 the state of that? Tell me a bit about who you are and why you run, what got you into it? I've been running now since 2011 or 2012, about 60 years. I got into running as part of recovery from addiction, basically opiate addiction. I think it pretty much saved my life. You know, addiction is one of these things that we use to fill this emptiness or this hole or whatever, and I think running can take the place of that. When did you actually realise that you were quite good? It just kind of happened. Early on when I started running, as soon as I learned about people running 100 mile races, I just knew that was what I wanted to do. Yeah, there was no question in my mind. So everything I did in the first couple of years was just trying to really work up to running my first 100 mile race. I kind of surprised myself when I ran my first 50 mile race when I ended up in second place female and I thought, wow, it might actually be something to do this. So did you start off with the usual 5K runs and a 10K and that kind of thing? Did you build up or did you immediately go, right, I'm going to run marathon? Well, I ran 5K, I ran three 5Ks and only until I won. And then once I won my first 5K, I was done with that. And then I went on and ran a 10, 15K and then I ran a marathon and then I ran a 40 mile or a 50 mile and then I started with 24 hours and 100. What was your first marathon? My first and only actually was the Pensacola marathon. Okay, so it was like, okay, I've run a marathon now. That really wasn't far enough. Marathons are too short for me. So you kind of very quickly built up distance and kind of your goal was to start to run 100 mile races. Were you road based? Did you go on the trails immediately? What did you do? I was really obsessed with the idea of trail running at the time. And so yeah, my first ultra is where trail runs. And it wasn't until I kind of got obsessed with the 24 hour racing that I started transitioning to more road running and track running. That's odd because actually, I would imagine that for many people, it's the other way around that they start on the road and then they kind of graduate, I would say graduate, but move on to trail running. Looking at your kind of race history, you don't race an awful lot. Can you explain why is that? The main reason is because I take care of a disabled son full time and he has very severe disability. And it's very, very hard for me to just even leave the house to go run much less go race often. So anytime that I go race, it has to be this very well thought out and planned thing that me and my husband have to plan everything around. He has to take time off work and all that. So it's a really big deal when I go race. But the other reason too is that I think for these really long races, like 24 hours and 100 miles, I don't think it's good to do it too often. And I don't think you do very well if you do it too often. So since I plan on doing 24 or hundreds a year, I figure that's probably, yeah, I think that's about enough because I think once I start doing more than that, I think I can't expect to do the best that I can do because when I go, I really want to give it everything I've got. So do you find that that is something that's important to you, that every race you enter or do, you put 100% effort into it? Yes, absolutely. How do you assess your life? Because many people could look at you and say, my God, she's suffered with addiction in the past and it's almost killed her, running's rescued her, she's looking after disabled child 24 hours a day, can't get out running as much as you would want to. How do you kind of assimilate all that in your life? Honestly, I think for the most part just because you just get used to the life that you're in, the skin that you're in, it doesn't really kind of hit home as much as it sounds. I think the biggest thing about all of it is that it just slowly makes me a better person. Let's move to Zwift and your sudden appearance on suddenly one day. This lady appears on Facebook, on the Zwift runners page. Oh, what is the distance record on Zwift? Because I've just run a hundred and sixty. How far was it? 160 points. See, when I read your post, Tara, I misread it as 160 kilometres. Just because in my brain that's what people run. They do 100 miles, which is around about 161 kilometres. So I thought, oh wow, she's run 100 miles on Zwift. That's amazing. Really good. Wow. So tell me a little bit about what this 24 hour run was about. Why did you decide to do it and why on Zwift? What happened? Tell me about Zwift. Well, a friend of mine, actually from Ohio, had decided to start this fundraiser for a safe house and it was all with the idea that we were just going to run or cycle from wherever we were. So he recruited a bunch of us to do that and a friend of his was saying that, oh, he was going to run on Zwift. And I was like, what is Zwift? Sounds pretty cool. So literally like three days before the