The Everyday Awesome Project

73: GUEST: Addict to Organ Recipient to 300-Mile Ultrarunner- Meet Kelly Thrush!

• Polly Mertens & Samantha Pruitt • Season 2 • Episode 73

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This week Coach Sam sits down with her friend and fellow ultra runner Kelly Thrush @just_keep_going. His story is nothing short of a miracle so buckle your seat belt! When doctors told Kelly he had just weeks to live due to end-stage liver failure at only 38, he could have given up. Instead, he and his girlfriend (now Wife:) found themselves on an extraordinary journey of transformation that would lead from the darkest depths of addiction to the heights mountains of human endurance.

In this raw and deeply moving conversation, we explore how this alcoholic  liver transplant recipient defied all medical expectations to become an ultramarathon runner who recently completed the grueling Arizona Monster 300 – a 304.4-mile trek across punishing desert terrain! But the physical achievement is merely the backdrop to a more profound internal transformation.

"The addict part of me that I was so ashamed of? It's one of the best skill sets I got," he reveals, explaining how the tenacity that once drove his addiction became his greatest strength when properly channeled. This perspective shift allowed him to not only reclaim his life but to create the Gratitude and Grace Foundation, supporting other transplant patients and those in recovery.

www.gratitudeandgracefoundation.org

The conversation takes us through vivid trail experiences – from hallucinating bumblebee-costumed figures on mountain trails to the emotional breakthrough that came when his wife simply said, "I am so proud of you." These moments of vulnerability reveal how extreme physical challenges can strip away our protective layers, bringing us to what he calls "that raw core of myself."

What emerges is a powerful meditation on worthiness, perseverance, and the human capacity for change. From destroying relationships through addiction to being surrounded by a community of supporters at his ultramarathon finish line, his journey illustrates how our darkest moments can become the foundation for extraordinary transformation.

Whether you're facing your own challenges, supporting someone through recovery, or simply seeking inspiration, this conversation will remind you that with the right support and mindset, we can all keep moving forward – one step at a time.

-Coach Sam xoxo

@everydayawesomeproject 

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Polly Mertens:

Welcome to the Everyday Awesome Project.

Kelly Thrush:

Perfect, thank you.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah. So what we're going to talk about today, you and I, my friend well, first of all, we'll give a kind of a quick briefie is how do we even know each other? My side of the story might be different than yours, so let's have some fun. What's your side of the story?

Kelly Thrush:

I'll go through mine first, right, right. So it was oh shoot, 2022. And I got invited to Charlie's Angles event movement for recovery out in Maryland. Where we did it was a fundraiser for an addiction recovery facility out there in Harvard, to Grace, maryland, and I got invited and I had zero idea what I was getting into, but we were going to run or move for 30 hours around this campus as part of the fundraiser project, right?

Polly Mertens:

What's the longest you'd moved before that?

Kelly Thrush:

50 miles 50 miles at one event at that particular moment, and that was like a month before or whatever. And so I went to this crazy event and I had all these ideas. I didn't know what the event was, but maybe I could get a hundred miles out of that. You know, thinking that was kind of the. And it didn't take long to figure out that was not the purpose of that event. It was not to go do a 100 miles, it was more about the camaraderie and sobriety and celebrating all the different things that we do there.

Kelly Thrush:

And then you were the race director, so to speak, at that event. And that's how we came across, because my first I mean we had met a few times during the first day, but I really remember meeting you in the middle of the night I don't remember what time of night, but it was well into darkness. And well, yeah, I'll be frank, I hadn't peed all day because it was like 100 degrees with 100 percent humidity, and I'm a desert rat, oh yeah, and I was not used to it, and I started getting worried about this. And so I came by you and ran through some of my symptoms and you're like now you'll be fine Once you cool down in the in the nighttime and you cool down and get something to eat, you'll be okay. And sure enough, I was, you know.

Polly Mertens:

You force fed me some peanut butter and jellies or whatever it was that we had there, and it was magic and we did meet in a pain cave, you know, like the fact that you were deep in it up to your ass, and alligators. So frickin beautiful to be in those moments with any person you know. You and I thrive off of that. That's just who we are. But that was so cool to see you in that experience and watch you literally in front of my own eyeballs evolving as an ultra runner, but not just as an ultra runner, like doing the thing, but as a human being, sure, right, and then understanding a little bit about your story of sobriety and your story of organ transplant and so on and so forth.

Polly Mertens:

So I was like I gotta, I gotta stay connected to this dude. He's going to do epic shit in the world and I want to be there to see it go down.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and you have. I mean, I know we don't live in the same space and we don't necessarily talk every week, but you have been a part of each one of those milestone moments, specifically in my ultra running journey, where we chat and celebrate and I'll bounce things off that big brain of yours and get some ideas and you show up sometimes at my stupidity.

Polly Mertens:

I do Like we were just talking about the across the years, a hundred miler. You're just like, hey, what's up? I'm like this sucks, Make it stop. And you're like, yeah, keep running. Next.

Kelly Thrush:

It's supposed to suck. That's why we're here.

Polly Mertens:

Okay, a hundred percent Okay. So for the audience, let's kind of impact your story a little bit so they can get to know you and what a beautiful human you are. So before running and before all the insanity and we're going to talk about your latest shenanigans, the 300 miles on the Arizona trail before all of that, you're just a normal dude cruising in life, right Like, just trying to make things happen, like any normal human would be in the world. Perhaps there was an issue with addiction or when?

Kelly Thrush:

oh, I don't know, I don't know, perhaps it was full-fledged, yeah, it was for sure. I mean, you know, maybe in my 20s uh, before I recognized it as a problem, it was a perhaps, but it didn't evolve that way. So, yeah, so, um, prior I mean to give the short version of this long story basically, what it was is you know, I, out of college, I played competitive sports and whatnot. You know, as a kid I played competitive baseball and and then quickly discovered, when I was in college playing ball, that I was really good at a couple of things. One was people. I was very good at interacting with people, and then I was very good at drinking beer. Yeah, I was pretty talented, and so, of course, I picked a career running bars Because it's people.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, it's people and booze 24 seven, you know and sports.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, for that matter. Yeah, absolutely. It was an upscale sports bar that I was part of that for 10 years. I was part of that company or something thereabouts and yeah, and I was good. I was good at that stuff and so, as my professional career sort of advanced, my drinking career did as well level and all-star at this level. So let's take it up another notch until finally it got to be an issue.

Kelly Thrush:

In fact, actually, I heard Dennis Quaid, the actor, who's also sober. I saw him on an interview or a little clip and he described his journey perfectly with mine and it was the three stages of addiction. And he says the first stage of addiction is it's fun, because it was, you know, the first few years or whatever was super fun. Then the second stage, it's fun with problems. Yeah, yeah, that was that was mine. And then the third stage was this is a problem, and so that was kind of the three stages. And so finally, in my late 30s, after, you know, trying to quit, knowing to have a problem, maybe it's not as bad of a problem all the denials kind of go through.

Kelly Thrush:

Finally, in January of 2018, I got very, very sick.

Kelly Thrush:

Unbeknownst to me, my liver was failing as a result of my booze and drinking over the years, because it had really accelerated that last year of my booze and drinking over the years, because it had really accelerated that last year.

Kelly Thrush:

You know, alcohol had dissolved my first marriage the year before, and so in 2017, I really spent the wrong end of that year in the wrong end of the bottle. And so, yeah, finally, on January 8th was really when I started to notice that year where I didn't feel good, and for friends of mine that I tell this part of the story to you know, I only drank two drinks that day, two shots, and that was it that day, which should tell you how bad I felt. And then I felt worse on Monday and didn't drink at all. And then I felt worse on Tuesday and didn't drink at all until finally, wednesday, at the request or demand of my boss, I ended up going to the hospital, which is where they told me I was an end stage liver failure, and I had no idea, yeah, or if I knew you're what age, where I was 38 at that point 38, and they're telling you you're an end stage liver disease correct End stage liver failure from as a result of my drinking, wow.

Kelly Thrush:

So the way that the story kind of went down is Jamie, who is now my wife, was then my girlfriend. We toured the hospitals around Tucson. There were four different ones that we went to for a certain period of time. The first one I went to. I was there for a couple of weeks and the doctor said nothing we can do for you. Maybe let's try this hospital, see if they can help. Which the next one? They worked on me for a couple of weeks. There's nothing we can do for you. We really don't think there's anything anyone can do for you.

Kelly Thrush:

But go see this liver doctor here in town who was the hepatologist which is liver doc of all hepatologists here in Tucson, and he had two appointments with me. The first appointment was simply to get my blood work and then the second appointment lasted about 15 minutes because he told me you got maybe a month, month and a half, to live and there's nothing I can do. You need to get your affairs in order. And thank goodness Jamie and I had met and worked together at that point because she was my advocate and basically rolled me out of that hospital or that doctor's office and told them that's not good enough. And so the next day, after having a very, very poor health day, I couldn't get out of bed. My family was there, kind of having a no shit moment, like what are we going to do? They got me to the university hospital down here, which is where I spent the next three months, yeah, and got me there the next day after the doctor's office.

Kelly Thrush:

But, and even when I got there, that team said sorry, you know, they can't help me.

