The Rich Roll Podcast - Lauren Fleshman Is Empowering Women Athletes

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Meet Lauren Fleshman. One of the greatest middle-distance runners in American history, Lauren has a storied history of breaking both records and paradigms. After collecting state championships as a standout high school runner, she matriculated to Stanford, where she garnered 5 NCAA titles, 15 All-American honors, and a spot in the Hall of Fame. As a professional, her accolades include two USA Championships and five World Championship berths for Team USA. Nonetheless, Lauren’s career was also marked with devastating setbacks. She holds the painful distinction of most likely being the best American distance runner never to make an Olympic team, her competitive career repeatedly impaired by injuries that had her on crutches at the wrong four-year intervals. It's the hows and whys behind Lauren's hard knocks that interest me the most. Because it's these very misfortunes that underscore her philosophic perspective on running. Her take on human potential. Her belief in transformation. And, perhaps most poignant, her passion for advancing the power and prominence of women in sport. Now retired from professional competition, Lauren wears many hats. A prolific and talented writer, she is co-author of the Believe Training Journal series and shares her perspectives on her wildly popular Ask Lauren Fleshman blog -- plus a book in the works. As an entrepreneur, Lauren hosts the Wilder Running & Writing Retreats. She's the co-founder of performance nutrition company Picky Bars alongside her professional triathlete husband Jesse Thomas, who graced episode 442 of the podcast. And together they host the Work, Play, Love Podcast. In addition, Lauren serves up coaching duties to the elite women runners of Oiselle’s Littlewing Athletics. And she is the very definition of an active mom of two. Most compelling is Lauren's committed, stalwart advocacy for female equality, empowerment and advancement in sport. Today we cover it all. From the doping scandals swirling around the Nike Oregon Project to revelations about the mental and physical health of female athletes under pressure, we explore how Lauren's successes and failures fuel her as a coach, parent, businessperson and role model. But more than anything, this is about fairness in sport. Advancing the role of women in athletics to forge parity. Creating an equitable financial ecosystem for NCAA and Olympic athletes. And how we can better calibrate the complicated balance between human rights and equity with respect to transgender and intersex athletes. Perhaps most importantly, this is a conversation about the unique pressures and body image issues so many girls and women face in competitive sports. It's about fostering healthier coaching dynamics. More supportive athletic environments -- and ultimately more successful careers. In companionship with our exchange, I urge all of you to read Lauren's moving New York Times OpEd, “I Changed My Body For My Sport. No Girl Should” -- a powerful piece she penned subsequent to our conversation. You can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the conversation streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This one left an impact on me. I hope it does for you as well. Rich

I've always believed that telling personal narrative is the better way to help people understand the complexity of something. And so I kind of offered myself out there, even though I knew it would result in some skewering. I ended up getting a call from an old competitor right when it came out who chewed me out. I remember taking that call and just being like, OK, here we go. Like, why did I even bother telling that story? Is it going to be any good?

But I do think that it helped contribute to a public conversation, a public understanding. It's just one of many stories that contributes to like the dialogue around this, the importance of really fighting for ethical and clean sport of learning what is and isn't okay. And what we want those, that to look like in the future. You know, the past is what it is, but I still do believe clean sport is possible. It's going to be hard, but it needs to be nuanced, our understanding of the past. And yeah, we rely a lot on whistleblowers too. So no one's going to come out

and talk about their experiences if we have this black and white view on everything. That's Lauren Fleshman. And this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. What's up, people? How are you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. This is my podcast, Grab a Seat. Thank you for dropping by. My guest today is the amazing Lauren Fleshman. Lauren is one of the greatest middle distance runners in American history. Over the course of her storied scholastic career, Lauren has taken home state championships and then at Stanford

University, accumulated five NCAA titles, 15 All-American honors, and a spot in the Hall of Fame. As a professional, Lauren's accolades include two USA championships and five world championship berths for Team USA. But Lauren's career was not without its setbacks. She holds the painful distinction of most likely being the best American distance runner never to make an Olympic team. Her competitive career repeatedly impaired by injuries that had her on crutches at the wrong four-year intervals. There's a very few interesting reasons behind this, which we will be exploring in full today. And I think it's fair to say that it's these very obstacles and setbacks that have given her such a compelling and philosophical perspective on not just running, but on human potential, on transformation, and perhaps most poignantly, advancing the power and prominence of women in sports.

I've got a bunch more I want to say about Lauren, but before we hit the ground running, you know what time it is. It's time to hear from the awesome sponsors who make this show happen. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

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need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can

be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type,

you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so Lauren Fleshman isn't just an incredible runner. She is the author of the Believe Training Journals with a new book in the works. As an entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of Picky Bars with her husband, Jesse Thomas, who you might remember from episode 442. Together, they also host the Work Play Love podcast, which you guys should all check out. And Lauren, now retired from professional competition, is a coach to the elite women runners of Wazelle's Little Wing team. And she is the very definition of an active mom of two kids.

But what stands out the most to me and why I felt so compelled to get her on the show is her advocacy for female equality and advancement in sport. And today we're going to talk mostly about that. We cover a lot of ground. We talk about Kipchoge's Sub-2 Marathon to the doping scandals swirling around the Nike Oregon project to how she navigates balancing her busy life and many, many interests. But more than anything, this is about fairness in sport. It's about advancing the role of women in athletics to forge parity. It's about creating an equitable financial ecosystem for NCAA and Olympic athletes, balancing impartiality and anti-discrimination against equity when it comes to transgender and intersex athletes, balancing impartiality and anti-discrimination against equity when it comes

to transgender and intersex athletes, and perhaps most importantly, how we can combat and ultimately overcome the unique pressures and body image issues so many girls and women face in competitive sports to foster healthier athletic environments and ultimately careers. On that note, and subsequent to our conversation, Lauren wrote a really fantastic op-ed in the New York Times entitled, I Changed My Body for Sport, No Girl Should. I urge all of you guys to read that, and I'll link that up in the show notes. So without further ado, this is me and Lauren Fleshman. Delighted to be here with you today. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time.

Me too. Welcome. Thank you. What brought you to Los Angeles? What brought me to Los Angeles? Well, Brandi Carlile singing Joni Mitchell Blue. Oh, there you go. Well, that's as good a reason as any, right? And you. How was it?

Did it live up to the hype? It lived up to the hype. Actually, there were parts of it that lived up to the hype in unexpected ways. Brandi Carlile was so nervous to perform Blue in front of her idol. You know, Joni Mitchell was there. Srelton John was there. I had seats behind. You know, I didn't have the best seats,i Mitchell was there. Srelton John was there. I had seats behind. I didn't have the best seats, but I was close. But I had a perfect view of all the famous people sitting in the front

couple rows who got to see this performance. So it was just a trip to see Brandy's body language from behind most of the time. And then she was very open about her tension about it. She's like, I am really nervous about this, you know? But yeah, Joni Mitchell's a living legend. I mean, she, the way Brandy described her, I think is true. It's like living in the time of Beethoven or Rembrandt, but in music and we live at the same time as Joni Mitchell and probably not for much longer. So. You have a deep Joni Mitchell fandom streak. I do. I mean, her album Blue, she's spectacular. And my whole family loves Joni Mitchell. And my dad is the one that introduced me to Joni. And he introduced Jesse to Joni when Jesse and I first started dating on this camp trip and Jesse was super nervous. And my dad essentially told Jesse he should start getting into Joni Mitchell because the ladies like it.

He was giving him tips. He said it in a much more crude way than that, but essentially— He actually had to become a fan, right? Yeah, he did. He has a nice respect for Joni Mitchell. That's cool. Well, and you got on an airplane to come and see that. I did, yeah.

Birthday slash Mother's Day present for my mom. Went to a fancy restaurant, and we just had a really kind of out-of-the-ordinary experience for us. Right. So it was very special. That's cool. And you grew up around here. I did.

Yeah. Santa Clarita. And I was just noting on the drive up here how this area is where I used to go with my dad when he would take me to work, wake me up at 4.30, go down to the sets of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman at Paramount Ranch. And my sister and I would play around in whatever Western buildings weren't being used that day for filming and imagine that we were prairie people. Yeah, he was a prop master, right? Does he still do that? No, he passed four years ago. Oh, he did. But he was 30-something years.

I mean, he got started building sets for concerts of all the kind of great bands of the 60s and 70s in his late teen years. Right. And then he went in the army for a few years, went to Germany and came back. And then he started working for Hollywood in the union building sets. Right. Paramount Ranch is super cool, but it's gone now basically. Yeah.

Completely burned in the fire. People who are listening might recognize it from Westworld. They did Westworld there? Yeah, the Western town stuff was all done. And that white church is from Westworld as well. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so I think the church is still there, but everything else is gone, and they haven't rebuilt it yet. Wow, what a trip.

Yeah, it's just one of those moments when I'm driving with my mom, and she tells me that you're having this nice little memory about a place that was important to you as a kid. And then it's like, oh, by the way, it burned down. You're like, oh, okay. That's okay. All right. Moving on. Everything's burning down around here. Yeah. Yeah. We just had a big fire this past weekend. Yeah. And I want to track like your whole personal story because it's super interesting, but there's so much going on and running and track and field right now. It's insane. Like I can't even keep up with all the crazy news. And as somebody who's, yes, you're retired, but you're very much an insider and you've been outspoken and have lots of opinions on all of these things. So I'm kind of excited to hear your take on all the goings on.

Well, great. I better take a few sips of coffee. Let's do this. I mean, we can start with Kipchoge's 159. I mean, what do you make of that? This is just this past weekend. Yeah, I didn't live stream it. I don't even remember what I was doing. I think work event stuff, but certainly followed it. And I mean, it's amazing.

It was amazing to see it done, even in the context of, you know, performance enhancing shoe technology that maybe shouldn't be legal for performance or I don't know, all the pacing and stuff. It's still magical to see somebody going for it. And Kipchoge is such a lovable character. Like he seems like such a beautiful guy. He is. And he's, he really feels deeply and has a way of expressing himself that it feels pure to me. And I think without Kipchoge being the hero of that story, I don't think it would work. I don't think it would hold much interest. Yeah. I think it was Lindsey Krauss who tweeted something like, the best part was seeing him accelerate across the finish line and then speed up to hug his wife. Yes. That finish line clip was the only clip I really saw. Yeah, me too. And it was so cool.

I mean, just bliss on his face, you know? And it's also really, it shows you how much adrenaline you experience by how little effort he looked like he was feeling at the end. I mean, who knows? I mean, he looked fresh as a daisy. He looked fresh as a daisy. And I think it's, you know, kind of canvassing the internet reaction to this whole thing has been interesting. Like, I think that you can appreciate kind of the beauty and orchestration that went into doing something that had never been done before.

While also understanding that there's artifice involved. Yes. And there's these crazy shoes. understanding that there's artifice involved and there's these crazy shoes. We don't even know what's inside this shoe. And, you know, all the pacing and all the machinations that went into making it possible. Like, we can entertain both of those ideas. Yeah, I mean, it's a magic show. It just reminds me of the big public displays of the famous musicians

and, you know, making the Statue of Liberty disappear or, you know, any of these things, the think tanks in the middle of plazas. They're all orchestrated for entertainment. If you know what you're getting into, cool. Yeah, and I think it'll be interesting to see how long it takes before we see 159 in a real race. I would imagine that the impact of that display will accelerate that happening because it

changes people's perspective and belief about what's possible. Absolutely. I mean, you see that across all industries, you have to see it to be it. And unless you're Kipchoge, you just be it. I guess, you know. But for most of us, it helps to have it, to see it done. And, you know, there are the valid criticisms too. One of the things that sits with me as a woman is there's so often this kind of really important milestone that starts with men, you know, the sub two marathon, the sub four mile. And the beginning of rallying around these bears is always on the men's side. And then we sort of search for the female equivalent kind of after the fact and like, oh, equality. What could we do here that is equally exciting or transcendent culturally to get people pumped on the women's side? And so it's always a little bit tough on that, you know, just thinking about that. And it's, I don't want to, you know, use it to take away from what Kipchoge did, because absolutely it's amazing. But it is enlightening to just see that when you have the biggest sports brand in the world deciding where they're going to put their marketing dollars, it's mostly men in those rooms, and they're mostly interested in the men's performances.

