What Angel Cona Wish She Knew As She Embarked on Her Running Adventure

From episode: Journey to the Finish Line: Angel Cona's Resilient Pursuit of Marathons

What piece of knowledge do you wish you would have had in the beginning of your running journey that you know now or, you know, what's the best thing you've learned or what would you like to learn? I've learned a lot about learning how to kind of fuel for races and shoes. Shoes are definitely a really important one. To start out running, I was very much, like I said, it was kind of a decision of, oh, I'm going to go run a marathon. So I started out not knowing anything. And a lot of stuff I've learned, like from my friends and everything, you know, like about eating every so often during a race or carrying the gels. And that's a huge help for the longer races. I also kind of learned with the whole calf issue to take a little bit more time between races. And if I signed up for a race and I realized that, hey, maybe I shouldn't do this race back to back, that it's okay to, you know, not run that specific race. And that was really hard to learn the first time because, you know, the 49k was supposed to be my first ultra before Peru. And I realized at mile seven that it wasn't going to happen. And I was mad about it. I was not happy. You know, my friends, of course, were like, no, you did the right thing. I knew I did the right thing. I did not, I wasn't happy about it. But so I kind of learned this year to, you know, if you don't think maybe two races that weekend is a good idea, maybe don't do. It'll be there next year. You can go back next year. Well, good for you for listening to your body and listening to your friends, you know, the experienced people. Because sometimes, you know, we can get stubborn as athletes. That's typically the case. So good for you. Yeah, I'm definitely, I have a lot more stubborn than I do running skills. And I don't listen very well. And I try, like to say, you know, this is kind of like my family at this point. And I try and listen. But I'm not the best at listening. So, you know, I'm trying. But at least you're honest and you know you have room for improvement.