[ad_1]
On Sunday, November 4th, at the Road2Hope Marathon in Hamilton, Jim was greeted at the finish line by friends, family members and supporters. He turned a millstone into a stage.
Millstone? Well, when Jim joined the YMCA in the early 1980s, he did it because his work was sedentary and he was not doing enough exercise. While discussing a diet with Y's staff, he had only one stipulation: do not run.
But his alley companions in the gym's dressing room worked on him. They all ran. "Come on," they said as they prepared to run.
"So I did it," he told me. They used it. He was good, then he improved, and then he started to train (not as well as he should have). His first was in Ottawa.
He completed it but the feeling was horrible. He could hardly walk after.
"I swore I would never do another one." He kept his promise. For five years.
His second marathon, in Hamilton, went a lot better. This time, he knew how to train, prepare, give himself rhythm. Twenty weeks in advance, on the one hand, not the 10 he made for his first marathon.
Jim, an organizational consultant in Hamilton, has since led them from Nanisivik, Nunavut, north of the Arctic Circle and from Anchorage, Alaska to Florida, Berlin, London and Marathon.
He raced with thousands of people in 2010, from Marathon to Athens, Greece, for the 2500th anniversary of the very first marathon, run in 490 BC. J. – C. by Phlipides, according to the legend.
This feeling in Greece was "incredible," said Jim, following roughly the same path. And there have been many other wonderful moments.
He made the New York Marathon seven times. It's probably his favorite. "You go through neighborhoods and you get that New York accent, people make noise and hiss, hundreds of thousands along the road."
At the biggest marathons (Boston, London, New York, which he all made), there are tens of thousands of runners.
At Lake Ainslie, Cape Breton, there were 47. They met at a school and were driven by bus on the road. The bus broke down. Then, the starter spray painted the starting line on the road in red and counted up to three. No banners or balloons.
"It was hilarious, there was no first aid station but the farmers set up tables, with milk, biscuits and baked goods," he said. "The typical inhabitants of Cape Breton, they asked where you came from."
And they would talk. When they discovered that Jim's people were from Cape Breton, they had to know everything. This was one of the most unusual, but also one of Jim's most memorable tracks.
There was Big Sur, in the hills, with the ocean on one side of the road and clbadical musicians playing on the other, with a man at the tail playing the same grand piano at a moment of the race.
Edmonton was the most expensive city of 1992. It's there that Jim had his personal best: three hours, 24 minutes … "and 37 seconds," he adds with a big smile. And that same day, his third child, Nathan, was being born. He did not know it at the time. The three children of his wife Ann (Kaela and Aysha) are adopted. They brought baby Nathan home a week after this marathon.
It was a whirlwind for Jim. An exhausting swirl, sweaty and dehydrating at times, but it would not make a single kilometer. The great distances have brought a lot; no tiredness like on a car, but life and health (he is 10 years younger than his 71 years), travel and experience, as many views and horizons, serene moments that run alone in the quiet morning, peace and fellowship, encouragement when he was down, applause when he crossed the line, and an absolute appreciation for … the trip.
He does not stop. He runs six days a week, usually starting around 4 am, loving every minute.
And he was touched by the organizers of Road2Hope. They made him a special bib. He was a runner … No. 100.
905-526-3306
905-526-3306
Source link