And so the ideas that naturally spring up are around men's barriers. And that's just another example of that. So there's just another reason to get more women in more of those rooms. Yeah. Well, we did see the eclipsing of Paula Radcliffe's record this weekend as well. Yeah, Bridget Cosguy. Also on a crazy, mysterious shoe. Yes, she is. But nonetheless, a world record performance.

Yeah, that one's hard for me to get excited about. I think she works with an agent who's been associated with so many marathoners that have tested positive for drugs. And it's just like the unfortunate thing is this association. If you associate yourself with these people who have so many ties to drugs and doping, it's really difficult to appreciate it fully. It's hard to suspend belief. so many ties to drugs and doping and it's really difficult to appreciate it, you know, fully. It's hard to suspend belief. Which brings us to the next big, you know, event in running, which is the Salazar, you know, doping scandal.

Yeah. And what I didn't know until I started digging into you a little bit deeper over the past couple of days was your own little kind of semi-brush with Salazar back in, when was that, like 2015 or something like that? Probably five, 2005 maybe. Oh, 2005, right. I read David Epstein's Pro Publica piece on that at the time. So can you explain what happened there? I mean, I know it's ancient history, but now it seems really kind of fresh and relevant. Yeah, definitely. I think it's ancient history, but now it seems really kind of fresh and relevant.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's interesting because with all the conversations around whistleblowers, I don't know if I classify. I don't think I do. But it's just one of those, I don't really know where my story fits in it. I mean, it was a little bit of an alarm bell sounding, I think. Yeah. It was a harbinger of what was to come. Yeah, and I knew that there was an investigation underway. It was a little bit of an alarm bell sounding, I think. Yeah. It was a harbinger of what was to come. Yeah.

And I knew that there was an investigation underway. I knew they were obviously digging around in Alberto's methods. And I've been thinking a lot about that time. Because when that interview with ProPublica started resurfacing, when the Alberto Salazar thing came out and I started seeing my name back in, I was feeling nauseous. Because doing that interview was really challenging. It was a tough decision for me to do. Not because I feel that I cheated or deserve or was at risk of, I don't know. It's hard to explain why it was. I guess it was just admitting to the mindset of an athlete trying to be the best and how you are then vulnerable to the adults in

your life and their input on what it's going to take to be the best. And that I took a small step in the direction and probably would have taken many more if I had been in Nike Oregon Project. I mean, I was like one of the most promising athletes in history coming out of Stanford and my event. And, you know, a lot of people thought I had the kind of the complete package to put, help put distance running back on the map. I mean, it's on the map now, but it wasn't when I was coming out of college, we had Dina Castor's medal in, um, marathon and mebs.

And, but outside of those two little moments, we'd had nothing for so long. And that was my whole goal was to do that. And so I came out of Stanford and there was this sort of emerging, I don't know, philosophy that was in reaction to all the blood doping. So blood, every movement is sort of a reaction to something else. So blood doping was becoming this big thing and people reading about it. And then the flip side of that was howiffe. This is the era of Alberto Salazar founding Nike Oregon Project. And I really think that the intentions at the time were, I mean, he said it straight up in interviews before, were to use every single method just on this side of legal to be competitive with the rest of the world and to put us on the top of the stage. And that wasn't controversial at the time. That was kind of like a, oh, good idea,

way to use what we've got, which is science and technology and smarts, right? And now when we look at it with this 15-year lens, looking back, all this concept of marginal gains and going into gray areas is very much in line with cheating. We're like, oh, the intent was to get an unfair advantage. Therefore, it was against the spirit of the sport. And essentially, that's where we are now. And that's where I sit now with how I feel about it. I really feel that you shouldn't do any of those things. But yeah, at the time, I don't think it was very clear. And so I remember being in that position of, should I sleep in an altitude tent? I do have asthma and have a prescription for an inhaler. Should I take the strongest dose possible to me year round, even

if I only need it seasonally? You know, like these kinds of questions of like, where is the line and where should it be? It does get gray and murky. I mean, on the one hand, there's things like cryotherapy and warm-up techniques. And I think, you know, sleeping in an altitude tent is kind of a standard practice for a lot of people. Like, I don't think people look at that as being super controversial. than, hey, you have a little bit of asthma, but let's trump it up and try to get the massive dose and use it year round as opposed to just when your symptoms flare up. Exactly. And so in seeking guidance for my asthma, you know, Alberto was the person who knew a doctor in Portland who had experienced testing athletes. And I believe this doctor was a good doctor. I don't think the doctor has been, it's not like the Dr. Brown case with thyroid. This asthma doctor has not been implicated in anything, but, and all those medications are now legal anyway. But at the time they were

on the restricted list, you had to have a therapeutic use exemption for certain kinds of inhalers. And yeah, it was just a, you know, if you went to your neighborhood allergist, they would just have you breathe in a tube and go, you don't have asthma. You're like, no, really, though, I do when I run in cold weather or the 5K, but they couldn't simulate those conditions. And so you couldn't test appropriately an exercise, you know, exercise induced asthma just anywhere. So anyway, that was kind of how I ended up getting connected with Alberto. I was a top Nike athlete. I lived in Oregon or not. Where did I live at the time? Maybe I live in California at the time. Anyway, I was going to be living in Oregon. Um, but I had obviously connections to Nike headquarters and he was starting this thing in there out there.

And it was like, I was like one step removed. So I had access to some of it if I wanted it. But then I had Vin LaNana as my coach who really protected me. I mean, he, when I look back, I'm so glad I was under his guidance at the time. I know altitude tents are illegal, but it's what an altitude tent led to at that time. So if you were sleeping in an altitude tent all the time and you were trying to maintain this crazy level of training, it was really common to get run down because you weren't sleeping as well. You were in an altitude tent. Well, once you get run down, now suddenly you can go to the doctor that tests thyroid and show that your thyroid is suppressed, right? Because you're suddenly all your other values are getting negatively impacted. So I always kind of started to, or I don't always, I now see the altitude tent through Nike Oregon Project as a kind of a gateway

to other things. And it did, it facilitated my exhaustion really quickly. And it led to a conversation with Vin LaNana about thyroid because I'd heard about other athletes and Galen Rupp and whoever having this thyroid problem. And I was like, maybe I have a thyroid problem. He's like, maybe you do, but maybe, maybe, you know, you're just tired because you're training really hard and you're not sleeping properly because you're sleeping in this tent and maybe you need to take responsibility for what the limits of your body are. And I was, I remember feeling really embarrassed because I remember thinking like, if I go to this doctor that these guys are seeing, I'll probably get whatever they're getting. Right.

Yeah. And I think what's interesting about this experience that you had is that, I mean, ultimately, you had an ethical compunction that allowed you to say, like, this doesn't feel right to me. Like, there's, like, what's legally okay. And then there's, you's legally okay. And then there's, you know, our internal kind of barometer around ethics and, you know, that flared up for you and you were like, I'm stepping away from this. This doesn't feel right to me. But I think it speaks to how these things happen. Like we tend to, you know, from our armchairs cast aspersion and judgment on these athletes that make

the wrong choice. But we don't appreciate the nuance of what leads up to it because it is a very gradual, slow thing where it's one thing and then it's the next thing. And then before you know it, you've crossed that line, but that line seems imperceptible in the moment. Yeah. And I, and that's why in the end I decided to speak with David Epstein, because I felt that the conversations I was hearing around the topics of Dr. Brown and the thyroid stuff or the tents or Alberto's group, all this and I was like, it's so much more complex. It is so much more complex. And I, and I've always believed that telling personal narrative is kind of the, is the better way to help people understand the complexity of something. And I, and, and so I kind of offered myself out there, even though I knew it would result in some skewering. I ended up getting a call from an old competitor right when it came out who chewed me out, who was just like, she took it as you cheated and this and this. And like,

as a, she, I think she took it as I had all these other things I must not have admitted. Really, there was nothing else to the story. But I remember taking that call and just being like, okay, here we go. Like, why did I even bother telling that story? Is it going to be any good? But I do think that it helped contribute to a conversation that a public conversation, a public understanding, it's just one of many stories that contributes to like the dialogue around this, the importance of really fighting for ethical and clean sport,

of learning what is and isn't okay and what we want that to look like in the future. The past is what it is, but I still do believe clean sport is possible. It's going to be hard, but it needs to be nuanced, our understanding of the past. And yeah, we rely a lot on whistleblowers too. So no one's going to come out and talk about their experiences if we have this black and white view on everything. Right. And it's amazing that, that you shared what you shared way back in 2005. And here we are in 2019, when this is finally getting adjudicated. And in between we have Steve Magnus. When, when did Steve Magnus kind of come out and publicly talk about

that L-carnitine thing that went down? I think it was actually, so it had this, the story I told was from 2005, but it was probably between 2015 and 2017 that I did the interview. Oh, when it got public. I see. And then that was similar to Steve. So it was kind of around. We were all starting to tell our stories because the rise of Nike Organ Project and these performances that seemed unbelievable. And the stories that were kind of being circulated within distance running of what was going on there, plus some of our personal experiences.

I heard some of the things about L-carnitine. I was like, that's not hard for me to believe, or that all these athletes are being tested for or being treated for thyroid conditions, and the medication helps them lose weight before race season. I'm like, that's not hard to believe because of my experience with asthma and my conversations with Alberto, I felt like I understood the mindset. And so I just, I was concerned that as the biggest sports brand, the most influential sports brand, putting their marketing dollars behind this group and these performances that had an ethos that was really dangerous to clean sport, that's not okay. And it goes all the way to the top with the CEO being aware of the testosterone cream and all of that and the email from Salazar to Lance Armstrong.

There's a lot of stuff that people all the way to the top were privy to. Yeah, they were. And it's one of those things around innovation too. I mean, I don't know if you have thought about it from that perspective, but I think that what Alberto wanted to do with NOP was some sort of parallel to what the innovation lab looks like for footwear, right? It was let's innovate our approach to training and coaching just the way we would innovate at the fastest spike. We'll look outside the box, we'll put a carbon plate in it, whatever you do. And I think to me, that explains why there was so much conversation with Mark Parker, because it's, and to me, that doesn't mean- The line between technological innovation and other kind of, you know, less acceptable forms of moving the needle forward

got kind of enmeshed. Yeah. Right. I think so. I mean, it's not dissimilar from the, you know, the tech suits and swimming, like it's getting weird. It's not just steroids and EPO. Like now we're entering into gene therapy and all kinds of craziness where it's going to become even, you know, it's going to become a hundredfold more difficult to try to figure out what's fair and what's not. Yeah. I'm surprised no one has invented shaving your head and swimming and then covering, like putting some sort of silicone directly onto your scalp. Like why hasn't, that's going to be the next thing. Well, the caps are kind of like that, I guess. And we've been shaving down, it's sort of been shaving forever. You can probably take a little more time off if it was

directly adhered to your skin. I know, right? Like some kind of lotion for your skin or something like that. I don't know. I did want to bring up though, before we get off the doping conversation or move it in a different direction is that Nike, it is shocking to me, and I don't know what you think, that a company like Nike that spends so much time on branding initiatives that have to do with the purity of the sport, you know, that I know of, they have never taken a stand on doping. Like they've never launched a brand campaign about clean sport and only using the body you've got. Am I wrong on that? What do you make of that?

Well, it would be completely on brand for them if you're looking at their brand deck. But when you look at their marketing assets, you've got the NFL, MLB, you know, they, they would put themselves in a position to look like the biggest hypocrites ever, because then they would have to take a stand. If something happens, then everyone's going to pull up that ad campaign. Well, yeah. I mean, it's all of it's already happening. I mean, if you just look at like if they really wanted to stand for clean sport, they could completely change everything in a year. They did do, wasn't that Lance Armstrong ad, you know, what am I on?

I'm on my bike. That was a Nike ad. That was a Nike ad, which is so ironic. So maybe, you know, like reflecting back on that, it's like, maybe we shouldn't do that. Like, we're still talking about that ad. That's true. But like they, for example,

if they decided that a major brand value for them was going to be clean sport, they could influence stricter rules in Major League Baseball and the NFL around doping offenses rather than whatever they do, a couple game suspension or whatever it is in some of these cases. They could influence everything. They can move mountains with the amount of money and marketing dollars and the level of assets, like top athletes in every sport. I just wonder what could they do if they set their mind to it? Like, yeah, it would be awkward and

uncomfortable at first, but they could clean house. They could create like a Manhattan project around it with the resources that they have, but you know, clearly it's not part of their business plan. And I think that, you know, part of that is perhaps a function of the fact that the way we perceive doping in sports like track and field and swimming and cycling is very different from what it looks like in the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball. Like, it's almost like those sports get a pass. Like we don't really, every once in a while there's the A-Rod kind of situation, but I can't imagine what's actually going on there that just gets, you know, unnoticed. So there is a disparity in the way that we think about doping in sports in those various disciplines.

