{"id":522,"date":"2012-05-02T22:02:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikaelstaer.com\/clients\/cbeals\/dev\/?p=522"},"modified":"2015-05-18T17:09:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T21:09:36","slug":"15k-to-freedo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikaelstaer.com\/clients\/cbeals\/dev\/2012\/05\/15k-to-freedo\/","title":{"rendered":"15k to Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finishing my last exam at Queen’s was something I had fantasized about for years. I envisioned bursting\u2014no floating<\/i>\u2014out of the exam hall into a radiant spring day, cloudless blue sky, birds signing etc., etc. I would sigh deeply as the burden of stress lifted off my shoulders leaving me weightless and free. I would feel profoundly satisfied, liberated and otherwise elated. This vision served as a beacon, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, that made all the tedium and misery of university bearable.<\/p>\n

It didn’t unfold that way. My final exam was mediocre and mind-numbingly long. I was one of the last to leave the exam hall. Instead of the perfect sunny day I had imagined, I was greeted by cold drizzle. A fitting goodbye from Kingston, my beloved city.<\/p>\n

It all felt utterly unremarkable. Where was the momentous event I had pictured? What, no fireworks, no marching band, no crowd? Instead of elation, I just felt exhausted, drained, empty. The cumulative effects of an overloaded semester, persistent terminal insomnia<\/a> and 20+ hour training weeks suddenly came crashing down on me. I dragged myself to the pool and struggled through a couple kilometers. Then I went home and collapsed into my bed before it was even dark.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I was a little naive. My mood is like some lumbering cargo ship; I can steer it out of stormy waters, but overcoming the inertia is a slow deliberate process. I tried to explain this to one of my housemates when he asked how I felt: “Uh… happiness takes time”. He was understandably confused.<\/p>\n

When I got home last Friday, I still felt off. I moped around the house listlessly. I decided that I needed something to break out of my post-exam funk, a punctuation mark to signal the end of school. So, on a whim, I signed up for the Billy Taylor 15k<\/a>. After seeing my sorry state over the past couple days, my dad said flatly, “You’re crazy”.<\/p>\n

I still felt completely burnt out, so I initiated a serious bout of intensive recovery<\/a>. This involves a brief but intense period of prolific food and tea intake, napping and abstinence from all physical activity with the exception of couch-to-fridge excursions. According to my training log, I also broke a 50 day streak of double workouts!<\/p>\n

I have always avoided racing in sub-optimal conditions. I want to race feeling 100% prepared, healthy and fit. But this is never the case. There are always excuses: missed workouts, second-guessed training plans, a scratchy throat. Sometimes I’m a little over-dramatic. The day before the race, my legs still felt like blocks of wood. I was convinced that I would run embarrassingly slow.<\/p>\n

Having never raced more than 10k, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Should I wear a fuel belt and compression gear like all the cool hobby joggers? I’m not a fan of the long-winded overblown race reports that plague most athletes’ blogs. If you’re like me, you get to the second sentence then zzzzzzzzzz. So here’s the executive summary:<\/p>\n

Billy Taylor 15k, <\/b>3rd place, 50:59.9<\/b>
\n5k splits: 16:50, 17:00 and 17:10 (big hill + wind)<\/p>\n

Also, props to fellow Fergus Distance Project (FDP) members Scott Brydges<\/a> who dominated the 5k with a personal best performance of 15:26, and Jenn Dowling-Medley<\/a> who placed third. Three entrants and three podiums – not a bad start to the season for FDP!<\/p>\n

More important than my result is how much better I feel. Years worth of toxic thoughts were flushed out by perspiration, exhalation and endorphins. Queen’s, Kingston and physics are behind me and a new chapter of life stretches before me.<\/p>\n

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