Runner aiming to finish collegiate career on podium
Janelle Hanna, 23, to compete in national championships
Janelle Hanna would love to finish her collegiate running career on the podium this Saturday.
The 23-year-old Peterborough native will compete in the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association cross-country running championships at Seneca College in Toronto. The Fanshawe College student claimed her second straight Ontario Colleges Athletic Association women’s title on Oct. 27. Last year she finished sixth at nationals.
It’s been quite a journey for Hanna since graduating from Crestwood Secondary School. She started her post-secondary education at the University of Guelph a choice she made predominantly to pursue track and field on one of the country’s strongest U Sports’ teams. Two years into human kinetics studies Hanna wasn’t enjoying her courses and wanted a change.
“The program wasn’t a match for me,” said Hanna. “I loved the team and I loved the training and if the school had been a better match-up I would have very happily stayed there but I wanted to do something different.”
She attended Fleming College for one year to get a pre-requisite course for Fanshawe’s medical radiation technology program, a three-year advanced diploma. This time the prime motivation for choosing Fanshawe was academics and not athletics. The fact Fanshawe had a cross country team was just a bonus.
Hanna flourished in a slightly less intense training and competitive environment and had immediate success in the OCAA.
“I had never won a cross country race in my life before last year,” she said. “It makes it a lot more enjoyable. Cross country is not really my favourite, I’m more of an 800 metre specialist, but I like the sport and that’s why I do it. It’s always been a good base for track. It’s definitely made it more enjoyable to be competitive.”
Last summer she got her track fix by competing on the Ontario circuit but this summer she has a 37-hour a week school placement at a hospital in Cambridge. She’s at a stage in life, she said, where she’s likely going to give up competitive running.
“As much as I love it, it really restricts anything you do in the summer because you have a really strict training schedule. You can’t really go away for the weekend and if you want to do any travel it can only be the back-end of August. I think I’m ready to redirect focus elsewhere,” she said.
The final year of her course is all placement. She’s still eligible to compete next year but it’s not looking very likely right now.
“I’m really look at it like this is the last one,” she said, of Saturday’s race. “For the foreseeable future, anyway. It definitely makes it easier to kind of get out there and say, ‘This is it. Don’t be afraid to go for it’ because there is nothing coming up after it.”
Hanna got off to a slow start to the season battling some illness and had mixed results. She said she made a tactical error which cost her a win at the Seneca Invitational on the same course they’ll run this weekend. It wasn’t until the final tune-up race at Centennial College that she really found her footing and used that race as a springboard to the OCAA championships. There she led from start to finish pulling away from the pack in the second half of the race. She finished the 6.3-kilometre race in 23:44.5.
Knowing the Seneca course, she says, and having experienced CCAAs last year will help.
“It’s an advantage to have run Seneca before because it’s a very tactical course,” she said.
“I would like to be up on the podium but we’ll see. It’s really hard to look at results and compare cross country races because you have no idea if the course was long or short or flat or hilly. It’s not like track where you can look at the times to figure out how people are doing. You’re going in a little bit blind but I think if I run smart I have a chance to be up there.”