No Limits: The powerful true story of Leah Goldstein-World Champion Kickboxer, Ultra Endurance Cyclist, Israeli Undercover Police Officer

INTRODUCTION

In my life as a speaker, I get the opportunity to listen to many other professionals trying to motivate and inspire their audiences. Intentional Thinking and Aligning Your Inner Energy are hot topics right now, as most people seem to want to find a switch or an easy button that will turn their lives around. It’s not as though I don’t believe that those things have some effect, but they all seem to discount the main cause of success. That awful four-letter word that generationally we seem to be forgetting how to do: work. Work! By nature, however, humans are attracted to passive goal-setting and habits. That’s what’s in our DNA.

Doesn’t it sound much easier to write what you want on your bathroom mirror, rather than actually going out and getting it done? Trust me, if you put an escalator in the middle of Kenya, where some of the fiercest and fittest human warriors still reside, they would use it. Maasai warriors hunt hyenas and can jump four feet in the air, but they would still use the escalator. Why?

It’s in our genes. We’re supposed to conserve energy when possible, expending only when absolutely necessary. And up until about a hundred years ago, it was very necessary. People worked, physically. At their jobs and at home, people burned their calories in an effort to live. Now, surrounded by dishwashers and low-maintenance yards, we kick back and enjoy the stillness that technology offers. Could it be that this sedation has spilled over into our spirit, our dreams, and our character?

I think a worthwhile life requires movement—physically, mentally, spiritually. Our belief systems and values need exercise, challenges, and change. Competing in ultra-distance cycling allowed me to test all of these things, while offering up eleven long days of uninterrupted reflection of my life. I tend to be extreme by nature, so I’m not suggesting everyone head out and start jogging across Texas. But I believe we are all greater human beings when we seek situations that stretch our minds, bodies, and souls. After all, it’s the only way to truly discover what’s possible.

The 3,000-mile Race Across America (RAAM, the M left in there for America) lures the crazy/brave (it’s a fine line) crowd, those people who simply must test their limits in order to feel alive. I entered for many reasons, including that one. I had only two goals in mind: 1. To win; and 2. To break the record. The race is insanely expensive and requires a full year of training and logistical preparations.

Each solo rider needs two follow vehicles, several bikes, spare parts, tools, lots of clothes, coolers, packaged food, and a diverse crew. My parents tagged along for the trip in their own vehicle, plus my friend Janessa acted as crew chief, handling much of the planning. Another friend, Lori helped with much of the prep work too, and brought aboard her sister, Connie (a triathlete from Michigan) and her buddy, Rob (a paramedic). My long-time friend Ed, who had served as our mechanic when I rode for the Canadian National Team, agreed to come along to take care of the bicycles, as did Sean, a young guy who worked on my gear in my new hometown of Vernon, British Columbia (B.C.).

We rented a minivan as our follow car, the vehicle allowed to leapfrog me throughout the race (and follow right behind me at night, providing safety and more light). Two crewmembers would work an eight-hour shift in the car, handing me bottles of liquid and food, fixing bike problems, helping me to the bathroom, and navigating the thousands of turns on route. The rest of the crew rode in my dad’s RV and prepped food, planned potential rest points, and slept.

Just as in professional races, I wore an earpiece, taped into my right ear. My follow car could talk to me anytime, and by pressing a small button on the connecting wire, I could speak to them. The little earbud became more and more important as the race went on and my crew had to keep me awake, alert me to traffic, and tell me when to stop. Ceding control of a situation was a foreign experience for me. I had to rely on them to push me, feed me, and keep me awake and away from danger. But they all rose to the challenge and were a crucial component of my success.

I used RAAM as a testing ground, a final battlefield to see what I was made of. How much can I take? I expected to come away euphoric and proud—how could one not be after tackling such a race? But what I received was so much more than that, for in the most blaring, painful moments I could actually feel my mind slowing down, quieting. The long, repetitive days allowed my normally racing thoughts to subdue, just enough to let my conscious brain hear what’s really important. My own inner voice finally told me what I really needed to hear.

