Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 122. Mary Cain, Runner

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122. Mary Cain, Runner · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: My legacy in sport will never be because I win
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a medal. It just never will. My legacy and sport
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: will always, I hope, be that I will always fight
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: for sport to be better for people. I can win
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a gold medal tomorrow and honestly, that matters less than
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: what I did this past November.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, you are listening to episode one two of Hurdle,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: a wellness focused podcast where I sit down with inspiring
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: individuals to talk about everything from their big wines to
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: how they've gotten through some of life's toughest moments. On
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: the show, what you can expect vulnerability, motivation, and candid
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring entrepreneurs on
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: what it really takes to follow your passions. My mission
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: is simple to inspire you to be your best self,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: move with intention, and have some fun along the way.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Emily A Body and this week on
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the show, I.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Am chatting with the runner Mary Caine, another.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Top requested episode since she opened up last November to
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: The New York Times about the emotional and physical abuse
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: she received during her time training with the Nike Oregon Project. Now,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: if you've never heard of the Nike Orgon Project. It's
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: an elite running team, and she ran on the Orgon
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Project under distance running coach Alberto Salazar. Now, last year,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Salazar was handed a four year ban by the US
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Anti Doping Agency for orchestrating and facilitating prohibited doping conduct.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Shortly after that happened, Nike disbanded the Oregon Project.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Now let's get back to Mary.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: For those of you who don't know her history, she
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: excelled at running from a really, really young age. At seventeen,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: she was already a record breaking phenomenon of sorts. She
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: made the US team for the twenty thirteen World Championships
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: in Moscow and advanced to the fifteen hundred meter final
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and finished ninth, becoming the youngest person ever to make
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: a world final in the fifteen hundred. In twenty fourteen,
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  Speaker 2: she won the three thousand meters at the World Junior
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Championships and also set a ton of US junior records,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: also with a mile pr of four minutes twenty four seconds. Y'all,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I can't, even, like god, brush my teeth in four
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: minutes in twenty four seconds.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: But that's that's another story.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: In today's episode, we talk about what it was like
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: for her to be so successful so early on in
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the sport and the.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Pressures that came hand in hand with that.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: We talk about her running for Alberto and the hardships
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: that went along with that as well. She talks to
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: me about pressures to lose weight, losing her period, five
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: different bone injuries, self harm, and the series of events
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: that led to her leaving Portland, coming back to New York,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: and eventually years later, garnering up the courage to speak
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: out and share her truth. We talk about the aftermath
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: of the New York Times article and on a positive note,
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: her new role as the New York community manager for
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Boston based running company Tracksmith. I've actually had the founder,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Matt Taylor of Tracksmith on the show before, so definitely definitely.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Give that episode a lesson as well.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, there's a lot of meat in today's episode
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: and a lot to get through. One disclaimer that I
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: will throw into the mix here. We do talk about
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of sensitive topics today, including disordered eating and
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: self harm, and Mary's is a best in today's episode
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: that for anyone who feels like they may be in
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: a similar situation that they are struggling.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: You are not alone.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: I am going to put some helpful resources into the
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: show notes, and as always, I am always here for
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: you as well. You can reach out to me over
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: email directly at Emily at Hurdle dot us. Now, before
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: we get into today's episode, I do want to take
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: a moment to give some love to my sponsor, Athletic Greens.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: I am on the move right now.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I'm actually taking a little a week away from New
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: York in Rhode Island, and what I will say about
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: being here is one, it is so relaxing. I feel
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: like I finally have some time to just breathe a
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: little bit. But of course, going hand in hand with
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: traveling comes eating all the things, maybe, drinking all the things, maybe.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And that's why, especially when I'm on the road, there
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: is nothing I love more than starting my day by
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: shaking up a bottle of Athletic Greens. And that's because
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: it gives me not only that anti accident equivalent of
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: twelve servings of fruits and vegetables, but it just makes
• 5:12
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• 5:15
  Speaker 2: nutrition and my day in the right direction. Each serving
• 5:19
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• 5:26
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• 5:30
  Speaker 2: ice cold. I shake it up with a few ice cubes.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: It's refreshing, just the right amount of sweetness and nothing
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: like those icky green grass tasting juices that maybe you've
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: had in the past. They have an awesome deal for
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: the Hurdle community. You've got to take advantage of it.
• 5:47
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• 5:51
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• 5:55
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• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Today, no code necessary.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: If you like what you're listening to as well, please
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: make sure to share this episode with a friend or
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: post about it over on social media and tag me
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: at Hurdle podcast and at Emily a Body. Also two
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: last little bits of housekeeping. One, if you have not
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: subscribed yet for the Weekly Hurdle, please make sure to
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: do that as well links in the show notes. And lastly,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I love sharing photos from the hurdle community on social media.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: So if you have a photo of you tackling a hurdle,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: going after something you want, listening to an episode, whatever
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: it might be, send it my way. Let me be
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: your hype man, and I think that's it with that,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Let's get to hurdling.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: Today.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I am sitting down with Mary Caine. She is a
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: runner and she's also the newest team member over at
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: tracks Good afternoon. I have to like check the clock
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: and see what's.
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  Speaker 3: Going on here.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, one o'clock my time.
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  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't we
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: kick things off today. I just mentioned your new role
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: at Tracksmith. Why don't you fill me in on what
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: that looks like.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's kind of Today's actually a kind of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: fun day for me because it's my thirtieth day on
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the job. So I've been here a full month. So
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have a check in with my managers
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: just to see how everything's going, how my work's been
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: for the past month. But yeah, everything's been going really well.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: It's been I think a blessing to not only have
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to represent such an amazing brand, but also
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: to really kind of have that space during COVID to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: be able to sit down and kind of work on
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: other stuff and not feel maybe the same stress and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: pressure that there's no races happening right now, because I
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: realize that my role within the company is more than
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: just me wearing a uniform on me.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: A lot of people listening right now have all different backgrounds,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: whether they're runners or not runners. But a lot of
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: people became familiar with your name if they weren't already
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: last November when you shared a powerful op ed in
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: the New York Times.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: What I would love to do is.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Talk us all the way through before we get to that,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I want to start all the way at the beginning.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Why don't we kick things off with you really talking
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: to me about where you grew up and what life
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: was like from a young age.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So I grew up in Westchester County, which is just
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: north of New York City. So I've lived within the
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: New York area for really my whole life, beside a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: one year stint elsewhere. And I grew up in a
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  Speaker 1: family of four girls, and I'm the second oldest daughter,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and growing up we were those too, you.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Know, many different things, like I remember when I.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Was four, I took ballet and I was on a
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: youth soccer league, and swimming was kind of my main
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  Speaker 1: passion out of all the different kind of after school
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  Speaker 1: activities I did, and I think I would go to
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: maybe like three to four practices a week, and it
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  Speaker 1: was a really amazing experience kind of growing up though
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  Speaker 1: with all sisters, because I never felt like I couldn't
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  Speaker 1: be an athlete, you know. Over the summer, yeah, we
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  Speaker 1: would watch the men's.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: World Cup for soccer, but we'd also watch.
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  Speaker 1: The women's and during the Olympics, I had Michael Phelps
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to cheer for, but there was also Jenny Thompson and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: so I never really felt like there was a cap
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  Speaker 1: on my potential just because I was a girl, because
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: in so many ways that was you know, the people
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  Speaker 1: who I was surrounded with day in and day out.
