Episode 27: Transcript

"I go and I run through the woods for ridiculous amounts of time." - with Annie Crombie

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: I realized, like, I don't know what to do with an illness that isn't COVID. And I keep taking COVID tests, like every day I'm taking a test, right? If it is COVID, then I know what to do. If it's not COVID, then wait, you mean I just have to wait this out? Like I've waited out every other cold in my life?

Doug French: Well, you know, all this just makes us even that much more excited to see you tomorrow.

Magda: Oh yeah, I know it's gonna be pretty exciting. I mean, I'm gonna spend the whole plane trip with a mask on like I have been doing since things ramped up again. And really, you know, thinking about the times I have flown in the past with some kind of cold and just like willy-nilly spread it to the people around me without even thinking about it. I think that's one kind of good thing about COVID is now we're actually aware of it when we're spreading things to other people.

Doug: And of course this puts you in the perfect mindset to talk about what it must be like to run for 100K nonstop.

Magda: Oh my God. Oh my God. Right? Like, so I mean, you know, Annie and I have been friends for years, and I'm a runner. Of sorts.

Doug: Well, recovering runner. Yeah, when's the last time you went out for a run? 

Magda: Well, it was the Turkey Trot. I haven't run since the Turkey Trot and my ankle, I don't know, it's still not feeling exactly the way it's supposed to be feeling.

Doug: The universe is saying don't do any more turkey trotting.

Magda: Well, I mean, I went to the wrong Turkey Trot. This Turkey Trot was very, very hilly and I think that's how I hurt my foot. I'm just not used to running on the hills like that. I think I just hit the pavement wrong. 

Doug: When in doubt, blame the topography.

Magda: Well, I live in Detroit, right? So in Detroit, everything's just flat. I mean, I live in Detroit and in Natick.

Doug: You live in denial, is where you live.

Magda: Apparently so, yeah. There was a time when I was doing 10Ks regularly.

Doug: When we first got here, my god, you were a machine.

Magda: Yeah, exactly. And it's just, you know, like, one of the things I really like about running is it's always there for you as long as your legs are still relatively functional because I'm not a, like, I don't care about being a fast runner. I don't care about running the entire time. I do the Jeff Galloway method, which is you run and then walk and then run and then walk and then run and then walk the whole time.

Doug: Which she completely venerated, by the way, as a very useful training regimen as you work up to running 62 goddamn miles.

Magda: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I was running and I would see that Annie was running and we would talk about running and we would joke about running. And I had not put together the fact that when she was saying she “went out for a run,” she was going on a trail run. Which means she just runs out in the middle of the woods, where there are no paved trails, just tree roots and whatever is out there. She just runs through. And she's a trail runner, which I think is very badass. I mean, trail running is much better for your body because you're constantly having to adjust and work on your balance. Plus the running on the earth instead of running on roads is better for you. She runs these long distances. She regularly runs 50Ks, which is 31 miles, or 100Ks, which is 62 miles. 

Doug: Yeah, the 50k is a warmup for her 100k.

Magda: Right, exactly, a marathon is 26 miles. You know, that to me is like the pinnacle, right? And she's like, “oh no, 31 miles.” She just went out and ran a 50K.

Doug: And with a pack on her back too, because they make her go out there with first aid supplies and extra clothes and stuff. I mean, it's amazing.

Magda: Some of these stories she was telling us are really exciting. 

Doug: Well, yeah, I had a great moment with Jodie Ousley today. Um, did you see the article she posted about, um, that author who fell down the stairs and has a TBI and the title is, “Am I Still A Writer If I've Lost All My Words?”

Magda: Yeah, I think it's interesting, you know, like this idea of who are you if the thing that you did isn't accessible to you anymore?

Doug: I'm going to link to it in Friday Flames this Friday, because she said, this is what I've tried to explain to people. And it hasn't really, and she needed the words. She couldn't find the words because she's also explaining how this recovery from her brain injury is nonlinear and she has good days and bad. But we had a moment because we were talking about all the things that Annie talks about, like running the length of the Pyrenees mountains. Um, and, and she said, that sounds like a lot of fun for someone who isn't me.

Magda: Ha ha ha! Yeah, I get it. I think this episode is fantastic and I don't want anybody to think that we're saying, “Hey, go become an ultrarunner” because that's not what we're saying at all. What we are saying by having Annie as a guest is, “Try something that you want to do, even if other people think it's kind of excessive or crazy.” And for Annie, it was largely because her kids were getting older that she had the time and the energy and the inclination to do this. You know, when her kids were little, she was very immersed in parenting them, as you are when you have little kids. And then when they got bigger, she just wanted to move her body more and started running and then became an ultra runner. 

Doug: Many people who are doing this running are channeling energy from something else they were doing, like parenting or drinking heavily or something in between. And I think, yeah, she put a lot of energy into her kids and the opportunity to just go and run for a hundred kilometers, I think is an interesting, all I could think of was, you know, that scene from that bit in Forrest Gump where he runs for like a month and a half or something. I forget how many. But he talks about how that run was that great purging situation where he was leaving a lot of his memories about Jenny and his mom and trying to move forward and doing a lot of mental purging by running like that. And I, it occurred to me, she might be doing a little bit of that as she's preparing for this next stage, because she was saying both her kids might be gone next year.

Magda: I've been watching the parents around me a lot and seeing how people let go as their kids get older. And some people seem to have an easier time with that than other people do. And even the ones that are able to let go sometimes seem to feel like they still have one foot in it, like, “oh, my kid might need me at any second.” And I think, I mean, you and I have experienced that, of having these kids who really didn't need us until suddenly they did for a brief moment. But Annie is somebody who is very intentional about helping her kids to be independent and need her less at age-appropriate times. And so it doesn't really surprise me that she just dove into this other thing once she had the time to do it. So why not do this thing that challenges her? I mean, one race that took 26 or 27 hours?

Doug: Although she wasn't really much of a distance runner or a trail runner. So that really inspired me because even though she is predisposed to this in some ways, she had to learn a lot of stuff from scratch. And there's a lot of tips here in terms of saying, you can learn how to do this. And I like your point too, just the idea that you can discover these things about you and develop passions in your fifties, as she has. And, whenever you feel like you've felt all the things and done all the things, no, you're not even close.

Magda: There are certain communities of people doing things that are more welcoming than others. And I think the running community tends to be extremely welcoming. And even people who are very competitive and very fast and run long distances with their own running don't in any way expect that of new people at all. And I'm sure there are tons of other communities like that. The knitting community is definitely like that. There have to be so many communities of people doing so many things that you could just say, as a 50 year old or as a 60 year old or as an 80 year old, “I want to start doing this.” And people would say, “here's how, come join us.”

Doug: And they're all cults.

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Magda: I think I feel like I talk about this all the time. Everybody like Annie is going gray or silver and it looks stunning on them. My parents are not fully gray at the ages of 76 and 81. And so I suspect that I will never be fully gray. I have like 20 gray hairs and I'm going to have to figure out, like, do I do anything about them? What do I do about them?

Doug: Do you think this is the upside of not being able to grow facial hair?

Magda: I don't have any idea. If I had facial hair, it would probably be gray. I don't know.

Annie Crombie: Yeah, that has actually been the upside of going gray during perimenopause is that the facial hair is gray. So it's not quite as noticeable as when it was like the black hair on my lips.

Magda: Hahaha!

Doug: Yes, that's the other revelation that Tina Fey taught us, that women do get mustaches.

