Over the Hill We Go

Five hundred pairs of feet grabbed at the dirt, grass and caked mud on the slopes of Centennial Hill one warm October afternoon. A thousand shoes pounded the sides of the hill, trying to reach the top, trying to get past the agonizing burn in their legs and the screaming in their minds to slow down.

Some began to walk up the big, steep hill, others seemed to sprint to the top. I tried to run as fast as I could (not very fast) up the slope, repeating one thing to my self, "Always run fast up a hill, always run fast up a hill."

This mantra was one of many given to me by my father, the same marathon runner that made "the legs feed the wolf," a common encouragement as well.

But Centennial was no normal hill, it was the largest I had ever come face to face with in a race. Add in the fact that there were five hundred other runners acting as a sort of reverse avalanche up the hill and it was quite daunting.

The saying worked though, and I felt the same spark of energy mixed with the painful fire in my over worked legs as I always did after reaching the top of a hill.

The hills I have faced running and the metaphorical hills we all face in life are different, but also have more similarities than you may think.

We all face problems and obstacles in life, some that seem too big to overcome or too dangerous to confront, just like runners face monstrous hills in a race.

We may seem too tired by previous legs on our journey or be discouraged by the number of people that have or are still struggling with the same mountain of problems.

But remembering the piece of advice "Always run fast up a hill" can make a big difference.

Many times I have stopped a certain journey through life short by ending it at the foot of a big, hill-like problem. Other times I have walked up the hill, giving a lacklustre effort or struggling with the problem or wishing someone would climb the hill for me.

But when faced with hills in life, big or small, like a challenging home work assignments, a medical concern, a financial woe or a plugged toilet, we should try to remember to confront the problems head on, defeat procrastination and avoidance and be strong in the face of adversity, much like a runner can choose to run fast up a big, tiring hill.

By confronted our problems and not avoiding them or trudging through them we can solve them faster, learn more, help others and be empowered.

We can also be buoyed, not shaken, by those struggling up the same hill as us. Instead of seeing this as a discouragement or threat, we should see this as a chance to help each other, to understand that no problem affects only one person and to realize that confronting problems, and solving them, is possible.

So next time you come to a hill, on a training run or in life, muster up that little extra you have and show the mountain who's boss and when you reach the top admire the view, even if your legs don't let you forget the lesson.

Don't Judge A Runner by Their Garbage Bag

The weather was terrible for the annual Billy Taylor 5K race in Guelph. The sky opened early in the morning and continued dumping water on the racers throughout the day. The wind howled and the air was bone-chattering cold, even for April. But I couldn't have cared less.

I was running one of the best races in my 12 year old life, and, besides being a little cold and wet, I was feeling great. I was feeling invincible. No one could match me, not the runners in their professional looking garb or the 'big kids' with their long strides, no one.

And that is when I learned a very humbling and very important lesson.

As I was trotting along, I caught a flash of dull green out of the corner of my eye. I looked sideways and saw a running garbage bag. That couldn't be! A garbage bag running? I looked closer and saw the garbage bag had legs and arms and a head. And the garbage bag, or should I say the person in the garbage bag, was pushing a stroller. The runner whizzed past me without even looking like she was breaking a sweat.

I was shocked. How could someone in a garbage bag and pushing a stroller beat me, the invincible kid, the running phenom?

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I must have eaten a bad pre-race banana or something to think I was that good and to really believe that just because someone isn't dressed like the front runners in the Boston Marathon doesn't mean they can't run like one.

My run in with the running garbage bag is similar to all sort of situations in life.

Sometimes we get too arrogant and believe that just because someone doesn't act the way we do or look the way we do or have the same lifestyle we do that they can't possibly be as successful or righteous as we are. They can't possibly get the deep meaning of a James Joyce novel or care as much about the world and its issues or get those pasta noodles to the same firm, but flexible consistency.

In short we're blinded by our false sense of superiority.

