 The miles don't matter to Norma Bastidas. They gather in pool like the rain she pushes through or the tears she so often shed. I have been an endurance athlete in breaking records, but you know there was a part of me that not a lot of people knew that he was a survivor of sexual violence and human trafficking. Born to a desperately poor family in Mexico, Norma's father died when she was 11. So when a friend told her about a modeling job in Japan, she says she saw it as her big break in a lifetime of dark clouds. I remember my mother saying, I'm afraid, but I can't stop you because this is the only chance. You know? And we all desperately want it to be true. It wasn't. Bastidas says the agency delivered her to a member's club who told her she must repay all the money it took to bring her to Japan as an escort. You cannot go to the police. I cannot go home until I pay my debt. And that left her, she says, vulnerable to all kinds of abuse. I was drugged on my way home from to the club, drugged and beaten. Nobody wanted to help me because I had been a bar girl, so I had no value. After several years, Bastidas managed to pay off her debts and leave. She later married, moved to Canada and had two children. For years, Bastidas says she numbed the pain by drinking, but she realized if she was going to do more than just survive with her children, she would need to thrive. So I started running because I didn't want them to hear me crying at night. Six months later, to everyone's astonishment, Bastidas qualified for one of the world's most prestigious race events, the Boston Marathon. I just became an incredible runner because of the incredible amount of stress that I had to manage. Then she had her big idea. She would break the world record for the longest triathlon in history, and she would do it to send a message. I designed the triathlon to follow human trafficking smuggling route. They didn't quite get it, and then I was showing them all those clips. Brad Riley of the Anti-Slavery Group, I Empathize, soon joined Norma's team. He organized the permits and coordinated operations for the record-breaking attempt. He also documented her journey in a film called Be Relentless. I wanted to look like Angelina Jolie, but I think I look more like, you know, we could work on the wrestler. There's so much water eating my gums too, the inside of, you know, destroying the inside of my mouth. It was very painful. That was probably one of the most painful things I've ever done. The journey took 64 days. All told, Bastidas racked up 3,762 miles, shattering the previous Guinness World Record. Along the way, there were roadside accidents, malfunctioning GPSs and constant inclement weather. But for Bastidas, this was a test that had little to do with punishing waves or pounding the pavement. As an athlete, I'm celebrated because I break world records, but as a survivor of human trafficking, I was shamed. By living large, by being as big as I can be, I'm empowered every single victim. I ran the last two miles with survivors of human trafficking. The healing comes from seeing them, from seeing every single one of those young girls being unbroken. I just want them to be proud of me. I want to do them proud. And for every step she takes, every mile she takes off, Norma Bastidas is proving that somebody once trapped in a nightmare can now live out her dreams. Kyung-la, CNN, Los Angeles. It's still very hard for me to watch it. It's, you know, it's such a, obviously such a personal story. And I mean, even watching that, I just can't, I have a hard time separating myself from the emotion, the roller coaster. You know, and I'm here to, you know, to kind of try to explain how do you go from, you know, being a victim to being a champion, because that's exactly what happened in my life. And I mean, we just saw a summary of my life. And I'm going to tell you that I wish you had been that quick. I mean, so many times, and for so long, I couldn't find a way out. And I mean, so many people ask me, you know, if I wanted to quit during the triathlon, and by the time I was already committed and I was, you know, I became that person, the athlete, the empowered athlete, there was no quitting. It was just simply managing. You know, quitting was, you know, for me, it was the times when I really had a hard time trying to understand, you know, the situation of how I got there and also how I could get out or help myself. I think to better explain how, you know, I decided to speak openly because this is something that, you know, it had happened to me and I had left behind and I was living a normal life. And I was happy that people do you know, I had moved to Canada, became a single parent, and they had no idea. And I was glad for that, you know, I was put in the spot and I was shamed for so long that I was just glad to become invisible. But about 11 years ago, I was a sales executive, winning awards and a single parent of two wonderful kids. My oldest was 11 and my youngest was eight. And you know, it was just one phone call that changed my life. And you know, the life as I knew it, the life that I thought I had built my castle just shattered like it was, you know, it would just built out of glass. I received a call that told me that there was something wrong with my son. He had run into playground structure and they thought he broke his nose. And you know, we went through the testing to try to figure it out, how could just not see, you know, a big playground structure led to the diagnosis that he was losing his sight. He had a condition called Conrad Dystrophy and it was progressive, it wasn't curable, and it often led to blindness. And with that phone call, I, everything completely collapsed. I became an employee rather quickly. And the secrets that I had been keeping for so long, I could not deny them anymore for one reason. Because if my kids are at risk, if I did not confront what had happened to me, I couldn't help my kids. I couldn't turn to drinking. It was not an option as a parent. But being present was so hard