The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Winning The World's Toughest Ultra With Sally McRae (Badwater 135)

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

People run for all kinds of reasons – in many cases as a means of escape. That could have been the story for Sally McRae, Nick’s guest on this episode of The Bare Performance Podcast. Instead, this year’s winner of the Badwater 135 has used her life filled with challenges and losses to fuel her. At 42, she has built a phenomenal running career, competing in ultras around the globe while also building a family. But more than anything, she has taken from early life challenges wisdom that has sweetened her journey and inspired everyone who comes into her orbit. This compelling conversation touches on fundamental ultra-training, strategy, nutrition, and lessons learned through various race experiences. But it’s the eloquent philosophical insights that will linger long after the podcast sign-off. With remarkable grace, Sally has found meaning in the inexplicable: a childhood marred by a chronically abusive father, a mother taken way too early by cancer, and what seemed like the loss of her dreams of competing as a professional athlete. Sally shares reflections on the upsides – as well as downsides – of strong survival skills. The protective walls that helped her endure a tough childhood might have suffocated her adulthood but because of her curious mind, open heart, and hunger to push herself to the limit, Sally came to understand some fundamental truths. For one, we are strongest at the broken places – and everyone has broken places. For another, feelings are our allies, even the toughest feelings in the midst of the most grueling race. Sally shares insights into how her training has shifted from emphasizing physical mechanics to developing psychological self-awareness and a positive mindset adaptable to all kinds of challenges (including diarrhea 14 miles into Badwater 135, known as “the world’s toughest ultra-race”). Sally’s life story will leave everyone ready to work harder towards goals while understanding, deeply, that (to quote the songwriter Harry Chapin), “It’s got to be the going – not the getting there – that’s good.” In addition to an amazing amount of wisdom, you’ll also get the scoop on how Sally trains, nourishes herself, beats back heat, and trains for every outcome. It’s no surprise that she has prevailed in life as she did in the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in 2021. Click here to listen to/rate/review previous episodes of The Bare Performance Podcast. You can also find out more about Nick’s performance nutrition and health supplements here. Key Takeaways: (3:54): All about how Sally acquired her childhood nickname, “Sunshine.” It was given to her as a child by her mother, who proclaimed her as bright and shiny as the sun. Hence, Yellow Runner. (5:10): Nick and Sally share a central pain in the loss of their mothers to cancer, a grief that has driven them forward with urgency and a desire to do their best in life. (7:10): About the impactful role, Sally’s mother played, demonstrating grace and wisdom that provided a huge cushion. But Sally, the middle among five children, was the least liked by her physically and verbally abusive father. This set in motion many years during which Sally sought her father’s, unattainable love. She strived relentlessly, excelling at sports, holding down two jobs as a teenager, being a leader in all ways at school. (10:55): Sally’s mother left a deep imprint with her message that her children could do anything so long as they worked hard and went for big dreams. (12:50): At 15, under threat from her angry father, Sally realized that she could empower herself to stand up to him and

In today's episode, I sit down with professional runner Sally McRae, who runs under the name, if you follow her on social media, Yellow Runner. And in the episode, we dive into where the name Yellow Runner came from. You know, Sally's childhood was filled with loneliness, pain, and loss from the dynamic of the family she grew up in and then losing her mother to cancer when she was 17 years. old, which was a pivotal point in Sally's life. And she compares life to climbing mountains like she does in these ultra marathons, in these trail races. You know, most people live their lives not knowing what they are fully capable of. And that's a scary thought. And I think ultra running

really allows you to test where that max capacity is. Where is failure and how can you reach it? How can you test yourself? And when Sally crossed the finish line of Badwater 135 in 2021, when she won, a lot of people said, you deserve this win. And she had to question that. And we talk about do we deserve things or do we earn things? Because there is a clear difference. Badwater 135 is deemed the world's toughest foot race that's.

starts at the lowest point in the United States in Death Valley and climbs three mountain ranges covering nearly 15,000 feet of gain and with temperatures reaching nearly 130 degrees. So without further ado, let's dive into the episode with Sally McRae. You were listening to the Bear Performance Podcast, where we discussed topics on fitness, nutrition, business, and leadership to help you perform at your highest level and go on more. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder of Bear Performance Nutrition and Prior U.S. Army Infantry Officer. We've scaled our brand through our core pillars of transparency, service, and integrity. And now I want to share with you through our experience and our guests, how you can optimize your life.

Welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the elite, the best of the best, the yellow runner, Sally McRae, welcome to the show. Thank you, Nick. And for the listeners, Nick and I have already been having, we just had the most incredible conversation. We had three episodes already. We did. We should hit record earlier. I'm sure I'm sure Ryan was recorded. We can pull some of that from something. We have I'm honestly so excited for this

This conversation It's already so good The chemistry is there It's so good All of the intro Like the best of the best Like people listening I'm not the best

Of the best That was a very kind Kind intro Give yourself some credit I'll tell you this The ultra running community The humblest Of the humblest

That's what I'll say There Dude I can be super prideful For the record Let's write that down You got to. You have to. You know, your name on social media is the Yellow Runner. And like I was telling you before, I was listening to some documentaries of your, some interviews. And I never knew before why it was Yellow Runner. And then you shared the story when you were 17 years old, your mother gave you all of these gifts. all these presents that were yellow. And your mom said that you were this sunshine.

And you shined as the person who you truly were and are. How did that moment, because I believe in the power of moments. Yeah, 100%. And I'm sure you, just like myself, have had these moments in life, good, bad, wins, losses, tragic, amazing. But they're powerful. in their own. How did that moment shape your life after that? What was the impact?

Yeah, this story is, it's one of my favorites and it is a turning point in my life. Gosh, I feel like I'm going to dive into this and I might start crying. I never cry when I share it. But I think it's because you just shared your story with me and you're just still so raw, Nick. Well, I shared my story with Sally Howden. I also, the reason I wanted to start with

this question was it really struck a chord with me because I also lost my mother in 2019 to ovarian cancer. So I know I know that feels like. I know the pain, the loss and kind of how it's this pivotal point in your life where you now have, and you feel like you have this obligation to do more, do better and give pain justice and like a meaning. Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like, you know, and for anyone listening, when you lose someone that is very precious to you, because I've lost a lot of people in my life and it's amazing how one of the first things that's so impactful is that you realize how they made you feel and that you're not going to have that anymore. And I think when you lose

someone that is so precious to you, you also gain a little like nugget of gold. And that gold is that you now understand what it means to live your life to the fullest. And as cliche as that sound, it just is like you understand like life is so short. Life is short. And I, I've never looked at this way. I've never, I think, you know, when it, when it came to my mom, I was 17, so I was still pretty young. But I never thought that I would lose her up until even like that month that she was passing away. I remember sitting next to her and be like, there's no way that you're going to be taken away

from me. This isn't how life is supposed to go. But that moment, this yellow runner moment, it's pivotal for me because what I realize is that there's so much in what she was saying. So she had a lot of wisdom that. ultimately has set me up to who I am today and a lot of the decisions that I've I've made in my life. But the reason why that story is so important too is what was happening leading up to it. So, you know, I didn't, I grew up in a family of seven.

I'm the middle of five children. And my mom was this amazing, loving, encouraging woman. I was really close to her. and then my dad was physically abusive, verbally abusive. And for whatever reason, I was the least liked of his five children. So, you know, for me, I lived a lot of my life trying to earn his love, trying to be accepted and approved by him. I would do anything for that. Even though I had this person that loved me unconditionally and was always encouraging me,

I wanted my dad to love me so bad. I wanted him to see me for who I was. And so you, you name the accomplishment, I did it. You named the accolade, I had it. Whether it was Spellabine champ or, you know,

class president, captain of the soccer team, like what I, I did all of it. And I also believed that if I was just a good kid, that things in life would be good. And that my future would be bright and all my dreams would come true.

And so I was also a workhorse. And we didn't have... a lot in comparison to the families around us in the community that I grew up in. So I started working really young. And so by the time I was 17, you know, where this story takes place, I was working two jobs. I was playing on two soccer teams. I was slated to be the first person in my family to go to college. And I wanted to be a professional soccer player.

That was my dream. Was it be a professional soccer player? Were you working this much to save money for your future or to provide for your family? It was a little bit of both. I never really provided for the family. I just took care of myself. So if I wanted a pair of soccer shoes, I bought them. If I wanted a haircut, I got them. We didn't have medical or dental care growing up. So I remember my sophomore year in college going getting 19 fillings in my teeth because we didn't have that growing up and I paid for that. So I learned at a young age to just hustle. And a part of that came from. You know, my mom and dad, they, they hustled a lot too. And my mom, I remember when I was like seven or eight, at this time, I wanted to go to the Olympics to be a gymnast. So I did gymnastics, just at the local, like, rec center. And I said, I want to go to a real gymnastics place.

That's why you're so jack. Gymnastics and soccer. And then I was a sprinter in high school. Yep. So it all comes together. Every explosive, like power sport, like I did it. And so when I told her, I was like, I really want. I want to be on like a club team.

She's like, we can't afford that. Gymnastics are like one of the most expensive sports. And you have to do dance too. So I was like, then I'll work for the money. And by the time I was 12, I had saved after enough money. And they took me to this gymnastics center. And I paid for the class myself. And the instructor comes out.

She's like, we'll evaluate you. We'll see if you can be on the team. So she evaluates me. And then she walks me out to the class. And all the girls on the team were like six and seven years old. At 12 years old, that's how good I was to be with six and seven year olds. But what it taught me was that through hard work, you can get further than had you not worked at all.

So even though I wasn't where I wanted to be as a gymnast, I didn't, I wasn't able to compete. I actually was able to walk into a facility and see what it was like for the first time in my life. And it was just glorious, you know, it was amazing. And I did that for a few months. I really didn't have enough money. for the months after that. But I think that throughout my life, my mom never told me no, but she did encourage me to try, to work hard, to dream. Like, that was always her message to me.

But it was very apparent to growing up that my mom was defenseless. You know, my dad was pretty violent with her as well. And no one ever stood up for her. And so for me, also experiencing what she was it was really hard to understand how to respond in a world that she talked about as being loving and great and good and yet we were being so oppressed at home. And so for me, everything was performance based and being tough. So I was a pretty tough kid growing up. I was pretty gritty. And at 15 years old, at this time, my mom had cancer and she was in remission. My dad calls her on the phone and he says, you know, I'm running real.

He was a soccer coach. I'm running late to practice. I don't have the bag of soccer balls. I'm going to be coming down the street. I'm going to run out and bring me my bag of soccer balls so I can get to the game, to the feel on time. And my mom says to him like, oh, all right. I wish you would have just brought him with you to work.

And he just lost it on the phone. I mean, he had a really terrible temper. And I was next to her in the room when she was on the phone with him. And she says, Dad's really upset. Like you, you know, and she would always kind of warn me. Like, she would say, you know, when you're around him, you need to be quiet. When, you know, be careful. And he hated my laugh.

