My conversation with Erica Terblanche for this episode started on a different note. I’d heard someone online ask this question: “What did they pay you to sell out your dream?”
Most of us had a dream of what we wanted to do in life. But most of us took the “safe” option of a career that offered the best future for money and the lifestyle that we thought we wanted.
Erica followed the corporate path too. She had a successful career for 20 years.
And then she left the company to pursue her dream. She talks about the difficulty everyone faces when they make such a choice. A career gives you money, responsibilities, a certain lifestyle, and an identity. Leaving all this to pursue a dream feels risky, but it’s more of a psychological challenge. She says that you can’t learn about resilience when you’re sipping a drink on the beach.
Erica approaches running as a psychological endevour and a lot of curiosity. She’s curious about what she can accomplish in running.
She did a trail race in South Africa called the 13 Peaks Challenge. It’s 100km with about 6000 meters of ascent. She ran this on a Sunday and Monday. Then she ran the Comrades Marathon in the same week. She wanted to see what would happen if she ran them back-to-back.
She experienced the pain in her legs earlier in the race than had happened in previous years. But she welcomes the pain when it comes. She looks at it like her growth-point. It is in adapting and managing the pain that causes growth.
She uses a technique called “tapping” that consists of “tapping” the meridian points of the body while repeating affirmations. She says this is an easy-to-learn way to manage pain in races.
We talked about the different strategies people use to keep a good mindset and keep pushing. She says her strategy is never ever give up and don’t die. Those are the first two prinicples of ultra running, and they don’t necessarily go in that order.
Erica says that now that she is entering the fourth chapter of her life she has begun to encounter some very logical changes, but certainly not physiological changes that suggest she should stop and hang up her distance running shoes. But quite the opposite and she is very excited about it. She doesn’t accept the narrative of society that you are “over the hill” when you are past 50.
We talked about managing your thoughts about the risks trail runners take. She was in a race, running alone, near a wildlife refuge. She started thinking that she hoped the fences were strong, because she could end up facing a rhino, a lion, or something equally as dangerous. She almost immediately encountered a jackal. After an hour, there were 6 jackals tracking her. It was nerve-wracking, but she said most of us don’t think that the risk of death is greater whenever we drive our car on the road.
Erica had a career as a land surveyer because she loved being out in nature. Then a big international consulting firm offered her 3 times her salary. She took the job and moved to the city and started working long days and hanging out with friends at the pub after. Her life was work, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.
Then she saw the TV show of the EcoChallenge Fiji. She decided she wanted to do an adventure race. So she recruited some friends to join her and she did her first race. She fell in love with adventure racing. She put all her time, money, and energy into adventure racing. Within 5 years she competed in the Adventure Racing World Championships. This became her entry into endurance sports.
Erica is taking on a new challenge to stretch her beliefs even more. She is doing the Swim to Robben Island, an 11K swim through the ocean where Great White sharks also swim. She says she has not been a good swimmer. But she is training both her body and mind for this challenge.
We talked about aging and our expectations to keep doing endurance challenges to and past 100 years of age.
We also talked about God and how our perception of what it means to have a relationship with God has changed over time. Both of us have seen the emptiness of religion and moved to a personal expereince with God in how we realte to him.
Bridge questions:
What is your essential piece of gear: Emergency blankets that have saved her life several times.
Strangest thing you’ve seen when out running: the strangest thing she’s seen was someone who brought an entire film crew to his race to film him while he was running.
The word or phrase that sums up your philosophy of life: Never ever give up. There’s always another chance.
Do you have that one friend in your life who can always find the worst-case scenario?
If you’re trying to keep a positive mindset, sometimes it’s exhausting to be with them.
You try to encourage them and build them up, but it’s like trying to teach a cat to play fetch.
I’ve said before that worry is a misuse of your imagination.
Mark Twain: Worry is like paying a debt you don’t owe.
Mark Twain also said: I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.
But your negative friend won’t pay any attention to these ideas.
You’re probably way ahead of me and expecting me to talk about how powerful a positive mindset can be.
That is true.
But today I want to talk about when you might need your negative friend to help you.
Sometimes you do need to imagine the worst-case scenario.
Hello, welcome to Monday Morning Mindset!
I’m Eric Deeter, your host. I’m an ultramarathon runner and mindset coach.
The Monday Morning Mindset is where I share ideas and tools to help you develop a strong mindset. It’s your mindset that determines your success in whatever you do. And developing a strong mindset is a skill you can learn.
It was the fall of 2008 and I was a real estate investor.
It was a great time to be an investor.
Good deals were a little hard to find, but money was easy to find.
If you could prove that you were still breathing, the banks would loan you money.
I think they may have even made some loans to people who were no longer breathing.
