My Marathon Journey Part 2
As a nature lover and mountain runner, the idea of running a flat road marathon around the industrial part of the city, alone, was rather hilarious. It was the stark opposite of my comfort zone, but hey, growth never came from comfort zones.
Nurture your body, invest in your mind.
Whether you have any degree of disordered eating, mental illness, or not, we all have an inner critic that can both drive and destroy us. Athletes can use it to our favour; our inner critic can spur us to attack and persevere through hard training. But currently, many of us have more time alone with our inner critic, don’t have our usual outlet of competition to keep self-criticism constructive, and have less ability to properly debrief with our social supports. Not to mention increased social media use and opportunity for downward self-comparison! This perfect storm can lead to focusing on insignificant and unhelpful outlets, such as food, body image, excessive training or worse.
Acceptance: The best way out is always through
Athletes are taught to “keep the ball rolling” — but when life changes and we no longer know what the ball is rolling towards, keeping it going without taking the time to reassess is to risk moving for months in a direction that won’t do anything other than lead us haphazardly down paths that end nowhere near what we wanted.