Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #050_ From Eating Disorder To Olympic Glory

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#050_ From Eating Disorder To Olympic Glory · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: All right, DOTSI so nice to see you.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Thanks for coming up all the way from Irvine to
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: do the podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: This is a long time in the making, so I'm
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: delighted to talk to you today.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me an easy drive.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: We'll see how the way home by.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I know it might be a little bit different going back,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: but you're here now and I'm going to hold you prisoner.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: For a little while.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So cool.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: So many things to talk about, but I think the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: most kind of top of mind thing is this anti
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: dairy ad that you worked on with a bunch of
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: other Olympic athletes that was intended to air during the
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: closing ceremonies of pyeong Chang.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about that.
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so well, the campaign itself is called Switch for Good,
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: and the you know, kind of the inspiration for me was,
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: I was just sitting on the couch watching olympicles like
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: probably you know, two and a half months ago now,
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: and the Milk Life ad came on. The Dairy Board
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: is a sponsor of the US Olympic Committee, and it
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: says nine out of ten Olympians grew up drinking milk,
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: which is probably true because.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: There's probably nine out of ten people.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: Right, and people are all things, sorts of things like
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: so did nine out of ten serial killers? I mean,
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: you know clearly that's just wildly misleading in terms of
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: what you drink when you're growing up has anything to
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: do with whether you're going to become olymping or not.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: And then it says that milk has natural proteins, as
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: if there's any other kinds and balance nutrition in the ad,
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: and my blood just started boiling. I mean, I just thought,
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: just for truth's sake alone, we have to answer this.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: This isn't truthful advertising. Well, right, welcome to advertising one
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: on one. But it just it just yeah, it may
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: It made my heart hurt and it made me mad,
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: and I just I started thinking, Okay, how do we
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: answer this in a really intelligent, backed up by science
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: way with a group of olympians, because that's the best
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: way to answer it. Who are who are telling the
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: truth and have really interesting stories to tell about their
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: dairy free lifestyles. So we just we went to work
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: and we whipped this puppy together a really short period
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: of time.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And Louis, you got Louis involved, right, so he directed it.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: He did. Yes, Yes, Luke Coicios, director of The Cove,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that was just I had worked with him
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: on The Game Changers, so I knew him and was
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: used to his style and his directing style. But he's yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: he's mesmerizing to be in action with.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So I saw it. It's on YouTube.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Ad Week picked it up.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of press around it, and I
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: know you did like a Twitter chat the other night
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that I chimed in on for a moment and I
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: shared that on my social media. And it's cool because
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: when you think about the power of the dairy lobby
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: on the consciousness of the average consumer, it's kind of astonishing.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's sort of diabolically genius the way they've
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: been able to infiltrate their message across the board in
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: public institutions. I mean there's posters in public high schools
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: that say milk does a body good, with guys bench
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: pressing and milk mustaches. And then they get involved in
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: the sports community by sponsoring at a very high level
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: things like the Olympics. I know they're a title sponsor
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: of I believe, iron Man, I think, or Triathlon. They're
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: very integrated into the endurance community, and they've done an
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: amazing job of sponsoring athletes to get behind this. And
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: so if you follow many an athlete on Instagram, you'll
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: see them doing ads for chocolate milk, which has been
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: they sort of figured out a way to position as
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: some kind of athletic recovery boosting elixir, which is kind
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of insane. And I don't begrudge these athletes who are
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: trying to make a living, you know, just trying to
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: pay their bills who get involved with this. But when
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: you kind of stand back and look at it from
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: ten thousand feet, you're like, what is going on here?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean other Olympic sponsors are McDonald's and Coca
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Cola exactly, So you know, follow.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: The dollar bills. That's all you ever have to do.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Have you been to the You've probably been to Colorado Springs,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: right to the training center.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was there.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe what I think they've improved this past year.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I saw a news piece about they've gotten much better
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: with the food that they're serving.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: But it's a bit better kind of been back since
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: There like a year and two years ago, maybe, Yeah,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: But there's an actual entire McDonald's restaurant inside of the
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: eating facility in the athletes village.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And it's free, right, it's free for a athletes.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, And I mean sadly the entire Eastern bloc
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: is in line because it's free McDonald's.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: We're like, oh gross, or you know, we.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: Have McDonald's but and it's cheap here, right, But it's
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: it's this. It's the saddest thing you've ever seen, just
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: that that just that total mind bender on you know,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: you're at the Olympics.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're pretty.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Sure that all these kerris lined up to put sludge
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: into their engine nastiest.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's so crazy.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: All right, so this PSA.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So tell me about the impact of this, like what
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: happened here?
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so, well, weird a little bit of a yeah, staff,
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: we all hiccup, to say the least. So we're just
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: forty eight hours in as of today.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: Media wise, so far we have we're at like twenty
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: five million impressions and in forty eight hours thirty five
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: thousand views on YouTube. So we're going well off broad broadcast, right,
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: broad perhaps television, but we had a bit of the
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: snafu the night that it was supposed to air on
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: closing ceremonies at seven point fifteen. The USOC was able
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: to get it pulled from NBC because they're a client
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: of NBC's and follow the dollar bills again, because they
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: said it was a direct attack on one of their
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: sponsors and there was an Olympic IP issue that they
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: saw in the final card of the of the commercial.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: So that's that is what it is.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It's not surprising, right, I mean, I'm sure you could
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: have foreseen this right once they get wise to what's
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: going on, Like there are bottom lines being threatened by this.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: It's in conflict with their leading sponsor or a leading sponsor.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: But the good news is there's something called the Internet,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: you know, and there's a there's a there's a way
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: to still get the message out, and I think it
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: is getting out.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: So I think it's cool.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: It's a first stab at counter programming, and there's a
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: story in and of itself. The fact that it got
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: pulled can create a news story that can create a
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: disition interest in what you're trying to OCCO.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because just like you know, the early years of tobacco.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: As they went along, you know, people started realizing something
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: that was being hidden from them. And people get pissed
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: when they realize, like they're something's being hidden in someone's line.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Did you get Were you on the receiving end of
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: a little backlash online?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: No?
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: No, no no, not yet has been really positive.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: But what I'm saying is is now that we're bringing
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: forward how dangerous dairy is and that it's not a
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: health food.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: It is not a health food.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Like they are saying it is, and we have many
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: of these really inspired, inspiring anecdotal stories and a lot
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: of science backing it up. People the general public as
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: they look deeper because they have something like the Internet,
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: like you said, they're going to start looking deeper and
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: they're going to start realizing that they've been lied to
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: that dairy's a health food and it makes for strong
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: bones and that it's good for you and that and
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: people aren't going to like that.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: So that's good.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is good.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: That is good. So the athletes, you got Rebecca Sony
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: who's a friend, Yeah, Ferris else in the spot.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, those two are both just amazing.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: I love their individual stories.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Ceba Johnson who is the first African American ski racer
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: in history, also the youngest ski racer ever. She is
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: vegan since birth, so she's never had a glass of milk.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: And in her ski racing career she never broke about.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: And I don't even know a ski racer that hasn't broken.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I would imagine most of them at at some point.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: She did after her ski racing career in a very
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: bad accident, but in her ski racing career she never
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: never broke a bone. Caro Lang who's a Canadian soccer
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: player and a mom, She's got a great story. Malachai Davis,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: who's a sprinter, was a sprinter for Great Britain two
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: thousand and four.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And Kendrick is a weightlifter, Yes, Olympic weightlifter.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Did he did he? I can't remember. Did he medal?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Did you know?
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: But he was seventh? He did quite well.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: He was the only US male weightlifter to qualify for Rio,
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: so he was the only one that went win.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: People don't really realize.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: I don't think that you countries have to qualify their
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: spot for Olympic Games and then the country themselves. The
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: coaches picks who will fill that spot, which is not
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: always the person that qualifies the spot, and it is
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: in weightlifting for him, but in other sports, which is
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: lots of layers of politics that people don't necessarily realize
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: goes on.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: But you have to qualify the spot. It's not like
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: just because you know, you're a country, a big country,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: that you just you know, automatically go to the Olympics.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: It's not the way it works, right, right, right? Got it?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Cool, Well let's let's take it back. I mean, there's
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: so many layers to your story. It's an amazing story.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're quite an unlikely Olympian in some regards,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, that was not the trajectory that
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: you were headed on as a young person. Most people
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: who end up at the Olympics are people who've been
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: harboring that dream, you know, since they were an infant,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: just dreaming of being on that podium. But you were
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: living a very different life as a young person.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Just a wee bit little bit.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I didn't.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, you did sports, right, you did. You wrote
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: crew in college.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: I did for like a year until it was like
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: messing up my party scene. Because you have to get
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: up a four thirty in the morning.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: But and I did.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: I grew up in Kentucky, so I grew up riding horses,
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: but you know, the horses the athlete, not you. But
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: I did grow up like a competitive I had a
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: competitive nature about me, and I, you know, competed in
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: saddlebread horse riding from a young age. So I think
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: I had that part of me in my emotions in
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: my mind that you know, really loved the competition aspect.
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: But then I through high school and college, it just
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: kind of got a got away from it and definitely
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: went wayward.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was it was.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: It was a deep dive into the underbelly of New
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: York City and the modeling world.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I'm familiar with that under belly, so let's let's explore
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: that a little bit. I mean, you know, something that
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I can relate to in your story is, you know,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: you're in college, you're an athlete, and at some point
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the venue your fades with the early morning workouts and
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: all of that, and there's this social partying life that
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: kind of enters and starts to take center stage. So
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I'm projecting on you, but I'm presuming that at some
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: point in college this is what was This is what
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: was happening.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: I was kind of living two lives because I got
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: okay grades in high school, but I really really loved
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: college because you're finally, you know, learning for doing what
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: you're free but in school, in the actual classes, like
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: you're doing what you're interested in, right right.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: So you're not.
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: So I was getting really great, great grades and studying
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: really hard and loving my classes, and then at the
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: same time, just that part of me that I think
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: felt like I, you know, hadn't been able to be
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: let out of my shell before, was had the ability
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: to do that in a way like like never before,
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: which you know, almost every single person it's gone.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: To college has experience that. It's not like that's a
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: rare finding life.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, growing up, were you like what kind of
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: an environment was your family situation?
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: I grew up into a pretty traditional like Midwest solid family,
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: Like great, just yeah, no.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like you're against your parents.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Right, No, No, I know that we're we were close.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: We're still close.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: That Yeah, that time was frigging rough for them, especially
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: as I got more and more towards my deathbed, when
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: I got really really sick with anorexia because by that
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: point I was, you know, twenty twenty one. I'm they
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: don't have any control, right, I'm not ten. There was
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: really nothing they could do. They tried some interventions that
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: were very unsuccessful. So yeah, it was it was it
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: was really tough for them.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Well, addiction, alcoholism, you know, these sobriety, recovery, These are
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: you know, constant themes of my podcast. And I've had
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: plenty of people coming and share their experience, strength and
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: hope in this regard, but I've never had anybody on
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: to share about eating disorders. And there's been a lot
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: of people who've been wanting me to explore this topic,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: this subject matter on the show. So I'm really glad
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: to have you here because i think your story is
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: very powerful and and what you what you had to
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: face and kind of how dark it got and how
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: you overcame it is pretty empowering. So where does it
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Where does that begin? Where does the dysfunctional relationship with
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: food start to start to enter your life?
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: Well, it starts with a dysfunctional relationship with yourself. You said,
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: You've had a lot of people on that have had
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: drug addiction, suffered from alcohol, alcoholism and alcohol abuse, and
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: it's it's really not too dissimilar. It is a clinically
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: recognized disease. It is an illness, and it's really whatever.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Most of those people probably told you about some kind
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: of issue that they were grappling with, and then they
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: tried a drug or they drank too much, and they
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: realized that they could you know, escape or fall into
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: and you know, ulterior universe and leave that pain that
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: they were in. Eating disorders really exactly the same route.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: I was in a significant amount of pain in my life,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: in confusion and fear. Part of it was stemming from
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: I felt like a real lack of control. As I
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: was graduating college, I had majored in journalism and thought
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: I wanted to go into hard news and realized at
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: the very end of college in my internship that I
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: hated it. And that was one of the first times
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: I recognized how much control big business has over everything
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: that we do.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: It had a lot of control over news.
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: This is Philadelphia, KYW And it was like, Wow, I
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: don't want to do this. You know it's going to
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: it's controlled the whole time, and so I was freaking
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: out that what I had just studied and majored in
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: in college, like, what was I going to do with
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: my life? So I started to it just very much
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: started kind of slowly in the beginning where I just
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: started to assert some control over my food restriction because it's.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Really really hard to starve yourself, I mean, you know.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: And that made me feel powerful, empower, empowerful. One thing
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: that you can control absolutely and you can, right you
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: you you do, you have the ultimate control over what
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: goes in and and you're eating It sounds like kind of,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: you know, almost meaningless or trivial, but it really started
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: to make me feel like I had everything under control.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And so how old were you at this time, nineteen nineteen? Yeah?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: And is there kind of a euphoria that's associated with that,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: like in the same way that you get a hit.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: From Absolutely, Yeah, it's better because I did a lot
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: of cocaine.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: It's there.
