LATE BLOOMER
‘Absolutely terrible’ runner as a high school freshman turning in big-time times in college
Michael Skora won the first race he was ever involved in – a cross-country competition in sixth grade.
In college, on February 14, he broke the four-minute mile barrier.
In between those two fetes? Well, that’s a running adventure that featured ups and downs, and a couple of times, he gave up running only to come back to it.
The Clarendon Hills native and Hinsdale Central graduate did not build on his first-race success in sixth grade and gave it up in seventh grade.
His brother, Daniel, convinced him to give it another try in high school, and Daniel talked him up to the Red Devils cross-country coaching staff. At the time, it proved to be an oversell.
“The first run in high school was at practice, and it was 2 ½ miles,” Michael said. “I walked through a part of the race, and I was exhausted. I was absolutely terrible.”
Skora’s freshman year saw him top out of 5:51 in the mile, and assistant coach Noah Lawrence said he was the 26th-best freshman on a team with 29 freshmen.
Skora’s sophomore year featured injuries as he suffered stress fractures in both knees, and he decided to give up running for the second time.
“I didn’t have a lot of mental fortitude back then,” he said. “I quit running and didn’t do anything for the next six months.”
But the sport called him back, and he got better.
“I became obsessed with running for a while,” Skora said. “That may not have been the best thing, but it got me to good places.”
After giving up cross-country and track twice when he was younger, Skora is doing big things, including running a sub-four-minute mile.
After wrestling with his college future, he graduated from Central in 2023, went to Indiana for a semester, and then went to Vanderbilt and joined the track program for the 2024 season.
The school does not have a full men’s program, but he is enjoying success there by setting the Commodores’ record in the 800-meter event (1:49.76 in 2024) and 1500-meter run (3:44.16 in April), which was a 39-year-old record.
But the big feather in his cap came on Valentine’s Day when he competed in the mile event at the Music City Challenge when he ran the mile in 3:59.36 at the indoor track at Vanderbilt.
He went into the race with a personal record of 4:07 so he knew breaking the mark would not be easy.
“I thought I could run faster than that, but it was still a big gap,” Skora said. “I thought I had a chance to do it, but it could have been delusional on my part. But I had confidence in myself, and it was the goal going in. It was the last opportunity of the season to do it.”
The outdoor season does not offer the mile, so this was it.
“I was definitely nervous going in,” Skora said. “But everything I did beforehand – all the preparation — was perfect.”
But the opening of the race was far from perfect.
“I got out pretty good start, but then I got tripped up, and I was in the back,” he said. “I stayed there for 800 meters and made a big move halfway through the race. It might not have been the smartest thing to do because I wasted a lot of energy. I went from last to fifth in one lap. But mentally, I kind of needed that because I could be near the front and be competitive.”
He finished third in the race but at one point had thoughts of winning it.
“The last 100, I tried to go outside and pass the guys and tried to win the race,” he said. “But I did not have enough in my legs at that point to get the win.”
But beating the four-minute mark was still in play.
“I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw 3:59 when I crossed the line,” he said. “There is a delay in seeing the times. I saw the first-place time, and it was like a 3:58.9. I was like, ‘yeah!’ because I thought I was a second behind him, so I was pretty sure I had it. But it was still great seeing it go up there on the screen. It was exciting. It’s something that a couple of years ago, I never could have thought I would ever see a time like that.”
He still has a lot of running ahead of him at Vanderbilt. And he sometimes has mixed feelings about running.
“It’s hard a lot of the time,” Skor admits. “Sometimes I question why I do it. It sucks in the wintertime when it’s 20 degrees out, and it’s 6:30 a.m., and it’s dark out. Sometimes I think, ‘I really wish I didn’t run.”’
But in the end, he’s glad he did.
“It’s nice to work toward something, and it keeps you disciplined,” he said. “I thought about what I would do without running… it’s fulfilling, and it gives you something to work toward. I feel like I have something that I can really be good at. You put so much time and effort into it, and it’s easy to see where the fruits of your labor are going. You see the results. That’s really fun for me.”
Hinsdale Central graduate Skora owns two running records at Vanderbilt.
