The 'chase — BYU has found past, current successes in track's hybrid event

PROVO — With apologies to Forrest Gump's mother, life is like a steeplechase race — despite a length that is itself enough to test your mettle, pesky obstacles keep popping up along the way and no matter how hard you try and avoid it, sooner or later you find yourself shin-deep in a puddle of water.

A hybrid distance-hurdle event, the 3,000-meter race entails roughly seven and a half laps around a track set up with four hurdle barriers and a water jump or "water trap."

"Basically what you've got is an event that makes you pay attention and is constantly giving you a challenge," said BYU assistant women's track and field coach Patrick Shane. "Physically, it's the hardest distance race there is, period. You get really tired running 3,000 meters and then you've got to go over 28 barriers and seven water jumps, and that just wipes you out.

"You're constantly having to stay alert; you're constantly having to confront the challenge of another barrier or water jump. And then to make it even harder, you've got people in the way that are in front of you and next to you and that are bad technically and are messing up and falling down."

The barriers begin after the field runs half a lap obstacle-free. Three hurdle barriers preclude a water jump, and then a final hurdle barrier comes 68 meters before the finish line. All five barriers on the course are evenly spaced between each other; the water jump and last hurdle barrier don't become part of the course until after the initial barrier-free half lap.

Not surprisingly, the water jump is a catalyst for drama.

"You've got the water, which is kind of exciting," Shane said. "Almost every race someone falls in the water jump (or) the water barrier creates some kind of disaster."

Like the four other barriers, the water jump includes a hurdle measuring four meters across. But unlike the other barriers which the runners simply hurdle over, with the water jump the athletes actually leap up onto the six-inch wide piece of wood and catapult themselves off the hurdle and into a water pit that is 70 centimeters at its deepest point, 3.66 meters long, and that gradually inclines back up to track level.

Process and potential

For various reasons, BYU has a history of excelling in both men's and women's steeplechase. Not least among those reasons is Shane, an assistant in track and the head coach of four national championship-winning BYU women's cross country teams.