Sometimes we also get complacent. There's nothing wrong with being happy and proud with what you've done and standing back and admiring you're effort. There is something very wrong, however, with doing something well and then thinking that you're finished improving yourself and the world. Continuously improving yourself and those around you is the only way to make this world a better place.

If we fail to keep these things in mind and fall into the traps of over confidence and laziness you could end up the way I did in that race all those years ago and at times since; passed by those who are working harder and helping others more.

You can be great. Scratch that, you're already great, but keep going, keep running the race the best you can, pushing youself and those around you every day and one day you might just become the greatest ever. And remember, don't ever judge a runner by their garbage bag.

Air Guitar Solos are Better then a Six Pack

A little less then a year ago my girlfriend Kelsey embarked on a quest to find out if what the health and fitness magazines said was true; could you actually get a six pack of abs in six weeks. She followed a strenuous workout regimen full of early morning gym sessions and instituted a blitz to purge all unhealthy foods from her diet.

Kelsey documented her adventures on her blog (http://kelseyatkinson.blogspot.com/2010/01/under-construction.html, her journey begins) and I learned a lot of lessons about running and life from her stories and observations.

While running one day, Kelsey was so in the zone, so charged on a runner's high, that she absent-mindedly started playing air guitar in the middle of our university's indoor track. What is even better is that when she noticed she was doing it she didn't stop until she was done her solo.

I loved this story because although Kelsey's quest was hard, painful and discouraging at times she found enjoyment, euphoria and freedom in the midst of it.

Too often when people finally reach their dreams or goals they have forgotten why they even had that certain ambition in the first place. We can become too occupied with reaching the top no matter what and on the way there negative feelings, obstacles, stresses and bad experiences can leave us hating the very thing we once loved.

I've encountered this studying journalism at university. I love to write and ask questions, meet people and be a witness to amazing events, but amongst the stresses of weekly deadlines, tough competition among my peers and discouragingly rude sources I sometimes forget the good I can achieve from reporting and the thrill that comes with it. Same with running. I really love it, but sometimes I forget the joy it brings me and instead my mind and body grow to hate getting out of my comfy bed to run in the pouring rain or chilly air.

But now I always think of the Air Guitar Lesson to help me remember to be thankful for the simple joys in life and the things I love to do, like running or writing, instead of dreading them, like chores I have to do before I can watch more TV.

Instead of growing to hate running, one of the things she loves, Kelsey used the simple joys that it gave her to help her out of the traps that cynicism and stress laid out for her.

I won't spoil the end of Kelsey's quest for you by saying if she was successful in getting a six pack in six weeks or not, although to me her journey, air guitar solos and all, taught me more than the final destination did.

So break out your guitar and turn up the music because doing what you love, and remembering why you love it, will make you feel like a rockstar.

The Radio's Advice

On a hot summer's day, about six or seven years ago, I received the weirdest running advice I have ever been given.

My Dad and I were driving along on the suburban roads of my neighbourhood, I forget why, but it probably had something to do with errands, when we flipped on the radio to a baseball game. The game was more or less background noise as my dad and I talked, but suddenly the announcer was screaming and shouting like he had been placed barefoot in the middle of a hot desert.

Me and my father stopped to listen to what the hullaballu was all about. It turned out the center fielder made an excellent catch to perserve his team's lead. The announcer wouldn't stop praising the player who had made the catch and that is when he uttered the advice that will stay with me forever, "And that's why you run on the balls of your feet, so your eyes dont bounce up and down."

It sounded like weird advice, advice that upon experimentation proved true, but weird nonetheless.

I have not really needed it in my running career yet, save the one time I used it to avoid meeting any trees face to face when going down one particularly steep hill in a forest. But I've tried to wring some sort of life lesson out of the radio's strange tip.

The more I thought, the less anything I came up with made any sense. It may have been the fact that I had been pushing buggies for six hours and I was going slightly buggy (pun attack), but it probably had more to do with my overthinking of the wise words.

