Malindi Elmore’s favourite workout

At age 32 Malindi Elmore retired from professional running after a very successful track career. The runner competed for Canada at the 2004 Olympic Games, the 2006 Commonwealth Games and the 2011 Pan Am Games. She was a 1,500m specialist who ran one of the fastest times ever by a Canadian woman, at 4:02.64.

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Seven years later Elmore picked up running for fun and is dominating the roads, running a 2:32 marathon debut, finishing second at the Canadian 10K championship and winning the Canadian half-marathon championships on Sunday. “Seven years ago I stopped racing. I never dreamed I’d be back at this level.”

RELATED: Elmore, Woodfine win Canadian half-marathon championships in huge personal bests

Elmore has got the running bug again and she has no plans to slow down. She plans to put herself in the mix for a spot on the Canadian Olympic team for 2020, targeting the marathon. “I’m certainly going to put myself on the line in Toronto [STWM]. My plan is to put myself in a position to get standard and see where that takes me. I didn’t see this coming at all. I didn’t even think this was possible a year ago. I started running for fun and then the marathon went really well along with my 10K and half training. I’m feeling fresh again.”

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If Elmore were to make the Olympics it would be her second team, 16 years after her first. “I would be 40 if I were to make the Olympics. That sounds old but I don’t really feel old. I think it’s a cultural expectation more than a physical reality that aging means you slow down.”

The runner says it’s nice to come back to running with a fresh perspective. If she could go back and tell herself anything, she would remind her younger self to not worry so much. “There’s a lot of pressure that can take away from the simple enjoyment of sport and trying to put the race together. I would remind myself to continue to enjoy it and to do my best.”

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Favourite workout

“I still love the track, so I like to incorporate the two. The track still feels really natural to me–my 1,500m background doesn’t just go away. I love mixing up tempo with the faster stuff.”

The workout: 2K tempo at 3:20 per K, 4x400m at 70 seconds, 2K tempo at 3:20 per K, 4x300m at 51 seconds, 2K tempo at 3:20, 4x200m at 33 seconds.

Least favourite workout

“I was supposed to do 3x5K at half-marathon pace but we scraped that workout because I had a really hard time wrapping my head around that. In the end we changed it to 5K,4K,3K,2K,1K.”