Kelly Thrush:

That liver team there and the transplant team told me no originally, because, well, there's a couple of hurdles that I had to overcome. So there's the original hurdle that transplant recipients have to go through All of us do and is you have to be the right amount of sick, right Cause if you are too sick, uh, well then you're not going to survive the surgery anywhere. At least odds are that you're not going to. So we don't want. We have to get healthier before we're willing to risk this beautiful organ that is going to save somebody's life. And the other flip side of that coin is if you're not sick enough, well then you can wait, because somebody else is and needs that, that new organ and I tended to fall on the I'm too sick side of that score. It's called a meld score for for liver patients. The big hurdle that I had to come over or overcome, excuse me, was I wasn't sober, you know, and the docs looked at me like we are not giving you this liver in somebody who's going to go out and drink tomorrow correct.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, that's a losing, yeah, and I don't blame for that, I mean I get it, you know. And then things have changed a little bit in the seven years, but back then it was you had to be sober for a year, would have had to gone to, yeah, sober for a year, having gone through whether it's AA or smart recovery, some program of that, that genre, as well as therapy and all these different checkboxes that you have to hit before they'll even consider you for the transplant list. I didn't have that kind of time I had. You know, the doc that told me I had a month or month and a half was pretty spot on, and so what ended up happening was there were two docs at that hospital that were my internal. They were hospitalists, or are hospitalists, my internal medicine doctors, who happened to be on shift the day I came to the hospital and I happened to become their patient and they saw something in me.

Kelly Thrush:

I don't know what it. I don't know that they could really put their finger on it. They stuck their reputations on the line and convinced the transplant team that I was worth the risk.

Polly Mertens:

She missed us.

Kelly Thrush:

Who are these?

Polly Mertens:

angels.

Kelly Thrush:

They're two docs. I've talked to them since you have. Yeah, I've talked to them since a couple of times.

Polly Mertens:

I mean you literally owe them your life and they're perfect strangers that walked into the room.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, very much so.

Polly Mertens:

That could be anybody's story. So pay attention to who's walking in the damn room people.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, okay, I do a lot of public speaking now and some of that public speaking is with medical professionals in the transplant world and that's a very powerful part that I talk about that because I get it. They see so many patients and a lot of this is just on paper and if you look at my story on paper, I shouldn't have survived. There's no way I should have gotten a transplant. Zero, zero chance. Um, but these two doctors happened to get to know me, uh, and decided that they would convince the transplant team and that was the beginning of March. That was probably six weeks or eight weeks after I really started getting sick.

Kelly Thrush:

And then things moved very quickly for two reasons. One, I got moved Once the transplant team said yes. Then I was put on the transplant list and I was moved to the top because I didn't have the time and they were able to recover an organ for me within about 10 days or two weeks that matched right. That did fit me as a person physically, because you got to find the right sizes right, because if they have, you know, a liver that was from somebody who was, you know, five foot tall and 100 pounds, anatomically it's not going to fit. And then it had to match all the other markers, and there's a whole series of them that they have, and so, luckily, uh, they were, they were able to find or uh recover one for me, uh, and that was on the 20, well, really on the 22nd of March, uh, that year. So this is what two and a half months later, uh, something along those lines.

Polly Mertens:

Unbelievable dude yeah pretty crazy. It is crazy. It is crazy and you could have actually also. I mean, I know we attribute a lot now to your wife, but like you also could have given up on yourself.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah and say fuck it, I'm out you know, and it's interesting, I've had this conversation with me when I'm out there in the trails and looking back at those weeks while I was in the hospital. I didn't ever have a moment of that, of saying you know what, this isn't worth it.

Polly Mertens:

This is stupid. I'm out of here Like cause I could have very easily um, or I choose the alcohol.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, yeah I choose the alcohol, yeah, and just discharge myself. And now I went. I didn't have any of those moments. Um, I had a moment where well, that's not true. I had one moment where I really thought I was going to die, you know. But I never had that in the back and I don't know, maybe it was denial, or maybe a big chunk of it was denial, maybe it's just kind of my personality of you know, there's always a positive side of things, maybe a combination thereof, I don't know. But I never really had those deep, deep dark moments in while I was in the hospital. Even when I'm filling out, you know my living will and what I want people to do when I die and how I want to prepare a funeral service or any of those things which we did. We went through all that paperwork and it was, it was a formality, went through all that paperwork and it was, it was a formality.

Kelly Thrush:

But, you know, even Jamie tells a story of when the night I got I had surgery was not good. I was in the ICU, my body had crashed, I was the term is bleeding out. At that point I was bleeding from anywhere that you can bleed from, to the tune of for anybody who's in the medical professional or profession, I had 27 units of blood transfused prior to surgery while I was in the ICU, and a unit of blood is about 250 milliliters. So what's that? Seven liters of blood transfused, uh, while I was in there, and so, and I was in and out of consciousness, um, jamie was actually by my side in the icu holding my blood bucket, for lack of a better term. Uh, and when they finally, um, got, you know, have the liver flown by private jet back to tuc, to Tucson and are wheeling me down to the operating room.

Kelly Thrush:

I think what sums up my personality is, you know, she's, she's a mess, she's crying and I'm being sort of whisked away, if you think you know Grey's Anatomy style down this hallway with all the doctors to the, to the OR. I'm holding her hand as they're about to say goodbye because I'm going through the double doors into surgery. Uh, I kind of went. I have the ventilator and that one hooked up to everything, I can't talk and I just winked at her like yeah, we got this, it's fine, I'll see you in a few, you know, kind of deal, um, and sure enough, you know, 14 or 16 hours later, whatever the surgery was, you know, I, she was in my hospital room.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, waiting for me.

Polly Mertens:

Pretty crazy. Somehow you found this inner peace to just go through the process and trust.

Kelly Thrush:

Mm. Hmm, yeah, and that was. There was a moment for that.

Polly Mertens:

There was a few moments.

Kelly Thrush:

Well. So when I first got into the hospital, I was super ashamed of why I was there, Right.

Polly Mertens:

Obviously, this is all my own doing.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and the shame and the guilt were just crippling Right. You know, I I didn't even let Jamie tell anybody. I was in the hospital for the first 10 days. Um yeah, not my parents, not my siblings, not the only people that knew were the my work, because obviously I wasn't at work, but they were the only ones that knew. And so because I was convinced the doctors were going to give me a pill, pat me on the butt and send me on my way and then I can continue drinking and life goes back to normal. No, but nobody's none the wiser.

Polly Mertens:

Right, that's an addictive mindset. You convince yourself of all these things. Yeah, you're living such a story that you've crafted and created in your own head yeah and that's. It just continues that way.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and I'm you know, lying to anybody and everybody, including jamie at that point, uh, and hiding all this stuff and you don't want the the curtain to be drawn so that everybody can see behind it, right, uh? And so there was a moment, probably two weeks, maybe two and a half weeks into the hospital, where I realized I'm not getting out of here anytime soon. I have to just let go of whatever fantasy I had of getting life back to normal, like I need to let go of that notion and then now just do what the doctors tell you. You know, and you're going to be here, you're going to be hooked up to all the machines and the IVs and this is, this is now your life, until they let you go.

Kelly Thrush:

Um, not knowing that at that point, not knowing transplant was the the end result, um, and there was, there was a very conscious moment, uh, of that of just having to surrender ironically enough, even though I didn't understand what that word meant at the time but just surrender to the circumstances and be like I can't control this narrative anymore. You know it. This, this is the truth of it.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah.

Kelly Thrush:

Accept it and just ride this wave until to wherever it goes, to wherever it leads, you know the suffering basically took over yeah. Yeah, very much so. And the suffering really is the part.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, yeah, very much so, and the suffering really is the part where we're all in denial, each of us does this all the time? Daily or whatever, for however many years around. Lots of things you know having control and having all these things that we deem to be happening in our lives, to us or whatever. The story is, that we're saying and it takes a long time or something really hard and challenging. Before that will be released.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, for me is stubborn and bullheaded as I am, it took it took touching my own mortality to get me to realize that you know you're not alone.

Polly Mertens:

No, no, no, no, I'm not millions of people right Like in that in a way it's alarming, but then at the same time it's not, because this is the human experience we're having.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and I think, yeah, correct, there are millions and millions of people who suffer from some sort of an addiction. In fact, I have my own thoughts about addiction, that human first off. We are wired that way. You know I talk about it often that addiction is not a bad word, because every person ever is slightly addicted to something. I mean it's on a spectrum. You know, there are zero people in the history of people that have been not addicted to anything ever. And, on the flip side, there's zero people in the history of people that have been addicted to everything, 100 percent, like all the things. It just doesn't work that way. Everybody is somewhere in the middle, uh, and so I want to talk about addiction, and mine specifically, because it's okay, it's just the way I'm, we're all wired this way, right?

Polly Mertens:

exactly and put on top of how we're wired, you know, evolution of mankind like it's a real thing, how we evolved, and the science behind all of that kind of stuff, and then looking at society and how we currently have crafted this existence that we're all sharing now is ludicrous.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah.

Polly Mertens:

Right, because we've taken this primate sort of, you know, way of survival, kind of way that we operate our bodies and our minds in sync with each other. And then now we've decided to make it even more challenging, as if it wasn't hard enough.

Kelly Thrush:

Right.

Polly Mertens:

We should definitely create an environment where it will become more and more of an opportunity for people to be addicted to new things, more things, because the relentless onslaught of applying that pressure Right. So when it was back in the day, I mean, I'm older than you, but when people could get addicted to things it would be drugs, alcohol, okay, maybe sex or porn or gambling right.

