38. Why Miracles Are Always on the Table (In Ultrarunning & in Life)
Do you believe extraordinary things can happen, even when everything looks hopeless? In this episode, I share why staying open to possibilities you can't currently see might be the most powerful mindset shift you can make as an ultrarunner.
After 30 years in this sport, I've witnessed the impossible happen over and over again - runners finishing races that should have broken them, overcoming obstacles that seemed insurmountable, succeeding when failure felt inevitable.
Some people call this hope, some call it delusion, but after watching runners emerge from their worst lows, finish with broken bones, recover from wrong turns that cost over an hour, and sprint across finish lines with single-digit seconds to spare, I call it a powerful mindset that works. Tune in this week to hear why it’s so important to keep miracles on the table.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How refusing to believe in miracles actually removes all possibility for one.
The three essential practices for becoming someone that miracles can find in races.
What staying alert for signs of a miracle means and how rigid thinking can cause you to miss opportunities.
The specific choices that keep doors open for miracles versus the ones that guarantee you'll miss them.
How past DNFs and failures are independent of what's possible for you right now.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
“I never took miracles off the table.” One of my fabulous clients said this when I asked her how she'd finally succeeded in a tough race. And it stopped me cold. Because in that moment she put into words something I'd been believing instinctively my entire ultra running career, but had never named. Because what she said means miracles are always on the table unless you take them off.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 38. Today we're talking about something exciting that might not sound like it has anything to do with ultra running performance, but I promise you it does. Miracles. And when I say miracles, what I mean in a practical sense is staying open to possibilities you can't currently see. It's about not giving up on outcomes that seem impossible. It's about believing that extraordinary things can happen, even when, and especially when, everything looks hopeless.
Some people call this hope. Some people call it delusion. I call it a powerful mindset. Because after 30 years in this sport, I've seen the impossible happen over and over again, too many times, in ways you just can't explain. And I've noticed something. The runners who finish the races that should have broken them, that they shouldn't have finished, all have this one thing in common. And as I said, it's something I'd been doing instinctively my entire ultrarunning career, really all my life, but had just never named. And here are just a few of the impossible things that I've witnessed.
You can be struggling through the worst low imaginable and still finish well. This is so many races for me, and every time you emerge from a low and into a high, it feels like an absolute miracle that defies reality. If you've had this experience, you know. Your shoe can fall apart at 30 miles into 100, and you can still finish. You just need to figure it out. I did this at Ozark Trail 100 one year. I made do with duct tape that kept coming off my shoe until I finally found a pair of trail shoes in my size, someone, actually the race director who's a friend of mine, was willing to let me borrow, and they were actually in my size. Miracle.
You can break a bone and still finish. I broke my big toe on a rock in the first five miles of Bigfoot 200, and found a way to run that didn't bother it, and finished, without even thinking about it the rest of the race. You can take a wrong turn that costs you an hour and a half and still finish. A good friend of mine did this at Double Top 100 one year and still finished under cutoff. You can have 5 seconds on final cutoff and still finish.
I've watched many runners over the years at Massanutten 100 come out of the woods into the finish meadow sprinting with everything they've got left as the clock clicks down and people are yelling for them, and they cross the line with sometimes single-digit seconds to spare. It's truly inspiring. I'm talking about outcomes that seem impossible given what you can currently see, but become possible through factors you couldn't predict or plan for, you couldn't imagine, doors opening that you didn't even know existed. And here's why you can believe miracles are always on the table.
First of all, it's just sheer possibility. What I'm talking about is possibility. The possibility that things can work out for you against all the odds that you think are stacked against you. That as inevitable as failure feels, it's just a feeling, not a fact. That you can succeed. If you're running an average 100-mile race, you have about a 60-70% chance of finishing, looking at the finisher rate. That's a better than 50% chance. Think about that. Even when you're out there in the middle of the race convinced you can't finish feeling awful, statistically, you're more likely to succeed than fail.
Doubt feels like truth, I know it, but the numbers tell a different story. You don't see the possibility for finishing, but it's there, all the time, whether you think it is or not. And every step you take while staying in the race tips those odds further in your favor.
