Training for an 828-Mile Iceland Challenge Through Grief

Nikkiey: I listened to you speak at CoachingCon, and this specific story was so freaking impactful that I'd love for the audience to learn more about you through the light of what you've accomplished. So can you share about that amazing feat of cycling and running 828.6 miles around Iceland?

Hannah: Thanks for being so precise.

Nikkiey: You're welcome. Absolutely. And doing it in nine days. What motivated you to take that on? Share that journey with us.

Hannah: Yeah, totally. It was a really challenging time in my personal life. And while my personal life was being affected in this really negative and really life-changing way, my business and my brand were thriving. I had built a massive social media following and there were a lot of eyes on me every day. And I had a couple of choices on how I dealt with it. One of my best friends was diagnosed with stage four cancer while being six months pregnant.

I remember maybe three months prior, I had done my first charitable mission, using my body and my fitness for the greater good. It was to raise money for an orphanage in Haiti. I had done that supporting someone else; it was their mission. And I remember thinking at the end of that, wow, we just attempted running 230 miles through Haiti combined, and we raised a shit ton of money for these kids.

But I had never met these kids before. And I was like, man, if I was willing to do that... Three months later, my best friend gets diagnosed with cancer. She's pregnant. It's like, okay, shit. If I was willing to do that for these little kids that I'd never met before, I have to do something. I said it on stage and I'll say it again: I thrive in control. And when this news was handed to me, I lost all control. I had absolutely no power to change the reality of what was happening, and I felt totally helpless.

And I remembered how empowering it felt to do that charitable event. Even though we were making a small difference, we were still making a difference, and we were able to do something that could impact people in a positive way. So as soon as I found out, obviously, I dealt with it on a personal level. I honestly let go of everything, meaning my business and my life, to try and support and help and do what I could. And it became evident pretty quickly that there was nothing anyone could do.

We just had to figure out the best way to keep... her name was Jessica... to keep Jessica's mind intact, because I had known the power of the mind. And I think everyone at that point knew she needed to keep her head in the game if we had any hope. And naively, I think we all thought that she was going to survive. She was a very goal-oriented person, always looking for the next thing to level up on. Her husband was really great friends with my husband, and they'd been together for, I think, 10 years at that point. Paolo and I had been together for so long.

It was rare to find another couple that had been through the wringer with each other and had grown together. So we became really, really good friends. They'd had their first son two years prior. And the thoughts going through everyone's mind were just chaotic, as you can imagine. Like, we have to do something. This can't be real. We can't accept this truth. So I decided with her and her husband, as I started to see her mind slip, we've got to give her something to look forward to. She needs hope.

All hope was falling through her fingers. Let's give her something to work towards or to visualize. So I told her one day at the hospital, as a joke, "Jess, I'm going to run around Iceland for you. I'm going to do something. I need you to just imagine what it would be like with you and both of your babies at the end of the finish line. And I'm going to do this for you." And she's like, "You're fucking crazy." I was like, "No, really, I'm going to do it." And it became kind of a joke. And then I went home and I was like, shit.

Now I actually have to see if this is possible.

Nikkiey: Yeah, exactly.

Hannah: I put that out there now. I have to be willing to try and do this. So I did. I went home and was Googling routes around Iceland, trying to figure out if there was some kind of existing route I could try to do, or some crazy distance. I wasn't thinking the whole country. And then I realized that Iceland isn't that big. And I had known it was possible to attempt 200-plus miles on foot from Haiti.

So I was like, if I bring in a bike and I'm running too, I could probably do this. And there was this one big diagram, which I actually have tattooed on my forearm, of the country of Iceland. It had this red line, which is Route 1, and it's called the Ring Road. It's this circular route that goes around the entire edge of the country. And I was like, I think it's possible. So I gave myself 12 months. I went back to the hospital with all these printouts for Jess to say, I'm going to do it. And it became a thing.

And I got myself a coach. I really thought about it: okay, if I'm going to do this and actually accomplish it, I need to give myself enough time. Because in Haiti, I had just showed up to the event, because it was someone else's mission. And it became very evident that my body broke down before my mind did, which was probably the most frustrating thing that's ever happened. I never got the opportunity to test my mental limits, because I felt like my ankles were dislocating with every step. I wasn't really equipped or prepared to do that mission.