Race Across America’s 3,000-mile route includes 170,000 feet of climbing.

OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA

One day, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.

Unknown

Breathe. My stomach is a knot. Did I even eat breakfast this morning? I suddenly can’t remember. Am I really going to start a 3,000-mile bike race without eating breakfast? What would my Jewish-and-constantly-trying-to-feed-the-world mother say? Just breathe, dammit, and focus.

And hailing from Canada, a National Champion, multiple race record holder and twelve-year pro cyclist, Leah Goldstein! George, the Race Across America Director, calls me to the line. A few claps and cheers went up, but all I could hear was my heart pounding.

Now this girl is something else! Brand new to the ultra-cycling world last year, and she’s been untouchable!

Oh, crap, please don’t jinx me.

Winner of Furnace Creek and Race Across Oregon, here she is attempting her first RAAM race—and believe me, she won’t be satisfied with anything but first place!

That’s actually true … can we please just start?

The RAAM starting line in Oceanside, California is a cluster of RVs, team vans, nervous crewmembers, and lots of bikes. The non-stop 3,000 mile race started in 1982 by a couple of insane (I mean that in the nicest way) cyclists who just wanted to see who could get from L.A. to the Empire State Building first. John Marino, who also raced, organized the event. John Howard, Lon Haldeman, and Michael Shermer rounded out the field of four. Remember that last name Shermer; it will be important later.

The rules of the race have hardly varied in its thirty-two-year history. The gun goes off, and the first person to get to the finish line wins. That’s it. Most of the racers would start on Saturday, four days from my start day, in the team division. There are two-, four-, and eight-man (and/or woman) teams. And the men’s solo riders wouldn’t start for another twenty-four hours. But that day, a Tuesday, a mere five solo women and fourteen senior men would head east to the Atlantic.

Caroline van den Bulk, my only age-group competitor, wheeled her Trek up next to me. My crew had told me that she had trained all winter in South America, had a pimped-out RV, and fully paid crew. Who knows if that’s really true? I sat on a trainer all winter in Canada, had a forty-year old RV that we weren’t really sure would make it across the county, let alone the country, and a ragtag crew of friends and friends of friends. Caroline had also already attempted RAAM, and though she’d fallen short by a few states, she knew things I didn’t.

I can’t lose sight of this one.

Nice Trek, she smiled, looking my bike up and down, as I did the same to hers.

Cyclists are snobs. We check out each other’s bikes; the components, wheels, seat, everything. It’s ridiculous, but we can’t help ourselves. My Trek was awesome, although without the same high-end electronic shifting that she had. You know when you have to pull or push a lever to shift gears on your bike? Yeah, she just pushes a button. That’s the kind of stuff that makes cyclists beyond happy. It’s a curse.

Yeah, you too, I replied.

You ready for this? Do you know what you’ve gotten yourself into? she smiled.

Yeah, I think so, I forced a laugh.

I had to pull out last time because of severe dehydration. It happens a lot, so watch out for that. This race is crazy. You won’t believe what will happen to you out there.

So I’ve heard. Ex-racers warned me about the hallucinations, falling asleep on the bike, saddle sores, and sickness. In fact, George our Race Director joked at our team meeting yesterday, It’s not a matter of if you’ll get sick, but when.

I wasn’t afraid of any of that, really. I was afraid of the unknown. Would this be the life event that would finally crack me? Could I actually completely breakdown, mentally or physically, and be unable to finish? I had been a pro racer for over twelve years, but with only a couple of ultra-distance events for experience, I was a complete novice. I knew what happens to your body after thirty hours or forty-eight hours of hard racing. But beyond that, I really didn’t know.

Few people attempt RAAM as a solo rider, the solo field averaging only about twenty-six riders each year. Even fewer finish—in a normal year over half the solo field drops out.

