The Rich Roll Podcast - Kara Goucher: Inside the Secret World of Elite Sport Doping, Abuse & Deception

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

This week, I am joined by Kara Goucher. She bravely shares her experiences as an athlete, including injuries, financial struggles, and her time with the Nike Oregon Project. We delve into the weight management pressures and ethical dilemmas she faced regarding doping practices. Kara also opens up about the emotional impact of being assaulted by her coach and the struggle to speak out about it. We also discuss the mistreatment of pregnant athletes by sponsors like Nike and the importance of advocating for clean sport and athlete welfare. Throughout our conversation, Kara emphasizes the importance of standing up for what’s right, even if it comes at a personal cost. Her story is inspiring and highlights the need for change in the sports industry and beyond. This is a powerful discussion. I encourage everyone to listen to this discussion and join Kara in speaking up against abuse and wrongdoing in sports. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Inside Tracker: Use code RICHROLL to save 25% OFF all Inside Tracker tests 👉insidetracker.com/richroll  On: Get 10% OFF high-performance shoes and apparel 👉on.com/RICHROLL Eight Sleep: Get $200 OFF the Pod 3 Cover 👉EightSleep.com/RICHROLL  AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF 👉 boncharge.com/RICHROLL

I think we have intuition for a reason. I stopped listening to mine. More track and field athletes are speaking about Nike's Oregon project and its coach, Alberto Salazar. Signing with Nike in 2001, this is every runner's dream. It will be caricature, your U.S. 5,000-meter Olympic team. It's just telling the truth. This is what happened. Kara Goucher, your U.S. 5,000-meter Olympic team.

It's just telling the truth. This is what happened. Today, we're going to explore the clandestine intricacies of elite sport, a world that is rife with deception, with manipulation, with abuse, with impropriety. And we're going to do it through the lived experience of two-time Olympian Kara Goucher, a vanguard of professional track and field, as well as marathon running with podiums at both Boston and New York City, which are accomplishments that Kara earned despite contending with a predatory coach as a member of Nike's controversial elite running team. There was one story being fed to the world

and marketed, and there was another story that I was actually living. Along the path of Kara's many extensive victories, what's interesting is that her journey is often punctured by setbacks, by near misses, by injuries, and it provides this really compelling lesson to anybody out there who is chasing an audacious goal. Because Kara has this unbelievable ability to compartmentalize and thrive amidst what I really can only characterize as a quite tumultuous milieu that showcases her unique mental dexterity, her level of mastery as she navigated through doping rumors, the horrors of sexual abuse, as well as grappling with the arduous role of a whistleblower. In her transformative New York Times bestseller, The Longest Race, Cara provides this really raw and transparent account of the abuse, the doping, and the deception, encapsulating the omerta that perfumed the sportswear titan.

Today, Kara shares her story. She does it with courageous sincerity, with openness. It's powerful. So sit back and please enjoy my conversation with Kara Goucher. We're finally doing it. Yay. So happy to finally meet you, finally get you in here. I know that we went back and forth

around trying to figure out how to get you in here when the book came out, which is almost a year ago at this point. But now the paperback is on the horizon. So the opportunity arose again and I'm delighted and honored that you would come down here and share thoughts from your career

and from this stunning and quite revealing book that you put out, The Longest Race, which has made quite the impact in the running world, in the apparel world and beyond. It must have been a pretty wild and disorienting ride when the book finally hit bookstores and all this stuff was made public. How has that been for you the last 11 months?

You know, I was so nervous about it, just thinking people would look at me differently or judge me differently. And I was really concerned with the people who are already in my life and what they would think. But I just, like the morning that it came out, I didn't, you know, it was on TV and I didn't watch it. I went for a run. I came back and I just felt this sense of peace.

I think like when you've been holding things in for so many years and been ashamed to share. And then it was just out there. And so, sure, there's been moments where people are negative about it, or it's funny when you meet people and like they know this about you, but they don't wanna admit that they know this about you or whatever. So there's been like some quirky moments, but in general, it's been really freeing.

Often when a tell-all type book comes out, it's well after the chronicled events and many of those events and the details of them have already been made public. It's just, okay, now here it all is in a book, but you are coming out with all sorts of stuff for the very first time, like revealing things that only you knew

that you were kind of disclosing publicly. And that definitely caused some tremors in the running world, right? So yes, a sense of peace, of course, but also I would imagine a sense of responsibility to then kind of steward this message into the world, which I know you've taken seriously and is kind of a big part of your whole world these days.

Yeah, I mean, without sharing at all, nothing can change. And I think there's so much fear of like retribution or the industry shutting you out or whatever it is, but then things will just stay the same. So it was like, if I'm going to do this and I'm going to talk about all the things that happened, then I have to like really do it and then be honest about it and being willing to answer the hard questions and being willing to meet with people. And otherwise what's the point? Right. Yeah. It's scary though.

Yeah, I mean- Going up against Nike and these powerful figures and you're like naming names and you've got all the receipts and there are CEOs involved and high profile coaches and other athletes. And these people are not anonymized in the story. And, you know, these people are not anonymized in the story. No, I mean, nothing, there wasn't a single story told that there

wasn't a receipt for, right? I mean, the first version had a lot more stories, but it couldn't get through legal because people understandably were like, if they sue you, I can't say that I told you this or I can't affirm. But the thing is like, it's not meant to tear any one person down or anything like that. It's just telling the truth. Like this is what happened. These are the people that were involved. These are the choices they made.

These are the choices I made. And that's just factual. This is what happened. Have you bumped into any of the Nike executives that you knew back during that time? Or, you know, since the book has come out, have you had some awkward encounters? Well, no one speaks to me, right?

So I've seen people, like I've bumped into people at the world championships or the US championships. And it's just, we just, they pretend like they don't see me, which is fine. You know, I don't see me, which is fine. You know, I don't want to fight. The only thing I really truly want, which I know I'm never going to get, is an acknowledgement that there was wrongdoing and that they held some responsibility.

We can't go back in time. Meaning Nike. Yeah. Just admitting like, hey, this was an unhealthy situation and we weren't looking out for you. And we apologize. Yeah, you're going to be waiting a while for that, I think. I know that's not going to happen, but that's the only thing I really would appreciate. But I don't want to give up my love of running and my love of the sport, so I have to just coexist with these people that are still there and that's fine. I'm not out to

start chaos everywhere I go. I want wanna be able to exist in this world. We should clarify for purposes of context that we're talking about your time at the Nike Oregon Project where you were training and competing under coach Alberto Salazar. We're gonna get into all of that. And this is not a new subject matter for this podcast.

I've hosted lots of other people who are in the book, you know, on the show. I've had Steve Magnus, David Epstein, Matt Futterman, Mary Kane, Lindsey Krauss, even way back. But you know, you're the kind of focal point of this whole thing. And we're gonna get into the details of all of that. But I think before we do that,

there was one thing that really struck me about your book and your career, which is that there are so many ups and downs and your trajectory is anything but linear or skyward. For every victory, there's a million setbacks, there's financial hardship, there'sbacks, there's financial hardship, there's injuries, there's near misses, there's lots of losses and second places and fourth places.

And I think that's instructive for anybody who's watching or listening to this, that that is the blueprint upon which most champions are made. Like it's mostly failures and misses and setbacks with the occasional victory. So talk a little bit about like how you, when you look back upon your career,

how that kind of forms, how you talk to young athletes or other athletes about how to think about their own progress or lack thereof. I'm like, I'm sure you've experienced it. You have like that one great moment and then that's what feeds you to continue. But most of it is unglamorous. Most of it is actually failure or not getting what you hoped. But that's sort of the beauty of it is that it's this like never ending pursuit. I was so up and down. I'm like winning a state championship, have a stress fracture, winning a national title, another stress fracture or whatever.

The number of injuries that you had is insane. And there were times where I would be like, what am I doing? I remember graduating from college. I got a postgraduate scholarship. I turned it down to sign with Nike. And my day was literally spent sleeping in as late as I could, doing the elliptical for two hours and waiting for Adam to come home. I was like, what am I doing? Like I used to be somebody, you know, I used to like be smart and have like things I wanted to do. And instead I'm just a shell of a human. But then every time I thought about moving on from it, I would just get this feeling like you're not done. And as long as

that feeling existed for me, I would just endure and keep trying. But that's not to say it wasn't always easy. There was plenty of times where I was like, what am I doing with my life? And why is this so hard? You look at everyone else, it seems like everyone else is just making the transition from high school to college, college to pro, pro to Olympian so easily. And that just wasn't my experience. It was roadblocks and like having to overcome the whole time. Yeah, it felt like you were kind of sliding in the, you know, through the door that was closing quickly at the last minute every time.

And I don't think it's fair to characterize you as a late bloomer necessarily, but there are some kind of late bloomer aspects of your career. It wasn't like you were the fastest kid out of high school, like Mary Kane. You had all this hustle to try to find the college that was gonna work for you, or like writing letters and all that kind of stuff.

And then, yeah. And then you had success at Boulder in college, but even then it wasn't clear that a professional career was in the making for you and you had some highlights in that professional career, but maybe not, you didn't reach the sort of heights that maybe you thought you were capable of. And it wasn't until you start embracing the longer distances

where you have some breakout moments and you're well along, like your shining moments come so late in the arc of your career. Yeah, I mean, I made my first Olympic team at 29 and just a couple of days before I turned 30. So yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say a late bloomer. I think figuring out my body and what worked for me and the way my body changed throughout

the course of especially like high school through college, my body really changed a lot and like figuring out what that meant and what works for me. And also learning that I needed to lean into really doing the work. Like I think in high school and even a little bit in college, I could get away with just showing up on that day and doing the workout. But as you get further down, like that doesn't work anymore. You're running against people who are super talented. And so being a more well-rounded athlete,

but the thing that's a little bit crazy is I never stopped thinking I could make it. So what is that? Like where did that kernel of belief come from? I just always felt like, no, if I could just, if I can just overcome this or overcome that, like one of my favorite things I used to say to myself is like, be patient little lion, you'll roar.

And I know that's so cheesy, but I really, really felt that way. Like I will have my moment. Like it'll come if I just, if I sit through this and I sit through this and I take this. And I don't, I just kind of always believed that. You know, I didn't reach, it's funny when you talk to athletes

because you'll talk to someone who won an Olympic gold medal and they're like, but I didn't get the world record or you talk to this person and they say, but I didn't win this. And I didn't achieve all the things that I had hoped to achieve,

but I just kept believing like, you know, if I put in the time, I'll have that opportunity. And then if I'm ready, that's when the magic happens. Mm-hmm. Do you think that you had teammates put in the time I'll have that opportunity. And then if I'm ready, that's when the magic happens. Do you think that you had teammates who had the same capabilities, but didn't have that same level of self-belief

who retired too early or didn't stay? Like a lot of it is just persistence. Like, you know, the book is called The Longest Race, but it's really the long game that you're playing. Like it's all about playing this long game and being ready when that moment arises. Totally. And I was married to Adam

who was a professional runner himself. So even if like, it was just still in my life, even when I was injured, right? Like he was still going to Europe and he was racing. And so I think maybe if I wasn't married to him or whatever, maybe I would have stepped away, but everything was set up for me to continue even though at points it seemed worthless. But yeah, I do think, I think of a lot of athletes

that I've trained with over the years that were more talented than me. Maybe they didn't, I hate to say they don't want it as much as me, but they weren't willing to like, give up everything else, like maybe I was. But I do think that's one of the things like, for me that gets complicated is Nike stood by me through all of those years, all of those injury years. And without that, I probably would have moved on. And so when I see athletes, especially in their like late 20s struggling, I just think, oh man, just stay the course. Like if you can just stay the course and keep believing, you never know what could be on that other side. But a lot of times for financial

reasons or just real life, they have to move on. Do you think it's something that's trainable, that sense of self-belief and that level of persistence to stay in it? Or do you think that you're just born with that? Like this is bred out of whatever happened in your childhood? I mean, I think a little bit is just the way I'm wired, but I do think you can believe in yourself and see your progress and give yourself a chance. I do think a little bit of it's just the way I'm wired. Like when I want something,

I will wait until the very last moment when it opens up and I'll get it. Did that make it challenging for you when you finally did make the decision to retire? Did you wanna keep going? Cause it's not like you had the sort of career and that I'm sure you would have preferred. Yeah, no, retirement was terrible.

