the following podcast is produced or sponsored by community members the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of bama b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or even alice at access at belmont media dot org hello everyone welcome to community conversations i'm your host roger colton seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents it sounds impossible doesn't it but belmont resident decker pct not only did it but she won the world marathon championships the world marathon challenge in two years ago and she not only did it two years ago she's off to try to do it again today we have back a p c with us to talk about her experiences welcome back to back and thanks for coming over thanks for having me roger let's get some background you are running marathons on a daily basis through the  marathon challenge how long have you run my dad and i been running since i was six years old my dad inspired me to run and you ran through college and but you ran through college that take out the travel let's assume a way that the travel how does one train for that when i ran it the first time i was averaging between one hundred seventy and one hundred miles a week and i was doing cross fit and personal training yoga for runners and i had about a year to prepare this time i only found out that i was doing it about six weeks ago i was given an opportunity to run this race again and to hopefully lower my time and we'll see how that goes and so i'm coming off ninety nine marathons this year too in other countries one was in berlin and one was in chile the volcano marathon which is the highest as it marathon in the world that fifteen thousand feet so i am feeling really fit from these nine marathons this year just may not be as fast as i was two years ago but i'm i have run twenty marathons since and i'm going to give it one hundred percent and my daughter will be at the finish line this time in miami so that's my inspiration to get to the finish line and your daughter is eight she now she was eight when i ran the first time this year she's ten she's him ok and she's a runner too i understand she's a runner but her favorite sport is domestics oh that's that's great so you run in do you run in belmont i don't know you train a train and every tuesday morning anybody is welcome to join us at five am at the belmont track we do track workouts and you can find me in the streets of belmont for five days week i was thinking you're you must be very familiar with the condition of belmont streets and sidewalks yeah this morning was pretty icy so you just kind of brace yourself and i know that antarctica is my first marathon and it's going to be very similar to what we've experienced this winter when you approach a competition do you react up your training or do you ramp down your training which or do you just do what you do until you leave one month leading up to the marathon typically out taper and that just means no gym work really just like running because i want to get to the starting line healthy and ready to run so where i only found out about this one six weeks ago i kind of have just been putting in a lot of mileage and and hoping it's enough most of us have been complaining about the the extraordinary antarctica it's when i read it the first time you need glacier it was negative four degrees this year where novo and it will be about twenty degrees i'm fine until the wind wind hits and when the wind hits it hurts so i kind of just know where the back is are with the wind and the wind tunnels and hope they hopefully just kind of just put my head down and there are a few of those ones but once i'm out of antarctica i feel so lucky to not be in antarctica anymore but it is the most beautiful place in the world i feel very fortunate to be able to do what i love in an extraordinary place well speaking of the wind i used to when i was younger i used to live in ohio and i would bicycle to work about twelve or fifteen miles and people think of i was being flat yeah and i explain that may be the case until you're trying to bike up on the highway with the wind in your face and that's how it is even though it's twenty degrees in antarctica it's not that it's the wind that can be f so you just gotta get through the miles and and the first one is antarctica and get it over with you've been relatively free of injuries except for the last time you ran the challenge  you had an injury but you've been lucky over the years is that correct yeah that's correct i'm i'm i have a little bit of a tweak in a calf and i just hope it hangs on i've been i've been working with tb twelve which is tom brady's company and they've been a huge help to me and trying to do core work and massage it out through deep tissue massage isn't it just totally trust that they know what they're doing and i hope that i don't get an injury you know i really hope and that it's just i'm able to hang on for the days and the hardest part about going in this time is realizing that i probably am going to hurt something some part of my body just nobody runs this seven seven seven and doesn't get hurt you know and i bounce back really quickly from from injury so i had torn my groin the first marathon and the six marathon when i ran it seven seven seven the first time and ran boston in april and was fine so i tend to bounce back really quickly i just don't know how long i want to keep getting lucky lucky like that  or i are there occupational hazards i don't know if that's the appropriate term but do you find you have to watch out for particular things you know there's nothing like that and this is really safe race and we feel safe and everything's fine and at first time going into it was the unknown and not knowing that those that question that was my one of my fears but as as i've learned the first time is were an excellent hands with the race director is a great guy and really is sure that we are safe and there's no problems actually then that's an interesting observation because when i drive places it seems like the first time i drive