Finish Lines & Milestones: Episode 73

Finish Lines & Milestones: Episode 73

Here's a link to listen to this week's episode.

Guest: Carrie Bradshaw @bionicrunnerbabe

Show Notes: 

Carrie Bradshaw, as you'll see by her Instagram, is a bionic runner. At only 43, she's had a double hip replacement and she's maybe the only person in the entire world training to run the world's most prestigious marathon, the Boston Marathon, on those two hips.

During this episode, sponsored by Athlete Bouquets, we talk about:

  • Carrie's video that garnered 25 million views (and is how I found her)
  • How she feels about her amazing name
  • How she started working with Meb Keflezighi as her running coach
  • How we were both at Chicago Rock N Roll in 2015
  • Getting into running in the first place
  • How she started a business in Australia “Sweat in the City”
  • Eloping in Bora Bora
  • Running her first marathon in Nike Shocks
  • The full story of her double hip replacement
  • Getting back into running after her surgeries
  • Her family's love of Halloween

Go follow Carrie on Instagram to see some of the photos we talk about during this episode.

Random bun maker I use 🤣

Episode Transcript

Ally Brettnacher (00:04)
Hey Carrie, how's it going?

Carrie Bradshaw (00:05)
Hey, Allie, it's going good. Thank you so much for having me.

Ally Brettnacher (00:09)
Absolutely. You guys are dodging the hurricane it looks like.

Carrie Bradshaw (00:13)
Well, it already passed and it missed Houston and went to Louisiana from what I hear. So yeah, we got lucky this time.

Ally Brettnacher (00:21)
That's good, I'm glad. I'm so glad, because I did not want you to be hunkered down with candles on this interview, but.

Carrie Bradshaw (00:22)
Me too!

Although that would have been really fun actually, but flashlights, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (00:29)
It would have been kind of Yes, yeah, exactly. Well, I'm so glad that we met over the internet. I found you when your coach, Meb Koflebsky, shared a reel that you made. How recent was that? I can't remember when.

Carrie Bradshaw (00:43)
It was, it was in July, right before hurricane barrel hit. we were going to Florida to visit my mom and we were at the Houston airport going to Florida. Yeah. And I on a whim because it was the first time I had been in the airport since I, you know, had my two hip replacements. And I had heard that sometimes you can set off the alarm. Some people say they don't set them off, but that's a whole other thing. And I was like, Hey Ben, my husband, Hey, will you take a quick video?

Ally Brettnacher (00:48)
Okay.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (01:09)
And see like, the case it goes off, it was on a whim. So then as we're getting on the plane, you know, before it takes off, just posted it with a little fun caption and played a song. And all of a sudden we get to Florida and it's like, start going crazy. And then over the next few weeks, it's like up to almost 25 million views. It went viral. The TSA security would, and I did set off the alarms. It was really, I was really excited.

Ally Brettnacher (01:28)
So crazy.

That's so funny. And I love, like you just said, that's a nother story. People are like, it doesn't set off the alarms. You're like, well, I just, I mean, I don't know what else you want me to do. I just walked through it and set it off. So I'm not lying about it.

Carrie Bradshaw (01:40)
I'm not lying. my God. Yeah, I so many people were supportive and funny and relating. Other people were like, my hips, my knees, the other people were like, no, this is a lie. I'm like, no, it's not a lie. I promise. Be nice. Yeah. Yes. It was crazy. Yeah. They thought because and then I was like, sometimes people would be like, mine don't set it off. And I'm like, I'm really sorry. Maybe you should try the Houston airport. You know, I hope I said I hope you get to set it off one day too.

Ally Brettnacher (01:54)
Yeah, you're right. just, you know, made this all up for internet fame. It's so funny. Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Carrie Bradshaw (02:10)
Let me know, keep me posted.

Ally Brettnacher (02:12)
Yeah, it's so funny though, what sets it off and what doesn't because I have like certain pairs of shoes that I never travel with because I never know like if they're gonna set off the alarm or not. And then I also have like, this sounds so silly, but I have a bun maker like for my hair, that's like a slap bracelet that like you wrap it up and it makes it like a ballerina bun. So, but it's metal. And so I've had situations where I've gone through security and it sets it off and they make me take it out. And then my hair looks absolutely insane.

Carrie Bradshaw (02:27)
Ooh!

I want it. I want it. Will you will you send me your bun thing because I want a cool bun. Okay. I got like a big poofy bun like you got like a big big bun. I need one of those.

Ally Brettnacher (02:42)
And so I've stopped traveling with that as well. So anyway, I digress, but.

yeah, it's so fun. It's like.

Yeah, it can be big or you can like get it really tight so that it's kind of small. Depends on how much hair, I have so much hair, but yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (02:58)
Okay. I want to, I want, I want the bun thing. Okay. And I'll wear that too. Okay. there you go. Okay. Awesome. Yes. And link it to your audience. Cause so it makes your bun either small or it can make it big and look pretty. So it's like.

Ally Brettnacher (03:03)
Yeah, it stays while you run too. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna write that down so I don't forget to send it to you. Bun. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, or you can like, have it be a little bit bigger.

Carrie Bradshaw (03:17)
So it's like, want to look like you're kind of put together, but not trying. Okay.

Ally Brettnacher (03:22)
Exactly. Which I need pretty much 90 % of the time. Actually, maybe probably 99. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, wait, what am I talking about? All the time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, well, I'm, I'm glad that Mev then brought us together because I just saw that he shared your reel and I was like, this looks interesting. So then I like went down a rabbit hole as we do and looked at your story and was like, my gosh, I'm just going to, I'm just going to message her and see if she'll.

Carrie Bradshaw (03:25)
I'm more like night. Me too, I was just gonna say that, me too. Yeah, all the time, yes.

Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (03:50)
come on my podcast. And then I saw your name, which was a whole nother thing, because I was like, wait, Carrie Bradshaw, is that real? And it is.

Carrie Bradshaw (03:53)
huh. Yeah.

So yes, that is so I love it that you reached out. I love it when people reach out to me and I love it that Med posted it. That made me feel super cool. But yeah, I remember when you reached out to me. I was like, yeah, I'll go on your podcast and the whole main thing. Yeah, Carrie Bradshaw. Yeah, it is real. I'm not making that up either. And so my maiden name, I'm Carrie, my maiden name is Tissoni, Italian Carrie Tissoni and I married Ben Bradshaw.

Ally Brettnacher (04:15)
Yeah

Carrie Bradshaw (04:24)
So fun story is that before we got married, when we were in the early dating phases, I told him that after a couple glasses of wine, that if he, did you know that if we ever got married, my name would be Carrie Bradshaw? And he did not run away. And so yeah, yeah, it's good. He stayed knowing that we have fun with it,

Ally Brettnacher (04:42)
That's good. That's so funny.

Did he somehow use that in his proposal? Will you be my Carrie Bradshaw? Like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Could have been fun.

Carrie Bradshaw (04:52)
And Mr. Big, he should have, that would have been great. think, you know, we should redo the proposal like at 25 year anniversary and like do something with Carrie Bradshaw and Big. I like that idea. Yeah. So that is my name. That is my name. you, so many people like you appreciate it and love it and ask me, you know, think that's so cool, but you'd be surprised sometimes when I'm like, yeah, Carrie Bradshaw, know, like Sex in the City. Some people don't.

Ally Brettnacher (05:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's so funny. So yeah, Carrie Bradshaw.

Carrie Bradshaw (05:21)
note the reference and I think a lot of younger people, lot of younger people. How old are you?

Ally Brettnacher (05:27)
I'm 30, if I'm 38, I just, shit. What year is it? Yeah, I'm 38. 38.

Carrie Bradshaw (05:30)
I forget to sometimes.

Okay, I'm 43. So we're kind of in the same age zone. So yeah, but the younger people don't seem to know it about it as much.

Ally Brettnacher (05:42)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, I could see that. So then you're like, yeah, like sex in the city and they just like stare blankly at you you're like, okay, or not. Nevermind. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (05:51)
And I'm like, nevermind. Yeah. Yeah. But most people, most people love it and I love it when they love it. And then they're like, I'm sorry, I bet you get that all the time. And I'm like, I do. And I love it. It's fun. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (06:03)
Yeah, you're like, why not? Could be a lot worse. You could have the last name Brett Knocker. you know, whatever. Yeah, I, I right after my husband, I got married. I the first one of the first work calls that I was on as Ali Brett Knocker, I was on a meeting and the guy's like, man, I hope that when you get married, you change your last name. And I was like, well, sir, I just got married and I really love him and it is my new last name. So thank you so much for that.

Carrie Bradshaw (06:08)
Whatever. We're both bees. Yeah.

my God, I bet he felt so awkward. I bet. I like that name. Okay, okay. No, I like that name. What was your name before you made a name?

Ally Brettnacher (06:33)
yeah. Yeah, it was funny. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. It was before video calls. Yeah.

My maiden name was Hill, H -I -L -L, so like, yes, 11, yeah, 11, which, yeah, my first grader can now spell it, so that's good, but yeah, it took a while, so anyway, yeah. How did you end up working with Meb as your coach?

Carrie Bradshaw (06:46)
Okay. so you went from like only having four letters to like having how many like 25? Okay. 25. Okay.

good, yeah.

Yeah, awesome.

So I had worked with a couple other coaches. Well, obviously I'm just, so for those of you who are listening, who don't know, I had two hip replacements and have gone through the last couple of years of pain, surgery, setbacks, and now I'm training again. And I was looking for a new coach in May or June, and I happened to see or hear that Meb chooses, or he works with just a few athletes. Now he's kind of started.

You know, going into the coaching space. And so I kind of looked into it. I'm like, that's awesome. Med coaches people. How cool would that be? Well, so I had to like write an email and kind of apply. I don't know. I mean, and they interviewed me. they had, had like an interview, on zoom or whatever. And, I told my story and I was lucky and he liked me and he said, I think, you know, you've overcome adversity. I think this would be a good fit.

super nice. He has like, he has an assistant named Aaron who I love, who's great. I love him. And yeah, we ended up starting, we started working together in like, would say June and, we, you know, he knows that I'm going to be running a marathon hopefully in January. And then I'm going to Boston in April. And I think it's just so cool that he, Meb, you know, like the Babe Ruth of Boston gets to be by my side and support me to like,

Ally Brettnacher (08:10)
Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (08:28)
that special marathon, that special moment to not only him, but to me as well. think it's a really cool experience. So yeah, now we talk every week and he's helping me. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (08:33)
Yeah. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, for anybody who doesn't know who Meb is, Meb has won the Boston Marathon, won the New York City Marathon. He's a silver medalist at the Olympics. Like, he's just incredible. I once got a high five from Meb, that's all I've got. But it was a rock and roll Chicago race. And it was towards the end of the race. And he's literally just standing there. There's like nobody else around him. He's just like a spectator just holding his

Carrie Bradshaw (08:45)
Out of it.

Ally Brettnacher (09:02)
And he's got a bib that says, meb. And I look at him and I'm just like, my God. And I just gave him a high five. And that was what I needed to get to the end. That was nice.

Carrie Bradshaw (09:08)
He's... what mile were you at? Like at 12?

Ally Brettnacher (09:14)
I have no idea. It's been so long, but it was probably like around there. Like it was close enough to the finish. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (09:18)
what year was it? Because I did the Chicago rock and roll like years ago in 2015. Mine was 2015. I wondered if we were there at the same time. It was really warm. It was Chicago. Yeah, warm. no.

Ally Brettnacher (09:24)
shoot, I'd have to, I would have to look at my spreadsheet.

Okay.

I had an ear infection the night before and I like literally like 1 a went to the CVS to get, it was crazy. It was not my day.

Carrie Bradshaw (09:40)
geez. I wonder if we were there the same year. Was it a while ago?

Ally Brettnacher (09:44)
I'm looking it up. It was a while ago. It was, think before, had to have been before kids. Okay, let me see. It was Chicago rock and roll, Chicago half, 2015.

