Tom: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Impact Theory. You're here my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know as I do that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that are going to help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is a super level badass. Not only is she a full-time corporate attorney at Global Powerhouse Apple, she is undeniably one of the toughest humans alive. It wasn't enough for her just to be a standout attorney, so at 28 she go headlong into the impossibly grueling sport of obstacle course racing. A sport where people actually die. Since beginning, she has racked up what is arguably the most impressive resume of any female in the sport. Her accomplishments prove that whatever men can do, women can do just as well. In her career, she's had 30 victories and more than 50 podiums. She's one of the 24-hour world's toughest mother three times. One of those victories coming just eight weeks after knee surgery. She was also the Spartan Race world champion in 2013. She's been the Spartan Race Points Series champion twice and she has three times finished the death race, a race that is literally designed to break you and has the slogan, "You may live." Having now also survived 2016, where she dumped her year of healing after fracturing her femur from all of the racing and training, she has begun to discover yet another talent sports commentating. Even though she could make a living as a sponsored athlete and commentator, she maintains her intense day job at Apple to ensure that she's challenged both body and mind. Please help me in welcoming the pop tart and ketchup craving race ninja who has been called the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing, Amelia Boone. Amelia, thank you so much for coming in the show. Amelia: Thanks for having me. Tom: It is an absolute pleasure. Amelia: Yeah, I hope I can do an intro justice.

Tom: You've already done that intro justice. It's really, really crazy what you've accomplished. I'll be honest, the thing that I'm most interested in, obviously 2016 was a brutal year for you, but reading your blogs about what you've been going through, I think is the thing that's going to be most valuable to people. You talk a lot about doing the hard things, but tell us what have you learned from rock bottom? Amelia: Yeah, 2016 has been an interesting year. For me, it was a fracture in the femur where I had an entire year planned and then just everything was wiped from that. For me, what I found is actually that hitting rock bottom, that's the time where you are forced to then really look inwards and discover who you are. It's great when you're on top, when you're riding this wave, when you're winning race after race. It's easy to ignore the hard things. It's easy to ignore your problems or to just push them aside or to think, "I'll deal with that later," or just you're riding this wave. When you're sitting there and it's just you and yourself, you have to confront that. For me, that's what this entire year has been. What's been so interesting to me actually is that more people have come out to me and said, "Yes, thank you. You are relatable. This has been so helpful to me." I'm learning that the more that I let people in and say, "Look, I go through hard times too that I hit rock bottom, that I suffer, and that I am vulnerable," that people relate to that. It's been amazing. Tom: Is that meaningful to you to be able to help other people through this by sharing your journey? Amelia: I think so. I didn't start out that way, like when I started out with obstacle race, and I didn't set out to be an athlete. For me, it was a fun jaunt with friends all weekend. Yeah, right. Tom: A 10-mile obstacle course through mud. Yeah, Amelia: Right. It was like, "Hey, let's get electrocuted by these wires, and cool, and have a beer at the end and get a headband.

" I didn't intend for it to turn into a second career, such as when I got injured, I didn't intend to necessarily help other people with it. When I realized the way that I deal with things is through writing and through blogging, and for me it was almost a personal diary and a journal. I'm like, "If people read it, great. If they don't, fine." For me, it's all about the process and healing myself. That's been incredible, that has been able to help other people. Tom: Yeah, it's amazing because when I started the research, I didn't know that you'd gotten injured. Tim and I had talked about you. He was on the podcast, he was wanting to put you on my radar and then said the things that you've accomplished were so incredible. We were like, "Oh my God, we got to get her on the show. It could be really amazing." I dive another research and I'm hearing all the stuff that you win and all these interesting questions, which we will get to about like, "Why women do better in longer races," which is utterly fascinating to me. Then I discovered in realtime in the research that you'd actually spent all of 2016 out with an injury. Then you quintupled an interest for me, because watching you process it out loud and really go through that, and talk about things like fear and the lessons that you were learning from that was actually really motivating and inspiring for me. What's a lesson that fear has taught you? Amelia: I think that I have learned that if something is fearful to you, then you need to do it and you need to explore it. Fear is a very powerful emotion. There were so many things that I was afraid of this past year with injury. Tom: Like not being able to come back? Amelia: Yeah. I'm still, a 110% honest, I still struggle with that every single day. You lose that confidence as an athlete, whenever you are knocked off of your pedestal or whatever you're on your track and you're forced to come back and question whether or not you can, "get back to where you were.

