April 29, 2026 • 48 mins
Professional runner, med student, and newly published author Mary Cain joins Sarah to discuss her memoir “This Is Not About Running" and the decision to use first-person present tense to share her meteoric rise as a running phenom and eventual abuse at the hands of a famed coach. Cain opens up about the struggles she encountered in high school before joining the Nike Oregon Project, the lies she was told as a member of that elite pro team, and the reality of “hot girl” contracts. Plus, another great memoir worth your time and breaking news from a superstar athlete that just so happens to appear in both books.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where hyping up
a first time author in today's episode is a great
excuse to tell you to pre order my book Runs
in the Family, out in Paperbackson you miss the shameless
plugs for the book, admit it. It's Wednesday, April twenty ninth,
and on today's show, we're skipping the need to know
and getting straight to my interview with professional runner, med student,
(00:21):
and newly published author Mary Cain. Caine's memoir This Is
Not About Running was released on Tuesday, and I caught
up with her last week to discuss her writing process,
plus the struggles she encountered in high school before joining
the Nike organ Project, the lies she was told as
a member of that elite pro team, and the reality
of quote unquote hot girl contracts. That conversation, plus how
(00:43):
Cain's book works in tandem with another standout memoir, and
some breaking news from a superstar athlete who makes an
appearance in both books. It's all coming up right after
this welcome back slices Before we get to the interview
with Mary, just a little bit about her. For those
who aren't super familiar. Now, you've likely heard the name
(01:06):
Mary Kane, either as a phenom on the way up
or as a cautionary tale on the way down. At
just seventeen, she became the first American high school girl
to break the two minute mark in an eight hundred
meter race and became the youngest US runner to make
a World Championships team. She joined a super elite training
camp run by former marathon great Alberto Salazar called the
(01:26):
Nike Oregon Project, and over the course of several years,
she declined both physically and mentally as a result of
what she called a toxic, abusive culture that included weight shaming, overtraining,
and inappropriate behavior. Cain became yet another entry in a
long line of top female phenom runners whose careers were
stalled or ended by red S, a condition that impacts
(01:47):
in athletes metabolism, bone health, cardiovascular health, their mentoral cycle,
immune system, and mental health. In twenty nineteen, Cain released
an op ed with The New York Times revealing the
toxic culture perpetrated by some Salazar and the Nike organ Project.
She told CNN in twenty twenty four that before speaking
openly about the camp and her REDS diagnosis, she thought
quote I was the failure I couldn't handle it, but
(02:11):
that she finally came to understand the problem was a
system that celebrates under eating and overtraining. In twenty nineteen,
Salazar was handed a four year doping ban, later upheld
by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for trafficking testosterone
and tampering with doping controls while leading the Nike organ Project,
and then in twenty twenty one, he was permanently banned
from coaching by the US Center for Safe Sport for
(02:32):
sexual and emotional misconduct. Salazar has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Now friend of the show, Caera Goucher, was also a
Nike organ Project athlete, and she participated in the investigations
into both the doping and misconduct allegations against Salazar. I
highly recommend reading her book The Longest Race before diving
into Mary's book. The two compliment each other well, and
(02:54):
Kara's detailed fact check account with co author Mary Palan
of her experiences with Salazar really he sets the scene
for Mary's book and her own experience just a few
years later. One last thing before the interview, I want
to actually read the opening lines of Mary's book because
I think they make clear the anger that she now
has as an adult looking back at her childhood and teens.
(03:14):
And I just want to give a quick content warning.
There is a brief reference to suicidal thought. Quote. Nike
loves Steve Prefontaine because he's dead. They have immortalized his
face and ads stores are filled with photos of him
racing in an old school Oregon singlet. He is recognizable
to both running fans and sneaker heads alike, but he's
not here to object to the use of his name
and image by a multi billion dollar corporation that perpetuates abuse.
(03:38):
They could pretend he was theirs. Despite how he stood
against the exploitation of athletes, Nike will use his quotes
to prop up their culture of overtraining and win it
all costs mentalities. How does pre feel about it? We
can't ask him. He's dead. I sometimes wonder if I
had killed myself how much the running world would have
pretended to care. I don't want to boost my ego
(03:58):
and pretend I'd get the pre treatment. I'd be a
dead girl, not a dead man, less glory in being
a girl. It probably would have lasted a week, But
I do think Nike would have loved me, even just
for that week one or two splashy ads about mental
health with not so subtle implications that they really tried
to help me. But at least I died quote doing
what I loved. Then, despite my contract expiring or in
(04:19):
this case, me expiring, I'd randomly pop up over the
years in some remembrance of how they quote unquote almost
saved me buy our shoes. God, one woman actually did
write about almost saving me in her book, and I
didn't die. So how many current runners would have pretended
we were old pals? The same number who tried to
monetize my pain after my New York Times piece by
hitting up the podcast circuit, who sold books by naming
(04:43):
me as their friend, or worse men tee who pretended
they were an expert on mental health and chronic injury
and the issues they currently have or pretended they got over.
Probably all the same people who said shit behind my
back when I was a child, or to my face
or on the internet. So yeah, like almost all of them.
Does it count as talking behind someone's back if they're dead.
(05:05):
Some runners convince themselves that the litany of drugs they
take doesn't make them drug cheats. They can't even touch
their toes, but in their heads, their mental gymnastics bend
them so much that they can suck their own dicks.
I didn't die, and so unfortunately for everyone else, that
means I've been here, watching, listening and absorbing for the
last fifteen years. And you know what, you can ask
(05:26):
me how I feel about it. I can speak for myself.
Here's my conversation with Mary joining us now. She's a
professional mid distance runner, founder of Atalanta, NYC and nonprofit
that employs professional female runners to service mentors for young girls,
and a student at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
(05:47):
Her record breaking high school and professional running career included
becoming a twenty thirteen World Championships finalist in the fifteen
hundred meters, the twenty fourteen World Junior Champion in the
three thousand meters, and the winner of the prestigious Wannamaker
Mile at the Millrose Games. She shared her story of
abuse as a runner for the Nike organ Project in
a twenty nineteen New York Times video op ed, and
has since dedicated her career to driving change in sport.
(06:09):
She serves on the board of the assist and nonprofit
that brings awareness, accountability, and transparency to sexual violence against
athletes at all levels. And she's been on a billboard
in Times Square. She loves studying Greco Roman mythology. She
prefers running without headphones, which is wild, and her new
book This Is Not About Running hits shelves on April
twenty eighth. It's Mary Kine that bio is longer than
(06:31):
you are old. Hi? Mary, how are you?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Hi? And I mean, if it makes you feel any better.
I'm turning thirty, like in a week and a half,
so we're maybe not gonna be able to say that
for too long.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That's very true. Congrats on the book, Thanks so much
for joining us. You know I shared the intro chapter
to the book before you joined, and wow, that is
one way to let folks know that the book is
going to be brutally honest. The gloves will be off.
Did you know you wanted that tone from the start
(07:01):
or did you find your voice while writing?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I think I always expected that the first chapter would
be different from subsequent chapters, and I think part of
it was because I've chosen to write the story from
the present tense and as a result, like, there's a
lot of times where it's like twelve year old me
and fourteen year old me and sixteen year old me,
and I was like, you know, like adult me is
(07:24):
pretty angry. I want her to be able to say
her piece. And I felt in many ways that was
an important place to like kind of come up front
and express myself so that people understood throughout the story.
If there's times in which I'm sharing what I was
thinking at the time, it's not to say that I
agree with that or that I think that's good. It's
(07:47):
just more to kind of set the tone that that
is what a culture of abuse does to you, where
it kind of like traps you into this mindset where
anything that happens you almost blame yourself versus thinking, oh,
what is being done to me is problematic. So that
first chapter is kind of meant to remind the reader that, like,
(08:07):
do not worry. I have gone to therapy and I
have a righteous anger and I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, it's really powerful that way. The book kind of
reads like a diary. It's short chapters in chronological order,
and the first person present tense does allow for instead
of adult you looking back and making commentary about things. Instead,
it's the you of that age, reacting and responding as
things happen. It's pretty powerful. A lot of media these
(08:35):
days sort of leads people to water and then almost
drinks for them. It's like, and then here's what's happening,
and let me remind you again what's happening. And your
book is very different. You sort of flatly say some
very problematic and disturbing things that adults in your life
do with very little judgment because it comes from a
place of at that age not really understanding the depths
(08:57):
of the depravity that you were witnessed to. And that's
a powerful thing to allow the reader to be like, wait,
hold up, did she just say this happened? As opposed
to them saying and the reason that's bad is this.
That does mean that you have to respect the intelligence
of your reader, and maybe they won't always be there
with you in seeing things the way that you did
(09:17):
or in the way that they should. I just wonder,
you know, I'm thinking about other folks who have been
through this before or maybe even intersected with you, someone
like Kara Goucher, who we've had on the show who
had her own experience, Like, as you're in this media
rollout or as you were finishing the book, did you
feel like you needed to write anything to how those
(09:37):
folks maybe were misrepresented to you, Because the way that
you write about her experience with Alberto Salazar maybe isn't
exactly what happened. It's just what you were told by him.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
One hundred percent. And there's so many moments like that.
