welcome to daring to dream a show of hope inspiration and practical advice for living the life of your dreams i'm susie spy the host and producer and as a life coach i work with people to help them get clear on what their dreams are what goals they want to accomplish in their lives and help them get over the obstacles that get in everyone's way when you're pursuing a dream and i've talked to some really amazing dream s over the last few years on this show and it people who have overcome incredible obstacles to achieve the dream that they've held for their lives but today i think i may be interviewing my most daring dream or ever i'm going to be talking to a woman who will become the first american woman to raw and seven marathons in seven consecutive days on seven continents if she is able to complete the world marathon challenge so please help me welcome back up easy you better you for having me oh my gosh i'm so excited to talk to you so when i first heard about this i was like what are you i mean i'm sure you've got met a lot of good writing but yeah so seriously what were you thinking when you hear signed up for it i read about it  the marathon maniac's home page and i thought that this was something that a way for me an opportunity for me to inspire the world and that you can do anything that you put your mind seriously seriously so give me a little background about yourself in terms of running and running marathons and when did you first when did you run your first marathon sure so i said my father fred inspired me to run when i was six years old and i've never stopped college and i remember just being on the bike and saying dad i want to run i want to run because he was a runner and i remember running and loving it i ran my first marathon when i was seventeen years old i'm on a quest to run a marathon in every state so i've run forty five marathons in twenty seven states oh my fifteen of those being the boston marathon was so impressive and so impressive and so what was the real inspiration behind signing up for this incredible challenge so i talked it over with my daughter and i thought that this was just so great for her to be a possible positive role model for her and just to show taylor my daughter she's eight to believe in herself when you believe  a busy woman so how do you fit in the training that must be required for this so i'm up every single morning at five and run before my daughter wakes up and then when she goes to bed i'm doing yoga for athletes and or doing personal training or cross fit so a lot of the work is done before taylor wakes up and or after she goes to bed oh my gosh wow that's so impressive so tell us a little bit about the race itself sure so we kick off january twenty third and our atika and then we go to chile miami red rid morocco to buy in australia all that is just mind blowing and so literally you'll be running during the day i suppose and then flying through the night and then just each day doing it right over and over it's it's going to be sleep run repeat and  the marathons are certified courses and twenty six point two miles and it will be running at different times of the day day and night depending upon how long the flight is yeah some marathons are run in the morning some in the afternoon some at night yeah wow and so what kind of preparation have have the organizers of the event provided richard donovan is the race director and he goes with the nominal job with this race and all of his races and he has a team of people a small team that travels with us and a team of people waiting for us at each location and yeah yeah well so what have you done kind  of mentally and emotionally to prepare for this mentally you know running i've run my entire life so the running part is the is the part that's not going to be the problem it's the weather conditions we're dealing with temperatures  all the way up to summer in australia ninety degrees or so so i do a lot of turnover running and i do a lot of this morning it was pretty cold outside so yeah being from new england i've trained in all sorts of weather and where i run marathons in ninety degrees and i've run marathons in negative two wow when you run in those extreme conditions you remember it yeah yeah and then combining in the elements of flying and the air pressure and sleep deprivation and yeah and i think my plan is to just stay focused and just think about what's going on at that very moment and not to look at head that's great that's great that's advice i would give you  worked with visualisation at all to really kind of see yourself getting that i especially see myself crossing the finish line in australia i'm really excited about i probably run with some tissues i've gone over i've studied the course for a year i know only what we're although all of the marathon courses are loops between two and ten laps ok so going over what the weather's going to be like how i'm going to be feeling i've gone over every single race in while so it sounds like you're really mentally prepared mentally prepared yeah and then what about emotionally i mean i know this will be difficult for you to to leave your daughter the hardest part of this race will be leaving taylor  and we're going to skype i'm going to leave her notes i'm going to check in with her teachers her class has been phenomenal i've said i'm going to send pictures where do you think i am based off my background and when and where that would be fun for them to try and guess i went and i  got to talk to them and i got to show them some medals and even the yak trax that