Polly Mertens:

It was kind of a gamut right, and now there's 100 more things that people could get addicted to, because now 100 more things have come into their opportunity, into their vision, into their eyeballs and ears, every day into their hands.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, your cell phones, that's. My favorite example is the cell phones. I mean, they're designed to keep our attention.

Polly Mertens:

It's nuts.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah.

Polly Mertens:

And it's really unfortunate that this has happened to our society. But we need to talk about it, we need to do something about it, we need to be honest about it, and I think that's the hard part. Well, that's the hard part is being honest about it. We need to do something about it, we need to be honest about it.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and I think that's the hard part Well, that's the hard part is being honest about it, because you know for me like I'm victim of that cell phone as much as anybody else Like you. Just you know, take your social media app, just remove the button. You don't have to remove it from your phone, just move the button off your home screen and then count how many times a day you reach for your phone and go to go to click it.

Kelly Thrush:

It's not there. You know, and I'll. It's double digits at minimum, maybe even triple for a lot of people. Um, but you don't want to admit that part because, oh no, I'm not addicted to my phone. I can put it down anytime I want maybe.

Polly Mertens:

Well, what's at the root of looking for those things? One of the root causes could be that, well, i't be comfortable with ourselves. So what's your root cause?

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, correct, I think it's. You know you take out the quote, unquote, boredom out of your life and you can't sit still or sit with yourself for 30 seconds. You know, I heard a standup comedian talked about I don't remember his name. Talked about this very thing. He goes when's the last time you stood in a line?

Polly Mertens:

A line at the grocery store.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and just stood there Exactly he goes. In 1983, when I was a kid, you know. We just stood in a line. We stood in a line he goes. I had no idea, I was being mindful.

Polly Mertens:

And we sat in a line. We sat in a chair and waited. Yeah, maybe you had a someone. Oh, we might have talked to another human. How insane is that, or even in line or whatever. Even in a car yeah, driving with someone else right, he was in a restaurant.

Polly Mertens:

We can't just sit in a restaurant and be like, hey, what's up, homie, we're having breaking bread. Let's make eye contact. Last time I checked we might know each other. Yeah, we're together for a reason, and you still see this, that they're totally looking at the thing.

Kelly Thrush:

What has what? What have we done? And now I mean, and Jamie and I are the same way, we have to schedule, you know, no phone days or no phone dinners, and like it just turn it off and put it away and like, don't, it's not even the same room, you know, off it goes.

Polly Mertens:

You know I have a question for you. So how long have you been sober?

Kelly Thrush:

Seven years just over.

Polly Mertens:

Okay, so seven years sober on the daily how much of a battle is this for you?

Kelly Thrush:

Not as much as it used to be. The farther it gets away, yeah, the farther it gets away, and it never really was a big battle, because I spent my hard months in the hospital.

Polly Mertens:

That's true, detoxing and getting back to support. Oh yeah, the first. I spent my hard months in the hospital. That's true, detoxing and getting correct.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, oh yeah the first 10 days when I was in the hospital, I was detoxing, I was hallucinating and you know, I mean there were people that came to visit and I don't remember coming to visit me, um. So I had a a blessing in that regard. Where the hard, the hard part of getting sober one, I didn't have a choice. I was in the hospital like there was no way to sneak in a bottle of liquor for me. It's frowned upon, uh, when you do that. Uh. And then the the hard part then was that first summer, um, because I was not in a good place mentally or spiritually, emotionally, that first summer, and it was multifaceted. The big thing where I wasn't in a good place is, you know, now I'm new to this sober world. Right, I have this brand new gift that I have been given that, in my mind, I completely did not deserve in any way, shape or form. This should have gone to somebody else that deserved it more than me.

Polly Mertens:

That is a better person than me, and absolutely yeah, oh yeah, for sure, survivors guilt for lack is a better person than me.

Kelly Thrush:

Absolutely. Yeah, oh yeah for sure. Survivors guilt for lack of a better term, um, because someone passed away that day and I did not, right, um, and I have no tools on how to cope with any of that, like I didn't have any, any of the tools that I use today, uh, when emotions are hard, I had none of those, and so that, first, call it, four months that summer after, after transplant, they were tough. There were some dark, dark moments in there because I, you know, I was beating myself up, I was guilty, I was ashamed. I didn't talk about my story, like if family or friends asked me no, no, we're good, I wouldn't talk about it at all.

Kelly Thrush:

I, I hated the word sober, I was embarrassed about it because sober people meant that they were alcoholics, you know kind of deal, and there's a stigma to that and I had no way of dealing with any of that. I didn't understand these emotions. I didn't understand why I was feeling the way I was feeling. And then I wouldn't accept the way I was feeling, right, I wasn't allowing myself way. I was feeling, right, I wasn't allowing myself. It was trying to use all the old tools that I had, which was compartmentalized, put in a box, shove it away, and we're going to pound this bottle of whatever liquor that I'm throwing back, and then I don't have to worry about it because I'm hammered, you know, and all that had disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Polly Mertens:

Well, you were still the same person. So just because you had a surgery and got another organ and were forced into detox and were forced into a sobriety moment and experience, you're still the same person. Even people that walk into you know AA or whatever treatment centers are walking in today or whatever their battle is, they're the same person. You don't magically become someone else. You know it takes time to be honest about how that shit occurred. Like what is the reason, or multiple reasons Could be a lifetime of shit, by the way, that that even became the circumstances that I became addicted and lost control of my own life and self-worth, and then all of the actions that happened. We've got to unpack all that shit and then we have to heal it all and build actual tools. I'm like, how am I going to do this differently? How can I fully evolve?

Kelly Thrush:

So it's taken you seven years or it took you I think it probably took me two to three to really become at peace with it. And what's what's ironic is during that journey of learning to love myself Right and to love and to love this part of me him it's one of my favorite speeches that he gives is that the addict part of me? You know, I was so ashamed of that man.

Polly Mertens:

It's one of the best skill sets I got. You know it really, truly is.

Kelly Thrush:

Capitalize on those skills Absolutely. Now you got to be careful. You got to wield it for good, because you can. I can absolutely turn back into the villain of my own story, yeah, but no, that tenacity that addicts have is fantastic. You just got to point it in the right direction, right? And it took a good two to three years for me to really truly understand that.

Kelly Thrush:

And how I found, or discovered that realization that this is a good thing and you're still a wonderful human being, because of everything that you went through, was when I started to share my story and talk about it with people, because I didn't for a long time. And then what I realized was I started sharing some of the things that I went through, or some of my hard parts, and, man, it makes you bond with that person in front of you. It was me. Being vulnerable in front of them, whoever they are, creates that trust. And now, all of a sudden, they're sharing with me and we can both become better because we're talking to each other.

Kelly Thrush:

And then you hear their story and you see a little bit of you know, I'd see a little bit of me in their story and vice versa and realize, man, this person, she's great, but you know she's a wonderful person. Wait a minute. Her story is a lot like mine, or his story is a lot like mine, and everybody gets better because of that. And so the more and more that I share, the more I realize that, you know, there are things that I maybe, I guess, wish didn't happen, but wish is the wrong word Cause it. It put me here talking to you today like this, you know.

Polly Mertens:

Exactly yeah, a hundred percent, I never would have if I hadn't gone through those struggles. Yeah. You know, and that's true for anybody who gets out the other side and can see straight you know meaning like what is the reality of who I really am and my worthiness in the world and why I'm here Right, and find that love and compassion for their self and then, ultimately, after themselves, the other people and the world that they're living in Right.

Kelly Thrush:

Right.

Polly Mertens:

It's like discovering that piece. Oh, my God, what an incredible gift that you gave to yourself.

Kelly Thrush:

but then, now that you're giving back to the world, yeah, well, and you know it, just being here and being alive is a gift Totally, and it comes with beautiful moments and it comes with not so beautiful moments, but both of them are gifts, you know. I mean they both are. You know, it's the. We were talking about Buddhism, earlierhism earlier. You can't have, you know, light without dark or sunshine without rain. I mean they're, they're intermingled exactly. If it was just bright outside all the time, you wouldn't appreciate it, because it's no, we don't walk this every day we don't walk around with dark sunglasses on.

Polly Mertens:

We wouldn't even look at the sun. Yeah, yeah, exactly it's always there, so we're gonna wear our dark sunglasses and turn the other way.

Kelly Thrush:

Yep, yeah so so here you are now seven years later yeah, pretty cool. Who to thunk it?

Polly Mertens:

who to thunk it? Your health is stable. How are you feeling?

Kelly Thrush:

everything's great. No, I feel great. I. I am healthier now than I probably ever was, you know. I mean, you know, call it six years, seven years, before my transplant, I mean I was 300 pounds running, running bars, you know, between beer and cheesesteaks that I had every day, you know, or fried foods, I mean I was, I was a big dude there for a while. No, I'm healthier now and, and knowing how lucky I am for that, because there's lots of transplant patients that it doesn't go as well as it did for me, you know I'm on the minimum amount of immunosuppressants that I can possibly be on. Right, I am taking the bare minimum amount, which is great, and all my markers look great, you know, and all those things you have to go to the doctor often. I know them all by first names. Yeah, I'm healthier now than I ever have been.

Polly Mertens:

You formed an organization called Gratitude and Grace, the Gratitude and Grace Foundation, which does what Sure.

