Way back in the mid-2000s, I attended my first (and only) overnight camp, away from my parents for an entire week. 

In theory, this sounded like fun. But in reality, I was miserable the entire week. I missed home, didn’t really bond with anyone in my cabin, and felt a loss of connection to others. 

Part of the ritual of this camp was a nightly campfire, where you’d sing songs and hang out by a fire eating marshmallows. 

For several nights in a row, I would just sit there… listening and watching, not saying (or singing) a word. Then I’d go back to the cabin in the dark, tearing up in the loneliness. 

A couple days in, my sister, who was also at this camp (and a seasoned pro at being outside her comfort zone), came up to me and said “You’ll have more fun if you sing along.”

I didn’t really want to sing in front of other people at that age. But I knew she was right. So I tried it. 

And it worked. I had significantly more fun. 

From then on, I sang along to every word of every song. I tried to connect with the other kids in my cabin and other cabins. I tried to enjoy the activities. And I had way more fun in the process. No more post-campfire tears! 

In just about everything in life since this moment, I’ve always been thinking about how I can make things more fun for myself. 

People that race against me know me as incredibly chatty. People that work with me know me as incredibly silly and goofy. People that grocery shop around me always think I’m talking to them.

I’m always trying to make situations more fun for myself, even if the activity is already inherently fun. 

And I’ve had a massive problem so far this year of not enjoying my races. 

I’ve raced three times this year, and I don’t feel like I’ve enjoyed the experience of any of them. Gorge was so speedy that I couldn’t keep up. Duchesnay was so muddy and floody that I got stuck. And QMT was a mental mess before it even began. 

Prior to this year, I can say that with absolute certainty, I enjoyed every race. I even had so much fun when my body thought it was dying at the 2024 Gorge 50K, and through a seismic blow-up at last year’s Squamish 50K. I’ve always been good at having fun. 

And I can’t quite pinpoint it, but I just know that I’ve not been having fun so far with my races. I’ve been having fun in training. But maybe because training’s been going so well, I’ve started to put more pressure on myself to punch above my old belief systems. 

I used to race really smart, knowing my relative ability really well. But with Gorge and QMT, I tried racing above that to see if my belief might be wrong.

And it still might turn out someday that I’m better than I think. But the early signs have at least been that I’m not there yet, and that racing aggressively is not necessarily the best approach for either my current belief systems, or for my body’s physical capacity to make up ground late in races. 

And one of the biggest revelations that I had immediately after QMT, is that I don’t want to race competitive races just for the sake of it being a competitive race. 

I want to race distances that excite me and fit into the grander scheme of my life.

I want to race in cool places at cool races because of the sense of place and intrigue, and not just because I know there will be lots of fast guys to stack up against. I don’t want the resume booster, if it means I have to pull all these extra strings to make it work.

And lately I’ve been doing a ton of things that I simply don’t enjoy around races…

• Flying.
• Leaving the comfort of normalcy and my regular routines.
• Spending extra money.
• Spending time unproductively.
• Missing work.
• Comparing myself to others that I know I’ll be racing against.

I know myself and I know that while visiting new places is cool, I like it best when I come back at night to a place that is my own.

My trip to La Malbaie before last year’s Harricana 42K worked so well because it was my home for two weeks. 

Every other race I’ve had greater success at, I’ve travelled by car. The majority of the time, returning to my home and community that same day. 

I like the comfort of normalcy and having easier access to all the things that simplify my life. All the things that are harder to come by when travelling. 

So once this crazy calendar year is over, I know that I’m going to be re-evaluating my racing plans for 2026. I want to do more local races, and/or ones with shorter travel times and better recovery times. 

I want to do my best to “sing along”, and work to have as much fun as possible at races. If anyone has any advice on this please let me know! Until then, be sure to see my race recap of QMT, and my latest newsletter about this topic! 

Thanks for reading, sing along, and see you soon!