When even Alberto Salazar says about his career that “I always thought I was a big baby, a wimp,” I think it makes it okay for the rest of us to admit that our sport is tough mentally. Competitive running is a celebration of suffering in pursuit of personal growth, and that can be tough year in and year out.
While most of us find a way to manage the mental side of the sport — or at least find détente — the best of us use our self-understanding to build a running career that intertwines with our personalities and strengthens both. Our Sylvie Kimche is one of the latter – as I learned from a recent telephone call with her after a strong performance at the club championships.
This profile is overdue – Sylvie is one of the very best masters runners on the team: four times NYRRC runner of the year, winner of her age group in something like 43 of her last 50 races in CP and 22 consecutively, and at the Club Champs she ran the fastest age-graded road race of the year among the women, and the third fastest in the last couple of years, 87.5%, winning her age group again.
What makes Sylvie tick? From talking to her, it is clear that she is driven by the need to push herself. Distance running is just the latest incarnation of that drive, and I suspect running has in turn increased her commitment to excel. From early on she was driven to compete and learn new things. Growing up in France, she was good enough in the long jump to finish in the top ten at the Gallic equivalent of the NCAA championships. She also competed in skiing at a high level while living in Grenoble. So when she moved to New York in her early 30s, she naturally fell in with a group of distance runners after one of them challenged her to run a couple of miles on Fire Island. No surprise: soon Sylvie was competing at a high level again, in yet another sport. She joined CPTC around 1989 after a few years with Millrose, and under the tutelage of Coach George she ran six marathons in four years, including a 3:07. And she has stayed with distance running ever since. Her favorite PRs are a 18:01 5k and 38:19 10k.
I like to ask masters athletes about their training, because they often have more interesting things to say than ‘a combination of intervals, long runs and VO2 max workouts.’ Like many masters athletes, Sylvie has found that her training has to have as its prime mover the need to avoid injury. Sylvie has had back and hamstring tendon problems over the years, and has found ways to lessen the chance of injury. She runs only on asphalt or preferably dirt, never on concrete, and keeps her mileage to around 25 miles per week.
Sylvie talks often about physical strength being a key part of her training. To get strong, she does not head for an air-conditioned gym, but, true to character, to the highest mountains she can find. Now that she is retired from her career at Abercrombie and Fitch as, among other things, a designer, design technician, sourcing expert, and fabric designer, she has time for multiday trekking, hiking, and cycling trips in exotic countries. She has been to New Zealand, Patagonia, Morocco, the Rocky Mountains, and will soon go to Bhutan. Long climbs on foot and bicycle serve as good strength-building exercises, and when she has to push over the Central Park hills in a race, she can look back to hours of climbing 15,000-foot peaks, and suddenly the North Hill just isn’t that scary. The other benefit is that after a long trip, Sylvie comes back fired up and ready to compete.
As for mental strength, Sylvie speaks emphatically about how important our own Stuart Calderwood has been to her career. Even elite runners like Sylvie benefit from having a strong supporter who tells her that she can do something difficult, and Stuart has served in that role and as a mentor. “Stuart is always encouraging,” Sylvie told me. “ He makes me believe in myself when I doubt.”
Her quick race at league champs has Sylvie thinking about one of her favorite races – the Fifth Avenue Mile. She is working with Coach Devon to put together a training plan to get her leg speed up over the next few weeks. Two years ago she ran 6:13 for a world class 91.8% age-graded score, winning her age group of course. Secondary goals are to do well in the September four miler, and perhaps to run some cross-country races in VCP.
Beyond Sylvie’s great run, many people ran fast and set age-graded yearly PRs at Club Champs. Alan Ruben had another extraordinary race, running an 87.4%, or 5:40 pace. The amazing part is that it was not a yearly PR for him. It was, however, the second-fastest age-graded percent of the year, second only to his own 87.7%. Stuart Calderwood also made the top-10 list for the year, coming in 9th with a 84.8%.
There were many age-graded PRs – sorry for the brevity, but people bring their inner Paula Radcliffe to the Club Champs. Here’s the list: Robert Siegell, Takeshi Yamazaki, Peter Zazzali, Thomas Raymond, Robert Mauriello, Budd Heyman, Phillip Vasquez, Frederick Paredes, and Susan Pearsall.
Congratulations to the 50+ men and 60+ women, who won their age groups. Cheers to scorers Sylvie Kimche, Deb Barchat, Judith Tripp, Alan Ruben, Stuart Calderwood , and Yasuhiro Makoshi.
At the NYC Half Marathon, CPTC racers made fewer stories. Only one, actually: The great Yasuhiro Makoshi won the 55-59 by a Bolt-like 9 minutes. As for the rest of the team … hey, even Radcliffe was several minutes off her PR.
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