Speaker 1: I use. My family has my recovery. That's my fuel
Speaker 1: right now. I'm just getting back to where I was,
Speaker 1: you know, for them. But you know, I think they
Speaker 1: feel like I should be more selfish and do it
Speaker 1: for myself. But I feel like everything I do anymore
Speaker 1: is for them. I don't think anything's easy. Like, if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it full fledged
Speaker 1: and hard as I possibly can, especially on long runs
Speaker 1: and races and you know, long training days. I don't
Speaker 1: want things to be easy. I don't want things given
Speaker 1: to me. I want to work for it, and I
Speaker 1: don't think enough people do that. Welcome to the new podcast.
Speaker 1: The only way is through a collaboration between under Armour
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio. Episode three, Kyle De's suffer Progress.
Speaker 1: Some people have a fire that burns inside them. It
Speaker 1: goes beyond training, beyond sport. It's intangible. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that tells you to get back up after you've been
Speaker 1: knocked down, the thing that tells you to keep moving
Speaker 1: forward when you've got nothing left in the tank. Former
Speaker 1: m M A Fighter turn ultra runner, Kyle Deets has
Speaker 1: a burning desire to be challenged and to endure it.
Speaker 1: Pushes him through steep inclines of mud and hard rock,
Speaker 1: through ultra marathons that span hundreds of miles, and ultra
Speaker 1: is the ultimate test of stammin us strength and determination,
Speaker 1: because when you're sixty miles in with sixty miles to go,
Speaker 1: you gotta search for something greater than yourself to push
Speaker 1: toward that finish line. For Kyle, it's the thing that
Speaker 1: keeps him primed for the battles that you can't train for.
Speaker 1: It would even be the thing that pushes him through
Speaker 1: the toughest fight of his life. Kyle sat down with
Speaker 1: Kyle Fussman and share his story. He is cow, so
Speaker 1: tell us what got you into trio running. My buddy,
Speaker 1: his wife was going to do this race and he
Speaker 1: was telling me about it before I knew what they were.
Speaker 1: He was like, she's gonna run this thirty mile race
Speaker 1: and I just started laughing. I was like, no one
Speaker 1: runs thirty miles. That's impossible. So I looked into it
Speaker 1: and he was signing up for a fifty miles. Did
Speaker 1: you want to do it with me? I was like sure.
Speaker 1: He'd failed on it a couple of times before He's like,
Speaker 1: you get me to mile thirty, you can go do
Speaker 1: your own thing. Where is his race taking place? Wisconsin?
Speaker 1: He knew everything, every ins and outs of running, but
Speaker 1: I was a better athlete than he was. So we
Speaker 1: get the mile thirty and look over at him and
Speaker 1: he was like, you guys can go. So me and
Speaker 1: my buddy flinchement. I just took off and it was
Speaker 1: until like the last five miles started cramping up. I
Speaker 1: don't really know how to hydrate, right or this funny story.
Speaker 1: I running and I that leg just because like it
Speaker 1: seized up over my hamstring and I fell and I
Speaker 1: look at the back of my leg and it looks
Speaker 1: like there's a softball. It's just this giant nod. I'm
Speaker 1: like screaming. I'm like grabbing sticks and rubbing sticks on
Speaker 1: my leg and I'm like, so I get up, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, I think I'm good. What like
Speaker 1: ten feet it happens again, he said, it looked like
Speaker 1: a ghost walk again. But I finished and I did
Speaker 1: pretty well, so that kind of let me hear. Running
Speaker 1: for me was always discipline, like ad to cut weight
Speaker 1: or to keep mind during something, to fight or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was never fun. It was never ever ever fun,
Speaker 1: so doing the traathl on stuff, but it takes me
Speaker 1: to the trails whatever, And I was like, this true
Speaker 1: running is where it's at. This is what I want
Speaker 1: to do. The minute you got out on the trail,
Speaker 1: this is it, this is what I was really born
Speaker 1: to do. It was just like an instant love. I
Speaker 1: love it first sight kind of that feelings what am
Speaker 1: I doing? Like this is awesome? What what is it about? It?
