Kara Goucher - Olympian & Author | Exposing Nike’s Dark Side (Oregon Project)

Your goals and your dreams are so big and so important. You don't get anything for going to the Olympics. The Olympics are for your love of your country and the pride of yourself. We were gonna have everything you could possibly need to be successful. Everything's about getting every little advantage. The next group of women or girls won't take this shit. They'll know, no, we don't have to deal with that. I don't have to be treated like that. I would never tell a survivor you have to talk about it. If you can, I think you should. The thing that made me important and the thing that made me special, I can't even do that anymore. I'm nothing now. I think most people are a lot stronger than they think. I remember telling Adam, I'm worried I'm going to find out I'm not as good as I hoped I was. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Very exciting news. HubSpots inbound converts is back, which means you got to clear your schedules, mark your calendars, get the sitter, three jam pack days from September 18th through the 20th live and boss. You're going to hear inspirational narratives, candid interviews on the highs and lows of incredibly notable figures, business owners, politicians. You're going to learn from successful entrepreneurs like Ryan Reynolds and Serena Williams on how they reinvented themselves and their businesses to achieve massive success. They're going to gain valuable insights from industry leaders, visionaries on effective strategies for personal and professional growth, and there's so much more. And on top of all that, I'm speaking again, this is my third inbound, so I'll be doing a segment. So if you want to hear from Ryan Reynolds, Serena Williams, or you want to hear from me, go to imbound.com, go see the lineup and grab your ticket today. I'll see you in Boston. Cara, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. I'm excited to go into this. I'm excited to talk about your entire journey, a lot of great things, a lot of not-so-great things, so we'll go into everything and just sort of like, I just want to have like the sort of like the raw, unvarnished account of like your life really, because it's a really interesting story. But you wrote a book. You wrote a book about your life and I was listening, as I always do it to some podcasts before we jumped on. And I was interested in the fact that you said that you were very nervous about writing this book. And a lot of the stuff that you wrote about and that's happened to you, and you speak about, it's not like it's that recent. Like there's been some years removed from when a lot of this stuff happened. So talk to me about like why nerves when you're writing a book and putting yourself out there speaking about this kind of topic, especially when people would assume like, okay, so it's happened, it was difficult, but like it's happened in the past, you've moved on. This stuff I guess really stays with you. Yeah, and I think a lot of it too is that there were some details I was going to share in the book. I kind of had this, this just mindset of I share all or I don't share, because it's kind of like you never managed to that. It's interesting now because isn't like your thought process about writing this book and worrying about judgment. I feel like that's the reason why some really shitty behavior does not get brought to light because of that exact thought process. And people that do not have the influence that you have and do not have the resume that you have. I mean, you even had a little bit of self-doubt about writing this book. Can you imagine that's somebody who did not have the career that you had? Trying to speak about people they've dealt with. I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot that happens you over your career. Obviously not everybody is involved in like a massive drug scandal, but there's other parts to it. There's parts about sexual harassment. There's parts about how you're treated as a woman. These are things that are, I think, a little bit more universally applicable and these are things that I mean, there's no need to feel shame about this stuff, but I mean, you just intuitively did. And I just want to say before we even start, like I think it's really admirable that you did put yourself out there. And I just want to say thanks for writing this because the more people to speak up, especially people that have influence, I mean, the better it is for any woman who's trying to just do their thing, kill it, high performance, pushing boundaries, working in fields that were traditionally dominated by men or whatever would have you. So it's really admirable. But I'm curious, now that you look back and you've written it, what was the outcome, positive, negative, but not just like the, I'm sure the public received it well, but like in your personal life, were you surprised by some reactions in a good way, in a bad way? Yeah, I mean, for myself, it was extremely healing, and which surprised me a little bit. Like I woke up the morning, it came out, and there was a piece on Good Morning America. We had filmed ahead of time. I didn't watch that. I just went for a run. I came back. I was so nervous the night before, but then as the day went on, I just felt so much more at peace. And I think especially over the last year, I really just felt lighter and lighter. Like I had been carrying around a lot of shame, and a lot of just things that I was embarrassed about. And it just has no control over me anymore. Like I kind of put it out there, and now it's lost the control. So I think that surprised me how healing it was. And then I think all of the people that reached out and continued to who have been in similar situations, like no, maybe they're not trying to do in the bus, but something happened at work, or something happened at school. And that's been surprising the numbers of people that have reached out, I think. It's been a little hard to hear. It's scary to think about that. It's really scary. Yeah. And honestly, in the first couple of months of the book's publication, I kind of had to stop receiving any sort of communication with people because I was getting really overwhelmed. I didn't even feel bad saying that, but I felt like I was taking out other people's trauma. I'm much more removed from it now, but I was surprised and saddened to be totally honest that so many people could relate to this story and the worst parts of this story. But again, as you were saying earlier, that was the whole reason that it had to be in there. I mean, when I was in my height of my running career as on every recover of every running magazine, I was being paid a lot for a runner. I was the face of running in the newspapers all the time. I looked like I had this perfect life. I was in every advertisement. And yet these things happened to me. And so if they could happen to me, they can't happen to anyone. And that was really important to me. Do you ever wonder, do you ever wonder because when you're dealing with running was your work. So when you're dealing with trauma in a professional environment and your work, performance is never at 100%. And I know that sports psychology is very real. So to the tune of like, I'm sure at the level that you were operating at, you saw teams and athletes always aligning with psychologists to sort of optimize performance. And it means a lot when a team that is not optimized mentally will not perform at the level regardless of their skills, it is a team that is or an athlete that it. But when you think back, do you think that your career was even jeopardized to some extent by like the shit that you were going through? Like if you thought, where could I have gone with this if I was basically like free of all this stress and all this negativity? You know, at the time and even while writing the book, I didn't think about that. I thought I was such a great compartmentalizer. I think it started because my dad died when I was little and I was really good at putting away anything that hurt and not like if it doesn't serve me, then I'm not going to address it. I'm not going to feel it. But I will say that after the book came out, a reporter wrote a story about it and said, you know, it makes me think what she could have done had she not been dealing with all this. And that actually made me a little sad because I had never given myself the grace to consider that, you know, I was in the top program in the world running for the biggest company in the world. It's a sporting company in the world. And all I ever saw was there were of course bad things but I also had so many opportunities. And so I never thought about it from that perspective and it did make me feel a little sad. I do think, wow, you know, at the height of my career at the peak ages of my performance, I was dealing with so much stress on a daily basis. And perhaps I could have performed better if I hadn't had all that other stuff going on. Yeah, no, I just think it's, again, it's important that you put this out there because you think of the opportunity that, like an environment like this could rob from somebody that didn't, I mean, it's always interesting how life sets us up. And, you know, whether or not it's death of a parent or it's a really hard upbringing, it forces us to be a certain kind of person. And maybe if you didn't have those traumatic events that are really on in your life, maybe like this negative environment would have sidetracked you so much that you actually wouldn't have been able to perform at the level that you performed at. It's, everything, it's life is weird. Life is very strange. Maybe if I hadn't been shoving aside my emotions since I was a child, I wouldn't have been able to do it in my late 20s and early 30s, you know, but unfortunately, unfortunately, however, when you look at it, that's a skill set I was really good at. But you think about like now when you put this out into the world, and when you sort of talk about it, when you bring it to life, and you think about all the potential opportunities that you're allowing for a younger generation who align with the right team, right coach, right environment, especially when they're younger. And you hopefully that, you know, if people act right and understand the duty of care for a young athlete as a coach or as a trainer, whatever, as a professional, you hope you can enable opportunities and post it maybe, you know, shed light on a bad organization that could basically destroy someone's entire career. If they ever, you know, replicated what happened to you to a younger runner, younger athlete that wasn't as mentally strong, it's just, it's just very sad because you see it a lot with, I don't know why you see it so much with athletes and coaches. I don't really understand it, but like I've heard your story, you hear a lot of stories of like trainers, coaches, abusing and taking advantage to a degree of young athletes to various degrees. I come from a hockey background. I can't remember the name of the coach, but I think he was Theo Flurry who was abused by a coach or trainer when he was younger. Maybe I'm getting the athlete wrong, but again, the point is, it happens a lot, which is pretty effed