But I had never hiked before, right? And I was like, God, this sucks. But I'll tell you the greatest thing that came from that, because I'd never pushed myself that long, like that, ever before. But what came out of that was confidence. And it was absolutely just startling to me how different I felt about myself by doing that.

And so I was now curious about what else can I do.

Welcome to the Trailhead of TrailRunner Nation. We go on virtual trail runs and we invite everyone that wants to come with us every week and we invite interesting guests that are going to help us understand running, help us become better runners, maybe healthier runners, better athletes and then hopefully that translates into being better human beings. If there's ever an episode that's gonna change their your perspective and how you see life, this is it. Hey Don, quick question. When's the last time you replace those beaten up bold tights? I think these babies have seen more miles than my car. Well good news, our friendship John G are making an easy right now to upgrade. John G's Black Friday sale runs November 17th through December 1st with up to 30% off. On jackets, shorts, tights, even the stuff I probably don't need but really want. And if you're not a member yet, you can join right on their site. It's free. That includes favorites like the women's pay shorts, men half trail

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get 10% off your order with the code trailRunner. Check it all out at JohnG.com. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about my Amazfit T-Rex3 Pro watch. He was noticing how stylish it was. I talked to him about how long the battery lasts between charges and how bright the screen is. You can almost run with it.

What was your response when you told them about all this stuff? He wondered if he had to take out a home equity line of credit just to buy it. They really are affordable. The value that a MaysFit offers is, get this Freeman, amazing. No wonder over 42 million people already trust a a maze fit. It is everything we need in a wearable on the trail. And in the office, you need to check out the new Amaze Fit T-Rex 3 Pro. You can go to us.amazefit.com, slash trail, and use the code trail at checkout for 15% off. That's us.amazefit.com slash trail and the code is trail to get 15% off or just go to our deals page and click on the link. Welcome to another edition of Trail Runner Nation. I'm Don Freeman and I am Scott War. Welcome back. This is another edition of aging as an athlete. our Trail It's our trail runner nation mini series co-hosted by Ultra Running Legend, Chrissy Male. Did you see what I did there, Don? I did. It changed the title. We used to call it Aging Athlete. And I said, Aging as an athlete. It's something that Chrissy and Don and I have been talking about. This is now the ninth episode, I think, of the aging athlete that we've produced. And we started not liking the title because we're thinking people may misunderstand what this episode mini series is about. That it's not about a bunch of old people going out and for a run. It's really for everybody because we evolve through our the aging process and we're all aging, of course. And we all want to do better, we all want to continue to evolve in a positive way. So aging as an athlete kind of may have been one of the titles, what did you come up with? No, it just occurred to me as you were telling the rationale

from the change that we're looking for is,

it probably wouldn't have bothered us if we were 30.

Since we're north of 30 we were offended by the title. I think that's okay. And I'm offended

most of all because I'm a bit older than you. We want to make this approachable.

