Labeaud and Wiebe to defend Eastside 10K titles

Natasha Labeaud returns to the Vancouver Eastside 10K Sept. 19 ready to defend the title she won a year ago, but also as a much more experienced athlete.
In March the 27-year-old ran in her first global championships, the IAAF World Cross-Country Championships.

She finished 60th there helping the Canadian team to a 10th place finish. Then this summer her eighth place finish in the Pan Am Games 5,000m final illustrated her tremendous versatility.

Labeaud calls Kelowna, B.C., home but resides in San Diego, her husband Marco Anzures’ home town. She has held dual citizenship since birth. Anzures serves as coach and sometime training partner to his wife.

“I race in B.C. fairly frequently, and will be racing there more with the indoor season and additional road races,” Labeaud said this week. “I remember that the Eastside race was organized well, there were great volunteers, and wonderful crowds. The course is hilly, but there are some parts of it that you can really get rolling.”

Labeaud, who completed her master’s degree in journalism at Georgetown University, must go to extraordinary lengths to keep her health and fitness.

On Saturday she will face Natasha Wodak, the Canadian 10,000m record holder (31:41.59), who raced that distance at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing where she finished 23rd. The race is part of the 2015 Canada Running Series with points going towards an overall prize.

Wodak is coming off a busy weekend where she was a member of Rachel Cliff’s wedding party Friday, then flew to Toronto and won the Canadian 5K road championship in 15:58.

The men’s race is no less compelling. A year ago Kelly Wiebe set a new course record, 29:20, in the event when he beat his BC Endurance Project training partner, Geoff Martinson, by over a minute.

Wiebe, 26, is also a versatile distance runner having finished 50th at the 2015 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and is a past winner of the Vancouver Sun Run. He has just returned to Vancouver following ten weeks of altitude training in Flagstaff, Arizona.

“I will be competitive up front for sure. I can’t guarantee a win, because competition will be tough with guys like Geoff Martinson and Chris Winter, but I will be competitive with the top group.”

The race starts at 8:30 a.m. on the Dunsmuir Viaduct traversing the Eastside and Gastown before returning to the Viaduct.

Edited from a press release by Paul Gains.