Latest / Zone2Speak Podcast / Amy Palmiero-Winters: One Step Ahead

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Amy Palmiero-Winters: One Step Ahead · Zone2Speak Podcast

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Now, let's get into the episode. Thank you.
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Welcome back to Zone to Speak. This is a cycling podcast, but every now and
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then a story comes along that transcends sport.
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Today, I'm honored to bring you a conversation with someone whose grit,
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resilience, and unshakable spirit absolutely floored me, Amy Palmiero Winters.
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Amy is a world-class ultra-runner, Ironman, Ultraman, and a groundbreaking adaptive athlete.
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After losing her left leg below the knee in a motorcycle accident,
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she didn't just return to sport. She rewrote what's possible.
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She's the first amputee to finish some of the world's most punishing endurance
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events, including Badwater 135 and the Ultraman World Championships.
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And in 2019, she became the first female amputee to complete the Marathon de
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Sables, a grueling ultramarathon through the Sahara Desert.
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She has shattered records and expectations, not just as an athlete,
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but as a mother, mentor, and founder of the One Step Ahead Foundation.
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Even though Amy's discipline is running, her mindset, toughness,
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and approach to challenge are something every endurance athlete can learn from,
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cyclists absolutely included.
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Amy, welcome to Zone to Speak. Thank you so much for having me.
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It's a pleasure. So we were just chatting a little bit before starting recording,
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and you were saying that your last race was at UTMB,
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the Ultra Trail Marathon in Mont Blanc, Chamonix, and you collapsed there. What's happening?
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UTMB, Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, has been a five-year journey.
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And I don't know if, you know, a lot of you know about UTMB and the preface
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to it and how you enter it.
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But over the years, it's evolved just like any other race has evolved.
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To be considered for UTMB years ago, you actually had to have a running,
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like a resume, a specific classification.
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Okay then to obtain that one
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of the races was marathon to
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sob wow going completing marathon
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to sob gave me the running index that
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i needed to gain an entry into utmb i ran marathon to sob finished it finished
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the entire race the next year i went back and that's where some of you if you
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go to Netflix and you look up Human Playground, episode one is me.
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That is my second attempt at, I wouldn't say it's not my second attempt.
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In 2019, I successfully completed Marathon to Salt.
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I went back again with Netflix and completely failed.
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So you'll see that journey in Netflix's Human Playground, episode one.
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In doing that, I ended up going to Cocodona.
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Cocodona was a 255-mile race across the mountains of Arizona.
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Unbelievable terrain, just grueling, hot, cold, windy.
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You name it, everything was thrown at us. But all of that was to get to UTMB,
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to get the zones that I needed to be to UTMB.
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I got into UTMB in 2023. Honestly, did not know what to expect.
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I'm a mother. I work anywhere from 70 to 90 hours a week, full-time, obviously.
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So my preparation and my training wasn't where it should have been.
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And it's not because I didn't do these races. It's because UTMB is unlike any other race in the world.
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I went out and ran Western States. I ran Badwater 135.
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UTMB is completely different. You can run 100 miles on one course,
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but get there, and it's as if you haven't even ran a mile in your life. Is that the altitude?
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I think it's a combination of, yes, I'm sure it's the altitude.
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I really don't let that affect me as much, but I think it's more so the terrain
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and the level of technical climbing and descent that really affected me.
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I got to the starting line by mile 72.
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I actually timed out of the race. So I missed the time cut off and,
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you know, jumped in the van,
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went back to the Airbnb and blew back to the United States with a more focused
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determination of getting back to that finish line in 2024.
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Fast forward, my thought process. And like many of us, and this is something
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that all of us can learn, when you're in a race, you try and take those mental facts.
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You're writing in that notebook of what you could do different,
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what you could do better, how you could prepare.
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Once you cross that finish line, I know we're all tired, but write all that stuff down.
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Fast forward, I was focusing on getting back to UTMB.
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And my thought was my training. I need to get on more mountains.
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I need to get on more hills.
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I ended up flying to Spain and did the UTMB Tenerife, went and did Speed Goat.
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That's hilly. Very hilly.
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Did Speed Goat in Utah, then turned around and did Broken Arrow.
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All of those races back to back were just punishing. And what I had done is
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I forgot the fact that I was missing my leg.
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So I forgot the simple rules that I had put in place in all my prior years of
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running was to not beat yourself up so you can't run the race.
