A client report: how I am doing after three years of working with Jasmin

A client report by Simone Hegner, December 2025

Still on the way: but with lighter luggage and the occasional smile at myself

“Still on the way”: that was the heading of the last chapter in my report on coaching with Jasmin, published on the Nunige Sports website in April 2024. And still on the way, on the way to more calm and peace with myself, is exactly what I still am today. This time, though, with a noticeably lighter rucksack than at the start of my coaching.

When I started working with Jasmin, my goal was actually quite different from taking myself less seriously: back at the end of 2022 I felt real pressure from the demands I kept placing on myself around my races, demands that just kept climbing. After 15 years of ambitious recreational running, my races were increasingly shaped by this pressure I put on myself, and no longer by the ease and joy of the early years.

But already in my first session with Jasmin it became clear to me that we would not simply find a few keywords for my races so I could stand at a start line more freely in future. Regularly visualising my race and meditating daily in race week would not be enough either. Instead, I realised there was no way around examining myself seriously, honestly and openly. How and when did these very high demands on myself develop? Are there other areas of my life where I set myself the same high demands? What role does running play in my life? What other pillars, my work, family, friends, my free time, carry me through life?

With Jasmin alongside me I gradually realised that my high demands on myself, and the strictness that comes with them, are part of behaviour patterns that kick in automatically above all when I am stressed. That automatic quality also explains why it feels so controlled from outside, so unfree and so inflexible when you act according to such a pattern again, very often while being fully aware that it does you no good. Through the coaching with Jasmin, and by reading the professional literature, I learnt that these patterns run in everyone once their resources are used up.

Through regular exchange with Jasmin I managed, step by step, to recognise in hindsight the circumstances that had once again made me act out such a pattern. That let me go back into everyday life with a sharper awareness, and with more practice I got better and better at stopping unfavourable circumstances from ever building up so much for me. Among other things, I realised that my resources are used up on weekends after working weeks with little time for myself alone. So on a weekend like that it matters to plan time for myself and give it to the training routines I know well. That is because training in places I know, and time alone by the Aare or on the Gurten, walking or cooking, is how I can refill my resources. Through the coaching, and by reading the professional literature, I learnt that people differ here and that any strategy is fine as long as it does the person good: some refill their resources by deliberately meeting friends, going out or training somewhere unfamiliar. In my case, train journeys and lots of people around me always use up resources too. And if I “force” myself into a preparation race on exactly such a weekend, because my high standards as an athlete say it would be good for my form, that is pretty much guaranteed to produce more stress and higher demands rather than joy.

So where has this coaching with Jasmin, which started as sports mental coaching, actually taken me as an athlete? In mid October 2025 I really did dare to race in Turkey, my first race “far away” from home, and in Turkey of all places. And over a distance I had not run in 13 years. On the way to the start line of the “Cappadocia Medium Trail” there were repeated moments of real doubt inside me over whether this challenge was at least one size too big for me. Talking through my worries and fears with Jasmin luckily kept shrinking them back down again and again. I realised that this race in Turkey was pushing me to commit to something I could not plan out perfectly with every safety net, and that this forced me a little out of my comfort zone. And daring to step out of that comfort zone paid off more than I expected: I spent a wonderful week in Cappadocia before the race and met many lovely local people. So I stood at the start line with real gratitude. I felt very grateful that as a woman I can take my life into my own hands and be financially independent, which running is what makes possible for me in the first place. That gratitude, and the feeling of “I have actually already won, just by being here and starting”, carried me over the 62km and the 2’000 Hm of climbing and let me run into the finish with a big smile on my face. Above all, this experience, and the road that led to it, left me amazed at where a deeper understanding of myself and a more caring way of treating myself have already carried me.

(An important aside: Guy Nunige prepared me perfectly for the “Cappadocia Medium Trail”, as he has for so many other races before. I ran the wonderful course without any problems in my musculoskeletal system or any other physical issue.)

At work, too, I trust myself with far more today than three years ago. Through the coaching I learnt, among other things, that my very fine sense for anything interpersonal (which can be exhausting at races) or my very meticulous, structured approach (which kept me away from races in “wild, hard to plan” foreign countries for a long time) can move both my team and me forward enormously. I also bring the forward-looking way of planning my week, which I learnt for myself, into my team much more openly now. And I notice that the whole team benefits from it.

So in that sense I am still on the way: on the way to new adventures in the running I love, on the way to new challenges at work like leadership tasks, which are slowly bringing me joy now rather than just unease. And above all, on the way to still more composure and a smile at myself whenever I have run my tank of resources down too far again and, true to form, fallen back into a familiar old pattern…