Abeba Aregawi sets a Swedish marathon record of 2:23:12 in the rain in Ottawa
Aregawi won the Ottawa Marathon on 24 May; Kenya's Elvis Cheboi took the men's race in 2:09:22 from a pack of six that included Rory Linkletter.
Photograph: Abeba Aregawi after winning the women's 1500 m at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, by Voltmetro, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsIt was cool and raining in Ottawa on Sunday 24 May, and more than 16,800 people ran the marathon and half marathon of Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, 4,846 of them in the marathon. Abeba Aregawi of Sweden won the women's race in 2:23:12, a Swedish national record, and took the $24,000 first prize. Elvis Cheboi of Kenya won the men's race in 2:09:22 for the same money, after a group of six that included Canada's Rory Linkletter led for most of the distance. Kristian Jamieson was the leading Canadian man in 2:31:23.
The course starts at City Hall, heads west along Wellington, crosses the Chaudière Bridge into Gatineau, loops the downtown there and comes back over the Alexandra Bridge, then follows Sussex and Colonel By Drive along the canal to the finish on Queen Elizabeth Drive. The organisers put 28 official cheer stations on it this year, the most any Canadian marathon course has had.
The weekend had opened on Saturday with the Ottawa 10K, which doubled as the Canadian 10K Championships, in 19 degrees under cloud with 8,102 runners. Andrew Alexander ran stride for stride with Thomas Fafard for most of the race and beat him in the last few metres in 28:19. Florence Caron, in her first 10K on the road, won the women's race in 32:31, more than 200 metres clear of anyone else.
A national record in the rain, on a course that crosses a river twice. Marathons do not need good weather. They need good runners.
Sources: Run Ottawa; Run Ottawa.
