so we have a very special guest tonight to get him safely say she is the only world marathon challenge champion we've had here at the library because i'm for those of you who are not familiar with that those stories she in january of this year and barked on an incredible feat seven marathons in seven days on seven continents which is hard just saying so i can't imagine actually physically doing it we are going to have how told win from the belmont savings bank which has so generously sponsored this night he's going to come up and say a little more about becca and what a great inspiration she's been to this community and don't want to get a chance we've got some great programs coming up in month of april we have our one book one belmont and at the end of this month we have a great ancestry program get to know your family tree  i asked my daughter in the gray sweatshirt what do you think about this and she said yeah mommy i think you could do it i asked my parents they didn't have the same answer at all they were a little stressed out over the last year but i just they trusted in me and and i was just i mean a slide show on my journey and i saw it as an unbelievable test of in durance and strength and at the time i had forty five marathons in an extreme conditions being from new england i've trained in all types of weather so i was confident and knew that i could get it done if i put the year long very hard training in i did personal training i did yoga for runners cross fit and i ran between seventy and one hundred miles per week for a year straight so i knew that i was not going to go to the starting line unprepared and so that's what i did to to prepare myself so we started the race and union glacier in antarctica which was unbelievable we got to run on the glacier which was just so cool then we went to chile and then miami in madrid morocco dubai in and ended in australia  so the the price tag was thirty six thousand dollars so i was very fortunate to have my three sponsors ultimate replenish or which is an electrolyte dr koop compression in mind while i came on board right away so i was lucky to have them support and  there's some fun facts about the race we averaged one hundred eighty three miles over seven days we flew twenty three thousand miles which gave me a whole lot of air american airline points i actually have a free vacation somewhere  we flew fifty nine fifty nine miles in the air and we averaged ten hours per continent that's it so it was very stressful seven days this is me leaving logan airport i've run forty five marathons in that my sister usually drops me off and  we get out and then i come back so what's it but when i got my number i was a little stressed out number thirty and i said i was second way my number if something doesn't go right i don't want to touch it i didn't know what to think about it but i said i'll make the most the snow had melted a lot so it was a lot like running in the sand which was incredibly annoying we had to set up shop right at ice runway and camp and we had this whole glacier to ourselves we had we were in this tiny little group on this huge glacier the course was four loops it was pretty awesome running on a glacier i really loved it was freezing cold our i pods didn't work none of us knew what to do for four hundred so we kind of just went up and talked to each other checked in with each other my passport which i thought was really awesome antarctica passport was the top right we took the russian allusion which i was really excited about i  never been on a military plane before and then i got inside and i was like not what i was really thinking expecting so it was a four hour flight from chile to to antarctica and i was confused we had military straps for first seat belt so it's just different than what i was expecting so we were there for three days so we went on a ten k we rode the course on our bikes and we got to know the fifteen runners there fifteen runners from across the globe and we just kind of got to  when i arrived in antarctica one thing i kept saying to myself is you're just going to have to get real comfortable comfortable being uncomfortable so that was just the model that stuck with me for seven days everything that we did we would eat sleep fly repeat so are running for seven days so this is the start the start and the finish we did for loops it was the sun was so blinding that we had to be covered head to toe in gear so i'm not used to running with a face mask or  glasses and that's that's just what we have to do because otherwise the ice the snow bounces off ice and you get these cheap blisters and blisters and it's really blinding i had broken this record in antarctica so one of the active military marines had handed me american flags so that's definitely something and i will never forget so this is an article medal we got a medal for each continent so the medals the middle spends it's really cool you can see him after  so next up we took our four hour flight back to chile i was very fortunate to have friends and family on every continent and my friends and family that were flying out were seeing me for just about eight hours so they'd fly all the way to chile all the way to africa for eight hours these are the flags from all over it was very windy i was so psyched to be out of the freezing cold in antarctica and then it we were just blindsided by the wind in chile so that was very annoying and these these in the bottom left hand corner those guys had come in from boston to cheer us on they took a guy's trip vacation and they made the most out of it and i said all right here for you here for you know in they say we're here for you chair you on so i got to take pictures with them and i thought that was so cool so we took a bunch of selfies with them and they just cheered us on the entire time this is the course all of the courses were certified courses and they were either out in backs on the water or they were circles loops just to keep an eye on us i think there are checkpoints and random places this is crossing the finish line in chile and we would cross the finish line and then we'd go eat together  to times we showered in restaurant employee bathrooms with thanks for the food can we have a shot we can use it was basically how it went this was jenny had run my friend had run