ironman

From running scared to running happy

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In the past two months, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with two incredible athletes who have shared their stories with me as age group triathletes. Throughout our discussions, I’ve learned not only about their personal ups and downs in the sport, but I’ve been challenged to reflect on my own story.  In particular, Vince and Katrina both spoke of their struggles with running, and it’s one that has also been a bump in the road for me.

I’ve been fairly candid in the past about my relationship with running and my fight to morph that into a healthy, loving relationship. For as long as I can remember, running has been hard, whether I’m on a casual run or running a race. It’s hard on my heart, my lungs, and my joints. It burns, it’s tiring, and it hurts. And to top it all off, I’m slow as molasses. I’m constantly at the back of the pack. No matter how hard I push, or try, the faster kids just keep getting faster and I feel like I’m moving in slow motion. The fact of the matter is, for most people, building your speed in endurance running takes time and patience – something which I have worked on building over the years, but still lack.

In my first year of training, I barely had a handful of 10K’s under my feet, and with the increase in mileage and intense training load, my body rebelled and I spent the majority of the season trying to combat shin splints. It wasn’t really much more than an extremely painful nuisance, but it made it incredibly difficult to develop as a runner when it felt like someone was stabbing a screwdriver into my shin with every step. I couldn’t break an hour for 10K, or 30 minutes for 5K. I was not a good runner. At first I started to come up with excuses – I don’t have the right build, or my quads are too big. Now while those things may be true, looking back on it, those excuses affected my performance. I didn’t believe in myself. Physically able or not, I was creating a mental disadvantage.

After a year of training, I started to see some improvements. The shin splints eventually disappeared as my body adjusted to the training and with time, I started to break through with some personal best times. But with a torn MCL just a few short months into the season, everything came to a grinding halt, and all the progress was put on hold. After missing more than two months of running, I would never realize my full potential for that year.

In December 2015, I started year number three of training. I vowed this would be the year of redemption for all the ups and downs, side tracks, health issues and injuries. This was the year for focus. I remember walking into my coach’s office on a cold December night, right before our first long-run of the year, and he looked me right in the eye, and said, “You’re running with the big girls this year. We are going to make you into a good runner.” I was terrified. The “big girls” were fast. Their long-run pace was almost on par with my race pace. I remember last year, I would look at their long-run distances to see how much ground they covered, and I was always in awe. Since day one, I have looked up to them and longed for a time when I could hang with them. I often wondered what it would be like to join them on long-run Monday – What did they talk about? Where did they go? What did they do? The world seemed so uncharted, but here was my moment, staring me straight in the face. So, I looked right back at my coach, and said, ok.

It wasn’t easy. For the first few weeks, my heart rate was higher than it probably should have been, and after a certain distance, I would start to get tired and slow, and I feared I was holding them back. But, I soon found my belonging. I learned that their long-runs weren’t much different than mine, and that we all had our own quirks, and pains and tired moments. I knew that once it came down to tempo running or speed work they would leave me in their dust, but for the time being I cherished the moments on long-run Mondays when I got to hang with the “big girls.”

Over the winter, my long-run pace dropped by 20-30 seconds per kilometre from the previous year, my heart rate slowed down, and I was hitting personal best times every week. And once we kicked things up a notch with tempo runs, my times continued to drop. Since I first started training with my coach three years ago, I’ve taken seven minutes off my 10K and more than five minutes off my 5K. While, the pain, the hurt, and the burning never went away, I was quicker and stronger, and at the end of every run, I was smiling bigger than I ever had before.

Looking back on my running journey, I don’t see a physical transformation. Yes, I am stronger, and I have more miles beneath my feet, but at the end of the day it became mental for me. All I needed was for someone to believe in me, and on that cold December night, my coach did. It forced me to stop over thinking, stop over critiquing and just do it. As Vince Cavaliere said, “stop running scared.”  I will be forever grateful to my coach for believing in me, and to my “big girl” training partners, including Vince, for spending all winter long running mile after mile with me, pushing me to be better and to just “stop thinking about it.” Pushing me out of my comfort zone, pushed me to become a better runner.