Kelly Thrush:

So we help support financially, communally, emotionally help support transplant patients and their families, helps support transplant patients and their families, as well as folks in substance abuse recovery as well, and that's been fantastic and really how it all came to be was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I had actually made it to the other side. You know, when I woke up from that surgery and I knew I had to give back Now, I had zero idea what that was going to look like. In fact, actually, what that was going to look like no-transcript was taking pictures of all these gadgets and things that are sticking out, I mean the tubes and the machines and what the doctors are doing, and putting together a binder for future transplant patients so they could have a little bit of expectation for what's coming, because the doctors can't always explain every single thing that they're doing. One, they don't have time. Two, I'm not really sure I understood. So I wanted to maybe put together a little binder or book so that, from you know, from a patient perspective of what's going on.

Kelly Thrush:

That's cool, um, well, I didn't realize that already exists. I didn't realize that at the time. Um, but, but that was the first thought that we had, and so as I got healthier and more, uh, emotionally stable, um, and started sharing my story. How gratitude and grace came to be was. Now Jamie started sharing her story because she has just a traumatic journey, as I did, being on the opposite side of that OR, and she wouldn't talk about her stuff either. And so, as we're starting to share, she was telling me things that I had no idea, I was clueless to it, that she was protecting me from because I was in the hospital. You know the days or nights that she would come to the hospital and never come to my room and see me, because she was out running down doctors and asking why aren't we doing this and why aren't we doing that and how come he's not on the transplant list yet?

Kelly Thrush:

And advocating for me while we were there, and so some of the things, especially financially, she shielded me from until probably two years later when we talked about it. So, for example, after transplant, when I was discharged, I would spend Monday through Friday at my grandmother's house and my mom was there at the time, and so they would take care of me during Monday through Friday. Because part of the the agreement, uh, I think for every transplant patient, but but most and especially for me, was you have to sign up and agree that you're going to have 24-hour care for the next two months or whatever it is, after your transplant, before when they discharge you. Okay, and if you can't have that organized and set and there's a plan in place, they just won't do the surgery right, like no, not until you get this, it's a plan in place. They just won't do the surgery right Like no, not until you get this. It's a requirement.

Kelly Thrush:

So Monday through Friday I lived at grandma's with my mom and they were always there. Specifically, my mom was always there to help take care of me, and then on the weekends I would come home with Jamie on Saturdays and Sundays. Well, what I didn't know was because money was so tight, is Jamie would turn off the electric at the house Monday through Friday. She would come to like my grandma's house when she turned off the water so that she could take a shower, or at least a hot shower maybe, and all of those things that she did just to save those pennies. You know she would all sorts of different things. You know I called it utility bill roulette. Like which one did you pay this month Exactly?

Polly Mertens:

Okay.

Kelly Thrush:

We don't have to pay that next month and we'll pay the other one. And we did that really I didn't know, but for like a year now we didn't have to turn off utilities and things like that once I got home permanently. But we definitely struggled for quite some time because the fact that, well, I mean my income, disappeared overnight, yeah, totally it was gone.

Polly Mertens:

And these things cost a fortune. Even if you have insurance, it's a fortune.

Kelly Thrush:

Super expensive. And then there's the 49 different pills that I was on when I got discharged. So I mean there was all sorts of these costs and expenses. So once we started sharing again part of that healing process, you start talking about your story. The light bulb kind of went off and the seedling of gratitude and grace started to grow on. This is how we're going to help people, and there are other organizations here. There's one other in Arizona that I can think of that has similar stuff to what we do Not exactly but close. But so we will help financially support transplant patients because you can't work. You know you're not supposed to go to work for about a year after your surgery. You're not supposed to drive for like six months after your surgery and really you can't, you don't, you're not up to it. You're just simply trying to get healthy again. That is your job.

Polly Mertens:

Right, that is a full time job.

Kelly Thrush:

Correct, eat the right things, exercise the right amount. You know all get the proper amount of rest and maybe a little extra. That's your job and so you can't go to work. You know and help, support, and so now what we do is if there's a transplant patient or their family that is struggling financially, they can go on our website and the very, very top of the first page there's a request financial assistance financially. They can go on our website and the very, very top of the first page is a request financial assistance button, uh, and they can click it and then we can help with, depending on what it is but the bills it could be rent to, the mortgage or the electric. I mean we, we've been helping now and we're starting to pick up momentum. You know we've been doing this now for about a year and a half. Uh, over the last probably two or three months. We I would say we average two requests a week that we've been doing yeah, yeah. Well, word's gotten out to these transplant coordinators and their social workers about what we do and so we've been able to help.

Kelly Thrush:

We helped this. One lady wrote us a wonderful email because her electric had gotten turned off and we were able to get it turned back on for her. Um, uh, and the email, the letter she wrote us, was just, I mean, it put me in tears. Uh, and she wasn't, and we did. We were able to do some other things because of sponsors that we had, and I'll give a shout out to orgain, which is a plant-based protein. Uh, either drinks or powders or whatever it might be. Um, they had sent us, uh, for this purpose. Uh, sent us a bunch of samples and different things, a big container and giveaways and all sorts. Anyway, this particular lady, her, her transplant team was I don't know what the right word is, but they were getting on her cause she wasn't getting enough protein.

Polly Mertens:

Well, the problem is she can't.

Kelly Thrush:

She can't afford the proper diet.

Polly Mertens:

The proper diet's expensive.

Kelly Thrush:

She can't afford to keep the lights on. So we sent her a month's worth of this orgain powder and didn't tell her we were doing it. We just sent it to her and you could hear the emotion in her words as she said thank you. I mean it's it really is. It's been, it's been super, super powerful helping these folks.

Polly Mertens:

It's crazy because they sound like little things and they're everything. They're everything. You know when you're the person in it or you and your loved one are the ones in it. It's fucking. Everything dude Like. These. Small moves are the biggest moves and if people only understood the impact they could have by making a few small moves every week or every month, whatever their emotional or bandwidth is otherwise, resources like it's significantly life-changing for all the humans. How did you take this organization and pair it or maybe you didn't with ultra running, because you have continued to since we met? You know you went from the 50 mile. Now I'm going to do this 30 hour and then you've continued to progress on that journey. Obviously it's been good for your physical health and your mental health and you've started the organization and you're helping other people, but you've continued on that path. You haven't gone back to the couch.

Polly Mertens:

No not at all. You just finished. What exactly?

Kelly Thrush:

Well, I just finished the Arizona Monster 300. That was three, three weeks ago. This weekend was 300 300 miles well, if we're going to be tactical, it's 304.4. But I mean, who's who's counting?

Polly Mertens:

I'm counting uh, yeah.

Kelly Thrush:

So we finished that. That was um, yeah, that was crazy. What a journey that was. That was amazing about it, that was super hard.

Kelly Thrush:

Uh, well, the way, the way it kind of came up. So so, destination trail races for those that are listening, um, they have other 200 plus mile races out there. Candace burke is the owner, founder, of destination trail, and so they have other races out there and I've always thought, you know that those, those races are just like. How do those? How do the guys do it? I don't understand how they run those things, you you know.

Kelly Thrush:

But as I have gone further and further in my ultra running journey I have, I have started thinking to myself that those distances might be a little bit more up my alley, because I love hiking, I love being in nature, I love being outside and I like being in the middle of nowhere, right, where it's not. I love don't get me wrong I like hiking the trails that are right near the trailhead and the visitor centers there, and they're great, but they also have 4,000 people there, you know, uh, and, and so I really liked the ones where you know you're, you're 10, 15, 20 miles from the nearest, anything, really. So this particular race happens to be in my backyard and you know a number, a stretch, a stretch of this trail was I run them every weekend.

Polly Mertens:

Right.

Kelly Thrush:

And so a year and a half ago was when Candace announced that she was thinking about this race and I was sitting downstairs in my recliner and we were getting ready to go somewhere, whatever, and I had I had my phone out sitting on Instagram and her post came up about this and Jamie was walking downstairs and before Jamie even said anything say hey, by the way, when this race happens, I'm doing it and she goes, and she goes what? And I said look, it's super long, it's going to be super expensive. I don, and she goes, and she goes what? And I said look, it's super long, it's gonna be super expensive. I don't know if I'm gonna get 20 miles, 50 miles, I'm gonna do the whole thing, but I but it's in my backyard I am doing this race. Yep, and she looked at me. Who because this is part of the reason jamie's as badass as she is she looks at me, goes. All right, we'll figure it out, perfect.

Kelly Thrush:

So, uh, she announced this. It was from superior Arizona, which, driving from my house, is about two hours. Okay, to Patagonia, arizona, which is about an hour and change south of my house. Okay, mostly along the Arizona Trail, not all of it, some of it cut through Tucson, but yeah, for 304 miles, and I signed up the day that it opened, of course, you did yeah the day that it opened I year ago.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, the day that it opened I signed up, which was a year ago of course you did yeah, and the appeal was what.

Polly Mertens:

What did you anticipate would happen on this 300 mile?

Kelly Thrush:

journey. So the the appeal, I think, was um wow. I don't remember what I was thinking at the time.

Polly Mertens:

I can tell you what I'm thinking now. I'm just kidding, well yeah no, that's fair um that's fair.