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And there's there's some there's some aspects of this
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: that in my life I've been a little careful with
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: talking about because anybody that is in the midst of
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: an of a needing disorder, in the throes of the suffering,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: just as I did, will tend to use some of
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: these ideas that I'm presenting to to fuel, So I
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: like to be kind of careful with the the uh
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: celebrating it if you will, in a.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Way where yeah, it was a high.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's when when you're when you're starving yourself, you there,
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: you hit a point where you feel like you're on
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: a substance and you're kind of floaty and very very
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: I mean your brain isn't working. I mean, you know,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: you're every every aspect, every organ is being starved. So
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: things start to shut down at the towards the end,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: and that what was what was happening to me. Your
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: your body starts to eat its own organs. I mean,
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: you know, it will do anything to stay alive. So
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: your brain is an organ.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: you know it if it didn't work for a while,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't keep doing it like it works until it
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: stops working, right, So one of the first sort of
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: things to confront is just acceptance or acknowledgment of the
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: fact that it was doing something for you, right, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: that's what fueled you to continue or to dive deeper
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: into it. Yeah, and I don't want to trigger anyone either,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: but I think like developing an understanding of how powerful
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: it is and how it really did give you a
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: sense of control in a you know, in the midst
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: of this, you know, feeling of powerlessness that you were experiencing,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: is I think is important to recognize.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: And then conversely, you know, discussing the true power that
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: comes with freedom and being well, is you know that
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: that there there is no comparison from now to then
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: as far as the actual power that I feel in
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: my life now, But that is, you know, it's a
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: it's a dark, scary place that you keep chasing, just
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: like you do it drug because you want that feeling again.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: So it's it's that it becomes.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: More and more difficult to access that feeling, right in
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: the same way that you become tolerant to a drug.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: Well, you just start eating less and less, right, so
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: you're you're chasing it, and then you get to the
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: point where obviously if you're not eating anything, then then
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: you're you know, you're hospitalized, and then you know the
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: whole Yeah, right, but yeah, you do chase all the
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: way until where you're you're at zero calories.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this begins in the early stages of you
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: sort of attempting to pursue a career in journalism, but
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: at some point modeling enters and and it's almost like
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: a perfect storm, this confluence of the New York modeling world,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: you know, converging with eating disorders and you know, this
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: fast paced lifestyle that's a perfect recipe to really you know,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: dismantle you.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I no doubt.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, there wasn't any aspect of the modeling world
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: that was necessarily fueling it. You know, I really had
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: my own deep seated reasons and was really pretty far
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: into my eating disorder by the time that I was
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: modeling in New York. But I had just started modeling
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: in the late part of college in Philadelphia and then
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: moved to New York with an agency, and it was
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: just like okay, well, you know, for me, it was like,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: well this is interesting for.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: A while, like we'll travel some and you know, it
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: was it just was, you know, happening.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: But it wasn't anything that was you know, single handedly
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: fueling me to get skinnier. And I didn't really have
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: any kind of you know, kind of outwardly connections with
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: what I looked like, or if there was fat here
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: or there, or if my butt was big or not.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: It wasn't.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: So many people think that it's really just an exterior
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: view of yourself. And you know you have body dysmorphic disorder,
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: you know, most people do. I probably did, but it wasn't.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: It wasn't outward face at all for me. It was
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: just the continuing to assert this control.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: That's interesting because I would imagine that you were surrounded
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: by plenty of enablers who are saying, look, you got
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: to get skinnier if you want to book this job
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: or what have you, and surrounded by a community of people,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: you know, other models.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Who are trying to be as skinny as possible. Right, yeah, yeah.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: One thing about that I found in the modeling industry
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: I mostly did.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: I'm not that pootage in it, and mostly did.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: Runway is that, and so especially the runway models, they're
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: complete freaks of nature. Yes, there's those that have eating
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: disorders and are starving themselves, and you know, clearly we've
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: heard those stories, but by and large, these people are
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: they come out of the womb that way, their whole makeup.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: It doesn't make any sense they eat whatever they want
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: to eat, whenever they want to eat it. They eat
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: at McDonald's all the time, and they just look.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Like that this is bizarre.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's wildly frustrating, but it's true.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: You know, they're not all just not eating.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: There are many, many, many of them that I would
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: travel with, like they had very normal eating and they
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: ate crap, which wasn't great, but and it just it
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: wouldn't show up anywhere. But nothing shows up anywhere on
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: you when you're sixteen or seventeen or eighteen nine anyways, right.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And are you keeping this a secret, like living this
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: private you know, double life where you're hiding all of
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: this kind of behavior And was it bolimia also or
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: towards the end it was bleimia.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Well you kind of your body just well really,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: I guess it's more your mind sort of snaps into
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: this realization that you're starving, and but then you eat
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: and then you can't deal with that what that feels
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: like and looks like and is so.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And maybe.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I think it would be instructive for somebody who's unfamiliar
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: with this, or maybe somebody who's listening who has somebody
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: in their life who suffers or is you know, has
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: suffered from this to maybe bust a few miss like
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: what do people misunders stand or not get about what
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: this disorder is all about.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great point, Like for parents and friends
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: and family that question. I get that asked that question
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: a lot, and I think the most the biggest myth
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: is that it is uh uh, you know, exterior facing
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: and that if you talk about to the person you're
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: too skinny or you're looking skinny, or your intellectual fat yeah,
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: or just even using those terms as if you're looking
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: at the person as just the only thing that's important
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: about them as if is if they're skinny or fat.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: So completely removing that rhetoric and talking to them from
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: a place of love and concern about their their health
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: right and there and just their ability to be in
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: uh society and in the world and and what their
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: talents are. So remove that language. And also so many people,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: every person really that doesn't understand an eating disorder is
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: just like.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Lucy, can you just eat the cheeseburger? Yeah, Like, just
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: eat a cheeseburger will be better.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: It'll be so much better if you just do that,
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: because we have to eat food every day, all day long.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: So unlike drugs or alcohol, where you do have to
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: just completely remove.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: That right, you know, in three hours you have to
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: eat against.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Because you have to yeah, completely, you know, reframe your
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: relationship with this thing that.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: You need to survive.
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: Yes, so if family members, you know, you have that
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: said to you, you know, if you just can you
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: just eat a little something. So that is is another
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: thing that people need to dive in and learn a
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: bit more about what eating disorders actually are and come
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: to the person with the place of love and not
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: mention how they look and not mention what they're eating.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: That's not what's going on. Really, think of it.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Maybe as a disease, like in alcoholism, and that helps
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: people to reframe the reference because then they understand they
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: understand alcoholism. Most people are like, okay, I get that
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: that's but they go, oh, well, that's the same type
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: of psychology. Then it helps them to frame speaking to
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: a friend or family about their eating disorder.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very interesting and bizarre psychological framework because
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: you know, just from my own experience as a recovering
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: alcoholic for many years, I knew I was an alcoholic,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: and I knew what I was doing was destroying my life.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I was powerless to change it.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: But I had the self awareness, and I would imagine
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: yourself or somebody who's struggling with an eating disorder has
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: some version of that self awareness along the way. But
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: there's this weird twist which is the body dysmorphia and
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: the bizarre, very strange psychological, you know, twist that comes
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: with that, which is you're looking in the mirror and
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: you're what's being reflected back to you is not reality,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Like your perception of what you look like is so
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: twisted and divorced from what is actually true. That is
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: that is like very hard for somebody to relate to
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: or understand.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, in your subconscious I think that
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: you are a bit aware of you know. It's like
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: I would have like moments of clarity where it was like, oh, yeah,
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: I'm really sick. This is really bad. This is not
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: like why you know now these pants aren't even fitting?
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: You know, is like uh uh oh, what happened? That
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: was just like a week ago. But then you you
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: sort of snap out of that and you're and you're
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: back into your then reality that you're that everything's fine,
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: and you don't you don't really think that you're sick
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: from anything. I mean most of the time, it's like,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: you know, no, this is normal, this is fueling me,
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: this is this is what I want it to be.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: And for me, again, it wasn't like wasn't connected to
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: the mirror. For me, it went from a feeling of
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: wanting to be in control to a feeling of I
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: wanted to disappear from the planet.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't want anyone looking at me. I didn't want
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: any attention.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: I didn't want people talking about me or how I looked,
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: because being in the modeling industry, that would be you know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: a common conversation.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: I got to where I wanted to get so small
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: that I would disappear off the planet.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Well, a couple observations about that. First of all, you're
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: in a profession that is the antithesis of that. And ironically,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: the more you shrink, the more attention you're drawing to
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: yourself out of concern from others.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: Right, Like, yeah, but not on the street, right, because
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: you're not you're you know, you get wildly unattractive. I mean,
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: my hair was turning gray, it was falling out, my teeth,
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: returning black, Like you get pretty gnarly there towards you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: well whatever.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: You're going to get a different kind of attention, Like
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: people are going to look at you strange on the street.
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, or they just don't notice. I mean I had
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: a lot of like people just started stopped noticing. I
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: didn't like being gawked at by whatever the construction worker
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: in New York City or whatever they were doing, and
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: they're you know, and I started feeling like I wanted
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: to disappear, and it was a way to disappear people
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: stop noticing me, and it worked.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Did you do that thing where you look in the
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: mirror and you pinch your skin and think.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: That that's fat that has to be lost when you
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: didn't know? That's a common thing.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Though, right, I think it's less common than we think
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: it is. I mean, I you know, yes, some people
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: it's it's just a direct relation to you know, what
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: they're looking at in the mirror. But if the people
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: that are pinching their skin and going off to get
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: rid of that, they're they're they're dealing with a lot
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: of inner pain, a lot of self hatred, right, and
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: and beating themselves up for so many more reasons than
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: just that fold of skin that they're pinching.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Right, it's got to be a very painful, lonely place
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: to be in, I would imagine.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just like you. I mean you know that you
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: know that space.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's uh, it is and you thrive off of
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: it for a while until you don't.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it has its own energy to it. I think. So,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: what's the where you hit bottom with this?
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I mean you get down to like ninety pounds, one
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: hundred pounds or something like that.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I got I got below that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: I tried to kill myself. So that that was a
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: that was a ran out in traffic on the seventy
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: six Freeway in the middle of the night.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: How do you when that happened?
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Twenty twenty two, I guess.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Was out in New York twenty one in New York.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, I was back in Philly.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: I went back and forth for a while, and.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: You know, obviously it didn't work. So but that was
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: rock bottom for me.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: So so how do you then begin to pick up
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: the pieces? I mean, what is the what is the
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: process of addressing this look like?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: For you?
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: You know, I had this this uh, this moment where
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: I I really clearly remember seeing a fork in the road.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: I knew that if I kept going that I was
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: going to die from this and I was going to
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: get so deep down that road that I wasn't able
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: to pull back out, and it was to take my life.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: And that was a sobering moment of what.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: Who would do that to the few people I had
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: in my life that really loved and cared for me
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: at that period of time. And I always say to people,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: you know, yes, eventual recovery have to has to come
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: from within, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: first catalyst, And for me it was it was my family.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I thought, I.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: Can't die like that's so that's so lame on my part.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: For them, it's so wildly selfish. So I know I'm
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: not going to get get better, but I'm gonna I'm
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: going to try a little bit because I have to
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: at least show them that I tried, and then if
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: I die, hopefully they won't be as sad be I mean,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: you know, you think of the craziest shit right when
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: you but that's what I was thinking. I mean, just
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: going to show them some effort.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: So I started trying to get.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Better, and that sense of self hatred, that that feeling,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: that that desire to disappear, Like, where do you think
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: that comes from? I mean, growing up with parents that
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: love you. It's not like, oh I was abused, you know.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I think that's another thing people struggle with, struggle with
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: really understanding. I thought, well, there must have been some
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: incidents in your childhood or something like that.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have to be connected to something.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Now like that, thirty thirty to thirty five percent of
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: eating disorder suffers had a severe abuse in their early
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: childhood years.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: So it's that's extremely.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a real thing, but it's not necessarily.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Determinative, right right, But I mean that's it is common,
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: is what you know.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: So there and there was.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: There was none of that in my life at all,
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: And I don't you know, I think some of it
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: has to do with just the you know, the makeup
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: of who we are. I'm an extreme introvert, which no
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: one believes but I am, and I to this day
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: that is hard to believe, I know, But if you
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: really under stand, you know, introverse, an extraversion, you know,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: it's not just like oh I don't like to talk
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: or something.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I have so many charismatic people that come on this
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: podcast and explain to me how they're so introverted, and
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I always have the same reaction.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: Right, But it's not as everything to do with charisma, right,
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: It's how we kind of recharge. But I I think
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: that I just to this day, I really I would
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: like to just live out in the middle of nowhere
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: on a farm with like two hundred animals and never
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: speak or see anyone ever again. Like I have a
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: deep desire for that, but I know that that's not
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: how I'm gonna save any animals.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: So with alcoholics too, that that desire to isolate, you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: to cut yourself off.
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think that's it was my personality that
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: was just coming through back then as it does now.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: But I'm able to say.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, well no, you're gonna you're making a conscious decision
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: to not go, you know, isolate, because I don't think
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: I can do much good if I isolate. But but
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: but back then that was you know, I think that's
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: really more what it what it was.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And so did your parents.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: I mean your parents must have been terrified, terrified, Yeah,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: I mean they just they're trying to help you beyond.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're doing interventions.
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: My mom flew to Philadelphia to do one intervention that
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: I distinctly remember, and I ended up.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: I don't have very many regrets in my life. This
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: is one of them. I took her to the Philadelphia airport.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: I don't even think she had a ticket, Like, I
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: just didn't want any of this to be happening.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: And I literally physically threw.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: My mother out on the street corner at the airport,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: Like what who does that?
