Running News Daily

Canadian dad, Lucas McAneney wins Buffalo Marathon while pushing his child in stroller

Canadian marathoner and dad from Waterdown, Ont., Lucas McAneney not only won Sunday’s Buffalo Marathon in Buffalo, N.Y. but did it with his two-year-old son Sutton along for the ride. McAneney pushed a stroller for the entire race in an attempt to break Calum Neff’s Guinness world record for the fastest marathon while pushing a stroller.

McAneney, 35,  finished the race shy of the record in 2:33:29, missing Neff’s world record of 2:31:21 set at the 2016 Toronto Waterfront Marathon while pushing his 4-year-old daughter Alessandra.

When McAneney’s son was born, the 2:18 marathoner briefly stepped away from the sport he’d been doing since he was young. A few months later, he was given a running stroller from his wife, which helped McAneney get more mileage while taking Sutton for a stroll.

McAneney split 1:13:21 through the halfway point, ahead of record pace. “I was on pace for the record until five kilometres to go, then my legs turned off,” he said. He covered the final few kilometres at a four-minute per kilometre pace, only missing out on the record by two minutes.

Dave Cook of Syracuse, N.Y., finished second, without a stroller, in 2:33.48

The Buffalo Marathon returned for the first time since 2019 after the pandemic cancelled the 2020 and 2021 races. The Buffalo Marathon is a popular destination race for many Canadian runners as a certified flat and fast Boston qualifier course. This year’s race hosted over 5,800 runners from 43 states and 13 countries.

Calum Neff ran faster than any other Canadian has over 50K, but Neff says he knows he can do better

Texas-based Canadian Calum Neff ran a 50K race in Houston over the weekend, posting a national record time of 2:51:27. He says he has had his eye on the Canadian record, which previously belonged to Andy Jones at 2:53:20 (a result that he ran at the same park in Houston where Neff ran on Sunday), for a couple of years.

After a failed record attempt in 2019, he had no trouble beating Jones’s time on Sunday, running to his first national record. 

Neff´s  previous 50K record attempt came at the 2019 50K world championships in Romania. “We unfortunately had a bit tougher of a course in Romania than I did in Houston,” Neff says. “There was some more elevation and it was very humid.” He fell well short of Jones’s record that day, although he managed to grab a 16th-place finish in a PB time of 2:57:58.

Even though Neff was four minutes off the record that day, he says he still believed it was within his reach.

Neff says his confidence grew even more after pacing Sara Hall at The Marathon Project in December. He helped Hall to a 2:20:32 finish (the second-fastest marathon ever run by an American) before crossing the line himself in 2:20:37, a PB of his own. “Having seen my marathon time come down, it all just lined up,” Neff says.

“After I paced Sara, I knew that day I could’ve gone another five miles and been under record pace.” 

while his felt as fit as ever, there was one glaring problem: Neff had nowhere to race. Refusing to let that stop him, he organized his own event, which was a new experience for him. “I’ve put on kids’ cross-country and track meets, but this was the first actual event I’ve race directed,” Neff says. Ensuring that the course was record eligible, he got it officially measured and certified by the USATF, and he was joined by about 20 other athletes (many of whom he coaches) on race day as well. 

The course followed a roughly 5K figure-eight loop that featured about one metre of elevation gain. “It was pancake flat and fast,” Neff says — much more ideal than the course in Romania. Feeling fit and ready to run, he says he was hoping to go a bit faster on Sunday, but he’s far from disappointed in his time. “I had targeted that sub-2:50 range, but I was just a little bit off my sharpness that I needed,” he says. “Still, I was able to take six minutes off my own PR and have one of those days.” 

After he crossed the line in record breaking, fashion, Neff stuck around to cheer on the other runners as they pushed for the tape. “As a coach to half of the athletes running, that was really special to have my finish happen then to turn around to watch my athletes finish.” Neff says several men he coaches ran under three hours for the first time, and multiple women ran times that qualified them for the American 50K team. “The U.S. mark is 3:33 for 50K. Two women went 3:19, one went 3:24 and another ran 3:25.”

He doesn’t have specific plans, and as much as he wants to race, he isn’t too eager to travel right now. With nothing set in stone, he says he does know that he wants to lower his record and break the 2:50 barrier in the 50K and run sub-2:20 in the marathon. “For now, I’ll just continue to focus on domestic races here in the U.S.,” he says. “Then play it by ear and see what opportunities come up in the future.” 

Canadians Catrin Jones and Calum Neff head to Comrades Marathon

Catrin Jones and Calum Neff, two of Canada’s strongest ultrarunners, are heading to South Africa this week to tackle the 94th running of South Africa’s most famous and historic ultramarathon, the Comrades, next Saturday, June 8.

Neff ran it for the first time last year, finishing in 31st position overall, in 6:08:06. Jones will be racing Comrades for the first time.

Jones is a veteran of the BC trail and road scenes who has eased back into racing since having her daughter, Elodie, who is now two.

“I’ve been wanting to go for years and thought about it many times,” says Jones, inspired by her friend, the much-decorated ultrarunner Ellie Greenwood, who won Comrades in 2014.

Jones won last year’s Squamish 50K and Whistler 30K, and finished third at the 2018 BMO Vancouver Marathon.

Neff holds the Guinness World Record for fastest marathon while pushing a stroller (2:21:22), set with his daughter Alessandra at the 2016 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

(Neff also held the half-marathon stroller record for a time, but his 1:11:27 from 2016 was eclipsed in 2017.) Neff is from Ontario but lives and trains in Houston, Texas.