And I've since, like you know, personally talked to Kara
a little bit about that, because I think Karen in
particular was the most difficult person for me to write,
because I felt people understanding my kind of understanding of
(10:08):
her was really important because obviously the relationship that she
had with Alberto was so horrifying, But it's easy to
kind of have a hindsight bias and be like Mary
probably knew that at the time, instead of being like, no,
I had this very different perspective of what their relationship
probably was based on all of the things he was
(10:29):
telling me. And I kind of have the opinion that
my book will hopefully elevate opportunities for other people, and
that like now, I hope it encourages other people to
like go back and read Caro's book, if they never
have to kind of like see another woman's perspective and
her viewpoints from those times. And I'm kind of always
(10:51):
wary of being like inserting myself into other people's story
and being like, this is actually what happened to her,
because she's obviously done such a beautiful job of speaking
for herself, and so if anything, I would hope that
this kind of more passes the baton to her versus
than me kind of feeling like I need to correct
the record because she's already done a really great job
(11:13):
of that for herself.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Perfect track metaphor. You know, there were so many moments
throughout the book that I wanted to give you a hug,
or I wanted to tell off an immature adult for you.
It just felt like there wasn't much joy for you
and running, even as a middle and high schooler and
being a track athlete, a D one track athlete myself,
Like I got so much joy from the sport despite
(11:34):
how hard it could be. And I wonder how you
managed to find and separate the joy that running brought
you from the sadness the people in running caused you,
especially when you were young.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah. I think that's a really great question and something
that I have been getting a lot of kind of
the like why did you run based on reading this book.
And I think part of that is because I've I've
always been someone who's like deeply process oriented, and any
goals that I have have just always been very internally motivated,
(12:06):
and they're not necessarily like I'm doing this for friends
or I'm doing this for glory or attention or like
insert the outcome. It's always kind of like a I
really like running, and I really like seeing how fast
I can go, and I just think that's like fun,
whether or not anybody ever watches me do it. And
(12:27):
so I think because I just always had that like
self driven curiosity, it made it so that kind of
like throughout I often was able to maintain the healthy
perspective of like, oh, everyone else is weird, but I'm
not going to let their weirdness affect me. And obviously
there's a certain point where that stopped because everyone was weird.
(12:50):
But it's it's a conversation that I still have now,
like even with my mom, right because I have kind
of gotten back into running a little bit and it's
very personal but there is kind of that question always
of like I kind of have a little bit of
intrigue to see, like what can I do now that
I like have corrected the long standing injury that made
(13:12):
it so I couldn't feel my foot, And like she'll
often kind of check in in a way where it's
like when you throw these little thoughts of like the
maybes out there, is that for you? Is that because
you feel you have to? Is that because you're like
any other reason other than just like your own curiosity?
(13:32):
And I'm like, Nope, if I ever got on the
track again, I'd probably like wave at the kids, glare
at the adults, leave and go like I amolkshake. So
I I'm very kind of like the act of running
can be separated from the board of track and field.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
We're gonna take a break more with Mary Kine. Right
after this, I mentioned your New York Times video op
ed in which you shared your story from your pro career.
But this book is really the first time you're sharing
what happened to you before you even got to Nike.
You struggled a lot on your high school team with
(14:12):
unfriendly teammates, and they're jealous and racing obsessed parents. In
the book, you share that your team even went so
far as bailing on a major national competition team race,
thinking it would keep you from running in it, but
you were able to run solo. That feels like such
an extreme example of your teammates depriving themselves of something
just to harm you, almost an unbelievable example. But you know,
(14:35):
when you're reading the book can see all the stories
leading up to that moment. Why or how do you
think things got so bad there? Instead of just the
usual jealousies of a phenom, it went beyond that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I think part of the problem was, honestly, a lot
of the parents of kids on my team were either
just kind of bluntly want to be runners themselves, and
incredibly wealthy people who were kind of used to just
getting what they wanted because they could probably in some
(15:07):
capacity like throw their name or connections or money around.
And here you have this like super nerdy kid rolling
up with like a frickin' duck pillow pet being like, Hi, everybody,
do you want to be my friend? I'm just like
weirdly not really talented and super hard working, and everyone's like,
can we buy her to get off the team now
they use to watch, and so I think those two
(15:31):
things kind of came to a head. But the truth is,
like Kirkus Reviews came out with a review this week,
and I like loved their last sentence because it was
something like, you know, even though this is almost like
so unbelievable in ways, it's so ordinary because I do
feel we all know the stories of like someone being
at a sports game and the parents screaming at them,
(15:54):
or the other coach making a kid cry, and like
it's not that foreign to us as athletes, but honestly,
people in any sort of like high performing field, like
there's the kind of lore always around helicopter parents. And
I think for me, I just was unlucky with the
(16:14):
people who I was around, because sometimes the kids who
are most protected from helicopter parents are the kids who
I don't know make it so their kids get to
be national champions. But for whatever reason, I was amongst
adults who were kind of bitter that I was faster
than them, and then you know, who knows what they
were saying to their kids at home, And it's part
(16:35):
of the reason I extend a lot of those kids
the grace of like making their name pseudonyms, so that
they have kind of like the privacy to hopefully like
become adults who don't pass this on to their kids.
But I think that is something that like the kids behavior,
I think always is stemming from the adults.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, And I think one of the complications in a
sport like distance running is some of the most successful
folks are quite young, so the expectations and potential benefits
of being great start much younger. So the focus on
you was incredible when you started to become nationally known
for fast times the internet, adults everywhere we're talking about you,
(17:21):
and it's the equivalent of being the star of a
professional adult league. But you're a kid, and so the money,
the sponsorships, the fame, the attention can come much younger,
which causes people to treat you in a way that's
just not appropriate for a child. And it's hard to
read the way adults talked about you, insults, accusations, even
threats in running forums. How do you think it impacted
(17:43):
the way you saw the world of running and maybe
even what you felt was okay or acceptable to at
such a young age already see the way people talked
about you.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I mean, I think the good thing is that I
never read any of those horrible things written about me
and thought like, I guess that's what adulthood is. Like.
I always read them and was like wow, like this
adult man needs therapy. But I would That's not to
say it wouldn't still like affect me and think like, wow,
people in the sport really hate me, and I don't.
(18:16):
I honestly don't know why. But I remember even like
meeting one of my good friends. We were having a
conversation literally the first time I was ever talking to him,
and I said something and I was like, well, I
know I'm like kind of controversial and running because he's
a runner, and he was like, I don't think we
should use that world word. Let's use like polarizing. Was
like that is better. But the fact that you weren't like, no,
(18:39):
you're not is like pretty rough. But I think, you know,
I understand that adults. I think because the Internet has
made it so that there's kind of a degree of anonymity.
I think sometimes people feel more comfortable taking out their
like disappointment in insert whatever, out on other people. And
(19:03):
I think I was someone who I do look back
as I watched a lot of my old interviews and
stuff who was like very young, Like I was very bubbly,
I was very precocious. There was probably a stuffed animal.
I was probably excited to tell you about the milkshake
that I had. I was never acting like an adult,
(19:25):
Like I wasn't rolling up to these interviews in ways
that it's like you could ever have confused yourself. Let's
put it that way, Like it was pretty obvious how
young I was. And I say that because I think
that's so often a defense we kind of see in society,
where it's like something will happen and you know, the
adults in the room will be like, oh, they were
(19:47):
six feet tall. I thought they were a grown man,
And you're like, no, you didn't. That kid was a
freaking kid, and you made that choice to talk to
them in that way. And I think we've just kind
of normalize this idea that as soon as you're on
the internet in any capacity or fair game to talk
about cruelly. And I just find that so odd and
(20:08):
so sad, and I think we can do better.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean, I've been through a ton of it
from being a woman in a male dominated field, and
on ESPN for years, and it took me a long
time to stop making it about myself and to flip
it and say, not even I'm angry at these people,
but I'm sad for them. The reason that you behave
that way is a deep dissatisfaction with something going on
with yourself. I hope you get better, I hope you
(20:32):
get healed, because there is literally no reason to behave
in this way to me because you disagree with my
opinion on something, or even more often, just because I exist,
which really feels like what was happening to you. It
wasn't even I'm jealous or mad that she's so fast.
It's like I don't want her to be here, and
so my response is to lash out in a way
that's completely unrelated to anything she has said or done.
(20:54):
And I think you know you had to learn that
younger than most people, because you weren't an over night success,
but you started to break through in a way that
was you didn't have time to slowly adjust. It was
just all of a sudden, everybody knows this name in
this time. And you also had to learn about a
business that's essentially one for adults, but started to involve
you very young. And one of the things you write
(21:14):
about in the book is these hot girl contracts. I've
talked about this plaguing women's sports for decades, but I've
also dealt with it in my own industry, and I
wonder if you can share first what those are and
then how it impacted you to know immediately as you
entered this field it's not all about the running.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah. I think that was one of those topics that
I was like, every single woman attached to sport or
in so many industries is immediately going to be like yes.
And yet it was probably actually the scariest thing for
me to write about because I think so often there
is this kind of culture I think right now in
(21:54):
women's sport that if you say literally anything negative kind
of about like women tangentially, then it's kind of this
oh my god, like you're bad. It's like if you
name somebody for like being really mean to you, it's
like you're somehow therefore not supporting other women instead of
being like, well, this woman hit me, Like I think,
(22:14):
I think that's pretty bad. But I I say all
that inso much as like the concept of the hot
girl contract for me and how I always understood it
is that in sports marketing, the people who are controlling
contracts are pretty much all men. Most of them have
like a token woman who they like sexually harassed, or
at least they did back in my day, which was
(22:36):
you know, like two seconds ago, and otherwise it's like
all these dudes who like control who's actually getting paid.
And there was the like not so you know, quiet secret,
because at least at Nike, they would talk very explicitly
about this that like some of the people who they
were like quote unquote paying to be professional female athletes,
they were just signing because they were hot. And that
(23:01):
was always very difficult to kind of understand in my mind,
partly because then the standards that were being used against
me when there was talks of like having a pay
cut or getting terminated or anything where it was this
kind of like machisimo, like it's just a business, you're
just not fast, But there's kind of this undercurrent of
(23:24):
like you'ves explicitly said you only sign this woman because
she posts like countless, you know, photos in her sports brand.
