This year, I challenged myself to run a total of 750KM and my first 10K race before the end of 2013.
Last weekend, I completed one of this tasks.
I wish I could say it was completing the 750KM, but alas, I’m not quite that motivated. Rather, I ran in my first 10K, and actually did pretty darn good (if I do say so myself).
The race was the Sporting Life 10K held every May in Toronto. An easy course for my first foray in 10K running (nearly 7K of the route is running downhill on Yonge St.). But everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right?
I had a few concerns going into this race. The first one is that I’ve only ever run 10K once in my life. It was last fall while I was training for a 5K. It was awful. I hurt for a week afterwards. When I got back, I was limping. My time wasn’t awful for a first attempt (1:14), but I walked a lot of that and found everything after 6K really hard.
The second concern was the lack of training I actually did leading up to this race. Oh sure, I had a plan. Especially given my goal for kilometres run by the end of the year. I mean, I’d be running at least 15K a week, right? Right?
Not so right. See, I haven’t really been hit by the running bug. I like to track my runs and watch myself improve, but I more run because I know I need to in order to stay in shape and try to shed a few pounds. I don’t really run for the love of running. Truth be told, I hate it. If I had a choice, I’d stay on the couch and open another bag of potato chips. But that’s a blog post for another day.
So going into this race, the furthest I had run leading up to it was 7K. Gulp.
I knew I had gotten stronger (again, why I track these things), but didn’t know if I could pull it off.
Leading up to race day, we had some great weather. Race day came and it was one degree when we left the house. Gulp. And the wind. Wowzas.
Still, Keith and I soldiered on. And when the time finally came for our corral to go, I was ready. Whatever happened, I knew this would all be over in the next hour and a half. I just had to do it.
And do it I did.
I set a goal for myself to finish in 1:12. When I created my run playlist the night before, the music ended at that time. I figured finishing a few minutes sooner than my first 10K with not a lot of training before the race would have been good enough of an accomplishment.
I ended up finishing the 10K in 1:05 (1:06 for the actual race — I started my Nike+ app and my run 200 metres before I crossed the start line). I also ended up running the entire 10K. I really wanted to walk around the 8.5K mark, but had a feeling if I did, I’d never start running again.
I can’t describe the way I felt after finishing that race. Pride, amazement, accomplishment were all ways I felt. Keith finished ahead of me and was standing just past the finish line waiting for me. When I saw him, I just collapsed in his arms. I really, really did it.
We’re planning another 10K, but I will train this time. And I have 600KM to go to meet my 750 goal for the year. But even if I don’t completely fulfill that goal, I’ll have this one.
Born this way?
Recently, a blog post by Allison Bird explaining why she left journalism went viral.
Some journalists and ex-journalists thought it hit close to home, others thought Bird was focused too much on the money (or lack thereof in the journalism industry), while others thought Bird was just out of touch.
Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick was one of the members of the latter camps. She wrote a response to Byrd’s post explaining why Byrd was so wrong and what Mallick thought the real issues were.
The headline on Mallick’s piece cuts to the quick: “Allison Bird quit journalism because she she was tired and underpaid.” That statement is valid, but Bird also left journalism for other reasons that Mallick brushes off or chooses to ignore.
I myself recently left the journalism industry. Not out of malice or lack of pay, but because I wanted to do more with social media, more than the traditional media in Canada is doing right now. I found a job which I love. I get to work in the social space every day, I get to meet new people, and I feel I’m still using my journalism skills, just in different ways.
What really bothered me about Mallick’s response was a part in which she takes issue with this quote from Bird:
Apparently, Heather Mallick does not. Young or old, every journalist Mallick knows wants to be a journalist so bad it hurts. Fleeing is the last thing on their minds.
We’ll just set aside the fact that in her post, Bird says she too was one of these journalists who felt they were born to do that job, who wanted to do nothing more for the rest of her life. Instead, here’s my own take.
I didn’t know I wanted to be a journalist until I was 17. That was the first time I walked into a newsroom.
I took in the dim lighting, the clusters of desks, the energy and knew immediately I was home. For more than 10 years, I was — I loved every second of being a journalist. Until, I didn’t.
The first time I began to feel uneasy in my industry, I was working at a pagination centre laying out dozens of pages for dozens of papers. Things didn’t feel right anymore. While I was getting paid well and working full time, all the other jobs out there were contract positions. I considered going back to school, but the only thing I could see myself taking was journalism. Not exactly a solution to my problem.
Instead, I took a year-long internship at the Star. During that time, I had my eyes trained on everything but the exit signs. I applied for contract jobs, full-time jobs, any kind of job that came up. I tried my hardest to prove my worth. I loved a lot of what I was doing, but I also missed the old-school journalism I did when I first started when I was 17, before social media, before the web was in the newsroom, back when it was all about words on a page.
But here’s the thing, no matter how much one’s eyes may not be trained on the exit signs, if there are no jobs available, there are no jobs. Full stop. I left the Star after my internship to another contract job, and it would have taken me another six months after that to be offered a steady position.
The journalism industry has changed. It isn’t changing anymore, it’s changed.
I miss a lot about journalism, I do, but I don’t miss the sense of always thinking about work. About wondering if I need to come in to help when news breaks. I don’t miss worrying that in a rush to get something done as fast as possible, I’ll make a huge mistake that everyone will see.
I too always wanted to be a journalist. I imagined I’d be doing it for the rest of my life.
And while I’m not a journalist anymore (hence my term “recovering journalist), it doesn’t mean I don’t still bring my journalism skills to much of what I do. Not just professionally, but here on this blog, too.
Who knows, I might even go back to the journalism industry some day after the dust settles a bit or if the urge grows loud in me again.
Or perhaps Heather Mallick is right. I simply quit because I was tired and underpaid.