Can't Be Broken
Can't Be Broken
Conquering Life's Challenges Through Sports and Resilience with Jamie Whitmore
What happens when a college athlete's passion for sports leads to an unexpected, life-altering journey? Meet Jamie Whitmore, a phenomenal athlete whose story captivates with tales of resilience, humor, and triumph over adversity. From swimming laps as a child and running cross-country in high school to making a pivotal career decision influenced by a chance encounter with a triathlete, Jamie’s narrative is a testament to ambition and determination. Learn how a memorable incident involving a naked guy at Berkeley played a role in her college choice, and how an unexpected path led her to become a professional triathlete and mountain biker.
Discover the intricate balance between Olympic dreams and financial realities as Jamie sheds light on the lesser-known challenges faced by athletes outside major sports circuits. Her journey through the Xterra circuit embodies strategic decision-making, showcasing the complexities of training across multiple disciplines like mountain biking, trail running, and swimming. She candidly discusses the role of sponsorships and endorsements in sustaining an athlete’s career, underscoring the power of perseverance and community support during health crises. Facing two battles with cancer, Jamie’s strength shines through as she recounts the emotional journey and the importance of faith and family in overcoming life's hurdles.
Jamie’s story doesn’t end at the finish line; rather, it inspires the next generation as she looks to the future with hopes of writing a book and fostering an interest in STEM education. Her experiences as a Paralympian and motivational speaker offer a rich tapestry of lessons in grit and resilience. Whether championing innovation in sports safety or sharing her motivational journey, Jamie Whitmore exemplifies the power of purpose and the impact one dedicated individual can have on the world. Tune in to this powerful episode filled with humor, heartache, and hope, and let Jamie's story inspire you to confront challenges and pursue your passions fearlessly.
What up, what up, what up, and welcome to another episode of Can't Be Broken Podcast. I am your host, seamonster, and today I have a special person with me that you guys are going to be wowed by her story, who she is and how she carries herself. I met her back. We went to college together, and so we didn't have social media, we didn't have all these things that are going on now, and so we lost contact. We graduated the same year. She was a criminology major, and so was I. Actually, I was a sociology major, minored in criminology, and I ended up doing something with it, but she went on a different path, and what an amazing path it is. She's an amazing person, a friend. She's a Paralympian, a motivational speaker, a cancer survivor, an ESPY winner, a mother of two and so much more. Welcome to the show, jamie Whitmore.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be here and basically, what you're saying is that we're old. Well, I'm old. I'm old for sure. No, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule. I know you're super, super busy, not only being a mother and everything that you do to give back to communities, public speaking, motivational speaker. You're a pro athlete. You got to become an athlete and then into the professional style, and then we'll jump into a little bit of what happened during that time that caused you to be a Paralympian.
Speaker 2:Well, I grew up in South Sacramento, which is located in Northern California, and I found sports very early on in life. I was about five years old and joined the swim team. It was a year round swim team. It was mostly because of my older sister. I wanted to be just like her so I dabbled in that for a while. My next door neighbor played fast pitch softball so I gave that a try. And then my dad was big into volleyball so I played co-ed volleyball for our church league as a kid and realized at some point I wasn't a team sports kind of person. And it was mostly because I just didn't want people to rely on me and I didn't want to be upset if somebody else like messed up, like I didn't. I didn't want to be mad at them and I'm so competitive. I realized individual sports was kind of my jam because then it was just me and the clock. So in gosh, it must've been eighth grade.
Speaker 2:A friend of mine was on the track team Cause kind of middle school is where you can dabble in sports for a very short period of time and figure out what it is you like. So she talked me into coming out to run. I ran the mile I was pretty good at it, went to high school, started doing volleyball and it just again wasn't my thing. And so my geometry teacher, mr Hunt Coach Hunt was the head track coach and he kept saying he would recruit anyone and everyone in that class, all his classes. So I said, of course I'll be out. There Was pretty good at the mile and the two mile, which then led me into cross country.
Speaker 2:So my sophomore, junior, senior year I ran cross country. I was one of the top runners in our sections. I think I won both my junior and senior year and then qualified for state meet both times. And again, track was pretty good, but that's what led me to earn a scholarship to Cal State, northridge. Yeah, and I was being recruited around the time of the earthquake. So that big earthquake was scheduled or happened just before my recruiting trip and so we postponed it. I ended up going there, loved the people, loved the track team and realized it was probably the safest place to be in California because they had just had the earthquake. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's how I ended up there, yeah, so that's how I ended up there and in class with you, which I was, I think I it was a minor in criminology with a major in sociology, but yeah, that was my focus. I wanted to go into law enforcement, wanted to be US Marshal, so I was really excited about that.
Speaker 1:You know, the funny thing is is I remember well now talking to you would have been great at whatever you did anyway. Really, you have a really great approach to life and, in general, to everything you do. Have a really great approach to life and, in general, to everything you do, and obviously it started at a young age and so, whether you went that route or the route that you are in now evidence that you overcome any adversity, obviously, and you take it head on, and so you would have been a great marshal if that was the route you took. But obviously it didn't Right and that's life right. You choose, you make choices and it takes you in different directions, but reality of it is, I think, the foundation part of it is, no matter what you would have done, based on your morals, values, competitive nature, your winning nature internally, your fortitude, you overcame and succeeded, no matter where you're at, and where you're at right now, you know.
Speaker 1:For sure yeah no, no, yeah, and then that's where we met. Yeah, the CSUN give a lot of love to CSUN Matadors. I had a couple other scholarships as well, to go and play. Did you have other scholarship or other offers at other schools? Where were those at?
Speaker 2:Berkeley was looking at me, and it was at the time that there was this naked guy that would yeah, he was known as naked guy and he was going to class completely naked and I'm telling you, I was like not going there, not going.
Speaker 1:Naked guy huh.
Speaker 2:It was. I know the whole trajectory of my life could be changed if they didn't have a naked guy at Berkeley.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying. If the naked guy was at CSUN, you would have gotten to Berkeley.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't have gotten there. And then Cal State, Sacramento was also recruiting me heavily and there were a couple other schools I don't remember. But what stood out about Northridge, honestly, was just was my trip. There was this gal, Lori Miller we still keep in touch because, as you say, social media and I had so much fun with her and the coach, Don Stramitz, was the head coach at the time and he was. He just knew his stuff and I knew I could get faster under him without being overtrained. And for me it was about, you know, maybe taking sport beyond college, like how far could I really go? Do I, could I do marathons and things like that. So I was excited to go there and don't regret the choice one bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I mean I had a couple of different offers and I wanted to go away from home. I grew up in the Valley here and my parents were going through a divorce. My brother was playing pro ball. Long story short, I was the only man in the family. Earthquake hit the whole deal and I'm like I got to stay local. You know I can't go and 100% best decision I made. You know, the best man at my wedding was a pitcher on the team. We still keep in contact. He lives locally and it's just amazing. People and the team was amazing, the coach was amazing and I had a great time, even though we were in bungalows and domes and all that. The campus sucked, but remember that that. But I mean it was an amazing time. It it probably wasn't the big college experience that you would get on some of these you know SDSU or even Berkeley but it was perfect. It fit like a glove for me. You know what I'm saying like it was just perfect.
Speaker 2:so yeah, I would. I would 100% agree. Yeah, it wasn't like the college community that I see now with other schools, as my friends' kids are going off to college. But still, you know, I had great experience and met the really kind, fun people and stayed out of trouble, so all good.
Speaker 1:You met me, right? Yeah, exactly, see, we're giving a plug, plug in for CSUN. They don't even know it. We're like they owe us something. Well, tell us a little bit after you graduated and what you did after graduation and what led you into where you're doing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was lucky and was in and out in four years. I had it all planned. I did not. I redshirted, I think, an indoor track season due to an injury, but didn't want to stick around a fifth year for a master's. I was just like I'm good, so I came.
Speaker 2:I came back home and I will never forget hanging out. It must've been gosh. I think it was the summertime, some some midsummer, where there was this gal named Barbara Lindquist, who was a collegiate swimmer, talking about turned triathlete and just talking about her experiences in triathlon. And I'd always been intrigued by that sport because I used to. I used to swim, I grew up swimming competitively for many years and then was a pretty good runner and so all I needed to do is get a bike and figure out how to bike. And so I turned to my dad while all kinds of interviews had been lined up for jobs. I remember my mom had lined up this all women's private investigative group. I was supposed to interview with them. And then again, moving forward to like US Marshals, sheriff's Department, all those kinds of US Marshals, sheriff's Department, all those kinds of things, I tell my dad, can I just hold off on that? I want to try to give triathlon a try. And so he looked at me and said, sure, so that winter we went and bought. He bought me a road bike. So he was my first sponsor. I tell people, he bought me my first road bike.
Speaker 2:I joined a triathlon group and started to learn, because there's more than just swimming, biking and running. You also have to kind of navigate nutrition. You have to navigate how to do transition, what's the best equipment out there, and I knew I couldn't do it by myself. So this group was amazing. I trained with them for probably about six months to my first multi-sport event, and around that time I met my he. He's my ex-husband now, but I met him. He's working at a bike shop. He was big into downhill downhilling and mountain biking, and so were all these guys at the bike shop. So I started to get connected with them and kind of dabbled in mountain biking. I hated it. Oh, this is the funniest part of my entire story. I hated mountain biking. I probably walked my bike as much as I rode it because, like I would be terrified. So a very long story short.
Speaker 2:Two of my training partners in triathlon also enjoyed mountain biking and we made this like game out of every time I went mountain biking. It was. It was like this points game. So if I put a foot down, it was worth one point. If I put two feet down, it would be two If I crashed but stayed on my bike. So I just like fell over, that was three points and if I fully launched off the bike it would be four. If I walked a section it was five. So you see where I'm getting with this. I can no longer walk sections.
Speaker 2:And we had like prizes and everything and you could redo sections, but it really the the need to win and beat these three other people. So it was my ex-husband and my two training buddies and we had prizes. Like the big dog was this little stuffed animal and every time we rode you held whatever spot you won, like whatever prize it was that you won from the last race, and so they would, or the ride. So it would constantly change. It elevated my mountain bike game so much that, let's see, I started mountain biking in 2000. By 2001, I had earned a pro card. By 2001, I had earned a pro card and then, but I love triathlon and didn't want to give that up, so I had also earned a pro card in that. So I I was, I had a license in both, and then that's when I discovered it's called Xterra and it was the perfect embodiment of both of those, the perfect mesh where it was off-road triathlons.
