Hanny Allston trail running and orienteering coaching

HANNY ALLSTON: FIND YOUR FEET, FIND YOUR 'SELF'

28/12/2017

Written by: Joonas Pääkkönen.

Reading Osho’s When the Shoe Fits, while having breakfast felt like a nice way to start my day off at a hotel in Tampere, Finland last July. It was time for the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC), a busy week filled with competitions. Later that day, though, I only had one meeting scheduled on my calendar: an interview with Australian JWOC team manager Hanny Allston.

I have been fascinated by the mental aspects of endurance sports all my life, alongside with the Eastern traditions of inner work, including various forms of meditation. Interestingly, my conversation with Hanny turned out to cover many such topics.

At the lobby of a hotel located in a picturesque Finnish landscape, Allston, known to be the only non-European to ever medal at the World Orienteering Championships, sat down for a chat.

“Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”, asks Allston with a friendly Aussie intonation when I enter the lobby where we were to meet. She seems more than ready and happy to talk about her various endeavors.

I was all ears. I kept nodding while listening to her talk. It was obvious that running was not just a pastime for her. Neither was it just a competitive sport. She definitely had a deeper connection with running, with competing, with confronting herself, and with being alone in the wild. Alone in the wild for hours. Where nobody can find you.

She is now, among other things, a successful business woman. With her company Find Your Feet, a multi-faceted company specializing in tours as well as education and outdoor retail, she goes running with people like me and you, to some of the most spectacular places on the planet.

"...it’s lovely to win a gold medal but at the end of the day, I want be able to do this forever. Again, when we were talking about “Do I want to support this system in Australia in orienteering?”, my heart struggles with that question because my husband doesn’t orienteer, my life is in a state which is not an orienteering location and I have these opportunities to use my skills for both myself and for other people in other ways..."

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Joonas' is a freelance writer, an orienteering and running coach, a Taoist qigong instructor, and a Ph.D. student in telecommunications.

Joonas is available for contact via email:
joonas.paakkonen@yahoo.com