Sister Act: Grace and Maddie's Running Journey from Cleveland to CIM

DFW Running Talk: Maddie & Grace
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Chris Detzel: [00:00:00] Welcome to DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, so let's get started.

All right. Welcome to another DFW Running podcast. I'm Chris Detzel, and today we have special guest, Grace Chow and Maddie Steir, although Maddie's been on a few times, so welcome back. Maddie. Thanks Chris. Excited to have

Maddie Stier: a guest

Grace Chow: today.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And Grace, welcome to the show.

Grace Chow: Thanks, Chris. Happy to be here.

Chris Detzel: There's something's special about the two of you. Did somebody wanna talk about that real quick?

Grace Chow: I'll happily talk about it. Maddie and I are sisters and we both grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I am not a Dallas Fort Worthon or whatever they are called, but I frequently visit Maddie.

And so that's how I got tied into the Dallas running community. But Maddie is a few years older than me. And we've been running ever since middle school,

Chris Detzel: I know there's some stories that hopefully we'll get to, [00:01:00] but were you too competitive, at all together, earlier when you started running or was it more later down the road or were you even competitive with each other?

Maddie Stier: I would say, so I am how much older am I than you, grace? Four years. I think. Three or four. Three or four years. So I feel like there was always a big enough a gap maybe before like college age where we weren't really competitive. I think our whole family dynamic, we were all pretty competitive, but I was really into soccer growing up and Grace will share, but Grace was more into running and I just did running as like a secondary thing.

So I wouldn't say we really got competitive probably until maybe I started doing marathons. I would say, I think

Grace Chow: you have to back up a little bit.

Chris Detzel: Let's back up my why

Grace Chow: competitive. In what? Competitive I guess I saw it from a different perspective in that we both ran track when we went to K through eight.

Middle school, elementary school. Maddie was, I guess two, two grades older than me. And so she [00:02:00] ran the mile in track. I was a couple years behind her, so track didn't start until I think fifth grade. And so I saw her doing the mile and I was like, oh my gosh that's a really long distance. And everybody thought it was so cool that Maddie did the mile and she was like the only one to do it.

So I was like, you know what? I wanna do the mile. And so once I hit fifth grade, I was like, I'm gonna do this thing. And there was another girl in my class who also did it. So we were like anomalies across our school 'cause we all did the mile, but we also went to a

Maddie Stier: very small, like Lutheran private school.

So the mile is not so crazy, I realize. But in our school where there was. 25 kids in a grade,

Chris Detzel: right?

Maddie Stier: Yes. There was maybe one kid per grade who did the mile. And I didn't even think of Grace, honestly. So sorry. You were just I did not, yeah, I was competitive with you, so I'm glad you were trying to beat me.

Grace Chow: Yeah, so I guess back to the original question, I was trying to be competitive with Maddie and that she ran the mile in track in middle [00:03:00] school and I think that's where it all started. But Medi said it, she was focused on soccer whereas I was focused more on actually ice hockey all the way up until high school.

And even in high school I played, but. Running took priority as soon as I started doing track and realizing I was a lot better at running than playing on a boys' hockey team. So that's where running took off. It's a little harder off as you get

Chris Detzel: older to plan the guys. So you ran track in high school, was it two mile, one mile?

What's the

Grace Chow: Yeah, so Maddie and I went to the same high school and I think we both ran the mile and two mile, I

Maddie Stier: never really did the two mile. I did the mile. I was always doing like the distance medley. For some reason I was doing the four, the 1200, usually the four by eight, stuff like that. But our track coach, we call him h Travis Hassels Worth, I don't even know how you say his last name.

Big shoutout. He was also Grace's cross country coach. So he did distance for track and then cross country. So he was linked up with Grace that way. But Grace wasn't, I think I was a [00:04:00] senior when you were a freshman. So again, not a ton of overlap.

Grace Chow: Yeah. I always did the two mile 'cause I was like, hey, the longer you go, the slower you can go.

And nobody wanted to do the two mile. So I was like, this is my chance to be really good. 'cause there wasn't much competition. Nobody wanted to run eight laps on a track. That's, I feel about Ultras now. Yeah. Just do an ultra and there's not much competition. It makes you in instant confidence boost. It makes you feel better about yourself.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. How are you doing an ultra or have you done No,

Maddie Stier: I did the Cowtown Ultra. Okay. I don't 2022 I think. Yeah. Okay. Again, there I was one of maybe seven females.

Chris Detzel: Did you win it A woman? Yeah,

Maddie Stier: I won. Okay. And don't quote me, there was probably more than seven females, but there's not a ton of competition in the.

Ultras. Grace did an ultra in 2019. I was looking

Grace Chow: back at it. Oh my gosh, this one sounds

Maddie Stier: terrible. Tell

Grace Chow: yeah,

Maddie Stier: about

Chris Detzel: a 50 miler. I see on your, is it a 50 miler or 50 K?

Grace Chow: Yeah, nine hours and 45 [00:05:00] minutes of running. That's not bad. Insane. My friend fellow Marine convinced me to run it and I didn't know anything about it.

Chris Detzel: Okay. You're a Marine. Come to

Grace Chow: find out.

Chris Detzel: You're a Marine. I'm

Grace Chow: sorry. Yes. So I didn't really introduce professionally. Yeah, I'm yeah

Chris Detzel: Let's introduce yourself and stuff like that. Let's go a little bit back.

Grace Chow: So yes, I'm in the United States Marine Corps. I've been in the Marine Corps for seven years now.

My husband is also a Marine and we have a 1-year-old Isaiah, and so we can talk about that a little bit. And then after listening to your podcasts, I just, I guess more introductory wise, what Melanie said, I'm not a runner that recently started or started during COVID. I've been running for 19 years now, so a long time for a little improvement.

After I was looking at stuff, I was like, man, I haven't really prd that many times, but when you do, it's that much sweeter. So I've run 20 marathons. Let's back up

Chris Detzel: quickly. Yeah. So when you say, I have a pr, you're specifically mean? Just [00:06:00] the marathon. You're not talking about the race. Yeah.

Grace Chow: Yeah. Okay. Yep. So just the marathon.

Like I said, I did 20 of them up to this point, and then Maddie and I right now are simultaneously not geographically together but training for the CIM marathon in December, and that'll be number 21, so hopefully big PR there.

Chris Detzel: So quickly, Maddie, grace, are y'all racing? What's the, what's your goal?

Grace, and then Maddie, what's your goal for CIM?

Grace Chow: My goal is to PR again. The last time I PRD was in 2022 when I ran with the sloth. Because there were people I just recognized from running with Maddie every time I would visit and I was like, Hey I know that guy. Like I can run with him. And then it happened multiple times throughout the Houston marathon and I was like, man, like this is so great to have people to run with that, that are encouraging you along with along the way.

But yeah, so that's my goal is to pr 2 57 was what I ran in 2022, so [00:07:00] hoping to beat that. Yeah. How

Chris Detzel: are you feeling now?

