Mirna Valerio (00:00):

I go to the cardiologist, he says, do you want to see your son grow up? And so I decided in that cardiologist’s office that I would change. So I started writing this blog backhoe running. I wanted to write about what it was like to be a black plus size runner in endurance words and showing the world that you don’t have to fit any particular type of body or race, gender, et cetera, age to start something or to start again.

Ross Borden (00:26):

This is creator, the podcast for Matador Network. I’m your host, Ross Borden, and I believe creators are the future of all global advertising. So join me as I sit down with top creators to hear about how they got started, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the tips you need to become a full-time creator. Alright, welcome back to another episode of Creator the podcast. Today we have Myrna Valerio with us, author, creator, and ultra marathoner among many other things. Myrna, welcome.

Mirna Valerio (01:01):

Hi, how are you?

Ross Borden (01:03):

I’m doing great. Where do you find yourself today?

Mirna Valerio (01:05):

I am actually at home in Vermont, resting up from a lot of travel last year and enjoying lots and lots of skiing.

Ross Borden (01:14):

Where do you live in Vermont?

Mirna Valerio (01:17):

I live right outside of Burlington, Vermont in a little city called Winooski, right on the Winooski River.

Ross Borden (01:24):

Awesome. So we’ve worked with you in Matador a number of times. We’ll get into that in a little bit, but tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, a little sort of the brief history going back and how you became a creator and what you’re doing now.

Mirna Valerio (01:39):

Sure. Four score and seven years ago I was born in Brooklyn, New York, so I’m originally from Brooklyn. I am a former teacher of 18 years. I used to teach music, Spanish and a host of other things, including directing my school’s, various school’s, DEI programs. I have a son who is 21 who plays basketball in college. He’s a junior and I am also a bestselling memoirist. My book was published in 2017. It’s called A Beautiful Work in Progress. I’m a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in the cohort 2018. I am a sponsored athlete in the trail running and cycling categories. I just joined a skiing company as well, and I’m not a great skier. This is part of my shtick. It’s not cycles either.

Ross Borden (02:35):

What ski

Mirna Valerio (02:36):

Skis joined? It’s renowned skis. They are based here in Burlington, Vermont, and I just had my first run on them yesterday and they are fantastic skis. So yes, I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but I do a lot of different things and lead a pretty good life.

Ross Borden (02:54):

Yeah, it sounds like like you do all kinds of stuff. So walk us through little bit. I’d read an article about you were first and foremost an educator and a mom of course, and then you had a health scare. Tell us about that.

Mirna Valerio (03:10):

Sure. In 2 0 0 8, I was teaching in a boarding school, teaching as one of my loves, being an educator and being in a classroom with kids high school age, mostly high school and middle school. And I was also at the same time in grad school. My son was five at this point. He was in and out of the hospital sick all the time. It was very stressful existence for us. My spouse had a crazy schedule, as did i. I was also in grad school full time and I was teaching piano, voice and other things on the weekends privately to students from my former school in Maryland. And I was based in New Jersey at this point. So on the weekends I’d drive back and forth to Maryland to do these private lessons and I would come back and probably be on dorm duty. These were boarding schools that I was teaching at, do dorm duty or do my work from grad school or take care of my son or all of the above.

(04:18):

And so on one of these trips back from Maryland, two jersey, I started having chest pains on the left side of my chest and thought I was having a heart attack. And so I pulled over, decided to keep driving after deliberating on whether or not I should call 9 1 1 or flag somebody down, made it home, had a colleague drive me to the hospital where I was immediately triaged because I was having chest pains. And eight hours later, after a whole host of tests and poking and prodding and blood tests and scans and talking to the doctor about what my lifestyle looked at, at that point he told me that I had a panic attack and I had never experienced anything like that. I looked at the doctor and I was like, what? I don’t get it. I can’t. Better

Ross Borden (05:15):

Than a heart attack,

Mirna Valerio (05:16):

Probably still scary. It was better, but it was very scary because I had pains up my arm and my back and my neck and my chest was hurting. And so that’s why I thought it was a heart attack, but obviously I didn’t die. And he said, you had a panic attack given all the things that you’re doing in your life right now and the fact that you don’t really sleep as much as you should, it was definitely a panic attack. You do have some inflammation in your blood, we need to take care of that. I’m going to send you to a cardiologist just to rule out any sort of future cardiac events. I go to the cardiologist, he says to me, do you want to see your son grow up? And for someone who is generally not speechless, that left to be

Ross Borden (06:08):

Speechless, and was he like, you’re just doing too much. Your lifestyle is going kill you.

