Steeplechase runners thrive despite lack of training

Paige Stoner doesn’t mind getting her feet wet.

“Surprisingly, it’s not that different,” Stoner said of running with wet shoes.

In the steeplechase, a 3000-meter race where racers must hurdle steeples — a larger hurdle — into water pits, athletes have to clear 28 hurdles and jump into seven water pits.

Stoner, Noah Affolder and Aidan Tooker have excelled in the event for SU this year. Fox said they might bring out the hurdles once or twice during May, but they generally don’t train specifically for steeplechase. Instead, they try to “find really good athletes,” Fox said, who will be able to thrive in the event.

“We have guys right now who just ran a 1500-meter and they’re about to run a 10K later in the season,” said Stoner, who broke the school record for the 3000-meter steeplechase with a 9:57.20 time. “They train us to be strong and be able to cover any event.”

Affolder, a freshman, started running the steeplechase in his junior year of high school. His coach set up sand pits to mimic water traps, and he didn’t jump in water until his first race.

“Right after I got out (of the water), I was like, ‘This doesn’t really feel too good,’” Affolder said. “A lap or two in, you forget about it. It wasn’t really a big deal after the first time.”

The most difficult part of the steeplechase is timing up the hurdles to avoid “stutter stepping,” Affolder said. Launching off his non-dominant leg can be “a little scary,” but he has gotten more comfortable with experience.

Stoner first tried the event as a freshman at Lipscomb University before she transferred to SU her sophomore year. She said Lipscomb’s approach to training for the steeplechase contrasts SU’s.

“We did hurdle drills (at Lipscomb),” Stoner said. “So we would kind of do the same workouts the rest of the team was doing, but we might be doing ‘thousand repeats’ out in lane two with some hurdles. Here, we don’t ever do workouts with hurdles. I guess they just have a different philosophy on training here.”

The same day Stoner broke the SU women’s record, Tooker set the fastest time among collegiate runners in the race at 8:45.79. Affolder crossed the finish line six seconds behind him. Fox said the three are all “natural” at the event.

Last year at nationals, Tooker ran one of the fastest times ever recorded by a freshman (8:39.34). He hasn’t run the event yet this outdoor season, but Fox said the steeplechase is “his event.”

“He’s kind of gravitated toward that,” Fox said. “You have to have really good hurdling skills, and it has to come naturally to you. It’s kind of a hard event to teach, and he’s picked it up right away.”