By Bill Pennington
She has more drive than Paul Bunyan’s axe, endurance that leaves the Energizer Bunny wheezing, and more running accomplishments than Rapunzel has combs.
Amelia Island Runner Rosa Haslip not only likes running, she’s also quite good at it.
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| Rosa and Gary Haslip ran the Vestcor Bridges 5K. |
She is without question the top female master’s runner on the island, and one of the top five, if not top three, in Northeast Florida. Her trophy case features more statues and medallions than King Tut’s tomb. And running has given her and her family the opportunity to see the country.
Not bad for a little girl from Cuba who ran the playgrounds of New Jersey without speaking or understanding a word of English.
“I can honestly say that I love running. I am addicted to it,” Rosa says. “I’ve been running longer than anything else that I’ve done in my life. Running makes me happy and it keeps me healthy and fit.”
It also keeps her perched on the medal stand.
Just a few of her recent local accomplishments include:
* First Female Masters Finisher in the 2006 5K Turtle Trot.
* First Female overall in the 2005 5K Turtle Trot.
* First Female overall in 2005 5K Reindeer Run.
* First Female overall in 2005 5K Dignity-U-Wear.
* First Age Group winner 2005 & 2006 5K Summer in the City.
* No. 5 Age Group Finisher in 2006 Gate River Run.
If you’re wondering why include a fifth place finish among the list of accomplishments, you must not be familiar with the River Run. It draws more than 10,000 competitors to Jacksonville each March. Rosa finished fifth of 590 women in the 40-45 age group, which is only the top 0.85%.
Can you say hip, hip hooray!
Even more impressive was her overall standing in the race. Rosa was in the top 2% (to be precise, 1.6%) of all females -- 69th of 4,148 -- and in the top 5% of all those who completed the 9.3 miles.
Yeah, she’s one of us, and she’s good.
The 2006 River Run was her first 15K in seven years… so much for the importance of course familiarization. Nagging back and hip injuries, plus parental obligations, had left her unable to train properly for longer events in the early 2000s. Prior to the River Run, she had been getting her competitive fix by concentrating on 5K races.
“I was a little surprised by my River Run finish,” she said. “I really hadn’t planned on running it. I hadn’t run the Gate since 1999. Around the first of the year I had started running some with (AIR member) Pat Hood just to give her a training partner. I figured some of the long training runs would help my 5K times. I was enjoying the training, but I still kept telling myself I wasn’t going to do (the River Run). “Pat would tell me that I had to do it, but I kept saying no.
Then, around the first part of February I was feeling really good and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do it.”’
And boy did she ever do it.
On a March morning so unusually warm and humid that some elite runners dropped out early, Rosa cruised to an impressive 67:53, averaging 7:18 per mile. An excellent time for any gender, or age. But for the 42-year-old Amelia Island champion, it was just another star in her galaxy.
Top of her game
In the ‘90s, Ms. Haslip had expanded her running resume with an impressive list of finishes in distance events.
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| Rosa, Gary and daughter Melanie after the July 4 5K in Jacksonville. |
Also impressive was a 1995 performance in Miami, where Rosa lit up South Florida with a 3-hour, 16-minute Miami Marathon. Her exceptional performance earned her second overall female. In her 30s, Rosa had become a force in Florida distance running.
“At that time in my life, I was pretty competitive,” she smiled, recalling her mid-‘90s success. “When I ran a race, I always wanted to finish with a good time. I always had a time in mind. I trained hard, and ran hard to get it. I was fortunate that I had a supportive family. I couldn’t have done it without them.
Family understands
“You know, you go out for a two-hour training run, then you come back and you want to lie down on the sofa for two hours before you’re ready to do anything. You need that support to allow you to train that hard.”
Fortunately, Rosa’s family understands the sacrifices of competing at a high level. Her husband Gary is a former high school basketball player and current Amelia Island Runner. And her daughters Melanie and Megan are stars in their own right.
Melanie, the oldest, is a scholarship swimmer and captain of the Florida International University women’s swim team. Megan also has the fire of Mom, but stokes it through academic achievements. A high school senior, Megan is a member of the National Honor Society and president of the Little Women’s Club.
Like many doting parents, Rosa and Gary turned their energies to helping their teenagers achieve their athletic and academic aspirations, thus limiting Rosa’s running in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
“For a few years there, we were driving Melanie to swim meets nearly every weekend… supporting her like we should have. That, combined with some of my own aches and pains, kept my training down from my real competitive years,” she said.
The super competitive years were 1983-1997. Those were Rosa’s days as a collegiate runner and finisher of 20 marathons. Yes, this former college sprinter has finished, and competed consistently as a sub-four-hour finisher in nearly two-dozen marathons, including the Boston Marathon in 1994.
When Boston is discussed for this interview, Rosa leans forward, her eyes get wide, and she radiates excitement.
Boston is a distance runner’s Sistine Chapel. It’s the ultimate challenge, and the ultimate reward.
“There is nothing like it. You stand at the start line and there are literally thousands of people lined up for 26.2 miles cheering you on. I still remember it as my favorite experience in running. For the first 10-13 miles, you keep thinking to yourself, ‘I’m doing the Boston Marathon.’ It’s so exciting, it’s hard to believe,” Rosa beams. “The whole day is nothing I’ll ever forget.” She cherished her morning in Boston to the tune of a 3-hour, 24-minute performance.
