AGELESS ELMORE TO TRY FOR FIRST CANADIAN MARATHON TITLE ON SUNDAY IN TORONTO

This is Race Results Weekly’s second article on TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon, and we use it with permission. 

AGELESS ELMORE TO TRY FOR FIRST CANADIAN MARATHON TITLE ON SUNDAY IN TORONTO
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2022 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission. 

TORONTO (15-Oct) — In 2003, Malindi Elmore ran her last race as a collegiate athlete for Stanford University.  She finished eighth at the NCAA Division I Track & Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif., in a field of 12 women, clocking a then personal best 4:11.78, and was part of Stanford’s winning women’s team.  She went on to have a great career as a middle-distance runner, getting her 1500m time down to 4:02.64, competing in the 2004 Athens Olympics, and winning the Canadian 1500m title four times before moving on to a career in triathlon.

Now more than 19 years later, she is the only one of those 12 women from that 2003 NCAA final who is still competing in athletics, and at 42 years old is arguably competing better than ever.  She hasn’t run a 1500m in ten years, but Elmore’s third act as a marathoner might just be better than her first.  In January 2020, at the Chevron Houston Marathon –just before the pandemic shutdown– she lowered the Athletics Canada marathon record to 2:24:50 and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.  Everyone was surprised except for Elmore.

“Everything has been kind of pointing in that direction the last few months of training,” Elmore told Race Results Weekly that day.  She continued: “We really locked into that pace.”

At the 2021 Olympic Marathon in Sapporo, Elmore finished ninth in 2:30:59.  She was not only the top Canadian on that day but the first woman over 40.  At 41, she was Canada’s top marathoner and has enjoyed being the national record holder for over two and a half years.

But 20 days ago in Berlin, Natasha Wodak –another over-40 athlete with a track pedigree– bettered Elmore’s national record, lowering it to 2:23:12 and improving her personal best by more than three minutes.  Elmore has had some time to reflect on Wodak’s achievement and said yesterday that getting her record back was not her main motivation for tomorrow’s TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon, which is hosting the Athletics Canada Marathon Championships.

“My focus is to come here to race,” Elmore said at a press conference yesterday.  She continued: “I’m not a big chase-times kind of…