By Cole Epley
Every four years, athletes of all ages are inspired by the Olympic games.
Sports fans reflect on years past, conjuring up deep-seated emotions of magical performances and enduring hope.
Dating back nearly 30 centuries, the Olympics is one of the most widely-recognized and revered global events in the world. Joshua McAdams, a 30-year-old Cordova resident, plans to be in London for the 2012 Summer Games—his second consecutive Olympics appearance.
But he won’t be a spectator.
The third-year Southern College of Optometry student is currently training to qualify for the steeplechase, a 3,000-meter race featuring four hurdles per lap and a water jump, at the 2012 summer games.
“Every four years, kids dream about the Olympics,” McAdams says. “I did, too.”
With a 2-year-old of his own, he reflects on discovering running during his childhood.
The fifth child in a family of eight, McAdams grew up in Cleveland, instilled with the values, discipline and work ethic that accompanies an upbringing in a Mormon family.
“Every year in elementary school, we had to do the timed mile run. Every year, I’d set a school record for the grade level,” he says. That talent shone throughout his high school years and into his college career, which he began at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
After a year at Belmont, McAdams took a two-year hiatus to go on an international mission to Thailand as a part of an LDS Church mission before resuming his college career at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
“While some say that the mission may not be the best two years of your life,” McAdams says, “it’s definitely the best two years for your life. I got to see how a Christian experience can change a person’s life firsthand.”
He reflects on how the mission changed priorities in his life while noting that his running actually improved after the Thailand trip.
McAdams’ coach at BYU, four-time NCAA champion and two-time Olympian Ed Eyestone, says McAdams came to his office in early 2003, just after he returned from his mission.
“Apparently the families feed the missionaries very well there, because he was probably about 35 pounds over the ideal weight for a runner,” Eyestone says.
The coach says that although he was skeptical at first, it took just two weeks and a grueling 80-mile-per-week ‘diet’ that “usually will get a runner to where they need to be.”
Eyestone realized McAdams’ potential as a steeplechaser in between the indoor and outdoor seasons.
“The first time he went over a hurdle, he looked like he’d been doing it all of his life,” says Eyestone. Noting his flexibility and natural inclination to hurdling, Eyestone says, “From that moment, I told him, ‘You know what? You’re going to be NCAA champion in the steeplechase.’”
Eyestone’s prediction was realized at the 2006 NCAA Outdoor National Championships, just three weeks after ‘the runner with the Cheshire cat grin’ won his first-ever Mountain West Conference steeplechase championship. McAdams, a four-time All-American, shaved nearly 33 seconds off of his MWC-championship performance en route to fulfilling his coach’s prophecy.
After graduating from BYU, McAdams applied and was accepted to Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, one of the top clinical optometry schools in the nation. However, he postponed his scholastic goals in order to train, qualify and compete at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
He placed 27th among all steeplechasers, blogging about his Olympic experience as they occurred.
Dr. James Newman, director of academic support services at Southern College of Optometry, says that McAdams came straight from Beijing to Memphis, eager to continue his education.
“He was still feeling the euphoria of participating, but you could tell that he was a very disciplined person and he really had direction for what he wanted to do,” Newman says.
Newman relates McAdams’ Olympic quest to his professional quest to become an optometrist. Just like an Olympian has to endure the pain and challenges to reach the goal, he says, an optometry student has to endure the exhaustive efforts and challenges to become a doctor.
“He’s having to discipline himself even further to keep after his studies and to learn for the long haul,” Newman says. “But you keep your eyes on the prize and you keep on keeping on.”
McAdams’ path has been far from perfect. Two weeks before winning the 2008 Outdoor steeplechase, doctors confirmed that he had suffered a stress fracture in his right hip. The runner persevered for a few months, even competing in races in Europe, before eventually deciding to give his body a well-deserved rest.
He was out of commission for four months solid — “I couldn’t even get on an elliptical machine,” he says.
In February of this 2010, McAdams began getting back into shape and, in just four months, managed a fifth place finish at the USA Championships. Although he missed his goal of finishing top three, he remained confident in his recovery and progress.
Eyestone likes his chances of coaching McAdams at both the Outdoor World Championships as well as at the London games. “I think he will be a force to be reckoned with at the World Championship trials this year, as well as the Olympic trials next year,” he says.
Since reading a book late last year which has influenced a change in his form and stride, McAdams says he is running better than he ever has.
Lately, he’s been focused on tackling the four-minute mile, which, as any runner knows, is among the holiest of holies as far as track accomplishments go. McAdams says that it’s “75 percent fitness and 25 percent being in the right race.” Two weeks ago in Fayetteville, he missed the mark by just 1.4 seconds. He returns this week to attempt the feat again.
Of course, his family will be in tow:
“The inspiration I receive from having my wife and daughter there, watching me,” he says, “there’s really no sweeter feeling than that.”
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