The Rich Roll Podcast - Ultra-Athlete Samantha Gash On Suffering For Your Passion, Running Across India & Why Service Is Paramount

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

Imagine running a 250 kilometer ultramarathon across the Atacama desert — one of the driest places on Earth — when your only legit running experience is a single ill-fated marathon attempt that left you humbly walking the last eight miles. That same calendar year, you race three more 250km ultramarathons to become the first female and youngest person to ever run and complete the 4 Desert Race Series Grand Slam, one of the world’s toughest and most prestigious endurance achievements imaginable. This is inspiring story of Samantha Gash – ultra-athlete extraordinaire, roll model, humanitarian, and just a really cool person. Discovering a previously unbeknownst acumen for endurance and a disposition for suffering unlocked a certain joy in Samantha, as well as a thirst for more. So the year following her 4 Deserts achievement, she conquered a 222km non-stop foot race across the Himalayas at 6,000 meters above sea level — an event that had only been completed previously by one man. That experience triggered a deep desire to leverage her running for humanitarian causes. So she got to work, running and raising money for causes she believed in. Among her accomplishments: * A 379km non-stop run across Australia’s Simpson Desert on behalf of Save the Children Australia; * A community run & fundraising event on behalf of podcast fave Turia Pitt and Kate Sanderson, victims of the Kimberley ultramarathon bushfire – a race in which Samantha also competed; * A 32-day, 1968km run across South Africa's Freedom Trail, also on behalf of Save The Children Australia; and * A 76-day, 3253 run across India from from Jaislamer, Rajasthan to Shillong, Meghalaya on behalf of World Vision Amidst the insanity of it all, she somehow managed to raise over $203,000 and counting for the aforementioned causes. Today we unpack Samantha's extraordinary, inspiring journey, blisters and all. This is a phenomenal conversation about Samantha’s transformation from someone with no athletic background into the inspiring ultra-athlete humanitarian she is today. From all the hardships and seemingly insurmountable setbacks and obstacles to the rare air she occupies today, it's a story about self-belief, purpose, perseverance and the call to service. But the core theme of today's conversation is the close kinship that exists between passion and suffering. And the magic that transpires when you have the willingness to entertain the impossible, step outside your comfort zone and courageously leap through fear into the abyss. Sam is an absolute delight. It was a privilege to spend a few hours with her and boyfriend Mark Wales, a badass Australian Special Ops Commander she met when they were both contestants on Australian Survivor. You're gonna love this one. Promise. Peace + Plants, Rich

Do you know the Latin root of passion is to suffer? And so often people go, I'm so passionate, I'm so passionate, and I'm like, oh, are you willing to suffer the most in your life for that thing that you're talking, that you're passionate about? I mean, it doesn't need to be the thing that you do for your full-time job. What we're passionate about can be fulfilled the most through the thing that we do outside of work because we have the time and space and maybe financial freedom from our full-time job.

But I think when you are willing to suffer for something and you connect it for something that's for me outside of myself to a bit that suffering doesn't seem so great anymore I really do gain great perspective of it I also choose when to suffer like I don't suffer like it's why I don't always race anymore because I know what it's like and how hard it is and i want to make my footsteps count and on the idea that maybe we don't have that many footsteps what is the best use of my footsteps that's samantha gash this week on the retroll podcast The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your

host. Welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where each week I roll up my sleeves and get deep, even emotional at times. It happens. There have been tears on this show with some of the most inspiring thought leaders and positive change makers I can find all across the planet. People across all categories of health and wellness, fitness, nutrition, medicine, entrepreneurship, social activism, music, entertainment, the whole deal. So thank you for dropping by. music, entertainment, the whole deal. So thank you for dropping by. Today's guest is the inspiring, powerful, super cool Samantha Gash, who is an extraordinary ultra athlete, a role model, a philanthropist, a humanitarian. What can I say? Samantha is amazing. Check this out. In 2010,

with close to no legit running experience. Samantha became the first female and the youngest person ever to run the Ford Desert Race Series Grand Slam, which is one of the world's toughest endurance challenges. It requires competitors to run four 250-kilometer ultramarathons across the driest desert in Chile, the windiest desert in China,

the hottest desert in the Sahara, and the coldest desert in Chile, the windiest desert in China, the hottest desert in the Sahara, and the coldest desert in Antarctica, basically the most inhospitable places on earth. And you got to do it all in one calendar year. You might recall Samantha's name coming up in my podcast with Jennifer Steinman way, way back. That was March of 2015, RRP 133. Jennifer is the filmmaker behind the Desert Runners documentary, which profiled four people over the course of a year as they tackled this crazy four deserts challenge. And Samantha is one of the featured athletes in that amazing movie, which you should definitely see if you haven't already. In any event, in the aftermath of her 2010 Four Deserts accomplishment, Samantha went on to run a 222-kilometer nonstop adventure across the Himalayas at 6,000 meters above sea level.

And that event had only been completed previously by one man. And that experience being in the Himalayas, it really triggered in her a deep desire to, from that point forward, leverage her running for humanitarian causes. So her next big run was a 379-kilometer nonstop trek across Australia's Simpson Desert. She used that to raise over $32,000 for Save the Children Australia. And then she went on to co-organize a fundraising community running event on behalf of podcast favorite Taria Pitt. You remember her from podcast number 287 and Kate Sanderson, who were both victims of the Kimberly Ultramarathon bushfire.

That was the race that burned Taria and Samantha, ironically, also was competing in that race. burned Taria and Samantha, ironically, also was competing in that race. And that event raised over $40,000 to support both Taria and Kate's continuing rehabilitation, which is amazing. And then in September of 2014, Samantha ran an average of 61 kilometers for 32 days in a row across South Africa's Freedom Trail, raising $55,000 on behalf of Save the Children to support a holistic initiative that increased access to feminine hygiene products and provide education around the importance of attending school. And most recently, Samantha teamed up with World Vision to run 3,253 kilometers across India. It was a 76-day expedition from the west side of the country to the east, which ultimately raised over $150,000 to fund six education-focused programs. So it's

insane. All of it. Extraordinary. And you're going to hear the whole thing, but first... But first, okay, so this is a super awesome conversation. It's a conversation about Samantha's journey from a traditional non-athlete practicing lawyer and then how she became this inspiring ultra-athlete humanitarian that she is today. We track all her crazy runs, the trials, the challenges, especially her recent traverse across India and how she trains, how she competes, how she prepares mentally. We talk about the hows and whys of her strong call to service, that pull to leverage her talents for humanitarian efforts. But I think the core theme of this conversation is the relationship between

suffering and feeling alive, the importance of challenging yourself and the magic that occurs when you have the willingness to step outside your comfort zone and leap through fear into that abyss, into the unknown. Samantha's super cool. It was an absolute delight to hang out with her and her boyfriend, Mark Wales, who came along for the ride. Mark is a badass Australian special ops commander. She met him when they were both contestants on Survivor, the Australian version of Survivor. And he was cool.

I was a little intimidated by him, but he was cool. All right, enough. Let's talk to her. Give it up for samantha gash awesome to have you here samantha thank you for making the trek up to uh up to the house to the container studio to do the podcast it's lovely to meet you yeah it's so great to meet you been waiting to meet you for a while so so it's awesome. I know. Your name is constantly coming up, and it took a little jockeying and some persistence,

and you've been pinging me pretty consistently, so I appreciate that. And I'm thrilled to talk to you. There's so many areas to discuss, so many points of interesting intersection, and I'm just stoked to meet you. You're a big hero of mine. And we're on Facebook Live. I should say that on the podcast right now. We are doing a first ever Facebook Live broadcast of the podcast. I'd like to make this a regular habit. So check it out on my Facebook page and leave a comment and let me know if you enjoyed this or what you would like to see in the future. But in any event, let's just dig into it. I think the first thing that I want to just explore with you, I think a great way to kind of just launch right into this, I want to hear

about India. You ran all the way across India, west to east, right? Unbelievable. I mean, it was the hardest thing that I've ever had to prepare for and definitely the hardest thing I've ever had to, you know, endure along the way. It was, for those who don't know, in 2011 I went out to India to do a 222-kilometre non-stop run between the two highest motor oil passes in the world. It's a race called the Ultra the High and And I really, I did have some experience at the ultra marathon running. Just a little bit.

But I mean, I had some experience, but in a really short condensed period of time. And it was like a baptism of fire going out to India to do 222 Ks at a race that peaked at 20,000 feet. So the run across India began with a formal structured race. No, the idea for India began with... When you did that race, I see. Yeah, so that was 2011. Okay.

So, and I think the way to kind of talk about India is like, why did I... It was a pivotal point for me doing this race in 2011. I was doing it purely for myself. I was just wanting to see what was my own you know personal physical and mental capabilities and I realized that I was in way over my head and I got to the second mountain pass of that race and I just said I was hypothermic I had brought six mates over from Australia and the US and they're all there for me and I just thought if I can mobilize their support to help me in this

moment for myself imagine what i could do if i was trying to do it for something that was for a slightly more worthy cause and so on that mountain pass i just said never again am i going to push myself so so incredibly hard unless it's for something outside of myself so fast forward you know six years or whatever it took but that was the kernel of the idea that was the birth of the yeah it was the birth of the idea and i i traveled through india a little bit afterwards and i um had a friend who i was talking about what would it be like to kind of go to do a traverse from south to north and he's like no don't go south to north it's been explored quite a bit either on car and a bit on foot.

He's like, go west to east. Think desert to mountains. And I love, I suppose, trail running for like the extremes in landscape and geography and climate that it can take us to. And so west to east sounded really appealing to me. And nobody had ever done that before. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, maybe they hadn't, it's just not recorded. But from my understanding, no one had done that before. And then it kind of evolved over the years. And it was after I did a run across South Africa that I

thought, I think I'm now ready to attempt the beast, which is putting, you know, the pieces of the puzzle together to see if this India run is actually possible. So I can't imagine the logistics of trying to pull that off. I mean, it must have taken multiple years just to organize it. It took two years of, I guess, sole focus to kind of work out what would the run look like? What kind of logistical support did I even need? What support could I get in country? What would I require from, you know, the networks that I had in Australia or the US? And then why was I going to do this? Why was I going to be, you know, an Australian girl running from the west to the east of India? What was that for? The purpose. What was the purpose? And so how did you like

sort of zero in on what that would be? Over the last five years, my kind of purpose has been exploring the barriers to quality education for children around the world. And so with that- Why did you, why that? Like why is that of personal meaning to you? I think it came out of Sahara quite a bit. And I'm sure we might explore- Yeah, we'll definitely get into that.

But I guess I think education is the breaking point to break cycle of poverty, to change someone's paradigm from having very limited opportunities to seeing the potential for future opportunities. And so I think if a child has access to education, their life can change, not just for them, but also for their families and the communities around them. So I think it's a really solid starting point. And what is the way in to actually redressing that in a meaningful way?

Well, for me, I don't think it's building schools. And I think a lot of people think a child can't get access to school. Let's go and build a school. But the problem is across the globe, there's so many barriers to why a child can't even enter into that school ground. And in a country like India, that barrier changes all the way across the country based on culture, the landscape of the country they're living in, the temperature, the language that they speak, whether they're in a patriarchal part of the country or whether it's matrilineal. So there's all different types of reasons why a child can't go to school, which

therefore I think the solution needs to be quite specific to that area. Even access to water. I had Scott Harrison from Charity Water on the podcast and it was fascinating how he was explaining that in these areas in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly where there really just isn't access to quality water, it's the women that have to make that trek, and that is prohibitive to them attending school, right? Definitely. And even things like children not knowing that they should wash their hands after going to the toilet.

