Lux Mountford, CHS girls track team’s top hurdler, learns to ‘whip the curve,’ lowers her time significantly and finds herself ahead of schedule on her improvement curve

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Not all the significant developments for the host school’s track and field programs at the Garry Nallenweg Chesterton Relays meet Saturday involved setting or threatening long-standing school records.
For example, junior hurdler Lux Mountford flew under the radar, and we do mean flew. After opening the outdoor track season in impressive fashion by winning the 300 hurdles with a 50.13 in a dual meet at Valparaiso, Mountford topped herself Saturday.
Following hurdles coach Chris Holth’s advice to “whip the curve,” Mountford ran a 48.33, dropping more than a second-and-half from her personal best of 49.9 set at the DAC championship meet last spring. Running that time this early in the season brings the goal of improving enough to qualify for the state meet into view for the athlete who has swam at state in each of the past three seasons.
Mountford ran a 50.51 at the 2024 meet named after Chesterton’s former athletic director, an improvement of 2.18 seconds, no small chunk of time.
Hotlh pushed her to go out faster and had faith that she would be able to push the pace without falling apart at the end. She justified his faith with her performance.
Mountford said that in advance of the race she looked at the times of some of the girls in the field and knew it was going to be a fast race. Holth told her how to give herself the best shot at hanging in there and she finished with the third-best time, finishing behind a freshman and sophomore from Crown Point.
“Coach Holth told me to get out good for the first two hurdles and as soon as I hit the curve, I just have to go,” Mountford recounted. “I just have to whip the curve because that’s when everyone starts to back off usually so that they can finish strong for the last 100. He told me to whip the curve and pray you can finish.”
In other words, go for it and see if you have enough fuel left to get away with it. She went for it, and she got away with it, a big day that made her even more eager to get after improving.
“I’m hoping for a 47. I’m already at a 48 low. If I’m improving the same pace as I am so far this season, hopefully, I can get down to a 46 by regionals,” she said. “That’s my goal. That would be so awesome.”
Holth gave Mountford a map that worked for her in the front of the race and she believes the next phase of improvement can come from the back end.
“I still need to work on my endurance because I’m getting so tired on the last 100,” she said. “My coaches told me I’m going out a lot smoother and a lot faster my first 200, but the last 100 is something I’ve needed to work on for a while. But I think I’m getting over my first two hurdles smooth and whipping the curve the best I can.”
The first track workout after swimming season always reminds Mountford of the differences in the two sports that involve constantly trying to improve endurance and speed.
“Swim, you’re going hard for two and a half hours, sometimes even more, every single day,” she said. “But for track, my first workout back, it was like three 300s. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so different from swim.’ Swim, I can recover so much faster. But for track, I mean, you have to have a 10-minute break and then hope that you can run the same pace that you did the first time. I think I’d be a totally different runner without being a swimmer. I think that endurance comes into track as well. I don’t think I would be as good. I’d be nowhere near where I am right now.”
Where she is right now is good, just not as good as where she wants to be five weeks from