There is. And they're the kind of, I guess that's what I mean by they're sort of the common player in all of them. So if you were going to make sweeping change culturally, I don't know who else could do it. They certainly have the marketing muscle to be able to create impact in anything that they decide to focus on, you know, which kind of opens up a new discussion, right? Like about how the decision, the way that

they've kind of decided to do that. And one of the other things that's been a big kind of deal in the running world in recent memory is the way that Nike has dealt with maternity leave with their pregnant female athletes. And it was a big story that like, again, back to Lindsey Krauss, like she's like incredible. She's killing it. She's breaking all these stories.

She's also an amazing runner. Yeah, she is. She's getting ready for New York right now. Like I just love reading everything that she does. And she broke this story, right? Yeah, yeah. And so this is another thing that you've had a few things to say about. Yeah.

So maybe like just explain this situation for people that are listening who are unfamiliar? Yeah. Well, so with being a professional woman runner, you kind of view your motherhood plan, your parenting plan based on your job. I think that's probably true and well beyond sport, right? But the way contracts were set up, there was no mention of the word pregnancy specifically, but it was well known that pregnancy was treated as an injury. And I don't know about this across all brands, but I know that what was— Well, first of all, that's great. Right then, like pregnancy as an injury. Yeah.

Like we're just on the wrong path. Totally. From the get-go. And generally, athletes would have some sort of a clause around if you don't compete within this many days. I mean, that could be as short as eight weeks up to six months. If you don't compete within that number of days, then you could get a contract reduction of 50% or 35% or you could be dropped. Or if you lose your world ranking or your national ranking, that could be written into your contract. If you lose that or it drops below a certain amount, you would lose significant amount of pay. So as a younger woman looking at my

contract, it didn't look like babies fit in there anywhere. And most of the conversations that I'd have with my peers involved, if I want to have kids, it's going to be when I retire. Because you're going to have to move on. And so that's just always what I thought. I thought I'd race for about eight years and then start a family and that'd be it. And so it pushes you into such a non-creative space. And you lose all this great talent right when they're entering their prime. So what happened was Alicia Montano helped bring the story forward of what happened to her with Lindsey Krauss in that story that broke with New York Times. Six-time Olympic gold medalist.

Yeah. I mean, she's getting- 11-time world champion, six-time medalist. She's won like six medals, but she's getting them all 10 years after the fact, right? From like doping. Right. Back to the doping thing. That's kind of, those wrongs are being righted the best they can. So I think she just got a medal at a Doa World Championships from like 2011 or something. We went to the same high school. Alicia and I are really dear friends. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. I mean, we're tight. and so I couldn't think of a better

face for that movement than Alicia and just what she went through but yeah is she the one that tripped in the 800 meters yeah she was at the Olympic trials and had like a big emotional display um understandably but yeah it was that was horrible and heartbreaking um So that's kind of what happened. She did this beautiful video piece plus op-ed with Lindsey Krauss about her experiences of essentially being let go, having her contracts threatened with ASICs even, and then really bringing to the forefront of people's attention, like why should this be so, especially in the wake of Nike having just produced this ad about like women can do anything they can dream of and featuring all these moms in the ads and all this stuff. So it wouldn't be such a big deal if they weren't. And Serena, of course. Yeah. And Serena, this huge story. And

so they're marketing women mothers with this lie, essentially, like mother athletes doing these incredible things with the support of Nike and these very dramatic tear-jerking videos. And then here's the reality of what they do to their female athletes behind closed doors with their contracts, with their pay. You know, Kara Goucher's story was very compelling because she was suspended. They didn't pay her for a year when she was pregnant with Colt. But they required her to do all of these appearances. I can't remember the number, if it was like 11 or 16 appearances. She was on the cover of Runner's World. She actually became more famous than ever that year.

She wasn't getting paid at all. But she was working for them. And she was not allowed to seek payment from anyone else, any competitor. Right, because of exclusivity. Yeah. So I don't even think that's legal, that you could basically force someone to work for free. I've heard of this before. Right.

Well, there's so many interesting facets to this. I mean, when I first kind of casually came across the story, my first instinct was, well, this must be antiquated boilerplate language that was inserted in these contracts forever ago. And nobody bothered to really kind of update it. But I was resistant or reluctant to, like, infer malevolence. Like, I just thought, well, this is just, you know, this is outdated and they're just late to fixing this. But it sounds like there's been women trying to challenge this all along. And it's not just Nike. I mean, Nike's at the forefront of this, but there are other brands that are doing this as well. And they've been like, no, this is the line that we're drawing

in the sand. And I think it speaks to a bigger issue, which you have, like, you're an interesting figure in this, in what I want to say, which is this whole industry is built upon this paradigm of athletic performance. Like your value is directly wed to podiums, appearances, what races are you going to be on and what podiums are you going to stand at the top? We're in a very different world now. And you're like the first generation of people and a leading voice in this movement, which is that these things need not be so directly coupled. Like you have a voice and a point of view and fan base and, you know, legions of very loyal people that care very much what you have to say. In my opinion, that transcends whatever podium you're like, that's way more powerful for a brand than, oh, you're going to get a silver or bronze at some meet in Doha or whatever that the general public doesn't even really care about. Yeah.

But this is the legacy of that. Right. And I feel like we're in this middle ground now where these brands haven't really cottoned on to the fact that the world has changed. Absolutely. And I'm always uncomfortable with calling myself a pioneer in something with this being one exception. Because you started like OG blogger back in the day. we started having these tools available to us, I decided, because I was sort of disillusioned with my first six years as a professional athlete, I thought that if I just became a national champion, they would use me in marketing and advertising and I, and we could help, I could be a person that helped bring the sport to a greater audience. And, you know,

and I won a national championship and nothing happened. I did great job with interviews. It didn't matter. We couldn't seem to get anything outside of our little circle of running media. And I was like, well, when social media and blogging came to my attention, I'm like, you can write your own story. You don't have to wait around for non-endemic media to come knocking on your door and decide your story's worthwhile. You make your story worthwhile. You tell your own story and the readers will find you.

I mean, it was so empowering. And so I did. I started doing that in 2009. And so by the time 2012 came around, my contract was gonna be up with Nike. This was my second conversation with the CEO, Mark Parker. But in this one, I came into his office essentially to say, hey, I want to have a baby. This model that we have that you just described so well, Rich, is antiquated.

Why are we still basing our contracts on this? I have been blogging. I have been using social media. I have an audience. I have a story that's much richer than, it's not dependent on being on the podium, but I'm trying to re-sign my contract with Nike and they have devalued me at 15, 20% of what I was paid before, but I'm more valuable than I've ever been. And this is crazy. Like basically telling him that the person he had in charge of sports marketing contracts was totally outdated and that there were going to be missed opportunities, especially with women. Because at that moment, I wanted to have a child and was thinking, this is actually a story that applies and is valuable to a lot of women.

And you look at who's signing up for road races, 65% women. Right. That's, that's their customer base. That's their audience. Like what, what was Parker's response? It was like pretty lukewarm, you know, it was, it was shocking to me. I know. And his wife was a world record holder in the 5k at one point. I mean, what is what, you know, what is the annual revenue of Nike? I don't even know. it's numbers that are silly it's numbers you can't even wrap your head around and we're talking about you know just minute dollars to allocate towards this thing where if they'd gotten out in front of it with the pregnancy stuff or with people like yourself like identifying like hey lauren has a

voice like there's something really interesting going on here let's put a little um marketing pregnancy stuff or with people like yourself, like identifying like, hey, Lauren has a voice, like there's something really interesting going on here. Let's put a little marketing muscle and a few dollars behind this. And the amount of goodwill that they could engender with their customer base would have, the ROI on that is insane. So it just seems completely myopic to me. It is crazy. And I do think that there was an element of Mark Parker not wanting to step on the toes of somebody that is in charge of a department who's been there for 25 years or whatever, right? I'm sure that people don't want to get up in someone's business unless they really, really want to go to bat for something. Because I felt like the conversation when we were eyeball to eyeball in his office was one where he was hearing me, but I also didn't leave feeling like he was going to do

anything about it. That was really discouraging. And it was the first time I went into Mark Parker's office was in 2006, right after I had won my US championship. And I had tried to work with the global sports marketing director trying to talk about why is the Nike women's catalog completely full of models, but you're using your top male athletes to model the clothes for your sportswear company? Why are models modeling the women's stuff and athletes modeling? And he was like, that's not my department. That's brand, whatever, essentially. Like, this isn't what I do.

I sign athletes and they win medals. That's what I do. And so I ended up emailing Mark Parker at 2 in the morning by guessing his email address based on the formula of everyone's email address. And he emailed me back. And it was Jesse who told me to do that, my husband, because he was so sick of watching me stew over it. He's like, just email him. I'm like, all right, I'll try.

And he did reply. And in that particular instance, that first time I went into his office, I was so nervous. But I was heard and changes were made. Yeah, there was a campaign after that, right? He got a hold of his head of brand, and things happened. Things changed. And I felt it was really, it was probably the first time that I remember getting over the anxiety around using my voice, using it, and having something big happen. And so, yeah, so it was just so different from the second time when I came in there.

Everybody's got their line, and moms didn't make it. Motherhood didn't make it at that time. So I was really relieved when that story broke with Alicia and Lindsey Krauss to see that if I couldn't be the person that made a difference, somebody else could make a difference. Yeah. The video is incredible. Yeah.

And she does that race while she's pregnant too in the video, which is cool. And we should say we focused a lot on Nike because you were with Nike and Nike is obviously the biggest target, but this is like an industry issue. You could tell it was industry-wide because in the wake of the ad, companies were coming out one after the other with revised language. Yeah. And Burton was one of the early ones. Noon, you know, Wazell, the reason I went to Wazell, and they signed me pregnant. I don't know if that has ever happened, actually, if a brand signed a professional athlete while openly pregnant with them. Yeah. And you're a partner in that company, right? I am. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's very cool. Well, I feel like things are changing, but they're not changing quickly enough. That's always the case though, right? Right. I guess. Right. We're in an era now where we're celebrating like the strength of women athletes in a way that we haven't before. And we are seeing this incredible resurgence in American distance running women, which is kind of cool and incredible. But there are so many things that still need fixing. Yeah, there are. There are. And as a retired professional athlete, I'm still really involved in the community. I try to keep myself engaged on mostly issues of gender equality, racial equality, ability, anything like that, any progress that can be made.

And I just try to make sure that I'm up to date the best that I can and helping kind of disseminate information to the audience the best I can. Yeah, in a very honest and authentic way. Yeah. You know, like you don't – you're not afraid to share your opinion, you know, which is what is so awesome. Well, people can unfollow. The, uh, back to the murkiness for a minute. Um, the other big thing that's kind of going on right now, especially as we go into Olympic year is, is, uh, the role of intersex athletes in female sports, which is something you've spoken about pretty frequently.

So where are we at right now in terms of what's legal and what's not and that whole confusing landscape? Yeah. Well, I don't actually know every, I mean, this new stuff's coming out all the time. It seems to be changing a lot. I mean, new stuff's coming out all the time. She seems to be changing a lot. But in the world championships, Castor Semenya wasn't competing in the women's eight.

And the ruling around, essentially built around her, but athletes that share a similar biology of being, it's DSD, differences in sexual development. Intersex is another way of putting it. But differences of sexual development is kind of like the broader terminology. So yeah, around athletes that are born with differences in that way. And so it seems like it's being fought in court. It's switching directions all the time.

She won an appeal. And then the role came back down. And I don't know. I feel like I've spoken about it a lot, but I actually haven't taken a strong stance because I feel like I still need more information. It's so complicated. I 100% feel that every human being should have the benefits of sport in their life if they want them. I mean, the benefits of sport are too great. I don't want to put a wall between someone and sports just because of differences of sexual development

or differences of gender identity or anything. And so I'm really uncomfortable with any wall or barrier put up for someone based on that. But participation in sports is one thing. Being a professional at something is another thing. And so I don't know. You know, I just don't know. I know what it feels like to compete against the best in the world and compete against someone who I feel has an unfair advantage. If you have a difference of sexual development that has If you have a difference of sexual development that has led you to go through male pattern puberty from testes that are functional and you can actually use the androgens because you could have internal testes but not be able to be insensitive to the androgens, which means you don't get the external changes in your body. But if you are sensitive to the androgens and you do undergo a male pattern, a traditionally male pattern of puberty, you have a different advantage. You just do. But then what do you do with that information? Do you just say, that's just the way it is? Maybe. I don't know yet.

