Sole Sisters Interview w/Camille Malmquist

Soul Sisters Podcast: Interview with Camille

Speaker: You're listening to Soul Sisters, brought to you by Running Scared Media.

Justine: I'm Justine

Kylie: and I'm Kylie, and we're here with Camille.

Justine: Yes, captain of MRC, the run club that we talk about so much on this show.  She just ran Mckethan slash, I guess. Put on the race and we'll get more into that soon. But let's start with just how did you even get into running in the first place?

Camille: Well, I started running. I was in my mid thirties and I all of a sudden could not put my pants on anymore.  Like, what is happening? What do you mean? I can't just eat whatever the hell I want all the time. And so it was like the most efficient way to burn some calories was the initial thing.  I had run track in high school. I ran hurdles in high school and played rugby in college, which involved a fair amount of running, but I didn't do pretty much anything for the next twelve years. And then all of a sudden it was like, wait a second, I need to be active. I pulled out whatever old shoes I had and went out for a run, and for a while I was convinced that I couldn't go more than two miles because I would just get these horrible blisters on the bottoms of my feet. And somebody was like, well, what kind of socks are you wearing?  And I was like, I don't know, cotton ones. They're like, no, no, no, you need better socks.  And it was like a game changer. All of a sudden it's like, oh, damn, now I can go three miles.

Kylie: Do you need. Because Justine's always on my case about the type of socks I wear running.

Camille: You definitely do not want all cotton socks. That is for sure.  You definitely get, like, a running specific sock that fits really snugly. You don't want it to be loose.  That's gonna, like, rub and make blisters. I personally really like toe socks. I run almost all my runs in toe socks.

Kylie: Is that what you bought after somebody told you to get running socks?

Camille: No. Initially, I just got, like some regular running socks. Over time, I started getting blisters in between my toes and I was like, maybe I need some toe socks.

Justine: Oh my gosh, I've never gotten blisters in between my toes, but I didn't know that was the solution. I didn't really know why you wore toe socks.

Camille: I think the material for running socks is like nylon, or it's something that's moisture wicking. Yeah, because you want something that's gonna keep your feet dry and, like, temperature regulated. So you don't want them too hot, you don't want them too cold.

Justine: That's also crazy that you learned it so early on. It took me, I think like a year and a half, like halfway through marathon training. It was probably a conversation with you, but I was kind of in the same boat. I was convinced, like, how am I supposed to run a marathon anytime?  I do, like over half the blister situation is horrible. And then somebody told me about running socks.  How have I ran this long not knowing the specific gear you need? It's a game changer.  You're just like, oh, this is so much more comfortable than I thought. It was.  Like, you don't realize your feet are uncomfortable. Your runs going to be pretty miserable.  So where were you at the time when you started running? Were you in the US?

Camille: No, I was living in Paris at the time. Some friends had organized a run for the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Justine: Oh, that was twenty fourteen or something.

Camille: And they were like, we're going to do this five-k. And I was like, oh, I want to join you, but I can't, but I can't go that far.  But I'll meet you partway. And that was when some people were like, hold on. Like what you need.  You need better socks, you need better shoes. And I, you know, went and as opposed to, like, whatever sort of vaguely athletic type shoes I had in my closet that were ten years old. And when I finally went out and bought like proper running socks and proper running shoes, it was like, wow, a game changer.

Justine: You're like, wait, maybe I'll just never stop.

Camille: Yeah, I guess so.  I mean, at the time it was it was a long journey because I for a long time couldn't even really imagine running a 10-K. I thought that was insane. How could anybody possibly run for an hour? That was that was wild to me.

Justine: And how many hours did you run yesterday?

Camille: Well, we were on the road for Six hours. My actual running time was four hours and twenty one minutes.

Justine: Is that just all the stops and everything?

Camille: The aid station stops, the stoplights, the regrouping, the photos, all of that.

Kylie: Wow, that's so much extra time.

Camille: It's a lot. It adds up and it's all on your feet.  So, yeah, whether you're running it or standing there, it's still time on feet. Grueling.

Justine: So you started running in Paris, and then how did you hear about MRC?

Camille: We were at a birthday party for a friend of ours who was a brewer there.  He had found out about this thing. He's like, oh, this guy is starting this run club, Mackellar Run Club chapter here in Paris. We're gonna run a five K and get a free beer at the end.  We were like, that sounds all right. It's already gonna run tomorrow anyway, so I might as well get a free beer out of this situation. And my husband, Nick had not been running at all, but I got him to come out for that. The incentive of the free beer was was enough to get him to come out for a thirty minute run.  We met some really cool people there. It was May of twenty fifteen, we did the monthly meetups with the Paris chapter. After a couple times, we were like, hey, when do we turn this into an all day event?  Because we really had fun hanging out together. And so we plotted out a proto brewery run. We started out at out at our friend Mike's brewery in eastern Paris and basically ran bar hop.  We started there. We had a beer, we ran to another bottle shop and just sort of plotted out a route where we ran. It ended up being, I think, about fourteen K and, you know, seven stops or something. And we stopped for lunch and we really slowed down after that. But we finished the whole thing, and that was enough to get us on the radar of the MRC Global People. We were nominated for chapter of the year that year, even though we had only about eight people in the club, but they thought that that was really cool.

Justine: And so they're like, you really understand the spirit of McKellar Running Club.

Camille: Exactly, exactly. So I mean, of course we lost to like Rio or whatever, who had like fifty people.  But you know, it's fine. We just didn't have the votes.

Justine: Put MRC Paris on the map.

