This is my recap of the 2022 Medavie 5km Canadian Nationals Championships held in Moncton on Sept 11. Like usual, it took a few days for enough memories to trickle forward and for me to fit this experience into my head: it was so large and so spectacular. At the outset, I had a hard time finding the right words to even describe it. What would I title this? What’s the right emotion word? I’m going with “Fireworks.” A thing, not an emotion. But you get what emotion it creates, yea?
At some point over my athlete career, I found that I loved the 5km the most. I love it because it’s equation is a sum of your current fitness and hardwork + your mental tenacity. It’s as much about how deeply you can hang in to that soaking 5km pain/how long you can stay there without giving up on yourself as it is about expressing the fitness you’ve gained during your training.
So I love the 5km. In 2021, I was determined to run the qualifying standard of 18:30 to make it into the Elite Field of pandemic-virtual 5km National Championships. I had a PB of 17:33, paced by Michael-Joggler who also raced in this 5km National Field, but it was outside the qualifying window. It took me 3 tries. The first had an unexpected trail section, as soft as smashed up birthday cake. I landed at 18:38. The second was a 5000m on the track at 10am and 28 degrees where the whole field melted. I didn’t give up. Finally, I nailed an 18:12 to punch my virtual ticket. I got to put on a special virtual 5km with my own personal Eliud Kipchoge triangle with my amazing Road Hammer guys. In this “made up race,” as my child called all virtual events, I ran an 18:02.
This year, 2022, I have been focused on a return to marathon training after a self-imposed 5 year “retirement” to raise my young kids. I knew the date of the 5km National Championships. No “made up race” this year, it would be held live and with all the due fanfare in Moncton, NB. I was still simply thinking about that date while returning to 32km runs and high mileage weeks for NYC Marathon.
In August, the Elite Coordinator Stephen Andersen emailed me and asked me if I wanted a spot on the Elite Start Line for 5km National Championships.
If you are a regular athlete, regular mother-runner, regular person like me…. You say “heck-ya” when the Elite Coordinator of a Canadian National Championships asks you if you want a spot on the start line with the best runners in Canada. Many of them Olympians.
I said heck-ya.
The fireworks show started early. Before I even did the hard thing, I reaped the rewards of getting to do the hard thing.
First: my daughter. Raising strong, confident children is such a priority for me. I told my 10 year old daughter about the email I received, asking me to race. She responded:
“Well. Do I have an email from him too? Because I placed 3rd at the Muffin Run 5km.”
Hahaha. I simply answered that it’s possible that the race director hadn’t looked at the Lunenburg NS age-group race results when he was inviting people but also this National Championships is for adults.
A few weeks later, the Elite Entry List came out. I knew it was released when my phone started blowing up. My running family was texting it to me. I would be the oldest woman in the field. Well, there were two 42 year olds. I felt proud of this. I got the most amazing reception when I posted the Canadian Running Magazine article on my social media. So much gratitude!
My women’s hockey team all congratulated me the next time I walked into the locker room. I told them I hadn’t even done the hard thing yet! They didn’t care. To them, the time for congratulations was now- I made it onto the line. That theme continued up to race weekend. I am so touched by the amazing messages you sent me, friends. Thank you.
An important athlete-task before race day was fine-tuning the race plan with my coach Lee. Lee has been my coach now for more than 7 years, even preceding the birth of the Halifax Road Hammers. I sent him a data dump of my workout data for the previous 4 weeks, including 2 key 5k-paced workouts and told him, “here’s my data, I have an idea for race plan.” He responded, “Thanks. I have a plan too.” I had a laugh and told him that we could have a “pace reveal” at the last practice before race day.
Our plans differed by 3 seconds. We came to an agreement. In this conversation, our even-tempered, even-keel Coach had a coach version of a temper-tantrum about hockey. When was I was leaving for Moncton? I said that a hockey slot got canceled so I could leave earlier. He thought I meant I had been planning to play a hockey game on the day before racing National Championships. “What are you thinking!?!?” It was just my daughter’s practice I was talking about. This conversation turned to the 4-game tournament I was invited to play on October 14 and…. Lee canceled all hockey until after the NYC Marathon. “I have said my piece. You do what you want!” Our normally mild Lee was so wound up over this that I did choose to pull out of the hockey tournament. Back to running.
