Episode 202 | Tommy Rivers Puzey

the morning shakeout podcast

Coaching, Marathons, Sports, Olympics, Running, Ultrarunning

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2022

⏱️ 140 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I’m not even sure how to set up this episode with Tommy Rivers Puzey so I’ll just tell you that it’s a long, winding, and at times heavy conversation with someone I deeply respect and admire about life, death, cancer, identity, hope, potential, love, gratitude, and more that I feel privileged to have had in person and that I am honored to share here with all of you.

We recorded this episode the day after this year’s Boston Marathon, which Tommy finished in 6:31:54. For those of you who don’t know, Tommy wears a lot of hats: he’s a husband and a father, a philosopher and physical therapist, and mentor and inspiration to so many, myself included. He’s also an incredible endurance athlete with a resume that’s too long to list here but, for context, in 2017 Tommy finished 16th at Boston in 2:18:20. Fast forward to the summer of 2020, and Tommy was fighting for his life in an Arizona hospital after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. He spent weeks in a medically induced coma, endured multiple surgeries and numerous treatments, and lost 75 pounds over the course of several months, but he survived. Not only that, he’s now in remission, regaining strength every day, and living a very full life, all of which we talk about in this episode.

Note from Mario: Please check out the Team Rivs collection from Tommy's sponsor, Craft. All proceeds from this collection go to support Tommy, his wife Steph, and their two daughters. I bought a hat and a t-shirt a while ago, both of which I wear with pride.

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Music and editing for this episode of the morning shakeout podcast by John Summerford.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It sounds like you're racing cancer, like you'd be racing someone in a race and you're
0:10.2	like, if I'm hurting this bad, you're going to be hurting at least this bad, if not worse.
0:15.2	The moment that you realize that pain is your ally rather than your enemy and you weaponize
0:23.0	that and you use it against your competitors and you use what it is that you personally
0:27.9	are feeling as a gauge of the pain that you're inflicting on them, it's exactly the same thing.
0:32.8	So that's the way that I've viewed it as though the deeper I could push myself into that state
0:37.6	of discomfort, the harder I could push back the more effort that I could put in, not as though
0:46.8	it would make a difference because you don't cure cancer by running, you don't cure cancer by
0:51.2	doing pushups, you don't cure cancer by whatever it was that I was doing to
0:58.0	try to inflict pain on it. But by doing that, you reminded that you're still there.
1:02.9	Yeah, it was just a, keep more than anything, you know.
1:20.9	Hey, what's up everyone? I'm your host, Mario Freyoli and my guest this week is Tommy Rivers Pusy.
1:27.9	AKA Tommy Rivers. I'm not even sure how to set this one up. So I'll just tell you that it's a long
1:34.8	winding and at times heavy conversation with someone that I deeply admire about life, death,
1:41.7	cancer, identity, hope, potential, love, gratitude, and more that I feel privileged to have had
1:49.9	in person and that I am honored to share here with all of you. We recorded this conversation the
1:56.0	day after this year's Boston Marathon, which Tommy finished in six hours, 31 minutes, and 54 seconds.
2:03.2	For those of you who don't know, Tommy wears a lot of hats. He's a husband and a father,
2:08.3	a philosopher, and a physical therapist, and a mentor and inspiration to so many myself included.
2:15.2	He's also an incredible endurance athlete with a resume that's way too long to list here,
2:20.5	but for context, in 2017, Tommy finished 16th at Boston in 21820. Fast forward to the summer of
2:29.2	2020, and Tommy was fighting for his life in an Arizona hospital after being diagnosed with a rare
	...

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