You think of the link effect of that. A child doesn't wash their hands before they go to the toilet. They eat food. They get sick. They get diarrhea. I'm sorry, they get diarrhea. They get sick. Then they might have to walk six Ks one way to get to school. It's 45 degrees Celsius, so 90 plus Fahrenheit. They're unwell from the simple thing of not being able to wash their hands. So the chain effect of things that can make a huge difference in these communities to get that child to school, sometimes people find it so overwhelming, the issue of, you know,

how can we help a child in some poverty-stricken areas of India get to school? But it's small stuff like teach children how to wash their hands, show mothers how to plant sustainable ingredients that they can grow during the different cycles of the season, which can actually be nutritious for their families, which is also empowering because they get to look after their families. Right. And I would imagine you saw quite a bit of this, you know, dearth as you were traversing the four deserts, right? I mean, you're running through these this you know dearth as you were traversing the four deserts right i mean

you're running through these you know tiny communities across these you know sort of uh you know areas that are quite impoverished yeah i mean i think i did have access to some kind of community connection through doing four deserts but um for the most part you are in this isolated world of the run, of the race. And I think the race is different than an expedition across India where the focus is not so much on the kilometers and how fast you do it. It's about what are your observations as you're doing that traverse. And the engagement with the communities that you're passing through, right?

Like I know you made stops along the way. And I guess that was the hardest part of the entire project. I mean, if I just had to run, it would be very, very hard. And I don't think I would have lasted that long because the motivation might not be there. From like 50k right into like giving a talk at some school or something like that. Yeah. But the project was to visit 18 different programs and communities that World Vision support across the country. And when I say 18, within each of those visits, I might have visited four different programs, whether it was a family in a mud hut, walking through the slums and meeting a shopkeeper, going into a school,

and all of those could have been separated by 50, 60 kilometers that we would have had to travel. So those were the hardest parts of the journey, but the most rewarding parts of it for the understanding. So, you have this idea of tackling the hurdles that impair younger people getting access to education, but you have to find a partner, right? Like, so why World Vision? Like, why, you know, what, how did you sort of line up the right people and the right organizations that you could partner with on this well you and i are both lawyers so we definitely do our due diligence yeah i call it laps and i try and say it's very very lapsed um i had i mean like

any project partner that i ever look for i do a lot of research into the programs that they do, the success or how sustainable that they are for the long term, whether they actually are a, the World Vision kind of motto is it's a hand up, not a handout. And I've worked with a lot of not-for-profits over my time and I just felt that the blueprint that World Vision had in India was something that I could work with and it's got to be a very collaborative process I mean I think my project was a bit of a red flag I mean imagine going to a charity and going I want to do something that's potentially dangerous and risky and maybe going to give you a lot of negative media attention I'm

going to run across the country I'm going to i'm going to run on roads which trucks go past and i want to try and connect the this run to access to education why would that get negative or negative reaction though i mean it's dangerous it's it's something were to happen and something could definitely but also expensive right like this is a major or you know thing to pull off but they there was different partners funding different things. And I get that question all the time, like how does this all get funded? Partially it gets funded by me. Partially World Vision committed to the content creation part.

So we had a videographer out with us and that was funded by World Vision because they were using that content. Logistics, I tend to get corporate partners and you do the kind of standard sponsorship packages for them. So you have different people who align to different parts of the story and you use your run across India to share that story for them. So when it comes together, how big is the crew? Like how many of you guys like schlep over there? Yeah, I had, I mean, it was madness.

I don't even, sometimes I go, how did I do that? I had three different crews that came out. My first crew, well, I'll talk about kind of the foreign crew, so the non-Indian crew. For the first month, I had what was called my, like, body physical month. So everyone I had brought out was, you know, physio, people who would give me tough love i mean it was such a long way to go i couldn't kind of get emotional into like the heart

components too much i really need to focus on what the body needed to do for anyone who's kind of done really long expeditions like the first two to three weeks are the hardest your body is going through a massive adaption phase and once it goes through that it gets more used to the rigors of long days of expedition running and you actually get used to it your body changes and it goes into this different gear and it becomes it becomes your new norm so until then you need people sort of like it's fighting you and fighting you and fighting you and then it goes okay like now i get what's going on like we can get into a groove now mean, everything that could go wrong to my body went wrong in my body in the first, from week two to week four. I, um, from the stress of the project and just dealing with all the different components of it. Um, and it

was really hot. I mean, the first 800 kilometers of the run was in, you know, 90 to a hundred Fahrenheit temperature, 90% humidity. Wow. And I was trying to cover a lot of mileage. So I was doing on- Like because it's flat. Yeah, it was flat. And I just, I only had a couple of community visits in that time. And then I needed to get to the middle section of the run where it was highly densely populated with community visits.

So I just needed to get through that part of the run. And so I think in the first three weeks, I did over a thousand kilometers. Wow. So it was a super high mileage in that kind of time frame so everyone I had out was about tough love right so I chose my crew based on the body and you know my stomach wants I think two and a half three weeks in my stomach swelled up and I put a photo of it on Instagram and everyone's like are you pregnant and I'm like I certainly hope I'm not. It was, it was so swollen. And then to run with that swelling in the gut and it was just such pain.

I was like waddling. I was, and then I was just kind of hurled over and, oh, I mean, there's some brutal footage of me just trying to get through that. And sometimes you have this vision of what something's going to look like, that you're going to be able to run. And then you kind of succumb to, to walking and it takes a massive drop of the ego to go you know what for the next two days like i just have to walk and i can you know i can power walk the shit out of something if i have to and i was hiking so hard in so much pain and just hoping that i could get through the mileage for that day. And then I had a stress fracture in my ACL and my physio thought it might've been bone damage.

How early on in the run did that occur? Three weeks in. Oh my God. So just for clarity, we should probably say like this run was how many kilometers in total? 3,253. And you're covering like 45 to 60K a day. Yeah. On average.

The longest, you know, probably the shortest day was 40. The longest day was 76. Uh-huh. Yeah. So three weeks in. And how many days total? 76. 76.

Okay. So three weeks in, you got a stress fracture. Oh, my God. And imagine what the mindset goes through when you're like, I have so much more to go. I haven't even reached Delhi yet, which was like my month in. that was like my first like milestone which you've got to break you know any long-term goal you break it into chunks and i just kept thinking gotta get to delhi gotta get to delhi so you have you've you broke this into three parts you have the tough love section then you have the head section and then you have a heart section to like bring you home. And I think that's a good sort of way of launching into

like how you approach such massive goals and obstacles, right? Like you break it into these component pieces. I just have to get to Delhi or I have to get to the next lamppost or whatever it is. Like when the rubber hits the road or your knee is killing you or whatever, like what are you resorting to to push through when i initially my physio i was in a lot of pain i was struggling to even walk and so my physio would bring me into my camper van and i think it's important to note like i lived in a camper van

for this entirety of this project not really any water and you have how many people like in your orbit um so in that it changed let's say the first month, there was maybe like eight in that camper van. I could stretch my arm out and touch the head of my photographer. I was like, hey, good morning. Were any of these people pacing you or was it just support? People would come out for maybe 5Ks at a time. It was actually for their mental health at times to get out of that vehicle because that becomes quite a, you know, the air conditioning is going full ball. It's, it's,

you kind of detach from the world of India. And the people who came out of my crew came out there because they wanted to experience what it was like to do India. This wasn't a highly paid gig. It was because they believed in the cause. And so I would have people come out for 5k and run with me and then jump in the security car behind me that's cool yeah it was and it was great so it was a revolving door of people and i would just chat to them and and sometimes i knew i didn't want to talk and other times i would just like talk about anything so how many days in or weeks in before you kind of click into that like sort of new mentality of being in the zone it's like

this is the new normal and i get up and this is what i do every day and it's like you're kind of in a groove with it i think i had i think probably getting to delhi so as i said i had a really bad um acl kind of um issue going on and so my physio didn't want to tell me at the beginning that he thought it might be bone damage and i could tell on his face something was wrong. And I'm a control freak. This is, I think, yeah, I'm a control freak. Yeah, okay. I'm a control freak.

I'm shocked to hear that. So shocked. Go ahead. So shocked. So I would look at him in the eye and I could tell that he wasn't telling me something. And that started to freak me out more than anything else because I thought he's not telling me it because maybe he thinks I can't do this. And so I was running with a friend at the time.

I'm like, you've got to make him tell me. You've got to make him tell me what's wrong with me. Does he think I can't run further? And finally, he told me, I think you might have a bone damage around your knee. And the moment he told me, I was like, okay, what's our game plan? This doesn't sound good, but what are we going to do about it? And he said, well, I think we should book an MRI when we get to Delhi to just find out. You've got a day off in Delhi after you visit some communities in the slums.

Let's book in this MRI. And I'm like, okay. And so I kind of went into overdrive of, okay, I'm going to plan. I called some friends in Delhi. I'm like, can you pull some strings? I have no idea how to work the medical system in India. Managed to kind of work that out. And after that was sorted out, I just said, okay, I've got a plan.

I'm just going to get to Delhi. It's going to be ugly. I'm going to have to walk a lot of it. I'm going to maybe have to take quite a few breaks. And I think letting go of the panic just allowed my body to start to heal itself. Also, you had a goal, like just we got to get to Delhi. Anything beyond that is not even worth thinking about. I had like 400Ks goal like just we got to get to Delhi. Anything beyond that like is not even worth thinking about. I had like 400Ks.

I had 400K to get to Delhi. Right. So it's like – I know. It wasn't like I was like 80Ks from Delhi. I had several days to get to Delhi. And my goal for the first day was if I can just try and – I would always walk the first 4K of every day to just get my body waking up. I'd get up at 3.45 every morning, so it's pitch black

and you want to kind of get yourself used to India roads. And then I would always run for 15K pretty much straight. And when I was injured, I was like, if I can run for 400 meters and then walk for 600 meters, then I can just keep doing 400-meter, 600 meter walk. And I would just keep breaking it up. And slowly, time after day after day, I was able to stretch out how far I could run and walk. And then I got to Delhi, got the MRI, and it wasn't bone damage. It was just a partial sprain or strain. And with that, I was like, okay, cool. Well, I can deal with a strain.

That's fine. Right. And the relief of that just mentally, I would imagine like a huge burden is lifted off your shoulders. I mean, I'm very careful how I say this because I think some people don't take notice when their body truly is going through injuries. But I also think people are really conservative. When their body is in discomfort and going through this new sensation,

we're so quick to go, oh, I better pull back my training. What's actually happening is your body is adapting to a new load. And sometimes you have to give it sleep, give it more food and giving it the right food, hydrate your body, maybe take a couple of supplements, feed it with all the positive love that you can, and you can push through that. And then that's a new boundary of what you're now capable of doing. And I had experienced that in South Africa when I ran across it.

So I knew I would go through a really clunky, yucky phase between week two to week four. And afterwards, yeah, I had pain. I was running across India. Did I ever think that that was not going to hurt? But my brain started to compute with the reality of what it was and get through it. Yeah, your brain and your body have the ability to acclimate

on a level that I think most people never truly access in their lives. And, you know, I had a taste of that in Epic Five, like the fifth Ironman I did, but like felt the best of all of them. And, you know, when I did the podcast with the Iron Cowboy who did the 50 Ironmans in 50 states, he did, you know, he basically, what he said mimics very closely what you're saying. Like at some point it just clicks

in and it becomes your new normal and that becomes you know then like your sense of what's possible expands yeah but i think most people sort of shy back from that before they get to that experience because there is that discomfort period where you think like this is not right or like maybe i'm going too far and you know you see i see it all the time out here on the trails like people go out for and i've said this before on the podcast but they're going out for like a 45 minute run or whatever yeah it's hot out but they're just like burdened with vests that are filled with like all these products and fluids and like oh it's like dude you're gonna you're not gonna die like come on you know what i mean like what is you know your boyfriend he's in the sas he's laughing over there because he's

like yeah like i i can't imagine what your training was like right like they didn't give you gels you know what i mean so you know i think but but people are so worried about that or maybe it's just the marketing machine behind it telling us that we need all this stuff but like to go without and to have that experience of uh of connecting with what your body is actually capable of it that's where the beauty can occur and i had the world's greatest perspective you know out the out the doors of that camper van i was watching women work in the fields tirelessly from sun up to sundown, carrying, you know, logs and heavy branches. And then I saw children walking, you know, four to eight Ks in the extreme heat with, you know, one small bowl of rice in their stomach and no shoes on.

And so when I would see that type of stuff and what I consider like true duress, I kept thinking I've chosen to be in this situation. And with that choice gives, I think, a high degree of empowerment and like resolve to kind of push through it. I also knew when I got to exit it, I got to, I could exit any point, but I was definitely going to exit, you know, day 76. And so it, you know, at the most it was going to be short-term discomfort. So what is it about, like on a broader level, like what is it about that suffering or that experience of pushing through? What is the allure and what does it mean to you?

