Travel Notes: We all have stories. This is from Athens 2004.

I arrived at the airport in Athens jet lagged and dazed after the long flights from Victoria, Toronto and Montreal. My luggage was predictably lost in the exchange from Toronto’s Terminal 1 to 3, after a delay from Victoria and a switch to the Greek Olympic Airways. After the usual rigmarole to report lost baggage, made slightly more difficult with the language barrier (my rudimentary knowledge of French and German was to be of little use deciphering Greek), I left the arrival hall empty handed and joined Lance in the airport. I was officially in Athens, on holiday, reunited with my husband and a spectator at the Olympic Games. Jet lag and lost luggage were not a problem. The sun was hot, the sky was blue, and I was on vacation for the next eight days. I was not racing, which was poignantly clear in my complete freedom from anxiety about my luggage, my accommodation, my hydration or my feelings of fatigue. I was dazed and happy.

My first impressions were not all what I expected. I saw evidence of the Olympics as we drove towards Vouliagmeni, the triathlon venue and place we were staying. The roads were all freshly paved and black and there was a fast Olympic lane to drive in, the surrounding environment was dry, dusty and sparsely vegetated with shrubby silvery green leaved trees (olives). Everywhere was evidence of rubble, the whitish rock that is the foundation of Greece. The road led between storefronts and empty buildings, car dealerships and firewood stores, and everywhere lay the empty shells of half built abandoned structures. Almost every second building was unfinished, as if ambition to build, to start, was all that mattered. Concrete shells of two and three story buildings were littered everywhere, like a bombed out landscape, although these were merely abandoned starts, not fallen down rubble. It was hard to fathom the feeling of looking at all these ugly skeletons of houses, why they are allowed to exist and why people are allowed to abandon such projects, leaving eyesores littered along the streets and over the arid but beautiful Mediterranean hills. As the week progressed and this empty building phenomena became a discussion point, the theory emerged that there was some tax break in starting new house projects, so developers started buildings that they never had any intention of finishing, and also that the huge rush to complete Olympic venues created a massive shortage of builders and tradesman for regular projects. Whatever the reason, the appearance that these buildings gave the area surrounding Athens was a constant source of bewilderment to Canadians I was traveling with.

Lucy

From time to time, I will post excerpts from my extensive travelling journals.

Today it is two weeks since I ran the New York City Marathon. To mark the occasion I went for a 20 minute unscheduled run. I ran just as it was getting dark, a bright wedge of moon slung in the sky, and I felt great. It's been a good rest. I didn't do much but walk and a few pool runs for a whole week, then I gradually started running a bit this week, keeping it very light and very short.

I don't think Lance figures I can last more that about two weeks without running or training anyway. He almost fell off the sofa when I said I was going to take a big break after NYC. "That'll last about 2 weeks"' he laughed.

But I am not going to launch into full training tomorrow. I am going to be clever and take my downtime from training and racing. It is definitely something I have had to practice. Resting while I was pregnant was easy, but resting for the sake of resting has taken some work. I'm very good at hanging up the bike and extremely good and letting the bathing suit dry out, but stopping running? That just feels plain unnatural.

I won't race for a while and in another couple of weeks, I will start building into longer endurance runs and increasing my volume. I was talking to a young athlete in the triathlon development squad and he mentioned, with a big smile, how excited he was for next season. I thought that was great. Even though the excitement was not focussed at any one race, he felt hopeful and positive about racing after a winter of training.

Sometimes unfocussed enthusiasm and joy for what you do is important. That's why I went and ran tonight. Not because I was training for anything in particular, but because I wasn't training for anything in particular. It's great to have a part of the season where individual training sessions don't mean much, where you go run in an unstructured way (sometimes I leap up steep hills because it's fun, or break into sudden fast strides ), and just relax a bit from performance.

