Lisa Bentley, 11-time Ironman champion, is a 51-year-old coach and motivational speaker from Ontario whose approach to racing and life is beyond inspiring. Bentley, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, speaks with gumption and sincerity and her example may be enough to propel us off the couch and into the wild as we face this first winter of the great unknown. Ben Kaplan caught up with Bentley after her workout on a recent Friday afternoon.   

iRun: During the pandemic, have you ever felt down or like a loss of motivation? 

LB: Everyone has days of lack of motivation. The main thing is these pandemic days become so similar, it feels like Groundhog Day, but I had more of them when it was winter. I’ve gotten somewhat used to it but I do remember days feeling a bit sad. 

iRun: So what did you do? 

LB: Figure out ways not to be. I would literally be determined to be happy. It would be a goal. So I would go to see my mom from a distance or talking to someone on the phone or walking my dog. Walking my dog has brought me a ton of joy. 

iRun: For me, it’s been exercise. I’ve never run this much in my life and I edit a running magazine for a living. 

LB: Exercise has been a huge part of it and completing a certain route or time or distance—whether a run or getting on my bike—brought its own goal and purpose and brought me a sense of satisfaction that got me through the day.

iRun: Is it true you’re sponsored by ASICS? What’s been your approach to pandemic footwear and what do you recommend?

LB: Yes, I’m part of the ASICS family. It’s ironic because the ASICS mission is “sound mind in a sound body” and I embodied that idea of mindset and heart-set throughout my entire career and now in my coaching and speaking. The amazing thing is that in spite of having very complicated, battered feet after 40 marathons (I have two torn tendons in my right foot because of my inherited flat feet), I am running totally pain-free for the first time in ages. My favourite training shoe is the Gel Nimbus 22, but I also run in the GT 2000 and Cumulus. The NovaBlast and DynaBlast are my go-to dog-walking shoes; for the rowing machine and strength circuits, I use the RoadBlast, and now that the colder weather has hit, I’m using the Gel Sonoma GoreTex Trail Shoe.

iRun: What’s your take on the importance of exercise? 

LB: Control what you can control and take a sense of pride in it. And choosing to exercise brings you a sense of control. “This is my bike ride or run or plyometric session and this pandemic cannot take it away from me.” Exercise releases endorphins and brings a sense of pleasure, of satisfaction. It’s good for your self-esteem. 

iRun: What else have you been doing to keep your spirits up?

LB: Doing things for others. When I was racing, I used to create a theme for my race which I would focus on when the effort seemed unsustainable. I have been doing that during this pandemic as well. For example, when I feel restricted or wishing that I could go to a restaurant or church or the gym, I return to my pandemic theme: Stay healthy. Then not being able to go to the gym or a mall or restaurant made sense and was bearable, even smart.  

iRun: What are some other themes you have used? 

LB: Be grateful.   

iRun: As a coach, how are you keeping your athletes grateful?   

LB: It’s a difficult year to provide motivation but I like to think that I am an athletic coach, life coach and “keeper of goals.” Our goals have had to evolve and my job is to provide motivation, not keep people motivated. 

iRun: So what’s the answer? 

LB: Create incentives and goals. Of course, when you take the gym and pools away from triathletes, it’s difficult. But it’s not something we can’t handle. We can use this as a time to focus on threshold and increasing intensity over shorter distances rather than just ‘surviving’ 6-hour rides and 3-hour runs in preparation for an Ironman. It has been fun to watch athletes run their best half marathon in prep for what is now Boston Marathon 2021 or ride their best 90K in prep for what has become Ironman Mont Tremblant 2021. Tell you the truth, I’m more worried about my mother in a retirement residence than I am about my athletes.    

iRun: That would be hard, being in a residence. 

LB: I just hope they don’t lock them in. 

iRun: How are you adjusting to the pandemic? 

LB: I’m not visiting people indoors. I’m not visiting restaurants. I can handle it thanks to my mini-daily goals and having our dogs to care for. I’m just concerned about my mother. I’m fine. I worry about people on their own, feeling a bit lonely and isolated and my concern is that people who need companionship are being taken care of. 

iRun: That generosity of spirit feels like a good time to broach your athletic career. You’ve said compassion is the key to success. What does that mean?    

LB: When I was racing, I knew my competitors. They were way better than I ever was—I knew their splits and there’s no way on paper I should’ve beat them, but sometimes I would. As I matured as an athlete I realized so much could be accomplished mentally by positive reinforcement, but also loving what you do and having compassion.

iRun: I feel like some athletes use anger or rage to pump themselves up. 

LB: It goes back to when I was a teacher; an older teacher told me, ‘As long as you love your students, you’ll be OK.’ As long as you love the kids, there’s no problem, nothing you can’t handle. And it was true. When I was having a tough personal day and wasn’t full of love for my students, they felt it and those were tough teaching days. But when I had genuine love in my heart for my class, I could handle any curveball. When you love your sport, love to compete, it’s compassion: it’s love.

iRun: How did that manifest at an event? 