You just kind of want her around and she's slower
than I am, but you're cutting me because I'm slow, Like,
clearly you don't think I'm attractive in.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
That sort of way.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And I talk in my memoir a little bit about
like the idea of jealousy and how like jealousy is normal,
and so of course in these situations, I think where
people get defensive is they're like, oh, like Mary's mad
at this other woman just because she was hot, And
I'm like, no, no, no. If that's how that woman's
making money, in some ways, good for her, right, Like
(24:03):
she can choose what she wants to do. But the
problem is, is it really a choice for women? Are
we really being empowered as women if we intellectually understand
that if I go on Instagram right now and I
start posting photos of me every single day in a
sports bra, i am going to get more followers, and
therefore I'm going to make more money. There's a certain
(24:25):
point where I'm kind of like, is that choice or
are we feeding into a system where it's men controlling
money and we're just playing the game that they want
us to play.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah. I've always said, don't hate the player, hate the game.
I try not to hold it against women if they're
trying to operate and succeed in a system that was
built to wrong them. I hold it against the system
and try to fix the system. But I also think
there is this fine line, and sometimes we might even
not judge it correctly. But I always look at folks
(24:57):
and say, I feel like that woman is empowered and
her sexuality and her control of herself and her body
makes me feel good, Versus I feel like that woman
is being exploited and the way she's behaving doesn't make
me feel like she's in control of it. And that
fine line is very difficult. But I think my day,
(25:17):
which is a lot more than two seconds ago, there
was a lot more exploitation and now there's a lot
more empowerment. And when I see a woman or a
campaign that feels wrong, I go, no, no, we're not
doing this anymore. You can still have your hot girl,
but you have to present her in a way that
feels good to women, not in this way anymore. And
the fact that we push back on that so often
(25:37):
now is progress from what it used to be. But yeah,
I mean the problem is still there that it's not
really so much a choice as it is just choosing
to make less money and retain your integrity if that's
not your damn or you know, go on only fans
and sell your parts or something whatever anyone wants to
do to make it through. I think I read the
(25:59):
book in I saw and understood why you had so
much trouble trusting people. Mostly just your parents were on
your side, seeing things the way that you did in
a couple other people, but for the most part you
had a me against the world perception. But you did
have this outsized amount of trust and belief in coach
Alberto Salazar and his Nike organ project. It was a
massive privilege and an honor to be invited to join,
(26:20):
to be a part of his team, to be trained
by him. You even skip the NCAA system to go
pro with him right after high school, which I think
speaks to the legend of Alberto right The aura that
he had in the running world made him someone that
you saw as outside of maybe the trepidation you had
around other folks in the running world when you joined.
What was the future you imagined for yourself?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, I think when I signed with Alberto, I really
saw my career as being essentially what Galen's was, insomuch
as it was going to be this like lifelong partnership
where you know, you start as a high schooler and
you know, I write a little bit about this in
the book. But like Galen and Alberto's relationship, Galen Rupp, Yes,
(27:04):
Galen rep it was it was really boundaryless inso much
as like where coaching started and ended versus someone who
would like low key break into your house and randomly
just be there. Was murky because it was it was
an all the time thing. And I'll always remember one
(27:24):
time Galen saying to me like, I'm so grateful Alberto
took you on, because now he's like off my back
a little bit more. And I was like, if this
is off your back a little bit more, then oh
my gosh, what was more. But I say all of
that because I and it's sad looking back because now
I find it all so creepy. But at the time
(27:45):
I thought like, wow, this is like a family, Like
this is somebody who will really like actually care about
you and like want to be involved in your life.
And I think I think I now look back on
those relationships and I'm like, no, he kind of said
a lot of like me things about Galen's wife, and
he made a lot of really in inappropriate comments, and
there's a lot of ways where I'm like, I don't know,
(28:06):
did you really love him as a person outside of running?
But at least the naivete that I brought into the
relationship having just had such a horrible, like high school experience,
made me like romanticize the idea of like team and
family as a team. And I think we, you know,
kind of sell that to kids as like part of
(28:27):
the joy of sports is like you're going to have family,
And it's like as soon as there is any drama
or any issues, we're kind of unequipped to deal with it,
let alone. When it becomes like my relationship with Alberto.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, and I think to the point of like his aura,
you accept behavior that somewhere in your core you know
is wrong, because bigger than that is this belief and
trust in someone who has proven success and who it's
supposed to be an honor to be led by. And
watching you lose faith in yourself and be Gasolin enough
(29:02):
to no longer trust yourself was really hard. You know,
at a certain point you're training with him, he convinces
you you need to lose weight, He encourages birth control, diuretics,
crazy calorie counting, You become underfueled, overtrained, You start crying
all the time at practice. You know, before then, you
seem so strong and sure of things. Throughout the book,
you talk about your stance on never doping, your ability
(29:22):
to be brave in the face of disrespectful adults even
when you're just a kid. But in that moment you
start crashing out. And at any point before the full
departure from his team, did you doubt him instead of
yourself or did it take a full removal from the
situation to have enough perspective to say, wait, that was
not about me.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, I think it really ultimately took a full removal
because I think any time that I started to fill doubt,
he honestly did a pretty good job of course correcting.
So like, for example, the only thing that made me
own SNA go pro was Alberto kind of like announced
that he was going to take on a Russian athlete
(30:06):
who had filled a doping test named Anna Almanova, and
also take on Shannon Robery, who, like I had teammates
who had been teammates with before and were like, I
never want to train with this woman again. She's a
horrible teammates. She's really mean, Like these people are telling
me like all sorts of stuff that's making me be
like we have this like great thing going here. I've
had bad teammates before, Like I don't want to train
(30:29):
with a doper. I don't want to train with a
woman who's mean, Like you know, this feels like kind
of like no brainer situations. And I think I was
so upset with Alberto for honestly bringing both of them on,
but at least with Anna Almanova when they ended up
like sending her back to Russia because they like learned
(30:49):
months before about like the Russian doping scandal, Like there
was kind of this like acknowledgment. There was a pseudo
apology of like you were right. And I think he
handled that lunch where we had this conversation so well
in my mind that I was like, Okay, I was
starting to doubt you. I was starting to question if
(31:10):
you cared about like drugs honestly, and I doubted all
of my teammates about like their kind of priority of
clean sport. But Alberto at least kind of like rebranded
it in a way that was very like, oh, you're
so smart Mary, like you Clockwright, It's like, thank you,
you were looking out for us. And so then I
(31:33):
was like, oh my gosh, Alberto.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Loves me again.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Master manipulator, master manipulator. He was really good at doing that,
and I think he was very good at like seeing
the moments that I was starting to slip and pull
me back. And it was the same thing even like
during the year that I was falling apart, Like there
would be these moments where even though it was like
ninety percent negative, there would be that ten percent of like,
(31:56):
oh my god, you look amazing today. Wow, this is
what you're gonna like, this is when you're gonna be great.
So I think having that kind of carrot made it
so that, like with Alberto specifically, it wasn't until the
usadapiece came out that I actually really was like, oh geez,
I need to rewire things. That's not true though for
(32:16):
anyone else, for pretty much all of my teammates, for
pretty much all of the other coaches, I was like,
what the heck is wrong with you guys, Like you're
never giving me that ca like you're never pulling me
back up. And I remember even when kind of like
before I left the organ project, I like said to
Alberto pretty explicitly, like I'm only still here because of you,
(32:38):
because I think in my mind, I was like, I
think a lot of these other people are potentially interested
in doing drugs, but Alberto doesn't know that, or Alberto
doesn't want that, Like right, I had this like real
he was the last like thread.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, And I think that's very common in situations where
someone has been groomed, especially from a very young age,
and that's part of the gaslighting, that's part of the manipulation,
is to make sure that that person is the shining
light and they are right and they're good, and you
are failing them, and I want to get to the band,
but quickly I do want to ask, because you know,
(33:11):
at the lowest point of this training, you have suicidal thoughts,
you're cutting yourself, You're breaking down all the time. In practice,
you've got broken bones, you didn't have your period for
three years. Alberto is taking you to doctors, not letting
you see results, telling you things are fine, even though
you don't feel that way. You finally go to another
doctor outside of Alberto's purview. You realize you have a
serious injury. Not just the shin splints that he's forcing
(33:33):
you to train through. You go home. Even after you
get home, you realize that you have serious bone issues,
that you have really damaged your body. This, you know,
red as relative energy deficiency in sport, which is what
we now understand is very common in a lot of sports,
par particularly distance running, where you're overtraining and you're underfueled.
This idea that getting smaller and smaller will help until
your whole body falls apart and then you can't run
(33:55):
or walk. You have all of this going on, and
now that you're out of Alberto's world and you realize
that what was going on there was wrong. How validating
was the ban? Not just what was happening to me
was wrong, but what he was doing and who he
was was wrong. That must have been just an incredible
weight off your shoulders and a redirecting and rewiring of
(34:19):
your brain of the way you saw everything that had happened.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I don't know, I don't know. I don't think the
anti doping ban felt that way. I think the anti
doping ban i'm grateful for because it helped me, like
start to realize things were bad, and it's why I
did the New York Times piece and it's why, like
everything precipitated, So I think that was kind of like
(34:42):
like a super positive reaction. And then I think the
Safe Sport life ban was incredibly impactful, but I think
it was actually I think that was one of the
saddest days is that I've had in the years post
(35:03):
the New York Times piece coming out, was the day
that I read the Safe Sport report because I did
not know that there were like accusations from kra of
sexual assault by Alberto and it was so deeply lonely
(35:23):
to like read that post, like it was like this
whole document that you know, those of us who were
involved were sent. It was literally just a crying on
a bathroom floor. And as I was reading it, like
the whole time, I was like, I didn't know this,
and I had told the Safe Sport reporters like so
many different things and admittedly, like there's a lot of
(35:44):
stories that are not in this book, and I think,
if anything, I actually didn't feel particularly believed initially because
the way the report was, it was clear that they
had interviewed like almost all of my past teammates who
just kind of denied most of my allegations, Like I
(36:06):
think a few of them were like a little scared
and didn't feel comfortable lying that much. But my specific
like claims were thrown out initially, and I think part
of it in retrospect in talking to the Center was
they were just like Carrie's claims, they just kind of
focused on because they ended up throwing out the other athletes'
claims who had like insanely powerful claims. So the whole
(36:29):
thing was kind of just, I think, really fumbled by
Safe Sport. But I think it's taken time for me
to feel empowered by that specific document, and I think
that's very normal. I think it's in the same way
that almost any you know, judicial legal enforcement thing is.
