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UjENA FIT Club Running Interviews and articles with 100 Interesting People

Best Road Races and the UjENA FIT Club is speaking with 100 people who we feel have a lot to say about running, racing and fitness  We will give you background information as will as their insights into the future.  Be sure to post your feedback and comments.

Read All UjENA FIT Club Running Interviews

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The sport of Double Racing is about ready to Take Off!
Posted Thursday, February 19th, 2015
by Bob Anderson, publisher of Double Runner magazine (Photo Bob Anderson with world record holder Julius Koskei wearing the yellow... Read Interview
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2013 Ujena Fit Club Male Runner of the Year
Posted Monday, March 17th, 2014
The Chris Jones story is a running saga of epic proportions.  Don't try this at home! (Photo - Leadville 100... Read Interview
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Sharon Vos: Three in a Row
Posted Sunday, March 23rd, 2014
Aging ever so gracefully at age 59 and forging a career record that becomes ever more impressive, Sharon Vos is... Read Interview
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Julius Koskei: All In the Family
Posted Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
 By David Prokop Editor Best Road RacesJulius Koskei (pronounced Kos-kay), who set the current world record in the Double Road... Read Interview

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Sharon Vos
Monday, February 25th, 2013
There’s something subtly amazing about Sharon Vos - 2012 Ujena Fit Club Female Runner of the Year
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by David Prokop

There’s something subtly amazing about Sharon Vos …

And it’s not that the 58-year-old, happily married, mother of two grown daughters  has been selected Ujena Fit Club Female Runner of the Year for the second year in a row. 

It’s not that she and her identical triplet sisters, Honor and Shelley, are the fastest triplets on the planet, at least in terms of the women’s marathon, and are in the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest aggregate time by triplets in the women’s marathon.

It’s not that she and her sisters had a father who was an Air Force General.

It’s not that Sharon has been running competitively for 25 years, has run 39 marathons, with a best time of 2:57:32, and is a remarkably consistent, prolific runner who has solidly established herself as one of the best age-group runners in the country – and she’s in the same age group (55-59) as Olympic champion Joan Benoit Samuelson and Masters runner extraordinaire Christine Kennedy.

What makes Sharon Vos truly amazing is that despite all she’s accomplished and all the unusual things associated with her name, the 5’4”, 110- pound runner from Greenwich, Conn., considers herself just an ordinary person of modest talent as a runner.

When she finishes behind Christine Kennedy or Joan Benoit Samuelson on those infrequent occasions when she runs against them, her New York area friends will jokingly chide her, “What’s the matter, Sharon, can’t you beat an Olympian?”  She’ll respond, “I’m just an ordinary person. These people are really talented. Joan Benoit has always been an idol of mine.”

And when we interviewed Sharon about her running career, she added, “To be very honest, they have talent that I don’t have. I train very hard, but I don’t have their talent. No way!”

For the record, Sharon doesn’t even consider herself the most talented of the triplets. That accolade, she feels, rightly belongs to her sister, Honor, whom Sharon describes this way: “When she started running, she got very good very fast”

At the core of Sharon’s success as a runner, it would seem, are the three C’s --competitiveness, consistency and commitment. It’s been said of her that she lives and breathes running. But she corrects at least that latter description right quick. “I live and breathe my family, running comes second.”

Of course, the only problem with this ordinary image Sharon projects of herself is that try as you might, you’ll never find an ordinary 58-year-old woman who’s run 39 marathons. Think about it, 39! The London Marathon in April will be her 40th, “and I’m super excited!” she says.

Bob Anderson, founder of the Ujena Fit Club, is very aware of the races Sharon has posted on the Ujena Fit Club Website these past few years.

He says, “There’s not a single race that she’s posted that’s not 80 percent age-graded, which is national class – 90 percent is international class. In fact, since she joined the Ujena Fit Club, she has posted more than 100 performances that are age-graded 84 and up. She’s been running 25 races or more a year that she’s recorded on the Ujena Fit Club since 2008. So she races a lot and she’s very consistent.

“She ran 25 races last year that she posted – you get points for being in the top 300 age-graded performances. Everything is age-graded. Last year a 77.43 age-graded performance got you into the top 300.  All 25 of Sharon’s posted races last year were in the top 300 and she totaled 6,266 points. Her best age-graded performance was 93.55 for her 3:09:03 in the Chicago Marathon, where she finished second in her age group to Christine Kennedy. Her second best age-graded performance was 91.99 for running 1:06:58 in the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile in Washington, D.C.

