The Prairie Inn Harriers will have more than a rooting interest in the Olympic women’s marathon today at 3 p.m. PT. The club has earned a viewing party. One of their own, Harriers veteran Natasha Wodak, will be competing in the northern city of Sapporo, to escape the soaring temperatures and humidity of Tokyo
The North Vancouver native has won the Saanich Peninsula Pioneer 8K seven times and also the Royal Victoria Half-Marathon, all in Harriers club colours, but today she runs in the red and white of Canada.
Wodak was an unaffiliated and largely unknown runner at the B.C. cross-country championship more than a decade ago when the Harriers saw potential and asked her to join their fold, leading to six consecutive provincial titles for the Island club.
“They were there when I started. It’s been a great continuing connection with the Harriers,” says Wodak.
The feeling is mutual.
“Natasha was running unaffiliated, with no club or university, at the B.C. cross-country championships,” recalled Bob Reid, legendary former coach, and now treasurer, of the Prairie Inn Harriers.
“We had a great team led by Lucy Smith, Cheryl Murphy and Ulla Hansen and so we asked Natasha to be our fourth member and she ran the anchor leg and we won the provincial championship. She joined our team at each B.C. cross-country championship and we won six consecutive provincial titles.”
Those years meant so much to Wodak’s development that she remains a member of the Prairie Inn club and runs as a Harrier.
The bond is strong.
“Natasha never misses an Island race and has supported and raced the Times Colonist 10K, GoodLife Fitness Half-Marathon and Pioneer 8K,” says Reid.
The 39-year-old Wodak has done more than dominate on Island roads. Her international credentials include the 10,000 metres and being a finalist in the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and gold medallist in the 2019 Lima Pan Am Games. Wodak, coached by 1984 L.A. Olympics 3,000-metre bronze-medallist Lynn Kanuka, recorded a Canadian all-time second-best women’s marathon time of 2:26:19 at Arizona in December to easily surpass the qualifying standard of 2:29:30 for the Tokyo Olympics.
Joining Wodak in the Olympic women’s marathon today are two more veterans of Victoria streets, Malindi Elmore of Kelowna and Dayna Pidhoresky of Tecumseh, Ont. Pidhoresky was the back-to-back winner of the Times Colonist 10K in 2017 and 2018. Elmore was second in the women’s 2019 Times Colonist 10K and second in the Bazan Bay 8K.
Islander Cam Levins of Black Creek will contest the Olympic men’s marathon in Sapporo on Saturday.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