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: That's the power of That's that's addiction in a nutshell.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: It's like, it's not you, it's nice, you know, it's
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: it's a behavior. It's a demotic behavior that's being driven
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: by this disease that's compelling you in a way that
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: transcends you know, who you fundamentally are as a human being.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're a complete outer body. I was so by then.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: It is demonic and it is completely outer body. Like
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: I now it feels like that was another human being
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: but I can't relate to and it's you know, and
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: she still loves me, my mom, you know that. That's
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: also that took a long time to process through of
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: why she would would still she just kept coming back,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: she just kept loving hard.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So you get to this point after this you know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: sort of failed suicide attempt, where you have the willingness
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: to you know, finally accept help.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: So what does that help look like?
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: Well, it wasn't great in the beginning because I was
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: you know, I had been like in and out of
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: of you know, like rehab facilities and group facilities and
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: things like that early on that I didn't you know,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: it's not successful because I didn't want to be there.
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: But I went through a few therapists that I didn't
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: connect with. I guess you'd just say, you know, it
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: wasn't the right wasn't wasn't the right We're going to
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: be the right people.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: So I had moved out to l A.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: By this point, I was doing production for commercials and
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: music videos back when those.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Were things people actually did that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: No, And so we came out from the East Coast
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: to do a three week job here in LA And
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: it was like the middle of January, and I was like,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: is this seventy eight sunny thing?
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Like is this is this normal?
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Everybody's like, ohyeah, it's always like this, and I was
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: like okay.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: So I just moved.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: I was like, this is insane and I hate cold
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: weather and really just living in New York City anyway,
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: So I moved out and I just came upon like
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: a little teeny tiny ad in a newspaper in a
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: coffee shop that there was going to be a speaker
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: on fear in the basement of a Borders bookstore.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I mean random, that is, yeah, and.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: Went down to listen to her speak, and uh, I
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: just went up there afterwards and I said, I, you know,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: can can you help me?
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: She was phenomenal.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: She was a shrink.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, she does. She does a lot
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: of fear based work. Was very busy after nine to
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: eleven when nobody would get on a plane because there Uh,
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: but a lot of what was inside of me was
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: was fear really right? You realize that and you and
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: you learn that at the at the end of it all.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: So we got to work and she was, yeah, she
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: blew my mind.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: What's interesting about that is that you're you're the one
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: who made the decision, right, it was it was your
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: own willingness and impetus to like seek this person out
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: and pursue her, as opposed to somebody trying to compel
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: you to do that.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, Yeah, that's it. You can't manufact you were
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: ready when you were ready.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's the hardest part for families of someone
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: who supping for eating. I do a free mentorship program,
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: so I just you know, I walk down the road
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: with a lot of eating sort of suffers, just as
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: somebody who's been in their shoes and encourage and I
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: get a lot of outreach from friends and family that
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: are just they're just so desperate h and and and
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: it's so hard for them to just really let it
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: sink in that they can't do anything until the person's ready.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: That's with everything, that's with every it's alcohol at all, and.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: It's just but it's so in your fashion addiction. Yeah,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: it's so because you can just see it. It's like, Yeah,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: you cannot compel somebody to be willing. They have to
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: be willing themselves. They've got to walk this path until
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: they're ready. And until they're ready, it's not going to stick.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: And that's a sense of powerlessness that the loved one
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: of the addict has to embrace. And that's a very
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: difficult thing. Your parents had to go through that, you know,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: it's It's an awful place to be because you can
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: see the healthy path forwards so clearly, and it's so
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: confounding and confusing and painful to watch as somebody self
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: destructs right in front of you.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: And you know what the answer is, I know, I know.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you find this person and what was it
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: about her that worked for you? Like?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: What was her process? Yeah, trying to unpack this.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: She put me to work.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: The every other therapist and psychologist that I had seen before,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: you know, would sit in the chair opposite me with
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: their yellow legal pad and their you know, cool pen,
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: and would just be writing a lot and okay, well
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: let's dive deeper into that. Okay, well and they're writing.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: I'm like, what the fuck are you writing?
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: And this therapist, her name's Chris.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: From almost this third time I saw her, I mean,
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: she spent a couple of sessions like trying to.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: You know, hear my story, right, She put me to.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Work, and I I'm I'm very coachable. I like to work,
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: and I like I like tools, and I like steps
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: and I like ways of doing things.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: And she was very action oriented.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Nobody that early, especially in my therapy, had said Okay,
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: this is this is your work.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: She was.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: Her basis was was was meditation therapy. So putting me
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: to work would look things like, okay, when you are
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: at this point, I'm deep into the blima.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: Because we're you know, we're towards the end.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: And so so she said, okay, when you are having
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: the urge, you're going to go well, first of all,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: you're gonna go to the store and you're gonna buy
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: little blue dots and sticky papers that you can you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: little sticky blue dots from the drug store, and you're
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: going to place them on your trigger areas. And so, uh,
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: let's say the refrigerator is you know, okay a trigger
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: you're gonna if you're gonna binge and purge, you see
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: the blue dot. You have to and I won't go
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: into details, but you have to stop. You have to
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: do this very specific thirty second meditation.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: And it would walk through a series of questions that
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: I had to ask myself an answer and if you
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: still wanted to binge, and this would be the same
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: thing with the blue dot on the toilet, if I
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: was going to purge, you can go ahead and do it.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: I have complete freedom go ahead and binge at first.
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: You first you have to do this work. Well you
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: can imagine how that progressed. You know, I was, you know,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: sitting in front of the refrigerator meditating for an hour
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: before then I would decide, uh, and then eventually you decide,
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: I think I can I think I cannot do that today.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Well don't know how to tomorrow is going to go,
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: but for today. So that's just you know, it's just
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: one example of all the different types of work and tools, like.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: A visualization or like a like a mantra based not mantra,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: but like some sort of thing that you would tell yourself,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: like a story.
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: Or No, it was more it was more act assessing
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: what I was feeling, which I never accessed before, because
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: that's what you do as an addict, right, whether it's
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: it's it's drugs or an eating disorder, which we're you know,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: both poisons for me, you're you're all you're doing that
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: to get a high, to not feel what you're actually feeling.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: So it was accessing first. It was just accessing where
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: am I feeling anything? Is it in my right fingertip
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: of my pointer finger, is it in my foot? Is
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: it in my gut. Is it in my chest?
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: Where do you where do.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: You feel it? What does it look like? What does
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: it feel like? How big is it is it? Does
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: it feel sore? Does it feel sharp? Does it feel
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: you know, painful?
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: What is it? What does it look like? What does
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: it feel like?
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: So that was like at the beginning, I you know,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: when I did that meditation with her, before I would
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: have to do it on my own, I'm thinking, this
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: woman is cray cray, like what you know, because you're
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: so violently disconnected from yourself when you start getting better,
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: when you start this this this work, and to start
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: to connect with that was like it just it just
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: felt nutty in the beginning.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's the process of integrating because yes, the
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: fridge is the trigger, and you have the blue dot
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: on the fridge, but the trigger isn't really the fridge.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: It's the emotions that the fridge catalyzed within yourself exactly.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Learning what those are, where they come from, and what
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: they're about and what's behind them is the process of
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: rebuilding yourself.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: And recovering right right. Yeah, And she's that's powerful.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she's remarkable, the first first one that ever even
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: went in that in that direction, and a lot of
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: times I would access.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Painful, different types of anger.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: And she had this this anger stick that she had
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: me made, and it was just a bath towel that
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: we'd rolled up to like a snake and put rubber
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: bands about two inches apart all the way down the
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: bath towel.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: And I had this literal like.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: I would get on my knees and slap the anger
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: towel on the ground over and over and over again.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm glad I don't have any video of this.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: To release that anger that I couldn't figure out what
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: to do with.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was just brilliant stuff.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: In my opinion, it was a completely different person after
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: releasing that anger. Okay, we got to put it somewhere
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: otherwise I'm going to binge and purge or go out for.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: The night and you know, do whatever. Yeah, it was,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: it was. It was amazing. I still have the anger tel.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Fun Really, how do you use it?
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: I don't anymore.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: But what's cool about that is the fundamental difference between
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of traditional therapy of like well let's
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: just talk forever versus very proactive behavior faced action based
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: you know, tactile things that you can actually do that
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: we begin to shift your awareness and create new neural
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: pathways and connect you with yourself and develop that self awareness,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: but in a way that is actually propelling you in
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: a different direction because it's behavior based.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: I know, it really is.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: I mean we've all known people that have been in
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: therapy for like forever, and I'm just one person and
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: this was just my one experience, and sometimes other types
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: of therapy work for people. But sometimes I'm like, oh man,
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: you know, it's like you got you got to get down,
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: you got to get dirty and gritty and dive into
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: you know, really I would just go insane if it
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: was if I was like still in therapy.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: You know, you know, you can always access some of it.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: You know, I've done some you know, emergency phone calls
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: to her throughout my life. But because we did all
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: of that super solid work, I never have one inkling
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: of a fear that I could ever go back into
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: my eating disorder again. I always have like, no, I did,
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: I did way too much work. It's not even possible.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: And the emergency calls to her that I've had in
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: my life that were, you know, other stressful situations we
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: were like done in, dusted in one session or two.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: You know, it was like oh yeah, right, okay, that okay,
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: you know, because your memory comes back and you have
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: the tools, they're embedded in you now you don't lose them,
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: and it would just be.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Her you know, kind of redirecting.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: Okay, go back to this remember oh yeah, yeah, okay,
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: I've got this, which is just so cool. It wasn't like,
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: oh I got to go to fifty more sessions now
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: I got this screwed up in my life.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: And yeah, what's also different or distinct from substance abuse?
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, you get sober. Okay, this is my sobriety date.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: I've crossed this line.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: I don't go back.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: I kind of you know, etching stone, like this is
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the date that I got sober. But like with eating users,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: it can't be like that, like because you're recalibrating your
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: relationship with food and you have to be eating along
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: the way. So I would imagine it was a more
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: graduated process of trying to, you.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Know, get on top of this thing.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Right, Like, so, how long did it take before you
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: felt like, okay, I'm getting a handle on it.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: A little over two years.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: I mean that's not by the first section, first session,
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: I thought, oh my gosh, I think I'm going to
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: get a handle on this. But it took a little
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: over two years before I was one hundred percent and
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: I knew I would never go back, and I knew
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: I was. I was really really well and healed, and
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: this is it wasn't even I got asked all the
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: time in my cycling career, you know, do you think
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: you're just replacing this, replacing the eating disorder with this,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: you know, with your athleticism.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: And it was like, no, way, it's not. There's no
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: possibility that that.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: I don't know if something else will be a problem later,
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: but it's not going to be anying disorder.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: I get I get that a lot, like oh, well
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: you do these ultra Maria. It's like, hell, you're just
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: You're just you just shifted your addiction. And I think
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: for me it's a little bit different. I got I
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: have to like like, I want to dismiss it, but
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: then I have to go am I you know, I
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: guess probably on some level I am, you.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Know, but I'm doing it in a healthier differently who
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: we are.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: It's taking some aspect of who I am and trying
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: to channel it for self betterment and the like there is.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's an.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: Addictive aspect to it, but it's different because it's not destroying.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: My life, it's improving my life.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: It could it could destroy my life if I had
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: a different kind of relationship with that, as it could
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: for you with cycling. It could, have no doubt. But
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: once you have you've done that work, you have a
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: different you have a different framework for it. I think, Yeah,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: but it isn't you know, like you know, perhaps this
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: is a good Now we can segue into the into
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: the cycling, I would imagine initially like the prospect, because
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: over exercising is symptomatic of a eating disorder.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Did you have an impulse.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Early on, like to take that sort of manic energy
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: and channel it into something else that wasn't necessarily food?
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well I had severe over exercise disorder with the
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: anorexcaa like nine hours in the gym on the Staremaster, you.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Know, just like so that was your early cycling career, right, like, yeah,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: it was getting.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Hours.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't know it at the time.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: Although it wasn't a bike. I never for whatever reason.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: I think I didn't think it was going to burn enough.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: You know, it's like you've got to have the whole
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: body moving.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Here, rest, running or the elliptical.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But when when we finally got towards the end
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: of my therapy, my therapist, I think she knew she
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: knew me very well by that point, and she recognized
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: that there was a you know, there's a there's a
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: competitor in there somewhere, and that ideally, if I was
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: able to act out on that competitive nature, that would
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: be the most healthy. And she also knew that that I, uh,
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: I would not cannsider myself healed. I told her this
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: in the beginning until I could move my body in
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: a healthy way again, because I knew I'd like to
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: move my body and knew that about myself, but I
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: was doing it very unhealthfily for so long in my
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: eating disorder. So she knew that I had that goal,
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: and so she said, you know, I feel like we're
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: at the point where we're really ready to kind of
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: pick something for you to be able to move your
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: body in a healthy way again. But I want to
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: just completely detach from any sort of negative connections you
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: had with any type of exercises.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: So what's something that you just really have never done before?
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: And I said, what about riding a bike?
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: Because that was not anything that I had done in
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: the eating disorder, and I had not ridden a bike
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: since I was you know, you know, ten years old,
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: on the banana seat bike and with the flag and
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: the neighborhood.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: So she said, perfect, Great.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: It's super interesting because it could have gone the other
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: way where Look, you know, exercise is a trigger for me,
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: So I'm just going to not I'm going to avoid
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: that for the rest of my life because that could
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: pull me back into this downward spiral. But I think
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: it takes courage to say no, I need to go
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: back into exercise, but I need to figure out how
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: to have a healthy relationship with it.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because you just I just knew it wasn't that
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: wasn't going to be authentic me, you know, and then
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: and and then then again, that's just that's not total healing.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: If I'm just you know, deleting parts of myself.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's still living in fear, and it's still being
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: a prisoner to this disease. Right, So so you enter
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: in so crazy, like this is just basically an experiment
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: to become a whole human being, not to like I'm
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: going to be a competitive athlete. Like it's I mean,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: first of all, how old were you.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: At this point?