Speaker 2:Now that, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, no, I was going to ask. Is it like when you told your dad or your parents, hey, I want to give this a try, Was your mindset to go pro? Like you approach them and says, hey, I want to give this a shot, to try to go pro. Or hey, dad, hold on, I'm trying to have fun and just mountain bike and, you know, do my thing. Or was the intention already, hey, I want to hold on this career, that's going to work for the government and I want to give professional you know, triathlons or mountain biking or road biking a real shot here. And was it attainable in your mind and your parents? Believe all you know, believed you and all that? Or how did that work out?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a hundred percent. I wanted to be pro, I mean it was. So I was figuring out how to go into law enforcement and it could I be a professional runner? Right, because I needed. I would have had to probably move to marathoning or stick with 10 Ks, which were so long I was like, oh my gosh, this race is forever. Right, I wanted to be like the miler 5k runner, but I just it wasn't in the cards for me. So my path it was going to look like I needed to go longer.
Speaker 1:So the shorter races weren't in your path, you'd like, and you looked at your times for that. Or you looked at, like, the competition and you just had a reality. You, you had a self acuity moment where you're like, no, that's not, I'm not going to be that, so this is better a choice for me to become Okay, you have to have self acuity.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, a hundred percent. It was like the talent was there. It was just you know what? What? What could I be the best at? Because so, back up to being this six-year-old girl, my, my whole life, I wanted to be a professional Like I. It was just etched in me that I, you know, I just I would pray all the time Like, please, god, let me, let me just find the sport I could be a pro in. And then law enforcement was kind of like the backup plan. If this doesn't work, then I'll always have this.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the importance of education, right, when kids want to skip getting their education, you always need a backup plan because you do not know what is going to happen in life. You don't know where you need to be flexible. You need to be like a rubber band where you can just go, you can stretch Right, and if you are so rigid, like a stick, you you have nothing to fall back on. And when your plan fails like not not even through your fault, but let's just say life happens and it takes you down a different path you need to be able to adjust. And so that is something my dad, being an auditor appraiser, always taught me like have multiple plans, have backup plans, have, like, have security so that you can be confident in if this doesn't go right. You can do this, and it's also how I think I approach sports Like I would. I was always in these long distance sports so you could have multiple plans, especially in triathlon, if the swim doesn't go well, which it never did, like I was not the fastest swimmer, so I would often come back mid pack. Sometimes I'd have a bad swim, I'd come back, but I still had two other events that it would eventually be. I could make up that time Right. And so you have to have all these plans.
Speaker 2:If you get a flat tire on the bike, you got to be able to do that and know and have the confidence that your run is strong enough to bring you back into the race. And maybe you're not going to get first, but you know we were. It was a point series often when I raced so you could. You didn't want to DNF, you didn't want to fail completely, so you had to still finish. Like that, I raced every race wanting to get to the finish line, no matter what place that was, because it mattered the overall.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it was constantly seeking those things and that's why my dad was okay with it. That's why my dad went out and invested in me because he knew I had the drive like he's always known this that I have the drive to push for my own success. And I think, to go off on a little tangent as a parent, looking at my children, the number one thing I have always told them in sports is that you need to be successful because you want it. You have to find that drive. I can't force you to have that, I can't push you, I can't live vicariously through you, which I see in a lot of other parents out there that take it way too seriously. It has to come within and I know, because that's how I was successful, like it came from my heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, 100%. And the other thing is that I see as well is it's almost like parents are blinded as well sometimes. And I mean, mean, we want the best for our kids, but you have to see the reality too. You have to see if they're, you know, good enough or not. You know, because some, some parents would be like my kid's gonna be a pro baseball player. I'm like I don't think I play baseball and you know, the guy can barely throw the first base right now. Good luck, you know, um, but so you have to, you have to have a reality check. You have to be real with yourself. You have to be real.
Speaker 1:And that's why I asked you know, did your dad believe in you? And and you believed in yourself, and you guys were realistic about this? It wasn't a far-fetched dream, you know. It was something that like, yeah, I'm right there. You know, the right coaching, the right consistency, the right so-and-so and so-and-so. There was a big investment, there was belief on both sides, and you went and attacked it. You had the drive. There was already. Your dad already knew that there was no blindness. There was no. I'm just going to support my kid, you know go ahead do what the fuck you want, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, that's what I tell my kids, like I'll open the doors for you, I'll make sure you get there, I'll be your biggest cheerleader, but at the end of the day, you're the one that toes that field. You're the one that has to like mentally figure it out and physically put the work in and want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just for everybody, a triathlon is going to be a swimming part first, the bike part second and then the running part. Last part first the bike part, second and then the running part last. And there's different levels.
Speaker 2:There's a sprint which is a short I think it's a 900, it's like usually about 750 meters swim. It's usually about a 15 mile ride and then a 5k run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you have the Olympic, which is a little bit longer. You have a half and then you have a full, and right now where you were competing was full Olympics. What were you doing?
Speaker 2:It was a completely different one in the sense that it was. It was an off road triathlon, correct, so it was. It was between, a little bit, correct so it was. It was between, um, a little bit between. It was mostly close to, say, an Olympic distance, but the bike takes longer because a 25, let's say a 20 to 25 mile bike ride on a mountain bike takes a lot longer. We're climbing bigger mountains.
Speaker 2:Trail running is not fast Like, but generally those were around 10 K and our swim was 1.5 kilometers. So our races for the women were right about three hours. The men were about two and a half to 240. And and and depending on the course again, would be dictate how long I was in a four hour race one time, cause it was so muddy, and then our shortest races was like two and a half hours or two hours. I'd say about two. So it was.
Speaker 2:It was such a perfect blend, though, of my talent because I was becoming very gifted on the mountain bike and in one of the I definitely was one of the top mountain bikers in in Xterra and then always had that strong run because that was my background. So if you asked any of my competitors they were like oh yeah, no, she was, she was definitely a runner, that was my strength, and then a pretty decent mountain biker, and so that combo often won the races for me so in my go ahead, go ahead, sorry I was gonna say I had about a seven year career in off-roadRA was not in the Olympics, but mountain biking was.
Speaker 2:So in 2007, I was kind of making that decision of if I want to go to the Olympics at some point, whether it be 2008 or 2012,. I have to start focusing more on mountain biking, because swimming and running take away from the mountain bike and those girls like. The fact that I could dip into the top five for Americans was pretty dang good, considering I spent half my time running and swimming Right, and so I was really juggling because my bread and butter and all of my money and my sponsors and everything were coming from my success in Xterra. So so that was. That was fantastic. Like I was in 2004,. I won. I won the world championships, I was the top U S athlete and since and and it was just one of those, do I want to go to the Olympics or do I just want to do? I want to be satisfied with being just a pro.
Speaker 1:Not just a pro, but a pro yeah, yeah, just a pro, just at the highest level.
Speaker 2:Oh my god right, but the sad reality of most olympic sports is they don't pay the bills. And if you ever really want to see the nitty-gritty is watch any movie on Steve Prefontaine. And he's one of America's greatest runners that never got to really live to his capacity because he died in a car accident. But he talks about in his movies the struggles of being a you know, a runner and trying to go to the Olympics. I think it's better now because we've changed rules and you can now make money, like you can be a professional alongside of being an Olympian. But we have so many sports out there. You know things like canoeing and kayaking, and these are sports that just don't get a lot of recognition and you don't make a lot of money. So it's a choice. You're choosing to probably live on food stamps to be a successful athlete, like we're not. Football is where it's at right Baseball, basketball they make, they make the money.
Speaker 1:Well, right now it's changed in college because now they have the nil and you can make money. Based on how good I was in college, I probably would have got paid in pesos, but you know, but I was all right, I had a scholarship there, it's all that mattered. But, um, yeah, it's so different now because you can make some money and some people choose to stay there rather than go pro because they are making money. But, like you said, a lot of it is, uh, is in football, still some basketball and baseball and the big sports that bring in some money and stuff. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's crazy to be an athlete. You know you got to choose between like I've heard the stories going to the olympics and you're hoping that you're topping, you know you gold or you get some kind of medal because maybe now you get some sponsorships or some some kind of money elsewhere.
Speaker 2:you know, rightorsement, and that's the biggest thing, yeah, but then the endorsements are all dictated by NBC. I'm going to be real and they will pick their athletes and that is who they showcased. And I want to say, like I want to give mad props to like Snoop Dogg and the whole thing. He got paid a crap ton of money which was like oh. But at the same time, I feel he brought such recognition to the sports that most people don't hear about. And for that, like I'm like you were, you were awesome, like he made it fun, he made it lighthearted, like equestrian. I mean, did you, did you not see him dress up like that was fantastic. And then he went out there. And we need more of that. We need people who are in the spotlight, bringing more recognition to sports, just to just to help all those sports out there.
Speaker 2:And then, who's the guy that donated the money to water polo? I'm at a loss for him right now. Um, oh, my goodness, but he, he's, like he was a rapper or something. Oh my gosh, I'm killing myself. So he found out that the women's water polo team like barely had anyone investing in them and he stepped up to the plate and he was. He sponsored their team so that they didn't have to work like two and three jobs that they could focus on water polo and while we didn't win a medal it's like he's Dr Dre, was it Dr Dre? He's so invested in it now that, like he's, he's helping them for the next quad going into la 2028.
Speaker 1:You're 100 right, but you know also why hasn't this happened before. You know, and we've seen it. We've seen it in not only in sports, but I remember when, and it wasn't my time right but you hear and you see the stories of like when we went off to war in Vietnam and we hated our soldiers. And now everybody's about. You know America and our soldiers and if you're I mean if you're flying you got first class, first dibs jumping in. You know, like, if you're served in the military, you're at Dodger games for free. You're getting treated like king and queens. You know, yeah, and that hasn't happened to law enforcement yet, and I hope it does. But stages, because we should. These are people representing us, everybody, including yourself, thank you so much, obviously and representing the United States of America. And and yet there's no money there and they have jobs and they're going out and we're watching them on TV and we're applauding them and we love them, yet nobody's doing anything financially so that they can train better and eat better and move better and support's like there's something lost in between. And, like you said, thank god for people stepping up and hopefully it continues and it was good.
