OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
Running in unique conditions, Rodney eyes gold
Noon is near on the waterfront and Brendon Rodney, the fastest Blackbird in Brooklyn, ambles past bleachers to his off-campus workspace. It is the worn rubber running track at Red Hook Park, set between Bay St. and the Henry St. Basin, down by an abandoned grain terminal. There are eight lanes, and Rodney, a celebrated sprinter for Long Island University’s track team, carries a metal starting block in his left hand. There are braces on his teeth, goatee hairs on his chin and two gold chains around his neck. He eyes overgrown grass by the shot put toe board in a corner of soccer field No. 3, a surface that doubles as the infield. The area is closed off with a black 10-foot chain-link fence along the track’s inner loop. A white sign warns that contaminants are being removed as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to clean up lead that traces back to when the Columbia Smelting and Refining Works facility stood across Bay St. The track stays open and Lane 6 is clear as Rodney commences a speed endurance workout. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to cut the grass today,” he says. Rodney, 24, maintains that he pays no mind to the lead as he mines for gold. He is an All-American from Ontario, fresh off a third-place finish in the 200 meters at the NCAA’s outdoor national championships in Oregon last month, and training for a top-three finish in the Canadian Olympic trials in Edmonton later this week. His road to the summer’s Olympic Games in Rio traces through tracks from Brooklyn to Beijing as he boasts a college-best time in the indoor 200 meters (20.46). He trains under LIU coach Simon Hodnett, a Pisces from Virginia Beach forever seeking to be in sync with his runners’ psyches. Hodnett holds a black umbrella in his left hand and a yellow stopwatch in his right. He heads a nomadic program that has operated without its own track in his 18-year tenure and harps on balance, exhorting Rodney to use both arms in order to rectify a tendency to run with one side of his body. Hodnett gauges Rodney’s fitness and goads him to go faster. He commands Rodney, a 6-3, 175-pound string bean who hates vegetables, to remain as tall and erect as possible with tightened core muscles. Rodney focuses on limiting missteps in stride. He insists neither lead nor Zika can keep him from the finish lines in the distance.
“I’m not worried,” he says. “Other people are more worried about them for me. I’ll just put on some bug repellant. It’s just mosquitoes there. I’m used to them.”
Mettle tests abound as he curves around tight bends and darts down lined straightaways. He is qualified for the Olympics after dipping under the “A” standard for the 200 meters in 20.18 seconds, and momentum builds as he pursues Usain Bolt of Jamaica. Having run a pulsing third leg for Canada’s 4x100meter relay team that took bronze at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, Rodney, a veteran familiar with the relay exchange process, remains in communication with his national team runners while training in New York. He also receives encouragement nt from a fellow Canadian with similar Jamaican roots. The e supporter’s name is Ben Johnson, and he is banned for life e from track and field for testing positive for steroids after winning nning gold in the 100 meters at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and then testing dirty a second time. He hails from the same part of Jamaica as Rodney’s father, Basil. Rodney notes that Johnson’s nson’s sister, Claire, lived with Rodney’s family and he calleded her “Lady.”
“(Ben Johnson)nson) called me last night,’ Rodney says. “He’s like a close ose family friend. He’s cool. He tells me to stay away from rom the things he did, not to make the mistakes he made. ade. I’ll see him at the track and I’ll say, ‘You know I am m going to race faster than you one of these days.’ He’s e’s like, ‘Yeah, you will, when you work hard.’ ”
Rodney’s runsuns are over for the day. He slips off navy spikes, stretches es a little and readies to head back to LIU’s silver Windstar ar van that he rides in with training partners along Court St. to and from campus each day. The back window is emblazoned mblazoned “DESTINATION LIU” in yellow lettering. He details foam rolls for therapy, an acupuncturist’s ’s work on his Achilles and summer heats that lay ahead.
“Sometimes s the best tracks aren’t the ones you want to train on,” he says. “Sometimes the older, softer, beat-up p tracks are better for a body in the long run.”
lll “Brendon eats like crap,” Hodnett says as he eyes his sprinterrinter during another hour-long workout in Red ed Hook. He lists Rodney’s food allergies, ranging ging from nuts to seafood to shellfish and adds that Rodney rarely eats fruit other thanan oranges and pineapples. Rodney confesses esses to a period when he drank soda with every meal upon first coming to campus, mpus, and relates a childhood reaction to nuts ts that ended with him in anaphylactic shock. ck. Hodnett counsels Rodney to stay on top of his supplementsupplements in order to ensure energy sources prior to o performances. “If he could, he would eat a chicken sandwichdwich at McDonald’s every day. That’s what his body takes to. I’m scared if I start weaning him off of it, I don’t know how it would affect him psychologically.”ly.”
No matter the diet, Rodney darts once the starting gun goes oes off, but he smiles when discussing the e false starts he experienced in the recruiting ecruiting process. He was more concerned ncerned with the facilities than the food on his visit. He did id not take to the “dundungeon” — the