RUNNING WOMAN
I’ve written the past few entries about running. I’m beginning to come across like some kind of fanatic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not consumed by this new form of exercise. It’s just that it’s the one constant in my ever-changing life. Since the Olympics, life has been anything but ordinary. Ordinary? You may wonder how I can refer to being an Olympic athlete as ‘ordinary’. Any athlete or person involved in sport will know what I mean by this. It is the simple, constant, predictable and calculated approach when training for something which makes the day to day existence quite….ordinary.
Back to the present and what I see as a temporary existence. It’s been interesting to travel so much and lead this sort of business person’s life. Without the job, that is. I am in different places multiple times per week, each time preparing for a presentation that I liken to a performance. Getting up in front of an audience and sharing the nuances of the ‘ordinary’ athletes experience, while trying to show how extraordinary it can be, takes a lot of focus and energy. I find myself using the tools I did as an athlete preparing for a race. Using my brain and preparing my energy to output a level of performance I expect out of myself and others expect from me. Only the stage is no longer the ice, the road or the track, it is now the podium and the microphone.
Throughout these few months, I began to run. It began with a desire to stay in shape. It soon became a necessity to not only keep my body feeling good, but to keep my head clear. Some days I find myself in the urban centers, looking for a route to run that doesn’t have me navigating too many stoplights or pedestrians. Usually I am out so early the latter is not a factor.
There are days when I look at my watch every two minutes, wondering how time can go by so slow. I’ve felt when running on pavement, surrounded by the concrete jungle, how I feel when on a treadmill in a fitness center: not too stimulated but it’s better than nothing. Those days are not much more than putting in the hours so that I can feel good after. Unlike competition when I never allowed myself to think about or be motivated by a finishing time or placement, there are days when all I think about is the result of what I am doing. Only it’s not a medal I’m focussed on, it’s how I am going to feel for the rest of my day and everything I do in that day I look forward to. It’s every interaction I have and how I am going to feel the day after and the week after that which keeps me running. I also think about the days I will have in rural areas, when I can run in the countryside or if I’m lucky, like this week, in the forest on the trails.
Which brings me back to a few days ago. I found myself in (for me) a new region in Canada: Muskoka, Ontario. I asked to leave later than planned after a presentation so that I could go for a run. I noticed trails climbing into the forest from the paved roads while driving in the day before, and knew I had to stay. I was heading down to North Toronto and a primarily shopping/industrial park/freeway laden area and could not resist the idea of running in the forest.
Though there were limited stretches to run on, and considering I found myself (perhaps illegally?) running on the paths through a golf course at times, I will never forget the feeling of bounding on those single track forested trails. I sounded like an elephant but felt like a deer. I was grinning ear to ear, feeling so alive and filled with…filled with joy, actually. Navigating my way on the vein of dirt making it possible to move through the maple, aspen and birch forest made me want to run faster and faster. I felt like a kid again and wanted to keep going and going.
Unfortunately, I only had an hour. Back to the hotel for a shower and then a car service pick-up, soon enough I was back in the concrete jungle again. The sound of leaves blowing in the wind and birds chirping were replaced with the noise of hundreds of thousands of vehicles flying by on the freeway close to my hotel.
I am beginning to realize I may be in the wrong line of work. Or maybe I just need to choose my job locations a little bit better. Perhaps what it comes down to is appreciating the place I am when I’m there, and dreaming about running in the forest when I’m not.
I guess I need to put into practice twenty years of visualization to bring myself back to those special places. Enough writing about it, I’m heading out for a trail run in this beautiful valley I call home.
UPDATE: A great day, a great run and I even saw a big moose on the trail. Only fell on the slick trails twice and felt like a kid bolting through the forest (not just because I was covered in mud from falling!). I highly recommend getting out on the trails, even if it’s just for a short hike. It’s like soup for the soul.
