Latest / Mind Over Mountain / Speed, Risk, and Self-Trust with Katherine Legge

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Speed, Risk, and Self-Trust with Katherine Legge · Mind Over Mountain

0:11
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to Mind over Mountain with me Cheryl Strade.
0:15
Speaker 1: Today my guest is the amazing Catherine leg who makes
0:19
Speaker 1: a living at speeds that most of us truly cannot imagine.
0:23
Speaker 1: She's a race car driver in racing series across many
0:27
Speaker 1: platforms IndyCar, IMSA, NASCAR, Indianapolis, five hundred, Formula E. She
0:34
Speaker 1: also is the host of Throttle Therapy, another podcast here
0:38
Speaker 1: on the iHeart Women's Sports Network. It's a wonderful podcast,
0:41
Speaker 1: so give it a listen. In our conversation today, we
0:44
Speaker 1: talk about fear and fearlessness, about learning how to trust
0:48
Speaker 1: your instincts, about hitting walls both metaphorically and literally, and
0:53
Speaker 1: how to keep going even when it hurts. We also
0:57
Speaker 1: answer a Dear Sugar letter from a woman who wants
0:59
Speaker 1: to know how to be brave. Let's listen to my
1:03
Speaker 1: conversation with Catherine. Catherine Legg, Welcome to Mine over Mountain.
1:07
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
1:10
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled to have you here, and I think
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm specifically really interested in talking to you because the
1:17
Speaker 1: sport you're engaged in, racing cars, is so outside of
1:21
Speaker 1: my experience. You have driven all kinds of different cars
1:25
Speaker 1: and different kinds of races, from IndyCar to IMSA to
1:28
Speaker 1: Formula E to Indianapolis five hundred. But the thing they
1:32
Speaker 1: always have in common is they go really really fast,
1:36
Speaker 1: like two hundred miles an hour plus fast. What's the
1:40
Speaker 1: fastest you've driven, and tell us about that experience.
1:44
Speaker 3: We'll say yesterday, I was on seventy five and I
1:46
Speaker 3: was doing a solid seventy two miles an hour. I am.
1:51
Speaker 2: I think the fastest that we actually drive over.
1:53
Speaker 3: The the fast array of cause that I've driven, as
1:58
Speaker 3: you mentioned, is probably Indy five hundred, and that would
2:02
Speaker 3: be from a average.
2:05
Speaker 2: Speed and a top speed.
2:07
Speaker 3: Top speed is going to be like two hundred and
2:09
Speaker 3: forty miles now in qualifying, and the average speed's well
2:12
Speaker 3: over two hundred, So it seems fast to the average person.
2:19
Speaker 2: But we're not doing that on normal roads, right.
2:22
Speaker 3: We have walls that are very close to you, which
2:25
Speaker 3: actually makes it feel safer because you have less far
2:28
Speaker 3: to go to hit them.
2:29
Speaker 2: And I know that sounds incredibly.
2:31
Speaker 3: Wild to stay out loud, but it's almost as if
2:36
Speaker 3: you're in a tunnel and everybody else is going at
2:39
Speaker 3: relatively the same speeds within a couple of miles an
2:42
Speaker 3: hour of each other, hopefully, so the closing speeds aren't
2:45
Speaker 3: that great, and everybody's going in the same direction, so
2:49
Speaker 3: it's not like you're going doing that on the highway. Also,
2:52
Speaker 3: you've kind of trained your whole career to work your
2:56
Speaker 3: way up through the ranks where you start off in
2:58
Speaker 3: a car that will do eighty miles now, and then
3:00
Speaker 3: you'll do one hundred and twenty, and so you'll kind
3:02
Speaker 3: of get that. The Actually the time that you notice
3:10
Speaker 3: that it is that fast is when you have to
3:11
Speaker 3: break and you have to slow down for pit lane.
3:13
Speaker 3: And you do pit lane at like, depending on where
3:15
Speaker 3: and how, it's sixty miles an hour or forty miles
3:17
Speaker 3: an hour. And when you're slowing down coming off the banking,
3:21
Speaker 3: you transition from like a big degree of banking to flat,
3:26
Speaker 3: which unsettles the car, and then you're you're asking it
3:29
Speaker 3: to slow down as hard as possible. So imagine slamming
3:32
Speaker 3: your brakes on in your road car and then imagine
3:36
Speaker 3: that force being about ten times what the you know
3:39
Speaker 3: you've panicked, you've hit the brakes and you're holding the
3:41
Speaker 3: steering wheel. It's about you slow down about ten times
3:44
Speaker 3: faster than that, so that is by far. I think
3:48
Speaker 3: even the acceleration you can get your head around, but
3:51
Speaker 3: the braking is what when people go on passenger rides
3:54
Speaker 3: is what freaks them out the most.
3:55
Speaker 1: I think I understand you started when you were like
3:59
Speaker 1: eight or nine, you first discovered the sport, Dan, Can
4:02
Speaker 1: you tell us about that?
4:03
Speaker 4: How did you come to it?
4:05
Speaker 3: I found gokut racing, and I say I found it
4:07
Speaker 3: my parents. My family really went on holiday vacation to Spain.
4:14
Speaker 1: And my dad and translate, you're like, British American holiday
4:20
Speaker 1: means vacation.
4:22
Speaker 3: Well, holiday over here reads like Christmas and Thanksgiving.
4:26
Speaker 2: And things like that.
4:27
Speaker 3: But this was just a basic vaka and we drove
4:31
Speaker 3: out to Spain actually, and that part I don't remember.
4:35
Speaker 3: Weirdly and get really badly cassick, which is another very
4:38
Speaker 3: strange thing. But anyway, I digress. I know I was
4:43
Speaker 3: not tall enough at nine or eight then to have
4:47
Speaker 3: a girl on the go karts, and my dad and
4:48
Speaker 3: my uncle did and I was blown away, fascinated or
4:53
Speaker 3: inspired by these go karts. And we got back to
4:59
Speaker 3: England after the baker and my dad saw anever in
5:04
Speaker 3: the local paper for our local go cut track, and.
5:08
Speaker 2: So we went along.
5:10
Speaker 3: My dad actually got a go cart, and I nagged
5:11
Speaker 3: him so much that for Christmas that year he bought
5:16
Speaker 3: me a little kid's cart and we did a couple
5:19
Speaker 3: of races together, and then he quit because he thought
5:23
Speaker 3: if he gets hurt.
5:24
Speaker 2: When I'm there, or if I got her.
5:26
Speaker 3: And I loved it so much he got just as
5:29
Speaker 3: much enjoyment out of watching me do it, and so
5:34
Speaker 3: literally every weekend from then on, my dad would pull
5:37
Speaker 3: me out of school on a Friday and we'd go
5:38
Speaker 3: car racing. My dad and I were very very clear,
5:42
Speaker 3: are very very close and bonded over it, and it
5:45
Speaker 3: was something that we shared this passion for strangely out
5:48
Speaker 3: of nowhere, I mean so much so that he gave
5:50
Speaker 3: up smoking to be able to pay for my go
5:52
Speaker 3: cut tires because we weren't wealthy.
5:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so sweet.
5:58
Speaker 3: My dad was very much much of the mindset like,
6:01
Speaker 3: I don't want to push you to do this. I
6:03
Speaker 3: don't want to be baseball dad. You know the typical
6:05
Speaker 3: dads that pushed that kids.
6:07
Speaker 1: What was that experience like for you as a girl,
6:11
Speaker 1: and especially, I want to say, as a teenager, where
6:15
Speaker 1: I think it can be. Really you already feel like
6:18
Speaker 1: you know, the odd girl out, like most of us
6:21
Speaker 1: feel that way.
6:22
Speaker 4: I still do think that was I did too, but
6:25
Speaker 4: I think we all do.
6:26
Speaker 1: But what I'm asking is, I'm curious if the experience
6:30
Speaker 1: of being like one of the few girls in a
6:32
Speaker 1: very male dominated sport as a young woman, as a
6:35
Speaker 1: teenager was a competence builder or a confidence depleter. Did
6:41
Speaker 1: it make you feel more insecure and more scared and
6:44
Speaker 1: more you know, wanted to be accepted, or did you
6:48
Speaker 1: feel the opposite way and you were like, hey, I'm
6:50
Speaker 1: I'm I'm here and I'm proud of doing it, or both.
6:53
Speaker 2: Being a little bit about more depleted.
6:56
Speaker 3: I would say when I was nine, nine through eleven,
6:59
Speaker 3: h I don't really know the difference between girls and boys.