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: I like that experiment to be a whole human being?
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: That is twenty six twenty six. Okay, so you get
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: a bike, yeah, starpelling around the neighborhood.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much like griciff Park Observatory. I was like,
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: that's where.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: I was, And I got a bike that was like
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: a mountain bike, but I got slick tires put on
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: it so I could ride street, so it's you know,
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: bouncing around with the shocks. But I started riding around
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: Griffith Park Observatory and then all of a sudden, you know,
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: I noticed there's like these groups of really fast people
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: that would come by me, and I'm like, oh, I
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: think I can stay with them, and then I kind
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: of could, and then they were like what are you doing?
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Like what you know, because I just looked all sorts
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: of wrong, right, the clothes everything. And so I met
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: someone on those group rides that was going to do
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: the California AIDS ride, and I thought, well, that's cool
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: because I can like do something good.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: You know, you have to raise it.
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: Back then you had to raise probably a lot more now,
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: but you had to raise three thousand dollars. And I
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: was like, well, this is ninety six, ninety eight when
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: I did it, So this was ninety seven and I thought,
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: oh my god, that's so much money. How am I
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: write letters to everybody I've ever met and raise the money.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: It's like, I'm gonna do something good.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: And it went from San Francis San Francisco, La. But
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: it's just like almost you know, seven hundred miles because
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: they don't go direct.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: And that was that was.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: I was like at the front with the had guys
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: and I'm still on my mountain bike with the slick
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: tires and uh like the fourth day and they were like,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: who are you?
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: And how long had you been riding a bike at
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: this point?
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Like just a matter of months, I mean just not
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: any period of time at all.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: And I was and that competitiveness, like I got to
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: be upfront.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: So I don't you know, I think too, Like I mean,
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: i'd like I used to like to suffer. I don't
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: like to suffer as much as I used to, but
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: I've always I've always liked to suffer, and and the
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: suffering that I went through in my eating disorder was
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: just so much more massive than any suffering I was
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: gonna ever experience on a bicycle.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: So it just didn't feel like much, you know.
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: I mean I knew I was suffering, and it was,
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: you know, definitely an aspect to that, but it just
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: it wasn't that bad. And the best part of the
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: cycling was I knew the suffering would end. I mean,
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: I knew there was a finish line. I knew there
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: was going to be tents and warm showers and yummy food,
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: and you know it was going to end. So it
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: was like, this is going to last an hour or
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: five I'm not sure. But but that ability to to
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: dig that deep and stuffer that hard was, you know,
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: definitely was trained quite well in my eating disorder years,
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: and I think I for sure use that.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, high pain threshold, yeah, from psychic pain
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: to physical pain.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and physical pain and you're eating disorder of THEO too,
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: I mean yeah, pretty extreme.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Uh huh. All right, so you do the aids ride,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, are the lights going on?
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: How is this are you thinking hmmm, Like.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: No, I'm thinking nothing. And the guy, I mean, I
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: just I'm like, I don't know that. It's weird that
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: I'm at the front with these guys. I don't know anything,
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean, I know nothing at this point.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: They're just nice guys that I'm like, I felt like
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: I was flip.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: On pedals at least.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: But mountain bike shoes, you know, so they're not even
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: hard souls.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm losing some watts through those puppies.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: So we finished the AIDS ride and a couple of
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: them were like, have you ever raced?
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: I'm like no, have you ever thought of racing? I'm like, no,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: what rate? What race?
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: Where do you We just did a race. They're like, no,
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: this isn't a real race. This is like a They
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: had to explain that to me. I'm like, oh, I
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: thought it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: Was a race. Could have told me that day one.
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: I could have taken it easy. So they said, I
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: think you should try like a race race. You know,
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: you got to get like a license with like USA Cycling.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, you know, where do I do that?
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: They're like, well, here, let's go on the internet. They
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: literally bought my license for me, and I tried my
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: first race, and uh yeah, that's the rest is history.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Rights And this starts to happen pretty quickly, right.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: Oh, it was like two weeks, you know, like the
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: next week or something. Yeah, it was like, okay, I'm
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: gonna get a license.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: My first race was up in Monterey, California, criterion or
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: like a road race, a road race in the pouring rain,
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: and as the most scared I've ever been on a bicycle.
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: It's still to this day. It was absolutely treacherous. And
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: I because I have no skills, That's the thing, you know.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: And now I'm like twenty you know whatever, twenty seven
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: and a half or something, you know what I mean,
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: And I have zero skills, and you're with people who
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: have been riding, you know, in the women's peloton, they
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: don't start quite as early as the men do, but
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: you know they've been riding at least since high school,
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: you know for sure. And you know, I didn't grow
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: up with any of that. Those that I hand coordination,
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: those motor skills, the technical abilities, you know, a lot
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: of that is really you know, at the high level,
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's intense, the technicalities. I mean it's just
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: like you're, you know, centimeters from each other's handlebars in
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: packs of one hundred and fifty climbing up the Alps descending.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we've all watched the truer for like,
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: those are the dissent you're doing.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: I had.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: I had zero skills, zero ability to control my bike
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: or be safe or I mean it was it.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: Was not just safe for yourself, but safe for everyone else.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: A liability, a complete liability. And I was treated as
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: such for quite a while. In the women's peloton.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Uh huh. So it wasn't like you enter your first
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: race and you win, No.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: I got like twelfth or something in that.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like a cat four or was it? Yeah? Four?
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: All right, but did it?
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Did it get its claws in you, like where you're like,
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: oh man, this is going to be my thing?
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: When I finished, I remember going to the van and
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: trying to warm up it was freezing, and changing my
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: clothes and calling my mom and going that's the most
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: horrible experience I have ever had in my life.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: I want to die. That was so dumb. We're going
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: and within hours I was like, where's the next race?
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Right? It could have been like I'm hanging it up,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: like that's tough for me.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: It was yeah, yeah, but then you just realize that's
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: bike racing.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: It's awful.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: But you move up pretty quickly, right from CAT four
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: to KAT two and how long is this?
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: I moved up from CAT four to CAT one in
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: less than a year, so it was again, that's cool,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: But I was a liability still at this point because
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: I'm now a Cat one and just scary to be
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: around in a criterion for sure. And by this point
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: I've bought a bike that some people will know is
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: a soft ride. So it was those old trathlon bikes
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: where you're like boing boing, boing boing, and I'm in
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: a crit doing that, and people were like, you have
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: to get a bike that doesn't bounce around.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: We like go through the corners at warp speed.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: But where does the I think I read somewhere I
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: like that you sort of said to somebody that you
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: were a professional cyclist before you were even a professional cyclist.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: I did, so I decided that if I was going
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: to do this, I think I came back from the
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: age round. I was like, I got to get more
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: miles on my legs. Like these people I'm going to
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: be competing against. You know, they have they they've been
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: doing this a long time. You get more miles men
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: my legs. So I lived in Venice, So I decided
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: if I got a bike messenger job in downtown LA,
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: then that would give me almost sixty miles a day
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: because it was twenty five miles to ride their twenty
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: five back. Right then you a messenger. So I go
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: downtown La. I get a bike messenger job. I'm the
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: only girl. I'm the only one that doesn't smoke a
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: tremendous amount of pot all day long.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Wow. And so I did.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: I did that, and I started to to to get
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: uh those miles in my legs.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: And that was that.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: That was the skill, probably like technical skills.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: I started a little bit like yeah, the guys were
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: starting to teach me stuff.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: I said, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm racing, so
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I you know, I need some help with this.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: And I learned, Yeah, I learned some things. I mean,
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: it's you you can learn it. But then to do
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: it as kind of a whole nother you know, they
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: always saying cycling like just follow my line. If I
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: can do it, you can do it. That's not true.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: Don't believe that. Even to the say mountain biking. My
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: husband's like, if I can go down these rocks, No,
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: I can't because you have just a better balance and
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: awareness of your body weight, and it's.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Like, you know you have to be uh yeah, and
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: that's just time.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just time in the saddle.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Right exactly right, Yeah, so it's uh yeah. Which I
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: didn't have time, you know. That was that was kind
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: of one of the issues.
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: So but I got I got a lot of uh
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: I did. I did get a lot of miles in
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: with that, with that messenger job, and then you know
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: road then every Saturday and Sunday just with the group
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: rides in Santa Monica and got lost. I took cabs
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: back from the semi ride like multiple times.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: I didn't know where I was and what was where.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: You probably rode by this. How I think the city
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: ride comes by here?
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: All?
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Oh for sure? No, when I was driving here is
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: like this is this is my training ground for a year. Yeah,
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: every road up here.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: So was there one race that like kind of clinched
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: it for you where somebody noticed you and said, hey.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: We can develop you or like, how did.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: It how did it transpire to you then becoming professional?
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I h so I was on a small team
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: for a couple of years and that team we went
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: to US Nationals.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: In uh, I don't remember what year, but.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Probably ninety probably two thousand, yeah, yeah, I think two
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: thousand and I got fourth at US Nationals and that
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: your first US Nationals.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after riding how many years at that point, three years?
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, three years.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: And so then that then in the road race exactly, yeah,
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: I've I was in Redding, California. So then then that's
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: the national team called and said, you know, come to
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: the training center and have some testing, and you're kind
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: of old, but you know, come anyway.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot. And then I did testing and they.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: Were like, oh, yeah, you're old and you're not that talented.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: They were like testing was just super market. I'm like,
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: I don't have a lot of deep well of talent,
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: like I recognize them more talented than the next person
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: on a bike, but now I don't have like really
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: great lung capacity or you know, high So it wasn't
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: like you were.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Someone who's just walking around on planet Earth with no
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: idea that you had this unbelievable amount of talent that
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: just needed to.
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: Find It's yeah, no, no, there's a lot of just
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: just a lot, like a large capacity to suffer.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: A lot, I think is really all that's in there.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Because yeah, so.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: They were like, you know, okay, we'll take you to
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: a few races, like you know, clearly visually disappointed on
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: their face.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: I could see after the testing was over, and I
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: was like, oh no, this is.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: This is a this is a one time a ticket
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: to We were in Tila Vista at the training center
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: down there, but then I started traveling with the US team,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: and you know, it was a darn good domestique for
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: a long time there, and you know, I had so
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: much to learn. I mean I was on the team
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: with like, you know, real serious badasses. I mean, these
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: women were fighting it out for you know, World Cups
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: and World Championships and Olympics, and that's who I was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: on the team with.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: So it's interesting that mainstream audiences have myself included, have
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: very little understanding or awareness of women's cycling. Like we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: watched the Zero, which I want to talk to you
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: about you know, Tour France all that kind of stuff,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: and we have some sense of what it's like and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: the men's world, but this world of women's cycling just
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: goes completely unnoticed.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah for the most part.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: Well, kind of welcome to the world in general.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I know, yeah, right, it's a bigger it's
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: symptomatic of something larger, of course.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: But but I but I.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: You know, how many women are in this sport and
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: where do they typically you know, learn how to do this?
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so you know, as you know and everyone,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: cycling is wildly popular in Europe and not here in
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: the States. So when when we're over traveling in Europe
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: and racing, you know, there is an awareness and there
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: is an excitement about and there are fans, and it
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: is something that people recognize and understand the women's side
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: of the sport. You know, why it's not as recognized
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: here as it is the men is symptomatic of something else,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: like you said, But you.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Know, over in Europe, I think they do.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: Definitely a much better job of the awareness of who
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: the women are. But nonetheless it's still a very small
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: peloton compared to the men. I think you know, women
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: in general, the men tend to start much younger. They
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: put the little boys on bikes, seems to be much
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: much younger, and whether they want to or not, and they,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: you know, the talent ID camps over in Europe will
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: select these young boys from.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Ten eleven twelve.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: Women tend to you know, find it as an outlet
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: in high school or college or something, or maybe they're
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: on the kind of a club team in college, and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: so they have had, you know, an entire they've gone
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: to college and that entire education before they even really
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: start racing professionally. It's just a completely different entry and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: it's a completely different exit than and the women definitely
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: end up on the top in the exit because you
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: come out and you have a college degree and this
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: was a really fun and interesting part of your life,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: but you're ready for the next adventures and you have
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: the education and the ability. The men come out and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: they are completely lost.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: They've been living in Belgium in a dormitory since age sixteen.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: Right and when if they made it all the way through,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: then maybe they've made it onto some really big professional
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: teams and they've done the tour you know, multiple times.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: I mean there's a handful.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: Of US riders that are making it, you know, a
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: good living now, you know, you know Hincappy and Ta,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: you know that that crew, but many many, many hundreds
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: more that your the career is over, either because they
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: have a horrific crash, right and it just ends right
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: then and there, or just because you know, they get
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: a bit older, what like thirty one, thirty two.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: And then what are they going to do?
