Can you Do Tough? Maria Parker's New Book Hits #1 on Amazon, EP 212

Speaker 1 0:02

Today is the launch of a book I know that all of you are going to love. It is the book by the extraordinary champion, maria Parker, the co-host of the Champions Mojo podcast, and today we're going to interview Maria about her new book, do Tough, which chronicles her win of race across America and the loss of her beautiful sister, jenny to brain cancer. I'd like to share with you the endorsement from Seth Goode, the multiple-time best-selling author. Seth says it's a poignant, heartbreaking and powerful story, a chance for each of us to find a way to level up, contribute and do things we never thought possible. Stick around. This is going to be a special show.

Speaker 1 0:57

Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I'm your host, kelly Palace, and today both my co-host and our special guest on Champions Mojo, maria Parker. Hi Kelly, hey Maria, so you are the guest today. Today is the day we are going to introduce everyone to your book. This book is truly amazing. I read every word of it. It is so inspiring, it's so interesting. It's a true page turner. It's just, it's my kind of book. You and I both know what kind of books that endurance athletes like and people who do tough things, like Maria.

Speaker 1 1:43

I'm so impressed with it and I can't wait to talk with you about it. So welcome to the show, thank you. So tell us the name of this book, how it came about, and let's just start there.

Speaker 2 1:56

The name of the book is Do Tough, and it came about because I've done some hard things. I've chosen to do some hard things, and people would ask me like how did you do that? Like why did you run a marathon? or why did you do race across America? How did you get through it, how did you endure it? And it got me thinking about hard things.

Speaker 2 2:18

And then, at the same time that I was doing race across America, my sister was dying of brain cancer, and that was just a different kind of hard altogether, and so I started to think about tough things that you choose and things that choose you.

Speaker 2 2:35

Most of us wouldn't choose to suffer, but we do That life is full of suffering. So I started to think about those things And people have been asking me to write about race across America. But I really wanted to write about my sister because we were very close and she was a huge influence in my life And watching her deal with brain cancer was one of the most inspirational and beautiful things that I've seen. So I wanted to write about her too. So the book is about race across America. The top stories are race across America And I tell the whole story with as much details I can remember and my sister's diagnosis and illness and death eventually of brain cancer. And then attached to each of those stories are some things that I've learned from other people in life and the experiences about what you need to get through tough things.

Speaker 1 3:35

Having read the book, you're helping people get through tough things, so how is that all coming together?

Speaker 2 3:42

I learned about this concept of chosen versus unchosen suffering. Chosen suffering is these things that athletes do to themselves. It's the hard workouts, it's the endurance events. It's why do we cause ourselves pain. It's we choose to suffer. That's something we chose, so we can't really complain about it, even though we do.

Speaker 2 4:00

And unchosen suffering is the rest of it, the bad things that happen to you that you can't predict and that you wish wouldn't. It's divorce, it's death, it's illness, it's a car accident. It's all the ways that life can be hard. And we know we're never going to get through life without some unchosen suffering And knowing that it's out there. For me, that's just like I can sometimes get everything's going really right now, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's not a good attitude either. Enjoy your life as it is, but when you do, when that door opens or when you turn that corner and you get the phone call or whatever it is, you have the same tools, especially you as endurance athletes or as athletes. You can use those tools and you can get through that and you're going to be victorious.

Speaker 1 4:46

Do you think you would have done Ram without Jenny's illness?

Speaker 2 4:50

No way, no way. I knew that it was. We'd considered it before. It's in the ultra endurance cycling world. It's one of the biggies. So, if you do, i had already been doing 12 and 24 hour races, even 48 hour races, but Ram is a different animal and I just didn't want to do something that hard. I didn't want to choose that kind of suffering.

Speaker 2 5:15

But as soon as Jenny was diagnosed, jim and I looked at each other and said, yeah, first we did a lot of research on glioblastoma multiforme, which is the kind of brain cancer that Jenny had very common kind of brain cancer And it was just so hopeless. So there's just not enough money. Human studies are really expensive and really hard to do. There wasn't a lot of not being done, not a lot of treatment. So I was really angry about that And I thought this is just your mom, my mother-in-law.

Speaker 2 5:48

One of her favorite sayings was if a problem can be solved with money, it's not a problem. And I thought this is one of those problems. It can be solved with money. We just need to raise millions of dollars and throw a bunch of money at it, and I'd seen that happen in breast cancer. Not that breast cancer isn't serious.

Speaker 2 6:03

But from when I was a little girl to now, breast cancer is a highly treatable cancer, and that's basically because of the billions of dollars in research money that's been raised by people. So my thought was, if this is a problem that can be cured with money, i'm going to raise money, and so that was the motivation behind when Jim brought up Ram again And it's like yeah, this is a big, this is the biggest platform I have available to me. Nobody cares about. Somebody rides their bike for 24 hours, but it's not a hugely popular sport. I wasn't an Instagram famous at all. Nobody really knew who I was, even though I'd set some records and done some pretty tough things on my bike. But Ram was a little bit bigger stage. So we decided to do it so we can raise money and hopefully find a cure for brain cancer.

