How Dirt Diva Catra Corbett Was Reborn On The Run

If Ross Edgley is a real-life Aquaman, I nominate ultrarunner extraordinaire Catra Corbett as a real-life Wonder Woman. Definitely one of the planet's most colorful athletes, Catra's polychromatic goth-punk aesthetic is a perfect superhero costume match for her sparkling personality. Rocking wild rainbow hair, brightly colored running costumes and tattooed head-to-toe, you can spot the Dirt Diva's smile from a mile out, happily tearing up the trails with her trusty side-kick training partner TruMan — a goggle-adorned mini dachshund. TruMan's superpower? He loves running as much as she does. Yes, it's all a bit nutty. But don't be deceived — Catra is an absolute beast of an athlete. Over the course of her storied career she has competed in over 250 ultramarathons and is the first American woman to run over 100 miles or more on more than 100 occasions (137 to date). You might recall Catra from the book Born to Run as the “kaleidoscopically tattooed” woman who ran the 212-mile John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney. When she reached the end, she didn't stop. Instead, she turned around and ran back — a 425-mile effort for which she holds the fastest known time (FKT), completing it in just over twelve days. Not enough? Catra also holds the FKT for the Muir Ramble – clocking 324 miles in just 7 days. Oh yeah, she also ran 144 trail miles around Lake Tahoe in 43 hours on just 50 minutes of sleep. Most recently, at age 53, Catra completed three back-to-back 200-mile races to become the oldest woman to win the triple crown of 200's (Bigfoot 200, Tahoe 200 & Moab 240). It's an astounding feat she completed in just 10 weeks. A mere eleven days later she celebrated her accomplishment by running another 100 miles at the Javelina Jundred — dressed as the The Mad Hatter. Vintage Dirt Diva. To top it off, she's a vegan — a lifestyle she adopted 15 years ago to which she attributes her high performance prowess, race consistency and longevity. Catra's resume speaks for itself. But most impressive are the obstacles she has faced and overcome to become the shining example of humanity and athleticism she is today. Twenty-four years ago, Catra was lost in a hopeless spiral of meth addiction, disordered eating, and sexual and emotional abuse. Ultimately busted for peddling crystal, she hits rock bottom in a jail cell that scares her straight. Upon release she commits to getting sober, moves back home with her mother, abandons her lower companions, her boyfriend, and the dark lifestyle that she came to depend on. Her only clean friend pushes her to train for a 10K with him, and surprisingly, she likes it – and decides to run her first marathon after that. Sobriety saved her life. Running gave her a new one altogether. Along the way she attempts suicide, loses loved ones, falls in love, has her heartbroken, meets lifelong friends and finally faces the past that led to her addiction — all of which is beautifully chronicled in her memoir, Reborn on the Run: My Journey from Addiction to Ultramarathons*. I sat down with Catra to learn the how and why behind her incredible journey from meth-addicted cosmetologist to world class, vegan ultrarunning phenom. We cover her goth netherworld days and how she transformed her life in recovery. We track her accomplishments and what compels her insatiable drive to push herself well into her 50's. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Just have fun. Don't go into it trying to be so serious. Maybe if you want to start running, or you want to get outdoors to make yourself feel better, just start by hiking. Just get out and breathe the air. Go out for a walk and look at the flowers, look at the plants, look at the trees. I mean, that, to me, just getting out is the first step. You don't have to become a runner or do 100 miles. But get out and then see what the world has to offer, and enjoy it, and just find your passion.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  That's Katra Corbett, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:48Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:51Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. Welcome or welcome back to the show, to the podcast, to my podcast. Great to see you. And just because that is a figurative and non literal statement does not make it untrue. Real quick up top, we're coming down to the wire on my charity water campaign to help bring clean water to those most in need. Right now, we're at about $44,000 raised, which is amazing. It's awesome. Thank you. But again, we can do better. Come on, people. Tis the giving season. It's all, of course, tax deductible and every penny is meaningful. So to learn more and to donate, go to mycharitywater.org/ Rich Roll. Did I mention I've got ultra runner extraordinaire

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  Catra Corbett, the one and only dirt diva coming up. She's definitely one of the most colorful athletes I've ever met. I mean, they really broke the mold with this one. She's super cool. She's got this huge personality that perfectly matches her colorful punk rock goth looks. She's lathered in tattoos. Her hair and her running outfits are all kinds of wild and unique. She trains with her little dog Truman, who wears goggles. I mean, it's all kind of nutty, but do not be deceived, you guys, because she is an absolute beast on the trails with over 250 ultras under her belt, including being the first American woman to run over 100 miles or more on more than 100 occasions. I think she's now at

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  about 137 100 milers, but who knows? I can't keep up. You might recall Catra from the book Born to Run as the kaleidoscopically tattooed woman who ran the 212 mile John Muir Trail all the way from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. And when she got to the end of the trail, she turned around and ran back for a total of 425 miles, for which she holds the fastest known time, the FKT, completing it in just over 12 days. Unbelievable. She also holds the FKT for the Muir Ramble Run, where she clocked 324 miles in seven days. Wrap your head around that. And most recently, now at 53 years of age, she completed three back-to-back

• 3:58Rich Roll?

  200 mile races. The oldest woman to Win the triple crown of 200s, the Bigfoot 200, the Tahoe 200, and the Moab 240. And she did it in just 10 weeks, which she celebrated by then running the Javelina 100 just 11 days later, dressed as the Mad Hatter, I might add, because of course, she's Catra. And I could tell you that Jason, who you guys know as my producer and my engineer, he lives in Phoenix, he saw her at that race at an aid station, so he can personally verify that this is true. Oh, and you know what? She's also vegan. But what's most impressive to me about Catra is that she has overcome so much to be in this place. Meth addiction,

• 4:42Rich Roll?

  jail, suicide attempt, and eating disorder, all of these obstacles that she faced and tackled and ultimately conquered to become this shining example of humanity that she is today. It's a truly incredible story. She chronicles it in her new book, Reborn on the Run: My Journey from Addiction to Ultra Marathons. And it's all coming up in a couple few. But first.

• 5:14Rich Roll?

  All right, Catra Corbett. So if Ross Edgely is the real-life Aquaman, then I nominate Catra as a real-life Wonder Woman. What do we talk about? Well, we talk about her incredible journey from meth-addicted cosmetologist to becoming a world-class vegan ultra-running phenom, of course, that goes without saying. But we also go into the how and the why behind it all. We cover the dark world of her gossine days, a world in which she was in this revolving cycle of drugs and sexual abuse, emotional abuse, jail time, both of her parents passing away, and eating disorder that she battled, and how she took all of these obstacles,

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  confronted them, and ultimately overcame them to transform her life in recovery. We discuss what drives her unbelievable motivation to push herself well into her 50s. And we talk about how she does it as a vegan, a lifestyle that she adopted 15 years ago. Don't worry, there's plenty of talk about Truman, her constant canine companion on the trails as well. I love this woman. Now 24 years sober, she's just getting started. She's got such a positive attitude and this amazing zest for life. So with that, I give you the one and only

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  All right, Catra, so nice to meet you.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Great meeting you too.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  Thank you for coming over here. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time. Consider myself a big fan and a loyal, longtime follower. You're amazing and your story is just insane. The things that you've been able to do and what you've had to overcome to be this incredible person that you are. So I'm excited to explore it with you.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  So the latest thing that you just did was you conquered these three 200s, right? In a row?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Three 200s within 10 weeks.

• 7:10Rich Roll?

  Within 10 weeks?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yep. 650 plus miles of racing. So three, they're not loops, short loop courses. These are mountainous courses. So the first one was Bigfoot 200 in Washington, which was very, very technical around Mount St. Helens, a huge loop, crazy conditions, very, very rugged. Like you were out there and so you had to make sure that you carried enough gear for 20 miles in between, up to 10 hours by yourself. And then the second one was Tahoe 200, which I had done before. And that one, dusty, dirty Rubicon Trail, lots of climbing, hot, you know, conditions. And this last one was in Moab and it was 240 miles and it actually got extended because there was so much snow up in the higher elevations

• 7:56Speaker 01

  where we were supposed to go at 10.5 that she couldn't send us up there. It would've been up to our croches and so 9,000, but we still had like a good seven to 10 miles of snow to deal with.

• 8:06Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  It's freezing cold too.

• 8:08Rich Roll?

  So yeah, it ended up being like three or four miles longer or something like that?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it ended up being 243 miles.

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  So it was actually five because it was 238.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  How much, how much time in between these 200s?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  They were like less than a month.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  So you're constantly, like when you finish, you're recovering and then... You're tapering. So there's no

• 8:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  There's no in-between, like really long running. I think I did once or twice a couple of 20 mile long runs, but there was no reason to. It was like 10 miles at tops when I'm going up in mountains, but.

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's kind, for people that are racing ultras all the time, the races are the training, right?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  It's like in-between, you're maintaining, or you're tapering, or you're just trying to absorb the fitness that you garnered as a result of the race.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:56Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's just amazing that you've, and are you the first woman to do, what's it called, the triple crown?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Triple crown. No, but I think of the oldest woman, oldest female. I mean, I'm not, 53, yeah. Yeah. So there was, yeah, there, there was no other women in their 50s doing the triple. I mean, they started doing it, but not everybody finished. So last year, two women finished, and I believe this year, seven of us, seven females finished.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  Finished all three.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  All three of them. So it only started last year.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Well, the Moab 240 has gotten a lot of press in the last year or so because of Courtney DeWalter, like just crushing everybody.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  She's insane at Tahoe. I don't know what you saw if she.

• 9:34Rich Roll?

  I haven't been following it that closely.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  So this year, she was in the lead pretty much the whole time at Tahoe, and then she started having stomach problems and only lost the lead within the last 10 miles. So she was racing another guy the whole entire time.

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  So did she end up second then?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yep. And she got the, blew the women's course record out of the water.

• 9:50Rich Roll?

  So she was faster than the year before?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. They both broke the course record. So, so it didn't, he was, you know, he broke the overall course record and her time was still an overall course record too.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  What is, what's going on with her? She's just a freak?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  She is. She's so sweet too. And

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  I know. I've heard interviews with her and she's like, oh, I don't know. I just go and I run.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  She doesn't wear a watch. She doesn't have a coat. She doesn't, you know, she's just one of those amazing, talented, gifted athletes. And she won Western States this year too, as well. So, and she's at this big yard, uh, big yard, I forget the name of the race this weekend, and she's going to try to like do 300 miles there. So it's a four mile, four and a half mile loop. Every hour on the hour, you start the loop. And you go as far as you can.

• 10:35Rich Roll?

  So you do the loop and then you wait an hour and then you start again?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  No, you wait to the top of the hour.

• 10:40Rich Roll?

  Right, so every hour you run for.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Every top of the hour.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  And then it's the aggregate time?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  So it's the aggregate time that... Oh wow, so it's interesting. So that involves speed in a way that most ultras don't.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  And how are you gonna sleep?

• 10:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  And how are you gonna, like, you have to, like, wait in between and so it'll be interesting to see how well she does.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  That's unique.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  But she's, I heard she was going for like 300 miles.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  So, because a friend of mine, Maggie's doing it and she's going for 240, so, but it'll, yeah.

• 11:07Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable. Well, yeah, with the explosion of the sport, you're seeing, you know, the higher caliber athletes getting into it. And she's dominating, like, nobody's business right now, which is really cool to see. And I think she's, she's like still a schoolteacher?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:21Rich Roll?

  Like, it's, like, she should be, like, somebody should just pay her, you know, a lot of money.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  She's sponsored, but you know, you know with our sport, though, there's not, you don't make, it's like, not very many people make money. I mean, you make money promoting product and that's what I'm doing a lot of now, since I've been around for so long. And I have my book out, so, you know, people pay you to use their products and to promote it if you like it, so.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Well, your resume is insane. Like, I can't even, you've done so many races, it's impossible to, it's not like we can go race by race through this. Like, I mean, all right, let's see, over 100, 100 milers.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  The first US woman to do that. Only four people have run over 100, 100 mile.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  No, there's a lot now, this is way back. So there's probably like 10 or 12 now. Yeah, there's at least four women now.

• 12:07Rich Roll?

  250 plus ultras, is that correct?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  What else?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I've done a lot of solo stuff.

• 12:15Rich Roll?

  260 marathons, 137 100 milers, numerous records.

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  The big thing that you did, though, was, was record, you recorded the fastest known time for the, the

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Muir ramble.

• 12:30Rich Roll?

  The Muir ramble, right, 310 miles in seven days.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  And it was actually 324 miles.

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  Right, and you went longer. Did you get lost or what happened?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  It's just a lot of route finding. The people that wrote the guidebook, they haven't been out on that course in ages. They did it in 2006, so after we finished it, I told them, because nobody had run it. And they were like, oh, you know, there had been fires in the area and so a lot of the

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  It's not super well marked.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we gave her like the beta, like I'm like, you need to change it on your website or you know, so if anybody else goes out there and I actually met another woman doing it when I was out there. She saw a vehicle that said, Muir Ramble Route, Dirt Diva Catra. And so her and her partner were driving by because they were gonna go camp that night because she was doing so many miles a day and they pull up and they said, who's doing the Muir Ramble Route? And then I was like, oh, I am. And she was like, really? She goes, I am too. And I said, yeah, I'm running it. I'm going for fastest time.

• 13:22Rich Roll?

  So did you run together?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  No, she wasn't running it. She was walking it. She was from San Francisco and she started, where'd she live? Because it starts in San Francisco and you take the ferry to Oakland and that's when you start your journey, the way he went. And she was just doing like 15 miles a day.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  So, and she was a school teacher and just something to do and to talk about in school and she went back. So.

• 13:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I met her and there's been people that have biked it and a couple, there was only about three people that have hiked it. So I was like, I'm not on this.

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  Because like I'd never heard of the ramble. Like, so what is it? Why is it so obscure?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So it's, the route is actually, the route that John Muir, when he arrived in the United States in California, he decided I wanted to go to Yosemite. And the way that everybody was going, they were going through like Merced or Sacramento and taking wagons and this, that and the other. But he goes, I want to go to the wild way, the way that people aren't going to see all things wild. So he asked somebody, which direction is the wild way? And they said, what? And he said, I don't want to go, I don't want to go where the people are. So he started walking, uh, when he arrived in Oakland and started kinda along the bay, kinda where I live in. I actually used my house as like one night sleep station. And so, yeah, he just went along this route and came in Yosemite through

• 14:36Speaker 01

  like the back way, not the traditional way. And so there's a lot of old roads that I was on that are, you still see pieces of pavement coming through, but now they're like totally abandoned. Nobody uses these. And I was like, really cool being on there because you know, he was on these roads too.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  So they made the course as close as possible to the original way he walked. Of course, you can't go on the freeway and there was a couple of places where you were going up fire roads with, which were gnarly, like straight up and straight down, straight up and straight down. But they didn't want to put you on the freeway, of course.

• 15:05Rich Roll?

  And this is different from the John Muir trip.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. I've done that. I have the yo-yo record.

• 15:09Rich Roll?

  The big thing is the yo-yo record that blows people's minds, 424.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Nobody's attempted to break it after all these years. Yeah. Don't know why.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  So you basically did the whole John Muir trail.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And then I turned around on top of Whitney.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  And turned around and went back.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  And you go from, I know you end up at the, do you end up at like the base camp at Mount Whitney? Or you go all the way to the peak?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  To the hut. You go to the hut.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  All the, to the hut, okay.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  And that's where it starts. Even if you start from the Whitney side, if you're starting your John Muir trail, even though you go up 11 miles, you don't count that. Your start is at the hut.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  So once you're 11 miles at the highest point is where you start. But I started from Yosemite, went to the top and then turned around and went back.

• 15:47Rich Roll?

  Did you plan on doing the double, the yo-yo?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  Or was it just you got there and you're like, I feel good, I'm gonna keep going?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I know. And Born to Run, he acts like I just made up I was gonna turn around. I'm like, who does that?

