Even though most runners have probably heard of Deena Kastor, I’ll give a bit of background here to begin with. Deena Kastor is one of the best-known American long-distance runners in the world. She has won numerous marathons and other distance road races, she was the national cross-country champion eight times, and won the bronze medal in the women’s marathon at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. She has been running races since she was eleven years old and had immense potential at a young age, mostly winning the events she entered.
In Let Your Mind Run, Kastor describes how she was offered and accepted a scholarship at University of Arkansas where she went on to become 4 time SEC Champion and 8 time All American. However, it wasn’t until she was running professionally that the mental aspect of running began to click with her. After college she moved to Colorado to train with the infamous Coach Vigil (or simply “Coach”), where she trained with the men Coach was currently training.
Even though Coach constantly emphasized having a good attitude and finding the positive in everything, things didn’t begin to come together with Kastor until she began diving deep into the subject of philosophy, not just in relation to running but to life in general. She borrowed and read Coach’s book Road to the Top, and was told it would give her a better understanding of his training methodology. From there, she began paying more attention to attitude and how it related to training and recovery.
Deena and Andrew Kastor at the Mammoth Track & Field facility. Photo Credit: Joel St Marie
All of the books Kastor read on the study of the mind eventually enabled her to shift her thoughts consciously from negative ones to more positive ones. For example, instead of thinking how tired her body felt before that jolt of caffeine first thing in the morning, she began to replace thoughts of fatigue with ones of getting outside with her dog. She noticed her energy shifted and she was indeed more alert. When her legs began to feel tired during practice, she shifted her negative thoughts to those of realizing her legs were getting stronger and this was a good thing.
Kastor began to notice that her workouts improved thanks to her positive attitude and in fact her whole day was more productive and enjoyable. All throughout the book, she shows clearly how her life evolved and how her running was effected as a result of having a positive attitude. She does this in a natural way and I didn’t feel like she was forcing anything or being too “preachy.”
She tells the story how she met her now-husband Andrew Kastor and how their relationship came to be. From the start, he was one of Deena Kastor’s biggest supporters and eventually he went on to be a massage therapist and running coach. Finally, toward the end of the book, she writes about her pregnancy and birth of her daughter, Piper. Shortly after the birth of Piper her coach Terrence Mahon decided to move to the UK; it was then that Deena and Andrew Kastor took over the Mammoth Track Club and jumped into coaching full-time.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and how it was written. Even if you’re not a runner, you might enjoy reading about Ms. Kastor’s story and all of the trials and triumphs she went through. I believe everyone could benefit from having a positive attitude in life, so for that alone, the book is worth reading.
Check out this book from your local library or here’s a link on Amazon.
Have any of you read this book? If so, what did you think?
Also, I have a discount code for Nuun hydration. Use code hydratefriends25 for 25% off your online order. Shop at nuunlife.com/shop or nuuncanada.com/shop. Valid through March 6, 2019.
One of my first blog posts was titled simply enough Why I travel. More recently, a couple of things prompted me to write this post now. One, I read a blog post that was basically bashing people for traveling, saying they’re just trying to escape their lives or tick off a box when they visit a place. The blogger said people should appreciate where they live more and insinuated that people who love to travel don’t appreciate their current lives and where they live.
Perhaps some people do travel to escape problems they’re currently dealing with and others may travel to a place simply to get that “perfect” Instagram shot, but that’s never been why I travel. I love where I live and while it’s far from perfect, it’s filled with natural beauty and interesting things to do. We have greenways, parks, and other outdoor spaces as well as music venues, museums, and restaurants with chefs that could compete with chefs at plenty of other well-known foodie cities. However, I’ll freely admit that traveling the world has shown me this isn’t where I want to live for the rest of my life. When I retire, I certainly won’t stay in the same area where I am now. I’ve thoroughly explored the area around where I live and will be ready to explore other areas when I retire.
Admiring the view with my daughter in Austria
Another thing that prompted this blog post is I recently read a quote by Anthony Bourdain that I found interesting. He said, “It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.” This sums up my feelings on travel pretty well. The world is a big place and I feel like the more I see, the more I want to see.
I’m a huge proponent of traveling with children and my daughter has traveled with my husband and me to places she doesn’t even remember because she was so young. By the time she turned two, she had flown to Vermont, Florida, and Hawaii. There isn’t a single place my husband and I have traveled to since she’s been born that she didn’t go with us. Never once did I question if she was too young to appreciate a place. She’s been to museums of all kinds, she’s hiked in more states and countries than most adults have, she’s eaten food from multiple other countries, and experienced more than I could possibly write here.
