Ep. 29- The Things I Learned Running My 1/2 Marathon This Sunday

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed mental LMFT 🎗️, marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

What an amazing weekend it was, because if you have been keeping up with the episodes, last time you heard that I was going to be running my second ever marathon at 41 years old this past weekend on Sunday, and I did it. I ran 13.1 miles. 2 hours 50 minutes, which I know is not the world's greatest time. I know there's people who probably finished it in an hour, an hour and 10 minutes, and people who are probably finishing full marathons at the same time I was finishing my half marathon. But it's a goal that I'm incredibly proud of, and it definitely has set my energy and my nutrition and my mindset back on the right path. So here's some things that I learned over that day, which started incredibly early. I had to be up at 4 o'clock in the morning to be downtown Fort Lauderdale, uh, because a race started at 6, and I wanted to make sure I found the right pacing group, which ended up not happening. I want to make sure that I can find a porta potty, which the lines were too long to use before the race, and the fact that I might consider checking a sweatshirt because it was 55 degrees versus throwing it away on the race. And I ended up wearing this sweatshirt the end— most of the time, half the time at least. And so there's some things, some really cool, interesting takeaways that I got from this marathon. So the first thing that I learned is anytime you're going to do a goal or participate in an activity such like this is that you're gonna have an opportunity to sweat the the small stuff. So the entire night before, even though I went to bed around 11, or I tried to go to bed around 11, there was no way I was falling asleep. I would wake up, I would go back to sleep. I'm like thinking about what I need to add to make sure that I had everything laid out, uh, perfectly for the night before. So I just had to jump into what I had and what I needed. And the little, uh, waist bag that I had to carry my energy gel and my phone was already set up with my keys and my credit card. And of course, as our minds tend to do, we'll start wandering. What am I missing? What needs to go in there? What do I really need to bring? What do I do? So here's the thing. You're probably not gonna get much sleep before you do some really cool activity, whether it's a race, whether it's some type of competition, whether you're traveling somewhere new. The excitement is a good thing, and at a certain point you just have to embrace it. Also, you're going to be worried that you forgot something, or in this situation, that I didn't train enough. So, you know, the week before I got my mileage up from 8 or 9 miles to 11 miles, which is a pretty big jump because things got in the way, right? I have clients to see in my practice, um, I was run down, it was raining out, whatever it may be, and I really had to make a big jump within the span of one week to get my mileage up so that I really wouldn't hurt myself during this run. So the Thursday night before the race, I went outside and realized it was about to start pouring, which it did. And I ended up in the gym in my building on the treadmill for 3 hours straight. And I brought everything like I would be doing the entire race, right? I had my 2 different bottles of water because I knew there wasn't going to be, you know, more water to pick up like it would be on the race. I had to come down prepared. I had all of my energy gel packets and my pack of sodium, which you heard me talk about in the last episode regarding vasovagal and dehydration and what was happening to me when I would start training and my heart rate would go up and I get really dizzy and really nauseous. And, um, if anybody out there has those type of symptoms, you should definitely check out the last episode I put out. And I did it 3 hours and I did about 11 miles. So I'm like, all right, that's probably going to be where I'm going to be competing and finishing at this race. Like, it's going to take me longer than 3 hours since I did 3 hours on the treadmill and I only did 11 miles. So, okay, so maybe I'll finish in 3 hours and 20 minutes or so. So turns out I did much better. I finished in 2 hours and 50 minutes because I know there's something about running with a group. There's something about group energy that can elevate you where you know that there's a little bit more that you can do and we'll get a little bit more into that in the next little bit. But one of the things that I found is that I'm so glad that I made a list of what I'm bringing and then started checking off what I actually don't need to bring with me. So I knew that I didn't necessarily need to bring a water bottle. So, you know, I started hydrating beforehand and I had a sports drink, the Body Armor coconut water-based sports drink, which I've fallen in love with and really enjoy. I brought one with me just to keep me hydrated before the race and as I start because I knew they weren't gonna have a drink station for the first 3 miles and if I wanted to take a sip and better to be a little bit overhydrated than starting to dehydrate. And I had everything laid out, everything was ready to go. So when I got up in the morning, I just slipped everything on and that really helped a lot. So making a list, coming up with a checklist of what you need and what you really don't need is always really important when you're about to take on a new task. And I also realized that, you know, in this type of race, I'm gonna need certain nutrition. So I made sure that it was easily accessible. I put everything into one Ziploc bag of the chews that I, that I've been using in one Ziploc bag instead of in 3 individual packages and having to open them on the way. So I can just reach into my pocket, pull out the Ziploc, grab 1 or 2 chews, and then keep running and throw it back into my pocket. Same thing with my salt. Also in a small little Ziploc, so I can just reach in, pull out a few crystals at a time, and then grab that. So again, right, nutrition— you have to make sure, especially when you're running a race, like, you got to know the miles, you got to know where the nutrition stations are, what are they going to have. Is it only going to be water? So do you need to bring any hydration powders, or like Nuun, which is a really incredible little pellet, like Alka-Seltzer. You just drop it in the bottle and it fizzes up and it turns into this really incredible sports drink. But I knew they were going to be having, uh, this Body Armor on the way, so I knew I was good. Um, so one other thing that I learned is that you're going to be faster than some and slower than most. And I felt really good for the most part of the race. There was some parts