Twelve months back, Hayley Butler was sitting on a couch watching Dani Samuels wheeling her way to World Championship gold in Berlin.

Hayley Butler Hayley Butler
Images: Warren Clarke

A talented hurdler as a youngster, Butler had been off the circuit for two years. She’d married, bought a house and given birth to her first son, Cooper. But as she watched Samuels’ ecstatic celebrations, Butler realised she wanted back. Not to compete, or anything ridiculous like that. Just to have a run, turn the legs over, burn off her “mum-tum”. So she started running again. Her times were good. So she started running a little more. Her times kept dropping. She ran more. Come the Australian Nationals in March this year, she obliterated the field in the 100m hurdles, running an A-Qualifying time for the Commonwealth Games. She’s still shaking her head in disbelief: “I just kept telling people to pinch me. I couldn’t believe how fast everything was moving, how ... how awesome everything was. It was a crazy, crazy time.” On September 15 the west Sydney mum will compete in the Athletic All Stars extravaganza at Homebush. A fortnight later she’ll be heading to Delhi.

Getting started

“When I came back I didn’t think I’d compete again – I just wanted to get fit again – so I called my coach, Penny Gillies, and she took me in with open arms. My first session back was as simple as a ten-minute jog with some stretching and basic drills, just to get my leg turnover happening again. The next session, I did a 20-minute jog and some run-throughs at a steady pace, perhaps 80 per cent. And from there it was just about building it up. I was feeling really good, so we started doing some short sprint work: ten reps of 30m sprints, that sort of stuff. Again, it felt good, so we upped the distances – four sets of 100m, four sets of 150m. We started to really test out my fitness, and my times were consistent with where they’d been before my break, so I started to sprint from there.”

Mental hurdles

“When I came back I actually didn’t want to hurdle. I used to hurdle when I was younger – that was my pet event – but I was honestly scared when I came back. It had been such a long time and there were so many unknowns: I didn’t know if I’d be any good, didn’t know if I could still make it over the hurdles, didn’t know how my body was going to deal with it. Plus, I’d had a shoulder reconstruction [an Oz-tag injury], so I was very hesitant. But when my sprint times proved so good, my coach started saying, ‘Come on, let’s hurdle.’ I wasn’t keen at all, but finally I gave in. Thank God I did!”

Perspective 

“I think being a mother has definitely had a positive impact on my athletics. As much as athletics means to me, as much as I put 100 per cent effort into it, I now realise there are more important things in my life. My son, my husband, my house – I’ve got that whole family life now. Things are happy at home, so now I’m at the track because I want to be, not because I have to be. And no matter how bad things are on the track – bad times, bad sessions – when I get home it just doesn’t matter.”