Barringer at NCAAs: Did That Really Happen?

Monday, Nov 23 was the first day of my vacation, and I watched the NCAA Div I Cross-Country Championships live, with a computer nearby to supplement the dreadful coverage on the Versus network.

In spite of the nitwit commentators and lengthy commercial breaks in the middle of the races, it was a pretty exciting meet. By now I'm sure everyone knows that Liberty's Sam Chelanga dominated the men's race, that Stanford bombed despite a strong 3rd-place finish from Chris Derrick, that Coach Blackburn's alma mater, Villanova, won the women's race, and that prohibitive women's favorite Jenny Barringer suffered a mid-race mental breakdown and struggled home in 163rd place.

Watching Barringer self-destruct was surreal. I kept asking myself, "is this really happening?" From her post-race interviews, it seems that she was asking herself the same thing. Predictably, some have bashed her for her catastrophic mental lapse, while others have risen to her defense, citing her courage in a) finishing the race, and b) being so willing to talk about it afterwards.

I don't think I fall into either one of those camps. For me, too much analysis from the outside doesn't help me grasp the reality of it any more clearly. I feel a certain amount of sympathy for any runner who has a psychological problem severe enough to interfere with their ability to do what they have trained for years to do. But at the same time, trying to explain it away doesn't seem right either. It happened. The reality is that until the next race, Barringer will be the runner with the Olympic resume and American Records who fell apart in the middle of a race that we all expected she would win easily.

As a coach, I keep wondering whether Barringer's race might serve as a kind of illustration of the importance of being in the right place mentally for a race. I'm not sure how many runners will relate to her experience, though. She had sky-high expectations for herself, but by her own admission had a lot of other important high-stress things going on in her life -- an engagement, application to Law School, and who knows what else. Obviously, Barringer is a strong-willed, over-achieving person as well as a great runner, any maybe she was just trying to do too much.

Some journalists have placed Barringer's collapse into context by citing feet-of-clay moments of other great runners -- Keninisa Bekele dropping out of the World XC race, Jim Ryun stepping off the track in a mile race, Suzy Favor-Hamilton collapsing in a 1500. They might have added the example of Fernando Mamede, the 10K world record holder who stepped off the track during the Olympic final in 1984. Great runners are not without their insecurities. Most of the time, they overcome those insecurities and perform like gods, but not always.

Running is such a simple sport, and yet it depends on the human psyche, which contains its mysterious dead-ends and dark corners. As a fan of the sport, I hope that Jenny Barringer gets back to a place where running can be simple again. It's tough -- shocking, actually -- too watch a strong runner suddenly go slack from the mental strain of trying to meet all of her self-imposed expectations.