Neither snow nor rain nor heat stopped an Okotoks runner from hitting the streets.
Former novice runner Jovette Morin-Ferguson took up the sport full bore in late 2017 when she made a commitment to run 30 consecutive days outdoors in an effort to get in better shape.
She went way beyond that and is now aiming for four-digits.
“On Dec. 3, 2017 I said I would run for a month without missing a day,” said the 63-year-old Ferguson. “So I did it for a month and then I said ‘let’s do it for a year. Now I am going for a 1,000 days.”
She started running in an effort to lose some weight. After dropping some pounds, she plateaued and felt running might help her shed a few more.
“I thought if I would run every day, I would lose some weight,” she said. “I started at 232 [pounds] and I am down to 168. I have so much more energy and I feel stronger.”
You need energy to convince yourself to run at near -30C weather with an Ian Tyson like “And those winds sure can blow cold way out there” breeze in your face.
“At minus -28 you can still run pretty well,” said Morin-Ferguson, who knows about cold having grown up in northern Quebec. “The hardest is when there is heavy snow and it sticks to her shoes. You have the weight of the shoes and you have to keep running.”
She gives a major thumb’s up to the Town of Okotoks for keeping the pathways cleared.
“They are fantastic about the pathways,” she said.
The Town can’t do anything about the sun. She estimates the hottest temperatures were close to 30C last summer. She opted to run at around 5 a.m. to beat the heat.
“Last summer was really hard with the smoke,” Morin-Ferguson said. “You run, but you can hardly breathe because of the smoke.”
Of course, not all of her running is in Okotoks — that was hard to do during her 2018 Christmas break to her native Quebec.
“We drove here,” Morin-Ferguson said. “We stopped in Moose Jaw so we had to find a place to run. We ran in Minneapolis and we ran in Chicago in a snowstorm.
“We scout around for places around our hotel that is safe to run.”
And when she runs, she runs. She ruled out the famed walk-run favoured by many beginners — and experienced — runners right from the get-go back in December of 2017.
“Everybody said ‘do the walk and run,’” she said with a chuckle. “And I said: ‘if I stop, I will never start again. I just start and run all the way.”
Her first runs were just under 3Km she is now running about 5km and maybe 8km on the weekend. Morin-Ferguson is a traditionalist — preferring to listen to the birds and the squirrels rather than rock and roll from her earphones.
And knock on wood, she hasn’t faced any injuries during her run, other than cold cheeks.
“People ask me ‘what about your knees, what about your knees?’’’ Morin-Ferguson said with a laugh. “I say to them ‘why the heck did you not care about them when I was 232 pounds? “It was way harder on my knees then than now.”