“Sharon races a lot more than Christine Kennedy – and, of course, to win Runner of the Year, you also have to post your performances on the Website.”

That, and your performances have to be good enough to get in the top 300 so you score  points. Sharon’s always are, it seems.

Sharon and her husband, Joost  (pronounced “Yost” like “most”), live in Greenwich, Conn. – their two daughters, Jennifer and Sophie, are grown and have left home (Jennifer, a linguist, is a graduate of Georgetown University in French and Chinese; Sophie is graduating in mechanical engineering in May from Duke University).

Greenwich, Conn ., is the first city in Connecticut right after you cross over from New York state and it’s an easy commute to New York City and Wall Street, where Joost used to work  as a financial advisor. He now works with Morgan Stanley in the White Plains area, which is near Greenwich, and he drives to work.

Sharon’s running career is closely linked to her now 35-year marriage to Joost Vos, whom she met in Holland when she was an exchange student for a year at Nijenrode University in Breukelen, Holland (“The original Brooklyn!” Sharon points out, “The Dutch originally settled the area that is now Manhattan, and the name Breukelen is how we got Brooklyn”).

They married in 1977 in America, then moved back to Holland, Joost’s home country, where they worked and lived for three years. Then they lived in Brussels, Belgium for three years before finally coming to America – this time to stay – in the fall of 1983. 

It was when they were living in Brussels in 1980 that Sharon and Joost decided to become fitter and more active by getting into jogging. Joost had been a speedskater in Holland, and Sharon and her sisters had run track for only one year in high school in Lakewood, Wash., before they went their separate ways, all graduating with degrees in  business from different universities in Washington state – Honor went to the University of Washington, Shelley to Washington State and Sharon to Puget Sound University. All would eventually find their way back to running, but separately and independently. Shelley and Honor both live in the San Francisco Bay Area now – Shelley in San Jose and Honor in Los Gatos.

But in Brussels in 1980, Sharon and Joost were undertaking a new fitness challenge.  “We were both trying to make it to a mile,” Sharon reflects now, with a can-you-believe-it tone in her voice. “We had a competition to see who could run a mile first without stopping – another Dutch man, Joost and me.”

Who won?

“I did,” Sharon laughs.             

Before leaving Brussels in 1983, however, Sharon and Joost had actually progressed to the point where they were able to complete a 20K race. “We ran very slowly,” Sharon says, “but we did it.”

When they moved to New York City, they started jogging in Central Park, which Sharon describes as “the most amazing green urban area one can imagine,” they joined the New York Road Runners Club (she’s still a member), and ran their first race – a 5-miler – in Central Park in 1984. “I ran a nine-minute pace,” Sharon recalls.

Joost actually beat her in that race. “He always used to beat me,” she says, “until 1989. He never beat me in the marathon though. I was a better long-distance runner.”

They ran several more races, a lot of them in Central Park, and even took some running classes. Then came a fateful day…

When they first moved to New York City, they lived in an apartment on East 23rd  Street while Joost worked on Wall Street and Sharon worked with a real estate development firm.  Then they moved to an apartment on West 82nd Street near Central Park.

Sharon picks up the story, “We were painting our apartment, decided to take a break by going to Central Park, and we spent the next one or two hours clapping for people as they ran by – it was the New York City Marathon! We looked at each other and said. ‘If they can do it, we can do it.’ “

And that’s how Sharon Vos, who now says, “The marathon has become my distance,”  first came to run the marathon. She and Joost both competed in the New York City Marathon in 1985. Sharon was 31 years of age and ran 3:32, Joost ran 3:49, and, no, they didn’t run together, even for a short distance.

“In a race I like to run my own pace,” Sharon explains, “I don’t purposely run with people, I run how I feel. I have a real belief that everybody runs a marathon differently and they have their good spells and bad spells in a marathon. So if you’re running with someone else, then at times you’re running according to how they feel.”

Comments and Feedback
run Two years in a row...Ujena Female Runner of the Year. I can also tell you these triplets are all simply amazing...feel honored to know all three! Congrats Sharon!!!!
Bob Anderson 2/25/13 9:21 pm
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In 1986 she ran the New York City Marathon again, finishing in 3:37. Of her running in  general at that time, she says, “I was not super fast. I was seeing some progress. I was averaging 7 ½ minute pace in the races.”

Photo: Sharon with her daughters Jennifer and Sophie

Then she became pregnant with her first daughter, Jennifer, and didn’t run the marathon in ’88. But she ran the New York City Marathon again in ’89 after training for it by running, in part, in Central Park with her daughter in a baby jogger. Her times in the shorter races had been faster than in previous years, and she hoped to run 3:25. Lo and behold, she ran 3:02!

