Ep 108: Redefining Strong: Owning Your Story, One Mile at a Time

Kat gets real about the messy, powerful journey behind her business and her attempt to set a Fastest Known Time on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. From battling self-doubt and balancing ultra-marathon training with motherhood and entrepreneurship, to redefining what “strong” means after setbacks, this episode is for every woman who’s ever wondered if she’s enough.

You’ll hear about:

• Overcoming the “monster of doubt.”
• Juggling family, work, and big dreams
• The reality of training for ultras while raising kids
• Why imperfect steps matter more than perfection
• How to celebrate your own wins, no matter how small

Connect with Kat:
Email: kat@kat.fit
Website: www.kat.fit

Share your story or feedback!
Kat loves hearing from listeners. Email your thoughts, questions, or your own “messy progress” moments for a chance to be featured in future episodes.

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Transcript

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Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultramarathon runner, and a strength trainer in her 40s. With nearly two decades of experience, I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood, all while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice, or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I am Kat, your host. Whether you have been with me for now two years listening to this podcast, it was just this past week on the seventeenth, two years ago that I launched this podcast. The seventeenth of May is my birthday, and just chose it as a bit of a milestone to just launch this podcast on my birthday and get it going. So if you've been with me from the beginning, I am so glad you're here. If you are new, I am so happy to have you and today, you're gonna get a, I don't wanna say going back to the roots story, but a little bit more of me Right now, I'm somewhere on the Pennsylvania stretch of the Appalachian Trail. I recorded this before I embarked on this journey, and what I am doing is chasing something called the fastest known time for the Appalachian Trail section of Pennsylvania. It is a two hundred and thirty rocky, relentless miles with thirty-one thousand feet of elevation gain and loss. Think boulder scrambles, ankle-biting rocks, and endless grueling stretches. Sounds fun, right? But why? Why would anyone be willing to put themselves through this? What goes into the training, and how mentally do you even approach a challenge like that? This is what we're unpacking today because it all goes back to, long-legged, long-armed, adventure-loving, knobby-kneed little girl I once was. The girl who wore scraped knees like badges of honors, but also loved painting her nails and spent entire days building forts in the woods, pretending like she was off on a multi-day ex- expedition. Even then, I had a wild imagination and a hunger for adventure, but also a tiny monster of doubt lurking inside. And we'll get back to that monster soon. But first, let me tell you about this 11-year-old girl. I loved being active. Even in a world that kept telling me to calm down and grow up. Around 11 was a time where sports entered my life, and here's the funny part. I was terrible at sports. I was not someone who was athletic. I was the person picked last in gym class, literally the last one standing, waiting for a team to reluctantly take me. I wanted so much to be good. I wasn't afraid to push myself, to work harder, to try again. But my hands and eyes never seemed to sync up. My awkward, fast-growing body just gave the other kids more reason to tease me. With thick glasses, I I got called soda can eyes and other names after every missed catch. But then one day in gym class, we were sent out for a run, and I'll never forget it. The spring sun on my face, the cinder track dust sticking to my legs, my heart pounding, and I suddenly felt free. Lap after lap, I just pushed harder. I felt more at home. Even when the sporty kids yelled, "Hey, you can't pass us," that little monster of doubt crept in. But I kept going, and I finished. I finished ahead of the fast kids, and for the first time, the teacher was impressed and suggested I go out for the track team. But jeers from the other kids only got louder. "How dare you pass us? How dare you make us look bad?" Still, I decided, why not? Why not go out for the track team? And I pictured myself as a distance runner. That was not where I landed in my track career. Because I got bored. It was fun. I enjoyed running, but I would get bored on the track. Lap after lap, I was like, "What am I doing out here? This is boring. Make it end." Then I saw the high jump. The challenge, the thrill of throwing myself over that bar just seemed amazing. And I went over, and at my first practice, I was horrible. Horrible. The other girls made it look so easy, and I was in awe. I asked the best girl for tips, complimented her, and she responded, "It won't matter. You suck, and you should just quit. You'll never be good at this." Those words stung, and that monster of doubt grew, swirling in my head all the way home. But then something shifted. Defiance. Who was she to tell me what I could or couldn't do? Who cared if I sucked? I was the worst jumper, sure, but so what? Of course, I would really love to say that I just brushed the words off easily, went back out, and if you have been following me for a long time, you've known I competed at the college level. I was recruited qualified for the NCAA championships, went on to hold many