Quince Mountain told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife Blair always talks about how the wilderness doesn’t care about you. There’s a thunderstorm, it’s not there to make you afraid or even an animal who’s chasing you. It’s not personal.

That was kind of nice when I was a person who grew up suffering, often in very deliberate ways, because of classmates and other kids who were pretty awful to me.

I found solace in the indifference of the wilderness. But I think what I had to learn to do later was connect with other people and trust other people.

My friends call me Q. I live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I’m a dog musher and an outdoor educator who works online. I think of it as edutainment, I guess, and I get the privilege along with my wife, Blair Braverman, and our 25 sled dogs, of sharing the story of our journeys and the people we meet on Patreon and Twitter and other social media. It’s a lot of fun.

This is gonna sound funny, but I didn’t set out to be a professional dog sledder or go in the Iditarod or anything like that. It just kind of happened. I just fell in love with Blair, and it was something she had done.

Dog mushing is something that turns adults into children. If you think about sledding, you see people sled down a hill, how fun that is. The dogs are just pulling you. I dare you to get on the runners of a dog sled with a decent team on a bluebird day and not fall in love with it.

I’ve always loved animals, too. Some of that I think comes from a person who grew up with social difficulties with people. People know I’m trans; I’m very, uh, public as a trans person. But I’m also not neurotypical. So, I had a lot of social difficulties and a lot of sensory difficulties as a kid. It was just easier to understand the intentions of the animals around me.

It’s such a collaboration. When I’m out at night with the dogs, crossing a mountain range or something, people will say, “Well, how can you do that? How can you be out there by yourself?” But I’m not by myself. I’m with 14 of my best friends.

There was this moment at this dog led race near Kotzebue, Alaska. I wasn’t actually in this race, my wife was, and she didn’t need my support. I just sort of had a few days off, and I ended up renting a snow machine or a snowmobile with a photographer, Katie Olinsky. Katie and I took this snow machine and we followed a little bit behind the race, and we went to this town called Noorvik. There’s no road. You don’t take a car there. You can fly there, you can take a snowmobile there. You can take a dog sled there.

We went across the street to check out the checkpoint in this community building. And of course they had put out this beautiful spread of food. There’s moose stew and chili and coffee, and all this stuff. Just feeding the mushers. I saw, in one corner of the building, there were some people working on some kind of carpentry project with some wood. There’s a woman there, and she just starts wailing, crying. The saddest sound.

It’s kind of awkward because we’re outsiders. We don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not gonna pretend it’s not happening. So I just wanted to say, “Hey, do you care to share what’s happening?” She had lost a grandson, I believe. They were getting ready to have this service. That’s what people had been building in the corner, the carpenters were working on a casket for this young man.

Then there’s a knock at the door, and it’s like a hunter who lives in the village. They had shot a moose, but it was not the season to do that, so I was kind of curious about it. It’s not really my business, but somebody just mentioned to me, “Oh, well Fish and Game authorizes us to go get these animals, because there’s a food shortage.”

I thought, There’s a food shortage, and these people had been entertaining the mushers, feeding everybody, building a casket, planning for a funeral, all these things. And the mushers didn’t even know it. I just thought, Wow, that is a community that can hold so much.

The race goes in a loop and then comes back through this community a few days later. So they said, “Well, come on your way back, we’re gonna give you some stew meat.” And I said, “No thanks. We don’t need that. We’ll be okay. I appreciate the offer.” But they weren’t taking no for an answer.

A couple days later we’re riding back, and go through this village at three o’clock in the morning. Just crawling through slowly on our snow machine, not to make any noise, and we’re not gonna stop. It’s three o’clock in the morning, you know? But sure enough, this woman runs out of the community center and brings Katie and I this cooler of stew meat and just insists that we have some of it. And I thought, This is what this is about.

This isn’t about times or days. I don’t remember who came in what place in the race. Actually, my wife had a top five finish. It was amazing, but that’s not the point.

As a trans person, I’ve gone down to the Wisconsin State Capitol, and I’ve been to these debates about trans inclusion in sports and so on. It was just a half hour of somebody reading the high jump records from New Mexico from last year, and when this person went through transition, look how much better their scores got, and what’s that gonna do for the sport? I’m like, This is so missing the point. Sports for most people isn’t about a college scholarship or becoming a professional anything like that. It’s about the connections we make. I wish we could begin to have this conversation, not in terms of competitive advantage, but in terms of belonging.