More often than not, it’s the mental breakthrough that will push our physical limitations to a place we never thought we could reach. Nowadays, my relationship with running is stronger and healthier. Yes, there are times when it hurts, but there are many more times when it feels freeing, empowering and simply, amazing. I may not be at the front of the pack, but I’m inching my way up and I’m teaching myself a lot of patience and happy thoughts along the way.
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Vince Cavaliere

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It’s an early Saturday morning in mid-March, and Vince Cavaliere is halfway through a suffer grinder fest spin session. He’s hunched over an indoor trainer, pushing a big gear with a grimace on his face, pain in his eyes, and sweat dripping from his nose. His training partners, working right alongside him, see his relentless determination and shout out words of encouragement. His wife, seated on the bike next to him, calls out his increasing wattage numbers, and this only makes him work harder. You can see him feeding off the energy around him.
Standing at 6’1” with a looming athletic frame, dark Italian skin, and deliberately coiffed flowing locks, Vince carries a presence. He’s loud, outspoken, competitive, driven, and a man of business. He knows what he wants, and he’s calculated in his dreams. As an entrepreneur of a real estate company, Vince has built something from nothing, and he is no stranger to dedication, perseverance and hard work. Dreaming big and always searching for the next best thing is in his DNA.

“I’ve always been goal driven, I’ve always been motivated to be something – and I’m still wondering what I’m going to be when I grow up,” he admits. “My brother says that I’m never satisfied, and even when I get to where I’m going, it’s like, really is that it?”
It was perhaps this mindset that propelled Vince from casual jogging with the run club to the world of eating, sleeping and breathing the sport of long distance triathlon, and ultimately, chasing the dream of racing at Ironman. But, outside of who Vince is as a person, are the people he trains with day and day out – the people he affectionately calls his, “tribe.” They are there for every suffer grinder fest spin session, every pain cave tempo run, every back breaking 200 kilometre enduro ride. They are the ones calling out the encouragement and egging him on to push himself beyond his own limitations.

Since his training journey began, Vince says that finding his “tribe” and the camaraderie of the sport was something he least expected. While, swimming, biking and running are truly individual sports, Vince says he discovered the team in triathlon.
“I never expected to be as connected to people,” he admits. “This is as much an individual sport as you can find. I have to swim by myself, nobody pulls me, nobody pushes me, I have to jump on my bike, nobody pulls me, nobody pushes me, and then I have to run, and nobody pushes me and nobody pulls me. But at the end of the day, the tribe are indirectly pushing me and pulling me.”
Vince’s training partners ultimately became a source of inspiration for him, and played an integral role in helping him to overcome  one of his biggest hurdles, running.
“Running is my worst discipline,” he admits. “It’s the one I work the hardest at, it’s the one that intimidates me the most, and at the end of the day, it’s the one I love the most.”
Reflecting back on his first year of training, Vince says he ran scared. Notably, he remembers his first half marathon in Vegas. He crossed the finish line in just over three hours, and for the next three days, he says, he sat in his hotel room with ice packs on his shins to dull the pain. “It was ridiculous,” he says.
Once Vince made the determination in his own mind to improve on his run times, he looked to his tribe for support, in particular, his training partner Kate, who was a driving factor in pushing Vince outside his own comfort zone.

“She is one amazing runner,” he laughs. “And just watching her and realizing she took an hour off her Ironman time, from 2014 to 2015, and won and qualified for Kona. If I can take an hour off my time, that is unbelievable, and I will have won in my mind.”
After spending an entire season chasing after Kate during training sessions, Vince went from running a three hour half marathon, to a 3.5 hour full marathon. While Vince admits the support from his training partners played an integral role in his physical running transformation, he had to rely on himself to overcome the mental hurdle of running, and says, he has yet to find his own breaking point.
“The hardest part is probably understanding, truly, where your limitations are as a human being, and at what point will you truly break. I haven’t found that yet,” he says.
Outside of Vince’s accomplishments as an athlete, and overcoming his own personal hurdles in the sport, Vince says his greatest fulfillment throughout his Ironman journey has been the opportunity to train with his wife, Katrina.

“She’s super talented in her own right, she’s super strong, mentally one of the toughest people I know, and I draw from that,” he smiles.
As his Saturday morning spin session wraps, and he wipes the final droplet of sweat from his nose, you see a man who is driven by his passions, his fear of failure and the desire to be the best he can be, not only for himself, but for others around him.  “I think I’m a true domestique in many ways,” he admits. “I like to see other people do well around me, and in order for people to do well around me, I have to be doing really, really well. I have to lead by example.”

The Rust2Iron Project

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For the past two years I have been writing my story. It has allowed me to be open, raw and honest with myself and to reflect back upon some of the most challenging adventures I’ve ever been on – both in my triathlon and personal life.  It has also allowed me to share this journey with others and to give some insights on the gruelling demands of training for an Ironman and chasing a dream larger than myself. When the dream was accomplished I felt at a lose for words. Although I am still dreaming, and still training, and still embracing new challenges, I feel that my story has been told. There are only so many ways to say, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” I want to take the opportunity to tell some different stories – stories from new faces, new places and new perspectives.