The more that I've read up on this, the more confused I get. Yeah. And the more uncertain I am about my kind of knee-jerk reaction to it. Because on the one hand, you look at Castor, and this is not, to be clear, we're not talking about transgendered athletes. No. We're talking about people that are born a certain way. So I think Castor's medical records are sealed, so we don't know for sure, but everyone is fairly certain in suspecting that she's XY, right? That she has, that she certainly exudes these intersex qualities. Should she be punished for that because that's the way that she was born.

It's certainly not her fault. No, it's certainly not. In the same way that Michael Phelps has gigantic feet or whatever. It's like, this is what sport is. So we can't like relegate her to the sidelines. It's to no fault of her own. No. I mean, the only difference is that sport is divided into two categories. Right, male and female. And it's not like swimming where it's divided by foot size. I know, it's complicated. So it's hard. So there was a ruling that if you reduce that person's testosterone levels,

then you create a more equitable field of play. But then was that overruled? I haven't been keeping track of yeah i think that um i think that what my understanding was that that ruling is was put back in place for the world championships uh because i don't know why else castor wouldn't have been able to compete but then you know there's i forget her name, Dr. Christina Karzas or something. She's written a book on testosterone and really downplaying testosterone as this critical, you know, variable that it is the one thing. Yeah, exactly.

We can't put everything into that. And like you said, like some people, like the amount of testosterone doesn't necessarily indicate the level that the impact that it's having and that that varies from physique to physique. It does. And so it's but as someone who studied human biology at Stanford, I'm not like, yeah, so there you go. Hey, it's, you know, there is a difference in puberty of what happens with testosterone and a combination of other hormones has an effect on the physique of the body. So, and the, and the size of the lungs and all these other things. So it's like, I don't know the, the person in me that sort of tries to pull my competitive side out. That's like, okay, pretend you were never an elite athlete. Pretend you're just a person who believes in human rights. And that's the most important thing. That version of me wants to say,

a person should just be able to compete however they want to compete. All types of women, even if that's complicated. But then that would include people who identify as female who were born male as well. I mean, I raced in a half marathon in Eugene and there was a person who was transgender female who was competing and I was passing her. And I remember thinking, I wonder, you know, the competitive athlete in me was like, I wonder which category this person's entered in. I wonder if I just passed someone in, you know, I was trying to move up through the women ranks, not as a professional anymore, but just cause I'm competitive. And then I was like, why does it matter at this level that I'm at now? I'm not

trying to, you know, I'm not fighting over limited resources, limited metals. It doesn't matter what category this person's in. I'm just stoked that they're out here having an amazing time in sport, but I had that wrestling inside still. So it's interesting being on the non-elite athlete side now, kind of seeing where you sit with it. So I don't know. Well, I think when you're post-retirement, it's not a zero-sum game anymore. No. But when you are competing at the highest level, it is a function of limited resources.

It is. There's only one gold medal. There's only so many spots that are going to comprise that Olympic team, and everybody's vying for that. And so these things become very acute. They do, and it sort of makes me think one solution, which nobody's proposing, is to change some of that zero-sum culture of the

sport. Why does it have to be that only people who win medals can actually make a living? Why is it that athletes go to the Olympics and don't get paid at all for going there while the IOC makes billions of dollars? If you changed it where anyone who made the team is going to make money and they're going to be successful, which is a lot of how road races work. You get an appearance fee that's so big, it doesn't actually matter that much if you win a prize. So if you just get paid for being a professional, then your tension around someone who was born with different internal genitalia than you, being in the same race as you, is not such a big deal really. Right. Because you're still going to be able to pay your bills.

You're going to be able to pay your bills, yeah. And so it's just like anything else. You deprive people to the point where they're at each other instead of trying to be at you, the person who makes the system. Yeah, and I think it's exacerbated in sports like track and field and swimming where there are a couple few at the very top who are doing very well. And then there's all the journeymen people who are incredible athletes and are literally scraping by just to make a living.

I was talking to a friend of mine just the other day, multiple gold medalist in swimming who's going for it again. And it's like, this person can't get sponsors. Like, this person can't get sponsors. They're, like, trying to figure out how they're going to, like, just, you know, basically, like, feed themselves to get to the Olympic Games. It's one of the most celebrated athletes that we have. And, like, I just was thinking this is insane that this is actually the case. Totally insane. And then we have, you know, Gavin Newsom,

who's trying to initiate these changes in the NCAA to allow amateur athletes to, to pro I mean, I think these things are, you know, overdue. They are way overdue. It's insane that we have that the Olympic sports model model depends on free labor on a continually like re surfacing group or not resurfacing regenerative group, right? It's always new people. There's never going to be a shortage of talent. They're going to keep coming up and they'll do it for free. I mean, that's the model of this Olympics. It's predatory.

Imagine if basketball or football was like that, where they were like, oh, no, you just work for free all year, every year. If you win the Super Bowl, though, you'll get some money. Good luck making it to the Super Bowl without any money. Right. And it's getting even more complicated now with social media because people have realized, you know, young athletes have realized that, you know, they are, you know, I hate this word, but they're quote unquote brands. Yeah. They develop audiences young through their various channels. And when they're in college, should they be allowed to make money

on their Instagram account or not? Like, is that a violation of NC2A rules? Like what does it mean to be an amateur athlete anymore? And should that just go the way of the dodo altogether and allow people to just make a living however they choose to. I think so. Absolutely. You know, I'm not against some sort of go ahead and make your living and pay some sort of a tax on that that subsidizes all varsity sports, for example. Like if you're going to be making money, like, yes, the athletes are bringing in revenue for football and basketball at the college level. But also these other athletes that are building their brands, they rely on that system to have regular competitions for them to keep their brand up. And I think that there's this tension – all these other sports will get cut, whatever wrestling programs are left.

They could figure out a way where it's being shared both ways. Yeah, it should be. In the same way that a college, if they're selling a jersey with the name of a student athlete on the back of it, it's insane to me that the athlete doesn't get to participate in that. And if there's an athlete who's got millions of Instagram followers and is monetizing that, then maybe some of that goes to the university or to the athletic federation. The athletic department or something at their school or something like that. I mean, I think that's reasonable, but it seems just totally dumb to me that you shouldn't be able to make money on your Instagram account as an athlete, but your roommate who's not an athlete posts pictures from like a –

Yeah, you know what I mean? Like Bobby Brown makeup, here we go. And they're getting paid and you're like, this is so dumb. Right. It is. It is. But it's amazing that it takes so long for these things to catch up. Yeah.

You know, we have to have endless debate and dialogue and then 10 years goes by. Yeah. And a generation of athletes who could have, you know, navigated their careers in a more functional, healthy way are sort of, you know, dispensed with. Yeah. I don't know, man. Solve this problem for me, Lauren.

Fair labor practices. I mean, it just makes me think this is just one, anytime I talk about sports, whether it's with pregnancy or labor practices, sports is one of the things that people love to talk about. But it's just one of many, many, many, many, many industries where unfair labor practices exist, where discrimination against pregnancy, pregnant women or nursing women's, it's endemic. So, but, but where I am okay talking about sports is that if it's on everybody's mind and we can make changes in sports, you know, yes, this is a privileged group that can kind of make changes first sometimes, but if we can do that and then that doesn't, that's not a conversation ender, but a conversation starter. And if athletes who make these victories then go to bat for everybody else, um, then I'm cool with it. I'm not cool with just stopping at sports, though.

I feel like that's problematic to me. Well, it seems like that's what you guys are doing at Wazelle. Yeah. So talk a little bit about that and what Sally has created with this company. It's pretty cool. You got to talk to Sally because she is way cooler than me. I follow her on Twitter. I've been following her for a long time.

Yeah, she's amazing. She's kind of an unlikely hero. She was like Smoker. You hear some common kind of background stuff, I think, a little bit. But sports saved her life, and she had this mixture of a passion for design and creativity and then this passion for running, because running saved her life. she, Wazelle was really the combination of those two things. And I was really attracted to Wazelle because they were speaking to the woman athlete only. Whereas when

I was at Nike, I remember we made this groundbreaking campaign called Objectify Me, and it was about making women's specific shoe. They kind of led the industry in making the first women's specific shoe. But even then, as proud as I am of that campaign, the entire thing is in reference to men. Men are still in the campaign. My existence is in reference to men. That campaign was a reaction to your conversation with Parker, right?

Yeah, it was. But I didn't even think about that until later when I joined Wazelle. It's only women. It's only women's stuff. It's only women. It's only women's stuff. It's only women in the office. None of our stories are in reference to male athletes. We're not like the female version of the men's this.

It's just women runners, and that is a big enough group, right? And all the diversity within that group. So it's very refreshing. It's really cool. And I really kind of grew into myself as a woman through my relationship with Wazelle. Obviously, I was starting to find a feminist streak to be attracted to them, but it was really the conversations I was trying to have at Nike around motherhood, around trying to recognize that this new model of marketing had emerged and that the audience didn't care about performance,

only they cared about the whole person, and in particular, the whole woman in my case, and the fact that I couldn't get anywhere with that there. Meanwhile, I have one conversation with Sally Bergeson, CEO and founder of Wazelle, and she's like, well, yeah, duh, obviously, duh. I don't actually care if you win anything. You mean, I don't have to push this boulder up a mountain

and have it roll on top of me every day? She's like, if you like pushing the boulder up the mountain every day, great. Tell that story well, please. That'd be great. And she's like, really, though, we want you to be you. And we want you to be you and shine brightly because when you do that, it gives other women the feeling that they can do that too and not be sort of limited into whatever box it is. Which for me was a performance box in my industry. But every woman and person has their box they're being pushed into all the time about how to define themselves versus being self-approved. So

yeah, my work with Wazell, I'm just extremely proud of what we do there. The team that we've built, the different ways we've kind of made changes in the industry, but we're small. And so a lot of those things aren't going to be probably noticed on a global stage until much later. But I think that 20 years from now, when people are talking about big changes in sport, behind every one of those big changes of women, Wazal has had an instrumental role, whether it was needling Nike or needling the press, engaging in conversations that help shift public opinion about things, and really doing it in that strong voice that you just described me as having. I mean, that's the voice Sally brings and that they encourage their athletes to bring. And I mean, that is so different

from most companies where they want you to be the superhero. I remember it being a pretty radical thing when you signed with them. Yeah. I mean, they joked at the time that they made as much money in a year. The revenue was the same size as left gloves sold at Nike. And I mean, that's probably was still too small of a number to be honest. Were people telling you like, this is the wrong move. You're going to destroy your career doing this. I honestly think people just thought I was speaking a foreign language. No one told me don't do that.

It was more like, what you're doing? Yeah, just puzzlement. Like who's Wee Zelly? Right. Who is what? Wasn't there a weird thing where there was some meet, maybe it was trials where the bibs had to have like a Nike logo on them, or you couldn't, like there was some confusion about like leading sponsors for an event coming

into conflict with the brands that the athletes were allied with that Wazelle found itself in the crosshairs with. I just remember reading something about that. Yeah. Well, I think maybe there's been a few things that have happened, but the story that came to mind for me was when they sponsored their first professional athletes. It was for the 2012 Olympic trials, and they were just trying. They're this small, tiny little company, two years old or something at the time, or four years old at the time. They're trying to make their first elite kit for the U.S. Olympic trials stage, and they have to submit it for review. And it was like, well, no, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. And they're like, well, they're like, make it smaller, make it less legible, make it, you know.

And she was like, well, can we put this bird pattern on it? No, too many birds, no birds allowed, you know, like just like, and so they ended up with the most blase jersey ever. And I'm sure Sally wouldn't mind me saying that because it's true. It was just this kind of what was supposed to be an exciting launch of a new player, a women's focused player onto the national stage of a sport. You're like happy anybody knew was putting money in track and field at this point. And the sort of welcome they received was just, it just showed why nobody wants to enter the sport.

