Author: Eric Deeter

Becoming a triathlete and ultramarathon runner

Viktoria Brown’s motivation to start running was to lose weight. She is mom to three girls, and when the youngest was born she started running. She also started eating foods that were low in carbs and high in protein. She was happy with her results and continued as a casual runner. 

She decided to start selling her low-carb baking mixes that she had originally made for herself. Her small business began to grow and now Hold the Carbs products can be found in stores in Canada, and she ships to customers in Canada and the US.

When she was in school she didn’t like any kind of exercise. She preferred to sit inside with a book rather than running and playing. But she discovered a love for horseback riding at the age of 9. Horseback riding is an expensive sport, so she only went once a week.

She decided that since she couldn’t be involved in horse riding as competition that she could still be connected to the sport as a reporter. So she started working at the Hungarian TV station, doing whatever they needed done. Her mother knew someone with a 5th-degree connection to the station, and Viktoria was invited to a tour. She convinced them to let her work for free, and she kept showing up and eventually she ended up as the commentator for the equestrian event for 1996 Olympic games. And her position connected her to the equestrian team and she was able to ride with occasionally.

After she started running, her first race was a 10K, but she says Ironman triathlons were always in the back of her mind because she had friends who did them and she thought if they could she could too. So she started working on that, and later in 2015 she ran a half-marathon. And a year after she ran the 10K, she ran a marathon. 

She then moved to triathlons and began working her way up in distance. She enjoyed the challenge and 2 ½ years later she completed her first Ironman. She saw that she was particularly good at longer distances. She placed higher in her age group in the longer distances. She started working with a coach and was able to place 7th in her age group in the half-Ironman distance.

She changed coaches in 2019 and it was a breakout year for her. Races were canceled shortly after, but when she was able to start again she was contending for the podium rather than being a middle-of-the-pack runner and triathlete. The consistency of her training paid off. She traveled to Hungary and placed first female in a triathlon at the same distance as the Ironman.

Then she ran her first ultra because everything was canceled. She saw this race when she ran a half-marathon. It was a 24-hour race and she ended up running 132 miles. And she’d never run more than a marathon before. She won the race outright (first overall for men and women). She broke the course record and became the first selection for the Canadian National 24-hour team. And she broke the 24-hour Canadian-soil record. 

Viktoria went into the competition at the 6 Days in the Dome race in 2022 with the goal of setting a new world record. This event was held at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She won the six day race with a distance of 457.4135 miles (736.135KM) which broke the 6-day record for Canadian women. On her way to winning the six day event, she set a new Canadian 48hr with a distance of 219.95 miles (353,991 meters) and the Canadian and GOMU World Record for 72 hours at a distance of 290.41 miles (467,366 meters).

She still had 80 minutes left to run once she passed the women’s 6-day record. She decided she should try to get out and run more since she had only passed the record by a small margin. But the pain that her mind had kept at bay to meet her goal came on so strong that she had to concede and stop running.

She says that the mindset part running ultramarathon distances is certainly a factor in performance. She says that she didn’t really feel the pain she was in until she’d met her goal of setting the record distance she was after.

Bridge questions:

Her fuel on the runs are a natural sports drink called Glyco-durance from F2C Nutrition that come in 4 flavors. Since she doesn’t usually eat in the first few hours and just drinks these drinks.

The strangest thing she has seen was a huge glowing unicorn that was clearly a hallucination.

The phrase that describes her life philosophy is that she likes to be in the presence of light and that she always chooses to be present over something that might come in the future.

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Speaker Notes:

Take a breath. Take a deep breath.

Inhale deep! In through your nose. Out through your mouth.

Again!

Again!

Do you feel calmer now?

If you do, it’s only the placebo effect. You’ve been told this will calm you down . . . reduce stress.

Reality – it has the opposite effect on your body.

The mindset work I do w/ my clients is about mind AND body . . . manage thoughts AND emotions.

And using your breath correctly is one of the best ways to manage how your emotions show up in your body.

I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say you’ve been breathing all your life.

