I have another small race this upcoming weekend as we creep into late October.
As I write this the forecast is calling for snow.
I wrote about this race a couple months ago, noting that I had signed up for it to keep me lightly motivated through the autumn cool off (and in parallel to a bunch of anxiety-spiking political stuff) and that I had chosen a race and a distance that was both familiar and short.
And as the day of the little fun run creeps closer I can tell you that I’m so chill about it that I almost forgot it was happening.
I used to run marathons, but the marathon was never my race. I struggle with nutrition-on-course and as much as I have tried to work on that—train my stomach to play along with the rest of my training—it has been a real barrier to longer distances.
I’ve pretty much settled on the half marathon as my ideal distance, but even so, finding the time and motivation to climb back out of my base of a comfortable ten klick run to feel good about a half takes a solid few months of focus.
So—I got to thinking about doing more shorter races.
And now here I am, race weekend, having been just steadily logging comfortable five to ten klick training runs four times per week over the last couple months and feeling strong about how I’ll be showing up to this little event.
It may be shorter than what my mind is telling me I should be racing, but my heart is looking forward to one last casual event creeping into a long winter of running—and hopefully not too much snow, either.
Definitions
- august
- In the month of August where I live summer peaks and the days are often relatively hot (in the high 20s or low 30s) muggy, smokey and dry. Rain is infrequent, but when it arrives it comes in the form of drenching downpours and epic thunderstorms. We begin our runs earlier in the day because the local marathon runs late in the month and our training distances are maxing.
- klick
- As a Canadian I run in metric. As a writer, I find the word kilometre clunky and clinical. I'll usually use the colloquial "klick" or "klicks" to substitute in for this.
- motivation
- Like many things in life, running is an act of motivation. You make yourself put on the gear. You put in the effort to lace up. You open the front door and you step out into the world and the weather. You press the start button on your watch and you go. Step after step, one footfall at a time.
- october
- Fully into autumn, October is a month of shifting seasons, short days, long shadows, and gorgeous sunsets. The cobwebs are hung on the eaves in preparation for halloween, and here in Canada we're running off Thanksgiving dinner for a couple weeks after a proper good meal mid-month.
- race
- You train and train and train some more, and then for no clear reason you pay a bunch of money to run as fast as you possibly can at a very specific time with a bunch of strangers along a course lined with more strangers (or along paths lined with trees if you are an ultra runner) at the end of which you are handed a medal and a banana and a sense of achievement unlike anything you will feel again (until you sign up for your next one.)
- september
- The days are noticeably shorter when we realize that September is upon us. The post-summer routine kicks in and people are back to regular work schedules and kids are back in school. It can still be warm, but the hottest days are behind us and most of the biggest races of the year are in the rear view. We savour September knowing winter is too soon to come.