up. I think I don't know why either. Obviously it's something about the dynamic of, you know, your coaches, especially when you are extremely driven at, when you're an extremely driven athlete because they feel that your coach becomes the gatekeeper to your dreams. So, you know, you're willing to sort of like sidestep certain things and accept certain things because you're so driven on this dream that you have, that you're kind of willing to put up with a lot of things that you absolutely should not. And I don't know why coaches end up in that position. Like how did they, it was a, it was a gymnastics coach that, so it was, he was the Larry Nassar, but he was the, the like therapist. He was the manual, so yeah, he wasn't an actual coach, but he was like a really, he was a really bad guy. He was a very, very, very bad guy, yeah. He assaulted like hundreds of women, I believe, between the Michigan and even with the US national team. So, you know, and again, like you think about that case, hundreds of women and it took so long for him to be called to town. Right? Like how, it doesn't make any sense. Like you have all these women, you have all their parents, all their own support systems. And still for some reason nobody wants to throw this guy under the bus, even though he's a piece of shit. And I'm sure people knew for years. Yeah, but, but the athletes think, well, everybody else is coming through here. And everybody who's good, everybody goes on to the Olympics comes through this guy and they're not saying anything. And I just think, you know, I think these things, I mean, he is an extreme example, obviously. But that's all this stuff happens, right? Like you, you're so, your goals in your dreams are so big and so important. And you start to compromise on your own personal. I don't even know what the word is, but things that you would allow to happen to yourself because you're like, well, they're doing it. It's almost like your morals. It's like you compromise on your own morals as a person. It's just disgusting. I want to go through your story first and we'll get into. So we're sort of fast tracking a little bit because there's a lot of parts to your story. So let's start with where you started. So you were a late bloomer as a runner. So maybe you can just give me like a synopsis of sort of your upbringing. I mean, you just mentioned your dad passed. What prompted you to get into running? Yeah, so my dad passed away. We can form my fourth birthday and actually lived on the East Coast. I was born in New York City. And when my dad died, we moved to a totally different cultural city, Duluth, Minnesota. Completely different. Where are my mom's parents lived? And my sister was six. I was four and then I had a six week old sister. So my mom was just needed help. So we moved in with her parents for a little bit, got a house in Duluth and I grew up in Duluth. And my grandpa was a lifelong runner. What's super interesting to me is that he wasn't a racer. He was at a competitive runner. He ran before like seeing, running was for mental health or exercise helped your mental health. Like before that was a thing that anyone would say. He ran and he used to tell me, I just feel so much better. I just feel so much calmer. So anyway, he took me, I was very shy, very shy child. And he took me to my first race. And he loved to tell this story about all these kids line up, some mile race, and some of them have their parents running with them. And I had my grandpa and they shoot the starter gun and I just fall so hard. And I get up and he can see that, like I'm leading bad from my knees and he thinks, oh my God, like I just ruined the sport for her. And I shocked him by saying they're getting away from us and he had no idea that I was competitive, anything like that. And so that's how it kind of started. And I mean, I don't even know what place I got. It was nowhere near the front. But his pride in me that I finished made me want to run again. And so he wasn't really serious. He was just something I would do with my grandpa a few times a year. I grew up, you know, I'm from Northern Minnesota. So we figure skated, I danced, I skied all of the thing. And then when I was in middle school, was the first time I went up for organized running. And it was the first sport I ever, I mean, I've played every sport. I'm telling you, like I hadn't had like private lessons in every sport. Because my mom remarried someone who was very, very sporty. But it was the first time when I ran for the organized team that I could just run, right? Like I didn't have to think about how the rack it was at my hand or how I was doing my blade or how where I was going to strike the soccer ball. Like I had to think about those things while I was playing or how my pole was planted. Like I could just run. And so I fell in love with it pretty quickly. And then I ran throughout high school. It was pretty good. Want some state titles and made the nationals twice as a high schooler. And then I went on to the University of Colorado on a very small scholarship. I struggled with my running for a while. I'm five, eight now. I, you know, when I started running, I wasn't even five feet tall. So my body changed. And my first couple of years at Colorado, I was very, like also ran, not really noteworthy at all. But by the time I was a senior, I won three national title. And I really had bought into, I could be one of the best the United States and maybe even in the world if I had the opportunity to keep pursuing it. So you were like by all accounts as an athlete, like a relatively late bloomer, right? Yeah, and definitely professional sense because I graduated at 22. And then for the next four years, I just couldn't stay healthy. I had a string of stress fractures at a hard time even qualifying for the national meet. Look at what I'm thinking about going to the Olympics. Like I was barely getting into the national meet. So yeah, I was, you know, I was in my late 20s when I finally started to stay healthy and things really started to click. Was there, was there just a very quick aside, like a training strategy or something that you were doing incorrectly that you sort of pivoted into that allowed you to stay healthy, compete at a higher level. I'm just curious because if you're repeatedly getting injured as an athlete, like diet or training or something's off completely. Yeah, I think I hadn't bought into being a full-time athlete, right? Even though I had my Nike contract, I would go, my husband also, he's an Olympian and he also runs and he and I would go to practice in the morning and we'd run really, really hard and then we'd come home and hang out and play games and then maybe we'd go for a second run and then we'd be working on the house like finishing the basement and we weren't thinking about it as like, workout, eat right, nap, weight room, second workout, nap. You know, like we just didn't think about it like that and it really wasn't until 2000, the end of 2004 when we moved out to Oregon to join this Nike Yorgan project. I mean, our lives were turned upside down because that was the first time we had been in a truly professional setting. I remember we had been there for two weeks and I was like, I'm so tired. I don't know if I can ever run again. You know, because we had training and we had drills. It's a lot. Yeah, we, they felt lovable. Then we'd get a massage and we'd go home and take a nap then we meet again in the afternoon and run again and we had just never done that but also included in that team. I got to see ART therapists once a week. Massage therapists once a week. I was getting all this body work and helping me stay ahead of my weaknesses and also I really realized as I got older, I'm just a more muscular runner than a lot of other runners and like really leaning into the way room and really leaning into strength training really helped me stay healthy. When, and this is actually after, so you said you already had your first Nike contract. Like I'm just wondering what it's gonna take to get you at this point to realize that you're actually good at what you're doing when you're getting a Nike contract. I mean, I'm so lucky I got that first contract in. I think it was because I had run, one, three titles in college and I'd won by a lot and so it looked like, wow, she finally stayed healthy for a couple of years and looked what she did. What could she do if she could say healthy for longer? But I signed that Nike contract and immediately had to have like knee surgery, you know? It was like, I'm sure they love that. Yeah, and honestly, like if my husband hadn't been still running, I don't know that I would have stuck with it because it just kept breaking my heart. I had dreams of going to the Olympics. I had dreams of like really being somebody and here I was like barely even qualified for the national meet and not even think about moving on beyond the national meet. So I definitely had moments where I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I had applied for a postgraduate scholarship and gotten it and passed on it. This is like, I used to be somebody but my husband was still living the life day after day and so that helped me stay in it and seeing his successes like, okay, I do still wanna do this. I love that. I think that's, I mean, first of all, it's like two very obvious cliche lessons like your partner is important and then also like nothing is an overnight success. Like these are a cliche, so just everyone, it doesn't matter what you've accomplished, it's so, so true. So you made your first Olympic team at 29. Literally days before I turned 30. Okay, so like I was basically 30. I turned 30 like four days after, yeah. And that's very, I don't mean that's very old, right? For an Olympic athlete, yeah. I mean, just to be fair, women's distance running is getting older. Like we're more peaky. I don't know the age. I don't know the age group. So you, not like gymnastics, but it was, I had never made a team before and usually in your 30s, you're making your second or a third team. So it was late, but it's not unheard of, yeah. No, I mean, you did it, you did it successfully. So, okay, so obviously that is like peak achievement for a runner. That's when your career is like, I guess starting more or less, because that's when you start to get exposure, that's when you're starting to compete internationally. I'm assuming that's when sponsors start to make notice of you as well, because I mean, as a runner, there's no league, there's no money really until it's sponsor money. I don't like, and then Olympics are in, like they are for like amateurs. That's what Olympics are for. They're not meant to be for professionals, right? That's the, yeah, they're not meant to be for like, hey, so actually you don't get anything for going to the Olympics. And in fact, no, I didn't know that. And even if you went to medal, you don't get anything from the IOC, the International Olympic Committee. You might get something from your sponsor, you might have a bonus structure built in, but like you don't get anything because you're supposed to love it and you're supposed to be doing it for your country. I will say World Athletics, which is the head of track and field, they announced