Camille: That right, that's right. And so we ran with them for a year. The one year anniversary of the MRC Paris chapter fell during our going away party week, because we were moving back to the States.  We definitely want this in our lives. There's no chapter in Reno and we get to Reno.  We're gonna start one. And yes, as soon as we were on the ground, we were looking around for a place to be a clubhouse somewhere that would be open at eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning, which is not, you know, turns out like not a lot of beer bars are open that early on.

Justine: Fair.

Camille: We met the owners of pinion. They were a brand new bar at the time, got chatting with them and just kind of dovetailed nicely that their new business was willing to host us. And our first MRC Reno run had four people and the second one had eight people.  So we're like, all right, this is good. This is going in the right direction. I think it was the third one when we actually got some people that we didn't personally know. That was when many of our OGs showed up on the third run. We also had gotten some shirts and stuff to give away for that one.  So we had some swag to give away. Jesse won a shirt that time and we were like, well, now you gotta come back, dude.  Like, this is your first run. You showed up here, you won a shirt, so now you got to come back. And now he designs all of our shirts for us.

Justine: Dang. Every part of that is full circle. Anytime I think of MRC, opinion is just hand in hand with that. Can't believe you had to convince and negotiate your way into using them as our home bar.

Camille: Especially convincing. Hey, can you open and have staff come here for the four of us?  Like, I don't know how many more people will show up. We promise at least four.

Kylie: Definitely sounds mutually beneficial for, like, a brand new bar. It's good marketing if you know. Okay, well, definitely have customers this Saturday morning or whatnot.

Camille: Exactly. It worked out well. It was a win win, I think, for us because we had a home base to go and for them because it brought more people in than would probably be there on a Saturday morning normally. And now we have forty people show up to the Saturday run and the beer line is super long and damn why?

Justine: Eleven a m is that just the universal time of Mckellar's?

Camille: That is the universal time of Mckellar's first Saturday. For whatever reason, the mothership we call it is in Denmark. In Copenhagen, their first Saturday run is at eleven a m on first Saturday, so that's when we do it. And then we also have runs on Wednesdays.

Justine: Why Wednesday?

Camille: We had a lot of people, service industry friends. Oh, I work on Saturdays so I can't go or like I'm working late Friday night and I don't want to get up on Saturday and go for a run, whatever. So a lot of people were like, I work on the weekends. What if we did a midweek one in the evening? And that allows maybe a slightly different set of people to be able to come. So we added one Wednesday and then it became two more Wednesdays and then two more Wednesdays.  And now we have all of the Wednesdays are covered. And yeah, pretty much every Saturday is covered now. So we have almost two runs a week every week.

Justine: That really blew up within like the last couple years here too.

Camille: The pandemic obviously changed a lot of things about a lot of people's lives. There was a lot of people who we saw a lot before that, and we didn't see very much after that.  Your lifestyle changes in a lot of ways. During Covid, we had the online bingo cards and stuff.  That was how we met. You was just like we did these little online challenges since we couldn't be hanging out together, we're still kind of doing the same thing, just on our own.  It was actually a pretty good community building thing. We got a lot of new people who are still sticking around today.

Justine: Covid was such a self-discovery moment for me, because I never knew that bingo would be such a motivational thing for me.

Camille: Yeah, it's surprising you're just like, oh, but I can check off a square. Let's go run every day. Those little rewards really do motivate, even though they're silly and not anything tangible.

Justine: But how I started to get really into running was wearing my Apple Watch and getting little monthly trophies when I would reach the goal that the Apple Watch set for me. Like they set a different goal every month to achieve, whether it's like workout twenty days or for this many minutes in the month or something, and it really would encourage me to go on extra runs or walks or whatnot when I wasn't planning on it, because I'm like, if I just do one today, then I will reach the goal, so I might as well do one today.

Camille: Those little things are really important, whether it's like a goal that you set for yourself.  I am motivated by Strava segments. If I know when I get a PR on Strava segment, that's very exciting and very validating.

Justine: Yeah, it keeps you sort of working a little bit harder on different things. It gives you a little extra motivation. What year was the MRC Reno chapter founded?

Camille: Our first run was June of twenty sixteen. We are approaching the ten year anniversary.

Justine: We are approaching the ten year anniversary.

Camille: That's right. And we actually get to have it on the first Saturday in June, which we did not know at the time.  We had literally just landed fresh off the boat from France. We did not realize the magnitude of the toe.  Oh yeah. We did not know that every runner in town was doing that that weekend. And so our first run, I mean, we didn't know very many people, so there's only four of us at that first run. But at the same time, every runner in town was participating in the tow.

Justine: Yeah.

Camille: And could not show up to the anniversary run or the first run.

Justine: Yeah, but this year the tow is the last weekend in May.

Camille: So we get to have our tenth anniversary on the first weekend in June. It's kismet.

Justine: Kismet. Any tips on starting or growing a running club?

Camille: Yeah, well, find your niche. Find your community.  Where? Ours is very much socially oriented. The run is as important as the social part afterwards. It's kind of our niche and we want everybody to feel welcome.  We don't want to lose anybody on their first run. We'd say we're no drop. So we regroup at all of the major turns to make sure that everybody knows where they're going. And we just want to be as inclusive as possible, get from new runners to like really seasoned runners. Everybody in between. You'll find somebody to chat with on the run. You'll find somebody to chat with at the social hour afterwards.

Justine: That's a good way of looking at it.  Just saying. MRC has a niche. The other run clubs of Reno, whether they are aware that they have a niche or not.  I kind of consider them in like specific groups. Silver State Striders is like the hardcore one.

