“WHEN ASKED ABOUT HIS RECORD, WHICH REED SET IN 2008, HE’ S BLUNT ABOUT MCBRIDE: HE DESTROYS MY CANADIAN RECORD."
The 800m is arguably the most demanding event at major championships. There is an opening round, where the top three in each heat along with a group of “fastest losers,” as they are cruelly referred to, move on to the semifinals, the very next day. Only the top two from each of three semi-final rounds automatically qualify for the final. There is no room for tactical errors, as many of the event’s stars have discovered to their chagrin. McBride was required to run 1:45 in both his qualifying rounds in London.
When told that his path is almost identical to Reed’s, who was eighth in his first world championships then snatched a silver medal at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka two years later, he is encouraged.
“It helps to look at others and see that they had similar progress and whatnot and they stumbled here and there,” McBride admits. “It’s nice, and it helps me remain patient and confident in what I am doing. As long as I am progressing, no matter what the rate is, I’m happy.”
Most generational talents drop everything to focus on training, dialing in on the next Olympic cycle with a pro training group and a world-class coach. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and administration, McBride remained in Mississippi working as a graduate assistant while working toward his master’s degree.
But in November, he returned home to be with his mother who had undergone abdominal surgery.
Although she is well recovered and has returned to work, McBride decided to remain in Windsor, where he has reunited full time with his Windsor Legion Track Club coach, Chris Scarrow. Between training sessions, sometimes with his younger brother William (800m silver medallist at the 2017 Canadian Junior Championships) and family. McBride is now studying for his gmat exam, a prerequisite to enrolling in msu’s online mba program.
Even while he was away in Mississippi, Scarrow and msu Coach Steve Dudley consulted one another to ensure McBride was carefully nurtured. McBride says Dudley’s approach was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and so the training didn’t dramatically change from his highschool days. After reviewing video of all McBride’s races recently, he and Scarrow have adjusted the training to focus on speed endurance as well as aerobic strength, so he can handle three rounds of topf light racing. Without a major championship this year, McBride will be free to experiment without serious consequences.
“Of course I want to PB,” he says of the upcoming season. “Because it’s a down year, I want to use it to adjust to moving back home. I want to fix weaknesses. If we are able to fix a lot of them and get to where I am able to handle three rounds at a high level, I think, come 2019 and 2020, I will be ready for the next World Championships and the next Olympic Games.”
In January he was named to Canada’s team bound for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, Australia. He will race his specialty there although he has misgivings about the timing of the event. “I was named to the team, and I am really excited but it’s also really early [in the year],” he says. “It’s definitely the earliest championships I have done in a while.” He’s skipped the indoor world championship for the past two years. “A goal of mine would be to come out with a medal. If I could do that it would springboard me in the direction I need to be going in.” Then he adds with a laugh: “The Commonwealth. I don’t think I will have to run 1:45 the first round so that’s always nice.”
In a typical week, McBride will run between 90–100 kilometres, with his longest run being 16–19 kilometres. Again, this is similar to the ground Gary Reed would cover in his buildup. The national record holder has been impressed with what he has seen from McBride.
“He’s obviously fast,” Reed says. “He has got good foot speed. In a 100, 200 or 400, he’s probably quicker than I ever was. He’s got great speed endurance. The only thing he is lacking right now is just that high-level experience. Of course, he has just got to run the gauntlet, like everybody.”
When asked about his record, which Reed set in 2008, he’s blunt about McBride: “I hope he destroys my Canadian record.”
Reed had a 400m personal best of 46. 45 while the younger man has covered the distance in 45.89 – he recorded that time while winning the 2013 Pan Am Junior Championships in Medellin, Colombia – and clearly believes he can go much faster.
“When I ran that in Colombia, the race was called back a few times,” McBride says laughing at the memory. “For some reason, the timer wasn’t starting. The race went off three times. One of the times we were literally 90 metres into the race and then they called it back. They didn’t give us proper rest. Moving forward, I would like to be in that sort of shape and get into a race where I can lower my PB.”Whereas Reed was an expert tactician and went into his races without a set race plan, McBride is more predictable. At 6'5", he is two inches taller than
David Rudisha, another notable front-runner.
“If you look at all the really tall runners they usually are more comfortable running from the front,” McBride explains. “As soon as our stride starts shortening it’s most likely not going to be a good outcome. Once you are thrown out of whack and you are out of your comfort zone, it’s very hard to stay in your rhythm. You are wasting energy trying to get out of a box, freaking out mentally. I am more comfortable from the front.”
