Healthy Rosemount hurdler Rachel Schow makes the difficult enjoyable

It was an odd start to the track and field season for Rosemount's Rachel Schow. Coming off a long winter of gymnastics — not to mention a grueling offseason training program for her track discipline, the hurdles — Schow showed up to her first track practice of the spring and felt, well, just fine.

"It's probably the first time I came into the season healthy — ever," she said with a laugh. "It was really weird to just go through normal practices and just get ready to run. I've never had that before."

Schow is one of the state's top female hurdlers in both the 100- and 300-meter races. Past results wouldn't indicate it, but a long list of nagging injuries have forced her into slow starts each spring. There was a hamstring injury before her freshman season. Then she had a stress fracture in her right leg as a sophomore. And last year, as a junior, she tore a ligament in her left foot.

Part of that run of bad luck can be chalked up to being a two-sport athlete, never taking a break in a year-round cycle of competing. Part of it comes from her natural build, she said.

Either way, Schow said she finally feels in top condition.

It showed last week at the Class 2A state meet, where she finished third in the 100-meter race and eighth in the 300. After graduating earlier this month, Schow now has a full summer of competing and training before joining the track team at Minnesota this fall.

"This was definitely one of my better seasons," she said. "I feel I wound up running to the best of my ability and really peaked at the right time."

Hurdles races are about as unpredictable as any in track, requiring a combination of form, technique, timing and endurance. Schow said the difficulty is what makes it so enjoyable. It also makes it unrealistic to expect to have the type of consistency Schow did during her high school career.

She first ran track as a third-grader through the Rosemount youth program. She joined the high school team as a seventh-grader but never ran the hurdles until midway through her freshman season.

"My coach would tell me that he thought I'd be a much better hurdler than a sprinter, and I just kind of would shrug and nod and try it just to make him happy," she said. "Then I had a sort or breakthrough race, and it all just kind of clicked. … My form and everything came together, and I could just race and not think about it."

She finished sixth in the 100-meter hurdles at the Class 2A state meet as a freshman. The next year she won both the 100- and 300-meter hurdles. In her four years competing in the state finals, she never finished worse than eighth in either event.

This month's state meet outcomes were not the results she had hoped for, but she felt she ran strong races.

"The times weren't my best," she said, noting her fastest time in the 100, a 14.23 — a score that would've been fast enough to set the Class 2A state meet record — came at sections. "But it was a really strong field with a lot of great runners, and I ran pretty well."

Schow plans to major in environmental engineering, with a second major in business. She's always been passionate about the environment, and she said that career field has been planned out in her mind for years.

She also will keep running, and take the unpredictability of her sport in stride.

"I love hurdling," she said. "It's just a combination of everything … and anything can happen."