We all have!

And most of the time we don’t think about it. 

If you’re a runner or in other exercise, you’ve had times when you feel like you couldn’t get enough.

But do you ever stop to think about HOW you’re breathing?

And whether there might be better ways to breathe? Or that you could change your athletic performance.

Or that the advice to take deep breaths doesn’t do anything to calm you down?

I did all my mindset work and started my coaching without learning how effective breathwork is.

Now I’ve incorporated it into my coaching because I can help my clients get better and faster results.

What I’ve learned about breathwork has changed the way I run and helped me be even more effective at managing my mindset.

I can talk about breathing techniques for longer than most people want to listen.

So I’ll give you the highlights:

1. Most of us breath too fast
2. We breathe too much volume
3. Breathing through your mouth (in or out) reduces available O₂

I want to tell you about a technique that is easy and will give you great benefits.

Resonant Breathing

Breathing at a rate of 3 to 7 seconds for both inhalation and exhalation.

Most common is 5.5 seconds = 5.5 breaths per minute.

Benefits

1. It gives you greater HRV, or heart rate variability. HRV is a measure of how much variance there is between heartbeats.

The variations between heartbeats is a sign of health.

If your heart beats like a metronome, with no variation in between beats, it’s a sign that your body is stressed.

HRV has become one of the key markers of mood, stress adaptation, performance, and even overall health.

2. Balances sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous system

Sympathetic nervous system = gas pedal.

Parasympathetic nervous system = brakes.

How to:

Sit comfortably.

Align your posture

Start off by exhaling from your belly. Pull your navel toward your spine.

Then 5.5 seconds inhale and 5.5 seconds exhale.

Don’t pause between inhale and exhale. 

This will give you a rate of 5.5 breaths per minute.

James Nestor (author of Breath): Breathing gives the same benefits of meditation for people who don’t like to meditate.

Taking on big challenges and the mindset it takes to do them.

 Ryan Steiner says he is autistic and is obsessed with running. Before he became obsessed with running he was obsessed with food and weighed over 700 pounds.  Now he has dreams that he pursues daily and says that what he believes most defines him is that he is a dad of an autistic child. He says that since they both have autism he can show her the world and share things with her in a way that he can’t connect with other people. His daughter, Kala, is in a wheelchair so Ryan pushes her as he runs. They’ve run a 50K race together, and he hopes they can someday run a 100 mile race.

His goal for next year is to run 100 miles, but he’s not sure yet if Kala is ready to run for 24 hours because it might be too long for her. She has a specialized wheelchair they call “The Chariot,”and it is specifically designed to run distance races with people with physical disabilities. When Kala was smaller, they used a jogging stroller. The Chariot is also a type of trailer for a bike so Ryan can vary his workouts.

Ryan is a fan of the elliptical bike. It is like an elliptical exercise machine on bicycle wheels, but with a longer stride.  He says it simulates a slow motion run, so it works the same muscles you use when running, but without the impact of running. It doesn’t replace the need for actual running, but he likes it as a supplement to his running workouts.

Ryan says he started out like Forrest Gump, but walking. And then he felt like he wanted to go faster. He also dedicated himself to losing weight. He did the Hennepin 50k race last year, and from the time he finished until February he reduced his mileage and his calories. He wanted to lose weight to see how much more he could improve his pace. He says he has to balance weight loss with race training because if he wants to lose a lot of weight in a quick period of time he has to watch how many calories he is counting and how many calories he is taking off so he can maintain recovery. 

At the Hennepin 50K last October he pushed his daughter, Kala, the whole way. He says it was a brutal thing because the heat and the humidity were really bad and it sucked all the hydration out of his whole body and he got really bad cramps. He chose that race as his first 50k because it has an extremely generous cut off which is 21 hours because of the fact it runs in parallel with the 100 mile race. This was his first night race as well. The course is a cross between road and trail because the ground is like crushed limestone, and it’s a good surface to run on .

