Narrating Journeys with Colleen Rue - Season 4 Eposode 2 - Just us On Justice and Other Things

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to another episode of Just Us on Justice and
other things. I am Scott Jones without my baby brother
Dan Jones. He is away today, so we have our producer.
I like calling you my producer. It's such a weird term.
Kim Grecoalec will be co hosting today for the first
time ever. And at the last of those of you
who listened to us all the time at the end
of last season, we talked about we're gonna try and

(00:23):
change things up, and there'll be times when I'm not here,
Danny's not here, we have a guest host or whatever.
So this is our first opportunity to do that, and
we are shockingly excited or very excited at our guest today,
Colleen Rue, who Kim and I got to meet in
Whistler in August as we went through the two nine
oh two nine event, which was a transformative experience. So

(00:43):
and we'll for sure talk about that later, but let's
begin with wherever. Like we said before we started recording,
calling wherever you want to start. Like you, I saw
your bio. You have a very interesting background, so it'd
be interesting to see how that background the lens itself,
and how you wound yourself into where you are today.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's so good to see your faces and to be
able to have a conversation with you.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
And I know we're going to get into.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Twenty nine oh twenty nine, and that's definitely something that
I'm super passionate about.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
But my my journey to what I do, and you said, you.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Know I'm at twenty nine oh twenty nine. I'm actually
a rec announcer, a host in an MC. That's what
I do as a profession, which is weird. It's a
weird job. Like when people are like, what do you do,
I'm like, well, I talk to people for a living.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's basically what I do.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
So that's where I got to meet you guys, was
in my capacity as this event announcer at twenty nine
oh twenty nine. But the process of me getting to
that point is is kind of weird. Like you said,
it's kind of interesting because I went to school to
be a paralegal and I have a type a personality.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I love paperwork, I love working in an office.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
I like checking the boxes and all of that, and
I always wanted to be an attorney. That was really
what I wanted to do with my life was to
be an attorney, and I pursued that path in political
science and got my paralegal certifications here in southern Utah,
and I even worked for a major law firm back
in Washington, d C. For about three and a half

(02:15):
years as a paralegal. I was doing antitrust law and
all of these working for biotech. We were representing biotech
companies and I also had experience working with a guardian,
ed Leham, who represented abused and neglected children, and so
I supported all of that work there. I also worked
for a prosecutor's office doing victim services.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
And I just I love those jobs.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
It was great and that's always where I saw my
path and where I was going. And it's interesting as
I have teenage teenagers now, so I have a sixteen
year old and a nineteen year old and these kids
are getting ready to going to college and they're pursuing.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Their degrees and what they want to be when they
grow up.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, I didn't figure out what I wanted to be
when I grew up until I was in my late thirties,
Like my opportunities changed, and I think that's the most
interesting thing for me. Is that truly a text message
changed the course of my career. And I love that story.
It's like one of my favorite stories. And I was

(03:22):
always in the fitness world. I was always an athlete,
and I was a coach and a trainer, and that
was just kind of behind the scenes. So I was
this pairentlegal by day, and I would go and teach
spinning classes, and I would personal train, and I would
run marathons and do iron Man's and things like that,
and so that was always a big.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Part of my life.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
But I never I never realized that it would lead
me into a career that I am into today. And
as I was working in fitness. When I had my children,
I actually didn't go back to the law froom. I
didn't go back to work, which that was a privilege
for me that I didn't not need to work and
I got to stay home with my first baby.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
And I still taught fitness classes and did things like that.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
And when I had got pregnant with my second baby,
I was given the opportunity to run a fitness program
at a local community center.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
And that's great when you're a mom.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Fitness is a great career when you're a mom because
you have daycare and you're able to bring your kids
with you. It's a really fun environment. So my kids
grew up at a gym. They went to the gym
daycare and they loved it. And I would work a
couple hours and then we would go home and I
got to work out, and I was still racing, and
I got to be in shape, and that lent into
other things like working in events and preparing and operating events,

(04:38):
and that led to meeting other people and other opportunities.
And I cut a radio at one day on a
local radio station, and one of my friends who worked
in radio actually heard the ad and he sent me
a text message that said, have you ever.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Considered being in radio?

Speaker 3 (04:54):
And not until that point had I ever considered that
my would end up being my career.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
So that's super cool. The cool thing about that, The
thing that's something I've learned later in life is if
you just keep your mind open to whatever opportunities are
in front of you, they could be very unanticipated paths
that you wouldn't like. You said, I'd never planned on
doing that. For me being a yoga teacher, not a
chance in hell that ever would have been a consideration,

(05:23):
and if I was talking to forty year old me,
you'd be like, that's not true and that didn't happen.
But just going okay, well, the universe has kind of
put me in this direction, and then being open to
that and going, well, no, of course I'm not going
to go on radio. I want to be a paralegal
or I'm going to be an attorney or whatever, and
kind of being not necessarily stuck, but maybe rigid in
how we approach those things.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
And I really take that approach with my kids too
these days, is yeah, go to school, get a great education,
and have a path, but be open to the opportunities
that are presented to you, and you might develop different
skills in your life. I really go back, as I've
had discussions about this path in my life with different people.

(06:05):
It's really brought me to the understanding that all of
those things that I did before I ever got on
a microphone really prepared me to get to do what
I do today in a weird way, like being a
fitness instructor, understanding that part, working with victim services, working
with hard situations and managing those hard situations and heart emotions.

(06:26):
It all kind of combines to what I get to
do today with all of that, and in a really
interesting way.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
So I like what you said, Dan, is you've got
to be open to that.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
You have to be open to opportunities that come because
if you pigeonhole yourself, you really are going to be
selling yourself short.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
But I think second to that also is that you
will have to have the courage to then walk forward.
So you get a text message with this suggestion, and
you could just say, oh, that's so nice and then
kind of put it to the side, but I'm guessing
that you didn't and you did something with it.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, And it was really a step in the dark
for me. What's interesting is my husband and my older
brother they actually went to college together. That's a whole
nother story that we could get into, but they actually
were on a radio station together at one point. They
were on a radio show in college, and they both
have communication degrees. My little brother has a communication degree,

(07:23):
so they were doing things in that field. But I
was never like my brothers.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
So it was an interesting step. But also I was
at a place.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
In my life where my kids were just getting to
the preschool age. They were just about to go into
preschool where I had a couple more hours in my day,
and so it was a good time also for me
to explore. And I guess I was just willing to
be like, what does that look like? What does that
look like for me? And I'm so glad I did
it because I worked in radio for eight years.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
I ended up managing a radio station.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Had you told me that I would ever manage your
radio station, I would.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Have been like, no, you're up in the night.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
So taking you back to your paralegal days, and obviously
there's a high trauma factor with that. We're not going
to go into necessarily the details of that, but how
did you because you were obviously younger when you went
to those like I started as a police officer at
twenty one. Was not prepared at all for what I
was going to be facing as a twenty one year old,
despite the fact that I came from a police family.