Grace Chow: And this is your first time with a coach too? Yeah. I know you asked Maddie's goal, but Yeah. Just to hit on the coach thing. Yeah, it's fun. This is the first time I've ever had a coach other than like high or college and high school.

'cause I ran D one cross country and track, but for a marathon, first time I've had a coach. And so shout out to Hogan Performance. Which is Jordan Hassay or Jordan Hogan's new coaching business. So she's been awesome so far. I haven't been with her long, only about a month, but so far I'm loving it.

It's holding me accountable, which was the biggest thing. I have no room to be like, oh, I don't wanna really run that far today, or I don't wanna wake up early. And so that's been great. But yeah, I know you asked Matt, do you have

Chris Detzel: Yeah, I'll get to Maddie in a minute. She don't worry about me guys. No we'll get to her for sure.

When you kinda look at the coaching piece of it it's a little different for you. And how's that been going so far? Are you like embracing it? Is it hard or you running with the community or is it just still alone? [00:08:00] Or what does that look like?

Grace Chow: So that's the bummer. The one downside I'd say about the military is that you're always moving.

So every three years in the military you move. So I've moved from actually where I live now, to North Carolina and then from North Carolina, I moved to Hawaii, and then from Hawaii, recently moved back to Quantico, Virginia. We're living in Northern Virginia and I haven't really gotten into a running group here.

I was hopeful that I would find one right away, but things have just been like busy getting moved into our house and job started all the things that go along with that. Yeah, it's been really great just having workouts planned like somebody else to plan the misery for you and know what is laid out for the week.

And so I can see, oh, Thursday's gonna be a really hard tempo workout. I need to make sure I set the coffee maker I need to make sure I go to bed with my son nice and early and I have things set out. I have my lunch packed for work, all that. 'cause I love to run in the [00:09:00] morning. If I run anytime later in the day, it just throws me off for the next two or three days.

Chris Detzel: What does that look like for your. You've got a 1-year-old that's gotta be somewhat challenging. Your husband's there, right? I mean he's there, but what does that look like? And does it make it a little bit harder to be perfect on your training?

Grace Chow: Yeah, so going back to the competitive ness between me and Maddie has three children, which she's talked about before.

Anytime I'm having a rough day, I'm like at least I don't have three.

Chris Detzel: That's true.

Grace Chow: And so if Maddie, she's got some young

Chris Detzel: ones though.

Grace Chow: I know. And so twins. So if Maddie's putting in these high miles, I'm like, if she can do it with three kids, I can absolutely do it with one. I might not I don't know how we rack and stack right now speed-wise, but I might not be as fast as her marathon wise with our previous races.

But we'll see how CIM goes. And yeah, back to your question, like how it goes with my husband, we're both Marines, so we both work right now, pretty regular office [00:10:00] hours throughout the day. My son goes to daycare and then. I like to run in the morning and then he does MMA mixed martial arts and so he works out at lunch and in the evenings.

So we've got an even split system working for now. But it is exhausting. By Friday, we're like, thank goodness the week is over 'cause we can finally relax.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. That's awesome. Maddie let's go to you. You're gonna run CIM, which I know we talked about last time. How's the training been going?

How's your mental toughness right now? What's going on with you?

Maddie Stier: Mental toughness. That's good. It's actually going really well. No, I like it. I think last time we spoke I was gonna focus on really like a summer of strength, which kind of turned more into summer of strength and summer of speed, focusing on the strength aspect of it.

I added an additional strength day and I really even upped. Like the weights I was lifting. A lot of times I would stick to more of a moderate weight when I would do my strength workouts, and I really actually upped it to [00:11:00] what I would consider really heavy. So I think the summer of strength went well.

And then I think I focused a lot on speed. Really what I would do is I would just show up to the track days with a lot of the slots, either down in Richardson will go to JJ Pierce High School, or we'll go, we'll stick up here in Frisco. But I basically would just run with Latch onto whoever was there. A lot of times it would be like Aaron Pearson, Eric Brittle, who are much faster than me.

Those are like two high, two 30 guys low. Two forties. Yep. That's

Chris Detzel: right.

Maddie Stier: And I would just hang on as long as I could. I knew I was gonna die, but eventually I was able to hang on a little bit longer and a little bit longer, and I was running some really fast times. So much so that even. Like at the 1776, I was blown away by how fast I was able to run.

Yeah, I know we have the 1776 mile marker, but the actual mile, I was shocked 'cause that was a PR for me there.

Chris Detzel: What'd you run? What was the mile? Time

Maddie Stier: was a five 14 for Nice. I guess I don't remember exactly the [00:12:00] 1600 versus the mile. I know we had three markers. One of the two was a five 14 which was definitely a PR for me.

So I was really happy with that. I feel like I set myself up with a good base going to CIM where I do feel like I, I could pr. 'cause even in these workouts, I feel like I've been hitting a lot faster times than what I've been doing. And I'm following the same thing. I'm still going. I don't have a coach or anything.

I don't even really have a structured plan. I just know my mileage each week. And on Tuesdays I just show up with them and again, I hang on as long as I can. I know I'm gonna get dropped. I know I'm probably gonna be the last one to finish the workout. I don't care. Because I'm getting, I'm making progress.

I'm running faster. And there's even, it was actually two weeks ago, I had a really good workout at the Lake, Jess Dees. She ended up doing it with me, which was super helpful, but it was like, it was 10 Jessie j Jess Dees, Jessica Dees, DE Jessica

Chris Detzel: DI don't know her. Yeah.

Maddie Stier: Yeah. She'll run with a lot of the southern sauce.

But she ran it with me and it was 10 [00:13:00] miles, one mile on, one mile off, mile on the goal was like low sixes, the mile off. I think we were targeting mid to high sixes and I was really nervous for it, but honestly it felt great. It was garbage weather. A lot of other people didn't feel great that day, and that was a really big confidence boost for me.

So I'm hoping for more workouts like that, especially with it being summer. I'm a not, I'm not a hot weather runner, which has always been really tough for me in Dallas. But this summer it really didn't bother me as much, so I don't know if I'm adapting or what.

Chris Detzel: Hey, you are, and look, it hasn't been as hot.

It's been hot and very, don't

Maddie Stier: say that, Chris. Gimme some credit. It's been hot.

Chris Detzel: No, it has. It's been extremely like hum humid, right? 90 plus percent humidity. So there's that. And it's really difficult, especially in the morning. That's great. And you have a few months and so you didn't tell me your goal, like what was your PR again?

Maddie Stier: My PR right now is a two 50 and some change. Okay.

Chris Detzel: Wow. I wish I ran in the

Maddie Stier: Woodlands in 2021, so I'm hoping to go in. I'm fingers crossed. Would love to go sub two 50. [00:14:00] Yeah, we will. See that's the

Grace Chow: goal,

Chris Detzel: grace. So that's gonna be hard to hang on to her.

Grace Chow: Yeah, I know Maddie mentioned in her previous podcast, she's I don't like to run with people.