Camille: Exactly, because they're like long distance runners.

Justine: They do. Yeah. Do they do twenty mile runs on Saturday?

Camille: I mean, not that we did that yesterday, but that's a special occasion.  Special occasion. They do that every week.

Justine: And then there's trail sisters and trail creatures.  Is it. Trail creatures is more hardcore version of Trail Sisters.

Camille: They're both trail running clubs.  Both trail running clubs, I think. Well, Trail Sisters is women oriented women.  So Trail Creatures is co-ed. And yeah, they're all they're all pretty speedy.

Justine: There's another one that I think it's called like Moms on the run or something. I joined their Facebook group.

Camille: You don't have to be a mom. You have to be a woman. Though I think for it, they start at like seven a m.

Justine: Yeah. And I'm like a dog mom.

Camille: So, yeah, you probably bring your dog with you to prove your mom's status, but I'm like, oh, seven a m is too early on, like a Saturday.

Justine: Are you crazy?

Camille: Are you crazy? The moms are up at that time.

Justine: Yeah, that's when they have time to do it. But yeah, there's like a niche for every type of run club here.

Camille: Yeah. Find your niche. And we owe a lot to Catherine who took over running our social media.  She's like, do you mind if I do this? I'm like, are you kidding? Like, I suck at this.  Please do it. That's that's awesome that you enjoy that.

Justine: So how did you meet Catherine?

Camille: Catherine showed up, I think, at run number six. It was January of twenty seventeen and it was really snowy. There was only about five or six of us at that run.  Okay. That was when we met Catherine.  Oh, this is somebody who's like a leader. And, you know, she loved taking pictures. She clearly love taking pictures and documenting everything. So like eventually she was like, do you mind if I just do the Instagram?  I'm like, that's great. Like, please do it because we're not as focused on that.

Justine: So from one run she's like, give me the log in.

Camille: I mean it was, it was it was a few months after that. I was not like immediate, but I'm not even sure when we started that Instagram, I don't remember.

Justine: Wait, then how were are you advertising your runs?

Camille: It was on Facebook.

Justine: Whoa. Okay.

Camille: And I guess it was on a Reddit thread or something. The third run, when we had people show up who we didn't know. I think that was from somebody had posted it on Reddit.

Justine: That's crazy. You don't know who posted it?

Camille: I don't. I still don't to this day.

Justine: Kylie and I had something similar because Kylie runs books and booze. Nevada, a book club and same thing like the first time, which I think was what, Kylie a year into our book club or a year and a half or something. The first time people showed up that weren't just our friends, they found us on Reddit.

Camille: Interesting.

Justine: And it's like, who posted us on Reddit? Who reads Reddit?

Camille: Yeah, I guess lots of people I know I would never use it for what events are happening in my town.  No googling a question. Sometimes it'll be like a Reddit Reddit thread will have like a whole conversation about whatever topic it is that I'm looking for.

Justine: Yeah. Kylie's younger than us. Do you use Reddit differently, Kylie?

Kylie: I'm not much of a Redditor, but I do know people who are. But I think what happened with the book club specifically was somebody posted, I'm uterino, I'm a female in my mid thirties or something looking for clubs or where can I go? And a bartender of one of the bars we visited shouted us out, was like, oh, this book club comes in!  They seem to be like women only your age group. I think this is what they're called. Which was so just crazy because, like, I don't even know who that bartender was. But when someone told me about that post, I did go on there, and I linked the Facebook so that people could find it easier from there.

Camille: Yeah, I didn't even think to post on Reddit, but apparently that's the place to go.

Kylie: It's kind of smart for the bartender. It's like, yeah, come here with all your friends.  Yeah, I swear there's a group. If you tell a bunch of people that there will be a book club and then they just show up expecting it, then they could just make their own.  All these, like, lost. Everybody just shows up with a book and they're like, were you here for book club? I'm here for book club.

Justine: Okay, okay, let's make a book club. And speaking about the club niches, because I was like, what is the book clubs niche? I think our niche is that we go for drinks instead of coffee drinks.

Kylie: I feel like most book clubs are like morning brunch over coffee book clubs.

Justine: Yeah, like, no, we need booze. We kind of took a page out of McCullough's book. We're like, the social aspect needs to be as important as the reading.

Camille: Yes, I really like that.

Justine: Let me copy that down. And then we also took a little of DJ trivia in there too. That's a big part of book club now unexpectedly.

Camille: So to be fair, that's how we found out about it, because we went to a bar with the book club, and there happened to be DJ trivia that night and we're like, oh my gosh, wait.

Justine: True, we should keep doing it. And going to book club where DJ trivia is.

Camille: People who like to read probably also know lots of things and like to play trivia. There's a good overlap there in the interest set.

Justine: So you said that mix niche is the social aspect. We don't usually do long runs, but this weekend we did and it's the marathon. How did that come about?