He hated everything about me. And so she said, he's coming right now to get the soccer balls. he's really angry. I don't know what he's going to do. And at this point in my life, at 15 years old, I realized no one had ever protected me from him. My mom couldn't protect me. I couldn't protect myself. My siblings couldn't protect me. And I had learned how to deal with the way that he beat me. Right down to a minute where I'm like, okay, it's going to last like a minute longer than he gets tired, you know. And I think that something just clicked. that, okay, I'm either going to sit here and watch him hurt my mom and just be a told jerk,

or I'm going to stand it to him. And at that point, I realize, dude, I can take the pain, which is kind of a sad thing to think about, a 15-year-old girl. But for me, like, it was worth it for me to stand up to him to defend my mom at this point. So I walk outside, comes rolling up, and he jumps out of his van. He says, you bitch. How dare you did it?

And I stand right in between him and my mom. I say, you don't ever call my mom a bitch. And it was just fire in his eyes. And he picks me up. And I was pretty little in high school. But he picks me up, throws me in the house. And he jumps on me. He starts wailing on me.

And my mom's crying. And then he leaves and goes and coaches kids, which is, you know, that's terrible in itself. But I remember I got up, I looked at my mom and I was upset. I was upset that after all these, you know, after all these. years like she could she still couldn't help me and I tried to defend her and so I get on my bike and I just ride I just leave for like two hours and my mom's calling all over town trying you know trying to find me and um I eventually come back and and I say it and I'm like what

why didn't why don't you leave him you know why have you stayed with him for you know for all these years and and her her response was just you know i've nowhere to go i don't have you know i don't work and and she was really sick so those next two years um really difficult because there's a lot of tension of course in our home and then my mom's dying and my dad still wasn't really um even patient with her even up until the day that she passed away and for me i could not wrap my mind around the fact that God was going to take my mom and not my dad. Because in my mind, and in a perfect world, if you're really good and you dot all your eyes and you cross your T's and you're a high achiever, well, things are just supposed to work out. If you work really

hard, then you should get what you deserve, right? And hard work means that you deserve to succeed. You deserve to have the things that you want. But that actually isn't true at all. A lot of hard work and a lot of trying. There's a lot of speed bumps and a lot of pain along the way. And I learned that really young. And so, and I know you'd watch the Billy Yang documentary,

but this is like a few months apart. I was playing one of my last soccer games. It was my junior year, and it was a rainy day, and my mom loved the rain. And she was always out at all of my soccer games. And this one I knew she wouldn't be at, because she was really sick.

this is probably like 10, 11 weeks before she passed away. And I'm going down the soccer field with the ball. I was like on a breakaway. So I was by myself. And I didn't see it around the sidelines the whole entire game. But as I got closer to the goal, I see this figure that looks like my mom standing in the corner of the field underneath an umbrella and just this gaunt weak form. And it just took me back. I took a shot.

It went flying over the goal. and I run over to her. I'm like, what are you doing out here? She's like, I just want to see, you know, I want to see you play. And, you know, I'm trying to feel. How did you get here who dropped you off? And of course, now as a mom, I look back. And I'm like, yeah, she wanted to see me play one, you know, one last time, one more time to encourage me. But it's like she should have been in bed. But that moment has stayed with me so vividly for my entire life. Because when I think of courage, when I think of courage, when I, I think of people that are strong. I think of that. You know, someone who's feeling physical pain and beaten down. Someone who knows that she's leaving her five children behind in a very unideal situation and being so supportive and wanting to remind me like, you're worth it. You know, I'm going to stand in the rain for you.

And then three months later, it was my 17th birthday. And she sat in her little wheelchair and she got me like a little yellow candle, yellow picture frame. I think it was like a little yellow clock. And growing up, she had always called me Sunshine. So despite my home life that what everyone had gone on at home, a lot of people also knew me as this really happy kid. So I was really well loved at school. My teachers loved me.

They always talked about what a happy kid Sally was. And that nickname of Sunshine is where that came from. So it was Little Bear in Sunshine. Those are her names for me. Was it actual happiness? or was it a front that you put on? I think it was definitely a mix of both. Being at school is such a safe place for me.

I loved being at school and I really loved people. And I loved excelling. Like I was good at every, I was good in school academically. I was a great athlete. Like anything that I did at school. So I felt like I was kind of in this world where I was loved and appreciated because I did everything good.

and I knew it made my mom really proud. And that was also a way that I was trying to make my dad proud too. But the joy so often, it did come from my mom because, you know, my dad was gone a lot working. And so it was just like always like a storm in our house. If he was gone, it was safe. But as soon as you heard that van drive up, it was not a safe place anymore. You have a relationship with your dad anymore? No.

The last time I saw him was my brother's wedding back in 2015. And I had not seen him. The last time I had seen him was in 2008. So I've seen him twice in the last like 14 years. And it's really important that I share this too because, and this might have to be like another podcast, but there's been just a long journey of me realizing that despite the violent and painful childhood that I had,

I knew that in order for me to heal, I needed to forgive him, whether he ever says he's sorry or not. I think that pain can sometimes breed bitterness and bitterness hardness, and it comes out of every part of your being and all your relationships and who you are as a person, person, whether you want it to or not. And I just, I, I didn't want that. Um, like six weeks after my mom

died, my dad was diagnosed with this massive brain tumor. And there weren't a lot of people to take care of them. So I remember when, and it was, it's like only one million people get this type of brain tumor. So they cut his head open from ear to ear. They opened up his head. They put these bolts in it. And they sewed his head back up and the bolts would just stick out. And then he would go in every week to the hospital and they'd hook his head up to this semi-truck to try and radiate out this tumor. And so at, um, when I went to go and pick him up, I remember it was like slow motion, like coming through the door into the recovery room and the nurse just being like, all right, so this is what you're going to do. You got to make sure his head doesn't

heal up over the bolts. So you got to pull the head. Make sure you pull the head away every day. and this is how you give a shot. And I just, it was just slow motion thinking about, I'm looking at this man who used to hurt me and he needs me. It's like this reversal, you know, this, but in every way, just everything that kind of defines human life, you know, like the pain and the sadness and the struggle and the fact that we are all capable of making really bad decisions.

we're all capable of hurting each other. And I prayed right then and there. I was like, God, yeah, got to give me strength to love him because I hate him. I hate him so much. I hate that you took my mom and that you left me with him. I hate that he needs me right now. I hate that he's sick.

You know, there's just, and as a teenager, like, trying to process all of that. You know, I've just buried my mom and I got to take care of this guy. Yeah, I was really heavy. But I believe he had some mental illness too throughout and probably still does. So I'm the only one in my family that's married with kids. Actually, my brother just, I haven't seen him in a while. He's in France.

He actually just got married. But I found that the first few years of my marriage and having my kids, I really, really tried again to have a relationship with him and it was just really toxic and unhealthy and I would kind of break down and I realize sometimes you have to come to a point in your journey where it's okay to let people go but you also got to check your heart and for me that's what it was. I was like I have to be honest with myself and say yes like I love him and I hope the best for him. I don't hope bad things for his life. I don't want his life to be terrible.

And I forgive him. I have to forgive him. I feel like that's my responsibility as a human. But now I'm going to go this way. And that's really hard. You know, that's really hard not having my mom, not having a dad. I've never really had a true father figure in my life.

But that has been the healthiest thing for my family, especially as a mom. to be 100% there for my kids and to be a good wife. I needed to let go of something that was so toxic and gross and damaging. You know, I'll always have to deal with those scars. Always have to deal sometimes, especially in the weak times in my life. I have some of those demons still come back, you know. And then I have to re-center myself and realize, no, that's just the brokenness of man.

You know, we're imperfect and we hurt each other. but we don't have to become, you know, someone else's bad choices. We don't have to, I didn't, I think for a long time I wore everything that he called me. I wore everything and believed everything that he believed me to be. And that was not a good place for me. And learning to grow from that and realize, like, no, I'm so much more than that. Like, that's, I'm not who he says I am. So I feel like we've strayed so much.

from the Yellow Runner thing, I'm sorry. No, that was, that was amazing. It sounds like you had, you were forced to grow up very quickly. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's, it's really easy. It's the easy option to hate, to criticize. It's hard to forgive. It's hard to look at a negative situation as positive.

And as you were telling that story of your mom, It made me think of a story of mine where it's interesting where some people are dealt with the worst cards, but had the best attitude towards it. And I remember the last, I was the same way where I didn't think, you know, I was told my mom had stage four of a variant cancer. To me, I said, my mom will fight this. It's my mom. Exactly.

Like, Mom, you're going to be in Texas in three months hanging out with us. And it wasn't until the last week where I realized, okay, this is not, this is not going the way I thought it was going to go. And we went to visit my mom when she was in the ICU. And when she was in there, they ended up pulling out her breathing tube. And the first like three days while she was in the ICU, I flew from Texas to Pennsylvania to see her. We had to talk back and forth through a notepad because she had a breathing tube in.

they ripped the breathing tube out on like a whim. They're like, we can take it out now. Ripped it out. The first thing she did, she looked at my dad and said, how have you been? Like, mom, you just got a breathing tube ripped down to your throat. You're asking, dad's fine. Dad's going to be okay. Let's focus on you.

But it was just the most selfless, one of the most selfless things I've ever experienced. and it's very interesting that, you know, your mom called you this sunshine. And before we started recording, I talked about how the world is a dark place. Like it sounds like your home, your house, your dad, it was, you were in this dark place. And what was the light was, was you, right? Like, if you look at that, there has to be a light in darkness. and what happens when you go into a dark room and you turn on the light or the sunshine walks in, everyone that's sitting in the dark is going to point their eyes on the light.

And they say, turn it off. We want it to be dark. Get out of here. But you got to keep shining, right? You got to drive through with that shine. And I think that's super powerful. So with all of the pain, the loss, the struggle, do you think that when you found, like sports and you continued sports and that competitive nature.

Was that still this feeling to please your dad? Or was it something that you actually fell in love with? It was an escape. Was fitness an escape early on and then when you went to college? Or how did that play a role in your life? Yeah, that's really powerful. And I'll even be able to touch on a not my favorite article that is floating around the internet that...

Oh, we're going to squish it. Oh, we're going to, we're going to squish it. Because I literally, like, called the writer and I was like, how could you actually turn my story into that? Like, that's so cheap, dude. But that's part of the industry, right? Like, journalists don't always tell the story right. This is why podcasting is so awesome. You could tell your own story.

You know, the whole thing with Yellow Runner, the reason why I even chose that name was one, because I actually kind of liked that it was, like, my name isn't in there. And sometimes when I put stuff out, even it's stuff that I write. I sign it, Yellow Runner. The whole idea behind it is when my mom passed away so much of my dreams, I realized passed away with her. Because like what we were sharing earlier, your life kind of takes a shift. Like when you go out in your early runs and you think about, oh my gosh, like life is so short. Like this is crazy. Like it makes you ask yourself, what am I doing with my life?