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  Speaker 1: And I really fell in love with competition and sport,
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  Speaker 1: and I think from an early age though being a
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  Speaker 1: very competitive kid, I really enjoyed having a sport like
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: swimming because it's an individual sport. Most events you do,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: similar to track, are on your own, but there's also
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: team aspects. Swimming in relays was probably both the event
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  Speaker 1: I would get the most nervous for and also the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: most excited for because I would have three other girls
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  Speaker 1: on the blocks waiting for me to try to swim
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  Speaker 1: as fast as I can so that we would do well.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, growing up, I really was more exposed to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: like other sports. I ran, but like in the same
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: way that I think most people do at a young age,
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  Speaker 1: which is like your gym coach tells you to run
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a lap of the track during recess or something, and
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  Speaker 1: I was probably the one kid who got really into
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  Speaker 1: that one lap and I would know as fast as
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I could, and I always wanted to be the fastest
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  Speaker 1: person in the class. And I don't really know why,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: but that was really my first exposure to running, and
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  Speaker 1: just after, you know, kind of years of maybe dominating
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: my elementary school class, which was only one hundred kids,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: so not particularly impressive, I decided in seventh grade, after
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: kind of some encouragement from like gym teachers and my parents,
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  Speaker 1: to try out for seventh grade outdoor track and field,
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  Speaker 1: And that season was really the first time I did
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  Speaker 1: any like I'm going to do quotes here proper training,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: and I put quotes because I mean I was probably
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: running like fifteen twenty miles a week or something. But
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I qualified for the state meet the three thousand meters
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and I was the youngest person on the team on
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: our national four by mile relay, and I think it
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: just kind of set a fire under me and it
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  Speaker 1: just made me love running in a way that yes,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I had tapped into doing those gym class one lappers,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: but I had this whole other world of racing miles
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and eight hundreds and three k's that I had never
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: really been properly exposed to.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy to think about being that age
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: and being in a place where you're running twenty miles
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: a week. When I started running, I was running a
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: half mile every day, and it was so hard. So
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: to have like that natural talent at such a young
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: age and have so much promise, that's I don't know,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: it's exciting.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I loved it, and I loved having
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: At the end of every school year, we would have
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: this like one or two week long after school program
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and it was probably like five evenings of the whole
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: entire school year where I would do what I thought
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: was running training, which in retrospect, I mean I was
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: like high jumping and long.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: Jumping, so it wasn't really true training.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I guess just I'd become
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: kind of like known within the town of being like
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a bit of a talent and running, and sometimes some
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of like the older students would come out and like
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: try to pace me for like a one k cross
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: country race, or I you know, time triald a mile
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: as a sixth grader and ran like five forty seven
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And I didn't really understood what that meant beyond just
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: knowing that I ran faster than I did the year before.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: But some coaches were just probably knew a little bit
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: better than me and were very impressed and very encouraging,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and so to me, it was always such a natural
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: progression from year to year of just adding a little
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: bit more. And I think just looking back, I was helped,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: like my my Negaivete in so many ways was beneficial
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: because I wasn't reading articles as a ten year old
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  Speaker 1: about you know, older athletes training. I only had myself
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to compare to, and it was just as a result,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a really natural, you know, each year a little bit
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of a bigger step. Really, from the time I was
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a seventh grader to a senior in high school.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: When do you think during that journey that you started
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: to really comprehend how good of a runner that you were.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it goes from probably a time that's like,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: oh my god, this is so fun to a little
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: bit more of wow, like there's some pressure here to perform.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So the first time I ever felt like real pressure
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: was in eighth grade. I the year before had qualified
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: for the three thousand meters at the state meet as
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: a seventh grader. And how New York works is there's
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: like a D one race and a D two race,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and D two is for smaller schools. And I qualified
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: through that and I ended up going to the state meet.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: My shoe fell off midway through the race, but I
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: still meddled. I was maybe like sixth in the state
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: for small schools. And going into that eighth grad qualifying race,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: there were two girls who were seated faster than me,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and I remember being so nervous, and I honestly just
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: like blew that race because I went onto the line
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: having like no faith in myself to make it and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: feeling such an immense amount of pressure to do, like
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: to make that same leap that I had the year
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: before and qualify, and only the top two girls would go,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and I came in third, and like way way back
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: in third, and I just remember being so mad at
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: myself after the race. And I think the reason that
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I just felt that pressure was a lot of people
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: were kind of, you know, just already starting to put
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: like in the exterior kind of side of things, a
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: lot of pressure on me, and not my parents, like
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: they couldn't have cared less. And I was anyway going
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: to the state meet on the four by eighteen, so
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: it was and like I didn't have an opportunity to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: compete there. But I think that was my first experience
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: of like really feeling pressure. And I walked away from
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: that race realizing that I could never ever do that again.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Because the truth is, the reason I was disappointed in
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: myself wasn't because I didn't make the state meet. It
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't because I came in third. It was because I
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: just ran scared and I realized that had I really
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: done the best that I could and still come in third,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I could have been at least proud of the race.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: And so I think that kind of experience of just
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: like feeling a lot of pressure for my coach and
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you know, from teammates. Just made me realize that you
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: can't get so in your head. And so I think
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that really did help me kind of going into high school.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Then the next year, the lesson that you learned that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: day that hey, like I just can't show up scared,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I have to show up and give it my all.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: How valuable is that?
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: And I would be lying if I said that that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: was a one, undone lesson I've been.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Get anybody who read my.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: New York Times off ed and watch the video realize
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: that I fell into that cycle of a mindset again
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: later in life. But I think the reason that I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: was almost so fearless throughout high school was because, yes,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I wanted to win. Yes I wanted to set a record.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Yes I wanted to be the best that I could.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: But the truth is, some of the races I'm most
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: proud of are the times that I came in fifth.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: It's the time I just missed out on something. It's
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the moment where it wasn't just like a clear cut,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: obvious w for the day. That are sometimes the moments
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: that I think I got the most out of myself
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and are the most proud of myself.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I remember after qualifying for the World Championship team in
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, I was second across the line, and afterwards
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who were like, Oh,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: are you disappointed you didn't win, And I was like,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: what do you talk talking about. I killed myself to
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: get to the line of the house as I could.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I made a team.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: That is all that I cared about in that moment.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And so to me, it's just, you know, I kind
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: of realized that probably just my natural competitiveness, my natural
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: kind of desire to please other people is something that
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: predisposes me to sometimes go into those more nervous, more
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: negative headspaces. But I just always have to turn it
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: back to that eighth grade girl who was kicking herself,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: not because she didn't make the team, but because she
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: didn't try.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: When you talk about repping the United States at the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: World Championships in that race that got you there, I mean,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: what a time?
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Was that just absolutely surreal?