Sure my daughter can read about ruins in Greece but she’s actually seen them in person, which is much more meaningful
As a parent, I’ve been able to see places through my daughter’s eyes, and see her reaction to places she’s seeing for the first time. I’ve seen her awe-struck and speechless more than once. When we’ve gone to a place that she really likes and has asked, “Can we go back there?” Usually the answer has been, “Probably not. There’s a whole world out there to see,” although there are certainly places we’ve returned with her. My daughter’s views have undoubtedly been shaped by traveling the world. She’s seen the kindness of strangers time and time again when we’ve been traveling. More than just looking at photos online or in a book, she’s seen things first-hand. This is undoubtedly a big part of why I travel as well- to show my daughter the world.
Travel has also boosted my self-confidence. Not everything has gone perfectly as planned when I’ve been traveling. I remember showing up at the place where my family and I were supposed to be staying for a part of our time in Chile, fully expecting there to be someone to greet us at the entrance to the property and help us get checked in. However, the guard at the front gate spoke no English. Finally with my husband’s limited Spanish and my broken Spanish, we convinced the guard to call someone else who spoke some English. She ended up driving to the resort, if you can call it that, and she is the one who showed us the apartment where we’d be staying and gave us her card with the instructions to call her if we had any problems because as she told us, she was the only person in the entire town who spoke English. Apparently we were there during the off-season, which means we pretty much had the entire resort to ourselves. By the end of that week, my Spanish had improved because of all of our interactions with the locals, but more importantly, I had been shown that even after a rocky start, we ended up having a great time and everything had worked out in the end. Over the years I’ve learned that gestures and just trying to speak the language go a long way. You can read about my adventures in Chile here: 15 Lessons Learned by an American in Chile and here: Las Cabras in the O’Higgins Region, Chile- A Test of Resilience and here: An American in Chile- Getting Outside My Comfort Zone.
Also, the more you travel to more remote areas, the more you want to travel to lesser known places. If you would have told me 20 years ago that one of my favorite places in the world would be the salt pans in Gozo, I would have said 1) I have no idea where Gozo is and 2) What exactly are salt pans? But I didn’t start out traveling to places like Malta (Gozo is one of three Maltese islands, which are off the coast of Italy; see my blog post here: I Almost Missed a Bucket List Item in Malta- Gozo Salt Pans).
The Salt Pans in Gozo
I started out like everyone else when I started traveling as an adult, going to places like the Bahamas, Cancun, New York City, and California. Costa Rica was one of the more exotic first places I traveled as an adult. More and more I began to branch out and went to little towns in Austria like Maria Alm, Zell am See, and Bad Gastein. We drove around Crete and got lost in numerous little towns and even had a restaurant owner open up for breakfast just for my family one morning. We went to New Zealand and fell in love with the country and the people’s laid-back attitudes. Beyond international travel, we’ve also traveled to 44 states so far in the United States and discovered the beauty in some less-traveled places like Rhode Island and Arkansas.
So why do I travel? I travel to have those moments where I’m stopped dead in my tracks and am speechless because of the beauty in front of me. I travel to eat new foods and drink new drinks. I travel to meet different people and hear their perspective on things. I travel to get out of my comfort zone. I travel to show my daughter the world and what an enormous place it is full of diverse people but deep down most people are caring, kind human beings.
Why do you travel? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how travel has changed you or how you travel has changed over time.
I’m following up on an idea from a blog post by TracyNicole at The Writing Runner. I have borrowed some of her questions and included some of my own as well, so thanks TracyNicole!
I know some of you have been following my blog for a while, and others may be new followers or maybe you just stumbled upon my blog and haven’t read a single other post by me. Regardless where you fall into those cases, I’m quite sure I’ve never addressed the questions I’m going to put here. So, I’m providing a bit of an insight into myself and encourage you guys to post comments about some or all of the questions that follow. It’s meant to be purely for fun, so let’s go!
When did you start running?
I ran on the track team in grade school for two years, fifth and sixth grade. I still remember running with some of my team mates on days so cold it made my lungs ache but I loved the feeling I got when I ran and pushed my body hard. When I started junior high school I decided not to run in school but just ran for fun on my own. I also didn’t run on the high school team but continued to run when I felt like it and this went on throughout college until I developed shin splints. After taking a few years off of running, I ran my first race as an adult when I finished graduate school and haven’t stopped since.
