ICED - Athletes, injuries & mental health Challis Popkey

Katie Kellner fractured her pelvis training for her first Boston marathon. Ring a bell?

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She’s a 2 time Olympic Trials Marathon qualifier and placed 57th at the trials this February. She was a Division I All-American in both Cross Country and the 10K on the track at Cornell, where she also was Ivy League Champ in both events. She’s transitioning right now from being a professional runner (paid to run) to an elite runner (still super fast, paycheck comes from elsewhere). She’s now a biostatistician currently doing research on the Coronavirus.

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Katie has a great attitude about injury recovery: Focus your energy on rebuilding your bone instead of lifting weights (cross training). Some pearls of wisdom from this conversation are:

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Don’t focus too much on the past (never going to be as good as I was) or too much on the future (I need to get ready for X race) - but what you can do today. Getting a massage, icing, sleeping an extra hour are all helpful in making you a better athlete. Doing hard work is the only way you are making yourself faster, doing hard work is not a recipe for success while you’re injured.

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If you're interested in being coached by Katie (she is AMAZING! super supportive and responsive) go to http://www.forwardfocusrunning.com/. She's also on Instagram @forwardfocusrunning.

After placing 7th in downhill skiing at the 2018 Olympics, Breezy Johnson was ready to make her best THE best. A partial ACL tear that Fall took her out for the whole 2019 season. She thought she had paid her dues to ski racing, “almost every skier tears their ACL,” but not every skier tears their PCL and MCL. Breezy did, just as she was getting back into training.

The second knee injury really shook her. This is an athlete who lives for race day. She loves that feeling you get when it’s all on the line, “when you have to put up or shut up,” and she felt like part of her soul had been wrenched out when racing was taken away for the second time.

We talk about her amazing recovery and return to racing in January, and how having something for your mind to focus on is just as important as having something for your body to work on.

Here it is folks. What you've all been waiting for, and so generously donating towards. PolyPro 3 is dropping this Friday, May 8th, on my youtube channel: youtube.com/channel/UCsii46E1ZytR95VIR4A2kjQ
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I have the bros themselves, Dan and Nick Popkey, on the show to talk about bruised egos and the creative genius behind the PolyPro series.
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For those unfamiliar with the series... WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Catch up. Seriously. 
PolyPro 1: facebook.com/dan.popkey/posts/10153967670269824
PolyPro 2: youtube.com/watch?v=0GYrJ32eF-0
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Our GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/polypro-3? (still open for donations)
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Nicky's Instagram Instagram.com/nicholaspopkey

Avital Shimko is is a mogul skier on the US Ski team. She tore her ACL doing a back full; which is a backflip with a full 360 twist just 4 months after achieving her goal of making the team. Her recovery was longer than most due to scar tissue build up on the front of her ACL causing a cyclops lesion. So she had to start physical therapy all over. She was in Sweden this March (18 months post op) feeling stoked for her first World Cup competition back. Unfortunately it was a quick turnaround when the corona virus cancelled competition & travel worldwide. We talk about expectations, dedication, taking breaks, working with sports psychologists, and staying motivated through injury.

Here’s a link to Avital’s blog we talked about:

talthemogulskier.com

She is also in instagram as @avishort. Check her out, she is quite inspirational and a talented writer. Also, the photo for this episode was taken 5 minutes after she tore her ACL.

Welcome Mark Taché! We discuss what he learned from his three knee reconstructions and how being on the ski team taught him how to be a successful business manager. We also talk about the challenges of working with young pro athletes. After retiring from the US ski team, Mark managed the pro surfing careers of his nephews Andy and Bruce Irons. We talk about pride, loss, addiction and the opportunity to give back and mentor young athletes. 
Mark was named Junior Alpine Skier of the Year by Ski Racing Magazine in 1980 and went on to the U.S. Ski Team, racing slalom and giant slalom internationally for 8 years on the World Cup circuit. He competed on two F.I.S. World Championship teams, in Schladming, Austria in 1982 and Bormio, Italy in 1985, and was America's top-ranked slalom skier his last year of amateur international competition. He turned Pro in '86, and raced the grueling head-to-head format on the World Pro Tour for the next seven years, winning the prestigious First Interstate Pro Cup in 1987 & taking second in the ‘87 World Pro Championships, earning honors as the Tour’s top American that year.
Taché is an avid mountaineer, golfer, rock climber, cyclist and overall outdoor enthusiast. 

Christin Cooper won the alpine skiing silver medal in Giant Slalom in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Twelve months earlier, she had fractured her tibial plateau in a downhill crash. She explains why she believes that the injury is one of the reasons she medaled.

Over her 10-year career on the US Ski Team, Christin competed in 2 Olympics, 2 World Championships, won five World Cup races and never suffered a knee ligament injury (very rare for skiers). She was also the first American skier, and is still the only female American skier, to win three medals in a single World Championships. She talks about how a healthy dose of fear helped her avoid career-ending injuries.

Full disclosure: Christin is also my Aunt! We talked about her growing up with a daredevil father on the beach in Malibu, falling in love with ski racing when the family moved to Idaho, transitioning from professional athlete to civilian, and the joys of puttering.

She and her husband, Mark, are quarantining in Mark’s native hometown of Aspen, Colorado, where they built a house twenty years ago, while running their restaurant, Montana Ale Works, in Bozeman, Montana, which is currently closed due to COVID-19, by telecommuting with their partners and staff. Towards the end of the episode we talk about how the skills she learned on the US Ski Team translate into being a successful business owner.