Choose Strong [NQM035]

“The farther you go and the farther your push yourself, the more you are stretched out and the more you reveal about yourself. You are stripped raw and those experiences embed into your life. You learn a lot about who you are and how you respond to challenges and hardships.” ~ Sally McCrea

Sally McCrea’s approach to endurance sports has been a huge inspiration to me ever since I set the goal for myself to do bigger and better things after the knee surgery compared to before. I am a strong believer now in building your endurance off of a foundation of strength training and mobility work. Your growth will be slower but much more sustainable, and you will eventually be able to go farther and bigger.

Sally has taken on two massive projects in the last two years. In 2022 she covered 507 cumulative miles over 5 races in her “Choose Strong” project, a tribute to her mother who passed away from cancer just four weeks after her seventeenth birthday. In 2023, she accomplished the Grand Slam of 200+ mile races in a single season, comprising of 4 grueling 200+ trail races (Cocodona 250 in May, Tahoe 200 in June, Bigfoot 200 in August, and Moab 200 in October). She became only the second woman to do so and now holds the fastest female cumulative time across all 904 miles (154,138ft of elevation gain) in 335 hours, 31 minutes, and 41 seconds. That is a lot of work, and a lot of time spent with your own thoughts. Below are some of the highlights.

What it means to be strong: being strong isn't just being the first across the finish line, it is being the best you can be with what you have, regardless of the circumstance. You can be strong and still feel everything. You can be strong and still fall down, and fall behind the timeline. You can be strong and still fail at your goal. You are strong as long as you keep moving forward. The only time you stop being strong is when you quit.

On setting examples: My kids have seen me struggle a couple times in races. When I started to really struggle, i was ok letting them see that. There was a part of me that felt that this is really good for them to see that. More than anything, when mom is hurting and struggling and things arent going her way she is still going to go forward and set out to do the things she said she was going to do.

On the concept of fear: Some of the fear was just in my head. It could have just conjured up for no good reason. It is easy to build up fear and disbelieve because we don’t see ourselves for who we are and everything we can be capable of. It is easy to want to give up when things hurt so bad, when you cant see the good, or when it just keeps getting worse. This is a big reason why we drop out of a major effort or race. If we can just hold on in the pain, there is so much good that awaits us.

On using courage to become strong: Courage is knowing that it is going to be difficult but you still go anyway. Knowing it is going to hurt but you allow yourself to feel it because it wont last forever, allowing yourself to feel it shapes you and that is what eventually makes you strong.

On the power of just getting started: Sometimes you need to stop overthinking it, stop trying to control everything, and just go. Our lives are like a race. If you look at your life as just having one finish line, you will look at your life in a different way. It is not about the accomplishments or failures along the way, don’t get too hung up on those.. If everything falls apart who are you? How will you respond? Everyone has the potential to be stronger, but you wont know what is ahead unless you go, and it takes sgrenth to do that. That strength has been inside you since day one, it is just a matter of whether or not you want to choose it.

On using mental fortitude to turn the tide: when I have obstacles in a race, when I have situations that frustrate me, it is never a question of whether or not I can finish. I immediately think, what can I do to solve this situation, to make this situation better, to keep on moving. This isn’t a question about quitting, this is a true reflection about who I am. It would be easy for me to complain about the fact that I trained so hard, or claim that no one trained harder than I did, and so I earned and I expect for everything to go my way. Real life is not that way though. No one wants to be uncomfortable and stay there. It is only in our human nature that we want to get out of the situation we are in when we dont feel good. No one wants to stay there. learning how to work through those situations, learning how to keep hope at the forefront and learning how to believe that we are capable of overcoming. That is powerful. That is where we start to become all that we were meant to be.

The work is not over until you cross the finish line: It is realy easy to focus on one negative thing and then let it get out fo control. Having raced for so many years I have had to work hard on identifying that and not letting it get to a domino effect. We dont only race when we feel good or feel like giving our best, or when things are going our way. We race all the way through the finish line.

Leaving mistakes in the past and moving on: Once I hit the halfway mark there was a side of me that kept thinking that I could be running so much better if I didn’t have these blisters. I kept thinking that I was such an idiot for making the rookie mistake of wearing the wrong socks. It would have been super easy to throw myself into this pit of regret and beating myself up, but I know from past experiences that that never helps me and that never allows me to do what I really want to do. So I had to change my mindset to ok what can you do with this type of pain. How well can you run if things are not going your way.

On letting yourself be weak from time to time in order to become stronger: After the river crossing I let myself be weak. I was not strong and did not feel great. I felt weak and broken and even started crying. From that point on when we got out of the river and started that climb everything that was going on in my mind was a conversation of how are you going to respond to this now. This is how the rest of your race is going to feel like. Who are you in this moment? Who are you when everything falls apart, who are you in this pain? I started demanding to myself that I had to pull it together. You can have this moment but take care of what you are feeling the best you can and keep moving forward.

On the flip side, sometimes you just need to suck it up and be strong from the get go: During these types of efforts you have the opportunity to experience feelings that aren’t ordinary or frequent in life. It’s putting yourself in a dark place where you are feeling discomfort and pain, and you are forced to ask yourself is this worth it? I have been in moments and races in my life where I have learned to just harden myself to what I’m feeling and toughen up and tell myself I am stronger than this. In turn, this allows you to accept it, feel it, and be in it. That’s what I did, I was just in the pain.

You will always be your strongest believer: Oftentimes we are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. So often we stop ourselves short in our tracks because of something someone said or a past failure or loss or hurt. We just think, people that are strong and can overcome they must be special, but that is just not true. Don’t let fear or discomfort keep you from getting to the finish line. We become better In the discomfort, in the failures, in the pain, as long as we chose to move forward