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Lauren Fleshman has impacted the world of running in so many ways. Her running career mainly started when she joined Varsity in her Freshman year. Her coach DeLong helped her through the beginning leading her through the end of her years in varisty.

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At the beginning of Laurens's career, she was always comparing or being compared to boys. When she was in varsity especially, she showed up to practice and worked her hardest but it wasn't enough because every practice she got outpaced by several dozen boys. When she made it to State that was her time to shine and when she was declared the top freshman in the state of California it was an amazing moment. But in her last track race of the year in the 3,200 a new history was being made by Kim Mortensen, she nearly lapped everyone and then broke a long-standing national record by 12 seconds. She was headed to UCLA on a full scholarship she wasn't just "good for a girl" but she was a star. Lauren then started noticing how women's rights aren't fair. and needed to be more recognized. Later on in the book it quotes, "Your consistency is fantastic. You train like a guy. You compete like a guy etc." This shows how she is being compared to the boys.

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Foot Locker Championships were on the way for Lauren. Footlocker was everything anyone could wish and hope for in Laurens sport. Finishing the top eight in the West Regionals was the way that she earned her ticket to the Foot Locker Championships. Going to Foot Locker was like the Super Bowl for high school running. You got to go to fancy hotels for free, and you're treated like royalty. you also get a bag of free running clothes and new shoes, with all-you-can-eat buffets. This was what Lauren was hoping for.

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Cross Country State Championships was a big thing for Lauren especially when the time came. One week after winning the State Cross-Country Championships she continued on her senior year and qualified for Foot Locker again by finishing second at the West Regional.

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Throughout Laurens's high school life, she was getting a lot of letters from colleges and was on the phone for many months just learning about each college offering her a spot but that was just the beginning of how her life would turn out. At first, Lauren hoped that the University of Colorado Boulder would be the one. But it wasn't. Instead, she went to Stanford University. For her, it felt different especially because the Coach was a woman her name Coach Beth Alford-Sullivan

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Eating disorders were becoming very common in college running. Throughout some of Laurens's life, she saw others experience eating disorders and saw that athletes judged a lot of food because they didn't want to eat unhealthily which led to less eating and then from less eating to having an eating disorder. When Lauren was visiting the University of Colorado Boulder to see how the school was she experienced the weight of everyone staring at her burger and fries she was eating. It made her value her ease around food even more, and she believed that ease was critical for her health and would continue success so Colorado would be a difficult place to hold on to that. It was a big opportunity but she decided to go to Stanford instead

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An important part of Laurens's career was at her first NCAA Championships. Lauren finished fifth in the entire NCAA division which is a big thing. This shows how fast and a great runner she is. It also shows how she has many opportunities in her sport that will come.

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Having a certain race weight for Lauren was a new thing when she joined Stanford. She never had an ideal weight she wanted to be at for races. When her new coach Vin Lananna was talking to her about having an ideal race weight it was a very important topic. Having an ideal race weight to get to is when you lose or gain a certain amount of weight to get to the weight you want to race at. For her, that meant to start eating healthier but while eating healthier not getting an eating disorder because sadly they are very common in running

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As a continuation of eating disorders, there is also something called the Female Athlete Triad which includes eating disorders. This was what Lauren was avoiding. But what was concerning was that the first time she lined up against Shalane Flanagan she got smoked. Lauren lacked a pop in her legs and couldn't summon her typical responsiveness when she made her move. When she was on campus she didn't feel like she was recovering between workouts instead getting beaten by several teammates on sessions that were her best. This was more than expected decreased energy from eating less.

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Going pro was a very big beginning for Lauren. In preparation for her agent meeting her coach Vin, insisted on what they thought the market value was. For her Every meeting was practically the same. Progressive agents would tell her $30K or $45K a year which was not nearly enough it was insulting because Laurens's male teammates had gotten offers 2 or 3 times the amount. Continuing after this Lauren decided to not get an agent at all and instead represent herself which was a very big risk and a new opportunity to be seen and do better things

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Continuing with the risks and new beginnings, on the way for Lauren she wanted to qualify for the 2008 Olympics while trying to do that, she wanted to launch a campaign to combat the massive problem of disordered eating and injuries for high school girls and college women. Nobody was talking to female athletes that way and she was willing to work hard and get it. Her ask was $60K. This shows how determined Lauren was and how big of a risk she would go to combat disordered eating and injuries for high school girls and college women. This was a new beginning in how Lauren will grow and get more involved in helping high school girls and college women.

