Armstrong hitting her stride

Welcome to Melissa Armstrong’s world.
While most of us are still in a dream state, her routine begins every day at 5 o’clock in the morning. She wakes up and goes for a run before heading to work later that morning.
She’s a full-time nurse in an operating room and she’s there, taking care of others, until 3:30 p.m., when she will then head home, catch up on some chores, and then meet with her running group at 4:30 and train for another three hours.
Home is next. Then food. Then sleep. “Then I do it all over again the next day,” said Armstrong, adding she also juggles her university studies and a relationship with her boyfriend of five years.
This is just a glimpse of the kind of commitment it takes to become an amateur athlete in Canada, and Armstrong, originally from Fort Frances and now residing in Winnipeg, is starting to see her sacrifices pay dividends.
On July 9, Armstrong competed at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in Victoria, B.C., and placed ninth in the 5,000 metre race. This event was an Olympic qualifier, and saw her compete against track stars such as Emilie Mondor and Megan Metcalfe, who finished first and second respectively.
“I knew that the Olympics were way out of my reach for this year, but just to get there and run at that level with those girls was amazing,” said Armstrong, who logged a personal best in the meet with 17:23.38. The winning time by Mondor was 15:16.21 (Mondor is Canada’s first woman to ever finish the 5,000 metres in less than 15 minutes).
But the race was a disappointment to Armstrong, who, like a child going for her first confession, was intimidated by the magnitude of the event, and said she didn’t perform as well as she could have.
“I really backed off quite a bit. I knew most of the girls from seeing their results throughout the world and watching them on television. And before I started the race, I kind of placed myself because I knew who was faster than me,” noted Armstrong.
“When I finished the race, even though I set a personal best, I still had so much more left, and it was just that I was afraid to go for it,” she added.
It was a lesson that will be well learned by Armstrong, who at 25, is still considered a rookie in running circles because of her late entry into the sport, which began five years ago.
Armstrong played an array of sports for the Muskies here in Fort Frances, but the school never had, and still don’t, have a track team. It was at the University of Manitoba, where she was taking a nursing degree that she started running recreationally before a friend, Danielle Huggan, who was a member of the Bison’s cross-country team, got her to try out for the team.
“I started out with the university team as a rookie and I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know anything about running, where most of the girls I trained with had been running for 10 to 15 years. So I still think I’m pretty new to the sport,” said Armstrong, who finished her degree in nursing and, in order to compete with the team, is taking a Bachelor’s in Exercise and Sports Science.
After being sidelined in the first three years due to a tremendous amount of injuries, it’s only been in the last two years that Armstrong has started getting “inspired with running.”
The first year it was a tear of the meniscus in her knee. Second year, a broken toe suffered during a cross-country race. And the third year, it was her most severe injury, as she suffered from planter fasciitis (an extremely painful inflammation of the fibrous band of tissue) in both feet and caused her to be out for eight months.
Due to her body’s unfamiliarity with what she was doing, she was especially vulnerable to injury. “I was injured 60 per cent of time because my body just wasn’t used to the training,” said Armstrong.
But now, after running many times around the block, her body has started to accept its master’s wicked ways and has grown to love it.
“I wanted to be able to give it a fair shot. And I felt that I was getting closer and closer, and I was improving, and then I would have an injury. And a lot of time when you get an injury, it just motivates you to come back twice as hard,” said Armstrong, during an interview in a coffee shop here in Fort Frances.
Armstrong may have been injured but she was never broken, and while most runners in her situation (beginner running level with full-time school leading to full-time work, a long-term relationship and mortgage payments) would have quit, it gave her a new-found motivation to pursue it even further.
And now look at her. At 25, she is starting to find her stride. She has begun to understand her body. Its limits and its restrictions. And a true love has matured for a sport that has started to control her thoughts.
“The appeal of it is going to a race and running a personal best or beating someone I’ve never beat before. Knowing you can go faster and wanting to go faster. Wondering how much more I can do and how much further I can get. That’s what gets me up every morning,” said Armstrong.
Running, it is said, is a dark tunnel with a light at the distant end; people punish themselves in order that they may reach the ever-receding light. Pain, they say, is a barrier which the runner must punch through in order that they gain a mastery of their body. Part pain, part pleasure—these are the cornerstones of running.
“The pleasures outweigh the pain. And I push myself so that I hurt and that it’s painful, and sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to make it. But I don’t know if I’ve ever pushed myself to the kind of pain like the elite athletes do,” she remarked.
Probably not, but who could with her schedule? And that is why this year will be an especially important one to Armstrong.
Depending on how she does this upcoming university season, Armstrong will have to answer a question that she always knew was coming—stop or go?
“You pretty much have to dedicate your entire life to it,” said Armstrong, who in less than a year, improved her personal best time by more than a minute.
“You have to be ready to make sacrifices. You have to change yourself and change your life,” she added.
“I think if the opportunity was there for me to go somewhere with my running, then I’d definitely pursue it. I’m only going to be young once in my life and I have the rest of my life to work.”
Whatever her decision may be, she has support. Her family has always been a crutch and her boyfriend of five years, Byron Goodwin, who was an outstanding runner for Canada and was a member of the 4×400-metre ’92 Olympic team, has been a steady presence by her side. “It’s like having a coach at home,” she said of Goodwin.
But spend an hour with the personable and pleasant Armstrong, and one gets the impression that as long as she stays healthy, her decision has already been contemplated, reviewed and made.
“This is a part of my life and if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it,” said the hopeful representative for Canada.
“Yeah, I might be poor because I won’t be able to work for a couple of years. But if it means having an opportunity to have that Canadian flag on me and represent Canada, then I’m going to do it.
“I know what I need to do. And now I need to push myself and do it.”