06/11/2026
Here's our next runner profile - on married couple Patrice and Michel Turmel.
When Patrice attends her pickleball or line-dancing classes, the other attendees will say something like “Oh, here comes our marathoner”. And then Patrice will respond with “I’ve never run a marathon in my life!” Never mind that she’s done 61km at the Canada Goose Ultra in 2024. Michel is similarly humble – “Oh, I’ve just run a few marathons”. He’s run four, plus he’ll admit to running 44 km at the 2020 Virtual Medoc run. These two – so humble, so helpful, such an integral part of our running community - are the consummate builders – building a life together, building community, and building healthy, happy children that grow into healthy, happy adults. And running has been an accidental and fortunate part of that.
Although they now have very similar values, they grew up with very different lifestyles. Patrice’s childhood in a French-speaking family in Regina, was highly organized. As a child, she did softball, swimming, gymnastics, as well as non-athletic pursuits like piano, and clarinet. In contrast, Michel’s family bought a cottage by the Montmorency falls just outside Quebec City when he was five, and he grew up finding his own fun. He wandered the woods and played hockey on a neighbour’s home rink; pickup shinny; and cross-country and downhill skied. We could call this “the Patrice path” vs “the Michel path”.
When it came to their three children – Céline, Nicole, and Marc – who are now grown up, their childhoods followed “the Patrice path” (but a less intense Patrice path!) Each kid had to do swimming, piano, and a sport of their choice. The kids tried a lot of different sports – basketball, hockey, figure skating, but the one that stuck was running. Céline ran in high school. Nicole and Marc started before high school, and joined the Excel Athletica track club. As the name suggests, they excelled. Both runners earned provincial podium finishes at various distances, and Marc went on to run track at the U of Regina. Michel and Patrice delighted in traveling to Victoria, Kingston, and Quebec City to watch him run at the National Cross Country championships. More importantly, running is a part of each now-adult’s life. Céline runs local distance events, and as a new Mom, is now doing Hyrox. Nicole has taken up triathlon in Ottawa; and Marc runs and is a committed jujitsu player.
For Michel and Patrice, however, their entry into an adult sports world was more ‘the Michel childhood path”. They participated in broomball, pickleball, ballroom dancing, cross-country skiing, and went to Fieldhouse classes. But watching the kids blossom with the track club motivated Michel to start running. While volunteering at a running event that Marc was doing, Michel saw a 70-year old man running fast, and thought, “If he could do that, why not me?” At first, Michel ran with Marc. Of course you know that Michel was much slower than his speedster son, so Marc would run out a ways, and back to Michel. He’d run in a circle around Michel. Then he’d ask, “Are you going to have a heart attack, Dad?” Patrice started her running journey later, owing to a serious battle with the rare condition of Vasculitis GPA. She lost a lot of strength; was down to 95 pounds; was on chemotherapy drugs, lost hearing in one ear; but recovered very well. These days, the only signal that she once had a serious health condition is when she asks her running partners to run on her left side, so she can hear the conversation. Both daughters ran with Patrice, and in 2016, Marc, Patrice, and Céline ran the Police half-marathon as a relay team. Michel and Patrice started entering formal races in 2014 when they watched Celine run the QCM half-marathon, and got caught up in the excitement. Michel decided then he was going to train and run the event in the next year. So he did, and then advanced to the marathon two years later at age 60, helped by Ashley King at the Running Room.
Michel and Patrice are ubiquitous on the Regina running scene. They’re perhaps our most committed volunteers – Michel has been the MM Treasurer and Secretary for a total of six years. He’s done the shopping for groceries for our club barbecue, flipping the burgers, setting up tents; and Patrice is an equally active volunteer for both Run Regina and Marathon Matters. You’ll see them both running and volunteering at Park Run. Patrice has done 180 Park Runs, and her goal is to hit the 250 milestone, as well as 25 volunteering occasions! You’ll often see them running and chatting with their many running friends. Their style of running is a little different from that of son Marc. Marc says, “If you can have a conversation while running, you’re not running hard enough!” Thank goodness they pay no attention to this rule, because their running buddies will attest that they have the best running conversations.
Twenty years after they encouraged their kids to start running, Patrice and Michel acknowledge that the sport instilled in the kids everything they had hoped. They made friends, developed positive attitudes and healthy habits. And as they counseled the kids – you don’t need to be the best at it, you just need to be the best you can be; have fun; and develop many good friendships – they took their own advice, and built themselves along the way. They hope that, some day, they will have three generations participating in a running event!
