Shalane Flanagan on Parenting & Positive Self-Talk as a Mom

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Shalane Flanagan can still fly.

If there was any doubt about that, the Olympic silver medalist and TCS New York City Marathon champion dispelled it on Sunday, returning to the NYC course where she won in 2017 and blazing through the five boroughs to cross the finish line with her close friend and assistant coach at Oregon, Makenna Schumacher. Running alongside a first-time marathoner like Schumacher was a new experience for Flanagan, and the Olympian was looking forward to it when she spoke to SheKnows last week, a few days before lining up at Mastercard’s Priceless Start in NYC.

“I had the past experiences as an elite athlete, of this really central focus of trying to place as high as possible, super competitive,” says Flanagan, now an assistant distance-running coach at Oregon. “But now it’s very different. I love being a part of seeing the marathon through a different lens, especially being with a first timer.”

Her new approach to the NYC Marathon is a lot like Flanagan’s relationship to running in general, which she says is now “vastly different.” When running competitively, Flanagan’s goal was specific: “to attain a certain level of fitness, to be able to compete with the best in the world and try to win major marathons,” she says. Now, running is about her mental health.

“I literally plan out my days, my weeks while I’m on a run,” Flanagan says. “I kind of sift through things I need to work through. I’ll write up workouts in my head for my athletes. I get very creative while running, and just that form of movement is really helpful and cathartic.” After decades of professional running, Flanagan is also grateful to be healthy enough to still lace up her shoes five days a week. “I feel like my best self when I am running,” she says.

So she makes time for it, despite being, admittedly, “overwhelmingly busy” these days. Part of it is coaching: in addition to coaching at Oregon, Flanagan is also a coach at the premier Bowerman Track Club. The other part? Being a mom to two little ones: Jack, 4, and Grace, 1. While her busy schedule inevitably takes her away from them from time to time (Flanagan missed Halloween while traveling for the marathon and the Big 10 Championships — Jack dressed up as SpongeBob and Grace was a unicorn!), Flanagan is loving the experience of being a mom.

“You don’t think they are as perceptive as they are,” she laughs. “I watch them mimic movements that I make… I’m like, ‘OK, I should maybe start to pay attention to my habits and make sure I’m reinforcing the things that I want to be teaching them.’ It’s the best form of accountability. They’re like a little mirror reflection of you.”

In more ways than one, it turns out. Flanagan says Jack hasn’t started organized sports yet — “He could barely listen to me and follow orders, so I don’t know how well that would go with someone else!” — but he’s already made his preferences known. Asking him about a couple of sports he might like to play recently, Flanagan proposed football and basketball. She’s sensitive not to push him towards running, to let him choose what he wants to try. Jack’s response: “No, Mama. I like running,” Flanagan recalls. “It was very cute.”

While it’s not clear yet whether Grace will follow in her mom’s fast footsteps too, Flanagan has plenty of experience coaching women in athletics — and knows the pitfalls they can fall prey to, like feeling pressured to maintain a certain weight or look thin, no matter the cost to their health or performance. With her athletes, Flanagan stresses the importance of fueling well, which as the author of three bestselling cookbooks, she has plenty of experience with. She also emphasizes creating a culture of open communication, “a safe space where they feel heard and not judged,” she says. “It’s just constantly reinforcing that they’re not alone.”

And when it comes to raising her daughter — athlete or not — with strength and confidence, Flanagan has a strategy for that too. “It’s exemplifying positive self talk,” she says. “It’s one thing to tell her that she’s beautiful and all these things, but I think if she can see how her mother really likes herself as well, I think that is really [important]… to just show her how much I appreciate my body and when it’s done for me, and how it’s literally created so many opportunities for me because I’ve taken care of my body and appreciated it.”

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