September 8, 2019
I ended up running my second marathon of 2019 in Moncton/Riverview, N.B., although it was not the Moncton marathon I had originally planned to take part in.
When I mapped out my goals for the year, I expected I would finish off the fall racing season by running the full marathon at Legs for Literacy. The late-October race was New Brunswick’s largest running event, and the final marathon of the year in the Maritimes.
It soon became clear in the spring, however, that I would have to make different plans. Reports from the rumour mill were that Legs might be scaled down for 2019, and would not include a full or half marathon. Then the official announcement came in April that it wouldn’t be happening at all.
By that time, I was deep into training for the Johnny Miles marathon in June, so I wasn’t giving a lot of thought to my fall plans, but I knew I wanted to fit in a second marathon somewhere. I had already run P.E.I. and Valley Harvest in the previous two years, and my preference was to try something new.
After considering looking outside the region to perhaps a Quebec or Ontario race, I talked it over with coach Greg Wieczoeek and decided I would set my sights on the Cape Breton Fiddlers Marathon in Sydney. As it takes place in early September, that meant I would have a fairly short turnaround for training after my spring marathon. I have always tried to give myself a full 16-18 week training period, but this time I would only have 11 weeks.
I was confident, however, that I was starting out with a strong fitness base after the Johnny Miles. Sore knees had made training for that race very tough, but I was happy with how it went, and raring to get back at it to train for Fiddlers.
But then I started hearing rumblings out of Moncton about another event in the works. A small group of runners there decided they were not just going to stand by and let their city go without a marathon event in 2019, and they decided to go ahead and put one on themselves.
The Resurgo Marathon was quickly born out of these discussions, and the date was set for Sept. 8, the same date as the Fiddlers race. It had me rethinking my plans again.
On the one hand, I had a long drive and a night away if I wanted to run Fiddlers. Moncton, on the other hand was only a 90-minute drive, meaning I could sleep the night before in my own bed and travel there from home. Plus I was inspired by the story of Resurgo and the people behind it – runners putting on a no-frills run for runners.
I decided Fiddlers could wait for another year, and I set my sights back on Moncton.
Training for this race immediately felt better than my spring training for Johnny Miles. As I had hoped, warmer weather had finally brought relief to my sore knees, and I was feeling quicker and stronger in all of my runs.
I also rededicated myself to core training – push-ups every day, and a circuit of push-ups, crunches, squats, planks, and burpees 3-4 days per week. I still wasn’t eating as well as I should have been, but I was in a pretty good place.
A month out from race day I drove to Saint John and raced the half marathon at Marathon by the Sea. I had run that race two years prior when I was dealing with shingles and not feeling my best, and I wanted another crack at it. I planned poorly, however. For one thing, I couldn’t find a any place open to eat breakfast in downtown Saint John on race morning, so had to run the half marathon on a completely empty stomach. Second, I forgot how tough that course was. When the dust cleared, I finished with pretty much the same time I had in 2017 – around 1:39. I decided to chalk it up as a lesson learned, forget about it, and return my focus to Moncton.
As race day grew closer, so did September’s hurricane season. Hurricane Dorian had ravaged the Bahamas and southern U.S. (except Alabama :)) and was heading straight for Nova Scotia. The Fiddlers marathon was canceled. Would Moncton escape the worst of the storm?
Dorian arrived the day before the race, and my part of northern N.S. got hit with some high winds and heavy rainfall. Power went out at around 6 p.m. and I went to bed early, laying in the dark and listening to the rain pounding down on the house. Was I really going to get up early and run a marathon in the morning?
The good news was that the race was still on, and that the organizers had pushed the start time back to 9 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., with hopes that it would give enough time for the worst of the weather to move on. It also gave more time for out-of-towners like myself to get there safely, and I very much appreciated it.
The trip to Moncton that morning was pretty bizarre. At two different spots I had to take detours because the road was impassable due to flooding. I had left a half hour early in anticipation of this. The wind was still blowing really hard and a lot of trees were down. In one place, downed power lines were arcing into some trees and catching them on fire.
Power was off pretty much all over, and it was off in Riverview when I arrived there at around 8:30. It was still crazy windy along the Petitcodiac River, but all of the organizers and the other runners were smiling and ready to go. So was I.
The day was a bit cool for early September, around 8 or 9 degrees, but with the strong wind making it feel more like 3 or 4. Dorian really marked the end of summer and the start of fall for us.
I decided to wear my MVR singlet but with a long-sleeve Cabot Trail Relay shirt over top, thinking I would get rid of the top layer after the first few kilometres. But I never found myself getting hot, and ended up keeping the long sleeves on for the entire race.
As advertised, the course was quite flat, all on the riverfront trail system, mostly on the Riverview side but with a small piece on the Moncton side too. It was about 60 per cent hard-packed gravel and 40 per cent asphalt, three loops in all.
We started off with the wind at our backs for the first 5K, then alternated between headwind, tailwind and crosswind. I decided on a strategy of ignoring the wind as much as I could. I enjoyed when it was at my back, but I focused on keeping a steady pace and trying not to let it affect me.
I felt good and strong, restraining myself for the first 4K or so, trying for a pace of about 5:00 per km like I did at Johnny Miles, but I ended up at around a 4:50 pace for this section.
There were 41 of us running the full marathon, and 101 more running a half marathon race.
One of the fun parts of the experience was seeing all of the Moncton runners who had been down in my area to run the Capes 100 trail race a few weeks before. Many of them were working as volunteers at this race, some of them comically dressed as wookiees at one of the water stops along the trail. Another, Jean-Sebastien Levesque, was the lead cyclist, and he always made sure to shout some encouragement to me every time we met.
The multi-loop course meant that runners got to meet each other several times, and I always enjoy that.
Dan Backa jumped out to an early lead in the marathon and held it the whole way, running a strong race. Coincidentally, he had also won the previous race I had been in – the half at Marathon by the Sea.
The colder weather did bring back some of the soreness in my knees, and I even experienced some cramping in my left leg at around the 15K mark, but other than that I had no problems. The cramping was uncommon for me, and I wondered if it was because I decided not to wear my usual compression socks for this race.
I started out ahead of Jonathan Legault, but at each turnaround I noticed him gaining on me and he looked strong. I knew I would have trouble holding him off, and he finally got by me at around the 30K mark.
The headwinds didn’t really bother me until the last 5K to the finish, and that was the only part of the race where I struggled. It was really tough, and I tried to dig deep, but just couldn’t find any more fight in me at that point. My calves were really starting to lock up bad at the same time.
I crossed the finish line at 3:28:47, two minutes shy of a PB, good for sixth overall. I was hoping to get closer to a 3:20, but was pretty satisfied with my effort in the tough conditions. [Side note: My Garmin told me I actually ran 42.9K, and had covered the marathon distance in 3:24:19, which would have been a PB. So I’ll take that little private cherry on top :)]
All in all, I was really happy with my experience at Resurgo, and am thankful to the dedicated volunteers who made it happen.
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