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Blokland wins one for dad

Stettler’s Canada Day 10K race winner takes secondary route after floods stall High River
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IAN BLOKLAND

Ian Blokland had planned to run a High River race last weekend.

But the devastating flooding that crippled that southern Alberta community scuttled those plans, steering Blokland to his hometown Stettler race for Canada Day.

Blokland won the 10-kilometre event in convincing fashion in steamy heat Monday. It was a victory in the face of trying times for flood victims like his father, Emile, the mayor of High River.

“I was supposed to be running there today, and we were going to have a bit of a family gathering and camping,” Ian Blokland said. “We’ll push that off until later in the summer, when hopefully it calms down a bit.

“He (Emile) is working pretty hard. He’ll probably need a pretty long nap once this (cleanup) ends. It looks like they’re starting to turn a corner there.

“There’s thousands of people working around the clock, trying to get everything going there.”

The entire town was forced to evacuate after the Highwood River overflowed its banks in late June.

“It’s by far the (town’s) worst flood,” the younger Blokland said. “Not only has the water never been this high, but normally it builds over the course of a week or so, and they can see it coming long enough to sand-bag and have some contingencies, whereas this one was in about the course of the afternoon.”

In similar fashion, Blokland made short work of the Stettler course Monday.

The seasoned marathon runner finished in 37 minutes and 12 seconds, short of his personal-best time of 34:31, but more than 10 minutes ahead of second-place finisher Greggory Jackson (47:58).

Blokland set his 10K personal best two years ago “on a much cooler day.”

Temperatures were pushing 30 C when this year’s race began Monday morning in Stettler.

“Today is obviously is a really warm day,” said Blokland, 37. “I don’t think it would have mattered when we started (because) it was already hot.”

Fresh off marathon runs in Ottawa and Halifax this spring, Blokland has been around the block, so to speak, but he believes his experience with adverse conditions is only so much of an advantage.

“Used to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” he said with a smile. “It just means that maybe you’re experienced enough to try and slow down early, rather than (going too fast too soon).

“So I thought I went out really, really slowly and it turned out that was exactly the right pace. There were little kids in front of me the first couple of blocks, and they tuckered out. I said, ‘OK, this is about right.’ ”

Blokland has been running “seriously” for about seven years.

“Running is usually something you do when you’re younger, in between other sports,” he said. “And then as you get older, you can’t do (other) sports, so you just run.”

As a youth, Blokland played tennis and basketball and occasionally ran in the off-seasons for those sports.

These days, Blokland lives in Camrose, where he’s an associate professor of physics and math at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus.

While visiting with his mother, Pat Turigan, in Stettler for a couple of weeks, he decided to sign up for the Canada Day race.

“I’ve never done this race before,” he said. “I’ve run on all the different pieces of the course, but I’ve never actually tried to run this as its own little route.

“Normally when I run around town, I have to get out on the country roads so that I can actually run for an hour without going in circles or crossing streets every 30 seconds.”

He prefers marathon running to the shorter distances, and his repertoire of winter and spring marathons would attest to that commitment.

“It’s different when you go this short distance,” he said after the Stettler 10K.

“You’re kind of running hard right from the start. Yeah, it’s done soon, but you’re really suffering early.

“Whereas a marathon, you ease into it, you talk to the person next to you, and maybe after a couple of hours, it starts to get a little tiring. But by that point, it’s more of an adventure, whereas these things are just suffering.”

He realizes that suffering is mild, though, compared to the pain his father and other High River residents experience as they try to rebuild their town.

Emile Blokland is a former Stettler businessman who served two terms on Stettler town council. His sister, Winnie Bissett, and their 90-year-old father, Floris Blokland, live in Stettler.

BY THE NUMBERS

Warming up for summer triathlons, Joel Norman won the five-kilometre race Monday in a time of 19:05. Graeme Broemeling placed second in 19:51, one second ahead of Kent Barritt.

Liam Missikewitz won the 2.5-kilometre event in 11:24, and Emily Barritt took first in the one-kilometre race, finishing in 4:55.

For full results, see next week’s edition of the Independent.