The Knighton Runs Podcast · Chris Knighton

70 | Shelley Aniciete, Knighton Lion + Chicagoian

·57 min·3 clips

Shelly says her wife’s Boston and Chicago marathons pushed her to run her first marathon.

Shelly Anishete has been running for over 20 years. She started in high school, but not on her school team. Running just felt good and useful, and that habit stuck. Over time, she has run hundreds of road races. Only recently has she started focusing on improving her times instead of simply keeping the miles going. That shift gives the conversation its shape. She also coaches runners herself. Her life outside running is wide, and the episode makes room for that. She loves fitness and nutrition. She spends time hiking around the world with her husband. She rescues pit bulls. She also spent 17 years as a public defender in Chicago, a city she proudly calls home. The talk keeps coming back to training. Shelly describes adding more running days and doing speed work. She says the biggest change has been learning to let easy days stay easy. Before that, she tended to run every day at the same speed. That made most runs feel alike. Now she is trying to draw a clearer line between effort levels. The host treats that as useful, because training works better when hard days and easy days are actually different. They also talk about the feeling before a workout starts. Shelly says she still overthinks speed work. Then she does it anyway. And once it is over, the fear usually looks bigger than the work itself. She says those workouts have helped her mentally as much as physically. They have given her a way to talk herself off the ledge when her mind starts to spiral. The episode lands on a simple but lasting idea: if you keep surviving the work, confidence starts to build. That idea reaches past running and into ordinary life.

As heard by us

A grounded running conversation about getting faster without making it complicated.

Shelly Anishete’s story feels like one of those long builds that only makes sense in hindsight. She started in high school without a school team, kept at it for more than 20 years, and has put in hundreds of road races before treating faster times as the point instead of a side…

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Why you'd press play

For the runner who keeps overthinking the workout before it starts.

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