We shouldn’t be guilty for chasing our dreams
After I first interviewed Hanny Allston for Sparta Chicks Radio back in 2017, I wrote:
You know when you speak to someone and they say something so profound it leaves you pondering the conversation for days, even weeks later.
That’s what speaking to Hanny Allston was like for me.
3 years of friendship and many conversations later, I still feel the same way.
Hanny is no stranger to the trail running and outdoor adventure communities in Australia.
In 2006, Hanny won the Junior and Senior World Orienteering titles. In doing so, she became the first non-European to win an Orienteering World Championship and the first person, male or female, to hold both the Senior and Junior title in the same year.
In the years since, she’s achieved a long list of victories, records and placings in the worlds of mountain and trail running, ultramarathon running and sky running.
She’s also the co-founder of my favourite retail and online store - Find Your Feet - based in Tasmania with her husband Graham. And on top of all that, she’s a performance coach and the host of an incredible podcast also called ‘Find Your Feet.
We cover all of that, and more, in our first conversation (which you can find here).
This conversation is very different. This is a conversation about Hanny finding her feet.
She has just released a memoir - her first memoir - called ‘Finding My Feet’.
I was lucky enough to read an advance copy. And the best way to describe it as soul-full.
It's Hanny's incredible story (so far) that is brave and vulnerable and heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry. It’s one of the most honest memoirs and autobiographies I’ve read in a long time.
In this conversation, Hanny and I discuss:
* the challenging of writing a memoir without hurting your loved ones,
* whether she intended to be so vulnerable and honest when she started the project,
* why she decided to write her memoir at such a young age,
* why your identity and having a strong sense of self is critical not only for performance but happiness and fulfilment,
* the importance of self-compassion and self-acceptance,
* her thoughts on the Imposter Syndrome and how we can diminish parts of our spirit and personality that we feel aren’t looking upon favourably,
* the difference between ego and confidence,
* whether she saw the constant changes in her passion, interest and sports over the years as a ‘failure’,
* what it means to be willing to sit on (and sometimes fall off) ‘the edge of your discomfort’
* the 3 most important tools every athlete should have in their ‘toolkit’, and
* the importance of freedom and recognising the choices we do have.
Click here to listen on iTunes.
Notes and resources:
To find out more about Hanny or to say hello, you can find her on Instagram or via her website. You can also find her memoir here and as well as her Trail Running Guidebook here.
Visit the Find Your Feet online store here and Hanny's podcast here.