What is it that you're connecting with and why does that give your life meaning do you know um i talk about this a bit in my like presentations but do you know the latin root of passion is to suffer i didn't know that yeah i love that and so often people go i'm so passionate i'm so passionate and i'm like oh are you willing to suffer the most in your life for that thing that you're talking that you're passionate about? I mean, it doesn't need to be the thing that you do for your full-time job. What we're passionate about can be fulfilled the most through the thing that we do outside of work because we have the time and space and maybe financial freedom from our full-time job. But I think when you are willing to suffer for something and you connect it for something that's for me outside of myself to a bit, that suffering doesn't seem so great anymore. I really do gain great perspective of it. I also choose when to suffer. Like I don't suffer, like it's why I don't always race anymore because

I know what it's like and how hard it is. And I want to make my footsteps count. And on the idea that maybe we don't have that many footsteps, what is the best use of my footsteps? Well, a lot of people can sort of cavalierly, you know, toss the word addiction, you know, in your direction. Well, you're just addicted to this, right? Like, so how do you respond to that? I'm not. Like, I'm actually not addicted to running at all.

You know, I just, you know, i can't really talk much about it but i was just on that tv show survivor and i couldn't run the entirety of it and i was like oh that's fine and there would be a lot of trial runners and ultra runners that could not cope not being able to run for a couple of weeks if i get injured for the most part outside of an expedition, I just say to myself, well, that's my body's way and my mind's way of telling me I'm meant to focus my energy elsewhere. So I don't think I'm addicted. It doesn't cause you any kind of like stress or duress?

No, not really. I always just say to myself, there's so many things in life that you care about and sometimes we can get caught up in the rigor of having to run every day and do a certain amount of mileage and achieve personal best through whatever is that physical pursuit at that time. But there's more to me than just a runner. You know, I'm always very hesitant to say that.

In fact, I try not to say I'm a runner. I try and say I'm an endurance athlete, which is so ambiguous that no one really knows what it means. I'm an endurance athlete, which is so ambiguous that no one really knows what it means. But I, you know, there's so much to me and what I care about that if I can't run for three weeks, I can spend my time pretty worthy and feel value in who I am as a person outside of that. Well, there's a certain mastery, I think, that comes with that. Like if you like being grounded enough and being connected enough with yourself to like be okay with whatever is happening right it's sort of a detachment from expectations and a a just a being you know sort of

being in the present with what is happening and being in acceptance or surrender surrendering to that it's something i've had to work a lot on yeah i'm definitely not um enlightened yeah i mean i maybe i spend so much time in india to try and get enlightened but i you know i was a lawyer like you and i felt um that perceived version of success was you know climbing the corporate ladder and you know looking a certain way and being you know communicating in a certain way and communicating in a certain way. And very quickly, I worked out that law wasn't the right path for me. And to walk away from it wasn't as hard as maybe it should have been considering I studied nine years to get into that position.

But then I wasn't brave enough to go and work for myself. And I went into finance because I thought, oh, that's another version of success if I work in financial advice. And then I was like, oh, no, I don't really suit that. And then I worked in communications. And then I was like, no, Sam, you're actually a terrible employee. You're really, really bad. And I used to always say, no, they don't understand me. And they're really harsh on me. And then I had this aha moment going, no, you don't want to do what they need. And of course, it's their prerogative as your employer to expect a certain type of maybe behavior or standard. And

I wanted to go and run across a desert or I wanted to take, you know, four weeks to do a run across South Africa. So. Yeah. Why won't they give me all this time off? I mean, like they don't understand me. Well, I think you figured it out a lot sooner than I did. I did a lot of suffering in the law firm environment for you. So I can tell you that you got out when you needed to. And I wish I had had the sense of self and the wherewithal to be able to be connected enough with myself to, to, you know, have that self-awareness to make those kinds of moves earlier. Yeah. I, I observed particularly the women who were in senior positions

at the law firm to me. And you were, I mean, just for clarity, like you were at Baker & McKenzie. Like this is a huge international law firm. Like it's not some small operation. I was lucky. Sometimes I think I wouldn't have got that job now considering how competitive it is. I definitely was what I consider a flight risk.

In fact, myself and a few other girlfriends who all got jobs at Baker's, I think that we were all flight risks. We were bleeding-heart humanitarians who, you know, travelled a lot, had a lot of multiple interests outside of law, and I think now they would see a red flag on our CVs. But at the time, Baker and McKenzie were hiring that type of person. I think we maybe kind of changed that. That's an attractive candidate. You want a well-rounded person. I mean, I went to law school

with a lot of people like that. But then the paychecks start getting dangled in front of people's eyes. And a lot of that sort of do-gooder, you know, sensibility that attracted you to law school in the first place sort of gets pushed quietly aside. And it's like, well, I'll go do this for a while. I mean, in the United States, like most law students that graduate law school have tremendous loans they have to repay. And the idea of going to work for a nonprofit or something, it just doesn't, it's not sensible at that phase. Like I'll pay off my debt and then, you know, I'll go do the thing that I want to do. There's always a deferment of that thing that you truly wanted to do. And for a lot of people, they just, they never make it back because they get sucked into the

system and the money's too good. And, you know, they blank and then they're, you know, partner and they're kind of in. Well, I i said to myself i'm either going to leave now because if i get used to the security of this type of income maybe it's going to be harder to walk away and i thought you know what if i then have kids and then there's going to be so many other excuses of why it wouldn't be fair to walk away from that security so i did it quite early in my degree because i didn't own a home i didn't't have children. Did your flight risk friends quit also? We all quit within a six-month period. And they're all my – I mean, we're still –

Are they on your crew? Did they come to India with you? No, but one of them was working at World Vision at the time. And that was just completely coincident. And the other one was working for the UN and she was – I think she just left Cambodia at that time. So we all kind of did our own different thing. I felt bad for Baker and McKenzie that the three amigos left them and within a six month period. Those places are used to huge turnover.

They are. They do invest quite a lot in your training and development at the time. And I don't ever begrudge or regret that I did that. I mean, I got an excellent solid base of what it's like to be a lawyer and, you know, if I get contracts thrown my way right now, I can review them with a lot of... Oh, it always comes into play. It does. I always think like that, I mean, I took a million depositions as a lawyer and that helps me as a podcaster, you know,

I know how to like, you know, pay attention and ask questions. But do you have like, how do you think about the sort of, I mean, a big thing about going to law school is it trains you in a certain way of thinking, like a certain mentality and how you approach problem solving. Does that come into play in ultra running? I mean, I know you also have this other, you have the artist side of you as well, the actress side. And I know that you've talked about how the performance arts training has applicability in your running.

So how do those two things work? I think both of them. I mean, anything that you do for that period of time and the training in both performing arts and law was a nine-year phase of my academic life. And then I actually practiced as a lawyer. I think anything that you do moving forward will draw from that skill base and you will incorporate that into how you, you act and conduct yourself and engage with other people and the projects that you choose to take on. I mean, I think I'm very methodical with the way I approach an ultramarathon, but I'm also very careful and I have a degree of like risk mitigation in my approach to it, which is weird for the fact that I ran across India,

but I don't think anyone will ever know how much risk analysis I did in a project like that to make it a project that wouldn't flop over and be a detriment to myself and the people who connected themselves to it. What would be an example of one of those risks that might not be self-evident that you had to like figure out how to navigate? I mean, there's like water, right? Would be one access to water. And there was sections of our, I mean, people mean people think that you you know there can be hundreds and hundreds of kilometers in india where you don't have access to a store and we would kind of camp a lot of the times our camper van at petrol stations but they only sell petrol like they don't sell water or any other supplies because they can't undercut

the stalls that are along the way so there those stalls, those tea houses have a monopoly. And so your access to water was definitely one. You have to know where all of those are, right? Yeah, and I had to hire the local team, and they were amazing. But there was definitely at times when you had to have trust that they had your best interests at heart. And the Indian culture is know, there's an, the Indian culture is so like, there's a ruthlessness to it because you think of the

population size to be successful in India, you have to have a ruthlessness and a competitiveness and you have to fight hard. And so for a lot of my crew members to go out there, they kept saying, I'm getting screwed over by India. I'm getting screwed over by Indians. I'm like, no, you are now in India. You need to understand the environment and the context and what you're working in. And as opposed to getting angry at someone, think why they're like that.

They're like that because that is the only way for them to be successful normally. It's a dog-eat-dog world sometimes. So it took me a while to, and I would make so many cultural mistakes that I would, the culture was the hardest thing that i kept finding there was risk in not understanding it um for the project for me i mean there were so many times when we got told we're going to turn the camper van around if you don't give us x amount of dollars and there was bribery all along the way and just you know imagine trying to i remember in the first couple of weeks of the run i'd be running anytime i go to the camper van

i'd have to take a phone call to the media or I'd have to write this blog or I'd have to answer this advice or we were getting traffic problems up ahead or the police escort wanted X amount of dollars. Right. And I'm just trying to run and I was like, I can't deal with all of this right now. So you've got to have like a slush fund for like just sliding off a few bills

every now and again for whoever to grease the palm. Oh, yeah. And you can't even like – you can't even record all that kind of stuff because it's just – it's the smallest amount of cash but then it all adds up. And, yeah, it was tough. What is – you know, what was the most surprising thing about India and the culture that you encountered? about India and the culture that you encountered? Like what is it like to traverse all of India and all of these different provinces of this amazing place that you got to experience?

The country can change within 50 kilometres from language, not just dialect, language, from the terrain, from the way the people look it is a country with 100 countries within it and that makes sense because of the way that india you know bangladesh and you know now west bengal and there's obviously the country has changed quite a lot over the years but you know the influence the tibetan influence up north and um you know the country is incredibly incredibly diverse which is why you can't put a blanket solution on the country when it's talking

about access to quality education you need to look in like microcosm to that certain community and go what is going to work with this community what are they going to pick up are they going to pick up economic development initiatives are they going to want um you know to focus on you know uh nutrition or are they what's going to work for them that is going to make it sustainable and flourish into the future yeah i've never been to india julie's been but you know as somebody who doesn't know that much about it from a bird's eye view looking down it looks like total chaos like they get that chaos like indians understand that chaos we don't understand it so us so a westerner trying to go in and operate you know whether in a business sense

or a pleasure sense for travel it can be incredibly overwhelming and you have to almost succumb to it and you just have to kind of give in to what that is, which is why my diet was Indian. I never tried to, you know, have a Western style diet whilst running across the country. I learned that the hard way in South Africa. Oh, I mean, I would have parties and I mean, I ate so much food, but it was probably the best food you could eat to try to run across the country to sustain the bulk of your body and not kind of fall apart and be a little weed finishing you know the run as well and did people know what you were doing as you were passing through i mean did you have kids and people come out and run with you were they did they have an awareness of what was

i mean i know there was press in india but like what was the day-to-day experience of that like people worked out i mean i had quite an extensive indian crew and i i had two support vehicles in my camper van so one of my support vehicles would go ahead and kind of check the route pick up any supplies that we needed and had run india on it and they would talk to all the locals so people were waiting for us and everyone would be screaming run india run india and so i'd be running and that's pretty cool and there when I was in Rajasthan um there was a pilgrimage happening in the opposite direction so hundreds and if not thousands of people were walking the opposite direction that I was running and you know it's probably

three sizes of this which is the road um of this you know um shed right now and they would kind of just all be clapping and I'd be clapping at them because they were walking they were walking 150k one way taking off their shoes praying and then coming back 150k and they would stop maybe every 30k per day and like sleep together in these communal environments with music and communal food um so I felt like I was doing this like reverse pilgrimage in an opposite direction and I love Rajasthan because although there was a lot of intensity with stairs and, you know, so many people, it was a real friendliness to it. And just it was a beautiful curiosity. As I got further north into the country, those stairs were not curious.

They were of hate and disdain. And that was a very difficult thing to kind of get through, but it was something that I prepared myself for as well. Disdain rooted in what? Like where is that? What's the origin of that? It's hard to know. I'm not them, and I try not to pretend to understand everything about India.

