Find Your Awesome with Amanda Nurse
Amanda Nurse: “There’s no harm in shooting for the stars.”
Amanda Nurse is an elite marathoner, run coach and yoga instructor in Boston, MA. She ran her first marathon (Boston, 2010) in 3:26 and now, 15 marathons later, boasts a personal best of 2:40, which earned her a spot in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials. With her multiple New England race victories she is one of Boston’s most visible runners, inspiring athletes to dream big through her social media account, @amandarunsboston, and is an adidas run ambassador.
Amanda recently welcomed her first child, Riley James, into the world and blogged about her pregnancy journey through her website, RunBabyRun.co. Now, she will document her training and fitness progress on her journey back to marathon running. Her goal is to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Trials (with a 2:39 or better) in the Berlin Marathon next fall. She hopes this will show other moms they can still have big fitness goals after giving birth.
Amanda’s story is pretty epic. She’s done some amazing things already and it seems like she’s just getting started. She’s got big goals and she’s not afraid to talk about them. She also shares how she plans to get back into Olympic trials-qualifying shape after giving birth, how she stays mentally tough and why her family is her biggest inspiration. Amanda (and her family) are super inspiring, not just for athletes, but for anyone with big dreams. As Amanda says, “there’s no harm in shooting for the stars.”
Nuggets:
“If I can do that, what else can I do?”
“I want to show that I can have a child and still be a good runner. I don’t want to have a kid and then, all of a sudden, I don’t have those dreams anymore. I do. I have bigger dreams and I want to keep at them.”
“I love that I wasn’t a runner in college. I wasn’t an all-star anything in high school or college. And I’ve found my niche and I’ve really pushed myself and now I can show other people that maybe they can do that too.”
“I definitely have a lot of self doubt at the beginning [of a race]. I think that’s pretty normal. I’ve worked hard to change that, to have a mantra, to tell myself that I’ve trained for it, that I’m prepared, to try not to size up my competitors, but more just focus on myself.”
“I think what I love about running is, in a race, the focus isn’t all on me. Your focus in a race is on yourself. There are thousands of other people around you running, but no one really cares about your race except for you. You’re just one person in that race.”
“Just focus on yourself and being the best you can be in that day—not worrying about how everyone else is going to do.”
“There’s always going to be people who are going to be faster, more trained and better than you. But at the end of the day, the only thing you can really control is yourself and how you’re going to do.”
“My mission right now is to inspire women—and men—to love their bodies, to really take care of themselves and to keep dreaming really big. My biggest thing has always been to really set high goals for yourself and don’t be afraid of them. Because, there was a time when I wouldn’t have even dreamed of running Olympic trials or running under three hours in a marathon.”
“It’s scary when you set big goals for yourself, especially if you don’t know the path how to get there. But I think the moment you put that thought out into the world it becomes a bit more real. So, sometimes it’s just the determination to say it, the courage to say it and then once you say it, that becomes more of a reality.”
“Anytime you have self doubt, just remind yourself of all those awesome workouts you had because you are trained. You are prepared.”
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why Amanda started running and how she went from a 3:26 marathon to a 2:40 marathon in just six years
- How she went from being a figure skater who cracked under pressure to being a mentally tough elite marathoner
- How she has come to embrace self compassion
Learn more about Amanda at
runbabyrun.co
Follow Amanda on Instagram:
http://instagram.com/amandarunsboston
Music: bensound.com
