Wichita author Jennifer Strong McConachie wants to show how to ‘Go Far’ in new book
You don’t have to live on a coast or by a mountain range to seek out adventure and you don’t have to be an elite-level athlete to achieve athletic feats around the world.
Wichita native Jennifer Strong McConachie is living proof of that and she’s sharing her story in a 192-page book set to release Oct. 26 entitled Go Far: How Endurance Sports Help You Win At Life, which the first-time author describes as “part memoir and part self-help.” The book is available for pre-order online and can be purchased locally at Watermark Books and Eighth Day Books.
McConachie, who has long been an endurance athlete since her days as a cross country runner and swimmer at Wichita North High School, was inspired to write the book after her life journeys of running through geysers in Iceland, forests in New Zealand and across the Canary Islands, hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro and swimming from Europe to Asia across the Dardanelles Straight.
She delves into the mindset required for athletes to push past what they think their physical limits to be. But the book is not just centered around endurance sports. McConachie believes the three pillars she writes about in the book can be applied to the reader’s everyday life and work life.
“I have so many great stories from my travels and it was so fun to write them all down and then come up with three pillars to explain my approach and how I was able to accomplish those things,” McConachie said. “It was really fun to think and reflect and spell it out and write it all down and organize it. It was all of the tools and ideas and methodology behind everything that I had been doing, but it was up in my head. It had never really been classified.
“So it was fun to examine how I got from here to here and write that into a system that hopefully can help other people. You don’t have to run endurance sports, you can apply the principles to win and go far in whatever way works for the reader.”
But the book is sure to appeal to those who enjoy endurance sports, as McConachie writes about her adventures as an ultrarunner, mountaineer and wild swimmer. She describes herself as just an “average” athlete who lives in a land-locked state located in the middle of the country, which she hopes is inspiration for others.
One of her three pillars she details in the book is having an “explorer’s mindset.”
“A lot of it comes down to having the right mindset and the right attitude,” McConachie said. “By having an explorer’s mindset, you can approach your life in a way that encourages you to seek out discovery and adventure and find freedom. I happen to use endurance sports to fuel that. But if that isn’t your jam, you can still use an explorer’s mindset in the business world to get new clients, to try new things and in your everyday life to go out and discover the world around you.”
While McConachie will be a published author for the first time through Penguin Random House, she’s not new to writing. She has a degree in Journalism, Mass Communications and Public Relations from Kansas State University and has been a long-time marketing executive at Nye & Associates in Wichita, where she has written for more than 200 brands and organizations in her career.
Following the book release in late October, McConachie plans on doing a book signing at Watermark Books at a date to be determined.
“It was pretty cool because the book just flowed because it was my story,” McConachie said. “I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’ve always been a huge reader and writer. I hope this can be inspiring to people to look at me and see that I’m not an elite, professional athlete. I live in the Midwest and I was just able to dream big and achieve and accomplish some really cool athletic goals and I’ve written down how I was able to do all of that.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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