Leanne Klassen is a 31-year-old former all-Canadian college basketball player. After graduating from SAIT in 2008, she started teaching fitness classes at GoodLife Fitness to keep active. After the birth of her 2nd child in 2016, Leanne turned to running to get back into shape. She had run a few recreational half marathons, but never thought she could run more than 21.1km until some friends talked her into running 30km of the 150km relay at the 2017 Calgary Marathon. Proving herself wrong, she decided to run her first marathon in Edmonton in August 2017 with a goal of qualifying for Boston, which she did in a time of 3:18:09.
Running in the worst conditions in Boston Marathon history, Leanne ran a 5-minute PB of 3:13:19. She then ran the 2018 Calgary Marathon and ran 3:08:49, which was good for 6th overall.
With her competitive juices flowing again, Leanne started working with her first-ever running coach, Lorie Alexander. Under Lorie’s tutelage, she made several changes to her training regimen, and the results have been dramatic. She won the Edmonton Marathon at 3:00:03 and then closed her 2018 race season by running 2:54:18 in Montreal in October 2018.
Leanne wouldn’t let a cold Calgary winter get in the way of her training and started 2019 with a 10-minute PB at the 2019 Mesa-PHX Marathon with a 4th place finish in 2:44:08. Leanne is now training for what will hopefully be another new PB at the 2019 Calgary Marathon!