Ryan has become very familiar with the trail running group associated with the Ornery Mule Races. He says that once he has a group of people he is socializing with it is easier for him than starting in a whole new group. His autism makes it more of a challenge to deal with new people and unfamiliar places. People tell him he should be his authentic self, but he says that if he was his authentic self he wouldn’t talk to people because he wants to be in his own world. So having people around him that are safe and can help him navigate those confusing things in a race he’s never been to before is really nice for him. So he likes being in the trail running community. Also, in new situations, he likes to have sunglasses on because then he doesn’t have to make eye contact and can look in other directions until he adapts to what is happening. He says he can fake it for short periods of time and people get the impression that he’s doing fine. Then they say things like ”Well, you don’t seem very autistic compared to people I know.” But it’s because he has practiced and forced himself to learn how to connect with others

 Ryan says that one of the things that helped him learn to push forward is that he learned to be consistent. And being able to connect with people, which allowed him to push through a lot of really tough training times. He loves running and he loves what running brings to his life. Sometimes he has to remind himself that he loves to run and push away the negative thoughts in his head that tell him he doesn’t want to go running because it’s too hot or whatever other excuse that pops us. He also has to balance the things he does with his daughter because there may be days when he is fine but she is not willing to connect.

Ryan has a trainer, and she’s been great at taking his obsession with running and filling his head with all the things he needs to know about his body and helped him train using heart rate. Helping him to see how his body should feel at each of these different levels. He also does speed work and strength training. She had especially helped him focus his energy where it needs to be.

He has also been a race announcer and has been on the live broadcast of the Kettle Moraine 100 mile race. He was nervous about doing this, but now has more confidence because of the podcasts he’s been on.

Bridge questions:

The fundamental piece for Ryan’s race is water, he says he can run without shoes without any problem but if he doesn’t have water he is finished.

The strangest thing he’s encountered is someone seeing The Chariot and asking to buy ice cream.

The phrase that defines his life philosophy is: real change only runs at the edge of your comfort zone.

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Speaker notes

Important message: This won’t last!

Happy or sad, it doesn’t matter.

Emotions change. Whatever you are feeling right now . . . it won’t last.

For most of my life, I’ve tried to control my emotions.

Part of this came from growing up in church.

Too much passion – not a good Christian

Anger – not a good Christian

Drive to win (competition) – not a good Christian

Note: This is my own interpretation of what I learned. What got stuck in my subconscious.

So I kept a tight grip on showing my emotions. 

5 is the middle – I ranged 6.5 to 3.

The only strong emotions: depression, shame, anger

But I hid these & tried not to show them.

Mindset work I’ve done is to connect my mind and body to experience my emotions.

Even though I tried to control my emotions, they still showed up in my body.

I wasn’t really controlling them. I was ignoring them.

You can’t really control your emotions.

Have you ever had times when everything is going great and you feel on top of the world?

You want that feeling to last forever!

But it will fade, no matter what you do.

Or, when you feel like crap, even for good reason.

You feel like you’re going to be in a funk forever.

No matter what you do (or others) to cheer up. You feel better for a while, but then that heavy weight settles back over your heart.

The bad news / good news is that “It won’t last.”

Your good mood won’t last.

Your bad mood won’t last.

One of the things I’ve learned from running ultramarathons is that you will experience these emotional ups and downs during your race.

You’ll feel like you can run forever . . .

Then you’ll feel like you’re about to die . . .

You can’t control these emotions.

But you can manage them.

Often the success of your race depends on how you manage them.

3 steps – in context of running, but applies to life.

1. Feel the emotion.

Control: “I don’t want to feel this.” (block the pain)

Or, “I can’t let myself feel too good because the higher the high the lower the low.”

But when you accept the way you feel, the negative loses its power and you’re able to enjoy the good.

Guests on my podcast – works for physical pain as well. Resist = persists. 

Let it come then let it pass.

2. Detach your story from the emotion

“I can’t run any farther!”

“I can run forever!”

These are only stories you attach to your feelings.

Results:

Run faster. Burn through your energy.

You quit. 

