Imagine a polar bear. Now imagine that polar bear is charging through a dense forest. A polar bear has no place in a dense forest, so imagine the polar bear in a panic driven rage smashing through branches and knocking over trees to get through the forest as fast as it can. You have just imagined Elliot trail running.

In his earlier life, Elliot found success swimming far and represented Canada in swims ranging from 400m to 10km. (He was also on a 4x200m relay once at FISU but he was definitely the fourth guy on that team so he chooses not to bring that up.) Despite a lifetime spent in the water, Elliot has an irrational fear of drowning. Despite an irrational fear of drowning, Elliot now only chooses to swim in openwater situations where the possibility of drowning is slightly higher; the slight fear of death distracts him from the nagging sensation that he’s probably done this before.

At first Elliot found running extremely unpleasant. However over time he came to enjoy it. The simple prompt from a friend to actually train for a race sent him down the rabbit hole. Elliot now enjoys planning, over planning, and eventually crushing running goals. As a side effect of this (especially the over planning) Elliot suffers from half a dozen running related ailments. Elliot enjoys planning out the recovery of said ailments.

Elliot has many latent nomadic tendencies and is constantly researching how he could pull-off living in a van, a cabin deep in the woods or even on a boat. Elliot’s ultimate goal is really just to play in the woods all the time and not have to deal with people. Elliot yearns to be a hermit but worries it might get lonely.

During the week, Elliot pretends to manage a software QA team while he day dreams about playing in the mountains. When not training Elliot drinks enough coffee to maintain an aerobic heart rate zone.

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Currently coached by Gillian Moody of B78 Coaching.