Until this winter, I had never owned a treadmill. Kinda surprising, right? I’ve always loved my time outside on the trails and getting fresh air, and for those days that wasn’t possible, when it was too cold or smoky out, I would find an indoor track or treadmill at the rec centre to grind out some kms. In fact, the year I covered the distance across Canada for The 5 Peaks Great Canadian Crossing during covid restrictions, I was pretty proud that every single km that year was outside. That’s a tough thing to do when you live in a such a miserably cold northern climate and most of your runs require a laundry load worth of layers to stay warm.
I’m proud of the resilience that all those outside miles have fostered for me. Choosing to become a year-round outdoor runner was life changing. Not only did it foster resilience, but it ensured consistency; commitment to my craft. And it helped me avoid the discouraging rollercoaster of fitness that can happen when a few rest days turns into a whole winter of losing endurance, followed by a spring of struggling to question your life choices and feeling really rather unfit.
However, something snapped in me this year. I was tired. Instead of resilience and toughness, I needed a dose of ease. Of safety. I’ve been learning a lot about some subtle differences in the way that men and women process trauma. Men are more likely to experience acute trauma, whereas women are more likely to experience ongoing trauma responses due to the *unfortunate* reality that we live under a constant level of threat and its associated hyper vigilance (trauma response) that men are far less likely to experience. Ask any woman in her life for a list of the times she has felt unsafe as a woman, in the presence of men. This has real, meaningful impact on how we move through the world. This is not only important for me to know for my work as a therapist, but I started to notice the toll this has taken on me as an athlete. The constant mental gymnastics of running outside, alone, in forested areas, in the dark, is exhausting.
As January 1st rolled around, I was super excited for another round of January Battle. A challenge to run 400km in the month of January, that we do every year with our lil track run group called Need for Speed. On January 3rd, I ran a 50km on the trails of Edmonton for the annual grassroots event called Fat Ass. It was a tough day, and on the way home I called Kirk, telling him I barely survived. He said “I’m at Costco, they have a treadmill here on sale. Want me to grab it?” I didn’t even hesitate.
Yes please.
Thus began a rather comical month of treadmill fails. We called our strongest friend, hauled it into the house, got it set up, only to have an error code come up on the console. So we called the manufacturer, they said “no worries, we will send you a new console”. Long story short, that one didn’t work either, neither did the next one they sent. And of course, by now it was almost the end of January, I was still running most of my kms outside, and our basement was now full of useless consoles. We marched a truckload of broken treadmill parts straight back to Costco, and I contacted the first person I found on Marketplace that needed their treadmill gone ASAP and was letting it go for a steal.
Ugh. Ok, why is even getting a treadmill so hard in winter. We called up our strong friend again, and got treadmill number 2, (4?) set up. Thankfully this one worked.
Those first few long runs I felt almost giddy. I could wake up before dawn, head to my basement, feel completely safe, entertained with Netflix and knock off those last few kms for another successful January Battle. Finally, something easy.
What happened over those next few months is so interesting to me. On the one hand, I was loving the easy km. It was wam, I wasn’t hyper vigilant, I watched more TV and completed more professional development courses then I ever have. I noticed I got faster and I had zero injuries. But on the other hand, something in me was slowly suffering. Starving.
Mostly, it was lonely. I still have my weekly Need for Speed social time at the Kinsmen. And occasionally, for a change of scenery and mostly when Sonya was in town, we would run the track at the shiny new Coronation centre which always felt quite social cause so many runners would go there on cold days. But I noticed that I stopped trying to make plans to run outside with friends. It was just easy to keep to myself and get those kms done in my basement and then get on with my day. Thankfully I’m a pretty socially driven person so I don’t think my relationships suffered too much. And now that I’m writing this from the other side of winter and am back doing a lot more social runs, I can safely say that my run community is as strong as it’s ever been. Changed. But still a beautiful scene.
But there was another thing I noticed as I kept going on that hamster wheel. It started to change how I felt about running. It became something I did to check a box. I wasn’t excited about workouts. In fact, I wasn’t even putting in intense effort. So I wasn’t getting the same satisfaction. Even though I was putting some work in, something wasn’t clicking for me. You know why? I kept choosing easy, and that was robbing me of the power to choose hard.
Building resilience is all about how we assign meaning to our emotions, especially the difficult ones, and the suffering that goes with it. Our brains, especially brains under stress (such as the stress of hyper vigilance over the risk of perceived threat) are hardwired to try to find something easy and comfortable. It’s a handy self-preservation strategy when we need to avoid potentially dangerous things and preserve the calories we need to stay alive, however, that’s really not needed, or helpful for an athlete (or anyone for that matter!) who benefits from being resilient and really freaking strong.
There’s this complex system in our brains involving the connection between our prefrontal cortex (the logical, problem solving part) and our amygdala (the stress response part), and some mid brain stuff involving the ventral striatum and reward circuits, that are more robust in people who choose challenging activities. Operative word here is ‘choose’. When we choose to do something that pushes us out of our comfort zone, we have the opportunity to assign meaning to that difficult thing, reinforcing our belief in our own strength and ability to handle difficult things in the future. Even the difficult things we don’t choose. And that’s really important. It creates this rock solid, deep knowing, that no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay.
After a long, boring winter being lulled into complacency with another Netflix series binge on the treadmill, I started to forget that I was resilient enough to be ok. I stopped choosing the challenges to foster that resilience, and started to forget my own strength. Honestly, I felt like I forgot who I was. Yeah, all that over a treadmill.
Now, this is no shade on anyone who uses a treadmill. Believe me, after all that work to get the treadmill, I’m keeping it! There are lots of reasons that a treadmill at home is a fantastic choice. Extreme cold, smoky days, and for days when I need to feel safe to knock out a hard workout, make it more than worth it to have around. And for lots of people, choosing to watch Netflix on the treadmill IS choosing the hard thing, especially if the alternative is sitting on the couch for that binge. So if that is your hard thing. Do it. Keep choosing it. Your brain will thank you.
For me, the problem wasn’t the treadmill per se. The problem was that I stopped challenging myself, especially once January Battle ended, and I spent a solid three months doing the easy thing, but not even really allowing true rest. I was just staying stuck in a ‘get it done’ mode that didn’t feel satisfying, and certainly wasn’t helping me feel strong.
I’m happy to report, that once our never ending winter finally subsided, I have fallen in love with choosing the hard thing again. Lots of trails and elevation for challenge, and lots of time back outside with friends.
I love how my relationship with running is a constantly evolving thing. For such a simple sport, it’s amazing how much it continues to teach me about who I am and how to move through the world. Some very exciting races are coming up for me this season, and now that I’m back outside and climbing, I’m feeling strong, and ready to keep choosing the challenge.
*I used the term ‘unfortunately’ earlier sort of tongue in cheek. The threat women’s safety is not simply an ‘unfortunate’ situation. It is a very real crisis to women’s health and well being, and something that can change as more men take accountability for their role in this crisis. Not just on the trails, but everywhere. In our homes, in our workplaces, in public places. I do not look at this as something that is just ‘unfortunate’. It is something I rage about regularly, and it shapes a lot of the work I do, because we all deserve so much better.
Run me Wild 