Hi, I'm Kelaine Conahan.

And this is recognized.

Act like, you know, this time last year we did the 135 challenge profiling,

135 baller women in sports who simply do not receive the coverage

they deserve from sports media.

To cap that all off, I ran a 135 mile race across death valley in the face melting

heat of July, a little thing called bad water running bad water was incredible.

It challenged me mentally, physically, and emotionally, and chased me in

places I never dreamed possible today.

July 11th.

20 22, 100 new badass runners will take off on their own bad water, adventure.

And I am so pumped for them as they run their own.

Ultra-marathons earn their own blisters and smash their own limits.

If you're curious what bad water was like today, we're dropping my exit interview

with clay skipper, where I'll recap the highs, the lows, the yelling, the pooping,

and the long slow grind across the.

But this is your fair warning because recognize is coming back hard.

Like after a four minute micro nap, 112 miles into the race.

This fall, we'll be releasing full length episodes, exploring

coverage of women's sports.

What's wrong, how you can help fix it.

Why it matters in giving you the real story about these amazing athletes

act like to go for now, put on your hoodie and crank up that space heater,

but stay tuned for the real deal.

We can't wait to share this with you.

All right.

Well, hi Kelaine.

Welcome to, uh, your own podcast.

Wow.

Thanks Clay.

It's.

It's kind of like a revelation to be here, honestly.

So

bad water was the 21st of July, right?

It

started the 19th, but it ended on the 21st.

So you're not wrong.

Yes.

Which is insane because when I looked you up on there and you know, they

have like the time and the mile, and then they have date and I'm like, oh

my God, that right there says it all.

Like the fact that there are three days where it says date checked into

like the, uh, checkpoint that was yeah.

Eye opening.

Yeah.

And it's funny because I feel like a lot of people then think, oh, you

probably just got a nice night of sleep or what have you, but no, you're

to the extent you possibly can on your feet and moving the whole time.

Right.

It's not like there's a staged area.

Okay.

Tonight we're landing here and we pull our sleeping bag out or whatever it is.

No, it's just like.

You're continuously moving forward.

It's tough

for sure.

Well, we'll get into some of the specifics, cause I am curious about that,

about pacing and everything like that.

But before we do, we're recording this on August 11th.

So it's, that's what, like 20 days almost.

Are you still in pain?

Have you gotten to the point where you were no longer in pain?

What is your, your pain?

Uh, like these

days.

So I, I'm not in pain.

I walked away.

So fortunately injury free.

I felt like I was expecting, oh, my Metarol would be sore or

tender or some nagging fatigue injury that you just expect.

Some of the a hundred milers that I've done.

I've walked away with tendonitis.

That I continued to run through or, you know, like you just have some

soreness that continues, but while I'm not in pain, I will tell you that I

do not have any, like, get up and go.

And I've talked to one of my, the people who was on my team, my

support crew, I was like, freaky.

Do you thi like, is this a problem that I still feel slow?

And he's like, no, just be patient with your body.

Just keep clicking off miles.

If they're slower, they're slower.

If your legs feel heavy, your legs feel heavy.

As long as you're.

Incurring any new injuries you can just keep pressing on and just give

yourself a break for not being as fast as you were before running 135

miles.

Yeah, seriously.

So 135 miles.

So how many ultras have you done?

And a hundred miles.

If those are different, different numbers.

Yeah.

So

I've done 300 milers, which is the minimum requirement to

apply for bad water is three.

So I was actually surprised that that was enough for me to get in.

I have done, I believe six 50 milers.

I've done a hundred K and I've done a whole bunch of.

Marathons last year when the Boston marathon got canceled, I

did a double marathon by myself.

I was training for bad water.

I did a 70 miler by myself.

So definitely a lot of miles under my belt.

Some of them in race form and other ones just grinding it out as kind of

a solo performance solo runner, which is a totally different head game.

Of course.

Yeah.

And so is the marathon like your gateway into this?

Is that how you got into, is that how people get into ultras?

Cause I'm always curious how people actually get into ultras a

hundred percent.

And that's why I've come to talk to you today, clay, because after

your marathon, I'm just sucking you right into this vortex.