I guess it's not that she doesn't like to run with people, she likes having people with her in a race, but she doesn't like to know they're there. Yeah. And so I think I'm here. That probably stems from when her and I did our first couple of races. 'cause I think I said the same thing. I was like, don't talk to me, don't look at me.

If I see you surge in front of me, okay great. But I don't want my race or your race to be dependent on one another, if so if one of us is having a bad day, it's let's not let that affect the other person. Yeah. I'm an

Maddie Stier: extremely mental runner, like more so even than physically where I don't want anyone talking to me or like it's exactly that.

If someone, for example, two Tuesdays ago, I just got on Eric Rele because he was driving me nuts during this workout. I'm holding on for dear life, trying to keep [00:15:00] up with these fast kids and it's hard for them. They're maybe not going all out as much as I am because I'm trying to keep them in my distance.

Yes, it's still hard for them, but Eric is come on Maddy, you got it. Keep it up. Meanwhile, as he's doing his rep and I'm like, I can't even acknowledge him. So it's can you just shut up? I know it's not that hard for you. You're turning around, yelling at me and cheering for me. So it's that kind of thing.

And then I mentally think, this is obviously easy enough for him, or some of them will, a lot of the sauce, they'll sing during their workouts or they'll, I'm just like, you guys stuck. Like I'm dying.

Grace Chow: That reminds me of our brother's also a runner. He was. He is more of an iron man now, but he ran a race with me just in Hawaii, and he did the same thing.

He was talking to me, it was only like a 10 K race and I said a similar thing. It wasn't very nice, and I was just run like, don't look at me, don't talk to me. And then he took off and then I think he won the whole thing. But I was like just stop. It's not the [00:16:00] nicest way. To tell somebody to stop, at least from what I remember, especially with siblings.

'cause you're a bit more, that's your brother. Yes.

But

Chris Detzel: yeah. That's pretty awesome. So two of you are looking forward to, I'm sure, CIM and seeing each other. Will you see each other beforehand or no,

Maddie Stier: like before we get to California?

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Hope Maddie's my, it's only

Maddie Stier: my lodging. Yeah, we're gonna, so me, grace and Mel, I think are gonna stay together.

Okay. So should be So she's

Chris Detzel: running it too?

Maddie Stier: Yeah. Awesome. She's better

Chris Detzel: because she just moves, she moved to Colorado, right?

Maddie Stier: Yeah. But she's still doing it and she's training. So I think she'll actually be a good person for us to, we're, I think we'll all be similar times. Yeah. Yeah. I look forward to

Chris Detzel: close together.

Yeah. You're not gonna stay together. You just, you won't know where each other's are. Don't be talking to each other, doing the race. I'm not a big talker during a race. I remember this one guy was like, it was a half marathon one time. Chris, how's it going? I said, Tracy, I go, you're gonna have to stop talking to me right now.

I'm focused and I'm gonna try to go fast. Okay.

Maddie Stier: Yeah. He's

Chris Detzel: alright [00:17:00] Chris. No problem.

Maddie Stier: I like to try to reach like a special state of Zen during a race. Yeah. And you can just zone out. You pinpoint something and that's the best when you can reach the Zen and then the miles just fly by.

Chris Detzel: What's the mo?

What's the favorite race that you guys have done together that maybe it was competitive or not? I don't know what's the most fun? It's a marathon. You said you both did Cincinnati and

Grace Chow: together. I'd say Cleveland Marathon. Just 'cause it's our hometown. I would like to go

Maddie Stier: back and do Cleveland again.

No, yeah, Cleveland's good. I think it would be fun to do it another time. I think to some of the more local smaller races, like we would always do, there was a few years we did the Bay Days. Five it's Bay Village is a town by where we grew up. They do a five mile 4th of July race.

That was always fun. But actually probably the Turkey trots. I love trots. I'm gonna say the Turkey

Grace Chow: trots,

Maddie Stier: because a lot of times it'll be more than just me and Grace, our broader family will go and we're all pretty competitive, even though they're all pretty slow compared to Grace than I. But they are competitive among themselves.

Yeah. No, but like Morgan and Jenna, so our cousin and [00:18:00] sister-in-law are the same, around the same pace. So they'll race each other or our brother and Yeah, cousin. True. Those. So yeah, those are always super fun. Does your brother fest

Chris Detzel: the two of you, or?

Maddie Stier: We have, so there's four brothers.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Depends on which one we're

Maddie Stier: Using them interchangeably.

I don't think any of them are faster than us right now, to be honest. I think though, for sure three of them aren't. But the one who was ri, so another one, he's the one in between me and Grace. Okay. Me and him are 14 months apart. James, the one that we were referring

Grace Chow: to, that is the Iron Man. He is the

Maddie Stier: Iron Man.

He was in the Marines, he lives in Hawaii. He's into tries and all that now. I don't think he's into running as much, but he, if he tried, he would be faster than us for sure.

Chris Detzel: Does being a Marine help, I mean it's

Grace Chow: I dunno, grace, does it help? That's interesting you bring that up. Talking about my brother.

'cause he also is a Marine, but he is no longer in the Marine Corps. But it's an interesting question. Being a Marine itself,

Chris Detzel: when you think Marines, you think tough. Yeah. Just strong. So I dunno,

Grace Chow: I think the Marine Corps focuses a lot on functional fitness [00:19:00] and so as I was going through the marathons I've done before this podcast, I was like, what happened in 2022?

I did, I think four marathons in 2022, which is an insane amount. Yeah, I don't know. I did two, like in the winter, in the beginning months, and then two in the fall. And I'm like, holy cow. That was so many, but none of them were fast. And I was like, what happened? And so that was the year and a half that I got into CrossFit, and I really started prioritizing CrossFit over running.

And I got real, in my opinion, I got really good at it. And so eventually I don't know I don't know. I guess I just fell away from CrossFit. The gym membership was expensive and I stopped doing it as much. I still really enjoy it. But to simultaneously be competitive in both running and CrossFit, I think is really hard to do.

And so back to your question. Yeah. I think the Marine Corps prepares you for a lifestyle of fitness and health and good habits where some people might see it and [00:20:00] think, oh, bad habits like alcohol and tobacco, which is far from the truth because all the marines I know motivators, leaders, a lot of them lead very healthy, fit lifestyles as well.

So going into work, I'm always, I always know people are gonna be running at lunch or working out at lunch or even before work starts. So it's always really refreshing to see that and feed off of other people's motivation, especially in lieu of having a running group with all these different duty stations I've been at.

Chris Detzel: That's awesome. You go to work and people are working out during lunch or whatever, for sure. Afterwards or before and things like catch up. You should,

Maddie Stier: I think some things that would be interesting you should share, I guess first of all, some of the unique, like on base there's some unique rules about running, like whenever visited Grace, she's had to.

Brief

Grace Chow: me on certain things. Yeah, I think Maddie got in trouble once for one thing, but yeah, one thing I was just gonna say about that is there's a pull-up bar in every office I've ever worked in, and [00:21:00] so there's always been a whiteboard and a pull-up bar, and every time you start getting sleepy while you're working at your desk, you go do pull-ups and you have a tally throughout the day or the week.