Mirna Valerio (06:14):

You could probably afford to lose a couple of pounds. I am a plus size woman, but what I’m really concerned about here is the fact that you work too much. You don’t sleep enough. You said you sleep about four hours a night, that it’s not enough. It’s not sustainable. That will kill you in itself eventually. So I’m going to need you to change your life drastically. And that was the moment that I said to myself, well, I’m not taking care of myself. I am taking care of everybody else. I’m taking care of my husband, my son. I’m taking care of my students and my other students back in Maryland, and I am not focusing on myself. I was doing really well at work. I was doing really well in grad school, probably less well as a parent and spouse, but I was not giving any of that attention to myself, which was detrimental.

(07:08):

And so I decided in that cardiologist’s office that I would change. And then so the next day, instead of getting up to work at four 30 in the morning, because that’s when I got up, I hopped on my treadmill, which I had purchased a couple of months before. I think I knew what was up. I knew something was going on in my body, and so I bought a treadmill, but I hadn’t really used it yet. So I cleaned it off, got on my treadmill and started running again. Well, I ran the first minute and then that petered out and then I had to walk. Then I ran again, and it was very painful, very physically painful, very sort of emotionally and spiritually painful. But I decided to do it again the next day. I knew it would hurt. I knew it would take a long time before I felt better. And a lot of people ask, well, you weren’t getting up to work, but you got up to work out. How was that changing? Well,

Ross Borden (08:08):

No, that’s different for sure. Yeah,

Mirna Valerio (08:09):

It’s very different. I’m moving my body. I am actually setting the stage for myself to be physically exhausted at night so that I go to sleep earlier. And also in that I did just stop working in the morning and I tried to condense my work time into the workday, which is very difficult for somebody who works at a boarding school because

Ross Borden (08:36):

You’re

Mirna Valerio (08:37):

Essentially working all day all the time.

Ross Borden (08:39):

But essentially you could barely run for one minute without having to take breaks and walk. And now tell us about your running because you’re an absolutely amazing phenom,

Mirna Valerio (08:49):

Right? Well, thank you. Thank

Ross Borden (08:53):

You for that. Don’t be humble. Don’t be too humble. I want to hear about it.

Mirna Valerio (08:55):

I’m trying not to be. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for saying that. I actually still run walk, but I do long distances and I think my body is suited for it. I think the way that what my lifestyle is, I think it, it’s suited to me just being outside for very, very long amounts of time. My last race, my last big race that I did was in March a couple of months ago where I did 142.6 miles. It was the longest assistance I had ever done. I think I’m going to leave it there. Oh my God. Where was that? This was in Palm Springs. It was, oh my God.

Ross Borden (09:38):

Also the hottest, driest place ever.

Mirna Valerio (09:40):

It was hot, but it was also cold because it was March and it was hot during the day, and then it was like 37 degrees at night. And that was the Lululemon further challenge, and which 10 athletes ran for six days doing the most amount of miles many of us had ever done. I think most of us, all of us PRD 140,

Ross Borden (10:05):

Yeah, hundred

Mirna Valerio (10:06):

42.6 0.6.

Ross Borden (10:08):

Don’t

Mirna Valerio (10:08):

Forget that. Point six. Don’t forget. It’s like a marathon. Don’t forget the 0.2, 26.2 because it matters. Yeah. So I have spent the time in the time after I left teaching, which was 2018 up until now, doing things like that, doing long races and learning new sports like gravel riding and mountain biking and skiing, and showing the world that you don’t have to fit any particular type of body or race, gender, et cetera, age to start something or to start again to learn something new and to really delight in the learning

Ross Borden (10:50):

Process. So when you were runner first and then started, when did you start your platform on Instagram? Because you have, what, 160,000 followers or something like that on Instagram?

