Montreal Marathon Memories

Last week I was thinking that I might write up a blog post about my experience at the Montreal Marathon. Unlike my prior two marathons, I went into this one feeling pretty confident. Although my training could have been better, there is no question that it was much much better than Niagara Falls (Oct 2010) or Mississauga (May 2011).

I lived in Montreal for 2 years in my early twenties but as a student, I rarely ventured out of the McGill Ghetto. I registered for the Montreal Marathon in part to see parts of the city that I had never seen.

Overall, I decided that I miss Montreal and did not do it justice when i lived there. We started at a park on Ile St Helene. It is a beautiful park. As we walked onto Pont Jacques Cartier, I looked over and saw an amusement park. "What you have an amusement park here?" I said....not quite realizing how silly I sounded.

The race itself had a fairly flat start and finished uphill.....mean and nasty trick by the organizers I'd have to say.

It was very warm and humid but I had a good race. I finished in 3:36 which beat my Mississauga time by 18 minutes. I was very happy with my time but subsequent news has made that seem very insignificant.

At the 41 km mark, I passed a scene where a man was flat on his back and EMS were performing chest compressions. His eyes were open and rolled back. Seeing this sent shivers up my spine. He was clearly in very bad shape.

After the race I found out that this young man (32 years old) had died of a suspected heart attack. The EMS staff who were trying to revive him as I ran by were unsuccessful at getting his heart to start again. He was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after.

I'll be honest.....I was very shaken by this. Despite running a full marathon I did not sleep much that night. Usually running a marathon means I get a good night's sleep. I couldn't get the image of his face out of my head.

This young man has since been identified as Jean-Francis Presseau. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

His results on sports stats show that this was his third half marathon in the last 13 months. His times were impressive. He broke 1:30 in a race this past April.

Those times indicate that he was a very good runner. Most of the people in the marathon clinic i attend would not beat his time.

We still don't know for sure what killed him. The coroner has ordered an autopsy. It may well be that he had an undetected pre-exisitng condition.

I don't know if there are lessons to be drawn from this. For sure, life is too short. One minute you're here and the next......

This won't make me stop running. I don't think that the occasional death during a race should dissuade other people from running. I am more guilty than most of pushing myself to complete exhaustion. Whether that was the cause in this case or not is irrelevant. It's not smart.

Life is a journey TO a destination. For one fellow runner, the journey ended at Pie IX and Rosemount on Sept 25th, 2011. Everyone else....keep running but be careful out there!!

Montreal is a beautiful city and I hope to go back to run again.