Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

by Alexi Pappas

a successful person can be successful in anything, the good and the bad. This is both empowering and heartbreaking.

Being brave is the best way to survive, and I’ve always been about survival.

I imagine all little girls as potatoes, wondrous nuggets of raw potential just waiting to be shaped by their mom-chefs. Whether your mom tenderly styles you into a Hasselback dish, tosses you in the microwave, or is totally absent, she is going to affect you.

My mom and I have the same thick eyebrows and hers were not curved up in astonishment, angled down in anger, or drooping sideways with sadness. They were completely flat.

all it started with my

I appreciated that she let me watch her without pointing it out. It can be embarrassing to admire someone so much, and I needed to be able to copy her without her acknowledging that I was copying her. By letting my observations and imitations pass unspoken, Petra gave me confidence while also preserving my dignity. This was a gift.

To magically become someone else would be to skip the journey of becoming our ultimate thing, our very big selves. It might seem easier that way, but it isn’t better.

down I knew I could do it; I knew I had it in me to become a very big Alexi. I knew I could grow the invisible but real muscle called confidence all on my own. Petra opened the door to that realization, but I had to walk through it on my own.

Sometimes it hurts to know you can do it. It’s an intimidating thing to realize because it means that the only person who can really define your growth and happiness is yourself. There is no shortcut to becoming your best self. The responsibility is on you.

Asking for help is a superpower anyone can have but only some people use. It is brave to ask for help. Asking for help is the first step toward finding a mentor. Mentors can help us change our lives if we let them.

To be pushed by someone who truly believes in you is a huge gift. It is like they’re pushing you and pulling you at the same time. It is a love that comes from a place of wanting you to be there with them.

My greatest loss has become my greatest gift: I’ve learned that the whole world and all its inhabitants are there for me to observe, absorb, and imitate. I will never outgrow or be too proud for mentors.

The vast majority of athletic programs, even at the collegiate level, lack the most fundamental information about how to properly guide female athletes through puberty and young adulthood. Programs confuse health with fitness. Fitness is not an indicator of durability and sustainability; it is only an indicator of athletic ability at the present moment. Health, on the other hand, is a more holistic measure of the body’s functionality over time.

The thing about eating disorders in distance running is that, for a window of time, they appear to be effective—until they aren’t.

if talent gave me a powerful engine, then hard work is my fuel. An engine is useless without the fuel.

I hope that in the future, new generations of female runners will come of age in an environment that sets them up for long-term durability. Because no matter how powerful the engine and how potent the fuel, the whole thing is useless if it burns out too soon.

I also discovered using physical triggers, playable actions, as a tool to help my mind overcome the anxiety associated with the onset of pain. For example: “When the pain hits after the third mile, remember to shake your arms out and drop your shoulders.” Or even something as simple as: “When it hurts, force yourself to smile.” By converting a mental struggle into an actionable objective, internal battles felt less elusive and more grounded. It’s much easier to tell myself to move my arms than it is to tell myself to “feel better.”

sometimes—I get bouts of sadness that come out of nowhere and feel like a sorbet scoop to the heart.

When you’re chasing a big goal, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time. If the ratio is off and you feel good all the time, then you’re not pushing yourself enough. Likewise, if you feel bad all the time, then you might be fatigued and need to dial things back.

where advice comes from can be just as important as the advice itself, and any advice coming from an admired mentor carries tremendous significance.

He had the enthusiasm of a parent who does not want to be a chaperone on a school field trip.

I have an irrational fear of losing a shoe mid-race, and I’ve come to accept that no amount of experience or mental fortitude will soothe it. So I just tie my shoes insanely tight before a race so there’s no room for fear in my feet, and I leave it at that.

This happens sometimes, where you notice yourself subtly but meaningfully surpassing your own expectations. And in that moment, you redefine who you are for yourself.

For me, putting on race-day makeup isn’t about how the world sees me; it’s about how I see myself. My race-day makeup symbolizes that this day is unique. It means that I am about to try something brave.

I thought about my family somewhere in the audience and all the ups and downs they had weathered during my journey to get here. I thought about how if the pain overcame me and I really did die right then and there, it was okay because there was nothing else I’d rather be doing.

I realized that this wasn’t really about me versus her—meaning any individual girl in my race—nor was this about me versus the world at large. It was about me versus me, just like in middle school, running as fast as I can and then some. It was about enjoying the results of my hard work and all the help I got from the people I love. My mental fitness and physical fitness were completely in sync, peaking simultaneously. It felt like the steep climb that began when I was a freshman at Dartmouth, with the countless days of pain and commitment, had culminated all in this one moment of perfect harmony. “Me versus me” doesn’t do this feeling justice either—it’s not a versus. It’s me within me and me outside of me. I was running around the track while looking at a miniature diorama version of myself running around the track and this image repeated in my heart to infinity. It felt like my mind could tell my body to do anything and it would do it. Some people call this flow, but I call it bliss.