Speaker 1:What snoop dogg did you know? Sure, he got paid millions. Who knows what he's doing with that money? Does he need it? But uh, he did bring light to more. And then the other person that obviously selfishly donated money to the water polo team. Um, but that should be happening more. Where there's, there's money to be made, uh, in that sport. So tell everybody a little bit about uh. You're an espy winner, but you're also an olympian. So tell everybody a little bit of how you transitioned, a little bit from professional XTERRA triathlons to the Olympic team, what you've done there, and then the SB winning. I want to hear about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a fun day. So I basically, let's see, I'd been racing for about seven years off-road and then in mountain biking and in 2007, it was October. 2007 was our world championships, and I had had a pretty successful year, had done, done well and was gearing up. I had just won the USA championships and looking to earn another world title. I can't exited the water out of the swim, headed out onto the bike and something was up with my left leg and I kept pedaling because I mean, even like, I tell myself I have to get across the finish line because they pay down to like sixth place, right. So so the goal is always making sure you have a payday. Maybe you don't win, but you can't just like throw in the towel. And so I, I, when I came into the second transition to head off to run, I was in sixth place in my leg. My, it was the weirdest thing. It just kept being having tingling, it was hurting, and so I was pushing more with my right leg in my and it was a position I had never. I had never been that far back. And my, I remember my dad kind of looking at me like what's going on? You're in sixth place Cause they would always let me know and I I did, I just didn't know went out onto the run. Then my right leg started cramping, so it was like both legs were now cramping and I I went into this like shuffle. I was like the smaller my steps could be and I have to run 10 kilometers, the smaller my steps can be, the better I can at least finish, I guess, because I was really worried I was not going to make it to the finish line. That's how bad. Whatever was going on was happening. Somehow miraculously I made my way into third place. So some other people were hurting more than me and kind of what ended up happening after that race was I took about a month off, because we always it's the last race of the year, we take time off. It's the off season. We do other things, so you could find me like kayaking or paddle boarding or rock climbing, whatever.
Speaker 2:And when I started up again in in December I think it was early December I always kind of start with running because it's my passion, it's my favorite thing. But my left leg was like super tight and it was weird, and so after the run I kind of went down and tried to stretch and I couldn't even touch my toes and I thought this is really weird. But it doesn't stop me. So I keep going, I'm doing everything the same. I start to swim again, I start to bike. My leg is fine in both of those, but the run it's still like really bad. So I keep taking time off of the run, I take a week off, I try to run again and I can't. So I'm biking, I'm swimming.
Speaker 2:It's now January and I want to say it's about the end of January and, oh my gosh, I went for a bike ride, a mountain bike ride, and this is the pain. It was so excruciating and it was like in my sciatic area, kind of like that hamstring, and so sitting I remember sitting being weird, all these things. So all of a sudden people are referring me, my coach is worried because I still can't run. Like it's January, the season's going to start in three months and I am unable to run without some sort of weird pain, and so I went and got an MRI.
Speaker 2:I remember crying in that MRI because it was so painful to lay on my back and I kept moving and the guy was like yelling at me because we had to keep redoing it Like MRIs are like 45 minutes long, but the tests were inconclusive, they didn't find anything. So I then went to another doctor and so during this like the next two months let's just say right around February I got it must've been February 7th I went for a bike ride. I went out about 15 minutes, came back, was absolutely bawling because I was in so much pain. So now this for the next like couple of weeks, I was going to like hospital after hospital, specialist after specialist, and I was just getting misdiagnosed after misdiagnosed.
Speaker 1:I want to say like yeah, what were some of the diagnoses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that so one was you have bursitis, which is like an overusage injury. Right Another one they thought I had a ruptured disc but the x-ray showed I didn't. So they I remember hooking at one point they hooked my leg up to needles and they were. They were like um, what do you call it? Like zapping me to see where, where they could pinpoint, cause it was exhibiting like a lot of, basically, nerve pain. So, and he was the one that was convinced it was a ruptured disc. And when I showed him my x-rays he said okay. So he sent me to a neurologist which I never ended up going to see, which is, you know, your brain brain doctor, because it was progressing so quickly that I ended up just at an ER in Roseville.
Speaker 2:So I was like going to all these different community like hospitals because I just nobody was helping me. One guy thought I was in there seeking cortisol, like shots, and I kept telling him like I get drug tested. You saw it comes to my door. I don't want anything, I just want you to tell me what is wrong with me. And then he was so arrogant and rude to me that that's why I kept going to different hospitals.
Speaker 2:My experiences were terrible. And so finally I was in Brooksville, which is like it's like an hour and 15 minutes from my house, maybe an hour and 20. And we had had a friend that was a doctor in the hospital. So he said, just go there, I'll make sure you're treated. Well, the guy who I had originally seen when I came in because I'd been there for so long, ended up shifting and the new, like you know, transitioning out shift change, a new doc came in and he they had done a CT scan and he was convinced it was an ovarian cyst. And I was like, bro, it's, it's not an ovarian cyst, like I've had friends that have those. First of all, the pain I'm exhibiting isn't even in that area.
Speaker 2:And but he he swore. He called me at home and he's like you need to go see an OBGYN. I'm just really worried. And so I went to go see an OBGYN. Then that guy examined me and said I think you have ovarian, this could be serious. And he never said ovarian cancer.
Speaker 2:But that's who I ended up being referred to was an ovarian cancer specialist. So now I'm visiting this guy and like these, these are not like fun exams Like this is so invasive and they're checking an area that once again I keep telling them it is not that area. But the problem now is it's, it's, it's becoming increasingly harder for me to walk and and it's just pain all the time. And so this ovarian specialist decides he's going to do what's called like a laparoscopy. So they make these little incisions and he goes in and he's going to take a sample of whatever this is, because he is worried it's ovarian cancer.
Speaker 2:And I just thought like, oh my gosh. So I go in on what was supposed to be an in and out patient basis and next thing I know I'm being admitted to the hospital because apparently there there was a large mass in me and then it was encompassed by blood vessels. And when he went to take a sample of the mass, which was his plan, I started to bleed out, so he had to stop the thing. Stitch me up. They admitted me and the stinky part is that I now could not go to the bathroom on my own, and I know that might be TMI but, like I could not pee, like I.
Speaker 2:So I was on a catheter and when they took it out I went to the bathroom but couldn't go and I had to go really bad. And so I've now been transferred to another hospital to send me to see another specialist. And this guy was insistent on you need, we need to pull this catheter bag out. And I remember being so mad and so angry that my because my stomach was starting to descend and like I don't know what happens if you can't go to the bathroom, like what happens? Could your bladder explode? So I'm freaking out and finally finally convinced whomever it was I think it was a guy nurse.
Speaker 2:Once again, this, the shifting of the nurses. So the female nurse left, the guy nurse came and I'm just bawling and crying and I'm so mad and I'm just like you need to calf me. And he's looking at me like I don't have time to bring a woman in, do you mind if it's me? And I'm like just do it. And I'm like the most modest person in the world. So it tells you how much pain I was in. Sure enough, it's all relieved. And so now this new specialist that I'm seeing I didn't know it at the time. But he was an oncologist, right? Because I'm just in a lot of pain, I'm delirious, I don't know what's going on. And he, we sit in his office and he says to me all I, all I remember him saying was 20, 20 years. He's telling me all these things, but he said the thing that stuck out was he said 20 years ago we would have just cut off your leg. And I was like what the hell.
Speaker 2:And I just, I know right, I'm like professional athlete, been running for like 15 years and all I heard was like cut off my leg. And I I didn't even understand why. Like why 20 years ago would you cut off my leg? Nobody has said anything to me.
Speaker 2:Once again, we had a friend at another hospital in San Francisco. He was a physician's assistant for a nerve doctor. San Francisco, he was a physician's assistant for a nerve doctor and he was listening to like me describe all of my pain and all of that and he just he just said, come to UCSF. So it was like a two hour drive. We we packed me up. At this point I couldn't sit. I had a Foley bag so I couldn't go to the bathroom, so I just laid all the time and my leg was starting to atrophy. And then my leg was starting to be like stuck in this really awkward position that I can't put it in right now. And I was admitted right away when I got to San Francisco.
Speaker 2:It was on a Friday I have weird things that you remember, right but then, but this oncologist came in. He would, I only knew him as like the sarcoma doctor, once again not really understanding what a sarcoma is. Have no idea that I'm like seeing cancer specialists, right, because that's how messed up I am, and so the thought that I even had cancer did not cross my mind. I just kept hearing large tumor, large mass, and I don't know why I couldn't connect the dots. So he admits me, they get my pain under control. And the best way to describe how much pain I was in on a scale of one to 10, doctors always ask you know how? How how high is your pain? Is it dull, is it sharp? All these things that help them describe it. The guy says on a scale of one to 10, what's your pain? And I looked straight out of it was like 20. I mean it was, and I have. You know, athletes, we have high tolerances for pain. We can endure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can endure a lot. So he ends up admitting me, got that under control, so now it was down to an eight and then and then they proceeded to to do more testing on me me like a needle biopsy, and it's weird because so much of that kind of stuff I rely on my family to tell me what was going on, because I only remember bits and pieces. When you're that sleep deprived and you're in that much pain, like your brain is just not functioning Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. I mean, yeah, I get it like you're just and and also I I believe some of it is I wouldn't say denial, but you're just like wait a minute, and then you've been told so many different things that you're now like here's another one, coming up with another theory of some some stuff, that something's wrong with my head, when my leg is fucking hurting. You know what I'm saying? Right, like it's your hair, it's your hair color, you know? Yeah, really, okay, cool, you know.
Speaker 2:And that's the funny thing is, nobody ever says you might have cancer, right, that I swear to you, if you ever go to an oncologist, they, they will not tell you anything until you actually have cancer. And then it's, you have cancer but they will never tell you it might be right. Because they don't they. I think they just don't want to be negative nillies, like they don't want to send you down this road spirally, so so. So we called my oncologist like the doctor, feel good doctor, because he, to this day, still was never the person who delivered that bad news. It was actually two. I was, I had been admitted. He, to this day, still was never the person who delivered that bad news. It was actually two I was, I had been admitted, I'd probably been in the hospital for about two weeks at this point, really bad off. And two doctors walked in a short guy of of like you know who's thick, and then this tall, lean guy, and they stood at the foot of my bed. And the short one says so, if you have to do radiation, this is what it's going to look like. And I didn't hear anything. I did not hear or no, chemo, he was chemo. I did not hear anything after if you do chemo, and, and I. But I could see his lips moving and I in my brain I remember thinking why is this guy talking to me about chemo? Like that's, that's what you talk to people, wait, wait, whoa. And then the other guy, his lips start to move and I hear him say and if you have to do radiation, this is what it's going to look like. And again, like my brain was just it was spinning and I remember my eyes welling up like totally filling with tears, that and I'm so a person that hates to cry Cause like I feel it's a sign of weakness and I'm just like I cannot cry in front of these doctors. But it was like being in a Charlie episode of Charlie Brown, where you never hear the adults talk, like they're just more, more, more, and that's all. That's all I remember.