Yeah. It was just like, wow. But they've persisted, you know, mostly because a couple of us really want them to. I don't know how much longer they're going to be able to do it. But, man, track and field needs them in there. It's that thing where you want to widen the aperture to bring new people in and create interest. And yet when you make those moves, you get shut down. It's the same. I think that's, there's, there's an aspect of that with the Kipchoge 159 thing too, where it's like, yeah,

we want more people to be interested in track and field, but it has to be on our terms. It can't be in this other way that actually people are interested in paying attention to. It can't be in this other way that actually people are interested in paying attention to. Yeah, yeah, totally. No, that's for sure true. Yeah. Yeah, I know Sally's great, though, and the work that we're going to do, I think, over the next few years will continue to push those conversations forward. We've got Olympic trials next year, 2020.

We're hosting the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, first World Championships for track and field in the US. I mean, it's a big deal. Yeah. Lots to look forward to. Yeah. Well, let's track your story a little bit. You grew up not too far from here. Yeah. Santa Clarita. Kick-ass high school, state champion, runner. I'm sure you were recruited everywhere, right? But you ended up going to Stanford and not on a scholarship. Yeah. I know. Questionable life choice. Well, I did the same thing. You did? Yeah. But I wasn't as good as you. I was a walk-on. I didn't deserve it. I didn't deserve a scholarship. Well, I was a little bit of a, I guess a late bloomer in a way. I don't know, sort of under the radar. I was 14th at the Foot Locker Championships as a junior, and junior year is the most important year for recruiting. So I got a lot of letters from smaller schools and medium schools, but as far as that top 10 cross-country programs in the nation, I reached out to most of them. I reached out to most of them. I was second at Foot Locker my senior year. So I was right up in there and I won all my state titles senior year. So a lot of the money had been given away at these top cross-country schools to people who were stars as juniors. And I didn't have the home

advantage of growing up in a household where college was normal. My mom and dad didn't go to college out of high school. My mom got her associate's degree the same year I graduated high school, actually. She went back to school for an associate's degree in business. And so none of them really knew the landscape. And so I didn't know. I was way behind when I was writing these letters to the schools. I didn't even know what early applications were. I'm not even using the right terminology because I still don't even know what it is. But so I wanted to look at the big ones at that time were Arizona, Northern Arizona, UCLA, which was right down the street, Stanford, and Colorado. Those are my top five and the ones I wanted to take recruiting trips to. And I mean,

UCLA never wrote me a single letter. That was the weirdest one. My high school coach, Dave DeLong of Canyon High, bless him. He called the coach there at the time and was just like, what are you doing, man? She lives right down the street. She just made her second at full locker. Are you not interested? And, but in the end, I didn't want to be that close to home. I wanted to have a little bit of an adventure. So you walk on and then you end up having this incredible career. Yeah. Winning all kinds of NCAA titles, like some crazy number of all American, like 15 across cross country and track and field. Yeah. And in so doing like from what I gather at the time, the men's program was a very congealed, like, well, they called it the machine or something like that, right?

Yeah, it was the machine. Yeah, it still is, I think. And you were starting to notice, like, why isn't the women's program kind of operating with this same perspective and philosophy? And you worked hard to try to cultivate that and create that in your own way. I did. And it was really difficult. And you worked hard to try to cultivate that and create that in your own way. I did. And it was really difficult. Yeah, I really envied the environment of the machine on the men's side.

But since then, now that I'm a coach and now that I have more perspective on kind of how misogyny and sexism works, I have a different view of what was going on there. And it still goes on today all across country. It might even still be going on there. I don't know. But a lot of times what you have is a men's head coach. It's like 90-something percent of the coaches at that time were men. I don't know what it is now, but it's still really, really high. And their head men's and women's coach,

and they hire an assistant that generally works with the women's team, and that head coach kind of dances in and out of their involvement with the women's team. Oh, so there isn't a separate head women's coach. A lot of times, no. We had an assistant women's coach when I was there and that persisted, you know, even just talking to Rebecca Mira, who's an athlete I coach now, who graduated there, there was often a similar dynamic going on of that head coach of both programs, but really the women's team was second priority. And they often trusted an assistant, oftentimes a woman assistant, which is an amazing gesture. But then when you really look at how that works career-wise, that person is doing crazy amounts of work and making pennies for it.

And they don't actually have full power. They still have to kind of check in with the head coach all the time. And so when you're an athlete interacting with a coach in that way, especially at a school like Stanford, where these athletes were best in the nation, top, top, top recruits. We were ranked number one every single year. I was there, but we never finished first. But you had this feeling that you weren't important and you weren't really getting what you deserved. And so many times you'd ask your assistant coach for something and they'd

have to go check with the head coach. It was just really weird. But when I was at Stanford, I went into Vin's office when I saw this dynamic and I was like, this isn't going to work for me. I need you to coach me, you know, and he did. He ended up being kind of my direct coach, but he really only worked with, I don't even know, one. I might've been the only woman he worked with regularly. Well, one of the things you've written about, it speaks to a larger issue, which is across all sport, men versus women, in that you have these young men, they're coming into their, you know, full-blown testosterone-fueled bodies. Yeah. You know? Natural performance-enhancing drug right there. And it kind of lends itself to creating that cohesiveness

and a team construct. You know, I experienced that as an athlete at Stanford and, and conversely, what you have with women are bodies that are changing. You're having, you know, interesting things that are happening physiologically that are very different from that, that tend to, um, push women apart from each other rather than create that cohesion. Yeah. And you're right. You have biology is playing a completely different role. You're either going to be, if you're lucky, a plateau for a little while, but most women experience some sort of performance dip. And then you, so that's, that's massively at play. Then you add in kind of inherited gender weird shit where socially women are taught to view each other as competitors for limited prizes. And I know men have their own version of that, but for women, there's a tendency

to tear one another down. I think that a lot of that is changing, or maybe it's just in my world. I don't feel that at all anymore anywhere I go, but I definitely felt that when I was younger. You were careful to make a woman your, to really trust another woman who was a competitor for something. And then you had those team dynamics, like I just said, of like you get less of the attention of the most powerful person. You're fighting for that limited resource. It just fuels that scarcity mindset. Yeah. And so you have all these different things making it difficult to be a cohesive unit,

to kind of expect what you can achieve. And so you get this ranking, a national ranking, based on prepubescent bodies. And then half of your team is going through a, like a pretty significant weight fluctuation and performance fluctuation. That's just natural that can be ridden out and overcome through time. But that's, that also is something that I, I really am passionate about is, is treating women's running culture as its own entity to be respected and normalized instead of comparing it to men. So part of the normal expected trajectory of women athletes is a plateau or a dip. That's normal and it doesn't need to be bad. It can be celebrated if it's part of the expectation. And so we have to find ways

to build team culture around that. We need coaches to be educated around that. There has to be a little bit of a broadening of an athlete's value during that period of time when their performance is dipping. So that has to be baked into the culture of the team. You may need to develop the pride of being the fifth scorer on your cross-country team when you're used to being the one breaking the tape. And that's a transition that is difficult. the one breaking the tape, right? And that's a transition that is difficult. Do you feel like that's getting noticed and appropriately kind of acknowledged? Because I feel like the typical scenario and like, I'm an old man, so I don't know what's really going on now, but you have coaches saying you're too heavy, you got to lose weight. And these transitionary phases just foment disordered eating habits and body issues and all the like. That is a big thing of what you're constantly talking about.

Yeah, that's still the biggest problem is that these women's changes in their bodies are met with exactly the opposite of what they need. They're met with, if you're a dedicated athlete, you'll lose this weight. And it's like, wait a second, what if what your body needs is to actually go through this period of change, and then it will even itself out? If you look at the athletes who have had longevity, the female athletes have longevity, and you look back at their college pictures, before they became pros, they all went through these body changes and weathered them. But you have a coach who's like, his horizon is just NCAA championships in four months or whatever.

He's not thinking about the five-year career plan. Totally, because what's incentivized for the coaches is where is this all baked in, right? Look at the system. Are they incentivized only based on their podium finishes or could we incentivize them by how many women continue running after college? Maybe you need a different metric of success when you are in charge of

a group of women going through this particular phase of life than just make them deliver top-notch NCAA performances. And I know that's asking a lot and it sounds crazy, but a lot of these coaches' jobs aren't as at risk as you'd think. They're in there for a long time. And I have seen some changes, women or men coaches getting let go and pushed out for creating negative body image culture. People come up to me all the time because of the letter I wrote to my younger self through Milespl Split that Wazelle printed 500 copies of and personally mailed to coaches around the country. Oh, did they? Wow. Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff they do that's like way different. Non-traditional marketing dollars spent. And

yeah, and it is making a difference. I have coaches, in particular, it makes me happy when I have male and female coaches working with high school kids. They're like, I give your letter to your younger self, to my team every year or whatever it is. And then I know that in some way their perception on body changes has changed. I don't know if I'm influencing the college level. It's hard to know. They're kind of insular. I love that letter. I read it again this morning.

I'll link it up in the show notes. But talk a little bit about what inspired that. Yeah, well, I mean, the Mile Split team asked me if I'd write a letter to my younger self because they were doing a series from professional athletes. And I jumped on it because I had been really immersing myself in eating disorder culture and negative body image culture and the toxic effect it was having on women's teams and individual women.

And I thought, this is an area where I can make a difference because I've been steeped in it so much and trying to learn and understand it. And so, yeah, Dr. Melody Moore, she's a clinical psychologist who specializes in eating disorder recovery. She actually lives out around this area. She was a big influence on helping me understand the clinical side because I had sort of the performance side, my own lens on it. And I had a good understanding of the challenges baked into the culture, the specific culture of high performance sport. And she had the broader lens of how the disease works and the beauty myth that

women are facing on the whole. So yeah, I just tried to pull all that together in this letter to my younger self to, in a way that would translate it the most direct way I could to like the, those minds, you know? So I don't know. I'm, I'm proud of it. It seems like it's worked better than I could have hoped, but. It's still, it's still relevant. It still gets shared and spread around. Yeah. I mean, more needs to be done than a letter. When did you write it?

It wasn't that recently. I don't know, a few years ago, a couple years ago. Yeah. I think that what my dream at the time, and kids have made this challenging. They've really made it challenging to kind of do all the things I really want to do, as anyone with kids knows.

Tell me about it. But I had this vision of following up that letter to my younger self with proposed changes at the NCAA level and the national high school level of kind of like a suggested curriculum for coaches for how to better understand the role they play in creating eating disorder culture and negative body image culture and really bringing a gravity to them to understand the role that they play for better or for worse and to kind of help them develop some best practices. I really wanted to do that and I haven't. I went so far, I did this survey, I had like almost 800 participants talking about their

experiences with body image culture. It's just, it's so much work, you know? It's just so much. That's a worthy investment of your time. It would be. Yeah. Yeah. It would be, but how do you, you know?

Well, listen, you're excelling in so many categories. You're an incredibly capable human being. I mean, like in addition to being like the elite of the elite at running, you're this crazy entrepreneur. You're an incredibly capable human being. I mean, like, in addition to being, like, the elite of the elite at running, you're this crazy entrepreneur. You're an unbelievable writer. Like, I've written down here, like, when is this memoir coming out? Like, I mean, I've been following your writing for a very long time and just thought years ago you would have come out with a book. You know, like, I know you have your journals and they're amazing and all of that, but, like, a book book. Yeah, a book book. At least one. This is know you have your journals and they're amazing and all of that, but like a book book. Yeah, a book book.

At least one. This is something you have to do. And, you know, like I texted Jesse last night. I was like, Lauren's coming in. Like what's non-obvious that I can talk to her about that I'm not going to find on Google or whatever? And he's like, she's a musician. She writes songs and like wants to sing. I was like, on top of everything else? You're like a musician too?

I have a guitar back there. Oh, exciting. You know, parents, like all the things that you do. And the fact that you're at all beating yourself up because there's something else that you have an ambition around that you don't have time for. I mean, this is the human condition. It is.

I've never had a shortage of ideas, but I'm not the best at executing them without a good team or at least a good partner. And a lot of the work that I've been able to do in the last couple of years has been because I've had the team of Wazel behind me that is essentially cheering me on every step of the way and being like, how can we help?