It was horrible. I was trying to put that delicately. It's okay, it was just terrible. Honestly, it was like, I didn't make the Olympic team in 2016, but I was the happiest I'd ever been as far as being a professional athlete. So I think athletes make this mistake a lot. My initial dream was to run in 2016 and retire. But then I was like, well, then I didn't get what I want. So now I have to rewrite the ending to this story.

So I have to make a world championship team or I have to win a major. I have to do something. And that led to two or three years of just total banging my head against the wall. Like the body was done, but I was just trying to make it happen because I was like, no, I didn't get the ending I wanted. And the reality is like, who really gets the ending they want? That's kind of life. But it was so difficult. And there was so much talking therapy and crying and being frustrated and thinking, why can't I just have this one last moment? I just want one more moment, and I just didn't get it. So the 2016 US Olympic marathon trials,

you got fourth, right? Three go, missed it by one slot. And correct me if I'm wrong, but two of the people that beat you were wearing Vaporflies, right? Yes. And was that the first instance of the super shoes showing up on that kind of stage at that point? Yeah, nobody knew about it, right? They were just prototypes. And that was the first time they were used in competition. So nobody knew about it. And honestly, the athletes that beat me were tremendously talented athletes. So there was nothing to question. I just stayed up for like two months at night. Except the questioning, the what if, if you were wearing

those shoes. Well, when I found out about the shoes, that of course reopened this huge wound because when something like that, that you want it so bad, like I moved my family, we've been living in apartments. Like I asked my family to sacrifice for me and I just wanted it so bad. And so many people were in on it when you miss it.

And if I had been 10th, it would have been like, okay, well, obviously the ship has sailed, but to be fourth just felt so cruel. And so many nights thinking about the race and replaying it in my mind. And I had finally kind of started to move on from it when I found out about the shoes and it just kind of reopened everything. Yeah. That's, that's, that's like. It was bad. It was really bad. It was very dark for me. I don't know that I'd wanna be your therapist. Yeah, Claudia Murphy, she's a good woman.

God bless her. Can we talk about the Nike Oregon project a little bit? I don't even know what the best way to kind of get into this is. I mean, maybe, I can't assume that everyone listening or watching like knows the story. So I want to give you the opportunity to kind of share how you came to be part of that team and what that experience was like, and then we can kind of get into the details of it. Yeah. So in 2004, my husband, who's an Olympian, he was a 2000 Olympian. We just weren't running very well.

College sweetheart. My college sweetheart. Yeah, Adam Goucher. Also a multi-time national champion, actually more accomplished than me in national championships by a lot. And was way more successful than you in the early years of your relationship.

Oh, I mean, not even a contest. Yeah, I would go to Europe with him and people would be like, well, what do you do? And I'd be like, well, I run. Oh, that's cute, but what do you do? I'd be like, I mean, not even a contest. Yeah, I would go to Europe with him. People would be like, well, what do you do? And I'd be like, well, I run. Oh, that's cute, but what do you do? I'd be like, I run. But so we were really struggling. And we just thought, you know what, we're young. We don't have kids. We should look around and see what else is out there. We never thought we'd leave Colorado or Mark Wetmore. I mean, we love him, you know, but it just wasn't working. I was chronically injured. He wasn't running very well. And so we went and spoke to a few different coaches. And then the last thing we visited, Nike flew us out

to visit Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project. And it was just running professionalized in a way that we had never seen. I mean, we were blown away by, you know, the devices, the underwater treadmill and soon the Ultra-G treadmill, but the altitude house, you know, you're living at elevation, even though you're living in Portland. The facilities, we were going to be working out at the Nike campus, so the facilities there were just amazing. And we kind of just said, this is every runner's dream.

And I remember Alberto, you know, there were no women on the team. It was a men's team only. And he was like, he really saw himself in Adam and he believed he could bring Adam kind of back to his glory days. And it was kind of like, and I'll coach you, you know, like to get Adam. But I know that Adam and I talked about it and it seemed like, this is crazy. Alberto said, just give me six months. If you don't like, don't sell your house. If you don't like it, you can go back to Colorado. And we just kind of were like,

well, who would say no to this? It's an opportunity of a lifetime. Sure, and Alberto just being synonymous with excellence in American marathon running. Like, you know, the biggest name, now coaching at the highest level with the most toys and resources at your disposal. And, you know, the Oregon Project

had been around for about four years, but he had never gotten like a collegiate national champion. He had gotten very good athletes and helped them. I mean, Dan Brown made the Olympic team in two events in 2004, the 10,000 and the marathon. So he had done very well, but he was very excited about the opportunity to work with someone who had been to the top, you know, with Adam. And I mean, I was an afterthought, but honestly, I didn't care. I was like- Excited to be there.

I get to be here. And from a kind of business perspective, there's the opportunity to join this team. And then there's also representing Nike as an athlete, right? Are those negotiated separately? Like, how does that work? Like your first Nike contract, I think was like 35 grand or something. It was $35,000 a year, which I thought was amazing at the time. I'm not gonna lie.

Adam had signed with Fila first. And so he actually changed to be a Nike athlete, I want to say in 2003. So we already had Nike contracts at the time. And so, but you go to the Oregon Project, all your medical is covered, all your massages, all your PT. If you have any sort of injury,

like, I mean, I was injured all the time, MRIs, surgeries, all that's covered. And you're having the best of the best checking with you all the time, MRIs, surgeries, all that's covered. And you're having the best of the best checking with you all the time, help you prevent injury. I mean, that alone is worth way more than any amount of money, having that team. So it all looks great. When does it start to appear

that things might not be as they seem? There were little signs early on of things that were just a little off. The way people were talked about or certain rules that were sort of like laughed off. But honestly, the first couple of years, we believed in what we were doing. We believed in Alberta.

I mean, it wasn't like we got there and we thought, what are we doing here? It was weird. You know, we were sleeping with a tent over our bed. And Alberta was so involved in our lives in a way that we weren't used to, you know, talking, seeing us every day, calling us a lot, constantly checking in. It was just different. But, you know, it was a couple years in before anything came up that felt uncomfortable. anything came up that felt uncomfortable.

I think that's why I stayed for so long because it was sort of like the slow burn of me sort of compromising my values as we went along. I think what gets missed, and I have some experience with this type of coach, it gets missed in people understanding the dynamic is kind of what you're referring to, which is you're in this unbelievable situation. And here's this person that you've vested your trust with,

who's telling you, just follow my lead and I'm gonna take you all the way to the gold, right? And this person has the credibility to do it, the expertise, and they're showing such tremendous interest in you. Right. And they're saying, do this, don't do that. It feels good. Yeah, exactly. So that over time with the right personality type

becomes controlling in the not so good way, but because it's so slow moving and imperceptible, you're more willing to dismiss what you only see later as kind of transgressions that maybe you should have taken note of at the time. That's perfectly explained, right? It's just little things. And we're constantly reminded of how lucky we were.

We heard from other athletes how lucky we were. So why would I, Sure, some of the comments make me uncomfortable. So what? There's things in life that make people uncomfortable. There's nothing that's perfect. And I could really explain away. I think my childhood made me really good at compartmentalizing feelings and things that felt off. My dad died when I was little. My mom got remarried. It wasn't a very healthy relationship. And I got really good at, I'm going to put that away because I actually can't feel that. And so, you know, that doesn't serve me well. So then when I was with the Oregon Project, if anything made me uncomfortable or

seemed out of the blue, I'd be like, well, that doesn't serve me getting to my goal, which is to become an Olympic gold medalist. I'm just going to put that here and put it over here. And I think that really helped me as an athlete, but in the end as a human, it wasn't great. Yeah, I mean, a couple observations on that. I mean, first, what's your therapist's name again? Oh, I have two, one passed away, Dr. Stephen Walker and then Claudia Murphy. All right, well, I'll pretend to be Claudia for a minute.

Your dad dies tragically in a drunk driving accident. He was hit by a drunk driver when you were very young. So you grew up without a father essentially. And then a stepfather enters the picture and seems like not so great things about him as well, little, some anger issues, stuff like that. So you're entering this dynamic with Alberto without a strong kind of older male figure in your,

I mean, you had coaches along the way, et cetera, but perhaps not somebody as kind of domineering and present in your life as Alberto was. So you can't help but wonder like to what extent like the kind of trauma or wounding that you had as a young person plays into how you're gonna interface with Alberto and the, you know, kind of like larger bandwidth

that you're gonna give him that maybe somebody else wouldn't. Yes, Claudia, it's true. I'm sure you've talked about this at length. I mean, but it's true. I think that's one of my weaknesses is searching for this figure. And I, you know, this will make me emotional,

but like I realize now I had it the whole time, my grandpa. But, you know, I worshipped my high school coach. It was a male. I worshipped my college coach. But with Alberto, he brought me into his home. He had me eat meals with him. He, I was at his house all the time. It was, you know, Mark Wetmore. I've never been to his house. I've known the guy since 1996, you know. Same with my high school

coach. I have no idea where he lives. It was just different. It was so much more invested in what felt like so much more invested in me. And so it was very easy for me. And looking back, this was a huge mistake I made, but to allow him to be more than a coach and to be that person. And I know that he enjoyed that. He actually would say, like, I feel like I'm a father. He would call my mother and say that I was brought into his life for a reason.

And that, looking back, was extremely unhealthy. But at the time, it felt almost like God had interviewed. Yeah, I was brought into his life and he's there for me. Which makes it so confusing, you know, but also makes the transgressions all the more egregious when the deception and the abuse, emotional and physical, you know, starts to enter the picture.

The other piece to that is this compartmentalization ability that you have. I reached out to Steve Magnus, I was like, hey, Kara's coming in, what should I talk to her about? And he's like, I've never seen anybody better at compartmentalizing so that they could perform. So amidst the chaos and the swirl of all the kind of weird stuff that was going on around you,

your ability to kind of have this on off switch and like focus on what was most important and just dismiss the noise or, you know, no matter what that unhealthy behavior was over there and just, you know, keep your eye on the prize and show up and like do your thing. Yeah, and I think that is a product of my childhood because my house was very chaotic,

lots of yelling and shouting and at times fear. And so I couldn't, I had to just- It's like a survival mechanism. Yeah, now I'm with my friends. I'm funny. Kara's a funny one. She's a fun one. I have to, I can't, yeah.

