McIntosh finding success in combined events

Tell Rachael McIntosh that it’s 80 degrees outside and she’ll have to think of… Tell Rachael McIntosh that it’s 80 degrees outside and she’ll have to think of what that means in Celsius. Ask her to measure something and she’ll want to use the metric system.

She’s still adjusting to gauging her speed in miles per hour, not kilometers, and if you talk to her friends, they’ll tell you how they joke about her accent.

But take her to a track and it’s all the same — whether she’s in her hometown of Nova Scotia, Canada, or Pittsburgh.

McIntosh, a freshman on Pitt’s track and field team who competes in the pentathlon and heptathlon, didn’t have an indoor track season in Canada, but that didn’t stop her from making an impact during her first year at Pitt. She placed third in the pentathlon at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Indoor Championships in March.

Coming to America

McIntosh had only been to the U.S. a few times before she came to visit Pitt But after only a few hours in Pittsburgh, she was hooked.

“They suckered me in with all the tall buildings and everything,” she said. “I just took a leap. I went out on a limb and decided I would go to this school in this place I never heard of. I had never even been on a public bus before by myself.”

McIntosh was close to never getting that experience. Originally, her plan was to stay in her hometown and go to a community college for a year or two. She wanted to stay in Canada and train with her old coach, Tanya Daniels — someone she referred to as her best friend.

After performing well at several meets during high school, colleges in the U.S. contacted her. With her coach’s encouragement to “go and see the world,” McIntosh decided to take a few calls.

Pitt Head Coach Alonzo Webb said the coaching staff heard about McIntosh when they were recruiting another athlete from Canada. A coach in Canada who knew of McIntosh told Assistant Coach Clinton Bell that he needed to take a look at her.

When the Pitt coaching staff brought her down for a visit, they saw her talent, and McIntosh, who spent her life in a small town, fell in love with the city of Pittsburgh.

“My first reaction was I noticed how really friendly all the people were,” she said. “I never really interacted with people when I could go to [a] city; I would just go to the meet and leave. I was intimidated at first, but that went away because everyone was so nice and welcoming.”

As a college freshman moving to a new country and adjusting to her sport at a higher level, McIntosh said her biggest goal this year was to not be overwhelmed.

“I just told myself to be careful and not get stressed out,” she said. “I told myself to make sure you’re happy and that you still love track and you’re still doing what you want to do.”

While McIntosh came to Pitt with confidence in her athletic ability, she also carried a sense of perspective. She knew she had four years ahead of her and her most important goal was to not lose her desire to remain competitive.

“Once you lose the desire, you stop having fun,” she said.

That easygoing nature is what stands out the most about McIntosh’s personality, and allows her to make friends easily, Webb said.

“She’s funny,” he said. “That’s probably the first word I would use to describe her. She’s just a fun-loving person. She doesn’t take a whole lot of things seriously, and she’s always joking around.”

Indoor vs. Outdoor

Despite her activity in sports all her life, McIntosh didn’t compete in the pentathlon until she arrived at Pitt. The pentathlon is comprised of five different events completed in a single day: 60-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump and the 800-meter.

However, McIntosh prefers the heptathlon, an outdoor seven-part event. Over two days, the athletes compete in the 100 hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200, long jump, javelin throw and 800.

Not only does McIntosh like the addition of the javelin and that the events are spread over two days in the heptathlon, but she favors the outdoor season to the indoor season, overall.

In outdoor, there is fresh air and she can see the other events and all the people, she said. Indoor is harder on the body, especially because the air is so dry.

“It’s a small track with small turns. You have to do two laps instead of four. The air is always heavy and dry, so by the end of the meet, it sounds like you have a cold,” she said.

That didn’t stop McIntosh from finding success at the ECAC Indoor Championships, but she said that one of the most important effects of her third-place finish was providing confidence for the outdoor season.

“I was proud of my third place,” she said. “I never had an indoor season, and it was nice to start it off well. But I think the best part was setting me up for outdoors. I have faith that I’ll do well outdoors now.”

Webb was impressed with McIntosh’s performance as a freshman, as well as her willingness to learn.

“She’s a fast learner, and she’s focused,” he said. “She just wants to get better, and if you tell her do something, she’s going to do it.”

With either the pentathlon or the heptathlon, McIntosh said that by the end of the day “you are bound to be tired.” That’s why with multi-events the athletes are given a break of 30-45 minutes between each portion.

It’s not until she wakes up on the second day of the heptathlon, McIntosh said, that she really feels the soreness — and then she has to compete in three more events.

By the time a multi-event wraps up with the 800, the athletes’ bodies “are pretty shot.”

“If somebody needed me to go do another event, I would, but it’s pretty impossible after you just did eight events,” she said. “I get used to how my body feels, but it’s never a very pleasant feeling.”

McIntosh said that although most of the other athlete’s dread the last event, the 800, it is her favorite.

In the pentathlon and heptathlon, the athletes receive points for every event. So by the time the longest and last event rolls around, McIntosh knows how many seconds she needs to win or overtake other atheletes to place. She knows how hard she needs to push herself if she wants to win.

“It proves to you if you really want it or not,” she said. “You can choose to go up there and beat her if you really want to. I feel like I have the most power: Do you want it or not?”

Maturing on the track

McIntosh trains for the multi-events five days a week, though she said she trained six to seven days a week in Nova Scotia. At Pitt, she’ll work a few days at hurdles, the high jump and the long jump and spend the other days working with speed, endurance and running instead of the technical events.

“When the others are working at doing jumps or running, we’ll go through two or three events at a time because we have to be used to being tired,” she said. “We’ll do at least two events every day.”

According to McIntosh, she played every sport imaginable in junior high, but she credits Daniels, her coach in Canada, with getting her to focus on track and field.

“She taught me a lot mentally,” McIntosh said, “even when I was younger. Her influence helped me to choose track. She helped me through school, taught me ethics and how to have a good attitude.”

Daniels and McIntosh developed a club, Bluenose Athletics, which started with five or six members who were “all best friends” and grew until the club had more than 50 members.

According to the club’s website, Bluenose Athletics “serves athletes at all levels from developmental to competitive” and gives athletes the option of competing at “local, National, and International competition.”

McIntosh said she never really loved the sport until she started working with Daniels.

“She always cared about what was going on in our lives,” McIntosh said. “She wanted to know you as well as she could so she could make you better. I don’t think I could be doing what I am doing now if she didn’t sit me down and tell me how good I could be.”

McIntosh said that the club is like a second family.

“They’re home,” she said. “They’re amazing. Nothing has ever come between us.”

McIntosh said she has career goals outside athletics for when she graduates Pitt in four years.

As a studio arts major, she originally wanted to pursue photography and she said she is still considering taking courses at home after she graduates. Currently, however, she’s interested in interior decorating or design, but still holds an interest in landscaping and photography.

Whichever path she chooses after graduation, McIntosh is certain she won’t want to leave track and field behind.

Although she doesn’t think she’ll go into coaching, she wants to run for as long as she can. She said with her high ranking in Canada, her chances of being a great athlete for her home country are very good.

“I’m going to take track as far as I possibly can,” she said. “I want to run until I can’t run anymore.”