Welcome And Life Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to Running with Problems. My name is John Eisen. And I'm Miranda Williamson. Running with Problems is a podcast that explores the problems encountered during a life in running. Today on the podcast, we have Andrea Fuchs who discusses her experiences with long COVID, which I am particularly excited for because I am also experiencing symptoms from long COVID. But before we get to that, Miranda, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 0:35

I'm doing well. I just got invited to be a guest on another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Is it a running podcast? Are you cheating on me?

SPEAKER_04 0:43

It is not a running podcast. We'll be talking about social impact careers. So if you're all are interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Oh yeah, that's a that's like a side chick. That's fine.

SPEAKER_04 0:56

Yeah, totally unrelated. But how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I'm doing pretty well. I'm treating my currently treating a sinus infection that apparently I've had for a very long time. I suspect sometime after I got COVID last year, I developed the sinus infection and it has hampered my breathing for probably about a year. Um, I really just haven't had a run where I haven't had to like hawk a loogie or like blow out my nose, like in so, so, so, so long. I can't even remember the last time I took like, I don't know, multiple breaths out of my nose. It's crazy. So really excited to be treating this now. I think that dropping out of Cocodona was the right call. It was a very difficult call, but I think it's the right call. Like it was hard for me to do that. I felt very embarrassed about, you know, especially as a how I present on this podcast, right? Like I am the guy who does all of the hard shit. I do, I do the big races. I sign up for a race, I pick the longest distance and I got my way through it. But I think I just had to admit at some point, like, you know, that's I can't live all of my life like that. And right now is a time for recovery. And then I can get right back to it when I'm feeling healthy and full in my body. And I'm looking forward to that. And for the first time in a very long time, I have some hope.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

I'm really glad you shared that on the pod. I think that'll resonate with a lot of people, and particularly with this topic that we're about to explore with Andrea.

Long COVID For Athletes

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah, long COVID is just something that we don't we don't really want to admit exists. Like you have infections, of course, like we're human, we have infections, attacks on our system, and then we fight them off, takes a week or two weeks. And long COVID is or long uh long and effects from any viral infection have been around for a long time, but they're they're very subtle. Yeah, they're not not they're not as well understood. Um, you know, they they are technically, you know, they're understood in some context by the medical system, but like even just to like acknowledge that one, like that I have it took me many, many months, you know, much longer than it took Andrea. Andrea was much faster on it. And I think that that like even just understanding, oh, this is what I have, and getting help diagnosing it and figuring out what version of it, because it it presents in so many different ways and so many different symptoms for different people, that it's just it's very hard. It's like a grouping, a syndrome of symptoms, and it can affect athletes a lot without them presenting like other people. So long COVID in a lot of people can can present as like being completely bedridden post-COVID, right? But for an athlete, it might present as what I'm experiencing, which is just suppressed capability, suppressed performance, unexplained, suppressed performance. And if I go to a normal doctor, there's a good chance that they would just say, you're getting older.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Yeah. Or they'll say, like, you you aren't that diminished, you just ran 100K.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I ran 115 miles on in or in the midst of like the full long COVID effect.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

I didn't do it well.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

But like You were about to say I didn't do it well, but Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I mean, I didn't do it at the standard I set for my own body, right? Like the what I expect my body to be able to output when it is peak performance. That's key. Right? Like we measure ourselves as runners. We all measure ourselves. We look at what we've done in the past and we expect similar in the future. And it's very difficult to understand, like to acknowledge like age-related decline. But to have non-age-related decline is completely disconcerting. And for me, I wanted to ignore it for so long. I wanted to just say, no, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing, and my body will catch up. And it did to some extent.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

But it didn't come back to 100%, and that's where I'm at right now.

SPEAKER_04 5:29

And when I was doing research for this conversation, I tried to find um journal articles and scientific studies on long COVID in athletes. And the only like recent reliable study I could identify was on um football players.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Okay. And the Is this American football?

SPEAKER_04 5:52

Yeah.

unknown 5:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 5:54

And um it was interesting because they said in this in the article that I couldn't get the entirety of it because it was behind a paywall, of course. Um, but in the synopsis of it, that it said that three to seventeen percent of athletes who experience COVID have lasting long-term effects.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

Three to seventeen percent.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

If you take the high-end, that's basically like one in six.

SPEAKER_04 6:26

People who have COVID then experience long-term effects.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 6:33

Yeah, and they were measuring everything from these athletes, but they had like strong measurements prior, which is what a lot of us as mid-pack endurance athletes lack a lot of that like statistical data.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

No, I was able to use my own that's right.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Yeah, you were. I don't measure my heart rate when I run.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Oh. Yeah, I've I mean, I've worn a heart rate measuring watch. And I think on my skin, a wristwatch does capture heart rate well, uh, at least on the average. Some people's skin, you can't trust a wristbound heart rate. And therefore, their data, if they're not wearing another heart rate monitor, would be hard to use. But for my skin, like uh I have good width uh like uh wrists and uh and and there's quite a bit of quite a few arteries right there that are pop out of my skin. So I think I usually feel like the wristbound heart rate monitors are like okay, at least on average, not like instantaneous. The instantaneous readings are not very trustworthy. So I typically wear a uh I wear the Koros armband. I I've also worn one of the polar uh like uh mid-chest bands, but those can chafe quite a bit. So I stopped wearing those. But anyway, yeah, so like because I have more heart rate data. Now I've never looked at my data. Like, I mean, I look at it like I look at it right after my run, and I'm like, I'm done. But I don't track like every single aspect of my life based on data. Right. But when it came to acknowledging, hey, do I actually am I imagining that I'm just slow? Have I always been this slow? I went to my data and I exported it all from Strava, which you can do. It takes like a few hours, and then they email you the whole package. And I downloaded it and I ran some testing. And you can clearly see statistically significant evidence that I was running slower. And then you can break it down by heart rate zone, and you can see that I was running slower at every heart rate zone uh above two, right? Two is like easy runs, and then three, four, five is where your heart rate really gets up. And all those heart rate zones, I saw a significant decline. So I mean, you say that there's less data, but every time you put that you upload a Strava, that's data that you can access later to do this kind of analysis. To uh, you know, you just need enough you just need enough recordings.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

