Tuesday, July 29, 2025: Ya, we’re runners
Hi Everyone!
Huge congrats to all our multi-sporters this weekend! The dynamic duo of Carolyn and Ian did the Augusta half IM! And here in Toronto we had Madalyn (1st in AG), Tess Farrell (top 10 in AG) and Miguel (15thin AG) in the TTF Olympic Tri! And Rob Dunne ran the 10K and came 2nd in his age group! Guys, it was such a hot day. Huge kudos to all of you on epic performances and give yourselves lots of time to recover – it will take a bit longer bc of exertion in the heat.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what makes us runners. My friend walked into an appointment the other day and the physio said “I could tell you’re a runner as soon as you walked in”. Which made us all wonder … what was he picking up on? I’ve always thought that being a distance runner is a personality. I can identify it in others, but I can’t put my finger on what “it” is. There is definitely something unique that connects us all, but it’s hard to put into words what exactly that is. I’m reading a great book given to me by a friend called “How She Did It”. It’s a compilation of accomplished female distance runners over the decades, and shares their stories about how they got involved and what their journey looked like. Some started running as young as 10, and some didn’t discover it until they were in their 20’s. But all of them said the same thing: “I knew I loved it as soon as I did it”. Which goes to show what I’ve always known: there are many runners out there walking around who are runners but don’t know it yet because they’ve never tried it. It’s definitely not for everyone, and I get that! It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t get it why we do it. Last Sunday a few of us were finishing up a burning hot, underfuelled, too-long long run. We were dragging ourselves down one of our last apocalyptic kilometers when we bumped into a mutual friend and her husband while they were having a very civilized leisurely coffee. We stopped to say ‘hi’ (we were taking any and all excuses to stop), and realized how horrible we looked. Hollow-eyed, red faced and as wet as if someone had poured a bucket of water over us. It was hard not to notice the contrast and beg the question, “why would we choose what we’re doing and not what she’s doing?” I can’t really answer that except to say, we’re runners.
My daughter is a runner. I sort of tried to point her into other directions, like rock climbing, short sprinting, and swimming. But once she tried the longer running stuff, she just loved it. It’s even weird to me. I’m like, I get why I like it, but why do you like it? You’ve chosen such a hard sport – it’s basically just different degrees of hard! Maybe one day someone will be able to put into words better than I can why we like it. For now, I’ll just say, distance running is a personality. It’s identifiable and we all have it. And we just have to learn to put up with the weird looks and comments of how crazy we are from our non-running friends. If we have to explain it, they’ll never get it.
On to tomorrow’s workout: Fartlek on the spit! As usual, we’ll meet at Lakeshore and Leslie at 6:05 for drills.
Let’s do: 5 min tempo, 3 min easy, 3 x 3 min faster (~10K) w 90 sec easy, 3 min easy 3 x 2 min faster (~5K) w 90 sec easy. Marathoners finish w 5 min @ MP.
The whole thing will take 32-39 minutes. Just note for those with longer run commutes in case you want to drive down and drive back with a coffee!
That is all – see you in the a.m.
xo
Seanna