St. Ignatius' Viehweg dancing all over her cross country opponents
For the average high school cross country runner there is no such thing as strategy during a race. It's simply, turn your brain off, put your head down, grit your teeth and battle through the pain to the finish line.
It's a sport lost on most athletic souls.
For an elite runner like St. Ignatius junior Ciara Viehweg, it's a different story altogether as she pays attention to the smallest details. Her mind is in constant motion, measuring her pace, and that of her competitors.
"When I'm running, I think all the time," she said. "What is my position? Should I go out fast? When should I surge?"
And most importantly, when to break them?
When she laced up her running shoes in her freshman year, Viehweg, now 16, almost instantly became San Francisco's next running sensation.
Considering the tough act she had to follow in San Francisco the past few years, her accomplishments are considerable.
Three years ago, Sacred Heart Cathedral's Shannon Rowbury dominated the city running scene. She won the state 800-meter title as a junior in 2001 and then went off to Duke University, where she set the school indoor mile record as a freshman, clocking a 4:42.45 at the ACC Championships.
Then, when Rowbury graduated, it was Michelle Gallagher's turn. Gallagher led Sacred Heart's cross country and track teams, and scorched her share of Northern California rivals, before heading off to Iona this fall. As an Iona freshman, she recently broke a school record in her first month of competition.
But now Viehweg, running across town at St. Ignatius, leads San Francisco's cross country pack. The bright, humble, highly dedicated young athlete is fashioning a record that should place her in the same company as past San Francisco champions.
After qualifying for the state championships in the 2-mile as a freshman, where she ran poorly by her standards, Viehweg blossomed as a sophomore. She placed second in the state Division III cross country championships, beating Gallagher. Then Viehweg placed fifth at State in the mile, running 4:56, less than five seconds off the winning time.
"Sometimes it is just God given talent," coach Elizabeth Gustorf said of Viehweg, who runs intervals with the boys when she needs a more difficult workout. "But then it's what you do with it that makes you what you are."
Viehweg got her first taste of competition when she was three years old and her mother introduced her to Irish dancing. She fell in love with it, but a decade later, after a third-place finish in the U.S. Nationals and numerous trips to the World Championships in Ireland, where her mother's family is from, running consumed her the way dancing once did.
Strangely enough, both Rowbury and Gallagher were involved in Irish dancing also.
"I had done it for 11 years and had gone as far as I could," Viehweg said. "It's painful. I had Achilles tendinitis. I dislocated my kneecap. "
"She still occasionally hops up and down and dances around the house," her father Craig joked.
The trips to Ireland spawned an interest in her running career by her extended family, including her distant cousin, Sean O'Sullivan.
According to Ciara's father, O'Sullivan -- Sean, James or Jim -- is the stuff of myth.
In 1962, a young runner from Limerick, Ireland, named James O'Sullivan, or Jim O'Sullivan, or Sean O'Sullivan, won eight national titles under two, maybe three different names. O'Sullivan apparently hoodwinked a country by changing his name repeatedly to get around a restriction that said an athlete could compete only in a certain number of national events.
Then, so goes the myth, someone stole his shoes before a meet in Belgium. He borrowed a pair -- or ran barefoot -- and won anyway.
While O'Sullivan has the trophies to prove his championships, according to Craig, it is Ciara's running career that will be of interest in the years to come to O'Sullivan and many other family members in Ireland.