Welcome to “Attune”

There’s so much more to running than running: it keeps our hearts and minds clear and healthy, friendships and memories are made on teams which last a lifetime. Attune is intended to share information, inspiration, stories and wisdom to inspire our Warriors to listen to and hear their inner voice. The word “Attune” was chosen because the voice within, which is so clearly heard during and after a good run, is too easily drowned out in today’s digital world. Teaching our children how to intentionally harmonize with themselves and their environment is vital to their health and happiness and to that of our community.

“To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.” Henri Amiel

“Becoming” is one of my favorite words. I first encountered it on the eve of my 18th birthday in 1991, on the second floor of Odell Lake Lodge, at University of Oregon pre-season cross country camp. Just six months earlier, I’d stood on the medal stand at the World XC Championship in Antwerp, Belgium with a bronze medal around my neck. I’d arrived at UO as the most decorated U.S. female high school distance runner to date. I’d won eight Colorado state high school titles, won the national XC Championship (2x) and the indoor two mile, and set records in all of them. And I felt lost.

I’d gone looking for a “sign” that night, as I waded through unspeakable grief after losing my Mother to cancer two months earlier. The weight of the grief, combined with weighty expectations that I would immediately make an impact on this top-level NCAA team, was so heavy it felt like a workout just climbing the stairs. I felt immense internal pressure to keep myself at the top, so I could prove I was not a flash-in-the-pan high school prodigy, something many running “experts” pontificated I would amount to.

What I found on the wall at Odell Lake Lodge that evening allowed a new perception of myself to emerge: that I am a work in progress - that I am Becoming. It allowed me to embrace the bumps and bruises and the challenges they were making me face, as loveable parts of me, not things to compartmentalize so that I could (try to) keep on winning with only parts of me along for the ride.

A wall hanging with miniature writing on the wall of a lodge in the Cascades allowed me to successfully step off the proverbial “treadmill” for a moment and breathe, something I hadn’t done fully in months. This led to trusting my innate sense of the timeline I would need, to learn how to bloom where I was planted, at the UO and beyond. The words were from Marjorie Williams’ children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit:

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You Become. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept."

Usually, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

But these things don’t matter at all.

Because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

My Mother had lovingly suggested that I take a year off before entering college, when I was in the throes of deciding where to spend the next four years of my life, yet hanging on for dear life, to hers. She was right, I needed time to “Become,” after loving her through her last breath, which took my breath away. But I could not imagine letting go of running then, too. Undoubtedly, she led me to that quote from a children’s book she read to me when I was a toddler, “suggesting” again, that I take the time I needed. I needed time to grieve and to grow (I had not yet started my menstrual cycle). I listened to her at the end of my freshman year in Eugene. I worked three jobs in Boulder County: at the Colorado Mtn. Ranch in Gold Hill, Alfalfa’s Market and at CU in Boulder. I rested, laughed, made new friends, climbed mountains, earned a paycheck and allowed my body time to heal and grow.

I begin this series of writings with this particular story and these quotes because we are living in a time when young people are stating they feel “stress and anxiety” due to no time to rest or to attune. They are burdened by the weight of comparison to others at the hands of social media “likes.” They feel pressure to out perform their peers in school, academics, athletics, social status and even looks, to win the race into specific schools or onto specific sports teams.

My intention with BMWS is to create such a loving and inspiring culture that kids feel safe to be themselves and courageous enough to risk “failure,” as they grow their wingspans. Here, kids have permission to attune: to harmonize with themselves and their surroundings, appreciating the little gains which all big ones are built upon. We will celebrate “mistakes” as evidence that we are trying, that we are seeking to improve ourselves.

