Malindi Elmore sets masters record with 4th-fastest marathon by Canadian woman all-time

Fresh off her strongest of 10 marathon builds, Malindi Elmore set a Canadian masters record (45-49 age bracket) for women with a time of two hours 24 minutes 54 seconds on a warm Sunday in Valencia, Spain.

Her performance was good for 12th place, one minute 21 seconds faster than last year’s effort, and 14 minutes quicker than the previous masters mark by Krista DuChene of Brantford, Ont., from March 5, 2023.

It was the third fastest time of Elmore’s career, three seconds off her Houston run in 2020 and behind her 2:23:30 personal best in Berlin on Sept. 24, 2023. Natasha Wodak, Elmore’s good friend and sometimes training partner, has held the national mark of:23:12 since September 2022.

“Today was another solid marathon for me,” Elmore said in an Instagram post. “ Six years now of running consistently in the 2:23-2:28 range every year — and at 45.75 years old [every month counts now] — I can’t take that for granted. “Every race is hard and special and gruelling and wonderful and terrible all at the same time.”

Elmore, who withdrew from her World Athletics Championships debut in September because of injury, was hopeful of a PB but the unexpected temperature of 20 C and wind didn’t make it possible.

“I hit a 10-kilometre rough patch between 25-35 km before finding a new rhythm for the final seven km,” said the three-time Olympian. “I reset my goals and decided to go after sub 2:25 …[and] made it with six seconds to spare.”

Joyciline Jepkosgei of Kenya won the race in 2:14:00, a new course record is what is widely regarded as one of the fastest marathons in the world. It is also the fourth fastest women’s marathon in history.

Elmore, from Kelowna, B.C., was dealing with posterior tibial tendonitis in her right foot during the Canadian 10K Road Running Championships on May 24 in Ottawa, and it flared up in a critical pre-world championships training session on July 3.

Elmore was the lone Canadian woman in the Paris Olympic marathon last year and clocked 2:31:08 in her second 42.2 km race at the Summer Games.

At the 2021 Olympics, she overcame the scorching heat in Sapporo, Japan to finish ninth in 2:30:59, the best Olympic marathon finish by a Canadian woman in a non-boycott Games. In October 2022, Elmore won her first Canadian marathon title and placed fourth overall at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

Élissa Legault, the other elite Canadian in the race, placed 23rd in a 2:29:05 PB for a Quebec record, over four minutes faster than her previous best of 2:33:27 set on May 29, 2022 in Ottawa. Before Sunday’s race, the 31-year-old native of Île-Perrot, Que., told Quebec running magazine KMag she had been thinking of the provincial mark for several years.

“I can’t wait to see if the magic of race day will work,” she said.

At the finish line on Sunday, a beaming Legault told KMag: “The crowd and the huge pack were pulling me along. I was already on pace for a little over two hours 30 minutes. … I felt really good at the halfway point. That’s when I started to accelerate.

“Around kilometre 27-28, it started to get tough. My boyfriend was telling me the projected times, and when he said 2:29:18, that’s when I thought, ‘Go, this is my day.”