LB: I could elevate my game way beyond my talent. I remember once competing with a chest infection and my internal message was: I’ll be the best person out there with a chest infection! I get to race! I will do my best with my deck of cards. When you throw your whole self into something, there’s no doubt you’ll be successful. I had no idea what success meant—it didn’t necessarily mean a win—but if you love what you’re doing and do it with compassion, it spurs belief. And when you have belief, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

iRun: What did you learn? 

Belief trumps talent every single time.  

iRun: We should mention that you had belief while suffering from cystic fibrosis.  

LB: One of my secret powers was having cystic fibrosis. 

iRun: Secret powers? 

LB: It brought me purpose. 

iRun: That’s such a cool way of thinking about it. 

LB: Not many endurance athletes would want a genetic lung disease, but it brought purpose to my racing. Somewhere there was a family with a child with CF watching me, and that has a lot of power. So when you’re on the course of an Ironman going up and down on the rollercoaster and you have something like that to hold onto, it’s powerful. 

iRun: It sounds powerful. 

LB: I did the best I could do with my deck of cards and I didn’t measure success as crossing the finish line first. But that’s how it felt—and it allowed me to cross the finish line first.  

Lisa Bentley is the author of An Unlikely Champion, and a speaker and a coach. Her website is LisaBentley.com.

You’re pumping your arms hard as you can as you dig deep in that final lap of your interval workout around the track, aiming to reach that new level of fitness as your goal race nears on the calendar. Train hard, then train harder is your motto. But what if you keep coming up short, or even yet: what if you could be achieving more than you ever thought possible? Could, perhaps, the missing piece in the puzzle be your recovery, or more specifically your easy runs—or lack thereof? 

Most of the time when striving to reach a new level of fitness we’re focused on the hard sessions of the week: tempos, fartleks, long runs, and interval workouts, but what’s between these sessions is just as important. The easy run connects the dots, aids recovery and should be treated as a vital supplement to your key workout sessions. If you don’t take this recovery run seriously, you’re opening the door to injury, overtraining, and just not being able to get the most out of your workout days — and that is the goal, right? — to recover as much as possible between hard sessions so that we are able to capitalize on those days. So, what gives? Why do we have trouble treating these easy, recovery days with respect?

In this era of endless gadgets and gizmos, it’s so easy to become tied up with the digital feedback we have strapped on our bodies. We might think, “Well, X:XX should be an easy pace,” and then go out and aim to hit the appropriate splits. In reality, listening to our body that day is the simplest way to take it easy. The easy effort is certainly variable, some days we may need to run at a snail’s pace to ensure we are recovering appropriately while other days we can easily stride at a faster clip — whatever the case, it’s more about listening to how your body is feeling than the pace itself. 

How can we ensure we stick to this? I recommend using a metric of distance or time, but not both together. For example, on my easy days I usually run a certain distance. I don’t care how long it takes, pace is completely irrelevant on my easy days. Sometimes I run a measured route that I know and in these cases I will run watch-less (I know, a travesty in the Strava community)! Other times, if I feel like exploring, I will wear my GPS watch, but will only use it to measure the distance. I know a lot of folks like to post the majority of runs on Strava—and you can keep doing that—but I urge you to care less about pace on those recovery runs and when it comes to segment hunting, maybe save those for the “workout days.”

Will you notice a change as you place more emphasis on these key recovery days? I think so! As you become more consistent with keeping your recovery runs as truly “listen to my body” days, I guarantee you will be able to reach another performance level on the days that count. It continues to snowball from there: as you are able to work harder in your key sessions, you will undoubtedly require those essential recovery run days even more, setting you up to access some new levels of fitness. 

Fitting easy runs into the week can depend on what you are training for. Some like to have a hard session every other day with recovery days in between. For myself, since I am often training for a longer distance race like a marathon or half marathon, it’s not uncommon for me to have 2-3 recovery days after a long run workout session. Whatever the case, the majority of your week, whether you are training for a 5K or a marathon, should be recovery runs. Here is a glimpse of one of my marathon weeks in which I totalled 172K — easy running took up 68% (117 km) of the week while hard running took up only 32% (55 km). I like the saying “train hard, recover harder,” and this breakdown of work certainly echoes that.

Easy runs are just one facet of the recovery process. I will always shout from the rooftops that sleep is king and nutrition is surely an essential component as well. None of these are to be overlooked when you are trying to stay healthy and get the most out of your fitness goals. So perhaps it’s time to pay attention to this often-overlooked component and keep it easy on those easy days—the effects might surprise you.

There’s something reassuring that the top Canadian health officials, Dr. Theresa Tam and the Honourable Patty Hajdu, have both run marathons. As runners, we should all feel good that our leaders hail from our community and that our most noble characteristics—determination, discipline, ambition and will—are shared with the health officials steering our country through an unprecedented time. Ben Kaplan, editor of iRun, spoke to Ms. Hajdu on October 21. 

iRun: You know more than almost anyone else in this country about the novel coronavirus. What’s coming next for Canada and the world? 