And again, then I just took that to running, especially as things with Alberto got more and more difficult for me and complicated and confusing in my mind to be like, I actually can't deal with that because if I open up to the thought that he's inappropriate or that this isn't pure love or whatever,

this is gonna cost me everything. So I can't deal with that. Put it over there. Yeah. But of course it doesn't go away. No, as it turns out. It all comes out in words on a page at some point, right? And in the therapist's office.

Yes, lots in the therapist's office. But it seems like, you know, Adam got wise to this earlier than you, or maybe just didn't have the compartmentalization strategy that you had and his tolerance level for what was happening waned, which then creates additional issues for you at home, being in a relationship and trying to compartmentalize

and do your job and keep everybody happy. Yeah, be at practice. I'm there for Alberto. I'm listening to everything he says. When I go home, I know, I mean, Adam saw the light way before I did, but I am a lot more trusting than him and a lot, I don't want to say naive, but maybe that's a good word. You know, Adam is a little bit more from the school of hard knocks and he doesn't really trust you. What are your motives? I'm not like that. I'm like,

everybody loves everybody. So he was sort of, and there were things that bothered him more than it bothered me. For instance, NCAA violations. I'm like, who cares? He's like, I care because I worked my ass off to get to where I got to be and no one gave me a handout. And there were rules that I followed the whole way. Not that I'm not a rule follower. I'm a total rule follower, but things stuck with him more than with me. And he just reached a point earlier on where he was like, I can't, I mean, where he and Alberto are like coming to blows at practice and yelling at each other. So then I'm trying to live this whole dance of my home life with my husband who I love dearly and my career

with this coach who I love dearly. And I'm trying to like live in both worlds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's stressful. Yeah, it wasn't fun. The NCAA violations were about collegiate athletes who were also members of NOP or Nike supporting athletes who were still in college. Yeah, I mean, this is before NIL or anything like that.

So you couldn't have something as a collegiate athlete that was like a gift or training camps, hotel rooms, equipment, all of that kind of stuff, which was happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That stuff seems to be changing for the better right now. Yeah, yeah. But I think at the time, you know, again,

those were the rules and really bothered Adam that they were broken. When I think about Alberto's behavior, I mean, there's so many kind of categories here. There's just him being generally inappropriate. There's legit straight up sexual assault. There's explicit conversations. There's inappropriate touching and massaging. There's intercontinental flights where he's drunk

and taking Ambien and saying all kinds of crazy shit to you. There's pressure to use weight loss drugs. Seems like everybody had hypothyroidism on this team and was getting prescribed Lavoxel. The control of course, the emotional abuse, the deception, the pitting people against each other, pitting you against Adam, pitting you against Amy Begley. There's also what I think, you know,

falls into the more egregious kind of things that went down is the confidence violating conduct because there was this supposed therapist, Darren Treasure, performance coach slash sports psychologist, I guess, who you were meant to believe you could go and talk to, but this person would then share everything with Alberto and Alberto would weaponize that information to pit people against each other

and manipulate and gaslight you and I assume the other athletes as well. And that just feels so violating. Yeah, I mean, when Darren was brought in in 2007 and we were told that, you know, Galen was struggling to win an NCAA title. He had come close many times. Galen Rupp.

Yes, and when Darren came into the picture, he won, I think, a couple indoor titles. And then it was decided everyone will see this sports psychologist. And I didn't really want to see him at first. But in my first meeting with him, I carry a lot inside. And it was really nice to just... I mean, the first session I had with him, I couldn't stop crying. I was like, why am I crying? But I felt pressure because I had run really well the year before. It was the first time I had really stepped up at a world level. I'm feeling all this pressure. My husband is not happy with the team. There was a lot of things I was carrying around inside. And so it was very great to relief to have someone to

talk to. That was in 07. But I would say pretty quickly, I started to realize that I was being told things that other athletes said. I would say something to him in confidence, and then Alberta would bring it up two days later in training. And it wasn't until 2009, that's when he was named performance director. And I was a psychology major. So I just said to him, Darren, this feels like a conflict of interest. So we went to lunch together and he said, no one else realizes this. You know, I'm not going to screw anybody. I'm going to be a professional. And I knew better. You can't listen to everyone's biggest fears and decide who stays on the team. Or decide which information you're going to keep confidential and which information you're gonna share with the team director. Right, or other athletes. But I just sort of took that answer.

Yeah, now it's even more egregious because we have found out he isn't a psychologist. He's not a sports psychologist, he's not a psychologist. His PhD is actually in kinesiology, which is not psychology. But I didn't know that at the time. So when did you first start to get an inkling like that things weren't safe for you? You know, I think a lot of it I realized was

my relationship with Amy Begley started to change where I would be told in the sessions that she was bad-mouthing me. And it really bothered me because I fought for her to be on that team. You know, I was the only woman. And when Alberto talked about her maybe coming, he said, I don't know, women are tricky.

And I was like, please take her, like bring someone on that I can run with. And so she came in and I believe she came in in the end of 06, but towards the end of 07 into 08, we were training together, but we had lost our sort of our friendship. And it wasn't, it really wasn't until after the Olympics that we, where we didn't room together because they told us, they told me do not room with her. I mean, we're at the Olympic games. I'm away from everyone I care about. And this is the one person I know.

Do not room with her. She'll ruin your race. And it wasn't until after that where we talked and then she had been told stuff about me that I bad-mouthed her. I said she was my punching bag. She didn't deserve to be on the team, which I didn't say any of that.

And I know now that she didn't say any of that. So, but that was in a way and I stayed. That's the hard part. I stayed. What is the argument that Salazar would have given for doing that? Like he thought that if he pits you guys against each other, that that would make you more competitive and race better.

Like I'm trying to understand why even do this. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he would propose to me that Amy's a difficult athlete. You know, it's very publicized that he would weight shame her a lot, body shame her a lot,

that she doesn't want it the way you want it. You know, she was the only woman I interacted with, like at all. But at some point, didn't Alberto present her with a contract that said that she wasn't allowed to be friends with anybody on the team? Well, I didn't know about it. That's so fucking crazy.

But he did. He made her sign a contract that said- When she joined the team? No, this would have been in about 08. You are not friends with Kara. She's your training partner. I didn't know. I didn't know that was happening.

I mean, like, that's the thing, is years stepping back and really trying to remove my emotion of still weirdly trying to protect him. I'm like, that is fucked up. Yeah. Like, what? That's crazy. Yeah.

Talk about the pressure to keep weight down and how that kind of came out in terms of how he coached. I mean, the thing is that leanness matters to a certain extent in sport, right? Everybody at the top is, they're trying to have the optimal body composition for that moment. I escaped a lot of the wrath, not all of it. I would get weighed and I would weigh myself at home so that I would know what the weight was going to be so it wouldn't catch me off guard if it was heavy. I would get weighed and Alberta would weigh me here and there. I remember leaning into the 06 National Championship, weighing me.

He would just bring a scale and plop it down and I'd just step on it and be like, oh God, please let it be something under 130. But Amy took the brunt of that. She really took the brunt of that. Yeah, I mean, there is truth in that you gotta be lean if you wanna perform, but you can be too lean and what is the long term impact of a coach

that's constantly telling you to lose weight. And then you, yeah, you compromise your immune system and you end up with all kinds of downstream issues. Another thing is that we were on supposedly the best program in the world. We didn't have nutritionist. We didn't have anyone telling us like, this is your body composition.

Let's try to get it to here. It was just like, I want you to weigh this. And what's the hypothyroidism thing all about? Like walk me through that whole world with this doctor who is handing out scripts for Levoxel and what is Levoxel and what was that supposed to do? And why did everybody have hypothyroidism? That's a great question.

So full disclosure, we introduced Dr. Brown to Alberto. Adam was struggling. This is Jeffrey Brown. Dr. Jeffrey Brown. Adam was struggling in 2003 before we went to Salazar. And our coach said, there's this guy associated with USA TF who's supposed to be the greatest endocrinologist for athletes. And so Adam emails him. Within minutes, he responds. I went with him

to Houston. Adam's mother has hypothyroidism and he ran all these tests. He's a doctor. Remember, he's a doctor. He's not like some herbalist telling, you know what I mean? This is a doctor. And he's showing us that Adam has hypothyroidism. Adam goes on the medicine. About a year later, my mother and my older sister at that point, my mom has always had it and my grandma has too. And my older sister is diagnosed.

I was like, I should go see. Lo and behold, I also have it. So when we moved at the end of 2004 to Oregon, we told Alberto about this because he wanted to know, who do you see? What is your routine like? We're like, we see this doctor in Houston. He goes to see him.

He comes back. He has hypothyroidism. And then in February or March, he takes our teammate Galen. Galen comes back with hypothyroidism. So at this point, we're a little bit confused, but again, it's a doctor. It's not some guy at Nike telling us this. It's a doctor. So even though it felt a little uncomfortable, I mean, Adam and I said that this feels a little weird, but what were we going to

do? There were other medicines that Dr. Brown was also prescribing to other athletes. I wasn't one of them. Cytomil specifically, which, you know, I don't know. That could be considered a performance enhancer or not. But everyone that came into the team then went to see Dr. Brown. And Dr. Brown became part of the Organ Project staff. He went to the Olympics with

us. He was around. And what does Levoxil do? Well, if you have a thyroid issue, if you don't have a thyroid issue and you take Levoxil, it actually can hurt you because it's too much for your body and you can get really tense and tight and lose your hair and things like that. If you don't, it just helps age your thyroid to produce properly if it's not producing properly. You know, in my instance, when I went through all of this, I started seeing Dr. Brown as a patient in 04 and my medical records were obtained. It took a couple of years for USADA to get my medical records. By the time they got them, I wanna say it was 2016 when they finally got them

and had their doctor look at it and I didn't have it. I never had it. You never had it. No. So was there some performance enhancing aspect to this medication that was motivating all these prescriptions? I mean, I don't know.

I think a lot of athletes are thyroid, their thyroid is depleted just because of how hard you're working. And it is so common in endurance athletes, but I hate that I ever took it. And I tried to get off of it in 2017, and I couldn't. My body like tanked out. My new doctor said, I'm sorry, you have to take this.

The interesting thing about how this unfolds and ultimately leads to you blowing the whistle is that there isn't some huge smoking gun that you can point to. So when Travis Tigert is like, we want you to come and talk to us, or you make the decision that you're gonna do that, there's a lot of trepidation on your part

because you sort of see things here and there and you're doing the math and trying to put disparate little events together and try to frame some kind of sense out of it, but it's murky at best. And when it comes to the doping aspect of what was happening at NOP, perhaps even more so from your perspective.

You're seeing things that don't look quite right in terms of how Alberto is interfacing with Mo Farah and Galen Rupp. You're seeing IVs and you're seeing, you know, like needles here, androgen gel and things like that here and there and around, but you're not actually a direct witness to anything happening.

And you're not in a direct conversation with Alberto where he's saying, I need you to take this. And he's telling you what it is and why. That's true. That's what made it hard because as I looked back, there were things that just didn't add up, but I didn't have a smoking gun. I didn't see him rub the testosterone gel on anyone.

