Night of Champions Tribute to Cliff

Cliff was taken from us, far too soon and I wrote some of this on the day he died because writing is my thing and I didn’t what else to do but write.

The “Us” who Cliff was taken from is a large community of runners who loved Cliff because he was our family.  “Us” is sitting next to you tonight.

Cliff was my family.  I’ve lived in this city as a young adult with no “adult” family members and he was my family. Over the last 6 years, I’ve spent as much time with Cliff as I have with any of my friends, save for my husband. Cliff dedicated his time, energy and love to me; nurturing my running talent and more importantly, nurturing my soul.

Cliff always remind me to enjoy the sport, the thing I choose to spend the short and long hours of my time away from my family doing. He believed in me as a runner. His belief in me has become my belief in myself. And beyond running, more importantly, I always knew that he believed in me as a person and as a mother.

In 6 plus years, he’s been with me through many seasons of my life. He was with me when I was a newlywed. He set me off on my honeymoon where I ran in wild Patagonia.

In those early days with him, I learned a lot from him. I learned what he wanted in running form. In order to do this, I had to learn how to interpret the things that he yelled at my across the track or the Commons. I got all the usual’s: “run through the hips; run relaxed; cycle through.” With me though, most notably, he used to shout at me across the SMU track, across the football team, to run like a tall, proud African princess.  This was a little harder to interpret than some of his other shouts. So I did the best I could until I heard, “Yes! Yes!” I wasn’t even sure what I was doing but it was good. I think of that all the time and I always smile and I always run a little taller and prouder.

At my first race as a Cliff’s Antique, it was a half marathon, Cliff was standing at the 1km to go line, like he usually was. As I approached, he shouting at me, “1:27!! 1:27!!!” I still don’t really know what he meant. The race clock wasn’t at 1:27 yet, there was still 1 km to go. But I ran a PB that day, while his message wasn’t clear, his support certainly was.

Those were my newlywed days.

After another few half marathons and a 3rd Boston, Cliff was then with me for my biggest running challenge across an African country, all 430km across it. I made it across that country on legs and an engine that he trained and with his words of encouragement and wise advice in my pocket.  I remember the day that I told Cliff that I wanted to run across The Gambia to help children.  I avoided telling him until the last moment possible but in hindsight, there was no needs for that. Most people said, “What?! Are you crazy?” He said, “I think you are a very lucky girl.”  Many of us heard that so very often.

While I was running in West Africa, I was lucky to work with CBC’s Dick Miller to produce a 24-minute radio documentary. I mention Cliff three separate times in that documentary, though it’s less than 30 minutes long. The run in Gambia was my journey. Cliff was always clear that he could help us prepare but we had to pull the race, the run, the event off. Yet, I talk about him often because he was so wrapped up in my journey.

As I ran in Gambia, children would join me and each time, I would think about how much I would love for Cliff to see these kids with their pristine and effortless running form and their bare feet. It’s some comfort to me that he experienced this in Kenya.

Cliff was with me as I became a coach for young teens.  We spent many hours at high school track meets together, it was our thing.  On March 13, when I returned to work from maternity leave, I work as a youth health centre nurse at Prince Andrew High School, I told the school athletic advisor that I couldn’t coach track and field, that I wanted to spend time with my own kids and not someone else’s. Then Cliff died 10 days later and I found myself volunteering to coach the distance runners. I felt like I had to do it because it was Cliff and I’s thing. I’ve spent the last 3 Wednesdays at Beazley track with my high school team, my own 2 kids running and crawling around the track and playing in the long jump pit. Cliff’s original female star Janet and her husband and fellow Cliff’s Antique Normand are there as my coaching sidekicks. They were looking for that Cliff connection too.

Cliff was one of the first people with whom I shared the joyful news of my first pregnancy in August of 2011. Then he trained me as I grew my sweet firstborn in utero, all the way through January until there was too much snow on the ground and too much baby ‘round my belly.

If you ran with Cliff, you understood that he would rarely speak to you personally about how well he thought you were doing. Or when you drove him crazy. But he sure told everyone else! By January that year, when I was about 7 months pregnant, in a mild winter, word started getting back to me that he was saying things like, “She just keeps bigger! She’s bigger every week!”  But I managed to stay with him on a snowless track all the way to mid January.

