Past: Lord Byng Grey Ghosts and Hollyburn Cross-Country Ski Club
Present: Pacific Spirit Park
Future: CIS University of B.C. Thunderbirds
Go back a decade to sometime in the fall and you’ll spot Kieran Lumb racing around Trout Lake or Vanier Park with thousands of other elementary school kids. For years, these seasonal meets were just about the only running the future UBC Thunderbird cross-country and track athlete ever did.
At Lord Byng secondary, Lumb kept running. In Grade 11, he won the city championship by a slim 47 seconds on a 7.6-kilometre course by shaving three minutes off his time from the previous season. In Grade 12, he defended his city title and added a B.C. championship to his list of accomplishments.
Despite this success, running wasn’t his main athletic pursuit. Lumb did cover great distances on woodsy trails, but most of those tracks were snowy. “I skied since I was two,” he said. “Not long after I started to walk, my parents had me on skis [which] they duct-taped to snow boots.”
Racing for the North Shore’s Hollyburn Cross-Country Ski Club, he won a silver medal in the 15 kilometre classic at the national junior championships in March. He trained frequently with his dad, a national junior team member, and later developed an immense love for outdoor sports like climbing, hiking and sailing through the outdoor education program, Trek. Running followed.
With friends, he overnights on long backcountry hikes and sets up a basecamp to reach more trails. “From Garibaldi Lake last summer, we did long runs and hikes for three days,” he said. “That probably is my all-time favourite part of running. On that more rugged trail stuff, it lets you see more things in a day. We could run in one day what it might take to hike in three days.”
The coaches at UBC are thrilled to have him.
“We really think Kieran is a diamond in the rough,” said Thunderbirds head coach Laurier Primeau. “He’s going to be one of our top cross-country athletes.”
Lumb isn’t part of a formal track club, so his coaches will avoid over-use injuries as they increase his mileage mindfully. “He hasn’t spent years training to the degree most track athletes have. Having said that, his aerobic engine is huge,” said Primeau.
He will be groomed to run middle-distance track events like the 800 and 1500 metre races and perhaps go even longer since the future engineering student has an impressive ability to marshal his focus and discipline, said T-Bird assistant coach Chris Johnson.
“He’s quite rare,” said the coach, noting Lumb’s fast leg speed despite the biomechanical differences between skiing and running. In the 800m, Lumb finished ninth in B.C. at the provincial high school track meet last weekend in Nanaimo.
Now the work begins, said Johnson. “He will run more than he has ever run before.”
Twitter and Instagram: @MHStewart