And then there's a leaderboard by the end of it that, so that's cool. Yeah. Marines love their pull-ups and so one reason me and Maddie I feel like started doing pull-ups is because of the Marine Corps. Although Maddie isn't a Marine, she still saw me doing it back to the competitiveness and was like, I wanna learn to do pull-ups too.

And so

Chris Detzel: I wanna be like my sister and do more.

Grace Chow: Yes. So just like she did the big bad mile, I guess I did pullups and she was like, I wanna do more. But yeah, the weird rules on base. So I guess they're not weird, they're just like professionalism, respect things is to, you always have to have a wear a shirt.

So when it's really hot in Hawaii, you very naturally just wanna run in a sports bra and shorts, which to normal off base people is totally fine. But on base you have to, and then there's, even if you live on base Yep. Everybody so it's like there's

Maddie Stier: certain people their house is on, like there's living [00:22:00] spaces there.

So even if you wanna walk out your front door, you gotta be fully clothed. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Maddie Stier: So

Grace Chow: I guess down tied and shorts,

Chris Detzel: you can wear running shorts right in this shirt? Yes. Kinda like this. Or Okay. Yeah. Got it.

Grace Chow: It's just like when you live off base and then you go on base, it's frustrating 'cause it's it's really hot today and I feel faster without a shirt on, but I have to wear it.

So he has a silly thing. And then another rule that maybe Maddie's referring to is on base, there's certain areas you can't run in that are just operationally secure. Don't run there or don't take photographs of the planes, the aircraft, helicopters, you name it. Drones,

Chris Detzel: no selfies or anything like that.

Grace Chow: I think one time this wasn't running, but we were on base for a Christmas party and Maddie like wanted to take a picture of the flight line and then somebody like came rushing over to her like wait, stop. You can't do that. And Maddie was like, oh my gosh, I was taking a picture of the sunset.

But yeah, there was a plane in front of it. It just so happened

Maddie Stier: to be behind the light line.

Grace Chow: You took the picture of,

Maddie Stier: I think some other [00:23:00] unique things that I noticed is, so base has some really cool, I'm thinking of Hawaii 'cause that's where Grace was most recently. They have a lot of, maybe this is probably all bases.

They have these hit lockers, which are like these high intensity interval training, outdoor workout spaces. And they're all across, maybe I'm wrong, but all across base. And there's some on track there. So a lot of times we would wanna run from Grace's house to base to go work out there. But you have to be like, anytime you enter base, it's like a very secure checkpoint.

You have to have your id. So you can't just, you can't just run there. So I don't know, maybe people all know these things, but I thought they were interesting.

Grace Chow: Yeah. That is just one thing you don't really think about. I guess running off base, but anytime like for the convenience when you're at work, just going for a run.

It's if I'm gonna leave base to get some change in scenery, I have to take my ID with me. And I know Maddie loves her pockets full of stuff when she runs, but That's true. I am very minimalist. So you find out

Maddie Stier: what your deadly allergies.

Grace Chow: Fortunately none yet. But you'd be surprised. You don't know. It could come up [00:24:00] anytime.

I do think when you become a mom, you automatically feel like, not obligated, but I feel a lot more inclined to bring my cell phone with me. And so running with an ID seems minimal when you run with your big iPhone. But I really started to like the new like running tank tops from Running Rabbit that has the pocket in the back.

So that's made it a lot easier. But

Chris Detzel: There's now a pocket in the back for, do you put your cell phone back there or just. Gel or what?

Grace Chow: Yeah, you can put anything. It's a pocket like sized for an iPhone, but it's right in, in between your shoulder blades and I really like it 'cause I don't take my phone out a lot.

I'm sure it would be annoying if you frequently have to look at your phone, but

Chris Detzel: that's for sure.

Grace Chow: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Wait, I got a call. Yeah. I've been taking my phone on some of my runs only because I'm now one of the admins for White Rock running co-op. And so somebody's gotta take pictures, and so now I'll just take pictures and things like that and carry my phone in my back pocket, which fits very nicely.

But I'm not a big fan of taking phones [00:25:00] and I don't like it. But I did think about Maddie whenever I was carrying that thing in Agel or two and I was like, man, she, it's a lot. She's even more than mine. So I don't even know

Maddie Stier: I've even added some new accessories, man. I got one of those like portable speaker things.

If I don't know if you've seen those clip-on ones and we'll use 'em for workouts. I have that. Have speakers. Yeah. You're trendy. Max has one. Eric has one. It's just like a, I think it's like next gear or something. It's just a very small. Clip on speaker. It's like the size of a small running light. You can get on Amazon, but it's just, it plays out loud.

So when we have big groups, we all just listen to music, we make playlists, share 'em. So I'll have that. And then running light usually as well. EpiPen phone, goose, water. I got it all. She brings some snacks too. Maybe hand them out. I

Chris Detzel: think you have to carry some stuff for sure. During to marathon still.

Grace, I assume you're carrying some gels or something. Water maybe. Yeah.

Grace Chow: I feel like gel versus iPhone though is like way different. [00:26:00] I'm not worried about a gel getting like water logged or chafing against my back or something like that. But yeah. Only recently I think I was listening to, yeah, Melanie's podcast.

Yet again, she had a lot of shout outs today, but he was saying how never skip a water stop 'cause somebody else told her that. And I recently did the Maui Marathon. This year in, let's see, that was in April of this year. And I was thinking that going into it, I was like, I'm gonna stop at every water stop or not stop, but get water.

Every water stop, even if it's in the first mile. I didn't plan for water or anything like that. My husband was there, but it was an out and back on a kind of a busy road. So it was hard for him to really get to me 'cause traffic was on the other side. All that to say, it was a cup less marathon. And so they issued you a disposable rubber, like silicone type cup and they gave you like a demonstration at packet pickup.

This is how you use this. [00:27:00] You need to keep it the whole time. You need to shove it in your sports bra or your shorts and every water stop. I could tr trail runners use that.

Chris Detzel: That's funny.

Grace Chow: Yeah. Anyways, go ahead. If you want water, take it out. And I'm like, okay. Is there like gonna be water in case you lose it or anything?

And they, their answer was, oh, just don't lose it. And it was like, okay. And the marathon itself was beautiful. Great. Like views the whole time. It was cool. I love the Island of Maui. It was awesome except for the cups. It just wasn't practical for people that were running at a six 30 to six 40 minute pace.

And you're running past maybe the Boy Scout water stand and they're not really trained to fill up cups of water that fast. And I train

Chris Detzel: them. First went

Grace Chow: that whole race, I felt amazing. The whole first half. I was like, this is awesome. I'm gonna pr There was a lady on her bike and it kills me. I can't remember her name.

She was awesome. Super encouraging. She was actually the cup demo lady at the [00:28:00] packet pickup, but she was riding in front of me the whole time. Like I said, great things to say about the race, just aside from the whole cup thing. 'cause I felt like I didn't get really any fluids, like the whole race.

