United We Run: 4 Runners’ on the Road to the Toronto Waterfront 10. 

If you want to hear the most hopeful sound in the world, go out and watch a big-city road race. You’ll hear it just a minute or two after the gun. In the bright, cool stillness of an early summer morning, before the rhythm of laboured breathing grows audible, it rises up from the throngs of runners: the sound of a thousand footsteps.

It’s the sound of elite athletes chasing the big win, of charity runners sweating for a cause, of newbies making strides toward self-improvement, and long-time runners rising to face new athletic challenges.

In Toronto, the diverse running community will make its footsteps heard once again this summer, when the city comes together for the inaugural running of the Toronto Waterfront 10 on June 25th. A lively course stretching from the heart of downtown to the city’s picturesque lakeside trail, the Waterfront 10 has become a summer goal race for thousands of runners of all abilities and walks of life.

Though each runs for a unique reason, four of these runners are set to converge on the race course on June 25th, adding the sound of their footsteps to so many others. Their stories are below.

The Lion: James Koka

Countless runners are gearing up to toe the start line on University Avenue this summer, gunning for that ever-elusive, always-satisfying obsession: the personal best. And while chasing down your PB can be a tall order, the experienced Pacer Team at the Waterfront 10 aims to make this challenge just a little bit easier.

For James Koka, helping others to reach their personal goals is a familiar and rewarding calling. Koka cut his teeth pacing for the Nike Women’s 15K in 2015. A seasoned veteran of the Toronto running scene, he can lock into his six-minute-per-kilometre pace, and hold on with metronomic precision. Come June, he’ll put this ability to work once again, heading up the 65-minute pace group for the Waterfront 10.

It’s a task that Koka does not undertake lightly. “You know that a lot of people are relying on you to meet their PB or time goal,” he explains. “So you know you need to be as close to your pace as possible. You want to be down to the second.”

Koka, who recently completed his first marathon this spring, trains with both the Parkdale Roadrunners and Academy of Lions run crews. A former cyclist, he began running as a form of cross-training, but found himself quickly drawn into the sport, fuelled by the supportive, community-oriented crew atmosphere.

“It’s a family,” Koka says of his Academy of Lions compatriots. “We spend so much time together, and we’re all on this journey together. While we all have very different backgrounds and careers, when we get together for running, we all share that together.”

The friendships with his fellow crew-mates may motivate his training, but Koka also holds a special affection for the would-be strangers he has found himself pacing. A crew runner at heart, he’s been known to crack jokes and call out encouragement to his pace pack – anything to get them through those tough miles on their way to a shiny new PB.

“It almost makes it better,” he says. “They’re all strangers to me, and we’re sharing that experience together.”

The Master: Joy Kramarich

For Joy Kramarich, the Waterfront 10 is more than just another big-city road race. A seasoned masters runner and something of a legend in the Toronto running scene, Kramarich will be competing alongside a stacked masters field in the race, which is also serving as the 2016 Ontario Masters Athletics (OMA) 10K Road Race Championships.

Kramarich is a high-achiever, unaccustomed to shrinking from any task; a gifted student and competitive athlete in her youth, she later went on to pursue a PhD. So when she began running again later in life, she approached the unique challenge of high-level training as a master with characteristic tenacity.

“It’s about pace,” Kramarich says of the key to masters racing. “You’ve got to control your pace because you just can’t run that way anymore. It’s really humbling.”

Kramarich’s petite, blonde exterior belies a formidable disposition; she’s endlessly talkative, and remarkably easy to spot on a crowded start or finish line. Her dedication to the city’s next generation of athletes has made her something of a fixture in the local racing circuit, where she can often be found playing the role of mentor to younger or less-experienced runners.

Kramarich, who trains under the University of Toronto Track Club, is an old-school running purist; she eschews the GPS-and-iPod set in favour of a sort of minimalist, almost spiritual, distance-focused regimen. Yet despite the tireless dedication and competitive zeal evident in her training, she is clear about what draws her to run the OMA Championships: a sense of mentorship and community.

