On Saturday, a subject of the highest Canadian middle- and long-distance runners will convene in Hamilton for the Riot Elite 5K, an occasion identified for producing very quick occasions. Two-time Olympian Lucia Stafford will toe the road; her personal course file of 15:20 from 2022 sits simply off the Canadian 5K highway file of 15:16.
Stafford is a two-time Hamilton Marathon 5K champion; after working the second-fastest Canadian 5K in her first highway race, she went on to win the 2023 race, with a time of 15:38. The 26-year-old made a last-minute entry into this 12 months’s occasion, wanting to check her health after a European coaching camp. Stafford already holds the Canadian file within the out of doors 2,000m and the North American file within the indoor 1,000m.
The 2024 race, in contrast to the occasion two years in the past, will probably be sanctioned by Athletics Canada–which means a brand new, blistering time would present up on her World Athletics profile. (Her present official finest is 15:38.)
Stafford will probably be joined by Olympians Julie-Anne Staehli, Erin Teschuk and Jean-Simon Desgagnés, together with Canada’s latest road-racing stars, Andrew Davies and Erin Mawhinney. The boys’s course file holder, Jeremy Coughler, who clocked 13:55 (additionally in 2022), can also be returning to higher his time. The occasion presents a money purse of $10,000, with $1,000 bonuses for breaking the course file.
Lucia Stafford comes inside seconds of Canadian file in her first 5K race
The course is a single-loop flat and quick route alongside Hamilton’s Waterfront Path, beginning and ending at Confederation Park. Saturday morning is forecast to be round 5 C and sunny, with little to no wind. The elite 5K begins at 9:30 a.m., with the open 5K and 10K races later that morning, and the half-marathon and marathon occasions on Sunday.
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