Real-Life Superhero

The superhero runner

There she is. Her name is Rhonda-Marie Avery. She’s got three kids, works as a RMT, and this summer she’s going to run the entire 885-kilometer Bruce Trail.

This winding footpath starts in a sleepy fishing village on the northeastern shore of Lake Huron, and follows the rugged Niagara Escarpment all the way south to Niagara Falls. Rhonda-Marie plans to cover that distance in 20 DAYS (!), which means she’ll have to run 45 kilometers each day. This would be a Herculean feat for the toughest of runners. But Rhonda-Marie has an extra challenge: she’s legally blind.

Rhonda-Marie was born with a rare genetic eye disorder called achromatopsia, which means she has no cones in her retina. She figures she has 8 per cent vision. But she hasn’t let this disability slow her down. Five years ago, when she was getting into running, she met with a group called Achilles Canada. Achilles paired her up with guide runners, and taught her how to run safely. Now Rhonda-Marie is returning the favour. This summer’s run is all about raising funds and awareness for Achilles.

It won’t be easy, of course.

The Bruce Trail features ankle-busting limestone outcrops, yawning crevasse caves and, uh, cliffs.

But the biggest danger RMA may face…is me. For two days in August, I’ll be her “guide.”

It’ll be my job to point out the rocks, roots, holes, streams and rivers along the trail. It’ll be Rhonda-Marie’s job (God help her) to trust my judgment.

I met Rhonda-Marie for the first time the other day. We got together with some friends at a remote section of trail near Ravenna, Ontario. It was below zero and the wind was howling. We ran for 4 1/2 hours through waist-high snow. I took a turn as Rhonda-Marie’s guide. I ran five feet ahead of her (about the length of a piano keyboard); close enough that she could make out the motion of my body. I pointed out the ice patches, and the tree branches at eye-level. At one point I ran down a little gulley.

“Whoa!” Rhonda-Marie cried out behind me. “You need to tell me when we’re going downhill!”

I asked Rhonda-Marie how she felt about this summer’s challenge; if she felt intimidated by the enormity of the distance. “Of course,” she said. “But I’ll be fine as long as my guides follow the rules.”

“What rules?” I asked.

“Rule number one,” Rhonda-Marie said, “is ALWAYS LIE!”

Of course, I thought. Ultra runners are in near-constant pain, and need a steady stream of inspiration in order to keep their legs moving. So when an ultra-runner asks: “How high is this hill?” the correct answer is always: “Not high at all!” And when they ask, “How much further until we eat?” the correct answer is always “We’re almost there!”

“Got it,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Rule number two…” Rhonda-Marie said, “is DON’T CODDLE! If I complain or slow down, kick my butt. Don’t ever feel sorry for me – unless I break my leg or something.”

And rule number three?

Rhonda-Marie smiled. “Rule number three is…there’s no such thing as snakes or bears.”

Rhonda-Marie’s epic adventure begins on August 4th. That means she’s got 3 1/2 months of training left. Every week she does two back-to-back long runs ranging from 20 to 50 km, two shorter runs (10 to 15 km), three swims (two to six km), and two bike rides (four hours or so).

You can follow her progress, and support the cause (and Achilles Canada), HERE.

The Freakishness of the Long Distance Runner (Video)

So there I was, bouncing around in an Ontario classroom, talking about my novel Ultra, and sharing some of my craziest running stories. A brilliant documentary filmmaker happened to be there, and she made this little video about me:

Many thanks to Lisa Lightbourn-Lay for making that video. The still images were provided by my photog brother Andy.

The Ultra-Running Birthday Party

A young friend of mine recently celebrated her 7th birthday. Instead of going bowling or having dinner at Chuck E. Cheese’s, she asked her mom for a “spa” birthday party.

A lady came over with her spa equipment and gave the girls (and two boys) manicures and pedicures. Then she gave the kids chocolate facial masks. “Most of us ate our faces,” my young friend told me.

The partiers enjoyed spa-licious smoothies, applied glitter tattoos, and sashayed about the house in fluffy bathrobes. They listened to spa music, read magazines, lit candles, and of course had a pillow fight. At the end of the afternoon, they put on a fashion show.

