See a photo gallery of the senior boys’ race on SportsOttawa.com’s Facebook page. By Dan Plouffe
The meal that powered Farah Abdulkarim to victory by nearly a full minute in the national capital high school cross-country running senior boys’ race isn’t your run-of-the-mill breakfast.
Mom’s “Somalian crêpes” with tea and honey was on the Gloucester High School student’s morning menu. Mix that in with his mom’s pasta dinner with beef or chicken, rubbing salts and a prayer or two the previous night, and that’s why she got a deserved big hug moments after Abdulkarim crossed the finish line of the 7 km course in 23 minutes, 42.11 seconds.
“My mom’s really supportive,” smiles the Grade 12 student who won the first city title of his running career on Oct. 24 at the Hornets Nest. “She was ecstatic.”
But an equally important ingredient to Abdulkarim’s senior year triumph came via his father. Abdulkarim’s father, who now lives in Dubai, had his son visit him during the summer, and brought him to see his native Somalia.
“I went running the first five days of our trip, and he said, ‘OK, let’s go to Kenya and Ethiopia and I’ll show you some good runners that I know,’” recounts Canadian-born Abdulkarim.
Suddenly he was in a training group that included the steeplechase youth world record holder.
“It was insane,” recalls Abdulkarim, who decided to skip the national youth track-and-field championships to focus on his cross-country training. “The groups there, I could barely keep up with them. But by the end of the month, I was really close to the top-5.”
Abdulkarim outran his national capital competition from start to finish, although a shoelace that came untied thanks to the major mud puddles in the first 3 km of the course threatened to upset his record of five wins in five races this season.
“I really wanted to widen (my lead) as much as possible because I thought my shoe would just come off eventually,” describes Abdulkarim, whose shoe was very loose but still on his foot at the end the race.
Glebe races to team title
Led by Alex Bernst’s second-place showing, the Glebe senior boys’ crew of Maks Zechel, Nicholas Rupar, Patrick Marshall and Alex Kurzner cruised to a comfortable team championship by 25 points over Lisgar.
“Before the race, there was a lot of chirping going on with the Lisgar boys,” Bernst smiles. “I’m really happy. We knew going into the season that we had a pretty solid team of seniors.”
Bernst was certainly well warmed up for his race despite the cold weather. He’d already attended an early-morning rowing practice, which is the norm almost every day of the week for the Ottawa Rowing Club athlete.
“(Rowing) helps incredibly with leg strength and cardio,” notes Bernst, who puts his emphasis on running during the fall “because it’s a school thing” and he enjoys the competition.
The Grade 11 Glebe student has enjoyed a fairly major evolution since he came in as a rookie Grade 9 who “wasn’t very good at all” to now earning senior silver against older runners.
“Mr. Dillabaugh is an incredible coach, so I try to make him proud and show him that I want to work for him because he works so hard for us,” Bernst explains.
Bronze medalist Adam Richardson, former OFSAA top-10 finisher Brendon Howard of A.Y. Jackson and Earl of March’s Nicholas Gagnon claimed individual OFSAA qualifying positions, while Lisgar’s Sam Kinahan, Nicholas Nussbaum, Julian Alexander-Cook, Chris Blakeney and Dylan Caulfield held off Woodroffe for the second team qualifying position.