this year that they will be giving $50,000 to every gold medalist in track and field this year. And it's been met with, it's been controversial because some people say you should be paying them more and some people are saying you should be paying them at all. Like the Olympics are for your love of your country and the pride of yourself. So it's been not as close a controversy, but they're the only first time that people get paid for it. That's really interesting. So that's new. So again, my background's hoggy. So the only reason I know about the professional versus amateurs is because I remember growing up, there's certain NHL athletes that couldn't compete in the Olympics. I think they were still in the playoffs and they were still getting paid. So it wasn't off season. So they weren't, they weren't able to qualify. I think that was the rule that I sort of learned about this. So you're not supposed to be getting paid as an athlete if you're competing in the Olympics by some sort of like organization or body. But now you're saying that's changed. Things are changed. Obviously, like when the dream team happened in basketball, like, yeah. It's not the same pure thing that it once was, but that still is the overall consensus. Like you can, your gold medal, you still get paid in other ways because you do appearances and you get contracts, but the Olympic community does not pay you and they still don't. So yeah, this is the first track and field is the first time that their governing body is going to be paying people for their medals. And like I said, seems like that, oh, yeah, that makes sense. It makes a ton of sense. It actually, so again, I only, sort of remotely follow like college sports and like what Olympic athletes make. And I know that a lot of them don't make a lot of money at all. But it always seems silly that they didn't get paid. It always seems silly that college athletes couldn't get paid because it always felt like we're not talking about your specific story where athletes were actually taking advantage of. But it always felt like all athletes were taking advantage of to some degree because they're the ones that are bringing the eyeballs. They're the ones that are training. Like they're the ones that are actually putting in the work. Yet they're the only people that don't get paid. Everyone else gets paid. I think that's blatantly obvious on the money maker sports, on football and basketball, right? Like they, I mean, for run, like contract and field and cross country, we rely on the football team success for our budget, right? So, but, but people are paying and buying jerseys and all this stuff for these other sport. And they're not getting anything, you know? So, I mean, that is changing, which is good. So, talk to me about when you joined the Nike Oregon project. And then, I guess you met Alberto Salazar. That was in 2004, correct? Yep, is that the end of 2004 is after the Olympics because he had been over there with one of his athletes. And my husband and I, we were in Colorado and we were just, we just weren't running well. He had made the 2000 Olympic team and he won the Olympic trials in 2000. And in 2004, we made it to the trials, but we both got knocked out in the first round. We didn't even make the final. And I had been seven, you know, four years earlier and he had been first. And so, we just said, what are we doing? Like, we only have so much time left in the sport, we really need to look around. So, we started talking to some coaches and then Nike said, you guys should really come out and visit with Alberto, check out the Nike Oregon project. So, when he got back from the Athens Olympics, he closed out there. And I mean, it was just, like as I mentioned earlier, it was professionalized sport. Yeah, it was like, you know, we were living in superior Colorado because we couldn't afford a house in Boulder and we were driving to the college to meet our college coach to train even though he's a college coach, which we love him, by the way, still have a great relationship with him and he actually coached me at the end of my career again. But now we're going on the Nike campus, you know, you're training in the Lance Armstrong Center. We're running on the Ronaldo field, but all of these things, it's a different level. It's totally different, right? Underwater treadmills, ultra G treadmills, access to, if my shin is sore, I don't have to fill out a form and get the Olympic, you know, get the Olympic training center to approve me to come. I'm seeing, I'm getting in that day for an MRI, right? It was just so different and it would be, and Alberto was like, don't sell your house, come for six months, if you hate it, you can go back. And we were just sort of like, we would be crazy to pass up this opportunity. Because everything, I mean, like when you're looking at it outside in, yeah, like how could Nike screw anything up? It's Nike. Like Nike must have vetted the best of the best. They invested all the money. Like anybody who's working with Nike, this is not like some no name trainer. Not like an upstart, Fanny, you know? But I guess I was Larry Nasser, right? He was also like a very notable name, like the good one. He can see him, yeah, he's like, I can fix you, right? But yeah, I do remember saying the only thing that scared me about going there was that we were going to have everything you could possibly need to be successful. And I remember telling Adam, I'm worried I'm going to find out I'm not as good as I hoped I was. Like that's how I knew if we went there and I couldn't do it, I just couldn't do it. I just wasn't that good. So right off the bat, you're already, you're like mentally you're saying, I'm sort of like trusting this guy's expertise. I'm going to trust what you're trusting whatever he does at this point because you're just like basically saying, I'm submitting myself to him in his training program. And whatever he says, he knows better than me. He's worked with better athletes and me. Okay, I see there's a power dynamic. It's not healthy. Right off the bat. It was a men's only team. We were actually heard of there because of my husband. And I was sort of like a consolation, like Alberto said. He wanted to coach Adam and he's like, but I'll also coach you. You know, and he said, I coach high school boys. That's about similar level. And it did not hurt my feeling. I was like, okay, I wanted the opportunity. I was like, this is the best program in the world. I get to be the first woman to ever be here. Like I'm in. I want to be a part of this so bad. So yeah, I mean, we both felt so lucky. And we literally a few weeks later, we were driving out to Oregon from Colorado. Where did Alberto come from? Like where did he come from? He's actually born in Cuba, but he moved to the United States really young. I think before he was two, I didn't mean like literally where he was. I meant like where'd he come from professionally? Like where did Nike find him from? Well, so he grew up on the East Coast and he was an extremely good high school runner. And then he ended up going to the University of Oregon where he won a bunch of titles. And he came in right after Steve Prifantane, who died in a car accident. And so, and you know, Nike, a lot of Nike is based off of pre. Like a lot of the ethos and their biggest track mean is the p-funting classic. And when Alberto was coming through Oregon, they were sort of desperate for another pre. And he kind of fit the very different personalities, but he fit the mold of like kind of being brash and being very successful. And then he ran the marathon and he won New York City three years in a row and he won Boston. And he just seemed to be this God. I mean, there, until recently, there was an Alberto Salazar building on the Nike campus. So he was just like the next great American distance runner. And Nike is built out of running. I mean, Bill Barramann and Phil Knight were runners. So that's how, and he went to the Evo, which is where they were and that's how. So everything was kind of a lining. It was like, it made sense, okay. So, it's a project Oregon for people that are not part of this world was really built around Alberto Salazar. Like that was, that was, yeah. His idea, he saw the Boston marathon. And there was one American in the top 10. And everyone was going crazy and he was like, remember when we used to win this? Like this is crazy. And so he basically went, you know, he's very close with Phil Knight and he said, I want to start something. And I want to get American distance runners back on the podium. Originally, he was thinking more marathon, but as it progressed, he went to the track as well. And he got a huge budget and he just had to convince people that he was good coach because he hadn't been coaching. You know, he was his own entity and athlete and stature. Funny enough, it doesn't always translate. Yes, no, it doesn't, it doesn't. Send to the Oregon project had been around for four years before we got there. And he had definitely had had success. He put Dan Brown on the Olympic team in 2004 and two different events. But I think the thing he saw in Adam and a little bit in me is that he hadn't had like an NCAA champion come there, right? He had had guys that were pretty, pretty good, but never like one necessarily. And so he was super excited about the opportunity to work, especially with Adam, someone that had made an Olympic team was obviously very talented, had won a national title in high school and college. And you know, after we got there, over the next two years, the Oregon project really became more and more and more serious and, you know, bigger name athlete coming in. So I mean, there was a point when you felt something was off with him. I'm curious, out of all the cohort of athletes, you know, outside of Adam and all the other people that you, you know, your husband and all the other people that you sort of communicated with and interacted with on a day-to-day, are you the first person that felt something was off or was, they're like whispers and rumors or was it like nothing? Did you feel like you were sort of shouting into a void that something was a little bit weird and uncomfortable? I mean, Adam and I both felt like things were a little off here and there. Just certain rules that he felt were stupid, you know, that bothered us a little bit, definitely bothered Adam a lot. The key felt like NCAA rules were stupid, just certain things. So there were a little things, but it's kind of like this. But NCAA rules is different than like predatory coach. Right, right, right. But that's the point is like we had a teammate that was in college and it would sort of like, you start to compromise your standards. So we compromise a little bit on the NCAA stuff, right? And then we compromise a little bit on how he treats this person. Then we compromise a little bit on that. And I think that's how it built over time. I didn't see the predatory behavior. I mean, looking back I did, but in those moments, I was just like, oh, I'm getting attention. Like Alberto cares about me right now. He's talking to me right now. And for someone who obviously has issues with wanting a male figure in their life to look up to and also just being such a driven