Well, I I think I'm not inaccurate in saying that a professional football athlete, they're not gonna have like every data point imaginable on that athlete. And while you have Strava, yes, that's helpful. It's not as many data points as these professional football players have.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

They do measure their like very specific sprint times uh and other random things from the combine. Have you ever looked at the exercises they do at the combine? It seems so insane. Like they have to like dodge some cones and then do a push-up and then push over a bag. I mean, I get it all emulates the like what they do on the football field, but it looks kind of dumb, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 9:53

Oh my gosh. We're gonna make everyone mad now.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

I'm just saying the combine is a little comical. Like the we're measuring all these kids on whether they're on how fast they run 40 meters, yards, maybe. Maybe they've run yards. It's probably yards. All right.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Okay, okay. Long COVID. This episode. This episode's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, it's really good. It's our first recording in 2026.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

We've taken a break.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Yeah, we had stacked up a bunch of episodes, and then of course, you guys have noticed that we had a bit of a break um before the previous episode. But yeah, we're recording again. We got another episode recording next week. Um, so yeah, we're back at it making content. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. I really enjoyed it because obviously it's close to home. It's something I'm going through like right now. But Andrea's experience is very different than mine. And it's really nice to hear a different perspective. She attacks it differently, she took it more seriously. Uh, and and uh she has had a bit of a relapse, which is very unfortunate.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Yeah. And we hope she gets better and is back out there running. Oh, she has been dabbling, but we want to see her out there.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah. And I want to be out there.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

Yeah. So enjoy this episode with Andrea.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah, without further ado.

Andrea Joins The Conversation

SPEAKER_04 11:29

Enjoy. Andrea, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

Thank you. I'm really I'm really stoked to be here. I think it's really nice to get to know you two and yeah, I guess get to share my own point or perspective on the world.

SPEAKER_04 11:53

So I was so looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:55

I was so excited when you reached out because today we're going to be talking about long COVID. Spoiler alert for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

We'll have already spoiled it in the intro.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Probably. Yeah. So I've been trying to get someone on the podcast to talk about this. And it's been it's been challenging to find someone who is open and willing to talk about it. And I think one reason it's been challenging is because people going through it don't quite understand it themselves yet. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

So I'm really I'll put my hand up in that bucket of someone, of someone like going through it. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm going through long COVID and and I do not understand the form that it's taking. I don't understand like I'm in the middle of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And that makes me, I'd say, less willing to just talk about it as an official thing because there's less there's less of a diagnosis, there's less of an understanding. So this is so I think from my perspective, I'm really excited to hear what you're going through and maybe connect a little.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

I think absolutely. I mean I'm sure you've heard you've already heard a lot, like, but you look fine.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, right? Oh, and and I I finished ultras while going through this, but that is not the same as like being healthy.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

No, no. And and that is one of the reasons actually that that I I reached out to to you, and I I'd love to reach out to other podcasts too to do this. Is like I have become a little bit of like an advocate, but I've like, I want more people to understand that yes, there are people who are totally disabled by long COVID. And those are the people that that I encounter a lot, like on Reddit groups and Facebook groups. And and there's so many of them out there, people who are literally are bedridden from this, um, in a wheelchair. And but there also are many, and maybe many who don't even know that whatever's going on with them isn't just aging, isn't just overtraining, that there's other stuff going on. And so I want there to be more awareness around that.

Andrea’s Ultrarunning Background

SPEAKER_04 14:10

Absolutely. But before we dive into all of that, I'd love to take a step back and just learn a little bit more about who you are and who you are as a runner. I stalked you a little bit, and you have quite the roster of races up there on Ultra Sign Up.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Uh I've got some of the I yeah. I managed to luck out on the whole getting the hard rock thing and the opposite with West. No. Well, but it was close.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

It was close.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Um that actually was like a really weird, like selfish desire I had at one point was for it to be my first hundred finish and then finish Leadville and have them kind of do that announcing thing, and like her first finish was hard rock this summer. Didn't happen that way. I I did not finish hard rock multiple times before I did finish it, but I was so early in the process that I there was no lottery, and um everything was different. Everything was different. I started going up to Silverton in 1998 and started being involved in in the organization of the run. I was on the board for 20 years.

unknown 15:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

How'd you hear about it? Um, I lived in New Mexico, and so a ton of people or related to hard rock live in Los Alamos and and even Albuquerque. So so there it was around. And I was a high school cross-country runner, college cross-country runner, and after that I didn't know what to do because I didn't know about any any of this stuff. And so I was like, well, I guess I'll train for a marathon because I'm not very fast, but I'm I'm okay. Like I'm like, if I'm doing well, I'm like front of the middle of the pack. Yeah, you know, something like that.

SPEAKER_04 16:01

Um I could tell from all your ultra-side-note numbers, you were like you were up there.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

And and I was slower in the beginning because I didn't know a lot of stuff that I know now, but um yeah, I did cross country and then I was training for like the Chicago Marathon in '97, um, when I was 23. And and then I but I was also on an email list about running. Um back when like you would get your distribution list through email. We're still on one.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Oh, yeah, which one? The Boulder Trail Runners still operates as an email list. It's so amazing. It confuses young people. They come to me and they're like, I couldn't sign up. I don't know how.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. So I was on one called the Dead Runner Society and and then another one called Ultra List, which is was like a spin-off. And I think I was on the Ultra List because they talk a lot about trail. And so I was like, Wow, I had this great training run. It was like eight or nine miles on trail, and and I was talking about getting ready for that marathon. And then someone, I still wish I knew who it was, but someone responded to my email and they said, Why don't you just do a trail 50k? And I was like, a what? But wait, what? I had no idea. Um, but at that time, there were like 1500 milers in the US. Like now there's 300. So it was like getting to know information was almost entirely word of mouth. You could run with people, or at least very little energy. Minimal. Yeah, minimal. Yeah. Like you still had to mail checks in to sign up for races and mail in a paper entry form and all that's, or you could just show up the day of with cash, and they're like, Yeah, sure. I think that's how I ran Lake City the first time, was not San Juan Solstice.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