'cause as you can imagine, running past at that pace, not really slowing down much to fill your cup at every water stop you got centimeter of water in the bottom of your cup. And by the end of it, I was just so dehydrated. I remember mile 24, I think my leg cramped so bad and that's never happened to me before.

I'm like, oh my gosh, what the heck? Just finish this thing. And so that whole last mile, I was like, just hang on. But I finished first female, so I was stoked about that. And I didn't pr although I was really hoping to, this was my first really marathon. I trained for postpartum, so it was just under, let's see, it was 10 months postpartum.

And so I really wanted a PR and I ran a 3 0 1, so it did not hit my 2 57 pr. Pretty good. [00:29:00] Yeah. Feel

Chris Detzel: really good.

Grace Chow: Thank you.

Chris Detzel: Think about it like postpartum, that's kind the 10 months and no water. What's optimistic

Grace Chow: trying to

Maddie Stier: pr 10 months postpartum.

Grace Chow: I know, but everybody said, and I saw Maddie, she did great after she had her first daughter Sage.

And even after the twins like coming back and just hitting the ground running literally. And not skipping a beat. I was like, I can do this. Mom. Strength's a real thing. All the perfect parameters are in place. This is a beautiful marathon. It's gonna be awesome. I used it as a see you later to Hawaii as well.

'cause we were moving a month after that. My final hurrah, let's make it count. Finally pr 'cause it had been since 2022. And unfortunately it didn't happen. But I'm hopeful for CIM that I can get a pr I

Chris Detzel: think it is a big opportunity for you to do that. Although 3 0 1 is amazing, so we've gotta put that in perspective, right?

You're not all that far from it, so that's positive. But you'll have your sister there, [00:30:00] you'll have people you know there. So there's always that little boost. I think that to me is helpful, and hopefully that will be for you as well.

Grace Chow: Yeah, I definitely hope so. Seeing other spots carry some water if you have to.

I hope CIM has cups of water. If not, I might pre-plant some. I think they will, to styrofoam cups throughout the course.

Maddie Stier: One thing I'll say though about Grace mentioned the whole mom strength thing and Okay. Say what you will, I know it's like a cheesy term, but I will say a lot of people always ask like, how do you find the time?

They'll ask Grace last me, they'll last Mel there. They'll ask all of us people with who have kids who run, and how do you find the time to I think Chris asked that

Grace Chow: at the beginning.

Maddie Stier: Yeah. How do you find the time to run? How do you find the time to progress and just how do you do it? I think a lot of people are curious about that, and I would say yes.

I think mom strength is true, but I really think a lot of it is just you learn how to prioritize your time. If I'm driving [00:31:00] down to the lake and I'm leaving my husband with three kids for a morning, I'm not going there just to lolly gag. If I am, I'm going No tacos afterwards. No, and you have to that's right.

Yeah. No, no taco joint after, but it's you are there to just get the job done. You are just focused on the prize and you're focused on you just really push for that short amount of time that you have and you need to be really strategic about it. And also, I think you're strategic about, I know Grace has the coach, which has helped her be structured, but for me, like at the beginning of the week, I, number one, I have the same routine every week.

I do the same, not the same like workouts and all that, but I have the same schedule. And then also making sure that I plan out the mileage, figure out how much time I have looking at my work schedule, looking at my husband, Hey, are you cool if I'm a little bit later this morning? Whatever it ends up being.

So I think that's a big piece of it.

Chris Detzel: No, it's, obviously you have to structure that time in the right way, obviously that's important. But yeah, just I was gonna ask you Grace what you meant by mom [00:32:00] strength, because I was like, of course I don't have that, but maybe Maddie said it perfectly.

I don't know.

Grace Chow: On the note of like structure. Yeah, you do need to prioritize things. 'cause sometimes you feel guilty Hey, I could be spending time at home with my son. And sometimes if you run with a stroller, I know a lot of people hate doing stroller runs, but I don't mind it all that much.

I see it as a little bit of an extra strength workout. But I feel like I am like the most type A, type B person you might meet. And what I mean by that is that in work and certain things, I am very particular, very stubborn, very regimented, like my way or the highway. But then I think after running in high school and college and there really wasn't a choice to not run like college.

They're paying for school. You need to show up to practice. You have no choice, so you need to run. And then same thing I guess with the Marine Corps, you always have a physical fitness test, actually two a year a combat fitness test and a physical fitness test. And so [00:33:00] you never have room to waiver in your physical abilities.

And what I see with being the most type A, type B person is that in my free time, I don't want to plan things. I don't want to have a regimented schedule. I wanna fly by the seat of my pants. And so with running after college, I was like I don't have to run if I don't want to. And for a long time I was just kind yeah, I'll go run eight miles today, or eh, I don't feel like running.

I'm just gonna go to the gym and do pullups or something. But I've never really had a strong running community as, I hate to say this, it's like I'm not from Dallas. I haven't lived in Dallas, but like the slots is, I see how awesome it is to have people to run with that are fast and you can count on them to show up and

Chris Detzel: They're all serious.

Grace Chow: Yeah, they're serious. That's a great way to put it. A lot of running groups that I've found and that my different duty stations are very social running groups. Yeah. Yeah, there's always like maybe a couple fast people, and I hate to say, they're usually guys [00:34:00] that are around my pace and it's I don't wanna run with a bunch of guys all the time.

That's kinda weird. And yeah, I, I think I've gone through a cycle of really hating, structured running workouts, all that sort of thing, minus my little CrossFit era where I really enjoyed it. 'cause I, it was going to a gym and the workout was planned for you. You didn't put any thought into it. You showed up, you did the workout, and you're like that was really hard.

But I did it with people and it was fun. We listened to music. And we had a great conversation after and then we all went home and ate a big meal. But yeah, with the slots and having that running community and not just the sloth group, I know there's Pegasus and some of the other ones, but in Texas it, I feel like I'm the lone wolf in whatever duty station I'm in from the slots because I can still see there runs on Strava.

I can still see them on Instagram. I know like their routine. I hate to say, like Maddie said, she always is very intentional about her time when she goes to do runs with whoever it might be at the lake. [00:35:00] And so they always take a picture after or they always stop at a certain bathroom, that sort of thing.

And so seeing their runs, I can live vicariously through them and I'm like, okay, like they did this workout today. What's to say? I can't do it now. It's a little different 'cause I have a coach that's telling me what to do, but still seeing somebody suffering from miles and miles away all the way in Texas.

It's still encouraging, so I really appreciate that from the slots.

Chris Detzel: That's pretty cool. I like that. You don't really have a running community today to be a part of and so you just look at, the slots and how they're doing and your sister and follow 'em amongst Strava.

That's pretty cool. I love that.

Maddie Stier: Maybe we should make this Grace's PSA, like calling all DC fast runners. We're looking to make a branch.

Chris Detzel: There's gotta be a lot. Guess lot of people in DC are close over there. Yeah, there's gotta be lots of groups over there.

Grace Chow: There's a couple I've looked at.

