So today’s the day of the Houston Marathon. It’s like christmas for runners – watching/following other elite athletes competing in big events. It’s a great motivator as well, I find myself imagining what my eventual debut marathon experience will be like.
But let’s not jump ahead too much. Let’s rewind a bit back to what I’ve been up to the last 2 months or so. So training coming back from my peak race Toronto Scotiabank Half-Marathon. I was so excited with
my performance post-race it was TORTURE trying NOT to run and to take my recovery week – just ask my clients they were sick of all the extra bottled up energy I was running around work with! Within 5 days, I couldn’t take it any more and had to run, so I called my running partner Mike Thornton to get back into it. I quickly learned that he barely took two days off which helped me feel better about rushing into it. I just felt so fresh and needed to put my new found motivation to good use. Even though I may have started back fairly quickly, I took it easy with mileage 40, 62, 69 and 87km/ week as I knew my spring season was going to be long.
Running has been my saviour time and time again. When life kicks me, I use running to help keep my sane. The end of 2015 was not so hot a lot of stressful things happening including leaving me to desperately look for a new job at the current time. If running has taught me anything, patience is key. All things tend to work out the way they are supposed to and I have to be patient and hope that I can find something or a new opportunity will make itself known in the near future. Through everything in the last 6 weeks I have not faltered with my running. I have been stronger than ever – as evidence as crushing my first few workouts back post-season as if I never missed a beat. I remember a few weeks thinking “oh I haven’t taken a day off in 2 weeks maybe I should” and then going out and doubling that day. Running is hugely mental and sometimes all you need is fuel for the fire and to use your situation and life stresses to your advantage to help fuel your passion and effort. Another huge saviour has been JB. I don’t only mean Justin Bieber – though I’ve been rocking out to his new CD non stop, it’s like a party in my car! Of course Josh has been a huge supporter of me through the ups and downs and always keeping faith in me and my future. There were many training runs where I just shut my brain off and kept going and before I knew it I just did an accidental 20k run.
I used my time off over christmas as a complete reset and Josh and I enjoyed a lot of food – 5 christmas dinners 5!!!- and hammered out our runs too. One of my favourite things post-season has been going to Niagara Falls for one night with Josh, James and Meagan.
I’m using 2016 to take chances and try new things. I’ve been doing a lot of artwork and painting if you haven’t seen it check it out www.facebook.com/tanissmithfineart. Art has been a passion of mine all my life and I’ve been using a lot of my spare time creating and studying art in the hopes of starting to sell it myself. It’s the year of leaving all doors open and you never know what my future career may be. Here are some of my fav’s:
In terms of training, 2016 is going great. Workouts are feeling smooth and strong. Josh has been transitioning me into longer tempo effort followed with harder effort intervals for workouts. I hated it at first such a longgg dragging workout but now I’m really enjoying it. I’ve enjoyed running in shorts for much of December and a few days of January. I can’t complain about the weather too much we’ve been very lucky. One of my strengths is working off my strength and grinding paces out vs speed and these workouts have been geared to work that. One of my main focuses for spring season is Calgary Canadian Half Marathon Championships. I just did my elite entry form the other day so exciting! To think that I can have help for travel and hotel expenses is amazing! I really want to be able to travel the world with running and have many experiences through that. Starting to get there – still so much work to do.
What I always tell my clients, one of the amazing things with training and working out is that there is no ceiling, you can always be better do more. I feel like I’m in a really great spot – yes I desperately want to improve but I do have SO much more I can work on and improve plus what time and experience will bring as well.
Thanks for reading! Keep on grinding.
Tanis Bolton - Road Racer 