Camille: So the Mckethan started. I was training for my first ultra, which was arch's fifty K, and that race was in January of twenty twenty three. Initially, I had a marathon on my training plan. It was the same weekend as Kim, but I didn't want to run Kim because I didn't want to spend all that money and travel. It just seemed like a whole lot of hassle. But I didn't really want to draw out my own marathon route. I was like, wait, the McCarran loop is almost a marathon distance. If I run from my house out to McCarran, you know, I drew out the route and figured out how to get it to twenty six point two miles.  All right. Well, I guess I'm going to do this. And then I got injured. It was originally going to be in the first weekend of December. I postponed it for three weeks and then my knee still was not better, so I postponed it again. It ended up mid January and it ended up being my very last long run before the ultra. And I put it out there to the run club. I said, hey guys, like I'm doing this thing and I would really love it if anybody wants to join me for any part of it. I was definitely not expecting anybody to like, run the whole marathon with me because that would be crazy. Come out and join me for any part of it and it'll be fun. And it turned out that I didn't run a single step of that marathon by myself. I started out with my husband, Nick ran with me from home out to McCarran, and we picked up Sarah and John there at eclipse, and we started heading up. And then we got to plum and Nick turned around and ran back home, and Sarah and John continued with me all the way up the hill. And we got down to Lakeside, and we picked up Alyssa, and the four of us come around to Miraloma, where we got a whole bunch of you. Justine, you joined up with us there, and Jill and Mark and people jumping in, jumping out, had support cars kind of following us, and I was posting every hour so people could find us. Hey, this is where we are now if you're looking for us. And you had a bunch of people ran up from the end, came back down every single step, I had people with me, which was great, and it was really helpful. When I was on my ultra, I just was thinking about like, oh, I'm at mile twenty, like, who is with me here? And it just it made me smile. It gave me something nice to think about.

Justine: Oh, that is cool. Where would I have been during Mckethan?

Camille: Exactly, exactly. And so everybody had so much fun doing part of it with me that they were like, you have to do this again next year.

Justine: You're like, run a marathon every year, right? Run this McCarran loop every year.

Camille: And we just did it for the fourth time. We had, I think it was nineteen people finished the whole thing yesterday, which is huge. That's like triple what we did last year and double the year before that.

Justine: It really does seem to grow every year. There's more people finishing the entire marathon.

Camille: Yeah. Even though you don't have to do the whole thing, you can do any part of it. But a lot of people want to do the whole thing. The McCarran loop is pretty iconic, and if you live in Reno and you're a runner, it is kind of like one of those bucket list things that you want to do.

Justine: So I drive the McCarran loop.

Camille: Yeah, it's meant for driving. There are a few spots that are not very runner friendly, but mostly it's okay. McCarran Boulevard is such a main road in Reno, I don't think they could ever make the McCarran a real race because like to shut down all McCarran would be chaotic.

Justine: No, you couldn't shut down all McCarran. That would that would be yes. It has to be an underground marathon.

Camille: Maybe it'll end up on Reddit, though, and then we'll be in big trouble.

Justine: We'll be in big trouble. I mean, it's already like an underground marathon, isn't it?

Camille: Yeah, except it's not a race. I'm always, like, very clear about that. I'm like, it's basically just like a giant MRC run. We really also still try to be no drop. We do the regrouping. I post the photos every hour so that people can follow along where we are. And we've got a couple of major regrouping aid stations at Miraloma and at the McDonald's at pyramid.

Justine: Oh, the chicken nuggets aid station. They love it. So did you come up with the name marathon or how did that come about?

Camille: That's very clever. I called it Mac Marathon, and Justine is actually the one who coined McCarren. But it really stuck because it's so good.

Justine: Justine was you.

Kylie: Whoa, dude, that wasn't even me setting you up or anything. I genuinely didn't know. Wow. Okay, SEO SEO, do you have any plans to change up the McCarren in the future.

Camille: I'm considering going in the opposite direction next year for the fifth one. Just just to mix it up. Five anniversary run for the fifth time. Let's change it up. See what it's like when we go the other way.

Justine: How come we haven't changed it? It's always counterclockwise.

Camille: It's a good route that way. The start and finish is at the lower point of a valley, let's say. So there's a hill on either side, but the hill to the south. The counterclockwise direction is the steeper hill. It's not as long, but it's steeper. So get that hill out of the way while everybody's still fresh. Yeah. And then from there you go down. And then it's very flat for like a lot of the back half. And then you get to the last eight miles and you have to start climbing again. That's actually, I think, a bigger hill. I think there's more elevation gain on that final hill, but it's more gradual. Just seems like that was the way to do it. But mix it up. We'd try it the other way. Maybe it's great. Who knows?

Justine: Yeah, I guess you don't know until you try it. You did do some other things this year. You guys had the bibs.

Camille: We did make bibs this year. MRC sent us this race managing software, and we were just kind of trying to figure out how to use it. And we were just kind of like messing around to see, like, what does this do? And it's super clunky. And a lot of people had trouble doing the registration. We were like, well, if we're going to go to the trouble to have registration, let's make bibs. And then yesterday morning when I woke up, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to mark everybody who's completed it already. Just like a little something special for people who have already completed the race. So I put the finish years on. Everybody's in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. I would write that on the bib or, you know, you finished in twenty twenty five. It said that okay, incentive. Exactly. Well, Rachel told me that that was motivation for her. Hers said twenty twenty four. And she's like, I want next year's bib to have more years on it. And it motivated her to finish the whole thing.

Justine: Yeah, because Rachel was gonna do three fourths of it. The plan was I was going to pick her up at the Chicken Nugget aid station, and then she's like, I'm doing the whole thing. Fuck it.

Camille: Yes, I love it, I love it. And her first McKeithen was also unexpected, and she was not. She was not planning on doing the whole thing, and it ended up being her very first marathon, which is amazing. I love that, actually. For me, it was my first time I ever ran a marathon. Distance was marathon. So a storied history of this being a really great first marathon because it's very chill. It's like it's not a race situation, like this is a group run and you've got all that support, which is really nice. External motivation from having friends around you. Both Michael and Pete yesterday finished their first marathon, so.