The big thing that I've noticed is being a crazy, like weird work dynamic structure with my husband is that we're both Marines so we have to be [00:36:00] at work early. And we live far from work and a lot of those running groups are in like DC proper where we live outside of dc So it's just a lot of driving traffic.

That

Chris Detzel: could probably be a weekend thing that you'd, yeah, I think

Grace Chow: that would be the only solution is like long long runs on the weekend. But yeah, on a run that, I forget when we were there for Maddie's twin's birthday, we did a long run with the slots and we were just talking about how the slots started and how Maddy kinda had all these people gravitate.

Towards the slots because I know like Jennifer started running with Maddie and then the slots became a thing, and then I was like, you know what? I am like the lone wolf slot sloth. But Maddie and started running together well before the slots even developed. So I guess in a way, we were our own little slot team before they were fully a team or I don't know, group.

I am not taking credit for the sloths, so let me preface that. I'm not trying to take credit for the floss, but I do think like [00:37:00] having somebody to run with and people gravitating towards you is really what caused the loss to be what they are today. Yeah, I think is a

Chris Detzel: fact of things, story of why that happens.

If Melanie told me that story or if you did money, it's one of you.

Maddie Stier: I don't know. I can, I mean I can share it on here if you're cur, I think people are always wondering how the sauce has come about. Why are we called the sauce? Honestly, it's nothing special. It's nothing exciting. There's.

Running threads across the board. Everyone has group chats about, oh, where are we running when, what are we doing? One morning we used to always go to blue Bonnet Trail in, we would meet at the QT there, and it was just being out and back on the trail. And usually we would do tempos on Thursdays, and I think it was some Wednesday night we were planning the run.

Someone said, I don't even know who said it. Are we running sloth mile, like the sloth emoji miles or cheetah emoji miles? They're like, I'm only coming if it's sloth emoji miles. And it just, honestly, that's how it stemmed into the sloth. I think someone just titled the chat that [00:38:00] as a joke and it, we ran with it.

And that's, and that was before sloths even got sloths are trendy now, like you see slots everywhere. But that was, I don't even know how many years ago. And then it's taken off, I will say, since Matt Campbell started running with us, he's done it so much with the sloths. People joke that Matt's commercialized the slot.

Which honestly, it's great. Honestly, it's great. I'll take it Matt. Matt has done a lot and I think it is, it's awesome.

Chris Detzel: I think it's really cool. I heard the story around a lot of you were running with Ray and the track team and stuff like that. It was one of

Maddie Stier: those It was, that's exactly, we were all running with RTC.

That was my origin to DFW running was through Ray and that whole group. And then it was just, from that text thread, other text threads form, and that's really what it was.

Chris Detzel: I think it's so interesting and Grace, when you look at kind of the Dallas Fort Worth area, both women and men are really fast.

As there's lots of women here running under three hour marathons, and it's. Pretty spectacular. I don't know that I [00:39:00] see that too much in one specific area. I'm not in a lot of areas, but it's just, I don't, 10 years ago I didn't see that at all. Like running under a three hour marathon was like, like for even a guy was really hard.

You know what I mean? I think Dallas

Grace Chow: is crazy. Yeah. Dallas is a really special place in that there are a lot of insanely fast runners. Men and women. And I also think just from an outsider perspective, there's a lot of young adults, I'd say 25 to these that are runners in Dallas. And I mean looking at peak running ages, a lot of men and women peak in their thirties at running.

And maybe that's why people feed off each other and then Holy cow, white Rock Lake going there for long runs. It's insane the amount of people that are out there. Yeah. On a Saturday morning running like I have never seen that anywhere. Even going to the National Mall, which we've done a couple of times, you don't see that many people running around the National Mall [00:40:00] on a Saturday morning like you do at White Rock Lake.

Maddie Stier: You need next time we're in, if you go to Austin to visit Will Grace, even like Lady Bird Lake is even crazier than White Rock. So much so I don't, I could be wrong on this, but I think a lot of times the running groups won't even run around Lady Bird just 'cause it's so crazy in Austin.

Chris Detzel: I feel like Houston is a huge and Houston, yeah.

Houston also is a. Big running community. So when you think of Texas, you've got DFW for sure. I think San Antonio's pretty good, austin obviously and Houston are just full of really amazing runners and yeah, some great races as well, in those areas. So I think, I don't know what it is about Texas, so maybe I should start a podcast around I can't even interview enough people in Dallas, so I'm trying to get to all of Texas will be really difficult, but still,

Grace Chow: yeah, I don't know.

Everything's bigger in Texas. Everyone's faster in Texas. I don't know what it's,

Chris Detzel: yeah. Like I like if you look at D fff, it's interesting because you have some extremely fast men and women extremely fast. I haven't [00:41:00] seen, like Matt Campbell was like we're trying to get this loss, some of these guys and some these women under, mid thirties to hit the two.

And hopefully Matt can do that and maybe a few others, coming up, whether it's CIM or some other race. But you don't see, I don't see any two tenors here in Dallas Ward, just don't. And but I do see of the ante. But it is, yeah. So I do see them in Austin and I do see it in Houston.

So it's interesting. I don't think we're there yet. I'm not saying there's not one person here, but I haven't seen them. I haven't,

Maddie Stier: yeah,

Chris Detzel: if I saw him I would talk, try to talk to them, but yeah. Grace, there's gotta be stuff around you, but I, like you said, with Drive and everything else, you'll have to do it on the weekends probably.

Grace Chow: Yeah. I mean there definitely are. Even like some of the regulars I've seen at the tracks I've gone to early in the morning that are also like running in the dark. I, we're still getting our speed under us here. Yeah. The big thing that I didn't realize I would have to deal with here is coyotes.

That's something that threw me off running on the trails here. I was like, oh my goodness. What do I do with [00:42:00] coyotes on the trail? And so I'm just figuring out places to run around here still and getting a feel for. What I like to run and where I like to run and what the best options are with bathrooms, with water stops, that sort of thing.

Chris Detzel: I could say that's a big challenge, going somewhere new and it's a fun challenge probably, but you don't know where to go, where to run, so you gotta start somewhere. How much in the neighborhood can you run in and where in the neighborhood can you run in to get maybe some longer miles to where you don't have to drive somewhere, going to get track workouts, all of those kinds of things.

And it's hard to build relationships with new people long term. Even if you go run with them, you dunno them for a while.

Grace Chow: Yeah. I think that's another thing with a lot of my running friends have been fellow marines, but like I said, we move every three years. So it's like making. New adult friends every time you go somewhere, which yes, they develop over time, but like every time you pick up and go somewhere new, it's oh, here we go again.

And I hate to say that I am not a fan of driving places to run with being [00:43:00] intentional with your time and wanting to maximize the amount of times in the day, time in the day. I feel like driving places just takes away from that. And I should probably change my mindset on that. 'cause there's a lot of great places I might be missing out on

Chris Detzel: for sure.

