Canada's second fastest marathoner Reid Coolsaet is eyeing Jerome Drayton's record

Reid Coolsaet is the fastest Canadian in the field of this year’s Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon. It’s a race he’s well familiar with having run it several times before including in 2011 when he qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics by running 2:10:55. He has since lowered his PB to 2:10:26 making him Canada’s second fastest ever marathoner. A two-time Olympian and the second-fastest marathoner in Canada’s history, Coolsaet has had his eye on Jerome Drayton’s 2:10:09 Canadian record for some time. And no Canadian has run Scotiabank–or any other marathon on Canadian soil–faster. Coolsaet set that record (2:10:55) here in 2011. An interesting coincidence: Drayton’s record was set in 1975 at Fukuoka, Japan, a race Coolsaet has run twice, achieving an excellent time here in 2016 (2:10:55–the same time he ran at Scotia in 2011). With a PB of 2:10:28, set at the Berlin Marathon in 2015, Coolsaet has been tantalizingly close to this goal for a while. He’s had to be patient through a series of setbacks, most significantly a painful foot condition in early 2017 that took him out of competition for almost a year. He came back in time for the Canadian National Cross-Country Championships in November, placing ninth.

posted Thursday September 13th