It was on December 29, just as I spent my last Amazon gift card and finally got tired of my mother’s fudge, that my internal voice awoke from its Holiday hibernation. Christmas wine and Clark Griswold’s antics in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation thankfully had managed to silence it for the last week, but it was back - familiar and amplified: 
 
“Get off the couch, man - the Holidays are over,” it said. “2021 is coming, and you have to be better.”
 
I had never been one for New Year’s resolutions – the very phrase reminds me of those early-year gym goers in brand new track suits who’d steal my coveted treadmill on stormy days in January, only to quit running by February. But amid the COVID-19 pandemic alone, I found myself making enough resolutions to last me my next 25 years. In fact, becoming better at just about anything has been an obsession of mine since March.
 
I’m a journalist in my mid-twenties. When the pandemic cornered me inside my one-bedroom basement apartment in Toronto, I vowed to commit my newly-gained free time to self-improvement. I did so because it seemed like the best way to ensure my success inside whatever world might await me post-pandemic. And also because that stupid tweet about Shakespeare writing King Lear during the plague made me feel guilty for spending the entire third week of March re-watching Breaking Bad.
 
I set several goals in the spring, and they multiplied by the month. I vowed to spend my spare time getting healthy enough to race a marathon, reading about investing so that I can set my financial goals until 2030, growing my YouTube Channel, learning to grind my own coffee, and freelancing absolutely everywhere.
 
In my pursuits, I picked up a few good habits. I started going on regular morning walks, reading a book per week, and practicing the Wim Hof breathing method. Just recently I’ve learned that Wim Hof is in fact a world record-breaking athlete and not simply an onomatopoeia for the said breathing method (inhale WHIIIM, exhale HOFFFF).
 
But as weeks passed, my constant attempts at self-improvement started to backfire. How could I make a savings plan when I don’t know how much money I’m making? How can I target a race when I don’t even know if it will happen? Why am I even meditating?
 
I found myself multitasking too much. I listened to investment podcasts while getting groceries, only to later realize that I had retained almost nothing of the episode, and that I had bought the wrong kind of fish. I hit self-improvement rock bottom when I had to lie to my professors that the hissing sound coming from my Zoom screen emanated from a tea kettle, and not from the front wheel of the poorly-greased spin bike I was riding during class.
 
By the Holiday break, I felt tired, without having much to show for my efforts. So, I’ve resolved to break out of this trap before new year’s resolution season sends my tendencies into overdrive. So this year I’ve set “counter-resolutions” for January and beyond.
 
1-Don’t invent work where there is none – This year, in times when I had few obligations, I kept myself busy with futile tasks like rearranging my laptop folders, or putting four articles of clothing in the washing machine, just to feel productive. But while my mom would have been thrilled at how quickly I used the Tide Pods she sent me, my plan to stay busy slowly burned me out. This year, instead of forcing myself to be working on something, I’ll try to be grateful for days when I have nothing to do. Besides, I hear The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix is pretty good.
 
2-Be less time-driven in my pursuits. I thought that placing time limits on my goals would help me stay accountable. But coming up with proper timelines for projects in COVID times can feel impossible. Worse, failing to meet deadlines can lead to disappointment or, in my case, rushing through a project at the expense of its quality. Alex Hutchinson made a case for time-based goals when he wrote about Teleoanticipation: the science of finish lines that explains that mental comfort we feel when we know that a finish line is approaching (and conversely, the despair we can feel when we face temporally ambiguous tasks.) Yet, I’m noticing that my best projects of 2020 were those that were not rushed by a clear finish line.
 
3-Take time to reflect on what goals are truly important. I liked the idea of self-improvement so much that I struggled to focus on specific goals, and instead got carried away by the minutiae of self-improvement itself. But these morning walks, podcasts, meditation exercises and endless glasses of water should all be means to ends – not ends in themselves. Without a clear goal – like becoming a better runner, a better investor, a better writer – these improvement techniques did little for me.
 
