Hey, everybody. I'm Doug. That's Connor and this
is the Bethel school district presents podcast. And
we have a great show for you today.
We'll be talking with a teacher who has
a very
wool, extra extracurricular activity in fact, Connor, I'm
gonna go so far as to call this
an extreme sport. Well, you know, Doug, I'm
gonna half to go ahead and disagree with
you there because I actually did this interview
and I know the sport in question is
running. And unless you're being chased by a
bear. I don't think that qualifies as extreme.
But you do you? Well, I did me,
and I got out running the other day
just to see if I could still do
it and I will tell you it is
an extreme sport, at least as far as
my legs are concerned. We will get to
that interview in just a few minutes, But
Conor, I thought since we're talking sports Let's
talk popularity of sports across this great globe
I have in front of me, The list
of the most. Popular sports ranked by total
fans. This comes to us from world atlas
dot com. Now you don't have this list.
I've got it. You're coming in cold to
this 1. And I wanna see if you
can guess at least a couple of the
top 10 most popular sports ranked by total
fans, and I will tell you this right
now, like they say on the Internet, Number
6, will surprise you. Wow. What a tease
for number 6. I can't wait to hear
number 6. But I'm gonna jump right to
number 1.
I don't need to phone a friend.
I'm not right here anyway. I don't know.
I only have 1 friend and he's right
in front of me.
I'm gonna say the number 1 sport. Hundred
percent confidence,
American football.
Well, that is certainly a good guess but
we are talking worldwide I gotta tell you,
1 through 10 American football does not crack
that list. The number 1 sport, which I
won't tell you, but has... 3500000000.0
fans.
The Nfl has a hundred and 84000000
fans. Wow. So I was not even close.
Let me re calibrate here and think more
worldly,
less America centric. I'm gonna say
it's gotta be not football, but
football or soccer as we call it. That
is exactly it played in Europe, Africa, Asia,
America all across the globe 3500000000.0
fans can't be wrong. Foot football. Soccer is
number 1. Okay. And I'm gonna go... III
just... I know of a couple other sports
that aren't huge here,
but they may be big other places. So
I'm gonna just throw a couple. You tell
me if they're on the list or not.
Alright.
Underwater hockey.
Is that like, when the ice melts, I
guess.
I'm take that as a note. It's that's
the no. What about cheese rolling?
She's rowling did not make the list surprisingly.
That's a that's a great sport and w,
I guess? Or Wisconsin.
What about
wife carrying?
No. I've heard of this though.
Extreme ironing.
No. I... That's definitely not. I'm I'm 1
for about can here. What about giant pumpkin
kayak. That's gotta be on there. Right?
I need to know more about... It's gaining
a popularity.
Maybe next year I'll be on the list.
But yeah. I don't know What about... I'm
gonna... A real 1 now. I'm gonna say,
cricket. Everybody in the world seems to love
cricket. I have no idea what how you
play, but that's gotta be on the list.
It is not only on the list. It's
number 2. Now your ridiculously
amazing list. Of
bizarre sports aside. You've gone 2 for 2
here. Soccer number 1 Cricket number 2, cricket
has 2500000000.0
fans. That's 1000000000
less than soccer still. Golly. That's a lot
of folks. A lot of people loving that
1. And you were real close on number
3
you said underwater hockey, which I think is
fantastic, but regular hockey has 2000000000 fans, and
number third most popular sport. I thought that
was pretty interesting. Would not have called that.
Where's quid shrank. Quid also not on this
list surprisingly. I'm gonna, give you a couple
more guesses for our audience gets bored here
and we get to our teacher interview. Let
me throw out like, 3 more sports for
me. Okay.
Out house racing.
I don't wanna know what that because.
Belly flop. But oh, it was like a
swimming type sport. Yeah. No. There's no. No
no water represented on this settlement all. I
was gonna say chicken fighting, but if there's
no water, you gave me a good hint
if that's not gonna be on there. So
I'm gonna just say good old the American
pastime,
baseball.
