Giant step on road to goals

PATRICK HAMILTON/Nelson Mail

FLEET-FOOTED: Josie Wilcox is heading to Tulsa University in Oklahoma to take up a four-year athletics scholarship.

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As the region's top teen runner, Josie Wilcox is used to taking very fast steps. Now she's ready to take one of the biggest steps of her 19 years as she prepares to leave for Tulsa University in Oklahoma to take up a four-year athletics scholarship.

It's not the first big move for Josie. She grew up in England and moved to Nelson when she was 12.

In England she had been a keen runner, as were her parents. Her father was a cyclist and she had swum from a young age.

It seemed almost inevitable that she would start to make waves in the sporting world here, and so it proved, from her very first Weet-Bix Tryathlon in year 8.

Now she's a member of Triathlon New Zealand's youth academy, composed of the top young triathletes in the country.

Although Josie has had plenty of public triumphs, it's the more internal goals that have pushed her on.

For her, the most memorable success of her teen years was outrunning her role model Flossie Van Dyke, a top triathlete and runner over 3000m on the track.

Similar successes dot her running landscape, out-running Jon Linyard in the opening 3km leg of a recent duathlon and finishing on the heels of Nigel Burgess in the Dovedale Hill run last weekend, narrowly missing out on a race record along the way (although she didn't know it at the time).

Such aspirations will be on hold for a while as she settles into life in Oklahoma.

After leaving New Zealand on August 16, she'll have a few days to settle in with her new room-mate, a runner from Missouri, before an orientation week, which will include a two-day training camp.

Although she's in Tulsa to run, her coach Greg Lautenslager has used his contacts to ensure there'll be a stationary bike trainer set up for her.

The university is well equipped with gyms and track and all the backup experts required in physiotherapy, nutrition and so on.

Her running gear will be looked after by Nike and she's already sent size details so everything she needs will be waiting for her.

The athletics team includes two or three swims each week as part of general fitness training, so her triathlon aspirations will be kept ticking over.

She points out that one of the top US triathletes, Sarah Haskins, a competitor with realistic Olympic aspirations, started out on the track team at Tulsa.

In her usual goal-oriented way, Josie has times she aspires to hit on the track, foremost being the 16-minute target over 5000m.

One of her most convincing runs in Nelson so far wasn't on the track, but on the trail, in last year's 23km Dun Run, in which Josie cracked the record by an astonishing seven minutes.

This gives some hint that her future may lie in longer events.

She's yet to run 10,000m on the track, but already has on her hit list a marathon run and an Ironman-distance triathlon.

But all such plans are in the future. For now it's a focus on her new life and perhaps a crack over the next four years at achieving All-American status on the track. To do that, she'll need to be in the top eight in a national track event.

Alternatively, she could attain that honour in cross country with a top-40 finish nationally.

Putting athletic aspirations aside, the bottom line in Tulsa will be academic achievement.

Josie's aiming at a four-year BSc majoring in biology, which will also serve as a pre-med qualification.

The next step could be a return to New Zealand for a dentistry qualification, or it could be further scholarship opportunities in the US.

Return trips to New Zealand for holiday breaks are on the agenda and Nelson will be home for a while yet.

- © Fairfax NZ News