The Flamingo Diaries
I don’t mean to be funny,’ said fellow tour member Tony, as we waded our way down a Saharan dune, ‘but it’s hard to imagine you finishing a marathon – let alone over 100 of them.’ I couldn’t blame Tony: he’d witnessed the undignified way I’d unsuccessfully tried to Twister-walk my way up an Algerian dune on all fours earlier in the trip, and had now seen our muscular, turbaned Tuareg guide grab me by the hand and haul me up to the summit.
‘That’s why I love running marathons,’ I laughed. ‘I enjoy surprising others – and myself! That’s my column’s goal: to prove that you don’t have to be good, young or slim – you just have to want to do it.’
The younger me would have been discouraged by these comments. It got me thinking about Lori Fox, an inspiring woman I met last year at the International Coaches Summit by 261 Fearless – an organisation aiming to empower women of all backgrounds through running. Lori, who trains its coaches, told me how important it was for them to avoid ‘profiling’ members – which made me chuckle; I’d heard the term applied to serial killers before, but not runners.
Lori, 54, confessed that when she’d first started running 10 years ago, she’d look at larger, older runners and assume they’d be slow, and perhaps not even finish. ‘I also sized up slimmer women and concluded they were faster than me. In both cases, I was often wrong. Which helped me realise that profiling is dangerous because it perpetuates limiting beliefs based on false premises.’
She went on to tell me about a woman in her 261 Fearless group who was adamant she couldn’t run a mile without stopping. ‘Her mantra was, “I can’t run that far,”’ said Lori. ‘After a while, she was able to run a mile, then two,and so on – all the while repeating her mantra.’ The woman eventually entered a half marathon. ‘She shared that she’d changed the tape in her head to “I can do this!”’ Lori said, ‘and that made all the difference.’
WORDS TO GIVE YOU WINGS
‘Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.’
Alan Alda, the Emmy Award-winning M*A*S*
