Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 100. Molly Seidel, Pro Runner

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100. Molly Seidel, Pro Runner · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

0:00
Speaker 1: You have to do all the work, and you have
0:01
Speaker 1: to be brave enough to put yourself out there. And
0:04
Speaker 1: sometimes a lightning bolt is going to strike from the
0:06
Speaker 1: heavens and it's going to work out. And sometimes it's
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Speaker 1: just not going to flow, and it's going to be
0:10
Speaker 1: one of those days that it doesn't work. But if
0:12
Speaker 1: you're not willing to put yourself up there and to
0:15
Speaker 1: put yourself in a position to be great, you're never
0:17
Speaker 1: going to be great.
0:32
Speaker 2: Hey, Hurdlers, Emily a body here bringing you Episode one
0:38
Speaker 2: hundred of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where I talk
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Speaker 2: to inspiring individuals about everything from their big wins to
0:48
Speaker 2: how they've gotten through some of life's toughest moments. On
0:51
Speaker 2: the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation, and candid discussions
0:56
Speaker 2: with everyone from top athletes to aspiring autopreneurs and what
1:01
Speaker 2: it really takes to follow your passions. My mission is
1:05
Speaker 2: simple to inspire you to be your best self, move
1:09
Speaker 2: with intention, and have some fun along the way. I
1:16
Speaker 2: have so many feelings right now. I can't believe that
1:23
Speaker 2: the show has made it to this point. I mean,
1:25
Speaker 2: I can believe it because I work really hard on it.
1:27
Speaker 2: But if you were to ask me at the end
1:30
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen what I thought was going to happen
1:35
Speaker 2: with this. This has already surpassed my wildest dreams. I
1:39
Speaker 2: have had the opportunity to sit down with some of
1:42
Speaker 2: the most amazing, talented, wise humans there are. I feel
1:48
Speaker 2: so so grateful all the way back to Alex Silverfagen,
1:53
Speaker 2: my first episode. I remember we recorded that inside of
1:56
Speaker 2: my apartment. I sat in a skiuage with Amy Purty
2:00
Speaker 2: and she talked to me about getting her leg amputated.
2:03
Speaker 2: Hayden Slater, the founder of Press Juicery, and I sat
2:05
Speaker 2: together in his office in Los Angeles and I sipped
2:08
Speaker 2: on a green juice. I welcomed Casper Capetti, the co
2:11
Speaker 2: founder of On Running, in front of a crowd of
2:14
Speaker 2: hundreds inside of Paragon Sports near Union Square. I cried
2:19
Speaker 2: with doctor Jason Worslin, the creator of the farragun in
2:22
Speaker 2: the back of their Santa Monica office. Tia Claire Toomey
2:25
Speaker 2: Crossfits Fittest Woman on Earth and I recorded in a
2:29
Speaker 2: studio in the Bahamas that has hosted Justin Timberlake and
2:33
Speaker 2: Mariah Carey. I sat down with Dina Caster, the American
2:37
Speaker 2: Record holder for the marathon in a hotel room in London.
2:41
Speaker 2: I got chills sitting on a couch in Los Angeles
2:44
Speaker 2: chatting with Moon Juice founder Amanda chantal Bacon. Natasha Hastings
2:48
Speaker 2: breast fed her baby while we talked in Baltimore. I mean,
2:53
Speaker 2: I am forever changed because of these conversations, and I
2:58
Speaker 2: can only hope that you all feel the same way.
3:02
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for motivating me to be better,
3:06
Speaker 2: to keep reaching for more, and to continue well after
3:10
Speaker 2: today's episode. With that said, today's episode Mollie's Sidle. If
3:16
Speaker 2: you're not a big fan of professional running, you will
3:19
Speaker 2: be a big fan of Mollie regardless. Mollie came in
3:22
Speaker 2: second at the US Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta, and
3:27
Speaker 2: the headlines blew up. You see, Mollie had never run
3:31
Speaker 2: a full marathon before. She qualified for the trials through
3:35
Speaker 2: a half marathon, and we explain how that all works
3:38
Speaker 2: in today's episode. Mollie has heart and she earned her
3:42
Speaker 2: spot on that team. Today we talk about the hurdles
3:45
Speaker 2: that she overcame to get there, battling obsessive compulsive disorder
3:50
Speaker 2: disordered eating as well as a string of injuries that
3:53
Speaker 2: set her back time and time again. In today's episode,
3:57
Speaker 2: she talks to me how she got through the hard times,
4:01
Speaker 2: giving me great detail about the treatments that she went through,
4:04
Speaker 2: the rehab she did both for her mind and her body,
4:07
Speaker 2: and her story of perseverance literally gives me goosebumps. Just
4:12
Speaker 2: describing just a fun fact before we get into it.
4:15
Speaker 2: Molly's marathon time in Atlanta was two hours, twenty seven
4:20
Speaker 2: minutes and thirty one seconds. That's a five thirty eight
4:24
Speaker 2: mile average, just throwing it out there before we get
4:29
Speaker 2: into today's episode. I do need to take a moment
4:31
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7:11
Speaker 2: Emily Abody. If you have a hurdle moment of your
7:14
Speaker 2: own to share. You just want to say hi, you
7:17
Speaker 2: want to talk to someone over email at Emily at
7:21
Speaker 2: hurdle dot us. Now more than ever, it is so
7:24
Speaker 2: important to connect. I am here for you, I appreciate you,
7:28
Speaker 2: and I just one more time, feel so blessed to
7:31
Speaker 2: have this community listening in. Thank you from the bottom
7:36
Speaker 2: of my heart for supporting me up to one hundred
7:39
Speaker 2: in the many weeks, months, and years to come. And
7:43
Speaker 2: with that, let's get to hurdling. Today. I'm sitting down
7:57
Speaker 2: with Mollie Seidel. She is a pro run are assumed
8:00
Speaker 2: to be Olympian that will never get old.
8:05
Speaker 1: No, it really doesn't. And every time my heart kind
8:07
Speaker 1: of like jumps a little bit.
8:09
Speaker 2: I feel excited and a little bit honored that I'm
8:14
Speaker 2: sitting here on your couch. We're in Boston. I am
8:19
Speaker 2: really just kind of in awe of you, as I
8:21
Speaker 2: think a lot of people are right now.
8:24
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a I'm vastly underwhelming when people
8:28
Speaker 1: actually made me. I had a girl tell me the
8:30
Speaker 1: other day, She's like, I expected you to be taller, Like, okay, okay,
8:34
Speaker 1: I don't know how to respond to that.
8:36
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're kind of interacting with a lot of
8:39
Speaker 2: people for the first time right now.
8:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well it's wild because in the lead up to
8:44
Speaker 1: the Trials, a lot of a lot of pro runners
8:47
Speaker 1: like myself, we kind of like it's almost like this
8:50
Speaker 1: monastic life, like you really kind of narrow in focus.
8:53
Speaker 1: I was actually out in Flagstaff, Arizona, so it was
8:56
Speaker 1: kind of like a very like focus on your training,
9:00
Speaker 1: like you're not really going out a whole lot. It's
9:02
Speaker 1: just like you're nailing your one hundred and fifteen one
9:05
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty miles a week and that's your life.
9:08
Speaker 1: And now it's like I get back to Boston where
9:10
Speaker 1: all my friends are here. It's just a very Boston
9:13
Speaker 1: is a huge running community in general, and so now
9:16
Speaker 1: it's really weird. Like before I could just like bang
9:20
Speaker 1: out my runs on the river and kind of like
9:22
Speaker 1: put my hat down and go. And now I've even
9:25
Speaker 1: just today I got stopped by a girl. I always
9:28
Speaker 1: like want to be polite and friendly and introduce myself,
9:30
Speaker 1: and I'm also like I kind of need to finish
9:32
Speaker 1: my run kind of in a little bit of a rush.
9:35
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm technically working right now, and I mean forget
9:40
Speaker 2: in real life, but I can't even imagine what the
9:42
Speaker 2: outreach has been on social media. And I mean, I'm
9:46
Speaker 2: sure other wonderful journalists are reaching out to you as well,
9:50
Speaker 2: so it's probably just a lot.
9:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot. It's been pretty crazy. I also
9:57
Speaker 1: like try to keep the perspective of, like if I
9:59
Speaker 1: start to like get overwhelmed or get kind of like cranky,
10:02
Speaker 1: like I just want to go back to just my little,
10:04
Speaker 1: boring life, I try to remember that this is ultimately
10:08
Speaker 1: very good for the sport of women's running because we
10:10
Speaker 1: don't necessarily get a whole lot of press. A lot
10:12
Speaker 1: of people don't know what professional running is or follow
10:15
Speaker 1: professional road racing. So it is really exciting that all
10:18
Speaker 1: of a sudden people are really excited about it, and
10:22
Speaker 1: it's an Olympic year. It's kind of the prime time
10:24
Speaker 1: to capitalize on it and let people know, like what our.
10:28
Speaker 2: Sport is about. I love it, And so for those
10:31
Speaker 2: that might not be in the loop. Molly came in
10:34
Speaker 2: second at the Olympic Marathon trials with a two twenty
10:38
Speaker 2: seven thirty one. That's a five thirty eight mile for
10:43
Speaker 2: twenty six point two miles.
10:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. See, that's the funny thing if somebody had told
10:47
Speaker 1: me that beforehand that I would be able to run
10:49
Speaker 1: that on that course, I definitely wouldn't have believed them.
10:52
Speaker 1: I wouldn't believe them if they told me I was
10:53
Speaker 1: going to get second. But I was definitely nervous going
10:56
Speaker 1: into it with it being a bit of a rookie
11:00
Speaker 1: in this area about holding that kind of pace for
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Speaker 1: that long. So sometimes you just have to You just
11:06
Speaker 1: have to do it before you're ready to do it.
11:08
Speaker 2: And I mean you just said the keyword there, rookie.
11:11
Speaker 2: So all of the headlines it's Mollie runs first ever marathon,
11:18
Speaker 2: qualifies for the Olympics. So explain how that works to
11:21
Speaker 2: people who might not totally understand how you just showed
11:24
Speaker 2: up and ran your first marathon. Yeah, going to the Olympics.
11:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think a lot of people have been
11:30
Speaker 1: a little bit confused because a lot of the headlines
11:33
Speaker 1: have been maybe exaggerating a bit, like girl literally runs
11:38
Speaker 1: the first time in her life and qualifies for the Olympics. Incredible.
11:41
Speaker 1: And I work the part time at a bakery as well,
11:44
Speaker 1: so it's like Bisa takes two hour coffee break and
11:48
Speaker 1: runs marathon. I being a professional runner, I do run
11:54
Speaker 1: a lot. I've been running since high school. I ran
11:57
Speaker 1: for many years for the University of Notre Dame at
11:59
Speaker 1: the collegiate level, but I was primarily five k and
12:02
Speaker 1: ten k, so that's three miles and six miles. And
12:06
Speaker 1: as I transitioned to pro running after college, I moved
12:09
Speaker 1: up a little bit, was doing slightly longer races. But
12:13
Speaker 1: it's only within the past I would say four months
12:18
Speaker 1: at this point that I've moved up to the half
12:20
Speaker 1: marathon and now the marathon. So it was I was
12:24
Speaker 1: training at a pretty high level going into this. By
12:27
Speaker 1: no means was I like couch to five K or
12:30
Speaker 1: couch to marathon. I'd been training upwards of about like
12:34
Speaker 1: one hundred miles a week. I've had many interruptions with injury,
12:38
Speaker 1: but it wasn't necessarily a challenge to ramp up to
12:42
Speaker 1: marathon training. My body handled it pretty well because I've
12:45
Speaker 1: got basically, oh god, now i feel like I'm gonna
12:48
Speaker 1: date myself. I'm twenty five now. I've been doing this
12:51
Speaker 1: since I was about fourteen, running consistently every single day,
12:55
Speaker 1: so yeah, basically eleven years at this point.
12:59
Speaker 2: What made you decide to ramp up and go for
13:02
Speaker 2: the longer distances.
13:03
Speaker 1: Basically, I have struggled a lot over the past several
13:08
Speaker 1: years with injury and things. I just felt like I
13:11
Speaker 1: was hitting my head against the wall and kept getting hurt,
13:14
Speaker 1: kept getting hurt doing this five k ten k training.