And it was a lot of pain. So I took the time that I needed. I found my coach. We started. I'd probably cycled maybe five miles before that. But I was an athlete and I was willing to go there. I was willing to put my body through what it needed to go through to prepare for something as daunting as that. And I did, man. It was the craziest experience. I remember my first training session on a bike, I was struggling to get to 30 minutes. I was like, oh my God, this hurts. I don't know if I can do this.

But slowly but surely, I just kept showing up. Kept training.

Nikkiey: How did you train and prepare yourself, both physically and mentally, for such a demanding endeavor? And then I'm going to ask how much you cycled and how much you ran. But how did you train and prepare yourself for that?

Hannah: I was so fortunate that I had a network of friends. I was working with NordicTrack at the time, and NordicTrack have some of the best trainers in the game. They had all these ultra athletes, these ultramarathoners, these insane athletes who were into endurance.

A lot of them became my good friends, and I had a great network of coaching resources. I reached out to Amanda Basham, who's now two babies deep and still such a badass endurance athlete. This is what they do. Maybe not 800 miles. And they kept saying, this is a really long way. I mean, running 100 miles, running 200 miles, whatever that is, that's crazy stuff. There's a very certain mindset you have, or willingness to go there, right?

So I needed to be immersed in the knowledge of all these people who do this all the time. I got myself a really solid coach, and I said, let's start as if I've never done anything before. Although I was super fit in one modality, anyone in the fitness industry knows they're not transferable skills. Just because you're great at one thing doesn't mean you're going to be great at something else. You might be decent at it and be able to make your way, but you have to specialize if you want to do something as crazy as this. So I started to lessen my regular training and started with 30 minutes.

Then it was 45, then 60, and then 90. And we would do different types of training. I wouldn't just show up and go for distance every day. I would do interval training. I would do tempo training to try to increase my lactate threshold. And then I would do endurance runs, and I'd do recovery runs. It was really important to maintain the state of my body at that time and to match my fuel intake. So whatever my output was, the food going in was the same. And slowly, over the course of, I want to say, 10 to 11 months, I did this.

Consistently, every single day, it became my life. I got a new office that had a treadmill in it, so I could have my team in the office and I was training while I was working. I just did whatever I could. It was such a cool adventure to embark on. But it was also my way of dealing with the shitstorm happening in my life that I didn't know how to deal with. My way was pouring myself into training, feeling that pain, and trying to deal with the mental suffering that was going on as well.

I was a psycho. I would train in absolute silence, with the thoughts going through my mind of what I was witnessing with my friend. I was at the hospital a lot, seeing very firsthand the most painful thing I've ever seen anyone go through. And it was like, what I'm feeling when I'm running, what I'm feeling when I'm cycling, this isn't pain. This is discomfort that I choose to do. What's happening with Jess right now is not a choice, right? She's essentially dying. At that point, I didn't quite understand that. But I was watching someone die, which sounds so morbid.

But it's a really hard thing to be part of. And so the training started to get higher and higher in volume. Then we started to do block training and brick training with biking and running. And right towards the end of my training, before I went off on the actual mission, it was five- to six-hour sessions a day and 5,000-plus calories of food. I just became this machine. I had this goal in my mind, and I had so much determination to get there. I left in July.

And in March of the same year, Jess passed away, on March 27th.

Nikkiey: And this was during the training, right?

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. And then it was like, oh, shit. Now everything has changed. I had this whole plan of bringing a massive media team. I was so naive. I thought she was going to survive. I really did think she was going to be at the end of the finish line, and that it would be the road to recovery. And when she passed away, it was like, all right, well, I have to do this for her now.

But now I didn't want a production team there. We had someone document it, and we have a really brief documentary of the whole thing on YouTube, but we really didn't get into the nitty-gritty. At first I was like, I don't want my husband there. I don't want anyone I'm vulnerable around there. We just have to fucking go. I just need a mechanic and a doctor. And after she passed away, it was like, no, no, no. All of us need to be there. I need to eliminate anyone who isn't close to this situation and just give us all some time and space to go through this shit.

Nikkiey: Thank you.