Sounds amazing, right? And it gave me an idea. If kids are having “spa” birthdays, shouldn’t there be an option for “ultra-running” parties too?

Say it’s your birthday. I could drop by your house in my running gear. To begin, I’d show you and your friends how to lace up your shoes properly. You’d be amazed how many different ways there are to lace up your shoes. It’s positively thrilling!

After that, I’d share stories about my craziest runs. Like the time I ran from Mississaugua to Brantford and drank eleven whole litres of water. Ot the time I jogged the rail trail from Dundalk to Owen Sound and counted every single railway tie along the route (14,157). Talk about a geyser of fun! This would be the best birthday EVER.

Soon enough, it would be time for the main event! We’d all go outside and run a few hundred laps around your yard. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too muddy. But even if it was, it would just add to the fun:

Since not everyone is super athletic, we’d keep the run short – just 3 or 4 hours. Along the way, I’d share tips on proper hydration and nutrition, and tell you and your friends how to avoid cramps and shinsplints.

Eventually, we’d stop to refuel. But you wouldn’t find any cake at this “ultra-running” party. Instead we’d feast on runner’s food: baked sweet potatoes, kale salad, dates and almonds, cauliflower and broccoli flowerets. If things got crazy we might open a bag of antioxidant-rich snow peas. It’ll be all fireworks and high-fives and hoverboards.

Am I crazy, or is this a BRILLIANT idea?! Let me know what you think – I’m still working out the kinks.

The Perks of Being an Author

Being an author’s cool. You get to make up stories, you can wear a beret and no one complains, and from time to time people send you fan mail and tweets.

Just finished reading Ultra by @Writerunrepeat to a grade 5 class. They loved it! They even asked for me to read while they ate lunch!

— Shonna (@macfsh) March 8, 2014

Best of all – you get invited into schools. Sometimes the students even give you stuff.

That’s part of a huge banner featuring scenes and quotes from my novel, Ultra. It was drawn by a cast of thousands (okay, maybe hundreds) of students at Oakville’s New Central School. Those same kids also gave me a pair of awesome running “sleevies” – inscribed with the name of their school:

How awesome is that?! I’ve always wanted a pair of sleevies. They’re perfect for those brisk spring runs.

Here’s something else I was given – by the amazing students at St. Hillary Catholic school in Mississauga:

A school letter! This was particularly meaningful, since, when I was growing up, school letters only went to the football players and the track stars. Since I was completely un-athletic back then, I never had a shot at one of these…

Until now! 😉

It’s quite a thrill, going into schools. Some days I’ll speak to 500 kids. I tell stories about running into bears and having hallucinations on the trail. I talk about writing and being creative and never giving up! Sometimes I even get my nephew Quinn on the line via Skype, and ask him how it feels to have inspired a literary character.

Most of all, I try to have meaningful moments with as many students as I can. I keep my eye out for the arty kids – the ones who have something special inside them that needs to be expressed. Maybe it’s a graphic novel, or perhaps it’s a new computer language, or maybe it’s a cure for cancer. With luck, those kids will find the strength to pursue those dreams. If they have someone who believes in them, I believe their odds are improved.

I like to think that I’m inspiring these kids, but the truth is, they inspire me more. Almost every single one of them asks me: “When’s your next book coming out?” It’s the greatest gift. Almost better than those running sleevies.

How Writing = Running (Part 17)

Number of seconds left until spring: 3,884,927.

Oops, make that 3,884,925. I mean 3,884,923.

Of course, anybody who’s ever spent any time outside knows that there’s no such thing as four seasons. There are actually 365 of the things, each one a tiny bit different.

That said – oh my geesh! – winter is NEVER going to end! There’s four feet of snow outside my house. The concession looks like a white tunnel, with 12 foot windrows on either side.

The skiing is pretty good mind you —

Photo credit: Shawna Watson

As for the running, I’m still logging my miles. Not as many as I’d like though.

A couple of months ago I made the painful decision to scale back my running so that I could finish writing my second novel. I’m still managing to squeeze in 60 kilometers a week, but it isn’t enough to keep me sane and balanced. Usually I’m running closer to 100k. The shorfall is making me pretty, er, spazzy.