from here to montreal or here to chicago it seems longer because i don't know what to expect you know you're expected to be if i can say easier for seven seven seven because you know what's coming i think so instead wins the race and i think i'm just going to and the first time doing it i was very stressed out and and it was it was so intense and i didn't i didn't really take the time to stop and look around and realize how lucky i was and i would be in africa and then i would be in asia and then ten hours later i was in you know another part of it so this time i will despite i still work very very hard over the seven days but i think i will really enjoy it more it being a second time around take more pictures write more things down in a journal and just really really love it the journey have you ever tried to talk anybody into doing this with your restrictor of the boston marathon is dave mcgovern is actually running it this year and i reached out to him i said what do you think about this race two years ago and he said i was ten years younger i would do it in a heartbeat i said you know you're fitter than i am and you're faster than i am and i ran into him a month later and he said i want you know that i'm doing this race and i thought that's so awesome so it's going to be fun to to be with him on the journey and the very center fee is about forty thousand dollars so it is steep and i feel fortunate enough to be able to do what i do and so but if anybody all the time people ask about the race but you have to want it's like the marathon you have to want to do it if you want to do it contact me you know walking steps on how i trained in what i know things went  but i think it's hard to talk somebody into running seven marathons in days tell us about two thousand and sixteen if i imagine you could talk for hours about this but yeah i can you let us know when we start with the  the sequence of countries and continents i think that that's one of the things first time and the point of me doing that the first time was to make history how often do we get to make history how often i just knew that if i could cross the finish line i was making history and there were two failed attempts by american female so i felt if i can just do this piece of history and how perfect would that be for my daughter to watch that in the community of belmont and boston and massachusetts and one honored to represent our country but i also wanted to set the bar as high as i could because i thought i'm never doing this again that there are right now in here you're home free the race started in antarctica and then in arctic a chilly miami madrid morocco dubai and we ended in australia and you said when we first started you had ten out you know there was one where you ran a race and then you knew that ten hours later madrid in morocco were two marathons within twelve hours apart so i crossed the finish line in madrid around noon and that same day we were towing the line of morocco and i just thought fight through these two back to back marathons and you'll be home free it was a marathon after that where i tore my groin i think my body just gave how do you  travel is a commercial airline this year we have a v i p chartered plane which i'm really excited about because we get the seats lay down flat and to bed so we get to keep our stuff on the plane and it's going to be more comfortable when i did it two years ago we were going through customs every day and bringing it going through american airlines and lugging our things everywhere and that part was exhausting so this part time having a chartered plane will be a huge difference we can also say the night hotels now get to go smoothly and setting aside the the injury did it go smoothly or was there some point where you said this is all falling apart no we the thing about this is i put my whole heart into the training for a year and i thought i could work so hard over this year and if the weather could not let us out to the front how often do our fights get canceled and delayed yeah so that part was really stressful like i don't want to get to marathon five or six and have a delay in the weather so having this so much out of your hands was harder than i thought that it would be but we had no hick ups everything went really smoothly so this would be like the fourth year in a row that the restrictor has put this race on and i am just hoping that for another smooth area he's so he's brilliant and what he does and i feel like you know if we miss this flight or he'll get us there you know i was just hoping that we don't have any rain delays or snow doing as you were telling us about the advantages of having the v i p airplane this year when you did it the first time around did you have been an opportunity to see the sights because you weren't anywhere long enough to see the sights to absorb the fact that you were in morocco or the fact that you were in chile the thing i had never done was run a marathon in another country so i thought that was really unique in fun we tasted the foods the local foods which was great delicious i loved reading ahead of dessert on every continent which was really fun and i thought it went better than i thought it would the first time around i really you know people would be like go visit this and i'm like oh we're only averaging ten hours per continent right right no time to go so it was tough to be in morocco but not go visit this and sometimes we ran through the night you know so the race does not  race begins when we touchdown land we go to the starting line and start the run and so oftentimes we would running at ten o'clock at night so i go all the way to africa and run through the night and not even really see you again anything but to me i probably would never go to africa i would never go to asia not that i i just wouldn't have really an opportunity to do so right being there i just thought felt i was so fortunate you know to be looking at these beautiful countries and places and doing what i love i love to travel and i love to run so i had a