How can we elevate what you're trying to do? And that's massively encouraging. It can take something from the idea to action, right? And I wasn't going to print 500 letters to my younger self and research all the addresses and of every high school that I could think of. And I wasn't going to be able to do that, but they could say, hey, this is important to you. This is important to women's running. We're going to do it. And then the same with the Believe Journal, my former competitor and dear friend, Roe McGettigan from Ireland, because of her, it went from an idea to actually happening. She was married to a graphic designer and she was able to help make this imaginary book come to life on a computer, which could then be printed. You know, it's just, it would have just floated around

every year, right? Like you're updating. Yeah. We update it and refresh it and stuff like that. We haven't done a big overhaul, um, in a couple of years, but we're going to do a big overhaul of the content for the next one. Right. Yeah. Um, but the book is the thing I really want to do. And that's, you got to do that. I want to do that. I need to do it. You know, when you, when you are going crazy on the days you aren't writing, you know, you need to write. It's a, it's a very aggravated state. I know a guy who's a big time writer director in Hollywood, like big, big time. And he's got a bunch of kids and he's like, everyone, each one of my kids cost me like three movies big time. And he's got a bunch of kids. And he's like, each one of my kids cost me like three movies. Yeah, it's the truth, man.

That's the reality that no one wants to talk about in our hustle culture. It's like, you can do it all. And it's like, you're somebody who's doing a lot, but you still can't do everything and be a present partner and parent and keep all these super important things in check. Yeah. I mean, the way I try to think of it now is there's all these things not being made, but I'm making something that can't be marketed or sold that I don't even understand yet when it comes to my marriage and my kids, right?

And so at least that's the lullaby I sing to myself at night when I'm feeling anxious and I want to write at my computer until two in the morning, but that would be a bad move since Zadie gets up at six. I'm like, you know what? You're making something, you're making something else there. It's not wasted time, but yeah, it's tough.

It is tough. I really struggle. I struggle with motherhood for sure. Well, your struggles are well documented in terms of your athletic career as well. Like this is, you're, I think Lindsey, Lindsey in that beautiful New York Times, that sort of elegy that she wrote to you

upon your retirement was like, Lauren is the best American distance runner to never make an Olympic team. And it seemed like every time there was an Olympiad, something interfered to prevent you from realizing that dream. And I just wonder like what your perspective is on all of that. Now, looking back, thinking like what could have been, what is being in acceptance and, and, you know, moving forward.

I mean, you have an incredible life, so it's not like there's nothing to lament, but I would imagine there are and, you know, moving forward. I mean, you have an incredible life, so it's not like there's nothing to lament, but I would imagine there are still, you know, you still have this sense of like, it was supposed to be this way. Yeah. It went another way. For sure. I often think about how much easier certain things would be if I had the title of Olympian, if just one of those years had gone slightly differently, you know, the hardest of those years being 2008, because that was an alternate for the team. Up until the last minute, I didn't know if, because there were a couple athletes doubling 10K, 5K, and I was in the 5K. And so I didn't know up until the last minute if somebody would decide not to come back in the 5K. And so I just stayed on guard and I trained all the way up to that Olympics I was like the ghost Olympian back home that never was and and I was really sort of in denial about

it until it was like the last possible moment I could be called um and I always was aware that while the Olympics was an obvious goal society feeds you right it's the most obvious goal that it wasn't the only thing to make it worth it. I just knew it would make things easier. It would open doors. So I wanted it. Yeah. I wanted it. I wanted it out of pride because I, because I would have earned it, but then, um, yeah. And so I, I, I think about that sometimes with like, even this book I'm working on, how do I write the book proposal? Do I write it as the fastest runner to never make the Olympics tells her story of whatever, but it's just part of my story. And I think that when you, what I have seen is that when you accomplish one of those

things that is so easily identified as quote success, Olympic medal, whatever, I think it is, I think it would be harder in some ways to be self-approved. I feel like I was sort of forced into finding self-approval in my career because I didn't get what I wanted. I didn't get that ultimate prize. I can't go by the title Olympian. I don't have people going around telling me I accomplished everything in the sport that I set out to do. So it's like, well, I got to find the peace there. I got to find peace with that. And that's the theme of life anyway. Everyone has to

find eventually. So not getting what I want pushed me there sooner. Well, when you get what you want, it's harder to reckon with yourself in an honest way. You can tell yourself a bunch of bullshit and everyone pats you on the back. And when it doesn't go your way, then you really have to kind of get honest. Yeah. I think that when I got what I wanted, until I didn't, but when I got what I wanted, there was a part of me that always felt I deserved it. And then when I didn't get what I wanted, I was like, but I deserve it.

And then it kind of clicked like, oh, there's people everywhere that deserve something and don't get it. I never deserved any of it. No one deserves anything, really. So I don't get it. I never deserved any of it. No one deserves anything really, you know? So I don't know. I think I would like to think I'm a better person because I didn't get what I want, but I don't really know.

Do you spend a lot of mental energy thinking about it or is that just in the past now? I mean, because you're a coach and you're still very much in the sport, it's not like you've just put that's in the rear view and now you have this whole other life. Yeah. I have a conflicted feeling about staying in the sport actually for that reason. There was, when I was thinking about retiring, a big part of me wanted to just close the door and leave it behind. And I've seen a lot of my peers do that. And it's very tempting because it eats at

you. There's part, like the more you stay in the sport, the doping stuff keeps eating at you. My seventh in the world finish with all these suspicious people in front of me eats at me. How many people have you raced that have beaten you who have been toppled by doping or are under the dark suspicion of that kind of behavior? And they kind of, I don't think I'll ever really know. So it's just, there's a big part of me that's like,

I would be happy shutting the door, diving into music and writing, never writing really about sport. But then because I do love the coaching and I do really love my relationship with Wazelle and this kind of broader women's athlete movement, I get to be involved in sport in a way that is very holistic,

where I'm constantly learning. And it does mean that I am kind of always getting pinged by my past still, because I am engaged and it's just over there. But it also gives me the opportunity to continue rewriting that story in my mind. I'm like, actually, that was really good. What I did was really good. And actually, with a few more years under my belt, you know, it didn't really matter that much that I didn't make the Olympics or whatever. I think with every successive year, it becomes less important. Yeah. And your voice is as strong as ever and the influence that you wield over your sport and just the conversation that swirls around female empowerment, both in sport and outside of sport, you know, continues to build and grow.

Yeah. And it will continue to build and grow. And we need voices who have an expertise in performance in that conversation. It's almost better because, well, here's the thing, like, because if you, like, if you just won every race you were in, you become very unrelatable. That's true. And your whole thing is being relatable and being honest and, like, here's the, you know, here's what it looks like, warts and all. Yeah. But the minute you don a gold medal, then it's like, oh, well, it's easy for her to say. Yeah.

You know what I mean? But the fact that you didn't get what you wanted and, you know, there is an argument that, you know, I should have, could have, would have kind of thing. It makes you kind of more endearing. I think that, that, that, that helps you connect with the people that are, are interested in what you have to say. I feel that. And I think it gives me a little bit of a, of a, um, I was going to say chip on my shoulder, but it's not even that with my coaching. Cause I feel like I have a very specific coaching philosophy with the elite athletes I coach, which is I will train them to be among the best in the world, but not at the expense of their personhood. And I had to sort of fight to reclaim the importance of my personhood during my career. I had a few years where I thought it was like a liability and that I

should just be this drone monk runner person and that that was the best way to go. So I was shutting out any other part of me, the musical part, any other part of me really. And I was like, no, I want to be a whole person. And I ended up having good results doing that against a better judgment of the quote experts in my field. So I coach with like a fervor around that now. Like, who are you? Let's not lose who you are. Let's chase this thing. Yeah, you need to make choices. You can't like do everything all the time, but you shouldn't lose track with who you are because you can only be you as an athlete. Don't try to be her. Don't try to be whatever.

And so it means that I really need to get to know who they are as people in order to do that. And I feel like I have something to prove there too. I want my success to be measured by how many of those people, of these women, leave the sport without an identity crisis, without going through a sinking depression due to the impossibility of transitioning back into a human self. And is it possible to get great results that way? We're finding out.

We're getting pretty good ones. How's it going? Great. Yeah. How many athletes do you have now? We have six on the team. I coach five. But it's really, I mean, we have a pretty magical environment and actually crosses outside of track and field, which is really exciting because we've got Lindsey Corbin and Heather Jackson of the Ironman crew. I don't coach them. I do some like kind of advising with Heather, but on the running side, but they come and work out with us. Like our, our gates are open to kind of bring in that champion culture for one another in bend because they live in bend right and that's just so exciting

to me so it's like being able to do that in in town is like it's pretty good in this tiny little idyllic little whoville where you live yeah and watching them compete at kona was just you know lindsey did she got 10th yeah she was yeah yeah she seems really cool i've never met her but little Whoville where you live. Yeah. And watching them compete at Kona was just, you know. Lindsay did, she got 10th, I think. Yeah, she was 10th. Yeah. She seems really cool. I've never met her, but she seems awesome. She is amazing. And she won Wisconsin, I think, right? This year. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And then Heather got fifth and had a great day. I think she's finished as high as third before, but she's also had some significantly worse than fifth. So it was good to see her have a good one. That's cool. And how did,

how did Jesse fair, uh, not being in Kona? It was pretty, it was pretty tough. I think, you know, it kind of came up on him quickly, right at the last minute. Cause he's so invested in picky bars and his work and the family that I don't feel like he dwells on it every day. But yeah, I started to get closer and the media buzz is building and he's like, I kind of wish I was there even just socially to connect with people. I think he's starting to feel pretty like it's moving in the rear view mirror and I think that's tough. Well, there's similarities between the two of your stories. Like he's dealing with these injuries and, you know, is facing, you know, what's next for him? What does his relationship with professional sports look like?

And I think that's a tough, confusing, emotional place to be. It is. While also raising kids and trying to run this company and do all the other things. I look at Jesse's story as an example of how masculinity is packaged and sold in sport, being archaic, where like kind of where I was in 2012, sitting in the room with Mark Parker at Nike, trying to talk about the value of the complete person. Jesse is this guy who is the CEO of Picky Bars. He's an incredible dad. He is very passionate about equally shared parenting, really sharing the emotional labor of home life, which is very against traditional ideas of masculinity, right? And these are things that are on the forefront of conversations around redefining masculinity in our culture right now

to kind of help with some of the major problems we're facing as a society, right? Around violence, violence against women, terrorism, all these things that are generally perpetuated among men and the unique ills that men face. The article in the New York Times, I think I read recently, was about the average man having a difficult time having these emotional intimacy in their friendships, right? Because of these antiquated views of masculinity. And Jesse's just such an awesome example of being kind of on the forefront of really doing it differently um but it and so

at a point in his career where he's experienced all this friction like it's all going to need to be behind him because of work and family I'm like why isn't this just the beginning in some ways for your for your career as a professional athlete like Like it can look different. It doesn't have to look the same. Like you couldn't do it the way you could before, but why is it considered less valuable necessarily if you want to do it differently? Well, I think, I mean, I would agree with everything that you just said and echo all of that. But I think what happens is all of that sort of progressive sensibility butts up against a traditional idea of what it is to be a man that like we still can't quite escape, which is I need to be this champion and I need to be this breadwinner. And this is what it means to be masculine. And when you don't achieve those

goals or ambitions for yourself, there's a sense of emasculation that takes place that makes you feel less than or less than a man or like, this is what I'm, this is where I'm supposed to be at this point in my life. And I'm not, and I feel like there's a, there's a weird kind of not shame, but like, uh, you know, a sense of, of insecurity, I think that goes hand in hand with that. Yeah. What do you think can be done about it? I think that goes hand in hand with that. Yeah.

What do you think can be done about it? I don't, I mean, I'm far be it for me to give anybody advice. I can only share my own personal experience, but I've gone through this. And I remember as I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be as I was transitioning out of law. It was a very confusing time. And it was also a very, there was a lot of financial hardship. And I have vivid memories of being down at the park in Malibu with my two daughters, like pushing them on the swings.