On the bright side, I’m nearly finished the book. I’m hoping to finish it by Valentines Day.

I should actually be working on it at this very moment. Instead, I’m writing on this blog. I’m procrastinating. You’d think that writing would get easier with experience, but it never does. There’s always that moment, each and every morning when I drag myself to the computer with that fresh cup of coffee, when I have to kick my own butt, and say: “It’s game time…you can do this! Now sit down and WRITE!”

Those first few minutes are always painful – just like stepping outside for that morning run. Your muscles complain and your bones feel like they’re made of glass. You want to turn around and slide back into bed. But after a few minutes of jogging, your muscles loosen up, and you find a comfortable pace, and you remember why you love this crazy hobby.

It’s the same thing with writing. It usually takes me ten minutes to find my groove. After that, I stretch out with the words, roll around in the syllables, and luxuriate in the paragraphs.

Writing and running aren’t the easiest of hobbies. But once you get going, there’s no stopping you!

Don’t Let the Path Beat You Down

“If you don’t get off the beaten path, then the path has beaten you.”

I didn’t write that line. My dear friend, and radio celebrity, Brent Bambury, wrote it for a radio show we created together many years ago. I remembered the sentiment this morning, after glancing at my lame-o running log:

Sigh. Between the polar vortexes and the icy sidewalks, my running routine has become as boring as the Oscars. Each day I take the same route to get to work. And then I take the same route home.

I call it the work-home axis. And lately it’s become a very deep trench.

Contrast it with the running I was doing last summer:

Now, that was a fun week of running!

If you want to be a good runner (or a good writer for that matter), you need variety. Jogging on the same stretch of sidewalk every day isn’t only dull, it’s not all that great for your body. Sure, you’ll work a few muscles in your legs and core, but over time, other muscles will turn to Jell-o from disuse. We need to exercise all the parts of our bodies – abs, shoulders, chest, back, and especially our brains! I’m not saying we all need to join a gym. There are lots of easy ways of getting active. Help a friend move and lift some boxes, go to a yoga class, or spend a few hours hauling kids up your nearest tobogganing hill.

Here’s what I just did to shake up my routine:

Photo credit: Shawna Watson

There aren’t a lot of things I like more than running, but strapping huge fiberglass planks to my feet, and throwing myself down icy slopes at wholly unimaginable speeds is right up there. Totally yanked me out of my mid-winter funk! And afterwards, I got to write this in my log:

Why Do I Write? Reason #231

Five months have passed since my little book was published, but I still haven’t gotten used to being an author. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, see the glowing orange letters on my bedside table, and pat the novel like it’s a dog.

I really did it. I actually wrote a book!

I barely remember writing the thing. Most of those 45,000 words got scribbled down in a fevered dream. That first draft was followed by two years of re-writing, endless rejections and fits of depression that I countered with 30 mile training runs through the forest. I kept asking myself: WHY DO I BOTHER!?

Now I know why. Because of mornings like this, when I wake up and learn that it’s been shortlisted for an award. An award that’s been won by Neil Gaiman and Suzanne Collins. An award that’s largely decided by my favourite type of people – book bloggers!

You can click the image below to read about all 5 books that made the shortlist. Buy them all! Support the arts!

Ultra-Running on the Radio

It’s always fun to share the weird world of ultra-running with a national audience. So just before Christmas, it was my pleasure to be interviewed by the brilliant Shelagh Rogers on her CBC Radio program, “The Next Chapter.”

In case you missed it, you can catch it here:

Friends tell me I spent too much time talking about the bears and hallucinations other trail demons, and not enough time promoting the book. Oh well. At least I got to repeat my mantra: “Once you’ve run 100 miles in a day, everything else you do seems a lot easier.”

The Weirdest Miles I Ever Ran…

Kids often ask me, what’s the weirdest thing you ever saw while running a 100-mile race?

Easy one! The 75 mile turnaround at the Haliburton Forest Trail Race.