Cliff fittingly met my sweet baby girl at the track and he was with me while she grew into a gorgeous toddler and then preschooler. Whenever she saw Cliff, which was often, she would run into his arms and he would pick her up. “Oh, I love that smile!” he’d say.

Cliff was with me as I came back from that pregnancy to set all new personal bests at every distance I ran. On a cold November day that year I was running around 4:00/km for a vo2max workout and Cliff told me that I would soon be running 4:00/km for my threshold pace. Half a year after giving birth to a human being, I could hardly believe him. But he had such a remarkable gift, honed over decades, of predicting your runner’s progress. Sure enough, by the time we shed our winter running gear, I was running 4:00/kms for my threshold workouts and he had me running with the big boys, usually Kenny and Clint on vo2max days.

In 2013, under his hand-scrawled pen and paper training plan, I made the Run Nova Scotia Timex team destined for 10km Nationals in Toronto.  But I wanted another baby more. Once again, a second time, Cliff was one of the first people to know that I was very happily expecting another baby.  The second time around, my runner’s body was more mother’s body and Cliff helped me confidently hang up my sneakers, step away from the National team and focus on my family. I didn’t miss running during the last 6 months of my second pregnancy but I missed Cliff.

This season, Cliff was with me as I’ve grown into both a runner and a mother of two young children, he helped me reclaim my runner’s body and my runner’s mind.

When I was slowly making my comeback after this second baby, I spent a lot of time running at the Commons around 3:30pm. I would run in circles with my 2 kids in the double running stroller because there are no curbs to negotiate at the Commons but also because Cliff would be there by the end of my run and I just wanted to be close to him. So many of us would head out the door on an easy run and find our sneakers unconsciously propelling us to the Commons or our corner at the Park just to be close to Cliff. To have him ask how we are because he cared so genuinely about the answer.

Most of the time, when I walked towards him, he would say, “How’s my girl? Always smiling.” Now every girl here is saying to themselves, “I was his girl!” I knew that I wasn’t his only “girl” but he made me feel like I was. So until I was ready to join him for the fast workouts, I joined him for camaraderie, for family. My daughter Regan got to play with him for a few minutes as runners arrived.  She loved to show off for him. My son Levi got to know his face.

There are so few people like Cliff on earth. Who give of themselves so openly, generously and lovingly. Countless times, I’ve arrived at practice and been the only one there.  Then Cliff would always say, “Ah, I get to watch you run by yourself. This will be very enjoyable for me.” Then I would be gifted with his individual attention.

Cliff got the best out of us because he certainly challenged us in workouts that I for one would never come up myself.  For example, during a half marathon cycle, 3 x 20 minute repeats at half marathon pace on a Tuesday evening.  On this particular evening I pointed out that this was 60 minutes of half-marathon pace running.  Like two thirds of a 90 minute half marathon.  Cliff says “Yes.” And I said…. “okey, dokey” and went out and did it.

Sometimes Cliff would say really funny training things without intending to be funny.  One night, we were running intervals at 10k pace, it was my first year with him and he says, “Tell me your best 10k again.”  I say “42:00.”  He says, “Well, gawd, we can’t be running that slow.”  

This marathon training cycle, Cliff was really busy putting all of our training plans down on paper because he knew he was going to Kenya. Something that wasn’t his strong point, your training plan was often promised for a minimum of 6 weeks before it showed up. Though the plan had trouble escaping his head, it was always meticulously planned including periodization in his head.

So this February, a mere 3 months into my training cycle, Cliff hands over my training plan and I’m looking at it and I see a long run that says, max 25 km, 20km at marathon pace. And I say… “Cliff, I’m just reading this, am I reading that this says 20km at marathon pace.” And he says, “Yes.” As if I am the crazy one.

More than the workouts, the crazy ones, the fun ones, the ones under rain and snow and hail with Cliff wearing 3 pairs of pants under an umbrella next to us, Cliff got the best out of us because he believed so fiercely in us.

Cliff was supposed to be with me with this spring as I ran my first marathon since becoming a mother, my first marathon in 4 years.

