Molly Sider reflects on her experience running the Chicago Marathon. Despite the excitement leading up to it, she felt shame instead of elation after crossing the finish line. She discusses the challenges she faced, including injury and the struggle between prioritizing safety and pushing through. Molly compares her marathon experience to a past triathlon, highlighting the lessons learned about personal motivation and the importance of valuing the journey over the end result. **Key Themes:** Expectations vs. reality Safety over ego Reflecting on motivations
Molly Sider reflects on her experience running the Chicago Marathon. Despite the excitement leading up to it, she felt shame instead of elation after crossing the finish line. She discusses the challenges she faced, including injury and the struggle between prioritizing safety and pushing through. Molly compares her marathon experience to a past triathlon, highlighting the lessons learned about personal motivation and the importance of valuing the journey over the end result.
**Key Themes:**
Expectations vs. reality
Safety over ego
Reflecting on motivations
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You know that feeling when you've poured your heart and your soul into achieving a goal. There's all that excitement and the anticipation of how amazing you're going to feel. Once you finally reach it. But then when you accomplish it, whether it's a major life milestone, a well-deserved promotion. Or a marathon perhaps. It doesn't quite live up to those expectations. And now you're feeling all confused and sad because you worked so hard for something that isn't giving you the feeling you had hoped for.
So what comes next and how do you make sense of that experience and where do you go from here?
Well, dear listeners, this very thing does happen to me. And for the next eight minutes, I'm going to break it all down for you. So that the next time this is your 📍 experience, you'll know exactly what to do. Welcome to Molly at this age, an itty bitty version of I am this age, the podcast proving it's never too late and you're never too old. So go do that thing. You're always talking about. I'm Molly Sider. I am a certified professional life coach, speaker storyteller, producer of insightful videos and recent grad 📍 students.
A few weeks ago, I ran the Chicago marathon. That's right. I did the thing that less than 1% of the world accomplishes. And you know what? Dear listeners. It sucked. And every time someone asked me how it went and I answer with terrible, inevitably, I get cut off and dismissed with a, you did it though, as if they weren't really asking.
And as if finishing is all that matters. But is finishing all that matters.
Marathon day was hot, crowded, stressful. My body hurt. And I had to walk the last six miles because my Achilles felt like it was on fire. When I finally did cross the finish line instead of the elation that everyone told me, I'd feel. I felt shame. Not because I was so much slower than I had planned or because I had to walk. I felt shame because as I limped over that finish line alone, tired and in pain. I wasn't sure that I had done the one thing I promised myself I would do.
And that promise to myself wasn't that I would finish.
It was that I would keep myself safe. So instead of having the thought of, wow, I just completed a marathon. I had the worry of, wow, what did I just do to my body?
That shame stuck with me for days. I shoved my metal into a dark corner in my closet, and I spent the next few weeks nursing my Achilles and untangling my emotions.
I have seen loads of videos of people barely able to walk over the finish line, crawling on the ground or being held up by two people because their limbs no longer work. I even saw a woman cross the finish on crutches after she injured herself around mile 17. Can you imagine walking nine miles on crutches? I mean kudos to her, but no, thank you. And all of this.
For what reason? What are we all trying to prove? And more importantly, what are we all trying to feel?
Right after I signed up for the marathon, I tore my MCL and it forced me to get very clear on the reasons I wanted to run one in the first place. And the reasons I settled on back then were that I wanted to feel challenged, strong, healthy, and accomplished. I knew a marathon would be an obvious way to feel those things. I also knew a marathon.
Isn't the only way to feel those things, but I was determined to heal my knee and train hard, but smartly.
See, when I was 23, I completed an Olympic sized triathlon. That is a mile swim, a 26 mile bike and a 6.2 mile run. It was hot and hilly and they ran out of Gatorade. By the time I reached the finish line, I had salt depletion. I was dehydrated. I threw up at the finish. And after the finish, I was airlifted to the nearest hospital. I came within one hour of dying and was on a respirator and in the hospital for three days.
As a 46 year old, I knew I'd approached the marathon differently than I did the triathlon.
