Michael Strub does not need any motivation to race against his siblings in Sunday's Tucson Marathon. But his children are trying to fire him up to beat two of his sisters.
"They say I have to go beat them," said Michael, from Los Angeles. "My kids all want me to beat Kammy and Amy, but that's not happening."
Five Strub children, separated by as many as 15 years in age, will gather from different corners of the country in what will become a mini family reunion.
And any time siblings gather, competition follows.
"They have something coming if they think they're gonna beat me," Kammy said.
The Strub clan — that is what they call themselves — consists of seven grown children and parents Michael Sr. and Theresa. Depending on age, the kids either grew up in El Paso or London making them about as different as, well, El Paso and London:
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● Michael, 41, is a Los Angeles lawyer
● Dan, 40, is in his fourth year of medical school at the University of Utah
● Kammy, 38, is a transportation planner in Phoenix
● Rosey, 30, is a freelance theater producer living in Brooklyn, N.Y.
● Amy, 26, works for a social entrepreneurial organization in Washington, D.C.
All have distinctly Type A personalities, cultivated by years of academic and athletic comparisons to each other.
"When you come from a big family, you either have to assert yourself or be trampled," Rosey said. "I don't think it's competitiveness against each other. But growing up with each other has shaped each other's personality."
Predictably, the notion of running came as a challenge from Dan, who ran his first marathon in 1993. He chose Tucson because he remembered it being a "fast" race when he participated in 1995. Plus, the timing was right — and it gave his family an excuse to meet for the holidays.
Even the kids' parents will fly from Virginia to Kammy's house in Phoenix and drive down to watch.
"They said, 'If you sign up for it, we'll sign up for it,'" he said. "So I sent them an e-mail saying I had just signed up."
Amy was in.
"It was my brother who had first described to me what it felt like to run a marathon," she said. "You were in it, and you felt just connected with everything. On this one day, everyone's cheering for you."
Amy just returned from three years in Morocco, where she worked for the Peace Corps. There, she would run through the hills with her head covered with a bandanna. Children would, spontaneously, run with her down the street.
Even livestock looked confused.
"When camels are standing up looking at you and going, 'What the hell are you doing,' that's pretty cool," she said.
Amy coaxed Michael into running his first race — the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon — in June. Amy ran with him for a while, but then moved ahead.
Michael, 41, definitely doesn't want to look like the old man of the bunch.
"It's certainly going to be driving me past Mile 20," he said of his age.
Rosey received a CD from Dan a few months ago with songs to listen to while running. The disc read: "Tucson Marathon? Dec. 10?"
She agreed but is a bit nervous — she has never run a race before. Well, technically, she participated in a one-mile race in the Virgin Islands when she was 16. But that's it.
Rosey decided to run by herself in the half-marathon Sunday.
"Hopefully I'll be done a few hours before they are, and I can go watch at the finish line with my parents," she said.
The person she will likely see finish first is Kammy, who has not run a marathon in 10 years, when she finished the Austin, Texas, race in about 4 hours 20 minutes.
Kammy has, however, done triathlons, and that makes her the favorite among the five.
Kammy, a mother of two boys from Phoenix, said she plans on catching up with her siblings during the race — "For four hours, Mike will have nothing to do but listen to me," she laughed — but you can tell she wants to win.
"There's gonna be some pride in whoever runs it the fastest," she said. "I can't say it's going to be anyone but myself."
The point of Sunday's race is not to finish with the best time, or to have family bragging rights — though it helps.
It's about using sibling rivalry as motivation for each to do their individual best.
"Growing up, our parents told us to challenge ourselves," Kammy said. "That led us to challenge each other as well.
"We're pretty different. Everybody really strives hard to meet their life goals. But constantly challenging yourself is a thread that runs through everybody."
IF YOU GO
• Where/when: Starting time for marathon and marathon relay: 7:30 a.m. at Cody Loop Road in Oracle, two miles south of Mount Lemmon Highway. Starting time for Bobbi Olson Half-Marathon: 7 a.m. at the junction of Oracle Road and Arizona 77
• Registration: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Tucson Marathon Expo at the Hilton El Conquistador, 10000 North Oracle Road
• Cost: $90 for the marathon; $60 for the half-marathon; $175 per team for the four-runner relay
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