Annie: My parents are both totally white, but my mother-in-law is like your parents, Magda, so who knows for my kids?

Doug: Is the older generation close by in your family? Do you see them often enough? Kids, grandkids, that kind of thing?

Annie: My parents are close by. They're about an hour and a half drive away. My in-laws are over in the south of France. And it's definitely at the stage where it's becoming challenging in terms of parents and their care and stuff like that. So both for me close by as well as for my husband having to fly over to France and so on more frequently than maybe he did before to help out.

Magda: You know, Doug and I both spend a lot of time complaining about the fact that neither of us live near our parents, although I now live near Doug's parents.

Doug: Again, complaining is a strong term..

Magda: I complain about it a lot that we're not physically close enough and it's hard to get there. It's hard to get there. But I mean, it's not the same as having to fly from Canada to France to take care. Does he have siblings that are closer that pick up any of the slack?

Annie: No, his brother lives in Calgary, so also in Canada. So yeah, they take turns. My mother-in-law is still in great shape. It's my father-in-law who requires constant caregiving. So when my mother-in-law needs a break, one of the two boys goes over and takes care of him for a little while.

Magda: Oh wow.

Doug: And are they native French people?

Annie: My mother-in-law is French, and my father-in-law is German. So they grew up in Germany and then moved to France when my father-in-law retired.

Doug: Well, you knew the risks when you married a foreign national’s child.

Magda: Oh boy. Okay, I want to talk about, when we first met you on the internet and the whole world of parenting blogs, the thing that attracted me about you as a person was that you were taking parenting little kids very seriously, but you weren't taking yourself seriously. And I thought that was kind of in contrast to a lot of what was happening on the internet at the time, which was people were very busy being attached to an ideology and deciding that doing things exactly one way, which is what they had been attracted to when they read about it, or what they had been taught by somebody was the way to be A Good Parent. And you were really looking at it like, “Hey, is there a study about this? Could we see, or could we maybe experiment and try it out, or maybe kids are different and what works really well for one kid doesn't work as well for another one. But like, why don't we just put some processes around this to find out what's going on?” Did you know that you were going to be like that when you were thinking about having kids or were pregnant?

Annie: I don’t know. I've always, I think, been like that in that I like to research things and I like to have conversations about things. And I think that was what really caught me off guard at the start with all of this parenting stuff and sort of talking to other parents online was how quick other people were to get offended, right, about a conversation. And it was sort of like, you know, just wanting to talk about the pros and cons of something or what works and what doesn't work, that if you said that something worked for you if that was not the thing that works for them, and this just completely blew me away.

Doug: We were all just learning for the first time how reactive and blindly uninformed we all were.

Annie: Yes.

Doug: And I'm always happy, by the way, whenever someone comes on who knew us both in that arena 20 years ago, there's a very small Venn diagram and whenever we come on and talk about that, that's always, it's always fun.

Annie: I still remember you introducing yourself to me, Doug. It was sort of poolside, I think, at one of the BlogHer conferences. And you came up and you were like, “Hey, I'm Doug. And I think you're friends with my ex-wife online.” That was, that's how you introduced yourself, yes.

Doug: Is that what I said? Well that's how I chat women up now.

Annie: Ha ha ha!

Magda: That’s really funny.

Doug: Many of the women that I'd seen I didn't recognize, because it wasn't commonplace to put your picture online at least for about maybe half the women

Magda: When we were writing, we all kind of just assumed that everybody was sort of just like a normal-looking person with, like, normal-looking hair with, you know, and if you were a parent, you probably had some split ends and caught two showers a week and whatever, right? And it wasn't like, I think we just assumed that everybody was like the people that were around us physically, not glamazons like they are now.

Annie: There was definitely a big, big shift that happened at a certain point, and I think that's when I slowly started moving out of that space.

Doug: And I was anonymous, so I was always startled when somebody recognized me, because I was teaching at the time and I was very protective of my privacy. I was in Heather Armstrong's book that is those essays about fatherhood. And that's the essay I wrote to our kids about, we were about to divorce. And that's how I came out to my head of school. I went into her office and said, “Hi, I'm in this book. I really like how this essay turned out. I've been anonymous for six years, but I'm not going to be anonymous anymore because I want to put my name on this thing that I've written for my kids.” And then when my contract ran out it wasn’t renewed. So. What’re you gonna do? I don't look, I don't think back on it very often because I might never have done Dad 2.0. Well, anyway, so welcome to the podcast episode where Magda and I talk and Annie just kind of nods at us!

Magda: I know that you've had your tangles with the Canadian school system and the whole dual English, French process and just like, how do you register for which and what do your kids get out of which one and that kind of thing. And I thought it was interesting to watch that because that's not a system that I'm party to, but I think Americans have this idea that Canada is like this big utopia. And so seeing that you were having interesting and sometimes difficult decisions to make about your kids’ school there, too, was kind of like, made me feel like, oh yeah, we're in the same boat here.

Annie: Well, and it's sort of a unique situation where we are, in that we live right near the border between Quebec and Ontario. And we sort of moved from one province to the other. And then even within Ontario, there's actually four school systems. There's the English public, the French public, the English Catholic and the French Catholic. Now, why the government still supports a Catholic school system, I do not understand, but there are, in any given area, there's four schools that you can be sending your child to, depending on which school system you decide that you're going to support. And it's just absolutely overwhelming.

Doug French: Does proximity to the Capitol have anything to do with that? Is it kind of a political thing to have all these things going?

Annie: Ottawa is within the province of Ontario, but this is a thing across the entire province of Ontario, these four school systems that exist. And I think it's just the Catholic school system is a remnant. It's something that has sort of support among certain groups within the population. And there's lots of people lobbying to get rid of it, but at the moment that isn't happening.

Magda: So it doesn't really have the Catholic, like actual practicing Catholics, supporting those schools. It's just people who want to have the ability to send their kids to a Catholic school.

Annie: I would say it's a mix of practicing Catholics, of maybe cultural Catholics, and then also people who like maybe being able to send their child to a smaller school and are willing to suck up the religious part of it, even if that's not something that they buy into.

Magda: Okay, I get that. In Detroit proper because the public school system has been so fraught for so long. And there was at one time a huge Catholic population. So the Catholic schools, especially kindergarten through eighth grade, have almost become like a shadow public school system for people in that people will send their kids there who have no connection to Catholicism and never did. But it is perceived by some people as a safer choice than the public. So it kind of almost is that same way, but that's only in Detroit, which was a very interesting thing to me to observe when I moved there. ‘Cause I just grew up with, you know, like kids who were Catholic sometimes went to the Catholic school at their parish, but that was kind of it.

Doug: How old are your kids now?

Annie: 19 and 16.

Doug: So how you're looking at the home stretch here now is your nest is about to empty and your younger is about to graduate. I mean, it's still, you know, it's a ways off. It's not around the corner, but it's around the corner.

Annie: Well, it may and it may not be. So my 19-year-old, he is actually planning to, he's going to be going off to Europe in September. He's going to be doing a bakery apprenticeship in Germany. So very, very excited about that. And then my 16-year-old at the same time was like, oh, well, maybe I'll go and do an exchange program in Europe next year and go to Spain or something like that. So we might be very, very quickly empty nesters, depending on whether the exchange program thing works out for her or not.

Doug: Why didn't I marry a European? I, you know, imagine where we could send the kids. Couldn't you be more Norwegian? That's the, we gotta pump up the whole Norwegian aspect anyway.

Magda: Right, exactly, exactly.

