Hello! Welcome back to Stride for Stride with Smrcka. This blog installment is on how Olympic Distance Runner Deena Kastor, maiden name Drossin, uses quotes from other novels and stories she’s read in her own book Let Your Mind Run! She also has held 5 World Records and 7 American Records. Kastor graduated from the University of Arkansas with an English Creative Writing Degree and a second major in Journalism. Also during this time, she was a 8-time division I All-American, 4-time SEC champion, and 2-time NCAA runner up. While I will be focusing on the quotes Kastor implements from others to enhance her novel, I will also be using her words from the novel as well. This is all to convey the important lessons and journey that Kastor had and how she expresses that in a form that many English majors can truly appreciate. Let’s dive in!
Each chapter in Let Your Mind Run has a prefacing quote that to some degree reflects what Deena is learning or feeling throughout the chapter. In the chapter “What Are You Thinking?,” the quote that Deena uses to preface the chapter is, “Be careful how you are talking to yourself, because you are listening” (Lisa M. Hayes 81). She goes into the importance of using perspective and positivity in this chapter when pursuing her goals and dreams. She also tells us her reading list during this point in her life story: The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, Power vs Force by David R. Hawkins, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, and The Power of Positive Thinking by Vincent Peale. Of all of these novels, she points out that the one that was really sticking with her and coming back to the forefront of her mind was The Power of Positive Thinking since it reminded her of how her coach would begin each practice. A quote that stuck out to her from this book, by Peale, was, “Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.” Especially since she said she has always been a pessimist to a degree up till that point in her life. From this idea of cultivating the mind as a habit, which is typically to mean using positive thought construction to alter your daily perceptions of the events happening to you, Deena started to implement this in her training to turn around her negative thoughts so that when things got tough, she could find a positive perspective to get her through it. She said that “sometimes, it took several tries. But each time, a shift in perspective got [her] through the crux of a workout, and built more endurance, more speed, and greater confidence” (Kastor 86). This then would build into one of her main mantras during her hard efforts and through her day to day life! That mantra being:
“Find a thought that serves you better” Deena Kastor (86).
In the next following chapter, “A Well of Strength,” the prefacing quote is: “A grateful mind is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others” (Marcus Tellius Cicero 81). This leads into one of the next, per se, virtues of Kastor’s training: practicing gratefulness. Her coach’s wife, Caroline, was someone with whom she became very close during her time training under her coach, Joe Vigil. Caroline was, as put by Kastor, “a former English teacher, [who] loved discussing books.” (Kastor 82). Caroline suggested to Kastor to read both Watership Down and The Artist’s Way. These books led to discussions between them about the dangers that come with expectations and how it can all lead to disappointment. The latter book gave them, however, a sort of self help guide for creative people. This is where both her and Caroline came upon the idea of journaling their reflections and gratitudes (Kastor 82-3). Deena says at the end of the chapter that “your inner strength is where you gain a real advantage. And [she] felt [hers] growing” (100). This is to say, that with both gratitude and her positive thinking, she could see the shifts in how her views on life began to change— this for Kastor was the beginning of something that was much larger for her that would shape the rest of her life! Which leads me to the next chapter I’m discussing: “Running On Joy.”
“Your inner strength is where you gain a real advantage” (Kastor 100).
My last chapter of discussion, “Running On Joy,” is a little later on in the novel, but as the chapter’s title suggests, it gets into the joy that one feels doing the things they enjoy. The prefacing quote for this chapter is, “[h]appiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential” (Shawn Achor 213). In this Chapter, Deena is training for the Olympic Marathon, which is to be held in Athens where she will receive a bronze medal. At this point before though, she was training in Mammoth Lakes, California in 2004. By this Olympic training and journey, we can see that Kastor is following a journey to strive for her potential and find how far her talent and training can take her. Leading up to these games was a significant challenge in ways because the summer games in Athens were supposed to be extremely warm so the different scientists that would be working on these games are what revolutionized how we prepare for, train for, and recover from heat to this day. Reflecting on this, Kastor says, “we could control nothing yet prepare for everything” (218). This line begins to show how Kastor is using her perspective of the situation to build her confidence in her training. It also reflects in this part of the chapter how grateful she is for access to the training and science that she is given leading up to the games. Yet, when it comes to the process that is training, there’s sometimes more things happening within the athlete. Even with gratitude and positive thinking, there has to be something deeper that makes you intrinsically motivated to keep putting in the hard work— as running is a grueling sport, at times, for everyone.
As the chapter goes on, Deena says that she “was aware on some level that joy was at the heart of the process, making it work. The more enjoyable the experience, the more effort we all put into it, and the greater the satisfaction” (Kastor 221). The joy that Deena finds in running is what truly comes across as one of the most, if not the most, significant things in the last third of the novel. When she then later goes on to say on that same page about other research papers she had been reading at the time, she talks about how she was reading about Indian researchers that were ‘investigating the “biochemistry of belief’” (which goes hand in hand with positivity, gratitude, and joy)! Deena reflected on this research in her diary that day saying that: “each and every tiny cell in our body is perfectly and absolutely aware of our thoughts, feelings, and of course, our beliefs” (221). If our body is aware of our thoughts, positive and negative, how we enforce them, how we feel them, the gratitude we find in our thoughts and observations, the joy we find in life, and all the things we tell ourselves, then we are a collection of all ideas that make us. Yet, as Deena’s successes have shown, being able to find joy, gratefulness, and positive thoughts in every situation, then maybe we can change the way we view the world and if we dare: change the way we live our lives and view ourselves.
To conclude this blog I will pull a few more quotes of reflection and importance to leave you all with.
“We have to repeatedly return to the thoughts that support our desires. We have to manage our emotions in order to keep belief, trust, and confidence as our energy and driver” (252).
“I am the sum of everyone and everything that had built me” (255).
In both the highs and the lows. When she saw herself as the strengths she had and the positive qualities she possessed, she was able to continue her personal growth. Later saying that “Growth [is] constant, self mastery [is] neverending… This excited [her]. [Her] competitive days had a short window, but [she] could push [her] mind and strengthen [her] positivity for a lifetime.” (277) All in all, to push your mind and strengthen your positivity for the rest of your life might just be the most anyone, or at least many English majors, could ask for!
“I had learned disappointment was rooted in the desire to improve and that under the grief, there was a deep love. Resiliency opens doors, and compassion and gratitude can dissolve tension, and enrich any moment. What more can I understand? I ran on to see what discovery and life lesson would emerge from the miles ahead” (278). Now lets see what lies ahead for us in our own journeys!
– Hannah Smrcka, Assistant Prose Editor, Assistant Layout Editor, Blogger
Hannah is a Junior at Lewis University majoring in English with a concentration in Literature and Language. They are on the Track and Cross Country teams for Lewis and enjoy playing piano in their free time. After graduation they hope to get their masters and certification in coaching to coach collegiate distance running, but they hope to still use their English degree to publish works outside of their main occupation. They feel that studying English betters them as a person every day. Some of their favorite authors include Charles Dickens, Rainbow Rowell, Lauren Fleshman, and Deena Kastor.