I realized that I shouldn't just try to get something out of the words that just wasn't there. What I should have really been doing was appreciating the quarkiness and yes, wisdom and strange beauty of those words that described the amazing way in which a talented player caught a ball.

It is important to draw wisdom or knowledge from things in life, like a radiant sunset, a literary masterpiece or a giraffe's kiss. However, at times, simply appreciating things for what they are turns out to be the way we can truly get something from that piece of advice or amazing novel, instead of overanalyzing it or manipulating it to be something it's not.

If you wonder constantly about why Mr. Bean never talks in his movies and try to figure out if it's an allegory for some social injustice in society instead of laughing at his wacky antics then you'll miss the whole movie and the whole point.

So simply enjoy the simple things in life and if you ever want to track down that fly ball in life, make sure to run on the balls of your feet.

The Stretch Theory

Grade four was a big year in my running career; it was the year I learned the deep importance of stretching.

Every day after school, from late February to mid April, my elementary school's cross country team would practice. Before every training session the team would gather in the gym to do our stretches and this is where I was to learn a vital lesson.

Usually my friends and I would break into not so quiet "whispering" and tomfoolery after the first few leg stretches while the coach tried to get through a decent warm up. The only time we stopped to actually stretch was to see who could balance for the longest while pulling one leg up behind us and standing on the other.

On this particular day though our coach finally became fed up with our antics. He stopped the warm up with nothing more than silence and a piercing stare at our rowdy group. We froze and a multitude of punishments our coach could inflict came to my mind, each worse than the last.

Suddenly the coach broke the silence. "You think this is a joke boys?" he said, "Well do you wanna know what happens when you don't stretch before a race?"

It wasn't really a question so much as an introduction and our coach proceded to tell us a handfull of squirm-inducing stories about kids who had neglected to stretch and had torn all sorts of muscles and ligements and popped knee caps and such in horrifying ways.

Suffice it to say, no one in that room that day ever forgot to stretch again.

Now although I was scared that day into seeing the importance of stretching I later realized the positive payoff of stretching on my own and although I haven't always been the most vigilant in doing a warm up, I've always run better after completing one.

I have also recognized that stretching isn't just an important tool in helping you run a better race, but also in helping live a more fulfilling life as well.

When you stretch before a race you sometimes reach for a part of your body, like your toes, in an attempt to loosen muscles, and become for flexible so you can use those muscles in a race and decrease your chance of getting a cramp or an injury.

In life you can also stretch, but in a different sense. You can stretch to achieve your goals and dreams.

You may not reach your goals the first time you stretch for them. For example you may not be elected the first time you run for student council or toast your marshmallow to a perfect golden brown the first time you make a s'more, just like you may not be able to touch your toes the first few times you stretch. But if you keep on working and stretching outside of the what you can certainly do to something you want to eventually do then you will finally achieve it, as well as improving yourself and learning lessons and skills along the way.

Just as when you stretch you prepare muscles used in a race, when you stretch for something in life that isn't always easy, like a big promotion or reconciling a broken relationship, you learn other skills and lessons about yourself that can help you in other areas of life. Perserverance, time management and the importance of forgiveness are just a few of these.

Stretching for the hard goals in life may take you outside of your comfort zone to try to achieve objectives that you have never reached before, just like in stretching when you use a muscle that hasn't been used as much or when you can't reach your toes as easily. But in doing this you lift yourself out of the ordinary into the extraordinary and prevent yourself from falling into a rut or routine of laziness or self-pity which can lead to harm or missed opportunities just as in stretching you decrease your chance of getting hurt in a race.

Now injury in running may happen even though you have prepared as much as humanly possible, and life is the same. You may fail, lose or fall down, but getting right back up and out onto the course is also important and stretching is a key part in getting yourself back in the game.

Stretching may be hard work, an arduous exercise that seems unnecesary at times and painful at others, but once you take the time, reach out and grab hold of that vision and plan you'll be ready to jump up and track down your dreams.