seventeen miles with me and she's also my training partner for the boston marathon so we get to the airport in we kind of would just take over a section and strachan do anything we were preparing ourselves for a ten hour flight so people would be you can see people taking pictures of us in the back like what you guys doing so this is leaving this is heading to miami florida so my parents came to support me this was an out and back right on south beach this is tommy who i mentor she's a little she's nine years old and ran a ten k with me at eight thirty pace so she ran the last ten k with me because i could barely keep up with her this is the course is really really pretty let's see the sunrise lululemon and then in miami came to cheer me on and i'm with me so it's nice to see them they also gave me a letter to open up on every continent so once i would cross the finish line it gave me something to do something to look forward to this is my coach from college hoops surprise me in miami and he was always my favorite he let me come home for the boston marathon which was unheard of in college you were going to come and bust marathon as acquitted upbeat so be a special bond it was great to see him there really special on the right hand side that's beth and she'll be running the world marathon challenge as american athlete next year so she's training right now and it's going really well for her so she should do really well in the middle that's the race director who really is like the unsung hero he works all year long to make sure that this is these events just go perfectly and alvin is in the wheelchair in the yellow shirt he thought and broken his back and he's paralyzed so he came to cheer us on the head met him in new york the race director richard donovan ran from california to new york to raise money for him and they were friends and he had run some of his extreme events the volcano marathon so it was really inspiring to see him the leaving miami and heading to spain my friend nicole she also works for me at the daycare that they care that i own time these are the four american in the back from two from australia one from germany and then myself she was a huge help to me throughout the year in my training in the alumni from last year came met us in madrid to cheer us on and run with us so it's great to have them there this is ted he was really fun to let watch last  year he's an opera singer so he knew that i had my daughter so when i ran by him he would say let it go well frozen style so it was really funny and it was making me laugh the whole time so it's good to have him there it's just something i found we had the option after every single marathon to get a massage i got one here because we madrid in morocco we're within twelve hours of each other so we were crossing the finish line in madrid had a two hour flight to morocco and started morocco at midnight so i thought this would be a good time to get a massage that was what i had prepped all year long for that tough this is nicole and i call came from or from boston to cheer me on this is four this is course so we had the option so sometimes we got a hotel and we could go shower we typically would eat shower and whatever time we have left before we had to meet we could sleep so i think i took a twelve minute nap right here  and janet kind of organized all my things and some food stamps we ran this was at like two thirty in the morning this is the course  so we average ten hours per person eating per flight so i did sleep about seven hours per flight which is more than i sleep now so i was totally comfortable the seats way down into bed so we just ate and slept the whole time we would land at the open airport go through customs go into the bathroom change our clothes and come out like superman ready to run that's the best way to describe it so we would head into the this is us coming out of the bathrooms ready to run so people were just kind of looking at us like what are you doing downtown dubai was really cool in the houses were like castles it was really really unique and different i loved it i had gotten really badly hurt in dubai so i had a growing terror and it was much like a stabbing to the brain so i had fallen to the ground totally confused and not sure what happened medical came over and they said what's the matter and i said i have a cramp and they said after four and a half minutes the cramp wouldn't go away it was like a stabbing in my groin and i thought we're going to have to you know i just got up and ran twenty four miles in severe pain so i crossed the finish line and they said we need to make sure that it's not a blood clot it's a blood clot just to prepare you we cannot let you run it's unsafe so after a few minutes of them trying to figure out what what it was they said torn you're growing which is which means you can run it's going to be tremendously painful but it's not a blood clot so i was really happy that it wasn't a blood clot so at that point i had six marathons in and i thought i have one more to go so i had a fifteen hour flight i had to figure out how i'm going to run i can't even walk so i had a fifteen hour flight from dubai australia and i got this email from this doctor and he said i'm a doctor i treat professional runners i hope this finds you take your toes and run with them facing as far as they will go and you'll take you know and your work and other muscles i said i got going over and over in my head and there had been two attempts by american females to finish this and i and they didn't get there and i didn't want to be the third one so i thought whatever it takes so this was me  australia so this is the final the very last one and my boyfriend joe had met me at the airport and this was a beautiful course so we ran down and back and i just put my head down and just went went for it until just chipped away the miles until i was done in the support in australia it was just amazing there were hundreds of people cheering us all and by first name i mean they knew our name they knew or they had come to see us and my mom got my parents got to see me on his active military and we still keep in touch all the time we talk all the time race director from ireland has some champagne at the finish and this is our second breakfast and because we woke up at seven we ate and