" That's something that you really have to work through. I've never really had to deal with that just self-doubt. I think for me, fear is teaching me almost to reframe and to think that it's not getting back to where I was, it's shaping myself as a new person going forward and to realize and to embrace those opportunities. Tom: It's really incredible. You actually put something up on your mirror when the injury happened. I forget the name of the book, forgive me, but- Amelia: Chery Strayed's, "Brave Enough." Tom: Yes, thank you. Perfect. Here was a quote, "Fear, thank you for being here. You're my indication that I'm doing what I need to do." Why do you think it is that, because I am obsessed with that notion, like that really sits at the heart of my being and this show makes me incredibly anxious. When we were originally talking about doing this, I was like, "Oh, dear God." I don't know that I- Amelia: Like, "I don't want to be in a camera." Yeah. Tom: I truly had no desire to be upfront. That was not what I wanted to do, but because it was one of those sayings that scared me as much as it did and I have a rule in my life, because I try to avoid pain so frequently, that if it scares me, then I have to do it. Just to become the person that I want to be, right? Because I'm a person left to my own natural inclinations. I'm very lazy. I'm very fearful and I will just recede into the background and accomplish nothing. I found that the fear had something to do with stakes and so I always put myself in that situation. When did you develop that notion of fear being a guiding light? How are you using it now through what you're going through? Amelia: It's interesting, because I actually throughout childhood and growing up, I was not a risk taker. I still to this day, I don't consider myself a risk taker. A lot of people would say, "When you enter that first 24-hour race in New Jersey in December, and it was 20-degrees when you were going through ice in the middle of the night," is that not taking risks? Tom: That's a fair question.

Amelia: I think that what I've realized is I'm like, "Okay, well this is a calculated risk?" No, I try and justify it. For me, confronting that fear, that first of all, the first time you do it, it's so paralyzing, but it becomes easier. You realize that and if you incorporate that, if you make it a practice, then the day to day things become easier. For me as a kid who was actually very fearful and very I don't want to take risk, I want to stay inside this shell and this is my life plan and I literally probably when I was 13 years old, had my entire life planned out. It is nowhere where I am right now. Thank God it's not. I think that it's been through the experiences of challenging myself and through confronting that head on and embracing the fear, and embracing the pain that I've then come to where I am. Tom: One of the stories you were telling you said, "There's something to be said about the the beginner," and that in the beginning I was actually less afraid of obstacles than I am now like the electricity, electric eel. Did it make you blackout at one point? Amelia: It did. There's this awful- Tom: It's the non-risk taker ? Amelia: Right, yeah. It's also one of those things that I think that you look back now and I see that obstacle and I'm petrified of it, because of those experiences that you associated with. I think at the time where you don't really know what's going on, you're like, "Sure, why not." It's also the middle of the night and you're exhausted, and you're not thinking straight, so you might as well get slapped in the head. Tom: I'm not sure I've ever had that thought. Amelia: I think that a guiding light for me has always been that I want to seek that next challenge and that I want to constantly find a new hard thing. When I, the ripe old age of 28 started to become, "A professional athlete." It was just this new challenge for me. It was, "How can I do that?" Everything that I encounter, whether it was that obstacle on that course that scared the hell out of me, was going to be pushing myself to that new limit.

Tom: Do you think about identity at all? Like your own identity? Amelia: I do. Actually, what's interesting is that I don't know how to introduce myself to people, because it also depends on who I'm talking to. Tom: That's interesting. Amelia: You meet people at a party and I say, "Hi, I'm Amelia." "Amelia, what do you do?" Most people will give their profession. Most people say, five years ago they said, "Amelia, I'm an attorney." Or this time around a bunch of athletes, do I say, "I'm an obstacle racer." Do I say, "I'm a ... " I go through this notion of what I am. I like that I don't have to define it and I don't want to define it. I don't like the labels, because I've realized now that I don't have to narrowly define myself in a box. Then I can constantly reinvent myself. I feel like not enough people do that or give themselves the opportunities to do that. Tom: Yeah, reinvention to me has been really important in my life. The way that I think about identity is maybe adjacent to that, which is I have this vision in my head about who I want to become. Part of the reason that I have to do the things that scare me is because the person that I want to become would do those things and that as I tell myself, and I don't know if this is just me or if a lot of people do this, but I'm always telling myself a story about myself like, "You're the type of person that does that. You get out of bed fast. You do this. You do things that scare you," all of that to create this self-fulfilling prophecy in myself. That's why it was so interesting for me to hear that you would think that as you're doing these obstacle races that they would get easier. When you're saying that in some ways, they actually get more difficult, that was really fascinating. You have a super interesting way of dealing with that, which I'll call, "Chunking.