Speaker 1: Just being able to see so it's like it's majesty
Speaker 1: sense of awe. You get that fresh air, leaves are changing. Son,
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain if you don't do it. Were
Speaker 1: you seeing life in a different way in a sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just kind of like why haven't I done this sooner?
Speaker 1: I grew up planning in the woods and running around.
Speaker 1: It was like a sense of nostalgia, like it came
Speaker 1: back to me. I was like, man, I feel like
Speaker 1: a kid. I'm out here running being doing the hell
Speaker 1: I want and climbed this tree I want Like no
Speaker 1: one's going to tell you what to do out there.
Speaker 1: The moment you just described was fantastic and it's your
Speaker 1: first moment, is there the best moment that you can
Speaker 1: recall on on the trails as you're moving forward. It
Speaker 1: was a failed attempt, but uh I went to Dominica
Speaker 1: a couple of years back and it was I was
Speaker 1: running the White two Guboe trail. So the trail they say,
Speaker 1: it's a hundred fifteen miles and they're like, well, how
Speaker 1: long do you think go take to you? And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, maybe, like oh twenty four hours. I
Speaker 1: can get it done today. So we fly into St.
Speaker 1: Martin and it is the most mountainous island I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in my life. So they give us the map
Speaker 1: and we're looking at topo. Was just like ups and down,
Speaker 1: up and down, up and down, up and down. I'm like, cool,
Speaker 1: it's a hundred fifty miles. Was like yeah, we think
Speaker 1: they don't know. So we're starting this tiny little Captain's
Speaker 1: off the island and it's almost like a little bridge,
Speaker 1: and we run up into the jungle. I've never ran
Speaker 1: the jungle before. I don't really care for jungles, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, what kind of wildlife do I need to
Speaker 1: be worried about? Like snakes, spiders. I was like, there's
Speaker 1: nothing on the island that's poison this. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's really good to know. Can anything kill me? They're like, well,
Speaker 1: like there might be some stuff out that, like, all right, whatever.
Speaker 1: So we start and it's so high. It's like sweating. Brutal.
Speaker 1: It's literally brutal. And I had no idea what time
Speaker 1: it was, and I didn't know how much time i'd
Speaker 1: go by. I just wasn't looking at watch. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to get done. How long was the race
Speaker 1: in total? It wasn't a race. We were trying to
Speaker 1: set the fastest known time on the trail and to
Speaker 1: be the first ones to do it. So let me
Speaker 1: go on. It comes nighttime. Here, crunch, crunch, crunch. Turn
Speaker 1: on my head lamp and as far as I can
Speaker 1: see how it's just crabs. Were literally running on top
Speaker 1: of crabs, like you don't see the ground because it's
Speaker 1: just giant crabs. And that's the only way two weys
Speaker 1: yet to run on top of It's disgusting. I had
Speaker 1: been running for exactly like straight. My last few miles,
Speaker 1: I ran thirty minute miles, so dense it was. That's
Speaker 1: very slow. I had only made it fifty five miles
Speaker 1: in thirty seven thousand feet elevation game. It was insane.
Speaker 1: But it was amazing trip. Just watching your face tell
Speaker 1: that story, I can tell how much you loved even
Speaker 1: the worst moments. Seven It was just hilarious. So what
Speaker 1: year more or less did you start running on the trails? Shoot? Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm going on maybe eight or nine years now, and
Speaker 1: I actually have quite a bit of memory loss from
Speaker 1: my injury. But uh, I don't know the Zach day
Speaker 1: when I really started turning. Okay, so you have no
Speaker 1: memory from the time that these symptoms are approaching. So
Speaker 1: when I started acting we or whatever, people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you all right? God, I just said, migraines. I've
Speaker 1: always had them. I know how to deal with them.
Speaker 1: So that was it. But people like skyline drugs is
Speaker 1: what is going on. It's not acting like himself. Like
Speaker 1: I would just be at work and I would leave
Speaker 1: or I just wouldn't show up to work. That's not me.
