Susan Lacke believes anyone can be a runner, no matter their size, race, gender, or ability.
Writer and professor Susan Lacke never anticipated becoming an endurance athlete. But when her boss Carlos Nunez offered her an opportunity to improve her unhealthy lifestyle, she went for it. What started as small changes became bigger and bigger until she signed up for an Ironman triathlon. Now, she’s breaking the mold of who we think of as an athlete - Susan is deaf, and she writes about other athletes that don’t fit the runner stereotype. She believes anyone can be a runner, no matter their size, race, gender, or ability.
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Shelby Stanger:
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Susan Lacke:
Running can take us places. Running can introduce us to people we would have never met before. Running can teach us things about ourselves that we may never have had the chance to even explore. It can build confidence it can break us down. We can do all of these different things and ultimately running gives us what we need.
Shelby Stanger:
Running is one of those sports that can seem really intimidating. As a runner, even I'm intimidated when I meet people who do Ultra marathons or Ironman triathlons, but running doesn't have to be competitive or even intense. It can actually be fun and peaceful. It can be a mental pause from an otherwise busy day. An opportunity to get outside and breathe fresh air. My favorite thing about it, you don't have to be a professional athlete. All you need are your own two feet, preferably some decent shoes and a road, a trail, or my favorite, an open stretch of sand. Dr. Susan Lacke certainly isn't one of those intense runners. In fact, before Susan became an athlete, she was pretty much the opposite: a heavy drinker and a pack a day smoker with no motivation to exercise. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. Susan's journey into running was certainly unconventional. She never played sports and she wasn't the type of person to jump out of bed in the morning and just go for a jog. But ironically, Susan studied health and wellness, and she ended up getting her doctorate in health education. She's now a college professor and a professional writer. She also happens to be deaf. In the past doing a podcast interview was something that was just logistically challenging.
Shelby Stanger:
Susan Lacke, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Susan Lacke:
Thank you for having me. I think that this is going to be a really fun conversation. I love that we can do that over a video call. In the past, pre pandemic, the way that I would do podcasts would be that we would have to record separately because I'm deaf and I read lips. So doing podcasts is not something that comes naturally to me, but now with the pandemic, all of this video conferencing software has come out with captions and its made that so much easier and so much more fun so that you can have these really great conversations.
Shelby Stanger:
This is a first for me and for the people listening right now in your car or wherever you're listening to this podcast, we're talking over Microsoft Teams and there's captions. She's able to see me, read my lips and read the captions below. I better not mess up.
Susan Lacke:
I think there's a lot of pressure there. But its really hard to mess up.
Shelby Stanger:
Thank you because I have a love, hate relationship with video conferencing, but now I'm realizing it can be really useful.
Susan Lacke:
Absolutely. It's been a real game changer for me. It was interesting because at the beginning of the pandemic, I was really scared that I was going to lose work. As a writer a lot of my work interviewing people. Before that meant I had to physically travel to the people for the story. Now I don't have to do that anymore. I was scared when the pandemic shut down travel, I'm not going to be able to do stories, I'm not going to be able to write. I'm going to lose money. In reality, it turned out that I'm actually able to do more work because I have these new avenues opened up to me. I know we like to moan about how hard video conferencing is, you have to put on makeup and wear pants and all of that. It's horrible.
Shelby Stanger:
You don't have to wear pants.
Susan Lacke:
I put on pants for you because you're fancy. It's amazing though, that we can talk to people who are on the other side of the world and how lucky are we get to live in this time where that's possible.
Shelby Stanger:
As a writer, Susan talks to athletes all over the world, she's written two books about running and she's an endurance sports journalist, but Susan didn't envision this career for herself. It all began when she started a new teaching job 15 years ago. I really want to talk about this book that you wrote the title "Life's Too Short To Go So F-ing Slow." The description is brilliant. She was a young overweight college professor with a pack a day habit and a bad attitude. He was her boss and an accomplished Ironman triathlete. She was a whiner. He was a hard-ass. I'm looking at you, you're a bad-ass triathlete and you studied health. How did you get to be a pack a day-? How did that happen?