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Fast forward, 2024, I got to the starting line of UTMB.
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And, you know, I felt something was wrong. I didn't know what,
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but I was so desperate to get to that finish line.
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Five days earlier, I had a surgical procedure where they surgically cut out
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a part of my residual limb, sewed it back together, stitched it up.
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The day before the race, I took the stitches out, super glued it,
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put a piece of duct tape over it, and there we were at the starting line. Wow.
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As I was running, it was almost surreal. I couldn't pick up my legs.
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I was having trouble. I was tripping.
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And when it came to just the slightest inclines, and we were just going through
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town, I was unable to catch my breath and basically simply just run.
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10 miles in I collapsed and
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my body started internally bleeding and
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we're all athletes so I was bleeding from both
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ends was taken to the medic how scary had an IV was vomiting internally bleeding
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came home and you know life gets in the way I knew something was wrong I didn't
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know what but I had to go back to work.
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I had to continue to be a mother and just live my life.
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A friend of mine called me New Year's Day.
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He said, Amy, you're in denial. If you do not get to me tomorrow, you'll be paralyzed.
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What had happened in France was my spine collapsed on itself and it crushed both my sciatic nerves.
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Hence why I couldn't pick up my feet and the internal bleeding.
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Hopped on a plane, blew to West Palm, had a invasive, very invasive surgery
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where they put four screws, two lateral rods, took some of my iliac crest from my hips,
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lined the rods with that just to kind of make it more structurally sound and
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put basically what would be a spacer in to try and lift my spine back up off of itself. Wow. Today.
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Well, you're looking great and strong. Are you feeling good?
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And I mean, you look very mobile.
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I won't lie. For a little while there, I was very scared. I thought that what I had done,
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had put an end to my athletic career. I want to say it was just like magic.
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All of a sudden, one day I woke up and felt okay.
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And it's learning to rebuild myself. It's learning to be smarter.
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And it's not necessarily about picking up the heaviest weights or trying to
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carry the heaviest load.
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It's about being smarter to have a future in ultra racing and in athletics in general.
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Absolutely. Yeah. Do you think those three races almost back to back,
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it's what maybe did it, did this injury?
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I think it's accumulation of that, but also the fact that you are missing your
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leg, you lose a lot of absorption, shock absorption in what your natural leg would provide you with.
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So when the prosthetic limb hits the ground, the shock, the rotational stress,
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the force then goes up into your limb and into your spine.
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That compiled with just probably genetics created the osteoporosis that decreased
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the strength in my spine and allowed it to drop.
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I think it's a accumulation of everything.
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Yeah. Well, I'm glad to see you healthy, back
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on your feet and hopefully you like
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you said you know pick up the weights again so to
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speak and get back on your career and your you know your hobby and and in your
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passion well the focus is UTMB 2025 crossing that finish line wow we are well
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we're we're almost there so So I've started,
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I've been running, I've been strength training,
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I've been doing a lot of core, core and back strength training.
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I found over the years that that is my key.
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One of my keys to success is being strong everywhere else.
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Yeah, makes sense. It's focusing on getting back to that starting line at UTMB
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and utilizing what happened in 23 and 24 to cross that finish line.
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Yeah, get all those learnings and make it to the finish line this year.
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Can I take a step back to your early days before the accident and ask you what
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role did sport play in your life?
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Was it as big as this is now? Before my accident, sports was everything.
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Growing up, sports gave me an identity. It gave me the confidence that I didn't have as a young girl.
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It, it gave me friendship.
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It gave me strength all around, just growing up as a young girl, two brothers.
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You know, we lived in the middle of nowhere. We didn't have anything.
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But it gave me everything that I need. Sports essentially gave me everything
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that I needed to become a strong young adult. Beautifully said.
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Yeah, I think sports, it's so good in anyone's life. It just gives us so much
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confidence, purpose, besides all the side effects.
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Sports creates discipline. Yeah, that too.
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It takes a person, whether you're a child, an adult, at any age,
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it allows you to focus on a goal.
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It causes you to be disciplined. It causes you to follow a routine.
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And in doing that focusing on that goal up ahead and following the routine It
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takes away from all the other negative things in life.
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It allows you That one thing when you have a bad day to focus on it gives you purpose.
