Moh Ahmed’s debut within the half-marathon must wait. He has withdrawn from this Sunday’s Aramco Houston Half Marathon after struggling a hamstring damage in his closing tune-up exercise.
“I’m regretfully withdrawing from the Aramco Houston Half Marathon. In my closing tune-up exercise on Wednesday, I tweaked my hamstring/hip flexor a bit, such that my coach, Jerry Schumacher, and I felt it might be unwise to line up on Sunday,” mentioned Ahmed in a press release Thursday.
Ahmed’s half-marathon debut was extremely anticipated, given his Canadian data within the 5,000m and 10,000m on the monitor. He’s the one Canadian distance runner to have medalled within the males’s 5,000m occasion at an Olympic Video games (Tokyo 2020).
“After an awesome few months of coaching, I used to be actually trying ahead to testing myself over the streets of Houston in opposition to an awesome subject, nevertheless it must wait till subsequent yr,” mentioned Ahmed. Exterior of some native street races and successful the Canadian males’s 10K title final yr, he has not raced the 21.1 or 42.2 km distance.
Rory Linkletter would be the lone Canadian athlete within the males’s elite half-marathon subject. Linkletter is racing in Houston in preparation for the Sevilla Marathon on Feb. 18, aiming for the Olympic customary of two:08:10. His private better of 61:08 was set at this race in 2022 (a Canadian nationwide report on the time). Ljnkletter’s PB is barely 50 seconds behind the Canadian half marathon report of 60:18 held by Cam Levins.
Regardless of Ahmed’s withdrawal, there’ll nonetheless be a big Canadian presence in Houston. 4 athletes will probably be chasing their Olympic goals within the marathon. Leslie Sexton, 2016 Olympian Lanni Marchant, and Canadian marathon report holder Natasha Wodak will all have their objectives on the ladies’s Olympic customary of two:26:50, with two spots nonetheless open for Paris 2024. On the lads’s aspect, Tristan Woodfine from Cobden, Ont, returns to the marathon trying to break his private finest of two:10:51, set three years in the past on the London Marathon. The lads’s Olympic customary for Paris is 2:08:10.
