“Comparison is the thief of joy.” You might have heard it before, but does it have to be the case?
As I load up on my final carbs and tuck in for bed before taking on the challenge of the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, France tomorrow, I can’t help but reflect.
It takes bravery to show up to any race, let alone a World Championship. I’m humbled by the women I’ve met here—the one who podiumed at Kona last year, the one who qualified in her first race, the one who’s on her 18th IRONMAN. I’m surrounded by some of the most dedicated and accomplished athletes in the world!
With that—not to mention some of the bikes and shoes and bodies on these women—it’s easy to slip into comparison, wondering if I really belong here. But instead, I’ve been working on using comparison as a source of inspiration, seeing those amazing women I’ll share the course with as examples of what’s possible.
With that, I’ve had practice. I’m so grateful for the impressive female athletes in my life who I call my friends. Their success doesn’t diminish mine, and mine doesn’t diminish theirs. I’ve met some women who can’t train with others who are about the same or “better” than them and my heart breaks for them. There’s a lot of power in celebrating each other and in finding a wolfpack!
On that note, it’s not that I’m not competitive. I want to do my best, and I love a good PR or ranking well just as much as anyone. I really believe that, if we let it, competition brings out the best in us. Isn’t that the whole point? But at the end of the day, only one person gets to win (or one per age group, I suppose). Since the vast majority of the time, we won’t get to be that person, it’s worth considering some alternative ways of relating to competition. I think this would help more of us to step up to that oh-so-intimidating start line.
A student asked me recently, “Are you going to win?” No way, kiddo. But that’s not why I came. I came to see what I can get out of myself, and something tells me tomorrow will provide no shortage of opportunities to find out.
I ran three days in a row for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-many-years. Not even three short runs. The first two alone, 7 miles, then 8 miles, felt solid and shocking. One day. Two days. And … I felt good. I rinsed and repeated because I couldn’t believe it was true. The third day was giving into the temptation to see how far this feeling good could really go. Another 8 miles, it turned out.
On that third day, I was so surprised to be running, that I started playing. I ran short stretches backwards, because I once heard that helps to balance the muscles and stretch the legs and I figured my legs, which might be in as much shock as my mind, could use the variation. Each time I turned forward again, my legs felt momentarily tired and disoriented. Then I’d catch my groove again. I threw in a few sections of running faster. Not exactly speedwork, more just seeing what the engine could take. Most of the run was on a long causeway that juts out into Lake Champlain. The dirt path was flat and gently curved. So, it was easy to designate far ahead trees as my destination for each of these backwards and forwards interludes.
When I finished that third run, I felt good. Like there was still a little gas in the tank.
For the last many years (at least 5, possibly 10), there’s always been some objection from my body to running even two days in a row. A tweaky toe. A hampered hamstring. A pesky plantar. And then last year, it was the increasingly extreme fatigue of what was eventually diagnosed as Addison’s Disease. I’m now on daily (multiple times a day) medication, which, along with a low potassium diet, has returned me to health.
And I wonder …
When I got back from that third run, the friend I was staying with commented on my level of fitness, expressing her frustration that she couldn’t run those distances days in a row anymore. A good and healthy response might have been to just say, Thank you. Instead, I started by attributing the runs to luck (maybe it was total eclipse energy) and to the incredibly restorative Normatec leg massage device she has, that I used after each of the runs.
Then I got to the heart of my hesitation to receive her compliment. Maybe I could run three days in a row only because of my medication. I’m not talking about the fact that without my medication I would not be here, because my potassium would have spiked to a fatal level, as it almost did last year when I spent 3 days in an emergency room. Certainly, the fact that my medication keeps me alive allows me to run and do pretty much everything else that’s involved in this business of living. Still, that’s not the heart of my hesitation. It’s that one of my medications is hydrocortisone, which is used to treat adrenocortical deficiency (that’s me), and swelling and inflammation and/or replaces the cortisol hormone that helps your body respond to stress. In other words, maybe if I weren’t taking this steroid, I would not have the energy to do those runs (because my body couldn’t handle the stress), not to mention the anti-inflammatory benefits.
Pill bottle spilling out multi-colour pills, by towfiqu barbhuiya on unsplash
In other, other words, maybe my fitness level is fake. My ability to recover from the runs is rigged, because I’m taking a performance enhancing medication. I’m a Running Ripley (I just started watching Andrew Scott’s formidable performance in this role). I can’t take any credit for the myriad ways in which I work to maintain my fitness level (my foray into Chi running), because none of my effort has real impact, it’s just the drugs. I should just feel lucky and leave it at that. (Recently, a friend pointed out that we need to stop shoulding on others … and ourselves). So, to re-frame, I want to just feel lucky and I’m not quite there.
I am indeed ultra-grateful for all my body does for me. And, I notice there’s a part of me that wants to take credit, to point to this or that training, or eating, or sleep habit. I want my fitness to be the appropriate reward for the Protestant work ethic I grew up with (in a Jewish household). I want to be grateful and feel like I have some control over what my body can do. The conundrum is that the Addison’s took away that feeling of control and the medication gave me back a feeling of control, which I now question.
This is the psychological wrestling match going on between different parts of myself.