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It gives you self-worth and I mean if you ask anybody,
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How how they feel training for a race and then when the race is over or when
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the event is over it's just you go into this state of depression almost yeah
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because you have something to focus on.
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And focusing on that it makes you happy it makes you feel good about yourself,
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you know and and to be honest with you when i'm training for a race it's like
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having a friend around all the time somebody to talk to somebody to be with
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somebody to share the highs and lows So that's what sports is like.
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And anybody can attain that at any age in life.
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100%. I started later in life. And I think even if you start early and you don't
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continue pursuing sports seriously, competitively, you can also apply all those
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lessons into life of setting goals, working towards your goals,
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working towards your goals.
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It's really a good positive. My best friend had said to me, she would,
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she hated running. She was basketball and volleyball.
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She would get in her truck, drive beside me in the middle of the night when
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I was running at all hours, you know, all different miles and distances.
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She was like, this is so mind boringly numb. She's like, I'd rather bang my
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head off the wall than go run with you.
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She ran her first race and she was hooked. That was it. I can't believe I never tried this before.
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How cool. And it applies the same whether you're cycling or whether you're running.
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In my training, I cycled for the Ultraman, for the Ironman, for the Half Ironman, La Ruta.
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I went and did La Ruta, one of the hardest mountain bike races in the world.
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And dirt bike racing and BMX bike
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racing so all of the same principles apply you set a goal and sometimes you
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have to start out small and then you just keep building off of that and it creates
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a healthy lifestyle yeah yeah
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it is a lifestyle and you have to build that and make that for yourself,
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and and yeah the journey of the training and and you know something when you
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have a training body It really brings so much joy,
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and you are healthy also because of it, and it just makes life grand.
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And after your accident, you didn't just return to running.
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I think you were even stronger than ever. What was the turning point in your
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recovery that made you believe that this comeback was possible?
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Right before I had lost my leg, a friend of mine, he said to me,
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hey, Amy, I bet you can't run a marathon.
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And I looked at him, you know, what's a marathon?
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Said 26.2 miles. And I'm like, oh, I can run that. I'm like,
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when? And he's like, next week.
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And so I said, okay. He was in his 40s. I was 18 years old at the time. And I said, absolutely.
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We went out, we ran the marathon. I qualified for Boston.
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Wow. Boston Marathon, something that so many of us dream of doing.
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And then a year later I lost my leg. So I think I had just started to really
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find out who I was and maybe what my potentials were.
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Laying in that hospital, I realized how much of my life and how much of the
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natural gift that I had that I took for granted.
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I was an amazing athlete and took everything I had for granted.
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I woke up that day with a second chance, a second chance to go and do it all over again.
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Yeah, sure, it was going to be with
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a prosthetic leg, but I still had the opportunity to do it all over again.
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I will say there were highs and lows simply because my focus in life up until
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that point had been fitness. It had been physically focused.
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My goal was to work towards getting in the army, to be a soldier,
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to be in the military police.
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Then my grand scheme of things was to get out of the army when it was time after
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my contract had been up and apply to the state police.
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And I thought to myself, I'll have five points for being in the military and
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then five points for being a female.
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And I'll for sure become a part of the state police department.
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And when I lost my leg, I lost all of those dreams.
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You know, dreams of growing up as a child and being in the Olympics.
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So I definitely had to start all over. I had to redefine who I was.
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But running and sports was also a huge part of that. And I had to figure out
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how to fit those back into my life.
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And all I did was just keep trying. I kept trying. I kept trying to run.
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But not knowing much about prosthetics, I didn't realize that you could go someplace else.
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That if it wasn't working, maybe you should look somewhere else.
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I didn't understand any of that. And when you lose a limb or when you go through
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a tragedy like that, there are no handbooks.
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There wasn't anybody next to me to tell me what to do or look at it as if you're buying a car.
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If you're buying a car, you do your research.
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You search different facilities. You search different makes and models.
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And you definitely usually don't go to the first salesperson.
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So a prosthetic leg at times is more than a car So why would you get your prosthetic
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leg At the first person that handed you a business card But you don't know that
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And I went through the process,
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Of basically what was told to me.
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And I remember going out there and I remember trying to run and I just couldn't do it.
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I would run three miles and go home and not be able to walk for two or three days. My limb was so bad.
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But I kept pushing. I kept trying. And I think one of the things that was important
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is I never settled for, okay, this is it.
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I knew that something had to be better out there. There was no space to feel sorry for yourself.
