By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2026 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
(20-May) — Natasha Wodak has represented Canada on 21 national teams, owns the Canadian marathon record of 2:23:12, and finished 13th at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Marathon. She’s competed in the World Athletics Championships five times (three times at 10,000m and twice at the marathon), and competed in the World Athletics Cross Country Championships three times. A fixture in elite Canadian distance running for nearly two decades, she’s won races in Edmonton, Langley, Ottawa, Saanichton, Toronto, Vancouver, and Victoria. She’s won each of Vancouver’s two half-marathons five times and owns the women’s course records for both events.
But Wodak, 44, has never run Canada’s premiere spring marathon, the Tamarack Homes Ottawa International Marathon which will be held for the 50th time on Sunday. Instead, Wodak had chosen to run the Canadian 10-K Championships which are held in Ottawa on the same weekend the night before the marathon. She won that race in 2022 and 2023 and competed in that competition more than ten times. She loves running in Ottawa.
“I raced that at least a dozen times, I would say,” she told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview from her home in Vancouver on Tuesday. “I would have to count, but I think I’ve done at least twelve.”
But this year will be different. The Asics-sponsored athlete will skip the 10-K to focus on Sunday’s marathon, instead. This is the first year that the race really fit into her schedule, she said. Last September Wodak ran the hot and humid World Athletics Championships Marathon in Tokyo where she had a rough run and finished 31st. So for the spring, she not only wanted a satisfying competitive opportunity but she wanted a race where she had a good chance to make a payday. Ottawa offered both.
“I didn’t really start running marathons competitively until like 2020, so there’s been so many marathons I’ve wanted to do in that time,” she said. “Every spring came and it was not really on the top of my list because it was the Olympic year, or I wanted to do the London Marathon, then Boston, then let’s qualify for the Olympics again. There was always something else in the spring that kind of trumped it, I guess.”
She continued: “In the fall I was kind of weighing my options on what I wanted to do, and I thought (Ottawa) would be my best option. I’ll be honest: it’s the best option financially for me. I knew they would offer me a good appearance fee, and there was good prize money. Whereas going to London I would probably make no money. So, you know, I have to keep it real and be honest.”
Wodak came to the marathon –at least in a dedicated way– late in her career. She made her marathon debut at the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2013 at the age of 31, but would not run another marathon for seven years. She was focused on perfecting her craft from the 10-K to the half-marathon, and enjoyed representing Canada in international competition at 10,000m.
“I’m very proud to represent Canada, let me tell you,” she said. “I will do it as long as I can.”
She didn’t get back to the marathon until December of 2020 when in the middle of the COVID pandemic she ran the COVID-safe Marathon Project in Chandler, Arizona. She ran a solid personal best of 2:26:19 at 39 years-old, and her marathon career was re-launched. That performance qualified her for the Tokyo Olympics.
“When I started doing marathons seriously in my late 30’s I knew I had a smaller window to do the marathons that I wanted to do,” Wodak continued. “So Boston and London being Majors were top of the list (she did Boston in 2022 but had to scratch out of London in 2023 with an illness). This year I prioritized picking a race that had less pressure and at home in Canada. I thought it would be a little more fun and not so focused on running a fast time.”
Wodak admitted that she can’t hit the same times in her workouts that she did two years ago. But under coach Trent Stellingwerff she has been running well. All five of her races this year have been successful. She (again!) won Vancouver’s two half-marathons, the First Half in February in 1:11:51 and the BMO Vancouver Half in May in 1:12:01. In the second Vancouver race, which was just 17 days ago, she smiled confidently as she broke the finish tape. She felt great, but is tempering her expectations for Sunday where the fastest-ever time by a Canadian woman is 2:29:42 run by Lyudmila Korchagina 20 years ago.
“I can still train at a very high level,” Wodak said. “I’m still running well, but I’m going for a 2:28 where I would have tried to run 2:22 three years ago. I don’t know if I’m just getting older, or had some inconsistencies over the fall and the winter.” She added: “I’d be really happy if I can compete well, have a negative split, finish in the top-5 overall, and be first Canadian.”
Looking back at her career, Wodak said her Tokyo 2020 marathon performance was the best run of her career, topping even her national record in Berlin in 2022. Games organizers moved the marathons to Sapporo –the stated reason was to avoid Tokyo’s searing heat, but it was still very hot– and Wodak and her Canadian teammates had to endure a special quarantine because one of their teammates came within a short distance of another athlete who tested positive for the virus.
“One of the girls on our team was within five feet of someone who tested positive for COVID,” Wodak explained. “So even though she tested negative every single day we were in the special quarantine hotel and we weren’t allowed off of our floor. It was crazy.”
Wodak, and her teammate Malindi Elmore, were in adjacent rooms and they supported each other through isolation. They would visit each other in their rooms (they were not allowed to leave their floor at the hotel) and trained together in a barren location provided by Games organizers which Wodak said “was like Chernobyl.”
“It was this cement training facility with an 800m loop,” she said. “That was the only place we were allowed to run. I think the silver lining was that we had our own hotel rooms. We had really big rooms that were really nice. Malindi was right next door to me. We’d just hang out in each other’s rooms and watch the Olympics.”
On race day Elmore finished ninth in 2:30:59 and Wodak 13th in 2:31:41. Both women were over 40.
“I would probably say it was the performance of my life,” Wodak said. “I thought maybe I could get in the top-20 if I had an amazing day, but to get 13th was pretty exciting.”
– – – – – – –
The Tamarack Homes Ottawa International Marathon is part of the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend. Organizers have recorded over 40,000 entries across all events, and every race has sold out. The marathon, which is a World Athletics Elite Label Road Race, has course records of 2:06:04 for men by Andualem Shiferaw in 2022, and 2:22:17 by Gelete Burka in 2018. Both of those athletes are from Ethiopia. The race winners will earn CAD 24,000 and the top Canadian finishers will receive CAD 5000. There are also event record bonuses of CAD 10,000.
PHOTO: Natasha Wodak of Canada just after finishing the 2025 World Athletics Championships Marathon in Tokyo, Japan (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
– – – – – – –
RACE RESULTS WEEKLY is sponsored by RunCzech, organizers of the Prague Marathon and a series of iconic running events, including the Prague Half Marathon, part of the SuperHalfs, and Italy’s fastest half marathon, the Napoli City Half Marathon. Learn more at runczech.com.
ENDS
Wodak_Tokyo_2025_Marathon_Finish_CROP_Jane_Monti_With_Credit.jpg
