Member of the Month: Helma Clavin!

Recently voted as Bohemia Track Club's Most Improved Female Runner, Helma Clavin has proven herself to be both an excellent runner and a remarkable person. With her natural charm, she has the ability to put a smile on everyone she meets, and as a result is truly a joy to be around. She has had many interesting experiences and overcome numerous obstacles, and through shear determination has always come out a winner.

Helma's childhood was a difficult but strengthening period in her life. Born in Germany during the Second World War, Helma lost her father to the fighting when she was very young, a loss from which her mother never recovered. Living in West Berlin, Helma and her sister were raised under strict supervision. The family had little food and money, and the girls rarely wandered out into the depressed and corrupt city. It was time for a change.

After high school, her older sister immigrated to the United States and quickly found work at a hospital in Manhattan. Helma and her mother soon followed, and in 1960 settled into a German community in Maspeth, Queens. Quickly thrown into a frightening but exciting world, Helma started her new life with no friends and a poor command of the language. She attended Ridgewood High School, and after classes chose to explore her new country on foot or on bike, even once getting lost biking to Williamsburg in Brooklyn!. She also became acquainted with television and many unfamiliar foods, and finally began to put on some healthy weight.

After graduation, Helma attended an aviation school in Manhattan, later getting jobs with Lufthansa and Seacoast/Mohawk airlines as a bilingual stewardess on their international routes to Germany. Her home in the sky was not to last, however. She met an Irish-American police officer at (oddly enough) a German dance in Queens, married him shortly afterwards, and abandoned the life of travel to become a mom and housewife.

At home she brought up two wonderful sons, Tom and Howard (who coincidentally have both found careers in law enforcement). As the boys grew, the family moved to a more spacious home in Lake Ronkonkoma, and as the boys began to gain independence, Helma found time to work again. For a time she was a school bus driver, but later became a secretary for the Suffolk County Department of Public Works in Hauppauge- a position she has enjoyed now for twenty years. One of the few women in an office full of men, Helma is sure to be found playing the role of mother hen.

One day in 1990 Helma decided to give up a 22-year smoking habit, and in order to combat the nervousness left behind, she began to run. She started by running just once around her neighborhood block- and in a pair of old Keds sneakers no less (thankfully one of her sons bought her a new pair of running shoes). Slowly but surely, her stamina increased until she was running two, three, then four times around the block, eventually looping all the way around Lake Ronkonkoma! She now had a new addiction.

For her first race Helma signed up for, not-so-surprisingly, her hometown four-mile Run Around the Lake. She knew no one at the race, did not know whether to run fast or slow, and simply could not understand why people kept handing her water on the course. After crossing the finish line she crawled out of the chute- that is until the hand of race director Lance Hugelmeyer caught her and put her back in. He guided her to the end of the chute and pointed her to the post-race refreshments. Helma was surprised to find what seemed to be a private party, full of free food and drinks. Soon afterwards she began finding other regional races, and collecting awards at nearly all of them. So far she has earned approximately 130 medals and trophies.

Thinking big, Helma resolved to complete the 1993 New York Marathon. Knowing nothing about the training process, and having no one to consult or even run with, she found a Runner's World marathon training regimen and proceeded to follow it to the letter. When the guide said to run for three hours on Sunday, Helma wound up running to Sayville or Farmingville. When a hill workout was required, she repeatedly ran up and down the tallest one she could find. When the day came Helma finished the marathon as planned, and without walking, in a time of 5 hours and 14 minutes. Proudly displaying her hard-earned finisher's medal while on the train ride home, Helma was mistaken for Uta Pippig, the German-born women's marathon winner!

Helma didn't stop there. Not only has she gone on to do several more marathons, but she became friends with Greater Long Island Running Club President Mike Polansky and the rest of the club's ultramarathon enthusiasts. With their support, Helma completed a 50 kilometer run in Prospect Park, and has continued her ultra ways, recently completing a 50K in Carmel, New York. Taking advantage of her bicycling background, Helma also began competing in biathlons, a pursuit she enjoyed greatly. In the future she would like to do a triathlon, or at least run the Midnight Sun Marathon in Alaska.

About a year-and-a-half ago Helma felt the desire to improve her running. Acquainted with some excellent runners such as Bohemia Track Club President Estella Clasen and standout Mary Trotto, Helma decided to join our club. Assisted by many of BTC's great Master's women, and particularly by the Wednesday night speed workouts, Helma actually improved so much that she was voted Bohemia's Most Improved Female Runner of the Year for 1998!

These days she runs approximately 50 miles a week, often on the Greenbelt trail in Blydenburgh Park, at Wednesday hill workouts in Selden, and at Thursday night St. James General Store runs. She diligently keeps a log of her runs, and feels she needs to cut down on her one-race-a-week average. Helma has an unusual hobby of collecting scales- butcher scales, fish scales, bathroom scales- which she does, as she says, "to keep my life in balance". Her biggest hobby, however, is giving lots of attention to her children and grandchildren. So it is only appropriate in the month of Mother's Day to highlight a mom who really goes the distance. Congratulations to Helma Clavin, our latest Member of the Month.