13:17
Speaker 1: I ended up leaving the training group that I was
13:19
Speaker 1: with over the summer specifically for or that was a
13:24
Speaker 1: major part of it. It just wasn't really working anymore.
13:26
Speaker 1: I have so much respect for my previous coach, but
13:29
Speaker 1: it was just frustrating for the both of us that
13:31
Speaker 1: I couldn't do the kind of training that he wanted
13:33
Speaker 1: me to do. When I began to be coached by
13:37
Speaker 1: my current coach, who's a good friend of mine, who
13:39
Speaker 1: was a Soccony teammate of my teammate of mine, John Green,
13:44
Speaker 1: we kind of came to the realization that my body
13:47
Speaker 1: really thrives off of super high mileage, longer tempo runs,
13:51
Speaker 1: the type of training that a marathon or would traditionally
13:54
Speaker 1: do as opposed to fast interval workouts that a track
13:57
Speaker 1: athlete would do. So he was like, let's try this out.
14:00
Speaker 1: We'll see if your mileage can get up. Just build
14:02
Speaker 1: a good base, get aerobically strong, and then we'll see
14:05
Speaker 1: what happens. And I was feeling really healthy, really strong,
14:09
Speaker 1: and he thought it would be fun to hop in
14:11
Speaker 1: a half marathon. Jumped in a half marathon in December,
14:14
Speaker 1: qualified for the Olympic trials, and we figured.
14:16
Speaker 2: Hey, it'll be a cool experience.
14:19
Speaker 1: Like we'll go out and then maybe a couple of
14:21
Speaker 1: years from now, when you're a little bit older, when
14:24
Speaker 1: you're closer to the age that women traditionally start moving
14:27
Speaker 1: up to the marathon, then you'll then you can try
14:29
Speaker 1: and be competitive. So, yeah, this was all kind of
14:32
Speaker 1: a big shock, like going in and with my first
14:35
Speaker 1: marathon build up really going a lot better than I expected.
14:38
Speaker 2: And I love what you told runners were old. You
14:40
Speaker 2: said you were going into it and keeping an open mind,
14:43
Speaker 2: knowing how much it's going to hurt, and prepared for
14:46
Speaker 2: that amount of pain. The idea of pain and running.
14:50
Speaker 2: And I feel like I've been talking about this a
14:51
Speaker 2: lot lately because it's so true the pain is part
14:54
Speaker 2: of what you sign up for.
14:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of people assume that when
15:00
Speaker 1: you get to the pro level of running, that it
15:03
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt anymore. That if like, it's this idea that
15:05
Speaker 1: if you get fast enough that it won't hurt anymore.
15:08
Speaker 1: And if anything is the opposite, I think it. Well,
15:11
Speaker 1: it's funny because I think I'm the biggest change in
15:14
Speaker 1: going from high school to college professional running is your
15:17
Speaker 1: relationship with the discomfort of running changes, and you're able
15:22
Speaker 1: to kind of like come to terms with it and
15:25
Speaker 1: handle it, because that's running at its core, is just
15:29
Speaker 1: being uncomfortable for a long period of time and like
15:32
Speaker 1: battling inside your own head, of your brain constantly telling
15:35
Speaker 1: you to stop. And I hate to admit how many
15:38
Speaker 1: times in races I have had the thought of, like,
15:40
Speaker 1: you should just stop right now, and it's like, nope,
15:43
Speaker 1: I can't stop. I have to keep going.
15:46
Speaker 2: I think it's probably pretty refreshing for people to hear
15:48
Speaker 2: that you still feel that way for people who are,
15:50
Speaker 2: you know, maybe even just starting out. Yeah, so, speaking
15:54
Speaker 2: of starting out, you didn't just show up in Atlanta.
15:57
Speaker 2: A contrary to some of the headlines.
16:00
Speaker 1: We're super oblivious about things in many senses. I had
16:04
Speaker 1: no idea how much to warm up for before a marathon,
16:06
Speaker 1: because for road races and shorter stuff, we warm up
16:10
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or three miles, and so I was assuming
16:13
Speaker 1: that i'd do the same thing for a marathon, and
16:15
Speaker 1: I asked a couple of people. They're like, oh my god, no,
16:18
Speaker 1: you don't warm up for a marathon. You're gonna be
16:20
Speaker 1: running for twenty six miles. I'm like, I'm really glad,
16:23
Speaker 1: I asked.
16:25
Speaker 2: I'm glad I didn't go run an extra three.
16:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly because that My coach is like, why would
16:30
Speaker 1: you do that. You'd be running like thirty two miles
16:33
Speaker 1: that day then, so extra I know.
16:36
Speaker 2: Okay, so you didn't just show up and running.
16:38
Speaker 1: I did not just show up.
16:39
Speaker 2: You said you grew up running, But talk to me
16:41
Speaker 2: about where you grew up, what you what your interaction
16:46
Speaker 2: was with sport from a young age.
16:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, grew up grew up running in Wisconsin. Basically, I
16:52
Speaker 1: went to a super super super small school, Like my
16:55
Speaker 1: graduating class was thirteen kids. Grew up in Wisconsin, and
17:01
Speaker 1: I knew that I loved running, but I was doing
17:03
Speaker 1: a lot of other sports as well. I played field hockey,
17:06
Speaker 1: ski racing was our main sport that was kind of
17:09
Speaker 1: like our school's pride and joy. So those were kind
17:12
Speaker 1: of like my main sports. But I knew that I
17:14
Speaker 1: loved running, and I knew I was good at it.
17:17
Speaker 1: I basically got into it through my church. They had
17:20
Speaker 1: a church team and they needed extra kids for like
17:23
Speaker 1: the Catholic School League, and they let me join through
17:26
Speaker 1: my CCD and found out that I was pretty good
17:29
Speaker 1: at it. But at the same time, this was like
17:31
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty small pond to be running in. So
17:35
Speaker 1: by the time I got into high school and I
17:37
Speaker 1: was the only person on our track team, and I
17:40
Speaker 1: was like, well, I hope that, like I can still
17:42
Speaker 1: be competitive and ended up in going out and winning
17:45
Speaker 1: quite a few state titles at the Wisconsin state level.
17:48
Speaker 2: Is that just constant one on one coaching.
17:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was basically my middle school track coach,
17:53
Speaker 1: Brian Borkowski, who I'm still super super close with. He
17:58
Speaker 1: was just like, well, if you need someone to oh
18:00
Speaker 1: you too, Like I'll like come and like run with
18:02
Speaker 1: you after school, like if you want to him, like, yeah,
18:04
Speaker 1: that would be great. And he was actually pretty much
18:06
Speaker 1: the first person that got me kind of dreaming of
18:08
Speaker 1: someday doing the marathon because he would do Boston every year,
18:12
Speaker 1: and in my mind, Brian was just like the coolest individual.
18:15
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, he goes out and
18:17
Speaker 1: like runs the Boston Marathon and does all this training
18:19
Speaker 1: and he's still super fast, and he'll run my workouts
18:22
Speaker 1: with me. And like, at the time, I was running
18:24
Speaker 1: like twenty miles a week, it wasn't anything for him
18:26
Speaker 1: to like run this extra stuff with me. But he
18:30
Speaker 1: just showed me how to love running. Like he just
18:32
Speaker 1: loved running so thoroughly that it showed me that, like,
18:36
Speaker 1: running is this thing that, yeah, it's hard, it's painful,
18:39
Speaker 1: but at the same time, like it is just like
18:42
Speaker 1: it brings you together with people, it helps you find
18:44
Speaker 1: confidence in yourself, and it's it's this sport that's just
18:48
Speaker 1: so much more than just running in circles. Right, So
18:52
Speaker 1: I really am so grateful for him for teaching me
18:55
Speaker 1: how to love running despite all the challenges that it brings.
18:58
Speaker 2: Did you find in high school then that your love
19:02
Speaker 2: for running was kind of a lonely experience if you
19:04
Speaker 2: didn't have a ton of people to do it with
19:06
Speaker 2: aside from your coach.
19:08
Speaker 1: See that's the thing. I never feel like running alone
19:11
Speaker 1: is lonely for me. And I don't know if part
19:14
Speaker 1: of that is developed from so much time running alone.
19:17
Speaker 1: Because Brian would only be able to meet up a
19:19
Speaker 1: couple times a week, So yeah, about half the time
19:21
Speaker 1: I was running solo, and then during cross country season,
19:24
Speaker 1: I'd basically be running alone for the majority of the season.
19:28
Speaker 1: And I had to learn a lot of self reliance,
19:31
Speaker 1: I guess, not that I didn't have other people supporting
19:34
Speaker 1: me and helping me, like my family was super supportive.
19:36
Speaker 1: I had a lot of friends through the sport, But yeah,
19:39
Speaker 1: it's I think I had to develop that sense of like,
19:43
Speaker 1: regardless of whether there are people to run with, whether
19:46
Speaker 1: or not the weather is good or bad or whatnot,
19:47
Speaker 1: you just go out and run regardless. And I think
19:51
Speaker 1: that really helps nowadays because I do. I do a
19:54
Speaker 1: lot of my training solo, and I run a lot
19:56
Speaker 1: more now than I was in high school. And so
19:58
Speaker 1: it's just being able to get at that like internal
20:01
Speaker 1: drive or I don't know it, probably the fact that
20:05
Speaker 1: I have OCD probably plays into it a little bit
20:08
Speaker 1: of just like it's really not a struggle to like
20:10
Speaker 1: go out every day because I'm a little bit obsessive.
20:13
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, I just I have to go
20:15
Speaker 1: out and do it, and after a while it doesn't
20:18
Speaker 1: even become a choice. It's just like brushing your teeth.
20:20
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, oh, it's not a question of
20:22
Speaker 1: whether I'm running today. I am running today, right.
20:25
Speaker 2: I actually said that to my dad the other day
20:27
Speaker 2: about going to the gym. He just got a membership
20:29
Speaker 2: with the Why, and I was like, you just need
20:31
Speaker 2: to establish what days are your gym days, and then
20:34
Speaker 2: you'll wake up and it'll be Tuesday and it's like, Okay,
20:37
Speaker 2: it's Jim Days gym day. Yeah, that's just it taking
20:39
Speaker 2: the guesswork out of it so you can make it
20:41
Speaker 2: actually a habit, and then that keeps you accountable obviously.
20:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when it's when you don't have to like
20:47
Speaker 1: make a conscious decision every day of like oh do
20:50
Speaker 1: I want to run, like do it like the weather's
20:52
Speaker 1: not good, like factoring all that in like it's so hard.
20:56
Speaker 1: But if it's just like in your mind like oh nope,
20:59
Speaker 1: going out doing this, it's just not it's just automatic.
21:02
Speaker 1: It takes out that extra guesswork and it makes it
21:04
Speaker 1: that much easier to get out the door.
21:06
Speaker 2: And I think that's why people love training for marathons, right,
21:10
Speaker 2: because it brings another level of consistency and regularity and
21:15
Speaker 2: kind of makes you feel like you have your life together.
21:19
Speaker 2: Even when you might not just because you have a
21:21
Speaker 2: schedule to follow, you have something that just feels constant
21:25
Speaker 2: when everything around you might feel a little bit chaotic.
21:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, well and that's what the times in my life
21:30
Speaker 1: where I've had running, it taken away from me. So
21:32
Speaker 1: like during injuries per se it, I do notice just
21:36
Speaker 1: how unstructured. I feel like I'm just like a drift
21:40
Speaker 1: kind of and I have no way of like, yeah,
21:43
Speaker 1: I just feel like my days are just kind of
21:45
Speaker 1: lost then, And it doesn't help that this is my job.
21:48
Speaker 1: So imagine then, like not only do you not like
21:51
Speaker 1: have running with the endorphins and the structure that it gives,
21:54
Speaker 1: but then it's like I just don't have anything to do,
21:56
Speaker 1: so right, Yeah, that can be. That was a real
21:59
Speaker 1: real strength, especially like over the past several years. Once
22:03
Speaker 1: this was like my full time job totally.
22:05
Speaker 2: So in high school you win a few state championships
22:08
Speaker 2: and then you go to Notre Dame.