(08:25):
So were you prepared kind of psychologically for what you
were being immersed in, and whether you were or not,
what did you do to kind of mitigate the effects
of that?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
You know, that's really interesting.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
My mom always worked at a law firm, and when
I was she was always a legal secretary, and when
I was sixteen, she got me a job to like
filing and doing things at the office. And so that
was a family law firm that I worked with, and
I was exposed there to, you know, the different dynamics
of family law and the difficult conversations and the hard

(08:59):
things that people were going through.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And so I was sixteen seventeen when I started.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Doing that, and you know, I never really thought about
it from that trauma perspective until I worked with the
Guardian d Item's Office and the Guardian OD LIKEEM here
in Utah. They represent abused and neglected children who are
brought into the system.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
So if a child is.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Removed from their home, they're given a Guardian ADLIGHTEM attorney
who represents them in front of the court. So you
have the state and then you have the parents, and
then you have the Guardian UD like them, who's speaking
on behalf.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Of the children.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
And as I worked with that attorney, her name was
Carlos Daly. She's actually passed away now, but she was
such a wonderful example of caring so much and being
so invested and as I watched her try to navigate,
you know, you talk about the trauma of having to
sit across from a child who's been mistreated or severely abused,

(09:57):
and you have to read those files and look at
those pictures, and you have to really become a part
of their world in order to represent them. And she
was always so good about navigating that and just talking
about that and having those conversations that this is hard
to look at and this is difficult. And I feel
like working with attorneys who are really good at balancing

(10:19):
that then themselves and working through that themselves. And it
was interesting when I worked victim Services, I actually worked
a murder trial where I was working with the surviving
family of that victim. And it was the first time
I realized and recognized.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
How deep those wounds were for this family.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
And it was interesting because I have to say, in
my younger mind, I think I compartmentalized it a little bit,
where this is my work and then this is my life.
Like I never remember having that anxiety response or something
that oh my gosh, this could you know, this could
happen in my own family. I never really remember that

(11:04):
happening when I was working. I was able to compartmentalize that.
Whether that's good or bad. I feel like that's kind
of how I worked through that, and I just loved
being a place where I could help those people in
that situation. And I just had some really great attorneys
that I worked with who were just good at guiding

(11:26):
me through that process.

Speaker 4 (11:30):
Well, Scott and I actually first met. So we have
a local nonprofit, the Zebra Child Protection Center, and it's
our local child advocacy center, and so I spent nearly
a decade there working for the nonprofit.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Very similar.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
We could be thought of as a specialized victim services unit,
So we were helping children and youth who had been
through who had experienced abuse, primarily sexual abuse. And Scott
was with EPs and he was the staff sergeant of
the Child Protection section, and I remember very similar. So
you start there because you want to help, and it's
a fit and you don't really There is that disconnect,

(12:05):
and I think compartmentalizing has a lot to do with
survival and it's how you get through and all of
those things. But eventually, for me, nearly ten years later,
it wasn't a big file, it wasn't a notable thing,
but the stacking of all of that started to have
some effects and started to show up in my body,
and that was really what kicked off kind of that

(12:27):
awareness that there needed to be some stronger wellness practices
put in place.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Those two areas, in particular, because I worked in child protection,
I worked in homicide before that, it seemed like people
would be kind of clicking along, No, I'm good, No,
I can deal with this, and people are like, how
do you deal with it?

Speaker 2 (12:42):
How deal with it?

Speaker 1 (12:42):
No, it's fine, and then something would go click and
they'd be like, I need to leave here now, I
need to get out right now. And within the next
month they need to go or they got to the
point where they were so disregulated that they didn't even
see the forest of the trees. And there's a couple
of people that'll be like, you've been here seven years,
time for you to go do something different. I know
this chaos is comfortable in your nervous system, but there's

(13:06):
other things you need to explore. And then you start
to watch, Oh, they're going to have a bit of
a different nervous system reaction where they think, well, I'll
just go to summer quieter and then I'll feel better.
Your NERVOUSYSTM then gets jangled up because it's not used
to the quiet, and then there's kind of a whole
process that has to happen for you to fully kind
of get back to wellness.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, and Scott, it's interesting because I've seen that my
mom worked for a prosecutor's office and they worked, they
did most of the sexual assaults. Her attorney was the
one who helped handled all the sexual thoughts, so if
nobody else wanted to deal with it, and he was
the one who had to deal with it. And so
my mom supported that for a long time. And it's
interesting what you were just saying, because I've seen that

(13:47):
in her as she's retired, that going to that quieter
place was really really difficult for her and taking a
step out of that was difficult for her to process,
and I can see some of that left over trauma
and anxiety.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
That comes from that.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I watched my dad retire and then watched my brother
retire and uncle, and they all kind of left very
dysregulated and to varying degrees did or didn't deal with
what they saw. But the analogy that I talk about
all the time on here, and I learned that therapy
is because I'm really visual. As we all have a
trauma trunk. We bury the bottom of the ocean. We're
throwing things in that trauma trunk and we tout the
lid on, put locks on it and go, I think

(14:27):
I'm good now, And unfortunately those locks rust that stuff
floats to the top, and then you're left to deal
with whatever comes up, and you don't really have I
didn't have control over what or when things came up
like it would be. I was in therapy telling the
story of a suicide that I'd gone to in like
two thousand and eight, and I start, I've told a
story fifty times. I'm not going to tell here, but

(14:47):
I started bawling my face off while I'm telling the
therapist and he even He's like, did you.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
See that coming? I'm like, I didn't.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
I've told this story so many times, but it was
so stuck in my system that then through EMDR I movement, desensitization, reprocessing,
that kind of moved it out and metabolized it. But again,
we think I'll just go quieter, I'll go walk in
the trees and I'll be better. Ah, you might not be.
You might need to do that is as thing to do,
but there may be other things to do as well

(15:14):
to make sure you're looking after yourself.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
And I think you know in my position now where
I work in endurance events, we see a lot of
people with those trauma trunks that are bearing really deep
and at those moments when they are up against some
really physically hard things or they're out of their element
and they're really kind of being cracked open. You have
to be really careful with that because people have different

(15:39):
responses and there's things there that we just don't expect
to surface, and all of a sudden they're there and then.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
We have to manage that.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think ultra events are a great place for people
with trauma to goal because it's it feels like you're
doing the work and you are kind of but there's
just sometimes it might be a little bit of scene
as a running way instead of dealing with you're dealing,
but at least it's some way to move it through.
But that's a great segue to go. Let's go back
to you and your kind of history or background in
endurance events. How did that start and where did that start?

(16:12):
And you kind of listed off a few different items,
but I want to hear more about how that came
to be.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, I was.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
I was not an athlete in high school. I was actually, well,
I guess I was an athlete. I was a dancer.
I did drill team in high school, and so, you know,
despite my five to eleven frame that my dad really
would have liked to have seen on the basketball court,
I was at halftime.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
On basketball doing dance.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
And so I loved drill and I did drill team
through high school and did a little bit in college
as well. But I was never really into the other sports.
I dabbled in ball sports, but they just they weren't
something that really spoke to me. And when I got
out of high school, I do remember well, taking a

(16:56):
step back. When I was growing up, I had an aunt.
Her name is Robin. It's my dad sister. She was
always into aerobics. She loved to work out and she
would take me along with her, and I used.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
To love it.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
She'd bring me old leotards and I'd put the leotards
on and we'd go to these different aerobics classes. And
if I'm really going to date myself, they used to
have a toy that was called Getting Shape Girl, and
it was like a cassette tape and it came with
ribbons and all these things, and that's what I got
for Christmas, was like Jane fond Of workout videos and
get in Shape girl, because I just loved it.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
And my Aunt Robin really is the one to thank
for that example, because she would just be like, Hey,
do you want to come to this aerobics class with me?
And so I loved it. I would do my Jane fond.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Of videos all the time, and so fitness and dance
was always a part of me because it was something.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
That I enjoyed doing. When I got out.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Of high school, I started teaching steph aerobics. I remember
it was this old grungey place down in Cedar City, Utah,
small town in southern Utah, and they had a carpeted
floor and I don't know why it was, but we
just did step aerobics on carpet and I were teaching.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
That in nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
So I always had kind of that fitness background. And
I became a spinning instructor shortly after that. And after
I got my spinning credentials and have been teaching for
a while, somebody's like, why don't you do a trathlon
and I was like, oh, I've never.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Thought about that. That's kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
And so I got a bike and I started running
and my dad. I always give my dad a hard
time because he always told me when I was younger,
He's like, you're just too big to run, Like You're
like too tall, You're really not built like a runner.
So despite my dad, he lives in the neighborhood and
the day as I ran by him this morning, I