" I don't know if you could use that word. Amelia: I'll take that. I'm a huge Goonies fan, so when it came out it's like, "Truffle, shuffle, and chunk." Tom: You'll go with? Amelia: I'll go with, yes. Tom: You break things up into small pieces? Amelia: Yeah. I find that people get ... If you look at the entirety of a task, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. For me, you start a 24-hour race, so you start a 100-mile race and you look at the clock and you realize, "I have 22 hours left to go and I'm exhausted right now." That's overwhelming. That's when people quit. Instead, in my mind, I think, "Okay, if I'm going through a really rough patch in a race, because things ebbs and flows, I think just get to the next obstacle. Just get to the next obstacle. Just get to the next lap and not think about the entire, the grand scheme of things." It's just these little compartmentalized in things. When you're going through so much pain and when you're going through a hardship, that's the thing that keeps me saying, "Is just to not think about the end games, not try and think about two days from now when this race will be over," but just enough task at hand. Tom: Is there a certain way that you want to be when it comes to pain? Like, "I want to charge through pain," or how do you conceptualize pain? Amelia: I make friends with pain. I think that pain is something that we're so fearful of. We spend so much money trying to avoid pain and, which is funny, because I think a lot of the rise of these endurance races and obstacles races is interesting as our lives would become easier and we're able to avoid pain. People are actually paying to seek out pain. Tom: It's interesting. I've never thought of it like that. Amelia: Right. There's a fantastic documentary that I'm a part of called, "The Rise of the Sufferfests," where the director actually chronicles the rise of these races. It's a good look at it. I make friends with pain, because I think pain is something that teaches us so many lessons.

During a race, if I'm like, "Okay, all right, my right hip hurts right now. All right, right hip, how are you doing?" I actually will talk to my body. Then you work through it. It's a process. I actually find that it changes. There have been times where I started a 24-hour race and my calf starting seizing out and how am I going to make it through 24 hours? 10-miles later, the calf is fine. I was onto the next thing. There's such a mind body connection, that if you can talk to your physical pain, I find it's much easier to deal with. Tom: Do you think mental toughness can be cultivated? Amelia: I absolutely think so. Tom: What's that process? Amelia: For me, I think that it's doing the hard things. It's not taking the easy way out. Tom: Do you like to make a list? Like, "These are the hard things." Amelia: No. I think that the hard things are different for everyone. I think that you know, because you go back to that notion of fear. If you're fearful of it, that's a hard thing for you. For instance, I realized very early on when I was trying to become an attorney that I always had this notion that I want to be a prosecutor and on stage, and things like that. I realized, "I don't do public speaking very well." That would seize up and it was awful for me. I hadn't- Tom: It seems like I've seen you do public speaking very, very well. Amelia: It's one of those things that I've had to cultivate and it's one of those things that I've had to practice. I think that the hard things give you cultivate that mental toughness. People say, "Okay, how do I make it a habit? How do I cultivate mental toughness?" I say, "That's what you do. You make it a habit." It's that you don't give yourself the option and it's something, you pick something, put it into your routine whether it's waking up 30 minutes earlier everyday so you can actually get out the door to move your body. You just don't think about it. You don't give yourself the option to not do it.

Tom: All right, talk to me about training in non-ideal conditions, because that's one of the tactics you use, right? Amelia: Right. Yes. Training when it's raining outside. There are a lot of people if it's raining, if it's snowing will say, "I'll get on the treadmill today." Why? That's easy and it's boring. I love running when it's cold, running when it's dark. Tom: Because you know you're getting more tough that's why you love it? Amelia: Also, part of me, I feel more alive. I like to be out on nature, and so I feel more alive. I also think that, yeah it forces you to go through hard things in non-ideal conditions that then yes indirectly help cultivate ... Toughness is a weird nebulous word and there's so many different things that can go into that. I think what it does is that it cultivates a willingness, and a drive, and a discipline to get through those things. I think now, I'm like, "Okay, I used to live in Chicago and I would go out and run when it's -10 degrees." If I can do that, I can definitely go out and run in San Francisco when it's 60-degrees and raining. It's all about comparisons. Tom: One of the writers that had written an article about you said, I don't know if you said this to him or if he just made it up. He said, "I think she runs in the rain and when it's cold, because she knows that her competitors are packing it up and going inside." Is that true? Amelia: Maybe it used to be true, but now, no longer. I think maybe I let out all my secrets and no one ever else is doing it. Yeah, I used to when I was training for World's Toughest Mother that first year and we all ran in wetsuits, because you have to, because it's freezing cold and you're in and out of water, and you lose all your body heat over 24 hours. I would take my wetsuit out and go run around in Chicago when it was 30-degrees and jump in and out of the lake. No one else was doing that. Tom: What a surprise. Amelia: I know. Actually, the police officers really didn't like it.

It's weird to show. Those are the things that make you uncomfortable and like we said, that uncomfortable tells you, "Okay, that's what I need to be doing." Tom: What I love about that is it's so simple, right? How do you deal with the things that are uncomfortable or that you need to get more tough? You go out and do them, right? Amelia: Right. Tom: You set the alarm, you get up 30 minutes earlier, you put your wetsuit on, you run when it's raining, you jump in the lake, things that obviously are unpleasant, but in their unpleasantness actually they begin to toughen you. Have you read Angela Duckworth's book, Grit? Amelia: No, I haven't. I have a list, like a list of books of mine along and it's on there. It's moving up. Tom: Yeah, you could have been interviewed for the book. I don't think there's any argument about that, but it's just an amazing scientific recounting of why it works, what's it play, how you actually develop it. I think she was really one of the first people to say that grit is a muscle. I think people think that a lot of foundational things, like internal fortitude, you whether have or you don't. She really laid out like that is just not true that you really can develop your grit. Is it again easier for you to jump in the lake for instance, which I'm sure the first time was pretty hard or is it actually maintained it's difficult to be you just demand it? Amelia: It comes and goes. I think there's certain things that definitely get easier, but then there are also things that it's funny, I don't ... People always ask me if I do all the cold exposure and ice bags, and things like that. Honestly, I have been so cold in all of these races and so miserable, that I almost prefer I'm like, "Unless there's a race on the line, I like my hot showers." It's this give and take about when I'm willing to and when I'm not. It definitely is this one of those things that I think that you can get out of practice if you're not constantly exposing yourself to those conditions, that it can be very pleasant and great.