Speaker 1: One day I was at work. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was doing. I didn't know how to do my job.
Speaker 1: What was the job? I was on the computer, I
Speaker 1: didn't know how like typing all this stuff, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know my coworkers names. Everything was just shutting down.
Speaker 1: I remember I was in the bathroom, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to go to the bathroom. Now I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing, so he became reclusive. What
Speaker 1: about your girlfriend? It's at this point things go blank.
Speaker 1: Kyle only remembers this period because of what his friends
Speaker 1: and family have told him. They've helped him fill in
Speaker 1: the gaps. Kyle's dad, Fred, his daughter Ava, his friend Nathan,
Speaker 1: and his girlfriend Kelly Well guide us through, just like
Speaker 1: they did for Kyle. We had only been together probably
Speaker 1: six months before things had started to like kind of flip.
Speaker 1: She was like reaching out to my friends, like, what's
Speaker 1: going on Kyle. Yeah, it's just like like he wasn't
Speaker 1: and it needs to be reliable, and then it wasn't.
Speaker 1: The last couple of months when I was getting these calls,
Speaker 1: calls from friends, calls from his boss. You need to
Speaker 1: check on Kyle. He goes he's always here early, and
Speaker 1: he didn't show up. I think more towards the end
Speaker 1: he stopped like coming around more because he forgot a
Speaker 1: lot of things. And then it was just he was
Speaker 1: very manic where he would not work out at all.
Speaker 1: He just wasn't around a lot. I finally able to
Speaker 1: track him down we just went for a run. Let
Speaker 1: me get this spot, and I really had to relieve myself,
Speaker 1: so I took off. I came back and I didn't
Speaker 1: didn't see him. Eventually worked my way back down to
Speaker 1: the car and all the cars were gone, Hey, you
Speaker 1: were going to go to the doctor, right? Did you
Speaker 1: do that? And I was telling everyone I was going
Speaker 1: to the hospital. Whatever it wasn't I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but girl, I got checked out. But it's just in
Speaker 1: my head. I had no idea. I didn't know, Like
Speaker 1: I hate saying that to him, but like I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if you were like a con artist
Speaker 1: or what was happening, because when I first met you,
Speaker 1: you were this person. And then like everything stopped. So
Speaker 1: I called a doctor and he goes, we hadn't seen
Speaker 1: Kyle in seven years really, And then my dad came
Speaker 1: and I was like, we're taking you to the hospital
Speaker 1: right now. I tell you this, We've seen something we
Speaker 1: really don't like. Do you have a brain tumor? Compared
Speaker 1: to their brain looked like about one third of the brain.
Speaker 1: My tumor was so big it was pressing on my personality.
Speaker 1: I think it was Saturday or Sunday, and I was
Speaker 1: in my room and my grandma called me and she
Speaker 1: told me, and so I cried to my mom about it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty had no feelings, like if you were to
Speaker 1: tell me your dog got ran over, it would be
Speaker 1: nothing to me. That's been one of the hardest things
Speaker 1: for me. I feel like I was a piece of
Speaker 1: ship to people. He's super apologic to all of his friends,
Speaker 1: thinking he let down, and I didn't go knock on
Speaker 1: his door to see if he's okay. So we're kind
Speaker 1: of a friend of mine, and people understand, but it's
Speaker 1: like that kills me. That's kills me thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Kyle's tumor was diagnosed as a hamagio parasite toma, a
Speaker 1: type of aggressive tumor that can occur anywhere in the
Speaker 1: body where capillaries exist. Kyle's grew in the frontal area
Speaker 1: of his brain. Unlike most tumors, Kyle's was growing for
Speaker 1: as long as eight years, remaining undetected, and by the
Speaker 1: time it was discovered, was already stage three. Out of
Speaker 1: all brain tumors, there's one percent chance anyone could ever
Speaker 1: have this tumor, that's how rare it was. Thankfully, these
Speaker 1: doctors they all came together, like I think there's two
Speaker 1: teams that worked on me for a fifteen hours straight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got it all out, and they said, if I
Speaker 1: want to on it, and I probably wouldn't have made
Speaker 1: another two weeks. It's insane, So very thankful for my
Speaker 1: friends and family to get my ass in there. His
Speaker 1: mind works in the athlete way. That's Kyle's girlfriend, Kelly.
