Real Life

I was born and raised in London, Ontario, and I never went too far. I call it the prairies of Ontario because it’s the flatlands. We don’t really have hills, but we have wind, so even doing something simple like hill training means finding the steepest hill nearby and doing repeats over and over again.

I grew up going to my family’s cottage in Tobermory, right at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, and we still have a place there. You went outside, and you were running, climbing trees, riding your bike and doing everything all day, every day. There were paths that followed the train tracks into the woods, and you kind of made your own trails as you went. 

Then and Now

Now they’ve built communities and houses in a lot of these places because the cities keep spreading wider and wider and taking over. It’s getting harder to find those spaces, so now I run at Fanshawe Lake, which is the local inland lake near London, and there’s a perfect 20-kilometre loop around it. You almost have to drive or bike to get to places like that now, which is different from when I was growing up, but it still does the job.

Running gives me the best place to sort through life, line things up and do some of my best thinking. Even when I’m on a treadmill, I can get into that groove and shut my brain off. I’m not actually turning it off, but I’m giving myself time to think, and running gives me that freedom amongst the chaos. 

The Illusion

Running became something more serious for me when I started my first real career at Western University in London in 2008. I was working in information technology support, and I joined as this young guy in his early 20s who was excited to have a big career at a big place where I’d never worked before. 

There were only two of us running the department, and the wife of the other person was a triathlon coach who ran a local club. She heard through him that the new guy named Spencer liked to run, so she invited me out to see how I could run.

At that point, I was a little cocky, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and I was probably about 30 pounds heavier than I am now. She placed me with five or six men in their 50s and 60s, and I remember looking around and thinking, why are you putting me with all these people? 

I was a little judgmental back then, but quite quickly they left me at every stop sign and every corner, and I was dry heaving trying to catch back up to them. 

That was when I realized my fitness was an illusion. I thought I was in shape, but I had no idea what that really meant.

Shifted Movement

I learned pretty quickly that there was more to being in shape than being able to go for a quick run. That experience opened the door, and in 2014 I went to my first Age Group Duathlon World Championship in Spain. 

I had my eyes opened pretty wide there because I could be complaining about sore legs, sore muscles or how hard it was to get up the mountain, and then a para-athlete would go by with a missing leg or arm, riding up the same mountain. You very quickly feel like you have nothing to complain about.

I want to feel movement, I want to be outside, and I want to feel alive. That year was really the catalyst.

A year later, I was diagnosed with a heart condition.

Stop Running

I had a new family physician because I’d been bounced around from doctor to doctor, which is pretty common in southwestern Ontario, and this doctor was concerned that I might have a heart murmur based on what he could hear. Heart murmurs aren’t uncommon, so I went in for an ECG and an ultrasound.

While the paper was coming out of the ECG machine, the head cardiologist at the hospital happened to walk by. He stopped, looked over and asked, “Do you know what you have there?” I had no idea who this person was because he hadn’t introduced himself, and I also had no idea what he was pointing at. That started a longer process of appointments, checks and genetic testing, and eventually I learned that I have long QT syndrome, with a genetic mutation involving the electrical function of my heart.

I probably shouldn’t run. I should live a sedentary lifestyle, turn the ringer off on my phone, avoid doing anything exciting and start taking beta blockers. 

“Every doctor I met during those first few weeks was telling me some version of the same thing. I didn’t know any better, so I thought, sure, load me up.” 

Why Not?

I wanted to see the specialist in Canada, or whoever had the deepest understanding of what this could mean, and that eventually connected me with a cardiologist in Toronto who still follows me today. 

There was still hesitation around me continuing to train. I went through all their testing, including the Bruce protocol, where the incline and speed keep increasing while you’re connected to a 12-lead ECG. Every time I do that test, I run it right to the end. They ask how I’m able to do it without an incident, and I can’t answer that. I’m just doing what I love to do. 