for the one reason. You know, the first time I was raped, I was 11 years old. And it was by a relative that I always had to look after. After my father died, I moved and lived with my mom's family because we didn't have money. And I often went to my grandparents' house to look after my grandfather who was blind. And he took advantage of his power and of a child. And he raped me. And now I was, my son was going blind. And I had to become the voice for him. And I was going to do it. But the universe was throwing something at my feet and he was just a bit too much for me to understand. But I loved my son so much that I was going to go all the way in. And also, the parallels were lost, you know? Single parent, my son was 11. They were at risk for the same thing happening when I lost my job to my kids. A life of violence that I had suffered just because my mom was a single parent and we were five and she didn't have a job. I just, I was just determined to see it through it to break the cycle of violence. So I did. I confronted. And unfortunately for me, I opened that door. But that door led to a long, long hallway into many of the doors that I had to. That was just the beginning of a life. And now when I tell my story, people always wonder how it went for so long and how did it happen so often? It's because of, you know, by the time I was raped at the last time, at 24, indirect and beaten, almost killed, everybody had ridden me off as a troubled 24-year-old. And everybody had forgotten that I was an 11-year-old who had been raped and nobody helped. Conveniently. And society plays such a high value on women's virginity and modesty that when that happened to me, I lost all my value to society and to every male that came after that from classmates, from strangers on the street, from the police, when I went to report a crime. You know, everybody just simply saw me as an statistic, a number that, you know, one in three women are violently assaulted. So I became a statistic, something that people just accept, you know, that certain women deserve that kind of treatment. I didn't understand much about the human trafficking part. It was, you know, my desire to see it through and to help as many people as possible. My son became a beautiful, it's now a 21-year-old. He's a visual artist, actually. He went from a scared kid that, you know, didn't want to go to school because he didn't know how he was managed, his life, to become in a very confident chain, so carving, you know, blind kid who goes to the most prestigious visual art school, the first in the history of the school to go with a C&I dog. And that taught me so much about you deal with a situation when you become silent and when you fall to pressure for because of convenience. You know, there were so many teachers, so many that wanted me not to raise an alarm when I kept going back to school and remind him that my son could sit on the back because he soon couldn't see the front. It was, you know, it was to their convenience because I was giving them more work. But they forgot he wasn't more work. He was somebody's child and he deserved every single opportunity. So instead of doing what I've done for myself so often, which is just move away, keep quiet and try to disappear, this time I went full on making them accountable and said I will not accept this anymore. And every single time I took that decision, he became stronger and my conviction became, my actions, they were differently. So now I knew what to do. My son is, you know, he's 21 and he's doing amazingly. I wanted to do something that, you know, for everybody else that is behind me that is still experiencing this kind of violence. You know, thankfully my life is different. I don't have to be afraid anymore. My relationships, I just remarried two years ago to a wonderful man who is respectful and actually had a wedding at a human trafficking shelter. They were my bridesmaids and I wore the widest dress ever because I wanted them to see that we are so worthy, that we are very, very worthy. But I wanted, there was something in me, it's not about me being safe. It's about the fact that he's still happening. That was enough for me to want to do something about it. To talk about violence, you know, after I became a well-known athlete for, because of the stress, I, you know, simply started to rack up awards and win races and everybody wanted to know what I wanted to do. I did my first record in honor of my son, the 777 run for site, seven ultras, seven contenders, seven months. And find race for organization that helped me along with my son, 250,000. Everybody wanted to know where I came from. That's when I made the decision to grab a pack. And I ran from Vancouver, Canada, where I currently live, all the way to Maslan, Mexico where I was born. By myself, with a backpack, just walked out of my house unsupported. And it was the first time I ever talked about it when I entered my country in Mexico. I wanted to talk to them that violence, it was something that, it was everywhere. And I counter, no matter where I went in the world, that it should have been stopped when it happened in my hometown, in my, that it was the fact that, you know, if we don't eradicate it, where we stand, it's going to follow us everywhere. So I wanted to empower everybody in my community and everybody that I touch along the way. And I wrote a book that is called Running Home to talk about these. And when I entered Tijuana, that's when I made the girls that were my bridesmaids. And that was the first time I heard about human trafficking. To tell you the truth, when I was in Japan, I had no idea I had been a victim. You know, back then, we're talking about 86, it wasn't even a crime. It wasn't considered, it became a law 2002. And because of how we portrayed victims, you know, how we still see them as chained and beaten and, and I did not identify myself because I had consented to so many things, which is an offer to employment sign contract. And so many times, I didn't even fight. There was no point. You know, I