lot of fun and my understanding is that antarctica was both your most favorite and least favorite yeah it was my most favorite it's really really beautiful we ran on a glacier i really really loved it until it was cold and then was cold and i just wanted to go home but we also stayed three nights to acclimate to the weather in antarctica we're not doing that this time and i didn't really like we had satellite phones to call home and it was just i felt so desolate out there i felt like there was just nothing around so that was kind of scary for me and if i need to get in touch with my daughter i had to call her through satellite and that was tough for me but i loved it it's if you ever get the opportunity to go go and of course it didn't hit me until right now but your daughter would have gone with you yet and you were out to do business yeah so daughter stayed home yeah and i feel like this these are i don't look at them as big asians although there's so much more when i leave her it's very hard for me to leave her very very hard and when i do leave her i feel like i'm treating it as a business trip you know i'm that's that's how i feel so let's talk about winning and you didn't just just doing this unto itself is a win like you said in being the first american woman to finish it but you won and you set a world record i did i was really happy to do that and make my sponsors proud and that was that meant a lot to me did you expect i went oh is that a fair question no i hope i hoped i would win you know this time going into it the competition is fierce but i always do my best i'm going to race my race plan and hope that it's not to win and be crushed if i don't you know and i feel like if i don't when i know that i've done my best you know and somebody just did it better do you feel the burden of expectation yes yeah  tremendous amount of pressure in that i put on myself you know nobody people there like go out and bury it and do the best you can do but it's always fun to win how does having done this and having won this well let me put this as a proposition and see what your reaction has and i start with the observation that in my wildest dreams i can't imagine somebody doing that so having done it and having finished it and having won it do you find that there are other challenges that you're more willing to take on big thinking that how can anything be more difficult having having mastered this i do feel like that i crossed the finish line and realize anything is possible you know people were said to me i will follow you because i don't believe that this is even possible you know i'm going to follow you for that reason and i said well whether or not you follow me and support me that way but i had to prove them wrong i had to prove everybody wrong that you know my parents didn't love this idea when i told him about safety and i just said it's happening and i  think when i say i'm going to do something believe that i'm going to do it whatever it is and i'll do it and the best that i can you know but i crossed the finish line of thought and he thing is possible in what i say i did it not i did it's we did it the community is there is a team this and it's the community that helped me get to reach my dreams you know so there's no way that i could do this by myself and the support of the town of belmont and my community is i mean i put them on my five k race every year just to get back to the community and and i'm so proud of that and most part of the things that i've done after the race after i cross the finish line talking to the schools and sparring the schools inspiring as many schools i can and kids and that's i ran this race to inspire the world and show the world that you can do anything you put your mind to and you find that i don't want to be well let me not do the disclaimer do you find that girl athletes female athletes maybe not even young girls but just female athletes in general look up to you and turn to you and men some of the nicest emails i've ever got my life oh that's right and have been from men but i really i really am proud to be a female that was third overall so i beat many men you know and it made me feel that was very proud of that i was really proud and the community of men and women and has just been and kids in all ages and all of you have just been so supportive i can't believe it i feel so fortunate and let's come back and visit that that for a minute because one objection that i have to the girls basketball team  belmont high for example is when they were called the lady marauders and i thought people were distinguishing between girl athletes and athletes so what you did wasn't simply in accomplishment for a female athlete you you were head of nine of the eleven all of the other women there and i know of eleven men so what you did was just not gender specific at all right right that's what i think the story goes so biggest only did she she that i just did so well you know under those terms and was up against some good athletes i was i was definitely proud of that i saw that people took note of it too since you've been back as the world champion have you had a chance to do fun and exciting things do network yeah i've never had so many people i've teamed up with the john hancock marathon team and i get to coach them with greg myers who won the boston marathon and my network has definitely expanded and i'm so proud of the race that i put it on in belmont april twenty ninth and it's a way to get the community together and i got to throw out the first pitch at fenway park i got to meet david ortiz and it's been so much fun that i've got a real fun time i've always really happy where i am in my life and i've always really have been you know it's but it could because i i work seven days a week and i manage newsies ice cream shop and i own a daycare and i run so much and but the thing is i love what i'm doing i love my jobs i love the way to run so it's not what to me you know i feel fortunate i w challenge in two thousand and sixteen she not only won the world marathon