obviously where I stopped to walk, as I know that I'm not capable of running multiple miles. At a distance without stopping to walk or slow down to a slower pace. And I wanted to make sure that, like, you know, as I looked at other people who looked healthier than me, who looked fitter than me, who looked stronger than me, that I wasn't getting cocky about, wow, I'm doing better than those people who look better than me, and had in my mind that everybody's working at their own pace, everybody's working at their own goals. And like, someone can't see the medical things that have been going on with me, like the vasovagal cardio-syncope, or the fact that I've been working on my nutrition and trying to lose weight. The same thing is I can't see that in them, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't get cocky about that. And here's the thing, when you get cocky, that's when the universe starts throwing stuff at you, right? You're probably gonna step on your ankle the wrong way, or you're gonna start feeling something in your stomach, you know, like that's not good, or you're gonna have to really need the bathroom and there's nowhere to go to the bathroom right off the bat at that point. So I really wanted to be conscious about just having a positive mindset the entire way of what was going on. And I also wanted to kind of set a mindset of cheering other people on, because the way the race was set up is that the course was going both ways right next to each other. So one way was heading out and one way was heading back in, and it was literally the lane right next door. So I made it part of my intention to kind of like cheer people on that were, so to speak, behind me. Not that anybody was truly behind me, but in time or distance-wise was behind me. So I really made sure that when I saw someone struggling or they were slowing down or they looked like they just weren't enjoying, I kind of like cheered them on and gave them some positive encouragement. So, you know, it's really, really funny that when I finished, as I was getting to a mile or a mile and a half out from the finish line, I knew my energy felt a little bit depleted and I knew I had a little bit more. So took a nice last swig of that drink, threw it in the garbage that happened to be right there, and kept going and kept pushing myself. And when I was like, I don't know, maybe 45 seconds out from the line, all of a sudden this massive surge of energy came back to me. And I'm like, wow, I can probably run another 2, 3, 4, 5 miles as long as I keep up the nutrition, as long as I keep myself hydrated. And I know only 13 miles was the goal. But for some reason, I felt like I can attack and accomplish an even bigger goal than what I even set out with in the original frame of mind. So go figure, right? That with all the excitement, with all the energy, with the proper nutrition, with the motivation that I had internally, and the motivation of the energy of what was going on around me, and most importantly, the momentum, the one foot in front of the next is when I realized I had more in me than what I thought. And I started to think about this over the last couple days of this is such a common occurrence for all of us out there, that we have more in us than what we thought. And I know that we have so many challenges and so many difficulties. And I know that this past weekend for so many people across the country who were Kobe Bryant fans, what an incredible loss that we had. Not only because of the loss of him as a superstar and as a person who changed so many things about the NBA and about training and about being a champion and about giving back to your community, but the loss of potential for so many other people that were with him, his friends and the children especially, that had so much to accomplish as life went forward for them. And, and even with Kobe, right, he was 41 years old. He's the same age as me. And he had a whole nother lifetime to go if this didn't happen, of what he could have brought forth into the world. And again, going back to these children, these elementary school, middle school children that just had their entire life ahead of me. And what has struck me so much is that the loss that I'm feeling, and I'm not particularly, I wasn't a Kobe fan, I wasn't a Kobe hater, I acknowledged and very much respected his talents and his abilities, But what really, really struck me the most was the loss of potential. And what I want to share with everybody today is that you have so many opportunities out there to figure out what your potential is, to figure out what your skill set is, to hone your skill set. It's really committing and going all in on something instead of just waiting for it to show up and tell you, "This is what you should be doing," like a smack across the face. It's the fact that you have to go out there and you have to choose what your purpose and choose what your potential is. So I want to hopefully give you some inspiration with the goal that I accomplished this past weekend. I want to challenge you to start focusing more on what you think you need to do in order to harness more of your purpose. To harness more of your potential, to feel better about yourself without having to get that from other people, without having to get that from going out and partying or doing things that maybe aren't completely in alignment with who you say you truly want to be and are certainly not getting you the results that you desire. So go out there, figure out what it is that you want to try, what you want to experiment with, what you always had on a bucket list that you'd want to accomplish this year in 2020. Try to put yourself around more like-minded individuals who can help motivate you, and in return you can help motivate them. And all of that is going to lead to much greater things for you, for me, for everybody around us. So I wish you luck. I would love to hear some of the ideas that you have. Please drop me a message. You can find me easily on Facebook. You can reach out to me on Instagram, Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️️️. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear what you're going to be taking on. What inspiration, what motivation? How are you going to help somebody else? How can you be helped? What help do you need to reach a goal? We can definitely help you connect with someone out there that might be able to be useful to you, that might be able to support you in some way, shape, or form, that might be able to have some insight. For you on something that you want to accomplish that they've done already themself. And just put out the question. Just ask. Just ask for help. And we're here to help you do that. So thanks for checking in. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

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