CAM LEVINS BREAKS 43-YEAR OLD CANADIAN RECORD
B.C. runner, in his first race at the distance, finishes fourth at Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon,
It took two hours, nine minutes and 25 seconds for Cam Levins to rewrite more than four decades of Canadian running history.
The 29-year-old from Black Creek, B.C., finished fourth in Sunday’s Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, but emerged as the main story by toppling one of the oldest records in Canadian running.
Jerome Drayton ran 2:10:09 in Japan in 1975, so long ago that the average house in Toronto sold for $57,581.
That record survived 43 years and several serious attempts to lower it. In 2015, Canadian veteran Reid Coolsaet targeted Drayton’s mark on a record-friendly Berlin Marathon course and still fell 19 seconds short.
But the record couldn’t outlast the long-awaited marathon debut of Levins — once hailed as the future of Canadian distance running and now a marathoner who sees even faster times in his future.
“I wasn’t aware of what place I was in … I was kind of just racing the clock,” said Levins, a 2012 Olympian on the track. “I hope I can get more into actually racing and trying to win marathons in the future. Today was really about feeling it out, practising the pace.”
This year, organizers invested a sponsorship windfall in pro runner appearance fees and attracted the deepest elite field in the race’s history. Course recordholder Philemon Rono lined up.
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So did Jake Robertson, the Kenya-based New Zealander who holds the Oceania marathon record. Organizers also signed Amane Beriso of Ethiopia, the first woman in Waterfront marathon history with a personal best faster than two hours, 21 minutes.
Then the fast course, aggressive pace and cold weather pummeled them.
Women’s winner Mimi Belete of Bahrain (2:22:29) and second-place Marta Megra of Ethiopia (2:22:35) both eclipsed the previous course record. Beriso finished fifth and trailed the leading pair by more than six minutes. Kinsey Middleton of Guelph was the fastest Canadian woman in seventh (2:32:09).
Men’s champion Benson Kipruto was among a group of runners on course-record pace at the halfway point, but the only one with enough reserve to change gears at 38 kilometres.
“You have to understand the weather and how the race is going, then you come to the conclusion how you’re going to tackle it,” Kipruto said. “I was told the weather changes every day (in Toronto), so I was well prepared.”
Robertson disintegrated in the final kilometres, losing ground to Levins and collapsing at the finish line, where race marshals quickly loaded him into a wheelchair. As Levins conducted his first post-race interview, Megra rolled past in a wheelchair pushed by a race volunteer. The new Canadian record holder didn’t notice as Megra doubled over and vomited on the Bay St. pavement.
Levins held up much better after his first full marathon. Like Kipruto, Levins established a threat to the national record early, but ran carefully enough to pick up his tempo late.
Fellow runners appreciated how well Levins, a marathon rookie, handled the 42.2-kilometre distance.
“I’m really excited to see what he does (next),” said Coolsaet, now the third-fastest Canadian marathoner in history. “Lots of marathons ahead of him. To debut at 2:09 is quite amazing.”
At times, Levins said, Sunday’s run felt like a time trial. He lost track of which runners were ahead of him and who had fallen behind, and thought mainly of beating the clock and restoring the lustre to his once-promising career.
Six years ago, Levins won NCAA track titles at 5,000 and 10,000 metres, while his legendary workload — he regularly logged more than 200 kilometres a week — gained him a cult following. After turning pro he signed with Nike and moved to Oregon, where he joined a training group headlined by two of Nike’s highest-profile distance running stars: Galen Rupp of the U.S. and Mo Farah of Britain.
But from there Levins’ results plateaued and injuries piled up. Afrayed tendon in his lower left leg led to problems with his ankle and broken bones in his foot, and those injuries culminated in surgery that sidelined him for the second half of the 2016 season.
They also prompted a switch from a track-heavy racing schedule to his current emphasis on road racing.
Levins says that as he progressed through Sunday’s race he gained confidence that he would break the Torontoraised Drayton’s record and pondered what the result would mean for his career. In the short term, it means a handsome payday. Organizers offered a $43,000 bonus for a Canadian record — $1,000 for each year the standard had stood.
Levins claimed that cash and grasped an opportunity to rejuvenate his career after a long stagnant period.
“Entering the last three kilometres of this race, I was thinking: I’m going to take back my career and be back to the athlete I know I can be,” Levins said. “That was just huge motivation.”