What Makes Hardin Run This Season? The Harrier Flash Is 'Just Faster'

"I was scared to death last year," said the blondish 115-pound sophomore, leaning forward from the couch in his chock-full living room in Winthrop House.

"I mean a three-mile race would kill me. I could hardly talk for 15 minutes. I couldn't run across the street at a yellow light."

That was last year. This year, the same little guy, whose name is Doug Hardin, has won six straight cross-country races, cracking two course records in the process.

What's the difference, Doug? How did the ugly duckling turn into a swan in one year? Hardin just doesn't know what happened. "I'm a bit faster this year," he says. But anybody knows that.

He didn't practice any harder over the summer than he usually does. He didn't find a pair of magic track shoes in his locker one day. Just all of a sudden, Doug Hardin got fast.

Amazing Metamorphosis

Charting the metamorphisis is astonishing. Last year, for example, Hardin lost to a Cornell runner named Chester Judah by 54 seconds. This year Hardin beat him by three and a half minutes. Last year, Hardin came in 35th in the freshman IC4A championships. This year, he whipped Gordon McKusick, who won the freshman title, and will probably be one of the favorites himself at the end of the season.

Hardin looks very much like Walt Hewlett -- the Crimson harrier sensation whose records Hardin is now shattering. Looking at him, you'd never guess he was a jock. He is slight, bespectacled, and looks a little undernourished. His clothes hang on him. He can't quite fill them out.

Doug is a very serious person. He concentrates in chemistry, spends 10 hours a week in labs, and plays the cello. He plays the cello well, too, and talks about music reverently.

"I went to the School of Music at Indiana University over the summer," Doug says. "At schools like Indiana they're professionals," he notes.

Quit Orchestra

I quit the orchestra here at Harvard. They're just not serious enough. They will have a bad rehearsal and just laugh it off. They just aren't serious."

Hardin is serious. He has little time to be anything else but. He gets up early and takes a morning run along the river, "just to wake up," as he says. He also runs to classes. ("I get there faster.") With his labs and his three or four hours of practice a day, Hardin's afternoons are pretty full. After dinner and an hour or so of cello practice, Doug hits the books. Somewhere in between he sleeps.

Hardin has a tough time adjusting to life as a famous jock. "It just occurred to me that in an ordinary year I'd be sent to the Nationals (He can't this year because Harvard and the NCAA aren't on the best of terms.) I just ran and was satisfied. Hey, I got a course record. Hey, I'm good. Look at that. I mean it just occurred to me."

"No," Hardin will say, "it doesn't really bother me that I'm not running in the Nationals. Maybe I'd make All-American. I could tell my grandchildren. Big deal."

He's a Plugger

Hardin has his own style of running -- he's a plugger. "I'm not fast. I don't have speed, but I can take a fast pace. I doesn't hurt me as much at the end." He doesn't have much of a kick. But Doug will kill you with his perseverence. He stuck so close to McKusick in the Cornell meet that even the Big Red sensation couldn't stand the pace and cramped out.

It takes Hardin about a mile or two to grab the lead, but after that no one can shake him. He says he is scared of half-miles and milers because they have real speed and can kick at the end hard enough to knock him out. "The idea is to keep up a very big lead on them. It becomes a psychological barrier, seeing me out there 300 yards ahead."

Hardin himself is an excellent miler. He han a 4:18 mile last year on the freshman track team, where he ran two miles also.

Yale's Big Man a Threat

How about prospects? First, there is the Big Three Meet at New Haven on Friday. "That's the important one," Hardin says. "I've been thinking of Ron Shorter, Yale's big man, all year." Last year during track season, Hardin ran a 9:28 two-mile race and beat Shorter. This year he wants to take the sophomore in cross-country.

After the Big Three Meet and what should be one of the few regular undefeated seasons in Harvard harrier history, Hardin will go on to the Greater Bostons on Nov. 1, where he will have very little trouble. Then on to New York for the Heptagonal championship Nov. 4, where he and McKusick will be among the favorites. Finally, Hardin will return to New York in 10 days for the IC4A's. And he should have a good chance even there.

"A distance runner has to love the wind running through his hair. He has to have a distance runner's mentality," Hardin says getting up from the couch. Whatever it is, and it seems to be an odd mixture of the serious and the esthetic, Doug's got it.