Making stops along the way

Hi All!

First up, congrats to Steph who ran the Pride 5K yesterday in a PB time of 20:15!!! Way to show resilience and bounce back from a disappointing covid canceled marathon. To everyone always remember: no training is ever wasted.

And Chris and Cassidy Robinson who did the Welland triathlon – I believe Cassidy finished first in her age group and 5^th woman overall!!

Also congrats to all of us who ran the Ekiden relays last Tuesday! LOVED seeing all of us and other runners out there celebrating the running communities in Toronto. Big thank-you to all who ran and all who came to cheer.

Speaking of celebrating, I hope everyone had a great weekend and celebrated Pride and/or anything else you had to celebrate. Goodness knows, we all need to celebrate when we can because there is enough news out there to get down about!

That’s what I was thinking about this weekend as I took the weekend off of training during a peak phase in order to celebrate my daughter’s birthday with a group of her friends. I was thinking that although training is “serious” business and we need to be focused and disciplined, I don’t think that we need to approach it with the sense that we’re putting all the fun on hold until after. If you can’t blend fun and relaxation with serious, focused training, you’re setting yourself up for an all-or-nothing scenario. You risk becoming resentful of your training and looking forward to it being done or possibly getting burned out. Instead, we should be enjoying the process and living our lives in the moment. I know that certain patterns do shift when we’re training seriously – we may have fewer late nights out and might not spend quite as much “quality time” with family. But I think it’s important to keep these things in the picture, even when you’re in “beast mode”. We don’t have to be binary – fun person or training athlete. As much as possible we should blend those two into one authentic self. I’ve had the odd ride or run where I haven’t been my best because I’d gone out with friends the night before. And I’ve cut some training short and definitely not maximized recovery because I’ve wanted to spend time with my kids doing activities they want to do. I’m not waiting until the end to do all my relaxing and celebrating in one big gigantic party. I’m pausing and celebrating in little stops along the way. So I’m not actually looking forward to when this is done. Hopefully my life won’t change too drastically one way or the other. Sure, the pendulum will shift a little more in another direction, but it won’t be like walking through a door and closing it shut behind me.

For those of you setting out on a training program now, see if you can approach it the same way. Celebrate as you go. Take pauses when you need or want them. Keep the non-training you beside you the whole time, and listen to that person’s needs as well. That way, once you’re done, you might just find that instead, you keep going.

Tomorrow, we’re back to hills! I have a new twist on them:

Pottery Rd. After every 2 hills, take 1-1.5 mins and do 3 mins tempo. Repeat that sequence 2-4 times (4 sounds insane – I just put that there but I think 3 will prob be most of our numbers)

Just teaching our bodies to keep going after the hills. As happens in most hilly races. And since some of us have a hilly one coming up, the rest of you get to join us in this 😉

I’ll aim to be there around 6:05/6:10.

See ya in the am!!

Seanna