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Cause that's, I mean, that's how I first became familiar with you, like through Born to Run, which I read before I got into all this whole world. And that kind of put you on the map and made a lot of people aware of it.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  And it was before all of our social media too. So like, nobody, you know, you didn't have all the Facebook and anything like that. So you knew who these people were. And then when that, when the book came out and then there was Facebook later on, people were able to Google like who these characters were in the story. So yeah, and I definitely wanna do a triple. I know my double's gonna be broken. And so now I live in Bishop and it's close enough to where I could do it. And I've, I've tried to do it a few years back and my uncle had passed away, so I had to bell out at one. So I'm gonna definitely do a triple.

• 16:39Rich Roll?

  So Bishop's like in the middle of nowhere, right?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  No, it's, no, it's like right next to Mammoth. It's a 395, thousands of people drive through it there a day. They get like a thousand truckers driving through.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  So it's very popular.

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  Trails everywhere though.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Everywhere. It's like climbers are there in the winter because of all the bouldering, buttermilk boulders and all of this. And I have trailheads like 19 minute drive from my house. I'm up at 9,000 feet. And from there, I can go right out on the John Muir trail. I can go 10 miles up, 10 miles down and I'm on the John Muir trail.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool. But you just recently moved there, right? Where were you living before?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yep, two months ago. So the Bay Area of Fremont, near San Jose. So I was born and raised there and lived there pretty much all my life. I was working at Whole Foods for 19 years. And I'm still seasonal with them, but. My boyfriend has been working for almost a year now with Sierra Lifeflight and so he's a pilot, not helicopter but airplane and so.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  So when you live on the east side of Sierra, the ambulances can't get you to a hospital fast enough, so that's why we have air ambulance.

• 17:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see, that's interesting.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah, because we're four hours, three to four, three and a half to four hours from Reno and then four hours from LA. So those are your closest major hospitals. I mean, we have a hospital in Mammoth and we have a hospital in Bishop, but if you need any significant anything.

• 17:55Rich Roll?

  He's the dude.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  He's the dude, yeah.

• 17:57Rich Roll?

  He'd come and get you.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:59Rich Roll?

  And are you able to like make all this work on sponsor relations? Like, do you, can you make a living doing this? How does that work?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:08Rich Roll?

  No? That's a shame. You should be able to.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, with my book, I'm hoping to make some money on that and speaking and stuff like that will definitely help and I am. I mean, with a lot of my sponsors, you know, it's like they give you discount codes and the more you sell, the, you know, if people are going through your avenues and buying stuff, you get money. So I'm actually making money.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Pretty good money.

• 18:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I guess I could live on it. I mean, my boyfriend.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  Depends on how you want to live, I guess.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  If I lived by myself, I'd be living on the street. So, no.

• 18:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I want to drill into the details of the racing and the training and how you live your life and all of that, but I want to go back to the beginning because what got you here is so bananas.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  So, you, you were born and raised in Fremont?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  And walk me through, give me a little taste of your childhood.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  So, I was such a girly girl, didn't even like getting dirt on me, always in dresses and patent leather, little shiny shoes and so my parents, I loved dance, that was my thing when I was growing up. I loved taking dance lessons, tap dance, things like that and my parents always thought I was very quiet and I was always like with a book and kind of hiding and to myself and they're like, well, we need to put her in sports because she's like in team sports, so she's more interactive with other kids, which I had no desire to do and I hated sports altogether, but my father was a soccer coach and my brother played soccer who was younger, so. I was forced into playing soccer and softball and I absolutely hated it. I hated running.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I didn't wanna run. I didn't wanna sweat. I didn't wanna get dirty. I hated it all. I just wanted to take dance lessons, but my parents felt this need to put me in these other sports.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  And were you, were you always like an extrovert? Like were you what we, in high school? Like where, who'd you hang out with?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  That's all another thing.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  You weren't like rocking the crazy looks from the get go?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  No, not when I was a little kid, but no, once I hit junior high school, that's when I started changing. And then I started using drugs and drinking and things like that. I had two older sisters. So I always was kinda with the older crowd, hanging out with their friends. But yeah, we moved when I was going into junior high school, so I just kinda got into with the wrong crowd. Like right off the bat, the kids that I met. And so started smoking and.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  What was going on at home that you think led you to that?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Nothing. My parents were great. Yeah, there was nothing going on there. My father was the president of Fremont City Soccer. I mean, my brother played sports. And I just was being, doing my own thing.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, my sister had gotten married.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  Wild streak that you had to explore.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I was coming out. I was coming into my own instead of my two older sisters were gone now, so I'm like my own person.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  So, so junior high, that started happening?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yep, started going out to discos, dance clubs, that whole thing.

• 20:49Rich Roll?

  And was it just booze at that time?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much, you know, smoking cigarettes and smoking pot once in a while and mostly drinking and just going, like I said, to discos back then.

• 20:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  You know, when I was.

• 20:59Rich Roll?

  Well, soccer dad, soccer dad probably wasn't too happy about that.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, he was in his own thing with my brother and the sports, you know, and I was playing soccer at the time too.

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  So it wasn't until I got into junior high school that I was just like, this is what I wanna do. And my father passed away at seven, when I was seventeen. And so that just put me like doing, getting crazier.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  You know, cause my mom now had to deal with me and my brother. My sisters were already older and they were married and had their own families. And so my brother then, my brother was with my father when my father died. So then my brother.

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  How did he die?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It didn't, he didn't, he didn't take it very well. And it took, he ended up going into recovery when he was like. Fifteen, cause he watched my father die, tried to save my father from having a massive heart attack at forty nine years old. Yeah, and it was like, he was healthy, he ran, but he smoked, you know, and he had quit smoking, but he ate meat and stuff like that, but it's not genetic, his, his parents lived till their nineties. So, but yeah.

• 21:57Rich Roll?

  So that set your, your brother off.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  That's what my brother off, kinda set me off, and my mom was trying to focus on my brother, and I was just going off on my own, and then decided not to go to school, and my mom's like, you need to do something, cause you can't just not do, you know, go to school, you need to pick something you wanna do, so I went to cosmetology school.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  And so I was doing that, and still like partying, going to the clubs and.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  Living at home still, though?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yep, living at home still, and then I moved out after I graduated from cosmetology school and got a job and started, I was living with a boyfriend of mine and his family, and we were in and out of, you know, it was a horrible relationship, back and forth, breaking up, you know, just, he was in a band, and I decided.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  Of course, drummer?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  Was he a drummer?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  No, he was a lead singer.

• 22:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  So then, we kinda, you know, he was cheating on me, and then I saw, met somebody else, and I started cheating on him, and so it was just easy enough to relieve that relationship, and so we had this huge blowout, and I ended up with this other guy, and this is not when I was on drugs, I was still, I was just drinking a lot, and, you know, drinking a lot, getting drunk, you know, when I'd go out, and so this other guy was a speed dealer, and at the time, I didn't know that, cause all my friends were like, don't tell her that you do that, and I would notice people coming in and out of the house and leaving, and, you know, and then finally, one night, we were going to LA to go to a goth club, cause I was really big in the goth scene at this point, and he, you know, they were all doing speed, and I was like, I'll do some, you know, and so, started from there, and it was just like

• 23:25Speaker 01

  on the weekends, I would do it, and then at one point, I was, I went to a Lollapalooza with a friend, and she's, I felt like shit, and I'm, she's like, just do some more, and I'm like, no, no, no, I only like to do it on the weekends, and she goes, you'll feel better, and I was like, okay, so I'll do it, so that moment was the turning point for me to be like, a major addict with it.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  So I.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  So when you say speed, are you talking about meth?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Meth, yeah.

• 23:48Rich Roll?

  So smoking meth?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  No, I was smoking, smoking it, yeah.

• 23:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, uh huh.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And my boyfriend at the time was shooting it up, but I didn't even, I pretended like I didn't know.

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, you knew.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Cause I wanted my drugs, I didn't know what he was doing.

• 23:58Rich Roll?

  Tried to pretend like, yeah, yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  In fact, I was so into the drugs that. I would pretend that I was buying it for somebody else and use my own money to buy more from him. He gave me so much a day, but then I was doing my amount that he was giving me and buying more from him.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  Right, wow.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  I know.

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  And at the time, were you partying in Fremont or were you going in San Francisco?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was in San Francisco and San Jose.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  What were the clubs where you got to?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Just all the goth clubs that are there, Drug Six, I mean, they just had all these funky names.

• 24:24Rich Roll?

  So what was it about the goth scene?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  I just loved it.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  That you connected with?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just loved the music.

• 24:28Rich Roll?

  Like, what's that world like? I don't know anything about that.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Very, you know, dark, negative.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a lot of brooding.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Very depressing. And I used to come, drive to LA a lot, because we'd be awake all night.

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  A lot of The Cure.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but those guys never even did drugs.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  No, I know.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  So it's like, you look at these bands. But my boyfriend was in a band at the time, so he was the lead singer for a band and they opened-

• 24:49Rich Roll?

  What was it called?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  His band was called, uh, Fleshigogo.

• 24:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  And they were opening for, god, I'm trying to remember, they opened for My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult a few times and so, you know, it was all that industrial kind of goth music.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  So.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  And what was the experience like of doing meth for the first time?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It was like doing a bunch of coffee.

• 25:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Like, just, you know, and it was like, I felt like I conquered the world. Like, when you do it, you're like, oh, you know, just chatty, like how I am now.

• 25:17Rich Roll?

  Like, confidence.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  Good energy.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  And then you just want to keep doing it, right?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:24Rich Roll?

  Like, you stay up for three days or whatever.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  You get super creative. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna make stuff and get crafty and make all the, I was always making it.

• 25:29Rich Roll?

  Clean your house and things like that.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I was making outfits, like killer outfits. People were just like, so impressed with like what I was whipping up, you know, and I didn't know anything about anything and just started sewing and making really cool outfits. I always wanted to have the coolest outfit on in the club, so that was my thing.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  And what's the coming down part of that feel like?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Like, you just get depressed. And if you're already suffering from mental illness, you know, which I didn't really know at the time, but I had a lot of that going on, it gets, you know, you just gotta keep doing it to stay above that, you know, so you don't have that come down.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  So I remember at one point, my boyfriend wanted to quit and I was like, oh, fuck no. Can't quit, that means I would have to quit and I'm not quitting.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  You're not quitting, yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I even came to a realization one day, just like, looking at myself, this is my life. This is have to, this is how it has to be.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  You delude yourself into thinking it's sustainable when it's not.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  When it's not, no, in the beginning, it's fun, but once you really truly become an addict, then there's no fun anymore. You're just chasing your drugs.

• 26:31Rich Roll?

  It's a job.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  You're just chasing it, yeah. When I watch shows about people like that, I just think, God, I was right there. I understand that and it's sick. It's a sick world.

• 26:40Rich Roll?

  Did you get to that place where you're stealing it and lying to people and all that kind of thing?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I had a job. I worked in a hair salon, so I always had a job.

• 26:47Rich Roll?

  You were always able to buy it on the up and up?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Well, we were selling it. So, we were small dealers, getting it and selling it to our friends. And then, obviously, somebody told on us and they didn't want to turn on their dealer, because that was the big guy. So, they said that he had got it from us, so the cops and him made the phone call. And I answered the phone and did the cell over the phone. So, two days later, knock, knock, knock, busting in the door comes the police.

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  And that becomes like your moment of reckoning, like you're bottom with the whole thing.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Going to jail was scary.

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  I want to work my way up to that, but I'm still, I want to know more about this phase of your life. Like, when, when you, kind of, when I was doing a little bit of research and due diligence on you, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, it paints this picture of a tremendous amount of chaos. There's like, there's incidents of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, a string of like, very unhealthy abusive relationships. There's, there's eating disorders thrown into there, there's OCD, there's, it's like, it's a perfect mixture of like, of like, all kinds of childhood and psychological trauma that contributes to it. You know, that's all driving you towards this moment where you end up in this jail cell.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I was sexually abused as a child by a family friend, and I kept that inside all my life. My parents even asked, did he touch you in such a way? And when you're a little kid and somebody tells you and you're, you know, you're, you respect them and look up to them, like, you better not say anything. Something's bad's gonna happen to you. So, then you're stuck, you lie to your parents and then you have nowhere to go. You know, and that kind of, I think, set everything.

• 28:24Rich Roll?

  How old were you?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  I was nine. So, yeah.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  And a family friend or a relative?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Family friend, I was a relative, but he was always around our house. It was my oldest sister's friend, he was like in her wedding and like. Close friend, like he was always at our house. And it only happened the one time, but that was, that's enough to change your life.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  And what's it like carrying that secret around for so long?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You know, shame. You're scared to, and as you get older, it's just like, oh, you know, it comes up. You think about it, you know, trauma comes up in life. And I, the, I just remember when I got clean and sober and when I finally was able to tell my mom was the first time in my life I felt so at ease. Like knowing that I was able to tell her finally after she had asked me when I was younger and I lied. And she's like, why didn't you, you know?

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  She just didn't understand. And I said, you don't understand, you know? And when I told her when I was like 27 or whatever.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  You've been like sober for like, what, like 25 years?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  24 years, gonna be 25 years in Jan, or June 24th. So I have to do something really big for that.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  So 96?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, 94.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  94, oh, 94, wow, yeah, a long time.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  But what is the, like, when you, now with perspective and that much time clean and sober, when you look back on, on that incident of, of sexual abuse, like, how do you think about how that fueled like you're using? Like, what is the relationship between

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Hiding stuff.

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  Drug use and also like seeking out, you know, like the sort of expression of, of like unhealthy, you know, behaviors as a result of like harboring that shame and feeling like you can't tell anyone about it.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, it was a constant like hiding it. So if I drank and I was gonna be with somebody and had a boyfriend and had to have sex, it's like if you're drunk or you're not aware of what's going on, it somehow feels better. Like you're not, you know, thinking about what happened to you.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Cause you, I mean, you must have had intimacy issues, like you're not trusting people.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 30:26Rich Roll?

  All that kind of thing, too.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  All my life. Not now, no.

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  No, my boyfriend's so awesome. No, as an adult, I'm like, You know, if people, if people, well, I was married and he cheated on me. So I'm like, if people are gonna cheat, they're gonna cheat. They got an issue with themselves. You know, they, if they can't just say, hey, I don't wanna be with you anymore. That's perfectly fine. I'm a big girl. I can accept it, but, but because of his alcohol and drug abuse and whatever, that's.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Well, it's weird how childhood tra- uh, trauma manifests itself later in life through the repetition of the pattern. Like, you suffer this trauma and you would think psychologically, you would do everything in your power to move away from that type of social dynamic. But you seek it out because for whatever bizarre reason, there's a strange comfort in that or a familiarity.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I, I think so too. Just like I said, when I was marrying my ex-husband, he's nice. I mean, I don't, I don't wanna say anything bad about him. But he was in for me, but he smoked pot and he drank a lot. It's like, why would I get, why would I go with somebody like that? Why would I marry somebody like that? People were in shock. I mean, I met him in Yosemite. He was a climber and he just had this personality, like charming, fun. And it was right after my mom had passed away and it just like, I connected with him. I just thought he was like so fun and this, that and the other. And 24 days later, I married him.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So, and I was clean and sober. There was nothing wrong with me. And, and then.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  And how long have you been sober at that point?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Well, that was in 2002, so I got sober in 1994. So I just wanted to save him, I guess. I mean, I don't know.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's something, like in the unconscious mind that, that attracts you to that person. And, and often those, those negative behavior patterns aren't necessarily manifest originally. Like, you're just like, oh, they're awesome. Like, they're nothing like that other person that I'm trying to get away with. And then you're six months in and you're like, oh, they're exactly like that person.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he was definitely a different person and then he progressively, I mean, if he was not living in Yosemite and climbing, that was, he was like, just drinking and getting drunk. And just, he couldn't stand being like controlled, in a controlled environment. He needed to be climbing. He was a dirtbag. He needed to be in the dirt.

• 32:42Rich Roll?

  Right. And if you have an eating disorder, meth is awesome.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  And I, but my eating disorder really came up big time after I got clean and sober. Could just trying to find some control in something and it like I became vegan and it was just like that was a good excuse to why I was getting really thin. And so that went on for a few more years. I mean, all my life, pretty much, you know, it's like the, the pictures in the magazines, as all of us women know, like growing up, it's like you have this image of somebody, which is not true, because I have friends that are models and they don't look like those pictures, except for when there's a picture of them. You know, it's like, there's so much airbrushing and things going on and, and I like that nowadays they're using more normal people, average people, you know, so we don't have to show our young girls, like, this is how you should look when it's fake, you know?

