Canadians crush cross-country
Canadians clean up at the NACAC cross-country championships, love is in the air and more.
Canadians crush the NACAC cross-country championships
The NACAC (North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association) cross-country championships were held this past weekend. The 10K race was held in Port Spain in Trinidad and Tobago.
The Canadian women’s team, consisting of Jessica O’Connell (2nd), Natasha Wodak (4th), Genevieve Lalonde (5th), Katelyn Ayer (9th), Claire Sumner (13th) and Natalia Hawthorn (16th), came second as team. The top four performances count towards the total team performance.
The United States came first in the team competition and Mexico took home bronze.
On the men’s side of the competition, U.S. was first, Canada second and Trinidad and Tobago finished third.
The Canadian men’s team consisted of Rory Linkletter (5th), Mike Tate (7th), Evan Esselink (9th), Benjamin Preisser (10th) and Ehab El-Sandali (12th).
Our Under 20 teams swept both the men’s and women’s podiums at the event.
Canadians took the top four spots in the women’s 6K race: Taryn O’Neil, Charlotte Wood, Makenna Fitzgerald and Anne Forsyth. On the men’s side, men grabbed the top three positions in the 8K race: Evan Burke, Nicolas Mota and Andrew Davies.
Women are on fire lately
I have comes across so many good interviews, profiles and podcasts with female athletes lately, crushing everything from short-distance track to multiple marathons in a single week. I’d normally put these links in the Strides section, but there are so many of them this week, I thought I’d give them extra love.
Canadian writer Alex Hutchinson looking at whether women are closing the gap at Boston in Outside magazine.
Jessica O’Connell (who was the top Canadian at the NACAC cross-country championships, as seen above) talked to Athletics Illustrated after setting the Canadian 3K indoor record at the Millrose Games last week.
O’Connell also talked to the Trackie podcast about her breakout performance.
iRun profiled 2:39 Canadian marathoner Sarah McKay, who got very good very fast and trains with Rachel Hannah.
In not-Canadian-but-still-badass lady coverage worth checking out:
I loved The Morning Shakeout’s conversation with ultra runner, neuroscientist and Strava podcast host Hillary Allen. Allen is a storyteller who has been through a lot — she is a very accomplished technical trailer runner who came back from falling 150 feet and nearly dying — and her joy for, uh, basically everything makes this episode worth listening to.
Lindsey Hein talked to American icon Shalane Flanagan on a recent episode of her podcast I’ll Have Another. She got a lot of interesting stuff out of Shalane in terms of balancing motherhood and being an elite athlete and also how the transition to coaching to going.
Hein also spoke to Kenyan-American Aliphine Tuliamak recently, who runs with NAZ Elite in Arizona. I didn’t know very much about Aliphine before this episode, but walked away from this conversation a new fan. She grew up in Kenya, became an American citizen after college, has struggled at the marathon distance, and was generally just a delight in this conversation.
Runner World’s profiled Philadelphia nurse and 2:30 marathoner Samantha Roecker. She works full-time as a nurse and has one of the fastest recent American women marathon times. NBD.
British runner Susannah Gill completely demolished the World Marathon Challenge record, running seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents in an average time of 3:28.
Track & Field posted this amazing Q+A with American Shelby Houlihan, who is quickly establishing herself as a future legend.
American ultra marathoner Camille Heron was in a car accident two weeks ago. She’s not only fine, she went on to win and set the women’s course record at the Tarawera 100-Mile Endurance Run in New Zealand. She ran an amazing 17:20:52 and was second overall.
Love on the run
Valentine’s Day was last week, so a few running media outlets covered the connection between love and running.
What’s it like to be an elite runner’s partner? That’s the question Canadian Running’s podcast The Shakeout explored in their special Valentine’s Day episode. They spoke to Melissa Bishop’s husband, Osi Nriagu, Natasha Wodak’s boyfriend, Alan Baggoo, Matt Hughes’s fiancée Maddie Davidson, Madeleine Kelly’s boyfriend Jeremy Rae and Will Roumanis, who dates Kate van Buskirk (who hosts The Shakeout, BTW).