I owned 4 houses: the one I lived in and 3 that I had rehabbed and was trying to sell as “rent-to-own.”
I knew I was going to get rich!
Then the economy crashed.
My rent-to-own schemes failed.
I had 4 mortgages and the only house occupied was my own.
And our faux finishing business died overnight.
We had no income and massive expenses.
And it was my own fault.
My stress level was through the roof!
We had savings that we figured would last us for about 3 months.
I didn’t have the background of mindset training I do now. If I had I probably wouldn’t have been in the mess I was in.
But I found something that worked to get me out of my worry and depression.
I took a good long look at my worst-case scenario!
I imagined having all my investment property and my own home go into foreclosure.
I imagined selling off most of what we owned.
I imagined moving into a small rental house.
I imagined going out and looking for what we called “a real job.”
(We had been self-employed for almost 15 years.)
And I knew that we would survive a worst-case scenario.
And I knew God would still love me.
Looking at the worst-case scenario took me out of my stress and depression and gave me hope.
We made it through. It wasn’t easy. And I lost more money than I ever thought possible.
We prayed a lot!
And Brenda, my partner in life and business, can cook amazing meals that cost very little.
And my worst-case scenario didn’t happen. We didn’t have to sell the house we lived in. And we stayed in business.
So my mindset tip for today is in two parts:
Don’t let your imagination bring you trouble that isn’t real. That’s what worry is.
But when the crisis is real, you can benefit from imagining the worst-case scenario.
Imagine it and realize you will survive.
When a crisis comes, that’s when you need your mindset to be strong.
You need the ability to see your options and make the best decisions you can.
I offer a coaching package specifically for crisis situations.
Ultramindsetpodcast.run – free 25 min. Conversation.
And the inaugural Cactus Roulette trail race meant I could have to run that trail a lot! So I chose to volunteer. This race is held in January in Kansas. The weather was good. It may have been 50 Fahrenheit at the start. And only in the 30s overnight. But January in Kansas can be sub-zero with a blizzard.
So after a good bit of a year to think about this, I’m going to run the second running of Cactus Roulette. I mean, how many times could I have to run Cactus Ridge anyway?
Winning at boxing is about mental strategy as much as physical endurance.
When Cam was 14 years old, it was explained to him how calories and fat loss work. He wanted to lose weight and started exercising to burn more calories. He tried to sign up for sports teams, but he wasn’t very athletic and never made the teams.
So he decided that every morning he would go roller blading for 2 hours to burn more calories. He expected results after 2 weeks. But when no one notices a change, he didn’t give up. He decided to give his plan 2 months. And it worked. People started telling him he looked thinner.
He decided that he wanted to take up boxing because he wouldn’t have to “try out” for a team. He went to the boxing gym and planned to just do the training. He wanted to look like
a boxer so that bullies would leave him alone and he would look good enough to get a date to the prom. But he didn’t want to actually get in the ring and box. He was there every day to train. He was motivated to follow his plan and look like a boxer.
After 6 months he was in better shape than all the other boxers. The coach called him out and embarrassed him in to sparring. He was so afraid of getting hit that his sole focus was not getting hit. And he didn’t get hit. He figured out that if he could keep from getting hit he would win fights.
He followed this strategy, and within 2 years he was the number one ranked boxer in the country.
He qualified for the 2008 Olympic boxing trials. He lost in the first day. He was disappointed, but then he realized that all the boxers he was competing against were going to turn pro. All he had to do was stick around and he would be one of the best boxers. And because he didn’t quit, he won Nationals later that year.
he decided not to go because all those boxers were going to go on to be professional boxers and he was going to be the only one left So he thought if he stayed he was going to be one of the best boxers Because all the experienced guys were gone And so he was because in 2008 he won the Nationals.
He continued winning Nationals the following years and has won more National Championships than anyone else in the history of the sport.
In 2012 he went back to the Olympic Trials and won the Olympic Trials and became the first to be suspended and kicked off the Olympic team for not filling out paperwork. Because he forgot to tell the drug testing agency that he was leaving the country for a boxing tournament so they showed up at his house in Kansas to give him a random drug test and he wasn’t there. And even though he tested negative this same week to compete in the tournament they, kicked him off. That was a very bad year for him.
He had the only thing he was good at taken away from him. He fell into depression. And he gained weight.
He got out of his depression because he lost a bet on a boxing match. As a result he had to go vegan for 28 days. He was training boxers, and one of his clients was vegan. As a result of the lost bet he also had to give up processed foods as well as alcohol. After 28 days he lost 30 pounds and he also realized what a negative person he had become.
