A day after becoming the youngest-ever female winner in the 40-year history of the Publix Gasparilla Distance Classic 5K race, Benito Middle School eighth-grader Ellie Pleune decided to run in the 8K as a training exercise, or a “shake-out” run.
Here’s what shook out: Ellie ended up surprising everyone and winning that race, too, capping a history-making weekend for the 13-year-old Arbor Greene resident.
Pleune broke away from the other 2,930 other runners in the 8K race before the halfway point, and cruised to the finish line in 31 minutes, 13 seconds (about 6:30 per mile), far ahead of 27-year-old Stefanie Shimansky of Winter Springs, who crossed more than a minute later in 32:33.
Ellie became the first runner in Gasparilla history to win both the 5K and 8K races, which were run Feb. 25 & 26 along Bayshore Blvd. in South Tampa.
“I was surprised to see her finish first,’’ said Ellie’s mother, Julie, who chuckles as she says didn’t even have her phone out ready to snap a picture. “I was under the impression she was using it as a training run.”
She wasn’t alone.
“I think it felt the same as (crossing the finish line in the 5K), but I was more surprised with myself,’’ Ellie says. “I didn’t think I would win both.”
Ellie did, however, think she had a good chance at the 5K title, considering that she finished ninth as a sixth-grader and second (by 19 seconds) last year. She trained for the race by putting in 25-30 miles a week, with additional exercises as part of a regimen she put together two months before the race.
Although she confesses to some nerves when she stepped to the starting line with 6,942 other participants for the start of the 5K, Ellie says she ran the exact race she wanted to, winning with a time of 18:14 (less than 6 minutes per mile), which was 31 seconds faster than last year, when she finished second to Kailand Cosgrove (who was sixth this year).
“At the start, I didn’t want to go out too fast,” Ellie says. “You have to save some energy so you don’t burn yourself out. There’s a point with about 1.5 miles left where you turn around, and I started to pick up the pace. With a mile left, I just give everything I have left.”
Ellie said she could hear former club teammate Lydia Friedman behind her, but she knew she wasn’t too close. Friedman finished 10 seconds later than Ellie in 18:24.
“It was probably better than I imagined it would be,’’ Ellie said of breaking the tape in the prestigious 5K race.
Following that first win, Ellie returned to New Tampa to watch older brother Casey, a freshman at Wharton High, compete in the Wharton Wildcat Invitational, where he finished 7th in the 3,200-meter race and 12th in the 1,600 meters.
Ellie, who runs for the Hillsborough Harriers club after starting with the Running Tigers club, gives Casey credit for helping to make her a better runner. When they train together, Ellie says it gives her a better and more competitive workout.
“He’s faster than me, so I have to really push to keep up with him,’’ Ellie says. “And he won the State championships (in middle school), so I look up to him because he won (that race).”
The middle school State Championship meet is in May, and Ellie says she has that at the top her list when it comes to races she wants to win, even ahead of Gasparilla. She was fourth in the fall at the middle school cross country championships.
Ellie began running in the fifth grade, unsure of where it would lead. She doesn’t even remember the first race she ever won, but does remember the first one she ran. At a meet at Armwood High in Seffner, Ellie mistakenly lined up with the wrong, and younger, age group. She didn’t win.
She has progressed the past three years and become one the top middle schoolers in Tampa Bay. She says expectations have grown — “Some people expect me to win every race” — but she says she welcomes the challenge.
“I would like to get a scholarship for running and not have to pay for college,’’ Ellie says. “It would be cool to run in college and be part of a team.”
First things first, however. Ellie will attend Wharton next fall, and plans to join the Wildcats’ highly-touted cross country and track programs.
And in May, she will race for that middle school State 5K title she wants more than any other.
We’ll keep you posted.
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