Februrary 8, 2009
Ottawa Citizen
Mark Sutcliffe

Linda Rainville Wagar knows that sometimes people roll their eyes when she comes up with a new idea.

"Sometimes I'm way out there," she says. "Sometimes people have said, 'Oh no, what's she up to now? What crazy idea does she have now?' " But some of Wagar's crazy ideas have worked out very well indeed. Like the one about running a marathon. Or the one that helped a Canadian athlete become an Olympic medallist.

Wagar admits she is a bit of a dreamer.

"Totally," she says.

But without her dreams, she wouldn't have run the New York City Marathon in 2002 or published her first book just over a year ago.

Wagar never thought she could run a marathon. And then she heard Running Room founder John Stanton describing the New York City Marathon and made her mind up, on the spot, to do it the following year.

"For me, it was life changing," she says of deciding to run New York. "If I could do that, I could do anything." And she did it. And it had a profound impact on her.

"That belief in myself that you can do anything, I didn't get that until after I ran a marathon," she says. "I didn't get that until my 40s.

"The word empowering is probably overused, but it's true. It's very empowering" Once she had that feeling, it was on to the next dream. Wagar decide to start collecting first-person accounts of marathons and publish them in a book. She launched a website and put the word out and runners started posting their stories.

In November 2007, Wagar published Canadian Marathon Stories, featuring more than 30 reports from runners of all ages and abilities, including Ottawa writers Louise Rachlis and Richard Bercuson. After failing to find a publisher, Wagar financed the printing herself.

How much did she have to put in? "I won't even go there," she says. "It's not about the money, it's about inspiring others." It's about more than that. With very little marketing beyond Wagar's own relentless efforts to spread the word, the book has sold 1,300 copies. And more importantly, it's raised more than $13,000 for Canadian Athletes Now, the fund that supports the training of Olympic-calibre athletes.

In August, Wagar watched as Priscilla Lopes-Schliep ran to a bronze medal in the hurdles at the Beijing games. Like other Canadians, she cheered the result. But it wasn't until a few weeks later that she made the connection. Lopes-Schliep was one of the athletes that had received funding directly from the proceeds of her book.

"When she won bronze, I didn't realize that Priscilla was the athlete I had sponsored," says Wagar. "I didn't realize until two weeks later when I saw the letter (from Canadian Athletes Now) on my refrigerator door. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, that's the same woman.' " A total of $3,000 from Wagar's book went to Lopes-Schliep during her training for the Olympics. Last fall, Wagar met the Olympian at a Canadian Athletes Now event in Ottawa.

"That was awesome," she says. "I was awestruck. Here's a bronze medallist and I helped her a little bit. But it's beyond that. All the people who bought the book helped her.

"To see the concrete result within a year, it made me realize that I didn't have to sell another book. That's what it was all about." But Wagar wants to sell the rest of her books and raise more money. And she hopes to find a publisher for the second edition of the book, with a new collection of stories.

Meanwhile, she's run four more marathons since New York, plus an ultramarathon of 53 kilometres. She's training right now for her sixth marathon, which she plans to run in May in her hometown of Sudbury, Ont.

But the book means more to her than the running.

"Every once in a while I pick it up and think, 'You did good Linda,' " she says. "The running is just something I do, not terribly well, but I do. But my dream was to hold in my hands a book.

"It's huge. If you follow your dreams, you can't go wrong. And you can't put a price tag on that either." And the dreams keep coming.

"Do you want to hear my latest idea?" asks Wagar. "It's a button that says, 'No whining.' And it's got my website around it.

"What do you think?" I think being a dreamer is a good thing.

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Linda Rainville Wagar's 138-page colour book retails for $20. It’s available from Running Room stores, and online at www.canadianmarathonstories.ca.  Proceeds from its sale will go to the Canadian Athletes Now Fund for Canadian athletes in training.