Gracie West didn't start running until her senior year of high school but has developed into a high quality competitor at Centre College. (Centre College Athletics Photo)
Almost every athlete has adversity he or she must overcome to succeed. However, Centre College junior Gracie West had major obstacles to clear to become a productive cross country and track runner for the Colonels.
She suffered from an eating disorder in high school that prevented her from even joining the Louisville Assumption cross country team until her senior year.
“I just wasn’t in a good place physically. Senior year, I really got it together. I was like, ‘I really, really want to run cross country.’ I had gone to a healthier place,” she said. “I got the clearance from my doctors and everything was good. I wasn’t super good. I was decent. Some high schoolers now are insanely fast, so I wasn’t on our team that won state. I was an alternate but that was okay with me.”
She estimates she was Assumption’s No. 10 runner in cross country and she also didn’t make the state track meet later in the year. She loved running but never thought she could run in college. Her high school coach suggested she reach out to Centre College coach Lisa Owens anyway, thinking there was no chance she would hear back from Owens.
“At best I thought it might be something like if I could get my times down, maybe you can come here. But she wanted me,” West said. “I committed in early February because it didn’t take long to convince me Centre was right for me. I loved running and wanted to keep doing it. I missed out on so much in high school and wanted to still be part of a team.”
She’s a big part of the team. When Centre repeated as Southern Athletic Association indoor champion, West won the 5K (3.1 miles) in 18 minutes, 16.03 seconds. She was also fourth in the 3,000-meter run. She has carried the momentum over to the outdoor season as she was a wire-to-wire winner in the 5K at Berry on April 11 in 18:10.42.
West still remembers her freshman season when she broke 20 minutes for the first time in a cross country race and now she runs 19:20 in her 5K workouts.
“I had never run a 5K on the track but by the end of my freshman year I was doing 18:25. Then sophomore year I got a 17:52 on the track, so that was really exciting,” she said. “I actually learned how to race because in high school I didn’t really understand it. Most of the seniors on our team had been running their whole lives and they knew what it took to get fast and have the endurance to do it.
“Racing can be really painful and I didn’t understand any of that until I got to Centre. I would just run as fast as I could but I didn’t care that much. But when I got here, I got much more competitive and actually understood the strategy.”
It was just about a year ago that West ran her 17:52 5K and then a few days later went on a long training run with teammate Sophie Bouldin. She was about 4 1/2 miles from campus when she took a step and was in intense pain.
“I had to hobble back to campus and was in a ton of pain. It happened so suddenly. I ended up having a stress fracture in my lower pelvis. I couldn’t run conference and really couldn’t run again until halfway through the summer,” she said. “I pushed it too hard the first week I started running and got another stress fracture in my lower back. So I was out all of cross county (in the fall).”
Doctors told her it was possible but “very rare” for a runner to have stress fractures in the pelvis and back instead of the leg where most runners might suffer that type of injury.
Her first race back was indoors in January and she’s still trying to get back under 18 minutes for the 5K and hopes that will happen this weekend at the SAA Championships at Sewanee, TN., when the Colonels try to win a third straight conference title.
West did train on the bike or elliptical almost every day starting in September when she was unable to run because it did not put any stress on her body. That meant none of this long 10-mile runs with Bouldin.
Fortunately, West enjoyed her junior classes even more than she had classes her first two years at Centre. She’s a pre-med major and likes the challenging courses she’s had. West had over 30 hours of college credit coming out of high school but those credits did not transfer to Centre.
“My high school is pretty hard academically. I’ve heard from other people that came in as freshmen and were shocked by the course load and I really wasn’t,” West said. “Assumption is a college prep school, so it had me prepared.”
She’s learning to also keep her running in perspective and understands runners can be hard on themselves for not reaching certain time goals.
“There’a team dynamic to running but it is also an individual sport and when things go wrong, it kind of feels like it is just you and it is your fault,” the Centre junior said. “We tend to be really hard on ourselves after races but my teammates have helped me with that. So I am proud of how far I have come considering the injuries I had and getting a late start in the sport. I’m also looking towards the next goal but I remind myself to take the time to actually think about what I have done.”
West admits she’s “nervous” about the conference championship this weekend knowing that Berry is poised to “give us a run for our money” for the team title.
“I am supposed to run the 10K on Friday, which is the worst race in the entire world. I hate it but I will do it. It is brutal and I will not run it any other time except at conference,” she said. “It’s such a long race and sometimes I am not going to lie, I kind of go unconscious. There was a time my freshman year when I didn’t even remember the last four laps.
“I will do the 5K Saturday morning and then I think Coach might have me do the 1,500, which is not my normal race. That is still up in the air because we have a lot of good 1,500 runners on our team who are trained for it but it will just come down to how the team points race is going and I will do anything I can to help us win.”
