I decided to go for a morning run today, having learned from yesterday not to leave exercise so late into the day. I felt more energized waking up, wondering if it’s because I started including zinc in my daily supplements or because the run last night renewed my energy and spirit (I had only been to Jiu-Jitsu once this week, so the lack of exercise might have made me a bit agitated). I meditated at my desk since I wanted to practice meditation right after waking up to counter sleepiness if I were to do it later in the day. Feeling my mind relax a bit and become more aware, I took to running.

Today’s guided run is “Run with Paula”—Paula Radcliffe, a world record holder in the women’s marathon for 17 years, along with other achievements in full marathons and half marathons (which I couldn’t recall). She shared her story of how she started her running journey, how she trained to become better and faster each time, how to take ownership of your mistakes, and how to embrace failure to learn from it to make the next run better.

There are some great gems I got from this episode: “You shouldn’t be nervous doing something you love,” how you should be “running for feel, not for time” (yet she ran the fastest time in the race to become the world record holder), how you need to understand yourself and your capabilities to break barriers to the best version of yourself, how all you’ve done leads to what you do, the idea that there are starting lines you’ve crossed in the past as well as starting lines you will cross in the future. This encourages me to keep trying new things, learn, adapt, and apply, building confidence in my flexibility to change with circumstances—whether internal or from external sources—to persevere and have the courage to cross the next starting line.

I definitely need to listen to this one again. That was a good 40-minute recovery run where I was inspired by an amazing runner’s story, feeling refreshed afterward, and checked off the Exercise box in my habit checker.