I decided I wasn’t going to live a sedentary lifestyle. I could sit still and not enjoy, explore or have fun, or I could just do what I could do. For me, that means defying the odds every day. I compete, I push myself, and I’m still asymptomatic all these years later. Why not?

Moving Parts

My dad was a physical education teacher, of all things, and he raced Hobie Cat Catamarans, especially Hobie 14s, at a very high level. He competed around the world and was a Canadian champion, so he had the same love of being outside that I have. He’s 82 now.

My mom’s family originally had the cottage in Tobermory, and she loved being outside. You could find her snowshoeing in the middle of winter or doing almost anything that let her be outdoors. She had the same heart condition I have, but in 2017 I lost her to lung cancer, even though she’d never smoked a day in her life. It was brutal, to be honest, and it happened during a period when there were already a lot of moving parts and different things happening in my life.

Around the same time, I had my daughter, Harper. There was loss and there was new life, and there was a lot to process all at once. Harper is nearly 10 now, and she loves being outside, riding her bike and doing all that stuff too. My partner, Steph, has two children of her own, so we have this fun little mix and this blended family. Steph loves mountain biking and rock climbing, and I’ve started branching out into different sports because of her and I’ve just bought my first full-suspension mountain bike.

Teaching

When I was called back into the office and expected to sit at a desk again, I couldn’t do it. Harper was starting school, and I wanted to give her the summers I had growing up: the cottage, playing, being free. That was a big part of why I moved into teaching.

I’m a technology teacher, so I teach graphic design, photography, construction and video production. If I can take students outside or bring nature into what we’re doing, I’ll do it. I never ran cross-country in high school. I was a band nerd, running the AV club, and when I tried out, I didn’t make it.

Part of teaching for me is giving students a more positive experience than I had. I’m hands-on. Give me a car and I’ll rebuild the engine. Ask me for a 10-page essay, and I’m lost. Now I teach at a hands-on school where I get to appreciate students for who they are and encourage them to be active.

When I coach cross-country, I don’t stand on the sidelines with a clipboard. I’m out there with them. At one school, I coached two girls who thought of themselves as 800-metre runners. They wanted to run a half marathon, so I wrote them a plan and told them I believed in them. They trained all summer and both finished in just over two hours.

They went from running 800 metres to believing they could run 21.1 kilometres. All I did was write the plan. They did the hard work. I believed in them, and that’s huge. 

Doing It

I’ve been told I couldn’t or shouldn’t do things before, and I’ve been told to sit still and live a quiet life, so I know what it means to find another way. I want to feel movement, I want to be outside, and I want to feel alive. That’s why I do it.

There’s something about being outside and breathing those different smells, that freshness, and being surrounded by nature. It could be a dirt-packed trail, singletrack or running through different vegetation and forests, but it’s just you and nature, which is where we all came from. 

I started asking what I could do that was different and wasn’t from around home. I wanted something that reminded me how beautiful the world is, and XTERRA felt like a natural move. 

Steph and I took the kids to Puerto Rico and turned it into a mini vacation. As adults, I think we forget to go and play because we get stuck in the grind. XTERRA offers that opportunity to go back outside and play like a child again. 

Connection

On the road, disconnecting with noise-cancelling headphones are great, but you still have cars going by, people everywhere and dogs. I’ve been run into by cars and chased by dogs too many times to want to deal with that anymore, so put me on a trail where the most exciting thing I see is a squirrel.

If I can grab a mountain bike over a triathlon bike, I will, and if I can run on a trail instead of a road, I will. I find it more stimulating, and your brain has to be switched on in a different way.

There’s something about capturing real people and giving their voices a chance to be heard. Everything feels a little fluffy and polished these days, but maybe you aren’t the most well-spoken person, maybe you’re a little rough around the edges, and maybe you have tattoos. 

This is real life. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like or how you speak. We’re all people, and it’s about connecting with people as much as nature.