Lucy

My New York Trip

I didn’t take my laptop to New York. I wanted to travel light, and to record my thoughts and observations with pen and paper, the way I started journaling my running, when I was a young girl. I wanted to pare my trip down to the essentials: my running shoes and orthotics, essential running gear, my heart open to possibilities. Faced with a lot of free time and down time (no kids, no training!) I wrote a lot over the weekend. Here are some of my reflections from new York.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

The TRIP is finally here, the voyage to New York has begun with the issuing of boarding passes. I’m sitting in the afternoon sunlight, in the pleasant international boarding lounge of the Vancouver Airport. I love the silence and the softness of just sitting in a boarding lounge, waiting for the departure to new places. Even before I had children and life became so much more than my own path, I liked leaving for trips.

I have always loved the adventure of travelling and a life in sport has afforded me many such adventures. I chose sport because I was well suited to the training and attention to optimum health, the time spent outdoors and the competition. Life in high performance also means travelling and hotel rooms and strange food and cities. I have come to understand the layers now: that I love the challenge of having to arrive at a starting line many time zones away, and be prepared and ready to execute a perfect race or as near to perfect a performance as I can. In my career I can honestly say that I have enjoyed and felt grateful for the privilege that my hard work has given me; the chance to race as an elite athlete, the bonus of hotel rooms and flights to new cities, the opportunity to toe the front of the line.

One day I will miss the racing at the elite level, and can already appreciate the richness that it has brought to my life.

I said good bye to the children this morning, already missing them and already looking forward to my time to be a professional. The irreconcilable emotions of motherhood.

Friday, November 9, 2007

The lobby of the Hilton is like Grand Central Station: huge and noisy. It is a circular room, and lined with rose coloured marble. It is busy and bustling and not cold at all. People are friendly here in New York this time, maybe excited, like I am for the start of the marathon. Walking across the Avenue of the Americas, someone holds the door of Starbucks open for me, people make small talk in the elevator. My room is on the 39th floor and from my room I can clearly hear the continuous intermittent honking of horns, the rush of traffic, the sirens, the blasting whistle of the bellman as he calls in a never ending demand for taxis. When I look down I see the tops of yellow cabs, stuck at intersections, moving right and left again. It’s all fabulous. it's a world away from my home in Victoria, where all we here is the wind. It’s New York.

I am being treated very well. The New York Road Runners are adept and practiced at putting on events and taking care of elite athletes. The best in the world come to race here and to win, and all their needs are anticipated. Before I even raced, I was given gifts. A shoulder bag filled with goodies that I shall cherish, inlcuding an engraved pen from Tiffanies. You’d think that by now I wouldn’t care so much about getting race gear, but I still like it!

In the elevator (and I’m in there for a few moments as it rised from the Lobby to the 39th floor), there is a small television screen playing an endless loop of the ING promotional video of the marathon. They have a runner’s eye view of the marathon course, speeded up so that you see the whole course in about 5 minutes. It’s awesome, though it makes some people dizzy; I don’t have time to see the course, but this gives a visual picture of the streets we will run through.

It’s so quiet in my room with the king size bed. No singing or laughing, or wrestling or dancing to music. No Hotwheels cars. I like it, this time on my own, but now and then, from nowhere, a loneliness rises up from deep inside me. Love for Maia and Ross and Lance floods into my heart. I look out the window to the high-rises of Manhattan and I can’t wait for race day.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

A quiet day, trying to find a balance between staying off my feet and resting, and getting a little light activity. I don’t like feeling stiff from lying about watching TV all day. I went for an easy run in the morning, at the tail end of the Olympic Marathon Trials for US men. It was hard to run anywhere. The sidewalks were packed with Saturday morning shoppers and spectators returning from watching the race. Central park was likewise crammed with people and many roads were blocked. I jogged along lightly, dodging pedestrians and trees, trying to get some sense of rhythm. The thing about NYC is that there are so many people in this place, they are everywhere, on every street, in every shop. Nothing, and nowhere seems to be devoid of life. It’s sort of nice really. Humanity.

