Campbell River native Stephanie Trenholm returned to the Western Canada Games in Kamloops this year after missing out on last year’s competition due to injury.
“Stephanie had a great meet. I was there to watch her and give advice if needed,” said dad Dale Trenholm.
In the 1,500 metre, Trenholm finished her first lap in 69 seconds. Her team mate led the next lap and three quarters.
She realized with one lap to go the splits were too slow to get her personal best so she kicked it into another gear with one lap to go and finished the race with a 66 second last lap, a personal best time of 4:27.86, a new Western Canada Games record and Gold medal to top it off.
With this time she is now ranked 23 in Canada.
On Sunday Trenholm battled the 800 preliminaries heats.
With two heats, the top three from each heat and the next fastest times would make it to the final.
“Stephanie didn’t make it easy on us or her Coach from U-Vic, Brent Fougner,” Dale said.
“The first heat was pretty fast with the fourth place girl running a high 2:15. With Stephanie’s heat, four girls had the same idea of running as slow as they could. Steph got fourth in her heat with a low 2:16, putting her eighth… so we thought, but we weren’t quite sure. We both had a sigh of relief when we knew she made it.”
On Monday, Trenholm took on the 800 metre final.
“Her hamstring was tight after Sunday’s race, but was feeling good that day,” Dale said.
“Monday was the hottest day there also. A blistering 35 degrees by the time she raced at 2:45. It was a hot one.
But she was properly hydrated and doing all the right things to be ready.
Steph had a perfect 200 by settling into a good spot just behind the second runner.
This went on for 550m where the two runners that were in front and the one behind started their move.
Steph was a bit late in reacting to the charge and lost some valuable feet, but recovered nicely by pulling them in the next 150m.
With 20 metres to go she passed the third place girl from Saskatchewan finishing the race with a new personal best time of 2:09.35, just .17 of a second behind the second place girl from Alberta and half a second behind the first place girl from Manitoba.
All three girls beat the old Western Canada Games 800m time - it was an excellent race to watch.”