Susan Lacke:
I haven't always been an endurance athlete. When I was in graduate school, I picked up some really bad habits and it's funny because even though I was studying health. The area of focus I was in was actually human sexuality. I thought I wanted to go to Africa and help with the AIDS crisis there. I basically ignored the stuff about don't smoke and exercise and eat salad. I kind of sloughed that off to the side, that's good advice, but not for me. When I became a full-time college professor, I was pretty stressed out, I was coping with that stress tough in obviously poor ways. I had this boss though, who as you just pointed out was the complete opposite of me. He was 19 years older than me, he was actually an immigrant from Mexico who basically achieved the American dream. He went to school. He became a doctor, a college professor, and highly respected in his field. He had his shit together and I did not. I spent the first few weeks, months at my new job avoiding him because we were so different. I mean this guy would sneak out between classes and meetings to go swim from laps in the campus pool. We did not have anything in common. One day I'm sitting outside my office having a cigarette and my boss Carlos sat down next to me. He looks at me, he's like mind if I have a drag? I was completely shocked I'm thinking this guy smokes? What's happening here? He was my boss, I wasn't going to argue, I handed him my cigarette.I watched him and he took it between his fingers and then stubbed it out in the ashtray.
Susan Lacke:
He said, you don't need that stuff. Come on, let's get some coffee. Bold move, right. But that was the start of this friendship where, very gradually, he got to know me and he would start asking questions like, why do you smoke? I started with, because I'm stressed out. He said, well, if you're stressed why don't you come swimming with me in the pool? Mind you, I'm this deaf, overweight alcoholic, pack a day smoker. Swimming laps was not something that I was ever going to do. But again, he was my boss. What are you supposed to do when your boss invites you to go swimming, you go swimming. Gradually, he kept putting these opportunities in front of me to make healthier decisions. He never intentionally said you need to quit smoking. He never said you have to lose weight. He never said sign up for an Ironman. He never said that. He just kind of suggested you might be a better way. Over the years we became friends because we trained together, he mentored me and he taught me everything I needed to know about triathlons. That's when I signed up for an Ironman, not realizing what a full Ironman would entail. For example, I didn't even own a bike. I had never run more than a half marathon when I signed up. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. When I told him, I signed up for an Ironman, he said, what were you thinking? That's something that happens when you train with somebody, it's different from other friendships. I think it's because we're just too tired to put that guard up. We can't pretend to be something we're not, when we are that exhausted. I learned a lot about what friendship was in that relationship with Carlos. The tables turned and I guess in a way, I got to repay that favor when he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. That was at a different type of endurance event for both of us. Carlos unfortunately passed away five years ago. As he was in hospice, dying from cancer, I kind of got panicked. I thought he's taught me all of these lessons and I am so scared I am going to forget them. So I just started writing them down, random thoughts, here and there. I would type notes into my phone or jot them down on little scraps of paper. Because I was so scared I was going to forget everything he has taught me. Someone said you know you need to turn this into a book. And that became "Life's Too Short To Go So F---ing Slow."
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. I didn't know the whole story. Thank you for making me have tears in my eyes, but it's beautiful. What are some of the biggest lessons he taught you that you carry with you today?
Susan Lacke:
The major difference between Carlos and myself was that even though I'm stubborn, I'm not tenacious. Carlos was tenacious. He would schedule the hardest workout in the worst conditions. And he would say, "You really have to put yourself through the paces and training so that you don't get phased on race day." He would go out on the hottest days for training. He would go swim in the biggest waves he could find. Meanwhile, I'm over here saying I'm good in the pool. So getting uncomfortable was something that was not familial for me. When you are friends with a guy like Carlos Nunez you will be uncomfortable a lot. He will push you. At first, I thought it was because he was trying to torture to me. Now, in hindsight, I see it's because he believed in me. He never put me in a situation that I couldn't handle. How lucky am I to have that? You know? I've tried to be that person now for others in my life, to make them uncomfortable in ways that is not punishment, it's not torture. Simply I believe in you. That was the biggest lesson that I learned from Carlos.
Shelby Stanger:
It sounds like he changed you mentally and physically. I'm really curious, I imagine that training, especially for an Ironman is grueling and there had to have been moments where you wanted to give up, how did you get through those moments? What was it?
Susan Lacke:
Fear is an incredible motivator. I have this really bad habit of leaping and then kind of putting together my parachute as I'm falling. I don't always understand what I'm getting myself into. I just do the stupid thing and hope for the best. It steered me a while over the years. I think that when we put ourselves in situations where we are scared of looking stupid, we are scared of failure, we are scared of whatever it is or whatever. It can really push us to say I better train for this then. I know that's not true for everybody. For some people the feeling can be so big, so terrifying, that it's paralyzing really. For me I've always felt like failure is not an option. Especially because I'm a woman and I'm a woman with a disability, I already feel that people are kind of expecting me to fail and I am going to do everything in my power to prove all of you wrong. When things get tough that's really the thing that keeps me going. I don't want to say I have haters because that's not true. I really don't have haters. I also know that there are a lot of people out there who would not be surprised if I failed. They would say women can't handle this or it's okay it's too hard for somebody who's deaf to do this. It really makes me a perfectionist. It works in my favor, but it also works against me sometimes. I have to be very careful about walking that line.
