Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 127. Aisha Praught-Leer, Pro Runner

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127. Aisha Praught-Leer, Pro Runner · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You need to learn to be more flexible and be
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: less rigid because there are so many ways to become
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: your best and because you've done it one way in
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the past doesn't mean you have to do it that way.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: There's not one roadmap for getting to your goal.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Hey, Hurdler's Emily Abadi here bringing you Episode one twenty
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: seven of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where I sit
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: down with inspiring individuals to talk about everything from their
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: big wins to how they've gotten through some of life's
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: toughest moments. On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: and candid discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: entrepreneurs on what it really takes to follow your passions.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: My mission is simple to inspire you to be your
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: best self, a move with intention and have some fun
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: along the way. Today I am chatting with Aysha Koutleer.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: She's a pro runner, and I just I loved our conversation.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I was trying to ask myself what it was about
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: this one that made me smile so much? And I
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: just feel that despite you know, Ayisha being married and
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: being a Olympian, that we happen to be at similar
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: life phases in that like, we're just women coming into
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: our own in our thirties, and it felt like I
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: was rapping with someone who was a friend of mine.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: In today's episode, the steeplechase athlete turned middle distance runner,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I feel like you should try to say that three
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: times fast. She talks to me about getting into her
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: sport late and not finding her true groove until the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: last five or six years. We talk about her fueling strategy,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: how she's enjoying life living in Boulder, Colorado, and the
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: importance of good friendships and how to form deep connection
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: later in life. These are just some top highlights. I'm
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: telling you this one is chocked full of goodness and inspiration.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: If you are joining us for the Hurdle book Club
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: link to do that is in the show notes today's episode.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: This month's pick Mindset is because of this conversation that
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I had with Aisha. I do also wanted to throw
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: into the mix a big thank you to her sponsor
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: at Camelback for helping to set us up. Before I
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: get into today's episode, I do want to take a
• 2:42
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• 5:33
  Speaker 2: sure to subscribe to the weekly Hurdle newsletter and make
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: sure that you're keeping up with a podcast over on
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: social media at Hurdle Podcast. You can find me also
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: at Emily a Body. If you have a hurdle moment
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: of your own to share, or you just want to
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: say hi, I'm always available over email. It's Emily at
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: hurdle dot us. And last little promo for the week,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: a last little bit of housekeeping. If you are interested
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in the Handling Hurdle Moments seminar, there are a few
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: spot left in the show notes the link where you
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: can get all of the information about it. After so
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: much positive feedback from last week's hurdle session, I am
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: so amped for some more deep, in depth and eye
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: opening conversations about coming into your power and overcoming the
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: hurdle moments that we all go through each and every day.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Let's have a good week, y'all. With that, let's get
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  Speaker 2: to hurdling. Today. I am sitting down with Ayisha prout Leir.
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  Speaker 2: She is a pro runner.
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  Speaker 1: How you doing, I'm great. I'm so happy to be
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  Speaker 1: chatting with you today.
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  Speaker 2: What have you done so far today?
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  Speaker 1: Well, today I woke up, I fueled, and I went
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  Speaker 1: to meet my team at the track at eight thirty.
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  Speaker 1: I ran seven miles and I helped my teammates in
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  Speaker 1: some workouts, and then I went to the gym. I lifted,
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  Speaker 1: I came home, I refueled, and I'm now on my
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  Speaker 1: third cup of coffee of the day. Just having the
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  Speaker 1: best day ever.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I love when athletes talk about eating and they're like,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I fueled today at least three times. What does fueling
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  Speaker 2: look like for you?
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's really interesting when I think about eating
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  Speaker 1: in the context of it's actually my job. So sometimes
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I get annoyed with the amount of times that I'm
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  Speaker 1: chewing throughout the day, but the fueling process is really important.
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  Speaker 1: So this morning, I usually I'm a big creature of habit,
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  Speaker 1: but sometimes the habits getting exhausting, so I'm onto my
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  Speaker 1: third different type of breakfast of the day. I started
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: with some gluten free toaster waffles with peanut butter. Then
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  Speaker 1: I had collagen, vitamin C and electrolytes after my run
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: before I hit the gym, and then after the jam,
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  Speaker 1: I had another cup of coffee, three eggs over medium,
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  Speaker 1: and two pieces of avocado toast. So I try not
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  Speaker 1: to let breakfast go until about three pm every day.
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  Speaker 1: It's my favorite meal.
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  Speaker 2: And it sounds like you're living your best life.
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  Speaker 3: I know it's pretty great.
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  Speaker 1: Like I think about the aspects of my job that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: are that nobody feels bad for me about, and one
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  Speaker 1: of them is fueling the others taking naps, so nobody
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  Speaker 1: can really pity me.
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  Speaker 2: What's the nap schedule?
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  Speaker 1: Like I'm actually a horrible napper, but I try to
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  Speaker 1: go for I started this last year where I have
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  Speaker 1: a technology free hour of my day because I kept
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: saying like, oh, I can't nap, I can't nap, I
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  Speaker 1: don't know how, and then I put technology down for
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  Speaker 1: an hour and every day I find myself dozing off.
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  Speaker 1: So I try to just have that little time and
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  Speaker 1: I probably sleep for twenty minutes.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: That's about it. That's such a great hack, though, because
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  Speaker 2: I often say the same thing, even though I know
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  Speaker 2: that it's not truth right, saying something like I can't nap.
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  Speaker 2: That's not a factual statement. The statement is I feel
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  Speaker 2: as though I can't nap. Correct. So maybe maybe we
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  Speaker 2: all just need a tech free hour in the middle
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  Speaker 2: of the day. I know, I share as hell I
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  Speaker 2: could use one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I just ordered some blue blocking glasses and I feel
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: like it's just going to give me full license to
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  Speaker 1: just look at my phone all day and I just
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  Speaker 1: need to slap my own hand and say no, put
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  Speaker 1: it down.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: I have some Do you think they work?
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  Speaker 1: You know?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know. When I put them on, I do
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  Speaker 2: feel at least a placebo effect in my mind, where
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I think that a I'm doing something better for my
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  Speaker 2: body than if I was not wearing them, and I
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  Speaker 2: also feel immediately more studious and prepared to handle whatever
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  Speaker 2: is about to come my way. So do they work?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know, Aysha.
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  Speaker 1: I am a huge advocate for a placebo effect. I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: don't even care if something actually works, but if I
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  Speaker 1: believe it, then it's working. So whatever, whatever, whatever, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: so you mentioned a whole good chunk of fitness. Why
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  Speaker 1: don't we start by getting into the nitty gritty about
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  Speaker 1: the typical events that you run. Yes, So I'm a
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  Speaker 1: professional middle distance athlete, which means that I have a
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  Speaker 1: little bit of range. So I race on the track professionally.
