The 2nd Annual Golden Shoe Awards

Chad Reynolds: Shining Son

By Carolyne Van Der Meer

“My dad was a doer,” says Chad Reynolds. “The Nike slogan was his motto. ‘Just do it,’ he said. So I did.” Reynolds is referring to a promise his father, veteran marathoner Ron Reynolds, exacted from him in November 2008, just two weeks before his untimely death to cancer of the esophagus. “He asked my sister and I to run a marathon for him. When I said yes, I was thinking sometime down the line. Like maybe in five years,” Reynolds says, chuckling. “Then he says, ‘Why don’t you do Montreal 2009?’ I had no choice – I couldn’t say no.”

And so Reynolds’s marathon journey began. The 34-year-old computer systems analyst had only just taken up running the summer before his dad’s death, but he was sidelined by many afternoons spent at his father’s bedside in the late stages of his illness. By the time Reynolds was able to fully focus once more on a running routine, it was March 2009 – and with his promise fuelling him, he was all the more driven. “My dad was a man of integrity,” he says. “That’s why it wasn’t an option for me to let him down.”

The training routine began with two Tae Bo kickboxing classes per week and two 5K runs. The company of a running group from his office gave Reynolds the motivation to push ahead and increase his distance. The 5K runs became 8K runs and soon he was running gruelling routes up Montreal’s landmark Mont Royal – a run that included 303 steps up the mountain and a loop around the summit. “My first goal was to do the stairs without stopping. By the third time, I could do it,” he explains. “The goals just got bigger from there.”

Reynolds started picking up the pace in May, increasing his distance to 11.5K, encouraged by his father’s brother Allan, who had started running more seriously after Ron’s death. By June, Reynolds and his uncle were running 15.5K in an hour and 40 minutes. But June meant that there was just a little over two months left until race day, and Reynolds hadn’t even clocked a half-marathon yet. It was time to up the ante.

A work colleague and running buddy of his dad’s, Mike Masters, became Reynolds’s coach. Masters, who credits Ron Reynolds with getting him into running 20 years ago, ran his first and only marathon in 1996 and according to Reynolds had no serious plans to run another. But Masters readily embarked on the journey, eager to help Reynolds fulfil his promise. Quickly the two crafted a strategy that took them through seven long runs interspersed into the regular weekly training routine of two Tae Bo classes and two 8K runs.

“We started leaving our cars at a train station and at the end of our work days, running to that station,” says Reynolds. The first run was 22K to the Dorval station in Montreal’s West Island area. The second was 26K to the Valois station. Reynolds’s longest runs were 28 and 29K – one of which led him to hit the dreaded wall, preparing him for the marathoner’s worst nightmare. After a last long run to Valois on August 29, Reynolds felt ready, and kept his routine in the two weeks before race day to simple 8K runs. “I knew I’d reached the pinnacle of my training,” he says. “I’d been told by several running friends not to do the full distance before the actual race, so I took it easy.”

On September 12, the night before race day, his stomach knotted from nervousness. “I couldn’t wait to get out there and keep my promise,” he says. Friends from his father’s running club accompanied him for the first 21K and his uncle met up with him for the second half. At kilometre 40, two more of his father’s running buddies fell in step alongside Reynolds and the four of them crossed the finish line together. “They gave me my second wind,” he says. “I knew that if I could get to the last 10K, I could do it. After all, eight was my base run – of course I could do my base run.”

Exhausted but ecstatic, Reynolds crossed the finish line in 4:43. “I looked up and felt like my dad was watching. I’d met my goal and upheld my promise,” he says, emotion in his voice. “And I proved that you can do anything if you set your mind to it – if you’ve got the right support – my family, Mike, Allan and many others.”

“Then of course, there is inspiration.” With a smile and a quick look skyward, he adds “Thanks, Dad.”