Speaker 2:And then the short doctor says so, do you have any questions? And in my brain I thought, yeah, I have one question, and it was one question. I didn't want to know the answer and I said, yeah, do I have cancer? And the tall doctor looks at his watch and says, oh, I have another patient. He boned out so fast. Oh, he cause they did not, they, I, he probably felt bad that they just came in and told me all of this information and I didn't even know I had cancer. And so the short yeah, the short doctor just like nods his head and I lost it, like there was no holding back the tears in my eyes, I was bawling and I just kept saying I don't want to die, I don't want to die, and I just kept repeating it.
Speaker 2:And it was a very touching moment with my dad at that point because he had been at my side this whole time. He was sleeping at the hospital with me, he was super stressed. You could tell he was like aging 50 years in the span of these months and he, he, we're, we're a family of faith. And he turned to me and said all you need is a mustard seed of faith, jamie, it's going to be okay. And I know that was like a lot for my dad because he probably just wanted to like crumble, because I'm his daughter. You know what parent wants to see their kid go through this. But he had to be strong because, like I, was losing it and normally I'm the strong one and and it was one of those where he just kept reminding me you just need a mustard seed of faith.
Speaker 2:And you know, he went home that night. My ex-husband came in to stay and I had asked him to bring me a can of mustard seeds because I like visuals, right, like what athlete doesn't like visuals? Like we want to see the stats, we want the numbers, we want, we want to visually see like how, how to overcome something, like how to accomplish whatever. And so the next day I thought he was going to go to the grocery store and then bring me this, this tin of mustard seeds. He actually went to a Christian Bible store and bought me a cross on a chain with a mustard seed in it.
Speaker 2:And it was, you know, cause, like my dad's a dad's dad like, seriously, the grocery store thing was totally what I could see him doing and he brought me that necklace and I wore that necklace like for years until I almost lost it because the clasp broke, so now I just have it hung. But it was so the key to everything that came like from that moment on, like it was even where I am today it was. It was just that, that constant reminder of I mean that small, that small and you can move a mountain. So then you got diagnosed with what was the name of the cancer. So the cancer I had was called the spindle cell sarcoma and sarcomas for those that don't know, they are the one of the most deadliest cancers you can get aside from pancreatic, pancreatic cancer. That that's like the deadliest cancers. You can get aside from pancreatic, pancreatic cancer. That that's like the deadliest, that's like you get that and it's just a matter of time.
Speaker 2:Sarcomas you can fight, but you can fight them, but you absolutely have to cut them out with a huge margin. And the problem is my particular cancer was growing out of my sciatic nerve like the sheath. So all of your nerves are protected by a sheath, which is where they grow. They grow in soft tissue, they grow in your bones, so osteosarcomas are the most common. A lot of people who have to have their legs amputated. That's the most common one, and mine. I think they had said one other case they had ever seen of it growing out of the nerve and it was 10 years prior to that.
Speaker 2:It was crazy getting me three and three percent, no rhyme or reason. So people get nerve tumors. That is not uncommon and what happens is like you constantly have to keep getting them removed because you don't want to sever the nerve because it causes damage, right? So people who get benign nerve tumors will often just continue to have surgeries. For me, the fact that it was cancerous, they needed to remove it, like they had to get it out, and they needed to be very careful.
Speaker 2:The problem was where it was growing. Here's why it was so painful. It was growing out of the nerve which caused me the most pain, but it was also then growing through my pelvic bone and it was so invasive that it was hitting everything it was. It was hitting like my colon, my rectum, my. It was pushed up against my ovary, which was why they thought it was an ovarian cyst. It was pushed up against my intestine and a couple other things, but it caused my leg to be like deformed. So it was like a butternut squash would be the best way to describe, and it was the size of a grapefruit. It was huge and I'm tiny For those that don't know, I'm 5'5". I'm 115 pounds, wet, yeah, so it was huge.
Speaker 1:And then so you get diagnosed and obviously there's a process of like what are we doing? Chemo, radiation, all these different avenues in your mind, in your emotional state, in your being. What was going through your mind either at that point or how to approach this? What was going through your mind either at that point or how to approach this, and what did you do to move forward and overcome and how did that?
Speaker 2:process. Look mentally so. Lance Armstrong was like probably the greatest cancer story that I had had up to that point. Regardless of his doping and all of the dumb stuff that he did, he still had one of the greatest cancer comeback stories ever. And the whole time I was sick the thing that kept me going was the thought of returning to sports. The the comeback story, the one that was just like Lance, only no doping, and and and and. It was. It was just that need to get back on top. And you know, the craziest thing is I think being an athlete is what helped me also get through it, because you know you suffer a lot in endurance. Sports Like if you've ever done an Ironman, if you've ever done anything right running, swimming, biking, they're all sports that the harder you go or the faster you get you still.
Speaker 2:You're still going hard Like it doesn't at any point get easier, because you're still striving for to be faster. So I always talk about how endurance sports are like the one sport, that they're just always painful if you're always trying to be better. So the entire time that I was in pain, it was like I just harnessed that, and I would pray that tomorrow would be better than today, and I would say the hardest part about the journey, though, was when I woke up from that surgery, because, again, for months now, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to tell everybody so you had surgery in one of your legs, meaning they um amputated from where to where some of your leg.
Speaker 2:So they I didn't actually get my leg amputated, it was the nerve. So they went in and section of nerve I would say maybe, maybe half a foot, so about six inches long. Okay, but the problem, the problem with removing, we got more problems. The problem was removing a section of your nerve, which was which is like the most important nerve in your leg, which is your sciatic nerve, is that when you remove that it's like a spinal cord injury, except that it's just the one leg. So that chunk, removing that chunk of nerve meant that I would have complete drop foot at most of my left leg and they thought actually all of my left leg was going to be paralyzed. Because that's the weird thing about nerves is you just you don't know what nerves might take over, you don't know how much nerve damage, because they also then had to peel the nerve, that tumor, away from everything. But they managed to save everything else and just cut that section of the nerve.
Speaker 2:So when I woke up, like three days later cause it took, it took a long time Like I had lost a lot. I'd lost a lot of blood. I think they said something like 16 pints of blood. So I was still getting blood transfusions and my hematocrit level was very low. And I woke up when the doctor walks in and he fluffs, or like, takes my sheet and moves it so that my feet are exposed, and he says, okay, can you wiggle your toes? And I thought what an odd question. Why would you ask me if I could wiggle my toes? Cause I knew the tumor was in my glute area? And and I said that's what you ask people with spinal cord injuries, people who, like, dive off of a dock and, you know, break their neck and back and stuff, and went to wiggle my toes, only they didn't move. And then he put his hand on my foot and I couldn't feel it. And then he put the sheet back over and he says, okay, I'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2:And I was like what the what? I could not figure out why nothing was working and nobody would tell me anything, nobody. And then a physical therapist came in and said, hey, jamie, I'm here to teach you how to walk. And it was the most absurd thing. I'd been running for 15 years as a professional athlete. Why is this guy here telling me I need to walk? And I was kind of not nice to him. I like sat up, was very stubborn and said what do you mean? And I went to take a step and almost fell out of my bed. What I learned was when you can't feel your foot and your brain can't tell your foot to move, and you've been bedridden for over two months and your whole leg was completely atrophied, you really can't walk.
Speaker 1:That was a quick lesson learned it really was.
Speaker 2:It was a hard lesson and every day like I was so tired from the loss of blood and just the surgery and being being in pain. But the one thing is I woke up and I was no longer in pain because the tumor was gone. But learning to walk was this total, totally hard thing. Right Like I couldn't. It was just weird. It was like my body really wasn't my body and I. I had a walker when they had to ACE bandage my foot up because it flopped. When you have complete drop foot, you have just zero control of your foot and it just flops.
Speaker 1:And drop means that you're have no. Did you have no feeling from, like your, I guess, your spinal cord, or your lower back, or your glute area all the way down from your knee down, or how did that feel?
Speaker 2:So I couldn't feel anything below my knee, it was all of that my hamstring, I couldn't feel the back of my leg and then that right glute. I can't, I can't, I couldn't feel. But I could still feel my quad and then my knee worked. So that was kind of the weird thing. Doctors didn't think I'd even be able to bend my knee and so, but walking again, when you're standing and now you're trying to put pressure on something that you don't feel like you, it was just like nothing was there. And so I'd say for three days that it took two physical therapists and a walker and then tie, like a bandaging, my foot up just to get me from the bed to kind of to the door and then back to my bed. That was it.
Speaker 2:It was like three or four days, and so the doc, the physical therapist, finally came to me and said if you can't figure this out, jamie, you're going to have to go to like a rehab center because you can't. If you can't walk, you can't take care of yourself. Oh, I lost it. I was like no more hospitals. I'm going to figure this out because, in my mind, in order to ride my bike again, which was my plan, I needed to be able to walk right Like, take small steps. I still had zero idea that I could never run again and that my situation was not going to change, that I, that I really was never going to feel my foot Like, I still thought I was going to return to pro mountain biking, pro triathlon, that it, you know, it's just a matter of physical therapy and I'd be good to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that was exactly my next. My next question was did you think that you were going to ever ride or do triathlons again, or run, or you know, or, oh shit, this is going to be my life now, right, kind of not moving as quickly or doing whatever, and I got to figure something else to do. Now, you know, cause you were, you were a pro athlete, you know, and uh, uh, yeah, and what was going on there, you, you obviously in your mind, was like, yeah, no problem, I'll be back and I'm gonna be a pro athlete again oh, 100, that's what I thought.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, my friend, the guy who got me into this hospital. He sat down there and was like, oh yeah, no, you're gonna, you'll have a custom um ankle foot orthotic made. You'll just wear a brace for the rest of your life. And I was like what, what, what? And he looked at me and thought, yeah, they severed your nerve. That is not, that's never coming back Like your, your leg is how it is. And I and I, and it was one of those like heart sinking moments.