Carrie Bradshaw (10:00)
my God, we were there. It was July, right? It was my mom's 60th. my God, we were there at the same time. And I know he, I know that I was, I had just gotten pregnant, just found out I was pregnant. And so I had, was like a big thing. I had to make sure it was okay to run it. And I went really slow and all that. And I remember it was really warm and my mom's 60th birthday. she ran, was it the 10 K and I ran the half. And I remember Meb was pacing the 130 group and I was like, if I wouldn't have been, you know, if I wasn't pregnant, I could have run, been paced by Meb.

Ally Brettnacher (10:02)
That's the only time I've ever done it. Yeah. That's so funny.

Carrie Bradshaw (10:29)
back then when I was faster. And I know, and I remember thinking, what a missed opportunity. And then funny how things worked out. And now I like talk to him every week and he's part of my life. But we were there at the same time, Ali. That is awesome. It was hot.

Ally Brettnacher (10:31)
that would have been really fun.

It's so cool. That's so wild. Yeah, there was, know, surely we passed each other somewhere, you know? It was, I remember, I just remember being happy that I got it done. Cause again, I had this ear pain that just came out of nowhere the night before and I was with a friend and she was so sweet to like not let me go to the CVS by myself. Cause it was like one or two in the morning. And I was like, I need to be able to sleep at least a little bit before running this half marathon. yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (10:48)
Yeah, that's great.

yeah!

my god, yeah, that was it. you in pain? Were you in pain during the marathon with your ear? Okay. geez.

Ally Brettnacher (11:11)
He's wild.

no, no, it was better the next day. Thank God. But yeah. so I had fun. I did it. And that's the only time I've done that one. Not really on purpose, but I was just, my friend lived up there. And so I just went up and did it. And maybe, maybe someday they still have that. Right. Don't they.

Carrie Bradshaw (11:23)
Okay.

How far? think so. I've been kind of, think so. have a lot of rock and rolls, like I know Nashville, San Diego, Chicago. Where else am I missing? Dallas, Vegas. I've done the Vegas one. Done Dallas. Yeah. I don't know if they've added any. I'm probably, I know I'm missing one. Right. But those are, those are, Phoenix. Because I ran the Phoenix Bull.

Ally Brettnacher (11:41)
Vegas because I go to Vegas for that

Yeah, it's hard to keep track which ones are... Okay, yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (11:57)
in Phoenix full marathon. yeah, have Phoenix. Yeah, there are I love those races. How many? Yeah. You've just done what you've done to

Ally Brettnacher (11:58)
Okay.

Yeah, it's their phone. I don't know how many of those I've done. I think just two. I think I don't think I've done any of their rock and roll. Yeah. Yep, yep. So at night it's an interesting, I don't know, have you ever done night races? Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (12:08)
Okay, Vegas, the Vegas ones, yeah. Awesome, at night, okay.

Right. Well, I did the Vegas one like two or three times years ago and it's, it is weird. Like it, like you're like, what am I supposed to eat today? This is weird. Like it's nighttime. You finish and it's dark, but it's, it's, that's part of the experience. I guess my husband and I did it. Yeah. I mean, I like it, but it's just different. It's not ideal for if you're trying to probably PR, but, it's a fun race and you get to go, you know, running up and down the strip or running up and down, you know, that was cool.

Ally Brettnacher (12:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was. Well, that's so funny that we were at a race at the same time. let's go back. Let's go back to Carrie growing up. So you grew up in Houston. Is that correct?

Carrie Bradshaw (12:50)
Yeah.

So yeah, I just say yes. When I was five, I grew, I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, which is really weird because just I'll get back to it. But like we, I just listened to one of your previous guests, Jason, talk about that he was at the Omaha Nebraska airport when he had that seizure. So I was like, this is crazy. But I was born there and my parents relocated for their jobs to Houston. They're in oil and gas. So we moved here when I was in, when I was five in kindergarten.

Ally Brettnacher (13:03)
Okay.

yeah, yes.

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (13:24)
And I basically, so I mean, yeah, I'm from Houston and I went to college in Austin at UT. and then, yeah, so I basically lived in Houston my whole life. I did live, we did move to Australia for three years, but yeah, you know, pretty much that was crazy too. But yeah, basically in, Houston, college, Austin, and then Australia and back.

Ally Brettnacher (13:37)
just saw that, which is crazy.

Yeah, so where in your life did running come into play? Were you a soccer player when you were younger?

Carrie Bradshaw (13:51)
Yes, I was a competitive. Yes, that was my sport. I was a competitive soccer player, like traveled all over the country with my team. Yeah, played in high school, but yeah, that was my life. I actually hated running. I mean, I was a fast, I used to be really fast. So was a forward and did short distances, I looked a mile and like I would never want to be a midfielder. I hated long distance running and that was like a punishment. But yeah, I was a soccer player, but.

Ally Brettnacher (14:00)
Wow.

Carrie Bradshaw (14:19)
And I was on the track, we were, was a very, like I said, competitive team. did nationals, regionals, but I tore my ACL when I was 12, when I was young, going on 13. And I just never really, I kept playing after that, after I went through some recovery and rehab, but I was never at the same level. I just was never the same after that injury. My confidence went down and I never was able to get my knee reconstructed. So I have no ACL in my knee still.

Ally Brettnacher (14:28)
Mm.

Mm.

Carrie Bradshaw (14:48)
because I was, I was, yeah. So back then the doctor, because I was so young, I would, he said, my growth plates were moving. Usually they do like a big reconstruction for the ACL. but at that point in my life, I was, my growth plates were still moving. He said, and I don't know if this is still how they handle these situations, but back then he said that, he couldn't operate and do the reconstruction because it could interfere with my growth plates. And so I just never got, I went to PT and.

Ally Brettnacher (15:14)
Interesting.

Carrie Bradshaw (15:16)
wore one of those big like Robocop braces, know, knee braces and kept playing. But like, I still played, I played varsity. And I mean, I was good, but I wasn't like at the same level. And it was just hard being a teenager and like feeling like you lost that, you know, to lose that part of your identity and which is kind of ironic or how life came full circle later when I lost my identity by with the hips, whole hip thing, you know, and getting my running taken away. So yeah, I was a soccer player.

Ally Brettnacher (15:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so did you, I was the same way, by the way, I hated running. I was a soccer player. I did run track my freshman year of high school. went to a smaller school so I could basically like try any sport I wanted to. And so I ran track my freshman year. I wish I would have kept up with it. I wish I would have tried cross country because now, you know, being a runner, you're like, I wonder, but, but I didn't. And I hated running and I was actually a midfielder. Ironically, I was left mid, but I,

Carrie Bradshaw (15:53)
Okay. Okay.

Right. Yes. Yes.

Ally Brettnacher (16:13)
I didn't mind running after something like a ball, but I didn't want to run a mile or two to warm up. Yeah, yeah. Did you, any athletics in college?

Carrie Bradshaw (16:14)
Right, right, right, right, right.

No, I, I, if that wouldn't have happened, I pretty sure I pro that was the path I was going to be on. But like I said, I just never, I never was the same. And I didn't really want, you know, I didn't really want to, I didn't, wasn't really interested in trying to pursue that. after everything, after high school, was kind of done with it. And I did start running in high school casually. just like as a fun, I didn't do races, but just like.

Ally Brettnacher (16:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (16:48)
you know, run like an easy five or six miles. started doing that. My mom was a runner. So I just started doing that a few days a week just to kind of stay in shape and release some stress. But I wasn't like tracking. We didn't have garments or I didn't care about that. I just went out and listened to my headphones, like the Sony headphones that you wear on your head with the headband. That was my burning. Yep. It was fun. In my soccer shorts, I would wear my soccer shorts. You know, the big Adidas? No, the Adidas ones.

Ally Brettnacher (16:57)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, yep, yep

The umbros or adidas. Yeah. Yeah. The adidas.

Carrie Bradshaw (17:17)
The stripes of big old long soccer shorts and like the big old t -shirts I would run in that and yeah, the gear was crazy.

Ally Brettnacher (17:25)
Yeah, did I say is it umbra? It's probably umbra. I said umbra and I'm, cause I'm a weirdo. Yeah, it's umbra for sure. Yeah, that's what I had. Yeah. Yeah. I just picture our uniforms.

Carrie Bradshaw (17:26)
Yeah, bro. bro. Yeah, it's fine. No, bro. Yes, I loved bro. I had those two. Yeah. But then yes, bro is awesome. And you know, they still sell a bro. My son, I got him I got him a pair of bro shorts recently. I had to. Yeah, yeah, look into it for your kids.

Ally Brettnacher (17:43)
That's crazy.

that's fun. That is so fun. yeah, they love that. My oldest, who's in first grade, she's seven, she's a soccer player, at least starting to be, you know, kind of get used to it. And the area of the country we live in, Carmel, Indiana, which is a suburb of Indianapolis, it's very, very competitive in terms of sports. So it's very intense. How is that for you and your kids in Houston?

Carrie Bradshaw (17:58)
Yes.

I have so many stories. Absolutely. It's crazy. I mean, my little boy did a baseball league when he was like last year when he was seven. Some of the parents are absolutely, the moms absolutely insane. Yes, exactly. We could probably swap stories and have so many laughs. I mean, it is entertaining because they take it so seriously. Like fighting at age seven in the pressure and it's like,

Ally Brettnacher (18:36)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (18:42)
They're yelling and getting so upset when a seven year old doesn't make the right play. I'm like, there's seven. Like what, yeah. So they, yes, it is very intense. And, I try not to, you think that way. I try not to like, you know, put pressure on my son about that.

Ally Brettnacher (18:49)
my gosh, yeah.

Yeah, so maybe it's just like.

Right.

Right. Yeah, it stresses, it just stresses me out. Like it gives me anxiety, I think, just like, cause I'm just like, can we just, can it just be for fun, please? Like I don't feel like I need to, yeah, yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (19:06)
Right. Can they just be kids for a little bit? Yeah. Be kids. Just have fun. Like let's, let's not freak out. You know? yeah. I want to say like, I have a story. remember one boy on my son's team in the spring. This is just a funny story. He, I guess didn't do as well as his mom thought he should have at the seven year old Pee Wee game. And he was the one in Girl Scout cookies after the race. And his mom said he didn't deserve or earn the Girl Scout cookies because he didn't catch the ball well enough. So.

Ally Brettnacher (19:16)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (19:36)
Yeah, that's what I was working with. So anyway, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (19:37)
my god, lord.

Yeah.

Yeah, people. People are nuts. So was Australia before kids? Did you move to Australia before you had kids? Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (19:46)
Anyway.

Yes. So yes, yes. So I was a teacher. I met Ben in my late 20s. He was in between jobs. He does engineering, oil and gas. And this crazy opportunity came up where he was offered a position in Australia. And we were dating at the time. It was serious, but we weren't married yet. And we took the leap and went. I mean, I was like, it was a no brainer to me.

Ally Brettnacher (20:19)
you

Carrie Bradshaw (20:20)
But it was like kind of scary and my mom was like, you're not even married yet. Like what's going on? I mean, it was, it was a risk, but I felt like in my heart and my gut, was the right choice. It was great opportunity. and it was, I don't regret it at all. was awesome. But yeah, so we were there for three years. and he worked in like, he would have to go to, this place called a country called Papua New Guinea where there were like cannibals. He would do, he was on a project there. So he'd be gone like six weeks at a time and then come back for two weeks.

So we were able to travel a lot during those rotational jobs because he'd get two weeks back at home and we'd go somewhere and kind of explore. didn't have kids. So we took advantage of that opportunity. I mean, it was hard being apart and I was in the other side of the world and it was before like all the phone stuff was popular. We used Skype. We used Skype. But yeah, so we were there for three years. It was awesome. We got to travel around that part of the world. I miss it. I really miss it now.

Ally Brettnacher (20:50)
Okay.

Wow.

Right.

Yeah. I'm sorry, did you say cannibals?

