My dad, David Burns, was a race walker when he was in high school and, when he brought that up to my track coach, Derek Veilleux, we decided to see if the talent ran in the family.

I started race walking in my first year at Scarborough High School with my only prior experience a vague memory of my dad showing me how to do it when I was little.

I competed in the 1,600-meter event in the first outdoor track meet of my freshman year and was runner-up, a tenth of a second behind the winner, a senior. After that race I caught the bug and was a bit more comfortable with the event.

Race walking looks different than other competitive races. Athletes must keep at least one foot in contact with the ground at all times and the supporting leg must remain straight. In competition, walkers are penalized if they violate these rules.

When I first started out with the sport I didn’t think that it was big at Scarborough and other schools around the state. It was new for many people and some were making fun of me because the motion looked weird. That made me want to quit and stick with running.

However, as the outdoor track season went on and I was doing well in the race walk, I ignored what people said. I ended up placing seventh at the state meet.

My sophomore season went much better, and I was very comfortable with race walking. I began practicing with my dad – who is a master’s division national champion in the sport – outside of regular team practices and got my time down under eight minutes by the end of the season.

During my indoor season that year I competed at the Nike Indoor Nationals in Maryland and the National Scholastic Indoor Championship in New York. I didn’t place at those two meets, but they gave me the experience of the bigger races.

Those two races were also the only time I really was able to compete in race walk during indoor track season because we compete at the Portland Expo for our high school season and it is impossible race walk on that track.

After my outdoor season I went down to North Carolina to compete in the Nike Outdoor Nationals, where I placed fourth and received my first high school All-American Award.

I went back to Maryland and New York for the two national meets and placed sixth in both races, earning two more All-American Awards. Up until this past outdoor season I didn’t have much competition during the high school races, so I was depending on all the national meets to really see how I was progressing.

Then my junior outdoor season became much more competitive when I found that Allen Cox from Bonny Eagle High School was right up there with my time. I had to push myself as hard as I could to stay on top.

Unfortunately, we avoided competing with each other until conference championships because track meets kept getting canceled due to the weather. I did manage to stay undefeated through all the high school races that year and won the Class A state title.

After this past outdoor season I went to outdoor nationals in North Carolina again, this time as the number-two seed with a good shot at wining. The experience was much different than any other national meet I had been to. I was so nervous because I had trained so hard and I wanted to do well.

I was also much more competitive and that makes a much bigger difference from my first national meet when I didn’t really know what I was doing. The judging is so much harder the better athletes get. The judges do not want to disqualify race walkers, but they are more critical if of those in the lead.

I didn’t achieve my goal of winning, but I did come in second and was the top Maine race walker, which is still very exciting. I also had the opportunity this time around to cheer on two Scarborough teammates – Kaitlynn Saldanha and Erica Jesseman, who traveled to the meet with us.

Even though I’ve seen them racing every meet, it was exciting to see them at the big meets. Kaitlynn competed in the women’s race walk at the Nike Outdoor Nationals after winning at the outdoor state meet just a few weeks after starting the event. Erica placed fourth in the 5K run and brought home a high school All-American Award.

I’m glad I didn’t quit race walking freshman year because I would never have been were I am today.

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