Ellie Greenwood places third in Vancouver, was aiming for hard training run

When Vancouver runner Ellie Greenwood arrived at the start of yesterday’s Vancouver Marathon, she did not expect a third place finish. She went into yesterday’s race hoping to get in a hard training run and finish in under three hours. A recent bike crash left her with a breaks in her hand which had to be fixed by a surgery not too long ago. Her hand was pieced together with metal plates and screws. Despite all this, Greenwood was the third woman to reach the finish (behind Lioudmila Kortchaguina and Hirut Guangul). She ran a 2:47:23. We caught up with her today. Here’s what she had to say about her race.

CR: What were you expecting going into yesterday’s race?

G: I went into the race hoping to get a hard training effort in rather than racing ‘all out’. I was unsure of where my fitness was at after missing a few weeks of training in late March and early April due to my hand injury. I hoped to simply run under three hours and was determined to run on feel. I told myself to keep things in perspective as the BMO Marathon was not a key race for. I treated it more as a fitness test and a chance to go out and have fun. I love the event.

CR: What’s the story with the injury? What happened?

G: In mid-March, I was cycle-commuting and a car cut in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting it. This resulted in me going over the handlebars and badly breaking three metacarpals in my right hand. I had to have surgery on to get metal plates and screws fitted to hold the bones in place while they healed.

CR: How has recovery been so far?

G: I took three and a half weeks entirely off of running and all physical activity as I had to let my hand heal. After that time, I was allowed to go back to running and had a medium-sized splint to protect my hand. I got rid of that just three days before the marathon. I still have to sleep with a small splint to protect it and I’m now working with an OT to get mobility back to my hand. The bones are healing well but my hand is very stiff after being immobile for six weeks. It was really hard to grab enough water from the stations on the course yesterday because of that!

CR: What were your initial goals for running Vancouver?

G: I had committed to running it many months ago but those plans were put on hold with the injury. I think I decided that I would run it for sure about two weeks before the race but knew it would very much be about just going out and seeing what I could do, rather than as a true race in itself. I used it as a stepping stone to getting back into real running fitness.

CR: Give me a description of the race yesterday. How did you feel?

I started out the race somewhat conservatively and just ran on feel. By the halfway point I was happy with how I was feeling but I did realize that having not tapered, my legs weren’t fresh and had no real speed. Around the 32K mark, I was in fifth place but soon moved into fourth. At that point, I decided I would push the final 10K as much as I could and began to chase my team mate Anne-Marie Madden who was then in third. Although I was disheartened to pass Anne-Marie, I was also keen to get the best result I could and was delighted that I was now in a podium position. My hand wasn’t in pain, it was just hard to drink so I was a little under-fuelled for the last 10K or so. I was really thirsty by the finish. I ran a controlled effort. The lack of taper meant my legs felt heavy but I was never working really hard because I knew first and second were far ahead of me and impossible to catch. I was happy to cap off the day with a 10K cool down run with a friend ensuring that I got a big mileage day in preparation for Comrades in four weeks.

CR: So Comrades is a big goal then. Tell us about your decision to race that.

G: After my successful race at BMO, I committed to running Comrades Marathon (87K) in South Africa on May 31. I won the event last year and though I don’t realistically think that I can defend my title, I feel like I’m in good enough shape to race well which I am keen to do as I love the event. It’s the largest and oldest ultra-marathon in the world.