then we were hungry so tense so we  all wait for breakfast again australia so this is the finish these are all my met also going through customs i got pulled aside a couple times and then when you run seven marathons on seven continents throughout your life or in seven days you get a you join the seven continents marathon club so it's an honor to be a part of that club coming home from logan i think we arrived at like one am or two am pretty late and then we got to him i got to hold the quality air in australia which was really cool this is the day care that i own everybody was incredibly supportive i was gone for sixteen days in total which was a really long time especially for my daughter who was such a trooper so we got to runner and they all use math questions throughout the school for homework how many miles is she how many has she done and then i got to skype with their class to this is at the parade the wellington was so supportive i went to the wellington taylor was goes to the wellington miss maria's dance studio where taylor dances they were so supportive this was my personal training inside the studio that because my life's like kind of like a puzzle so i drop out taylor and go workout trio he was huge help to me huge help to me actually one thing about donna she taught me you have a three biggest she said i'm an energy coach we can talk to me i said i don't really know what that is but sure and i went down and she said what are your biggest three biggest fears in life for this race and i said missing my daughter and being hungry and being tired and she said don't let those three things happen at one time or you're going to have a very bad day if you're missing your daughter be sure to eat something because it's easy to let those things go when you're not and i still to that day you saw things and she said patience that patience will win this race and the race of life just have a tremendous amount of patience and recently it had been pretty pretty patient so i thought that was a big help this is a coach at the boston bowled out running club in their recovery group that that iraq coach great group of supportive runners and they were definitely some of my biggest inspirations and you know they fight for their lives and i certainly can fight for my excited about that this is the parade savings that and if you look at this picture of him looking at me and i just thought that was really special and i remember looking up and making eye contact i think she was pretty proud of me  my sponsors who took us to disney world my daughter and i and this is dr cool recovery who just thought we needed a break and then we did a couple months before i left it was so great martin wylie who are so funny one of five point seven i was nervous to go out there so you're going to make fun of me i think i said to my dad don't make fun of me or you make fun of me and they said no when they were so so supportive this is norah o'donnell who's who just contacted me and thought this was so incredible so i got to  new york city and talk with her and that was a lot of fun wall street journal and then this is like to give you an idea top left hand corner was oh my you know we stop and then in different colors but bottom left w questions i have two questions my first question is did you get any great endorsements from all the us from companies and my second question is do you feel in the future this might damage you physically at some point with all this running in training like sore stuff like that you know when to quit so i'm working with two sneaker companies right now so you'll definitely know soon when i decide which one is a better fit  for you know i've been running since the age of six competitive high school through college my doctor sees no reason to believe that you know when i do get injured i mean i tore my groin in three weeks later i was one hundred percent healed so i bounce back for whatever reason really well so i have we have no reason to believe what i'm doing is unhealthy so i've also run forty five marathons and have had no pains or aches or it's been thirty years of running in probably twenty ish competitively so it probably would have something at this point but i feel good i do i'm really good at listening to my body of something you know i was on a training run two weeks ago something just didn't feel quite right i just backed off a little bit and then i just listen to my body constantly yes so we i brought my own packets which is now i ever eat when i'm running marathons so we had our we have each section like labeled on what was ours you know i was number thirteen with a band and then anything i use electrolytes and i use my but they also had bananas and anything that that we needed so there was a ton of food  i trained really hard for one whole year i knew that my base was very good but i knew that i needed to put a lot more work in to to run this and i wanted to set the bar as high as i could set it so i knew that would be mean personal training and going to yoga and cross fit to make me stronger i was really focusing on madrid in morocco which were two marathons within twelve hours so i was constantly running  tired legs which which really not supposed to do as a runner runners will tell you when you're tired back off so you really had to be very careful what i did i went to the starting line totally healthy no no problems no aches and pains nothing as if it were what i do this again oh yeah i know there are several i mean i have the good thing about i've been invited to more races than you could buy restraint to even imagine but eventually i would like to try and ultramarathon right now i'm focusing on that i have i'm running a marathon in every state so i'm twenty seven states and i'd like to complete that before i do anything like one hundred if i was to get hurt at a hundred mile race or fifty i want the fifty states totally done before i'd focus on my life's like a puzzle so oftentimes before taylor even wakes up i'm running at five am i'm up at four four thirty to run early in the morning you know taylor was really on board with this i wanted to be fair to her i wanted to make sure that this really wasn't taken away from our time together so a lot of my training is before she wakes up in the morning or after she goes to sleep at night or during