Claudia Harnett’s unforgettable dance
On Friday evening at the Golisano Training Center in Rochester, NY, UChicago’s Claudia Harnett received the nationals DMR baton from Emma Kelly in second place. Harnett would run the anchor leg of the DMR final in eight grueling laps around the flat, purple and gold track at Nazareth University.
As she grabbed the baton from Kelly, she took a few hard steps to get in front of Johns Hopkins’s Phoebe White and set her eyes ahead on first place MIT and their anchor Kate Sanderson. She caught up to Sanderson in less than half a lap, now in the perfect position to plan her move. As the race elapsed, spectators could see the restlessness in Harnett’s legs while she ran on the outside of Sanderson’s shoulder, her breath a hot warning against Sanderson’s neck. After all, she scratched all of her individual events to focus her full attention on these eight laps. Harnett was ready to do something special.
Photo by Fred Watson
With two laps to go, she finally unleashed the move she’d been holding back. Though her face broke out in a grimace, it was clear she would not let off the gas. Harnett extended her lead over the rest of the field and crossed over the finish line to solidify her team as national champions, the first relay title in school history.
“It means everything,” Harnett told D3GD in a post-race interview. “The opportunity to compete is just a privilege. I’ve been injured for two years and being able to run for my teammates, my coach, and everyone who’s not here has been amazing. This is the best race ever.”
Any race that ends with a national title could be considered the best race ever, but for Harnett, this one was extra special. Not only was she injured for two years, but before this season, she hadn’t raced in a single college race since indoor nationals in 2023 when she ran the 800 leg to help her DMR team to a runner-up finish.
This time, with a new appreciation for the opportunity to compete, Harnett seized her moment.
Photo by Diamond Gentile
Beginnings
Harnett, an Economics and Psychology student-athlete at UChicago, has loved running since she was a young child. Realizing she might have a knack for it, she did what many with similar inclinations would do and she joined her high school cross country and track teams at Lakeside School in Seattle, Wash. her freshman year.
Though she wasn’t necessarily focused on training seriously early on, she found quick success. During her freshman season of cross country, she placed 20th in the state in a time of 18:40 over 5k. In track, she excelled in the middle distances and ran the 1500 at the National Junior Olympic Track & Field Championships as a freshman. Her times were excellent, but sometimes her relationship with running felt somewhat complex.
“Growing up, [running] was something that also stressed me out a lot,” she admitted. “I would get super, super nervous for all the meets and I wouldn't let my parents bring it up at the dinner table.”
Like couples often do when the relationship between them becomes complex, Harnett and running took a break, except, it wasn’t her choice to do so. She was a junior in high school when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation, shutting down both seasons of indoor and outdoor track. It wasn’t until Harnett realized her loss that she began to appreciate running again.
“Coming back to running and choosing it for myself took that stress away and made me a bit more grateful to have it,” she explained. “I was able to train because I love training and run because I felt like running.”
Passion (as well as the ability to train freely) led to Harnett’s most successful high school season yet her senior year when she set new personal bests in the 800 (2:11.16) and the 1600 (4:51.95) both in the same weekend. Passion was also the criterion for her to attend UChicago according to Head Cross Country and Track and Field Coach Chris Hall, who had taken notice of Harnett’s performances.
According to Hall, Harnett had the best high school performances of any other athlete to come to UChicago, but performance is not the only factor coaches look at during recruitment.
“Claudia struck me as someone that enjoyed the process, which is something I really want in an athlete,” Hall said. “At Chicago, practice time is the break from the stress of academics, and having people around that really appreciate that time is important to our program.”
Harnett recalled that when she asked Hall what she needed to do to be able to join the team at UChicago he told her, “I just want to know that you really love running.”
When Harnett eventually stepped foot on UChicago’s campus, she was excited to start anew in a competitive yet low-pressure environment. She described her freshman year as “just having a ball.”
Her enjoyment was reflected in her performances that year; she was in the top two in D3 in every regular season cross country race, she won UAAs, was third at Midwest regionals, and finished 17th place NCAA All-American. Track season rolled around and she carried her momentum into the indoor 800, mile, and 4x400 relay. She ran the 800 leg on the national DMR team that finished third in the country. In the outdoor season, she set new PBs in the 800 (2:11.11) and 1500 (4:30.59) and won the 1500 at UAAs. Everything was going great for Harnett, who was establishing herself as one of the top D3 freshmen to come out of 2021.
Then, she got her first stress reaction.
On the sidelines
As a freshman, Harnett was ranked 14th in the nation in the 800 and 12th in the 1500 during her first outdoor season, but she was unable to compete in either at the outdoor national meet. A stress reaction in her right hip would sideline her for the rest of the season following conference weekend. She did what most college athletes do while navigating an injury and took time off from running until she felt better. She missed the entire 2022 cross country season, when UChicago posted their highest finish in women’s team history, but, eventually, she had recovered enough to return to track.
This solution worked temporarily–Harnett finished a full indoor season her sophomore year, capped off with a national runner-up finish in the DMR to best the previous year’s finish by one spot–but when her injury resurfaced ten days before nationals, she knew something wasn’t quite right. She grit her teeth and made it through the meet, but then had to take months off from running again. She missed the entire outdoor season.
“My injuries just kept coming back,” she said. “This would happen to me again and again–I would have to get on crutches, take time off, and then after a few months, kind of slowly start building.”
She knew she suffered from some sort of hip impingement, evidenced by her inability to do back squats, and it turns out, her hip impingement had escalated to a labral tear, which she had been training and racing on the whole time.
“Basically, within the hip socket, you have cartilage that normally stabilizes the hip,” Harnett explained. “When there's a tear, it gets loose and you don't have hip stability. Along with that, I had more bone in that hip, so it would grind against the other bone, cause a stress reaction, and then grind against that cartilage and cause a tear.”