There were syringes in the refrigerator, but I never saw them injected into anyone. The IV thing was a little bit more clear, honestly, like when you're faking it for an IV. Yeah, talk about that. Like I actually didn't know about all that, like how a saline drip can mask a performance enhancing drug. Yeah, so you're not allowed to take a saline drip

without a doctor, like a therapeutic use exemption because it can hydrate you to a level that it dilutes a drug test. So if you're on EPO or whatever. Yeah, then it would be such, it would make the amount, the concentration appear smaller, right? And so people, I mean,

I learned this from Tyler Hamilton, honestly, is that if you're glowing, you need to get hooked up to an IV. My teammates did IVs before big competitions and it made me very uncomfortable. Right, on its face, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it makes it suspect

as to whether something else is actually going on. Well, and also when your coach tells you, we have it down to a science now, we know exactly what to say to get it, that feels bad. Tyler Hamilton plays a big role in your decision to come forward. Yeah, I mean, I remember the whole Tyler Hamilton thing.

I would bug Shalane because they were from the same hometown and he won the medal, I think the gold medal at the 04 Olympics. Then of course he had to give it back. And I would tease her about her homie from Marblehead. But I think his book, it really blew me away. And I remember seeing him on 60 Minutes. We were up in Park City as a team. We were going to go out to dinner after we watched it from our condo. And I remember thinking, somebody needs to check on him. Like, his soul is just annihilated. And he's sharing this and he doesn't want to, but he knows he has to. And I just related to that so much. And then we went to dinner that night

and it was brought up and Alberto's like, he's lying, he's just trying to make Lance look bad and he wants to sell books. But I eventually met with Tyler a couple times with the first time. And I remember we met at a restaurant in Boulder and I told him, if you were a track athlete, I wouldn't even come here

because I'm so opposed to all of that. But then in talking to him, he humanized it so much for me. And I don't think he should be able to race again. But what he's done as far as exposing it and being honest about it. And I mean, there's forgiveness there for me. And I think he can help stop someone from doing it. No one was looking out for him, but he's really inspired me in a weird way

to come forward and to share. And I saw the difference he made. And I was like, if he can do it and he survived it, I can do it. Yeah, he was really swinging in the wind because he was so early on all of this stuff. And I remember that 60 Minutes interview as well. And he just looked haunted.

Like he couldn't make eye contact. Like he was in a really bad state, you could tell. You could tell. I mean, the one difference between Tyler and myself is that Tyler had the smoking gun because he had done it. He had done the infusions, he had blood doped and taken the EPO and the testosterone where I just thought everyone was doing that, right?

Yeah. And if you're gonna come and talk about it publicly or share with Tiger, you're putting yourself in a position where people aren't gonna believe that. If you're saying this was going on here, but I didn't do it, that becomes a very difficult argument to swallow.

And it's a reason why a lot of clean athletes don't speak up when they see something because exactly that. I know that there are people who think my career is tainted. I had a good friend who used to be so supportive who wrote in his emailer that everybody ever associated with Salazar should give their medals back.

And that hurt me so, so deeply. But again, if I worry about that, Alberto is still a coach right now. And this is all still continuing. So I have to be willing to say, there's going to be a lot of people who think that my career was enhanced and isn't fair. I have to be able to deal with that. Otherwise, the alternative is this just continues. And there's another Kara down the line, which is Mary Kate or whoever, and this just keeps going on.

One of the things that you witness that feels really kind of salient to all of this is suddenly Mo Farah has this huge kick at the end of races, which he had never had before. And he's maintained his innocence in all of this. And as far as I know, there hasn't been any, he's never tested positive or anything like that. But you witnessed him go from somebody

who wasn't exactly known for having kind of a kick at the end of his races to being, I wouldn't say superhuman, but like really having a different gear. The greatest kicker in the world, multiple years in a row. Yeah, I remember I was at, this would have been 2011

and I was at the Prefontaine Classic. Adam had stayed in Utah at our training base with our son. And there was an immense 10,000 and it was hot, like the pace was hot. Mo had already run really well the year before, but he was a steady Eddie, right? And yeah, I saw him kick away and I called out, I was trembling and I called Adam and I said,

I don't believe what I'm watching. And he just said, do you think they could be cheating? I was shocked at my answer. It was like, so it just came out, yes. Which was the first time you had kind of admitted that out loud to anybody. I mean, I had been thinking about things in Alberto and I had met a couple of times in Utah

because I wasn't understanding the men's progression compared to mine. I had been with Alberto for over six years at that point. I knew the program. I wasn't understanding what I was seeing. So I had met with him a couple of times without saying, I never said like, I think something's going on here. I just said, I don't understand.

But that was the first time I said anything out loud. And that was sort of, honestly, like, you know, you see in the movies like glass shatters and or they're thinking it really truly felt like that. Yeah, another piece being the back to back, like super intense workouts that Kaylin and Mo were able to put in that you were like, there's no way

you can get up the next day and do this thing that we just did the day before. There was a system that we had that we had been doing since I got there in 2004. And every year you were trying to do an extra repeat or go a little faster. These are like big, big workouts, like mile repeats, Ks,

things where they're on the calendar circled in red, like this is gonna happen and it's gonna tell us so much information. And those were the days where you went to the well and then you had to be, you had to recover. That doesn't mean you don't run, but you had to recover because you went so hard in those sessions.

And we would do a session like that and I'd be trashed. And then I'd see them, they'd be driving to go do another workout. And I just, I mean, I asked Albert, I said, I don't understand it. I don't understand. And he just said, you've had a baby, your body's in a different place.

But we've never done this. Like that's just gaslighting. Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, there's this weird controlling behavior that he's exerting around you. And some of the most egregious things that he does that you talk about in the book,

terms of propositioning you and touching you inappropriately and all that kind of stuff, you don't even share with Adam. No. And so I'm sure people have asked or perhaps you had to think through what's gonna happen when people ask me, well, you didn't even tell Adam these things,

your husband, what was going on when they were going on. How do you expect us to believe what you're saying about how Alberto was behaving? Yeah, I mean, I've been asked that a lot, especially on Twitter. Thank you, social media. Twitter's pretty reliable for that kind of thing.

Look, it's a great question. As I've gone through this and I've met with other victims, it's actually very, very common, but I didn't know that. The first time that Alberto touched me inappropriately, I'm in a foreign country with him in 2006. It's the first trip we've ever taken together. It's the first trip where I am the focus. And I truly, I mean, in the moment,

I was so frozen with fear. I couldn't believe this was happening. And I just convinced myself it was an accident because he's a dad and he's a devout Catholic and he loves me like a daughter. He tells me. And again, like with those boxes, if I think maybe he did that on purpose,

it ruins everything that I'm living for and that I've built my life around. So the first time it happened, I really truly just convinced myself that it was an accident. It wasn't until three years later that that happened again. And at this point. And when it happens, it involves substances.

This guy's like, you know, at least a couple of glasses of wine in and sometimes an Ambien, et cetera. Like it feels like he has a substance issue. Yeah, oh, yeah. But now I'm thinking like, well, what am I gonna tell Adam? Like he touched me inappropriately three years ago

and I didn't tell you. It feels like I'm soiling our well, what am I gonna tell Adam? Like he touched me inappropriately three years ago and I didn't tell you. It feels like I'm soiling our marriage and I hid something. And I know that I just should have told him, but I just didn't. I came back from that trip. We were in Lisbon, Portugal and came back and I said, I never wanna travel without you again. And that was my way to solve it.

I'll never be alone with him again. And I wasn't until a plane ride two years later. Yeah, you eventually do tell him. Yeah, it was really shitty. Yeah. At what point do you decide, like walk me through how you come to this decision that you're gonna speak publicly about this

and testify and go on the record? Well, there's sort of two pieces. It's like the doping piece, but then the sexual assault was very different. The doping piece was that Adam and I went together to USADA in 2013 and there was already a case open. I thought, oh, I'm gonna shock them. There was already an open case going on.

Which should have been comforting to you to realize like, oh, I'm not the only one. Like people are looking into this. They don't know if they can trust me. That's what it felt like. You know, for the first two hours, they just let me blabber on about what I think happened. And then they're like, oh, go have some coffee

and then let's go back in. And then the questions start. And I appreciate you, Sada, so much. And I understand all of it. But in the moment, it felt like, oh, they don't know if I engaged in this or not, which how would they know? So that was very uneasy, right? But then, so, you know, for years people would say, we know why you left. We know why you left. And I'd be like, you have no idea why I left. But okay. A lot of media from the UK constantly asking. And so there was this documentary in 2015 that they were doing and it was BBC and ProPublica were doing a piece together. And I cried. And when Adam told me he was going to do it, I said, please don't do it. I'm still running. I want to run for at least another year.

Everyone's going to ask me about this. I'm never going to be able to escape it. Please don't do it. And he said, I have to do it. And I respect him so much. And I respect his values that I knew it was the right thing to do, but I was too afraid. So they came over from the UK. They interview Adam for hours. The next day before they fly out, they want to meet with me so that I feel better about the situation. I meet with them. They were very nice, well-intended, I believed. And then that night I just started eating at me like, why didn't I do it? Like, why couldn't I be brave like Adam? Now I'm gonna have to answer questions that I could answer. I could be on the front end. And

yeah, it just ate at me. And a couple of the bigger decisions in my life, I've just really, really prayed upon it. And I prayed upon that. And I just said, I really regret not doing it. And so Adam reached out to them and they got another plane and came back. Is that what led to you talking to David Epstein from ProPublica? Yeah, because they were in conjunction together. So the crew came back from the UK

and he came back from New York and we sat down. And I mean, I was just emotionally spent afterwards. I felt I wanted what they were doing to end, but I also felt guilty because these are people that I loved. So it was not like a fun experience, but I didn't regret doing it in the moment. In the backlash afterwards, I did at times regret it.

Right. Yeah. Right. I ruined my perfect, peaceful life. Sure. Yeah. You're exposing yourself on a whole different level and opening yourself up to everybody's opinion. I reached out also to Matt Futterman, the New York Times,

I guess now The Athletic, got rid of their sports page. And he said that he really wanted to be the one to write the story and that he met with you, spent a bunch of time with you. Ultimately you decided to talk to David Epstein instead, but what struck him, he understood why you made that decision.

But what struck him was that at the end of meeting him, and you didn't know him beforehand, that you said, I'm a hugger, give me a hug. And you were like very warm. And he said, beneath the kind of hardness and the challenges that you were going through, that there is this kind of sweetness about you, this kindness about you,

that it felt like you were trying to make sure you were protecting in the middle of all of this? Yeah. One of the things that has happened that I've been really working on the last couple of years is that I just, I think it's a Minnesotan thing or I don't really know what it is, but I just assume the best. And I am very positive, annoyingly so to my husband at times. I got jaded from all of this. And I started to assume, oh, they're going to dick me over. They're going to try to screw me. They're going to talk about me behind my back. And I became a little bit more closed off. And I've really worked hard the last few years to not

to take that down because that's not who I am. But I think you go through so many things and so many people let you down that you're like, yeah, you just start to try to protect yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you still love running. And I've heard you say, or I saw it written that you're very quick to say like,

this isn't like my story in this book isn't really a book about abuse and a culture of doping and a bad coach, it's about my love affair with running. Yeah. And how you kind of maintain that throughout this whole affair. Yeah, my coauthor and I, Mary Plante, I said, yeah, we have to talk about all this

difficult stuff, but it's a love story. It's a little bit like Little Women and Joe and her book, right? Like I just love running so much. And it's more challenging for me now to run the way I used to, but I just appreciate it so much. It's given me so much. And even through all of that, I'm okay. I'm actually a better person from all of it. And I really got to live a dream. And now I get to run because I love it. I never lost the love of it. The few times I did, it was because it had become so business oriented and so results oriented, I lost my way and I would have to step back and go visit my family and take a deep breath. Why am I doing this?

