serious a runner? Despite having the physique of a kayaker, he came close to doing a seventeen-minute 5k in high school.
“For someone who was 185 pounds, that’s pretty good. I remember lining up in cross-country in high school, looking over and thinking, ‘These guys are 140.’ I was pushing 190.”
On top of his training in the kayak, van Koeverden ran three times a week at school, plus track workouts once a week. On Fridays, he would run twelve kilometres in the morning at school, then fourteen or fifteen at night with his canoe club.
“I’m glad I’m not doing it anymore because it’s a lot of kilometres for a guy my weight,” he says. “But it made me tough. It made me really tough.”
Van Koeverden says he packs his running shoes wherever he goes. “Even if I’m going somewhere for a night, well, what if I wake up and want to go for a run? I can’t leave these behind.”
As an elite athlete with a finite career, he’s already thinking ahead to life after kayaking, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever give up running.
“I will always be a runner. Running is just so accessible, I’ll always do it. I’ll always enjoy it and I’ll always live somewhere close to trails and I can always just get on to the trail and give ’er in the trees for a few minutes.
“I always look forward to my next run. I could go on at length about the feeling you get after a run and the high that you feel and the sense of accomplishment that you get for days after. Even if you just did a short one, you just have something to reassure yourself that you’re doing what you should be doing and getting the most out of your day.”
Like many runners, van Koeverden dreams of running a marathon. But he wants to complete his Olympic career and then move down a weight class first. He’s done a half-marathon in 1:18, so he figures he can break three hours in the marathon.
“I don’t want to do a marathon until I’m sure I can crack three hours. I just don’t want to run for three-and-a-half hours. I’d much rather run fast and be dead. But I’ll have to lose some weight. Towards the end of a half-marathon, it’s starting to hurt a lot in my joints.”
Van Koeverden says he believes in getting the most out of every day, and he can’t think of anything more productive that investing time in your health.
“From my perspective, the things that are worth enjoying are free. Running shoes aren’t free, but it doesn’t cost anything to get out there and go for a run.”
Stumbling through the woods
iRun on instinct Ian Perriman, British Columbia
It seems I have weak ankles. At least that’s what I concluded from an otherwise satisfying and glorious trail run through the woods early one morning a few years ago.
I had never been much of a trail runner. I usually found myself spending a lot of time looking down, watching for roots and rocks, instead of taking in what was around me. For me, the uneven terrain was extra work and extra stress, preventing me from getting into a good rhythm. You struggle up a short hill and then try to fight the gravity going down the other side. You go up and down, sideways, turn left, turn right, over logs, dodging rocks, stepping between tree roots, avoiding puddles and mud. So you never relax, never settle into the groove of a good long road run.
But those kinds of challenges constitute a healthy break from the monotony of running the same route through your neighbourhood.
An invitation from an old friend to run through the autumn leaves was too much to resist. Which is why I was up at six o’clock on a Saturday morning, driving through the dark to rural Quebec. The plan was for three men and a dog to take a two-hour run through the woods.
We started out just as the day was breaking. It was a morning to savour: clear and crisp and just below zero. At any time, this would be a spectacular route, but in autumn, it was even more special. We were basically running on an enormous bed of leaves. It made the trail less evident, but thankfully my friend had run it many times. The sky was perfect, the temperature ideal and I was quickly warmed up and enjoying a comfortable pace.
The challenges of the route made the time move more quickly. Another benefit of trail running is a relief from the pounding of a road or bike path. In autumn, the leaves can make for an especially soft landing. But what lies beneath can pose problems; the leaves are a clever disguise for rocks, roots and soft spots, and this quickly became a problem.
My experience from a few previous trail runs was that if I don’t land with a flat foot, I can easily stumble or turn an ankle. With alarming regularity on this run, I found myself recovering from minor stumbles. I found it particularly common when I was running downhill. I would stretch a little bit to get over a root or a branch lying across the path and when I landed on something unexpected, with the force of my stride plus a little extra gravity, I paid a price. I ended up on the side of my foot, feeling a sharp pain in the ankle, plus a little shot of adrenaline and a jump in my heart rate.
What you fear most is an injury – a sprain or worse – that will sideline you for weeks. You lurch to the side, almost wipe out completely, then regain your balance and hobble for two or three steps. And then it becomes clear that the pain is passing and no major damage has been done.
For some reason, this seemed to happen to me about four times as often as to my two running partners. They were both almost as good as our four-legged companion at navigating the terrain.
After it happened a few times, it became harder to stay relaxed; unfortunately, that apprehension can make it more likely to happen again. If you’re tense, you don’t react as fluidly. When it happens a few times in the space of a few hundred metres, it can become very frustrating.
But that didn’t overshadow the benefits. Here I am, I thought, a few minutes and an eternity from my home, drawing in clean air and working up a comfortable sweat, and with good company.
After a while, as on any long run, the conversation gave way to a comfortable silence. The sun was peeking through the trees as it rose over the hills, illuminating the wet terrain. The leaves beneath our feet changed from a mixture of yellow, green and brown to a brighter combination of reds and purples. It was as peaceful as anything involving exertion can be. A rhythm settled in and there was only the gentle sound of feet on leaves, the occasional twig breaking.
Until I disturbed the calm by stumbling once more.
Faster, harder
iRun to challenge my perceived limitations Cassandra Williams, Ontario
When I ran my first marathon, I went deliberately slowly. I was less concerned about finishing time than finishing at all. And I knew that if I fed any hint of a time goal to my compulsive, competitive personality, I would risk going too fast.
So I avoided the temptation of aiming for a sub-four-hour finish, trained with a 4:15 pace group and finished in about 4:08.
That gave me an obvious goal for my next marathon, which I planned to do the following spring: to break four hours. But in between, I decided to run a fall half-marathon and use it as a test of whether I had the capacity to go a bit faster.
I’d only run one half-marathon before. Using the same principle of avoiding a time goal, I finished in about 2:03. So for this next test, I figured anything under two hours would be an improvement. I