I thought you've done that one a couple of times.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah, that's a brutal race. Isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 17:55

That was my fit first 50 miler.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah. I was I I took like 16 hours, I think both times I did it. So it's there's a lot going on in that course.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Um it's easier now that it's hot all the time. There's less snow.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

I I will never have a good reaction to that comment.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

I'm not even a skier and I'm like, I want more snow.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Oh, this year has been so little snow. The salmon's already melting out.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Dang. No derailing.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

No, it's fine. Hopefully, hopefully it's a little bit more than a little bit. So yeah, I I ditched all the marathon stuff um and just started doing ultras, and I was I was doing just enough mileage to get by. So I like I would finish back of the pack. I just like hang out and talk to people. I I didn't consider it racing.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Um, so I kind of You were just out for an adventure.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, yeah. And I'm like mildly competitive. So I like looking back and I'm like, wow, I qu I wasted, quote unquote, I wasted like all my 20s, all my 30s on just like getting it done and fighting cutoffs. And um now I'm know so much more. But so I just did that, yes. And I had my first hundred, I sleep was Havelina. The first I actually finished. And um, and then I had two hard rock finishes, eventually came back for a third, failed, and then finally did come back for the third 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And the third was that was uh pretty close to the wire, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

It was. I was living in LA at the time, whereas before I'd been living at 7,000 feet. So I was like, ah, you know, I got experience, it'll be fine. And it was brutal. Um like physically I was okay, but I was just slow.

SPEAKER_04 19:47

So I uh I've run the hard rock course. The soft rock you did. Yeah, over multiple days, and my San Diego girlfriends wanted to do it with me, and I was like, Yeah, I don't know how you could even prepare living in Southern California for that.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Heat training, ironically. Yeah. To get to get your blood volume up. Yeah, that's that's like the fake, fake altitude training.

SPEAKER_04 20:14

And you have done some heat training. You ran San Diego 100 three times?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

I love that race. Yeah. I don't know if I do Badwater, but I found that I'm okay at in hotter temperatures. I've done Angeles Crest. Me too. Yeah. Um, highly recommend that race, actually. Angeles Crest. It's great people.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Have you seen the new San Diego 100 course?

SPEAKER_02 20:35

I have not. Is it to is it all different?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

It's different. Yeah. They instead of being more like an out and back, it's now more like a loop. Oh. And they don't have the out and back to like sip it's flat into the desert.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

That's weird because I think when I did it, there was only a tiny little out and back. It was mostly a loop.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

It was mostly a loop when you did it. Oh, wow. So yeah, it's changed over the years then.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Okay, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Because the previous incarnation was mostly out and back on the PCT. Okay. With some extra loops on and on. And now it's back to being a full loop. I wonder if it we should.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Maybe they had to change it for a minute for something.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Yeah. Sometimes permitting can do that. And so yeah. So I fell into like this whole this crowd of people, um, and still really good friends with a lot of people I've known for I guess almost 30 years now. Um yeah, got involved with hard rock and just kind of slowly start accumulating finishes. And then in my mid-30s, I was like, you know, maybe I do want to do a marathon. So I took a couple years off from Ultras to train properly for a marathon. And then I'm like, oh, like this actually might translate. So I when I was I did okay. I started with San Francisco.

unknown 21:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Um, I ended up doing four or five of them or something. I did Boston. Um, I did Napa Valley. That was like my best one. And trained really well for that. Although at that time I was in a window of very disordered eating. And so I was at like my leanest ever. Um, and I was training well, but walking up the stairs would make me dizzy. So I was definitely on that cusp of like, I wasn't skinny enough for people to be like, hey, what's going on? But I was I was on that edge for three or four years at least.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

I'm discovering more athletes who have that red S. Yeah. They don't necessarily look terrible.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Yeah, I actually did lose my period for eight years.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

So that was like in the middle of all of that, and in my 30s, which is late. You know, most people that have this is like younger. Um and and I had to, I did gain weight to get it back. And and then I've been okay, I guess, since then. I've I've learned some lessons and I I do have osteopenia now, which I probably will always have. Um what is that? It's low bone density, but it's not osteoporosis. It's like the gray area.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Does this make you more prevalent for stress reactions or stress frequency?

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I think I it could be, yeah. I do currently have, I guess we're kind of jumping a little forward, but I do currently have a little bit of arthritis in my low back, which I actually think was triggered by a fall I took. So, but maybe the bone is already a little weak, and you know, that set something off. So that's annoying. That that is affecting my running now. Um, so let's get okay. I did some marathons, went back to ultras, and then actually was like, okay, now I'm like I've gone from back of the pack to like solid mid-pack. And I'm like, this actually feels good. It's like kind of nice to like not finish just ahead of cutoffs and feel like I can run fast. So I had some injuries in there, but really good training years, like 17, 18, 19, and did like probably my best races over like the 18 to 19 year range. Um, one 100 miler, like kind of shouldn't have, but the person who was leading dropped out with a kidney stone, so that's legit.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Okay, sure. Yeah, it's a good reason.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Um, but I yeah, I've done I did 21 and a half hours, which I never thought. Like wow. I'd gone up to 24, like once before that. And I was like, there's more, there's more.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Oh, that's really cool.

Long COVID Onset And Symptoms

SPEAKER_02 24:35

So that felt great. And then COVID happened, you know, everything kind of slowed down. Um, and at that time that I did that, I was 44. And so I'm like, I'm doing great in my 40s. Like, what's this is this is fun. Um, and then so that happened. And I have always been a person who is on that like nervous spectrum. Like I have anxiety. A long time ago, I was medicated for that, but I I didn't like that, so I I went off. But I'm a person who catastrophizes. So when COVID happened, I was already just kind of like, oh man, this is the thing. How do we get masks? How do we try to keep ourselves safe? And I played it pretty cautious and I kept it that way. And then the end of basically it was like New Year's of 2022. Um, I was visiting a partner, and just one day I just started feeling like not right. And I was like, oh, I wonder if I like caught something from their family or something. And I felt just very, very not right. And I went to get PCR testing negative, you know, they're not perfect. Um a month before that, I had just gotten a my one and only very large tattoo. Maybe my immune system was hy hypersensitive. I don't know what happened. But so I've never tested positive, which means I can never get a long COVID diagnosis, I guess. Um, but within I flew home feeling like something really bad is happening. It was just like that sense, that inner sense of like impending doom, which I remember Justin mentioned in in that podcast on overtraining, because it felt like something was massively wrong. And I felt like that, and I spiraled for a few months. Um, I went to the ER a few times for chest pain. I was working remotely and I was capable enough to keep that going. Um, it was kind of a low lift at my job, and I was able to work enough, you know, like work 20 minutes and then zone out for 20 minutes and just kind of repeat that. And that was a scary, scary time. Like I didn't Were you living alone? I was, yeah. And going through relationship stuff too, like a really significant breakup happened around that time, or like a couple months into that. I had one of those in COVID too. Yeah, that was rough. And but I never, aside from the ER visits, I didn't do a lot with traditional medicine because I think I knew because I didn't have a positive test, I was just gonna be gaslit nine ways to Sunday. And that's what I was seeing on a lot of online places. So I worked with herbalists, I got on Facebook groups, they were incredibly helpful. And they, and there's still like tons of great people there who were just like, here are the things we're learning. Like everything was crowdsourced because people didn't really know much. But I guess I had the benefit of it being two years in. You know, the people who got long COVID in March of 2020 had nothing to go on.

SPEAKER_04 27:48

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:49

They didn't even know if it was a thing. Right. Like long COVID wasn't a thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah. But it's interesting because the more you dig into it, there are kind of stories about long viral sicknesses from other things, but they don't it doesn't come up that often. Like there's long virus from flu or long virus from Lyme.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

And RSV as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So like there's precedent for it, but it definitely was COVID was a new thing. And the the long story, kind of short, is that the entire 2022 was just a very, very gradual return to a semblance of being able to go and do trails. So I felt bad enough that I knew training was not an option. There was no consideration. There wasn't like, oh, I feel okay, I'll go for a little jog. I was like, I'm gonna walk for five minutes and do like vagus nerve breathing to calm my nervous system down and do that a few times a day.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

And what were you feeling? Like you you said you felt bad. What what can you explain it a little bit more?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Sure, sure. Um, there was like that psychological sense of like something's wrong. And I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And I had I actually wore an aura ring at that time, and my HRV, which had been like a hundred forever, was like 22. You know, I'm like, whoa. I eventually got rid of it because I was getting negative reinforcement by seeing that number. So I felt, yeah, I had chest tightness. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't want that reminder every day, like you're not better. So I got rid of that. Um, I kept a diary too of like kind of how I was feeling, which that helped a lot. I had chest pain, tightness in my chest, um, GI stuff. So I had like heartburn. I'd never had a heartburn before. For the first several months, I almost felt like uh um like I'd had gastric bypass. I could I could only eat like three or four bites at a time of stuff. I just felt like my body didn't want more. So I'd switched from like this athlete, like you know, big food heavy stuff, you know, like big fluffy food, like salads and stuff like that. I switched to like stuff that was super dense because I'm like, I need to eat or I'm just gonna lose all this weight, and that's not good. So I was trying to keep weight on. I think I I think I lost a bit of weight then. Did it trigger your disordered eating? No. No, I think because it was like so clear to my body or to my mind that this was an illness to be healed from, it didn't trigger that. So I guess that's a good thing. Um, so yeah, my my sole focus was like trying to keep this, like keep writing the symptoms down and just see how they were changing over time, you know, have the GI stuff, weird pains and in my chest and shoulders and in my mid back. Um, I had some skin things. I had there was a there's a thing called COVID toes where your toes are kind of yeah, where they're kind of like purple all the time. And I was like, oh wow, my toes are purple all the time. I don't know if I've noticed that before. So it's it's a circulation thing.

SPEAKER_04 31:07

I listened to a podcast in um preparation for this conversation about a triathlete um who got long COVID, and he said he got skin stuff. And his ex explanation of what he was feeling was a heaviness. He said it was like not necessarily fatigue because fatigue, you go take a nap or you eat something and you feel better. This was like a general heaviness in your body.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah. Yeah. I I can't, it's funny, I can't say that I specifically felt that, but there's almost like evidence that that was sort of there by me, you know, just taking really slow walks instead of going for a hike. Like because I felt I had a good awareness of like what my capacity was for that day or that hour, and I adhered to it. So, I mean, if I had a job I had to go to, if I had kids, I might have recovered way more slowly, or not at all. So I was able to just kind of cocoon and do what felt best for my nervous system.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

And this is like in the heart of the sickness, like what is the time frame here? Uh probably three or four months.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Three or four months. So, yeah, for January 2022 through March into April. Um, I was definitely starting to feel more um with it March and April into May. I went on a retreat in May that was really important to me. It was like more like a spiritual retreat, actually, with all their women. And where we basically did just a lot of inner work with each other, and then went on a four-day water fast in the desert. And you didn't drink water, or no, you only drink water with water, yeah. And I already knew at this point that fasting is a strategy to help with long COVID. And I was like, okay, this will be intense, but it'll probably help. And the experience of that retreat was powerful. I needed it, like emotionally. I connected with some amazing people, and so there were little things along the way that really helped me, like the support of a couple of key friends. Um family honestly were harder. Um, I still feel like there's people in my family who don't truly believe I was ever sick because I did life stuff fine or fine enough. I went to my job, I wasn't and yet, and yet I was like declining dinner invites and stuff. I'm like, I'm not up to it. And and so I feel like there's maybe that's a little bit of paranoia on my part, but I do have this feeling that some of them are like, well, she wasn't really that sick. But it's like to have that sensation a couple of times that that you might die while you're sleeping, that's freaky. And it's hard to explain that to people when otherwise you look okay.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