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  Speaker 1: My primary event these days is the fifteen hundred meters.
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  Speaker 1: I'm a recovering steeplechaser, which is a three hundred meter
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: hurdles race. Hello Hurdle podcast. So it's basically a long
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: distance hurdle race, and I gave that event up that
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I'm most known for my last season racing that was
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Since then, I have switched over to the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: flat events of fifteen hundred meters and up to five
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  Speaker 1: thousand meters, so I kind of specialize in running fast
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: for under fifteen minutes and ten seconds. All my races. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: all my races are against international fields of women, and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I am trying to be one of the best in
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  Speaker 1: the world at it. So it takes a lot of training,
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  Speaker 1: which is sort of where I am in my phase
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of the year right now.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Why did you give up the staple chase, Yeah.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Giving up the steeple chase was an interesting choice. I
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: had my best year of my career ever. I won
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Commonwealth Games in the steeple chase. I was top ranked
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: tenth in the world, and I had an interesting conversation
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: with my coach that hang on a minute, you are
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: really good at this event. But in order to sort
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: of lengthen my career, what if we transitioned to a
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: flat event. The steeples notorious for being very, very very
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: grueling on the body. And in twenty eighteen.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I also.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Dabbled in racing the fifteen hundred meters indoor, so it
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't part of the plan, but we decided to sort
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: of throw my name into the hat for the World
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Indoor Championships, which was in Birmingham, UK in twenty eighteen.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So I qualified for the meet and I thought like, hey,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, my main goal is Commonwealth Game steeplechase. I'm
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: just gonna show up here and see.
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  Speaker 3: What I've got.
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  Speaker 1: And I made the final and we thought, oh, that's
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. Hard to make World Championships final in any event.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And then in the final I placed sixth and it
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: was the deepest field assembled in world in or history,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and we thought, hang on, a minute, I might actually
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: have something here. So we thought like, hey, why don't
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: we just try. Why don't we just try a full
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: year of fifteen hundred meter training and see what that
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: looks like, See if my body is interested in this,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and if it feels better. I'm thirty now, and I
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was starting to feel a little bit of that wear
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and tear from I mean, if you think about it,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you're racing nearly two miles, You're jumping over stuff, You're
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: planting one foot on a barrier and launching yourself into
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: a water pit, and.
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  Speaker 3: It's a lot of.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Variables and sometimes they can go poorly. So we gave
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it a try for a year and I and I
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: had the most fun of my entire career last year
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: training for fifteen hundred and racing fifteens in five k's
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: And it was one of those moves that was maybe
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit strange and wild from the outside of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Why leave an event that I'm really good at to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: transition to the fifteen hundred, which is having a moment
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: in history right now where the best women in the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: world are just attacking this event and running super well.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: But I'm a wild ladies, So I decided.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Why not give it to try.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: I love that, And I think that the most important
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: takeaway from that whole bit is you explaining that by
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: making this change, you were having more fun. I know
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: that it's a lot of pressure from talking just to
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: so many athletes about as you were referring before when
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: we were talking about fueling, like your body and your life,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: like that's your job. And so if you're gonna go
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: out every day and train every day, because that's your job,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and you owe it to yourself to be going out
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: every day and training every day and enjoying the process.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Totally, totally, totally, And I think that a lot of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: people see end results. When you're an athlete, you're sort
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of into this folder of entertainers basically, and people see
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: your performances, but what they don't see is that maybe
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe if I added all the days up for
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the whole year, I take two weeks off per year,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and I'm out on Christmas morning doing a long run,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: and New Year's Day and my Birthday out, you know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: doing a hard track workout.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: And if I.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Didn't love this, I would be miserable. I've been a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: professional athlete. This is my eighth year and if you
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: don't enjoy it. It's too hard. It's too hard. You're
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: judged on your best and worst days, but there are
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: so many days in between that create those performances. At
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the end of the year, Why.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Don't we roll it back a little bit and talk
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: about how you got to this point. Did you always
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: think that you were going to be a professional athlete?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not. I mean I think every kid growing
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: up thinks that they're going to be in the Olympics,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: or at least wants to be. But it's really hard
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: to conceptualize, or at least for me, it was really
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: hard to conceptualize how how to become a kid that
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: becomes a professional athlete. Like, it just wasn't my It
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't the path I saw for myself. I've always been
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a massive late bloomer. I didn't actually pick up long
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: distance running until I was sixteen, which is late for
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. And I, yeah, I was kind
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of a weird kid, so I didn't have like the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I didn't quite have all of the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: sport playing. I've never played a team sport with the ball.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I grew up doing karate and tumbling and cheerleading, which
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: is just not Yeah, it's just not the path that
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: one would take if they thought they were going to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: be a professional athlete. And yeah, I found running late.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And I found running because my cheerleading coach my freshman
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: year of high school got fired in a way that
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I thought was unjust. So I thought like, I'm going
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to stick it to them. I'm not trying out for cheerleading.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And then I found myself with other you know, all
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: this time on my hands because it'd been something that
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I did for years, and I had a friend convinced
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: me actually like hey, why don't you, why don't you
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: come out for a cross country. It'll it'll keep you
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: in shape for a track, because I if I was
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: going to go to the Olympics. In my mind, I
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: was going to be a sprinter, which just didn't work out.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Like I was really fast as a kid.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Once I hit maybe fourteen, I just I didn't speed
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: up anymore, like I just hit my peak. So I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: thought like, okay, sure I'll go out for a cross country.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: My parents did not think I could run three miles straight,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: which was our race distance. They came to their first
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: class country and meet, having no idea what to expect,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: and I was just pretty good at it, and I
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: just enjoyed what I was doing and enjoyed it enough
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and found enough success later in my high school career
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: that I just kind of found myself being recruited by
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: schools to go running college. I graduated high school in
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the height of the financial crisis,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and it was a really important to my family that
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I got a scholarship to go to college. It always is, right,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, like a what a great thing to be
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: able to do is to earn your way through college,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: but it was it was even more important in two
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight for my family that you know, they
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: didn't want to say anything, And as I've grown up,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I realized, like, oh wow, that was really important.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to get a full ride and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: run at Illinois State, where again, like I wasn't particularly
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: focused on becoming a professional athlete, that wasn't the path
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that I saw myself on. I studied geology in college.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a paleontologist, which makes me laugh
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: because I'm so far from that knowledge base. Like my
