Halfmoon Bay's Teresa Nightingale went to Toronto last weekend on a mission. Her goal was to try to better her time from last year and break three hours, attempting to place in the top three masters women again at the Toronto Marathon.
Unfortunately, a foot injury put that mission on hold for a little while longer.
"I made it halfway and things were going well, but my foot acted up and I had to stop," Nightingale said. "I was pretty steady and had a nice pace going. Then my foot started acting up, so I stopped and tried to treat it a bit, but then I said to myself 'this is stupid', so I went back to the finish area to watch the winners come in."
She said she first noticed the injury a few weeks ago while training at the Kinnikinnick sports field.
"The ground there is a bit rough and a little uneven, so it acted up a bit then. Then I ran in a cross country event on Oct. 1 and it was a little sore again," she said. "Mentally and bodywise I was feeling great and my training went so well, but this foot problem was just too much to overcome."
She admitted though, that had her foot not been an issue, she still might not have broken the three-hour mark.
"The conditions were not ideal. It was quite windy, so I would have had a tough time getting the time I wanted," she said. "I watched the top competitors come in and they were all having a tough time and coming in with finishing times that were well below what they had expected. So, if I was going to have some problems, this was probably the race to have them in."
Nightingale said she was initially frustrated with the injury, but on the positive side, she did get to be part of several historic marks during the event.
One was seeing Ed Whitlock from Ontario set a world best time of 3:15 for a competitor 80-plus. Whitlock is 80 years old.
"I ran with him for a few kilometres. He's just amazing," she said.
The other was seeing Fauja Singh, running in his eighth marathon, set a Guinness World Record as the oldest person 100 years old to ever accomplish a run of this distance.
"We were all at the finish line cheering for him," Nightingale recalled. "To be there to witness these records and see these people was a pretty exciting thing to be a part of."
Nightingale said she plans to rehab her injury to get ready for the national cross country events in November and prepare for the Vancouver Marathon in May.
"Vancouver has changed its course. I wasn't going to do Vancouver, but now, in talking with a lot of my running friends in Vancouver, I think we're going to give it a go," she said.