Carrie Bradshaw (21:22)
Yes. Like rewind here. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, you're hilarious. yeah, I kind of skipped over that part. Yeah. So there were cannibals there. He was on this jumpsuit. He had to bring like a little knife that he would hide in his little room. Like it was like he was like in a prison cell, like a kind of like a crappy dorm room. And like he's in this little room.

Ally Brettnacher (21:26)
Sorry, like you like, and there's cannibals there and then you're like talking and I was like, excuse me, is that what you said? Yeah.

Get out of here.

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (21:50)
for six weeks at a time, or sometimes it was eight weeks. And he would work all day. And he said that they lived on site with the locals, but like they're, they're a bunch of tribes. They're doing this big LNG project for Exxon, but they, would be on this like site that was secure and they would have to hire locals to help us in the village. They would hear stories like this is like, there are these tribes. I would have to get him to tell you a story. He would, he, should share one on Instagram. Like he would tell me like they'd hear from the locals. yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (22:17)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (22:19)
Like somebody got in a fight or somebody made somebody bad, so they went and cut their head off. Or they would eat people. Like, I mean, crazy stuff. Like, just like, yeah, yeah. Like, so he had a little knife, because in case they broke into the, he had his little knife ready in case they broke into the compound where they were. Yeah, so they, he did that. I mean, he has pictures, he has pictures with the tribal guys. I'll have to get some.

Ally Brettnacher (22:27)
Right, like that's crazy. Shit. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

That's wild to think about. Like that exists and that that's, yeah, just can't quite, Papua New Guinea, I can't picture, is that, where in the world is that?

Carrie Bradshaw (22:50)
Right, yeah, there were cannibals. They eat each other. Yeah, it's a whole nother world. Pop a New Guinea. Yeah, pop a New Guinea.

It's like on the other side of the world near a little thing. I want to say it's north of Australia. It's a little, New Guinea, Papua New Guinea. We'll have to look it up, put a little, yeah, it was a few hour flight from Australia and they had a big project there in the middle of nowhere where, know, and they, had to hire locals to come in and yeah, Papua New Guinea.

Ally Brettnacher (23:09)
Okay.

Okay. Okay.

I see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. it's not so it's not by Indonesia. Well, it's kind of by Indonesia if you like. mean, it's all relative, I guess.

Carrie Bradshaw (23:26)
Everything was pretty kind of close there. All those different like Bali, Thailand, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea. I never went to Papua New Guinea. I really wasn't interested. I just got the pictures. The pictures were enough. That's good.

Ally Brettnacher (23:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get eaten. I'm good. I'm okay. I'll go to Thailand. went to Thailand and Australia. It's been over a decade now, with my dad and my sister. so I love that part of the world. I would love to, my daughter's name is Sydney. and her name's kind of Sydney after Sydney, Australia, sort of. mean, my husband went there for work before she was born and loved it there. And so just ended up naming her that.

Carrie Bradshaw (23:49)
Sing. Awesome.

Me too. Awesome.

That's awesome.

Ally Brettnacher (24:09)
And ironically, one of my best running friends who was episode three of this podcast is going to be running the Sydney Marathon like the day after this comes out. So, yay.

Carrie Bradshaw (24:13)
Okay, Sydney.

Yes, it's going to be this. Yes. I, so I, so I ran the Sydney half when we lived there, we lived in Brisbane. I ran the Sydney half marathon. I did a lot of haves over there. I ran the Sydney half and I've heard now they're going to make it one of the world majors, right?

Ally Brettnacher (24:24)
Okay.

Okay.

That's what they're saying. I, it's kind of like make, make Sydney a major and you keep seeing the buzz, but I'm like, okay, so like, when does that happen? so she, my friend, has done all six of the Abbott world majors. And so I think she'll get grandfathered in this year if they make it a major, like within the next year or something like that.

Carrie Bradshaw (24:33)
Yeah.

I don't

Okay.

I don't, yeah, that's a whole nother world that kind of, feel like became really popular and blew up in the last few years when I've been kind of in a cave with like being injured. what, back to your Australia, where did you guys go when you went to Australia and where did you go in Thailand?

Ally Brettnacher (25:01)
Yes.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so we went to Thailand first. And so we went to Bangkok, Thailand and Koh Samui. He got scuba certified for this trip. So I got to scuba dive in Thailand, which was just like incredible. And then in Australia as well. And so we went to Sydney and then we went to Cannes up on like the North East. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (25:16)
Mm -hmm.

Awesome.

Yes.

Yep, cans. Yeah, they have, they don't pronounce the R. Yeah, cans.

Ally Brettnacher (25:36)
It's like car -neys or something like if you look at the word, but yeah, cans. Yeah, right. I know I wasn't even gonna try to say that. So yeah, do you scuba dive?

Carrie Bradshaw (25:38)
I know, verb is canned or Melbourne. Yeah. Yes.

That's awesome. So you got you did. I did it. My husband's a big scuba diver. I did it when we went to Ken's. I'm saying we went there to the Great Barrier Reef, right? And we did a trip there and I did scuba dive there and they gave me like a certification. I don't it wasn't like this long. Yes. Yeah. And I did it. like I am more I would do it again. But I'm not like gunko. It kind of scares me being that far underwater. But my husband loves it.

Ally Brettnacher (25:53)
Okay. Yes. Yep.

Yeah, I totally get. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I'm like, I'm a little bit of both, especially now that I'm a mom. I'm trying to decide, have I gone scuba diving since I've been a mom? I don't think I have actually, because it is just a little, it's just a little scary being down like a hundred feet underwater. It's deep. Like, and you can't just like float up to the top. You've got to be careful. And yeah, so it was an incredible experience being able to do that in the Great Barrier Reef. I remember.

Carrie Bradshaw (26:17)
Okay.

rights.

bright.

Ally Brettnacher (26:38)
We were on a boat and they're like, okay, you're just gonna jump off while it's moving and just like swim down. And I was like, okay, here we, my dad's like, all right, well, here we go. It was just wild, but it was cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was really fun.

Carrie Bradshaw (26:41)
I don't...

That's cool that you and your dad got to do that. That you and your dad got to do that together. You should find some pictures of that one in Thailand and send them to me and I'll see if Ben and I can find the ones from when we were in Australia. You know, when we were scuba diving.

Ally Brettnacher (27:01)
yeah, to see if we like, yeah, gotta be similar places. I mean, I don't know. God, God, Carrie, tested my memory. Was I in college? Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (27:05)
What year, what year did you go? Do you remember? might've been living there. Were you there in like 2011? I know, no, I'm just thinking. So we were there, me too. I'm going, I'm like trying to think out loud. 2011, 12, 13.

Ally Brettnacher (27:19)
Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (27:24)
You know, I don't want to put you on the spot.

Ally Brettnacher (27:24)
Okay, Thailand.

Well, it's okay, that's what editing's for, it's good. Okay, here we go. 2006.

Carrie Bradshaw (27:29)
Okay.

Okay, you were before me.

Ally Brettnacher (27:35)
I'm sorry, so more than a decade, more than almost two decades ago.

Carrie Bradshaw (27:37)
Almost 20, almost 20 years. Crazy.

Ally Brettnacher (27:41)
Wow. Yeah, I found this picture. my gosh. There's me and my sister and my dad. That's so funny.

Carrie Bradshaw (27:46)
That's awesome. That's so cool. And that was before you met is that before you met your husband, obviously. That's so cool that you got to do

Ally Brettnacher (27:53)
yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was before I graduated college,

Carrie Bradshaw (27:58)
that is until you have, as you said, you're my sister and a brother.

Ally Brettnacher (28:03)
I have two sisters. So I'm the oldest of three girls, yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (28:04)
two sisters, okay. Okay, okay. And y 'all, that's so cool that you guys got to have that experience together.

Ally Brettnacher (28:12)
Yeah, it was, was so much fun. do you have siblings Carrie?

Carrie Bradshaw (28:15)
Yes, I have a younger brother. So I'm 43. He's 41. His name's Mike. And I have a half sister, Emily. She's 27. She's younger. My parents split up when I was a kid. And so my dad remarried and they had a daughter when I was like 15. So there's a huge age gap there. But yeah, so my brother's in Houston and she lives in Iowa near Omaha. The half sister. The half sister. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (28:21)
Okay.

Okay.

okay. Nice. Yeah, yeah. man. Yeah, well, gosh, thinking about that 20 years, almost 20 years ago is kind of wild to think about. can't, my mind is now blown. That's how long ago that was. I wanted to make sure before we, sorry. Before we stop talking about Australia, I got to hear about sweat in the city. Tell us about sweat in the city.

Carrie Bradshaw (28:52)
I know.

Right, I know.

No, good.

Okay, I feel like I need to bring it back. Okay, so did you see the business card that I posted that my friend made? it's on my Instagram. I got special business cards made. You need to find this. My friend Jill, she is an amazing, what is it called, like graphic designer and she made my business card. So it's the background. So, okay. So in Australia, I decided I've always been into running and fitness obviously, and I

Ally Brettnacher (29:08)
Yeah.

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (29:32)
It like, you know what? really want to get, it's always been on my bucket list to get certified for, to teach fitness classes or help people or be a personal trainer. and so I did it when we were in Brisbane, I signed up for a program and I got certified or licensed to be a fitness instructor or personal trainer. So instead of going with like a local gym, I was like, you know what? I'm going to start my own business and I'm going with and play off of my name. It came to me one day and I was like, we're going to call it sweat in the city.

with Carrie Bradshaw. So I got my business cards made. They're rad. Can't use them anymore because it has all my old information. But you'll have to look for the business card or I'll send it to you. But yeah, so I ran these fitness classes slash boot camps for other expat group, another expat group that I had met for some of the coworkers at Ben's business and then some random people that I met throughout the community. I would...

Ally Brettnacher (30:14)
Yeah, I wanna see it.

Carrie Bradshaw (30:28)
the expat group was my biggest, a lot of Americans and people from other countries coming in for these oil and gas jobs. So yeah, I would do these boot camps a few times a week and they were just basically like circuit workouts. And then I would even run. I did a couple run clubs with like Lululemon, local Lululemon, led those, but I'm not a certified run coach, but I would, you know, lead those and basically, yeah, do the boot camps, like fun strength training and the

Ally Brettnacher (30:35)
Mmm.

wow.

Carrie Bradshaw (30:57)
Parks and everything are so beautiful in Australia. So we would to work out and do these camps, these little fitness sessions, for example, at this beautiful park by our old apartment there. And it overlooks the river and the story bridge. It's just gorgeous. Anyway, but yeah, was sweat in the city, sweat in the city. It was awesome. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (31:00)
Mm.

I want to go. Sweat in the city. I love that. That is so amazing. Starting a business is hard. Starting a business in another country. Like, how?

Carrie Bradshaw (31:26)
Right, you know, I just I know I need to get I need to get myself a little pat on the back like going through all the formalities of setting that up and all that you know, the, you know, like the logistics and it all. did it because they taught us how to do it in the class as well in the course. But yeah, I did it and got everything like legal legalized and had fun with it while we were there. And that's kind of what kept me busy and

Ally Brettnacher (31:36)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (31:50)
and then like I would go teach, or like I said, lead the run clubs or teach for Lululemon. Like have, they'd have me come in to certain stores and work, you know, help the community out, kind of volunteer. No, it fun. And I got to meet a lot of people. So yeah, that was cool. And it worked well because like I said, Ben was traveling six to eight weeks at a time. So this was my thing that kept me busy and it was social and it was, you know, I was helping people and it brought in a little money and it was fun.

Ally Brettnacher (32:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be so fun. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (32:20)
But then when he would be home, if we went out of town, it was flexible because I'd be like, all right, Ben's coming home in a couple of weeks. So during that week or two, that week when we're going out of town and we travel to Thailand or whatever, New Zealand, I'm not going to have it. It worked well with our schedule for us being able to travel when you come back. It was fun. I know, I kind of feel like it needs to make a comeback here in Houston.

Ally Brettnacher (32:32)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, yeah, that's so cool.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about, that time in the world, like 2011, there's not really boutique fitness like we know it now. Like it didn't really exist at all.