run, I just got on Zwift and started setting it up and tested it out. I made a friend like five miles or so on it before, you know, I actually did the run and just had an old set up on my screen where I was going to broadcast the whole thing and then I just ran for 24 hours on it. You didn't stop. It was amazing to see that post pop up and then realize that it was 160 miles. I think that the record on Zwift for we're running at the time was 50K. I think somebody had won. Yeah, I think this was somebody said. But you know, we never, I never really planned to run quite that far. I was thinking maybe 140 or so. But it just, I just, when I got on the treadmill starting to run, I thought, I'm just going to run an 830 minute mile pace for as long as I can. And then when I have to slow down, I'll slow down. How do you feel? Oh, during the run? Terrible. Red Bull. A lot of red bull. A lot of people liked insure pizza. Did you not, did you have any stomach issues? A little bit, but not actually too bad. I found out that when you run on your treadmill for a really long time, it really, really heats the room up really bad. And we had a lot of trouble with just trying to keep my body temperature down. I mean, it was like almost 90 degrees in the room at one point. We have windows open and everything. How did you interact with Zwift during the run? Did you, did you look at the screen? Did you immerse yourself at all in it? Or you did? I had set up some tables behind in front of the treadmill. And I set up my computer screens, two computer screens on it. One was my broadcast screen. The other one was where I was watching Zwift. And then I had boxes set up on the other side where I had my mouse and my keyboard. And I would reach over there and mess with my mouse and stuff. And I would text on my phone. Did you, did you, yeah, did you chat to people on Zwift during the run? Were people giving you ride-ons and those kind of things? Yeah, I got quite a few ride-ons, but no real chatting. I think probably a lot of people probably thought that I was just a fluke once I got, you know, a hundred miles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't think a lot of people thought I was real once my mouse started getting really high. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, I was skeptical initially. You know, I looked at it and thought, really? Sure. But, you know, immediately, you know, you know what happens on Facebook. You know what happens on the internet. People do a bit of snooping and just checking out. Oh, yeah. You know, but immediately it was obvious that it was genuine. And yeah, wow. So how did you feel afterwards? Very painful. Running on the treadmill for 24 hours is a completely different kind of pain than running on pavement or trails or whatever. And I was, that was one of the things that really surprised me because by like 30 or 40 miles, I was like hurting in places that I had never hurt before on long runs. But it really didn't take me too long to recover from it muscarily. But for the first couple of days, I was pretty much just laid up. What is it about Zwift that's kind of caught your imagination? Since you've started using it, you did your 24 hour run. And since then, the kind of the Zwift experience for you, what's it been like? You know, honestly, it has really surprised me taking anybody this long to come up with something like this. I mean, obviously there's a huge market for it. And I mean, the moment I heard about it, I was like, oh, yes, finally. It's really made a difference in, you know, doing long runs on a treadmill, you know, those 15, 20 miles don't seem so bad anymore, when you can immerse yourself in this, you know, artificial world. And, and I think too, it's great that because Zwift creates this atmosphere of, you know, feeling like you're with other people, you know, in the, you know, the group effect and all that, you know, even if you're not running in a group, it just gives you this feeling like you're not alone, you know, and they do a good job. I think that's one of the things that the kind of Zwift would aspire to and is seems to be working very well, certainly worked very well for cycling and it's building up in running. Have you, have you managed to enter any, any group runs as yet? I've only done a few so far. Usually, I'm on a training plan. So, you know, usually kind of stuck to whatever I'm supposed to be doing. Let's just talk about incline for a second because quite recently, very recently, Zwift released a new update and that update is the Alpe de Zwift, or the Alpe d'Huez and it is a 1000 meter climb. Do you like using the incline on your treadmill? Yes. Yes, I do. You do use it? Yes. Yes. In fact, all my runs that I do are even like the super easy runs that I'm not doing hills or anything. I always run at at least one degree of incline. It's not two to four. So, I am, I'm all about running incline. I have not run the expansion yet, but