Well regardless of the title, this mini series is for everyone, regardless of your age. It's about embracing how our body is and our minds evolve and how we can keep running strong throughout every stage of life. It's for anyone who wants to run long, healthy and happy throughout their life. Now, over the past previous seven episodes, we've talked about training smarter, not harder, covering everything from adapting training plans as we age, optimizing hormones, navigating minipause, shifting recovery strategies, which I think is important as we age, and dialing in the fuel that supports us during performance and longevity. Now, this is the eighth episode. I think I may have said it was the ninth. It's the eighth episode in this series, and we're joined today by Adventure Athlete Sean Cheshire. Chrissy, tell us how you met Sean and tell us a little bit about Sean. Right on. This could go on a bit. But I met Sean in April when I was coming, or maybe it was early May, off the Arizona Trail, round four. We're now going into trip five. Maybe I'll see Sean again in the spring when we try and finally finish the Arizona Trail. A friend of ours actually, our very first aging athlete, guest, Scott Drum, exercise exercise physiologist was crewing us and he brought Sean by after we were like hanging out their house, we showered recovered and I heard that about a bit about her story at that point and that more relevant is that she was coming to Washington to take on this goal that she had set for herself and I said hey I'm in town I'll be town, I'll be there. And turned out, I was in town and I got to be there. So I'm really excited to bring Sean on to aging as an athlete, the series, to discuss aging athlete and to help her celebrate the achievement of that adventure she did in Washington. She set a goal of circumnavigating Mount Rainier on the Wonderland Trail and set the goal of less than three days, which is a very like really searching for it. Any athlete trying to go out there to do that is incredible. And she set a record doing it because Sean cannot see. Sean lost her sight about 15 years ago. If I've got my facts wrong, I know she she'll correct me and I just want people to take that in. The Wonderland Trail in the Pacific Northwest Rudy Rocky 27,000 feet of elevation gain which is 8,230 meters. It's 93 miles long and her and her crew one person was able to go the whole way with her. Myself included had to bow out for a day, she was freaking crushing it. And two days, 23 hours and 34 minutes. Wow. Congratulations. There was this comment that was made out there. And I'll be honest, it's credit to Andrew, her physical therapist, he said, I don't know if you remember this, it was like in the first early hours because he was only able to make it for like the first day and couldn't even up with her on the first day. Sorry to call you out, Andrew. But your comment was, I'm not impressed that you're doing this blind. I'm more impressed by how old you are. And I was like, how Sean was approaching her 50th birthday and here she is crushing all of us on this endeavor. She's been on the planet for 50 years celebrated her birthday in September. Her site was taken at 35. Since then she's trained her body and mind to more than compensate for not having vision. Shared by the same PT, he said he has built her ankles into titanium grade and her balances to civility supersedes other athletes for the mental training she does alongside strength and balance work. The way I took it is like, if I were joining next to her and we had brain scans going there, are different parts of Sean's brain that are firing than mine. It's just fascinating to watch her use, echolocating, verbal input from us, and her extreme trust in her own foot placement to make her way around these... I mean, trails are technical up here in Washington. So there was so many moments I had out there where I was like, Sean, how are you doing this? We would cross over these log bridges that there would be a guy to head, her, and then me if I would you know, we take turns in front, but when I was behind, I would be like tossing in,

like ankles rolling and everything, trying to get the crusts this log and she'd just make her way right across. So just an awe of what was happening out there and I'm hoping by getting to share some of the stories on this podcast, we can share what the five crew people got to witness. And that's why I want you here, Sean. I want to talk about that venture.

We will bring up the aging piece to it

because what you're doing is incredible. So welcome. Thanks for your time. I just with that, with that intro, Chris, a ton of questions just popped into my head. Sean, tell us 15 years ago you had full sight. Do you have a complete, what degree of blindness are you and how did you become blind? Yes, I was working as a paramedic and lost my vision from a traumatic brain injury. So trauma to the back of my head. I don't remember the accident when I was working. I just, I remember like weeks after the accident and I have cortical blindness. And so I'm total blind. I don't even have light perception. Oh really? So when you see the log, you don't see even a shadow. No, I mean, you close your eyes and that's kind of what I see. Wow. Except for you'll get light perception through your eyelids and I don't. Holy cow. So, you know, the test that they do is that just shows that I have no brain activity from my optic nerves to my bilateral occipital lobe of my brain. It's just flatlined. Holy cow. Yeah. That is amazing. So, were you an athlete before the accident? So I did sports when I was in high school, but I grew up in a lot of childhood abuse, and it was a way for me to get out. But I didn't, I don't think I really thought about being a good athlete. I think that was just an outlet for me to get out. I didn't actually learn what it is to be an athlete until I lost my vision and took the challenge of trying to make the Paralympic team to race with Team USA on a tandem bike for about seven years. And my first challenge was, you know, someone made the statement that I'd never be good enough because I didn't grow up riding bikes.

So, being on a tandem was the first time I had been on a bike and someone had said, you'll never be good enough. And back then, because you have to understand when I went through that change, my mental health, I wanted to die and trying to figure out how to reinvent myself, free discover myself was such a ugly process.

