Whitehorse Daily Star

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Photo by Marissa Tiel

LOGGING GAINS – Joe Parker runs the final stretch of the 10K Yukon Championships this summer in Whitehorse. Parker is one of three local runners representing the Yukon at the national cross-country championships in Kingston, Ont. this weekend.

Parker continues to gain experience; will test himself against Canada’s best

Talk to some runners and they have a real storage problem.

By Marissa Tiel on November 24, 2016

Talk to some runners and they have a real storage problem. Medals, race t-shirts, race bibs all amount to lots of shelf-space.

At the Parker’s Whitehorse household, no space is immune to Joe Parker’s running paraphernalia and the 17-year-old runner is starting to collect – medals that is.

“Most of my team thinks it’s bad luck to throw out your bibs,” he says. “But I usually do.”

After a summer gaining race experience on the Yukon circuit, the Grade 12 F.H. Collins student is getting ready for his newest challenge: cross country nationals.

Alongside senior runner Lindsay Carson and Dawson City runner Jack Amos, they will make up Yukon’s small contingent at the national cross country competition in Kingston, Ont. this Saturday.

Parker’s journey to nationals likely started as a youngster. His father used to run marathons, and their family has always been active, he says.

In elementary school, he was a member of the running club and when he studied overseas in France in Grade 8, he joined their track and field team.

His only break in running came in Grade 9, when he wasn’t sure who he could run with at school. Instead, he continued playing soccer – he’s a midfielder – and climbing indoors.

But eventually the other sports hit the sidelines as Parker adopted running as his main pursuit.

He began training outside of school with Yukon running coach Don White last year to prepare for snowshoe running at the Arctic Winter Games (AWG).

Using mukluks that he’d built in school, he began training on traditional wooden snowshoes with White and the rest of the group heading to Greenland for AWG.

“Once I really started training for that because I had a goal in mind, I started to really enjoy the sport and I started to get more competitive and train harder,” says Parker. “That’s when I got more serious about it.”

He walked away from the 2016 AWG with four medals: three bronze and a silver.

He has kept training since that performance, and even amped up his commitment to the sport after a track meet in Kelowna this summer.

“I started to take it way more seriously and I find myself pushing extremely hard during interval training,” he says.

Before that B.C. track meet, he was training three or four times a week. Following it, he has been training five or six times a week.

“I noticed that as you’re training harder and pushing yourself to the limit more and more, it’s like you’ll get faster, but there’s definitely more ups and downs for how you feel during your runs,” he says.

Parker is a member of White’s local training group, primarily made up of about half a dozen local youth who regularly show up to the sessions.

Parker says he prefers running on the trails to the road, but likes to race track more than cross-country.

His favourite workout is short intervals run on the trails. Around Whitehorse he frequents the Mount McIntyre trails, the Hidden Lakes loop and Riverdale.

He is a self-designated long distance track runner. He says he most enjoys the 1,500 and 3,000-metre races.

Anything over 5K is not someplace you’re likely to find him, although this weekend’s 6K race is the exception to that rule.

Last week, the soft-spoken teen, with a messy flop of hair and braces said he’s not that thrilled about the extra one kilometre.

“Ugh, I don’t like it, but whatever.”

He’s more comfortable with the 5K distance thanks to all those Tuesday night Fun Runs.

In training, Parker is one of the fastest in his group.

“He’s really good at keeping it slow and doing conversation stuff,” says White of Parker.

Most of their training takes place at a conversational pace.

Over the summer Parker shaved about a minute off his 5K time.

“It’s really nice to have my hard work pay off,” he says.

But the gains in speed aren’t so easy to obtain.

“During the track workouts, I can see the improvements that Joe is making,” says White. “It’s difficult when you’re the fastest guy on the crew to get faster.”

Last summer, Parker’s goal was to gain more experience racing. He competed in about a dozen local races, ranging from the 5K Fun Runs, to the Yukon 10K Road Championships, to the Klondike Road Relay, as well as a few Outside competitions.

“I love that feeling you get after you work really hard,” says Parker. “(Running) is just a really good way to stay healthy and I like being fit.

“You’re only responsible for your own performance.”

Parker has already been accepted to the University of Northern British Columbia for engineering next fall, but the school has neither a track program nor a cross country team, so he’s looking at other options.

This weekend, in the national cross country championship’s largest field of 223 runners, he’ll look to gain more race experience on his mission to get faster.

Coach White expects that he’ll be in the middle of the pack.

“It’s going to be a huge eyeopener and learning experience,” says White.

“I don’t really have many expectations for myself. I’m just hoping to run as hard as I can and finish strong,” Parker says. “I’m just going to go for the experience. I know I won’t win, so why stress about it.”

This is the second story in a series of profiles about the local runners representing Yukon at the National Cross Country Championships.

Comments (2)

Up 4 Down 0

Patricia Parker on Nov 29, 2016 at 10:25 am

Way to go Joe

Up 7 Down 0

William Parker on Nov 24, 2016 at 8:25 pm

Good work!

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