(18:45):
do every single morning as I'm still a runner.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
But so I never had really taken.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Up any of that stuff until I did my first
trasslon in nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
So it was a sprint traathlon.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
There was no wetsuits, there was no rack for your bikes,
there was nothing like that. It was really tradler in
its infancy back then. And so I'd gotten to travelon
really liked that. And then I transitioned into long distance cycling,
so doing century rides and things like that because there
was a really great group in southern Utah that brought

(19:19):
me into riding. And I talk about my friend Claire Jensen.
He's passed away as well, and he was kind of
the grandfather of that cycling group, and he taught all
us young kids, us young twenty year olds really had
to enjoy riding our bikes, and he would ride right
next to us and support us until we got faster
than him, and then he would just let us go

(19:40):
and be so excited to see us. And Claire was
an amazing example of just loving to be out in
nature and to do those things, and so I thank
him for that example as well. And it just that
long distance cycling really just cemented in my life that
I loved being out moving my body for long periods

(20:02):
of time. And after I had my first baby, I
had her in two thousand and six, and I got
right back into traathlon and I found that my postpart
and body actually did really well.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Some women have that experience where their body gets leaner
and stronger, and really the female body is absolutely incredible.
And I really found my stride in trathlon and absolutely
loved it and started doing my did my first marathon
in two thousand and one, but hadn't done as many
marathons up to that point, but really got back into

(20:39):
that really long distance running, and that all just led
to more marathons, and that led to iron Man Triathlon
and I was actually able to compete at the iron
Man seventy point three World Championships twice. So I was
able to qualify and go and compete at seventy point three.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
So that was great.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
I loved it until well I didn't love traflon anymore,
and you know, you speak of trauma. I was a
coach and was also coaching athletes and putting together group
rides and things like that, and there was a scenario
where I had a group ride. We would go out
every I think it was every Tuesday, and we would

(21:18):
go to this beautiful five mile stretch of pavement that
was pretty new here in southern Utahn. We'd go do
time trials and we would have a large group who
would go out and do that, and I would sit
and take everybody's time as they came back in, and
we had so much fun doing that. Well, one day,
we everybody got off, we started everybody and as people

(21:41):
started trickling back, there was sirens and then there was like,
where what's going on? Where's everybody going? Where's where is everybody?
And we come to find out one of the athletes
that we put out there, Brayden, he was actually hit
and killed on that ride, and at that moment when

(22:02):
we speak of trauma, I couldn't ride my bike anymore.
I wasn't even on my bike that day, but I
was the one in charge of the ride.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean, it was nothing of my fault. This was
an accident.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
The driver was looking into the sun, didn't see Braden
and unfortunately hit him from behind and he was killed.
And that really shifted me and my athletic journey because
I couldn't ride anymore, and truly I've only ridden probably
a handful of times since then because I watched him

(22:34):
leave behind four or five kids, five young kids, a
family that I couldn't imagine. And from that point I
really threw myself into long distance running and trail running
and kind of the ultra world and got into doing
fifty milers and loved it because I wasn't on my bike,

(22:55):
and honestly, that really shifted that. But I do love
to just be out and in the mountains and for
long periods of time move in my body.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Is there a party that has a contrarian nature? So
when your dad says no, you shouldn't be doing the running,
then you go Okay. Then I'm gonna run all the miles.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Not really, I'm not that person. I am like the
goodie too shoes, the teacher's pet kind of person. So
not really, I don't. I think I just loved it
and I thought, well, my body's fine and I seem
to be doing just fine.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
It was, and it was interesting.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
As I've gotten older and as I've competed in different things,
my parents don't really necessarily understand what I do for work,
nor for endurance and why I like to do those
things because my dad was a baseball player, but in
my parents they're active people, but they didn't We didn't
grow up hiking in the mountains, and my parents didn't

(23:52):
run every day. And it's been interesting to watch my
dad talk to other people, and then the other people
come back to me and tell me what my dad
says about my athletic performance, and so it's it's kind
of fun to see him lean into that, not necessarily
straight to me, but through other people.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
So I totally projected on you because I am a
conrarion by nature. So if someone says he shouldn't be
doing that, and I that's exactly what I'm going to do.
So that's all that was I don't.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Go against the grain very much.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
Scott, I am like, oh okay, he was hopeful for
a kindred sper.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
So you kind of just well barely touched on iron
Man's and well I did an iron Man and I
was in the world like those are extraordinary achievements. Twice yes,
like I am doing my first triathlon of my life
this year. But the reason I haven't before because I'm
confident I can do the run on the bike. I
don't know how to swim. So I've had to start
literally from zero with a friend of mine who's a firefighter,

(24:48):
who's my swim coach, and he goes we started like
here's how you tread water over ten breaths, and here's
how you float and putting your belly up to the
sky and like all those kind of things. So I've
had to start at zero so that in August we're
going to do it. Kim's going to do as well
as well as my oldest boy is coming with too.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I love that, and I love that you're willing.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
We talked about bravery earlier, being brave enough to try
something you don't know if you're going to be very
good at and that you've never done.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
I mean, swimming is hard for people.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
I'm an iron Man announcer as well, and it's always
interesting the iron Man's stories to hear them and people
who get into the sport later in life, and I
love that. That's something that just inspires me so much
to stay in it and to try new things and
don't be afraid. You know, maybe you're not going to
be a great swimmer and maybe you're going to be
the last one out of the water, but who cares,

(25:37):
Like go and learn a new skill. So I love
that you're learning that. Luckily I had a little bit
of a swimming background. My mom actually couldn't swim and
was terrified of the water, so she made sure that
all of us could swim because she wasn't coming in
after us. So we were put in swim team in
middle school. And luckily I had some swimming background when
I was doing travelon so that was good.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I seeing my wife's already done this journey, she's already
done triathlons and all that, so this is kind of
she's watching me do it like whatever, fifteen twenty years later.
But it's back to my I think my maleness and
my hubrists and all the things. I'm like, I'm sure
I'll be good at this, Like why wouldn't I be
good at this? Like I'm long, these long monkey arms
should be good for something, and they're already. Like my again, Andrew,

(26:20):
my swim coach, She's like, yeh, yeah, totally. Once you
get it, you'll be fine.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
My ego is nowhere. I'm not winning. I don't care
about winning, like as whatever, none of that's going to
come into it. I run very slow. That's I'm not fast.
I don't even want to try to get faster. That's
just not what this is. But I have found, and
through to nine oh nine, found that I can actually
go kind of long, slow into the trees and kind

(26:44):
of walk forever.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah, And I disappreciate that so much because that's really
what ended my triathlon career, was the pressure of getting
faster and being better.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
It's kind of the strawa, you know, the symptoms of strawa.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Where everyone is seeing what you're doing in there, judging
how every workout is going, without having any context of
what's going on in your life. And that pressure is
real in trathlon, and it was real when I was racing,
and I just got to the point, you know, you
talk about contrarian. I didn't want anybody talking about what