Kelly Thrush:

Uh, I think the thing is is that I one? It was, or is, I think still, 300 is the longest trail race that's out there, the longest distance. So that was pretty cool. It's the inaugural year, which is pretty cool. It's in Arizona. I'm an Arizona kid, yeah you know. So all those things, and I really wanted to see if I could you know, I wanted to.

Kelly Thrush:

I don't know if I can do this and and let's, let's give it a shot. You know, um, and I think one of the things that I I really talked about with a good buddy of mine who helped me train and get ready for this race um, you know, as we're getting closer and the butterflies are starting to kick in, as we're getting closer to the race, I said, look, here's the thing. One of the things I think I have going for me is that anytime we go, do these crazy adventures, or I'm out in nature for a 20-mile, let's climb up this ridge, and it doesn't matter the distance or how hard it's been or how long I've been out there. As soon as I get back to the truck I wish I was still out there as soon as I get back, I'm like I should have stayed out a little longer, I should have enjoyed that summit some more, I should have taken another path back, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Kelly Thrush:

And so this race, I'm like, well, I'm about to get what I wish for, because you made it to that aid station, which is 45 miles away through this canyon, in the middle of the night and you're going to sleep for an hour maybe and then you're going to go do it again for another 45 miles and we're going to rinse and repeat for the next week and do that, and so I was looking forward to that piece going into the race. So I think that was part of the appeal Now on the back and we can talk about the race itself. But what I have have learned now, what, what makes me want to do it again? Because I will.

Polly Mertens:

I mean, I told you earlier I'd go do another 250 miler right now, if I could.

Kelly Thrush:

Now, my feet are still a bit beat up, so they, they. They will not let me today, um, but I think what I learned is the, the emotional clarity that came with stripping away every layer of who I am till I finally got to that Just the word I've been using is raw core of myself. The only way I can think that I can get there is by pushing for multiple days over multiple miles, over super hard terrain, up and over mountains is the only way that I think I can get to that emotional place where you're just, it's just you and that's it. There, you and that's it. There's no fluff, there's no, there's no projection of the persona that I want you to see. It's just me and the emotions that you feel, and I don't know how to get there a different way.

Polly Mertens:

And that's why I like these. Multi-day things are very different than the single day. So anyone who's been, is listening to this, who's done races, whatever marathons or even ultras, where you know you start, even if you start in the dark, and you finish in the dark, or start it as the sun comes up, finishes the sun setting, whatever the dynamic is. That is an experience and it's epic and we, we love it, we love those people and we want people to be doing that all day long. All humans are capable of doing that.

Polly Mertens:

In my never to be humble opinion, once you go all night long and continue to keep moving, something changes and, like you're saying, the peeling back of the layers. Right, there's this traditional way that we operate in the world every day is, you know, when the sun rises, we get up and then we go to work and we do some things, and then, when the sun sets, we go to bed and then we do it again, and we do it again, and we do it again. It's called the story of our life accumulating days, months and years.

Polly Mertens:

And that's kind of how most people live, but in nature that's not how the wildlife lives, and in the dawn of humanity that's not really how they lived either. So there's something really primal about that. When you're out in the nighttime and so that first night you sort of are having this like huh, I'm still moving, this is quite remarkable and it's very liberating, right. It's this great adventure, You're on this grand adventure and then usually somewhere around the second day, whether it's at sunrise or whatever the thing is a little different for everybody. You know, probably some suffering is creeping in, and maybe even creeped in before this.

Kelly Thrush:

No, it was day two. It was day two If you're trained.

Polly Mertens:

Ideally it's day two. Some things, some wheels might start falling off the bus at this point. Part of that is exhaustion, you know, mental fatigue, focus, all of the things that are required to make good decisions, and then part of it is just the miles are piling up. This is still a human body and the human body is built a certain way in Western America in the year 2025, right, so some shit's going to hurt, but then the miracle really happens when you start working through that, right. So you've sort of let go of all your stories and all these preconceived ideas, and I know that the race didn't go as planned in your head.

Kelly Thrush:

Right.

Polly Mertens:

It never does, by the way, and I love that the most about all of this I never know what the fuck's going to happen and, frankly, bring it on, that's always even better going to happen and, frankly, bring it on, that's always even better. Um, but in that, like peeling back of the layers and as the days start to, or the miles start to, mount, you know. Now you're on day one. You're having a few issues, you're obviously working through them still relatively intelligently, or your crew's helping you or whatever. Was it most of your feet that were the problem? Child?

Kelly Thrush:

the physical problem was feet, yeah, and and they, they really started. They started hurting. Probably mile 70 to 80 is when they started to hurt. Um, they didn't get super bad until well. I mean, they were super bad in the middle, but when they really started to affect my mental capacities, uh, was we, were? We were pushing 240 or 250 miles. Where now I'm? I'm starting to slow down and wondering if I can do this because my feet hurt so bad. But no, I mean, you nailed it the first day. I mean the first day like was great. We're out on the trails and look at this gorgeous rainy canyon and we're up and down and I'm meeting new people and all the fast runners are passing me because they're fast and they're going through, and it was fantastic.

Kelly Thrush:

and there's there's people everywhere yeah that first aid station night, the first sleep station, um, you know, I got there, probably two in the morning or whatever time. It was about an hour and a half past where I wanted to get there. Um, it was packed I mean there's so many people.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, uh, now I didn't get to sleep very much because I was kind of tucked behind these rocks and you know all that different stuff, but it was super cold the first three nights. I I want to keep this, this plan that I had spent hours writing, you know, trying to keep my paces and where I wanted to be. Okay, we're going to be an hour and a half short of our rest than we wanted it to be, but I built in some cushion into that rest. It'll be fine. Day two, as we're now out of this aid station at 6 AM. So right when the sun came up, I was brush my teeth and head out the door. And then what I didn't think of or look at or put into my equations was the terrain. You know, there was a never ending climb coming out of Gila River Basin and onto this plateau, and I don't know how far that climb was.

Kelly Thrush:

It felt like forever you know, but I finally crestedsted it. Probably it took me about five hours, four hours, whatever it was, to actually make it out of that. It wasn't really a canyon, but you were climbing non-stop, yeah, non-stop. It's not super steep but it's up, you know well for five hours no, true, well, there you go, uh.

Kelly Thrush:

And so that was when I was now at that point, really inside my own head. Here's where it gets real Correct. And I was inside my own head because I'd written this plan and I and there's, and day two was supposed to be my big day. I was going to do a hundred K at 20 minute miles, and here's where we're going to be, and we're going to be there at midnight and you know, I had it all dialed up and my crew had their assignments, they knew what I was doing and all this stuff.

Kelly Thrush:

So I text once I climbed out of this thing, uh, I text my crew at whatever time in the morning it was and said, hey, we're gonna, you got, we're gonna have to make adjustments. I don't know what that's gonna look like, but there is zero possibility. I'm gonna keep the paces that I put on paper. Yeah, and I'm and I am, I'm so far inside my own head at that point that that's all I can think about is having to make up the time and I'm going to have to just skip this next aid station and blah, blah, blah. So two of my crew and I could not have picked a better team to help support me through this. I mean, they were second to none. You know, jamie's the crew captain and all four of my pacers are all experienced ultra runners, and two of them piped in almost immediately and said what are you talking about? Your job is to make it to the next aid station. We'll handle the rest Like we've got this.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, relax Get out of your own head. The only focus you have is getting to. At that point it was tortilla aid station, that's it. That's all you got to do. And then I want you to leave with enough time that you're not, you know, getting kicked out Like that's all you have to do. And it took a couple of those texts for me really again to surrender and release those expectations to where. Okay, they got it.

Polly Mertens:

I'll just leave them to it. They're going to do what they're going to do, and my job is to get here, Uh, and it it did.

Kelly Thrush:

It took a little bit of weight off my shoulders and my thinking, you know, because I'm the back of the packer Because you're making yourself crazy. I was, well, and I'm the back of the packer, and so cutoffs are a real thing, you know, sure.

Polly Mertens:

It's a legit thing in any race. In any race, that's a reality.

Kelly Thrush:

But you can make it 10 times worse by making yourself crazy in the process. Yeah, I really, yeah, yeah, and I was, I was ruminating for hours, climbing out of that thing, knowing that you know, I'm looking at my watch going. We got, we got to pick up the pace and I'm doing like 25 minute miles instead of 20 minute miles. And if you start doing the math, very well, if I'm well, five minutes longer than one minute a while, that means I'm 20 minutes late every hour and blah, blah, blah. You know, uh, and then that's gonna put, and then that's going to put you two hours behind here. And if you're two hours behind here, then you know, and just, and the reason.

Polly Mertens:

I'm laughing is, of course, because I've done this and anybody who has done ultra running has made themselves crazy as a fucking jaybird out in the middle of nowhere talking to themselves. Sometimes we're whipping out our spreadsheet that we have with all our magic ideas about how this is all going to go perfect, or we're taking our phone out, we're calculating minute miles, and all these. We're so hilarious, aren't we? Yeah, this is when we're still in our old story Correct, right, that old identity of we have control. Things are going to go a certain way. I'm a certain person. This is how the world works. People have expectations of me, my crew, my pacers, whatever I have expectations of me. All of the stories that we tell ourselves. And that's the cage, really. At some point, you opened the door to the cage and stepped out of the cage.

