When Olivia Chadwick was in her 40s, she felt like she had achieved a “mediocre amount of success.” The exercise physiologist and coach had a family and career, but still felt like she had untapped potential. It was while she was battling with these thoughts that she took on a new client, Garnet Morris, who had gone on his own radical transformation in his 40s.
The two bonded while running and went on to become each other’s chosen family. Recently, they sat down to write a book about their journey. “17 Runs: The Unbeaten Path to Unlock Life’s True Potential” is set to be self published in early 2025 via Legacy Launchpad.
“It’s called ‘17 Runs,’ but it’s not really about running. It’s really about the relationship that evolved between Garnet and I as running partners,” Chadwick explains.
In advance of the book’s release, Chadwick spoke with the Brainsport Times about her relationship with Morris and why the pair felt compelled to write a book.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: Tell me about your first meeting with Garnet.
A: We met in 2013 because Garnet hired me to be his coach. I’m an exercise physiologist and the coaching wasn’t necessarily going to be for running, but it ended up being the predominant way that we trained together.
I didn’t have any information going in, as you typically wouldn’t with a new client. I just knew he was a high-level executive who owned a finance company and had been very successful. I didn’t know at the time that he was going through a divorce and his life was in a bit of a limbo.
I met Garnet when he was in his late 50s and, in his early 40s, he’d gone through a massive life transformation. That was when he realized the beginning of the breakdown of his marriage. He was 300 pounds, he was a smoker and he was going through bankruptcy. When I met him, he was vulnerable and honest in saying: ‘This is where I’ve come from. I’ve had diabetes. I’ve had critical health issues. And I’ve also had a massive transformation.’ He’d lost over 100 pounds and he no longer smoked. Health was very important to him and he spent a lot of time pursuing an optimization approach to health and longevity.
So I was trying to figure out, if he’d already done that work: What was my role? But that whole journey had taught Garnet the value of having coaches. So I became one of his coaches.
Q: When did your relationship evolve from a client-coach relationship to something that was more meaningful?
A: Throughout the book you learn about our lives. We have really similar histories. We both have siblings that have committed suicide. We both have a history of sexual abuse. We both have childhood trauma. We are both very emotional and connect on that level. That desire to get deep in conversation was really where our runs always went. So that’s what you do in the book: You go on runs with us. Essentially we’re meeting up in the morning and we’re engaging in conversation. We would keep track of one another’s personal growth evolution and inner work evolution.
What the book does is offer lessons of success. Garnet’s story of him evolving at the age of 40 is really where you find me now, in that sort of mid-life area. I’ve had a mediocre amount of success. You have a home, you have kids, you’re quite comfortable. But I want to evolve massively. I really feel like I haven’t met my potential in life. I’m 40. I’ve got 20 or 30 years left to really elevate myself and meet my potential and I don’t know how to do it. In the book, I’m also at a stage of life where my son is going through surgeries. I’m leaving my ex-partner. And I’m trying to move above and beyond a level of living that I’ve lived my whole life. And here’s Garnet, somebody who really has done that at a very similar age and time that I am now and has become a multi-millionaire in the process. So the book is following our conversations, but has been redesigned around life lessons that Garnet feels are powerful principles and philosophies that were really what took him to the next level of success. And he’s sharing those lessons with me out on a run.
Q: How did the act of running together enable those conversations to flow as they did?
A: Years ago, I listened to an interview with Malcolm Gladwell and he was talking about how cool running is because it brings together people from all walks of life to do a task. And you have conversations about their life, which you would otherwise know nothing about, and then yours. And you often have time out on a run to go quite deep into conversation. And there’s something about the alchemy of running, that mixture of the neurotrophic hormones in your brain making you feel good and that release of adrenaline, which also feels freeing. It releases inhibitions that might otherwise be there had you not had that experience. That allows us to have conversations that might be taboo in any other social context. But because you’re out running, you can talk about something really dark and heavy. You can go: ‘That sounds really terrible,’ and you can cry about it, but you can cope with it in this really unique way.
Q: When and how did the idea of a book get surfaced?
A: As you learn from the book, Garnet establishes a really deep connection with my son, Keenan. Garnet met my son when Keenan was three years old and they became instant friends. Garnet is a high-level executive, but he can also be really playful, which you would never get when you first met him.
Garnet was diagnosed as an adult with ADHD. And when he met my son, I don’t think he’d been with him more than a few hours before he really felt that Keenan was just like him. And what he meant by that is he also thought Keenan had ADHD. And Keenan at the age of eight was diagnosed with ADHD.
Garnet approached me initially to write the book for Keenan. The idea being that Garnet has often been a mentor in my life and many people’s lives and, if he could go back to being the age that Keenan is now — 17 — what lessons would he want to bestow to help move people along faster and not be so hard on themselves, to overcome limiting family beliefs, dream bigger, aim higher and unlock their fullest potential?
Q: Has Keenan read the book?
A: He has decided he will not read it until it’s in paperback. I’ve read him excerpts.
Q: How has the experience been of writing a book together?
A: I knew our relationship was really close — we’ve become like family — but I don’t know how often you get to sit down with, say, your dad and have deep conversations about his childhood. I know people sometimes never get to do that. It was very healing and cathartic for both Garnet and I to do this. It was this equal bonding experience and being really fully seen and heard by one another. It was another level of healing from past experiences and a real solidification of our own bond we have as chosen family.
We wrote the book as if we were writing it for a young adult because we recognize that that period of time in life is really hard. However, young adults don’t buy books necessarily. So we recognize that it will predominantly be parents, caregivers and coaches that might consider buying the book. We wrote this book trying to really instill life wisdom. And we firmly believe that other people will read this book and realize: Yes, I want this for my person going off to college, but I also want it for myself. I want to elevate my own self-belief. I want to still overcome challenges that I faced in my past and let them go and feel inspired to aim bigger and higher and believe in my ability to do that.
17 Runs will be available early in the new year.
