ORONO – The steeplechase is a testy event that turns distance runners into hurdlers, and, once a lap, into water-jumpers.

Or – as was the case several times during Friday’s second day of the USA Track & Field National Masters Championships – swimmers.

And while most world-class athletes simply stride over the two hurdles per lap, then vault gracefully off a third barrier and into (preferably the shallow end of) a water pit, there are plenty of other ways to get around the track.

Just ask Marie-Louise Michelsohn.

Michelson is the first to admit that the technique she used to get around Clarence Beckett Family Track is a bit unorthodox.

“It’s funny,” Michelsohn corrected. “I made it up. But it’s very efficient.”

Michelsohn’s method: She runs up to the barrier. … stops … and swings one leg up over the top. Then she sits on the top of the barrier and scissors the other leg over.

And it works: On Friday, the 60-year-old math professor from Stony Brook, N.Y., set a world record for the 60-64 age group with a time of 8 minutes, 47.67 seconds in the 2,000-meter event.

One thing to remember: Running the steeplechase isn’t for the faint of heart. If you hit one of these barriers … it doesn’t move. And neither will you.

Michelsohn said she tried several other methods of clearing barriers when she took up the even three years ago, but always felt like she was on the verge of injuring herself.

But in Michelsohn’s backyard was a fence that she had to slither over in order to go on some of her runs.

“That’s how I used to cross it,” she said. “So when somebody said, ‘Try the steeplechase,’ that was such a natural [technique for me]. And I found I can get over [the barriers] that way.”

More than 1,000 athletes are in Orono this weekend to take part in the national championships, which was also held at UMaine in 1998.

For some, the meet offers a chance to compete against athletes they’ve never met in a championship environment.

For others – like Brian Campbell and Dave Bergstrom – it’s something else entirely.

No matter where Campbell and Bergstrom go, they end up meeting near a high jump pit.

And that’s the way it’s been for more than 25 years.

Campbell, you see, grew up high jumping for a high school in White Bear Lake, Minn. Bergstrom attended Albert Lea High, also in Minnesota.

And though the two weren’t close – Campbell said they probably spoke three times in two years of competition – they met up again during their first year of college.

Campbell was at North Dakota State. Bergstrom attended Morehead State, just across the river from Fargo in Kentucky.

Both excelled. Campbell cleared 6 feet, 10 inches in college and topped 7 feet on his 27th birthday. Bergstrom went 7-13/4 as a collegian and qualified for the 1980 Olympic Trials.

“Now he’s in Arizona and I’m in North Dakota, and we’re still jumping against each other,” Bergstrom said with a laugh.

On Friday, Campbell won the matchup in the men’s 45-49 age group, clearing 5 feet, 103/4 to win the national title. Bergstrom was second.

Campbell admitted he was disappointed in his effort, despite the win. He had hoped to jump 6-21/2.

But as he reminisced with Bergstrom, he smiled broadly. Then he shook hands and set out on another quest: Campbell had promised himself an authentic Maine lobster dinner, and was ready to head toward Bar Harbor.

Other athletes didn’t have to make the kind of trips Bergstrom and Campbell did.

Mike Viani of Bangor, a former University of Maine standout, hopped in his car and headed north a few miles.

But don’t think the decision was a spur-of-the-moment thing for Viani.

He targeted the meet a year ago, though he initially thought the U.S. championships were coming to Orono a year early.

“I coach [at Central High School] out in Corinth, and I ran with the kids this year,” Viani said.

Viani, 35, who ran for Maine as Mike Norman, ran in the prelims of the 100-meter dash on Friday and qualified for this weekend’s finals.

But after spending three years slimming down from a high of 270 pounds that he carried as a serious powerlifter to the chiseled 225 or so he weighs now, Viani’s training was sidetracked 10 days ago.

“I rolled my ankle playing softball,” he said.

In the 100, the ankle didn’t bother him much … early. But he said it didn’t feel too good after he got up a full head of steam.

“I had a pretty good start, but just the pounding on it hurt,” he said after running a 12.29 and taking fourth in his heat.

Another notable Bangor athlete who qualified for the weekend 100 finals: WABI sports anchor Tim Throckmorton, who ran 12.73 and finished fourth in his heat in the 45-49 age group.

While some athletes came to Orono with modest goals, others, like Vince Struble, had lofty aims.

Struble, a 52-year-old from Raleigh, N.C., cleared 14-2 in the pole vault, but said he hadn’t done what he’d planned to do.

“I was gonna try to break a world record,” the good-natured Struble drawled. “It’s a good facility.”

Unfortunately for Struble, the elements were against him in his quest to vault 15-0 and claim the record. While Friday’s chamber-of-commerce weather was pleasantly warm with a nice cooling breeze, the wind that did exist didn’t do him any favors.

It was in his face. And pole vaulters don’t like that.

That’s because the event is so dependent on carrying speed into the takeoff that any headwind makes vaulting high very difficult.

And Struble, a high school coach who finished seventh in the 1972 Olympic Trials, knows what it takes to vault high. His personal best, from ’72, is 17-0.

“I felt I should have made [14-8],” he said. “The wind conditions sort of switched on me here. With a little tailwind I probably would have had a shot at it.”

Instead, Struble was left watching a track-side wind sock flop in the breeze, waiting for a lull that never came.

“I’m really just waiting for a tailwind,” he told friends after one unsuccessful vault.

Before another, he told an event official to ask all the spectators to breath out in unison so he could get the tailwind he needed.

Nothing worked.

Still, after more than 20 years of trying to learn how to vault well in masters competition, Struble thinks he’s beginning to figure things out.

“I’ve been trying to stay in shape, somehow,” he said. “Like everybody else, I went through the bicycle stage, the jogging stage. And then I got back into vaulting.”

The problem: Every time he tried to train hard, his body rebelled.

“I tried to vault in masters meets every five years or so, but I kept getting injured before I got there because I started training for it,” Struble explained.

Now, he doesn’t do that. And his training regimen is one even couch potatoes can emulate.

“I found that when I didn’t train for it ahead of time, I’d do better,” he said with a laugh.