When I sat down with Lisa Smith-Batchen, I knew this conversation would be different.
Lisa is one of the most decorated ultra-endurance athletes in American history. She was the first American woman to win the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile stage race through the Sahara. She is a two-time winner and 10-time finisher of the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race through Death Valley. She was also the first woman to complete the Badwater Quad, covering the Badwater course four times for 584 miles, and the first person to run 50 miles in all 50 states in 62 days.
Those numbers are almost impossible to process.
But what struck me most was not the mileage. It was her relationship to challenge.
Lisa does not speak about ultra-endurance as punishment. She does not frame pain as suffering. In fact, she is very careful with that word. To her, suffering is not something you choose. Running through Death Valley, pushing through fatigue, confronting the unknown, and continuing when the wheels fall off is not suffering in the same way. It is a chosen challenge.
That distinction matters because when challenge is chosen, it can become a teacher.
Challenge Reveals The Real You
Lisa went from marathons to Badwater at a time when there was no modern playbook for ultra-endurance. There was no internet full of training plans. There were not endless conversations about sodium, fueling strategies, shoe technology, heat adaptation, or recovery protocols. She learned by doing, and sometimes by doing things the hard way.
That is one of the great lessons of her story: the unknown was part of the draw.
We live in a time where people often want certainty before they begin. They want the perfect plan, the perfect program, the perfect conditions, the perfect gear, the perfect evidence that they are ready. But no meaningful challenge works that way.
At some point, you have to step to the starting line.
That does not mean you should be reckless. Lisa herself said she would not coach someone to jump from a marathon to 135 miles. Preparation, training, and wisdom all matter, but the deeper point still stands: you cannot wait until fear disappears to begin.
The body and mind reveal themselves under pressure.
Ultra-endurance forces that truth because you cannot fake your way through it. At some point, the plan breaks. The heat hits you harder than you anticipated. Your stomach knots up. Your feet start to hurt. Maybe your confidence shifts. Ultimately, you are left with the question every hard thing eventually asks: why are you here?
Lisa’s answer has changed over time. Early in her career, she was running away from pain, but later, through her relationship with Sister Mary Beth Lloyd, she began running toward purpose: raising money for orphans, clean water, and children who needed help. That changed the meaning of her gift.
That is why purpose is not a soft concept. Purpose changes what people are willing to endure.
Research in older adults has linked a stronger sense of purpose with lower all-cause mortality, and systematic reviews suggest that purpose is associated with healthier aging behaviors and better well-being. That does not mean purpose is a magic shield, but it does support what Lisa has lived: when you have a reason bigger than yourself, you organize your life differently.
Strength Is The Cost Of Doing Business
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was Lisa’s clarity around strength training. For a lot of endurance athletes, especially in older endurance communities, strength training has historically been treated as optional, unnecessary, or even risky. They worry it will make them too big, too sore, too slow, or too tired to run.
Lisa sees it differently. She said something that should be written down by every runner: it is not running that helps her run 100 miles. It is being strong.
That is exactly the conversation we need to have.
Cardiovascular fitness matters. Endurance matters. Time on feet matters. But if the goal is to keep moving well into your 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, you cannot build your entire physical identity around endurance alone. You need muscle. You need bone. You need the ability to squat, hinge, carry, push, pull, stabilize, and get off the ground.
This is where endurance athletes and the general population often meet.
Whether you are running Badwater or simply trying to age with independence, the foundation is the same: you need strength.
Lisa’s first non-negotiable movement is sit-to-stand. That may sound basic, but it is one of the most important human patterns. Can you get out of a chair without using your hands? Can you control your body through a squat? Can you lower yourself to the ground and get back up?
These are not gym tricks. These are independence markers.
The research supports this. Numerous studies show that resistance training improves strength, gait, balance, and functional performance in older adults, and exercise that improves strength and balance is one of the most powerful strategies we have for reducing fall risk. The Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee reported strong evidence that physical activity reduces fall-related injuries in older people by 32 to 40 percent.
The CDC reports that over 14 million older adults fall each year, and falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults 65 and older. In 2019, 83 percent of hip fracture deaths and 88 percent of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for hip fractures were caused by falls.
Lisa understands this personally. She watched her father begin to shuffle his feet. Then he fell, broke his hip, and that fall became the beginning of the end of his life.
That changes how you see movement.
Picking up your feet matters. Squatting matters. Carrying weight matters. Upper-body strength matters. Core strength matters. Getting off the floor matters.
Strength is not vanity. Strength is responsibility.
Fueling Is Part Of The Training
Lisa and I also talked about nutrition, and this is where her experience becomes very practical.
Ultra-endurance exposes every weakness in a plan. If your pacing is wrong, you pay for it. If your hydration is wrong, you pay for it. If your sodium is wrong, you pay for it. If your calories are wrong, you pay for it. There is no pretending when you are moving for hours or days.
One of the biggest mistakes Lisa sees is starting too fast and not having a plan.
That sounds simple, but it is the difference between finishing strong and trying to rescue yourself after you are already far behind. She thinks about what the athlete will eat the day before, the morning of, and during the race. She thinks about calories per hour, fluid intake, sodium, foods that digest well, and whether the plan has actually been practiced in training.
That last part is key.
