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(The following account has been written by Nancy
Tinari. She has just won the Masters
division of the Tufts 10K for Women in Boston, a race she won in 1988. She then competed in the Canadian Roar
Running 10K Championship in Montreal where she finished 2nd
overall.)
I started out as a runner on my high school's
cross-country team, in grade 11 at the age of 16. Up until that time, I hadn't been good at any sport, but my gym
teacher encouraged me to try for the team and my high school coach, George
Gluppe (who is still my coach today) quickly recognized my talent. I always loved cross-country because at my
high school, George S. Henry, in Don Mills, Ontario, we had a huge team of
great runners. Even though I wasn't a
great runner right away, I got to be part of a winning team and with
training, I improved rapidly. I
wasn't very interested in track running so I didn't do much of that until my
grade 12 year. By grade 13, I was
serious about running. I was training
hard, often twice a day. I made my
first national team, the Canadian cross-country team, and went to Scotland in
1978 for the World Cross-Country Championships, where I placed a decent 36th. This was the first of 6 Canadian cross-country
teams that I was a part of between 1978 and 1988. Many of my best memories of running come from the times I was
part of those Canadian cross-country teams.
We had great fun, since we were all distance runners and understood
each other. It was great going to
Europe, too - I always enjoyed the sightseeing aspects of the trips and
crammed in as much exploration as possible.
Paris, Rome, Warsaw were some of the places I went. I was very proud of our women's team
achievement in 1983 in Gateshead, England.
Led by 20-year-old Alison Wiley, who raced with the world's best and
came 2nd, we were the bronze medal team. I was our second finisher with my career World X-C best placing
of 12th.
I've been on so many teams and in so many races that it's
really hard to pick the best ones. I
always loved cross-country because of the team element and because that was
how I began running. However, I was
to do better in road racing because I didn't have the leg strength to be as
good on uneven or muddy surfaces as I was on the perfect surface of a road or
track. Track was important to me too,
because track running is where the real elite of the sport perform,
especially at the World Championships and the Olympics. Though I enjoyed and excelled at distances
from 10K to 20K on the road, I can't say that I liked the 10,000m on the
track. It's extremely tough
mentally. However, it had to be my
distance at the World level because I wasn't fast enough to run at that level
over the shorter distances, 1500m and 3000m, though I competed often in these
distances when I was younger. In
1978, I made the Commonwealth Games team and placed 5th in the
3000m. I also ran the 3000m at the
World Student Games in 1983. By 1986,
another Commonwealth Games year, the 10,000m for women was in all the
Games. From 1986 to 1988, Sue Lee,
Carole Rouillard and I were very competitive with each other in the 10,000m
and we all ran good times. I competed
in that event at the 1986 Commonwealth Games, the 1987 Pan-Am Games and World
Championships, and in the 1988 Olympic Games.
I started achieving great success in road-racing in 1983,
and after that I only ran enough track races to keep sharp and qualify to be
on the Canadian team in the big events.
I had my real breakthrough at the Cleveland 10K in May of that year
when I drove there with a group of my club teammates. I won the race easily, and was very
pleased with my time of about 32:30.
I didn't know than that the women I had beaten by so much had been
given not only their travel expenses but appearance money as well. I only received a giant trophy. However, the race opened all the doors for
me because in 1983, 32:30 was a very good time. Race directors from all the big American road races started
calling me. I chose my races carefully
because I wanted to keep training hard, and not get burned out from a lot of
travelling and racing. I had a lot of
fun times at the American road races.
I almost always finished in the top three. That year, because of the roar racing, I started to make a good
living as a professional runner. I
was also working part-time in a lab at York University after getting my
Honours B.Sc. in biology there.
In 1984, I was training harder that I had ever training
before in my life, hoping to make the Canadian Olympic team in the marathon,
because the women's 10,000m was not yet an Olympic event. I got a very bad knee just 3 weeks before
the Trials race in Ottawa. I was in
the shape of my life -- ready for a 2:30, I figured. My first marathon, in Toronto the previous
September, hadn't gone well because I had overtrained and then had severe
foot problems during the race, which I finished in 2:40:50.
I was quite heartbroken at not being to run at the Trials
of the Olympics, and my knee injury stopped me from running most of 1984 and
1985. A previous knee injury had
caused me to stop running for almost two years between 1980 and 1982. This was the story of my running -
terrible injuries that lasted so long that even with cross-training, I wasn't
able to get the steady, year-to-year improvement that a distance runner must
achieve in order to make it to the top of the running world. This is partly why I am so keen as a
masters runner. It's because I never
got to run or race as much as I wanted to; I sincerely believe that I never
achieved what I should have. In some
ways I was very talented. I had
tremendous aerobic power and also pretty food speed for a distance runner - I
ran 4:17.0 for the 1500m at age 19.
