Some of you may have heard that Canadian marathoner, Lannie Marchant, may not be part of Canada’s Olympic team in Brazil later this summer.

This isn’t the first time the athlete has had trouble meeting Athletics Canada’s bar. According to this article:

Four years ago, the runner from London, Ont., had met the Olympic standard with a strong run in Rotterdam. Her time of two hours 31 minutes 51 seconds, however, fell short of the much tougher criteria set by Athletics Canada (2:29.55). She appealed but lost and didn’t go to the London Games.

And according to this opinion piece, Marchant has excelled since then, not only meeting Athletics Canada’s tougher criteria, but also becoming a role model for other runners:

Marchant’s career has come a long way since then. In 2013, she broke Ruegger’s 29-year-old Canadian record, running 2:28.00. The next morning, Marchant was on the cover of every newspaper in the country. Since then, she’s represented Canada at the world championships, won a Pan Am Games medal and qualified for Rio in both the marathon and the 10,000 metres.

Marchant has also become a transcendent figure in running in this country. She’s talked candidly about body image and is a role model for runners of all ages. At the national cross-country championships last November, high school kids lined up to take selfies with her. And so did their parents.

Marchant is smart and accessible, both as a relatable figure that stands alongside recreational runners at local road races and as an athlete with social media savvy, promoting running beyond the diehard track fans.

The trouble is, despite being a strong contender in a more limited sphere, Marchant isn’t likely to reach the podium at the Olympics.

Canada’s “Own the Podium” organization focuses on getting Canadian athletes to the podium. For the summer 2016 games, Own the Podium aims to get Canada into the top 12 medal count. For the summer paralympic games, OTP’s goal is for Canada to place in the top 12 in the gold medal count.

Marchant is already going to be in Rio to run the 10,000 metre event. It’s not as if she would be taking a spot away from another Canadian woman who could run the marathon instead. Each country is permitted three marathon spots, and only two Canadian women have qualified. Her argument is, “I’m going to be there anyway.”

But what if she performs poorly? Athletics Canada is, as this article argues, “fearful of … blemishes.” Author Michael Doyle argues further:

What’s sad about all of this is that Athletics Canada and Own the Podium are probably leading this country down the wrong path when it comes to the most lasting impact that sport has in this country. A recent study reveals that participation in sports is at an all-time low, and that children become less interested as the emphasis becomes overly performance based. Denying one of Canada’s strongest role models a chance to run in a marquee event at the Olympics sends the wrong message.

I’ve blogged before about completing versus competing and about finishing without placing. But does the sentiment that we can go out to have fun, going for a personal best even if we have no chance of actually winning carry over to the Olympics, where the stakes are higher?

Is Athletics Canada and Own the Podium so overly focused on results that they’re denying some of the positive social influence Olympians can have–encouraging kids to participate in sports, being good role models on important issues like body image, and that sort of thing? Do Canadians only care about the athletes who win medals? Should our national body only support athletes who have a chance to contribute to the haul?

There’s a bit more to the story than I’ve outlined here. The Canadian marathon team won’t be announced until July and apparently Marchant hasn’t been given a definitve “nix.” But many other nations, including Kenya, Ethiopia, the US, and the UK have already confirmed their teams.

Marchant has taken steps to prove her fitness to compete in both events. And she is Canada’s top-ranked woman in the marathon.  She’s also 32 years old, so it’s not realistic to think she’ll have another opportunity for the Olympic marathon.

What do you think? If she’s going to be there anyway, should Canada’s top-ranked woman in the marathon be allowed to compete in that event even if she has no chance of “owning the podium”?

Update: On July 11th, 2016, the Canadian Olympic team announced that Lanni Marchant will represent Canada at the 2016 Olympics in Rio in both the 10000m and the marathon.

Here on the blog we often talk about the virtue of small steps. Tracy talks write a bit about doing less. Me, I’m more a shoot for the moon kind of person but I’m that way because it leads to me doing more even if I don’t achieve the big goal. The thing is, for me, I don’t feel bad for aiming high and settling with a lesser achievement.

I think we ought to celebrate our small achievements. And as Tracy wrote recently it’s not all about getting better all the time.

We’re in a society that seems only to care about BIG CHANGES. But the incremental gains after the first chuck of achievement are often small. Most of the good comes from the initial small thing. And the small thing may be more sustainable.

So maybe we ought to celebrate the small stuff.

Here’s two examples:

Running: We’ve written before in praise of small distances. I loved my one mile a day running streak. And the New York Times touts the health benefits of running 10 minutes a day.

Weight loss: Again, we’ve written in praise of moderate weight loss. Everyone talks about the health benefits of weight loss but we tend to think of weight loss in terms of big big transformations. You know, biggest loser caliber weight loss. But almost all the health benefits of weight loss come with small losses, say of five per cent of your body weight.

Here at the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Congress Kate Hunt opened with a plenary address on gender and health care. As a success story she looked at a fitness and health group for men associated with local football clubs. She counted this program as a success because many of the men, who weighed on average 250 lbs, lost and kept off about five to ten lbs. The researchers who designed the program count that as success in terms of health impact even if it’s not biggest loser style success.

Losing and keeping off 5-10 lbs isn’t anywhere near as hard as losing 50 lbs and yet you get many of the health benefits. Ditto running a mile versus running a marathon.

Why then don’t we care about small achievements? How might we change our thinking about this? 

I got recruited onto a team for the Global Corporate Challenge that started a couple of weeks ago. It’s called an “Employee Health and Performance Program” and it takes place world wide. You can read more about it here.

