The beautiful words of Rachel Seaman (CAN) announcing her retirement from competitions.

An impossible task, summing up the last 20 years of my life!

I surpassed what I ever thought possible and I’ve been bitterly heartbroken. It has been the hardest decision of my life to retire. At first, all I could think about was everything I didn’t achieve and everything I had wanted my daughters to witness me do. That haunted me for awhile but now that I can think more rationally about what I’ve done, I am proud of myself and the things I pushed myself through.

I finish my career being the fastest Canadian Woman of all time and an Olympian! However, the greatest gift I’ve gained through racewalking is my husband Tim who I have created an amazing life with and I am so excited for the rest of our story now that we are both retired from sport.   

I have known for quite some time that I was done, longer than you may think. The disappointment from 2016 guilted me into trying to fight for another chance at the Olympics in 2020. I’ve truly put myself through quite a bit of stress and torcher these past years, fighting against myself and against what I really wanted to do which was retire. I basically got to the lowest point this past year (started pre pandemic) that I just couldn’t push through it anymore. I retired or so I thought this past fall but my guilt of not trying just a bit longer got to me and so I started training again.

I really did enjoy it again for awhile and my training was progressing well. But then I started having overwhelming feelings that I just wanted to be doing other things with my life. I just haven’t been as passionate about competing and I haven’t had the drive to be competitive the way I once did. 

It took me 9 months to fully make the decision to retire, start to finish. Some may think, why couldn’t you hold on for a few more months for the Olympics but honestly, I didn’t want to train one more day haha. It’s been almost 2 months since I racewalked and I feel good about my decision. I don’t miss the day to day training (yet) but I miss the days when I loved it, when I was super fit and training felt effortless.

I miss the fun training sessions with old teammates and competing at the highest level for Team Canada around the World. But I have always said to those close to me, that I didn’t want to only be known as “Rachel the Racewalker”. Now that this chapter of my life is over, I’m so excited to be also known for other things moving forward. 

I will do some separate posts in the coming days thanking the most impactful people from my career so I can do their support justice and not just a few words each. I have been lucky to be surrounded by some amazing people who invested a lot of time, effort and love into me and I am forever grateful.  

Now what?

For now I am spending every minute (almost literally haha) with my girls before Tim drags me to the workforce where I will begin my duties as VP of our business, Champion Permits. I’m just excited to not be micromanaging my life and just do whatever I want and not worry about what I eat or if something I do will make me tired. Going on fun vacations and cheering on my kids at their activities. This is the beginning of the rest of my life and I can’t wait! Thank you all for your support throughout the good and the bad. You really cheered for me when I did well and picked me up when I was struggling. I hope I have and will continue to do the same for you. Now, let’s get living, cheers!

Rachel Seaman