7:03
Speaker 2: You just kids right back then. I mean, I know
7:06
Speaker 2: they grow up much.
7:06
Speaker 3: Faster these days, but I didn't really notice it until
7:12
Speaker 3: the parents got involved. And then it was the little
7:15
Speaker 3: things like oh, I can't believe you got beat by
7:17
Speaker 3: a girl, you know, And it was that kind of
7:20
Speaker 3: thing that started it off. And then when you start
7:22
Speaker 3: to get hormones and you start to go into your
7:24
Speaker 3: teenage years, they're not your friends anymore because then they
7:27
Speaker 3: see you as a girl and you see them as
7:28
Speaker 3: a boy. And so teenagers were very difficult. I was
7:32
Speaker 3: very shy as a kid, so I still am. I
7:36
Speaker 3: still find it uncomfortable sometimes going up to strangers and
7:40
Speaker 3: people that I don't know and sparking conversations and asking
7:44
Speaker 3: for things. And so, you know, my dad would tell
7:46
Speaker 3: me to go to the vendor that sold parts, to
7:50
Speaker 3: go CUSSI to go and ask for an eighty six
7:52
Speaker 3: sprocket because we needed it. And I'd be terrified to
7:55
Speaker 3: go and ask for this sprocket and hand over the money.
7:59
Speaker 3: But yeah, I always, to this day, many many years later,
8:04
Speaker 3: still very much feel like the old one out. And
8:08
Speaker 3: I can only describe that to people who haven't been
8:11
Speaker 3: in that environment, that it's like going to a gym,
8:15
Speaker 3: or it's like going to the gym ten years ago
8:16
Speaker 3: before it became popular for women too, and seeing all
8:19
Speaker 3: these big burly guys grunting and you doing a workout,
8:23
Speaker 3: feeling like they're whispering at you behind your back and
8:26
Speaker 3: they're making fun and you feel very very self conscious.
8:29
Speaker 3: And so even now, it happened when I did NASCAR.
8:33
Speaker 3: Last year, my first row into the NASCAR world, I
8:36
Speaker 3: very much felt like I stood out like a sore thumb,
8:39
Speaker 3: even though for the majority of my career, I think
8:42
Speaker 3: it's been very hard for me to find a balance
8:45
Speaker 3: between being true to myself and authentic and feminine, but
8:52
Speaker 3: also just trying to be one of the guys and
8:56
Speaker 3: do what they do and be respected for that, and
8:59
Speaker 3: not play on the fact that I'm a woman, but
9:01
Speaker 3: acknowledge the fact that I'm a woman. And so it
9:04
Speaker 3: definitely lends itself to this whole other range of variables
9:08
Speaker 3: and worries and concerns and all the things that you
9:12
Speaker 3: know you don't have as a guy. And also when
9:15
Speaker 3: you are spending your weekends with them and you're thinking
9:19
Speaker 3: about racing twenty four seven, like, I hadn't ever worked
9:24
Speaker 3: with a woman like as in a work environment until
9:28
Speaker 3: last year. Really, I mean, we have women in PR
9:31
Speaker 3: but there really weren't that many. I had one woman
9:34
Speaker 3: engineer once, she was awesome, but there really.
9:38
Speaker 2: Aren't that many women in racing.
9:39
Speaker 3: So I find myself, and I was having this discussion
9:43
Speaker 3: with a very dear friend of mine the other day,
9:44
Speaker 3: find myself acting like a man sometimes and I don't necessarily.
9:49
Speaker 2: Want to because.
9:53
Speaker 3: Well, so I think I likened this on the podcast
9:58
Speaker 3: that you did with me and thrust with therapy. I
10:00
Speaker 3: liken this to being in the military or something, because
10:03
Speaker 3: we communicate via abuse, right, Like my love language is
10:07
Speaker 3: to make fun of you, and women typically don't like
10:10
Speaker 3: that very much, right, Right, And so.
10:15
Speaker 2: You know you'd be like, okay, dumbass.
10:18
Speaker 3: And I said that to one of my girlfriends the
10:20
Speaker 3: other day and she looked at me like I'd killed
10:22
Speaker 3: her puppy. And I was like, oh, sorry, my audience wrong,
10:26
Speaker 3: like code switch.
10:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's what you've.
10:29
Speaker 4: Had to do to survive in that male dominated world.
10:32
Speaker 4: Have you.
10:33
Speaker 1: Can you think of any times in your in your
10:36
Speaker 1: career that that you've sort of stepped forward and done
10:39
Speaker 1: the opposite where you've been, like, I reject this male
10:45
Speaker 1: dominated way of being or thinking or approaching this, and
10:48
Speaker 1: I am going to to bring really my most authentic
10:53
Speaker 1: self forward, myself as a woman race car driver.
10:58
Speaker 3: Yes, And it was a very clear, defining moment for me.
11:02
Speaker 3: And that was two years ago, and it's when I
11:05
Speaker 3: had Elf come on board as Indy five hundred primary sponsor,
11:10
Speaker 3: and I was like oh, okay, make up.
11:14
Speaker 2: You know, I'm I'm now.
11:17
Speaker 3: Crossing over that line that I never never crossed before.
11:21
Speaker 3: They wanted to have a pink car, and I was like, no, please, please,
11:24
Speaker 3: never have a pink car. That's so cliche. I'm gonna
11:26
Speaker 3: hate it. Everybody's gonna be like, oh, look at the
11:28
Speaker 3: girl in the pink car.
11:29
Speaker 1: Right, and you have to wear a lace, bustier or
11:32
Speaker 1: something right, right.
11:34
Speaker 2: And I fought it every step of the way.
11:37
Speaker 3: And I also am vehemently against segregation in racing. Right,
11:42
Speaker 3: there's a woman only series, there's women who used the
11:47
Speaker 3: fact that they're women to get along in racing. I
11:50
Speaker 3: think you should be professional and whether you're male, female, black, white,
11:56
Speaker 3: it's in different like do the job that you're there
12:00
Speaker 3: to do. And so I was always of that kind
12:04
Speaker 3: of very very black and white, no gray area lines.
12:09
Speaker 3: And then the pink car thing, and I literally was
12:15
Speaker 3: dreading it and I turned up at Indy and it
12:19
Speaker 3: was the best thing that ever happened, not to me personally,
12:22
Speaker 3: but also it changed the face of racing.
12:25
Speaker 2: Like there was this whole girl power.
12:28
Speaker 3: I hate all these cliches, but there was this there's
12:31
Speaker 3: this girl power movement where all the fans, all the women,
12:36
Speaker 3: you know, ALF did some really cool activations where they
12:39
Speaker 3: were giving away lip glass and stickers and like drive
12:44
Speaker 3: like a girl, magnets and they did a drone show,
12:46
Speaker 3: and so everybody got on board with it, and they
12:50
Speaker 3: dragged their dads and their husbands and their brothers to
12:53
Speaker 3: the LF activation.
12:55
Speaker 2: They saw the pink car.
12:56
Speaker 3: They were all wearing pink jerseys, and there was a
12:59
Speaker 3: sea of night year old Catherines of the future that
13:01
Speaker 3: were like cool, I can do anything. And so it
13:05
Speaker 3: honestly makes me want to tear up even now, because
13:08
Speaker 3: I had never entertained the idea that that would be powerful.
13:14
Speaker 3: I thought that would be negative, because I thought that
13:17
Speaker 3: being seen as a girl was negative in some way,
13:20
Speaker 3: shape or form, Right, and then you.
13:22
Speaker 1: Stepped into it, yes, and realized its power.
13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And so since then I've been me.
13:39
Speaker 1: We're talking about the sport itself being male dominated, but
13:43
Speaker 1: what about what about the fan base? You know how
13:46
Speaker 1: what has the response from from male fans been to
13:49
Speaker 1: you and fans who are women?
13:52
Speaker 4: What do they make of you?
13:53
Speaker 1: And have you had different responses based on the gender
13:58
Speaker 1: of the fan?
13:59
Speaker 3: Very much so, And actually that changed with the demographic
14:06
Speaker 3: of transitioning to NASCAR last year or so, so up
14:10
Speaker 3: until that transition, I would say it's becoming more and
14:14
Speaker 3: more a family sport.
14:16
Speaker 2: More and more women are.
14:19
Speaker 3: Partaking in it, and I would credit that to a
14:22
Speaker 3: Netflix show called Drive to Survive, where Formula one wasn't
14:25
Speaker 3: even on the American radar until this Netflix show came out,
14:29
Speaker 3: and it's like a what do they call it where
14:33
Speaker 3: they follow the drivers around docu series.
