Callahan McKenzie has won the women’s division of the 2023 University of Washington Medicine Seattle Marathon.
The marathon was held on Nov. 26.
She finished the race with a time of 2:47:54.
The marathon is sponsored by the University of Washington and runners covered routes through Seattle landmarks like the Space Needle, the university campus, Gas Works Park and Green Lake.
“I’m really excited about it and I have been training for it since the summer,” McKenzie said.
Originally from Seattle, McKenzie has been living in Whitehorse as a permanent resident for more than four years.
“Seattle is a very hilly city so I knew the course was going to be quite hilly. So, I did a lot of kinds of trails running uphill.”
At the race, she was the 19th overall best among 1,724 runners and seventh overall for her age group of 30 to 34 years.
This is McKenzie’s second time participating in the Seattle Marathon. The last time was in 2015 when she finished with a time of three hours and eight minutes. She told the News she has participated in a total of four marathons, including the BMO Vancouver Marathon in May where she finished with a time of 2:49:28, an 18-minute personal best.
David Eikelboom, another Yukoner who participated in the Seattle half-marathon of 21 kilometres finished in fourth place with a time of 1:09:06 out of 3,109 runners. He also finished first overall in his age group of 35 to 39 years.
It was Eikelboom’s first time at the Seattle Marathon. He said he prepared for the race by doing a 130 km run every week and other intensity sessions such as weightlifting.
“It was fun. It was a cool race and it was quite cold. Like it was about zero degrees when we started and, basically, when we finished. But it was a well organized run, like lots of hills. It’s a tough course.”
He said there were a lot of really good runners who showed up at the start of the race.
“It was funny, because there’s probably 15 or 20 people who all went out really fast, like way faster than they should have. And I was kind of not sure what was going to happen. But I guess I stuck to the race plan and as the race went on, I was just kind of catching people who had gone out a bit faster than they should have. But the top three guys like once they went out fast, they just stayed fast. So, I never really saw them again after.”
He said he has been competing and training in distance running now for about 12 years.
“This was probably the first half marathon I’ve done in about five years. I’ve had a bunch of injuries in the last few years,” he said. “So, I was pretty happy with that, given that this course was a fair bit more difficult than the other ones.”
Eikelboom is McKenzie’s coach at Endurance North Run Club, a Whitehorse-based running club whose mission it is to “create an open space for people of all abilities and stages of life who are interested in training, competing and improving together through expert guidance and mutual support.”
He said he is impressed with McKenzie’s performance at the marathon.
“She just improves and improves and I really feel privileged to get to keep working with her.”
He said the plan moving forward is to do a bit of a reassessment and figure out what he wants to do next.
“I want to run another full marathon. It’s been a few years since I did that, and I feel like I have a bit of unfinished business with the full marathon, maybe Quebec City or Toronto. It would be kind of fun to do it in like a bit of a bigger race, just kind of get some really good level, high level competition and have some fun with it.”
McKenzie is appreciative of her support crew, family, friends and coach who helped her along the way.
She told the News her plan going forward is to participate in other major marathons such as Chicago, New York or Boston.
“I’m having so much fun that I want to keep doing that, so I want to keep running marathons as long as it continues to be fun,” she said. “I could run a couple of the world’s major marathons, but I don’t know which one yet.”
Held annually, Seattle Marathon began in 1970 when a group of friends from the University of Washington decided to hold their own running event.
Contact Patrick Egwu at patrick.egwu@yukon-news.com
