Ottawa – If you take a look at the Canadian record books in men’s distance running, you’re likely to spot Cameron Levins’ name just a few times. And by just a few, we mean a lot. He currently owns the Canadian record for the 15km, 20km, half marathon, and marathon distances and has, at various points in his career, also held the 10km, indoor 5000m, and outdoor 10,000m records.
Paris 2024 will mark Levins’ third Olympic Games, albeit his second as a marathoner. He competed on the track in the 5000m and 10,000m at London 2012. After a difficult ankle injury ruled out Rio 2016, Levins set his sights on the longest of Olympic running races–and Canadian marathoning has never been the same since.
In his very first marathon in October 2018, Levins took down Jerome Drayton’s Canadian record of 2:10:09, which had stood for 43 years, when he completed the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in2:09:25. Since then Levins has lowered his own record twice more, once at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, running 2:07:09 to finish fourth, and then again at the Tokyo Marathon in March 2023, where he ran 2:05:36.
Heading into Paris 2024, Olympic.ca chatted with Levins about the mental and physical battle that is the marathon, and his legacy in Canadian distance running.
This interview conducted in December 2023 has been edited for length and clarity.
O.ca What would you say is the best thing about the marathon and what’s the hardest thing about the marathon?
CL: The best thing is just how rewarding it is of the work you put in. I think it really gives you a lot of opportunity to improve just based on the amount of effort you’re willing to put in. That’s not to say that I’m not a talented athlete, but I think there’s a lot of gains you can make just from hard work alongside that. I’ve basically improved four minutes almost exclusively off that from my 2:09:25 to where I am now.
The hardest thing is when the race goes badly and it’s a long time to struggle to finish the race, if you are deciding to do that. In track races, if something goes bad or you have a tough race, you know, often it’s just a couple of laps or even if it’s a 10km, 12 laps is a long time, but it’s still nothing compared to another hour, hour and a half that can happen with the marathon and the last 10-12 kms are tough no matter what.
But there’s definitely a difference between feeling tired like that and just continuing to move as you’ve trained your body to do so many times beforehand.