22:11
Speaker 1: So I ended up I won nationals for cross country
22:14
Speaker 1: my senior year of high school. So it got a
22:16
Speaker 1: scholarship to Notre Dame, which I was just like so
22:20
Speaker 1: excited about. It was the chance to like get college
22:23
Speaker 1: paid for it just because I can run in circles
22:25
Speaker 1: kind of still blows my mind a little bit. But
22:28
Speaker 1: I went to Notre Dame, had an incredible team around me,
22:32
Speaker 1: but really struggled my first two years. I struggled with
22:35
Speaker 1: a lot of injuries. I ended up my freshman year
22:38
Speaker 1: having molded in my dorm room, so I was really really,
22:40
Speaker 1: really really sick.
22:42
Speaker 2: Wow.
22:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just not a great situation and it
22:47
Speaker 1: was hard. I thought. By the end of my sophomore year,
22:50
Speaker 1: I was considering quitting the cross country team just because
22:53
Speaker 1: I couldn't get anything together. I was just so hurt.
22:56
Speaker 1: I was just in pain all the time, and it
22:58
Speaker 1: just wasn't fun anymore more. And I ended up basically
23:02
Speaker 1: like I didn't qualify for regionals my sophomore year, just
23:05
Speaker 1: kind of like pieced out, went and did research down
23:09
Speaker 1: in Argentina for the summer, and it was just like
23:12
Speaker 1: kind of fell back in love with it because it
23:14
Speaker 1: was running regularly and doing really high mileage. Was a
23:18
Speaker 1: great way to fight some of the culture shock because
23:20
Speaker 1: I was the only American on the crew that I
23:22
Speaker 1: was with, So yeah, kind of fell in love with it.
23:25
Speaker 1: And when I came back, we ended up getting a
23:27
Speaker 1: new coach that year, and Sparks just kind of changed
23:31
Speaker 1: my entire collegiate career.
23:33
Speaker 2: And you mentioned before that you had OCD, So when
23:35
Speaker 2: did you start seeing that develop?
23:38
Speaker 1: That was through high school just being around like my
23:40
Speaker 1: family and the structure of that. It really helped being
23:45
Speaker 1: able to and I think it's lower stress in high school.
23:50
Speaker 1: Mine comes out a lot more when I'm under high
23:53
Speaker 1: stress situations, high pressure. So it really started kind of
23:57
Speaker 1: like becoming this really big, no negative influence on my
24:01
Speaker 1: life during college, just because I was under so much
24:03
Speaker 1: stress with school, so much stress with running, and I
24:06
Speaker 1: didn't have good ways of managing that anxiety. And that's
24:10
Speaker 1: ultimately what OCD is. It's you have all this anxiety
24:14
Speaker 1: and you develop control mechanisms to try and feel some
24:18
Speaker 1: sense of relief or some sense of control over the
24:21
Speaker 1: world that just feels like it's spinning out of control.
24:23
Speaker 2: So what were some of your control mechanisms.
24:26
Speaker 1: Knocking was a big one for me. I would like
24:29
Speaker 1: knock especially on wood in like repetitive patterns, saying things
24:33
Speaker 1: over and over to myself when it gets really bad.
24:36
Speaker 1: I would like flip light switches, like you can't like
24:39
Speaker 1: leave a room until you've done certain things of like, oh,
24:41
Speaker 1: I check things, I flip the light switch on, like
24:45
Speaker 1: obsessively checking like ovens. And I was pretty good at
24:48
Speaker 1: like hiding it from a lot of people because I real, like,
24:51
Speaker 1: you know, consciously like this is super weird. I don't
24:54
Speaker 1: like you consciously know that it's not necessary to do
24:58
Speaker 1: these things, but you have to do it, like your
25:01
Speaker 1: body almost like you just feel a sense of dread
25:03
Speaker 1: if you don't. And then obviously it would reflect in
25:07
Speaker 1: my running sometimes I would kind of obsessively seek out mileage.
25:12
Speaker 1: And then ultimately it came down to eating. Yeah, it
25:15
Speaker 1: developed into really negative, disordered eating habits.
25:19
Speaker 2: Talk to me a little bit about that.
25:20
Speaker 1: A lot of that it doesn't necessarily stem from body
25:23
Speaker 1: image issues, though that is a huge problem in our sport,
25:26
Speaker 1: this idea that you need to be very thin. I
25:29
Speaker 1: was kind of like obsessively purging at certain times, so
25:35
Speaker 1: making myself throw up. That was more towards like the
25:38
Speaker 1: early end of college. And yeah, just like only eating
25:43
Speaker 1: certain kinds of foods, eating certain amounts, and yeah, it's
25:46
Speaker 1: just finding ways to like exert control over the world
25:49
Speaker 1: by controlling something like what you put into your body.
25:54
Speaker 1: Is something so easily that you can control. So when
25:57
Speaker 1: you're like I can't, like I feel like everything is
25:59
Speaker 1: just like spinning out of my like out of my control.
26:03
Speaker 1: I'm able to just like manage this one thing.
26:05
Speaker 2: Right here, right. And so a lot of people casually
26:11
Speaker 2: will say, oh, I have the worst OCD.
26:13
Speaker 1: I hate it when people say that, like, and I realize,
26:17
Speaker 1: like I think, I think there are a lot of
26:19
Speaker 1: people in the world who do have OCD tendencies. But
26:22
Speaker 1: like saying like I wash my hands all the time,
26:25
Speaker 1: I'm so OCD, or like I just need to make
26:27
Speaker 1: sure my room is clean. I'm so OCD. I'm like,
26:30
Speaker 1: you don't know what real OCD is, Like it's a nightmare, yeah,
26:34
Speaker 1: And it's like it's just these repetitive thoughts. And sometimes
26:39
Speaker 1: it's this feeling that your brain is like a radio
26:42
Speaker 1: that's turned up to like full volume, and it's just
26:45
Speaker 1: these repetitive thoughts. You can't get them to quiet down,
26:49
Speaker 1: and you can't focus on the world because your brain
26:52
Speaker 1: is just so loud, and so it's it's hard. But
26:56
Speaker 1: I think like people who actually are really struggling with
26:59
Speaker 1: it like getting help and like seeking therapy for me Ultimately,
27:03
Speaker 1: that was the biggest thing for me, is learning how
27:06
Speaker 1: to manage it. It's like my life is so drastically
27:09
Speaker 1: different now than it was, and I've been on and
27:11
Speaker 1: off medication for it. Ultimately, like meditation actually really helps.
27:16
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be good with it. And I know
27:17
Speaker 1: that sounds so like millennial of like, oh yeah, I'm
27:20
Speaker 1: meditating every day, but like that actually has been a
27:24
Speaker 1: super big thing for me. And then just running. Even
27:27
Speaker 1: though some of my OCD tendencies exert themselves on my running,
27:31
Speaker 1: my running is a very good way to manage my OCD.
27:35
Speaker 1: Something about like the rhythmic nature clearing my mind. It's
27:39
Speaker 1: just like sometimes I feel like my brain doesn't fit
27:43
Speaker 1: with my body. Sometimes it's just like my brain is
27:45
Speaker 1: just exploding. And then I go for a run and
27:49
Speaker 1: it's like my brain finally fits inside of me, like
27:53
Speaker 1: everything just makes sense and everything sinks up in a
27:57
Speaker 1: way that I feel like my truest self them out running.
28:00
Speaker 1: And I think that's ultimately why I love running so much,
28:03
Speaker 1: because this is the only time that I feel like
28:05
Speaker 1: my brain works.
28:07
Speaker 2: I can relate with that for sure. And I mean,
28:09
Speaker 2: when it came to dealing with your OCD and then
28:14
Speaker 2: what eventually became disordered eating when you got help. Was
28:17
Speaker 2: it because that you were ready to seek it or
28:20
Speaker 2: was it because that people started to catch on to
28:22
Speaker 2: the fact that you had a lot of ticks per se.
28:26
Speaker 1: So it was it was a combination of things. I
28:30
Speaker 1: originally early in college started going and seeing just one
28:33
Speaker 1: of the Notre Dame like counseling center therapists because I
28:37
Speaker 1: knew this was a problem and it was really affecting me.
28:41
Speaker 1: It's like when it gets to a point of like
28:43
Speaker 1: that you feel like you it's disrupting your normal life,
28:47
Speaker 1: that's when it gets really hard. So in terms of
28:50
Speaker 1: my OCD, that was something that I was able to
28:52
Speaker 1: identify that I needed help on, sought out help, and
28:57
Speaker 1: learned of ways to manage it a bit better. In
29:00
Speaker 1: terms of my eating disorder, which then kind of took
29:02
Speaker 1: on a life of its own that was much more
29:05
Speaker 1: of like I was in such denial about it, and
29:10
Speaker 1: I think because of how our sport is structured, the
29:14
Speaker 1: normal control stops of like when you see someone losing
29:18
Speaker 1: a lot of weight, like struggling mentally, that isn't something
29:23
Speaker 1: that kicks in quite as early as it would in
29:25
Speaker 1: other realms, just because with running, it's like this idea
29:29
Speaker 1: that like, oh you look so fit, you look so lean,
29:31
Speaker 1: you look so ready to race, that in other spaces
29:34
Speaker 1: would have been like, oh, you look really unhealthy, like
29:37
Speaker 1: you aren't well right now. But I was running so well.
29:40
Speaker 1: I was winning NCAA championships. This was later in college,
29:43
Speaker 1: just as more my junior senior year, and I ended
29:46
Speaker 1: up having probably lost about twenty pounds at that point.
29:50
Speaker 1: But it was that I was running so well and
29:53
Speaker 1: I looked so quote unquote fit that things were okay.
29:56
Speaker 1: And I thought things were okay because I had moved
29:58
Speaker 1: past the point where I was knocking on things all
30:01
Speaker 1: the time, where I was forcing myself obsessively to purge
30:05
Speaker 1: that now it had transformed into kind of this life
30:08
Speaker 1: of its own. I think that's what's insidious about it,
30:10
Speaker 1: is that with mental health issues, it can so quickly
30:13
Speaker 1: transform into one thing. Yeah, yeah, I can go from
30:16
Speaker 1: one thing to another. So I was like, I don't
30:18
Speaker 1: have a problem anymore. But it became fairly apparent by
30:22
Speaker 1: the end of my senior year that there was a
30:23
Speaker 1: huge problem. Once I had gotten so new putritionally deprived
30:28
Speaker 1: that my bones started breaking.
30:30
Speaker 2: Talk to me about a what were you actually putting
30:33
Speaker 2: into your body at this time, because you mentioned that
30:35
Speaker 2: you were so particular about the foods that were okay
30:38
Speaker 2: and the foods that were not okay.
30:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was. I won my first NCAA
30:43
Speaker 1: championship at the end of my junior year. I think
30:45
Speaker 1: it was kind of this idea of, oh, if I
30:48
Speaker 1: want to win national championships for cross country, which is
30:51
Speaker 1: arguably one of the hardest running national championships to win,
30:55
Speaker 1: just because it's so competitive, I was like, I need
30:58
Speaker 1: to be all in on every sense of my life.
31:00
Speaker 1: So I was running super high mileage, at least for
31:03
Speaker 1: a collegiate athlete. I was running aboute hundred miles a week.
31:07
Speaker 1: But then I was eating all the things that I
31:10
Speaker 1: thought were I was supposed to that were quote unquote clean,
31:13
Speaker 1: that were healthy, like good proteins, fats. I wasn't like
31:16
Speaker 1: cutting out anything by any means, but I actually I
31:21
Speaker 1: was gluten free at the time because I thought that
31:25
Speaker 1: I had like my stomach would get super upset when
31:27
Speaker 1: I had certain foods. But it was just because I
31:30
Speaker 1: was so nutritionally deprived that like my body couldn't handle it.