Whatever story you’re telling, set it aside.

3. Create a new story

“I know this feeling won’t last. I’ll keep going until I feel better.”

“I feel good! I need to manage this feeling to get the most out of it.”

Two things to remember:

The way you feel right now wont’ last forever.

You can’t control how you feel, but you can manage your emotions by accepting the feeling and creating a story that helps you keep moving forward.

Changing beliefs about who you are is a success mindset.

Lindsay Dare Shoop is an Olympic gold medal winner in the sport of rowing. She got into the sport of rowing because she didn’t believe she was good enough to play college sports.

She played all the sports in high school. She was tall and athletic and did well as a competitive athlete. She played volleyball for 10 years, and it was her favorite sport in high school. But she had the mindset that she would never be good enough to compete in any sport at the collegiate level. She looked at the collegiate athletes she admired, and they were all taller and faster than she was. So she never even considered playing sports in college.

But she began to struggle with motivation in college. She missed the structure of team sports, it had helped her focus. And she began to get out of shape and gain some weight. Athletes in her high school were required to keep their grades up in order to play. And she was outside the structure of her parents being around to guide her and ask about her school work. Also, she missed the camaraderie that comes with being part of a team.

Then she ran into the rowing coach at the University of Virginia campus on December 1st of her junior year. He told her that her height and athletic experience would be a good fit for rowing. She didn’t know anything about rowing, but she joined the team and started working out and learning. She made fast progress and soon attracted the attention of the coach of the National Team. She made it as part of the National Team and started at the bottom and eventually worked her way up to be the fastest starboard rower in the country. Her ability led her to be on the Olympic rowing team.

She says that when her team won in the Olympics, only five of them had learned to row in college. They were the first women’s team to win Olympic gold for the United States in the 2000 meters. 

What she noticed as an athlete and as a coach is that if you are lanky with a short torso and long arms and legs that is going to help you have better leverage,  minimizing the risk of injury. Also, rowing with a team requires attention to form as well as matching your power to that of the team. It sounds counterintuitive, but too much power will make the boat go slower. She says it’s similar to swimmers who may be less fit who will still win over stronger swimmers if they use a smooth efficient form.

She paid attention to her form as an athlete, and sees the benefits now as a coach. She says that  to maintain our joints we have to keep the alignment that is most efficient. If the alignment is off, the muscles and ligaments have to work harder to keep the joints together as well as do the motion of rowing. This is where injuries come from.

Physical training goes hand in hand with mental training for her. She says that because your mind is intrinsically linked to your physical body, stability and efficiency in one will affect the other. One thing that helped her mindset in training was to write down everything about her workouts. It helped her build confidence because she could easily forget the good days when one or two challenging days came along. She started to notice that sometimes it took 10 good days to make up for one bad one. Her workout journal helped her keep perspective.

Her diet was all trial and error. She says that during her first world championships she was eating granola bars, cereal, and toast because that’s what she likes. She has never been a big meat eater, never liked to eat eggs or red meat. She thinks she could probably be a vegetarian if it wasn’t for seafood and barbeque pork. She believes the most important thing she did was to get plenty of sleep, stay hydrated, and eat lots of fruits and vegetables when she started training because she didn’t have many options. That went a long way for her.

Bridge questions:

What is the most effective exercise: rowing and swimming.

What is your best diet tip: Sleep. Because if you don’t it’s going to affect your hormones.

Word or phrase that sums up your philosophy of life: The more you know, the less you need.

Connect with Lindsay:

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Speaking notes

You can be in your comfort zone and still be uncomfortable.

Yes! You can be going crazy and completely stressed out with too much to do. Yes, this is the life of a business owner.

The chaos feels uncomfortable, but that very chaos can be your comfort zone.

Life coaches and motivational speakers: Get out of your comfort zone!

Quotes:

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

You’ll never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone.

Great things never come from your comfort zone.

Leave you comfort zone and arrive at your success zone.

True self-discovery begins where your comfort zone ends.

But for those of us who are business owners or attorneys, you can stay in your comfort zone and still be uncomfortable.