I’m not saying that self-improvement is bad. Far from it – the ability to learn and reinvent oneself, I’d argue, is one of the best skills a millennial can have, especially as we face a growing gig economy and a quickly-changing world. If we spend all our days perusing Netflix and scrolling through Tik Tok instead of, say, learning how we work best, or getting our anxiety under control, we have no chance to succeed.
 
But we must self-improve tactfully. With patience, with kindness to ourselves, and with purpose. For me, that starts by taking my downtime to reflect on what things truly require my attention. And then and there, it was my family, their big screen TV and Chevy Chase.

I've been thinking a lot about the general unrest inherent to these difficult times. 

While some of its causes might be intuitive (disease, division, restrictions) I've been distressed at times by something smaller: I have a lot of time on my hands and I'm not always sure what to do with it. It's a petty complaint - probably a thinly-veiled first world problem - but it's a valid one nonetheless. 

Like for many others, parts of my life are on hold. I don't travel much, I see few people, and I'm so deprived of new stimulus that my heart now races when the postman comes, even though I know full well that the only physical mail we get is the electric bill.

Days at home on PEI with my family are peaceful and nice. Yet, my sense of purpose lately is fleeting, and I am trying to understand why that feels like a problem. After all, if I'm bored, restless and looking for something to do, it probably means that I'm not sick or grieving. Why can't I just be happy with that much? Isn't a nice neutral sit in the living room watching re-runs of Jeopardy kind of a good deal right now?

Bestselling author Mark Manson wrote in his bestseller The Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck that happiness doesn't come from the absence of problems as much as it comes from the resolution of them. In other words, we need stuff to fix, progress to make, goals to chase to maintain a level of well-being. Ever go to Turks and Caicos to lie on the beach for three weeks? It's boring and it sucks after day five, probably.

After a while, we need a challenge. Stanford Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman echoes Manson, and said we are programmed on a neurochemical level to pursue goals.

Huberman said it's long been known that obtaining a goal, like getting a promotion or walking into your new house for the first time, can cause a spike in dopamine - a neurotransmitter that helps regulate feelings of pleasure and well-being. But the pursuit of those goals is just as important a source of dopamine. (He explains it well at the 11:45 mark of this video). In the house example, that could mean that you felt positive emotion not only when you got the house, but also every time you deposited money to save up for the house.

James Clear goes one step further than Huberman in his bestselling book Atomic Habits, and writes that the brain has far more neural circuits designed for wanting rewards than for liking them. In other words, chasing a goal could make you feel even better than actually achieving that goal. 

So what happens in a time like now, when we aren't always sure what to chase?

​Clearly, we have an existential problem: a lot of us are stable and safe and nailing Trebek's Daily Doubles, but are also in duress because our future goals are ambiguous. What's helped me deal with that problem is to spend time running. It's trivial to the rest of the world, but it provides me with goals to hit, which in turn gets me all dopamined up and distracts me from vagueness. 

I've also seen Manson, Huberman and Clear's work manifest in my running. I am unfit, I am not winning races, and I am still far away from my best level of fitness. Yet, I am extracting just as much enjoyment from running as I ever did, perhaps because I see a path forward (provided I can keep healthy.) So I've come to believe that well-being doesn't depend on where we are as much as it depends on how we see the road ahead. 

So it's with that in mind that I made the video above. This is what a week of training looks like for me right now. It's not my biggest week or my most intense, but it feels like a step towards something else. And that, chemically and otherwise, is exciting. 

Till next time,
​AC

I'm starting a Youtube channel.

Why?

I've spent the last two years obsessed with a question: How can I run well and consistently, while staying healthy and keeping it fun? 

I still don't know the answer, but I've noticed that people of all speeds tend to ask themselves the same question. So I've decided to make my own search for fitness and health public. Here is an update of where I am in my recovery:
 

The background:

Two years ago was the last time I felt optimistic about my own running. I had just run my personal bests: 3:47 in the 1,500m and 14:28 in the 5,000.

