Sioux Lookout runners finish Winnipeg half marathon

Windigo Education Authority’s education director recently completed the 9th Annual Winnipeg Police Service Half Marathon along with four other Anishinabe runners from the Sioux Lookout area.
“I’ve done triathalons and 10K runs, but this was a half marathon and it’s 21 kilometres — it was a very big challenge,” said Mary-Ann Ketchemonia, who is originally from Keeseekoose First Nation in Saskatchewan. “It was quite pleasant for a while, then it got progressively more difficult.”
Ketchemonia prepared for the half marathon, held May 5 near the Assiniboine River and Assiniboine Park, by doing a variety of training workouts.
“We walked probably one kilometre, then you run,” Ketchemonia said. “Some of us have walked on treadmills forever. Even though I trained year-round, it was still a challenge.”
Ketchemonia said the first five kilometres were “quite easy.”
“The first 10 kilometres was quite doable — it was not bad at all and I enjoyed it,” Ketchemonia said. “At about 15K my muscles were just a little tender, nothing to be too concerned about, but the last three kilometres I was so far into it that my feet were screaming.”
Ketchemonia even asked one of the police officers along the route to not let her give up before the finish line.
“For myself, it took over three hours,” Ketchemonia said. “I actually ran the last half kilometre, because you get your second wind and you get your third wind. Sometimes you don’t even think you can go on and then you just do it; somehow you just push away all this pain and you push away anything that you are feeling and you somehow get a second wind.”
Although Ketchemonia had pushed the pain away to finish the half marathon, she said the pain came back after she crossed the finish line.
“Almost instantly, the physical part was the pain came back but then it was like wow, ‘I did this,’” Ketchemonia said, noting she finished 2,698 out of 2,700 runners. “I finished the run.”
After the run, Ketchemonia and the other four women, Rita Campbell, from Mishkeegogamang, Myrna Quedent, from Lac Seul, June Trout, from Kitcheuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, and Jessica Trout, from Lac Seul, got together for a group photo with their medals.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to be connected with other Anishinabe-kwe,” Ketchemonia said. “We had that feeling of camaraderie.”
Ketchemonia said her muscles have loosened up over the last three days since the run.
“The first day all of us were phoning one another and asking how we were doing,” Ketchemonia said. “Somebody else had shin problems; (for me) it was my glutes and my quads.”
Ketchemonia usually bicycles about 60 kilometres a day during the summer to keep in shape, noting she had once weighed about 343 pounds before going onto an exercise program about seven to eight years ago.
“When I was that heavy, I went for a drive and I put my abusers from residential school in the truck seat beside me and I spoke to them and I said: ‘You’re not taking my life anymore,” Ketchemonia said. “And that day I went on my first walk. Since then, I’ve been at the gym for years now, every day. I don’t have to drag myself to the gym every day — it’s my lifestyle now, it’s part of who I am.”