Take two

MONTREAL – After completing the Chicago Marathon five years ago, Julie Petry wasn’t planning on signing up for another long-distance running event again.

While Petry, the wife of Canadiens defenseman Jeff Petry, was one of 35,670 participants to actually cross the finish line on October 9, 2011 following the 26.2 mile trek around the Windy City, the Houston native suffered a small setback along the way, injuring her leg. That ultimately cost her valuable time, and led to a disappointing finish given all the months of hard work she’d put in to prepare for the grueling road race.

As a multi-sport athlete who’d been a four-year letterwinner in field hockey, lacrosse and basketball in high school in Southeast Texas, before moving on to play field hockey at Michigan State University, it was a particularly tough pill to swallow.

That’s all behind Petry now, though, and she’s currently training to give running another go. This time around, the 27-year-old is gearing up to run the Oasis Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon in Montreal on September 25 – and she won’t be doing it alone.

In conjunction with a program she championed called Extra Mile Allies, Petry and 15 other women will all be pounding the pavement in two months’ time to raise funds for the Montreal Canadiens Children’s Foundation and the Julie and Jeff Petry Foundation – both of which support underprivileged kids. In this case, the funds allocated to the JPFoundation will go to S.A.Y. Play Center in Detroit, a first-class multipurpose facility that serves the academic, social and physical fitness needs of youngsters in the area.

Those ladies taking on the 13.1 mile challenge alongside Petry include fellow Canadiens players’ wives Angela Price, Katia Pacioretty, Alyssa Flynn and Stefani Pateryn, spouses and girlfriends of players from several other NHL teams, and Canadiens staffers, too.

“I still work out pretty regularly, and one day months back I was on the treadmill and I was thinking that I needed to commit to something to really challenge myself again after having a baby. I’d always been training and competing for something my whole life. I thought about a half marathon, and the wheels just started turning from there,” said Petry, who gave birth to the couple’s first child, Boyd Jackson, on August 8, 2015 in Michigan. “It was during the time where I was trying to get back to normal, back into shape after having Boyd. I thought about doing something that could benefit my own personal health, but also help others by giving back. I wanted to see if any other girls were interested in doing it with me, and the response was really great. So, we created the team, Extra Mile Allies, and everyone committed to raising $1,000 each for charity before the race.”

With the help of Canadiens strength and conditioning coach, Pierre Allard, Petry and her teammates were provided with a training program that began back on June 6. The program called for runs three times a week – on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday – with the mileage rising incrementally as time went on. The fourth week of every month, however, would generally be a recovery week and …

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