I happen to be in a sport that men and women can be in and it doesn’t matter. So it doesn’t matter in that sense that I’m trans, nobody’s checking my gender card. Being able to be a part of something competitive at an elite level without having to worry that being trans will disqualify me has given me the perspective about how important it is that people are able to participate in the sports that they’re working on, that they care about, in the communities where they belong, being who they are.

I think here’s what I want to tell trans people and trans young people. Trans people, people who don’t fit in in all kinds of ways, and who doubt their own validity, and try to figure out where they belong, and maybe feel like they landed in a spaceship in their family and in a community, and no one’s like them, or a few people are, and they’re trying to find their way…people like us have been here for hundreds of years, thousands of years. We’ve been here for millennia in human history, and somehow a lot of us have found ways to survive. We’ve found ways to find each other. So I want you to be able to find your people that you can trust, whether they’re adults, they’re other kids, whoever.

If you feel that love and openness from people, move toward that. And you’ll be able to get through this. I don’t know how, but there’s gonna be a way, it’s gonna open up. It’s not gonna come from politicians, or your school principal, or your teacher, or me, or anyone else. It’s just gonna be a journey that you find and it’s gonna be a really cool one, and I hope you stick around for it.

I want to hear about it.

Quince Mountain is an outdoor educator and dog musher living in Wisconsin. He is one half of the BraverMountain mushing team with his wife, Blair Braverman. Quince is the first openly trans person to compete in the Iditarod and on the reality TV show Naked and Afraid. Learn more about Quince at .

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

The post Quince Mountain Races Toward Connection appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Andrew Bernstein told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was trying to get back into the gym and I was working out, from a seated position in the wheelchair, but I was just not used to moving around again, and everything was out of balance.

It was scary, because every time I couldn’t stand up, It was a reminder of how weak I was, and how much my body had changed, and how much my life was going to change going forward.

Everything was hard.

I am better known as Bernie. I’m originally from Brooklyn, New York, and I’ve lived in Colorado since 2018.

I am a PR and marketing professional, and I work for the virtual cycling platform Zwift.

For a lot of my adult life, I was an amateur bike racer, and had a lot of passion for cycling and riding and racing bikes. Now that I’m no longer actively racing, I still ride a lot, and I’m very passionate about it, but I also have a passion for just being outside and hiking.

In 2019, I was the victim of a hit-and-run, and survived pretty traumatic injuries, including a lot of broken bones and collapsed lungs and internal bleeding.

I suffered a spinal cord injury, which resulted in paraplegia. My left leg is now paralyzed, and it also affects my bladder. Whenever only one side of your body’s impacted, you get all these imbalances. So I live with a lot of chronic pain as a result of my spinal cord injury.

I was hospitalized for three months and then I went home with his new paraplegic body and, and had to spend a lot of time learning how to get in and out of the car, and get into the house, and use the bathroom, take a shower. All basic things that you have to relearn when your body no longer functions as it did.

There were a lot of challenges, but one of the ones that has stuck with me as the hardest to overcome was learning how to stand.

When I was in the hospital, I was largely using a wheelchair. And when I was discharged from the hospital, I had been given a leg brace called a KAFO, which stands for knee, ankle, foot, orthotic.

When you don’t have any strength around those joints and the muscles around those joints, the brace can keep your leg rigid. It almost becomes like a peg leg, and you can put weight through it.

I was learning how to walk with that, and I was getting along pretty well, but they still tell you “Listen, when you’re out in the world, you’re on the sidewalk, you’re getting in and out of the car, sometimes slips and falls happen.” So it’s important before they let you leave the hospital that you know how to get yourself back on your feet.

The way that I did that was with a physical therapist in the hospital. She would get out a wrestling mat, and she’d have me transfer to the floor, that’s the physical therapy term, transfer.

I’d get down to the ground, and then we’d try all these different methods of standing. Sometimes she would grab me by the waist of my shorts and haul me up to my feet. I didn’t quite have the strength to get there. I had all these weird imbalances, and my muscles were super atrophied. I had previously been bed bound for two months. So sometimes just the act of standing would be painful. I’d wrench my back, and then I wouldn’t wanna try again for days or weeks.

Finally I was coming to the end of my time at the hospital. Being in the hospital is terrible, but at the same time there’s a huge amount of support, and that particular hospital was well staffed and the staff there was very caring and very supportive. This process of learning how to stand was daunting because not only was there a physical challenge, but it was also like every time I did it was a reminder that I’m taking a step towards leaving this very supportive environment.

