His Running Career Was Over. So He Turned Around

Aaron Yoder can run a mile backward faster than most people can run one forward.

We’ll give you a second to process that.

Today, the Tabor (Kan.) track and field and cross-country coach brings an unusual résumé to Hillsboro, Kansas: elite runner, international retro running competitor, record-setter, and living proof that sometimes the best way forward begins by turning around.

But here’s the strange part:

None of this was the dream. The dream was to run a sub-four-minute mile. The dream was the Olympic Trials. And in 2010, Yoder looked like he might be on his way.

Running for the Kansas City Smoke running team while coaching, he clocked a personal-best 4:04 mile. Then his left knee started hurting. And it didn’t stop. “I was crushed.” It was the same knee Yoder had undergone surgery on in college. This time, his surgeon gave him advice no lifelong runner wants to hear: Stop running.

Yoder didn’t.

Determined to keep going, he trained through the pain for another couple of years.

Eventually, things got so bad he could barely walk. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. Life was already piling on stress, and running had always been the place Yoder went to deal with it. Now that was gone, too.

“At the lowest moment in my life, with a lot of stressors accumulating, I felt so overwhelmed,” Yoder said. “The one thing I could do to alleviate stress, I couldn’t do. I was crushed.”

His body was telling him he couldn’t keep going forward. So, eventually, he stopped trying.

And turned around. Literally. Yoder remembered something he’d done as a kid. Running backward. It wasn’t a grand training strategy. There was no carefully constructed comeback plan.

He simply decided to try a run in reverse. One mile became another. And another. And another. Four miles backward. No pain. Suddenly, the thing that looked ridiculous made perfect sense.

“The dream of the Olympic Trials and running sub-four in the mile died that day,” Yoder said. “And I chose a better path.”

Read that sentence again.

Not another path. A better one. Yoder committed to six weeks of training exclusively backward. Something unexpected happened.

“The discouragement and devastation turned to excitement and motivation,” he said.

And then Aaron Yoder did what highly competitive runners tend to do when they discover they can do something unusual: He started timing it. By the fall of 2015, backward running wasn’t just rehabilitation anymore. It had become a creative outlet.

Yoder was transitioning into leading both the track and field and cross-country programs while teaching new courses at college. He found that retro running challenged him physically and creatively. Then the time trials started. On roads and treadmills, Yoder consistently ran backward miles in under six minutes.

Yes.

Backward.

Under six minutes.

At some point, “this lets me run again” became “I wonder how fast I can actually go?”

With encouragement from coach Robert Spies and backward-running coach Garret Doherty, Yoder began pursuing bigger goals, including world records and international competition. The guy whose running career had supposedly ended had found himself competing on a world stage. He just happened to be facing the opposite direction.

Ask Yoder today what all of this has taught him, and he’ll talk about something he calls “Reverse Reality.” It’s become part of the way he coaches.

Most athletes are trained to look ahead. The next race. The next goal. The next PR. The next championship.

But Yoder knows there are moments when looking forward can feel impossible. An injury happens. A goal disappears. The season falls apart. The future you pictured suddenly isn’t there. That’s when Yoder tells his athletes to look backward. Not to stay there. To see how far they’ve already come.

“Sometimes when faced with discouragement and injuries, it’s too hard to think about future goals when you are stuck,” Yoder said. “Take a look back and pull from lessons and things you picked up in the past and draw momentum from those experiences.”

Think about that.

A man who became known for running backward now teaches athletes that sometimes looking backward is exactly what gives you the strength to move forward.

That’s more than a running philosophy. That’s a life philosophy. Naturally, there’s an important question that needs answering. Do Yoder’s athletes ever challenge the guy who runs backward ridiculously fast? Not often.

He’s raced a few of them in shorter sprints, and apparently, they’ve gotten “pretty close.” But Coach has terms.

“If you let me warm up and get my spikes on,” Yoder tells them, “You can pick the distance.”

He is also quick to point out that retro running isn’t the centerpiece of his athletes’ experience at Tabor. That’s intentional. “I never wanted it to be a distraction to their experience,” he said. Instead, it’s the lesson behind it that shows up in his coaching.

Don’t quit because the original plan stopped working. Adapt. Use what you’ve learned. Find another way. And when someone tells you the road ahead is closed, perhaps check whether anyone said you couldn’t travel it backward.

When asked what The Right Way To Play® means to him, Yoder doesn’t talk about records. He doesn’t talk about championships. He doesn’t even talk about running. He talks about purpose.

“The right way for me is to ‘Do what you can, and God will do what you can’t,'” he said.

Then he describes something most people would struggle to call a gift. Injuries. Shoulder dislocations. Knee problems. Arthritis caused by overtraining. “The greatest gifts were injuries,” Yoder said. “Those gifts guided me toward my purpose I found through the pain.”

The very thing that appeared to take away his future ultimately helped shape it.

Today, that experience allows Yoder to look at an injured or discouraged student-athlete in the eye and say something far more meaningful than I understand. He can say: I’ve been there. And I’m here to help. That’s the kind of coach Yoder wants to be. One who supports people through the victories and the hard seasons. One who helps student-athletes develop not only for their next race, but for what comes afterward.

“Support people through good times and hard times so they can ultimately give back in a way that honors their faith, family and future,” Yoder said. “If you do that, the rest takes care of itself.”

Maybe that’s the real record worth chasing. Because Aaron Yoder’s story isn’t actually about running backward. It’s about discovering that forward isn’t the only direction in which progress happens. Sometimes the plan falls apart. Sometimes the road changes. Sometimes the thing you would never have chosen becomes the thing that leads you exactly where you were supposed to go.

And sometimes?

The Right Way Forward starts by turning around.

That’s The Right Way To Play®.