I got there around midnight, after 18 hours of running. 2 women volunteers were there. They were cooking lasagna and chicken noodle soup over a Coleman stove. They’d hung a disco ball from a tree branch, and a lantern was burning right above it, and the fractured lights from the disco ball swirled across the backdrop of trees. It was freaky and beautiful.

I was about to sit down in a camp chair, but one of the women said “DON’T DO THAT! BEWARE THE CHAIR!”

Beware the chair?

‘If you sit down after running 75 miles you’ll never get up again.”

So I kept standing. One of the women asked to see my feet. I took off my shoes and it was a horror show down there. Seriously, it was like I had trenchfoot or something. Trenchfoot times ten. The woman was totally cool about it though. She cut my blisters open and drained them, then squirted krazy glue into the skin flaps to seal them up. After that she wrapped duct tape around and around my feet, and put my shoes back on.

“Good as new!” she said.

I started running again. I only had 25 miles left to go. That’s nothing, right? Just the distance from Toronto to Hamilton. It was a hard grind. I was tired, freaked out, my feet were killing me, and I was having trouble keeping food down. It felt like that race was NEVER going to end!

And then, at 2 am, my phone rang. It was my neice Caelan, calling from Edmonton.

There she is. She knew I was running the race, and she’d asked her dad (my brother) to wake her up, so she could call me to cheer me on. I don’t remember much of what she said. But I do know that she told me a knock knock joke. A knock-knock joke that she’d made up herself. It went like this:

Knock knock / Who’s there?

Banana / Banana who?

Banana had to go to the hospital…

I knew where this was going. I’d say “Why did banana have to go to the hospital?” And Caelan would say “Because he wasn’t peeling well!”

So I did my bit. I said, “Why did banana have to go to the hospital? And Caelan surprised me. She said: “Because he had puke in his lung.”

Yeah, I didn’t really get the joke either. But it was such a weird punchline, it made me laugh. Believe me, when you’ve run 84 miles in 20 hours, and you’ve had your feet sliced open and krazy-glued back together, you’ll laugh at anything. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as I did in that moment. Caelan’s crazy joke got me to the finish line.

So as a thank-you present, I put Caelan in my novel. Except I changed the spelling of her name to “Kaylin.”

Here’s another character in my book:

Any guesses who she is?

Believe it or not, it’s Kara (the 40 year-old cop)!

The real-life Kara (above) is tough and fearless and deadly with a bubble gun. That’s how she came to inspire that tough-as-nails character.

I should mention that Kara is also my neice. And she’s not too shabby with the knock-knock jokes either.

To DNF or Not to DNF?

Warning: a graphic picture of my feet appears in this post.

But first, a very pleasant image:

A bunch of baby bats, wrapped up in little blankets. I don’t know why they’re wrapped up like that. Maybe they were cold and wet. Just like me, last September…

***

I already mentioned that I run 100-mile races, right? That once or twice a year I go to some remote forest, line up with a bunch of crazy people, and run without sleeping for 24+ hours.

It’s a weird sport called ultra-running. I’ve run a dozen or so of these ultra-marathons in the last five years.

Every single time, I finished successfully. Until September 2012. When I ultra-failed.

The Haliburton Forest Trail Run is held at the Haliburton Wildlife Reserve; a sustainable forest tucked into the armpit of Algonquin Park. You run 25 miles out into the heart of the forest, then you turn around and run 25 miles back. And then you do the whole thing OVER AGAIN.

Here’s what the starting line looked like at 5:59 a.m.

This is how it looked 90 seconds later:

One hundred miles. 160 kilometers. Half a million strides. Starting NOW.

The race took place September 8, 2012 which, in case you’ve forgotten, was a rainy day. Very rainy, come to think of it. It rained for eighteen hours before the race began, and then, for good measure, it rained another 12 hours while the race was happening. This created a lot of mud.

Here I am at the 50 mile turnaround:

I look happy, don’t I? Don’t be fooled. I’d been running for ten hours, and I was far from happy. I was…what’s the word….oh yeah – UNHAPPY.

Everyone was in pain out there. At mile 54, I caught up with a young guy named Pablo. Pablo was having trouble with his hip, and he squinted with every step he took. He wasn’t giving up, though. “Pain equals learning,” he told me. “If you aren’t feeling any pain, then you’re not learning anything.”