And it is hard as um these athletes and these like kind of your body is is something you're so in tune with, yes, that you have a sense of when something's not right, but you're still functioning maybe above uh like a non-athlete.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Like you know the you know the normal cadence of your body. And like you know what a weekday run feels like. Um and when you go on that run and it feels different, and then it feels different the next time it feels different. There's this this sustained, out-of-your control lack of feeling yourself or that as that athlete. Like it doesn't appear to anybody else that you're doing anything bad or anything worse, but you know it.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

And how do you find somebody in the medical system or outside of it to convince that this is a real thing?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Right. Yeah, because there's no definitive blood test. I mean, you you can test for like residual spike proteins. Um, I think you can test for micro clots. So one of the current theories is that the reason for a lot of the long COVID symptoms is that it's a it's a vascular disease. So it really affects your capillaries. And that hence the the purple toes, um, the issues that some people have with with chest pain can be from tiny little clots that happen that aren't really harmful, but your body senses them. And so, yeah, that there's there can be vascular problems that then persist even after you you've come out of the long COVID stage.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

So, what do you mean by the long COVID stage and coming out of it? Like what was your experience?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Yeah, um, I started hiking in May and actually like hiking, like hiking uphill. And there's a mountain here that is like my favorite mountain. It's about a 2100-foot climb and it's a loop of four and a half miles. And I'd done it a lot before, but sometime in June, I decided that if I take it slow, that I could start doing that again, and that I could do it. I decided I wanted to do it once a week for the year, and so I was like, well, I now I'm gonna do it 52 times between now and the end of the year. And I did. Um, but the first times, the fastest I've ever done that loop is like, I don't know, hour 20 or something. But the initially I was doing it like three hours. You know, I'm just going real slow. I'm actually feeling stuff happening in my chest and just kind of like doing breathing to calm myself and be like, this is okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

And this is four months out? Yeah. The initial infection? Five, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah. Like really taking it easy, like mid-May into June, and just seeing what comes out of it, and just trying to do a lot of those, the inner work stuff, like doing journaling. That I did so much journaling. Um, so much that I basically almost kind of stopped after that year. Um, took a big break from it.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

Um how was your mental health at this time? Living alone and going through this.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah. Well, I won't living alone was not a problem. Okay. That was a that was a without having a partner at that time, that was an ideal thing. I love having my own space. Um, I've never minded living alone. So that was actually probably good for my healing. It was just to only be able to focus on me. Um, so that was good. And I might have just forgot the your the gist of your question.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

How your mental health was doing at this time. About four months out from it was better.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Um, I was reckoning with the the relationship blowing up, spending a lot of time with a with my best friend and kind of processing that. Um, and I was actually able to do some processing with the ex later in the summer that was actually helpful for closure and stuff. That's I know that's not always possible with certain people, but but that helped me to to kind of let that all go. And I think just being able to be outside was helping my mental health a lot.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Yeah.

Healing Tools And Slow Return

SPEAKER_02 38:47

I still had a lot of fear in general around like getting worse again. Um, but I think there was something in me that was like, no, this is going in the right direction.

SPEAKER_04 38:58

So you weren't scared of losing running.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

The the weird thing is like the short answer is no, because I think it was so severe that it was just easy to drop it. It was easy to drop running in the beginning because I just felt so bad. And then as I got back to it, I was like, okay, I could see that this will come back. And so I I basically didn't run for I probably started running the downhills of that loop a little bit by July, August. Um, but to just go out and go for a run, like a flat run even, I don't think I even did until 2023. Um but then by then I was like, I'm 95%. You know, I was hesitant to say 100, oddly enough. I'm like, I've I just felt like there's still something. Um, and stress, like emotional stress, would make me get a little bit of like a chest, I call it like chest inflammation, where like things feel like they're kind of happening in there. So like it almost brought me more in tune with the direct correlation between emotions and my body. That I I have actually never really built been that in tune with those before. And maybe that's part of my personality before. But yeah, I don't feel like I'm a person who had a lot of good access to connecting emotions and bodily sensations, but now I do. And that's been a big help for me because I'm also a mental health coach.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

So it's a really helpful skill to like feel something and know that it comes from an emotion and like know which emotion it comes from.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Yeah, like that that stereotypical therapist question, like, and where do you feel that in your body?

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Like, stop asking.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

But like yeah, seven years ago I would have been like, I don't know. And now I'm like, oh yeah, right here. So in that way, I think it I had this this interesting optimism, even a few months in, where I was like, whatever comes out of this, I'm gonna be a a better coach. I'm gonna be a more empathetic person, you know, to people with chronic illness. Like I just saw that whatever happened, it was gonna help me emotionally for the better. Um and so then I guess maybe let's speed up the time a little bit. Started doing more running in 2023, met my current partner, um, and that was all, you know, puppies and rainbows, and I should say kittens, I'm a cat person.

SPEAKER_04 41:29

Uh runner. Skier. Skier. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

Um he'll be one of those people that's a scram scrambler and skier, and he will be the first to say, I'm not a runner, but he does occasionally run for fitness. Um yeah, he's uh he's a ski mountaineer.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Um, so we did a lot of like did a lot of like snow stuff in the winter. That bit that was that big winter. So when I first started coming back, it was the big snow winter. So I did lots of snow running with my spikes on and then got immediately got like some you know, some overuse stuff going on, went to some PT. So like 23 and 24 were like on again, off again, running and going to PT. And you ran a couple of races. I did. I ran a pretty good race in 2023, I think. I ran a 50 that I had run a few times before. And how did that feel? Um, I ran it with a small injury that got bigger during it, but fitness-wise it felt really good. And then I ran it a few times, a few hours faster than I had run that race before. So I was like, wow, okay. Um and then it was 2023. Yeah, and then I but my injury stuff was getting worse and worse and worse. And by the end of that year, I went to an orthopedist, and they're like, Oh, you need to just stop because there's stuff going on in here. And so I stopped completely for a couple months, slowly started doing stuff. Like the stopping didn't help anything.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