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in truth, I felt on that day
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: that I had to make that team, and I don't
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: know why, but I just felt. I was like, there's
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of people watching right now. Who if I
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: can cross that line top three, make that team, It's
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: just going to mean a lot to a lot of people.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't really thinking of my team or my
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: family even when I say that, But just like younger
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: athletes like I wanted to show people that you can
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: be seventeen and kick some butt and be powerful and
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: be strong, and so going into it, even though I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: was so nervous, as soon as I got out onto
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the track, there was just such a piece in me
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: because I was like, I'm gonna do it. I know
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: what to do, I know how to run, and let's
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: just push as hard as you can. And so I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: remember with a lap to go, I was like, with
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: one lap to go, you're gonna be in the lead.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: And I just ran.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Like a bad out of hell, trying to hold it
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: as long as I could, and that last fifty meters
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: hurt so bad. But crossing that line was just like
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: probably one of the greater moments of my career because
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I knew it, you know, me making that team me
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and more than just like one person crossing a line.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: And second, it kind of had a deeper meaning to it.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: You talk about this idea of knowing your purpose and
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: knowing that you just had to And I think at
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: so many different points, for so many different people, we
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: all feel this sense of this is what we're supposed
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: to do. But how do you pursue these moments from
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: a mental standpoint to the best of your ability? I
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: think sometimes we just like psych ourselves out.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's changed over time. I think
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: with age, you know, like a young age, there's an
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: innocence to you, and so there's just this feeling of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: like invincibility that I don't know, do I ever like
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: fully want to get back. And it's not to say
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be able to line up on
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: a start line and know like I can win this.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: I have that ability.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: But it's more I think that came from such an
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: in certain ways outcome perspective that like the goal was
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to win. I was there to win, I'm trying to win,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I came in second, and I was really
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: happy to be able to do that and like that kind.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: Of like achieved the main goal and I was just
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: so proud.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: But I don't feel in that race I was necessarily
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: thinking of the process. You know, during workouts, I was
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: probably picturing myself crossing the line and winning, and that
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: visualization is great, but there was never kind of a like,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you know, sitting down and thinking of the why behind
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a workout. So because I always thought of the outcome,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I maybe didn't do as well in my training of
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: kind of like compartmentalizing things. If things weren't going well,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I'd maybe be a little bit more hard on myself,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit more down on myself. And that's not
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to say I'm like perfect with that now. I still
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: sometimes will kick myself if I do something wrong in
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a workout or something I perceive is wrong. But I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: guess I just try to think of things a little
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: bit more as like stepping stones. So rather than feeling
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: like me having a slower run or not quite hitting
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the times means I can't achieve a goal, instead I
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: reframe it to just like this is one step closer
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: now to getting there.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of the time also, like we
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: let these hurdles are the hurdle moments that we experience
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: kind of sidetrack us. I mean, please, there's so much
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: that so many individuals are going through right now that
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: things feel difficult and hard, and it's like we don't
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: know the right way to get over the hurdle, or
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: we walk to this one experience and it feels difficult
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: and it's like can I get through this? But what
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: you're saying is that these moments that are difficult or
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: the things that aren't going as you had hoped, are
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: teachable moments, right, yes.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: And of course in the moment sometimes I am like,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I know this is a teaching moment, but I'm not
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: handling as well. But in general, when like I said,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: back down and I kind of like go through the
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: processes that I'm really supposed to, like you know, doing
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: my breathing or you know, doing journaling or stuff like that,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I can always kind of just sit down and remember that,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I think as a young athlete, I thought
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: straining was how you got to the top level.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: Like grinding it out, pushing all the time, and.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: There's something really powerful about being able to bring yourself
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to that edge kind of every day. But the older
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I've gotten, the more I kind of think of the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: arthured Lideard saying of you know, you're trying to train,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: not strain, and I kind of think about that then,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: even just like a reflecting upon workouts where if things
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: don't go perfect, if I feel like I had a
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: little bit left in the tank or I missed a
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: split here or there, I'm just like, training is about
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: putting in the work to get to the day, not
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: having that all out race effort every single day.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's also because that's of being on the
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: edge of pushing yourself. It's exhilarating, right, it's exciting. It's like, Wow,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I just crushed that workout, and I feel invincible. But
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I mean if you're getting to that tipping point every
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: single day, then sooner or later, as you certainly experienced,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: and we'll get to like you get to the breaking point.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I you know, I think for me,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: what a lot of kind of the maybe training philosophies
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: that I've learned over the last few years always comes
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: back down to patients where I think, as a young athlete,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you know, most people haven't had an injury at a
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: certain age, and so they maybe haven't had to.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Go through rehab processes.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And have to analyze their you know, biomechanical imbalances that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have developed through injury, and so just so many things
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: come very easy at a young age and I'm twenty four,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: so I know I will probably you know, later in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: my career, like, oh my god, what were you complaining
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: about then? But I think there's always just has to
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: be a knowledge that every year is going to be
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a little different, every cycle is going to be a
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: little bit different, and that's okay. Change is what makes
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: you better, it's what makes you faster at what makes
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: you actually able to make improvements year to year. And
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I think at a like, as a younger athlete, change
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: that wasn't just super linear felt very scary. You know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: things like adding five miles a week seemed like.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: An easy way to change.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: But now I'm trying to kind of learn other methods
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: that maybe aren't just the obvious, you know, AD five,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: AD ten, ad fifteen miles a week, because you have
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to be kind of cognizant of all the other things
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: that go into your training and all the other kind
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of risks, and you know, maybe realize that your redline
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: now you're probably straddling a little closer than maybe your
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: younger age self knew how to straddle.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: When you say that change is scary, I mean that
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: applies across the board, right, It applies everywhere it's sometimes
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: we get so comfortable with how things have been that
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: when things shift and there is a noticeable difference in
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: our day to day, it's frightening and it's uncomfortable. But
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: from those moments of discomfort, again going back to this
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: idea that you have an opportunity to learn from them.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Like no one you know shows up to these scary
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: moments and it's like, oh my god, I'm so amped
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: to be scared out of my mind right now. But
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: ten times out of ten, that moment again, it teaches
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: you how to be a better person and in your
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: case with what we're talking about here, also a better runner.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean I've always felt that if you're not
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: able to kind of sit down at the end of
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the day and reflect on the good, the bad and
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the in between throughout not just your past day, but
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: week or training cycle or you know, personal life, then
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you're not trying to be better. And to me, in
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: so many ways, just the you know, not to sound cliche,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: but the journey of life is just trying to see
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: how good I can be in my relationships, in my careers.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: In my running.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And so for me, it's like to be able to
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: sit down and just reflect on what needs to be
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: changed is really the most important part of your day,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes you might want to push against
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it a little bit because the status quo is easy
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and it's safe, and you know, I know I'm kind
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: of like a creature of habit and somebody who in
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the past has had trouble kind of getting myself out
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: of uncomfortable situations because it's kind of like the idea
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of inertia, where a body in motion stays in motion,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: or a body at rest stays at rest, And you know,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I think I'm somebody who's it's very easy for me
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: to stay locked into something even if it's not working.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And the you know, biggest challenge I've kind of faced
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: entering into adulthood and you know, continuing on in my
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: journey is being able to face having to make changes.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: So talk to me about what it was like to
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: be at World Championships.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: It was a really just incredible experience. I went for
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the whole World Championship. I was my event was in
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the first half of the meet, but I stayed for
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the second half because I just wanted to be able
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: to experience the whole meet and go as a fan
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of the sport and cheer on Team USA and be
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: able to see a little bit of the city and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: it was incredible.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: I mean I remember.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Being able to watch like Matthew Centrowitz compete and win
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a medal, and that was just so incredible. And to
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: be able to be a part of Team USA and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: kind of meet the other teammates. I mean, I remember
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I would go to all the team meetings and just
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: be so excited, and every time we went to lunch,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I would try to like sit at a new table
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and talk to different athletes because you know, not only
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: was I their teammate, but I was there, you know,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: a fan of theirs and a fan of the sport,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and it was just it was just one of those
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: moments where it's like I would never like, I wouldn't
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: be able to write a book on all of the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: different conversations I had and moments I shared with people there,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: because there's just too.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: Many to count.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And there's something that is really incredible about kind of
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: getting to know people in a setting like that. As
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: you know, American athletes, we often travel to a lot
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of the same meets and you kind of get to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: like see people at airports and be like, hey, we're
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: the only people who like speak English, Like we're gonna
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: sit together on the plane, and you know, you just
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: develop these relationships and these friendships that you know, it's
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the people who in so many ways were like kind
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: to me and sat down with me at that meet
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: that I still am like a passionate fan of even
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: to this day. And their character was such that they
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: were nice to the probably annoying seventeen year old who
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was just like trying to take pictures even though they
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: didn't have an iPhone and was probably really annoying and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: asked weird questions. But there was just so many very
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: kind people there who really took me under their wing
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, cheered for me. And I think a
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: lot of people there were surprised when I made the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: final of the World I think something, well, we thought
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: you'd get out early. But you know, it was really
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: incredible just having that like support of you know, people
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: who became your team.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Talk to me about telling the line for the final.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: I was terrified.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I did not, I mean in retrospect, like I think
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I was very harsh on myself afterwards. I was tenth
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I think in the heats and the Semis. Even though
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I advanced both times, I did not run a smart race,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and either the Semis they did a little bit better,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: but both events, if you like watch my race, I
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: am all over the place the whole time, and there
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: was a lot of like going into lane three and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: getting cut off, and just a lot of wasted energy
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that I think I went into the final absolutely exhausted,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: and even though I was trying to will my legs
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: to move faster, I just didn't really have it in me.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: But I remember being so scared in the like you know,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: kind of room beforehand in the call room, and the
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: woman who ended up winning a bit of araga, we
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: like got up for a minute and like went into
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the corner and I don't know, maybe I was the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: only one watching her, but she just like threw up everywhere,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and I just remember like kind of stifling a laugh
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, okay, we're all feeling this
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: It was not just me surprised.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: We're elite athletes and we're really tired because we just
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: did an extraordinary thing.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: But I remember being honestly, like immediately afterwards, pretty disappointed
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: because I just felt like I had this amazing opportunity
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: to toe the line, and you know, ended up only
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: being two people in the field, and I think at
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: least one or two people have been like popped since
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: for drugs. Although I mean the winner was but I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: don't think her title was taken away because it you know,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I guess like the timing wasn't right or something like that.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: But I just remember kind of like as everybody blew
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: by me being like, I don't have anything.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, when did you?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, now you have to take a step back
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: and be able to be proud of that performance. Right,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: So when do you think that that switch flip for you?
