Coach Croft

If you’ve never heard me on a podcast or talk about training as a masters or menopausal athlete, you’ve heard me say old ways won’t open new doors.

This might just be one of the hardest lessons endurance athletes ever learn, too. Because many of us say we trust the process. Far fewer are willing to actually surrender to it.

Trust sounds good when the process looks familiar. When the mileage is high. When the workouts feel hard. When exhaustion feels like proof that you’re doing enough.

Surrender is different though. It asks you to release the belief that success can only happen one way.

For masters + peri/menopausal athletes, that’s where things often get uncomfortable. The body changes. Recovery and stress changes. Life gets chaotic. Yet many athletes keep reaching for the same tools that worked ten or twenty years ago and wonder why the door won’t budge.

The goal isn’t to do less for the sake of it. This is where you do what strategically moves you forward and sometimes that means a few less miles. Sometimes it means more strength work + more recovery. Sometimes it also means letting go of timelines that no longer serve you.

The dream doesn’t have to change. The path might need to adapt slightly.

And that’s often the difference between trusting the process and surrendering to it. One believes. The other lets go.

10 years ago, I had a hysterectomy at 38.

I didn’t set out to become a menopausal marathoner. In fact, I resisted the marathon for years and was convinced I’d be one and done.

Somehow, over the last decade, I’ve learned a lot from both.

Ten years.
Ten marathons.
Countless lessons about resilience, adaptation, trust, and what it means to keep moving forward when life doesn’t go according to plan.

I could list a million of them but this carousel shares a few of the biggest ones.

I’d love to hear: what’s a lesson your body has taught you that you couldn’t have learned any other way?