University of Delaware Athletics
Michaela Meyer Overcomes Barriers On And Off The Track To Become A Record Breaker
2/24/2020 3:49:00 PM | Track & Field
Senior Michaela Meyer is one of the best middle distance runners in the history of Delaware women's track & field.
It's easy to see the success she has on the track; she holds the school record in the 800-meter run, both indoor and outdoor. It's not as easy to see all the little things and hard work that go into performing at such a high level. But what's even more difficult to see is the silent challenge Meyer faces on a daily basis.
***
The 800-meter run can be a weird event. Not quite long enough to be paced like a distance event, but too long to be a full-out sprint the entire way. The difference between winning and losing often comes down to strategy. For Meyer, that strategy is to attack.
"I'm an aggressive runner," Meyer said. "I think what makes me strive in a middle-distance setting is that I really attack the race. I don't really let the race control me, I control the race, and that's been my whole race strategy this year."
"She trained more like a sprinter with her high school team," Delaware track & field assistant coach/cross country head coach Ryan Waite said. "So she was really good at the 300 and the 600 indoors in Connecticut. She really developed power, she really developed explosiveness."
"A lot of times 800-meter runners, middle-distance runners in general, they tend to think like distance runners. They tend to be conservative and try to pace things out evenly," Waite continued. "I think Michaela coming from a sprint background has helped her be a little more fearless when she runs her races and just attack it right from the beginning."
Meyer wasn't always competing at a school-record pace. During her sophomore season, she met with Waite, disappointed in where her times stood. His advice was to focus on all the little things outside of just going to practice and competing hard.
So she started focusing on her recovery after workouts more, intentionally doing drills that would maximize her performance before races, making sure her nutrition was giving her the right amount of calories, and possibly the most important: getting a good amount of sleep.
"In high school I was someone that would stay up really late to get all of my work done," Meyer said. "I made the switch to be a morning person and I went full force into it. And I think that changed my attitude about running because I was able to feel more refreshed. I think it was the best decision I ever made. I give a lot of my success to my sleep. I get eight hours every single night."
As she made those small changes to her lifestyle to perform at her best, the results on the track started to show up too.
"Just the complete package. It wasn't like she did one thing and all of a sudden she's seeing this huge jump," Waite said. "She did a lot of little things and she continually added more little things, and they've all added up to turning into what she's doing now."
As she started to see the fruits of her labor, Meyer's confidence grew as well. A confidence that's key for a runner who likes to, in her words, "drop the hammer" after the first 400 meters of a race.
"One of my favorite Michaela moments was before she broke the school record outdoors in 2019 [at the Raleigh Relays]," Waite said. "We have three athletes running in the same race, and it's getting down to crunch time and the race is about to start and I've spent more time with the other two athletes than I have with Michaela coaching her up on what she needed to do."
"And as she's walking by, I just grabbed her shoulder and I made eye contact with her and just very seriously nodded my head and said 'you got this.' And she just nodded her head back and walked right to the track. And she ran the best race of her career up to that point and broke the school record."
To balance the rigorous training of a national caliber athlete with her studies as a nutrition major, all while getting her eight hours of sleep, Meyer has to be a meticulous planner.
All of this is even more impressive when you consider the fact that Meyer has dyslexia, a reading disorder that makes it incredibly difficult to process written words. Meyer has to make special arrangements to have her tests read to her, and her homework takes hours longer than that of students without learning disabilities. But living with dyslexia can be challenging outside of just school work.
"I was always the kid that stood out," Meyer said. "In high school it was very present that I was the kid that was taken out of classes because I had to get my exams read to me, because when I'm looking at words, it does not click for me. What I read does not get processed in my brain."
As she has evolved as both a runner and a person throughout her four years at Delaware, Meyer has grown to accept dyslexia as a part of her life.
"My years here, I realized it's more of something that I can embrace," Meyer said. "If I take power of it, then no one can make me feel ashamed. So it's something that I don't dislike about myself anymore. It's a trait that I have and I'm very confident in my likability."
This winter, Meyer broke the Delaware indoor 800 record in January and then broke her own record a few weeks later, running a blazing fast 2:07.07 at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston. No Blue Hen has ever qualified for the NCAA national championships, either indoor or outdoor, in their current format, but Meyer has a good chance to become the first. Last season, she finished 33rd at the NCAA East Region Prelims.
"It's just so exciting that there's even a chance of it and we're talking about it[qualifying for NCAA nationals]," Waite said. "For her to not really have an example of what it takes to get there, and her to blaze her own path to make it a possibility is really exciting. I don't know if she's going to make it or not. I think that she's got a good shot and she put herself in a position to have a shot, and that's all we can ask for."