Mirna Valerio (11:01):

64,000. Love it. So in 20 0 9, 2, 0 0 10. Well, I’ve named my blog Fat Girl Running in 2 0 9, and that was a thing, don’t call it Fat Girl Running. You have the word fat. And I was like, well, I’m fat. It’s not something that I’m ashamed of. It’s what my body is. But I named it FCO running. I didn’t write in it until 2010 or 2011 when I was training for my first marathon. So in the years between 2008 and 2011, I was sort of reentering my journey as a runner and increasing my mileage and increasing the frequency with which I trained. I became a coach at the school that I was teaching at, and I just reconnected myself with my body in terms of fitness and other things. And so I started writing this blog, faculty running. I wanted to write about what it was like to be a black plus size runner in endurance sports.

(12:18):

And so that it turned into a thing in 2015, I got hit up by Wall Street Journal. Hey, we love your blog. I’m like, wait, wait, you’re reading my blog. I only thought my mom read my blog and a couple of friends that were feeling sorry for me, and so they wanted to write about it was Rachel Bachman, who’s still at the Wall Street Journal, and she said, I want to talk to you about your fitness lifestyle as someone who does fitness, but not for weight loss necessarily. And there had been some weight loss goals in there. I’m not going to lie about that, but at some point I plateaued and I just kept doing the stuff because I loved doing the stuff. I loved running. I had loved running since I was in high school when I started running. And so she interviewed me and two other people profiled us in a beautiful article, and then that snowball started rolling downhill.

Ross Borden (13:20):

Yeah, wall Street Journal. That’ll do it.

Mirna Valerio (13:22):

Yeah.

Ross Borden (13:22):

How did she find you? Did she mention how she stumbled across your blog

Mirna Valerio (13:28):

When SEO was a thing when SEO was good and easy, I think when you did a search on Google, my stuff came up and that’s how she found me. She Googled me. She was Googling people who did fitness who were plus size people who did fitness. And then after that was Runner’s World. That came a couple of weeks later. And then it was NBC Nightly News, then it was CNN, then it was, and then it just kept, and really, it hasn’t stopped sometimes the frequency and it ebbs and flows, but it definitely hasn’t stopped, which is really cool. And every time I get hit up by a media outlet or anything, I am so surprised and honored and tickled.

Ross Borden (14:10):

That’s so awesome. So the Wall Street Journal article was like the watershed moment, and then it was the snowball effect after that basically. And had you already had an Instagram and all of a sudden it just started blowing up? Or did you start one when that happened?

Mirna Valerio (14:25):

I started my Instagram in 2015 only because I had had a Facebook, and that was how I shared my blog posts. I would link them on Facebook and people would read them. And after all of the media attention, I started getting hit up by various brands, Hey, I’d love to send you a pair of these, or I’d love to send you an outfit to wear at your next race. And that’s how that started. My very first sponsor was Merrill. We were initially supposed to do a commercial together that didn’t pan out, but they said, Hey, would you like to be an ambassador? And I was like, I don’t know what that means, but yeah, sure. And that’s when that relationship began. That was six years of bliss, and that’s when I started doing my first shoots where I had to travel to places and run on the trail 30 times before we got the shot. And it was all just so cool to me. I was still teaching full time, and so very frequently I would have the news come to campus or a brand or tough mutter would come and we do shoots, and that’s how I started to become a sponsored athlete.

Ross Borden (15:52):

And then also probably moving around for all these events and the speaking engagements or the brand events that you were participating in. You kind of got more into travel at Matador. We’ve worked with you with Pure Michigan. I love that video that goes beyond just running out, checking out the city and exploring Michigan and I think North Carolina and some other states. We have another tourism partnership. Hopefully we can’t talk about it yet, but I think hopefully landing soon. So I’m excited about that. Wait, I want hear about a beautiful work in progress. Tell us about that book and it became a bestseller. So what inspired you to write the book? Were you already on your running journey and your creator journey when you decided to write the book and what’s the book all about?