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Oh? I think within like a day, because I remember
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: like one of the women in the kind of cool
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: down room afterwards, like you know, came over to me
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: because I was getting a little bit upset, and she
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, I came in fourth, Like the fact
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: that you were in the final is just incredible, and
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: she's like, but also the fact that you're upset about
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it is pretty cool. She's like, She's like, it says
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: a lot about you that you're like a little bit upset.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I was like, thank but yeah, By the next day,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: like just watching other teammates of Tmosa Metal and being
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: able to watch the races and explore the city. You know,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: it was it was the sort of thing where I
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: was just like happy and appreciative to be there. And so,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I think any competitor will understand that. Like,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: sometimes you'll have.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: A really good race.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, your friends, your family, and your teammates
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: will all be like, good job, that's amazing, congrats, and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: there's that kind of fire under you that's like, yeah,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: but I kind of feel like I could do more.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And sometimes that's really good because it just kind of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: gets you out there the next day to run hard again.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: So, also in twenty thirteen, you joined Nike's Oregon Projects
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: run by Alberta Salazar. Talk to me about what that
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: was like for you. I mean, was this what you
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: thought would be making it so to speak at that
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: time in your career.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I so kind of to give a little bit of background,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I had first started working with Alberto a year before
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I went pro in the fall of twenty twelve. He
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: reached out to me and we started working together because
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: just that past summer I's at the National Record in
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the fifteen hundred. So it wasn't like totally out of nowhere,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: but I was so excited and it was like a
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: dream come true to work with such an incredible program.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And within a year I made a World Championship team
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and you know, was not only on the team, but
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: in the final and came in tenth, and so I
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: was already kind of achieving things that like, you know,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: professional level athletes dream to achieve.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: And so I went, you know, kind of that.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: First year working with Alberto through it as an amateur.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I kind of paid my own way. It was, I
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: was trying to preserve my ncaaligibility. And then in the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: fall of twenty thirteen, and I actually only took one
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: recruiting visit, and I just realized that I really wanted
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: to run, and I really wanted to give it the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: best shot that I could. And for me, at the
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: level that I had already achieved, I felt the next
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: step was going pro because I was already kind of
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: competing at that level, and you know, I wanted to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: have the opportunities that came with being a pro, and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: in truth, I also wanted to have the in my mind,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: what I thought was protection by being pro, because I
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: was cognizant even at the time that like, you know,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: people get hurt, things happen, people's careers, ebbs and flow.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: And I thought having a sponsor supporting me versus maybe
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: something like an NCAA system might like mean more protection
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: because I would have more financial support. There would be
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: no risk of having you know, like almost a rough
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: college career and then you know, almost having no financial
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: safety net at forwards to continue to pursue running at
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: my own time. And so for me, it was kind
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: of ultimately a no brainer to go pro. And I
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: was already working with Alberto and so of course the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: next step was joining that team. So yeah, that's kind
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of how that happened.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: What did that look like at first for you, like,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: talk to me about what it was like to be
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: a part of the Oregon project.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: At first?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: It was incredible. I mean, this is like picture your
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: favorite sports team and having the head coach call you
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: up and say like, hey, I think you have the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: opportunity to be the best in the world, come join
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: my team. Like that was literally what it was for me.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: And I was, you know.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: On a team where there were metalists, there were people
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: who had American records. You know, it was at the
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: time considered.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: The best of the best.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: And I was at the time a high school junior
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: and senior, and I was living in New York while
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the team was based in Portland. So for me, it
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: was like this little like other world that I was
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: a part of because my day to day life, I
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: was not with the program. I was with my you know,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: high school classmates. I was with my coach here who
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: oversaw my training. So probably like nine to ten months.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: Out of the year, I.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Was not interacting face to face with the team. Any
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: interaction was just over like phone, call, email, something like that.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And then for those occasional weekend trips or you know,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: during the summer racing season or during a couple altitude
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: training camps, that was when I kind of had like
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: full time exposure to the team. And because they were
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: always just such short little experiences, and I think just
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: because I was like young and so excited and kind
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: of a fangirl of everybody, it just felt like, you know,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: these just incredible little camps that I was taking, and
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I stoked it all in and was probably
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: overly eager.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: What was it like, I mean, I know you worked
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: with John Henwood and he's a good friend of you
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: and still a coach to this day. So talk to
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: me about what it was like to be working with
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: him here while there was just so much that you
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: were removed from. At the time, it was great, it
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: was excellent.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think in retrospect I appreciate it more
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: now than I did at the time, because at the time,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you're like some punk, you know, sixteen seventeen
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: year old who's like I've you know, been at the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: World Champs, like I work with Alberto, you know, like
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I want to like win the Olympics, I want to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: train with my teammates, and you know, you're kind of
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: there's almost this like part of you that's like, oh,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: like I already want to be out there, and you
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: have trouble maybe appreciating.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: What you have in the moment.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes I kind of had that with
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: John where it wasn't like an outward thing, but inwardly,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: like there was just this part of me that was
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: so excited to go away for college and to join that.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: But looking back, I'm like, oh gosh, Like he he
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: buffered me for two years. He gave me that opportunity
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to like develop at the pace I needed to. He
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Ad just did things when you know, the training was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: too outrageous. He was, you know, kind of that barrier
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: for me that I think, inadvertently, you know, kind of
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: protected me from a lot of the things happening.
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: Like sooner.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: What changes after those two years then?
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: So you know, I've thought about this kind of over
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the last maybe you know, a couple of years or so,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and I think the turning point for me was after
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the US Indoor Championships in twenty fourteen. I won the
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: fifteen hundred meters, but right afterwards I had a stress
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: fracture a stress reaction in my shin, and for about
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: a week I trained through it. And you know, at
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the time, I was so like, oh, this stuff happens.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: But you know, in retrospect, I think I was already
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: kind of like inadvertently getting into some of the things
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: that was like predisposing me to bone injuries. At the time,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I wasn't really training that high with mileage, but I
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: think it was like my body's way of being like,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you you need to go through puberty, think you have
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: to develop, And so I had this stress reaction, and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: I trained lacrosse, trained like a mad woman for like,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: you know, six weeks, eight weeks.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: Whatever it was.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: And during that time, I think my body like that
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: was the moment where my body started to bite me
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a little bit, and I had no like I did
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: not have a bad, reallyationship with food at the time.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: There was nothing like that. I think these were just
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: like very normal changes that a lot of girls, you know,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: go through. But I think if you look at pictures
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: of me from when I won USA Indoors to when
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I won World Juniors, it's probably like a three or
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: four month different. But I look like somebody who's developing
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: into a woman versus being a teenage girl. And to me,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I like had no you know, body image issues at
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: the time, and so I was like completely blind to it.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Like I wasn't looking at pictures of myself and noticing any.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: Sort of difference.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: And my training, as soon as the injury went away,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: was going amazing. I mean I ended up coming in second,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: you know outdoor usas to Jenny winning World Juniors. Like
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: in my mind, things were going really really well. But
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: language started to change towards me and in this kind.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: Of originally a lot of it.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Was like you're not fit, You're not fit, and there
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: was no blatant like you know, like what that was
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: code for, So I think as a naive kid, I
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: just was like, oh, like, I gotta get faster, I
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: gotta get stronger, and I kept pushing like harder and
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: harder in training. And it wasn't until after I won
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: World Juniors that Alberto sat me down and was like,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you're too heavy to be able to compete on the
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: international stage. You're not going to travel to Europe with
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the team, even though I just won World Juniors with
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: second usas and most of my teammates were going off
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: to Europe for like the summer season, and I was
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: told that I was not going to go because I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: needed to stay in Portland before my school year there
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: had even started, so that I could catch up to
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: everybody else, drop some weight and get fit enough to
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: maybe like salvage the season with a little bit of
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: like a road racing season. And this conversation kind of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: came up because the day before World Juniors Alberto had
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: asked me to do to buy one hundred meters just
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: like you know, kind of pre race strides, and he
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: asked me for both of them to break thirteen seconds,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and I ran twelve five for both.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: So I did what I was suposed to do.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, the day after World Juniors, Alberta told
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: me that the reason he told me to do that
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: was because he wanted he like thought I wouldn't be
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: able to break thirteen and therefore he was going to
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with me the day before my World
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Juniors race, explaining that he thought I wasn't able to
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: run fast because I was too heavy.