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: So it ends up being a very male centric sport
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: in general, because what do they do.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: They go right back into cycling.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: Their managers, their swan years, their mechanics, they know, because
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: that's what they know, and they don't know where else
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: to go. So that, you know, you just you just
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: see it kind of like you know, cycle itself, right right, Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought that.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: So you end up on like T mobile right yeah, right,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: and you ride the Giro. Yes, what year was that?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: Oh god, let's probably oh two thousand and three or four,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: I would say, yeah, I had to be amazing, Yeah
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: for sure, definitely.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: I mean they still have rules in women cycling to
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: this day that are we're trying to change that. You
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: can only ride a certain amount of kilometers, So I
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: don't know what they think is going to happen to us,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: Like at the well.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: It's the same as women, like they don't have they
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: they have shorter events for women.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: It's really getting silly at this point.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: So I'm just saying that because the giro that we're
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: thinking of that the men do, we could clearly do.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: But that wasn't you know?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: It was different.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's different course and just different links. Right, we're
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: only allowed to do so many kilometers, so and.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: It's fifteen it was fifteen days.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: I think it's shorter now, but right, the men's is
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: obviously three weeks twenty one day.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you frail women, we don't we little flowers?
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: You know that's amazing.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So so you kind of take this road
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: cycling career essentially as far as you feel like you can.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Like you're at your peak? Where are you at?
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: Like in the peloton you're kind of like in the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: middle of the packer there.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: No, I get a bit better than that.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: Like I have won some domestic stage races and won
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: some big and some big single day stage races, and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: won some stages as some big European races.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: You prove those those people wrong who are like, eh,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: you're a little old and you're not.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: I might.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Right, well we haven't even gotten to the Coup de
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: gras with that.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: But but all right, so you have this road cycling
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: career and then you know basically what you're you're thinking
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: about retiring, and.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: I was about thirty five at the time, and I was,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, quite frankly, it was just getting kind of bored.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: I get bored fairly easily still, and I just thought,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: you know, gosh, I mean that was just obviously way
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: more than I had ever imagined it ever could be.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, wow, what a ride. That was, What a
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: great adventure.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: And you know, it's been nine years since I had
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: first gotten on a bike, and I thought, well that's enough,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: you know, I think I'll see what else is out there.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: And I had just won a prologue at a major
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: international event in Australia, and my coach at the time said,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: you know, you have a really unique ability at this
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: you know, ten minute or so effort output. I was
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: never really great in like twenty k forty k time trials.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: I was like always like okay, you know, ninth or
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: something like that, but it was never I would always
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: get well quite frankly bored in them, like, oh my god,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: we're still going.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: I could never do what you did. Oh my god.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: So I had this and do this.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: You know, there is where that natural talent lies in
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: that middle distance sort of aerobic and anaerobic combined effort.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: And so he said, I think you should try I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: think you should try the track. I think you should
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: try the pursuit, like, just give it a go. It's
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: that you've got like a really intense talent in this distance.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: And so I did, and I thought, well, this is
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: this is kind of this is kind of cool because
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: it's something different. I went to the track for the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: first time and it was scared out of my mind.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: I never been on a track before.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: No, they had tried to put me on a track
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: many years before, and I was so scared that I
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: literally got off the bike. They continued their training and
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: I went and did running wind sprints out in the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: parking lot because I thought, well, at least I'm like training,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: but I couldn't wrap my head around going up on
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: the forty five degree banking and my tire sticking like
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: it just it made no sense to me. Still doesn't really,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: And so it was like, this is so amazing because
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: I am so scared doing it. I mean, it just
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: felt like I was coming alive again on the bike.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: All the way through to the Olympic Games. I was
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: petrified of riding at the top of the track.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Even during even the Olympics.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: I remember the very last time. So in my event,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: you only are at the top of the track in training.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: So our event is done from a standing start on
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: the black line, you know, and you do twelve laps
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: and you do exchangees, so you fly up there and
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: down and that wasn't scary in the event, but just
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: riding as you as you're kind of working into an effort,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: we call it. You'll do two or three laps at
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: the very top of the track, right, so it right
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: next to the rail, and you're going kind of slow
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: because you're preparing for a huge burst, right. So, but
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: you can't go too slow on the track because you'll
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: slide off and you know, get pretty horrible woodburn and splinters.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: I have splinters in my hips from crashing and there's
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: still they're still there.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: So it doesn't feel good.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: So some of my teammates were, you know, track trackies
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: and track sprinters, even us they used to be and
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: they were a bit larger, and you stick better on
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: the track if you're larger than if you're a bit lighter.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: And I was coming from road racing, so I just
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: you know, I wasn't skinny, but I just wasn't you know,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: express sprinter.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: And so it would scare the living daylights.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: Out of me because they were going creeping around the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: top of the track and I'm going, maybe you're not
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: going to slide, but I am getting ready to slide,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: and I could feel like.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: My back will just sideways.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: Just so the very last effort we did before Olympic Games,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: like the day before, we did a fifteen hundred meter
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: effort and we finish it. I come down and my
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: teammate says to me, she's like, you never have to
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: do that again, because.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: She knew how bad it scared me.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: And then and when you're in competition tracks, there's all
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: these other teams whirling around, so you got traffic on
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: the forty five degree banking, which just is like, yeah,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: I can't even describe how scary.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: So sorry, yeah, but it's mesmerizing to watch. It's it's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: like this crazy ball and very beautiful. But for somebody
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: who who has no familiarity with this at all, like
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: you do team pursuit, you're in a velodrome, they have
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: these crazy banked turns that look forty five degrees right,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: how high up is the highest bank?
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: It's like four stories I guess four stories. Wow?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: And how fast you have to be going to kind
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: of you know, not fall. And when you're going, the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: faster you're going, the more the more perpendicular you.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: Are to the ground, right, I would imagine, yes, Like
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: I've never had a spinometer at the on the bars
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: of my track bike, believe it or not. That's kind
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: of like something you like, we always kept our our
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: srm Mr Watt meaner was connected to our seat because
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: you can't read anything when you're in any kind of
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: effort on the track. But it felt like you know,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, sprinters aren't laugh at this because they would
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: probably say like five miles an hour, but for me,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: it's a little closer to fifteen to feel safe because
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: I never slid off the track because I was going
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: too slow, because that just what I mean, you know,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: so yeah, it's it's a bit more of a clip
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: than you would like to just be doing recovery for sure.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: And although it's you know, both road racing and track
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: cycling are on a bike, they're incredibly different. Like your
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: road cycling is all about you know, efficiency and how
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: you're meeting out your energy over an extended period of time,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: and there's there's you know, there's surges, et cetera and
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: things like that within the context of that. But in
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: track cycling, it's about massive bursts of power.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is able.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: To maintain gigantic watts on a gigantic gear. Yeah, also
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: all the crazy strategy and tactics that go into when
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you make those surges and when.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: You have those So you do have a like you
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: do have efficiency and economy of efficiency happening in team
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: pursuit based on the team and what the rider's strengths
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: and weaknesses are and how you're going to use them
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: to the team's best ability. Like you can change how
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: many half laps, laps lap and a half two laps
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: people do. You can feel that off of the rider
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: in front of you and recognize that they're actually going
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: to take a short turn or that they might go
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: a bit longer, which usually never happens, but that they're
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: going to have to peel off in a short tern.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: Like in the in the Olympic Games. And there's some
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: me that you know, I will say, there's a little.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: Bit of ego connected to that, like you want to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: be able to do your full turn. But my fourth pull,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: I was supposed to do one lap. And I knew
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: that that that my teammate Sarah Hammer was was had
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: an extra gear. I could feel it from the two
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: laps before that, and I just instinctually knew I got
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: to get out of the way. We got to get
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: her to the front for these last couple laps. I
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: knew we were behind with Australia. This is this is
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: to go to the into the gold medal. I didn't
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: realize we were one point seven seconds behind. And that
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: is a deficit and team pursuit that has nobody's.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: Ever come back from. Yeah, nobody ever has.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: And so uh it was that was an instinctual and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: and and my teammate behind me, Jenny Reid, says, I
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 4: had no idea that you were going to pull off
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: like you weren't slowing, And I knew I wasn't slowing
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: and I could hang, but I knew I was just
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: going to keep the same speed, and I knew Sarah
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: had another gear, so I came off again, back on
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: and we ended up being in Australia by eight one
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: hundred of a second. So it was definitely releasing that
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: ego for the team, not at that you know that
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: you had that at that level in the Olympic Games,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: like I have to do my full poll or whatever,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: but you kind of do in training and you know
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: it was you normally would swing off if you're starting
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: to die, and I knew I wasn't. I just knew
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: that we had another gear with with another rider. So anyway,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: incredible amount of of tact to tactics and savviness and
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: thinking and then just subconscious thinking. You get to know
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: each other so so so well.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: Right, you have to be so in sync with your
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: teammates that that's subtle, like that subtle, intangible thing that
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: you're aware of that allowed you to make that decision
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: right in that moment that made the difference.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's crazy.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean how long do you have to ride
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: with your teammates before you can kind of develop that awareness.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: Well, we'd been on that journey together, I guess for
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: four years. I mean I had ridden with her before that,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: Like she was the person that I met her and
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: her husband Andy Sparks at the LA Track for the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: very first time when I tried it, when that coach
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: I had said, said try it. So I had ridden
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: with her for even more years than that. But the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: real push to twenty twelve Olympics was, you know, we'd
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: been at it for years and just.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: To be clear, like team pursuit is basically you and
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: your there's four of you, right.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So my in twenty twelve they did the women,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: three women, three kilometers.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: You couldn't lose anyone. Now they do it just like
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: the men.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: It's four women four kilometers, but you can drop someone,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: so totally different tactic, like completely different.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: You're rotating who's pulling exactly.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: So the tracks are they're two hundred and fifty meters,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: so in three kilometers you're doing twelve laps. You know,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: four kilometers you're doing sixteen and you start from a
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: dead start. So track bikes are fixed gears, no breaks,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: So you start the starter that's taking the most load
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: from the start isn't a gate, and then the other
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: people are uptrack being held by a person that is
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: acting as a starting gate. And so you're in a
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: gear that is big enough that when you get up
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: to speed you can go fast enough.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: So it's it's it's really it's about.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: Eight hundred watts of power out of the starting gate,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: which is a gnarly way to start a race because
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: if you think about it, when you started to time trial,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: you know, you start in a spinning gear a little
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: bit till you get up to speed, so you don't
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: load your legs. So it's this really gnarly load the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: first five seconds of.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: The right still latate, Yeah, cascade.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: From moment one like just blast and then you're welcome
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: to team pursuit.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: Like your cadence is up to one hundred, like one
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty two, right.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah that's what we averaged, yeah exactly, yeah in
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: the race. Yeah, that's in that in that monster monster gear.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: So for for trackies, we rode one oh two's at
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: the Olympic Games, which is which pretty big.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: And what is the training like, uh a daily basis
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: what is it?
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: The training is a real combination of aerobic efficiency and
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: anaerobic power.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: So it is very much like that.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: You know, I compare it to the eight hundred meters
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: or fifteen hundred meters right track runners. So we're doing
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: five and six hour road rides, we're doing gnarly gym work,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: and we're doing really.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: Explosive track work.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: You know, people don't realize in three and a half minutes,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's not anaerobic. You know, you need oxygen
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: if you're going for three minutes, you know, sixteen seconds.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: So it's a combo.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: And if you don't have that efficiency, and if you
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: don't have that base and you don't have that economy,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: you can't ever go as fast as you go at
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: that level if you if you don't have that set
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: in your system.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: It's like the hardest equation to solve because you have
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: to be incredibly proficient as an anaerobic athlete and as
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: an aerobic athlete. I think the eight hundred meters it's
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: because you can't, like, if you're running the eight hundred meters,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: you can't go all out the entire time, right, There
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: is some pacing and some strategy involved with that, but
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: you have to be a sprinter and you have to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: be an endurance athlete.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but at that level, at the Olympic level, you are.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would say from our race like.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: You you always you always die, like you never We've
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: never did a race that we increased or I should
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: say decreased our life lap times you all. So you
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: literally are building a system that can go all out
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: for three minutes in sixteen seconds.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: And that training involves longer endurance training on the road
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: and then also super high output on the track.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: Right right, it's just busting it as hard as you possibly. Yeah.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: And another thing that people don't realize is how much
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: raw strength is involved because with the one gear and
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: with that big of the gear, you have to have
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: the strength to keep that gear turning over at one
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: hundred and twenty two, right, So the cadence, so the
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: fastest anyone is going to go on a bike is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: the highest cadence in the biggest gear. So a lot
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: of people look at tracks like they're like, oh wow,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: they're spinning so high.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: You know, they're at one twenty two, But.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: You're in a giant.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: Gear doing that. And to keep on top of the.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: Gear as well as we say it, you have to
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: have an incredible amount of strength because you can't fall
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: off the gear because once you fall off.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: The gear, it's over. You're you're you're dropped.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: Because in road cycling, you can you can shift if
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: you're kind of falling. You know that feeling you're kind
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: of falling off the gear and it is like, whoa,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: I got to spin this out mood through some black tape.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Right, you can't.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: Recover and then regroup, right, So you can't do that
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: on the track. The track, the track athletes track cycling
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: athletes look totally different from the road cyclists. They almost
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: look like they're very like, very thick and squat and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: incredibly strong.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: I almost look like wrestlers, you.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: Know, especially the sprinters, right Like, the sprinters totally look
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: like that. I mean they look like uh, I mean
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: track cycling. It is so similar to track and field.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: You've got the sprinters, and you've got the middle distance,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: and you've got the endurance and they you know, they
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: tend to look the part.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: What's that crazy event like the I don't know what
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: it's called the Dolly Madison or something like that, the Madison,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: right like, I still still even understand what that is.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: It's insane. Yeah, so they sling each other. I mean,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: you're you're in a team of two and they and you.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: You basically rotate laps and they use each other as
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: a propeller to to go fast into the into the
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: next laps. So so the person that is coming out
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: of the race onto the relief line, you know, is uh,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: swings that the next person down in and then they
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: race and race, and then it's yeah, it's it's it's
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: really fun to watch, but it's really confusing. It's really
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: hard to figure out. I don't know what's happened, who's winning,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: who's it?