The week before Cliff left for Kenya I ran a tune up race that was probably the best race executed race of my life.  He called me that night and I was so excited to tell him about it.  So he was leaving and it was the end of my maternity leave and my baby’s first week of day care so I didn’t want to leave the baby in the late afternoon to train. So Cliff tells me that he would meet me in the middle of the day. I said no, that he didn’t have to come to the track just for me. He said, “of course I’ll be there” and hung up. As always, he was there. All those hours together… for years, he was there.

That was a Wednesday. He left for Kenya on Friday. Kristen and I drove him home after track and I hugged him goodbye and wished him a safe and happy trip to Kenya. I didn’t know that would be our last conversation, our last hug. His last words to me. We were talking about my kids. He patted the trunk of my car twice as I drove away like he always did.

Continuing my training after Cliff’s death was hard for me like it was for so many of us. Going into my April marathon in Nashville Tennessee, I had a resounding feeling that this was a body trained by Cliff himself and this body would never be trained directly by Cliff himself again and I damn well better make it count.  My goal was aggressive because Cliff had been training me aggressively and I wanted to go out there and lay it all the line and give it my best shot.

I want to tell you that I felt Cliff out there on the marathon course and that I achieved my goal. I wore my Cliff singlet and the best part of the race was certainly the spectators yelling “Go Cliff’s” at me. I felt like that kept me close to him. I could hear him saying, “you’re so lucky” as I toured through the gorgeous but hilly city on foot and as I met and worked with kind runners on the course.  I did set a PB in Nashville but in terms of that race, the honest truth is that I started the race with tears streaming down my face. As I passed the 1km to go mark, his absence was crushing.

But this is the way that it is now and we will run on together because we have to. Look around you tonight, at this community that Cliff pulled together simply by virtue of who he was. He brought so many of us together.  Amidst the grief and sadness, this shines brightly and it matters. In conversation about what Cliff left behind, all of us together, my dear friend Sarah remarked, “the running is almost secondary.”  

In this post-cliff world, we all run on together because we have to and because there is no other option. Cliff left pieces of himself in all of us and we each have to become someone’s person. I can see it happening. Tash reached out to me right before my marathon with words, gems, that Cliff had said to her about me. Mike’s my person, he can dispense Cliff’s wisdom to me when I need. Nadia calls me for workout advice.  And I know that it continues down the line.

We keep running together.

My kids spend lots of time running with me in the running stroller, especially at the Commons. Every time I take them there, we swing through that North stretch, my smart daughter who is now 3 shouts, “Mommy, where is Cliff? I want to see Cliff?!”  He’s the first person in her little life that she’s lost. We had a dreadful winter and when the snow finally melted and the sidewalks cleared in mid-April, I took her and my son for a run at the Commons and as we ran by Cliff’s post, she asked to see Cliff. I told her we’d talk about it later.

When we got home, we talked about what happened to Cliff in a very little girl way, about how he died and that meant we wouldn’t be able to see him anymore because he wasn’t a person anymore but that he loved her very much and we can’t see him but he’s watching her from his place in the sky.  She was quiet and didn’t say much and just moved on with her toys. But then about 15 minutes later, she climbed up on the couch to look out the window and she told me that she was looking at Cliff in the sky and I knew that she understood in her own way.

The Friday of Cliff’s graveside ceremony was show-and-tell at her day care and before I even know about the ceremony, she had decided that she was going to take this pretty hideous antique ragdoll that Cliff had given her. The ragdoll’s name is Little Cliff, as an aside, Little Cliff has long braided hair and wears an apron over her dress. So that Friday morning, I know I am going to work and then to the cemetery and we are leaving the house together and she’s dragging little Cliff by her hair and when we step out onto the patio, she looked up at the sky and told me that she was looking up there for Cliff and that he was looking for her.

She will continue to ask and talk about Cliff every time we are at the Commons because she is 3 and a 3 year old is often on repeat. We’ll talk about how he’s in the sky. She’ll look upward while I look forward. I will see him there, at his post at the Commons: messenger bag slung over your back, cell phone open to timer in hand, gleefully, happily putting our tribe through our work.

We keep looking upward and forward.