Speaker 1: She stuck about kyle side every step of the way.
Speaker 1: When he woke up from surgery. There was no sit
Speaker 1: down talk about well, if something goes wrong and you
Speaker 1: can't run again. It was like, Okay, what do we
Speaker 1: do next, Let's take the next step, Let's be there.
Speaker 1: Let's just kind of move in the moment and not
Speaker 1: worry about how far ahead we're looking. He couldn't walk.
Speaker 1: He was just gonna keep standing until he could take
Speaker 1: a step and then go from there out of the hospital.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, I couldn't walk. I
Speaker 1: couldn't really do ship. It was awful. I could see,
Speaker 1: but like I couldn't make out anything in my ear.
Speaker 1: I could hear, but it was just hanstant reading. Learning
Speaker 1: how to walk again. That was tough. Like equilibrium was
Speaker 1: so off. I'm stand I'll get up out of my
Speaker 1: chair because I had to sit up for a long time.
Speaker 1: I'm good, and I would just stand there just to
Speaker 1: work on my balance. Tell the fall back into my chair.
Speaker 1: Each member of Kyle's family played a significant role in
Speaker 1: as we had. His dad spent each day helping him
Speaker 1: learn to walk again and guiding him as Kyle pushed himself.
Speaker 1: Here's fred Dee's and uh, okay, we're gonna go. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go out the door. Okay. Now we're gonna go
Speaker 1: out the door and pass Bob's house. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go out the door, pass bop saus next door. And
Speaker 1: he's wore out. I mean, that's all he's got. So
Speaker 1: the next day we're gonna go a little bit further,
Speaker 1: a little bit further and then get to the end
Speaker 1: of the block, which is like a hundred mile marathon. Now,
Speaker 1: just everything he had to get to the end of
Speaker 1: the block. Touch the top foot them, let's stop right here.
Speaker 1: You know, one little touch a televile bowl. I can't
Speaker 1: carry you back. I'll be okay, I got touched to
Speaker 1: the bowl. Okay, touch horrible back Kyle's daughter spent long
Speaker 1: hours with her dad while he got better, playing games
Speaker 1: and working on puzzles to help his mind. I haven't
Speaker 1: sleep on the couch right next to him, so like
Speaker 1: I would always be awake all the time. So then
Speaker 1: if he needed help, I would help him up stairs
Speaker 1: to use the bathroom. And I was sitting away for
Speaker 1: him so I could take him back downstairs. We did
Speaker 1: like word searches all the time, and we can never
Speaker 1: find words, so we'd always give bad and then we
Speaker 1: just put it down and walk away. They wouldn't give
Speaker 1: up on me, and they wouldn't let me give up
Speaker 1: on myself. Say with my daughter, she's built just like me.
Speaker 1: What's she's the best? What's her name? Ava? What did
Speaker 1: you feel like walking on your own for the first time?
Speaker 1: It was emotional, it was and like my first run back.
Speaker 1: So we have a skybridge at home. My buddies all
Speaker 1: took me to go for a run. And he's dead
Speaker 1: and want to be on a horrible winner, so they
Speaker 1: took me up there. I think I ran down one
Speaker 1: stretch of it. I don't know if you'd call it running,
Speaker 1: but shuffled down and nothing. I just tucked in one
Speaker 1: of the corners. It was broke down. It was it
Speaker 1: was hard, Uh, just that you were able to be
Speaker 1: running again, It was, it was, It was. It was
Speaker 1: hard on me, like because I didn't think I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to get back, Like you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: negative person, but it was like, how the hell am
Speaker 1: I gonna get back on my feet after all this?
