Navigating Life’s Obstacle Course with Resilience and Triumph with Kelly Majdan

Transcript

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And we're back to another episode of Life-Changing Challengers.

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My name is Brad Min, I'll be your host, and I am so honored to have author and health and wellness coach, kelly Majdan, with us today.

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How are you doing, kelly?

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I am fantastic.

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How are you doing?

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Excellent.

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So Kelly is the author of Lessons from the Obstacle Course: Five Strategies to Conquer the Muddy Fields of Life, and it's all about what she learned as she started a journey with her and her family on the obstacle course.

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But before we get there, Kelly, as I ask everybody, will you tell us a little bit about your childhood, the complement of your family and the environment you kind of grew up in?

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Sure, yeah, I was kind of like thinking about this going okay.

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So grew up in Colorado and I always like to say that I grew up swinging from trees in Colorado.

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We lived out in the mountains foothills of Colorado, just outside of Boulder, and when I was eight years old I was in the 70s my parents were one of the first ones, or you know, in that group of folks that started, that went through the divorce process, right, so eight years old, not a lot of I would like.

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I kind of always like to say my parents weren't really meant to be parents, so just kind of like they just, you know, weren't a lot of watching over kids.

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And my sister was four years older than me, so I was eight years old and I was kind of left to raise myself in a way, because mom was always gone.

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Dad was just not interested.

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He's a great dad but just like didn't know what to do with kids.

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So pretty much start from a very early time in my upbringing was just actually just kind of making sure I looked out and took care of myself and did kind of my own thing all the time and it kind of led to an interesting I think it was fourth grade year where I didn't really show up to school.

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They passed me and it was just an independent type of upbringing.

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An independent type of upbringing Typical, I think, for a lot of kids in the 70s when, if you go through any generational theory, they called our generation, generation X, the nomads or latchkey kids.

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I was definitely one of those latchkey kids, so I always joked around.

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My dad ended up it was kind of like I said a lot of people were getting divorced at the time and he had another buddy of his who he just got a divorce and so they ended up going to building houses kind of around and I think they purposely scheduled the kid weekend together so that we would entertain ourselves which is fun.

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I grew up with a lot of really, you know they're like my brothers and they would pick on me like they were my brothers, so but it was.

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You know, that was really pretty much my formative years, was just really being on my own and making my own decisions and kind of just working very independently.

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Independently.

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We ended up going to college in a little town called Durango, colorado, which is just a great little place called Fort Lewis College down in the mountains, met my future husband there towards the end of my schooling and he was going off to the Marine Corps.

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He was about two years ahead of me.

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I stayed back, finished my school because I was like, well, I'm not going to follow any guy around, right, but we stayed in contact and continued to blossom our relationship.

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Bring break of my senior year of college, I flew out to San Diego, which is where he was stationed, because he went through the OCS and was now out at Camp Pendleton and he was at some school and he basically engaged, you know, asked me to marry him.

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So once I finished college I moved out to California, just kind of came home, packed up my stuff and they did our home of record move and we moved out to California.

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We've been together now this June we'll be 30 years married and so we've had a lot of very independent living, very much pulling on our own bootstraps, which is good and bad.

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I think you need to be able to pull on your own bootstraps and do your own thing, but I do think that I could have had a lot of if it had been a thing and I don't think it really was a thing in the early 90s with a lot of us.

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I think one thing is really wonderful benefit now is a lot of mentorship that a lot of people get, and it wasn't really something that I think we were really I don't know people didn't really talk about when we were going through our early careers and I know I could have benefited from that.

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But I also benefited from being able to just always rely on myself, which is pretty much how I grew up.

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Yeah, I grew up as a last key kid, only child, and yeah, it literally was, and I'd wake up in the morning.

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Maybe one of my two parents were home, and it was.

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You know.

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Get yourself up, get yourself dressed, make yourself breakfast, get yourself to the bus stop, get to school, come back home Nobody was there Make yourself a snack, do your homework, homework and wait for someone to come home.

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I know exactly how that felt and, yeah, there was no, it was only like mentorship.

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You know, you had your teachers and your family and that was pretty much it.

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What was your field of study in college?

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So, ironically enough kind of funny my father was a general contractor, so a lot of the houses we lived in he built, and so I grew up in that kind of environment, thinking, oh, I want to be an architect because my dad would always talk about these ladies that he really enjoyed working with, because they were great, phenomenal architects.

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So I went to school thinking, okay, I'm going to go be an architect because I thought that would be fun.

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I always loved the fact that we always kind of were in the process of building a home.

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And I sat through my first art classes and went this sucks, that's just not for me.

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So I of course did what every college student does who says, ok, I really chose poorly.

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I went to speak to my counselor and she's like well, you can go into business.

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I'm like, ok, I'll take a few business classes.

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Well, I got into my accounting class and absolutely loved it.