Speaker 2:And when he left, my dad said well, your, your, your ex-husband didn't, my, my husband at the time, I should say, courtney, he, he didn't want any of us to tell you because he didn't want, he didn't want you to know, he wanted you to figure things out for yourself. And I mean that in the most positive way. He, he didn't want anybody telling me what I couldn't do. And let me tell you, like the nerve doctor said, I'd never, I'd never, ride more than a stationary bike. But my, my oncologist was always pretty awesome and he said you know, jamie, if, if there's a way, you, you will find it. Like you, you would be the person that I know you'll find a way to do whatever it is you want to do. The problem was then my cancer came back Like really.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, within. I went to start radiation because we the plan was to do radiation first and then and then chemo, because you want to radiate the area to make sure that the cancer doesn't come back. And with sarcomas there's no science at least at that time 16 years ago, there was no science that proved chemo and radiation worked. It was just that's what they hoped for. So four days into radiation, so I started radiation about a month later because I had to heal and some other things. And so four days in, they called the doctors, called me into the their office and I thought it was to tell me how well I was doing, cause I was like swimming, I was going to the gym every day, I was doing what I could do, like I couldn't ride because I just didn't even know how at that point I I mean I was I went from a Walker and walking half a mile to a cane and walking two miles to go into the gym and working out and then swimming, and then I would drive to San Francisco and I would for like 15 minutes of radiation and I would drive all the way back. So it's like an hour hour and 45 minutes one way. So that was my day Get up, go to the gym, go to radiation, come back, sleep. And that 26 days. But day four, they told me. So, jamie, we don't know how to tell you this, but your cancer has returned and it's already the same size as the first time. So it is way more aggressive than we thought, which freaked everyone out, because anytime cancer returns, it can spread and your chances of survival go down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I would say that I was driving home that day from radiation was probably one of the dark, probably the darkest I had ever been in, because, like I was scared for the first time because I because I already I now knew what surgery meant. I already I now knew how hard everything was. And now they're telling me I have to do that all again. Like I was devastated and then I had to call people and tell them, like my cancer is back, like I could die. So, my, yeah, my second surgery. I wrote everyone in my family a letter because I didn't know if I was going to make it out. The first time I was like, oh, I'm good, I'm going to come out of surgery and I'm going to do a race in a month. And now the reality of this might not be the plan anymore. Like I might not make it. Like I wrote everyone a letter and they were so mad at me.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, they're thinking positive, just like you were the first time around. Now the, the, the jamie, mental fortitude, positive, competitor, all that stuff's like what are you writing? They don't, it doesn't come out of you, it never has. You've always like okay, how are we going to get around this? Let's move forward, let's figure it out. And now jamie's like writing the letter of like I don't know, I love you, I don't know if I'm gonna make, and they're like what?
Speaker 2:wait, it was still positive, though Still positive.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I know, but still that's still. That's not somebody. I'm sure that's not what they imagined you to be at all. Right, based on.
Speaker 2:Right, and yeah, I always tell people I'm, I'm, I'm between a realist and an optimist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always be. I will always be real first, and then then the optimism kicks in. But like I got, I got to go there first. So that's how long was the process? How long from let's just say obviously, or like going through swimming, to the second time and all that like what's the time span there?
Speaker 2:We're now at 10 months, so going into that, under a year yeah, yeah, it was 10 months.
Speaker 2:And the second surgery was way more invasive. They had to remove my entire glute muscle, part of my tailbone and more of like sacral nerve, sacral nerve and some other stuff. They had to basically take more of a margin because the tumor was starting to make its way up to my spine and then, and if it reached my spine, if it latched onto my spine, then I would have I would be in a wheelchair today, so that that surgery ended up being successful. But it didn't come without its complications. I went into sepsis because my all of the surgery and radiation caused my ureter, which is it's like the tube that goes from your kidney to your bladder, so it's how the urine goes from your kidney to your bladder.
Speaker 1:You never knew. You never knew you were going to be a learn so much anatomy and, uh, you'd probably be a doctor right now and some stuff. You know what I'm saying? All this stuff you're telling me, I know right.
Speaker 2:But, it's until you get to do it. I know it is and I went into sepsis and if you don't know, sepsis is a silent killer. It actually kills more people because they just you can't. It's called the silent killer. You just don't even know it. Like people can get different kinds of infections and when you don't take care of that right away, your body fills with all of the garbage that's there and it kills you, and so I like survived two cancer surgeries and I'm about to be taken out by a flipping sepsis.
Speaker 1:You know, crazy. Remember when, uh, what was it? People had gone to uh, to vietnam and world war, this and they come back and the mosquito bites them and and right away from from whatever yellow malaria yeah, malaria or something. I'm like damn mosquito got them. They fought, they jumped out know and went to war and they lived all that and they come back and a mosquito got them.
Speaker 2:I know I'm telling you that I was just devastated. Well it, because it also set me back. Like I kept trying to get back on a bike to design because I have to wear a brace when I walk and I kept trying to figure out how to get back on a bike. And every time I kept trying to figure out how to get back on a bike it was like, nope, here's the next challenge. So the infection was so bad I ended up getting a PICC line. I still had drains in my back from the actual surgery they're called JP drains and now I had what is called a nephrostomy tube that was stitched into my back and it went into my kidney, because the kidney was good but it just couldn't drain, so it drained into its own bag and I had to walk around carrying this bag.
Speaker 1:Sexy, sexy times right there.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh and I. I would laugh because I would still go to the gym.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, at this point I had like four drains on me right and I had a walker, so I would attach stuff to the walker and I would have my my bag of antibiotics on my chest, because I had to get antibiotics 24 hours a day, 24, seven, for five weeks. And then little by little the drains all started coming out, except the last one, the nephrostomy one, and I had to have surgery for that because they needed to figure out what to do, and what ended up happening was they took out my kidney and then put it into my right pelvic area. So both my kidneys are now on the same side.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, oh my goodness, after the second surgery and whatnot, how was recovery with that time? And then how becoming a Paralympic came into your mind, or how were you going to proceed, moving forward from there?
Speaker 2:the Paralympics were always on my radar. Bob Babbitt, who was one of the co-founders of Challenged Athletes Foundation, had been a huge fan of mine as a triathlete and he had reached out to me in the hospital and said Jamie, remember, there's always the Paralympics. So that was my, that was my desire. Like I got, I got to get back on a bike. So that's why I have to learn to walk again. I have to.
Speaker 2:I ended up finding out I was pregnant, and that's a whole story in and of itself, which delayed my progress another year, and I'd or two years actually. So I'd say, from the onset of my first surgery, it took three years for me to get back on the bike. My first ride was on the back tandem to make sure that I could pedal and that the brace would work, and so, as we dialed in all of the ways to adapt my bike, I got on a bike and I've never been off since. So it was, yeah, paralympic cycling was kind of the natural place for me to go, since I couldn't do paratriathlon and swimming would be difficult because my leg would drag in the water. Versus somebody that has no leg at all, that's who I would be competing against.
Speaker 2:So I'd also say that being on the bike was kind of one of the only times that I don't feel disabled as much Like when I walk. It's very apparent If you see me, you can tell, but on the bike you can't, and and so I always just felt so much freedom and independence when I, when I, when I ride, but the uh I would say so I got back on in in about 2000,. 2011 is when I started writing, but 2012 is where I I started really riding and trying to make a go of it, and so, um, actually no, it was too. It was all 2012. So I went to my first Paralympic cycling event, did really well earned status to make the national team, and it was like never looked back.
Speaker 1:What do you ride?
Speaker 2:So I ride. At that time I was doing both the track and the velodrome. So the velodrome is where you're on a fixed geared bike and you ride in circles and that it's. It's terrifying because you have no brakes, but but it was also really exciting because it was something different and so I was training for both of those leading up to the Rio Paralympics in 2016.
Speaker 2:And it was in 2014 that I won the ESPY and that was incredible to be able, like I've always been a huge sports fan, grew up loving football and baseball with my dad. At the time I was like a Raiders fan, a's fan, love the Giants, love the Niners. You know, at the time I was like a Raiders fan, the A's fan, love the Giants, love the Niners. You know all NorCal and, oh my gosh, now I'm in like the who's who of every sports icon ever I met so many people. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it was incredible. And at the time, the Seahawks had just won the Super Bowl, or no, they had beaten the Niners and so maybe the Super Bowl hadn't happened. No, they did, they won. And I was like, oh my gosh, because I came face to face with Richard Sherman and I was just like oh he's the other side, but I ended up talking to him because I have mad respect for him.
Speaker 2:He was like the nicest, most articulate person, took a picture with me and everything Can't say the same about Kaepernick. That guy ignored me in the elevator or not ignored.
Speaker 1:but it was too good to talk to me. Thank God I'm a big Raiders fan. Thank God they didn't get him. Would you win the SBN?
Speaker 2:would you win the SBN? So I? I was nominated for best female athlete with a disability and that's what I ended up winning in, and I have the SB sitting at my dad's house. It's pretty dope Like it's probably one of the most awards.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. Congrats on that, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And so then, um fast forward into training and getting to the Olympics in 2014, 16, 16.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was real I go ahead.
Speaker 2:I had qualified for the top spot for women, so I had secured my spot, but it wasn't for me. That wasn't good enough. Like I was going there on a mission. I wanted to earn a medal, and I wanted to earn a gold medal. It was the dream since I was six years old, and so I. I had four events. My first one was the 3k pursuit on the track. I had qualified for the gold medal round. So it's like it's like a cat and mouse. You, you each start in a gate and then you chase each other, and if one catches the other, then they get the gold medal. Um, and otherwise it's whoever crosses the finish line first, and so I was up against a British girl. But the coolest part about making that gold medal round is, no matter what, you walk away with a medal, and so I knew I could fall out of the gate and I was still getting a silver.
Speaker 2:So that was really yeah, and I did get silver. She caught me. And then I mean, it's like you couldn't wipe. I remember you couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I was so stoked that that childhood dream had finally come true. But I still wanted the gold.
Speaker 2:So I had two more races that didn't go as well. One was a sprint, and I'm not a sprinter. The other was the time trial, which I was favored to do well in Just had some mechanicals, didn't have my best race. And I had one last chance in the road race and it came down to a sprint. Like I, I am not a sprinter and I was going up against a gal from Germany and China and we it came down the last two K. The three of us had broken away from the rest of the group and we were in a line. So it went China, germany and myself. And the whole time I'm in the back thinking when, when do I sprint? Like how do I win this? And we're getting closer and closer to the finish line and at 500 meters the German girl pulls off to the right. So I pulled to the right. So now we're all parallel going into the final finish line and I kept thinking, like when do I sprint? I am not a sprinter. I normally break these people off way sooner.