athlete, it's just hard to describe, but it's like this slow burn. And when you look back, you can see how it was happening, but in the moment, you know, it went so far before I was like, oh my God, it can't be here anymore. I think that I think that someone's how we view someone and how others view people and their charisma and their accolades and their resume. It's like, it's a little bit intoxicating to a degree and you don't realize it's some shit that it just pretty fucked up. In intoxicating is the perfect word. I've actually done other interviews. It's like he is so charismatic. Like he charmed my family. And he's, look, not everyone's, people aren't all good and all bad. He's funny, he's smart. He's very engaging. He looks you straight in the eye when he meets you. He like really makes you feel like he's paying attention to you. And he's, he's famous worldwide. I mean, we were racing in Europe and we got into cab and the cab driver just started freaking out because Alberto Salazar was in his cab, right? Like you're living in this world. He has a building on the Nike campus. He's huge. And so you, you like the attention. Even if it makes you a little bit uncomfortable at times, it is a little bit intoxicating. You feel like, well, I'm, he's, he's singling me out out of all these people. And it just, it's sort of like a slippery slope. Because when I look at your story, there's, there's all these different pieces to it. And I could see that all this stuff happening at the same time. So we talk about the drugs and the doping and then there's a sports psychologist that comes into this Darren treasure. And then there was, I think, sexual advances on you as well. But I think you, at the time, you were like, you didn't, you didn't really realize how, how wrong those things were in the moment. And then I think there was, so I want to just understand sort of the environment that you're in because there's a lot happening at the same time. So it's not just sexual advances. It's not just authority figures that maybe aren't guiding you in the right direction. It's not just doping. And I think you've seen like syringes and stuff. Like it's a lot of shit happening at once. And I feel like for somebody who's just trying to like win at life and be a high performance person, this is a lot of distractions, a lot of stress. So I think you're just like, okay, I'm focusing on my North Star. I'm going there. And all this other shit, it's not quite right, but I don't want to let it jeopardize my life and my career. And this is like the, yeah, this is, go that sort. Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't second guess the explanations I was given, right? If the syringes in the refrigerator are for allergy shots, that's what I got to go with. Cause if they're not, if I even think for a second, I don't know if that's true. What now I've completely compromised. I'm living here, the shots are in the fridge. Anybody could think they're used on, you know, same with like the, the dirty jokes and the talking to me about sexual stuff. I'm like, hey, I'm the only woman here. Don't be the prude. Don't get kicked out. Just just roll with it, laugh with it. Just don't, don't be that person, you know, and, you know, and we had this sports psychologist, and they were, and he is not a sports psychologist, but we were told he was. And they're working in the other also very sketch. And so it's just like again, again, I think it goes back to my childhood a lot of like, if there was an Olympic gold medal for compartmentalization, I am winning it, right? Like syringes has to be allergy shots. Cause otherwise everything I believe in and everyone I care about is a lie, put it over here. Yeah, I don't like it when Alberto talks to me like that, but he also calls my mom and tells me he loves me and says that he feels like he's a father figure. So I'm just gonna remember he's a father figure. So bad and comfortable stuff put it over here. And I just can't let anything else come in. And I'm running really well. And I'm, you know, I'm like, when did I start running really well when it came here? So I don't want to risk losing this cause this is the path to everything I've ever dreamt of. So maybe just help me understand like this timeline of your life with Alberto. And what was going on with, cause there's a couple people that are involved in this story. I've read that Dr. Jeffrey Brown was a doctor that all people were going to. There's a sports psychologist there in treasure. So can you maybe in your words just summarize all the different things that were happening that obviously you've written about in your book, this very, very, just a quick summary of all the different people and players that were taking part in what eventually you testified about this story. So just so people can wrap their heads around all the different things that were happening, all the different players. And it's actually wild because when you think about all the people involved, I think that most people would probably have the exact same reaction as you. Like there's so many, there's so many people that have been like signed off on that are part of basically this, I don't know, I don't want to call it like a, like a cult, but it's like a little bit of like a, whatever it is, a little bit of a cult. It's like how could, how could this, how could this be anything but legitimate and exactly what they say it is? Just walk, like walk everybody through sort of the, the few key players. Yeah, so obviously Alberto is the head coach and he is the super famous athlete that everyone loves. And then we have Darren Treasure who we were told was a sports psychologist. Turns out he is not a psychologist, doesn't even have a degree in psychology, but he, we had to meet with him twice a week. We had to tell him like our biggest fear is that first we were told everything was confidential, but then it would start to come out later. Like Alberto would say, why did you tell Darren, you were worried about that workout or why did you tell Darren you're, but you have to see him because they worked together and Alberto and Darren traveled together. In fact, when I would go to the starting line of arrays, I would talk to Alberto and give him a hug and then the last person that would talk to me would be Darren. Like it was so controlling. And then there's Dr. Jeffrey Brown because everyone on the team had an underactive thyroid, supposedly, right? So I had seen Dr. Jeffrey Brown recommended to me by the USATF, which is the United States Track and Field Association. And they, they recommended Dr. Brown as a like credible endocrinologist. He had actually been at one point associated with USATF. And I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism there. I took a low level of sinthroid, but all of a sudden all of my teammates are also going to see him. All of a sudden it was on payroll. He's on payroll comes to the Beijing Olympics with us. And you know, I do believe that people have underactive thyroid, but I'm starting to see like what are the odds that everybody on this team? And then there were some of us that were just on sinthroid, but then there were other people that were on different medications. Then there was another doctor. I don't want to say his name because he passed away. I didn't get to see him, which is interesting, but he prescribed inhalers. So most of the team was also on an inhaler. And so there's all these people that are a part of the team, right? And everything's about like everything's about getting every little advantage. 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So you can get an inhaler if you have a prescription for one, but it helps, obviously, it dilates your lungs. And it dilates all the little things and it helps you get more airflow. Thyroid is a little trickier because if you take too much and you don't need it, then your thyroid stops working, which is eventually what happened to me longterm. But then there are also medications in the endocrinology space that I was not prescribed, but that my teammates were something called side-a-mail that you would take right before you run, which is arguably a performance enhancer. So at this point, a lot of people would call this gray area because technically you can use an inhaler if you have a doctor's prescription or a flow vent, all these different allergy things. And technically you can take all these different medications if you have a thyroid condition, but this really is what we call now medicalization of the sport, using medicine to get advantages that you otherwise wouldn't have. I mean, what are the odds that everybody on this team had horrific allergies, horrific lung capacity, and thyroid condition? I mean, how would we all have gotten to this place? No, of course, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous when, of course, but it's okay. So when was like the straw that broke the camel's back, when was like the moment between you and Adam, because obviously you're having conversations about this at this point, and you're probably back and forth saying, this is not normal, because you testifying, you testifying, it's probably pretty scary because I'm sure the thought, is this gonna totally blow up my entire career, crossed your mind, probably a lot, quite a bit, more than once, for sure. So what's that moment? I mean, honestly, it was a lot of little things like my coach had a prescription for Andregel, which is topical testosterone, and I started to, you know, I would live with him, Adam and I would live with him in a teammate when we would travel and it started to get real uncomfortable but I was around it, it would just be sitting out, and you know, you talk about blowing up, when I first, when I first went into Usada to tell them what I thought I knew or what I had seen, I was crying and I was like, I might have been doped and I don't know. Like I'm terrified that maybe he rubbed that on me, and anyway, long story short, I was able to get a hold of all my medical records that took a really long time, because people don't want me to have them, but they were able to look for patterns in my testosterone and thank God, it was totally good, but it wasn't with all my teammates. But anyway, but it was just building, right? All these things are building and we had gotten a new teammate, and Adam had left the team. He was basically just supporting me, like still running with me and around with the team, but he wasn't racing for the team anymore. And I had had my son, I mean, there was just so much building, and I was in Eugene, Adam meet, and Adam wasn't there, and I watched one of my teammates do something, and I called him and told him what I just saw, and he said, do you think they're cheating? I couldn't believe how quickly I just said, yes. I couldn't believe it. I had never admitted to anyone that I actually thought they were cheating. Like I had said, that's weird, or I don't understand that, or that doesn't make sense, but I had never said it. And that would have been probably in June, and then we still had, it was a world championship year, so it was like, okay, I just need to stay on the straight and narrow, get through the world championships, make the Olympic team next year, and then I can move on. Have you said publicly what that thing was, that prompted that reaction? The, that made me think you were cheating? