Meet The Nation 342 - Rachel Carrasquillo

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Konnichiwa. This is going to be a Meet the Nation episode. You probably thought we forgot about them. We didn't. I've just been busy putting on the race and so on and so forth, but we still have maybe eight to ten of these. These are short ten-minute conversations with someone about the, just about them, about their life, people that listen to the show. They don't have to be notorious or famous in any way, although they could be. And if you want to do one of these, email me at tenjunkmiles.jml.com. If you have already emailed me, you're on the list. We have maybe ten in the queue right now, which means we have ten more of these before it'll end. But maybe some more people will sign up, get on the list. There's only 343 of you, so that means there's about 4,500 of you that are cowards. So get your name in. Let's get you on the list. People really want to get to know you. And especially if you're one of those people that is a new listener that just got done doing the Sugar Badger, there was a lot of new faces out there. Let us get to know you. Sign up for one of these. 20 minutes, it's easy. And you don't even have to be good at the trivia. And today we're talking to Rachel Carasquillo. Let's hope I got that right. I don't know. It's possible.
It's kind of a Hail Mary, but...
Rachel comes to all the races. That's what we'll call it. Rachel comes to all the races. She's a nice lady.
We'll find out if she's coming to all the races soon.
Being fussy. There we go. We're back with Rachel Carasquillo.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (1:46)
Yes, Carasquillo.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:47)
Oh, my God. That was like a Hail Mary. I can't believe I got that.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (1:51)
Yeah, you did awesome.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:52)
You probably get a lot of weird ones.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (1:54)
Oh, for sure.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:55)
Carasquillo, Carasquillo.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (1:59)
Yeah, so I'm a teacher and my students just call me Miss Rachel because Carasquillo is a mouthful.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:04)
So what kind of name is that?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:07)
Puerto Rican.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:09)
Very nice.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:10)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:10)
OK. Well, I told the folks about how you come to all the races with your friend. Who's your friend?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:16)
Sharon.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:16)
Sharon. You and Sharon. Yeah.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:18)
Yeah, me and Sharon. Yep.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:19)
But you didn't come to the Sugar Badger.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:21)
No, we've never been to Sugar Badger.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:23)
OK. So it's Badger or Dots or just Badger?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:27)
Yeah, Badger or Dots. No, we've been to both. But Sugar Badger. So so I'm a teacher and usually I don't get out. Well, I didn't get out my last day. It was Friday. But then I had three days of conferences next year. It's different. I'll get out before the race. I'm hoping to be able to come to Sugar Badger next year.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:45)
Imagine running on the trail with no bugs and it not being.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (2:48)
Yes. Yes, that would be great.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:52)
You know, and then there's purple flowers everywhere. It's like super lit up with these purple flowers. It's probably the best time of the year to be on the trail.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (3:00)
Yeah. Yeah, I really want to do it for sure.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:02)
Okay. Well, we'll get you there sometime. So where are we calling? Where are you located?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (3:07)
Indianapolis.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:08)
And what, and you said you're a teacher. What do you teach?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (3:12)
I teach special, it's behavior ed. It's a bit special ed.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:16)
Okay. And special ed. And then tell us a little bit about your running journey. Like, you know, you can include, you know, your friend and what role she plays.

**Rachel Carasquillo** (3:28)
My buddy.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:28)
Yeah. Well, how did you get, find yourself, you know, doing all these races?

**Rachel Carasquillo** (3:33)
So, gosh, probably about 15, 16 years ago, I was really, really overweight.
And I had another friend who I kind of watched, trained for a marathon. And I thought, oh my gosh, like, I want to do that. I'm too big to do that. So she, I would usually meet her for breakfast or for coffee or something. And she started going, hey, how about you meet me to run? And I thought, well, that's a terrible idea, but okay. So I literally could run a block and she was super encouraging and like little by little, I could run a little bit more. And then I lost the weight and I started, she like saw these girls running or these women running like close to our local high school and stopped one day and kind of said, hey, like, what are you guys doing? Do you mind if I join you? And they were like, no, you can join us. So she started running with this running group. She kept inviting me. She probably invited me like five times a week for like six months. And I kept telling her no, because I didn't think I could keep up with them. So I finally said, yes, started running with this running group. And literally every single woman, and the guys who ran with them, they're mostly women, they had all run marathons before. And I'd already seen my friend run, run a marathon. I thought, okay, I want to do that. So I made these women that at 450, they switched the runs 450 every single morning, like six days a week. They're running, meeting at the high school, running at 450