Oct 16 2019
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Revisiting Ed Whitlock’s greatest marathon performances

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By Ravi Singh

Marathons become the subject of news and local legend, but marathoners themselves rarely do. There’s bound to be some overhead shots and a quick recap on the local news of the New York City and Boston Marathons, both of which have in themselves become cultural mainstays. Less likely, however, is a marathoner commanding a global audience and cult of personality in the way their counterparts in other sports might.

The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, however, managed to produce something of an exception to the rule in a running curiosity named Ed Whitlock. The Milton resident had a brief flirtation with running in his youth before dropping the habit during adulthood only to return in his 40s.

In 2004, he became the oldest man to ever run a marathon in under three hours, running a 2:54:49 in Toronto at age 73.

Ed was a bundle of contradictions. He was a fast runner who didn’t do speedwork. He was a runner with world records who had no sponsors. He had an incredible amount of longevity, yet maintained habits that would sabotage the rest of us, whether running for three hours every day in the lead up to his world record in 2004 or wearing the same shoes for over a decade.

Ed also broke other barriers in that he made the world care about a runner.

At the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2016, Ed became the oldest man at the age of 85 to break 4:00 in a marathon. The next day, the race communications manager, Jenna Pettinato, says, “that was busier than the day of the race for me. Requests came in from all over the world. Everyone wanted to talk to Ed.”

Ed somehow found his way into People Magazine, where he mused about his future, “You never really know if you’ve run your last race or not. I think I do have longevity in my genes, but you never know—you might get hit by a bus.”

Whitlock at 81 finishes the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, setting a world record for his age group. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

In December 2016, the New York Times marvelled at Whitlock as, “curious, relatively unconstrained and full of “physical and emotional vigor,” not so different from the older aunt or uncle who insists on shooting squirt guns at family reunions.”

It wasn’t just the numbers, but the raw ambition and grace, two things that are sometimes difficult to find anywhere in this world, with which Ed approached running. It was the fact that he made us say, “How?”

Even Vice Media, usually preoccupied with guerilla warriors and dark tourism, found time to produce a video more contemplative and subdued than its usual fare.

The video does capture something a bit sad about Ed, another one of his contradictions, which was that he could commit so strongly do something he admitted he at times didn’t really care for. It’s perhaps not possible to know or ever fully understand a man like Ed Whitlock and that’s why he’ll remain an enduring curiousity and one that continues to inspire even if it was never his intention. What remains is his legacy, and the cold hard facts of his performances: some of the greatest ever by anyone to run a marathon.

Whitlock’s Single-Age World Records in the Marathon

Source: ARRS.run

68y253d    2:51:02     14 Nov 1999 Columbus
69y237d    2:52:50     29 Oct 2000  Columbus
72y206d    2:59:09.3   28 Sep 2003  Toronto
73y204d    2:54:48.3   26 Sep 2004  Toronto
74y035d    2:58:40.0   10 Apr 2005  Rotterdam
75y202d    3:08:34.5   24 Sep 2006  Toronto
80y224d    3:15:53.9   16 Oct 2011  Toronto
81y222d    3:30:28.4   14 Oct 2012  Toronto
82y228d    3:41:57.8   20 Oct 2013  Toronto
85y224d    3:56:38     16 Oct 2016  Toronto


 

						
					


								
			   
								
									
			

			
		


	

		

	
									
					



	


		

			
							
								
				

					
										
					

												
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																			That time a 100 year old ran a marathon in Toronto									  
															


							 
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By Ravi Singh


One day, a bearded figure with origins in a small rural town no one ever heard of and who was witness to an astonishing amount of history—two world wars, the partitioning of India, the invention of television and the iPhone, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more—decided, for no particular reason, to go for a little run.


“At 89 years, he took seriously to running and ended up in international marathon events,” is one of the many excerpts of Fauja Singh’s Wikipedia page that manage to be astonishing, hilarious, delightful, absurd, and inspiring. Like any biography befitting a proper legend, Fauja’s life has come to read as a blend of truthful elements, life lessons, perhaps a little embellishment, and tales of extreme adversity leading to unlikely triumph.


The oldest man to ever finish a marathon at 101, supposedly didn’t walk until he was five. Running through every story about the man they called the Turbaned Tornado, however, is an unquestioned reverence for what he achieved, the impact he made, and the people he inspired.


The adventure was triggered when Fauja met Harmander Singh, President of the Sikhs in the City Running Club, himself a marathoner 160 times over, met Fauja. The latter had moved to the UK in 1994 to stay with his son after another one of his children passed, leaving him with no close relations in his homeland of India.


Accordng to Harmander, “his simple outlook on life and respect for all based on his religious values of remembering God, working honestly, and sharing with others” resonated with everyone from youth, fellow runners, and even the Queen, who included Fauja as part of the 2015 New Year Honours List.




“Fauja Singh was introduced to me by Sukhjeevan Singh, a local businessman, in 1999,” Harmander recalls. Fauja was hoping to enter the London Marathon, but had missed the cutoff date. Harmander had previously run London in support of the Harefield Heart Transplant Trust on behalf of Sukhjeevan, whose son was awaiting a heart transplant. Harmander had subsequently trained Sukhjeevan to run the London Marathon on his own, so the latter figured that Harmander could find Fauja a bib and train him in the 12 weeks remaining before the race.


In 2003, race director Alan Brookes invited Fauja to the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon. He’d come back again in 2011 to celebrate his 100th birthday. Though Guinness never verified his record because of an absent birth certificate, his time of eight hours made him the oldest marathon finisher in history.


