Tuesday, August 19, 2025 – Hurtling Obstacles
Hi Everyone!
Congrats to all our racers this weekend! In the TrackSmith5K we had Pearce making his rust-busting return to racing, and despite battling ahead cold, put himself in the fastest heat of the night! Way to put it out there. And down in baking hot Ohio where the water was covered in algae, Leigh Anne did the Ohio 70.3 and PB’d by 30 minutes! Here in Toronto, Tanis, Shauna and Madalyn all competed in the TO Island sprint tri! Madalyn and Shauna came 1st and 2nd in their age categories, and Tanis came 2nd only because she did an extra lap on the bike – otherwise would have come 1st! And somewhere in the mountains in Quebec Anna undertook a 45K mountain trail race and managed 38K before being pulled off for the cut off time. Way to go for the unkown. It sounds like there were plenty of obstacles challenging all of our racers, and they all did their best at hurtling them and knocking them down to get to their goals.
That is in fact what I’ve been thinking about this week. Overcoming obstacles. I also raced this weekend – my last 1500 of the season. It turned out our race was 45 minutes late, so we were all standing around in the hot sun waiting for updates which were not forthcoming. But in the midst of this, one of the competitors arrived, and said “thank goodness for the delay – there were two accidents on the highway!” She had been sitting in her car watching her arrival time move further and further back until it said she would arrive at the exact time that the race was supposed to start. So she just practiced deep breathing and prepared herself to sprint from the car directly to the 1500m start line. As it turned out, she did have plenty of time, and ran the race no problem, but another racer saw she wasn’t going to make it and turned around and went home. There were many factors outside of these competitors’ control, but one of the athletes decided to try to overcome the obstacles while the other lost hope and gave up.
It’s good to practice not giving up, because often times that is not an option. My daughter is using bike share city bikes to get to work every day at the EX. She’s a bit nervous riding bikes in the city and is also learning how to use the system for the first time. On her first day, she got partway there and realized she’d forgotten her baseball cap which is part of her uniform. She’s a bit of a perfectionist, so this rankled her but she thought she might be able to buy one on her way in. Then the bike port would not accept her bike to lock it at her destination. She tried the only two ports available and they were not working and it said she’d be charged $1000 if she left it unlocked. Her timing for not being late for work was slipping away and she still didn’t have her hat. She called me, very upset, saying she hated all of this and just wanted to quit and go home. But of course that was not an option. She had to take a deep breath, confront one obstacle at a time, and figure it out. Guess what … she survived! A person came to take out a bike and she locked hers into that port. Then the first kiosk she saw was selling baseball caps for $5. And she was on time for work. And isn’t this just how we get through life? It’s almost like a video game where we’re trying to reach our goal but Donkey Kong keeps throwing down those damn barrels! And by the way …they won’t stop coming. So we’d better learn to jump over them or else we’re going nowhere.
When we plan out our race schedules and training calendars, we don’t plan for obstacles. No one ever does. But I have never in my life seen anyone get through an entire cycle without at least a few – some bigger than others. Often the immediate urge is to want to throw in the towel and say I give up. Or as my dad would say, “Stop the world, I want to get off”. And as my one and a half year old once declared loudly while still on the runway before taking off on a trip, “Hugo all done airplane!” But try to overcome the urge to fold into the fetal position and pull a blanket over your head. The more we learn to hurdle and swat aside these obstacles, the better we get at it. Unfortunately we can’t plan this type of practice, but every time life serves up hurdles, just think of it as training for the next ones. Because there will be next ones, and we will bet better at navigating them. Just take a deep breath, and start hurtling.
On to tomorrow’s workout! I won’t be there, but it will be fartlek on the spit – meet at Lakeshore and Leslie at 6:05 for drills, 6:15 GO!
2-3-4-5-4-3-2 minutes on with 2 mins bw all. Start to finish it will take 35 mins.
Have a great one and I’ll see you next week!
xo
Seanna