• 33:31Rich Roll?

  It's changing, but, but there's, you know, a lot of it is the same.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:35Rich Roll?

  You know, and I think that that speaks to, um, something that is, that is, uh, that, that I see a lot of, which is if you're an addict, an alcoholic, or you have some kind of unhealthy predisposition, you can latch on to a seemingly healthy thing, like, I'm gonna be a raw vegan, or I'm gonna be an ultra runner, or pick, you know, behavior X, and you can shade your unhealthy behavior under the umbrella of something that people will socially approve of. Um, when your, when your relationship to that thing is very unhealthy.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:11Rich Roll?

  Right? So you can, there's tons of people in recovery and ultra running. There's a reason for that.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:16Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, you can be very addictive in your training, and that's been something that I've had to, you know, evolve into, like, am I, is, what is my relationship with this? Am I hiding? Is this making me a better person? Or am I just using this as an outlet? Because I can't use drugs and alcohol anymore?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Well, we kinda need something to take the place.

• 34:35Rich Roll?

  We do.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  And it's healthier, but it can become unhealthy when it rolls.

• 34:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and you can be a raw vegan when, when it's really not about that. It's because you have an eating disorder, and this is a good way to, like, tell everybody that you're doing something good for yourself when you're actually not.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  And so how do you like, like, what is your sort of history with all of that then?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, the eating disorder was early on when my, when I was running. So it just made sense like, oh, she's getting skinnier. Cause I was already thin and then you stopped doing drugs and you start gaining, I was normal weight. It wasn't like I was overweight. And then I started running and I became vegan at the same time. So then I realized I can control this. I was eating like two apples a day. It was like ridiculous. That's how controlling I was with what I was eating and I wouldn't eat in front of people and my mom's like,

• 35:22Rich Roll?

  Two apples a day and how much are you running?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  At that time it was early on, but I was still running like 80 miles a week. Yeah.

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  On two apples a day.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I lived on apples.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  That's the Christian Bale diet from that movie, The Machinist, where he got down to like a hundred pounds.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, if you want to get really thin. And then it got to a point where I was exercising so much, I was rollerblading to the gym one day and rollerblading back and it was like a hundred degrees out and, and I like passed out when I got home and my mom's like, what the hell is wrong with you?

• 35:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And I was like rollerblading, working out in the gym and I was like, I don't know. And she's like, yeah, that's not good. So I went to the doctors. And she was like, do you have an eating disorder? And I'm like, no, I'm vegan.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And it wasn't until I started training for ultras that I actually met a guy on the trail and he's like, you, you know, I was saying how I was going to do a hundred miler. And he goes, you can't do a hundred miler. He goes, you're too thin. And I was like, what? And it, and it's dawned on me at that point that like, maybe there is something going on and I had went to the doctors and they saw like I had a heart murmur. And I felt like I was going to have a heart attack at some point. And then I'm like thinking about my dad. I'm like, shit, I'm going to die, you know? And so it kinda, I kinda changed it and started reading more nutritional stuff, like about nutrition and supplements and, you know, having a different relationship with food, like eating and taking supplements that were going to nourish my body without eating the junk,

• 36:51Speaker 01

  but still eating a ton more calories that I was eating instead of apples and a few things and eating more stuff like, you know, quinoa and adding other things. And, and I changed it, you know, I, I helped myself. I mean, and I did do a lot of reading up on it, like anorexia and stuff and. And back then I was really self-help, you know, early on in recovery, reading every book I could. And I thought, yeah, this is, this is gonna take me out, like the drugs took me out. And just reading people's stories and books. I had gotten a couple of books and I was just like, yeah, I don't want this to be.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  What were the, what were the books?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I don't even remember the name of them, but it was a woman. Two of them were by women that wrote about their, their times of anorexia and stuff. It was in Barnes and Nobles, I just happened to be looking and

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Got books on eating disorders.

• 37:33Rich Roll?

  Alright, so you, you make this meth sale over the phone and you get busted and you end up in jail.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  That was scary.

• 37:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, was it just, how long were you in jail for?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Uh, like less than two days, but I was in overnight.

• 37:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Which I didn't think, the cop told me, oh yeah, you won't be in overnight. And so when I'm going in and I'm going through the process and you're sitting like in a lobby. I mean, I've never been to jail, so I was just thinking all bars in this. But it was like the, a waiting room at the airport or something.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  And this is just from what I can remember in my mind. It was in, uh, it was a women's correctional facility in, uh, Milpitas. So it was called Elmwood. And so, and San Jose is where they took them in to that jail and then Elmwood was for the females. And so there's a lot of interesting people in there, just me, remember, you know, here's me all gothed out. And, and just going in through the whole process and where they strip you down and just, they treat you like shit. I mean, cause you're a criminal, I guess, in their eyes. And I'm just like, I'm not supposed to be here, really. And they're like, just get over here, you know, and the whole time I'm like, well, they're, they're, I'm not supposed to be here. They're gonna let me out. They should be letting me out now.

• 38:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, don't you know who I think I am?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so even the guy that took my photo, so I worked in a hair salon in downtown San Jose. He was one of my clients, so that was just.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  The guy who worked in the jail that took your, your intake photo?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just like, oh God, you know, just so embarrassing, you know, to have been going through this. And now here's a person that knows who I am and knows what I'm going through and. It was a dark time and so going in like they hand me the the clothing to put on like after you know I'm in there for several hours before they even do that and I'm like no I'm not supposed to stay here and they're like yeah you're going into whatever with the rest of the people so you get your outfit on your flip flops and you know nothing fit it was like all falling off of me I was so skinny and march us all in and you know and I remember the cops telling me he goes if you do get in there I'll make sure that they put you in a cell by yourself so I did end up in a cell by myself and so when I went into the you know and I'm crying I'm just like I don't belong here I don't belong here and

• 39:37Speaker 01

  there's like it's like a mirror it's not really a mirror it's a piece of sheet metal you know because you don't want you to cut yourself cut somebody with them breaking a mirror and so I'm just looking at myself in this thing and thinking what am I what am I doing here I how did I get here this is you know my whole life I'm just thinking oh my god that this is not who I am and so it dawned on me I need to do something I need to change so I remember sitting on the bed and laying down and it's like these woolly blankets in fact they use them at two hundreds and I will put those blankets on me I'm like at the sleep station I'm like

• 40:07Rich Roll?

  Reminds you.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Get the woolly blanket away from me I don't want to go to jail.

• 40:10Rich Roll?

  That's an interesting full circle thing though like this is the same blanket but my life is so different.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  I hate them so that I I mean I had a crew this time so I'm in my car with my you know at the sleep stations with my sleeping bag on no those things freak me out and there's times like literally I'm freaked out I'm like get that thing away from me.

• 40:29Rich Roll?

  But those are kind of cool god shots too because you're like oh this is it's such a vivid tactile like memory that takes you back that makes you remember where you came from.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  No that I don't want to ever be there again so I know what I need to do not to ever ever be there.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  It's like a it's like a relapse dream.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yes and you're awake and everything's a relapse dream and then you're awake for a hundred hours.

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, uh, so you have this moment. You make this decision.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And so I.

• 40:57Rich Roll?

  And that was it?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, you know.

• 40:59Rich Roll?

  I mean, was it?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  They assigned me a public defender, so I had to go to court right away. And so I got out the next day. So they were gonna charge me with everything my boyfriend got charged for selling, possession, like, everything. And he kept trying to take the blame, saying, no, she had nothing to do with it, although I was the one that sold it on the phone. But the, he was taking all the blame when they came in and raided the house and all that, and he showed them where, we cooperated.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  But he's like, just, you know, she's never been in trouble. You know, he had been in trouble before, and they saw that, and the judge saw that, and I was talking with my attorney, and he goes, he goes, usually they're gonna charge the female with the same amount of crime as their boyfriend or whatever. And he goes, but he goes, he might be nice to you, and we'll see. Well, you have a job, you have, you know, you've never been in trouble. So with that, he went in front of them and said, you know, she has a job, she'll go into drug diversion, and she'll go to meetings. And so then he said, okay, let's see, let's put her into an outpatient program, go to N A N A A every day, either one of them, and get the paper signed, and I was checking back every two weeks.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And so I was going, and this went on for three months and to six months, and then they finally, I was off of drug diversion after six months with no, no record. They let all of that go.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, good, so no felony charge.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And they didn't try to roll you into, you know, trying to get somebody above you? Like, try to cut a deal, like, tell us?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Well, no, see, that's why, the, the guy that turned us in, they, he pretended like we were the big wigs.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  We didn't, yeah, they couldn't do anything, cause Jason was gonna tell him where he got it. So he was fine with going to jail, and he did, he had, see, he spent three months in jail, and then three months house, house arrest.

• 42:43Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  So, and he got his thing wherever they, they wipe your slate clean years later. I mean, he's been in, clean and sober for all these years, too. So, yeah.

• 42:52Rich Roll?

  So court order to N A, N A A?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:56Rich Roll?

  How was that?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Interesting, you know, I was in downtown San Jose, so there was a lot of gang, ex-gang members in my meetings and I would just-

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  You could get that court card signed.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I just was like feeling like I did nothing, you know, my, what I got arrested for was nothing compared to what these people see on a daily basis and how they were raised and, you know, but they're in recovery too and trying to better their self, but I was just like, my God, I can't even talk because I don't have, I'm just like this white chick that, so what, she got, you know, she's hanging out in the clubs and she got arrested, like my story didn't matter. And so-

• 43:28Rich Roll?

  Did you, but did you embrace or accept the fact that you were an addict or an alcoholic? Or just somebody who got in trouble?

• 43:34Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I knew I was.

• 43:36Rich Roll?

  And what's the, what's the, what's the relationship between the meth and the booze? Like, do you consider yourself-

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Well, I stopped actually really drinking after I, I stopped drinking pretty much when I started doing meth, because you don't really get drunk anyways and I'd rather do the meth.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  No, unless you want to go to sleep.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  So, but then after I did get arrested, I, I was drinking for a little bit, couple of months after that until they were like, no, you're not supposed to drink at all either. So that's why, from the time I got arrested till June 24th is my actually sobriety day, because I was still drinking here and there when I went out on occasion, but I wasn't doing drugs.

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  And clean and sober ever since.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yep, June 24th was my day.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  But like, AA is not really your thing, right?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  No, you know, I, and I appreciate that people, that helps them, my brother goes to AA, he's been off and on for years, back and forth into recovery, now he's been in it for a long time and he, it's a great tool, I would say, I, I think that's a, you know, the main thing of starting my recovery was that, but then going to therapy really helped me more, because I felt like I just had deeper issues and, you know, I, you know, I just, it's hard for me to sit around and just listen to the same stories over and over when I would just want to move forward in life. And I like talking about my past because it helps people, but it's like, I have so much more in front of me that it's like, here's what, this is what I did, let's keep going, you know, let's talk about the future, let's talk about good things we can keep

• 44:56Speaker 01

  doing, you know, it's like when people say, I want to do this, that, and the other, but I can't do it, and I, you know, wait a couple of months and I'm like, no, do it now, you might not be here tomorrow, you know, so, but it definitely helped me, but I just, you know, I prefer going to the mountains as my church and praying and just thinking, and that's where I do all my thinking, I like running alone and- Seeing so much in, in, you know, I, I take something away every time I'm out in the mountains and just running even on the streets like a bird of this, that, and I just, and grateful.

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  That's your church, that's your AA meeting.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yep, it is.

• 45:28Rich Roll?

  It's interesting, cause for me, um, I mean, that's a huge part of my sobriety and my recovery, but for me, like, that's not enough. Like, I still, like, I go to AA, you know, like, I'm part of the recovery community and, and I think now people sometimes get confused, they know my story and they think like, oh, well, I put the drugs and the alcohol behind me and now I'm just gonna train and like, that's sobriety. And it's like, no, that's not like, at least for me, like, I'm only speaking for myself, um, that's not, that's, I've, I know from firsthand experience that I need something, that I need a more structured program beyond that. That's a contributing factor that keeps me in line, but, um, for me, I

• 46:12Rich Roll?

  need to have a connection with a higher power. I need a spiritual program, I need to be of service to other alcoholics who are still sick and all of that, you know, or, or I'll go sideways pretty quickly.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And thank God, I've never wanted to go sideways. So, yeah, you know, I guess, and I look at me now and I think, well, that makes perfect sense because look at how much I get into something. It's like, my mind goes and it's like, I ain't doing that anymore.

• 46:35Rich Roll?

  That's it. But that's very alcoholic, you know that, right? That ability to focus, it's like harnessing the best of what it means to be like, that kind of human being and channeling it in the right direction, right? I think, I think alcoholics and addicts are, look, they're incredibly crafty and focused people. Like, when you're, as you said, like, when you're using, like, you're, you, there is no way you're not gonna find that meth that day. No matter what it takes, it's gonna happen, right? And then if you can take that level of intensity and place it in a healthy direction, then the world explodes in a good way. Yeah. So, all right, so you get out, you're sober, you're doing the whole deal. Um, when does the running creep in?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  So, the running doesn't stop, start until two years later. So, I, I'm, you know, working out in a gym, I'm getting healthy, so I'm doing things and, like I said, eating healthy and... It wasn't.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  Did you do, when did the vegan, did the vegan thing?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Vegan started right away. So actually, I became a vegetarian when I was nine.

• 47:31Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  We raised animals. So we, we didn't own a farm. So my, like I said, my dad always had stuff going on. So he bought like nine head of cattle and my sisters were in FFA, which is Future Farmers of America. And I was younger, so I was in four H. They put me in the four H program. And I had a lamb and we had the stairs and so before I ended up getting the lamb, we had the nine head of cattle and then they grew up and they went away, they got sold. And there was one still on the ranch and I named him Charlie. My parents used to always say, don't name those, those are not pets.

• 48:03Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Don't name those animals.

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the more you personalize them.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  And stuff. And I was like, well, his name's Charlie. He's white and he's named Charlie. And that's what I'm calling him. And I go up to him and hug him and whatever. So then all the other ones were gone and Charlie was still there and then he went away. And the day, like within a few days, I come home from school and my brother opens up the freezer. We had a meat freezer in the garage. And he's all, look, Charlie's in the freezer. And that was it.

• 48:30Rich Roll?

  You were nine, you were nine.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Nine.

• 48:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  And it was devastating to me. When I see, it's so funny. I was just at the fair and I saw these girls like with little lambs and stuff. And I was like, oh my God, they don't understand what's going to happen to their animal. You raise these. So yeah, Charlie was in the freezer and I told my mom, I'm not eating anything out of there. I'm not eating a hamburger ever again. And she didn't force me to. I mean, she was Italian, so she would take the sausage out or the, you know, whatever, the meatball. And so even though there was meat sauce in there or whatever, it was a connection that I had. But as long as there was no meat hamburger, like I didn't eat a hamburger when I went to McDonald's, I would eat fish and chicken growing up. But so then my lamb, you know, I was eating lamb still, I think until that point to the following year when I went to the fair, once again,

• 49:13Speaker 01

  had my little lamb, auctioned it off, was all excited and this boy said to me, you know, they're getting, somebody's gonna eat them. And I was like, no, they're not. And then I thought, oh my God, Charlie, my lamb. Like I thought somebody was just gonna keep him for a pet like I did, you know, it wasn't a connection because I just loved animals. Ten.

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And so I just went off. I just started bawling and I ran to the pen where he was and I just laid in there. My dad came and found me and he's like, no, no, no, they're gonna keep him for a stud. And I think, you know, I don't know this, the real story, but I'm sure my dad told the guy, like, go tell her that you're not gonna eat them. You know, I don't know. So he came over, he goes, no, no, we're gonna keep him for a stud. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but.

• 49:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  So there went lamb.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  He gets to breed.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  So a young age, I was very aware of stuff. And I'm very sensitive towards animals growing up. And you know, I had a duck and my brother killed my duck. And just like, you know, he's a wild child.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  Well, your relationship with Truman right now is like on a whole other level.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 50:14Rich Roll?