What am I doing that's meaningful? but also when you have to sit next to somebody and you watch them take their last breath, there's no, no one can prepare you for that. That feeling that you feel, you will remember one for the rest of your life, but there's no amount of preparation for what that is to lose something right in front of you, to see life taken away and realize that's never, ever coming back. Like, it's done. It's in front of me and it's done. And when I was 17, I sat at her, at the foot of her.

her wheelchair. She's telling me this. And it was such urgency as Sally, I don't want you to be bitter when I'm gone. And I knew that part of her was talking about my dad. I knew a part of her was like, please, just don't stop being who you are. Don't stop going after your goals. Don't stop being Sally. Like, just keep shining Sally who you are. And it was just like this mother's heart of, I can't watch you graduate from college. I can't watch you give birth to your first child. I can't meet your husband. Like there's all these things that we as mothers, like we live. long for. Like when you tell me that your mom said, you know, how are you doing? I mean, that's such a mom, right? Like, we're just like, we want to care and nurture and it's just like

in us. And I feel like my mom was, she was the same way. She wasn't thinking about, oh, my gosh, this torturous cancer and how painful it is. It was how you need to understand the most important thing is that you don't forget who you are. That everything in life, it boils down to this. we are all going to die. So what we do in life actually does matter. And the choices we make, they matter. So choosing Yellow Runner was really a tribute to her, but also a message to anyone that follows me

that we all have a light. And when it's gone, it's gone forever. Because there's only one of us, there will never be anybody ever again that's exactly like us, thinks the way that we do, that relives everything the way we do, the feeling, everything.

and that's so precious, it's so valuable. And so that idea of the running then was a tribute to her that, okay, I'm going to run and I want to shine my running, but it's not, even though I get this opportunity to compete and run professionally, and yet I'm very competitive, I love to compete ever since I was little. But this idea of like, but man, if it's all just for a bunch of a pile of metal, like, I'm missing out on why I'm actually running. See, running to me is like one of the most beautiful metaphors to life because nobody teaches

us to run. You know, it was the most natural progression to our maturity. You know, you first learn to walk and then pretty soon you just learn to walk a little bit faster in you're running. I didn't need a coach to teach me how to do that. But the cool thing about running too is it challenges you. It makes you feel your body pushing against gravity and then you're slamming it down back onto earth and to hear your lungs working so hard to move your body. And when you're not in shape

or you're injured, you feel that. You have to feel the ache and the pain that comes with that. And then to run and like push yourself up a mountain and to feel that even when you are strong, that it's still hard and that it humbles you. I mean, the metaphor of running and life is such a beautiful way to communicate with people. That's why I chose that name. It's like this, yeah, it isn't about me and like these cool things that I've been able to do, these opportunities and these gifts around because at the end of the day, it's all curated. You know, even when we talk about challenging runs or like the pain that we feel in a run, no, no, no, I signed up for that $300 registration form in any suffering or pain that's in it. That's curated. That's planned. That was an opportunity that I got to push myself. And but what's real pain? Oh my gosh. Like the real pain in life? The real, like, struggle in life, it's not standing at the start line of a hundred mile race. It's not, it's not running in bad water through the desert in 130 degree heat.

That's not pain and suffering. And I think that you can relate to this in so many way having served our country, having signed up to lay down your life for our country and for other people. Thank you, by the way. I haven't told you thank you yet. And to lose people, that, that is, that's a real struggle. That's real pain. And so I love that I've been given this gift and this opportunity to run all over the world.

But if I ever think for a minute that it's all about me or winning, then I've totally missed out on even why I'm here. And I know my mom was a woman of faith and she loved her children. And for us to live a life that was meaningful, that to know that what we're doing day in and day out, it needs to be something that is more than us. You know, like I wanted my running to be more than just about me. And so this idea of encouraging other people to be courageous

to remember who you are. It's your journey. Like, you are a light. We all are. And I think that that's probably the most fulfilling part of my career. and just the path that I've been on. But when my mom died, I didn't want to play soccer anymore. And I was on this, like, the club team that I was on was a nationally, it wasn't the national team, but it was a national level, like the level that we were on.

So we had scouts from all over the place. I mean, I was getting letters all the time. It was at the pinnacle of, like, this is what I dreamed of. Like, this is what I worked for. I mean, I told you earlier, I was working two jobs by the time I was. 15, I would close up the coffee house at 10 o'clock at night on a school night. And I would go to the gym for two hours and I'd train because I had this dream and I was so intent on the fact that I wasn't given handouts. I mean, I bought my cleats from the thrift store. I didn't have a

personal trainer, but I could pay for a gym and I could outwork anyone. And that was that was the dream journey for me. And I really believed, like, I was, like, I was. like if I work this hard, I've earned all this. Like, I'm going to get it. But when my mom passed away, what it really made me do was understand like, is all that worth it? When she was gone, it made me realize how empty that goal was for me. And I, from that point on, was on a really long journey of understanding what sport was in my life. And I know we all use, we use different things for therapy, right? There's some good therapeutic things. And then there's some really dangerous, you know, with drugs, alcohol, we can really get wrapped up in when life doesn't go our way.

But for me, I was just sad. I was so sad. I didn't want to play soccer anymore. And then I had this burden to take care of my younger two siblings. My old two siblings kind of took off. I had this 12 months of complete hell. It was six weeks after my mom died. My dad got this brain tumor.

Two months later, my grandpa died. and then a few weeks after I turned 18, I was the lead in the school play. I was singing up on the stage. There's 100 people in the cast. And we're doing the dress rehearsal. And all of a sudden, the director stops. She stops me as I'm singing.

She says, Sally, I need you to pause just for a second. And a few of my friends who were sitting down in the chairs, they're like, Sally's not your dad out there? And I look out the window. and I see my dad walking between two cops. It's handcuffed. They'd arrested my dad on campus in front of everyone. No one knew my story. No one knew any part of my life. But he had kicked my sister in the face and she had a bruise and, you know, my little sister didn't realize that if she confided in a teacher at school that, you know, they needed to take action. So it had, it had been a year since my mom passed away. Well, it arrested my dad in front of everybody on school campus. And then the they very quickly took my two younger sisters away to a group home. They were then in foster care for nine months. They made me the guardian, but I had to sign these papers, and they said, how old you is like 18? They're like, all right, we'll be on your way. And I drove home and my mom's

broken down, 1979, Ford Fairmont wagon. And I walked through the house, left the door open. I remember this so vividly. And I had my school backpack, threw it on the ground, and I just fell to my face and just cried and cried for, I think I cried myself to sleep because what I realized in that moment, it was like, this is not, this is not the way it's supposed to be. I've had everything taken away from me. My mom's God. My dad's in jail. My sisters are gone. My older siblings are gone. My two sisters are in foster care. This is not really like a bright and happy life. How am I not supposed to be bitter when everything has been taken away from me? So, yeah, sport at that time, I mean, I felt like I was 40 years old, you know, when I was 17.

I felt like I had to grow up so fast. And I felt so alone. I mean, what friend did I have that had experienced? What I didn't even have any friends that worked? I mean, all my friends went shopping at the mall on the weekend. I was working at Togo's sandwich shop. I always felt like pepperchinis and mustard on the weekends, you know? My life was just so different. And so I stopped playing club. I finished up at high school. And then a school friend, well, or my mom's friend came up to me and was like, your mom would be so sad if she knew that you threw all of that away.

And she literally took me by the hand to local schools in the area. And she's like, you have to go to school. And I was like, everyone's already given away their scholarships. Like, everyone's already committed. Like, I'm just going to work. And I got to figure out what's going on with my sisters. And she's like, no, you can't do that. So we walked on to the campus at Biola University.

and the coach says, we know who you are, we want you to play for us, and half the girls on the team are willing to get part of their scholarship if you'll come and play for us. And that just, that was a point, too, that changed my whole life because I'm like, these girls worked so hard. Like, why would, I'm a stranger to them, and they're giving up something they worked for so that I would be here. Did they know your story?

No. A lot of people didn't know. I kept that. See, in this part, too, I, I, one of the things I'm not very proud of is, although it was really nice hearing me say up until a week before your mom passed away, you're like, okay, now I have to believe this is real. But I didn't believe my mom was going to go. But one of the most saddest parts about my growing up was I believe that crying was weakness.

And so I never, ever cried. It was really rare when I did. And when my mom told us that she was diagnosed with also stage four cancer, and never cried, ever. And a month before she passed away, she had me sit next. to her and she asked me point blank like you've I've not seen you cry once you know I'm this is it Sally like I'm going and I was like no you're not I was just so like you're not though like you're supposed to be here this is not how the story is supposed to end like that no you're because you're just

stop talking that way and she was so sick I mean it was crazy how sick she was and very apparently on her way out um so I was a pretty tough a tough kid And I, you know, crying was not something I did. And I think that ever showing that was just for me a sign of weakness. I was pretty hard. But then I also had like this soft side of me that I would show at school and this happy kid. And I feel like being hard was a point of survival for me. So I had to be tough.

And I was very protective. The older I got was really protective of my siblings. So if they did something wrong, sometimes I would say that I did it. because I knew that I could endure a little bit better than they could. It was a really demented pathway that I understood growing up. In fact, the first few years that my husband and I were married, I went and saw a counselor on my own. He says, Sally, he's like, I'm just trying to understand how you relate to the world.

He's like, if you were to be in a car accident, like a really bad car accident, the car was flipped upside down. And you're laying there and you're waiting for the ambulance to come. you're waiting for someone to come, help you. And you look over it and you see a 76 gas station like 50 feet away. And you just focus on that. You're just focusing on it. Pretty soon the ambulance comes.

