At 14, New Westminster’s Milena Kalisch has discovered a few things.
She loves running, and the longer the course better.
She’s also pretty good at it.
Kalisch made an impressive debut at the U.S. Athletic Amateur Union (AAU) national indoor track and field championships earlier this month in Landover, Maryland, declaring a couple of medals for the return home.
For the St. Thomas More student, it was awesome just being there.
“I felt very excited to have done so well my first time competing in a national championship event,” she told the Recordin an email. “I felt so happy and overjoyed that I was even able to participate in such a big event in front of such large crowds.”
Kalisch competed in the 3,000- and 1,500-metre races for 14-year-old girls, scoring silver and bronze.
Not a bad spring break result for someone who spent much of 2016 sidelined due to a leg fracture.
“I felt a bit nervous before starting because I had never run the 3,000m on a track,” she recalled. “In Canada we do not run the 3,000m in competition until we are 16 years old. I had only run 3,000m in practice and in cross-country races.
“This was my first track race since I fractured my tibia early in 2016, so I worried a little about my leg.”
Her first event was the 3,000m run, one of 20 runners competing for position on a 200m track. She was aware that it could be jumbled and didn’t want that to stymie her pace.
“Before I left for the races, my coach recommended I start at a comfortable pace on the edge of the pack until the crowd thinned out. After six laps there was a group of five of us in the lead … and it got tactical because no one wanted to take the lead so the race slowed down a lot.”
When she crossed the finish line there was just one runner ahead of her – 13 seconds separating her from gold. Entering the race, based on her personal best, Kalisch was seeded ninth.
The next day, she followed a similar route in the 1,500m event, enduring a crowded field and slipping back as far as eighth before lopping into the top-three by the fifth lap to finish third overall in a time of 5:08.66. This time, just five seconds separated her from first.
As a youth, Kalisch gave numerous events a try, first as a member of the Royal City Track and Field Club and now with Ocean Athletic in White Rock, where her coach is Olympic 3,000m bronze medallist Lynn Kanuka.
A B.C. champion in both cross-country and the 1,200m in 2015, Kalisch’s winning stride was stopped by a leg stress fracture. It meant a couple of months of little activity, then onto a pool treadmill. With lots of encouragement from her coach and oversight from her doctor at Fortius Sport and Health, she strengthened the limb to the point where she was ready to race.
Putting last year’s injury behind her, the California-born, Canadian-raised teen said the biggest challenge to getting back on course wasn’t the physical, but the mental side of recovery.
“The biggest obstacles to overcome after my injury (were) the fear of reinjuring my leg and getting my speed back. When I was injured, I could do nothing for months, so first I had to get back in shape and now it’s working on regaining my speed. … It was really hard not to be running and training with my club, I felt very sad and worried about my leg.”
Her first race after the rehab was the Pinetree Classic cross-country race last September, which she won. She followed that with a provincial championship.
The most comfortable fit has been the distance races.
“I love the long races and the strategy involved. You have to decide where you should be positioned in the first few laps of your race, and you also need to figure out when you need to start picking up the pace,” she said. “You have to be careful to make sure you don’t go out too fast so that you still have the energy left to sprint when it’s time for your finishing kick.”
