RUSH — If you see Miranda Melville on the Lehigh Valley trail this summer, she'll appear to be walking, but what you'll really be seeing is an Olympic hopeful in training.
Melville, 19, is a race walker.
Race walking is anything
but a stroll in the park, she says, and it certainly isn't like the
speed walking you see those ladies doing at the mall. It's a real sport
and it's hard, Melville of Rush says.
Perhaps her times will convince you. At the USA Track and Field Junior National Championships in late May, Melville race walked a 10K in 54 minutes. That's faster than 445 people ran the same distance at the Medved Lilac 10K in Rochester a few weekends before. And don't forget, she was walking.
One year out of high school, after graduating from Rush-Henrietta in 2007, Melville is making a name for herself on the national scene. She's traveled as far as Russia to compete, where she and a few others represented America in the World Cup.
"At the national level, she is the best under-20 walker in the country right now," said Mike DeWitt, her coach at University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Race walking is an Olympic event, and Melville hopes to make the team in 2012.
But
even Olympic status hasn't convinced everyone of race walking's
worthiness. Very few college track and field meets include race walking
events.
DeWitt trains college-age race walkers to compete at larger national and international events. His program is part of the reason Melville chose to attend UW-Parkside, where she majors in psychology and also competes in a few other track and field events.
DeWitt, who competed at the national level as a race walker for decades beginning in the 1970s, understands well the battle Melville has in validating her sport to the uninitiated.
Melville said a quick walk usually does the trick for doubting friends. It's a sport of technical ability. The motion is tricky.
According
to the USATF rule book, a walker must always have one foot in contact
with the ground, and the advancing leg must be straight –– with no bent
knee — until the leg is completely vertical to the ground. The arms are
pumped low by the hips for maximum forward propulsion.
The result is a fast walk with more attitude than a schlep from the parking lot to the grocery store.
Alas, even Melville needed
convincing that race walkers are bonafide athletes. When she was a high
school freshman, her coach asked her if she'd race walk and, while she
was willing to try, it was with a skeptic's heart.
"At first I thought it was really silly. I was like 'What? These people are just walking.'
"But I ended up really liking it."
She
was disqualified for visibly having both feet off the ground at the
same time in her very first race. That was the only time she's ever
been DQ'd though, and as soon as she got the form down, Melville said,
she liked the challenge of trying to go faster.
These days she's meeting the challenge of going farther, too. In high school the most common race is 1,500 meters, which is 1.5 kilometers. In the past year she's had to push into 10Ks to compete with her peers, and next year, when she reaches the over-20 bracket, she'll have to take a really long walk: 20K. That's almost 12.5 miles.
But she's preparing for the challenge. Melville practices every day, in between shifts at Peppermints restaurant and the Pieters Family Life Center.
Even if her Olympic dream doesn't come true, Melville says she's still happy to have the little-known sport in her life.
"I like being a part of something that is a little more unique."