That height would come in useful for a basketball player and it’s no surprise to learn that, up until his final year at Windsor’s W.F. Herman High School, McBride was an accomplished player. It was Scarrow who recognized his potential for the 400m and 800m. But the coach is also a believer in allowing high-school kids to explore a variety of sports before total commitment to one.
“That was my first love – I was a basketball player first,” McBride reveals. “I played throughout highschool, I didn’t do track full time until Grade 12. Looking back, if I had put all my time and energy into basketball instead of track, I think I could have been decently successful in basketball as well.”
McBride now has an international contract with Adidas and earns additional money from racing, which means he can pay his bills and afford a decent standard of living. Although he would love to jump into a pick-up basketball game, he knows where his bread is buttered. “It is tempting,” he admits with a laugh. “Well, it was tempting. Then you hear some of the horror stories – this person getting injured because they were playing a sport. It is really not worth it. I do enjoy grabbing a basketball and shooting from time to time, or just dunking. I don’t like to play in a game.”
Though he has only been back full time with Scarrow since November 2017, the improvement in McBride’s strength is noticeable, according to the coach. Their partnership is another thing McBride has in common with Reed. The latter also trained in Canada under a Canadian coach, a rarity for a world-class athlete these days.
Although Reed and McBride have never met in person, the national record-holder has followed the latter’s progress closely, even sending him an email to wish him good luck before the 2016 Olympics. Reed was fourth in the 2008 Olympic final and recognizes what it takes to be counted among the world’s elite 800m runners. And he remains one of McBride’s biggest admirers.
“It’s a fairly wide open event,” Reed says of the current state of the 800m. “I think Rudisha has probably seen his best days, that’s just my personal opinion. I think Brandon is the right age. He is coming up. If he plays his cards right he could dominate for two, three or maybe four years – and I mean seriously dominate. I don’t see any reason why in 2019 and 2020 he’s not right there on the podium.”
“T HAT WAS MY FIRST LOVE– I WAS A BASKETBALL PLAYER FIRST .”
Zara and Mekaal Rahim’s strategies for getting though the toughest part of a marathon may seem unorthodox; after all, their go-to techniques include playing I, Spy, singing their favourite songs at the top of their lungs and stopping for ice cream and chocolate breaks along the race course. But their tactics make a lot more sense when you consider how old (or rather, young) they are – willowy, soft-spoken Zara is 11, while bright-eyed younger brother Mekaal is nine. And as they wrap up their quest to become the youngest girl and boy to run marathons on all seven continents, the “how” of their globetrotting adventure is as important as the “why.” How are such young kids able to take on a race distance that seems daunting to most adults? And, perhaps even more crucially, how can they do so in a safe and healthy way, despite near pervasive warnings that kids their age shouldn’t run so far?
The Rahim children – who were born and raised Toronto but currently live in Qatar and run marathons alongside their parents, Ziyad and Nadia – belong to a small-but-seemingly growing subset of kids who are running longer race distances at younger ages. In 2011, Tyler Heggie of Charlottetown, completed the p.e.i. Marathon at the tender age of nine, and then two years later ran the 273-kilometre length of p.e.i. over the course of a week and a 4:01:43 at Toronto’s Scotiabank
Waterfront Marathon just two months later in order to raise money for MS research. (Oh, and he won his provincial cross-country championships the day before his marathon in Toronto.) Nikolas Toocheck of Philadelphia finished his first marathon in 2012 at age nine, completed his own world record for being the youngest person to run marathons on all seven continents in 2014 at age 11, and now, as a teenager, he is running 50 marathons in all 50 states in order to raise money for critical eye care for underprivileged kids.
But in addition to all the positive attention and accolades they’ve received, these young runners and their parents have also faced scrutiny and discouragement due to the extreme nature of their race goals. On Nikolas’s fundraising website, for example, his mother dedicates an entire faq page to addressing the questions and concerns people have raised about her son’s distance running over the years: “When Nikolas first suggested this, his dad and I had lots of questions... We had the same questions and many more that others have asked, Is he too young? Will he hurt himself ? Is distance running OK for his long-term physical growth? We resolved to address all of our concerns before allowing our son to embark on such a fantastic and unique odyssey.” (The Toochecks had Nik exhaustively assessed by pediatric cardiologists and sports medicine specialists before and after his first marathon, who gave him the all-clear.) Tyler Hegge f lew to Toronto to race in 2013 because his local marathon in Charlottetown, which he completed in 4:37 two years previously at age nine, put age restrictions in place to prevent him from participating. And the Rahims have struggled to find marathons, in North America in particular, that will allow Zara and Mekaal to run.
