NATIONAL RECORD-HOLDER VODKA WILL MAKE SUNDAY’S PREMIERE AT THE OTTAWA MARATHON
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2026 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
(May 20) — Natasha Vodak represented Canada on 21 national teams, holds the Canadian marathon record of 2:23:12, and finished 13th in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic marathon. He has competed at the World Championships in Athletics five times (three times in the 10,000m and twice in the marathon), and has competed in the World Athletics Championships three times. An elite Canadian distance runner for nearly two decades, he has won races in Edmonton, Langley, Ottawa, Saanichton, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria. She has won each of the two Vancouver Half Marathons five times and holds the women’s course records for both events.
But Wodak, 44, has never run a Canadian spring marathon Tamarack Homes Ottawa International Marathonwhich will be held for the 50th time on Sunday. Instead, Vodak chose to lead Canadian 10-K Championshipsheld in Ottawa the same weekend as the marathon, the night before the marathon. He won that race in 2022 and 2023 and has competed more than 10 times. He likes to run in Ottawa.
“I’d say I ran at least a dozen times,” he told Race Results Weekly in a phone interview from his home in Vancouver on Tuesday. “I’d have to count, but I think I did 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 the race has really fit into his schedule, he said. Last September, Wodak ran the marathon at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, where she ran a tough race and finished 31st. So for the spring, he not only wanted a satisfying competitive opportunity, but a race where he had a good chance at a payday. Ottawa offered both.
“I didn’t really start running marathons until 2020, so there were so many marathons I wanted to do in between,” she said. “Every spring it came and it wasn’t really at the top of my list because it was an Olympic year, or I wanted to do the London Marathon, then Boston, then qualify for the Olympics again. There was always something else in the spring that kind of overpowered it, I guess.”
He continued. “In the fall I was thinking about my options about what I wanted to do and I thought (Ottawa) was my best option. I will be honest. it is the best option for me financially. I knew they would offer me a good appearance fee and there was a good prize. Whereas going to London I probably won’t make any real money. So, you know, and I have to be honest.
Vodak came to the marathon, at least in a dedicated way, late in his career. He made his marathon debut TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon In 2013, aged 31, but would not run another marathon for 7 years. He focused on perfecting his craft from the 10K to the half marathon and enjoyed representing Canada at international competitions in the 10,000m.
“I’m very proud to represent Canada, let me tell you,” he said. “I’ll do it as long as I can.”
He didn’t return to the marathon until December 2020, when he ran the COVID-safe Marathon Project in Chandler, Arizona, in the middle of the COVID pandemic. He ran a personal best of 2:26:19 at the age of 39, and his marathon career took off. That performance qualified him for the Tokyo Olympics.
“When I started getting serious about marathons in my late 30s, I knew I had a smaller window to do the marathons I wanted to do,” Wodak continued. “So Boston and London were first on the list as majors (he did Boston in 2022 but had to leave London in 2023 due to illness). This year I prioritized picking a race that had less pressure in Canada. I thought it would be a little more fun and less focused on running a fast time.”
Wodak admitted that he can’t hit the same times in his training as he did two years ago. But he’s been running well under coach Trent Stellingwerf. All five of his races this year have been successful. He (again) won two Vancouver half marathons, the first half in February in 1:11:51 and the BMO Vancouver Half in May in 1:12:01. At the second race in Vancouver, just 17 days earlier, he smiled confidently as he broke the finish line. She felt great but is tempering her expectations for Sunday, where the fastest time by a Canadian woman is 2:29:42, set 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 2:28 where three years ago I would have tried to run 2:22. I don’t know if I’m just getting old or if I had some inconsistencies over the fall and winter.” He added: “I’ll be really happy if I can race well, have a negative split, finish in the top 5 overall and be the first Canadian.”
Looking back on his career, Wodak said his performance at the Tokyo 2020 marathon was the best run of his career, even surpassing his national record in Berlin 2022. The Games organizers moved the marathons to Sapporo to avoid the sweltering heat of Tokyo, but it was still very hot, and Vodak and his Canadian teammate had a special Canadian teammate. another short distance 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 he was testing negative every day, we were in a special quarantine hotel and we weren’t allowed to leave our floor. It was crazy.”
Vodak and teammate Malindi Elmore were in adjoining rooms, and they supported each other through isolation. They visited each other in their rooms (they weren’t allowed to leave the hotel on their own floor) and trained together in a barren venue provided by Games organizers that, according to Wodak, “looked like Chernobyl”.
“It was this cement training facility with an 800m loop,” he said. “It 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 to me. We just sat in each other’s rooms and watched the Olympics.”
On race day, Elmore finished 9th in 2:30:59 and Wodak 13th in 2:31:41. Both women were in their 40s.
“I would probably say it was the performance of my life,” Wodak said. “I thought I could finish in the top 20 if I had a great day, but finishing 13th was pretty exciting.”
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It Tamarack Homes Ottawa International Marathon is part of Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend. Organizers recorded over 40,000 entries across all events and every race sold out. The marathon, which is a World Athletics Elite Label Road Race, holds the men’s records of 2:06:04 by Andualem Shifferav in 2022 and 2:22:17 by Gelete Burka in 2018. Both of these athletes are from Ethiopia. Race winners will earn CAD 24,000 and top Canadians will receive CAD 5,000. There are also event record bonuses of CAD 10,000.
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RACE RESULTS WEEKLY is sponsored by RunCzech, organizers of the Prague Marathon and a number 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 here runczech.com:.
FINISHING