But yeah, no, I started running marathons and a friend of mine had met somebody

at a tailgate and was just like, you need to talk to my friend mosey because

mosey had run ultra-marathons and I.

I loved running my, even my first marathon, which was a disaster.

I came back in the second.

I mean, it was so bad, but the second one I came back and I was like, I love this.

I've dropped my time by 40 minutes.

And I was like, look at me, I'm gonna be an Olympian, which I'm

not . But nonetheless, I felt like.

It unlocked so many possibilities and I just loved the training process.

So yeah, I talked to this guy, Masi, who I'm still very close with.

And I was like, I'm thinking about dipping my toe in and around here in

DC, in Western, Maryland, there is the JFK 50 miler, which is known as kind

of the first American ultra-marathon.

It started because Teddy Roosevelt had said that any American military

troop should be able to move on.

With gear 50 miles in a day.

Wow.

And so this became this kind of tradition, but that was the

first ultra-marathon that I did.

I jumped right into a 50 miler, loved that.

I think a lot of people see 50 miles as close to double a marathon

distance and think like, there's no way I could possibly do that.

Yeah.

But it's a totally different game.

If you like endurance, if you like pushing yourself to the point where.

You have to dig deep and get beyond just the physical.

You really have to tap into your mind and strategy.

If that's something that you enjoy, then ultramarathons, I think.

A very logical next step.

And they're shockingly accessible.

Well,

interesting.

Well you, yeah, now I'm now.

All right, I'll do it.

I'll do it.

All right.

Great.

You're in.

Okay.

okay.

So bad water.

So you mentioned there, you have to apply for it.

Okay.

So I didn't even know this.

So how do you get into the bad water?

How many people get in?

I'm curious about all that.

The goal for the race is for people to be able to actually successfully do it.

And so it's a pretty restrictive application process.

It feels a lot like you're going to college.

There's, there's like essay questions.

You have to have done at least 300 milers.

There are questions about like your motivation for doing it, what

you bring to the ultra community and the bad water community and

how you embody the bad water.

Wow.

Spirit.

Yeah.

And ultimately, Kind of a, a review board that selects a hundred people every year.

I don't know what the number of applicants are, but I know that

it is a highly coveted race.

It was certainly on my bucket list.

The reason that it's selective of course, is that thus far, zero

people have died during bad water and they wanna keep it that way.

Right?

Yeah.

Because it's known as the toughest foot race in the world, really having

just amateurs or people who aren't serious about the sport, try to do it

would be, you know, a fools errand for.

Because first

of all, tell people you're where you're going.

You're going through death valley.

Yeah.

So Badwater is in death valley.

It's basically across the entire expansive death valley.

So it starts at Badwater basin, which is the lowest point in north America.

It's 282 feet below sea level.

It's the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth.

And the reason that death valley stays so hot is it's kind of like a bowl, right?

So the hot air gets trapped and just kind of swirls around.

There's no way for it to exit.

So it just kind of bakes constantly.

And yeah, so Badwater basin is at the lowest point there, and then you

wind up having to climb your way out.

So you run, there's kind of rolling Hills.

And then throughout the course of Badwater, there are actually

three separate mountain.

And there's a 15 mile stretch where you're climbing 5,000

feet and it it's just brutal.

And then you wind up losing almost all of it.

And then you do another mountain climb.

Yeah.

It's it's I mean, just absolutely devastating to know, like I did all

that work and now it's just gone.

It's just gone.

And then you do another series of switch backs and then the last 13 miles, right?

So you 122 to 135 are just vert.

Like you.

Just climbing Mount Whitney, you are on no gas, just fumes and just

kind of gutting and gritting it out.

It's really tough.

Now, if the temperature doesn't get you, the Hills will get you

because it's, I mean, it's so hot.

The sleep deprivation aspect is incredibly challenging.

The hits just keep coming and you just gotta figure it out.

There's so much.

And I think that's consistent across most ultra marathons.

So much of it is actually just mental troubleshooting.

Right?

You've got this base, this foundation of the amount of training that you've done.

You're gonna have to figure out how to solve problems, whether it's

a cramp that you have, or whether it's that your nutrition isn't

going the way that you want it to.

