(waves crashing) - 10, nine, (bike gears clicking) (tranquil orchestra music) eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! (people cheer and clap) (wind blows) - I am about to attempt to do 500 miles on a 10 mile loop course at the Mammoth
Endurance Washington Island Ultra. 2020 was like the year of my life, I still say. I got to work from home. I got to go to the gym and the training could just get bigger and bigger and longer and longer, and
everything just fell into place. I traveled and w
ent to California to ride with her a couple times, do some back-to-backs. It was the perfect year, and
then coming here and having her and Karen here to be here with me to help me, the race was still really hard, but it was magical. It, really honestly, like if it had to be the last thing I did with her, I couldn't have asked for a better last thing for us to do together, big thing, 'cause the last time I saw her was at the island. Sorry, I forget about that
sometimes until I think about it, but
the last time I hugged her was here as they were leaving. - [Producer] Do you wanna tell me what happened? - Her ex-boyfriend murdered
her and then killed himself. I felt like it summed up our
friendship perfectly, right? Like if it had to end, it didn't end by us not seeing each other for years and not talk, like we talked up until hours before she passed, and the last words were, "I love you." So I feel like everything in that year leading up to it was still so amazing. We did just such great
work together. It was perfect. I think it was like hour 33, 34 in 2020, I was having a rough time and I came up so that she could give some gel and I'm like, "I'm never F-ing doing this again." And she's like, "No, you're not." And I'm like, "I never fricking wanna do this again." And she's like, "You never have to do it again." She gives me the gel, we go on, and I don't think anything of it, and then when I got home, I'm laying on the bed, and I'm like, that was horrible but, and I texted her
and I said, "I really think that if I put" "in more work, I can do 500." And she said, "Oh hell yeah, we'll do it." I have two things I have to do. I have to do this, and I have to do H3, and those were the things that we planned and that we were gonna do together, and I feel like we need to do those to like really, not finish our time, but finish what we set out to start, 'cause she was also my coach. She wasn't just my best friend. She fed the crazy in anything. - Good, okay, all right. So I
wanna hammer out nutrition. Okay, yeah. - So just have 'em like a Halloween bag. - Good. - Oh yeah, yeah. So they are all mixed. I didn't separate them by flavor. The chews, I feel like night two, are gonna be the best, 'cause I'm gonna be too, it's gonna be harder to take a gel. So the chews, if you open them and then just dump 'em into my Bento box, I'll just take handfuls of them throughout. - Are you not just gonna eat 'em at the beginning of the loop? Crewing for somebody when they're doing
some sort of like big event like this, you are literally their lifeline. You are their eyes and ears, and when it gets late in the
game, you're their brain too. - Usually, crew members are
needed for unsupported races. So races that don't have aid stations set up by the race organizers or ones that go beyond the normal race
time or like an Ultra marathon or an Ultra event. This certainly fits under that category in that it's an Ultra event and it's unsupported and it's just people come, and usu
ally they support themselves, because they don't go the full length of the event. For this one, since Heidi is going the full 36 hours and she's riding her bike, she definitely needs people to help her out. - I know that that's not enough. - Scratch super fuel or scratch electrolytes? - I want to scratch electrolytes. - Okay, so that's gonna be... - I think a hundred, yeah. - Your job is to get her through and to the finish line and actually, your duties
start well before that even. So Taryn and
I have been doing a lot of prep work even in the last few days, and so yeah, it's just you're really doing
everything for your athlete. You want them doing as little as possible leading up to the race, and then during the race, you're keeping track of all their vitals for 'em. So she typically trains in
what are called gator skins, which are really flat resistant. So that's good for when she's riding in Arizona where there's lots of little things that could give you a flat, but they're pretty h
eavy. So we're gonna put her in some Continental 5000s, which are light rolling with resistance. Still pretty flat resistant,
but they're a lot lighter, and even just the like small weight difference between these two types of tires really makes a big difference in both speed
and the energy requirement to move forward. So we're just swapping over
her race tires to her wheels so that she can be as light as possible. - So I have a Dimond that I
bought secondhand from a friend of Mary's, because it
seemed like a cool bike. Mary had the Dimond and then when she passed, her parents gave me her
Dimond and her Cervelo road bike. So I'm riding her bike and