So Yeah, that's um, I don't know. We we have a physical therapist who who I see, we both see personally, who we've had on the podcast many times. Um, there are some injuries you do need to stop for, but I think there's a lot of doctors that tend to tell runners to stop when that is not the right instruction.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Yeah, they're like, oh, we did this MRI, there's all this stuff going on. I'm like, there's stuff going on in every MRI over the age of 40. Yeah. So yeah, oh, you got this little tiny labral tear. It's like, yeah, but that's not the hip that's hurting, it's the other one. That's how the body works, you know. Um, so yeah, of course the MRI found stuff. They're like, Yeah, you should stop running. Didn't help any of the pain. So I'm like, well, if I'm gonna hurt either way, I'd rather be running.

unknown 43:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

So I slowly started doing some running. I actually started doing some more like mind body stuff for the pain. Um, that gets a little in the wook territory, but. But I can be into woo sometimes, um, trying to like help help my brain understand that my body is safe so that it doesn't have to feel pain. That's kind of the gist of that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

That's interesting. Does that help you in like ultrarunning or just more for chronic pain?

SPEAKER_02 44:18

I feel like it's a chronic pain thing. Yeah, it could help with ultrarunning. Um, because yeah, you get that, we get that um what's that thing where the brain kind of will stop you from going too fast? The central governor. Where it's like, oh yeah, you're gonna die. You better stop running so fast. And you're like, no, actually, I'm not. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

No, I'm fine.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yeah, I'm fine, it hurts, but I'm fine. Yeah. So that helped. I like slowly got back into doing some running. And um another reason kind of why I'm here today is that I had what 23, 24, most of 25. I'm like, I'm good. Like, yeah, I've got injuries I'm dealing with, and maybe some of those are that I that I am getting older and I am probably going into perimenopause and all of that. But then in this last August, at the end of August, um, I was exposed to a virus. I don't even know if it was COVID. And I had a relapse. Oh so I I was off of running pretty much off of cardio from September through at least December of this last year.

SPEAKER_04 45:35

And was that sickness similar to the first one? Yes, but much more mild.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

Okay. And so this kind of gets back to your question earlier, John, of like, was it hard to not run? And like this time it was, because I didn't feel that bad.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

So why didn't you run?

SPEAKER_02 45:52

Uh, I think because I I spent too much time online, and there's so many scare stories out there about if you push this too hard too fast, you will be bedbound. You'll cross this line that you don't know where the line is, and then you know, this person writing the post, they're like, you'll be like me. You know, I wished I hadn't pushed too hard.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

That's really scary.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

And so I got paranoid about that, you know. I'm like, I need to keep my heart rate real, real, real low and do I still believe in that. Like, I don't know that if I pushed really hard, I would have crossed that line, but I don't know that I wouldn't have either.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Oh, you don't want to hear my story. Okay. I'm glad I didn't read that thing online. I feel like very scared.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

I do feel like for this illness, this it's a syndrome, right? So it's a collection of symptoms. I feel like in a lot of cases, the thing we don't want to hear as athletes is that radical rest actually will help and a really gradual return to activity.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Like, it's one of the hardest things for us to do.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I basically had almost a whole year off. And then I came back and ran well. So that's why I took that seriously last fall.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

Um because you wanted to get back to where you were in 2023, where it's like when you take it seriously and you recover, yeah, you can be back to your old self at least 95%.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Yeah, or at least back to the self that I could be at at my age. Maybe not to my 40-year-old self, but maybe I know they're we're in the high carb revolution now. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

If you eat 400 carbs an hour, it's everything's fine.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

It but that has helped me. Like I do feel better. Um, my the running group I I spend time with a week about once a week is like mostly 20 and 30-year-old women, and and I run well with them.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

I run with girls uh 10 years younger than me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

So I keep up exactly. So I've got optimism again, but but this has actually been more of a wake-up call because I think before I was like, I had it, I healed, I'm done. Now there's kind of like this specter that's like it can come back. So it almost feels realer now.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

And that's so like you you thought you had left it behind.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

And now you know it it could pop up out there lurky if you get unlucky strong handrails.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

So I'm like more strict about masking now when I go into populated spaces than I was two years ago. Um I don't know how that will look in the future, you know, if I'll start to kind of let down my guard more. But for now, I'm like, I I can't get a virus and it's not acceptable. So I want to hear about yours, John. What's going on?

SPEAKER_00 48:47

I I still have a couple more questions. Okay. Okay. Um so you mentioned that you kind of abandoned the traditional medical system, which I don't blame you in the least. Uh, but I wonder in with the second coming, or have you had any or any interactions with the traditional medical system related to this in the past few years that were positive or negative?

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Um the positive ones were were actually when I went to the ER and just got reassured that I'm not about to die and you know, blood work looks okay and and that kind of stuff. I haven't had specific like negative interactions, but I think I just have a combination of extreme frugality and a suspicion that I'm just gonna get gasolit to just keep me away.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Which is not like you're not making that up. Like it does happen.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Like I can I could guarantee I could almost guarantee you that I could spend the next six months like trying to hunt down blood tests and be like, hey, I still have these lingering symptoms or not as strong as before, and I could go to specialist after specialist and spend$10,000 and know not anything more than I know now from reading Facebook groups.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

Yeah, similar to like you listen to the podcast on over-training syndrome. Yeah, it's a process of elimination to get diagnosed with long COVID. Right. They eliminate all other possibilities before they'll then diagnose you with it, similar to the over-training syndrome.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:22

And then once you're diagnosed, it's like there's still no specific treatment.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Because it's so different for everyone. Like some people present as like um extreme like um exercise reaction. So like you go for a walk and then you have to take a four-hour nap. Luckily, it didn't get that triathlete.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

I was listening to the podcast on, he called it allergic reaction to exercise.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:48

Whereas previously it had been his entire life, he felt like he now had an allergic reaction to exercise. Ugh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Yeah, and as an athlete, ugh, that's hard.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

It's really hard.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

It's so hard.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

Yeah, you put so much into this. I guess my story, like I got COVID 15 months ago.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