Carrie Bradshaw (32:53)
There were some, but it wasn't as popular. Yeah. yeah. It's, it's overwhelming. It's like decision paralysis. You can't, there's too many classes I get overwhelmed. just, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (32:57)
Like a lot smaller. Yeah. Where now I feel like there's so many. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I just hide in my basement and do my Peloton. That's my group fitness.

Carrie Bradshaw (33:13)
I'm just gonna say that. I'm just, just keep it simple. I'll just go for a run and like, can't, I can't handle all these options.

Ally Brettnacher (33:20)
Right. Yeah, I know that's it's nice. I have my, my coach will program Peloton for me. So like today is a strength day for me. So I'll just go do a strength class and she'll just like, just pick, I'm like, you got to tell me like what to do so that I don't get on there. And like, yeah, have the paralysis by analysis being like, okay, what do want to do? There's like hundreds of options. It's like, yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (33:26)
Okay. Okay.

my God, yes, it gives me anxiety. I don't even, we have a Peloton right here. I haven't even used it in like many, many months. It's embarrassing because it overwhelms me. I need someone like that to just be like, this is what you're doing. You're on a plan because then I'll start getting sucked into like, okay, what kind of music do I want? Which instructor? How many minutes? You know, it's overwhelming. Yeah, but that's good.

Ally Brettnacher (33:51)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I just, she'll be like, do it, do a Hittin Hills class, like one of the spin classes. And I'll be like, okay. So then I just go on and sort by like, okay, 45 minutes Hittin Hills. And then I'll like, won't even scroll down. I'll just like choose from the eight that are there. That's what I try to do. that it's like, yeah, yeah, there's too much. So, well, that's really neat that you lived in Australia. So then he did his job. I'm assuming then just bring him back to Houston.

Carrie Bradshaw (34:03)
Thank

That's good. That's yeah, keep it simple. Don't overthink it. That's good.

Ally Brettnacher (34:23)
Was it a set contract amount of time you were gonna be there? Or how did that work?

Carrie Bradshaw (34:26)
Well, this, so this project, he was working in the office in Brisbane, probably. And we also lived in Perth for a little bit and Singapore, but those were like short. We went to Singapore as well. Those were short, shorter, like six months and like two months. we, our home base was Brisbane, but he, so he would go to the, he he worked in Perth for a while in Singapore, but yeah, the Papa New Guinea was the big project with Exxon. So I actually moved home a little bit before him.

Ally Brettnacher (34:34)
Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (34:52)
in early, at late 2013, early 2014, and he had to finish up a couple months of the rotation project, but I was able to get us settled in our new place. And, he ended up getting a job with one of their, the companies that they worked with on the joint venture in Houston. After that, after that. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (35:01)
Okay.

Okay.

And then when did you guys tie the knot?

Carrie Bradshaw (35:17)
that was when we were in Australia. So we got engaged when we were in Australia. And then we ended up kind of eloping and going to Bora Bora for our wedding. Yeah. And we don't know regrets. Like we didn't have anybody there, but we, I got it. You're going to like this one. So we went to Bora Bora. was like the coolest thing. mean, you know, our families probably weren't too happy about it because it was just us.

Ally Brettnacher (35:22)
Okay.

no regrets.

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (35:46)
But we got this amazing trip. We stayed in one of those bungalows over the water like in what's that couples retreat or whatever it is beautiful st. Regis it was like the premier vacation we peaked and on vacations, but I got married there and then What was I gonna say? Yeah, so we went there got married and then we actually had to come back to Australia and legalize it in town hall in Australia because the way the

Ally Brettnacher (35:51)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (36:13)
All the legal stuff worked. But my point was, I was getting back to it is we did one of those trash the dress photo shoots in the Bora boarding. It's all night. I got to send you the pictures. we, they, so I, but I, knew our anniversary is now this month in a couple of weeks on September 29th. So I'll post them. I'll post the pictures again. Yeah. So we were the crazy and it was before it was really popular. He was in his suit. I was in my white dress.

Ally Brettnacher (36:24)
Okay, I'm gonna like I just clearly didn't scroll back far enough.

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (36:40)
And we did a whole photo shoot of jumping in the water there with people were watching probably being like, what is going on? Like just imagine like hanging out in the morning, like drinking your coffee and you see a guy in a suit like swimming around in the water and the girl in the wedding dress. So we did this photo shoot called Trash the Dress and people were like, my God, Carrie, do you regret that with your dress? I'm like, no, it's still in the bag.

Ally Brettnacher (36:49)
Yeah, what is happening?

Carrie Bradshaw (37:05)
I don't even know what it looks like. We had to let it dry from the ocean water, but I don't care. The pictures were worth it all, and it was fun. I gotta send you those pictures. So that was one of the bucket list things we did, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (37:05)
Right.

That's so cool. my gosh. Yes.

Yeah, getting married in Bora Bora. Yeah. How did you, where'd you find your dress in Brisbane? Did you just shop?

Carrie Bradshaw (37:25)
No. So this is funny. this is another thing you ask good questions. This is a funny story you'll like too. So I came home to run the New York city marathon in 2011. And I was here for, he was working, you know, his rotational job. came home for probably six weeks and I went on a run one day in Houston. It was like probably in November, December. And there's this nice area. Have you heard of Priscilla of Boston? It's a wedding.

Ally Brettnacher (37:31)
thanks.

Carrie Bradshaw (37:54)
a high -end wedding dress brand, it's like a high -end boutique, I don't know, I don't know all the fancy wedding dresses, but it's a good one. They were going out of business. So I just stopped in in my sweaty running clothes by myself and they happened to have this dress, they told me it wasn't my size, but they were like, go try it on, it was the one off the rack. was probably, I don't know, I'm just throwing something out there, probably $10 ,000, maybe more. I got it for 200.

Ally Brettnacher (37:55)
Mm -mm.

Yeah, I don't know anything.

Carrie Bradshaw (38:23)
but I had to pay for it to get cleaned and altered and that was probably $1 ,000. But whatever, I got this like, no, it was pro, I need to look it up. don't wanna, I wanna say it was like, it's a designer brand called Priscilla of Boston. We need to look that one up. They went out of business, but I happened to get, had a few left and it was, so I my sweaty wedding clothes. I tried it on, it was a little bit big. And I was like, all right, it needs to be cleaned. So I went to this really good tailor or wedding dress tailor and she,

Ally Brettnacher (38:29)
But what I thought you were gonna say 2000 and I was still gonna be like, whoa.

Okay.

Ow.

Carrie Bradshaw (38:52)
made it look good, tailored it to my body and yeah, $200, maybe it was 250, whatever. But yeah, wanna say it was probably like a $10 ,000 or more dress if it wasn't like on the rack. Cool.

Ally Brettnacher (38:58)
Whatever, that's amazing.

Yeah. Well, you know, that's probably, I'm trying to think about what it costs to run New York city, like $275, probably for an entry. So it's like the same amount as your registration for a marathon.

Carrie Bradshaw (39:12)
Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it would -

Actually, the dress was probably less than the marathon, but before the alterations. Yes, but I went in sweaty, like didn't have the whole like emotional, like my mom's there with my best friend. did come to the alterations appointment, but like, I'm like, I think I got my dress and I'm all sweaty, you know, at the fancy Priscilla Boston shop. And yeah, that was it. Took it home. Yeah, so that's what happened.

Ally Brettnacher (39:23)
Yeah, right.

Right.

Wow, that's cool. That's really cool. I have a wedding dress story. One of my friends who's actually, she's doing the Ragnar with me next weekend. And she got married just shortly before we did. I forget the distance, maybe six months. I just found my wedding dress. I go to her wedding. It's in her backyard or somebody's backyard, her family. It was beautiful. She comes walking down the aisle. She's wearing the same wedding dress that I just got.

Carrie Bradshaw (39:49)
Okay.

How many months, wait, how many months apart were your weddings?

Ally Brettnacher (40:09)
for my wedding.

probably six months, like I had just gotten my dress. forget how long, but I, no, no, no idea. So she's walking down the aisle and I'm like, okay, well my husband's with me. He's my fiance at the time and I'm thinking, well, I can't tell him because he doesn't, I want him to know what the dress looks like. So I just keep it to myself because I'm not gonna tell her either, know, hey, by the way, I have the same dress. Like, I don't know, I just didn't say anything and she looked amazing. So I thought, well, that's good, that's good.

Carrie Bradshaw (40:13)
Did you not know she had the same dress?

And you got the, yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, you're like, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (40:41)
I like my dress, it looks good. But she trashed her dress that night. There was a swimming pool and after the reception, like when it was winding down, she jumped in the pool in her dress and it was so cool. It was so much fun. Yeah, so I can't wait to see those pictures.

Carrie Bradshaw (40:53)
It's so fun. I love it. Yeah. So how many months? Yeah. How many months later did you get married? When did she find out?

Ally Brettnacher (41:03)
I don't know. I want to say it was like six months. I think I told her after her wedding, like when they got back, I was like, hey, by the way, I have the same dress. And it was like slightly, we made slight differences, like, you know, whatever, but I just couldn't believe the first wedding I went to after getting my dress, my friend was wearing the exact same dress. I mean, like, what are the odds? I mean, there's like a million wedding dresses. So, but it was, it was kind of like, I just looked at her and she looked incredible. And I'm like, well,

Carrie Bradshaw (41:10)
Okay, yeah, that's awesome.

It's almost like it was almost like a good sign. I feel like that's a good sign.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and she's one of your best friends.

Ally Brettnacher (41:32)
There you go. Like that's, that's amazing. That's what I'm going to look like. That's, that's great.

She's a good friend of mine. you know, with kids and everything, we aren't as close, but we've run races together and we lived together for a time in our 20s and now we're doing a ragnar together. It'll be the most time we spent together in years, which I'm really looking forward to, but it was just, yeah, it was wild. Just wild, so.

Carrie Bradshaw (41:41)
Yeah, yes, I get it.

That's all. Wait, so you're doing Ragnar next week and how many girls are you with for that? Y 'all are in like a van, right?

Ally Brettnacher (42:02)
So yes, there are two vans. It's a team of 12 women. So our team is women only. You can have mixed teams or you can do one van if you want to do like, I forget what they call it, like the ultra version of it where you're running like six legs instead of three legs. But it's a couple hundred miles, I think it's less than 300 miles from Traverse City, Michigan down to Muskegon. So all kind of on the shoreline of Lake Michigan -ish.

Carrie Bradshaw (42:06)
Okay.

Okay, so 12 girls. And then how many times will you run?

Ally Brettnacher (42:30)
So it should be quite the bonding experience, yeah.

I will run three times for a total of 18 ish miles for me personally. So it's like seven miles, six miles, three miles or something like that in terms of the mileage. So it's not, it's a lot and especially since you don't really sleep much. So yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (42:37)
And what is, yeah.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

right.

That's on my bucket list. want to do one of those one year. The sleep part scares me a little bit, but it's worth it. Especially, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (43:00)
Yeah, same. Yeah, well, especially since just recovering, I had the flu for a week and now I'm recovering from that. And I'm just like, please Lord, let me, you know, recover enough so that I don't like get sick again because I'm not sleeping. So yeah, so I'm just like chugging vitamin C and trying to sleep as much as possible. So yes.

Carrie Bradshaw (43:07)
yeah!

Right, yes, because your immune system is compromised.

Yes, yes. Well, that'll be exciting. I can't wait to see pictures or hear about that.

Ally Brettnacher (43:29)
Yeah, I'm going to try my best to document it. And I don't know what that looks like. I'm a terrible blogger, but I try to blog. And I try to take as much video as I can. But it's like a lot of work to put all that stuff together.

Carrie Bradshaw (43:39)
Right, it is, it is time consuming. Just do like, yeah, yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (43:44)
but we'll see, we shall see. We'll see, I'll just bring my microphone to my computer and I'll just interview everybody as we go.

