Youthful racer keeps grueling schedule
Hollister’s Thomas Rich is 8 years old and he’s a fast swimmer.
So fast in fact that he’s already posted qualifying times for the
Junior Olympics
– in the 10 and under age bracket.
Although his first love is swimming, Rich appears to be equally
gifted in long-distance running as well. His dad, John, will vouch
for that. At a recent workout to prepare for a local 5-kilometer
race, the elder Rich had a hard time keeping up with his son.
Youthful racer keeps grueling schedule
Hollister’s Thomas Rich is 8 years old and he’s a fast swimmer. So fast in fact that he’s already posted qualifying times for the Junior Olympics – in the 10 and under age bracket.
Although his first love is swimming, Rich appears to be equally gifted in long-distance running as well. His dad, John, will vouch for that. At a recent workout to prepare for a local 5-kilometer race, the elder Rich had a hard time keeping up with his son.
“I was running with him to try and push him and we got to one hilly area and I could barely keep up,” John said. “I can’t believe his stamina and speed.”
And neither can anyone else.
“We told Jess Morales, the cross country coach at San Benito High, about his times and he just shook his head,” said Thomas’ proud mother Naoko. “He couldn’t believe it.”
If he continues to excel equally in both sports, someday he might be forced to decide between the two. But for now it’s all about the fun of winning and filling up his room with medals that he’s earned. His collection of medals includes a number of first and second-place finishes that he won as a swimmer on Rovella’s Athletic Club’s boys 8-under A Division as well as his awards for running.
“I like running but I probably like swimming more,” said Thomas, who wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m. to get in a two-hour workout at the pool at Rovella’s in Hollister before heading to Ladd Lane Elementary School. It’s a grueling schedule that he’s faithfully kept without complaint for the past few years.
“He swims 6,000 yards every day,” said Naoko, whose son first leanred to swim at the age of 4. “He really likes it and wants to do it. Someday, he wants to be an Olympic swimmer.”
After the workout in the pool, he makes a brief stop at home in order to have his morning breakfast before heading off to school, where he is an honor student in the GATE program. With such a demanding schedule finding time to fit in a run now and then is more challenging, but he still manages to run roughly 25 miles a week.
He first started running at the age of 6, becoming interested after watching his father, mother and older 13-year-old sister Ann Mari compete in a number of local 5K events, including the Red Ribbon Run in Hollister, the Wildflower in Morgan Hill, the Rio Grill in Carmel and the Bubba Gump run in Monterey.
“I’m not the guy who is going to win the race,” said John. “I just do it to keep in shape.”
The Rich family will often run four or five days a week about six miles each time along Southside Road in Hollister. The extensive training has also helped Ann Mari, an eighth-grader at Rancho San Justo, ascend up the local ranks in her sport. Last month, she finished 56th overall out of 2,000 entrants in the Pat Tillman memorial race put on by Leland High School in San Jose. She finished third in that race amongst all women runners and won the 15-under girls division. Ann Mari’s accomplishments also include a victory in the Wildflower run as well as a first-place finish in the girls 10 to 13 age bracket in the Bubba Gump 5K run in Monterey as well as another first last year in the Red Ribbon Race in Hollister. Her time of 5:35 gave her first overall among all female entrants.
While Ann Mari’s accomplishments are equally if not more impressive in their own right, Thomas is drawing most of the attention based on his age and continued improvement. At the age of 6 he turned in a time of 27:01 in the Bubba Gump run and improved his time to 21:35 last year, which captured the boys 9-under division. In that event he was also 40th overall out of 541 participants. A week before the Bubba Gump run Thomas ran a 6:30 mile at the annual Red Ribbon run in Hollister.
“We’re very, very proud of him,” said John. “He doesn’t complain a whole lot and he wakes up early every day to do all of this.”
Most recently Thomas posted Junior Olympic qualifying times in three separate events that took place in San Ramon. They were the 200 IM, 50 Backstroke and 100 Backstroke.
So will he be the next Mark Spitz, a future Boston Marathon winner, or something else?
“When I grow up I want to be an engineer or a medical doctor,” said Thomas, who is also fluent in his mother’s native tongue of Japanese.
Somehow, you just get the feeling that Thomas will do whatever he puts his mind to.