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I mean, one of the unique things about Fort Lewis, where I went to school, was at the time and maybe it's still that way, I don't know, but at the time because it was just this little mountain college and it was like in the middle of nowhere and it was just a really neat place to be.

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We had a lot of all of our teachers in the accounting department were all from the big five accounting firms and they had just, you know, they had run the course of working their corporate careers and this was kind of like their second life.

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That they went and said I just want to go out in the mountains and go teach, said I just want to go out in the mountains and go teach, and so we really had some phenomenal, phenomenal teachers there.

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And I remember my teacher who did cost accounting and the way he just explained cost accounting I was like, oh my God, I get this.

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And I set the curve in the classes and went, all right, I'll be an accounting major.

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Then a few years later I got into tax accounting and all the other and I went what did?

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I do.

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But I finished with my accounting degree but I never went forward to go after CPA or anything like that because auditing absolutely was like that was not my thing.

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So I ended up falling into financial services and working in the wholesaling and selling space and fell into working with corporate 401k plans.

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Wow.

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So this is going to seem like surreal, you ready.

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So I grew up.

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My dad was in real estate, started as an agent Well, no, actually I should take that back when I was really young, up to the like to my age of seven, I think.

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My dad was an accountant for international harvester.

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Then he went into real estate instead and started being an agent and then went into appraisal a real estate appraisal and then started his own appraisal firm and then retired from that not too long ago.

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So yeah, so I'm right there with you and I lived through all of the real estate.

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Matter of fact, I got my spending money for college and books and rent by doing appraisals.

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Oh, wow.

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Yeah, because he taught me how to do them and it's something that you can do on your own time.

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You make the appointment, you go look at the house, then you do the forms and you send them in, and that's it, and it's pretty lucrative.

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So at the time it was pretty lucrative.

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So I'm right there with you.

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I got it all.

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Yeah, as far as recovering accounting majors, I can't say I was ever an accountant just because I never followed through with that path.

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And there's another story in there, but I'll just tell you that for about three or four years I was a series seven, series 63, series 24.

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That's for a whole different.

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Well, we got to move on, but that's for a whole different conversation.

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So you got married and you're in San Diego, right?

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We?

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were in San Diego.

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Okay, so how did you enjoy San Diego?

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How long were you there?

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Loved it.

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It was absolutely beautiful and it was like in the mid-90s.

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And so we were.

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My husband was stationed there for three years.

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He actually had a little bit of a longer station than most Marines do, just because he changed from different units while at Camp Pendleton.

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And we actually put in for Okinawa because it was just the two of us and a cat.

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And you know, like let's go right.

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This would be really cool, but unfortunately they didn't need his MOS and Okinawa, but they did in Pensacola Florida.

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So we ended up next three years in Pensacola Florida, which was a great duty station as well too.

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It was a beautiful area and I remember going out and looking and going to visit Floribama, and that was that far and it was literally in the middle of nowhere and, like I know, you go there now and there's high rises all over it, but literally at that time it was like literally just middle of nowhere out on Orange Beach.

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So anyway, so we were there for three years and we decided we were, I like to say, we're young and dumb.

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We decided that it was time, for we didn't want to continue moving around a lot and we were thinking about having a family and all that kind of good stuff, and so we said, well, let's go ahead and give up his commission because he was an officer and head home to Colorado.

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So we did that in 1999 and ended up going back home to Colorado and then it took us another three years to get pregnant because we had fertility issues.

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It was really more on my side that I had the issue, and so which was kind of it was some entertaining stories with figuring all of that out as well too.

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I've got stories too, yeah.

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In 2003,.

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The Lord blessed us with our son and then two years later, we had our daughter.

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So it was really worked out pretty well.

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I kind of felt I always kept praying.

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I'm like I just want to have replaced me and my husband.

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Two is good.

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I didn't need to fill a van or anything like that.

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I figured man on man offense defense.

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That's just the perfect way to go.

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It worked out really well.

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We got the son first and then the girl.

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How perfect could this be right?

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And they are probably the most planned children you could probably have.

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Because we had to follow a certain fertility schedule and a certain shot schedule.

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So we had to tell my body you need to keep this egg.

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So there were certain things that we had to do in order to be able to make that happen.

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But yeah, and now my youngest is graduating from high school this week.

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I thought like where did time go?

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Exactly you get older and time just seems to go faster.

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Oh, it does.

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It does and especially, you know, I thought you know it took us we were married nine years before we had children, so we were in our thirties by the time we had kids, which is that then that was kind of a little unusual.

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A lot of people were having kids earlier, but that now for so many folks that's normal.

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So you, a lot of people are having kids in their 30s and and I think that's where now our story will really resonate a little bit more, because we are that older parent- so what were you doing at this point?

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So, as far as not being, I mean, I know you're trying to get pregnant.

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That makes one thing, you're trying to get home, but what were you doing for a living at this point?

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So at that time I was working for a mutual fund company when my son was born, as an internal wholesaler manager.

