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Former NHLer Geoff Courtnall's new path leads to Boston Marathon

Jack Knox, Victoria Times Colonist, April 10, 2012

Sometimes, when runners power past, you wonder if they're trying to escape life or embrace it.

Geoff Courtnall doesn't run from much. His work ethic and swing-a-hammer-by-day, swing-a-stick-by-night teenage years are legendary. So, now, is his unflinching honesty about topics many would avoid: the mental illness that took his father's life, the drinking that masked his own struggles with darkness.

When the 49-year-old begins next Monday's Boston Marathon, it will be about pursuing a goal, not fleeing a past.

He has dreamed of running it since playing for the Boston Bruins in the mid1980s. The team massage therapist was Jock Semple, who was also an organizer of the world's most famous long-distance event. (Semple is the guy famously photographed in 1967 trying to tackle Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the race.) Semple would disparage the hockey players: "You guys aren't in shape until you've run a marathon."

Courtnall, whose 17-year NHL career ended at age 37, got it in his head that he would run Boston before his 50th birthday.

The idea firmed up when he saw Cam Neely, a former Bruins teammate and fellow Vancouver Island native, at the 2010 Winter Olympics. "I told him, 'Next year I'm going to run the marathon in Boston to raise money for the Cam Neely Foundation.' " Neely founded the cancer charity in 1995 in memory of his parents.

As it turned out, Courtnall got hurt and couldn't run Boston in 2011 – meaning April 16 will be his last chance to do so before turning 50 in August.

"I've been training for a year but got injured twice, so I didn't know if I could make it," he said Monday. He finished the Victoria marathon – his fourth 42-kilometre race – in a blistering 2: 58 last October, but then got sidelined for six weeks by a deep calf pull in November. "It has been quite the commitment."

He'll have his own cheering section Monday, being accompanied on the trip by son Adam. They'll meet up with his other son, Justin, who plays hockey for Boston University.

Pushing Courtnall along is the promise of money for charity – much of it his own. He'll donate $1,000 for every minute under 3: 10 that he runs. Friends have pledged to match the sum. "It's pretty motivating."

The money will be split between the Neely Foundation and the Courtnall Celebrity Classic Society, established by Geoff and his brothers Russ and Bruce in 2003. So far the latter organization has pumped more than $3 million directly into Victoria mental health initiatives, including the Archie Courtnall Centre, the emergency psychiatric-care facility at Royal Jubilee Hospital.

Archie was a strong, vital man whose struggle with depression ended in suicide in 1975, just two weeks before Geoff's 13th birthday. Geoff grew up fast. By age 18 he was running several businesses – building fences and patios, hauling goods – while also playing for the Victoria Cougars.

"I learned lots about working hard when I was young."

He credits his father for that – and for planting the seed that has seen him grow into something of an activist. "It was probably from my dad and the way I was raised." In hockey, they say that having a tough guy on the team makes the others skate a little taller; as an advocate for those with mental illness, Courtnall has had that effect off the ice, too.

He is seen as a hardnosed man with the courage to be open about his challenges. "I think it's life. We all have issues." He told the Times Colonist's Lindsay Kines last year that it was his friend Neely, at the Vancouver Olympics, who expressed worry about his drinking.

It was shortly after the Games, while in the Seattle airport en route to a gold-mining venture in Peru, that he grabbed a copy of Christian author Joel Osteen's Becoming A Better You. His faith has been renewed. "It has been life-altering for me."

So has running. "It gives me lots of time to think about things in my life." Beats waking up with a hangover, too, he adds.

"Sports has always given me a release," he says. Hockey was all about chasing goals. "Running is no different."

For more information, go to courtnallclassic.org.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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