Mirna Valerio (16:40):

Sure. So as all of these really cool things were happening to me in 20 15, 20 15, 20 16, that’s when things really started. I had this blog, so I had guess evidence of my writing ability online. And then I was, a couple of different literary agents contacted me and asked if I was thinking about writing a book. And I had been in grad school for writing, and initially they wanted something more akin to what my blog was, and I didn’t really want to continue that. I wanted to actually do some real writing in memoir form. And so that’s what it turned out to be. And I would write it differently now, but it really is, I say a compilation of long personal essays that are generally centered around my running life, my running life, but also include lots of snapshots of family, of school, the whole person. It’s mostly about running, but there’s also lots about me who I am and how I came to be and how that comes out of in my running and the things that I do in the fitness world. And it gave me a chance to really write in a very detailed manner about nature, about what it feels like to be in a body like mine, about what it feels like to do my first modeling shoot with real models and how I’m continually astounded by all of those opportunities that are thrown at me and how I’m grateful for those things and how I hope that other people are inspired and motivated by that. So that’s what that was

Ross Borden (18:39):

About. How has that been? I mean, you are not the Lululemon model most people think about. You’re also, you don’t have the body type of an ultra marathon runner. Do you meet people that are surprised or doubt your athleticism and abilities in these arenas?

Mirna Valerio (18:58):

I meet people that less and less now in the beginning and also still in the present. I definitely come across people who are very surprised or are in disbelief. You don’t do that.

Ross Borden (19:18):

And how do you react when it’s like that?

Mirna Valerio (19:20):

I

Ross Borden (19:20):

Feel like for a person, you, you’re probably completely unbothered by that, but what’s your reaction?

Mirna Valerio (19:25):

Oh, it bothers me every time. I am very good at anticipating that people will say those things to me. They say these, sure as I’ll say it on social media, but in person, I’ll get something like for example, and this was 2015, I was doing a hundred K, my first and only a hundred k. I was at the packet pickup. I’m talking to somebody, this is a couple of months after my Runner’s World article came out and the Wall Street Journal thing came out some talk. So people recognized me from that magazine and from those two outlets. And so someone was talking to me and then some guy comes up, interrupts the conversation to talk to whoever the other guy was. And I’m like, whoa. Because sometimes you’re just stunned and you don’t know how to react necessarily in the situation. And he’s like, so what are you doing? Which race are you doing? I was like, well, I signed up for the a hundred K. He’s like, well, 50% of the field doesn’t finish. And then he walked away.

Ross Borden (20:36):

Who’s wrong

Mirna Valerio (20:36):

With people? There’s lots wrong with people, but there’s also lots of good that people have within them. And so in moment I was like, oh, you think I’m not going to finish?

Ross Borden (20:50):

Yeah, I love it. I

Mirna Valerio (20:52):

Mean, it took me

(20:54):

25, 25 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds to finish. But I finished and people out there were not going to let me not finish. I wasn’t planning on not finishing, but things happen. And on my third loop, that was a Halina 101 hundred K in Arizona on my third loop, I was hallucinating. It’s the middle of the night. My lamp blows out. I had forgotten to charge it. Everything was going wrong. I felt sick, but on. And this is why trail running is so amazing. Someone lent me his little flashlight. He had an extra flashlight. He said, Hey, here, please use this in a desert, a big Saguaro cacti everywhere.

Ross Borden (21:46):

Oh my God. Yeah, you do all these desert runs. It

Mirna Valerio (21:48):

Makes the whole

Ross Borden (21:48):

Thing even more

Mirna Valerio (21:49):

Hardcore. So he lends me that I get to the age station, it’s called Jackass Station. I am in a bad place. I sit down, somebody takes my shoes off and my socks, they give me some, I couldn’t eat or drink anything. They give me some hot chicken broth. Then they give me some noodles after that, and then they give me some ginger for my tummy and I start feeling alive again. But they got me back together and they said, now it’s time for you to go. You need to get up out and move out of this aid station. And I did. And then I finished. And then as I’m on my fourth lap, people are, it’s making me a little emotional. I was keeping people abreast on Facebook whenever I had a signal and I would say, I’ve got 20 more miles to go, or I’ve got 15 more miles to go. And people were sending me messages like, Myrna, you got this. You’re a teacher. You can do anything. You eat 20 miles for breakfast, you got this. And so having that support behind me from people that I actually knew and who

Ross Borden (22:58):

Knew

Mirna Valerio (22:58):

What it was that I did and how I did it, and they knew what I could do that made that guy’s comment just null

Ross Borden (23:07):

Even more insignificant, null envoy. I mean, I bet for every dipshit who sort of has a negative comment like that and says, you’re not going to finish. You have a hundred people in your community, whether on Facebook or Instagram or personal friends that know you’re going to do it and are cheering you

Mirna Valerio (23:23):

On.