Justine: So do you always pick an ultra race to train for in the beginning of the year, so that the marathon makes sense for you to run?

Camille: In recent years it has been like a training run. Last year I had the marathon in February, so that was a well placed training run for that. I mean, not necessarily. The first one obviously was a training run for a specific race and then the second one for way too cool. Yeah, which is another early season ultra. So again, it's a good long distance training run. It's funny because I'm not actually training for anything right now. I don't really have anything on the calendar until Toe, but I do have another road marathon right after toe and I'm gonna try to PR so it was good. Little confidence builder for sure.

Justine: Where's that one at?

Camille: That is in Minnesota at grandma's marathon.

Justine: Grandma grandma's marathon.

Camille: It's apparently like the tenth biggest marathon in the country right after CIM.

Justine: No way. Just thinking grandma, I know, why is it called grandma?

Camille: Um, I guess there's a restaurant called grandma's. It's like a pasta restaurant that sponsors it. Or that's how it got started. Their pasta feed the night before is, like, legendary.

Justine: That's pretty cool.

Kylie: So I've only ran two marathons before, and the first one was in Philadelphia and it was large marathon where there's like spectators the entire way. People are trying to give you shots, doughnuts, pizza, whatever, and crowds cheering for you. So that was a really fun marathon. My second marathon was in Lake Tahoe and it was completely deserted. It was just me along the side of the road. I'm hesitant to run another marathon. That's why I've never completed the full marathon loop all at once. I've done every section at this point, but in different years, different years. How do you do ultra runs? Is there that same support throughout? I'm assuming it's a lot more like the Your Tahoe experience.

Camille: I would say you are definitely like you spend a lot of time alone having those memories of like who was with me on this training run sort of picture like other times I was on runs with people. The last ultra I did was the one hundred K, and there were people around for most of the first half, and then it starts spreading out, I think a little bit later in the race, second and third loops. I didn't see nearly as many people the last seven miles. I didn't see anybody else between when I left the the last aid station and when I got to the finish line, I didn't see a single other runner, and that's in the dark. And it was just like. But I had a lot of people texting me. People who were tracking me. People texting. My family was texting me, and my coach was texting me. You're almost there. You're so close. Keep going. That was really helpful. It made me feel less alone.

Justine: That is actually super helpful because I'm thinking even toe. So Camille and I are on toe team, and it's an ultra team. Yeah. So instead of running the normal three legs, you run six. And the longer the race goes on, for, the more there's space between you and other runners. You do run lots of sections alone, some at night, but I think it's knowing that you have a van of teammates to come back to in between each leg, like for sure is so motivational and knowing that there's like so many other people out there doing the same dumb thing that you are.

Camille: Yeah, it feels like all of Reno's doing this dumb thing. Yes. It's like we're just gonna stay up all night and run around Lake Tahoe.

Kylie: Yeah. I was terrified of getting eaten by a bear. There has been bear sightings. There are usually bear sightings.

Justine: Yeah, I wasn't doing the toe, but I was doing a Tahoe run at night.

Camille: Oh, yeah, that's right, the Midnight Express.

Justine: Midnight Express, which I actually first did with Camille. Yes, we did that. I think you posted it on Facebook. You're like, who wants to do this dumb race with me? This is a ridiculous thing. We start at nine pm and we run around Lake Tahoe in the middle of the night.

Camille: In the middle of the night, you can't see it's beautiful, but you can't see anything.

Justine: I know, I don't know why that race was made. It was terrifying. I was like, in the neighborhood with no street lights, that kind of town. And I'm like, if I got eaten by a bear and have nothing on me, I don't have any bear spray. The van people, they would probably never find me in that. Well, they would think I would just got lost. I honestly had so much fun doing it with you, Camille. But yeah, the second year I did it with Kylie. Yay!

Kylie: I was like, she had less fun.

Justine: I was more anxious, I think, because, you know, you're my sister. I was skin in the game. I was kind of scared when Kylie would go out. Oh, it's like eight or nine miles stretches at a time that you run by yourself. So I'd be like, we need to find her halfway.

Camille: And there are there are very few people out there doing that. That is that is a very solo type of race.

Justine: Yes. It was like the end of October because it's around Halloween. Yeah. I tell my husband I'm just scared the entire month of October. Spooky season. Yeah. People have their scary decorations out, you know, talking about scary and scared. What a segway. Camille, do you have any running scared stories?

Camille: If we're talking about bears, I will say when I was running the SOB one hundred K two years ago, I was out there, just passed somebody. As I come around this turn and I see this, like shape in the trail ahead of me and it's like, oh, there's a bear. And it's like pretty big. It's not a baby bear, but it's not a full grown bear either. I'm like, this is something like a juvenile bear. So immediately that's worse because I'm like, oh my God, where is mom? I just kind of stopped in my tracks and was looking up the hill like looking all around. I don't see Mama Bear anywhere. I know that you just do not get between mama and baby. That is the number one rule. And so I just kept my distance and stayed far away. Is moving forward very slowly. And watch this bear is kind of just lumbering along the trail. And finally it just lumbers off the side and went down to the creek. And I was like, okay, now's my chance. Get out of here as fast as possible. Run! Make up that pace.

Justine: Yeah, I actually read. I never finished the book, but it's called something like you are three fourths a bear. Some sort of fraction is in there. I think it's more about how we're all connected to nature. But the first paragraph, they do talk about bears specifically and humans, the bears that are in between ages of like adult and baby, like those juvenile bears. They were comparing them to teenagers and they said they will like, rush you just for fun. Oh, like they're just jerks to be jerks.