There is a theory that women distance runners get stronger after having a child, and Sharon, for one, believes there’s some truth to this theory. “I tend to believe it,“ she says, “I think you become a little more efficient in your breathing because you’re carrying all this extra weight when you’re pregnant, and psychologically you learn how to deal with pain, discomfort during childbirth and things not being the way you’re used to in your life. I actually think it makes you tougher.”

Whether baby Jennifer had anything to do with it or not, that 3:02 performance surprised Sharon, and she says today, “That was actually the turning point for me. I thought there was something to this, that I had ability I didn’t know I had and there was a possibility that I could run faster than I thought I could. From that point on I was more focused, I started training harder.”

Sharon also gives credit to her sister, Honor, for inspiring her during this time. As Sharon explains, “Joan Benoit was my idol early on. But what really spurred me on to start racing more was my sister, Honor. While Shelley and I were just getting started in running, Honor was already heavily into racing, working with a coach and was evidently very talented.”

Honor has the fastest PR’s of the three sisters – including a 2:44 marathon – and she’s the only one of the three who has competed in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials for women.

Sharon says, “Seeing her impressive progress, I thought, ‘We’re identical triplets, maybe I can improve a lot, too.’ I knew I couldn’t be as fast as she was at that point in time, but I thought, because of her accomplishments, there was something I could aspire to that was well beyond what I was doing.

“Later I would gain tremendous inspiration from my sister, Shelley, in seeing how courageously she handled such great adversity in her life when she lost her husband, Stan, to cancer, and subsequently her oldest son, Ben, who was killed in a freak skiing accident at Lake Tahoe, even though he was a fine skier.  Facing the kind of adversity you do in a race, even one as demanding as a marathon, seemed quite minor compared to what she had to endure.”

Thus Sharon started competing in more races, ran a marathon each year – mostly New York and Boston. Then she started branching out, so to speak, running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., and the Seattle Marathon in the state where she and her sisters had gone to high school and graduated from college. She had her second daughter, Sophie, in ’91 and didn’t run a marathon that year.

Her best years, from a standpoint of the stopwatch, came in the ’94 to ’96 period, when she was 39, 40 and 41. She set all her personal bests during that period, and was even working with a track coach. She ran her best time in the marathon – 2:57:32 – in ’94 in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. That same year she also recorded her personal best in the half-marathon, 1:25:34.

In ’96, at age 41, she would set all her personal bests in the shorter distances. She ran the mile in 5:22 in the Masters 5th Avenue Mile in New York City – her friend Eileen Troy won the 40-44 age division, Sharon was second. That same year Sharon set her personal bests in the 5K (18:37) and the 10K (37:14).

She says, “When I was 41, I ran Boston in the spring – I believe that was the 100th anniversary of the race – and I ran 3:00:05. But that fall I didn’t run a marathon and just focused on these shorter races. That’s when I set all my personal bests. Because all of my racing before that had been in conjunction with training for the marathon. I believe that you sacrifice your shorter distance speed when you train for the marathon.”

Sharon’s running was going great, she was enjoying it, but she hit kind of an unusual wall in the marathon unlike the one you usually associate with “hitting the wall.”  She explains, “I had a three-year spell (’95 to ’97) when I couldn’t get under three hours.  I ran 3:00:19, then 3:00:05 (the Boston race), then 3:00:19 again. It was frustrating!”

Finally she broke through, running 2:59:19 in the 1999 Chicago Marathon at age 44. Then, when she was 47, she ran 2:57:47, which was only 15 seconds slower than her personal best set when she was only 39. She may have been getting older, but she wasn’t getting much slower. And talk about consistency! That, in itself, takes discipline and character.

Of course, speaking of discipline and character, not many people have had a general for a father as Sharon and her sisters did. Air Force General John Rouse had been a bomber pilot in the Pacific theater during World War II. Later, when he achieved the rank of general, he was the commander at various Air Force bases, and at one time he was even head of NORAD for the western sector of the United States. That was a huge responsibility because NORAD, which stands for Northern Air Defense, was the organization charged with the responsibility of protecting America from missile attack.

Surely, one would think, Sharon gets at least some of her drive and discipline from having a father of that stature and capability. Sharon answers without hesitation: “I would definitely agree. He always instilled in us that whatever you do, do it as best as you can. He didn’t push us, he taught by example. He had a great sense of right and wrong. That’s the thing that stands out about him when I think of him being a general. I think we all had a sense of doing the best that we could. If you’re going to make a commitment, make a commitment. 