Speaker 1 6:45

So what will readers get out of this book? What do you hope that those people that read it will get out of it?

Speaker 2 6:55

I hope that anyone who reads this book will be encouraged. That's my biggest desire in life is to encourage people, and so the book is not just about doing hard things. It's about you can do hard things, you can survive hard things And you can be in a huge pit and you can get out of it. It's who I am. I want to encourage people, so I hope that anybody who reads this book ends up with a feeling of hope for the future.

Speaker 1 7:26

Yes, i know I did, and you and I talk about suffering a lot. I think that's one of the commonalities that we share in our friendship in this show, in encouraging each other and encouraging others, is that we know that life throws us a lot of suffering, and so what would be like one chapter or something where, if somebody is going through something really tough, what would be the piece of advice in the book?

Speaker 2 7:59

I think one of the really valuable pieces of advice that's in the book is about getting help, having people around you who can help you. And that sounds obvious, but when you're in a tough place and a dark place or you're doing something hard, a lot of you can have the tendency to want to go it alone to try to manage. And it takes humility to ask for help and it can be hard. You can feel very vulnerable. Lots of times you don't have to ask for it, you just have to accept it. People around you are going to see the situation you're in and they're going to throw you a buoy. Take the buoy. If you need help, take it, Don't try to go it alone.

Speaker 2 8:44

And then, second to that is sometimes when you're in a dark place, you have to look for the good moments, the good, the little glimpses of the cloud parting the sunshine. You have to really look hard for grace. I'm not going to say it's easy, but even in the most tragic, horrible situations and the most difficult moments, If you look for them, there are moments of grace, there's moments of beauty, there's moments of love and laughter. And hold on to those. Just store them up like little golden guineas, because those will get you through. In the darkest moments you can reflect and say, okay, this is bad, I have this person who loves me or I had this moment. Lots of times when really tragic things happen, there's lots of little miracles happening And you just have to look for those and remember them and recite them to yourself and that will help you get through a really tough time.

Speaker 1 9:47

Do you feel like there's anything that stands out, that you think, wow, i would have done that differently?

Speaker 2 9:54

Yes, mention this in the book. The end of Jenny's life was difficult And I think I would have been more honest with myself and Jenny and all the people that were close to Jenny about the end and what that might look like. I didn't really know. I didn't have as much experience as I do now with the end of life stuff. But, yeah, i would have talked to Jenny more about what she wanted. I think it was really hard.

Speaker 2 10:24

When she died, we ended up making the decision to discontinue treatment, even though the doctors will never tell you. This is one of the ways the medical system has really cheated us. Their job is to keep everybody alive and to do it in a way that they've been taught And so they'll never. You know it's time to go on hospice. They just won't do it. You have to make that decision and that's a tough decision And Jenny wasn't able to make it for herself. And a grave regret I have is that I wasn't able to say to Jenny at what point do we stop this, when she could make that decision. We ended up making the decision for her because she didn't have the capacity at the time at the end, and it was complicated because her brain scans were stable. It didn't look like the cancer was growing, but yet the clinical picture was just terrible. So anyway, i regret not being more honest with myself and her and earlier on.

Speaker 1 11:24

Would this be a conversation that people could have before anyone even gets sick?

Speaker 2 11:29

Yeah, but the thing is yes, and everybody should have this conversation. This is something that we have been talking about a lot in culture lately that we end of life stuff, But it's hard to know what to do for end of life stuff. So hard to know.

Speaker 1 11:46

Yes. So, maria, in knowing that many of our listeners are athletes, yes, and so in this book you have so many gems and jewels for that, for getting through tough things which can be like we've been talking about in the first part of the show, which can be illnesses or life problems. What has been your perspective on endurance sports and how their ability to have this positive change?

Speaker 2 12:20

Yeah, i love endurance, what endurance sports have taught me And one of the things that I think has just applied across my life. I wasn't even thinking about it. Yesterday I was weeding this row of raspberries. That's funny, i was doing it for fun, but it was just really hard going And I spent an hour on it and I had maybe done a quarter of the row And I was thinking I'll just come back out tomorrow and I'll do a little more And I thought where did that mindset came from? That's the tiny steps.

