Marathoner maintains spirited stride for Tokyo
Having already qualified for the Games, Pidhoresky not pressured to chase times
Dayna Pidhoresky has some good lines. She also has a spot already in the Tokyo Olympic Games next summer.
Those two things could very well be related.
“When you are growing up, I don't think anybody says, `I can't wait to run a marathon,' ” said Pidhoresky, 33, the Vancouver resident who is currently slated to do exactly that with the world's best athletes in Japan in a little over nine months. “There's a point where you realize that you're not fast enough to run anything else.
“I was always the type of person who wasn't the speediest, but I excelled at running distances. That's why I loved cross country when I was younger. Now I probably can't run on the grass without rolling an ankle.”
You can understand her being in good spirits speaking about her sport. Pidhoresky, a Tecumseh, Ont., native who moved to the West Coast some six years ago for training purposes, doesn't have the pressure to chase times and races that many elite track and field athletes in this country do right now.
Athletics Canada is slated to send three female marathoners to the Tokyo Games and said all along that the 2019 national champion, which was decided as part of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront
Marathon last October, would get priority as long as she had also run the Olympic qualifying time of 2:29:30.
Pidhoresky was the first Canadian woman across the finish line at the Toronto Waterfront event that day, clocking in at 2:29:03.
Athletics Canada officially nominated her, along with men's marathoner Trevor Hofbauer and race walker Evan Dunfee, in May for their events at the Tokyo Olympics.
Pidhoresky's efforts that day at the Toronto Waterfront also took some seven minutes off her personal best. Her previous fastest marathon had been a 2:36:08 in Ottawa in 2017.
Pidhoresky, who specialized in cross country at the University of Windsor, ran an impressive 1:13:15 half marathon in Detroit in 2010 and that started to give her confidence about longer distances.
“I felt like every other marathon I had under performed,” Pidhoresky, who is coached by husband Josh Seifarth, said of the Toronto Waterfront race. “I'm not a 2:36 girl. It just had never come together until that day. Everything came together that day. Everything felt good that day. And I still think I have more in me to give.
“I knew in the second half of the race that I was on target to run under the standard, but we really wanted to keep top spot. I didn't want to do anything foolish that would have risked that.”
The novel coronavirus pandemic forced the International Olympic Committee to postpone the competitions in Tokyo from this past summer and schedule them for next summer. It will all still be run under the Tokyo 2020 banner, but it's now slated to go July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021.
That's, of course, assuming that everything is safe and sound around the world by then.
“I think the best thing to do is approach it like next year is definitely going to happen and make sure that you're mentally and physically ready,” said Pidhoresky, who has been a part of The Vancouver Sun Run six times, highlighted by a fourth-place standing in 2019.
“You have to prepare for that marathon build.”
She's a part of a flourishing women's distance running scene in this province.
Vancouver's Rachel Cliff set the Canadian record in the marathon in October 2019, when she ran a
2:26:56 in Nagoya, Japan, bettering Lanni Marchant's 2013 national mark of 2:28:00.
Kelowna's Malindi Elmore then bettered Cliff's mark in January in Houston with a 2:24:50.
“The performances do feed off one another. You see somebody run a quick marathon or a half marathon and you think ` Why can't I do that?'” Pidhoresky said.
The majority of track and field athletes have until the national championships June 24-27 in Montreal to qualify, but marathon qualifying is up in May.
Cliff and Elmore both achieved the Olympic standard with those times and get to carry them through.
Cliff didn't run the Toronto Waterfront event. She competed in the 5,000 metres at the world championships in Doha, Qatar, in early October. She was slated to run a marathon in Tokyo in March but that got cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.
Elmore was scheduled to run Toronto Waterfront, but pulled out with an injury.
Cliff was scheduled to run the half marathon world championships in Gdynia, Poland, on Saturday, but Athletics Canada pulled out its five-member team on Tuesday due to a COVID-19 spike in that country.
Cliff and North Vancouver's Natasha Wodak are among the confirmed entrants for the Marathon Project, a race on Dec. 20 in Chandler, Ariz., that's pledging a course that is “as flat and fast as you could possibly imagine.”
Wodak ran the 10,000 metres at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
The BMO Vancouver Marathon, which is slated for May 2, is listing Pidhoresky as an entrant in the half marathon. She won the event last year in 1:13:07.
I was always the type of person who wasn't the speediest, but I excelled at running distances.