  Most dog owners.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  I'm super bummed that you didn't bring him.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  I know. Now I'm feeling really bad. I should have.

• 50:18Rich Roll?

  For people that are listening or watching.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Well, they're probably mad that I didn't bring him.

• 50:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're like, we're, I mean, your dog's like famous, right?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, more famous than me.

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Truman's like 12 or 13 now. How old is he?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  He's 12 years, seven months. So he's getting up there. And I've only had him for six and a half years. I rescued him.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  Right. And what kind of dog is he?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  He's a miniature dachshund.

• 50:38Rich Roll?

  Dachshund. And he's run ultras.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Five 50 Ks.

• 50:42Rich Roll?

  Five 50 Ks on those tiny little legs.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  So he has four inch legs, nine pounds, can run 50 K, starting at six and a half. Or he ran his first 50 K at seven.

• 50:51Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And you trained him like you would train a human, right?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:54Rich Roll?

  Just start very slow.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  And he just would follow me.

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  It's like, I can't believe a little dog like that can run a 50 K.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  And there's people emailing me that have weiner dogs.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  Do they, do you get people angry at you? Like this is abuse or something?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Well, they have, but I have, I mean, my doctor, my vet is, he's like vet approved. And I have friends that are ultra runners that are vets. And they said, we are taught in veterinarian school that these guys have all these back issues. And they're like, we never think they could run because they have back issues. Well, the back issue can't happen from running. It happens from jumping. And it makes perfect sense to have them run low to the ground, keeping them thinner and just getting them checked. And it's like, he's just happens to be an amazing little guy. And he has always been vet approved. I've had full body x-rays. I mean, it's not like I'm just some crazy lady letting my dog run. And I knew that people would come out of the woodwork and try to say stuff. And it's like, I got proof. I have vets that approve of him doing this.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  And now he's gotten older and he has a heart murmur. So we've tapered him back to 10 miles at the most.

• 51:54Rich Roll?

  10 miles at the most.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  And with those tiny little legs, I mean, if you broke it down by strides, I mean, the 50 K is probably like a 200 mile.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I think. Yeah.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 52:05Speaker 01

  And and

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  And what's the deal with the the you put like ski goggles on?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yes, well, he's had eye injuries and thousands of dollars like his surgery on his eyes because he's low to the ground, running trails, pokey things.

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Are right on the trail.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Eye level. So he had one of his corneas got really scratched and he had to have surgery on it. And that's the eye that usually has problems and he has eye drops for the rest of his life because he doesn't make tears. And so my vet's like, the best thing you can do, because I swear like every six months, it was like a major eye issue. And the last one was last year, a Tahoe two hundred, we were sweeping the course, me and him were pulling the ribbons and he was with me. And I had these trekking poles and it had a sharp point and he ran into the point and scratched his eye again and it took three months for it to heal. So finally, we're like, okay, we gotta gotta do, you know, he started with the regular little dog ones that were individual like glasses. And he would wear them, but you he if the minute you stop, they were off and they were ruined. And so

• 53:01Speaker 01

  a friend of mine, actually, she's like, there's this company called Rex Specs that makes these really cool goggles, but at the time they didn't make extra small. They were only making small, so they were way too big.

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  For dogs, though.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  They are for dogs.

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, they are specifically designed for dogs.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like a lot of law enforcement.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  Thing like.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Law enforcement dogs wear them. Yeah, it's a thing.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  Truman's the only dog that I've ever seen wear a ski mask.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Look them up. And I know I'm, you know, because dogs get damaged just from the sun, just like we do. That's why you hear so many dogs of having like glaucoma and these certain things.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cataracts.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Cataracts from the sun and stuff and it makes sense. But like I said, he's always gotten scratched. And so these, these are so much better. He doesn't have the gunk like I was constantly cleaning gunk.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  And he likes wearing it?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't mind. If I stop, then he wants them off when he's done. So he knows when they come on, like I won't put him on a road run, you know, because it's like let him not have to wear them, but definitely on the trail, there's so much debris that gets in his eyes.

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  And do you have a leash when you're running with him or does he follow you?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Off trail, we don't need to, like on places where you don't need to have a leash. Nope, he's not on a leash. Yeah, on the trail.

• 54:02Rich Roll?

  And what happens when you have the occasional like rattlesnake encounter or?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  He's always behind me. So he doesn't, he's not ever been one to run like way in front of me. So which is good because most people are like, what do you do? And I'm like, we've never had that problem. He's. Like beelined straight towards the rattlesnake when I jumped out of the way. And finally, like, he looked at me and I was like able to grab him like he was almost on one on top of one that was quarrelled.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Crawled up and down. I was like, that would have not been good. Cause he's so little and if he gets bit, I mean, there's anti venom, but in the Bay Area where it was at, it was like a forty minutes away for the anti venom for the dogs. Around here, I'm sure you guys have it.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it's still, I mean, we lost a dog to rattlesnake bites.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I know it's, it's, it's a, I mean, it's serious if that happens.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  But I think that's totally cool. Like I remember, it reminds me, one time I did the Alcatraz swim.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Oh, the Shark Fest.

• 54:57Rich Roll?

  This was like a long, long time ago. Uh, and the guy, the organizer of it, I think it was on New Year's Day, like it did like the, you know, on the coldest day or whatever.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  But the organizer at the time, if memory serves me, had a black lab and apparently this black, like this, this lab, his favorite thing was to do the swim. And he would do the swim from Alcatraz with everybody.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:20Rich Roll?

  And he would beat half the field and he was so excited, like running around in circles and then he'd run, he'd, you know, swim up onto the beach and run around and like, you know,

• 55:27Speaker 01

  That is so cool.

• 55:28Rich Roll?

  Lick everybody. Like it was like, he was like on fire.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  You know? And who would have thought like, it's supposed to be, oh, you know, these prisoners could never make it out of Alcatraz. They'd die. And like the dogs like out there, just like beating half of these swimmers out there.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, animals are pretty amazing. If they find a passion and love like we do, if they can do it.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  You know, and like I said, I've never, I've never got to a point where Truman has laid down and been exhausted.

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  And said, I can't go anymore.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, I mean, granted, like if Courtney owned him, he would have probably been dead.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  So I'm not like pushing him like that.

• 56:01Rich Roll?

  Have you ever been in a race though, where he's like, I can't go anymore and you have to drop out or whatever?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. He's running in a race when he gets a bib on and I take him off leash, he's running with the other runners like in front of me and they're like,

• 56:14Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Oh no, the winter dog's beating us. You know, that's when he runs in front of me. Cause he keeps thinking I'm up there and then he's like, oh, that's not her. Where did she go? You know, why isn't she coming? So yeah, when he see, when he gets a bib on, he knows that's a different thing that we're in a race.

• 56:28Rich Roll?

  So interesting.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  It's funny.

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  All right, so, so where does the vegan thing come in?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  So.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  Where do you make that switch?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  So, I was vegetarian already before I got clean and sober and decided the day that I quit doing drugs that me and my friend Katrina were talking about, oh, we're, we're gonna go vegan. And when, when we were on drugs, we'd have these conversations about being vegan. So, yeah, exactly. So, that was the perfect time. I said, you know, I'm not doing drugs anymore. I'm going vegan. So, that's when it all started. The same day that, pretty much, I quit, you know, doing drugs, I quit eating meat.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  What was that decision about for you, though?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Just to get myself healthy again, to get healthy.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  Almost like a purification.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not doing that toxic stuff. I'm gonna get clean and sober and I'm gonna eat, eat good. And I'm glad I did. That helped, but, you know, there's unhealthy vegan. There's eating a lot of sugar and crap that is not so healthy. And back then, it was mostly like you didn't have really almond milk or stuff like that. It was mostly soy. And I have a major intolerance with soy. Like, I get major stomach issues from a lot of soy. I can't do it. So, I try to avoid that. And back then, it was like mostly soy. Everything was soy. Tofu was soy. And it's like now, we're, it's so wonderful. We have all this plant-based, you know, Beyond Meat and like just great, like, without soy in it or gluten and stuff like that.

• 57:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's come a long way. It's a lot different now. But it's also easier to be an unhealthy vegan with all the crazy, you know, you can get all the cupcakes and the whatever, you know?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  I got a bunch of pastries over at Juicy Ladies.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, yeah. Well, Juicy Ladies is pretty, they have really super healthy food there.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  They do. I love that place.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  So, you do that and then, but it's still a spell before the running creeps in.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so two years. So, I'm working out, doing my thing at the gym. And I went back to school. So, I had never graduated high school. So, I went through the adult school. And I could have taken-

• 58:27Rich Roll?

  You're, you're a cosmetologist at the time, like you're doing hair?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just working part-time. So, I moved back home to the Bay area, to Fremont from San Jose. And working part-time. And I decided I wanted to go back to school. And get my high school diploma, just like a normal person, like sit back in the classroom. So I went through the adult program. I could have taken my GED and got over it and been out. But I thought, no, I'm gonna go back like where I should have been. And so I was going to Cosmo, I mean, I was uh going to adult school and I was actually working at um a bagel store, just part time and then working in the salon part time. And I was in a Barnes and Nobles and there was a flyer, well, actually, let me backtrack. So I had this other little wiener dog I used to take for a walk, because I've always had wiener dogs.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  Pre Truman.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, no Truman, pre Truman. This was Oscar Meyer Wiener.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  Okay, of course.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  I know. So I was, I would take him on these three mile walks and one day I just, out of nowhere, I don't know what possessed me, but I'm like, I'm gonna run, I'm gonna run today, I'm gonna go out for a run and not take him. So I went and I ran my little route, three miles and I was like, whoa, I ran, you know, and that was really cool. So I was in Barnes and Nobles and there was a flyer in the back of the store and there was a flyer for like five K, ten K. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna, that's a ten K, I'm gonna run that ten K. I only ran once, three miles, and it was in two weeks. And I asked my mom, I said, do you wanna walk the five K? Cause she walked every day. And she's like, yeah, I'll go. So a couple of weeks after I started running, I entered this ten K,

• 59:55Speaker 01

  ran like no, didn't know pace, thought I was gonna pass out. I was still like wearing all black in that phase, still goth phase. It was like hot out and I.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  Did you have like the all black hair and like white, you know, like face and the whole thing?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  And I was wearing all black and black shorts and black sweatshirt and whatever. So I finished and I was like, wow, you know, that was a big thing. And so I got back to the vehicle and on our car, there was a flyer for the San Francisco Marathon. And I was like, when is this? And it was like three months. I'm like, how far is a marathon? I know it's far, it's like twenty miles. And I had to call my friend Kevin. I'm like, Kevin, do you know how far a marathon is? And he's like, yeah, twenty six miles, point two miles. And I said, I'm gonna sign up for it. So I sent my check in, cause that's like pre anything, computer stuff. So I sent it in and I had three months to change, so I, or train. So I went into the Barnes and Nobles, got a book that said how to train for a marathon. Had to skip ahead to three months training program.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  And I read that I was, you know, okay, Sunday, nine mile run. And so there was no GPS garments, none of this. So I got in my little car. Odometer. Drove four and a half miles out and it was the gas station. And I was like, perfect. That's my turnaround tomorrow and then I'll run back. So that's how I started my training.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. And just, I felt like I was, it was, you know, I knew, never knew anybody other than my dad or my brother that had run and, you know, so none of my friends ran and this was me just doing it for me, you know, like finding my own way. And so doing that, I was just like, wow. And like I said, no, I didn't know anybody that ran marathons and my family and friends were like, whoa, you're crazy, you know?

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  But looking back on it now, like, what do you think that switch was that got flicked? Like, what is it about running that spoke to you?

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  I think it was, it gave me confidence and it gave me a passion, something to strive for. So, and just, I needed something.

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  Like the structure.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Going out to nightclubs anymore. I mean.

• 1:01:58Rich Roll?

  You're sober for a couple of years.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I just felt kind of alone.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Change your friends.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I was kind of alone. And so running made me not feel alone. Like it, it gave me something. It gave me a purpose. And it made me feel good.

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  And you finished that first marathon?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  I did. And it was like, I, my, I was sore. Cause now I think about it, when we're in the two hundred mile races, we're like, remember when we ran our first marathon? Holy crap, like you couldn't walk. And like after a hundred mi- or two hundred miles, I'm like a little stiff that day. Everybody's like, uh, uh, uh, like right after they finish. But I go take an Epsom salt bath, then I come back to watch the finishers finish several hours later. And I'm like, they're like, you don't even look like you did anything.

• 1:02:38Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  It's weird how your, our bodies just like.

• 1:02:42Rich Roll?

  And running that marathon, I think I read like you you had to run past all these clubs.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  To party.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  So I was running exactly past all the clubs and I was just like, wow. So each time I passed a place, I'm like, look where you are now.

• 1:02:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that difference.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  It just gave me like this strength as I propelled myself forward, like, look at you now, you know, it's like, who would have ever thought when you were in there looking out on the road that you'd be running past all of this?

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  And was there an idea like this is what I want my life to be about now? Or is it just been a natural progression of becoming more and more invested?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  I just knew it was gonna be part of my life. I wanted it to be part of my life, yeah. And, you know.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  How did you know that? Like, what was, what, what do you think it was?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Even in the middle of that first marathon, I was planning my next one. I hadn't even got to the finish line, not even halfway. I'm like, I think I'll go to Honolulu. I want to do the Honolulu marathon.

• 1:03:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's special because most people, I mean, that's unusual.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's my mind, though. Like, even like, oh, I hope somebody puts on a 500 mile race. Candace, you need to come up with a 500.

• 1:03:42Rich Roll?

  500 mile?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  She's gonna.

• 1:03:44Rich Roll?

  Not then, though.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  No, but now.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  This is like now, right. But had you ever heard of ultras? Like, when did you first discover that world?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  So the first year I ran two marathons and the second year I decided I was gonna run every marathon in California. And this is mine, you not knowing anybody. And I actually started running some of them were trail marathons because in, at the time in California, there was too many to run. I couldn't have run them all. But a lot of them were on trails. And I thought, oh, this is kind of interesting. There's, you know, these trails that we're running on. And it was a lot harder than running on a road marathon. The very first one I did, I was like, this is way harder. There was no water stop every mile. It was like, the guy that put on the trail marathon that I did for my first one was in the Marin Headlands and it was like, water every six miles, like out of a jug and a box, a thing of cookies, which I couldn't eat. I mean, they weren't vegan.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  So I was like, oh, my God, you know, and they, they told us in advance, you need to carry water bottles. I had to buy a waste thing.

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  So getting through my first trail marathon, I met actually a guy that I was running with and he was doing all the marathons in California. And he kind of became my mentor, this older gentleman. And he, so we were running a lot of the same ones together. He was much faster than me, but on the trails, I could kind of keep up with him, but road, he was faster.

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And this is like 99, 90?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  This is in 97.

• 1:05:00Rich Roll?

  97, okay.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so then I started hearing people, I was at a, it was, and I remember this vividly, I was at a, uh, It was a marathon in Morgan Hill and I heard this lady, Linda, who's actually a friend of mine now. But she was rambling on that she had run, because this is on a Sunday, she ran like a fifty mile or the day before and I was like, fifty miles, she ran a fifty mile, she's running a marathon today? Like, and she talks, like, she's funny, like, I've known her all these years, but she was going on and on and on, I'm like, how could she even be talking, like, she's running this marathon today? So I heard her talking about that and then I thought, I'm gonna run a fifty K, it's only six miles more, I mean, come on, I run in trails and-

• 1:05:40Rich Roll?