But the core, the love was always there. Are you happier with a legacy that involves this advocacy around clean sport and equity in sport? Or would you rather be remembered just for your athletic performances? Like what is the balance between kind of how people, how you think about how you're kind of perceived? You know, I'm still, there's still a lot of people that don't like me. Do you want them to, do you need them to like you? Well, I think that's a little bit of like a trait I have

of trying to be like, no, get to know me, I'm fine. But my job isn't to convince people that I'm right or to make them see that I did what I did to survive and I did what I did that I thought was right. I think legacy is such a weird thing. Most of the people in the sport now, like, don't even remember that I used to be really good, you know, that I was stood on the podium. You're just the person on NBC who talks about running. Yeah, I'm just a person on NBC who, again, some people love me, some people hate me. Why are you so obnoxious? And then other people

are like, we love your passion. So again, it's just, it's tough. I think, like, especially talking about more of the safe sport issues and the assault stuff, that stuff really, to actually go and do those hearings and to do that, it was for the younger generation. It was for my nieces specifically, because they're being raised how I was, which was like, you treat people with kindness, you love your family, you always do your best. And they could end up in a situation like that. They just could even now.

And so that was my motivation there was to really protect them and the other girls around them. And so I do care that that's changed, but I don't necessarily need, I don't know. It doesn't have to be about me. I just want it to change. Yeah. And what is your sense of where we're at with that?

Has it changed? How much still needs to change? My lens is through the sport of swimming and I've got all kinds of opinions about what's happening and what should be happening and what's not happening. But in your world, it feels like there's progress, but there's still a long way to go. There's a long way to go.

I'm sure there's plenty of coaches out there behaving badly and people taking substances they shouldn't. And when you look at track and field, let's say, like what is your sense of how clean it is right now? So this is, I'm gonna tell you the truth and then I'm gonna tell you what I do because I love my job. I don't think it is right now. So this is, I'm going to tell you the truth and then I'm going to tell you what I do because I love my job. I don't think it's any better. I think it's the same. I think we talk a lot about shoe tech. Shoe tech only takes you so far. I think that people are cheating. But when I watch the sport, I don't think through the lens of someone who lived through all

that stuff and witnessed what I witnessed. I view it through me in 92 watching Lynn Jennings win a bronze medal at the Olympic Games. I go back to that person who sees how beautiful it can be and how empowering it can be and how inspiring it can be. Watching that race changed my life. And so when I work for NBC, that's the mindset I bring to it because that's, I could be inspiring the next Lynn Jennings or the next Faith Kipyagan or whoever. But if I'm being really brutally honest and Travis Tiger will argue me on this,

I don't think there's been progress. He thinks there has been. He does. Yeah. Well, he has to believe that also because that's his job, right? That is his job. If he's not cleaning things up.

He's very passionate about protecting clean athletes. I consider him a friend. I look up to the things he's done. I just think when you're in the underbelly of it, you see things he'll never see. And I just don't think, also you probably get this because you were a competitive swimmer

and also an endurance athlete. You see things that because you have done the training and you have been through that, you see things that because you have done the training and you have been through that, you see things that just don't make sense. And if you talk to athletes and you take the mic away, they'll tell you, I don't believe that, it doesn't make sense. And sure, there are breakthrough performances

all the time that are real, but I think I would be kicking myself later if I sat here and told you things are better. Yeah, it's hard when you see one of those breakthrough performances, it's harder and harder to have that kind of childlike enthusiasm for it. Because in the back of your mind,

there's always a little tickle like, hmm. Yeah, I mean, I used to like, every time someone did something amazing, put it on social media, I don't do that anymore. It's not because I don't believe, everything I see, I don't believe, that's not what it is, but it's just, you know, some things are too good to be true. So if you had to say, if your perspective

is not that much has changed, how deep does it run? Like, is it like every metal? And like, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. I know, is it like every metal? You know, like, and like, if you, I don't, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. I know, I'm like, I'm sitting here. I'm just trying to get a sense, like, is it just a few bad actors or is this systemic in a way that maybe the average person wouldn't even realize?

I think it's probably systemic. I don't, but like, I have friends, this like little anti-doping community that believe you cannot win a medal clean. I don't believe that. I really don't. Maybe it's because of my own personal experience. I believe there are opportunities and there are advancements in technology and there are people doing things that are truly incredible and they're clean. So I don't believe that. I don't believe we're going to watch the Olympics this summer and every single medalist is a doper. I don't believe that. I don't believe we're gonna watch the Olympics this summer and every single medalist is a doper.

I don't believe that. But I do think a lot of them will be. Is that good? You're probably, yeah. You're saying that into a microphone, but it's not an NBC microphone. Right, oh, I would never be able to say that. That'll be a different, yeah.

Yeah, no, and that's not the place for it. Sure. And I've had people come at me, how could you take this job? But I love this job because I get to go back to the place for it. Sure. And I've had people come at me, how could you take this job? But I love this job because I get to go back to the beauty of it and what sold me on it in the first place and what excited me.

And I don't know who might watch that, especially from hearing it from a woman that might become someone great and believe in themselves or give themselves another chance. So I love my job. That's not the place for talking about doping and sport. I'm happy to do it with Rich Roll.

I'm happy to do it at a USADA meeting, but that's not the place for it. Yeah, it's so complicated and tricky because there's nothing like the Olympics. And watching the Olympics as a young person was, those were formative experiences in my life. and to be able to see people do incredible things and take that picture that ends up in Sports Illustrated and put it on your wall and visualize yourself or dream.

That's a really beautiful thing that is worthy of protecting. I agree. And to the extent that it's been denigrated, that like really sucks. But knowing that perhaps not everything is as it appears, can we still have a relationship with those athletes and with the Olympics and with the competition and in the spirit in which it was, you know, birth to like, you know, connect with that, like awe and wonder that makes it such a magical thing.

Like, look, we know the industry behind the Olympics is just turning out money and pumping stuff, but the athletes for me always saved the Olympics. It's always beautiful. I'm always crying. There's someone who does something you didn't believe. There's someone who faltered and it's just painful to watch.

I think there's a place to love it and embrace it. You know, for me, I For me, I get invested, but I'm at a point where no one will ever surprise me if they get popped. That's kind of the world I live in. I'm a super fan. I'm going to cheer you on. I want to see you do incredible things. If you get popped, it's not like one of my childhood heroes when I found out that he got popped. I cried. I'm not gonna do that anymore, but I'm still gonna allow myself to get on that hype train and enjoy the beauty of what could be

from a person rising in that moment when everything matters and everyone's watching. I mean, there's something just absolutely amazing about that. Yeah, that's very well said. We should point out that the testimony that you provided and others provided ultimately leads to Alberto getting a lifetime ban from coaching. Nike, however, avoids any kind of penalization for this.

And one of the really striking things that came out in this investigation was the fact that Parker, the CEO was copied on emails about doping stuff. Like he was apprised of what was going on and he ultimately steps down. He'll say it was for unrelated reasons. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, I don't know. But that's pretty indicting. That was hard for me to find out

because I had a personal relationship with Mark Parker. I flew back from the New York City Marathon with him in 2007. I flew back from the Beijing Olympics with him. I took a- On the Nike Jet. On the Jet, the big one with the gold toilet. Which is verified. It does exist.

His family, they're amazing people. His wife's amazing, his kids. For me, I was a little crestfallen to read that because of course I know he's a businessman and I definitely learned that with the pregnancy stuff. He stood by the company, but yeah. He has to though. He has to, that's his job.

But that part was a little hard for me to read. So what do you make of Nike avoiding any kind of like culpability in this scenario then? Well, I joke that Nike is, they're Teflon. I mean, anytime there's a scandal, people are like, I'm not wearing Nike anymore. I'm burning my Nikes. And then this amazing ad comes out

and everyone's like, oh my God, they're the best marketers. I'm so inspired. I mean, people will send me Nike commercials. I'm like, okay. It's powerful. It is powerful. Because they are the best at that.

They are the best at that. And they have great product. Their marketing is unparalleled. A hundred percent. And that creates a mind share and a relationship with a brand that, you know, every other brand is the envy of, you know, every other brand. Everybody.

And like most people, I grew up just worshiping the brand. I mean, signing with Nike in 2001, I thought life doesn't get better than this. And being able to train on the campus with all those resources. It's like, yeah, it's a dream come true. And meet all the athletes and be involved. And actually, you know, when you sign, they say welcome to the family and feel like you are. You know, and that's what's hard.

Like we were joking earlier, but my son doesn't get any Nikes. You know, he's not allowed to have that stuff. And it wasn't really an issue until the last couple of years. Now he's in middle school. Things are cool now. I'm actually wearing his shoes right now.

We let him buy a pair of kicks. He's a big cross country runner. He's a huge cross country runner. But yeah, like he wants to be like everyone else. But yeah, no, we don't, he gets to a certain age. We'll never give them another dime. I know, someday he might,

or like maybe he would marry someone who wears Nike's and I'm like, I'm gonna have to do with it. Air Jordan drip, I just can't resist. Yeah. We'll see what happens with that. We'll see what happens. Well, digging a little bit more into Nike, I wanna talk a little bit about

the kind of business of elite running, because one of the other fascinating things about the book was just the level of transparency that you brought to what these contracts actually say. When you sign with Nike, which to your point, is the dream of many a young athlete, like, oh my God, what would it be like to be sponsored by Nike? Whether those dollars are small or big,

there's a lot more going on in the fine print of these agreements than one might realize. And I appreciate the fact that you were like, here's what it is. And you laid it all out. Like when you finally leveled up and you were doing well

and you signed a contract for 325, right? Like that's a lot of money. Yeah, it was a lot more money than I thought I was ever gonna make, yeah. But then when you realize like, okay, 10 appearances, 10 public appearances, Like that's a lot of money. Yeah, it was a lot more money than I thought I was ever gonna make, yeah. But then when you realize like, okay, 10 appearances, 10 public appearances, like a certain number of races and everything is scripted out,

like everything that you have to do. So the idea that you're gonna sign this contract, they're gonna pay you a lot of money and your job is to just run, on some level that's true. Your job is to run and to perform and to train and to compete. But there's a lot of other things that are happening where your time is being committed in ways that are at cross purposes with trying to extract the best performances out of your running.

And also there's reductions based on your performances too, once you get to those higher levels. So you have to be, I think I had to be ranked top two in the US or top five in the world. And if you don't, you're facing a permanent reduction that can only be undone by an Olympic medal or American record. So it survives the life of your contract. So there's just a lot of pressures. Yeah, bonuses and penalties.