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is one of my teammates, winning this 10,000, I just didn't believe it, I didn't believe what I saw at all. Oh, you didn't see them injecting something, you just saw the result, okay, okay, okay, I gotcha, gotcha, sorry, I understand. Yeah, and so, and then I started to look back at other things, like the way they were working out versus the way I was working out, I actually did talk to Alberto about that, and he kind of gas lit me and was like, well, you had a baby and you're a woman, and I'm like, okay, well, we've always trading the same, and you still have to recover whether a female or male. But I kind of was just like walking on eggshells, trying to get through the world championships, and the thing that finally broke me, which is pretty embarrassing, because you have to think, this has been building for years, I've actually been sexually assaulted by my coach by this point twice. Really? Oh, I didn't realize that. Oh shit, okay, that's another part of the story. So Alberto, actually sexually assaulted you? Yes, and, but I had convinced myself it was a mistake, but ever, anyway, we're on the plane, I've had it today goo, and I've left my husband and my child at home, and he came on to me, and it's kind of embarrassing, but that's what broke me, because everything else I could kind of compartmentalize, and I could kind of make an excuse for it, but this was just so blatant, and I just remember, I'm on this flight from Portland to Korea, South Korea, and I just went, or maybe I was to Tokyo for a second, but I just went in the bathroom and just started crying, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And so as after the world championships, where I told my husband, I can't do this anymore, like, I cannot, and I hadn't told my husband about everything that had happened, and then I slowly started to open up to him, but it kind of sad that that's what made me leave and not all of the stuff before, but that was whatever, for whatever mental reason, that's what I just felt just so degraded, basically. This was supposed to be my father figure, you know? When you start to sort of speak up, I guess when you testify as well, what else starts to come out about him? You know, it's one of those things where like, once you finally remove yourself from the situation, and then you look back, you see how it was so different than you thought. Like, honestly, when you said it was like a cult, that's actually a great term, because we didn't question anything, I didn't question anything. When I got away from it, I mean, I had to go to therapy, I started to look at things and talk about things, and my family would be staring at me like this, with their eyes like that, saying, care, that is not normal, that is not. Yeah. All these events between an athlete and a coach, or the way people talk to each other, and it really wasn't undoing. Honestly, I ran well for a couple of years, I made another big team, and then I just kind of hit bottom, and it took me a couple of years of like, really working on myself and, I don't know, it's like, it's like reliving everything again, but with a pair of glasses on, and it's like you're angry at yourself and you're sad, and it says all these conflicting emotions, because you still, even with all the bad stuff, there's still good stuff, so you're still mourning not having these people in your life anymore, which is super weird, but you are still. But that's a definition of like, that's like a Stockholm syndrome, like these are like, these are, I don't know what this particular version is called, but like the narcissism and the gas lighting, it's only effective if you have a relationship with that person, right? And then they take advantage of that relationship, and I'm no expert on narcissism and gas lighting, but I think this is why people, to an extreme degree, stay in abusive relationships, because they always justify, well, it was just a one time thing. It was just, well, you know, it's not gonna happen again. Yeah, and I mean, that's how I got through it. I did it myself, it's a mistake, or he had had too much to drink, or whatever I would say, you know, to justify the behavior and then put it away, and you know, when it really started to unfold, and when I really started to deal with it, I was embarrassed, I remember calling my family and being like, I'm embarrassed, like these things happened to me, and I never told you, and I never told anyone, and you know, my mom and sister were horrified. So as my husband, telling my husband some of this stuff was, it was horrible. I've learned through therapy and meeting a lot of other people that that's actually totally normal, that you don't tell, and you just keep it to yourself, but yeah, I think you have to, right, to feel properly. Yes, totally, and I just think another thing, just that I want people to understand is, it's not like you see it for what it is, and then you're just totally over it, right? Like I said, I have spent seven years with these people, they were my entire world, you know, and they were the only people I hung out with. I've lived with them, I traveled with them, I trained with them on a daily basis, so, it was really hard, it was really hard to leave, and it was hard for a long time. Was, what was the, what was, you know, as you go through your healing process, you took a really strong stance, and you started to speak out, and I think that not only, that probably helped you heal to a degree, but I mean, then you start to, I love your perspective of, you'll never fully come to terms with what happened, but you have to reframe as to why you're speaking out about it, why it's not something to be embarrassed about, and I think that what you've done very well is you've realized that, at the end of the day, this happened to you, and it's horrific, but think of the potential of not speaking out, and not calling out this bullshit behavior, because then what's gonna happen to the next woman athlete that goes through this program, or whatever, because this, again, this is a wildly recognized program, this is something that was supposed to be the epitome of Nike, of performance, to tie it into the Olympics, tie it into professional running, so I think that you have to speak up. I think that you're doing a lot of people into service if you didn't, that's the way I feel at least, but. You can't swear for you in stuff I look at myself, and those times are very differently now, like I actually was surviving, you know, I was doing the best that I could, I could really was, but yes, honestly a big testifying against him on the dope inside was super hard, but testifying against him on the sexual assault stuff was way harder, and I almost didn't do it, I actually said I can't do it at first, but the reason I ended up doing it was that I have two nieces, they both run, and they just started to think like, they're being raised the same way I am, they to be kind, be respectful, appreciate your opportunities, which is how I raised my son too, and they could sign themselves in the same situation, and I could help stop that. You know what's really messed up? Like, this is not like we're having a conversation about something that happened a hundred years ago, we're having a conversation about something that happened, like he testified in 2021, which is less than three years ago. Yeah, this stuff happens, you know, and I think that's why I don't, I would never tell a survivor you have to talk about it, because everyone's on their own path, but if you can, I think you should, because the more that we talk about it, the more that we destigmatize it, and the more the next group of women, our girls, won't take this shit, if you wanna mute, they'll know. No, we don't have to deal with that. I don't have to be treated like that. The whole environment has to change because outside of sexual assault and harassment and misconduct outside of the doping, even the formal policies that Nike had towards treatment of pregnant athletes was okay. Well, there's no policy. Yeah, yeah, so policy is putting in nicely, right? So there was no policy. So you think about all these factors combined, the fact that you still sort of succeeded in spite of is very admirable. It's just phenomenal because all of this is almost like, it's all stacked against you. It's all stacked against you. So, super difficult sort of period of your life, and the testifying is very recent. What changes have been made to like walk me through even like the outcome of Alberto Salazar, Project Oregon, what happened with the testifying about the doping, what happened with the testifying of the sexual assault and abuse, what was the result? So the first hearing on the doping stuff was Usada versus Alberto Salazar and Dr. Jeffrey Brown. And I testified there for hours on both in both cases. They were handed down a four year, so it was held before the American Arbitration Association and they were both handed down a four year suspension in 2019, which they both immediately appealed, but he couldn't coach during that time. We had the appeal, I wanna say sometime in 2020 where we all testified again. And this was in front of Cass, which is the court of arbitration to sport and they upheld the ban. So he served a four year ban from October 2019 until his ban was lifted last year, but there was also the safe sport side. There was originally three people on the safe sport side that two other women that testified with me. And that the first hearing he wasn't there. We got to talk in private and he was banned for life. Then he appealed that decision as well. So we went in front of a judge and at that time, he had witnesses. I didn't have any, it wasn't me versus him. It was the safe sport versus Alberto Salazar. That testifying was honestly ranked, like probably the worst experience in my life. I was really living it. You were really living it and then you have his lawyer telling you a liar the whole time, second guessing it, making you describe it over and over again, then saying, well, you said it was this and now you're saying it's this and it just was a horrific experience. But that was in 2021 and the lifetime ban was upheld. So safe sport only has jurisdiction in a Olympic level sport in the United States. So he could still coach at the NCAA. He could coach for another. Which is horrifying. Yeah, as I go, let's go put him in front of younger athletes now. Yeah, yeah. So the jurisdiction isn't great, but it does prevent him from coaching Olympic level professional athletes in the United States. And what happened that the safe sport is the sexual misconduct, correct? Okay, understood. Why do we not have rules that if you get barred from coaching because of sexual harassment or assault at an Olympic level, how are you ever able to coach anybody ever again? Because the NCAA hasn't joined safe sport. And so because of that, they're the only groups that have joined safe sport, which was decided by Congress and is funded by Congress. It's just that Olympic level sport and it was really formed after the Larry Nassar scandal. And there's