Nickademus de la Rosa is no stranger to mountaintops, of both the literal and metaphorical variety.
For much of the 2010s he was at the top of the ultrarunning world, rattling off podium appearances at some of the longest, toughest and most iconic events in the sport, and boasting a list of completions almost as long as the races themselves.
Of all the highs, perhaps none was greater than his finish at the 2013 Barkley Marathons, a race often deemed the toughest in the world, with only 26 finishes in its 30+ year history.
Yet, while a victory on one of the sport’s greatest stages brought the promise of a legacy cemented, it also served to further deepen an identity rooted in performance, one perpetuated by a constant striving for the next win.
While de la Rosa's immense talent for the trails allowed him to dictate his own story for years, his performance-centric identity collapsed when an abrupt diagnosis and open-heart surgery forced him to retire from competition in 2017. What followed were years of soul-searching and grappling to rediscover a sense of self outside of sport.
That journey ultimately led him to mental performance coaching, using his education in sport and performance psychology and the hard-earned lessons from his own career to help athletes separate their self-worth from performance and free themselves to compete at their best.
Today on The Shakeout Podcast, Nick shares from his own journey of mountaintops and valley bottoms, how’s he reshaped a relationship with the sport he loves that’s built for the long run, and how stepping away from the narrow constraints of the podium can help us all get the most out of the sport we love.
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Checkout Nickademus on social media @ultrademus
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