Welcome to the Farnham Street Podcast called The Knowledge Project.
I'm your host, Shane Parrish, the curator behind the Farnham Street blog, which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out.
The Knowledge Project is where we talk with interesting people to uncover the frameworks you can use to learn more and less time, make better decisions, and live a happier and more meaningful life.
On this episode, I have Amelia Boone.
Amelia has dominated obstacle course racing since its infancy.
She's almost superhuman.
A four -time world champion, she's been called the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing.
She's also known as the Queen of Pain, having once said, I'm not the strongest, I'm not the fastest, but I'm really good at suffering.
In this conversation, we talk about learning, self -reliance, reading, and a little bit about training and so much more.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Amelia Boone is here and she's one of the most decorated athletes in the ultra competitive and somewhat superhuman Spartan and Tough Mudder races, 24 -hour races, 100 miles running.
When she's not doing that, she's a lawyer for Apple.
She offers a real -life example of someone driven by a different motor.
I'm pleased to have her on the Knowledge Project for the first time.
Welcome, Amelia. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
I'm really appreciative.
Make the case for why, given all you've accomplished, I shouldn't think of you as superhuman.
In the case. I mean, because most people, I think, would think there's a little bit of crazy more than superhuman.
But I think the funny thing is I've always just considered myself a very regular person and that I've never really been a standout all -star in anything.
I just happen to kind of find this weird world and capitalize on it pretty early on.
But I was just going through the motions for the first 28, 30 years of my life and then kind of made a change.
How did you get started in this kind of branch of athleticism and keep it like they're both super competitive?
So being a lawyer and then being this ultra competitive athlete on the same token, walk me through a little bit about that.
Yeah. I went to college.
I went to law school.
I went there with the idea that this was all about academics and this was all about getting the best job I could.
And so in college I worked my butt off to graduate the top of my class so I can get the best law school that I could go to in law school.
I worked hard so I could be at the top of class to get into the best law firm that I could get into.
And I got into one of the top law firms in the world and I sat around that first year and I go, okay, what's next?
And it was one of those realizations where I thought I'd work to achieve that goal and work to achieve that goal, but then there was something else that was still there.
And so it wasn't until I was 27 at the time and decided randomly as people do for stupid events to run a tough mutter with some coworkers there and we finished and they were like, okay, that was cool.
Check that off the list, go back to our lives.
But suddenly I found just this different niche, this different I think competitive outlet for myself and one that I was really bad at.
I mean, my first race that I went out there, I remember falling off of every single obstacle and being like, really?
Really? You used to do monkey bars all the time when you were a little kid and you can't even hold your body weight up.
And I think it kind of at that point in my life reignited this fire of this new challenge, of this new thing and it created a life of its own.
What's it like going from an extremely mentally challenging job to this physical sort of release when you're training or you're running or you're racing and how do they compliment each other?
Yeah, I used to think that there was no tie between the two.
I remember at first, when I first started racing, I used to think, no, one's completely physical and this provides me the outlet that sitting at a desk all day long doesn't provide me.
But the more that I realized in the longer that I've done it, I realized that actually many of these races, and especially because I'm geared towards the really long distance races, they're way more mental than they are physical, especially at a certain point.
I say in a 24 -hour race, you're going to run, the first half of the race is physical and the second half of the race is completely mental.
And there's so much strategy and triage that involves and goes on in these races.
Kind of like in day -to -day and work as an attorney and things come up or in any way, it doesn't matter if you're an attorney, in any situation, you have to be able to adapt on the fly when things go wrong.
And that's really what all these ultra endurance events are about, because it's not if things are going to go wrong out there, it's when things are going to go wrong out there.
And the people that succeed in them are the ones that are able to address the task at hand and work through that.
And so I think that I found more and more that I've continued to do this a very, very distinct connection between the two areas of my life.
Can you give me an example of something that like you're 50 miles into a 100 -mile race and you have to work through and what does that look like to you personally?
Yeah, so I think, I mean there are a number of things that come up, but for instance if you have, I was in a race about two years ago and I realized that at certain points of the race you had dropbacks.
So you would have areas where you would store your supplies and your nutrition in advance and then you plot that carefully out to kind of know like okay, if I need to change out shoes or I need to change out socks, like what am I going to do?
And I remember I got to this aid station, a 60 -mile aid station and I didn't have, I screwed up my dropbacks, so I basically just didn't have anything at that station and I was like I don't have my nutrition, I don't have the shoes that I was going to change into.
And at that point you start, your entire race plan starts to crumble and you start to think oh god, oh god.
But then I realized like look, it's not, there's nothing in that that you can't work through.
So yes, I don't have the nutrition that I was planning on, but this is why I train long distance, sometimes fasted runs to know that your body can get through these things.
And it's just so you kind of adapt and I'm like okay, well I don't have my nutrition for the next 10, 15 miles, so I'm going to have to take it a little bit slower, going to have to make sure that I don't get into that zone of bonking.
And so you just kind of readjust your race plan and it's little things like that that happen all the time or things with injuries and I you swear that a situation will pop up and all of a sudden your left knee is hurting and you think oh god, I've really done something wrong and then five miles later
you're fine. I just kind of talk through it in my head and I say okay, what is hurting right now?
How can I change this?