a lot of people who both say to my face, well, I'd run for them. He's such a good coach. And then like, okay, you take that knife out of my back. Real quick. And I think that's really sad. I think it's really sad that people think, especially men like, well, I don't care because he wouldn't do that to me, you know, he's great coach. So maybe again, you know these details because you lived it. So I don't want to sound like overly simplifying. But like, why is the conversation whether or not he can coach NCAA and not why is he not in jail? Like I don't, I don't, it doesn't make any. Yeah, well, to be fair, I didn't bring any charges against him in that sense. Both of the incidents were in foreign countries. One was in Italy and the other one was in Portugal and Lisbon. And, you know, there was the statute had run out in Italy. It had not in Portugal. And I just felt like just doing that alone was so traumatizing. And really, my goal was not to ruin his life, was not to put him in jail. It was just to make sure he couldn't do this to another athlete. And that happened and I can live with that. Okay. I'm sorry for going so deep on all these, I find it just, I find it important to just walk through what happened because if even one person listens to this, that's going through something even remotely similar, I just want them to understand that like, he had the journey is not easy, but know that there's people that will support you and you'll come out on the other side. Okay, that's really what I'm trying to get at. But. It's really hard, you know, but it was definitely worth it on both counts. It was a lot of testifying, crying, a lot of stress. I have no doubt, it's like, I don't want to make you relive it at the third time right now. So let's sort of move on to where you're at right now because even before we started recording, we were talking about, you know, there's very casually like, okay, so there's all these doping issues in US sports. But this is that this is one incident. I don't think has there been anything significant a doping scandal since I haven't heard of one to the degree of what you've gone through. But then also in US sports is, you know, that's in terms of Olympics, that's one country. Then we talk about all these other countries and you just testified this week. I think about other countries that are, you know, not as regulated as a US by any means. And I'm just thinking this is going on in the US. I mean, like it's almost like comical to think that other countries would police their athletes more than the US if it's gonna be like an international competition where your country's reputation is on the line. Yeah. So I was the last couple days I was in DCE. I wasn't testifying. I was meeting with funders and congressmen asking them to support you, Sadda. So you saw it as the United States if I don't be an agency. And we, I'm on their board now. They're 10 member boards. So obviously I speak with a little bit of bias. But they do the most testing in the world. And they have the most robust testing program. And I think it's great because US athletes that are doing well, you can trust in them more than you can a lot of other athletes because they are being tested on a regular basis and they are being held to the highest standard. But you saw it is not the top, right? The top is WADA, which is a world anti-doping agency and we all answer to WADA. So every country has their own, what's called NATO, which is their national organization of dope, if I dope being. And what happened, what came out a couple of weeks ago was that there were 23 positives. I'm gonna try to say this is simply as possible. Sorry, we can totally get into the weeds on this if you want. But this drag TMZ. Yeah. TMZ is a new, I don't even know what the drug TMZ is. I just know of the celebrity news outlet. But, yeah. It's a manufacturer. It's not Climbuterol that could be found in meat. It is only made in a pill farming. It's 100%. If it is in your body, you took, it can't be contaminated through anything, right? It's not like that. You got to take a via pill, yes. So this drag became famous because Valiyeva, the young Russian figure skater at the Beijing Olympics, she had tested positive for it. First she said her grandfather had burped on her drink and her father had a prescription for it and then she changed it to, and she's a young teenager. So someone else is baking up the story and they changed it to, he had made her a strawberry dessert and he had spit up in that or whatever they said. Anyway, she ended up with a four-year band and it was really bad because she skated up the Olympics and she displaced people, but then the medals were re-awarded. Long story short, in 2021, there was a swimming competition in China that helped select their Olympic team. Remember the 2021 Olympics were deferred a year. So, you know, it's the Olympic year in 2021. They're having this competition, 23 Chinese athletes test positive for TMZ. Now according to the rules of your underwater, would you have to be certified to compete in these events? If there's a positive test, it has to be reported. Whether you find no fault because sometimes there are no fault cases, right? Sometimes it is from the meat. I mean, it's very rare, but it does happen. But even if it's no fault, these have to be reported. And what happened was it wasn't reported. They had their own investigation three months after the fact and they said that they found traces of TMZ and the sink and events in the kitchen of the hotel where the athletes were staying. So, I just like few things here. This is a pill, right? It's not like in your cleaning supplies or anything like that. And then also, this is in during COVID. This is in 2021 in January where COVID things are high. So, you're going to tell me that they didn't clean the kitchen that two, three months later, they were able to find traces of this, whatever. It is what it is. 13 of these athletes. 23 now. Well, 23 positives. So, Shenata, which is their anti-doping agency, eventually reports it to Wata, saying this is a mass contamination case we're not going to hold a new one accountable. Wata says, sure, that makes sense. And nothing gets announced. 13 of these athletes end up swimming in the Olympic. I think five or six of them end up winning medals at the Olympic Games. And no one knows. And so, there's whistleblowers that went to Wata and said, these athletes are using TMZ and it's been covered up. Wata doesn't do an investigation. So, finally, these whistleblowers start going to the media and they actually come to Usada as well. So, the New York Times spent a year and a half investigating this and finally blew up in this story the other day. It's crazy. Wata, if we can't trust Wata, our world, then what can we do? Like, who do we trust? So, US taxpayer dollars go to fund Wata. United States is the biggest funder of Wata. It's $4 million, you pay, it's sense for you, but you pay to fund this world anti-doping agency and they're not following their own rules. Other things that have come out in this is that the Chinese gave Wata an extra 1.9 million over what they're supposed to give, which that's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to take any extra money because it's a conflict of interest and 500,000 of that was noted for investigative purposes. Also, another thing that's come out in the last couple of days. Another thing that's come out in the last couple of days is that there's this sportswear company in China. I think it's pronounced ANTA, it's ANTA. They outfit the Chinese Olympic Slim team. They outfit the Chinese Olympic team and they also have been paying Wata. So the conflicts of interest here are just so bad. Well, it's almost like, it sounds like it's all started with a really lazy scan. It's like, well, you know, it's a little suspicious if one person has TMZ, but if we just give everybody TMZ, they can't actually think that we did that on purpose. So they're just gonna forget. It's not even like an intellectually complicated plot. It's just like, no, I'll just give everyone TMZ and say it was an accident. Like, I'm sure they believe that. But then it's seeing at that hotel, right? So if everybody's eating the same food and everyone's contaminated, everyone's gonna test positive. And I think what's really hard moving forward is that first, China did not use the rules that are, that you have to use according to Wata. Wata didn't investigate it. They accepted the explanation. And just from the optics, it looks like, okay, so this was just months out from the Olympic game. Oh, the other point that is important to note is that the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, is 50% of the funding for Wata. So Wata doesn't necessarily want a big scandal on the eve of the Olympic Games. And then remember, just a few months later Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics. So just everything about it, like banning these Chinese athletes for the Olympics, when knowing that the next Olympics are being held in Beijing just months later because of COVID, it just, it's bad, but now athletes are pissed and not just in the United States, all over the world because if we can't trust Wata, what are we doing? So basically I was on the hill meeting with different senators and Congress people and just basically pleading our case to hold Wata accountable. Because right now, no one can actually hold Wata accountable. The only way we could maybe is by like, removing their funding, but we need Wata. We need, yeah, the United States can't be in charge of everything. That would be crazy and a huge conflict of interest. So we need a robust, trustable world anti-doping agency, but right now we do not have it. And the athletes aren't mad. Yeah. Well, I was gonna say who elects the leadership at Wata? So some of them are through the IOC. It's very, it's so complicated. The vice, the vice chair is someone from China. It's very political and that's part of the problem. And I don't know if you'll remember when the whole Russian, Russian doping scandal happened. So Chi and there was a movie about it called Icarus. So yeah, after that, it was like, how could this have happened? How could we have not known that they were swapping samples that they were covering up tests? And Wata said basically like, we don't have enough money. Like we don't have the jurisdiction to hold them accountable. We don't have the funding. We don't have an investigative team. And so after that in 2017, all of these people, Michael Phelps testified from people from other countries did and Wata was reformed. And so now they can hold countries accountable and they do have the funding. Their funding is huge. Their funding went up 52% between 2019 and 2023. And yet they didn't follow their own rules, right? So it's just this really bad situation. And I have a lot empathy for the athletes. Three of these athletes that won medals at the last Olympics have already qualified for the Parasol Olympics. Two more might as well. And athletes, I mean, obviously the swimmers are the most mad. They're like, so I have to go race this person who I know failed a drug test for the last Olympics and beat me. And now they're coming back. I mean, just imagine, you