  It sounds so much more impressive, though.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I signed up, I found like a fifty K, and actually, the very first fifty K, let me back that up. So I called the race director, because at the time, there, you had to, it was in the back of like Runner's World or whatever, there was no email and all of that, so there was one in Fremont called Aloney Fifty K, and this is, it has nine thousand feet of climbing in it.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, it's in Fremont, I'm gonna run it, because I live in Fremont, you know, and I had never been up- I think I'd been at Mission Peak a couple of times at that point. A few times, and I knew it was hard, but I didn't know what was beyond that, like, it was a point to point, so it went out to Del Valle and so I called up the race director and I said, oh, I wanna sign up for your fifty K, and he goes, have you run out there before? And I said, well, I've been at Mission Peak and I'm doing marathons, he goes, hmm, he goes, you know it's really hard, it's really remote, and I said, oh, yeah, and he goes, well, he goes, how long have you been running for? And I said, a couple of years, and he goes, and you want this to be your first fifty K? And I was like, yeah, I wanna, I've been at Mission Peak twice, and he goes, it's a lot harder than you think.

• 1:06:42Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  And he kinda scared me, and he goes, I suggest for you to run Skyline Fifty K. And that was an easier one at Lake Chabot, and I was like, okay, because he kinda scared me, and he was like, pretty much telling me not to do it. So I was like, okay, I'll go run that one, so that was, and at the time, there was only like- I think there was maybe four 50 Ks in the Bay Area.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Now, I can't even tell you hundreds.

• 1:07:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  And this is just in the Bay Area where I lived.

• 1:07:06Rich Roll?

  I mean, the, the, that whole scene had been around for probably a couple of decades, but

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very small.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  It was still very much this micro subculture.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  People sleeping in tents the night before.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:17Rich Roll?

  And, and just small groups of people. It was hardly what we think of it.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Everything's a lot of rain sells out now. I mean, the loanee sells out. So I decided then, okay, I'll do this 50 K. So I did the one at Lake Chabon. At that point, I had already run, I did this two 15 mile looped course. It wasn't part of the course. I mean, some of the miles was, but I wanted to feel confident that I could run 30 miles. So I did 30 miles before even the race

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  came. And that was at a slower pace. I mean, race day, you're always pushing harder, you know, because you're wanting to get ahead of people. And, you know, you have nobody to push you when you're by yourself training and you're just kind of dally, dilly dallying. So I showed up, it was 105 degrees that day, super hot. I was not used to like walking like hills. And I'm seeing all these people like right off the bat, once we got off the road part, it was a steep hill and they're all walking. And I'm thinking, oh, what the heck are they walking? And people are like, you should probably walk right now, you know, and it's, there's lots of hills. And is this your first ultra? And I'm like, yeah, but I don't need to walk.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  So all those people later on, of course, passed me and they're like, see, you should have been walking. My legs, I mean, it was so hot. I didn't know about hydration, didn't, you know, wasn't drinking right, wasn't eating correctly, knew nothing. And I was just like, by the time I got to like, I think 27 miles, I was like, oh my God, like in a bad way. I'm like, am I going to even make it? Like, I was scared I wasn't going to make it to the finish because I legs were so tight and just like, you know, dehydrated and so, but I made it. And I finished and I was like, oh my God, that was so hard. And then I was like, well. I'm gonna do a fifty miler. So it just, and at that time, Ultra Running Magazine was the magazine. So you got, I got a copy at the finish of the fifty K. So I didn't know anything about this magazine until I finished.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  And that's where it opened up. It was like, all these races, here's where the races are. This is my bible to see where I'm gonna go next. So I signed up for a fifty miler. And then I did another fifty K, and this is all within a four month period. And I got through this fifty mile race that was in Napa. And it was pouring rain, like horrible, hor- I never ran in conditions like that. And they actually allowed you to drop to the fifty K if you wanted to and you were in the fifty miler. And I stuck it out. I said, nope, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna finish this and then I'm gonna run a hundred miler. So in the middle of it, I was just like, oh, my God, what am I doing? If I can get through this, that means I'm tough enough and I can do this hundred miles.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  So I got through the finish and then decided to run a hundred mile race.

• 1:09:44Rich Roll?

  And what are you learning about yourself along the way? Like, what is running doing for you?

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  So I'm learning that I am, I, I never looked at myself as being super strong or, you know, confident. I was always, you know, a little bit, I'm not so confident in what, if I can do it or if I can't. But my confidence was building and I was feeling like I can do whatever I set my mind to. And it took me a long time to learn that in life. Like, I always would put up blocks and put up doors and walls in front of me and not, you know, just think I couldn't do it. You know? And then being able to-

• 1:10:18Rich Roll?

  And then not taking that risk. It's like, well, you're never really putting yourself on the line.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, and I remember, I'm gonna backtrack to, me and my dad were watching, when, you know, way back in the day, they used to have Western States on, World of Sports.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Did they?

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:33Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  And so my dad, he was a runner and he was like, come watch this. And he goes, there's these people running from Squaw Valley. And I knew where Squaw Valley and Auburn were, cause we used to go play soccer in Auburn. And we'd go to Squaw Valley to ski once in a while or go to the snow. And he goes, they're running from Squaw Valley to Auburn. And I was like, yeah, you know, I was like twelve or fourteen at the time. And I was like, okay, I sat down and I was like, okay. You know, I was interested, but I remember that. I remember him talking about this Western States. And he was a runner, like I said, he had did a marathon. And I was like, hmm, whatever, you know, and that was my thing. Okay, I'm gonna go, give me some money. I'm gonna go to the store now.

• 1:11:09Rich Roll?

  Right, but it was lodged in the back of your unconscious mind all those years.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  After I did that marathon and then I did my fifty K, I was like, I gotta do this hundred miler. Like, my dad, if he was alive, he'd be right here helping me get, do this thing. And, and, you know, I, I had heard what a hundred miler was vaguely, just through that one chance, you know, on the TV. And so I was like, I'm gonna do this. So I didn't know anything or anybody that ran. And, and here I had already did my few fifty, fifty, two fifty K's, or one fifty K and two fifty milers. And show up at the hundred mile race, knew nothing, didn't even have a light. So me and at the time, my boyfriend Kevin, I'm like, shit, I gotta go to Walmart or wherever to get a light. I need these lights for nighttime. I wasn't even think, that's how like clueless.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Clueless I was, and no nighttime running. And I was like, okay, and at the time I got bike lights and they had like the bigger batteries, it was D cell batteries. So I'm showing up and, you know, getting all this new stuff to use. And at the time, I was eating a lot of baby food because it's easy to digest when I was doing ultras. And I thought, I read up, somebody ate baby food. I'm gonna put baby food in my drop bags and jars of almond butter or whatever. At the time, they didn't have a squeezy packets of baby foods. It was glass jars.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Just the cans of it, right.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  They were jars and they were broken in my pa, my drop bags. Yeah, because they're not very gentle with drop bags. So that's what I used as fuel. There was, I had, I think I had gel at the time. There was a couple of gel companies. But I, and Cliff Bar, and that was it. And I.

• 1:12:43Rich Roll?

  For the whole time.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know the right nutrition. I hadn't met anybody doing these hundreds and fifty milers really to be able to figure this out.

• 1:12:51Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, the trajectory is pretty traditional, like, okay, ten K marathon, fifty K, fifty miler. And then it's like, okay, hundred miler, like the jump from fifty miler to hundred miler. Like, people think of those as being kind of in the same world, but those are, I mean, you're doubling the distance.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  You are.

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, it's a crazy leap and it's a very different thing doing a hundred versus a fifty.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  That's what, I mean, the, back then, there wasn't a lot of hundred K's. So there, there are hundred K's around, but back then there was like maybe four to five in the United States. So you had to go that leap. That was your leap. There was no like in between like they do now.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  And what is, tell me the difference.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  It's it's a big difference. I mean, past fifty miles, then you're like dealing with going into the night if you haven't trained at night. You're going into like, you know, hallucinations, I mean, not sleeping, trying to keep yourself awake, it's a whole nother, you're stumbling around.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  And knowing when to walk.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Rich Roll?

  When to take breaks.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  I was like so, I was so out of it. Back then, I wouldn't even, I wasn't even doing coffee back then. I thought that was a drug. So, so in the middle of the night, I'm stumbling around and this lady comes up on me. She goes, are you okay? And I said, no, I'm tired. And I said, I I said, I hope there's coffee at the next aid station. I was gonna, willing to have coffee. And she goes, okay, she goes, I don't think they have it here. And she goes, you need to take in like a caffeine pill. And I'm like, what's that? She goes, it's just like coffee. And I'm like, no, that's like a drug. That's like speed. And she goes, no, it's just like, it's two hundred milligrams of caffeine. So this, me and her were going on and on and we were walking together. Her name was Kim. And we got to the aid station and they actually had no coffee. And I was like, oh, my God, how am I gonna do this? And I was like,

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  bad falling asleep. Like, I I didn't know how I was gonna get even around this. But this was like miles, I was going into mile eighty loop. Eighty to a hundred. No, I was at mile sixty. So I was already going into getting to eighty. And I could not stay awake. So she convinced me to take this caffeine pill. And she goes, break it in half. If you're that freaked out about this, she goes, you really need to take it. You're not gonna make it. And she was right. I took this caffeine pill, a hundred milligrams. And all of a sudden, I was like, wow, I'm like awake. And I didn't do coffee back then, so.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  So you're.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, it it definitely helped me. That saved me. I probably would have never been able to finish. I mean, I was so out of it. And just taking that little bit of caffeine got me through that, through that night, you know, and and I was like, okay, it's not that bad. But it was years before then that I even did coffee. I didn't start drinking coffee until like two thousand four.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you don't seem like you need it.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  No, I had some today.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  I did like my espresso.

• 1:15:31Rich Roll?

  Do you have, have you DNF'd a bunch of races?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  You do that with, that's how you learn.

• 1:15:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, you race all the time. You have a like, you're just constantly, like, it's just been a constant stream of you racing ever since, right?

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  A lot, yeah. Like, after this, doing these three 200s, I'm just like, I don't want to do anything, but I have a 100 miler coming up, like, next weekend.

• 1:15:53Rich Roll?

  And do you treat every race the same, or do you try to peak for certain races or prioritize certain events?

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Well, obviously with the 200s, you were ju- I was just like, there was no training. I was like, you know, you're racing and then going for it. And that's a different kind of race. You're, you know, you're taking it a lot slower to be able to survive and then push yourself later on when you can.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  I would think in between, the most important thing is making sure you're healthy and totally rested.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to gain weight back up. Cause I, like, with, I started, I think I was like 113, 1614, at the beginning of the race season. I mean, I always get down to about 109, 110 if I'm doing lots of races. But I got down to like 103, 104 and was constantly trying to add, you know, calories. Like, I mean, like jars of almond butter and everything else. I'm like, eating vegan ice cream, which I never hardly eat, but I know I'm needing calories. And so I'm like, buying one for me and one for my boyfriend. And my boyfriend's like, somehow, this is not going right. You're not gaining weight and I'm gaining weight. So, but just eating a ton of healthy and lots more calories, like I said, adding more nuts and high calorie stuff every day

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  just to gain that weight. So you know you're gonna lose it when you're back into the game.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  And a typical training week is what, like 80 to 120 miles?

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. In the summers, I'm definitely up there. I mean, some, this year, I had some.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  Running twice a day or long?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Nope, just once a day. And some of my runs, I mean, I had some 300 and something mile weeks this year.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  And do you work with a coach? Or do you design your own? Just do what you feel?

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Just do my thing, yeah. I like training. And my whole thing is, I love just being outdoors and being in the wilderness and. You know, I was fast at one time. I'm not ever gonna be as fast as I can, you know, I guess if I had a coach. But I I run because I love it. I I don't want to be fast.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  That's the thing that I get. Like, you just like being at these races and you like being part of the community.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  And that's when I push myself when I'm in a race. I'm like, training for me is just enjoying the earth and seeing what I can see because, you know, I've been given a gift. I feel like it's a gift to be able to do this because I'm no different than anybody else. And it's like, I just happen to have this love for being outdoors now and that's, you know, seeing things every day. I don't want to miss anything, you know, because one day I'm not gonna be here or I can't do it. And I know that time can come. I could hurt myself. I could, something could happen where I can't run again. And so I'm enjoying it now.

• 1:18:14Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Injury free? You've never had any big time injuries?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Luckily, yeah, just like minor stuff like PF here and there. My, I've always had a hamstring thing. And I heard that in CrossFit years ago and it just comes and goes and I, you know, I have recovery pump boots and I go to, you know, get massages and so Epsom salt baths. And so I'm constantly doing stuff that helps me.

• 1:18:35Rich Roll?

  Massages, acupuncture. You have any, ever had any back issues or anything like that?

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  No, uh uh.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  No, I'm starting to get more like a shoulder thing just from with your head down and you're in the two hundreds and you're falling. You know, it's like notice it the older I get and the longer I go, it's it bothers me. So now I don't even try to carry the water bottles in my hands in the two hundreds. Because I'm using trekking poles anyways. I put the water up here with my hydration. And I find that that actually helps me when I'm using the trekking poles in the two hundred mile race. I usually don't, grab on to them until about fifty miles in, but they give you something to do and then you're working your other muscles. So you're not like, ah, hunched over.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  And outside the running, what kind of cross training do you do?

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  I do, I lift weights. So I do kettlebells, box jumps, kind of like modified CrossFit stuff. Yeah, but on my own. And so, in Bishop, I haven't been working out, I mean, in a gym for two months and I used to go to twenty four hour fitness or whatever. And I'm like, I don't have a lot of options at Bishop, but I found that they have a CrossFit that actually is open twenty four seven and they have other stuff in there. You can use the, they have great treadmills and rowing machines and weights that you can use. So you don't have to just do CrossFit. And that's kind of what I'm gonna join that, so.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  So you show up on the pages of Born to Run. I would imagine that kind of changed your life a little bit. I mean, that book was such a big deal.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  It was a big deal.

• 1:19:50Rich Roll?

  And they've still, they've been trying to make a movie out of that forever.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  I don't know if that's ever gonna happen, but there were a couple moments where it looked like it might have, might, it looked like it was gonna go. Peter Sarsgaard was, I don't know, but I don't know what happened. But, but so many people read that book and, and that was really an entry point for most people's, unless you read Dean Karnaz's book. I mean, this was an entry point for people to discover what this whole ultra running world was all about. And you were this crazy colorful figure in this book. I mean, so what was that like for you? And how did that change, you know, what would happen to you when you would show up at these races? Or just how you were living your life?

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  I, I would meet a lot of people because people were not runners and then they became runners because of this book.

• 1:20:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  It was like so many people that, they may have been 10K runners or not runners at all. And then they read this and they had this whole thing where they wanted to get into this barefoot running and this

• 1:20:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Whole thing that kind of went away. Yeah. But that kind of is not the thing, but they were all minimalist getting into it. And I'm like, yeah, I don't, you know, people were coming up to me and they were like, you're that girl in the book. And I'm like, yep, that's me.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  And I'm trying to remember, because you went down for the race with the Tara Hamara in the Copper Canyon?

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  No, uh-uh. No, this is all, I was at Badwater when he was writing the whole Badwater stuff.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's when I

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  It's been so long since I read it.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was all, do you mind if I write about your yo-yo? And I'm like, no, go ahead.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh. So you did the yo-yo. Did you, did you ever get tempted to do the double Badwater?

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  No, I did Badwater. So everybody assumed I did Badwater a bunch of times. I only did it last year.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  You did it once?

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, last year.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, just last year?

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  So my boyfriend has done it three times and I've crewed there a bunch. And I always told Chris, the race director, I, I'm not gonna run it. I don't run on the ri, road. I'm not a road runner. I'm not a road runner. And he always see me doing like flatter stuff and he'd be like, uh, wait, you just did this, or you just did that. And he was always trying to encourage me to do it. And then I was like, no, no, no. And then finally I was like, guess what? I'm gonna do it. So I did his whole series. So he has the Cape Fair, which is the 50 mile and the desert in, or not desert, on the beach in North Carolina. And then I did the Salt and Sea, which is a team race, and then did Badwater.

• 1:21:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  So it's called the Alter Cup. So I did that last year.

• 1:21:58Rich Roll?

  And Badwater is back to its original course, right?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, the only one year did they not have it, but they had

• 1:22:03Rich Roll?

  They lost their license to do

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  The start time's different. They don't start in the morning like they used to. They start at night, which is Great.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  It's much better.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  I think it's much easier because I've crewed when it used to be the old time and it's much harder.

