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I run
Feb 9, 2002

I have never been much of an athlete, but last year I managed to finish my first 10K race. In fact, I finished my second and third, as well. If someone had told me a year earlier that I would do that, I would have laughed. In fact I did. A couple of years ago, just as I was starting a new job, one of my new colleagues and I were discussing what we like to do to keep active. She enjoys mountain biking, I like rollerblading. And then she asked me, how about running - do you like to run? "Oh no," I said emphatically. "I don't run." She might as well have asked me if I liked taking cough medicine.

"Oh," she said. "But have you ever tried it?"
"Uh, no. Never. Not my cup of tea," I said. Subject closed.

In the months that followed, having completely forgotten this conversation, I was mulling out loud about needing to find something new to do. I was trying to eat better, and I wanted to be more active, but I'm not a fan of aerobic classes or going to the gym.

"You really should try running," my friend suggested. "You might like it."
"No, I don't think so," I said. "I don't run."

In my mind, running was something that other people did. Fit people. People who have dogs. They get up early in the morning for a brisk jog before breakfast, then go to work. I don't have a dog, I don't like mornings, and I wasn't fit. Therefore, running was out of the question.

About six months later, having completely forgotten about this conversation again, my better half was recovering from shoulder surgery, and was badgering his doctor about what he could do for exercise. He's a very active guy who had been sitting on the couch for eight weeks, and he was going stir crazy.

"Can I play soccer?" he asked.
"No."
"Can I rollerblade?"
"No."
"What about judo?"
"Uh, no. At least four more weeks."
"Come on, you have to let me do something," he persisted.

The doctor told him that he could run, and that was about it. (No soccer, unless you can guarantee that no one will bump into you.) He came home feeling dejected.

"We can do it together," I suggested. And so we did, briefly anyway. He hated it. We ran together for a couple of weeks, until the doctor said that he could play soccer, which he thought was way more fun. At least soccer has a purpose, he said. Running ... what's the point? But I kept up with it, and I started to find that it was a great way of burning off stress. Eventually, I signed up for a 10K class - mostly as a motivator to make me run during the winter, but also to set some kind of goal for myself. I finished my first 10K race in March (although race is too strong a word - I'm quite slow), my second in April, and my third in May. It felt great.

(No replies)

skating on the rideau canal
Jan 7, 2001

To most people I work with, it was pure blasphemy that I had lived in Ottawa for five full years and never skated on the Rideau Canal, known in winter as the world's longest skating rink. It's not that I wasn't interested - I always enjoyed skating as a child - but I just never made the time. This year, I decided it was high time that I gave it a shot. I also had the bizarre notion that if I liked it, I could even try skating to work. I hauled out my skates and had them sharpened, and away I went. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask one very important question: which part about this is supposed to be fun?

Not having grown up in Ottawa, I was not raised with the mythology that skating on the canal is a fun thing to do. I grew up in a big(ger) city, so my skating experience was limited to local skating rinks with smooth surfaces that receive regular maintenance. I never experienced "lake skating" at people's cottages, and my father's only attempt to fashion a skating rink by flooding our backyard was utterly unsuccessful. That being said, I was duly warned that canal skating was a different ball of wax, and that I should not expect it to be like a hockey arena. Apparently, I grossly under-estimated this advice, and put more weight on my co-workers' insistence that skating on the canal is a wonderful and pleasurable experience that I was missing out on.

Full of anticipation, I laced up my skates as I watched dozens of happy skaters pass by. Once I was ready to go, my first few steps were very tentative. After all, I hadn't used my skates in several years, and I expected that it would take a few minutes to remember how the whole thing works. The theory came back pretty quick, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to put it into practice. The bumps and cracks and pot-holes - about which I had been warned - diverted all my attention that might otherwise have been put to use "having fun". I had far more in common with the unstable toddlers than other people my age, who just didn't seem to notice the crevices and lumps that represented impending disaster in my path. I forged on, in hopes that I just needed to build up some confidence, and then I would begin to enjoy myself. I let this go on for about 30 minutes, when I remembered that I still needed to turn around and go back, and I still wasn't having any fun yet. It took me two full minutes to reorient myself in the other direction, and I slowly skated back to my starting point. During the whole journey, I couldn't shake the feeling that the canal really needs a giant zamboni machine (and perhaps a small miracle) to smooth out the ice. However, nobody around me seemed to notice - they were too busy having fun.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but I can't help but feeling that the canal is not actually the world's longest skating rink, but rather, it is a big chunk of frozen water that people choose to skate on because they grew up believing it is fun. Nevertheless, I think that I'll wait until summer, when I can put my rollerblades on and skate alongside the canal instead of on it.

scout

(2 replies, Latest reply: Dec 2, 2001)