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MOUNTAIN GREEN, Morgan County — On the Fourth of July, a Utah man will achieve his goal of competing in the U.S. Olympic Trials for steeplechase.
Mike Hardy, an alumnus of Weber State University’s track and field team, recently found out his time at the 2016 Hoka One One Middle Distance Classic earned him a spot at the event. He missed the automatic qualifying time of 8:32 by a touch over half a second at 8:32:55, but made the cut to be one of 24 people accepted for the Olympic trials.
“I’ve kind of looked up to these runners that I’ll be racing with for a real long time, kind of idolizing them,” Hardy said. “It will be cool just to be in the race with them.”
To make the Olympic trials, the Mountain Green native continued to push himself after graduating from WSU in 2015. He met with WSU coach Paul Pilkington to train twice a week, but spent most days running on his own before and after his job as an electronics engineer at Hill Air Force Base.
Training without a team made preparation for the trials harder, but Hardy said he thinks he has matured over the past year.
“Last year (the Olympic trials) was kind of a reach,” he said. “Last year my best time was 8:41, so I had to cut at least 9 seconds to get the auto (qualifying time). That’s what motivated me to keep up the training and stuff, because I really wanted to make it to trials.”
Hardy will go into the Monday’s prelim race for Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, ranked at No. 14. The top 14 people from that race will go on to the finals, which will be held July 9. Only the fastest three competitors will make the U.S. Olympic team and head to Brazil.
There is about a 20-second time difference between Hardy and the top competitors for steeplechase, so he said it would be “quite the jump to make the team,” but not impossible. Mostly, he’s grateful for the opportunity to continue challenging himself. At first he planned to stop racing after trying to reach the Olympic trials, but since he ran a personal best this season Hardy said he will probably continue to compete next season as well to see if he keeps improving.
Hardy and his wife leave for Eugene, which is nicknamed Track Town USA, on Saturday. He said he’s looking forward to returning to the town where he competed in the 2015 NCAA Championships.
“It’s kind of a unique place to run a race because you normally only get that kind of excitement from like a football game or basketball game, but you go to Eugene and they really appreciate all of the work the athletes do and the competition,” he said. “It’s really cool to go out there.”
Contact the author at ncrofts@ksl.com or find her on Twitter.
