By Mia Gallegos | FāVS News Reporter
Sabrina Little is an ultramarathon runner and philosophy professor, and she argues the most important training an athlete can do goes beyond the physical — it’s building character.
Little, a professor of philosophy at Ohio State University, is speaking at Whitworth University on Thursday (March 5) at 4 p.m. to share her experience in the importance of character growth in becoming a well-rounded athlete.
Davey Henreckson, director of the Weyerhaeuser Center for Christian Faith and Learning at Whitworth University, said Little’s focus on character and virtue aligned with the center’s speaker series vision.
“Sabrina Little fits right into this vision,” Henreckson said. “Her work on moral character, human flourishing and athletics helps us get a clear sense for how we can develop virtues like courage, perseverance and patience.”
Little’s Ph.D. research centered on character development, and she began noticing parallels between her work as a marathon runner and what she was studying academically.
“I was realizing that on a regular basis, I (was) putting on my shoes and intentionally practicing, trying to be more excellent,” Little said. “I found my two worlds speaking to each other in a way that was really fruitful in character development. We talk about virtues and vices and these kinds of excellences of our character or defects of our character.”
Little explained the vice of Acedia, which is better known as sloth in non-philosophical contexts.
“Our cultural imagination for that vice is this kind of slow moving, resistant to work situation,” Little said. “But there is this second manifestation of the vice, which is this frenetic internal busyness where you’re flitting your attention off, being everywhere and nowhere at once.”
Little discovered that the second manifestation of Acedia was what she was experiencing during her long runs and distance training.
“What I thought was a deficiency in fitness — this inability to stay in place and persist on my long runs — was actually a character issue,” Little said. “I had to work on my habits of attention.”
Little said that in determining this was somewhere she could grow as an athlete was paramount in her discovering “richer ways” about how sports fit into her life. As a mother of three now, she is continuing to find new ways that this richness of character and training of vices that may be inhibiting athletic performance can help her and those around her.
Little’s book, “The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners,” explores these ideas and how the development of any virtue takes practice. She explained that just as athletes return to the field of their practice, they are able to grow and train their character in the same way.
“I think we sometimes like to micromanage things like our fitness or our career preparedness and other things that we put on our resumes and then when it comes to our character, we kind of throw up our hands,” Little said. “Having more intention there, taking it seriously and realizing that you can change is how you can improve in those respects.”
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