And you remember that, that 76 gas station. He's like, no, tell me something. He's like, a year later you go driving in the same neighborhood and you see that 76 gas station. What do you think? Like, what do you feel? What are you feeling in that moment? He's like, is it just all those feelings of like that pain and that agonement? of waiting for the paramedics to come and you're in this you're in pain upside down in the car

your car smash like that scary frightening and i look at my side i don't feel anything because the thing is is that that thing that hurt me so bad i'll never let it get to me again i'll never let it affect me because i'm tough like that and he was like i just did there and stared at me he's like all right so that coping mechanism is super powerful for so certain parts of your life. He's like, I now understand why you've been able to do what you can do and why you are where you are. He's like, because honestly, textbook tells me you should be in a gut or somewhere. He's like, but it's terrible for relationships. It's terrible for relating and connecting with people in the world. He's like, it's okay to feel that. It's okay to

to drive past that and be like, man, that was really painful. That was really scary, but I overcame it and here I am today. See, I grew up with like, you just don't feel anything and knowing like, okay, he's coming down the hall with a belt or he's dragging me by my hair down the hallway. Like, I know it's going to come. And I just learned how to endure it. And I learned how to get harder and tougher and greater. And it was just a point of survival for me. So I didn't share a lot of that story with people. In fact, when I started college and I met my husband like the first week because he was a soccer player too. He didn't know anything about me. In fact, it was like six months before he actually learned anything about me. He was really upset. Like, why don't you share any of

that? I can't believe you'd keep all this. And I was like, one, I don't ever want people to feel sorry for me. I'm not just this, I don't want to be coddled. I don't want people to walk on eggshells around me. And I don't want people to ever think that I'm weak or that they have more than I do. Because I grew up so much in my life, always having less than my peers, always having work harder for everything. And so a lot of it was pride. I was really prideful. I don't want people to know or to think that I was weird because sometimes you hear about the kids that have lost a lot or come from abusive homes and you're like, dude, they're jacked up. Those are like the screwed up kids. And that's kind of how I even chose my major. I got into communication studies. That's what I love

studying people in the way that they thought and communicated. And I did everything I possibly could to not be that textbook girl. And I didn't want people to know me that way. So when I started on the soccer team, it was a great gift, but it was the beginning of me really understanding how sport in itself is it can transform a life, right? It can keep us connected. Like being a part of team is incredible.

When we feel fit and we're training our bodies, that in it of itself, what that does to us just chemically. is really healthy. But as far as just, you know, as far as running went at night in college, and I always had a hard time sleeping, I only sleep three or four hours because I was taking 18 units. I was the captain of the soccer team and I was still working two jobs. And, you know, I would sometimes go and run at night like at midnight. And I would just cry because I think a part of it was I just felt so, I still felt so alone. You didn't meet anybody with my life story. and I would run and I would pray and I would ask those questions like God like why the hell did you put me here?

Like nothing makes sense like every single time I work super hard for something you take it away you smash it in like the most painful way. And now I'm like going to a school. I didn't even want to go to this small private Christian school in La Mirada like this is like I wanted to go to the tar heels like I wanted to be a tar heel in North Carolina like this is not the way I planned it. And what I learned is that year after year, it was never the way that I planned it. And I would just fight against that. And I worked so hard to try to always get it back to the way that I plan. Always get it back to the way that I dreamt, the way that I thought it was supposed to be. And starting my freshman year in college, every summer I signed up for these like humanitarian, like, trips that this school would put on.

There would be like 10 or 12 them you could sign up for. And so I signed up for one that went to Ukraine. And the whole trip was living in an orphanage. We lived in this orphanage for like six weeks. And it had been less than two years since my mom had passed away. And my mom loved kids. And she loved caring for people that were forgotten. So she loved orphans. And during Halloween and Christmas, she'd always take us to like the local convalescent home and we'd go trick-or-treating around the forgotten old people. And we'd seen Christmas carols, you know, and the convales. And the convales the convalescent homes, like her heart was always, like, you always be kind and remember those

that are forgotten. And so for me, naturally picking an orphanage was, I kind of, in some ways, felt close to my mom. And what was so powerful about that, which I didn't know, because when, you know, as Americans, you go to an orphanage where you know these people don't have anything. And so in my very prideful way, I'm like, okay, we're bringing over clothes, bringing over toys, like we're the saviors, we're the heroes, like this can be great, like we're going to change their lives. And it was like so opposite because we came in and one of the first things we did was we threw a giant birthday party for all these kids. We're over 100 kids. And we're going to do balloons. All the kids are going to eat a gift. And so, and we had our translators with us. And we started

seeing happy birthday. And then we'd say January and all the kids at the January birthday, we wanted them to come up and we wanted to celebrate them and give them a present. We said January. no kids came up. February, no kids came up. And as we went through each month, we just, more of our kids are just crying. And I look over the transit, I'm like, what is going on? They're like, none of them know their birthday. Nobody's ever celebrated their birthday. These kids aren't remembered. They're not seen. And it just hit me in that moment. I'm like, I got to have the most incredible mom for 17 years. And she made every birthday, every holiday, such a big deal, just like your mom. And that's a gift that I'll never ever forget. But what that did for me

as a human, just even like my development, feeling every year that I was special, that I was seen, that I was known. I mean, when it comes down to it, I think that every human longs for that. We want to be known. We want to be seen. We want to know that our life has purpose and meaning. And I've got these hundred kids in this room in front of me. No one's ever told them that before. And so between soccer and then going on these trips, and I did these trips every year, I went to, one of my favorite ones was going to Poolsmore prison in South Africa. We did like a trip. I was on this soccer team. I was actually the only girl on this men's soccer team. We traveled around and we would go into these homeless shelters and we'd go into prisons and we would bring soccer clinics as a way to communicate with the people. And when I was in Ukraine, when the orphans would have their two hour nap time, I would go and I'd run around the city to just explore it. And whenever I'd see a soccer game going on in a school year, I'd just like hop in and play.

And I was like, it's so cool. Like I don't speak Ukrainian, but I can speak to them through soccer. And so every year in the summer, that's what I would do. And I realize, soccer is like this universal language. Like it is so it's one of the most popular sports in the world and like I can just go drop a ball anywhere and people are going to come out and play like they love this and I can connect with them. And so my final trip was to that South Africa one. And when I signed up for it, I didn't know until I arrived that I was the only girl on the team. And it was in 19, no, it was 2001 right after the apartheid.

So women were just then allowed to play soccer. They had just started a women's league. So I come up with these men. It was made of college, semi-pro, and professional soccer players. And we had come from all over the world. And we would play against these men's teams. And I was scoring goals. But all these women would come out.

Like, who is this girl playing with men? Like, who, what is she doing? And the guys would go into the locker room. And I would go into my locker room by myself. But I'd come out and there'd be crowds of women. And they gave us these little player cards that people, you know, we could sign her autograph. And I'd give out my player cards.

but the stories, the things that these women wanted to talk about had nothing to do with me and soccer. You know, you take a couple minutes and you listen and these women are telling you about how they're trying to, you know, feed their five kids at home and there's not a dad around. And, you know, and then we would go and visit in the prison, Pultzmore Prison, which is one of the most dangerous prisons in the world. And these guys are locked up for 23 hours a day. They can only come out for an hour at a time. And we did a soccer clinic for these guys. I mean, all these guys have tattoos, you know, all over their face, like some of the scariest guys I've ever seen my life. But then you break it down and you talk to them and you're like, wow, you're in here for 10 years

because you stole food for your family. Like that's crazy. It's crazy that the rules here would put you in jail for this long. But then again, looking back on all that, it's like, wow, soccer was just the way that I was able to reach people. And also a way that I was able to gain a whole new worldview on life and all its ache and all its pain and all its loss and realize I'm not alone. Like the stuff that I've gone through is nothing compared to these orphans. I remember these two sisters tell me how their dad had chased them with an axe for two days and they were found hiding in a field and that's why they lived in an orphanage and kids had never even known, you know, their parents and the abuse that some of these kids had taken and then going into

very impoverished areas where people are living in cardboard and mud and realizing like even though I have experienced loss and abuse, that brokenness that I've always been able, that I've always tried to hide is one of the most powerful connecting points that I have. Because I can go and sit with somebody who is hurting because of loss or because of abuse or whatever it might be or just feels so alone, I can say, I understand. You know, I'm right there with you. One of my favorite quotes is by Ruth Stoll. It's a loaf can feed a little lab, but when broken in a pieces can feed a multitude. And I think sometimes we're afraid to call ourselves broken. But it's realizing like being broken is like being part of like a beautiful stained class window. You know,

a stained glass window when you look at it from a hillside. I mean, if you ever ever been able to travel, Europe, some of the most beautiful stained glass windows and cathedrals and churches. I mean, it's a work of art, it's beauty, but a piece of glass all by itself is nothing. But when you put it together, all the colors and what it creates is amazing. And I think those years in college, that healing that I went through is like, yeah, you're not like a broken loss, nothing. You're part of this, like, beautiful story. And you're supposed to use all that brokenness to reach people. You know, we're support, we're not, no human was meant to be an island, right? Like, I think that as humans, we want to be known, but the only one can be known is if we, if we connect. And this

idea of yellow runner being a light, like that at the end of the day it doesn't have anything to do with me. That's every person, you know, every, every person wants to be known. They want to know their life has meaning. And it doesn't mean that we have to have a big following in social media. You can be a light right in your home, right there in your neighborhood, wherever, you know, wherever you work. And I think about that for my mom. No one knew her. No one knew Diane Francis. Like there wasn't social media. And she was more of an introvert. She didn't have like tons of friends. But I always think about how much she impacted me. The most powerful thing about her wasn't like the things that she possessed. We didn't have a lot of things. I remember getting a roll of quarters

after she passed away that she had some rolls of quarters in her drawer. But it was how she made me feel and the words that she said and the way that she encouraged me. And I realize if she hadn't been that to me, if she hadn't said those things or written those things, I don't know if I'd be so bold as I am today. I don't know if I be where I am today. And even through her loss realizing that, like our losses and our pain and the ache in life,

it isn't for nothing. It's not in vain. It isn't the end of our life when we lose or when we fail or when we hurt. It's because there's something else ahead. And even though society is very self-focused, everything's about us right now, our stories are so much greater when they're meant for other people, when they're meant to be connected, when we're meant to be a stepping stool for somebody else. And that's like the best part. I almost think that, like hearing that, we think that there's beauty and perfection and we want to chase perfection. but the reality is that there's there's beauty and imperfection because imperfection is

vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities are relatabilities and perfection is not relatable to anyone like no one can relate to perfection people want to chase it they want to achieve it but how do you actually connect with people it's sharing vulnerabilities and the more I think about whether you ever intended Yellow Runner to be this or not. It almost feels like the way you're describing this, your mom was Yellow Runner,

and she handed that off to you. And Yellow Runner is this this name for you as a guide. Like a light is a guide, right? And a guide takes people to where they need to be. It helps

them get from point A to point B. Yellow Runner, this name that you operate under, you are the guide for people to relate to, due vulnerabilities to reach these new levels of full potential, whether fitness, personal, life, family, whatever, I think it's

so much deeper and larger than just running. It is literally this guide to this is what I've been through. It's been hard. It's been tough. But look what I'm going to go accomplish. Because I truly believe that what is hard is relative. So like you come across someone on the street,

their definition of hard is going to be harder than yours, which is going to be harder than mine. We all have these definitions of what is difficult and what is hard. Absolutely. And to try to compare. one another's quote unquote hard difficult pain suffering it's almost impossible and in some ways not fair and it's not fair no it's not because we all feel things differently as well but how do you allow that hard that pain that suffering that loss to impact you moving forward do you turn it into this

this grudge this hate this like criticism or do you turn it into all right I'm going to be this guide. I'm going to be this light. I'm going to be Yellow Runner. And for me, like, it all makes sense why you do what you do, why you are who you are. It all makes sense. Your, your story is literally taking you to this point of your life. Now you're just hard on seeing what the world has challenged you with.

