Post Falls Lass Keeps Running, Reaches Ireland

At 10, Nicolle Clutter hit the road.

She wanted the wind at her back and no obstacles in her path. This kid was going places - fast - and her parents didn’t mind. In fact, they encouraged her.

“They got me into road races in the fourth grade,” Nicolle says. “I liked it.”

She was a born runner, in the best sense of the word. Small-boned like both her parents, Nicolle loped happily beside her marathoner dad without a thought about the work involved in running.

No one guessed then that running was her ticket to see the world.

“I just wanted to run in high school,” she says.

She has. She runs hard and fast, the same way she works out. And her year-round diligence has paid off.

While other 15-year-olds basked in the sun at the beach last summer, Nicolle wore down her Nikes at a running camp in Yakima.

Her participation in that camp netted her an invitation to travel to Ireland this winter for two races against young Irish runners.

Nicolle was the only athlete from Idaho to join the group of 22 kids and four adults.

She hadn’t planned to take the $2,000 trip. Her grandfather changed her mind. He watched her run for Post Falls High last fall in a 5K race in Yakima.

He was so impressed, he offered to pay her fare to Ireland.

Nicolle, still slightly built as a sophomore, had a good season. She won one race, placed high in every other and snagged second at the regional competition. When the All North Idaho Cross Country Team was announced, her name was on the list.

A few weeks later, she was heading to Ireland, with a stop first in London.

Sightseeing was top priority, but the group punctuated tours of cathedrals and castles with runs through Hyde Park.

Eight days in Ireland introduced Nicolle to lush countryside, friendly people whose English she couldn’t quite understand and pig intestines.

“It was so gross,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “They called it black pudding and didn’t tell us what it was until later. I didn’t eat mine.”

Between kissing the Blarney Stone and trekking through Bunratty Castle, Nicolle wedged in her first international competitions.

One race took runners around a monastery in southern Ireland’s Cork. The ground was mossy and rain-slicked. She was a bit intimidated by an Irish girl who’d competed in the European Nationals.

Nicolle ran hard but carefully. Some runners slid and fell. She pounded after the Irish girl, finishing 30 feet behind her and in second place.

Another race took runners through a muddy Limerick field. Some ran without shoes, which Nicolle considered but decided against. She finished second again.

After each race, the American kids joined the Irish runners for dinner and games.

“I liked seeing how they lived compared to us,” Nicolle says. “There were a lot of similarities and a lot of differences, like what they wore and their accents.”

None of her achievements swells her head. Running is a private pur suit with her, a source of self-improvement and a clue to what she has inside.

“It’s made me disciplined. I watch what I eat, how much I sleep. This year I cut out pop and chocolate,” she says, with earnest appreciation for the sport that inspires such behavior in her. “After a tough workout, I feel really good inside.”

If her trip to Ireland taught her anything, it’s that running will take her places if she works at it. That’s something she’s more than willing to do.

“I want to run in college,” she says. “I want to see how much I have in me.”