accolades. But that's not how things were. The monster of doubt is so tricky. It grows, it shrinks, it hibernates, but it just never fully disappeared. And with high jump, I became obsessed with learning how to master the event. I embraced the pain and the bruises and the ache of hitting the bar and landing on the bar. I was thrilled when I cleared a bar, even if it was so far off from what the other competitors were jumping at. I saw myself every time I cleared the bar winning the gold medal at the Olympics. Literally cleared, and I'd be like, "That's right, I just won the Olympics." The thing about persistence and determination, eventually you see progress. But honestly, it's not right away. Sometimes it takes years of battling doubt and days of wanting to quit, and that tiny voice deep down inside saying, "No, keep going." As I alluded to before, I did find success in high jump. But more importantly, I found purpose helping others who were overlooked and doubted. I made friends with competitors, not because they weren't threats, but because I believed everyone deserves to find their own version of success. I would be at high jump competitions in high school. My opening height would be higher than what the competitors were jumping at, and I'd sit there and coach them. I would look for the girl whose coach dismissed them, or maybe they didn't have a coach. That girl who reminded me of that younger version of my self, who wanted to belong and who wanted success. And there I would just come up and see if she'd be open to coaching. I made a core group of friends. And in college, track and field became my life, my peace, my freedom. College ended and my athleticism changed. I stopped chasing my Olympic dreams, and I didn't know what was next. Surely, there was the marathon, maybe embarking on that crazy dream of trying to backpack some of the Appalachian Trail. I was in my apartment after college, I saw this story on TV about someone running three hundred and fifty miles across Northern California. And the thing that stood out to me was ordering pizza on the run. That sounded cool. Like, how do you go out and you run and you order a pizza, eat the whole pizza, and keep running? It planted a deep seed. I looked into this. This sounded incredible. Again, life does not move in a straight line. It wasn't, "Okay, I'm going to just do this." I then moved into college coaching, and I also felt like I lost the athletic identity. I felt "Who am I?" I'm no longer competing for track. I'm no longer competing my dreams, and this is where I lost a part of my identity because track and field became my life. Coaching was different. Coaching Was a weird ambiguous space. I was coaching with peers who remembered me from my athletic days, and I refused to live in the glory days. But yet at the same point, my training had no anchor for the first time in my life. And that's where I got caught up in diet culture, restricting calories, and my body image plummeted. Exercise became punishment, not joy, not freedom. And then coupled with that in my own life, I was with my husband, and the idea of starting a family sounded horrible because I dreaded the F word, becoming fat. Pregnancy was defined in my mind based on societal terms, was that if you got pregnant, you would lose your body and you would become fat. And this was something that I struggled with. I did want kids. I do have kids. And I needed to find some peace with my body in order to go with that. My first pregnancy, I struggled with body image, and postpartum, I went right back to punishing myself with exercise. However, with my second pregnancy, I was blindsided by a high-risk pregnancy. This put me on bed rest as soon as I found out I was pregnant. At the same time, I had just started my business six months prior. This forced me to slow way down. It forced me to look at so many things, my relationship with my body and the dreams I'd pushed aside. And that monster of doubt came roaring back. I wanted these big dreams. I wanted to have peace with my body. I refused to believe that just because I had kids meant that my dreams were done with. Because that knobby-kneed, wide-eyed, dream-filled eleven-year-old girl was still in there. She wanted these things to come true. But the reality was I was in my thirties and battling what society tells women, our bodies break down after kids and that our dreams don't matter anymore. In previous podcasts, I have shared a little bit about my high-risk pregnancy before, but we're not gonna go into all of that. I honestly, i'm an open book about it. However, his story is his story. My story is my story. When my son was born- I slowly began to fade. I was left in a body I didn't trust. I was battling postpartum PTSD, and I was torn. I felt like a shell of a being. And I also knew I wanted to be that adventurous 11-year-old again, and I also wanted just to give up entirely. Now, people often talk about the runner's high. "When I run, I don't get the runner's high. Oh, I'm not a runner because I don't get this natural high." Honestly, I rarely feel it. About four months after having my son, my husband encouraged me to just take one step, just to go out and try for a run. The run started with a walk, and my inner voice doubting every step until the quiet, persistent voice said, "Keep going." And I started to run, and then all of a sudden, I found myself on the sidewalk, a scraped knee, and just wanting to quit, wanting to just stay down on that sidewalk, just done. But that little, tiny voice that is ever so quiet was screaming, "Just get up. You're worth it." See, that