The next firework thing to happen was members of my Strong Women Squad insisting on making the 2.5 hour drive to another province to watch me race. My mother already accepted my invitation to come. Now I would be fully supported. How lucky am I?
Travel Day:
Saturday, Sept 10. Day before the race. I do my early morning hockey- mom thing, getting my kids to 8am practice. I do my shake-out run after. I have a well-timed surprise run in with Love Training More athlete Jody which is perfect. I need to tell someone that this is how I am feeling: “Nah, don’t want to do this anymore. Too hard.” Which is a key sign that I feel exactly like I should. She understands. I feel seen. Now I can carry on.
I arrive in Moncton around 3pm. I check in to the hotel. There’s a Technical Meeting for Elite Athletes at 4pm. I have time to get my bib from the “Elite Only” room and take a little stroll along the race route first. It’s a very solo stroll. I loved my solo drive. This is very solo. I have been surrounded by my Strong Women Squad for all of my athletic adventures x many years. This is jarring.
My phone is filling with texts from “best friend group.” They are all here. Just not here- here.
I go to the meeting. I don’t know anyone. I grab a water and look around and calculate where to sit. There are women at the back 2 tables and they aren’t talking to each other. Maybe they don’t know anyone either. I slide in here, a few chairs away. I don’t have any imposter type feelings in this stacked elite field. I did what I needed to be invited here. I belong here too. Within 3 minutes, it’s clear that all of these women know each other from competitions called the Olympics and World Championships.
Elite Coordinator Extraordinaire Stephen walks through the technical things. Route. Prizing. Doping control. “There will be random shoe checks after the race.” What the what? I don’t even know what this means. Are my shoes legal? I don’t know.
I am back in my room by 4:30pm. I have a mini-mental-meltdown. I’m not invincible. It’s just part of the experience. Via text, Meaghan fixes it. I ask her to run warm up and cooldown with me before the race. She agrees. I won’t be alone tomorrow. My mother will arrive. Meaghan and Brett will arrive. Michael and Jennie will arrive. Bea is already here.
Next up, there is a Pasta Dinner that the Elite Field are strongly encouraged to attend. Patched up by Meaghan, I head down for 6pm. I can do this. Wonderfully, the first people I see when I walk in are Road Hammer teammate Aaron Manning and his lovely girlfriend Aimee. We sit together with New Brunswick Hammer badass Paula Keating and my girl Linda’s friend Donna. It’s a relaxed and fun meal and then Elite Coordinator Stephen has the mike with the two guys who will be doing the LiveStream and they share that they are going to now profile all of the athletes in the elite field. They flash photos of the first 2 on the screen.
“It’s going to be an athlete roast!” they taunt.
We look at each other. What? Where are they getting their roast content, lol, they don’t know all of us!
Sure enough, they had photos of all of us and had gathered enough little tidbits to pull it all together. When Stephen gets to me, he says, “This is Erin, she’s a coach in Halifax and she skipped her daughter’s hockey game to be here today. She trains with the Halifax Road Hammers.”
Meltdown fixed, fun evening had, I tuck into my luxurious solo hotel room eager for the experience to come.
Race Day:
I wake up centred on: “I am so lucky to get to do what I love today.” The sunrise is spectacular over the Petitcodiac River.
The Open 5km, which includes the Canadian Master’s Championships, was running at 9:15am, steps outside our hotel. I head down to watch. I am happy to grab a few minutes with my teammate Ian, to share a fistbump with Paula and a good luck with Stacy. My mother arrives just before the race begins.
Stephen, Elite Coordinator, is standing at the finish line when my mother and I stroll up to see the end of the race. He says hello and asks how I am doing. I introduce him to my mother.
