Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A BMO Cinde-RUN-na Story!

Perhaps two of the best UBCTC feel good stories of the year deserve an update, which occurred in the BMO race in early May 2012.


Jonathan Heinz and Brendan Naef ran nearly the entire 42.2 kilometre course side by side. What both men achieved in BMO were nothing short of big time marathon marvels, but both are too humbled to admit it even to this very day. Sub 2:44 NBD.

To the untrained eyes, it may have seemed this teamwork of brushing broad shoulders was almost rehearsed. Brendan had even picked-up Jon from the YVR airport the night before.
Jon and Brendan’s race photos are virtually identical, which would offer a nifty 50% savings incentive.

Both had to deal with minor misfortunes. One was quietly disgruntled for missing blankie-blank crème pies earlier in the month due to reoccurring pesky-snake-head-like back spasms. The other couldn’t convince his coach to get any blankie-blank approval for one to compete in more competitive races.

However a miracle had happened in BMO that couldn’t have been better scripted.

It started early in the marathon when Brendan and his running mate ran past two runners at a blistering pace.

One of two runners was the celebrity and not just another-random-guy mr. Jon Heinz.

Jon clued in instantly that his pace partner was deemed too slow to keep up and gladly switched wheels to join the Brendan express. Jon had two wrist bands for pacing (don’t laugh, he hasn’t discovered Garmins yet…) one for 2:46 pace and another for a 2:44 pace. He ripped off his 2:46 wrist band like Simon Whitfield ripping his visor in the final moments of 2008 Olympics.

Brendan ran with the lion’s share of the workload and needed to stay ahead (about the length of a snake-head to be exact) in order to not fade with Jon. Jon was thrilled to be keeping up with this Brendan express wind and would try to do some of the pace-making but then often accidentally kick Brendan’s foot to give him a little extra boost. Both worked efficiently together and left nothing in the reserves when crossing the finish line.

When both crossed the finished line, Jon was very much appreciative of Brendan’s efforts. Brendan singled-handedly helped Jon achieved the impossible - Jon's marathon standard time to rake in a precious track and field scholarship. Brendan conquered his back spasms and improved his PB by nearly 9 minutes. Amazing!

Honourable mentions to Jesse Chao, Christopher Hart, and Derrick Lee for achieving and crushing their very first marathons. Jesse Chao couldn’t have started with more fashion. He appeared at the race start just in time after smoothly fixing his watch. Chris Hart noticed that his time didn’t quite register with coincidently all of the timing mats, and had to heckle the timing officials to put down his three luckiest numbers at the very least 5-6-0. Andrew had ran countless hours this year and posted a solid PB in preparations for the IMC this year.

In the half marathon race, James Montgomery, Kyuwon Kim, and Rachel Schoeler were all champing the new course and earlier 7am start. Nobody can say they did more BMOs than James Montgomery, a long time veteran in the race as he achieved a PB. Kyuwon Kim and Rachel Schoeler achieved new distances as they posted impressive times and re-positioned themselves to more greatness.


Other notables: Sherry Gu was busy working all weekend at the Running Room exhibit to secretly sell her new homemade jel products to randomly lurking UBC tri club members. In case there was any jel/cliff-bars/expired powerbars over-dose, Dylan Stephanian was always looking busy at the medical tent.

Congrats to everyone who ran in BMO!!

Full
15th Overall         1st Male 20-24     2:43:33     Jonathan Heinz
16th Overall         2nd Male 35-39     2:43:44     Brendan Naef
184th Overall         26th Male 25-29     3:12:35     Winston Guo
527th Overall        55th Male 25-29    3:33:08    Andrew Wight
1242nd Overall        111th Male 25-29    3:54:21    Tzu-Cheng Chao
3074th Overall     193rd      Male 25-29     4:43:45     Derrick Lee
3611th Overall        31st     Male 01-19    5:06:00    Christopher Hart

Half
82nd Overall        11th Male 25-29    1:25:30    James Montgomery
1003rd Overall        32nd Female 20-24    1:44:23     Kyuwon Kim
3049th Overall        134th Female 20-24    1:59:27     Rachel Schoeler




1 comment:

Jonathan Heinz said...

If you must know, the pace bands were 2:42 and 2:44 IN ADDITION to a Garmin. And "brushing shoulders" was only ever "kicking heel".