Learning from and being inspired by professionals in our sport is something we value greatly at Pace of Me Coaching. A few weeks ago, our team had the opportunity to Zoom with Emily Saul, Sports Psychologist, as part of our mission of connecting our athletes to and learning from invaluable speakers.
This was our first of several workshops on the mental side of training and racing that we will host with Emily this year, and on this call we explored the concept of “Are you Serving Your Running, or Is Your Running Serving You?”
Emily helped our Pace of Me team think through this topic with both vivid analogies as well as tangible examples.
Learn more about Emily Saul here!
Running can be a powerful teacher- one that shapes our discipline, reveals our patterns, and invites us into deeper layers of who we are becoming. But, like any meaningful relationship it asks for awareness, honesty and care. In our workshop, our coaches and athletes had the chance to join Emily in an immersive and reflective session exploring the emotional, mental, and identity-based relationship we have with the sport we love.
Continue on to read our Top 5 Takeaways from our workshop!
1. Running can be the supported thing or the supportive thing.
In order for running to be in a top position in our life, one where we want to challenge ourselves in the sport, other aspects of life have to support this space. When life feels stressful or unpredictable, we don’t have the capacity for multiple areas to be challenged at the same time. During these times it may serve us better to have running play a more supportive role – one that helps balance out the “hard” in the other areas of life. It can be a wonderful source of peacefulness, clarity, certainty and strength.
Having a community of support can help make your running feel even more energized and supported.
2. Notice when running isn’t serving you.
What a beautifully strong ability it is as runners to recognize when running is not serving you and have strategies to refocus, reframe and reorient your approach to it! With Emily, we broke down what these three strategies mean when it comes to running. Refocusing encourages you to bring a fresh mindset to things and reconnect you with your reasons for running. It’s a jumpstart. Reframing may require checking in with our values to see if our goals are aligned with them and serving us positively. Lastly, reorienting is asking ourselves if we’re making running a space of challenge or do we need to make changes to make it more of a space of support.
We love finding little winks out in the world that keep us moving in a forward, inspiring direction!
3. Align your goals with your values.
When running is aligned with our personal values, our experience as runners can be transformed. Sometimes we can feel stuck when we set a goal that has roots in areas that do not support our running. Whether you’re at the beginning of a training cycle or thick in the middle of it, think about your values. Then, connect your goal(s) to these values and think about whether or not these are aligned. Refer back to them as you move through training!
4. Our best selves can show up when our goals are aligned with our values.
The opposite of this is feeling like we have more struggle, and we don’t want that. Give this part of our training as much focus as many of us give to sticking with our workouts. Our sustained motivation can be driven on where our goals and values direct us. You might not always feel like doing these things, but you are worth it!
When running is aligned with our personal values, there are sunny days ahead.
5. The difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to” is discipline.
We often find ourselves seeking when our running isn’t serving us- this “freedom from” something can take the form of wanting “less” in our running. Less miles, less structure, less force, etc. At the same time, being disciplined with our running can free us from some of the stresses of modern life- the rhythm of our routine allows us to find flow and escape into movement.
Our discipline with training can bring the gift of “freedom to” – affording us the ability to do and experience things in life that are meaningful to us. Discipline is what you will choose to do even if it isn’t a want in the moment because it will serve that greater goal! It builds strength, health and fitness, which then brings us more independence and the opportunity to say yes to life’s adventures!