Annie: Yeah, the EU citizenship is a big advantage in terms of that. So my kids have French citizenship, and they can both go and study, work, whatever, anywhere in Europe without having to worry about getting an extra visa or anything like that.

Doug: That's fantastic.

Magda: That is just delightful. It's absolutely delightful and I'm kind of envious of that. 

Doug: What year of high school is your younger?

Annie: She's in grade 11. So she would be, if she goes, she was going for grade 12, which I was like, are you sure you want to be away for your graduating year? And she was like, yeah, sure. So like, all right, whatever.

Doug: Oh, so she'll get school credit for whatever she does and then just graduate independently.

Annie: You know, that was my question, is what about her mandatory courses that she has to take and that sort of thing. And they said, well, first find a program. And then they would sort of sort out the rest. The only mandatory thing she has next year is English and math. So she could either, she could maybe do, I think the math would probably be fine, whatever math they're giving her in Europe is probably fine for Canadian math. And then it would be more the English, maybe she'd have to do that as a summer course or something like that.

Magda: Oh, that's so cool. And you know what? It's like, there's some countries where the senior year is such a big deal. It would be fun to go to one of those and have like one of those big deal senior years.

Annie: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Doug: Well, and we could have had a whole other conversation about alternate education, in terms of maybe the kids not going to college right away.

Annie: Yeah, and that's where I really enjoyed listening to some of your other podcasts about that. There was one night when I went out for a really long run and I listened to, I think, both one that was about that and then the one about taking care of your parents. And that was like just a huge long therapy session for me because I was dealing with both of those things at the same time.

Doug: And where are you and your husband with that? I just, We want to help, but we also want, realize that the scaffolding has to stop at some point. So how do you reconcile? Cause I know I thought, all right, I went to college right out of high school and Magda did too. And so that's what my kids will do. And now neither one has.

Annie: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think he also had several kind of misstarts along, my husband did, along the way and started sort of several programs before he found what he wanted to be doing. And even now he doesn't work in the field that he studied in. So I think he's, it's more of his thing to sort of be doing that for him. It's as long as they leave our house eventually, he doesn't really care. And I'm sort of the opposite in that I was always like academically, I just, I just performed and it was what came naturally to me. Like I would have friends who would say, Oh, I’m going to study enough to pass that test and I didn't understand what that means. I was like I don't understand how to study hard enough to just pass, right? Like you're either studying the material or you're not. 

Doug: That reminds me of, brief sidebar, but when I was working in the financial industry, I had to get a Series 7, which is just a license to deal with clients, to talk to clients. And you study a lot, there's a lot of investment vehicles you have to know cold and the passing grade was a 70. And my head exploded because I went back and I got an 81 or something. And I said, I went to my boss, I say, look, I got 81. And he's like, “Fantastic. 11 points too many. Let's go to work.”

Annie: Yep. Ha ha.

Doug: Actually, we've never had this conversation. What did you study? What is your degree? What are your degrees in?

Annie: I did a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in German. It was a double major. And did with that an exchange program to Germany, which is where I met my husband. And then I did an MBA after that with a focus on international business and financial management.

Magda: I want to talk about the switch that happens when you go from parenting your kids intensely. And I like to make a big distinction between, I think there are genuinely helicopter parents but I think a lot of other parents are just parenting intensely, meaning throwing yourself into it and trying to do things sort of best practices-related. But the shift that happens when your kids don't need to be parented as intensely anymore,  it's much more about them and supporting them instead of you making all the decisions and running them here and there and all that kind of stuff. And the switch into being able to pay attention to yourself again, and what that was like for you and what you ended up spending your time doing. Because this is like Doug and I were both like, well, let's talk about this cool thing.

Annie: I actually remember fairly clearly when that started to happen. And it was, I remember a certain point, I don't remember the exact ages of the kids. But there was a point where I was like, they're not yet ready to be staying home alone, but they are ready for me to not only not be in the room, but not be in the house. And I started doing this thing where I would like just go down the road, like two two houses away, right? And it was sort of a thing where I called it sort of being “accessibly inaccessible.” So it was sort of they knew where I was, they knew which neighbor's house I was at, they would be able to come and find me if there was a problem, but I was not right there if they wanted a snack or if they needed some help getting dressed or whatever else. And it was just kind of like it gave them this incentive and space and whatever to be doing things for themselves. And that was like for me, that was that first little freedom for them and I think it was a really important transition in that sort of from parenting intensely to just giving them the space, giving me the space. And then, you know, with time that becomes more and more and more space. And eventually there is a point when, yeah, they can be left home alone, when they can be taking the bus to their own activities, when I don't need to be there as much and I don't even need to be accessible at all. So, yeah, that is when things start to change and things start to open up.

Doug: I think it's important. I think that parents need an excuse to get to a bar by 10.30 in the morning.

Annie: Ha ha ha!

Doug: And recognize they're doing it for their kids. Their kids need to develop their own boundaries and autonomy and that's where the cerebral aspect of parenting comes in with all the work you've done since I've known you.

Magda: Did you feel like it was difficult for you at the very beginning to make those sort of deliberate separations to give them the space that they needed, or did it just feel sort of natural?

Annie: For me, it felt natural. It was also something, I don't know, I think it was a bit of a coping mechanism as well, right? Like when you are so intensely parenting and some of that is a very positive kind of intense parenting in terms of being there emotionally for your child and supporting them and all that type of thing. But some of it, too, is just doing things for them that they really should be able to do themselves. And so I think it was this point where I was like, this is just, it's like, it's too much, it's too much all the time and I need to create some space for myself. And I need to give them the space to be developing those skills for themselves as well. So it was quite deliberate.

Magda: It felt deliberate to me when I was doing it, too. And I started observing that there were other parents, especially moms, that were having big, big problems with it. And what I realized was that there had been parents who, I don't know, like they just didn't have a model of parenting that was that you released the hold gradually, right? And so they kind of thought that if they weren't doing something every minute or worrying about it every minute as a surrogate for doing something, that they were a bad parent. And I'm wondering, did you observe that in other people? Did you feel any of that tension in the group that you were in.

Annie: Yeah, I think in general I found that a lot of parents struggled with how to create that sort of space for them and how to balance parenting with the other things that were happening in their lives and whether it was during those very early stages of parenting, even when their parents were sort of babies or toddlers or as they grew and as the kids became more independent, people had a lot of trouble planning for that and creating that space for themselves. I remember having conversations with other parents who would say, like, I don't have time to go to the gym. And I would be like, of course you have time to go to the gym, right? Like, I don't care how old your child is. Like, unless you're really in a situation where you need to be working three jobs in order to support your children, then yes, you have time to go to the gym. You just have to sit down. You have to look at your schedule. You have to talk to your partner. You can figure it, but you can figure it out and you can find a way to go to the gym. But I think, yeah, people found it really difficult to sort of find those opportunities for themselves at any sort of stage of parenting.

Doug: Now this is an interesting question to you, because you've actually approached this in a very particular way, approached your parenting in a particular way, but now that you've reached this point where your kids are heading off to Europe and will never see you again, how do you think this time in your life is different than when you knew you were pregnant with your first child? How has things worked out perhaps differently than you anticipated?

Annie: That is a very big question.

Doug: It is, yeah. I mean, art of it is, when you're 20, you think what life will be when I'm 50, and then you get to be 50 and you're like, wow, this is not what 20-year-old me had any idea about. So, I mean, we could back up a bit and say something like the way you were parented, how your experience as a child informs the way you parented your kids to the point where they seem ready to go launch and do some interesting things.

