SALMON ARM — For Glynis Sim, a middle-distance runner whose family home is situated part way up a pretty steep hill, there has always been the option of which direction to go to begin each of her workouts.
“I usually try and plan the run to go downhill at the end,” the Grade 12 standout from Salmon Arm Secondary explains. “That way, it really makes me work right from the start.”
That’s another way of saying that Sim, who finished this past outdoor track season last summer as the best 2,000-metre youth steeplechaser in the country, is one who never puts off a challenge any longer than she has to.
Currently battling some lower body soreness which has hampered her training, she is nonetheless expected to be amongst the top contenders at the upcoming B.C. High School Cross Country Championships, Nov. 7 on Vancouver’s Jericho Beach course. Sim won the race as a 10th grader in 2013 and finished 10th last season behind her Okanagan rival, Vernon’s Hannah Bennison, who took first.
But the versatile Sim is also a top threat on the track. Last summer, at the B.C. high school championship meet in Langley, she excelled in a trio of events. Sim was third in the 3,000 metres and fourth in the 1,500 metres. But where she shone brightest was in the steeplechase, winning the hazardous 1.5-km water-pit race by a wide margin at 5:04.55.
After a summer of excellence in the event, on the provincial, national, and international stage, it’s become her signature race.
“It’s her emotional and mental intelligence that really helps her prepare well and understand what it takes,” says John Machuga, her coach with Vernon Amateur Athletics. “And it’s not just in training, but in terms of what steps, process-wise, that she has to take. In that regard, she is a very intellectual and mature athlete.”
Yet even Sim isn’t beyond surprising herself, as was the case following last June’s high school provincial meet.
Moving up to the more demanding 2,000-metre steeplechase distance, one which she had not run the entire season to that point, Sim was carrying a personal-best of 7:32, and with Machuga, assessed her chances of reaching a personal best of 7:20, which would give her a spot on the B.C. team.
“I pointed out to her that to make the Canadian team, that she had to have one of the two fastest (youth division) times in the country,” said Machuga. “I told her that 6:52 was the fastest, so she went out and ran a 6:51 (6:51.57).”
If shaving about 36 seconds off a PB time wasn’t crazy enough, that time qualified Sim for a spot on the Canadian team competing at the IAAF World Youth Championship last July in Cali, Colombia.
Despite having to run a heat just to qualify for the finals, Sim not only made the championship race, she turned in the race of her life, finishing sixth in the world at 6:45.58.
I am still a little…” she begins with a quick pause. “Sometimes I can’t wrap my head around it. Being able to represent Canada like that was something that I never thought I would do.”
Sim, who is happy to now have her driver’s license and the ability to drive to Vernon once a week herself for workouts with Machuga, is attracting plenty of attention with her accomplishments.
B.C. schools are hot in pursuit, as are NCAA Div. 1 programs stateside. Already she has taken a visit to Nevada-Reno and has a few more planned in the immediate future.
“She is in the frame of mind now where I think those times will continue to drop,” said Machuga. “She is learning new ways to race, and she is learning different things about herself. She’s a unique person to coach, and she is an easy person to coach.”
And one whose first choice will always be to tackle the hills first.
