Tell me about skating across the country.
It was a random idea. As I was saying out loud, ‘you can’t skate across the country,’ I don’t even think I even finished the sentence.
Once a goal enters my soul, I start asking questions like, ‘where would I eat? Where would I sleep? How would I do that? How many hours a day would I skate?’ And the only way to answer these questions is by doing the thing.
My intention was not to break the world record at all. The previous world record holder reached out to me and said, ‘I think you could beat me.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just doing this for fun.’ That’s how I talked my husband and friends into doing it with me: ‘We’re just gonna all skate in the morning and then we’ll go on a cross-country adventure.’ But that transformed into ‘we’re going to break a world record.’ We skated, sunrise to sunset, every single day. And we ended up beating the world record by 22 days.
I ranged from 35 miles to 101 miles daily and skated 12 to 18 hours a day. It wasn’t elevation, it was road quality. Some roads were dirt and gravel, and I’d have to wear skates and walk on the road for hours and make it 5 miles.
Have you done other audacious things since then?
I finished that in June 2012, and the next December we broke a world record for climbing a building for 24 hours. I used to compete professionally in stair climbing, a race where you enter a stairwell and you run to the top. I’m really good at the sports no one else does. We climbed the building for 24 hours, a team of four, and we climbed more than 87,000 feet, which is more than 2.5 times Mount Everest.
Do you still skate?
I just did 15 miles this morning. I go to national championships in Duluth, Minnesota, every September. And I’ve won it the last 10 years. I do the half-marathon and then the full marathon, so I win my category in the combo race.
How did you become a trainer?
I started with small group classes at Boulevard Park, just $5 workouts. I didn’t make any money doing that, but I was establishing my role as a coach in town. From there, I started personal training clients in someone’s single-car garage … [eventually] I moved to a 3,000 square foot shop off of State Street. When [Kulshan CrossFit] was doing its best, I sold it and bought 5 acres and built a personal training studio so I can still do what I love but be with my kids full time.
And what are you doing now?
I run a personal training business called Driven Athletics. I work with driven people, driven athletes. Some of my athletes are super slow, and they’re working on finishing their first 5K, even if they walk. And some are world-class athletes. The thing we have in common is we show up, we make positive goals and we work towards them.
One thing I’m super passionate about in Bellingham is bringing athletes together for races and events. We always make neon, fun, obnoxious uniforms for Ski to Sea. We had eight teams this year.
I have kind of been collecting these really positive, hardworking people in the community who show up and do what they say they’re gonna do and have a good attitude, and they’re really good competitors, which means they’re supporting others on the field.
Our focus first is fun. Enjoyment, feeling good, giving back to the community. This year, we were able to donate $7,000 to Skookum Kids. It just feels good when you’re working hard and it’s going towards other people that need a little bit more help than we do.