Robin Flynn is hungry. New York’s hustle and bustle has been slowed to a crawl under a two-foot frosting of snow, but this does not deter the petite mezzo from an 8-mile run through Central Park. Afterward, at the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle, she piles a bowl high with edamame, whole grains, and raw kale before settling into a booth to chat. Robin is a vegan triathlete, a 2010 Merolini, and a young woman on a mission: she is running to save herself.
Robin is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and running is her coping mechanism. At press time, she will have run at least 14 marathons, two ultra marathons (50K distance), and two half-ironman triathlons since she began marathoning last year. And thanks to running, she is, in her own words, a stronger woman. “Running has helped me cope with the self-doubt that being a victim of sexual abuse caused. I shook off that ‘victim’ mentality due to my discovery of running and the self-esteem that it built. I’ve gained more self-confidence than my abuser took away.”
She wasn’t always so hardcore. Raised by her single mother and maternal grandmother in Florida, Robin was a swimmer in high school until choir overtook that interest. It wasn’t until college that she began running across the Brooklyn Bridge to stave off the inevitable gain of the “freshman 15.” But she wasn’t a dedicated runner at the time.
“I was always an ‘I want to lose five pounds’ runner,” she says. “It made me feel good up to about two miles. I did it pretty irregularly—I’d run a day or two a week for a couple of weeks and stop.” She occasionally ran with her husband Brendan, a New York City firefighter, but he was much faster. She did a few races, but never stuck with it. Then, in the winter of 2008, she was blindsided by a serious case of the blues.
Like so many other young singers, Robin found herself frustrated and restless after a fruitless audition season. “I busted my butt all fall, got every audition I applied for, but no bites,” she remembers. “I sort of lost myself in the audition process and started to question what I was doing, if I was not good enough to do this career, just the normal sort of self-deprecating mental chatter. My husband noticed that I hadn’t been running. I’d never been depressed before, and I got really depressed around Christmas time—I’d stayed in my pajamas for two weeks—and my husband said ‘Let’s go run, just to get you running again, just to get you outside.’ She did, and soon she was training for her first marathon.
“It helped me to get out of my singing funk and to focus on something else, to have a goal again. I was singing for other people at that point because I wanted so badly to be liked. I needed validation and I didn’t get any of it. I knew from reading about marathons and other runners that running is a very, very tangible, goal-oriented sort of sport. As long as you do the work, you get the results.”
Robin began to focus on her running and stopped singing. “I didn’t sing for months, from January to March 2009,” she confesses. “It was time to take a break. I missed the music and the sensation of losing myself in the music, but I didn’t miss the absolute, you have to do this now, you have to do this perfect.”
But even though she was missing the music, Robin was busy finding something else—something, as it turned out, that was critical to her well-being both as a person and as an artist.
“The pain [of being a sexual abuse survivor] is driving me to do this,” she says. “Our circumstances really define us. I wouldn’t be who I am today, and I like who I am. As an abuse victim, I could have gone down. There was a clear path of self-destruction I could have taken, and I did for a little while. But the running showed me that I have the power within myself to overcome the tremendous amount of pain, suffering, and hurt that I felt—that I’m stronger.
“The victim’s mentality is that you’re powerless,” Flynn continues. “The abuser takes away your power. I was able to find my power again through running. Music saved me, in the sense that it gave me focus, direction, and something to pour my angst into. Opera is such a thinking man’s music genre, and I was able to lose myself in that. But the running has really helped me feel strong. It’s physical and mental strength when you cross that finish line.”
Not only did Robin beat her depression and find a way to manage her inner demons, she changed her body and her eating habits, too. She lost some weight and gained a great deal of fitness. And although she had been vegan since 2005, her eating became much healthier as well.
“Just because you’re vegan doesn’t mean you’re healthy,” Robin confesses. “I was eating a lot of processed foods. I started eating a lot of leafy vegetables and whole grains and cut out as many processed foods as possible. I saw a big energy change. I was already more healthy than most people, so I had a leg up.”
A vegan for ethical reasons, Robin is accustomed to “getting grief” about her diet, but says, “It’s gotten a lot less oppressive, I think because I’ve stopped being offended by it. Up until about a year and a half ago, my grandmother thought I was going to wither up and die. I think the running has solidified in her mind that I can be healthy and vegan. If I can run 26.2 miles (the length of a marathon) on a plant-based diet, then obviously I am succeeding in my dietary habits. And the opera world has been easier to deal with than the athletic world—singers are more open-minded. “
Robin’s approach to life as a singer has also been changed by running. “I am a singer, but I’m more than a singer,” she says. “I’ve got more talents, more emotions. When I was not running, I felt that all my emotions—good, bad, angry, sad—were related to my singing, and it was exhausting. With running, it is a release of emotions and I am able to let go. All of those feelings of angst and doubt, I am literally able to run them into the ground. It built my self-esteem. If I can run 26.2 miles, I can get in here and sing a 10-minute audition and sing it well—own it.”