• 44:00
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  Speaker 2: for you must have just been so confusing because you
• 46:24
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• 46:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and it was.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: But I think like I also was so trusting that
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to me, I was like, Okay, well my prs four
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: oh four, and yes I was second at USA's but
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I only ran four oh six and I was too
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: young to realize that. You know, that might like two
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: seconds in a championship style race doesn't really mean much.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: But I think I was just so like, oh, he
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: must see something I don't like. He's a professional, he knows.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: What he's doing.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: You know, the assistant coaches are agreeing, like, he's probably right.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: So rather than kind of maybe having the like wherewithal
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that maybe an older athlete would have, I was just like, Okay,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I will do that. And so over the course of
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: that summer, I drop weight really quickly. I had probably
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: been like, my guess is like one hundred and twenty
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: one hundred twenty one pounds and I dropped down to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: one thirteen within like you know, maybe six weeks or something. Wow,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And you know, I I ran fifth af mile and
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I look at pictures from that race and I just
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: cringe because I look like death, Like I have dark
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: circles under my eyes. I just look like greasy to me,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Like it just doesn't look like a good situation.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: What are the people close to you like thinking or
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: wondering this time? Because I mean, for example, I as
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that you do with the platform that you have.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: And we'll get into this a little bit as well,
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: but we face criticism on the regular. It's like you
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: do one thing and it makes some people happy, and
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: you do another thing and it makes some people disappointed,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: and you just are trying to navigate your day to
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: day and in that process, I mean, my first reaction
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: is to vent to someone that is close to me,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: someone that's my friend, someone that maybe lives three blocks away.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: For you, after getting this criticism from your coach and
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: not traveling, which also must have been like what, well,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: what's going on? Like did you talk to anyone about it.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So part of what kind of happened was I
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: ended up moving to Portland earlier than planned, which as
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: you can imagine, like I'm sure anybody who's a parent
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: with like, you know, high school age kids, like all
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: of a sudden having you know, your child tell you
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: that they have to move to Portland like two months
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: sooner than school starts, because like their coach wants them to.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: My parents were not thrilled about that, because you know,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: they wanted to have the summer with me, or at
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: least have me going somewhere I wanted to go, like
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: to Europe to race, and so I had called them
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: pretty upset, and you know, kind of I think was
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: in my own way, like probably trying to protect people
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: and kept being like, yeah, like they don't think I'm
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: fit enough. And you know, my parents don't know a
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: lot about running, let alone professional athletics. But to them,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: they're like you just finished second at usas how how
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: are you not fit? Like that doesn't make sense to us.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: And so because I had called them pretty upset, they
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: called and texted like the assistant coach and the head
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: coach at the time to be like hey, like I
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: think Mary's really upset that you're not, you know, including
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: her on these trips, like you know, why are you
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: doing that? Like why does she have to move to
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: school early? Like can't she just be with the team
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: right now? And I got a lot of backlash from
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: my coaches for talking to my parents, and I kind
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: of got the lecture of you know, you're an adult now,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you're a professional, Like if you're going to do this
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: for a living, if you're gonna be on this team,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: like you can't go crying to your parents when stuff
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: like this happens, like you just have to suck it
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: up and like get fit.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: And I was so embarrassed, Like.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I remember being kind of mad at my parents for
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: like calling them and for like expressing what I had
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: said to them, and that became a theme like over
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the course of the year I was in Portland, where
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: anytime my parents would come in and like say anything,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I would get kind of shit for it and get
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: in trouble, and so I just stopped sharing with them.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And the truth is that, you know, most of my
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: friends from high school weren't runners, and I felt like
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I couldn't necessarily share things with them because you know,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: talking about you know, body image of stuff, which is
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: something I felt uncomfortable with. And I think I just
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: felt like my coaches knew what they were doing, and
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: so you know, turning to my sisters just felt like
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: wrong and I just like I just didn't want to
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: get in trouble, and so that really did sort of
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: silence a lot of communication.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And with that silencing and the weight loss eventually comes
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: some more injury, because what you come to realize is
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: that you are not in a place where you can
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: sustain or get stronger when you are that frail.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and for the first year or two of me
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: kind of going through and this is like a normal
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: progression for a lot of people, but for the first
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: year or two, you haven't done enough damage, even though
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: you're actively having your bones kind of become brittler and
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: brittler at the time, you're like the first signs of
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: weakness come from just like adrenal fatigue. All the time.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I just always felt exhausted. I had some bouts of
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: like athletic level anemia. My levels never dropped to like
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: crazy low levels, you know, like I was probably like
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: in the twenties versus the teens, but I was having
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: all of these kind of other side effects first before
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: actually breaking things, and I just blew through those warning signs,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you know, losing my period while you know, I'm telling
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: all my coaches about it, I'm asking them for help,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: but they're kind of telling me, like that's something that
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: happens with hard training. I'm feeling exhausted, I'm feeling tired. Well,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: they're telling me, I'm probably not doing all the stuff
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: that I'm supposed to be doing to recover. You know,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I'm having lower iron issues. Well, that's your fault. There
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: was never really productive information given to me. It was
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: always somehow blame blame, blame, shame, shame, shame. And so
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: that was really kind of that two year cycle where
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I was remained on the organ project and you know,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: life is sometimes unfortunate, and that as soon as I left,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: that was probably two years were two years too long
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: of underfueling and under eating. And you know, within a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: couple of months of me leaving the team, I had
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: my first or my second bone injury, and from there
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: I proceeded to have you know, a cycle of bone
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: issues because I had just developed like lower bone density
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's like a lot of things where
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: once you do damage to something, it's not an overnight fix.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Just like I didn't develop bone issues over the course
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: of a month, and it was two years of probably
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: underfeeling that caused the issue. I had to put through
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: two years of work to get out of the issue.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: And I feel that was really difficult to often hear
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: from my doctors that you could be doing all the
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: right things right now, but that doesn't mean that's enough
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to fully kind of eradicate all of the damage that
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: you've done.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: And so it was. It was a process.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: It was a process.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: So when the red flags are starting to pop up,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: right with all of the injury, when does it go
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: from like, Okay, I really feel like something's wrong here
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: to I need to make a change and it needs
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: to happen asap.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: It was the second bone injury that I had in
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: the cycle. Like I ended up having four bone injuries,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: and the first one I just cross trained right through.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I was like I am good, I'm okay. I was
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: in full denial. I was still going through weird dieting trends,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: like what A lot of it was just like crazy
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: calorie counting where you know, in order like you know,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: based on my just like bodily makeup, I kind of
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: need about like fifteen hundred calories or so, just like
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: living if I did so activity and I would always
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: keep track of everything that I ate, and I would
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: try to cut out at least five hundred calories a day,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: because if I did that for the course of a week,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: I was told that I would lose a pound a week,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: because my coach used to always tell me, meaning Alberto,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: that thirty five hundred calories equals a pound, and if
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: you're able to cut that out, then you'll like lose
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: a pound. And so I would always try to, you know,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: cut that. But my goal was always to see how
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: close to fifteen hundred I could get. And there were
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: days that I was only eating that much. And the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: really frustrating thing though about it, and something that I
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: think made it really really hard for me to fully
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: acknowledge the fact that I had an issue, was the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: fact that.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: I didn't really lose.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Weight that well, like, even though I was under eating
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: by just like ridiculous amounts, my body fought me at
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: every single step. And the thing is that you know,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: some women will experience, and I think in particular because
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: of like the age in which I was kind of
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: like exposing myself to disordered eating was that I would
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: like really retain water a lot. I kind of bloated
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a lot. I would have issues that were kind of
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: surrounded like digest and stuff like patient and upset stomachs
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: and irritable boughs and all these different things because my
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: body was like, no, we're not gonna let you do this.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: And so to me, I would look in the mirror
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and I would see somebody who was still big, and
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: like there were times where it would just be like
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: my weight would just skyrocket back up. And I'm sure
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: sometimes I probably just like had a night where I
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: just like binged because I was, you know, so exhausted
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: and so hungry. But other times I think it was
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: just like purely just like my body trying to like
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: retain nutrition in whatever way it knew how.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: And so you're also so small at this time to