At the moment, there’s nothing to change. I can’t stop taking my medication.
The bottom line is likely the same as it always is: Be grateful. Every day.
I was a proud “Dickie Chick.” One of a threesome of sisters, with a dad named Dick, who participated relay-style in the 70.3 Ironman in Muskoka in 2017. One sister swam the 1.9k, the other sister biked the 90k, and I ran the 21.1k. (That’s me on the right.)
The Dickie Chicks. Janet is on the right.
I remember flying past runners who were doing the full slog, calling out “just doing the relay” so they wouldn’t feel bad. As beaten up as they looked, I was strangely envious of their extra sweat, grime and grit. Fleetingly.
Running prevailed and I started to get serious about it. I raced for personal bests and prizes and bought a Garmin. About a year ago, I noticed my runs were turning into countdowns: 9k to go, 6k, 5k, 4k, 3k, 2k, done.I was also getting unnecessarily anxious before races, even before speed workouts. (Ridiculous!)
A few months ago, my oldest son announced a goal to do the Muskoka 70.3 Ironman to mark his 40th birthday.
And there it was—that fleeting feeling from seven years ago. Me? An Ironman? The feeling started to linger. It started to grow.
I did some research, talked to a few experts. Before long, I’d gone way past doing the 70.3 in cottage country at age 64. I was fantasizing about being at the 2025 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Spain on November 8, 2025, at age 65.
I kept things to myself. I was afraid that if the words came out of my mouth, I’d be committed.
Uncertainty swept in. I hadn’t swum lengths in four decades, not to mention my childhood trauma over cold water.
In a bold moment, I called a personal coach—Ryan Power, as good as they come. I was surprised he was keen to take on a 65-year-old female novice. You know what he said? He said that he’s currently working with seven athletes right now and two are over age 75.
Well then.
He said that an equivalent to qualifying for the world tri championships is qualifying for the Boston marathon, which I’ve done twice.
Well then.
It’s in the cards, I said to myself. I was ready to let it out of the bag. Now I’m committed.
What has gotten into me? I prefer simplicity. What can be more complicated than a triathlon watch, or a fuel plan to sustain 8 hours of work?
I don’t really like spending money. In the last 20 days, I have spent at least $2.5k, and according to Austrian triathlete, Clément, I can expect to spend another $3k to get myself geared up for competition, and then $2.9k in every year to follow. (Not including things like Spain.)
A bike covered in tri gear.
Worst of all, I can’t figure out the leg action to clip out of the pedals on my new road bike.
“You’ll want to clip out with your right leg,” said the bike specialist, “so you can lean away from the traffic.”
But my right leg wasn’t working. Forget the traffic, I thought, I’m using my left.
Last week was my first official week of training. Don’t tell Ryan, but after day one, I had a stiff back. After day three, I had a bruised elbow from banging the lane ropes. And on day five, I added a scraped knee to the old bod from tipping over on my bike. (I’d clipped out—yay—but forgot to use the brakes.)
It’s week two. I can hardly wait to get going again.
Will I make it to Spain? I have no idea. But I like picturing myself crossing the finish line. If that gives me joy and motivation and a good reason to hop out of bed every morning, then why not try. Anyway, I’m 64; I can do whatever I want.
Is that the point of this endeavour? That I’ve reached the age where I can do whatever I want? Let’s think about this.
I cannot get too excited and talk about my new hobby too much or people will think I’m bragging. No one likes a braggart. Humility is the much-preferred trait, especially in the family I married into.
I cannot let myself get too exhausted. Yawning through social gatherings is equally as unattractive as bragging. And I need energy to continue baking bread, concocting hummus, and creating grandkids’ birthday cakes (another source of joy).
I cannot let my new hobby negatively impact my 42-year marriage. I cannot consume our travel budget around races; I cannot get too obsessed because that’s hard to live with; I cannot cram the drying rack with any more workout clothes; I cannot let this interfere with happy family traditions; and I certainly cannot expect a cozy night on the couch livestreaming tri championships. It’s not golf, after all.
The cannots add up, and they’re hard; I think about them all the time. But I cannot not do this or I’d be short-changing myself on something my gut is telling me to go for. Who cares if I get a little excited, exhausted and obsessed? It’s nothing that a new drying rack can’t fix. Or a glass of wine in Spain.
Lots of athletic wear on a clothes drying rack.
Janet Tufts’ bio
With over 30 years of local, national and international experience in the non-profit and public sectors, Janet is currently enjoying semi-retirement, balancing a part-time role as Executive Director of Operation Walk Canada with her love of reading, writing, baking and moving. Previously, Janet served as the Executive Director of both Big Brothers Big Sisters of London and Area and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.
From 2016 to 2018, Janet spent two years in Malaysia as a member of a multi-cultural team that led the government’s implementation of their blueprint for public school transformation. Janet holds a Master’s in Business Administration, Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Arts, and a Professional Certificate in Communications and Public Relations. She has served as a director on numerous boards, and is currently a board member of St. Joseph’s Health Care London. Janet embraces any opportunity to be part of a humanitarian mission and to date, has been to Southern Sudan, Peru and Ecuador.