Annie: I mean, it's hard to say. I think that for me, I think what surprised me the most was that the challenges that my kids had were not the challenges that I had as a child, right? I don't know, I expected through, maybe through a combination of genetics and then sort of, you know, the way that I raised them, that they would face similar challenges and that they would have maybe similar strengths to what I did, but not at all. And so I think that was probably the biggest surprise to me was having to figure out how to navigate through different things that I had never, ever experienced, that I had no idea about. And it's so different, like there's the initial stages of parenting where everyone has to do things like feeding and diapering and sleeping and the, you know, really the themes are the same no matter who your kids are. But by the time they're in, let's say, middle school at the latest, they're all very, very different from each other. And the challenges that we're facing as parents are very different from each other. And the challenges that are potentially very different from what any of us has ever faced.

Doug: And how much did the research you did fill in those blanks? Because your first thought is, “let's research this.” And as you know, it's all about half research and half experience. So where did you look, and how did you think that overall approach bridged that gap a bit?

Annie: Yeah, absolutely. I think that having that ability to research was really helpful. I did end up having to sort of navigate through some fairly big mental health things with one of my kids and just, you know, the waiting times sometimes to get in to have mental health support services. I was really glad that I had good research abilities and that I was able to help them cope and to sort of get through those things and to have an idea of what it was that we were going to be dealing with. You know, I think trying to use my intuition, which may not have been right, I think was really important.

Doug: Well, that's the real challenge, right? Because with mental health, there's no one size fits all. There's no cure all. There's, let's try this, let's try that. Is there, what type of therapy could work best? Is there a medication that needs to be used? And then medication as a whole opens up a whole other Pandora's box, because you never know what's gonna work and what cocktail fits your child's brain chemistry best. How much experimentation was necessary before you think you found something that you could go with longer term?

Annie: Good question. And I think we're not still not fully there, but definitely a lot better. And it was sort of, I think once we were able to get mental health support services, then things got much better, much quicker. So yes, in terms of both therapy, in terms of medication for anxiety, for obsessive compulsive disorder, still have not sorted out medication around ADHD. That one, the side effects have always sort of been stronger than any beneficial side effect. But it's been an ongoing challenge and quite a journey. So yeah.

Magda: All right, so are we gonna get to the reveal here of what you started spending your time on once you kind of had that flipover where you had time for yourself and your kids not only didn't need you, but really it wouldn't have been beneficial for you to be there all the time?

Annie: Yeah, so what I do is I go and I run in the woods for ridiculous amounts of time. I guess that's the short of it. But in terms of how I came to do that, it was actually, I used to play team sports. So I played Ultimate Frisbee. I played basketball. I really liked being physical. But once my kids got to a stage where they were doing all kinds of activities, things like soccer and gymnastics and so on, then I found it really hard from a scheduling perspective to be able to commit to a team sport. And then I was looking for other ways to be able to stay physically active, to give both my, you know, sort of my body and my brain that release that it needed in terms of exercise. And then it was actually in 2015, the Ottawa Race Weekend, so that's the organization that puts on the Ottawa Marathon and all of the other sort of races that are sort of shorter distances below that, they had reached out to me as being a blogger at the time and said, look, we're offering entries into Ottawa Race Weekend, any race distance that you would like, and all we're asking sort of in return is that you kind of share on social media for and participating in the race. And I had never before that considered running a race, but I was like, huh, okay.

Doug: This is the crazy part to me, that you weren't even, in 2015 you're like “I don't know,” I mean and now when you visit your brother-in-law in Calgary he flies and you run.

Magda: Were you running at all at that point?

Annie: I was just running in sports, so I was playing Ultimate Frisbee, I was playing basketball, yeah.

Magda: Oh, okay. All right. So it wasn't like you were going out and running 5K twice a week on the paths, on the paved paths near you even. Oh, wow. Okay, so I mean, if you're playing soccer though, you were running for 90 minutes.

Annie: No, I was not doing that. I was not. No, I was not doing that at all. I had never. Yeah, but I was always like before, I was like if I'm running after something, like there's a game, there's a point to it. So I'm playing soccer, I'm running back and forth, I'm trying to get this ball, I'm trying to keep the ball away from other people, then you know, those are things that made sense to me. But just going out and running, it just seemed to me like ridiculous suffering, and why would I want to do that? They told me I could sign up for any race that I wanted. I decided to sign up for the 10K because I figured 5K was sort of, it's easy enough that you could kind of do it without training. 10K was long enough that as a non-runner, it was scary enough that I was like, okay, I've got to prepare for this and do something. And my son at the time was, he was 11 and he said that he'd be interested in training with me. So I asked them if they would give me two entries and they said, absolutely. We went off to sort of train together and when we were taking, when I was dropping off my daughter for gymnastics or for horseback riding or whatever, instead of forcing my son to sit and practice his verbs for French class or something like that while she was doing whatever else, I was like, okay, we're going for a run.

Magda: So you ran it and you liked it? Was it a trail run or was it a?

Annie: No, it was just a regular road run. So it wasn't until, it was the next year that I started trail running. So I heard about other people that were doing this. It seemed like fun. I'd been running on a lot of the dirt roads near our cottage and really enjoyed that. So I thought, okay, let's go and try this trail running. And I heard about a women's trail running festival. So I signed up for that and got had an opportunity to try it there for the first time and really loved it and sort of met people there, different trail running groups and so started then going to some of those groups and yeah, really, really enjoyed that as well and then started doing the trail races as well.

Magda: So what distance do you usually, like, when you sign up for, so how many races do you do every year do you think at this point?

Annie: It depends. I would say I used to do, like before the pandemic, I did a lot more maybe than I do now. And part of the reason is that a lot of local trail races got cancelled during the pandemic and then didn't come back again after that, which is really unfortunate. But what I would normally do in a season is I would set a goal race, and my goal race is usually sort of August, September. And then I would plan training races on sort of the buildup to that. So if I'm doing, let's say, a 50k in September, then I might sign up for you know a 30k in July or something along those lines as a training race along the way.

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: Oh my God. So 50K is 31 miles and a 30K is. What is a 30K then? I'm not, oh, six times 3.1. So 18.6, 18.6 miles. Oh my God. 

Doug: 19 miles, something like that.

Annie: This is all too much math. Yeah.

Annie: Uh huh.

Magda: So, wow. So, like, so what's your goal when you're, I mean, I completely get if you didn't, if you thought just running to run didn't make any sense, then when you found trail running, like that makes more sense, because it's kind of like a hike combined with running. You know, you're running through the woods and it's beautiful

Annie: Exactly, and it's out in the woods...Yeah, it's just, it's such a different experience running on a trail versus running on the roads. It's both like it's gentler on your body because you're on the dirt rather than being on hard pavement. It's just you got the fresh air, you have nature around you. And it's just a real, like I think it's meditation in addition to physical fitness. And I just really, really love that opportunity to get away from everything.

Magda: Mm-hmm.

Annie: And it doesn't feel the same way when I'm running on the road. I do still do a lot of my training on the road. And when I'm training on the road, I tend to listen to something. I actually often listen to you guys, or to other podcasts. There's trail running podcasts that I listen to as well. So that's when I'll take my headphones with me and I listen to something as I'm going. But when I'm in the woods, I don't listen to anything. I'm just sort of out in the woods, enjoying that immersive experience in nature.

Doug: Are trail running podcasts just an hour of somebody saying “you can do it”?

