Faster after four

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 27th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: longevity in an elite sport.

Sara Hall has been a recognized name in running since she was in high school in the late '90s. She has won national titles and records across distances up to the marathon.

MAST: Yet her story has been as much about persevering through failure as it has been success. She has a memoir titled For the Love of the Grind, and that love has been fueled by her Christian faith, her relationship with her husband Ryan, and the four daughters they adopted from Ethiopia.

I recently sat down with Hall to discuss how motherhood, aging, and letting go of ego changed her relationship with the sport. I asked her about aging and wisdom, how she realized when she had reached a point of being mature—in her faith and in her running.

HALL: Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've arrived at any in any means right now. I try to still see myself as a beginner and just have that mindset with things. I think, yeah, that I think there's always just greater levels with God, which is exciting, you know. And I think my faith has evolved in different ways. And I think that I embrace mystery more now. And I think running too, you know, I improved kind of linearly in the marathon for a long time. And now, you know, you get to 43 years old, your body doesn't necessarily do what you want it to do all the time. But running can look differently. And it's like there's always these other areas of the sport like trail running and stuff that I haven't even yet explored. So it's like I feel like that’ll just be kind of like your faith, like just continuing to explore and, and, and just see different levels and different areas.

MAST: Sure, sure. I want to talk a little bit about the other great journey that you've been on, which is motherhood. You wrote that you always wanted to adopt, and for more than a decade now, you've been Mom to four sisters, and you actually got faster at running, even though you were older. And I know you had some fears about being “washed up,” in your words. So, how did becoming a mother affect your approach to and your attitude about running?

HALL: Yeah, it definitely changed things. You know, when you're a professional athlete, your life very much revolves around yourself and your whole day, everything you eat, sleep, drink, and there's definitely a self-centeredness to it that is kind of understandable. And then all of a sudden you have four kids with very unique needs. Your life is no longer your own, right? And it's like a mental load you can't really ever turn off. And being a mom and my kids, you know, they came from trauma. They didn't know any English. They'd never been to school. So like there were just so many things I was thinking about all the time. Juggling, trying to show up well for them, but also show up well for myself. And you know, I kind of assumed I would have to retire, but it turned out that like I was like, I'm just gonna keep trying. Like I really love this still. And I'm really thankful I did. I think there's just been so many ways it's made my running have more meaning. I've gotten to just model to my kids through running so many things that I want to instill in them. They saw me fail, they saw me go through long injury cycles where I didn't know if I would ever get out of them and like show up every day, like put in the work, keep faith, to then come out of those injury cycles to place the highest I ever have at an Olympic trials at age 40 in conditions that didn't favor me, you know, and like against kind of all odds. And so yeah, without that, I mean I wouldn't have gotten to show them any of those things. And so it was tough for sure. It still is tough. But I wouldn't have it any other way for sure.

MAST: I wanted to ask about Atlanta in 2020, you stepped out of the race early, and it was at your husband's urging because you both knew you had these longer term goals, and that you know leaving this one behind would allow you to potentially accomplish things later. Just briefly, how do you get to that point where you go, “You know what? This is not. This is not the day, but we're going to keep going because there may be another day if we call this one, you know, a wash for today.” How do you get there?

HALL: It's tough. Yeah. It's, it's definitely tough. I definitely don't like to drop out if I physically can finish. But I've learned that, yeah, sometimes that is the right decision because, you know, it, it takes a lot to come back from marathons that you're really having to drag yourself through the last. Like that can do a lot of damage on your body. It limits your opportunities later. At in that time in Atlanta, you know, I was gonna focus on the Olympic track trials.

And it would really be upsetting to drop out. And so I think I'm really trying to figure out how to do this without ego, you know. I think as you get older, you go through different stages of ego development as you age, you know. And I think in your 20s you're very much in the ego building phase and stuff. And I think in your 40s you realize how much of elite sport and stuff is tied to your your ego. And I think as long as you can let go of that and and make the right decision for what is the right decision, you know, and like what your gut feeling is without caring what anyone else thinks, I think is the main thing.

MAST: Right, right. Sara Hall is a professional runner who has been nationally ranked for almost three decades, and she's the author of the book For the Love of the Grind. Sara, thank you so much for being with us.

HALL: Thank you so much.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.