Yes. And then their ability to just suddenly stop paying you whenever they feel like it, if they feel like you're not performing. And the crazy thing in your case was you get pregnant, you're on billboards and posters, they're marketing the shit out of you. They're kind of leveraging your name likeness

and image for their own gain. And to some level like celebrating your pregnancy, even though they Photoshopped your belly and did all that kind of stuff. Like they're kind of using your pregnancy to say, we're pro women and all that kind of stuff. And then they surreptitiously without any notice or advanced warning, stop paying you.

Yeah. So talk, explain this whole aspect. So the word pregnancy at the time was not in any Nike contract. And when I first signed with Nike, Adam came with me, we went to the Nike campus and he said, and I was 23 at the time, or 22, I was 22. And he was saying, well, what happens if she gets pregnant? I was like, what are you asking that for? You know, let me just sign this deal and live my dream.

And they said, we don't really deal with that. You know, we deal with that on a case by case basis. Fast forward, that was in 2001. Fast forward to 2009, I knew I wanted to have a baby. I'd been very open about it. Alberto had helped me decide when to have this baby. And this was no secret. Everyone knew. He went to John Capriati and said, Kara wants to know.

I just said, what's going to happen? Because I've heard different things. Some people got paid throughout their pregnancy. Some people got suspended without pay. I'm doing it no matter what, but I want to know. So you can plan. Yeah, exactly. And Alberto comes back. He said, don't even go there as long as she does her appearances, as long as she shows up, it's fine. Great. I worked my ass off during that pregnancy. Did so many appearances and it was fun. It was fun to show people you could run and enjoy running

and do that while you were pregnant. But I was due at the end of September and then I got paid quarterly. And in July, my financial advisor said, hey, your payment didn't come through. I said, what? Ah, they're in Europe. I'm sure it's just hung up. It's like European season. Asked my agent. He can't get a hold of cap. Finally, he does. And he comes back and he says, you've been suspended indefinitely. Like they don't even know how long they're gonna suspend you. Like for what?

Your medical condition. So yeah, that was it, stopped getting paid. Yeah, then there's the crazy situation with John Slusher. Right, where you go to him and bring this up. And what happens? Like he says, oh, I'm gonna get into it while he's telling you how much you've inspired his daughter. Yeah.

But then nothing happens. No, I mean, he's like, I'm the guy that reduced Tiger Woods. Well, I'm not Tiger Woods. And then we met with him and he said, we don't pay you to do photo shoots and appearances. We pay you to run and you haven't been running.

And then he follows up in an email saying like, oh, I was watching my daughter run. So impressive of what you do. I talked to her about it. She can't believe how much you run. We're sticking with the suspension. And at that point it was an 18 month suspension, which eventually they offered me a 12 month suspension. And at that point, it was an 18-month suspension, which eventually they offered me a 12-month suspension,

which meant that for 12 months, you don't get paid and 12 months is added onto your contract link. Right. And then at some point, there's like advances offered. Yeah, well, they offer me an advance and I take it. You know, I've talked to Alberto and he said, take it, you know, it Alberto and he said, take it. It's always better to have the money. And then the idea was I was going to be suspended for 12 months total and I could take this advance now and then I could pay them back essentially with

holding a quarterly payment here or there, how I wanted. At the same time, I'm thinking like, am I crazy or is this wrong? This feels really wrong. So Adam and I were trying to find a lawyer and I would speak to a lawyer. They get really riled up and then they call me back and say, we're on retainer with Nike. We can't help you. And so this happened multiple times. Finally, I find this other lawyer.

In the meantime, I'm getting ready to run Boston. I have to run Boston. I've been told if you win Boston, you'll get paid and all of this will go away. Boston is six and a half months after I gave birth. So I'm nursing a newborn, training 120 miles a week. I'm not being paid. I'm trying to find a, it was just such a chaotic, horrible, horrible time, actually. Yeah, I mean, that's the idea that

they would give you an advance that you have to pay back is crazy. And it's one thing to say, listen, our policy is when you're pregnant, like you take a leave or whatever, like you can go into that contract deciding whether you wanna sign that or not. But it's the lack of notice

and the fact that they kind of sprung this on you without even giving you a chance to kind of financially plan around it when everybody knew that you were gonna be pregnant. Right, and just to be clear, they eventually reduced it to a six month contract, but I had to add a year or a six month suspension, but I had to add a year, which was very bad.

I mean, everyone was mad about it, but I had found a lawyer and Alberto told them I had found a lawyer. And that drove a settlement that you could have pursued. Like if you were just, you just wanted to get on with things. I will say, I won't say her name, but one of their most famous athletes told me

that is bullshit, you should fight. But I was exhausted. I was exhausted. I just wanted to move on. It's an Olympic year coming up. I just wanna, you know, I think that's one thing people don't understand sometimes is they see someone like being successful or being out, but you never know what's going on behind closed doors. And I was so exhausted. The only other time I've ever felt that exhausted is, you know, trying to make an Olympic team in 2016 while I'm, ready to testify and things like that. Like I, it was so exhausting. And I know that to this day, I'm still a little disappointed that I said,

I'll sign it, just make this be over. Right, because you had a pretty good case. And the fact that they wanted to settle so quickly is indication that, you know, you could have gone further with that, I think. And just forgive me, but on the timeline, where does this fall in terms of when, You could have gone further with that, I think. And just forgive me, but on the timeline, where does this fall in terms of when like Lindsey Krauss is reporting and Alison Felix and all that other kind

of stuff came out around contracts and female track and field athletes in pregnancy? So my son was born in September of 2010. And so this was all happening end of 2010 into 2011. And that came out in 2018. But there was so much fear. I mean, people would say, well, Nike paid you the whole time. I'd say, no, they didn't. And they'd be shocked. But there was fear, like you don't talk about it. You don't talk about how you get treated. I am not the only one. I learned during that there

were so many athletes that were suspended without pay during that time, just like I was. Maybe they weren't as public facing, but they got screwed too. And they felt like they couldn't do anything about it. I mean, I went all the way to Parker because I felt like we were friends. And I emailed him and I said, you're a father, your wife is a mother. Like, I feel like this is wrong. And he took a couple of days to get back to me. And in the end, he chose, you know, the company policy over what I think

were his true ethical values, but he was a CEO, so. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that that's changed? Like, has that aspect of this, because now there's so much spotlight on these contracts that brands, not just Nike, but other brands have kind of revamped how they approach their pregnant athletes.

It's definitely changed. And Nike was the last one to change, right? Like all these little brands in wake of the story in 2018 with Alicia Montano and I, but especially when Alison Felix used her voice, which by the way, you get the ball rolling, then you join forces, right? Like that's how the real change happened.

Alicia and I came forward and talked about our experiences. Half the people were like, that's crazy. Half the people were like, you think you should be paid for eating bonbons and sitting at home. But then Alison Felix, who doesn't have a single scandal surrounding her, comes and joins our side.

And now the conversation moves. And it was so quick. It was so quick. I was contracted by Wazelle, Skechers, I think, at the time, Noon. Everyone updated contracts, like, immediately with pregnancy clauses. So I think, and then Nike eventually did. It was about six months later. But they also amended their contract.

So that's good. So no one else has to go through that. I think there's still some room there. I remember the first major race I did after I had Colt and I said, I need an extra plane ticket and an extra hotel room. They're like, for who? I was like, my mom.

Well, why does your mom need to come? Well, I have a baby. I need to sleep well the night before. Well, why does your mom need to come? Well, I have a baby. I need to sleep well the night before. Well, why would you bring your baby? And that actually shocked me. People who were so nice to me when I was running well and running fast, pushing back about a plane ticket or pushing back about a hotel room. I hear that there's still a little struggle there. There's a lot of people doing great work, specifically Alison Felix and Alicia Montano,

like trying to get nursing stations or daycare at races. There's people doing great work there. I'm not really involved in that, but I appreciate what they're doing. I think that space still could be better, but I think contracts have gotten a lot better. It's in the brand's best interest to have their own kind of like long play,

long tail version of their relationship with the athletes that they work with. It's a new world now. Podiums, winning, competitions, those things are all important. And of course, the brand wants to associate with people who are doing well on the biggest stages all across the world. But at the same time, the purpose and the reason

why they're paying you is so that they can sell more shoes. So how do you sell more shoes? Well, you win races, that's one way, but there are many ways to be a brand ambassador and further the kind of ethos and mission statement of a particular brand. And to me, it feels like the right thing to do and the better money is spent being in association

with a personality, a person who is a high performer, but also has way more going on. And often what's going on is complicated, right? It means like, oh, I know, I can't always race or I get injured or I have a baby and there's other things in my life. But ultimately, because they wield influence in the public sphere and people adore them

or look up to them, that's a relationship that's worth investing in for the long haul that shouldn't be, you know, transactional on, you know, the micro calendar of your race calendar and should be like, let's look at this from a decade perspective, and there's gonna be ebbs and flows, and we're just in with you for the whole time.

And of course, if it's not working, either party can get out, but in this world of social media and the way in which people can represent a brand and its identity in such a diversity of ways, my sense is that contracts are going to have to reflect that if they don't already. Yeah, I think there's a couple different types of ways. There's the athlete that is just the high performer that doesn't want to share a lot.

And I don't think that's bad either. Right, not everybody. Just because you're an athlete doesn't mean you also have to have a lot. And I don't think that's bad either. Right, not everybody. Just because you're an athlete doesn't mean you also have to have a production company and be a broadcaster. Totally, exactly. Very good point. It's good to still have those athletes.

They're aspirational. You want to see them when they perform. They're high performers. I know a couple that I consider friends that really like hate social media. And they just want to focus. They shouldn't have to feel that pressure to have to do that too. They don't want to share everything.

But then there's also this other idea of people that are sharing the ups and downs in the long run, like not just what's going to happen at Boston and the Olympic trials, but hey, I'm going to be doing this for a decade, I hope, and it's not always going to be great. I do think that there's room for both. I do think that the athletes that share more, people want to hear from more. They just released the most tracked athletes at CIM, this race, this marathon in December, and only one elite was in the top 10, CJ Albertson, who won. He was tracked, he was eight, but everyone else was more influencer-y type or people sharing their stories of why they were running. And I think, you know, and then it

becomes like this tough line of like, are you an influencer or are you an athlete? Which is the world I live in a little bit, honestly. Right. And a lot of like elite athlete opinionation around people who are too influenced. Right, right. Which that gets tricky. But I think there's a lot of inspiration in both those types of athletes. The one that's more of an open book and the one that is just a high performer. And they have a lot going on,

but they just don't wanna share it and that's okay too. It reminds me of, you know, Lachlan Morton is? Mm-mm. He was in Boulder. What? Professional cyclists who rode for EF. And this was several years ago, pre-pandemic, but he didn't make the Tour de France team.

So he decided he was gonna ride the Tour de France course himself, like alone, like self-supported. And he documented the whole thing on his Instagram. And, you know, he went through a lot trying to do it. And it ultimately had all these foot problems. And so he kind of attached Birkenstocks to his road bike. And it was like this incredible story

and everyone fell in love with him and he got more engagement. He was wearing his EF kit and the whole thing, but he got more engagement than the EF team at the Tour de France for what he was doing. And I think- So what I'm saying is one isn't better than the other, but they both have their place and their purpose

and both can be interesting. Right, and people can relate to him not getting his dream and still trying to go try, right? I think sometimes we think we have to win everything to be important and to matter, but that's not really, I mean, people don't even remember I was a to matter, but that's not really, I mean, people don't even remember I was a good runner, but they love that I talk about my son or they love that I'm talking about this or that. It's really, it's been really interesting. I used to think I would have no value from the moment I can't make an Olympic team. I don't know what

I'm going to do because I'm going to have no value. And I'm shocked that I'm 45 and doing fine, you know, and I'm still supported by the running industry. It's for me been very eyeopening and it's really made me embrace who I am fully. And I think that's important for athletes to remember. Speaking of Parker and the Nike jet and the gold toilet and all of that, did you see the movie air?

