Matt Hope breezed to victory as the King of the Road 10-mile champion.
The runaway winner from Red Deer blew away the competition at 53 minutes and 46 seconds on a windy Sunday morning at the Landrex St. Albert Road Race.
“My time was what I was aiming for actually,” said Hope, who ran a 3:21 pace. “A good solid effort was the main goal. If I ran a 3:30 pace that’s fine and if I ran in the 3:20s that’s great so I hit exactly what I wanted to hit. It was prefect.”
Hope, 23, had never stepped foot on the course through the streets of St. Albert until race day.
“I don’t know quite where all the hills were so I just wanted to stay relaxed and then kind of gradually pick it up throughout the race, depending on how the wind was. I tried to go pretty controlled since it was so windy,” Hope said. “I had a few injury issues (last year) so I just wasn’t sure how I was going to feel but I’m really happy that I was able to do it without any pain.”
Hope is the seventh 10-mile winner since Travis McKay of Edmonton repeated in 2011.
“I haven’t had many wins to be honest,” said the 2012 Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association cross-country champion in Grade 12 with the Hunting Hills Lightning. “It’s always fun to do well so it feels good.”
Hope finished a lengthy three minutes and 11 seconds ahead of the runner-up, Jesse Bauer of Edmonton, the 2015 Canadian and Alberta duathlon champion and 2016 Alberta sprint duathlon winner.
“I hung with him for a mile, got a good wind block, and then I was on my own for nine miles,” said Bauer, who was shoulder to shoulder with Hope while climbing up Heartbreak Hill at the start of the race on the Sir Winston Churchill Avenue leg towards Levasseur Road before falling behind on the southern loop of the course.
Hope, a former Alberta Golden Bear and teammate of the last two 10-mile winners, Kieran McDonald and William Madsen, was flying solo crossing Sir Winston Churchill onto St. Anne Street and after passing the mile three marker on Grandin Road kept the pedal to the metal with nobody in his rear-view mirror.
“Being alone it’s really hard to motivate yourself to push through, especially the final five K. That’s kind of the point in the race when you’re with people and the pace is picking up and you’re pushing hard but it’s hard to kind of have that mentality when you’re by yourself,” said the third-place finisher in the men’s 3,000 metres at 8:35:58 as an unattached runner at the 46th annual Golden Bear Open in January.
Bauer, 28, didn’t give up hope, no pun intended, with the front-runner long gone.
“To be honest I just kind of block it out. Once he's out of sight it becomes your race, so as soon as I couldn’t see him any more I just started focusing on my race and got in my own head and started working on myself and just kind of waited for something to happen,” said Bauer, who had raced unsuccessfully against Hope in the past and “knew he was going to be quick” but was still hoping to track him down. “You’ve got to keep going because you never know, he could pull a hamstring and drops out and all of a sudden you cross the line and you're winning so you keep going.”
Bauer was all smiles over his 56:57 result after placing seventh overall in 2015 at 57:17.
“The last time I did this race I had a nasty fade from five miles to eight miles so this year I did not want to fade and I didn’t, so I’m super happy,” said the Edmonton Triathlon Academy competitor. “It was the best race of my life and I beat it by about 20 seconds this time so I was really pleased with the final time, especially with the wind.”
The 2012 Triathlon Ontario Male Duathlete of the Year is a big fan of the 10-miler.
“It’s a grinder’s course. It’s relentless. You’re kind of going up, you’re kind of going down. You’re fighting something,” Bauer said. “It’s a course that really suits me. It’s not all about who’s the fastest on the day, it’s about who is the strongest, who is the toughest and who can stay in their own head and not crack.”
In last year's St. Albert road race, presented by Active Physio Works, Bauer was “out-leaned by a teammate” in the five km and wound up second at 17:40.
Bauer was also the 10-km winner in 2016 at 34:34.
“I really like coming here,” said the former Vincent J. Maloney School student who moved to Ontario and spent 10 years in Windsor and two years in Hamilton before returning to Alberta in 2015.
Hope also plans on returning to the 10-miler.
“I really liked the course actually. It was really nice and open and that part wasn’t great considering the wind. There is lots of fun hills, lots of downhills too, so you could really cruise on that,” said Hope, who will compete for the Red Deer College Kings in the fall. “It was just an awesome job by all the volunteers and organizers. It’s a really good race.”
FAST TIMES: Overall, four out of the 91 finishers (47 males and 44 females) completed the St. Albert Road Runners and Triathlon Club 33rd annual 10-mile in less than one hour.
Last year’s 10-miler in the snow and cold featured 105 finishers (53 females and 52 males) and McDonald, a high school buddy of Hope, prevailed at 60:08.
Visit www.stalbertroadrace.com for results.