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So I was managing a sales desk and I was one of the supervisors on the sales desk, actually.

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And then when my daughter came along, I was working at a 401k internal sales desk and I was managing that desk and building out those internal wholesaling platforms.

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Nice.

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And what was your husband doing?

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Oh, he was doing construction.

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No, he was actually no.

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He got out of the pre-tour so and he followed.

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He ended up getting his program management professional.

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So he was a supply officer, which he's always kind of like, oh, that's not the sexy thing in the core right.

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But like you know what you believe me, people want to make sure that they love and they take care of their supply officer, because where do you get your stuff from?

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And so it was natural for him to go into a program management professional.

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So he was.

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I always like to say he's the guy that gets people, gets the folks, the business in business users who are using the programs to communicate to the IT folks that are building the programs, because there's not a good communication line here.

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They don't speak the same language.

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Yes, I don't know.

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The thing is is that when my professional life I'm also a designated PMP and PGMP as well, so you know very well what.

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I'm saying, yeah, I know that and it's just being surreal now, the things that are very comparable to both of our lives.

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It's like uncanny what is going on here, but yeah, that's kind of what pays the bills around here, at least a little bit.

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But OK, so fast forward a little bit.

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And there was a big obstacle that happened in your life.

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Yes.

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So we're really kind of worried.

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I think we're all just kind of going along with this.

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And where this?

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If I were to go back and say where this obstacle stemmed from, it would stem from my husband being a Marine when everything was happening, if we remember early 2000, right 9-11.

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And then we go.

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I mean, we literally got a call in 2002 or 2001,.

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Actually, when it happened, the Marine Corps was keeping tabs on where all of their people were, and so you know.

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So we're really heightened in that respect.

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But as everything was going on over there, in 2005, our daughter was born and at that point, two weeks after our daughter was born, my husband went to Iraq to help with what is called a Z-backscatter x-ray man program which was able to scan vehicles going into Marine Corps checkpoints.

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And he was actually, you know, they sought him out for this job because of the fact that he was a Marine, he was a supply officer, he's a PMP, so he spoke Marine because the Marines kept breaking everything which go figure right, and they really needed to get these vans up and running in country.

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So the first year of our daughter's life he was actually a contractor out in Iraq and went through all sorts of things and there's all sorts of stories with that respect.

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The reason why I tell that is because I think there were some things that happened at that point in time because when he came back his health started changing and there was a lot that was going on with his health.

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That we really going back and putting the pieces together is where I've connected the dots, but didn't really understand it when things started kind of falling apart early around 2012, 13 ish, and my husband ended up turning to me one day because we were living at the time then in Arkansas is a big company picked up my husband and he was working for that company and living in Northwest Arkansas and his parents had followed us out, lived in Bella Vista.

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There's very windy roads there and as we were leaving or getting ready to leave his parents' house, he's like honey, I think you need to drive and we hadn't been drinking.

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So I'm kind of like, okay, well, what's going on here?

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This is kind of strange because normally you know he doesn't ask that question.

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Well, when we get home, I asked him I'm like what's going on here?

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Because I did notice a lot of things were going on.

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I did notice my husband was quite grumpy.

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He was complaining of headaches a lot more.

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He was getting dizzy.

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Now, as a family, we really all enjoy especially my daughter and I love amusement, park rides going on, and of course it kind of runs your head around and I was kind of thinking all of this was going on and we were also both trying to build our careers at the companies that we were at and we had young kids, so I just thought maybe he's just getting tired and that's just life going on.

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Well, when we got home I asked him what's going on?

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Because you're off, there's just things going on, not straight, and he goes I'm seeing double.

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I'm like, well, what do you mean?

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You're seeing double?

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Because I see two of you stacked on top of each other.

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It's kind of can't.

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I'm like, okay, well, babe, how long has this been happening?

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He said pretty much since we moved five years earlier.

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I'm like you're just now telling me this.

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Five years, five years, five years he'd been dealing with this.

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I remember I have a Marine and Marines are stubborn, and he's also a New Yorker, he's a Pole.

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I mean I'm like he's got everything.

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He is the most stubborn man out there and I'm like, babe, this is not right, like you need to go get this.

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So I annoyed him for him to finally go see an eye doctor.

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And when he goes to see an eye doctor, this one eye doctor says, oh well, you just need prison glasses.

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And I'm going, okay.

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And he's like fine, put the prism glasses on me.

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I'm good, just call it good.

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So you know, I do what every wife does and every good caretaker who loves somebody does.

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I'm like okay, well, why do you need the prism glasses?

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What's going on?

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Did he tell you that?

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He's like no, we just need prism glasses.

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I'm like okay, that's not enough.

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Like that's not the answer, that's not enough, that's not the answer.

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Anyway, we would banter back and forth like this for a while until my son, chasing after our daughter with a bow and section, cut bow and arrow.

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He ends up running into it and cuts, thankfully, just the white in his eye, because it hit my daughter's door and she slammed the door and he kept going.