she qualified and raced Kona on it, and I covered up her American flag, which for me, is actually very strange, 'cause I super love having flags on everything, but then I put the BFF sign over it. So I feel like I've had amazing rides on it, very fast rides. I've had some not so fun ones, (laughs) but from the moment I rode it, it just felt
so good with very little tweaking. So I'll be taking her with me, (laughs) and I do love it. I hate the reason I have it, but I love that I have it, and I love that her parents wanted me to have it. (rhythmic electronic music) - [Man In Black Shirt] If anybody can do it, she can. (man laughs) - Heidi, yeah, if anybody can do it, Heidi can do it, and you know what? Heidi has the best hair ever this year. - The hair is gonna get her over the finish line, I'm telling you. - The hair is gonna do it
this year, I know it, I know it. - She's just got that right attitude, you know? And she just doesn't do it for herself. She's doing it for a bigger purpose. - Exactly. - So I think that's really great. That's commendable. - She's got the heart. (cheery folk music) - Welcome to the island. (crowd applauds) Thank you so much for coming. This is a super special place to me. (clears throat) I get worked up every time I do this, sorry. It's a super special place to me, and it just means the world th
at you guys come up here and support the event and support the island and that you're just a part of this big family thing that we've created here. So thank you so much for participating. Each one of you guys came up here with a goal in mind or a thought in mind. Just have fun with it. At times, it's gonna be brutal, maybe. At times, it's gonna suck. Just enjoy it. You signed up for it. You signed up for a challenge. You signed up to be in a beautiful place. You're gonna get all of it. So have f
un with it. - That I'm not convinced that maybe we don't just need another one or we don't just need a longer one. - But that was the one that was there the whole time. - So we've got a little bit of a wiggle here in her seat. You can kind of see this is coming up and down and it shouldn't do that. (laughs) So we've been fiddling with this screw that's in here, trying to get it tighter, but it doesn't really seem to be fixing it. There's some folks here with a local bike shop that we're gonna tr
y and flag down once we're done with supper, - [Heidi] Oh, they might have a torque wrench. - but I don't think it's gonna be an issue. I don't think it's gonna be an issue, but I know right now, all that matters is a hundred
percent mental comfort. So if this is in her head now, it's gonna be in her head 18 hours from now. (worrisome orchestra music) Okay, so we just talked to the bike shop people, and we weren't able to fix the issue that we have with Heidi's bike, but we did get the okay that
it's safe to ride. (bike gears clicking) - I was one of three children,
single mother, which is fine. She did the best she could.
(tranquil electronic music) I think I feel like there was some resentment towards me maybe for looking more like my father, acting like my father, was not enjoyable. I kind of just got through, waiting until I turned 18 to leave. Still don't have a relationship with any of my family, did have a short stint with
my mother for a little while, probably in my early twent
ies, because I don't know where she is or anything anymore. Self-preservation, I guess. - Heidi is a force to be reckoned with. She's beat all of the odds. She's unconventional. She's hilarious. She is trustworthy. She is an amazing chef, so good, and she's so true. Like she is who she is through and through, and that's why I love her. That's why everyone loves her. (laughs) - I don't remember my father at all, and I'm not sure why I don't remember him. I think he left when I was four. My mother
never talked about him except at bad stuff. We were brought up to be fearful of him. We were brought up, the schools were never to let us out to anybody but her. We had very strict rules. We weren't allowed to go outside and play without her. Everything was very strict. So we kind of were raised in this fear of him. I believe she met him in Germany. I think there was this anger thinking, oh, he only is here to live in America, and so I met him once. He came to the door when I was, I think, in f
ifth grade, and I was home alone, and
he introduced him and he's like, I'm your father, and I shut the door, 'cause I was scared, because that's what I was brought up to, and I called 9-1-1, 'cause I was scared, because that's what I was told you're supposed to do, and that was the only time I had seen him. Right when I actually was getting into triathlon, I decided to look him up. So I looked him up, and I
actually stumbled upon the death index and he had died, and he died in New York while I l
ived in New York, and I was really bummed out, and my friend, Sue, he lived four houses down from her while I was friends with her when I was back in Boston, and it was a big bummer. I'm like, wow. He was right there, and I didn't know, and he was in New York when I was there, and I didn't know. So I've done some research into trying to, he probably didn't die a very happy death. He was kind of young. He was in hospice, but he is buried as a John Doe, 'cause nobody came to pick him up. So after
she passed, I started
singing hummingbirds too, and that's in her writing, and