challenge but she set the world record which i believe still stand still stands i'm a baseball fan and one of the things that strikes about baseball pitchers is that there's something special about the way they're put together the way their arms are structured is there can anybody do what you do if they work hard enough or are you built in some way but you know if you believe in yourself you can do anything you put your mind to and i watched somebody who was not a runner runner at that when i ran it for charity and he had never run a marathon and i believed him and i knew i knew he was going to do it because he believed in him he had never run a marathon and pulled out seven marathons one after another and to watch him do that and and he played football for notre dame but he wasn't built like a runner and any couldn't run you know when he started training he couldn't run more than two miles and to watch that unfold was so inspiring so if you believe in yourself it's hard to believe in yourself because there's so many reasons as oh would when people say to me i would love to do what you're doing but i don't have time that's hard for me because i don't have time my daughter is ten years old i work seven days but i find time for the things that i love so i always when i get my motivational talks i say find your world marathon challenge find what it is that you're passionate about and what you believe in and follow your dreams and dream big you know and that's what i what i always say and if you believe it and it you can do it  can you articulate why you why you took this on and you talk about following your dream yeah but what brought this to to you my daughter when i asked her about this i had already run forty five marathons at the time and i said what do you think about this taylor do you think mommy can do it and she said mom you got this was support you we're going to go learn about the constants we learned about consonants we learned about what everything we needed to know we did our homework on each continent and had a lot of fun learning about it and then i said if she watches me do this and puts in the hard work and she shall break out of her shell and she did she broke out of her shell and she competed at the heinz convention center for gymnastics meet and watching her succeed has i've been so proud of you know and she says to me mom if you did that then i can do this and i love when she says that to me i have a weird question too many of us what what you do or what you've done sounds like this grand adventure it in some ways it sounds almost romantic but i wonder if we sometimes overly romanticize it or are there times where you just say this is really drudge work i understand well yeah yeah i got myself in trouble when i ran the volcano marathon and it was at fifteen thousand feet altitude and i thought thought it was my doing yeah i thought this is not i never thought this is too big for me because i'll try anything but i thought this this is way different than i thought that i could ever i don't think that i was mentally and physically prepared enough to enter that race and take on that race and it was the hardest thing i've ever done in my life and when i crossed the finish line i was hysterically crying i was like i did it i try and figure it out and and that's what i love about these endure and races you just you go your highs are incredibly high and your lows are really low and when you hit rock bottom you just put one foot in front of another and figure it in that thing some time you know what i kept thinking is sometimes you wake up and you don't feel good or you blow a tire you know you have to get to work people are relying on you to be at the finish line and you know and so that was my only just figured out put your head down and you're going to get there so that that was kind of like how yeah you know and so i would think that would have to there would have to be circumstance yeah but you know i thought climbing everest would be really cool doing an iron man would be really cool but my decisions from volcano on will be definitely very well thought out from that point i would think you know i mean you know how could they did their training in the swiss alps they did their training in all chile right there at fifteen thousand feet how could i think coming from boston charles river belmont streets that i could run in fifteen thousand feet altitude you know i put my life in danger but but we saw fifteen active by volcanoes and it was the most beautiful i'm interested in the first step of the first race it seems like of all the steps that you take over the course of seven days taking the first one knowing that what's ahead of you yeah i went what's going through your mind when we take the russian allusion it's a private military plane and when i walk down the stairs and touch foot on in antarctica i think you are so lucky to have your health to be doing what you love to be doing stop look around i'm so fortunate to be doing those things and i say you have seven days of very hard work ahead of you and just take one race at a time if the race is becoming too big for me take one mile at a time and one foot in front of another until you get to the finish line and no negative thoughts and i don't use negative thoughts when i go to work and i used to get that i think positively at all times but i just think you have seven days ahead of you very hard work and you'll figure it out thanks for coming where we're out of time we have to stop i know that you're extraordinarily busy getting ready to leave in a couple days for this second effort so marathon challenge you've been listening to community conversations i would like to thank you the listeners as well you can access community conversations through i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network and you can also access community conversations on the belmont media website media dot org by looking for the b m c podcast even listening to community conversations i'm your host roger colton i will talk to you again next week