PH: That’s the most common question I get asked. 

iRun: Please tell me the end—not the end of times but the end of this pandemic—is near. 

PH: Obviously our scientists and researchers are trying hard to figure out what happens next and there have been some good developments on the vaccine front. Canadian scientists, and scientists around the world, are optimistic that vaccines will become another tool in our toolbelt. 

iRun: What’s the biggest challenge with combatting COVID-19? 

PH: We know a lot. But as we learn new things, new things happen.

iRun: What’s the current state of our world? 

PH: Canada is doing OK. We had tough times in the spring, but we learned a lot and the lessons we learned are helping us manage this second surge. With regards to hospitalization and death, Canada is doing a better job now in protecting people—especially vulnerable people—who become infected with COVID-19.  

iRun: Are there any signs that say we’re in better shape now than we were and the future looks bright and rosy? 

PH: Everyone wants to think that, but there’s still so much we don’t know about the virus. 

iRun: What causes you concern? 

PH: We still don’t know the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the effect of people who become infected and the scary thing is that evidence is still emerging, so we just have to be as cautious as possible. I don’t think anyone should take COVID lightly—a lot of people get it and recover just fine, but there’s so much we don’t know. 

iRun: It sometimes feels like we’re living in the Twilight Zone or an episode of the Leftovers. 

PH: It feels like we’ve been living this for forever, but we haven’t really. It’s been under a year and the coronavirus is a new pathogen. Yes, there’s been good signs—hospitalization rates and death rates are going down—but it’s no less of a serious illness.

iRun: What guidelines are you personally following? 

PH: Certain things that I’m doing and I know most of us are: wash your hands; stay home when you’re sick; stay six feet apart, especially indoors, and wear a mask when you’re in close quarters. We know that if we’re in a crowded place, there’s an elevated risk of spreading the disease so I always wear a mask. Personally, I’m not comfortable eating inside a restaurant, especially a small restaurant, even if the tables are distanced. 

iRun: How come? 

PH: It just doesn’t make me feel comfortable. If I have to socialize, I do so outside. Even a small dinner party with ten people around a table in a condo, if those people are from different parts of the city, that’s a risk I don’t feel comfortable with. People have to assess situations for themselves, but remember that this is an opportunistic virus looking for people coming together.  

iRun: Who is your hero? 

PH: Dr. Tam. 

iRun: Mine, too. 

PH: I didn’t know her before the outbreak, but she’s an impressive, solid leader and so pragmatic and really almost unflappable. Of course, she worries about Canada. She sees all Canadians as her patients, but she’s so level headed and collaborative. And I think my other heroes are the everyday moms and dads trying to make their way through this pandemic, raise their kids and work from home.

iRun: Your riding is Thunder Bay and we understand that racism is a global problem that has eroded trust in the system. What are we going to do, as a country, to create an economic and judicial system that it’s fair for everyone, especially Indigenous and Black communities?  

PH: Reconciliation, in a country marked by colonialism, will always be a process, not a destination. We have to remember the past and in terms of our Indigenous community, it’s about intentional engagement. The systems and structures need to change according to the voices of Indigenous leaders. Child welfare, health legislation—to transform these systems, we need more than cultural awareness, which can amount to cultural tourism. I think we combat racism with a change in leadership from the top down. 

iRun: It’s now time to pivot to you. Is it true you ran a half marathon in Vancouver in 2001? 

PH: I did, and I also ran a full marathon in Minneapolis the year after that. I’ve run two marathons and countless 10-milers in Thunder Bay. In Thunder Bay, we have a wonderful 10-mile event and I used to do that every year for a long time now.  

iRun: Who’s faster, you or Dr. Tam? 

PH: I earn the Participation Award. Not that I was ever competitive, but there was a time when I ran in a lot of races. It was a new world for me and I enjoyed it and I’ve kept running as a tool to help with my mental and physical health. 

iRun: Do you run often? 

PH: Four or five times per week. 

iRun: Very impressive. 

PH: I often run in the mornings with my son, which is lovely. Running has been a big part of my life for 15 or 20 years.

iRun: You think it helps you help us fight the virus? 

PH: People on my team laugh because I have “running thoughts,” and I get so excited. It’s a way for me to clear my head and refresh myself. Sometimes on a run when I ruminate over those sticky problems we all have, I get a new clarity of thinking: suddenly, an intractable problem gets refreshed. 

iRun: So perhaps running will help save the world. 

PH: There’s nothing like it, I will say that. 

iRun: Last words for runners in this country? 

PH: Thank you to all the people sacrificing and, as we all know, running can be pretty solitary, but it’s going to be a long winter and now is not the time to give up hope. We all need to double down on helping each other, helping the elderly and perhaps lessen our focus on ourselves. Now is the time to focus on how we can help our community.