31:34
Speaker 1: I guess, which I've found out since then, but yeah,
31:37
Speaker 1: I was probably the volume of food. I was nowhere
31:41
Speaker 1: near the amount of calories that I needed to be eating,
31:43
Speaker 1: but I was still eating a lot, so I was
31:47
Speaker 1: able to kind of like fly under the radar. So
31:49
Speaker 1: I was eating the amount that probably someone who was
31:53
Speaker 1: running fifty miles a week should be eating, but I
31:56
Speaker 1: was running double that, and so I just slowly kept
31:59
Speaker 1: losing more and more weight, but I kept running faster
32:01
Speaker 1: and faster and faster. Throughout that senior year. It was
32:04
Speaker 1: like I came in it probably I won my first
32:07
Speaker 1: NCAA championship that passed spring at one hundred and twelve,
32:10
Speaker 1: came in after the summer having just trained so hard,
32:14
Speaker 1: not eating enough, eating so quote unquote clean. I was
32:17
Speaker 1: probably one o five one oh six. Then going to
32:20
Speaker 1: the next season at one hundred and every time, because
32:23
Speaker 1: you keep running faster, you think, oh, this is my
32:26
Speaker 1: new racing weight, like this, this is what I should
32:29
Speaker 1: be at. And then by the time I got to
32:31
Speaker 1: the spring and summer of my senior year, which was
32:34
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen Olympic Trials, where I was just so
32:37
Speaker 1: obsessed with making an Olympic team. I had my world
32:41
Speaker 1: standard for the five k, but I was probably ninety
32:44
Speaker 1: five pounds and just so unwell mentally and physically, and
32:48
Speaker 1: that was that was the breaking point. I broke my
32:51
Speaker 1: back and my sacrum in quick succession and just didn't
32:54
Speaker 1: even make it to line at the trials. And that
32:57
Speaker 1: was kind of like the rock bottom moment that I knew, like,
33:00
Speaker 1: you can't keep doing this, You're going to kill yourself.
33:04
Speaker 2: When you have this moment, is it a conversation you're
33:09
Speaker 2: having with yourself or does it quickly become a conversation
33:13
Speaker 2: that you're having also with your coaches, with your family,
33:17
Speaker 2: with your parents, and probably uncomfortable conversations.
33:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those were awful. So it was I'm very,
33:26
Speaker 1: very very lucky that I have people around me who
33:30
Speaker 1: love me and were able to see and people around
33:35
Speaker 1: me who love me and who love me regardless of
33:38
Speaker 1: whether or not I'm running. And so basically like I
33:42
Speaker 1: had a balling conversation with my mom about how she
33:47
Speaker 1: was like, I just want you to be healthy, Like
33:49
Speaker 1: I don't care about Molly the runner. I care about
33:51
Speaker 1: Molly the person. And what Molly the person right now
33:54
Speaker 1: needs is help, like you can't do this, and I
33:58
Speaker 1: think I had convinced myself was like, I don't have
34:01
Speaker 1: a problem. I just like, like, I just need to
34:03
Speaker 1: gain a little bit of weight back and I'll be fine.
34:06
Speaker 1: Like I know, maybe I'm a little bit too low
34:09
Speaker 1: right now at ninety five. Think you're like, oh, I
34:11
Speaker 1: just have to get back up to one hundred pounds
34:13
Speaker 1: and then I'll be fine. And it was this realization
34:16
Speaker 1: and talking with friends and family and my coach and
34:19
Speaker 1: be like, no, like you need to like really take
34:22
Speaker 1: this seriously, like you are not healthy. This is going
34:24
Speaker 1: to be a long time to get back where you
34:27
Speaker 1: need to be. And I don't think when I was
34:30
Speaker 1: at the worst of my disorder that I realized just
34:32
Speaker 1: how hard it was going to be. Eating this sort
34:34
Speaker 1: of treatment is really fucking hard, but ultimately it's worth it.
34:38
Speaker 1: It just takes time. And that was I'm very glad
34:42
Speaker 1: that I had that support because I would not have
34:44
Speaker 1: gotten through that alone.
34:46
Speaker 2: When you broke your back and then your sacrum, did
34:49
Speaker 2: it start out as just something that felt a little off,
34:52
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it was like, oh my god,
34:53
Speaker 2: this is broken. Or was there a big moment that
34:56
Speaker 2: you knew, wow.
34:57
Speaker 1: For my back. It was kind of like it like
35:01
Speaker 1: started out feeling really really sore. This is a couple
35:03
Speaker 1: of days after indoor Nationals, so March of twenty sixteen
35:07
Speaker 1: really sore. Gradually progressed. We thought it was a backstrain
35:10
Speaker 1: for a while just from having a long season, got
35:13
Speaker 1: an x ray, realized that there were fractures. Cross trained
35:18
Speaker 1: so hard all through the spring with the intention of, Oh,
35:20
Speaker 1: if I just cross trained super hard, I'll be back
35:22
Speaker 1: running in six weeks and I'll be able to make
35:25
Speaker 1: the trials, And got back on the ground, was running
35:29
Speaker 1: and I was in a track workout being just so unhealthy.
35:33
Speaker 1: Weight was so low getting ready for the trials, and
35:36
Speaker 1: I literally like I felt like I'd been shot in
35:40
Speaker 1: my butt basically like it just went and I was like,
35:43
Speaker 1: oh my god, and had to like literally sit down
35:46
Speaker 1: at the track just stop. And we knew what it was. Yeah,
35:50
Speaker 1: but even then I was like, maybe I can still
35:52
Speaker 1: make it back or something, because I was just yeah,
35:55
Speaker 1: like mentally unwell. At that point, how do you accept
36:00
Speaker 1: that you need help? It was it was hard. It
36:05
Speaker 1: was hard getting to that point of like being willing
36:08
Speaker 1: to say like okay, I'm going to take a step
36:10
Speaker 1: back from my running and going to turn down these
36:12
Speaker 1: pro contracts that I've been offered. I'm going to give
36:15
Speaker 1: up on And at the time, I thought I was
36:17
Speaker 1: giving up on my running career. And that's what like,
36:19
Speaker 1: I just felt like I was giving up that I
36:22
Speaker 1: needed to keep pushing and pushing and pushing and I
36:25
Speaker 1: couldn't anymore, and it was it was hard. Yeah, I
36:28
Speaker 1: went back to Wisconsin. I was like, man, I'm like
36:31
Speaker 1: moving back home. Cool, like super successful and uh yeah.
36:35
Speaker 1: I went into treatment just outside of Milwaukee and spent
36:40
Speaker 1: four months in super intensive treatment and then the still
36:45
Speaker 1: continued to like seek treatment over the next two years,
36:48
Speaker 1: just on a more infrequent basis, but staying with my
36:51
Speaker 1: therapist and I actually still talk with him fairly frequently.
36:55
Speaker 1: It's been kind of like my main go to guy
36:58
Speaker 1: because it's still something you need to like keep maintaining.
37:01
Speaker 1: You're never fully done with it.
37:03
Speaker 2: So that was an in patient program, so you were
37:05
Speaker 2: there for four months.
37:06
Speaker 1: So it was an intensive outpatient because we lived so
37:09
Speaker 1: close that it was actually better for me and my
37:12
Speaker 1: therapist thought of this that if I was living at home,
37:17
Speaker 1: that it would be a much better situation for me
37:19
Speaker 1: to have the structure of family, for like my mom
37:22
Speaker 1: was able to like make me meals and like be
37:24
Speaker 1: able to really watch what I was eating, and he
37:26
Speaker 1: knew that. I was like when I hit rock bottom,
37:29
Speaker 1: I just went all in, like I was willing to
37:32
Speaker 1: do whatever I needed to do to save my running
37:36
Speaker 1: career because I knew if I didn't take it seriously.
37:38
Speaker 1: He was like, my therapist was super hard on me,
37:40
Speaker 1: like very frank of like, if you don't take this seriously,
37:43
Speaker 1: you will never run again. And I was like, I'm
37:47
Speaker 1: going to be as dedicated to this as I am
37:49
Speaker 1: to my running. So if you want me to drink
37:51
Speaker 1: three Insure shakes a day, I will drink three goddamn
37:55
Speaker 1: Sure shakes a day, and like do all this and
37:57
Speaker 1: like and I think he was actually pretty surprised about
38:00
Speaker 1: how quickly I was able to do it. Usually something
38:03
Speaker 1: like that will take like six months to a year
38:05
Speaker 1: of pretty intensive work, So I think he was very
38:09
Speaker 1: surprised at just how like crazy, like crazy invested I was,
38:14
Speaker 1: And like, let's do this.
38:17
Speaker 2: So while you're going through this program, how are you
38:19
Speaker 2: rehabbing your body as well? Obviously a big part of
38:22
Speaker 2: it is reshaping maybe your relationship with food, and also
38:26
Speaker 2: the mental side, but what are you doing for rehab
38:29
Speaker 2: for all of your bones and yeah, that kind of stuff.
38:32
Speaker 1: So I didn't run for a while. I obviously like
38:35
Speaker 1: just needed to like let my body.
38:37
Speaker 2: Heal, talk me through the mental side of that.
38:39
Speaker 1: It's hard. It's really hard because running is kind of
38:41
Speaker 1: like what keeps me stable. Part of it is like
38:45
Speaker 1: at least when you're like coming back from something like that,
38:48
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, it is just so physically painful
38:51
Speaker 1: to move that it's like you you just can't do anything.
38:55
Speaker 1: And just I had been so obsessively cross training and
38:58
Speaker 1: pushing through the pain, which is something that you become
39:01
Speaker 1: very good at when you're a runner. But you need
39:03
Speaker 1: to be able to separate like the good pain or
39:05
Speaker 1: like quote unquote discomfort when you're training from like the
39:08
Speaker 1: bad pain of like oh this is broken, and so
39:11
Speaker 1: being able to just learn to be still for a while.
39:14
Speaker 1: And that's something that I still struggle with in times
39:18
Speaker 1: that like I need to take off where I just
39:20
Speaker 1: have a trouble sitting still sometimes. Yeah, just learning to
39:25
Speaker 1: be like okay with your body and okay with your
39:27
Speaker 1: mind and learning some of those calming techniques and finding
39:32
Speaker 1: other ways of managing my OCD and anxiety without having
39:35
Speaker 1: to resort to obsessively working out or controlling the foods
39:40
Speaker 1: that I was eating right and then because at the
39:42
Speaker 1: same time you're doing this, you're having to like gain weight,
39:45
Speaker 1: which goes against basically everything in sports culture, and just
39:49
Speaker 1: like I don't know, freaking Instagram culture nowadays of like no,
39:53
Speaker 1: only drink Kale smoothies and you can lose another five pounds,
39:56
Speaker 1: and just like this idea of like, oh I have
39:58
Speaker 1: to gain ten pounds and yeah, it's like my weight
40:04
Speaker 1: was so low that even just like eating normal meals
40:07
Speaker 1: and then they were having me drink like two extra
40:09
Speaker 1: Insure shakes a day, like you're going to gain weight
40:11
Speaker 1: off that. So it's like the mental side is just
40:14
Speaker 1: like trying to process, like you've gone through all of
40:18
Speaker 1: this stress and like losing weight and losing weight and
40:20
Speaker 1: losing weight, and you just feel like a failure as
40:22
Speaker 1: your weight goes up. But yeah, you kind of just
40:25
Speaker 1: have to buck up and it sucks, but you get
40:27
Speaker 1: through it.
40:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine how difficult it's
40:30
Speaker 2: got to be to get over those mental hurdles of
40:33
Speaker 2: just accepting this new way of life and these new
40:37
Speaker 2: patterns and counteracting the things that you were so diligently
40:41
Speaker 2: working toward.
40:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and you have to relearn just how to
40:45
Speaker 1: live and how to think, because I think for the
40:49
Speaker 1: longest time my mind had been set to this idea.
40:52
Speaker 1: It's in sport, it's always okay to be a little
40:56
Speaker 1: bit underweight rather than overweight. The worst thing you can
40:59
Speaker 1: do is be one pound overweight. It's fine to be
41:02
Speaker 1: three pounds underweight. And now my thinking is totally shifted
41:05
Speaker 1: of like I cannot go under like my minimum baseline weight,
41:09
Speaker 1: like because I will get injured and I will like
41:13
Speaker 1: my bones are gonna suffer. So it's better now in
41:16
Speaker 1: my mind, I'm like, Okay, it's better to be a
41:19
Speaker 1: little bit overweight in your training, and then like I
41:22
Speaker 1: don't know, you can get down to like your race weight,
41:24
Speaker 1: but you can't go below that and just straight up
41:26
Speaker 1: you don't have the energy reserves. Like I'm so much
41:29
Speaker 1: stronger now in the training that I'm doing because I
41:32
Speaker 1: actually have energy to train rather than just like running
41:36
Speaker 1: off fumes and being so light that sometimes like that
41:39
Speaker 1: your body can just propel itself.
