Beyond The Limits

Watching one race just taught me so many life lessons:

• Choose to be great
• Push past your comfort zone
• The things you tell yourself you can’t do, are the things you should be doing
• Find your tribe

Saturday, May 6^th; in Monza, Italy; at the Nike Breaking 2 event, three amazing men set out to do the “impossible” and run a marathon in under two hours. To run a sub-two-hour marathon they would need to pace each mile around 4 minutes and 36 seconds. That is 26.2 miles at a 4-and-a-half minutes pace! Take a second and let that soak in if need be. My goodness, as a runner who gets excited to maintain a pace within 8 minutes for 3-6 miles, just the idea that they run a single mile under 5 minutes is amazing to me!

Three men, hand-picked by Nike, started the race together: Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea (read their stories). They all performed amazing, but Eliud Kipchoge, the 2016 Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist, dominated the entire 26.2 miles. Unfortunately, he did not break 2 hours, but give him all of the credit in the world for beating his own personal record by seven minutes and coming in only 25 seconds over (2:00:25)!

I have now watched the Nike live stream of Breaking 2 about four times (you can find it on Nike’s FB page). Each time I find myself in awe and 100% captivated by Eliud Kipchoge. I was glued to both my phone and computer watching him run. I never once noticed Kipchoge hesitate or break his stride, it didn’t even seem as if he was tired until the last few miles. His focus was incredible. When Nike broke away from the race to tell his training story, I found myself smiling and thinking “this is an incredible human being”.

Something tells me, when you shift your mindset to be great at something, your actions will have to shift to ensure outcomes of greatness.

Kipchoge said, “Passion is a choice, you need to choose to be great”. I don’t know about you, but this is exactly what I needed to hear in life right now! This mindset translates to all of life, not just running and athleticism. This one statement says exactly what I want everyone who visits our blog to take away, choose to be great! Something tells me, when you shift your mindset to be great at something, your actions will have to shift to ensure outcomes of greatness.

After watching Breaking 2 over and over, Kipchoge has truly inspired me to push beyond the limits and choose to be great in my own ways.

On the shoes that Nike crafted for the athletes, Kipchoge had “Beyond The Limits” written on his: people will put limits on you, you will put limits on yourself, and it is up to you to push beyond those limits and “not just take what is given”. Such a powerful message I needed to hear. I have been struggling with an idea of doing something that some days I feel like is impossible for me and way outside of my comfort zone, but as always I have this little voice in my head saying “why not you Eb? You can do absolutely anything you want to do”. After watching Breaking 2 over and over, Kipchoge has truly inspired me to push beyond the limits and choose to be great in my own ways.

Since painstakingly completing my first marathon, Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans on February 5, 2017, I have the desire to do it again, and do it right! A conversation I had previously with an awesome woman started meandering through my thoughts. She had sat with me prior to my first marathon telling me about her favorites: Boston, NYC, & the Big Sur. So I set out to see where some of the best marathons were (also known as: I googled it). I wanted find fun, energetic routes, nice scenery, and the opportunity to run some new terrain!

What I learned from google is: there’s a billion marathons all over this glorious globe. You could pretty much pick a city off a map, and at some point during the year you’ll be able to find a marathon nearby! So I realized there are just too many to choose from! In comes my new goal:

To run at least one marathon in all 50 states. I call my journey #runderlustFifty50!

Currently, I don’t have a time-table set for completing this goal. Running is a passion of mine, it’s where I go when I need to decompress. I want to enjoy these runs. I want to travel, see new places, collect some badass medals, and most importantly, meet some amazing people and hear their stories!!! One thing that I have learned from running is that there are some amazing people out there with amazing stories to why they run. There is something incredibly amazing about coming across another runner before the sun rises and being greeted with a smile and a “good morning” or an encouraging “get at it”. Some of my best conversations are had with my running partners when I am dog tired and feeling like stopping where I’m at to call a Uber to come take my butt home! On this journey, I want to discover more of these great humans that share my passion for running. I want to build a tribe all over this globe.

At the moment, I only have a couple of marathons picked out. I would love to run the awesome major ones like Boston, NYC, & Chicago, but I also want to discover some of those races that are less talked about but are just as amazing! I most definitely plan to make my way to my hometown of St. Louis, MO to run a marathon nearby. Most importantly, along this journey I would love for some of you all to chime in and tell me about some of your favorite marathons you’ve ran, dream to run, or have plans to run. It would be so awesome to build such an amazing community that some of you all would come out to join me on parts of this journey! I’m sharing this goal with you all!

Kipchoge said, “Sport needs teamwork. If you are only one, then you can do nothing; but if you are more than one, then you can do great things”. I think I truly learned this lesson when I tried to take on training for and running my first marathon alone. 20+ miles are a long, hard road by yourself. It can be done, but it’s lonely. Hopefully along this journey I can build a tribe of like-minded people who share my passion.

With Louisiana done, here’s to the next 49 marathons in 49 more states. Spoiler alert: I am currently registered to run a marathon in January. Charm is uber geeked to come cheer this one on. Stay tuned for my next blog that will tell you all about what I’ve signed up to do, where, and for who!!!

And keep reminding yourself, “you need to choose to be great, it’s not a chance, it’s a choice” (Eliud Kipchoge)!