“You and Ben Flanagan, all about your moms!” He laughs. During their “athlete roast” the night before, when they intro’d Ben Flanagan, who went on to win the race, run the fastest 5km ever on Canadian soil (13:38) and narrowly missed the Canadian record by 3 seconds; this is how they intro’d him, “We have Ben Flanagan racing. He loves his mom. That’s all you need to know about him.”
Stephen tells us that they are talking about when Ben Flanagan won the 10,000m at NCAAs, he immediately, live on ESPN, asked “where’s my mom?” See here 🙂
We get to watch Ian and Paula crush it en route to becoming our new Canadian Masters Champions and I get to watch longtime training pal Mike Juurlink have a barn burner race too. From now on, I would love for all of my goal races to include a race to spectate first. It was the perfect chill way to spend the hours before my own 11:45am start time.
Now it’s time to eat second breakfast, get my race gear on, #fastbraids in and greet Brett and Meaghan as they arrive. Michael and Jennie are here. Jennie does amazing #fastbraids but I don’t know exactly where she is at this moment. I do my own for now. Then it’s time to get to the races.
Meaghan and I leave our bags with Elite Race Supporter Brett and head onto the course for warm up. It’s warm. Last forecast I viewed said 24 feels like 29. Can’t control. Just run. I see Sasha Gollish up ahead, with a resume that includes representing Canada on multiple international stages.
Meaghan is laughing, saying that she can’t believe she’s alone, don’t the pro elites have, like, handlers to keep them calm? Like race horses? I am laughing because I am the one with the handler to keep me calm. I am the lucky one! Meaghan, you are simply the best.
Now I have a fangirl moment because I consume lots of runner content and I sure know who Sasha is. Sasha stops to tie her shoe and we catch up to her. “Hey, it’s Sasha? I’m Erin.” I say. She says, “Yea, Poirier! I know.” We share some warm up, have a brief warm up chat. It’s pretty awesome.
I have warm up time to have Jennie re-do my fastbraids. This shared moment of running sisterhood feels good. My mother is right here too. This centres me. I am so lucky to get to do what I love.
Photo by Meaghan Strum 
Jennie <3. Photo by Brett Ruskin
Next is pretty awesome, I am finishing my warm up drills in a parking lot alongside the spectating field walking back to the start/finish chute to see the end of the Elite Men’s race. Stacy and Paula are screaming at me and everyone is looking at me like, “oh, it’s one of the Elites” and I pocket that firework feeling.
Halifax is pretty much local in this Moncton, NB race and I’m surrounded by my support crew next to the Elite Tent as I finish up my drills and strides. I get final hugs and fist bumps and it’s time to line up; 1 of 16 women in the Elite Field at Canadian National Championships.
I actually miss the announcer introducing me because I am talking to Rochelle from NB but I am pretty sure he introduced me as the oldest woman in the field. Yes, sir!
Stephen takes a selfie with the field.
This start line: just fireworks.
The airhorn goes and I know what to do.
“Do your job.”
1km:
I let the field go off the line. I’m committed to nailing Coach Lee and I’s plan. Rochelle is ahead of me, I am last. I knew this might happen. I am ok with it. Then Rochelle is next to me, then behind me.
“RELAX. Be STRONG.” These words organically pop into my mental race field and my race brain starts repeating them.
I hear Brett and Meaghan and have a smile for them. Michael and Jennie are a bit farther down. I float. I feel so good. I will nail this first km.
Lil smile for Brett & Meaghan 
Elite Photographer and Support Person, Brett Ruskin!
1km Split: 3:36.2, nailed it
I actually can’t divide the rest of the race into kilometers because I don’t know what happened when.
Through 1km, there are women within reach. This is exciting. Before the race, I wasn’t sure if the whole field would run away from me while I remained committed to following Coach Lee’s plan. The women are there and I believe I can start picking them off.
I start picking them off.
We hit the first 180 degree turnaround around 1.5km in and I don’t have much recollection of it. It must have been ok.
Coming off here, I think I have my first thought of: “I want this to be over.” The course was basically a double out and back. Four things. I want the 4 things to be over. The thought is held up by Evil Bitch Brain. NO! I push back. I’m not running this most amazing of races like this!
