Since my first race of the season all the way back in April, I haven’t had a single period of more than six weeks without a race.

Is it over-racing? Le Duh.

Is it fun? Le Fun.

If you’re an elite runner wanting to do your best, while also thoroughly enjoying your experience – which do you prioritize?

For me -> Le Fun > Le Duh.

I mean, it was no secret that racing Harricana three weeks after the National Champs for 50K in Squamish could be considered too much. Le Duh. But something kept on calling to me when it came to Harricana. I felt a gravitational pull to the event, and I didn’t want to wait until next year to have my first stab at another one of Canada’s most popular weekends. Le Fun.

The questions were asked of me. Would it hinder my ability to do my final two races of the season – the Mountain Running Championships and Bromont 55K? I said not, but that it might impact training for those two races. Le Duh.

But as I’ve outlined: Le Fun > Le Duh. So I chose to do Harricana and had an absolute ball, balling out. Racing experiences are always useful, and coming away with a supremely smart racing day will serve me well in the grand scheme of gaming the system over the long-term.

But there’s another underlying problem here within the equation of Le Fun vs. Le Duh.

The day before flying out to Oregon for the Gorge Waterfalls 50K in April, my first race of the season, I picked up a quad injury. I then raced on that injury, expecting to do well. Instead of doing well, I catastrophically blew up like a grade five science experiment 🌋.

For the grade fives, they get an A+ if their volcano explodes. For trail runners, they get detention. Two weeks without recess.

If only that was the end of it. But after getting detention once, my body continued to rebel, personifying itself within this bad boy mentality. Overcompensation injuries followed one after the other.

Sulphur Springs -> Baker’s cyst. Barely trained, did very little speed work.

Quebec Mega Trail -> Baker’s cyst, but a great training block nonetheless. Came into the race very fit. Bad luck! Fell early on and injured my other quad.

Squamish 50K -> Plantar fasciitis, then this weird unsolvable knee issue. Is it quad tendonitis? Knee tendonitis? A combination of both? I raced outside of myself nonetheless.

The knee issue remained, but I had little else to look forward to in life following the conclusion of my job. I went to La Malbaie to train and race Ultra-Trail Harricana 42K, and spent the entire time dealing with the same knee problem. With that…

UTHC -> Knee problem. Nothing’s working. It won’t go away. Compensation injury once more, with my posterior tibialis (apparently that’s a thing in the body!) stressing out now too.

Probably as a result of my post-trivia timothée chalamet, I’ve actually come back from UTHC with a much different approach to every other race I’ve had this year.

Gorge Waterfalls 50K -> Injured zombie, but can’t wait to run again!🧟

Sulphur Springs 20K -> Slightly sore, but can’t wait to run again!

Quebec Mega Trail 50K -> Injured undead zombie, but can’t wait to run again!

Squamish 50K -> Injured zombie, but can’t wait to run again!🧟

It’s completely different this time…

UTHC 42K -> Injured and completely un-zombie-like, yet don’t have that same motivation to run again.

It must be the injuries. It must be this feeling of not wanting to make anything worse. It must be the knowledge of what’s at stake with the final two races of the season before I can take a legitimate rest. (Literally nothing except having fun and maybe wanting to live in Quebec for October).

But for the first time that I can remember since stepping into the trails, I don’t have that same desire to start running again ahead of my next race.

In fact, I’m giving myself a full two weeks off, even though I only have six to go until Bromont. I want this knee injury to go away. I want this posterior trivia-paralysis to go away. I want to get healthy again.

I’ve even booked myself a guaranteed four days of minimal activity (including cross-training) next week as I help XACT with the Montreal Marathon. The goal is now to try and stop writing articles about that damn knee, and instead write articles about how fit and healthy I am, going into the end of the season and beyond.

The goal is to stop swimming and cycling, and return to running, healthy, and uninjured.

An off-season sounds nice. My body clearly needs a rest. Thanks Bus Driver! BUT what if I took my off-season right now?

What if Defi des Couleurs and Bromont kickstarted my 2025 training year? What if Ultra-Trail Harricana ended my 2024?

I mean, that must be what people do when they perform well at Javelina. It’s a precursor to Western States the following year, rather than a way to close out their year in style. It’s a beginning. Not an end. Right?

So right now, I’m not pushing the recovery times. I felt a need to run again following Gorge and Quebec, and didn’t help my injury prone self in the process. If nothing’s helping this injury, hopefully two weeks will be the thing that finally changes my fortunes around, and grants me with a brand new knee to quadricep connection.

For now, you can catch me by the pool, inefficiently fish-like. Or, at the Montreal Marathon, where it will be my honour to hand you an XACT bar. Let’s hope this recovery goes to plan, and I can go into the season finale ready to have fun.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!