It was an experience, a day, and a series of moments through the streets of Boston that Rosa would likely have never enjoyed if not for the resolve of her parents. Persistence, sacrifice and determination are all qualities of great athletes. For Rosa, the qualities were obviously passed down from her courageous family.
From sea to shining sea
Boston, the home of Paul Revere, Minutemen, and the Boston Tea Party, is a long way from communist Havana, Cuba. That’s where Rosa was born in 1963.
“My dad didn’t want us to grow up in the Castro regime,” she said, “so, he got us out.”
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| Rosa with daughters Megan, left, and Melanie. |
Although Rosa’s account of the move is sketchy because her father guarded his children from the political tension, she explained that he went to work at a Cuban work camp in 1968. The work camp was a method for obtaining a visa to leave the country. Through his hard work at the camp, Rosa’s dad was granted a visa by the Cuban government, and he moved his family to Mexico City.
“You couldn’t get right into the United States,” she explained. “We had to wait six months first. You had to be sponsored by a U.S. citizen at that time to enter the country. Our grandparents lived in New Jersey, so they sponsored us, and we moved to New Jersey. When we got there, I remember sitting in my kindergarten class, and I didn’t understand a word of English.”
The family lived in New Jersey for seven years, with Rosa’s father working in Manhattan before being offered a position in Salt Lake City, Utah. They moved from the industrial northeast to the mountains of the far west.
“I hadn’t grown up in this country. I had no idea about Utah,” Rosa said. But she fell in love with the mountains, gorgeous skylines and clean mountain air. “It was a great place to run. The hills and cool weather were excellent for training,” she said.
She became a champion runner at her Salt Lake City high school, starring as a 200- and 400-meter track athlete, and finished third in the state 400-meter her senior year. That was good enough to attract collegiate attention, and Rosa accepted a track scholarship to the University of Utah. She ran successfully at Utah before a foot injury sidelined her for her last two years of college.
The foot injury was actually a precursor to her adult running career. Rosa wanted to keep running, but sprints were now out of the question.
“I always hated long-distance running. I was a sprinter,” she said. “Give me a 200 or 400 run, that’s about all I wanted to do. But I lost some speed with the injury, so I started running long distances. It was better than not running at all.”
Rosa, Gary and Amelia
An ironic romantic twist of fate was also about to take Rosa a long distance away from her Utah home.
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| Rosa races to a master's win in the 2006 Turtle Trot 5K. |
While Rosa had been starring in high school track, a young Gary Haslip was playing varsity basketball at the same Salt Lake City high school. The pair probably passed each other in the hall every day, but never bothered with a second look, until a common acquaintance set them up on a blind date, some 10 years after they had graduated.
“It was supposed to be dinner only,” Rosa smiles. “I wasn’t looking for a relationship, and I was told that Gary wasn’t looking either. They (friends) told me that he was athletic, liked to exercise and was fit. So I figured we at least had that in common. It was just supposed to be a dinner date, nothing else.”
And Woodstock was just supposed to be another small music festival; Elvis was just another country boy from Mississippi; and Bill Gates was just another college dropout with crazy ideas.
Dinner turned into a second date, a second date became serious dating, and then romance. Gary and Rosa’s relationship bloomed, they got married, and Gary presented his new wife with an opportunity to move to Northeast Florida, where he would accept an engineering position at Kings Bay. The pair moved from Salt Lake City to Fernandina Beach in 1994.
It was a difficult transition.
“My parents had moved to Deerfield Beach some years before, so I was happy I was going to be closer to them. I wasn’t exactly sure where Fernandina was – I just thought Florida was Florida and we would be close to my parents in South Florida. All I knew about Florida was Miami and Fort Lauderdale,” she said.
What she discovered was a small beach community five hours from Deerfield Beach.
“I was used to mountains, hills and the mall just down the road. I got here and all I saw was flat ground, no hills, no mountains, and no real shopping. I wondered where the mall was, and my parents were still a long way away. I cried a lot. I really didn’t like it,” she lamented.
But, like most who experience Amelia’s lifestyle, she quickly adapted. Now she enjoys a position with the Social Services Department for Episcopal Children’s Services and adores the island.
“Let me just put it this way, we had a chance to move back to Utah a few years ago, and we didn’t take it. I love it here. We live where most people come to vacation, or retire. I feel real fortunate to live near the beach. I just went kayaking the other day and I was thinking, ‘This is great that I get to live here,’’’ she said.
As one of the island’s top runners and competitors, she also relishes her relationship with the Amelia Island Runners club.
“There is nothing like a good run with the group. There we all are, sweaty and nasty and nobody cares,” she said. “We can talk about anything related to running, because we understand each other. I’ve met some of my best friends through running. I met Pat and Craig Hood through running. I just wish we could get a few more people to come out for our weekly runs (Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6 p.m.). It’s fun and motivating – great to socialize.”
And even though Rosa enjoys winning, running is much more of a Zen experience than times and trophies.
“I get the greatest ideas when I’m running. I feel like I should run with a note pad. By the time I get home to write down my thoughts, they’re gone,” she said. “I think it’s a terrific sport no matter your pace, and a good way to stay in shape for your whole life.”
Rosa, you don’t need to write this down, you live it… whether it’s exercise, or anything of lasting value, discipline and dedication bring you a lifetime of results.