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but it's pretty watching cricket, right.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly like watch cricket.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: That's just what I was thinking.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: How come you didn't do individ Did you try to
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: pursue individual pursuit?
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: I started That was like two thousand and seven that
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: I did my first individual pursuit, But in two thousand
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: and eight Beijing Olympics was the last time that they
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: had individual pursuit in the Olympic Games.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: So then they changed the They.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: Do this a lot in a lot of sports, where
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: they you know, they change the program trying to you know,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: get the audience and excited. I mean, individual pursuit is
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: an amazing event, but watching it, if you don't know
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: what's going on, it can put you to sleep because
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: it's just like a rider riding around in circles. So
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: they took the individual pursuit out of the program and
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: added in the for the women women's team pursuit. It
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: was already in for the men, and they added more
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: parody to track cycling, so it was equal events men
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: and women.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: See, so for.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: Endurance track, all they had was team pursuit and the omnium,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: which is yeah, a whole other event.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: So what year was it that you start?
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Two thousand and seven? Was your first time on the track.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, okay, yeah, and then you ascend pretty rapidly here,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: right like you end up winning like seven US titles
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: something like that, right over the course of the next
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: couple of years.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: So first race on the track, what was did you
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: win that race? Like? What did that? What did that
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: look like?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: I did?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: You did? Yeah?
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: It was an individual pursuit and it was it was
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: Nationals actually, because I.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: Went first first race on the track was Nationals and
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: you went.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: Yes, but our our our most decorated female individual pursuer
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: of all times in the United States was injured.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: So I will say that she was on she was
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: helping me. Uh but uh so I got a little,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: I get a little. I got a little lucky that year.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: But in the final of that race, like you do
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: qualifying rounds and then you go into the gold medal final,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: and in the gold medal final at that that that
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: track is the Home Home Depot Center right now stub
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: Hub Center, and they'd had X Games in there the
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: week before, which had created this like incredible amount of
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: dust and they had it was like there was like
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: this layer of dust on the track that was making
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: it really slick.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: They were crashing a lot.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: In the in the monster exactly right, but I would
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: have taken some sticky but it was so I'm in
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: the gate and we take off, you know, the gun
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: goes off for the gold medal ride, and I crash immediately,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: like I literally take one try to take one pedal
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: stroke out of the gate, which is a really powerful
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 4: pedal stroke, right and just slide out and fall, I
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 4: mean just zoom just right underneath myself.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: And I didn't know.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: Enough to know because This is literally six weeks after
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: the first time I'd got on the track, and I
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: was on it for like a week, and then the
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: person that was helping me, you know, Andy and Sarah,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: are like, you know, Nationals is in like five weeks,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: let's just go for it.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, you know, so here we are.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: So I slide out, and this very decorated person I'm
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: talking about that's won world championships and everything at this
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: point had already been to an Olympic game. She comes
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: up to me, runs up and she's like, don't worry
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: about it happens all the time. And I'm like, oh
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: my god, Wow, I'm not retarded, Like, oh, this happens.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: They come out of the gate, people slide you know,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 4: I take off again, you get a second, you get
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: a restart, and I won. And right after the race
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: is over, I come up to her and I was
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: like that was the best news ever. Like it completely
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: relaxed me, Like, Okay, this is normal because I don't
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: know anything about tracks, like I've never even been to
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: an international track race. And she's like, I've never seen
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: that happen before in the history of tracks, And I
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: was like, wow, you're like a psychologist here.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: She knew I needed to hear, like, oh no, okay,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: we'll leave it to me.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't. And then you win. That's
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: so insane.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: It felt insane for sure.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah, all right.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: So fast forward to twenty twelve Olympic Games London. You're
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: thirty nine at this point. Yeah, are you the oldest
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: person on the cycling team. I'd be one of the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: older athletes in the USA Olympic team in general, I would.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: Imagine, right probably, So yeah, it's yeah. And the cycling
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: team yeah yeah, I was wow.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: And so going into that, what were the prospects of meddling, Like,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: where did you guys fall in the pecking order?
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: We were totally under I mean total.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: I mean so track cycling again, right, is not wildly
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: poplar or in the United States, we don't know a
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: lot about it, but it is the thing in Great Britain, in.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: Australia, in New Zealand. I mean, these are deep.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: Rich track cycling countries that have respected it for you know,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: one hundred years, I mean literally, So we were up
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: against giants in this sport.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it would be.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: Like I mean literally is like you know Jamaican Bob's
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: letters beating the Germans or something.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: It was like we were major underdogs.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 4: The book He's had us at the very best at
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: fifth and we just thought maybe if it's our best
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: day ever, there would be a scratch of a possibility
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: we could get a bronze. Like you know, there was
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: we were, we was we'd never beaten the British or
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: the Ausi's before they're they're a teams. We'd beaten like
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: their B teams whatever. But ever so, how did this happen?
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, I'm still not entirely sure it was.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: You know, it's that's the thing about sport at that level.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: Is you you know, you do it.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: Your whole life or whatever, and you train and train
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: and train, but it's all about delivering in that one moment,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: on that one day, in that one month, in that
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: one you know, it's it's it's not uh, it's not
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: something that is you could ever probably repeat again or
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: that would have ever happened again. A lot of the
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: really amazing Olympic moments right that we watched that we
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: just watched in peong Chang, like the skier, the girl
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: that had never won a World Cup or anything, but
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: you know, it's just like we we had one of
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: those moments. We just rode completely outside of our skin. Uh,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: two of us on the team, Jenny Reid and myself
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: have never ever performed or been able to put that
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: output out on the track in our history, and we
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: probably couldn't have done it the next day.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: It was a moment in time that the three of
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: us put together. We had a lot of love and
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of respect for each other. And there's something
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: about team pursuit or any really ton of team sport
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 4: where you know you're not lining up for yourself. You know,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: there's there's this this whole other layer, this whole other
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: beautiful layer that I loved about Team Pursuit more than
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: I ever loved anything about road where it was it
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: wasn't about self, it was about it was about others,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: and it was about you better make sure that you're
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: showing up one hundred percent because you know that they are.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: It's like relay swimming. It's like relays and swimming or
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: in track and field. I mean there's something really beautiful
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: and powerful about that, and that's what's magical about the Olympics.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: When moments like that occur, I mean, it's so cool. Yeah,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: what is what is.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Being an Olympian? What does that experience mean to you?
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, now it's been a couple of years as you.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: Can reflect back on that, well, you know, there's something
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 4: there's something great about being thirty nine and a half
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: at the Olympics, and.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: That's well, it just besides that it's rare or whatever.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: But I was a grown woman and I was really
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: really hyper aware that I was at the Olympic Games,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 4: that this was not going to be an experience. I
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: would be repeating that I was representing my country and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: I specifically got selected to go deliver for my country
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: and my team and USA Cycling, and I was able
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: to just be there and be super present and soak
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: up every single moment where I think if I gone
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: to the Olympics at twenty, you know, you're like, oh,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: this is cool, awesome clothes. I'm going to be here
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: ten more times, you know, which you're not necessarily first
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: of all twenty year olds.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: Right, you don't know that that's the case.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: But it was just a magical experience for me in
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: every way because I allowed it to be, and I
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: went after it being that experience and just I had
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: done a ton of sports psychology because I struggled with
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: really big time nerves in track cycling. But I felt
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: like I got there just really fully, completely mentally and
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: emotionally present and was able to have that full experience.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: And so it's almost it's almost like fairyland when I
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: look back on it.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't mean as much to you if you were
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: younger and weren't able to like have that presence of
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: mind and no perspective when you're.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: Young, right either, Like there was just no and I
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: had a ton of perspective and had almost died, and
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: you know, this was really just felt like a complete
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: gift that this was even in the realm of possibilities,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: that I was now experiencing.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: This crazy when you think about it, little nutty like.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: Wandering out in the middle of an interstate to being
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: on the podium in London.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's extraordinary.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's that's something. Thank you.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Did you see Icarus, the documentary Icarus? Yes? Yeah, what
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: do you what do you think like as an Olympian?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: You know, the now we're in the midst of you know,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: this conversation about state sponsored doping and and kind of
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: this cloud that is hovering over the Olympics itself, and
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: as somebody who's who is an Olympian like.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: And the Russians have had some doping violations and it
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: sounds like they're not going to be invited the summer.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I know, and you had him on the podcast.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: I think, Brian, so I have I think a little
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: bit of a different view of that movie than some
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 4: other people that I've spoken to about the movie.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: You know, if he hadn't have been.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 4: Very specifically seeking out his own systematic doping, he would
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: have never have run into that doctor, and that whole
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: that whole part of the story would have never unfolded
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 4: the second half of the movie, and that the systematic
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: doping and how it is interesting it uncovers a lot
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: of truths that were not uncovered. But as a Olympian
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: and as a clean athlete and as someone who uh,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: you know, was very conscious about being clean, the movie
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: really kind of angers me because he was setting out
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: to cheat, very complete full consciousness of cheating. I don't
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: care if it's just a gram fondo or whatever. You're
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 4: going to go to the line. There's a lot of
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 4: people there that lined up in all honesty and clean
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: and the fact that it didn't work gave me some pleasure.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm not a big fan of the movie
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: because of that. Like I don't, I don't. I don't
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: love watching stories of people vindictively, dishonestly going to the
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 4: start line.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: I don't have any respect for that.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I get that.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: I get that, you know, as somebody who who is
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: in a sport that has you know, a cloud over
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: it as well.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Right, and.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: Who fighting clean and all of that, I can understand,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: you know, that emotional response to that, for sure.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: It is fascinating to see what's happened though on the
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: on the geopolitical stage as a result of that second
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: and third act of that movie, though, And I think
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: more will be revealed and hopefully this will lead us
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: to you know, some higher ground here.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that's I mean, that was why
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 4: it was that that part of it was like, you know, people,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: you really got a good full view of the underbelly again,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: how you know, how it all all of the hidden
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 4: secrets and how it's all, how it all unfolded and
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: that's happened, you know, unfolded in many countries that way, Banana,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: East Germany. I mean that, that's that's that's a whole
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: other level. What's going on from russ And right now.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: I mean that, Well, I remember the East German swimmers
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: from back in the eighties exactly. I mean it was
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: something else at the time.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's talk about let's talk about the diet.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, how long were you?
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: Hour and a half into this, the word vegan has
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: not been uttered one time. I know, hor.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: What are they going to talk about the fact that
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: she's vegan? All right, so vegan athlete?
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: Hopefully they haven't tuned out yet.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: Start it's been renditing. So when did you turn vegan?
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: Why did you turn vegan? You were vegetarian prior to that. Yeah,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: give me the history here.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: So I just, uh was just.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 4: Hanging out and I was at a race in uh Minnesota,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: road race and it was a stage race, and I
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: stumbled upon a program that showed what goes on behind
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: closed doors of our slaughterhouses every single day. And I
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: felt very confused and of course horrified and all of
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: those feelings. But I felt really confused because I thought, well,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 4: I think this is probably from another country, because you know,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: our government protects its people and that of course has
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 4: to include all of our food sources. And so I thought, well,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: I'm going to stop eating animals tomorrow just in case
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: this has any validity. But I think I'm going to
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: go home from this race and start doing research and
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 4: find out that this is like obviously just an isolated incident.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 4: So I stopped eating meat the next day, you know,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: the next morning, and then of course go home to
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: find out, Holy Mother of God, this is this is
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: systematic across all big agriculture, every animal, every species of animals,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: every So I was that was the beginning of my
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 4: vegetarian journey. And then as I dug deeper and found
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: out more and looked under more hoods, there was the
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: exposure of the egg industry and the dairy industry and
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 4: which are really, in my opinion, wildly more horrifying than
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 4: the meat industry could ever be.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: So this was this began what year was that.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: Two thousand and like mid two thousand and nine.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're full on cycling pro at the time.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: Did you have some trepidation about how this was going
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: to impact your training and your performance.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of did.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 4: I had I had a coach who was a vegan,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: which is interesting, and I had read the China study,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: so I kind of heard about this.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: SIN was like, oh, that's interesting. So I had had a.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 4: Sense that I might not completely. I wasn't going to
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: perish from being a vegan, like I wasn't going to die, right,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 4: But I kind of thought this might end my career,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 4: Like I didn't know that it was. I was necessarily
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 4: going to be able to have the strength and the
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: stamina because where might I get my protein?
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: But I didn't care.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 4: I thought, you know this, I just knew almost instantly
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: that this was something that was significantly more important than
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 4: anything I was going to ever be individually on a bicycle,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: That it was so much bigger than any Olympic Games
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: could ever be for me in my life or just
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: in general.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: And I was fully willing to take the risk.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: And how did that play out in terms of shifting
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: your diet and then monitoring how you're progressing as an athlete?