For me, it's just like, it makes complete sense. So how at this point in your life now, you know, you're getting ready to graduate college, why did running continue to be a part of your life? Is it because you felt something during these runs? Is it because it reignited this difficult? Because I know for me, with each big challenge that I put myself through, whether fitness, business, personal,

that is now my new level standard of what is difficult. For you being younger, before you were 17 years old, you went through difficult. You went through like these hard, hard things. And I think for a lot of people, that's a challenge, you want to reengage that challenge.

You want to reengage that hard, that difficult, was running something that reignited that suffering that you strived for? I think running was always a very, and it is. So what it was then, what it is now, it was always one of the most peaceful activities. I think you and I talked about earlier how it's like your brain's always going. My brain's always going. And people ask me, often like don't you get bored and you run. I'm like, are you kidding me? I don't think, I can't remember last time I was ever bored in my life. I've never been bored before, which I'm really grateful for. And so when I run my, yeah, my brain is going 100 miles an hour,

but it's also where I experience so much peace because it's just me and my feet hitting the earth. It's me, especially the mountains. I have such a love for the mountain. My mom had a love for the mountains too, but last week I was running up Mount Baldy. There was no one up there. It's my favorite mountain to train on in Southern California. And, you know, when my mom passed away and I would run at night in college. And then after I graduated from college, I just started running because it was like my time to pray. It was like my time to think.

It wasn't, I don't think I ever, and I hear this a lot. It's like, especially when I first started. running ultras. People say, oh, ultra runners, they're always running from something. I was like, well, I think that every person at life, at some point in our journey, we do feel like we want to run away from like our life. We don't want to accept it. We don't want to accept where we are, what we're feeling, what has happened to us. And so there's always like some outlet. So yeah, some people find it in running. But for me, running has always been like this very peaceful place where I I feel all of who I am.

It's definitely not running away from something. It's accepting where I am. And it's feeling. And I think that's why I love running in the mountains so much because I never feel 100% strong when I run in the mountains. I feel all of my humanness. I feel the struggle. I feel that I can always get stronger.

And every time I hit the top of a mountain, it's this, this first couple minutes. I realize, even though I've been to the top of this Mount Baldy, so many times, it looks different every time I get up there. It's, and it's like such a precious gift to be able to climb up a mountain so tall. It's over 10,000 feet high. But to realize that moving my body and the hours that it took for me to get up there and all the things that I'm processing, all the things that I'm thinking about, all of that is just such a beautiful gift.

It's that one time in my day where I can just be me and just feel completely at peace with whatever it is that I'm going through, no matter how rough it is. So I think when I first started running, it was just this natural side of me where I was like, oh, I'm out of college. Like I'm not training. I've trained my entire life. Like my goal, my whole life, was to be a professional athlete. So first it was I wanted to go to the Olympics as a day.

gymnast so I tried that for a long time and then it was just all in soccer and like I am going to be a professional athlete so I don't even know what that's like to not train I like what is that so when I graduated from college I started teaching I was an English teacher my husband and I went and taught in China for five weeks and when we got there we didn't know that it was six days a week teaching 12 hours a day and I was like I'm going to go crazy so so that I don't go crazy I'm going to go run around this town every morning at 5 a.m. In China. In China. In Tianjin, China. So I would get up and I'd run around the town. And I have a pretty, a very vivid memory. So I'm always very comfortable exploring a new area

because I can just remember things. I'll pick out whatever and then I can find my way back no matter where I am. So I would just go explore. I'd run all over the place and then I would make friends with the lady that was selling these egg wrap things in the morning. That's how I ended my run. But my love for endurance running was just that. I can explore it. It can take me to new places. And then I always loved that feeling of just being fit. So when I came on from China, I was like, I'll sign it for a marathon. Why not? And so I signed up for a marathon that was like the one race that I did that entire year. It took me four and a half hours. I had bloody feet and blisters when I finished. I was like, that was awesome. And then I learned about the Boston

marathon. And I was like, oh, that's a race you have to qualify for? Okay, I'm totally qualifying for that. So I qualified for it in my second marathon. And then we moved to Washington, D.C. And I ran the Boston Marathon. And then I got pregnant with my daughter. And I ran like one more, I think I ran like one or two more marathons. And then that was it. So it wasn't like it was just me staying in shape. So I was still like going to the gym. I loved lifting. So I was always at the gym. I was always running. But marathons with all the people that knew me was like, that's really weird. You do that. Like, you're not a runner. Like, why are you doing that? But that also kind of fueled my fire too. I was like, oh, yeah, well, I am. Sounds familiar to me. Not putting myself in the same category

as you, but I'm just saying, I can relate to that. Yeah. When you say you're going to run a marathon and then people look at you and be like, but I thought you lift weights. Yeah. It's like, well, yeah, I'm going to do both. I'm going to do both. Yeah, that's pretty much what it was like. So then I had my son and at this point I really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. So I started my own fitness business and I would do these early morning fitness boot camps and I would take them on hikes and we'd do the mud run races and I'd teach them out of lift weights, all that stuff. And during that time I was still hopping in road races.

Nothing big. I'd do like one or two a year and I wasn't crazy like I wasn't like elite at all. And then one day I was just flipping through Runner's World magazine and I see this article about 100 mile races and I was like, what the heck? Like people do that? That's weird. And then my, and I've always been a curious person since the time I was little. I think a lot of things that I did, I was just spur by what if? Like, what if I try?

Why not? And I thought, that's really amazing that a human body can do that. I'd never even thought of that concept and that really excited me. And at that time, to remember being really intrigued even with triathlon, like Iron Man stuff, but I swim like a rock. And so I was always like so like amazed by people that could do Iron Man. So like, that's amazing. They can swim and ride a bike.

And so always being fascinated with sport and just the human body as a whole, I really believe on every level that we as humans are capable of so much more than we think we are. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for that. So that's why I signed up for one. Because I thought, okay, they're doing it. I didn't know that was possible. It's amazing the human body can do that. I want to do one.

Well, my kids were one and three at this time. And so I went to Eddie and I was like, so I really want to do this 50-mile or and he was like, oh, my gosh. But he wasn't surprised. And so I started training for it. And in April of 2010, I ran my first 50-mile race. And I loved it so much that a few weeks later in another 50-mile race. And the week after that, I did another 50-mile race.

and I did all these races and was by the end of the year, like, so injured. Oh, I bet. I did not know what I was doing. And everything at that time, like, everyone that I had interacted with, it felt like they were all racing all the time and running big miles all the time. And I, you know, the competitive juices really kicked in there too because I was, I was placing pretty well. And then just this idea that I was in the mountains.

So I'm on the trails and I'm running far and, oh, my gosh, I can't believe my body can this and I'm winning and okay I think I kind of want to keep doing this so it was more curiosity than anything and I think the the first few years so it took me three three and a half years before I did get really competitive and then I ended up getting signed by Nike in the very beginning of 2014 but I think what I realized in all of that training and just pushing my body was that I that dream of becoming a professional athlete, that love of just sport and pushing my body and training had never left me. It was always there. It's just that along that journey, I thought that at some point that it was all for nothing. And then I realized as I really started to train and

think, wait, maybe I can make, maybe I can make a living out of this. Maybe I could actually turn pro doing this. All of those years and years and years of training made sense to me. Everything that I had gone through, I was like, no, I know how to do this? And people are like, how can you be a good mom? And how can you do this? And how can you juggle doing this? I was like, I've been working two jobs and caring for people since I was a little girl. Like, I know how to do this. And I know how to run through the night. I spent a lot of sleepless nights. Like, everything about ultra running just kind of fit who I was. And it's funny looking back now to think, like, I really want to be a professional soccer player. But I was like, no, everything that. my journey in tales was setting me up to do this. Like this is actually what I'm supposed to be doing. People want to challenge what you're doing when it makes him uncomfortable. 100%. Could you imagine living your life not knowing, for me, I can't, but living your entire life, not knowing what your physical capabilities are as a person, like actually testing your body. What do you tell people when they say they can't relate to feeling the run?

Yeah. Because I was that type of a person for the longest time. When the military made us run, I found no joy in it. But I don't say I'm not running from anything when I go run. But I think I am eliminating distractions. The world is so noisy. Yes. And we're always distraction.

by something, I recently read this book called Deep Work. And it highlights and brings to life how distracted we actually are. Like, email, phone, conversations, sidebars. Like, there's always things going on. For me, what I found with running is it is the one time of my day where there's no distractions. Yes. And I can, like you said, I can feel every part of myself during that run. And I don't go into a run trying to think of something, but it will find me.

Yeah. You know, and for me, that is the deepest part of my day where I get to work on myself. Yes. And that's why I have to do it every morning. And my wife knows that I need my morning run because it just, it provides me this energy where I feel fueled. And I feel like I have something for the rest of the day. What do you tell people when they ask you, like, how do you do this?

Why aren't I feeling this? What should they feel? What do you respond to people like that? Well, I think two things. I really love that you shared that because whether you are running or you're walking or cycling or whatever it is, you have a quiet spot. I think the most powerful thing we can do is humans is to. start our day quiet. It's so hard to be still. It's very hard to be still. It's very hard,

I think, especially this day and age, to accept where we are, who we are, and be honest about what we're doing with our life and how we're perceiving the world around us. And really what it is that we are setting our mind on. So running for me, those are a lot of things that I think about the morning. So when you start your day with thinking about, okay, like, who am I? Like, what am I doing? What direction am I going in? Man, everything needs to align with that. It's like when you have a goal or a mission statement for a business, right? Like making decisions is, does that fit the mission statement? Does that fit our brand purpose? Okay. You can say no, no, no, no, no, no. So much stuff, it's so much easier to make decisions. When you fit, you stick to that mission statement.

you stick to that purpose of the company you're building. Well, it's the same thing for people. If you don't know who you are or what you're doing, if you haven't taken an honest look at maybe the mistakes that you've made or the laziness or the fact that you've been so distracted, if you're not going to take time in your day to be honest with yourself, who is? At what point are we going to stop and be honest with ourself?

Like, when you're honest to yourself, you then, then can start, then, you can then start your day and say, okay, I am going to work on this. I'm not going to do this. This is a distraction. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to focus on this. And I'm going to change this. It'll change your life. That's really powerful. So I think running when and I get this all the time. Running is painful. I hate it. I'll never do it. I'm not a runner. And then of course I also get kind of like the shrewd comments too like yeah, like I run but I'm not like you or I'd never do that or I'm not crazy. It's like, You don't have to compare. You know, you don't have to compare. This has, you don't have to be intimidated by me. At the end of the day, I'm, I'm not a ballerina. I have, like, so much respect. My mom was a dancer.