Can I change my gait?
Can I slow down and walk?
Can I stop and stretch?
And it's just all those kind of the little micro adjustments that you make.
So that's where you are today when you're racing.
Were you always like that?
Like after that first race and you went into the second one, were you as mentally prepared or as strong maybe as you are now?
How did you develop that?
Like any skill, it's definitely it's practice.
It's through habit and it's through repetition.
I think that initially I was very very kind of volatile in all over the places in races and when something started going wrong I would scream and cry and think oh this is the end and etc etc.
So it is definitely something that the more you expose yourself to the better you get at it like anything and I think that's also why something a lot of these ultra endurance events you don't see them dominated by, well this is changing, but you don't see them dominated necessarily by very young kids.
So the 18, the 20 year olds who are probably are way vastly physically superior to those of us in our mid 30s or 40s.
You see in a lot of these events actually it's people more seasoned in their late 30s in their early 40s.
You can be a dominant ultra runner into your mid late 40s and I've seen that a lot because it comes through the mental practice and that repetition and just knowing that you can adjust instead of freaking out.
Have you ever freaked out when you're running?
Definitely. I mean I've been in races where I have been in situations where I just I mentally shut down.
I was in, there are these races that are now defunct for a number of reasons mainly liability but they're they're called the death race and it was a race that's very hard to explain but you never really knew when it started you had a general idea and you didn't know when it ended but they generally
went about like 72 hours.
You're out there in the woods doing various tasks it was a very mental combination so you'd have to say carry a bag of cement up a mountain and then at the top memorize a bible verse and then run back down and then recite the bible verse to the volunteers that were sitting there and if you got it wrong
you had to do it all over again and so it was a kind of a combination of all of that and I remember in one of the races we were about 48 hours in and I had to carry this log up this ravine that was like gushing water and it was just very dangerous and at some point I just sat there and I just sat down
I don't know I can't do this I will not do this anymore but I let myself in that moment like take 10 15 minutes sit with it let it pass and then realize like all you have to do is just take the next step because when you start to look at the entire macro picture and you get overwhelmed and that's the key
in all these races that I've always found is just just focus on the next singular step I never look in the distance I don't wear a watch that tells me you know how many miles or how long I'm into something because that's when you start to get overwhelmed so that perspective does that carry over to work
as well yeah I think so I think that it definitely I always am focusing on just like the mini little tasks it's kind of one of those things like if anybody sets to -do lists one of my favorite things do is write a to -do list and put something on there that I've already finished so then I can just cross
it off you know so you get that feeling of accomplishment exactly it's just gaining that little momentum of something that okay if I can just get this done then I'm already on a roll is it hard to see yourself just with this like what does my next step look like like right in front of left versus how
do you map that to these goals where you you want a podium you want to be the best at what you do yeah this has been an interesting relationship I think that I've kind of developed over over the years and realizing that where you are going to start to falter and where I have fallen down in races is when I
start to run somebody else's race and and those are the situations where somebody's going out much faster than me oh I should keep up with them instead of trusting that I actually know what I'm doing out there right and um and so it's very tough sometimes and especially in a very long race where you'll
be going out at a much slower pace because you say okay this is how I do it I'm I'm a closer I'm a finisher I gain my speed and my momentum in the last 20 30 miles as opposed to the beginning but you see somebody else um executing a different strategy and the situations where I've blown up have been
those situations where I've tried to follow them and it's a tough thing to do because you know you don't you don't it's not always going to be successful for you to go out there and and and do your own thing um but I've always said that I don't care it doesn't bother me if somebody else beats me on any
given day like it that does not bother me what bothers me is when I make mistakes and I beat myself and um I've found that most of the time that I do that is when I'm when I don't kind of stick with what I know and kind of focusing on that um internal compass so you're really racing against yourself
yeah I think so and I think in in in so many ways and I've also I've also come to realize as well that winning as as motivated as people are to win as motivated as athletes are to win you see so many people winning races and so miserable and unhappy at the same time where you see people who are sitting
at the top of their profession and you think man you should be happy but you realize and as I've realized is that it's never going to be enough just to win a race it's never going to be enough just to be sitting at the top because you think you think at some point like once I get to x point in my life
once I have achieved this then I will be happy and I will have made it it's just so not true and so for me racing has really turned into just the love of the entire process and the love of getting there and working through those really long hard situations and if the results follow great um but if they
don't it's not as tough for me anymore because I realized like I just love the process of getting there was it always like that for you or did that come about through some injuries or like how did you land on that yeah I think I think deep down I always kind of realized it but I allowed myself to stray
from that when I started having success and thinking that and really when I started to have success through winning and then thinking that that was the end goal and that was all that mattered and so I started to get fixated on it you know it's like the more you win the more you have success the more
you feel the need to stay successful and you're so scared of falling from that and it actually took me it was I was injured for a year I ended up with a stress fracture in my femur quickly followed by a stress fracture in my sacrum so I was off running and competing for a year and it forced me to really
step back and take a look at myself and say okay who is Amelia Boone outside of racing who's Amelia Boone outside of being an athlete which is kind of a funny question for me because I didn't grow up an athlete you know this was an identity I didn't have until I was about 28 years old but suddenly in a span of five
or six years I clung to it as my sole identity and stepping back through that I realized that the winning was and doing well and success was a great challenge for me and I enjoyed the competition I enjoyed getting there but it was also making me miserable and so I think having to step back from that and reframing
