BARNES: Canadian distance runner Rachel Cliff making her case to go to Tokyo Games in 2020 – Toronto Sun

When you run as far and as fast as Rachel Cliff does every week, it is possible to leave your disappointments in the dust. Even the soul-crushing kind.

So it is that Cliff, a 31-year-old distance runner from Vancouver, has been able to move on, well on in fact, from 2016 — when she was denied a place on Team Canada for the Rio Olympics — to become the national-record holder in the half-marathon in 2018 and, more recently, the marathon.

That sentence doesn’t really do the feat any justice at all. She set the Canadian record in just her second marathon — ever. She ran 2:26.56 in Nagoya, Japan, on March 10, erasing the previous Canadian mark of 2:28.00 set by Lanni Marchant in 2013. In Cliff’s first ever marathon, in October 2018 in Berlin, she finished just .53 seconds off Marchant’s time.

“I think I can run faster, and I’d love to run faster,” Cliff said last week, after returning from the Pan Am Games in Peru, where she won a bronze medal in the 10,000 metres. “But, especially in the marathon, so much can go wrong, so your primary goal is to get to the start line healthy. I’ve had two very positive experiences in the marathon, so we’ll see what the number is.

“If I end up doing the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, it’s not going to be fast because it will be so hot. If I do that, it’s right in the middle of the year, so it likely impacts where else I can do marathons, too.”

If she ends up in Tokyo, she will have come full circle from 2016. She slid under the Olympic standard in the 5K, but wasn’t nominated to the Rio team, and her appeal was denied. She found out, by email, in the dead of night, and it was a devastating shock. Three years on, she has gained valuable perspective.

“I think in 2016 there was a bunch of things that happened. Without getting into too many details, I think one piece of it was that I had a really good year — I didn’t have a huge breakthrough, but I ran better than I did the year before and it was actually a pretty natural stepping stone — but for whatever reason I was kind of missed by the people making the decisions.

“I have been someone who consistently performs when there is a Canadian singlet on my back. And I was really fortunate to be given opportunities to show that. In 2016, I was quite young. Through no one’s fault I just didn’t have the same amount of experience under my belt to stand out.”

She’s one of several standout Canadian long-distance runners now — Natasha Wodak, Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, Jessica O’Connell and Malindi Elmore are among her national peers — but the world is jammed with them. Cliff’s performances in 2019 leave her 36th in the world in the 10K, 74th in the 5K, 88th in the half and 92nd in the marathon.

“We peak in our late 20s and early 30s, even mid-30s women continue to run personal bests, and I think a lot of us are figuring this out and will stay in the sport longer,” she said. “There is a big crop of women pushing each other. It’s an exciting time to be a part of it.”

She got into running later than most pros, buying her first pair of track spikes in Grade 10. She was coached and mentored by some former Olympians in track and field, Thelma Wright and Graeme Fell, and her aunt Leslie Cliff was an Olympic swimmer.

“They were all very humble. I wasn’t aware at the time how good they were at the age I am now. They really did a nice job of teaching me, at an impressionable age, what it takes to be good, without really saying it. They kind of led by example and I do look up to those people.”

Cliff typically runs 145 kilometres a week, and is grateful for the sponsorship of On, a Swiss footwear company, that keeps her in brand new shoes. When compounded by international travel, marathon running is a grind but she loves it.

“The human body is definitely made to do these things and if you train properly I don’t think they are unhealthy at all, but you do need to be aware that you probably don’t want to do more than three a year.”

Though her record run in the marathon qualified her to compete at the World Championships in Athletics in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 27, she decided to give it a pass, citing the prospective heat, even for a midnight start.

She is instead hoping, again, to be named to the Canadian team in the 5K.

dbarnes@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes