Sarah Tedesco

The Choices Between Races

The second-year runner is learning how much of a season happens before the starting line.

Sarah Tedesco knows the exciting part of improvement: finish a race, check the time, realize you’ve gone faster.

She also knows the less convenient part. Training has to fit beside school, work, friends, and family. Recovery needs time. Fuelling needs attention. Sometimes the plan everyone else is making clashes with the one your running requires.

“You have to adopt the lifestyle of a runner,” she says.

Now in her second year of eligibility with St. Mary’s cross country, Sarah is learning what that means in daily choices. Commitment isn’t confined to the moment when someone asks you to run hard.

There are days she does not feel like training. There are also days when the effort is there and the belief is harder to find: what if all these choices do not lead to the improvement she wants? She recognizes that uncertainty without giving it the final say. The only way to discover what the work can produce is to continue giving it the chance.

“If I don’t try, then I can’t expect anything to come from it,” she says.

The thought is simple enough to return to when the larger ambition feels distant. She does not need to resolve her whole running future before the next practice. She needs to arrive, work, and let that day add something.

Her athletic beginnings were in soccer, influenced by her dad. Speed and endurance were strengths on the field. Junior high brought an invitation to cross country, but the sport became a passion in her final high school year. She joined for friends and fitness, then discovered how much she enjoyed training, testing herself, and setting personal bests.

That excitement still drives her. When doubt arrives, she returns to a straightforward idea: if she doesn’t try, nothing can come from it. Showing up keeps possibility alive.

This season, she wants a top-25 finish at the championships. Further ahead, she hopes to become an all-conference cross country athlete. Those ambitions give the small choices a destination.

Her mom helps her recognize the progress along the way, encouraging her to celebrate improvements of any size and trust her potential when confidence wavers.

That encouragement matters to an athlete learning how much patience the sport asks for. A personal best is easy to recognize. The quieter improvements—being more consistent, handling a difficult stretch better, following through on the day’s plan—can be harder to credit when a future goal occupies so much attention. Her mom helps her keep the scale of progress wider.

Sarah wants the bigger result. She also wants to remain the person who can appreciate getting closer, even before the result arrives. Learning to see both gives her a more dependable reason to continue.

Outside training, there’s a dog who qualifies as her best friend, ready for an adventure or a neighbourhood stroll. Time together gives Sarah a reason to enjoy moving without asking the watch what it thinks.

She loves the thrill of a new personal best. She’s learning to respect the quieter decisions that make the next one possible.