and understanding and really kind of looking at like where that all came from forced me to reprioritize so many of us get driven by that we want to be the best in whatever our respective field is and then we accomplish that but we're unable to kind of step back because then your identity becomes wrapped
up in winning and your ego starts to play with you and how did you get that was it the injuries that gave you the ability to kind of like step back and give you that perspective or were you able to do that as you were going through this and be like okay well winning is not you know it's not giving me
this thing that I need and what gives me this thing I need is the journey I don't necessarily think it was the injuries because to be completely honest as I as I sat there on the sidelines for a year all I could picture was coming back and you know crushing it again and and getting to that point again and standing
on top of that podium again because I was if something was taken away from me and so I was singularly focused on getting back to that it was actually the humbling process of once I was healed and able to start training again and start racing again and realizing that that amount of time off had really
dinged me as an athlete to be better I mean it takes a long time to rebuild but I decided to go out and race anyway and to kind of check my ego and realize that it's just it's it's all a process and so it was actually for me was getting back out on that race course and you know getting my pants beaten
off like and then just and not doing well and realizing actually that it wasn't the end of the world and that that wasn't that some of the races that I had this past year where actually were my worst finishes ever were the most memorable to me and because I've realized that the the times that I can focus
on and the times where I felt joy and felt fulfilled and felt happiness were not the times after a race where you would be standing on a podium or where you had that great victory they were times when I was out there in the middle of misery at 3am with fellow competitors like breaking through the eyes
thinking what are we doing just laughing and it was those kinds of moments shared with other people and I realized that that's I mean that's really what it's all about at the end of the day do you think that makes you less competitive or more competitive you mean that mindset yeah yeah does that make
it more likely that you're going to accomplish a podium or do you think it makes it more like oh like are they mutually exclusive or do they drive each other I don't know talk to me about that relationship I don't think so because I actually think that sometimes the more that you I actually think it
makes me more competitive as an athlete to then not be fixated on the results I think that when people are able to step away from that end goal as the end all be all that's when you actually really start to thrive because otherwise it's very and it's true and with any any goal you set in life and and I
always try to you know make this people realize that this is applicable well beyond athletics is that if you get completely fixated on the outcome you're gonna sit there and drive yourself nuts trying to achieve it and be yourself up if you're not achieving it and I think in a lot of ways that's really
self -sabotage I think that's why you see people always say the cliche things it's it's hard to get to the top it's even harder to stay there and I think that's because once you're at the top people start to self -sabotage so there's kind of a great freedom in the whole being the underdog and kind of a great freedom
and learning the mindset that the results don't matter but I don't think that's something that is definitely a learned practice I don't think that anyone can just be like I don't care about results anymore because I mean we're all high achievers and that's a huge lie what it is I mean we care about results
but what it is is is choosing consciously to to focus on something you can focus on the results but like making an effort to to always kind of check yourself and various points of the process and when you start to get over when you start to get overly fixated on one thing then to bring yourself back
in when you're out running or you're competing you're alone I mean nobody owes you anything talk about the entitlement and self -sufficiency yeah I yeah so I have had a major I don't know problem but I think in this in our world today we see so many people that you feel like you have a right to something
or that someone should help you out and I was raised my parents are phenomenal phenomenal I had a phenomenal childhood I had you know fantastic upbringing and I thank them so much for that but it was one of the things they told me very early on is like you can't depend on anyone in your life except
you and I understand that that sounds very cynical and can sound kind of very lonely but I think it's the ideal way to function is that if you want something people will help you on along the way and that's great and be grateful for that but you can't expect it to happen and I see so many things in our
world today where it's like well but I should get this because so -and -so and blah blah blah blah blah but it's not that way and so what I always choose to see the world is that if somebody helps me that's phenomenal and that's great and I you know and I give back and I am appreciative but I'm not going
to sit there and expect it and that it's always going to be on me and it's that self -responsibility and and kind of just self -sufficiency that I've always prided myself on is that I think that all we can ask as human beings for ourselves and then to help others is to first be self -sufficient and be
able to take care of yourself and that's really what it comes down to for me.
Did your parents have actions that that reinforce that when you were a kid like is there a message for parents that are listening to this interview that want to make their kids more or less entitled and what they can do or what you think that would be applicable?
Yeah well and I will say this with a big caveat that I don't have kids so I would take this with a grain of salt but from my experience what I think my there are many things I'm very grateful for my parents for.
First of all starts with that we didn't have a TV really growing up and so I was forced to read all the time not forced to but I mean that was that was what I did and I was a voracious reader and I read everything and anything and so that was number one.
Second is definitely that as soon as we as soon as my sister and I were able to work we were out there getting jobs and even before I mean my first job ever was mucking out stalls when I was six years old in this barn where we kept my mom and sister had a horse and to pay for the horses boarding at the barn
we worked kind of not as farm hands but a stable help to muck out stalls and to take care of the different horses and so I remember being six years old and giving a wheelbarrow and my mom saying I got 25 cents per stall and I'm sitting there six years old wheeling around this wheelbarrow full of sawdust
and you know horse poop and um but feeling pride in that accomplishment and so we never got new things and we never you know got new cars and we never had any of that it was that if you wanted to buy something you got a job and you worked for it and I worked through high school I worked all throughout
college I worked through law school and um I really am thankful and I know I wind and complained at the time that my friends were getting things that I wasn't getting but I mean I it was the best thing ever that they could have done for me.