Shelby Stanger:
That kind of hits home for me. I love to prove the haters, even the ones in my own head, wrong. Yes, it's made me successful. It's also caused me pain. Any tips on how you deal with that? That balance?
Susan Lacke:
It used to be that I would deal with it by drinking it a lot. I don't recommend going that route. Right now I am learning that I need to set some boundaries for myself. Part of the reason why I love endurance sports is because was I want to see what my limits are. I go sometimes too far in trying to find those limits, or in trying to out-stubborn my limitations. I haven't been successful when I am trying to be too stubborn. I often go too far, physically, emotionally, mentally. So over the years, I've had to learn to respect my body when its saying, you're going to that edge. So perspective, and also therapy, gives you a lot of insight into where your body's limitations are. That's a work in progress for me.
Shelby Stanger:
There's a fine line between pushing yourself and respecting your body's limits. Susan seems to have found a healthy balance between the two. Part of that has been adjusting her expectations, what it means to be a quote, "real runner." When we come back, Susan talks about how to take on a big challenge, like an Ironman and why running is for everybody.
Shelby Stanger:
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Shelby Stanger:
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Shelby Stanger:
Susan was really lucky to have a mentor like Carlos when she started on her athletic journey. It makes a huge difference to have someone to help you train, push you to your limits and encourage you. But according to Susan, you don't have to be an expert or have one by your side to start. You just have to show up and do it. It may be sloppy and it may be imperfect, but you'll feel so accomplished and so proud of yourself when you finish whatever you set out to do, whether that's a neighborhood jog or even an Ironman.You've done really hard things. Any tips for people who are starting from scratch and want to do something like a triathlon or a marathon, or just a 5K race, and they don't know where to start?
Susan Lacke:
For beginners, my biggest tip is that you don't have to know exactly what you're doing. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to instantly take to swimming like a duck to water. We have all of these ideas about, "I'm not really a writer" or "I could never do that." Nobody's expecting you to be perfect on your first try out. We are expecting you to do the damn thing. Showing up is the hardest part. Sometimes we say, I'm going to train for the 5K, but then we don't actually do it. We get intimidated or we miss one day of training and think it's all falling apart. So we quit. That's the biggest thing that I see with beginners in the sport. As soon as they make one mistake or they have one hiccup, they think, people are going to find out, I don't know what I'm doing. Here's the truth. None of us know what we're doing. We're all making it up as we go along, we're all figuring this out. What works for one person may not work for another. It's up to you to find out what works for you. Experiment, have fun. If something doesn't work, try something else. There is no one perfect way to do this thing. But you still should do it, you should still try. Because when you've actually done it, when you come out on the other side and you realize that you've done this in spite yourself and because of yourself. That can feel so incredibly empowering. That's when you feel like the real bad-ass. It's not that you crossed the finish line, necessarily. It's that you had to overcome all this other things. When you look back on that, it feels amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
I could give you a hug through this computer, because you're giving such good advice that I need to hear right now. I'm doing something that you've done. I'm writing a book or trying to. I have no idea what I'm doing and it's hard and painful, and I want to quit every day. So thank you.
Susan Lacke:
That is totally normal. I tell you with both of my books, there were points when I was writing, when I said, you know what? I'm just going to send the advance cheque back to my publishers. And say you know what, thank you for the opportunity but I can't do this, this is not for me. Writing a book is hard, it really is. It's like eating an elephant and you look at this elephant and you are like I have no idea how am I going to be able to take all of this. Really it's one bite at a time. When you think you have the whole overwhelming book to write, you don't have to write the whole book right now. Why don't you sit down and to try to write 100 words, that seems more manageable, right? When you're done with that 100 maybe then see if you can do 100 more. It's really no different than doing an Ironman. You don't have to do the 440 miles, right this second. But you should probably try to make it one more mile and see how you feel and then another. Stringing together all these little bits until at the end you've done an Ironman, you've got a book, you're bad-ass. That's amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
When you talk about running, I've read that you wrote you like running slow. What does that mean? Does that mean you like running slow because you're physically slow? Or do you purposely like to go slow because you like to take in the sights? What does that mean?