Not my first race by any means but I always liked this race photo for some reason
What do you consider to be the hardest distance to train for and/or race?
Hands-down the marathon is the hardest distance to train for. When I was training for the one and only marathon I ran, the Long Beach Marathon, I felt like the time it took to train was like having a part-time job. I was also injured with what seemed like one thing after another. Back then, I really had no idea what I was doing when it came to training for a marathon. I just followed some training plan I found online but I knew nothing really when it came to proper fueling, stretching, cross-training, or any of the other things that go along with long-distance running, even though I had run at least a few half marathons by that point.
I think the hardest distance to race is the 5k. The distance is just long enough that you can’t run all-out for the entire race but you can’t warm-up into it and speed up later like you can in a longer race like a half marathon. The 5k is an intimidating distance to me, even though I’ve run 46 half marathons, a marathon, a 10k, 15k, and 10 miler. I would rather race any of those other distances than a 5k.
Describe some of your favorite race courses.
One of my favorite races ever is the Spearfish Canyon Half Marathon in South Dakota. This course was downhill through a beautiful canyon surrounded by trees with water views along the way. I loved every second of the race. Not surprisingly, this was also my fastest half marathon to date. I also think the course for the Famous Potato Half Marathon in Idaho is one of my favorites. Similar to the race in South Dakota, this race in Idaho also began in a canyon and had several water views along the way. Apparently I really enjoy running races through canyons. That being said, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to run the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim and not in a million years the Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim.
This photo from the race start of Spearfish Canyon Half Marathon doesn’t do it justice
Are/Were either of your parents runners or active in other sports?
Absolutely not. Both of my parents weren’t even the slightest bit interested in sports of any kind. My mom couldn’t and still can’t ride a bike or swim and never even went on regular walks. My dad had a physically demanding job with odd hours so when he was home (before my parents got divorced anyway), he was often sleeping or working on his car or tinkering on things around the house. I didn’t inherit the running bug from either of them!
What is one weird/unusual thing you do as a runner that most other runners don’t?
I’d rather run outside in the early evening during the summer when it’s 90 degrees than get up early to run before work even though it would be 20 degrees cooler. In other words, I’ll run in 90 degree weather over 70 degree weather if it means I don’t have to get up early. Crazy? Probably.
Do you have a bucket-list race?
Not really. Sort-of I guess. Since I’m only running half marathons in the US now (only 6 more states to go!), I’m pretty limited with my choices now to make sure I finish all 50 states. Once I’m done with all 50 states, I would like to run Seawheeze in Vancouver. I’ve been dying to go to Vancouver, I hear this is a fun race, and I love racecations, so I think this one would fit the bill perfectly.
What about you guys? Let me know some interesting running info about you! Feel free to answer some or all of the questions I’ve posted here.
I got the idea for this post when I was listening to a podcast I often listen to called Marathon Training Academy. On the podcast, the hosts Angie and Trevor were discussing taking action and setting goals for running. At one point, Angie was talking about some things that she did during 2018 that were good decisions that ultimately helped her achieve some of her goals for the year. Likewise, not all of her decisions were the best which ended in not-so stellar results. Marathon Training Academy podcast link
While I was listening to the podcast and running, my mind began to drift to some of the running decisions I made in 2018 and how things ended up as a result of those decisions. I’d say overall, 2018 was a roller coaster for me when it comes to running. Right off the bat in January I wanted to do things a little differently and wrote about it in my post Shaking Things Up a Bit. One of the biggest things I changed is going from running hard three days a week with an emphasis on cross-training (with no easy running days) to running five days a week.
Running in the Canary Islands in my Topo shoes that turned out to be a poor purchase
I wasn’t sure how my body would handle those extra running days but honestly I feel like it was a great decision for me and my body. The training plan seemed considerably harder than what I was used to, but I would say I handled it well and didn’t end up with injuries, other than some caused by running gear that wasn’t right for my body, which I’ll get into later. The training plan I followed for my half marathons in Idaho-42nd state, Anchorage, Alaska-43rd state, and Arkansas-44th state allowed me to finish in times that I was mostly happy with, but again, I’ll get into more details on that later. More importantly, I was able to follow the plan and only rarely did I find myself not having enough time to fit all of the runs in as specified.
