With Club Cross-Country happening tomorrow in Bethlehem, we caught up with one of our Oiselle Volée team members and Mid-Atlantic sales rep, Vicki Huber-Rudawsky. Not only is she a fabulous member of the Oiselle family, she is an experienced runner with an impressive career. She is racing tomorrow with some of her long time running buds for their local running store and club, Delaware Sports Club.
I have not truly run a cross-country race since 1992, when I placed fourth at the World Cross Country Championships. I have always considered myself a track runner, and having played field hockey throughout high school, I fought the transition to cross. By my junior year at Villanova, I was in love with another side of running. My college career ended brilliantly with my Villanova team winning NCAA XC team title and I won the individual title.
I am 47 now and although my running gals and I run trails three times a week, we do not race cross country except for maybe one race a year at Thanksgiving. However, when my friend and running store owner, Mike, told me that Club XC Nationals were in Lehigh this year, he thought it would be "fun" to send a Masters Women's team.
When I mentioned this to my ladies, they said they would love to ride up with me and cheer me on. I responded that I needed three more women to make a team, but no one took the bait. As the weeks went by, I kept on them, talking about how fun it would be to race together and how there was no pressure on us to do anything but participate. In the end, we are running Club XC Nationals for Mike and the Delaware Sports Club because he has supported running in our community for over a decade. He truly does not care how we do but wants us to have fun and get muddy!
I am a Volée and the mid-Atlantic sales rep for Oiselle, but the club cross-country rules state that all team members have to wear the same shirt, or they will be disqualified. Knowing this, Mike ordered the Wazelle Long Sleeve tops (my fave!) for us all. In this way, I can represent two amazing dimensions of my running and my life - the Delaware Sports Club, where I started my running career over thirty years ago as a 14 year old and still run with some of the same people I did "back then"; and Oiselle, my employer of over a year now and who continues to amaze me with their dedication, style, quality and commitment to excellence - both the people and their product.
I, and my team, who are quickly approaching fifty, have no delusions of grandeur. The race will be tough, we will hurt in the end, but we will cross the finish line knowing that we took on a challenge that was scary and completely out of the norm for women of our age. In a strange way, that only runners can understand, it will be fun.
