Miranda Melville has done the clarification thing dozens of times.
"Oh, you speed walk," people say when the 26-year-old Rush native tells them she's a competitive race walker.
Well, not exactly, Melville says. The rules are more technical than most realize, but if Melville succeeds at her goal and makes the 2016 Olympic squad thousands of Rochesterians will be following her next summer in Rio and they'll see exactly how race walking is done.
"I'm confident that Miranda will be in Rio," said her coach, two-time Olympic race walker Tim Seaman, 43. "If someone asked me to buy a $3,000 plane ticket right now to go coach Miranda in the Olympics next year, I'd buy it."
Melville, who'll compete for the first time in the Pan-American Games on Sunday in Toronto and the World Championships Aug. 28 in China, won the 20-kilometer race walk at the U.S Track and Field Championships in Oregon two weeks ago, topping 2012 Olympian and four-time U.S. champion Maria Michta-Coffey. The 2007 Rush-Henrietta graduate just missed making the 2012 Olympic team by a mere 2.2 seconds.
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