Lucy Schodell: Why We Choose Hard Things

Lucy Schodell knows what it means to choose something difficult. She's taken on The Speed Project solo, raced 100 miles, crossed 240 miles of the Gobi Desert and continues searching for adventures that make her nervous enough to wonder whether she can pull them off. But Lucy doesn't see endurance as an individual pursuit. In this episode of Enduring Minds, Lucy joins Evan Birch and Jason Bahamundi to talk about confidence, discomfort, motherhood, human connection and why she believes running, and life, are team sports. Lucy shares how sports helped build her belief that she can take on difficult things, why being told she can't do something tends to make her want to do it even more, and why the people around us sometimes need to carry our confidence when ours disappears. The conversation also goes beyond running. Lucy discusses creating Watch Women's Sports IRL, a platform designed to make women's sporting events easier to discover and attend. What began partly from wanting her daughter to grow up watching women compete became another example of Lucy seeing a problem and deciding to do something about it. There are also French fries, crying at an airport restaurant after a 100-miler, two exhausted runners weeping at a water stop in the Gobi Desert, and a discussion about what Evan calls “ultra feelings.” Because this is Enduring Minds and eventually somebody is going to cry. This isn't a conversation about how to run hundreds of miles. It's about what we discover about ourselves, and each other, when we do hard things together. Enduring Minds: Going the distance. Breaking the silence. Keep Connected: Run Tri Bike on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ Run Tri Bike on ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠ Evan Birch on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ Lucy Schodell on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ Enduring Minds on ⁠Instagram⁠ Join the ⁠⁠⁠Everyday Athlete Clubhouse⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the ⁠⁠⁠Run Tri Bike Newsletter⁠