had been almost killed so many times. At this point, I knew that there was nobody that was ever going to help me. So sometimes surrendering and trying to find a way out becomes the best option. And I have done it so often that I didn't identify. It was not until I worked with the United Nations that they told me the guidelines of what makes a human trafficking victim. And I became enraged just the thought that this wasn't something that it was, you know, by chance, I had been prey on from the beginning. Every single thing that happened to me, it was with the intention of that happening. And I couldn't ignore it anymore. So, but I couldn't find a lot of people that wanted to, you know, talk about human trafficking specifically, because as one person when I went into Mexico City, there was one potential sponsor for it. She just lost, you know, she just lost her compulsion. She said, I don't want to, if you want to do it for all the reasons except human trafficking, because I don't want to be involved with those women. I was so angry, because I was like, I am one of those women, you know. So I just went home and I thought, what can I do that the people would, it had to be something crazy that it can blow people's mind. The record originally was only 45 kilometers swimming, 2,000 cycling and, you know, 500 running, something like that. But the thought of swimming in 42 kilometers was something that kept me at night. And I always say, courage, it's, you feel it. You know, if it does not terrify me, it is worth doing, you know. And that's the thing that it kept me. And by the time I already started the world record, I was committed. It was, I already had broken the record by the times I went back to my computer and tried to figure it out. And I gave up and I thought, there's no way I can learn to swim. And I thought, yes, you can. You speak Japanese now. You speak three languages, you know, you qualify for Boston. And then I would, something will stop me and think, but it's ocean, it's open water, how about the sharks and all those things. And every single time I tried pitching the story and I found resistance, that's when I get better. When I find a lot of resistance. And I always tell myself, every single time a door closes, instead of, it's the communication we have in our brain. Instead of saying, oh, this is the end. I know this, like, wow. I see it's like, this is wonderful. Because the more resistance that I know, that I find the strength to do it even better. And that's what I kept telling myself. It's like, wow. And I woke up excited. I was like, I wonder what can I do? So I call the team and I said, let's just not break it. I want to shatter it. I said, I just want that to stand for a long time. I want to stand tall for the first time. And give an interview as a Mexican, as a female, and as a survivor of human trafficking, I want to stand strong. And I want to be called, again, as World Record holder. So we mapped the route from Cancun. And I decided to end in Washington to sort of connect to both countries, following the human trafficking route in Cancun that connects Kirby and Central South America, Mexico. And then went to Washington to, you know, because that's kind of connected all the places where women and children might end up in the United States. And when Guinness gave me the numbers, because there's a formula for triathlons, it's 3% swimming, 78% cycling, and in the 20, whatever percent running, I mean, had to really when the team called me, and I had a hard time really not shaking because they told me that I had to swim 193 kilometers or 122 miles. That's a big difference between 42 miles, you know, and I did not want to let them know that I was terrified. And they knew that I couldn't swim. But why do that? Because I was I am so tired of people assuming that what I do is easy. That, you know, standing here and telling you, and, you know, that every single time I do something worth noticing, people just go well, because you were born talented, or because, but they ignore the amount of time it takes for somebody to do something. So I wanted to say that with passion, tenacity, and by not giving up, I can accomplish and I will learn to swim. And I will accomplish that. So I just wanted it was just sort of a way for me to symbolically tell them that when I talk about ending human trafficking, that people believe me, because you're just showing them how you start. If I woke up every day, every time on the world record, I just woke up and, you know, after swimming 16 kilometers or 10 miles a day, you know, if I woke up, it's like, wow, I have, you know, six more thousand, you know, to go, I wouldn't do it. But all I have to do is just focus on what was in front of me. And just go with it. Managing the pain was, you know, it was difficult, but I make sense of it. I'm teaching my body a difference between pain and suffering. I have had pain for so long in my life, physical pain from all the times I've been, I've been hurt, you know, how many times when it rains, I can't stand the pain in my right hand because of breaking my hand, trying to escape once from a bathroom. I suffer headaches from multiple concussions of being used as a punching bag so many times. That my body knows, but I am rewriting, rewiring, that now I'm teaching my body about the good kind of pain, the pain that happens when you have a workout, when you accomplish something great. Pain is what sometimes is necessary to accomplish something worthy. Suffering is where I come from. It doesn't escape you. It's when it is a pain that you can't stop. It's not up to you. And it just, it's with you no matter what you do. So now I'm trying to create rewiring everything so my body learns a different kind of dialogues. And that's the reason why I am so good at breaking those records because, you know, I can differentiate between, you know, the pain of swimming. I just, you know, every single time I was having a hard time and I don't think I can go any farther. I just close my eyes and think this is where