Sweet repeat for Setlack

Emily Setlack finished the St. Albert 10-miler in select company.

The sixth multiple winner of the fastest female crown in the 30-year history of the 10-miler is also first female to repeat since Tara Struyk of Edmonton in 2010.

“I look at it as a good day out here to really push myself and see what I can do so place to me so much doesn’t matter. It’s more about enjoying the experience and pushing myself,” Setlack said after Sunday’s race. “There were a lot of volunteers, it was a beautiful day and lots of people to run with. It was awesome.”

Setlack’s time of 59 minutes and 34 seconds for 10th place overall out of 239 finishers – 131 females and 108 males – was 16 seconds quicker than last year’s debut in the St. Albert 10-miler when she placed 14th overall out of 326 runners, including 134 females.

“It’s kind of hard to know what a good time is on this course because it’s so rolling. It’s not super faster and it’s a little bit slow I guess,” said the marketing and communications co-ordinator at 4 Wing Military Family Resource Centre in Cold Lake.

Kiely Beaudry of St. Albert was the female runner-up at 1:01:28 for 14th place and Shannon Maisano, the first St. Albert runner in race history to win the female portion of the 10-miler at 1:03:03 in 2012, placed 16th at 1:03:12.

Janelle Bricic of St. Albert also finished seventh for 33rd place overall at 1:07:21.

Lindsay Riege, a Paul Kane High School student, was the U19 female winner at 1:17:59 as the 26th fastest female for 81st place overall.

Setlack, 24, was the ninth runner to cross Sir Winston Churchill Avenue from Grandin Road to begin the north loop 19 minutes into the race and not one female within striking distance.

“It does help if there is a girl right ahead of me that I was kind of chasing after because it makes it a little more of a race but there are a lot of guys to run with so that helps a lot,” said the former national 5,000m junior champion.

The course was identical to last year’s route except the start line was moved to Sir Winston Churchill Avenue and across from the St. Albert Curling Club from its trademark location on Grandin Road next to Grandin Park Plaza. Runners completed the south section of the course first instead of the north section.

When asked if the course was tougher this year, Setlack replied: “It was just mentally because when you get to what used to be three miles to go, you know you have seven miles to go so I found it a little bit more challenging but it was still an enjoyable course to run.”

The Tech Shop 10-miler was a good test for Setlack to pass in preparation for the Canadian half-marathon championships May 31 in Calgary. It’s her first national half-marathon since winning the 2010 female title at 1:15:41.

“I’m not going to set too many expectations on myself. I just want to go and see what I can do and push my goals to just push myself as hard as I can because it’s at altitude a little bit so generally your times are a little bit slower so I don’t really know what to expect,” said the top eight-kilometre competitor at the 2014 Canadian Mountain Running Championships at 56:04 at the Kicking Horse Ski Resort in Golden, B.C.

Setlack was embraced at the St. Albert finish line by her husband, Matt, the winner of the inaugural Sturgeon Valley Athletic Club 10-km race. The air force captain, based at the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, was clocked at 32:37

The Setlacks are among a stable of elite runners sponsored by the Running Room.

Last year in the 10-miler, Matt finished seventh overall at 57:08.

“I’m training for a five K and 10 K distance so I wanted to do the 10 K to see what kind of shape I was in. It was kind of a good warm-up for next weekend, when I do the TC 10 K in Victoria. I’m also training for the CISM world military games in Korea in October so I’m hoping to run a fast time (in the 5,000 or 10,000 metres on the track) to qualify for military games,” he said.

Matt, 28, beat Eric Wiebe of Edmonton for 10-km honours. Wiebe’s time was 33:31. Andrew Peters of Edmonton placed third at 33:39.

Riley Stuermer, a St. Albert Catholic High School student, finished eighth at 37:24.

The top female was Jodi Nesbitt of Red Deer at 39:33 for 10th place overall.

There were 32 male and 21 female 10-km finishers on what was a condensed version of the north section of the 10-miler.

“It was good. I liked it. The first kilometre was pretty flat up the main street, Perron Street, and then you turn left up Mission and then the next two or three kilometres it was uphill but actually when you were going up Dawson it was slightly uphill but it was pretty flat,” Matt said. “The last three or four K were downhill so that was nice.”

Setlack is a big fan of the St. Albert Road Race, hosted by the St. Albert Road Runners and Triathlon Club and sponsored by Landrex.

“The course was excellent and really well organized. Joel Maley is the race director this year and he did an exceptional job organizing it. The City of St. Albert made sure there were lots of pylons for safety out there. There were lots of good volunteers too directing the route and it was really clear and easy to know where you were going. I was very impressed.”

Visit www.stalbertroadrace.com or www.resultscanada.com for results of the St. Albert Road Race.