HERE WE GO AGAIN...
I’m excited. Two and a half weeks of complete rest has left me crawling in my skin. In just over a week, I get to start training again. Yes, training. Excercise. Work. The regime begins one more time. Heading into my twentieth season as an athlete, it will be most likely the last time.
I liken it to renovation projects. They are so fun to start. A new beginning is always fresh and the possibilities seem endless when a project has yet to begin. However, when the extent of the project becomes a reality, most people lose steam and become lured to starting the next project, without finishing the one they’ve started. My house in the Eastern Townships holds ample evidence of my inability to remain focussed (just ask my Husband who, thankfully, is good at finishing things!). Fortunately, I am better at sport than carpentry. After so many years of keeping the focus through daunting racing seasons in cycling and speed skating, I can safely say I fare better in sport than renovation. My strength as an athlete has always been at the finish.
Last year, I began my training in Jerusalem. I was visiting a friend and doing some work with Right to Play in the West Bank and the day arrived, marked boldly on my calendar, that it was time to begin exercising again. I had already rested for a month, and just arrived from Ghana and another Right to Play trip, but knew I had to begin. After so much news in Canada of the Middle Eastern ‘situation’, my husband Peter and I were apprehensive, wondering if it were safe enough to go out for a run. We soon realized that it was indeed okay. A few days later, we circumnavigated the Holy City by foot, weaving through the varying communities with prudence and curiosity. I remember thinking ‘now how many athletes can say their season began here!’
I thought of all the different places I had commenced training over the years. Once, it was on the bike, in my favourite part of California. A series of paved road ascents equalled over 50,000 vertical feet of climbing on two wheels after ten days time. Another year, it was in Ethiopia, again with Right to Play, doing early morning runs with the hundreds of locals in the streets of Addis Ababa. I felt like an ox running with the lithe Ethiopians, but I did not care. The experiences of being a part of, if only for a brief time, a culture so rich in running history made any effort disappear. And the last Olympic year, back in 2006, Peter and I did a month long bike tour in Arizona. Dirt roads carried us along the Mexican border, and the Eastern mountainous side of the state made for epic rides up to the Navajo Nation. It was a magical and gruelling trip, traveling through the desert state. The culture and kindness we experienced put us in another time, another place.
Bike touring in Arizona Spring, 2005, in Monument Valley
As I set out to leave this piece of paradise in the townships I call home, across Canada by plane, and then twenty-two hours of driving down to California, I am again aware of the choices I make. After so many miserable years racing my bike through treacherous weather conditions, I need guaranteed sunshine at this time of the year. Even more important than the weather, this is a time for me to be away from the team environment. So much of my year is spent within the regime of the team that I crave my space and the freedom to do my own thing. It’s too easy to stick with routine and the fact that I am still here, fresh and motivated to do this again after so many years, is due to the fact that I am creative with my ‘working environment’. It allows me to find my own way and make clear to myself that I don’t need the pampered environment, or the attention from outside forces, to find my drive and determination.
For me, this means setting out on a mountain traverse in the desert for two or three weeks this April. I am not an adventurer but have a zest for the unknown. One hundred and seventy five kilometres of trail-less desert high altitude terrain awaits us. Though intimidated by the thought of melting snow for water, making it to the next food cache without running out of supplies and being able to endure the 9000-14,000 foot elevations, this is the uncertainty that I need right now. It’s too easy to have everything planned and prepared all the time. I know that if I can get through this self-contained journey that is just me and Peter, that I will be able to do anything next year. The support I won’t have, the team that won’t be there for me and the experience of having to find the motivation inside of myself with no crowd, no extrinsic force to help me through, will surely come in handy as the Olympics roll around in just over ten months time.
Each year, I feel most satisfied after the first few months of training that leave me feeling so fit and strong that I can run up any mountain, ride up any road or do just about any physical activity with strength and endurance. The later I get into the racing season, this fitness becomes much more specific and it can only be channelled into four and seven minute efforts on skates. But in the spring, I literally feel like I can move mountains and this feeling of freedom is what I long for.
So here I go, one more time. I can’t wait to see how the next month, let alone the next year, unfolds.
Me and Peter during the last hike in the Inyo Mountains
Peter cooking dinner at one of our glorious, but windy, camps the last time we did the hike in 2004
Me, exhausted, unable to move at 12,000ft during our last hike in the Inyo Mountains. Now why do I want to do this again???
Olympic road kill. Yes, that’s me!
To read about the last attempt at the Inyo traverse, check out Globe Trotting
To see more photos from trips mentioned in this journal, check out Photos