that i watch a half hour of her dance and go workout inside the person for studio inside of so i just figured that would that's how i go for the year so yeah but but also i love what i do i love to travel i love to run and it was really exciting year and having so many people on be the first female i have you know i put so much pressure on myself to beat everybody and do really well and then i met them and they were the most incredible people especially the women heather from australia and from your shoes off from australia and you meet them and then you they have their goals one was to do a first on one was to do it for cancer patient and they all have different goals and reasons as to why and some of us got sponsored some of us went through charity and we all had our own reasons you know and  we're fifteen of us will have that bond forever i mean we talk all of the time still and we went through a lot together i mean there were some of us that i went in from dubai to australia i was completely broken didn't even know how i didn't even know i was so stressed out and you know didn't see this coming it didn't and one came over and sat in my seat with me and we just and stefan from you know another country and he just said we're going to be ok you know it was a week it was a we're going to pull through this we kept checking on me and i was so upset and the airline stewardess stephen she said she came over and i was you know upset and crying with my head in between my you know legs and i was like just rocking back and forth and it was a lot of pain and she came over and she had this ice pack for me and she said let's just ice this for fifteen hours straight and i said yeah it's true that i fall asleep like an hour into it and she switched out my ice pack for me i was sleeping and it just took the village of us together to to figure it out and pull through and get to the starting line but but we all some of us did we all got injured at different points some right away and some were like in australia when they were hurt so you really rely on each other you know and especially two of them were moms two of the women that ran were moms and we really that was the hardest part of this race was being away from my daughter it wasn't the running it would have it was really just being with her so we really just you know when we when we needed each other and that was nice so but  we do we do have a special bond forever and everybody has a different reason that's why they were there hundred percent success rate which is mind boggling and the funny thing about this whole thing is before i even left the u s i had a flight to chil to new york from boston to chile new york to chile before i got to new york once i landed in new york we missed our connection to the away so we missed so we were on we missed it by twelve hours we missed our first connection we missed it by twelve hours so we had to wait twelve hours to get our second flight so then we missed that delayed connection then they lost our luggage our new york city and i looked to my training partner who was just flying out of me and i'm like i don't understand how i haven't even left new york i'm like all my stuff first australia i mean antarctica that you know you have special gear i had some it series gear that that my sponsors had bought for me in your talking like the best jacket the best sneakers best of everything and the way to you know she was like we're going to do the best we can to find and i'm like oh i need you to find i can't check in without this stuff so we found it was like twelve minutes to spare i'm like what am i going to do one of the runners never got their stuff luggage so everybody just kind of shared what they had i days yeah so well i i i had my training partners there so and then one of my friends rode the bike so i had company for i was very lucky to have the company that i had jenny had run seventeen miles with me my friend janet had by the whole entire marathon with me my friend a call by the whole way with me so i did have and then it was nice to just be one with my i pod i mean i put my daughter's dance studio dance routines music in the listen to that and think of her and i but it was you know it was great to have the crowd the people around with so that helped out a lot but i do the crowd support of boston is just amazing it was  yeah i had the marathon stick so i would just go to the airport and we were just it was it was a tremendous amount of maintenance and you were covering your body watching you know you finish a marathon and you're like where's the pizza and beer and all those things do you had to really prep your body for the next race so you're thinking electrolytes and all the bananas and all of those big goals and we had business class international so we had access to the lounge which was a ton of food to choose from fruits and you think i have not finished until i've crossed the finish line australia so don't count yourself as finished and so it really was a lot of maintaining on the body so i had i did have the marathon stick so i rolled out every part of my body and then they took my marathon stick and so that morocco so that was a bummer so but then richard being the main race director the us had marathon sticks for us at the next location so we were able to do that so in the beginning they travelled with us medical travel the us and then when we left chile richard had a doctor from the continent from the country meaning us there so they were incredible i mean they really made sure we were ok and same with a massage they didn't travel with us they just he contacted massage companies who met us there  my favorite race was in arctic and running on a glacier was incredible it was really just so amazing and it was so beautiful too it was different it was twenty four hours of sunlight so i didn't use my watch go back to bed because it's so it's so light out twenty four hours so that was different and annoying and then you don't want to miss breakfast so you made sure to you know have a friend wake you up when it was time to eat so it was different but but it really was really cool it was just very cold it was negative for so the door opens to the plane and it's a hole when we when we landed it was negative twenty it was actually a very cold day and i thought this is