It took just three meets for Hanna Tarleton to become a school record-holder at Washington, but her path to UW was much longer. A native of Bellingham and a Washington state high school champion in the 300m hurdles for Sehome, Tarletonย sought a small college experience out of high school and found herself at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in Claremont, California. Still running track but at the Division-III level, Tarletonย was fifth in the 400m hurdles at the NCAA Championships as a sophomore. After her sophomore year, she decided to transfer home to Washington to pursue better opportunities in biology. Tarletonย walked on to the Husky track team in 2017, but suffered a stress fracture right before the indoor season and missed the rest of the year. Now, healthy and competing for the first time since 2015, Tarletonย led off the women's 4x400m relay that shattered the school record by nearly five seconds in New Mexico last week, running 3:37.30, converted to 3:37.74 for altitude. Tarletonย talked about what led her back closer to home.
ย GoHuskies.com: You joined the team last year but were unable to compete due to an injury? Hanna Tarleton: I got injured right before the week we got back from winter break and I was out until June. I had a stress fracture in my sacrum, so that was a tough one.
ย GH.com: At that point, you haven't raced in a couple years and you're going into your senior season, did you feel like just throwing in the towel and giving up on athletics?
HT: Yeah, it was tough. I transferred here my junior year and wanted to run but I couldn't that year because I had transferred winter quarter and I hadn't done preseason. So the next year I had finally done preseason and got to that point and then got injured right before the season started, so it felt like there were so many obstacles to get here. It was kind of a tough decision at first (to come back from the injury) but I thought I had already put in all that effort and I didn't want to finish my track career on that note.
GH.com: So in 2016 you got to just be a normal student? What was that like?
HT: Exactly, a brief time of being a normal student (laughs). It was tough. I do really well with structure so I felt like my academics I actually needed some structure to help out with all the other aspects. It was very odd not having a team to train with, I really didn't like that. It's like a fun activity if it's with a team. By myself I thought, "Oh, working out kind is usually so much fun, and now it's not."
ย GH.com: What first made you decide to transfer?
HT: I was a Bio major at Claremont which is not necessarily the best track there. It just kind of worked out that my financial aid changed, and realizing more and more that it wasn't the right fit for academics. UW is the perfect place for Biology, you can't really get a better spot. So coming here was great. It's so much easier to get a job when I want and so many varied classes.
ย GH.com: Where is Claremont?
HT: It's East of L.A., liberal arts, with like 900 students, so like a completely different world. My cousin went there, a lot of people go there because they had family go there. It's pretty well-known but not to the point where everyone's heard of it. But I had visited my cousin and I wanted to get out of Washington a little bit, I loved the weather there. It was D-III so I could run track but really focus on school. The community was really close-knit and I loved that about it.
ย GH.com: But eventually you were looking for more options with your specific courses?
HT: It just wasn't the right fit. They didn't have the resources. There's barely any ongoing research happening on campus. UW just, if you want to you could have three different jobs in three different labs on campus, there's just so many opportunities.
ย GH.com: Had you considered Washington for athletics and was running D-I or in the Pac-12 something you had ever dreamed about?
HT: My brother went to UW and we're from Washington so it was always something on my radar, but I wanted something smaller originally, so I didn't think about UW as much. I kind of got contacted by the coach at the time at the end of my senior year, so it was too late to think about it but that kind of put it in my head that I could potentially run here. In high school I just had no concept of the times I needed to run to compete at D-I. Even coming here after my time at CMC (Claremont-Mudd) I really had no idea if I could walk on, what that would be like. Eric's just really easy and just made it better than I could have hoped for for trying to walk on. It's been great.
ย GH.com: Now that you're finally back competing, you've had some really solid times aside from the relay record, so have you surprised yourself a bit?
HT: It was crazy because I hadn't raced in so long I just had no idea. I kind of hoped I could improve, part of me hoped I could just compare to how I ran a couple years ago, so this has been great. It makes sense, the workouts, the training, is much more purposeful and difficult and you can't miss things. At CMC it's a little more come and go, not as much fall training. So it makes sense because this is the hardest I've ever worked, but it's great to see that show up in times and races.
ย
Hanna Tarletonย on the left, with Imani Apostol, Raquel Tjernagel, and Carolyn Birkenfeld after setting the 4x400m relay school record. GH.com: On the trip to New Mexico, did the relay group know what the record time was and feel confident that you could break it?
HT: I think we all kind of knew we were running different races that weekend to stay fresh for the 4x4, so it was in everyone's head that we were really going for it. But it felt weird running at altitude and on the banked track it was hard, so it didn't feel like we'd run fast and we were all exhausted, thinking it was not very good, but then we heard our time and saw our splits. So the altitude kind of tricked us and it turns out we were going pretty quick, so it was really exciting.
ย GH.com: Since this is only your third year of competition, is there any thought of you getting another season in 2019?
HT: There's usually five years of competing available, for injury you can extend that for six years, so my stress fracture might qualify, but I'm definitely going to be done with my undergrad, I'm only taking a few credits this next quarter, so it would have to be a very intentional extension. My mindset is this is a senior season.
ย GH.com: Outdoors, the 400m hurdles is where you've had the most success so is that event still your plan?
HT: Yeah, the hurdles are the goal. Indoors we are training slowly for the hurdles and it will start to pick up more when it gets closer to outdoor.
ย GH.com: You had a time of 1:01.27 at NCAAs your sophomore year, is that still your PR and how do you feel now compared to then?
HT: That's the last time I raced the 400 hurdles. So what is that, 2015? Who knows what will happen with the outdoor season, but hopefully I can improve upon that. I feel definitely fitter and stronger than I did back then.