Ross Borden (23:25):

What has that been like? Have people reached out to you and said, you’ve inspired me to start running again or get into fitness out of nowhere

Mirna Valerio (23:35):

Just today? So my Instagram account is a skiing account right now. And that’s a funny thing that I do. When ski season comes around, I don’t do a whole bunch of running. So I put up my ski content has been doing so well. It’s kind of crazy because I started skiing when I was 45. I’m 49 now. And again, I’m a plus size person. I’m black. I check off so many boxes of people that you don’t typically see at a ski resort on a regular basis. And so I put up the ski stuff, there’s a video of me crashing, there’s a video of me in powder in the trees, and there has been a lot of negative feedback. And I just block those people. And it’s mostly young white males that give me that feedback, that negative feedback. But everybody else, all white guys are like, you go, this is great.

(24:42):

I’d love to see it. And there are people that are like, I haven’t skied in 25 years. You have just given me the motivation to book myself a lesson or to actually use the past that I have or to not sit in the lodge when my kids are out learning how to ski. I’m like, I’m going to learn too. And the same happens with running. The same happens with cycling. Hey, what bike are you on? I didn’t even know. Plus size people could ride bikes. Clearly your bikes are good and they work for you. And so I love watching what you’re doing. Or if it’s running, I didn’t even know we could run or I only run inside because I don’t want anybody to see me. Wow. So I get those messages all the time and it just makes it easier for me to do the work that I do.

Ross Borden (25:33):

Yeah, that’s amazing. I love it. I mean, it’s got to feel so good to really touch people when you’ve never even met them and you’re inspiring them to change their life or get back on skis or get back on a bike or get back on a running trail. That’s really awesome. So what else is on the horizon on the brand front? You said you’re kind of backing off a little bit on the

Mirna Valerio (25:57):

A hundred

Ross Borden (25:58):

K

Mirna Valerio (25:58):

Races racing. Yeah. No, a hundred Ks really. I’m actually, this year, I turned 50 in October and I’m doing what’s called the motivators grand year. I’m doing cool adventures. For example, I skied trees. That’s an adventure. That’s something way out of my comfort zone. And I actually have a lesson on it tomorrow with my ski instructor.

Ross Borden (26:27):

What skier is this in

Mirna Valerio (26:28):

Vermont? Where’s your home

Ross Borden (26:30):

Mountain?

Mirna Valerio (26:31):

My home mountain is Bolton Valley, but I also ski still quite a bit. I work with Epic Pass. That’s one of the brands that I get to work with. And just like having connections at Bolton, at Stowe with Epic Pass, and those connections have made my reach even further. So it’s good. So it’s been really great to have an even larger community to try to inspire, motivate.

Ross Borden (27:02):

By the way, I meant to ask you Motivator. Who made up? Did you make up the motivator? Did someone else

Mirna Valerio (27:08):

I did not

Ross Borden (27:08):

Make it up. Call you the motivator.

Mirna Valerio (27:09):

I didn’t make it up. So my friends, when I sort of restarted my fitness journey after a three and a half year hiatus in 2008, my peers, my peers, my colleagues rather, they’d see me out running, they’d see me in the gym working out, lifting weights. They’d see me go do five Ks and they started asking if they could come with me. Hey, I know you’re running today. Can I go run with you? I’m like, I’m slow. They’re like, I don’t care. And so we started this little faculty group of people that did things. We called ourselves the 10 soldiers, the time is now Soldiers

(27:53):

Love that time is now. And then out of out of nowhere, they started calling me Vader. And I’m like, well, what does that mean, alligator? They’re like, no, you are the motivator. And I’m like, I kind of like that. Then we had this meeting where we were learning about Twitter and Wave like 2 0 9 or something like that. And we were all figuring out what our handles were when we learned what the word handle meant in that context. And they were like, oh, you’re definitely the meor. That’s you. And so that’s how that came to me. It’s kind of,

Ross Borden (28:39):

And the Meor was born right

Mirna Valerio (28:41):

There? Yes. BA

Ross Borden (28:42):

Twitter. Awesome. Twitter. Well, early happy birthday. I don’t think anyone would think you’re 50 turning 50. That’s incredible. Must be all the ultra marathons keeping you young. So one thing I ask everyone, Myrna, who comes on the pod, I want to hear if you had to choose three passports, if you were limited to three passports for the rest of your life and you had to live only in those locations, only in those countries, you could go nowhere else. What would the three countries be?

