New Balance Canadian runner of the week: Alex Loewen

Like many, Alex Loewen wasn’t really interested in running through her childhood and teen years. It just wasn’t appealing. She’s 23 now and starting her profession as a high school teacher in Abbotsford, B.C. Similar to a lot of people her age, Loewen is getting used to the stresses that come with settling into a new role. She uses running as a method of dealing with life’s pressures.

That’s not what got her started though. At 18, she was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. She had just finished her first year of university, studying in Ottawa when she got the news. “Up until then, I felt independent,” she says adding that she had moved across Canada to go to school. “I was employed as a page in the House of Commons. I went from feeling that I was on top of the world to just the bottom of it.”

Soon after her diagnosis, she had her 19th birthday. Then, a major abdominal surgery was put on the calendar. It took about nine months to fully recover from it. That’s when she started running.

“I felt I had gotten a second chance,” she says. “I wanted to appreciate my body and set goals. As I progressed more, I got hooked.”

Now, Loewen typically runs between five and 10 kilometres on each outing. She aims to run two to three times a week and is looking towards finishing the half-marathon in Vancouver in June. When she’s running, there isn’t just one thing on her mind. “Running is that time I have to myself. I can think about anything or nothing. It’s freedom and relief, but it’s also demanding.  It’s kind of an oxymoron.” she says.

On an ideal day, she would be running along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. While she lives in B.C. at the moment, Ottawa is where she has done most of her running. The canal would be her first choice if she could have her perfect run.

Even though battling cancer is what led her to running, it’s not what defines her. Her job as a teacher takes up a lot of mind space. In her language and social studies classrooms, she’s very much learning on her feet. “It’s very much you’re being tossed in,” she says. “It’s stressful to always be watched.” There’s also the added pressure that comes with being closer to the students ages than she is with many of her coworkers.

It’s the act of setting goals in running that she applies to her work life though. Loewen is driven by achieving things. On a run, that means finishing the route. When she doesn’t want to, she makes herself see it through the the end.

“I’m not going to stop until the end,” she says. She pauses. “I feel the same with my practicum right now.”