41:41
Speaker 2: I'm curious to know what your relationship is these days
41:45
Speaker 2: with a scale, do you get I actually.
41:47
Speaker 1: Don't weigh myself at more. Yeah, Like I'm fine with
41:50
Speaker 1: like being weighed, but I think it's I'll get like
41:55
Speaker 1: too wrapped up in the numbers. And so I've found
41:58
Speaker 1: that it's a lot better for me to actually just
42:00
Speaker 1: like I've got a better awareness of my body. So
42:02
Speaker 1: I was out in Ethiopia in the fall doing some
42:05
Speaker 1: volunteer work with girls, got to run and training, and
42:08
Speaker 1: I lost weight while I was over there, and so
42:10
Speaker 1: when I came back, I was like, Okay, Like I
42:12
Speaker 1: can feel that I'm under the weight that I need
42:14
Speaker 1: to be. I just don't feel good right now, Like
42:16
Speaker 1: I need to focus on like gaining some weight back. Yeah,
42:18
Speaker 1: or even like after this marathon cycle, I'm I'm doing
42:21
Speaker 1: fairly light training right now compared to what I was doing.
42:23
Speaker 1: So like I'm okay with like gaining some weight, getting
42:26
Speaker 1: like my reserves back up as I enter the next
42:29
Speaker 1: training cycle, because I know it's going to be a
42:31
Speaker 1: really long spring and summer.
42:33
Speaker 2: Like ause I get ready for the games, right, And
42:35
Speaker 2: how special is it now that you have this sense
42:38
Speaker 2: to feel how it is that you're doing because before
42:42
Speaker 2: so much of quote unquote how you felt was based
42:45
Speaker 2: on what you would look down and see.
42:47
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. It's like just being able to like have that,
42:51
Speaker 1: like I guess, confidence and awareness of my body and
42:53
Speaker 1: to like step to the line and no, I'm not
42:55
Speaker 1: necessarily the skinniest girl on that line, but that I'm
42:58
Speaker 1: like confident in my body is like I'm much more
43:02
Speaker 1: at peace with it and I don't, like I'm not
43:04
Speaker 1: obsessed with it like I was, right, Yeah, and that
43:07
Speaker 1: just brings me a lot of like relief.
43:15
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43:19
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43:22
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44:43
Speaker 2: so four months through the treatment program, then what happens?
44:47
Speaker 1: Uh? Then I was actually healthy enough at that point
44:51
Speaker 1: that my therapist had kind of told me like, I
44:55
Speaker 1: don't think you should be like training super heavily, But
44:58
Speaker 1: I was like, but I want to train heavily, and like,
45:00
Speaker 1: if I can get super healthy in the next four months,
45:02
Speaker 1: would you let me like go maybe spend the fall
45:04
Speaker 1: out in Flagstaff, live back there in a healthy way,
45:08
Speaker 1: and then come back maybe go back to Notre Dame
45:10
Speaker 1: in the spring then, and so I like went all
45:13
Speaker 1: in on treatment, got healthy, got back up to the
45:15
Speaker 1: weight that he had wanted me at, and then ended
45:18
Speaker 1: up being able to go out to flag Staff for
45:19
Speaker 1: that fall, do some training, and then with the intention
45:23
Speaker 1: of coming back that next spring and hoping to run
45:26
Speaker 1: well so that I could get a pro contract. Sorry
45:28
Speaker 1: if this timeline is.
45:29
Speaker 2: Super message, I'm running this the fall of twenty sixteen.
45:32
Speaker 1: Okay, So I got to go out to Flagstaff just
45:35
Speaker 1: be with friends. I took the fall off of school
45:37
Speaker 1: because this was after I'd graduated, but coming back for
45:40
Speaker 1: a fifth year now, so I was not at Notre
45:42
Speaker 1: Dame for that fall, came back in the spring, and
45:46
Speaker 1: even though my body was in a much healthier place
45:49
Speaker 1: and eating disorder like that, it it just kind of
45:51
Speaker 1: SAPs your bones. It has very long term repercussions that
45:55
Speaker 1: I don't think I was fully prepared for just how
45:59
Speaker 1: severe they are going to be. And I ended up
46:02
Speaker 1: fully fracturing my hip at the end or my pelvis
46:06
Speaker 1: at the end of my fifth year. So I finished
46:10
Speaker 1: out my NCAA career being effectively immobile, not able to
46:15
Speaker 1: do anything, and with just nobody was offering me contracts
46:18
Speaker 1: because I was effectively a broken toy, And yeah, nobody
46:22
Speaker 1: was interested.
46:23
Speaker 2: When you fracture your pelvis, that's such a horrible sentence
46:27
Speaker 2: to say. When that happens to you. Are you do
46:31
Speaker 2: you feel like you're just back on the ground again?
46:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. I continued to run on it for
46:38
Speaker 1: a while. It was kind of a situation where it
46:41
Speaker 1: was so excruciatingly painful, but I was really in denial
46:45
Speaker 1: about what it was, and I think my coach was
46:46
Speaker 1: hoping that it was something different than it was, and
46:49
Speaker 1: I was under a lot of pressure to perform. But
46:52
Speaker 1: eventually it got to the point where I could not walk,
46:55
Speaker 1: so we went in got the MRI. It showed that
46:58
Speaker 1: it was very severely fractured. So that was it, And
47:01
Speaker 1: it's just I thought that was truthfully, I thought that
47:04
Speaker 1: was it, that I was going to be done, and
47:08
Speaker 1: I healed up. I finally was able to do stuff again,
47:12
Speaker 1: and sock Andy was willing to offer me a contract
47:15
Speaker 1: to come out to Boston run on a team that
47:17
Speaker 1: they were putting together. And for me at the time,
47:19
Speaker 1: that was way more than I deserved, Like nobody would
47:23
Speaker 1: have offered that kind of contract, that kind of developmental contract,
47:27
Speaker 1: and so I like, I'm still so enormously grateful to
47:30
Speaker 1: them for that. So I moved out here. I was
47:32
Speaker 1: training for a year, and I had quite a bit
47:35
Speaker 1: of success my first year of training, but kept running
47:38
Speaker 1: into this problem that my hip that I had thought
47:41
Speaker 1: healed would just get sore. The more track work that
47:44
Speaker 1: I was doing, kept getting hurt, kept getting hurt, and
47:47
Speaker 1: right after USA USA ten K champs on the track
47:53
Speaker 1: after that first year of running, Pro went back in
47:55
Speaker 1: got another MRI to see if there was something wrong,
47:57
Speaker 1: and they found that it actually never healed fully, that
48:00
Speaker 1: I had a two millimeter gap in that pelvis, So yeah,
48:04
Speaker 1: anothery're biggie, and then they're like, okay, you need to
48:07
Speaker 1: have this like surgically repaired, like this won't heal on
48:10
Speaker 1: its own. So that was went in on my birthday
48:15
Speaker 1: in summer of twenty eighteen. They drilled out the bone
48:18
Speaker 1: marrow from the two crests of my hip on the
48:21
Speaker 1: very top, spun it down to get the stem cells,
48:24
Speaker 1: and then injected in the bottom and that was like,
48:27
Speaker 1: I've been through some really painful things in my life
48:30
Speaker 1: and having to do that with no pain, like because
48:33
Speaker 1: they couldn't do pain medication and they couldn't put me
48:36
Speaker 1: out for it because I needed to be awake to
48:39
Speaker 1: like manipulate myself. That was quite literally like what I
48:43
Speaker 1: imagine hell to.
48:44
Speaker 2: Be, Like, yeah, I can't how like how does someone endure.
48:51
Speaker 1: One the aamya xanax. So at least I was like
48:54
Speaker 1: chilled out while it was happening. The doctor who did
48:58
Speaker 1: the surgery was like, she's one of my favorite people,
49:01
Speaker 1: super super nice. She gave me like a sandwich halfway
49:05
Speaker 1: through because it's like a two part surgery. But yeah,
49:07
Speaker 1: it was. It was hellish. They pulled out like and
49:11
Speaker 1: even like after you go through the drilling and like
49:14
Speaker 1: the bone marrows out, your hip is just so hurting,
49:18
Speaker 1: so bad, and then they unsheath this like needle that
49:22
Speaker 1: is the biggest needle I've ever seen to inject the
49:25
Speaker 1: stem cells into the bottom of your like like the
49:28
Speaker 1: very bottom part of my pelvis. And it was just like,
49:31
Speaker 1: oh my god, but you just kind of, yeah, you
49:34
Speaker 1: just get through it.
49:35
Speaker 2: Did you think at this point even though you were
49:37
Speaker 2: getting quote unquote fixed that you were going to be
49:41
Speaker 2: able to come back to running. Were you sure of it?
49:42
Speaker 1: They gave me a fifty to fifty chance of it working.
49:45
Speaker 1: And then like even then it might not, like with
49:48
Speaker 1: the full knowledge that like I might never run at
49:51
Speaker 1: the same level again, just with how impinged and like
49:54
Speaker 1: impaired my hip would be. So yeah, I'm happy to
49:57
Speaker 1: say that I was the better half of that fifty percent.
50:00
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was kind of like truthfully, it was
50:02
Speaker 1: kind of miraculous. But yeah, it was basically six months
50:07
Speaker 1: of not being able to do anything. So yeah, from
50:10
Speaker 1: July of that year to the next January.
50:12
Speaker 2: So now we're finally in January twenty nineteen.
50:14
Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen. Literally, I know, sorry if there's so much stuff,
50:19
Speaker 1: it's like the timeline's wild, but yeah, that it's like
50:22
Speaker 1: literally starting from square one, right, And so yeah, twenty
50:26
Speaker 1: nineteen was hard because it was like trying to like
50:28
Speaker 1: build back up off of nothing.
50:30
Speaker 2: What advice would you offer to people who, like you,
50:34
Speaker 2: just feel as though they are getting knocked down time
50:37
Speaker 2: and time and time again by injury.
50:41
Speaker 1: I would say that the number one thing is to
50:45
Speaker 1: if you are feeling like you're just in this injury cycle,
50:48
Speaker 1: constantly hurting things, you have to get back to a
50:52
Speaker 1: point where it you feel fully healthy. You don't want
50:57
Speaker 1: to constantly be playing ketchup. And I think that was
51:00
Speaker 1: my problem for a long time, is that I always
51:02
Speaker 1: had something going on and I would try to push
51:04
Speaker 1: through it, and then it would cause another injury. And
51:06
Speaker 1: I'd try and push through that and it'd cause another injury.
51:09
Speaker 1: And I almost think that those six months of being
51:12
Speaker 1: able to just like sit, let everything heal, and then
51:16
Speaker 1: start building off of it, coming from the standpoint of
51:18
Speaker 1: my body is finally healthy, my hip is finally healed.
51:23
Speaker 1: I'm not like nursing something and then trying to push
51:26
Speaker 1: through it. I think once you're coming from a standpoint
51:29
Speaker 1: of being healthy, then you can build off of that.
51:32
Speaker 1: It takes a long time, but if you're constantly like
51:37
Speaker 1: facing these tiny things or large things, you're going to
51:40
Speaker 1: be hitting yourself against a wall constantly. And that's not
51:43
Speaker 1: to say that through twenty nineteen I didn't have a
51:45
Speaker 1: lot of injuries. I mean, that's ultimately why I ended
51:48
Speaker 1: up with my new coach, because I had so many
51:50
Speaker 1: like imbalances. But now I do feel that at least
51:55
Speaker 1: I'm in the standpoint where like I'm able to train
52:00
Speaker 1: at a higher level because like my hip is repaired
52:03
Speaker 1: and because I took the time to let it heal.
52:06
Speaker 1: And it was really freaking hard being patient enough to
52:09
Speaker 1: do that, but and it sucked at the time.
52:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also think it's I also think that it
52:15
Speaker 2: was probably important for you, like your mom said to
52:18
Speaker 2: you when you were younger, like I care about Molly,
52:22
Speaker 2: my daughter, not just Molly the runner. You probably also
52:25
Speaker 2: had to get to a point where you cared about
52:27
Speaker 2: Molly the person and not just Molly the runner.
52:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's like, yeah, having to think
52:33
Speaker 1: about like, oh man, I don't want to like destroy
52:36
Speaker 1: my body so like twenty years from now I can't walk,
52:39
Speaker 1: which I think previously I was definitely under the opinion
52:43
Speaker 1: like I'm just gonna go as hard as I can
52:45
Speaker 1: now and not think about Molly at age forty five,
52:47
Speaker 1: and now it's like I want to make sure that,
52:50
Speaker 1: like my pelvis doesn't snap when I'm that old. Yeah,
52:54
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, definitely try and even not even
52:57
Speaker 1: from that standpoint, just thinking like if I want to
52:59
Speaker 1: try and stay in sport for the next hopefully ten years.
53:02
Speaker 1: Like I see women now who are competing at a
53:04
Speaker 1: super high level in the marathon at age thirty five
53:07
Speaker 1: thirty six, It's like, I'd ultimately like to do that,
53:10
Speaker 1: but I need my body to be healthy to do that,
53:12
Speaker 1: and I can't be like constantly just like tearing myself apart.
53:16
Speaker 2: So what's the first race in twenty nineteen that you
53:19
Speaker 2: come back to and it's like Molly's back.
53:23
Speaker 1: I did the BAA ten k that was in June,
53:27
Speaker 1: so it actually had been based almost exactly a full
53:31
Speaker 1: year since my previous race at USA outdoors on the track,
53:35
Speaker 1: and I actually raced way better than I thought I
53:38
Speaker 1: was going to. I actually think I like PRD in
53:40
Speaker 1: the ten k and there so I was like shocked.
53:43
Speaker 2: I feel towing the line that day.
53:45
Speaker 1: Oh, I was so nervous, but I was so excited.
53:48
Speaker 1: There's just like nothing feels like racing feels, and I
53:52
Speaker 1: was just so like ready to get back into it. Yeah,
53:55
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. I was like, I really hope I'm
53:57
Speaker 1: still able to do this.
54:00
Speaker 2: So you do the ten k and then you're feeling high.
54:05
Speaker 1: Feeling high, go and do a couple more races and
54:08
Speaker 1: then do Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July fourth,
54:12
Speaker 1: and I hurt my hip again and was on crutches
54:14
Speaker 1: for two weeks, and I definitely called coach Sparks by
54:18
Speaker 1: college coach and cried to him. It was like, I
54:21
Speaker 1: think this is the end of my running career. And
54:23
Speaker 1: he was like, you're being dumb. You're too dumb to
54:25
Speaker 1: quit running. Like you're going to get through this, just
54:28
Speaker 1: like you've gotten through everything else. You just need to
54:30
Speaker 1: be patient, right, got through that, spent the summer rehabbing.
54:34
Speaker 2: When did you say you went to Ethiopia?
54:36
Speaker 1: That was actually November? Okay, so that was part of it.
54:38
Speaker 1: I had gotten involved with girls got to run previously.
54:41
Speaker 1: I'd been out in January of twenty twenty nineteen actually
54:46
Speaker 1: doing a relay and it was a really good way
54:49
Speaker 1: of while I was injured and kind of building up
54:51
Speaker 1: to focus on something that wasn't just me. Yeah, And
54:54
Speaker 1: I think that actually really helped as well, because it's
54:56
Speaker 1: like running is such a selfish sport that you're just
54:59
Speaker 1: so self focused all the time. It's like how does
55:02
Speaker 1: my body feel? How am I performing? And being able
55:05
Speaker 1: to think like bigger picture of like what's going to
55:08
Speaker 1: be good for all of these people who aren't me
55:12
Speaker 1: was really important for me. And realizing like that ultimately,
55:14
Speaker 1: like our sport is super silly and inconsequential, and like
55:18
Speaker 1: there's a huge world out there, and it just gives
55:21
Speaker 1: you a good perspective on like I'm doing this because
55:24
Speaker 1: I love running and it fulfills my goals, but there's
55:29
Speaker 1: more to this than just.
55:30
Speaker 2: Me, right, And so you come back from that trip
55:34
Speaker 2: and you qualify for the trials at the Rock and
55:37
Speaker 2: Roll San Antonio, Yes, one ten twenty seven. Yeah, and
55:42
Speaker 2: that was love.
55:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
55:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
55:45
Speaker 1: I was very surprised, just because it was very hard
55:48
Speaker 1: to train in Ethiopia. It's really high. I had only
55:51
Speaker 1: been running consistently since September at that point, and John
55:55
Speaker 1: was now coaching me, so my current coach and my friend,
55:58
Speaker 1: and so we had no idea how that was going
56:01
Speaker 1: to go. I think John always has a lot of
56:03
Speaker 1: confidence in me, but yeah, we were both pleasantly surprised
56:06
Speaker 1: with how well that went.
56:08
Speaker 2: And that's a and that's a one ten twenty seven
56:11
Speaker 2: half marathon. I feel like we just like throw these numbers.
56:14
Speaker 1: Around, yeah, yeah, probably like what are these numbers? So
56:16
Speaker 1: what's going on, but then there was more to be had. Yeah,
56:20
Speaker 1: So after that race, I was originally set to debut
56:24
Speaker 1: in the marathon at the Houston Marathon and then the
56:28
Speaker 1: Houston half is the big race that everybody does before
56:30
Speaker 1: the trials, and my coach and I were talking and
56:34
Speaker 1: he was like, you know what, like maybe like you
56:37
Speaker 1: could switch to the half at Houston, And I was like,
56:39
Speaker 1: would you let me do the Olympic trials like for
56:42
Speaker 1: the marathon. He's like, I'm not wild about the idea,
56:44
Speaker 1: but like maybe we can do this, Like this might
56:47
Speaker 1: be a really cool experience, and like we'll see if
56:50
Speaker 1: Houston will let you switch to the half. They let
56:52
Speaker 1: me switch to the half and went out to altitude.
56:56
Speaker 1: Then beginning of this past year twenty twenty was train
57:01
Speaker 1: them a butt off and got to the line, ran
57:04
Speaker 1: very well at Houston, and yeah, then just was like
57:08
Speaker 1: kind of got that like little inkling in my mind
57:11
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, I think I can do this.
57:13
Speaker 2: And I think what I didn't even realize until more
57:16
Speaker 2: recently was just the dramatic difference I would say, between
57:19
Speaker 2: how fast you have to be as a half marathon
57:22
Speaker 2: or to qualify for the Olympic trials in the marathon
57:25
Speaker 2: versus I mean, within reason, how fast you would run
57:28
Speaker 2: a marathon. To qualify for the trials in a marathon
57:31
Speaker 2: for women, you have to run a marathon and under
57:34
Speaker 2: two forty five, And if you are qualifying using a
57:37
Speaker 2: half marathon time, you have to run the half marathon
57:40
Speaker 2: and under one thirteen. That is a big difference. I
57:44
Speaker 2: think it's I think it's like talks to how much
57:46
Speaker 2: of a badass you are that you qualified being a
57:49
Speaker 2: half marathon er.
57:50
Speaker 1: And there are other women who do qualify off the
57:52
Speaker 1: half marathon. I don't know the exact number of us
57:56
Speaker 1: that did, but yeah, it's I think it's kind of
57:59
Speaker 1: this expectation, like if you're going to be like, if
58:01
Speaker 1: you're qualifying off the half, you have to be willing
58:03
Speaker 1: to go out and like freaking send it, like totally. Yeah,
58:07
Speaker 1: you have to kind of know what you're getting yourself into.
58:09
Speaker 2: So, needless to say, you come off of the Houston
58:12
Speaker 2: half marathon, you're feeling great and you're like, Wow, I
58:15
Speaker 2: guess it's time to go out there and run a
58:16
Speaker 2: full finally.
58:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but I was like, that's not to say
58:20
Speaker 1: that I wasn't scared out of my goddamn mind, because
58:24
Speaker 1: it was effectively the deepest field the Olympic marathon trials
58:27
Speaker 1: it ever had. Just the state of women's distance running
58:31
Speaker 1: in the US right now is insane. There are so
58:34
Speaker 1: many women who are so talented. So going into this,
58:38
Speaker 1: I really was trying to keep my expectations fairly low.
58:42
Speaker 1: The secret to happiness to really say, but yeah, I
58:47
Speaker 1: was not by any means try like just seeing like, oh,
58:50
Speaker 1: we have Sarah Hall, who's run two twenty two for
58:53
Speaker 1: the marathon. We have like Emma Bates, Emily Sism, Molly Huddle,
58:57
Speaker 1: who's like a thirty time national champion, Desi lynd And
58:59
Speaker 1: who's fricking won the Boston marathon, like all of these women.
59:03
Speaker 1: And every time I would think, I think of like
59:05
Speaker 1: five new other women who are doing this thing, and
59:07
Speaker 1: so I'm like, okay, like let's just like go out
59:11
Speaker 1: with the goal of just seeing what you can do.
59:13
Speaker 1: Try and like keep your expectations based on your effort
59:17
Speaker 1: rather than on like places, because like I was so
59:21
Speaker 1: mentally prepared to do so badly in this race that
59:24
Speaker 1: I was just like typing myself up, Like your self
59:27
Speaker 1: worth isn't based on how you finish in a marathon,
59:30
Speaker 1: like your time in the marathon doesn't tell you anything
59:32
Speaker 1: about your value as a human. And so I was
59:35
Speaker 1: so ready to do so badly in this race, and
59:37
Speaker 1: then it went so much better than I expected it to.
59:40
Speaker 1: And I almost don't know how to like react to that.
59:43
Speaker 2: Now, do you attribute that to anything specific?
59:48
Speaker 1: I think I've been over the last I guess it's
59:52
Speaker 1: five years now at this point, I've running has broken
59:56
Speaker 1: my heart so many times. I've had so many failure
1:00:00
Speaker 1: years in this sport that I try to, like not
1:00:04
Speaker 1: to say that I always expect the worst, but I'm
1:00:06
Speaker 1: always ready for it if it comes. And that's I
1:00:09
Speaker 1: think part of my mentality going into that race, of
1:00:12
Speaker 1: like just expecting it to hurt so badly the entire time,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: because that's just I've kind of gotten used to that
1:00:18
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. Like, and I'm okay
1:00:20
Speaker 1: with that. I know that sometimes like life just sucks
1:00:23
Speaker 1: and you just have to get through it. And I
1:00:25
Speaker 1: kind of expected that to be the marathon, but when
1:00:28
Speaker 1: it's not, That's why I was so surprised that, like
1:00:31
Speaker 1: the first twenty miles, I was like, the marathon is
1:00:32
Speaker 1: obviously hard, but then I'm getting into it. I'm like, oh, man,
1:00:36
Speaker 1: like I feel like consistent and smooth in this Like
1:00:39
Speaker 1: I feel it's this feeling of like power. I guess,
1:00:42
Speaker 1: like you know you're running hard and you feel tired,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: but you're like, I can keep running at this like
1:00:47
Speaker 1: all day long.
1:00:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this indescribable high.
1:00:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:00:51
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine maintaining the pace that you were
1:00:54
Speaker 2: running and feeling that level of high. But I can
1:00:57
Speaker 2: relate to that feeling because earlier last year I ran
1:01:03
Speaker 2: Chicago at a pace that I had never dreamed of,
1:01:06
Speaker 2: and you're out there and it just is as if
1:01:09
Speaker 2: you're invincible. Yeah.
1:01:11
Speaker 1: And then even with the crowds at the trials, it
1:01:14
Speaker 1: was crazy. There were so many people there. It's like
1:01:16
Speaker 1: going through its scream tunnel and you're just like, but
1:01:20
Speaker 1: that's the funny thing. I wasn't like elated by any means.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: I felt like my emotions were very in check and
1:01:26
Speaker 1: like I was just in like this flow state that
1:01:28
Speaker 1: I just felt like I was like going.
1:01:30
Speaker 2: Talk to me about the moment you realize what's about
1:01:35
Speaker 2: to happen. As you were getting toward mile twenty five
1:01:40
Speaker 2: mile twenty six.