I think seeing a woman running freely, I would never see women on the streets. I would never see a woman riding a motorbike. And here I was a woman in shorts. And I know people are going to be like, you should have worn long pants. Well, you run in 110 degrees in pants and see how it feels. I would have died. And I got to a certain point where I was like, you know what, I'm going to be as respectful as I can, but I am an athlete and I'm going to stand for being an athlete running and I need to do what's right for me as well. And I've got my security team and I'm wearing a top that's appropriate,

but I need to wear shorts. Right. So that was occurring more in the heart section, like the third section as the elevation starts to go up and you're heading north. Yeah, and the very, very top hits great because that's quite like this Tibetan Nepalese influence as well. But the kind of the northern central belt of like Lucknow and Haridwar. No, it wasn't too bad.

But Kanpur. Yeah, there was Marut, which has got a high degree of kidnappings. And so there was men on mopeds, particularly during the festive seasons, that were riding around spitting at me. There was a man who was slashed open, dead on the ground, tied up by a horse, and there's people who were just watching it. And there was a lot of – obviously there's people who are poor and starving and begging. But seeing like the mental illness side of that as well um and you know you just wanted to give water to i always felt like i was never doing enough i wanted to do so much more

than i could do and i think i'd feel that part of the world where the volumes turned up to 10 i mean you know in india it's just it's your face, right? Like just because there's so many people and there's so much poverty. It's quite overwhelming even just thinking about it. You know, you go back to some of those moments and it's only when I do a podcast when I have this liberty that you give me to speak about this story for, you know, 40 minutes, whatever it is, do I take myself back there? And normally when people ask me in my day-to-day

life how was india they just they want a short condensed answer they want a sentence so my awesome so my answer was oh it was really complicated it was harder than i thought but amazing and then they're like awesome great cool right and i don't even don't even know how to answer it in you i either give you that superficial giving you nothing answer. How many hours do you have? Or let's sit down for a little while and have a chat. And so it's been a long time since I've sat down and, like, thought back to those moments of running up to Nainata,

which is this province, well, no, it's this town, kind of the foothills of the Himalayas. And there was this lady standing on her own up a switchback on a road and she was, I don't know if she was either starving or dehydrated and I think there was really strong mental illness there, but I just kept kind of going back. I was like, I can't leave her. I need to do something. And I kept kind of going back up and down and thinking

that I needed to do more and gave her water. And my Indian team were like, you've just got to go. There's nothing you can do. And it's a shit feeling. Yeah. But ultimately you raised $150,000. Yeah, at a minimum $150,000. I don't know the final tally, but we were funding six education programs.

And that's where that money is getting funneled into programming. And I went to those communities where that funding is going as well. So there's quite a nice connection to actually see the people where the funds will change their lives directly. Right. And how do you kind of conceptualize, you know, I'm not looking for a pithy answer, but, you know, in the wake of this experience, like, did it change you?

Like, how do you think about poverty education India and that experience overall like on a personal level like what did it mean to you I mean I try not to set the small stuff I mean it's very easy it's hard to adapt to India and it's so easy to adapt back home and so it's you know we the life of comfort is so easy to get into and the life of simplicity is sometimes much more challenging you can't help but keep wanting to seek that to go back to that where life is simple and it feels like it makes sense and when you walk away from it and you're doing what sometimes feels like the mundane you you know, it is in my natural inclination to think what next. And I have forced myself to not plan another project for a while.

I mean, that was kind of three years, really heavy focus of my life where I didn't think of anything else. There was definitely impacts on like relationships and just, you know, it was, it was all consuming to make that thing happen every single day it was a challenge in the lead up to it nothing went to plan and that set me up really well for india because getting the funding even getting the permits getting people on board people loved the idea that backing it was more challenging and i had to really i had to back myself more than i've ever backed myself in my life so I now need to have a little break of I can't keep chasing that you can't keep chasing that feeling um unless it feels really right yeah and so yeah but but your capacity for

resilience and malleability must be through the roof right because you've had I mean when when when nothing goes to plan and you're in these, you know, incredibly trying circumstances and you've got, you know, however many weeks to go, you know, you adapt, right? Like, so when you come back, I mean, everybody that I've spoken to who's been to India, they have trouble reacclimating when they come home for a variety of reasons. And, and they're just going to like an ashram. They're not like doing anything like, you know what I mean? But, you know, sort of having that knowledge, like that sense of what you're capable of and your ability to kind of like, you know, weather whatever gets thrown at you

has to be, you know, a very fulfilling sort of feeling to have. I think resilience at a high degree is really possible for anyone if you really believe in what you're doing. And I think our capacity to be tolerant and understanding if we back ourselves and we have the support by others for that is through the roof. I mean, I don't always have high resilience, but I think in those circumstances, it's pretty strong. So what do you tell people who come to you and say, I'm trying to do my first ultra or even my first 5K? You know, how can I get like a little, how can I slice off a little of Samantha? I just say, know why you're doing it.

Like, be really clear on your why. say know why you're doing it like be really clear on your why um and you know like i mean you're i follow your training and i think you're quite incredible to be so consistent and whether it's just social media that allows me to think that i think you're incredibly disciplined and consistent with your training even when you don't have a race um it's obviously a way of life for you i think some people it's funny when people say that, thank you for that, but like it almost makes me uncomfortable because honestly it's like what I prefer to do. Like I feel guilty because I feel like

I should be doing something else, but like if I was single, I could easily like move into a hut and just like do that all day. Like that's my choice, you know, that's my love. Well, that's your why, like you love it. It's, you know, that's my love. Well, that's your why. Like, you love it. It's, you know, it's part of who you are and it's the fabric of your DNA now, whether it was from the beginning or it's something that is created into you. But I think for people who are tackling a new challenge that's not a part of their DNA

and they want to be able to deal with the challenges that it poses and obviously training for an ultramarathon or a marathon, a half marathon, you just, I think, if you know why you're doing it, you're able to deal with the challenges of time commitments, the doubt within yourself, if you get injuries, if you don't succeed in the way that you wanted to the first time around. I think you can kind of keep going back to that point. Yeah, I think you have to know why you're doing it.

You know, a lot of people approach me, oh, I'm training for this, I'm training for that, and it's like, why are you doing that? Like what's going on with you personally? Why is this important to you? What is meaningful about this? What are you seeking to learn about yourself via this experience? And I think when you have a grip on that in a healthy way that helps inform you know the approach to seeing it through as opposed to like oh i don't

know i didn't think about you know like i think you like you're gonna burn out or you're just gonna that day's gonna come where you wake up and you just don't feel like it and that's probably not gonna happen it's not a particularly mindful way of going about something that's going to cause a lot of you know pain and potentially discomfort to you so I think it also helps inform your support network that you create around you so if you know why you're doing something you know whether you get a coach or whether you seek you know advice or support from friends or what you seek from your partner in order to kind of like keep pushing you you're a bit more clear in what you need to get in order to do this big, great, audacious goal. Yeah. And I think, you know, sort of interlineated in what you just said is understanding that even if it is an individual pursuit or goal, that these things don't happen in a vacuum or isolation. Like you

need a team. Like you need people who support you, who have your back and can hold you accountable and lift you up. These things don't happen. You know, it's not, we have this ego attachment to like I did or it's not how it works at all. Yeah, I mean, I might have been the one who ran across India,

but I can like wholeheartedly say that I would not have done it if I didn't have my team. Yeah. And what an incredible group of people, you know, to sort of take a time out from their lives and devote themselves. I mean, obviously it was a grand adventure, but I think people underestimate like how difficult it is to crew any kind of ultra event, let alone an expedition on that scale. I can't imagine. Yeah, it's amazing what they did. And sometimes I always feel, I feel so guilty for what they go through in order to be there.

Now, a couple of years ago. I'm so sorry. Thank you. I'm so sorry. I'm like, come out. Let's talk about you. Tell me about your problems. But you and I have both experienced crewing at the same time together.

We both crewed at the same Badwater event. You were there? I was there. How did I not meet you? We actually passed each other. We did? This is a cool story. Who were you crewing for?

So you were crewing Dean. I was crewing Kath Todd, the girl who won. Yeah. So you guys were on the right-hand side of the road and I think Dean was having a bit of a – you were a very blokey team, right? Yeah, it was all guys. It was all boys. And Kath was running quite well at this point.

He was just before the nighttime and we just kind of ran past and we kind of had a bit of an exchange. Hey, Dean, you know, you guys said hey to us and she kept going. Uh-huh. And so I was listening to – I know. and we kind of had a bit of an exchange. Hey, Dean, you know, you guys said hey to us, and she kept going. And so I was listening to Dean's podcast, and then I was listening to David Goggin's podcast, and we were all there. That's crazy.

And you spoke to them about it at the same time. Like, oh, my gosh, I was there then. And then I remember when we passed Goggin's as well. That's amazing. I didn't know. I wish I had known. Well. You know who else was there was Shannon for our griefer do you know Shannon ultra Shannon oh is this she did the double like

she was the first woman to do the double bad water she she didn't have a good race like she's you know dealing with some health issues right now but she lives right near here and every time I go out there's one trail where I got to run and I and I would say 95% of the time when I go out there, I see her out there. And she had an all-female crew, like all these hotties. Well, you guys had the boys' crew. We had a mixed crew. We had someone who was from Canada.

We had someone from Vegas, and I was from Australia, and we all had met Kath through different circumstances. So I met Kath in India, and she was going to do that ultra race, but she pulled out because she couldn't handle the altitude, but we connected really well. And she's like, you know, I know you like to talk a lot. So can you come and crew me and just talk the entire time when you pace me? Is that your one experience at Badwater?

Yeah. It was a rude awakening for me. I was in no form or shape i remember listening to your podcast when he's like you're gonna have to run this and this and you're like well jason coop jason coop who's like his coach who was kind of crew captain i was like how much does dean want to say like i just figured i will we'll pace him in like the last 50 miles but like most of it we're just gonna be doing handoffs he's like no you want someone to run with them the whole time i literally went ashen and the first real pull i had was like the hottest part

of the day so where did you start with him i blew up like i had to stop like i couldn't do my whole pull like i was like it's too hot i thought i was going to be like you know the only crew guy in the medical tent i ended up running with him all night like once it got dark and it was fine and it was good but like i didn't train. I was not really training. And like I just went in over my head. I felt bad about it. How long were the stretches that he had you doing? I mean, there were a couple hours depending upon how people felt.

That's long. Like that's – I mean, we – so Kath took 32 hours. And, I mean, we didn't sleep the entire 32 hours. I'm sure you didn't sleep either. Crewing that race taught me what crewing really means if you're crewing someone to make the most of every advantage they can possibly have bad water there's no downtime yeah you think it's going to be chill and you're going to be in the van like listening to music with the air conditioning on like I felt like we did it harder than the runner but and the other thing is like you're not supposed to put the air conditioning on in the van because it'll overheat.

Yeah, and we had, I mean, I learned so much about crewing from that experience as well. And I've implemented in other experiences when I crew people in those types of races. You know, when you're crewing in India and it's 77 days, you better not expect that from someone because it's way too high demand. You better not expect that from someone because it's way too high demand. But in Bad Water, the way Kath wanted to be crude is obviously you run behind her. She doesn't even speak to you. She just puts her hand out right or left if she wants a certain water bottle. And you've got to kind of like put your hand out and get it in the right spot. Like a track and field baton handoff.

And then be ready when she wants to return it back to you. And then she'd be like, okay, I want you to wet my face with some ice cubes. And she goes, you know, get my face, but don't get my glasses. And, you know, it was so intense. And some people can go, she was high maintenance. But at the same time, this girl is going, you know, she's going for the win. She was hopefully going for the record. Yeah, it's like this is, she's a high performing elite athlete.

Yeah, and from your, if anyone here is listening to this and they are about to crew someone, I think the best crew are those who are able to take the runner's goal as their own. So a win in whatever PB they wanted or whatever thing is a win for them and they can't be sensitive. Yeah. And I just think you can't take what someone does.

