Adventure Awaits

Initially, I was so scared of what it would mean to take the summer off….for my contract, my agent, my coach and what my running peers would think of me in general…..

That I am a wimp for giving up on the season just because I didn’t make the team.....

That I am ungrateful to my coach, agent, and sponsors for everything they have done for me the past few years.....

That I will get out of shape and lose all the great fitness I had.....

That I don’t love running as much as I should.....

None of this is true, however.  And as the days go by and I catch up on sleep and my body begins to relax, I realize how little I really care about what other people think.

To me, this is not that big of a deal.  I have been traveling to Europe the past three years and as much fun as I have had, I am ready for a change of scenery.  There are things in Oregon that I have always wanted to do-camping, hiking, mountain biking, bikram Yoga, etc. I have looked for an opportunity but it has never come up with my running schedule.  Post Olympics, this past year, I have found myself thinking about them more than ever.   Why should I continue wondering whether the grass is greener on the other side of the fence when I have a chance to go over there and see for myself?!  I refuse to live a passive life.  I don’t settle with something, just because it’s the way I have always done things if there are other things that I would like to do and experience.  When I commit to something, I like to be all in.  I am going to take this opportunity to go and see and do all these things so that I can come back and KNOW that this is where I want to be- wherever that is! 

Running or not, Happiness is one of my core values.  I firmly believe that passion comes out of happiness and success comes out of passion.  So wherever I end up after this summer, I trust that I will be able to be more bought in and therefore more successful than I would have been otherwise.  That is my risk but it is one I am excited and willing to take!

Slight Turn of Events

Immediately after Nationals I was gung-ho to go to Europe and chase a P.R. 

Since then, plans have changed.

I’ve decided to hang up the spikes temporarily and take an extended break from the sport.

I am headed back to Oregon for the summer.  My soul, my spirit, and my passion need to be recharged. 

I am scared, I am nervous, but I am also excited.  I did not achieve my running goals this year but I have decided to take this as a new opportunity, a wake up call.  I never wanted my personal identity to be defined solely by who I am on the track but in my dedication and intense focus throughout the past 8 years, I realize I have been blocking out a huge portion of myself and life.  Its time for me to be reminded again of who I am outside the oval.   I love running and competing and I am not ready for this phase of my life to be over, I just want to learn how to incorporate and express my true self through it better.  That is my new summer mission.  

Call me crazy, but wish me luck! Thank you for understanding! 

Rising from Ruins

In this sport, successes and failures can never be refined or extracted down to one sole source.  It’s a hard thing to try to explain, if you’ve never experienced something like it before…..the roller coaster of emotions your mind and body takes you through from the moment you step foot off the track through the days that follow.  I’ve always explained the sport as this volatile entity, containing within it the power to make you feel better than anything in the world when things go right.  With this carrot, it sucks you in….gets you hooked…your mind seems to be on its side as it conveniently blocks out all the pain of workouts and heartbreaks of loses to allow you to remember only this wonderful time when everything was perfect.  But the person who has been in the sport long enough, begins to see the whole story…this beautiful, amazing thing carries with it a threat to, at any moment, transform into quite possibly the ugliest emotions the human psyche is capable of. As if it were not enough to be defeated physically on the track, the wake that follows becomes a wave that can easily sweep you out to an ocean you were never prepared to have to weather.    Whether or not this journey is grounded in truths, it is a tough, tough thing to resist…in the defeat, you have realized that you may not have prepared your body to the level it needed to physically be to succeed, this makes you question whether you were ever mentally strong enough to get there in the first place….with this mental wall now crumbling, all those painful training miles that you were ignored in the name of your goal before suddenly hit you like a ton of bricks....your body is no longer held together by the inspiration of your mind and every little ache and pain makes itself known….The mental battle of workouts becomes tougher as you have even more pain to mask your physical body from….its a game of ping-pong between the mind and body until things either SNAP (you get injured)…..or just fizzle out and eventually flatten (you race slower and slower until you can’t finish a race without your body feeling like you had to run the last three laps through the sandy long jump pit).  

            This is what happens when you allow yourself and your career to be defined by one meet- the danger of the Olympic Trials or any selection-based meet.  Its caused by pressure.  Everything they say about failures is true….”Champions rise out of disappointment.” “You learn more through failure than successes sometimes.” While I have not been questioning my fitness this year (I have been claiming to be in the best shape of my life), I recently have been filled with doubt about whether or not I have the amount of mental strength to be successful at this level.  I guess this is my chance to see what I am really made of.  Everything happens for a reason.  A person is never defined by one single moment but how about a summer….Challenge accepted…..Lets see what I am made of…….