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Yes, we're not bad parents, it's just kids.

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They just do things.

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But I also do think God works in mysterious ways.

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And the eye doctor that my son saw I said I asked my husband and again bothered him enough, Please don't see him Get a second opinion, because prison classes aren't going to work.

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So this eye doctor does go a little bit further.

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My husband not only a Marine, jumped out a perfectly good airplane, did all that kind of good stuff, but he was also he's a career lacrosse player well, not career, but like, played lacrosse all through junior, high and high school and even into his college years and stuff.

00:18:47.913 --> 00:18:50.748
So he's thinking, well, maybe there's a concussion or something going on there.

00:18:50.748 --> 00:18:53.333
So he sends them off to a neurologist.

00:18:53.333 --> 00:18:54.776
The neurologist sends them off to get an MRI.

00:18:54.776 --> 00:19:08.518
And literally on January 24th my husband, we went in to see the doctor and found out he had a pineal gland cystic mass sitting in the middle of his brain and basically it was sitting between the four lobes and it was cutting off his circulation.

00:19:08.518 --> 00:19:20.797
And I joke with my husband now that I'm like you are alive because of me hounding you, because it literally would have caused a brain aneurysm, Like he was probably a year or two away from just dropping dead.

00:19:20.797 --> 00:19:29.501
So that sent us into a really great neurologist at UAMS in Little Rock.

00:19:29.501 --> 00:19:31.165
I can't say enough about Dr Day.

00:19:31.165 --> 00:19:32.048
He was phenomenal.

00:19:32.809 --> 00:19:39.133
And after five minutes of sitting down with us, Dr Day turns to his assistant and says schedule him for brain surgery immediately.

00:19:39.133 --> 00:19:40.016
I'm going, wait a minute.

00:19:40.016 --> 00:19:41.426
What Brain surgery?

00:19:41.426 --> 00:19:42.148
What?

00:19:42.148 --> 00:19:48.892
So I'm like, okay, I know my husband's not going to ask, so I ask so again caretakers out there, you ask the questions.

00:19:48.892 --> 00:19:51.528
If they're not going to ask, you ask the questions because you have to.

00:19:51.528 --> 00:19:54.252
I'm like, stop, Tell me why.

00:19:54.252 --> 00:20:00.912
And he pulled up a perfectly good x-ray of a brain and my husband's and he said see that blob right there.

00:20:00.912 --> 00:20:07.526
And I'm like, yes, he goes, that should not be there, that needs to come out because that's going to kill your husband, basically.

00:20:07.526 --> 00:20:09.932
So I'm like, okay, let's get it done.

00:20:10.512 --> 00:20:19.506
I just went into okay, let's you know operation mode.

00:20:19.506 --> 00:20:19.886
Let's get it done.

00:20:19.886 --> 00:20:22.272
Let's take care of the kids, because the kids were little, so I had to make sure they were taken care of.

00:20:22.272 --> 00:20:24.137
We had just gotten two puppies that were going to be ginormous dogs.

00:20:24.137 --> 00:20:40.816
So I got my aunt and uncle, who absolutely love animals, and got them scheduled to come up to take care of the dogs, because we were going to be down at the hospital for about a week or so and just basically made sure everybody knew what was going on, made sure the kids' school knew what was going on, was taking care of FMLA paperwork.

00:20:40.816 --> 00:20:49.450
You know just everything that you just have to do to ensure that he is going to have a good recovery and didn't have to worry about.

00:20:49.450 --> 00:20:52.748
I even bought like a new mattress because I knew he was going to be in bed for four months.

00:20:52.748 --> 00:21:01.167
So it's not just operation, you have to have this handled.

00:21:01.167 --> 00:21:01.469
So you get it.

00:21:01.469 --> 00:21:01.789
You just do it.

00:21:01.789 --> 00:21:02.112
You get it done.

00:21:02.132 --> 00:21:07.173
He had a surgery in March of 2014, and the doctor came out and found out that they also were worried it could be cancerous.

00:21:07.173 --> 00:21:09.382
Thankfully, we dodged that bullet.

00:21:09.382 --> 00:21:16.438
It was just this big protein blob sitting in the middle of his brain Weirdest thing ever and I don't know really where it came from.

00:21:16.438 --> 00:21:18.412
And that's the thing that they don't understand.

00:21:18.412 --> 00:21:20.931
That leads us to a couple of years ago.

00:21:20.971 --> 00:21:42.490
We found out that that wasn't the only cause of his double vision, because we continued having issues with his double vision and it never really corrected itself as it should have corrected itself by getting that thing out and then we went to a doctor when we moved here we found another really great doctor who operated on what they call a fourth nerve palsy.

00:21:42.490 --> 00:21:56.988
Anyway, because of the surgeries weren't fixing it completely, he sent him off to get blood work and we now know that my husband's been battling Lambert-Eaton-Myasthenic syndrome, which is called LEMS, and it's a neuromuscular autoimmune issue, which is called LEMS, and it's a neuromuscular autoimmune issue.