I have a confession to make. Just 14 days before running the 2024 Boston Marathon as part of a charity team raising money to fight racial and economic injustice in Boston (a cause deeply aligned with my professional and personal commitments.)
My confession: I sort of wish I could back out. Because I can’t handle the pressure.
I’m pretty certain I can handle the physical pressure of running 26.2 miles. I’ve done that distance more than 40 times and have run more than 26.2 miles on some occasions. (Darn, I’ve even raced Boston 8 times before, and I’m a running coach for goodness’ sake!). But can I handle the pressure to perform and prove my worthiness to be here at all?
To many people I know, I’m a seasoned marathoner and ultra marathoner who runs all the time. And in some ways, this is true. I do love to run. And I run a lot. I can run long. And I can run pretty fast (for a 50-year-old). I could (if I had the time) run hours a day and find joy in every step. I have run on three continents, in more than a dozen countries, nearly all US states. At dawn, at midnight, and with the sun at its apex. In the shadows of pyramids, on the streets of countries rebuilding from war, on crowded sidewalks in urban spaces, and in quiet woods in my various home states.
I love to run. But I don’t love to race because I hate having my running on public display. And right now, the pressure weighing on me is the pressure to be publicly productive with my running and training and preparation for this race. And to perform on race day. To prove that I am worthy.
I feel the need to prove I’m worthy of the right to run this marathon. That I’m worthy of taking up space in this race. That my body deserves to be out there on April 15. Social media traffic among the Boston marathoning crowd can be brutal. There are posts asking why “charity” runners get to “take the places” of those who have “qualified” by time. There are those who have mused publicly about the selfishness of those like me, who have run this storied race before, while others who wish to, have not.
And because I worry about my worthiness as a charity runner, I feel the need to perform for others; to be happy, energetic, gracious and grateful at all times to friends, to fellow runners, online, to potential donors, to the non-profit staff. After all, I have “taken up” a spot in a race with only 30,000 spots. After all, the charity has “allowed” me to run “for them”. After all, I could just step aside. Instead, I have to publicly ask others to support me.
As someone who has struggled with imposter syndrome and a fair amount of body-hatred my whole life I’m feeling something deep and hard at this moment: the pressure to prove that I am worthy of others donating their hard-earned money to a cause I care about. To donating to me. To my body. I keep wondering: Is my body worthy enough…? Is my body worthy enough for you to care? Is my body worthy of your sacrifice? Then, if it is, what happens if I fail to knock the marathon out of the park?
These feelings and questions are troublingly familiar. They recall years of high school and college competitive running when terror gripped me each time I stepped up to a race. A place where others could see me and potentially witness my failure. I had won races, for sure. But would this be the day the truth of being a fraud was revealed? Would I still deserve to take up space on a team? On a track? To be called an athlete? I did not like my body. And I did not trust it to fulfill my duty to others (coaches, teammates, spectators). The eyes on me were too much. The fear of having to perform for others was too great. At 19 I stepped away from any competitive running. I couldn’t take the pressure. I didn’t want others to expect anything of my body and I didn’t want my body failing them. Failing to do whatever they hoped I (and my body) would do. I didn’t want the pressure.
So, as I face down these final days of fundraising, I have at times wished that I could just run this 26.2 mile on my own, without fear of letting anyone else down. I want to run and push forward and champion an anti-racist agenda in distance running with my race…but boy do I fear that I–and my body–will somehow fail the cause.
So now my confession is public. Perhaps foolishly. I know I should work on my mindset. But that is a task for another day. Today, I breathed. And today I ran…without a watch or a plan, for five easy miles. Solo. Hoping to believe a bit in my body. In me.
With a bit of luck, I’ll raise the remaining $400 of my fundraising goal by 4/12 and with a bit more luck, I’ll feel worthy as I run 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston later this month.
Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello is a professor of American Ethnic Studies, Chair of a department at Salem State University, and consultant for non profits, universities and community groups on issues related to how groups and organizations can effect structural change with an intersectional lens at the core. She is also an RRCA certifiedrunning coach and founder of The Atalanta Effect running coaching for women.
Is there anyone getting ready for a race who isn’t a bit of a control freak? You may be out there, but my guess is that most of us have lists of gear and race plans that we review in the days leading up to an event; we check and double check our kit the night before; we go over various contingencies in our minds; we formulate back-up plans in case of a disaster. All this so that the wheels don’t fall off the bus on race day.
It was a bit strange, then, to find myself at an event last weekend where the wheels seemed to be falling off the bus—not my bus, however, but that of the event itself. It began when the race directors of Around the Bay announced, sometime in the winter, that the course had grown from 30 km to 34 km, due to unforeseen circumstances. There would be two finish lines and two finish times for us all, with winners in both groups. I had signed up for the 30k race as an opportunity to re-do my first ATB attempt in 2017 when I failed to take warnings about the hills in the back 10 km seriously and had to live with the consequences. This year, I would beat that 30 km time. The last four kilometres would have to take care of themselves—I wasn’t racing them. Still, it felt a little weird. Two finishes? And, gutted after 30 km, how long would it take me to get to my banana and warm clothing?