she used to tell her athletes to be brave before the races. So I gave my tattoo guy a card she wrote me, and he took her writing and put it on it, and these are from everybody. These are coming off after the race. Somebody gave me an M, that's from Jan. This is from Lynn Feedler. - [Woman Off Camera] Oh wow, okay. - [Heidi] This is from Josie, and this is Jen Aronson. Believe in my $600 light. - Yeah. - I mean, really
was fine, but sure. It got it's own plane ticket. I'm done, man. (everyone laughs) - Do I look like an adventurer? - You look like you're about to go spelunking. - [Heidi] Yes, exactly, yeah. - That is actually what it's for. - So you always have to test your headlamp for bounce ability by headbanging. - (laughs) Got it. - I am racing or I'm running for 36 hours. So I'm doing the solo run. Smart, (laughs) during the race. I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 20, hold on, gotta math
, 2019, and Heidi and Mary were
very integral in my cancer care and cancer recovery and
completely rallied behind me and around me to get me through that, and so this race coincides
with the three year anniversary of me being cancer-free. Yeah, so Saturday when I ring the bell and I'm finished, it'll be ringing the bell to celebrate three years of not having cancer. We had kind of, I don't know, been this tripod of sorts where it was like no matter
what someone was going through, no matter what
was happening,
we would just drop everything and be there for one another. Mary, she collected broken toys. She collected broken people. I feel like that's how her and Heidi initially became really close, because Heidi was very sick, was going through some really
tough times with her illness and making it through that,
and when I connected with Mary, it was the very same way. I was going through some
really mentally tough things, and a lot of Mary's closest
friends were, at once, broken, and Mar
y was the person that everyone would go to to help them out, to get them back on their feet, to lift their spirits, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and
it was an incredible gift she had to see people through some of the toughest times in their lives. I have this memory, after she died, Heidi and I were together in Arizona
and flown down there to be with Heidi and Jess, and Heidi and I had both turned to each other and at the same time said, "I thought it would be me who died first." B
ecause of Heidi, with her health issues, and me, with my health issues, and Mary was, out of the tripod, these three legs, Mary's the strongest, the bravest, the nothing was gonna touch her. No one was gonna touch her, and then to be standing there
with our strongest leg gone and broken off and the two
of us feeling incredibly raw and broken and whatnot, it was just, it's unfathomable. It's still is, it's unfathomable that she's not here. There are many days where you wake up and you're like, oh
no, I'm gonna call her, I'm gonna text her, I'm gonna hear her voice again, and it won't happen in this lifetime. (suspenseful orchestra music) - [Crowd] Five, four, three, two, one! (crowd cheers and claps) (bike squeaks) - So yeah, so if she can hold a 15 mile per hour pace, - [Man Off Camera] Oh true. - that'll give us 2.7 hours buffer time on the 36 hour. So if she can hold 40 minute loops, that's where we are. - We're planning on, I guess by now, we'll go like 10:30 to 2:30 and then, so th
at way, four hours on, four hours off the night. So that's hopefully get some maybe three hours of quality sleep, plus or minus. - What do you need me to do? - I'll do another loop or two. - So that'll be hundo, yeah? - I'm about to be a hundred right now, yeah. - [Jess] Yeah, so two loops and then breakfast and kit change. (inaudible) - [Man In Teal Sweater] What's that? - The sound, (Heidi imitates squeak) (group laughs) for the next 30 hours. (suspenseful orchestra music) - Finishing up night
one here. I got to sleep in until about 3:00 AM. So Taryn took the 10 to three
shift and then I jumped in. When I took over, Heidi was looking great. She's been eating and drinking
well, and that's still true. She just passed the hundred mile mark. So we're super stoked about that. We're about a little over seven hours in now and in the next couple hours, she's gonna come in and take a break. We're gonna fix her like some real food to eat and change her kit, refresh, and then head on back out f
or more loops. - What do you want? What's happening? Just the crank again? - It's so loud. - It's yeah. Could you just ride and see if you get the same sound? - Yeah, beef jerky, potatoes. It sounds like your bottom bracket. - [Heidi] Yeah. - Yeah, squeaky bottom bracket, it's very obnoxious. I can't imagine riding 400 more miles with it. I couldn't do four minutes with it. All right, we got three gels. (monotone cello music) - It's like really loud, and it's making my eye twitch. I'm not suppos
ed to cry at 100. (suspenseful orchestra music) - The mental fortitude to do this same 10 miles over and over and over is so impressive to me. Yeah, you have to stay awake, and you have to be on your nutrition, and you have to train to ride your bike for a long time, but it's the same 10 miles over and over. - The thing that most folks don't even realize, she's up at 2:00 AM. She's up at 2:30 in the morning. She's on her bike at 3:00 AM riding for hours before she goes into work. - Mentally, is