• 1:22:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. I crewed, I crewed for Dean there a couple of years ago and at like two in the afternoon, you're like, what is happening?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  But we're all trained for it. So like when you're training, you know, even when I've crewed there, I've always trained, you know, ready for it. But when I got in, I definitely trained like, you know, full on clothing out in the heat of the day and I had no problems.

• 1:22:37Rich Roll?

  It was fine for you?

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to go back because I think I could push harder. So.

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  Did your, did your souls melt in that whole thing?

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  None of that. Mm-mm. None of that.

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, do you know Shannon Farrar-Greefer?

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  Yes, of course I do.

• 1:22:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she lives here. I see her on the trails all the time.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  I know and she's probably going to be mad that I'm here and I'm not stopping by and seeing her.

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  You should see her. She's a kick in the pants.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  I know, but I don't have time.

• 1:22:55Rich Roll?

  She's amazing. What she's been able to do and.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  You know, she's, she's battling some health challenges at the time.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  I mean, we've known each other for the same amount of time. Yeah.

• 1:23:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because she goes way back.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  We met at a 24 hour race and it was the same year she did her first 100 miler.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  We know each other. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time with her. She's supposed to be at Havelina this weekend, but she's something with her knee.

• 1:23:15Rich Roll?

  She keeps showing up. Um, you guys are the OGs.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Rich Roll?

  You know, going way back. So now when you show up, you're like a celebrity at these races.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting, but it's great. I mean, with the book, it's like so many people are coming up to me just saying how it touched them or inspired them and emails all the time and, you know, and that's why I keep going. It's like, you know, women are all, oh, I'm too old to do. It's like, no, you're my age. Why are you too old to do this? You're not too old to do anything. It's like, you can do anything you want at any age. And a lot of women are just starting to run in their 50s. So it's like, it gives them somebody to look at.

• 1:23:52Rich Roll?

  And you've been doing this for a long time and some of your biggest accomplishments are recent.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  I've always done crazy stuff.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  I know. And the book came out in March, May, like the spring, right?

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, May. Uh, Reborn on the Run.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Rich Roll?

  So Tom, I haven't read the book yet, but tell me, I mean, we're talking about all this stuff that I know is in the book.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Rich Roll?

  It's a autobiography, but what inspired you to write a book about all of this?

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  I have so many stories. So like I'd be out on runs with people and they're like, why don't you write a book? Why don't you write a book? You know, it was a constant thing. And so a literary agent from uh, New York, Carol Mann Agency contacted me and they said, Have you thought of writing a book? And I said, yeah, but I don't have time to write a book. I can record a book and then somebody can put it on paper for me. I I'm busy running all the time. So they said, well, we can help you do this. And so I said, all right. And so this guy, Dan, had written an article about me and I really liked his style. He came and followed me. He did all this research on me. And so he knew me really well. And I said, well, do I have to use one of your writers or can we use somebody else?

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  And she said, well, certainly can hire somebody else. You can hire somebody. She goes, but uh, tell me who you want and I'll contact them and have a chat with them. And so I said, here's the person and here's his contact. And they contacted him and then he got back to me and I, he goes, yeah, he goes, I've never written a book. He goes, I write, he writes for a newspaper and he's great at interviewing. So we decided that we would collaborate and we would work together and he'd be my writer. So we figured out the way we were gonna do it. I was gonna record my stories. We came up with like the format of the book. And then we would record like s- stories, like the chapters. And so in the beginning, we kind of started and we sent it, sent of it, some of it out and they're like, no, this is like an interview. You guys are like interviewing each other back and forth. So he was like, you gotta really flesh detail out.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  So I would go out on these runs and record, you know, run walk and record my whole story that I was talking about and and I would have to go back and I wouldn't even stop on the trail and just sit down and close my eyes when I was, you know, recording my chapter, just remembering in full detail things. And so that's how we did it. I recorded it, basically, and we, you know, by chapter by chapter, and it was a lot of work. It wasn't easy.

• 1:26:03Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  And so that's how we did it.

• 1:26:05Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  It was really cool, yeah.

• 1:26:07Rich Roll?

  So you've, uh, so congratulations.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's no small thing.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Rich Roll?

  So you've been kind of touring around.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, doing book signings and, you know, a lot of my races, I'm just doing book signings and, you know, in different, like, I'm gonna be in San Diego in December at Running Skirts to do a thing with them. And I did a bunch of the REIs in the Bay Area, so.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  I'm waiting till after the new year to start doing more stuff, because it's like, I'm, after all the running, just doing all those races. I'm like, I just want to have me time and be on the trail all by myself.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's a weird thing, like, your, your story's so different than mine, but like, I'm into ultras, I'm in recovery, I, I'm vegan, you know, like, what is it about? I mean, I need to get some tattoos, I guess. You have a lot of tattoos. That's my next venture, I suppose.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:26:56Rich Roll?

  But what do you think it is about, like, those three things that, I mean, there's so many, like, there's a lot of vegans in the ultra world. Like, I feel like.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  A lot more now.

• 1:27:04Rich Roll?

  That's the sport that really launched the idea that you could be an athlete and be vegan. Now you're seeing athletes in all different disciplines, but.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:27:12Rich Roll?

  It kind of started in this ultra world, maybe that's because of Scott Juric, I don't know, but.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was around before him.

• 1:27:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  So, but no, but, you know, I wasn't fast, or, you know, and that, he got us on the map, you know, for the vegans. And, you know, like I said, I'd been vegan for a long time, and it shows you, look, I'm not, I didn't waste away. I'm still going, um, I'm getting enough protein, I've been.

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  I mean, you're fifty-three and you just ran three two-hundred-mile-plus races in a period of ten weeks.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:40Rich Roll?

  It's insane.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  And so what, we can't do anything?

• 1:27:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you look amazing, so it's all working fine.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and I'm so happy with the, you know, with the social media showing these other athletes. Like, you see these even raw vegan bodybuilders, and it's like, no, why do you have to eat meat? Look at this guy, you look at him, and obviously, they know what they're doing. You're, you're getting the right amount of calories in food and building your body from there. So it's not, yeah, it's sad. I wish everybody could kind of get on board.

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  Well, it's changing, you know, it's growing and you know, awareness and I think social media has played a big part in that.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Which is really good, you know, documentaries and stuff and that's changing.

• 1:28:17Rich Roll?

  And people get angry, but then there there's a conversation that's happening.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  So there's a, there's a debate that's often healthy, sometimes not healthy.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think a lot of times when people are like overweight, they're like, oh, I don't want it. That's not good for you. It's because they're afraid. You know, they're, they have to face theirself. And it was funny because I was running with a, a guy at the race and he was like, most men that become vegan, they were overweight or something. And then they watch a documentary and then they get back in, you know, they get into this. It's like more women tend to be going into the veganism, but guys are like meat and you know, you're supposed to be the hunter kind of thing and, and they.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Well, there's different entry points for different people. You know, I think a lot of guys, yeah, they reach middle age and they feel lousy and they're overweight. I mean, that's my story. And then I'm like, I need to do something different. And now 12 years later, it's like about the environment and it's about, you know, factory farming and it's about ethics and all these things that I didn't care about.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:29:13Rich Roll?

  And actually were a turnoff at that time. Like, a lot of it is timing. People have to be in the right place in their life at the right time in order to receive a certain message, you know? I certainly would not have been able to hear it, you know, a year prior to where I was. And so, you know, I think, um, everybody has a role in how they advocate, you know, these lifestyle choices. And I think they're all appropriate because people are tuning into different frequencies.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Yep, I agree with you. A lot of people start as a diet and then their, their mindset, they're like, wait, and it goes a little further. And then you're more conscious of what's going on in the environment. And they start just using it as a diet, not really as a lifestyle. Because it is a lifestyle change.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  But then it expands. You got, you, you, you know, it's like you ran a 10K and now you're the ultra queen, you're the dirt diva. What does the dirt diva mean? What is that?

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  So that's a trauma. So I've had the Pacific Crest.

• 1:30:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. Cause then, explain how in ultras you, you get these nicknames.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Well, that's not from ultras. That's from, this is from fast packing and hiking. So, so when. You're doing like the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide, all long distance hikers, they don't use their real name. You become somebody else.

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  Why is that?

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  It's just the thing.

• 1:30:24Rich Roll?

  It's a tradition.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  So I wasn't even doing a long trail. I was doing the yo-yo on the JMT and I met a guy that was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. And I came running up the trail and he was like, oh, you know, it's filthy. It was like on my turnaround. And he goes, you look like a diva, you know, it was like colorful and but filthy. I hadn't showered in days, you know, I'm going on like 10 days and he goes, you look like a dirty diva. And I was like, what? And he goes, do you have a trail name? And I said, no. He goes, dirty diva. And I said, I don't like that. And he goes, dirt diva. And I go, oh, I like that. And so then we started talking and then he gave me his trail name and he told me he's like at the Pacific Crest Trail. And I was like, yeah, I want to do that one day. And so that kind of stuck. So I use that as my trail name because he gave it to me.

• 1:31:05Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  So that's kind of how it stuck.

• 1:31:07Rich Roll?

  And you've always had the flair for the color and all that.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  I love color.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  For people that are just listening to this on audio, it's like you've got, I don't know how many colors in your hair right now. You're wearing like

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Six.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  super cool clothes and you're known for showing up these races and you always have these, these like amazing outfits, usually running a skirt.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, always.

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  There's like 800 colors to you and rainbows and all kinds of things going on.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:31:30Rich Roll?

  You should have your own full line of your gear.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  I do, I would, I would love to. No, I am sponsored by people. I would love to make my own.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  They should, well, whoever's sponsoring you should let you design a line.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:31:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  If they're listening.

• 1:31:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if they're listening.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just love color. Color brings joy and happiness, I think. And I was in such a dark place for so long and even people in races, they said, if you can just stay there and run right in front of me this whole race, I'm going to finish because I'm going to be feeling good and happy. Cause you, you know, just seeing you in a race, people will say that. You came up at the right time. I was like feeling sad and you are just, you look happy. You're just happiness, the color.

• 1:32:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're always jumping up and down and smiling and, and like, but you must have your dark moments.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  During the races and in life in general.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  I was telling somebody in the two hundred, I'm like, fuck. Like, maybe a mountain lion will bite my leg and I'll have to stop so I don't have to quit, like, make an excuse to stop. Like, just, maybe something will happen and I have to save somebody's life and I'll be able to stop the race. I mean, you go, your mind is like, wacko out there, you know, and that's what I think, but then I go, no, knock it off. You know, just keep going, don't think that. So I always try to change that, but there's those points when you're like, I gotta be out here three more days, three days with no more sleep, you know, sleeping here or there, it's freezing out. I was wearing two pairs of pants at the last race, a Pulltek shirt, two puffy jackets, two, with hoods over my head, with a hat, with two pairs of gloves and hand warmers.

• 1:33:01Rich Roll?

  This is at Moab?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  That's how cold, and a mat thing up over my face. That is how cold I was at night, and I was just okay if I kept moving. Like, if I had to stop, it would have been way, it would have been a bad thing, cold, would have like, it was that bad, snow.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  But I feel like your thing is, you're having fun all the time. Like, you're doing this for fun, you're not here like, I'm gonna beat these people and I'm gonna be on a podium, like, you're there for the ride.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  I'm there to inspire other people, that's what I, I would say, you know, it's like, we need more people to inspire other people, and I mean, people are inspired by really fast people, but just me, I'm average and just been doing it and just do crazy things because I say I want to do something and I make it happen.

• 1:33:41Rich Roll?

  You know you're not average, right?

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  Well, I guess not.

• 1:33:43Rich Roll?

  You've done things no one's, no one's done, and you've had plenty of victories and all of that. But it's funny, because you, like, you've won races and you've done things that no one has ever done before, but you're also like, you can be a middle-of-the-packer person as well and be there with, you know, all kinds of people who

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't mind, as long as I finish, if I finish in last, I don't care. As long as they finish, and to me, I always look at that person, they were, you know, the last place, people were like 12 hours behind me at Moab, but it's like, those are the people, they're out there a long time, and so, they get through it too. So it's all up here that's pushing.

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  It's harder because imagine being out there for like a full day long.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  No, I didn't want to.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  It's like you see that, you see that at Badwater.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:23Rich Roll?

  You know, like you finish and then you go back down the mountain and you're in the hotel and then you go to dinner and then you go to sleep.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  And you wake up the next morning and people are still coming in.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  It's like unbelievable.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  It's true. Yeah.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  And that takes an extra level of like tenacity and focus and you know, I don't know. It's, it's, it's inspiring.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  It is. Well, you look at Shannon. I mean, one year she like, I was like, is she even gonna make it? Like two years ago was like questionable and I was like dang, you know, it was like two or three years ago when she finished last and she

• 1:34:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  made it. It's like wow. Yeah.

• 1:34:55Rich Roll?

  Amazing. So you've been in this game for a long time and the whole subculture and world of, of ultras has changed so dramatically. I would imagine there's a hardcore group of people who lament these changes and want it to be the way that it was. Yeah, like go back to the tent and all of that. Um, and yet, uh, now it's become, I don't know if it's fair to say mass participatory, but the number of, numbers of people and there's so many races.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  No of an ultra.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and more and more people are doing it. So how do you think about that growth?

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  I like it. I, you know, a lot of the old school guys are, I was talking to somebody last week at the race and he was like, wow, I don't have too many people. That's where I'm running the 200s. Well, yeah, if you want to be in a race where there's less people, you do the 200s. That's more on the edge now. That's the French people.

• 1:35:44Rich Roll?

  How many people are showing up at the 200s?

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  So let's see. That race had a hundred and I want to say like a hundred and eighty, a hundred and, it did sell. Tahoe sold out. Tahoe was like 200 and something. It sold out.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  And how many people DNF?

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  It's a high finishing rate. All the 200s, 80% finishing rate.

• 1:36:05Rich Roll?

  How are they vetting people for that? Or what do you, why do you think that is?

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Because you get more time. The cutoffs are not tight because she's allowing for sleep in the race. So it's not a stage race, but it's like a stage race.

• 1:36:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Cause it's a continuous clock running and there is plenty of time. So like the earlier cutoffs, uh, well, this race, it just seemed like, cause it's longer, that the, you know, you get more extended, but I think the first cutoff at mile. Thirty or no, it was like twenty, you, because it's so remote, she can't, doesn't have a lot of cutoffs in between because you can't get the people out of there, so you just keep going, but the, the first cutoff, you had to get to twenty miles, you had thirteen hours. Which is

• 1:36:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Totally doable. She makes it so it's like two and a half miles an hour.

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  To three, and that allows for sleep, so you could sleep every day for five hours if you wanted.

• 1:36:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  And still finish, that would be like at the back of the packers doing it, so.

• 1:36:59Rich Roll?

  And what does the sleep look like at the front of the pack?

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Uh, well Courtney, nothing, she takes like two hour nap breaks on, two minute nap breaks on the trail.

• 1:37:07Rich Roll?

  Two minutes.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  She, that she was telling me that at Tahoe, I go, how much did you sleep? Cause I go, I only got two hours sleep and I still took uh, ninety hours to finish, you know, because I was wobbling and just sitting down a lot at the aid stations and eating and just like trying to get myself to go because I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't. And she goes, oh, I probably slept about, I think she said twelve minutes total.

• 1:37:27Rich Roll?

  Twelve, so like six two-minute naps or something like that? It's unbelievable.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:37:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's super.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  And I go, I had two hours, which was not enough. I tried to have five hours total in a two hundred. In the first two of the Triple Crown, I only got two hours in and it was, the hallucinations were

• 1:37:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Out of control.

• 1:37:47Rich Roll?

  What are you seeing when you're hallucinating?

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Everything's a something, a tree is people, you know, it's just like a stick is a snake and it's like.

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  Does it happen during the day too, or only at night?