(36:54):
I always kind of warned people who are going through
the process that, like, even if you kind of quote
unquote when you're not going to feel very good afterwards,
because it never negates what happened, and it's actually usually
the other person just streaming and having a bunch of
other people scream that you're a liar. You're a liar,
you're a liar, and even though you know you're not,
(37:17):
that's not like the most empowering thing to go through
even if some people you agree with you. Yeah, I
think to me the safe spoort thing was actually more
validating because I was like, we have two other women
who are like I also went through something, and then
that ultimately at least sent me down a path to
be able to do like a different type of therapy.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah. I think there's a lot of shame and self
blame that comes, even if logically you know that that's
not true, that is so internalized deep within you over
the course of the time that it's going on that
by the time you get out of it, you still
have to process that much longer than maybe that ruling
will do for you. And then the ruling brings more
attention and more doubters and more people's opinions and all
(37:58):
of that as well. So that is very enjoyable. I'm
glad that you feel like you've gotten to a point
where some of that weight is off. But yeah, you're right,
it takes time. It's not an instant validation. You know,
you mentioned earlier that there's a part of the book
when you write about like jealousy and the feelings that
you have and your control of them. And I have
(38:19):
to say I'm like, really, it's a really meaningful part
to me because I think a lot about people not
giving themselves time for self reflection, for meditation, learning how
to self regulate and control reactions. And you write about that,
and you write about how you understand feeling jealous or
feeling angry. But the goal is to not be mad
at the people who cause those emotions in you, but
(38:40):
to understand why you're feeling them, gain control of them,
decide how you want to react to them, which is
such a powerful thing. And it feels like you have
gone through a lot of therapy to understand yourself and
to be able to see your story differently than maybe
as something you're a victim of, but rather as something
who made you into who you are today. And I
(39:01):
want to know who you are because you're not Marykin
Phenom child Runner. You are potentially future Mary Kane, doctor
Mary Kane. But who are you? What do you want
people to think about you now? Having read this book
and knowing your story.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I think I want to be known as someone who's
deeply honest. And I think, sort of tragically that kind
of right now in today's society, I think equates too
courageous and I only say tragically because I think there
should be a standard where we're all deeply honest instead
of it being like, wow, how are you so brave
(39:38):
to like speak truth? But I think the reason that
it is considered brave is because you know, there's like
a lot of people who I name in this book,
and there are a lot of people who are not
happy that they are named in this book. And rather
than reflecting hmm, maybe I should have behaved different, there's
(40:01):
more of a like, you know, tendency, and this is
true for a lot of people to try to pick
out any little thing and be like, you said, this
happened on a Tuesday. It happened on a Wednesday, like
you're a lying hoe, And I'm like, no, that's not
how this works. I'm not scared of you, bully anymore.
(40:23):
But I think there is this kind of standard in
which victims are held to, like this perfection standard, And
a lot of it has to do with like legal stuff,
where like lawyers are horrible and they try to you know,
gaslight people all the time. And I think I am
just at a place in my life where I'm kind
(40:44):
of back to my like inner child, where I'm just
like a deeply confident, self confident person, and so I'm
in a privileged position where, like I can just be
honest because when I get the angry emails, yes, is
it like emotionally really frying, And yes, do I need
(41:05):
to go to therapy? So I can like handle that,
of course, But it's also something that like I can
handle partly because I'm not really ever going to be
in that world in the same way. Even if I
ever run again, I have no interest in playing in
that sand pit, because I don't think it's actually changed
that much, like, based on all of the things that
(41:26):
I have like honestly even helped had to deal with
in like the launch of this book and just all
the random pettiness, you're just kind of like.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, being a doctor's way easier exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But I think, I mean, I think part of the
thing about medicine is at its core, it's a field
that is built to care for others. And I think
so often people in sport like meaning particularly people who
are like in the professional side of this. I'm not
talking about people who are like grassroots or community like.
People who are really in the professional world kind of
(42:02):
act like they're as important as a doctor, and I'm like,
you're not helping anyone, Like you're kind of high key
just like running around and seeing how fast you can
go and then acting like it's the end of the world.
And I'm guilty as anyone of doing that. But I
think that kind of like meaningless pursuit only means something
(42:23):
if you make it mean something, So it like only
means something if then you're like standing up and being like,
let's talk about healthy sport, let's talk about ending abuse,
let's talk about empower women, like insert whatever the thing
is that has meaning. And so I hope, you know,
I will be remembered in some ways as someone who
had influence, not as an influencer.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, I love that last question for you. What does
running look like for you? Now? I know you switched
national allegiances from the US to Ireland, but like as
far as the future or competition or just finding join it,
what does it look like?
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, it's been really fun. Over the course of the
last year, I think I finally kind of just sat
down with myself and was like, Okay, I want to
be physically in a position that if I want to try,
I can, And I think I've been doing like all
the pt I've been doing all of the even just
kind of like therapy work to be in a position
where like I go out and run, you know, half
(43:20):
the week, I cross train half the week, and like
I'm by no means deciding to do anything yet like
next year I'm going to be in clerkships and I'm
going to be like in the hospital running around all
the time. But I kind of just liked the idea
of like getting my body just like truly healthy again
and then anything from there cool. And maybe that's just
(43:40):
I continue to do exactly what I'm doing. I'm sure
there's gonna be periods in my life where it's a
heck of a lot less than I'm doing right now.
But if one day I kind of am like, ah,
like I can represent Ireland, then like the options open,
but it will always be that will always be a
nude chapter that will not be related to this chapter before.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is it Ireland? Because you don't want to represent the US?
Or what was the change?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
I had had enough instances I didn't feel and I
was told essentially that there was no guarantee that there
would be protection against people who had threatened me. In
different capacities, and that's really disheartening to hear from you know,
your national organization that it's not equipped to help you,
(44:30):
partly based on the sponsor that they have. And so
I just felt at the time that I made the change.
It's kind of like I don't know if I'm ever
going to do anything, but I kind of like the
idea of knowing that I like it's a choice. Like
if I choose not to, it's because I chose not
to and was just like having a blast in medicine
and like didn't want to take a step out year.
(44:51):
But if I choose to, I'd love to do it
with people who I don't know just like never mistreated
me and want me there and want to protect me.
And the truth is like a lot of USA Track
and Field, they're the same cast of characters who would
just like see me walk off into a room with
Alberto alone and like not really blink an eye. And
(45:11):
so I just I think I respect myself and I
respect my safety too much not to be like, oh
my gosh, I'm like really proudly Irish and I already
have citizenship, so like makes sense why not have some
joy in life?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, it makes sense. I just love at every turn
how you're taking control of your story, your truth, your narrative,
your perspective. It's a really powerful thing to do after
what happened to you. And the book is really fantastic
and I hope you have great success with it. So
thanks for talking to us.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Thanks again to Mary for sitting down with us. And
don't forget. You can now watch full length Good Game
interviews on the Iheartwomen's Sports YouTube channel, so go on
over there and subscribe. We got to take another break.
When we return, a friend of the show announces a comeback.
(46:05):
Welcome back, slashays. We love that you're listening, but we
want you to get in the game every day too,
So here's our good game play of the day. Pick
up a copy of Mary's memoir This is Not about Running.
We'll link to it in the show notes. And while
you're at it, we mentioned it in the interview, but
make sure to check out Kara Goucher's book The Longest
Race as well. We'll link to that too. We always
love to hear from you, so hit us up on email.
(46:25):
Good Game at Wondermediaetwork dot com or leave us a
voicemail at eight seven two two o four fifty seventy
and y'all don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. It's
real easy. Watch the news that another outspoken track and
field legend is making a comeback. Rating five Olympic appearances
and counting review y'all. On Monday, we read the rewords
(46:48):
that never would have made our twenty twenty six bango card.
Alison Felix comeback. Felix, the most decorated female track athlete
in Olympic history, announced that she's planning to make a
return into competition, with her site set on the twenty
twenty eight LA Olympics. In a story in time, feel
excited how seeing athletes like Lindsay Vaughn, Tom Brady and
Lebron James have success in their forties made her revisit
(47:11):
her own assumptions and expectations. Quote. So many of us
have been told not to do the big, bold thing.
You know, at this age, I should probably be staying
home and taking care of my kids doing all that,
And just why not, Let's flip it on its head,
Let's go after the thing. Let's be vulnerable. End quote. Yes,
we love to see it and actually, looking back on
(47:32):
the last time she was on the show talking about
doing hill workouts and can while the rest of Sport
Beach was sipin' spritzes, she still got a dinner. We
should have known. We'll link to the full time story
in the show notes. Now it's your turn, rate and review.
Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good Game, Mary, Good Game,
Allison and Kara and Alicia Montano and every other athlete
(47:53):
who has called out Nike's policies. Few to the culture
that allows this type of behavior to go unchecked for
so long. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
(48:15):
our producers are Alex Azzi and Bianca Hillier. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rutterer, Lucy Jones, Britney Martinez, and
Gianna Palmer. Production assistants from Avery Loftus and I'm Your
Host Sarah Spain,
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where hyping up
a first time author in today's episode is a great
excuse to tell you to pre order my book Runs
in the Family, out in Paperbackson you miss the shameless
plugs for the book, admit it. It's Wednesday, April twenty ninth,
and on today's show, we're skipping the need to know
and getting straight to my interview with professional runner, med student,
(00:21):
and newly published author Mary Cain. Caine's memoir This Is
Not About Running was released on Tuesday, and I caught
up with her last week to discuss her writing process,
plus the struggles she encountered in high school before joining
the Nike organ Project, the lies she was told as
a member of that elite pro team, and the reality
of quote unquote hot girl contracts. That conversation, plus how
(00:43):
Cain's book works in tandem with another standout memoir, and
some breaking news from a superstar athlete who makes an
appearance in both books. It's all coming up right after
this welcome back slices Before we get to the interview
with Mary, just a little bit about her. For those
who aren't super familiar. Now, you've likely heard the name
(01:06):
Mary Kane, either as a phenom on the way up
or as a cautionary tale on the way down. At
just seventeen, she became the first American high school girl
to break the two minute mark in an eight hundred
meter race and became the youngest US runner to make
a World Championships team. She joined a super elite training
camp run by former marathon great Alberto Salazar called the
(01:26):
Nike Oregon Project, and over the course of several years,
she declined both physically and mentally as a result of
what she called a toxic, abusive culture that included weight shaming, overtraining,
and inappropriate behavior. Cain became yet another entry in a
long line of top female phenom runners whose careers were
stalled or ended by red S, a condition that impacts
(01:47):
in athletes metabolism, bone health, cardiovascular health, their mentoral cycle,
immune system, and mental health. In twenty nineteen, Cain released
an op ed with The New York Times revealing the
toxic culture perpetrated by some Salazar and the Nike organ Project.
She told CNN in twenty twenty four that before speaking
openly about the camp and her REDS diagnosis, she thought
quote I was the failure I couldn't handle it, but
(02:11):
that she finally came to understand the problem was a
system that celebrates under eating and overtraining. In twenty nineteen,
Salazar was handed a four year doping ban, later upheld
by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for trafficking testosterone
and tampering with doping controls while leading the Nike organ Project,
and then in twenty twenty one, he was permanently banned
from coaching by the US Center for Safe Sport for
(02:32):
sexual and emotional misconduct. Salazar has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Now friend of the show, Caera Goucher, was also a
Nike organ Project athlete, and she participated in the investigations
into both the doping and misconduct allegations against Salazar. I
highly recommend reading her book The Longest Race before diving
into Mary's book. The two compliment each other well, and
(02:54):
Kara's detailed fact check account with co author Mary Palan
of her experiences with Salazar really he sets the scene
for Mary's book and her own experience just a few
years later. One last thing before the interview, I want
to actually read the opening lines of Mary's book because
I think they make clear the anger that she now
has as an adult looking back at her childhood and teens.
(03:14):
And I just want to give a quick content warning.
There is a brief reference to suicidal thought. Quote. Nike
loves Steve Prefontaine because he's dead. They have immortalized his
face and ads stores are filled with photos of him
racing in an old school Oregon singlet. He is recognizable
to both running fans and sneaker heads alike, but he's
not here to object to the use of his name
and image by a multi billion dollar corporation that perpetuates abuse.
(03:38):
They could pretend he was theirs. Despite how he stood
against the exploitation of athletes, Nike will use his quotes
to prop up their culture of overtraining and win it
all costs mentalities. How does pre feel about it? We
can't ask him. He's dead. I sometimes wonder if I
had killed myself how much the running world would have
pretended to care. I don't want to boost my ego
(03:58):
and pretend I'd get the pre treatment. I'd be a
dead girl, not a dead man, less glory in being
a girl. It probably would have lasted a week, But
I do think Nike would have loved me, even just
for that week one or two splashy ads about mental
health with not so subtle implications that they really tried
to help me. But at least I died quote doing
what I loved. Then, despite my contract expiring or in
(04:19):
this case, me expiring, I'd randomly pop up over the
years in some remembrance of how they quote unquote almost
saved me buy our shoes. God, one woman actually did
write about almost saving me in her book, and I
didn't die. So how many current runners would have pretended
we were old pals? The same number who tried to
monetize my pain after my New York Times piece by
hitting up the podcast circuit, who sold books by naming
(04:43):
me as their friend, or worse men tee who pretended
they were an expert on mental health and chronic injury
and the issues they currently have or pretended they got over.
Probably all the same people who said shit behind my
back when I was a child, or to my face
or on the internet. So yeah, like almost all of them.
Does it count as talking behind someone's back if they're dead.
(05:05):
Some runners convince themselves that the litany of drugs they
take doesn't make them drug cheats. They can't even touch
their toes, but in their heads, their mental gymnastics bend
them so much that they can suck their own dicks.
I didn't die, and so unfortunately for everyone else, that
means I've been here, watching, listening and absorbing for the
last fifteen years. And you know what, you can ask
(05:26):
me how I feel about it. I can speak for myself.
Here's my conversation with Mary joining us now. She's a
professional mid distance runner, founder of Atalanta, NYC and nonprofit
that employs professional female runners to service mentors for young girls,
and a student at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
(05:47):
Her record breaking high school and professional running career included
becoming a twenty thirteen World Championships finalist in the fifteen
hundred meters, the twenty fourteen World Junior Champion in the
three thousand meters, and the winner of the prestigious Wannamaker
Mile at the Millrose Games. She shared her story of
abuse as a runner for the Nike organ Project in
a twenty nineteen New York Times video op ed, and
has since dedicated her career to driving change in sport.
(06:09):
She serves on the board of the assist and nonprofit
that brings awareness, accountability, and transparency to sexual violence against
athletes at all levels. And she's been on a billboard
in Times Square. She loves studying Greco Roman mythology. She
prefers running without headphones, which is wild, and her new
book This Is Not About Running hits shelves on April
twenty eighth. It's Mary Kine that bio is longer than
(06:31):
you are old. Hi? Mary, how are you?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Hi? And I mean, if it makes you feel any better.
I'm turning thirty, like in a week and a half,
so we're maybe not gonna be able to say that
for too long.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
That's very true. Congrats on the book, Thanks so much
for joining us. You know I shared the intro chapter
to the book before you joined, and wow, that is
one way to let folks know that the book is
going to be brutally honest. The gloves will be off.
Did you know you wanted that tone from the start
(07:01):
or did you find your voice while writing?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I think I always expected that the first chapter would
be different from subsequent chapters, and I think part of
it was because I've chosen to write the story from
the present tense and as a result, like, there's a
lot of times where it's like twelve year old me
and fourteen year old me and sixteen year old me,
and I was like, you know, like adult me is
(07:24):
pretty angry. I want her to be able to say
her piece. And I felt in many ways that was
an important place to like kind of come up front
and express myself so that people understood throughout the story.
If there's times in which I'm sharing what I was
thinking at the time, it's not to say that I
agree with that or that I think that's good. It's
(07:47):
just more to kind of set the tone that that
is what a culture of abuse does to you, where
it kind of like traps you into this mindset where
anything that happens you almost blame yourself versus thinking, oh,
what is being done to me is problematic. So that
first chapter is kind of meant to remind the reader that, like,
(08:07):
do not worry. I have gone to therapy and I
have a righteous anger and I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, it's really powerful that way. The book kind of
reads like a diary. It's short chapters in chronological order,
and the first person present tense does allow for instead
of adult you looking back and making commentary about things. Instead,
it's the you of that age, reacting and responding as
things happen. It's pretty powerful. A lot of media these
(08:35):
days sort of leads people to water and then almost
drinks for them. It's like, and then here's what's happening,
and let me remind you again what's happening. And your
book is very different. You sort of flatly say some
very problematic and disturbing things that adults in your life
do with very little judgment because it comes from a
place of at that age not really understanding the depths
(08:57):
of the depravity that you were witnessed to. And that's
a powerful thing to allow the reader to be like, wait,
hold up, did she just say this happened? As opposed
to them saying and the reason that's bad is this.
That does mean that you have to respect the intelligence
of your reader, and maybe they won't always be there
with you in seeing things the way that you did
(09:17):
or in the way that they should. I just wonder,
you know, I'm thinking about other folks who have been
through this before or maybe even intersected with you, someone
like Kara Goucher, who we've had on the show who
had her own experience, Like, as you're in this media
rollout or as you were finishing the book, did you
feel like you needed to write anything to how those
(09:37):
folks maybe were misrepresented to you, Because the way that
you write about her experience with Alberto Salazar maybe isn't
exactly what happened. It's just what you were told by him.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
One hundred percent. And there's so many moments like that.
And I've since, like you know, personally talked to Kara
a little bit about that, because I think Karen in
particular was the most difficult person for me to write,
because I felt people understanding my kind of understanding of
(10:08):
her was really important because obviously the relationship that she
had with Alberto was so horrifying, But it's easy to
kind of have a hindsight bias and be like Mary
probably knew that at the time, instead of being like, no,
I had this very different perspective of what their relationship
probably was based on all of the things he was
(10:29):
telling me. And I kind of have the opinion that
my book will hopefully elevate opportunities for other people, and
that like now, I hope it encourages other people to
like go back and read Caro's book, if they never
have to kind of like see another woman's perspective and
her viewpoints from those times. And I'm kind of always
(10:51):
wary of being like inserting myself into other people's story
and being like, this is actually what happened to her,
because she's obviously done such a beautiful job of speaking
for herself, and so if anything, I would hope that
this kind of more passes the baton to her versus
than me kind of feeling like I need to correct
the record because she's already done a really great job
(11:13):
of that for herself.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Perfect track metaphor. You know, there were so many moments
throughout the book that I wanted to give you a hug,
or I wanted to tell off an immature adult for you.