Race day is not the day to experiment.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand on single-stage ultramarathon nutrition emphasizes that athletes should individualize fueling and hydration strategies and practice them in training. Sodium and fluid intake become especially important during prolonged exercise, particularly in heat, where sweat losses can be extreme.
This also matters beyond ultra-running. A lot of people think of hydration as just water. But when you are sweating heavily, you are not losing only water. You are also losing electrolytes, especially sodium. Replacing only water during prolonged hard exercise can be inadequate and, in extreme cases, dangerous. Sports nutrition reviews commonly cite sodium ranges around 300 to 600 mg per hour as a starting point for prolonged exercise, adjusted for the athlete, environment, sweat rate, and tolerance.
Lisa also emphasizes real food. For her, that may include applesauce, avocado, string cheese, gels when needed, and protein-containing foods that she knows her body tolerates. That is important because endurance nutrition is not just about what works on paper. It is about what your gut, muscles, and brain can use at hour five, hour ten, or hour thirty.
The same principle applies to everyday health.
Do not wait until your body is failing to start paying attention. Track what you eat for a few days. Look at your protein. Look at the quality of your food. Look at whether your nutrition supports the life you say you want.
Older adults often need more protein than the current RDA to optimize physical function, especially when they are training. As we age, muscle becomes less responsive to the anabolic effects of protein, a phenomenon known as anabolic resistance. This means that older adults need higher per-meal doses of protein to achieve the same level of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) that younger adults can get with smaller amounts. Research shows that this resistance can be overcome by increasing protein intake per meal and aiming for 30–40 grams per meal instead of the lower 20–25 grams often sufficient for younger individuals.
Despite the RDA remaining at 0.8 g/kg for adults over 50, studies using the IAAO method suggest that 1.2 g/kg is a more appropriate RDA for both younger and older adults, including men and women older than 65 years, as well as women in their 80s.
Many experts now recommend 1.2–1.5 g/kg for older populations to support muscle maintenance, strength, and functional capacity, including the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN), the PROT-AGE Study Group, and the Society for Sarcopenia, Cachexia, and Wasting Disease.
Evidence supports this: doubling protein from 0.8 to 1.6 g/kg has been shown to significantly increase lean body mass in elderly men, while even smaller increases from 0.9 to 1.4 g/kg improve body composition and lean mass retention in elderly women. Even modest adjustments, such as moving from 1.0 to 1.3 g/kg, show measurable benefits in maintaining muscle and metabolic health as we age.
Protein is not just for athletes. It is for anyone who wants to maintain muscle, recover from training, preserve function, and age with capacity.
Finishing Is Not Always The Same As Winning
One of the most powerful parts of this conversation was Lisa’s language around not finishing.
In endurance sports, people often use the term DNF: did not finish. Lisa reframes it as MTRC: make the right choice.
There are times when quitting is avoidance. There are also times when stopping is the correct decision. If you are injured, unsafe, broken down, or facing consequences that do not match the purpose of the challenge, continuing may be more ego than bravery.
The art is knowing the difference.
Lisa has had races where she did not finish officially. One Badwater attempt ended with her in the hospital receiving an IV. She was disqualified, but then she left the hospital and finished the course unofficially. For years, that unofficial finish stayed with her. Eventually, she went back to get the official finish because, for her, it was unfinished business.
Not every unfinished thing needs to be completed. But every unfinished thing deserves an honest conversation.
- Why did you start?
- Why did you stop?
- Was stopping the right choice?
- Are you at peace with that choice?
- Is this still your dream?
- Or was the lesson that something else is calling you?
This is the level of maturity that separates discipline from obsession. The point is not to finish everything at all costs. The point is to live in a way where your choices are aligned with your values, your health, your purpose, and your long-term capacity.
If you learn something, you did not waste the experience. And if it keeps calling you, maybe you are not done.
Action Checklist
Find your why before the challenge begins. If your only answer is “because someone else did it,” that may not be enough. Your reason has to be yours.
Start before you feel perfectly ready. Preparation matters, but certainty is not the entry fee. You build confidence by beginning.
Strength train as a non-negotiable. Squat, hinge, push, pull, carry, and learn how to get off the ground. Strength is what keeps you in the game.
Practice sit-to-stand. It is simple, but it is one of the most important movement patterns for lifelong independence.
Pick your feet up. Shuffling is not just a gait change. It can be a warning sign for weakness, fear of falling, and declining confidence in movement.
Fuel your body with a plan. Do not wait until you are depleted to think about calories, protein, hydration, or electrolytes.
Do not treat hydration as water only. If you are sweating heavily or training long, you need to think about sodium and electrolytes.
Write down what you eat. Awareness creates leverage. Most people cannot change what they have never looked at.
Use failure as feedback. A bad race, a missed goal, or an unfinished challenge is not automatically failure. It is information.
Make the right choice. Sometimes the right choice is to keep going. Sometimes the right choice is to stop, recover, and come back wiser.
Do not postpone your life by another Monday. Start with a mile. Start with a walk. Start with five-pound weights. Start with one better meal. Start today.
Lisa’s life is a reminder that the body is capable of more than most people ever ask of it. But capacity is not accidental. It is built through strength, practice, fueling, purpose, and the willingness to step into the unknown.
