I’m Burlington’s Pan Am Community Torchbearer!

4 Comments

Um….. I WAS VOTED BURLINGTON’S PAN AM COMMUNITY TORCHBEARER!  I have held in this secret for two very loooooong months.  I found out about this result soon after voting closed in late January, but I wasn’t able to share the news with anyone until the Pan Am Games made their official announcement, which they did last week.

Believe me, this was a hard secret to keep.

The torch will pass through Burlington on Friday, June 19th, although I don’t know many more details than that.  This is what I do know:

Where:  Spencer Smith Park; this also happens to be the Sound of Music Festival weekend.
Length of run:  200m (and here I was hoping for a 5k! Ha!)
And:  Burlington is listed as one of Pan Am’s “Major Celebration cities.”

So to you, my readers, my patients, my family, my friends:  I thank you for granting me this incredible opportunity. And to you, Marnie, my friend, my neighbour, my nominator, thank you for igniting the spark for all of this to happen.

Mark June 19th on your calendars.

And come join me along the torch route as we celebrate the Pan Am spirit of community and sport.

panammap

C’mon, tell me you don’t have THIS song running through your head right now.

One click. One vote. One torch.

Leave a comment

I usually publish my blog posts on Tuesdays. But, you see, this is not a usual week.

I was just notified that I’m one of twelve finalists nominated to carry the Pan Am torch as it makes its run through Burlington this Summer, en route to Toronto for the 2015 Pan Am Games.  I can’t think of a cooler opportunity.  My friend and neighbour, Marnie, sent in a nomination unbeknownst to me, and here I am, excited about the impossible becoming possible.

Pan Am news is everywhere in the GTA.  Commercials abound, billboards are popping up, and the buzz is growing.  This is kind of a big deal.  Toronto 2015 is only the third time in 85 years that these International Games have been held on Canadian soil.  Right in our own backyard.

And it’s exactly the type of thing I love.  I’ve been to the World Track & Field Championships, three World Junior Hockey Championships, and a College Bowl game.  I’ve cheered at more NHL, CFL, MLB, NBA, NLL, and MLS games than I can count.  I plan family outings around sporting events, I time my holidays around races, and I nearly knocked over Mike Weir on the fairway of a PGA event (true story).  I am a sports-based chiropractor, I married a Phys Ed teacher, and my kids know that fitness is a part of life.  I believe that grassroots minor sports are windows of opportunity, growth, and dreams. I live and breathe this stuff, it’s what makes me tick, it’s what makes me me.  Passion?  Nope.  It’s more than that.

Sport is community.  Sport is health.  Sport is important life lessons all rolled up and condensed onto a playing field.

I’m a fan.  I’m an athlete.  I’m a mom raising fans and athletes.

So I am turning to you, my community.  I am hoping for your support, asking for your help, tugging at your heart strings, requesting your vote.  One click.  One vote.  One torch.

Please VOTE here: http://cms.burlington.ca/Page14733.aspx#.VJN5nrgYU

With my humble thanks,

Ashley

Torch Relay Celebration Community

I Ran a Race. I Won.

4 Comments

Yesterday I posted a status on my ‘Dr. Ashley Worobec Facebook Page‘ that showed a couple of pictures from my 10k race the day before.

My words were:

“These pictures sum up my weekend, and why I LOVE to run- this is happiness in its truest form. I raced in the 10k Hannukah Hustle in Hamilton on Sunday morning and I won! It wasn’t a big race, and my 43 minutes wasn’t record-breaking, but as 1st female, I even got a bike escort into the finishing chute and got to break through the finish line tape with my daughter in my arms. This first picture shows me stopping to grab her from the wagon (my 5-yr-old son wanted to stay put!) and the second picture shows the post-race bliss (and exhaustion!). Find something you love and throw yourself into it. The benefits will reach far and wide.”

And then I reconsidered, regretted, and thought-twice for a bit.  Should I have put this accomplishment out there, so bravado and look-at-me and I’m-so-great?  That’s not typically my style, not what I’m about, not who I am.  And yet, I really wanted to share this moment with my patients.  That’s the exact purpose for my Dr. Ashley page; a place where my patients can get to know me and what makes me unique in my time outside of the clinic.  It’s where I can share my opinions on topics that I think would be of interest to them- be it fitness, parenting, or healthcare.  I deliberately keep this Page separate from my personal Facebook profile, and that’s the part I’ve been reconsidering; why was I okay with posting this under my professional persona and not my personal?  Answer: because somehow, it seems less show-offy, less girls-shouldn’t-brag, less boastful, and more polite.  Somehow, I’m a degree removed.

All day, I’ve had people congratulating me on the race.  The feedback has been wonderfully huge, and Facebook tells me that almost 2500 people have viewed those pictures.  And yet, I keep downplaying my run, skirting around the compliments, trying to exercise humility after a showy post.  I’ve “aw, shucks”-ed a lot.  “It was just a small race,” I tell people, “I only won because no one fast showed up,” or “I was dying out there.”

Wanna know the truth?

I felt great.  I felt effortless.  I felt invincible.

And it was a small race and none of the super-fasts came to play, but it was still my first win in years, my first bike escort, my first finish-line tape, and the first time my kids saw their mama WIN.  An outright, unequivocal, black-and-white win that they can understand.  They’ve seen me head out into the pre-dawn cold Sunday after Sunday while they stayed in their cozy pj’s.  They’ve heard me huffing and puffing as I pushed all 80lbs of them in the double stroller on my last training run.  They’ve watched me cross off numbers on my training plan and cross off days on the calendar.  And then they saw me win.

I hope they learned that fitness is fun.  I pray they learned to seek out a passion.  I know they learned that if you work hard you get rewarded.

I recently read ‘Carry On, Warrior‘, in which the author, also a blogger, talks about how she has no shame.  She writes, “I’m shameless.  I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have.”  I can see where she’s going with this.  As my own blog grows, I can feel my filter loosening.  My take-it-or-leave-it growing.  My this-is-me flourishing.

This is me.  I ran a race.  I won.  And I’m damn proud that my kids saw it happen.

Ashley019