Thousands hit streets for Manitoba Marathon despite rainy start

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Over 10,000 runners were not to be dissuaded from hitting the streets for the 46th Manitoba Marathon on Sunday, even with overnight rains that threatened to throw a damper on the festivities.

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Despite an extreme weather warning due to overnight lightning and heavy rain which was lifted at 6:15 a.m., the rain stopped 15 minutes prior to the 7 a.m., scheduled start of the Full Marathon and first wave of the Half Marathon.

“We’ve been watching the weather all week and we dial in pretty tight with the forecast,” said Manitoba Marathon Executive Director Rachel Munday. “We have connections with the weather office so we knew that a storm was coming in last night. We expected it to be a little bit earlier so not at 3 (a.m.) but a little bit earlier in the morning but we were watching it and knew that it would likely pass before the race was scheduled to start. So we were just watching and hoping that we would be able to start on time.”

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Munday says there no danger that the event might be cancelled, just delayed until 30 minutes from the last lightning strike. In 2022, the Manitoba Marathon had to be cut short due to scorching temperatures.

“We definitely were watching it minute by minute for every update being able to communicate with runners.”

Andrew Taylor from the U.S., placed first in the 42-kilometer Manitoba Marathon, in an unofficial time of 2:32:51. Winnipeg’s Tyler Derksen was second at 2:42:06, followed by David Plotkin from the U.S. at 2:48:51. Winnipegger Dawn Neal won the women’s event for the second year in a row with a time of 2:53:51, edging out fellow Winnipegger Jessica Wylychenko at 2:55:36. Jaala van Dongen was the third women across the finish line at 3:15:28.

It was the largest turnout of runners in at least 10 years, Munday said. As well, the 1,050 runners who took part in the full marathon was the largest since 2001. Some 600 runners took part last year.

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Remarkably, the overnight downpour made for almost ideal marathon running conditions.

“If I’m going to be picky, it would have been nice to have it be a little less humid,” Munday said. “But with the amount of the rain that we had and a wee tiny bit of heat, it is a little bit humid. Other than that, it’s a great day for running.

“It’s amazing what kind of energy you can have when you have 10,000 runners and all of their families and friends.”

Meanwhile, Canadian record holder and soon-to-be three-time Olympian Cameron Levins of Black Creek, B.C., and two-time Olympian and Canadian Marathon record holder Natasha Wodak of Surrey, B.C., took the top titles at the Canadian Half Marathon Championships.

Levins, who also won in 2022 and 2023 with a Manitoba Half Marathon record time of 1:01:41 last year and is headed to Paris this summer to compete in the Paris Olympics, took first place in the men’s event in a time of 1:04:23, while Wodak finished first among the women at 1:12:56.

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Vancouver’s Thomas Nobbs was second among the men in a time of 1:06:15 while soon-to-be three-time Olympian and Canadian 10K champion Malindi Elmore was second in the women’s event at 1:13:09, just two minutes off her course record time of 1:11:06. 2020 Olympian Dayna Pidhoresky, a Tecumseh, Ont., native living in Vancouver, was fourth at 1:16:49, among 39 high-level athletes in the field for national championship.

The national finals was hosted by the Manitoba Marathon, the final time it was host the event. Manitoba Marathon was originally supposed to hold the national championship from 2018 to 2021, but there were two years where they didn’t host championships due to COVID-19.

“Our four years (as host) went quite a bit longer than it was intended to,” joked Munday. “But you know we like to share the love a little bit and not to say those athletes won’t come back and run us again or we won’t host another championship at some point.”

glen.dawkins@kleinmedia.ca

X: @SunGlenDawkins

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