The night before the race, we received another notice: a sinkhole had opened along the route, and now we would be running 35.4 km. I mean, really? I felt sorry for the race directors, but I also felt sorry for myself: it was a weekend of freezing temperatures and those last kilometres were going to be cold and miserable, for sure. I tried not to think about it as we made our way to Hamilton the next morning. It was sunny and I was ready to race.
But at the stadium, things were chaotic. No one was around for the bag check, so we bundled our belongings into plastic bags and threw them behind a table. At the start, I tried to find my way to Corral D, but couldn’t see any signage for it. My pace rabbits were up at the front, so I made my way to them and talked strategy: they were aiming for a steady pace for the first 20 km, with a bit of time in reserve for the hills. This was the plan. Almost as soon as we started, one of the rabbits disappeared, presumably for a pit stop, and then reappeared a couple of kilometres later. He pushed the pace and then vanished over the horizon. The group gamely pressed on with his partner, along the lake and through the rollers. I felt terrific as we crested Heartbreak Hill: on pace and ready for the final three km to the 30 km finish line. Suddenly my rabbit accelerated, leaving me behind. What? And then a kilometre marker appeared—it said one thing, but my watch said I was almost full kilometre farther along. I ran past the Grim Reaper, looking for markers. All I saw was kilometre signage for that day’s other races. Where the hell was I? Up another goddamned hill and looking for the 29 km marker, which never came. Or did it? Suddenly a voice shouted, “You’re at 30!” I hit the mat and my watch clicked 30 km, right on time. Or was I?
I thought that most runners would race the final kilometres to the stadium, but it seemed that most, like me, had raced their 30 and were done. I was frozen after a kilometre of making my way toward the second finish on wrecked legs. Suddenly a runner came up behind me, “Hey, Al!” It was Keelan, a young woman whose running I’ve admired since she was three years old, racing her brother down the street in front of my house. She, too, had raced her 30 km, and my joy at her successful first ATB warmed my heart. But not my hands. We walk-jogged our way back to the stadium, weary and cold.
Finally, I found myself in a warm room, with the friends who had driven to Hamilton with me. We were thrilled with our finishes—we hoped—as we waited for the results to be posted. My pace rabbit found me and apologized profusely. He thought he had lost a kilometre somewhere along the way and raced his group into the finish three minutes under the allotted pace time. What had happened out there?
And then another voice called out to me. I turned and said, “Juan!” Juan and I met in a race corral in London, UK, nine months ago. He was wearing an Ontario triathlon t-shirt that morning and I had introduced myself as a fellow Canadian. It was a lovely warm morning and we were both excited to be in London, ready to race through the streets of a magical city. What were the chances of his appearing, here, now, at the end of a race through a somewhat less magical city, where we had circled a sinkhole and frozen our butts off?
The excitement of seeing Juan again was all I needed to set things right, just then. The summer day we had enjoyed in July found its way to Hamilton and the wheels went back on the bus. Because, in the final instance, life is about chances and being thrown for a loop. The same orbital drift that opened the sinkhole and placed the kilometre markers god knows where brought Keelan and Juan to me just when I needed them most, to make the world merry and bright after a long race on a cold morning.
Alison with racing pal Juan VarelaAlison with racing pal Keelan McGoey
Alison Conway lives and works in Kelowna, British Columbia, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people.
description: red text in the style of the movie “10 Things I Hate About You” re-written to read “3 Things I Hate(d) About Running”, next to a cartoon of a woman running
Last week I posted about my running journey since last fall, going from a stalwart non-runner — one might even say an anti-runner (both in the sense of being staunchly against the very idea of running, and in the sense of being the inverse of a runner, like the anti-Christ) – to a person who finished the Burlington Butter Tart 5K a few weeks ago by doing intervals of slow-running and walking.
In that post, I noted how much I used to hate running, which makes it extra remarkable that I tried it again at all and that I’ve continued to do it. The funny thing is though, I still kind of hate running. Although I look forward to going out for a run, I feel good after a run, and I like the rituals I’ve built around running, while I am actually doing the running I can hardly wait for it to be OVER.
Even now that I have built a lot more stamina and cardiovascular capacity than I had when I started, the running itself still feels hard. I think I had assumed, or hoped, that at some point it would start to feel easy, and it hasn’t. It still feels hard. But I have figured out some ways that are helpful to me in dealing with that hardness.
Early on when reflecting on my experience of running, I realized there are 3 distinct types of discomfort that make me hate exercise: (1) I hate feeling winded and breathless; (2) I hate feeling hot and sweaty; and (3) I struggle with the sheer physical effort of putting one foot in front of the other. However! The good news is, even though I still hate running, understanding more clearly what exactly it is I hate about running has actually been very useful. It’s helped me figure out how to cope with those things, alleviate or respond to them, motivate myself through them, and in some cases just accept them. Here is what I have been finding helpful so far in dealing with those 3 types of discomfort:
Feeling Winded and Breathless: This might be easiest one. I realized that if I’m breathing so hard that I’m uncomfortable, I can simply slow the fuck down and take a walking break, LOL. And this became a lot easier to do when I let go of any particular expectations of what I think I should be able to do – that I should be able to run without breaks, that I should be running at any particular pace. Since I let go of that kind of achievement-oriented sensibility, it’s a lot easier to just ease up the pace when I need to so that my breathing and heart rate stay in a range that feels okay.
