Beginner's Mindset: What It Is, How to Get It

Another Mother Runner

Sarah Bowen Shea

Running, Sports, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Anyone looking to try a new sport or take up a new hobby will appreciate this insightful episode about the beginner’s mindset. Along with hosts Sarah Bowen Shea and Coach Liz Waterstraat, guest Tom Vanderbilt, author of the new book Beginners: the Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, talks about:

-what exactly a beginner’s mindset is;

-his tires-fell-off-the-bus marathon experience;

-the role failure and self-doubt play in the learning process;

-the power of good coaching and a group; and,

-what a “stereotype threat” is.

Before Tom joins the conversation around BARRY INSERT TIME HERE, Coach Liz talks about the mindset she brought to her Ironman training this year—and how it carried her to success (+ enjoyment!) on race day.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thanks to Topo Athletic for supporting AMR.
0:02.8	Topo offers footwear that aligns with any adventure, running on road or trail, hiking, or even recovering around the house.
0:09.4	Save 15% at topoathletic.com with code AMR Fall 2025.
0:15.4	Music Welcome to another mother runner. This is Sarah Bowen-Shay. I'm joined today by the feisty Liz Waterstrat. Hello, Liz. You just rolled right into that one. No warning or anything.
0:36.4	I know. Oh my goodness. one, no warning or anything. I know, I know.
0:38.8	Oh, my goodness.
0:40.1	So, Liz, this is my chance to finally get some details from your mouth rather than you.
0:47.4	You wrote a blog post about your amazing finish at the Iron Man World Championship in Kona last month.
0:53.9	I can't believe that that was now
0:55.0	last month. But I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth about the experience,
1:00.9	partly because it lends itself to our topic today, which as we'll get into, is going to be
1:06.8	about beginner's mindset. So that, like, I was very intrigued by your entire mental approach to your pursuit.
1:14.6	It was very deliberate and thoughtful and strategic and, yeah, deliberate.
1:20.5	So tell us about it.
1:21.2	Well, like you said, leading into the topic that we're going to talk about today, I very much took a beginner's
1:29.0	mindset approach to it. I've done the Iron Man World Championship four times before. I know what
1:35.8	it's about. I know it's difficult. I know that training is a lot. I know the entire race
1:41.4	experience can be overwhelming. So I just decided to look at it with a fresh
1:46.7	set of eyes. And that helped me to just frame the entire day as an adventure. And to be
1:55.1	quite honest, the whole thing from start to finish, from the start of the year to crossing that
2:00.6	finish line, it was just a lot of fun.
2:03.1	Wow. But, you know, Dimmity oftentimes talks about type two fun. I don't even get the sense that you're talking about type two fun.
	...

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