Kelly Thrush:

I did, yeah, and so it took a couple of days still, you know, because there was a point on night number two Sorry, I didn't think about it where I was, night number two, where we were actually starting to chase cutoffs a little bit Right, um, because the first half of these, the first three days, um, cutoffs were. I mean, they were, they were gracious, but they were still pretty tight, you know, considering, you know, the distance and the terrain we're going.

Polly Mertens:

I think the race directors do that on purpose and also the climbing was mostly upfront right.

Kelly Thrush:

Correct the big the you, that on purpose. And also the climbing was mostly up front right, correct the big, the big chunk was in the first half. Um, now, there was plenty of elevation afterwards, but but the big chunk of it more than half of it, I think, was was in the first half of this race, like two thirds or whatever it was. Uh, and so that second night I at this point too, I had now teamed up with some people still can't have any crew yet, you know well, you can, you can have crew, but you can have pacers. And so that second overnight I teamed up with a couple of guys. One of them, his name was Tom, he's from Australia, and you know, we kind of came out of that aid station at dusk and we have. I don't remember how far we had to get to the next big station, but probably 35 miles or something like that. And so just basically, yeah, until the next morning. Yeah, we were going all night long because it was eight o'clock or nine o'clock when we left, finally left that, that aid station or whatever. And so we teamed up and he said hey, do you want to? You want to? You know, rock this together, cause it's easier when you're with other people in the heck yeah Cause then you can talk and you just met this person, so you can they share their story and you can share my story and you talk, and that makes the miles sort of tick by.

Kelly Thrush:

And so there's a couple, three, four of us that were really going, but the one that aid station in that night was the middle of the night. It's called them R&R, which was refuel and ramen stations, or ramen and refuel, because they were in the middle of nowhere, right? So there's no big party, it is quiet, it is. Here's some pasta that you can eat. Um, this particular one actually had personal pan made or hand pizzas. Uh, they were delicious, by the way, um, and so we got to this one, but it was we're now pushing, like we're only getting there an hour and a half ahead of the cutoff, like we gotta, we gotta push a little bit, and what i't? This was the one part of the course that I had never been on before.

Kelly Thrush:

You know, being that this course was in my backyard, I literally trained on every section, except I wasn't able to do this one because it was in the middle of nowhere and logistically trying to figure that out was tough. So as we were coming into this, it was middle of the night, so I couldn? Uh. So as we were coming into this, it was middle of the night, so I couldn't tell you really what it looks like. But all I know is that you're in this sort of canyon area, hilly area it's called the black hills and you can see headlamps everywhere, at all 360 degrees you can see headlamps. So I have no idea where we're going. You know like are we, is the aid station over here, or is it over here, or? And then you have to climb this you know pretty good size mountain or hill or whatever it was before. Then you dip down back into the aid station and then the next day climb back out.

Kelly Thrush:

But we had to hurry and we were suffering pretty good because sleep deprivation is starting to kick in. So we were able to get to that aid station about an hour and a half or maybe two hours before the actual cutoff when you have to be out of the aid station so we had some time to sit, we ate some pizzas. Uh, I didn't. I don't think I actually slept at that aid station, but I was able to sit down under a blanket next to a fire, warm up a little bit. Uh, tom actually did sleep for a little while, uh, and then we woke him up and we headed out, uh, and then that third day, uh was kind of where the way I've described it, maybe you can put this into words better Time and space dissolved.

Polly Mertens:

Yep. They ceased to exist 100%.

Kelly Thrush:

They weren't there at all. It was. The only thing is just move forward. You know, that afternoon I now have my pacer, my first pacer. The trek was with me, thank goodness, because now I'm starting to be in some dark head spaces. And this is that afternoon. Evening is when the hallucinations started kicking in, because I, at that point, probably only had an hour and a half sleep in those three, maybe two hours in those three days, and I didn't sleep the night before this race. I mean, let's be honest, you know. I mean we didn't start till 11 AM and we had to drive to superior. I got up at 5 AM. I mean I maybe had four hours night before. Um, so yeah, sleep deprivation started to kick in and that's when your eyes start playing tricks on you. Um, what was cool about that experience is I was still consciously aware enough to know that what my eyes were showing me is not real. You know, the only time that I got startled one of my favorite stories is when I almost stepped on a snake climbing up.

Kelly Thrush:

Mount Lemond, which was the big climb Right. That was the six thousand feet and twelve miles on these just back bushwhacking trails and fire roads that we had to be on. But Christian was out in front, I was. Second. We picked up another guy named Robbie, who we'd met right there, and Robbie's a big part of the reason I finished as well. We spent 200 miles together. We finished the whole thing together. We met on the trail that night for that afternoon.

Kelly Thrush:

So anyway, so we're coming up this hill and we're kind of cresting to the left around this ridgeline, and as I turned to step, you know, making that left-hand turn, I jumped and the first thing that rolls through my mind is why is there a three foot long yellow corn snake in the middle of the trail on Mount Lemmon? They don't live here, and that was the first thing, and I'm looking down at this. It was, it was three feet long, was kind of a, a maze yellow and it's slithering, I mean it's, it's moving. And then I hear them giggling and I went that that's not a snake, is it? It was, it was an agave leaf, which for those it's a cactus that lives up in that area, but it was three foot long. It was on the trail, but I'm staring at this thing while they're telling me what it is and it's, it's moving, like I can see it moving, and that was my first for real hallucination that, uh, the trek, uh. The next one came not too too much later, you know, not even a mile down the trail. It came, uh, and this was a very fun one.

Kelly Thrush:

So I need you to imagine a disney costume, character muppet thing, right, like it, like a mickey mouse style costume, right? However, this particular lady, she was a woman, uh, she had a bumblebee butt, complete with, you know, a good stinger, uh, but the top half half of her was a beekeepers outfit, complete with the, the helmet, and she was bending over to pick something up. And I'm staring at this thing across the way, going, that's not, there's no way that there's a bumblebee Muppet thing in the middle of Mount Lemon. And so then, so I tapped Christian on the shoulder and said right, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to tell you what I see and then you're going to tell me what it actually is. So I described this to tell you what I see and then you're going to tell me what it actually is.

Kelly Thrush:

So I described this to him and he very deadpan, you know, kind of looked at me, goes yeah, man, that's a snake, or that's a snake, yeah, man, that's a tree stump, yeah. And then so let's go. And so we just kept on trucking after that. So then I saw all sorts of fun stuff. I saw a tiki guy kind of standing behind, like this guy, that was praying. I saw a ninja that was pulling on a branch at one point. The weird one, the weird one the weird one.

Polly Mertens:

They were all weird.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, the weirder one, or the more real one, I suppose, were the auditory hallucinations. I could hear people talking just off the trail. I couldn't understand their conversation, I couldn't hear their words, but it was people chatting often, and you pause for a sec because the first thing you do when you hear somebody behind you you stop like, oh, there's somebody and there was nobody there. Okay, so then we just kept on going. Those ones were very real, like it took a second, you know, I knew that there was not a ninja pulling down this branch, totally um, or, or a beekeeper, uh, but the auditory ones were interesting you know, these kind of things are part of it and we tell these stories and we laugh about it, but it can scare the hell out of people and it's actually a big reason that a lot of people don't want to do this kind of stuff is they don't they think they're going to be terrified.

Polly Mertens:

So this shows the value of having pacers with you or trail partners to slog along rather than in the dark, and especially at the nighttime or in the times where you're hallucinating, it can be dangerous. So, to be honest, this is a dangerous sport. We choose it anyway willingly. We choose it anyway willingly. But then you can be strategic and intelligent about having people around to make sure that you are safe and you don't make a wrong turn or a bad decision because of some of these things or just really being depleted.

Kelly Thrush:

Well, I think that's a good point, and your trail buddies, they're there and they're in the same boat as you. Yeah, absolutely, and it does. The camaraderie that I had with the people that I met out there is gosh fantastic, you know and because you're all.

Kelly Thrush:

It's that shared suffering you hear is talked about often and you're, in that moment, sharing that same suffering, as you're both have this goal in mind. You've never met before. I met three or four different Australians that I shared some miles with people from phoenix and ohio and I mean all over, right, uh. Then now we're great and we text and we see each other on strava or instagram or whatever it is, and we text back and forth, or they're running. You know a couple of them are doing coca-dona this weekend or this week, um, which is great, because now I'm going to cheer for them. You know from all the down here, but it's, it's, it's amazing. The people that you meet so that you can be safe while you're out there and not and realize that it's no, it's not a snake, it's OK, it's an agave, it's fine. You know or no, there's no ninjas in the forest. You know, it's just, it's just your eyes playing tricks on you you know, it's just.

Polly Mertens:

It's just your eyes playing tricks on you. One of the biggest things I learned early on, and why I'm still drawn to the sport, is you learn so much about taking care of yourself, I mean, and I love how everything strips away and you have that single focus of keep moving forward. So it's like hydrate, nutrition, stay warm, stay, keep moving forward. Something happens, deal with it. Something happens, deal with it again, deal with it again. You're problem solving. You're just learning all these skills that otherwise in your everyday life you would never learn.

Polly Mertens:

You would never be pushed to this place. That's so damn challenging and nobody can resolve it except for you Like that kind of empowerment to me is freaking priceless agreed, yeah, well, and I think too, what that also does is, um, do you can?

