My Story: The Evolution of a Tough Chick
Growing up in a family that has always loved the outdoors, I have pretty much tried all kinds of tough stuff going from a marathon to a triathlon (think Ironman World Championships), and all the way to this whole new scary yet exciting stuff called adventure racing (watch The World’s Toughest Adventure).
But amidst all that toughness, I am also dealing with emotional fragility which I have been learning to honor.
That’s why I’ve decided to bring my best friend, Prianka Nandy, on the podcast so you would get to know me better and, hopefully, understand the context that I bring to my interviews.
Here are just a few takeaways from my experiences as a mom, an athlete, a coach, and a human being:
1. Your journey and your goal are always married to each other.
If you're going to progress and put your health aside because you think you’ve got to find the pointy edge, your outcome is going to be the same. Your race day isn't going to be healthy either. You can always find a whole bunch of excuses and reasons to blame it on. But if you're willing to look honestly at yourself, you'll see that your journey and your goal actually were the same thing.
2. Take the “health first” approach.
Start looking at the whole athlete – their mind, body, and relationships. Find not the maximal amount of training that an athlete could do, but how you could maximize health in their life from all of those different perspectives. When you do that, the end result will take care of itself.
3. Keep your stress bucket from overflowing.
There is this kind of stress that comes from training that will give you a physical adaptation. We stress the body so the body can adapt. But if we have other stresses, like family stress, they go in the same bucket as the training stress. So if you have a lot of life stress and you still have the same amount of training stress on you, your stress bucket ends up overflowing. Therefore, when your life stress goes up, your training stress has to come down. Adaptation might be less, but at least your stress bucket won’t overflow.
If you want to learn more about my crazy yet wonderful experiences as an athlete and all the amazing things I’ve learned from them, check out the Tales of Toughness Podcast on https://gosonja.com/podcast.