Susan Lacke:
A lot of different things. I am slow, it's just what it is. I'm not super skinny and I have asthma, so I'm not really like this balls out type endurance athlete. You would never see me qualifying for Bastion or Kona. That's not to say I haven't tried. There was a phase about halfway through my writing career where I started feeling like, well I do all this writing about endurance sports. And I'm super slow. So if people find out I'm slow, they're not going to take me seriously. I'm going to lose my credibility. This is a common theme, as you can see, I'm really scared of losing my credibility. Because I build a lot trust with my readers. I thought, well if people are going to take me seriously, I need to be a fast runner. Because I sometimes write about like how you can become a better athlete. So I thought, no, I'm going to do that. I'm going to become fast. I am going to qualify for Bastion. So I set out to lose weight and get fast and become the so-called real runner. It backfired so spectacularly that even to this day, I am a little embarrassed by it. I became really grumpy. I was really tired all the time I got injured and I stopped caring about running. I had gotten so caught up in becoming a real runner that I actually stopped liking running altogether. I hated it actually. It was around that same time that, but I thought, well... I've got this whole folder of racers that I set aside over the year because they're not what real runners do. I was so focused on qualifying for Bastion and becoming fast that I would ignore press releases for things, like a Naked 5K in Tampa, Florida.
Shelby Stanger:
Sign me up. Wait, talk to me about this. What other things did you ignore?
Susan Lacke:
Ever year I would get the press release of a Naked 5K in Tampa Florida, that's held on a nudist colony. I also did, a race in England and you chase a wheel of cheese down a hill.
Speaker 4:
A wheel of cheese?
Susan Lacke:
Yes and I love cheese, and I love gravity. So this was definitely my jam.
Shelby Stanger:
That sounds amazing!
Susan Lacke:
It's basically the best thing ever. Actually if you look on line you can watch videos of this race. It's called the Cooper's Hill Cheese Roll. I went and did that race. I also did my first 50 mile ultra marathon, I did the Rim to Rim one across the Grand Canyon. I did all of these things that aren't your typical running experience. I spent a year doing all these different events and at the end of the year, I looked back on all of these experiences that I had. I realized that even though I'm not doing unreal races, I had never felt more like a real runner in my life. That was actually, why my second book, "Running Outside the Comfort Zone is all about these different races that I did. You can read about the Naked 5K in that book. It was a really cool moment when I realized that I don't have to be fast in order to be a real runner. I don't have to set a PR every time I run. I run because I love running. I run because it's a beautiful day outside and I want to see where this trail takes me. How lucky am I to have this healthy body and the life within it to be able to go out and just enjoy that. So I am now a slow runner by choice, but also by physiology.
Shelby Stanger:
Running can be an intimidating sport. I love that you're all about running for everybody and every body. Tell me about that. Like how can every body and everybody get more into running?
Susan Lacke:
I think first you have to want it. I feel like some people view running as punishment or as something that you have to suffer through in order to lose weight or whatever. That doesn't have to be the case. Running can take so many different forms, if you want to run just because, you don't have to do a race, if you never want to race. I feel like we get caught up, in this is what a runner should do. They should be able to run a five K and under the time. The next step is to appear in the half marathon and then there's to qualify for Bastion. We have to kind of checklist, what real runners do. I feel like COVID has reminded us that we don't have to have races to enjoy running. There are so many things we can do with running. One of my favorite experiences ever, was doing the Rim to Rim of the Grand Canyon. There was no medal at the finish line for me. Actually, there was really nothing at the finish line. There was no victory moment, but there was this deep satisfaction in being able to look at this huge hole and say I was able to cross that. That's pretty cool. Running can take us places. Running can introduce us to people we would never have met before. Running can teach us things about ourselves that we may never had a chance to explore. It can build confidence. It can break us down. We can do all of these different things and ultimately running gets us what we need. And if I sound evangelical about it and I'm making you roll your eyes, I absolutely get that because if you had told me back, 15 years ago, when I was a pack a day smoker, I would be talking about running like this I would not have believed you at all. In a way I think that kind of speaks to just how cool the sport can be. Because not only has it changed me physically and mentally, but its given me this really amazing career where I get to travel the world and I get to tell stories for a living. I'm not going to lie, this is the best job in the world.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. You know, I feel like there's these brands out there like Hoka One One who do a great job of showing us these people who are runners, but who aren't necessarily that runner stereotype we all have in our heads.