It was around the time that people were debating over the attractiveness of the dad bod and whether they heard Yanny or Laurel. Trump had just called himself a "very stable genius" and some people still believed him. 2018 was a lifetime ago.

Since then, I've been stuck in an injury cycle that's lasted roughly 22 months. That's so long that when a baby gets that old, the parents stop counting his age in months and finally just say "he's almost two."

The ailments were joint patellar and hamstring tendinopathy on my left side. At their worst, they made walking painful and running impossible. The timing of their onset was terrible - I stopped running two weeks before Runners of the Nish was published.  After my book came out, I found that even more of my life revolved around running, in a time when I couldn't do it myself. It was a weird and hard thing to live with. 

But lately, I've regained some health. I'm running 50km per week and can do the odd workout without feeling like my hamstring is about to peel off my leg or my patella is starting a localized bonfire. I'm not yet able to put my body through a full training load, but am currently durable enough to admit that I want to make a comeback to competitive running. 

So these videos are meant to entertain and connect with others of all speeds who want to run faster, more consistently, and with more fun. 

So what is this channel for?

A place to share content like the workout video above, training recaps, discussions with friends and experts, new training ideas, and maybe a parody song if I ever see Nick Falk again.

A documentation of my own attempt at staying healthy, running well and finding fitness, and eventually returning to competition.

A means of connection with a community of runners trying to keep things fun and light in less-than-fun-and-light times.

What's this channel not for?

Teaching - I hope to explore ideas for better training, but I mean for those stories and exchanges to be taken as anecdotal. I have a kinetics degree but that doesn't mean I know what's best for you or that I listened in class.

Speed flexing - I am not here to show off my own running (there are many faster runners out there). I aim for my videos to be fun and helpful for runners of all speeds. 

Promoting - There is no agenda here. If someone does send me as much as a rocky road granola bar, I'll make it clear that the wrapper on my desk is a prop. 

Thanks for reading and watching, see you soon.

AC

At one point in your life, you thought about what the apocalypse might look like. If you’re an optimist, you might even have envisioned what your life might look like after the end of the world. So much that you probably uttered a variation of this cool thought experiment out loud, embedded in a sigh, in the middle of a busy workweek:
 
If the world I know ended, and my commitments went away, what things could I do with all my free time?
 
Having a chance to start over because you survived the apocalypse is nothing more than that – a thought experiment. It will never happen. We have classes and jobs and friends and unfinished projects. We have mortgages and training plans and pathetic fantasy hockey teams that require our attention, frustration and continuity. Waking up in dystopia is but a funny dream – and I’ve never been this close.

 

​I met Gary Malloy in the lobby of Hotel Le Concorde in the heart of Old Quebec, on the Friday night before my final cross-country race as a St. FX X-Man in 2016.
 
I really met Gary Malloy at 4 am on Sunday morning, more than 24 hours later and 10k deeper into my running career, following the race that made Runners of the Nish a book of clear tragedy. In the early hours of the cold morning he aimlessly stood outside our hotel, after a night of licking his wounds. Quite like us, the Lancers had sorely missed their team goal, and he was the head coach.
 
“Alex?” he asks as if not sure (who’s sure of anything at 4 am?), and fair enough, we don’t know each other. “You hungry?”
 
What else am I to do? It’s morning. I haven’t stomached anything since an arsenal of OUA athletes passed me in the final stretch of the race, almost a full day ago now. So I’m starving. Plus, this old dude is the Windsor coach - that’s where I want to go to school next year. His weird invitation is definitely a sly recruiting ploy – this guy must have been waiting for me in front of the hotel for hours (Gary later told me his cab driver that night was a 2:12 marathoner from Ethiopia – needless to say I was a distant consolation prize).
 
I followed him up the road and then down a few stairs into a grungy basement cum fast food eatery cum dystopian mosh pit filled with crestfallen runners, running on nothing much. Years later, Gary still called it a “Donair restaurant.”
 