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: brain every day, I think I've killed so many brain
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: cells from training so hard that I can't even remember
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: what minerals are anymore. But yeah, I wasn't really that
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: great in college until I bloomed late my senior year
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and it was I just had a realization that, hey,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: this is going to be these are going to be
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: my last races. Ever, why don't I actually like fully
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: fully apply myself here and just like go out with
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a bang. And then I found myself being a professional runner.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: After that, just found myself that way.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's so interesting for me to like
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: try to be to look back on it, because I
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: don't know what I was thinking, Like I had no
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: idea what I was doing. All I knew and still
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to this day, all I really know is just like
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: my own effort, and I was just giving myself fully
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: to it when I was at the track, and then
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: giving myself fully to my studies when I wasn't on
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the track. And yeah, I had never been to a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: national championship until indoor track my senior year, which is
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: very rare to have had such a long professional career
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: when I was kind of a dud for a long time,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: and I look around at my teammates that or training
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: partners that I've trained with through my life, and I'm like,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you guys were way better than me, way better than me,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And I just found myself blooming light and having a
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: great season my senior year and my first national championship
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in college. I was second with like a lean, a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: leaning finish for the top three and just surprised a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: lot of people and myself and my coach in college,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and that is what ultimately gave way to me becoming
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: a professional athlete.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: When you started to succeed in that way, did you
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: think that you would keep going with it or were
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: you still at first thinking about the other avenues that
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: you were going to take when you got out of there.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When I my senior year of college, I really
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: was trying to straddle the line of realizing that I
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: really loved running and how can I keep doing this
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: with the knowledge that I need to be able to
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: support myself. I want to have a fruitful life and career.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And my thought process was to get a master's in geology,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and while I did that, to try and assistant coach
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: out of school. So what I did was I looked
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: at the top thirty schools in the country running wise,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and then matched up which had geology or environmental science
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: or any sort of earth science master's programs or PhDs,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and I just made this little cross reference list. And
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I then reached out to all of the coaches and said,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: would you consider having a grad assistant coach, which was
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: something that kind of normally happens, and I think I
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: sent out thirty personal letters explaining who I was talking
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: about their program, introducing myself, and I didn't hear back
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: from anyone except for one school that said no. And
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: it was demoralizing, like, oh shit, you know, like I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: don't have any options here at all. My running career
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: is probably going to be over, so let's just enjoy
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: it while I can. I'll just run as hard as
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I can outdoor, and then it's been a fun run.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And then after I got second at mc douaa's coaches
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and agents started calling my college coach. And it was
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a huge shock because suddenly I went from not a
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: single college coach in the country wanted anything to do
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: with me, or would even a reply to anything that
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I would send them to oh my gosh, all of
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a sudden, like I might sign a professional contract and
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: be legit so that was a really big turning point
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: for me.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: When the calls start to roll in. What happens then?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: When the calls started coming in, most people would have
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: reached out to others that they know, but this was
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: was novel to us. We didn't have professional running professional runners.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Coming out of Illinois State University was a big first
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: for everyone. Is you is I was at the time,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: like very much a mid major university. We didn't really
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: have that many people going to NCAA's. I was my
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: coach's first athlete that made a national meet.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: So we were.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Really ill equipped with the skills, and I specifically was
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: really ill equipped with the coping skills to handle all
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of a sudden this like pressure and excitement. So I
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: decided not to handle it, which was really probably a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: bad choice. I just said, Kushbobi, can you talk to
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: these people I have? I'm taking eighteen credit hours, I
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: have five labs. I can't I can't take this on.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Can you just weave people out for me? And then
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: when I finished my studies, we'll talk about it. And
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: he was great and said.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Like yeah, sure of course.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: But this was also at the very beginning of Instagram.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: So this is twenty.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Twelve and now now the world is just so much
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: more connected, and I have student athletes reach out to
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: me all the time, just even shooting a DM or
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a friend of a friend gets you know, gets my
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: email and I chat on the phone with someone I didn't.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I definitely didn't do any due diligence of like trying
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: to figure out and trying to learn from people who
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: came before me, which I think was a mistake. But
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I did very much luck into a really amazing training
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: group with a great coach and a solid sponsor. But
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I think I was really really lucky for that to
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: have happened.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what do you go with?
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: So I narrow it down to two. I just I've
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: been so lucky in my life. So I narrow it
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: down to two coaches. One his name is Mark Roland.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: He's a British guy. He has an Olympic medal in
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the steeplechase, and he has a group called the Oregon
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Track Club in Eugene, Oregon, which has like some of
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the most storied middle distance athletes. It's a more of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: an international team, but they have some of the best
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Americans that, like, you know, I had even kind of
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: heard of, which says a lot because I wasn't paying
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: attention to running that much. The other group was coached
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: by John Cook, who's a little bit of an older coach,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and his roster is absolutely loaded with other really fantastic
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: middle distance athletes, and they're based in Austin, Texas. So
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: what I do is I make a list of ten questions.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I ask both coaches the same ten questions. I write
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: down their answers, and then I make little pro and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: con lists. I'm not a perfectionist at all, by the way, yeah, clearly,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and so I make these little pro con lists and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I just start thinking about it, and I ultimately choose
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to go to Eugene and I finished school. I with
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: my college coaches helped choose an agent. I'm having these
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: conversations with these coaches.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure out.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: What comes next, how I get a sponsor, all this stuff.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I go race in Europe for the first time. I'd
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: never been to Europe. I got on a plane by myself,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: not knowing where I'm going, hoping there's someone to receive
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: me on the other side, because of course, like international
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: data isn't really a thing yet. And I find myself
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: racing the summer in Europe, and I choose to go
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to Eugene, and I say, I'm super lucky because the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: other coach in his club ends up disbanding for reasons.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I don't really know exactly what happened, but I luckily
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: had chosen I had chosen Eugene, and if I hadn't,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: like my situation would have dissolved and I would have
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: been kind of floundering at.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: What to do.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: So I get super lucky by choosing Eugene, and I
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: moved there in September of twenty twelve, and I go
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: from being this like pretty much unknown big fish in
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a small pond athlete to walking into a practice with
