Broken-hearted, but not broken
Despite falling short of making Olympic team, Matt Loiselle still gets to enjoy his favourite pastime: running
Matt Loiselle was getting over it, over the disappointment of coming up short of the standard for Canada’s 2016 Olympic marathon team.
The runner from Windsor, Ont., was coming to grips with the fact he wouldn’t be off to Rio de Janeiro next month.
And then the news came out of Athletics Canada’s Ottawa office just shy of two weeks ago, naming Canada’s track and field delegation for the Rio Games, with Eric Gillis from Antigonish, N.S. and Hamilton’s Reid Coolsaet listed as this country’s two entries in the marathon.
“Yeah, that hit me pretty hard,” Loiselle said. “I mean, running in the Olympics was my lifelong goal, and I worked my ass off to try and get there.
“So it sucks, for sure. There’s no other way around it.
“But I’m not going to sit here and cry. There are way worse things to happen, and I’m still able to run, still able to doing something I love to do.”
So, in a way, Sunday’s Tely 10 is a 10-mile therapeutic exercise for the 31-year-old Toronto resident, who returns to St. John’s to defend his title.
Loiselle had twice run the Tely 10, and both times won the race (his first one came in 2012). Both his times — 49:25 last year and 48:09 in 2012 — are among the top five fastest showings ever recorded.
Loiselle has been so good on the route from Paradise to St. John’s that only the great Paul McCloy has covered it faster.
But things are different now. Loiselle has been hobbled by injuries, which he says played a role in his unsuccessful attempt of securing an Olympic berth.
He didn’t run at all from last September until February, sidelined a full six months with a pair of small tears in the Achilles tendon. Later, bursitis set in.
“I was injury-free for years, and then it seems like everything caught up to me,” he said.
Loiselle isn’t prepared to say his Olympic dream is totally over, but he’s a realist, too. He knows that maybe it’s time to get on with real life — he’s an accountant by trade — and, as he jokes, be, “the normal weight of someone my size.”
He’s lucky in the sense that he’s still more than capable of doing something he’s loved to do since childhood. And what’s become part of the passion is running the Tely 10, the 89th race starting 8 o’clock Sunday morning on McNamara Drive in Paradise.
“I love that race,” he said. “I’d do it every year, if I could. The atmosphere on the course, the after-race parties and barbecues… it’s all top-notch. I love St. John’s.”
Sunday’s race is, for the first time in a while, shaping up to be a dandy, with Loiselle expected to be pushed pretty good by eight-time winner Colin Fewer and Marystown native and Simon Fraser University product Ryan Brockerville.
Fewer wasn’t at the start line last year to defend his title, missing the race to nurse a calf injury.
But he’s back, and appears to be in fine form after winning the Nautilus Harbourfront 10K and Mews Centre 8K races.
Most telling, however, was the Toronto Waterfront 10K, where Fewer was 13th of 4,820 finishers, in a time of 31:39. That showing nipped Loiselle, who was 15th in 31:54.
“You know,” Loiselle said, “my first race (after the injury) was in April and guys who I used to beat by three minutes were beating me.
“And I still felt great. I love competing. For me, it’s fun. If Colin or Ryan Brockerville finish ahead of me, that’s fine. I don’t worry about it. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I just want to be out there on the course.
“For me, this is what it’s about now.”