My times in the 10,000m didn't change much from 1983 to 1988, because
I was injured so much. In 1987, I was
living part of the year in Brussels with my husband Paul, who was doing his
Ph.D. there. We trained together in a
huge forest with wonderful trails and gravel paths.
My most amazing race weekend of all time would have to be
an April weekend in 1987. On a
Saturday, Paul and I took a train from Brussels, to a city in the Netherlands
called Oostend, where I won a 20K race in about 1:08:30 in spite of a mile of
beach running on the course. The very
next day, we travelled to the town of Spa, where a whole series of huge
cross-country races for all age groups was going on. Paul and I entered the toughest race, the
half-marathon. I hadn't intended to
race two days in a row; this was supposed to be Paul's race - so I didn't
have racing shoes with me, but I wore my training shoes and tackled this
half-marathon cross-country course through the mountains. It was the toughest race, in terms of
terrain, that I have ever done. There
were may accidents and injuries as thousands of runners struggled through the
course. In spite of running through
the rough downhills very cautiously, I managed to win the women's section of
the race, completely exhausted.
I had little else to do in Brussels but train, and I was
certainly in the shape of my life that year, as I proved when I won the
Canadian Championships 10,000m in a time of 32:15, and it was one of the
easiest 10,000s that I ever did.
However, at the World Championships I was hampered by severe Achilles
tendonitis and could only manage 32:30.
Later that year, in November, I competed as part of a 3-woman Canadian
team at the IAAF World Road Racing 15K Championship (now it is a
half-marathon), held in Monaco. I placed 2nd in this international
race and ran my best time ever for 15K, 48:53, a time which still stands as a
Canadian best. That was definitely
one of the best performances of my running career. A few months later, I got a bursitis injury in my left heel
that was to last until I finally had surgery on it 9 years later! This injury severely curtailed my training
in 1988, but with a combination of limited, high quality running and heavy
bike training, I was able to make the Olympic team and I ran 32:14 to finish
13th in Seoul.
After 1988, I never returned to the same level of running
again, not because of my age, but because of several factors: my chronic heel bursitis, pregnancy (my
son Abebe was born in 1991), and another health problem that was the worst
threat to my running - disease in my iliac arteries. The symptoms of this disease began in
1990, when I began to notice an inexplicable weakness in my quads during
intense running. I had to drop out of
a 10K Canadian road championship in 1992, a race I had hoped to win due to my
excellent fitness at that time, because all the muscles in my left leg
cramped up inexplicably. After that,
I was unable to run for more than a minute at a time without the cramping
reoccurring. It wasn't until months
later that I got a diagnosis - my left iliac artery was blicked just above
the groin so very little blood was reaching my left leg. I had bypass surgery in December of
1992. Although painful, it was completely
successful and I resumed training six weeks later. I ran respectably well for the following two years, winning the
Canadian Road Race 10K Championships in 1993 and 1994. Unfortunately, shortly after my surgery in
1992, I realized that the artery on the right side must be narrowing because
I was getting cramping during intense running and racing. For a while I could compensate somewhat by
pacing myself carefully and pushing harder with my left leg, but each year
the cramping got worse. Medical people
claimed they could not detect any narrowing and refused to attempt
surgery. By 1996 I could no longer
give an all-out effort in races.
Finally, during a workout in March of 1998, the right iliac artery
became totally blocked and bypass surgery was performed a couple of days
later. It was wonderful, after that,
to be able to run hard again for the first time in years, but at age 39, it
was too late for me to become a 32-minute 10K runner again. I would have to be content with being a
top Masters runner. After so many
lost years, no wonder I've been so eager to run hard since my surgery. Canadian runner and triathlete Carol
Montgomery recently had surgery for the same problem and achieved spectacular
performances after her surgery.
Running to be the top Master is totally different from
trying to be the best at the Olympics or the World Championships. It's ridiculous to take yourself too
seriously. Also, if I compare myself
now to what I was at my best, I would be pretty depressed if I hadn't changed
my expectations. However, when I am
actually in a race, I still take it seriously and try to give my best
effort. On good days, I still feel as
powerful as I did when I was younger 0 I even still feel I'm running
fast! Because of all the health
problems and injuries I've gone through, I'm just that I can still run well
and not be in pain.
I'm sure I'd now be running times closer to my PBs if I
was training the way I did when I was younger. However, I probably couldn't
train any harder than I am without falling apart completely. I still follow the same pattern of
training that I always have: Monday easy, Tuesday hard, Wednesday easy,
Thursday hard, Friday easy, Saturday/Sunday hard training both days or a
race. However, my Tuesday/Thursday
hard days when I was younger included two
hard workouts: a hard 4-5 mile tempo run in the morning followed by a long
cross-country or track workout in the afternoon. Now I usually just do one workout. My Sunday long runs are neither as long nor as fast as they
used to be. My easy days used to
include an easy 5-mile run and a weight workout if I was injury-free; and a
weight workout and a swim workout if I had a slight injury. Now my easy days consist of a weight
workout or a swim workout, and I almost always skip running completely for
those three easy days a week.