00:21:56.988 --> 00:22:14.118
So that was also part of what was going on and I have a feeling, if I connect the dots, knowing what I know now that I've done a big deep dive into health is, I think something when he went off to Iraq might have triggered this.

00:22:14.118 --> 00:22:20.233
I have no proof, but if I were to kind of go back and see, it does seem like there's, because everything was fine before then.

00:22:21.125 --> 00:22:21.224
Right.

00:22:21.224 --> 00:22:28.755
Yeah, I can always see that when there's a certain point in your life right where things start to change, you're always going to go back and check that out.

00:22:28.755 --> 00:22:30.307
Now did the?

00:22:30.307 --> 00:22:31.209
I didn't.

00:22:31.209 --> 00:22:32.711
I know nothing about LEMS.

00:22:32.711 --> 00:22:36.221
Did the doctor say anything about it being?

00:22:36.221 --> 00:22:42.012
It could be genetic, it could be just something that was passed down, or is it something that can actually be acquired?

00:22:45.746 --> 00:22:50.917
It's typically acquired by small cell cancer 60% of the time.

00:22:50.917 --> 00:22:58.868
But my husband's never smoked and I mean he's about as clean as you can get except for alcohol.

00:22:58.868 --> 00:23:11.109
But anyway, when he was sent off to have chest x-rays done and all that kind of stuff to try to figure out why he has limbs, I knew that there was no small cell cancer that was going to be found, because there's no reason for it.

00:23:11.109 --> 00:23:13.566
There's nothing in his history that would have brought that up.

00:23:13.566 --> 00:23:23.606
So of course nothing was found there and there's really all of the typical things that would bring up limbs he doesn't.

00:23:23.606 --> 00:23:25.330
He didn't have before.

00:23:25.330 --> 00:23:26.913
Like, we have no idea.

00:23:26.913 --> 00:23:33.672
It's just something that has just happened and it's a very, very rare neuromuscular autoimmune issue.

00:23:33.672 --> 00:23:38.380
You might have heard of myosinic gravis, which is MG.

00:23:38.380 --> 00:23:41.109
These two are on opposite camps.

00:23:41.210 --> 00:23:45.669
This is also kind of where the whole obstacle course stuff comes in and why we continue doing this.

00:23:45.669 --> 00:23:52.473
We didn't realize it at the time, but now we have an even more reason why we continue with obstacle courses.

00:23:52.473 --> 00:24:03.231
So if you think of you work out, a lot of your viewers work out, so think of you're going out a lot of your viewers work out, so think of you're going to do three sets of bicep curls and you're going to pick a pretty challenging weight because you know you want to really build that bicep up.

00:24:03.231 --> 00:24:06.506
So your first set to 10, you're like, okay, that's not a big deal.

00:24:06.506 --> 00:24:10.028
I got this Second set, 10, you're like, okay, this is getting a little bit harder.

00:24:10.028 --> 00:24:14.930
And then your third set, if you picked a good weight, you're going to be like I can barely get out that.

00:24:14.930 --> 00:24:17.290
You know last two reps are like killing you right.

00:24:17.290 --> 00:24:20.532
Well, for my husband, reverse that.

00:24:21.472 --> 00:24:24.214
So what limbs does the first set?

00:24:24.214 --> 00:24:24.714
He does.

00:24:24.714 --> 00:24:27.836
It's like he can barely complete the first 10.

00:24:27.836 --> 00:24:30.117
The second 10 is getting easier.

00:24:30.117 --> 00:24:32.118
And then the third 10, he's like I can do this all day.

00:24:32.118 --> 00:24:40.623
And it's with a challenging weight Because what it does is interrupts the acetylcholine through your calcium channels to get your muscles to fire.

00:24:40.623 --> 00:24:51.011
So we all need that channel that goes into your muscles and that is what tells your muscles to, tells your brain, tells your muscle to constrict.

00:24:51.011 --> 00:24:54.939
So that's how limbs affects people.

00:24:54.939 --> 00:25:00.335
Now, myocytic gravis is the opposite the more you use your muscle, the more tired it gets.

00:25:00.335 --> 00:25:06.798
Now my husband needs to use his muscle or he'll end up not being able to have his muscles.

00:25:06.798 --> 00:25:14.611
So that's really important for us for him to continue to be active, and that's going to be frustrating.

00:25:14.872 --> 00:25:16.819
be active, that's going to be frustrating.

00:25:16.819 --> 00:25:17.576
The acetylcholine is basically.

00:25:17.576 --> 00:25:22.811
It just takes his muscles a lot longer to fire than the rest of us.

00:25:22.811 --> 00:25:31.032
Rest of us, we can probably do a dynamic warm-up and our muscles will fire right at that point where it's going to take him.

00:25:31.032 --> 00:25:33.891
It sounds like it's going to take him a.