Carrie Bradshaw (43:49)
Yes, or just do like little 10 second clips here and there. Don't make it, remember it's like the decision paralysis. Like just keep it basic and don't overthink it. Just make it a few little ones. Yeah, a few little clips.

Ally Brettnacher (43:54)
Yeah, yeah.

Right, I know, just make it simple. Yeah, yes, yeah, so right. So when did you do your first race and what was your first race? Was it a half, was it a full, how did you get into more races?

Carrie Bradshaw (44:11)
Shoot, you know, like I said, my mom was a marathon runner. In high school, I didn't run races. just did it for fun and played soccer. In college, the same thing. I want to say I did like a 5K with a friend in college. She asked me to do it. And I was not competitive. And I still wasn't even competitive when I ran my first marathons. My mom was like, she had run marathon. 2003, I was in college.

Ally Brettnacher (44:21)
Mm -hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (44:37)
And she was like, do you want to run the Hewlett? We should do the Houston Marathon. I was like, what? I was probably 20 at the time, 22, no 21. And I was like, can I do that? Anyway, she had some loose plan with the long runs, kind of like a schedule. And we would run some of the long runs together. It was fun. It was an experience. yeah, so we went and did that and it was 2003.

Ally Brettnacher (44:42)
Okay.

Well...

Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (45:04)
I showed up in, I mean, I didn't know how to train. did probably, I didn't do it right, but I show up in my soccer shorts, my big baggy soccer shorts. And I think it was probably like some men's t -shirt. Not knowing. I actually think it might've been a little bit better than cotton, but nothing. was terrible. It was like really bulky. And then like, you remember those Nike shocks that like were really cool looking, but they are not good running shoes. They were like those springs back then. those shoes and they would have like the big old springs on the bottom.

Ally Brettnacher (45:12)
Mm -hmm

Right, cotton. Yeah, cotton t -shirt.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (45:34)
The Nike, I think they were called Shas.

Ally Brettnacher (45:36)
Yeah, I think I can remember. I can start to picture him. Yep.

Carrie Bradshaw (45:40)
Well, they were definitely not ideal for running probably a long marathon. Right. But I thought they looked cool. Look over here, the shocks, like they were cool. I thought they were cool looking and they were kind of like in, but I definitely, they were not good running shoes for me and they probably weren't meant for marathons.

Ally Brettnacher (45:43)
Those are weird shoes. I'm gonna look up a picture. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

my god, yeah, yeah. They still sell them. They still sell these. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (45:59)
So I ran in those. Yeah. I mean, they had those little bouncy things. They were really, I thought they were so cool. Yes. I thought those were like so, I had so many different colors. So I ran in those. Anyway. Yeah. It was like really hard. Like I said, didn't fuel, didn't even know about fuel. I might've taken a gel and some Gatorade, didn't know about all, how to do all that. But we both finished. I think my time was like four hours and 21 minutes, which is fine. But I didn't, I was hurting so bad. was like,

Ally Brettnacher (46:08)
yeah, yeah. That's so funny. Okay. Wow.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (46:29)
At mile 20, I was like, I'm never doing this again. This is so hard. But then I remember my mom and I, it was a cool experience for us. My mom and I going home that Sunday and like, we couldn't walk. Like we're like cracking up, like walking up the stairs because we're like holding on. And like, it was, was, it was cool. And like, was like, I thought it was just the coolest thing to say. I ran a marathon, didn't know what I was doing, but we ran this. I was in very sore for a long time. So yeah, that kind of started it.

Ally Brettnacher (46:54)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (46:58)
did another one for fun. The same, the same one in Houston the following year, my friends kind of all came out from college and we made sweatshirts and it was fun. Like I said, I ran it for fun. think at the time it was like, it was about the same four hours, 20 or four 30. And then, so yeah, that was kind of it. I never really trained. Like I would run for fun and do right races and like half marathons. And my mom and I would do a lot together. But when Ben met me in 2009.

Ally Brettnacher (47:13)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (47:28)
I kind of got him in some races, but I didn't really ever push myself. just was like, I don't care about my time. I just want to run for fun. go slow. wasn't until he got to Australia when he was like, Carrie, like, why don't you try? You know, why don't you push yourself? I'm like, well, I don't really want to hurt. I just want to relax. Well, so I kind of got this competitive buggy. Somebody was like, why don't you see if you can do your 10 K in like under 50 minutes? So that was how it all started. And my competitive side from growing up came out.

Ally Brettnacher (47:36)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (47:57)
And so then I'm like, became obsessed with it. I'm like, I kind of want to do this. I kind of want to see what I can do. And so I came up after a couple of races, I was like half marathons. brought my time down, you know, more and more. was like, and then I ran New York in 2011 and got it down to like four or five or four or seven. And, like was running half marathons, like in the one forties eight or something like that. And I was like, I told him, I still wasn't like super fast, but I was like, I'm going to qualify for Boston.

Ally Brettnacher (47:57)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (48:26)
And Ben's like, cause I think the time was like three 30, three 30. He's like, you have like a four seven marathon. Now you have to shave off like, know, whatever that is 37 minutes. What would know? Wait, 35 probably. Yeah. Like, yeah. 37 minutes. He's like, let's slow, your roll. Carrie. he's like, you're in over your head, man. Like, well, I don't know. You're delusional. Well, guess what? I'm the type of person when I get focused.

Ally Brettnacher (48:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (48:54)
And I'm like, no, I haven't. I'm like, I'm all in, I'm going for it. And within like, started training properly, like working harder, doing some speed work, racing. I got down when I finally ran my next marathon, which was the one to qualify for Boston, I got a 327 and eventually worked my way down to 309. So from 421 to 309 to 309. Yeah. And so Ben, Ben says now like,

Ally Brettnacher (49:17)
Holy shit. Okay. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (49:23)
He's like, I will never doubt you again when you say like, you're going to do something like you well blew me away. So it's kind of like our joke now with coming back from hip replacements. I'm like, no, I am going to do these marathons. I mean, God willing. And I hope it works out. But he was like, just tell me when we're going. You know, I keep, he thinks if I want to do it. So yeah. So first marathons and races, I didn't, had fun. Just didn't take it seriously. Wore the soccer shorts.

Ally Brettnacher (49:33)
Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Ugh.

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (49:48)
And then started getting into it when we were in Australia and just slowly worked my way downtime wise.

Ally Brettnacher (49:57)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm sort of similar. Like my first Chicago is the marathon I've done the most. So I've done Chicago four times and my first two were like five hours, like right around five hours. And then, and then I did one that was like four 18 and then my PR was the year we got married. and it was, just under four hours, like three 57. Hi. And, so that's where my PR is stands now.

Carrie Bradshaw (50:05)
Okay, awesome.

Okay.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (50:27)
I've done a couple of marathons post -children kind of to prove like, okay, I can still do this. So I did New York in 2018. And then I did the Monumental, which is our local marathon in 2022. so now I'm like, I've said that I want to qualify for Boston. So I'm kind of in the same boat where I'm like working my way to get my time down. And I want to see what all this training in the last couple years with a coach and like doing things the right way.

Carrie Bradshaw (50:31)
Yeah.

Mm

Get awesome.

Right.

Right.

Ally Brettnacher (50:57)
I want to see how that translates in the marathon. I've gotten my half marathon PR last year for the first time in like seven years. So I'm excited.

Carrie Bradshaw (51:06)
so what where are you timewise? Like what is your half marathon PR right now?

Ally Brettnacher (51:10)
So my half marathon PR is 144 .13. So, yeah. So then my coach, right after the half, like looking at my VDOT, like that's the app that she uses. And she's like, look what that translates to in the marathon. She's like, I'm just saying. And I forget what it is, but it's like in the range of like a Boston qualifier.

Carrie Bradshaw (51:14)
Okay, you're there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're there, you're in the ballpark and you have time to train. So you're doing the race you said, in November.

Ally Brettnacher (51:40)
Early November. And I'm not, I want a PR, which I think I can just crush, because my PR is just under four. So I don't know that Boston, I don't want to put too much pressure on myself to qualify. And so I'm just going to see what kind of just train up into that point, see what I can do on race day, and then go from there. But you know.

Carrie Bradshaw (51:45)
Yes.

Right, right, right.

Yes. And it's a good base to have and yeah, it's a good base to have. And then you can slowly chip away. I went from, like you said, 421 all the way down to 309. Like you can do it. You just like chip away a little bit at a time. You don't have to do it all at once. And now that you're training, you know, properly, like I started to, and you, the main thing is you have that goal and you're like, you're like, I really want to do this. Like it's like, you know, you're excited and that you will. It's just, you don't know the timing yet. You will. Yes.

Ally Brettnacher (52:27)
Yeah, yes, just don't know when. But yeah, I'm also like right on that, you know, I'm 38, so, you know, close to 40, right, where I get the extra time is also something that I'm like, okay, I don't want to kill myself trying to do it when if I just continue, you know, my persistent training, you know, I'll have a little bit of a buffer. So we shall see.

Carrie Bradshaw (52:36)
Yes, yes.

Yeah, what is it? think right now if you're 40, is it what three you just have to break 340. I don't know what it is if you're 40. I need to look it up. I want to say it's 335 or 340. But then again, you have to do the buffer five minutes.

Ally Brettnacher (52:56)
I should know that, I forget. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Then you have to do it by like, it just feels like you have to do that by like 10 minutes now. Cause you like, who knows, you know, for anybody.

Carrie Bradshaw (53:08)
Right. Right. Is it? Yeah. Wasn't it like over five minutes last year? The buffer.

Ally Brettnacher (53:15)
Yeah, something like that. was crazy. So.

Carrie Bradshaw (53:17)
Yeah. and that's going on right now. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (53:19)
We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I who knows, but yeah, like you said, we'll get.

Carrie Bradshaw (53:24)
You can do it. You can do it. Yeah. And then, so you're already up to 16 miles, you said. You're feeling good.

Ally Brettnacher (53:30)
Yep. So we shall, we shall see. So I want to talk about, I want to talk about your hips. We've mentioned it a couple of times. And then if we have time, I want to hear just more race stories. You've done a lot of races, but at what point did you realize there was something wrong? Like when did you start experiencing pain in your hips?

Carrie Bradshaw (53:37)
Okay.

Okay. Okay.

well, my whole life I was born with something called congenital hip dysplasia. Never knew, played soccer, ran marathons. I didn't know. mean, I had, I had symptoms, but didn't know they were related to these hips. so what congenital hip dysplasia is it's a condition that most people are born, you know, born with. want to say I saw a stat like one out of a thousand babies are born with it. I don't, I don't, maybe don't quote me on that. basically my hips didn't form properly at birth.

the socket does not cover the ball of the hip. And over time, went undetected. These days doctors check the babies for it, but it went undetected for years. And if that happens, it's the number one cause of early arthritis in young adults. So I was having some pain leading up to my diagnosis, but I kind of just thought it was normal. It was painful, it was progressing. But at age 40,

Ally Brettnacher (54:39)
Mm.

Carrie Bradshaw (54:51)
I'm 43 now at age 40 was when shit hit the fan. I was out on a run and I had already been feeling some pain. Like it would get to the point sometimes when I would run just like four or five miles, it would be pinching in my hip flexor. And when I would get home, I would have to limp around. And it did that also when I, after I had babies, it started really coming on the hip pain. But so at 40, I was running and my hip completely just like locked up. can't explain it.

That's the way I describe it. It locked up. It felt like it was broken, something in my hip. I had to limp home and eventually I ended up going, I ended up finding a really good doctor in Houston, one of many that I saw and he, they did an MRI and all that and they were like, Carrie, you have hip dysplasia. Well, I had no idea what hip dysplasia was. anyway, so at that point they didn't see a lot of arthritis or much arthritis on my MRI.

which ended up being incorrect, but I'll get to that. So they put me on, yeah, so they missed it. And so they're like, you have hip dysplasia, you also have labral tear, blah, blah, blah. Let's put you in PT for a few months and see how that goes. Cause maybe you won't be an issue. So I did that. I did everything I could. They released me from PT. I'm like, I'm still having this deep pain. I got a steroid injection. I started something called PRP.

