Mind Over Mountain
My new podcast, upcoming events, and some Dear Sugar news!
Hello friends,
The first sport I fell in love with was gymnastics. The hours my older sister Karen and I spent on the lawn outside our apartment building in Chaska, Minnesota doing cartwheels, handstands, somersaults, and attempted back flips that almost broke our necks cannot be counted. Inspired by Nadia Comăneci’s perfect 10s at the 1976 Olympics, we tumbled and rolled and leapt ourselves dizzy with dreams of becoming Olympians ourselves, until summer faded into winter and we forgot about them.
It wasn’t until high school, when I joined the track and cross country teams, that I applied myself to a new sport. If I had to list in chronological order the things that have saved me over the course of my life when I most needed saving (books, hiking, writing, the love I’ve received in abundance at every turn), running would probably be the first. When I began to run I knew I wasn’t “good” at it. I knew I wasn’t going to be a champion. And yet I also knew, instinctually, that to do it would be to put myself vigorously against myself in a way that would ultimately unify me—that would make me whole and at one with my true essence and nature, even if only glimmeringly.
And I was right. It did.
In regular life I was an insecure teenager, longing for approval, half-starving myself skinny, making myself smaller and less than I was both physically and intellectually so that I might be loved. In my runner life I was a beast, the way you have to be when you run, primal and boiled down, panting and pushing into the next step, calling upon your strength and sometimes something beyond to move forward.
On the weekends and during the summers I ran through the woods on the gravel road that passed in front of my house, regularly crossing paths with black bears or deer or porcupines. During the track or cross country seasons, I trained with my teammates on the roads around our school in the town of McGregor (the school was too strapped to have a track). The year I joined the cross country team was the first year my school had enough girls on it to have an official team (we needed five) and to my—and I think everyone’s—great surprise, at this longer distance and with so little competition, I was the fastest runner.
Each afternoon our workout began with the same run, a 4.5 mile out and back along a road the locals call The Shortcut. We all started out together, but soon the boys team and our (male) coach who ran with them would disappear from sight and the four other girls would drift into a pack far behind me. I ran in the middle with a boy named Ward, the younger brother of one of my male teammates, who’d been allowed to train with us even though he was barely a middle schooler. Side by side in silence and in every kind of weather, Ward and I ran harder and faster than we would’ve if we’d been alone, each of us too proud to let the other get ahead by more than a couple of steps.
The number of times in the years since then that I’ve thought about how that felt—to hold on and push, even when it hurt—cannot be counted. It was formative and unforgettable in the simplest, most essential way. Like the miles become part of you once you’ve run them, or at least part of what you now know about yourself and your capacity to go and keep going, even if you’re going no where but out and back as fast as you can. Like they teach you there are no shortcuts, even on The Shortcut.
That’s what I mean when I say I feel like running saved me, the same way, years later, hiking did. Very little of the so-called “self-care” that’s ever been worth a damn in my life has felt like pleasure or ease. That doesn’t mean it’s always felt like agony, but it has always felt like me testing myself against my own ability to endure and persist, to hold on and withstand, to find my courage and heart. It’s for that reason, I decided to hike for three months on the Pacific Crest Trail in my mid-twenties when my life hit rock bottom, and also why, the year before my hike, I took a 700ish-mile bike-packing trip in northern Minnesota and Ontario after my ex-husband and I separated, and why, these days, I go to the gym a few times a week and lift weights and repeat the word strong strong strong silently to myself even when I’m not feeling that way inside.
It’s also for that reason that I decided to say yes when an intriguing new opportunity recently came my way: to host a podcast that’s all about the ways that taking our bodies to their limits teaches us what our spirits and hearts need to know, heal, and grow. The podcast is called Mind Over Mountain and it’s on the iHeart Women’s Sports channel. On the show, I talk to women athletes of all varieties about the epic, interesting, exhilarating and difficult things they’ve done (and are doing) in their lives and in their sport. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix by having my guest help me answer a Dear Sugar letter each week. The first six episodes are out now and a new one is released every Thursday. It’s been an inspiration and a revelation to get to ask powerful women to tell me stories about the great, hard, astonishing things they’ve done and won and struggled with and failed at and triumphed over. And wow, friends, I don’t know about you, but I really need the uplift and insight of those sorts of stories right now.
You can listen to Mind Over Mountain here (or wherever you get your podcasts) or watch it here. And if you want to submit a Dear Sugar letter for me to answer on the show, please send it to me at deardearsugar@gmail.com. Send me your letters!
Before I sign off I want to tell you about some things I’ve got coming up:
I’ll be interviewed on stage by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh at Hunter College in NYC on Thursday, April 30 as part of their Distinguished Writers Series. Tickets are free, but you have to register to get one. I’d love to see you there!
I’ll be teaching my weekend writing workshop at the gorgeous Kripalu Center May 1-3. You can attend in person or online (or watch the recording of the weekend later). Click here for the in-person class and here for the online class.
My Alaska adventure/workshop in July is sold out, but if you really want to go, sign up for the wait list. You never know! I’m so dang excited about this. If you registered for it, I cannot wait to see you. I know we’ll have a blast.
In October I’ll be back at the wonderful Omega Institute teaching my weekend writing workshop October 9-11. It’s offered both in person and online (and again, you can also watch the recording later). Click here for the in-person class and here for the online class.
I’ll be back soon with a couple of wonderful interviews in my occasional “Tells Us” series—both of the authors I have lined up over the next month or two are former students of mine who have written stunningly excellent books. In the meantime, I hope you’re well and thriving. Let’s keep pushing, friends. Say it silently with me: strong strong strong.
xCheryl
PS: From the Department of Isn’t It Cool How Life Turns Out Sometimes? As I wrote this, I searched for my old running mate, Ward, who I’ve not seen since I was a teenager, and I learned that he’s the longtime head coach of the Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams at a small college in Minnesota.
PPS: Speaking of Dear Sugar, stay tuned. I’m pondering ways to bring back my monthly Dear Sugar letter here in some new and different way (which has been on a long hiatus, so if you’re on my paid subscriber list, all payments are still on hold, fyi).
Yeeeegods, Cheryl! What a brilliant idea for a podcast!
As a gymnast from age 7-17 and then a life long runner (and now at 61 a better walker), I completely concur. Thank you for your magic, Cheryl!