TO2015 Pan Am Men’s Marathon Start List (Unofficial)

TORONTO July 22nd 2015. 19 athletes are set to toe the Start Line for Saturday’s Men’s Marathon at Pan Am Toronto 2015. CRS stars Rob Watson and Kip Kangogo will face especially tough competition from Peru’s Raul Pacheco and Brazil’s Franck De Almeida. Beyond them, there are 5 other athletes who have run in the same time range (2:14 to 2:16) recently to qualify. The race promises a fair bit more depth than the women’s marathon. With the heat, humidity and hills, it will be a sizzler of a competition. Our boys NEED YOUR CHEERS!

All of you CRS regulars will know Kip Kangogo @KipKangogo, the Pride of Lethbridge, well. You will have seen him, the super nice guy he is, at many of our CRS races. He was our CRS Men’s Champion in 2013, and has been runner up in 2012 and 2014, so often battling away with Reid Coolsaet and Eric Gillis.

And I think it’s fair to say that the enigmatic, peripatetic Rob Watson @robbiedxc may just be EVERYONE’s favourite Canadian high-performance athlete on social media! He’s been a regular star at both Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon and Scotia Vancouver Half, stars in his own podcast, is a Manchester United fan, and loves cookies and beer post-race!

Here is the complete (unofficial) Start List for Saturday morning’s Pan Am Men’s Marathon.

While our CRS stars Rob and Kip have PBs of 2:13 and 2:15 respectively [Rob’s at STWM 2013], they’ve only run 2:16 and 2:17 most recently to qualify for the Games. That puts them in a tough spot against Raul Pacheco, who like Pan Am Women’s Champion Gladys Tajeda, trains with Mexican marathon legend Rodolfo Gomez in Huancayo, Peru. That’s 3,300m up in the Andes! In April he finished one place ahead of our current Canadian #1 ranked marathoner, Reid Coolsaet, at Rotterdam, with a 2:11:01 PB at age 36. Last Spring, Brazil’s De Almeida ran 2:12:04 in Padova, Italy, just 1 second shy of his 2012 PB.

But on race day, in a Championship, on a tactical, challenging course, ANYTHING can happen. And the pack chasing Pacheco and De Almeida should include our boys Rob and Kip, as well as Raul Machacuay, Pacheco’s teammate from Peru; Mexico’s Dani Vargas; the two Americans Tim Young (2:14) & Craig Leon; Masters’ athlete Diego Colorado from Colombia who was 2^nd in Guadalajara at the last Pan Am Men’s Marathon; plus Brazil’s Ubiratan Dos Santos, Argentina’s Mariano Mastromarino (a steeplechaser turned marathoner), and Chile’s Roberto Echeverria. And I feel compeled to offer a special shout out to Segundo Jami (a 2:17:11 guy), who I’ve seen race a couple of times in the Ultimas Noticias 15k, in his native Quito, Ecuador. Both times he was runner-up, and one reporter with a sense of humour suggested his father should have named him “Primero” instead of “Segundo”!

YOU’RE INVITED to join Toronto’s Run Crew CHEER SITES this Saturday July 25^th, 7am Start, to represent our city and cheer on all the athletes – but especially ROB and KIP!!! Your cheers could make the difference!  Full details here.