Obviously, hopefully your runner is respectful and they definitely apologize at the end for anything and they've got manners but i think you have to understand that they are at their the limit of their capabilities and like it's a fine fine line that they're playing on yeah it ain't a party that's for sure it's not a part no one's having a party that's why they say like never have your friends crew for you because it's like yeah when i mean it's you're stripped down to like you're just rossed self and it's inevitable that there's going to be you know outbursts or you know emotions and as a crew member you also have to be highly attuned to the psychology of your athlete right like you need to know when what they're asking for is not right. And you have to like sort of step in and say, no, you should be doing this.

I was amazed at how Dean maintained his composure. Like he was polite and gracious throughout. Like I never saw him crack on that level. And he wasn't having a great race. Like he had every reason to be like frustrated and kind of let that loose and how that flows downstream onto the crew. And I never saw him do that. And that's like a – I mean, that takes extreme character. And it's experience.

I was going to say, it's got a lot to do with experience, that not everything is riding on that run. He's been there, done that before, and knows that some runs will work and others won't, that he's only going to probably perform worse if he starts to let his mind take control in a negative sense. So he was, you know, the heat of bad order is so hot that if you start, and same as India, if you start to freak out, that heat intensifies and you actually realize how hot it is.

So there has to be this calmness and almost meditative spirit when you're running in those types of environments. Well, let's take it back a little bit. I fear that certain people that are listening are going to form this impression that you're just some crazy outlier genetic freak who was born to just be this amazing runner and it was just bred into you from the get-go but your origin story you know belies that notion yeah i was really really uncoordinated not particularly fit uh growing up in melbourne never really played sports yeah i was a kind of country girl um i think i was afraid of um embarrassing myself and looking like a fool so i would often not try things and i was that kid in primary school that when they picked you know

when they do that schoolyard pick which i think is the worst thing you can ever do i'm very familiar with this are we gonna both be like that last kid standing so i was anything having to do with eye hand coordination and isn't it exactly and isn't it terrible that as long as you're not the last kid picked you're like oh phew you know if you're the second last kid pick you're like well that's all right at least i wasn't standing on that line by myself so i was not a great athlete um and i i really my primary school years were just of me being a bit of a i mean for those who you know are listening in the podcast and have never seen a photo of me standing next to someone. I mean, there's probably a reason why I have a lot of solo photos on my Instagram account.

It's because I'm 4 foot 11.5. So I'm pretty short. I like the.5 part. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to be very accurate. I was teased a lot growing up, and I think it's because I didn't own my space. I didn't own, you know, I think kids.

Well, it's interesting that you would go into performing arts then because that takes a certain sense of self-composure. By the time I got to high school, I started to kind of build and gather in my own wonderful weirdness, and I owned it. And it was actually through in year seven I got into the school play and I was the first year seven student to get into the school play and it was all of a sudden I felt that I was around like my like-minded interesting bizarre

unique people who were also at the same time you know know, pretty smart and were good at sport. And it kind of taught me that I can try those other things and still be this arty small kid who, you know, is not really sure of her place. So I think performing arts was a real eye opener and an independence. It's interesting that you would then pursue law, though, because it's sort of a binary thing. Like you're going to be an arty kid or you're going to be kind of the sensible, you know, business minded person. I mean, if you're going to be a trial lawyer, then like performing arts is, you know, fantastic. But most people who end up going into law aren't the people that are in the school play. Yeah. In Australia, it is.

Really? Yeah. In Australia, a lot of people who were very performance-driven, high communicators, a little bit wacky. You just drop the pen, hit your head. I dropped my pen, sorry. I know. And it's on Facebook Live.

It's on Facebook Live. So, you know, it's going to be awesome. Yeah, so I feel like that's a bit different in Australia. I mean, a lot of the people that I know really were a bit of um people on the stage and then like went into law and then left law quite quickly because it was too much of a tight you know square for them that they didn't want to fit into right so at what point do you decide law like how does it work in australia like in the united states you go to university and then you go to law school do you start studying law like when you're in college yes a college so I um started with a performing arts degree I took I took a year off after finishing year 12 and I traveled throughout the states um did like 30

states with my backpack in the year and then came back and did my degree which was a performing arts and law degree um and in, law is just your undergraduate degree and then you become a lawyer and then you have to, as a lawyer, you then do another year training, which gives you a practising certificate so we don't sit the bar. I see. That was a convoluted way of answering that. No, I got it.

I got it. I got it. So how old are you then when you you're like this young lawyer at baker and mckenzie i wasn't that young because i had found ultra running during that time so in 2000 oh i see yeah but now i remember like you started you started running when you were like doing sitting for your exams and things like that as a stress reliever exactly so i did my first marathon which was a massive thing for me big deal like really had never run that much and then decided, okay, I'm going to – I found a group of friends who were a little bit older

who were running so I started to run with them and do fun runs and did my first half marathon and I was just like, wow, like I don't just physically feel amazing but mentally I feel the strongest that I've ever felt in my entire life. I felt it was a bigger endorphin hit than acting on the stage and I loved acting. So for me to feel that through running um so you knew like this connected with you it just i mean you weren't like winning a half marathon right you're just like a middle of the pack i was a middle of the pack yeah middle of the pack and then i did my first marathon

nearly pulled out 32k because it hurt um And my girlfriend kind of basically dragged me through the last 10Ks. And it was that near failure that made me do my first ultra. So here's where I think it gets super interesting. And you take like the road less traveled, right? So most people would be like, okay, that was fun. Like maybe I'll be this like hobbyist marathoner and do a marathon a year or maybe use that as my vacation go to some destination and run a marathon that's most people right but you go from being

this person who struggled to finish their first marathon and almost pulled out the next thing you do is you sign up for the four you're like then I got into ultras like no you sign up for the four deserts like that was going to be your next thing right is that correct uh yes and no so you signed up for the four deserts. Like that was going to be your next thing, right? Is that correct? Yes and no. So I signed up for the first race of that series. I signed up for the Atacama Crossing in Chile. And that was the only one I wanted to do. So it wasn't a plan to do.

You were just going to do one. I was just going to do one. And I considered it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which I feel like my life has had this thread of, oh, you've got to do this once-in-a-lifetime thing. And all of a sudden, that becomes my serious part like my life has had this thread of, oh, you've got to do this once in a lifetime thing and all of a sudden that becomes my serious part of my life. Well, everything you do is once in a lifetime, right? Yeah, and then it becomes like my addiction, you know, in a sense.

And the running isn't the addiction, the adventure and like living life on the edge and, you know, pushing the boundaries of what we're humanly capable of and then realizing like our limits are so far deeper than we ever thought possible. But then also having like the self of like understanding yourself to not always have to push into that place. Right.

Sometimes it's important. But you didn't have that sensibility when you signed up for Atacama, right? You're just going to go do this crazy desert. It was a crazy – it's like, oh, I'm going to be Sam Gash and she likes to do different things. She's going to run in the Atacama desert. She's going to take six months off. She's so interesting.

Cause she's so crazy. And everyone was like, you're so crazy. I'm like, yeah, I'm so crazy. Yeah. Just watch me.

Yeah. Just watch me. I'm just going to be this little girl running across the desert with a massive backpack on. So, so you go to like, why that one though? Just so it worked out. It worked out well with my university timing um but also something about reading about the salt

flats and i just i really felt a connection to like the atacama desert on an academic level like i just liked the sound of it you know the sahara i was like okay that's sand antarctica i need to do another race to qualify and that's way too expensive. And China didn't appeal a great deal to me. So I wanted to do that. And then I linked it into a three-month placement at a capital defense office. So I kind of was doing this North and South America experience and making six months off university worth it. I see.

six months off university worth it. I see. Okay, so did you have an awareness that there was such a thing that the possibility existed that you could do four and that no woman had ever done that before? No, I never knew it. I didn't know it. I knew there was three of the races. I didn't ever believe that someone would even comprehend doing four.

And now we're going to intersect with a podcast that I did probably two years ago at this point. I can't remember exactly when it was, but with Jennifer, the director of Desert Runners, and that's where your name first came up on the podcast because she documented this experience, right? But maybe walk us through the experience of the first one and what triggered you to then tackle all four. So I was doing my clerkships at law firms in the summer before I went across to Chile. And I was living this extreme life of working really, really hard at the law firm and then partying and then trying to train to run this ultra marathon, which I didn't even know how to train because back in 2010,

there wasn't much content available for how to run an ultra marathon, particularly an ultra marathon that requires you to carry everything that you require in a pack on your back whilst you're racing, particularly for a female who was a pescatarian. So this whole, like, I just, I didn't know what I was doing. I was making it up. And one night I went out late and I was dancing. I was wearing heels.

And, but I'd said to myself, the next day, it's going to be my final long run before I fly to Chile. And I got up, I felt exhausted. I didn't really want to go train, but I was like, no, you've got to do it. And put my backpack on, put all these soup cans in my backpack to try and simulate the weight. And I always go, why didn't you just put like the sleeping bag that you're going to use and why didn't you put the stuff that you're using not

these like jarring soup cans that like dug into my back as i ran because you're ultra because i'm so crazy and i twisted my ankle during that run and had this really bad injury and i think i was very close to not doing the race that I had like been so excited about for five months and I decided the only way I could possibly do it was to walk it and I had had a moon boot on until about 10 days before the race and so I just started and how long how long was a moon boot on six weeks whoa so no running no running. No running. No running. I did like one hike in Santiago before the race and my legs were so sore the next day because I hadn't used them in six weeks.

And I was like, well, I might be able to get through day one, but I doubt my legs are going to feel pretty great on day two. And so I just, I remember the restraint I had at the start line on day one, watching everyone run, bolt off the start line. And I was like, oh, don't go, don't go. You can't run. You have to walk. And I was walking with the guys with like the poles and who were, you know,

not to judge but were overweight and looked like they hadn't trained. And I felt like, oh, this is not where I wanted to be but just accept it. Just accept it. Like you're lucky that you're 25 and you get to be, but just accept it. It's a crazy experience. Just accept it. Like you're lucky that you're 25 and you get to be, you know, in San Pedro de Atacama. Day one walked. Day two walked. In fact, I was known as like this – so I'm short.

I've got this massive backpack on that weighs 25% of my body weight, big water bottles at the front of my chest, and I had my arms out straight because I didn't want to get chafing under my arms. And I had two pigtails down my, you know, the front of my chest and I had my arms out straight because I didn't want to get chafing under my arms and I had two pigtails down my you know the side of my and so the film crew could always see me from far away because they said I had this very militant like very hardcore power hike and my arms would be waving straight in the air so they said they always recognized me from the very, like from far away. And they just thought I was like this cute little Aussie girl who was just pretty slow and doing her best to get by.

She's in over her head. Yeah, she doesn't know what she's doing. So I was like, I was a battler. I was in the, you know, bottom third of the field. Day five came on, which was 74 Ks. And I started to, I mean, it feels weird to say that, but it's almost like walking in that desert and being calm about having to walk healed my injury. And on day five, I was like, am I so bold as to maybe try and shuffle? And so I just started shuffling,

wasn't fast. And I shuffled the first like 45 K and I didn't even stop. And I'd I started to see people that I had never seen any other days in the races. Right, the war of attrition, they're starting to drop. Yeah, they'd gone out too hard too early. And I got to this point where all of a sudden I caught up to three Aussie guys. And you have never seen a group of guys so unhappy to see a girl in the desert. How many women were in the field? Maybe like 20% of the field. And they looked at me and one of them was my boyfriend at the desert. How many women were in the field? Oh, maybe like 20% of the field. And they looked at me and one of them was my boyfriend at the time and the panic on his face

that I had caught up to him and he was in the top 20 of the field and I was like the bottom 20 of the field. And on the big 74K stage, we ended up finishing that stage together. And I actually felt that I held myself back to finish the final 25ks with the boys right and I just remember thinking okay like it was a massive confidence booster that you know I still got first in my age group that race and that was my goal going into it that's amazing so from struggling to complete your first marathon to being in a boot for six weeks before this thing and walking most of it and then just hammering, you know, just like crushing the longest day, you know, and doing it in style. Yeah, I crushed the last, that day and then the last 24Ks I came in like third female.