It just felt like there wasn't much joy for you
and running, even as a middle and high schooler and
being a track athlete, a D one track athlete myself,
Like I got so much joy from the sport despite
(11:34):
how hard it could be. And I wonder how you
managed to find and separate the joy that running brought
you from the sadness the people in running caused you,
especially when you were young.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah. I think that's a really great question and something
that I have been getting a lot of kind of
the like why did you run based on reading this book.
And I think part of that is because I've I've
always been someone who's like deeply process oriented, and any
goals that I have have just always been very internally motivated,
(12:06):
and they're not necessarily like I'm doing this for friends
or I'm doing this for glory or attention or like
insert the outcome. It's always kind of like a I
really like running, and I really like seeing how fast
I can go, and I just think that's like fun,
whether or not anybody ever watches me do it. And
(12:27):
so I think because I just always had that like
self driven curiosity, it made it so that kind of
like throughout I often was able to maintain the healthy
perspective of like, oh, everyone else is weird, but I'm
not going to let their weirdness affect me. And obviously
there's a certain point where that stopped because everyone was weird.
(12:50):
But it's it's a conversation that I still have now,
like even with my mom, right because I have kind
of gotten back into running a little bit and it's
very personal but there is kind of that question always
of like I kind of have a little bit of
intrigue to see, like what can I do now that
I like have corrected the long standing injury that made
(13:12):
it so I couldn't feel my foot, And like she'll
often kind of check in in a way where it's
like when you throw these little thoughts of like the
maybes out there, is that for you? Is that because
you feel you have to? Is that because you're like
any other reason other than just like your own curiosity?
(13:32):
And I'm like, Nope, if I ever got on the
track again, I'd probably like wave at the kids, glare
at the adults, leave and go like I amolkshake. So
I I'm very kind of like the act of running
can be separated from the board of track and field.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
We're gonna take a break more with Mary Kine. Right
after this, I mentioned your New York Times video op
ed in which you shared your story from your pro career.
But this book is really the first time you're sharing
what happened to you before you even got to Nike.
You struggled a lot on your high school team with
(14:12):
unfriendly teammates, and they're jealous and racing obsessed parents. In
the book, you share that your team even went so
far as bailing on a major national competition team race,
thinking it would keep you from running in it, but
you were able to run solo. That feels like such
an extreme example of your teammates depriving themselves of something
just to harm you, almost an unbelievable example. But you know,
(14:35):
when you're reading the book can see all the stories
leading up to that moment. Why or how do you
think things got so bad there? Instead of just the
usual jealousies of a phenom, it went beyond that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I think part of the problem was, honestly, a lot
of the parents of kids on my team were either
just kind of bluntly want to be runners themselves, and
incredibly wealthy people who were kind of used to just
getting what they wanted because they could probably in some
(15:07):
capacity like throw their name or connections or money around.
And here you have this like super nerdy kid rolling
up with like a frickin' duck pillow pet being like, Hi, everybody,
do you want to be my friend? I'm just like
weirdly not really talented and super hard working, and everyone's like,
can we buy her to get off the team now
they use to watch, and so I think those two
(15:31):
things kind of came to a head. But the truth is,
like Kirkus Reviews came out with a review this week,
and I like loved their last sentence because it was
something like, you know, even though this is almost like
so unbelievable in ways, it's so ordinary because I do
feel we all know the stories of like someone being
at a sports game and the parents screaming at them,
(15:54):
or the other coach making a kid cry, and like
it's not that foreign to us as athletes, but honestly,
people in any sort of like high performing field, like
there's the kind of lore always around helicopter parents. And
I think for me, I just was unlucky with the
(16:14):
people who I was around, because sometimes the kids who
are most protected from helicopter parents are the kids who
I don't know make it so their kids get to
be national champions. But for whatever reason, I was amongst
adults who were kind of bitter that I was faster
than them, and then you know, who knows what they
were saying to their kids at home, And it's part
(16:35):
of the reason I extend a lot of those kids
the grace of like making their name pseudonyms, so that
they have kind of like the privacy to hopefully like
become adults who don't pass this on to their kids.
But I think that is something that like the kids behavior,
I think always is stemming from the adults.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, And I think one of the complications in a
sport like distance running is some of the most successful
folks are quite young, so the expectations and potential benefits
of being great start much younger. So the focus on
you was incredible when you started to become nationally known
for fast times the internet, adults everywhere we're talking about you,
(17:21):
and it's the equivalent of being the star of a
professional adult league. But you're a kid, and so the money,
the sponsorships, the fame, the attention can come much younger,
which causes people to treat you in a way that's
just not appropriate for a child. And it's hard to
read the way adults talked about you, insults, accusations, even
threats in running forums. How do you think it impacted
(17:43):
the way you saw the world of running and maybe
even what you felt was okay or acceptable to at
such a young age already see the way people talked
about you.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I mean, I think the good thing is that I
never read any of those horrible things written about me
and thought like, I guess that's what adulthood is. Like.
I always read them and was like wow, like this
adult man needs therapy. But I would That's not to
say it wouldn't still like affect me and think like, wow,
people in the sport really hate me, and I don't.
(18:16):
I honestly don't know why. But I remember even like
meeting one of my good friends. We were having a
conversation literally the first time I was ever talking to him,
and I said something and I was like, well, I
know I'm like kind of controversial and running because he's
a runner, and he was like, I don't think we
should use that world word. Let's use like polarizing. Was
like that is better. But the fact that you weren't like, no,
(18:39):
you're not is like pretty rough. But I think, you know,
I understand that adults. I think because the Internet has
made it so that there's kind of a degree of anonymity.
I think sometimes people feel more comfortable taking out their
like disappointment in insert whatever, out on other people. And
(19:03):
I think I was someone who I do look back
as I watched a lot of my old interviews and
stuff who was like very young, Like I was very bubbly,
I was very precocious. There was probably a stuffed animal.
I was probably excited to tell you about the milkshake
that I had. I was never acting like an adult,
(19:25):
Like I wasn't rolling up to these interviews in ways
that it's like you could ever have confused yourself. Let's
put it that way, Like it was pretty obvious how
young I was. And I say that because I think
that's so often a defense we kind of see in society,
where it's like something will happen and you know, the
adults in the room will be like, oh, they were
(19:47):
six feet tall. I thought they were a grown man,
And you're like, no, you didn't. That kid was a
freaking kid, and you made that choice to talk to
them in that way. And I think we've just kind
of normalize this idea that as soon as you're on
the internet in any capacity or fair game to talk
about cruelly. And I just find that so odd and
(20:08):
so sad, and I think we can do better.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean, I've been through a ton of it
from being a woman in a male dominated field, and
on ESPN for years, and it took me a long
time to stop making it about myself and to flip
it and say, not even I'm angry at these people,
but I'm sad for them. The reason that you behave
that way is a deep dissatisfaction with something going on
with yourself. I hope you get better, I hope you
(20:32):
get healed, because there is literally no reason to behave
in this way to me because you disagree with my
opinion on something, or even more often, just because I exist,
which really feels like what was happening to you. It
wasn't even I'm jealous or mad that she's so fast.
It's like I don't want her to be here, and
so my response is to lash out in a way
that's completely unrelated to anything she has said or done.
(20:54):
And I think you know you had to learn that
younger than most people, because you weren't an over night success,
but you started to break through in a way that
was you didn't have time to slowly adjust. It was
just all of a sudden, everybody knows this name in
this time. And you also had to learn about a
business that's essentially one for adults, but started to involve
you very young. And one of the things you write
(21:14):
about in the book is these hot girl contracts. I've
talked about this plaguing women's sports for decades, but I've
also dealt with it in my own industry, and I
wonder if you can share first what those are and
then how it impacted you to know immediately as you
entered this field it's not all about the running.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah. I think that was one of those topics that
I was like, every single woman attached to sport or
in so many industries is immediately going to be like yes.
And yet it was probably actually the scariest thing for
me to write about because I think so often there
is this kind of culture I think right now in
(21:54):
women's sport that if you say literally anything negative kind
of about like women tangentially, then it's kind of this
oh my god, like you're bad. It's like if you
name somebody for like being really mean to you, it's
like you're somehow therefore not supporting other women instead of
being like, well, this woman hit me, Like I think,
(22:14):
I think that's pretty bad. But I I say all
that inso much as like the concept of the hot
girl contract for me and how I always understood it
is that in sports marketing, the people who are controlling
contracts are pretty much all men. Most of them have
like a token woman who they like sexually harassed, or
at least they did back in my day, which was
(22:36):
you know, like two seconds ago, and otherwise it's like
all these dudes who like control who's actually getting paid.
And there was the like not so you know, quiet secret,
because at least at Nike, they would talk very explicitly
about this that like some of the people who they
were like quote unquote paying to be professional female athletes,
they were just signing because they were hot. And that
(23:01):
was always very difficult to kind of understand in my mind,
partly because then the standards that were being used against
me when there was talks of like having a pay
cut or getting terminated or anything where it was this
kind of like machisimo, like it's just a business, you're
just not fast, But there's kind of this undercurrent of
(23:24):
like you'ves explicitly said you only sign this woman because
she posts like countless, you know, photos in her sports brand.