going to be pretty cold i don't like to be cold so it was like when you we slept tents and i had never slept in a tent in my life so that was different so those were forty degrees so still pretty cold be like living in a fridge for three days  i like to because sometimes i wasn't able to charge my i put my my watch so we always had the timer so i could tell exactly where it was because after you know i know what i feel like when i run a marathon but after five and six you just don't know what you know but it was nice but also the courses were really pretty all of them were run on water or loops and i loved all of the courses i thought they were yes i mean those are the toughest one i mean the toughest for me was in arctic and it was like running on sand which was just a no i ran the first lap and i was so annoyed and aggravated and just took one lap at a time but i wasn't cold i wasn't but what was really hard was somewhere in australia so it was it was seventy seven degrees and we were just dripping in just uncomfortable and but it was one mile closer to being finished so but i did love that right on manly beach i was so it's really pretty and i had the most proud support to yes the hardest are the hardest hard to buy because i was injured so that was very painful run for me knew when i went down i was like carnal for the knees trying to figure out and i thought it was a cramp in you know i said don't touch it don't touch it and it was already just in a lot of pain but they didn't know at the time so after four and a half minutes which to me is like an eternity it's a half mile you know so i thought just going to run i thought i was running with a cramp and then when i crossed the finish line in dubai they said come over and i went over and they that's when  and it was purple the size of like a softball and they could tell that you know it's not that they it's not that i went to hospital i think but they could tell there was a tear on a percent and i think it was just constant wear and tear on the body but that point i really was one of the last to get hurt there were stress fractures bad backs shin splints all sorts of serious injuries so yeah at that i mean i saw some one we all had trained for a year so we all learned about the race about november and i knew i knew i watched last january i watched it unfold and i watched it like a hawk making sure that they were eating and everything was fine and they were safe and  way after about that was last january about feb i gave them a month and i reached out to the runners who all of all five of them had said amazing things about the race you're going to love the race director there's plenty of food there's plenty of everything so and th is what i did in all of the training was very different believing we all had in common yoga never wanted yoga but some didn't do cross fit because when you put your bodies through that for a year you might get hurt so everybody took a different approach but everybody to yoga  one in one week yeah so what i did actually so i thought about i talked to my friend mark and i said what do you think about i took out a bunch of advice from my running friends and he said why don't you try  twenty ten ten ten ten so you run twenty miles then fifteen then twenty and then ten ten ten ten so that's what i did for the hundreds and i do for twenty on a friday and then fifteen a saturday twenty on a sunday and then i  know but these are extreme athletes i mean these guys are there but they're these covered pretty fast too but all of them i think i was had the most marathons and i bow but they had all run the volcano marathon the north pole marathon north pole marathon is april i ran with people friends so i had i had my friends that came out and travel with me run with me so they knew the and yeah and also and also these marathons so if i were usually run a marathon or in the last year and three twenty eight i had a half hour per marathon i said  be very happy with three fifty three fifty five which was my goal i ran to fifty five so you know when you run a marathon you run it so much slower half hour slower than you used to running it kind of is like a long run but i did have to play mental games of myself i couldn't say every single day mile twenty two twenty three twenty four for seven days so i would call them loops i would even think about the i shot my mile repeat on my watch because every single it was like just groundhog day every single day so i took off and then i just focused on ok to have thirteen loops even though you know certain distance but at least i wasn't it wasn't like thinking about the the miles every single day so and some people just use their you know everybody was so different didn't want to run yeah a lot of days yeah some days i woke up tired and i said this is how it's going to feel when you're in my all six marathon sex you know you're going to feel and that's exactly how it felt you know you woke up and you're like yeah yeah so richard garvin hear it yeah he's from where's he from dublin and he was i'm telling you he's unsung hero he really put in he works all year long for these seven days  if we missed our fronts first flights we were on the connecting flight we were on the next flight so that fifteen runners takes and then we had great food we had great i mean we got to go to restaurants and use their showers and the hotels we did stay at here and thirty six miles for three and a half months for somebody for alvin he was not he was working on his own house and he slipped and fell and and he's paralyzed so he said how can i raise money for this i'm going to run across the u s so fluent right across the u s and i met him in new york city because i wanted to also meet the guy that finish you know use every so proud of your body loves you and i'm like you know so he really makes you feel ok you know and so he really is a good guy yeah the problem with this type of event there's no way to top it  you know it is a goal of mine but there's nothing there's no way to top this now that you know i've already done the biggest event that i could possibly do but there's other i mean you know i started running group for kids which is so much money and we meet friday mornings before school and then i started my own club on mornings and running club and it's great to get back