Annie: No, they're not. There's some that I really like. There's one called Trail Society, which is a women's trail running podcast, and it's three professional ultra marathoners that sort of talk on all kinds of different topics. And it can be everything from preparing for races to, they had one I think that was on perimenopause. There's all kinds of topics that they'll cover, but always just super interesting and entertaining and it's a way to keep me engaged as I go through the training.

Doug: Well, that's the really the abiding thing, is one of the great aspects will be those looking for, to talk to you, because when you find an abiding passion in middle-age, that's gotta be the most revelatory thing. I've had a few discussions with this friend who was running after he dried out. He'd acknowledged he was an alcoholic and needed something else to fill the void.

Annie: Hmm. There's a lot of that. Yeah.

Doug: And now he just runs 25 miles without breaking a sweat, literally. I mean, he just does it, and it's an obsession. And another friend of mine who discovered rock climbing, now he rock climbs every weekend and weighs half of what he did when I met him and like every weekend he's on Facebook saying, “I climbed this today.” Um, would you associate that? Why do you think this became such a big part of your life?

Doug: And why do you think your body is able to withstand it as well as it seems, because I think a lot of people are thinking, “You know in my 50s. There's all sorts of stuff that can go wrong with my bones and my tendons and everything else,” and how do you balance all that?

Annie: Heh. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I think part of it is preparing for it. So I, in addition to going out and running, I also do strength training. And, and that's something that I'd been doing even before I started running. Cause I'd sprained my ankle a couple of times playing Ultimate Frisbee and decided that I needed to do something to support my body more so that I could continue to do the sport. So I do regular strength training to maintain that. But you know, I think that really being active and being strong is so incredibly important to get your body through middle age. I think it's more the people who don't do anything that are at risk of having all kinds of health problems versus those that actually do something. So yeah, I haven't really worried about the risks from a sort of a health perspective, but I do obviously, I have to take care of my body. I have to, if I do notice things not going well, I have to take care of them. I did have one year where I did no races at all because I was having some breathing irregularities and some heart rate issues that seemed abnormal to me. So I continued training but at a lower intensity. I did long hikes instead of long runs and I went through all the different medical tests and things like that I needed to before I did any more racing. So I think just, you know, yeah, paying attention to your body, making sure that if health issues come up that you take care of them but otherwise no reason not to go and push and enjoy yourself.

Magda: Have you read Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running?

Annie: I have not.

Magda: Oh, okay. So he's a Japanese novelist who has written, oh, like zillions of novels. I think he published his first one in the late seventies and he's still working. And his publisher for a long time was asking him to write a memoir. And he just kind of blew them off and they kept coming after him. And he said, “Well, I'll write a memoir if I can write it about being a long distance runner,” because he ran marathons and they were like, okay.

And so he wrote this memoir about it. It's very interesting because it tells his backstory of how he started running, how he got into writing, all of this stuff. And one of the things that really stuck with me in this was he started running to stay physically fit because he felt like his body didn't feel good. He was putting on weight in places that didn't seem to be supporting his movement, that kind of stuff. And his wife was doing nothing and just stayed exactly as she had been and, you know, seemed to feel fine. And he was really resentful for a long time that he was putting so much into staying in good physical condition and she didn't have to. And then he had this realization that he was putting all of this into his health and that his wife would have no idea if she needed, you know, that she needed to be maintaining her health through physical exercise in that way. And that it really was kind of a benefit to have this early warning system of “it's kind of falling apart” before he was, you know, if he wasn't running at all. And that was kind of a, like it was a cool perspective on it for me because I had been feeling very sorry for myself when I was, I don't know, 36 or something that I had to exercise where I felt horrible.

Annie: Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, we all know that person who is just like super skinny and eats Big Macs and smokes cigarettes, right? And outwardly, they look like they're really healthy, but inwardly, probably not, right? So, yeah.

Magda: Right.

Doug: So here's a question, is this a passion? Could you stop if you had to? If you broke something, you know. No, I mean it, there are people who get into this vibe and really love what they do and then something happens and they can't while they recuperate and it just drives them mad. Are you at that point now? Do you think this has become this part of your life? Yeah.

Annie: Could I stop? Oh absolutely, yeah, no I definitely suffer from withdrawal when I can't get out and do it but it doesn't necessarily have to be running. What I would say is if I could not do any type of outdoor endurance sport, then yes, I would suffer from that. I have had points where I've had injuries and I've had to switch to something else in them for either a certain period of time or in Canada we have seasons and so I do other things during other seasons as well. I do a lot of cross country skiing and snowshoeing and stuff like that in the winter. So I'm fine with that. But if it was that, no, I cannot get out and have long periods in sort of the fresh air myself, then I would find that very difficult.

Doug: So let's quantify this. Let's just buffalo people with, no, I'm serious. On a fully functional year, if you've even, I don't know if you've even, like, if I were you, if I were in your position, I'd have a spreadsheet. I'd be like, looking, I ran this many miles today. That's what I did last year with my bike. Yeah, okay.

Annie: I have Strava. So most runners are on Strava.

Doug: So how many miles, kilometers, what distance would you cover in a fiscal year?

Annie: So just running most years, I cover the year in kilometers. So like 2023, I would probably have close to 2023 kilometers that I would run. That started out like a few years ago as kind of a big goal, but since then it's become more just the normal that that's what I would do. And then on top of that, I would have additional kilometers that were walking and skiing and that sort of thing as well.

Magda: Wow.

Doug: So how long have you, what's the longest distance you've run in one go?

Annie: 100 kilometers. Yeah.

Magda: Oh my god, 62 miles. How long did it take? Like, are you, when you do these trail races, are you aiming at all for time? Or is it really just about the experience of the run? Like how you feel during the run, ease, whatever, or something like that.

Doug: Yes.

Annie: So yeah, it depends. So I did two, I did three races this year, but one didn't really count. And it was just more of a practice. So I did two races that were actually like, sort of races where I was going out and trying to achieve something. So one was a 100 kilometer race and the other one was a 50 kilometer. So for the 100 kilometer race, this was my longest race that I've ever done. My goal was just to finish it. And it was also, so it was my first time doing 100 kilometer, it was my first time doing a race where I was gonna be out all night. And my friend, my friend Jen and I went to the race together. She and I do a lot of these races together and we decided that we were going to do the night part together so that neither of us would have to be out there alone during the night. Jen had been injured leading up to the race, so she had decided she was just going to hike the whole thing. So in the end, we started the race together, 10 am on the Saturday it started, we were hiking together, and then she ended up getting really bad blisters. I don't remember exactly what time the blisters started up, but they were really bad at a certain point. As nighttime struck she was having trouble moving even at a good hiking pace and I was freezing cold because I was not dressed to be going that slow so around 3:30 in the morning we each decided to sort of go our own way and then at that point I was too tired to be doing much running. 

Magda: And you at three in the morning, you had already been going for 17 hours.

Annie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I did a bit of running, but not much, mostly just sort of hiking at a fast enough pace to stay warm. And then, yeah, the 100 kilometers, I finished in 27 hours and 40 minutes. So started at 10 a.m. on Saturday, finished mid-afternoon, I guess, on the Sunday.

Magda: That sounds like being in labor. Like it really does, wow!

Annie: Both of my labors were shorter than that. Yes.

Doug: I mean, what supplies do you travel with and how do you administer them? I mean, at this point, you got to have an entourage, right? You have refueling stations.