14:37
Speaker 1: Reality, reality TV thank you, kind of fictional sometimes, but yeah, right, but.
14:46
Speaker 3: The women got into it because they were like, oh,
14:49
Speaker 3: he's handsome. They don't realize that most drivers are five
14:51
Speaker 3: at all, but they they kind of started this whole
14:57
Speaker 3: interest in racing that wasn't the before. Really, all we
15:01
Speaker 3: had was NASCAR and the eighty five hundred. So that
15:05
Speaker 3: spiraled and now it's like forty three roughly percent female audience,
15:11
Speaker 3: which is bonkers because when I started twenty years ago,
15:15
Speaker 3: it was eighteen percent, right, absolutely insane, And so there
15:20
Speaker 3: is no reason why women can't love racing. They just
15:23
Speaker 3: weren't really exposed to it because it was seen as
15:25
Speaker 3: a male sport.
15:27
Speaker 4: They weren't invited to the party, right.
15:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically.
15:31
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look, there was a couple of
15:34
Speaker 3: women who came before me, and Janet Guthrie being really
15:37
Speaker 3: the first. There was no women allowed in the pits,
15:40
Speaker 3: There was no women's bathrooms in the paddock. There was
15:44
Speaker 3: you know, that was really tough back then when she
15:47
Speaker 3: was there. But what blows my mind more than anything
15:53
Speaker 3: is when I made the transition to NASCAR, I got
15:55
Speaker 3: a lot of hate from both men and women. And
15:59
Speaker 3: I expected it from the men. You know, she belongs
16:01
Speaker 3: in the kitchen. Women shouldn't be driving. I mean I
16:06
Speaker 3: got I had a bad first NASCAR Cup race and
16:10
Speaker 3: I literally got death threats from its.
16:13
Speaker 1: Back up And explain why, in particular would you doing
16:18
Speaker 1: NASCAR bring about that kind of hate.
16:22
Speaker 4: As opposed to the other racing you were doing before that.
16:25
Speaker 3: Because it was the first time in a while that
16:28
Speaker 3: they had a woman in NASCAR. Before that, there was
16:30
Speaker 3: Dannika Patrick.
16:31
Speaker 2: She hasn't.
16:31
Speaker 3: She's been retired for a few years now, I think,
16:34
Speaker 3: and she got just as much hate when she was driving.
16:38
Speaker 3: I think there is still this very misogynistic view by
16:41
Speaker 3: a lot of NASCAR fans that and any car fans,
16:45
Speaker 3: but they were kind of used to me, so they
16:47
Speaker 3: weren't vocal about it anymore.
16:49
Speaker 1: You so like, okay, that's that, Catherine leg And then
16:55
Speaker 1: and then you come out of the gate and your
16:58
Speaker 1: first race didn't go well.
16:59
Speaker 2: It didn't go well. I spun coming. It was in Phoenix.
17:02
Speaker 3: I spun coming off, turned to and collected one of
17:07
Speaker 3: the leaders. And so yeah, they the NASCAR fans were
17:12
Speaker 3: not happy about that. I turned around a lot of
17:14
Speaker 3: their opinions through the course of the season when we
17:16
Speaker 3: had some good results, and I feel like we earned
17:20
Speaker 3: their respect, which was great. But the really disappointing thing
17:26
Speaker 3: about that was the women, the women that came after me,
17:31
Speaker 3: because they didn't think that I belonged. And I just
17:34
Speaker 3: wondered what would make somebody so miserable in their own
17:38
Speaker 3: life that they felt the need to bring another woman
17:42
Speaker 3: down because they're going to have been through the same thing,
17:46
Speaker 3: were not necessarily the same, but similar things, right, and
17:49
Speaker 3: so they could relate being a woman, and they still
17:54
Speaker 3: had that opinion. And that's I mean. I got the
17:56
Speaker 3: dude thing because I've had that my whole career. I
17:59
Speaker 3: did not get at the women not sticking together thing,
18:03
Speaker 3: because in my experience, it's been very much like there's
18:05
Speaker 3: only a couple of us, we better wet this good?
18:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, what did how did? How did you respond to that?
18:12
Speaker 1: I mean, did you make any public response to that
18:14
Speaker 1: kind of hate? And and also just inside yourself in
18:18
Speaker 1: your private life, how did you take care of yourself?
18:21
Speaker 1: Because I know, I know how painful that is. I
18:24
Speaker 1: think anyone in any field who has has a public presence,
18:28
Speaker 1: and especially in the ruthless world of social media, one
18:31
Speaker 1: missed up and people are very happy to come after you.
18:35
Speaker 4: How did you respond publicly? And also how did you
18:39
Speaker 4: heal privately?
18:40
Speaker 3: I've gotten a pretty thick skin over the years, and
18:43
Speaker 3: most of it it doesn't Honestly, it doesn't even fuel
18:47
Speaker 3: me to be better or carry on or any of
18:49
Speaker 3: the things that people say. It was kind of like
18:51
Speaker 3: water off a ducts back because I knew in my
18:53
Speaker 3: mind that I was gonna do good things, and then
18:57
Speaker 3: that opinion to reasonable people, who could you know, debate
19:02
Speaker 3: whether something was good, bad, or indifferent. Yes, I had
19:04
Speaker 3: a horrible race. Did I deserve to be philified for it?
19:09
Speaker 3: Maybe a little bit. But when I did good a
19:13
Speaker 3: lot of those people also turned around, So that to me,
19:17
Speaker 3: that's fine.
19:19
Speaker 2: The barrage of abuse was so large. I mean I couldn't.
19:24
Speaker 3: I was shielded from it from the form the most part.
19:27
Speaker 3: But it was so many things, some of them being
19:30
Speaker 3: quite clever, like one guy sent me a vet he
19:34
Speaker 3: found me on Vemo or PayPal or something he did
19:37
Speaker 3: like a request for wasting money on a ticket or
19:41
Speaker 3: something like that. I was like, actually, that's quite funny.
19:45
Speaker 2: And there was.
19:47
Speaker 3: There was just so much of it that it made
19:49
Speaker 3: me kind of giggle, and I was like, Okay, this
19:52
Speaker 3: is good because I'm getting a lot of visibility from this,
19:54
Speaker 3: so as long as I do turn it around, well,
19:56
Speaker 3: I was kind of unbothered. But then I didn't want
20:00
Speaker 3: I actually didn't want to give it a voice and
20:02
Speaker 3: I didn't want to address it. But my team said
20:07
Speaker 3: that I have a responsibility to address it, so I
20:09
Speaker 3: did it on my podcast because they said that there
20:13
Speaker 3: were other young girls going through similar things in different
20:16
Speaker 3: sports and in different arenas, and that I have a
20:19
Speaker 3: voice to be able to help them understand, know that
20:24
Speaker 3: they're not alone, and maybe combat it for young people
20:28
Speaker 3: in the future to see, you know what it does
20:30
Speaker 3: when you behave like that.
20:32
Speaker 4: And so do you think that was the right call.
20:34
Speaker 4: I mean, do you think do you agree with your
20:36
Speaker 4: team in the end.
20:37
Speaker 2: I don't know.
20:38
Speaker 3: I was kind of guilted into it because I was like, Oh,
20:40
Speaker 3: the poor Catherines of the future, the Catherines of the
20:43
Speaker 3: future need the Catherine of now to step forward. Yeah,
20:47
Speaker 3: So I don't know whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. NASCAR,
20:50
Speaker 3: to their credit, stood by me. They were wonderful. The
20:52
Speaker 3: team stood by me. Else stood by me, and they
20:55
Speaker 3: all kind of said this is unacceptable. I think it
20:57
Speaker 3: got to when people were telling me to kill my
21:00
Speaker 3: and that they were going to kill me, and there
21:02
Speaker 3: was a policeman posted up outside my house. It got
21:04
Speaker 3: to the point where, yeah, I probably should have. Like,
21:08
Speaker 3: looking back on it now, though it doesn't really even
21:10
Speaker 3: evoke any emotion apart from a little bit of.
21:13
Speaker 2: That was an interesting period in my life.
21:15
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like it hurt your feelings and
21:17
Speaker 1: upset you, but at the end of the day, you
21:19
Speaker 1: pretty quickly went to a place. I imagine you have
21:22
Speaker 1: to go a lot when you're in the car at
21:25
Speaker 1: two hundred and some miles an hour, and you have
21:28
Speaker 1: to maintain your equanimity and your sense of mission and calm.