After school, Meyer wants to complete an accelerated nursing program and settle down back home in Connecticut. But until the end of the season, expect her to be overcoming all challenges as she rewrites the Delaware record book.
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It's easy to see the success she has on the track; she holds the school record in the 800-meter run, both indoor and outdoor. It's not as easy to see all the little things and hard work that go into performing at such a high level. But what's even more difficult to see is the silent challenge Meyer faces on a daily basis.
***
The 800-meter run can be a weird event. Not quite long enough to be paced like a distance event, but too long to be a full-out sprint the entire way. The difference between winning and losing often comes down to strategy. For Meyer, that strategy is to attack.
"I'm an aggressive runner," Meyer said. "I think what makes me strive in a middle-distance setting is that I really attack the race. I don't really let the race control me, I control the race, and that's been my whole race strategy this year."
"She trained more like a sprinter with her high school team," Delaware track & field assistant coach/cross country head coach Ryan Waite said. "So she was really good at the 300 and the 600 indoors in Connecticut. She really developed power, she really developed explosiveness."
"A lot of times 800-meter runners, middle-distance runners in general, they tend to think like distance runners. They tend to be conservative and try to pace things out evenly," Waite continued. "I think Michaela coming from a sprint background has helped her be a little more fearless when she runs her races and just attack it right from the beginning."
Meyer wasn't always competing at a school-record pace. During her sophomore season, she met with Waite, disappointed in where her times stood. His advice was to focus on all the little things outside of just going to practice and competing hard.
So she started focusing on her recovery after workouts more, intentionally doing drills that would maximize her performance before races, making sure her nutrition was giving her the right amount of calories, and possibly the most important: getting a good amount of sleep.
"In high school I was someone that would stay up really late to get all of my work done," Meyer said. "I made the switch to be a morning person and I went full force into it. And I think that changed my attitude about running because I was able to feel more refreshed. I think it was the best decision I ever made. I give a lot of my success to my sleep. I get eight hours every single night."
As she made those small changes to her lifestyle to perform at her best, the results on the track started to show up too.
"Just the complete package. It wasn't like she did one thing and all of a sudden she's seeing this huge jump," Waite said. "She did a lot of little things and she continually added more little things, and they've all added up to turning into what she's doing now."
As she started to see the fruits of her labor, Meyer's confidence grew as well. A confidence that's key for a runner who likes to, in her words, "drop the hammer" after the first 400 meters of a race.
"One of my favorite Michaela moments was before she broke the school record outdoors in 2019 [at the Raleigh Relays]," Waite said. "We have three athletes running in the same race, and it's getting down to crunch time and the race is about to start and I've spent more time with the other two athletes than I have with Michaela coaching her up on what she needed to do."
"And as she's walking by, I just grabbed her shoulder and I made eye contact with her and just very seriously nodded my head and said 'you got this.' And she just nodded her head back and walked right to the track. And she ran the best race of her career up to that point and broke the school record."
To balance the rigorous training of a national caliber athlete with her studies as a nutrition major, all while getting her eight hours of sleep, Meyer has to be a meticulous planner.
All of this is even more impressive when you consider the fact that Meyer has dyslexia, a reading disorder that makes it incredibly difficult to process written words. Meyer has to make special arrangements to have her tests read to her, and her homework takes hours longer than that of students without learning disabilities. But living with dyslexia can be challenging outside of just school work.
"I was always the kid that stood out," Meyer said. "In high school it was very present that I was the kid that was taken out of classes because I had to get my exams read to me, because when I'm looking at words, it does not click for me. What I read does not get processed in my brain."
As she has evolved as both a runner and a person throughout her four years at Delaware, Meyer has grown to accept dyslexia as a part of her life.
"My years here, I realized it's more of something that I can embrace," Meyer said. "If I take power of it, then no one can make me feel ashamed. So it's something that I don't dislike about myself anymore. It's a trait that I have and I'm very confident in my likability."
This winter, Meyer broke the Delaware indoor 800 record in January and then broke her own record a few weeks later, running a blazing fast 2:07.07 at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston. No Blue Hen has ever qualified for the NCAA national championships, either indoor or outdoor, in their current format, but Meyer has a good chance to become the first. Last season, she finished 33rd at the NCAA East Region Prelims.
"It's just so exciting that there's even a chance of it and we're talking about it[qualifying for NCAA nationals]," Waite said. "For her to not really have an example of what it takes to get there, and her to blaze her own path to make it a possibility is really exciting. I don't know if she's going to make it or not. I think that she's got a good shot and she put herself in a position to have a shot, and that's all we can ask for."
After school, Meyer wants to complete an accelerated nursing program and settle down back home in Connecticut. But until the end of the season, expect her to be overcoming all challenges as she rewrites the Delaware record book.
Â
Players Mentioned
Mid-Distance
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