The second reason you can believe in miracles is that you already have proof. There are so many stories of miracles happening in the world. And you probably have your own. If you think back, you can probably think of improbable things that have happened in your life. Lucky breaks. Times when things against all odds worked out for you anyway. Maybe it was getting into a race that you thought was possible. Landing a job that seemed out of reach. Meeting someone who changed your life in an unexpected moment. Coincidences that were exactly what you needed at the time. You know, that relationship that worked out against all odds.
You've lived through your own evidence that improbable things happen, you just might not have called them miracles before. You just called them lucky breaks or coincidences. But what if they were something more? And third, it doesn't cost you a thing to believe miracles are always possible. You have nothing to lose by believing this. The biggest fear here that we have about believing in miracles isn't really about being disappointed. It's about feeling foolish for hoping you're going to get a miracle. But what's actually foolish is deciding ahead of time that extraordinary things can't possibly happen to you.
If you don't believe in miracles, you disappoint yourself now ahead of time. You're telling yourself ahead of time that one can't happen for you. So get used to the disappointment now rather than keeping open the possibility. And when you refuse to believe in miracles, you simply remove all possibility for a miracle. Like even if one does happen, you'll argue against it and turn it down because it doesn't match your belief and you'd have to change what you believe. Can't possibly be a miracle. Miracles don't happen to me. I'm going to turn that down.
Even if you start feeling a lot better in a race, you'll say you're still dropping because you've been suffering for so many miles and it's just not your day. So you turn that upswing in how you're feeling down. But keep your mind open to the possibility of miracles and running becomes more enjoyable and exciting and one might actually happen. So why not believe?
And fourth, are you sure we know everything about how the world works? Can you absolutely, positively know that miracles are impossible? Like, are you 100% sure? Would you stake your life on it? If you're going to have doubt, have doubt that we know everything and leave the possibility of miracles open. I think the world is more amazing than we give it credit for in our regular, daily lives. Sometimes we forget that more is possible. That there's still mystery in the world that works out in our favor. That we don't control everything. And that's actually good news.
Things we don't control can work out for us even better than we could imagine, without us having to force it into happening. We're constantly surprised and awed by miracles we hear about happening in the world. Why should running—our running—be any different? And you're not exempt either. Miracles are on the table for you too. Period. Whether you believe it or not. The possibility exists regardless of your belief in it. The only question is, are you going to give miracles a chance? And if you want to give them a chance, here's how you become someone that miracles can find.
First off, believe that they're possible for you. Like my client, never take miracles off the table. Because if you don't believe they're on the table, a miracle could start happening and you'd just dismiss it. You'd actually stop it, turn it down, give it up, pass it by. Until the race is over, every possibility is on the table. Past history doesn't disprove miracles either. Miracles are now. They are independent of your past failures. It's just plain smart to keep all your possibilities open instead of throwing them away because miracles seem foolish to believe in.
It's not about ignoring reality or pretending problems don't exist. It's about not prematurely closing doors that might still be open. Believing a miracle is possible is actually also easier than not believing in miracles. When you believe miracles are possible, you can go on in a race because there's something to go on for. You want to. There's always possibility that things could change, things could work out. There's something to dig deep for when you need to. Running becomes that adventure you want instead of a battle you have to fight.
So when you don't believe in miracles... You have to run without hope, without possibility, without allowing yourself to be delighted by an unexpected turn of events. Math is just plain math, and you have to summon the energy to go on. Writing is just harder that way. So believing isn't passive, also. It's what keeps you engaged long enough for the unpredictable to unfold. Believing is active.
The second thing to become a magnet for miracles is stay alert for signs of one. Staying open to miracles also requires keeping your attention open, staying on the lookout for signs. Because if you don't, a miracle could be in process and you wouldn't even notice it. You might even believe something bad is happening. Staying alert means letting go also of needing to know how or when one will happen. Miracles don't work on your timeline. They happen in their own time, which is why giving up too early is the only way to guarantee that you'll miss one. So keep your spidey senses open for anything that feels like the beginnings of a miracle. Stay mentally flexible enough to recognize opportunities and solutions that more rigid thinking would miss, and follow those opportunities.
All right, third, make choices that keep the doors for a miracle open. You have to live and run like someone who believes, to make choices that leave that possibility open, that don't rule it out, that leave a way for a miracle to actually happen. And that means not giving up, not quitting, not DNFing, even when everything seems like it's working against you, even if it's been so long that you should give up hope, even when you've tried everything and nothing's working or you've DNFed before and you're just gonna DNF again, show up to the race, start the race. You never know how it'll turn out until you're done.
