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Halifax Road Hammers teammates tie for the win at Nova Scotia Half

Calvin DeWolfe and Matt McNeil, the event's defending champion, clocked identical times at the Nova Scotia Half-Marathon on Sunday

Nova Scotia Half-Marathon
Nova Scotia Half-Marathon
Photo: Submitted by Cal Dewolfe.

That feeling when you both run 1:12 for a half-marathon and it’s a training run…

Halifax Road Hammers – Canadian Running‘s club of the year for 2016 – teammates Calvin Dewolfe and Matt McNeil tied for the win at the Nova Scotia Half-Marathon on Sunday. They both ran 1:12:33. (Dewolfe is listed ahead of McNeil in the official results, in case you’re curious.)

“Matt and I are both training for the same club and are both coming off injury, so our coach, Lee McCarron, advised that we treat the race as a workout and not a competition,” Dewolfe says. “We were chatting most of the way and then crossed together.”

Though Sunday’s effort in Barrington Passage, N.S. may not have been a competitive bout between the two, it will be a different story in two weeks at the Dartmouth Natal Day 6-mile (9.6K) Road Race on Aug. 7. That’s because there’s cold hard cash on the line. “Since Matt and I tied this race perfectly, we will race each other all-out in two weeks to decide who gets the loot!” Dewolfe says.

The Run Nova Scotia’s Performance Series, which McNeil is the defending champion in for the open male division, combines a runner’s best time in a 5K, 10K and 21.1K. There are nine races eligible for the series with the best time over each discipline combined. The runner with the fastest cumulative time wins $750.

“Today’s goal wasn’t to push it,” McNeil told Andrew Wagstaff of Maritimerunner.ca. “We ran faster than we planned, but we’re pretty happy that it was a controlled effort, which was the main thing.”

Colleen Wilson, the defending champion, reclaimed the victory in the women’s race running 1:23:43. She bested Maritimes master legend Denise Robson by just under two minutes. Wilson, who finished 11th at the U Sports Cross-Country Championships for Dalhousie last November, ran 1:23:30 in 2016.

The Nova Scotia Marathon, along with its namesake distance and half-marathon, also featured a 10K on Sunday, its 47th year of running.

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