And I just thought maybe there is something to be said about, you know, maybe I was strategic without even knowing it. Like maybe the injury allowed me to drop my ego, observe people around me, focus on the mind being the power as opposed to the physicality and see where is the most important part about that race, which is the 74K long stage and attacking that. Because I pass people by hours, hours and hours. People who were so far ahead of me earlier on, they're 50Ks in, they'd burnt themselves out. And once you get over that red line,

you can't recover. That's the way it works, you know? And then you can literally gain hours on people. Exactly. I mean, you've seen it in like 100 mile races and Ironman races. I mean, I've never won a race because I've been at the front from the beginning.

It's always been attrition. Yeah, it's about continuing to move, just keep moving. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, and it's, it's a, you know, the, the hare never wins. The tortoise usually wins. The longer the race, the better the tortoises chances are. Yeah. And from that, I, you know, dusted my hands. I was like, wow, I achieved my goals and I didn't even realize it. And I went to Texas and I was, I was working for a capital defense office and working on a death row campaign. And during that time, I've said it before that I thought that no work

could ever be as tough as what I did during those three months. And so all of a sudden, the idea started to come into my head. What if I tried to become the first woman to do this? And I knew two other women were trying to do it that year and so i was like well i can't try it next year i'm gonna have to try it this year and i remember telling my boyfriend at the time and he's just like i'm like i reckon we can do it together what if we both you know not just be the first woman but we can be the first couple he's like i didn't sign up for that yeah he's like i'm he's like i'm a med student. I'm going to sign up to do something so silly. And he's like, I don't think you're going to be able to pull this off.

And it was obviously I had to get the funds. You know, I was a law student doing an internship at the time, a non-paid internship. But first you had to break up with him, right? Well, I didn't break up. I stuck with him throughout that thing. Or should I say he stuck with me throughout that thing. And I think him telling me that I couldn't pull it off was just like, who can tell me I'm not going to pull this off if I work hard enough. Like,

you know, I just run 250 kilometers across the desert with an injured foot. And so I just worked so hard trying to find the funding to do that race. You know, I never put it out to the world that I was anything other than I was. I said, I'm just this, put it out to the world that I was anything other than I was. I said, I'm just this, you know, I'm just this young Australian woman trying to do, being an ordinary person trying to do something extraordinary. But my first call was to Jennifer Steinman, the filmmaker. And I said to her, I saw that you were filming a couple of people during this race. If I did all four, do you think you might film me? And she's like, yes, I have no woman yet. I would be very interested in that. And that was my catch. Yeah. And that's like, yes, I have no woman yet. I would be very interested in that. And that was my catch.

That's cool. Yeah, and that's how it kind of developed. Well, I think you're sort of presenting yourself in this semi-self-deprecating manner of like being this average person. But what I'm hearing, like the theme that's emerging from the story is this boldness. Like there's a certain audaciousness. You know, it's not an average person that makes the leap from, you know, the almost I didn't finish marathon

to the desert marathon. And then making the leap to I'm gonna do all four and be the, you know, try to be the first woman. Like that's not a, you know, methodical organic growth curve you know what i mean like you're you're just you have this like there's a a sensibility to like see the possible or see the see the possibility in the impossible and and and take that leap of faith you know that i think maybe that's your maybe that's your gift like how do you think about that? I mean, I think it's also believing that past experience,

even if it's limited, shouldn't be a limiting factor in being able to tackle something big on the basis that you do the hard work to make up for that gap of experience. So I might not have run an ultramarathon before, but I, here's my nerdy lawyer ways i read everything you could possibly read about ultra marathons and what would it take to fuel a body in a way that it could look after it and you know maybe the injury was a blessing in disguise as well and i i still think to this day i wouldn't have done all four if i had didn't have that injury right if you just had a

perfectly right up the middle experience on that yeah i wouldn't have done it and and then china i nearly put out in china was hard like it was it was so mountainous and i kept thinking you know you start i romanticized what chile was like and then i get to china and i'm like oh this is actually really hard like i forgot how hard it was um and the first day was just hills after hills after hills and it was that was probably that and a moment in sahara were the only times that i ever contemplated pulling out of it and but beyond that i just i was willing to be the last person walking across the finishing line i was willing to do anything to get there and i actually became a stronger athlete as as the year progressed I think there's uh

there's beauty in in naivete like naivete can be underestimated because when you you're not really clear on what you're getting yourself into you know you can embrace it in a way that somebody with more experience might be sort of cautioned off of you know I mean with that comes of preparation and all of that, but like to just be like, why not? You know, like, yeah, it's going to be awesome. Yeah. And I have people write to me all the time going, oh, I've never, never done a 10K run

and I think I'm going to run across Australia or something. And, you know, obviously there's a risk mitigator, Sam going, oh, prepare yourself and maybe build into it. And then I kind of think, no, I was a bit like that and I should never crush someone's, like, you know, naivety on the basis that they have enough realistic optimism and understanding that they need to prepare themselves and there are risks associated with jumping a lot of steps.

Yeah, and I think that person will find out in due time whether that's really going to happen or not. I mean, there's a lot of people that make broad proclamations like that. And, you know, in a matter of months, they usually flame out. But the person who, you know, continues to persevere, that's the flame you want to fan. Yeah. And I think that actually is my greatest strength. I think it's that I tend to typically do what I say I'm going to do. And I have an idea. And for most people, they seem like far-fetched, fanciful ideas. But if I put the idea out, what I first require when I say fanciful idea is I want to get a bubbling of excitement of myself, of other people that I respect their opinion of.

Once there's that bubbling of excitement that takes me to about 110%, oh, my God, I really want this, then the work that I do reflects that commitment to make that excitement a reality. And you can't manufacture that, right? That's why you can't just make this decision now, oh, I'm going to do this other adventure. Like it takes time, right? And you'll know when it strikes you.

Yeah, and it has to feel right. I i mean i sometimes say in ultras you get caught out if you have impure reasons for being there you'll get rooted out oh yeah like the body's like i'm not going to do this like that's why if i ran across india just to run across it i think i would have made two weeks well let's talk about the sahara and what happened there. I mean, I talked about it with Jennifer when she was on the podcast, and it certainly makes for, you know, quite a gripping story in that documentary. But, you know, walk us through what happened there. Oh, you know, you said, what do you not want to talk about beforehand? Yeah, I know. Well, that's what I meant.

Yeah, and I don't really. I mean, it's in the film. Well, the thing is, it's funny in kind of prepping for today and, I know. Well, that's what I meant. Yeah, and I don't really. I mean, it's in the film. Well, the thing is, it's funny in kind of prepping for today and doing my due diligence, you know, sort of leveraging that lawyer background that I have, I noticed that it doesn't come up that much. Even though it's in the movie and it's talked about when you read about the movie and all the interviews that you do,

I mean, you're certainly never raising it and it often isn't even asked about. Yeah, I mean, I think in the early days, it was asked about and I didn't want to talk about it. I remember I did my first, okay, I should probably say. We should probably explain what we're talking about. Yeah, so I don't, you know, I'm a corporate speaker and this is in my corporate speaking but i don't talk about it i show it but if i was to explain it now in words um and also we should just point

out that we had to turn the air conditioning off because i feel like i'm in the sahara it's like 104 out here we had to turn the ac off because it screws up the audio but now it's sort of we're having a saharan experience so you feel like i'm like glistening and maybe you think you know we can turn it back on but it's just like this hum on the audio every now and again but i'm like i'm thinking i don't want her to be uncomfortable but like fuck it she ran across india sometimes i feel like my legs are slipping. Okay. So on the first day of the run across the Sahara desert, 250 Ks, I am always typically really underprepared because I believe in a lot of recovery. So day one of that race, it just, I was the hurt locker. I, my backpack's always the heaviest. And I suppose I have the most internal demons at the start of a run,

particularly a stage race. And I was running with a group of friends and then we went into a checkpoint and they wanted to take their shoes off and my whole approach is don't take your shoes off, don't sit down, just keep moving even if it means you have to walk for a bit, just walk out of the aid station. And I started walking out of the aid station slowly was shuffling and you know there was a sand dune and there was a there was a guy on the sand dune and i was as the movie goes i was confused why there was a guy on the sand dune um but i just thought he must have been a part of the race and i i mean it's it's kind of the middle of nowhere

though right i mean there was an aid station nearby, but it's not like you're in a town. We actually weren't far from a town. But you don't think it because all you see is the sand. But, like, there are in, like, Egypt these kind of sand dune communities. But you do get into the bubble of the race. You think you're the only thing out there, that the race is the only thing that exists in your mind. And I kind of got to that sand dune,

and he had his hand out like he wanted to give a high five. And so I kind of grabbed his hand and, you know, he obviously had impure motivations and, you know, attempted to sexually assault me in that moment. All I can say is, like, I'm so lucky that Lycra is so tight and I was hot from Sahara because it actually helped me out in like being a bit of a barrier from him being able to go a bit further.

And I was also very lucky that there was a guy on a motorbike that was riding by and scared him away back into the bush. And so I backed away from him. And, you know, you think about it, like I was frozen. I was frozen in that moment because I was so – I did not expect. Like now when I do my expeditions, I think about this stuff, and I'm prepared for it, so I think about my whistle. I mean, of course you didn't expect it.

Can you imagine you're in the middle of running an ultra and you get yanked and put in this position where you're being sexually assaulted. I mean, nobody would. But now I say women, be prepared. Be prepared that when you run on the trails, you have to realize that there can be anyone on the trails. And there's been a lot of incidences around the globe

where a woman has gone for a run on a trail and she's been somewhat assaulted by someone there. And it is a crappy thing to acknowledge, and particularly for something that we love to do. But that's why there's whistles on backpacks. That's why, you know, we should carry our mobile phones, even if we want to be disconnected from technology, you have to think of, um, you know, I hate to think of worst case scenario because I'm like the eternal optimist, but I've, it's definitely made me more cautious. And, um, it took me 45 minutes to find um

someone after that happened I mean what's going through your mind in that 45 minute period I can't even imagine that you were able to even move forward I don't think I moved I had lost my voice like I I could not even speak and I was going forward and um there were these checkpoint markers and the wind kept hitting the checkpoint markers and so they kept flapping and I was going forward and there were these checkpoint markers and the wind kept hitting the checkpoint markers and so they kept flapping and I kept thinking someone was behind me. And so every couple of like, you know, minutes I would like dart around and look behind me thinking someone was there. I mean, were you moving or were you just sitting laying down?

No, no, I was like moving forward. I was going through the course trying to get to the next aid station when in reality I could have stopped, waited for the guys to come up behind me and i that would have happened much quicker but my mind said like safety is forward i've got to go forward i don't want to stick where i am the person that i found or that found me was jen stymann the filmmaker and she took one look at me knew something had happened and put her camera on um in the car which must have been like we've talked about it since then that's a big like filmmaker moment i'm here for my friend now i'm not going to film this moment right so she kind of carries there i mean this is the most

dramatic thing that perhaps is going to happen in the documentary and she has an opportunity to document the whole thing and she put it down and i still was quite composed because I was like you know got to get to safety I was like in like you know um I was very I was composed until I got to safety and then I just I hadn't drunk water in 45 minutes I'm in the Sahara desert I was dehydrated I was fatigued I was emotional and I took like a bit of a break and I had seven k's left to go and when I went to do the seven k's I just like collapsed on the ground and I'm like what am I doing like why bit of a break and I had seven Ks left to go. And when I went to do the seven Ks, I just like collapsed on the ground. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, why am I running? Why am I pushing? I'm going to finish a race after I've just been like, it just seems so

meaningless. It seems so meaningless. And it was all going through my head. Like, what is, what is this about? And like, what's this country? And so I pulled out of the race. They were like, you know, you can pull out of today and we'll just give you an average time and we'll let you continue tomorrow. Which in some ways sometimes when you're racing you want someone to give you an easy option as well like we'll still let you be in the race but you don't have to do that 7k so i i got into my tent um people kept coming past thinking that i was the first woman for the day because no other woman was back. And they're like, hey, congratulations, awesome. And I'm sitting there going, I don't want to tell them what happened.

I also don't want to lead them to think that I won. And so I just, again, like I didn't know what to say. And then after about 20, 30 minutes, I was like, nah, I've got to go back out there. Like I have to go to that exact spot where I finish and I have to finish this because if I don't, this moment is going to define my racing experience, not someone else is going to define my racing experience when I did this for myself.