Speaker 1:And and then I saw the sign it said 200 meters and I said this must be the time I sprint.
Speaker 2:And I just, with everything that I had, went into that final sprint and narrowly edged out the other two to finally win a gold medal. And it was just. It was the most epic thing I'd ever done because of all that I had endured just before that. I mean, I was. I'm now. I was at that time, eight years out from having cancer, wondering if I was ever going to live, wondering if I could ever walk again, and being told I'd only ride a stationary bike, to now being on the podium winning a gold medal with my two boys and my dad right there watching me. It was incredible.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, yeah, that is. That is amazing. First of all, thank you for bringing home the gold medal, or any medal, or even, you know, getting there and representing the USA. What an amazing accomplishment I mean there's so many different things and and to have your family, family, your boys, your dad, who's been there, you know, through the toughest of times, and your number one investor right from the beginning. Um, and going through all that, you know. My biggest question, one of them is because this is a podcast of overcoming adversity. You know can't be broken and whatnot. Did you feel broken at times or at one time? And if you did, or there was a point in your mind, like when you were writing those letters, what was the, what was your mindset or what do you think? What do you attribute to you continuing to move forward, continuing to press on and overcoming and becoming a gold medalist, and where you're at now, like what do you think is the catalyst for that?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of it is my faith. A lot of it is knowing that I'm here for a reason. I'm here for a greater purpose and being okay with that. So in a lot of my talks with people to like motivate them is, if you live life to kind of serve others not selfishly, not what am I going to get out of this and you live that, it just gives you this sense of hope and purpose that forges on right. Like once you have kids it becomes more prominent right, because you want the best for them, you want to be here for them. But for me it was always just this self-drive to pick the hard road. I don't know Like you remember the commercials of the easy button. I hated those. Like why does everybody always seek for the easy thing? Like, I will go through the narrow gate, I will go through the door that's harder to get through, because it's always the better story.
Speaker 2:We don't make movies off of, you know, team Germany that wins 20 times. The movie comes from team America that beats the team that won 20 times. The boys in the boat is one of my all time greatest underdog stories. So for me it's same with vacations too. It's always like the weird things that happen on your vacation, that you get lost and something happens, that that is is just makes it such an experience, an unforgettable experience. When everything goes right, you don't remember that Like you, just you don't. So for me it's the struggle. It's the struggle, is the story, the struggle that overcoming that, and I've always just believed that tomorrow is going to be better. Today, today could totally suck, but guess what? I get to go to bed. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and it could be better.
Speaker 1:I heard a great quote. You're 100 percent. I heard a great quote recently on a podcast. The person said when the purpose is greater than the problem, the problem shrinks. You know, the problem shrinks. You know, and uh, one of the other things that that that person said, um said, our struggles determine our successes. So choose your struggles wisely, you know, and I was like holy shit and and I think that's one of the reasons that I, that I started doing, uh, running, doing ultra marathons. I did a hundred mile race, I've done several 24 hour races over 50, you know, triathlons, and not not at the competitive level or the pro level. But I chose hard because I don't have the body type to run that far with this much muscle. Have the body type to run that far with this much muscle? Uh, not that I'm a big muscle, muscular guy, but but I, that wasn't my. I started doing this in 2017.
Speaker 1:My dad passed away from cancer and I drank for a year, like trying to just destroy, actually, not a year. I drank for six months and trying to just drink out of sorrow and pain. And what? What am I doing? And then I flipped it and I'm like, well, I can go lift, I can do this this is in my, my wheelhouse but running far for my body type and what I carry is going to going to be hard, and so I run because it is hard, you know, because it's hard for me, right? And uh, you chose hard, you chose your hard struggle and that's what you want, because the easy road is not always the best road.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Now you've succeeded in so many different things. You've got an SB, gold medal, silver medalist, I mean, overcome cancer, mother of two and all that, and that's successful. But in reality, what does success mean to you? Successful? But in reality, what does success mean to you? Is it that? Is it other things?
Speaker 2:What does success actually look like to Jamie? When I got sick, it was a unique perspective of how people truly thought about me. Right, most people die and it's at their funeral or their celebration of life that everyone shares how they feel about someone. And when I was really, really sick, I mean, hundreds of people were reaching out to me and telling me how much of an impact I had made in their life.
Speaker 2:And to me, I think that's success. To me, it means I'm doing something right. To me, it means I'm I'm doing something right, like if I'm making a difference in just one person's life, if something I said gives someone the motivation to try something they've never done, or to not give up to make it through cancer, then then then I've succeeded. I've. I mean, if I, if I have to hurt or if I have to get cancer to help someone else or to take, you know, to be where I'm at, then it's 100% worth it, and so that's how I base it is am I making, am I having an impact? And not for myself, it's not so I can be like woo, I did that. It's just that again, it comes down to purpose, of knowing that I am here for a reason and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing that I am here for a reason and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1:What an amazing. No, that's amazing. And you're impacting me right now because, you know, knock on wood or whatever. I've never gone through anything hard. I think the hardest I had was a meniscus tear and I was like, oh my God, my knee Am I going to I'm talking to the doctor Am I going to be able to run again? I'm like you're in and out of here in an hour. We're just fucking scoping it. I'm like what does that mean? You know, and I thought you know, and I take pain. Really well, I think there's a quote from Amelia Boone.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know who she is. Amelia Boone is a professional athlete in like Spartan races and things, and she would beat the men and the women and just conquer these events. And she said a quote, said I'm not the fastest and I'm not the strongest, but I know how to take pain real good. And that's how she won, because while others are quitting or slowing down because they're in pain and they're hurting, she's just like I know how to take pain. Let's just keep moving forward. And I think when I heard that, I'm like that's me. I'm like that's me. I'm not the fastest, I'm not the strongest, right, but I really know how to take pain really well and you're, and you're not going to beat me. I mean, I'm a short little grommet. I got a Division one scholarship for my parents in Mexico and I was like I got to figure it out because we don't have money. So I got a scholarship and taking that hard road has really made me gritty. Hard road has really made me gritty.
Speaker 2:Just like your, your.
Speaker 1:You know your Instagram handle and your email is all gutsy girl. You know, it's true. You, you took this road less traveled, whether it be one intentionally and the other unintentionally. Right To be gutsy through the process and overcoming adversity. What do you think are some of the? Do you think some of the foundation from your dad, mom, parents, growing up or going through those hard times changed? Or how did you, how did you, how can I say this? How did you get to be who you are now, this gutsy, gritty, overcome adversity was you think it was kind of built, you know, right from a young age.
Speaker 2:I think it's both. I mean, this is where our sociology degree comes in, because sociology is all about like, how did your environment shape and affect who you are? And then psychology is what, internally, what's innate? I? I a hundred percent. My dad said I came out of the womb super headstrong. I look at my one son writer it's the same thing. I can do it, I have this, I've got this, and it's that independence, that, um, that desire and drive. And then I do think that my environment a hundred percent shaped it, the fact that my I was very close to my twin uncles, who are now gone, but they helped raise me with my dad. It was like having three dads and they always just pushed me, taught me and told me like you could be anything that you want if you just don't give up. So I have always believed that, which is also why I see that in others too. I can see potential and I, but, but we have to want it for ourselves. You know I can't want things for other people. They have to come to those terms themselves. So I think it was 100% both mine.
Speaker 2:I, like you, I also came from a divorced family. My parents split when I was three and a half. I remember the day my dad drove away and and I wanted to live with him and back then in the eighties that was unheard of. You know, the mom always got the kids and the dad got got to see me whenever. But he showed up to every game. He like he, he was super involved and eventually I moved in with him when I was in high school and at that time nobody really got divorced either. So I was a very minor minority in a minority and I think that shaped me too, because my, my family dynamic looked different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no 100%. Do you do any now or back then? Did you follow any routines or habits or anything that just kind of keeps you focused on where you're going?
Speaker 2:You know I I was, I was oddly believed in weird, I had superstitions. So my pro career I would always wear the same socks to race and they were clean. I washed them. But you know, I would try to eat the same foods so that, because I knew I performed well off of those foods and that does go back to even in college was discovering what worked best, what fueled my body the best. Discovering what worked best, what fueled my body the best, it's just always trying to be healthy.
Speaker 2:I try now, especially since I underwent cancer and am a mom of many kids, because I have two bonus kids now I try not to be so routine anymore because you can get stuck and hung up on those, you can rely on those too much. So I allow freedoms. I know what works, but I also have the room to if it doesn't go well right before this warmup. Like you still have to race fast, right Cause I still race, it's like you. You have to let go of some of that and be just be willing to just go with. Go with the flow.
Speaker 1:You don't do any of that Cause you know we live in this time now with social media where you see you need to cold plunge and you need to get grounded and you need to get the sun. You know all these different things that people are putting out there, which some are really good. Obviously you're trying to be healthy. Do you do any of those things as a routine or a habit?
Speaker 2:I would say, I mean, all of that is important, Anything you can do to speed the recovery. So for me I have Norma tech, which are like compression legs that are hooked up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, I do use that. I use, uh, when we travel with the team. We have Swanee's that flush our legs. Um, I have a massage gun.
Speaker 2:I, I, again, I I'm good with my eating and that's just been that way for a really long time. You got to think of your body like a car, right, the more high performance octane you put in it, the better it's going to work for you. So, and then sleep. Sleep's always important.
Speaker 2:It's hard when I'm at home like I'm a mom first and an athlete second, whereas when I was no kid list, it was athlete first, everything else was second. So it's the phase I'm at the tail end of my career. So I'm okay with that. But I would recommend all kids like yet, what you, what you do when you're young, you will. You will pay for it or not pay for it when you're older, right? So, yes, you should be stretching Like.
Speaker 2:I get irritated at coaches that don't teach the importance to athletes when they're young, because they say things like oh, they're young, they can get away with it, but all of your habits are created when you're young. So in high school, yes, in high school, if you have good coaches, they are going to teach those kids the best practices so that when they go to college and become an athlete or not, they're still doing those things that are right. And then when it carries on, because there's so many endurance sports anybody can do right, anybody can run. Get a pair of shoes, you can go run. But the habits you've created when you're younger will pay off and you'll benefit from them when you're older.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then as far as foods and supplements or all that, you're like a meat eater, not vegan, and you do shakes or things like that.