Annie: Mm-hmm. There is, so there are aid stations along the way, which is fantastic, and they have, they tell you ahead of time what you can expect at each of the aid stations, and at this particular race, there's some that where it's cold food only, and they'll give you a list of what you're gonna get, and then there's other ones that have warm food as well. So I lived for the grilled cheese stations. That was absolutely what kept me going. Most amazing thing, like grilled cheese has never tasted as good as it does when you're out doing a 100 kilometer race.

Annie: And what you have is you have a pack that has, there's a list of mandatory equipment this is in case you get into trouble in the woods out there anywhere. So it's things like emergency blanket and whistle and some matches and an extra layer of clothing and so on and so forth, a first aid kit, that type of thing. Then you have to have some food and you have to have some water with you. And then you have these aid stations along the way where you can be both eating something there or refilling kind of your own sort of stock and taking it with you.

Doug: How much does that weigh on your back?

Annie: It so during one of before one of my races actually I think it might have been my first ultra where I weighed it ahead of time, and I think it weighed 16 pounds, the pack with all the mandatory equipment in it.

Magda: So it's not horrific, but it's not like-

Doug: Not terrible but it's, you know, yeah.

Magda: Wow, wow, wow. 

Doug: I would love to rename this The Wow Wow Wow Podcast because I love it when someone's, when you get like six or seven wows in a row out of Magda, you know, you've hit a milestone.

Annie: Heh.

Magda: Well, I'm just thinking about, remember a couple of years ago, this was, I don't know, a few years before the pandemic, when you and I were both doing just like sort of regular road races, you know, like 5Ks or 10Ks or whatever. We were joking around about the fact that there are all these people who are always on the course, trying to yell encouragement or with signs and stuff like that. 

Annie: Yes, “you're almost there.” That's the sign. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Magda: Yes. And like most, most of them are great. But. There's always somebody who has a sign or who's yelling out, “you're almost there!!” and you are never almost there. It's like you always have at least 20% of the race still to go, which is not “almost there.” And so ever since you and I talked about it, whenever I see the You're Almost There Guy, I always laugh because it makes me think of our conversation, right? Which is kind of motivating. So I'm just wondering if there's that same culture of like, bystanders and onlookers? Like, is there some dude who's like at kilometer 80 who's like, “you're almost there” and you're like, I still have 20 kilometers to go, dude. No.

Annie: Yes, yeah, absolutely. No, there is definitely that. So I said I've done two races this year. So I did the 100k, I did a 50k this last weekend. And at this 50k, it was five loops of a 10k course. So on that one, you would not only have onlookers that are kind of cheering you on and trying to tell you that you're almost there, but you would have people who had no idea what loop you're on, right? So they think you're almost done. When you still really, like, they think you have a kilometer left when you actually have 11 kilometers left, right?

Magda: Ha ha ha!

Annie: So I was just like, no, I'm not almost done, not even close. So yeah.

Doug: Every sport has the “Get In The Hole” guy.

Annie: Yes. Yeah.

Magda: Yes, it's true. It's true. Doug and I were watching, this had to be like 15 years ago. We were watching golf and it was some golf tournament on TV and it was like, you know how there are all those onlookers who cluster around as close as they can to the person hitting the thing. And at this particular tournament, there was some guy who every single time any golfer would swing and hit, as soon as the club hit the ball, this guy would yell out, “Get in the hole!”. Like his yelling this magical incantation would get the ball into the hole. 

Doug: Well, he'd clearly, yeah, he'd been clearly over-served.

Annie: Ha ha.

Magda: Oh God. And so Doug and I forever, after like 15, no, it had to, we've been divorced 15 years. It had to be 20 years ago. For 20 years, we have been joking around about the Get In The Hole Guy. 

Doug: It's a family tradition.

Magda: You don't want to be around the Get In The Hole Guy. You never want to be dating the Get In The Hole Guy. You just don't want to have anything to do with the Get In The Hole Guy.

Annie: No. Yeah.

Doug: So now, as far as the trajectory of the way you've realized what your body can do, which I'm still so impressed by, and congratulations a hundred times, that's amazing. At what point did this feel like something you could do? I mean, there has to be something that toggles within you that says, “I can make my body run 100K.” Did you always possess that? Or was there a particular event in this transition that really made you think that marathons were for sissies.

Annie: Hahaha. Yeah, no, I don't know. It's hard. I think it's through the community where there just seemed to be a lot of people that were trying to go for longer and longer and longer distances. And I am, I think, both of an age and a body type where I am never going to be going out and running a fast 5K. Even for sort of my age group, I'm never going to be somebody who could possibly be getting on the podium or something like that for in, you know, in my age group at a short road race. But being able to go further and further and further seemed like it was something that I could do. So, you know, I just like having something that I can do to push myself and this was a place where I felt like I could do that.

Magda: I find that so cool. Just so cool. Except for the part about it being three in the morning and being freezing and being in the middle of a trail. Like, I assume the trails are well marked.

Annie: Yeah, they're very well marked. And yeah, no, the being cold was not fun, but we dealt with that. But the being out at night, I absolutely loved it. Like I was, I mean, I've done a little bit of night running before, never through the whole night. And I was really worried about how my body would react to being out there all night. And in the end, it was actually fine. I was not overly tired. I think some of that had to do with the fact that the race was a 10 a.m. start, which is unusual. Some of these races, they start at 6 a.m. and then there's like a shuttle that you have to take to the start line at 4 a.m. So it means you're actually getting up at three, which is that, that I find awful. 

Magda: Well, because you start out in a hole already. You start out in a hole already, like sleep deficit, and just your normal routine deficit.

Annie: Yeah, yeah.

Doug: Like you've gotten up early for a flight, which you could just ignore and just run there now.

Annie: Exactly. And then you can just, yeah, well, but or you can sleep on the flight. But yeah, you can't sleep during the race. So, yeah.

Magda: Ha ha ha!

Doug: Yeah. So I'm thinking of two things right now. I'm thinking one about Forrest Gump, who ran across the country like a handful of times, which was fake. But I'm also thinking of Eddie Izzard, who ran 31 marathons in 31 days to raise money for...

Magda: She ran 31 marathons in 31 days, what?

Doug: Yeah, yeah, I'll send you, the post the link. But yeah, the hashtag this is back when hashtags were relevant. It was #makehumanitygreatagain. And she raised $500,000.

Magda: I had no idea. I thought she was like a cocktails and high heel kind of person.

Doug: Well, there were some marathons that she actually went and ran in the street carrying a flag. And there were some marathons she conducted on a treadmill while she was interviewing someone. It was like a comedy show. Running the entire time and, yeah in the month of, it was I think January 2020, but 31 marathons in 31 days, which is ludicrous to even comprehend but it's–

Annie: So if you think that's ludicrous, Doug, Candice Burt, Candice Burt ran an ultra marathon every day for 200 days. She has set the world record. 

Magda: What's the technical length of an ultra marathon?

Annie: 32. It's technically anything longer than a marathon, but so Candice Burt ran 32 mile ultra every day for 200 days.

Magda: Holy crap, how would you even have the time to do that? I wonder how long it took her to run those.

Doug: Does she have kids?

Annie: I don't think so. I don't think so, but she's, so she's 41. I'm just–

Doug: Is she of this earth? Did she come from Krypton and land  in an asteroid in rural Kansas?

Annie: Ha ha

Magda: 200 days, 200 days in a row, she ran 32 miles every day.

Annie: 200 days. Yeah, 32 miles. Mm-hmm.