(27:20):
I was doing anymore. I didn't want to explain why
my transition was two minutes versus thirty seconds or something
like that. Like it just that got to be hard
for me because I kept putting that pressure on myself
to perform, to get faster, until i was at the
bottom of my bucket and I'm like, I can't go
any anymore, and I don't like this anymore.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
And so then the walk.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
In the woods and the transition into the ultra world
that has this culture of not really caring, like if
you got lost for four miles, hey, great, We're glad
that you made it back on course.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
This is amazing.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
I liked that dichotomy between the stress of racing for
me and then just kind of letting it all go
and enjoying. And I'm hoping in my old age that
if I did get back into travelon I could just
back off and just enjoy the process of it. And
that's what twenty nine to twenty nine has taught me,
because it's a whole bunch of people who have to

(28:16):
lean into something that is really really, really really hard,
and that they don't know the outcome. I'm not very
good when I don't know the outcome of something. I
want to control that outcome. If I don't know, I'm
going to finish them? Why am I going to start?
But being brave enough to start something that you don't
know the end is something to me that I work

(28:38):
on every day.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
I think there's a lot.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
I mean, we were talking about courage and starting things,
and I mean not only for gender reasons, but he
does not suffer from any sort of female.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Confidence gap as I do.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
But you also you had the courage to walk away
from something that you were good at, that you had
put so much investment in, that undoubtedly had woven itself
and to become quite part of your life story. So
what was the transition like for you from leaving that
and then moving more into your ultra movement events.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
You know, that's an interesting question.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
I don't think anybody's ever framed it that way, Kim,
So I appreciate that because at the time it didn't
feel brave to me.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
It felt like a cop out.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
And I had a really hard race at iron Man
seventy point three worlds. It was in Las Vegas. It
was so hot, like one hundred and three degrees. I mean,
you don't want to do track on a one hundred
and three in Vegas.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
It's not fun.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
And I had been racing a lot, and I really
had extended myself too much. I wasn't going to have
a good race. I didn't set myself up to really
succeed in that, and then I just had a terrible race.
And I remember that what was hardest for me was
that I felt like I disappointed everybody who came to
cheer me on, and that was so not true, like

(30:03):
that I was telling that story to myself when they
were there just so excited to see me, and I
was so embarrassed that I performed so well. It was
all about me, Like I was so focused and hyper
focused on myself, and so when I walked away from that,
it was really almost out of shame of I can't

(30:26):
be the person that these people think that I am,
and if I'm slower, they won't want to support me,
when again that was not true. And it took me
a long process to figure that out. That people are
just there to cheer you on and they just want
to see you happy. That doesn't mean you have to
be fast, it doesn't mean you need to be the best.
And so through that process I really grew in that

(30:51):
understanding that it can be so much more, that your
sport and what you do and what you love to
do can be so much more than will you got
to be the best at it, and teaching my kids
that and trying to set that example for my kids
that hey, you can go run cross country and I
don't care if you finished first, I don't care if
you pr but I want you to find the joy.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
In the process and the journey.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
And so, you know, I am glad that I that
I had to step away from that because the lessons
that have come from that have been so great in
my life and brought so much more joy to me.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Where does your introspection come from? Because you seem remarkable
at kind of knowing what's what and being able to
process it and articulate it and no doubt articulated inside
and then outside. But is that like, how have you
holned that skill? Or is it a genetic thing?

Speaker 2 (31:47):
You know, I think it might be a genetic thing.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
I'm not sure because I I feel like it's interesting.
My husband's like, you have this superpower to just see things,
so you just see things.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
The other day, this is an interesting story.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
We were in Las Vegas, not a place that I
loved to visit very often, but there was a marathon
down there.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
It was the inaugural Las Vegas Marathon, and they had asked.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Me to come down and announce, and my husband is
my sound guy, and so he was coming with me.
And we were walking through downtown Las Vegas, not on
the Strip, but the Fremont Experience, in real downtown Vegas,
which is not a great place. There's a lot of
there's a lot going on in that area, and there's
a lot of homeless people. There is just a lot
going on. And we were crossing a road and there

(32:35):
was a ton of people just people were drunk and
they've got their big tall drinks and they're partying and
they're having fun. And my husband and I are just
we're just walking through because we're going back to our
hotel because we need to go to bed and.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
We need to work the next morning.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
And there was this man in a wheelchair and he's
clearly a homeless man. He doesn't have he doesn't have
anything but his wheelchair. He's dirty, and he's missing part
of his leg and he's trying to roll himself across
this street. And we're crossing the street with it had
to have been seventy five people. And we got across

(33:09):
the street and I looked back and this man in
this wheelchair is struggling to just turn these wheels and
to like get across the street. And I looked back
and I thought he needs help, and no one else
there was no one else around that went back and

(33:31):
I looked.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
At my husband.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
I'm like, he needs help, Like I have to go
help him. And so I walked back and I said,
can I help you? And he said, oh, yes, please,
because the light was turning like there's cars coming.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
This is a busy place.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And I wheeled him across the rest of the intersection
and kind of put him on his way. And I
looked at my husband. I said, didn't you see him, Like,
didn't you see him struggling? And He's like, I didn't.
I didn't even notice he was there. And I'm not
trying to elevate myself that I saw anything, But it's

(34:04):
those little moments that I feel like I've been maybe
given the opportunity to see some of those and to
maybe see that the need in people in what they
need and able to meet them where they're at. That's
the only way that I can explain it is sometimes
I feel like I see things and I'll say to

(34:25):
my husband, didn't you see that?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
And he's like, no, I didn't. I didn't see that.
I'm like, why didn't Why didn't you see that? Is
that just something that I see?

Speaker 3 (34:33):
So again, I I'm not trying to say this to
like elevate that I have like this this special thing,
But I don't know. I think I've just been blessed
with maybe that opportunity to see on a different level
sometimes and to be able to recognize that and express.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
That for people.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
But to have that kind of innate foundation and then
building upon your work with victims, when you are the
person sitting next to that child or youth and you
are seeing them and they're in that moment, it seems
to parlay so well into what you do as an announcer.
And again, having the privilege of seeing you at twenty
nine or twenty nine twice. I mean, there's three hundred

(35:14):
people on the mountain for thirty six hours in.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
A very wide variety.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Of headspace, but you seem to be able to pick
out the people who either need it, who have that
story to tell, who could use that moment, So you
seem to have kind of moved that into what you
continue to do now.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, and I love it.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
I always say that I try to meet people where
they're at, and at twenty nine to twenty nine, it's
it's a hiking challenge. So for thirty six hours, the
challenge is to keep climbing this mountain until you reach
the height of Mount Everst twenty twentynine feet. It's easy,
it's simple, hike out. I've got to let down and
just keep on going. So it seems simple, but in

(36:00):
that process, it's so difficult, and people go through so
many different things, and from joy and just being so
excited to just the depths of despair and shame and
humiliation and doubt, and learning to meet people where they're
at and learning to recognize that as they walk towards you.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
It's something that.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
It's a privilege to be able to be in those moments,
because the moments that a lot of people see at
twenty nine or twenty nine are probably those outward moments
where I'm on the microphone or we're talking. But the
moments that I love the most are the ones that
are off the mic, where maybe that person isn't ready
to hear their story told or narrated, maybe they're not

(36:48):
ready to have the eyes turned on them. But those
small moments where you can kind of sidle up to
somebody and be like, hey, how you doing, talk.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
To me, like, tell me what's going on, and you
can have those moments.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Those are the most precious moments in my life to
be able to recognize that in somebody and then fill
some space for them for a minute and get them
back onto their journey and onto their path like that's
it's it's so great.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
I love my job so much.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
How did you get into Tunio tonight? How did that
come to be?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
I just asked to be in twenty nine or twenty nine,
That's really where it comes to. I had been an
announcer for quite a long time, doing half marathons and
ultra races and different events, and I had some friends
who worked with me in these different events on the
operation site. And when twenty nine to twenty nine was coming,

(37:46):
to Utah. Snow based in Utah in twenty eighteen. That
was their first event. They needed some people on their
team to work, and my friends got the call to
come and do operations for them. I did not get
that call, and I watched from a distant this event
kind of unfold here in Utah and I was like, hey,
you guys, is so cool, Like what is this event?

