Rojas family looks to make Falmouth history
The Ric Rojas family trophy case back home in Colorado has long been missing one particular bauble: A Falmouth Road Race title.
On Sunday, some four decades after his initial bid, Rojas, the former Harvard distance great, will again try to get his hands on that precious hardware. Or, at least, he will attempt do so by gladly surrendering family bragging rights to 31-year-old daughter, Nell, who will compete in the women’s elite division in the 47th edition of the fabled Woods Hole to Falmouth Heights classic.
“The plan for Falmouth and the rest of the year is to work on leg speed,” Ric Rojas said. “We are trying to get well under 16 minutes for 5K sometime this year. If she can do that she’ll continue to be in the mix. I told her, ‘You’re playing with house money, just be as competitive as you can.’ The good thing is that this is 40 years later. She loves to run and she doesn’t mind me coaching her. If she is in the mix, we’ll be happy. I told her to just do the best that you can.”
The elder Rojas came out of Los Alamos High School where he won four New Mexico state championships (two in cross country and two in the mile), highlighted by a still-standing state 5A mile record 4:12.6 in the mile set at 5,000-foot altitude at New Mexico Stadium in Albuquerque.
Rojas spurned more than two dozen Division 1 scholarship offers to walk on at Harvard where he went on to become an All-Ivy League performer, winning the Greater Boston Championships as a harrier and running a school record 13:30 in the 1974 Penn Relays 3-mile. As a post-collegian, Rojas won the 1976 U.S. national championship in cross country, and virtually every major American road race, including San Francisco’s Bay-toBreakers (1975), Utica Boilermaker (1978), and Spokane’s Lilac Bloomsday (1979).
Yet, despite success on the roads, Falmouth proved more elusive. On the Cape, Rojas finished sixth (32:44) in 1979, third (32:34) in 1980 and 10th (33:13) in 1981, losing out to all-time greats Craig Virgin, New Zealand’s Rod Dixon and Alberto Salazar.
This year, Nell Rojas, a burgeoning U.S. distance star, has adroitly accepted the passing of the torch. In May, she won the Bolder Boulder 10K in 34:32, exactly 40 years after dad won the inaugural Boulder in 29:43. Nell, a three-time Big Sky steeplechase champion for Northern Arizona University, won the Grandma’s Marathon (Duluth, Minn.) in a sparkling 2:28.06 in late June. Her upcoming schedule includes a 10-miler in Minneapolis on Oct. 6, a 5K race in New York Nov. 2, and the Thanksgiving morning Manchester (Conn.) 5-Miler.
“(Falmouth) is a fast field. I’ve never really run in a stacked field like that before, so we’ll see,” Nell Rojas said. “The short stuff, I don’t know. … I (ran a personal best) in the half-marathon and marathon this year so I think the longer distances are better for me. But, I’m excited. The advice my dad gave me is that all the action takes place in the final mile.” Father always knows best. “She is a bit of late bloomer,” said Ric, 67, who founded RISE Athletics/Rojas Integrated Strength & Endurance, now directed by his daughter. “Running the marathon, in my opinion, a lot of women I think get too involved with the distance too soon. She is older. That’s to her benefit.”
Ric, easily recognized by a thick bushy, black mustache during his running days, may be a little less hirsute, but he hasn’t lost any of his fastball.
“We are excited to becoming back to New England. When I was in high school we ran in the desert, the dirt and the arroyos and then I came here to run iu college and New England had all these wooded, grassy areas. Wow!” he said with a laugh. “It’s different for me, though. When you are doing it, you think it’s never going to end. Now, Nell is taking over. It’s really a lot of fun.”