Charity Racing — Using Your Passion to Fuel Your Training | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

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We have another fabulous post on charity racing this week from Tiffany Zook. You can check out her first two posts in the series here: Find Your Passion and Demystifying Fundraising.

Lets face it, training for an endurance event is just plain hard. A very small percentage of people ever undertake training for a race, much less a long distance race. So how on earth do you do it? I can tell you for sure that there is no way I would have been able to do it without the motivation of doing it for my patients and for people all over the world who are battling blood cancers. As I discussed in the first post about discovering your passion, I have known my passion for years and am absolutely committed to cancer charities, specifically childhood cancer charities. So, yes, that is great and noble, but how do you use your passion to fuel your training?

It has been said that running is at least 90% mental effort. For me it has felt like that number is closer to 99%! I have had training days, coming off of too little sleep and hydration, in which I make my mind up to be determined to finish or climb a big hill, and I absolutely get there by the sheer power of my thoughts and mental strength. Imagine that mental determination coupled with the image of a loved one or a client who is enduring cancer treatment… For me, all I have to do is think about all of my pint-sized patients, who are running a much tougher race than the one I am physically running. I liken my journey to something they are currently enduring, such as recovering from treatment, or taking a long time to get recovered enough to attend school, or powering through to the end of treatment and finishing strong. Suddenly, when I replace my thinking with those images, I don’t focus on myself or the struggle I am conquering, instead, I am filled with the assurance that says “if they can do it, I can do it”. Very, very powerful words.

Currently, one of my honored teammates, Montana (you can read about him HERE), is recovering from a bone marrow transplant. His story began more than six years ago, when he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. His cancer returned this past year and was wide-spread. He endured nearly six months of intense chemo and radiation before going for a bone marrow transplant. As you can imagine, treatment brought him as close to death without actually dying, as is conceivable, and yet, here he is recovering and returning to a sense of normal life. THAT inspires my every step. THAT inspires me to keep on going. THAT inspires me to endure the 5:00am training runs. THAT inspires me to fight for his cause!

You can see how easy it is to use your passion to fuel your training. On race day, it is infinitely more powerful, because in addition to you and your cause, you have countless others out there running for the same cause, all with their own story and their own motivation. There are thank you signs like these ones, showing gratitude for running in place of those who cannot.

And then, there are the survivors themselves who come out to cheer you on, OR who will be running next to you. Absolutely amazing.

I am certain that I would not have the running bug this bad or be as in love with endurance racing as I am, if I didn’t have a larger cause than myself to motivate me. It is incredibly humbling and motivating at the same time.

So, I challenge YOU to not only find your cause and surpass the fear of fundraising… I challenge YOU to kick your training up a notch by using your passion to motivate and fuel you. You will never be the same.

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