And so in my brain, not understanding what it takes to actually race at that elite level, I was like, oh, I've got three and a half years. I can do this. And that was my hook. And that process of learning about really what does training look like, nutrition, rest, recovery, all of that. That was how I learned really what an athlete was and racing at that elite level. So we all have stories of how we got into running or whatever. And I think this is really interesting that even though you were active in sports, you didn't really embrace this endurance athlete persona or identity until after you lost your sight. So how did that start? I mean, somebody say, hey, you're blind now. Guess what? There's this thing called the Paralympics. Maybe you should try out. I think it was because I was so depressed and all I just hid in my house and I wanted to die. And I mean, I tried to kill myself twice. And I think that like my recreational therapy, because I was in the army for eight years. So I received services at the VA hospital and the wreck therapist and some of my doctors and then someone called the New York State Commission for the Blind and and this guy Glenn who's also blind. He was like a case worker. He would just show up at my door because everyone is making sure I was still alive. And so they were just constantly trying to come up with ideas to get me

interested in because that would help me not want to die anymore.

Right? So it was just you know the first sport I ever did was

Paranordic by a phone cross-country skiing rifle shooting, which is where I learned how to follow sound. Wait a minute

Oh, yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, wait a minute. How in the heck do you shoot a rifle when you can't see? How does that happen? So, VI athletes, we use an audible rifle. And it's hilarious. It looks like a 22 rifle that everybody else is used, except when we come into the range, we lay prone. We put on a headset. We get our rifles set up, and then we go based off the tones. So when I would train for this, my friend Jesse and I would race against the Syracuse Biathlon Club, which is a range of men from 17 to 75 and some women scattered throughout that, but mostly men. And one time Jesse and I won third place and the guys were all like, well, if I could shoot a rifle like that, I'd win third place too. So Jesse took them out to the range and had them try the rifle based off only what you could hear. And they came back in about a half an hour later and they're like, we don't know how you do it. We could do anything. But that was why I didn't get penalty labs because I got all of my shots. You were a good shot. Yeah, so that was an interesting experience. Can you talk a little bit about going from not being a competitive athlete in a sense to discovering that, you know what? I'm pretty competitive and I kind of like it. What, what, talk to us about that transition? I mean, I think really the beginning of it wasn't so much competitive against other people. I think it was an internal competitiveness of life versus death, like the desire to live versus the desire to not live. Like, and I really felt like I was driven to push myself based off of that. So it wasn't at first directed towards, I wanna go out there and beat everybody. It was more of getting up every day. And this is what makes me a great athlete is I love the process. I love getting up every day and eating good and healthy and pushing my body, pushing my mind, and then the rest in the recovery and taking care of myself. I love that. So that way when I show up to do the thing, I had to live to do that. So then I go out and I do the thing and it's not really, it wasn't so much about beating people. It was more of like an award, like I was rewarding myself for living every day and choosing life. I don't know if that makes sense, but for me that was my internal path to that. I think that there are many people we've met out on the trail through all our runs that may not have had blindness, that they were trying to overcome, but maybe it was some other domestic abuse or substance abuse, addiction or depression or anxiety. We all have these obstacles that we need to overcome and some of us find it through running and some of us find it through biking, some of us find it through needlework or cross stitch, I guess, I don't know. But yeah, cross stitch absolutely, but not needlework. Yeah. I wanna know, at what point Sean, did you say, okay, I identify as this athlete now. I need to, was it a process or did you figure out really early on that this is something I enjoy this process? I want to be this identity as an athlete. Well, I mean, I don't know if there was a defining moment. I think what really drew me to this lifestyle was how I had to take care of myself.

And... I think what really drew me to this lifestyle was how I had to take care of myself and I felt really good. I was starting to feel good. And I was able to come off of anti-anxiety medication, depression medication. I was on all of it. by choosing to do this, I was able to not Medicaid. It kind of like became my medication every day. And I don't, I want to say that because my journey as an athlete is very intertwined with my grief process, that I didn't really see myself the same way other people saw me as an athlete. So like I went to the cycling camp in September and then I did my first time trial with someone I didn't know to hit a military standard in November, got paired

...