"I'll never forget one race, one of my best 5km races was last year at Payton Jordan (2019) and that was when I was really at the height of my mindfulness practise. I was meditating every day - I would wake up and meditate for 10 minutes, I was so aware of what I was doing and how I was feeling throughout the day through mindfulness. I would meditate at night. There was so many moments in that race where I wanted to give up, I was not in shape to run 13:22 for 5km that day, hell no! But I kept giving myself opportunities. I kept giving myself opportunities to keep pushing. Every moment I wanted to give up and let off the pace and let that gap open up I just gave myself one more step, I gave myself one more breath, and I just kept going and going. I kept telling myself that this pain that I'm going through, it's okay, it's not something that I possess, it's just something that's there. It's not a part of me, it's just something that is present currently and that was the huge breakthrough for me. I was like "Holy shit, if I can learn to continue to breath through things, I can push myself to a whole new pain tolerance and to a whole new place that I never knew I could get to before."

Sam Parsons (Tinman Elite) is back on the Sweat Elite Podcast to discuss everything mindfulness with Sweat Elite's Tait Hearps.

"You can achieve these certain states of being through running. Running can be such a meditative endeavour. It can be a way to free yourself from darkness, anxiety, stress, whatever it may be. Running is an escape for a lot of people. That hour that you head out your door can be the best hour of your day. It can be the one hour where you're not stressing about the test you have the take, or the work that you didn't do or whatever might be coming up. Learning to take moments in your day just to breathe. I always had this huge misconception with it."

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