This week Mark speaks with a Canadian Olympian who looks forward to challenging himself weekly. Then a look back on a historic performance on the Boston Marathon with Krista DuChene. Plus remembering the Marathon of Hope thirty eight years later with Terry Fox’s brother.
As we head into 2019, this edition of iRun is all about inspiring you to give this next year all you’ve got. First, Graydon Snyder shares his story or running, then joggling to an epic finish. Then one women shares how and why she completed 100 marathons despite a devastating injury. Plus running guru John Stanton shares his favourite stories from this sport we all love.
By: Tim Huebsch
How do you sum up 365 days of running in a single thought? Well, don’t they say a picture is worth a thousand words kilometres?
What you’re about to see is a year of running summed up in four photos, all showing you slightly different characteristics of the same 365 days of running. Basically, the photos are extrapolations of my own personal GPS watch data, turned into eye-catching graphs and maps with data pulled from Strava, a social fitness network.
The facets are the most overwhelming visuals on first glance.They look like a bunch of wingdings scattered across a page. But, when you realize what you’re looking at, the data begins to make sense. Each individual pattern represents a run, in chronological order, and from left to right. As you can tell, it wasn’t a great year for running consistency. Popular patterns include track workouts (ovals), loops and straight lines (warmups and cool downs). If you look closely, the route is superimposed on top of the actual distance.
The facets, in my opinion, best sum up the year. There are so many different stories that can be pulled from your runs. Exploring new places, running longer than you ever have before, or getting lost and tacking on an extra 10K to your long run accidentally. The facets offer vague reminders and clues of each of those runs.
The most visually appealing version of the visualizations is the map feature. Take a second. Can you guess what city this is just by the outlines of runs?
Basically, the map shows every single step I took and uploaded to Strava in 2018 within the Toronto. The darker the lines, the more times I retraced that same route, as a whole or in part. You can even pick out certain landmarks on the map including the Martin Goodman Trail, Humber River, Ontario Place, Riverdale Park, Monarch Park Indoor Track Stadium and the Leslie Spit, to name a few. (Click here for 2017’s.)
The calendar is pretty simple, showing every one of my runs tracked by GPS data for the year.
Any day with a shade of colour represents a distance run greater than zero. The lighter the shade, the less distance covered that day. The darker, the greater the distance covered. As you can tell, there are significant periods during the year when there was no activity at all (and thus, no colour on the calendar), due to injury, rest or not running with a watch. Distance is calculated in kilometres.
Do you have a favourite time of day to run? Perhaps it’s at 6 a.m., before work, when the roads and trails are empty. Or maybe it’s a 8 a.m. run-commute followed by a 5 p.m. return trip. Or you’re a night owl, and get in your runs well past dark and just before bedtime.
The ridges in this visualization weigh the pattern of the time of day I ran most in 2018. Clearly, I enjoy evening runs on weekdays, and daytime activity on Sundays.
Melbourne, Australia-based Marcus Volz, who has a PhD in engineering & applied mathematics, is credited with creating the framework to display the data in such a visual way. In 2017, Volz shared all of his runs between 2011-2017 on his Twitter account making for an incredible collage of activities (including a few kangaroo-shaped runs, which represent the route of the Melbourne Marathon).
Curious as to whether you can do this yourself? Anyone can create the artistic visualizations with their GPS data as Volz publicly shares the instructions online via his Github, an open-source platform to share computer code.
For the past three weeks, just as winter has taken hold, I’ve been running at lunch. Preparation begins the night before with a packing routine and checklist that’s as meticulous as the preparation the precedes a destination race.
In winter, preparing ahead of time means you have to account for variability. Maybe I’ll go bare legged in shorts, but it’s good to have a base layer just in case. Same goes for up top, where a long sleeve top might work, but a half zip pullover is good to have. For temperatures bordering on extreme cold and heavy winds, I like to have my toque. Of course, the GPS watch better be charged and if not, I better remember the USB cord.
My office doesn’t have a shower, so out of consideration for my colleagues, baby wipes and a towel are perhaps the most essential items along with my shaving kit that’s sure to be stocked with deodorant and a comb.
By the time it’s all done, my bag has enough heft that my destination could be Billy Bishop Airport rather than my office along Front Street.
