The Manitoba Marathon was a full go in Winnipeg yesterday. One of the events was the Half Marathon which featured 1399 male racers and 1181 female racers for a total of 2580. All of which had one goal and that goal was finishing first.
Cobden's Tristan Woodfine did just that with a time of 1:04:44. Just more than three minutes behind him was Neepawa's Daniel Heschuk. Daniel finished the race in 1:07:48 which was good for fifth place in a race that included more than 2500.
Heschuk was even just 12 seconds away from finishing in fourth.
"It felt pretty incredible. It was Athletics Canada National Championships for the event and they're hosting this for the next three years," said Heschuk. "There were people that were Olympians and a bunch of people who run internationally. It was really incredible to just run with some of these athletes."
"It was very humbling and really exciting to be in the mix," continued Heschuk.
This was Daniel's sixth Half Marathon. His previous best came last year when he finished the race in 1:09:03. The time improvement speaks to how hard the Neepawa native has been working over the past while.
He also runs with the University of Manitoba Bisons Track Team.
"From mid-March until just before the race I really started to ramp things up and I was doing weights in the gym up to three times a week," said Heschuk. "I increased my mileage and was doing longer and longer more intense workouts. I've been getting up to like 70-80 miles of running per week."
From the outside, the Top 5 finish doesn't really come as a surprise. The time last year earned Daniel second place and he was just 30 seconds away from winning first. But, when you add up all of the competition at this year's event, it all still feels it's something that he's surprised with.
"Even into mile 3 I was thinking to myself I really shouldn't be up here because they were going so fast," said Heschuk. "I kept on thinking like here is where I'm going to get passed and that sort of thing. The finish certainly blew all of my expectations going in."
For now, Daniel will take some time to enjoy the great finish, but that won't last long.
"I don't know if I'll train quite as hard as I did, but I definitely do plan on taking part again next year so I'll still be working hard," concluded Heschuk.