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: be that size and to be taking on what you're
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: taking on, Like just like it's hard to cut time
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: and seconds off of your running, it's also hard to
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: be that size and to lose a ton of weight.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely, And I mean I we just like
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is, we pulled another converto bless
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: number out of his ass, like I'm sorry to put
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: it that, you know, Curtly.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: But it wasn't like there was.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Some like scientific calculation because nothing exists like that to
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: find the perfect weight. Like one time I maybe weighed
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: myself and we saw like one thirteen one fourteen, and
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: so that was like the do or die goal and
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: there was no there was no reason for that, Like
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: there was literally nothing about that number that meant anything
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: beyond this, just like random idea by Alberto. And so
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: it's you know, sometimes I look back and it's sad
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: because like I like, I knew my weights really well.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I weighed myself like every day, you know, And now
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I know that it's normal to have like day to
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: day fluctuations just based on you know, wait, you wait
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the night before, like saw your period, like all different things.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: But I remember like there would be days where I'd
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: get up and the next day I'd you know, the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: scale would show me two pounds more and I would
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: just like cry because I was like, oh my god,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: what did I do wrong? And or you know, I
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: would drop two pounds and be like, oh my god,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm you know, I'm gonna make everybody happy now,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: and looking back, that just didn't make any sense, and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of sad to think about. And
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: so now I'm in a place where I truthfully don't, like,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I don't count calories, Like I'm very very against that.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: And it's not to say I don't understand why people
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: do it. And I think, you know, our eating culture
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: is one in which, like weight loss is so celebrated,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: and you know, it seems like a lot of things
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: with running are very quantitative, and so it's a kind
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of an easy way to be like make sure you're
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: keeping on track. But I just warn any athlete out
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: there that I just feel it's a very slippery slope
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and you're better off just like thinking about what you're
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: eating than how much you're eating, to make sure like
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: you're getting in you know, good amounts of you know,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: protein or fiber, veggies or fruit. You know, look at
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the watt versus how much, right.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: And so in twenty sixteen, you leave the Oregon Project
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: and you at the time shared a statement saying that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: you were back home in New York and a full
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: time student at FORDUM and you just made the decision
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: that you would no longer be competing in the Oregon
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Project uniform. At that time when you made that statement,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: what did you really want to say?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: You know, it was I remember that like week of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: trying to write something, and I remember my parents being
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: incredibly frustrated because you know, they had had some experiences
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: where like at twenty fifteen at Usas, my mom came
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: with me to the meat just to like watch me race.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: And the reason she had come was it was like
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: right after I had called my parents two or it
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, six weeks after I'd called my
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: parents to like kind of help me come back home,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: because like I admitted to them the fact that like
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: my mental health was suffering, and I didn't open up
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: to them about everything. Like I didn't share with them
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: that I was cut. I mean I actually never purposely
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: shared with them I was cutting. I kind of got
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: you know, that ended up being like an intervention from John.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: But I was just in such denial about everything for
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: so long, because for so long I was just gaslight.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: And you know, if you're constantly told by like all
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: of your coaches and all of your teammates that like
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: You're just supposed to do what you're told that, you know.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: I couldn't, like I myself, almost couldn't fully accept yet
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: that what had happened was wrong. I still looked at
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: myself as being weak for having to leave the program,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: and so my parents had witnessed some of the behavior
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: by my coaches and buy my teammates, and had had
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: some pretty heated conversations with people about it.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: But I was an adult.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, eighteen, and they couldn't force me
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: to leave a program, and so I stayed on the
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: team in twenty sixteen despite living or twenty fifteen, despite
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: living at home. But it wasn't until after the trials
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: that I think I was able to accept enough to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: know that stay on the team was bad. I couldn't
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: fully yet, like verbalize or accept everything that was bad,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: but I knew, at the very least for my mental health,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: I had to leave the program because I had an
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: eating disorder. And so when I came out with that statement,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: which is looking back so wishy, washy and dumb and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: like myself now is like that's a lie, at the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: time kind of did feel that way, and I remember
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: my mom saying to me. She was like, you know, Mary,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: like you are like the the guide of your own life,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm never going to like interfere, but like when
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: the day comes that you're ready to like really talk
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: about everything, like I will be there for you.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: And that just gets me emotional.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: But like I wasn't ready yet because I wasn't like
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: fully I think at peace myself. And so the day
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: that I was, which was you know, within a week
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: of Alberto's ban this past fall of twenty nineteen, I
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: went to my mom and I was like, the day
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: has come. We're scrapping that last name, and we're gonna
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: we're going to tell the truth now because I see
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the truth.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Before we get to talking about the op ED. I
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: don't know necessarily, and I think this is, I mean, god,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: the right way. I've been thinking about this phrase so
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: much lately and just when it comes to everything like
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: what's the right way to do X or talk about
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: why or whatever, and I just don't think that there
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: is one when it comes to so many of the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: difficult conversations that we have with one another as humans.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: But when it comes to you cutting yourself, do you
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: remember the first time that you did that? And I
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: feel as though that must have been a really effing
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: emotional experience.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think for me, the reason it was,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: And like, I think one thing I've always wanted to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: make very clear is that the you know, at least
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: for me, is that I like nobody made me cut myself.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: You know, the external environment was one in which it
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: was just incredibly toxic, incredibly negative, mean and.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: Hurtful, just to like sum it up.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: But I do also recognize that I was probably somebody
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: who's predisposed to taking frustration and anger out on myself.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: And that's something that I had.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: Always been aware of.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Like I would be lying if I said I had
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: never had the urge to do it before being an Oregon,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that's just something that I can be
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: like open about.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: But I had always.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Prided myself with never having done it, like never getting
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: so low, like so self hating that I ever did that.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: But the first day that I.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: Did, Sorry, no it's okay, I was just really.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Like I knew I wasn't okay, because it's not like
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: you just wake up and do that one day. I
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: just I just hated myself so much and I just
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: like I felt like there was nowhere else to direct that.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: Then, just like on myself.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: And you know, I like, I wasn't angry with anybody
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: else but myself because I just thought I was failing.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: And I knew just based on the language that my
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: coaches used, that they felt the same way. And I
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: just was really disappointed that these people who I cared
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: about so much were disappointed in me, and I just
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: felt so bad, Like I felt bad for them because
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: to me, it was like, you know, I don't I
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: don't like to upset anybody, And I just really blamed
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: myself for that.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Right right, It's so heartbreaking to think of that feeling
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: of being so alone, and it's so difficult to imagine
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: this system where you tell people that you need help, yeah, and.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: No one helps, and how awful is that? How awful
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: is that?
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: It just it just made me think that like, like
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't think when nobody helped that like, oh, they're
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: in the wrong. Like in the moment, I just felt
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: like it just showed how much I was in the wrong.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: And you know, I just I hope nobody right now
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: is feeling that way, because that is just the cruelest thing.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: To do to somebody.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Is to just like perpetually make them feel like they
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: are the problem, especially when I mean this is about running,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Like like why would somebody be that like mean or
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: cruel over something that is so in the scheme of
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: things meaningless like running. You know, we're not like saving
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: the world. We're not doctors, we're not scientists, we're not lawyers,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: we're not you know, activists.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: We're people who run.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Around in circles and you know, do really cool things
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: and you know, can have a platform for good. But
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: it's not exactly like that team was you know, social
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: justice Warriors or anything. You know, most of them were
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: considered I'm just gonna put it out is kind of
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: assholes within the circuit, Like we were not a beloved team.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: We weren't really a liked team because I don't think
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: we came across as particularly nice most of the people
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: on it. And to me, I just was like, oh,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: we're misunderstood. It's you know, like they're actually really great people.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: But you know, I I think I just put the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: rose colored classes on myself and got way too sucked
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: into something that you know, I now look at and
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it's running, you know, like who you know,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: I love it, and I think it has the potential
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to be an amazing platform and way to get your
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: voice out and mental health kind of reliever in all
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: of these different things. But at the time, it's not
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: exactly like those people were fighting for any of.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: That, right, So then talk to me about the New
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: York Times. How did that even come to be?