Baseball coming in number 8 at 500000000
fans, The ones you missed in between there
were tennis at number 4 with a billion
fans,
volleyball at number 5 with 900000000,
number 6,
table tennis. Wow.
850000000
fans. Well, I count me as 1 of
them. I'm at. I love a good table
tennis game.
It's the number 7 basketball at 800000000.
We just said baseball. So I've got 9
and 10 left, and we know they're not
American. Football. Got 1 guest left.
Oh, boy. I'm going to say
boxing. That is a good guess. Not on
the list, number 9 rugby 475000000
fans. And number 10 is the great game
of Golf.
I'm gonna take that as a you're not
status side with the start to the show
this week, but that's okay. We're gonna roll
with it. I had a good time at
least. Let's move on to our interview Connor.
You sat down with 1 of our amazing
team features, and they had just gotten back
from a very
interesting running event.
Joining us today is Abigail Shelley is an
educator in our multilingual ling education department teaching
at 2 middle schools. Is that correct? Yes.
I'm at Bethel Middle school and Cougar Mountain
Middle. School. And so you recently had a
pretty special experience. You got to run the
Boston Marathon, which... I understand that's kind of
the school super bowl of marathons. What was
that, like, first off? I mean, that's a
pretty amazing experience. Can you kinda walk us
through the day? Yeah. It truly was amazing.
Think I went in with low expectations just
because, you know, when everyone says something's great.
It's like, isn't it really the magic that
they say it is, but it completely was.
I mean, it is 1 of the largest.
In the United States, but it's also definitely
the most historic. It was the first marathon
in the United States and it's run, 26
miles outside of Boston and you just run
into the city and people are lining the
street the entire way. So... Yeah, for for
about 3 hours, Had people cheering for me
the whole time, which that was truly the
magic of it. And I just assumed when
I heard that you'd run the Bo marathon
that you must be some hardcore marathon or
this must be year. Fiftieth marathon,
but it's not. It was your second marathon.
So your first time out, you qualify
for the hardest marathon to get into? When
did the idea kinda come to your head
that I'd like to qualify for the Boston
Marathon? And can you take us through your
training a little bit. Yeah. So
why Wanted to run the Boston Marathon. I
competed as at AD3 university for Tracking Cross
country. And then also got into Triathlon during
my time there and wasn't an all American
for that for Nc DD3.
And then when I graduated in 20 20,
Covid hit, so I got really into continuing
that exercising and I had more time, so
I just liked more the endurance piece of
getting to run and and having the time
to do that. And during my second year
of teaching, I decided that I needed something
to train 4 because I was kind of
getting lost in the motion with my exercise
and by when I didn't have that direction,
then I was like, you know, what what
do you do and my expectations for myself
was kind of less. So I was, you
know what? If I train for marathon, I
might as well try to go for Boston,
I knew the paces that I was running,
and I knew that it would be a
push, but it would be an attainable push,
and it probably keep me motivated.
I ran in the Virginia Beach Marathon
in March of 20 22. And was 5
minutes under the qualifying time. Sorry. For... Oh
so I was 03:24,
qualifying time is 03:30. And so you have
to wait until the
registration opens, and sometimes depending on how many
minneapolis since they haven't in, you won't even
get in if you're under the qualifying time.
So I had to wait for a little
bit throw my time in and then I
found out that I got in. So the
that was when my training started. What was
that experience? Like, of because I imagine even
though... I mean, you you got the original
threshold of okay. I I met the qualify.
Time. And and I imagine 5 minutes is
not nothing. That's probably pretty good. You had
to be feeling pretty good. But when you
finally get the official...
Okay from the marathon and, you know, wow.
I'm actually gonna get to do that. How
excited were you? I was super excited. I
mean, it was... Definitely
still up in the air. If it was
gonna be a possibility. So to have that.
