ALBERTSON, LINKLETTER SET TO COMPLETE BOSTON / OTTAWA MARATHON DOUBLE ON SUNDAY
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved – Used with permission.
OTTAWA (24-May) — It all started with a conversation at last October’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon.
American C.J. Albertson and Canadian Rory Linkletter were sitting at a table with Stephen Andersen, the Tartan Ottawa International Marathon elite athlete coordinator, and Andersen was talking about the merits of his race. Albertson, who was in Chicago as a competitor, and Linkletter, who was there as a pacemaker, were intrigued by what they heard. Both athletes were planning to run the 2025 Boston Marathon in April, so doing Ottawa five weeks later would present a special challenge.
“Stephen was pitching Ottawa to C.J.,” Linkletter recalled in an interview yesterday with Race Results Weekly. “Why don’t you come to Ottawa after Boston? I knew I was doing Boston at that point, and so I was like, maybe I’ll do the Boston/Ottawa double kind of thing as well.”
Albertson, 31, didn’t need much convincing. A veteran of over 20 marathons, he had run back-to-back marathons before and Andersen’s pitch was definitely landing.
“It seemed like a nice course and some other people said good things about the race,” Albertson said. “So, I’ve done doubles before. The timing worked out.”
Both athletes tailored their training so that they could peak for Boston, get a short recovery, then resume their training for Ottawa. For Linkletter, his first race running under coach Jonathan Green, Boston was a smashing success. Linkletter led the race at halfway and finished sixth in a personal best 2:07:02, the fastest-ever Boston Marathon by a Canadian.
“Boston was our first big moment together when things really clicked, and it was awesome,” Linkletter said of his relationship with Green. “It was sweet.”
Linkletter, 28, who represented Canada at both the 2022 and 2023 World Athletics Championships and the 2024 Olympics, recovered quickly from Boston.
“Honestly, I was doing workouts four or five days after the race and feeling pretty good immediately after,” Linkletter said. “We’ve just been really cautious, me and my coach, just about our approach on not digging too deep again post-race.”
Linkletter shifted his thinking about Boston as he looked ahead to Ottawa. The Boston Marathon morphed into a key workout as part of his Ottawa preparations.
“Boston was a huge race and a huge workout…
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