And in your your corporate and your racing experience do you feel like that that is a common belief that people have in terms of the self -sufficiency or do you feel like people are prone to entitlement to the point where it impacts not only their happiness but their ability to do things?
I feel like the people who are the most content and therefore kind of I would say the most successful in it are the ones that that don't have that entitlement and I you know I'm in a sport where there's not a lot there's little money there's very few sponsorships and so you don't see a lot of entitled
athletes and especially in ultra running you know it's very under the radar it's it's it's not on TV and people run a hundred miles to get a belt buckle for god's sakes you know like there's there's no there's there's very little ego in it and so I think that that's partly why I was why I was drawn
to it and so there is a lot of self -sufficiency out there but you see it start to creep in when people start to think well but I should get so -and -so because I've been you know this successful of an athlete and and luckily because it is still such a small community there is kind of a a social norming
effect when people's start to get out of control and so it's kind of the the checking by the social shaming of those folks that I think really keeps people in line can you talk to me about how you you prepare and deal with the setbacks I know the last year has been particularly challenging and I think
you have like a sixty thousand dollar pinky finger yes yes my my finger is titanium so talk to me about how that's been going from I think you podium six six or seven years in a row and then last year was a particularly challenging year because of these injuries how do you how have you learned to deal
with these setbacks yeah I think I keep telling myself that like anything it's also practice and learned behavior but I'm not gonna lie it doesn't necessarily get easier well I still have the same you still have the same reaction to any time that you feel like life kicks you or brings you down or you
have an injury or you have something that prevents you from from doing what you love what's changed is actually how I've talked to myself about it the language that I've used myself and then how I how I react to it and so for instance I the first time that I was ever had a long -term injury I would sit
there and I would start to beat myself up over the fact that I was upset or I would beat myself up or the fact that I was injured and then I would get upset over the fact that I was upset that I was injured and so it was like this NASA like nasty vicious cycle of self -flagellation is what I would call
it and the only thing and I think that so many of us get caught into that and that repeatedly beating ourselves up for our mistakes and then beating ourselves up or feeling a certain way and so one of the things that I've started to do with all setbacks is really just just to start to speak kindly to
myself and to be more gentle with myself as a type a very perfectionistic person that I've had a lot of nasty negative self -talk that I've never really realized or understood for a long time and I was when those people who people like oh you should change your language and how you talk I'm like oh that you
know I was like foofy crap that I don't really understand or deal with and that's that's not at all my thing you know I was like I don't really feel like I need to change my language but I realized as soon as I was served to be gentler to myself and to just kind of recognize that okay this is how you're
feeling it's not good nor bad that you're feeling this way it's is what it is and this is just a feeling and it isn't who you are and going through that entire process dealing with the setbacks has been very helpful for me and that I credit a lot to picking up an actual meditation practice which I never
really had beforehand I would always say the excuses oh well running is my meditation like I don't sit still and I and I still believe that running is a great form of meditation for me it's where I get all my best ideas it's where I you know do the majority of my thinking and planning for the day but actually
being forced to sit still and you think about these things as well has definitely helped I find that meditation is an enabler of so many other things people look at it as you know this cost of time but it facilitates so much of what comes later I really empathize with your kind of yourself talk because I'm
incredibly hard on myself not only in my expectations of myself but in terms of the language I use on myself or with myself and I've always wondered if that drives me or if it limits me or to what extent where am I on that continuum because part of it does drive people to be better I mean it's facing
reality and dealing with you know maybe things that you've done that you could have done better and then part of it is you know you're switching yourself into this negative mindset how do you how do you think about that yeah I actually I've had the same kind of struggle and battle in my head about that as
well but for me what I've also realized is that I've is this is a recent change that I've really kind of a practice that I've tried to instill is that I've always kind of thought of these negative parts of me or these negative thoughts as as demons or things to banish or things that are limiting me
but instead recognizing that actually if I look at the past 34 years of my life just how old I am that these thoughts and processes in the way that I have worked and have actually contributed to my success so the way you know that for even though people may say that it's it's bad or it's a bad part
of you or something to be banished actually I've it's done pretty well for me yeah and so and so the idea is then to acknowledge that that self -talk or these habits have have done have you know provided me a lot but that doesn't mean that I have to stick with them and that doesn't mean that I that I
can't change them and try something new and so it's kind of like thank you thank you for being there thank you for what you have enabled me to do but like I think it's now time to try something different you know and you aren't and this isn't bad this isn't a bad part of me but like you've served your
purpose and now I'm going to try and see if I can find a different way I like that it's like this notion of what got you here is not going to get you there right exactly and I think also just to to realize that I think so many people are like oh and I especially this around the time of your new year's
is like this is what I want to change this is what I want to do away with and this is my nasty habit but I think that people rarely give thanks to those parts of themselves because that's what's brought you a lot of success in a way even if you think it is something that's limiting it it's it's a function it's
of you know it's it's part of who you are and once you can be appreciative of that then you can actually start to change it I like that a lot talk to me about some of your your habits that you think make a huge difference in terms of not only your happiness but your ability to manage two incredibly