You just kind of want her around and she's slower
than I am, but you're cutting me because I'm slow, Like,
clearly you don't think I'm attractive in.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
That sort of way.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And I talk in my memoir a little bit about
like the idea of jealousy and how like jealousy is normal,
and so of course in these situations, I think where
people get defensive is they're like, oh, like Mary's mad
at this other woman just because she was hot, And
I'm like, no, no, no. If that's how that woman's
making money, in some ways, good for her, right, Like
(24:03):
she can choose what she wants to do. But the
problem is, is it really a choice for women? Are
we really being empowered as women if we intellectually understand
that if I go on Instagram right now and I
start posting photos of me every single day in a
sports bra, i am going to get more followers, and
therefore I'm going to make more money. There's a certain
(24:25):
point where I'm kind of like, is that choice or
are we feeding into a system where it's men controlling
money and we're just playing the game that they want
us to play.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah. I've always said, don't hate the player, hate the game.
I try not to hold it against women if they're
trying to operate and succeed in a system that was
built to wrong them. I hold it against the system
and try to fix the system. But I also think
there is this fine line, and sometimes we might even
not judge it correctly. But I always look at folks
(24:57):
and say, I feel like that woman is empowered and
her sexuality and her control of herself and her body
makes me feel good, Versus I feel like that woman
is being exploited and the way she's behaving doesn't make
me feel like she's in control of it. And that
fine line is very difficult. But I think my day,
(25:17):
which is a lot more than two seconds ago, there
was a lot more exploitation and now there's a lot
more empowerment. And when I see a woman or a
campaign that feels wrong, I go, no, no, we're not
doing this anymore. You can still have your hot girl,
but you have to present her in a way that
feels good to women, not in this way anymore. And
the fact that we push back on that so often
(25:37):
now is progress from what it used to be. But yeah,
I mean the problem is still there that it's not
really so much a choice as it is just choosing
to make less money and retain your integrity if that's
not your damn or you know, go on only fans
and sell your parts or something whatever anyone wants to
do to make it through. I think I read the
(25:59):
book in I saw and understood why you had so
much trouble trusting people. Mostly just your parents were on
your side, seeing things the way that you did in
a couple other people, but for the most part you
had a me against the world perception. But you did
have this outsized amount of trust and belief in coach
Alberto Salazar and his Nike organ project. It was a
massive privilege and an honor to be invited to join,
(26:20):
to be a part of his team, to be trained
by him. You even skip the NCAA system to go
pro with him right after high school, which I think
speaks to the legend of Alberto right The aura that
he had in the running world made him someone that
you saw as outside of maybe the trepidation you had
around other folks in the running world when you joined.
What was the future you imagined for yourself?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, I think when I signed with Alberto, I really
saw my career as being essentially what Galen's was, insomuch
as it was going to be this like lifelong partnership
where you know, you start as a high schooler and
you know, I write a little bit about this in
the book. But like Galen and Alberto's relationship, Galen Rupp, Yes,
(27:04):
Galen rep it was it was really boundaryless inso much
as like where coaching started and ended versus someone who
would like low key break into your house and randomly
just be there. Was murky because it was it was
an all the time thing. And I'll always remember one
(27:24):
time Galen saying to me like, I'm so grateful Alberto
took you on, because now he's like off my back
a little bit more. And I was like, if this
is off your back a little bit more, then oh
my gosh, what was more. But I say all of
that because I and it's sad looking back because now
I find it all so creepy. But at the time
(27:45):
I thought like, wow, this is like a family, Like
this is somebody who will really like actually care about
you and like want to be involved in your life.
And I think I think I now look back on
those relationships and I'm like, no, he kind of said
a lot of like me things about Galen's wife, and
he made a lot of really in inappropriate comments, and
there's a lot of ways where I'm like, I don't know,
(28:06):
did you really love him as a person outside of running?
But at least the naivete that I brought into the
relationship having just had such a horrible, like high school experience,
made me like romanticize the idea of like team and
family as a team. And I think we, you know,
kind of sell that to kids as like part of
(28:27):
the joy of sports is like you're going to have family,
And it's like as soon as there is any drama
or any issues, we're kind of unequipped to deal with it,
let alone. When it becomes like my relationship with Alberto.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, and I think to the point of like his aura,
you accept behavior that somewhere in your core you know
is wrong, because bigger than that is this belief and
trust in someone who has proven success and who it's
supposed to be an honor to be led by. And
watching you lose faith in yourself and be Gasolin enough
(29:02):
to no longer trust yourself was really hard. You know,
at a certain point you're training with him, he convinces
you you need to lose weight, He encourages birth control, diuretics,
crazy calorie counting, You become underfueled, overtrained, You start crying
all the time at practice. You know, before then, you
seem so strong and sure of things. Throughout the book,
you talk about your stance on never doping, your ability
(29:22):
to be brave in the face of disrespectful adults even
when you're just a kid. But in that moment you
start crashing out. And at any point before the full
departure from his team, did you doubt him instead of
yourself or did it take a full removal from the
situation to have enough perspective to say, wait, that was
not about me.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, I think it really ultimately took a full removal
because I think any time that I started to fill doubt,
he honestly did a pretty good job of course correcting.
So like, for example, the only thing that made me
own SNA go pro was Alberto kind of like announced
that he was going to take on a Russian athlete
(30:06):
who had filled a doping test named Anna Almanova, and
also take on Shannon Robery, who, like I had teammates
who had been teammates with before and were like, I
never want to train with this woman again. She's a
horrible teammates. She's really mean, Like these people are telling
me like all sorts of stuff that's making me be
like we have this like great thing going here. I've
had bad teammates before, Like I don't want to train
(30:29):
with a doper. I don't want to train with a
woman who's mean, Like you know, this feels like kind
of like no brainer situations. And I think I was
so upset with Alberto for honestly bringing both of them on,
but at least with Anna Almanova when they ended up
like sending her back to Russia because they like learned
(30:49):
months before about like the Russian doping scandal, Like there
was kind of this like acknowledgment. There was a pseudo
apology of like you were right. And I think he
handled that lunch where we had this conversation so well
in my mind that I was like, Okay, I was
starting to doubt you. I was starting to question if
(31:10):
you cared about like drugs honestly, and I doubted all
of my teammates about like their kind of priority of
clean sport. But Alberto at least kind of like rebranded
it in a way that was very like, oh, you're
so smart Mary, like you Clockwright, It's like, thank you,
you were looking out for us. And so then I
(31:33):
was like, oh my gosh, Alberto.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Loves me again.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Master manipulator, master manipulator. He was really good at doing that,
and I think he was very good at like seeing
the moments that I was starting to slip and pull
me back. And it was the same thing even like
during the year that I was falling apart, Like there
would be these moments where even though it was like
ninety percent negative, there would be that ten percent of like,
(31:56):
oh my god, you look amazing today. Wow, this is
what you're gonna like, this is when you're gonna be great.
So I think having that kind of carrot made it
so that, like with Alberto specifically, it wasn't until the
usadapiece came out that I actually really was like, oh geez,
I need to rewire things. That's not true though for
(32:16):
anyone else, for pretty much all of my teammates, for
pretty much all of the other coaches, I was like,
what the heck is wrong with you guys, Like you're
never giving me that ca like you're never pulling me
back up. And I remember even when kind of like
before I left the organ project, I like said to
Alberto pretty explicitly, like I'm only still here because of you,
(32:38):
because I think in my mind, I was like, I
think a lot of these other people are potentially interested
in doing drugs, but Alberto doesn't know that, or Alberto
doesn't want that, Like right, I had this like real
he was the last like thread.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, And I think that's very common in situations where
someone has been groomed, especially from a very young age,
and that's part of the gaslighting, that's part of the manipulation,
is to make sure that that person is the shining
light and they are right and they're good, and you
are failing them, and I want to get to the band,
but quickly I do want to ask, because you know,
(33:11):
at the lowest point of this training, you have suicidal thoughts,
you're cutting yourself, You're breaking down all the time. In practice,
you've got broken bones, you didn't have your period for
three years. Alberto is taking you to doctors, not letting
you see results, telling you things are fine, even though
you don't feel that way. You finally go to another
doctor outside of Alberto's purview. You realize you have a
serious injury. Not just the shin splints that he's forcing
(33:33):
you to train through. You go home. Even after you
get home, you realize that you have serious bone issues,
that you have really damaged your body. This, you know,
red as relative energy deficiency in sport, which is what
we now understand is very common in a lot of sports,
par particularly distance running, where you're overtraining and you're underfueled.
This idea that getting smaller and smaller will help until
your whole body falls apart and then you can't run
(33:55):
or walk. You have all of this going on, and
now that you're out of Alberto's world and you realize
that what was going on there was wrong. How validating
was the ban? Not just what was happening to me
was wrong, but what he was doing and who he
was was wrong. That must have been just an incredible
weight off your shoulders and a redirecting and rewiring of
(34:19):
your brain of the way you saw everything that had happened.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I don't know, I don't know. I don't think the
anti doping ban felt that way. I think the anti
doping ban i'm grateful for because it helped me, like
start to realize things were bad, and it's why I
did the New York Times piece and it's why, like
everything precipitated, So I think that was kind of like
(34:42):
like a super positive reaction. And then I think the
Safe Sport life ban was incredibly impactful, but I think
it was actually I think that was one of the
saddest days is that I've had in the years post
(35:03):
the New York Times piece coming out, was the day
that I read the Safe Sport report because I did
not know that there were like accusations from kra of
sexual assault by Alberto and it was so deeply lonely
(35:23):
to like read that post, like it was like this
whole document that you know, those of us who were
involved were sent. It was literally just a crying on
a bathroom floor. And as I was reading it, like
the whole time, I was like, I didn't know this,
and I had told the Safe Sport reporters like so
many different things and admittedly, like there's a lot of
(35:44):
stories that are not in this book, and I think,
if anything, I actually didn't feel particularly believed initially because
the way the report was, it was clear that they
had interviewed like almost all of my past teammates who
just kind of denied most of my allegations, Like I
(36:06):
think a few of them were like a little scared
and didn't feel comfortable lying that much. But my specific
like claims were thrown out initially, and I think part
of it in retrospect in talking to the Center was
they were just like Carrie's claims, they just kind of
focused on because they ended up throwing out the other athletes'
claims who had like insanely powerful claims. So the whole
(36:29):
thing was kind of just, I think, really fumbled by
Safe Sport. But I think it's taken time for me
to feel empowered by that specific document, and I think
that's very normal. I think it's in the same way
that almost any you know, judicial legal enforcement thing is.
