SACRAMENTO, June 7 — Natasha Hastings craved running success so badly that three times during the week of Christmas she drove more than 200 miles from her family’s new home south of Atlanta to Columbia, S.C., for a day of training with Curtis Frye, her coach at South Carolina. That same week, Hastings’s parents were moving to that home in Georgia from their longtime base in Rosedale, Queens. Hastings helped them every day. Talk about dedication.
“Commitment and focus and being healthy,” Frye said. “That’s why she’s having a great year.”
So far, Hastings’s season has been spectacular. In March, she won the N.C.A.A. 400-meter indoor title. Outdoors, her time of 50.23 seconds on May 26 in Gainesville, Fla., is the fastest in the world this year. She is running the 400 as well as the 4x100 and 4x400 relays here at the N.C.A.A. outdoor track and field championships.
She ran four events in the Southeastern Conference outdoor championships, but they involved only six races.
In Sacramento, she would have had to run 10 races in 4 days, including 3 finals in 64 minutes Saturday. Now she will run no more than six races in three events.
Her schedule was lightened when South Carolina failed to qualify for the 4x100 relay final. She won her 400 heat easily Wednesday night in 52.19 and ran a semifinal Thursday night.
At A. Philip Randolph High School in Harlem, Hastings broke national records. She became a world youth champion in 2003 and a world junior champion in 2004. In college, she was hindered by quadricep and ankle problems.
“She had a lot of stress her first two years,” Frye said. “It was tough. She was committed to classes and running and sometimes she didn’t get back from meets until two in the morning.”
Now, as a 20-year-old junior, she is healthy both on and off the track. She hopes to become a chiropractor, and she carries a 3.6 grade-point average as an exercise science major.
“I have the genes to be good,” Hastings said. “My mother, father and grandma were all runners. My mother set records in England that still stand.”
In the U.S.A. Championships from June 21-24 in Indianapolis, she will run against pros, including the former Texas standout Sanya Richards. Richards earned the International Association of Athletics Federation’s world female athlete of the year award last year and owns the American record in the 400 at 48.70.
Richards and Hastings are old friends; they first met when Hastings was 12.
“I respect her,” Hastings said. “I’ve raced her three or four times and she’s beaten me every time.” She added: “There’s nothing in particular I have to do to beat her, just do what I was trained to do. My coach always says that when you train to beat anyone special, you have no goal.”
Frye said Hastings was doing fine.
“She’s learned,” Frye said. “She once asked me, ‘Why do I need to run early in the morning? Why do I need to watch my diet? Why, why, why?’ Now she knows.”