(38:07):
And back then it was a little bit smaller, but
still just as bougie, and they had these tents at
Snowbasin and all these people doing this challenge. That really
spoke to me. The challenge itself, just a physical challenge.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Spoke to me.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
And they came home just saying how much fun it
was and how great it was to get to know
all these people and the connections they were making. And
I said do you have an announcer? Like do they
have an announcer at this event? They're like, oh no, no,
they wouldn't want an announcer there, and I was like, okay, well,
maybe could I have somebody's phone number? I'd love to
get in touch with them. And I reached out to

(38:39):
Gartha Wilson. He's the director of operations, and I just
sent him an email and I was like, Hey, I'm
a female announcer and your event looks amazing and I
would love to show you what I could do because
I always loved multiple multi day events and getting to
know people. And I thought, this is like the culmination
of everything I love. It's like the physical challenge that

(39:01):
I love. It's the people that I love all into
one package. And he didn't answer my email. There was
like crickets for a long time, and I was like, ooh,
I didn't go well. And so my friend had encouraged me.
He's like, just reach out again. He's a he's a
really busy guy. And I reached out again and Garth
got in touch with me immediately and he said, yeah,

(39:23):
we'd love to talk to you. And I remember talking
to Mark Hotolik our CEO, and I was so intimidated
by Mark, so intimidated by Mark. He's a very very
nice man, but he runs a tight ship and he's like,
I just can't.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Have you talking a lot. Just don't talk a lot.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
And when I got to my very first twenty nine
twenty nine, it was snowbased in twenty nineteen, so it
was my friends worked in twenty eighteen and it was
that following year and they brought me in and I
remember on that Friday, because I didn't do anything on
Thursday back then, and I got there on Friday, and
I was so nervous.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
And I don't usually get nervous.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
I'm very comfortable in my space and in my skin
and what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
But I was so nervous as Mark was like, just
don't talk a lot.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
And I remember at one point I turned to my
husband on that Friday morning and I said, you know what,
screw it, I just have to do me and if
they don't like it, they will never have me back.
And you know what, that's just fine because I can't
sit here and worry about what everybody.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Else is thinking. And I just did my thing.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
They had never had an announcer before, there was really
no playbook for it, so I just got in there
and we just started doing the esset board thing and
it was so fun and I loved it and I
had a lot of joy in it, and I saw
other people engage and connect.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
With their experience.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
And from that point on, I've been every twenty nine
or twenty nine cents.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
So and judging by the Red hat and bib in
the background. You've also competed in one company.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
I haven't you're seeing that so funny story. So number one,
I've never not been the voice of the mountains, so
I've never had the opportunity to climb, and people are
always like, oh, would you like to climb.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
I'm like, of course I would, But if I climb,
I'm not going to be there for you. And they're like, oh, okay,
never mind, don't climb.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
So I do always climb the mountain outside of the event.
I make sure to climb the mount because I want
to see what you guys are experiencing.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
But my husband actually had the opportunity.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
He works most of the nine twenty nines, but he
wasn't working at Stratton in twenty twenty three and so
he got the opportunity to be able to climb. So
we signed him up and he climbed until he got
his red hat. Now, the red bib is a really
funny story because sometimes people come to the event and
they don't get their red bib and they don't make

(41:44):
it there. And we had a girl named Colleen Gory
and she came to the event and she wasn't able
to finish, and I think that's her.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yes, it's her snowbasin. She has finished since, so she
has red bibs to her own credit.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
But they had these red bins and they just go
on the garbage just you know, they have to be
thrown away.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
What do you got to do with them their their
last years? And I was like, hey, can I have
that colleen bin?

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Because I really like to have it. So that's where
that bid comes from. So I have a little piece
of another.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Colleen on my wall.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
So I don't know if you're aware, but kim Uh
did the year before, so we her and I completed
twenty twenty four, but she did twenty twenty three, so
I thought it was an insane idea teara My wife
and I went to be her support team, and I
volunteered a couple at a food station and I'm like, yeah,
this is cool, but not a chance in hell. This
is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, Like why would

(42:37):
you do this? And by the end of day one
cause I did the same like you would do. I
spoke to every single person the whole time, so whether
they wanted to talk or not, I would approach him
more often than not, they're like, oh, you just pulled
them out of their they're funk or they're they're so
feeling the pain and struggle. So that was cool. And
then by day two I probably had one hundred and

(42:58):
fifty people, Hey have you done this before? I'm like no,
and seventy five of them going you should like okay.
So by the end of the day two, I'm like, ah, no,
now I have to do this. So we get back
after and I'm like, I think I have to do
this event. So fortunately, because she was alumni, we got
in and got to complete it, and it was a
remarkable event. There's a whole bunch of reasons. One is

(43:21):
it's such an interesting community. With three hundred plus people
there at Whistler, I don't know what the other events hold,
probably similar numbers. The organization, like the rituals. The burning
of the board is a cool ritual, Having you as
the announcer is a cool ritual. Getting the red bib, like,
it's just all such a unique I can't imagine anything
else like it. Like you look at whatever, a trail

(43:43):
run or whatever, and it's cool, but it just all
seems like a muted version of that yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
It really is.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Twenty nine is something unto itself, the whole concept, because
it combines so many things, and I don't it's interesting
when you talk to the co founders, Jesse Anceler and
Marco del I can call it O'Brady, and you know,
did you intend to do this, like those rituals and everything.
Did you intend that they become what they are? And

(44:11):
I don't think they did necessarily. They knew the challenge
was going to be hard. They knew it was something
that was going to challenge people and would be fun
to give it a try. But I don't think anybody
foresaw the community that was going to be built from this,
And really it's the community that has grown twenty nine
or twenty nine, it's not us. I mean, sure, all

(44:33):
those rituals and those things, and so much credit to
Mark and Garth and the operations team and seeing those
kinds of things that they could implement that really took off.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Like you said that the branding board, that a scent
board and branding.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
That and just the smell of that stupid bamboo that
you would think is not a big deal. But I
love to see people, especially like Kim, if you're an
alumni and you come back first time that you ran
that board again, You're like, oh my gosh, I remember everything.
It's like it just floods you with memories. And so
all those little touches really.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Just became what twenty nine oh twenty nine is.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
But it's interesting because if we take twenty nine oh
twenty nine back to twenty twenty, when the pandemic hit,
we had only done to that point.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Let me see, seventeen eighteen, we had only done.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Five events before the pandemic hit, and we were planning
to expand and go to Sun Valley, Idaho that year
in twenty twenty, and of course everything got shut down,
and so it was like, Okay, well, what do we do.
I was really new, I had only done two events
with It's crazy to even think that I had only
done two events nine to twenty nine back then. And

(45:45):
we decided to do some virtual challenges during the summer
of twenty twenty, and we got people in zoom rooms
just like we are right now, and people were hiking
or they were on their treadmill, and they we brought
them together that way, and the bonds that were formed
in twenty twenty really laid the foundation for what the

(46:07):
community looks like today, and that seems so weird that
the pandemic would do that, but people they had to
reach out to each other. They had to really buy
into this concept of we're going to do something hard,
but I have to do it by myself this year,
but how can we do it together?

