My Interview with an Olympic Runner.

I used to run every Sunday for 5 km. At first it was difficult. Then it got easier, so I upped my game to 10. As a working mom trying to be the best employee, wife, mother, and dog-owner that I could be, for me running was a therapeutic effort to clear my messy head from the week prior.

Eventually someone suggested I try a Half Marathon. Sundays became 18 km training days, but no run was without a full-blown menu of issues I was trying to work through. Honestly, I thought of the whole experience as “running from” as I lulled myself into the physical process.

I ran a Half Marathon twice - and that’s the extent of my running career.

Not Natasha Wodak . I met Tasha thanks to close personal friends who hosted a small group at their dinner party. Tasha brought her gold medal from the 2019 Pan Am Games in Peru from earlier in the season, and modestly showed it to her relatively new extended family at the dinner.

Touching the gold medal was electric.

There’s this thrill you get from being close to someone else’s major accomplishments. It vibrates through your being with an obscure sense of desire to accomplish gold at anything yourself, without knowing how hard the medalist truly worked to get there.

Unlike me, Tasha is one of those runners who’s “running towards”.

At the beginning of 2020 before the pandemic hit hard in Canada, I asked Tasha if I could interview her. She kindly invited me into her home where I met her sweet cat Sammy (Tasha volunteers for VOKRA and speaks “kitty” as a second language).

The smell of fresh baked cookies was in the air like some sort of real estate gimmick. Sugar, flour, and butter were not part of my own meal plan as I was prepping for my next stage show for WNBF Canada (I didn't know until later that would be cancelled four-times-over due to the virus). I enjoyed the familiar scent of home-baking nonetheless.

At the time, Tasha didn’t know the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed either.?

Novice athlete and late bloomer in fitness that I was, I had no grasp of the extreme mental and emotional pressures that high performance athletes like Tasha have to confront. (I guess I thought they were superheroes?) Think of Simone Biles and her very public case of self-care at the Olympics, and the court of public opinion that trolled her online quickly after.

Like the rest of us, for Olympic athletes, inner head-games can impact outward performance, big time.

What follows are some very timely excerpts pulled out of my one-hour interview with Tasha.

Me: If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an amateur, you win better by focusing on the process, not the gold. Is there truth to this?

Natasha: Absolutely. Especially in an Olympic year, you get so caught up in the Olympics, you forget to enjoy the process and the experience along the way. I had a moment, three or four years ago, when I hated what I was doing because it was so much about the end-goal that I forgot about life.

You need to enjoy life. You need to enjoy the process. You need to focus on what you're doing right now instead of thinking, “I need to be here in 10 days, and I'm not.”

So I definitely agree with keeping your eye on the big goal, but having little goals along the way too, and remembering, “This is my life. I have one life to live and I want to enjoy it. And if I'm not enjoying it, I don't want to do this anymore.”

When I got a new coach in 2017 (1984 Olympic bronze medalist, Lynn Kanuka), we sat down and had that exact conversation that if I wasn't happy, and I wasn't getting joy out of this sport every single day, we were going to change something. Because why else would you do it? For the glory of saying, "I went to the Olympics"?

I went to the Olympics in 2016 and that year was one of the hardest years of my entire life. I was not happy. Two months out I had a breakdown in front of one of my friends, crying on the ground saying, “I don't want to go.”

I'd already qualified, but I felt so much pressure that I just wasn't going to be good enough when I was there, and I was like, “I don't want to do this. This is not what I signed up for.”

And everyone thought I was crazy, but I'm like, “I'm going to the Olympics! You don't just go to get a participation ribbon! The whole world is watching. I need to perform!”.

Me: Tell me about your worst day as an athlete.

Natasha: The worst race of my life would be my race in Doha. I was coming off the best season of my entire life and my expectations were incredibly high.

I had visualized nothing less than a Canadian record and a personal record, and placing in the Top 12. I knew that I was fully capable of that. Then a few things popped up along the way, so I started to doubt that. But still, I told myself, “You can pull this one out.”

Two laps into the race, I knew it wasn't my day. I was heartbroken IN the race. Trying to get through that was incredibly difficult.

I was in Qatar, and just seeing Lynn there, who spent money and took time off work, and having Alan (her partner) there, who also took two weeks off... it was very annoying (to feel this way).

My parents back home were watching but it felt like I was letting them down after everything they sacrificed for me to get there.

I finished the race, and since I was doing this study where I had swallow a pill to measure my body temperature, they start to weigh you trackside within about 30 seconds of finishing.

So they’re telling me to stand still while I'm sobbing and all the girls are looking at me, and I just remember thinking, “Get me the f*ck out of here.” It was devastating.

Then I'm trying to get out and you have to go through all the media, and people were asking me for interviews while I was crying, and... it was just that I couldn't handle the disappointment I think, because I hadn't prepared myself at all that?this would be a possible outcome.

It was so far off where I wanted to be. It made me question the sport. I forgot all about every other success that I had that year. It was like everything else didn't matter, even though I had this amazing season. I expected so much more out of myself. But, I took the time to be sad and was able to analyze the race. It happens to everybody.

I've also been fortunate to have sessions with a Sports Psychologist who works for Team Canada. And I really should have made the time to see her before that race. I think that would have helped a lot.

(In long-distance running) you have so much time to think and to doubt yourself. It’s a huge mental game. So you have to try your?best to shut your brain off in the first half to conserve mental energy.?You can do this by just having a plan in place.?

At the (2018) Commonwealth Games I was like, “You're getting a medal for this”. And I never wavered on that, even into the final stretch. I got 5th but I was one-second from 3rd place.

I never stopped believing that I was going to get it, and it took me a long time to get to that place. I'm 38 and I’m just learning now how to go all the way to the end and continue to think,

“No, you're not giving up. You're going to fight. You're going to fight all the way to the end.”

It's incredibly exhausting. It takes a lot of recovery after the fact because it zaps you. Your whole body becomes fatigued because of how focused you have to be in the race. It's crazy.

You get to stages of races where you're like, "I can't... I can't do this”. And it’s been so many times that's happened to me. So I worked on that with my Sports Psychologist. She asked, “What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you're struggling?" and I said, “I can't do this”.?And she said, “I want you to change that to: YES, I CAN.”?

Sometimes you just need a reminder, a few words that can snap you out of it, because you really can. It is possible, but you have to believe it.

Now when things start to get tough I say, “Yes, you can”.

And I’ll continue to repeat that and other phrases like, "This is your race” or “Today’s your day.”

(End of interview.)

In the year she turns 40, on the morning of August 7, 2021 in Sapporo, Japan, Tasha finished 13th out of 88 starters and 73 finishers in the Tokyo 2020 Marathon.

She posted to Instagram about how thrilled she was for this finish. After knowing what I know about her, I'm thrilled FOR her.

It WAS your day Tasha. And yes, you did. Thank you for being so open about your journey. Now I’m inspired once more to go for gold in my very non-Olympian life.

By Penny Greening