This Athlete Spotlight is dedicated to an endurance athlete who has as much internal strength as she does physical strength. She stays true to her morals and her goals and is one of our favorite athletes because of her deep level of integrity.
Thank you Alyssa for being so authentic and open! Your words of wisdom about resilience in athletics and life are important for every athlete to hear.
Question 1:
Do you think there is a strong relationship between physical health and mental health? Have you ever seen any benefits in your mental or emotional health while you were training for athletics?
“Absolutely. I think they go hand in hand and balancing them both can be tough, there will always be ups and downs depending on what is going on in your life. If one is struggling, chances are the other one is struggling. For example, if I am struggling mentally, like being stressed out for too long, my training is probably going to suffer eventually. I might make less healthy eating choices, or be too focused on that stressor during my training. Training can for sure be an outlet but if it keeps going on eventually its going to take a toll. Not even a toll on training but how your body is on a physiological level. And on the flip side, if I am struggling physically, let’s say if I am injured or I am not where I want to be physically it can mess with my mind and cause me to doubt myself. Again, it’s about balance, but its tricky! In my experience, I have had times where I am training way too much and it affects my mood and how I treat people and the same with when I am injured and training too little I can get really down in the dumps and be a grump. If I am on a high mentally and just came off a big win I have gotten a little too confident and slacked off a bit, and when I am really mentally struggling with something it has shut me down and caused me to pull plugs on workouts. But I remember the first time I really got started to up my running in 2015 when I was starting out, I got my first runners high and I realized how much true joy working out brings me and makes me mentally and emotionally a much better person.”
Question 2:
What brought you to obstacle course racing originally?
“Honestly God did ha! I never imagined in my life I would be where I am at today and I totally fell into it my divine intervention. I have been an athlete all my life. Mainly I really loved strength training since I was little. I was a natural runner, but it didn’t bring me as much joy as weight training. After playing D1 softball I took a workout hiatus. A couple years later I was going through a breakup and needed an outlet and started working out again and taking care of myself better. And then the competitor came back out in me. I was living in NY at the time and really wanted something to train for with my newfound fitness. Randomly one day I was on Groupon and I stumbled upon a stadium race at Citi Field. As someone who was really strong the idea of obstacles really excited me, not to mention the fact it would break up the running, even thought I actually loved running stairs anyways. Plus I got to tour a stadium of a team I loved! So I signed up and rocked it and was hooked!”
Question 3:
Spartan often advertises that they aren't just teaching people how to race, they are teaching people a new way of life. Do you think that through Spartan training people could learn to have more mental endurance in their daily lives? Are there any other benefits to Spartan training / racing that may not be obvious to someone who is new to the sport?
“Yeah for sure. After I completed my first race I immediately started looking up what it meant to be a Spartan, how to train for it, the top athletes in the sport and even signed up for my next one for when I moved back home to Washington state. My dad was on a journey of 80LB weight loss and had an entirely new healthy lifestyle and he also was really into the idea of these kind of races. We both realized that Spartan was more than just a race, it was a way of life. That we will all face obstacles in life and we can either choose to go around them and get penalized, fail and then try again, or push through them and dig deep and prevail. To be able to race well and prepare for a race also involves a lot of mental toughness, to get dirty, be cold, fail, lose, train consistently, etc. It’s a lot of things we can’t control, and isn’t that life? Navigating things we can’t control and how we react to them as well as learning from the things we did well or could do better next time? I tell you what, I think about the hardest and coldest races I have done when I am going through something uncomfortable and know that I can persevere. The races test mental and physical strength and endurance in lots of different ways and it’s always throwing you a curveball. So I think to not only completing a race but preparing for it takes making a healthy lifestyle with mental and physical training on a lot of different levels. Especially for people getting off the couch. Finishing the race is a huge feat but it’s going to take a lot of little healthy steps along the way to get to that moment and they probably won’t come out of it the same person as when they started. Signing up is just the first step.”
Question 4:
What about endurance athletics in general? Would you say it's possible for athletes who train in ultra running / rucking / OCR or any other endurance sports to apply that endurance to enduring obstacles in their daily lives?
“I definitely think so. I love the obstacle metaphor for OCR but at its core, an endurance event will take the same challenges of mental and physical strength. They all require a healthy way of living to perform at one's best
and things can go wrong in any kind of race, you shoe unties, you forget to grab water at the aid station, you have an injury pop up, you went off course, the weather is not ideal. Again, curve balls will get thrown at us in races and even more so in life and in the end it’s not about what happens to us, it’s how we react and training and competing helps to live a more resilient lifestyle.”
Question 5:
Do you have any advice for the readers who are just starting out on a fitness program?
“I would probably answer this differently over the years depending on when it was asked. Right now, it’s just stick to it. It’s going to be an experiment. I have done all sorts of different types of training. You don’t necessarily know which one is going to work and you never will know if it worked or not if you bounce around all the time. Periodization is key. It’s one thing to be fit and just hop around to all different sorts of workouts, but if you really want to train and get good and see your potential you’ve got to have some sort of progression and set small goals along the way. And to that, lastly, I would say hire a coach. Especially if you are just starting out. There’s so many different ways to train out there, especially in such a new sport such as OCR, no one has really got it down yet. I was all over the place when I first started and it worked for me but eventually, I wanted some real structure from someone who has been there, and can see outside of the box that I was in. I even went through a handful of coaches. Some just didn’t work for me and that was ok I learned a lot out of the process.”
6. In your response you talk about how racing helps you live a more resilient lifestyle. The theme of our blog is resilience! And how we believe that the people who overcome mental health obstacles exert a great amount of resilience in their daily lives.
Do you have any Spartan words of encouragement for a beginner who may be having doubts about their resilience (in OCR and / or in daily life)?
“Oh very cool! Yeah I totally agree with that. That's honestly a tough one. I think resilience isn't something that is necessarily innate. I think it has to be taught and built and practiced and you especially have to be aware of your thoughts and have the mindset of overcoming things. So I think my first advice mentally, is to be aware of your self talk. Just take a day to notice the things that you tell yourself and how you talk to and refer to yourself. Successful people have a positive mindset and an attitude of getting things done and reaching goals. And then from there it would just be creating a culture of positivity. Maybe starting a gratitude journal or just turning negative thoughts you notice into positive ones or creating mantras. And then physically, resilience could look like setting a 30 day type of challenge, going an extra rep, getting your workout in no matter what life has thrown at you in the day. It's little things that are gonna add up and build resilience but you have to be aware of them and be ready and willing to get uncomfortable.”
Thank you again, Alyssa! We can't wait to apply your inspirational words to our workouts and get back to training for our upcoming races!
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