It’s just a thought.
I fix it.
My mantra resumes. “Relax. Be strong.” But this is not right. Not the right mantra. There is nothing relaxed about 5km pace. I need to swap this word out. I’m rifling through the mental filing cabinets of my Fierce Race Brain, holding up new mantra options.
At Cabot Trail Relay, “run like a hockey player” worked. I try that. The words are definitively rejected. The effort to access this pace is spiraling out of control.
My second km rings and I can’t quite see it. 3:3x. Maybe 3:38. Already ringing early, before the marker, from GPS error and also likely not running the 180 turn tangent. This sh*t is sliding out of control.
But not all the way out of control. Coming into the next 180 degree turn, turn #2, I think I have passed 3 more women. Jennie told me after she was so thrilled, “Erin is going hunting!” I was.
This turnaround is packed and it’s loud and it’s amazing. Earlier, I watched both Ian and Mikey J take this turn at full speed and pretty much land one foot in the flower bed coming around. When I was talking to Stephen that morning he said he tried to take it at full speed too. The better option was to slow a little into the turn. The turnaround cone is an old enemy of mine.
I slow a bit into the turn. The turn is a hot mess. I’m up on the side of my alpha-flys like I am on the edge of my hockey skate. Except your Alpha-Fly’s don’t have an inside and outside edge. Because they are not hockey skates. I know all of my people are at the turn. While I don’t “see” any of them, I hear them. I hear a loud “POIRIER!” A few seconds later, a sign pops into my consciousness: Juurlink. I hear ERINs! A few seconds later, I have an awareness of the names the shouts belonged to. Bea. Meaghan.
I recover from the hot mess turn. The young woman ahead of me is within reach.
“Relax and be strong.”
NO NO NO, not relax!!!
There’s no other word available. “We want this to be over.” Those words, this thought, is now bashing me over the head. No, not that either! I fix it. Organically, my mental filing cabinets hold up Doreen at the Blue Nose 5km yelling, “BE THE STORM!” Yes. I go with “STORM. Be Strong.” It lasts for a bit.
The day before the race, Stephanie’s text in our group chat said this:
You represent our province, our city, our run club, women, master’s women, mothers, working professionals, volunteer coaches and best of all “our best friend group.”
I don’t think of this whole text here but somewhere along here, I know that I have one clear thought of “represent everyone” and an awareness that so many people were watching and this also helps me keep a lid on the word “relax.” Represent was better. But I am now doing this cycle over and over again of “We want this to be over.” Fix it. Onto better words: Represent. Storm.
There are way too many thoughts in my head. I am not in my 5km zone.
I pass the young runner in front of me on the 3rd out. I am reaching for it but I don’t seem to have access to the 5km pace and power that I want. My 3km split rings and I don’t like the number but I drop that thought, I don’t need to assign any value to this. Just. Keep. Hammering.
Somewhere here, in this “3rd thing to do”, I finally put “relax” away. I finally get deep into to that 5km hypoxic, brain-functioning of a toddler, running wildly zone.
The 3rd turn, not in the same place as turn 1, is coming up. I have passed the young woman and proceed to forget she even exists.
There are many volunteers at the turn. There are many cones. There’s a sign on the ground that says “turn-around.” I have gotten myself so deep into the 5km zone that I can’t process what to do. Where do I turn? Why are there 3 lines of cones? Which line do I turn around? I ask myself this? Actually, it’s screaming in my head, WHERE?!?! Evil BB is yelling, “there’s a shoe check at the finish, you will get DQ’ed if you don’t’ do the turn right!!” It feels so high stakes. I ask myself again, “where?” The answer is: silence. The volunteers are silent too.
I decide that I won’t run around the sign that says “turn-around,” it’s too far to the right. That dosen’t make sense. I go with the top row of cones, behind the volunteers. I blast in.
“NO!!! NOOOOOO!!!” The volunteers are no longer silent. “TURN AROUND! TURN HERE.”
