Student Life Revisited

Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog post on iRun.ca. I am a 40 year old runner living in Victoria, BC. This fall I returned to school to complete a Master’s degree in Music (Voice) at the University of Victoria after a ten year hiatus. I started my M.Mus at the University of Montreal but due to circumstances at the time, I didn’t complete the degree. If someone had told me back then that I would eventually go back to school to finish my program I would have hoped they were right. Had they added that I would also be running on a University cross-country and track team at the age of 40, I would have laughed my head off and thought they were insane. Yet, here I am! Of course, many things happened over the past five years that have led me to this point in my life. My background up until five years ago wasn’t very athletic. My undergraduate degree at McGill was intense. I ran recreationally to keep fit but my focus was definitely music and singing. Running was an on again off again thing that I did when I had time and even after I graduated I rarely ran with any consistency…that was until I met Malcolm Balk in 2001. Malcolm is a running coach and Alexander Method teacher. He saw I had some potential and took the time to teach me how to run with good running form using The Pose Method and The Alexander Technique and encouraged me to run on a regular basis.

In 2003 my husband was offered a position as the Conductor in Residence for Pacific Opera Victoria and The Victoria Symphony so we made the move out to the West Coast. I joined the Island Road Racers (IRR), a running club in town, in hopes of meeting people. Before long, I was doing workouts with the club 2 – 3 times a week and running in local races. My running times consistently dropped as I started to take training more and more seriously. I was fortunate to have had some excellent coaching along the way with Malcolm Balk, Rob Harmsworth, Ron Bowker, Matt Clout and Paul O’Callaghan all of whom gave me valuable training knowledge that I lacked having had so little background in the sport. Since then, I have competed in distances from the 1500m to the half-marathon.

Last December, on the trip home from the National X-Country Championships, Brent Fougner, the coach of the University of Victoria Vikes asked me if I was interested in running for the cross-country/track team. I was already tossing the idea around of returning to school to finish my M.Mus and Brent’s offer gave me the incentive to apply to the music program. I was accepted and this fall I began my new life as a student. I thought it would all feel strange after so many years away from school. Instead as I walked across campus on my way to my first class in jeans and a t-shirt with a knapsack on my back it actually felt very comfortable and right.

The entire Vikes running team has been extremely welcoming and even though they are half my age (I have fillings in my mouth as old as most of them!), I am enjoying their company. I love to tease and razz…it’s from growing up with four brothers. It took a few practices for them to feel comfortable about teasing me back but now the “senior citizen” jokes fly as soon as there is an opportunity; it’s hilarious! I run two workouts a week with the Vikes team. The rest of my training is overseen by my coach, Jon Brown. He schedules my daily runs and keeps tabs on my volume and intensities in between workouts.

I will be posting regularly on iRun Nation and will be sharing my experiences as a…ahem…mature varsity runner. I hope you enjoy it!