We ordered some “Donairs” and I got ready for the job-like interview that a prospective coach might deliver to a prospective athlete. I was ready to rhyme off my PBs, what my mileage was like, and whether I thought Salazar was doping his athletes and whether Centro was a douche on Instagram.  But we didn’t talk about running. Gary instead amused himself telling silly stories about the night that just passed. I jumped in and told him I had been kicked out of the bar, only to be negotiated back in by Emmanuel Boisvert in a messy Québécois war of words with the bouncer that my Acadian dialect just could not win. Gary laughed.
 
 “Ahhh, alcohol,” he said, “The great equalizer.” By no mistake did the erudite retiree borrow Horace Mann’s assessment of education itself and apply it to what some would call his second passion.
 
“It brings us all down to the same level.”
 
As if Gary ever thought he was above anyone.
**
 
Two and a half years have passed since our first interaction. I went to Windsor for a Master’s degree and I have been injured for most of that time. To allude to Steve Boyd’s eloquent post from a few weeks ago, my injuries, to me, had been a more crude intimation with death than anything I had encountered. Until death itself, that is. Gary was there for me, helping me through the tough times with words, Wings tickets and the occasional outing with friends. Without his optimism – which I have yet to see paralleled –, and the support of my teammates, amidst the injuries I would have left Windsor.
 
But I didn’t, and when I got healthy, Gary made my summer of 2018 a special one. He brought us to historic Hayward Field (and begged the meet director to let me race despite my off-standard 1500m PB, and white lied his way into convincing them I’d pace the race - I didn’t). He hosted “Cyr you later” BBQs when I left town and, obviously, he helped me reach my running goals for the year. He was the first one (slightly before Evan Ubene over the Hamilton track microphone) to tell me I had broken 3:50 in the 1500m, a goal I had chased all summer.
 
“Trois Quarante Sept!” he said in my mother tongue, clenching his stopwatch, giddy at the finish line.
 
I was so happy with myself – mainly because I thought my race had made Gary smile so hard. But in reality, he wore the same grin he bore when I finished any other race, and when we’d come back from a cool down or show up for a warm-up. It was never about the results. It was about our personal growth – about us learning something new, and coming back tomorrow for more. He was the truest form of teacher – full of wisdom and free of judgment. Maybe because of that, he was someone you toiled to make proud, but never someone you were afraid to disappoint.
 
Gary was the same every day, with everyone he encountered. He lifted us when we were down, and challenged us to buckle down if we were flying close to the sun. He offered the same time, respect and friendship to everyone, regardless of age, standing in life or mile time. He was a rare peacekeeper in a track world full of egos and quarrels. He was a better equalizer than the drink he praised.
 

I’ll cut right to the chase, as some Law student who calls Biology a pseudoscience accused me of waxing lyrical in previous posts (lawyer me that one, Frisky F ;) ). 
 
I have been out since July - no running or cross training. I have not been able to do consistent aerobic exercise without having knee pain, and it has completely changed my lifestyle. I eat less, sleep less, and go for walks to get some sort of blood flow going. I am a tablet of Metamucil away from becoming Mister Rogers circa 2000. I have never endured a more trying five months - I  am living my worst nightmare. 
 
I have been seeing world-class therapists here in Windsor and have been doing so many glute exercises that I can probably crack open three walnuts at once. Yet, there has been no change in pain levels. So, I have no choice but to fight this injury with more fire - I'm getting arthroscopic surgery.
 
The date: December 14th
 
Location: London
 
Passengers in the Cyrmobile: so far, two (three more seats available – come see me recover from anaesthetics as you may be able to convince me to buy you dinner pretty easily).
 
Recovery time: 6 weeks to 3 months
 
Surgery efficacy rate: 50/50
 
I met the surgeon today, and after reading my MRI, he told me I have patellar tendinopathy. That was always what we thought, but it is nice to know that nothing else is going on in there, and it is nice to have the diagnosis confirmed. The pain has been pretty severe at times, so it got me worried that its cause was something more sinister. 
 