successful careers and do so much yeah I am a big believer in routine and and really just in making things I get asked a lot like how do you so I get up around 4am and I get a lot of people say how do you do that and how do you train and how do you force yourself out there every day and like anything
it's just it's it's repetition but I've realized that I function best early in the mornings and that people are totally different so my number one thing is for people is to realize where is your kind of golden hour of the day and mine actually is before the sun comes up and so I can get up and that's
when I train and that's actually you know I know that at that hour of the morning I'm not going to have work obligations whereas if I wait till the end of the day then you never know things bleed over you get stuck at the office etc etc um but then also you know like that's just when I get up and I'm
ready to go and I'm productive and I am super productive through the first you know eight nine hours of the day and then I start to crash later on right and so it's capitalizing on that and and and recognizing and everyone has a different rhythm and so that's been something that's been really really
useful for me and just in in honoring that and knowing that if I need to be super productive then that's when I'm that's when I'm going to get it done um and then I can't I can't try and you know draft a very complex contract at seven o 'clock at night because my brain's already shutting down right and sense
and so I think that that's that's been really something that's been important to me in terms of in terms of habits and routines do you like can we geek out on that for a second like do you eat the same thing every day do you like how far does this habit routine go yeah I don't well it is very kind of automated
when I get up and and then I have my coffee and then I do the same kind of warm -up exercises before I go out for my run and I generally run about five days a week right now and so and even on the mornings that even on the days that are rest days for me which is a habit I've recently included that I
didn't for a very long time but it's the same I do the same process it's just that I'm not going out to the trails instead it's I've realized like okay well then I'll go to the gym and sit in the sauna so I feel like I'm doing something kind of replacing that and I think that's very very tough especially
for athletes that are super type A and they're like oh I can't take a rest day I can't take a day off and I'm like oh just do the same routine but just shove in something else like go to a coffee shop for those hours where you would be training or ghosted in the sauna as I do so that's all the first
you know the the eating and everything like that in the early mornings is very automated for sure and I think that that you know you take out you take out the decisions and I think we a lot of people touch on the thing that the less decisions the fewer decisions you have to make every day less brain space
it takes up and so yeah there are certain things where if you just kind of automated it frees up so much time to focus on other things what do you listen to when you run or work out like are you listening to audiobooks are you listening to music is it the same song on repeat like is it nothing is it
just you and this silence and this internal monologue yeah so I have um a little ipod shuffle that I listen to and it actually has had the same songs on it for probably about five or six years oh wow I was probably the only person upset when Apple discontinued the shuffles because everyone's like who uses
a shuffle anymore and I go I do um but yeah so I listen to music when I run but the music is kind of almost like I don't actually really even hear the music and a lot of the times I've talked about a lot is that I'll be kind of like I'll hit a song and then just repeat that song over and over and over
again and so even though the music's there I'm not really focusing on it it kind of serves as background noise for me to then think about other things um and that's just how you know I've that's for some reason has always been something that's very therapeutic to me it is very kind of meditative what sort
of things do you think about when you're I don't even know like I get up at 4am but I definitely don't go running so I mean like what sort of things do you think about when you're on a four or five hour training run right like you know more before most people get out of bed then yeah I so that's actually
where I do the majority I blog occasionally um I'd like to write more than I do but I do a fair amount of writing not all that suits the light of day and I do the most of the writing in my head when I'm running and then I then I will you know after the run and sit there and then write down what I was thinking
about because otherwise it'll just vanish out of my head and I don't really run with a phone ever so I'm not going to stop and run and and take down notes of things that I was writing I do sometimes run with a sharpie and so then I'll kind of jot down things on my arm as I'm going if something if something
kind of comes along but I work through a lot of problems actually out there and I don't force things I kind of it's whatever kind of comes to my head of something that I need to think about and then you know devote some time to it and then move on to the next thing and then sometimes it just honestly
you just kind of zone out and it is that people say oh is it a runner's high I don't think if it's a runner's high it's more just if you've ever meditated and got into a zone where just nothing comes to your brain then then it's kind of that state I guess and that for me is like the ultimate kind of run
it's almost kind of a blank mind one of the questions that I really want to ask you and I can't figure out a way to fit this in so I'm just going to come out and ask it right away which is like what do you fear yeah okay so here's a funny I'll answer this in a roundabout way if you'd ask my parents
when I was five years old the answer is everything Amelia fears everything um I was that kid and I was petrified of I couldn't like sleep over at my friend's house because I was afraid of you know like my parents house burning down or something totally random I had completely I had so many fears and so many
phobias and so it was very kind of when I started to sign up for these races and these long 24 hour races it was so out of character for me and for what everybody in my family and my friends knew about me and I think that it was actually through doing a lot of these races that I started to work through
a lot of these fears and being fearful but honestly the one of the big things that I fear is not being able to do what I love and so in that that is why injury has been such a hard thing for me um is because you you fear the loss of something being taken away from you and I think that so many people
in life are driven by that fear of loss and that's that's why we set up structures like we do is that we are so afraid of things being taken from us or losing um but so it not losing in scheme like losing a race but losing something losing connection losing a loved one um losing a relationship and so those
are things that I are still that I still have to work through and I and I work on and for me really kind of addressing those has been in reframing how how you term that loss because sometimes that loss then opens up space for something else to come into your life and that's that's really been a process