As I share stories of my own journey of Becoming which continues to this day through BMW, I hope to continually share the great paradox which any seeker must confront: that sometimes to Become requires loosening our grip or letting our foot off the gas pedal, to gain the perspective needed in order to achieve the thing we are after. I hope to convey how it’s not only ok to “coast” for short moments or even seasons of our lives, but it can be necessary, in order for us to thrive. A wise approach to physical training parallels that for life: we need recovery days in between the hard efforts, in order to benefit from the work we put in. “No pain, no gain” and “all out, all the time,” do not lead to success in the long run.

Had I not taken a year off at a time when the world expected me to be “taking-off” toward NCAA stardom, I may not have completed my college career without serious injury, burnout or at all. During a year off to attune to myself, the running world wrote me off. I never let the fire die, I just needed a break from fanning the flames. Inside, the embers were glowing, maintaining my passion for running, which was allowed to grow, because I stepped away from the competitive world for a time. I would not have accomplished what I did in my 20’s and 30’s nor be involved in the sport as I am today, had I not created and pressed my own “pause” button, with an eye on a return to form when all systems were GO.

These accomplishments included NCAA champion, US World Track and Field Team member in the 5000m, 8th place in the World Mountain Running Championships and part of the Gold Medal winning women’s team, at age 38. I credit the decision to allow myself to Become, by taking a year off, with refueling my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual reservoirs so that I could fuel my passion for the duration of my life, not just a training cycle or two.

This past summer, I was in front of 600 middle and high school XC runners at two different camps in Oregon: Steens Mountain Running Camp (my 25th year, yr. 52 for camp) and Ultimook Running Camp (My 5th year, on the Coast). I sat with coaches of high school teams from across the country, hearing the same thing: “it seems like the chance to imagine their future is being taken away from kids; they ‘know’ what they’re going to do before they know who they are. “

“Our perceptions rule our lives.” When I was 18, I needed a new way of perceiving myself, so that I could adopt a vision of long-term success and choose a way to be which lent itself to genuine satisfaction. Today I am hearing that kids feel they are on a treadmill they can’t get off of. I am hearing from young runners that time to Become is hard to allow these days, with daily live streamed running results constantly reminding them where they “stack up” in the rankings and constant pressure to update their own results.

At Boulder Mountain Warriors we run to teach the value of consistently showing up to do the work, goal setting, resilience, grit, teamwork and kindness toward self and others. Concurrently, we aim to create a team that feels safe, where all Warriors know they belong, so we all have the courage to fail, because the ceiling we’re trying to bust through, is not a far fall from the floor we leapt from. If our elementary and middle school Warriors are allowed to be kids, focused on the process of training, and on the feedback their bodies are giving them as they work their bodies, learning how to listen to them and adjust with the help of coaches, they will feel a genuine sense of satisfaction. As satisfaction, or a positive feedback loop becomes a familiar feeling, then the consistency we are looking for, which leads to personal mastery, will emerge. In a digital age, this is not a small feat to accomplish, but with all of us buying-in - kids, coaches and parents, we can do it.

The place to release the pressure to perform is in the body. Sports psychology tells us that in order to get into the “flow state” where we can harness the energies from all aspects of our being to perform optimally, we have to be mentally and physically relaxed. We have to loosen that “grip,” let go of that FOMO, that obsession with looking to see what someone else has achieved.*

On Boulder Mountain Warriors we embrace the gift that running has to offer us, of being away from technology, attuned to ourselves, to the team and environment surrounding us. We intend that running, at its core, will be our constant friend for life, always there to remind us of who we are.

*For many HS runners, the STRAVA app. is the source of this anxiety. I recommend staying off it.

If interested in scheduling small group sessions for your children to learn body-centering practices which help reduce stress and pain, increase focus and range of motion reach out via email to melody@bouldermountainwarriors.com

I am trained in a work called Cortical Field Re-education (www.cfrhealing.com), which is based upon the Feldenkrais Method. I discovered the work during a chapter of my professional running career when I was injured. It helped me develop a greater sensitivity to my inner-compass. Through it I have been able to increase my capacity to rest and to embrace more than I imagined possible: my self-perception changed

Melody