“I love running,” Kramarich explains. “But the bigger thing I love now is promoting young people. That’s my job now. My job is no longer about me; my job is about promoting and encouraging.”

The Dark Horse: Mike Thornton

Only a few short years ago, Mike Thornton might have lined up for a 10K road race just hoping to make it to the finish.

If this sounds like an unlikely origin story for an emerging competitive athlete, that’s because it is. The Brantford, Ontario native, who began a treadmill regimen five years ago in a bid to get fit, recently clocked a blistering sub-three-hour marathon, hot on the heels of his first-ever win at the Brantford Rotary Classic 10K.

“I don’t think you really realize your potential until it’s already happening,” Thornton says, when asked about his recent breakthroughs. “You’re just putting a little bit of work in every day, then all of a sudden you’re at this point, and you’re like, how did that happen?”

A commercial pilot and First Officer with WestJet, Thornton runs the bulk of his mileage alongside his teammates at Grand River Endurance, whose ranks include breakout elites like Josh Bolton, Tanis Smith, and Rob Brouillette.

“I consider myself the slowest out here,” Thornton says, a distinction he’s come to take pride in. “You surround yourself with the people that you want to be like, and feed off of that. It really helps.”

But fast friends and rigorous training aside, Thornton shrugs off any notion of himself as an elite distance runner. “I still don’t think I’m anywhere near that,” he says. For him, the Waterfront 10 represents his first post-marathon goal race – an important step in a long and protracted process of training that will, with any luck, ultimately allow him to compete at the level he wants.

“I kind of believe in the fact that, if you really want something you’ll make it work, you’ll make time for it,” he explains. “There’s not much you can do except roll with it and do your best. You just have to adjust your goals a little bit, and if it takes me a little longer to get where I need to be, then that’s what it is. I just work with it and do what I can.”

The Warrior: Olya Ovtchinnikova

For many runners, the daily task of getting in a mileage run can sometimes become a chore, taking a great deal of mental fortitude and self-discipline. But for Olympic fencer Olya Ovtchinnikova, who represented Canada at the 2008 Beijing Games, running has always felt like something of a pleasant diversion.

“I always ran, even when I was training,” she recalls of her days as an internationally-ranked fencer. “When you run, you clear your head and you don’t think. For me, it was physical exercise, but it was a mental break, so I ran a lot.”

Ovtchinnikova is no stranger to competition; she was named to her first national team at the age of 15, an overwhelmingly positive experience that further fuelled her already strong desire to train and compete.

“You realize that it is a little bit bigger than just having fun,” she says. “Those little steps – starting to deal with losses, losing a hundred times before you win once, dealing with pressure, either your own or external – those things, you just kind of take them one at a time. And you don’t realize what it does to you as a person until you step back and look at it.”

Over the course of her career, Ovtchinnikova won bronze medals for Canada at both the World Championships and the Pan American Games. In 2008, she competed at the very highest level, representing Canada in the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Since then, Ovtchinnikova has dedicated herself to working on behalf of the next generation of Canadian athletes in pursuit of their Olympic dreams. Now retired from fencing, she has begun competing in road races as a charity runner in support of the Canadian Olympic Foundation (COF), a organization which fosters high-performance athletes across the country.

After completing her first half-marathon last year, she now has her sights set on the Toronto Waterfront 10 this summer, once again running in support of COF. And although she came to the sport primarily as a fundraiser, Ovtchinnikova found herself pleasantly surprised by her experience, relishing everything from training, to pre-race jitters, to the satisfaction of a race well run.

“It was a nice feeling,” she says. “Even if it was just a fraction of the feeling I had when I competed, it was a nice throwback.”

Join James, Mike, Joy and Olya at the start line of the Toronto Waterfront 10 on Saturday June 25! Register and connect with them on social media using hashtag #Waterfront10. 

Amy Friel (@AmyFrii) is a Toronto-based freelance writer, two-time marathoner, and unabashed running geek. As a Digital Champion for the 2015 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, Amy had a taste of the city’s vibrant running community – and hasn’t been able to stop writing about it since. Her work has been featured in iRun magazine, the Globe and Mail, as well as on her blog thelongslowdistance.com