The practice started, quite honestly, out of a desperate need to maintain my routine throughout the winter. I dread running in the dark and I am honest enough to admit that I just don’t want to brave the cold and the dark in the morning anymore. When the end of the day arrives, I may find that I’m just too fatigued or that my attachment to a desk and monitor has left me a bit stiffer than I’d like.
The time crunch proved a factor too. The evening brings its own responsibilities and sometimes just a need to wind down rather than crank up the adrenaline.
Just before lunch, I head to the bathroom with my giant gym bag. I change and drop my bag back off in the office, where I put in a quick dynamic warmup. In an open concept space, someone is going to see me doing high kicks and lunges, but it doesn’t bother me and it’s likely that no one cares. The same goes for my trip down the elevator in a group of suits.
Every day, my route is the same. A straight shot down Simcoe Street for a few hundred metres before I meet the Martin Goodman Trail. Whatever the distance or workout, the run is an out and back heading west before bringing me back to my office.
My legs move well at this time of day–better than I expected them to, but it makes sense. They’ve had some time to wake up at get moving, but haven’t had the chance to get stiff and sore. The rest of my body is a happy balance of having some fuel in me, but not overfed or regretting that snack I had too late in the afternoon.
I’ve sometimes remarked that running along the MGT in the winter is spiritual, or at least they closest I’ll ever get to spirituality. The mostly uninterrupted running and relative midday quiet, the meditative quality of watching waves crash and hearing wind howl, all creates the space for a body in motion and a mind that’s open.
Quickly enough, I’m doing what I always do on a run, which is enjoying myself and moving with purpose.
It’s not to say that the rest of the day is futile or unfulfilling, but running is a restorative practice and perhaps midday is the perfect time to do it. It’s active in itself, but in a broader context it’s about resets and reminders to appreciate who and where you are. Sometimes the end of the day is too long to wait for that. By that point your mind and body have endured enough and now have to turn to other obligations and labours. I’m privileged to have the midday hour for the activity that represents a pure state of just being.
St. Ambrose and other fathers of the Church regarded the hour as the day’s most divine and therefore favourable to prayer, breaking away from the affairs of the day for contemplation. I don’t pray, but maybe that’s what prayer does for people who make time for it during the day–offers the opportunity to look deeper and find contentment in the present and simply being.
The afternoon sees a boost of energy rather than a wave of lethargy. I’m pleased to have made a productive use of my lunch break. I haven’t neglected the hard work of training and am please with myself.
There is still beauty and light in winter. There is still reward in running even when nature is brutal.
Matt Galloway didn’t know how much he needed running, until he tried.
BY: Ben Kaplan
The host of Metro Morning on CBC, Matt Galloway, 48, is a father of two with an outsized influence on Toronto. His decency and moral compass seem to act as a barometer for how the issues of the day should be framed. In that sense, he’s a lot like Mark Sutcliffe in Ottawa and perhaps John Stanton when it comes to our sport. It’s important to know who the good guys are Galloway says he finds peace, at least in part, in his running shoes.
iRun: You wake up at 3 a.m. for work. Why’s it important that you make time to run?
Galloway: Much of my life is being “on,” whether it’s on the radio or with my kids, you need to be engaged. Also I’m plugged in a lot. I have phones, watches and things that buzz and the time when I run is when I carve all of that out and have solitary time. That’s why I make time to run.
iRun: Funny how working out can bring inner peace.
Galloway: It’s like meditation. It’s the time when I’m just not working. And there are things that come up during work when I’m running and the brain empties itself out and you solve the big problems that you couldn’t solve when you were supposed to be solving them, but for me, running is the time to be out and be aware. These days, I’m running a lot without listening to anything and I explore the city and get lost. It’s a way for me to be selfish.
iRun: That’s funny, because runners are always being applauded for, in essence, spending loads of time on themselves.
Galloway: Being selfish isn’t something I can or should do during the rest of my life. Family takes up a lot of my time, work—those things are supposed to—but running is this one thing for me.
iRun: Do you want to race, get faster, improve?
Galloway: I’ve run races and it’s fun. There’s energy that comes from that and that’s different than being by yourself. There’s also an energy that comes from focusing on a specific goal. But right now I don’t feel compelled to compete. I’m aware of my pace and distance. But I don’t need the competition part of it. I just need to be out running.
iRun: Will you run on the treadmill during the winterttime?
