T&T's lead­ing dis­tance run­ner Tonya Nero crossed the line in 19th place in the women's cat­e­go­ry at the Sco­tia­bank Toron­to Wa­ter­front Marathon in Cana­da, yes­ter­day.

She fin­ished in two hours, 54 min­utes and 56 sec­onds in an event that had some 25,000 ath­letes from over 60 coun­tries par­tic­i­pate.

"For the first time in my life I ran an en­tire marathon at a steady pace.I'm grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to race and grate­ful that all went well. Thanks to all who made it pos­si­ble and thank God for the won­der­ful gift of run­ning," said Nero in a Face­book post fol­low­ing the race.

With tem­per­a­tures on­ly slight­ly above freez­ing and a pesky wind blow­ing from the north­west, Ben­son Kipru­to of Kenya and Mi­mi Belete of Bahrain in quick times.

Kipru­to, who was on pace to bet­ter the event record of 2:06:52 two-thirds of the way through, made a suc­cess­ful late-race break­away to win in 2:07:24.

He de­feat­ed a host of world lead­ing run­ners in­clud­ing 2012 Olympic marathon cham­pi­on Stephen Kipro­tich and two-time cham­pi­on Phile­mon Rono to claim the ti­tle. The 27-year-old de­feat­ed Tan­zan­ian Au­gus­tine Sulle fol­lowed by Kenyan Fe­lix kandie and Kipro­tich and Rono were in po­si­tions 7 the 9th re­soce­tive­ly tim­ing 2:11.06. and 2:13.3

Belete won an in­tense, late-race bat­tle with de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Mar­ta Megra of Ethiopia, and broke the event record of 2:22:43 with her 2:22:29 clock­ing. Third was Ruth Chebitok of Kenya in 2:23:29.

It was Nero's sec­ond ma­jor race for the month af­ter fin­ish­ing 21st in the women’s race at the in­au­gur­al Com­mon­wealth Half Marathon Cham­pi­onships in Cardiff, Wales, on Oc­to­ber 7. She com­plet­ed the 13.1-mile course in 1:17.06.