Susan Lacke:
I really support what Hoka is doing, because the whole Humans of the Hoka campaign has done such a good job of illustrating what real runners look like. It's not always the people that we see on the cover of the running magazines. We need more of that, we need so much more of that. And I have made it my mission and my passion to go and find people whose stories are not told in endurance sports. To tell it in a way that is not your stereotypical, contrived, inspirational bullshit. I do that because I know what it's like to be the subject of inspirational contrived bullshit stories. A lot of people want to make me out to be that inspirational deaf girl who overcame everything. I can tell you me being deaf is the least interesting thing about me. I take that same approach when I'm talking to for example a transgender female who is a runner. The story is not necessarily about the transgender or the female part. It's about what other things are in your life, what do you love most about running? What are you training for? What challenges have you overcome? And letting people have the space to tell their story. The thing that we hone in on is often a footnote for the person who's experiencing that. I want to make sure that I give people the opportunity to represent the whole spectrum of who they are as a person and what they bring to endurance sports.
Shelby Stanger:
I love how Susan frames her writing. Her goal is to show the whole person that she's writing about. Not just one dimension of them. She's good at it, partially because she knows what it's like when people latch on to one detail about you, even if it's not the one you identify with most. Susan is a runner, she's a writer and she's a professor first. She's also deaf, but deafness is not the most interesting thing about her. Not by a long shot. What's your relationship to your deafness? How do you want to talk about it?
Susan Lacke:
I haven't really spent a lot of time talking about being deaf until recently. A lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt like I couldn't be deaf. I couldn't reveal that about myself because I already this bit of imposter syndrome. Because I'm not really a writer. I don't really know what I'm doing. I was scared at first the people were going to figure that part out. I had to be perfect in every other way. I felt like if I revealed that I was deaf that people would think that it somehow affected my ability to convey information to them accurately or that in a lot of cases, I guess out in the world when people find out that I'm deaf, they often assume that I also have a cognitive disability of some sort. They make assumptions about my intelligence or my ability to function in day-to-day life. And so when they find out that I'm also a college professor it really throws them. Because they don't normally associate a disability with intelligence in anyway. I felt like I couldn't talk about that part of me because it would discredit me somehow. I really kind of tucked that away. It wasn't intentional. I wasn't trying to deceive anybody. It just never really came up and I never really put it out there. Over time, I started telling these stories of other people in the endurance sports space who typically aren't represented. You have people of color, for example, you have people who are deemed non-conforming, people who may wear traditional religious garments when they race. I was telling all these stories and all of them were so authentic and so confident in who they were. I realized that we created this mold of what the typical endurance athlete looks like. Typically male, that person is typically very slim, they fit, very fast, very confident. We create this image of what an endurance athlete looks like. When we have people who don't fit that mold it throws us out of loop and we start to that we don't belong. If we really want to create a sport where we're truly inclusive, where we can say, anybody can do an Ironman, anybody can do a marathon, we have to back that up by saying, actually anyone can, everybody can. We have to put those stories out. That means I also need to put my story out there. I need to put my voice out there. You don't typically hear my voice on podcasts, right? So people don't think that deaf people can do triathlons. I'm here to say you what have my ears got to do with what my legs are tying to accomplish. Of course, I can do a triathlon, I've done several, many actually. My ears have never once stopped me from doing that. My relationship to being deaf is pretty complex, but it's growing to a place where now I'm starting to realize there is a lot of benefit to being authentic and to putting yourself out there. It really does help other people to see that this mold that we've created, of what an endurance athlete looks like is not reality. When you go to a race there is many different kinds of people: shapes, sizes, colors, abilities. And I want to see more of that. Don't you?
Shelby Stanger:
I 100 percent want to see more of that. I bet you do too. Susan is out there breaking the mold. She is showing the world that being a runner isn't determined by your size, your race, your ability, or even your speed. All it takes is getting out there and putting one foot in front of the other. Susan, thank you so much for coming on the show and for showing us that anyone can be a runner. I personally had a blast interviewing you. Thank you for making me laugh so much. Susan has an amazing sense of humor. You can follow her on Twitter at @SusanLacke. That's S U S A N L A C K E. You can buy her books at your favorite bookstore or on her website, susanlacke.com.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler, and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby and our presenting sponsor this season is Ford. I have a new podcast I've been talking about. It's called Vitamin Joy. You can subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast. You can find me on Instagram at @ShelbyStanger. As always we love it when you follow this show, when you rate it and when you review it, wherever you're listening and remember some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.