Like, she actually was, like, had talent. Like, she, like, could actually dance. Like, running is something that you just, you do. Any able body, just anyone can run. But to find the enthusiasm and the desire and the reason to do it, we tend to put pressure ourselves and we tend to compare it to what other people are doing

and I even see this in trail running it's like well I have to be on this epic mountain ridge in order to be a trail runner no you don't there's a lot of people live right in the city and the only time they can ever get on an incline is by putting the treadmill up to 6% and the only time they get to run on the trails

is in a race you can do whatever you want to do whatever pathway that you have for yourself you can do it But no one's forcing you to be a runner. No one's forcing you to love it. But I do believe that if you start with just walking, if you get out and you just walk and...

Without a phone. Without a phone. And you just challenge yourself to go start your day and watch the sunrise. I promise your day will be different. Go and be quiet. Yeah, leave your phone at home or leave it off in your pocket. If you need it for emergency, you have kids. I totally understand that.

and then why not try running? Well, maybe go out for 30 minutes and run for two of those minutes. You know, I think when it comes to the sport of running, I do believe it's something that everyone can do if they want to. It's like when people say, I could never run 100 miles. I never thought I could run 100 miles too. I didn't even know what existed. But when you set your mind on something

and you don't put all the pressures of not only comparing or putting weird times, time frames on things. Athletes contact me all the time. I ran my first marathon in four months. I want to run a 100. And then at the end of the year, I need to do a 200. Why do you need to do all that in such a close amount of time? Well, a lot of times because we're seeking validation and meaning. And, you know, when I first started this sport, people would say, well, you're not a true runner unless you're not a real ultra runner unless you run a hundred amount of race. Like, who said that? Who said that you had to run this amount or this fast or that distance to,

be a runner. Where are all these things come from? So that's the outside critics and the negativity. What if running was your own personal journey? And it actually took you a year to train for a 5K. Could you do that? If I challenge you to run a 5K in a year, you have 12 months to train for it, well, yeah, that just sounds too easy and that sounds stupid. To who? You know, the journey that we have in life, when I look back, I was like, dude, I got signed so much later in life. I mean, it really is, my story is very unheard of. Like, I had two children. and I was 33 years old. Like, that's nobody's story.

I mean, you look at most professional athletes across every single sport. They're not caring around those two things. But I think that what was so powerful for me that changed my life was I stopped thinking about how everyone else was doing it. I mean, you said this yourself when you were talking about building your business. We could do business the way everyone else is doing it. We could copy all these models. but when you build something that's your own and you find your own way, that's powerful. That's something that you can celebrate.

That's something you can own. And I think sometimes people forget how powerful their own story is. You know, and I've been able to share my story around the world for a long time. I've been given platforms so I could do that. And one of the things I always like to tell people is like, you don't need to have like this crazy, painful, like, psycho story to be meaningful. Because we see that a lot, right? And we even see it on social media.

People just like, pour it out. They'll dump it all out. And everyone's like, you're so inspiring. And it's, you're so amazing. And you're so strong. You're so this. But that isn't what makes us strong and inspiring just because you got through something hard. Because the reality is you never know where someone is on their journey.

Their hard days today might be preparing them for some of the most painful, horrific days, 10, 15 years down the road. And so, yeah, we can never judge people in their pain. We can never judge people at where their starting point is because everyone's story is so unique. And so when people come to me and they want to learn to run or they don't like running, but they want to find the motivation, I say, well, first we've got to start with you. We got to start with where you are today with what you have to work with and your own unique life. I remember talking to a mom, she had two special needs kids and her husband worked 60 hours a week.

is her time to run and navigating that going to look different from a girl that just graduated from college and still living with her parents? Absolutely. But there's something so incredible about that because when we continue to look to the left of the right, we're missing out on what's in front of us. We're missing out on what we are supposed to be doing. And that's living the story and telling a story that one bright light, right? What time of the day do you prefer to run? You have morning runner, day runner, night runner? It depends on the schedule of the day.

I love to start the day off with a run, but I can't really be a sunset run either. One of my favorite things to do is to be at the top of a mountain when the sunsetseting, which also means I got to descend the mountain in the dark. But I'm kind of all over the place. When my kids were babies, I ran a lot at night because that was the only time that they didn't need me was when they were in bed. I prefer to run in the dark. I also, my favorite runs are sunrise runs. You really can't beat a sunrise run.

It's something about, I feel like I'm waking up with the world. And it's the most peaceful thing for me where I start when it's dark. I'm watching the sun and if it's a beautiful sunrise, I'm just like, this is ideal. Yes. There's nothing better than this. And you wake up with the world and you start your day. And it's quiet. It is peaceful.

It's quiet. Like where I run as the sun's rising, I'm surrounding. There's deer everywhere. Oh, I love that. Do you run on trails or? It's like a combination of rodent trails, but our neighborhood has deer everywhere. For some reason, central Texas, there's just deer. And then you can go up and pet them.

It's crazy. That is crazy. But for me, it's like the most peaceful thing. I love it. It's quiet. In the winter, when it's cold, your heart rate's low, you're just in this rhythm, you're in this place. That is my favorite way to start a day.

That's my challenge to people of, you know, if you're not a runner and you go to run at 12 p.m. when it's 100 degrees now, you're probably going to, you're going to hate it. Find a time that fits, you know, and you can, I think everyone can fall in love with it, not necessarily for what it feels like, but for what it provides. So when you choose races now, why do you? Why do you race now? What is the reason you keep racing? What is the reason you keep chasing the next thing or you want to achieve the next bigger thing? Is it to leave a legacy of the yellow runner? Is it to be the guide? Is it personal? What is it? That's a good question because I've had the opportunity to race all over the world. And that really was a dream of mine since I was little. Like I wanted to travel.

I wanted to see the world. So I understand that running absolutely fulfilled that dream for me. In 2015, I is when I really started to get invited quite a bit to race. And it was really hard to turn races down. So I did have a few years where I maybe raced a little bit too much. How many races would you do a year during those years? There is a few times I did six or seven races in a year, which is a lot for ultras when you're running those longer distances. And if you actually want to be at 100%.

So I was racing a lot at like 70%. And my coach was always like, oh, Sally. But that showed me a lot about myself. It showed me a lot that I loved, I love competing. I think I'll always be a competitor in some way. I love to push myself. And, but I think for me, I would choose these races because there are places that I wanted to go. And I wanted to be immersed in the culture.

I wanted to. And I think, too, being so aware that no athlete is a professional athlete for the rest of their life, it's very quick. It's fleeting. Big names are big names for a couple years. And then there's someone new. There's, you know, new people are breaking records. And there's new athletes. athletes that everyone's talking about. And so I've also been very aware of not finding my identity

or my value as an athlete. But every year, I've been so grateful that people keep signing me and keep picking up new sponsors. And maybe that's partly because I came into the sport a little bit later. You know, I started endurance running a lot later. I didn't, you know, I have a lot of friends that are competitors. They competed in college and they, they did a lot after college, and I didn't. So I feel like my body has been able to handle a lot more even, you know, as the years have gone by. So for me, like this last year, you know, I did bad water and that, I chose that race because it was one of the first races that I learned about when it came to ultras. And it was so mysterious and weird and was really hard to find even information on it. And, you know, they don't

have spectator. There's just such a weird race. But it sounded entirely, almost almost impossible that I wanted to do it and I wanted to win it. And it was a very quiet goal of mine. And so that's Why, it chose that one. Was 2018 the first year he ran it? Yeah, 2018 was the first time I did it. You got seventh, seventh place, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was a rough, that was a rough performance.

Why so? You know, I think in 2018, it was like, you know, I'd been running profession for four or five years. So I think I had this idea that, like, dude, I'm dialed in. I know everything about my body. I know how to train. like I coached this too. Like I know what I'm doing. I've won a lot of races.

Like I just felt, um, a super prideful. And, but I showed up on the start line so fit and so sure that there is no one that trained harder than I did. I mean, that was my belief. And, um, all the recipes for me to be greatly humbled, which I was. And, you know, I, I, that year was the hottest in the history of bad water races. The race has been around for a really long time. Got up to like 128 degrees.

And I didn't get my, I think it was my electrolyte. Something was off in how I was ingesting my electrolytes. And so by mile 30, I had this really bad cramping in my adductors, which is, you know, that muscle doesn't really turn off. And so it was really hard to take a step without feeling it, without feeling like my leg was going to collapse. And I just endured that until the finish line, but I was really angry. I think one of the biggest things that I learned about myself was, you know, you can be totally fit, prepared, you can put all the training. And something small can, well, somewhat seemed small, can go wrong and can totally thwart your

race. But how I responded, you know, it took me a long time to get out of my bad attitudes. I think it took me like 20 miles to before I was like, all right, I need to first understand the fact that all the four crew members out here gave up four days to be in this crazy insane heat with me in the desert. Like they took vacation days, time away from their family to drive this car 135 miles all the way to Mount Whitney. So that recentered me really quick. But then as I moved along, I realized too, I know that with every setback in my life, everything that seems like a failure. every struggle, every challenge. I can learn something.

I can grow. And I know that one day I can come back and, you know, and try this again. But I think a piece of my pride, even after I finished that race, was just like, oh my gosh. Like I sacrifice so much. Like I gave so much of myself for this race, so much for the training. Like I thought this was going to be my year. And I failed miserably on every account. Like I didn't do anything I wanted to do.

And of course, and we were talking about this earlier, you get messages from people that are like, well, least you finished, you know, like I would love to get that. It's like, yeah, but that was, that's your goal. That wasn't my goal. And, and I didn't have the day that I really hoped to have, but what I did learn was that it was everything that I needed. And I think that's really important is, is athletes that we remember that, whether we're failing or we're succeeding, we have to. We have to. respond in the same way with gratitude and then okay how can I get better what do I need to change and so 2018 was um is what helped me this year have a different result so badwater 135 is deemed the toughest foot race in the world would you agree with that it's the toughest race that i've done um i can and and as far as races go i know some people would say the barclay but i don't think the Berkeley is a race. And that's not, I don't mean that in an offensive way at all. I mean, it's a very challenging event. But as far as like when you think of a run race that there is an actual start time, there's a course to follow. There's a finish line and the RD wants you to finish. Like when you

think of run races, um, Barclay isn't a race. It's, you know, you don't even, you don't, you don't even know like where you're going and you're looking for pages in a book. So, um, the squid games of Ultra marathons. Yeah, I just, and it's a challenge to be respected. I mean, I have friends that do it every year. So I have a lot of respect for the heart and the dedication that goes into training for that. So no looking down on that at all. But as far as running races go, the reason why I think this one, and I've done UTMB five times,

that race is difficult too, because you have to climb a lot at UTMB, but believe it or not, unless you do this race, you don't realize this. There's a lot of like fast running because you're running to the next like trail. So you're dropping into these villages and then you're running sometimes three, four miles to get over. So there's a lot of really fast running in that race and then a lot of heavy climbing. And you're passing through three countries and sometimes through several different types of weather. So I think, and I've struggled a lot even at that race. So to compare the two is really difficult to do.