Mirna Valerio (29:14):

Ooh, that’s tough. Outside of the US you mean?

Ross Borden (29:21):

Nope, including the

Mirna Valerio (29:22):

Us.

Ross Borden (29:22):

Oh, everyone tries to get off with that.

Mirna Valerio (29:24):

Oh, okay. No, no, no. Addition I’m keeping us

Ross Borden (29:27):

Is one of them.

Mirna Valerio (29:27):

Keeping my us passport. Smart. Smart. I love Spain. I know, I love, love that place so much. It was my first trip outside of the US in college, and it will forever be with me. I love that country so much. And let’s see,

Ross Borden (29:58):

Where do you go in Spain? What made you love? I love Spain too because I studied there when I was in university in college, and I absolutely fell in love. And sometimes I had a hard time putting my finger on why I love Spain so much, the way of life, the people. But where did you go in Spain that made you fall in love with

Mirna Valerio (30:17):

Spain? We were in, and so my college semester abroad was in Corda and Granada. And then I Granada spent a couple of summers taking kids over to Ada and Gus, and it’s there. There’s the poet Feder who, and within his poetry expresses this sense of ddue and it’s this deeply spiritual, slightly macab, a sentiment that is present everywhere and it really connects you to the land, the people, the food, the customs, the landscape. Ada in Granada, I was a Spanish teacher, I

Ross Borden (31:12):

Can tell you speak pretty good Spanish from that accent

Mirna Valerio (31:16):

And the flamenco music. And yeah, there’s something there that is really kind of undefinable that I love about Spanish culture.

Ross Borden (31:30):

I can tell you’re passionate about it. I would concur with all those things. I spent a lot Serrano, but yeah, under Lucia is incredibly special. Alright, so us, Spain, you got

Mirna Valerio (31:43):

One more Spain and then probably somewhere in North Africa, maybe Morocco. I did a race, well I did the first day of a six day race there. It’s called Blo, a marathon of the sand, six day, very famous race put on by the French in Morocco. And they drop you off in the middle of the desert. There’s a desert again. The

Ross Borden (32:15):

Desert again. And now it’s a race through sand. I hope you’re not running in sand.

Mirna Valerio (32:20):

No, you’re running in sand and you’re running through the wa and the dried up lakes and up and over dunes that are constantly shifting. So I had like to man, only three passports. That’s not enough because I mean I haven’t even hit

Ross Borden (32:35):

Any yet. That’s a good mix though. That’s a good mix. And you’re going to have an easy commute from Spain down to Morocco. There

Mirna Valerio (32:40):

You go. Okay, well maybe actually, you know what then no, then maybe I’m not going to do that. I could just use my Spanish. Just going back. No. So then it would have to be somewhere in Asia and that would be

Ross Borden (32:49):

Korea. Okay. Korea.

Mirna Valerio (32:52):

I did study Korean and diversification. How many languages do you speak? I don’t speak Korean though. I mean I could read it’s phonetic, I can read it and there’s some words that I know. But I got Spanish, Italian, French, a little German.

Ross Borden (33:07):

Wow. Polygram.

Mirna Valerio (33:10):

Yeah. And so this is a fun game.

Ross Borden (33:15):

Alright, Myrna, well thank you so much for joining. That was a great conversation. Congrats on everything. Thank you. We’ll look for the new book soon, and I hope to announce our new tourism partnership soon as well. But thanks for joining.

Mirna Valerio (33:30):

Thank you so much,

Ross Borden (33:33):

Creator. The podcast is produced by Matador Network. We are a leading global travel publisher focused on travel and adventure. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe. Every week I interview a new top creator. New episodes are released every Tuesday on YouTube, apple podcasts, Spotify and everywhere podcasts are found. Thanks for listening.