I did. I did. I did. Thoughts, please. I thought it was really good. I thought it captured a little bit of that Nike, like we're grinders, we're gonna get everything. I did think it was interesting that the star of the movie was the mother.

Right, Michael Jordan's mom. You didn't even see Michael Jordan, his face in the whole movie. The star was the mom. And of course, like my mind goes to like, isn't that interesting? The mom was the force behind everything.

She made the decision. She's the one that got him the royalty, which had never been done. So this movie is really, I mean, yeah, it's about how Nike got Jordan. It's very interesting,

but it's really about this woman who changed the sport industry. So that kind of stood out for me. Yeah. Didn't you like try to get Matt Damon's attention or something like that? Yeah. I have a friend who her husband was- Send him your book or something? Yeah. So I have a friend whose husband was in Matt Damon's wedding and Matt Damon was in her wedding. And she's like, oh, I'm going to give him this book. And nothing really came from it. But it's not like I want people, this is the thing. There are good people at Nike.

There are good things happening at Nike. What I want people to think about is, do I want to purchase this knowing that someone might be treated this way? Or that there's been no acknowledgement that this happened, not just to me, to many, many, many people. And I think if you can, like... And I think we live in a society that's just spendy, spendy, spendy anyway. But if you really think about when you're purchasing things,

who is this affecting and who is it helping? I wish Nike is the leader. They could come out and say, we wronged women. We have had a misogynistic culture. We're gonna change that. And we're gonna be open about it and transparent about it. I mean, think of what could happen. It could change the entire industry. It could be so good. And I know it's not gonna happen.

I'm like trying to imagine a universe in which that would actually happen. I know, but it could be so great. So, yeah. We'll see, I guess. We'll see. Time will tell. Yeah. One of the other things that you're contending with,

and I'd never heard of this, this is not in the book, but is something called runner's dystonia. What is this? It's the worst thing that I could ever have been diagnosed. I mean, it's not the worst thing. It's a really rare, it's a neurological movement disorder. It's rare. And what happens is I have repetitive movement dystonia. So it's a movement that you do a lot. So it happens to writers, it happens to musicians, happens to runners, and they don't know what happens. A lot of people had a really bad fall

before it happened. I also took a very bad fall before it happened, but they don't know for sure. But essentially your brainwires get crossed. And so when you go to do that motion that you've done a million times that's so natural to you, your brain sends a signal and all of the muscles fire at once. So you lose complete control over wherever you have it in your body. I have it in my knee down in my left leg. So when it's bad or before I was diagnosed, I'd be trying to run and everything fired. So when I actually made contact with the ground,

I didn't even know if I was making contact with the ground. Like I would fall, I fell into traffic. It was so frustrating. And then one time I went running on a road and my husband filmed me and I was like, my foot's not landing. It's slipping out. And he's like, no, look at the video. It's nothing. Because you don't have sensation. Yeah, you lose all the sensation. What does that mean when everything's firing? It's like, I feel nothing. Like I feel my right leg coming and then I put my left leg forward. And this is like the best way I

can describe it. I'm on a freshly Zamboni ice rink. The ice is as smooth as it can be. I'm barefoot and I don't know what's going to happen with my foot. I don't know if it's going to land. I don't know if it's going to slip out. For me, I got the sensation of slipping. It was always slipping and it wasn't, but that's what it felt like because I have no feedback that my foot is landing. I don't feel it. Was this like a sudden thing or did it happen gradually?

And then how do you even get diagnosed? I've like never even heard of this. Well, yeah. So it started, I'm trying to think, it started around 2020 where I would go out running and I would sit down on a curb and look at my shoe and say, like, do I have a leaf on here? Like, why am I slipping? It would often happen when I was taking a right-hand turn. And it was kind of just gradual.

Like, I'd feel it, but it didn't stop me from running. I just thought, what the heck is going on with me? I remember Googling. It feels like I slip when I run. Brought me to Reddit. No answers, really. And then, and I was also in a very stressful time. My grandpa was passing of COVID. You know, the safe sport thing was going on. And I thought, I'm just so stressed out that this is in my head, you know? And then in December of 2020, I took a really bad fall on my treadmill where I don't remember anything. I just woke up dangling from it. And then after that-

Like you blacked out? Yeah, I don't remember anything. I remember thinking, I'm gonna go another half mile. And then the next thing I know, my arm was kind of on it like this. Like I actually thought I broke my arm and like my legs were, the skin on my legs was kind of on it like this. Like I actually thought I broke my arm. And like my legs were, the skin on my legs was ripped off. And after that, it just proceeded to get worse.

But I still didn't tell anyone because I'm like, what the heck is happening with me? I mean, that situation, everyone was scared. I got my heart checked. Everything was fine. But I was running one day and I was just trying to get to Wonderland, which is this lake in Boulder. And it's crushed gravel there, which feels better than just pavement. And I was trying to get there and I fell into traffic and I called my husband. I was like, something's wrong with me. But this was February of 21 and I didn't get a diagnosis until the Mayo Clinic, February 22. So it was like a rabbit hole of seeing my doctor. Adam videoed me walking. She got me in to see a neurologist. He thought I had something pinched in my back. We did all these four hours in the MRI to find out my back is

amazing. It looks great. And then we thought this is probably... Then did a brain scan, found out I have lesions in my brain, which was really scary. Probably have MS, then had the lumbar punctures. No, you don't have, I mean, this is just like, and then it's kind of started to go away. And then I got back from the Tokyo Olympics and it got so bad I couldn't walk. And Adam videoed me trying to walk home after dropping our son off at school. And I'm like touching the cars and like walking really gingerly because I feel like I'm going gonna fall. He sent that back to my doctor. And then I was seeing a specialist immediately. And they told me,

they tested everything under the sun. And then they told me to be ready that this could be something really scary. Like ALS or Parkinson's or something like that. Both of those were brought up. Yeah. And I was just in disbelief. So then I finally see this specialist

and he says, you have runner's dystonia. And I was like, what? What the hell is that? I mean, I'm relieved because I'm not gonna die, but I didn't know what it was at all. I left the doctor's office and I Googled runner's dystopia. You're like, he misspoke. Yeah, I'm like, what is he talking about?

But it's been a very frustrating- Runner's dystopia, when you can't run anymore. Yeah, I'm like, what is he talking about? But it's been a very frustrating- Like runners dystopia, when you can't run anymore. Yeah, I was like, what do I have? What is this? But finally I found an old Runner's World article and I was like, oh, that does sound like me. And so I've just been working with doctors and I was doing really well.

I was taking a Parkinson's medication three times a day and physically I felt amazing, but I started mentally slipping quite a bit, like having a hard time saying words. And my husband and son would fill in the word for me. You know, I'm a broadcaster. Yeah. And I need to be able to talk.

Yeah. And so that was really hard because I had to back off of that. And now I just take it before I run and I get Botox in my leg, which sounds weird. But what the Botox does is when the brain sends the signal for everything to fire, it just can't. Cuts it off.

Yeah, so when I run, I don't look like how I used to. I don't look like someone who went to the Olympics. I look like an old lady kind of limping around, but I still like it. Well, it kind of lets you off the hook then. There's no pressure anymore. Yeah, there's nothing I can do. Yeah.

That's scary though. So it's a neurological disorder that I presume they don't have any kind of cure for. No cure. Is it progressive? It can be. And I have found that if I push too much, sometimes my right foot can get affected or I'll have a really hard time walking for a few days.

And basically that's where I've been trying to find this sweet spot of like, how much can I do so that I can do it every day versus last year. How much is that? Sadly, it's about four to five miles a day. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not 130 miles a week. No, it's really sad. It's not even close. And it's hard because I miss it. I miss being able to just say, it's a beautiful Saturday. I'll be back in two hours. Like I really miss that.

And just being able to go and, you know, like sometimes you have those days where you just get out there and you're like, I'm just gonna see what I have today and just have fun. Cause I was already sort of past the competitive part when this all happened. I miss being able to go run adventures with my friends who like to drive up to the mountains because I was already sort of past the competitive part when this all happened. I miss being able to go run adventures with my friends who like to drive up to the mountains

and run these crazy loops up on the continental divide. Like I miss that a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you seem happy. I am, yeah. I mean, look, sometimes I have dark moments where I think I'm 45 and this is as good as it's gonna be. Like, this is not that good.

Four miles a day is not that good, right? And I get- Can you ride a bike? Can you do other things? I can. I have tried to get back into Nordic skiing a little bit. Yeah, we didn't even talk about, like your sliding door biathlon career.

You could have gone in the Olympics in biathlon. Well, maybe, yeah. But to skate ski is really hard for me with my legs. So then it really needs to just be classic. So I don't know. I've tried some other things. I've loved the gym and become a little bit of a gym rep with trainers because I need to be told what to do.

But yeah, I mean, I miss it, but I try to still do other things. Yeah. Well, I think you have found in the broadcasting and the other things that you do, like a way, like you very kind of like gracefully segued out of your competitive career and into something else that you enjoy,

that you're good at. Like you found something and you have that, you know, the advocacy that you do and you have a level of, like you have a podium and a captive audience to talk about the things that you care about. But one of the things that you see, and I'm sure you've seen it a lot, is elite athletes who kind of have an existential crisis

when they retire, because it isn't ever gonna be, they're never gonna be that fit again. And there's probably never gonna be anything that's that exciting again, or a situation in which they're the best or nearly the best at something in the entire world. And it's really hard to replace that if you haven't sort of been doing something all along

where they're overlapping as you retire. And I've often thought whether governing bodies, colleges, brands, et cetera, could do a better job of preparing athletes for that new chapter that every athlete inevitably faces. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's, when you're at that level,

there's a little bit of like, I don't wanna think ahead to the future because I there's, when you're at that level, there's a little bit of like, I don't want to think ahead to the future because I need to be right here, right in the moment. I don't want to admit that this is going to end or that, but it's really lonely. And I watched Adam go through it and there's not, the hard part is there, maybe for some very, very lucky people, but for most of us, there's no like obvious sign that it's done. You know, in 2016, I thought I'm going to make this Olympic team, I'm going to run the Olympics, and then I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom. And I didn't make the Olympic team. So then I'm like, well, I'm going to make the world championship team in 2017, and then I'm going to be a stay-at-home

mom. Then that didn't happen. And there's no point where- There's no bang. You just wake up one day and go, I guess I'm done. Yeah. It's just not how it works, right? Or you're trying to run out the end of your contract or whatever it is. And so it's really tough. And I watched Adam struggle with his identity and like, what am I now? And I thought, that's not going to happen to me. And it happened to me too. I struggled with what is my value? I used to host a women's retreat. Well, who's going to come if I'm not, I'm no longer the one they're watching out on the course. I'm just a person jogging at home.

