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Feedbacks and Looks on an historical year for Canada at
the IAAF World Cross Country Championships 2004. By Emilie
Mondor
Personally, this year was a very different experience going
to the Championships, a heavier load of pressure maybe, but
also higher expectations for myself and for my team mates.
For the first time, I was coming into a World Championships
as a known contender for a top-ten placing and even maybe
for a medal depending of the calibre of the race that is always
very variable every year.
This year, well, it happened to be one of the highest ever
in the women senior races both in the long (8 km) and the
short course (4 km) maybe due to the fact that all around
the world people understand that the winter cross country
season is a very efficient bridge towards the summer track
season for the runners doing 1500m to the marathon. This summer
being an Olympic one, pretty much everyone was present on
the start line of the first race, the 8km on Day 1. Many of
the most experienced runners had planned to also take part
in the second race, the 4km on Day 2, but the horrible weather
conditions and the challenging course made them changed their
 mind
Saturday night.
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Mondor [with glasses] behind eventual
race winner Johnson
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I myself was registered for both senior women's races. It
was my first time racing over a distance like 8km and my experience
on this year's Championships in Brussels happened to have
been one of the best and also one of the hardest of my life.
Finishing 8th in the
first race (8km) was a very rewarding performance for me,
as I knew that the competitors I beat expressed the strength
of that performance, and also by the closeness to the top
finishers. It was a very hard race physically and mentally,
we had to fight the deep mud, the rain and the 100km/h wind
to be able to still run that hilly cross country course in
3:15/km. I finished that race totally empty and tired. Looking
back at it, I now believed that the 8km and 12km cross-country
races are one the most painful events in the world. But I
didn't have much time to think about how I was feeling after
the first race, as I had confirmed my participation also on
the 4km of the next morning and I was now focusing on recovering
to help Team Canada as much as I could.
Well, by the next morning, I felt pretty good waking up,
anyway, I never gave myself any choice about racing or not
that second race. I had teammates that were counting on me
for a team performance and I was committed to do it for my
country and them. That morning was at least sunny, so I felt
excited to be racing again. It would be the first time I would
race back to back at that level of Championships and I had
no idea how my body would react.
Canada had put up a very good and young team this year on
the 4km race. There was me (Emilie Mondor) just coming from
a victory in the Belfast International Cross country, Carmen
Douma (2nd in the 1500m at the World
Indoor Champs few weeks before), Malindi Elmore (ran 9:00
for 3000m indoor in January), Tina Connely (half-marathon
BC record holder), Courtney Inman (a 4:10/1500m runner) and
Leah Pells (4th in the 1500m at the 1996 Olympics).
Going into the first 2km of that 4km race, I had half my
own teammates ahead of me and my legs were really feeling
the effects of the accumulations of hill work from the previous
race. I was the "weakest" link of our team as the
only one of the 6 who had raced the 8km before that important
race. I happened to come back on my teammates and on other
strong competitors in the last 1km of the race and ended up
finishing 13th in that second race. My other Canadian fellows
had raced with all their heart too and were following me closely
with Carmen in 17th and Malindi in 22nd. Our last marker was
Tina in 35th who almost ripped out her calves on that race.
Courtney did the race of her life in 37th and Leah was well
placed in 57th.
I got sick after the race and it is only once I came back
to the changing tent that my teammates told me about the team
result. We were 3rd, having displaced all the habitual super-powers
of cross-country, except Ethiopia and Kenya. It is the first
cross-country medal for Canada since a team medal in 1983
at a time when the African countries were not yet racing the
event. It was a wonderful day for all of us and I now believe
that the double was worth.
To follow Emilie, look at http://www.emiliemondor.com
Source Emilie Mondor
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