Then you realize, you're like, "Oh no, wait. Wait, let's flex that muscle again. Let's train it." Tom: That's interesting. Do you have a set routine that you do as you prepare for something? Do you cycle through those things like, "Now is the time to be cold. Now is the time to do ultra long distance." How do you prep? What does that look like? Amelia: Yeah. I think it definitely depends on the race and exactly what I'm going for. I think yes, in terms of training, I cycle through various points in the year in terms of building strength, and then in terms of building mileage, and then backing those down. Because what's interesting about obstacle racing is that you have to be such a well-rounded athlete and we have to mix this ultimate mix of speed, and strength, and skill, and endurance. If you're a runner, if you go run a marathon, you never really need to train your upper body, but we're crawling over things and jumping over things, and so you have to be so well-rounded. It's this fun little game of figuring out the right combination. Tom: I love that you call it a fun game. People watching right now almost certainly are dismissing you as just being, "She's so gifted athletically. Of course, she's doing well at this," but you actually couldn't do a pull-up when you started these courses, if I'm not mistaken? Amelia: No. I was very, very weak in terms of . I spent six months trying to do a pull-up to prepare for the race. I couldn't do it. I went onto that race and I fell off all the obstacles, I had no strength, and I loved it though, because to me, I all of a sudden had this new challenge in front of me. I was like, "I was really bad at that. Let's try and get better." I didn't come from a stellar athletic background or anything like that, but I all of a sudden found this new purpose. I was . Tom: When did you develop that, that you would look at something that you failed at that you tried for six months and still failed and go, "Wow, now I'm excited because I have this challenge.

" Amelia: A part of me has always had that. I don't like failure. Nobody likes failure, fine. It's one of those things where it's almost like I wanted to write it. It was one of those things that I failed at that and now it is going to be my new task to achieve that, to go do that. I think that that was one of the first things that I realized of what really drew me to this. Tom: Yeah, I loved when I came across that, because I did assume that, oh you must have been athletically gifted. Your physique is ridiculous and just crazy. As somebody being a quest and having worked in the health and fitness industry like, "I know physique." Reading that you had started so far back from that was really interesting. To me, when you hit that moment where you're really bad at something, you've got two choices. Choice one is the easy choice, it's the ever present choice, which is "avoid." I did not like that. I don't like failure. Just like you said, everybody hates it. Most people do that left turn right there and they say, "Okay, well, I'm not going to be doing that again. There's a really interesting psychological principle, which is to say, "Okay, well, now I'm going to look at this as a challenge. I understand that the body, the mind can adapt. I'm going to develop this new skill." People that are able to do that either just they have it in them or they cultivate that in themselves, it's astonishing to see how far they end up going. Amelia: To this day, I still have to do it. For instance, when I broke the femur, there is very little I could do physically, because bum leg, of course. They said, "You can get in the pool and you can swim with a pool buoy between your legs." I don't know if you've ever spent any time swimming with pool buoy between your legs, but it's really boring. It was the only thing that I could do. I'm not a swimmer. I don't frankly like swimming, but it was my option.

I sat there and I go, "All right, we're going to make friends with the pool." Really, for this past year, I have ... To me, swimming is that hard thing, that failure thing, because I'm not good at it, and I don't like not being good at things. Over this past year, I've grown to actually crave that time and in that pool and to do that. There are things that I'm awful lot in my flip turns. I look like a drowning corpus. It's really, really gnarly. If any of the swim coach looked at me and they'd be like, "Oh my God." To me, it was a way, especially in injury to tackle a new challenge and to recognize, and actually to be very humble about where I was and what I could do. I think that that makes you so appreciative of everything else in life for sure. Tom: Other than swimming, what is something that you're taking on as a challenge? Amelia: This past year, I've actually gotten into meditation as well, which is also something that I've always . To me, running was my meditation. I always looked at my early morning runs as my way to clear my mind, but the idea of sitting still and just thinking nothing, to me it was frightening. I'm horrific at meditation. Sometimes I fall asleep. Sometimes it's 10 minutes later and I realized that I've been planning my day, "Oh crap," but I still do it every single day. Thinking that someday it will get easier. Tom: You're a big believer in the power of routine? Amelia: I am a huge believer in the power of routine. For me, there are so many decisions that need to be made in life. You cannot encounter that idea of decision fatigue, so routine for me, it takes away some of those decisions, so just becomes automatic. I feel best when I go through just have a set planned. That to me is the power routine, is really taking away those decisions that you have to make up, make every morning, and so you can focus your energy on the big decisions and what really needs your attention not, "What am I going to eat today? What time am I going to wake up?" Tom: Since your injury, have you thought at all differently about work and what you're doing as an attorney? Amelia: Yes.