Doug: So how does that affect you at all? Do you have another milestone? Do you have another goal? Cause you are possessed of a certain motivation. Do you want, like, do you want to be Diana Nyad? Do you want to swim from Cuba to Florida? Or would you, you know, would, could that be in your future? Like, hey, I'm running to Banff.

Annie: I'm not necessarily running to Banff, no, but I do. 

Doug French: Ha ha! Banff is the funniest word in North America.

Annie: So my retirement plan, there's actually, there's this trail. Yeah, there's this trail that goes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic via the Pyrenees Mountains. So there's one that goes along the French side and another one that kind of goes along the Spanish side as well. I would love to do that as an out and back as a retirement plan. Not like, this is not going to be an all-at-once or whatever like that, but I would love to just take months and do that whole thing. And I will invite my husband to join me for as much of it as he wants, but I will also not force him to join me for all of it. So, yeah. 

Doug: Will he take taxis to cafes along the way and just offer encouragement periodically?

Annie: Yeah, he likes to hike. He's not a runner. But yeah, so I'll see what, but that's my retirement plan. When I no longer have the commitment of having to go to work every day, then I would love to just at some point spend months just out exploring and doing something like that.

Doug: Well, I wonder there's a similar setup for Hadrian's Wall. Back in 2016, a bunch of us walked the length of Hadrian's Wall, it took us a week, it's about 100 miles. And it's about like the narrowest point in Great Britain, which makes perfect sense because Hadrian said, I'm gonna build a wall, let's both choose a place where I have to use the fewest resources.

Annie: I'm sorry.

Doug: But yeah, that's a hundred miles and it's a whole thing. You know, they have pubs along the way and people stop and there's, there's boarding houses and everything else. So, uh, I would say that's a consideration too.

Annie: Absolutely. Yeah, and no, and there's all, I mean, if you're looking for absolutely ridiculous things to do, there are many of them out there. I have friends that did a race in the UK last year that was basically you have 24 hours to get as far as you can from the starting point and the person who gets the furthest away is the winner, but there's no set course. So you decide where you want to go if you want to go on trails, if you want to go on roads, which direction you want to go in, and when the 24 hours is up, you know, you have to make a note of your location and whoever got the furthest wins.

Magda: Wow. Oh, that's so funny. The only thing that would make that funnier, is if there was some round after the 24 hours where you could knock somebody else off course and take their spot, sort of like playing croquet, but everybody else's position.

Doug: But it’s measured by Strava, it's not as the crow flies, because that would really suck if you ran 100 miles in a circle.

Annie: No, I think it was as the crow flies. No, it's as the crow flies. So yeah, so you have to be smart about your choices of your route and so on. So yeah, in their case, they weren't looking to win it. They just want, I think they wanted to do 100K. So that's what they did. But for the people who are wanting to actually win it, you need to really be smart about the direction you go. Yeah.

Magda: Oh yeah, you have to put in a lot of research and a lot of strategizing because the other thing is there are no aid stations along the way because there is no way.

Annie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you have to figure out your own nutrition and all of that type of thing. Where are you going to fill up your water?

Magda: Wow. Are people allowed to have other people on the trail that give them water at pre-arranged spots or anything like that?

Annie: I'm not sure what the rules are for that one. Yeah

Doug: So yeah, that's the really cool thing. Are you familiar with the show called Alone? The first series was in Vancouver Island. They've since gone up to like close to the Arctic Circle at Great Slave Lake. They just put them down there with, they get 10 tools and a pack full of clothes and good luck. Build a shelter, catch fish. You can kill this to eat, you can't kill that to eat, and you also have to carry 60 pounds of camera equipment and film it. One season, I think the record was 78 days, somebody lasted out there, and by the 78th day, the snow was this high and the water source was frozen over and they had to ice fish. And then the next year, they said, if you make it 100 days, you get a million dollars. We'll double the prize money.

Annie: Wow.

Doug: So it's just, it's an interesting discussion. I mean, my head is all in thinking about what the human body can do. And that's why I was so really psyched to hear that you were doing this. ‘Cause you know, knowing where I know you from and knowing where you are now, that's a hell of a transition. And as I say, that's why I think, you know, where the trajectory leads you. Do you have like a particular next challenge in mind? You want to do the as the crow fly things or the as the crow flies thing, or is that beyond the pale at this point?

Annie: I have been interested in doing stage races, which is where, you know, you're not out there all night every night, but you're doing a significant distance every day. There's some of them that are kind of the luxury version of these stage races where you're staying in like a hotel. 

Doug: Marathon glamping.

Annie: Well, yeah, it's like they, I mean, they have hotels booked for you after each stage and you get gourmet meals and all of that type of thing. And there's massage tables and that sort of thing. And there are ones where you're in a tent and you're cooking your own meal. So there's different kinds.

Magda: Yeah, well, like the Ragnars, the whole Ragnar series, I think, is the ones where you're in a tent. But I think the Ragnar series is designed for more casual runners than you are. Because I think like the longest, like, so Ragnar is a, it's just a brand of these staged races and you, so you form a team that's I think between like four and eight people and they break up this long run into shorter legs. And so people are running these different legs of the race, but the Ragnar ones, I think their legs are like between two miles and 12 miles or something like that. So it's not, nobody's doing any kind of ultra distance at all.

Doug: Well there's got to be like a tour to Canada, right, where either you run or you bike or you do something to get from one length of the continent to the other. Iis that a thing?

Annie: There is one, I think it was a German woman who did the whole Trans Canada trail in Canada and wrote about that. I believe she might be the only person who's done the whole trail, but that's something like you really need to be taking a couple years off to do that sort of thing. 

Magda: Yeah, because Canada's big. Canada's like really, really big.

Annie: Yeah, yeah. And some parts of the trail are not, like you can't even do them on foot, they have to be on canoe or things like that. So it's a different experience. It's not just going out for a run in the woods. It takes a lot of planning and that sort of thing as well.

Magda: Right. Well, and also like you have to time certain times of the year also, like, I mean, you just literally can't get there from here a certain number of months of the year in some of those places.

Annie: Some parts of the trail you probably can't access and some of them, too, you have to be considering what equipment is allowed. We have parts of the TransCanada Trail that are near here that are ski trails in the winter and you are not allowed to walk on them. So you would need to be prepared if you're planning to do that one in the middle of winter, you have to have cross-country skis to do that part of the trail.

Magda: Wow, wow. I went cross-country skiing once and was like, I just don't even understand how this is supposed to go. 

Annie: But you're Norwegian!

Magda: Like I just couldn't, I knew that the parts of my body I was moving to try to make myself move were not the parts you're supposed to try to move, to make yourself move, but I just couldn't, like I just couldn't get there, so.

Doug: Cross-country skiing is extraordinary. I've tried it once too, and there's definitely just a particular muscle memory that you have to learn how to use, because wow.

Annie: Yeah.

Magda: And you just do it all the time. Like it's your winter thing.

Annie: Yep. I did it growing up and then I hadn't done it for like years and then when I had plantar fasciitis from running and I was like, well, I've got to figure out another thing to do for a couple of months while I let this heal. Then I grabbed my old cross-country skis from college and dusted them off and brought them down to the shop. And I said, well, I have these two pairs. I don't like, I have no idea if either of them fits me anymore. I don't even know how you fit cross-country skis anymore. Can I wear either of these? And if so, can you get them ready for me?

Annie: And so I did that just for that first season and then yeah, I actually did quite like it. So then the next season I invested in some new skis and I've been doing it ever since, in the winters.