Speaker 1: Here is Nathan TACKI a running partner and friend of Kyle's.
Speaker 1: He's passionate about all sorts of different things, and when
Speaker 1: it burns, it's bright man, just like the dimmer ever
Speaker 1: there on that wall. When he finds something, whether it's
Speaker 1: your frenzy likes or where any activity is gonna do
Speaker 1: his mountain climbing, fighting bike, it's going to be that
Speaker 1: lights which is on and it's on all the way.
Speaker 1: There's no no dimmer there. Then my opinion of him
Speaker 1: is so high as an athlete and it it was just
Speaker 1: a man, but as a runner was so good that
Speaker 1: I was like, finally slowed down a little by me.
Speaker 1: I can keep up with them, finally, that's not true.
Speaker 1: Maybe that first runner too that, but not so. At
Speaker 1: what point does your memory return? I remember stuff like
Speaker 1: off the bat I remember stuff, chunks of stuff I
Speaker 1: still don't remember. Do you remember that you love to run? Yeah?
Speaker 1: M hmm, it was weird. I remember. I woke up
Speaker 1: wanting to train fighting again though like that, What's all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was started doing m hold on
Speaker 1: going back for a minute. Yeah he did m M
Speaker 1: A help give you the tools through this through training. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like our gym was known for being one of
Speaker 1: the toughest gyms as well, and you basically go through
Speaker 1: like a hell week. It's everyone just speaks the ship
Speaker 1: out of you. Yeah, you can prove your worth. You
Speaker 1: get your ass kicked, and you keep coming back and
Speaker 1: you 'ear in that respect, you didn't really get a
Speaker 1: chance to take a break. It was there were two
Speaker 1: rounds on you. You're exhausted, the other guys fresh, and
Speaker 1: you're just getting beat up. Yeah. What does that teach
Speaker 1: you everything? How to keep that dog in you? Right?
Speaker 1: You want to keep fighting, You don't want to give up,
Speaker 1: beaming help to endure and coming back over and over
Speaker 1: and over and suffering. Once you have that, does it
Speaker 1: translate to every aspect of your life? For me, it has.
Speaker 1: Out of all the things I've done, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's ever gonna leave me. As a championship belt right there.
Speaker 1: When I run, I'm fighting, When I run my bike,
Speaker 1: I'm fighting. When I'm doing anything, I'm fighting. The fighter
Speaker 1: will always be in me. So that just doesn't never
Speaker 1: leave me. But as you recovered, you had trouble remembering
Speaker 1: other things, chunks of stuff I still don't remember. It's
Speaker 1: just weird. I don't remember a couple of my buddies.
Speaker 1: Still I'm learning them. Even now, you're meeting people who
Speaker 1: you knew for a long time. Could you remember when
Speaker 1: you met Kelly? No, No, I had no idea, so
Speaker 1: you didn't even know when you met your girlfriend. When
Speaker 1: I woke up, I thought I was still with my
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend. We had been apart for almost two years,
Speaker 1: so when I woke up, my feelings we're still for
Speaker 1: that person. So did Kelly have to win your heart
Speaker 1: all over again? She did flying colors, Like you're in
Speaker 1: the hospital, your girlfriend is there, you don't even know
Speaker 1: who she is, don't recognize her, and now she's got
Speaker 1: to make you realize that you're together. So it was cool.
Speaker 1: She was heart. She never pressured me into a relationship,
Speaker 1: She never put it on me, or made you feel
Speaker 1: bad for not remember who she was. She made me
Speaker 1: like a big picture book with pictures of us doing
Speaker 1: things and trying to help my memory and still nothing.
Speaker 1: But I see these photos of us and me with
Speaker 1: her family, and I don't know her friends and my
Speaker 1: friends and all of this, Like how how was this
Speaker 1: blocked out? You know? So she won me over again.