For me, the injury made me very, very grateful that I was more than just enough. That to me, it was a time to also recognize and reconnect to what I love about being an attorney as well. What's interesting to me is that I actually found it's sometimes harder to work, because I didn't have the other ball in the air, for instance. Tom: You've talked about that. Amelia: That I am more productive when I am juggling multiple things. Tom: Why? Amelia: I think it forces you to be efficient. It's that if you know if I know, "Look, I have to get out tomorrow morning to train at four o'clock, so I need to get in bed by X time, so I need to get all my work done, my attorney work done by X time so I can do that." Whereas if you don't have that, then just, "Oh, I can procrastinate a little bit. I can take my time, blah, blah, blah." I found that I'm more productive when I am juggling multiple things. Tom: That's really interesting. Talk to me about self-flagellation a little bit, which you've written quite eloquently about. Yeah, what have you learned? Amelia: Yeah, so I've talked about this, I call it, "The merry-go-round of self-flagellation." Let's say you're feeling bad about something, you're feeling bad about a failure, or for me, I sat there after the femur and I knew that it was my fault. I had run myself into a fracture in my femur. I went back through my mind all of the ways that I could've changed that. You get on this merry-go-round as I called it of you already feel bad that you screwed up and that you wrecked your entire season. Then you feel bad, because you feel bad and so you beat yourself up over feeling that and just spirals into the circle and you can't get off of it. For me, I've had to step back and almost detach myself and realize when I get into this story that I'm telling myself, and just stop it. It's really hard.

I think we all do it. Tom: Do you have technique of these? Amelia: I think really I try to depersonalize it and detach it and to realize I almost think of myself as a third person and say, "Okay Amelia, you're on that right now. Stop." If one of my friends came to me and said that they were doing that to themselves, I'll be like, "Get off of it." That's the past. You can't change that. Beating yourself up over, something that happened in the past isn't going to change it. Tom: What advice would you give to somebody in your shoes, a true world class athlete, they've had this catastrophic injury, what's your advice to them? In that moment of uncertainty, when they don't know if they're going to be able to come back or not? Amelia: I think really, it's acceptance is where you need to end up. You talk about it in stages of grief. Everyone talks about injury is like the stages of grief after death almost not to be that traumatic. To realize that it's okay how you're feeling and kick, scream, cry, do whatever it is you need to do, let it out. Give yourself a time limit. I said after my injury and I was miserable, and I was just a bear to be around, but I told myself, "Okay, I'm going to give myself two weeks to be an awful person about this." Then you know what? I'm going to pick up and move on and say, "What can I do now in this scenario?" Really what it was and what I found is I cut myself off and then I looked out, "How can I make the best of this situation?" For me, that ended up in being able to do commentary work, and being able to be on the course beyond the sideline to support my fellow athletes, and actually take joy in their accomplishments, in their victories instead of seeing them as competitors. It's about reframing what you can do in that moment. Tom: All right, so you brought up strong women, which we have to go deep into. Why do women do better the longer the race? Amelia: Women are better at suffering. I don't know if that's just because we, maybe childbirth, I don't know.

I don't necessarily think that women are tougher or women have more mental grit, but there's this definitely phenomena. You see, as the longer the race gets, the gaps on a time between men and women tend to lessen. You see a lot of women winning very long races outright. I think that maybe, I don't have the ... If I have the answers, I would probably be in a different field. I'd be in some type of psychological expert and I'm so and so or physiological expert. For me, I've really found that women have this ability to really pull down deep. I think for me, I realized that there's a lot of things physically that I can't do on the same level as men, so- Tom: From a brute strength perspective? Amelia: From brutes and I'm not going to compete with dudes in a squat contest or a bench press. It's not going to happen, but what I can do is outlast you. That is something that I really, I don't know, maybe it's a chip on my shoulder, but that's really what drives me through those races. I think that maybe women, there have been so many instances where we are told we can't, or we haven't, or that's not what things that you're good at, that you carry that chip on your shoulder and so in these long races, it comes out. Tom: I love that. How do you use the chip on your shoulder effectively and not let it be just bitterness? Amelia: Exactly. I think it's a very hard fine line to not cross over into. I think for me, it's always thinking you're the underdog, is an effective way to do it, even when you're not. Everyone likes being the underdog. I loved it when I first came into this and nobody knows who you are and then all of a sudden you're there. "Damn, and who is this woman?" It's keeping that underdog mentality even when you're not. I think for me, for instance when I was also on the top of the sport and winning everything and doing that, I still always try to view myself as the underdog. That's hard to do, because you have the target on your back, but just keeping that mentality for me has been very helpful.