The rain finally stopped, and darkness fell. At the 68-mile checkpoint I pulled on my headlamp. I ran for two miles, then noticed that the light was flickering. Cheap Dollar Store batteries! I ran two miles back to the aid station and picked up my spares. These worked fine, but I’d had to run four miles out of my way.

(2nd warning – that picture of my feet is coming soon!)

I reached the 75-mile checkpoint by 11pm, which meant I still had a shot at finishing the race in 24 hours. Shawna surprised me at the aid station. She fed me yogurt-covered raisins and salted yams, and told me that I looked surprisingly good, considering the circumstances.

Luckily, she didn’t ask to see my feet.

Those are the tops of my feet. Believe me, you don’t want to see the bottoms.

Remember, I’d been running through muddy oil-slicks for 17 hours straight. I probably should have changed shoes and socks and greased my feet with Vaseline, but that would have taken an extra twenty minutes (it takes a lot of time to perform these seemingly simple manoeuvres when you’re wet and cold from 17 hours of running).

I ran on. I made it to the 85 mile checkpoint, but then things started to fall apart. At the top of a hill, I saw a two-storey marble sculpture of a rabbit. I ran closer and realized it wasn’t a marble sculpture at all, but a tree. I became dizzy. My feet were SCREAMING with pain. So was the chafing on my, er, undercarriage. I slowed down to a walk. And then, without the heat generated from the running, my body temperature plummeted.

I was wearing three layers of clothes, plus a running jacket and tights, but it wasn’t enough. The temperature dipped down to 5 degrees, and I began shivering uncontrollably. I could barely hike the hills I’d pranced up earlier in the day. A germ of an idea took root in my mind. You don’t have to finish if you don’t want to, it said.

It’s called a DNF, and it stands for Did Not Finish. I’d never DNF’d in my life.

But the pain in my feet was getting worse and it felt like my butt cheeks were being ripped to shreds with every step. The germ solidified in my mind.

And so, at 3 a.m., after running 89 miles (which was actually 93 if you count the extra miles I ran to get my spare batteries), I did something truly crazy. At the intersection of Ben’s Trail and Krista Trail, right near the makeshift Shrine which was the inspiration for a VERY IMPORTANT SCENE in my newly published novel (“ULTRA,” Scholastic), I intentionally walked off the trail.

“This is how it feels to DNF,” I told myself, stepping over the line of orange and pink flags.

And you know what?

It felt GREAT.

Mind you, after leaving the course, I still had to bushwhack two more miles through the forest before I stumbled upon a logging road. And then I had to wait until a car came along and mercifully picked me up. So in the end I figured I covered 95 miles.

Which wasn’t enough.

****

23 people finished that race. 31 DNF’d.

Pablo, that guy I’d chatted with during the race, was one of the successful ones. I cheered as he crossed the finish line. When he saw me, he beamed.

“How did you do?” he asked.

“I DNF’d,” I admitted. “I couldn’t handle the mud.”

“What? No! You were looking so good out there!”

It took a while to convince him that this was good, that this was my decision, and I was comfortable with it. I’ve had plenty of successful races before, and I wanted to see how failure played out. There is a cult around winning, around success, completion. But there is a wintry beauty in its opposite – in failure, chances lost.

“Pain equals learning,” I reminded Pablo.

He grinned, leaned down and rubbed his hip. “Then we must be geniuses now,” he said.

* * *

One last thought on pain and learning.

This is a standard rejection letter, from one of those highbrow literary journals that almost all writers dream of getting published in, but that very few people actually read. I’ve got millions of these forms lying around, from all the lousy short stories I sent out over the years.

Every one of those letters stung. But as Pablo pointed out in the race, pain can be instructive.

If you’re going to be a writer, you’ll have to deal with rejection at some point. But you can view these rejections in one of two ways:

1) You can see them as stop signs. As brick walls.

2) Or you can see them as an invitation to keep pushing.

If you’re suffering from hypothermia, or excruciating chafing, by all means, take some time off to recover. Otherwise, keep writing. The finish line is out there – somewhere.