AUCs National Champion:

During the day, Gédéon is a parttime AUC student, in his second year of the community college accounting program.The early mornings, though, you will find him running. Gédéon is the premiere distance runner in Haiti. His personal best in the halfmarathon is 1hour and 6 minutes and personal best in the full 26 mile marathon is 2 hours and 29 minutes.

Sunday, May 1st, AUC student Valnet Gédéon was able to achieve one of his life-long dreams of running in the Vancouver International Marathon with the goal of raising money for AUC. He finished 10th out of nearly 5,000 marathon runners. Which was quite a feat when one considers that Adidas, sponsored 5 Olympic calibre runners from Kenya and Ethiopia. Gedeon kept pace with the lead group of 6 for nearly 10 kms. At the half way point (21.1 km or 13.2 miles) he was still running 1 hour and 13 minutes. This would have brought him in at 2 hours 26 minutes (3 minutes ahead of his goal time and 5th place).However, at about the 22-23 km mark, his left knee began to bother him. The pain quickly became excruciating and he was simply unable to generate the power required to keep his pace. This resulted in a disappointing second half for him and an overall finish time of 2;44. Gedeon’s response was typically Haitian “I asked God to help me finish in the top ten, and He found a way to answer my prayer”. A lesson in perspective from a man we can learn from. Through his perserverance Gédéon was able to raise nearly $7500 for AUC. Thanks to everyone who helped make our dreams come true.