I think it's hard to compare a lot of trail in ultra races. You know, people will say, well, how long does it take someone to do 50 miles? It's like, well, there's like 19 different variables that go into that. Are you running at 11,000 feet the whole time? Are you running on the road? Is it flat? Is it along the shoreline? Are you, you know, like, what's the weather like?

Could be huge variations. Yeah, what's the temperature? The thing about bad water. that I absolutely fell in love with that I just I made very personal for me was you you start at the lowest point in the United States. The original course goes to the top of Mount Whitney. So it's originally 146 miles. But you have to go through the belly of the desert, the place where the hottest temperatures have been recorded on the earth. And consequently, the RD chooses to do the race at the hottest time of the summer. So you make sure that it's nice and hot. You then

actually cross over three mountain passes. You're on the road, but there's a lot of climbing in that race. And the last 12 miles is 5,000 feet of climbing. And many times it's freezing because you're going up to Mount Whitney. You're going up to the eastern Sierra, which is just beautiful. It's one of my favorite mountain rages in the world. So this idea that it's a hundred 35 miles and you're going through so many different types of terrain and environments and the weather and all of them are extreme. It kind of messes with you mentally because on paper you're like, dude, it's just on road. Like I'm running 135 miles on road. I should be able to like crush this. But there's a lot of invisible variables that it doesn't matter how fit you are. It's going to humble you to

your knees and and you have to respect that. So yes, I think it's the the toughest race. Just for for that reason, it's what keeps me coming back to it because I don't think it's something that I'll ever be able to perfect. But this year when I was training for it, what I came to realize is I have to train for this so specifically to me. The way I trained in 2018 was totally different as to how I trained for it this year. What did you change? What was the biggest things? I think the biggest thing for me was studying. I feel like we, you know, we should always be students of our craft, right? Like the day that I think that I know everything or that I've learned everything there is to learn. I've stopped growing and I fear that. I don't ever want to

stop growing. I want to know that I can always always be better. And what I struggled with was, you know, the electrolyte, how much I could consume, what I could consume. That was really fascinating to me because when you talk with all the other people that are running this race, what they're doing is so different. I mean, you literally have people that they brought out like Kentucky fried chicken, pizza and sandwiches. And they were able to eat that the whole time. Like if I eat that, like, I'm losing it. Like there's no way I can even get a bite of that down. Is that for every race or is that just for bad water? Well, yeah. And I think for most ultras, I love talking food and what works for people because some people just have stronger bellies or they can take more what they're craving

or why it is. But bad water is so unique because, you know, you really have to dive in to understanding the science of what your body is doing in that kind of heat because it's next level. I think for all of us, we can relate to being hot. You can think of even like 100 degrees running in that. That's crazy. But then when you get up and do 115, 120, 125, like, where is that like on any day, on a normal day on the planet that you can just find that heat? And then try and push your body at a max effort for 135 miles in it.

Like that it just is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around. It's hard to train for. And so then what the athletes are doing is they're trying their best to be as fit as possible so they can endure. So one, it's like, I just need to be able to endure. So there's some athletes that are running over 200 miles a week just to train for that because they figure, well, if I can be super fit, then that is going to be a positive for me. But then you see even ones that train 200 miles a week, they don't even make it to mile 50 because they fall apart. You know, they're barfing or they don't even make it to the cutoff time. And so I really wanted to own that for myself.

And so a lot of, you know, especially on like my recovery days where I was doing lighter work, I would sit down and I'd open up YouTube and I would watch every type of scientific presentation on heat training that I could find. I would, you know, listen to these professors talk about these case studies of, okay, we put cyclists in a room for 90 minutes and, you know, or this is what the science. cells are doing and this is what the gut is doing and it was so fascinating to me. But the more that I did that over time when I realized was, yeah, that no one's really doing anything more than 90 minutes. Like a lot of these studies and what we're talking about, like it's a good starting point for me. So I need to do all these things. But who's the person studying 10, 15, 20, 25 hours, what a body, how a body can operate in that. And then that's when I really fell in love with the race.

I was like, I get to do that. I get to do all these experiments on me. And the reality is, is that even if a scientist studied me until the day that I died, they still wouldn't be able to tell me all the things about me and why I do what I do and why I operate the way that I do. And that is what made the journey so fascinating was I then started to chase temperatures. So I'd spend half the week, for like seven weeks, I spent half the week in the desert. And then I'd be back, at this time we were leaving up in Bend, Oregon.

then I'd be back home in Bend, Oregon, and I do a lot of studying in long runs and stuff, but then I get back in the heat. So I did that for seven weeks before the race. But what then I started to realize, too, and I had this whole log, so I'd write down what I could eat, what I could drink, how many calories, but I was really specific about the temperature. So I then started to learn, like, oh, I can consume so many more calories when it's 90 degrees. And then I'm still good at that many calories to like 100 degrees. but once I hit 115, oh my gosh, I can't. It's so hard for me to consume these things. So then I need to only take in this particular nutrition when it's 115.

So when it came time for the race, I told my crew, when you can, when you can find, and we put up like little thermometers on the car, but I was like, when you can, you know the temperature, yell it out to me because then I can do all the calculations in my brain and I can tell you what it is that I need at that time. and where I can push and like, oh, okay, if it's dropped this much, I know I can go, I can run at this pace. And I loved that. I thought that was just so fascinating because I also learned that I did things so wrong in 2018 and that I needed to fix that. And so bringing it back to 2021, I was like, oh my gosh, I can consume so many more calories. I can move so much faster. And then I just need

to switch this thing and alter that when the temperature gets really hot. And then I was, experimenting with gear and shoes and I was I was studying one of my favorite things to do is study Bedouins and desert dwellers and why they wear what they wear I mean they're living in that insane heat all the time but a lot of them are wearing the color black they're wearing dark blue and so then I started studying colors and fabrics and then I would test all that stuff out in the desert and it just became something really personal and exciting to me I I think it was, it's realizing to so few people get to run the race. And so there isn't going to be a lot of data out there.

There's not going to be a lot. There's not going to be like a guidebook on how to run the race. And they're going to tell you how to operate in the heat and talk to you about the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and all of that. But to move well, to move fast in that extreme exposed conditions, it still is very mysterious to me. I'm crossing the finish line this year. I still was like, oh my gosh, there's so much I have to work on. How many runners do bad water every year? They only lead in 100 a year.

100. Yeah. What did you find that your body could tolerate in terms of calories and sodium per hour? Yeah. So I actually, so I use spring because I can get down. And spring has so many different packets. I have different calories. So they're awesome sauce.

It was their apple one. And then there's strawberry one. The strawberry one, I think, only has 100 calories. the awesome sauce apple one. I think it's 160 or 180. It's 180. Yeah. And I loved that because it was so easy to get down. It was 180 calories a way. I personally, because I'm, I'm a bigger runner, I'm almost 150 pounds, 5'6, so I can consume more calories. I need more calories. I don't know how people do 100 calories an hour. I'm like, dude, I need like three or 400 calories an hour. But I got it down to like the minutes. It's like every 27.

minutes. I need like 15, 200 calories. But I was doing Vitargo. Are you familiar with that? Yep. So I did Vitargo. It's a starch. I did the naked one so that I couldn't taste it. And I would put that in my water bottles. So when it was super hot and I just, I didn't want anything and it was feeling sick and my belly was revolting, I would do Vitargo because I, you could barely taste it in water, but I was still able to get a whole bunch of calories and really high carbs too. I mean, it's really high carbs, high calories. And then the apple spring is really high calories. So I was getting in per hour like, oh my gosh, 180 carbs, I think. I need to go back to my data. But I'd get in about 350, 380 calories an hour. And the carbs were pretty.

high. What about sodium? So sodium, I was, so both of those things have sodium in them. So I would calculate the sodium in both of each scoop of a targo and then in the Apple Spring Energy. And then I would supplement it with noon. So I was doing noon tablets. And then I think I had as backups. I had salt tabs, but I tried to get in as much salt as I could in what I was drinking and then be really careful about how many salt tabs I was taking. So I think I would only do like one or two salt tabs an hour because there was so much in the other products that I was taking in as well. Do you find that when you eat salt tabs sometimes, it hurts your stomach?

So I've experimented over the years. There is, I think it might be salt stick. there's a couple really popular ones. One does hurt my stomach. Salt sticks hurt my stomach. Yeah, it might be that one. The one that I use is one that bad water gives everyone. They mail it to us and it's awesome. So that one I can take really well. What I did learn was that we need a lot more potassium and magnesium than a lot of those tablets have. And so doing the calculations on that was really, that was really crucial for me too. Yeah, I should, I should maybe whip that out. I should whip out all my data. I would love to see the nutrition because that's what I love the nutrition aspect of, of endurance sports.

Because when I first started endurance sports, I didn't understand the importance of fueling. So I wouldn't fuel at all. And then, dude, I was the same way. You just like, you hit this point where you bonk. And you don't know what it is. In the beginning, it was hard to understand. Like, I just thought I was weak and not well trained. Yep.

And then when I started actually fueling, I was like, oh, I can train forever as long as I just give, you give myself calories and sodium. Yep. And I have a pretty strong gut where I can handle a lot of calories. I don't get gastrointestinal distress. That's awesome. Which I'm fortunate about. Yeah, you are. But, um.

Not even at Leadville? I got like a little. Stomach pain at Leadville. Yeah, I mean, you were in altitude too. Sometimes people get it there. Altitude got, like, I felt, I felt sick. I couldn't breathe at altitude, but my stomach was fine. That's awesome.

But I was curious about that because it's one thing to consume calories and sodium at between 50 and 80 degrees, 100 and almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit trying to get, I mean, the last thing you probably want to do is put food in your mouth. Oh, yeah. And your body is going into survival mode at that point. So your body's working so hard to cool itself down. So it's pulling blood away and it's trying to protect your vital organs. It's not interested in digesting food. And so what you are eating, you start just to get nauseous. And I think at some point it's almost impossible to avoid heat exhaustion in that race because you're totally exposed the whole time. I unfortunately I had really bad intestines from mile 14 all the way to the end oh my gosh so that's why I was trying to consume so much too because I was losing everything throwing up no diarrhea oh really bad in 2021 this year when you won yeah so that's something I like to share is like I actually did physically probably felt worse this year but mentally I was in a different space about it than it was in 2018.

What was that? What was that space? This year it was, see, I've spent so much in my life saying, well, I'm tough enough. And I think sometimes when we tackling goals, tackling, you know, a race,

and I've been able to push myself pretty far thinking that, you know, I'm tough enough, I'm strong enough, I've been through a lot, like, this is nothing, and I think in 2018, that's how I was, and I was so angry that I couldn't, I couldn't make my muscles do what I wanted them to do. Like, you're kind of at the mercy. Muscle cramping and fatigue, like them just kind of bending the way that they want to and seizing up.