Ally Brettnacher (55:53)
Jeez.

Carrie Bradshaw (56:18)
injections, were quick $2 ,000 for an injection. was crazy. And it did give me some relief. Yeah, that was painful too, but it did give me some relief. And then I started the anti -inflammatories. At this point, I had already met with several doctors and I was just like, it's just that same pain would come up even if I was just walking a couple of blocks with my family, like to a restaurant or like every time I would drop my son.

Ally Brettnacher (56:23)
my gosh.

Yeah

Carrie Bradshaw (56:47)
off at school, I would walk in, you know, maybe like a quarter of a mile and always on the way back, it would lock up. So it was just getting in the way of my day -to -day life. But yeah, I found out at age 40 that I had this hip dysplasia. And that's when the whole process began. Like how, what am I going to do? I going to, there were different options presented to me. Most people said, wait as long as you can to get your hip replaced.

Ally Brettnacher (57:15)
Right.

Carrie Bradshaw (57:17)
And it was tough because I didn't have anybody because I was so young. I couldn't find anybody like me because I really wanted to still be able to run. I was devastated.

Ally Brettnacher (57:30)
Right, that would be so awful. Did you stop running like from the time you started seeing doctors? Because you said it was getting in the way of your day -to -day life. Could you run at all?

Carrie Bradshaw (57:37)
Right. yeah. I mean, there were times I couldn't even walk around the block. My mom was in town once. But I mean, I would try sometimes, like especially after the PRP when I had some relief. But before the PRP, I would try again. I was in denial. And within a few minutes, was just like this locking up, like grinding feeling in my bones. Like something is seriously wrong. But they weren't sure. They were telling me that they couldn't see any arthritis.

Ally Brettnacher (57:41)
Yeah.

Right.

Carrie Bradshaw (58:04)
And they were confused. The doctor that I saw the first one said he was passing around all my imaging to like other reputable surgeons. They were all trying to study it out, study it and figure out what's going on with this girl. We don't know why she's still having this pain. And that night it would keep me up like shooting paints down my leg into my back. So fast forward, he referred me to another specialist and that guy referred, you know, and then I ended up meeting with a couple more. One was out of state.

Ally Brettnacher (58:22)
Mm.

Carrie Bradshaw (58:32)
until eventually I researched and found Dr. Stocks, who is like my angel in this whole story. he, met with him several, it was like a two month wait list. I met with Dr. Stocks a few months later and he, that's kind of where we started talking and he got the ball rolling with, you know, a plan. And he was very low pressure. He said, Carrie, why don't you, this was in the summer of 2022.

So this had been a wait, no summer of 2000. Yeah. Summer of 2022. Cause I was diagnosed in 2021 summer of 2022. He was like, we can do a hip replacement. And I said, well, do you think, well, I, cause the other doctors said I wouldn't be able to run. They're like, no way. And he was the only one who gave me his blessing that he felt confident enough that I would be able to run again. So I'm kind of going like, I'm kind of kind of veering off in different directions, but

Ally Brettnacher (59:25)
Wow.

Carrie Bradshaw (59:30)
Yeah, I was diagnosed in 21 when I was 40, had that severe pain and I kind of was trying everything I could to avoid surgery. Different doctors were telling me to avoid it, that I'm too young, wait, try to wait it out five to 10 years. It was really confusing and I was depressed. It was, and I couldn't run. And my husband said he remembers me like calling him at work, just like sobbing. I don't remember that, but I probably did. but yeah. And then I finally found this doctor who was like, yeah, let's do it. and I wasn't ready at that point.

Ally Brettnacher (59:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:00:00)
So we're in 2000, 2022 now. And he's like, you know what, Carrie, why don't you just book a hip replacement this, this fall? I book up fast. Why don't you just get that on the schedule? And if you're not comfortable and that time comes, just cancel it. Like you're not going to get penalized. Like, I don't care if you cancel it, but just get it on the books. Right. Right. There's like, yeah. And so I was like, all right, like not really thinking I would go through with it. it was in the summer and,

Ally Brettnacher (1:00:19)
Right, because someone also take your spot. Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:00:28)
Yeah, I had it on the calendar. like, I don't think I'm really going to do this. But then a week before my surgery on November 7th, and this is what we'll get to about Halloween. was still kind I had, I was doing PRP during all this and I was getting relief. So I'm like, well, maybe there a miracle will happen. And it'll just, you you think about it, I'm like, maybe some miracles gonna happen. And it's just gonna go away and I'll be fine. And I don't need to have a hip replacement. Because what 40 year old wants a hip? It sounds crazy, right? It's nuts. So

Ally Brettnacher (1:00:40)
Yeah, I'm ready for that.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:00:58)
Okay, fast forward, went on vacation. I'm like, all right, PRP is helping with a little bit. It's giving me a little bit of relief, but it was still painful. So fast forward, my surgery was scheduled for November 7th. Fast forward to Halloween. And my family and I went trick or treating that night. My son and husband are crazy about Halloween. They were both dressed up as Michael Myers. And my son was six years old at that time. So super appropriate.

Ally Brettnacher (1:01:25)
my God, that's hilarious. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:01:28)
I was kind of worried about getting a call from a teacher or the principal, but we did it. and like my little daughter, Poppy's a fire, a cute firefighter. And then we got Michael Myers, senior and junior walking around and I'm in my skeleton onesie, just being cozy. And I couldn't, so we're trick or treating and within five or 10 minutes, it does that thing, my hip. And it's like, I can't even go trick or treating with my family. Like I was limping around for the next.

15, just trying to suck it up for the next 15 or 20 minutes. And finally I had to be like, I got to go home. I can't do this guys. I'm in so much pain. was limping around and at that point it was like, I felt like it was a sign from God. Like I walked home alone, left Michael Myers, junior and senior out there with the little firefighter, walked home in my skeleton outfit and was like, you know, just down. was like, all right. I mean, I have, I guess I'm doing the surgery in a week.

Ally Brettnacher (1:02:04)
Cheers.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:02:23)
This was my sign. Like I can't even go trick or treating. Like this, don't know why that specific event was the sign I needed, but it was. And so at that point I was like, I guess we're doing this and I'll leave. You know, I got to get a walker. I got to figure this out. I got to go to some class teaching me about hip replacements and yeah. So that's the story. yeah. No, it was on virtual, but I, yeah, you have to a course before it. Okay.

Ally Brettnacher (1:02:27)
Yeah.

you had to go to a class, like in -person class?

Okay, because of the, yeah. Wow.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:02:52)
Yeah, because can you imagine all the people that I would be with in the class?

Ally Brettnacher (1:02:56)
Exactly. That's exactly what I was picturing. I'm picturing like Carrie and then there's like a bunch of 80 year olds. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:03:00)
80 year olds. That's how it was. So when I went to pre -op, I went to the waiting room and there were all there were full of like people with like canes and like, grandmas and grandpas and are like our parents and here I am. And I'm just like, God, what am I doing? I was so scared. But yeah, had a little course online to go through the procedure and how to do recovery and the precautions just to kind of give you an idea of what you're up against. So yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (1:03:07)
yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:03:29)
That was like the point where I was like, I guess we're doing this. Yeah. Rock and roll.

Ally Brettnacher (1:03:32)
Yes, we're doing this. Yeah. And then, so then, you you've mentioned a couple times, hips, plural. So it's not just you have one hip replacement. How did you go from doing one to then doing the other?

Carrie Bradshaw (1:03:41)
Yeah.

Okay, yeah, so when I was diagnosed with congenital, it was bilateral congenital hip dysplasia where my hips didn't form correctly. The left hip was the first one to go. That was my bad one. The right one was okay. The left one was the bad one. So we did the left one first and the right one still has dysplasia. But my doctor and I, when we had many conversations about all of this, we thought I had a few years.

Ally Brettnacher (1:03:53)
Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:04:14)
three, four, five, maybe years before I would need my right one replaced because the dysplasia wasn't as bad on that hip. But after my first surgery in November, during my recovery, guess my right hip was having to pick up the work and compensate because my left hip was, you know, broken, essentially. They had to like saw off my femur. You my leg was basically broken.

Ally Brettnacher (1:04:15)
Mm -hmm.

Alright.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:04:44)
in so many ways. I mean, it was crazy, but I still could walk. I had to walk on it, but like had to use my right hip to, you know, that was the one picking up the slack. So within a couple months after my surgery, maybe less, it started acting out, my right one, and started crying out for help. And we thought I had longer. So about two months in, three months out, I'm still...

Ally Brettnacher (1:05:03)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:05:08)
you still have precautions at that point. I'm like, and I'm going for walks and I can feel, just feel it getting worse. It's clicking, it's shooting pains. I, it wasn't to the point, it wasn't as far gone yet as the left was when I went under, went under surgery, but I knew what I was in for. So I was pro, I was like, you know what? I'm not just going to wait this out another year or two and be miserable. Like I'm going to, I'm doing it. Like we've already, it's, let's just knock it out.

Ally Brettnacher (1:05:16)
Mmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:05:35)
So I had a conversation with my doctor, we did an MRI. He said, Yeah, there's a lot going on in there. Could I wait it out and suck it up for another year and get by? Sure. But at that point, I had seen now that my recovery was going pretty smoothly with my other one. And I just didn't want to live in that purgatory again for another year. So we booked it. Yeah, it was purgatory. we, I had already was recovering well from the left one. So we made

Ally Brettnacher (1:05:56)
Yeah, purgatory. That's a good way to put it.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:06:05)
we, we just had a conversation and got the MRI done and scheduled it for April 3rd, which was less than five months after the first one. So go back in for that one. Yeah. And, that was over a year ago, April, 20, 30. yeah. And so, yeah, the whole thing, we had to do it all over again, which I'm so glad it's over with.

Ally Brettnacher (1:06:15)
Cheers.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:06:29)
Rather than just like imagine living like right now being like, all right, any year, anytime it can go, my right one, I'm glad they're done. So yeah, so now they're, I'm bionic. Yeah, they're the right one, bionic. And the right one actually had a harder recovery with the second one. The tendon, apparently this is common after hip surgeries, the tendon, the hip flexor tendon, the head nurse guy told me it got quote unquote pissed off and that happened.

Ally Brettnacher (1:06:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bye Onyx.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:06:59)
from hip surgeries and it tightened and I had tendonitis. Like it was excruciating to get out of bed and stuff. And I was crying. I actually thought something was wrong and called me like emergency helpline. My husband had to carry me. So the right one had was my troubled one after surgery. But I mean, I can manage it now. I still have some, a little bit of lingering hip flexor tightness, but I'm able to manage it with some, know, PT stuff.

Ally Brettnacher (1:07:14)
Hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:07:27)
But yeah, so got it done in April and it's been like well over a year now, we're at 16, 17 months and they're done.

Ally Brettnacher (1:07:27)
Yeah.

Jeez, now you're just setting off metal detectors at the airport. Yeah. So during the time that you couldn't run, Carrie, like I can imagine, like I've been injured before. I've had a, you know, I had a stress fracture years ago and couldn't run for a while. And so I swam and it's like, what did you do? How did you, yeah, not get super depressed? I mean, were you just depressed and...

Carrie Bradshaw (1:07:35)
So yeah, I'm buffally bionic.

Yes, yes, I hope so, yes.

I mean, I got, yes. I mean, like I said, my husband remembers me calling him at work just sometimes like defeated. I, it's funny how our minds like protect us in a way. I just got like, it's like, I felt like I was a shell of myself. I was a mom. I felt like I was just going through the motions of life. You know, couldn't really like enjoy day to day, everyday moments, like being in pain, like just carrying my kids. I couldn't carry my kids around. They were younger. I can't carry them now. They're too big, but.

