Mindset and Running for Mental Health
My guest this week is Ciara Carter. Ciara is a runner, personal trainer, health coach, and podcaster. The mindset for running and mental health is a big part of her podcast. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Look for the Run, Thrive, Survive podcast.
Treadmill got her hooked.
Most of us hate running on a treadmill. In fact, we call it the dread-mill. But Ciara became a runner because of a treadmill. And she says it happened by accident. She hated running when she was in school. She hated it so much that she intentionally overslept to miss PE class when she new the “mile run” was on the schedule. And she chose sports that didn’t require long periods of running. She never considered soccer, but chose basketball and softball.
But after an injury prevented her from playing basketball, she took a spin on her mom’s treadmill as a way to stay in shape. She ended up doing a mile. Then she did it again. Then she ran farther than a mile. Soon she was putting in serious miles. But she didn’t want to run outside. The hills intimidated her.
Running outside.
She soon moved to Florida, where there are no hills. She entered a 10K race–outside. And she fell in love with running. She set a goal to run the Boston marathon, and chose a “Boston-qualifier” as her first ever marathon. And she qualified for Boston in her first ever marathon! But then COVID dashed her hopes.
The mindset to get through hard things.
She says that running got her through some dark times in her life. In the year where she kept saying, “It can’t get any worse, can it?” it was running that kept her holding on when things did keep getting worse. Running the Boston marathon was the one thing that she counted on in 2020 when everything else seemed to be going wrong. The disappointment of losing that chance was hard. And she found it hard to get out the door and keep running.
But she was able to get back the mindset to keep moving forward and has her sites set on new challenges.
As she says in every one of her podcast episodes: “Run your life. Don’t let it run you.”
Connect with Ciara:
Website: Run Thrive Survive
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
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