Galloway: I don’t have a treadmill and I don’t go to a gym. I’ll run in snow and rain and ice and anything like that. A few years ago I ran every day for a year and it showed me there’s always places you can run. Cemeteries, for example.
iRun: I love the story of how you became a runner, because it wasn’t that you ran in school.
Galloway: I was standing on the side of a road and watching a marathon in the pouring rain and people were electrified by what they were doing and I thought, What don’t I get? It’s awful out, and these people are having the best time. I needed to find a way to experience that, and I did.
iRun: So from a non-runner to a runner every day for a year. What changed?
Galloway: I bought some shoes, ran down the road and then I ran further down the road. Ran a couple of loops in the park and thought, this is really hard. But a few months into it, you feel a little better, and then a few months after that you feel a lot better and then I ran a 5K, then a couple of 10Ks, and then I just kind of got it. I started running a lot.
iRun: What has running taught you?
Galloway: Discipline, and how strong you can become, how fit. How you can go anywhere and how all you need is your shoes and away you go. It changed my life.
iRun: And it’s been something you’ve stuck with?
Galloway: I now run five or six days a week. It’s just part of my life and now it feels like my body needs it everyday.
iRun: That need you’re describing, it’s not just endorphins, but sounds like maybe something deeper, more complex.
Galloway: It gave me something that I didn’t know I needed. Which is that outlet, or that sense of feeling fit. But a different kind of fitness, there’s the ability to get out and explore that I didn’t have otherwise. Turns out I needed that in my life and I didn’t know that I needed it, but the news is relentless and a lot of it feels bad, and you need an outlet. People do different things and for me it’s lacing up and just disappearing into the city or wherever I happen to be.
iRun: What’s it mean to you as a father, as an example for your girls?
Galloway: I like showing my kids that being physically fit can be part of your life and that you go for a run and come back and have a glow, but I also like the idea of rigour. It’s easy to lay on the couch, but whether it’s this or something else, I want them to have a sense of commitment. And deciding you’re going to do something and sticking with it. I could’ve stopped running for a day during that year—no one would’ve cared—but it would’ve ground me up and pissed me off. I want to feel like I can commit to something and I want them to, too.
iRun: Where do you think you’ll be as a runner in five years?
Galloway: I watch big races all the time and I would like to do the New York marathon sometime and maybe I’ll do that, but I was out on a Sunday long run and coming back home and as I got close to my house there were two older women running and they seemed like the happiest people you could imagine. Just two women happily running and cruising along and I want that. Not competitive. Just part of your life.
anadian Olympian Alex Hutchison and why
On this edition of iRun Radio, runners will get some advice from Canadian Olympian Sage Watson. Then, Alex Hutchison shares his thoughts on the world record marathon held in Berlin earlier this year. Plus, an Ottawa runner explains why he ran the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon dressed as a battery.
By: Sage Watson
Women helping women is the only way forward. I’m in the gym working out and I see this girl running on the treadmill and I want to her if she keeps running on her toes like that she’s going to have serious leg issues. . . then I stop myself. Who am I to judge? I may be a professional track athlete, but I am not her coach, I’m not her training partner.
All of us are guilty of judging one another or—worse—talking behind one another’s back. “Wow… look at how short her running shorts are…” Or: “Is it really necessary that she wears a crop top to workout in?” I am guilty, you may be guilty and this needs to STOP. As women, we face too many issues in society (lack of women in sports, equal pay, lack of media coverage) to not have each other’s back. I’m not just talking about hyping up your friends. I’m talking about in public, the workplace, after you get your butt handed to you in a race. It’s important to support one another instead of judging or criticizing.
After all my races in high school I would shake my opponent’s hands. It was the sportsmanship thing to do whether you win or lose I was taught. I also loved doing it because before the race “all bets are off,” but after we can come together as women who have something in common and be thankful that we have competitors to race against. When I went to the NCAA in University it was a whole different ball game. I remember going to shake the others girl’s hands and they looked at me in disgust! So for awhile I did the same: I didn’t shake hands. Then after one of my races a girl came up and shook my hand. It caught me off guard and from that moment on I told myself no matter what I’m going to shake my competitors hands (even if that means getting rejected). Even at the Olympic games, world championships and Diamond League races, I shake my competitor’s hands. Having gratitude for your competitors after a race is a way better feeling than having jealousy.
