On 2/22/11, twelve years ago today, Tim proposed to me on a beautiful houseboat we spent many holidays pet-sitting in, offering me a glittery diamond ring as a symbol of his love and commitment.
Last week, on our way to live/train in Mexico for a month, someone stole it from me, as my carry-on had to be checked last-minute, and I hadn’t yet transferred it back to my hand after taking it off for strength training.
Even though I know things are just things, I still felt mad to have such special things (my engagement and wedding rings) stolen from me. And I couldn’t help but blame myself for leaving a tiny window of opportunity for it to happen.
“You don’t deserve nice things,” the little gremlin in my head told me.
When I arrived in Mexico and realized my rings were stolen, I felt stressed all day (and tired from an early morning flight and oddly cold) yet finally rallied and went on a training run late afternoon with my mind racing, only to get completely lost on new trails, finding myself at dusk surrounded by a dog chasing me to protect its territory, vultures eating animal parts, and truckfuls of guys heading to a party.
Fear filled my mind as I clutched my pepper spray, trying to navigate the ever-changing map on my phone, every terrifying runner story swirling through my head.
Finally, I saw a woman drive past, and I asked her, in my best Spanish, how to get to where I needed to go, before dark. She turned her car around, put out her cigarette for me, and drove me back. I tried to give her some money as a thank-you, but she wouldn’t accept it, simply telling me to not run by myself at night and to avoid that dirt road in particular because it was dangerous.
“Perros?” I said. “Borrachos.” She replied.
For the next week, I felt scared leaving our place. I ran only on treadmills and at a golf course. I looked up flights to go home, only to realize I have no real home right now, no comfort zone to go to…just a storage unit in Boulder (the downside to “adventure life” that nobody talks about).
“This is not how I retire.” I told myself while still in bed one day, wondering how I was going to get my run in.
So instead, I faced my fear. It was time to take action.
An OCR friend, Lauren Taska, who has lived in Cabo, reached out and hooked me up with her training partner here, a Kona athlete named Cibelle. Tim found a group for me to run with, and our AirBnB host’s father, Vicente, drove me through the trails he has run on hundreds of times, showing me the safest places to run. (He, too, preferred to avoid the section I had gotten lost and afraid on. I suppose every city has its safe and not-so-safe places to run.)
The community came together to help me out, and after a week of feeling afraid and wanting to leave Cabo, my mindset has shifted. I can get my training/job done by running with others or, if by myself, in an open, safe trail during the day. Phew!
And after spending time with good friends in town from both Seattle and Colorado, my nervous system is coming down from high-alertness. (At one point, I jumped at the sight of a garbage bag; my heart goes out to people who have experienced real trauma rather than just my perceived experience, like people in the military, and people who have had someone sexually/physically assault them.)
One of my favorite ways to experience a new place is by running in it – I’ve run through parts of Brazil, Ecuador, England, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Canada, Thailand, Costa Rica, the UAE, many parts of Mexico, and nearly half of the United States.
I’ve meant only wonderful and helpful people on my runs, including every time I’ve run in Mexico. Bad things can happen anywhere, however, so these are my top tips for running in a new place:
1) Research where to run (the trails I ran on were generally recommended as good, safe trails, I just needed to research the my exact trail plan better). Apps like MapMyRun and TrailForks can help.
2) Run with others when possible. This is not always easy to do, with varying paces and schedule, so when you can’t find others to run with…
3) Run with pepper spray. A law enforcement office told me “Sabre Red” is the best.
4) Take a self-defense class. I took one back in college, but I’m do for another.
5) Don’t run at night or even late afternoon, in case dusk falls quicker than anticipated.
6) Run without headphones on. I sometimes still listen to music, but I do it without headphones on. Bonus: people on the trail can hear me/my music coming.
I’m grateful that I feel safe again (not something to take for granted), I’m hopeful Aeromexico Airlines will reimburse my stolen rings, (though either way, I still have the love they symbolize – which is what really matters, of course), and I look forward to a chance to enjoy the food, beaches, and warm weather of Mexico, grateful for the mindset tools and community support I needed to shift this trip experience from a bad one to a good one.
As we say in our family when things don’t go right the first time, “Let’s try again.”
After living in Costa Rica for a month, we are on our way to live in Mexico for a month…
We’ve been asked how we do it, and I’m happy to share.
We have remote jobs, a kid who’s not in school yet, and no mortgage, so that’s huge. Also, we are willing to live with a lot of uncertainty and discomfort in order to have these experiences.
Our standard for quality food and for safety in lodging is high, for instance, but other than that, we are willing to live in small, inexpensive places with ants and outdated furniture (with everything that we DO own stuffed into a storage unit) while navigating communication in another language.
(Truth be told, if I had a beautiful home I worked hard to buy, remodel, decorate, and build a community around, I likely wouldn’t want to leave it very often, and especially not for a slightly rundown rental with a toad living under the bottom patio step, but since I don’t right now, it that makes traveling easier.)
We are willing to walk a couple miles a day and/or ride a clunky used bike with a chain that falls off, in order to get around.
The beach shots on social media look glamorous, of course, and an evening near the ocean IS priceless. We are also, however, using toilets that cannot flush toilet paper and wearing the same few outfits over and over. (So…not so glamorous.)
Living abroad is not a life we planned, and it’s not what we’ll do forever, but after Tim had cancer seven years ago, we look at our time on Earth a bit differently, with the mindset of filling our days to the brim, “making every day as good as possible,” as the pura vida philosophy of Costa Rica encourages, and that, for us three, includes travel experiences.
