After taking her son Colt to school, Kara Goucher usually goes for a run.
The Olympic runner isn’t training for anything anymore, not like she used to, but she still feels drawn to putting one foot in front of the other with no finish line or world championship in sight.
She’s been feeling lighter than ever lately, just days after her memoir, The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team, was released.
The book, co-written with Mary Pilon, a former New York Times sports reporter, has been a long time coming. 44-year-old Goucher was a star witness who brought down Alberto Salazar, a now-disgraced elite running coach whose name and likeness once flanked the halls of buildings on the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon. She thought it would take years for the weight to really lift.
“I knew I was ready to stop keeping other people’s secrets,” she said over the phone.
The book comes at a time of reckoning for the running world, as more and more women runners have come out to share their stories about the sport’s darker side, which can be fraught with manipulation, eating disorders, and physical and emotional abuse. And there comes what appears to be a golden age for American women’s distance running as recreational women’s running reaches a boiling point.
It’s a moment Goucher has been waiting for for a long time. “If the sport is to be saved,” Goucher told David Epstein in a 2015 ProPublica investigation, “it cannot continue as it is.”
She seems to be spending the rest of her career making sure that’s the case.
In a recent conversation, she reflected on her decision to share her story with SafeSport, other athletes she’s reached out to for inspiration, and her relationship with running. This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
2019, The New York Times Opinion documentary on Mary Cain quickly became known. Awareness of abuse in sport has never been higher. Did you expect the world to respond to Mary’s story – or your own – the way she did?
KARA GOUCHER I thought, “Well, Mary’s story is awful and what she’s been through is awful, but this is our sport!” But it was especially outrageous because she was so young and so vulnerable, and I think people could relate imagine her sister, her daughter, her friend—she humanized it in a way. I think it appealed to a lot of people.
It was just harrowing to think that the most powerful company on earth and the most famous coach on earth aren’t some dream scenario where you excel and love every moment. It could be filled with thoughts of suicide and thoughts of harming yourself.
In your memoir, you share that you made the sexual assault allegations that led to it Salazar’s lifetime ban from the sport. Tell us about your decision to share your story with us SafeSport after reaching out to you as part of an investigation into Salazar’s conduct.
I was really thinking of my nieces when I was asked to testify for SafeSport. I knew it would open a lot of boxes I wasn’t done with. I am religious and I have prayed and thought about them. I kept thinking that they are good girls, good girls like I’ve always been, and if they were put in a similar situation, they’d probably do the exact same thing as me.
I could help stop this for you. When I become a mother and see these younger children, my son himself, I would never want him to feel powerless or have to accept that kind of behavior.
It seems we’ve reached a tipping point in the sport, with more and more women coming forward to share their stories of abuse or mistreatment. There seems to be that touch of “enough”. Do you think collegiate and pro running is changing?
We still have a long way to go but I think the talks are so important. There are a lot of people reading Mary’s story – and of course that was extreme – but people could see themselves in that situation. At the professional level in particular, we need an independent body that checks people who have suffered abuse. It’s too much for them to go to SafeSport.
Athletes are brilliant compartmentalizers. You push the pain away and instead focus on how badly you want it. You deny how much you miss your family because you are always so focused on your dream. When abuse happens, athletes are so good at pushing it away.
There should be another independent body that screens athletes, almost like anti-doping. Not tied to any shoe brand, trainer or governing body, just a safe place that checks in and makes sure you are treated well. We need something like that, and we need to seriously think about how it affects people – not just women, but men too. We still need changes when it comes to how we protect athletes.
You talked about the importance of finding the power in your voice. Were there any athletes that drew inspiration from you as you told your story?
I really looked up to Allyson Felix. In this very respectful way she found her voice. She’s so perfect — she’s never said anything controversial, she’s never upset anyone, so she should be using her voice to make a difference, whether it’s childcare or racial disparities in maternal mortality or pregnancy protection or now theirs from women managed companies. She’s got a lot to lose — her reputation is so squeaky clean — but she’s speaking out.
The other person is Lynn Jennings. I can’t even tell you what it was like to read her story in the Boston Globe. What she went through is terrible. She inspired me so much. I was very emotional about it. The childhood hero I had ended up being even better than I had ever known.
Why did you choose to use your voice as a commentator for NBC?
I can hear the voices of the announcers I used to watch growing up – there wasn’t a single woman who ever found her way into the booth. We haven’t heard women. And that in a sport that had just as many women as men.
The first meeting I attended was in Eugene, Oregon and I hadn’t seen the new stadium. And of course it’s a Nike Mecca, and there were photos of Salazar everywhere. I called my husband crying and said ‘I can’t do this, I can’t be here, I don’t feel safe’ and he was like ‘You have to do this, you have to.’ Part of it was overcoming my own fears and making space for myself.
It was also important to me that my nieces, who are runners, turn on the TV and hear that voice. It’s important to have a female voice on the show telling a female story.
How is your relationship with running now?
This book is not a story about abuse, it’s a love story about how much I love running and how much it is a big part of my life, even though there have been dark times.
I try to run seven days a week, but sometimes it’s four, sometimes five or six.
But I’m only halfway through my running life and the majority will probably be positive when I come around.
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