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: some of the best athletes in the world. There's Olympic medals,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: there's a World World Championship medals, there's you know, American
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: record holders, there's the who's who of runners. And it
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: was kind of like an oh shit moment for me
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of like, wow, I am so far out of my league.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: This is wild. How do you gain confidence at a
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: time like that when you just feel completely overwhelmed and
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: having one of those like holy shit moments.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: It was really hard. I really struggled my first year
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: in Oregon. I'd never been so far from my family.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I went to college two hours from my parents' house,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: moved across the country, knew nobody. Everybody that was on
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the team a sort of a transplant, and nobody had
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: any family around, so you're just like all kind of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: leaning on each other. And I really struggled. Like if
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you asked my mom, I called her crying at least
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: once a week because I was getting my ass kicked
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to the curb day in and day out, and day
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in and day out. And I really I really questioned myself,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and truthfully, I felt like I didn't belong and that
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: like what was A doing and like this is I'm
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: so I'm so far out of my league that like
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: maybe this was a mistake. And I also really struggled
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: with becoming a professional. I didn't really have any role
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: models of how to do it necessarily. Like my senior year,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I was, as I said, just like so focused on school.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I to practice, i'd run, I'd go home, I would
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: never think about it again. But now all of a sudden,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything else to do. I just run,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and then I like think about my run all day
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and like think about how behind I am. And I
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: really really struggled for a long time until in January
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I ended up breaking my foot and I was just
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: burning the candle so hard, trying to keep up, trying
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: to keep up with everyone. And I was running with
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: a woman who had graduated from the University of Oregon,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: which is like, you know, thus was thus school at
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the time for middle distance athletes, and she she was
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: much fitter and more well trained and could handle the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: training better than I could. But I was running with
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: her on my easy days, like Okay, if I can
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: just keep up with her, like you know, I'll get
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: there faster. And I was so not listening to my
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: own body and so in my own head that I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: was just like burning the candle so hard, like I
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't recovering. I was worrying all the time. I couldn't
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: sit still, and that led to me getting pretty severely injured,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and I had I had eight weeks where I wasn't running.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I was on crutches for probably three weeks. I was
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: like totally at a loss of like, oh my gosh,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: this really sucks. I was like, when I look back
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: at it, I'm like I would think I was depressed,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Like Eugene in the winter is very dark and rainy,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and I would at times go to the pool to
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: go cross train and sit on the edge of the
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: pool with my feet dangling, just staring at the water
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: like I don't want to get into this water, like
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: this just sucks, and I just felt so sorry for myself.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But at one point, I don't know what happened, but
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: it was just sort of a realization that like, hey, aish,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: you've been given a chance to do this. It's up
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: to you whether or not you're gonna lean in. And
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't leaning in, you know, I was just
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: like thinking about all of like the why me in
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: a bad way instead of like why not me? Like
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: why why can't Like I'm already freaking here, you know,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: like I already moved across the country. I already took
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: this like big leap, and you know, this coach had
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: taken a big leap on me, and my sponsored taken
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a big leap on me. Like if I just sit
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: here and feel sorry for myself, I'm going to totally
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: squander this opportunity. So the injury really helped me. I think,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: like snap out of it of like, well, if I
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: just waste time, I'm just wasting time, and why not
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: just be the best that I possibly can be. So
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that was a huge turning point of like I don't
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: really care, Like I just would tell myself like I
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: don't really care how I feel, like, I'm just going
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: to do the best that I can, Like I'm just
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I'm in control of my own effort and that's that's it.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: So I found a way to to get on the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: right track mentally and really start relying on the people
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: around me, on my teammates and actually learning from them
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: instead of like staring at them from afar like oh wow,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: they're so good. I just started following their lead and
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: found myself getting better and better and growing and growing
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: in that. And then I in twenty fifteen started seeing
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: a sports psychologist in Eugene, and that was one of
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: the biggest career moves I've ever made. One of my
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: good friends and really incredible athletes is Nick Simmons, and
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: he for years I think he could see that I
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: was struggling. And he has had the same sports psychologist
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: named Jeff. I don't know Jeff's last name, but they
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: had been working for his whole career, and he kept saying, like,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: you got it. You know you got to see somebody.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: You got to see somebody. So I scour the internet.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I'm reading bios. I'm trying to find somebody because I
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: want to be the best I can be in my
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: personal life. Things were really changing and I thought like,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: all right, this is a good time. And I started
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: seeing doctor Melissa Todd in twenty fifteen, and she and
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I have worked together since then. I have I still
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: do a web meeting with her every other week, and
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it has transformed me into I think the word is
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: probably fearful, like a fearful athlete, into an empowered athlete,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and she's she and I have been able to work
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: together to figure out to help me figure out who
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: I am and where I'm coming from, and what makes
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: me feel good and what makes me not feel good,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: and how I can show up for myself to my
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: best ability if I'm standing on a start line, or
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: if I'm waking up in the morning, or if I'm
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: having a conversation with my spouse or I'm talking on
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the phone to my parents or whatever, like, how can
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I show up best for myself and it's changed my
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: career so much.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Taking a break from today's episode to talk about Thrive
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Market now, I shared with you that I recently started
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: using the online membership based market and I am so
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: sold on it. Basically, it works like Costco. You can
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: pay five dollars a month for twelve months, or nine
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: ninety five a month if you pay by the month,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: and this membership gets you twenty five to fifty percent
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: off regular prices for things that sometimes cost what feels
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: like an arm and a leg at my local grocery store.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I'm talking groceries Bathom, Body meats, and seafood. Wine brands
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: like missus Myers, White Rice, Sun Warrior, Noon, or Gain
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: you name it. I easily. There's a soap that I'm
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: obsessed with that costs easily almost ten dollars the market
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: downstairs four dollars on thrive Market. It doesn't get better
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: than this. I recently also stocked up on so many
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: of my essentials like coconut flour, spices, oats, and it
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: was just so easy because it comes straight to my
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: door again for a fraction of the price. Of course,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: they have options for every diet, whether you are keto Paleo,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: gluten free, vegan you name it. Head on over to
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: thrive market dot com slash hurdle and joined today to
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: get a free gift of your choosing up to twenty
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: two dollars in value. Again, that is thrive market dot
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: com slash hurdle. Thhr i ve market dot com slash
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: hurdle to start your risk free membership and get a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: free gift today drivemarket dot com slash hurdle. Before this interaction,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: had you ever worked with a therapists before?
