Iron men and women win running awards
Although winning your age class in the Interior Running Association’s two running series — the Canadian Tire Road series and the Starting Block cross-country series — is a major accomplishment, there are two other series awards that are, in many ways, even more difficult to win.
These awards are the Iron Legs award and the Legs of Steel award.
To win the Iron Legs award, you must have competed in every Canadian Tire road race, or every Starting Block cross-country run. To do all the road races, competitors must compete in eight races during the summer. That requires travel across the Okanagan, with events taking place in Kamloops, Penticton, Oliver, Vernon, Barnhartvale, Lake Country and Kelowna.
The cross-country series has fewer races, but the five events stretch from Salmon Arm to Penticton and are done in just a six-week period.
The winners of these awards for 2018 are as follows:
Road Race series — Linda Abbott-Simons, Garry Bell, Camille de Montreuil, Mel Doherty, Diana Eacret, Markus Heinrich, Zach Jackman, Sandy Wike. All except Mel Doherty (Kamloops) are from Kelowna.
Cross Country series — Janice Bradshaw (W.Kel), Charlene Nixon (Kel), Patrick Amundsen (Summerland), Rory Bass (Kel), Jared Breneman (Kaleden), Colin Dyke (Kam), Markus Heinrich (Kel), Zach Jackman (Kel), Roly Muller (Kel), Guenter Naumann (OK Falls).
A special tip of the hat to Guenter who won his class in all five races, and to Bruce Butcher from Kamloops who ran five races in the road race series, winning his class in all of them and also ran three races in the cross-country series. Both these gentlemen are in their 80s!
The Legs of Steel award is for those few runners who complete every road series and every cross-country series run.
To do this requires a tremendous amount of determination, not to mention hundreds of miles of driving and over 138 kilometres of racing! We have two recipients this year, both from Kelowna, Markus Heinrich and Zach Jackman. Congratulations to all the winners!
I cannot leave this subject without mentioning, again, the incredible record of Mel Doherty. Mel has an amazing number of Iron Leg awards. He has not missed a Canadian Tire road race in over 20 years, and will soon be closing in on running 300 consecutive races. He has also won the Legs of Steel award many times.
The final race in the Dirty Feet trail race series was held on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail out of Penticton. This was a 20K run on a very gently sloping trail that could be done solo, or as a two-person team relay where the first runner passed off to their teammate at the 10K turn-around point.
In the solo event, Kelowna’s David Guss (M50-59) continued to show all the younger runners how it’s done, while Penticton runner Stacey Cleveland (F40-49) led all the women. Team winners were Nick and Mathew Sunderland (Kel) for the men, Amanda Avison (Pen) and Christine Haddrell (Sum) for the women, and Kelowna runners Danielle Shand and Adam Zelenka in the co-ed division.
A special mention to West Kelowna’s Janice Bradshaw who has run more races this year than I can count! She placed third in the F50-59 class.
A few short notes on local runners:
Malindi Elmore and her hubby Graham Hood have been named by a major running magazine as the sixth-fastest running couple in the world, according to their mile times. Malindi has a personal best mile time of 4:40 and Graham a 3:51!
UBCO Heat runner Veronika Fagan recently competed in the University Sports Cross-Country championships in Ontario. She ran very well, finishing 18th overall out of 160 of the best University runners in the country. I know that Delilah Topic, who is one of the Heat’s coaches, is very proud of Veronika.
Vernon runner Linda Proce recently competed in the Athens Marathon. This is another huge event and she ran very well. Her time of 4:17:38 earned her seventh place out of 103 runners in her F60-64 age class!
The Wurtelles, Heather and Trevor, were in Las Cabos competing in the Ironman 70.3 event (Half Ironman). As per usual, they performed very well with Heather finishing as the third pro woman and Trevor as the fifth pro man.
One of my favorite Okanagan athletes is Vernon’s Shanda Hill. Shanda competed in her second Deca-Ironman (10 times the Ironman distances) event of the year last week in New Orleans. Unfortunately she dropped out after finishing the 38K swim and 404 miles on the bike. She certainly has nothing to be ashamed of by stopping. This woman has done more Decas than any woman in the world!
The weather was absolutely awful, and then one of her friends in the event had a terrible crash on his bike. I’m sure this brought back bad memories to Shanda as she had a very serious bike crash several years ago. She wisely decided that enough was enough and left the race, quite at peace with her decision.
CYCLING
Kelowna has several young cyclists who are well worth keeping an eye on. Two of them competed in the Canadian National Cycle Cross Championships held in Peterborough, Ont. Conor Martin and Jacob Rubuliak both did well in the under-19 men’s 15-kilometre race. Conor finished second and Jacob placed fifth in a field of the top 30 young cycle cross riders in the country.
Cycle cross is a tough sport. The riders follow a dirt course with many muddy sections, steep climbs and sharp corners. Often they have to dismount and carry their bikes up a steep muddy slope. It’s very exciting to watch.
POTPOURI
A couple incredible feats of endurance that I just can’t resist telling you about!
A 38-year-old British woman, Jenny Graham, just broke the women’s record for cycling around the world. She took 20 days off the previous record, riding 18,000 miles (30,000K) across four continents in 124 days! This was an unsupported ride, she carried all her gear through 16 countries (including Canada), took four flights and one boat ride. She rode 15 hours a day and she averaged 156 miles (260K) a day!
Another Brit, 33-year-old Ross Edgley, became the first person to swim the entire coast line of Britain, a distance of 1,780 miles (3,000K), and he did it without ever touching land. He was in the water from June 1 until November! When he finished, he had to learn to walk again and his tongue had partially disintegrated from salt water exposure!
This guy has to be a little crazy, he is also in the Guiness World Records book for completing a rope climb the equivalent height of Mount Everest in 19 hours, and completed a marathon while pulling a car!