By Sebastian Studier
Just how fast is Landen Liu? On January 28th, he ran 200 meters in 22.02 seconds (which roughly translates to a springing speed of 24.6 miles per hour). The fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt, ran 200 meters in 19.19 seconds at the 2009 world championships. Bolt may have a slight advantage here, but Landen isn’t far behind.
Liu is off to an impressive start at Bethel after he won MIAC Men's Indoor Track Athlete of the Week two weeks in a row after setting Bethel men’s track and field program records in both the 200-meter and 60-meter dash during his first two collegiate meets on January 21st and 28th.
Landen did not see himself as “gifted” in athletics as a child and asked his mom why he wasn’t as good as everyone else. When Landen asked his mom Jackie this question, she grabbed him by the arm and said,
“God made your body perfectly for everything he has planned for it. He can’t use any other body than this one”.
Jackie does not take the credit for teaching Landen lessons about life, but rather gives the credit to God.
“You can’t take credit for raising a kid that loves the Lord because it’s his spirit that gives him that wisdom,” Jackie said.
As one of the biggest influences in Landen’s life, Jackie believes that she was able to connect with Landen on an extremely relatable level due to her coaching career and background in the running community. Jackie was a track athlete herself at Bethel during her college years, a position that Landen would ultimately follow suit in.
The world of sports entered Landen’s life in second grade when he played baseball before transitioning to cross country and eventually track in middle school. It wasn’t until freshman year that Liu knew he had something special in his athletic ability.
As a freshman, Liu was competing at section meets for Centennial High School and was extremely nervous before competing.
“I was really stressed about my time, and then I just surrendered it to God and was like, alright God, if you want me in this sport, it will be through your will,” Liu said.
Liu ended up running sections in the 200 and made the finals, hitting a personal record by a half second before coming in fifth in his section, and was one of the fastest runners in the state that year. It was at this moment that Landen knew he was fast.
Next for Landen came greatness, but this greatness came with a cost.
During his junior season, Landen fractured his vertebrae during his section meets and then at the state meets, actually made it worse when he ran the 100-meter dash. It got to the point where he could no longer even warm up.
Landen made it to the finals in the 200 meters, and while broken down with an injury, simply decided to go for it. The race began and Landen found himself 15 meters behind the rest of the group at the 100-meter mark before finding some inner strength, hunting the other runners down, and winning his state title only by a hair.
“That’s God right there, I can’t take credit for that,” Liu said.
Now a state champion, Liu believed his success went to his head “big time”.
With his success, now came his cost, as Landen would go on to lose his senior season to ongoing injuries.
“It really took me to lose my senior year for me to reflect on who I was becoming and what my faith actually meant to me and just to remember that I do this for God and not myself,” Liu said.
Throughout this difficult time in Landen’s life, his mom Jackie believes that although he lost a season out on the track and lost an opportunity to defend his state title, the experience helped him gain much more perspective on his life outside of athletics. Although Landen lost a lot, both she and her son look back and realize how much of a gain it truly was for him.
“I think he gained perspective on so much more,” Jackie said. “It’s more of a relationship of who he is in God’s eyes than who he is in a track person’s eyes. It’s great to have titles, it’s great to run, it’s great to have accomplishments, but knowing that even if you didn’t do that, you’re still a child of God.”
Complex injuries with hamstring problems and back problems kept Landen off the track while it felt like his “body was falling apart”. Terrible thoughts began to creep into Landen’s mind as he did not know if he would ever be able to run again after visiting a total of four different doctors, all of which could not help him.
Rather than closing himself off during his senior season, Landen stayed with the team and helped.
John Kretschmer is a former assistant coach of Landen’s at Centennial High School and remembers Landen still showing up to practice every day to keep his teammates organized and to give them advice. During this season, the sprinting coach of the team was a teacher who could never get to practice on time and usually showed up about 40 minutes late. Landen took it upon himself to be the leader of that group before the sprinting coach showed up.
“He’s very modest,” Kretschmer said. “He would reach out to anybody at any time to help”.
Entering the summer before college, it never got better.
Landen was integrated into Bethel University at this point in his journey, having participated in PSEO at Bethel during his senior year of high school.
Backing up a few steps in the story, Bethel was a part of Landen’s life long before he ran a race in a Bethel jersey. During his junior year of high school, Landen came to tour Bethel and met with Bethel track and field coach Andrew Rock, who would go on to begin training with Landen that winter and begin to form a tightly-knit relationship.
“In recruiting, for me, it's finding kids that have a high level of ability but also fit the community and culture of Bethel, which I think is really unique and hard to find,” Rock said.
Knowing what he knew about him and his family and the value they place on Christian higher education, he felt that he had to work really hard to connect Landen to Bethel and build a relationship with him and his family.
Jackie herself knows that Landen is in excellent hands with coach Rock at Bethel.
“You can’t really pick a college based on a coach, but with this, it was in a perfect package with a bow in this great atmosphere and this coach who’s amazing and phenomenal,” Jackie said.
With Landen’s mom being a Bethel alumn herself, Landen would always hear about Jackie’s experiences at Bethel. After one month of training with Rock, Landen knew he wanted to come to Bethel not only because of the “super nice” campus and Biokinetics program (Landen’s major) but also because Rock actually cared about him as a person rather than just an athlete.
As Landen’s freshman fall semester began at Bethel, he had to stop training because it felt like his hamstrings were going to tear every time he ran. As the months went by, Landen started to believe less and less that he was going to have an indoor season and once again, began to doubt that he might ever run again.
“The entire time I was just being patient and working on myself through my faith and deconstructing my pride,” Liu said.
What happened next for Landen in October, changed his life.
“God gave me a date. It was November 14th”
Landen texted his mom and told her to save this date. The weeks went by and multiple trips to different doctors ended with no solutions. A trip to a spine specialist resulted in Landen being told that he has “chronic back pain, but we don’t know why”. The specialist recommended Landen to another specialist, named Dr. Josh Sandell at Synthetics.
Landen went to see Dr. Sandell, and he fixed him. The day that he went in was November 14th.
Now, Landen is breaking all-time Bethel records and his former Centennial coach Kretschmer is not surprised. He knew Landen’s time was coming.
“I could see him continuing to succeed,” Kretschmer said. “I don’t see him being a one-year-wonder”.
Coach Rock thinks that Landen challenges him as a coach in a positive and productive way. Rock is always learning and growing as a coach in order to do whatever he can to make Landen the best runner he can be.
“I wouldn’t want him to change in terms of his determination and fight that he has to be the best he can be,” Rock said.
Jackie is very encouraged about how much Landen’s faith has grown him to become a stronger man of God.
“What we do isn’t going to last for anything but who we are in him (God) is going to last forever,” Jackie said. “I think that seeing him grow in that faith is so powerful as a mom”.
Landen believes that everything happens for a reason and that God has a plan for him.
“I’m going to do this for God and I’m going to do it through him,” Liu said. “I’m back and I’m just thankful to be competing and giving the glory to God”.
Jackie knows Landen is fast but she also knows what he has inside of him.
“He’s a cheetah with the heart of a lion”.