According to the surgeon, the injury could go away by itself in several more months, in a year, or in a few years. It is curable with rest and physiotherapy, but surgery often accelerates the process. Since arthroscopy is non-invasive and relatively low risk, and since I was able to get under the knife this fast, I saw it as the best option. 
 
So that’s where we are. I am optimistic (thanks Warren Buffet) and I try to approach this challenge with a positive outlook, but I can’t help being nervous. Living as a non-athlete has been an interesting experiment, but it has strengthened my conviction that, health willing, I will never quit running. I hate this loss of structure and I don’t feel like myself – running has become a huge part of my life in these last five years. 
 
Plus, it is very hard to explain to people who are not in the sport (or sport in general) what I am dealing with. It’s not that I am missing out on making the Olympics. It’s not about the Olympics – it never was. What I am missing out on is trying to crack the top 10 at U Sports XC. It’s travelling to new places for training camps. It’s running on new grounds with new people. It’s logging 100 miles in a week and smugly posting on Strava about it. It’s going for a run with my sister and my two little bros when I get home for Christmas. It’s putting Angus Rawling in his place, dammit (which seems increasingly hard to do)! 
 
I love this sport, and the people in it. I am meant to run. I don’t know how fast, and I don’t know how far, but I am meant to run. 

So let’s end this.

AC
 
 
 

I was not even marginally successful, but I was hungry. I wanted to turn heads so badly. Back then, I was motivated by a combination of sources. There were the wholesome satisfactions of feeling fit and setting new PBs, and then the hellish desires to make incredulous jaws drop and gain recognition from my superiors. Like only an immature 19-year-old speed-obsessed teenager in an Eminem and testosterone-induced perma-trance could, I wanted to rub my nameless spikes on a seldom frequented East-Coast track and set the damn world on fire. It did not matter who cared. I romanticized the craft too much to  notice that most people probably didn't. 

​I wanted so badly to get faster that I probably wished it into existence. Soon, things started clicking. By my arbitrary standards, I was fulfilling my promise - I was starting to make it. A few months removed from that small surgery, I won a conference bronze medal. Then silvers, then I finished my time at St. FX with gold. Our team won championships, our group travelled the country for road, cross and track races. I beat Cal's PB. He beat mine. Neuffer crushed both of us, we crushed him back. I beat Riley for the first time. I beat Lee for the first time. Angus came in and beat me for the first time. Scott stayed for a fifth year and raised us to his level. I chose to move to Windsor to keep running. There were new personal bests. I ran on Hayward Field. I chased Nick Falk on grass, on dirt, on pure hate. I came back to PEI for the summer, by then having run faster on the track than any Islander before me. I won road races at the Highland Games. I saw Luc, a runner from my hometown whom I helped coach make his first strides at St. FX. I wrote and published a book on our team's journey to the 2016 U Sports championship.



​

I love reminiscing on these moments, no matter how insignificant they may seem to whomever. Not because I want to boast - many would have much more to boast about anyway - but because they are rewarding to me. Lately, I have been inclined to reminisce, because the memory of these moments has been my crutch. 

Immediately following a fun weekend of racing at the Antigonish Highland Games in early July, I gradually descended from a rarely-interrupted three-and a-half-year-long high. Now three months into a knee injury, I was told there is bone degeneration on my left patella. I am not surprised, as my knee hurts to walk on. The development of pain was insidious, and crept up on me so discreetly that I don't think I could have been more diligent in trying to catch it. According to the doctor I am working with, the healing potential for this kind of injury, like its best treatment option, is unknown. Tomorrow, I am being given a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection to stimulate healing. If it does not work, I might have to opt for something more invasive.