Ally Brettnacher (1:08:15)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:08:28)
when they were younger, couldn't walking to the park, walking every day, the thing about limping to my car. it just became like the norm where I felt like I, I, this is my life now. And it was so hard because running used to be such a huge, was a huge part of my life. And being an athlete, I did ride the bike some, but I mean, it wasn't the same. There's no races and training. I mean, it was fun. but yeah, I,

Ally Brettnacher (1:08:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:08:55)
I, it was hard. mean, I was hard also watching people get to still live that life that I had been, that had to take it away from me. Yeah. And I didn't know at this point, if there was ever hope because so many doctors were like, okay, I was like, all right, well, let's see the hip replacement. And they're like, well, you can't run. That's like, you can't run on a hip replacement. And then I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't have any hope. I didn't even, it's like, okay, do I stay in pain or, get this hip replacement, but then what?

Ally Brettnacher (1:09:02)
Right. Ooh. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:09:24)
I'm still screwed. I still, it's still not the best ideal outcome because I probably can't run again. It was like, felt like it was this, yeah, there was no good option.

Ally Brettnacher (1:09:35)
Yeah, yeah, it's so hard. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:09:36)
Until I met Dr. Stocks and he gave me that hope.

Ally Brettnacher (1:09:42)
And I read somewhere that you gifted him your race medal from the race, the first time you were able to complete a race after your hip replacement. Talk about how you ended up finding your way back to running. Like, how did that start?

Carrie Bradshaw (1:09:57)
Okay, so I researched a bunch of doctors, talked to them. A lot of them, like I said, said, wait as long as you can. I don't think this is good. Don't run. So I found Dr. Stocks in Houston and Houston has a lot of reputable surgeons. And I asked him, I called his assistant and I said, hey, cause I wasn't giving up on this. I'm like, there has got to be a way. I want to find, I was like, I'm determined. Like, I don't feel like this is, I want to see if, I'm not just going to accept no as an answer.

Basically, I'm going to I want to do all my research. So I called and spoke to his surgical assistant. They put him on the phone with me and I said, here's my situation. You know, wasn't expecting him to give me the green light, but I was like, I am a competitive runner. I want to get back to it. Am I able to run after hip replacement? And he went to talk to Dr. Stocks, got back to me. He said, yeah, he has no problem with it. I was like, are you kidding me? And I was like, my God. So I then maybe it was like a two month wait.

Ally Brettnacher (1:10:28)
Right, good for you.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:10:55)
We talked about it. That's when he told me to go ahead and book it. We met a couple other times before my first surgery. And yeah, he, he was like, mean, there's no guarantees, but I don't have a problem with it. And there's detail. don't, I won't go out into the weeds about it, but he was able to back it up. And he felt very confident that the new prosthetic parts are so good that he thinks that they, just don't have enough research on how long these hips will last. So he gave me his blessing.

Ally Brettnacher (1:11:22)
Mm -hmm.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:11:23)
We didn't know how recovery was going to go. Nothing's guaranteed. I didn't know, you know, I mean, I don't, said he's only had, he's done over 6 ,000 and I think he said he had three people run half marathons and only like a few run halves and nobody's ever run Boston. So, yeah, I start after my, second hip replacement, you know, I had my plan with PT. You have restrictions, like you have your first six weeks. have precautions like.

You can't bend more than 90 degrees. have to sleep on your back. You can't, there's lots of, cause your hip can go out of socket. It can go outside. So then after 12 weeks, you go back to it for your followup. And at that point he says, okay, you're on round three. Now you can start walk running gently. So I was on a plan to start doing that. My PT and him put me on a plan. And then at six months, you're kind of given the

Ally Brettnacher (1:11:58)
Mm. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:12:19)
the bigger green light, the brighter green light. And he said, okay, you can start training. So I started training about a year ago. I started running more. That's about, it was about a year ago. And I actually ran my first 10K in September, but that's not the medal I gifted him. I just ran the 10K to see if I could run six miles with a friend. wasn't fast or anything, but it was like, wow, this is the furthest I've run. Ran a couple other 10Ks last fall, just training. I wanted to run the Houston Marathon in January.

Ally Brettnacher (1:12:24)
Wow.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:12:48)
this past January on a whim in December. Or hopefully I'm not losing you right now on, started training, I guess. Okay. September, October was running some tankers. was like, wow, every run was like this celebration. Like this is so cool. on a whim in December, I think I had done like one nine or 10 mile long run slow, training for Houston in January on a women December, there was this,

Ally Brettnacher (1:12:50)
Mm

I'm with ya.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:13:15)
half marathon called the Santa hustle in Galveston, which is about an hour away. And I signed up the day before. I was like, I skipped my long run today. I'm just gonna, I'm going to sign up for this. And I told my husband, I'm signing up and I'm going to do it. If I can't finish the 13 miles, I'll just do 10 mile long run and walk in the three miles. so we drove out there to Galveston early in the morning, drove, drove down to Galveston and I did the Santa hustle half marathon finished. was hard. I was so tired, but I did it. And it was like,

Ally Brettnacher (1:13:32)
Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:13:43)
I was so emotional that I finished my first half marathon and it was like, it was on a whim. So I ended up giving him, I was so excited. It was before Houston and I, because my first one was supposed to be Houston. I gave him that Santa hustle medal from my first half marathon. We actually had to do a media segment together the following week. So the timing was awesome. And I told them, Hey, don't tell him that I have this medal that I'm going to give him.

Ally Brettnacher (1:13:46)
Mm.

that's so cool.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:14:11)
And so they did it, they put it on the news on the, have a media clip of me handing it to him. It was emotional. Like I had tears in my eyes and I gave him a hug and gave him my medal and he did too. And he's just, he's so supportive and positive and he's been like my miracle and my angel through all of this. Yeah. So.

Ally Brettnacher (1:14:21)
Hmm

Yeah, it blows my mind. being an app, like in all the stories I hear about people who've dealt with health issues one way or another, it's like, you have to be your own advocate and not take, and not take no for an answer and do your own research because it just blows my mind that you could have taken all those nos and just been like, well, shoot, I guess I'm not running. I guess this is it.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:14:50)
Right, right, right. Absolutely. And like the third doctor I went to, he was like, if you were my wife or my sister, Carrie, just can you wait it out five to 10 years? I'm like, what a horrible way. Like this is even more depressing, right? And then you can't run. like, so I need to be in pain because basically they're saying his thing was he didn't know at the time. Like he's like, you're a little bit too young to get a hip replacement.

Ally Brettnacher (1:15:06)
Right?

Carrie Bradshaw (1:15:16)
because they say they're not sure if they only last 20 to 30 years. You're gonna probably have to have a revision, but you're too old to get the dysplasia major surgery, which is another big surgery, but that's for younger patients who don't have arthritis already. So yeah, people were saying no, and I was like, I'm gonna just keep looking. because yeah, and I found, yeah, I'm so glad I advocated for myself. I'm so glad I did my research.

Ally Brettnacher (1:15:29)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:15:46)
I spent so many late nights like under the covers, like scouring the internet, like at midnight, looking for hope and looking for someone like me really. And I couldn't find any marathon runners like me who ran on Hipporhoids.

So Dr. Stocks, unlock that door for me.

Ally Brettnacher (1:16:07)
So have you since found anybody else? Are you still the only one?

Carrie Bradshaw (1:16:12)
I found somebody who's done half marathon, but I don't know anybody that's done a full except some men. But I was, I've been researching, but no, I haven't found anybody with double hip replacements who's run a marathon. Now there may be somebody out there, but no one that I've found that's done a marathon or qualified done Boston.

Ally Brettnacher (1:16:34)
Yeah, right.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:16:36)
Right. So maybe there is someone, I couldn't find anybody with this story.

Ally Brettnacher (1:16:40)
Yeah, right. I it's just I'm like, well, how do you get in like the certainly got to get in the Guinness Book of World Records, the furthest distance run by a woman with two hip hip replacements. You know, yeah, right. Anything.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:16:47)
Right? Double.

Boston, maybe a body or whatever it is. Yeah, I don't know. There may be some men. I'm not sure. But yeah, I don't know. And it's what's the best part about all this and we can talk about it more as we go. But so many people now, you know, that's what I really needed and wanted and was searching for someone to provide me that hope because there was so much unknown going into this surgery.

Even on Halloween, when I decided I was going to do it, I mean, I was so scared. was like, I don't know what I'm in for, but now that I've gone through it and I've been sort of sharing my journey and all my milestones and the good and the bad and the ugly on my Instagram, I've probably had 20 to 30 people around the world reach out to me for help, support people that have had the hip replacement and are going through recovery and having problems.

people who have dysplasia that aren't sure what to do. that, yeah, young, old, people whose doctors have said, can't eat. Somebody messaged me the other day, this poor girl, and she was like, I had my hip or hips replaced and my doctor said, I can't even lay on the beach or lay on the ground. I'm like, do you mean during the first six weeks, like when you have your precautions or do mean forever? And she said that he told her couldn't, she couldn't sit in a bathtub or lay on the ground. I'm like, I'm not.

I'm not your doctor and I'm not a doctor and I'm not your doctor, but that is crazy. I said I'm laying down right now People I think there's just not enough research in my dot, know people aren't staying on top of it and like my doctor my doctor stop You know, dr. Stock said like he's just not seeing a problem with hip replacements I mean no guarantees and I think a lot of doctors maybe don't are misinformed or they haven't Studied the latest research. I mean, I'll be the guinea pig

Ally Brettnacher (1:18:20)
Yeah, wow.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:18:45)
Yeah. So anyway, that's how I got running and, you know, was able, he was, he was the one that gave me the green light and I trust him. I trusted him. and I, and I went back to one of the doctors because I was still trying to decide, am I doing this? And I wanted to go tell him what Dr. Stuck said. The other doctor was great too. He was the one that said, wait. And I told him, I'm like, well, I just saw Dr. Stuck and he said, you can do it. He goes, well, that's ballsy. You know, he was, he was hilarious, but he actually came back.

Ally Brettnacher (1:18:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Huh.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:19:14)
I told him I got him replaced and he said, know what, Carrie? I now I agree. You can run because I have a patient who's like a swimmer or an athlete and she's doing stuff on her hip replacements. Now he was like, I have, I agree with your doctor. So he came back and now he's on board with what my doctor said, but a lot of doctors are not. And, know, honestly, most people probably, this is what my husband Ben was telling me the other day. And one of my guy friends, I talked to him this week. said, Carrie, most people just would have been like, I give up.

Ally Brettnacher (1:19:30)
Good.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:19:43)
getting hip replacements, running's over, like, I'm good. Like, I have an excuse now. I don't have to do it. But it's not really an option for me.

Ally Brettnacher (1:19:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I understand. I've been bitten enough by the bug that if it were taken away from me, I would do everything in my power to find my way back to it. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's that big of a part of my life at this point. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:20:01)
Yes!

Yes!

Right. Or at least, you owe yourself the shot of finding out and learning as much as you can and giving yourself, you know, interviewing doctors, doing your research to do everything you can. And if someone gives you the green light and you're, you're feeling well and it's like, I'm going to do this for myself and you know, to inspire other people, you know, who may be going through this. Absolutely. But it's interesting. It gives me more motivation now. I'm like, I'm going to do this for me. I'm going to prove it.

Ally Brettnacher (1:20:23)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:20:40)
to myself. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (1:20:40)
Yeah, yeah. my gosh. Yes, yes you are. my gosh. I'm so, I'm so excited. I've gotten a chance to get to know you better Carrie, because now I get to be a big fan and cheerleader. And I'm just, I'm excited to see what you can do. Cause I know you can do it. Like your husband said, I will never doubt you. Cause.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:20:46)
Yeah.

Okay. You too.

Me too. Well, thanks.

He was like, whatever, when Carrie gets it in her mind, she's going to do something. She's going to do it. I want to bring up though, as little side note, when you wrote me about the part where we were leaving messaging and you said, Carrie, so you decided that you were going to get a hip replacement when you were dressed up as a skeleton? That was awesome.

Ally Brettnacher (1:21:06)
She's gonna do it.

Yes.