So, I mean, was it COVID? I never got tested. It was a viral disease. The way I something. The way I treat viral diseases is I sit my side my ass in bed and I wait for it to go away. I drink warm water, take some Tylenol, measure my temperature. You know, like I'm my parents have an over-reliance on the medical system, and so I tend to have an under-reliance. I don't I don't eschew the medical system, but I don't like overuse it or try to.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

But for most viruses, that's that's what you should do. Normal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

And I've had many virus viral infections, and so I figured this was just like the every other one. It was pretty it was a pretty bad viral infection. I was I was knocked down pretty well. And um, I had just come off an injury, so I had torn my calf, I'd taken two months off, I had run for like a couple weeks coming out of that, or run like back to normal for a couple weeks, and then and then I had that COVID about a week, week a week in a few days. And um and the comeback, you know, I expected normally when you have a viral infection, you come back, uh, you know, you kind of get better by like two or three days out of that. Once you start feeling better, that you can go to work. It's like, oh, the running kind of comes back in a couple days. And this one just never just never came back for like for a while. Like I I went for a run that weekend. You know, I was feeling like I could sustain myself, like I could be out of bed, I could walk around, like, and I wanted to go do my favorite run. It just snowed. I like to do the Boulder Skyline. Um it's uh yeah, it's like a usually for me, it's like a six-hour run, freshly snowed. Maybe it's a seven and a half hour run.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

And uh that's long.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

It's long, right? But so I yeah, you this is me.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Um yeah, I know, it's all of us.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

It's ultra rotors. So I I went out the first peak, and um and I didn't know how I would feel. I was very willing to turn around. My previous attempts at like trying to run had just been walking, and that's all this was. I was I just I mean, there was a ton of our snow on the ground, so I just walked and I ended up, you know, I was up there at the top of the mountain. I was like, you know what? I feel fine. I can't run. Like anytime I try to run, my body just says, this ain't working. Like the heart rate gets super high at a slow jog. And so, but I could hike, and so I just hiked it up. It took me like nine hours, it was a very long day. Um, but I enjoyed being outside. I had all the food I could handle and water, so I was very safe, I felt safe, but I just couldn't do it at my previous heart rate levels or my previous speed. And I had a big year planned last year, and I was unwilling to give it up. I just figured, you know what, my body's gonna get better at the rate it gets better, and I'm gonna do the thing that I plan to do, which is very bullheaded and maybe I shouldn't have done it, but it was the choice I made. Yeah, I was able to do four hard ultras last year, all at slower paces than I would have expected myself.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Right. And still with a high heart rate?

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Yeah, so higher heart rates. And um I ex I kind of thought, okay, all right, I finished that year, I took a couple months off, I did my normal thing, and I I had signed up for Coke Donut because I just figured I'd be better by then and this year. And so I started training for Coke Donna. I figured, okay, you know what? You know, it's been long enough. Now I can actually get sustained training time in. You know, I'm not going from race to race to race with no training in between or very little, just recovering. I'm like, I gave myself a sustained rest, and now like two months, and then now I'm gonna go into three uh five months of training, and sustained training is good for like building back your fitness, and I figured, you know, my fitness is gonna come back. And at this point, it's been eight months. So I started training, and it's you know, I went about four months trying to do it, and um, yeah, about two weeks ago I just said, okay, this is enough because all that training has been very high heart rates uh for the speeds that I'm running. I'm running, I can't even keep up with my local uh like my regular group runs. You know, it's like the opposite of what you did where you took it seriously and recovered. Like I have just been trying to ignore it for so long that at some point my body's just like, no, this isn't working. And so I yeah, I've dropped out of uh Coca-Dona and I've started taking the rest seriously, which I mean I guess it's about time. Only took four took me 14 months. But uh Yeah, and I I s I've been seeing this doctor, nurse practitioner guy who like specializes in athletes and holistic root cause analysis of their symptoms.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

So it's like like he's there to help me figure out what's going on.

John’s Data Sinus Infection And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 55:59

Okay. Do you have anything that's any indicators at all other than the high heart rate, like blood work, anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Yeah, so I I haven't done any blood work until um till just uh last week, basically. Uh but yeah, my symptoms have included like I get um I get uh vision uh impairment when I um when I run.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

You pointed your head. I'm like, I still have tinnitus, by the way, that I've had since 2022. So that's a lingering thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Wait, what is tinnitus like uh ringing in your ears? Oh, ringing in your ears. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

So that that can be a thing too.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

Yeah, I'm getting I get these after images that come into my vision and they just don't go away. You know, like when you look at a bright light and it stays there, but um sometimes it'll just be there for 20, 30 minutes while I'm running. Wow. Um I get like lightheadedness. Um I've had a clogged nasal cavity for the last like 14 months. Uh I've snored. I've had Miranda says I Miranda says I have sleep apnea. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:07

Yeah, I I didn't know what I was doing.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

But I didn't snore before.

SPEAKER_04 57:10

No, I wouldn't have married him if he didn't snore.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

So yeah, clearly I'm a little bull-headed and I'm like, this will just work itself out. It wasn't. I I saw an ENT PA back in October, told him all these symptoms. You know what they did? They told me everybody has sleep apnea, sleep on your side, take some nasocort.

SPEAKER_01 57:32

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Which is ridiculous. So this this nurse practitioner guy I just saw, he um he had me go get a whole bunch of labs, including a nasal swab, and it turns out I've had a sinus infection.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

For that whole time. Apparently a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 57:49

That your body's also what even if it's even if it wasn't also doing the long COVID stuff, which it probably is, you're still fighting an infection for 14 months. Yeah. So that's a load on your own.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

Yeah, that's a load. And I did a statistical analysis of my paces and my paces at heart rates based on my my Strava data. You can export all your Strava data and then use Claude code to do all this. And and I saw like clear statistical evidence of increased heart rates at lower speeds at heart rate zones. Um my heart rate zones have shifted down. My um and you can actually see a nice trend. I the first six, six or seven months were worse after the COVID, right? Because you know, I didn't take any rest time, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

Um, and you can see like sustained trend, and then it comes back, and it comes back to basically where I am now, which is I would say 70%, 60% of where I was.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