Feeling Hot and Sweaty: I’ve found 3 things that have helped me deal with this:
I started running last November, and initially I had thought that it was silly to start running just as winter was starting because of the weather. In hindsight I realize that it was probably a smart move. By starting to run during a cooler time of year, external heat and humidity weren’t part of the equation in the earliest days of running. It meant that I was only having to tolerate the heat and dampness generated by my own body, and the colder weather and wintry winds helped to moderate even those sensations. It allowed me to build an initial foundation of improved cardiovascular fitness during cold and cool weather, so that by the time the more oppressive summer conditions arrived the habit of running regularly had already been well established, and I was able to ease into being hot and sweaty. If you already don’t like hot and humid weather, starting out as a beginner runner in the cooler months might be easier.
I realized that fabrics really matter. Cotton fabrics absorb a lot of sweat and hold it there: gross. I avoid cotton as much as possible in my running clothes, and choose synthetics or lightweight merino wool (particularly in winter).
I started carrying water, not for hydration per se, but for physical relief and cooling. I don’t run long or hard enough to need to actually re-hydrate during the run, but on a hot day, having a small squeeze bottle of water in my hand is great for shooting a little in my mouth to alleviate the yucky dry lips and mouth from heavier breathing, and squeezing more down my shirt to cool me off (in the summer, that is – I don’t think I’ll be shooting water down my shirt once winter comes!). Far more goes down my shirt than in my mouth.
Sheer Physical Effort: This is the hardest one for me to describe, as well as the one I find most challenging to manage. It’s that sensation of heaviness in my legs (especially my calves) that comes on after running for more than a minute or so. It’s not pain – it’s just my muscles going UGH I DON’T WANNA. It’s just the UGH sensation of WHY exertion itself PLEASE CAN WE JUST WALK. It’s the toughest mind game for me about running, the argument between my legs and my brain about when we can stop, and my legs put up a very convincing argument most of the time. The thing is, running is exertion, I don’t know if there will be any getting around that. At this point, I’ve got a few mental strategies that seem to be at least somewhat helpful once the UGHs start:
Explicitly reminding myself that what I’m feeling is discomfort but not pain. I don’t like the way it feels, but it doesn’t hurt and it’s not a sign that anything is wrong.
Being attentive to my form and trying to make sure that I’m keeping my core somewhat engaged but otherwise being as relaxed as possible. Those UGHs are even harder to deal with when my whole body becomes tense or I’m slouching.
Deliberately evoking positive feelings by smiling or reciting little upbeat mantras to myself. I make myself smile by being proud of myself for getting out there and just doing it, appreciating the view over Hamilton Harbour or the plants and birds along the trail, thinking of my cat wearing a shirt, or any number of other things that bring me a bit of joy. Some of the little mantras I go to most often are things like “I can, I am, I will,” “settle in to it,” “it’s just yes,” and “keep showing up.”
Remind myself that this discomfort is temporary. I only have to tolerate this for a little while, and then I get to go and have a nice iced coffee and a lovely shower and do whatever else I want to do. Tolerating 20 or 30 or 40 minutes of fairly minor discomfort is very well within my abilities (especially since I usually do run/walk intervals, so I get breaks from the discomfort). I don’t have to do it forever, and soon, I will get to stop. Sometimes I even think of it as asking fierce me to stay in charge for just a few more minutes until we’re done the run and then couch potato me can take the helm again.
I try to remember to put some kind of easily digestible carbohydrates in my system about 30-60 minutes before I go out for a run so that there is readily available fuel for my muscles. I don’t honestly know if this actually makes a real difference or not, but it seems biologically plausible to me, and whether it’s a real biological effect or a placebo effect probably doesn’t matter…to my way of thinking it’s a can’t-hurt-might-help kind of a situation.
description: Blue and green stylized text that reads “Running always reminds me of how much I hate running.”
So! That’s how I’ve become a runner who still kind of hates running. I’d love to hear what works for you!
Stacey Ritz is an associate professor at McMaster University, a vegetarian who uses lard to make pie dough because that’s how her grandma did it, and the owner of a bossy cranky cat who is currently wearing a shirt.
If you had told me one year ago that I would run a 5K race this summer, I would have laughed in your face. But on Saturday, I ran the Burlington Butter Tart 5K.
Got my race bib on, waiting by the lake for the start. (alt-text: a woman wearing a blue hat and a black “Slow AF Run Club” tank top with a red numbered running bib pinned to it, with Lake Ontario in the background)
I have never been a natural athlete. As a kid, I remember resenting the Canada Fitness Award Program, where I don’t think I was ever able to meet the Bronze standard for anything; in fact, the Program was discontinued in 1992 because it was viewed as “discouraging to those who needed the most encouragement,” which reflects my experience of it to a tee. The worst part was when we’d be sent outside to run a lap around the school perimeter. I always seemed to get a stitch in my side, and was always one of the very slowest ones (and sometimes dead last). All of my memories about running as a kid involve shame, embarrassment, physical discomfort, and envy of the kids who seemed to lope effortlessly around the school.
