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this is perfect Sudbury sports synergy.
With a good, solid stable
of runners at his disposal, Laurentian Voyageurs’
cross-country coach Darren Jermyn is anxious
to jump into a season that will begin with
far more of a feeling of normality than either
of the past two seasons.
And for the first time in
three years, organizer Jesse Winters and company
will welcome both community athletes and post-secondary
students together for the annual Sudbury Masters
/ Continental Insulation Ramsey Tour, the
44th edition of the event.
Suffice to say that come next
Sunday morning (September 11th), from 8:30
a.m. through until around noon or so, things
will be hopping up at the Laurentian Track
– and that’s something that surely
brings a smile to the face of volunteers and
participants alike.
“We did this once as
a virtual race at Lo-Ellen during Covid, but
I’ve never run it as a community race
which is something I am really excited for,”
noted local sophomore Kristen Mrozewski, coming
off a very encouraging rookie OUA season in
what amounts to her secondary varsity sport
of choice at L.U.
“I’ve never raced
the local 5 km’s,” she added.
“I’ve done the Turkey Gobbler
(Walden Trails), but we do that for fun as
a group of friends; we’re not racing
it.”
In spite of a solid succession
of noteworthy performances, starting with
her inaugural cross-country season, running
through to OUA indoor track and on to an abbreviated
outdoor schedule, Mrozewski remains somewhat
tepid with race day less than a week away.
“We haven’t gotten
together yet as a team very much,” said
the 19 year old long-time hockey netminder.
“We’re a little bit nervous; it’s
still early in the season. I think once we
get there, we get to the start line and start
racing, we’ll be okay.”
Still, it’s best to
keep the goals modest in terms of individual
times and such.
“The first race obviously
isn’t going to be anybody’s best
race,” said Mrozewski. “You want
to see where you are at fitness-wise and decide
what your goals are going to be this season.
The aim for the first race is to show coach
what you’ve been doing all summer, what
you have been putting your time into and hopefully
you get something that you are happy with.”
For a young woman who first
started training with coach Dick Moss and
the Track North crew while in grade 11 at
St Benedict but never seriously challenged
for an individual city cross country title
during her time with the Bears, 21 year-old
fourth year Health Promotions and Concurrent
Education major Angela Mozzon has plenty of
reason to smile as she prepares for her third
year with the Voyageurs.
“I am so happy with
how much I became dedicated to the sport,”
said the local who finished third among the
Laurentian runners at the OUA Championships
last November in London. “In high-school,
I found that I did it more for fun. But since
Covid, I’ve really started to love running
a lot more and just keep pushing myself to
do my best.”
“Over the past two years,
I’ve been really working on my mileage
and that’s the biggest difference I
see, is that I’ve just gotten so much
more fit, just from the mileage alone.”
Having run the Ramsey Tour
five km twice during her time at St Ben’s
and again as a freshman at Laurentian, Mozzon
enters the early September test far more conscious
of exactly how she wants to tackle the course
that includes roughly an equal mix of trail
and road racing.
“I’m really excited
to see how it goes this year because it has
been so long,” she said. “I think
my goal for this would be to start out quick.
I think the last mile is really where I have
to push myself – it’s almost all
uphill. But it’s nice because with our
workouts with Darren, a lot of times we will
do 2km repeats on the trail, so we’re
all pretty used to that gradual uphill.”
Similar to her teammate, Mozzon
is anxious to reap the rewards of a summer
of solid dedication to her sport. “At
this point, I wouldn’t say that I am
not fit, but I really don’t have the
speed right now,” she said. “In
a few weeks, once we’ve done some harder
workouts, I will have a better idea of where
I am at.”
“I really tried to do
more mileage this summer and I’m hoping
it pays off.”
With every other race his
team will enter pretty much four hours away
or more, Darren Jermyn could not say enough
good things about the group that supports
his program in so many ways, much closer to
home.
“The Sudbury Masters
(Running Club) are so dedicated to putting
this on – and it is a lot of work,”
said the man who knows that far better than
most, still at the helm of the elementary
races at the end of the month that bring together
well over a thousand young athletes in most
years. “I can’t think of another
race – perhaps the Around the Bay (Hamilton)
– that has this much continuity.”
And much like his runners,
Jermyn appreciates the early season read that
he gets to make on the team that he took over
from Dick Moss a couple of years ago. “The
expectation for our athletes over the summer
is that they train and come into camp ready
for the season,” he said. “They
are not in superior shape; we want them at
top fitness at the end of October and the
OUA Championships.”
“But we really want
to get a benchmark of where they are at.”
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