There's just so much of it that is knowing and understanding your body

and figuring things out on the fly.

How many people finish this year?

Do you know?

Actually only 84 started this year.

And the number of finishers was in the sixties.

It's wild consistently like an 80% completion rate, which is much

higher than most people would think because it draws such serious runners

who know what they're going into and what they're going up against.

Yeah.

And what did you say if I might ask for what your motivation was in that essay?

I'm so interested in my limits.

And I think it's pretty audacious when people set out to do something

where they know they might fail.

I've crude for bad water.

Two times I crude my friend Masi, who I brought up earlier.

Who's really how I got into ultra running.

And I was on his support crew one year when he DNF or.

That which stands for did not finish.

Yeah.

And I was on his crew the next year when he came back with

a vengeance and succeeded.

Now, the time that he DNF, he, he had a time goal in mind.

He had run it two times previously and he really wanted to, to beep 30 hours.

But, you know, I had seen both the good, bad, and the ugly

of a bad water crossing and.

I was really curious to see if I had what it took.

Mossi kind of challenged me as did the other members of my crew.

They were like, you're next?

Huh?

And I took that challenge very seriously and applied in 2020 and got in.

And then 10, I did the entire training cycle 10 days before the race.

They canceled it because of COVID it was devastating.

Oh my God.

A gut punch.

Yeah.

Jesus brutal.

Okay.

So you mentioned the training cycle.

So let's get into that because in some ways this is gonna sound crazy.

But to me it seems like the mileage might actually be the

easiest thing to train for.

Right.

Cause it's just math.

It's just, if you run X amount of miles and you figure it out, then you're good.

You nailed it.

But the other stuff, heat training, sleep deprivation, hydration.

The mental focus, it takes that all seems like wildly difficult to train for.

So.

Walk me through the training program.

How does it work?

What does it look like?

How do you prepare for all those different aspects

of it?

So, I mean, it starts really, I mean, the race being in mid to late July, you start

training as soon as you hear that you've been accepted, which is in February and

it's like, all right, let's do it now.

Presumably you've been doing some amount of, of training or I certainly,

yeah, that's starting on the.

Couch to 5k program.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

This is not a couch to 5k situation.

So you started in earnest in February and you just kind of ramp up your mileage.

It's much more about the number of miles per week that you're running as

opposed to a marathon where it's like, I have a long run of 20 miles this week.

Yeah.

And that's the peak, blah, blah, blah.

But for bad water, as it is with many ultra marathons, it's a volume.

Training program.

And so I was, you know, I probably started at somewhere in the neighborhood

of like 60, 65 miles a week, you know, it's like eight miles a day with maybe

a rest day and a long run in there.

And you build up to, you know, for the majority of my training cycle, I was doing

between 85 and a hundred miles a week.

Wow.

Which is a lot like that is a huge time suck.

So you're running double digits on average every single day.

But, you know, while you're doing that, my approach was like, alright, I woke up

this morning at some God forsaken hour before the sun rises, how am I feeling?

And so what I would then try to do is calibrate how many miles can I actually

run based on how my body feels, both because it's either sleepy tired or

my muscles are tired and just kind of continuing to check in on any like, oh,

I have heel pain, that kind of a thing, but it was really just kind of maximizing

the number of miles and trying to get to.

Some large number at the end of the week of 85 to a hundred miles.

The biggest training run that I did was a 70 miler that I

did in late may or early June.

And a lot of that was testing my, my mental game.

At that point, I knew that I had the physical fitness that if I had a

race, like if I had a hundred miler, I know I could have done it, but I

wanted to see all right, 70 miles by yourself, go see how this goes.

Test out your nutrition strategy and your hydration strategy.

Fly.

Those are things.

And I'm sure you've heard this in your marathon training.

You never wanna try something for the first time on a race or event day.

So you need to work out these things and you're gonna eat some uncomfortable

things in ultra-marathons like one of the things that works great for my body

and I love is pickles and pickle juice.

Mm-hmm . But for some people that's like.

Not in a million years will turn my stomach.

Right.

But I kind of have a trash gut, so I'm like, cool, I'll eat

this pop tart and drink this pickle juice and keep it moving.

Right.