And it was like two o'clock on a Tuesday and it's a bunch of moms and I'm down there. And I had these conflicting emotions of like, how cool is it that I can be in the middle of a weekday, I can be at the park with my daughters when they're young in this precious moment versus the conflicting and probably more powerful sentiment, which is like, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing with your life, man? You have nothing going on and like you're down here in the middle of the day and you don't even know what you're doing. Like this is not the way it's supposed to look. And that creates a kind of vertigo that the only way through that is to stay with it. And I think the answers are, you know,

within the self, like Jesse knows what the path is and those solutions come when you can find those moments of stillness and, and clarity, you know, with the clarity around those intuitions comes when you carve out that time to really connect with yourself. And it's, it's not going to come from some other person saying, do this or don't do this. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. And it kind of reminds me of, in the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about the power of marketing to shift public perceptions. And we were talking about doping and Nike. But the power of sports marketing to kind of parents as kids or whatever, like they're not, I don't know, they're not like givens. Like as in they don't just exist for no reason. No, they're just norms. They're social contracts that are reinforced through basically our daily experience and everything that we see and hear and are exposed to. basically our daily experience and everything that we see and hear and are exposed to. And there's so much happening with women right now in marketing where the marketing machine of business is, for their own sake, to make money because it's hot right now,

they're helping shift the narrative around the feminine identity. And who's going to be at the forefront from a business side of shifting masculine identity and capitalizing on that shift because it's coming um i think on a big way it's happening around us but i just wonder who's gonna which which what who's gonna be the first like male specific company really uh jumping on that yeah that'll be'll be interesting. Well, I don't know. Jesse's available for that ad campaign, right? Sure. I mean, if he wants to be, but yeah, I don't know. He's my inspiration. Well, I mean, look, he's amazing and everything that you guys are doing. There's something about, I experienced this with my wife as well. Like both of you guys have your respective paths and kind of lanes that you're in and you're excelling in those.

And you're very independent and strong people. But there's an alchemy that when you come together, whether it's through your podcast or these other various things that you do, there's something exponentially more awesome about that. Yeah. I wish we had more time to capitalize on that together. That's the nature of young kids. It's like we're at the age where a bunch of people are splitting up. They got young kids this age and it causes so much tension. But I actually feel like the podcast is like saving our marriage sometimes. Because we have this weekly time where we get to see the way that one plus one is more than two when we're together. And the formality of the mics, it just creates a structure that forces you to be present for that.

And you can't be like checking your phone or whatever. No, you can't. So I have a joke with my wife. It's like, oh, I think we need to like do a podcast because we got to like talk. We need to talk, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know, man. I definitely feel like optimistic

about the future with Jesse. I think it's exciting. I sometimes get jealous of future us. Like if we can just make it to future us where we have more time to spend together with just us, we just got to make it like four more years. Because if we can make it four more years, still liking each other a lot, still loving each other, we're going to be able to drop two kids off with someone who will take them for a week or two weeks or whatever. And we can do some cool adventures together. And sometimes it feels like I spend a lot of time admiring Jesse

from afar, even though he's in my home, you know, because there's so much of like, all right, you take the kids. I'm going to go out for a run. I'll take the kids. You go out for your bike ride. You're leaving next weekend for this work thing. I'm leaving the next weekend for this work thing. You know, we have, we get these short conversations and our communication is good, but we just don't have that much time for depth. So it's, yeah, it feels a little bit like we're on hold sometimes.

Well, here's a little tip. Yeah, give me a tip. By the time you get to that point, then you're gonna lament, you know, the thing is it's like- What do we do? You have to appreciate the moment that you're in because it is precious and the kids do grow up so fast and all of that future tripping, you're,

you know, takes you out of being present for what is actually happening for all those super advanced moments, you know, um, that are, that are hard, but great. And to the extent that you can leverage them to cultivate intimacy and grow closer to Jesse, that's the beautiful potential of the whole thing. So that when you get to that point where you can drop them off, you actually aren't going to want to. You're going to want to bring them with you. Yeah, that too. Well, what would you write in your letter to your younger self about that period of time? I'm interviewing you. I would say that so many of the fears and anxieties were completely like justifiable and legitimate, but also turned out to not happen. And the amount of energy that I put into them

was ridiculous. So my letter would be to trust yourself above all and to invest the time required to get to know who you are so that you can figure out what that voice is trying to express and be fearless in the expression of that. And if you can figure out what that voice is trying to express and be fearless in the expression of that. And if you can create fidelity to that, that your life will unfold in front of you.

Probably not the way you want it to or on the timeline you would prefer it to, but that's really the only path. We're here to grow, and to the extent that you can invest yourself in that personal growth, I really think that the answers that you're seeking are revealed in that way. Yeah, that's great advice. It makes me feel a little better about the path I'm on. But it also is something you have to constantly recommit to because I feel like that's my intention. But then life comes along in these moments you know, moments of choices and whatever.

But that's also how you coach your athletes, right? It's adaptability. It's not about, like, here's the plan and we have to be perfect. It's about being malleable so that you can absorb whatever life is throwing at you. Yeah. That requires a lot of confidence. Yeah. Adaptability requires confidence.

And I think people look at, you know, like you're on the cover of Outside Magazine on a dock and like you have this beautiful life and these beautiful kids and this business and it all looks fantastic. And what I appreciate is just the honesty with which you share like the struggles and how difficult it is. And I think it's fun to tune into your podcast and there'll be questions about like, what gel do I use? And then the next question is like, what is venture capital? You know, it's like. It is kind of amazing the breadth of things people write in about. And it's fun. I really enjoy doing that.

I think you need to write this book. What do you think? What do you want to know in the book? What do I want to know? Yeah, what do you want to know? I just, I think to me, it almost doesn't matter. Like the narrative is less important than just your voice. Cause there's something very specific about the way that you write. That's very identifiable. That dates all the way back to when you started blogging.

It's just this unapologetic honesty. That's so refreshing. So to me, it almost doesn't matter what you decide to focus on. It's the voice, I think, that I connect with. And I think that's needed, especially like a strong female voice who's honest, who has integrity, who can speak truth to power and elevate the feminine, the strength in the feminine, I think is something that we need in our culture. Well, thanks. Yeah. So where are we at with that? I'm going to press you on this. Yeah, you can press me on it. I am obviously more committed than ever to honest truth-telling, and my writing style is to just say things how they are. And if I find that I'm dancing around something, I try to just cut right into it and get right to the truth of the matter. So right now, where I'm at in the writing process is kind of recommitting to the book. I was in a real groove. I'm sure any writer can relate to this, but in a real groove of writing, having it in my everyday. And then coaching started to ramp

up and I host these wilder retreats where I do running and writing. And those take a lot of time. Is that women only? Because I want to go to one of those. You can come to the co-ed one. I want to run and write. You can come to the co-ed one, yeah. Those are the two things I like to do. Most of them are women only, but I do host them for men and women too. Is Julia Hamlin still involved? Yeah. She's teaching the yoga at the retreats. She's awesome. I'm actually going to talk to her on her... Oh, nevermind. I shouldn't talk about that. I'm going to talk to her on a special thing coming up soon. But, um, so I put it away, I put it in the drawer and then I recently was going crazy because I'm not writing. So I'm

spending time writing in my mind, in my bed, pissed that I didn't write during the day. I'm at that stage of the creative process, but I needed to essentially do a, when the, when the track season was over for the athletes, I was coaching. I needed to kind of create better boundaries around what my coaching time is when my creative time is what my family time is. Cause all of them were just bleeding into one another and spending too much time on my phone in front of my kids because I'm getting coaching stuff coming in at nine o'clock at night. And basically anything can pull away from writing time because writing is hard and you have to sit alone in a chair. And so suddenly I'm scheduling everything on top of my writing time. So I really did that exercise of sitting down and reclaiming my time. And now I have a schedule. So that's really helped. It's been a week.

So I'll let you know how it goes, but I am writing again. Good. I'm glad's really helped. It's been a week. So I'll let you know how it goes. But I am writing again. Good, I'm glad to hear that. It's just about momentum, too. Yeah, it is. You know? It is. It's like anything in that way.

How do you deal with, I'm sure you get this question a lot, like, you know, you guys, you and Jesse are so enmeshed in your business and your personal lives. Like, there's this idea like, oh, there needs to be boundaries around like when we stop talking about business and when it's just our time. And I just know for me, like that's kind of like setting myself up to fail because I can't really live up to that. Okay, now here's the iron curtain that's going down on work. And it's like this is our lives. This is what we're involved in.

This is what's top of mind. These are the things we need to talk about. So I don't do a very good job in the traditional sense of creating boundaries around that. And I'm wondering how you guys do that. We've had to be pretty strict with it. I think Jesse's like you. I don't think it's his natural inclination to want to do it. But I grew up in a household where boundaries weren't really super safe. My dad was an alcoholic.

He was an amazing guy, but he was kind of an explosive alcoholic. And so it's really important to me that there's going to be kind of like a feeling of safety around what we're going to talk about. And with work, work is not safe for me. Talking about picky bars at dinner or like, I don't know, just having it kind of come out of left field when I'm thinking about something else, it affects me in a really negative way. And part of that is the boundaries thing from growing up. But part of it is my relationship with risk is so much different from Jesse's. And so every conversation about picky bars comes back to risk for me. I mean, our names are co-signed on every loan. They could take our house if picky bars can't pay their bills. That's normal entrepreneurship stuff that Jesse's more comfortable with me because of his upbringing

and his personality. I grew up without a lot of money and, you know. Yeah. So I don't, it's not safe. It's not a safe space. That's so interesting. So how did you end up with such a, like a stable, stand up, good dude? Like how come, you know, you, you know what I mean? Did you go to a lot of therapy? I have, but after I met him, I think my mom used to tell me that she grew up with an alcoholic dad and she married an alcoholic.

And so I knew from a young age that there was a pattern. And she told me straight up, don't marry an alcoholic. Plus, we had a lot of mental illness in our family and especially bipolar disorder. So all three of my mom's siblings have or had bipolar disorder when they were alive. And so the risk factors, if you're genetically predisposed, alcohol and drug use, lack of sleep, tons of stress. So those things I was aware of from a young age, too, because my mom was the one kid that managed to avoid that. And she was worried about my sister and I. And so I had this like double fear

around alcohol in particular. So for me, I really was drawn to kids in high school who had good, clean fun. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Mormons and Christians, even though I'm not a person of faith. And Jesse was sort of the first person I met who was similar to me, but not a person of faith. That was, he didn't have his first drink of alcohol until

like two months before his 21st birthday, and he got busted. The first time he held a cup in his hand at a college party ever, he got an MIP, minor in possession. On campus at Stanford? On campus at Stanford. Seriously, that's the kind of luck. But I was really attracted to the fact that he didn't need those things to be himself or to be comfortable around other people. And I felt safe with him. So, yeah, definitely tractor beamed to that secure stability. Yeah, you transcended.

Yeah, I made it out. Yeah, you didn't step on the landmine. That's amazing. I didn't. And did you go to Al-Anon as a kid or anything like that? No. And I was just talking to my mom about that. Dad never got sober? Nope. Not well. I don't know. Maybe forced sober when he had liver cancer because he couldn't drink when you're on the chemo and stuff. But no, he never did. He was pretty high functioning. I mean,

he always kept his jobs and stuff. But I think in that industry, there's a ton of alcohol use is pretty common. So yeah, he never, he never did, but I think there was, there is some element of that environment that I grew up in that I miss though. Like all his buddies were always, they always had a beer in their hand. They were always down to party. They were always having fun. There was so much a roller coaster. There was so much laughter. Yeah. Like for all the, you know, when it all falls apart, it's bad. Yeah. But there's an aspect of it that's very exciting. It is.

