Edmonton woman brings home elite marathon medal
An Edmonton woman has returned home after achieving a long-distance dream almost a decade in the making.
Jessica Khubyar-Ebert recently finished the Tokyo Marathon and earned marathon running’s greatest prize: The Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Medal.
The award is given to runners who have six world marathon majors, and Khubyar-Ebert has been chasing the medal for nearly 10 years.
In 2011, she began running half-marathons. She said she was inspired to take the next steps after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
“So next year, 2014, I went out and ran my first marathon. Thought I could run it like a half marathon – apparently you need to train for these things,” Khubyar-Ebert said.
Underestimating how difficult the 42-kilometre race would be, Khubyar-Ebert said her first two full marathon efforts fell short.
She almost gave up. But, with the help of a six-week training program she set a personal record at the Okanagan Marathon later that year.
“It wasn’t a qualifying time, but it reignited my desire, my drive,” Khubyar-Ebert said.
In 2015, she qualified for the Boston Marathon. It was during that trip that she learned about the Six Star Medal and started on her journey toward earning one.
After Boston, she headed to Berlin, Chicago, New York City and London.
Her last stop on her Six Star journey was Tokyo. It’s one of the hardest marathons to get into, with hundreds of thousands of applicants vying for one of just under 40,000 spots.
Khubyar-Ebert had been applying for years and she was shocked to see her name finally drawn in October.
“It’s like winning the lottery but costing you a whole lot of more money,” she said. “Next year would have been better, we’d already had vacations and whatnot booked for this year, but just kind of had to do it and finish the majors journey.”
Khubyar-Ebert admits she didn’t train as hard for Tokyo as she had for other races, but she was confident in herself and her ability to persevere.
“I knew I could do the distance,” she added. “It wasn’t gonna be pretty, it wasn’t going to be fast.
“There was lots of tears … It was just something else.”
After crossing the finish line Sunday, March 2, Khubyar-Ebert was awarded her Six Star medal.
“I brought all my medals, because I wanted to put the family together,” she said. “Reunite them all as they should be.”
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nav Sangha
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