462: It Can Be Two Things At Once

 There's a quote I keep coming back to lately: if you stare too long at the closed door, you won’t notice the opened one behind you.

There’s been a lot on my mind lately, with our daughter graduating 8th grade, and it’s one of those bittersweet moments where I am feeling ALL the emotions. 

Happy and sad. Presence and longing. The desire to stop time in its tracks and the joy of watching her grow into the person she’s meant to be. 

A beautiful chapter coming to an end and a new one beginning. 

I’m literally sitting here with tears streaming down my face as I type this out.

This week on the podcast, Kevin and I had one of those conversations that started in one place and ended up somewhere completely different — in the best way. We started talking about Rachel Entrekin winning the Cocodona 250. We ended up talking about our daughter's graduation, letting go of past versions of ourselves, and one of the most quietly damaging traps runners fall into without even realizing it.

The comparison trap.

And more specifically — the belief that you can only feel one thing at a time.

Because it’s almost always both. 

Two things can be true at the same time. 

What Happened at Cocodona 250

If you haven't heard, Rachel Entrekin made history at the Cocodona 250 this year. She didn't just win the women's division. She won the entire race, beating every competitor in the field, and she broke the overall course record by nearly two hours in the process.

Two hundred and fifty miles through the mountains and desert of Arizona. More elevation gain than Mount Everest. Less than twenty minutes of sleep over the entire race. First place, overall.

The running world, and honestly the sports world at large, took notice. It hit the national news. It was discussed on ESPN. And then, as always happens on social media, the commentary started.

One camp was celebrating by comparison: she beat all the men, she broke the men's record, look what a woman did. Another camp pushed back: why do we need the comparison? Isn't what she did incredible on its own?

Kevin and I talked about this at length, and here's where we landed: both responses are human. 

Comparison is one of the ways our brains make sense of the world — it provides context, it helps us understand scope. Most people can't wrap their minds around running 250 miles, so when you add and she beat every single person in the race, it helps. It gives the accomplishment a frame.

Rachel Entrekin ran 250 miles through the mountains and won. That is also complete in itself. It doesn't need an asterisk. It doesn't need a comparison to be extraordinary.

And the moment you add the asterisk, you open the door to hypotheticals — but what if so-and-so had been in the race, but what if conditions were different — and now you've moved away from what actually happened into a story that doesn't exist. The hypotheticals are endless. The race result is not.

The Question That Changed Everything

One of the things that struck me most from the coverage of Rachel's win was a clip that went viral — her talking about the question she asked herself during the race.

Why not you?

She was out there running 250 miles, and at some point she looked at the situation in front of her and thought: someone has to win this. Someone can break this record. Why not me?

I love this so much because it's not arrogance. It's curiosity. 

And curiosity is one of the most powerful mental tools available to us as runners, because our brains are very good at generating reasons why something won't work, why we'll fall short, why this is a bad idea. The negativity bias is real, and it's strong.

But here's what I want you to notice: the negative what-ifs your brain generates aren't facts. They're stories. And if you're going to spend energy in the land of made-up scenarios, you're allowed to make up positive ones too.

What if it all goes well? What if I show up and feel amazing? What if I'm more capable than I've been giving myself credit for?

Why not you?

Then Graduation Happened

The same week we were celebrating Rachel's win, Kevin's high school students graduated. And this week, our youngest daughter finishes eighth grade, closing out nearly a decade at a school that has become one of the most meaningful communities in our lives.

I'll be honest. I got a little emotional while recording this episode. There's something about watching a chapter close that brings everything into sharp focus, especially when it's not just your child's chapter, but yours too.

I've been feeling such a mix of emotions this week: profound pride sitting directly next to genuine grief. Excitement about what's ahead living right beside fear of the unknown. Joy and loss, at the exact same time.

We're not always given permission to feel that. We try to keep things in neat little boxes. 

We're often encouraged to focus on the positive — be excited, this is a good thing — as if honoring the sadness of an ending somehow diminishes the celebration of what's beginning.

But two things can be true at once.

You can be so proud and so sad in the same breath. You can be excited about what's next and genuinely grieve what's closing. These aren't contradictions. They're the full picture.

Graduation made me think about the closed door metaphor, and I see this in runners all the time, and I catch myself doing it too.

The runner who keeps trying to get back to the fitness she had at 38. The woman who is still training like she did before kids, before perimenopause, before her life got more full and more complicated. The athlete who can't stop comparing her current pace to a PR she ran five years ago, and measuring everything against that number.

Wanting to get back to where you were is just standing in front of a closed door, waiting for it to reopen. And it's not going to.

That's not a pessimistic statement. It's actually a freeing one — because when you stop waiting at that door, you start to notice all the other doors that are already open.

The scientific principles of training haven't changed. You still need progressive overload. You still need strength training. You still need varying effort levels and adequate recovery. 

But the way those principles get applied — the ratios, the recovery windows, the volume, the intensity — those need to match who you are right now. Not who you were five years ago. Not who you were before your hormones shifted or your stress load increased or your life expanded in ways you didn't plan for.

That's not giving up on your old self. That's respecting everything your old self built and using it to move forward.

Let Go to Let In

When we hold on to past versions of ourselves — past fitness levels, past paces, past identities — we don't have room for what's possible now. The grip itself is what's keeping us stuck.

Letting go doesn't mean forgetting or dishonoring what was. I look back on past versions of myself with genuine gratitude. The volume I ran in my twenties, the PRs I set in 2019, the training blocks that pushed me to places I didn't know I could go — all of that is part of what built who I am as a runner today. 

I'm not erasing it. I'm just not trying to live there anymore.

Rachel Entrekin didn't win Cocodona by running the race she ran two years ago. She ran the race in front of her, with the body and the preparation and the experience she has right now. And some would argue she was more prepared now precisely because of everything that came before, not in spite of it.

That's what moving forward actually looks like.

Two Things Can Be True

So here's what I want you to sit with as you head into your week:

You can grieve the runner you were and be excited about the runner you're becoming. 

You can honor a hard training block and be relieved it's over. 

You can feel proud of where you are right now and still be hungry for more. 

You can love your body as it is today and want to keep building it stronger.

These are not contradictions. They don't cancel each other out. 

They are the full picture of what it means to be a human being in a body that is always changing, always adapting, always moving through seasons.

The goal isn't to choose one feeling and suppress the other. The goal is to hold both — with honesty, with gratitude, and with the willingness to keep moving forward anyway.

Ask yourself right now: what closed door are you still standing in front of? What version of yourself are you still waiting to get back to? And what door might already be open, just waiting for you to turn around and walk through it?

Whatever you find there — let it be two things at once.

Enjoyed this post? Listen to the full conversation on Episode 462 of the Real Life Runners Podcast. And if you're ready to train in a way that actually matches where you are right now — not where you used to be — learn more about the Running Reconnected Team at realliferunners.com/team.