Before Ottawa’s Alan Forster was even in his teen years, he was an experienced marathoner.
In 1979, Forster completed the National Capital Marathon when he was just nine. Then, he completed the marathon again the following year. And the next.
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“It was the 1970s and there was a running boom,” Forster says almost 40 years later. “My dad originally told me ‘No way, you’re too young’ to run a marathon and for whatever reason I kept at him. He said, ‘Here, if you can complete this Amby Burfoot 16-week program, you can run the marathon.’ I was dreaming of being [three-time Boston Marathon champion] Bill Rodgers.” At the time, the marathon in Ottawa was relatively new, having started in 1975. Forster ran his first marathon in Ottawa, in about four hours, with his father.
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According to an Ottawa Citizen newspaper clipping dated May 10, 1980, 14 boys and three girls under the age of 14 started that year’s National Capital Marathon (which is now known as the Scotiabank Ottawa Marathon). In the same article, there’s mention of Forster training for the National Capital Marathon by running about 80K per week. (The Citizen writer was Martin Cleary, who regularly contributes to Canadian Running.) Unlike then, most races nowadays have minimum age cut-offs. Asked if the early marathons did any damage to his body, Forster says, “I’ve had muscular issues and repetitive injuries over the years but nothing structural [from early-age marathons].”
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By the age of 11, Forster had completed three marathons in Ottawa as well as a number outside the city including in Montreal and what was then known as the Skylon Marathon and is now the Niagara Falls International Marathon. When he was 12, Forster stopped running marathons and got into track at his elementary school – a seemingly counter-intuitive transition considering that most runners now move up in distance rather than down.
After Grade 8, Forster and his family moved to Newfoundland and Labrador where he set a number of provincial records which was a rare feat given the presence of Paul McCloy, the province’s most famous middle- and long-distance runner. Forster ran 3:56.86 for 1,500m and 8:38.8 for 3,000m as a youth – setting these records that still stand. Forster moved back to Ottawa for university where he won a national cross-country title with the Gee-Gees team in 1990 before things petered out. Interestingly, the top University of Ottawa (and CIS, now U Sports) runner in 1990 was John Halvorsen, the race director of the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend.
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“At the time, people couldn’t believe it,” Foster recalls of his first few Ottawa Marathons. “It was a big deal and I got in the newspaper. People still ask me now, ‘Are you still running?’ I am. I hope to run a marathon in every decade [of my life].”
In his current senior role at the Ottawa General Hospital, Forster says he’s responsible for building programs to promote health in the region, among other things. “The [Tamarack Ottawa] Race Weekend plays a huge part in this,” he says.
