Carina Swiegelaar (Tuks) was planning on just having fun during the South African Cross Country Championships in Port Elizabeth; however, she surprised herself by winning a silver medal in the 4km race.
Hopefully, it won’t be her last medal at a national cross-country meeting. This weekend she is representing Tuks at the USSA Cross Country Championships in East London. Tuks are the defending champions.
The first year physiotherapy student who has already qualified as a pharmacist readily admits being surprised winning a medal.
“I did not expect anything. Beforehand my coach, Ilze Wicksell, advised me not to allow myself to be intimidated and just focus on enjoying the race. I took her words to heart. When we started some athletes immediately made a dash of it. I resisted the challenge to take up the chase and kept on running at a pace I am comfortable with. The conditions were indeed not ideal. It was cold, wet and muddy.
“My patience paid off. As the race progressed, I started to catch up and pass more and more athletes. When I moved up to 7th I thought to myself; wow this is unexpected. Still, I kept to my own race plan. Putting in short bursts of speed on the uphill sections and slugging away through the mud. Finishing second was amazing.”
Swiegelaar is hesitant to make bold predictions about what might happen over the weekend.
“I really would love to win a medal for Tuks at the USSA Championships, but cross country racing can be unpredictable. I will stick to having fun and running my own race and then, whatever happens, happens.”
Wicksell wants Swiegelaar to focus on becoming competitive over 800m.
“It might take a year or two before Carina starts running fast times in the 800m. The first challenge is to work on her speed. She used to be quite a good 400m-athlete. When she was in matric, she won the South African junior title. But while she was studying at the Northwest University, she mainly focussed on doing longer slower sessions. Now she believes she is not fast anymore. It is certainly not so. I just need to rekindle her muscle memory.”
Wicksell who was the first South African female athlete to dip under two minutes in the 800 metres is a firm believer that the secret to the two-lap race is being able to run a fast 400m. When in her prime she was able to run 52.20s.
“The faster any middle distance athlete can be over 400m the more confident they become. So next year Carina will mostly race over 400m doing the odd 800m races. Once I am happy with her speed, we will start working towards getting her to run the perfect 800m race. Carina will definitely keep on competing in cross country races as compliments middle distance running."
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