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: Well, I started, I mean, you know when people asked today.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: Oh gosh, you know, how do you do it? It's
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: so hard and it's like I didn't think it was
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: that hard. I still am.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 4: Just so it was by that question, because first of all,
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: there's Google, you know what I mean, I could get
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: like whatever fifty years ago with something it's like okay,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 4: but it's just just I mean, it just explodes in
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 4: your face. Recipes and foods and all this and all
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 4: these interesting ways to put the foods together, and the
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: flavors and the tastes and the spices and and you know,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 4: still we have to remember that our food, our plant
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: food are our spices, our herbs are what flavor meat food.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: Nobody's ever just you know, most of the time slapped
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: just a piece of meat on the grill, they have
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 4: marinated it and tenderized it and spiced it. And that's
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 4: plant food that does that. So when people say, oh, well,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 4: it's not going to taste very good, it's like we
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 4: are the food that is making your food taste good.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: So it's it.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: I thought it was I thought it was interesting. I
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: thought it was fun. I really was like interested in
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 4: the journey of it, and I loved cooking all of
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 4: a sudden, which I hadn't for all of those thirty
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 4: seven years. I just my husband and I went out
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 4: to eat six nights a week. It was like boring kitchen.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 4: I don't want to do Now I'm like interested in
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: cooking and preparing food, and then I start to become
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 4: really interested in, you know, types of nutrients that I'm
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: putting in, how I'm feeling, and then what's coming out
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: on the bike.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: So I'm doing like all these little mini.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: Experiments with myself and then I'm going back to the
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: drawing board and go, okay, a little more of that,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 4: a little more of this, you.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: Know what it was? It was just yeah, it was
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: It was fun.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: And cycling is a super interesting template to explore this
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: because it's like this perfectly conceived contraption to quantify human
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: output and performance. You've got the power meter, You've got
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: the hurry monitor, I mean especially on the track. Than
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: it's like a data out of mining machine. Right, So
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: there's yeah, there is no other sport where you could
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: just lose yourself in graphs and data to really map
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: out like, okay, what is what's the impact of this
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: on this? Right?
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: So were you were you like sort of paying attention
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, And I had a I
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: am an unfortunately too tall for really awesome aerodynamics. I've
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 4: got really long legs and a short tour, so so
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: I sit up quite high. And so in track cycling
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 4: and team pursuit, you have you know exactly how many
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 4: wats that you have to put out on the front
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: to sustain the speed that you want to go.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: For me, it was four hundred and seventy four and
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: I know exactly people.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: That don't know that's really high.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I know exactly how many wats that I have
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: to put out when I am in you know relief
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: quote right, which was closer to three hundred and forty.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: So that's my rest whereas my teammates, when you're shorter
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: and more aerodynamic, you have to put out less watts.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: So I had to put out the most watts on
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: the whole team every time I took a pull and
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 4: every time I was in you know, in line.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 3: So I knew.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: Exactly how much I had to produce and exactly what
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: types of foods were fueling that and keeping that at
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: a consistent level, if you will, like consistently being able
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: to put out those watts on the front and days
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 4: that I could or couldn't and you know, what was happening.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: It was connecting almost everything to my input, my nutrition,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: which before I had just been like a zombie, like
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 4: I just ate whatever was in line at the training center,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 4: like you said before, which was pretty nasty stuff.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: And now you know it was it was like.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: Just so interesting to see all the different plant foods
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: and what would happen. And then you know, everybody talks
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: about this, but I mean, for me, it was really
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 4: important to be recovering because I am thirty nine and
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 4: a half and I'm then I'm you know, everybody's in
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: a race to recover, right because we're only damaging during training,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: We're and we're only repairing then during rest, and that's
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 4: when you get stronger. You don't get stronger in training.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 4: So for me that that was my race. The recovery
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: was my race. It's every athlete's race, but especially as
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 4: you're getting older. And I had started noticing that my
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: recovery was changing, you know, before I had gone plant based,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 4: I mean it was it was, it was deteriorating, and
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: I was like, wow, this is I am not feeling
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 4: like I used to after the six hour rides. You know,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: I'm eating the same thing, I'm sleeping the same way,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: you know, so that that was.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: A doing the norma tech boots and all that kind of.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly and getting massage and high reprisse.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean four it's twenty four to seven, right,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: you're doing something. I don't miss that part, like just
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 4: thinking about all of that stuff every day, all day long.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: You're thinking about yourself all day long, every day. Yeah,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: it's more.
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: We all to be an athlete at that level is
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: a very self involved then yeah, completely, it has to be.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: So then going plant based, you're noticing an improvement in
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: your ability to recover that's gathering from this.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean and that was like in
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: like a couple of weeks.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 4: I mean that was just so fast or I was
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 4: like what And I didn't, to be quite honest, it's
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: something that I connected at first. I mean I don't know,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: it's just stupid. I mean that's the only thing I
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 4: had really changed.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: And you came in from an ethical point. You weren't
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: doing this like, oh I'm going to douse my performance.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: You're doing this.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: From an ethical perspective of this is an intolerable system,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: and I'm opting out. I'm opting out and whatever happens
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: athletically is going to happen. Yep.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I and I and I hope that something
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: good will happen because I feel like by opting out,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 4: I'm doing good. I mean, I you know then so
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: so maybe maybe maybe something will come.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: From this, And it definitely did, but it was, it was,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: it was. I don't know.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 4: The other thing that's so joyful about it is, you
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 4: know so many people say when they say, oh, you know,
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 4: it's hard, it's hard to stick to or something like that.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 4: To me, it's like, it's such a joy to sit
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 4: down in every meal and you're aware that you are
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 4: choosing conscience over ease, like whatever is just there and
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 4: it is so uplifting and so fulfilling and such an
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 4: empowering feeling, like I feel so strong every time I'm
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 4: slightly challenged. Let's say it like a business dinner and
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 4: we're like at Ruth Chris, you know, like whatever that
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 4: happens once a freaking year, who cares?
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, everyone's worried about that steakhouse.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that one experience where you know, but you know,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 4: people are just people are really nice. And the last
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 4: experience I had at Ruth Chris, which wasn't that long ago.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 4: They brought in a vegan meal from a restaurant down
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 4: the street because they knew. So it's because right now
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 4: you and I aren't that quiet about it.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: So and the whole table was like, what are you
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 3: That looks so delicious? And You're like, well, you just
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 3: have your little dead animal over there.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 4: I mean it's like, you know, it's just because it's
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: just it's just so it's so bountiful and so colorful,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: and so, you know, I thought that was just great.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 3: They all wanted some. I was like, no, I'm not
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: sharing very hungry.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: When you were when you were in the lead up
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: to London, you said you had a coach who was vegan.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that was your coach at that time.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, he was my track coach, but my road
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: coach at the time.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: That yeah, I see, yeah yeah. And and so you know,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: it's not just you, You've got these three other women, right,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: and so are they going well like you know, you're
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: like you're going plant based, Like what how is that
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: going to impact us?
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: Like vocal about it? Really? Like for well, by the
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: time I was with them. I was already plant based,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: like I had that had happened.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: The vocal aspect of what you do is of recent development,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: because I don't remember hearing about this during London.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like oh dotsy the you.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: Know, No, I didn't do any social media back then. Anyway.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 4: It was like I didn't even realize it was no, no, no,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 4: it was like it was like my husband's and I
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: little you know he was he had gone pescatarian by
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: that point, you know, and and he so he was
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 4: like right after London, which he did and I did,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 4: and he didn't even tell me.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: And then like I'm literally going.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 4: To Whole Foods going to see the fish guy, like
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 4: I need the fish that you know, was just clocked
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 4: over the head once and it.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: Wasn't the one.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is why I'm going to these links
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 4: for my husband's Finally he just stopped eating them.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: Did this fish get here?
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: I know? The guy was like, and then.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: Do you have a chain of custody?
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: He and he was probably besing me, but he would
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: do that.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, he would like, you know, okay, yes we're
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 4: going to go here to this week the clocked over
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 4: the head ones that didn't suffer at all or right
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 4: here and they're the sea bass and so I mean
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 4: he would I still.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: Did to day.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, here she comes.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 4: Make your story like you're oh, it's so ridiculous, so ridiculous.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: But they didn't really.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just kind of like they just I
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 4: just ate what I ate. And you who was freaking
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 4: out was my track coach, who's like a larger kind
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 4: of like chubby version of crocodile Dundee, Like he's backcountry
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 4: Australia and he was like what what this is?
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: Why would you do that? You know, like why is
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: this a thing what I have to deal with? Like
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: it was like putting him out in a way of
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: like this, So but it did.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, didn't take long for him to be like, Okay,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 4: this is working, eat whatever you want.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting. Yeah.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: I mean I think that that, you know, maybe what
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: you do gets gets unfairly lumped in with like endurance
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: athlete runner type people. But I think people don't appreciate
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: or understand the amount of power and strength require to
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: perform at that sport. I mean, it's like massive amounts
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: of power like crazy amounts of strength that you need.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so the I mean, just to give a comparison,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 4: So on the I did a lot of inverted leg
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 4: sled work because I needed to lift move an incredible
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 4: amount of weight that I was not going to be
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: able to move doing squats because I would have crushed
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 4: my upper body. And I had a lot of work
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 4: to do in a short period of time to get
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 4: up to that strength that we were talking about because
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 4: I'm coming from road cycling, so I went from being
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 4: able to do about it started at like two hundred
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 4: and fifty pounds on the inverted leg sled to five
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 4: hundred and eighty five pounds times sixty reps times five sets,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 4: because my coach had gotten to me where we would almost.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 3: Be the length of the event. So the sixty reps
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: with five hundred eighty five pounds on it, it would
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: take approximate.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, And that's a pretty obscene amount of weight
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 4: for one hundred and thirty pounds female.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy all on plants.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: Right, unbelievable. So when people come up to you.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: And they're like, you know, well, do you think you
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: would have done better on a paleo dot or do
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: you you know, like like, yeah, what kind of crazy
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: questions do you have to feel right to defend.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: Your Probably the same ones you do.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it's like I think, I mean,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 4: it changes the longer you're in it, right, there's in
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 4: this movement or speaking about this, you know, people people
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 4: ask people are asking better questions than they were before.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 4: But I think it's also just people are becoming a
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 4: little bit more educated and more aware and you know,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 4: but uh, you know, it's it's it's kind of still
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 4: all the same stuff right where they just people really
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 4: don't understand not only protein, but they don't understand iron,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 4: They don't understand BE twelve. They don't even understand what
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 4: B twelve is that it's a bacteria and you know
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 4: where you can get it from.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: They think animals make BE twelve.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 4: So there's there's just a lot of misconceptions out there
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 4: about the different nutrients that that that they think that
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: you need from the myth that we've been told and
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 4: lied to about our whole lives that you can only
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 4: get that from animal flesh.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: So it's just those you know.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: Do you have were you taking supplements or do you
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: have to be those because fear of Like.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 4: I know, that was always a scary thing because in
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 4: my road career, I was taking more supplements than I
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 4: probably are, definitely more than I needed to being completely
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 4: plant based. I was taking a liquid BE twelve that
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 4: my doctor would prescribe and I would pick up the
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 4: pharmacy just so that I knew it was not didn't
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 4: have a lot of fillers in it. Right when you
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 4: just get them at the store, they have a lot
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 4: of fillers. So I was taking the B twelve, and
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 4: I was taking a whole food's plant based iron because
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 4: I did my best when my iron levels were higher
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 4: than they would naturally run and when my ferretin levels
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 4: were higher and.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: My hemoglobe and levels were higher.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 4: So I would cycle this whole food plant based iron,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 4: which I could easily get from food.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: But it would be like, you.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 4: Know, a large trough of spinach or somethings exactly exactly.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 4: But it was still you know, mega foods, So it
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 4: was still the plant and that's it.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: Just those two No protein powder.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 4: No bas none of them, you know, ascid, none of
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 4: that stuff.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: I didn't bought, no way.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 4: I would do some plant protein every once in a while,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 4: just because you get, you know, tired of you have to.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 4: I mean I was taking in five thousand calories a
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 4: day and sometimes more, and so you know, with alternadurans,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 4: you just get tired of eating. I don't really do
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 4: protein shakes anymore, but I did back then because it
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 4: was just like, I just want to drink something. I
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 4: think I'm going to die if I have to eat again,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 4: because you just yeah, all right.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: So twenty twelve, you win the Silver Metal. You're doing
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: it plant based, but you weren't a mouthpiece for this movement.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: So between then and now, you've made this decision to
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: be a vocal advocate for these issues.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: Like what inspired that?
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: And like how do you think of yourself as a
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: as a mouthpiece for these issues that.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: We care about?
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I didn't when it came back from London,
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 4: I didn't know anything. I didn't know there was I
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 4: didn't know there was.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: A movie this.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: What's going on?
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: Where am I?
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: I'm tipping over on the track like I'm doing the
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: Age ride, I'm on my mountain bike.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: What's happening?
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 4: I didn't. I had no idea there was a vegan movement.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: I had no idea there was an animal rights movement.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 4: I didn't know about you yet.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 3: I didn't know. I knew absolutely nothing.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 4: I'm still to the point where I I'm not sharing
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 4: anything because I don't think there's anyone that cares.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 4: And the moment happened when my husband came home one
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 4: day from doing some shopping. He'd been to Native Foods
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 4: and he saw a little cute group of people meeting
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 4: he it happened to be Mercy for Animals.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: He got a flyer and brought it home and was like, look,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: there's like people that talk about what you talk about.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, stop it.
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 4: And I picked up the phone and called Mercy for
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 4: Animals in Santa Monica and got a hold of Solomon.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: I'm like you guys like you, like what how do you?
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: What do you do? And so he said, come up,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 3: come up and see us, let's have lunch.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 4: And that was the beginning of recognizing that anybody talks
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 4: about this and that, and then that people listen to
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 4: them and actually care and are creating a pretty large
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 4: movement of people that give a crap.
