What did they give you to sell out your dream?
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.
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