run, I wouldn't say I had a runner's high, but it provided a moment of clarity where I felt that 11-year-old girl, and that run was a pivotal moment that changed everything. It changed how I coach my clients, how I train, and those big dreams came rushing back. Again nothing is linear at all. I would love to say I stood up and wrote a training plan, hired a coach, whatever, and you know what? It's been this great, flawless success story ever since. But I would be lying. The setbacks were fierce. The false starts, the quitting, and so much failure went into these past 12 years. I ran my first half-marathon eight months after having my son. It wasn't pretty. The training was not pretty. I ran it scared. I ran it out of doubt. I ran it terrified 'cause I didn't wanna lose that 11-year-old girl that was filled with adventure and wanting so much more to that teen girl who rallied around those other jumpers in the field to give them hope, to inspire when others may have overlooked or maybe they had been battling their own doubts. But why the Appalachian Trail? Why this challenge? Because I'm doing it for those same reasons. For those who can't. For those fighting doubts, struggling to move their bodies, searching for self-worth. For kids picked last. For those who were told their dreams don't matter now that they're moms. This isn't just for me. This isn't just for bragging rights. It's for the 11-year-old girl who kept going despite being told she shouldn't, and for anyone who needs to hear that their dreams still matter. Training for an ultra-marathon is tough, not just physically, but logistically. It's not just about logging miles. It's about weaving those miles into life that's already bursting at the seams. I am a mom of two active boys in sports and band, and a partner who works, travels, trains. I run a business. I train clients. I write, produce, and edit this podcast, among so many other things. I'm not sharing this because my twenty-four hours are supreme, but giving a glimpse to pull back that curtain that these twenty-four hours that I have are full. And squeezing an extra eight to twelve-plus hours a week of running, strength, and mobility is an absolute puzzle. Finding time is hard, but I use the same strategies I coach my clients on. I do not aim for perfection. Instead, I work in ranges. My strength training is progressive. My runs are carefully mapped out. In my life, my real messy, beautiful life is so a part of the training too. There are many days when my feet hit the floor at five AM, and I do not stop moving until my head hits the pillow at ten fifteen PM. It's a constant dance between training, coaching clients, back-end business work, strength training, shuttling kids to activities, making meals, and somehow keeping up with the house. It's full. Surviving this training with all that is thrown at me is actually what builds my mental resilience. Out on the trail, it's all about taking the next step, tuning into how I'm feeling, knowing when to push, when to pull back. The same skills I practice every day. When I wanna quit, I ask myself, Will I be okay with this in two hours or tomorrow?" The answer is almost always no. I wouldn't be okay with giving up. But I wanna be real here. Training for and completing an ultramarathon isn't about an at all costs mentality. It's about honoring my health, my wellbeing, and not risking it all for the finish line. So right now, I'm somewhere out there on the Pennsylvania section of the Appalachian Trail. My goal is to reach the Maryland state line. But every step along this journey is a victory, a celebration of what's possible. And I wanna turn it back to you listening right now, wherever you are. Maybe you're driving. Maybe you're out on a run. Maybe you're just trying to make it through a regular day. And I want you to pause for a moment and get honest with yourself. What is the thing you keep telling yourself you'll do when life calms down, or when you're ready, or when you finally feel like you belong? Where do you hear that little monster of doubt whispering, "Who are you to try?" Here's my challenge. Pick one small thing, one thing that feels just out of reach, or maybe even a little bit wild and audacious. It might be putting on your shoes and heading out the door, signing up for something that scares you, speaking up for yourself, or carving out time for something that matters to you, even if it's only five minutes. Don't wait for perfection. Don't wait for permission. Progress is built from those messy, imperfect steps. Every time you choose to try, you quiet that monster of doubt and build a little bit more belief in yourself. So what's your next step? What's one way you can move toward your own finish line? Whatever that looks like for you. Take the step, celebrate it, and then take another. I promise you, you are capable of more than you can even imagine. And every single step forward matters. If this episode sparked something in you, if you took a step, big or small, or if you're wrestling with your own monster of doubt, I wanna hear from you. Reach out to the podcast, share your story, or just let me know what resonated. You can email me directly at Kat, K-A-T, at Kat, K-A-T, dot Fit, F-I-T. I read every message. I love connecting with you all. Remember, you're not alone in this journey. We're in this together, one imperfect, powerful step at a time. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast, and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit Strength or share this episode with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.