that I've been working through these past few years and I don't have the answer it's still it's still a it's still a you know an ongoing uh ongoing journey for me are you still a big reader I am a big reader it's not as much as I want to be anymore um I I I actually have gotten back into reading it
was something that I brought back in my life about two years ago after you know a few years of just kind of putting things to the side but yeah it's and it's actually been something that has been a huge huge benefit to just set aside time to read because I used to do it all the time and I stopped for a long
time so when do you read I do so I now set aside about 30 minutes to an hour every night before I go to bed to read and I don't force myself like if I don't feel like reading I'm not going to sit there and be like you read Amelia um but that's generally how I yeah it's like it's like you know designated
study hall time or something um but so I that's I generally read every night before I go to bed and then mainly travel I travel I'm on planes a lot I look forward to planes I do my best work and my best reading on planes because I never get wi -fi and I absolutely love it and it gives me a huge chunk
of time to be able to read um to be able to write so you you have very you firm obligations and very to to very complete life so it might actually be full -time lives for other people you fit two of them and and you read how do you sort through there is a million books published each year how do you
sort through what you read yeah so I a long time ago not a long time ago I think it was when I was probably in college um I decided I was going to read every book on the list of like the hundred greatest novels that everyone should read in their lifetime and I don't actually know where that list came
from I think it was I don't know if it was time or like the guardian it was by no means a definitive source but it was some like hundred greatest classics everyone should read and I started doing that in college and working my way through and so I still when now if I don't have something like in my
if I if I don't have a book like that's really calling to me and I'll go back to that list and be like okay what have I not hit on there but I do take I have a running list of running like note on my um on my phone of books that people mention that come up and I just when when people say something like
or recommend it like I'll write it down and so I mean I've just I probably have 200 books that are sitting there that are waiting to be read and then kind of when I need the next thing I will take a look at that and be like oh that strikes me because I go in waves of do I want to read something fiction do
I want to read a novel do I spend a long time doing solely non -fiction and now I'm trying to get back to mourn to the novels um so yeah why is that I think that reading that when I was young reading for me was always not an escape but an ability to kind of like journey into a different world um and into
the novels and into that realm and I think in my life like there and I think right now in in society we are so connected and everything is you know you can get instant access to to world events to everything going on and at some point it's like you kind of want to back away from that and so it's kind
of and so for me novels getting back into novels have been has is an opportunity to to live in a different kind of world for a bit and um I think that that's something that is under appreciated uh in this day and age so as a uh self -described you know type a personality when you're reading a non -fiction book
how do you actually read that do you read from cover to cover do you uh jump around a bit how do you process that yeah I read so I generally one of the greatest most freeing things that ever happened to me was when I gave myself permission to not finish a book um and I used to think that if I started
a book that I needed to read all the way through it it's so liberating and then I was just a failure and once I realized that there's nothing wrong with putting down a book that feels like a slog um then I've then I've kind of you know repurpose that I generally read cover to cover um unless it's a book
that's that's you know very chapter specific and you can jump around because there are some times if I'm reading a book non -fiction book about athletic performance or sports psychology or something like that then I'm only really focused on one area so I'll jump straight to that and I don't feel bad
about that um but yeah it's it's generally cover to cover and I don't try and overthink it either but do definitely have no qualms anymore about putting books down talk to me a little bit about that that's really interesting that the not the putting the books down but the learning aspect of this I just
kind of thought about this you you went to from not having competed in a particular sport not having any friends in it to dominating that sport how did you learn how to train compete um to tune your body and what was that process like I think to be honest I think that's the the part of the sport that got
me so exciting and got me involved because there was no roadmap when I started out with obstacle racing I mean it was it was a brand new people won't even call it a sport we didn't even know what to call it we were calling it adventure racing I mean there wasn't a name for it and there was no roadmap
there was no way to train and so I had the opportunity to kind of write that quote unquote book um and to to find out and to try different things and to learn and it was all through trial trial and error and I think that that's what appealed to me whereas opposed to people will get its triathlon or things
like that and you know okay well this is you have to do a brick workout and this is how you do it and this is these are the you know the the certain ways and this is your your schedule and everything was so planned out for me it was the the challenge in in learning the best way to go about something
that nobody had any idea how to do and that was really drew me in there how did you learn was it sheer like brute force on your part or was it like oh I'm gonna seek out and talk to these people and I'm gonna read these these books that might offer me tidbits and I'm gonna craft my own plan like what did
that look like honestly it was it was really just trial and error I found that for a very long time I didn't so I didn't run with a watch I didn't know what a tempo run was I didn't understand the different training you know I didn't come from athletic background so there was almost this ignorance as
bliss kind of thing and just going out there and not knowing anything and kind of having freedom from all of those inputs and I've actually found is that now it's it's almost harder because there's so much input coming in as this is how you should train and this is if you're not doing it this way and then
you're doing it wrong and this is the best exercise for so and so whereas when I first started there was none of that and it's actually has driven me bonkers to the point where like I've started to actually disconnect from a lot of that and just to go back to this was where I started with all of this and how