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It's an amazing, strong mindset.
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Yes. And at the time, I also wondered, too, am I going to get married?
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Is someone going to want someone like me who's now defective?
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You know, I always laugh at the girls here. I'm the director at a Step Ahead
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Prosthetics, and we have a morning meeting all the time, every morning.
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We have a 7.30 a.m. morning meeting.
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And somebody will have this special pen and they'll be playing with their pen
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and all of a sudden they'll break the little side piece off of it and they're like, oh great,
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now this pen's ruined and they'll throw it at me and I'm like, no, I was that pen.
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That was essentially, to me in my life, in my thought process,
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I was that pen and I was broken and how was anybody gonna ever want me being so broken?
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So not only do you lose your limb but you have to redefine who you are and find
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that confidence again to get out there and meet someone and then start a life with them.
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I remember meeting my husband.
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It was a fantastic story. I'll never forget it. Neither will my kids.
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I was drag racing on my motorcycle, was racing up to a corner,
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stopped, and was surrounded by three cop cars.
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And my soon-to-be husband was across the street at an intersection watching
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it all happen. He's like, wow, I got to meet that girl.
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Wow, that's bollocks.
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You know, and went on, had children.
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And I remember thinking when I was pregnant with my first child,
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thought to myself, oh my gosh, are they going to be born without their leg? Oh, no.
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You know, I realized in my head, Amy, come on. Yours was an accident.
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This is not something they can do. Yeah.
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So you not only are you redefining yourself, but you're redefining the rest
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of your life and your dreams on becoming married and having a family and then being successful.
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Yeah, it's a lot to go through. It's a lot to go through. And I see you smiling.
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And I mean, you have done so much with your life.
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Like I said, in the intro, you know, a mom, you know, founder of One Step Ahead
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Foundation. and you have taken on events like Bad Water, Marathon de Sables.
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Where does this drive come from? What keeps you going when most people wouldn't?
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A lot of people just break.
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What keeps me going? Prime example, I was out on the trails Memorial Day.
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I was testing out a pair of shoes.
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As I was running up this trail on these stairs, a young lady was coming down and she stopped.
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She looked directly at me. So of course I stopped.
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She said, I did not want to come to the trail today.
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She's like, it was all that I could do just to get out of bed and be here.
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You made it all worth it. She's like, just seeing you made today worth it,
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made the struggle worth it.
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She's like, how do you do it? How are you smiling? how do you look the way that
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you do when you look the way that you do? And I said to her.
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I'll tell you this, when we're faced with adversity or we're faced with a choice,
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you can let it beat you and you can stay down or you can use it and step upon it.
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And I told her the next time you don't want to get up and come out,
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use that as the foundation that you stand upon.
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And every day when you step upon that, knowing how good getting out here makes
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you feel to walk, no matter what's going on in life, every day that you step
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upon that foundation of making a choice of choosing you,
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I said, because right now you chose you this morning.
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So when you choose you and you stand upon that foundation, you get stronger every day.
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Every second you make that decision to choose you, you get stronger.
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And those things that are over here, they start to get smaller and weaker,
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and then soon they'll fade away.
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So why do I always go out there and do these things?
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What keeps me going? It's that kind of thing that keeps me going.
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My daughter is in the army my son's in the navy and they both went through boot
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camp and my daughter said there were times when it was so hard and I just wanted
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to quit but I knew that you could do it and that you did it and if I can do
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it she's like if you can do it I can do it too,
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and and that's another thing too I am
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the example for my kids as parents
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as any type of You know someone who's close to a child you are their role model
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and you have the ability to change their lives and Kind of dictate How they
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react to challenges So for me getting out there and doing these things. Yes, they're very hard.
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But it allows me to make a difference in the world and it allows me to change people's lives.
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I'm not saying you have to go run a marathon or run for five days through the woods.
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No, that young girl that I met on the trail, it's about feeling better about
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herself and quieting the negative thoughts or the negative interactions that she has in her life.
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So by our interaction, if that allows her to be stronger, when she looks in
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the mirror, then it's worth it.
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Wow. Beautiful. Beautifully said. And the beginning, I love it.
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I want to take that part and have it as my morning affirmation.
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It's really, really good. It's true. And absolutely, I think being a parent
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should push us to be all, you know, you have to be the example all the time.
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Which also brings me to my next question about breaking barriers.
