Welcome to Running to Myself. I’m Trisha Stanton. Life and mindset coach, running coach and host of Running to Myself.
16 years ago I ran my first marathon. The process of training for that first race changed my life. This podcast is my opportunity to share some of the lessons I have learned about running and life through the many ups and downs of life during my almost 2 decades of running and learning more about who I am. It is my hope that through my stories maybe you will see a bit of yourself as well and find a nugget of truth and inspiration to take with you. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Episode 9 The Big Wind
Sometimes you share an experience with someone that takes on a life of its own and becomes one of your shared core memories in your relationship with that person. Stories that take on a life of their own. That is what I have for you today.
First you need a little background. If you have listened to any of the previous episodes you already know that I knew nothing about running when I first began. At this point I had run a marathon or two, but it was still very early on in my journey and there was a lot I didn’t know or hadn’t experienced yet.
Also, a little background about Joy and I. We have been friends for 46 years. We were elementary school classmates. We have been more like sisters than friends since the age of 7. And that includes sister fights and getting on each other’s nerves. After about 15 years of a long distance friendship-going to different high schools, college in different states, me moving out of country and then to several states other than the one she lived in, we finally ended up living in the same town and only a few miles from each other right in the middle of our raising kids era. It was awesome. We finally got to have shared experiences again rather than catching up over the phone. We are both lifers in this friendship journey and had learned long ago to take time where we could.
Dave had long since declared his one and done status with marathon running so I was once again running alone most days, but had progressed from wanting to run alone so that no one would see me to wanting to have someone there to pass the time. And to be honest, Dave had spoiled me by spending all those miles riding his bike alongside me while I ran, carrying the water, riding up ahead so he could have it open and ready for me so I wouldn’t have to stop and mess with it myself. He had the support role down to a science. He really spoiled me. Now Joy stepped in to fill that role and started riding her bike alongside me during my long runs. We would pass the time solving all life’s problems. She took her job as support rider seriously and we spent many hours covering 100s of miles over a span of about 10 years doing this together. During all those individual runs only two stand out on their own and I’m going to tell you about one today.
We refer to this as The Big Wind. I wanted to make sure I was remembering the details correctly so I asked Joy to send me everything she remembers from that day to see if we matched up. Here’s what she said about the new activity we were learning to do together….
I was learning to be a support rider. Ride ahead and have water ready so you didn’t have to break stride. Pack it all back up and catch you. Ride your pace. Ride ahead. Repeat. (Like I said earlier, Dave had really spoiled me. It turns out Joy continued to support my spoiled ways.)
She continued with: I learned to fend off dogs. Keep cars away.
That was our normal routine for each run. It took quite a bit of coordinating for us both to be available with enough time for me to complete a long run. We both worked full time, had 6 kids between the 2 of us who were in all the activities. Scheduling took effort and if a run didn’t happen at the scheduled time, it likely wasn’t going to happen at all.
On this particular Spring day I had a 17 mile run scheduled. If you live in Indiana, especially out in the country, you know that Spring can mean pretty intense wind. I’m not sure why this had never come up before. I guess I had been pretty lucky with the weather up until this point. That was all about to end.
I kind of remember noticing that there was some wind, but we were not prepared for what it was going to feel like when we were trying to go against it. As we began, the wind felt like it was cutting across us. It made the run more difficult than it would normally be, but not impossible. We were heading 8 and a half miles out and then would turn around and cover another 8 and a half miles back. I’ve never gotten to the point where 17 miles feels like an easy day. This was definitely one of the longer runs of my training cycle. I expected to arrive home tired. I did not expect to almost not be able to make it home!
After 8 and a half miles of the wind making it uncomfortable but not impossible, we reached our turnaround and prepared to head back home. It was like trying to cross a forcefield. Suddenly the wind was no longer cutting across us. It was directly against us. And it was strong! We still had 8 and a half miles to go. Running against the wind is no joke and definitely not my favorite, but truth be told, I would rather run against the wind than ride a bike against the wind. Joy had the harder experience in this. She’s the real hero or victim in this story. Here’s how she remembers it:
The wind. It blew sideways.
I knew how to downshift in the wind. But I didn’t have the stamina then to pedal faster in a lower gear after all those miles, and I didn’t have the strength to pedal into it in higher gear. Once I stopped to give you your drink I couldn’t catch you let alone get ahead of you to be ready for the next stop. I was sooo tired.
She went on to say, we should have tried not to run into the wind. Or not go that day. Also, later I learned to say no. Not going to ride into 30 mph wind. Not going to ride on ice. Check the weather. Not going to ride through rain storms or lightning.
And then she added what I had been thinking all along as I reminisced about this day…she said I still have zero idea why we didn’t turn around!
And that’s our Life Coach Connection…sometimes it’s better to turn around and choose something different. There’s something to be said for continuing on through something that is difficult, and also in some situations it’s okay to choose your hard. After I recovered from the exhaustion of that particular run I was proud of us for completing it, but we never chose to run in those conditions again. We learned to determine the weather conditions ahead of time and created a decision making process around when we would continue through the weather or reschedule. We no longer chose to run if the wind could make the road signs turn sideways. IN other words, we learned to see the signs of what we did not want to take part in and made decisions based on that information. How does this extend to regular everyday life? I have a couple of thoughts to offer today. First of all, when we learn new information we can use it to become better equipped to make a decision. Maybe that decision means you decide to do something differently than you would have before. Does that mean you were wrong before? Not necessarily. It could just be that you made the best decision based on the information you had and now that you have new information, you are making a new and different decision based on what you now know. It doesn’t make you wrong. It’s okay to change your mind as you become more informed.
The next idea that I want to offer you is in relation to emotional pain. I talked in last week's episode about accepting the 50/50 of life, that we all experience pain in our life. It is also true that some of the pain we experience is unnecessary and comes from our thoughts about a situation. This is a big topic and one that I coach on often. I’m just going to skim the surface right now to give you this idea. When I am managing my mind effectively and I notice I am in emotional pain I look at where it is coming from -is it necessary pain or could I choose something else. Is there an easy and effective way to solve that pain? If so, I can take action to feel better.
Another way to think about this is that I never want to be so rigid about how I think something should be that it makes me blind to what it actually is.
One more thing before I let you go…September is National Recovery Month. The purpose is to increase public awareness surrounding mental health and addiction recovery.
Current statistics show that SUD is on the rise. It is more than likely that someone you know struggles with SUD whether you are aware of it or not. I am going to be talking about this all month in my Facebook group, The Simple Truth Coaching. The people I am reaching out to are the people who love someone who struggles with SUD. People who battle addiction have people who love them and those people, the families, friends and loved ones experience a unique pain because of this disease. I know this because it is my story. Beginning later this month, I am going to be offering a series of workshops specifically designed to address the unique needs of those like me who have a loved one with SUD. If you know someone who you think would benefit from this conversation, please direct them to my Facebook group or my webpage. This is the beginning of an important and much needed conversation for family members who are in a very painful and often lonely situation. I’m taking the first hard step in talking about it so that you know that you are not alone.
That’s all I have for you today, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Running to Myself. You can find previous episodes on apple podcasts and spotify or on my website www.trishastanton.com. New episodes are released each Monday. You can select subscribe or follow on Apple or Spotify to automatically receive each new episode as it comes out.
If you know someone who you think would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them! I will be back next week to share a little more about my training journey on the road to discovering my truest self.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about my coaching program or have questions about life coaching in general, please visit my website at www.trishastanton.com .
Have a great week and remember, Mindset Matters!