Speaker 2 12:51

I think one of the things that people get discouraged about when they're trying to get through something hard or they're choosing something hard to get through, is that they just they look at the end and they think, oh, i'll never get there, and that the key to endurance sports is one stroke at a time, one kick at a time, one step at a time, one for the bike. For me, it's what I can see, and I use this example all the time I'm riding my bike I've got a seven mile climb ahead of me and I know it's a seven mile climb and I'm going six miles per hour. That's an hour of climbing. That's a long climb or more. And if you think that And you're in pain, and you're in pain, right, you're climbing, you're in pain, you're breathing hard, you're in pain. For me, thinking about the top of the hill is not where I want to be. I want to be thinking about something that I can actually achieve, and for me it's getting to the next thing that I can see, which is usually like a crack in the road 10 yards ahead of me. It's something I can see.

Speaker 2 13:46

And then I was like, okay, i'm going to go for that crack in the road, got it. All right, i'm going to go for that next bush, got it. And every time you achieve a little goal, you build a little confidence, you get a little sense of power. And so that was the thing with the raspberries. I'm never going to get to the end of that raspberries, probably.

Speaker 2 14:03

But my story, that I would told myself, was that's just a little bit in time, i'm not even going to worry about it. I'm going to do one bush at a time, or two bushes at a time, i'll do an hour at a time, or 15 minutes at a time. I'm not going to think about the end of the road raspberries, i'm just going to be here in this moment and take one tiny step, and I think that applies to so many hard things in life. There's definitely a time to helicopter up and think about your strategy for the whole thing and how you're going to get through it, and imagine yourself at the finish line, but almost all of it is just getting to the next, doing the next right thing.

Speaker 1 14:36

And we, as athletes, get those tools from endurance sports. We started this conversation with raising awareness and money to help bring cancer and that's 3,000 miles to a cure. How is that going? Oh, thanks.

Speaker 2 14:52

It has turned out to be an ultra endurance event Raising money. I set out to raise a million dollars and that was gonna raise a million dollars. During Race Across America, i think I raised 70,000. So I was way off from that But we've just persisted and we've raised more than a million but we've donated, i think, something like $900,000 to charity to bring cancer charities. So it's a long row.

Speaker 1 15:19

Maria, why did you write Do Tough.

Speaker 2 15:24

I thought I might like to, but then I just gave that up. Obviously, it's 10 years after I did Ram, i think. Right after Ram I thought, oh, maybe I'll write a book about it, and people said you should write a book. But I didn't until I was encouraged, both by you and especially by my daughter, genevieve, to write a book, and Genevieve started a business called Podcast A Book, and so she really got me started. She's helping a lot of people who do podcasts and we're talking our wisdom and she's helping us take it and put it into a book format, which is great. So I'm really grateful for that.

Speaker 1 15:59

Yeah, was it easy, maria, Was it hard. I feel like that was the actual journey of writing the book.

Speaker 2 16:07

It was like having a baby. It was not easy.

Speaker 1 16:11

Looking ahead, what are some of your goals and aspirations for the future? personally, and maybe cycling and advocacy. What's next for Maria Parker?

Speaker 2 16:23

This year, as most of our listeners know, i'm starting to swim regularly and I'm enjoying getting better, slightly better, and this year Jim and I have done triathlons. There's now triathlon organization that allows recombinant bikes, so it's called CalTri, And so we've had such a great time. We've done two triathlons. We're gonna do a third this year, so I think that's gonna be part of my future, continuing to do triathlons. My family is always a huge part of my goals and aspirations to be there to support my kids and grandkids and to love them and just to encourage especially the kids and their marriages and try to help them get through the tough times that having a family can bring. And we're gonna keep on working at 3000 miles to a cure. We're gonna keep on raising money. I'm gonna keep my ear to the ground, keep on paying attention to the research, and then I'm working on also just creating space for fun and relaxation in my life. So a real aspiration for me is to just have more fun and not always be doing ta.

Speaker 1 17:26

Oh, I love it. When is the exact date your book's coming out?

Speaker 2 17:30

The e-version comes out on June 13th And then shortly after that we'll have the paperback version and then after that the audio version, and also you can find more information about the book at mariapparkercom.

Speaker 1 17:44

Mariapparkercom. Okay, maria, and the last question is what have I not asked you that you might wanna share?

Speaker 2 17:54

My greatest desire is to help people have hope. So if you're listening to this and you're in the middle of something hard, whether you chose it or you didn't I'm thinking of a friend right now who he's a super endurance athlete We've had him on the show, Jeffrey Ritter, And he's going through a really difficult health crisis. And if you're in that spot and it seems like all your plans have been turned upside down or things aren't going as well as you'd hope, I would just say be encouraged, be encouraged, Look for the good, take small, tiny steps and just hang in there. Sometimes doing tough is just surviving.

Speaker 1 18:36

Yeah, just getting taken one day at a time.

Speaker 2 18:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1 18:40

Thank you, Maria. This is wonderful, beautiful, and I can't wait for people to get your book in their hands or on their screens and enjoy it. I love you.

Speaker 2 18:51

Maria. I love you too, kelly, thanks. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.