Tom: You said that women can really dig deep. Is there any of that, that you can articulate? I know you use a distraction technique to keep yourself focused. What are some other techniques that are the active digging deep? Amelia: Yeah, for me, I think the digging deep and races also comes up in interacting with those around you. The distraction in terms of compartmentalizing, chunking the race, but then also just stopping to think entirely and by doing that by interacting with those racers around you. That's great thing about long races is that you have time to chat with people, because you're out there for so long and you're going out a slow enough pace. I always try and if I'm running the same pace, another competitor, "How are you doing? Where you from? How are you feeling?" Getting to know them. Sooner or later, you realize that a few miles have gone by and you haven't been thinking about yourself, you've been thinking about other people. I think that that's very powerful is if you take the focus off of yourself and focus on others, you can almost ignore the pain that you're going through. I don't know. Maybe women as women are more stereotypically more nurturing, more caring, that ability to then tap into other people. I don't know. No one's ever described me as extremely nurturing. It's not like number one attribute, but I do generally enjoy getting to know other people and learning about other people. Tom: Yeah, that's interesting. To your point about, I guess if we could really explain this, we'd be in a different field, but as somebody who's married to a woman who is just gritty beyond reason and really beyond reason, and will to the point like you, she'll get injured and she'll keep working out, and she'll be like, "Yeah, tomorrow for sure I'm taking tomorrow," and I wake up to the sound of weights clanking down. I'm like, "Wait a second, I thought you're taking the day off?" "Yeah, no I felt good.

" I pride myself and my ability to suffer, I can suffer my friend, but my wife? It is inhuman, I guess really crazy. Amelia: It is, but what's interesting and what I've learned is that there is a difference of what ... The thing that has made me so great at this sport, my ability to suffer my ability to brace pain is also my greatest downfall. It's also my greatest weakness, because I will push myself past the part point of being smart. That is what has led to injury for me. This past year, I've had to realize like, "It's okay to rest. It's okay to take a few days. It's okay to take a few weeks or few months and actually take care of your body." That's almost become such a dirty word for some of us, that four letter word of rust is the worst four letter word out there. It's sometimes the hardest thing, the hardest thing for me this past year has been to take care of my body. It's interesting how that goes around and comes around. Tom: Do you ever struggle with knowing if you're resting because it's the right thing or you're resting because you want to be lazy? Amelia: No, I don't. Tom: That's my big downfall. Amelia: Really? Tom: That's why I push myself past the point of what some people consider reasonable, because in my head is a voice that is so catastrophically lazy, that I have to push like my wife will be telling me, "You're sick. You need to rest." I can't let myself do it, because that's what I want so badly. I've learned that doing what feels good is rarely the thing that moves me towards my goals. Amelia: Right. Yeah, I struggle more with that if I'm resting, I feel lazy and I hate that. I'm saying we've associated rest with laziness, which isn't the case necessarily. I'm trying to create this Twitter movement of epic rest days or rest day , because people go out there and they are like, "I'm bragging about this 30-mile or I just crashed and it's so epic bro." I'm like, "You know what? I walked a thousand steps today. I ate a tub of ice cream, .

It's not so bad. It's about balance, right? Tom: Right. No, that's really interesting. My wife and I actually get in fights with each other, because from the rationale perspective, the other person seems crazy. When she is pushing herself to ridiculous extremes like, "What are you doing?" Her retort is always, "This is exactly what you do when you're sick." It's like, "Okay, that's a little harder to argue." Amelia: It's very easy for me to dish out advice to other people, it's so hard for me to take it. I think that, that's also something I've really tried to do this past year is try to live authentically, to lead by example, and to make sure that if I'm telling somebody something that this is what they should do X, Y, and Z, that I'm also doing it myself. I feel like there's so many people out there that can spew advice and they can set up a life that looks so perfect on the outside. They can create anything through social media, but it's not authentic, and there's that weird disconnect and I hate that. For me, this past year especially, admitting vulnerability and admitting when I'm struggling is part of that entire trying to live authentically. Tom: What would you say to a young girl who struggles with just feeling inadequate? Amelia: I can imagine being a teenager right now. I remember how hard it was for me at that age. Now with social media, it boggles my mind. I think especially for younger girls, it's about, "Don't limit yourself. Don't label yourself. Constantly try and break boundaries and barriers. You don't have to choose." I think for me, one of the greatest compliments I can get and I never set out for this are people that come to me and parents that come to me and say, "We struggle for female role models in this world. Thank you for being a female role model for our daughter, something that can use their brains, can use their body." I never set out to be a role model, but to me that's so powerful. I, especially for younger girls is that don't label yourself.