Early in 2018 I also began Heart Rate Training, which honestly wasn’t anything that did much for me either way. Maybe I didn’t give it long enough (I’ve heard you really need to spend several months or even a year on it for you to really see changes) or maybe I just wasn’t doing it like I was supposed to. Either way, I’m not sure I would spend a ton of time on heart rate training again unless there was a specific reason I was seeking it out, like I had plateaued and felt like I needed to try something else to get faster or have more endurance.
A decision I made that ended up to be one of the worst decisions I made in 2018 was to try new shoes without fully understanding the mechanics behind them and how they would work for me. I vowed early in the year to try new shoes instead of sticking with the same brand and style for years on end like I previously had, so I tried two brands that were completely new for me, On and Topo. Not long after running with these shoes, I began experiencing calf tightness and pain when I would run. It got so severe I would have to stop and stretch my calves and my feet started falling asleep when I was running. Initially I thought surely it’s not both pairs of shoes that’s causing my problems, but yes, it really was both pairs of shoes. I finally looked into the shoe specifics and learned that both pairs that I was running in had a much lower heel-toe offset than I was used to. You can read all about the details on that here. I switched to running shoes with a 10 mm heel-toe offset and haven’t had any calf issues since then. Lesson learned, no matter what you may hear, minimalist shoes are not for everyone, and that’s perfectly fine.
One of my better decisions was to do more trail running. That not only helped me cope with the hot, humid weather since it was cooler on the shady trails but it also undoubtedly strengthened my ankles and feet. I won’t lie, though, summer was tough to get through. I couldn’t take any time off from running during the summer since I had a race in Alaska in August and after that I had to pretty much jump right into my next training plan for the race in Arkansas in November.
Rediscovering trail running
In 2018 I ran my first “fun run,” Color Vibe 5k,in September and honestly I can’t say now if I think it was a good decision or a bad decision to run it. I had very mixed emotions after that race, mostly because of it not being a timed race. Apparently I’m too competitive to run a race that’s not timed, and this is coming from someone who has only rarely (three times to be exact) placed in the top three in my age group, one time each at first, second, and third place. I think I need to see an official time if I’m going to run a race, otherwise I’ll just go out and run on my own. I also now have mixed feelings about running a timed 5k in 2019. I’ve only ever run three 5k’s in my life; my first race ever, with my young daughter at her first 5k, and this fun run. Although I feel like I’m long overdue to see what I’m capable of running a 5k at, I’m not sure I want to put myself up to that test. Let’s face it, to truly race a 5k is tough, much tougher than a half marathon, in my opinion. Do I really want to do that to myself? I’m not sure that would be the best decision for me.
Color Vibe 5k
To cope with the abnormally long summer that stretched well into fall, I began exploring new running routes and other ways to fight boredom on my runs. This in itself was a good decision but I began to develop other issues unrelated to my running route or the heat. Gradually I began to notice my runs were getting harder and I was out of breath more and more. I chalked it up to the heat and humidity but when things finally started to cool off and I was even more out of breath than normal, I went to the doctor to get my iron levels checked. Sure enough, I was anemic once again (I have a history of it). The even worse news is this was just a couple of weeks out from my next half marathon in Arkansas in November. No way were my iron levels going to get anywhere close to normal before the race since they were so low.
I made the decision to run the half marathon despite being able to barely run a mile on training runs without getting out of breath. To my shock and awe, I ended up running one of my fastest half marathons in quite a while in Arkansas, thanks to the downhill course and nice weather conditions. Running that half marathon and especially finishing it strong was definitely a good decision for me. I have no doubt my doctor would have told me to not run the race, had she known, but if I hadn’t run it, I wouldn’t have known what my body is capable of even when it’s not at peak condition.
Finishing strong at the half marathon in Arkansas
That pretty much ended the year for me as far as running goes. I decided to take it easy in December and let my iron levels come back up so I just ran when the weather wasn’t too bad and I felt like running. Since my iron levels have come back up, I’ve been experimenting with pushing myself even more. I’ve seen some split times on runs that I haven’t seen in years and I owe that to the ability to push through the pain and focus more on the mental aspect of running, some tricks I picked up after reading Deena Kastor’s book “Let Your Mind Run,” which I have an upcoming review on.
What about you guys? Do you reflect back on the previous year to figure out what worked for you and what didn’t work? This is the first time I’ve done this for an entire year, although I’ve done it for individual races before.
runningtotravel 