So I think there's a lot of that. And you don't have, you're not getting work skills and life skills. In your 20s and early 30s, late 30s, if you're lucky, you're focused on this singular pursuit and you're not learning how to do other things. So all of a sudden you're, I was like 38 and I'm like,

hey, what am I good at? I don't know. I never thought about it. It's tough. Yeah. I can't remember who it was. Somebody was on this podcast. I think it was a psychologist who was saying

that there was some study where they took elite athletes. I can't remember. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna botch this and get it totally wrong. But the upshot was that athletes who had something else in their life while they were competing at the highest level actually were happier and competed better than those who were like,

I can't afford to do that. I'm only doing this one thing. And that kind of puts the lie to the idea that you have to have that level of tunnel focus in order to kind of reach your potential. Well, the lead up to 2016 was the happiest time of my career. I had my son, I had a new community in Boulder,

old friends that I reconnected with. I had a little bit of a social life. It was the happiest time of my professional career, but I didn't make the team. Yeah, you didn't. So I don't know. I think it's like a fine line of being all in, but remembering that you are more than an athlete. And I think probably almost every athlete has lost themselves at some point, just caring so much about the results. And yeah, I think there is a happy medium there where you can, I don't think that I missed the team because I had margaritas with my friends one night or that I went to a movie with my friend or my son or

whatever. I don't think that's why I didn't make the team. But yeah, I didn't make the team. What do you think is the biggest differentiator between the person who stands at the top of the podium and the also Ram? Everybody's super fit, everybody's talented, everybody presumably has access to great coaching, it has the resources they need. Is it a mindset thing?

And if so, what is that difference? Or have you noticed anything with the many athletes you've been around? I think it is a mindset to some extent. You can't be afraid to lose. You can't be in the moment worrying about what's gonna happen. You have to just be like blinders on,

just running as hard as you can. And you have to believe that it could be you. I think too, at those big, big levels, the window only opens up. It's not always open. Someone wins everything all the time. Unless you're like one of the most special athletes we ever watched, you're probably cheating, right? Like the window opens, then you have to be brave enough to pounce, say, this is my moment. There is so, those athletes are all so fit and it's really who can control the controllables the most in the moment.

It doesn't get distracted by this or that, really is just controlling what they can in the moment. And yeah, they're not worrying, they're just being. Totally present. Totally, totally present. When I think of an athlete like that, I think of Jenny Simpson in the 1500. And she would just be so calm. And she would just wait and just be so aware of what everyone was doing. And when she saw the window, it was like that. And it was such a joy to watch her

because she wasn't worried about that move or this person might out kick me. She was so present in what she was doing. It was like fascinating to watch. And that's hard. That's hard to do, but to just be so in the moment. You're not thinking about the finish line. You're not thinking about anything else,

but like the stride I'm in right now. That's powerful. I think that's applicable to anybody who's trying to be excellent in what they're doing. Like how present are you with the thing that you're trying to master? Yeah, it takes patience and presence. You can't, one of my sports psychologists, Dr. Walker,

used to always say, you are really bad at future thinking. You need to shut down the future think. Stop thinking about, oh, I'm doing 10 by a mile and I'm only six in and it's tired. How am I gonna do that 10th one? Be in the sixth one,

make the sixth one as excellent as it can be. And then you can worry about the seventh one and then make that as excellent as it can be. And then you can worry about the seventh one and then make that as excellent as it can be. And then you can be in the eighth. And then before you know it, you got through all 10, but it's almost paralyzing to future think because it really affects you being in the moment and being present within yourself.

As an aging athlete, I would say, I would add to that by saying, living in the past is not doing you a service either. Because when you're training and looking at your watch or whatever, I'm 57, it's like, I'm measuring myself against when I was at my fittest. Yes.

And just feeling bad all the time because I'm not measuring up to the person who was able to do that thing whenever that was. Instead of just being like, here's where I train, you know, train where you're at, not where you used to be or where you think you should be. I totally agree.

I had a breakthrough. And it's hard, that's really hard. It's so hard. I had a breakthrough from 2016 to 2018. I had multiple stress fractures. I was so frustrated. I just wanted this one last race. And I woke up on July 9th of 2018

and I was like, I'm a master. You know, like I'm not supposed to do what the 24-year-old women are doing. And it was the weirdest sensation because I feared turning 40. I remember when my mom turned 40. And it was so like, there's a reason there's this category. Like, it's okay. That's one thing I would just say. It's okay to age. It's okay to reset what your new gold standard is. I'm probably never going to run a marathon again, but you know what I would love to do? Run 10 miles. And I can't even believe that that's my gold star, but that's what I'm trying to do right now. I want to get strong enough and good enough with my dystonia and

manage it enough that I can go for a 10 mile run. And that is my new gold medal. And it's ridiculous. It's a 10 mile run, but that is what I can do with where my body is at now. And that's okay. I love it. What is your sense or your take on the state of American women marathon runners right now as somebody who kind of resurfaced the prominence of American women in that distance. We have such a good group right now. We're not necessarily seeing those podium finishes. I mean, we saw one in Tokyo, obviously with Molly Seidel,

but we're so close. And it's sort of like the more you have, the more likely it is to happen. I mean, in 21, we saw some podium finishes in the majors, but they were all within like a five week span. I'm very hopeful with the crop of women we have right now that this could become a regular occurrence. There's just so many women

and they're learning how to be like full marathoners, not just time trialers, not just technical racers, everything, right? We've seen this new generation where, yeah, they want to go with the pacer and run as fast as they can. And then the next marathon they pick, it's a challenging one where you have to think and read each other. So I think the women's marathon in the United States is in a very, very good place. And I think for the foreseeable future, because they're inspiring girls that are in college right now that are going to want to run the marathon. When I was in college, I was like, who'd want to run the marathon? You know, like we had Dina. Dina was our gold star.

But now there's so many different personalities and multiple women. I mean, the Olympic trials are going to be crazy. It's not... When is that happening? It's on February 3rd. And in the past, it was like, there's three or four or maybe five women. I can't tell you who will make it. I have no idea it's gonna be, but as an athlete, that's very nerve wracking, but as a fan of the sport and wanting to see growth in the sport, it's amazing.

Are you gonna be doing commentary at the trials also? Oh, you are? Oh, cool. And you'll be calling the marathon in Paris. Yes. And track and field? Yeah, 1500 and up. That's so exciting.

Yeah. I hope to be there. I'm excited. I've never attended an Olympics, so. It's a spectacle. Yeah. But it's so amazing. I mean, the last Olympics I was at was Tokyo

and the stadium was empty. Right, that was a weird one. It was super weird. So I'm excited for, you know, I don't wanna say a real Olympics. I know. I feel bad because Tokyo Olympians are real. The full spectrum of the Olympic experience.

The way the crowd reacts to what's happening, the way you can see the athletes actually taking that energy, some in a negative way, you know, and letting it overwhelm them, but some using it as fuel. Like you can see it in the moment. It's amazing.

Cool. The final thing I wanted to ask you is, pertains to the athlete who's listening to this or watching this, who is starting to realize that the dynamic that they're in on the team that they're on or with the coach that's overseeing their progress might not be the healthiest. Maybe it's not terrible.

If they told somebody who knows what the reaction would be, what do you say to that person? How do you guide that person to address a situation that on some level is somewhat relatable or similar to what you endured? I think we have intuition for a reason. And I stopped listening to mine because I thought, I know this feels uncomfortable.

I know this feels not good, but it's so small. And the goal is right there. We have intuition for a reason and listen to it. And you know what? Maybe for other people, that is a great situation, but the same situation isn't good for everyone. You trust yourself. You have that ability to know what's right and what's wrong. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if someone else thinks it wasn't a big deal. If it's making you uncomfortable and your little bells are going off, that is not going

to help you as an athlete. You're not going to run or perform the way you want when you have those constant questions in your mind. So listen to yourself and trust yourself. You will make the right decision. And if that decision is to seek out help or additional guidance, what are the safe sport resources that you would recommend that person look into? Well, that's a great question because there aren't a ton of good resources. There is a resource being built out right now

by Katie Steele out of Bend, Oregon, which is a place for younger athletes, collegiates, and just post-collegiate athletes to reach out, get help, get mental health services, connect with other people. I think USATF is trying to do something in this vein of athletes being able to reach out. But again, if you have to do it solo, hit me up. I'm serious. If it feels wrong, you're not the only one, and people will believe you and will help you. There's going to be another opportunity. This is not your opportunity. It's like, we sometimes as athletes, we think this has to be it. So I can't leave. I can't do that because

this is it. No, that's not the opportunity that you're looking for. It's not what's going to bring you true happiness and success. It's hard to tell that person when they're in it though. Super hard, super hard. And I get it. I stayed so much longer than I should have, so much longer than I should have. I wanted to leave so many times and I convinced myself I had to stay

over and over and over again. It took a horrific experience on an airplane for me to say, I can't do this anymore. So I get it. I get it. It's your family. It's your community. It's your whole life. But your life deserves to be better than that.

So if they're gonna reach out to you, should they do that like through your website? And I'm wondering if there's like some kind of SafeSport hotline number where people can report. There is a SafeSport. Yeah, you can go to safesport.com and they have like call lines,

they have support there. SafeSport gets a bad rap, but I think it's because it's so overwhelmed. But my experience with SafeSport was very positive. They believe me, they listened to me. I never felt judged, but reach out to SafeSport. And this is one of the things that I really would like to see infrastructure of. When you're on these teams, there's no one checking in ever. So I feel like that should fall on the governing body. I feel like that should fall

on USATF to check in periodically. Someone who is completely unrelated to the team that can really talk to you. And I know that USATF was talking about or maybe has even started like a program where they're checking in with athletes. But what if you're not quote unquote good enough to be checked in on? I think this is like a place that we need to close this loop so that people have a resource. When I was at the Oregon Project, where would I go? I'm not gonna go to a sports psychologist. I can't go to Alberto. I'm not gonna go to his boss. Where am I gonna go?

There's no one safe for me to talk to. And that was before Safe Sport. But I think this is a problem. So this is like not the happy response that probably everyone's looking for, but I would say, reach out to Safe Sport and find someone, if you can, that you can confide in and talk to. Here's the thing. This stuff is happening. Oh, for sure. And people need to

know that people are going to believe them. Like, I was so inspired by seeing the gymnastics team testify to Congress about Nassar. Like, that gave me resolve to go ahead and testify in the SafeSport case. So I just want people to know like you exist and if I can help you, I will. And SafeSport will help you. If they can, they will help you, but you're not alone and you're not crazy. If you really feel like this is wrong, you need to talk to someone.

Well put. I think that's a good place to end it for today. Okay. That was great. Thank you. You're so inspiring. Your strength and your courage to tell your story in the unvarnished way that you did

requires a certain level of confidence and boldness. And it's made a huge impact and it's inspiring millions of people. And I appreciate you stepping out and sharing your story in the way that you did. And hopefully I'll see you in Paris. Yeah, that would be awesome. In the meantime, the longest race out in paperback,

wherever you buy books, patronize your favorite independent bookseller or buy it online and come back and talk to me some other time when Colt is making the Olympics and we can talk about his cross-country career. Yes, let's do it. But I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today,

visit the episode page at richroll.comcom where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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Plants. Namaste. Thank you.