Don't give into what is popular, because what's popular is definitely not necessarily not what's right. Challenge yourself physically. Challenge yourself mentally and look to break those barriers. That to me is you see a strong ... When I see images of strong girls coming to races, you have all these girls now interested in obstacles racing and that's phenomenal to me, because it's about being functional. It's not about looking a certain way, it's about what your body can do for you and achieving things, and carrying heavy things, and surviving hours in the woods. Tom: It really is a pretty incredible test. Talk to me though about when racing stop being fun for you at least for a minute? Amelia: Yeah, so people always ask me, "Now, would you quit being an attorney to be a full-time racer?" I never really seriously considered it for a number of reasons. One of them is also racing to me has always been the stress release. It's always been my outlet. As soon as you start making it your bread and what puts food on the table, it becomes not fun. That was the reason why I always kept all that. Tom: How do you think that robs the fun out of it? Amelia: Because it no longer is just winning just the cool thing, it's then winning because of the expectation and there's that pressure that surrounds it. I avoided that scenario, but I think for me racing, I went through a period where racing stopped being fun because I felt like if I wasn't winning, I was letting everyone else down, that it was expected that I was on the top of that podium. That all of a sudden, when I got 4th at Spartan Race World Championships, people, and I was supposed to win, it was like, "What happened to Amelia?" I was just like, "Guys, I got 4th." Tom: It's actually not so bad. Amelia: I know. It was this, all of a sudden what I realized is I was letting other people's expectations get to me, as supposed to just thinking about myself. I race because I love it, whether that's winning a race or whether that's coming in dead last, whether that's doing a race on crutches.

It's really trying to just harness in on the original reasons that I started all this. Tom: If you had to define confidence, how would you define it? Amelia: Confidence for me is not making apologies for how you're living or what you're doing. Tom: Not even feeling like you have to or just not doing it? Amelia: Just being able to make decisions and to own that, and to not care about all the noise. They may be the wrong decisions, but you need to stand by them, for me. Tom: All right. When you had the injury and everything, you said that it really, really shook your confidence. How did you rebuild it? What does that process look like? Amelia: Honestly, I'm still working through it. I'll let you know in a few months, but to me, it's celebrating the little victories for sure. The first time that I- Tom: Letting those build like momentum and confidence in you? Amelia: Yes, for sure, because every single little victory is going to create that bigger sense of self. That first run back where I did a mile, and it was high-five. I thought like I had just run a hundred miles, but it was that little wave, that if you can keep building on those. Unfortunately, it's never going to be a smooth linear progression. Those little setbacks are the times where you need to realize, "Okay, it's just a bleep on the radar. It's going to look like this, but as long as you can see that goal towards the end and embrace that process, that's really how I've been rebuilding it." Tom: That's really incredible. If you were in Stephen Hawking situation, what would you shift your attention to? Amelia: Yeah, so I've actually asked, if I couldn't race and if I couldn't express myself physically, because I've talked about it, is that I've ... When I haven't been able to use my legs, I've had to use my voice. What's really been empowering for me this past year is to be an advocate for the sport, be an advocate for obstacle racing.

It's such a new sport. We have such an opportunity as athletes to help shape it in where it goes and will it make it to the Olympics or what will it do? For me, it would be shaping that. Also, really, I'm really passionate about women in sport and about women and women equality in sport, things like that. It's using that voice. Tom: How do you think we get to that? Amelia: Man, that's been a question for how many years at this point. We've come a long way, but it's really just more and more, it's women standing up, but it's also men standing up. It's everyone regardless of making sure that price pursues for women are the same across genders. You see some sports where men get a hundred thousand dollars and women get $50,000 for winning the same freaking race. I don't get it. That is something that there needs to be a constant dialog about it. Unfortunately, we're still not there, but we're getting there. Tom: I know the quorum is going to force you to give me a really humble answer to this question and I'll maybe push you a bit, but what do you think your impact has been by you beat the vast majority of the men that you race against, the vast majority. Do you think that's helping? Do we need more people that are playing at that level that can really show up and dazzle, quite frankly? Amelia: What I want the impact to be is to start to normalize that conversation, because people will say, "Oh my gosh, you got 2nd overall," or she won that 50k outright like it's some crazy strange thing. That's great. It brings attention to it, but if we keep thinking about that as an outlier, it's not going to shift. We need to be like, "Look. Dude, that woman won. That's awesome. That's cool. That a woman won outright." If we can normalize that, then that's when I think we've really made progress. Tom: Have you seen the studies that they've done on "throwing a girl?" Amelia: Some of them, but they keep emerging, so I don't know exactly what you're saying.