00:25:33.891 --> 00:25:35.365
It's a specific.

00:25:35.365 --> 00:25:45.786
Whatever muscle he's going to be using, he's got to warm up and do several longer sets of things in order for him to be primed for it to fire.

00:25:46.469 --> 00:25:48.154
Pretty much Once he gets going.

00:25:48.154 --> 00:25:53.730
He gets going, which is good, and there is a medication right now that he is able to take.

00:25:53.730 --> 00:26:01.096
That is helping as well too, and so he knows that it starts to wear off, he needs to take it, but it's just a really, really expensive medication.

00:26:01.096 --> 00:26:03.851
So thankfully, we've discovered the problem.

00:26:03.851 --> 00:26:06.758
The only thing is there's not a cure for it Right.

00:26:06.758 --> 00:26:08.692
So now you manage it.

00:26:09.785 --> 00:26:10.026
Right.

00:26:10.026 --> 00:26:14.938
How did you move that into this obstacle course racing that you're so famous for?

00:26:15.904 --> 00:26:17.170
I don't think I would say famous for.

00:26:17.550 --> 00:26:21.910
It's the book, it's Essence from the Obstacle Course, so it's an obstacle course.

00:26:21.910 --> 00:26:22.893
So when did that all start?

00:26:23.233 --> 00:26:28.457
Oh yeah, that all started the year my husband had his brain surgery in 2014.

00:26:28.457 --> 00:27:08.587
During the time that he was recovering, we had a few issues that sent him back to the hospital, like his brain swelled and he had blood clots and a few other things that we were managing and my back went out on me, like with what happens with a lot of caregivers like I had poured everything into taking care of my husband and the family and making sure our whole ship stayed afloat that I was not taking care of myself, and when I was in my third trimester with my daughter, my back had gone out on me as well, and so it went out on me again and I'm like I couldn't even I had to sit on the floor to bring my legs up to tie my shoes, because if I tried to bend over, I wouldn't be able to get myself back up.

00:27:08.587 --> 00:27:13.756
So I was in the process of healing myself along with my husband.

00:27:13.756 --> 00:27:22.705
I had some really great friends from work who were like, okay, kelly, you need to come do this thing called the Warrior Dash with us, and they were all excited and like really bubbly about it and I'm like, yeah, let's go.

00:27:22.705 --> 00:27:23.205
Do you know?

00:27:23.205 --> 00:27:24.507
Like, okay, I'll jump in.

00:27:24.507 --> 00:27:25.446
And then I took a stop.

00:27:25.446 --> 00:27:27.469
I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:27:27.469 --> 00:27:28.670
What's a Warrior Dash?

00:27:28.670 --> 00:27:30.030
Like what did I just?

00:27:30.030 --> 00:27:35.575
So it was five miles and some obstacles.

00:27:35.575 --> 00:27:37.415
You go through a little bit of mud and all that kind of stuff.

00:27:37.955 --> 00:27:40.597
And that was when obstacle horses were kind of starting to get their thing.

00:27:40.597 --> 00:27:45.821
Tough Mudder was starting to get there and Spartan was coming along and I'm like, oh, this feels like fun.

00:27:45.821 --> 00:27:46.583
Yeah, let's go do this.

00:27:46.583 --> 00:27:56.606
Okay, they did not tell me how muddy it was.

00:27:56.606 --> 00:28:00.438
I don't know if you've ever done a warrior dash, but the last thing to get your medal is you have to swim through a mud pit.

00:28:00.438 --> 00:28:01.361
I'm like, seriously, swim through a mud pit.

00:28:01.361 --> 00:28:02.704
I'm going, okay, what I had the best time, I ate it up.

00:28:02.704 --> 00:28:03.788
I loved it.

00:28:03.788 --> 00:28:04.891
I've been a runner.

00:28:04.891 --> 00:28:05.973
I've done a lot of races.

00:28:05.973 --> 00:28:06.736
I did one marathon.

00:28:06.736 --> 00:28:09.172
I'm like, okay, check the box, I'm good, not going to do that again.

00:28:09.393 --> 00:28:24.534
Training sucked, but I did it and I'm like, this is fun and my husband and the kids had gone along with us out to this you know dusty field in Tulsa, oklahoma, and standing on the sidelines they were excited about it.

00:28:24.534 --> 00:28:26.525
They're like, oh my God, we want to do one of these.

00:28:26.525 --> 00:28:44.875
This is great and that's the biggest thing, because it lit that spark in my husband because he was starting to kind of, because we had some of those setbacks, you're not going to be able to do the things you used to be able to do, all that BS that people say and the excuses that people make.

00:28:44.875 --> 00:28:47.526
He really wanted to get back in Pelé Lacrosse again.

00:28:47.526 --> 00:28:53.050
He wanted to go and do the things that he wanted to do and he was starting to get this feeling that I'm not going to be able to do this.