Kelly Thrush:

then, like I try to describe, I? I was amazed at how my body responded, you know, because we've all been on those one mile runs that are just awful. And you go, I'm not doing this today. And your body says, you're right, we're not doing this today. Versus, specifically, in my case, with my feet. I literally had a conversation with them on the second to last day when they are battered and bruised, and and I had this um, uh, they were so swollen, you know, over the course this, this 300 miles, that my crew actually bought me three new pairs of shoes throughout the week. They were each a size bigger whoa, so that my feet would fit, wow, into the shoes. And by dane that thursday, so that would have been the 10th. So we've now been out there six days, or coming up.

Kelly Thrush:

On the sixth day I couldn't put my gaiters on my shoes right, which are the things you put over your shoes to help keep sand out of them, because they wouldn't fit. I couldn't fit them on there and I couldn't tie my shoes properly. Also, like I couldn't tie them tight, they were just loosely snugged on there, and so that last day I actually had a mental conversation with my feet and said look, here we go. Fellas, I apologize to you and this is going to hurt. However, you will function today and you will operate as you do normally. You will do all the normal motions you will, you know, as you, as you were going. You know midfoot, I mean all the normal motions you will, you know as you were going.

Kelly Thrush:

You know midfoot, I mean all the different things that we talk and we talked for, you know, two or three minutes, and I said all I need you to do is to get to the Casablanca, which was the last aid station. You have to get there by Thursday evening. That's it. Once you do that goal, do whatever you want, I don't really care, but that's all you have to do is get there. Yeah, and it worked and they and they did. Now I'm I've can't run really since then. My feet are still battered and bruised. I actually have a doctor, another doctor's appointment on Monday morning with a podiatrist. Yeah, because there's still some issues going on with them, but they were able to achieve the goal that day, even though it hurt, you know, um, because I asked them to or commanded them to one of the one of the two, depending on whose perspective.

Polly Mertens:

Exactly, and there'll be moments in these things where you don't feel anything.

Polly Mertens:

And there's other moments in these things where you feel everything. It's the most bizarre thing and you're like, okay, I guess this is what we're doing for the next hour or whatever the hell it is, and then the pendulum will swing again. But I think the most incredible experience I'm hoping you're going to share as we start to kind of wrap up our time together is really what was happening to you mentally and emotionally. So physically, people are not going to be able to comprehend this race, as much as we could talk about it for days on end, all the details, unless they get their butt off the sofa and they get up into the mountains and on the trails and just start experiencing nature firsthand. It's like going to Mars.

Kelly Thrush:

Right.

Polly Mertens:

But it's available to all of us and, by the way, it's also free in most places to do this. So we beg of them to just start and do anything. But for you I want to know, like, for your mental and emotional journey on this race course, this particular experience that you had? Yeah, you overcame endless amounts of suffering. I mean, it's not even stuff that we can comprehend. Like I said, people just can't even grasp this. Over and over and over, you got up and rose again and again and again. It's kind of like your sobriety journey. It's kind of like being a transplant recipient. You continue to rise. What in the hell was going on in your? Do you even remember?

Kelly Thrush:

Oh yeah, Maybe not all of it the hell was going on in your.

Polly Mertens:

do you even remember? Oh yeah, no, maybe not all of it. I mean, were you even present in the reality when you could see you were going to finish the race? Did you have even awareness? Or had you just had your brain left the building?

Kelly Thrush:

No, no, I was, I was aware. Um, so, the first time that I had those thoughts that I, that I think I allowed myself to have those thoughts was at the top of Mount Lemon.

Kelly Thrush:

It was after and in the middle of night. Number three, going into day four, was we made the top of Mount Lemon with time to spare, right, so we now had I don't remember exactly, but we had time to spare. We didn't have to rush and we talked about it earlier. That was the point in the race where the cutoffs start to get even more generous, right, because once coming down from there, uh, when we got to mount lemon and and I it was middle of the night, so it was cream I ate two, uh, impossible burgers and took my shoes off and went to bed. When we got up and we were headed out down the mountain now with a big group of us we're probably eight of us at that point that all were heading out at the same time. That was the first time I went.

Kelly Thrush:

I'm gonna do this thing, you know, like, like this, this is going to happen. I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and if I do that, I'm going to finish a day early. You know, those kind of things like I have plenty of of. My body feels great. My feet don't, but my body feels good. Mentally. I feel good, um and again, because that time and space had kind of dissolved.

Kelly Thrush:

I just have to get to the next aid station, that's it exactly and it doesn't matter that it's 30 miles away, it doesn't matter that it's going to take us 10 hours to get there. None of that even came up in my thoughts. It was just get to the next aid station and then you get to have another burger or a quesadilla or a pizza and sit and eat and joke around with everybody and you know bond in that moment, and then we're going to get up and we're going to go do it some more. So that was the first time that that happened Towards the end. So there were three thirds of this race.

Kelly Thrush:

The first one was getting to that first aid station before you can have crew, which was 105 miles, which actually was, ironically, a third. That one was tough because I was by myself, I was in my own head, I didn't have somebody that I was with, crew wise, or even I mean I had made friends, but not close friends, you know. So I was by myself a lot of that chunk. The second third was getting through Tucson, very, very different, you know. We got down off the mountain. Now we're on paved bike path for 40 miles or whatever it was, which, again, I use that a lot of times. I use that same section as my commute to work, you know. So I know it in and out. But that was that second section.

Kelly Thrush:

And so that particular day that I don't remember what day it was, um Tuesday, I think uh was tough because we needed to get to what was called Gabe Z, uh, which was going to be the beginning of that third, third um by the end of that night. And so we left at eight in the morning and we had to go 40 miles, uh, before we were going to quit for the night. That was the hell or high water and it was hot. So remember I said it was super, super cold. Those last three days were pushing a hundred degrees, it was totally exposed, no shade Right. And so we made it to that Gabe Z, that's when. That's when those layers were pretty well stripped.

Kelly Thrush:

My feet are now trash. I'm now whatever it was was five days in. I'm exhausted at that point and because we had pushed, now I'm still moving great, I'm still in good spirits. You know, for the most part. I mean, like you said, the pendulum swings. I have my moments, but what's great is that when you're in other people, hopefully everybody's pendulum's at a different point as they're swinging. So my moment is his crappy, you know good one, and vice versa. Right, yeah. And then your pacer, hopefully, is there to have all good moments you know Right, exactly.

Kelly Thrush:

Hopefully, and so we have this. Now. There's a hundred K between the Gabe Z and that last aid station Casa Blanca is what it was called uh, there's 100k little over. It's like 67 miles or whatever, um, between those two. Uh, that was tough, um, and that's when those layers started getting stripped.

Kelly Thrush:

Um, we had a stretch that that day it was hot. There were five of us, um, I caught back up with tom the australian and his pacer, marco, and then there was our crew. There was a stretch of I don't know how how many miles we did, but it was probably an hour, hour and a half where none of us really talked. We were just, you know, marching through the desert at a decent clip. It was relatively, relatively flat for the most part during this stretch, and we were trying to get to that next aid station because it was super hot and we heard they had ice, so we were trying to get there, you know, um, but that's when the layers were starting to to. Really, I'm now getting to the core of this thing, and so what, what happened was, at the end of that night, we're trying to get what was called oak tree, which is in the middle there, uh, and now we're in the foothills of some of the mountains that are down below, so we're in grasslands, kind of oak, ironically forest, and it's rolling hills, and this might be my favorite story. It's on a short list, if it's not. So we're getting through this stretch of these foothills here and it's dark I don't know what time of night it was, but it was dark and had been for hours and we have to make this climb and it's about three, two, I don't know two or three miles worth of climbing out of this little valley that we were in, and again, not a steep climb, but it's a vertical, not stopping here's hills, and you're just climbing for the next hours, or whatever it was.

Kelly Thrush:

Uh, and at this point my feet are now affecting me and which means now it's affecting my, my team that I'm with, because they're not going as fast, because I'm not going as fast. You know, um, my, my pacer, jeff, he was like well, I'm with him, so it doesn't bother me at all, but the other guys that I'm with, they're, you know, they want to stay with you, but at the same time they have their own race. You know those mental questions to rise. So, anyway, so we're coming up through and I, I made a conscious decision that no, no, no, we're going to push this last uphill section. You know we're going to go at a good clip. It hurts, I know it hurts, but we're going.

Kelly Thrush:

So we're making this climb and just towards the end of this climb, jamie called me just to say goodnight, you know, whatever time it was, because she had to work the next day, I think, and I said I'm going to call you back. We're going to be at the top of this thing in 0.15. I'm out of breath. I'll call you back in. However long it takes me to go a quarter mile, I'll call you back so we make it to the top. I call her back and it was a two-minute, not even a one-minute phone call and she's saying I just want to tell you goodnight and that I love you and you're doing great.

Kelly Thrush:

And then the very last thing she said when she hung up was I am so proud of you, man, I lost it. I'm tearing up right now. I did up right now. Um, I, I did, I start, my lips started quivering and I, I just started. I couldn't help it because all those layers are gone and you're sleep deprived and you're exhausted and you're 200 and whatever miles. I'm into this thing. I can't help it, and so what I really wanted to do was hide it from the two fellows that I'm with, you know, because we're tough guys in the middle of the desert. I'm like what are you talking about, man? This?

Polly Mertens:

is what it's about.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, just let this happen and realize how much more I love Jamie because I did this race.

Polly Mertens:

And again, I wouldn't have gotten there and yourself.