There are only a few specific things I need to say about
my training. I have always stressed high-quality running:
track work, even sprinting, and intense long intervals from distances ranging
from 400m to 5000m. I have always
done most of my training on soft surfaces (trails, golf courses) because
pavement injures me very quickly.
This year I started doing a lot more stretching than I had ever done
before. I learned many new stretches
that were taken from Martial Arts. I
think that my enhanced flexibility has allowed me to maintain my speed this
year in spite of the fact that I had to cut back my track work because of
Achilles problems.
Injuries have taught me that I can never plan far ahead in
my running. At the end of the month,
I will run in a Masters’ mile track race in San Francisco. After that, I will take a break from
running in order to let my Achilles tendonitis clear up so that I can run on
the track again. Probably next year
will be much like this year. I will
participate in the BC Timex Series (which I won overall this year and last
year), and the Great Canadian Bagel national series. I’ll fit in a few big American road races
wherever convenient. If my Achilles
cooperates, I’d like to run in a few track races, possibly even the 5000m at
the National Championships.
Outside of running, I only worked as a lab technician for
a couple of years. It was a very
demanding job that really required 10-12 hour days, and I was too busy with
training and travelling to competitions.
For many years, while I made my living from running, I took extra
courses at York University in psychology, creative writing and French. While I was living in Brussels, I took
French courses for foreigners.
After my sun was born, I became a “full-time mom”. My husband is an engineering consultant,
public speaker, and university/college part-time teacher, so I’m still the
traditional “housewife” in many ways.
I give Paul assistance with secretarial work, as well. Also, I work part-time as a speaker for
B.C.’s Esteem Team, a group of Olympic athletes who go to schools throughout
the province giving kids motivational talks.
I work mainly with the grade 4-7 age group. I also do volunteer work to help with the preservation of my
fantastic training area, Mundy Park in Coquitlam.
My favourite leisure-time activities are reading and
writing. In fact, at times I wish I
had majored in English rather than in Biology. I have toyed with the idea of starting a second career as a
freelance science writer, or as an English teacher. However, right now I’m having so much fun with my running that
I don’t want to give up making that my first priority for a while.
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ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Finished 13th in 1988 Olympics 10,000m
Silver Medallist at 1987 15K Road Racing Championships
Silver Medallist at 1987 Pan American Games – 10,000m
Bronze Medallist (Team) at 1983 World Cross-Country
Championships – 12th Place individual
4th Place Finish at 1986 Commonwealth Games
10,000m
1st Bolder Boulder 10K
1st Cascade Run-Off 15K
1st Tufts 10K for Women
1st Schipol International 10K (Holland)
1st Bob Hasan 10K (Indonesia)
1st Tulsa 15K
1st Cleveland 10K
Top 3 New York Mini-Marathon 10K
Top 3 Gasparilla 15K
Top 3 Utica Boilermaker 15K
Top 3 Falmouth Road Race
National Record-Holder over 15K Road in 48:53
One-time National Record-Holder over 10K (Road and Track)
Canadian Cross-Country Champion 1979, 1987
Canadian 10,000m Champion 1987
Canadian 10K Road Champion 1981, 1982, 1983, 1993, 1994
Consistent Top-3 finisher at Canadian Track & Field
Championships over 1500m, 3000m and 10,000m distances 1978-1988
5K Canadian Masters record in 16:24
8K Canadian Masters record in 27:21
10K Canadian Masters record in 34:09
2000 Results
Steveston 8K – Vancouver – Feb. 6 – 26:46 (short course) –
2nd; 1st Master
“First Half” Half Marathon – Vancouver – Feb. 13 – 1:19:13
– 3rd; 1st Master
Seymour Forest 5K – Vancouver – Apr. 1 – 16:24 – 1st
Vancouver Sun Run 10K – Vancouver – Apr. 16 – 35:05 –
13th; 1st Master
Garden City 10K – Victoria – Apr. 30 – 34:30 – 2nd;
1st Master
Lilac Bloomsday 12K – Spokane, WA – May 7 – 42:38 – 13th;
2nd Master
Shaughnessy 8K – Vancouver – May 28 – 27:28 – 1st
Ambleside Masters road Mile – Vancouver – Jun. 3 – 4:44 –
1st
Buffalo Subaru 4-Mile Chase – Buffalo, NY – Jul. 15 –
22:10 – 4th; 1st Master
5K Run at the Docks – Toronto –Jul. 21 – 16:48 – 2nd;
1st Master
Orange County 5K Race for the Cure – Newport Beach, CA –
Sep. 24 – 17:15 – 2nd; 1st Master
Personal Best Times
1500m – 4:17.0
3000m – 9:02.0
10000m – 32:14.05
10K – 32:10
15K – 48:53
½ Marathon – 1:12:49
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