Kara Goucher on Equity for Women in Sports, Living With Dystonia and Altra’s Support
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Kara Goucher is nothing if not resilient.
Yesterday, Goucher and Altra — the footwear brand that has backed the decorated competitive runner since 2018 — led a workout for media members at the Michael J. Fox Foundation headquarters in New York City. After the event, the athlete addressed attendees and revealed how dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that she was diagnosed with in November 2021, has affected her life.
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“I thought I would chase masters records, and my son has got into running and I thought we would do races together, but that stuff is off the table. I’m just trying to find other ways to love running,” Goucher told FN.
Although this is her fight, she is not alone. Altra has found ways to support Goucher — a three-time NCAA Champion and World Championship silver medalist who has finished third in the NYC and Boston marathons — even though she no longer is able to compete. For instance, the brand is donating $5 of every purchase of Goucher’s “Hope” colorway of the Paradigm 7 shoe to the Bachmann-Strauss Fellowship in Dystonia Research, a training program by The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Also, the brand presented a $50,000 donation yesterday to the aforementioned organization.
Yesterday’s moment with media is also five months removed from the release of her tell-all book, “The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team.” Although Goucher admitted writing the book with co-author Mary Pilon was hard, she also said the process was cathartic. “It’s been an extremely healing process and I’ve been able to let go of things that have haunted me for a long time,” Goucher said.
Here, Goucher offers FN a look into how dystonia impacts her day-to-day, the support she has received from Altra and how life has changed since the release of her book.
How does dystonia affect your daily life? How are you preventing it from doing the things you love?
“I work with an awesome neurologist who refused to let me hear no for an answer, and I work with an amazing neurological PT, so I’m always trying different things. Right now, my big strategies are I take a Parkinson’s medication before I try to run to calm the body down and a lot of times I’ll use Kinesio tape to give some awareness that I have a lower leg so I could feel it moving through space. I’ll often carry a fidget spinner to distract my brain to not focus solely on that. I also have had to learn to accept that this isn’t a running day. Like today is not a running day because I traveled in yesterday and I woke up tired and even walking over here, I can feel the drag in my leg. It’s not fun, but I’m determined to still have some of what I love in my life.”
What would you tell someone who has dystonia and is concerned about potentially not being able to do the things they love? What advice do you have for them?
“Just don’t give up hope. Don’t take no for an answer. I was diagnosed by a movement specialist in Colorado, and then I went to the Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Clinic confirmed my diagnosis and told me I had to stop running. My neurologist back in Colorado, she said, ‘No, we’re not accepting that. We’re going to try.’ It may be different, but you can still do the things you love. It’s just different.”
Are races off the table for good? Can you compete in some way?
“Look, I’m wild. If I was able to do something, I would (laughs). But at a super competitive level, I can’t. I just can’t train the way I need to train. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t hop into something.”
How do you scratch your competitive itch today?
“It helps that I get to call races, I call races for NBC, so I get a little bit of my competitive juice out there being the best commentator I can be. But I still push myself. If I catch a good day where I feel good, I’ll go and not just do a run. I’ll do a hard workout. It’s nothing what it used to be, but it’s like where I’m at. I’m always going to be competitive, it’s harder for me to get it out now, but when the opportunity arises I try to seize it.”
Given the efforts of you and your athlete peers, how hopeful are you that there will one day be equity in women’s sports?
“It’s a long term thing. Until we have equal television rights in tournaments and things like that, even in the NCAA, we’re still catching up. But I believe the conversation has moved forward so much in the last few years, and I really commend the US women’s soccer team because they really put it in the forefront. You can’t compare viewership when it’s so inequitable to begin with. I’m hopeful that we’re moving in the right direction, I’m hopeful that 10 years from now it’ll be a different picture. Even though I want it to be more, it has progressed so much from 10 years ago, and progress takes time.”
After stints with Nike and Skechers, you signed with Altra in 2018. How has Altra evolved in the five years you’ve been aligned with the brand?