i'll be wearing in an article that help me grip the you know what so it's been a fun for school and they they made a big poster board and it's they're going to move the runner which is me when i it one of those things that it was an instant i've got to do this i thought i was born to run this race yeah and why just to show the world to go for it and to to shoot for the moon because you have an opportunity to be a role model and everybody has been so helpful i thought ok it's thirty six thousand dollars i wonder if i can get some sponsors and i was able to do that i reached out  board and generous and it's been awesome and what has been your biggest kind of hurdle or challenge once you decided to do it have you faced any fears or like overcome challenges along the way in preparation this is different approach in training when i train for the last marathon the goal is to run on fresh legs now i'm running on tired legs which in the beginning was exhausting and it's built me stronger as a runner i feel very strong and fit but i remember in the first few months thinking it's going to be a long year out of my body in between seventy and one hundred miles per week of running  so getting injured with not getting injured is very important to me i've never had a running injury in my life and i didn't want to start and so yeah very lucky to never have the best coaches and i'm the best people behind me i kind of feel like rocky is what i say and belly songs in there and i have been a little john so sure i'm going to run with it i may not always use it i'm very lucky that two of my training partners will be in africa and also in chile so we'll run together and i won't use it then yeah and what do you what are your what are your goals in terms of completion of each marathon so i like to set a goal two goals when i go into every single race and my two g are to finish and to run a three fifty so just below four hours which would make me really happy yeah yeah it is there any part of you that's like i w but i do think that finishing is just so important oh yeah yeah definitely and so there are fourteen others fifteen including you that's right yeah and how many women versus men there are levin men ok for women  and how many americans there are five americans total an american female has never done this so there are four other american men men ok ok and have you been able to build relationships with them over the course of good but half of the runners on facebook so i can't wait to actually meet them because i feel like i already know them yeah have you actually been able to have any kind of conference calls or skype's or anything with that you had talked to the previous winners and participants from last year right so richard so tim durban was the american male from last year reached out to me and was very generous with his time and he gave me some really good advice and just knowing that he had gone through that was just so great oh yeah the one female that ran last year and i remember being on the edge of my c watching her finish and being so proud of her and she was a huge help to me this year so the been so supportive and i'll do the next thing  awesome so we can keep track of you very quickly if you like the world marathon challenge faced page they do a great job of updating we are were fabulous fabulous so when you think about crossing that last finish line what do you think that's going to feel like just make i when i cross the finish line and i've just made history so i'm sure that it's going to be emotional time oh yeah yeah definitely you know it's been it's been a great year of have i love to travel and i love to fund and to run and just to have the support of the world and i'm very lucky and yeah i'm so it's wonderful that you have gotten so much support absolutely absolutely well i would love for you to combat it well and for us to talk about this once you're completed this because i know you're going to yeah and what do you see after this so i love my job i have my two jobs i don't want to change anything there i would love to get into motivational speaking at some point and maybe with my daughters a little bit older and i like to coach at the collegiate level when their fall back to community and  started a bum on track club and we meet on tuesday mornings and it's so much fun and it's great it's great and what i mean my biggest question is where have you found the will and the determination to take on a challenge like this and continue every day to prepare and do what you have to do because so many people care and so many people are so supportive that you want to make everybody proud you know i'm very fortunate to have so many people believe in me and to show my daughter go for it because people will follow you in the hope you along the way in your giving back to the community i'm having a lot of fun with it yeah i think that's such an important point to for anyone pursuing a dream is that you need support you need to have people around you right gary encouraging you and cheering you on all sorts of directions and says i'm so humbling  well i can't wait to talk to you when you return and we're so excited for you we'll all be here cheering you on and watching your progress and episode of daring to dream while backa is such an inspiration and i hope that you can take what becca is doing in her her advice and her inspiration to pursue your own drains and began by taking that first step putting it out there and moving forward and allowing it to unfold thank you for joining us and look forward to seeing you next time