Running Wild

When sophomore Brenda Taylor puts in a day at the track, she puts in the whole day.

Taylor, The Crimson's Athlete of the Week, competed in five events this past weekend and was a key to the women's track team's second-place finish at Heptagonals, the equivalent of the Ivy Championships.

Taylor won the 100-meter high hurdles and the 400 hurdles, the latter in a meet record of 59.66 seconds. She ran fast without jumping, too, collecting a second in the 100-meter, running the second leg of the first-place 4x400 and running the second leg on the third-place 4x100 team. The 4x400 relay established another meet record, with a time of 3:43.74.

Taylor's scorecard for the weekend is an impressive one: five events, three firsts, a second, a third and two meet records.

"I was running all day," she said. "It's hard to run that many events. There are different levels you can run on--team level and individual level. Doing five events is all about the team level. You don't expect to run great times, what matters is how many points can you score for your team, and so on that level, five events is not that bad because I can handle it."

Taylor has shown the ability to be a huge point-scorer consistently. Against Yale, she won the 100 and 400 hurdles, finished second in the 100, and ran in the winning 4x100 and 4x400 relay.

At Penn Relays, she set a school record in the 400 hurdles and ran in the school record-setting 4x400. She also holds the school record in the 55-meter hurdles, which she won at indoor Heptagonals.

"I guess my body is physically capable of doing a lot of events," she said. "The hard thing mentally is that there's a lot of things going on at a track meet, so you have to check in 30 minutes beforehand and be in a certain place at a certain time."

Taylor copes by warming up for an extra long time--an hour and a half--then keeping warm the whole day. Saturday, she ran a total of four times. Sunday, she raced five times.

"You don't think about that when you're doing it," she said. "You think, 'I have to be ready in 10 minutes.' Mentally, you're in a zone."

In high school in North Carolina, Taylor was an All-American twice in the 300-hurdles and a scholastic All-American in the 400-hurdles. She battled injuries her freshman year at Harvard before becoming a dominant presence this year.

"Last year, I was adapting to a new environment and was frustrated," she said. "This year has been really reinforcing to come back and have a chance to run the way I feel I'm capable. For me, it was really exciting."

With the last team meet finished, Taylor can finally do something she hasn't been able to do in a while--run for herself. Given the amount of sacrifice she has made for her team, her next challenge is appropriately personal.

"Now I'm hoping to focus on my event, the 400 hurdles, and run for time," she said. "My goal is to make nationals in June."