Coach gets down on all fours on the track and instructs Lu to practice hurdling by jumping over him. Coach instructs Lu to “lead with the knee” (26) and has him practice multiple times. Coach then pulls over a real hurdle and blows his whistle for Lu to practice. Lu runs towards the hurdle, but just as he reaches it, he stops short. Lu feels embarrassed because track usually comes easily. Coach tells Lu to stop for the day, and Lu feels like he has failed. He tries to convince Coach to let him keep practicing but Coach tells him to go run with the rest of the team for the rest of practice.

On the way home from practice, Coach asks Lu if he is scared to jump hurdles. Lu says that he is only scared of stumbling and falling: “I ain’t built for that kind of embarrassment, Coach. Plus I’m way too pretty for bruises” (32). Lu's joke does not amuse Coach. Coach slows down when he sees two men walking on the sidewalk, one whose “face looked forty but his body looked eighty” (33) and another man with “an old body and an old face” and “a wild jumpy bop” (33).