Full circle
I'm an ASICS athlete!
Hey, hello, hi!
Been a few weeks.
But I decided that I’ll only write a newsletter when I’m excited to write one. Because, frankly, if I’m not excited to write it there’s literally no chance you want to read it.
But I’ve got something I’m excited to write about!
The world’s worst-kept secret is out of the bag - I’ve signed with Asics. It’s my first professional running contract and I’m so happy to partner with them.
I stared running in grade five. I distinctly remember going to track and field practice at my elementary school. We didn’t actually have a track, but we did have two baseball diamonds, and if you ran around their entire perimeter is was (ball park) 400m.
After the 400 we’d run the 100m. Again, no track, but we did have a gravel road that ran alongside the school. So that’s where we did the 100. I wore my mom’s Asics to practice and came home the fastest kid my age.
So I kept running.
In grade 8 my parents asked if I wanted to run a track race in the big city (Ottawa is a very big city if you grow up in Pembroke, ON). So I brought a friend/mentor of mine (Melissa Jones) and she took me through my first-ever-big-city track meet.
Once again, I won in my mom’s Asics shoes.
I went to practices through high school with a local club called Coureurs de Bois (that’s ‘runners of the woods’ for the anglophones in the crowd).
That’s me at practice ^.
I loved practice. I couldn’t tell ya much about my training in high school beyond enjoying fudging the numbers (par example: if I was told to do 8 reps of something, and I could get away with only doing 6, job well done Maddy!)
The thing I always liked best was being in the forest and chit chatting.
Ten years later, I was still running and working as a staff writer for Canadian Running Magazine. October was a big month for the mag because of marathon season. One of our most important days was the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. That October, 2018, was my first time covering a marathon in person. That day, Cam Levins broke the Canadian marathon record that had stood for over 40 years. I got to write about it and it became the first story that I remember being really proud of.
(He has since broken his own record several times).
I was recently asked to profile Cam again, but this time about his North American record. Like me, he has recently signed with Asics. Back in 2018 when I first wrote about him, I’d never made a national team or had national funding. It had literally never crossed my mind that I might be able to secure a pro contract one day.
If you told the kid in her mom’s Asics about everything that was yet to come, initially she wouldn’t have believed you.
But then she would’ve thought about it, chewed on it a bit, and because there’s always been a cocky streak inside of her, decided, ‘that’s cool as hell.’
MK
Running update:
I’m still ironing out my spring/summer racing schedule!
I’ll post it once I’ve got it.
I don’t plan to race until the end of May.
Quick-fire recommendations:
Eat: homemade meatballs with spaghetti, Jeremy’s been making them lately and it’s a lovely weekend treat.
Listen: Leonard Cohen - boygenius
Read: Alison Roman’s new book! I don’t have my hands on it yet but I will soon and I’m very excited.
Congrats, Maddy! We are so proud of you! 🥰🥰🥰