Natasha Wodak and Justin Kent win Canadian 10K virtual championships

Natasha Wodak proved that you can run a pretty killer solo effort on Wednesday when she earned her second-consecutive national 10K championship win, only 10 seconds behind her winning time from 2019. She finished her 10K run in 32:41 and took the top women’s spot by nearly a minute with Rachel Cliff finishing second in 33:35. 

The Canadian 10K Championships, which historically took place as part of Ottawa Race Weekend, were moved to a virtual event for 2020. Registered runners had a 12-hour window (from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time) on Wednesday to complete a 10K course of their choosing. Their route had to be an out and back. 

In the men’s race, Justin Kent came out on top with a 28:52, followed by Luc Bruchet who ran a 29:17 just days after a 10, 000m personal best on the track. Dylan Wykes, Elite Athlete Organizer for the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend is really happy with how the virtual race went. 

“This year has been extraordinary in so many ways that we really wanted an opportunity to engage with Canadian elite runners and give them a chance to compete against one another in some way. Congratulations to all the runners who took part and we cannot wait to see them at the Start Line in Ottawa in 2021.”

If runners didn’t have a chance to run on Wednesday, no worries, there’s still plenty of time to participate in the The Beat the Champ race. This event will run through the month of July and invites runners to try to beat the national 10K champion at their own game. This open competition asks runners to beat the 2020 winning times (28:52 and 32:41) by running 10 x 1K intervals, and combining individual segments to beat the winning 2020 10K result.

posted Friday July 3rd
by Madeleine Kelly