Daniel Kipkoech is happy to be back on the Island on the GoodLife Fitness Victoria Marathon weekend. You would be, too, if you were the three-time defending race champion.
“When you get success at a place, you like it,” said the 30-year-old Kenyan pro, who is also the two-time defending champion of the Times Colonist 10K.
“The people are very welcoming, the weather is not bad and the course is good – it’s well balanced between flat and hilly sections.”
The 38th annual Goodlife Fitness Victoria Marathon is on Sunday morning, with the marathon and half-marathon beginning at 8 a.m. from Menzies Street, and the 8K at Government and Wharf at 8:50 a.m. All races finish on Belleville in front of the legislature, with the familiar and comforting voice of P.A. announcer Steven King calling out the finishers as they cross the line.
Kipkoech’s recent dominance — part of a run of eight-consecutive men’s Victoria marathon wins by Kenyan athletes — points out what running means to that famed Commonwealth country straddling the Rift Valley.
“Running to Kenyans is what hockey is to Canadians,” said Kipkoech, who this year has won the 2017 Vancouver and Calgary marathons, and finished third in the massive Vancouver Sun Run.
In his younger years, he came under the tutelage of the great Olympic-champion Kip Keino, in the Kenyan incubator city of running, Eldoret.
Kipkoech will return to Kenya following the Victoria marathon to compete in the nationals trials for the world cross-country championships.
“It is very tough to make the Kenyan team in athletics [track and field] or cross-country but you have to keep trying because you never know what can happen,” he said.
Kipkoech’s personal best is 2:19 and he said he is gunning Sunday for the next level in marathon: 2:12.
Meanwhile, 1,422 runners had registered for the marathon as of Friday, closing in on the marathon race cap of 1,500. The Victoria race is again a qualifier for the Boston Marathon.
There were 3,138 registered for the half-marathon, 2,194 for the 8K and 929 for the family fun run.
There are two Olympians in the field. Reid Coolsaet has the second-fastest marathon time in Canadian history (2:10:28 in 2015 at Berlin) and contested the marathon at both the 2012 London (27th place) and 2016 Rio (23rd) Summer Olympics. Evan Dunfee placed fourth at Rio in the 50K racewalk after deciding not to challenge the decision despite being bumped by the bronze medallist. Coolsaet, who has trained in Kenya, will run the half-marathon Sunday while Dunfee will do what he does best and walk the marathon, and will finish ahead of many people who are running.
The total of 7,683 registrants to date is down from the 8,448 total last year. Long gone are the halcyon days of road running in North America, which crested with a high of more than 14,000 for the Victoria marathon.
“Firstly, we battled the triathlon craze after Simon [Whitfield] won Olympic gold, and now millennials are looking for more novelty,” said Rob Reid, the former long-serving race director of the Victoria marathon, who has been involved with the event since 1988.
“They want adventure, like off-road trail runs and mud and obstacle runs and the like, and to be entertained. They may reserve their traditional road running to one event a year now.”
That has even affected the top end of the sport.
“It’s one of the reasons the Canadian marathon record [2:10:09 set by Olympian Jerome Drayton in 1975] has not been broken and has stood for more than four decades,” Reid said.
The final chance to register for the Victoria event is today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Race Expo in the conference centre.
Reid and race manager Cathy Noel were this year’s recipients of a granite plaque to be placed on the Walk of Fame outside the Frontrunners store. The granite stones bearing their names will be alongside those of past inductees such as Olympians Whitfield, Bruce Deacon, Zach Whitmarsh, Diane Cummins, Jon Brown and Ironman Hawaii legends Peter Reid and Lori Bowden.
Noel, who has managed several Island running events over the past two decades, recalled how she came to Victoria to work on the organizing committee for the 1994 Commonwealth Games, and that among her responsibilities were the Games marathon events.
