 So I am a mathematician. I'm also an ultra-runner, which really just means anything over the standard marathon distance, usually on trails. And I would argue that mathematics and ultra-running pretty much exactly the same thing. So that's what I'm going to talk about today, mainly focusing on community. I would not be a mathematician or a trail runner if it weren't for the amazing community of people that have motivated, supported, and helped me along the way. And so my goal, really, for this talk is to inspire all of you to just go forth and be a good math citizen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell a few stories from my ultra-running experiences that I found have really paralleled with my mathematics experiences. The first one is this idea of recognition, very simple idea. I have had so much trouble thinking of myself as an ultra-runner. I've run over 50 miles eight times and I still just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I might be an ultra-runner. What it took is it took the recognition of ultra-runners that I really respected, people that started talking to me like I was an ultra-runner and inviting me on their crazy loop runs, they're ridiculous. And it took that before I finally was able to call myself an ultra-runner. And if it weren't for them, I would have never signed up for this 50K trail race that I just did three weeks ago and I actually finally felt like an ultra-runner for the first time. Similarly in mathematics, I kept waiting to feel like a mathematician. I was like, all right, all right, when I go to grad school, I'm gonna be a mathematician. Okay, no, maybe when I get my first paper or okay, once I get my PhD, well, I finally feel like a mathematician. No, none of those things worked. What it took was it took mathematicians in my field who I really respected treating me like a mathematician and valuing my mathematics and calling me a mathematician before I could call myself a mathematician. And so I guess the moral of the story is really just, let's recognize and respect each other's mathematics. It feels a little silly to say that, but it actually makes a huge difference. It made a huge difference for me feeling like I belong. But that's kind of the end, like, oh, I feel like I belong. Let's go back to the beginning. When I first started trail running, I hated it. Oh my gosh, it was really hard. I was going up these hills and the hills were hard and I was so slow and I was like so used to road racing where I was fast and now all of a sudden I'm slow and it's really frustrating. And it really didn't help that I was running with this guy. So this guy, you can tell he's freaking gazelle. He like leaps up the hills and he looks back. He's like, oh my gosh, how did you get so far behind me? Really frustrating. But what was great about this guy is he never said, hey, I've just been like naturally gifted with this my whole life. No, he said, I used to be really bad at this and I've been doing this for a lot longer than you. And if you do it for a while, you're gonna be good too. And the crazy thing is, it was true. So I've done it for a while now and last year I ran five trail half marathons and I got second place overall female in every single one. What? Okay, and I actually, most of the passing I did was on the uphill. I used to hate hills. Now they're kind of fun. In mathematics, we are so often surrounded by gazelles. But sometimes we are gazelles. And I think as mathematicians, when we're surrounded by gazelles, we've kind of gotten used to like, okay, I'm gonna put my head down, I'm gonna work really hard and it's gonna be okay. But I think more importantly, when we are the gazelles, we need to recognize and be open about the amount of time, effort, and struggle that it took us. Because that'll help the people around us kind of stop seeing us as gazelles and it'll make us human. Final thing I wanna talk about is this 50K I just did because it's kind of recent. So I was training for this and it was kind of awful. This is my training plan. A lot of miles. I had to run 26 miles twice. Those are trail miles. That's a really big time commitment. It was kind of horrible, really actually. And I think the whole reason was because I did every single mile by myself. I logged all of those miles by myself. And I started to feel like it just wasn't for me. Flash forward to race day. It was the greatest day of my life. And the reason for that is because I had my family there and my dog. And a crew cheering me on. I made a friend and we ran 10 miles together and we kept like high fiving each other. It was so weird. And what I learned is that when I'm running with people I run faster and further than I had ever done in a training run. And so a lot in isolation. And we almost cheer the isolation of mathematics. So let's just remember that together we can do hard things and usually better. I wanted to end with this because my sister-in-law, she's a former track star. She just posted this on Facebook like literally two days ago and I thought it was kind of amazing. So she said, the lovely combination of age and mom mod have certainly made this challenge a great one. So as my stiff and sore self hits the roads I start to think about all the fun memories I have of running. Interestingly enough they don't include winning or necessarily running fast. Although I do enjoy both of those things. But our comprised of friends and teammates and competitors that have made me laugh, work hard and run strong. So let's all just remember to be good math teammates and make each other laugh, work hard and math strong. Thank you.