Hello again!
I know you're anxious to hear about my famous run in Ottawa last weekend! No, seriously, since last month, I've been telling myself that the June editorial would be easy to write, as I would be talking about the long awaited and beautiful achievement of my goal! I was so confident! Well, I have to admit a bit shamefully that I more or less want to talk about it today. I looked for other subjects, but they all seemed to lead me back to this, despite myself.
The famous race was difficult, very difficult...
Pour faire une histoire courte, un petit pépin médical (rien de grave, je vous rassure) m’a empêché de m’entraîner les 3 dernières semaines avant ladite course. À mon grand bonheur, tout se replace et j’arrive à Ottawa la veille. Ce jour-là, un courriel de l’organisation de la course nous annonce que toute la programmation risque d’être modifiée, voire même annulée à cause des conditions météorologiques. On prévoit 31 degrés, 36 avec l’indice humidex (merci Humidex!), avec possibilité d’orages (il y a même eu une tornade à 25km de là!), et bien sûr un 5-10 mm de pluie pile dans nos heures de course. « Tsé », quand toutes les chances sont de ton bord ! Pas grave, on se prépare en conséquence, on s’hydrate au maximum toute la journée, on mange le plus intelligemment possible, on essaie de bien dormir, mais bien sûr, cerise sur le sundae, ma sœur qui court aussi le lendemain, a un vilain rhume depuis 5 jours et tousse comme je n’avais encore jamais entendu quelqu’un tousser !
We finally get to the starting line, wait our turn for the faster rows to start, and about 10 minutes before our start, a torrent of rain (the one and only one of the day of course) comes down and floods our shoes for 20 minutes! I won't even kid you, because of the rain, my phone freezes and doesn't give me my race info anymore, so I'm running blind, with no idea of my speed or distances. Right! I apologise, this is clearly not as short as I wanted it to be. So I'll stop this here and tell you that after 1/3 of my run, I already have at least 4 blisters on my feet, so I change my running style, I hurt all over, I come close to giving up 3-4 times, I cry, I walk, I resort, I seriously question why I'm doing this, I hold myself back from throwing up and ....!!! I miraculously manage to finish (and run) with some wonderful photos as a souvenir (the worst in my life!). I am angry. Proud but mostly angry.
Sometimes, when I was looking for other subjects to avoid turning the knife, I just thought of my father's anecdote who explains in a conference that we often tend to blame our sector of activity, the economy, our territory, the weather, etc., when business is not going to our liking. He says that when he had a team of reps on the road, 2 of them traded territories. The guy making $35k would get the territory of the guy making $50k and vice versa. After about 20 months, the numbers had reversed, proving that territory was not the problem. To anyone who gives me a similar excuse, I tell them the same thing my father did; that it's up to them to adapt to the market and change it, not the other way around.
I've been thinking about my race ever since (mostly because my thighs are still creaking) and I'm detailing all the possible excuses that made this race terrible (I would have had another 2 pages of Word), but the truth is that I wasn't prepared. I can't expect to be prepared for the worst by not training in the worst conditions. It makes sense! Even if it makes me angry!
Having said that, NO, I will not be running in the rain and at -20 anymore. At least not yet. And I'm willing to accept that the next few races may be difficult.
Are you?