And so I went back out there and I charged through that 7K, probably the hardest I'd run 7K in the entire thing. You get a ride back to exactly where you stopped. Yeah. Got a ride back and they were just like, okay. And it was very unceremonious. It was like, okay, Sam, go. And I put the stopwatch on and I went.

And so I'm now running in the heat of the day with all the people who are at the back of the field thinking what is going on? Why is Sam running at the back of the field? I haven't seen her all day. And I just didn't speak to anyone. I just kind of like put my, I used my little, you know, the little bit of battery I had in my iPod that I was saving for the long stage on day five and I'm like I need to put this on right now and I just like ran and I I processed what happened as much as one can process in a short period of time and I just thought no like I'm not going to be a victim I'm going to make this this race is about me and I'm not going to be a victim. I'm going to make this, this race is about me

and I'm not going to let someone that I'll never see again, like be the defining moment for this. It was your character defining moment. Yeah. You know, I mean, nobody would have besmirched you to just be like, no, I'm not finishing. You know, there's no point in that. It is the extremely rare person

that would have made the move that you made. And I think it speaks to what you said earlier. Like if you have a talent, it's this, you know, commitment to following through on what you say you're going to do, like this firm constitution. And I think if anything, that is obviously, you know, this is your secret power, right? And I don't know what kind of compartmentalization was required to be able to kind of mentally approach that but the fact that you made that decision and followed through on that i mean that's that's it just it's an unbelievably remarkable thing yeah my grandma had died a week before that race and i had been my parents had been overseas so they weren't there

when she died and i spoke at her eulogy and I was there with her at the end and I just remember thinking like right now she's watching over me and she wants me to finish this and I definitely felt her spirit with me for the rest of that race and to the credit of my people who I shared a tent with who most of them I had never met before I don't know if they had a secret conversation and made a strategy but one of them was with me for the rest of the race. One of they took turns, but there was someone in that tent with me every moment for the rest of the race. And these are guys that whether they went slower at times or faster at times to kind of stick with me, they definitely made it possible. Um I look back at that and you wonder why I focus on access to education. I think my capacity or my fortune to be educated in the way that I am

gives me that ability to have perspective and to think to the long term and to analyze a situation and to get myself out of a situation that could have placed me in the cycle of being the victim. Yeah, that's what I was sitting here thinking about. Like, that would be the typical route. Like, you're the victim. You can do the speaking circuit and talk about, you know, female empowerment and women's rights. But, you know, really allowing that to sort of control the narrative. And then maybe five years later, you go back to the spot where it happened and you run that seven kilometers as a part of that healing process. But expediting the healing process by immediately going back there and running that is like taking this bold step to redress it as it's occurring without any time for even reflection upon what had occurred.

Yeah, and I think the reflection was done afterwards. And I think we have to acknowledge that things out of our control happen to us all the time. And sometimes they can be horrible like that, or they can be 10 times more horrible like what's happening to so many women in sub-Saharan Africa where they're abused on a daily basis and they don't even know that that's actually a bad thing.

And there's certainly no way that they can get out of that. And so there's always degrees of perspective, but I look back at that and although it was horrible at the time, I feel it was my defining moment in that experience. I feel like I grew up and we can choose to look at something in a positive lens or a negative lens and it's our choice how to respond to something. We are so much more defined by our response to something than the action of what happens to us in that moment. Yeah, absolutely true. And I don't know what they're putting in the water out there in Australia,

but the only thing worse that I can imagine than being sexually assaulted in the midst of a race is having your body completely burned. So, Turia. And your friend, yeah, Turia, who, you know, you probably know I had on the podcast as well. Your friend, you were in that race as well, right? Yeah, I was. Were you a witness to that occurring? I was. Oh, gosh, Turia.

She's, gosh, Turia. She's amazing. But I mean, the point being, like, the thing about, like, what are they putting in the water in Australia, meaning, like, she has similar command over her story and how she talks about it. Like, it's reminiscent of the way that you're sharing it in the sense that, you know, she's using it as a means to not only empower herself, but to empower others.

So they're breeding strong character there down under yeah i was just ahead of turian during that race and i i saw the fire um and i ran through and i remember going to the race director saying no one should be allowed through here we based i was with another two guys at the time and we had run for our lives pretty much to get away from the fire. We passed back that message. Right. And it wasn't. You were speaking to that. It's getting super hot in here.

I'm like, I'm going to take my clothes off. Should we turn the AC down now? I don't know. We'll get through it. I feel like Rich is trying to say like you need to be wearing less clothes and doing these podcasts. She, they didn't pass that message back yeah so it was a pretty awful experience to be a part of and you know i sure is amazing yeah and you ended up um doing or doing a race that raised funds for her and others correct yeah there was two girls who

were two and kate sanderson who were the ones that were you know significantly impacted by that fire and so a year to the day that it happened um we hosted a fun run in melbourne around the tan which you might have run around when you were there botanical gardens in uh melbourne i was in mel no i didn't because i like i said i was only there a day like i couldn't i didn't even go for a run there yeah it was literally in and out yeah well there's a just a right kind of in the heart we drove by it though i know what you're talking about yes we did a two-loop run and we raised some funds for the girls not as i mean the funds were whatever but it was more just this community has your back yeah and she came down for it and ran a loop wow it was the most

amazing thing she walked it and then she kind of ran the last little bit. And I'll never forget, she still had all her body protectant on. Right, right. And she was just, you know, her arms were straight and Michael was part. Her face looks like a ski mask with just the gauze all around it. And she ran it and Michael was next to her. And I just, my heart swelled with pride of her strength. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

All right, so you get through sahara i mean i would imagine you had to battle some demons about just not doing the next one or was there a moment of thinking you're like it was antarctica my sponsor said if i got through each race they would fund the next one so i was like oh well got through sahara take me to antarctica and at this point where are you in the pecking order of women, like in terms of rankings? Like are you working your way up here? Yeah, so I'm fourth now.

Like I'm consistently ranking fourth. And are women dropping out? Like are they starting? Is there some attrition occurring? So there's only two of the women who are doing the trying for it. And I was always hours ahead. So that kind of. So it's like years to lose even despite all of this

like you're in the driver's seat you can lose like easily um but the more interesting thing for me like i didn't really care so much about the first woman thing like it didn't i feel like it was just it was fortunate timing that i decided to do it um i was a stronger athlete than the other two women but what was-deprecating thing coming in again. But what was, okay, I'll try and inflate myself up. What was exciting is that I really had learned to run. So by the final race in Antarctica, I was racing against a girl who was in the first race. And she just did Atacama and Antarctica.

And she was hours ahead of me in Atacama. And by this last race, we were battling. Like we were dueling it out for each other. And she's like, who are you? She's like, I remember looking at your pigtails in that first race. And I just, you wouldn't think having run 750 kilometers in those extreme environments would have taught me to run and to be stronger. Because most of the other people who were going for the Grand Slam got weaker.

They got tired. You know, you have to go back home you have to work you have to cram in your life in a short period of time but for me it had i maybe it's the inner resilience but i actually learned to become stronger well you're so new to the sport too yeah i was like oh you're gaining every day on the job training yeah wow yeah did you hire a coach or are you just trying to figure this out through whatever you could find online? I just figured it out myself. I mean, I have to be honest. I didn't do too much training in between.

Didn't have the time. I had to do my law. I had to actually study to be a lawyer. And there was only three weeks between Sahara and Antarctica. So you're just using that really to kind of recover and do some shorter runs. Yeah. And so the last one is, what was the last one? Was Antarctica the last one?

Yeah, correct. All right. So when you complete that and you realize like, hot damn, like you just won this. You're the first woman to ever do this and the youngest. Yeah. And is it true that like at the time? No one acknowledged it. It wasn't a big thing.

It wasn't even a thing. It wasn't even a thing. There was no category for that. How many guys had done it, completed it? Only two. There were only a couple, right? Dean was one. Right. And Paul Liebenberg.

So kind of two professional. Paul is a doctor, but Dean is professional. So really two professional male athletes had done that challenge beforehand. And this year, the year that I did it, 13 people or 11 people were tackling it. And how many of them finished? Maybe eight, I think, something like that. And did the other two women complete it as well? And that's what was cool.

So three women in the first year. Yeah. Of course. I mean, women are quite good at just – even in pain. And one of the women was a lot older. women was, you know, a lot older. She was, you know, mid 50s maybe. And then Lucy, who was from the UK, she had like terrible knee pain and like had to hobble most of it. But she got through it.

There's a toughness about women who tackle endurance races. Yeah, for sure. You know, I think women are tougher in the ultras than the guys. I don't know what it is but i think it's true but there must have been a point you know after you did this maybe when you got home where you're like i'm hot stuff man i just rocked that thing i wish i took more time to to think that way yeah i didn't but yeah what i'm getting at really is like okay i'm like good at this like i could like make this more of a thing,

not just like something I do on the side as, you know, while I'm being a lawyer, but like, when did you start to see the possibility that you could perhaps pursue this, not necessarily as a professional running career, but like from a perspective of advocacy and like, you know, make this like your main thing? To make it as my main thing, maybe four years later. Yeah. I think at the time I i was still i'm doing this i'm gonna finish my law degree i'm gonna be a lawyer i don't come home are your friends like do they did they get what you were

doing um maybe two i was i would blog during it so people were along for the journey and you know when you're blogging along these things you're quite emotional and you're raw with your writing and you know I'm sure there's plenty of spelling mistakes in there as well because you're writing on this small little keyboard in the desert um but no I don't think people truly understand and that's okay that's something you have to come to grips with that of course people aren't going to understand what that journey was like and um at the beginning that's hard to kind of re- readapt yourself back to that world. I mean, I've been travelling around the globe. I've been finishing my law degree in between.

Like I had mastered more in that year than I probably had in the 10 years prior to it. But that's something that you can't put that on other people. You have to kind of take that yourself. And when the movie came out, how was that like sort of reliving that experience on the big screen in an auditorium with other people it was years later it was maybe two years later two three years later and it was in edinburgh so jen didn't let me see the film before it came out

so i was going in there petrified about how this scene would play out in sahara you know i was like i hope no one thinks of me as a victim you You know, I certainly didn't see of myself as that. And I remember watching it and a woman came up to me afterwards and she kind of spoke to me and she kind of lingered for a little bit. And then a couple of days later, she wrote to me on Facebook and said, you know, I was the girl that came up to you. I want to let you know that a couple of years ago, someone that I knew broke into my home, beat me up and raped me. And she said afterwards, she didn't get the support that she felt that she needed. And she had really been hard on herself and she'd been playing the victim game.

And she said that after seeing the film, she realized that she was the only person who could take control of her situation. And so she had joined a gym and over that next year, she had been like signed up for like Tough Mudder events and she would send me photos of when she would like complete the race. And I remember thinking if that is the only positive of that situation coming, it's worth it. That's beautiful.