I tried running again during grad school, when many people in my lab were running. I found a training plan in a magazine for non-runners to get to a 30-minute sustained run in 10 weeks and decided to give it a try, absolutely determined that I would not quit before completing the plan. My friends assured me that by then I’d love it, but that didn’t happen. In week 10 I went out 3 times and ran for 30m as scheduled, but hated every bloody second of it, and I got home, took my running shoes off, and never put them on again. I figured I had given running a fair shot, and it just wasn’t for me.
So what on earth made me take it up again 25 years later? In early October 2022, I met a friend for dinner at a conference, and she told me that she had recently started running using the Peloton app, and was really loving it. Now, my sisters-in-law had been singing the praises of the Peloton app for quite some time, but they are both exercise lovers by nature, so their endorsement didn’t do much to convince me. But when my friend told me that she, too, had previously hated running, and using the Peloton app and springing for a good pair of running shoes had changed her mind, I decided to give it a try. She sent me a 60-day free trial for the app, and I went home and I bought a pair of Hoka running shoes.
I started by going out once a week, Saturday mornings, using the Peloton Outdoor walk/run workouts. I think part of my ultimate success was the pure dumb luck of having selected exactly the right workout for someone who was a true beginner. One of the things I find frustrating about the Peloton app is that it doesn’t provide much info about the detailed structure of their outdoor running workouts, so I was fortunate to have chosen one that had short running intervals (30 to 60s) separated by a couple of minutes walking. If I had chosen one marked “beginner” that had 3- or 4-minute running intervals, I think I likely would have quit; it was a few months before I could sustain 3 minutes of slow running comfortably.
By February, I had been going out consistently every week, and one day, to my great surprise, I discovered I was actually looking forward to my next run. In March, once the days had started to get longer and it was still light out when I got home from work, I started going out a couple of additional times on weeknights as well. In April, I happened across an advertisement for the Burlington Butter Tart 5K (where you get a butter tart at the end), and the idea amused me so much that I signed up for it.
Running this time around has been an interesting and thought-provoking journey for me. I had a particularly significant a-ha moment in February when I was out for a run and thought “I wonder how long it will be before I can just run continuously without taking walking breaks,” and then, my next thought: “it literally doesn’t matter if I never get any better at this. Even if I do walk/run intervals forever, even if I don’t extend the length of my running intervals, even if I never get any faster, it doesn’t matter at all.” That was an utterly transformative moment for me, and I’m still feeling the reverberations of it.
We are often such an achievement-oriented culture that it’s easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that we have to always be moving toward a goal of some kind to make our efforts worthwhile: to run faster, run longer, lose weight, whatever the achievement is that is supposed to motivate us. For me, rejecting that achievement mindset was paradoxically motivating: just getting out there and moving at any pace is worthwhile. I like the way I feel after a run; although I’ve never experienced the classic ‘runner’s high’ (even many elite athletes don’t, and there may even be a link between depression and not getting a runner’s high), I do get a diffuse sensation of a sort of spaciousness in my body for up to a day or so afterward that feels really good. I also enjoy the little ritual I’ve built around my runs. And I feel positive about making a good investment in my health: I don’t give a rat’s ass about losing weight anymore, but I know that building stronger bones and muscles will be a valuable asset to me as I age (I turn 50 next year).One of the things that was helpful to me was following some non-archetypal runners on Instagram (I’m a particularly big fan of Sandra at @bigfit_i_run and Martinus at @300poundsandrunning), who helped affirm that there is nothing wrong with being a slow runner, and that running with walking breaks (also sometimes called jeffing) is a totally legit way of being a runner. In fact, a growing amount of research shows that running slower has some specific benefits that aren’t associated with more intense workouts.
During the race on Saturday, I completed most of it by alternating between 90s of slow running and 30s of walking. I can run for longer intervals than that now, but I tend to run a lot more slowly when I’m tackling longer stretches, so that 90s/30s strategy actually improves my overall pace. However, when I came around the final corner and could see the balloon arch finishing line in the distance, I pushed myself to run as hard as I could for the last 600m or so. In my head I felt like Usain Bolt, but the video my son took proves that I was really moving at what can only be generously called a hurried jog. I finished the race in 42m 53s. There are plenty of people who would not be even remotely impressed with that time (the winner of the race finished in 16m and change), but I didn’t do it to impress anyone.
Although I’m glad to have done it, I don’t think I’m going to run another 5K any time soon. One of the things I realized while preparing for this 5K race was that I don’t actually like running for more than 25 or 30 minutes at a stretch; I persisted with the 5K distance because I was determined not to back out of the race, but now that it’s done, I think I’ll go back to doing 20 or 30 minute outings. I also found that when I was preparing for this specific event, I tended to slip back into the goal-oriented mindset (maybe I can finish in under 40 minutes, if I train more maybe I can do the whole thing without taking any walking breaks) that my February insight had helped me escape from. Now that the race is done, I’m really looking forward to going back to that headspace where getting ‘better’ doesn’t matter.
Crossing the finish line at the Burlington Butter Tart 5K. In my head, I felt like I was sprinting at top speed, but video footage proves that it is more of a sort-of-hurried jog.