Did you know more people climbed Mt. Everest last year, than have ever finished this race? a grey-haired guy winked at me.

Really? That’s comforting, I managed. It’s also 50 percent longer than the Tour de France, and we have half the time to finish it.

This was his third attempt at RAAM, having failed within 200 miles of the finish last year. I tried to imagine pedaling for ten or eleven days and not making the finish. My stomach hardened. I would have to be nearly dead to drop out of this race.

Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine. You’re quite a rider.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was one of the few cyclists who seemed confident in the possibility of me winning RAAM. Most ultra-distance athletes had warned me of too much too soon. It usually takes a few years of shorter distance races, like 500 to 800 miles, to build up the endurance in your body. Ultra cycling is not just about pedaling for a long time. Your joints, muscles, digestive system, and yes, unmentionables, must adjust to the constant work. I had completed just three ultra races in the past year, but was too impatient to wait another year. Or more probable, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sacrifice another entire year endlessly training on my bike. For the third time in my life, I felt ready to start a new chapter.

My thoughts quickly spun back to the starting line. I rolled my wheel up to the banner while George read the rest of my bio. My mother, father, and seven crewmembers lined the starting chute, leaning over the metal barriers clapping and taking pictures. In slow motion, the gun went off and I pushed forward into the unknown. Veterans of the race had told me that as the race went on, my thoughts would become more and more scattered; events that had only stood out for a moment as a child would suddenly rear up and make me sad or angry or afraid all over again.

As I pedaled out of the hazy beach town, I dreaded the stories of my past that I didn’t want to think about. I don’t want to relive that terrifying moment. I don’t want to remember that lonely time. But the memories did come. Pedaling along a plain white line for eleven days straight, they bombarded me with no mercy. I took them as they came, watching my life play out in front of me, as if trapped in a theatre with no exit.

When I had told my friend, Lori, that I was planning to do Race Across America, she asked me something no one else ever had.

What are you running from? At first, I thought she was kidding, but I saw that she had her psychology face on.

I don’t know.

Yes, you do.

I’m used to people asking me why, and I have a great repertoire of snappy comebacks that seems to appease them.

I’ve always wanted to do this race.

What else am I going to do with myself?

Because it’s there.

But the reason isn’t that simple. While most people would be afraid to take on a race like this, I was scared not to. Scared of the ordinary—of being normal. Disappearing. My entire life, I’ve been the girl who everyone watches to see what crazy thing will happen next. I feared that if I stopped racing, I would lose part of myself. That thing that pumps me full of adrenaline and makes me feel alive would be lost and I’d never be the same. Competition was like my best friend, and I wasn’t ready to lose it.

When faced with fear, we think we have two choices: fight or flight. That’s right, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what our high school biology teachers told us. Our adrenal glands fire high levels of cortisol and adrenaline into our blood stream, which increases our heart rate and blood pressure. Our body is loading (or prepping) to either run away from the perceived danger, or fight for our lives. It’s old hardware, granted, and developed from thousands of years of being chased by wolves and tigers. In our modern world, the system seems obsolete—ridiculous even. What do we need to run from now? Or fight for? Certainly very few life-or-death situations present themselves to any of us during our eighty-something years on earth.

Therefore, I believe, many of us have fallen into a third, and much more dangerous choice when faced with perceived fear. We freeze. We do nothing, and, therefore, neither have to risk failure nor success. I’m continually surprised by my audiences’ reaction to my story; as, to me, it’s just my journey and nothing more. I think people find my life fascinating simply because I’ve never, ever, been frozen.

I’ve simply never stopped, and if that’s all people get out of my story, I’ll be satisfied. To move, do, explore, and change, instead of sitting, planning, worrying, and drowning in apathy. Have I made bad decisions? You bet. Big ones. But bad choices beat no choice every time, because they are still movement. And I’m here to remind you that more often than not, a risky decision could turn into an incredible change for the better, couldn’t it? Or taking a long-shot gamble could very well be the biggest win of your life.

