Two
of Canada’s all-time greatest marathon runners raced
on Sunday and they finished, respectively, second and
fourth. Reid Coolsaet and Krista DuChene, both Olympians,
are 42 and 45-years-old, and both chat easily about their
performance. There were things they did well—Krista’s
last kick, Reid’s ascension in the hills—and
things that didn’t go their way: Reid felt a bit
under the weather, Krista, like everyone Sunday at Around
the Bay, felt hamstrung by the wind. There are elements,
however, that they share in common, beyond grit, natural
talent, drive, and almost a supernatural ability to tolerate
pain. That’s joyfulness.
They both have days like
we all have, to be sure, but, if you want to run forever
like Reid and Krista, you have to fall head over heels,
with running, in love.
“I don’t overthink
stuff. I truly enjoy it. I put the work in and, when I’m
done running, I don’t let it consume my life,”
says DuChene, Canada’s Marathon Mom, who Sunday
set the W45 Canadian record at Around the Bay, finishing
the event for the eleventh time. “Sunday’s
race was good for me because I didn’t have marathon
fatigue. I could stay up and go to my kids’ activities
in normal clothes and not sit in the van in my pyjamas.”
All of us love running. We want to go fast and go far
and buy the latest gadgets and sneakers and travel to
exotic races while maintaining our fitness and posting
cool running photos online. However, practitioners of
the sport who’ve survived, and by that I mean not
just running the half marathon once and crossing it off
their bucket list, must develop a deeper relationship
with the sport. Running is a lot of running around in
circles and, if you do it in Canada, oftentimes you have
to do it while the weather is crap. To hear Reid and Krista
describe it, they chase numbers and records and both have
chased prize money and considerable, though Canadian,
fame. That’s not the reason they run.
“I will totally admit
that I’m motivated by numbers and hitting a weekly
mileage or time in a week, but if that’s all-consuming,
it’s detrimental,” says Coolsaet, currently
training for the Western States 100-miler and adds that,
despite his forays into race directing and coaching, the
two-time Olympian with a marathon PB of 2:10:55, is most
definitely not retired. “I’m not chasing Olympic
spots anymore, but I always love racing and, even now,
while my focus is trail running, I ran Around the Bay
solely because I couldn’t pass up a local race that’s
one of the big icons of running in Canada.”
Coolsaet ran Around the Bay
because he wanted to. He ran it in trail shoes. He had
fun. Being him, he knows that diehard running geeks will
check out his times and wonder if he’s still got
it. He wasn’t feeling 100%. He didn’t care.
Like Krista, he runs for himself and because he loves
it. Loves getting to the starting line. Fighting through
the aches and pains. Seeing familiar faces and hearing
the cheers and, when it’s all over and he’s
with his wife and kids, thinking about the race and drinking
a beer, he loves to plan for what he’s going to
run next. “I enjoy having a reason to compete and
train and, as long as I wake up and want to do this, I
think I’ll hang on as long as I can,” says
DuChene, who plans on running shorter distance races this
spring and summer with Canada Running Series as she prepares
for the Chicago Marathon this fall. “You always
have to have some motivation and reason for running, and
I definitely still do, but I’ve just adjusted my
goals reasonably to make them appropriate for my age.”
Reid Coolsaet and Krista
DuChene are two of the finest practitioners of our sport.
They’ve achieved great success in their sneakers,
but they’ve also inspired legions of middle-of-the-packers
to follow in their fluorescent shoes. Do you want to run
forever? Want to extend your spring season into the fall,
into next year, into ten, twenty, fifty years down the
road? Listen to Krista DuChene and Reid Coolsaet. The
secret isn’t the stretching, the sneakers or the
training plan—though all those things will help.
The secret is the attitude you choose.
“I think some part
of my longevity you’d have to attribute to a combination
of motivation and listening to my body,” says Coolsaet,
“but the bigger thing is, probably, I just love
to run.”
|
219.jpg)