Running a business or a law practice puts you in this strange reality: you’re stressed and have too much to do, but you’ve adapted your mindset to the chaos.

The chaos is familiar. The chaos is your comfort zone.

So when you’re not working, you’re thinking about what you have to do. You carry the weight of your business in your mind all day, every day.

Call this the Chaos Comfort Zone.

Your mind is always churning. You feel the weight as tension and stress in your body. And your body and mind develop resistance – just like taking drugs or alcohol.

But eventually your body or mind will break from the stress – BURNOUT!

This happened to Brenda and me. We were getting calls for business and had jobs booked out 4 to 6 months. We went 2 years working our butts off and never took a vacation.

Friends invited us for a weekend at their condo. Free if we listen to a sales pitch.

“We’re not going to buy!” 

Sales woman: “When was the last time you took vacation.”

“We’re self-employed. We don’t take vacations.”

Her: “Do you think that’s healthy?”

We bought – put 

Paradox: you don’t realize that the stress and chaos is your comfort zone.

Three steps to break out of the Chaos Comfort Zone

1. Realization

Ask yourself: Am I doing what is healthy for myself?

Take a step back and look at your life and business from an outside perspective.

2. Make a decision

It doesn’t matter what kind of comfort zone you are in: Chaos Comfort Zone or just cruising through life on Easy Street.

Human mind: Don’t change what we are used to. New and different feels like a risk.

Truth: Comfort zone is more dangerous. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Make a decision: “I’m not going to put up with this any more.”

3. Take action

Once you make a decision, take the first step immediately.

It’s important to get started right away. 

If you wait too long between decision and action, your mind will talk you out of it. 

Your comfort zone is deadly. It doesn’t matter if you’ve adapted to chaos or you’re just cruising through life.

Your comfort zone will eventually steal your soul.

Mindful running for ultramarathon distances

 For Tom the journey of starting running started many years ago so he is not even sure when it was but it was around 20 years ago. The first few years he was running just to clear his mind after work, but in early 2016 he started to increase his training daily. He did it for his mental health. He was running 5 or 6 times a week for around an hour or sometimes 3 hours a day. In March 2018 he wanted to increase the speeds and increase his steps with the intentions of starting some big challenges. He saw a story of a man who swam around the whole of Britain, spent almost 200 days at sea and thought he could do some kind of crazy challenge too. So in 2019 he started his first challenge.

Tom struggles with anxiety and stress in his life and that’s why he decided to run. When he started running more it was a hard time in his life because he had stopped living with his two kids and he had lost his business. He wanted to improve his mental health and have challenges so he started looking for solutions to not be stressed all the time. Running was the sport he chose. It helped him, and that’s how he started to focus more on running.

When he was trying to change his life he learned that his anxieties and tensions were connected to some traumatic experiences that he had lived through. He found that if we don’t listen to those traumatic experiences, then we will actually pass those traumatic experiences on to the next generation. He was also looking for solutions to inspire his children to keep pursuing their dreams and fighting for the life they want to have and make his family’s cycle of trauma end with him. He didn’t know where all this was going to take him, but he wanted to push his limits. When he started running and did 5K he knew it was great and 10K was cooler and he wanted to keep increasing the miles.

He does self-supported running adventures. In 2019 his first big challenge was to do 5,000,000 steps. He started that challenge and really didn’t know what to expect from that first challenge. When he finished it he knew he could train for anything in his life because he went from doing 25,000 steps a day and in the start of his journey to doing over 100,000 steps a day which was a total of 14 hours of heavy exercise.

When he finished, he took a 3 week break and started the next challenge which was to run 11,000 kilometers on his own, with a backpack. Both of these challenges he did in Asia so the weather was quite hot and sometimes it was very difficult to find water along the way.

When he did his 11,000km challenge he started in Vietnam and ran through Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. But he got caught in a Covid lock-down in 2020 and got stuck on the beach next to the jungle. The first 3 weeks it was pretty tough because he was being harassed on the street by people and authorities thinking he was breaking the Covid quarantine. The police asked him to stay in the hotel room. There were only 2 people who spoke English, but he was able to finish his challenge despite being stuck there for 3 months.