Speaker 2:I'd say I stay away from as much supplements as I can, because we have strict liability. If I take anything that's even cross-contaminated and I test positive, then I'm suspended. So I have to be really careful. I buy from only NSF companies and I do. I do things like beta alanine, I do probiotics and lick iron and then um, let's see, when it comes to I, I'm a variety eater. I I feel that your plate should be well-rounded, Like I am totally okay with eating meat. I don't do pork, though, so I would do small amounts of red meat or chicken and then always like your grains, your carbs and then your lots of fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so normal.
Speaker 2:Normal right? Well, it's not normal anymore.
Speaker 1:I guess now right, exactly what do you think is some of the best advice you have ever received, or something you could pass on that others should kind of live their life by, or some great advice that you received from somebody?
Speaker 2:Oh, the first one was definitely what you do now will affect you later. I don't even remember who told me that but also it's if you can learn from others instead of having to have that failure on your own. You know like I try to teach my kids all the time. I have 48 years of experience, that's like 34 ahead of you. If I can teach you like learn a second language, I am still so angry that, like we don't teach Spanish starting in elementary school because, let me tell you, I've been working on Spanish for years and I still suck at it. So I look at my kids and I'm like you can pick whatever language you want later on, but you are going to speak Spanish Because, let me tell you, all of South America, central America, you can go to Mexico, you can go to Spain, you will be able to communicate and it opens so many doors.
Speaker 1:No wonder you became my friend.
Speaker 2:I know right.
Speaker 1:Spanish for me.
Speaker 2:There you go, but it's like one of those. It's just little things like that, right. Like you know, so much builds from when you're young, and I mean the other thing is but this will kind of go into my quotes of my favorite quote is Babe Ruth. Something along the lines says don't let your fear of failure get in the way, or don't let your fear of striking out get in the way of hitting a home run. It's so impactful because don't focus on what can go wrong. Don't focus on your failure, focus on what can go right.
Speaker 1:That's a great man right there, except he was a Yankee.
Speaker 2:I know right.
Speaker 1:Go. Dodgers just won the World Series.
Speaker 2:I did see that, I know.
Speaker 1:I know, if you could have done something different. What would you have done differently, if anything?
Speaker 2:Or Spanish Ah there you go.
Speaker 1:Spanish is better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true, I would have totally taken so many more years. I need to go live in Colombia for like two months so that I can come back frequently speaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I try to learn sign language. I remember I was out on patrol working and there was a guy that got robbed and I tried to communicate him and he was dead and I was like, oh shit, Like now, what do I do? I get on paper, but it took forever. I mean, this is a rapid, evolving moment that I have with this guy who just got robbed and I'm trying to catch this guy rather than just take a report. And we couldn't communicate. And so I took, I went back to college for a semester to try to learn the basics of sign language color, height, distance and it was hard, I mean. And the thing is, if you don't practice it, you know right, you don't, you don't, what do you say? If you don't use it, you lose it.
Speaker 2:So yep and Northridge was known. Northridge was known for deaf studies and that's where I had a teammate who ran with me. She was originally from South Africa and I took notes for her in a class and stuff, and so that's where I first learned like, oh my gosh, there's a thing you can be an interpreter. So she taught me some sign language and then later on, when I became a coach, I had a few athletes also who were deaf and had an interpreter and I did for like a month or two months. I took the most basic so I could tell them to do things faster or whatever. I learned all the things to coach them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, you know a little bit of Spanish, then A little bit, a little bit A little bit of Spanish, a little bit of sign language. Un poquito. What do you think is the biggest stigma that people have of either paraplegics or disabled people? What do you think, or how yeah, that people have either paraplegics or disabled people? What do you think you know, or? Or how yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, guess what is? What do you think is the biggest stigma out there? That possible that we can't do things? You know what I mean. Or or that we need help with everything.
Speaker 1:And you get annoyed if somebody says something like can I help you?
Speaker 2:Or opens the door and you're like no, I got it Not really so in the beginning yes, right, Because I'm still asserting my independence, but now it's like things are easier if you do have help. And I tell that to my own teammates who are in chairs, because I can do a little bit more than them, and I always say I know you can do it, but if I help you it goes faster, help you, it goes faster. And so then they concede. I think the biggest issue that a lot of people have is they don't. They don't. We don't want to be an inspiration just because we're disabled and we wake up.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like just because I wake up in the morning, even though waking up is hard, but it's like. You know, tell us we're an inspiration because of the. You know, tell us we're an inspiration because of the refusal to give up right, to give in, or yeah, that, and I would say no. The thing that bugs me is when people come up to me and they'll say, oh, did you hurt yourself? Because I'm not an amputee and I'm not in a wheelchair, but I do wear an AFO and you can tell my leg is different and I walk because it's like really skinny and I have no glute muscle. It's very visual, but they'll say something like that and it depends on the mood I'm in. But sometimes I'll be like, no, I had cancer. And then they're like, oh, snap. And then if I'm in a good mood, I always say, oh, no, this is permanent. And then they'll proceed to tell me, oh, I had this, I had this like torn ACL, and I'm just like bro, I'm never going to get better. Like you got better.
Speaker 2:Don't compare your injury to the fact that I am physically disabled. It's like. It's like, just think about what you're asking or what you're saying to someone with a disability. It's the same with don't. Don't walk up to a person that's missing a limb and right away say, oh, what happened? Like you don't even know that person and that's all you want to know about them. You didn't ask their name, you didn't say hello, and I've witnessed it. I've witnessed it on planes. My teammates who are amputees and some random Joe Schmo will roll up and just be like oh, planes, my teammates who are amputees and some random.
Speaker 1:Joe Schmo will roll up and just be like, oh, what happened? And it's just, it's so rude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so true. Some, you know, I mean I'm sure people with the right intention are trying, but, uh, there needs to be more awareness of how you communicate with people and and and um's, absolutely, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Um, you've gone through some, some very difficult times in your life. Uh, and and what? What do you think is the best advice that you could give when you know people are dealing? We all go through our difficulties and everybody perceives it in certain ways. Right, you can perceive something very small, that you perceive very small and I perceive it as a huge deal. But whatever, that means that somebody is going through a hard time. To them, what would you say, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:Well, first you can do it Like don't, don't give up, right, like that's the easiest, but it's also find your purpose, find another way. It might not look the same and that's okay. I mean, I always wanted to go to the Olympics and I went to the Paralympics and to me it's a much more incredible story and I think for me it's always yeah, knowing that there is greatness in anything that you do. Right, like I. It's like I said before if you change one person's life, if you can be there for one person, if you can be that 3am friend, be that person, just make a difference. And it doesn't matter how you could be in a chair, you can still make a difference.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, 100% no. I love the way you oh yeah, 100% no. I love the way you say you know, have a purpose, impact others and how you live your life. It's amazing. I'm so glad that we reconnected, that I happened to flip through the Go Matadors thing and saw you there, and that you're doing well, that you're doing amazing all the accomplishments. But it was never a doubt in my mind when we were friends in college that you were already an amazing person and that you had a good head on your shoulders and that you were going to be successful in anything that you did. I mean, I'm so proud of you and I'm so proud that we're talking. You know that we're. You know how many years is it? I, you know what? How many years is it? I don't want to say how many years, but it's been a long time since college.
Speaker 1:Right Like 20, 26 years I think we were both D one athletes. Let's go. Uh, you know we have a lot of similarities, uh and um, and that was why I think we connected as friends the similarities of the college and what we wanted. We wanted to serve people. You know, I ended up serving people with law enforcement and I still serve people. Now You're a motivational speaker, and how did you get into that? How often do you do that now? When did that start and and how can people get ahold of you?
Speaker 2:You know, I first started speaking when I was forced to in my pro days because you they hand you a microphone, you got to stand on a podium and then, and then I also started kind of doing clinics where I would share my expertise as an off-road triathlete, because it was such a special niche that I I just I loved it, which is funny because in college I was terrified of public speaking. So then and I always have shared my testimony, that was another thing. So a lot of churches or youth groups or other faith-based things is where I used to speak a lot. And then once I got sick, I was starting to get invited to more cancer type things and then when you become a Paralympic athlete, you have the same opportunities as any Olympic athlete. So now it started becoming more corporate and I was a motivational speaker for the Hartford and Deloitte and numerous other things.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of one-offs, but what do I talk about? It's a lot of integrating my story into whatever the theme of that convention or gathering is. So a lot of times it's about adversity or, you know, some kind of overcoming, and sometimes it's just my story where I try to help. I give some people something to walk away with, like five tangible things. They were always, you know, never be afraid of failure, suck it up. Buttercup was one of them. It's what I've taught my kids.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, bad things happen and you just you can't allow that to be your excuse in life. You have to just keep going and, again, overcoming obstacles, like the mental aspect of how do you overcome things. But yeah, and so I just weave. It've been into a thing and I speak anywhere is from gosh. The shortest has been like 15 minutes, which is really hard to fit a lot of stuff in. So you just have to kind of pick a dynamic of that. And then sometimes it's been like it's like I'm the what do you call it? The guest speaker, or they have a name, yes, well. Well, it's like the main person that comes in and and then it's like 30 to 45 minutes and it's and it's funny cause I do have an agent and he's always like oh, you never have to worry about Jamie, she can. She can totally speak for 30 to 45 minutes.
Speaker 2:Um, and, and you know like you can go through my agent, you can come to me via. I think most people just find me on Instagram, my handle. They come across my story or word of mouth and I mean I like sharing things. I think the nice thing about the way that I do it is I make myself very available afterwards, where I think sometimes, when you're like Michael Phelps, you don't have the luxury of doing that because people would just go nuts, right, and I'm not that status, but my but my story is so unique because any anyone can experience cancer. I mean it's something like it's some crazy number, but you will. Either everyone will either have cancer or know someone who has cancer. I mean, like that's the reality of where we're at, and so that resonates with a lot of people. Just, you know, hearing how my mind turned out is a very positive thing for those who have lost others, because you know it's it's 50 50 shot. You either survive cancer or you don't.
Speaker 2:And then I wear just a lot of hats Like I, I'm a mom. Um, you know, I was a single mom for a short period of time. Not short period, it felt like forever, it was like five years and it's. I mean, it's hard right, like and and I, but I feel like that's the plan, like that's God's plan for me is the pro athlete, the. The person with a disability, the cancer survivor, the mom, the single mom, the. Now I have bonus kids, so now I am a mom of four and you know it's just things keep happening so that I can keep sharing my experiences.
