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Went to this last night and wow, I have to say, I walked away with a lot of thoughts after feeling a lot of emotions. The theme of the night was perseverance and these three athletes are perfectly illustrative of this. https://twitter.com/gary_robbins/status/1197979023785086977
To start the night, we watched @TSN documentary Endless about @gary_robbins's 2018 attempt at Barkley. I tell you, I felt re-traumatized. It's been awhile since my head was there and I both hated being there and I kinda liked it.
Then Gary spoke about his many failures. I wish there was more time. His whole life is very interesting and you could probably always guess he was destined for greatness, but he did get there in an easy straight line. He fell down a lot and kept getting up.
Next up was @eLLiejG. Holy moly. I was not expecting the emotional journey of her presentation. If you don't know her, you should. 3x UROY, 2x Western States champ & CR holder, Comrades champ, etc etc etc. Her career a few years back was something to behold.
Then in 2016, her leg was like, yeah no, we're done. I won't go into super detail here, but I'll admit, for years I've thought Ellie had every right to just hang it up. Yet she's kept trying and kept running. I assumed her running shorter distances was a way to get back to ultras
But she just freaking likes to run. 5k, 10k, whatever. Running is running. Ultras are not better than any other distance. It's just longer. And Ellie wants to run, so she does. She keeps putting herself out there, finding different challenges, being part of the community.
I didn't think I could be a bigger fan of Ellie's than I already am, but now I'm all
Lastly, @dylanbo stepped up. I don't know Dylan very well, mostly through social media & he seems like a really great guy. He loves sports. Like, a lot. My favorite tweets of his are hardly ever about running but about football, lacrosse, soccer, etc. It's endearing.
He's also a fellow American & always seemed a bit of a bro, but again in an endearing way. He even used the word bro at some point and it came off adorable and my fandom grew. He's had some injuries in 2019 after an incredible 2018. I expected his talk to be about physical stuff.
But nope. He spoke about mental health and emotional fitness. He stood on stage in front of 500 strangers & talked about his depression from the last year & how it probably sparked his physical injuries. He spoke about meditation & having a healthy emotional practice.
Find a healthy mindset & your body will follow. I was blown away by his words. AND THEN he talked about passion vs identity and how to be passionate about what you do, but do it for the love of it, not because it defines you or because of superficial rewards. Yes, Dylan! Preach!
He ended talking about his 6th place at TNF50 last wknd. He ran with joy for the 1st time in a long time. It was a difficult race, as you'll see from this video, it didn't go as great as he hoped. He wished he had a more triumphant story to leave us with. https://twitter.com/dylanbo/status/1196861134944362496?s=19
Psst, @dylanbo, the joy is the triumph!
So anyway, I'm so glad I went to this show. I really hope others got as much out of it as I did! Thank you @gary_robbins @eLLiejG and @dylanbo for sharing your stories!
