Athlete: Faye Baldock

BACK AT IT’S ATHLETE AMBASSADOR Faye Baldock

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOU:

I’m Faye, 30, originally from England but I moved to Canada when I was 19. I have been living and working in the Bow Valley for the past 8 years. My sport is Running! However, I absolutely love Cross Country Skiing & Biking (Downhill, Cross Country & Road) as well as Fastpacking. I grew up with running as one of my main hobbies and ran for the local athletic club taking part in road, track & field and cross country events. In 2012 I started running longer road distances with my favourite road event being the half marathon. When I moved to the mountains I started combining my love of hiking with running and instantly took to ‘trail running’ which led me to the start line of my first 50km race. Since then it’s been a natural progression of exploring on my own two feet, covering distance, having fun with friends, getting outside, spending a lot of time in nature and finding myself on start lines for 50km, 50 milers, 100KM+ as well as multi-day races. Running for me is a huge aspect of my day to day life and the activity I choose to dig deeper. Today my focus through running is on structured training, under the guidance of my coach Jen Segger. I have big goals when it comes to distance with the heart & thirst to ‘race’. To say I am incredibly intrigued by the human body – both physically & mentally is an under statement. I live for pushing limits. I love seeing where my 2 feet can go. I love putting in the work. But, most of all I LOVE being outside!

OTHER PASSIONS OTHER THAN YOUR SPORT?

As mentioned above I really love Cross Country Skiing (both Skate & Classic techniques). I think it’s a great way to enjoy winter, explore trails whilst gaining mileage and vert through cross training. This past season I skied from October – May which was an incredibly long season and one which I still wasn’t ready to give up 😉 Throughout summer I love biking – road is great for active recovery but the adventurer in me loves mountain biking (especially riding downhill!) Although, I try not to get too excited on a bike as the last thing I need is to injure myself for my main sport which is running 🙂 Non sporting passions include photography! I really enjoy getting outside and capturing the mountains through my lens as well as astro and sunrise shooting (Although, these days I do favour my sleep and recovery than staying up late or getting up super duper early!).

WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE?

A typical day for me includes getting up around 7 a.m. & starting the day with some light stretching. After a hearty breakfast & coffee (I LOVE coffee) I then head to my day job (administration based) where I put in a 10 hour work day. I choose to have a shorter lunch break so I can finish work a little earlier but, on the days I extend it I am usually out on the trails at the Canmore Nordic Centre (skiing, biking or running at an easy effort) enjoying the fresh mountain air and the break away from my desk. After work I focus on my workout. The hours of training vary depending on the training session and whether it’s a run or a cross training day but, I usually train on average for a couple of hours daily. By 7:30 p.m. I am in my kitchen prepping dinner before taking a hot bath infused with Epsom salts, finishing my evening with a yin yoga & stretch session and 30 min of reading. Weekend days are spent out on the trails for hours at a time building my endurance base! There’s never a bad day living in the mountains but, I do still love my weekends when I can play outside all day long!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE TRAIL IN THE BOW VALLEY?

Ahhh gosh – this is really hard to answer. All of the trails offer so much variety and I love running on all kinds of terrain. Right now I am really digging the Horseshoe Trail system. I find I can run on the trails in there for hours and feel really good. The fresh forest feels, sweet single-track, greenery and smell is enough to keep me going. I also love how there’s no real ‘vert’ yet all of the rolling terrain adds up and you can easily get a 600m+ run in.

3 THINGS THAT MOST PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW:

-I used to work for Walt Disney World in Florida. I worked in a hotel called Animal Kingdom Lodge and my uniform was a ‘Park Ranger’ – SO FUN 😀

-I LOVE garlic stuffed olives (As in, I would choose a jar of olives over everything else as a movie snack) haha!

-I hate heights. Mountain heights / ‘birds eye views’ no problemo. But, vertical, narrow, ‘straight down’ heights scare the living daylights out of me. I feel vertigo typing this haha

ONE SPORT THAT YOU WISHED YOU WERE GOOD AT:

I love trying different activities and I love sucking at most of them. I’m a hard worker and I like starting from the bottom of a sport and progressing as time goes on (Seeing progression and small victories is awesome). One sport I haven’t really gave enough time too and one that I would like to be good at is climbing. But, the fear of heights mentioned previously kind of hinders that. Plus, all of the ropes, systems and safety seems pretty complex) I just like to move!

ONE GOAL YOU WOULD LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH THIS YEAR?

I would really like to finish the ‘Sinister Triple’ event I am signed up to healthy and happy. Sinister Triple is made up of the following 3 races; Sinister 7-100 miler, Canadian Death Race-125km & Blackspur-108km. They are back to back events with roughly 3 weeks recovery between all 3. If the races are cancelled this year due to the pandemic then I would still like to accomplish the 100 mile distance and spend most of my other time fast packing in the mountains 🙂

WHICH OF YOUR SCARS HAS THE BEST STORY BEHIND IT?

Ahhh – I have way too many scars in fact, if you look closely I think some may still have dirt and twigs in them 😉 I can’t say any one scar has a significant story but, there’s plenty of them and they all bring back memories of days spent adventuring (Mostly from when I get tired and my cadence lacks and I usually trip over the smallest rock & the result is a lovely gash in my knee) – Touch wood, I havent had any big falls out on the trail but definitely a few ‘oh that was a nice wake up call to pay more attention’ 🙂

YOUR FAVOURITE MOTIVATION SONG?

I hardly ever run with music as I like to be in tune with the trail, my breathing & of course aware of my surroundings especially for wildlife safety. But, I absoloutely love blasting ‘Following The Sun’ by SUPER-Hi Neeka to and from the trail heads. I love the lyrics “Maybe I don’t wanna know, the way home, taking on a journey, I’ve got places to go….If you’re looking for me baby, you know you can find me, following the sun. Somewhere running up my heart beat, I don’t look behind me, following the sun” … I am definitely someone who resonates with lyrics and these lyrics together with the beat definitely puts me in a good mood to smash out some km’s!