But

Grace Chow: I really like the fact of walking out my door, going for a run, coming right back in, stretch, shower, grab food, and then hit the road wherever I have to go next. So I think that's just a me thing that I need to overcome at some point to make new running friends and find a running group. So hopefully that'll happen soon.

And were you gonna say something.

Maddie Stier: Yeah, I am gonna totally switch gears 'cause one thing I feel like we didn't talk about that I think is interesting that I think we should talk about with grace is grace you like five. Secondly brushed over your background and like your intro into running. And I really think, I think I should share what I think are listening now.

No, I just think like [00:44:00] you brushed over things 'cause you don't think that they're that interesting. But I think these are some things which is why I thought it would be good for Chris to have you on. And feel free to chime in and interrupt me at any point. But first of all let me preface it by saying Grace.

Has always been, I don't even wanna use the word stubborn because I think I'm quite stubborn, but like Grace has always just done grace. Like Grace is just gonna do what she wants to do. She doesn't wanna be told what to do, she doesn't wanna be told where to be. She doesn't care if she's the only person who is doing set activity or she's gonna go take a nap as everyone else is in the other room.

Grace is gonna do grace and that has been her since the beginning. Like she said, grace played ice hockey growing up. Only girl on the team. Since how old were you when you started playing play? Like five. So Grace started playing hockey 'cause our brothers played hockey and why not? Why not play hockey? So I think that's one thing you hockey too, for a for one season.

And I realized I don't wanna be the only girl on a hockey team. This sucks. But Grace kept it up. [00:45:00] Then you started running quite early on like maybe seventh or eighth grade and Grace said she did the mile and two mile, which is correct, but. Probably in like eighth grade Grace, eighth grade, however old that is.

Grace would go on like 16, 11. Okay. Grace. She would go on 16 mile runs. She would just leave as a 14-year-old and go. And I remember being like as junior and senior in high school thinking, what is wrong with her? Why is she going and running these long runs? And you can elaborate on it a bit, grace.

But then, and I dunno why my mom even led her 'cause that's strange. But then she did the Cleveland Marathon when she was 14 years old. I remember my only memory of that was my mom thinking, oh gosh, this runs through some not great areas in Cleveland. Is she gonna be okay? And I remember gonna the finish line of that marathon, just thinking that good job, but why would you do this?

What is job messed up? What's wrong with your mind? [00:46:00] So very early on, grace was into distance running. I don't know what triggered in your head as like a child, but I feel like now she would be one of those kids you would see on social media. 10-year-old girl runs a marathon.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, exactly.

You never see that. So what was going through your mind? Grace, I wanna hear the story here.

Grace Chow: Yeah, you should have told us. There's, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. I missed the whole social media error of popularity. Yeah. But so yeah, and I guess it was once track started and I was doing the two mile, I was like, I can run slower the farther I go.

So this is great. It doesn't matter what pace I run. And so I would just increase the distance more and more. And then I got, like I said, the most type A, type B person you might meet. I got so fixed on having my running schedule as a, 14 is when I ran my first marathon, but this probably started when I was like 10.

So building up to that, that I needed to run. And people would ask, how much do you [00:47:00] run? Oh my gosh, I see you all over town. And my go-to thing was, I run every other day. And then they're like, my car can't even go that far. How far do you run? And I was like 10 miles every other day, like Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

And I was super regimented about it. I would do the same route every time. So I guess my mom had peace of mind knowing I was doing the same exact route, but 10 miles. I always, sorry, what?

Chris Detzel: I thought it was 10 miles. It's a pretty long route. Yeah. Five out, five back maybe. Yeah.

Grace Chow: Like I still have the route, like pretty memorized in my head and 'cause the route went, my, our parents are divorced and it would go between our parents' house and then loopy loop around the whole town and back to one of their houses.

So I could do the route from either house and it would be the same thing. Okay. So I was a little OC about

Maddie Stier: one other thing I'll add to this is and not to get too deep, I feel like when all this was happening was [00:48:00] right when our parents were getting divorced. So I feel like some of this was like a coping mechanism.

Maybe you probably don't even think that Grace, but that's my yeah. Psychoanalysis of you. I

Grace Chow: think this was like a bit after our parents got divorced, so Yeah. I wouldn't say that's what it was. I think really what it boiled down to was I like knew I could keep surpassing my limits and go farther and farther.

I knew I was one of the few people, I mean what, I guess 10 to 14-year-old, whatever age I was, is doing this. Like I could be really good 'cause there's not that many people doing it. And in my head I remember always thinking I really wanna do a marathon. That would be the coolest thing ever to complete a marathon or be like the youngest girl to complete a marathon.

Which I know 2011 was not probably the case. I don't know what the youngest girl to ever run a marathon is. I'm sure I could look it up, I'll Google it, but I just, I that was like. My like, big [00:49:00] ambition. I was like, to run a marathon, this will be amazing. And so then in my head I was like, even more amazing would be to run and qualify for the Boston Marathon at like young nine years old, by the way.

Sorry, they've been young. Nine years old. Okay. So I was, well by the time I actually ran one, I was 14, so I was five years off from the world record. But in my head that was just motivation to keep me running and I thought it was really cool. And yeah, I I thought it'd be even better to run the Boston Marathon and then I looked it up and I remember just being crushed because I saw there was an age limit to register.

And I'm like, man, like what a g. I've been training so hard for this long and like I'm not even old enough to run it. And I was like maybe I can have my mom register as herself and I can run it as my mom. Because as a 14-year-old or 10 to 14-year-old you're just trying to like, figure out how can I go [00:50:00] about doing this and not break rules or get in trouble, and yeah, I ran the Cleveland Marathon in 2011. I ran it in three hours and 41 minutes. And then that's, yeah. And then I was like, all right, checking the box. That's awesome. Didn't do another marathon until Maddie, actually two years later was like, I'm gonna do my first marathon. And I was like, whoa.

Wait a minute. What do you mean? You used to make fun of me for running so far? What do you mean you're gonna do a marathon? That's my thing. And then. Yeah, Maddie was in college at University of Cincinnati and we went down, it was only like a four hour drive from where we lived in Cleveland.

And she was, we went down, I think because she was running the marathon. And I was like, you know what you don't really know what you're doing. I'm gonna run this with you. So I was like I'll just pay to you for it. And in my head that's not at all like what my actual motives were. It was like, how am I gonna let my sister run a marathon?

Mind you, she's

Maddie Stier: [00:51:00] 15

Grace Chow: in this time.

Maddie Stier: She's

Grace Chow: this, when I was 16, I had to do math. Yeah. 16. And this was in 2013. And she's competitive, man. What'd you say?

Chris Detzel: Mad. So you said you're very competitive with Maddie there. That was funny.

Grace Chow: Yeah. I think I'm just competitive as a person, but yeah, and we ran it.

We started together and I think that was one of the times when I was like, don't look at me. Don't talk to me. Let's just start together and see how it goes. And Maddie beat me. And I was like, oh my gosh. She beat me. What am I doing with my life?