Speaker 1: It's just made us stronger. Kyle's athletic ability is rooted
Speaker 1: in the intangibles. It's hard, his focus, his fight. Kelly
Speaker 1: shares these same qualities. These are the things that bond them,
Speaker 1: that brings them balance. Here's Kelly. I could communicate for him,
Speaker 1: no problem. If somebody else was asking him something, or
Speaker 1: he needed to tell somebody something, he couldn't get the
Speaker 1: words out. It just bonded it so quick, so easy.
Speaker 1: And there was a point we didn't know if we
Speaker 1: would just be friends or date or whatever else. That's
Speaker 1: kind of how it turned into us dating because he
Speaker 1: didn't want people to feel sorry for him. So my
Speaker 1: main goal was just to be there and if he
Speaker 1: needed to see, then I would help him see. If
Speaker 1: you needed to walk, I'd help him be his legs.
Speaker 1: You just see someone who's so passionate lose it and
Speaker 1: then want it so bad you don't give a crap
Speaker 1: about anything else. You just want to help them move
Speaker 1: along their journey without feeling bad because they're a burden
Speaker 1: on somebody. My most proud woman, so Kyler behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: when no one's watching him or no one cares, he's
Speaker 1: going harder than anybody else that has no hindrance to
Speaker 1: their athletic ability. Like, my tumor messed with my brain
Speaker 1: so much that now I have a clear conscience, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like all this stuff that was like these
Speaker 1: little disciplines and things I was just thinking about my
Speaker 1: brains working full force. Now it's like everything's clear now,
Speaker 1: and like I see all these things like, oh man,
Speaker 1: if I did this better, I could do this, and
Speaker 1: so you could see clearly. But and one of the
Speaker 1: things that this affected was your eyes. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: had really good eyes before this. Now I'm visually imparent.
Speaker 1: So my left eyes but he doesn't work. My right
Speaker 1: eye ites like how does she ran rap over it?
Speaker 1: And my eyes are fine. It's the nerves from the trauma.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's probably the hardest thing that throughout this
Speaker 1: whole situation. A couple of days after surgery, he said,
Speaker 1: don't take my eyes. And that's the only thing that
Speaker 1: has not come back. So that's pretty sad. But like
Speaker 1: I said, it's just something that you can't sit around
Speaker 1: and sulk in are you You'll just be stuck. So
Speaker 1: we just kind of moved forward. And how does that
Speaker 1: affect you when you go out to run Roman ancles
Speaker 1: a lot? My depth perception is really off, so um
Speaker 1: could come back. It might not. They don't know. Kelly
Speaker 1: one of our my first rate I think, first real race.
Speaker 1: We rank arm in arm and she never ran the
Speaker 1: partner but maybe on here, hold on here. So you
Speaker 1: wake up in the hospital, your girlfriend's there and you
Speaker 1: don't even know she's your girlfriend, and she's never really
Speaker 1: run before. She ran a little bit from what she
Speaker 1: was telling like she would do like local races like
Speaker 1: five cases. But now she's out with you for fifty.
Speaker 1: So when I got back on my feet again and
Speaker 1: started running and walking, she was there. Her and my
Speaker 1: family were there with me every day. But on a
Speaker 1: trail it's a completely different landscape. It's not flat and
Speaker 1: you have to really be able to see so that
Speaker 1: where are you going so we went out and ran
Speaker 1: a couple of trails that I think I kicked every
Speaker 1: rock and rolled backle on every stomp, Like so Kelly
Speaker 1: is with you when the whole time you're running arm
Speaker 1: trail that, how did she come through the day killed it?
Speaker 1: She's a beast, she is. She's as tough as nails,
Speaker 1: and she's stubborn, just like me. The longest he had
Speaker 1: run was probably eight miles before this fift K we
Speaker 1: signed up for. I had no idea about a pace
Speaker 1: or anything. We were just going and at this point
Speaker 1: in time, his eyes, if we got in a dark spike,
Speaker 1: he couldn't go over, so we just had to lock
Speaker 1: arms and keep going. So I had to say step
Speaker 1: up left, right, and it was affecting him his back
Speaker 1: because he was coming down where you couldn't see, and
Speaker 1: I think the fourth lap was one. Mentally, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do this. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can finish this, but where arm And
Speaker 1: you can't say that because he's still going, And we
Speaker 1: ended up coming around and when we finished, I mean
Speaker 1: like it was just the most emotional thing in the
Speaker 1: world because everybody was there and That's what I like
Speaker 1: about the whole trail community is everybody was so supportive.