Speaker 2 (46:23):
And it was so fun to watch that and then.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
To come back in twenty twenty one and watch these
people who had never met each other before but had
these really unique connections to one another from doing this
virtual challenge come and be together on the mountain. And
from that point on, I truly believe that community just
exploded because those people were so connected to each other

(46:49):
into their experiences that they were having that they just
continually brought people in.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
And it's just it's so.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Much credit to the people who come and do twenty
nine or twenty nine. They really are the foundation of
what it feels like when you get to the mountain.

Speaker 4 (47:05):
And I think, in my own experience my microcosm of that,
I do agree that it's that, but you have to
have something to participate in. When I happened upon this event,
I had never done an endurance event before. And I
think it was the Lovely Man Jim that was interviewed

(47:25):
who was quoted as saying, it's frustratingly doable. I mean,
the thought of doing going from nothing to an iron
man seems completely outside the realm of possibility. Yet somehow
hiking the equivalent of Mount Everest for thirty six hours
seems somewhat doable. And the first year I got to

(47:45):
put a red bib on, but I only got seven
of the eight as cents done. And I was grateful
enough to have friends that came to support, but I
only saw my red hat and success when I had
built that community and once got and I did it.
So there is that strength in bringing people around you, guys.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
But that is so authentic to the event.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
I mean, it's felt from the coaching calls to when
you register to mail that you get and they expanded
Thursday nights and it just it seems so natural and foundational.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
And there's a micro community that happens because as you're
going through your sense one doesn't really count because everyone's
kind of just in a big pack. But after that
you end up kind of being around the same ten
or fifteen people because you end up pacing out with
those same ten or fifteen people, and you start having
side conversations with those people over the course of thirty
some hours, and then the final assent once you put

(48:39):
that red big bomb in particular, while I've only done
wi ther, the locals who are hiking that trail anyway,
they know exactly what the event is, and then they
start showering you with praise and like, oh, I can't
believe you did this mostly so difficult in all the things,
and it's just such a cool you almost get that.
Last one doesn't count, and I think you guys do
it really good job articulating at that, like, first one

(49:01):
doesn't count because you're kind of in a wash. Last
one doesn't count because you got the red bivon. You're
basically going to be carried to the top. And those
are all true statements. It's the two to seven. There's
some rough parts in the middle of event.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah, and Whistler. You know, you guys did our longest event.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
So it's a fifty k all uphill basically is what
it shakes out to be, and it's four miles at
a time.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
You're committee.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Once you turned the corner and you start that hike
it is four miles up and you put that against
like Jackson Hole that is nineteen a cents and those
microcosms that you talked about, they change depending on the mountain.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
And it's so interesting.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
At Whistler, I feel like you guys really have time
to get to know each other and really have to
be quiet and.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Just walk and embrace the process.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Where a place like Jackson it's it's definitely not a
sprint and it's definitely not easy, but it's so different
to see because you end up your that microcosm grows
significantly because you are passing people the whole entire time
in only six minutes on the gondola, it changes that flow.
But still we see that same thing happen on every

(50:11):
single mountain, just in a different way. It all has
just a different flavor of taking people through this journey
and it really just ends up being this incredible culmination
on Saturday afternoon of just celebrating what everybody can accomplish.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
And I love what you're saying, Kim.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Where that Jim Fisher, he's kind of he lives over
in Toronto and he was eighty years old when he
first finished, so he had climbed with us before, but
he first finished when he was eighty years old, and
he just hit it on the nail on the head.
It is frustrating, really doable. All you have to do

(50:48):
is walk. All you have to do is keep moving.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
But boy is that.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Hard when you're on lap numbers five and it's dark
and it's raining, probably at risk and the wind is blowing,
and that you are sick and you don't feel good
and you haven't had a good meal and you just
want to sit down.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
It's hard. But all you have to do is walk.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
And that's where the coaches came in, like they were
like angels who just would suddenly appear and conjure. And
one I think was Derek was in the yea as
we're starting a cent five in the dark and it is,
as you know with Whistler this year, it poured rain
starting in a scent too, like Torrential Downport the whole time.
So he stops us as we're about to start. He's like,
what's your guys plan. We're like, well, we thought we're

(51:32):
gonna be doing six, so we're we're only doing five.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna complete this one.
They're taking us about three hours, fifteen minutes, go to sleep.
We'll be back out here by about three in the morning.
And he's like, you don't got to do that. You
guys are good, Like just go do your normal ascent.
And then you need to reframe that you're gonna go
to bed, but you're gonna sleep for three hours like

(51:53):
a nap. You're not going to bed, You're gonna have
a three hour nap. He's like, three hour nap good,
three hour sleep bad. And I'm like, oh yeah, totally reframed.
So we're doing the night ascent, which again is bananas
where you can't see anything but the circle of your
head lamp. And I even said to her at one
point because there's parts in Whistle where you have to
hold a chain to get up these slate rocks and

(52:13):
the water is running off of it like a river,
and I'm like, what kind of waiver did I sign
that this is okay? This is madness? Like fight slipped
like it wasn't you're falling off a cliff, but it
would be a real possibility to fall and batch your
knee or hit your arm or whatever. So go through
five and then as we were starting, I think it
was our last ascent. One of the coaches like, good

(52:35):
for you. I almost quit my job for the first
time ever. This rain was awful, so well done, and
she's like, how's it going. So we're like, ah, like
we've been three hours fifty minutes. She's like, you literally
have the perfect pace. You've done it exactly right. She's like,
there's people who went out first and they did it
in two hours, and guess what, they're not here for
their last ascent. The slow, steady is what gets this done.
And yeah, we finished, Like there were some rough parts.

(52:57):
Ascent three, weirdly was by far, like the word despair
is a perfect descriptor because we were both super low.
Because normally one of us would be higher and you
can kind of pull the other one up. We were
both just in the dread, right in the bottom. And
then my idiot brother can't tell time, so he was
part of our support team. He would meet us at
the top. Well, he miscalculated, so he zips over us

(53:18):
on the gondola an hour ahead of time.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Hey, he's gotten Kim, and.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
We're like, we literally just wrapped the whole race. We're done.
Because we're failed. This must have been a seven hour
a cent and we got up there now when it's
three hours and fifteen minutes. It's just like all of them.
But psychologically it was like we dropped into another part
of the matrix and where time was triple of what
it actually was.

