When Anthony Antaya broke the tape over 42.2km at this spring’s Saskatchewan Marathon, he capped off an impressive streak: He’d won all four race weekend distances in four consecutive years. In each instance, it was his first time racing the distance on the road.
Antaya, who is going into his fourth year of medical school at University of Saskatchewan this fall, began his streak in 2022 when he won the Sask. Marathon 5km in a time of 15 minutes, 31 seconds.
“Then, the next year, I entered the 10k because why not try it out? And from there I did the half, then the marathon,” Antaya says. “It’s been a lot of fun trying out different distances on the road. I especially enjoyed the half marathon last year — that was a great time. The half is a good balance; the marathon is just so long.”
Antaya, now 25 years old, had an active childhood growing up in Prince Albert. He played hockey and soccer and discovered running in fifth grade when he joined his school’s cross country team. Antaya ran school track and cross country for the rest of grade school and eventually joined the PA Athletics track club. At the time, Antaya assumed his competitive running career would come to an end when he graduated from Grade 12, but his mindset shifted when his older sister started training and racing with the U of S Huskies cross country team.
“Hearing about the experience she was having with the team — there was a very welcoming, competitive environment; a lot of people with like-minded goals who were working towards something as a team — that really sounded like something I wanted to have for myself,” Antaya says.
A knee injury prevented Antaya from trying out for varsity cross country when he moved to Saskatoon in 2018 to begin his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the U of S, but he was still able to train with the Huskies as a freshman and he made the varsity team the following year.
The transition to university competition wasn’t easy; as Antaya’s mileage increased he struggled with injuries including runner’s knee, IT band syndrome and patellar tendonitis. Though they cost him opportunities to compete (between injuries and COVID-19, Antaya has only used four of his five years of U Sports eligibility since 2018), Antaya says dealing with injuries helped him develop a healthier relationship with running.
“Early on I had a more competitive mindset — I was more focused on winning at all costs,” he says. “Injuries early in a career can be a big setback if you haven’t found a love for the sport and an approach where you just enjoy running for the intrinsic pleasure of it. Then, when you have an injury, it’s like: OK, how am I ever going to get back?
“But when you have more of a love for the sport and a love for a team, it’s easier to take hurdles like an injury in stride and say: OK, what do I need to do to get better so I can help the team and get back to the sport I love? Once I started to learn that approach was better for me long term, it really helped my motivation.”
In 2022, Antaya was hoping to run the 5,000m at the Canada Summer Games as part of Team Saskatchewan and signed up for the Sask. Marathon 5km to get more familiar with the distance. So began his winning streak (he also went on to make Team Saskatchewan and run the 5,000m at the Canada Summer Games, where he finished 17th in a time of 15 minutes, 28 seconds).
“It was a great race and the Sask Marathon was a lot of fun. I was like: I’m going to race again next year,” Antaya recalls.
The next spring, Antaya won the 10km in a time of 32 minutes flat. A year later he won the half marathon, crossing the finish line in one hour, 10 minutes, 26 seconds.
Transitioning to the marathon after that was an adjustment, Antaya admits. “I’d never run hardly beyond a half marathon prior to my build up for this marathon,” he says. Still, he wanted to tackle the distance because he knew his life as a medical student and soon-to-be resident would only get busier and he didn’t know when he’d have time again to train for such a race. He continued doing workouts with the Huskies track team throughout the winter and, as spring arrived, began doing longer tempo runs and practicing fuelling while moving. Mostly, he tried to train smart.
“I didn’t want to have any injury before the marathon — I wanted to stay healthy,” he says. “That was a big priority, just listening to my body and if I needed an extra day off, then I took it and didn’t worry too much.”
After having won three races at the Sask. Marathon weekend in the last three years, Antaya’s friends told him he needed to go for the win in the marathon. But 42.2km was such a different beast compared to anything Antaya had tackled before that he focused instead on simply running his best race. It was enough for him to cross the finish line in two hours, 33 minutes and 59 seconds — more than three minutes ahead of the second-place finisher.
“After the race, I pretty much couldn’t walk hardly for a good while,” Antaya recalls. “Luckily my parents were there. They were really supportive and helped me get to the massage tent as soon as possible to get those muscles worked out.”
As for what’s next? Antaya says his trend of doubling his race distance each spring has come to an end.
“My most immediate running plans that I’m looking forward to are doing my last year (of U Sports eligibility) with the cross-country team this fall with the Huskies, especially after I was part of the team that took bronze in the 2024 Canada West Cross Country Championships. That was an unforgettable experience,” he says.
“I don’t see any ultramarathons anywhere in the near future.”