Do everything you know to get out of that low and give yourself the time to do it while you keep moving forward. Do not let past history of DNFs tell you that this one is going to work out the same. Keep going. When you have seconds left on the clock, give it everything you've got and surprise yourself with more. When you take that wrong turn that ends up costing you a demoralizing hour and a half like it did to my friend, you keep going as hard as you can because you're still in the race and a finish is possible.
Here's one more story about miracles. For my trip to Massanutten 100 a few years ago, I rented an SUV. My Fiat was tiny and I wanted to camp in the back of a car, so here I was driving up the interstate on a nice sunny day, easy drive, and suddenly I came over a hill and saw the cars ahead of me at a dead stop. I slammed on the brakes and stopped just in time, but it was close and I knew that whatever vehicle came behind me had an even shorter stopping distance and might not be paying attention like I was. And it all happened so fast.
I saw a vehicle coming at me in the rearview mirror and instinctively pressed the brakes with all my might and held tight to the steering wheel and braced against the seat. And I think a million things went through my head at one time. The vehicle, a rental SUV, was totaled, mashed from the front and back into a literal ball of metal. The driver who hit me, gone. The state trooper who responded, amazed. And that evening, I walked out of the emergency room, unscathed, on my own power. Two minor scrapes from the airbags, and that was it.
The state trooper was so amazed, he visited me in the emergency room. I should have been seriously injured. I should have, like, lost a limb, but I didn't. I literally shouldn't have lived. Had I been in my own car, had I made that decision that I almost didn't make, to rent an SUV, I wouldn't be here recording this podcast. It literally was a miracle. And the days since that wreck are bonus days that are the result of a miracle. That's just one example of a miracle in real life. But they happen in running too.
The client who said miracles are always on the table had finished a race that she had DNF'd twice, one that she cared deeply about but seemed out of reach. Until she let go of her sureness that she wouldn't finish, relaxed about how the miracle would happen, and just kept running with the faith that a miracle was always on the table for her. And that was the year she finished.
You already live in a world where miracles are possible. You always have. The only question is whether you'll stay open to them. You're already brave enough to believe that you can run 50, 100, 200 miles or even more when everything in your logical mind says it's impossible. That's miraculous thinking right there. You're already someone who attempts the extraordinary. So why not extend that same faith to the race itself?
Why not trust that the same universe that gave you the audacity to line up at the starting line might also have a few more surprises in store for you? Stay in the race. Keep your heart open. Let miracles find you. Because here's what I know for certain. It's so much better running and living in a world where impossible things happen all the time. And you're exactly the person they happen to.
All right, y'all, that's this week's episode. Thank you for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 38. Today we're talking about something exciting that might not sound like it has anything to do with ultra running performance, but I promise you it does. Miracles. And when I say miracles, what I mean in a practical sense is staying open to possibilities you can't currently see. It's about not giving up on outcomes that seem impossible. It's about believing that extraordinary things can happen, even when, and especially when, everything looks hopeless.
Some people call this hope. Some people call it delusion. I call it a powerful mindset. Because after 30 years in this sport, I've seen the impossible happen over and over again, too many times, in ways you just can't explain. And I've noticed something. The runners who finish the races that should have broken them, that they shouldn't have finished, all have this one thing in common. And as I said, it's something I'd been doing instinctively my entire ultrarunning career, really all my life, but had just never named. And here are just a few of the impossible things that I've witnessed.
You can be struggling through the worst low imaginable and still finish well. This is so many races for me, and every time you emerge from a low and into a high, it feels like an absolute miracle that defies reality. If you've had this experience, you know. Your shoe can fall apart at 30 miles into 100, and you can still finish. You just need to figure it out. I did this at Ozark Trail 100 one year. I made do with duct tape that kept coming off my shoe until I finally found a pair of trail shoes in my size, someone, actually the race director who's a friend of mine, was willing to let me borrow, and they were actually in my size. Miracle.