And like,

that's she dunk the pop tart right in the pickle juice.

Get it nice and soggy.

I can imagine that's a great combo flavors.

The braininess with the sugar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's I don't tempt

me with a good time.

I'm in.

And so, yeah, it's a lot of that kind of experimentation that you wind up doing

along the way and seeing what works.

Right.

For example, during this training cycle, I drank a lot of Pedialyte and I was like,

my body really likes Pedialyte, right?

Like it's over, over other sports hydration solutions.

That was a thing that worked great for me.

Now about five weeks before.

The race, you're not gonna get that much more fit.

So your mileage, yeah.

You just gotta keep some level of maintenance.

You don't wanna overtrain.

So you wanna go into the race fresh.

You definitely wanna don't wanna go in with any injuries and those five weeks,

what you focus on is heat training.

And this I think is it's the most challenging aspect, both of

bad water and of the training.

And so.

Last year when gyms were closed, what I would do because saunas

were not available to me is I would put on six layers of sweats.

Oh God.

And I would sit in my bathroom with a space heater on and drink hot tea.

Or I would sit in my pot, parked car in Washington, DC with the windows

up with the same six layers of sweats on, and just sit there for an

hour and just sweat my brains out.

But this element of heat training, it does two things which are kind of mind blowing.

Bio physically, it actually brings your veins closer to your skin so

that they cool off more quickly.

And the other thing that it does is it, your body learns

to process fluids more quickly.

And so you sweat much more quickly, like as soon as you're hot, your

body's just like we're doing this and there you are sweating so great

for when you're running bad water.

Not so great when you're trying to be a civilized human

at dinner with your friends.

And you're just especially in DC.

I mean, yeah.

Like you go to happy hour and you're.

Kind of drenched, but you know, these are the things we do for

the sports that we love this year.

I was actually able to go into as sauna, thanks to vaccines.

And when I was in there, The first few days, you know, I would sit in the, so

for you, wait any six pairs of sweats?

No, this time I'm just like, I'm just a regular person.

Okay.

Sweating, like the rest of us.

But I will say that I outlasted every person and not even, I

wasn't even being competitive.

I was just like, I gotta be in here for an hour and you see all these

guys, they're just like, Cooking.

And then they're outta here.

And the first few days that I did it, this past training

cycle, it was like 180 degrees.

And I was in there for an hour and I felt great.

I was like, look at me, I'm like doing this.

And then one day, the next day, I couldn't make a past 35 minutes.

And I was wondering, I was like, what happened?

Oh my God, have I taken a massive step back?

So I like left.

The sauna like regrouped, I cold off and I went back in there.

I was like, we're getting to an hour.

Like we gotta get that number.

And then I finally looked at the temperature gauge and it was 200 and

I was like, that is why you can't last for an hour in here because

you are a hot, steamy mug of tea.

And so

do you do it every day for those five weeks?

I didn't do that every day for five weeks.

But every run that I went on was in multiple layers of

sweats and stuff like that.

And so you're really just trying to acclimate your body and then something

that I, I know a lot of my friends think is psychotic, but you know, I'm

working from home and I would be in a small, close off room in my house.

And I would have a space heater on while I'm wearing sweats, like

just working, you know, it was definitely over 90 degrees at my desk.

The more that you can expose yourself to high temperatures and get yourself to

just be constantly sweating, drinking, you know, I've never been more hydrated

in my life and that's, that's really.

Both from the mental game perspective and physically the things that I believe

prepared me the most to be successful in such an extreme climate condition.

Wow.

And so what, what is the temperature and, and the actual race, what's

the lowest it gets in the hottest.

It gets.

Yeah.

So the start of the race was, and this was at 8:00 PM.

The start of the race was one 11.

And throughout the course of the next day, it got to one 18.

And so, you know, Jesus, this, yeah.

So it's, I mean, you are, it is, it is hot and there's no reprieve.

I will not forget that there was a period late in the second day.

So I, you know, I'm probably, I'm 85 90 miles into this race and I'm

just, I've, I'm so tired of wearing.

Ice bandana that goes around your neck and it keeps you cool.

But I am chafing just so badly.

And I was like, can I just take this off?