I mean, I was super excited and I
was like, alright. It's definitely with time to
get work. So I I hired a coach
to start working with, and that's also I
just moved to the P w in the
in the past few months, so to knew
that I was gonna have some really dark
nights
really, really early on. And, yeah, It seems
so far away when you start training for
Marathon, It's like 4 months out. So you
kind of... It's really delayed gratification. So I
wasn't even thinking I don't think about the
end part when I was training for it,
but at that time, I was also coaching
Cross country. I had recently accepted a position
to coach... Head track field... 1 of the
had track field coaches at Bethel High School.
So had a lot on my plate. So
I knew that I had to prioritize that
training somehow, and I have some crazy stories
as to when I had to fit in
some runs, but I mean... Yeah. The boss
Marathon itself made it completely worth it. It's
kind of, like starting out and, you know,
getting picked for the yankee on your first
time ever playing baseball.
So where do you go from here? Is
this do you imagine that you're gonna keep
running marathons? Is it not now you wanna
win the marathon? What... What's next? So I
P in Boston. By 7 minutes, which was
super exciting. So I ran a 03:17,
and I
I think I'm gonna focus on some shorter
stuff for a while. Coaching takes up a
lot of my time,
and training for a Marathon is just a
complete, like, eat it eat it eats all
your time.
So I think I might try to enter
some local races, maybe some half marathons and
10 k and just see how competitive I
can be in that scene. But what's most
important to me is, I mean, coaching. Athletes
all day. I think you always have to
remind yourself how hard that is and how
much dedication that takes. So if I'm asking
kids to be a practice every day and
give it their all. Like, I... I need
to making sure that I'm holding myself to
that standard too, And that's just a personal
thing for me. So I think it makes
me a better coach. So some things will
definitely be on the horizon, taking a little
bit of a break right now.
Where my partner and I were hiking the
camino this summer. So we'll practice some walking
a little bit more, but hoping to get
into some short and faster stuff. I imagine
training for Marathon offers many life lessons. Was
there anything that you learned as you were
kind of testing yourself out there that now
applies to you in the classroom helping students?
Absolutely.
I think a great analogy for marathon training,
especially over the winter is just putting a
lot of work in in the dark. So
metaphorically that beats you know, people don't really
know
all the work that it takes to be
a teacher. People don't really know all of
what you're doing behind the scenes, and people
may never know. And People also may never
care. People might not know the amplitude of
the difference you're making, but find those people
in your corner who know how to support
you through the hard times who know how
to ask you good questions about what you're
working towards as a teacher or what kind
of stuff you're doing in the classroom
to make the difference in students. And then
especially take time to celebrate what you've done.
So that really is what a Marathon the
race itself feels like. If you've put in
the work honest the day is just a
celebration to showcase what you've done. So for
teachers, whether that's an end of your project,
whether that's you just prioritizing,
making sure that you're highlighting what you're proud
of that year.
A lot of work that we do is
in the dark and behind the scenes. But
it it it can, and it and it
is worth it as long as you give
yourself the, but of respect that you deserve
with how proud you are of yourself. So
there are many many dark nights when I
was on the track and just took some
moments to be like, you know what Ab
I'll go? Like I'm really proud of you.
And I think that's a a very
deep form of self love and self appreciation
when you're the 1 who tells you that,
and you don't need to hear that from
anyone else. Definitely good lessons. And thank you
so much for joining us and congratulations and
get, can't we to see what you do
next? Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate
it.
Connor fantastic interview as always, have you ever
run a marathon. I have run the mile
when I was in seventh grade. Alright. That's
not bad. Kept it under 10 minutes. Had
Massive stitch in my side the whole time,
drink my body weight and gatorade afterwards and
I have not run again. That'll still solve
everything. They're not running. Yeah.
I have run a half marathon. I'll tell
you the end of that. That was it
for me. I knew I was not cut
out to be a marathon runner, but lots
of respect for everybody out there that's listening
to our podcast. And getting their steps in
today, we will talk to you again next
week.
And