Speaker 1: I mean, two people ripped their shirts up and we're like,
Speaker 1: do you want to run another lap with someone else?
Speaker 1: Run with you? If I was watching this on a
Speaker 1: movie screen, what would I be seeing and hearing? We
Speaker 1: were flying most of the day because more me, I
Speaker 1: would get frustrated with myself because not performing where I
Speaker 1: think it should be. I was just down on myself.
Speaker 1: I think that whole run, you know, these people wizz
Speaker 1: past me that we've never touched me before. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm competitive, and uh, it was just that was hard.
Speaker 1: How can you be competitive after you've just had a brain,
Speaker 1: which is what I am? What What does that tell
Speaker 1: you about approaching any illness where there are certain laws
Speaker 1: laid out you gotta do this guy do that. I'd
Speaker 1: never never had anything like that happened to be not
Speaker 1: broken hands, feeing all this random stuff from fighting and
Speaker 1: running bikes. But like, I was never really ever taken
Speaker 1: out like that. I'm not a stationary person, not built
Speaker 1: that way. I would refuse to be that way. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm hard to no. So I just did it, and
Speaker 1: like that all my friends are the same, all the
Speaker 1: same mentality. When I get to those darker moments, whatever
Speaker 1: I dig for negativity, that's kind of what I feed
Speaker 1: off of. You know, people doubting me, you know things
Speaker 1: that happened to me throughout my life. And when I
Speaker 1: get in those moments, I run harder. I get emotional
Speaker 1: amounts like a roller coaster. I'm happy, I'm pissed, I'm
Speaker 1: going through it all. I'm going through all the motions,
Speaker 1: especially on long runs and races, and you know long
Speaker 1: training days, you know, being out there for hours and
Speaker 1: hours on your own, your mind's all over the place.
Speaker 1: So you get into those dark zones, you get into
Speaker 1: those areas where most people will never tap. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what kind of feels me and keeps me
Speaker 1: motivated to keep going. Kyle feeds on suffering. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? Is? See, you're you're in a
Speaker 1: in a race, and most of us normal mortals are
Speaker 1: you're getting towards the end of the race, if we
Speaker 1: put out a lot of effort, we're struggling. And he
Speaker 1: fuels on that like he like sniffs it smells that
Speaker 1: that's suffering that people are doing. He gets stronger, on
Speaker 1: it like other people. When he sees other people like
Speaker 1: shift back a gear that gives him an extra gear.
Speaker 1: He'll try to like tell me to motivate myself, think
Speaker 1: of something that just angers you, or just think of
Speaker 1: the worst possible thing, and like like no, like absolutely not,
Speaker 1: Like I'm looking up into the sky distract myself, like
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about happy thoughts. But he just is someone
Speaker 1: who he's just very emotional. The small things are what
Speaker 1: he remembers, like the tiny little things, Like he just
Speaker 1: picks those awful things out of his life and just
Speaker 1: works against them and just digs harder than anyone I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. But that's Kyle. Since his injury, Kyle has
Speaker 1: worked to return to the trail running fighting because people
Speaker 1: have cheered him through every step and every mile. The
Speaker 1: journey in front of him will be a challenge. What
Speaker 1: Cole is more than used to adversity. He's built for it. Now,
Speaker 1: is Kelly still running with you? Arm and arm? I don't, Nope.
