As I crossed the finish line the crowd countdown was down to two seconds, maybe 1. That actually didn’t give me a whole lot of security I’d got under for standard, the finishing clock is often started by hand which can be a fraction slower then official timing equipment. As everyone started congratulating me, I decided to wait until someone could tell me definitively it was under, before celebrating. It was a good 10-15 minutes before I found out. Nicole Clark from Athletics Canada was standing close and said “SportsStats (official timer of the race) has you at 2:11:28”, it didn’t sink in until she passed me her phone with the time on it! Then I let out WHOO HOO 🙂 One thing I have to clear up is that my time DOES NOT automatically get me on the team for London. What it does for now is, it meets Athletics Canada’s Olympic qualifying standard that one must reach in order to have a shot at going. Every county has three spots per event they can enter athletes in, in Athletics. That’s means Canada can send up to three marathoners so long as all have standard. Currently Reid and myself are the only two that have met this mark, others will trying for it in the coming months! They have until the Canadian Track&Field Championships in June of next year. So, if two other Canadians run faster then me before that, I would be bumped to 4th, and not go. Good news is that I too can run another marathon in that window if needed. Hopefully that clears up things for anyone who wasn’t sure what exactly 2:11:28 did for me. All the being said Sundays race was a HUGE step forward in my hopes of representing Canada again!!!!!
I’ve really enjoyed reading all the message of support this week from everyone! Can’t believe what a great job CBC did covering the race, both online and TV. Awesome that folks were able to watch from all over!! There’s a couple options for people to watch if they missed it, CBC has posted a three hour segment online and now has the one hour TV recap up too, recommend this one if you don’t have a lot of time.
Finally thanks Emily and Heidi for putting up with me the last few months, tired runners aren’t always the funnest people to be around. Also thanks Dave being a kick ass coach, and thanks to the rest of our amazing Speed River support team! There’s at least 10 folks I should name, I’ll do it in person how about that 🙂 Thanks guys!
NEWS STORIES GuelphMercury Marathoners’ display should make Guelph proud Speed River marathon runners under Olympic qualifying time CBC Canada qualifies 2 marathoners for London Olympics HometownWeekly, TheCasket Second to spare Watson talking to the TorontoStar Marathoners don’t want to see writing on this wall
