It’s impossible to come up with just one word to describe Alexi Pappas: athlete, author, poet, filmmaker, actor, and the list goes on. Equal parts dazzling and untamed, Pappas is a free spirit living in a world of boundless pursuits.
Born and raised in the U.S., the 34-year-old ran for both Dartmouth and the University of Oregon through college before competing internationally for Greece at the 2016 Olympic Games, where she set the national record in the 10,000m.
As much as Pappas is known for her illustrious running career, she is equally known for her artistic pursuits. Pappas has written, directed, and produced several films, including Tall as the Baobab Tree (2012), Speed Goggles (2016), Tracktown (2017), and Olympic Dreams (2019). She’s also the author of an award-winning book, Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas, which she published in 2021.
Despite wearing many hats, Pappas has always managed to find balance in her many endeavors, even while training for the Olympic Games. While most elite athletes focus only on training and recovery, how did Pappas manage to do it all?
We had the chance to talk with Pappas about her time preparing for the Olympics, the challenges she faced, and her pursuits outside of running, including recently being a guide for a blind runner who won the Boston Marathon.
Alexi Pappas On Finding Her North Star
Reaching the pinnacle of performance in any one area, whether that’s athletics, the arts, or anything in between, is hard enough.
For Pappas, although it may always look like she’s taking on so many projects at once, she always has her ‘North Star’ at the forefront. Whether it’s training for the Olympics, producing a movie, or writing a new novel, Pappas only focuses on what she’s doing at that moment.
“I’m always very aware of what my north star is at any given moment,” she told us from her apartment in California, “I think it’s important to point out that it’s always changing. I’m doing a lot of things, but I’m only doing one thing at a time.”
Being aware of her ‘North Star’ has helped Pappas craft a balance between her many pursuits. She says that being aware of her main priority allows her to see every decision she makes as an empowered choice in support of her ‘North Star’ rather than a sacrifice.
“If I decide to go out to dinner with my best friends, and we stay up late, but I still want to wake up the next morning for a hike, and I feel kind of sleepy, I’m not going to see that as a sacrifice. I see it as an empowered choice, creating the life that I want to live. And I think that approach makes things feel better, even when they’re joyfully chaotic.”
Seeking Balance During Olympic Training
The Olympics are a big deal. The Games are where the best of the best go to compete in the pinnacle of sport. Most athletes train their entire lives to make it to the Olympics and will talk about the sacrifices they made throughout their lives to get to that one moment.
However, for Pappas, training for the Olympics, her ‘North Star’ at the time, allowed her other pursuits to become an outlet.
“It was the most beautiful time ever because I was in this kind of playground for training,” Pappas said with a light in her eyes as she recalled the memories, “It provided relief to my nervous system and body, which kept me healthy.”
From the outside, you may not have thought that she was taking her Olympic lead-up as seriously as her teammates. While they were doing ab work, extra training runs, or cross-training, Pappas was writing or editing, focusing on one of her arts projects. However, this switch in her brain was the key to staying happy and healthy in training.
“I’d never gotten injured training for the Olympics, and I was running like 120 miles a week, I noticed that some of my teammates would train even when they weren’t. Their brains would never turn off,” she said, “And when I was done with practice, I’d say, ‘Let me put the shoes away, and let me pick up this movie I’m editing or whatever.’ And I think that kept me healthy because you can’t run 20 hours a day, in your mind or your body.“
Considering she ran a Greek national record at the Rio Olympics, she might be on to something.
Overcoming Challenges To Find Balance
Finding the balance to be successful as an athlete and artist wasn’t always easy for Pappas.
Following the Olympics, Pappas dealt with what many athletes do: a post-Olympic low.
Initially, she was not well-equipped to deal with the challenges ahead. She had witnessed the harms of poor mental health directly when her mother, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, died by suicide when Pappas was just four years old. Despite the effects mental health impacting her and her family so closely, it was not something widely discussed as she grew up.
Without much knowledge of mental health and how to find the resources she needed to deal with it healthfully, it was a challenging journey to come back from her post-Olympic low. However, she became inspired by her experience and began advocating for mental health.