Speaker 4 (53:38):
And Whistler was so beautiful, like you're talking about the
other events, which, to be perfectly honest, are completely unfathomable
to me, like walking up nineteen times under a gondola,
like I can't wrap my head around ever wanting to
do that. Like Whistler comes, yes it's only eight times,
but it comes with the forest and you walk through
like from a nature perspective, there is all all the time,

(54:03):
and so yes, you're down in the muck on three,
but then you stop and you realize you're you're beside
this large creek and there are these six hundred year
old ancient rainforest trees beside you. So it was very
nice that you like for me, when I did it
the first time by myself, I never felt alone, like

(54:24):
there was just something that all there was a presence that.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Was felt on that mountain that was really special.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Well, the Whistler Mountain is a very special mountain.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
I mean it's.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Very special, and you really ken't put it into words
until you actually go and hike it, and you spend
some time in that headlamp, all by yourself, in the rain,
in that quiet, quiet forest. That just I feel like
that forest eats everything. It just takes the outside world
and just eats it up and just leaves you in
this little, quiet place to have to manage your way through.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
And it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Scott had you said as you said the three of
eight was like the hard one. That is, so I
see that on every mountain, so it doesn't it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
It's more the mileage or the time.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
So it takes me about, you know, five six hours.
It's usually around dinner time ish, between lunch and dinner
where things really start to get interesting.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
On Friday and with the thirty six hours.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
We start on Friday at six am, we end Saturday
at six pm. And you start in that first one
is so so fun, so exciting, and everybody's got their
new gear on and they've got their headlamps on, and
you just heard Colin or Jesse or somebody kick you
off from the start line, and everybody's just ready for
this journey. But it's kind of like life, whereas somewhere

(55:46):
in the morning, it's somewhere in the middle it just
gets like really boring and just really like do I
just have to keep doing this?

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Like is this what I'm doing? I'm only on three, I.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
Have to go to eight, and it seems so overwhelmingly huge,
and everybody, no matter you're at Snowbasin or Stratton or
Mont Tremlint, it doesn't matter. There's that moment on Friday
that I wish that I could remove everyone's brains and
just say keep moving because Saturday will come and Saturday
is going to be so much better. But right here

(56:18):
and Friday, you don't realize how much better it's going
to be, and that lap six can actually be better
than lap three, And that, to me is one of
the best metaphors for life, because when you're in the
muck of it and you're really going through it, you
can't see that things could get better because you're just like,

(56:40):
how could it get better? It's just getting worse or
worse and worse. But life is not linear. The path
to those finish lines and those goals that we have,
they're not linear. And we have to stop thinking that
they're going to be And just because we're down doesn't
mean we're going to stay down. It will turn back
up at some time and it will probably go back
down again too, but that's part of the ride and

(57:04):
just watching people cycle through that is so interesting.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
There's a story was that snowbasin.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
There's a guy named Nick, and it was Friday and
it was hot, hot, and dusty yet snowbasin like usually
is and Nick was out there and he was so
upset because he was so behind pace, kind of like
you guys were feeling, and it was getting into his
head and he's like, I'm behind pace.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
I can't believe this. I don't know why.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
It feels so hard and all this stuff. He's just
going over over. I said, Nick, give me your watch,
and he was like, no, I can't give you my watch.
I'm like, give me your watch. You're not leaving until
you give me your watch. And I took his watch
and I'm like, just climb, just go, I'll talk to
you when you get back. And he came back around
and he was like, thank you so much for taking

(57:49):
that away, because.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
He was so caught up in this process.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
That he was trying to go through and what his
expectations were of this process, that he couldn't just sit
in the journey that he was on and just keep
on moving because it it just has to unfold. And
that's when we go back to, you know, my world
in traathlon and being a competitive athlete like that. That's

(58:15):
what I could not I could not separate was those
expectations and when those expectations didn't seem to be coming
to fruition, how to navigate through that and I think
twenty nine to twenty nine and things like that, just
teach us just sit in it.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
It's frustratingly doable. It's going to suck.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Like it is going to be bad, but if you
just stay the course, boys are going to be amazing
when your toes hit that red carpet and you finish
and somebody hands your red hat.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Well, weirdly, both again the universe looking after us. Both
of our fitbits just before the events started frizzled and
died separately, so there was no watch like there was time.
That's why when Danny goes over top us in the
gondola an hour ahead of time, we're like, well, we
must be an hour behind because we can't we have
no way to tell. And then where it came to
be our last ascent, I was like it was might

(59:08):
as well have been my first. I felt great, that
was her not great time. So I happened to get
a glance of somebody's watch as they were going past me,
so I knew, oh, we're fine for time, like we're
literally we finished in thirty four and a half hours,
so we had but it was a last hour so
that she had trouble, So like, there's no time constraint here.
We're good. So the time wasn't it. It was just

(59:30):
in that weird perception of three, it felt like it
was an eight hour ascent that literally put us so
off course that we can't recover from it. But back
to the red carpet again, back to the rituals going
through the the other side on one through seven, through
the gate whatever, and it's fairly there's people cheering, and
the volunteers are so great. But then that red carpet,

(59:53):
it is like it was because I want to absorb
all of it, bawling my face off, I have her
go ahead of me, because I'm like, you need to
go first.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
I take up a lot of space, so you go first,
and then you're trying to observe it, but it feels
like you're on a treadmill that got sped up and
you're racing through that red carpet because you got all
those people with the red hats. Again, the coach. I've
never hugged somebody harder in my life than when the
coach as I'm bawling my face off and I can't
remember his name, but it's what was it, Eric?

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Eric?

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Yeah, So I hugged Eric and put tears on Eric's
shoulder as it doesn't matter where I'll covered in rainwater anyway.
But it's such a remarkable experience. And then you exhale
and you're.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Like, okay, it's done well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Now, like now what like back to your nervous system
in the chaos. Now you're like, I don't really know
what to do with myself at the moment, other than
the next day I can't walk at all.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
But you're up there, so you shift from you're at
the base for the majority, and then whenever the clock
tells you too, or whenever you nately know, then you
head to the top and you start announcing from the top,
and I can imagine, I mean, you're you sleep, but
you're I'm off the mountain for a very long time,

(01:01:03):
so you're there with everybody. I can't imagine the energy
draw that you go through and so as fatigued as
we were. What is it like for you at the
end of these events and how do you kind of
reset yourself and take care of yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
When you were asking that, Kim, I thought about this
story that happened just this year to me that I
don't think I've ever told, not to a broad audience,
but it was at Jackson Hole.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
And you're right. My days are long.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
It starts on Thursday and in the days, days are
really long. And Friday, despite what everybody thinks, I do
go to bed. I usually sleep for about five hours.
I try to get off my feet for about five hours.
But I can be on the microphone for you know,
fifteen sixteen hours in a day. That's pretty common. And
I don't do any caffeine or anything like that. I

(01:02:02):
just kind of there's so much energy on the mountain.
There's just so much coming at you. But it is tiring.
I mean, it does get tiring, and you hold space
for a lot of things too, where people are going
through a lot of stuff and you cry with them
and you laugh with them, and you're up and down
with them, so you're kind of on that journey. And
at Jackson Hole, I don't know what it was in particular,

(01:02:25):
but there was a participant in Her name was Jen,
and she was doing her thing and we were just
going through it, and I just loved her her and
I just kind of clicked and she was so cute
and she was out there just working hard, and she
wasn't able to finish at Jackson Hole, but she was
up the top cheering everybody on when I went when

(01:02:46):
I transitioned to go to the top. So the last
couple hours, I'll transition to the top to call in
those final I try to wait until we have as
many red bibs on the mountain as we think we're
going to get on there so that I just get
to call people up that final time because it's so
much fun. I loved when we started doing that because
it's really my favorite time to kind of complete those

(01:03:07):
stories at the top of the mountain.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
And I was up there just doing my thing, calling
people in and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
We got done, and Jen came over to me and
she grabbed me and hugged me and she said, I
see you. I know you're tired, you're doing a great job,
and you're almost done. I lost it, you guys, like
I lost it because that's not usually the position that

