Stone Soup for the Soul
It's Friday and I have so many goodies to share, the most meaningful of which to me was this blog post on career choices called The Flyway - What Am I Doing? by Dr. Sarah Lesko. She wrote about how she was drawn to a medical profession. She embraced the challenge of becoming a doctor and loved the complexity of care and emotional intelligence required for family medicine. However, even after 17 years off running competitively due to injury, she felt her heart pulled toward running and little by little she became more involved with the growing women's apparel company Oiselle. Here's how she put it, shortened into excerpts:"One of my favorite profs in med school had a great definition for parenchyma. Parenchyma: the essential, distinctive, functional part of an organ, the bulk of a substance. She would tell us, 'Parenchyma is the there, there.' I was looking for my existential parenchyma.
I highly recommend reading Marathon Man, a write up by Kathryn Miles on a man named Gary Allen that put on a marathon free to participants in his hometown Millinocket, a small mill town Maine. His rationality for free entry was that simply bringing visitors to the town would boost its economy. And the plan worked! The coolest part was how local businesses embraced the marathon and rallied behind it by contributing what they could toward making it an even better event. The local snowmobile club hosted both a pre-race spaghetti dinner and a pancake breakfast. The high school booster club ran a family funfair during the marathon. Residents began offering rooms for runners to sleep when local motels got booked out. It's kind of like the stone soup of marathons.
I recently got to see a pre-screening of TRI, a new fictional indie film about two friends training for their first triathlon. While the inspirational vibe of the trailer had me rolling my eyes a little bit, I gave the movie a chance and I'm glad I did. It truly captured the process and emotions anyone goes through when training for a race, no matter if you're in the front of the pack or DFL (dead f-cking last, as I learned). I've never trained for a triathlon but I found myself relating to the struggles and doubts of the main characters all the same. It's not the most groundbreaking story line ever, but the particular subject of the triathlon, lovable characters, and stunning visuals more than make up for it. If you're already feeling the winter blues and need some motivation and inspiration, watch this movie. It was just released this week and streaming on Amazon for $6.
I enjoyed listening to Lindsey Hein interview Amanda Brooks, creator of the FASTZach app, on her podcast I'll Have Another. I had the pleasure of meeting Amanda at Kara Goucher's Podium Retreat. The podcast is a great listen as Lindsey and Amanda talk about all things marriage, motherhood, and running. It was very cool to learn more about Amanda's experience growing up as a diver on a national team. We've been in touch even more recently I've been beta testing FASTZach before its launch in January 2017. FASTZach is an answer to my prayers as someone who runs and travels often. The app will develop a running route for you based on how far you go, how much traffic you want to avoid, and which sites you want to see. So for instance, say you're staying in Montmartre while visiting Paris and want to see the Eiffel Tower on a 6 mile run. FASTZach will create a 6 mile loop for you from Montmartre that takes you right by the Eiffel Tower. How cool is that?That's all I've got for this week! -L