New Balance Canadian runner of the week: Ron Noseworthy

It has been a three-decade long hiatus from marathon training but this year Ron Noseworthy, 59, is finally back at it.

He’s had quite the welcome back. The Dartmouth, N.S. runner has been braving brutally cold weather and icy sidewalks all winter. In April, he’s not exactly expecting spring any time soon. Ask any Nova Scotia runner about this winter’s marathon training and they will tell you it was the most brutal, he says. What a year to return to training for the distance…

Noseworthy ran his first official marathon in Saskatchewan in 1983. He still remembers feeling too confident and going out too fast. That’s when an older runner advised him to take the speed down a few notches. Going out too fast was a painful mistake. Though there’s been a 30-year gap in his marathons, he’s been running all his life. He started in childhood. In 1967, his local community had a sports day. He still remembers signing up for several of the races. “I won them all and so I thought ‘Hmm I’ll keep this up,'” he says. “I’ve been active all my life,” he adds.

Though it’s been a 30-year break from the marathon, he hasn’t taken a break from running. It’s always been part of his routine and he’s raced several 5 and 10Ks. Last year he raced a half. He left Saskatchewan in 1987 to move back to Nova Scotia. He says he ran outside every single winter though and Saskatchewan winters aren’t exactly mild. But this year gave him something to talk about.

“Nobody has ever seen it this bad,” he says. If he were to hang up the phone and walk outside his home, he would see six inches of packed ice. It will be there solid until the end of April he says adding that the weather has’t been easing up. But he’s sticking with it. His goals are keeping him motivated. He plans to race in May and again in the fall at the Maritime Race Weekend. And the dream: qualify for Boston eventually.

When it comes to the pre-run routine, he’s gotten it down to a tee. And like many others runners, he doesn’t change a thing. If he’s got a long run scheduled, you could walk into his kitchen exactly and hour and a half before he heads out the door and expect to see him perched at his kitchen table eating a bowl full of oatmeal, brown sugar sprinkled on top,and no more than a cup and a half of coffee. Post run you’ll see him with a banana and protein shake in hand within an hour after returning.

Someone who has been running since 1967 will always have a few words of advice. “Even a small distance is better than no distance,” says Noseworthy. That, and don’t go out too fast.