Walking in My Shoes – and other brilliantly depressing 80’s songs

In a recent effort to inspire, bad-ass dietician and Iron woman Claudia Hutchison told me the story of Olympic rower Sue Kenney.

The story goes something like this — Sue took up rowing as an elderly person (she was at least 30).  She trained at the Boulevard Club in Toronto and got pretty good. It just so happened that a bunch of Olympic rowers trained there too. One day Sue told their coach she wanted to make the team. He said “ha ha ha ha ha ha. No really, ha ha ha ha ha ha.”  And she said “Ha ha to you coach, just watch me.” From then on she lived like an Olympic rower — she trained like one, ate like one, she started wearing her spandex unitard to church. Next thing you know, she was rowing in the Olympics.

The moral of the story? Fake it ‘til you make it.

So I asked myself — if I’m trying to transform from couch potato to Kenyan elite, WWKKD? (What would Kip Keino do?)

For starters he’d put down the delicious banana muffin currently found in my left hand and ask for “more raw broccoli please.” Then he’d drink more water and less Coke Zero; he’d regularly run barefoot through the Kenyan tundra; he’d run his easy easy runs at a 4:00-per-kilometre  pace; he’d average 250K of high-altitude running a week (in his off season), he’d sleep in a hyperbaric chamber;  and he’d divide his spare time between deciding whether to go with the New Balance or Nike sponsorship offer and fending off screaming hordes of freaky running fans.

Of course, I have to be realistic, and I am on a budget, so my list is more like:

Try harder.

Yup.

Perhaps living like a sub-4 marathoner might be a more suitable start.  And that’s not bad…Honestly, my 30-pounds-ago self would have freaked at the thought of things I now call routine: training 4-6 days a week; running far enough to require toilet breaks en route; owning more than a drawer full of dry-fit clothing; fartleks — enough said.

But there is room for improvement — more water, more vegetables, more sleep. Less wine.

And I think Super-Sue might be on to something: If I can walk in the shoes of the sub-4 type for long enough, maybe I’ll be able to run in them too. That is, if it’s possible not to go all Howie Mandel in the meantime.

Let me close with the latest entries into my winter Hall of Shivers.  Keep ‘em coming!

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