Ok, who is this girl???

So when I was first contacted about having the opportunity to interview Katie Spotz, I was like, "no way...absolutely not!"

I don't talk about school much, but that's because I'm still IN school, and I really, really, really shouldn't be. Except maybe to teach. I seriously have enough credits that I could be a professor ;-) I'm one class away from a PR/ADV degree and the only thing in my way is a third year french class. The only problem? I don't speak french. I transferred from a private catholic college (not sure what I was doing there, ha ha) to GVSU. Somehow the fact that I needed to take a language was lost in translation until it was almost time to graduate. What I need to do is sit my butt down and learn enough French to finish, but....ugh.

The only reason why I'm bringing this up is because while I was procrastinating French, I took every single PR class possible. Towards the end we worked with a lot of clients and I was using the word opportunity every single day. Mostly when I wanted to get someone to do something for me :-)

So I replied that I was "too busy," and that should have been the end of things. But then I made the mistake of typing Katie's name into google, and I was instantly hooked. At the age of 24 Katie has already had more adventures then most people can imagine. She is the first person to swim the Allegheny River (a total of 325 miles) and is the youngest person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She also ran 150 miles across the Mojave and Colorado desert (solo and self-supported) and completed a 62-mile ultra-marathon in Australia. And those fun facts are from wikipedia...who knows what she does in her spare time.

When I talked to Katie she had just completed Race Across America, a 3,000 mile bike ride across the United States. She and her partner Sam were using the race to raise $50,000 for Blue Planet Network and Farm America. Their goal? To bring clean drinking water to communities in Kenya that are suffering from severe draught. When I asked Katie "why?" she responded that she believes that the wars of the future won't be about oil, they will be about clean drinking water. Without it, people die.

The initial plan for Katie and Sam was to race across the country as a two-person team, alternating every couple of hours. Katie spent all winter training for the event but had a freak accident on a training ride she had done hundreds of times before. She fell and broke her pelvis.

It was 7 days before the start of the race....

Katie sent out a mass email imploring people for help and within 48 hours she had a handcycle. She also had a team of people to help her get across the country. Her support RV was now filled with 13 teammates (and 1 bathroom) and she decided that she was going to continue on with the plan. Only this time she would be pedaling with her hands.

I have to admit that I'm curious to what it feels like to pedal a handcycle. According to Katie, it was really hard. She basically had one day to learn how to control the thing before it was time to take off. Apparently you have to use your body to help turn corners etc. Going up hills was extremely difficult and at times she was only moving 5 mph. With the handcycle, Katie was covering about 20-30 miles each day, and her teammates were helping cover the rest.

On the 3rd day of the race Katie crashed her handcycle on a rumble strip (with a broken pelvis)...

Instead of giving up, Katie got the OK to get back on a regular bike from her doctor. When I asked her to describe her favorite moment of the the journey, she said it was the moment she was able to get back on her bike and started pedaling again. She felt absolutely free and was able to cover 100-plus miles a day for the remainder of the ride. Not to mention she was able to spend time out of the RV. I can only imagine how crowded it felt with 13 other people in it. And only ONE BATHROOM. I keep mentioning that fact because it must have required some creative scheduling :-)

After 7 days, 16 hours and 59 minutes the team crossed the finish line. Hurray!



At some point during our conversation I asked Katie how she would describe herself, and she used the term "bench warmer." According to Katie she was on a lot of different sports teams when growing up but she was the one always on the bench because she was always the worst one on the team.

I think it's pretty cool that a former "bench warmer" is riding bikes across the country and rowing the English channel, don't you? Katie said that the changing moment in her life was when she ran her first marathon. She wasn't the fastest but she crossed the finish line. From that moment on she realized that she could accomplish some pretty awesome things if she just kept trying.

My last question to Katie was simply, "what's next?" I was tempted to suggest Mt. Everest but I didn't want to give her any ideas :-) Katie answered that she still feels like she has unfinished business with RAAM. She would like to back next year sans broken pelvis to race on a 2-person team.

I'm really glad that I took the "opportunity" to talk to Katie. She may describe herself as ordinary, but she's certainly living an extraordinary life. While I'm impressed by her athletic endeavors, I'm more impressed by the fact she's because she's using endurance events to raise money for a great cause.

More info about Katie can be found here.

And that's the end of my interview. At first I was going to just write the interview in a question/answer format, but my notes were chicken scratch. I was so interested in what Katie had to say that I kept forgetting to write down her answers!