(alt-text: 4 runners approaching the finish line of a race, marked by a yellow, beige and brown balloon arch. 3 of the runners are blurred out to protect their privacy; the author is wearing black shorts, a black “Slow AF Run Club” tank top, and a blue hat.)
Stacey Ritz is a faculty member at McMaster University in Hamilton, crossword fan, and is a strong contender as the Canadian record-holder for most repeated viewings of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
post-5K.jpg: Sinking my teeth into the race’s namesake after the finish. (alt-text: a woman wearing a blue hat taking the first bite of a butter tart)
If you had told me one year ago that I would run a 5K race this summer, I would have laughed in your face. But on Saturday, I ran the Burlington Butter Tart 5K.
I have never been a natural athlete. As a kid, I remember bitterly resenting the Canada Fitness Award Program, where I don’t think I was ever able to meet even the minimum standard for anything; in fact, the Program was discontinued in 1992 because it was deemed “discouraging to those who needed the most encouragement”, which reflects my experience of it to a tee. The worst was when we’d be sent outside to run a lap around the school perimeter. I always seemed to get a stitch in my side, and was always one of the very slowest ones (and sometimes dead last). All of my memories about running as a child involve shame, embarrassment, physical discomfort, and envying the kids who seemed to lope seemingly effortlessly around the school.
I tried running again during grad school, when many people in my lab were doing it. I found a training plan in a magazine for non-runners to get to a 30-minute sustained run in 10 weeks and decided to give it a try, absolutely determined that I would not quit before completing the plan. My friends assured me that by then I’d love it, but that didn’t happen. In week 10 I went out the requisite 3 times and indeed ran for 30m, but hated every bloody second of it. I got home after that 30m run, took my running shoes off, and never put them on again. I figured I had given running a fair shot, and it just wasn’t for me.
So what on earth made me take it up again 25 years later? In early October 2022, I met a friend for dinner at a conference, and she told me that she had recently started running using the Peloton app, and was really loving it. Now, my sisters-in-law had been singing the praises of the Peloton app for quite some time, but they are both exercise lovers by nature, so their endorsement didn’t do much to convince me. But when my friend told me that she, too, had previously hated running, and using the Peloton app and springing for a good pair of running shoes had changed her mind, I decided to give it a try. She sent me a 60-day free trial for the app, and I went home and I bought a pair of Hoka running shoes.
I started by going out once a week, Saturday mornings, using the Peloton Outdoor walk/run workouts. I think part of my ultimate success was the pure dumb luck of having selected exactly the right workout for someone who was a true beginner. One of the things I find frustrating about the Peloton app is that it doesn’t provide much info about the detailed structure of their outdoor running workouts, so I was fortunate to have chosen one that had short running intervals (30 to 60s) separated by a couple of minutes walking; if I had chosen one of the many marked “beginner” that had 3- or 4-minute running intervals, I think I probably would have quit. It took me several months before I could comfortably sustain a 3- or 4-minute stretch of slow running.
By February, I had been going out consistently every week, and one day, to my great surprise, I discovered I was actually looking forward to my next run. In March, once the days had started to get longer and it was still light out when I got home from work, I started going out a couple of additional times on weeknights as well. In April, I happened across an advertisement for the Burlington Butter Tart 5K (where you get a butter tart at the end), and the idea amused me so much that I signed up for it.
Running this time around has been an interesting and thought-provoking journey for me. I had a particularly important a-ha moment in February when I was out for a run and thought “I wonder how long it will be before I can just run continuously without taking walking breaks,” and then, my next thought: “it literally doesn’t matter if I never get any better at this. Even if I do walk/run intervals forever, even if I don’t extend the length of my running intervals, even if I never get any faster, it doesn’t matter at all.” That was an utterly transformative moment for me, and I’m still feeling the reverberations of it.
I think we are often such an achievement-oriented culture that it’s easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that we have to always be moving toward a goal of some kind to make our efforts worthwhile: to run faster, run longer, lose weight, whatever the goal is that is supposed to motivate us. For me, rejecting that achievement mindset was paradoxically motivating, and has allowed me to recognize that just getting out there and moving at any pace is worthwhile. I like the way I feel after a run, and I enjoy the little ritual I’ve built around my outings. Plus I feel like I’m making a good investment in my long-term health: I don’t give a rat’s ass about losing weight anymore, but I know that building stronger bones and muscles will be a valuable asset to me as I age (I turn 50 next year).
One of the things I found helpful was following some non-archetypal runners on Instagram (I’m a particularly big fan of Sandra at @bigfit_i_run and Martinus at @300poundsandrunning), who helped affirm that there is nothing wrong with being a slow runner, and that running with walking breaks (sometimes called “jeffing“) is a totally legit way of being a runner. In fact, a growing amount of research shows that running slower has some specific benefits that aren’t associated with more intense workouts.
I completed the 5K race on Saturday by alternating between 90s of slow running and 30s of walking for the majority of the race (except for the final 600m or so where I could see that beautiful balloon arch at the finish line and just pushed through to get there). My final time was 42m 53s, I am damn proud of that.