Most major Canadian races follow the recommendations laid out in Athletics Canada’s Guidelines for Inclusion of Children and Youth in Road Races, and cap registration at a minimum age of 18 for the marathon and 16 for the half-marathon. These guidelines cite wide-ranging potential risks for young runners who train for and race long distances, including a
heightened risk of overuse injuries in still-developing bones and ligaments, a decreased ability to properly thermoregulate their body temperature while running, and perhaps most importantly, the risk of psychological burnout that ultimately impedes (and even halts) their long-term development as a runner and overall athlete. “I think it is important to understand this guideline is not written in the context to say that kids a certain age cannot run so far,” says John Halvorsen, former elite runner and current race director of the Ottawa Marathon, conceding that there will always be exceptional kids who can go the distance without issue. “It’s less about what can you do versus what is the best for a child when you talk about longterm athlete development, and to a certain extent, how do you manage the parents’ desire to often push their dreams onto their kids?” It’s a rare child that possesses the innate motivation and desire to take on a marathon, Halvorsen points out. “When I get asked, I simply suggest that before a kid worry about running a marathon in say three hours, why not go break three minutes for 1k… then carry that pace to 3k or even 5k.”
Multiple-Boston Marathon-qualifier Allison Christie found that her then seven-year-old daughter Lindsey’s desire to graduate to her firstever 5k race after multiple 1k and 2k fun runs posed more than enough of a distance challenge for both mother and daughter. “She knew she liked running (not sprinting) and while she loves playing team sports with her friends, she really wanted to do something that was just hers,” says Christie. They settled on a two-loop course in case Lindsey ran into trouble but in the end it wasn’t an issue. “She
ran about two-thirds of the race and walked the rest, and also spent about 500m practicing her finish line facial expression and pose. It was pretty amazing to see her finish and to see how proud she was of her accomplishment.” But at the prospect of Lindsey attempting a marathon, Christie balks, drawing in part on her own personal experience of how the marathon can break down even its hardiest participants. “As a marathoner, I don’t think I would encourage my kid to run one until they were done growing – so, 17 or 18. It is hard on your body.”
Alan Forster recalls actually having to push his own marathon running dream onto his reluctant parents, even though (or perhaps because) his father was also a marathon runner. Forster, now vicepresident of the Ottawa Hospital, first decided he wanted to attempt the Ottawa Marathon in 1979, when he was just nine years old, inspired by a combination of American marathoning great Bill Rodgers, the Montreal Olympics and his dad’s subscription to running magazines. “I have to say, everyone tried to talk me out of it, even my parents,” says Forster. “No one really thought it was a great idea. I kept at them, though, so the deal we struck was that I had to prove I could do the training without getting hurt – if I completed the schedule, then they would let me do it.” And stick to the schedule Forster did, his progress closely monitored by his parents after he agreed to their condition that he simply focus on completing the distance, and not worry about his time or position (though Forster finished his first full in an impressive four hours, running alongside his dad.) Still, despite his decidedly unchild-like dedication to training, Forster insists the time commitment wasn’t that much greater than friends who played hockey or did downhill skiing, and that he still found the time to be a well-rounded athlete. “I can’t say I recall it getting in the way of anything. I do remember going to the local hockey rink or football field and playing sports after a run. In fact, the day I finished my first marathon, I went to play soccer with my friends later in the afternoon.”
When the Rahims reminisce about the races they’ve done – in their home country, as well as Antarctica, Chile, South Africa, Scotland, Australia and the U.S. – they emphasize how chasing their “extreme” goal has necessitated being extremely relaxed in the way they go about their training and racing. Both kids are active in multiple sports, including swimming, soccer, karate and gymnastics, so their run-specific preparation maxed out at just one half-marathon distance long run, as well racing shorter distances periodically in the Qatar race series their parents organize, capitalizing instead on the strong multisport fitness both kids already possessed. “We put a Fitbit on them just to see how many steps they do,” recalls Ziyad, himself a world record-holder for consecutive ultramarathons in different countries. “Not training, just what they do on a normal weekday with school and sports and so on. And we found they were doing about 18–20 kilometres on a normal day.” Even with the addition of a modest amount of run-specific training, “at the end of the day they still don’t want to go want to go to bed and insist they’re not tired,” says Ziyad. Thus far, the kids have stayed energized and injury-free, though they say they’re looking forward to getting back to racing shorter distances (and in Zara’s case, making more YouTube videos) once they’ve met their world record marathon goal.
Experts agree that the best way for young runners going longer to avoid heightened risk of injury and psychological burnout is to stay consistently active in a wide range of sports, rather than focusing myopically on distance running. “The error isn’t necessarily made
"It's a rare child that possesses the innate motivation and desire to take on a marathon."