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  You see it in the day, but mostly at night and then you hear, I was getting audio stuff and I was like, huh? Nobody's around, there's people around me, no, they're not here. And at the end, it was just like, uh, everything was at the end of Bigfoot, that was the first time where I didn't get at least three, four, or five hours sleep in a race. And the walls were like, every rock was a painting, like somebody came out and like, I was like, wow, these people came out in this little town and they painted each rock with like a picture, a mural. I was like, this is really cool. And I would just be stumbling and falling asleep on my feet and. So at the end, I told my boyfriend, he paced me in and I said, did you see that like killer rock wall? And he saw like, what? Cause there was no rock. He goes, there was a rock wall. I go,

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  no, there was like all the, the paintings on it. And he goes, there's no paintings. I said, tomorrow, you need to drive me back over there. And we get there the next day and I'm like, nothing on there. I saw all these really cool paintings.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  And at Tahoe, the, I kept, so Truman was crewing. He was on the crew at Tahoe with my Pacers. And at the end, I was so out of it. I kept stopping and I would stop at a bush and start petting it. And I was like, ah, it's Truman. And I'm like, fuck, what am I doing? And I'd snap out of it, like knowing that, what are you doing? You're wandering to these bushes, petting bushes. And my Pacer was in front of me and she calls me sister. She's from Mexico. My friend Gabby, a Pacer at Badwater this year. And she goes, sister, what are you doing? And I'm like, nothing. And she's like, okay, keep coming. And then at Badwater, she had hallucinations and we had to push her hard because she barely, she was nearly cut off. And she kept saying, I see a Chinaman in a Chinese pointy hat. And so I kept going to the bushes. And at one point she goes, what are you doing,

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  sister? And I said, I don't see a Chinaman with a Chinese hat. She laughed. She goes, you're hallucinating.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  Somebody should do a book of like all the, all the hallucinations.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  They should, especially after Bigfoot.

• 1:39:50Rich Roll?

  Look into somebody's collective unconscious mind.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  I mean, after Moab, everybody has like a story, crazy stories. Like I saw sculptures of mountain lions out there out of the snow. I mean, it was just crazy. The people that-

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  It can't be good for you.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Well, no. And the, one of the women that was like, I think she was in like second or third van and she was doing the triple crown too, Fawn. And she had like major hallucinations where she laid down and stopped and everything was moving. She was in, trapped in this other world, she said. The race director had to come find her because we're all wearing spot devices. In order to send a search and rescue out, they couldn't get to us in time. And so the race director Candace, she always heads up a team like, okay, we know that's Fawn and she hasn't moved for seven hours. We got, I gotta go to her. I gotta find out what's going on. And so she went out to her and she was said she was trapped. She couldn't get going. She was in like this another world. She was so out of it. She hadn't slept.

• 1:40:45Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's why I try to sleep a little bit because I don't want to be there. I've gotten there.

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  I can't be good. I would imagine it pays dividend if you can force yourself to sleep.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  The way that you feel.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  But she sleeps on trail is what she does. And what happened is she went to lay down on the trail and she sat her light down and she couldn't find it in her gloves and it was freezing out there. So she couldn't move. She just, she would see headlights go by and she was trying to say stuff and couldn't get it out to people. Like they were not that far away from her, but nobody saw her because it was dark.

• 1:41:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's craziness.

• 1:41:18Rich Roll?

  So what's driving all of this? Like, what is it? What, what keeps you in it? Like you've done hundreds of these things. Like why are, how are you still enthusiastic about it? What are you trying to learn about yourself or prove to yourself?

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Challenge.

• 1:41:31Rich Roll?

  Is it just?

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  I just want to keep challenging myself as long as I can because I, I know I'm only here for this one time in my life. And it's like, I just enjoy being out there. I just enjoy the whole thing and the people you meet along the way. It's like you're a family, especially in the two hundreds, you gotta help each other. You connect, if you don't have Pacers or crew at night, you're like hooking up with another runner for safety purposes. Just keeping each other motivated and you learn everybody's story out there. It's like, we all have a story and it's really cool to share these things.

• 1:42:01Rich Roll?

  What do you think people don't understand about hundreds and two hundreds and these crazy ultra races?

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  They just think it's way too far and that people can't do that. That's just like, you know, it's unheard of. They don't believe that we can do this and they just think we're nuts. Yeah, they just think we're nuts.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  You know, and, and it's getting more common, especially now with the hundreds. Two hundreds are still a bit out there.

• 1:42:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  But I'm trying to bring everybody in. Anybody can do a two hundred. It's easier than a hundred.

• 1:42:30Rich Roll?

  Anybody can do a two hundred.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  I swear to God, it's easier than a hundred. And this is why.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  Because it's a trek.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  You get so much time. Yeah. So you get so much more time to finish and it's doable. And that's why the finishing rate is high. You could push yourself, you know, first one, go out and see how you do, but it's a matter of managing your sleep and managing your fuel because you're alone out there and you gotta be taking care of yourself. So you can't have a problem. You, you got 20 miles and it could take 10 hours to get into the next aid station. You better be damn well ready to take care of yourself.

• 1:43:00Rich Roll?

  I think people would be surprised at the sort of type of person that shows up at these races because I think if you don't know better, you imagine or you project this image of this super athlete and there are certainly those kinds of people, but in my experience, a lot of the people you're like, whoa, like you, they just look like

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Average.

• 1:43:21Rich Roll?

  Average, everyday people. They don't, they don't even necessarily look athletic. Like I just did a podcast with this guy, Sanjay Raval, who made this documentary about the 3100 self-transcendence run.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:35Rich Roll?

  You know about this? Where they go around the half mile block in Queens.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  That's nuts.

• 1:43:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's like 30, I don't know, 25 of them or whatever every year. And they literally run from 6:00 AM to midnight every day for like 52 days in a row until they've, whoever gets to 3100 miles first wins, literally around a city block.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Like the most, and then they switch directions each day or something like that. And you look at these people and you're like, you would never think like

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  They could do something like that.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they do. And it makes you, it really reframes how you think about sport and performance and extraordinary accomplishments.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's, and it's a mind thing. Like there, you have to have a strong mind to do a lot of this.

• 1:44:17Rich Roll?

  And how have you trained your mind? Like what is, what is your relationship with your mind? Because it is so mental.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:44:24Rich Roll?

  Like how have you gotten to this place where you can push through and do these things?

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Positive thinking and thinking of others that are not here or people that are injured or wanting to change places. You know, there's people out there that are sick, that have cancer, people I know, they, they would, they would trade in an instant to go out and do the triple crown and have me have their cancer. You know what I mean? It's like, you gotta do it for other people and, and you know, just do it for everybody that can't. And that's my big thing.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  So do you take like a, do you have like a mental image of an individual? Like when you hit that breaking point, you don't want to keep going? Like what gets you through?

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of times I run for people and a friend, Dennis O'Connor, just passed away and I saw him recently at Tahoe and he was out on a training run. I believe he was in France or the Alps somewhere, just out on business and he was out on a run and there was, I guess, a storm. I don't know the full thing, you know, I just, from what I read online. And he fell and he broke his arm and he didn't have a spot device, but he had his phone and he was able to send like a message.

• 1:45:24Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  And no, the search and rescue couldn't come out to him. The storm was too bad, so they found him a few days later dead.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, man.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  So, stuff like that. I'm like, he was doing what he loved. He was, everybody loved him in the Bay Area running community. Anybody they met, super nice guy. And so during, you know, the last two hundred, I just said, I'm doing this for Dennis. Dennis is with me and we're, you know, he's not here anymore to do it and there's no complaining for me. I'm doing what I love and he did what he love, did up until the end, but it's just still sad. Way to go to be by yourself and.

• 1:45:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  You know, so from hypothermia or whatever, he passed away because nobody could get to him.

• 1:46:01Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  So when you think of like the Triple Crown two hundred thing that you just did or the Double John Muir, whatever that's called, like, how do you, like, what does it mean to you?

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Just, you know, just showing other women. It's a lot about me inspiring other women to do things that they think they couldn't do. And I was always afraid to even be out in the wilderness. When I first started running, I was like, there's no way I would be out running on a training run, going past a certain point into the mountain. And now it's like, I'll just go wherever I want. I carry a spot device, safety, you know, out where I live.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  So the spot device is like a GPS beacon?

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  And I can hit the button if something happens to me.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Something happens and it alerts.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it goes right to my boyfriend to, directly to his phone when I hit that button. And then it goes to the search and rescue as well.

• 1:46:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  So that means I ain't coming out anywhere. But we're gonna get a satellite phone. So that way, if I'm ever out on a run, to let him know, like, okay, I'm gonna be three hours behind. I got stuck in a storm over here and I can't get over the pass yet, but I'm not needing a rescue, so I don't need to push that other button. But we're, because he had an accident in the wilderness and he didn't have a spot device. He broke his pelvis in five places, seven months ago.

• 1:47:11Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Out on a training run and he was taking pictures, standing on a ledge, the rock came down, he was going headfirst, he was able to twist his body around.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Whoa.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Landed on his pelvis and his phone was still up above him. He had to crawl to get his phone. He had no reception.

• 1:47:26Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  He had to crawl. He didn't know how far he was gonna have to go. He was, at the time, he didn't know how far, when she broke.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  To find service.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  To get service. Yeah. So he had to crawl one mile, took him four hours. It was getting dark. It was in February. He had no gear to get through the night. And had he not been calm and relaxed, like that's the kind of person he is. He could have died out there, but he was able to get reception. Luckily, you know, there was, for whatever reason, he got a little bit of reception, able to call. He called his work first because he's supposed to be flying that plane that flies people.

• 1:48:00Rich Roll?

  He's supposed to be the guy rescuing himself.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  So he called and he was like, got it. He goes, we're, I'm sending SAR where you, you know, he was able to tell him where he was at. And so the search and rescue came out to him and it still took him a while. It was another six miles to get him to the ambulance. So he was that far away from the vehicle that he would have not made it. There was no, he said he couldn't have made it pretty much any farther than he did. He was just trying to remain calm. He knew he was in a bad situation, but you just had to, you know, and he was basically scooting like for four, one mile, four hours scooting on your butt, like trying to not do anything to one side of you. So, and so they were able to take him to the hospital, x-rayed him, and then they were like, yeah, we're going to put you in our, put you in your plane that you're supposed to be flying and fly you to Reno to have surgery.

• 1:48:47Rich Roll?

  So now he's got a spot device.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  It's like ironic, but he's the guy who should know more than anybody how important that is, but it's like, it's like a lawyer being his own advocate.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and you, you know, it's like, he didn't really know and we didn't think, you know, he had just moved to Bishop and it's like, oh yeah. But we don't, and I wasn't even around. I was in, um, I was in Texas pacing at a hundred mile race. And then I get this rambling message. Oh, I tried to base jump off of a, of a, a mountain and I fell and I broke my pelvis. That's what I got. And he, that's the message he left me. He goes, I'm at the hospital. Click. Love you. I was like, what the fuck is this? And I like called him, what are you talking about? Oh, I fell. He goes, and he had hardly any reception back on his phone. He goes, I'm having surgery. And I'm like, wait, wait, what's happening? What's happening? But he's just that kind of guy. Like, don't worry about it. I'm cool.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  So he's still making a comeback.

• 1:49:38Rich Roll?

  It's super dangerous. Do you, are you familiar with what's been going on in Malibu Creek here? There's like, uh, there was, there was a murder and there's been a bunch of break-ins around here and they've just apprehended a guy who they're calling the, the Malibu State Park survivalist or something like that.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  Whoa, no, I haven't heard of that.

• 1:49:57Rich Roll?

  But there's like a guy who's been living out like the big, I don't, you, you've probably run out of creek, right? Yeah. I was just running there this morning. That's the local, that's where I go. Um, there was like a dad and his child who were camping in there, like, I don't know, eight or nine months ago, who got shot point blank. And there's been a couple of other weird things that have happened around here like, like a dead body discovered by the Hindu temple and they don't know if these things are related.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:22Rich Roll?

  And then a bunch of break-ins around here where uh, nothing's stolen, but they can tell, oh, somebody, you know, forced, forced entry, but the food, like they've eaten all the food.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Oh, just taking food, yeah.

• 1:50:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so it's like, oh, somebody's living in the woods, right?

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  So they just, there's been like this manhunt, like just like two weeks ago, there were like 12 cop cars and like those armored tank, like military LAPD vehicles and the helicopters. And they found this guy. I don't know that they've been able to legit, like, be able to prove that he's the guy behind all of this, but some guy's been living back out. And I mean, there's so much land, there's gotta be people like that all over the place.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Like where they've been bishoped, like, yeah, there's like.

• 1:51:04Rich Roll?

  These people off the grid that are.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  They could do it.

• 1:51:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  I mean, they can't go way up in the mountains in the winter because it's snowing.

• 1:51:11Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  But they can come in around town and there's so many off-road vehicle trails in bishop. Like I can run for days. I mean, we're working on making maybe a 200 mile loop down there too.

• 1:51:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? Like making your own trail?

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  No, I'm talking the race director trying to do a race out there.

• 1:51:27Rich Roll?

  What would you call it?

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Bishop 200.

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  You gotta name it after Truman, I think.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Nope, Bishop 200.

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  Um, well, I love the fact that, that you are this like strong, uh, you know, presence and, uh, and source of strength for so many women, you know, I think it's super important. And your story is like crazy cinematic. It's like, oh, you're working in a beauty parlor and you're not an athlete and you got all these tattoos and crazy hair and you're Goth, never had done anything and now you're like, you just crush it, you know, and you continue to crush it and you show up and you show up and you show up. And it's just, I think it's the, I think what speaks to me more than anything is like the spirit in which you do it. Like you're just, you're full of like good energy and happiness.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, I was negative for so long.

• 1:52:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  And I look back though, and people are like, would you change anything? And I said, no, because I wouldn't be who I am today.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Had, and had I not had to go through any of those experiences.

• 1:52:23Rich Roll?

  The darkness is the teacher.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, I wouldn't be sitting right here in front of you had I not been all of those things.

• 1:52:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So when people, I'm sure people email you or get in touch with you and say, um, I can't get off drugs, or I'm trying to get sober, you're inspiring me. Like, what do you, what do you usually try to share with those people?

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, try to tell them, go to AA or NA right off the bat, that I'm not a therapist, but I just, you know, I just say, if you just, you know, believe in yourself and start exercising, start eating right, you, you can do it, you know? And it's like, sure enough, months later, uh, people will message me back and say, thank you for just even saying anything to me, because I didn't think you were going to message me back. And I get that all the time. I'm like, why wouldn't I message you back? I mean, I, you get a lot of emails, I get a lot of emails, but I always try to at least give them a sentence of a, on a, a post, because that one person, you could be changing their life. And I learned that a long time ago, that I'm like, I need to, and especially those ones where you're like, ooh, there's, there's, you know, reaching out to me and I need to say something,

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  because who knows who they're not reaching out to.

• 1:53:27Rich Roll?

  And I find often that it's, it's not necessarily about the information. It's like, yeah, duh, like you need to go to an A meeting, or you need to re- raise your hand and ask for help, or you need to see a shrink, or you need to like, I think most people already know that.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Rich Roll?

  But it's, they want, they're like, they're, they are raising their hand to you.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:53:46Rich Roll?

  And it's the connection, it's the sense that they're being heard and they're being recognized. I think that is the most important thing.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  I, I agree with you, for sure.

• 1:53:55Rich Roll?

  And that I think can be transformative for people.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:53:59Rich Roll?

  Um, I think this is a really boring question, but I'm going to get killed if I don't ask it, which is, like, take me through a day in food. Like, what, how do you, how do you do all this stuff and do it on a vegan diet? What are you eating? What are you eating? Typical day, what are you eating when you're, you know, what are you eating, what do you bring with you when you're training? And like, how do you fuel on these races?

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  So usually, like, morning, it's either like,

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  I usually do um like a smoothie or do some yogurt with pinoli on it and just like

• 1:54:31Rich Roll?

  Back to the porn to run thing.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:54:35Rich Roll?

  Explain what that is for people that don't know.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  So it's uh what is it? It's uh what they eat to the tarahumara eat in uh the Copper Canyon in Mexico. And so it's just a grain that they use that has all this protein and supposed to have all these vitamins in it. And it tastes actually good. And I like adding it to my yogurt just to add some more flavor and maybe a little protein. And usually that's all I have in the morning. And a lot of times I don't even eat before I run in the morning if I'm just going out for a short run until I come back like at eleven. I'm not a big breakfast person. And then I'll have like for lunch, I'll just take like a Beyond Meat burger patty and a bowl of fruit and just eat the patty bites off and then some fruit. And then for dinner's my main meal. So I just do like a big salad with a hodgepodge of everything in it. You

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  know, some, you know, Beyond Meat burger, you know, I use like sriracha, vegan mayo, you know, like spicy stuff, you know, and just every vegetable. And I do a lot of cauliflower rice. I like that.