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You have broken so many barriers for adaptive athletes.
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In your opinion, what needs to change in the endurance world to make sport more inclusive?
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What needs to change in the endurance world? To be honest with you,
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it has evolved unbelievably in the last 10 years.
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Where sports is at compared to where it was for adaptive athletes,
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it's immeasurable, the differences.
29:15
That's good to hear. It has changed so much to be inclusive of athletes with
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disabilities, athletes with, you know, whether it be physical, mental issues.
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Everything has opened up and essentially welcomed all of us.
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I'm doing, this weekend on Sunday, I'm doing a Hydrox.
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Oh, yeah, I know Hydrox. You have to do a run and then strength in between, right?
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For a certain time period. And I think the weights are the same for everyone.
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Yes. Yeah. I'm doing the Hydrox competition.
29:59
Wow. They have a completely separate division for adaptive athletes.
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So you can choose to go in as an able-bodied athlete, an elite athlete, or an adaptive athlete.
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And to me, it seems like all of the fitness platforms are doing that.
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CrossFit did it. Ultra Running's doing it. That's good. Yes.
30:23
Wonderful. How many times I've been connected with just to help the board members
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of a race make it more inclusive.
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So they really have the ultra running community, the ultra world,
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whether it be ultra cycling, ultra endurance, all of it has really done its
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part to making all the sports accessible for everybody.
30:49
Wonderful. So happy to hear that.
30:52
Once you said, when I run, I feel unstoppable.
30:57
What does movement mean to you? Not just physically, but also emotionally.
31:01
Because when I hear this, I feel emotion.
31:05
Movement to me is being alive.
31:11
There's no other word to describe it for me other than just being alive and
31:16
being in that moment as well as anytime I have movement, whether,
31:22
you know, a lot of times it's outdoors.
31:24
So you have that sense of being alive in nature, which is...
31:30
You know electrifying on its own yeah yeah
31:34
it's it's my quote-unquote it's my church not a
31:37
religious person so that's that's my
31:40
religion just being out there in nature
31:43
yeah and it helps you work things out when you're
31:47
out there and you have movement whether
31:50
whether you're stretching whether you're walking
31:53
whatever it is it allows you to
31:57
process one of the girls when we were doing our workouts she had she had a cold
32:04
and she had a cold and my my number one thing if I'm sick or I have a cold is
32:12
to go do a workout because being out there being active,
32:17
allows me also to feel better and to heal yeah I couldn't agree more I think
32:23
if you're starting to come up with something and you go out there and even have
32:28
a good sweat, you immediately feel better most of the time.
32:31
And I also find that funny because sometimes you are not even thinking about
32:36
something, but somehow you process that and it just become clearer in your head.
32:44
It's really magical.
32:47
In talking about training and performance, how has your training evolved over
32:52
the years, especially balancing with your daily life.
32:55
You have a very busy daily life as a mom and as a founder.
33:00
You said in the beginning, you work crazy hours a week. How do you balance all?
33:06
Balancing training is very, it has always been very difficult.
33:10
When my children were younger, I did a lot of my training at night when they were sleeping.
33:15
Now I have learned to maximize my training.
33:21
For instance, when I went and did Badwater, when I was doing my training for
33:27
Badwater, my focus was putting in the miles, putting in the miles,
33:31
just monotonous, just getting in the miles.
33:34
I was running all hours of the night for 10 to 12-hour clips.
33:40
Went to Badwater, finished in
33:42
41 hours the next year pre going into bad water i don't know why it hit me i
33:52
wish it wouldn't hit me sooner but and i think it had to do with somebody talking
33:56
about the marathon and how long it took your body to recover from a marathon yeah.
34:02
And it was just like a light bulb going off. And it was, why would you run a
34:06
marathon before you run a marathon?
34:10
Yeah. So in doing Badwater, it was stay away from the long runs.
34:16
And this is just what worked for me. This is not necessarily what's going to work for someone else.
34:20
I ended up focusing on a functional fitness twice a day with weights strength
34:28
training cardio like intense cardio a lot of core and back strength twice a
34:36
day and then what I did twice a week was I did sprints. I was on the track.
34:41
I had to do four, six, and 800 meter repeats, depending on what various day it was.
34:48
But those repeats had to be at a certain time with a specific recovery time,
34:54
and then right back into the next 400, and you had to hit the window.