Knowing she was not getting any college running out of such a complex injury, Harnett made the difficult decision to get surgery. She met with a surgeon the summer after her sophomore year, but the surgeon would not operate without being able to see the stress reactions on an MRI.
She postponed the surgery and attempted to run her junior cross country season, but it was too painful. While she sat on the sidelines, her team went on to post their second consecutive podium finish that year when they finished third. Of course Harnett wished she could have shared a part in this accomplishment by racing, but she knew it was not possible.
“I dissociated a little bit from cross country especially and had some ‘awe, wow, they're amazing, I could never do that right now’ [thoughts],” she said. “It wasn't so much that I [felt] like I could be out there with them. I was thinking there's no way I could be out there with them right now.”
Photo by Jen Reagan
A few months later, she finally underwent surgery in December. She would spend a few weeks on crutches and take four months completely off from running.
“Ultimately, I just had to listen to my body and know I [didn’t] really have anything more to give,” Harnett said. “This [was] just leading to stress reactions and more pain.”
The surgery appeared to have been successful, and by the summer, she had built her mileage back up to 45-50 miles per week. In July, however, everything came crashing down. Her body could not sustain the mileage she was running and she found herself in pain again. Somehow, she had re-torn her right labrum.
“I met with doctors when I came back to Chicago and they were confused as to why it re-tore because normally when you get a surgery with your labrum it's sutured–tied or secured in a way that it's not gonna tear again–but mine was not,” she explained.
“I was definitely a little frustrated, but, at this point, I’ve learned to have no expectations. [I] love running, but I can't make it the center of my life anymore because I keep having to lose it and come back to it again. It's something I always love, but I’ve had to adjust my expectations for a few years.”
A new normal
Just about every day at 3:40 p.m., Harnett climbs atop the same elliptical machine in the UChicago Henry Crown Fieldhouse fitness center. She wraps her fingers around the same hand grips, lines her shoes into the same foot pedals, and stares at the same places on the wall as she pumps her feet wildly in an elliptical orbit.
Harnett gladly chooses this monotony over that of the chronic injury that has plagued her life for four years of college running. Of the eleven seasons of cross country and track that have passed in her college career, she has only completed four full seasons of competition due to injury.
Every time she tried to build her training up to 50 running miles, she would find herself back where she started, having to replace running with cross training and find new creative outlets to compete, like seeing how many pull-ups she could do in the weightroom.
In 2025, her senior year, Harnett believes she has finally cracked the code.
Now, she embraces the cross training she was previously forced into. Instead of running miles, she gets her volume from the elliptical. The only time she runs on land is for track workouts, pre-meet, and races. The rest of her training, including post-workout cooldowns and long runs, are all spent cross training. This is Harnett’s new normal.
“I've just had to find what works for me,” she said. “I've basically cut my mileage in half and I spend many hours on the elliptical trying to entertain myself.”
Sudokus, crosswords, and Duolingo all occupy Harnett during her often mentally grueling cross training sessions. She even started listening to music in Spanish because English lyrics were not engaging her enough anymore. Her current favorite pump-up song is Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE”
“The name of the song is ‘unforgettable dance’ in English,” she said.
“It feels like I'm having a little dance on the elliptical. It's just very fun,” she continued with a smile.
Harnett’s smile quickly reveals what makes her special. Despite the relentless cards she’s been dealt with injury, she maintains a level-headed sense of optimism and finds new ways to embrace challenges with that same smile on her face. It’s what Coach Hall missed most about her when she was out due to injury.
Photo by Diamond Gentile
“When Claudia is training and racing I see a smile on her face every day and [I] missed seeing that smile,” he said. “Her impact on our program is something I will be talking about for the rest of my coaching career–what can be accomplished through a positive attitude and a tremendous work ethic.”
Harnett’s indoor season this year was a perfect testament to what Hall was referring to. Not only did she complete a full season of competition and win a national title in the DMR, but she set a new personal best in the mile of 4:52.31, a near-personal best in the 800 of 2:11.51, and a DMR national record of 11:31.24 in which her 1600 split was 4:48, three whole seconds than her high school 1600 PB. 2025 has been her best year yet.
Though she admits that at times she feels guilty, like what she has delivered is not what she or others expected when she was first brought onto the team, her life-best performances this season have reinforced to her that, despite her injuries and training modifications, she can still grow and improve from the athlete she was in high school. She could not be more excited to finally break this barrier.
Coach Hall, who has assured her all along that he just wants to see her happy, shares in this excitement.
“All I wanted for Claudia this year was the opportunity to see her race again,” he said. “I would have never put expectations on her to make this strong of a return. Not just for me but for her teammates, we all respected how hard she worked to return to this level and were ecstatic when she had the opportunity to return to the form she showed as a first year.”
He recalled that every person on the team was on their feet cheering for her when she toed the line for the first time in two years back in January. She ran 2:12.81 in the 800 meters, which surprised many, including herself. Her teammates cheered at the result, but they cheered louder because of who she is as a person.
This support from her coach and teammates is the reason Harnett believes she’s been able to keep showing up despite all of her setbacks, and her love for her team is what empowered her to choose the DMR at nationals.
Photos by Diamond Gentile (left) and Pete Callahan (right)
“The DMR was really special, and the team aspect meant a great deal to Claudia,” Hall said. “I believe she could have contended for a victory in the mile but didn't feel she had that many races in her as the hip was getting sore again. As always, she put her team first and wanted to do something with others. The hard work paid off, and she has a memory that will be with her forever.”
Amidst her coaches and teammates and with an unerasable smile, both in Rochester and in the years leading up to this very moment, Claudia Harnett choreographed her own unforgettable dance.