she gonna be able to get through what she's gotta get through in the next, I would say, eight to 10 hours? If she can break through
that wall, I think she'll get it, but if she lets it get the best of her, I think she won't. She's just willing to make the sacrifice. She's been through a lot. It's easier to say than to do, but Heidi, when she says she's gonna do it, she's gonna do it no matter what. - So she's definitely feeling it, and she definitely is gonna benefit a lot from this break, I thi
nk. She's starting to give a little bit of like the, I don't wanna say self-doubt, but the mental weirdness is kinda starting to happen, I think. Okay, so it's about 4:00 AM. Heidi has about 150 miles left. We're in a pretty deep valley right now to be expected. So we're just gonna fuel her up with some potatoes, get her a lighter helmet, and hopefully get her back to smiling. - [Jodi] Let's go. - [Heidi] You're not the boss of me. - Right. - Yep, I'm trying to move my shorts. All right, all rig
ht. Three loops till breakfast. - [Jodi] Yay. (upbeat drum and bass music) - [Jodi] Yes. (laughs) - [Heidi] That's pretty awesome. (laughs) Can I get two and can we do less water? - Two and less water. - That's hard to drink. The whole thing, yeah. - Oh, okay. - Okay, see ya later. - [Heidi] All right, let's go. - Yeah, let's go. - See you in a few. - Fine already. - Good, quick turn. - I hate having to wait for you. Is she coming? Okay. (laughs) - [Man In Teal Sweater] Get on it, sister, bye. -
I don't have to take that from her. She's not my real mom. - [Jodi] What? - [Heidi] You're not my real mom. (tranquil orchestra music) You have 120 left. - No, you have... - It's fine. I get to do 120. - No. - There you go. - You have two more loops. - I have one more lap left. - One more lap, that you go. - There you go. - I love it. - Tell me what to say. - Two more, okay, are we doing it by one or you wanna do it by three? - What do you mean? - Okay, are you doing 'em in groups of three ment
ally? - No, we're doing two and that'll be a hundred. - Okay, all right. - And then in my head, I do a hundred every freaking day off. - Okay. - The bottom bracket (inaudible). I don't know how, but it's like even louder. - [Taryn] It is louder. Whatever's going on with the
bike is much worse, much worse. - It's like making my head insane. - Okay, does it feel any worse at all or is it... - Going up hills, it's like it sounds like it's gonna break apart. - [Woman Off Camera] Yes, that's what it
sounds like. - Okay. - It is worse than yesterday, right? - [Woman Off Camera] Oh, it's much worse. - It sounds like the bike is gonna split. Going up those hills, I was like. This is so freaking painful to listen to. (bike gears rattle) (inaudible) - Oh my god, it's so loud, yes, - It's so loud. - so, so loud out. (inaudible) - Click out. - There we go. So after we hit 36, we don't have to do the 10 anymore. Thank you. - Yeah. - Appreciate it. Cause I pour water all over the res, and I'm like,
okay. It kept going, kept going, kept going. - Because sometimes the seal
in there can get a little dried on top of that. - Oh, thank you for that, okay. - My eye stopped twitching. Thank you. - Technically... - Oh, I thought that was an hour and a half. - Yeah. - Even so. - [Jess] You can still make it. - Go. - Just an hour. - Rachel Peterson is on her last lap and it's a big, big deal. So I'm gonna ask if you can hear this and you want to come up, I'll let you know when she's coming. She's gon
na be finishing a hundred miles here. It's the first time anyone's ever run a hundred miles on the island, and the coolest thing about it is today marks her three year
anniversary of being cancer-free. (magical orchestra music) - I didn't think three years ago I would be able to walk to my mailbox, let alone run for 36 hours, and so I'm celebrating my
strength and my perseverance. I'm running for Mary as well. She always did the big, hard, incredible things, and I think that's the legacy
that sh
e would want us all to carry on is to not stop doing the big, hard, incredible things. (crowd cheers and applauds) (Rachel cries) - Congrats, girl. Oh man, I'm so proud of you. (onlookers clap and cheer) - I just left it all out there. - I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you, babe. - Hey. You did awesome. - It was so hard. - But you did it. Here, will this help? - Yes. (suspenseful orchestra music) (clock beeps) - So it is officially 10, a little bit past 10:45. The 36 hour mark was 10:00
AM,
but going into this weekend and this race, we all knew that we were getting 500 regardless, and so a lot of folks are packing up, and they're headed out. Their race is done, but we're gonna stick around, and we're gonna keep doing
10 mile loops until we reach 500. She just passed 430, 430 miles. So we've got about 70 left to go. There's been a few teams that have heard what we're doing out here today, and even though they're done racing and they could go home and sleep, they've all said we're s
itting right here until she gets 500. (inspiring orchestra music) (uplifting orchestra music) (crowd cheers and applauds)
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