Eff. I messed it up. I turn. Eff x 2. The young woman I had passed turned at the correct spot. She’s now got 10 steps on me.
There’s about 1150m to go. I know the 4km sign is strides away. When that part of me wanted this to be over, this is where she wanted to be, with 1km to go.
My mental filing cabinet spontaneously offers up another image to help. It’s Dave Martin telling me that I never give up my long races, why did I spent years giving up in my 5kms? With this thought, I know that the only thing I have left to do is: to not give up and get to the line.
I do that.
I can’t wait for the crowd to appear. The crowd appears.
I have no idea what the clock is going to say. In a spectrum of a 5km race that runs from “dumpster fire” to “grind” to “magical day”: this has been pretty firmly “grind.” I have left the puzzle of what is happening alone; a key 5km tactic for me. It’s a surprise when the clock comes into focus at 18:4x. I take it. That’s what I had.
I finish with everything I’ve got. Crossing that line is simply: fireworks.
I hang on the rail for a long time, until I no longer feel dizzy. I know right away that I loved every single terrible-glorious-grinding moment of this. All 18:46 of them. On race day, as the wise running folks say: all any of us can do is hunt with the teeth we’ve got on this day. I have an amazing reunion with my support people. Am I ever lucky.
my Mom <3
My final placing is 12th out of 16 women. As the oldest in the field.
On my solo drive home, I have a lot of time to think about what happened to my performance goal. This is what I come up with.
When I woke up that morning and looked at my phone, the first text of the race day was from my husband. It was a video clip of the well-loved classic Eddie Murphy Raw, the perfect silly hype text:
Here is where I land on the performance. In your athlete body, you’ve got a bunch of different rooms. Marathon Door. Mid-Long 10km/Half Marathon Door. 5km Door. Track Events Door. In my body: Women’s League Hockey Door. I have been all in on training for NYC Marathon. I’ve spent a lot of time with that door open.
On that race course, I knocked on my 5km door and said, “Hey! 5km pace, are you there? Let’s go!”
Except Eddie Murphy in his classic Raw red leather pant suit opened the door and said, “WHAT??! 5km pace!?! What? Who do you think you are!? You don’t have any 5km pace here coming out to play! Are you the girl who ran 94km of weekly mileage the last 2 weeks!? You the girl who ran 32km long runs the last 2 weekends with 12km of interval work? Come on with the asking for 5km pace! You left her in May, when you started training for a marathon!” Then the door slammed shut. Lol.
The combo of the NYC marathon training and also the heat definitely skimmed off the access to the 5km pace and power that I was hoping for. My Hammer teammates Aaron and Cal had a similar experience.
The pro elites were also off of their goal times. It was predicted that the eventual winner, Julie-Anne Staehli, with her PB of 14:57 could take down the Canadian 5km record of 15:16. She won with a 15:55. Perhaps Eddie Murphy in his red pantsuit told her no too when she asked for her full 5km potential.
But in terms of best athlete experience? Heck yea, it was the best.
I regroup with Coach Lee the next day and he says: Lots of little variables can make fairly large differences in the 5km. Heat, solo, turns etc all things can add quite a bit for a 5k race. People were slower than expected across the board, when you see the pros running 45-60secs slower, then you know it was a tough day for many, so you should be proud of the result, and pumped about the experience you had.
Final set of fireworks.
And a final list of thank yous. Biggest thank you to Elite Coordinator Stephen Andersen who put on a pro event. I think he made everyone in the field feel equal and special- what a skill! Thanks to my mother and to Meaghan and Brett for making the trip to Moncton to share in this. And to Meaghan for being my handler and all that entailed. Thanks to Jennie for the superb fast braids and the on-course support. Thanks to Bea for staying around the city to be there. Thanks to friends Ian, Juulink, Michael, Paula and Stacy who stayed after their event to cheer for mine. Thanks to every single person who sent me encouragement and sent me love. When I opened my phone on the way back to my room, I had 67 texts and many more DMs. Those mattered so much to me.
Here is Canadian Running Mag’s coverage of the race.
Here are the final Women’s Elite Field race results.