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: No?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: No. I One time in college I had a bad
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: breakup and my my college coach's wife was a therapist,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and she encouraged me to to just like seek out
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: one of the free counselors at school. So I went
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: into one session and she told me to journal, and
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, cool, I got this. But I'd
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: never I'd never I'd never seen a therapist that you know,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: regularly or that was my own, and I didn't. It's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: not something that I grew up around. You know, nobody
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: in my family really ever had. It wasn't part of
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: the culture that I was used to. And I think
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: think I tell people all the time, I think everyone
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: I think everyone should have a therapist or a counselor
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: or a confidante. And I think that mental health needs
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to be mental health is healthcare, and I just wish
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that everyone had access because I know how much it's
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: changed my life and how much it makes me a
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: better version of myself. But yeah, it wasn't something that
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: was that I grew up with or that I had
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: really even considered until I was living in Eugene.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: And when you first started working with your sports psychologist,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: do you remember from the get go, like any of
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the takeaways that made you say wow, Like, yeah, I've
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: got to keep coming back to do this.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: One of my earliest takeaways was how quickly she was
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: able to see who I was.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: And one of.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: The earliest ideas, like sports psychology nuts and bolts, early ideas,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: was an article that she had printed off for me
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: that was written by doctor Carol Dweck, who wrote the
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: book Mindset and which is my I would recommend this
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: book to anyone, whether you're an athlete or a human,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: or a business person or whatever, And it's this idea
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that there's a you can work through life with a
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: fixed mindset, or you can work through life with a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: growth mindset and a fixed mindset would be to give
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: a sports metaphor, I'm not good at K repeat workouts,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and the growth mindset would say, K repeat workouts aren't
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: my strength, but I know I can work on them
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: and develop it into a strength. And I think that
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I was being really black and white with who I
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: was as a person on and off the track of like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: this is who I am, this is what I'm good at,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: this is what I'm not good at, beause are my
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: limitations and tut off and taking that piece of paper
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: home and reading it and seeing example I could just
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: see examples where I was really limiting myself and realizing that,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: like I don't actually have to buy into that this
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: is who I am and I'll never be anything different
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and I'll never change. It really opened up my eyes
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to like whoa I can actually like morph into like
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I used a two point oh three point h four
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: point oh five point zero, and I can become whatever
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: it is I want to become. And no, I'm not
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: going to be the best at every single thing, but
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: like I don't really need to be, and I can
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: just always be working to improve.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: What a beautiful takeaway you start to work with this
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: sports psych and then you start to also see the
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: benefits of this in your performance.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Right right right, and even even just in practice, starting
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: in practice and working on how I go about executing
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: things on a day to day level. And in twenty fifteen,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I started working with her in November, and I would
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I was having this injury that wasn't going away and
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: wasn't going away. And in December of twenty fifteen, we
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: realized that I need to get surgery. And I had
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: a torn accessory tendon to my achilles and it wasn't healing,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: It wasn't healing. Us trying everything wasn't healing. So I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: ended up having to get surgery. And it was just
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the best timing that I started working with Melissa in
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: novel and I had the surgery in December, And so
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: if you're counting, that's December of twenty fifteen. The real
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Olympics are in the summer, and I am my back
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: is against the wall of I could not run pain free.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I was in so much pain, and I couldn't string
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: together more than a week of training at a time.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: And if you think that you're going to qualify for
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: the Olympics, with stop start training. It's very very difficult.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: And so I get the surgery, and I'm working with
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: her about just sort of letting go of expectations and
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: letting go of expectations. Also let's go of limitations and go.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I get running. I go up to flag Staff to
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: do some altitude training, and I'm so.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Out of shape.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I just like I wish that I could wear the
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Harry Potter invisibility cloak and that nobody could see me,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: because I just like needed, I know, I needed so
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: much work and I just wanted to get fit. And
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: something that really helped during that time was my coach
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: decided that I'm not working out with a watch, and
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: it would be like I'm trying to think of a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: here's an analogy. You need to drive across the country
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and you can't use your spiometer. And that was my
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: whole training for six weeks up in the mountains was
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: just like going on feel and working with her through
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: this like really helped to shape my mindset that I
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: would have for all of the years after this, which
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: is I can trust my body and like I don't
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: need to be afraid of being too slow because it
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: could also mean that I would be afraid of going
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: too fast and not having this measurement bogging down on
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: me all the time, just like taught me to run freely.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: And we just worked on that mentality and worked on
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: trusting myself and worked on believing that my limitations could
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: just be pushed to the side, and I end up
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: getting healthy, qualifying for the Olympics, running personal bests, and
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: like having a good year from what could have been
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: really tragic of not qualifying for the games, you know,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: re injuring myself, trying too hard, or not showing up
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: for myself in the way in the best way. And
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: it really helped to work on it in the moment.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: What advice would you offer to someone outside of that
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: great takeaway who might also be struggling with injury right now.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I think what I've learned from that experience and then
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: my years since, is that you need to learn to
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: be more flexible and be less rigid, because there are
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: so many ways to become your best and because you've
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: done it one way in the past doesn't mean you
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: have to do it that way. There's not one roadmap
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: for getting to your goal, and if you're banged up
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: like that's okay, and it's okay. You know, it's okay
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: that it does suck, and it's okay to like feel
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the suck and be upset about it, but also like
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: let go a little bit of this idea, this preconceived
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: notion of what you need to be doing to reach
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: your goals, and be willing to work with your body
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and listen to it and push on the days where
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: it's telling you yes and back off on the days
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that it's telling you no. And it's one of the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: hardest things to do. It's so easy to say, like,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, listen to your body, just back off when
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: you need to, but it really is the most important
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: piece of becoming whatever you want to be is just
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: letting go of these expectations and leaning in when you can.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: So is the comeback better than the setback?
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it totally is. Like when you when you're
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: in these like just shit bag moments, Sorry for cursing,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: but like it just sucks so badly, and then when
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you get to these beautiful winds, it's just like a
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: deeper you just have felt on a deeper spectrum of
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: going from blah to awesome. It's just like it's such
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: a different feeling when you have had setbacks and you
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: have been in the pa to being able to be
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: you know, on a podium or just knocking whatever you
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: are doing out of the park. You just like you
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: feel a more human spectrum of what it's like to
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: overcome things.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: So what does the comeback then look like? For you?
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: The comeback is awesome?
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: So every day, every day should be a comeback. I mean,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: but in essence, why didn't you say that you have
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to kind of harness some of that comeback
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: energy every day when you wake up?
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure, for sure, Because like if you've been
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: in the pits and you wake up and you're coming
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: out of it or you're not there anymore.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: It's like, Wow, what.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: A day, you know, like there are so many possibilities
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: of like how great the day can be today? And
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I try really hard to like be grateful for the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: days that I get out of bed and I'm not
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: like limping to the coffee machine, because yeah it every
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: day is a little bit of a comeback.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, So back to your comeback.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: So I go to the Olympics, And.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Is that still like a crazy sentence to say?
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Sometimes here's what's strange about my life?