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's amazing as somebody who not so long ago
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: didn't even know these worlds existed that you're having PSA's
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: airing during the Olympics, and you've created this.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: Compassionate Champs movement, Like, tell me what that's all about.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: So I'm learning more and more every day.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 4: But when I started compassion Champs, it was it was
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 4: really kind of more out of a desire to meld
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 4: together compassion and strength. I felt like there was, you know,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 4: nobody really that that was having a real conversation about
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 4: being able to be caring and compassionate and loving and
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 4: empathetic but also strong and fierce and badass and you
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 4: know those those two just weren't coming together as as
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 4: a as a group of people. So that that's that's
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 4: where it was kind of born out of. I'm learning
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 4: more and more as I am traversing this movement and
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 4: reading more research and understanding more from being a part
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 4: of the Game Changer's film, which we can talk about
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 4: that you know, people and and and just from my
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 4: own experience, uh, sadly and and really disappointing to me,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 4: is by and large, people don't care about the animals.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 4: They just don't. They just they don't care about the suffering.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 4: They don't want to know about it. They don't want
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 4: to hear it, they don't want you to show them,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 4: they don't definitely don't want you to talk about it,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 4: and they really don't want you to talk about it
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 4: when when you're all eating. But people do care about
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 4: their health and do care about their performance, not just athlete,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 4: you know, athletic performance. People just care about their general
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 4: performance and being better in their life.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 3: A lot of the people that you've had on here, So.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 4: The conversation that I'm having is changing a bit more.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 4: I think it's I'm almost feeling more like an undercover
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 4: animal activists because it's at the core of what I
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 4: care about the most.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 3: It's the least effective way to change people's minds, right.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: The way to impact people is by appealing to what
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: interests them, not what interests you. Right, such a bummer,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, the athlete plays a
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: very interesting role in this movement because what they're able
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: to do with their bodies speaks louder than the words
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: that come out of many a doctor's mouth. Many an
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: active this mouth. Because when someone sees you with a
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: silver metal on, sees you on a podium, or sees
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: you on that velodrome, kicking ass.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: It's like, Wow, how does that? How does that person
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: I want to know more about who that person is
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: and what what inspires them and what fuels them, and
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: telling that story is a way to impact hearts and
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: minds that I think is different and important, you know,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: And that's why I think. You know, this Game Changers
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: movie that you're a part of is going to be
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: a really big deal. Like, I haven't seen it yet,
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: I've seen the trailer, but I know it's making a splash.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: You were at Sundance. You just got back from the
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: Berlin Film Festival. Tell me what it was like to,
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: you know, see that movie, be part of that movie,
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: and to participate in in in screening it before audiences
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: for the first time.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just a wild pleasure and honor.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 4: I just feel like, you know, we're kind of at
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 4: a tipping point of the movement.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 3: You know, we're not anywhere near like.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 4: A large percent of the population eating plant based, but
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 4: I feel like I'm definitely having outside of the movement, right.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 4: We have to take ourselves outside to really recognize, but
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 4: those conversations are at a much higher level than they
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 4: used to be. People are at least aware now that
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 4: they've decided that that's for them or not.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe not.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 4: But screening the film at Sundance and at the Berlin
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 4: Ali in Berlin, which was the international premiere, it was
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 4: so many different types of people asking all different types
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 4: of questions, you know.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 3: It was That's what I loved about it.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 4: It was like a wide variety of of of questions
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 4: that not just your typical like oh, where are you
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 4: getting your protein? Well they cover that in the film,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 4: so maybe that's why they weren't asking that.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: But and people's reaction to it was it's sundance.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 4: It really really caught me off guard and by surprise.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 4: Normally we're used to people saying, oh, okay, this is
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 4: interesting plant based. Okay, I think I might try a recipe,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 4: or I might try meatless mondays, or I'm going to
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 4: try this on slots of people. We do the Q
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 4: and A after the film, right, there's about fifteen of
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 4: us there, the doctors and the athletes. I'm the only
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 4: female because the other two females.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 3: It's a male, very male's very film.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 4: There's totally it's very focused on young men because they
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 4: are the ones that are resistant to change as far
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 4: as eating meat, and the meat myth. So the three
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 4: females in the film and the other two are still competing,
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 4: so it's the only female there. So I just got
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 4: this rush of women, you know, standing in line to
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 4: talk about this, and every single one says.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 3: I'm starting today. I what do I do for dinner?
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 4: Somebody else comes up and says, I'm going back to
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 4: the condo and I'm supposed to cook for ten people,
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 4: and I have chicken and the refrigerator, and I can't
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 4: serve them that it's you know, it's diseased, or you know,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 4: they would they would, she would pick out different parts
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 4: of the movie that she had learned about all of
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 4: the gnarliness of chicken. And I can't in my right
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 4: mind serve them that, you know, I don't know what
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 4: I'm going to do. And I'm thinking, oh my god,
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 4: oh my god, no, cook the chicken.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: Let's start tomorrow. You know, It's like, oh my gosh.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 4: It wasn't a completely different type of panic. Almost of
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 4: these people just just so moved by what they learned
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 4: and so moved by the health aspect that they were
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 4: everyone starting tomorrow. And so I was like, wow, guys,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 4: we got to really be ready for this because nobody
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 4: knew that was going to be the reaction.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you better have your answer, like chambered.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was exciting to feed.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: Them when the inspiration is at its peak.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 3: Right exactly exactly? Yeah, yeah, so yeah, what was.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: The What was the response in Berlin? How is it
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: diff front?
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 3: It was?
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 4: It was gosh, I people are a little bit more
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 4: subdued there, you know, I just the Germans.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: Are also questioners, they're much more Yeah.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we got, I mean we yeah, we got.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 4: There's a part in the film where it kind of
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 4: goes into tobacco industry and kind of how they were
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 4: eventually exposed even after there was you know, seven hundred
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 4: studies that says smoking kills you, but they had, you know,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 4: kind of kept them all quiet. And the pr firm
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 4: Exponent that is known for hiding big tobacco, hiding a
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 4: lot of chemicals that are in different things that we
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 4: lotions and things we put on our skin and are
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 4: now spinning big agriculture.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 3: So that was.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 4: Very That was an interesting topic in Berlin, Like a
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 4: lot of people brought that what are we going to
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 4: do about Exponent?
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 3: That's not Okay, you know, so that that was a
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 3: little bit more.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: A skance of the what you are trying to go for.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 4: Well yeah, but I mean, if you'll see it, it
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 4: kind of at least helps people to understand why all
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 4: of this how all of this marketing is working, This
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 4: meat myth is working in the machine that's behind big
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 4: agriculture and the spin that every time something comes out
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 4: like what we're doing with switch for good. Uh, if
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 4: we get big enough, which we better and I hope
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 4: we will, there'll be some type of exponent, whether it's
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 4: there or someone.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 3: Else doing a quick spin for a big dairy.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 4: So that that is a kind it's a pretty integral
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 4: part of the film for people to understand why they're
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 4: being told this myth, like where it's coming from and
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 4: how much money is behind that myth.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 3: So but but.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 4: But Germany as a whole, and especially Berlin, I mean
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 4: Berlin is known as the vegan capital of Europe, so
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 4: you know, it was really people with a very open
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 4: minds too at the film.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, we were talking before the podcast about
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: how amazing Berlin is for you food. They have vegans,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: a full vegan supermarket, and we're.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: Like, how come they have that. We don't have that here,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: like would crush and I.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 4: Imagine, I mean I just couldn't get over myself.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: So what is there a release plan for this movie?
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: Like they have the distributor lined up?
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 3: Can you tell? The cool thing is yeah, well yeah,
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 3: I mean they don't know yet either, so.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 4: Uh, the cool thing is that there there's distributors are
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 4: fighting for it. So they're in a great place, a
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 4: great space to be in. I assume within the next
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 4: month they'll hopefully make that decision of who they're going
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 4: to go with. I mean, their their goal is very
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 4: much eyeballs on the film, and and not that they
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 4: don't have a monetary goal. Their goal is for you know, uh,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 4: one billion people to see the film, which is lofty,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 4: but it's it's uh, you know, it's certainly possible, if
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 4: not maybe probable. So they if you, if you keep
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 4: up with the website, you know that that will that will.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 3: Tell game Changers movie dot com.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 4: Well, we'll we'll tell when it's gonna released, because I mean,
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 4: everybody is seems, you know, good things, seems to be
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 4: dying to see it. But I think it'll do some
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 4: more film festivals too before yeah, so we'll we'll see.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, more will be revealed. All right, So we got
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: to wrap this up. But I have one final question.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: Anybody is still there were two hours?
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: We're good.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: You have this competitive nature, you have retired from cycling. Uh,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: where are you going to channel this this uh, this
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: energy into this movement?
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Yes? Or oh my god? You know is that.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 4: There's there's no question in in in my mind that I.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 3: Will do this till the day I die. It's it.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 4: It fills every piece of my bursting heart with so
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 4: much joy and and and and need and fulfillment. And
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 4: that this is this is revealing the secrets behind this
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 4: is is very similar to back in the day with Tobacco.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 3: I feel such a such.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 4: An inherent, deep need to share truth with people, like
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 4: if if it's not if they're not if they're not
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 4: being told the truth, somebody has to tell them the truth.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 4: Somebody has to you know, uncover and and if I
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 4: can use the Olympian thing or the Olympics thing that
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 4: I you know, did and fought really hard for, because
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 4: you're right, people, people are interested in what in you know,
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 4: Olympian eats or what an Olympian does. I mean it's
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 4: you know, that's part of this you know p s
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 4: A with the with the seven Olympians. It's like nobody's going,
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 4: oh god, stupid Olympians. Put them in the corner.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 3: People just kind of are inherently like go team.
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 4: And so that platform, uh will will will hopefully, hopefully
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 4: allow us to to reveal and uncover these untruths that
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 4: people have been been told their whole lives, from animal
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 4: agriculture all the way to all the different diseases that
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 4: the seven top diseases that we're dying from in this country.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 4: People are just consuming incredible amounts of dairy while they're
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 4: fighting prostate cancer, you know, incredible amounts of dairy while
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 4: they're fighting ovarian cancer. It's insane, and so's it's the
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 4: only thing besides my relationship with my husband that I care.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 3: The most about. It's it's it's everything to me.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Well, it's beautiful and it's exciting times.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I think the awareness is getting out there,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: and there is a there is a you know, a
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: growing interest and receptivity to these ideas that I think
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: is only going to build, and and your role in
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: all of that is prominent and growing. So it's awesome
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: to see one final thing if you'll.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Old me, do you have to go?
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: So I think it would be great to kind of
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: end this with leaving a few thoughts for somebody who's
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: listening to this, who perhaps is suffering from an eating
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: disorder or is stuck in the cycle of of you know,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: a pattern that they can't see themselves through.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: So if there is there.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: A lifeline that you could throw to that person, or
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: something that they could think about or do.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: That could perhaps be helpful, well, a.
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 3: Couple of things.
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 4: I think that when you're deep into the disorder, you
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 4: definitely don't feel like there's ever any way out. And
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 4: that's especially true with eating disorders because you have to
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 4: continue to eat right. You can't just be like, Okay,
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 4: no more drugs, no more alcohol. I felt so isolated
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 4: by that and just letting them know that there truly
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 4: is a way out. Once an anorexic not always an anorexic.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 4: It's it's it's not the same as it is it
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 4: as it might be, or how many alcoholics look at
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 4: it and for their own recovery, there there is freedom
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 4: on the other side. There really is a pathway, whichever
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 4: pathway you choose to have freedom from it. So many
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 4: eating disorder suffers that I met, that's the one thing
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 4: that they just don't really believe is true, and it is.
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 3: There really is freedom. And I think the other thing
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 3: is that.
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 4: Most most eating disorder suffers are fairly Type A, and
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 4: they most that I've met, want to contribute to society.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, they have a kind of a yearning, kind
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 4: of a desire. If you let this disease run its
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 4: course and you die from it, you're not going to
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 4: be able to do anything. You're not going to be
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 4: able to have an impact on the world, and you're
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 4: not going to be able to do anything for the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 4: greater good. And you're definitely not going to be able
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 4: to do anything healthfully for the greater good while you're sick.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 4: So allow that to be You're bright, guiding and shining
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 4: light out of this. That was a big part of
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 4: it for me is recognizing that I can't do anything
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 4: if I'm dead, you know, So let that come to
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 4: the top of your heart and let that guide you.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 4: There is a way out, and you can't do anything
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 4: for the world if you're dead.
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, beautifully put and raise your hand and make yourself
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 2: known and find help, find that person that you feel
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: comfortable talking to, that you can confide in. And I
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: think that's an important first step in breaking that cycle
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: of denial and that prison that keeps you stuck.
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: So thank you.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was awesome, Dotsy, You're an inspiration. I really
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: appreciate your time and your testimony tonight as well. It's powerful,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: and I wish you well and keep doing what you're doing.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 3: I feel like we're saying goodbye forever something.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: Will you come back and talk to me more tomorrow?
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: Right? Cool?
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: So, if you want to connect with Dotsy at dot
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: cy bouch on Twitter and Instagram, Compassion.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 3: Champs, Vegan Olympian on insta.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: Vegan Olympian, Oh that's right. Yeah, Well it's funny.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: I type your name in, but then it automatically pulls
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: up vegan Olympian.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: So cool. Weird that Yeah, that is weird. We got
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: like six months of awesome.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it's Compassion Champs dot com.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Compassion dash Champs dot okay, dot.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: Org and you have your own personal website too, right yeah, okay,
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: Dotsy Bouche, you say dot com? Yes, okay, you got
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 2: it all right, well yeah, please do come back and
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: talk to me again.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: This was great.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 3: Thanks you appreciate Peace with
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: H.