(36:54):
I always kind of warned people who are going through
the process that, like, even if you kind of quote
unquote when you're not going to feel very good afterwards,
because it never negates what happened, and it's actually usually
the other person just streaming and having a bunch of
other people scream that you're a liar. You're a liar,
you're a liar, and even though you know you're not,
(37:17):
that's not like the most empowering thing to go through
even if some people you agree with you. Yeah, I
think to me the safe spoort thing was actually more
validating because I was like, we have two other women
who are like I also went through something, and then
that ultimately at least sent me down a path to
be able to do like a different type of therapy.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah. I think there's a lot of shame and self
blame that comes, even if logically you know that that's
not true, that is so internalized deep within you over
the course of the time that it's going on that
by the time you get out of it, you still
have to process that much longer than maybe that ruling
will do for you. And then the ruling brings more
attention and more doubters and more people's opinions and all
(37:58):
of that as well. So that is very enjoyable. I'm
glad that you feel like you've gotten to a point
where some of that weight is off. But yeah, you're right,
it takes time. It's not an instant validation. You know,
you mentioned earlier that there's a part of the book
when you write about like jealousy and the feelings that
you have and your control of them. And I have
(38:19):
to say I'm like, really, it's a really meaningful part
to me because I think a lot about people not
giving themselves time for self reflection, for meditation, learning how
to self regulate and control reactions. And you write about that,
and you write about how you understand feeling jealous or
feeling angry. But the goal is to not be mad
at the people who cause those emotions in you, but
(38:40):
to understand why you're feeling them, gain control of them,
decide how you want to react to them, which is
such a powerful thing. And it feels like you have
gone through a lot of therapy to understand yourself and
to be able to see your story differently than maybe
as something you're a victim of, but rather as something
who made you into who you are today. And I
(39:01):
want to know who you are because you're not Marykin
Phenom child Runner. You are potentially future Mary Kane, doctor
Mary Kane. But who are you? What do you want
people to think about you now? Having read this book
and knowing your story.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
I think I want to be known as someone who's
deeply honest. And I think, sort of tragically that kind
of right now in today's society, I think equates too
courageous and I only say tragically because I think there
should be a standard where we're all deeply honest instead
of it being like, wow, how are you so brave
(39:38):
to like speak truth? But I think the reason that
it is considered brave is because you know, there's like
a lot of people who I name in this book,
and there are a lot of people who are not
happy that they are named in this book. And rather
than reflecting hmm, maybe I should have behaved different, there's
(40:01):
more of a like, you know, tendency, and this is
true for a lot of people to try to pick
out any little thing and be like, you said, this
happened on a Tuesday. It happened on a Wednesday, like
you're a lying hoe, And I'm like, no, that's not
how this works. I'm not scared of you, bully anymore.
(40:23):
But I think there is this kind of standard in
which victims are held to, like this perfection standard, And
a lot of it has to do with like legal stuff,
where like lawyers are horrible and they try to you know,
gaslight people all the time. And I think I am
just at a place in my life where I'm kind
(40:44):
of back to my like inner child, where I'm just
like a deeply confident, self confident person, and so I'm
in a privileged position where, like I can just be
honest because when I get the angry emails, yes, is
it like emotionally really frying, And yes, do I need
(41:05):
to go to therapy? So I can like handle that,
of course, But it's also something that like I can
handle partly because I'm not really ever going to be
in that world in the same way. Even if I
ever run again, I have no interest in playing in
that sand pit, because I don't think it's actually changed
that much, like, based on all of the things that
(41:26):
I have like honestly even helped had to deal with
in like the launch of this book and just all
the random pettiness, you're just kind of like.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, being a doctor's way easier exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But I think, I mean, I think part of the
thing about medicine is at its core, it's a field
that is built to care for others. And I think
so often people in sport like meaning particularly people who
are like in the professional side of this. I'm not
talking about people who are like grassroots or community like.
People who are really in the professional world kind of
(42:02):
act like they're as important as a doctor, and I'm like,
you're not helping anyone, Like you're kind of high key
just like running around and seeing how fast you can
go and then acting like it's the end of the world.
And I'm guilty as anyone of doing that. But I
think that kind of like meaningless pursuit only means something
(42:23):
if you make it mean something, So it like only
means something if then you're like standing up and being like,
let's talk about healthy sport, let's talk about ending abuse,
let's talk about empower women, like insert whatever the thing
is that has meaning. And so I hope, you know,
I will be remembered in some ways as someone who
had influence, not as an influencer.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, I love that last question for you. What does
running look like for you? Now? I know you switched
national allegiances from the US to Ireland, but like as
far as the future or competition or just finding join it,
what does it look like?
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, it's been really fun. Over the course of the
last year, I think I finally kind of just sat
down with myself and was like, Okay, I want to
be physically in a position that if I want to try,
I can, And I think I've been doing like all
the pt I've been doing all of the even just
kind of like therapy work to be in a position
where like I go out and run, you know, half
(43:20):
the week, I cross train half the week, and like
I'm by no means deciding to do anything yet like
next year I'm going to be in clerkships and I'm
going to be like in the hospital running around all
the time. But I kind of just liked the idea
of like getting my body just like truly healthy again
and then anything from there cool. And maybe that's just
(43:40):
I continue to do exactly what I'm doing. I'm sure
there's gonna be periods in my life where it's a
heck of a lot less than I'm doing right now.
But if one day I kind of am like, ah,
like I can represent Ireland, then like the options open,
but it will always be that will always be a
nude chapter that will not be related to this chapter before.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is it Ireland? Because you don't want to represent the US?
Or what was the change?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
I had had enough instances I didn't feel and I
was told essentially that there was no guarantee that there
would be protection against people who had threatened me. In
different capacities, and that's really disheartening to hear from you know,
your national organization that it's not equipped to help you,
(44:30):
partly based on the sponsor that they have. And so
I just felt at the time that I made the change.
It's kind of like I don't know if I'm ever
going to do anything, but I kind of like the
idea of knowing that I like it's a choice. Like
if I choose not to, it's because I chose not
to and was just like having a blast in medicine
and like didn't want to take a step out year.
(44:51):
But if I choose to, I'd love to do it
with people who I don't know just like never mistreated
me and want me there and want to protect me.
And the truth is like a lot of USA Track
and Field, they're the same cast of characters who would
just like see me walk off into a room with
Alberto alone and like not really blink an eye. And
(45:11):
so I just I think I respect myself and I
respect my safety too much not to be like, oh
my gosh, I'm like really proudly Irish and I already
have citizenship, so like makes sense why not have some
joy in life?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, it makes sense. I just love at every turn
how you're taking control of your story, your truth, your narrative,
your perspective. It's a really powerful thing to do after
what happened to you. And the book is really fantastic
and I hope you have great success with it. So
thanks for talking to us.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Thanks again to Mary for sitting down with us. And
don't forget. You can now watch full length Good Game
interviews on the Iheartwomen's Sports YouTube channel, so go on
over there and subscribe. We got to take another break.
When we return, a friend of the show announces a comeback.
(46:05):
Welcome back, slashays. We love that you're listening, but we
want you to get in the game every day too,
So here's our good game play of the day. Pick
up a copy of Mary's memoir This is Not about Running.
We'll link to it in the show notes. And while
you're at it, we mentioned it in the interview, but
make sure to check out Kara Goucher's book The Longest
Race as well. We'll link to that too. We always
love to hear from you, so hit us up on email.
(46:25):
Good Game at Wondermediaetwork dot com or leave us a
voicemail at eight seven two two o four fifty seventy
and y'all don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. It's
real easy. Watch the news that another outspoken track and
field legend is making a comeback. Rating five Olympic appearances
and counting review y'all. On Monday, we read the rewords
(46:48):
that never would have made our twenty twenty six bango card.
Alison Felix comeback. Felix, the most decorated female track athlete
in Olympic history, announced that she's planning to make a
return into competition, with her site set on the twenty
twenty eight LA Olympics. In a story in time, feel
excited how seeing athletes like Lindsay Vaughn, Tom Brady and
Lebron James have success in their forties made her revisit
(47:11):
her own assumptions and expectations. Quote. So many of us
have been told not to do the big, bold thing.
You know, at this age, I should probably be staying
home and taking care of my kids doing all that,
And just why not, Let's flip it on its head,
Let's go after the thing. Let's be vulnerable. End quote. Yes,
we love to see it and actually, looking back on
(47:32):
the last time she was on the show talking about
doing hill workouts and can while the rest of Sport
Beach was sipin' spritzes, she still got a dinner. We
should have known. We'll link to the full time story
in the show notes. Now it's your turn, rate and review.
Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good Game, Mary, Good Game,
Allison and Kara and Alicia Montano and every other athlete
(47:53):
who has called out Nike's policies. Few to the culture
that allows this type of behavior to go unchecked for
so long. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
(48:15):
our producers are Alex Azzi and Bianca Hillier. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Emily Rutterer, Lucy Jones, Britney Martinez, and
Gianna Palmer. Production assistants from Avery Loftus and I'm Your
Host Sarah Spain,
Host
Sarah Spain
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