Bruchet going out in top form
UBC runner races to four personal-bests, two records in final season
AHoward Tsumura couple of years ago, if you wanted to run a mile in Luc Bruchet’s shoes, you could have just asked him.
“Go ahead,” he would have said. “I’m not using them.”
Stress fractures in both shins kept appearing with ill-timed regularity, reducing a stride that he knew could be world class to nothing more than a frustrating walk.
But ask to borrow those shoes this Saturday, and the Surrey native will politely decline. Bruchet needs them now — because on the road to the final home meet of a most remarkable collegiate career, his penchant for heavy mileage and a recent gift of extended health have finally intersected.
On Saturday, Bruchet will lace up his spikes for the final time in blueand-gold, running in both the 800and 1,500-metres as his UBC Thunderbirds host the Simon Fraser Clan in their annual crosstown Achilles Cup Duals clash (4:30 p.m.-7 p.m.) at UBC’s Rashpal Dhillon Oval.
“It’s been a cumulative thing for me over the last two years,” admits Bruchet, who was forced to sit out the 2012 outdoor track season with a fractured shin, but came back in 2013 to win the NAIA national title at 1,500 metres; and this past fall, topped the entire field to claim the Canadian senior national crosscountry title at Jericho Beach.
“I wouldn’t say I have been lucky. I would say that I learned how to train and stay healthy and it all accumulated.
“In the fall (at cross-country nationals) it all came together. I was fit and I took that confidence going into the indoor season.”
And he’s kept the ball rolling right into the outdoor season.
The stops and starts of his first few seasons on the Point Grey campus have been replaced in 2013-14 by a stunning level of consistency at distances spanning the entire canon of middle distance.
Following his senior national crosscountry title, Bruchet proceeded to post personal-best times at four distances, highlighted indoors by a landmark performance in Seattle on Feb. 1 at the University of Washington Invitational.
That day, Bruchet ran the first subfour-minute indoor mile in UBC history, clocking a 3:57.71 en route to a first-place finish in a race that included some of the top milers in the U.S.
“That’s faster than Roger Bannister (3:58.80) ran at the Commonwealth Games,” says Marek Jedrzejek, head coach of UBC’s track and field, and cross-country programs, referencing the historic Miracle Mile staged in Vancouver in August, 1954.
“He is such a talented athlete, but it took him a while to develop through all of the injuries. Now he is showing that he has the potential to be a future guy who can make the Olympics and Commonwealth Games.”
Adds Bruchet: “It was cool. Going in, I wanted to break four (minutes). But when the gun goes off and the juices take over, you just want to win the race. Winning it and breaking four minutes, on the 60th anniversary (of Bannister’s run), was extremely cool.”
The sub-four mile is a highlight on its own, but Bruchet has done so much more.
Two weeks before that run, he opened the indoor season in Seattle at the Washington Indoor Preview, setting both meet and UBC records in the 3,000 metres, clocking in at 7:54.57, five seconds faster than the previous UBC best set 18 years ago.
Following that race, Bruchet flew to Boston to compete in the prestigious New Balance Indoor Grand Prix at the same distance, and finished at 7:56.33.
That roll has continued into the outdoor season. Bruchet ran a ninesecond personal best 13:45.04 in the 5,000 metres at the Stanford Invitational on April 5. On April 19 he returned to California and, at the Mt. SAC Relays, turned in the fastest outdoor time by a Canadian this season at 1,500 metres (3:42.02).
That’s four personal bests, two school records and a Canadian senior national cross-country title, all in a span of under five months. And all following an injury-riddled start to his UBC career.
Now the aspirations are to run professionally, and down the road, take a shot at making the Olympics.
“Through the first two to three years I’d get so disappointed with the injuries,” says Bruchet, who while injured in 2012 helped out as a statistician for the UBC men’s and women’s hockey teams.
“But I had such a great support group, and Marek never gave up on me. He believed in what he first saw in me at UBC. Everyone stood by me and that made me a better person.”