Like, I couldn't do anything about that. And it took me so long to get the legs, like, moving. But this year, I realized in my training, what fueled me was that what I felt in 2018. And I kept telling myself, I don't ever want to feel that way again. but what if I go back and I have that same day? Like, who am I? What am I going to do? So so much of my training was centered around mental training.

And so I put myself in situations that were not ideal. It wasn't like a masochistic way. I was like, I want to suffer. Like I need to find a way to suffer. But it was just kind of a gut check with myself of, all right, if I'm really struggling out there, I have two choices. That's ultimately always what it comes down to. I'm either going to quit or I'm just going to do the best with what I have and keep moving forward.

But my mindset doesn't have to be negative. I can actually choose to really struggle and experience and feel everything that I'm going through and stay positive and just do my best. Or I can complain and be upset and be angry and say, this just isn't my day and why does this always happen? I'm so over this. I don't want to do this anymore and then quit and then have that be the end of it. But I didn't like that. I didn't like that option. I didn't want that option.

And so in training, when training was tough, where I put myself, like there was a few times went out to Furnace Creek and it was over 120 degrees. And I remember sometimes being 15 minutes in the run and just massive headache, like goosebumps and thinking that I was just going to pass out. And for the record, I always had somebody with me when I was doing this. I did not do it by myself. But my husband would drive next me.

And it was just that good reminder of like, oh my gosh, like this is so hard. Like, I don't know how I'm not for this. But that was so specific to the training that I wanted to do. So then I would work through that. And you'd be like, are you okay? And I would get in the truck and I'd have to say, okay. So I will feel this on race day. I'm only out here for 20 minutes.

I've got to be out there for 135 miles. I have to figure out what to do. And so over the course of those seven weeks where I was really heavy into the desert training, I would talk to myself. And I would say, all right, so this is what you're going to do when this happens. And this is what you're going to think when this happens. And this is what you're going to tell yourself all the while, always focusing on the fact that I really wanted to win this race.

And ultimately, I think it was around mile, I don't know, probably like 25 and I was like 10 miles and I was losing everything it was so terrible but I remember telling myself like I'm just going to be the best at I'm going to be the best at literally and I'd like make myself laugh and then after I got over that I was like well I'm just going to be the best at feeling this I'm going to be the best at feeling that like I just made that my goal. I had all like these little, many goals, but I refused to let anything take my eyes off or be the reason for me not getting to that finish line first. And so I think, you know, like anything that we do, especially in endurance sports, our minds are so powerful. But what's

even more powerful is what you prepare for before you get to the start line. Tell yourself what you're going to do when everything falls apart because it will. And if you have that toolbox, if you have that plan of, okay, so when everything falls apart, this is what I'm going to say, this is what I'm going to do. These are actually just situations. It's not the end of the world. I did sign up for this. I came out here to push myself.

I came out here to reach my goal. I shouldn't be feeling sorry for myself. When things go wrong, here's what I'm going to do with this situation. Here's how I'm going to handle it. And it was just that every hour, every single hour. And I knew just from years of running ultras, every time. that I went to the bathroom. I was like, I just lost every single nutrient, every single thing that I put in my body.

All right, we need to eat it again so that I would like just grab food from my crew, get back on the course and start taking stuff in and all knowing like this is going to leave my body in like 30 minutes and I got to start all over again. But I didn't make the challenge bigger than my goal. And I didn't let the discomfort be more than what it was. but I was really adamant about being okay with feeling it, which was a really difficult pathway for me. And I even, when I shared my race recap after, I talked a lot about that. I talked a lot about it's okay to feel that things suck.

It's, it's okay to admit it. It's okay to realize that things hurt, that things ache. There's a reason why we were created with feelings. And I spent so much of my life trying to make myself not feel a lot of life and to think of how much that I missed out on or how that actually did help me in the long run. But what if I actually made myself feel everything that this life entailed, everything that I'm supposed to feel. And what if in this race that's the very thing that actually I look back on so many of my races where I've had a lot of struggle with my races. That's not the first one. I mean, even in that Western time film that you said that you watched, it's like,

I was so angry about my knee. I was like, are you joking me? Like, how does this even happen? But then it's realizing like everything is just how we respond to life and its challenges. And we're either going to do something about it or we're just going to walk away and we're going to quit. So for me, that's what I just felt like. That was the day that I was actually supposed to have. and it was just as physically uncomfortable as 2018,

but mentally I didn't want it to destroy me the way it did in 2018. And I wanted to feel it. And I want to encourage people that. Courage is still moving forward despite what you know is ahead of you. When you know that what is ahead of you sucks when it hurts, when it's going to be a challenge. when and that's absolutely talking about life right a courageous person still goes for despite it all but you don't have to be tough you can be weak and courageous at the same time and when I got to the finish line I mean I was limping I had kind of done something to my solace and so I limped all the way

up that last 5,000 climb and I teared up a couple times during it because I'd spent hundreds of miles running up and down that mountain because that was my favorite part as a mountain runner ending in the mountains. Like I wanted to finish strong. I wanted to be the strongest one up to the finish. And I remember thinking those those final two miles, man, all I wanted was a strong finish. Why can't I have like just a freaking strong finish? Like why can't my hard training? I dedicated myself in every single way. Why can't it end the way that I dreamed it to be like this triumphant badass? And I'm like, yeah, I don't think I've ever really been a badass in racing. but I've never been afraid to just keep moving forward.

I've never been afraid just to know that despite the ache and the pain that I know is there, I haven't been afraid to get to the finish line. And I remember really thinking about that this year. The week after that race, I was laying in bed so often with the Mark Pro on my legs and thinking about, like, no, like, that's so much a part of who I am is it's okay to be, to feel weak and to feel broken and to be incredibly courageous at the same time. And I think a lot of people need to know that

because I talk people all the time. They're like, well, I'm just not strong enough. I'm not brave enough. I'm not, you know, I don't have what it takes to do this and this. And it's like, you just have to be willing to keep going. And that in and of itself will change your life. I think strength and bravery to choice. Absolutely.

You choose it. It's 100% of choice. All these things that people want to do in life, all the things you've done in life is because of a choice. Growth is a choice. Challenge is a choice. We are faced with challenges in life that we don't get to choose, but we get to choose the outcome sometimes. We get to choose how we go about it. I've always heard the quote that if you don't like something, change it.

If you can't change it, change what you think about it. And if more people would just apply that to a lot more things, because what happens when you realize that you choose growth, you choose the challenges, you put the responsibility on yourself instead of taking that finger and pointing it on something or someone else. Yeah, that's powerful. And when you take responsibility and accountability for the things you do or don't do in life, then you realize, I mean, I've realized anything that I accomplish, any success that I reach, before I die, when I look back and I write down the things that I do that I'm proud of, that all comes down to me.

No one else. Like, I am responsible for what I do or fail to do. And is that, like, when you cross that finish line of bad water, was that the feeling that you felt was, this was like every step was a choice every every moment was a choice every hill every every every race like all these choices led me to this did you feel that when you cross the finish line yeah i i think the the main feeling was a sense of relief but also a dream that i had had and it was very quiet about for so long. I think when you, when you're on a journey where you feel like you're struggling so much, you also tend to take what you dream of, those goals and stuff, and they become so much more precious and quiet to you. And I think when it came to bad, there are so many things that I was doing with the race that I had dreamed of for so long,

that even with how I finish, I mean, not finishing as strong as I wanted to, I didn't finish as fast as I wanted to. You know, there's a lot of things that I was like, oh man, I didn't do this and this and this, but to cross that finish line first and realize, wow, I dreamed about this so long ago. And for whatever reason, I'm here right now experiencing what it is like to be the first one across the finish line. And, you know, a lot of people were so kind. They wrote in, right after that race you deserved that you trained so hard

like that was amazing it was incredible you deserved it and that's really hard for me to accept that's always been a hard a hard just that idea

that our hard work deserves for us to be champions it deserves for us to succeed when really it's like your hard work is actually it's the best part

of what you do you know being able to be the the the champion of a race or to get that pinnacle in your career like whatever that that goal is it's like it is amazing it's also so fleeting and as soon as you get it you're looking for something else to create you're looking for that journey again because that actually is the best part got i i've in my life there are so many times i worked so hard and i as a kid i wanted to believe that all my hard work is going to pay off and it didn't you know me and it write down to just who I was as a person and you know if I if I can just be obedient and be a good daughter and be a good

student and be a good teammate like all these I deserve that I should deserve all good things in life but when we look at life as a whole and the more that you travel and you sit and you you talk with people and you hear their stories you're like yeah that actually isn't how life happens. The best part of life is in the journey and how we respond to the people around us and the storms and the joys that are that are in our path. And then you get these little tiny moments, this little, you know, it's the chariot on top where, you know, you get to stand on a podium for a little bit and be known as being the first one across the finish line. I'll tell you what, my favorite thing about anything that I've done in running, it always involves my crew. It always

involves the training days. It involves the grind or or you know when you're training you hit that turning point you're training. You're like, whoa, I'm stronger. Oh my gosh. I'm faster. Like that's awesome. Like all those moments that that make up the journey, man, that that's the best part. So in some ways it was like this is the end of a really long journey. This this thing that I dreamed of for so long that I'm so grateful for. But also understanding it's just this other, little step, this little stepping stone in my journey that it's not over, that there's so much more ahead. And yeah, that excites me. I really like that about the word deserve because I'm sure every athlete that was running bad water deserved to win. But there's a difference between

deserved and earned. And I think sometimes people confuse those. They think they deserve something. They deserve a win. They deserve a promotion. They deserve a pay increase. Yes. But did they earn it? And when you earn it, I think that's when you're truly proud of it.

Absolutely. Well, Sally, this was epic. Honestly, we could keep talking. We could do like eight more episodes. My biggest takeaway from this, this. conversation that keeps going back to I don't think you even you didn't you didn't choose yellow runner it was just like it was given to you as this this guide and your life that things had happened to you from what I see like from my perspective growing up losing your mom

your experience with your father you know the heartache the struggle it built this layer of toughness and grit, a true grit, to appreciate and realize what you get is what you work for. And I believe in that fully. I really do it. I don't believe we deserve anything, but I believe we get what we earn. I love that. And you earned Batwater 135 in 2021.

So thanks for coming in today. It was epic. Thank you, Nick. We have to do another episode. We have to if people will have us. Because how long was this one? It's probably about a two-hour episode. I know.

It's pretty awesome. Well, thanks for coming in. I appreciate you. Thank you, Nick. Likewise. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to leave a review on iTunes or share. with Frank. It helps us to grow and reach more people and hopes changing lives with the Go One

More mindset. Head on over to bpnsups.com for all your health, performance, and nutrition needs. We offer a wide range of products to help you feel and perform at your highest level, built on quality, and proven by results without compromise.