It is very exciting. And you never know what's going to happen. You don't. I know. You don't. Yeah. So I do, I am kind of that person in the relationship, not with substances, but I'm the live wire, the unpredictable, the spontaneous one. And Jesse's so stable that sometimes we have friction around that of like

the predictable versus the unpredictable, you know, but that's a minor problem. You should be able to roll with like being, you know, on the lease and everything like that. I know you'd think. Money's different. I don't know. There's something about that. Well, when you grow up without it, you're going to have a different relationship with it, of course. Yeah, that's true. Going to Stanford, sports was my way out into a different future. I didn't get a scholarship freshman year at Stanford, but I was told when I went on my recruiting trip that if I competed well, I'd get one every other year. that if I competed well, I'd get one every other year. And since I was young and naive, I never considered that wouldn't happen. I never considered I'd get hurt or anything. I was like, oh, okay, great. So that's as good as you telling me that I only have to pay for one part of,

you know, we got financial aid. So one part of one year. And luckily I didn't get hurt and I did get that support in the other years. And yeah, so it made a difference, but it always felt like tenuous. Like I would take ketchup packets from fast food restaurants because I didn't have money to buy a bottle of ketchup or I would buy my gas like $2 at a time, just like limping my car along. I didn't have a credit card or debit card like my buddies on the team. I couldn't do that. I had friends that were giving me their old hand-me-down clothes, and I had friends that would always magically buy me my milkshake at post-race celebrations. And I got by with a lot of support from people, but I kind of always felt like I had no business being there. So yeah, I didn't grow up with any money management skills. So yeah, I think

Jesse had entrepreneurial parents, and I think he just has a lot of confidence and he went to business school and he's just kind of I think more familiar and I get better and better he's just realized he has to really explain it to me and I need to feel really safe I need all the information but when I'm ready for it

and not at dinner well it's good that you guys understand that about each other because then you can make sure that those needs are fulfilled. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I think every risk taker can benefit from a voice of reason in their life. So I like to think that I help keep picky bars on a more reasonable path of risk

or maybe a slightly more conservative approach than he may otherwise take. Only time will tell how that turns out. But we're almost 10 years. How's it going? I mean, 10 years. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

And where is it at since I talked to Jesse? You had a couple supply chain things. We did. But it seems like you sorted everything out. And when you talked to Jesse, he was just kind of diving in full time to the business after Challenge Roth and kind of deciding he was going to go on sabbatical and apply his tenacity, his iron person tenacity to the business. And he has had an amazingly successful year. So the company is doing well. We've had a few profitable months, nothing crazy,

but just to like the models working, he can see clear year over year numbers that his time and his effort has worked and that the decisions we've made have been beneficial and it feels good to see him kind of walking around feeling proud of himself for something so non-sport related um that's cool and i do feel safer and safer i mean anytime you're in the black business feels better yeah well a decade in you've had 10 years of uncertainty and you guys are still doing it. So that should also make you feel like you're probably going to be okay. I still feel like our most profitable year was when we were working out of our home kitchen

because your overhead is nothing. Right. You know, like we're selling millions more picky bars, but it's so much harder to make the numbers work. Because the food business and just business in general, it still doesn't totally make sense to me why. It's easy when you're tiny, and then it's almost impossibly hard until you get to some magic number like $10 million or $20 million in revenue.

And then as soon as you get there, things start to change again. They scale in a different way. I think a lot of businesses are like that. My wife was in the garment business and it was the same thing. Like when you're small, it's fine. And then you get into that nether zone, that middle zone. And she had like a very complicated line and she was doing all the store, all the big department stores and all that kind of stuff. But their terms of when they pay her were crazy. And it was like, she was constantly teetering on disaster the whole time.

And the only way that you become like Tommy Hilfiger is somebody gives you an insane amount of money to get you over that. Yeah. And that's the thing is that we are kind of at that level where we have to decide, do we try to find money and try to grow it faster? Or do we kind of stay the course on this safer, more sustainable path of growth? We have all positive signals in our business right now, but you don't know. You don't know. You don't know. So that's Jesse's job. That's what he's swimming in every day. And I'm like, please don't bring me into that unless we have a meeting. Or we're doing a podcast about it.

Then you have like 15 minutes to talk about it. Right. And yeah, and he's an obsessive person. He does Ironman. You understand the obsessive. Yes, very detail-oriented. Yeah, so he could talk about it 24-7 and be happy. But I think it's good for him.

I think I force him to be a little bit more balanced in that way. All right, we got to wrap him to be a little bit more, more balanced in that way. All right. We got to wrap this up in a couple of minutes, but I can't let you go without, um, I love asking elite athletes, uh, what they, what they would tell, like, what, what are the, what are the things that most amateurs are doing wrong? Like you're at all these races, marathons or whatever, 5k is 10. And you see, you're around a lot of, marathons, whatever, 5Ks. And you see you're around a lot of people who are weekend warriors or serious amateurs. And you're like, why is that

person doing that? Don't they know that they... Like what comes up when you think about that? Well, being that I'm in the food business, I generally, I just had a moment like this running a picky bars booth at a running event in Snohomish, Washington. The things that come up to me, the people, the things people say when they come to a nutrition booth are just, that's when it happens the most. I'm like, why do you think you cannot eat carbohydrates? Why do you think that four grams of sugar is too much sugar? Why are you wishing this had zero calories in it? It's food. It shouldn't have zero. The things that people believe, hold these deep-held beliefs, they make me sad because I know from experience, having been someone who teetered on the edge of an eating

disorder early in my professional career, who was pretty obsessed with weight and calories and trying to optimize it like I did every other part. I was doing that from a performance side, but I know how much brain space it can take up. It makes you unable to really enjoy your life and be present in so many other ways. So I see that and I get sad because I'm just like, oh, imagine what you could do if you weren't so worried about that four grams of sugar that comes from, you know, a banana or whatever it is, like, well, imagine what's possible. Hence the, I love carbs t-shirt. Yes. In defense of carbs, you know, I just, I don't know.

I really do struggle with that. Outside of that, there's like kind of more lighthearted things like people just hammering their easy days. I'm sure you get that one a lot. But when I go out and runs with amateur runners that are just, they only run a few times a week, but when they do, they hammer it. I'm just like, oof. Strava culture. Yeah.

I do love some good Strava culture on the mountain bike, though, I will confess. But yeah, you do. It's like anything that people do that makes it hard to have a sustainable, enjoyable relationship with sport is hard to see. I think I read, weren't you running with some Kenyans once and you were like, they run so slow. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it.

They were training in Palo Alto leading into the Peyton Jordan Invitational to run 5Ks and 10Ks. And I was just like, what is happening right now? They were doing the kind of jog that you do when you're approaching a red light and you want to like time it so that you slow way down so that you can hit the light right when it turns green. So like how slow? 12 to 15 minute pace at first. Like I'm talking-

For how long before they ramp it up? We're running 12 minute pace probably for a few minutes and then sort of, you just gradually cranked it down, then to 10, and then to 9. But I mean, mind you, at this time, I was running all my runs at 640 per mile. Right.

Six minutes and 40 seconds. So this was, I was like, what's happening here? I was like tripping over my feet. And then by the end, they were running under six-minute miles. On that particular run, they ran it like a progression. But when I later got to train with sally kipiego on her easy days she would just run easier like she would run probably one and a half to two minutes per mile slower than i would if i went out by myself so i started making

myself go out with her the days after hard workouts because she would just kick my butt on the workout days on the track i'm like well obviously running those nine minute miles isn't hurting you at all so i might as well do that too. There's some kind of weird American mindset where it's like, we can't give ourselves permission to do that. Like we feel like if we have this time, we have to be, you know, performance minded about it and that it's squandered if we go slow. Even when we know it's a recovery day. And that goes for beyond sport, right? Just taking that 15 minutes between when you got to the doctor and your doctor appointment, not feel like you need to be a recovery day. And that goes for beyond sport, right? Just taking that 15 minutes between when you got to the doctor and your doctor appointment, not feel like you need to be checking emails and

answering them on your phone. What if you just sat there, looked around? Yeah, I know. But all of man's suffering can be reduced to his inability to sit with himself alone. Pascal said that. Is it? Yeah. Yeah, I will say as a person who sitting still does not come naturally to me, but I have- No meditation practice for you? I don't have one. If I was an early riser, I would have one easily. I want one, but my kids are my alarm and it makes it tough. So I have to put it at a different time of day. It's not impossible though. I can do it. But you live in this little blue zone, right? Like you're right on a river.

The kids probably go to school like down the street, right? You walk them or ride a bike to school. Yeah, Jude's in first grade. It's all very contained. Zadie's home. Yeah, it is. It's pretty cool. So Zadie is two now?

Yeah, Zadie's two. And so how old is Jude then? Jude's six. Six. Yeah, first grader. Yeah. Learning to read. Right. Doing all that.. Six. Yeah, first grader. Yeah. Learning to read. Right.

Doing all that. Super advanced. Yeah, it's so fun. And what's so, all right, well, let's wrap this up. So what's next? Like, what are you, like, what's top of mind? What's next? Well, top of mind for me is really, this is my New Year's.

It's not New Year's. It's fall. But I really want to write. I want to do creative work. And I want to be a part of my daily life. I want to be the best coach that I can be. And I want to spend more mindful, present time with my family. And so I'm really trying to create three distinct buckets.

I generally like an integrated life approach. That's what I tend to do, but I've just learned that it's, it's really making me unable to do those things as well as I can. Coaching, creativity, and family. Yep. That's what I want to do. And so creativity is going to be mostly my book, but there's space for music in there. There's space for podcast in there. It's just like creating things, feeling like that creative part of me that exists outside of someone else's athletic success, right? Because the coaching is creative, but it really is for someone else's moments. And as rewarding as that is, I need more than that to feel good.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. And I want to set a better example for my kids around device usage. So that's where the boundary comes for family, that when I'm with my family, I want to be with my family. And I know Jesse and I are at a point in our relationship where I think that will go a long way for us. And for my first grader, I want him to know what we're doing when we're in the room with him.

And when your face is in a phone, you could be doing anything. Yeah, it. It's hard though. It is, but I want to try it. I want to try it for a few months and just see what happens. And I think I just, when I'm with Jesse and we're not on our phones, I feel special to the most important person in my life. And so I know he must feel the same way when I'm not on my phone. And I need that. I need that bolstered feeling that I matter to him, that he sees me. And with all the other things happening in our life, I need to feel that. And I want him to feel it. Yeah. I think that's a good place to end it. Beautiful. Beautifully put. I love that. And I'm going to hold you to the book. I'm going to bug you. You want to be an early reader?

I love that. And I'm going to hold you to the book. Okay. I'm going to bug you. You want to be an early reader? I'd be happy to. I love doing that. Yeah, please. Please.

Any help that I can give that you're willing to receive. I appreciate it. Awesome. And then when you write it, you can come back and tell me about it. Okay. Come back on the show. Sounds good. Work, Play, Love is the podcast.

You can find Lauren. She's easy to find on the internet Fleshman Flyer is that on both Instagram and Twitter? Lauren Fleshman on Twitter and you blog on the Wazelle site but not on your own site no I haven't blogged on my own site

I want to revamp my website but asklaurenfleshman.com has the archives of kind of my athletic stories and kind of some Q&A. Before we answered questions on Where to Play Love, I answered questions on my blog. Right. Cool. Yeah.

All right. Well, a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you. Yeah, cool. And give my love to Jessie. Will do.

All right. Peace. Carbs. Peace and carbs. Don't leave them out. They're sad. There you have it. We did it.

Powerful, that Lauren Fleshman. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Be sure to check out the show notes on the episode page to dive deeper in the Lauren's world. Show her some love on the socials. You can find her again on Twitter at Lauren Fleshman and on Instagram at Fleshman Flyer. Lastly, don't forget to check out her blog, Ask Lauren Fleshman, and check out the Work Play Love podcast with her husband, Jesse Thomas. Once again, right now, you can take 30% off your first order at Picky Bars with the code RICHROLL. When you're there,

be sure to check out their Coexist campaign, which supports awareness and recovery from eating disorders. Again, this is purely a gift. I'm not an affiliate. This is not a paid ad. Just sharing good information about good nutrition from good people. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, Google Podcasts. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate.

I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the video version of the podcast. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music by Analema. Appreciate the love, you guys. And we'll see you back here in a couple days with the producer, editor, and writer at The New York Times, Lindsay Krauss.

It's a great companion piece to this episode. I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. So to take you out, here's a clip. And until then, peace, plants, namaste. If we want to think about girls' sports, we need to invest in the girls that are actually playing these sports. You know, the girls that, the Mary Kanes, but also the girls behind Mary Kane in the race. We need to make sure that we're protecting all of them. And I think that's going to involve, first of all, investing in science. There's not, a lot of the science that we do have is based on a boy's trajectory. It's different than a girl's trajectory.

A lot of the science that we do have is based on a boy's trajectory. It's different than a girl's trajectory. And then really educating coaches to understand how to nurture specifically a girl's athletic trajectory. And then finally helping girls understand what's good and what's bad. A lot of this pressure from girls comes from themselves. These are really good girls. These are high-achieving girls. They know how to do what it takes. What they don't understand necessarily is what the stakes of that are. And that if they just ride out some of these challenges that are different

than the boys or even some of the girls that they're competing against at any given time, they can come out the other side and maybe be one of those, you know, women in their late 20s or early 30s that are setting the national records, that are on the medal podiums, that are, you know, going to the Olympics and the longer distance races. But I think so much of that talent is actually getting to extinguish far earlier than it should be. If anything that's come out of this conversation, you know, around this stuff in recent days, if anything comes out of that, I hope it's that. That, like, you can excel without hurting yourself. Thank you.