Her new-found confidence has paid off. Although Robin had had some success after her studies at Mannes and Queens College, as a 2006 Studio Artist for Opera New Jersey, and in 2008 as the title character in Cendrillon at Intermezzo, like many other young artists, she felt she was spinning her wheels. Then in fall 2009, she got a phone call from Gayletha Nichols at the Met, who remembered Robin from her Met auditions. She was invited to sing the alto role in the quartet-style “chorus” for the workshop of a new Baroque opera called Enchanted Island, a pastiche of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring the music of Handel, Vivaldi, and Rameau set to new text. There was a performance in Liszt Hall and it was recorded. Peter Gelb and Brian Zeger were present, among other Met luminaries.
“It was unbelievable,” admits Robin. “I finally feel like I’m a part of some sort of ‘in’ crowd. I was really thankful that Gayletha was thinking of me.”
Shortly afterward, Robin got word that she had been invited to participate in the 2010 Merola Program at San Francisco Opera—her first “real big-girl sort of situation.” She performed the role of Unolfo in Rodelinda on the Schwabacher Summer Concert Series, sang “Connais-tu le pays” and an excerpt from Le nozze di Figaro in the Merola Grand Finale concert, sang in the chorus of L’elisir d’amore, performed in a masterclass for Jane Eaglen, and was featured in a San Francisco Chronicle article (www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/26/DDB21EC0M9.DTL).
And the running-singing connection continued. Robin continued to train hard during her tenure at Merola, kicking off her visit with the Angel Island 25K trail race and the icy 1.5-mile Escape from Alcatraz swim in San Francisco Bay. She took on the hilly Marin Headlands with a local running group and between rehearsals scheduled foggy jogs under the Golden Gate Bridge. And she wrote about it in her inspirational blog, The Athletic Performer (theathleticperformer.blogspot.com) where she chronicles her experiences in both sports and singing.
After one particularly difficult rehearsal, Robin wrote, “There’s no denying that I’ve hit an artistic wall . . . it’s a wall similar to the ‘wall’ you hit while running long distance races. The ‘wall’ in running or endurance sports is something that can happen when your body runs out of glycogen . . . fuel/calories/energy . . . and because of this, you run head first into a mental fog that allows the evil voice of ‘can’t’ to slip into your psyche, completely unnoticed. Horrible, negative, ‘you suck’ sentiments start to buzz around inside your head and it’s only when you’ve mastered the ability to punch ‘can’t’ in the face can you climb over the wall and finish the race.
“I had to sit down last night and have a good ‘talking to’ with myself. I had to remind myself that I’ve climbed way bigger walls and come out on the other side with a right fist smarting from the right hook that I gave Mr. ‘Can’t’. I have to find my right hook tonight . . . I need to silence all of the negative na-na with my right hook. Boom, boom, POW!”
She must have found that right hook after all. “Yesterday’s concert was a ton of fun!” she reported in her blog. “I was nervous about singing outside, but the sound system/crew was spectacular and everything went on without a hitch.”
Despite some struggles, the experience was ultimately rewarding. “Merola was a place in which I discovered how to be an artist.” Robin says. “I was able to make the student mentality disappear and the valid professional emerge. I had the opportunity and the joy to discover my artistic voice in a safe, encouraging, and nurturing environment. At Merola, I was treated like gold, like I was worth listening to. It was a dream of a summer for me.”
She went directly from Merola to win the Sun Valley Opera Competition in Seattle. Next, in October 2010, Robin ran the Chicago Marathon and the very same evening—that’s right, after running 26.2 miles—performed a recital of Rossini and Handel for the Bach Week Festival.
Robin continues to push herself in all ways. On a typical day, she rises at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. to play with her cats, blog, and answer e-mails. Her day is built around her singing schedule, but always includes some vocal work and some athletic training. Often she combines training with other activities—for example, running or biking 10 miles to get to work. She’s in bed by 9:30 p.m.
“If you want something badly enough or love something strongly enough, you will figure out a way to make it happen or fit it into your schedule,” she writes in her blog. “I don’t buy the ‘I don’t have time’ excuse . . . ever.”
“At first, when I decided to do this, running so many marathons seemed lofty,” says Robin, who started a project of running a marathon a month for a year, but quickly surpassed that goal as her hunger for expanding her limits has grown. “It’s now become second nature and has only elevated my desire to push my body further, to keep conquering the little voices of doubt. Endurance sports are a slippery slope (in a good way) because I’ve conquered something that, in December of 2009, seemed so daunting. It’s old hat to me now and funny to think that, at one time, one marathon per month seemed like a lot. On any given day, I can go run the distance of a marathon. I’m looking toward bigger challenges.”
What is Robin’s next big challenge? In addition to the many marathons, ultras, triathlons, and biathlons in which she routinely participates, her next major athletic project is the August 2011 Ironman Louisville Triathlon—2.4 miles of swimming, followed by 112 miles of cycling, followed by a full 26.2-mile marathon. As for singing, “It’s another audition season for me with the Merola Opera Program ‘stamp of approval’ on my résumé,” she says cheerfully.
Running and singing have become inextricably intertwined. “Conquering physical pain in training and racing is a complicated mental exercise that toughened me up, and you need to be tough in this business! Training for endurance sporting events prepared me mentally for the rigors of the process of getting work,” she says. “Crossing finish lines gives me confidence which definitely helps with auditioning. I like myself and, therefore, other people are more likely to like me. Focusing on running and logging miles gave me time to re-evaluate the way I thought about singing and the business of singing. Through running and training, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of mental clarity—both personally and professionally.”
She began running for healing. Now Robin Flynn is simply running for her life.