1:01:42
Speaker 1: Well, I want to preface this with I was in
1:01:44
Speaker 1: more pain in those last two miles, and I've been
1:01:47
Speaker 1: just about in any race of my life, Like it's
1:01:49
Speaker 1: so freakin' hard, so like you can't really like enjoy
1:01:53
Speaker 1: it because one you're so terrified that someone's gonna catch you,
1:01:56
Speaker 1: and then they give you that tiny little flag, like
1:01:59
Speaker 1: six hundred meters from the finish, You're like, this is
1:02:01
Speaker 1: way too early to be giving me this flag. There's
1:02:03
Speaker 1: a lot of race left, but I think coming down
1:02:06
Speaker 1: once you hit the final downhill, because it was downhill
1:02:09
Speaker 1: for the last two hundred meters, and so by that time,
1:02:12
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm pretty confident that I'm going to
1:02:14
Speaker 1: the Olympics at this point. And I could see my
1:02:18
Speaker 1: my whole family was there, and I could see my
1:02:21
Speaker 1: brother and my sister holding up these ridiculous cut out
1:02:24
Speaker 1: heads they'd had of me, and my sister is literally inhysterics,
1:02:28
Speaker 1: like sobbing, and that's when I was like starting to
1:02:31
Speaker 1: like break, like just break apart. I was just like,
1:02:35
Speaker 1: oh my god, Yeah, it was. It was wild because
1:02:39
Speaker 1: you're just crossing the line and it's like the culmination
1:02:41
Speaker 1: of every dream you've had. You're like a kid, it
1:02:44
Speaker 1: was it was like next level and just realizing like damn,
1:02:47
Speaker 1: like I just like did that. Yeah, I'm still kind
1:02:52
Speaker 1: of processing that moment.
1:02:53
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone ever fully processes that moment. You
1:02:58
Speaker 2: just replay it and replay it and replay it, and
1:03:00
Speaker 2: you probably ask yourself, how does it get better than this?
1:03:03
Speaker 2: And I think maybe the answer to that is when
1:03:07
Speaker 2: you run in the Olympics.
1:03:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's like I don't know, it's just
1:03:11
Speaker 1: like it's such an honor to get to like say like, oh, yeah,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: I'm representing the US like at the Olympics. And I
1:03:19
Speaker 1: think that's the that's the core of it, just the
1:03:21
Speaker 1: opportunity to go out on the world stage to represent everything,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: like represents the country that I grew up in and like,
1:03:29
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just a sense of pride and
1:03:31
Speaker 1: I'm really really looking forward to getting to do that.
1:03:34
Speaker 1: And everyone dreams is like being competitive at the at
1:03:38
Speaker 1: the Olympics, but at the end of the day, it's
1:03:40
Speaker 1: about like going out and just being a willing to
1:03:43
Speaker 1: like give your best effort and do everything you can
1:03:47
Speaker 1: on the day to like, I don't know, put the
1:03:49
Speaker 1: best foot forward for the country. Effectively.
1:03:52
Speaker 2: I love it and the metaphor of the best foot
1:03:54
Speaker 2: forward as you move forward with running, you're.
1:03:56
Speaker 1: Just so oh Joe because it's running so.
1:04:00
Speaker 2: Good at this. Okay, so talk to me about what
1:04:03
Speaker 2: life's like now. Obviously you said your training isn't a
1:04:06
Speaker 2: well deserved down beach.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, my coach has been super nice. He knows that,
1:04:11
Speaker 1: like sometimes in full time off, that my body doesn't
1:04:14
Speaker 1: respond super well to it, so he's letting me run
1:04:16
Speaker 1: in these two weeks after the marathon, which really helps. Shockingly,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: my body actually feels like pretty okay right now. So
1:04:23
Speaker 1: like I've just been doing easy mileage. I think I
1:04:25
Speaker 1: did like thirty miles last week, and it's just nice
1:04:27
Speaker 1: being able to like enjoy being back home in Boston
1:04:30
Speaker 1: finally with my sister. The weather's been really nice. I'm
1:04:34
Speaker 1: back with my friends and just kind of like in
1:04:37
Speaker 1: that sense, my life is much calmer. In the sense
1:04:40
Speaker 1: of media and social media specifically, things have been absolutely insane,
1:04:46
Speaker 1: which I don't think I was prepared for.
1:04:48
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that.
1:04:49
Speaker 1: It's been wild.
1:04:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean, how many, like if we just
1:04:53
Speaker 2: take Instagram as a platform for example, like how many
1:04:55
Speaker 2: followers did you show up to the trials with.
1:04:57
Speaker 1: I showed up on Trials morning probably with either a
1:05:00
Speaker 1: hair under eight thousand or right around eight thousand.
1:05:03
Speaker 2: And now what are we at like forty five carry five?
1:05:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just got verified as of today.
1:05:08
Speaker 2: That was exciting.
1:05:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like it's almost like a joke to me,
1:05:14
Speaker 1: Like every time I see it, it doesn't seem real.
1:05:16
Speaker 1: And like I now, I definitely I'm not super good
1:05:22
Speaker 1: with posting all the time. I'll go dark for long
1:05:24
Speaker 1: periods of time. Also, I usually don't have very good
1:05:27
Speaker 1: quality photos on my Instagram, So now, for one, it's
1:05:30
Speaker 1: really weird having all of these great photos from the trials.
1:05:33
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with it. It's really
1:05:34
Speaker 1: ruining my blurry iPhone running photo aesthetic. But yeah, it's uh,
1:05:42
Speaker 1: it is kind of fun and definitely like having a
1:05:44
Speaker 1: little bit more of a platform. A lot of people
1:05:46
Speaker 1: have been like reaching out or dming, so I apologize
1:05:50
Speaker 1: if anyone hearing this has DMed me, and I haven't responded.
1:05:54
Speaker 1: I'm still working through everything and I truthfully probably won't
1:05:57
Speaker 1: get to them all.
1:05:58
Speaker 2: I think you're entitled to house time to defer it.
1:06:01
Speaker 2: And I mean, but the thing about social media is
1:06:04
Speaker 2: that there's no denying that you want to do the
1:06:09
Speaker 2: best you can to help as many people as you can.
1:06:12
Speaker 2: And I think, I mean it speaks to the work
1:06:14
Speaker 2: that you did in Ethiopia, like you want to show
1:06:17
Speaker 2: up and help other people, and sometimes it feels as
1:06:20
Speaker 2: though there's just not enough time to help as many
1:06:23
Speaker 2: people as you want.
1:06:24
Speaker 1: No, and that's what like, Yeah, it's like there's always
1:06:28
Speaker 1: a new message to respond to. There's always like five
1:06:30
Speaker 1: different things, and I feel like you can just kind
1:06:32
Speaker 1: of like spiral into it and there's no getting out.
1:06:36
Speaker 1: And then obviously you always have like the haters online
1:06:40
Speaker 1: of people like responding to stuff, and it's almost like
1:06:44
Speaker 1: you can't even respond. It's like it's not even worth it.
1:06:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: So, and truthfully, I'm usually show a wall with my
1:06:50
Speaker 1: social media that I miss half the stuff on there,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: so probably for the better, sometimes probably for the better,
1:06:56
Speaker 1: or just like at the end of the day, I
1:06:58
Speaker 1: just try to I try to keep in mind. And
1:07:00
Speaker 1: a piece of advice I was once given that don't
1:07:03
Speaker 1: accept criticism from anyone, that you wouldn't.
1:07:05
Speaker 2: Accept advice from Oh good one. Yeah I dig that.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to keep in mind of all the
1:07:12
Speaker 1: RANDO like let's run haters.
1:07:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure, and there are definitely a lot of them.
1:07:16
Speaker 2: When it comes to walking away from that trials experience,
1:07:21
Speaker 2: aside from obviously a place on the Olympic team, what
1:07:24
Speaker 2: would you say, just from that experience and from running
1:07:27
Speaker 2: a marathon, maybe one of your biggest takeaways was whether
1:07:30
Speaker 2: it's technical or a little bit more metaphorical or whatever you.
1:07:34
Speaker 1: Got For me, I guess it's this feeling of going
1:07:36
Speaker 1: into that race. I felt like I even like on
1:07:40
Speaker 1: the starting line, I didn't feel like I belonged. I
1:07:42
Speaker 1: don't deserve to be here. I haven't done enough to
1:07:45
Speaker 1: earn my way here. There's so many people here who
1:07:48
Speaker 1: have done so much more. I even now like I've
1:07:51
Speaker 1: felt like a fraud a little bit. And being in
1:07:54
Speaker 1: that race and finally getting up there, it was actually
1:07:58
Speaker 1: kind of cool. The final part of the course. You
1:08:00
Speaker 1: go out underneath the Olympic rings, turn around and come
1:08:03
Speaker 1: back past the Olympic torch, and as we're coming back,
1:08:07
Speaker 1: you're seeing the women coming out still and one of
1:08:10
Speaker 1: those women was Desi Lindon, who was in fourth at
1:08:12
Speaker 1: that time and trying to trying to still close the gap,
1:08:15
Speaker 1: make the team, and she saw us, she saw me
1:08:20
Speaker 1: and Alphine coming out, and she just like looked straight
1:08:23
Speaker 1: at us and gave me a thumbs up, and I
1:08:26
Speaker 1: was I felt like it was like that moment of like, no,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: you deserve to be here, Like you freaking go after this,
1:08:33
Speaker 1: like don't disappoint Deesse Lindon because like she's just like
1:08:37
Speaker 1: the freaking biggest hero of mine. Like I cried watching
1:08:40
Speaker 1: her win Boston coming through mile nineteen and be like,
1:08:42
Speaker 1: oh my god, she's gonna do it. So like getting
1:08:45
Speaker 1: that kind of like validation and like realizing like no,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: like I I can perform at this level, like regardless
1:08:53
Speaker 1: of what I've gone through the last couple of years,
1:08:56
Speaker 1: Like I have worked way too damn hard and suffered
1:09:00
Speaker 1: too damn much to give up now. So I think
1:09:03
Speaker 1: that kind of validation of like coming overline being like
1:09:06
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I didn't chicken out, or like I'm
1:09:10
Speaker 1: glad that I was brave enough to go and run
1:09:13
Speaker 1: hard before I believed I was ready to run hard
1:09:16
Speaker 1: in that race.
1:09:16
Speaker 2: And I think that happens for so many people, right,
1:09:19
Speaker 2: regardless of its running or I mean, how many times
1:09:23
Speaker 2: do we question do I belong here? Can I show
1:09:26
Speaker 2: up here? Am I allowed to take up space? But
1:09:29
Speaker 2: how beautiful is it when you do show up and
1:09:31
Speaker 2: you tell yourself that I do belong here?
1:09:35
Speaker 1: Yeah?
1:09:35
Speaker 2: Because so often.
1:09:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think a lot of people probably sell
1:09:39
Speaker 1: themselves short. I think I definitely have done that on
1:09:42
Speaker 1: a lot of occasions, assuming like I shouldn't be up
1:09:45
Speaker 1: with the front pack because I'm I'm not fast enough
1:09:48
Speaker 1: to run with that group. I should play it safe
1:09:50
Speaker 1: and stay back here. And that's not to say that
1:09:52
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't work out, Like I've definitely had times
1:09:55
Speaker 1: where I've tried to go out with the front pack
1:09:56
Speaker 1: and I've blown up spectacularly. I think it's it's this
1:10:02
Speaker 1: idea that like, you have to do all the work,
1:10:04
Speaker 1: and you have to be brave enough to put yourself
1:10:06
Speaker 1: out there, and sometimes a lightning bolt is going to
1:10:09
Speaker 1: strike from the heavens and it's going to work out,
1:10:11
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's just not going to flow and it's
1:10:13
Speaker 1: going to be one of those days that it doesn't work.
1:10:15
Speaker 1: But if you're not willing to put yourself up there
1:10:18
Speaker 1: and to put yourself in a position to be great,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: you're never going to be great.
1:10:22
Speaker 2: So you talk to me about maybe one of the
1:10:24
Speaker 2: biggest takeaways aside from going to the Olympics, from the trials,
1:10:27
Speaker 2: what would you say was one of the best pieces
1:10:29
Speaker 2: of advice that you were offered going into it.
1:10:32
Speaker 1: A couple of the amateur women who had qualified for
1:10:35
Speaker 1: the trials. I was kind of hanging out with them
1:10:37
Speaker 1: before the race, just sitting with them. They were super nice.
