Hey, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. I'm your host Mason.

Today I'm really excited to talk about this episode. By the way, this is a throwback

episode. We're talking to Alexandra Himmonsley, author of Running Like a Girl and Leap In.

Alex overcame a deep fear of water to eventually

become an open water swimmer or an open ocean swimmer. Both of Alex's books are written to provide

inspiration to get over, you know, fear, get off the couch, and to do something out of your

comfort zone that gets you, that might help you discover a new

passion. I'll admit, when I was younger, you know, college age, high school and college age,

I was absolutely petrified of speaking in front of people. I'm talking, you know, I would rather

die than speak in front of people. And I'm sure a lot of y'all feel the same way.

And I remember I was getting ready to give a talk or something at school. You know, it was speech class or something.

And I was shaking. I couldn't sleep. It was on the verge of a panic attack. I just don't know what it was.

It was so overwhelming. And I remember my mom talking to me,

like, hey, it's going to be okay. She was concerned by how much I was affected by it. And I remember

getting up there and not even being able to talk. I couldn't even open my mouth. And the teacher

was like, you know, what did you study? And I said one word answers. I was like,

I, I don't even know what we were talking about, but I said the subject the talk was about.

And she asked follow up questions and it was one word answers for about five minutes until she

just gave up and I went and sat down and I don't think I've ever

felt more humiliated and I thought I'm never going to speak again I'm never going to be a speaker

never going to talk well guess what when you start doing adventures and you do them for causes

people want to hear about them people ask you to come talk to their group. And that same

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