But it eventually got to a point where it’s like, OK, it is time. I shouldn’t be here anymore. I’m well, or I’m well enough. I’m occupying a bed that could be used for someone who needs it more. Plus, you wanna go home, you wanna be with the cat.

I realized I really did need to learn this skill if I wanted to be able to exist in the community. So, I was practicing with my physical therapist, her name was Natasha. I just remember one day, close to the end of my time where I was like, “OK Natasha, I really need to get this down. Let’s try it.” I think I know the right positioning for my hands and I think I know the right position for my feet and I think I know exactly what to do this time. So, I got transferred to the floor on the wrestling mat, and got my feet all set, and got my crutches set so I could lean on them, and started to get myself up. I didn’t quite make it, and fell back to the ground.

Natasha knew from all of our previous tries that oftentimes, I was one and done. And she asked if I wanted to try again. I was like, “Yeah, I do.” And I stood up for the first time.

Natasha asked me what I had done differently and I just said, “Natasha, I just decided to do it this time.”

I think that moment will always stick with me because it taught me that mindset was such an important part of everything in front of me. And that was very important because getting back on my feet was just the early part of this recovery. And since then, I’ve decided that I wanted to ride again, and I do ride again.

I decided I wanted to hike a lot, and I figured out how to do that. And I’ve been able to drive my recovery by setting goals and then deciding what I want to do, and then working backwards and figuring out the steps that I need to take to get there. And that’s been very helpful to me.

It’s helped me accomplish a lot of things despite, or maybe even because of, my paraplegia, my spinal cord injury.

I think the single biggest lesson was just that I had a choice. I could choose to wallow, and certainly I met a lot of people who had made that choice. Or I could choose to move forward. And that’s enabled me to have a strong recovery. And I’m very grateful.

I’m relatively new to this. I’ve been injured for four years, and I’ve had the great privilege to speak to both people who are newer in their injuries and also people who have been in it way longer than me.

This is advice that I’ve been given and also advice that I’ve given to others: You should approach it with curiosity. I think our natural inclination is to be scared and depressed and fearful. And that’s completely understandable. I definitely was in those spaces at times, and still am. But I think what I’ve come to learn is that if you’re curious about what this means for you, if you’re curious about what you can do that makes your body feel good, and what you can do that maybe helps you improve. If you’re curious about what your life looks like now, and what it can look like, those are all things that I think can help you focus on the right things and improve.

Some people with spinal cord injuries will not see a physical recovery. I’m very fortunate that my injury has these things go relatively minor, so I’ve been able to recover. That’s not the case for everyone, but I do think that any person with this type of injury can try to think about how they will move forward in their world, and how they will continue to be an engaged member of their community and continue to enjoy life.

And I think we can all do that. And it just takes a little bit of work, a little bit more work for a person with a disability to do so than an able-bodied person. But it’s possible for all of us.

Andrew Bernstein is an elite track cyclist and marketer in the outdoor industry. He has also written about his recovery on outsideonline.com. You can follow him on Twitter @bernietweets.

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

The post Andrew Bernstein Chooses His Own Recovery appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Nick Beckman told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There were a lot of moments in Fort Myers where I didn’t really think that I could keep going. This is after eight days of 18-hour days. I would sit in a car for 5, 10 minutes and get off my feet, and just try to compose myself and reset. And I would just find myself sobbing and I’d call my wife and say, “I don’t know how I can stand up on my feet again and go again.”

There were 20 or 30 of us on site there. You’d look around and you’d know who had just come back from having a cry. Every once in a while, you go up to a friend, a coworker, a colleague, you have a hug, you shake it off, and you move on and keep doing the work ahead of you.

People just call me Beckman. I am here at Mercy Chefs’ Headquarters in Portsmouth, Virginia. I am the director of logistics and facilities, which means I oversee all of our equipment, all of our kitchen trailers and support vehicles.

Mercy Chefs is a faith-based disaster relief nonprofit. We aim to cook and serve chef-prepared hot meals in the wake of natural disasters and national emergencies to victims, volunteers, first responders, anyone who’s hungry.

I have a wife who also works at Mercy Chefs, and then a young son, and two more on the way. So, by the fall I’ll have three sons. I would say my family is my first priority, and my passion for sure. I love being a dad. I think it’s just the greatest thing that anyone can do, is be a parent. But Mercy Chefs is high up on the list. We say often around here that it’s more than a job, because it takes a lot more of your attention and your care than most jobs do.

