Kelowna’s Vik Bains returns from the Boston Marathon repping his personal best time.
At two hours 51 mins and 11 seconds, getting a sub-3 hour time was good enough to put Bains in the top 1200 racers; out of nearly 30,000 participants.
“Just a small town Kelowna guy in the first wave with the best runners, it was very intimidating. It was the best race of my life. It will be in my memories forever,” said Bains.
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While Bains has been running hard and training for seven years, he credits his weekend warrior team of runners to light the fire under his feet and get him to return to Boston, and record his personal best.
His five member team, dubbed the TMRL (Thursday Morning Running League), including veteran Kelowna marathon-runner Rory Switzer, helped show him the ropes and improve his training.
“It’s pretty cool to have four people with the same common interest,” said Bains. “I logged 1450 kilometres in 14 weeks of training. I really dug deep and amped the mileage up.”
Bains improved from his last year mileage of just under 1000 km in 14 weeks in order to make sure that he was ready for one of the most iconic marathons in the world.
“You don’t typically set your personal best in Boston,” Bains said with a laugh.
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While he may not return for next years Boston Marathon, he said the entire experience from start to finish is something he’ll never forget. From waiting almost two hours for the race to start, setting his personal record and then celebrating with other runners at Fenway Park afterwards was the perfect way he imagined the whole experience.
Bains said wouldn’t have got this far without his TMRL team of Jeff Vogt, Christy Lovig, Jason Deleurme and Switzer, along side with his friend and biggest fan Nathan Zimmer.
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It’s off time now for Bains.
“It was nice to have a cheeseburger after, and we partied good afterwards,” said Bains.
“Relax with my family and thinking of doing the Okanagan Marathon.”
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