Paul Ecker runs a 53.5-second 400 meters with zero running base

High Hopes - 27-year-old Paul Ecker is a personal trainer at Midway Fitness who ran cross country and track for DeSales University in Allentown after graduating from Cape Henlopen.

In Paul’s senior year at Cape, he ran a 4:40 mile and pole vaulted 12 feet. He also played third base for the baseball team.

A few days ago, Paul showed his watch on Facebook, which read 53.7, and he wrote that he shocked himself with his 400-meter (one lap) time. Paul calls me coach – there has always been great respect between us. I told him his watch needed a new battery and that there was no way he ran a 53 quarter. He invited me to his workout at 6 p.m., 96 degrees in the shade, of which there was none. Incredibly, we both showed up.

Paul owns a 1:54.6 800-meter at DeSales and a 4:03 1,500-meter, which equates to a 4:20 mile.  

Paul weighed 123 pounds in high school. Now at 27, he weighs 183, and, yes, that is 60 pounds of packed-on explosive muscle.

“I like Olympic lifts for the explosion, and I just got certified as level one CrossFit instructor,” Paul said. 

And so Paul took off. He was always a smooth strider, so that didn’t surprise me. About 180 meters out, I saw him drop down to pick up the pace. He never “caught the bear,” no “rigor mortis” on the home stretch.

Paul caught his breath and checked his watch, it read 53.5. He screamed, “Yes!” and was a happy guy and so was coach Fred.

“How much have you been running?” I asked him. “You don’t just roll out of bed and run a 53-second 400 meters.”

”Zero, zilch, just the Olympic lifts, power and force turned into speed. Maybe I can talk to coach [Bill] Collick about his football team.”