and like and it worked for me so stick to that as opposed to listening to all those inputs from other people about what is the best way to do something because I think that no no two athletes are the same and one training plan isn't going to work for everyone and so mine may be a bit more unconventional
and a bit different than what the standard you know the the standard thinking is now but six seven years ago there was no thinking like that so just to ignore that but finding your own path is part of like what you self -describe that as like finding joy in that like that was part of the appeal to it
that doesn't necessarily exist today right people there's tons of resources on how to train how to compete there's there's lots of people like you to reach out to and be like hey can you help me would you still go about it the same way knowing what you know now or would you try to more optimize that honestly
if if I was starting out now I don't actually even think I would get into it because I think that there was already you already have this roadmap and I think that you already have this way of comparing so for me it's always been about what I've realized and come to accept and recognize is that I like
the new challenge I like the unknown and um and I like something I like the challenge of where there is no map that's been written and so for me like if I it's like it's like okay well what's the next thing now what's the thing that no one else has conquered that that people don't understand um and then
to try and and to learn that um so I it's interesting to think about for sure do you set goals for the year what's your personal process for like accomplishment yeah I I do not set goals um I don't set resolutions uh but I do kind of focus on themes um so I will every kind of year review review what happened
or or what I took from that and then and then try and apply that into my life going forward um and so I think this entire past year for me was kind of like reconnecting with racing and rediscovering joy um and and understanding that and and what I realized from that from racing and and actually finding
joy in it again is that part of that joy was is is about for me is writing my own you know marching to my own tune and um to do that sometimes you have to be bold and you know I have to say okay well this is what everybody wants me to do as an athlete but it's not necessarily what I'm being drawn to
right now so I'm going to go off into this direction and having the ability to say that and to recognize that and realize like that's okay and so for me I'm now like saying okay well this year the idea is like as part of that capitalizing on that joy is to be bold and go in my direction have that self
-confidence and so that's kind of what I do on a on a yearly basis um I have goal races but I try to not get too fixated on the actual race itself um because as I realize as I've realized the joy comes from the building up to that race and the getting excited about it you know it's kind of like when you
go on a trip and you get super excited before you're on the trip and everything and then you get there and you're like okay this is cool you know it's not it's always the anticipation and I like that a lot that's shared with a lot of extremely successful athletes in sports that I've talked to and it's
across the board is that you know the day -to -day you know that's one single event but it's one or lost in a way during the week the training the preparation the mental yeah and I think that I think it's the most sick you know that the best athletes are the ones who enjoy the daily grind and I honestly
discovered this past year that I could train and train and train and train and rarely race and be happy as long as I was training you know but could you train without having a race like would you still have the same sort of maybe competitiveness or drive that would make you get up at four not make you
but you know get up at four am to go run for five to six hours absolutely I absolutely because I the racing is kind of the icing on the cake but for me the joy is found in in the day -to -day and the like if it was four to five hours on a treadmill god no but I realized that a lot of my you know it's
the trails it's nature it's me being out there kind of by myself clear in my head seeing beautiful things what's timeship for one second here it's yeah 60 years in the future uh we're having a conversation telepathically probably uh talk to me about what you want in your life what does what does your
life look like at that point what what made you happy yeah um man so how old am I mid -90s I hope I may get that far I hope I hope I'm walking at that point I hope I'm still racing at that point that's a better I know I know I actually that's one of the things that I've that I've taken a step back to
to realize is that like I want to have longevity as an athlete and when I'm in my 70s and 80s I would be amazing to still be out running um and I do know people that age who are running races still um but I think for me it's really it's about relationships and um in my life at that point it's it's really
about building those connections and it sounds weird coming from a person who spends hours a day by herself training because I realize that that's actually a very selfish act but what has always kept me coming back to sport um is really the community and the connections that you build and the reason that I
love really long races is that it's less about you individually you know and a less about pure physicality and more about the connections built out there on the course and among the community and so those are the relationships that I really cherish and um so for me it's it's really about 60 years from now
like what have I given um to others and how am I relating to others and um you know I think that in the in the day we all just want to be surrounded by people that we love and that love us and um that's so hopefully everyone yeah I mean I assume at that point we'll all be living to 150 anyways so it's
okay you'll still be putting us to shame by getting up at four and running like 50 miles right yeah do you do you ever have days when you just want to like give up and sit on the couch and watch Netflix like what do you do when you're exhausted by by all of it I was exhausted just researching you going
like oh my god like I don't feel like a lazy person very often but I'm like oh I feel so lazy right now so this is I people may want to shoot me for saying this I never I don't really get tired and so and I don't have never had a day where I just really am just like screw this I don't want to go for a run
I just I want to sit on the couch all day to me that sounds like the worst torture in the entire world um and I think what's really driven that is that because I was kept away from training for a year or so is that every single time that I go out for a run that I'm able to train it's an act of gratitude
for me like I am just so over the moon giddy to be able to go out there and do something that makes me happy and so focusing on that um you know just just drives me drives me through it um and so I guess that maybe that's something that keeps me that keeps me going maybe at some point I'll hit a wall
and I'll be all out of gratitude but I hope not hopefully you just get more of it right yeah what do you what do you have to give up there's opportunity cost to this right so what are you sacrificing to live this way I sacrifice I to be honest I sacrifice a lot of my relationships and that's as I said