21:33
Speaker 4: And I would love to hear.
21:34
Speaker 1: I would love to get inside of that a bit.
21:36
Speaker 1: One of the things that I learned a lot about
21:40
Speaker 1: in my research about race car driving, which I did
21:42
Speaker 1: because I knew I was going to talk to you,
21:44
Speaker 1: is really, first of all, there are so many layers
21:47
Speaker 1: of preparation that you have to go through. They are
21:50
Speaker 1: physical to a greater degree than I knew. I'd love
21:54
Speaker 1: for you to tell us about that, and also mental,
21:56
Speaker 1: and I want to hear about that too. So how
21:58
Speaker 1: do you prepare to get behind the wheel of a car?
22:02
Speaker 2: A range? A lot?
22:03
Speaker 3: A lot of preparation is in experience as well. You
22:07
Speaker 3: know what you need to do and it just becomes
22:09
Speaker 3: second nature, both physically and mentally and emotionally also because
22:16
Speaker 3: I think I started off being a very emotional driver.
22:21
Speaker 3: Women tend to be more emotional than men anyway, and
22:23
Speaker 3: I had to learn to temper that. And I learn't
22:26
Speaker 3: necessarily process those emotions in any way, shape or form,
22:30
Speaker 3: but I learned to turn them into something different. So
22:32
Speaker 3: like when I got choked up or I wanted to
22:34
Speaker 3: cry or anything like that, I would turn that then
22:36
Speaker 3: into anger, right because there's no crying racing, Like I
22:39
Speaker 3: could not show weakness like that.
22:41
Speaker 1: But that's interesting because anger is an emotion too, So
22:43
Speaker 1: when you say you were an emotional driver, you mean
22:48
Speaker 1: the emotions that we really think of as female.
22:51
Speaker 4: It sounds to me.
22:52
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah. Yeah.
22:54
Speaker 3: So I got advice early on in my career, which
22:58
Speaker 3: was be a robot by a very good friend of mine,
23:01
Speaker 3: and he said that because if you're making decisions at
23:07
Speaker 3: two hundred miles an hour from an emotional place, they
23:10
Speaker 3: are not the best decisions. If you immediately react, then
23:15
Speaker 3: you put yourself at risk of crashing into somebody or
23:18
Speaker 3: spinning out or doing something bad. So you have to
23:22
Speaker 3: learn to channel those emotions and decide which ones are
23:28
Speaker 3: productive or not.
23:29
Speaker 2: And a lot of the best.
23:30
Speaker 3: Drivers are the ones that are really cool and work
23:35
Speaker 3: from a position of subconscious, not even your conscious mind,
23:38
Speaker 3: because your conscious mind is not as fast as your
23:40
Speaker 3: subconscious mind. And if you drive angry or sad or
23:47
Speaker 3: depressed or any anything like, it affects you driving. Because
23:52
Speaker 3: I found at the beginning of my career I always
23:54
Speaker 3: drove better when I was happy. And so there are
23:57
Speaker 3: a lot of mental coaches in racing too. I have
23:59
Speaker 3: a fantastic one called Gloria, and.
24:02
Speaker 1: Why has she taught you? What does a mental coach
24:04
Speaker 1: help a race car driver do?
24:06
Speaker 4: Exactly?
24:07
Speaker 3: It's a bit like having a physical coach too. It's like,
24:10
Speaker 3: now I know what to do, and my gym routine's
24:14
Speaker 3: pretty easy and pretty set because, as you said, like physically,
24:18
Speaker 3: it's a lot harder than you would imagine. The cars
24:21
Speaker 3: are one hundred and thirty degrees inside and you're wearing
24:24
Speaker 3: fireproof underwear and sweating, and so you have to be
24:28
Speaker 3: strong and fit. My heart rates that one hundred and
24:30
Speaker 3: eighty beats per minute for like three hours. Really probably
24:34
Speaker 3: it's a bit fast, but yeah, so you have to
24:37
Speaker 3: be endurance and strong.
24:39
Speaker 2: Your call has to be strong.
24:40
Speaker 3: You're pressing one thousand pounds worth of pressure on a
24:42
Speaker 3: brake pedal, so it's way more physical than you can imagine.
24:49
Speaker 3: And mentally it's the same, like when you have things
24:51
Speaker 3: coming at you at two hundred miles an hour and
24:53
Speaker 3: you have to make decisions, you don't have time to think,
24:57
Speaker 3: and when you're doing pit stops, when you're arguing with
24:59
Speaker 3: your crew because they've told you something that you don't
25:01
Speaker 3: agree with, when you crash or make a mistake and
25:08
Speaker 3: the whole team is relying on your performance because they've
25:12
Speaker 3: done a flawless job when they've made a mistake, and
25:15
Speaker 3: you want to be angry because you had a good
25:17
Speaker 3: shot of being on the podium that race. There's so
25:19
Speaker 3: many things that come into play, But for me, the
25:25
Speaker 3: biggest thing that I worked on early on in my career,
25:29
Speaker 3: more than anything, was the almost like self sabotage, like
25:34
Speaker 3: how you talk yourself into or out of things, and
25:37
Speaker 3: how you have to fake the confidence and believe in
25:41
Speaker 3: yourself before you even believe in yourself, and you have
25:43
Speaker 3: to just keep telling yourself over and over until you
25:45
Speaker 3: actually believe it. Because I had a whole bunch of insecurities,
25:49
Speaker 3: just like most teenage girls. Right if you look at
25:54
Speaker 3: I'm racing against all men, I'm the only girl, and
25:57
Speaker 3: you look at we're just coming out of go kass
25:59
Speaker 3: in to professional ranks. You take ten teenage boys, eighteen
26:06
Speaker 3: year old boys. They think they're God's gift to racing.
26:09
Speaker 3: They think they know everything. They're I'm confident, and then
26:12
Speaker 3: there's me and I'm like, I don't know anything, and
26:14
Speaker 3: I hope I'm good enough, and I really hope I
26:16
Speaker 3: don't make a fool of myself and all these things.
26:18
Speaker 3: It's just a completely different framework. So you have to
26:23
Speaker 3: treat that as such. And so I learned some strategies
26:28
Speaker 3: to let go of those negative thoughts and to basically
26:31
Speaker 3: program my brain into you got this.
26:43
Speaker 1: Since we were talking about fear, I think now is
26:45
Speaker 1: a great moment for me to share with you a
26:48
Speaker 1: really interesting Dear Sugar letter I received.
26:51
Speaker 4: Oh yes, that's I know. That's about justice. Very topic. Okay,
26:55
Speaker 4: I'm going to read it to you. Okay, Dear Sugar.
26:59
Speaker 1: I was happy to hear about your new podcast featuring
27:02
Speaker 1: so many brave women, because courage is what I need most.
27:05
Speaker 1: I celebrated my seventieth birthday last year, and six months ago,
27:09
Speaker 1: I became a widow. I live alone for the first
27:11
Speaker 1: time in more than forty years. Of course, i'm grieving
27:13
Speaker 1: the loss of my husband, and I've had to make
27:15
Speaker 1: many adjustments. One of those adjustments is I'm trying to
27:19
Speaker 1: venture out more than I used to and do new things.
27:22
Speaker 1: That's what I want to ask you and your guest
27:24
Speaker 1: about today. Can I learn to be brave? There are
27:28
Speaker 1: many things I would like to do and can do
27:30
Speaker 1: if I choose to, But I find myself hesitating because
27:33
Speaker 1: I am afraid. For example, I've always wanted to go
27:36
Speaker 1: on a safari in Africa. You could say it's a
27:39
Speaker 1: lifelong dream, and now there is nothing stopping me but myself.
27:43
Speaker 1: I know there are many tours I could join, and
27:45
Speaker 1: I'm in good health, and I even have a friend
27:47
Speaker 1: who's also a widow who would go with me. What
27:50
Speaker 1: has held me back is I worry about whether it's
27:52
Speaker 1: safe or not to travel to such remote places, and
27:55
Speaker 1: I wonder about what I'd do if something went wrong.