Although I’m very pleased to have completed the race, I don’t think I’m going to run another 5K any time soon. One of the things I realized while preparing for it was that I don’t actually like running for more than 25 or 30 minutes at a stretch, and because I’m slow, 5K takes me nearly 45 minutes. I persisted with it because I was determined not to back out of the race, but now that it’s done I think I’ll go back to 20 or 30 minute outings. And I also don’t really like “preparing” for something — it tends to puts my head back into the goal-oriented space (“maybe I can finish in under 40 minutes”, “maybe I can run for the whole distance without any walking breaks”) that my February insight helped me escape from. I’m going to go back to just running for its own sake where it literally doesn’t matter if I never get any better
Stacey Ritz is a faculty member at McMaster University in Hamilton, crossword fan, and is a strong contender as the Canadian record-holder for most repeated viewings of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Today is Mother’s Day in the US, Canada and lots of (but not all) other countries. If you’re curious, here’s a list of when Mother’s Day is celebrated during the year. To honor mothers, we phone them (according to this site, Mother’s Day is the busiest calling day of the year), take them out to dinner, buy them cards, and of course send flowers.
There are lots of running races held on Mother’s Day. The weather is often warm, and it’s almost summer, which is perfect for an outdoor athletic activity. And, of course, there’s the chance for a nice prize if you win. In Madrid on Spain’s Mother’s Day, there was a 7km race– Carrera de a Mujer– and the grand prize was a food processor.
Yep, you read that right. A food processor.
Hmmm. Women’s Race. Mother’s Day. Food Processor. Am I sensing a gendered pattern here?
Absolutamente no, say the race promoters. Okay– what did they say?
“We apologize but we consider this a product with no sexist character and ideal for any athlete who wants to improve their nutritional habits,” the statement said. “We regret if any woman felt offended.”
The organizers promised to “take measures” to avoid similar incidents in the future.
Yeah, that is 1) pretty unconvincing; 2) one of those irritating non-apology apologies; and 3) avoids responsibility by saying they’ll “take measure” to avoid the problem. The measures they need to take next time are simply to provide the same prizes for for women that they provide for men’s races.
Let me add that the other prizes were 0% fat food products. Oh, and the race in the past featured T shirts with the slogan “Today, the girls win!”
Yeah, my feelings exactly. Thanks for the photo, Tabitha Turner from Unsplash.
This isn’t the first time your FIFI reporter has spotted sexist prizes for women who win athletic competitions. Oh, no. In 2019, a regional Spanish squash tournament featured regular sorts of prizes for the men’s categories. But for the women’s division, the top prize was a vibrator. Yep, it’s true. The other prizes including a body hair removal kit and an electric foot file (which I’ve never heard of and am a little worried about). I wrote a post about it, which you can read below.
Clearly, there needs to be some sort of national sports promoter training (in Spain, and elsewhere, too) about avoiding blatant sexism in managing athletic competitions that include women. Seriously, what about cash or general sports-related swag do they not understand?
Not that there’s anything wrong with either food processors or vibrators. They’re both fine gifts for anyone, for any occasion. If you’re giving one or the other (or both) to Mom this year, just make sure to put a lovely bow on them. Happy Mother’s Day!
Last Sunday, I ran my first Half Marathon in thirty-nine months. I was very, very nervous: it had been a long time since I tried to hold any kind of race pace for more than 10 km. I decided I would put my trust in the Pace Rabbits holding the 1:50 sign. Usually I’m not a fan—I don’t like the crowd around the Rabbits and want my watch to set the pace, not theirs. But this time out, I wanted to avoid looking at my watch, to run by feel and just hold steady.
Immediately, I liked my Rabbits. They made the pace feel effortless and the woman’s strong legs had an easy cadence. They were great on the hills—“We’re going to run this together”—and good at negotiating water stations. They didn’t talk too much. I kept my eye on the dark pony tail in front of me and remembered to breath. I thought about how the race might feel for the Rabbits. Presumably, the pace was not demanding for them, but they had to hold those signs and check the times written on their arms and compare their watches while making encouraging noises to the small pack behind them. They had given up a race day of their own to make someone else’s day better.
After the race, I thanked them. And then I suddenly realized that I knew the woman from Before Times. Before Covid cancelled Boston, before an injury robbed me of hope, for a while, and eighteen months of running, there had been a woman at races in Kelowna who ran ahead of me. I had tried to catch her but never could. She was training as a massage therapist and spent two years in my valley before returning to her home town. We had talked. And now, here she was: Jamie Komadina.
To say that it felt miraculous to have the past meet the present on the streets of Vancouver is to understate how comforted I was to see Jamie’s face again. She told me about her recent Boston marathon odyssey l (travel horrors, a sudden flu, and the miracle of making it to the start line) and how she hoped to run it again. “Boston 2025!” And there it was: the future. With strong legs and an easy cadence.
We all should have a Pace Rabbit in our lives. Someone who makes the hard things easier, who gives up time in the limelight so that others can have theirs. Someone who opens the door to the future and says, “Look!”
We all should have a Pace Rabbit in our lives, so that we can learn to be one in turn.
Photo description: Alison and her Pace Rabbit, Jamie Komadina, at the finish line of the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon.
