With the final leg of my Olympic preparation underway in St. Moritz, France, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on what this journey means to me and how I got here.
In my reflections, I’ve dug deep into the pillars of my personality and looked at how track has fulfilled those traits.
My two strongest traits have always been a fiery competitiveness and an abundance of energy. At a young age, these traits went uncontained, which spelled disaster. I did poorly in school and struggled to communicate effectively.
The latter of those two stems from being an introvert in denial. I loved hanging out with friends, but would become emotionally drained quite quickly and refusing to remove myself to recharge on my own, I stubbornly pushed on, usually culminating in some epic tantrum.
My perfect outlet first came unknowingly when I began running in Grade 4, thanks to Kingswood elementary’s lunchtime popsicle stick runs.
I fell in love with running, trying to push myself further every day, feeding that competitive fire. But what I didn’t know at the time was that running was also allowing me to reset inside the solitude of my own head.
Through high school there was a shift and I became too focused on the external rewards — track no longer fulfilled the same parts of my personality.
Ironically, while I was no longer intrinsically driven by it, my extrinsic being had become so intertwined with “being an athlete” that I couldn’t possibly fathom quitting, despite not feeling fulfilled.
Luckily, the next big shift came shortly after high school, when I began studying kinesiology at UBC. Learning about human physiology, I developed a passion for getting the most out of myself.
While the actual training still didn’t drive me, I saw it as a prerequisite to being great and that was enough to get through it.
For a number of years, my needs were met by finding joy in the outcomes of the pursuit, not the pursuit itself. Or so I thought.
In my reflections, I came to realize that, unbeknownst to me, the training had been making me happier all along.
When I didn’t train, I couldn’t focus and actually revelled in those moments spent alone with my thoughts.
This year, for the first time since I was in elementary school, I became consciously aware that the training was making me happier and through my reflection, I now have a better understanding of why that is.
Knowing this, has also had the added effect of making me happier while training, which led to training better, which has led to being happier etc… until I’ve found myself in the best shape of my life.
With these revelations from my reflections, I find myself thinking less about my outcome goal for Rio and more about embracing and enjoying this journey that I’m on, appreciating what sport has done for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I still dream daily of standing on that podium, the culmination of a lifetime’s work and I know now, more than ever, that it’s possible.
(This column is part of a larger blog post that can be seen on DunfeeWalks.ca)
