My 2022 Goals Revisited: The Why
This week I’m going to dig into why I chose to run all the Athletics Canada Championships. This is the first instalment, the Why.
At some point early in 2022 I decided that my goal for the year would be to run all the Athletics Canada Canadian Running Championships, the senior championships that is. For obvious reasons I did not run the junior champs and I elected to exclude the master’s champs not part of the senior (or open) champs for financial constraints (which for those of you who don’t know me, the former now must be obvious!).
I wanted to set a challenging yet fun goal before I retired from competitive running. I’m not sure anyone has attempted to run all the championships Athletics Canada offers, including track ( I ran the 10,000m champs, which were separate from the rest of the track and field champs, where I raced the 5,000m), road (5k, 10k, half, and marathon) trail (Vertical Kilometre) and cross-country races, and I set out to do so. This weekend is the Canadian cross-country championships, championship 8 of 8 in my 2022 season; what will be the culmination of my 2022 goal.
But why? Why did I decide to do this? Good question. I’m not sure there is ‘a reason.’ I like a good challenge. I like all the various disciplines and distances. I love to compete. And with only one championship to go, I think it’s important for me to reflect upon it all before it slips away in the realm of completion.
Before I dive into the details, I just need to mention Coach Terry Radchenko. When I first suggested to him I wanted to do this, with the dates of all our championships in front of us, two championships with only 5 days between and the necessity to travel back and forth across the country, I asked Terry if he still was willing to coach me.
On paper, this is not an ideal way to set up an athlete’s season. It’s physically, mentally and emotionally demanding. It requires sacrificing some specific training to reduce the risk of injury. It requiree a ‘less is more’ approach after my solid winter base miles as I turned 40 last December.
Thankfully Terry agreed to stay by my side. I think he knew I was too stubborn to back down from this challenge and I know he cares so much that he wanted to make sure I took care of myself throughout the journey. Terry, I was far from perfect, I’m too stubborn for my own good sometimes, but from the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking the chance on me to do this. It’s been a wild ride with a lot of success, some failures, but for sure a whole heck of a lot of fun.
The rest of the week I’m going to dive into more of these championships, some specifics about each of the races and some reflection on why I love to run. It’s 5 sleeps until the XC Champs and I am so very excited to get to Ottawa and that start line!