The day before her first track meet, Mountain View High School senior Hannah Rutherford couldn’t get the baton handoff right during practice. 

The problem? She was just too fast. 

The next day, she brought that same speed and tenacity to the 100-meter dash — which she won by 30 meters. It was Rutherford’s first race as a high school track and field athlete, her only race as a junior varsity athlete and her debut year at the California Interscholastic Federation State Championships, none of which she could’ve ever predicted, she said. 

“For me, it’s always felt kind of freeing,” Rutherford said. “The feeling of just letting go and running as hard as you can is just really satisfying in a way that a lot of other activities aren’t.”

Today, she holds the fastest time in the 400-meter dash in the Central Coast Section region in California, which is the third-fastest time in CCS history and the fifth-fastest time in the state. She also placed fifth in the 400-meter dash at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in June.

“It was really gratifying to see that all my hard work paid off,” Rutherford said. “It was kind of like a whirlwind of a season.” 

Unlike many of her competitors, Rutherford was not trained to compete in elite-level track and field from a young age. Instead, her running journey began on the Junior Olympic Sports Day in fourth grade, a sports event for the public elementary schools in Los Altos, she said. 

Rutherford continued to participate in the Junior Olympics throughout elementary school, and soon after her sixth-grade win at Junior Olympics, COVID-19 hit. Despite being under lockdown, she was determined to train on her own and even recruited her dad to time her. Her parents’ support has remained constant: they do not pressure her to perform to certain standards, which is rare in competitive running, she said. 

“The main source of pressure just comes from myself because I’ve built up really high expectations,” Rutherford said. 

In her first years on the track team, when she ran a “bad race,” she would often replay the event video and analyze her mistakes, she said. Now, after rebounding from bad days, she recognizes that progress isn’t predictable and has the headspace to let those races go, she said. 

“I really have a strong internal drive to get better and that definitely fuels me,” Rutherford said. 

Rutherford often runs extra repetitions of the women’s track workouts at school or runs with the men’s team for more difficult competition, staying on the field after most of her teammates go home. Even when she feels burnt out and promises to take a week off, a few days in, she gets the itch to start running again, she said.

“[Rutherford’s] number one quality is her work ethic,” Mountain View High track coach Markus Rutner said. “It’s completely unparalleled. There are not many very talented athletes that work this hard.” 

Her hard work doesn’t go unnoticed: many non-running students at Mountain View High know about her. Teachers sometimes tell Rutherford that their students were talking about her during class time, she said. 

Rutherford’s work ethic extends past track and field; she’s also a varsity tennis player and former soccer player. Although Rutherford’s main focus remains on running, her participation on Mountain View High’s tennis team keeps her in shape when she isn’t on the track and keeps her from becoming too hyper-focused on one sport.

As the varsity track and field captain, and with her track statistics, Rutherford’s teammate junior Elin Daniels was a little intimidated at first. Daniels’s nerves dissipated, however, when Rutherford started talking to her during warm-ups.

“She leads by example more than anything else. She goes out there and she’ll do [a track workout] with purpose and focus,” Rutner said.

Her work translated into success. Although it’s common for athletes with Rutherford’s number of wins to gloat or become arrogant, instead she’s sometimes struggled with imposter syndrome. 

“No matter what the times say I always feel like I’m coming in as an underdog,” Rutherford said. 

In the years since her first meet, that feeling has started to fade and her confidence has grown with each race, she said. 

“She’s probably one of the most humble people I’ve ever met,” Daniels said. 

In the future, Rutherford hopes to commit to a Division One school for track and field that maintains a balance between running and academics. If her training in college gives her the potential to run for her mom’s home country, Japan, Rutherford said she’ll definitely consider it. Her teammates and coaches know she’ll go far in any type of running career, Rutner said.

Whatever the situation, Rutherford knows she won’t stop running. 

“I would say it’s a really big part of who I am,” she said. “For me, it’s a stress reliever, it just feels really good and I think the things I’ve gained from it outweigh the potential sacrifices.”