Not owning a home right now means we’ll be renting all winter anyway, so we figure why not rent in a warm, new place, if we can? (If you rent a place in Latin America for a month, you generally get a large enough discount on Air BnB that the nightly rate falls below the rental cost in a city like Seattle or Boulder, without the year-long lease commitment.)
Traveling to new countries, taking in mother nature’s beauty with wonder, while attempting to connect with people from different cultures – curious what we can learn from them – while knowing we have incredible friends/family back home that we miss and are reminded when away to never to take for granted? Not to mention boxes of clothing and toys in our storage unit that feel like Christmas to open when we return?
It’s not a lifestyle that works for everyone, of course, with most people having various job, financial, and family obligations that make living abroad unfeasible and/or undesirable, but for us right now, in this season of our lives, most days it feels like we are living the best of both worlds, and I feel completely grateful for it.
It’s totally worth a couple cucarachas in our kitchen.
Honored to rep both 40-somethings AND mamas on this top-ten list, showing the world we can still mix it up with the best of ‘em! 💃🏽💪
Not to mention top-three American in a super stacked field…humbling! Feeling excited to race these incredible athletes again, starting this April! 🏃🏽♀️
Believe in yourself, put in the work, and JUST KEEP SHOWING UP! 💚
To feel pure and utter joy, untethered to a particular result or outcome – what a beautiful feeling. 😊
👉 I’m learning it’s possible to feel as much joy as we want at any given time. It’s not something we have to go earn; it’s a mindset we can cultivate.
👉 What a transformation from the deep disappointment I felt after finishing 7th place at my last world championship to the full joy I feel today after finishing 7th at Spartan Trifecta Worlds.
👉 We can WANT a different result (like I did today, before the rain turned my running trails into a muddy mess) and it’s natural to feel disappointment if we don’t reach it, but…we don’t HAVE to.
👉 Although I prefer to fly while racing, that mud slowed me down enough to see the the beauty of Sparta’s mountains, and the fistbump fist a volunteer held out for me after I pushed through a muddy set of burpees.
👉 It’s like after two days of intense racing, Life forced me to slow down to soak it all in and realize that, hey, I’m running (in Sparta!) the third longest I’ve ever run in my life and only the second time I’ve raced three endurance races in a row (and this time with my body holding up well, injury-free). That’s alone is a personal feat to celebrate.
👉 What a gift to someone always so focused on getting through a race as quickly as possible, focused on achieving a particular result – a chance to savor.
👉 To be able to hold both the pursuit of future greatness and full appreciation of present moment’s simple beauty in one hand…
👆It’s like 20 years of reading self-help books finally came together.
👉I’ve reached a finish line I’ve always wanted – a balance that feels just right…wanting more but not needing it for joy…an inner peace that can thrive next to my inner fire…
The people who told me I wasn’t disciplined or focused enough to be my best and hit my potential were wrong…
Back in my 20s, a coworker’s eyes filled with shocked when Tim mentioned I graduated from Georgetown cum laude. I had just pulled a big prank on the guy, crouching down behind him while he walked backwards and fell over me. He had trouble believing someone who goofed off could also be intelligent…
At both track and OCR races, I remember getting a negative vibe when I beat someone who had a more serious demeanor than I did. It felt as if they thought I didn’t deserve it. I was certainly putting in the work, day after day. My unconscious tactic for staying relaxed on raceday was to smile, laugh, chit-chat, and and make jokes. (Similarly, have you seen multiple-time Olympian gold medal sprinter, Usain Bolt? He’s a total goofball before his races!)
At the last Marathon Olympic trials, competitors were shocked that Molly Seidel finished top three in the because she was having “too much fun in the lobby”, laughing with her coach and goofing off, the NY Times reported. Somewhere along the way, I picked up on this idea that I wasn’t taken seriously (and therefore must not take my running ambitions seriously) if I was enjoying myself while racing, only to discover, thankfully, that for me, that is entirely untrue.
Upon reflection, I’m glad I didn’t win that race, or even come close. If I had, the lesson for me would be to continue to greatly reduce the amount of fun and laughter in my life and put on a serious, hard-core demeanor, spending less time doing things I enjoy and more time doing things that I thought would help me get faster, stronger, and more mentally prepared – that meant less time snuggling and watching comedies with my family and more time mantra-ing, visualizing, and analyzing races with a fine-toothed comb. (I did that, and I somehow still screwed up on an obstacle because it was built differently.)
Also, I had more physical setbacks pop up in the form of nagging injuries such as Achilles tendonitis and Golfer’s elbow, likely because my body was tight from an unrelaxed nervous system. All that left me with was a homesick racer, missing her family, turning down fun opportunities do do shows like Ninja Warrior, Wipeout, and World Chase Tag, with higher pressure to produce a particular outcome to “make it all worth it.”
I learned my lesson: do it the way that has worked for me for 25 years. Nearly every person I used to race track and races and even an obstacle course racing my first year nine years ago doesn’t race anymore. This could be for a variety of reasons, but those if you want I’ve asked have given the same reason as at least playing a large part: mental and emotional burnout.
I still have the desire, but I’m no longer relying upon that achievement to bring me lasting happiness. I can feel good in everyday ways that are more within my control, thus giving myself, as life coach and author Tony Robbins recommends, a larger gap in which to find and cultivate joy.
How does one do that? Great question! I just checked out every book on happiness that I could find. Doing some serious research…stay tuned.
