MEXICO
live in the moment.

My romance with athletics has always been motivated by my dissatisfaction with weakness and my ambition to push through my fears. Skiing came from my own fear of speed. Mountaineering originated from my fear of heights. When I began marathon training in 2005, I did it because I hated running.

Our Tarahumara coach definitely did not hate running. But he didn’t love it either. Everyday he would run and run and run and when he would stop, he wouldn’t collapse and revel in the feeling of being stationary, he would just stop running and go about his business. He explained to me that running is no different from planting beans—it has to be done.  I used to ruin whole days over running. All morning I would dread the thought of having to do it, then I would be miserable while doing it, and then all night I would whine because I knew I was going to have to do it all over again the next day. Our Tarahumara coach taught me to run like I breathed: to remain aware but not focused on it, and indulge instead in those aspects that I most enjoyed.  This is a great lesson for the many unpleasant or mundane things in our lives.

He was sad when I had to step out of the race because of the reoccurrence of shin splints, but he praised me for applying what he had taught me. He said that I had made a decision to focus on the aspect of running that I most enjoyed: maintaining a healthy body.