What we do is unlike anything else in the world. If you look at disaster zones, you see a lot of food, a lot of people that do food. But oftentimes it’s hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese sandwiches. Something really easy and cheap to make for a lot of people. And that’s great. We always say that any food is good in the wake of a disaster, when someone’s lost everything, their fridge is useless, the pantry is maybe gone. We believe that anything is better than nothing. But we also believe that there’s a way to serve with excellence, and that comes with a lot of extra steps. We could go out and put cheese on bread and hand it out and call it a day, but we believe that a meal in a box with a hot main dish, whatever it may be, fresh green salad, a piece of fruit, a lovely piece of bread and a dessert altogether means a whole lot more to someone than a cheese sandwich or a hotdog.

Hurricane Ian struck Fort Myers in early October of 2022, and we mobilized. It was our biggest mobilization ever.

After two days in Fort Myers, we all got together and said, “We need another kitchen. We need more capacity. We need to be doing more.” We burned through an entire truck of fresh groceries in a day and a half. Again, every single meal is handcrafted. It comes with love, and it’s a real meal and all that. Means a lot of hard work.

I believe call time was 4:45 AM, and we muster, and we pray over our day ahead, and the opportunity to serve folks in their hardest time. If there is food for us, you grab something really quick. And then it’s about pulling the food off of the trucks for the day. We’re scratch cooking. So when we get onions, we get bags of onions and it takes a team of volunteers to dice those onions, before they can go in a skillet. There’s chicken to chop, there’s meat to smoke. You’re just doing this, that, and everything, and all of a sudden you look up and it’s 5:00 PM and you haven’t eaten.

There were a lot of moments in Fort Myers where I really thought of giving up and throwing in the towel and saying, Mercy Chefs is too hard. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I want to be with my family.

I talked to my wife, I talked to my coworkers, and prayed it through, and I say, Mercy Chefs isn’t a job, it’s a calling. For those of us who are honored to hear that call and respond, you don’t get to just give up when the going gets tough. Because then you drive out, and you see the faces of the people that you’re touching with a meal, and you realize that these people haven’t given up either and they lost everything. I still have a house. I still have a bed. And my family’s okay back home.

We always talk about the one at Mercy Chefs. We make 20,000 meals a day. And it’s easy to just say, Yeah, we did 20,000 meals today. That’s incredible. Way to go team. But that’s 20,000 individual people who got touched by a meal. And so at the end of the day, oftentimes we’ll get together and the question is posed: Who is your one today?

In Fort Myers for me I was just taking a minute for myself to walk down the three-quarter-mile long drive-thru line that we had for people waiting to get food, waving and smiling and saying hello.

There was a little boy in a car with his mom, and he had a little crayon-drawn sign that said, thank you, Mercy Chefs. He was holding it up out the window in the back of this beat up old car. I could tell his mom was tired. But I could also see in her face a little bit of hope, waiting in the drive-thru line, that she was gonna get to feed him today. And his little thank you note, that was really special for me, because I know what I would do for my son to get him food in the wake of a cataclysmic event like this, and I would wait days for a hot meal for my son.

I didn’t say anything. I waved and smiled and moved on, but that’s something that’ll stick with me.

The biggest thing I learned in Fort Myers is the capacity for human endurance is incredible, but the capacity for love between us as humans is even even bigger. As hard as it is to see someone on their worst day and a community ravaged by a storm like this, it’s always really, really cool to see how a community can come together, and love each other. A lot of times we see volunteers who will show up to serve with us, who don’t have a home to go back to at the end of the day serving with us. They’ve been affected just the same as everybody else in their community, and yet they choose to come out and serve their community with us. They could be at home talking to the insurance company and sorting through the rubble of their belongings, but they step out of that, and step into service for their community.

On day 16 of my 18-hour days, I’m running on very little sleep, a whole lot of caffeine, and very little food. My alarm goes off at 5:30 AM and I say, There’s no chance I can move my feet out of bed. There’s no chance I can swing my feet off this air mattress and stand up and put on my grimy clothes that haven’t been cleaned and get back out there and do the work. There’s just no way. And then I sit for 10 more seconds with my eyes closed and I think about the previous 15 days where I did in fact get my feet out of bed.

For me, I think looking back typically is my best way to move forward, trusting that it has been done. There’s nothing here that I haven’t done before. I know the work ahead of me. I know that I have done it and can do it. It’s just kind of that mental step of telling yourself I can in fact do this because I have in fact done this.