27:58
Speaker 1: Another example is that a friend invited me to join
28:01
Speaker 1: her singing group. She's always raving about how wonderful this
28:04
Speaker 1: group is and how much fun they have, and though
28:06
Speaker 1: I'm interested in exploring it, I'm afraid that I'm not
28:09
Speaker 1: a very good singer. My friend assures me everyone is
28:14
Speaker 1: welcome and no one cares about being good, but I
28:16
Speaker 1: fear I would go and then be too self conscious
28:19
Speaker 1: to sing. I feel silly writing this letter, and I
28:22
Speaker 1: guess you won't answer it, but it helped me to
28:24
Speaker 1: write it. Anyway, Maybe listening to the courageous women you
28:28
Speaker 1: interview will inspire me to be more brave. But if
28:31
Speaker 1: you have any direct advice for me, I would welcome it.
28:33
Speaker 1: Thank you, signed seventy and Scared.
28:37
Speaker 2: Oh it makes me want to cry. I know it's adorable.
28:41
Speaker 1: It's so sweet and so real because I think I
28:46
Speaker 1: think the first thing I want to say to seventy
28:48
Speaker 1: and Scared and then, you know, Catherine, I really want
28:50
Speaker 1: your perspective.
28:51
Speaker 4: But you're not alone.
28:53
Speaker 1: Like most of us, we're afraid of something, you know,
28:57
Speaker 1: And I think that being afraid and learning how to
29:00
Speaker 1: be brave is this lifelong process, and we're all at
29:03
Speaker 1: different stages. You know, we're afraid of different kinds of things,
29:07
Speaker 1: and so I just want to assure you, yes, it
29:10
Speaker 1: is possible to be brave. And I'm going to guess
29:12
Speaker 1: that you agree with me about that, Cat.
29:14
Speaker 3: I do, but I also think it's a muscle that
29:18
Speaker 3: you train right. So for me, I am the same way.
29:24
Speaker 3: I can't believe I'm admitting this on air, but like
29:27
Speaker 3: I would hate to go and sit at a restaurant
29:30
Speaker 3: by myself and get dinner right. Terrifies me. So I
29:34
Speaker 3: go and get coffee and make sure I put my
29:36
Speaker 3: phone down, and I like train myself up to that point.
29:40
Speaker 3: I would not sing, but I can't sing.
29:43
Speaker 1: I bet you can, I bet you can. Maybe you
29:46
Speaker 1: in seventy and scared, can you know?
29:48
Speaker 3: I want to go on to Safari with her necessarily
29:51
Speaker 3: singing with it. But I think a large part of
29:56
Speaker 3: me training that muscle is doing it anyway, right, like
30:01
Speaker 3: if you know, uh, like I've jumped out of aeroplanes
30:04
Speaker 3: before and I'm terrified, but I know, once to take
30:06
Speaker 3: the step, that's it and I will be super proud
30:10
Speaker 3: of myself and I'll enjoy it and I'll do all
30:12
Speaker 3: the things. So it's about doing it anyway, like you
30:15
Speaker 3: just got to take that step.
30:17
Speaker 2: And I mean as far as the singing goes, so
30:20
Speaker 2: go join the group.
30:21
Speaker 3: And if you don't sing, you don't sing, like have
30:22
Speaker 3: some fun. You're never gonna look back and regret making
30:26
Speaker 3: an ask, can I say that and ask of yourself
30:29
Speaker 3: You're gonna look back and regret all the things that
30:32
Speaker 3: you didn't do and the fun that you didn't have,
30:33
Speaker 3: Like we don't know what tomorrow bring, So I do
30:37
Speaker 3: all the things. I just make yourself dumb, like it's
30:41
Speaker 3: a muscle. It's like discipline. You know, you don't want
30:43
Speaker 3: to get up and go to the gym at six
30:45
Speaker 3: o'clock every morning. However, if you do it consistently for
30:48
Speaker 3: like six weeks, guess what, it's not hard anymore.
30:50
Speaker 2: Like take that first step. Oh, that's a you thing.
30:54
Speaker 1: That's a near thing that he hates the first step.
30:56
Speaker 1: And I'm, oh, gosh, I mean I feel like everything
30:59
Speaker 1: you just said. I'm just yes, yes, yes, it's absolutely
31:03
Speaker 1: a muscle. And this has come up in my life
31:05
Speaker 1: on a couple of fronts, but one of them. People
31:08
Speaker 1: are always asking me for writing advice, and you know,
31:11
Speaker 1: they'll say, oh, my gosh, you know when they read Wild,
31:13
Speaker 1: how are you so brave to tell like the full
31:16
Speaker 1: honest truth of your life and things that you know
31:19
Speaker 1: would seem embarrassing to say, you know, to put down
31:22
Speaker 1: on paper about yourself. And what I always say is like,
31:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I just came out of nowhere and
31:27
Speaker 1: wrote Wild. You know, I had been apprenticing myself to
31:30
Speaker 1: the craft of writing for decades. I've been a writer
31:32
Speaker 1: for many years, and I you know that first that
31:36
Speaker 1: those first stories and essays I wrote in my early
31:38
Speaker 1: twenties where I was a little bit brave, and then
31:41
Speaker 1: I got braver and braver and braver until now like
31:43
Speaker 1: Writing's not scary to me in that way anymore, because
31:46
Speaker 1: what I know is I can do it, and I
31:48
Speaker 1: know that when I'm brave, it makes me feel alive
31:50
Speaker 1: and happy and seventy and scared. That is what Catherine
31:53
Speaker 1: is saying to you too, is like you'd go and
31:56
Speaker 1: maybe you show up at this singing group and you
31:58
Speaker 1: don't sing the first four times, or maybe you hum or,
32:01
Speaker 1: you know, and then you join in and saying.
32:04
Speaker 4: With this, you know, you know what it is.
32:06
Speaker 1: It is an adventure to go to Africa on a safari.
32:09
Speaker 1: It is outside of your comfort zone. But what we
32:13
Speaker 1: know is that you can do it, and you will
32:15
Speaker 1: be so much happier if you try than if you
32:18
Speaker 1: never take the risk, because you'll be trapped in the
32:21
Speaker 1: cage of your own making, which you yourself have said,
32:24
Speaker 1: you know, the only thing keeping you from doing it
32:26
Speaker 1: is you, And we're saying this right, come on, sister,
32:30
Speaker 1: you know, join us here, and you don't need our permission.
32:34
Speaker 4: You need to give your self permission.
32:36
Speaker 3: The other thing I think I'll add to that is
32:38
Speaker 3: as you get older, like just referencing her age, you
32:43
Speaker 3: get more comfortable and you stop going out of.
32:46
Speaker 2: Your comfort zone. And I just had this experience.
32:48
Speaker 3: I was in ta host game with a friend of
32:50
Speaker 3: mine and I say, you used to be able to
32:56
Speaker 3: do this stuff, Like what is it meantally that's stopping you?
32:59
Speaker 3: And she's like, you know what, You're right, and she
33:01
Speaker 3: did it anyway, and she was so happy because she
33:03
Speaker 3: got back to what she was doing before. And it's
33:06
Speaker 3: like in every aspect of our life, we get comfortable
33:09
Speaker 3: and we stop doing the things that scare us. When
33:12
Speaker 3: we're younger, we do the things that scare us, and
33:14
Speaker 3: that's the adrenaline and the motivation to keep going. Yeah,
33:17
Speaker 3: and everybody's different, obviously, but I think that you should
33:22
Speaker 3: maybe think what would twenty year old you say to
33:27
Speaker 3: seventy year old you, now, like come on, you got this, Like.
33:30
Speaker 2: Just just do it? Just like, just do it. Thanks.
33:33
Speaker 4: That's a great way of thinking.
33:35
Speaker 1: And you know, Catherine, I don't. I think that one
33:38
Speaker 1: of the key aspects of giving good advice is really
33:42
Speaker 1: listening and really paying attention to the words that the
33:45
Speaker 1: letter writer uses. And in this case, I do want
33:48
Speaker 1: to just say I think there's something to that going
33:51
Speaker 1: back to your twenty somethings elf, because seventy get scared.
33:54
Speaker 1: You say, like, you know, you are grieving your husband.
33:57
Speaker 1: You haven't lived alone for like forty years, and here
34:00
Speaker 1: you are now alone. And I think that there is
34:03
Speaker 1: a piece of that in this too, that you got
34:07
Speaker 1: really used to having your life be in partnership with
34:11
Speaker 1: somebody else. You always had that companion, which is a
34:13
Speaker 1: very kind of safe feeling. It can be a very
34:15
Speaker 1: safe feeling, right, And then now here you are on
34:18
Speaker 1: your own, and you're making some moves in the direction
34:23
Speaker 1: of going solo, venturing solo, whether it be to the
34:26
Speaker 1: singing group or to Africa. And it's okay that like
34:29
Speaker 1: it takes, as you say, some adjustment and that you
34:31
Speaker 1: have some hesitation. What we're trying to say is don't
34:36
Speaker 1: live there in the hesitation.