00:28:53.050 --> 00:29:00.069
And so, seeing the course and we were talked about it on the way home he's like I really want to do one of those things.

00:29:00.069 --> 00:29:02.073
I'm like, okay, let's find one.

00:29:02.073 --> 00:29:11.299
So we ended up finding Conquer the Gauntlet and it was I picked a race in September 2015.

00:29:11.299 --> 00:29:27.421
He had his surgery in 14 because I really want to make sure he had enough time to recover and it had to be far enough out but close enough to home because we couldn't go too far away from the kids, because we only get a couple of night passes because his parents would watch the kids.

00:29:27.421 --> 00:29:36.377
But we ended up doing Conquer the Gauntlet in September of 2015 out in Little Rock, arkansas, and we just had a blast.

00:29:36.377 --> 00:29:39.710
It was so much fun and so that really just started our journey.

00:29:39.789 --> 00:29:44.470
And then our kids as they got older, they were like we want to do this, and so we did them.

00:29:44.470 --> 00:29:47.549
We took them on a couple of warrior dashes and they absolutely loved it.

00:29:47.549 --> 00:29:52.847
And I've got some wonderful stories of the kids, you know, first going through the mud pit, going, oh this sucks.

00:29:52.847 --> 00:29:59.726
And then the next year we encourage them to bring some friends along, and then they become the cheerleader for their friends going, oh, you can do this.

00:29:59.726 --> 00:30:00.728
This is going to be so much fun.

00:30:00.768 --> 00:30:13.931
Seeing that transformation in them was just really cool and seeing how they've grown and my daughter is not afraid of anything and she's also a fantastic lacrosse player and so she's like closes everybody down on the defense line.

00:30:13.931 --> 00:30:30.034
So you know, just it's just seeing them not be afraid to get in there and get dirty, because they've done a lot of these obstacle courses with us and we try to do at least I don't know, we try about three to five a year if we can, because it's always been challenging with the kids' sports schedules.

00:30:30.034 --> 00:30:40.209
So in fact, we've got a trifecta to do this year and we'll be doing Conquer the Gauntlet one more time because they're going to be closing the race Like anybody going out there.

00:30:40.209 --> 00:30:41.814
Go do Conquer the Gauntlet one last time.

00:30:41.814 --> 00:30:42.556
It was just a thing.

00:30:42.556 --> 00:30:42.957
I can't.

00:30:42.957 --> 00:30:50.578
My hats are off to Mayor Price and their whole family because they've done just a phenomenal, phenomenal thing with Conquer the Gauntlet.

00:30:51.565 --> 00:30:52.746
Yeah, it's unfortunate.

00:30:52.746 --> 00:30:53.205
Yeah, it's unfortunate.

00:30:53.205 --> 00:31:02.791
You know, as much as I love to have these races available for people, it seems like the days of the grassroots event planners that want to do this is kind of gone.

00:31:03.313 --> 00:31:03.692
Yeah.

00:31:03.932 --> 00:31:04.532
You got to have.

00:31:04.532 --> 00:31:07.915
Well, it's more, because it's just your finances.

00:31:08.056 --> 00:31:09.977
Oh it is, it's got to be expensive.

00:31:10.416 --> 00:31:12.699
Well, I mean to rent whatever area you're going to rent.

00:31:12.699 --> 00:31:13.419
That's first.

00:31:13.419 --> 00:31:19.022
So I helped to start a series out here called Best Damn Race.

00:31:19.022 --> 00:31:21.594
So we've got Best Damn Race out here.

00:31:21.594 --> 00:31:22.544
I just kind of was helped.

00:31:22.544 --> 00:31:30.656
Best Damn Race, tampa, which is Safety Harbor, new Orleans, savannah, orlando and Jacksonville.

00:31:30.656 --> 00:31:35.548
So there's this series and it's always a 5K, 10k and a half marathon.

00:31:35.548 --> 00:31:39.453
But I understand what it costs.

00:31:39.453 --> 00:31:45.441
Like the biggest thing is police, right Security for over there.

00:31:45.441 --> 00:31:54.513
It's one thing is to rent the area, but out here I mean, the biggest expense is the police department, because you're not paying the marshals, which is what they're doing is they're marshalling the course.

00:31:54.513 --> 00:31:58.554
You're not paying their regular fee, you're paying their overtime.

00:31:59.095 --> 00:31:59.717
Yeah, it's true.

00:32:00.464 --> 00:32:16.633
But because of that being just so expensive and inflation and the whole bit, they're just taking these grassroots and they're lucky if they can sell the race to Spartan or a big conglomerate like that, otherwise the grassroots one just go bye-bye.

00:32:16.633 --> 00:32:18.857
You know it's unfortunate.

00:32:20.125 --> 00:32:25.570
It is unfortunate because of the cost of Spartan, and not a dick who gives him, but because he put on a great event.

00:32:25.912 --> 00:32:26.073
Yes.