Nick Beckman is Director of Logistics and Facilities for Mercy Chefs, a winner of the 2022 Defender Service Award, established by Land Rover. These awards recognize the nonprofits doing selfless service for their communities every day. You can learn more about Mercy Chefs and their work at .

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

The post Nick Beckman Is Fueled by the Hard Days appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Kieron Wilde told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I got into tourism almost 20 years ago, and left my career of ecology behind. But I’ve always felt like I had abandoned my real purpose and my real calling.

And I had that moment where I was like, Maybe they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I own a company called First Nature. We are a destination management and private tour company. We specialize in creating custom experiences around the Pacific Northwest.

Travel’s definitely a passion of mine. It’s all the things that go along with travel: the learning, the experiencing of other cultures, the meeting of new people, and just the experience of opening yourself up to the world.

The beginning of the pandemic aligned perfectly with the birth of my first child. And for my industry, the tourism industry, we were one of the first and hardest hit. Everything just came to a screeching halt in March of 2020.

My “oh shit” moment was probably not long after the official call came down from the US government, banning travel. Just the aftermath of that, cascading down through every hotel here, and every small little outfitter and guide, is massive.

My husband was still working full-time. He was still going to the office quite a bit, even though they were social distancing. And I was basically a night nurse, and if anybody’s had a kid, they can understand what that means. Every few hours you’re awake, if you even get to go to sleep in between, and then there’s the daytime. You’re doing the same thing, but also trying to run a business. Every day felt a little bit overwhelming.

What kept me going was the excitement, for one, of being a new parent. I was very lucky in some sense that I had the opportunity to be at home and not be out guiding. It’s a very magical thing to become a parent, and I had been wanting it for my entire adult life, actually a lot of childhood as well. It’s just been a huge goal of mine forever, and it’s hard for two men to have kids. It’s a little bit more complicated than most other partnerships, for the obvious reasons. So it had taken us many years to get to the point where we had been able to realize our dream of having a family, and the fact that we had finally reached this goal was amazing. Even though everything else seemed to be falling apart and it kind of felt like the end of days. We’re like, Is this the apocalypse? And what are we gonna do with our brand new newborn in this new world?

I just remember just sitting there on very few hours of sleep on my computer trying to figure out how to refund these people all their money. They had paid for tours that they weren’t gonna be taking. And I had that moment of, Hey, maybe this is an opportunity to invest in doing things differently, in a way that is more fulfilling for myself and makes a better impact on the planet and the people that we interact with. Maybe this is a way to rewrite the script on travel in general.

I just started working on a plan B and a pivot for my company. We started to think about ways to create regenerative travel moments for people when they’re traveling to the destinations we work in.

Regenerative travel is a trend in the industry right now that allows visitors to engage in stewardship that leaves a place better than they found it. It can look a lot of different ways. Regenerative travel can be anything from volunteering to do trail restoration work, to spending some time cleaning up a beach in the destination you’re visiting, to planting trees in riparian zones to help salmon habitat restoration.

I had a couple moments in 2021 when we launched the first of these regenerative travel projects, where it was still pretty new that people could travel together, and there was a lot of hesitancy around travel still, and it was hard to fill them. I definitely had a few moments where I was like, Is this even a viable product?

But it’s gaining momentum, we’re working with destinations to consult on how they can be more regenerative as a destination. And there’s a lot of interest.

It takes time when you make a big pivot, you make a big move, and you kind of have to trust the process and stick with it if you want to be successful. I really believe in purpose finding and doing that internal work, and I’ve done a lot of those exercises over the years, just finding my intention, following your passion, and seeing where all those things align.

It took a while to apply that to my own business, because once you’re making money and you’re doing your thing, it’s hard to really shift. It’s hard to change tracks once you’ve built this thing and it’s really going along. The pandemic really provided that opportunity to say, Woah, is there a way we could be doing this better? Is there something entirely different we could be doing? It provided that opportunity to take a break and pause and shift focus.

You just get on autopilot sometimes when you have so many things, but find those moments where you can breathe and just be in the moment. Be still for a minute. And that’s when a lot of those epiphanies come, I think, when people take that time to be still.

Kieron Wilde is the founder of First Nature Tours in Portland, Oregon, and is an experienced tour guide in the Pacific Northwest as well as in Central and South America. You can find his company at .

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��,��, or wherever you like to listen. �����Ի��� to be featured on the show.