Now Tom is running the circumference of the earth and running on every continent. It is a massive challenge that will take him 14 months. For this challenge he is starting with just his backpack so he is running from hotel to hotel. In late October or early November the support team will join him when he is in Florida.

In his backpack Tomasz carries his laptop, some food and water and some clothes. He plans his routes very well to buy things on the way and not have to carry a lot of things. He says there is often no place to hide when there is heavy rain or, as in Scotland, snow and strong winds. You just have to keep running because you have to get to the hotel you’ve booked for the night.

He practices what he calls mindful running because one time he was running worried about the future and not paying attention to the present and he almost stepped on a dangerous snake. And he worried about his life as well.

So he started to focus on the road ahead of him.

After that he realized that he was running like crazy and doing heavy physical exercise and he was enjoying it. And after running, he was able to sit at his laptop and work. He started searching and found out that he was actually reaching a flow state and started practicing active meditation. He began to teach about his flow state practice at universities.

When it comes to getting into the flow state, Tomasz says that your whole mind has to be in the present moment, in the here and now. Having a meditation practice can help you to create the conditions for full flow. For him the most productive way to do it is active meditation when running. He tries to focus on something specific. It can be a color like orange, and every time you run focus on that orange color. Just look around you and focus on the orange things and when you don’t see it look at other similar shades and you will be surprised that you can find little things of those colors. It’s a pretty simple activity to start practicing mindfulness. Another thing he does is to count his breaths. He says that anything that makes you focus on the present instead of letting all that cascade of thoughts that you know are coming like a swarm in your head will help you get into a flow state.

Bridge questions:

His most important piece is his laptop because even though he is running he has to work and organize everything along the way because even though he can knock on doors to tell what he is doing and see if people are willing to help him he can’t exist without his laptop.

The strangest thing he has ever seen was in the Philippines and it was the gap between the rich and the poor, children in extreme poverty sleeping under bridges, he was so amazed that he had to leave the Philippines because he could not mentally handle seeing those things.

The phrase or word that describes his philosophy of life is: that each one of us has the same opportunity to have the life we are proud to leave, regardless of our past experiences.

Connect with Tomasz

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Speaking notes:

According to Jesus, the second greatest commandment in the Bible is this:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

I’ve been going to church all my life, and I’ve never heard a preacher talk about this like what I’m about to say.

I don’t know if I really want other people to love me like they love themselves.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Some people confuse this with the “Golden Rule:” Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

Love your neighbor.

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

They sound the same, don’t they?

If you Google “love your neighbor as yourself” and look at only the results that come from Xans, they will focus on how do you love others.

This is in line with every preacher I’ve ever heard speak about this “2nd greatest commandment.”

But most Xans miss an implied truth.

Let me state this commandment in a different way:

Love yourself! Then love others in the same way.

This is different from “do unto others.” It’s different from just loving your neighbor.

This put the focus on you.

And this is the reason I say I’m hesitant to say I want others to love me like they love themselves.

Because most people I know don’t do a good job of loving themselves.

Three examples:

1. Self-talk

Try this. Make a list of all the things you say to yourself this week. Then repeat these things to your friends and neighbors.

Will they think you are a loving person?

You’re such an idiot.

You know how you are! You’ll find some way to screw up.

You’re not good enough.

2. Keeping promises

How many times do you tell yourself you’re going to do something and then something comes up, or you just plain don’t feel like it.

Diet and exercise.

Taking time to rest.

Most of us keep promises to others better than to ourselves

3. Burning yourself out.

Life can be hectic.

We push ourselves and ignore the warning signs that we’re damaging our health (physical and mental).

Usually you can see burnout or risk of burnout in others before you see it in yourself.

It’s easier to love others than to love yourself.

So here is what I suggest you do: 

Love your neighbor – do good to others. And love yourself the same way.