Things to eat, races to watch, a park to be excited for
What the pros eat is becoming a go-to topic for a lot of media outlets.
Hello!
If you’re been reading for a while, thank you! If you just signed up because of last week’s giant IAAF standards breakdown, welcome!
This week’s newsletter is a bit of a hodge podge of links and results and things.
More reactions to the new Olympic track & field standards
I broke down the new Olympic marathon qualifiers last week. It was a pretty popular topic and I’ve read a lot of good stuff about the new standards so I decided to round up some of the best stuff here.
At Fast Running this week, 2:14 Irish marathoner Stephen Scullion reacts to the news and tries to process his best way to get to the Olympics now that his Houston run is no longer the qualifier he thought it was.
Canadian Running had reaction from some Canadian athletes, including Kate Van Buskirk.
Athletics Illustrated also looks at the new standards and what they mean for Canadian athletes.
Runner’s World looks at how it will impact the U.S. Olympic Trials.
American track athlete Tianna T. Bartoletta wrote a great piece about the standards on her personal site.
Notable recent Canadian performances
Canadians Josh Cassidy and Tristan Smyth went 1 and 2 at the wheelchair race at the Los Angeles marathon on March 24. The local paper, the OC Register, had a nice story about Josh Cassidy, whose chair snapped during the race.
Malindi Elmore won the Shamrock Run 8K in Portland, Oregon, running 26:20.
Simon Rayner set a Canadian 55+ record in the 3,000 at the World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships. He ran 9:41.54, which was a second faster than the old record, which was set in 2016.
Toronto is getting a cool park dedicated to Terry Fox
BlogTO has all the details about a new park that will open on Toronto’s waterfront in the fall of 2020. The visualizations look super cool.
The park, according to Legacy Art Project Toronto, an organization that has been working hard to make the new green space a reality, will be a "new home for a permanent, citizen-funded art-park reflecting the values Fox exemplified: innovation, perseverance, courage, community engagement and hope."
You can donate to the crowd-funded project at Legacy Art Toronto.
Walking a marathon, when you can’t walk
Outside magazine had an amazing profile of Adam Gorlitsky, who was attempting to become the first American paraplegic to finish a marathon, using a robotic exoskeleton. His goal was the Los Angeles marathon on March 24. Spoiler: it didn’t go as planned (you can check out his Facebook page for all the details), but he’s not giving up any time soon and the profile is well worth a read.
Eat like the pros
It seems like everyone is obsessed with what pros eat lately. Canadian Running profiled the diets of Sage Watson and Gabriela Stafford this week and looked at the top trends in food for 2019.
Well + Good looked at what American steeplechaser Colleen Quigley eats over the course of the week.
iRun just dedicated an entire issue to food, putting Natasha Wodak on the cover.
The big takeaway from all this seems to be if you’re smart about what you eat and pay attention to how you feel, you’ll be fine. Oh, and diets are stupid.
The book to read this week
I’m picking Deena Kastor’s memoir Let Your Mind Run for this week. Why? Deena, the greatest female American marathoner ever, released this memoir last year. In it, she breaks down the big races of her career and the different mental approaches she took to each. It’s about how she learned resilience, patience, positivity and more. It’s timely now because Deena has had two bad marathons in a row: she DNFed Boston 2018 and at Tokyo 2019, she fell twice and was waaaaay off her goal time. She talked to Runner’s World about the experience and how she managed to stay positive through it all.
We could all approach running a little more like Deena, and reading her book is a good place to start. Proof? She bounced back to run the world’s fastest 8K masters’ time at the Shamrock Shuffle 8K in Chicago (it doesn’t qualify as a world record).
Upcoming races to watch
It’s almost spring, which means spring race season is here! I’ve been rounding up and sharing all the Canadian race starts to know about as I discover them, but here is a round-up of the major ones I know about so far:
Sometime in March or early April: The Barkley marathons, possibly the hardest ultramarathon around. Follow @keithdunn on Twitter to stay up-to-date on all things Barkley.
March 30: Canada is sending a team to the cross-country world championships. Evan Esselink and Luc Bruchet have announced they are injured and will not be competing. Replacement athletes have not yet been announced.
March 31: Around the Bay 30K is taking place in Hamilton, Ont.
April 6: The Spring Run-Off 5K and 8K in Toronto, which will feature Sarah Inglis, who set the Canadian all-comers record in the 5K earlier this month in BC, and Canadians Tristan Woofine, Dayna Pidhoresky and Sasha Gollish.
April 7: Melanie Myrand will tackle the Rotterdam marathon.
April 15: Krista DuChene will be running Boston.
April 28: Canadian men’s marathon record holder Cameron Levins will have his second attempt at 42.2 take place at the London marathon.
April 28: The Hamburg marathon will feature Canadians Reid Coolsaet and Trevor Hofbauer.
May 5: 2018 Boston Marathon champion, Japanese runner Yuki Kawauchi, is running his second marathon in three weeks when he toes the line at the BMO Vancouver marathon. He just ran a 1:08 half-marathon in Japan dressed as a ninja because he’s the best. (Ninja link via @noelthatcher)
Strides: links to read
The LuluLemon Toronto 10K will be open for registration on March 29. It’s a super fan race (also usually a super hot one). Registration for the LuluLemon Edmonton 10K is already open sold out in less than a day.
iRun talked to Jacqueline Gareau, who won the Boston marathon in 1980 (the year Rosie Ruiz cheated her way to the win and was eventually caught) and hasn’t slowed down since. She’s 60 years old now. She’s thrilled Rachel Cliff recently broke the Canadian marathon record, talks about what it takes to get better as a runner, and what her own running goals are now. Gareau really should be a bigger name in Canadian running, and this Q+A is great.
Erin Strout is one of the best writers in the running game lately. She was a guest on Mario Fraioli’s podcast The Morning Shakeout (one of my fave running podcasts.)
Women’s Running’s profile of American legend Jenny Simpson is very, very good. She talks about social media and how, at 32, she knows she’s in the twilight of her career, but she’s going to make it the best chapter yet.
The fight over whether athletes can wear hijabs to compete at the 2024 Olympics in Paris hast started. Ugh. American athlete Ibtihaj Muhammad, who won bronze in fencing while wearing is already speaking out on the issue.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and keep on running. If you have any news, tips, feedback or questions, feel free to email me at runthenorthnews@gmail.com.
Cheers!