The post Kieron Wilde Won’t Put His Life on Autopilot appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Genevieve Clemons told her story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was in a dormitory with one other roommate, but because classes were online, we spent most of our time in this tiny room, taking online classes. And so I just felt really cooped up, irritated, unmotivated. I wanted to find my community, and I just hadn’t.

I go by tons of nicknames, kind of dealer’s choice, but just generally Genevieve.

I am currently going to be a senior at the University of Texas at Austin. I would say two of my biggest passions would have to be nature and wildlife. And, recently, a big passion of mine has become running, just anywhere, as far as I can go. I love running.

When the pandemic hit, it was the end of my senior year of high school, and I was honestly quite miserable even before the pandemic started. I was dealing with some anxiety and perfectionism. I didn’t really feel like I fit in in my high school.

I didn’t have the best experience with high school sports. I was on the tennis team, but I had a coach that treated me not the best. And so I just kind of had a complicated relationship with sports, and I was also having a hard time balancing academics with everything else. I just took things really seriously. I graduated as Valedictorian, but I wasn’t happy.

I wanted to change a lot of things about my life, my outlook and the way I was living it. I saw college as an opportunity for that.

Coming out of high school, I didn’t really have a lot of connections and friendships, and I was really depending on having that normal freshman-year college experience to help me bounce back. So when the pandemic hit, I got pretty depressed.

Having to be cooped up inside all day started out kind of exciting, like, Whoa, what’s happening? Finishing out high school, we get to do school online, it’s easy, and then it just kind of dragged out. I started out my freshman year at UT in the middle of the raging pandemic, and it was fully online, so that was pretty difficult.

At that point where I was really seeking balance, I was like, Maybe I just take everybody else out of the equation, and I just fully look for something and do it because I love it and I want to do it. Maybe that’s the answer.

I knew my dad was a marathon runner, in his younger days. And I was like, Why don’t I try running? And honestly, I hated it in tennis, when we had to do running. Hated it. But I was like, you know what? I’m gonna try it, but I’m gonna do it my way. So I just literally put on some shoes and started running. I didn’t want anyone to know I was running. I didn’t want to know how fast I was going. I just wanted to get out there.

For several, several months, I would just go out on this trail by my house. Sometimes it was just a mile, and that mile was freaking hard, and I would feel accomplished because I was really just shutting everything else out. And it was, How did I feel today? Slowly I had little victories and little moments like, Oh, I actually kind of felt not out of breath today, or, I ran a little faster or went a little further. I was hooked.

I started to run further and further. And I just loved it. I loved the feeling of pushing myself in that way, in the endurance way. I was attracted to distance running. So, one day, I was like, I want to run a marathon. And I shocked myself when I said that, but I was like, my dad did it, I want to do it. I want to see what it’s like.

In my head, when I say something out loud that I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. I was so intimidated. I was like, The last thing I want to do is run with all these people. They’re gonna see how slow I am, they’re gonna see I’m not a real runner. But I was like, You know what? This has all been good so far. Just try it. And that was my new goal after getting out of high school and letting anxiety run the show. I was like, I’m not doing that anymore. Let’s just go.

But I knew that’s the kind of stuff you can’t do alone. Sure, there’s the internet, but I wanted to talk to some people that had done it. So I went to these running groups, and I found a community that I was so embraced by. In sports as a kid, I was always on the sidelines breathing really hard, and the coach was like, “Come on.” I wasn’t used to these people just believing in me and seeing my potential, and wanting to share the gift of this sport.

I did my first trail race, and I was so scared. But my family came and I was like, You know what, I’m not gonna worry about it. I got out there, and I have never ran, or competed, or done something where I felt so joyful. We were all out there to have fun. I would pass people on the trail in the race, and they would say, “Hey, great job.” It was just so encouraging.

So, I just catapulted off from there. I’ve run probably about nine races, maybe ten so far.

Seeing other people believing in me, I realized I could also believe in myself. I think whatever that looks like, having some kind of faith in yourself, listening to whatever that is inside you that guides you to do things—that light, that spark in you—instead of walking in fear and doubt. Everybody has those thoughts, I sure do still. If I’m about to sign up for a race, I think, Are you sure you can do that? Or, Is this really for you? Or, as I’m sure everyone thinks, Can someone like me really do this? To recognize and say, Hey, I’m hearing these voices of doubt, but right now, I’m gonna choose to listen to something else.

Genevieve Clemons is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in biochemistry. Earlier this year, she competed in her first 100K race. She was nominated for the show by her very proud dad.