know, talking about having to compartmentalize and not like having to totally put that aside. So yeah, basically it's a huge disaster. It's really so it's almost like like so. There's doping issues globally. And this is just one that was really prevalent. Honestly, I hadn't been a whistleblower that blew it open. We wouldn't even know about it because it would have been just swept under the rug. It was swept under the rug. So you got to think about all these other countries. I'm curious if you still think that there's doping issues in the US with certain sports, but also with other countries. I mean, this was one whistleblower. So it's interesting because the US has the most testing facilities and the most testing. And still the US athletes still win. They're still, they're still, you know, they still do quite well. So if every US athlete was always losing, that would be a little bit of a red flag, but US athletes are still winning. And I don't think the doping is across all sports in the US. I'm sure some people try and get away with it or whatnot. But I think that the checks and balances and the rules make it probably a little bit difficult for a US athlete to dope as much as, you know, maybe a Chinese athlete or a Russian athlete or whatever, pick a country, it doesn't matter, right? But I am curious, like, just your take on, what's the fix? Because you have all these different countries that all operate with different infrastructure and different ideologies and different cultures and different everything. And I don't think, you know, every country operates from the same moral lens as the US. And even people within the US don't always pray from a great moral lens either. But I think it's harder when there's more regulation. But look, the US is not perfect. I know you're a hockey guy, so I was asking about this. I knew I was gonna be talking to you. So you can't be drug, like, you saw it, doesn't drug test for the NHL. For like, when they do the Winter Olympics and, oh, oh, for the, yeah. The actual NHL, like, they don't, they also don't test the NBA or football, which I can't think of right now. But hockey, so in hockey. Yeah, that felt you. Yeah, the NFL, the biggest one. But I like, that's the one I don't want. I was, I'm Canadian too. So I'm gonna get hate for this. But I like my sports hockey. So like, I'm coming, I just moved down. I just moved to the US and the love for football is beyond. Yeah, right. And I grew up in Northern Minnesota. So like, I get the hockey love, like, that was art. They even lost our professional team for a while because we're so obsessed with the high school hockey. And now we finally have wild again. But so I get it. But like, for instance, the National Hockey League, they have their own testing, but they can't be tested at the start of the playoffs until the first game of the season. So I'm sorry, what? Like, that's when the dopey would happen, recovering in the playoffs and then in the office and when you're training and getting ready. So I just want to be clear that we have problems in the United States and even for, even for sports that aren't so stupid, even for sports that are under use artist jurisdiction. Like, look, if you really want to get away with it and you're willing to take a lot of risks, you, you might be able to, like, you thought it has limitations. They can only test you from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. If you want a microdose in those other hours, but at least they have such a robust testing program that you got that you have to be on your toes. But that doesn't mean people won't dope. But what is the solution? It's so hard, but I believe the solution is everyone needs to be held at the same standard and it should be thousands and thousands of tests a year per country. And for instance, this whole Chinata situation, they didn't follow the rules, so there should be a then a sanction. I mean, I don't want the athletes to have to pay, but if we truly want clean sport, it's like what happened with the Russia scandal. Like, it was unfortunate that there were some clean Russian athletes, I'm sure, and they had, that they provided a way for them to be able to compete at least in track and field. Like, they had to prove it. They had to live outside the country. They had to be open to more testing. But what are we doing? Unless we actually hold these countries accountable and unless we actually have this standard that makes sense, it's just gonna be like this. It's never gonna be fixed. No, it's never gonna be fixed. So this is, you know, you speak on this now, you're speaking to senators, you're, you haven't testified on this yet. Maybe, maybe one day, maybe someday. But talk to me about, because outside of athletes, I think all high-performing people sort of succumb to this at some level, you exit your career in a relatively negative way. And even when people exit their career in a very positive way, something business person sells their company, they still have this identity crisis. I have what do I do now? So I can only imagine when you exit your career in a not-so-fun way, you must have some sort of identity crisis. And I want, I want you to help people who do have an identity crisis, because I mean, the level that the shit that happens to you, I hope that no one else has to go through, even though I know someone else will. But the mental forward to the you exhibit is phenomenal. And I just want people to understand like, how did you transition into a successful, happy, productive, sort of second-win second season to your life after going through all this shit, because I'm sure it wasn't easy. Yeah, I mean, look, no, I'm not like the poster child. I wanted to run at the 2016 Olympics. I thought that maybe to have another child after that would be like my glory, I'd, you know, run in the third Olympic Games and be done. The top three make it in the marathon at the trials. I was fourth, which led to literally three years of like questioning my value. What can I do, you know, I was running but really half-heartedly I kept getting injured, which I think was my body saying, you know, we all agreed you were going to be done after the Olympics. And I really struggled with, if I'm not making the Olympic team what value do I have? And honestly, in a weird way, turning 40 helped a lot because I just realized I was on the second side of life and I couldn't be worried about that anymore. But I think I was open to, you know, I struggled for a couple of years trying to make something happen so that I would know I was done. And look, you're like, you're trying to like say, like I just want, I don't want my body to be able to compete anymore. One more, I want to have one more good race and then I know, you know, and it just wouldn't happen every time I'd prepare, I'd get hurt or I'd run bad. But I understand it's so hard. And my husband went through this too. It's like you've had this, this pursuit for so long with blinders on almost. And the thing is in life a lot of times, things rarely end the way you want them to. And you have to be okay with that, but there is a whole other life after that. And I basically struggled for a couple of years really questioning who I was. And then I just sort of started paying attention to opportunities. And for me, I love running so things in the running industry. I eventually got hired by NBC. I'm the distance analyst for NBC now for all the Olympic games and the big track meet and stuff. And I love this side of my life. It's so fun and I get to still be in the sport and I get all of that knowledge that I learned along the way. I'm applying here on a totally different platform but I get to, I get to apply that. And so I totally understand the feeling of like, I'm nothing now. The thing that made me important and the thing that made me special, I can't even do that anymore. But that's actually not true. That's one thing that made you special and made you feel important. There are other sides to you. So it's just, it's acknowledging that it's a loss and it's sad and there's like a more eating period, I would say. But then realizing no one is one thing. That's just like no one person is just one thing and then really being open to what else do I have to offer and what else could I do and taking a risk? You know, I never ever wanted to be on TV. That was nothing that ever, ever interested me. When NBC first asked me to audition, I told them no and my husband said, you're good at it. You was like, just do it. It's an experience and it's something on your resume, you know? It's ended up being a career that I have absolutely loved. So I think just being open to changing and knowing that you are more than that one thing that you shined at. You know, you went through so many tough periods but when you fast forward, there's a lot of good lessons that you've learned from all the different things that you've gone through. And I would love to hear a lesson that you've learned for yourself, but also maybe just a lesson for a young athlete that you wish somebody would have told you when you were first starting out. I mean, I think one thing I wish I would have realized when I was younger is that success doesn't happen overnight. And I mean, you mentioned that earlier, but it's it, it especially now this day, you do like social media and everything. You feel like everyone just is crushing it right away. But the reality is if I was talking to a young athlete, I'd say I hit my peak in my in my mid 30s, my early to mid 30s. And when I was 15 killing myself because I didn't PR, I couldn't have imagined that I'd be doing it for another 20 years, you know? And so just have to do something. Yeah, and just know that life is a long journey. And I know we all want success right away, but good things take time and it takes practice and it takes loving and it takes working at it. So I wish someone had told me that when it was younger because I felt like everything hinged on every race that I was running. I think one of the things I've learned about myself is when I think most people are because trust me, I'm not that strong, but I'm just so much stronger than I thought it was. You know, I've been able to weather a lot of storms and yeah, some of them are really hard, but they've made me smarter and they've made me more complete and more sure of who I am. And I think most people are a lot stronger than they think. You hear people say, oh, if that happened to me, that would kill me. And it really doesn't. And as long as you can work your way through it, you're actually better on the other side. I know it sounds so cheesy, but it's true. It's so true. It's so, so true. I mean, you also, if I'm not mistaken, there was a neurological order runner's dystonia. I have no idea what that means, by the way, so maybe explain because all I understand is that it limits how you can run. Is this a physical or is it a neurological means it involves your mind or brain to some capacity? Yeah, okay, so it's not just like a physical purely, so there's a brain condition of some sort that limits how much you can run. And I want you to also just speak about how that's impacted you, but also just thinking back of all the bullshit that you dealt with. Like this is, yeah, difficult, but