1:10:39
Speaker 1: They were like my race moms, and they kept saying
1:10:43
Speaker 1: they were the women who first told me don't warm
1:10:45
Speaker 1: up twenty minutes, like five minutes, but then also saying like, remember,
1:10:50
Speaker 1: stay calm, stay patient. The race doesn't start until at
1:10:54
Speaker 1: least sixteen miles, so on that course they were eight
1:10:57
Speaker 1: mile loops, so that would have been the going into
1:11:00
Speaker 1: the third lap. So those first two laps, I was
1:11:03
Speaker 1: conserve your energy, stay in the pack, tuck behind, draft
1:11:07
Speaker 1: off people because it was super windy. It was like
1:11:08
Speaker 1: twenty miles an hour. But I was like, use as
1:11:10
Speaker 1: little mental energy as you can because the race starts
1:11:15
Speaker 1: on the third lap, and like you have to be
1:11:17
Speaker 1: ready by the time you get to the third lap.
1:11:19
Speaker 1: You can't exhaust your legs early in the race. Trying
1:11:22
Speaker 1: to race these first sixteen miles because it doesn't start
1:11:25
Speaker 1: till till like well into the day.
1:11:28
Speaker 2: And how valuable is that that that helped you get
1:11:30
Speaker 2: to that point and then really kicking in.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: That saved me. That saved my race, like being able
1:11:36
Speaker 1: to go into the third lap and feel like, Okay,
1:11:38
Speaker 1: now I'm ready to go. And I think at that
1:11:40
Speaker 1: point a lot of women in that race were because
1:11:44
Speaker 1: a lot of women's legs were just absolutely fried. People
1:11:47
Speaker 1: had been playing little strategic games fighting each other, making moves,
1:11:52
Speaker 1: and with how windy it was and how hilly it was,
1:11:55
Speaker 1: I think it sapped a lot of people's legs and
1:11:57
Speaker 1: a lot of women said that after the race that
1:11:59
Speaker 1: their legs just felt trashed. Yeah, And I think like
1:12:03
Speaker 1: between the sixteen to twenty two mile mark is when
1:12:07
Speaker 1: quite a few of the top group ended up dropping out.
1:12:10
Speaker 1: And so I think it was definitely a matter of
1:12:13
Speaker 1: just learning to like preserve yourself as long as you
1:12:15
Speaker 1: can and like choose your battles. Because that's not to
1:12:18
Speaker 1: say like the last six miles were the hardest I've
1:12:21
Speaker 1: ever run, but I felt like I was able to
1:12:25
Speaker 1: get to that point and still be like, Okay, you
1:12:27
Speaker 1: can be competitive you can. You can fight this out
1:12:30
Speaker 1: and not feel like you're redlining the entire time.
1:12:33
Speaker 2: You mentioned the forty five thousand new social media followers. God,
1:12:39
Speaker 2: they come to your page now and they see this
1:12:44
Speaker 2: triumphant woman. Don't laugh, It's true. It's just so weird,
1:12:50
Speaker 2: this triumphant woman who has maybe even surpassed her wildest dreams.
1:12:57
Speaker 2: You look in the mirror, now, what is it that
1:13:00
Speaker 2: you see staring back at you.
1:13:02
Speaker 1: Despite everything over the past week and even that race, Like,
1:13:05
Speaker 1: I feel like my general opinion of myself hasn't changed
1:13:10
Speaker 1: at all. Like all of this is fun. It almost
1:13:13
Speaker 1: like still doesn't seem quite real. But I felt like
1:13:15
Speaker 1: going into that race, I was in a really good
1:13:18
Speaker 1: place mentally. I went into that race because I was
1:13:21
Speaker 1: assuming that it was going to go so badly. I
1:13:24
Speaker 1: had come to terms with the fact that it was like,
1:13:25
Speaker 1: the outcome of this race doesn't affect my opinion of myself.
1:13:29
Speaker 1: Like I was so obsessed in twenty sixteen with making
1:13:33
Speaker 1: a team. I felt like that was what I had
1:13:35
Speaker 1: to do to have value as a human, And this
1:13:37
Speaker 1: time around, it was like, I feel like I love
1:13:41
Speaker 1: the training that I'm doing, I love the community that
1:13:44
Speaker 1: I'm surrounded by in Boston. I love the I love
1:13:47
Speaker 1: just like being in this place right now that I
1:13:49
Speaker 1: am in my life and making an Olympic team doesn't
1:13:53
Speaker 1: change that about me. Like, sure it would like that
1:13:56
Speaker 1: is my highest goal as an athlete, but at the
1:13:59
Speaker 1: end of the day, like my value as a human
1:14:01
Speaker 1: doesn't rest on that, and so going into it and
1:14:05
Speaker 1: making that team it's so cool. But at the same
1:14:07
Speaker 1: time it makes me so happy, But I feel like
1:14:10
Speaker 1: my happiness isn't contingent on that anymore. I feel like
1:14:13
Speaker 1: a more complete person who's got other things. And like, truthfully,
1:14:17
Speaker 1: the happiest moment of that day wasn't crossing the finish
1:14:21
Speaker 1: line and like having the adoration of people like, oh
1:14:24
Speaker 1: my god, you made the team. It was sitting in
1:14:26
Speaker 1: the bar that night, eating a burger, surrounded by my
1:14:30
Speaker 1: favorite people in the world, getting to just celebrate this
1:14:33
Speaker 1: moment and be be in it and just being happy
1:14:38
Speaker 1: that I was healthy and able to walk without pain
1:14:41
Speaker 1: after that race and surrounded by people that I love
1:14:45
Speaker 1: and just realized that I was going to the Tokyo Olympics.
1:14:49
Speaker 1: And yeah, It's like there are these huge moments in
1:14:53
Speaker 1: our life. I think everyone assumes like, oh, you make
1:14:55
Speaker 1: an Olympic team and you're just happy for the rest
1:14:56
Speaker 1: of your life. Like, no, I'm still going to struggle.
1:14:59
Speaker 1: I'll probably still go get hurt multiple times through my career.
1:15:02
Speaker 1: There's going to be other things. But as long as
1:15:04
Speaker 1: I'm okay with like being who I am at my
1:15:06
Speaker 1: core and able to live with that, that is what
1:15:09
Speaker 1: brings me. That's what brings me, like peace. It's not
1:15:14
Speaker 1: getting metals or yeah, yeah, getting metals or breaking records
1:15:18
Speaker 1: or whatnot. All those are temporary. You need to be
1:15:20
Speaker 1: okay with who you are at the end of the day.
1:15:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's really special that the best
1:15:25
Speaker 2: part of that day is the celebration of the event,
1:15:27
Speaker 2: because I think so often, especially in events and milestones
1:15:32
Speaker 2: where you work so hard, there's so much build up
1:15:35
Speaker 2: that we don't take the time to stop, look around
1:15:38
Speaker 2: and enjoy all of our hard work.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and just to enjoy it wasn't even necessarily that.
1:15:45
Speaker 1: It was like being able to appreciate all of the
1:15:47
Speaker 1: people who helped me get there, like seeing my mom
1:15:51
Speaker 1: and dad so happy and having seen them like have
1:15:54
Speaker 1: to drive me to eating disorder treatment, and like be
1:15:57
Speaker 1: with me through that, or like my sister who was
1:16:00
Speaker 1: like having to help me like hobble around on crutches
1:16:04
Speaker 1: all summer, and like, I don't know, my brother who
1:16:07
Speaker 1: was one of the people who was there at those
1:16:09
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen trials with me that I was like at
1:16:11
Speaker 1: my breaking point and he got me through it. It's like, yeah,
1:16:14
Speaker 1: it's just like those are the people who got me
1:16:17
Speaker 1: through the worst of times, and now I get to
1:16:18
Speaker 1: share this with them and it's just so much fun.
1:16:22
Speaker 1: And like now they're going to get to come to
1:16:24
Speaker 1: Tokyo with me and like get to just share that.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, that's what was really special. It's
1:16:30
Speaker 1: the act of It's the act of running on the day,
1:16:33
Speaker 1: like actually being in that race and realizing that there's
1:16:36
Speaker 1: no other place that I would rather be in the
1:16:39
Speaker 1: world than full flight in the middle of a race,
1:16:43
Speaker 1: just hauling and just being in it, and then getting
1:16:46
Speaker 1: to celebrate and just be surrounded by my favorite people
1:16:50
Speaker 1: and just appreciate what we've been through to get to
1:16:53
Speaker 1: that moment.
1:16:55
Speaker 2: You have an opportunity right now to offer the Mollie
1:17:01
Speaker 2: who is in the thick of it, she's struggling. You
1:17:05
Speaker 2: have an opportunity to offer her one piece of advice.
1:17:08
Speaker 2: Looking back on it, what do you tell her?
1:17:12
Speaker 1: I would say that nothing lasts forever. In that nothing,
1:17:17
Speaker 1: no bad thing, is going to last forever. No matter
1:17:20
Speaker 1: how bad it gets, it won't last forever, and good
1:17:24
Speaker 1: things won't last forever. So it's like you just have
1:17:28
Speaker 1: to be in the moment and get through it, and
1:17:30
Speaker 1: this idea that it's okay to feel sad and hurt
1:17:34
Speaker 1: and to just let yourself experience those emotions and just
1:17:39
Speaker 1: realize that no matter how much you're hurting right now,
1:17:42
Speaker 1: that will pass and you're going to be able to
1:17:45
Speaker 1: get through it. But you just have to accept that
1:17:47
Speaker 1: sometimes it's going to be really, really hard and you
1:17:51
Speaker 1: just have to keep moving and stay strong. And even now,
1:17:55
Speaker 1: it's like I can appreciate I can appreciate the pain
1:17:58
Speaker 1: that I went through to sort of treatment or when
1:18:01
Speaker 1: I had my injuries, because I realized, like that's turned
1:18:04
Speaker 1: me into the person that I am now. But I
1:18:07
Speaker 1: think I just needed to like fully experience that when
1:18:10
Speaker 1: I was in it, and yeah, it sucked, but now
1:18:13
Speaker 1: it's like on the other side, I can appreciate it,
1:18:16
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like I didn't say that as
1:18:19
Speaker 1: eloquently as I wanted to, But just this idea that
1:18:24
Speaker 1: there's going to be so many ups and downs, but
1:18:27
Speaker 1: none of them are going to last forever. So just
1:18:29
Speaker 1: be able to keep riding it out and you're going
1:18:32
Speaker 1: to get through it. And I don't know, no matter
1:18:36
Speaker 1: how bad things might be, you never know what's going
1:18:39
Speaker 1: to happen the next day.
1:18:41
Speaker 2: I personally am so grateful for your time and I
1:18:46
Speaker 2: actually have zero deaths in my mind that this is
1:18:49
Speaker 2: going to impact and help a lot of people, some
1:18:52
Speaker 2: of which you maybe just don't have the time to
1:18:54
Speaker 2: get there to their DM.
1:18:55
Speaker 1: I apologize I left you on unread.
1:18:59
Speaker 2: It's okay, Hey, it's okay, thank you, Thanks so much.
1:19:03
Speaker 2: Please take a moment and leave a quick review by
1:19:05
Speaker 2: clicking the link with a description to this episode. We
1:19:07
Speaker 2: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear
1:19:10
Speaker 2: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at Hurdle
1:19:12
Speaker 2: dot us, connect with the podcast Instagram, Twitter at Hurdle
1:19:16
Speaker 2: Podcast Mollie. Where do they find you? How do they
1:19:18
Speaker 2: keep up with you? How do they follow you on
1:19:21
Speaker 2: your road to Tokyo?
1:19:23
Speaker 1: Probably the best way is through my Instagram at by
1:19:26
Speaker 1: Golly Mollie. I have a pretty much inactive Twitter account
1:19:30
Speaker 1: at by Golly Molly twelve, so probably don't rely on that.
1:19:34
Speaker 1: Or if you're around the Boston area and out running,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: just come say hi to me. You'll probably see me
1:19:39
Speaker 1: down by the river. Come run with me.
1:19:41
Speaker 2: Perfect I am at Emily Abodi. Another hurdle conquered. Catch
1:19:46
Speaker 2: you guys next time.