Jealousy is natural when you see others doing better than you or doing the same amount of work, but getting further ahead. The same thing comes to training partners and co-workers.
I’ve experienced the best and worst when it comes to training partners and it’s easy at the beginning of training to be supportive for one another, but when it comes to competing and your partner kicks your butt, how do you react? Calling her the “B” word may be the easier thing. Or we may cough up an excuse like, “Well, she did have a few extra training sessions,” or “She was in a better position than me in the race.”
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything; don’t make up an excuse and feel the need to tell everyone. They won because it was their day to win, not yours. Support the women you compete against, be grateful for the chance to race, and move on.
Women, we need to stop the criticizing, being jealous and judging one another. We are in this world together and for us to get things like equal pay, more women in sports, more coverage of women’s sports and stopping the criticism of what we wear to compete or train in, we need to uplift one another. It’s supply and demand. If we demand the uplifting and supporting of more women, the world will supply it. They won’t have a choice.
I turned 50 this year, and have found such peace and love, with the love of running, and the women I share my adventures with.
It truly has changed my life, and continuously changing.
Rewind. It’s the year 2012, I’m age 43, my children are adults. Is it really time for me, to discover something I never knew about myself?
My story begins at a gym working out, seeing a sign posted:
“Learn how to run, 5km or 10km: REGISTER”
Fast forward to the present, the year 2017. Age 48, registered for GOODLIFE MARATHON TORONTO, with my two running sisters, Carina Spina, Lucie DesLauriers, our second weekend girls getaway, and “umpteenth” race together.
Who would have thought that year in 2012, the running poster would forever change my life.
My name is Maria Poulios. I’m age 48, married, with two adult children, ages 29, 26.
To date, I have accomplished over six half marathons, 10km, 5km and two 30km races, since the love of running started for me in 2012. My new challenge this year: my first marathon.
Every year that draws by is a growing experience. Always learning from every race, every training, every meal, every running buddy.
I started as a person with self doubt and evolved into a runner with self confidence. A healthier, stronger, me.
This new me, has in turn, made changes in other aspects in my life. I’ve learned how to balance my work and family life, and how to truly enjoy the memorable moments in life.
The rewards, ahhhh the rewards:
Lost fifty pounds
Mental health stronger
Looking and feeling healthy
Discovering a second family
My running family.
The extended family: the inspiration, support and encouragement I have found amazes me. The kindness, generosity, and the love I have encountered has restored my faith in humanity—that there truly are angels in the world.
Hence, we arrive to today: the GoodLife Marathon. The name says it all, GOOD LIFE. I have won the lottery. My winning tickets!! Carina and Lucie.
My running sisters. Is it really about a race? Or really the purpose? A reason to do a race? It’s a trophy, a medal, making our stamp in this world. Running has no age limit.
We are alive!
Each race is a finish line for me. At the finish, I look back and reflect on how I started, how I succeeded, how I failed, how I cried, how I laughed. How I overcame.
The gift to me is these two sisters and our getaways. The laughter we share, the fears, the failures, and the stories.
Through their eyes and adventures, even though I cannot be at every single race, I live the moment with them. They have guided me and encouraged me to see my potential, and flaws, and embrace both of these perfections and imperfections, as to the person I have become today.
Who am I today?
I am Maria Poulios: Runner, giving, loving, truly blessed, on an adventure of a lifetime. Discovering myself, sharing it with two amazing sisters, and having the time of our lives.
In retrospect, is it really about three girls and a race? Or is it a race, with three girls in a forever life of changing adventure?
In keeping with the theme of the latest issue of iRun, this edition of iRun Radio is all about women. First, Krista DuChene takes a look back on her historic performance at the Boston Marathon. Then, a runner who ran until the day she gave birth, shares her story of chasing down the six world marathon majors. Plus, Janie Shepperd of the Runner’s Academy shares new guidelines for running during pregnancy.
The winningest female marathoner of all-time became faster after the birth of her children, twice. An issue dedicated to strength, discipline, and unity: The Sport the Women Took Over, an iRun Playbook for Decency and Good Times in the New Year.
Please click the box on the bottom right and enjoy our winter issue in full screen.
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