I saw that and I was like, that is just the best.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:21:29)
That was my favorite. Like I never thought about it like that. And I'm like, yeah, I was a skeleton that night when I decided I'm doing this. That was hilarious. I loved it. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That was so funny. Yeah. So, so yeah, I'm not like as far as like a 309. I'm not anywhere near that right now, but working with med has been so cool and obviously super special, but

Ally Brettnacher (1:21:37)
You're like looking down in your outfit and you see the hip bones and you're like, well, hip bones, like it's time. It's time. So funny.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:21:58)
We're building up slowly and I know you're probably, that's probably your next question. I'm right now the plan and I'm kind of taking it week by week because these hips, don't know what, I don't want to jinx anything and have unrealistic expectations. I'm hoping I can run the Houston marathon in January as my next milestone. But it's a big one. I'll probably run some races leading up to that, like smaller ones, but I am, I am hoping that I can, my hips.

can handle it and that, you know, they can last that long, but I'm taking it a week at a time. did 16. That was a huge one. 16. I called it sweet 16. We had a little sweet, sweet. We had a sweet 16 celebration after I did 16. Yeah. So every time what's cool now is like, I feel like I'm like, it's the second chapter of my running life and every, it's like your first marathon or your, you just start, everything is like.

Ally Brettnacher (1:22:34)
Yeah.

Awesome. Wow, 16.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:22:55)
exciting though. Everything is a celebration. my God, I ran a half marathon. my God, did or six miles. my God, I did three miles and now it's like every long run now is like such a huge deal to me and it's fun.

Ally Brettnacher (1:22:58)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a silver lining for sure. It's like everything's a PR. It's a PR on my hips. These hips for these hips.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:23:09)
It is. Yes. I feel like Boston, you know how they have different categories, men, women, everything. I think they need to have a bionic category for registration. If you're bionic.

Ally Brettnacher (1:23:21)
Right. Yeah. I think they finally, they have like Paralympic stuff. So it's like, yeah, why not bionic? Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:23:26)
Have a bionic, I think they should have a bionic. I think that would be so funny. A bionic category, like, you know, if you're bionic, you get like a little bit of special treatment with your qualifying times. Maybe you don't need buffer.

Ally Brettnacher (1:23:37)
What qualifies as bionic? What does that mean? have like a, sorry, okay, a metal joint. Okay.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:23:43)
Just if you had a metal joint. Yeah, I think that we'll have to look it up. from what I've been told or heard, I think if you have like a hip replacement or a knee replacement or a shoulder, yeah, metal in your body as a joint.

Ally Brettnacher (1:23:56)
Got you. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be interesting. That's an interesting thought. What got me thinking too, this is random, but like this back to the skeleton side note. So I saw that your husband Ben was on a waiting list for like years for your giant skeleton. I feel like you need to spray paint the giant skeleton's hip bones to be a different color. Just saying.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:24:06)
Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. So that is so funny that you said that. So like I said, Theo and Ben, Michael Myers, Junior and Senior, they are like, it's out of control. Like it's become part of our annual budget, like for Halloween. Anyway, like what they spend on all these animatronics, you know, those animatronics, like they are, we don't even have room for all these. It is crazy. Okay. I like it, but I like it because it makes them happy, but I'm not like a super big Halloween person. It's fun for them, but.

Ally Brettnacher (1:24:34)
my god. Yes. So funny.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:24:45)
Yeah, they were on a three year wait, he was on a three year wait list at home depot has the original and if I finally got it, but he was telling me the other day, Ben was we should do a picture. His name's Gus, the skeleton, the 12 foot skeleton is Gus. got to get a picture of Gus and like somehow show people where the hip bone is and what you show, how your femur was sawed off. We could do like a, how good like an interactive video. So, because you know, I was even confused, like what's the hip bone where

Ally Brettnacher (1:24:59)
Okay, Gus.

There you go.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:25:14)
It's going into your femur. I think we could show like what they do and cut off and put back in. It's with the skeleton.

Ally Brettnacher (1:25:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, you gotta do like a video and be like, here you go. This is what happened to me. Like that'd be really fun.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:25:27)
Or we do the hip replacement. We do a hip replacement on the skeleton. Two metal hips. Yeah. But I think we will do a visual just so people can see like what was going on. Yeah. He said the same thing. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (1:25:31)
Yeah, Gus needs two new hips. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. That's so funny. That's good idea. All right, well, I can't believe we've been talking for almost an hour and a half now. Do you realize how much time just flies by? It flew by. I wanna ask you the end of the podcast questions now. So I have two, and we've already alluded to one. But the first one is, what is your favorite mantra and or song for running?

Carrie Bradshaw (1:25:48)
It doesn't, it definitely flew by.

Okay. Okay.

Okay, I was thinking about this. have, love music. love songs, but little mantras. I don't have like one go to, they sometimes change. I was just thinking like right now, my mantras are like, I get to do this when I'm running and like say I'm not having a good run. Like today I was even really tired. I'm happy. This is fun. I get to do this. I feel alive. You know, you know, even during the hard work, you feel alive. You feel, I think I'm

Ally Brettnacher (1:26:22)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:26:35)
This is fun. get to do this. I'm so lucky. I feel alive. Those are my main ones. And then you have like, and like, I'm assuming when I run the races, I'll be like, when it's tough, you got this one step at a time. You know, all the typical ones, but my main thing right now for me is focusing on the gratitude I have. And like something stolen when something stolen from you and you get it back, like it changes your whole perspective. So yeah, I feel alive. This is fun. I get to do this. I'm so lucky. songs.

Ally Brettnacher (1:26:46)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yes.

Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:27:04)
I mean, Hips Don't Lie by Shakira.

Ally Brettnacher (1:27:07)
I mean, I thought of that earlier, because I was like, okay, I wanna make, I was like, I wanna make Carrie a mug. What would I put on? I was like, I'm gonna put like hips and then I'm gonna do Shakira lyrics.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:27:17)
Yes, or remember that one that one hip hop song like hip hop hooray? I don't know. Yeah, that one's a good one. But I like Shakira. Yeah. yeah. All that stuff. I mean, I have other songs. I love music. And I love the 90s and like early 2000s music. But yeah, that's I guess the hits don't lie when and there's also one called titanium by David Guetta. That's a good, you know, theme song. And I like all the inspirational

Ally Brettnacher (1:27:22)
Yeah, here we go. Hip -hop, hooray, ho. Yeah, mm -hmm, mm Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. I would try to sing that.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:27:44)
Yeah, there's a lot of fun inspirational ones, but I honestly, like the, the Snoop Dogg and the fun ones to run to you. But as far as like hips don't, I think hips don't lie probably is the go -to.

Ally Brettnacher (1:27:55)
Yeah, yes, that's perfect. Okay, and then your next finish line or milestone we kind of already talked about going into Houston in January, I mean, in Boston.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:28:02)
Right, Houston and Boston. Yeah. So Houston, that's the plan right now. I'm technically signed up for the half for Houston because I don't want to jinx it, but I can change it. I'm planning on changing it in November or December to the full. I'm going to see how these long runs go. that's my plan. That's my hope is that I'm going to run the Houston marathon in January, scheduled for Boston in April with the neb's going to get me there. the

Ally Brettnacher (1:28:10)
Okay.

Right.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:28:29)
The way I got in, so I've, I've run Boston once and I've qualified. think I've told you five times. I was actually supposed to run it in 2018 for the second time. I qualified after my son Theo was born a year, nine months after he was born. I was in, got in, you know, through the registration paid everything. And then I found out I was pregnant on Christmas Eve after I had done it. I was like, all right, didn't get to go to, and that was before they had the deferral, the pregnancy deferral rule.

Ally Brettnacher (1:28:56)
Yeah, which is crazy to think about that.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:28:58)
So yes, I didn't get to defer. So then the whole hip thing happened for years, know, fast forward, here we are. So I had to give, just to explain to the audience, had to, the hip company heard about my story, the prosthetic company, and they had seen some of the media clips and they reached out to me and asked me to give a like Ted Talk speech at their national sales meeting in April. And I was like, my God.

I actually told him, think I'd rather get a third hip replacement than have to like speak in front of 500 people. I was like, my God, it was 12 minutes of me up there. I was like, this is so scary. But anyway, I gave it and somebody, some people there with the hip prosthetic company, somebody volunteers and does work with Boston and he approached me and said the prosthetic company actually has access to a bib for me. So I'm very fortunate.

Ally Brettnacher (1:29:28)
Yeah, I mean, that's how I would feel too. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:29:52)
That that I'm able to get a bib through the whole hip thing from the big prosthetic company, the medical community, and I can represent them, maybe raise some money and awareness about arthritis and hip replacements and make them proud.

Ally Brettnacher (1:30:08)
So cool. Now I'm thinking, now I'm thinking, Carrie, you need to like get some skeleton running shorts.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:30:15)
Okay. Yes. Yes. Or the Tin Man. The WD -40. my God. If you come out to Boston, we should have a pit stop where you guys like, oil my hips with the WD -40 at the Boston Marathon. Yeah. I hope we get to be there at the same time. I hope we get to meet each other in Boston when you qualify. You are going to qualify.

Ally Brettnacher (1:30:16)
Something like that, know, spray a little, some hip bones on there. I don't know, think about it.

my god, yeah. Yeah, I'm like.

yeah. my gosh. That'd be so amazing. So cool.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. Yeah. I, you know, your mom has been the runner in your life. My mom started the running in our family, but my dad is, is more of the runner now. And he's done, he's done Boston a few times, maybe three. But anyway, he wants to run. I don't know if he'll do Boston again, but he wants to run at least one more marathon. He's almost 70, but I'm like, my dream would be like, I would love to be there. Like when he's there, I'm like, okay, you turn 70, I'll turn 40 and then we'll both go. Yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:30:51)
Okay.

That's awesome.

Wow.

Right.

That would be awesome. That's so cool. Your dad sounds awesome. Your dad sounds so awesome. My mom can't run anymore. She had her back fused. She had a back fusion, spine fusion, but yeah. No, that's intense. Yeah.

Ally Brettnacher (1:31:12)
That would be a miracle, but you it'd be cool. Yeah.

My mom just had a back, just had one in December. My mom did. Yeah. She, it's been a whole thing, but yeah, she, she used to run and then, then she couldn't run anymore and she's still very active, but yeah, then had a hip hip fusion, a back fusion. Yeah. Crazy.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:31:28)
gosh, yeah.

Same. That's even more intense than a hip replacement. Yeah, that's serious and she's recovering right now.

Ally Brettnacher (1:31:43)
Yeah, just finally, it's been almost a year and she finally played golf for the first time. So it's like, thank goodness.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:31:46)
Okay. good. Yeah. I remember that was a really painful surgery and recovery major. So same thing. Yeah. My mom can't, yeah. She comes out and she would be like, when we went to Boston the first time she's super organized and type a and she hired a driver to take her and been around and like she had spreadsheets and maps where she saw, they saw me at four places at the Boston marathon. They coordinated with the drug.

Ally Brettnacher (1:31:54)
Yeah, yeah. Ugh, it's hard. So.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:32:14)
you want, she should be hired for logistics and stuff because she type a like she knows how to navigate the HUD maps out until the driver ready to go. they saw me at force box. So she, we're going to do, we're she already got the reserve, the driver for April. So.

Ally Brettnacher (1:32:18)
That is a business idea, people. Yeah.

That's so amazing.

I love your mom, that's amazing. Carrie, thank you so much for doing this, it's so much fun. I hope we get to meet in person at some point, hopefully in Boston, that'd be even better.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:32:33)
Anyway. Yeah, anyway.

I love chatting. Yes, yes, no. No, I love chatting with you. And yeah, maybe we can do a follow -up with Meb in April or May. Yeah. Okay. Well, you go have a good day and I'll think, I'll, you send me, I'll have to send you the trash to dress and do your skeleton idea.

Ally Brettnacher (1:32:48)
that'd be so fun. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, yes. Thank you.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, please. All right, well, thank you and thanks everybody who listened and happy running.

Carrie Bradshaw (1:33:03)
Yeah, yeah, thanks so much.



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