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��,��, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

The post Genevieve Clemons Won’t Let Anxiety Run the Show appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

A.K. MacKellar told their story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I remember having this moment and feeling like, If I don’t go right now, I’m gonna be too scared and I’m not gonna go. So start biking.

I am in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I am the founder of a body inclusive movement platform specifically for LGBTQ+ folks, and I do that full-time, running an online fitness community as well as getting outside and being active.

In 2019, I was in a mountain biking accident, and I had a traumatic brain injury as a result, which completely changed my life. I’d started riding maybe four or five years earlier, and I was really excited to explore Sedona, Arizona. This weekend was just more about exploring the sport and being among people who love it as much as I do.

You bike all the way up to the top of this plateau, and then go down. It’s this notable trail in Sedona and has some tough features. I was pushing myself a little bit outside my comfort zone to do it, but in a way that I felt encouraged and I should go for it and challenge myself.

We had stopped at part of this trail that was a little bit of a technical feature, a big rock roll where you couldn’t really see the bottom. A couple people had gone ahead of me and they were fine. But I didn’t know that you couldn’t just roll your bike all the way down and be fine. You had to lift your front wheel, otherwise your front wheel would be too vertical, and with the momentum you’d go over your handlebars. So it’s interesting to reflect on that moment of wanting to beat the fear, but without all the information.

I am feeling my body weight go forward, and feeling myself leave the bike, and seeing the rock ahead of my head, but knowing that, there’s no stopping myself, there’s nothing I can do. You just see the thing in slow motion, but it’s really the fastest occurring motion. It’s seconds or less than seconds that it all happens: hitting the rock, having the bike fall on top of me, and lying on the ground for a second. In that moment, I didn’t know that anything was wrong. I just thought, Whoa, OK. That didn’t go as planned. And it wasn’t until I stood up that I recognized that my body wasn’t OK.

I’m nauseous, I’m feeling dizzy. I had played competitive hockey growing up, so concussions are very common in that sport. And recognizing this feeling that had occurred before, and knowing that my body wasn’t OK, but not knowing at all at the time the extent of it.

Once I got home I recognized how rough a shape I was in. In high school I had a friend who had had some really bad concussions. So I messaged her saying, “What should I do?” And she gave me the contact of a sports medicine doctor who specialized in traumatic brain injuries. I remember calling them up and needing a lot of help. They were like, “Oh, we only have an appointment with a physio. Do you want that right now? Or do you want to wait for the doctor?” And I remember being like, I can’t make this decision. I don’t know. Cognitively, my functioning was so low.

Over the course of three to four months as I was trying to go back to my office job in real estate, my body was not tolerating that. I started to recognize that forcing myself to go back to this office job that I wasn’t passionate about anymore was not the path that I needed to walk down.

Even though it was terrifying, I decided to quit my job and start my own business in personal training. And the funny thing was, the next day, a bunch of my symptoms went away. The stress and forcing myself to do something that wasn’t right for me having a real physical effect on my body was a big eye-opener, and something that you almost can’t recognize until after that big moment happens.

At the time, I was working with a coach, someone who believed in me, and told me, “Jump, take the leap. You can do this.” At the same time, I had a really supportive partner who said the same thing, “Why not take the chance?” My parents thought I was crazy. They did not support that decision at all. And I told them, “I really don’t want to hear it anymore.”

I think the biggest takeaway for me is that my body and the signals it sends are really important to listen to. Whether it’s a headache, or jaw pain, or your eyes not functioning, or your brain not functioning, they’re signals that you need to slow down, that you need to rest, that you need to take care of yourself or prioritize that.

And it’s frustrating, and it doesn’t work well with the realities of our daily life with work, and socializing, and responsibilities, and childcare, any of those things. But it really is the only way.

A.K. MacKellar is a certified personal trainer and fitness coach and the founder of , an inclusive online platform offering movement classes and community for all kinds of people.

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��,��, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

The post AK Mackellar Follows Their Body’s Lead appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Amy McCulloch told her story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After living this independent life, suddenly I was back in my parents’ basement, without a husband, without a future, without a marriage, with all my possessions in boxes. And I’d actually just gone out and bought the hiking boots, bought a new backpack, and just landed in Ireland the next day. I couldn’t really face being at home because it was too familiar. It was almost too painful to be somewhere that was so familiar to me because it felt like such a step backwards.

I am currently in London, England, in my home. I was actually born in the UK, but I moved to Canada when I was young.

