Manitoba Marathon Father’s Day 2022

I promised to share a few stories from the past weekend this week. I went back to where I grew up and started running here at Garden City Collegiate. (First picture, they have redone the track, nice!)

I wasn’t very good, and there were much better runners at our school than me. I was more of a hockey player than a runner.

After going away to school in Toronto, I returned to Winnipeg and my roommate was a track star from Garden City, Steve Batten.

He would often invite me out for runs with him and showed me tips on running and strategy. Then, he suggested that we enter our first race, the Manitoba Marathon.

We carbo loaded at the all you can eat pasta dinner the night before at the Convention Centre. And then race morning we headed off to the start line.

He sustained an injury during the race, but encouraged me to continue and he would meet me at the finish line. Later during the run at various points, he would show up and yell words of encouragement. So uplifting!