34:38
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I think if you also set a timeline to it,
34:41
Speaker 3: that always helps me. So if you say, like steps
34:45
Speaker 3: in a timeline, So, okay, by next Tuesday, I'm going
34:48
Speaker 3: to have booked a four day trip to the other
34:50
Speaker 3: side of the country solo.
34:52
Speaker 2: Just to see if I can do it.
34:53
Speaker 3: And then this is going to be next to August,
34:56
Speaker 3: and I'm going to book it by this time, and
34:57
Speaker 3: we're going to do that by this time. And like
34:59
Speaker 3: have a schedule on a step by step plan in place,
35:03
Speaker 3: then you'll hold yourself countable rather than just letting it
35:05
Speaker 3: roll down the road.
35:06
Speaker 1: Thank you, Catherine and Seventianscared. Will you please write me
35:11
Speaker 1: again so I know how.
35:12
Speaker 4: This turned out? And I will Catherine.
35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we want to make we want to know
35:16
Speaker 1: that our advice was taken, because we both feel pretty
35:19
Speaker 1: passionate about this, and if if you don't take it,
35:21
Speaker 1: we're just gonna I'm going to get your address. We're
35:23
Speaker 1: going to haul you over to Africa and go in
35:25
Speaker 1: Safari with you, because that sounds like fun to me.
35:27
Speaker 2: I'm so in.
35:28
Speaker 3: And I also want to say that I think you're
35:30
Speaker 3: super brave for writing that letter, so you have you
35:33
Speaker 3: are brave already.
35:42
Speaker 2: You know.
35:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of courage, I can't imagine what it must have
35:48
Speaker 1: been like for you after you, you.
35:51
Speaker 4: Know, you break both of your legs.
35:53
Speaker 1: I would love to hear about the experiences you've had
35:55
Speaker 1: with crashes and how is it that you muster the
35:59
Speaker 1: courage to get back into the car again and drive
36:03
Speaker 1: fast again. That to me again sounds like a really
36:07
Speaker 1: high mountain to climb, a really terrifying thing.
36:09
Speaker 3: My first big crash was in two thousand and six,
36:13
Speaker 3: my first year in the big leagues, and it was
36:16
Speaker 3: the equivalent of an IndyCar nowadays. And my rear wing delaminated,
36:20
Speaker 3: which means it peeled itself from the end plates. And
36:24
Speaker 3: the rear wing on an IndyCar looking beast keeps it
36:28
Speaker 3: on the ground. It forces the air onto the wing
36:32
Speaker 3: to push it into the ground, very much like the
36:34
Speaker 3: aeroplanes have wings that create lyft.
36:37
Speaker 2: It's the opposite effect.
36:38
Speaker 3: Right, So when I lost that downforce, I lost thousands
36:43
Speaker 3: of pounds.
36:44
Speaker 2: I don't know.
36:45
Speaker 3: I think it's probably over a thousand pounds worth of
36:46
Speaker 3: downforce on the rear wing, which gives you grip and
36:49
Speaker 3: so the rear all I remember, I was doing one
36:53
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty miles an hour and I suddenly picked
36:57
Speaker 3: up speed heading into a corner. I didn't know what
37:00
Speaker 3: had happened, but it was like somebody put a rocket
37:02
Speaker 3: out of my house.
37:03
Speaker 2: I was just like.
37:04
Speaker 3: Taken off and then all of a sudden, the rear
37:07
Speaker 3: end switched on me and I hit the fence one
37:10
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty I climbed the fence. It was ethanol
37:14
Speaker 3: fuel back in those days, and you couldn't see the fire,
37:17
Speaker 3: so to me, the fire was terrifying. I've always been scared,
37:22
Speaker 3: especially of ethnol fires, because you can't see them.
37:24
Speaker 2: It's a haze.
37:25
Speaker 3: There's no flames, there's no orange, there's no smoke. So
37:32
Speaker 3: I saw the engine break off, and I remember thinking, Okay,
37:35
Speaker 3: that's good, because along with that is the fuel cell
37:38
Speaker 3: and the fire risk and everything else. And I spun
37:41
Speaker 3: through the air and hit the catch fence thirty feet
37:44
Speaker 3: in the air, and.
37:48
Speaker 2: I hit my head on the ground as I was
37:50
Speaker 2: rolling along it. Oh my god.
37:53
Speaker 3: And you're protected by a rollcage, but I still felt
37:58
Speaker 3: my head with my helmet on, dragging through the dirt,
38:01
Speaker 3: and I thought, Okay, this is how it ends, because
38:04
Speaker 3: the head injury like kills you. And I think it
38:06
Speaker 3: was subconscious, but I was very much thinking, Oh now, you.
38:13
Speaker 4: Really were thinking I'm about to die?
38:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
38:17
Speaker 4: And it wasn't the only thought going through your head.
38:19
Speaker 4: I mean, did you have that?
38:21
Speaker 1: And then like the whole movie of all the people
38:23
Speaker 1: you love the most and the beautiful things.
38:25
Speaker 2: None of that.
38:26
Speaker 3: It was very matter of fact. There was no motion
38:28
Speaker 3: tied to it. It was just purely let unscrewed. I
38:32
Speaker 3: am uh oh kind of thing right. And then I
38:36
Speaker 3: came to rest hanging upside down, and my first thought
38:42
Speaker 3: was tell my dad that I'm okay, because he was watching.
38:45
Speaker 3: He was there, I was watching the race, and I
38:47
Speaker 3: didn't want him to I choked up thinking about it. Yeah,
38:51
Speaker 3: I didn't want him to think that I wasn't okay.
38:53
Speaker 3: And I didn't really even know that I was okay
38:55
Speaker 3: at that time because adrenaline, Like, I didn't know whether
38:57
Speaker 3: my leg still worked or anything. So hanging upside down
39:01
Speaker 3: in this race car, the safety guys were awesome. They
39:04
Speaker 3: were already on the track. Well, the crash was still happening,
39:07
Speaker 3: like getting to me, and I was super bummed because
39:10
Speaker 3: I was running in sick in that race and it
39:12
Speaker 3: was a really good race.
39:13
Speaker 2: It was the best race that I'd had all season.
39:14
Speaker 3: And there's only like eight lass.
39:18
Speaker 1: So while right alongside I think I'm gonna die, was
39:24
Speaker 1: I was doing well in this race?
39:25
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? Are you actually?
39:28
Speaker 2: Yes?
39:29
Speaker 4: Okay? I told you you're right.
39:31
Speaker 1: Every time you said screws, I'd be like no, But
39:34
Speaker 1: now I now I agree, Okay.
39:37
Speaker 3: It's okay. I've come to terms and peace with my
39:40
Speaker 3: screw loose. And actually, after I broke my legs and
39:43
Speaker 3: I've got hardware on my legs, I had a literal
39:46
Speaker 3: screw colme loose that they had to take out and
39:48
Speaker 3: I could claim for real then.
39:50
Speaker 2: But anyway, they got me.
39:52
Speaker 3: Out and took me back to the med center and
39:55
Speaker 3: I told them to radio my dad and tell him
39:58
Speaker 3: that I was okay, and they were and obviously because
40:00
Speaker 3: they didn't know that nothing is wrong with me because
40:02
Speaker 3: of the adrenaline. And I get back there and I
40:06
Speaker 3: am fine, luckily, and they said, can we get you
40:09
Speaker 3: anything else?
40:09
Speaker 2: Like I love a cup of tea?
40:11
Speaker 3: So it was my first year in the state small.
40:13
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell it's English.
40:15
Speaker 4: I know it's spot the tea, but that's my English accent.
40:19
Speaker 4: How do you like that? Oh, yes, you know.
40:21
Speaker 2: We can work on it. But it was good.
40:23
Speaker 4: We spot a tea.
40:25
Speaker 2: That's a bit scoolish, it's wet, it's a bit Scottish.
40:30
Speaker 1: Okay, I do have Scottish ancestry.
40:32
Speaker 2: Maybe it's your blood, yeah, blood.
40:36
Speaker 3: And then my dad came into the med center and
40:39
Speaker 3: I've never seen my dad cry before in twenty four years,
40:43
Speaker 3: and he cried and so obviously, and I'd held it
40:47
Speaker 3: together until then, like the emotion of going through that,
40:50
Speaker 3: I was fine until I saw him, and him crying
40:53
Speaker 3: made you cry, and and he Catherine for fifteen minutes,
40:58
Speaker 3: I didn't know whether you were dead or live.