most people quit. This is it. This is the moment where most people turn around and then they go home and they spend the rest of their lives telling everybody why they couldn't do it. And it feels good at the beginning. And people will nod and will say, yeah, you're right. That's horrible. And you just going to these, you know, have the explanation of explaining why your feet, I mean, you know, you know, my face was so destroyed from the jellyfish, the constant stinging of the jellyfish, the salt that was just dissolving the skin inside and outside, inside of my mouth and outside of my face, the larva of the ocean harboring in my skin suit that I had to wear because of the second degree burns from the sun. It was like having chicken pox every single night that I came out of the ocean and I had to do it every single day. After coming, I had to physically go swimming to the ocean to continue swimming laps so they could count. And I was going towards towards pain. But every single moment I said, this is it. This is it. And I would not be the one of because I do not want to be just anybody. In that physical mental ability to say this is where most people quit. And this is where I am. That empowered me. And that's what I want. I want for the people that I represent other victims to know. Because I want them to have higher expectations. We expect so little from, you know, women's of sexual violence. We just expect them to not cry to, you know, not complain too much. I want them to dream bigger. I want them to know that that's what happened to them. It's not who they are. So that's why in the difference of why I'm doing the things now is because for myself I couldn't do much. But once I made my life about somebody else, that's when I can break any records and I become unstoppable once I'm made up my mind. Why? Because the purpose of it was bigger than myself. Just the thought of my kids not having the life they deserve. The thought of more victims not having the opportunities because we're great at understanding. But we still deny them their rights to education, to opportunities, to employment, to marriages. We still deny them. And that's unacceptable to me. So once I found that purpose, the reason why I had to get better, it becomes a lot easier. In terms of planning, I mean, you know, it's, it's a difficult situation. I mean, all I had to do was to really become an expert on anything that I tackle. And that's how I was able to understand I educated education was incredible, not only in the physical preparation, but also becoming an expert on anything they undertook. Because there's always going to be resistance from the beginning. I mean, I will be, you know, very naive if I told you that when I, as soon as I opened my mouth, everybody clapped and embraced me. There was an incredible amount of resistance at the beginning. And I'm going to tell you just, just like we were listening. You know, when I first talked about what happened in my life, and I ran to Mexico and I came back, I lost my house. I lost all the sponsorship because they had known me as a runner in a World Record Hurl there of a mother of, you know, a son who was going blind. And when they heard my story, a lot of I broke up in a relationship and I lost it all. It was like deja vu all over. And that's the way we reward courage. But once I made a decision that this is something that I was going to follow through, I couldn't just take it back and said, well, you know, I'm going to follow through until I lose my house. It was just something that you just simply do. One of my less favorite things, it's about when I know my purpose, and I know where I'm going, just because I educate myself and I become an expert and I know exactly what it takes and what I need to do. It never waver. It doesn't matter how many people tell me that it cannot be done. I simply focus on what I need to be do and to find a way. It's simple. And that's why they call the documentary relentless. Because every single time my team was so frustrated of every single time they came to tell me why we had problems doing what I intended to do, they spend the next 20 minutes on a conference call telling me what are the problems. And I said, enough. I am so tired of listening to these. Next time we have this conversation, I want to waste my time. I want you to spend 20 minutes telling me how we're going to accomplish these and with solutions. That's what they call it relentless because they were like, wow, she's relentless. But that's what it takes. That's what it takes for anything. You know, in a time my life so personally with, you know, with my purpose, but also with how I lead my life in general. I really don't know a lot more that I can tell you. I mean, I just want to let you know that, you know, greatness takes a lot of courage. And unless you risk something, it is in courage, you know. And the bigger the goal and the reason why I sometimes struggle so much is because I remind myself that this wasn't something that was meant for me, according to society. A child, poor, born in Mexico, from an educated parents weren't supposed to be trilingual athletes living in several countries. And the resistance comes from that, from society and people's expectations of where I belong. And the challenges in the roadblocks that I find is because I am shattering those expectations and I'm creating ways for me to tell the people that it's not up to them. And I learned that when I ran my first marathon when they told me that I couldn't qualify for Boston. And I qualified within six months. I thought never again would I ever let all the people's expectations or limits determine what I'm capable of. And that's what I've done and that's what I do every single day because, you know, I just want the women and the girls that I am their mentor to understand that, you know, if they reach for the stars, I really want them to expect to touch them and to understand that we may not have control of what happened to us. We definitely have control on what we do about it. Thank you.