After 42 kilometers, Fauja still had the energy to entertain admirers and leave a legacy in the city. Harmander explains that the race “…was the trigger for many health conscious initiatives such as the ‘Inspirational Steps’ program organised by the Toronto based Guru Gobind Singh Children’s Foundation, which has evolved into an annual series of different distance races attracting over 500 participants from the South Asian communities.”


Now, past his 108th birthday, Fauja continues to move, though his comparatively sedate routine covers about six miles of walking every day. According to Harmander, “He is coping well with the onset of nature on his body and is reluctant to let people down who wish him to attend their functions.”


“Fauja has always said he loves the attention in a respectable way and feels he must be doing good if his actions or presence inspires people to become more active and positive about themselves,” Harmander says.


The marathon is meant to humble us and show us a world beyond ourselves. Fauja, humble as he is, might be one of a very few runners whose life and personality make the marathon seem small.



						
					


								
			   
								
									
			

			
		


	

		

	
									
					



	


		

			
							
								
				

					
										
					

												
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																			Michal Kapral’s history of oddball records									  
															


							 
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By Ravi Singh


The Kid


There are lots of ways to process the magnitude of the marathon. Of course, there’s the official distance of 42.195km. That’s roughly 105 laps around a standard track. Various forums across the internet place the step count at anywhere between 30,000 to 50,000 steps.


At the 2017 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, local runner Michal Kapral also had to factor in approximately 130,000 tosses and catches. In support of the Sick Kids Foundation, Kapral went after the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run while juggling five balls.


“I do serious things in my life, but I like to keep that kid inside me alive.”


Kapral had luck at STWM in the past. In 2004, he set the record for fastest marathon run while pushing a stroller (2:49:43), which he followed up with the joggling world record the next year with a time of 3:01:41. He’d subsequently best his own record, including with a 2:50:12 at STWM 2007, which still stands as the joggling marathon record.


To those who might ask Kapral the basic question of “Why?” his response would be, “I’ve always liked to do things that are different and that’s followed me most of my life. I don’t really like to grow up. I do serious things in my life, but I like to keep that kid inside me alive.”




Dropping the Ball


In all previous attempts, Kapral juggled three balls, which he insists is actually quite intuitive and gels well with the mechanics of running. In 2016, he even joggled the entire Chicago Marathon in 2:55 without dropping a single ball.


From the very beginning, however, Kapral says there were signs that he was approaching his “Icarus moment” with the 5-ball attempt. Before his marathon attempt, the longest recognized joggling world record was 5K, set my Matthew Feldman 2011.


“There was definitely a high chance of failure, but I felt I had a 50/50 shot at the record.”


“I knew there were going to be drops, but I thought I could get to the point where I could comfortably run 400m without dropping any balls,” Kapral explains, but adds, “I was lucky if I could even get to 100.” Add to that the fact that most of his training was done on a quiet street near his home or around a track.


With no shorter races under his belt and an admittedly rough training cycle, Kapral still felt, “There was definitely a high chance of failure, but I felt I had a 50/50 shot at the record.”


At the start, Kapral recalls, “I was in an absolute panic. I tried to stay at the front of the slowest corral, but a few runners shimmied in front of me and I was squished right in. I never had that experience while training.” In a race with thousands of others, the 5-ball pattern also acted as a visual obstruction.


From there, it only got worse, almost comically so. Kapral recounts, “Around 2K into the race, I pulled a muscle in my hand, which has never happened. It started as a tweak and then got progressively worse.” The second 5K of the race took Kapral 56 minutes.


Joggler Out


Then the cameras from the race’s online broadcast arrived. It’s one thing to be suffering on the course in front of spectators, but quite another in front of a global audience. The cameras lingered on Kapral at the 16K mark, capturing drop after drop after drop, each one requiring him to step back to the drop point and start again. He eventually puts both hands on his waist and looks down at the ground, clearly crestfallen. At this point, he had been running and juggling for nearly four hours.



At 17K, Kapral had enough. At the insistence of pacer Zach Warren, a fellow joggler and former world record holder, the pair were still going to finish the marathon as regular runners within the six hour limit. That required them to negative split the race by two hours.


“The crowd kept me going and later in the race there were few spectators. The crowd was essentially the volunteers and they were just incredible as well as the other runners,” Kapral remembers. Together, he and Warren came in just under the six hour limit. “I would have loved to come into the finish breaking a record, but at that point I was just another runner and it still felt great,” Kapral concludes.




Laugh It Off


The man who has won races and runs marathons significantly faster than the average runner while juggling barely avoided finishing dead last that day.


In 2017, STWM was a debacle, but it’s also been the site of Kapral’s greatest victories and he acknowledges both as special. Even if the 5-ball record wasn’t meant to be, Kapral says he wouldn’t trade the experience of branching out of his comfort zone.


“It’s a matter of committing to a goal you set out no matter how crazy it might seem.”


“You often wonder why you’re doing certain things and why you can’t just be a normal runner, so I contemplated that a good bit as I trained,” Kapral says. He concluded, however, “It’s a matter of committing to a goal you set out no matter how crazy it might seem. I loved the training even if it was frustrating and I didn’t get as good as I expected, it was a ton of fun.”


Zach Warren, Kapral’s pacer in 2017, has studied laughter as part of his PhD, and Kapral says he’s very much into making people smile, an endeavour at which he succeeds on every run.


That’s perhaps the element of play that’s central to Kapral’s whole joggler persona. Like a child first learning to kick or throw a ball, the process itself is as amusing as anything and brings as much joy as mastering the skill. That’s the marathon–a place where adults can still play. If Kapral were to worry about embarrassment or perfection, that would mean growing up. Like a kid, perhaps he’ll also never learn. Kapral is currently chasing a 5-ball record at the 10K.