Through her journey of finding balance with her own mental health, she recognized the impacts running and the culture of competitive running have on young athletes. She particularly noted the ‘more is better’ environment we live in today. Where young athletes are running the same weekly mileage as professionals, taking the sport too seriously at a young age, and putting their bodies at risk with unhealthy habits.
“I think it’s honestly just about giving people different visuals and vocabulary to understand the other perspective,” she said, “If you think about yourself like a soup, sometimes you want to turn a soup up really high, add all the food and sauté and whatever, but then you have to let the soup simmer, right? That’s what makes it a soup. You have to have those slow, down days where you’re not doing anything really.“
Particularly with her history of disordered eating, she had to reframe her mindset around fueling for performance, “I began to think about myself as a castle. Do I want to be a castle made of twigs? Or do I want to be like a castle made of stones?”
Adopting A Playful Mindset
Ask many Olympic athletes to describe what they do, and the last thing you think you’d hear is the word ‘play.’ But for Pappas, the concept of playing is key to enjoying sport.
“I think that the real answer is just seeing sports as movement and as interaction with people and nature and the world, instead of seeing a sport as just a sport as if it lives on a planet all by itself.”
“If we break it down, we’re really just playing, you know? And I think we need to encourage kids and adults just to play. And if it happens that they want to play by moving their legs and running, that’s great. I’m just trying to soften the boundary between an organized sport and a playful life.“
Even when it comes to racing and the pressure of elite sport, Pappas says she used her imagination to make it all into a game. Whether she’s a gazelle running in nature or a kid chasing an ice cream truck, her playful view of life helps her keep elite sport fun and imaginative.
“It’s interesting too, because if you think about nervousness, isn’t it imaginative, too, because you’re imagining bad, right? And so it’s almost like, what if we could imagine good?”
From The Olympics To Guiding A Boston Marathon Champion
Moving on from elite sport isn’t easy, but Pappas has found renewed purpose as a guide for Lisa Thompson, a blind runner.
Thompson and Pappas have been running together for about three years now. They’ve run national championships, the London Marathon, and even some triathlons. Most recently, however, they had the run of a lifetime at the Boston Marathon, despite a challenging year.
Thompson has been suffering nerve pain throughout the year, which has impacted her performance. When it came time for the Boston Marathon, her nerve pain was severe, and Pappas had to help Thompson find her new ‘North Star.’
With intense competition from rival runner Jen, they didn’t think winning was possible, so they shifted their focus to finish and “maybe come second.”
Pappas even encouraged Jen to make a last-minute equipment switch to the Merrell Morephlite since her carbon-plated shoes worsened her pain, “I think one of the things that we learned is that it doesn’t matter what you think ahead of time. You have to be in the present and make smart decisions.”
When the race began, rival runner Jen took off, as expected, while Pappas and Thompson stuck to their game plan. However, things took a turn when they reached Heartbreak Hill.
“We get to Heartbreak Hill. And Jen is there walking. She bonked.”
“So I told Lisa that we just passed Jen, and Lisa was in so much pain at this point, but she’s competitive. Once she realised we could win, that pain didn’t matter because in no world did we think we could win. And all of the sudden we’re in the lead and I know Lisa wants to walk so bad, but I have to help her get to the finish,” Pappas said. “So I get her to focus on anything but her legs — her arms, her breath, anything.”
Pappas says that guiding has been an incredibly fulfilling venture. She highlights the impact and connection with her athlete, “Guiding is amazing. You’re not neutral. You’re always going to either help someone or you’re going to hold them back because you’re so intimately connected.”
As expected, Pappas currently has many different projects on the go. In the world of running, she’s planning on attending the ‘Marathon Pour Tous’ at the Olympic Games in Paris. This is the marathon that is open to the general public, along the same course the Olympians will run. She’ll also be guiding Thompson at the Berlin Marathon and the Sydney Marathon later this fall, while running the New York City Marathon herself.
Outside of running, Pappas is producing a movie that features the RZA, Wu-Tang Clan, and several other comedians. She also has a mentorship podcast coming out called ‘The Mentor Buffet’ and is being created alongside Rich Rolls Company.