(01:03:37):
I'm in. And I found myself, like you were saying,
Scott sobbing on Jen's shoulder, just out of pure just exhaustion.
I was tired too, and I was fatigued, and I
wanted to sit down, and you know, but we there's
more to do. And it was such a beautiful moment

(01:03:58):
for me to have somebody see me like that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
I mean, when we're seen by people, that just makes
us feel good.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
And that's something that I always want to do in
the work that I do, is to see people for
who they are.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Not just like, hey, he's got a good job, you know,
in a high five. No, I want to like, I
want to.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
See you for who you are, not what you're portraying
to the world, but for what you're actually going through
and what you are. And it was just such a
sweet time. And there's multiple moments like that where you know,
I am exhausted, but yet someone will be there to
kind of pick up my pieces too, because I have
an amazing support staff. My husband is generally my sound guy,

(01:04:39):
and he's amazing. I mean, he makes sure I have
food and he makes sure that I am hydrated, because
really taking care of me is like taking care.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Of one of you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
And I have amazing staff who are always doing that,
and so it is a lot. And one of my
favorite times on the mountain is when I get to
leave the base and I get to sit in the gondola.
And despite what everybody might think I am, I am
actually one of those extroverted introverts.

Speaker 5 (01:05:06):
I like to be by myself and I like to
sit and be quiet, and I love to sit on
the gondola and get to ride up to the top
before I call in those last people, and I get
to see everybody down below just struggling and kind of
figure out who's coming up and who we're going to
see pretty soon.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
And I just like to sit there just in that silence.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
And my husband knows that if he's in the gondola
with me, he can't like, don't talk. This isn't the
time to talk, Like we're just kind of decompressing and
it is one of my favorite times at that brief
quiet moment.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
At Whistle it's about twenty three minutes long, which is
really nice.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
At Jackson it's only about five so it's not very long,
but it's just.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
That time to decompress. But it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
It's I mean, you hold space for a lot of people,
and I come home and I feel like I've done
an ultra marathon.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
I mean my body.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
Actually, I'll try to go out for a run on
a Monday or something and my legs will just be
toat So I'm like, how can my legs be so
tired when all I did was stand or walk around
that stupid assent board.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
But I can rack up. There was one time at Snowbasin.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
I did a half marathon at the Ascent Board at
Snowbasin on a Friday, and I was like, Hey, that's
pretty impressive just going back and forth.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
But there's just so many people to take care.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Of and you just don't think about it in the moment,
but definitely after the fact, I'm like, oh, okay, we
need to reset.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Your superpower is though I would suggest that everybody at
every event will go I've really connected with Colleen. I
think she really really understood what I was going through,
and you wouldn't. You're not going to remember three hundred
and fifty people at Whistler, but all of us think
for sure that you were going to remember us, Like
that is your power, that isn't And there's an authenticity
to it. It's not like you're just kind of blowing
past and whatever. And I would have pegged you as

(01:06:53):
the introvert extrovert. We actually saw you in the airport
as we're leaving Whistler and your husband's pushing the back.
It's all that kind stuff, and We're almost, hey, was
you able to say? And I'm like, no, she's had enough.
We're just gonna let her go. When you were on
your way to and you weren't, there was nothing, but
you just had an energy like, Okay, I'm tired now
I kind of have to go and get back to

(01:07:13):
my regular routine and read whatever, rejig or however you're
going to kind of re energize.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Yeah, and it and it is, you know, And it's
like I always want to be present for people.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
What there are times where I'm like I just need
like a minute, let me just put a hat on
really low, so nobody knows who I am, so I
can just sit for a minute and be and just
be me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
But I appreciate what you said about that connection because that's.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
Really that's my goal, and I hope it always is
authentic because it is for me, like it's from the
bottom of my soul, Like I feel everything with you guys,
like I have cried right along people, I've celebrated right
alongside people, and I really do feel it. And I
actually when I usually when I'm flying home or in

(01:07:58):
the days after, I actually sit down and I think
it's how I process things is I write notes on everybody,
just so you know, y'all have a file.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Y'all have a file. So it's kind of the way
that I move on after the event. I kind of
have to like dump it all out and I'll.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Just be like, you know, whatever I know about you
or whatever I remember, I'll just make some notes about
your experiences so that the next time I can also
look back on that. But I do think it's a
way of me just kind of like processing through all
those experiences in putting them to bed and then getting
to move on to the next people who need my

(01:08:38):
attention just as much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
So that's super cool ritual as well. And I think
for us the podcast has been that. So I just
started journaling literally like two weeks ago because I've always
wanted to, so that's very fresh. But this has been
that for me too, where we had an episode where
my wife Terry, my brother Kim, and I all sat
in Whistler afterwards and did a podcast about the event

(01:09:01):
and talk about it and kind of because then you
want to get it ot Walt's fresh because it starts
to fade and you don't like it seems too precious
that it just goes away to nothingness and then you
don't remember what a cent one felt like versus six
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Yeah, for sure, And it's such a it's such a
great ritual or process to go through. And I love
that you guys did it right right then, because yes,
the rose colored glasses start coming on later in the
week and you forget about some of those things. And
that's why I like to to do that and kind
of just process through everything because we do. We go

(01:09:34):
through a lot in thirty six hours on that mountain together,
and it's so unique and it's it's just it's incredible
and I wish, I do wish that I could now.
I mean, I've been I think I counted, I've done
twenty five, twenty nine, twenty nine mountains now. I mean
it's it's been a lot. And sometimes I'm a little
bit hard on myself where I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
Like, crap, I can't remember that person's.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
Name, and you guys always remember me, and that makes
me feel so good, and it makes me feel so
bad when I can't remember exactly what happened on the mountain.
And I think that's why I have my notes too.
But there's just so many people. So if ever I
seem like I don't remember you, I do remember you
just might.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Have to refresh just a little bit of what that
circumstance was.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Well, I think that is a We've taken up enough
of your time. I believe that was a great way
to end. Anything else that you wanted to cover that
we didn't cover, or what's next for you? Maybe what
are you going to keep doing this? Or I would
doubt that because it seems like you are also a hey,
let's see what else the universe has, and you maybe
have other things that are forthcoming, you know, always.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
Looking for great opportunities.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
But I'm going to be at twenty nine or twenty nine,
hopefully till till they are done with me. I'm like
till I'm an old lady and they don't want me
at the assemble anymore. Hopefully I'll be there there forever.
But this is just a great conversation. I love having
these conversations with you guys and actually getting to talk
through all these important things, you know, because there's there's

(01:11:00):
so much to be said and so much to be
learned from all of the different experiences we've had. I've
been such a privileged person to have this life that
I've been given and the unique opportunities and the talents
that I've been given, and i just feel so incredibly
blessed to have that and to get to interact with
people like you guys, and to have these shared experiences together.

(01:11:25):
I mean, that's just that's what fills my cup, that's
what makes me want to do this over and over again.
And so twenty nine or twenty nine, I'll be on
every mountaintop that they'll have me on, so you'll see
me there this year. I'll be I Also, like I
mentioned before, I'm an Ironman announcer, So I'll be at
many of the finish lines of Ironman, some Rock and
Roll marathon events, as well as just other local things

(01:11:48):
around southern Utah. But the more people that I can
help narrate their journey and be a little part of
that process for them, the more the better for me,
because it truly is just the joy in my life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
So thank you guys, Thank you

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
M HM

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Narrating Journeys with Colleen Rue - Season 4 Eposode 2

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Narrating Journeys with Colleen Rue - Season 4 Eposode 2