The Guelph Victors
The Guelph Victors is an adult running club (18+) for runners looking to improve their fitness by participating in group workouts with a diverse community of runners. We offer group training runs in Guelph 2-3 times per week, depending on the season: Indoor track in winter, Outdoor track in spring, summer, and fall, Tuesday tempo runs in fall and winter, Sunday long runs, and occasional time trials to test your fitness. Signing up for a membership gets you access to all of the above activities for the calendar year! You’re welcome to join us for a workout or two before becoming an official member. Hope to see you out there!
Vic Matthews
The Guelph Victors running club is named after a coach who led us in the early days: Victor Matthews. We still carry his spirit of striving for improvement, and inclusiveness towards all runners. Vic was a long-time University of Guelph running coach (and U of G classics professor), but he also worked with local runners who wanted to get faster. He had an incredible gift for knowing each athlete’s potential (even when they didn’t fully understand it themselves), and remembering by heart their various race times and personal bests! It was a shock to everyone when Vic died suddenly in 2004, just shy of retirement; shortly thereafter, we named the club after him.
John Marsden
The Victors were coordinated and coached from 2004 to 2016 by John Marsden, a talented local runner and aficionado of good things (coffee, wine, bread …). A protegé of Vic Matthews, he picked up the pieces after Vic’s sudden death and grew the club into an organization of close to 100 active member/runners with multiple weekly workouts. John still directs the Guelph series of road races, and he also operates Speed River Timing. It has expertise in state-of-the-art timing for all different types of athletic events.
We’re indebted to both Victor and John for where the club is today!
today
The Guelph Victors club is now directed by a Leadership Committee of runner/members, including:
- Karl Cottenie
- Holly Dolan
- Lee Frank
- Colin Hardy
- Natalie Intven
- Lorraine Nelson
- Lina Urbisci
The club is also closely connected to the Running Works store in Guelph. Many of our group runs begin at the store, Victors runners often lead running clinics there, and graduates of the clinics sometimes become Victors!