These last few months have been difficult. It's not so much the time missed, as it is the uncertainty about my return timeline that keeps me up sometimes. Hobbling the Windsor campus without answers just weeks since I excelled here makes the setting sobering and dystopian. The possibility that I will not run again - that I will not feel high again - scares me, and brings tough questions to mind: If I do not make a comeback, have I wasted all this time trying to make the unmakable? Have I lost years of my life in vain?​ Should I have quit years ago? 

​

For four years, I elected running as the focal point of my life. I needed nothing else. Running with the X-Men (and now the Lancers) has pushed me to chase academic degrees. I found a social life during runs, team suppers and the odd after-party. I cultivated business relationships through the sport, and used running as a vehicle to develop other interests and passions I now have. My sport enabled my growth in multiple directions. I needed nothing else. At 23, I am convinced I still don't.

I now think that we never fully make it in running, but running makes us a bit more every time we get out the door. I've been incredibly lucky to stay healthy and grow within this sport over these last four years. Without health, I would not have gotten here. Not even close. I would not be writing, I would not be in a Master's program, I would not have the friends I have, and I probably would not be happy. So, regardless of what's next, how could I regret that rage-fuelled stubborn decision to blindly chase running that 19-year-old me stubbornly and miraculously nailed?  I can't.

I am 23, and for the first time in my life, I am facing a career-threatening injury. Stuart overcame one. Myriam overcame one. They are beatable. They have to be, because I cannot stop here. I want to chase more track times. I want to wear the Maple Leaf. I want to move to the roads. Maybe become a Roadhammer. Maybe progress to the marathon. I want to meet up with the boys when I'm fifty-three and tired from my day job and get my creaky but healthy joints out the door. On some level, by chance and circumstance, I've been made. But, I want to be made more. I don't want to be done. I don't want to be done. 

AC

​

I’m quivering. From the cold, I think. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just my rapid breathing that is making my chest twitch almost rhythmically. Either way, I’m beat, mangled. I can open my eyes, but not for long. Long enough to feel the wind on my eyeballs – a continuously present wind – that my somatosensory receptors have selectively ignored for over half an hour now.I cover my eyes to shield them. My hands are pulsing, but so is my forehead. They synchronize and throb together as I roll over to my backside, face still twisted in complete agony.
​

The Plains of Abraham have not seen such a spectacle for 258 years, buthistory has a weird way of repeating itself. The battle for land, between the French and the English, turned soldiers against each other. Multiple clans, fighting for the same purpose – to extinguish the opponent – depleted their resources, so much so that it was difficult to distinguish the winners from the losers. The line was blurred. Everyone looked the same. Teams were broken down to their purest forms – handfuls of individuals – sprawled out on the battlefield, waiting to learn if their self-sacrifice was worthwhile. Waiting to know if their self-sacrifice was honest enough. Today is not much different.

Here I am, a French-Canadian lying lifelessly, soon listlessly. I’m Montcalm reincarnate. Defeated on the Plains, a heaping pile of war residue. Next to me lies Wolfe, – no, Dewolfe – equally as trashed. We’re unsure of who crossed the finish line before us. We have no idea what’s happened behind. I think Bernie is close by, and the look on his face would be telltale. Too bad I can’t get up. Too bad I can’t see.

I need something – food, maybe. Water…something to make my stomach stop turning. My homeostatic levels are severely threatened from all angles. I feel empty in more ways than one. But there will be a banquet – there will be drinks. We will soon feel alive again. Sustenance is not an issue. I need reassurance. I need comfort so direly that I pick my arms up from the ground and use them as support to push my body up into a sad Vinyasa pose.

​I open my eyes, and look at Cal Dewolfe, sitting with his head between his knees – beat, distraught, confused. Thank God he is close. I would surely collapse under the weight of my chest and blood-filled head in seconds. I open my dry mouth, knowing that the moment will unveil the value – the significance – of these last months, of these last years. This moment of clarity and truth will be the one I remember. I sacrificed countless hours for this mid-November moment to be a good one. Hoping that he knows better, I turn towards my lanky training partner, roommate, friend, and rival and hope – wish – for some good news.

“How’d we do?”

​