41:01
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm so sorry I put you through that.
41:04
Speaker 3: And then we had this whole like come to Jesus
41:06
Speaker 3: thing where he said it would be my fault because
41:10
Speaker 3: I'm the one who got you into racing, and I
41:12
Speaker 3: would blame myself. And I was like, listen, no, if
41:16
Speaker 3: I ever hurt myself racing, I'm doing something that I
41:19
Speaker 3: love to do, and I love that I got into racing,
41:21
Speaker 3: and if I die racing, so be it, because I
41:23
Speaker 3: would do it a thousand times over, Like, do not
41:27
Speaker 3: blame yourself. And so I feel like that conversation had
41:30
Speaker 3: to be said while I was okay, just in case,
41:33
Speaker 3: you know, right, And then fast forward twenty years, no,
41:38
Speaker 3: fifteen years probably at that time, and I was testing
41:41
Speaker 3: a prototype in France during COVID, which made my life
41:45
Speaker 3: even more miserable, and I ran over something like a
41:50
Speaker 3: piece of rubber or something on the track and I
41:52
Speaker 3: hit the wall again over one hundred miles an hour,
41:54
Speaker 3: and I found the only concrete wall in the entire place,
41:58
Speaker 3: and it pushed the front of the car so the
42:01
Speaker 3: steering will hit me in the helmet and the pedals
42:04
Speaker 3: were around my thighs.
42:05
Speaker 2: It come back so much and.
42:06
Speaker 3: It had broken both my legs, and I remember nobody
42:13
Speaker 3: spoke an English. So there was fifteen people around the
42:17
Speaker 3: car trying to figure out how they were going to
42:19
Speaker 3: cut me out of this car, and I was getting
42:20
Speaker 3: very claustrophobical. Of of a sudden, I was like, just put
42:23
Speaker 3: me out, just I don't want to know what's going on.
42:26
Speaker 3: You can grind with that angle grinder as much as
42:28
Speaker 3: you want on a car if I'm out of it.
42:31
Speaker 2: So they did.
42:33
Speaker 3: I regret that every day since because I think that
42:38
Speaker 3: had I been had I stayed with it, I could
42:40
Speaker 3: have helped maneuver myself out and I probably would have
42:42
Speaker 3: done less damage.
42:43
Speaker 1: Right, Wait a minute, when you say put me out,
42:46
Speaker 1: you mean like put me out with drugs?
42:49
Speaker 2: Yep.
42:50
Speaker 1: And my heart, my heart is raised in listening to
42:56
Speaker 1: all of this. So you're stuck in this wreck mhm,
43:01
Speaker 1: this wrecked vehicle, and you're saying to the French people
43:05
Speaker 1: around you in English, but or you say this in French.
43:09
Speaker 3: In English, and there's this one guy who's translating, and
43:12
Speaker 3: it's very scary because like do they know what they're doing?
43:16
Speaker 4: They just you were scared.
43:17
Speaker 2: You use the word yes, Then I was absolutely okay.
43:23
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
43:24
Speaker 3: I mean, I could feel that one of my legs
43:26
Speaker 3: was at the wrong angle, so I was so yeah,
43:30
Speaker 3: I just I was petrified at that point.
43:32
Speaker 1: So you think them putting you out. Then suddenly they're
43:35
Speaker 1: like you're basically a piece of meat, like a bag
43:37
Speaker 1: of meat, and they're lunching you out of the car.
43:39
Speaker 1: Whereas if you had stayed alert, you would have been
43:42
Speaker 1: in pain, but you would have been able to.
43:44
Speaker 2: Exactly And I really wasn't in pain.
43:47
Speaker 3: That's the really weird thing, Like adrenaline is wild because
43:51
Speaker 3: I didn't have any pain. My My fear mostly was claustrophobia,
43:56
Speaker 3: Like I was like, just get me out, just get
43:58
Speaker 3: me out. And I don't know why I panicked and
44:00
Speaker 3: had that just get me out experienced, but I.
44:03
Speaker 2: Just wanted to be out of that car.
44:05
Speaker 5: And I was like a psychological feeling of absolutely And
44:09
Speaker 5: then I remember waking up butt naked on a steel
44:15
Speaker 5: hospital bed thing coming out of the helicopter, and I.
44:18
Speaker 3: Remember thinking again, I was like, oh god, how many
44:22
Speaker 3: of the racing people have seen me naked?
44:24
Speaker 2: Now? I was like, just put me out again. I
44:27
Speaker 2: don't I don't want to have any part of this.
44:31
Speaker 4: I just want to be forever. Yeah.
44:35
Speaker 3: And then again my dad sets to the hospital and
44:40
Speaker 3: he's he's a cautious driver.
44:42
Speaker 2: Strangely enough, my mom's not. I definitely get my driving
44:45
Speaker 2: from my mom.
44:45
Speaker 3: And he'd had to drive all the country roads to
44:49
Speaker 3: this hospital in the middle of the French mountains, and
44:53
Speaker 3: he was terrified, petrified that there was something wrong with me.
44:56
Speaker 2: Didn't know it was around.
44:57
Speaker 3: Like again the emotion that I put my poor parents.
45:01
Speaker 3: My mom hopefully had no idea that any of this
45:03
Speaker 3: is happening, but my poor dad, I mean, the amount
45:07
Speaker 3: of stuff I've put through. And then again in the hospital,
45:10
Speaker 3: it's military hospital, they're wonderful. Spoke no English, so I
45:13
Speaker 3: had one team owner who spoke a little English, and
45:18
Speaker 3: it was like.
45:19
Speaker 2: Broken going back at the forwards.
45:22
Speaker 3: But it took it took like four days for them
45:24
Speaker 3: to find somebody who could fix my legs. So I
45:27
Speaker 3: was just like laying there no cast or anything, just
45:30
Speaker 3: waiting for somebody who was able to drill down through
45:33
Speaker 3: both of my length.
45:34
Speaker 2: And put rods and screws and stuff with it.
45:36
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's something. Yeah, I'm thinking about your parents.
45:41
Speaker 1: I have to say, like, I love, you know, and
45:44
Speaker 1: admire that you are a race car driver, and I
45:46
Speaker 1: think you've just just you know, you've obviously been a
45:49
Speaker 1: champion and pioneer in that sport. And I'm also, as
45:52
Speaker 1: a mother, really glad that neither of my children are
45:55
Speaker 1: interested in this is a profession or.
45:57
Speaker 4: Even a hobby.
45:59
Speaker 1: I think it must you have put your parents through
46:02
Speaker 1: their paces. And even though your father from the beginning,
46:04
Speaker 1: I mean, in so many ways he kind of introduced
46:06
Speaker 1: you to the sport.
46:07
Speaker 4: I love that.
46:08
Speaker 1: Your family is such a part of your story, you know,
46:12
Speaker 1: from the very beginning.
46:14
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's kind of moving. And I'm thinking, you know, we've.
46:18
Speaker 1: Used the phrase, or you've used the phrase a few
46:21
Speaker 1: times over the course of our conversation, the little Catherines,
46:24
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, there's that little Catherine and
46:26
Speaker 1: you the literal girl who found the go kart racing
46:30
Speaker 1: and said this is my thing. But what about the
46:35
Speaker 1: next generation of women race car drivers, like, have you
46:39
Speaker 1: played a part? I'm sure you've played a part in
46:42
Speaker 1: nurturing them by simply being a role model to so
46:45
Speaker 1: many of them. I'm curious about, like, what what do women,
46:50
Speaker 1: the up and coming women race car drivers need to get,
46:53
Speaker 1: maybe more support than you got in this male dominated sport.
46:57
Speaker 3: I think having a model is important, but I think
47:02
Speaker 3: having the support and understanding.
47:06
Speaker 2: Of how it's different for a woman in racing.
47:08
Speaker 3: And I've had this conversation recently because I'm mentoring a
47:11
Speaker 3: couple of young ladies because what I want to be
47:14
Speaker 3: able to do is have somebody to hand over the
47:16
Speaker 3: baton two. Right at the moment, I'm in the like
47:21
Speaker 3: last few years of my career and there is nobody
47:26
Speaker 3: coming up behind me. There was a group of us
47:29
Speaker 3: when there was Danika and me and Simona, and so
47:34
Speaker 3: there was a few of us of our ilk, of
47:37
Speaker 3: our kind of generation, and then after that nobody. And
47:40
Speaker 3: I really put that down to the formation of the
47:46
Speaker 3: segregating series, which was that the F one Academy, now
47:51
Speaker 3: it was the W Series, And what they did was
47:54
Speaker 3: they take they take all the promising young female drivers
47:57
Speaker 3: and they they race together. So it's like a woman
47:59
Speaker 3: only series. Now, I will say I am all for
48:03
Speaker 3: women's sports. I support women's sports vehemently because I don't
48:07
Speaker 3: think that, you know, women should be playing basketball against
48:12
Speaker 3: the men right like I don't. There's no reason to
48:15
Speaker 3: write to have them do that because there are physical differences.