Let’s just talk about it right up front. I am afraid. I’ve been afraid of many things since childhood, the list ebbing and changing throughout my life. You may find it strange, that someone like me would be afraid of anything. I’ve faced most peoples’ worst fears—like terrible injuries, public speaking, and death, and while the thought of those things makes me nervous, none of them are so scary as to stop me from moving forward.

As a child, however, I often felt myself creeping close to that edge of freezing. I was terrified—of the dark, being kidnapped, monsters, and strangers. Mostly kids’ stuff, but my shy, sensitive nature compounded everything. I wasn’t just wary of strangers. I looked at them from behind my mother’s leg and imagined all the mean and terrible things they may be capable of, and then planned the amazing and high-tech ways I could escape if they tried to take me. A petrified James Bond. I know, it’s a paradox, but try to stay with me.

I was especially afraid of God. My mom’s cousins took me to their ultra-Christian church a few times, a foreign place where people spoke in tongues and washed each other’s feet. My family was Jewish, observing holidays and keeping a moderately kosher kitchen, but we rarely went to synagogue. I knew who God was, and the basic Old Testament stories, but this Christian church brought God and his wrath to a whole new level. One Sunday, the congregation watched a movie, where Satan, a bad angel as I recall, came to earth and gave people a choice. Either they could live out their life however they chose, and when they died, their soul would become his property, or they could accept Jesus as their savior and get beheaded right then and there.

The parents in the film were comforting their children as they waited in line for the chopping block.

Don’t worry, Johnny. We will all be together in heaven, the mom said, patting a kid my age on the back.

He put his little neck in a guillotine, the blade sliced down, and his brown-haired head fell into a black bucket. One by one, the Jesus people sacrificed their lives for eternal life in heaven. I was horrified. Tears sprang to my eyes as I scanned the faces of the congregation. Surely this wasn’t real? Was it? My cousin just rubbed my back.

You don’t have to worry, Leah. All you have to do is pray to Jesus, and you will get to go to heaven.

So I did. Not out of love or anything spiritual. It was complete fear. I performed my daily prayers while I did my ten minutes of sit-ups each night. I’m not sure why I started this routine, although I probably heard sit-ups make you stronger, and, therefore, did them on my own from the age of seven. Each night, I’d tuck my toes under the end of the couch, make sure no one was around (it was secret; again, I don’t know why), and start a stopwatch.

1-2-3-4-5. Please Jesus, forgive my family that doesn’t believe in you. 6-7-8-9-10. Please make my sick dog better and keep the bullies away from me at school. 11-12-13-14-15. Oh, and please don’t make me get my head chopped off. Amen.

My older sister Iris and I often spent the night with our cousins, and our parents would pick us up Sunday morning. If they were late, we’d end up in a pew. A few visits later, my father was waiting outside the church. His red face and clenched fists were enough of a message for my cousins—they’d never be late again. They weren’t, and I never went back to that church, but I continued to pray to Jesus. Just in case.

In the midst of early teenage rebellion, Iris saw every scary movie, rode every crazy ride, and jumped into cars with questionable teenage drivers, all while grudgingly dragging me along.

My parents worked overtime to pay the bills, and my sister was often left to babysit me. We saw Jaws and Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, rode the rickety wooden roller coaster at Playland in Vancouver, and peeled down 16th Street in a souped-up Camaro. To my thirteen-year old sister, this was what made life worth living. To me, at nine, it was completely terrifying. After seeing Jaws, I couldn’t stay in the bathroom for more than twenty seconds, convinced that the huge shark would find its way up the plumbing and eat me. Fight or flight?

At night, lying in the dark, my imagination ran wild. What if a kidnapper puts a pillow over my face and I can’t scream? What if Jason in