it sounds funny when I say in 60 years like what do you want and I say people around me that I love and and that you know share time together because I realize it is a very selfish act um and I don't get to see my friends in my family as much as I'd like to um it's harder for me to you know go all of my
vacation time is taken up by racing so I don't necessarily have time to go vacation with friends or to go do other ventures that aren't related to racing um so there's definitely you know that there's that part of me that I haven't really figured out and I found a lot of connections and and relationships
through you know the athletic world and whatnot but I definitely you know sometimes have that guilt that creeps in um around family and friends and and things like that and and you know I give up work happy hours and things along those lines that but instead if I you know have to train earlier the next
morning and whatnot but I think there's a balance I mean I don't think by any means that I'm singularly focused on one thing to the detriment of others because when people say like I don't have time it's not that they don't have time it's just that it you know is it it's just not the first thing on their
priority list and so I say I say for instance oh I don't have time to make my bed oh no that's not true I got plenty of time to make my bed it's just not a priority for me um so I think it's just what you choose what you choose to focus on for sure do you talk to yourself that way like I find it really
helpful when people confront that reality and the reality being like I'm choosing not to do something because I'm placing something else as more important versus like I can't do that oh absolutely and it's it to me it goes 110 % like I own I own my my faults I own my weaknesses and I own things that I'm
really bad at you know like I don't for instance I'm an awful cook I'm a horrific cook I will burn down the house with anything if I really wanted to I could take the time and learn how to not burn my eggs but it's just not a priority for me and I will admit that maybe at one point in my life it will be
a priority and that's the thing is that I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing I think I think people can do like two things pretty well like if you look at like work family and extracurriculars like you can probably nail two out of three of those it's when you try and like do really well at like
all three of those that stuff starts to like go by the wayside but that doesn't mean that you can't have it all it's just that your all is going to shift at different points in your life and you know and your priorities are going to shift so I don't really have a problem with with owning that there
are some things in my life that I just don't put at the top yeah I think that's part of what makes people successful right is that they they make those trade -offs between I don't have to be good at everything I want to be really good at a few things and I realize that that hat comes with a cost right
so you had an interesting habit as a young child which was uh you collected quotes can you tell me about that when did that start what does that look like today yeah I the the quote started with me and my reading habit um so I'll never forget you know we were enrolled kind of in the the summer reading
a library local library reading programs and I remember like reading 60 books in a summer or something like that and I was probably got in like third or fourth grade and I would just take quotes from books that really kind of stuck out to me and I would at that point I mean there was really no computer
stuff and so it was all just written down in a notebook um and then as I got older and I was heavily involved in music as well and very much so and that lyrics really talked to me and so um I then switched to when lyrics would grab me I created a document that had all the lyrics and then that also put
in all my book quotes and um unfortunately you know back in the day when your computers used to crash and used to lose everything that went along with the which has been really sad but I've always kind of tried to recreate them and whatnot um but I to this day whenever a quote pops up to me in a book
or in a lyric or just anywhere like I stick it into a document and um it's really interesting to me because I can go back through that list and then and then kind of pinpoint moments in time based on that quote or that song or how I was feeling it's very very pervasive with songs for me I mean because I'm
sure everyone can do this like teenage angst years of what you were listening to and where you were at that point in time but it is I have this playlist um on my on my iTunes of like all these different songs from different eras in my life and uh it's really kind of you just like take a walk down memory
lane by listening to them that's awesome um so being a type a person and not necessarily just an athlete but one of the common things I hear from my type a friends is uh an incredibly successful friends is that resting is a form of weakness uh resting being sleep resting being like anything that is not pushing
you forward towards a particular goal or achievement what do you say to that yeah yeah I mean this was something that I if you would talk to me three years ago then I would have completely agreed is that oh I don't I don't I don't rest I'm always constantly moving like there's no point in rest etc um
and it led me into situations with burnout obviously you know physically mentally um and in forms of serious injury on the physical side it's only been you know within the past year or two that I've been able to embrace the concept of rest and that really that you're gonna have to at some point take
a step back everything in life is a push and pull so you push you push you push and then you've got to pull back like it's just natural and that nothing is a linear straightforward progression and um like don't get me wrong I still hate the concept of rest I don't it doesn't come naturally to me every
once a week you know when I have my rest days and I sit there and I'm anxious and I'm agitated and I just want to get it over with um and get back to you know get back to the grind but I think that it's it's one been one of those relationships that I've been working on reformulating and realizing that there's
nothing wrong with rest it's not a four -letter word it's nothing dirty and that like the greatest gains come from those times of of quietness I like that a lot Amelia where can people find out more about you yeah so there you can find me on social media um on twitter at Amelia Boone on instagram at ar
Boone 11 um I have a website that still needs some updating and a blog um Amelia Boone racing dot com and yeah I'm doesn't generally where I'm most responsive thank you so much for being on the show this was an amazing conversation yeah thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it hey guys
this is Shane again just a few more things before we wrap up you can find show notes from today's show at fs blog slash podcast you can also find out information on how to get a transcript there and if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food go to fs blog newsletter
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