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: At first, it was such a like looking back, that
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: evolved so quickly, you know, after Alberto's band came out,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Like my first reaction was like the he was still
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: under investigation, Like nobody had reached out to me, you know,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: I was reached out to like once in twenty fifteen,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: within like a week of becoming home because of like
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: my you know, the occidental classic meet in which I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: admitted to my parents that I was like really struggling
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: mentally and emotionally. And so I remember at the time
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: just like like literally my parents had said he saw.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: To like we're really sorry, but like we like Mary's
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: not in a.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Good place right now, like please call us back, you know,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: like we don't know.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: What's going on.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: And then five years later, four years later, it turns
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: out the investigation has still been happening, and I had
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: no idea, and so I sat down and I read
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: that full I don't even know how long that report is,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: but the full thing, And what many people might not
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: realize is that I, like I was not on the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: team during almost any of the periods that were brought
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: up in which got Alberto band, so like stuff with
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: alcarnatine and such was happening like before my time, and
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: so when I joined, I was told stories about those things,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: but they were all wise and I didn't know that,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: like up until reading the USADA report where they're like, oh,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: athletes were told that Usada, you know, gave alberta permission
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: to do this, but that's actually not true. And so
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting there like, oh my god, I thought he
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: was given permission, like that's what I was told, And
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: so I just like scoured that report and looked at
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: every single line where it was like athletes were told this,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: but in actuality, you know, X, Y and Z happened.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: And I just felt such a like physical like slapping
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the face reaction to that because I was like they
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: lot And that was the first moment where I could
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: vocalize that like up until that time, I couldn't you know,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: like I already knew that the sports psych was lying
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: about being a sports psych, and I, you know, I
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: knew certain things were lies, but to really just see
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: such an egregious mistelling of a situation was.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: Like mind blowing and it made me.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: Sit down for the better part of probably like three days,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: where I was just like literally going back through emails
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: and texts and all this different stuff and just you know,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: finally at a place where I was able to be like,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: none of that was okay, Like none of that situation
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: was okay. And it wasn't until that I was able
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: to see that, like there was definitive proof that I
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: was lied to that I think I was able to
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: come to terms with the fact that there were other
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: really dark truths of my time in Oregon. And you know,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: at first, like I just wrote a piece and honestly,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: my first outline of writing was like very misdirected anger
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: where I was like, I am just screaming out on
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: a piece of favor about why nobody helped me. And
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I like sent it to Lindsay Krause because my friend
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Alexi PAPIs like had her information and I had asked
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Alexi for it and was a little cryptic to Alexi
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: about what I was doing, and when I sent something
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: to Lindsay at first she was like, well, I don't
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I don't really know what you're gonn write, but like
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: just shoot anything over to me. And I sent her
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: my piece and she just immediately within like probably like
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: an hour, emailed me and was like, can you come
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: down to the New York Times right now?
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: Can we mean in person?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Please? I was like sure, And I sat down with
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: her for a few hours and just everything's built out
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: and I just like really opened up to her in
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: a way that, you know, I think she just made
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: me feel safe.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: I trusted her.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: I knew the work she had done with Alison, Alicia,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Kara and the women that had come over and come
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: out in the Dream Eternity piece, and I just I
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: just told her my story and she was incredible and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: supportive and just like helped me like have a space
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: to work through it, both verbally and in writing. And
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the six weeks or so that we worked on the piece,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: or it was probably even like shorter, it was probably
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: like four or five weeks that we worked on it
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: were like the longest weeks of my life because as
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: soon as I wanted it to be out like I
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: wanted it now, and I had no patience, Like every
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: day I was emailing Lindsay like are we gonna drop
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: it yet? And I think for me that that need,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that desire to like let it out was because as
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: soon as I saw how bad everything was, I didn't
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: want anybody else to be going through that. And the
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: thought that anybody else could be trapped in that situation
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: and feeling that level of shame and blame and guilt
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: that I did was just so sickening. And I didn't
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: expect it to be big. I expected it to just
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: stay within the track world. And you know, Lindsay kind
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: of felt differently. She was like, either everybody will read
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: it or nobody will read it, but I think she
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: kind of leaned towards that everybody will side. But I like,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't care or who read it. I didn't care
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: how many. I just I thought I would stay within
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: the track world and maybe help one person.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: That was all I needed.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: Were you scared?
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: Not really?
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: I mean I sat down with my parents and I
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: told them I was like, well, I'm never going to
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: get a contract again. And I was like, I'm like
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: I literally said to them, I'm like, I want to
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: pursue running. I want to continue running. I was like,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: but I just am going to be open with you
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: that I'm probably gonna have to go through different different avenues,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: whether it's having another like full time part time job,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: some other situation, but like, we are burning our bridges today,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: and I was like, just be prepared for that. Know that,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: I know that, and I'm okay with that. And so
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: I was like fully at peace with that, fully prepared
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: for that, did not care, honestly did not want to
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: be a part of that system anymore. But most of
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: the fear came more from.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: Like like.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: The whole thing and in process, Like as soon as
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: it was out, I felt free. There was no fear,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: and I knew as soon as it was going to
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: be like thrown out into the world, I would be okay.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: But it was more for that like build up that
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to scream off a roof.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: Everything, to speak out in that way, in such a
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: old way. I admire you for that.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, I had a woman on the show or
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: her name is Ash Welking. In her episode she said,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: be careful that the sword you fall on to inspire others,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: isn't the one that you injure yourself with. And I
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: think that this definitely could have gone multiple ways, especially
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: when it comes to that feedback loop, right and people
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: responding to what it was that you were so ready
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: to put out there. So talk to me then about
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: the response component.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: So I think for me, like one thing that I
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: think people maybe don't realize is that I was used
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: to the media and not always being super supportive of
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: me and not in not that it was like negative
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: per se, but there was this level of like fascination
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: of whether or not I would burn out, and you know,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: talking about my body and my development, and you know,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: I was used to like, I mean, almost no professional
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: track and field athlete who competed with and or against
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: me ever reached out to me when I left the
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: organ Project. I don't know if I can literally name
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: one person who did so.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: To me.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: There was no like, I was not going to injure
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: myself on that sword because people had already shown me
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: that they did not care about me, and so if
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: people were going to be negative come at me, I'm
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: used to that.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: You know, this is the.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Same sport, This was the same culture where you know,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: nobody ever showed that they cared. So I wasn't you know, Yes,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I had this incredible young career and people followed me
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: and it was positive and wo but like people dropped
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: me like a hot potato as soon as they could.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: And so to me, it wasn't like there was going
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: to be this big shocking moment of you know, oh
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: my gosh, like people are mean, because I was.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: Just kind of used to that at that point.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: And so for me, what was really surprising was the
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: level of positivity and support that came from it, just
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: from the general larger running community. And of course some
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: fellow pros have since, you know, like come out and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: spoken to me and said some just really really kind
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: things and have made me feel more welcome maybe again
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: within that professional sporting world. But to me, it was
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: more like overwhelming and surprising to have positivity, because that
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: was the thing I was not expecting to have, and
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: it was both really beautiful, really kind, and as I
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: always say, also just a little bit sad because I
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: think every time it made me realize how many people
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: go through experiences such as this, and to me, that's
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: just so wrong and so bad. And I almost feel
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: sad that I share this story with so many other
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: people because I wish nobody had to go through this
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: sort of behavior with you know, just terrible like negative
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: experiences in sport.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: Can you recall any specific interactions that you have had
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: after this all went live that made you appreciate people
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: from your past that maybe you hadn't before.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: I mean I think you know, right off the bat,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: you know, Cara Goucher was just an amazing like friend
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: during this process.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: Where about a week.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: Before I, you know, had the article released, I reached
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: out to Kara and was just like, Hi, I don't
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: know if we ever spoken before, but I just want
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: to let you know that I'm doing this. And within
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: like five minutes, she messaged me back and was like,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: do you want to hop on the phone right now?