And my crew chief Ricky goes, it's still 1 0 2.

So no, I, at that point I was just like, I don't even know what hot is anymore.

Like what is 1 0 2, interestingly, once you exit death valley and start

climbing towards Mount Whitney.

So that's basically like, let's call it mile one oh eight.

It drops to about 70 degrees.

At that point 40 degree swing.

I was wearing a sweatshirt at a point because I was freezing.

Wow.

And so did you feel like the heat training prepared you or was it

still completely unbearable when you were actually running the race?

For the most part, I felt prepared.

There is one section of this race called ment valley and it is from miles 68 to 73.

The sun is just baking this one section and you're on a black road and the

heat is just radiating up from the road and there's no cross breeze.

And so this particular section I felt like was unbearable and I took a video of

myself at the start of it, not knowing, but I was just like, we're doing great.

I have a buddy in with me.

Who's pacing me.

And he's spraying me with, do you know, like the thing that you hook your

garden hose up to, and you'd like spray.

Fertilizer on your crops.

So it's basically that, and it's just filled with cold water.

So he's like spraying me.

He's like it's hurricane Harbor in here.

Right.

And I'm in like the greatest of moods at miles 68 and we fast forward 30

minutes and I'm just like, I'm in such a dark place because it's just so hot.

My legs have these little red swirls on them because they're just cooking.

So I feel like that section was one where I'm not sure that

you could have been prepared.

I do know that Sally McRae, she actually won the race when

she got out of that section.

And then up the next climb, my crew saw her and they were like, yo, she left here.

Crying like crying, crying.

Cause it's, I mean, it's just brutal.

You're just cooking and you're so tired and you're so hot, but I, I do feel

like there is some reprieve and you just have to push through, which is,

I guess, ultimately what I did is I took a nap and I don't have kids, but

I imagine anybody who has a toddler knows how beneficial it is to take

a 30 minute nap when you're cranky.

And so that was really a huge game changer for.

Wow.

And

so, yeah, I wanna hear a, how you train for the sleep deprivation.

And then when do you take that nap?

Are you moving the whole time?

Are you running the whole time?

Are you walking some of it, like, how does that even work?

What's the pacing, like, I

don't really think there is much training for sleep deprivation.

I'm sure there are ways to do it.

I've been told, you know, like cut out caffeine before the race

so that when you have it at the race, you're very responsive to it.

And I found that to be helpful, but otherwise you're

just kind of going in blind.

I was, went into it thinking initially, like maybe I won't sleep mosey both times

that I crewed him did not really sleep.

He took one nap the first year when he DNF and the second year he took zero naps.

He just pressed on and just kept moving.

And so that was kind of like where my head space was at.

In kind of processing the fact that it's a night start, which is

already so difficult to, to like, it's, it's tough to start at night.

I'm a, I'm a morning person.

The idea of starting something at 8:00 PM is really kind of like a mind, fuck.

I just kind of wanted to press through, but I wasn't sure I

was gonna be able to do it.

And so we decided that after PME valley that we.

Take a nap.

And I was just racked out in the van, the support crew van that was with us.

I was just laying in there with the AC blasting on me and just

took a 30 minute nap and woke up and truly felt like a new person.

Wow.

And I did another 30 minute nap, probably around 8:00 PM.

That was at mile like 90.

Three or 95 was at the point where I, I was basically drunk.

Right?

Like, I mean, yeah, if you looked at me, you'd be like,

yo, this person is on something.

And so I just, you know, I, I took a 30 minute nap, woke up and was

like refreshed and rejuvenated.

And I took one more nap.

That was four minutes long, which seems impossible.

But I, I literally, I just walked into the van and I was like, I

just need to like lay for a second.

And.

Closed my eyes and was out.

And then four minutes later, my crew chief, Ricky was

like, all right, let's go.

And I was like, I'm ready.

Like, and it felt like, wow, again, it was like night.

It was literally like night and day.

I think in terms of sleep deprivation, that's something that you could

probably learn to do better is nap, or like integrate that into your, do

some overnight runs just to see how your body reacts to running in the

middle of the night and how short your naps can be to still be effective.

So how does the crew actually work?

So there's a van with you.