When you cross the finish line at the Olympics, there is no dad or boyfriend or coach to catch you. They are somewhere beyond the barricade of security fences. The people who catch you are the women you just raced,

Nerves are cousin to excitement, and excitement is cousin to gratitude. Pay attention to your nerves: If you feel nervous, it’s a sign that a Very Big Thing is unfolding. Be nervous for how good that thing can be.

here’s the thing about trying to solve an internal problem with an external solution: Even if you achieve the goal you set for yourself, it will never be enough.

Sleep requires safety, not desperation.

The minute you start looking backward, when you entertain the idea of trying to unscramble an egg, you need to ask for help. You need to stop moving and deal with yourself at exactly where you are in that moment.

When I was younger, I had sympathy for my mother—how sad she must have been! But now I felt empathy for her. This is the strongest connection I’ve ever felt to my mom: when I finally understood what it felt like to want to disappear.

Humiliation cannot survive when a friend is by your side.

time. I was weary, like a used tea bag, unable to appreciate ordinary wonderful things. And it was getting worse. Still, I did not ask for help.

The energy I put into healing myself was tremendous and there was none to spare for updating friends or otherwise opening up to other people. I didn’t want attention, I wanted to heal.

The only muscles a dead person has are the ones we invent for them.

I don’t have regrets, I have tools. I am so happy that I did it. I am so happy. When I felt my happiness return, I knew that I would never again be afraid to fail. I felt like I was flying. For the first time in my life, I was fearless.

From now until forever, someone will know everything about me. It doesn’t need to be the same person, and it certainly doesn’t need to be everybody—but whether I’ve had a bad turkey sandwich or dropped out of a workout or experienced something even more painful, somebody will know it and they will help hold that thing with me.

Everything inside of me is also somewhere outside of me. I don’t want to stay behind with them, the things inside. I want to make room for the next thing life hands me and the next and the next, because I expect there will always be a next.

If a person is not answering to their number one task, to take care of themselves, then they shouldn’t have to take on any other responsibilities. You have to take care of yourself first. You are your own most precious resource. Everything you are in this world hinges on you facing yourself before you face the world.

Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney.

When making a willpower budget, the best place to start is with the little things: How can you cut out some of the smaller day-to-day decisions that use up little drops of willpower? For me, having a set routine for the day ahead is key. I coined one of my favorite personal mantras, “Tomorrow Starts Tonight,” because before I go to bed I lay out my clothes, pack my day bag, set up my coffee pot, and even write a to-do list and schedule. Every micro-decision that I can make for myself ahead of time leaves me more willpower to dedicate to training the next morning, or to whatever big task is on my plate. If you’re planning your day on the fly, there’s no way it’ll be as efficient. I also started becoming more vigilant with medium and big decisions: I was much more thoughtful about how much I committed to in a single day, and I made sure that all of my tasks had a set starting time and place. I was no longer down to “meet at 3-ish for a run somewhere,” because I understood that the back-and-forth texting leading up to the run would cost me some willpower. It’s much easier to take the time to make thoughtful plans.

drained. I am an introvert, so while I love conversation and social interactions, I am not energized by them. I require lots of alone time. But once I started thinking more proactively about my willpower, I started bringing along headphones so that when I needed to, I could remove myself from the team chitchat and just stay focused on the task. At first I felt selfish doing this, like I should entertain all the conversations happening around me, but now I understand that in order to contribute the most to the world, I need to be protective of my willpower.

The Willpower Index is a simple table with an X and a Y axis. The Y axis represents a range from “bad for you” to “good for you.” The X axis represents “willpower draining” to “willpower boosting.”

You wouldn’t get frustrated with yourself for feeling hungry if you haven’t eaten, so why get frustrated if you need to boost your willpower when it’s low?

you can be proud of yourself and want more out of yourself at the same time

A training cycle should be seen as a long-term body of work, and any single day probably won’t make or break your season.

It wasn’t up to my mother to leave. She should have known better. I felt the number one rule of life should be that we don’t get to know or choose when we die, and she broke it. She broke that rule and the consequence was that she got separated from me forever.

my dad taught me that trying hard and not giving up is the best way to achieve your goals. What else do you do when your wife leaves forever and drops you in a well of sadness with two children and no ladder? You grab the walls and climb because you know that if you don’t, you might end up staying down there forever. You try hard because you must.

your body is like a pencil: If you sharpen it too much, it will break. You can’t stay “peaked” forever; you need to recover so you can build up again for the next thing. If you recover properly, your next peak can be even higher than your last. But my rule wouldn’t allow me to take any time off to recover, so I overtrained and developed a number of injuries, starting with a hamstring tendon tear that ultimately catalyzed a stress reaction in my sacrum.