Gosh. And so then I was like, alright, rematch, let's sign up for the Buffalo Marathon in 2014. And so the next year my dad drove us to Buffalo, New York. Very, I'm, if any listeners are from Buffalo, but it was very random no, it's

Maddie Stier: actually a really good marathon.

Grace Chow: Buffalo in the rust belt, very [00:52:00] flat buffalo, New York.

Alright, so saddle up, we go to Buffalo, New York and we both run the Buffalo Marathon. And I looked up the results of that and once again, Maddie beat me by six minutes. Wow. And I don't know, we ran that one together. Or really, I tell you exactly why

Maddie Stier: I beat you in all of these. I don't think, have you ever beat me in a marathon?

I think maybe Cleveland one year.

Grace Chow: Yeah. I don't know. That's why I was trying to figure out which ones. It's because give you after, that's

Maddie Stier: because you don't have a routine. You just do these on a whim and you don't really train.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Maddie Stier: So you just jump in. Yeah. And you can run decent times. Yes. But I think if you trained to the amount I trained, then you would be better than me.

Yeah. It would be interesting to see.

Grace Chow: I don't think you were really training. I think I was this early on. For the Buffalo Marathon. No, I was, yeah. I trained. Not like this,

Maddie Stier: but yeah I trained.

Grace Chow: I feel like there's been a lot of maturing that's happened over the past decade, [00:53:00] but I can definitely say I haven't run a smart marathon up until today.

And so I'm very hopeful that having a coach and running CIM will change that trend that I've had going. But yeah, so Maddie beat me in the Buffalo Marathon. Fast forward. We do countless other marathons, some together, some apart. I did three marathons on deployment all throughout Italy, which was really cool.

Wow. None of which were actually, one was a 3 0 9, so this is in 2020. So I did speed up a little bit, but it took years and years of just figuring out what the heck a marathon is and how fast to run it and what to expect to actually pr. And so fast forward to today. Still sitting at 2 57, but we'll see if,

Chris Detzel: okay.

I think you know me has a good point. And now that I know. You, your training habits. Not that you don't go run, you, when you do sit down and truly train hard for a marathon and hopefully this, what, obviously [00:54:00] it's what you're doing this time, sky's the limit for you.

Literally the sky's the limit. Like you're running two hours and 57 minutes and consistently three hour marathons, or ish, the talent is there, it's just have to, up the miles and do the training, and yeah, man, you definitely would be faster than Matt.

Even today, if you want it, you can. It's

Grace Chow: on. It's on. Yeah. I weirdly think that I've learned a lot from DFW Run Talk because it's not forced learning. It's like leisure, listen to this and listen to what other people are doing, and it's oh, should I be doing that? I haven't maybe I should and maybe it'll make me better.

And so like the water thing or the nutrition thing, like I know you talked about goos in a podcast and I was like, man, I remember going marathons, not even eating one goof. Should I probably be eating those like a little more frequently? And so now Jordan right now is you should have one every 5K.

And I'm like, every 5K. I dunno if I can hold that down, but we'll test it. And so getting nutrition [00:55:00] down, getting a training plan down and having a text from a coach actually seeing if you're getting workouts in and you're hitting times has proven. Up to this point, granted no injuries, no hiccups, has proven to be really helpful and I'm optimistic about CIM.

Chris Detzel: I can't wait. I'm really excited now. You both just watching the two of you and look, both of you are excellent runners and doing amazing things and the running community, we both have kids, jobs and, everything that's going on with life, and you're still overcoming, I say overcoming.

You're still doing great things and it's pretty cool to see. And obviously you have to have partners, husbands, whatever, that help. And you have that as well, I always think so. It's funny, my wife said, me and my wife, and we get together. I don't know, 12, 13, whatever years ago we were running at DRC Dallas Running Club and we met each other.

And it's just so much easier to be with somebody that understands that you have to train. They have to [00:56:00] train, and it's just Yeah. They're just gonna go off and do this 20 miler or whatever they're doing. And you just understand, yeah, I gotta watch kids fine, no problem. Just is with Yeah.

If they're not like that, then you know, there's gonna be some opportunities, within the relationship. Luckily that, in my opinion, for us, it's never been a problem to, Hey, she's gonna go off and do 20 and what she was doing, a hundred milers or 50 milers or whatever. You can go off and do a 50 miles loop around the lake, do it five, yeah. It's can be known. It's for eight hours, nine hours, whatever it is, and maybe I'll go to the lake and go give her some water or something. I don't know, whatever.

Maddie Stier: But, it's just. No,

Chris Detzel: it's just

Maddie Stier: Ha it's having someone who gets it. Yeah. The other day I was finishing a workout and I thought I was having a foot pain.

My arch was really hurting me, and I was really bummed. I was like, wow, it's just a really good workout. And I told my husband, and then I take out my, take off my shoe and there was a rock in my shoe and I was like, oh, thank God. It was just a rock on my arch. She's thank God. I was like, what do you mean?

Thank God? He's I can't, he knows I can't deal with you being injured. Like he, he knows. So yeah, same thing. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Saying, Leo was [00:57:00] injured for, I dunno, a couple months and, it was hard for her because she hasn't been injured in 15 years and doing this running, of course, yeah.

15 years and so

Maddie Stier: Wow. 15 years, no injury.

Chris Detzel: That's right. That's I impress. Wow. She's on her 13, she's something. Boston Marathon in a row, and yeah. Last year was for her pretty tough, because then she had to, but instead, now she has big muscles for the last two years she's been working out, looking great.

I was like, keep going. Get those muscles.

Maddie Stier: That's awesome.

Chris Detzel: But ladies, this has been amazing. Is there anything that, we didn't cover that you're like, Chris, we should have covered this.

Maddie Stier: I hope what listeners get out of this is we are very similar, but it just shows like there's not a one size fits all approach.

Grace has a coach, but she's a very, like she's says she's Type A, she's not type A at all. Grace is the most type B person ever and she needs that structure and she needs somebody to tell her what to do and when to do it, and it works for her and that's totally fine. Whereas me, I'm Type A to a T, like it drives grace nuts and I don't necessarily need that.

But there's no right or wrong way to do it. It's [00:58:00] just what works for you and yeah. Curious to see how it all plays out.

Chris Detzel: Great.

Maddie Stier: Anything great?

Grace Chow: No. Yeah. I think we talked a lot, so thank you for patiently listening and I really appreciate all your podcasts that have gotten me through some long lonely Hawaii runs.

So I hope you keep doing what you're doing for a while and continue to have great guests on your show. And I'm excited for the next how many months until CIM, like four months and to see what comes with it'll here

Chris Detzel: before you know it. Great. Ladies, I've truly enjoyed this and I appreciate the two of you coming on and we'll have to do it again, maybe after CIM if you want to.

All right. Thanks everybody for tuning into another DFW Running Talk. I'm Stetl. Don't forget to subscribe to DFW running talk substack.com, our newsletter. Until then, thanks everyone. Thanks Maddie. And thanks Grace.

Maddie Stier: Thanks everyone. Yeah, ~sorry if we.~