You've got a whole team.

Sounds like you have some Pacers.

I assume they're helping with nutrition and hydration, but I'm curious how

the whole crew situation goes down.

Yes.

So every racer at Badwater is required to have a support crew and.

You can have a minimum of two people, but up to four people.

And so we had four in our crew.

Typically, the way it works is you have one person who is your crew chief.

This is the boss of all bosses.

In my case, it was this guy, Ricky Harrow.

He is such a badass.

He has done a solo self supported crossing of death valley.

What that means clay is that he reengineered a shopping cart with breaks

and made it streamlined and carried all his own supplies, his own ice, his own

water, his own food, and any medical supplies he would need and pushed himself

from Badwater basin up to Mount Whitney.

Did it literally by himself, total beast.

Wow.

So anyway, this is the guy you want in charge yeah.

Of your health and wellbeing.

So that's Ricky.

And then I had three other people, Kaylee Derian Jimmy Wilburn and

Brenna bra, and all three of them were part of the support crew.

So you have a van and it basically leap frogs me every two miles.

Right.

Drives up here, puts its flashers on.

I run to it.

they give me water.

They give me whatever food, fuel, new gear change, whatever it

is that I need in that moment.

And then they move up ahead.

And so it's just kind of this moving target that I'm

constantly leapfrogging with.

And after you get to mile 42, you're allowed to have Pacers hop in with you.

And so whether that's for motivation or to keep you on some specific

pace or really just to mule your.

Water bottle, for example, or to spread you with cooling, that's a really big

advantage is to have somebody with you.

Who's helping to drive you on.

And so from mile 42 onward, I had a pacer with me.

I think that if I were to do it again, I would have less of that.

Because typically I run by myself, right?

Like my training is almost entirely by myself and I feel like I'm able to go

to a head space and just push through.

And even, you know, the, the ultra marathons that I've done, I love

interacting with other runners and being a part of the experience.

But I would say that the vast majority of those races, I'm running by myself

and I'm able to kind of check in with my body a little bit more and know

what's going on and also tap into some.

Mental side of things that is really beneficial.

And so if I were to do it again, which I'm not sure I would, but you know,

if I were to do it again, I think I would spend more time by myself.

But having said that my crew was amazing.

They did a great job of kind of restarting my engine.

So let's say mile 90 when I'm.

I am just dragging.

Right?

I'm so slow.

I'm so tired.

I'm making excuses.

My stomach's a little upset and you just need someone, like, it's not even

like, they're codling you, but you just need somebody who's like, Hey, you think

you could run to that sign up there?

And you're like, yeah.

Yeah.

I think I could.

It's literally that simple.

They're they're just like, what if about if we just run to the

next reflecting thing and you.

I think I can commit to that.

It's really just that small trigger.

Instead of you having to ask the question, somebody else is asking it and you also

have that sense of accountability of like, I don't wanna let this team down.

They don't wanna let me down.

We're all in this together.

It makes it feel much more like a team sport.

And I, like, I grew up playing team sports.

And my first experience at Badwater was as a crew member.

Yeah.

So I know how like gratifying it was for me to see my friends succeed.

I just feel like that good vibes and those good, like that good energy

helps propel you along the way as

well.

I can imagine.

You mentioned there in the PME valley.

What was, is that I saying that, right?

Yeah.

PanIN yeah.

PME,

you said you went to a dark place there.

Oh God.

Describe even what is the like mental journey that you go on?

Because even when you're talking about training and you're like,

the farthest I run is 70 miles.

I'm like, even that, like I would get to the, the starting line and

be like, Okay, so I've done 70.

I need to do another 65.

Nope.

I can't do it.

I be like, and there, my psychologically I would be defeated

already.

I wish I had a better answer.

There's just an aspect of you.

That's like.

You can do this.

And sometimes it's as simple as like you can do another mile.

Right.

And you know, I've heard Ryan Hall.

He's, uh, one of the best American marathoners of all time, his

quote is run the mile you're in.

If you can finish this mile, you can reevaluate how you

feel in a mile from now.

Or you can finish this section.

That is a small goal.

You can bite it off, you can chew it, you can swallow it and put it behind you.