You can break a bone and still finish. I broke my big toe on a rock in the first five miles of Bigfoot 200, and found a way to run that didn't bother it, and finished, without even thinking about it the rest of the race. You can take a wrong turn that costs you an hour and a half and still finish. A good friend of mine did this at Double Top 100 one year and still finished under cutoff. You can have 5 seconds on final cutoff and still finish.
I've watched many runners over the years at Massanutten 100 come out of the woods into the finish meadow sprinting with everything they've got left as the clock clicks down and people are yelling for them, and they cross the line with sometimes single-digit seconds to spare. It's truly inspiring. I'm talking about outcomes that seem impossible given what you can currently see, but become possible through factors you couldn't predict or plan for, you couldn't imagine, doors opening that you didn't even know existed. And here's why you can believe miracles are always on the table.
First of all, it's just sheer possibility. What I'm talking about is possibility. The possibility that things can work out for you against all the odds that you think are stacked against you. That as inevitable as failure feels, it's just a feeling, not a fact. That you can succeed. If you're running an average 100-mile race, you have about a 60-70% chance of finishing, looking at the finisher rate. That's a better than 50% chance. Think about that. Even when you're out there in the middle of the race convinced you can't finish feeling awful, statistically, you're more likely to succeed than fail.
Doubt feels like truth, I know it, but the numbers tell a different story. You don't see the possibility for finishing, but it's there, all the time, whether you think it is or not. And every step you take while staying in the race tips those odds further in your favor.
The second reason you can believe in miracles is that you already have proof. There are so many stories of miracles happening in the world. And you probably have your own. If you think back, you can probably think of improbable things that have happened in your life. Lucky breaks. Times when things against all odds worked out for you anyway. Maybe it was getting into a race that you thought was possible. Landing a job that seemed out of reach. Meeting someone who changed your life in an unexpected moment. Coincidences that were exactly what you needed at the time. You know, that relationship that worked out against all odds.
You've lived through your own evidence that improbable things happen, you just might not have called them miracles before. You just called them lucky breaks or coincidences. But what if they were something more? And third, it doesn't cost you a thing to believe miracles are always possible. You have nothing to lose by believing this. The biggest fear here that we have about believing in miracles isn't really about being disappointed. It's about feeling foolish for hoping you're going to get a miracle. But what's actually foolish is deciding ahead of time that extraordinary things can't possibly happen to you.
If you don't believe in miracles, you disappoint yourself now ahead of time. You're telling yourself ahead of time that one can't happen for you. So get used to the disappointment now rather than keeping open the possibility. And when you refuse to believe in miracles, you simply remove all possibility for a miracle. Like even if one does happen, you'll argue against it and turn it down because it doesn't match your belief and you'd have to change what you believe. Can't possibly be a miracle. Miracles don't happen to me. I'm going to turn that down.
Even if you start feeling a lot better in a race, you'll say you're still dropping because you've been suffering for so many miles and it's just not your day. So you turn that upswing in how you're feeling down. But keep your mind open to the possibility of miracles and running becomes more enjoyable and exciting and one might actually happen. So why not believe?
And fourth, are you sure we know everything about how the world works? Can you absolutely, positively know that miracles are impossible? Like, are you 100% sure? Would you stake your life on it? If you're going to have doubt, have doubt that we know everything and leave the possibility of miracles open. I think the world is more amazing than we give it credit for in our regular, daily lives. Sometimes we forget that more is possible. That there's still mystery in the world that works out in our favor. That we don't control everything. And that's actually good news.
Things we don't control can work out for us even better than we could imagine, without us having to force it into happening. We're constantly surprised and awed by miracles we hear about happening in the world. Why should running—our running—be any different? And you're not exempt either. Miracles are on the table for you too. Period. Whether you believe it or not. The possibility exists regardless of your belief in it. The only question is, are you going to give miracles a chance? And if you want to give them a chance, here's how you become someone that miracles can find.
First off, believe that they're possible for you. Like my client, never take miracles off the table. Because if you don't believe they're on the table, a miracle could start happening and you'd just dismiss it. You'd actually stop it, turn it down, give it up, pass it by. Until the race is over, every possibility is on the table. Past history doesn't disprove miracles either. Miracles are now. They are independent of your past failures. It's just plain smart to keep all your possibilities open instead of throwing them away because miracles seem foolish to believe in.