I'm going to today and I'm really looking forward to it. Well, right. What do you think about Zwift being, Zwift controlling your treadmill? So, if a new update came out where they said, okay, from now on, all Bluetooth treadmills will link direct to Zwift and Zwift will automatically raise your incline when we come to a hill. Would that be something that would interest you? Yes. Yes, it would. And I think it would be, and obviously, I think they would do it this way, but I think it would be great, you know, if you could choose to have them control it or not. But I would, I would definitely be interested in that. I don't, I don't know if they'll ever really do it, though. There's been talk of it being like a safety issue. I don't really see the big deal with it. So, I think they should just go ahead and do it. And I think it would be especially important if they, if they really want to do like, you know, running races, you know, then I think it needs to be with treadmills that have, you know, them controlling the incline. Yeah. I mean, it's a big, it's a big issue, isn't it, that's going to start coming to the four in the next few months about racing on Zwift and having a level playing field. Well, that might be, that might be it. You have to have a heart rate monitor to race, because then at least we can kind of have some idea that you are definitely running and not just, not just, see, I can, I have, on this, on this treadmill that I've got now, it's direct to Zwift. So there's no foot pod involved. So I can just turn it, turn it up and go and go. I do all my runs like that now. I'm, I'm in the lounge with coffee and, and this thing's doing all the hard work. No, actually, actually it does, I did test in it does stop after a minute. If you're not on it, it stops. So tell me about this future run that you're doing. It's an event to break the Guinness World Record for 24 hours on a treadmill. Who holds that currently? What rules are there and is it difficult? The current female treadmill world record stands at 153.6 miles and it's held by a Hungarian surname is Edith Burces. And unless you have a Guinness official present, which costs like eight to $10,000, then you have a lot of proving to do, put it that way. We have to have two video cameras and witnesses. There's a lot of scrutiny, isn't there? If you haven't got a tracker on, if you haven't done every single mile with a GPS watch, then the people are running, especially in the States where you've got let's run.com and everyone is down your throat, aren't they? If you miss any. Yes, we have to have two witnesses present at all times and they're only allowed to work for four hours at a time. So we need 12 witnesses and they can't benefit from the outcome of it or anything like that. So, you know, they'll also scrutinize the witnesses. So we have to be really careful about the whole thing. So you're going for the longest distance on a treadmill in 24 hours. Just to get a bit technical, what are you using to actually record the distance? It'll be done on a, we have to have a certified calibrated treadmill. So basically, you know, we'll have to either pay for somebody to calibrate it or the company themselves will have to provide it, but we just have to have this certificate of calibration and the distance will just be recorded by the distance on the treadmill itself. So it's on the 30th of June. And where, where are you doing? Whereabouts? It's going to be Cleveland, Ohio at the Cleveland fitness club. Are you inviting people to come and watch you? Yes, yes, yes. And that's another stipulation of Guinness is that it has to be open to the public for the whole event. And so the gym is actually going to stay open all 24 hours. So people can come and we expect the news to show up and all that. Is it going to be streamed? Are you going to stream it live? We do plan to hopefully we can make that work out the way we want. But yeah, we do plan to. Do you want to plug again? Just give us a one final plug for the date, the venue, the date, exactly what you're doing with your next run. Okay. Yeah, so I'm going to try to break the 24 hour treadmill Guinness World Record in Cleveland, Ohio at the Cleveland fitness club, June 30th, 12 p.m. And this is going to be a fundraiser for the Heron Project, which is a charity that assists people that with recovery from addiction and also provides education to children and communities and provides support and assistance to families and just a really, really great cause, I feel like. So we're really excited about it. And you can look us up if you're interested. Brilliant. Tara, it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you and kind of meet you virtually for the first time. We've chatted on Facebook quite a lot. Fantastic what you're doing. Good luck with it. Thank you. And thank you again. It's been great being here talking to you. Well, I'm sure we'll talk again soon. Take care. Thanks. Bye. Bye.