Rory Linkletter is Consistent. The Weather Was Also Cold.

Yesterday, roughly 16,800 people decided to spend their Sunday morning running 42.2 kilometers through the streets of Ottawa in the cold and rain. This is a choice people make voluntarily.

Among them was Rory Linkletter, a man who has made running very fast his entire personality.

If you recall, Linkletter showed up to the starting line this year with one explicit goal: to win. He finished second last year, a placement that usually fuels the classic athletic narrative of "returning to claim the crown." Instead, Kenya’s Elvis Cheboi crossed the finish line in 2:09:22, presumably to ensure nobody could make any clever puns about Elvis leaving the building before the 2-hour-and-9-minute mark. Ethiopia’s Gizealew Ayana took second at 2:09:26.

According to the official standings, Linkletter completed the podium, finishing third in 2:09:43.

It is a very good time. It is a podium finish on home soil. It is also not first place.

En route to the finish line, Rory managed to keep his composure well enough to offer a mid-race salute to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was cheering from the sidelines. Because when you are running a 4:56 pace per mile in the freezing rain, that is apparently the ideal time for casual networking.

After the race, Linkletter told CTV News, “Back-to-back years on the podium. I’d love to win it for Canada one of these years, but I’ll just keep taking swings until it breaks my way.”

It’s a remarkably calm response for someone who just sprinted for two hours straight in the rain only to be beaten by twenty-one seconds.

Meanwhile, the women’s elite race was won by Sweden’s Abeba Aregawi, who ran a 2:23:12. She used to look at 1500-meter tracks before deciding she wanted to look at asphalt for fifteen times longer. It worked out for her. On the Canadian side of things, Élissa Legault took eighth at 2:29:12, and Natasha Wodak finished in 2:33:15, proving that running a marathon over the age of 40 is a thing you can do if you hate sitting down.

Also of note: Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe ran his own unofficial marathon before the main event started. He did it in the dark. He raised over $100,000 to fight youth homelessness, which is objectively excellent, though running in the pitch-black Ottawa morning still sounds like a mild form of psychological penance.

To recap: Linkletter wanted first. He got third. He ran a 2:09:43. Most of us spent that exact same timeframe trying to decide if we wanted to get out of bed to make coffee.

He’ll probably be back next year. The podium spots are comfortable, apparently.