And at a certain point, I feel like in a marathon for me, it's

one like when I hit miles 17, and now I'm counting down miles, right.

I have nine miles to go.

I'm I'm single digits and I'm counting down instead of counting

up for something like this.

It's like when you're at mile 90, it's over, you're doing it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And it's, what's crazy is like, I still had.

40 miles to go.

you know what I mean?

45 miles to go.

And I was like, oh, 90, I got this.

Right.

There's just a point where you're like, I'm not stopping now.

Yeah.

There's no way that I'm stopping.

I'm just doing this.

And I feel like everything that you do as part of training and everything

you do as part of the race sets you up for greater success down the road.

Because the first tough moment that we didn't even talk about

this, the first 17 miles clay.

We started in a weather pattern called a haboob, which I have had never heard of.

Right.

Have you heard of it?

Me neither.

No.

Sounds terrible.

Yeah.

And it was so as we're driving in there's this like hazy cloud hanging overhead

and Ricky's like, You might run into a haboob and I was like, what's that?

And he's like, have you seen the mummy?

Terrific.

Like just what a girl always dreams of, but basically it was like a, a dust storm.

Jesus and we, so we ran the first 17 miles into a headwind.

It was as if you had resistance bands on you.

It was intense.

I mean, but I somehow was able to persevere through that.

You're fresh.

You're excited.

Like you're, you're gonna get through that section.

But over that first night at probably like mile 30 something.

Should not be challenging for me.

Right.

Like if you're having trouble at mile 30, yeah.

You're gonna have, this is gonna be a long outing, but I was just feeling

really groggy and that, so that was the first time that I was like, all

right, how am I gonna solve this?

I drank some Coca-Cola.

I had a bunch of candy.

I then put in my headphones.

I was literally just.

Singing out loud to, to everyone in the desert who was no one.

And finally I like snapped out of it.

You know, I, I was able to click back into being fully cognizant and feeling good.

And I feel like it's little successes like that when you're like that didn't beat me.

So I got this next thing too.

That's not gonna beat me this uphill section.

I got you.

I'm also just naturally overconfident and cocky that

kind of rash chip on my shoulder.

Plays into my ability to succeed when things are te objectively terrible.

Yeah.

And do you have any, like self-talk in that moment, when you, either in that

section there at mile 30 or another time in the race where you had to like, do

a similar navigation of a mental hurdle

previously, like in other races, there's been just like a line from a song

that has just been stuck in my head, but this one, there were two words.

It was just find it.

Find it, so whatever it was, right?

Like find your pace, find the thing that's gonna get you out of this.

Find the mental motivation, whatever it was.

The words that like came to me were find it.

I said that to myself, probably 400 times over the course of the race and it wasn't

like a mantra I repeated aloud to myself or some kind of self empowerment thing.

It was just.

This is the objective you have work to do.

You gotta get there.

And the only way to get there is to keep moving, whatever you have to do.

Just find it.

There's no excuses, no one else is gonna do it for you.

Just find the motivation, find the ability to get there.

Wow.

I love that.

I'm gonna steal that.

All right.

Well, I think that is.

Perfect place to end.

So thank you for jumping on with me, explaining how to make my veins rise

closer to the surface of my skin.

That's one of the craziest things I've ever heard, and

I've done a lot of interviews.

Yeah.

It's bananas.

Like this has been awesome.

Thank you so much for having me.

No, this is great.

I'm I'm so grateful that I was able to do this interview and.

I'm excited to run bad

water.

Yes, you're in can't wait, I can't wait for you to run.

I'm gonna crew you.

I'm gonna feed you P not

legal contract.

This is not binding act like.

Thank you all so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed the stories.

We've got so much more to share with you all coming this fall.

Can't wait to see you then down with the sound, take your body to the ground.

Take cover.

Cause you the blow full show.

Nobody.

Yes, no, but yes.

Got the party in the pocket.

You can tell your best, but it ain't no stopping.

He dropping like rain before on your head.

We be on the ground.

When, where your suckers in the bed coming weak.

Call me out night straight.

Bra is coming in.

Hi, gotta read the plot we been taking over.

If you win away with how you looking over your shoulder, be cold, then we heavy.