You know, I would say one thing. I would say when as long as you perceive that things are not normal, your heart rate zones are meaningless.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

And because I I even asked uh David and Megan Roche about that. I was like, how do I recalibrate my heart rate zones after four months off? And they're like, don't even look at them. Like, just wait until you actually feel like like you're normal training and things are seem okay to even don't like don't recalibrate because everything will be wonky.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Right. I mean, my heart rate zones would be crazy right now. My uh slow jog puts me at 160 right now.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

Yeah, that's yeah, that's too high.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Which is not good. So yeah, I mean, I think the I think the sinus infection and and the blood work did not show red S, which is good. You know, that was a worry. Um the sinus infection may be a good proportion of my symptoms. Um it's unclear.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

But uh so once you clear that up, then I can start. Then you can see what what still remains, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And we can talk offline about that because I've got a laundry list of like supplements that I take that are theoretically good for like clearing out viral stuff and supporting metabolic health, and um you wouldn't believe like all that money, all that that ten thousand dollars that I was gonna give to you know the medical system, I've basically given it to like supplement companies. I'm okay with that decision.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Yeah, it's just something that like I don't know. I think it was really hard to admit it for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

I just wanted to battle through it and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

And honestly, it's like we we really do want COVID to be over. And I I don't I don't begrudge people that but it's but it's hard. It is hard to I have noticed recently, I don't know if you have too, that more a little bit a little bit more people are wearing masks again in public.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

I'm wearing them to the everyone who feels a tiny sniffle should wear a mask immediately.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:51

Oh that should that should stay like and I wear a mask to protect myself from all those other people who are not doing that. Yeah. But yes, that would that would cut down on stuff so much. Oh yeah, like like we even a surgical mask will I think it cuts down your exhalation by like 70% or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

I feel like we should have learned something, you know, like from this whole time.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:16

I have a lot of optimism in a lot of regards, and then not so much in other regards. So I'm I'm definitely I don't know. I'm optimist about like beautiful, lovely things that humans can do, and but then I also like we were also we have herd mentality and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:38

So well, speaking of optimism, what what do you have planned next? What adventures or races or big things do you have plan next?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

I'm I'm in like I'm a dis in a decision period right now, actually. Um I feel like weirdly enough, I feel like I'm having like a micro relapse right now. Um, I just got a one-week road trip where I went to a bunch of concerts and wore a mask, but I still feel like there's like something's happening. So I'm trying to be really careful. But I was giving myself till the end of this month to decide if I was gonna and sign up for Hamez.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

Oh, that's such a good race.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

It is, and I love the people, and and a good friend of mine is gonna race there, and she hasn't raced in like 10 years, so it'd be I'm gonna go regardless. But I was gonna try to decide by the end of the month if I was gonna sign up for the 50k, and I'm like maybe, maybe the 25k, or maybe nothing. So I'm gonna that could be on my horizon. Um, and if training goes in a generally good direction, I'd like to do that 50 again in August. Um, the one I did a few years ago. I've been volunteering every year that I don't run it. Which one's that? Oh, it's White Pine 50. It's um northern Utah in mid-August. And it's it's kind of a smallish race, maybe 100, 150 people, really good local people running. Oh, I like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

And you mentioned earlier. Sorry to interrupt.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Uh I was just rambling.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

You mentioned earlier that you were on the board of the Hard Rock. What was your role on the board?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

And uh what board member at large, yeah. So we had, yeah, we have flip the the officers, right? Um, but then there's we're six or seven of us are just board members. But I've done a lot of I've run a couple of eight stations there. Um and I get a lot, I still go almost every year. There's a lot of old to old friends there. So it's it's such a good community and and it is exclusionary. And I will admit that. It is it is kind of a thing. Like if you got in early, this is your tribe. And if you didn't get in early, you you can kind of join the tribe, but it it's maybe it's not the same. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

You kind of sit on the outside a week.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:01

I know people started going just in the last few years and they already feel like part of the family, so you know, maybe I'm wrong about that. But that's okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:08

I think it's okay for there to be some spaces where everyone's welcome and everyone's accepted, and then there are other spaces where it's a little more exclusive. That's all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

Like, like I'm never gonna get into Western, but I got into hard rock, so yeah, and that's fine. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

I don't think I'm we're a part of the hard rock community too much, but I always enjoy going to hard rock. Yeah, I enjoy volunteering there, I enjoy just crewing, just like walking around with a camera. Like it is a it's a good vibe, an experience. Yeah, it's really fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

I think, and there are a lot of races that are like that, especially if they get the same people coming back. Um, and some I think Angelus Crest has a little bit of that. Western has that. Um, I mean, yeah, it is new people because of the lottery, but but the party vibe that whole weekend is like the energy there. It's it's like being at a concert.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

And the aid stations at at Western are a lot of the same people every year.

Race Plans Hardrock And Awe

SPEAKER_02 1:05:13

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, Western and Hard Rock have a little bit of that same thing where they bring back the real old timers to do aid stations, like people who have done well at the race before. I love that. So that's really fun. Famous.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:27

Oh this has been a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. We like to end our podcast by asking our guests to give a piece of unsolicited advice to our audience. Yeah. What advice would you like to share? It doesn't have to be running. I could have so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:48

Um I would I would say like make no matter what's happening for you, like make room for awe in your life. And whatever that is. Like I'm a person who will like I will see the bright flower and I will cry, you know, and that's I love that about myself. And it took me a while to to love that about myself. So I think just like letting yourself be who you really are and and be okay with that. Um and sometimes if you forget, one of the things I like to do, I love post-it notes. And so I'll like take post-it notes and just write things that I like to hear and just put them in places around my house. Like um one that a friend of mine gave to me was uh what did she say? Oh, more will be revealed. I just love that. I'm like, we're all in a story, but like we're all in the story of our lives, and more is going to be revealed.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:49

It's a little life mantra. I like that. Yeah, I like the I like stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:54

The TikN Han saying life is available only in the present moment. I want that one somewhere on my body.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's mostly what I got for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:08

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.