Photography by Todd Duncan
Clothing provided by New Balance

Suzanne Evans is on the verge of joining the ranks of Canada's top women runners.

Some runners burst on the scene, establishing dominance in the public mind with every step in a race, every tape-breaking photo. Other runners develop in the public's consciousness so gradually that, by the time they are well known, it's as though they've always been there. Suzanne Evans of New Westminster, British Columbia, is somewhere in the middle. To those paying attention in the last couple of years, it feels like Evans, thirty-five, emerged from out of nowhere, but her quiet arrival as one of western Canada's top female marathon runners has come without the usual over-the-top buzz and fanfare. Perhaps that's because Evans is modest about her accomplishments and cautious in her approach to her athletic career.

Evans's approach to racing, training, nutrition, and competition are surprisingly relaxed. "It's never been my top priority," says Evans. "At this point, it's a complement to the rest of my life, running is." And yet Evans was the first-place woman in the Royal Victoria Marathon for the last three years in a row, gradually improving her time from 2:50:23 in 2005 to 2:45:38 in 2007. She won the women's first-place title in the thirty to thirty-four age group category in the Vancouver International Marathon in 2005 (top Canadian woman) and 2006, and the half-marathon at Vancouver International in 2007 in 1:18:31. She won the women's title in the Run the Ridge ten-kilometre race in 36:11 in 2007; the 2006 Sandcastle City Classic ten-kilometre in 36:07; and the eight-kilometre 2006 Steveston Icebreaker in 28:40.

Although Evans has focused on the marathon, she has recorded solid victories in road and trail races at ultra distances ranging from fifty to one hundred kilometres. She took first place among the women four years in a row at the Diez Vista (fifty kilometres), improving on her time each year from 5:22 in 2004 to 4:43 in 2007. She won the 2005 Montrail (BC) Ultra Trail Running Series, and the Knee Knackering North Shore Trail Run (the "Knee Knackers") for the last three years in a row, establishing the women's course record in 2006 in a time of 5:18.

With an impressive string of recent first-place wins, Evans is still basically a local runner entering local races. "I choose whatever is local because I'm a stay-at-home mom on a tight budget, and so . . . I just run whatever is offered basically in Vancouver and in the Lower Mainland." Evans travelled for the first time last year outside British Columbia to compete in the 2007 ING Ottawa Marathon, where she earned fifth place among the woman and second place among Canadians in a time of 2:46:20. At press time, Evans was looking forward to accepting the race director's invitiation to participate in the 2008 ING Ottawa Marathon again this year.

Evans admits that her approach to training is unscientific. "I'm just winging it," she says. Ideally, Evans would plan her training and her race schedule more methodically. As the marathon distance is her main focus, she would enter certain ten-kilometre events systematically as a tune-up race at just the point in her training to achieve better results for a planned marathon. "Absolutely, if I were going about it correctly, I would be choosing races to complement that. At this point, I don't. I just wing it all," she says.

Even her participation in the ING Ottawa Marathon last year was almost accidental, resulting from a family visit—her sister lives in Ottawa—and enough airline points to travel free.

Still, Evans is not without ambition. "For years I was second and second and second, and I thought, ‘One day, I just want to be first!' and then it started happening." She doesn't know how to account for the shift from second- to first-place ranking within the last couple of years. "I've always been competitive, for sure. The taste of victory—you get a little taste, you want more and more and more, I suppose."

Evans joined teammates Nicole Stevenson of Toronto, Ontario; Peter Vail, a Canadian currently living in Colorado; and Todd Howard of Victoria to compete in the International Team Challenge at the AT&T Austin Marathon in February 2008. Canada faced off against the United States, Great Britain, Kenya, and Malawi. The Canadians finished third overall behind the United States and Kenya. Evans finished in 2:46:16, fourth among the women and first in her age group behind third-place teammate Stevenson, who also placed first in her age group (thirty to thirty-four).

Evans described the course as very hilly with short steep hills, putting Victoria to shame. The weather was perfect, and she would do it again "in a heartbeat."

Evans was surprised that she was chosen for the team but conceded that the pool of fast female runners in Canada is fairly small. While she does not count herself among women runners of the first tier—she describes teammate Nicole Stevenson as "smoking fast"—she understands that she isn't far behind.

Evans speculates that joining the Phoenix Running Club of Coquitlam, British Columbia, about five years ago was an important step in her career. A club with runners of all ages and abilities, it put her close to like-minded people, some of whom were former and current provincial and national record holders. Although Evans no longer trains with the club as frequently as she once did—their training schedule and hers are no longer compatible—she still runs with the club every Saturday morning and values her continued association with its members.

At thirty-five, Evans feels the pressure to decide what she will do with the remainder of her career in the open category. "I'm sitting uneasily at the point where I have to decide: do I keep coasting along like this, or do I give it one hundred per cent?" Her current personal best, just above a 2:45, is a psychological threshold for women marathoners. Breaking through that time barrier may open the way to the highest levels of elite competition. Evans looks forward to seeing how good she can become, but she doesn't have much time to decide. Her running friends in their mid-forties have told her that she only has a couple of years, "and then it's downhill from there," she says, laughing.

"Maybe this is it. I don't know."