In the Rust2Iron Project I will continue telling my own story, but will also include guest appearances from other athletes.  

I hope you enjoy the ride.

Another year, another adventure

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Getting back into the routine and grind of training can be a bittersweet journey. My mind and body have long been ready for structure and a break from being on a break. The off-season provided some much needed time to fly by the seat of my pants, indulge and otherwise float along free and without constraints. And while it was good for me, I also came to the realization that structure works in my favour. Without it my life is one giant zig-zagging swirl, much like a carefree child running after dandelions in the wind. It’s fun and freeing for a short while, but eventually I have to float back down to reality. So, here I am, looking ahead to the new year with a plan in my mind, challenges on the horizon and an uncharted path to carve out.  Despite being my second Ironman year, I have no doubt this one will become unique in its own way. There will be new milestones, new tests, new triumphs and new stories to tell.
On December 7, the start to the season was kicked off with a swim. As I do at the beginning of every year, I pulled my bathing suit off the back of the bathroom door for the first time in months. It’s the dreaded moment of putting back on a bathing suit that may or may not fit. As tradition goes, the straps felt tight and my ass seemed large.
Once at the pool, I shuffled half asleep onto the deck with my hoodie still on and looked through my half open eyes at the turquoise still water. As with every first day back, I pondered whether the pool was longer or not. Either way, it didn’t matter, if I procrastinated any longer my coach would have dropped kicked me in, so I eventually lowered myself into the cool water and kicked off the wall. Despite always being the last one in, the water is my favourite place. While some of our training sessions here can be gruelling hard work, it has also been a place of healing for me and I always look forward to the first day back at the pool.

In just the first few weeks of my new training schedule, I’ve already felt in familiar territory but I’ve also realized I’m starting in a different place. My mindset is more focused, my knowledge and experience base has broadened and with each start to the new season, I’m stronger than the last.
As 2016 begins, I’m at the beginning of another year of many unknowns and unchartered territory, but that’s the beauty of celebrating the start to a new year. I get a blank canvas, and I look forward to painting it with all the patterns and all the colours.  2016 will be my year of adventure – in work, in play, and in everything that comes my way.

Off season blues

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It’s been just over six weeks since Ironman, and I think my life is finally settling back down to something that resembles normal. It’s a hard transition to go from a million miles a minute, to the greatest experience of my life, to nothing. For a few days after the event, I allowed myself to heal. That meant allowing myself to sleep in, not train, and otherwise not think about swimming, biking or running. And considering I was still hobbling along with sore muscles, searing blisters, chaffing and healing road rash, a break was probably needed. But slowly the pain and tiredness went away, and as the sunshine and sparkles of race day faded, I began to feel somewhat lost. There was no more structure in my life, no schedule telling me where to be or what to do, and no more goals, or drive. I slowly started to feel the happy escaping me. Some nights I would curl up on the couch feeling sad and lonely. Some nights I paced around the kitchen unsure of what to do. Some nights I barely slept. At the time, I longed for workouts, but didn’t have the energy. Even light jogs would send my heart rate skyrocketing, and I started to worry I was losing everything I had worked so hard to build – and I was.
The off season was tougher than I had thought. My body, my mind, and my life, in general, needed a break from the constant and, at times gruelling, two-a-day training, yet at the same time my body and mind almost ached for it. I remember during training season, I would say to myself, when this is all over I’m going to enjoy life outside triathlon. I had plans to stay up late, eat chicken wings, drink beer, sleep in, and otherwise regain my social life. Yet, with all the time in the world to do those things, I kept finding myself wanting the one thing that I thought I wouldn’t miss – training.
As I gave myself some more time to digest the post-season, I found that over time things slowly fell into place. First and foremost, I had to tell myself that it was ok to let go of the constant swimming, biking and running routine to do other things. I just had to rediscover what those things were. I also needed time to recover and to accept that if in that process I lost some of my fitness that was ok too. It’s a part of the cycle, and with rest comes re-building which can sometimes be one of the best parts of training.
Within about a month, I had settled back into a busy life full of triathlon and chicken wings and beer. It’s an incredible combination, but my sadistic love for punishment will have me chomping at the bit for more intensity soon enough. I’m already setting goals and thinking about my next challenge, and yes Ironman Canada is on the calendar for next year. If you had asked me immediately after the race, or even during the race, I would have said that another Ironman was not in the cards for me. But with some reflection, I’ve discovered that this journey I’ve been on is not over. A chapter of it is complete, but there are so many more mountains to climb and conquer. Here’s to whatever 2016 has in store for me and I’m knocking heavily on its door.