34:58
So you had a goal time, and you had to always be within that time,
35:03
each 400 or each 600, and you also had a specific recovery time.
35:09
So it was training your body to meet those high standards with minimal recovery.
35:16
That's what I did up until probably two weeks before the race.
35:20
I think I ran maybe a 17 mile run just to kind of fine tune my prosthetic.
35:27
We ran Badwater and I finished and dropped my time by five hours.
35:31
Wow, that's impressive.
35:35
And learning that made training a lot easier. Right now, you know, I don't have the time.
35:43
I wish that I could be a professional athlete and just compete and focus on
35:48
my fitness and focus on strength training and go to these races and show up
35:53
in top performance. But I can't.
35:55
I work a lot. I have a family.
35:58
So my focus now is I do what's called a military fitness.
36:04
What is that? It is brutal.
36:08
It is brutal. There is no breaks. There's no stopping, no slowing.
36:14
And it is a constant in your face.
36:18
You're not going hard enough. You need to go harder. Wow. For how long?
36:23
It's, you know, the hour, the training could only be for an hour. Okay.
36:28
Still a lot if you can't stop. Yes. And I've noticed that that has allowed me
36:34
to continue in my athletics without beating up my body too much and without
36:41
taking time away from my family.
36:43
So it's nice I can I can actually go into a workout workout at an intensity
36:49
level that's very high for an hour and be done but then still have the confidence
36:55
to go cycle 100 miles or run 100 miles.
36:59
Now I will say for UTMB that's completely different I have to do a lot more
37:04
technical training as far as with prosthetics.
37:08
Yeah, yeah, because of the ups and downs and the rocks, and I think we even
37:11
pass the snow passes, or?
37:14
Yes, snow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then another thing, too, is in these races,
37:19
you're carrying a lot on your back, and that makes a big difference, too.
37:23
And I've understood that I think I need to change how I carry things.
37:27
I think I need, as a female, instead of putting it on my back and wearing down
37:32
my spine, I need to put some on my hips.
37:36
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I never did ultra running, but yeah,
37:40
some of the backpacks also have, I don't know if that works,
37:43
but that they clip on your hips.
37:45
So some of the weight is transferred more to your hips. Yeah.
37:49
Yeah, I did do alpine climbs. So Chamonix was my second home for quite a few
37:55
years. It's a beautiful place. Yeah.
37:58
Oh, my goodness. It's magical. Yeah. It's really enchanted.
38:01
It's absolutely magical just being there. And you just, you feel like you're a part of a family.
38:09
Yeah. Yeah. Way to say it. You feel like you're home.
38:14
Yeah. I was always, I mean, jealous is not the word, but I felt FOMO,
38:19
even though I know I couldn't, you know, it wasn't my sport,
38:21
but I used to be every summer in Chamonix and then you have the UTMB.
38:25
The town would be so crowded, but it was such a happy, happy moment, stage of the season.
38:33
Yes. Switching gears on your impact and legacy, tell me a little bit about One
38:38
Step Ahead Foundation. What inspired you to create it and what impact are you most proud of?
38:45
The One Step Ahead Foundation came about from being in the presence of other amputees.
38:54
Where I lived in Pennsylvania, I had never met another amputee.
38:59
When I said that I knew my life couldn't get, I knew my life had to be better.
39:04
I knew that there had to be better out there. It led me to Long Island,
39:10
New York, where I found, in my mind, the best prosthetic facility.
39:14
In coming here, I met so many children who suffered from limb loss,
39:20
and all of them died away from sports because of their limb loss,
39:26
because of their prosthetics.
39:28
And I remember saying to myself, I don't know who I would be without sports.
39:34
So that was the spark that basically started the foundation for me.
39:40
It is about giving children and adults experiences and adventures to help them
39:48
create that self-confidence within them that then carries them through the rest of life.
39:55
There's you know we would go rock
39:58
climbing ice climbing and no you know rock climbing or they weren't going to
40:03
go and be a professional rock climber ice climber however they were put in a
40:08
situation where they were on the side of a rock or the side of you know ice
40:13
and they were clinging to it.
40:15
And it made them work so hard.
40:19
They were scared, doubtful, and had to find some place and had to dig within
40:26
them a place that they had never experienced before. They had to dig deep.