At breakfast the rumours started. Questions and quiet talk about a tragedy, possibly a death in the marathon that morning. By mid afternoon, the rumours were confirmed that Ryan Shay, one of the promising young American runners, had died after a collapse at the 5mile mark. I did not know Shay, but it was quite shocking and one of those moments in life when you realize, yet again, how precious our time is. We were told to be strong, to race in the morning with life and joy as that is what he would have wanted, but there were close friends of Ryan’s in the race and I know this was not going to be easy for them. It felt strangely familiar to be looking at death while amid such life. Emily Mondor's tragic death last year before the National 10k Championships, Benny Van Steelant passing away right before Long Distance World Duathlon Championships in October.

I spent a long time at dinner, getting my carbs in, but catching up with Bruce and Rosemary Deacon, just chatting and laughing about running and life and children.

Later, I sat in my room, going over my morning routine, visualizing how I wanted to feel when I woke up, checking and re-checking that all the clocks were ready for the time change.

Lucy

Coming Down from the Runner's High

Well, that was pretty much the most fun I have ever had racing. It was definitely my most fun marathon experience even if it wasn't the fastest. I will have much more to say over the next few days but for now, here are the highlights of my weekend in Manhattan.

1. Riding the bus to the start with a police escort and seeing the Statue of Liberty standing way out in the bay.

2. All the helicopters and motorbikes and fire trucks everywhere. It seemed like every police officer and firefighter in the city was there.

3. Seeing Lance Armstrong's black SUV parked in the elite area and thinking about making funny faces in the tinted windows.

4. Starting on that massive bridge with really really loud music!

5. The music all along the course. All types. Loud and fun.

6. The masses of people everywhere, especially 1st Ave. and Central Park.

7. Running the bridges.

8. Hearing someone call me by my first name and seeing Peter Reid in the crowd at mile 14.

9. Then seeing Malaika!

10. Having the elite men's motorcade catch me from behind and feeling like I was running from the cops. Then watching these incredibly beautiful runners bound by effortlessly.

11. Running the last 2 miles on air in Central Park.

12. The last 400 yards!

13. The elated, bright and joyous feeling I got at the finish. I was moved and overcome with a feeling of life. I wanted to run those last 2 miles again.

14. The feeling of wonder, that at 40, I can still have this passion about running!

Lucy

Ready for New York City

Starting the run at Ironman Canada 2007. That was hard!

It's been about ten years since I ran my last stand alone marathon. Over the course of five years in the early 90's I ran six marathons, posting a personal best at California International way back in 1992. When I was a young runner, in my teens, I remember thinking that I would run a marathon before I turned 24, so I guess that's why I did my first one in 1992: I was already a year overdue. There's something about having a firm conviction about what you want to do and finding a way to make it a reality.

Since that day in Sacremento, a lot has happened. (For one, when I went back in '94, my boyfriend proposed in the hotel room. That was Lance and that's another story). I turned away from marathons in '96, finding that my body couldn't handle the mileage required of world class marathoners, focusing instead on the wonderful intensity of cross country, the 5 and 10km events, and eventually discovered triathlon as a way to satisfy my desired lifestyle of combining being outdoors, competing at endurance events and cross training. In the last seven years I have raced three Ironmans and have given birth naturally to two children: at each of these events I swore at the time it was the hardest thing I have ever done. (In the moments after each of the first of these events I swore I would never do another--birth or Ironman). Some things just make you tougher.

So, at the beginning of this year, the year I turned 40, I got it in my brain that I was going to do another marathon. I knew it would have to be a fall marathon, after Ironman training was stashed away as foundation. I considered the Royal Victoria in my home town, but then as fate would have it, when I went to race at Freihofers 5k in June, I was invited back to New York for the marathon. Once the seed was planted there was no turning back in my mind. I had to do New York. In my long career, it was imperative to do New York, and to do it this year. I said yes.

I now I find myself staring down the last few days before this famous race. Soon I will be boarding a plane and flying from Victoria to JFK, will be making a room at the Hilton my race headquarters for a few nights, I will be hydrating and stretching and thinking about calories, what to wear and reviewing my pace plan.