Tom: Just that it's so incredible, it has nothing to do with being a girl and it has only to do with whether you keep throwing or not and that boys tend to keep throwing and girls are encouraged to go do other things and so they just stop and that boys when they first are throwing, throw like a girl. It's just that sheer repetition. When you were saying really pushing the boundaries that that's what you would want for a young woman, that to me, you want to talk about getting equality in the sport. Honestly, I think there really is only one answer, so I always play a game with myself like, no bullshit, what would it take? No bullshit, what would it take for female athletics and male athletics to be on par? I think it takes you, it takes people like you that show up, they play to win, they push the boundaries, they show that they're able to play at a level that's impressive to watch. I look at you and I'm not inspired, because you're a woman. I'm inspired because you're a badass and that it- Amelia: That's what I want. Not because I'm a badass, I have to feel like I'm . Tom: I think you could say that. Amelia: I want it to be regardless of gender, that I want it to be, because you're right. I grew up playing softball and so I'm sure I threw like a girl at first, but I throw, I was a pitcher and now I play softball very well. It's normalizing that and breaking down where we don't see the gender anymore. Unfortunately, to not see the gender, we almost for a while have to be hypersensitive to it or that's at least the realm that we're in right now. How do we shift from that hypersensitivity to then being blind to it? Tom: Yeah, so trust me, I do not wish Stephen Hawking upon you, but the voice that you have learned to speak in and I think other women are going to see that and they're going to realize that's got to be a part of the strategy, of finding that equality is to be able to speak out, to encourage them to push the boundary, just to say that they can do it, that it's a valid choice I think is going to go a long way towards doing that, getting more people adapting it early, developing their prowess and then we can see really what they're capable of doing, which is pretty incredible.

Just seeing them blossom in this endurance events I think is really going to make people question their own assumptions about what women are capable of. Amelia: Yeah, we just had an ultra runner in Texas in this 100K. She won it outright. She won outright and you're seeing this more and more. It's one of those things to keep that conversation going, that I think is really important. Tom: It's amazing. I'll be very interested to see how far we can take this. I hope that you certainly stay very, very invested in the sport whether it's competing, commentating, obviously you won't be able to compete forever, but a voice is pretty missed. Amelia: I don't know. Thinking about the endurance sports is that you tend to peak later on. I'm always like, "Oh, I'm 33 and I feel so broken." I'm like, "No, I'm still doing this as long as it's fun and as long as my body lets me." I'm excited for the ride. Tom: What's the impact you want to have on the world? Amelia: My God, that's such a good question, because I think that the impact that you think that you want isn't always the impact that you end up having. If you'd ask me that question 10 years ago, I would have given you a completely different answer. Tom: What would the answer been 10 years ago? Amelia: It would have been, be a partner at a law firm and have my 2.5 kids, and married. It was listing under dream or whatever. I realized now that what I see, what I want to do is live authentically, live by example. Also, what I've really learned and to know that you don't have to fit in these boxes and that you may not be able to have it all, but there are opportunities there to always pivot into reinvent yourself and that especially for young girls is you don't have to choose. You don't have to choose brains, you don't have to choose beauty, you don't have to choose strength.

You can have them all and you can incorporate those into your life. For me, it's not having this massive global impact, it's the small little connections that I make to people through all these to the girls running those obstacle races that are 10, 11 out there, that I can have those impacts on those little ... those little impacts on peoples' lives, then I think that adds up to the big one. Tom: That's incredible. Where can these guys find you online? Amelia: Twitter at Amelia Boone. I'm on Instagram at arboone11. Facebook, I have a website that desperately always needs updating. Tom: That's amazing blog content, really, really great. Amelia: Thank you. Yeah, so my blog ameliabooneracing.com. You can find it there. I don't get to write as often as I would like, but it's one of my favorite things. Tom: Your blog is titled in Latin. Amelia: It is. Tom: What does that stand for? Amelia: Race Ipsa Loquitur is a doctrine in law that means, "The thing speaks for itself." Tom: That's cool. Amelia: It was a play on race, which is R-E-S and then I made it R-A-C-E, yeah so I was corporate in a little law. Tom: That's good. I like it. Amelia, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was absolutely incredible. Amelia: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Tom: All right. Guys, you're going to want to dive into her world on this one. It is absolutely incredible. What you're going to see is somebody who has really found their voice both physically and just from the perspective of being able to articulate things for people. What she does physically is unbelievable. It will make you challenge every assumption you have about what a human can do, let alone what a woman can do and when you see the footage of her crying in the ice cold river, and she just keeps going in one of the death races, which she has completed three times. By the way, it is absolutely astonishing to watch a human push the boundaries.

When she said that, "I hope that you guys got the chills like I did," that is unbelievable to encourage people to push boundaries. I hope you guys are pushing the boundaries in your life, not accepting limitations, pushing your mind as hard as you push your body. This is somebody who is a role model for me to be certain and I hope as a role model for many people. Guys, dive in. She will change your life if you let her. All right, it's a weekly show, so be sure to subscribe. Until next time my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Amelia, thank you again so much. What a pleasure. Amelia: Thank you so much. Yeah. Speaker 3: Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life, our one ask is that you go to iTunes and Stitcher and rate and review. Not only does that help us build this community, which at the end of the day is all we care about, but it also helps us get even more amazing guest on here to share their knowledge with all of us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of this community. Until next time. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. How did we do? If you rate this transcript 3 or below, this agent will not work on your future orders How to Cultivate Toughness Amelia Boone on Impact Theory Page 2 of 20 Need Help? mailto:support@rev.com Get this transcript with table formatting.