Covering 400 meters of ground and clearing intermittently placed obstacles in about one minute resembles a graceful art form from the stands, but is treated as a science on the track.
Like all other events within the track and field sport, running a 400-hurdles race requires precision and extensive practice.
Hurdlers such as Oregon senior Kayla Mellott have to calculate how many strides they are going to take in between hurdles and which leg they are going to leap from on each approach.
“Generally, you figure out what your stride pattern is going to be, and then you practice it and use it in every race,” Mellott said. “I’ve used the same stride pattern for the last two years.”
Last weekend, Mellott adjusted her stride pattern in between the preliminaries and Sunday’s final race at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships.
“It’s kind of a different idea to switch it up at the last minute,” Mellott said. “I’d been thinking for a while that I needed to change it a little bit, so I just figured, ‘It’s the Pac-10s, why not?’”
Teammate Kasey Harwood, who ran a season-worst 1:02.69 in the preliminaries, thought it was a daring but impressive move.
“It’s unusual for someone this late in the season and this late in their career to be changing things like that,” said Harwood, who still holds a regional qualifying mark, “but it was a bold move on her part, and I admire her for that.”
Mellott’s time of 1:00.24 in Saturday’s preliminary race was not bad. It was .09 seconds slower than a personal record she set a week earlier at the Oregon Invitational.
“We noticed on her video in the preliminaries that she was adding too many strides,” Oregon assistant coach Rock Light said.
Mellott said she presented the idea of changing her stride pattern to Light shortly before the final race. Light said it made sense but that “it’s hard to maintain the same stride pattern throughout the race.”
Right before the gun went off, Mellott made her final decision.
“It’s kind of like breaking a habit,” she said. “It’s definitely breaking away from what you’re used to in a race, which is usually not recommended.”
The move paid off as Mellott finished fourth and scored five team points with a time of 1:00.13, which improved her personal
record from the previous week by .02 seconds.
However, the race still had its share of faults.
“Typically, the last 100 (meters) is the best part of my race, where I feel like that’s a really hard part for (my competitors),” Mellott said. “In the finals, it really wasn’t there, and I don’t know if it was because of the change in the stride pattern in the first part of the race or if
I was just
fatigued.
“I hit the last hurdle with a weird stride pattern, and I think that threw me off. Even though I screwed up on that last hurdle, I still ran a faster time, so I think it worked for me.”
Mellott said that she doesn’t necessarily count every stride but translates how comfortable she feels on every approach into whether or not she is on stride.
“A 16-step feels completely different from an 18-step,” she said. “You can just feel what you’ve done. I know that if I throw my left leg up and get to the next hurdle
comfortably and I throw my left leg up again, I went 17 strides. I’m pretty sure in the finals at Pac-10s I took 19 steps to the last hurdle. Doing it for four years, I just know what each one feels like.”
For beginners at the collegiate level like Harwood, who is only a freshman, the ability to recognize and implement a consistent stride pattern is still
developing.
“I don’t have a very consistent stride pattern right now,” Harwood said. “I haven’t got it down, because I’m just starting.”
Mellott doesn’t believe it will take much effort to get used to her new stride pattern. She said she will experiment with it over 200 or 300 meters of hurdles in the days leading up to the NCAA West
Regional meet May 27-28.
Mellott has a favorable trend developing as her times have improved with every race (excluding preliminary races) this season.
“I’ll take it as a sign that I’m ready and that I’m peaking at
the right time,” she said. “I
just hope that I can carry that on
to Regionals.”

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