Right now I feel excited and yet calm and intensely alive. I'm ready and I'm strongly aware of the poignancy of the occasion--my high performance career is winding down, maybe not with this race, but soon. I feel honoured to be heading out for this famous event that runs through 5 boroughs of the big apple city (I can't wait to hear the Gospel singes in Harlem!). I'm curious to put my endurance to the test--how will I feel now that I have raced those gruelling Ironman events where the discomfort goes on for hours? I have run so many more half marathons, good ones, and my training is light years smarter than it was in '92.

After all those early years of being anxious and nervous, of being worried about being good enough, the gifts that time has given me--the gifts of family and marriage and perspective--are with me now. I am going into this race clear headed and with a strong sense of joy. I can't wait. I've never felt more like a runner than at this moment and I know I'm tough enough!

Lucy

Cultivating a Calm and Joyful Mind

After twenty years in sport, I have a pretty good understanding of what physiological markers I need to reach in training in order to achieve certain goals in competition. I have never yet tired of the relentless pursuit of the perfect race, nor the simple act of putting on my shoes and going for a run in the woods. My life has changed immensely in the last seven years through the birth of my two children, and parenting has rewarded me with personal challenges outside sport beyond what I ever could have imagined.

What I love to work on now is the rewarding process of becoming an astute and balanced person while continually entering the high stress playing fields of competition. I practice cultivating a continuous calm and joyful mindset, a psychological state that is like happiness and contentment with the current moment, but is also manifest in a mental clarity that creates a stillness whether things are going really well, or very poorly. I’ve been through all the intense ups and downs of sport so many times I find solace in being able to remain confident and centred through everything that comes along. When things go wrong, I feel disappointment and then I move on. When I experience a win (or a 4th, as in my most recent World Duathlon Championships Result in Virginia), I smiled and laughed with the locals, then came home to my family in Victoria and resumed taking Maia to soccer, and watching planes with son Ross, equally important events in my life.

So, a good portion of my training energy is devoted to cultivating the kind of mindset that makes me feel good. How do I cultivate this feeling, this confidence? I use my time well. When I am training, I make a commitment to myself to put my best effort into each day, no matter how tired I am, or what has happened in my personal life. I contemplate how I feel when things are going well and the positive thoughts and attitude I have about myself, the world and my training. I work on eliminating negative self-talk, self- defeating behaviour and actions that sabotage success.

I like the discipline of training my body and my mind, of practicing how I am going to be confident and joyful on race day. The more I practice being confident in training sessions, the more easily that mind-ease surfaces on race day. I like getting to races ready to perform. I expect to be nervous before major competitions as this means that deep down, I care about what I do, but with my well of calm at my centre, the nervousness never becomes debilitating. I work to be free of worry and anxiety, to be able to focus on the process of running well. This practice serves me well, as when I arrive at a big event where the athletic stakes are higher, like a world championships, I have the comfort of knowing that all the strength and courage I need are right there in my soul.

Lucy

Athletes and Artists: Not So Different!

I just came across another blog--this one about art and being creative. It's called Sixty Minute Artist, and the author has 4 kids and a full time job and needed to find a way to do art to stop himself from going crazy. So he finds sixty minutes each day to make progress on a painting.

hmmmm. Sounds like some other people I know. People who need to train each day to feel normal. hmmmm. Sounds like me.

So I read his latest post and it's about how to be a successful artist. This piqued my interest because I have always believed that there are similarities between athletes and artists and writers (and probably dancers, musicians, environmentalists and a whole lot of other similar people who have a passion for something.

He mentions that there are 3 things that make a successful artist.

1. Curiosity 2. Commitment 3. Good work habits

Now I am smiling. When I gave my Run For Joy talk at the marathon, I spoke about the many things I feel have been a huge part of my success and how we can all find personal success if we know what we are looking for. My top three were:

1. Overcoming personal barriers. 2. Commitment and dedication. 3. Creating joyful opportunities in racing and training.

My 2 is the same as his 2 and my 1 is the same as his 3. I would even say that my 3 is very close to his 1. Just a different way of saying it.

Curiosity, though. I like that word. It has got me thinking!

Lucy