I am a novelist. I write thrillers for adults and also science fiction and fantasy for young adults. I have a real passion for walking and mountaineering, in particular for high altitude peaks, and also all sorts of endurance events, and have sort of become addicted to running after not really being able to climb during the pandemic.

Probably the biggest challenge that sort of led me into the outdoors was the end of my marriage. I was in a long-term relationship from when I was 21, and we were together for ten years. I really felt like that was going to be the relationship that would define my life. That was the path that I thought I was gonna be walking, thought we were going to start a family. But one year into our marriage, it all kind of fell apart.

I arrived in Canada all of a sudden, on my own with all my stuff in boxes, and just having no idea what I was going to do with my life from that point on. I was looking into the future and really couldn’t see a path for myself.

I realized at that point that I was going to have to make some kind of significant change. I was just really lost. My first thought really was that I needed to get outside of myself to try and do something for myself that would take my mind off what was going on with me, but also allow myself to process this monumental shift that I was suddenly facing. And that’s when I decided to go on my first long distance walk. I’d never done anything like that before. I’d always been a big traveler, but I’d never really been that active of a person.

I kind of was this introverted kid, a shy kid who always had a nose tucked in a book. That kind of person didn’t enjoy running or pushing themselves physically or getting sweaty. All of those things, that kind of internal narrative, I’d convinced myself was true. I think when my marriage broke down, what I was realizing was I had to question a lot of the stories that I told myself about who I was. Is that really who I am, or if I just push myself a little bit outside of my comfort zone, push my boundaries a little bit, could I be capable of more? Could I find myself enjoying something different? Could my life look different now?

So I booked a one-way ticket to Ireland and decided to walk the Kerry Way. It’s a part of the Irish coastline that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. That’s where the Skellig Islands are, which is where Star Wars was filmed. The end of the world place where Luke Skywalker ends up living out the rest of his days. The Kerry Way is very clearly marked, but it was completely out of my comfort zone at this time. So it was quite daunting to think about.

It’s a mixture of wild ocean, forest, farmland, and it’s the location of Ireland’s tallest mountain. It was very challenging for me as the first long distance walk that I’d ever embarked on.

I can remember really distinctly showing up at this bread and breakfast in County Kerry, and just looking around at the other tables and they were filled with couples or families or friends who were either coming back from finishing the Kerry Way, or about to start, or going on a road trip around Ireland. I had this really distinct feeling that I was there all on my own, and I really had to rely on myself to get to the next destination. I had something like 18 kilometers to walk on that first day.

There were so many times when I found myself completely on my own. I was walking slightly in the off season. So there weren’t that many other walkers around, but there were a lot of sheep, a lot of lambs. And I found myself quite often, to entertain myself, I guess, and also because I was processing quite a lot of really big emotions, just screaming at the sheep, crying in front of sheep, like singing at sheep. Those sheep really were my only witnesses to the kind of emotional rollercoaster that I was going on.

The mantra that I used in order to propel myself forward is that I only had to take one more step. Just one more step, one more step. It was very, very simple, but that’s what the walking did.

When I was at home back in Canada trying to process the emotions, I was so distracted by the internet, by looking things up, by always being on social media, and just wanting to kind of wrap myself up in a duvet and wallow. But when I was out there and walking and just putting one foot in front of the other, that was the only thing I had to do, to concentrate on. Giving myself the time and the peace in a way to just say to myself, All you have to do today is put one foot in front of the other, and reach that next destination.

What that first journey really taught me was that I was so much more capable of doing things, of doing physical things, of doing hard things, than I ever really thought was possible. It gave me that confidence and that belief in myself, that I was also capable of change. And that maybe even after ten years of being in the same relationship routine or in the same life routine, that things could be different. It really opened my eyes.

I went on such a rapid journey after that into the world of mountaineering, the world of walking, the outdoors in general. And that was something I would never have accomplished had I not gone through that total reset of what I thought my life was going to be. When I look at how far I’ve come in five years after that time, I’m both unrecognizable to myself and yet also so much truer to who I know I really am now.

Amy McCulloch is the author of Breathless, a thriller based on her experience climbing Manaslu, the eighth highest peak in the world. She has also written seven young adult books, and has a new novel, Midnight, coming out this summer. You can find her on Twitter .

You can follow The Daily Rally���Dz���,��,��, or wherever you like to listen, and nominate someone to be featured on the show .

The post Amy McCulloch Is Ready for Her Next Journey appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.