I'm older, more cautious and I'm much smarter. So beginning to train for this marathon after an injury and long after my experience at that triathlon, I was committed to keeping myself safe, whatever that meant. If I was injured and I had to drop out. So be it. If I was feeling dehydrated and I had to drop out fine. Here's the problem. The struggle between the desire for safety. And the ego telling you that you can keep going is very real. Training for a marathon takes months of dedication. You run hundreds of miles preparing for this day, it's basically a part-time job.
If you're running for a charity, that means people donated money to your experience. And if you're anything like me or documenting on social media and telling all your friends about the marathon. So come race day. Even the strongest wills are likely to lose the battle between safety and ego. Besides, it's not always clear when enough is enough, in my case, I could still walk.
So that is what I did. I walked for 6.2 miles after running 20.
They say that the training for the marathon is the marathon and the marathon is the celebration where you collect your metal. Similarly. I like to call my life, my learning journey, everything I do. I'm just gathering information. Goals, our guides. They drive us and redirect us and they keep us moving forward.
They're really important, but it's not really the goal that we're after. It's the feeling. We believe that goal is going to give us that we're after. So when creating a goal, be it to finish a marathon or something else. It is so important to know the feeling you're after and to find ways to feel that way.
Even if the goal is never achieved.
I learned a lot about myself. I'll training for this marathon. I learned that having to wake up before the sun rises gives me anxiety. I learned that I prefer running alone. I learned that I love running to 10 miles and anything after that is extremely challenging for me. I learned that I love running. I also learned that the most important part of training and running a marathon. His community.
In the beginning of this year, I had decided that I would focus on strengthening friendships and making new ones. I didn't know at the time that the marathon would be the very thing to help me do this. I could not have made it through months of training and I definitely could not have crossed the finish line without the support of my community. I did not complete this marathon alone.
I finished it with so many amazingly supportive people by my side. At mile 10, I spotted my friends and my family, my mom Dontre good. Golly, miss Molly. T-shirt while my dad experienced his first marathon as a spectator.
At mile 14, three friends surprised me on the sidelines by mile 18. There they were again. At mile 20, another friend showered me with confetti and handed me a frozen pickle pop, which tasted, uh, mazing.
As I approached mile 21, feeling hurt and defeated. I suddenly saw this giant poster with my face on it. A friend had waited for me all by herself, even though the other people she was chairing with had left. \ And then she walked alongside me to mile 25. At mile 23, we re encountered my pickle pop friend and she yelled to the crowd.
This is Molly, and it's her first marathon. And the crowd went wild. They were cheering my name for what it felt like five minutes. I could barely hold back. My tears. I received texts from friends, following my progress on the app and chairing me from afar. And when I finally returned to the house where my friends and family had been waiting for me all day, I was greeted with pizza and ice pack and a hot shower. All without lifting a finger.
I've always loved cheering at marathons, popping in whenever I felt like it and staying as long as I was inspired, but I was mainly cheering for my own benefit. I was feeding off of the energy and emotions of those incredible runners who put so much into their journey. But I was doing it for me. Now that I've experienced being a runner myself.
I promise to show up to future marathons, to cheer on for the runners benefit because the crowds are as important as any other aspect of the race.
In the days after the marathon feeling all sorts of confusing emotions. I finally came to the conclusion that I did in fact, stay true to myself. I did everything I was supposed to do. I walked when it no longer felt good to run, I stayed properly fueled and hydrated. So while my body was hurting, my energy was high. And I allowed myself to feel whatever emotions were coming up.
I didn't pretend to like this thing just because everyone told me I would, it's okay. To not like marathons. Even when I worked so hard at completing one. And I know I will never run another one because doing that again would not be staying true to who I am.
And now that I've figured this out, I've realized that all those people I thought were dismissing my feelings were actually trying to tell me something that I'm now able to hear. After three weeks of untangling, a web of emotions. I have finally found pride.
I trained for. And I finished. A marathon. In long before the race. I got to my goal of feeling strong, healthy, challenged, accomplished, and I found my community. And what all those people have been trying to get me to see is that it makes no difference how it went. Even if I hadn't finished, I'd still be worthy of my metal.
Congrats to all the marathoners who finished in Chicago and recently in New York and all over the 📍 world and to the ones who didn't. If you liked this episode, please share it with at least one other person. The more we grow, the more we can help you grow. Thank you to Dan Devin for my music, David Harbour for my artwork.
I am. This age is produced by jellyfish industries. I'm Molly Sider your host until next time stay curious, everyone.