00:32:26.265 --> 00:32:33.714
But I think a lot of these like I was sad when the Warrior Dash went away because that was such a great entry-level race.

00:32:33.714 --> 00:32:38.601
And then this year Rugged Maniac went away, and I was such a great entry level race and then this year rugged maniac went away and I would be I hadn't gotten a chance to do one of those.

00:32:38.601 --> 00:32:40.325
I was really looking forward because they were going to have one here in dallas.

00:32:40.325 --> 00:32:44.008
I'm like, oh, let's go do this because it's close to home, it's in our backyard yeah okay.

00:32:44.730 --> 00:32:46.252
So it's sad because you do.

00:32:46.252 --> 00:32:53.914
You see a lot of those just kind of full shop and and I don't know I'd be curious and so I'll put this out to the world.

00:32:53.914 --> 00:33:02.078
I'm like, is it the group that were really doing a lot of these races just now, moving off and having kids and not participating anymore?

00:33:02.078 --> 00:33:04.095
Like, are they seeing a lot of participation drop off?

00:33:04.095 --> 00:33:12.598
I don't know what the case is from that perspective, but I would love to see a lot more people get out there because there's so much.

00:33:12.598 --> 00:33:14.488
That's what I wrote the book about.

00:33:14.508 --> 00:33:16.311
It wasn't about how to complete the obstacles.

00:33:16.311 --> 00:33:43.998
It's really about the mindset of what you mentally go through and physically go through and how you relate that to what you mentally go through and physically go through in real life, because a lot of the challenges are very similar from a perspective, because a lot of the challenges are very similar from a perspective and there's so much growth that you can get from doing these courses and doing things that challenge you, because we don't do enough that challenges us anymore.

00:33:43.998 --> 00:33:46.232
We have got very sedentary lives.

00:33:46.232 --> 00:33:51.497
We don't go out and really push ourselves to do hard things.

00:33:51.497 --> 00:33:59.108
I think we really, truly miss out on that rewarding part of pushing your limits to know what you can do.

00:33:59.891 --> 00:34:01.976
I am not a podium person.

00:34:01.976 --> 00:34:06.596
I always joke around like I'm going to be a podium person just because I'm going to outlast everybody in my age group.

00:34:06.596 --> 00:34:08.728
Then I'll finally get up there.

00:34:08.728 --> 00:34:13.818
I don't go through these very fast, but I go through them.

00:34:13.818 --> 00:34:18.885
Every time I take on a course I finally get through another obstacle.

00:34:18.885 --> 00:34:19.847
That's been challenging me.

00:34:19.847 --> 00:34:30.186
So it's that resilience to not give up and to keep trying and kind of facing your fears and all sorts of other things that we see in life that you find on the course.

00:34:31.128 --> 00:34:32.630
Oh, and I agree wholeheartedly.

00:34:32.630 --> 00:35:08.784
I believe that the generations coming in behind us no-transcript.

00:35:08.784 --> 00:35:15.306
Part of that is training theory, but those are exceptions, you know, and it just doesn't seem like we're doing anything hard.

00:35:15.306 --> 00:35:20.719
I coach a cross country team out of a private school.

00:35:20.719 --> 00:35:24.327
That's got 800 kids and I have a problem fulfilling a team.

00:35:24.907 --> 00:35:33.715
When I was a kid, everybody wanted to be on a team and a lot of them would gravitate towards cross country, especially if they played baseball.

00:35:33.715 --> 00:35:38.235
If they played soccer, they would race cross country because it would get them in shape for their sport.

00:35:38.235 --> 00:35:40.012
And that's not happening anymore.

00:35:40.012 --> 00:35:48.608
You know, people are just going there and they're doing their thing and they're relying on their talent, and which is fine, but it's not giving people that evolution of the human spirit.

00:35:48.608 --> 00:35:50.510
That's why I do what I do.

00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:53.735
You know, I am constantly trying to push, push the boundaries.

00:35:53.735 --> 00:36:05.503
I'm not I might be slightly older than you, but other than that, I'm still trying to push, trying to keep going, and that's what my whole roster of people that I coach are of that mindset.

00:36:05.503 --> 00:36:11.331
It just doesn't seem to be coming in behind us as far as the generations go.

00:36:11.913 --> 00:36:14.733
Yeah, I don't know where the change was.

00:36:14.733 --> 00:36:15.367
Was it really?

00:36:15.367 --> 00:36:16.251
Was it COVID?

00:36:16.251 --> 00:36:23.235
Was it the fact that we've, you know, and we've not had to push?

00:36:23.235 --> 00:36:26.057
We've not had a lot of adversity, which, thankfully.

00:36:26.057 --> 00:36:37.702
I'm not asking for adversity, I don't want it in that respect like a big adversity but I don't know whether we're not pushing people like we used to.

00:36:37.702 --> 00:36:45.827

Navigating Life’s Obstacle Course with Resilience and Triumph with Kelly Majdan

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