Speaker 1: So I'm like I've adapted pretty well to my surroundings. Um,
Speaker 1: you can do this alone now, Okay, then let's let's
Speaker 1: go back to Colorado where you're running with Kelly this
Speaker 1: last August. What was it that came to you to
Speaker 1: decide to get down on a knee? Oh? Man, everything
Speaker 1: that she's done, I mean, she made me love her
Speaker 1: right off the bat. As much as I I have
Speaker 1: no idea who she is, it was there like there
Speaker 1: was something between us. She was the best. Like she's
Speaker 1: been by my side anything I need. No, I can't
Speaker 1: drive anymore, so she takes me to work every day,
Speaker 1: picks me up, takes me to my doctor's appointments. She's
Speaker 1: phenomenal with my daughter. They get along to pick on
Speaker 1: me all the time. So what's it like that day
Speaker 1: when you decide this is the day? So I had
Speaker 1: planned it for a little bit now, And uh, I
Speaker 1: secretly got the ring because you know, she does all
Speaker 1: our bills and everything anyway, and so I secually got
Speaker 1: this ring especially made for And uh we're running up
Speaker 1: so the day before the trans rockies, and we're running
Speaker 1: way far than we should have that day up mountainside
Speaker 1: in Buena Vista, and I'm like the whole time running
Speaker 1: like we'll keep going a little parks. I was looking
Speaker 1: for a spot with a nice landscape in the background.
Speaker 1: Can you see very well? Yeah? I can see. I
Speaker 1: can make it up. I've been in the area before,
Speaker 1: so I know the area. And that's so we're running
Speaker 1: up this mountain side. Oh my gud, this is a
Speaker 1: good spot. And I'm like, under EMA wants us to
Speaker 1: do some media obligations whatever they want to do it
Speaker 1: for you. She's like, what, Actually, I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk in front of the camera. But so I had
Speaker 1: set my phone up. She's scolding me. She's piste off
Speaker 1: that she has. She's like, I just run. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this. I'm like, I had her answer
Speaker 1: a fake question. Then I give him my little spiel.
Speaker 1: I got down on when you and I asked her.
Speaker 1: So the story goes, and how did she react? She
Speaker 1: jumped on me. Well, she said, fucking serious. She didn't
Speaker 1: believe me at first, but it was it was a
Speaker 1: good day. Wow. Yeah. And and how long after that
Speaker 1: was it when you could start to run alone, sharing
Speaker 1: that moment with her, showing her what I used to do,
Speaker 1: and like explaining it to her along the way, like
Speaker 1: going over mountain peaks and stuff. It's like it's the
Speaker 1: best and like you know, getting on top of the
Speaker 1: mountain and like sharing that view with her and everyone.
Speaker 1: It was was pretty cool. So being able to propose
Speaker 1: at the top of the mountain, does that feel like
Speaker 1: you won the battle that you've been through. Yeah in
Speaker 1: a sense. Yeah, like I still got a lot of
Speaker 1: ground to cover before all this, everything I did, I
Speaker 1: waste well by myself. I'm trained by myself, did racist
Speaker 1: by myself. I never had crew people crew me or
Speaker 1: come out and pace me for races, and now it's
Speaker 1: like I have a crew for a lifetime. If I
Speaker 1: would have done that a little bit earlier in my life,
Speaker 1: I don't know if how much it would have changed
Speaker 1: my attitude. But I'm nothing without them. I think everyone
Speaker 1: needs a team. But you can't be aloner forever. As
Speaker 1: much as I still love that mentality, I can't, at
Speaker 1: least I can't. So you know, my team is the best.
Speaker 1: You know, my family, my friends, my daughter, you know
Speaker 1: you guys, and everyone that's involved in my life. It's
Speaker 1: my team. So and I have a good support system.
Speaker 1: With that, I'm unstoppable. This trail season, Kyle's out to
Speaker 1: prove himself. He'll be running ultras throughout, including an other
Speaker 1: trip to the Sixth Day one hundred and twenty mile
Speaker 1: trans Rockies. He's not just training to be the car
Speaker 1: he was before his injury. He's training to be better,
Speaker 1: to prove his worth. To endure this has been the
Speaker 1: only way is through a podcast collaboration between under Armour
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio. Join us next time to hear
Speaker 1: more stories with athletic performance and what it means to
Speaker 1: push yourself through