Camille: Yeah, they're teenage jerks. So that's terrifying.

Justine: And then I stopped reading the book. I'm like, I don't need to know more about bears. That's all I need to know. We're good. I'm done. I'm already afraid of them. I don't want to be more afraid. Hey, that's actually hilarious, though. They're like who? Like, they're just. They're just fucking with you for fun. Yeah. Specifically, they said, I don't agree with this advice at all, but they were saying in the book that it's actually good to not run away when a juvenile bear rushes at you because they're playing. And if you teach them that you're scared, then they, I guess, become more aggressive, like knowing that they are kind of top dog.

Camille: I know if a bear is juvenile. Exactly. I'm like, I'm not in any. No. Yeah, I'm not an expert. I'm gonna run away from everywhere. I'm sorry. That's not my responsibility to teach the bear those kinds of things. We're onto parents. They should be teaching. Where's the parents? Where's the parents?

Justine: Isn't that what National Park Services are for? To train the bears for us. What was our government used to be paying them for? Like. Hello? Oh, God. Right. Well, there goes the bear training budget we're gonna figure out now through this game that I have come up with. Grab your phone, Camille. Okay, so one of the resolutions that I think is a pretty popular one for people is to stop Doomscrolling, right?

Camille: Yeah, that's a good one.

Justine: I had an idea as to how to motivate somebody to not doomscroll. We're gonna go to our settings and our iPhone and look up screen time. Okay, Kylie, you do this.

Kylie: I don't I don't have this on. I don't want to know. Yeah. Kylie was mortified when I told her about this idea earlier, and she said that we're outing people's addictions, so if you don't want to share it, you don't have to. We'll just tell. We'll share.

Justine: Mine should look like this. Oh, see, I don't have it on.

Camille: What do you mean?

Justine: I was like, I don't want to know. I just turned it off because I hate knowing. It makes me sad when I get this vacation. I could turn it on right now and then turn it off again. Last week's average forty eight minutes.

Justine: So social media or on your phone in general. That's a screen time.

Camille: Total screen time five hours, thirty six minutes. So I guess that's forty eight minutes per day would be my average.

Justine: Is that last week how little she uses her phone? I spend forty eight minutes a day on a single app. I spent last week fifteen hours and seven minutes on social media. Camille used her phone for forty eight minutes for the entire week.

Camille: All day. Per day. So five hours, thirty six minutes for the week.

Justine: Okay, okay. Wow. Well, that's a lot better than I thought it would be. Actually good for me. It's massively impressive. What's yours? Kylie?

Kylie: My social media for the week. And mind you, I put timers on my social media like a freaking child because I do have a problem. So if I didn't have these timers, this would be even worse. Keep that in mind. I spent twenty five hours on social media last week and I spent fifteen.

Justine: I spent less than that. Okay, I spent, I think seventeen.

Kylie: You don't need to defend yourself.

Justine: No, I need to, I need to I was thinking that we would put a decimal in there, and then that's the amount of miles you have to run today. So Kylie would have to run two point five. I would have to run one point five, but that would mean you would run zero point five oh.

Camille: Hey, hey, I'm recovering from a hair a thon.

Justine: She's like, I'll take it. I know she did run an entire marathon yesterday.

Kylie: Well, that's why she's not on her damn phone. True.

Justine: That helps. True. Why did we interview you about marathon? We should have interviewed you about your lifestyle. Tell us how to be more like you.

Camille: Oh, boy, I don't know. I'm not sure that that's advisable.

Justine: So are we going to start running our social media screen time then?

Camille: Yeah, me and Camille will go do a run, and then I'll meet up with you to continue our runs. Because we have more time to run than Camille. And then that'll be all right. We'll catch up with you later. Kylie, enjoy your run.

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Camille: Sort of. I mean, I think it's nice to take the opportunity to assess something you want to change. Maybe a project you want to take on. And the new year is just as good an excuse as any to do that. I mean, as far as like running resolutions. My goal is to sort of be at the level of fitness where I can just jump into a trail fifty K at any time on a whim.

Justine: Is that because you don't have a trail fifty K in the books yet?

Camille: So you're like, I could sign up for one at any moment. Kind of like decide I want to do one in a month and just do it.

Justine: That is the best part about training for a marathon or even a half marathon. You can last minute sign up for anything.

Camille: Yes, exactly. Just sort of gradually moved up from like a few years ago. It's like, yeah, I can just jump into a half marathon kind of on a whim. That's going to be fine. I've almost worked my way up to like, yeah, I could like, go out and run a marathon anytime. It might not be my best one ever, but, like, I can do it. And so now the goal is to just be able to, like, on a whim. There's this fifty K that sounds interesting in three weeks. Like, let's do it. Do it.

Justine: Oh, do you have a dream destination for fifty K Colorado?

Camille: I'm not sure I know for real. The opposite of a recovery run. Yeah. Colorado though. Yeah. Montana or somewhere. Just, like, very wild and beautiful and hilly and hilly. I like the hills. I live in the mountains for a reason.

Justine: That's true. The good thing about any, like, run or race with hills versus, like, all flat, is that it's not boring. Right. You get to use different muscles. Yeah. Honestly, I feel like you're more sore when you do something that's all flat.

Camille: Yeah, when it just doesn't change the whole time. I think that's harder on your body. Where have you? The farthest you've traveled?