“We both have evolved. I signed with Altra saying I wanted to set up these masters records and I wanted to do all these races, which obviously are now off the table. And Altra was this scrappy brand started by two friends and it’s really grown into a bigger brand that people know and recognize. The heart of the company is still the same, the heart of the company is still about keeping people healthy, keeping people in the sport, giving you an opportunity. This event proves that just because I can’t race anymore I didn’t become worthless to the brand. We’ve both grown in different ways and it’s been fun to evolve together.”
What makes Altra the ideal brand to back you at this point in your career?
“Just that I don’t have an expiration date and it’s not a thing where I’m not worth anything because I can’t race fast anymore. Altra embraced me as a mother, as a person with dystonia. They have embraced all of the parts of me instead of it just being performance-based. The brands I was at before, there was an expiration on inspiration, and Altra doesn’t see it that way. It’s been a fun partnership to still have value even when you’re not an elite athlete anymore.”
How did the “Hope” colorway of the Altra Paradigm 7 and the charitable component with every purchase come together?
“Well, everybody knows that I love pink, so I’m always pushing for bright colors and things are probably off-trend. We talked about pink, but how do you make that a little bit more in the color palette that’s coming out, so we fell on this salmon-y pink. It’s the things I love but maybe more for a general audience rather than a hot pink shoe, which is what I would have picked. [The charitable component] was Altra’s idea. They came to me and said, ‘Would you feel comfortable doing this? We’d like to do something,’ and I thought it was awesome. One of the things with dystonia is that there’s not a ton of research around it. I even talked to friends who are doctors and they said there’s not much in the pipeline specifically for dystonia. The fact that they were willing to donate a certain amount of money to the research, it meant a lot to me and I was like, ‘I’m totally on board. What do we do? How do we do this? How do we make it work?'”
Your book “The Longest Race” has been out for a few months now. How has life changed for you?
“It’s changed a lot. I used to carry around a lot of shame, embarrassment. I don’t carry that around at all anymore. I felt frustrated that only parts of the story had been told, that people thought they knew what happened that were involved. I don’t have to feel that way anymore because I can just put people to the book. For me, it’s been really healing. Writing the book was really hard. It put me back in therapy. As an athlete, I’m like, ‘I can handle that, I can handle that.’Writing the book with Mary Pilon, my co-author, I was like I actually never dealt with this and the way it made me feel and I actually am still carrying around a lot of emotions and complications. The process of writing, it was tough. The night before it came out I was totally freaking out. I was like, ‘What was I thinking?’ But then I woke up the next day and I didn’t watch Good Morning America, I didn’t watch any of the reaction. I just felt lighter. I went for a run, I felt free. I asked my husband, ‘How’s it being received?’ He said, ‘I think good.'”
What are your next steps? How will you move on now that the book is available and your story is out there?
“I just want to keep living authentically. I want to be in the running space. Running is what I know and what I love, so I’d love to continue doing broadcasting for NBC. I applied for a board position at USADA and I got the board position, so basically I work directly with athletes on athlete concerns. Clean sport is something I’m really passionate about, so I’m continuing to be a voice for athletes, whether it’s on the air or through USADA. I’m protecting the sport in the ways that I can and bettering the sport in the way that I can. The sport changed my life in such a positive way, I just want that to be available to the next generation.”
You are quite accomplished, but when you retire from everything you’re involved with and all is said and done, what would you want the first thing people remember about you to be?
“I just want them to think that they can do anything and they can stand up to anything. I’m a small town girl. I didn’t come from a fancy family. But I had my integrity always intact. I want people to see that everybody is somebody. People will say, ‘You stood up, you’re brave.’ No, I’m not. I’m so scared all the time. I need to do the right thing, and anybody can do that. I’m not any more special than anyone else. I just want people to see me and say, ‘Hey, I can make a change to it. If she can make a change then I can, for sure.'”
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