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, yes, please, Because of course she was
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: somebody who had been really at the forefront of the
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: Sauda investigation and who for years I had followed and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: just always felt really just truthfully confused by because I
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: as an athlete, just was always again hearing this like
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: other side to the story. So it's not that I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: felt ever that she was like per se like wrong
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: about what happened, but I was like, oh, maybe it's
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: just like a total miscommunication by everybody. And being able
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: to finally like sit and talk with her was just
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: the most like cathartic experience because it was just such
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: a shared experience, like so much of it, and I
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: think some of the like sides of coaching, you know,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: Kara maybe hadn't quite spoken as publicly about before. You know,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: we were able to like share in those experiences and
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: just talk it through and just kind of like try
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: to heal a little bit together. And of course after
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: my story came out, then many other women such as
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Amyot or Begley, Jackie Arrison, just like kind of countless
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: other people stepped in and said, yes, this happened, you know,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: we we had similar experiences. And then of course, you know,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: two of my past teammates, Cam Levin's and Dathan Ritzenhein
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: also came out and you know, shared their support. And
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: I think those people are the people who I always
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: will just always mean something to me because they really
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: understood what I went through, either through witnessing it through
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: experiencing it themselves, and to be able to stand up
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: and say that I think was incredibly brave, and you know,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: it's it saddens me that, you know, there are many
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: other voices who never have stepped forward or if anything,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: behind closed doors, denied stuff or you know, said negative things.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: And you know, to me, that's just sad because it's
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: just a denial of what happened.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: But it's it's the people who.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Came forward who really just I think will be forever teammates.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: For me, what about running right now excites you?
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: I think just the journey of trying to get back
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: up to speed excites me. Like there's something really fun
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: about chasing big goals again. And I think for a while,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: even though I would talk the talk, I wasn't really
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: walking the walk in my training because I was either
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: hurt or you know, too scared or too cautious or
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: you know whatever. But now I'm just like, screw it.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to see if I can make an Olympic team,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Like why not, let's do it. And so to me,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: kind of like going out every day and like being
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: able to like really dream again, I think is fun
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and I think if it, you know, if those things
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: never happen, yeah, I'll be disappointed, but that's not the
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: only reason I'm running. I'm running because it's fun, it
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: feels good, I like the journey, I like pushing myself,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: and it's a great thing to share with other people.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, the other day, my boyfriend and I went
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: for a run together and it was just an easy
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes and it was just really nice to be
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: able to share that and have those miles together and
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: you know, chat and even when you're silent, just you know,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: know you're sharing something with somebody else.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: Do you have moments these days of frustration thinking about
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: where you were versus where you are now.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be lying if I said no, But I
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: think usually usually I honestly am kind of like at
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: a place right now where I've kind of finally accepted that,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: like this is just where I am, and there's going
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: to be something really rewarding at the end of the
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: day about my running career, and whether that's me achieving
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: all the goals that I had set out for myself
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: at sixteen or coming up short in all of them,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: but having tried my absolute best, you know, I think
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: that's really all that I care about now, and so yeah,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: I'll have those moments like on a bad day where
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like, dang it, had I had that never happened,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I could have done X.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: Y and Z.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: But the truth is it didn't happen. So how would
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: I know if that was ever ever in the cards?
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe had everything, you know, gone super smoothly,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: I would have put other bumps in the road, or
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: maybe I would have been burnt out so hard that
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: I never would have come back to running and I
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: would have left the sport because of just that mental
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: just destruction that had happened. And so to me, it's like,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: of all the imaginary outcomes, they don't exist, they're not real,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: they're not here, and so I can't live in a
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: past or in a false future. I just have to
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: do my best to turn up every day and also
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: realize that there's kind of something fun about being the underdog.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: There was something really cool about being a seventeen year
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: old nobody kind of expected to hit the circuit, and
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of look at next year and
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it'd be really fun to like shock some people,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: And you know what if I don't, well, maybe I'll
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: do it the year after and just keep putting in
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: the work, keep putting in the miles and you know,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: see what I can do. But I think another thing
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: I kind of like to leave people with is the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: fact that my legacy in sport will never be because
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: I win a medal. It just never will. My legacy
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: in sport will always, I hope, be that I will
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: always fight for sport to be better for people. I
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: think that's something that actually has a lasting impact versus
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: being able to just have this tangible piece of metal.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that I don't want that. That
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it doesn't excite me every day to try
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: to chase that.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: But it's also humbling to.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: Realize that I can win a gold medal tomorrow and honestly,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: that matters less than what I did this past November.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: People come to your social media page and they see
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: a woman who's the NYC manager for a tracksmith and
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: a runner. When you look in the mirror, what is
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: it that you see looking back at you.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: You know, my younger self would have always just like
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: inserted whatever sport I was doing at the time, and
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: of course most recently that would always be runner. But
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: now I just like I just see me and that
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: person somebody who's probably sometimes funny, probably sometimes emotional, probably
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes annoying, loud, is going to speak their mind, is
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: passionate about their family and their friends, and you know
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: about so many different topics, And you know, I think
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: when people ask you to define yourself, it's such a
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: limiting moment because at the end of the day, we
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: as people have so much opportunity, and who I am
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: right now is probably going to be different than who
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: I am in the future. And just continuing to strive
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: to look at myself with more and more of a
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: smile on my face and know that you know, I'm
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: kind of being the best Mary I can be every day.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: You have the opportunity right now to offer the Mary
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: who is feeling as though she's not good enough, who's
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: worried about her weight, who is cutting and feel so alone.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: You have the opportunity to offer that Mary a piece
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: of advice. Looking back on that hurdle moment right now,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: what is it that you tell her?
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing I've always thought back on
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: is I wanted that girl to know and I want
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: that girl who's out there right now or boy to
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: know that they're not alone, never alone, no matter what
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: you're going through. There is always somebody who loves you,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: there's always somebody who cares about you. There's always somebody
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: who needs you at the end of the day. And
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: my biggest advice is to find that person.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 4: And I know in my case it took a couple tries.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: It wasn't my coach, it wasn't my teammates, it was
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: my family, it was my coach here in New York,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: and it was about trying to find that person and
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: ask for help and know that the strong and the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: brave thing to do is to turn to somebody. You
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: don't have to do it alone, because you are not alone.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Mary, Your honesty is just it's beautiful.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: And I think there's no doubt about it in my
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: mind that you're doing exactly what it is that you
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: said you want to do, and like this is your
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: legacy and this is the important stuff, and this message
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: is so powerful.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you, And I just hope, like one thing everybody
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: knows is that sometimes people have kind of turned to
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: me and been like, Wow, it's so brave that you
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: speak your truth and it's so powerful that you do,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: And to me, I'm like, no, it's what you have
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: to do, because at the end of the day, if
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: you're gonna kind of go through life and hold hold
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: it in and lie to yourself and lie to those
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: around you, you're just never going to be able to
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: unlock that full potential that you owe to yourself and
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: that you deserve. And so to me, it's like, don't
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: no matter how hard it is, and no matter how
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: scary it is, don't hold that back. Don't hold that in.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: You know, speak your truth, speak your mind and say
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: it loud and proud.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you so so much.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: Please take a moment leave a quick review of the
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: show by clicking the link with the description to today's episode.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: We all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: hear about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: hurdle dot us, connect with the podcast Instagram, Twitter at
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: Hurdle Podcast Mary.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: How can they keep up with you? Give me all
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: the details.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: I guess you can follow me on you know, the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: social media's Instagram, Twitter, my handles run Mary Kine, and
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: of course my as my new role with Tracksmith as
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: the NYC Community manager, keep an eye on their.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: Pages as well.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: I'll be, you know, hopefully kind of unveiling some new
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: stuff soon that I've been working on for this past month,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: so I'm excited to be sharing that.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be a part of it. I am
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: at Emily Abodi at Hurdle Podcast. Another Hurdle conquered. Catch
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: you guys next time.