40:31
And it was because of that experience, because of digging deep,
40:36
That when they were placed back into their normal lives, the stuff that was
40:42
around them, the way that people looked at them,
40:45
maybe the areas of where they were not so confident started to wash away.
40:54
They blossomed. She was on the side of the ice and she was crying.
41:01
And I was beside her trying to help her. And she's like, I ate you.
41:06
I hate this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be here.
41:09
And I was like, you know what, Sophia, give me one more, figure it out.
41:15
Give me one more, hit that ice, pull yourself up one more, give me one more step.
41:19
And she, you know, pulled herself up on the ice and I'm like,
41:23
okay. I'm like, you're going to give me one more. We're going to get five more
41:26
steps before you get down.
41:28
And she did. And it took us an hour, but she got down and you could see that
41:34
it changed her. It made her stronger, more self-confident, more resilient.
41:41
So when she was at school and somebody looked at her different because she wore
41:46
a prosthetic or because she had a limp, it didn't faze her.
41:50
When you are put in a situation of pain and struggle, it allows you to evolve as a person.
41:59
If you are never pushed outside of that comfort zone, you're never going to change.
42:04
You're never going to understand who you truly can be. So the foundation for
42:07
me was to give them activities that allowed them to, you know, it made them struggle.
42:15
It, you know. But he made them overcome. Exactly.
42:19
And I remember one of the little guys, he's just such an amazing young man now.
42:26
When I met him, he would never wear shorts and people would stare at him and it would make him cry.
42:33
He went to every race with me, every triathlon, every running race,
42:39
you name it, rock climbing, ice climbing, camping, skiing. We did everything.
42:44
We were sitting in central park one day and i looked over
42:47
at him and he was sitting in shorts and somebody
42:51
was walking by and they looked at him and
42:54
they said i saw you on the news this morning and
42:57
he was like yeah he's like it was me it allowed
43:02
everything just to come full circle you know
43:05
was he gonna go off to be a
43:08
professional triathlete no he didn't want to he wanted
43:11
to be the best at a curator in a
43:14
museum and he is an amazingly
43:17
brilliant talented young man and
43:20
achieved all of his goals and dreams
43:23
but watching the transition that
43:27
he made from being uncomfortable when
43:30
people stared at him to being confident is what it was all about it's about
43:36
giving experiences and adventures to allow you to gain that self-confidence
43:41
within to then go out in the rest of your life and just be more confident,
43:48
be more self-confident.
43:51
What an amazing work and how many lives you are touching. Incredible. Incredible.
43:58
You are truly a force of so much light. Amazing.
44:04
I just have some rapid fire round questions for you.
44:08
Longest run you have ever done? Longest run I've ever done? 255 miles.
44:15
Mind-blowing. Favorite post-race indulgence?
44:21
Goodness. It has to be ramen soup. Ramen, the chicken, ramen chicken soup. Has to be the best.
44:28
And mountains or ocean? Mountains.
44:31
Solo training or group vibes?
44:35
I love group vibes, but never get to run anybody, so it's solo training.
44:42
Most underrated piece of gear you can't live without? Toilet paper.
44:50
I didn't expect that one Boilet paper I carry it on every run,
44:56
That is my go-to kit Important indeed Last but not least One word to describe
45:04
how you feel when you are racing Alive.
45:09
Beautiful. Amy, thank you so much
45:13
for inspiring us all, for being on the podcast and continue your work.
45:20
I'm really, really going to be cheering for you for this year at UTMB.
45:24
Thank you so much. And thank you so much for having me.
45:28
I know that as we spoke in the beginning, I'm not doing cycling races,
45:32
but we're all the same because we're out here and we just want that adventure.
45:38
We want to capture something greater than what we know.
45:44
We want to go beyond who we think we are.
45:48
And that's the most important thing is just to believe in yourself.
45:53
Trust in yourself and I'm
45:57
prime example there are times when you set
45:59
your goals and you won't reach it but
46:03
you have to continue to get back up and to keep fighting learn from it keep
46:09
fighting and get yourself one day to cross that finish line or to obtain that
46:15
goal another thing is is there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
46:20
So no matter what it is, keep your head up, keep taking those steps forward,
46:25
keep pedaling forward because there's always light at the end of the tunnel and struggle is good.
46:31
That's true. Amazing words to live by. Thank you. You're welcome.
46:39
And that's all for today's episode. I want to thank the listeners for tuning in.
46:44
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46:48
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