Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2024 i Canadian Running

This 142-km race follows one of the most scenic stretches of highway in Canada, hugging the curves of the Skeena River and the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia’s coastal mountains and temperate rainforest. Every year, on the first Saturday in June, about 300 people meet to run the Skeena River Relay, a 10-stage race from Prince Rupert to Terrace, on Ts’msyen territory. The unofficial relay began in the early 1990s, when running clubs from Prince Rupert and Terrace thought it would be fun to spend a whole day racing each other along Highway 16. “There were no set stages or limits on numbers of runners,” says Ray Leonard, one of the relay’s founders. “In fact, there were no rules whatsoever. We ran the first formalized Skeena River Relay in…

PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR MARCO AROP 800M GOLD MEDAL 2023 WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS It was a track-and-field season to remember for Edmonton’s Marco Arop, whose standout performance—which we consider the performance of the year by a Canadian athlete—came in the 800m final at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. Arop was the first Canadian male athlete to win a world championship title in the event. “Every year, I write out my goals,” Arop told Canadian Running, “and this year, becoming a world champion was one of them.” Arop advanced handily out of the heats and semi-finals, and in the final, he executed the perfect race. Knowing he was the fastest man in the field, Arop positioned himself at the back of the pack for the first lap. At the…

In the age when casual runners have become increasingly fixated on personal bests, major marathon qualifiers and Strava segments, one run club is embracing an inverse approach. Slowpokes Run Club—founded by the quartet of Lucas Siemucha, Neil Pinault-Southam, Marco Valente and Peter Dowhaniuk—emerged in October 2022 as a means of providing Toronto runners with an accessible and healthy social outlet. “Our main objective was just to get people socializing together outside in a way that didn’t involve late nights or a drinking culture,” explains Dowhaniuk. “It was really about building a community that everyone would feel genuinely better for joining,” adds Valente, who runs Slowpokes’ Vancouver chapter. “The running group market also felt intimidating for us to enter as non-elite runners, and we thought others might feel the same. We…

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Whether you’re training for a race or just running to get (and stay) fit, how do you know how much and how often to train? Should you run every day, or is running now and then enough—or something in between? While the type of race you’re training for will dictate the type of training plan you should follow, there are some common mistakes you can avoid with a little knowledge. Too much or too little? It’s not realistic for most runners to be race-ready year-round; most runners’ training regimes have distinct peaks and valleys, and this is as it should be. Unless you’re a competitive runner targeting the indoor season (or the Boston Marathon, which takes place in April), and you’re accustomed to training six days a week, you’ll generally…

Runners  Selva Yogarajah, 29, is founder of the performance sock brand UndefineX and trains with Toronto’s Monarch Athletics Club. He’s also the founder and head coach of Northern Endurance, a Toronto-based competitive distance running team, and assistant cross country coach for the Sheridan Bruins. Carley Stastny, 29, is a content and social media manager who runs with Toronto’s BlackToe Run Club; in September she ran the Berlin Marathon (her second marathon). She’s a former contemporary dancer who started running for a new athletic challenge. Selva The North Face Winter Warm Pro Vest $160 Tracksmith Harrier Long Sleeve $120 Under Armour UA Qualifier Elite Cold Tights $110 Arc’teryx Rho Neck Gaiter Long $45 Tracksmith Varsity Runner’s Cap $54 Tracksmith Thaw Gloves $38 Under Armour HOVR Phantom 3 SE Storm $200 Carley…

University of British Columbia wins women’s and men’s titles at U Sports Cross Country Championships For the first time, the UBC Thunderbirds took home top honours in team results in both the women’s (38 points) and men’s (52 points) races at U Sports XC at London, Ont.’s Thames Valley Golf Club on Nov. 12. Katie Newlove of UBC won the individual women’s 8K title, while the men’s race was won by Laval University’s Philippe Morneau-Cartier (who went undefeated all season), with his teammate and recent Pan Am Games steeplechase champion, Jean-Simon Desgagnés, taking second and Andrew Davies of UBC finishing third. (Davies was on the gold-medal-winning men’s McMaster Marauders squad in 2022, transferring to UBC for a graduate program.) Laval finished second in the men’s team results, with 60 points;…

Carbohydrate stored in muscle and liver is an important fuel source for running, but these stores are limited and can easily become depleted during exercise. Sport nutrition advice is generally focused on preventing the depletion of these stores to improve endurance and delay the onset of fatigue; when runners are not aware of (or ignore) this advice and run in a depleted state, this is known as low carbohydrate availability. However, there may be times when low CHO availability is desirable. Muscle adaptations (such as increased mitochondria and blood supply), accumulate over a training cycle and contribute to improved fitness, and low carbohydrate availability enhances these specific adaptations. While performance may be compromised for that session, the enhanced adaptive response in muscle may lead to improved performance on race day.…

Sometimes trail running is as much a test of courage as a test of fitness. You may be well conditioned and have the legs of a pro soccer player, but can you traverse a narrow, precipitous path in a no-drop zone or teeter across an exposed ridge with just a chain or rope to help you? Such questions were preying on my mind as I set out to tackle B.C.’s Howe Sound Crest Trail (HSCT) on a fabulously sunny morning in September, pushing bear encounters and dehydration well down my list of potential worries. At 29 km, the HSCT might not be the longest trail on Vancouver’s North Shore, but it’s certainly one of the most nerve-wracking. Best done south-to-north, the sinuous path winds across B.C.’s North Shore Mountains, sticking…

Mere hours before the Tartan Ottawa International Marathon got underway last spring, race director Ian Fraser watched the sun rise over the Laurier Street bridge as runners, spectators and volunteers milled about. Music blasted in the background, and the energy was electric. Taking it all in, Fraser became unexpectedly emotional. “The tears were just streaming down my face,” he recalls. “I’ll never forget seeing that sunrise come up, and thinking, this is unbelievable … Everyone had come back.” Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, which takes place in late May, was among the first wave of Canadian road races to cancel its 2020 event as the world shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Fraser (who will be leaving Run Ottawa in 2024 to become CEO of Ottawa’s RA Centre)…

First responders often confront traumatic situations, and rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are high. Jonathan Blackwood’s story is a testament to the transformative power of running. Blackwood spent 10 years in the military and 15 years with the Lethbridge Police Service; as it has for many law enforcement officers, for Blackwood, running became an indispensable tool to process trauma associated with their job. Fifteen years into his career, Blackwood, 44, found himself battling PTSD after an accumulation of traumatic experiences—in particular, the recovery of the body of a 12-year-old who drowned in Lethbridge’s Old Man River. Blackwood has a son similar in age, and the weight of these experiences led him to take a stress leave from the police force to seek treatment. During this period of recovery, Blackwood…