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Well, you've since gone on to i mean we can't go through like every crazy race and adventure that you've done but you know there's you ran across south africa and like you know what else you did you know you did what else i wrote them all down but you ran across you had a big like run in the desert simpson desert in australia like you know it's not just like you're doing this you know all the time right yeah I mean I really love the self-devised expeditions where you can

create the parameters um maybe that's my control freak nature coming through but I like the I like creation um I like taking the limits to where I want to see them and push them. I want to eat when I want to eat. I want to go for as far as I want to go. And I want to do it for why I want to do it. And sometimes when you do a race, you don't have control of that kind of stuff. So I have control in the creation. Then I have to learn to lose control when I actually do it. And I think that's something really poetic about playing into what you naturally are inclined to do and then having to go to the opposite level of it. Yeah, yeah,

for sure. How do you think of the balance between mental and physical in terms of, you know, the strengths and requirements to tackle these types of events? I definitely think mental is a lot stronger. You know, I've seen people who are physically very capable and pull out of these races the second day. And the worst thing about these races is you have to, typically you have to stay with the race because you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert. So you actually have to watch people complete the race

that you dreamed about doing. And time and time again I would see people and I just would see their, like their head in their hands thinking why did i pull out at that point like could i the thing is there's so many things you can do before pull out you can slow down you can take on more nutrition you can wait for someone to come and like bounce off their camaraderie um you can sit down for a moment but somehow all those alternatives become like we don't think of them when we're feeling in that crux of like discomfort and we're on the edge we think our only solution is to

completely take ourselves away from it uh i can't actually remember what your question was but what has to do with the mental game yes i think and the barriers that that we erect i think that prevent us from really connecting with our capabilities like you know david goggins says all the time like he's got his 40 rule you know his famous 40 rule like yeah okay you know when we think we're done we've only tapped into about 40 of what we're truly capable of and you meet that like like how do you is that do you agree with that is that do you think of it differently i don't have a formula for it um but for me i'm 41 or yeah 41 i'll be like david mine's 43.5 percent i i definitely think mental plays a massive role in the creation of self-belief

that you can do something like that and then the self-belief that you can do something like that. And then the self-belief then requires you to have the commitment to do the training. So I think it starts with the mental side, but then it also empowers the physicality as well. But I think you have to really believe in yourself. You have to believe it's possible and you have to believe in your ability to do the hard work behind it. Have you had any of these kind of spiritual experiences that you hear about? Like Dean talks about, you know, sort of having his visions when he becomes delirious. And, you know, what is your kind of like ethereal connection to these endeavors? Oh, I don't know if I, in the expeditions, you have a couple of them.

In India, I couldn't have been running in a more spiritual place. And, you know, I talked about spirituality a lot with my crew whilst I was out there because some of my crew were avid yogis and felt the departure of being out of practice yoga in a studio meant that they were void of their spirituality. And I said, spirituality isn't something, in my opinion, spirituality isn't something that you get in a studio meant that they were void of their spirituality. And I said, in my opinion, spirituality isn't something that you get in a room. It's something that's inside you that you can bring into other parts of your life.

And spirituality for me is to experience or to be part of what the majority of the population truly live their life like. And the way the majority of Indians live, daily survival, moment by moment, not thinking ahead, to try and get into that frame mind takes me to my closest place of spirituality without a doubt. And it's something that we're not used to. It's very hard to get to that, but these people live it

not because of choice. And what does that spirituality look like for you? How do you articulate that? I think it's when I actually stop fretting about what's to come and dwelling on what's past. Being in the moment. Being in the now, right? I think that's how you get through these ultras.

Ultimately, the more you can anchor yourself in the present, that fear of the future and reflection on how hard it's been or whatever difficulties you've had evaporates and allows you to just propel forward. And as I think I said earlier on, I'm very careful when I choose to take myself there. I'm not someone that just wants to take myself there. You know, I don't, not someone that just wants to beat myself into like discomfort all the time to constantly see what I'm capable of. Like I do back myself now. I know that I'm capable of going there,

but I don't always need to go there. And I think that's something I've learned with maturity and getting a bit older. So then what is your relationship with balance? The balance is that I have to really believe in why I'm doing it to take myself there. And that, you know, my relationship with myself and my family and my partner and like my health and the pursuit of pushing the boundaries need to sometimes be moderately aligned. And there'll be times when I push the boundaries out of the comfort zone a lot. So the last three years I've been doing that a lot with India and now I need to kind of like go back into like-

The pendulum has to swing back. It has to swing. It has to swing back so I can go back there and do it in the right way for the right reasons and with the right outcomes so now i'm kind of like going you couldn't just launch right into the next thing yeah which everyone goes what's next and i'm like for the first time in my life i felt comfortable going like i for a moment i tried to kind of say a few things because i've got ideas of course i have ideas but i'm like no there's no what's next i'm just i'm going to do little – I'm doing little micro-adventures.

I'm finishing my book, which comes out next year. We're going to make a document. We just got the funding for the Run India documentary. Well, I know that you made these amazing – there are these amazing videos on Vimeo that you can find on your website. I believe those were the ones produced by World Vision, right? Those ones were produced by world vision right those ones were produced by a guy called steve young um who was hired by world vision um kind of at my request

as the right person to come out on this expedition but there'll be a proper documentary proper documentary made by that guy who filmed that kind of content that's very cool and that was something that was hanging over me i'm like we have so much incredible content in the can that shows these stories of these people that we met and what we went through. It almost wouldn't be doing justice to the project to not be able to showcase that stuff. Yeah, beautiful. So is there an anticipated sort of release date for that?

Yeah, December. It'll be out by December, yeah. Oh, December. Oh, wow. So hopefully we can take it into a couple of the film festivals. Is Jennifer then sort of taking a look at the footage? Are you in communication with her? I mean, Jennifer's one of my best friends now. I came to her wedding in Berkeley last year,

and I'm going to go and visit her in San Francisco at the end of this trip. So she's definitely my soul sister and has looked over every content that I've ever kind of put out. And she's a very good guiding, I suppose, figure for me on that stuff. Well, we got to land this plane, but I think the final thing, and I kind of want to explore with you is how you think about your role as a, you know, as this sort of inspirational figure or role model for female empowerment. You know, this is a theme that kind of comes up from time to time on the podcast.

And I kind of my mantra or the thing I always say is like, there are amazing women doing amazing things all over the place. We don't do a very good job of shining a spotlight on them. And, you know, in America, the spotlight is keenly on the Kardashians and kind of all kinds of, you know, figures that as a father of two young daughters, I would prefer my daughters don't model themselves after. And so I'm always so happy to be able to share the message of somebody who I think is a healthy role model and inspiring figure who is really empowering, you know, women and young women in particular all over the world with your strength and your grace and your accomplishments. So how do you like think about how you carry that? I struggle with the word inspiration. I struggle with the

word inspiration. When you get an email and somebody says you're such an inspiration, how does that make you feel? Like what is your emotional reaction to that? I used to cringe because I – maybe I – I think the places – the people I'm inspired by are the ones that just do what they really believe in for the intention of doing the thing that they really believe in, like wholeheartedly. And then it's my choice to feel inspired by them, not because they've said that they're

inspiring, but because they're doing something they really believe. And so if someone chooses to say, oh, I'm really inspired by your talk or what you did, like that's them, like that's how they choose to feel. And that's awesome. But I guess I don't go about my business and I don't run across India with the objective of being inspiring. It's I'm doing this thing because I really believe it can make a tangible difference through a different

type of way. And it's, I think it's soft that run across India, I think was a really great example of soft diplomacy, which I think can be really effective. And if someone chooses to feel a certain way about it, I mean, yeah, of course.'s heartening. But you're aware that this sort of sense about yourself is being cultivated. I mean, you go and you give talks at corporations and probably at schools and all kinds of places, right? So when you're delivering that message, how are you, what is the core idea

that you're trying to communicate? Well, my core thing is to just show that I am really a normal person in the sense that I'm relatable, that anyone could make the choices that I've chosen to make and go down this path. It's just comes from choice. And if I can open up people's minds to how they can pursue their choices, well excites me particularly when it comes into the way of positively impacting the lives of other people and how do you look at the landscape of you know sort of female empowerment and you know the figures that are you know out there and and kind of what they speak to that was a poorly articulated question but you get what I'm saying, right? That's because we're pretty much stripping right now.

I've got this friend, Neil Strauss, and he's a writer and he has a podcast that he does with Gabrielle Reese and they do it in a sauna and it's called The Truth Barrel because when you're that hot and you spend that much time in there, it's like truth serum and you end up telling the truth and i feel like this podcast has sort of morphed into the truth barrel so oh i mean you are gonna have to put we're gonna we're almost done you're gonna have to put a towel on the seat so um you're gonna have to hit me with that question one more time because i sweated out there i remember all i remember is that i asked it very poorly but it had to do with oh like how you think about this landscape of female empowerment like what you're you you know like who are the people that you look to and like how do you think about how um you know culture messages young women and what can be changed about that i guess is a way of putting. In my late teens and early 20s,

I used to say I was someone that got on better with guys and, you know, I found the company of other women not as fulfilling. And I've now done like a 180 on that and I am the biggest advocate for associating yourself with kick-ass women who have strengths where you have weaknesses where the focus is on elevating each other even if you're in competitive fields and so I feel like I have flourished as an individual ever since I've chosen to do that ever since I've seen the pie being a whole lot bigger and I don't think that if a woman is successful in this slice of pie that

she's taken my slice of pie. In fact, she's got that piece of pie because she created it. And so I have a really incredible group of women that I associate with often in the entrepreneurial space who are writers, speakers, I guess thought leaders in their own way. And they are the people that I typically go to when I have this harebrained idea that I want to kind of develop. And, yeah, that's – and Jennifer's one of them. And I just think you have to know your core. And, you know, recently I did something where I forgot that that's not the norm. And I think I've created that over the years because that's what makes me be the best version of myself.

I've created that over the years because that's what makes me be the best version of myself. But, you know, I recently did a project where I wasn't around that and I realized how much I need that in my day-to-day life. So my message to young women is to find your female tribe and don't be afraid of them being successful. In fact, elevate them with everything that you have to be successful because that is going to be the true measure of how you gain success too. That's very similar to Robin Arzon's message. Yeah, it's cool. Because I love that girl. I know.

And you said before the podcast, you went to her class. And I was like, did you tell her who you were? She's like, she probably didn't even know. So, yo, Robin, she listens. She's going to listen to this. She's my girl crush. She's everybody's girl crush. Well, that's awesome and you know

maybe as a final thought um just for somebody who's feeling stuck in their life who needs a little inspiration or a kick in the pants or or just that like you know like sort of little kernel of wisdom to help catalyze you know perhaps a a move off the couch and in a better trajectory i mean the outdoors is no pressure the outdoors is the environment where i find um not just mindfulness and like um the ability for me to remove judgment away from myself but the place where i can be most creative and so whether that's the physicality of being outdoors but i don't get that same feeling of being in a gym so and not everyone who listens to your podcast is someone who is active but i just say get outside like be outside be in nature get off the roads where there's like this increased level of silence put your phone on silent if it's with you and just like stop being so hard on yourself and start creating the things

that make the most sense to you. It's a beautiful way to end it. I think we did it. Yeah. How do you feel other than being super hot? Literally my glasses are fogging up right now. I actually think it's perfect that we taped this thing. No, it was really great. Thank you so much. It was beautiful to spend a couple hours with you. I really appreciate your message. You are a true inspiration and i wish you nothing but um positive good vibes and luck and keep doing what you're doing i look forward to seeing what you do next but there's no time clock on that yeah thank you time right enjoy california and uh when you finish that book will you come back and tell me about it i will i will thank you it's been an absolute privilege. I have hounded you and thank you for accepting the hounding.

No, you didn't hound me at all. Are you kidding? Like I'm super happy to be able to do this. It's fantastic. So awesome. You can find Samantha online pretty easily. You can Google her and like a billion articles come up

or you can just go to samanthagash.com at Samantha Gash on Twitter, Instagram, all those kinds of places, right? Is there one place in particular where you like to interact with people? Yeah, I think Instagram is where I'm most present reflection of what I'm doing and probably the easiest way of getting in touch with me. Right. And do you have speaking engagements coming up? I do.

I have a very, I suppose, full schedule when I get back. But nothing in the U.S. while you're here? No, but my book is actually published in the U.S., so I'll be doing a book tour next year throughout the U.S. Oh, cool. Who's the publisher on that? Macmillan. Oh, nice.

Yeah, in New York. Excellent. Well, then you're definitely, you have to come back. Yes, I'd love to. Awesome. Well, I plan on being in Australia probably. Yeah. As we talked about before.

I will host you. Anyway, absolute pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you. Peace. I plan on being in Australia probably as we talked about before, but anyway, absolute pleasure. Uh, thanks so much. Thank you. Peace. Plants. Yeah,

we did it. Yeah. Right on. We did it. How do you guys feel? Was it good? Was it awesome? I thought it was pretty cool.

I thought she was great. Uh, why don't you give her a shout out on the internet and let her know what you thought. She's easy to find just Samantha Gash everywhere you look at Samantha Gash on Twitter and on Facebook and on Instagram and share a few thoughts about what you thought about the conversation. Again, if you want to check out the meal planner, I encourage you to do so. Go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, richroll.com. If you would like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of ways to do

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