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Tell me the one thing that's.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I live in a very small, specific niche bubble. The
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: people around me are some of the fittest human beings
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: you'll ever see in your life, Like some of the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: most superlative, excellent, focused, fit, high achieving, great mindset people
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: you could ever find in the world. So that's my normal.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I forget that sometimes I forget that, like the people
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: around me, you are the razor's edge, and I forget
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: some times that there is perspective, you know, Like one
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: of my best friends in the world that I measure,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: I measure with in training is world champion, Olympic medalist,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: world silver medalist. She's as good as they get, you know,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: like her goal is winning Olympic gold. And I forget
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: that that's not normal. So, yes, it is weird. When
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I think about it, I'm like, oh, yeah, when I
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: was at the Olympics. But like, that's not a weird
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: sentence to say in my group. It's kind of just
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: like saying, oh yeah, when I was at the grocery store.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: That's really really really abnormal.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Oh I love it, I love it. Yeah.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: So anyway, here I am at the Olympics, I didn't
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: run as well as I wanted.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: And when I.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Graduated college, I really thought like, Okay, I'll run professionally
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: for four years, maybe five, and then I'll go back
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: to school, get a PhD, become a geologist, whatever. And
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: when I was there, a switch really flicked for me
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: of seeing true, true, true, true excellence in its purest form.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: The Olympics is an amazing place, and when I was there,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I realized like, wait, I actually want more. I know
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I'm good, but I'd really like to be great instead.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: And I know that I knew that what I needed
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: was to be challenged directly in a more in my
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: face way of what it means to be great. At
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the time at OTC, we only had three women on
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the team. We all ran different events, and I didn't
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: have like a direct training partner, so I didn't have
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of like check ins of how I was doing.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I'd check in when I went to a race,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: and I could measure myself against the other women in
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: the world, but I wasn't directly training with anyone specifically.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: So where my husband and I are on a run
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: in Rio and he brings up like, you know, have
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: you ever thought about transitioning to a different training situation?
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: You know, this is every four years people Olympic athletes
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: kind of check in with themselves and say like, Okay,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: this is this fitting with me? Is this like you
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: sort of live your life on these like four year increments.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: And it was just like a check in, like how
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: are you doing? How are you feeling? Like are you
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: are you happy in your current setup? And it was
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: in that moment that I was like, you know what,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: if I'm going to do this for another four years,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going to really do it for another four years
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and I really want to be great. So from there
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: I begin my second and round of list making in
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: my life, and this time I make a list of
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: the best female steeple chasers in the world and I
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: look at where they live, who they're coached by, because
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: I just am seeking that direct training situation where I
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: am thrown to the I need to get thrown to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the wolves again. I need I need to to really
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: challenge myself. So it ends up working out that Emma
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Coburn is also looking for a change, and I take
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a really big risky step to move to Boulder. My
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: husband was was just great and thought, you know what, sure, Like,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: let's just you want to be great, let's do this.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: So we move from Eugene to Boulder, and our life
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: just like kind of changes and settles in a new way.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: When we lived in Eugene, it was kind of hard,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: like we our houses at level and altitude training is
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: really important for middle distance athletes, so for a lot
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: of the year we were gone. It would be a
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: good year if we lived in our house for five months,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: like pieced together throughout the year, and that has a strain.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: On your life.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And you know, we were everybody there was kind of
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: a transplant, so we didn't have a lot of friends
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: outside of the sport and the people that I saw
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: every day in training. And so we moved to Boulder,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and our life oddly just kind of settles, Like we
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: live at altitude, so we don't need to be taking
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: trips all the time because we're already in the mountains.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: And there are a lot more young professionals in Boulder,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: so we're finding ourselves, like meeting other couple friends and
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: there's just like a little bit of stress that's relieved,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'm training with one of
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the best to have ever done it. And after dying
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: for like two or three months trying to hang on,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I'm starting to like come into my own and we
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: go to our first international race and I shave like
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen seconds off my personal best or something like that.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Like my PR was nine thirty one. Maybe I'm trying
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: to do some math of thirty three. Whatever it is
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: IPR by like twelve seconds or eleven seconds whatever. Run
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: I run the Jamaican record, my first shot with a
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: new coach and a new training partner, I run this
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: massive PR and all of a sudden, like I'm more
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: of a player on the world stage, and it was
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: just like all of these pieces of our life like
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: coming together. I'm healthy finally for a whole year. I
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: am happy in my personal life. I am loving the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: grind of working with someone who really knows how to
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: be how to do this event, and how to be
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: one of the best in the world. And her fiance
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: at the time now husband is our first time coach.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: He's never coached anyone before, but he's such a student
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: of a sport and he's taking such great care of us.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: We're so healthy, we're so fit, and things really turned
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: around so it was a big leap and it just
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: started this awesome, awesome comeback.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: I want to take a second to focus on your
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: friendship and relationship with Emma, because I think it's really special,
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: especially because it is something that really blossomed as you
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: got older, And I think that's a really difficult thing,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: right to fall into a groove and to establish such
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: an excellent female friendship. Yes, not from like a younger age.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious if you could articulate, like what you
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: think it is about this particular relationship in your life
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: that makes you want to prioritize it so much, Like
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: what is it about this relationship that makes it so
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: almost effortless for you?
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, moving to Boulder, Emma and I knew of each other,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Like we didn't know each other super super well, but
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: we had raced each other a few times. When you're
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: racing internationally, you just kind of sit at the table
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: with people that speak your same language at meals, so
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you like peripherally know people and it's the same conversation
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: every time of like what races are you doing?
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: Cool?