Justine: Oh, probably Paris. And you've done. Japan. Japan. Japan. I don't know what's farther. I know it depends where we are. Very far away from where we are here in Reno. Based off of your answers and personality. If I had to, like, put together a quiz really quick for where your next race should be. South Africa Safari adventure. Run away from the lions like. I feel like you would do really good in that race.

Camille: That would be pretty awesome. I do love a big cat.

Justine: I think we're both very goal oriented. And for resolutions, I don't really want to take anything away from my life. I know some people do like Dry January or even like the Doomscrolling thing. I'm gonna put timers on my phone, but I'm not on social media as much. But how do we make this a challenge in a way that I can track it, document it, and maybe grow better habits over time?

Camille: I like that approach, too. If our listeners are playing along and try to, like weekly, get a long run in based off of their time, obviously I had fifteen hours worth of social media last week. I could have, instead of doing one point five miles done fifteen miles for the whole week, or fifteen miles on the day if I was trained up for it. Just something that changes the behavior instead of takes away social media

Justine: Completely well, like a positive reinforcement as opposed to a negative one.

Camille: Yeah. Instead of like, depriving myself. Instead we're like, adding something or like, doing something positive.

Justine: Researching for this episode a fun way to run your social media time. I saw on social media ads for an app. It's like an app blocker for social media, but you have to run your distance. The amount of time you spend running is how much time you unlock to use social media. Would you do something like that?

Camille: That seems like a good motivator. Camille wastes all her unlocked social media time looking for run to do.

Justine: Yes. To get more social media time, you open up Strava to plan tomorrow's run for more Strava.

Camille: Yes.

Justine: So Strava, your biggest social media for sure.

Camille: Damn it. That is absolutely the one I'm on the most. Yes. Point eight. Okay. Turn around. Oh my God, I'm crying. And I think I don't know why. But when it's cold and I run. Oh, yeah. It's just water. Why am I doing that? It's so embarrassing.

Justine: Just because you love running so much. I'm like tears of joy. I'm touched. Literally. Anytime I do a morning run because it's so cold. Yeah. So crying can never be that girl who wears makeup and looks cute and fun. I know. I'm always like, wow, you wear makeup on a run? I would like, just immediately smear it all. That's. Yeah, I know me. I know me as a running goal. I want to do, like, one Strava art a month. Okay. Because what happened to MPE? I don't know. All of us got busy. Nobody's pressuring each other to do a run. It's really sad. And two years ago I had done the runs. Run every state. Yes. That was so good. Fifty states. And on top of that, I barely even started by July, so I had like six months of catching up to do.

Camille: Yeah. So that one became more stressful than fun.

Justine: Yeah. And then last year, because of two years ago, being stressed by it, I just didn't have a goal at all. So I think one month is manageable. And who knows, maybe I'll get like Canada in way less, way less provinces.

Camille: Yeah, that should be one a month and still finish the whole thing.

Justine: Hey, northwest territories has to be really big though.

Camille: Oh, the only fair that was actually the like funny part about doing the States is like some of the really bigger states, the mileage would be smaller than like like I think my Texas state mileage was less than Rhode Island.

Justine: Oh that's funny. I guess because the the bigger states like, you know, Wyoming Square. Yeah. So like what? You can do that one block and you're done. And that's our time.

Camille: Yay!

Justine: Nailed it. Oh, I hope you all got something motivational out of having Camille on her podcast. She inspires me to work hard and do better every day. So I hope the same can be said to our listeners.

Camille: Thank you for having me. This was super fun. Set yourself goals, maybe make them scary and see how far you get.

Justine: So true. If you have a friend like Camille, like she'll encourage you to do your scary goals and then they won't be so scary because you have, like, support. Yeah. Soul sisters runs out of Reno, Nevada. You know what else runs in our area? DJ trivia Both Kylie and I love playing at different bar locations throughout the Sierra Nevadas, from Minden to Carson City, Reno to Sparks, Cold Springs and everything in between. There's a game that's running distance near you.

Kylie: Wait, Justine, I'm not running.

Justine: And if you're in the Northern Nevada area like us, DJ trivia just added weekend games. So now trivia runs can happen every day.

Kylie: I'm not liking where this is going. Guess I'll just have to check out DJ trivia and find the game closest to me.

Justine: DJ trivia is across the US so you can check online and find a game near you too. And unless you're Kylie, there's no running required. Okay, on to my second run of the day. Kylie is back and this time with buzz and Violet in tow.

Kylie: Oh yeah, buzz is my dog.

Justine: Have you ever introduced the dogs, our soul pups? Wait, we definitely have for the hiking episode.

Kylie: Yeah, we've talked about them a little bit. It's a throwback. Yeah. Buzz is my dog.

Justine: How did your run go with Camille?

Kylie: It went well. I literally finished my run with Camille. Drove to your house so that we can do a run together with baby and dog in tow. And somehow between that, like fifteen minutes, my left hamstring hurt and I don't know why it's hurting because earlier this week my right hamstring was hurting. So maybe my New Year's resolution should be stop working out when I'm injured.

Justine: That's actually a pretty good one. I'll start it after this run. So you were talking about your resolutions?

Kylie: Yeah, we're very positive. Reinforcement focused. Wait. My neighbor has a treadmill just on their driveway. Maybe they're getting rid of it. Oh, should I steal it?

Justine: Putting the resolution early. Putting the resolution early. Camille and I, we are like positive reinforcement girlies, so we're more. How do we add a training plan or some kind of goal to get you to where you want?

Kylie: Ah, I see, so. And if part of that goal is to instead of just saying no social media forever, my goal is to run more. So I'm going to take away time from social media anyway, because now I'm using that time to run. So you're just reframing?