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Getting an agent was a must-do for Lauren if she wanted the $60K salary so she hired Ray Flynn and got a $60K offer from Nike. But to maintain her salary she needed to make the USA teams and achieve high national and world rankings. If she feels short her salary would be reduced by up to 50% and after that, there is no possible way to get it back up. So making the USA team was another must for Lauren.

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Ch 8-9:  Going Pro - The Battle Within Part 1

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Ch 8-9:  Going Pro - The Battle Within Part 1

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When everything is positive there is always a negative. When Lauren was a few days back into training, she "felt something in her shoe" but when she checked, there was nothing. That's when Lauren got a diagnosis of something like the female athlete triad. She had increased blood flow in the area of her second metatarsal which is a long bone on top of your feet. It wasn't caused by a stress fracture tho but a stress reaction. but even though it was caught early she still had to wear a boot and have crutches for at least a month. Having that injury now took away from training and practice. When she told Vin he suggested doing cross-train diligently in the pool. This injury shows how Lauren has to push through the tough times and how having a new injury can lead to new, different, positive, and negative beginnings.

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Ch 8-9: Going Pro - The Battle Within Part 2

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Ch 8-9: Going Pro - The Battle Within Part 2

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To continue with Laurens's injury, she then started training in the pool. If Lauren wanted to possibly heal quicker and train at the same time the pool was her spot. Although there wasn't a big chance her foot would heal faster it was a long shot Lauren was willing to take. In the meanwhile Lauren noticed that her foot still hurt and went to go get it checked again. It was broken clean through. Laurens's injury went from a fracture being so small at first that not even an X-ray could see it only an MRI could and now here it was, a fault line. In the end, it took Laurens's foot to heal 12 weeks which was twice as long as it should have. Having this issue was a big risk that could affect Laurens's career in her sport.

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Lauren was all about having fair and equal rights for women etc. So Lauren did something about the problem and decided to email the CEO of Nike. The next morning there was a reply to schedule an in-person, one-on-one meeting with the CEO of Nike. Doing that led to new chapters in Laurens's life. When the morning and time of the meeting came up Lauren was ready. Mark and Lauren talked about how the company's female athletes aren't seen as suitable enough to model women's clothing the eating disorder culture pervasive in running and how strongly Lauren felt about combatting it and said how Nike was making the problem worse. So she asked to use professional athletes in their catalogs so it would make women and girls more likely to embrace their strengths.

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After she met with Mark she was on a flight to Kauai to shoot the next Nike women's catalogue with pro athletes. This was a major turning point and a new beginning for Lauren. Later in the spring of 2007, Lauren got a great call saying that Nike had been working on the first true women's specific running shoe and wanted her to be the face of the campaign. When the Nike ad came out, It was an amazing moment that would make readers appreciate that the new dawn for women running was upon us. But when she flipped to the next page and kept looking through the ad she saw a disturbing photo of Brandi Chastain an icon in women's sports. She then decided not to participate in the next ad featuring the first true specific women's running shoes.

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After seeing what she saw in the Nike ad Lauren decided that she would need to reach out to Nike confronting them about the mistake they made. It wasn't just a shoe poster to her it was a statement to young girls of what success looked like. She wanted to be a role model to younger girls. She wanted to inspire them to feel powerful and worthy without anyone's approval. So she shot out an email to Nike asking to do better saying how disappointed she was seeing the ad imagery. Lauren knowingly took a step further to say how she felt about the Nike ad.

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Speaking up taking a risk and taking a step further was the best thing Lauren has done, after reaching out she had just recently become Nike's go-to runner for multiple campaigns. She'd been featured alongside NBA and NFL stars in the "Quick and Deadly" campaign. That was a very big thing for Lauren.

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Lauren had a big opportunity that was coming up which was making the Olympic Team at Nationals in Indianapolis in June. When the race started she found herself in a lead pack of four women with a mile to go. The part of Laurens's race that she thrived on was the part where she heard her dad's voice in her head egging her on. But that time his voice was gone. She didn't feel powerful at all instead felt distracted and physically exhausted. When the 600m came up instead of doing the usual which was making a signature long kick for the win she pulled off to lane 3 and stopped entirely. She stopped for 13 seconds and watched the whole pack zoom away around the bend until a Stanford runner ran by in a distant fourth place leading the chase pack. She noticed the runner was running toward fourth place not away and that was where her next crazy decision she made happened she ran back sprinting at full speed.