Shortly after I started it, I heard about some worries I’d never thought about, like “who owns the data?” and “what do they use it for?” Like, do they use it to pressure employees? Is there a Big Brother-esque thing going on here, with our employer keeping tabs on our health and activity level?

I don’t know. But I do know that as a “leader” in my organization on a team with mostly people who have less power than I do (except for one other member), I’ve had to calm my instinctual desire to do the “go team!” thing for fear it gets mistaken for putting pressure on others.

So the whole workplace thing has suddenly added a couple of dimensions to the challenge that have an edge to them that I hadn’t planned for or had the foresight to see.

Also, on a more personal level, I started off with a modest target of 10,000 steps a day as my “stage one” target because, frankly, I had no clue how many steps a day I usually got. Well, it turns out that my daily average is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 16,000 (or just a bit more). But that’s factoring in a half marathon and quite a bit of other activity.

Cycling and swimming convert pretty nicely into steps. On swim days, I easily get in 10,000 steps before 8 a.m. because each 1000 m in the pool = 4750 steps.

So when it came time to set my stage two target, the app recommended I go for 16,627.  I said “no” to that, and took a gamble on 13,000. Why is it a gamble? For one thing, I’ve got no plans to do another half marathon in the next little while. For another, I’m going on vacation on the boat for two weeks starting next Wednesday. I’m worried about even reaching 10,000 a day on that trip.

I’ve also discovered a few other things on this challenge. I had never walked to work before and now I’ve started. I like walking to work. Not only does it give me an easy 6500 steps before I sit down at my desk and after a day at the computer, but it’s a good head-clearing opportunity, more relaxing even than riding my bike. I like my riding my bike, but I feel compelled to walk, especially on days I don’t swim or run, because I am more likely to hit my steps target. So the challenge is changing my habits, but was there really something inferior about riding my bike over walking? I doubt it.

The most alarming discovery has been just how unbelievably inactive I am when I decide to work at home. It’s just not that far from my desk to the kitchen and back again. I can get from breakfast to lunch time without even taking 1000 steps. Sam and I had a looming deadline for the book, so I had a few days like that over the past couple of weeks. I had to add something to the day. And truth be told, the GCC got me out the door for a run a couple of times I would otherwise not have gone.

And it’s not only when I work at home. Yesterday I missed my Sunday long run because we had to go out of town, which meant taking a drive. We had work to do on the old boat and we met some friends for dinner. But all of it was really close together and by the end of the day I was exhausted yet had only managed about 7,000 steps.

I’ve started to walk to personal training. The other day, when Renald and I went to a movie, we got there early. We used to like to sit in the theatre when we got there early so we could chat before the show. Not this time. “Let’s go for a walk — we have almost half an hour,” I said. He looked puzzled, but obliged. We did walk and talk. So there’s that. Another example of how the challenge has changed my habits.

I’m a little concerned about the fact that there are four stages. If I’m already at 13,000 (a compromise that puts some pressure on me but not as much as Big Brother wanted to put), then what will I do when I reach stages 3 and 4? So far I’ve taken 241,847 steps or 155 kilometres, swum 9,400 metres (the equivalent of 44,650 steps) and biked 29.15 kilometres (=8746 steps) since May 25th. I’m not sure what to do with that info. But it suggests to me that I’m active enough.

David Sedaris, one of my favourite humour writers, wrote a hilarious article for the New Yorker called “Stepping Out: Living the fitbit Life.” He captures well the obsession with getting more and more steps in a day with his new fitness tracker, starting small and then adding and adding and adding:

I look back on the days I averaged only thirty thousand steps, and think, Honestly, how lazy can you get? When I hit thirty-five thousand steps a day, Fitbit sent me an e-badge, and then one for forty thousand, and forty-five thousand. Now I’m up to sixty thousand, which is twenty-five and a half miles. Walking that distance at the age of fifty-seven, with completely flat feet while lugging a heavy bag of garbage, takes close to nine hours—a big block of time, but hardly wasted. I listen to audiobooks, and podcasts. I talk to people. I learn things: the fact, for example, that, in the days of yore, peppercorns were sold individually and, because they were so valuable, to guard against theft the people who packed them had to have their pockets sewed shut.

At the end of my first sixty-thousand-step day, I staggered home with my flashlight knowing that I’d advance to sixty-five thousand, and that there will be no end to it until my feet snap off at the ankles.

The point is, you’ve got to stop somewhere or getting more steps becomes an obsession of its own. I mean, I haven’t forgotten it for the whole day yet, but one morning I forgot to put the thing in before I left for the Y to go swimming. I can’t wear it in the pool but hey, I usually get a few hundred between home and the locker room and back!

I can’t imagine my disappointment if I forget it for the whole day! As I  said on Sam’s FB page the other day, “what’s the point of activity if your gadget doesn’t track it!?” Really, not really. But you can see it going that way sometimes.

I guess the long and short of it is, I like the effect of walking places where I might otherwise not walk — like to personal training, or even just going out for a walk, which isn’t something I do much these days. And I appreciate the info about how very inactive I can be when I settle into a project at my desk and don’t come up for air.

I can live without the added pressure of having the app dictate what it thinks my target should be. And I’m not sure how keen I am about the competitive aspect of the challenge. It feels a little pushy or something.

At the moment I’m not thinking about moving to a fitbit or some other more advanced tracking thing once the challenge is over. But I’ll have to see by the end of 100 days just how wedded I am to the idea of knowing how many steps I took in a day.