48:18
Speaker 3: And I'm also I'm not feminist really either. I am
48:21
Speaker 3: just a realist in that racing is one of the
48:24
Speaker 3: only sports where we can compete on a level playing field.
48:28
Speaker 3: As long as we work hard enough at it, we
48:31
Speaker 3: do not need to be separated. There are a lot
48:33
Speaker 3: of sports that strength or are stamina, endurance or whatever
48:37
Speaker 3: it is obviously takes.
48:40
Speaker 2: Plays a Yeah, So.
48:45
Speaker 3: With the start of the women only series, I liked
48:52
Speaker 3: the fact it was giving them opportunities that they wouldn't
48:54
Speaker 3: necessarily have had if not for this series. But I
48:59
Speaker 3: don't like nobody's progressed out of that series because unless
49:03
Speaker 3: you're racing competing with the best of the best, it
49:06
Speaker 3: does not force you to be the best. And while
49:10
Speaker 3: me and Danny Kerr and Simona and everybody else Janet Lynn,
49:13
Speaker 3: Sarah Fisher, we all had to fight and claw and
49:18
Speaker 3: sweat and tears everything that the guys had to do
49:21
Speaker 3: also to get to the top of whatever respective series
49:25
Speaker 3: we were doing to then progress on to the next level.
49:29
Speaker 2: When they've taken all the women and made it.
49:33
Speaker 3: It's kind of become a little bit of a gimmick
49:35
Speaker 3: because they've given them way less power, way less speed,
49:38
Speaker 3: way less attention, and they're like a support race for
49:43
Speaker 3: a Formula one and they get a lot of attention,
49:46
Speaker 3: and they get a lot of sponsors involved in it,
49:48
Speaker 3: but they don't go anywhere from there, and so.
49:51
Speaker 4: It's more like a sideline act.
49:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exactly. It's like sideshow.
49:56
Speaker 3: And so I despise that because these women are very
50:00
Speaker 3: talented and had they been given the same amount of
50:02
Speaker 3: support to go and race against the guys in the
50:06
Speaker 3: F two series and the F three series and the
50:08
Speaker 3: F four series and you know, make their way up,
50:10
Speaker 3: then they would be in my position and probably better
50:15
Speaker 3: off honestly, because they would have had good cars and
50:17
Speaker 3: everything else in two, three, four, five years time.
50:20
Speaker 2: Whereas I think the powers that be are I don't know.
50:26
Speaker 3: I just I struggle because I don't want to say
50:28
Speaker 3: anything negative about it, because I again I think it's
50:31
Speaker 3: great that they're at least getting some visibility, but I
50:34
Speaker 3: think it's it's helped them back, and I am very
50:38
Speaker 3: sad for them. But there are a few that are
50:41
Speaker 3: doing it the hard way and racing against the guys.
50:45
Speaker 3: And I'm actually mentoring a young lady called Lady Abuse,
50:50
Speaker 3: and she's doing a myriad of different series this year
50:55
Speaker 3: and she's showing great promise. So hopefully if we keep
50:58
Speaker 3: getting her the experience and the confidence that she needs
51:01
Speaker 3: to progress, then in three four years she will be
51:05
Speaker 3: she'll be ready to take on that mantra and then
51:09
Speaker 3: there are lots beneath her. But it's it's a really
51:14
Speaker 3: tough one because I feel like we were making such
51:16
Speaker 3: positive momentum and we were making you know, there was
51:21
Speaker 3: it was snowballing.
51:22
Speaker 2: Down a mountain.
51:22
Speaker 3: There was the f one, not the f one, the
51:25
Speaker 3: FIA Women in Motorspot Commission that Michelle Muton headed up.
51:28
Speaker 3: Michelle Muton is the only woman on the planet that
51:31
Speaker 3: has won on a global stage, and she won in
51:34
Speaker 3: World Rally when it was tough, like this chick is
51:38
Speaker 3: like she's she's awesome. She is older now, but she
51:44
Speaker 3: was no nonsense, like she was everything that I want
51:49
Speaker 3: to be right and she won global rally, which is
51:55
Speaker 3: harder than any other series really in the in the world.
51:58
Speaker 3: And she started the Woman in Just Book commission and
52:01
Speaker 3: so she got a lot more women involved in kating
52:04
Speaker 3: and coming up through the ranks. And like it was,
52:06
Speaker 3: it was when I say snowball down a mountain. It
52:08
Speaker 3: was a positive momentum. There was six of us at
52:11
Speaker 3: one point in the eighty five hundred six women out
52:13
Speaker 3: of thirty three, which is huge percentage.
52:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing.
52:18
Speaker 2: Right now there's just me.
52:19
Speaker 4: But then, but then, I mean, not all is lost.
52:23
Speaker 1: You You're still You're You're persisting, You're still still there.
52:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you have some time left in you.
52:29
Speaker 1: You mentioned that you're you know, you feel like in
52:32
Speaker 1: the last few years of your career, what's next? You know,
52:35
Speaker 1: we are on mind over mountain. What what is the
52:38
Speaker 1: mountain that your mind is climbing these days?
52:41
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, in your life or your career.
52:45
Speaker 2: That's a deep question. I am. I think for me
52:53
Speaker 2: this year, it's.
52:58
Speaker 3: It's tricky because I I'm not doing everything that I'd
53:03
Speaker 3: hoped and dreamed this year and it kind of all
53:05
Speaker 3: fell apart very last minute on the NASCAR front. And
53:08
Speaker 3: then so I'm fighting to try and get it back together.
53:10
Speaker 3: And I think my Mound over Mountain moment is more
53:14
Speaker 3: I love this sport. I've given my life to it
53:17
Speaker 3: and I've poured everything into it, and it does not
53:22
Speaker 3: love me back at the moment, and so I think
53:26
Speaker 3: it's just persisting through that and finding that passion again
53:32
Speaker 3: for the next generation, because I have to keep motivated
53:36
Speaker 3: and do it for the lanies.
53:37
Speaker 2: Of the world.
53:38
Speaker 3: Right, So I think it's about not feeling sorry for myself.
53:42
Speaker 2: And being like, oh, whoa is me?
53:44
Speaker 3: I'm not doing any naspa racist at the moment, because
53:47
Speaker 3: I know I will be because I always bounce back.
53:51
Speaker 3: Whereas just like I don't know, I don't want to
53:54
Speaker 3: ever ever feel anything other than very fortunate, and I
53:58
Speaker 3: don't want to feel entitled they get me anything. But
54:02
Speaker 3: I do feel like I've I've given it everything, and
54:06
Speaker 3: I want to go out on a high note over
54:09
Speaker 3: the next however long that is, and I have done
54:12
Speaker 3: you know, I have had some success.
54:16
Speaker 1: Wonderful Catherine leg Thank you so much for this conversation
54:20
Speaker 1: and thank you for being on Mind over Mountain. It's
54:22
Speaker 1: been a true pleasure to talk to you.
54:24
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me, Thanks.
54:27
Speaker 4: So much for listening.
54:28
Speaker 1: If you'd like to submit a letter for consideration and advice,
54:32
Speaker 1: please send it to me at Dear Dear Sugar at
54:34
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. And please do not forget to rate,
54:38
Speaker 1: review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Happy trails.
54:42
Speaker 4: And I'll see you next week.
54:43
Speaker 1: Mine over Mountain with Cheryl Strait is an I Hurt
54:46
Speaker 1: women's sports production produced by Britney Brown and Rodney Brown
54:50
Speaker 1: of Barbara Jean Productions. Supervising producer is Caylin West at Rome.
54:55
Speaker 1: Associate producer Amaya Brathwaite. Our executive producers are Molly Barton,
55:00
Speaker 1: Jerry Carrita, Grace Views and Jesse Katz. Our theme song
55:05
Speaker 1: is composed by Gramoscope Music. Don't forget to rate, review
55:09
Speaker 1: and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Happy trails and
55:13
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.