Mississauga Marathon has growth surge in seventh year
Mon May 17, 5:01 AM By metro news services

Thousands of runners and walkers took part in the Mississauga Marathon yesterday as one of the fastest-growing races in the country saw an 11 per cent rise in participants.

There were 13,484 registered participants for the seventh annual event, which included a marathon, half-marathon, 10K and 10K student relay, 5K, 2K family fun run/walk, and a relay.

Daniel Njenga broke the tape with a time of 2:20:36.5 to win the mens marathon, while Allison Hobeika had a time of 3:08:46.5 to take the womens title.

Philip Rotich and Lucas McAneney crossed the finish line in second and third in the mens category, while Julie Cummings and Daniela Fiumara finished second and third for the women.

In addition to the record number of participants, this years event also had record numbers of volunteers, with more than 1,500 individuals donating their time and services.

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Rocks!! in Mississauga

The 7th annual Mississauga race weekend saw 6 members of the Sudbury Rocks!! Club take part in the half and marathon events. Suzanne Dionne and sister Lise Perdue along with Norm Trowell tackled the 1/2 marathon course while Sheila Yaw MacLean, Brent Walker and Vince Perdue ran the marathon.

Race day provided spectacular weather with sunny skies and fairly light winds. The temperature cooperated too with start temperatures at 7:30 am hovering around the 10 degree mark and slowly rising all morning to about 23 degrees by noon when the majority of the pack were finished. Aid stations every 2k plus lots of gel supplies in the latter stages of the marathon ensured all runners were well supported on the route. The course is excellent with lots of scenic neighbourhoods and lakefront parks to navigate. It's even downgrade for the first few kilometres as we headed towards the lake. With a setup like that personal goals may be in sight. If those aspiration were "I want to finish strong" then all were successful. Some of our group had loftier hopes. Brent Walker fell just short of his sub 3 hour marathon and Sheila Yaw-MacLean did not quite make her Boston qualifying time. -BUT- Everyone finished and everyone got a medal - the same medal. Dream goals are never easy. Just keep on trying.

There were a total of 11 participants from the Sudbury area in those 2 events. I didn't track the shorter runs from the previous day.

Results

 

What Doesn't Kill You      By Sheila Yaw MacLean What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and in my mind I always run a 5 minute kilometre. Two statements that I live by and had in my head when I approached Coach VP (Vince Perdue) last September with the grand idea of running a marathon in 2010 to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of my marathon career and more importantly to qualify for Boston again. 10 years ago 5 ladies (myself included) and Vince Perdue made a decision to train to qualify to run the Boston Marathon in 2001. For most of us, our qualifying marathon was our very first marathon we had ever run so with our 10 year anniversary coming up I thought it would be wonderful for the 6 of us to get together and run Boston again in 2011. Vince told me early on that it would be "tough going" and I needed to start training immediately because I had been on a running hiatus for the last 3 years and my chance of success was slim, but do-able if I put the work into it. No problem. I started running in September and thought I could get a little base mileage in and really start the training in January because after all you only need 18 weeks training to run a marathon. All marathon schedules are between16 to 18 weeks long...Right? So under the direction of VP and tonnes of help and encouragement from Stephanie Koett I started "training" in January to run the Mississauga Marathon in May. It was extremely "tough going" but thankfully we had a nice winter and those LSD runs on Saturday were not so bad...weather wise at least. I learned the hard way about what happens when you haven't put in mileage for a very long time and want to get to Boston. A 5 minute km turns into a really tough 6 minute km, your body takes a lot longer to recover, you seem to catch every bug going and you shouldn't miss a training run because life gets in the way. This doesn't happen if you're a regular runner. On the plus side I learned that if you close your eyes and listen to Stephanie while doing a pace run on the indoor track at Laurentian University it really does go down hill on the far side. The power of positive thinking.... So on Sunday, in my mind I now run a 5:41 minute km (the time I need to qualify for Boston), I put in all the training that I could (not should) both mentally and physically, did everything right pre-race...had very little wine the week before, started hydrating 4 days before and went to bed early for the entire week and crossed the half way mark at 1:58:30 with with a minute and a half in the bank and the finish line at 4:21ish at the Mississauga Marathon. What happened, what was missing? Coach VP would say the training......and he would be right. I'm not disappointed because you only get out what you put in with anything in life. I have become a little faster runner...a 6 minute km is now do-able for an extended amount of time and I had a great time training with Vince and Steph. Coach VP was wonderful during the entire run even though I'm sure he had to hold his tongue from saying a million times "I told you to start training hard in September" when I had to walk. Thanks very much Steph and Vince for sticking with me and putting up with my whining these past 18 weeks and a very special thanks to Jerry who was at the finish line holding me tight while I cried cause it was a really really darn "tough going". It's still all good. :) Sheila Yaw-MacLean