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Melanie Myrand: World Championship marathoner and frontline worker

What a typical day looks like for this World Championship marathoner and nurse practitioner

5K workout

Melanie Myrand is a World Championship marathoner and nurse practitioner who lives in St. Genevieve, just outside of Montreal. She’s currently working shifts at three different locations across the city to do her part to help Canada get through COVID-19. The runner had a breakout year in 2017 at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, where she ran a 25-minute personal best to go from 3:04 to a blazing 2:39. She has since lowered her personal best to 2:33, the time that qualified her for the 2019 World Championships.

While running remains a passion of Myrand’s, she’s using her daily exercise to clear her head, as opposed to focusing on marathon fitness. She chatted with Canadian Running on a rare day off to fill us in on what an average day looks like for her, right now.

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RELATED: Huge runs for Setlack, Myrand and Mason at Rotterdam Marathon

6 a.m. – Wakeup and breakfast

For Myrand, the day starts at 6 a.m. with breakfast with her husband. She’s out the door by 7 a.m., heading to work at one of three possible locations: her usual clinic, a senior living residence or a screening centre.

7 a.m. – Drive to work location for the day

Myrand explains that she usually works outside Montreal, at a family medicine clinic, but it’s fairly quiet there right now. “We’re trying to help lots of our patients via telemedicine. That’s why I started giving hours at the screening clinics for COVID. At those clinics, the shifts are four hours long because of the protective equipment that we have to wear. There are limited quantities of the suits, so we keep them on at all times. Because of this, you don’t really drink or eat while wearing them.”

Myrand says while things are busy, she really feels like she’s part of a healthcare team right now. “For example, we have a hotel set up as a hospital. In just one week people made that happen. Within my own clinic, I rotate with the other nurse practitioner so we can go out and help where needed. She’ll cover patients while I give time at a testing centre or old age home, then we swap. This is like a marathon–it’s going to last a while. I’m really proud of everyone in the healthcare system. We’re helping where we can and we’re sharing the load. You really feel supported.”

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Myrand explains that in Quebec they’re working with hot zones, warm zones and cold zones. “The warm zones are those who have been tested and are waiting for results, or are waiting to be screened. We screen based on the availability of tests. We have a lot of seniors without help, so we’re trying to move those patients into hot and cold zones, depending on if they’re sick. So we need two different sets of staff for that–those taking care of the hot zones and those in the cold zones. That’s why we need so many more workers.”

Myrand’s day will end around 4 p.m., then she’s back in the car heading home.

5 p.m. – Get home and shower

Myrand jokes that her shower used to be in the morning, but now it happens after work, before her run. “This is so I don’t infect my husband. I put my clothes from work in a bag in another room and they stay there until I wash them. Then I hop in the shower, prep dinner, and go for my run.”

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RELATED: Berlin Marathon will not go ahead as planned

6 p.m. – Run time

Myrand had been holding out a small hope that she’d still get to run the Berlin Marathon this fall, but unfortunately, that’s looking unlikely. The runner says that Berlin was the original plan. “I was kind of burying my head in the sand. But now that I know the race won’t happen as planned, I’m running once a day, just to clear my head. If I want a day off, I take a day off. Running is just stress relief. Once we can start racing again, we can plan an actual build.”

Her daily runs are around 75 minutes, with a couple of workouts a week just to turn her legs over–when she feels like it. Last week, those workouts were 5 x 9 minutes hard in the middle of a long run, and 3 x 6 minutes for some speed work.

7:30 p.m. – Back from run

Myrand is back from her run and putting the finishing touches on dinner. Her and her husband eat together around 8 p.m. and then it’s time for calls with friends before bed. And then she does it all again the next day.

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