• 1:55:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  That's one of my favorite things.

• 1:55:34Rich Roll?

  So somebody's listening to this like, alright, I know, it's basic. That's why it's like, this is kind of a boring ques- I I would, I suspected that your answer would be something like that. But I think a lot of people would be surpr- they're like, well, how is that? That doesn't seem like very much. Like, how is that powering this person through a hundred and twenty miles of running every week?

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  It does. If you're eating, well, I mean, I eat other stuff like when I'm really hungry, you know, add more almond butter into like a smoothie and just more calories. But I'm getting clearly enough because I'm not, you know, if I start feeling like I'm losing weight, then I add, start adding more calories. But I'm just not a huge like eating tons of food all the time. And from when I'm out running, I always bring stuff. So

• 1:56:12Rich Roll?

  What are you bringing when you're?

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Almond butter packets, like packets of almond butter. And this one company I just found makes like a bigger one. So it's like five servings. So I can use that.

• 1:56:21Rich Roll?

  What company is that?

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  It's uh Trell Butter. And they only have one vegan formula. So I'm gonna try to email them and say, can we make the coffee one with vegan for the two hundreds? So I use that actually during the two hundred mile race and it was great because in between those aid stations, when I had like five hours to go, that

• 1:56:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  thing powered me and Muir Energy, which is a great company, they're local here and they have like four to five ingredients. And so it's thicker than a regular gel and it's almost like a consistency of an almond butter and they're like about a hundred and eighty calories per little packet of gel. So I use that in baby food packets and that's pretty much what I eat. And then even in these two hundred mile races in between, that's all I'm eating. But at the race aid stations, I sit down and they make, that's one thing unique about between a hundred and a two hundred and a hundred mile race, I'm not eating that much. You have to sit down because you gotta go twenty miles again. So they have a full vegan gluten free selection there for you.

• 1:57:17Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have the bin, the gluten free vegan bin. And there's a lot of people, you know.

• 1:57:22Rich Roll?

  Gluten free vegans.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Even my, one of my Pacers is not even a vegan, but he was trying to eat more vegan when he was out there with us and he was eating the gluten free and he goes, this stuff's good. So they whip up you a patty right there. You have to wait for, you know, because they're making it to order because, you know, not coming in like in a hundred mile race, a bunch of people, you gotta leave food out. So they cook it up, you sit there and they even had gluten free vegan bread. I was like, what? You know?

• 1:57:44Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  So I would sit down and eat tons and people are like, wow, how can you eat that much? So I'd have lentil soup, then I had the patty, then I would have the bread and then I would have hash browns and then I would go again.

• 1:57:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  So that was a lot of fuel. And then in between, I would do the almond butter and the Muir Energy and the baby foods.

• 1:58:02Rich Roll?

  Do you do real foods too? Like dates and bananas?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Dates. I don't do a lot of bananas. I love, yeah, they have sweet potatoes out there, but dates, I carry those all the time.

• 1:58:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Like dates are like one of my favorite things for training because bars, you know, it's like they have so many different things. I mean, they even have raw foods bars, but I'd rather just have dates for the sweetness and the carbohydrates.

• 1:58:22Rich Roll?

  Like the per, their nature's gel.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  They are. When I did the Marathon de Saab in Morocco many years ago, the stage race, I noticed like the guys that were winning these races, I'm like, how do they, their packs look so small? It's because they look at your calorie content and you have to have a certain amount a day. They just had bags of dates and that was the amount of calories, you know, for the entire race because it's three dates is like a hundred and twenty calories. So I'm like, shit, that's how they got away with this. I'm like taking wrappers off my bars to make it lighter in the bag and you know, whatever else.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  Have you, you just did that race once?

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Rich Roll?

  You did.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  A long time ago. I'd like to do it again, but it's just so crazy now. That's a crazy race with like thousand people and just like

• 1:59:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Exploded.

• 1:59:04Rich Roll?

  Um, I just had Fiona Oakes on.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's really cool.

• 1:59:08Rich Roll?

  Documentary about.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  She's amazing. She's so funny.

• 1:59:11Rich Roll?

  I know. She's very funny.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  I'm like, what?

• 1:59:13Rich Roll?

  She's like really serious, but like really funny in a self-deprecating way.

• 1:59:18Speaker 01

  You're like, you're amazing. But she's like, oh no, I don't like running.

• 1:59:21Rich Roll?

  She's like, I don't like it. I'm not very good at it. I'm a shit runner.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  So it's like, how? How could you? Yeah. She's, I want to see her documentary.

• 1:59:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you should watch it. It's good.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  She's really, she's a cool lady.

• 1:59:33Rich Roll?

  Um, I think it's worth noting also, like just on the calorie thing and like how you eat every day, that you've been doing this so long, when, when you go out on your daily 20 mile run or whatever it is that you're doing, that's just not that, it's, it can't be that taxing. Like people think, oh my God, 20 miles, like I'd be in bed for a week after that.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  No, I'm not running like an eight minute mile.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Taking pictures and selfies and making videos.

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  Who is, do you do, who's taking all these pictures?

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Me.

• 2:00:03Rich Roll?

  So how are you doing that when you're like facing? Oh, you do? Okay.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  And I have a little tripod I carry.

• 2:00:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do?

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  And so in my video ones, I have a little button, so I set it up and then got to do the dance videos.

• 2:00:16Rich Roll?

  Tricks of the trade.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm good. I know people are like, who follows you? Truman can't be doing that.

• 2:00:21Rich Roll?

  I know, because I was like, somebody's taking photos, because their photos are always really great.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  You don't run by yourself? I'm like, of course I do. This is all me.

• 2:00:27Rich Roll?

  iPhone or like cellphone?

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  iPhone.

• 2:00:29Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:00:30Rich Roll?

  No excuses.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  And that makes people smile too, because they're like, oh, we look forward to seeing these funny videos that you do, your music videos. And it just gets people out the door because they're like, oh shit, like she's having fun. Okay, we're going to go run today.

• 2:00:42Rich Roll?

  Right. It makes it less intimidating.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:44Rich Roll?

  You know, you're like, I'm going to run this and it's super scary. You're like, no, I'm out with Truman and he's wearing ski, ski goggles.

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  And an outfit.

• 2:00:53Rich Roll?

  What is happening here? It looks like, I mean, sometimes it looks like, um. No, it looks like, like, uh, you're, you're like, are you on the set of Mad Max? Like it's, there's something post-apocalyptic about the whole thing.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Poor Truman.

• 2:01:08Rich Roll?

  I know. So what are you, now you've done these two, these three 200s, like what, what's next? Do you just go right into the next race or?

• 2:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had in between 11 day break for my next 100 mile.

• 2:01:19Rich Roll?

  11 days.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  And I, and I'm like, I want to do it, you know, but I'm going for my 10th at Havelina 100. And last year I had, did Moab 240, cause that was the first year they had it. And 11 days later did the 100 mile and I'm like, never again, never again. And then I'm like, oh crap, I have to, cause I'm going for number 10 now. So.

• 2:01:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:39Rich Roll?

  So that's coming up when?

• 2:01:41Speaker 01

  It's, uh, next Friday or Saturday.

• 2:01:43Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  But I love that race, cause you, I wear a costume every year. It's always right before Halloween. It's like a big party. If I was ever to suggest somebody to do their first 100, that want to be kinda low key about it. It's loop, it's 20 mile loops. Do Havelina, it's like a party.

• 2:01:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  And that what you don't feel.

• 2:02:00Rich Roll?

  Arizona desert.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Uh huh. It's hot, it's gonna be warm probably, but I've been looking at the temperature, doesn't look much over 80, so keeping my fingers crossed.

• 2:02:07Rich Roll?

  What's the costume you're gonna wear?

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be, uh, uh, what is, what is the name? Oh my God. Uh.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  They, from Alice in Wonderland, uh, the, the rabbit. What is his name?

• 2:02:22Rich Roll?

  I'm blanking right now.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  I know, me too. And I have the costume sitting right at home. Well, I was gonna be her and then I was like, no, I gotta be the, the white rat, Mad Hatter. Thank you.

• 2:02:32Rich Roll?

  The Mad Hatter. Yes, of course. My daughter was just the Mad Hatter in a play and I can't.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Well, I have had so many costumes every year. I'm something. So yeah, I got this like dialed in costume.

• 2:02:41Rich Roll?

  We're both under 50s. It's like, it's okay. We can have a brain.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  I know, we can have a brain. I ran 240 miles.

• 2:02:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, come on.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Come on, my brain's dead. So yeah, and I just have to finish making my little hat and I'm all set. The costume's ready to roll.

• 2:02:54Rich Roll?

  Like the full black top hat with the playing cards in it or?

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm gonna do that and I have to make like a little watch on there and I have the little rabbit ears on there. And I'm carrying a little rabbit. I was carrying like a prop, so I'll pin it to the back of my pack, the white rabbit.

• 2:03:07Rich Roll?

  It's just getting more surreal.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. You'll see the costume. You'll love it.

• 2:03:11Rich Roll?

  All right, we gotta wind this down, but, uh, I wanna end this with some, some inspiration for people that, that are feeling stuck in their life or feeling like.

• 2:03:23Rich Roll?

  Maybe that ship has sailed. You know, I think it's so inspiring what you do and, and the way that you do it. It just makes, like I said, it makes people feel comfortable taking a leap of faith or getting outside their comfort zone. Because you make it fun and you make it accessible. So if somebody's sitting on the couch or they're rubber banding in and out of whatever lifestyle habit they're trying to adopt, like, how can, how can we get people to understand that the things that you do are not necessarily unique to you, but available to everybody?

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  They gotta get out and just find their passion and just have fun. Don't, don't go into trying to be so serious. Maybe if you want to start running or you want to get outdoors to make yourself feel better, just start by hiking. Just get out and breathe the air. Go out for a walk and look at the flowers, look at the plants, look at the trees. I mean, that, to me, just getting out is the first step. You don't have to become a runner or do 100 miles or do whatever. But get out and then see what the world has to offer and change, of course, change the way you eat. Eating healthy definitely will help your mindset too. And I think that's a big part of when I got into recovery, that it did help me, was eating healthy, you know, not eating the junk and the toxic stuff and just getting

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  rid of toxicity in my life. So just get out and enjoy it and just find your passion.

• 2:04:47Rich Roll?

  These things are cumulative. You know, they're not, they're not unrelated to each other. You start taking care of yourself in one way and then you're more, more encouraged to take care of yourself in other ways. And when I look at your story and your life and your trajectory, I mean, it's so dramatic and crazy that you went from this place of where you were to what you're doing now and you're just continuing to crush it. You know, it's just, it's so awesome.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  I was meant to be on this planet for a reason and to inspire others. I always say, you know, it's like I, you know, tried to commit suicide and it's like it didn't happen because I'm supposed to be here, so.

• 2:05:24Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm glad you are.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:05:25Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, uh, the book is called Reborn on the Run. Um, are you out like doing talks? So like, is there a way for people to, if they want to come and?

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, they can actually, if they want to even get a copy, they can get it on Amazon or they can actually email me. Um, my website's almost finished, but they can email me at [email protected] if they want an autograph copy and I can send that out to them and they can get it through that way. But my website will be up and they'll be able to order it through there.

• 2:05:55Rich Roll?

  You get your website done when your book comes out.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  I, it's.

• 2:05:59Rich Roll?

  You're too busy running to 600,000 miles.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  I'm like trying to find somebody to do it for me and he came up with this great one.

• 2:06:05Rich Roll?

  He had to base jump off a rock.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So he just did it while I was out running the 240. He's like finally had time to sit down because he's working two jobs and he's a busybody guy and running and so, but yeah, so it's finally getting done. But I'll be, um, my next book signing is in December 1st at, uh, Running Skirts in San Diego and I'll be at Havelina doing a book signing. I'll be selling my book there at the 100 Mileer next week. So.

• 2:06:29Rich Roll?

  Awesome. And, uh, if people want to connect with you online, you're at dirtdiva3333. So how many threes?

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  Three threes.

• 2:06:38Rich Roll?

  What's the deal with that?

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  I'm just obsessed with the number three. And three threes is like way more luckier. Like it's a better number and it's like a positive number. If you look up 333, it's a very like the angels and positive things are always around you when you have that number. And I see that when I look at my watch or my phone, a few times a week I see 333 or I'll see a car go by or I'll see those numbers. Looking at the watch. It's not 333.

• 2:07:01Rich Roll?

  What time is it right now? Wouldn't it be, oh my God, you know what? It's like five of three right now. If it was 333 right now, I would, I might freak out.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, I'm just obsessed with that number three.

• 2:07:13Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And then Instagram.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Oh, Instagram is dirtdiva333 and Twitter is dirtdiva33. I think that for some reason I couldn't get the 33. And then Facebook, I have an athlete page because my regular page is full, which is like whatever. So I have an athlete page and Truman has a page too.

• 2:07:30Rich Roll?

  Truman, does Truman have his own Instagram?

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  He doesn't because like just keep us together. It's too complicated. His little paws can't really use the phone that well. So. We just let him have a Facebook app. He has a Facebook athlete page.

• 2:07:42Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Truman has a lot of personality. I'm telling you, if you've never gotten a dose of Truman, you're in for a treat.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  Most everybody has seen him around and they like their selfies. Like my poor crew guy, he was like at one of the aid stations and all you see is these pictures of his arm and Truman. Like everybody's taking pictures of Truman. He goes, "My arm got really popular, my arm."

• 2:08:04Rich Roll?

  Oh my God. Awesome. Well, you're super inspiring. I just want to recognize you for all the amazing work that you're doing.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:08:13Rich Roll?

  It's really cool to follow your path and all your racing and all the fun stuff that you do and the spirit in which you do it. And I just want you to keep doing it.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  Thank you. I will. I'll keep going.

• 2:08:23Rich Roll?

  I appreciate you coming by and talking to me today.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  I appreciate it too. Thank you for having me.

• 2:08:25Rich Roll?

  So come back anytime.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  I will. And I'll bring Truman.

• 2:08:28Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to bring Truman. Truman can do an interview.

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  Truman would be great. Especially on the video.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:36Rich Roll?

  All right, Catra. Thank you so much.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:08:38Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace.

• 2:08:43Rich Roll?

  Infectious, right? That's the word that comes to mind. Infectious. She's such a force of nature. I absolutely love that woman. Hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed having it. For more on Catra, please check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com to take your experience beyond the earbuds. And do me a favor and let Catra know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts with her directly. You can find her on Twitter at Dirt Diva 33 and on Instagram at Dirt Diva 333. And don't forget to pick up her new book, Reborn on the Run. If you're looking for nutritional guidance, check out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com. There you will find thousands of plant-based recipes,

• 2:09:24Rich Roll?

  delicious, nutritious, easy to prepare, all customized based on your personal preferences with unlimited grocery lists and even grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas. We have amazing customer support and we now have gift cards so you can gift this for the holidays. Makes a great gift. And it's all available for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. So again, click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website or go to meals.ritual.com. If you would like to support the work we do here on the podcast, there are a couple of simple ways to do it. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Simple as that. Share the show on social media or in front of people at the dinner table when you're enjoying a holiday meal. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube,

• 2:10:07Rich Roll?

  Google Podcasts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you can also support us financially on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. I'm giving him more and more things to do on the show. So I think the catch-all phrase for him right now is quote unquote producer, and he's doing a great job. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing the podcast and editing it and coming up with all the graphics in assistance with Jessica Miranda. Ally Rogers for snapping a few portraits of this episode. David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here next week for a deep dive

• 2:10:51Rich Roll?

  into health and wellness and nutrition with none other than plant-based nutrition legend, Dean Ornish. Dr. Dean Ornish and his wife, Anne Ornish. It's a great one. You guys are going to love it. But until then, peace. Plants running. Namaste.