Community Fridays: What I am Loving in the Running World
Hello there and HAPPY FRIDAY! I hope you all are having a great start to the weekend and have some fun weekend plans ahead of you. I am currently down in Tennessee with my family, visiting my sister and friends for a couple days. Let the party start!
Before the weekend starts, I wanted to share, again, COMMUNITY FRIDAYS! This is the day of the week, where I share inspiring runners, situations, races, news, and encouraging podcasts/books in the running world! Community is so much better than competition and I love sharing people and things that inspire me with you. So, let’s celebrate each other and push each other toward excellence!
Below are a few people and things that are encouraging me in the running world, what or who is inspiring you, lately? If you have someone or something that you would love to share with the running world, email me at coachbethanythompson@gmail.com! I would love to feature you are someone else as an inspiring runner on the blog!
INSPIRING RUNNERS
Lauren Floris aka The Foodie Runner After sharing my Friday post last week, one of my friends on Instagram reached to me and shared this amazing, fellow mama runner! Lauren Floris, also known as The Foodie Runner on Instagram is not only a hard core mama runner (and a coach at Up and Running), but she is a 2020 Olympic Trials qualifier and pregnant with her second! I love seeing other fellow mother runners chase after big goals and Lauren definitely fits in that category. One of the things I love about the running community is how we can draw inspiration from each other. Lauren is such an inspiration to me as I continue to dream and work toward my own big goals. Go Lauren, go!
Jessica aka Jessicas.Ultra.Miles – Okay this lady is amazing. She’s not only your ‘typical,’ mother runner, but this lady just ran 24 HOURS. Yes, you read that right. 24 entire hours. I literally cannot even wrap my mind around a 24 hour ultra run (that’s 50 miles people). Ultra running is something that is so far removed from me and seems to very different, but inspires me all at the same time. Jessica shares, “My first marathon I remember getting to mile 23 and losing control. I sobbed hysterically until mile 25, like a crazy person in the street I didn’t care who saw me. Anyone who’s ever experienced that wall knows how cathartic it is. Maybe part of my drive is chasing that feeling. Looking for that release of emotion. This time around it came later. The 24 hours was over and I was alone in the car on Sunday morning- exhausted- and it hit me. The raw emotion, relief, ALL the feels. It brought me to my knees and honestly it brought me to repentance. I was stripped bare of all my typical “Jessica” energy and humbled before God, this is who I was. I was tired. I’ve been tired… and my strength isn’t enough anymore. So I prayed and told Him “here’s this little bit.” It’s ugly on it’s own. I can be strong willed and defiant, but He can make me beautiful and tender. Perfection won’t exist here. I don’t need it anymore, I just need to love and let myself be loved and to be honest. I need to say Yes. And just like that my heart that had been hard for a season started to feel like it was opening again… light being let in through the cracks. The ultra pulled me back and gave me the perspective I craved. God used it.” > Excuse the ugly tears. So inspired by you Jessica and your courage to chase after “that,” feeling, the courage you show in doing hard things, and rising above. Find Jessica, here.
APPAREL
If you all have been reading my blog for any amount of time now, you know I LOVE my Brooks running gear. My favorite Brooks running shorts are currently on sale and I am definitely thinking about grabbing a pair before the sale ends.
EDUCATION: PODCASTS AND BOOKS
I have to spotlight two of my favorite running books that I’ve read this year – these were books I seriously could not put down, especially the first one I will mention
Deena Kastor’s book, Let Your Mind Run, was AMAZING. I loved everything about her mindset, how she approaches races/runs/hard workouts. This book really takes a close look (through personal experience) the power of positive thinking and mindset/visualization! Highly, recommended!
Jack Daniel’s Running Formula – if you want a science backed, super nerdy running book this book is it. I have loved/am loving working my way through this book (I read it over and over again to get more nuggets of gold.) It has some awesome training plans in the back of the book and really touches on almost every aspect of training/VDOT, V02 max levels, altitude training and more. It is one of those books I go back to, whenever I have a question or want to research a running related topic. I would highly recommend this one too.
And that’s a wrap for this round of Community Fridays! (I may need to find a better name for this thing, that doesn’t seem to have quite the ring I wanted…) I hope you all have the best weekend ever. I will be back Monday with a full weekend recap, full of travel and running and food.
Questions of the Day
- What is your weekend like?
- How often do you travel?
- Who is inspiring you lately?