Justine: Yeah, I'm not like that. Like I'm okay with taking things away. I'm a resolutions girlie. I always like having resolutions this year, not thinking about what do I want my resolutions to be. I'm just focusing on keeping child alive, you know?

Kylie: Pretty good one.

Justine: Thanks. I'm thinking, you know what I should think about goals I want for myself? It's because you're a mom. Doesn't mean your whole life has to revolve around your child. There are still things I want to do. I guess I am setting intention, so I want to be spending lots of quality family time. I guess one that involves my baby. But I also want to focus on my health and that includes exercise. But it also includes things like getting better sleep. I stay up so late. Let me get off that damn phone. So there you go. They go hand in hand.

Kylie: If you go hand in hand, the time that you spend on your phone at the end of the week, you would be so exhausted that you would then fall asleep instead of doomscrolling night because of all that running you've been doing.

Justine: That's so true. I don't have a nighttime routine. I think I would also help me with sleeping better. I did something every day where my body is like, okay, that means it's nighttime, a sleepy time, tea and then reading a book so that you're, like, screens off?

Kylie: Yes, I think the screen is definitely what keeps me up the sleepy time team. I've had it a couple of times. Maybe I need to do it more consistently. I don't really notice anything, but are you keeping your tea bag in the whole time?

Justine: Yeah.

Kylie: Oh, but I don't know. I want to retry melatonin. I kind of had a bad melatonin experience when you got drunk.

Justine: That's how I felt like, dude, I took a melatonin. I was fighting with my partner at the time. I took a melatonin because I was like, I'm tired, I want to sleep now. I'm all amped up from this fight. Whatever my partner comes in the room, wants to talk out the fight, wants to apologize. I was like, on the verge of falling asleep.

Kylie: So you fell asleep on me?

Justine: I forced myself to stay awake. My eyelids have never felt heavier in my life. These are like five pounds, dude. Try to lift them.

Kylie: She starts seeing hallucinations because she's supposed to be asleep, bro. For real.

Justine: So then it's not like a long conversation or anything. But when we finished, it's time to go to bed. I close my eyes. I'm seeing colors I've never seen before. Oh, when I close my eyes, whoa, it's tripping me out.

Kylie: Can you describe the color?

Justine: It was like a different shade of blue. Dark blue. Purpley.

Kylie: That makes sense, because there is a shade of blue. Purple that you don't see. Whatever. It's true.

Justine: Ah, you just made one up, huh?

Kylie: No, because I'll point out something and be like, those jeans are purple. You're like. You're colorblind. It's like, actually, you don't know what purple is. Girl, I know purple. I named my damn daughter after the color.

Justine: When I do finally fall asleep, it's weird because, like, my body fell asleep, but my mind wasn't. Wow. I just felt so out of body and weird. But I think if I did it, of course myself, to stay up past when the melatonin hit, it would have been a better experience. Maybe. So I'd be down to try again. Don't run back. What, are you throwing a snowball at me?

Kylie: Yeah, but that was a mistake. Because the snow is, like, not sticky. So I just threw powder.

Justine: Ah ah ah, shit. That actually hit you? Okay. Run! I have a baby. Oh, my God, I'm hit! I'm hit! I can't feel my fingers anymore. I was hit in the ribs. Your neighborhood is so snowy compared to mine.

Kylie: Well, you're higher up in the altitude, like, higher to the sun. Oh, there you go. Oh, dude, that was actually a mistake. I really can't feel my fingers anymore. And I have buzz on the leash. I have to, like, constantly use my fingers to retract and retract the length.

Justine: Whose idea was it to start a snowball fight? Yours. Yesterday I did that during a marathon. This year was the shortest I've ever ran from a Harrison. I only did three miles. I went from Miraloma to the local Denny's. If anyone is curious. With Angelo, because it was his first year and he's still building up his mileage. Blah blah blah. Kind of like how we all are. Camille said, can you start out running? You're like, I can't do a five K, I can't do a ten K. So he's currently conquering the five KS and he's crushing it, honestly. He can do so much more. He's just worried about it. But when we got to our stop at the end of our three miles, I started throwing snowballs at people because everyone's waiting at the light, so they all have to stop. And nobody was amused. Camille did not throw snowballs back. And then that made me just feel like a giant asshole for, oh, because they're like running a marathon. I'm like, get snowed. I like to see. Please. We're dying out here.

Kylie: Yeah. Justine, we've been running since ten a m. That doesn't sound that bad. They were on mile fifteen sixteen.

Justine: Oh, God. They had ten miles left. More than halfway. They were not amused. It's just a punishment. I don't want people to think this is a punishment. You get to run the amount of social media you are addicted to. I think it should start as a challenge, not punishment. It's a challenge. Yeah. There you go. You can frame this so many ways, I guess depending on your level of runner. If you do six hours of social media in a week, first of all, congratulations. Second of all, maybe instead of running like point six miles, you just run six miles your entire like your week goal could be to run twenty five miles the whole week runs complete. Good way to start the new year. Does that encourage me to go on my phone less or more.

Kylie: Maybe I want to run more, but we want to say thank you, Camille again for coming on the pod. We love having guests. Camille was such an iconic one. It was a long time coming. Yeah. Oh my God, you guys, I can't. This is what I have to work with.

Justine: No. Okay, let me do something. Solution is to not be so awkward on the conclusion on the outros. Oh my gosh. Thank you again to Camille. And thank you Camila. Third time. Good night. Okay. Happy new year.

Kylie: Happy new year.