Runner’s World had this cute story about blind runner Anthony Butler and his running-partner-turned-girlfriend Jessie Rix. The two met when Jessie decided to volunteer with Achilles, the international organization that pairs runners with disabilities with guides for races.
I first heard about Anthony in an old episode of Runner’s World now-defunct podcast Human Race (He was in episode 11, Bright Eyes). Human Race ended in 2017 but it remains one of the best running podcasts I have ever listened to.
If you’re interested in volunteering for Achilles Canada, they have all the information on their site.
A day in the life of decathlete Damian Warner
Canadian Running followed decathlete Damian Warner to see what a typical training day looked like. Damian lives and trains in London, Ont., where a his days usually consists of weights/physio session and a track/therapy session.
They posted the highlights on YouTube, and you can watch it below.
Canadian spring marathon schedule
You should probably be training by now for most of these races, but here’s a roundup of your Canadian marathon options, just in case!
April 28: Waterloo Marathon (Ont.)
May 5: Mississauga Marathon (Ont.)
May 5: Toronto Marathon (Ont.)
May 5: BMO Vancouver Marathon (B.C.)
May 12: Scotiabank Fredericton Marathon (N.B.)
May 19: Marathon SSQ de Longueuil (Que.)
May 19: Woody’s RV World Marathon in Red Deer (Alta.)
May 26: Scotiabank Calgary Marathon (Alta.)
May 26: Scotiabank Ottawa Marathon (Ont.)
May 26: Saskatchewan Marathon (Sask.)
June 9: Scotiabank Blue Nose Marathon (N.S.)
June 16: Manitoba Marathon (Man.)
June 16: Banff Marathon (Alta.)
A book I read and liked this week
I read a ton — running books and otherwise — and figured I might as well start highlighting them here. A book I read this week is Running Within by Jerry Lynch and Warren Scott. It’s a great overview of various mindful techniques you can use to up your running mental game: affirmations, meditation, visualization and the like. In the age of Headspace and Calm and self-care and mindfulness, there wasn’t anything truly mindblowing or revelatory in this book (which is from 1999, by the way, the photos in the book are AMAZINGLY vintage) but it does a great job of breaking the practices down in a useful, actionable way.
Strides: The links I read and liked this week
CBC Radio’s The Current talks to Russ Reinbolt, who made it 138K into the 480K Yukon Arctic Ultra, and Pat Cook-Rogers, who made it 480K into the 700K race. You can walk, run, ski or bike the race, but the temperature can be as low as -50 degrees Celsius… so good luck.
Donovan Bailey answers 20 questions for The Athletic (link is behind a paywall). It’s a good article — The Athletic is excellent and worth the $$. Bailey talks about basketball, possibly starting a charity 5K and whether he still thinks Michael Johnson is a chicken.
Canadian Trail and Mountain Running announced their 2019 championship events. The long distance championships will be held at The North Face Dirty Feet Kal Park 50K in Vernon, B.C. on May 5, 2019. The regular running championships will be held at the Quebec Mega Trail 10K race on June 30, 2019.
Japanese runner Mitsuhiro Ueyama is running 100 marathons in 100 days and tracking it all on Strava. He should be right around 80 by the time you read this newsletter. (via reddit)
I caved and ordered the book Inside a Marathon by American marathoner Scott Fauble and his coach Ben Rosario. The shipping to Canada was $35 US, more than the cost of the book itself. But I am super intrigued by the premise of the book — it’s a complete breakdown of Scott’s training heading into the 2018 New York City marathon, where he finished seventh and was the second American. I’ll read it and let you know if it’s worth the cost, as ordering from the website directly seems to be the only way to get it in Canada.
That’s it for this week!
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Thanks for reading and keep on running!