AREA RUNNER, MOM BOUND FOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
CU alum Sara Vaughn bound for world championships in London
BOULDER» Capturing major life events within the limited constraints of Twitter posts isn’t easy, but a pair over the past week beautifully celebrated what Sara Vaughn is all about.
The first showed Vaughn moments after she leaped into the arms of her husband, Brent, following her thirdplace finish in the 1,500 meters Saturday at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships. It was a career highlight that put her on the U.S. team going to London for the biennial world championships in August, moving fellow runner Amy Hastings to post the photo with a tweet, “Years and years of hard work for this moment.” Then on Monday, Vaughn posted: “Guys, Cassidy just peed on the big girl potty and I just celebrated like it was Saturday afternoon.”
Cassidy, Vaughn’s youngest child, is 22 months old. She has two sisters, Kiki (10) and Calia (7). On the NBC telecast after Saturday’s race, Vaughn called out each by name, blew a kiss and said, “Love you! Taking you to London!” An American flag hung over her slender shoulders like a shawl.
Being a 31-year-old mother of three isn’t the only thing that makes Vaughn’s achievement extraordinary. Not only is she usually the only mother in her races, she also is the only one who has a job apart from running. A Boulder real estate agent, Vaughn competes against women who live off income from their shoe sponsors and focus full time on training.
And so, that Twitter photo of Sara and Brent said a lot more than 140 characters could ever convey.
“It was amazing,” Sara said Wednesday. “We both just cried. We didn’t have to say anything to each other. We
were just crying, sobbing.”
They met while running at the University of Colorado. She was from Nebraska. He was a threetime Colorado state champion for Smoky Hill High School.
“It is pretty hard to describe,” Brent said of their post-race reunion. “We’ve both been training for a very long time. Sara has stuck it out through very difficult times. We had moments where we didn’t really have enough money to pay for food. It’s like 10 years of hard work after college going into that moment.”
For a few years after college, they could live off Brent’s shoe contract. Each time she gave birth, she went a year and a half without really training. When his contract ran out, they had to make some hard decisions. Eventually he started a construction company in Aurora. She went into real estate, because it gave her a flexible schedule. She could always get in her morning workouts, because no customer wants to look at a house at 8:30 in the morning. She would get in her evening runs after the kids were in bed, even if it was 9:30 at night.
“If we didn’t have kids, we could live on $20,000 a year,” Sara said. “We could eat Ramen noodles and not feel bad about not having any savings. But toward the end of Brent’s contract — and I didn’t have a contract — there were times when we were like, ‘Do we pay for swimming lessons or go to a meet?’ At that point running is a selfish endeavor, and that’s too much. That’s not fair. We had Kiki when we were in college. We always had that stress, that extra demand on us. We never knew any different.”
Cassidy is too young to understand why Mom and Dad have been so happy this week, but her sisters are more aware something big happened.
“Kiki has been around the sport for a long time, so I think she does really get it,” Sara said. “She’s excited about the trip, but she’s also excited at the accomplishment. Calia is excited for the trip. She thinks she’s going to meet the Queen of England, and she is going to tour the fairy castle. She’s at such a magical age, where it’s all about fairy tales and princesses.”
Former Buffs star Jenny Simpson won Saturday’s race, and afterward Vaughn had a lot of questions about the London trip for her former CU teammate. Simpson made her fifth worlds team and is a twotime medalist, claiming gold in 2013. She also is a three-time Olympian who earned a bronze medal last summer in Rio.
In the post-race interviews on the NBC telecast Saturday, Simpson made sure viewers understood the magnitude of what Vaughn had achieved, grabbing Vaughn’s shoulder and saying, “This is a mother of three!”
“That’s part of the reason I was so overwhelmed with emotion after the race,” Vaughn said. “It’s an interesting mix of a personal selfish accomplishment and getting to share it. If it was just me and Brent, I don’t think it would be as significant as the fact that we have kids and get to share that with them.”
Vaughn intends to savor every moment of her first major international meet. The night of the women’s 1,500-meter semifinal at the London Olympic Stadium, Usain Bolt will race the last 100meter final of his career.
“It will be chaos,” Vaughn said. “Tickets are selling for a thousand pounds ($1,300) each. It will be amazing. I’m just really glad to be part of it.”