If you're lucky enough to be in the mountains, you are lucky enough.

When something bad happens, you have three choices: let it define you, let it destroy you, or let it strengthen you.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

This is where I am.

I am not Anna Frost by any means of imagination...but I had been pushing myself (in a combination of training and life) as hard as she had done in the her past years. I am not broken in a "normal" definition of terms, not injured like she was when it finally hit her. But at some level I am told by my body, in a different way, to stop, take a breath, look deeply, and re-think a lot of things. I can sign my name under what she said. Thanks for putting it into words, Anna...

Watch Salomon video on Anna's views on running, racing and life.

Thanks to Sarah Lavender-Smith for bringing it to my attention (and for transcript - I am re-pasting it here).

“I couldn't actually see that I was that bad, and running had become … the thing I had created for myself, so running was who I was. And that’s not right. It took until I got to the rock bottom, where my injury was so bad and my head was so far away from who I was, until I could actually open my eyes and say, ‘Wow you've gotten yourself really deep there,’ and it’s been a really, really hard journey back out of there, and made me open my eyes and say, ‘Running really is just running'. If you get disappointed by running, then it’s not running that you’re actually disappointed in; it’s yourself. You have to love who are, because that’s what you've got, that’s all you've got, and you have to be grateful for that as well. That’s what I’m learning.It took a long time before I could put on a pair of shoes again to go and do what I love, not just go and run. I’m sure it will come back—the drive to race—and if it doesn't, I've got a lot of adventures that I want to do, and there’s such a huge amount of life and the world to travel—to adventure and to explore—that I don’t need the racing to do that.

4 comments:

Carilyn said...

Thanks for posting the transcript. I don't know Anna, but I will definitely try to read more about her.

ultrarunnergirl said...

Valuable stuff. It reminds me of when I was injured (http://www.ultrarunnergirl.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-not-running.html) and couldn't run --how dark those days were. All because running was how I defined myself, at least in part.
I was lucky; through this injury I came to discover there were so many other opportunities for fun and meaning. I realized that I was more than just a runner. I think it has saved me from going down that overtraining/FOMO road.

Olga said...

So true, Kirstin, so true. So much more...

ALM said...

Thanks for posting. It's a good reminder to keep our lives big and full and adventuresome in many aspects, not just 1 or 2.