WODAK Natasha

General
MARATHON RETURN
In December 2020 she ran her second ever marathon at The Marathon Project in Chandler, AZ, United States of America, seven years after her first marathon. She said she would use the marathon as a back-up for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she hoped to compete in the 10,000m. "Over the past seven years, the desire hasn't been there for me to do the marathon, but during COVID, with such limited opportunities, I decided that now is the time. Many of my friends and other women are running so fast in the marathon. I've been inspired over the past years and I want in on that. My reservations before were mainly that the marathon is so risky due to the high-volume training. I'd still like to compete at the Olympics in the 10,000m." (runningmagazine.ca, 16 Oct 2020; cbc.ca, 16 Oct 2020; runthenorth.substack.com, 21 Dec 2020; athleticsillustrated.com, 22 Nov 2020; Instagram profile, 16 Oct 2020)

UNIVERSITY CAREER
At age 18 she moved to the United States of America to study at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She struggled with the intensity of training at the university, and during her second year she moved back to Canada before enrolling at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada. "I was so naive. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I'm so close to my community at home, so I had a really hard time learning to cope without them. I didn't expect the training to be so overwhelming. On paper, it seemed so doable, but nobody explained how much it would really take. I was thrown into it and I got injured, ultimately, that kind of training just didn't work for me." After graduating from Simon Fraser University, she took a three-year break from competition. "The time away was nice, at first, but then you miss competing and you miss being really fit. I felt like I never saw my full potential or used my talents properly [during the break]." (sfu.ca, 22 Apr 2013; athleticsillustrated.com, 16 Sep 2012; medium.com, 07 Aug 2019)