you've dealt with more difficult shit. You've dealt with a harder situation that ultimately, when you, life is again, we just spoke about this at the beginning, life is so strange how it works. Like everything that happens in your life is horrible as it can be, really does set you up for like the next chapter. And all the different things in your life that made you hard and made you able to persevere and injure, then when something like this happens, all of a sudden it's like, you know what? I figured out how to deal with like 200 other horrible things that have happened in my life. And at the same time, I've won 10,000 times, so I'll figure this out as well. I'm sure this is probably what allowed you to sort of tackle this with grace and not let it destroy you psychologically, mentally, physically. But as a runner, you can't run as much anymore. That's not easy. So what happened? Yeah, so I started falling when I was running and just having lack of sensation in my lower left leg. I started, and I fell into traffic and I finally realized like, I need to go to the doctor and it took a year to get the diagnosis because I had had MRIs and I had MRIs by brain and I had some lesions so they thought I had MS. And then long story short, I was finally diagnosed with repetitive movement, dystonia, which happens in musicians a lot or writers. It's a movement that you do again and again and again and they don't know why it happens. A lot of people have a bad fall before it. It happens and I did have a very bad fall, but I feel like the symptoms had started before that. But basically when my left leg swings through to land on the ground, instead of just the muscles needed to land on the ground and then push off firing, everything fires out once. And so I have no sensation that I've hit the ground that I'm pushing off the ground. You'll get this analogy because you're a hockey player. This is what I said to my doctor, the first time I went in, I said, it's like I'm on the most freshly zamboni diced and I have a slick shoe on and my foot comes down and I don't know that it's gonna, like it does not feel like. I know exactly, I know exactly the feeling. Oh, this is so many people and they just look at me with a blank face. And it's actually a horrifying feeling because you feel like you just don't have control of your body at that point because your foot is just not catching and it's doing whatever it wants. It is the, the only person that I've ever told that actually got it. So that's what it felt like and it's been really frustrating and I got a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic and they confirmed the diagnosis and the doctor there told me you just have to stop running because it can get really bad. It can affect your walking, which had happened. That's what ended when I ended up going to this specialist because I was having a hard time walking. But you know, my neurologist, she's amazing and she's like you used to run 135 miles a week, you used to run the Olympic marathon. Just don't listen to them when they say you can't do it. Let's figure out a way to find out what you can do. And I am so grateful for her shout out to Dr. Jill Olson. So I started going to PT. I started doing really intensive therapies. Just to figure out a way that I can still run a little bit. And basically, the things that work best for me is I do take a Parkinson's medication before I go run to help my muscles relax a little bit and not be so controlled by my brain and not my body. And then I also get Botox injections quarterly. So every three months in my lower leg. So that when my brain sends the signal for everything to fire, it just can't. Because it's been Botox, so it's been. And so I can't run the way I used to. I can't go run up in the mountains like I used to because I catch my foot really easily. I can't tell the clearance I'm making. But I'm still getting out there and setting goals that are different. Like I said, a goal a couple of weeks ago to run under my son's fastest 5K time. And I did it. And you know what, it felt pretty damn good. I love that. Totally different, you know, four minutes slower than I used to run in the 5K, but it still felt pretty awesome. I think that's how life is. Like you have to keep redefining your goals, right? And you have to keep redefining your goals. And who you are as a person cannot be static. It has to be fluid and it has to be evolving. And I think that it's because a lot of people have trouble even accomplishing that first milestone in life, like that first major success. A lot of people try to accomplish a first major success their whole life and never even get there. But when you do accomplish something that, you know, 0.001% of the population accomplishes. And then you're like, okay, what do I do next? Because there's no playbook. There's no playbook for life after the Olympics. Are you kidding me? Like it's it's the top 1% or 0.01% for a reason because not a lot of people get there. But as a high performing person, like this is something that you will eventually hit because you'll perform at the top of whatever sport you're in, you will make more money than most of the people that you went to high school in university. Like doesn't matter what the thing is, you'll build a business bigger than all your friends that are still W2. It doesn't really matter. It's like you still have to make sure that you like take care of yourself. And you take care of like your future self. And I think that a lot of people lose their identity and they lose their purpose. And just because you're a high performing person does not mean you kill it in all other areas of life. You see a lot of broken relationships, a lot of people, I mean not from your world, from the business world, they lose their health and their wellness, both mental and physical because they just don't have identity anymore. Or they sacrifice their identity for the one thing that they know how to do. So it's I think it's an even stronger person that can not pivot, but like adjust gracefully as life goes on to like a new version of themselves and be happy and proud of that. There's many seasons of life. Like you don't, I don't want to be, I didn't want to be 40 and be dead. And be like, well, I compost everything. There's no point in living. There's nothing that's gonna bring me joy. It's like, no, I still have a lot. I still have more than half my life left. Like I need to reassess what it is that want. Yeah, yeah, right? Like I have a lot, lack going on. And but I understand that it's hard. But yes, like really redefining what success means and redefining what happiness means, it helps so much. What would be some words of advice just for a younger athlete when they're looking to get involved with a team or a coach or a mentor? Just what would be the one rule or the one sort of just thought or insight that you give to that person just so that hopefully they don't find themselves in the wrong, wrong space? I think it's important when you're looking for a coach or a mentor. Make sure there's someone associated with them that you can check in with that isn't gonna get back to that person, right? So maybe there's like just a liaison that talks to you or a teammate just someone because it's hard to know, especially when you're younger, is this the right fit for me? And you need to be able to bounce it off other someone else like a neutral party, even when you're in it. And make sure that yeah, you should stay, you know? For me, I had nowhere to go. Where was I gonna go? Everyone that I would have talked to about it was up the Nike chain all the way to feel night. So like, who am I gonna go to? So I really encourage people to make sure you have someone else that you can go to if you started to feel uncomfortable a question if it was the right place for you. Yeah, it can be like a sanity check, almost. Like I feel something's wrong. In partial third person, you know, third party is not involved in this. Is this normal that this is happening? And yeah, okay, that's good advice. Because I think this is an interesting dynamic between coach and athlete or agent and young like performer artist, actor, whatever. This is like a, it could be a, it's like the power dynamic is off. The power dynamic is always off, right? I mean, it happens in corporate too, but I just think that it's because in corporate, you're not, you're not looking for a mentor till you are of a certain age. Usually you're like 25, like I mean, it's not to say that predatory behavior doesn't exist, but I think that at least you have a little bit more understanding of how the world works and what should and what shouldn't happen. In sports, you're just so damn young, you have no idea what's going on. Like you really don't know what's going on. You really, it's like you're just assuming that whatever happens is this is the way it's supposed to be. And that's when people can take advantage, unfortunately. Okay, last thing that I always like to ask because we started this conversation talking about you're speaking about your book. When you look back at what you wrote and all the information you put out there and you sort of put some more information that you're slightly hesitant to put out there, was there something that you still wish that you put in the book that you didn't? That is good. Well, the original copy of the book was twice as long as it is and the editor like edited it down. So you had a good editor too. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of stories that I thought mattered, that he didn't think mattered. And so I would love if all of those little stories had been in there because I think it helps you see how I became who I am and what the tipping points were. And things like that, but I will say overall, he kept the stories that mattered the most. And is there one story that you thought was? I know people ask me that there's so many little stories, right? About it's okay if the book was fine. I'm just scared. No, I think there was nothing that when I read it, I was like, I really wish that had still stayed. I felt like it still told the complete story. And so no, I'm good with it. Good. You can do it another one, you'll do it another book. More stories, yeah. All right. So if people want to connect with you, where should they go? Where do you want them to? Obviously we'll put it in the show notes, like the link to the book, Amazon, wherever you can buy your books. Social, anything else? Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter and threads and Instagram at caregoucher. I do have a Facebook page, but I'll be honest, I never go there. But you can follow me there and see what I'm up to and there's ways on there to get a hold of me if you need to. Perfect. And then when we kind of cover this a little bit, but I just want to, I want to, I always like closing with this question. If you were going to go back and tell your 20-year-old self, one, one lesson, what would that lesson be? Honestly, it would just be something that I used to tell myself when I was younger and wasn't having the success that I saw other people having. And I would just tell her, be patient, let a line, you're gonna roar and just have the patience it's all gonna pay off. The end.