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Where are you going next? And what flight did you
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: take there? And that was really our relationship. I knew
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: that I respected her a lot and that I liked
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: whatever I knew about her, but we weren't like besties
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. And moved to Boulder,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I am met with a
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: person who sees life and the world very similarly to
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the way that I view myself and the way I
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: operate in the world. And we become such good friends effortlessly,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe it, Like, I didn't plan to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: move to Boulder and like become super close friends with Emma,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: but it was just happening so organically. And I don't
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: know about you, but I think making friends is really.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: Hard, especially really hard. It's really hard, and it's actually
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: something that a lot of people reach out to me about,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: asking my advice on how to how to do it
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: and how to know when like someone's a good fit
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: for you. And I think I mean on a case
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: by case basis, But I love what we both said
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: in The Beauty of Female Friendships That Last that when
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: you make them when you're older, the word effortless is
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: just it's really important, I think, because I agree that
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: all relationships take a certain amount of work, but when
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: it feels effortless and you can truly be yourself, it's
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: just irreplaceable.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I completely agree, and I've identified as I've gotten older
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: that I'm actually quite introverted. I realize that there's a scale,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: sort of like a spectrum of what relationships give energy
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to me and what relationships take energy from me. And
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: immediately I just was so energized by her, And spending
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: time with Emma is not hard for me, and sometimes
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: spending time with people is hard and takes energy. And
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: we start traveling the world together. And one of the
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: things that really druck me when I was on my
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: sort of visit to see if Boulder was if Boulder
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: was going to be a good fit, was we were
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: talking about books and Emma loves to read and I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: love to read, and she was reading Mindset by Carol D. Black,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: which is the basis of a lot of the way
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that my psychologist and I talk about sport. And Emma
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: believes that believes in the growth mindset so inherently that
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: we can just trust that each other thinks similarly about
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: really big things. And another thing that I think is
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: unique in our friendship and in our group that we've
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: built is this idea that there can be more than
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: one successful person in the room, and that if Emma
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: does something awesome, it only enriches my life, and if
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: I something awesome, it only enriches hers. It doesn't take away.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: It's not a pie, it's not a competition, it's not
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: a comparison. It's just adds too. And I think that's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: really hard to find, especially in super high achieving, laser focused,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: goal oriented people. And that's something that we share at
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: the heart of who we are and is like a
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: founding block of our friendship.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, so give me like a highlight reel of what
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: happens for you over the next two and a half
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: or so years.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, so pretty much all my life highlights happen in
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: the next couple of years. Right before we move to Boulder.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: My husband and I get married in Minneapolis. So that's awesome.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, like throw the marriage highlight
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: into the mix here somewhere.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, So, yeah, we get married, we have this like
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: really awesome wedding that turns into like a crazy warehouse
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: dance party. So that is like a life highlight. It's
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: the best party I've ever thrown. That was awesome highlight.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Two Emma wins World Championships in twenty seventeen and this
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: was really defining for our professional life. My foot is
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: broken in this race and that is a low light
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: for me, very big low light and also a highlight
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: because I watch em A win World Championships from inside
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: the race front row seat, from the back of the bus,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and from there I have another sort of epiphany moment
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: of like, screw this, I want to also have a
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: lot of fun success. I want to stand out of a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: podium too. This looks great. So I feel sorry for
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: myself for a little bit and then I put my
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: head down with a singular focus that I'm going to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: win the next championship, and for me that was Commonwealth Games,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: which if you're listening from the American audience, doesn't really
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: resonate with you. It is of an Olympic style championship
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: from from the Commonwealth countries, so we're talking UK, Canada, Kenya, Uganda,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: the most countries in the Caribbean. It's a it's a
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: huge deal. Basically the next specs. If you live in
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: a country that participates in the Commonwealth Games, it's the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: next best thing to the Olympics, so that's coming up
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: for me in twenty eighteen. So I decide I'm gonna
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: win and that's like.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: I just make that decision. I got, you know what,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: I'm going to win this one.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what, my sports psychologists didn't really
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: like that, like, oh, here's a huge outcome goal that's
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: like very very us extreme and serious and focused. But
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I just decided that that it was my singular focus.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: And that's actually really interesting to me because when I
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: sat down with Dez, and by sat down, I mean
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: I was sitting on this couch and she was sitting
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: on her couch as well. But when when her and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I chatted, I thought one of the most interesting things
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: that she did going in to the Boston Marathon was
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: talking about that she in the two months leading up
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: to it said I'm going to live and breathe like
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: a Boston Marathon champion. I'm going to eat like a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: Boston Marathon champion. I'm going to sleep like a Boston
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Marathon champion. I'm going to live every single day of
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: my life like I am a Boston Marathon champion because
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: that's what I'm going to be. So to hear you
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: say I decided I was going to win, but my
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: sports psych didn't like that. I think that's interesting that
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: she didn't like that.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hearing you talk about does like that gives me
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: goosebumps because I even think about that race sometimes when
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I'm out training and it sucks and it's raining and
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: cold or whatever. I like channel her, and I think
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of runners do too.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: But yeah, you know, a lot of a lot of
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: sports psychology suggest that you focus on the things that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: you can control, and outcome.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Of races isn't totally in your control because you can't
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: control what other people are going to do. So when
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I say, oh, yeah, I'm going to when conwalk games,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: is kind of.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Like, well, maybe you should think.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm going to do as well as I can,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna I'm gonna have a maximum effort or
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put myself in the best position to win,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: not like I am going to do this thing.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: But I didn't care.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I saw the and I felt the joy and the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: jubilants and the just celebration of Emma winning world championships,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: and like, I just wanted to feel that too, So
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I just make that choice and like hearing myself say that,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: I'm like, come on, girl, like make the choice again.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: And it was really Winning that race took a lot,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Like the stats behind it are. My personal best going
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: into the race was I think twenty two seconds slower
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: than the favorite. The woman who was the favorite, her
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: name is Selphine Chesspool, and she at the time was
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the second best deeple chaser in history. And I knew
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: that if I wanted to win that I would have
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: to beat her to do it. So I thought about
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: that every day. And I also stats know that if
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I win a medal at Commonwealth Games, it's the first
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: distance medal for Jamaica in history, and so I realized
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: how difficult this task is. But I've seen it done before.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I just watched em A win World Championship, so why
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: not me? And it's like everything that I've ever learned
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: about myself just like comes through and in the race.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: Leading into the race, it's in Australia, I go down
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: with my coach and he just says, whatever move is made,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: you just cover and watching the race like it's it's
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: kind of surprising that if you look in the last
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: few laps, like I'm I'm ten meters back from the leader,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: and I'm just absolutely grinding and girding my teeth, and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: I just didn't give up. And I thought about the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: way Emma one World Championships, which was on the last
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: water jump, she just powered off, took that corner and
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: just kicked so hard for home, and like I'd seen it.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I'd watched that race so many times and I pictured
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: myself doing it and I did the same thing, and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: so that was career highlight for me.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: So that was cool. Also, that was cool. Yeah, It's
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: just a little thing I did.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was cool.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: And other small highlights was six that World Indoors in
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the fifteen hundred, which shaped the way that I became
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: a fifteen hundred meter runner. Now I've had I set
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: the Jamaican record in the indoor fifteen hundred and the
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: indoor three k, in the outdoor five k. Last year,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I set the Jamaican record again in the steeples chase.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: So I think I now have five national records.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: And have in.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: Our personal life, my husband and I have made three
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: couple friends of like people in the world that we
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: like encounter and meet. Making friends again is so hard,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: so that's a big life accomplishment for us to Like.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: I love that you through that in the mix.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's just like I mean, obviously not
