for all of you put up your hand if
there’s something big in your life that
you’ve been wanting to do but for some
reason you haven’t done it yet come on
now keep your hand up that people have
told you that your idea is crazy and
impossible I’m asking you this today
because I want to challenge your
definition of what’s crazy and
impossible my name is Stephanie case and
I’m a lawyer I specialize in human
rights and humanitarian emergencies
which has taken me to some of the most
difficult places on earth but outside of
my professional life I am an ultra
runner which means that I like to run
distances longer than a marathon whether
in the jungle or in the snow or the
desert the longer and the tougher the
trail the better a couple of years ago I
combine these two passions to create a
charity called free to run which is an
organization that provides sports
opportunities for women and girls who’ve
been affected by conflict in places like
Afghanistan now the things that I’m most
proud about in life have started out as
crazy and impossible ideas and I want to
tell you about two of those experiences
today – unlikely success stories about
some of the toughest ultra marathons in
the world the first is about nila ferns
aina there are two women from
Afghanistan who wanted to become the
first people from their country to
finish an ultra marathon they signed up
for the 4 deserts Gobi March which is a
250 kilometer ultra marathon through the
Gobi Desert
it goes over six stages so you do about
a marathon a day and then a double on
and it gets worse you carry about 20
pounds of gear on your back so you’re
carrying your food your clothes your
sleeping bag everything you need now
these women they hadn’t run more than a
couple of kilometers before outside let
alone a marathon or an ultra marathon so
that’s where free to run came in to
train for this kind of a race in any
country is difficult but to train as
women in Afghanistan it’s near
impossible in order to train they had to
get permission from the police to be
able to train in a local park they
needed male chaperones to be able to go
out in the mountains on the weekend and
they had to have private transport to
get to and from their training because
if they went on the street they would be
harassed and sometimes people would
throw stones at them I don’t think
anyone actually thought they were going
to make it to the race let alone finish
the race they had just six months to get
ready it’s not that anyone doubted their
intentions but what they were trying to
do really did seem impossible well they
showed up on the start line and they
were convinced they were not only going
to finish they were going to win it’s
called managing expectations
but you know it didn’t take long before
a reality set in the pain the fatigue
the blisters and the weather didn’t help
on the second day we got hit by a
snowstorm
which is not something anyone’s
expecting in the desert and no matter
how tough the conditions were though
they stopped to pray five times a day
Shia and Sunni side-by-side let me tell
you by the fifth day even I was praying
it was the long stage the 80 kilometers
stage and we were walking at a pace of
three kilometers an hour which meant
that it was going to take us 24 hours to
finish this was my face when Neil Farr
decided she was going to stop drinking
water it was fifty degrees Celsius and
dehydration was a massive concern we
walked all day and into the night and
when we finally got to the 220 kilometer
mark of the whole race Zana decides
she’s gonna quit she sat down at the
checkpoint and took off her running
shoes we couldn’t believe it and nothing
we said could make her get going again
and you know at that point I thought
this was crazy and impossible I think I
don’t think she’s gonna make it and I
gave up on her but no sooner had I given
up did she put her running shoes back on
she got up and she walked out of the
tent into the night we walked straight
through until sunrise and this was the
moment when Zainab could see the end and
she knew that she was going to finish
nila ferns a nod made history as the
first team from Afghanistan to complete
it really was incredible and it taught
me that even I wasn’t dreaming big
enough that maybe there was more that
was possible out there so I took that
experience into the biggest challenge of
my own life which happened just a few
weeks ago torta Jeon it gets worse this
is a 338 kilometer non-stop race through
aosta valley in italy competitors have a
hundred and fifty hours to finish which
seems like a lot but not when you
consider the amount of climbing you have
to do you have to do twenty four
thousand meters of climbing which is the
equivalent of going from sea level to
the top of Everest and back down two and
a half times yeah training for this kind
of a race takes years not months and in
the years leading up to the race I’d
been living in areas of active conflict
in 2012 I was living in a armed compound
in Afghanistan where I would do loops
around the compound walking let alone
running outside was strictly forbidden
and as I was doing my loops I could hear
gunfire sometimes explosions outside in
2014 I was living in a tent in South
Sudan in a site for internally displaced
people and the physical and mental
stresses were so extreme that I
struggled to even get outside of my tent
in the morning to have a bucket shower
let alone run 50 kilometers through the
bush and in the two years leading up to
the race I was living in Gaza where
again I wasn’t allowed to go outside I
have one advantage in Gaza though over
the other two places and that was a
really amazing training partner Tyrone
and we would do lubes together inside
the parking lot of the UN compound for
hours yeah and when when Tyrone got
tired I would go inside on the treadmill
where often I would impale myself on the
front of the console when the
electricity frequently cut out so
needless to say my training was abysmal
I really had no business being on that
starting line I got to the race and I
had no idea how it was gonna turn out I
didn’t know if I was going to finish I
didn’t even know what day I was gonna
finish on but I knew that I was going to
leave everything out on the trail well I
ended up leaving a lot more on the trail
than I was expecting because I was
throwing up for the first 30 kilometers
I couldn’t keep anything down if I had
to chew anything I would immediately
start dry heaving so in order to get the
calories in I ended up drinking cups of
olive oil and eating whipped cream yeah
it’s not as fun as it sounds and beyond
the nausea was the sleep deprivation I
was pushing myself so hard that I just
didn’t want to waste any time sleeping
so I went the first hundred and
seventy-five kilometers without taking a
nap and even at that point I only slept
for 80 minutes this is what I like to
call my tour face I did everything to
try to get through I dealt with
hallucinations I dreamt up imaginary
friends I sang songs I took song
requests from the animals I mean I was a
I was a completeness there was one
moment I was standing in a valley in the
middle of the night and I had no idea
which mountain I just want come down but
I made it to the final ascent something
I’d been thinking about for days and I
thought I was home free until it started
snowing and as the ice built up on my
shoulders I knew that if I stopped even
for more than a few seconds I could fall
asleep and fall off the mountain so I
ended up peeing myself as I was doing
that last ascent it wasn’t really the
but in the end I finished and you know I
not only finished I finished in second
place female
I was second place female in 14th
I ran for 98 hours and 15 minutes
straight with just two and a half hours
of sleep it was insane I actually still
don’t know how it happened nothing about
it really made sense but you know it
taught me that we actually have no idea
what we are capable of until we try and
these barriers these limitations that we
put on ourselves they’re really in our
mind
once we rican sexualize this notion of
crazy and impossible then the
opportunities are really limitless so I
want to bring you back to that question
that I asked you at the beginning that
big thing that you want to do well maybe
it’s time for you maybe it’s time for
you to redefine what’s possible in your
own life and dare to be a bit crazy
maybe it’s time for you to do that big
thing and follow the illogical path to success thank you