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Later after the race, Alberto Salazar the head coach of the Nike Oregon Project another elite training program went up to her and offered his team's sports psychologist. Darren Treasure which was the sports psychologist taught her that writing down specific voices that mean something good to her and repeating it will become something. The idea of all of this was that repeated thoughts become beliefs, beliefs inform actions, and actions repeated over time create an identity. To change your identity you must start by changing your thoughts. More than a decade later Lauren found out Darren was reported by other athletes to be operating without appropriate licensure and violating HIPAA laws that protected the disclosure of patient health information without their consent or knowledge. In the end, Alberto was issued a lifetime ban for sexual misconduct by the U.S. Center of SafeSport.

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In 2008 Lauren was on a good path with training and sleep. In one of her races, she broke 15 minutes for the 5k event making her the eighth fastest American of all time which is insane. But, with every positive, there is a negative and with that, she was diagnosed with another injury. She had increased blood flow around the navicular which is a possible stress reaction. The navicular bone is not the bone you want to break. They are hard to put back together and usually require a screw and bone graft to fix. Navicular problems have ended many careers. Lauren had to start doing pool training which could be enough to settle it down but her plans on making the Olympic team were out the door. When the day of the race came to try to make the Olympic team Lauren wasn't sure how it was going to play out because she just got out of pool training a week before. She ended up not making the team and was an alternate. She later begged for a spot from Kara and Shalane but both refused. Though being an alternate for the Olympic trials wasn't bad for Lauren instead it was good. She got more fit and let her foot heal for 6, then 8, then 12 weeks, to heal it completely. But it didn't. The doctor recommended surgery. She had a 50% chance of returning to form.

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Because of Laurens's injuries and races, Nike decided to reduce her pay by the max. This was not a good start for Lauren but after her reduced pay she confronted him and walked out with 50% of what she had signed for. Later on in that chapter, they explain how making the Olympics and medaling was what it took to sell shoes by their definition and they saw her as a failure. Continuing, when her injury got better Lauren decided that she wanted to put her heart into the sport and approach things differently. Lauren made an account on Twitter to share her thoughts on the sport. Lauren wanted to do so many things to leave the post better than she found it so she set up a business called Picky Bars where they later grew it and created more than just bars.

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Almost exactly two years after missing the Olympics by one spot Lauren returned to the starting line of the National Championships. She ended up breaking the tape first and almost immediately dropped to all fours heaving desperate for oxygen. That race encouraged her Picky Bars business. But she sometimes had bad voices telling her things that weren't true so she decided to start blogging about her thoughts and fears. It was much harder for her to share her vulnerable moments than the victorious ones. People weren't used to athletes talking about their problems so it got many followers and brought more readers to engage positively. Her blog gave something important to her other than running that she looked forward to. This also helped Picky Bars.

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On Laurens's pre-race blog, she requested that anyone who was watching her hold up the letter c for courage to show support for her. When the time came they were all around her surrounding her with support. After that race, she checked her time and she made the finals. When the time for finals came, everyone was still holding up the c's for courage and to support her. At the end of her race clapping began to arise around her out of nowhere. It was a recognition for her. After her race, she sat down and talked with a group of people from a company called Oiselle which was led by the CEO, Sally. She wished she could run for them. They were so tiny Nike didn't even know about them. Later on in the chapter, Lauren realizes how Nike isn't a good fit for her anymore and decides to leave it behind and join Oiselle

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Oiselle was just the right fit for Lauren. Oiselle was the brand that understood women and got what people were saying. Oiselle gave Lauren so many opportunities that she could have never thought of. 1. Being a coach. Nike would not have encouraged her as much as Oiselle has. Laurens's first big work trip with Oiselle was to participate in a runway show at New York Fashion Week. The goal was to put athletes on the runway alongside agency models, showcase activewear as you would fashion, and tell a story about it. Oiselles clothing where different than other brands. Lauren later called Kara and asked if she was interested in joining Oiselle and with great luck she joined the team. If Lauren was going to coach she needed to be good for the athletes she coached. She needed to build the experience she wanted for her younger self. While that younger version was grown up there were so many girls out there hoping that someone might holistically support them.

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Throughout Laurens's career, she had ups and downs positive and negative moments. This all created who she is today. She took so many risks and had so many opportunities to shape the world and the environment. She accomplished so many wonderful things and still is at this very moment. She became a coach and made her team sponsored by Oiselle called Little Wing Athletes which was very successful. She later retired in 2016 leaving her mark in the sport forevermore.