Doug: I could ask you another hour's worth of questions about this. You know, there are people who reach our age and think, well, I've basically felt everything I'm going to feel and that ain't you. No, I mean, I mean it. The endorphin rush must be extraordinary. 

Annie: There are still blisters that they can go out and feel, believe me.

Doug: Right, right, right. Well, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of pain in my future.

Annie: And chafing, I won't tell you about the chafing.

Magda: Yeah, by like, by kilometer 96, it's like emotions you didn't even know existed.

Annie: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Yeah.

Doug: Well, but how do you, but why is that, how do you overcome that? How is the balance sheet such that the overall experience is worth all of the pain you put your body through?

Annie: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, there's just, there's an adrenaline from being able to go out and achieve those things, I think, and just absolute like amazing beauty on some of these trails that I would maybe not have the opportunity to be able to access if it wasn't as part of an organized race like this. So yeah, and it's also just, it's a learning process of continuing to learn how, how do I better take care of my feet so that I don't get the blisters, you know, what types of creams should I be using so that I'm not chafing or can I, you know, switch out which sports bra I'm using so that I'm not chafing or something like that, right? But it's, yeah, it's continuing to sort of tweak those different things, tweak your nutrition, tweak your clothing choices, your other things that you do to help make that experience as positive as possible.

Doug: Well, I already know the answer to this question, this thought, because, you know, you at this point, you could be an influencer. You could be saying like, this is the cream I use. This is the sports bra I use. This is the equipment that best serves me when I do this. As someone in a much different mindset might be into that, I don't see that as even something you're even remotely attracted to as a thing.

Annie: Not really, and it never was back in the parenting blog stages, too. I accepted a little bit of advertising on my blog for brands that I really felt were well-aligned with my values, but I've never been really into the whole influencer side of things. So I've done very, very little of that over the years. 

Doug: That's where we are now in terms of you could be a TikTok runner and, uh, yuck. But if someone wants to be a TikTok runner, and if someone's intrigued by the idea of seeing if their body can do what your body can do over and over again. What advice would you have in terms of starting out? Things that maybe a neophyte wouldn't quite be prepared for? How can you set someone on the path to decide if this is a thing that could be a bigger part of their lives?

Annie: Yeah, I mean, I'd say look for groups that are near you. There's an organization called Trail Sisters. They have chapters definitely across North America. I'm not sure sort of beyond that as well, but we have a local Trail Sisters group, Trail Sisters Chelsea that I'm a part of. My friend Josee is the one who runs it. And that's a really fantastic way for people who are beginners to be able to go out and just sort of see, is this something for you? They do a weekly run, sort of short distance, then that way you get exposed as well to other people who are maybe doing these big ridiculous things and have an opportunity to talk to them and learn more about it and have a chat as you're doing a nice sort of easy run in the park. So absolutely groups would be my biggest recommendation is sort of find some other like-minded people and head out on the trail with them.

Doug: Yeah, I would imagine group encouragement is one of the great things that the internet can still afford us. You can meet your people and inspire each other to push on when the challenge seems too onerous to achieve. And as far as the way your own body reacts to it and the recovery from it, is there anything that a new runner should be prepared for after a run or is there some kind of aspect of the recovery or the process that maybe you didn't see coming that you've learned that would be a good shortcut for a new runner?

Annie: I mean, I think the most important thing for people to learn if they're looking to take this on is that 80 to 85 percent of your runs should be at a really, really easy pace. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize initially when they start out. They think they should be going out and trying to run fast all of the time, or even trying to run at sort of a medium pace, and that's not at all the case. You should be doing the vast majority of your runs should be really super slow, very comfortable pace. It can even be a walking pace then if that's what you need to do initially. And then it's only a very small portion where you should be then trying to really push and get your heart rate up. So yeah, so just make sure you get that right mix in your training, make sure that you build in as well recovery days, make sure you have at least sort of one day if not more per week that you're not running so that you give your body that opportunity to recover.

Magda: That's good, good advice. The 80 to 85%, I hadn't realized that. And I mean, I've been running for years. I guess I just never really put it together that you're supposed to be training at a very, very easy pace most of the time.

Annie: Yeah, absolutely and I think that's where a lot of people, too, they'll say like if they're interested in going out and running maybe with a friend who is a seasoned runner who runs a lot then they'll be like afraid that “oh, well, I'm not going to be able to run at their pace” and most of the time that's not an issue at all. And that just about any serious runner is going to have some easy runs that they need to do as part of their schedule. So they'll be more than happy to go out and run with a friend on one of those easy runs, even if it is at a slower pace.

Magda: That's cool. That's very cool. 

Doug: Yeah, you made Magda's day with that because Magda runs a lot, but she's happy to spend three weeks finishing a 5k. Yeah, exactly.

Magda: I tweaked my ankle slash heel at the Turkey Trot and have been staying off it ever since. So we'll see what happens.

Annie: Hmm. And I see you saw a different Turkey Trot that has beer. So you're going to go for that one next year. That is always, that's, yeah, that is another huge motivation is that a lot of these races, they do partner with microbreweries, which is a really sort of, you know, great thing as well. You've got that, you know, you have that beer waiting for you at the finish line. And my friend Jen and I even signed up for a 25K just on a complete spur of the moment because we saw they had a really cool beer glass as the finishers price. So it was like, Hey, let's go.

Magda: It’s funny, I sign up for a 5k on the on a whim because I like the metal or the shirt or the beer glass or whatever it is. There's a beer-sponsored 5k back in Michigan that every year the medal is also a bottle opener.

Doug: So to sum up, the best advice Annie has is: listen to your body, find your people online, and look for beer at every turn. 

Annie: Yes, absolutely.

Doug: Well, it's so great to talk to you, Annie, it's great to get in touch with you. It's been too long since I saw you in person and that's the nature of the world we're in now. I mean we don't have the opportunities to gather as often as we used to. I'm really grateful you came on today to motivate me to get back to the gym today and work off all this holiday food that's becoming a problem. Because my son works for a bakery now and he brings home about 5,000 calories a night for us to eat and it's becoming a problem. And I hope there are people out there who are even thinking about it and will be inspired. If there's any way that they could reach you to talk more about this, where could they find you online?

Annie: Yeah, absolutely. So I am not blogging regularly these days. So the best place to find me online is actually on my Instagram. So it's @ethicalthinker. And then if people do want to go and check out some of my more recent, but not super recent blog posts, it is ethicalthinker.com. And there is actually the most recent blog post I wrote there was five years ago when I did my first ultra marathon. So if people are interested in learning more about that, they can read that, that first post that'll come up. Lots more background info there.

Doug: Well, yeah, if you did choose to decide to start a Substack or something and make a resource for people, you'd be a perfect candidate for that because I've always loved your writing and if other people are half as inspired as I am to try and realize what their bodies can do at this stage in life, I hope it worked. So thank you for that. 

Annie: Awesome, well it's great chatting with the two of you, too.

Magda: Thanks. 

Doug: Thank you all for listening to Episode 27 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Annie Crombie, ultra runner and co-founder of Annie Crombie and Fitch.

Annie: No. Ha ha ha. No.

Doug: When The Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC, and it's available on all the usual platforms, and at whentheflamesgoup dot substack dot com. Subscribe there for our weekly episode on Wednesday and our weekly newsletter on Friday Flames, which will return this Friday. Um, actually, you know it won't because this episode's airing in a couple weeks. Forget that. If you do listen to us on Apple Podcasts, and many of you do, please send us a review. We'll be back next week. Until then, get out for a run, and all the best. Bye bye.