Speaker 1:What else can we throw on the plate there, you know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:I mean truth, I've coached athletes Like I. Right now I volunteer at a middle school a hundred percent on my own. Um, my kids aren't even there anymore and I, because I love running and I feel that running shaped who I am today and so I do like a running club and then I coach their cross country, I coach the track and I just I want kids to be inspired to to get outdoors. Right, not everybody's going to have be able to play baseball like you did. I mean, it takes a lot of talent and a lot of sport, but anybody can run. You absolutely can. You start out by walking, then it turns into a jog and then you're running.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that simple. Yeah, no, yeah, 100% running. Uh, uh, born to run, there's that book?
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've ever read it born to run about? Uh, I have not. You know it's a book about uh. Actually, where I'm from, um, it's about the rarumari or the tarumana tarumana indians that run their ultra marathoners and long distance runners and they run to live. You know, they hunt their food by running a deer down. And it's a great book written by I think it's Jim McDonald's, his name, and he talks about that tribe that still exists in today and my great grandmother was 100% Rarumari and my dad actually spoke the language.
Speaker 1:So, but they have two things that they do they run and they love to drink alcohol, but it's not alcohol Like we look at it, like it's beer, it's, it's called I think it's called Tequiche, and it's it's an alcoholic beverage or something that they make out there. Right, and I told my dad I don't think I got the running part down from from uh, from the tribe. I think I got the drinking part down pretty good, you know, and I started laughing. I'm like I guess, so I don't know whatever, um, but so what's what's uh? How do how do people get ahold of you If they uh want to follow you on Instagram, get a speaking engagement, and what are your handles, and what social media arenas are you in?
Speaker 2:I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram and then the threads, which is Instagram, and then I do have a. What is it now? The X? I think I'm still on X.
Speaker 2:I'm not on TikTok, I apologize, but you. But it's pretty easy. You can Google my name and then Jamie Whitmore, or my handle is gutsytrygirl. But again, if you go on Instagram you can Google Jamie Whitmore and then you'll see and those are the easiest ways that it does have my. You can either DM me or it does have my agent's info on there that you can go to him. I have an athlete page on Facebook. It's Jamie Whitmore and that's kind of how I've gotten a lot of my stuff. Yeah, and it and again, I enjoy it Like I used to travel at least twice, going everywhere and speaking.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot of schools because you know it's nice to go into STEM schools and show kids that you, you can use your brain to help others in ways of like aerodynamics and um testing and things like that. And it's the more that we have the younger generation investing in our sports and stuff, then the more medals we can win versus like GB where they have tons of money in it. But it's even in designing helmets that better protect our athletes right, whether you're a cyclist or a football player, because those are like two of the biggest concussion prone sports and so, yeah, like to know that kids are interested that or prosthetics. So, yeah, like to know that kids are interested that or prosthetics that's another thing that I try to encourage is that I I'm able to still be an athlete because of what other people have created for me and I've.
Speaker 2:I had an opportunity to go to Sweden because my, my brace, my AFO which is called ankle foot orthotic that I wear that allows me to cycle, and then I have a different one to walk in. They are they've. They came out of Sweden and I got to go to that plant in face to face with all of these workers and thank them for creating something that gives me life, like I can be active and I can do normal things like mow the lawn or whatever, whereas I wouldn't, I I would be peddling with one leg if I didn't have grace, and that's the reality of whatever. Whereas I wouldn't, I would be pedaling with one leg.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If I didn't have. And that's the reality of it and it's simple, it's just carbon fiber and it's, but they hand, do it all and they layer it and I got to see the whole process and but to my, my emotional moment was like to really be able to thank these, these guys, like thank you for coming into here every day and doing this, because you truly make a difference in people's lives, like every little piece, every worker, every person in their little station is how I, I can live life and do what I do. So it's, I mean, you know, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Well, it means a lot to them.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that you went down there and face to face, you know, like in the old days right they thank you and see people in the eyes and everybody who's had an input on something that has had a big input and impact on you. What's next for you and what's next for Jamie in the next five years or, you know, in the near future? Uh, in regards to still being, uh, uh, a pro athlete, uh, at the Olympic level and all that, and uh, after, after being an Olympic, uh, you know, in the Olympics, what's what's next for Jamie?
Speaker 2:Right, I, just so, I just finished participating in my third or not participate, but, um, competing Cause I like to use that word competing in my third Paralympics and I was fifth in the road race. So I, you know, I still, I still have more in me, but the gains are so small when you're, you know, past your forties. Let's just say so I. But I always told myself, even when I was racing as a pro, that I would be competing until I was 50. Like that was the, the, the commitment I made. So I know for sure for two more years. Do I have LA 2028 in me? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just hired a new coach and so I'm excited to be working with him, because sometimes you just need to change, Like I loved my old coach and but I, but I am excited to kind of like open a new door and start a new chapter with somebody to that might have just a little different aspect to teach me.
Speaker 2:And then I, I, oh my gosh I started writing a book when I, when I was in the midst of having cancer, and then then then I got pregnant, Then I started racing, Then I went through a divorce and then I debated whether I would return to racing or not, and did and and. So it's one of those where it like started so long ago and I would love nothing more than to finally have the time to finish it. But I got three kids in high school, so it's kind of hard right now, but I think it would be so impactful because then I can take it or and people can recommend it, or at least I hope it would be impactful. But you can then read about all of the things in my journey and what helped me get to where I am today, Because sometimes, like you, just you need that, like you need that in your life. I still need that. When people share an incredible story, I'm just like wow, like I want to go out and ride my bike.
Speaker 2:An hour for five hours because I you just motivated me and I think that's how the world kind of goes around and I think the more real you are, the more personable you are. That the story just has a greater impact, are that the story just has a greater impact, so that that my goal is, like flipping, write this book. So I got to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, you said something that sparked something in me, so I'll put it back on you. You said but it's hard right now Cause I got kids suck it up.
Speaker 2:Buttercup If if, if just that is hard.
Speaker 1:Trust me, you've gone through harder times. Get this shit done, because I think it's something very valuable, very impactful. It reaches more of an audience. I think I wrote I'll send you a couple of I became a co-author in a book oh, nice, yeah, and I'm called the Rockdown Trainer. It's a chapter I wrote in a book called the Little Black Book of Fitness and it's with several people, from the guy from Cypress Hills in it the winner of the biggest loser season, I don't know several different people from different arenas give their advice of fitness, from mind, body and soul warriors, and I was asked to write a chapter of my journey and it was a while ago. I think I'm a better writer now or I've gotten a lot more now, but I'm very happy that I got the opportunity to do that and, yeah, I'd like to write a book as well, but I think your story is very amazing and several people would love to hear that. So I think the sooner the better, Right, I know Well.
Speaker 2:And that like, while it's still relevant, my first excuse, right Cause. So in endurance sports we always have the saying everybody wakes up in the morning on race day with an excuse, so don't be the one to use yours.
Speaker 2:And so my first excuse was like well, I had twins. And then it was like, well, then I got divorced and I was so angry during that period of time like just hurt right, like this. I just felt very betrayed and so I went through and we didn't really talk about this, but that was kind of another thing. I endured physical pain and overcoming physical stuff, but then I also had the emotional. I had never been depressed in my life and I still wasn't. It's like I was depressed inside, but on the outside I was still like, hey, looking at the most positive way that I could.
Speaker 2:But to go through a divorce is so hard mentally and it affected my training, leading into Tokyo and stuff like this. It was just brutal on me. But I had to wake up every day and carry on Right, because I had two kids depending on me and it had to get done, like I just had no choice. I always tell people I didn't, I couldn't just crawl into a hole, even though that's what I felt like doing. And so you know it just kept getting delayed because, as I say, the chapters just kept adding on. So when I finally sit down, I mean hopefully it comes out to be something worth reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you and I are going to have to put points on it Like your, like your mountain biking experience, where you get points Like if you didn't write something today, you get a point If you, you know.
Speaker 2:I know right and you don't want points.
Speaker 1:I have to keep you on check. Yeah, I don't like losing.
Speaker 2:So that's the temptation.
Speaker 1:I think that's what we're going to have to do in order for you to get this thing done, any things we didn't cover, or things you want to say to the audience, or anything you want to leave us with that that we didn't talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I can't. I think we really hit upon a lot and you've got a lot of material here, but my door is always open, like I, I've had so many people reach out for different reasons. It could be their, their battling cancer, or someone they know is battling cancer or've just incurred a disability. Or resources like where should I go for this or that, or even sports stuff? Right, because I coached for many, many years before my kids got older and I started diving into their sports. But it's like I love sharing, I like listening and helping in any way. So it's one of those. If anyone out there is just struggling for any reason and you need to talk to someone or whatever, like reach out, message me, I, I, I I'm not so big that I don't read my own stuff. It's just sometimes it takes a little while. Right, because you know my kids, my kids are priority.
Speaker 1:But you're being so humble. You're being so humble because you are big and people don't understand that you are big and you have a lot on your plate and you're going through and you're training and family and all this stuff. But you know, ever since I've known you and and now even talking to you and reconnecting for this podcast um, you're just so humble and so open. You've always been like that and it you know you're such a classy person uh, to offer your, your, your services or or your door open, a telephone or any which way to help somebody. And, uh, that says a lot about you, because I know people, as they get bigger and bigger, their doors close. And just listening to you talk, it's amazing how sincere, how humble and how awesome you are.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. You know I've really learned a lot. You've impacted my life and I hope that the people listening have taken a little bit of different things that they can use in their life, and I know they have. We've shared a lot. You've shared a lot through your experiences and what you've gone through and I really appreciate that for being vulnerable on this podcast, taking your time. I know it took a lot of your time today on a kind of what is it on a thursday? On halloween, halloween and then, um, but I really appreciate that and uh, when you're in la, make sure to you have my, my number, make sure that you get you reach out with your family. If you come down here with your family, whoever to reconnect, and also I hope to see you in the near future in the Olympics here in LA. Yes, we'll stay in touch and I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me, it's been my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. Thank you so much for everybody listening. Thank you very much for listening. It's been a blast here. I can't. This has been one of the most humbling, one of the best podcast sessions that I think I've taken for myself. I know everybody will enjoy it. Thank you, and everybody listening in. Remember you can't be broken.