Polly Mertens:

True, but in that moment it was her, but she was reflecting back to you the reality of what you were saying, or should be saying to yourself yeah, having pride in what you're accomplishing. That's what good partners and good friends do. They reflect back your own damn truth. Yeah, they just have the balls to say it, because sometimes you don't. So she called you on it, so that's so good, because that's why it rung such a chord. If it was superficial and it didn't really resonate, it would have just kind of bounced off. You know we all have those kind of relationships.

Kelly Thrush:

Oh sure, were you looking to go? Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah, were you looking to go? Yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah, she just went right at it. No, and it and it and it did. It struck that chord, uh, and now I'm talking to them about it and, and that made the miles go by a little faster too, till we got to this aid station, and that next morning well, it wasn't next morning, it was like two hours later, uh, when we left that aid station was when I had the conversation with my feet like we're gonna go see jamie Casablanca and we have to hurry to get there and this is how this is gonna go today. Uh, and they did it, and so that was, that was probably my, my favorite moment, uh, of this journey.

Kelly Thrush:

Now, the, the, the um, last two miles coming into the finish line were pretty amazing as well. I mean, you know, uh, it was daytime, you know we hiked through the night. Uh, we had 16 miles to go. Molly is now pacing us, and now she has. Now she's responsible for a whole little crew. We picked up another runner, and Mike is his name, and so she's in charge of all of us, I think, because they're like, oh good, he has a pacer, we're not going to get lost and she's like exactly around me, um, but so what happened, uh?

Kelly Thrush:

jamie texted our little group, uh, when I crossed the 300 mile mark and we're now four miles from the finish. Right, and we're on this. I think we weren't quite to the little road that we had to take, which is like two miles long. Uh, but I'm in, just I'm in mode, we're, we're going to the finish and I'm we're cruising along, well, cruising along, uh, and uh, uh jamie, you have no concept of time and speed anyway.

Kelly Thrush:

So, whatever, didn't matter, we're just, we're just moving yep, my, my sole focus is to get to that road, because I know the road signifies we're done with this thing, right. And so jamie texted 300 miles and that was it okay, cool. Oh hey, 300 miles, we passed it all right, we're good, didn't I mean just brushed it off. And then Molly, a few minutes later, she looks back at me. She goes that's 300 miles. I'm like yeah, I know. And she goes this is not a big deal.

Kelly Thrush:

And I'm like no, it's a bit, no, it is a big deal. I mean, here come the waterworks again, when we got to a mile from the finish line. Man, you can see the pictures. I posted them online. You know like my lips quivering, you know like I can't wait. And then I start. As you come around the corner, you can see the gate and the finish line and the whole thing. The cowbells are going and I can see it's not just my crew there, like one of my best friends, growing uh, who has just gotten into photography, has his big old telescope lens out and he's, and I can hear him yelling for me. And then I see, like a bunch of my run club and we're still an hour and a half away from tucson at eight o'clock in the morning on a friday, like people have jobs. Yeah, they're there, you know, to cheer me on and I, you know there's this group of people that are are here supporting me and man it just that, was it my dad's there you know our youngest is there.

Kelly Thrush:

Um, it was amazing, uh it, just it. It was, uh, it was amazing that it's a memory, that it one I'll never forget, but it absolutely changed me as a person since I've done that race it.

Polly Mertens:

It was 1000%. Yeah, because you evolved right Like you're. This is, this process is an evolution. We talk about it as a like breaking down, but we don't really mean breaking down, we mean peeling back Right. It's really an evolution, an opportunity for growth, stripping away all the unnecessary, not even real, false senses of self identity, whatever, constraints, restrictions, ideas, limitations, whatever to find who am I really, what am I doing? How did I even do this? I have no freaking idea. Who am I right now? No idea, right, but it's so incredibly beautiful.

Kelly Thrush:

How did people got to witness?

Polly Mertens:

that.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, and so many people did, and that I was able to share it with them.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, all these people that support me, oh yeah.

Kelly Thrush:

You'll continue to. Well, and during the race, you know, I had a moment of clarity, to quote the rooms, during the race there was multiple people that came to visit me because I'm a local, you know. So there's all sorts of people that came while I was in tucson, uh, and I had a conversation with, you know, the person that was next to me, and I said and I kind of smiled and I remember the context of the conversation, but my response was god, it's a, it is amazing, how many people are out here cheering me on. And and she smiled and very sincerely, as a compliment, went, really, it's amazing, meaning like, of course, you have this many people cheering you on. And my response was yeah, it's amazing Because I look back to eight years ago when I had destroyed, or tried to destroy, every relationship that I had, and somehow or another eight years later, here I am with these text messages and hugs and people that are taking a week off of work to come help me reach a goal.

Kelly Thrush:

Exactly, that is good stuff right there, those relationships and friendships that I have somehow cultivated Right, which is amazing.

Polly Mertens:

Well, hopefully, hopefully you have full recognition. I'm sure you're still in the process of actually like fully recognizing. It's going to take a while for it all to continue to download, but but the I am worthy what?

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah.

Polly Mertens:

Because that was the deepest, darkest. I'm not worthy of getting sober, getting this organ having a life, getting all of these opportunities, having this girlfriend, now wife, having this community, starting to write all of the. Am I worthy, I'm not worthy questions.

Kelly Thrush:

Yep.

Polly Mertens:

We're just answered.

Kelly Thrush:

Yeah, very much so, and continue to answer was fuck, yeah, yeah.

Polly Mertens:

And what are you going to do with it?

Kelly Thrush:

Yep, that's the whole. That's that's the key to it is what? What? Okay, yeah, the answer is absolutely like, unquestionably. But now, what do you? Do you know, and how do you? How do you bring other people? How do you become that beacon that attracts other people that are either, uh, in addiction or new to sobriety, or going through their transplant which is why I like doing some of these things is so that you know you can be an example. I can be an example of no man.

Kelly Thrush:

The kind of life that you have on the other side of this is just, it's dumbfounding you know the kind of life you know that you can have incomprehensible, yeah it just is, and so hopefully that's the biggest thing is having a positive impact on folks that need it, and even some that don't, maybe, but just having a positive impact on people.

Polly Mertens:

Everybody needs it, yeah some are asleep and are not going to hear it or see it. That's fine. We can't wake up everybody, but everybody needs it.

Kelly Thrush:

Yep, everybody. And having the ones that don't think so right, the ones that say I'm not worthy of it, you know, grabbing them spiritually by the hand and guiding them through when they need that little extra love and support, exactly.

Polly Mertens:

I can't even fathom what's going to happen next with you. I have no idea.

Kelly Thrush:

I don't know either. I can't wait though.

Polly Mertens:

Whatever it is, I'm totally in. What are we doing? Let's go Exactly, exactly, wow, so beautiful, so beautiful. The story is amazing and really it's because you're amazing and you are a beautiful human. You're on the path, dude, full 1000% on the path. Like it's so incredible.

Kelly Thrush:

It's good stuff.

Polly Mertens:

It's good stuff. It's good stuff. I hope that people are inspired by this story, in whatever capacity it speaks to them. You just never know who's listening and you know what's going on with them or a loved one, or whatever the dynamic might be. But I believe you always have to start at home. So you know you wouldn't be able to have the impact with hundreds and eventually thousands of people on with your nonprofit and with the course of action that you're taking to help others, if you hadn't first resolved this oh for sure, really owned your physical body, your emotional body, your spiritual body in your life right yeah, absolutely it does.

Kelly Thrush:

It starts within you know, I can't I can't love anybody else if I don't love myself, exactly, exactly just can't do it.

Polly Mertens:

Keep loving yourself, because we love you. How are people going to be able to find you if they want to continue to oh?

Kelly Thrush:

gosh. Uh, so well, first we'll start with the foundation gratitude and grace foundationorg. Okay, uh, it's how you find that? Uh, it's a 501c3. Uh, we are always looking for donors, so anybody donate and sponsors and sponsors uh, we look for those.

Kelly Thrush:

We have all sorts of events. We're going to have another team for el tour de tucson. Uh, if there's any cyclists out there that want to do that's a big bike race in november. Uh, christian, who's one of my, was one of my pacers. Uh, he's running the mammoth, okay, uh, um, sally mccray's race, uh, in september. Uh, he's going to run that on behalf of gratitude, anditude and Grace. He's raising some money. We got all sorts of different things that we do and events. So there's all sorts of different ways volunteers or sponsors or donors or whatever. So, go there first and then Instagram is pretty easy for me it's just keep going, is my handle, so just underscore, keep underscore, going. Underscore is how you find that and you can find me. Uh, you can just Google and go from there and there's all sorts of different ways to listen to my story and uh, yeah, and emailing and especially if folks need something, need someone, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm a phone call away, easy to get ahold of. We'll walk you through whatever we got to walk you through.

Polly Mertens:

Yeah, there's nothing we can't handle. That's what people need to remember. I mean you're a shining, freaking example of that. Thank you, nothing you can't handle right. It's incredible. All right, dude.

Kelly Thrush:

I'm proud to call you friend, right back at you. Can't wait till we get to see each other again.

Polly Mertens:

I know I was just thinking about Tucson. I might have to take a look at that bike ride.

Kelly Thrush:

Come on down.

Polly Mertens:

Love it, love it All. Right, everybody. That's it for us today. Remember what I always say how your life feels is more important than how it looks. This, dude's a testament to that. 1000%, and that's a wrap. We'll see you next time.

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Polly Mertens

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Samantha Pruitt

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