When Sasha Gollish crossed the finish line in a 1,500-metre race in Portland, Ore., last month, she knew she had a good chance of making the Canadian team at the Pan Am Games.

And qualify she did. 

She ran a very quick 4:07.47, her personal best at the time – only nine-one-hundredths of a second behind the fastest Canadian time, registered by Nicole Sifuentes at a different qualifying meet. A week later, Gollish improved her personal best to 4:07.08, but it was her performance in Portland that sealed the deal on the Pan Am Games.

“I knew based on the qualifying criteria that I had a good chance to qualify for  [the] Pan Ams,” she said.

On July 24, she hopes to be running in the semi-finals in the women’s 1,500-metre race at York University, and based on her performances to date, she has a good chance of going on to the finals the next day, perhaps even medalling.

The Pan Am Games record is held by American Mary Decker, who in 1979 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, finished the race in 4:05.70.

For Gollish, 34, the Pan Am Games will be the biggest stage in her athletics career so far. It’s the first time she’s been on the national team as an adult, and she’s pumped about it.

“I think I am continually improving, and I’m really excited to see just how fast I can run,” she told The CJN via email. “My improvements are from the dedication to the workouts and training my coaches set out for me. I trust my coaches implicitly with what I am trying to accomplish. They try to push my boundaries and I try as hard as I can to complete the workouts to the best of my abilities.

“Running in my home city, it’s a dream come true. And something that most athletes never get to do. And it was what I had been working toward all year.”

Not only will Gollish be running in front of family and friends, she’ll be competing at a venue that’s familiar to her, providing her with something of a home field advantage.

“All of my high school first-round qualifiers, the North York Secondary School Association meets, for OFSAA [the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations] were always held at York University,” she said on her website, sashagollish.com.

Gollish has been running competitively for quite some time. 

“I started running when I was in Grade 5 at Crestwood [School]. They had a cross-country team, and I thought it would be really fun to run through the mud and trees. I then started running with my mom. My mom was an avid runner, so we were able to have a mother-daughter activity together. We did the inaugural Breast Cancer run together, and from there I was hooked,” she said.

Two summers ago, she was part of the Canadian team at the Maccabiah Games in Israel. She competed in the Maccabi woman event, which combined competitions in cycling, swimming and running.

She won gold. To get to the winner’s podium, Gollish won the half marathon, and finished second in the cycling time trial and in the triathlon.

“I am motivated by the desire to be the best I can be, whatever I endeavour,”she stated. “I love going to practice and working really hard with my teammates. There is something satisfying about finishing a really hard workout and knowing you achieved what you set out to do.”

When she isn’t busy exercising her body, she’s busy challenging her brain.

She is currently in the PhD program in engineering education in the civil engineering department at the University of Toronto. 

“If you plan it right, you can work and train as an athlete,” she said. “It is a careful balance, one where you have to make choices to ensure you set yourself up for success… I love that I have the work-training balance.”

For Gollish, the Pan Am Games are an important milestone in her athletics career, but it’s not the ultimate goal.

Once the Games are over, she’ll sit down with her coaches and plan the next phase – preparing for the Olympics.

And if that isn’t enough to keep her busy, she’ll continue in her role as an athletic ambassador for Fast and Female, an agency that motivates girls to participate in sports and supports them, and in her other career as a rather prolific blogger.

Visit sashagollish.com and you’ll find regular updates about her training, her competitions and the adventures she’s experiencing as an elite athlete. She plans to add a section on healthy recipes to help athletes perform at their best.

But before she lets out her secret to a nutritious lifestyle, she’s got a major competition to get by, including she hopes, a date in the finals in the 1,500 metres.