It's not about ignoring reality or pretending problems don't exist. It's about not prematurely closing doors that might still be open. Believing a miracle is possible is actually also easier than not believing in miracles. When you believe miracles are possible, you can go on in a race because there's something to go on for. You want to. There's always possibility that things could change, things could work out. There's something to dig deep for when you need to. Running becomes that adventure you want instead of a battle you have to fight.
So when you don't believe in miracles... You have to run without hope, without possibility, without allowing yourself to be delighted by an unexpected turn of events. Math is just plain math, and you have to summon the energy to go on. Writing is just harder that way. So believing isn't passive, also. It's what keeps you engaged long enough for the unpredictable to unfold. Believing is active.
The second thing to become a magnet for miracles is stay alert for signs of one. Staying open to miracles also requires keeping your attention open, staying on the lookout for signs. Because if you don't, a miracle could be in process and you wouldn't even notice it. You might even believe something bad is happening. Staying alert means letting go also of needing to know how or when one will happen. Miracles don't work on your timeline. They happen in their own time, which is why giving up too early is the only way to guarantee that you'll miss one. So keep your spidey senses open for anything that feels like the beginnings of a miracle. Stay mentally flexible enough to recognize opportunities and solutions that more rigid thinking would miss, and follow those opportunities.
All right, third, make choices that keep the doors for a miracle open. You have to live and run like someone who believes, to make choices that leave that possibility open, that don't rule it out, that leave a way for a miracle to actually happen. And that means not giving up, not quitting, not DNFing, even when everything seems like it's working against you, even if it's been so long that you should give up hope, even when you've tried everything and nothing's working or you've DNFed before and you're just gonna DNF again, show up to the race, start the race. You never know how it'll turn out until you're done.
Do everything you know to get out of that low and give yourself the time to do it while you keep moving forward. Do not let past history of DNFs tell you that this one is going to work out the same. Keep going. When you have seconds left on the clock, give it everything you've got and surprise yourself with more. When you take that wrong turn that ends up costing you a demoralizing hour and a half like it did to my friend, you keep going as hard as you can because you're still in the race and a finish is possible.
Here's one more story about miracles. For my trip to Massanutten 100 a few years ago, I rented an SUV. My Fiat was tiny and I wanted to camp in the back of a car, so here I was driving up the interstate on a nice sunny day, easy drive, and suddenly I came over a hill and saw the cars ahead of me at a dead stop. I slammed on the brakes and stopped just in time, but it was close and I knew that whatever vehicle came behind me had an even shorter stopping distance and might not be paying attention like I was. And it all happened so fast.
I saw a vehicle coming at me in the rearview mirror and instinctively pressed the brakes with all my might and held tight to the steering wheel and braced against the seat. And I think a million things went through my head at one time. The vehicle, a rental SUV, was totaled, mashed from the front and back into a literal ball of metal. The driver who hit me, gone. The state trooper who responded, amazed. And that evening, I walked out of the emergency room, unscathed, on my own power. Two minor scrapes from the airbags, and that was it.
The state trooper was so amazed, he visited me in the emergency room. I should have been seriously injured. I should have, like, lost a limb, but I didn't. I literally shouldn't have lived. Had I been in my own car, had I made that decision that I almost didn't make, to rent an SUV, I wouldn't be here recording this podcast. It literally was a miracle. And the days since that wreck are bonus days that are the result of a miracle. That's just one example of a miracle in real life. But they happen in running too.
The client who said miracles are always on the table had finished a race that she had DNF'd twice, one that she cared deeply about but seemed out of reach. Until she let go of her sureness that she wouldn't finish, relaxed about how the miracle would happen, and just kept running with the faith that a miracle was always on the table for her. And that was the year she finished.
You already live in a world where miracles are possible. You always have. The only question is whether you'll stay open to them. You're already brave enough to believe that you can run 50, 100, 200 miles or even more when everything in your logical mind says it's impossible. That's miraculous thinking right there. You're already someone who attempts the extraordinary. So why not extend that same faith to the race itself?
Why not trust that the same universe that gave you the audacity to line up at the starting line might also have a few more surprises in store for you? Stay in the race. Keep your heart open. Let miracles find you. Because here's what I know for certain. It's so much better running and living in a world where impossible things happen all the time. And you're exactly the person they happen to.
All right, y'all, that's this week's episode. Thank you for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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