You have to go a long way to catch up to Cochrane’s Tom Strachan.
The cross-country runner is on the move at the next level.
Running for Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) Trojans men’s team, the 6-foot-3 Bow Valley High School Class of ’08 grad is competing in the national collegiate running ranks. He’s entered in this weekend’s (Nov. 7-8) Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) national cross-country running championships at Calgary’s Confederation Park.
Studying to be an emergency medical technician at SAIT, the 24-year-old former high school distance runner has parlayed his track skills into competitive cross-country running creds. He finished his high-school running career with a 25th-place provincial cross-country finish in 2007 and a seventh-place finish in senior boy’s 1,500-metre run at 2008 provincials.
“Track and field was more my specialty in high school,” Strachan says. “I was able to go to provincials every year in high school. Track and field was more my baby than cross-country. But it’s just something I’m getting back into now.”
He’s now on a six-man SAIT team challenging 17 other schools from across Canada. SAIT is the No. 12-ranked men’s cross-country team in the CCAA. SAIT’s men finished third at Alberta Colleges Athletic Association (ACAC) provincials Oct. 25 at Fort McMurray’s Keyano College. Strachan placed 23rd, running the eight-kilometre distance in 30 minutes, 27 seconds.
“I’d like to just go out as hard as I can,” Strachan says of his plan for nationals. “Thirty minutes of pain is worth the whole thing.”
At nationals, runners are doing four laps of a two-kilometre loop at Confederation Park.
“Being from SAIT, we do train on this course all the time. So I’m pretty well accustomed to this course,” Strachan relays. “We’ve run it a lot over the past couple of months here. I’m very familiar with the big, brutal hill; where there’s a good spot to take it easy and where there is a good spot to put the hammer down and run as fast as you can.”
And he’ll take any edge he can get competing against the nation’s top collegiate cross-country runners.
“I’m expecting it to be pretty tough,” he says of the field. “It’s Canada’s best runners. I’m expecting it to be very painful.”
It’s the price you pay competing at the next level.