“Both of our parents were very loving. They always encouraged us to do our best, but without pushing. We never felt any pressure. They were not pushy parents. There is a great difference between encouraging you to do the best that you can do and pushing you to be the best. You don’t need to be the best to do your best.   

“My sisters and I were all good students, we’ll all been happily married, we’ve all been successful in athletics. We owe that to our parents. They really instilled the right values in all of us.”

As she complimented her parents in these words, Sharon’s voice grew noticeably more excited and passionate. When this was brought to her attention, she responded simply, “It’s because I loved my parents.”

General Rouse passed away six years ago at age 90. His wife, Honor, the mother of the triplets, is now 94 and living in an assisted living home in San Jose, Calif. Originally from Australia, she met John Rouse during the war, they had a short courtship, then they got married and she came to America. In addition to the triplets, who were born in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 1, 1954, they had a son, John, who’s s four years older than the girls and is a professor of Theater Årts at the University of California, San Diego.

A true general’s daughter (like her sisters), Sharon Vos has been running competitively now since 1982. That’s a long time to be competing and even a longer time to stay relatively injury free. Sharon thinks that her family-first, running-comes-second approach has been her saving grace.

“It (running) wasn’t my total life and I think that saved me. I’ve been extremely lucky and I know it.”

Sharon’s approach to her day-to-day training also has a lot to do with it, one suspects. “I am not a sophisticated trainer,” she says. “I just basically run.  I more or less do what I did the year before – if it works. I look at what I did last year, see if it works and repeat it. I don’t spend the whole day thinking what I’m going to do in a workout; I don’t have time for that.

“I know if I was more serious about my training, if I did cross training, worked out in a gym, was more sophisticated in my running training, I might be faster. But that’s not the way I am. I don’t belong to a gym. I keep it simple – and simple works for me. I don’t get injured a lot. I’m afraid if I did too much, I might get injured.”

Sharon runs 45-50 miles per week.  “There may be a week or two when I’m above 50, but it’s not a lot,” she says.

Her typical weekly pattern these days is as follows: Monday – Short run or no run,  depending, among other things, on whether she ran a race on the weekend. Tuesday – Track workout where she may do 4 x 800, or 4 x 1 mile, etc. Wednesday – Generally a 10-mile run. Thursday – Maybe an 8-12 mile run at a moderate pace. Friday – Short run (4-6 miles) or a complete rest, depending on whether she’s running a race on the weekend. Saturday – 2 ½ miles if racing on Sunday, a medium distance run (6-8 miles) if not.  Sunday – Race or a long run (18-20 miles) or a shorter run (10-14 miles) which might include tempo sections.

Since Sharon ran that 2:57:47 at age 47 in 2003, she has continued to race steadily. “My times have slowed over the years, but I’ve been happy to remain competitive in my age group. I continue to race because a) I love it, and b) I have an incredible number of great friends because of it.

“It’s fun to be ranked the best senior New York road runner in my age group (which has happened four times in two different age groups in Sharon’s career). It’s fun to be the top female senior runner in Connecticut, which I’ve been every year since I’ve turned 50.  It’s fun to see how your times equate to the age-graded scoring. It’s also fun to see how your times compare to the year before – I like to see how close I can come to the time I ran last year.

“Running keeps me fit. It’s a great stress reliever. It’s something I’ve been able to show my daughters, that it’s okay to undertake and stick to something. And it’s been a great fun social environment – the racing scene.”

(Both of Sharon’s daughters played on their high school varsity tennis teams. Sophie also played field hockey in high school and also at Duke University on a club level.)

At the same time, Sharon is quick to point out that for all the passion she’s applied to her running and all that running has given her, she wouldn’t be doing it if it was adversely affecting her family in any way – remember her statement: “I live and breathe my family, running comes second”?

She sums it all up: “My husband is a runner, and he’s been so encouraging. He drives me to races, he cheers me on, he listens to me, hears me complain or be happy. Or he joins in and runs the races as well. (Yoost runs mainly for fitness now and does short races for fun. He’s run nine marathons).

“And this has been very important because if I was feeling that this was harming my family in some way, I would give it up (running), or I wouldn’t pursue it as seriously or intently, or devote the same amount of time to it.

“I would never put my running before my family. So it’s important to find that fit of training and racing without it being a detriment to your family.”

So there you have it: Sharon Vos, 2012 Ujena Fit Club Female Runner of the Year – an extraordinary ordinary woman, or an ordinary extraordinary woman. Take your pick.

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