Every city seems to have a marathon. But leading the pack are the Big Six marathons in New York, Boston, Chicago, London, Berlin and Tokyo. Make it there and you can make it anywhere.
Cam Levins of Black Creek will be among the favourites racing the New York City Marathon on Sunday. He prepared for it on his home Island last month. There was a purpose to running, and winning in record time, the half-marathon race in the Royal Victoria Marathon weekend in October. The Victoria course’s profile was much like that of New York, and it was a perfect primer.
“It was really good practice. It’s a rolling course and helped me to gauge [New York’s] rolling course,” said Levins. “I feel good about New York.”
Levins was asked about strategy for Sunday and his plans for positioning himself in the lead pack at the front of the field of more than 50,000 runners from 131 nations traversing from across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and back to Manhattan to the finish in Central Park.
“I never look back. I just try to run my own race. I never pay attention to anybody else,” said Levins.
It is that single-mindedness that has propelled Levins’ career. A notable result Sunday would add to the 34-year-old Islander’s stellar resume. Levins broke his own Canadian record in the marathon for the second time in less than a year by running 2:05:36 to place fifth in the Tokyo Marathon in March. It was also the fastest time ever recorded by a North American, topping American Khalid Khannouchi’s 2:05.38 from 2002 in the London Marathon.
Levins broke his previous Canadian record of 2:07:09 set last year in placing fourth in the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. That time had beaten his original Canadian record of 2:09:25 set in the 2018 Toronto Marathon, which had bested Jerome Drayton’s hallowed 43-year-old Canadian record of 2:10:09 set in 1975 at Fukuoka, Japan.
Levins has eclipsed that twice since. His national record time in Tokyo last spring beat the Olympic standard of 2:08:10 and qualified Levins for his third Olympic Games at Paris next year.
He qualified for the finals of both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the 2012 London Olympics, famed for Mo Farah’s gold medals in those events for host Great Britain. Levins returned to the U.K. to win bronze in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games in the 10,000 metres at Hampden Park.
A torn tendon in the left foot and surgery kept Levins out of the 2016 Rio Olympics. His return, and switch from track to road, shook the Canadian running firmament in 2018 when he broke, by 44 seconds in his debut marathon, Drayton’s Canadian record.
Levins said he isn’t even thinking about the Paris Olympics at this point.
“My focus is New York City,” he said. “Paris is a world away and I’m not even in that build, yet.”
Soon he will be.
“I’m hoping to compete for a medal at Paris,” he said.
It would complete the circle in many ways for the Islander who began running in Grade 7 with the Comox Valley Cougars Track Club before becoming the Island and B.C. high school cross-country champion with the G.P. Vanier Secondary Towhees of Courtenay and the 2012 NCAA Division 1 champion in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres with the University of Southern Utah Thunderbirds.
The NYPD said this week there will be added security along the marathon route Sunday due to the increased tensions and inflamed passions among some in the public ignited by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