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: the entire point of what we're talking about here, but
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: it just like it doesn't matter who you are, Making
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: friends is a hard thing.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: And so it just like warms my heart when people
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: are open about that experience because I don't think that
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of people are.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think that at the basic level,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: like we all just want to belong, and in that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: is the fear of like, well, if I approach this
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: person or if we go on a friend date, like
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: maybe like it's gonna suck. And like we've definitely had
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: friend dates that have sucked and we're not friends with them.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: But like everybody goes through the same difficulty, Like everybody
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: wants to have friends, everybody wants to belong. And yeah,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that we do.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: You mentioned the four year cycle earlier, and obviously the
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: Olympics have been pushed off. I'll bite for now. Talk
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: to me about how that was for you and what
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: that meant not just for your professional life right now,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: but maybe also for your personal life.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's difficult.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's more difficult for my personal life than
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: for my professional life. Interesting fact about me, I'm married
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: to one of the best American milers in history and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: he is five years older than me. His name's will Lear,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: and it's wonderful because he intimately knows what it takes
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: to be an athlete at this caliber. But it also
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: means that we've lived a very serious, focused.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Life and a.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Two athlete household, and pushing the Olympics back the biggest
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: ripple that it has.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: In our life.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: And this is something that like not a lot of
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: people are talking about but is a very real thing.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Is family planning and having the Olympics push back a
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: year condenses the rest of the schedule. And we work
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: for World Championships, we work for Commwalth Games, we work
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: for Olympic Games, and we work for these you know,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: the Diamond League and these big race opportunities, and now
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: we have all these events that we're supposed to happen
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: over four years are happening in three hopefully. So it
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: really removed a baby making window from our lives. If
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: I'm being completely candid.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of women are talking about
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: this now. And when I had Alophine on the podcast,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: that was one of the first things she talked about
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: was that they were really looking forward to doing that,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you know, starting this fall, and for now they're putting
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: it off. And that's a scary thing.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: It's a totally scary thing. And you know, it's it's
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: really difficult that my profession is my body. Sometimes it's
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: like it is hard when, yeah, when when there is
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: no chill time necessarily, and there is no maternity leave
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and there is no consideration for normal human moments like that.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's it's tough. And I I feel
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: easier about it than Will does. And you know, he
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: was so looking forward to it. We're both so looking
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: forward to it. But I think especially for him being
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: five years older than me, it's like another three years,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: another four years, it's like, oh my gosh, Like, you know,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: he's been waiting forever and has lived this seward discipline
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: life already and now we're just gonna bulldoze through another
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: four years without coming up for in a in a
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: family sense. And it's been a really hard conversation for us.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: And it's been That's one thing this year that I've
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: really had to check in on is that, Like, you know,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: am I handling the idea that my body is my
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: job in the best sense? And I've had to work
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: on that a bit.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: Do you think that you have been.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I have gotten a lot healthier with that idea this year,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and a lot of it came with help from a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: registered dietitian that is one of my training partners. Her
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: name is Maddie alm And I always think of my
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: body as just like a machine, Like I sometimes forget that, like,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I'm a human woman. I'm just like must fuel,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: must run, must whatever. I get a bit robotic. But
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: one thing that is sort of being talked about more
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: now is this antiquated idea that as a performance middle
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: distance runner distance runner that like riding the razor's edge
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: with your body and your body composition. It's a fallacy
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: and like we in our group especially are trying to
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: dispel this notion that lighter is faster, and I just
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: really for years have focused on like, my body is
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: a ferrari and it needs high octane fuel all the time.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I have to be perfect in my fueling. I have
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: to have this super low body fat all the time.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: And this is the way that I am going to
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: be the best, and it's just not true completely, is
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: just not true. And I've learned actually, like i'd never
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: I'd never talked to a professional about like what it
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: looks like to properly feel my body, what it looks
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: like to gain more weight in the off season and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: then naturally get fitter and your body composition changes as
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: your workouts change, and that has been I think the
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: biggest blessing of this Olympic postponement is I've learned how
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: to get my body to its healthiest standpoint and be
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: happy with that. And for me, like I've successfully gained
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: like four percent body mass, and I feel happier every
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: day and I'm not as grumpy, and all of these
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: like little injuries that you hold on to for years
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: by being on the raisers at just started disappearing. And
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I was spending five days in the gym doing strength work,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: and I added another meal to my day, so I
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: eat four meals a day instead of three, and I
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: drink wine when I want to, especially because we haven't
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: had as many competitions, so like I haven't just had
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: to be on that razor's edge margin and it's I
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: think gonna give me a much happier next few years
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: of treating myself like a whole person and being a
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: little bit more relaxed. And it's something that I'm really
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: proud of.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: What excites you right now?
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: Oh man? So much excites me right now.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot going on in the
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: world that's like kind of super severely depressing, but there's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: also so many things to be excited about. I still
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: like I'm nearing the end of this strange season, but
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I'm still so excited about showing up for my teammates
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and showing up for myself and getting out the door
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: and running and like enjoying the summer and enjoying this
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: fitness that I earned.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: So that excites me.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: I'm excited about the connection that I've made being home
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: longer in the year and spending more time at home
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: with my husband, Like that's awesome, and I am excited
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: to see him every day. I'm excited for the possibility
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: of an Olympic year. I am excited to spend time
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: with friends as I ender sort of a more RESTful
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: phase of the year. I'm going to go drive to
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Park City and see one of my best friends in
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: the world. Emily in Fell who is another who is
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: a fellow runner, and I haven't seen her for probably
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: over a year. Like, I'm just excited about the small
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: things in life, like the connections, the friends, the health. Yeah,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's all where it's all very small, maybe, but.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: But it feels good.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: It feels good. All right, Well we're winding down here.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: Two last questions, Okay, question number one. People go to
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: your Instagram page and they see a woman that loves
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: to run and do a great job at it. You
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: look in the mirror and what do you see?
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: I am a total lover, like I Something that I
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: love about myself is that I show the people around
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: me how I feel about them. So I feel like
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: I'm a good friend, I'm a good wife, I'm a
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: good person in other people's lives. And a few years ago,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: maybe like I think this is twenty thirteen, I made
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: a New Year's resolution that I was if I thought
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: something nice about someone, I was just going to tell them.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: And I love that I never stopped doing it. And
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: it's a really like a major piece of me is
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: that I love making other people around me feel good.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: And that's usually what I see when I look in
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: the mirror.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: Right now, you have an opportunity to offer yourself one
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: piece of advice when you're going through one of the
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: hurdle moments we talked about today, maybe your foot injury,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: maybe the time that you were feeling like you weren't
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: really in love with your sport right before you experienced
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: that bad injury. You have an opportunity to offer yourself
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: one piece of advice looking back on that hurdle moment
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: right now, what do you tell yourself?
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Don't chase perfection, just chase the best.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: To you, Thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: I had such a nice time talking to you.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: Please take a moment and leave a quick review by
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: all face multiple hurdles in life, and I want to
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: hear about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: hurdle dot us, Connect with the pod on Instagram and
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: Twitter at Hurdle Podcast. Aisha. How do they keep up
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: with you? Where do they find you? Give me the details.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: I am most active on Instagram and my handle is
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: my name at Aisha Pratlear and I respond to dms,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: so if you've got anything to say to me, I'll reply.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: I love that tidbit. I love that tidbit. I am
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: at Emily a Body at Hurdle Podcast, Another Hurdle Conquered.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: Catch you guys next time