He read the book, Think and Grow Rich, and decided to put the principle of focusing his mind on the pursuit of happiness. He decided to not start out the morning by looking at the stream of news and information on his phone. He started each morning by making a list of 10 things that he is grateful for. And his rule is that he can’t repeat any item on his list.
This conditioned him to look for things each day that he was grateful for and put them in his memory so he will remember them the next morning. Also, he has a rule that you cannot add a person’s name to the list unless you first reach out to them that day and tell them you are glad they are in your life.
He challenges everyone to try this for 90 days, and if it doesn’t change your life to call him and let him know.
Bridge Questions:
What is the most important piece of equipment you use in your training?: His mouth guard.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen while boxing?: He told us that one time he was in a fight that he was winning in the National Gold Gloves final, and the person he was fighting throws a punch and he goes to block it and he felt like he was falling for a long time and when he opens his eyes he is out of the ring on his back. The entire boxing ring had collapsed.
What is your word or phrase that sums up your philosophy of life?: If you can fail without getting discouraged, success becomes inevitable.
Leah Atherton has been running for most of her life. But she’s been a serious distance runner for the past 10 years. She enjoyed running cross country in school.
Leah also is a poet and has been involved in writing and spoken-word poetry. Her first collection of poems was published a few years ago. She says some of her best writing is done right after a run or sometimes during a run. She enjoys poetry because she can convey her feelings and distill them down and extract the key essence of what she want’s to convey.
Leah’s father was a runner And they lived in the South West of England and had really nice places to run just for the fun of it. But in her teens she started to have these overwhelming thoughts that if you’re not winning things and you’re not fast, then you shouldn’t do it. So she stopped running. But after her father died, she was living in Spain and started running again. She has always come back to running whenever she’s been away from it, and her focus has always been to do it for fun. Racing didn’t bring her back to running. The draw was the opportunity to go frolic in the woods.
Leah sees racing as a time challenge or a classroom. In races she learns what works as far as gear and nutrition. And they are also a way for her to experience new types of terrain that she may not have experience running. And having the support of the aid stations and camaraderie of other runners is a benefit. She enjoys the experience and the lessons learned. But she then takes what she’s learned and plans her own adventures running solo for the sheer joy of it.
I asked Leah about fell running and to explain what it is. I’ve heard the term, but Leah is the first person I’ve had the chance to ask for a definition of it. She says most fell running events are informal. Everyone meets at a pub and pays the barman a few pounds. Then the race starts and you run up a mountain and back down. The first one back to the pub is the winner. There is no marked trail. You find the best way to get up and down the mountain and go. Usually the way up and down is extremely steep.
Leah also enjoys fastpacking. At it’s heart, fastpacking is like a long-distance hike, except you cover the distance faster. For those who are ultra runners, this sounds like what we call “power hiking.” It’s not quite a run, but it’s “walking with purpose.”
One of her fastpacking adventures was on the Southwest coast path. It’s a 630 mile trail around the southwest coast of England. She took a tent, sleeping back and kit for a month and ran it solo. She likes the freedom to decide how far to go each day, and to check into a hostel if the weather gets bad. She also led some friends on a fastpack on easier trails and going from hostel to hostel.
As for gear for fastpacking, Leah recommends carrying several things, but she especially likes to have a down jacket as a Middle Layer in case it gets cold. She says to think of the basics as the kind of mandatory gear you would have for a 100 miler. And make sure you have food with you. She says she doesn’t care if it is only 2 miles to the nearest civilization, she always has something to keep her warm and preferably brightly colored in case someone has to come find you on the side of a mountain. She also always carries a head flashlight. And make sure you have a way to navigate and a way to call for help. She also recommends carrying a compact backpack and making sure you have some basic survival skills to take care of yourself.
She says that one thing she would recommend to everyone is to go out and do a local race whether it’s a 30k or an 800 because it guarantees that you will learn something about yourself.
For Leah, this summer has been pretty epic as she has had a year of consolidation and recovery. She’s looking ahead to her next adventures. She has an ambition to up her game and start doing some true mountain adventures. She’s talking to her coach about doing some of the low-key races around the French Alps. She has a spreadsheet of adventures she wants to do. One is the Alta Via in the Dolomites. It’s been on her list for the last 5 years, but she’s been putting it off because she feels the need for better preparation. But finally something has grabbed her by the collar and has told her yes it’s time to do more of this. She says she would also love to do something like the Appalachian Trail.
Questions from the bridge
The most important piece of running gear is: a running bra.
The strangest thing you have seen in a race: The race course went past the “murder cottage.” The cottaged suddenly loomed ahead through the black of night and the drizzle and fog. Suddenly green lights began glowing in the cottage. It was the classic scene from every horror movie ever made.
The word or phrase that sums up your philosophy of life: Choose wonder.
