Once Jacqui Pettersen got bitten by the marathon bug, getting faster was the only cure.
With virtually every race she shredded increments off her previous best time, but the big breakthrough came last year when she annihilated her PB by 20 minutes running through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.
If that wasn't inspiring enough for the 48-year-old from Prince George to keep up her training, her 3:08:55 time in April at the London Marathon certainly was. Now Pettersen has her sights trained on breaking the three-hour barrier when she returns to Germany for another crack at the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 29.
"My first marathon when I was 24 or 25 was 3:46, and up until Berlin last year they've all been in that range, give or take a few minutes," she said. "I'm excited about Berlin this year because that was my breakthrough marathon last year and I've gone on to improve my times and I'm hopeful I'll be able to do that again.
"I love beating my younger self."
Pettersen is a voracious reader and the College Heights Secondary School graduate had to develop that habit to help her through 18 years of post-secondary medical school studies to become a neurologist. She had a book, Hansons Marathon Method, sitting on her shelf for years but it required too much running, so she never followed it, until last year. She finally took the time to read it thoroughly and radically changed her approach to training and exercise physiology. She realized she wasn't running enough and that prompted a radical change. She started running as much as 130 kilometres each week - more than the 100 km per week the book recommended - and that paid off for her last year in Berlin.
"It's made all the difference, it's been a gamechanger," said Pettersen. "I followed it very closely except I added a few tweaks because I feel I need more long-distance runs than they require."
Her willingness to get up every morning at 5 a.m. and follow through with her long high-intensity training runs shed 10 pounds from her already-lean five-foot-two frame which has put her on the path for her first sub-three-hour race.
The London race on April 28th, her ninth marathon, on a chilly day with 20,000 runners, did not come without some intestinal discomfort for Pettersen. Twice she had to make pit stops along the way. But her fast time more than made up for that.
Pettersen has always liked running but was more into short distances until she saw the Victoria Marathon while she was a masters student at UVic. The race piqued her curiosity and in 1995 when she ran her first marathon and did it in 3:46. She didn't run the 42.2 km distance again until 2003, also in Victoria, and did one more the following year in Calgary with her husband Kevin. In that race, on a sweltering day they both hit the runners' wall and she swore she'd never put herself in that situation again. But in 2013 she returned to Victoria and set a PB and hasn't looked back since.
"I was enjoying running shorter distances and Kevin said to me, 'I think I'm going to run another marathon and before long I was also training for Victoria again," she said. "It felt good, it felt like I was starting to get the hang of running marathons. I qualified for Boston that year but I got injured so I couldn't do it."
She ran in New York the following year and her time was quick enough to get her to Boston. Running those big races proved addictive as her times continued to fall and that began her quest to complete her bucket list.
In mountaineering, scaling the highest peaks of the seven continents is the ultimate goal. In the marathon world, the dream of most runners is to complete the big six - Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin and Tokyo. Pettersen already has five of them under her belt and on March 1st, 2020 she plans to complete the list when she races the Tokyo Marathon. She found out last week she's locked up a Run as One start position in the semi-elite category for the Tokyo race.
"I never thought that would ever be possible, I've always said marathons are not my thing, I'm a sprinter, so it is kind of shocking how I've improved," Pettersen said. "It just goes to show that with the right training program and motivation and dedication I think anybody who puts their mind to it can do this."
As a cognitive neurologist, Pettersen treats patients suffering from memory loss or Parkinson's disease. Eighty per cent of her work involves teaching medical students as a UBC instructor and conducting research.
Every marathon is a learning process for Pettersen and her Berlin experience last year was like no other. She was among 40,000 runners and hoofing it through the narrow streets of the city took some getting used to and there were times she felt like a lemming heading uncontrollably over a cliff, knowing one misstep could lead to a disastrous fall. Runner traffic was especially dense around the aid stations, where she had to be especially careful not to run into other athletes on the course.
In London, her 3:19 qualifying time put her in an advanced starting row with much less traffic and she's hoping that will also be the case when she returns to the Berlin route.
"London was much less crowded and that allowed me to run faster," she said. "I'm encouraged by my London results because despite stopping twice I was still able to achieve the time I did and I'm training harder since then."
Pettersen can take comfort in the fact her husband and their two sons, 11-year-old Kai and eight-year-old Max, will be there for moral support, as will a friend from Berlin who has run the race there for 15 years. Anything that reduces mental stress will help overcome the physical demands of racing that distance.
This is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and for Pettersen that added to the lure of coming back for this year's race. Halfway through her race last year in Berlin, Pettersen heard an announcement that Kenyan runner Eliude Kipchoge set a new world record time of 2:01:39 while winning the men's race.
"That gave me a little extra motivation and my last 10K were my fastest," she said.
Pettersen is already making plans for Japan in March and her rising status as an elite age group runner has opened the door for her to race in the age group world championship in London, April 26, 2020. She's ranked 41st in the world in her 45-49-year-old age group to qualify for the world event.
She's also making plans to race in Victoria again.
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