#064 – World-record holding adaptive athlete, Josh Koehler, talks about his comeback journey from several major surgeries, including three shoulder and two foot surgeries and, most recently an aortic dissection resulting in several strokes, an emergency open heart surgery, and a coronary artery bypass surgery to obstacles course races.
Topics Covered:
- Power of proper nutrition and movement during recovery
- Benefits of functional fitness, especially after an injury
- Support from family and taking the fitness journey together
- Giving back and helping others in their own comeback journey
Today’s Guest
Josh Koehler
Josh is a world-record-holding adaptive athlete. He goes by “@2c_ocr” on social media, which stands for Second Chance Obstacle Course Racing. He started that page in 2018 to chronicle his comeback journey from several major surgeries, including 3 shoulder and 2 foot surgeries.
In November 2020, Josh had an aortic dissection resulting in several strokes, an emergency open heart surgery, and a coronary artery bypass surgery… bringing his surgery count past a dozen. He continues to run and race because he refuses to allow his injuries to rob him of the outdoor activities he loves. Josh also wants to set an example for others, including his own visually impaired son. His most recent endeavors include the soft launch of a new website and Instagram page: 2cRacing.com and @2c.racing, respectively. Josh hopes to feature many challenged athletes who deserve their stories to be told!
Follow Josh:
- Instagram – @2c_ocr
- Instagram – @2c.racing
- Website – Second Chance Racing
Resources:
- Inspire to Run on Instagram – @inspiretorunpodcast
- Free Guide – Kickstart your Fitness in 5 Steps
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Listen to Inspire to Run Podcast:
Richard Conner 0:00
Everyone welcome to part two of this two part series, where we continue the conversation with Josh Koehler, and hear about his incredible journey back to good health and racing. After open heart surgery, we’ll talk about what he did to recover faster, avoid injuries, and how he’s paying it forward to help other athletes Hope you enjoy.
Intro/Outro 0:18
Welcome to Inspire to Run Podcast. Here, you will find inspiration, whether you’re looking to take control of your health and fitness, or you’re a seasoned runner, looking for community and some extra motivation, you will hear inspiring stories from amazing runners, along with helpful tips from fitness experts. Now, here’s your host, Richard Conner.
Richard Conner 0:43
You have accomplished so much during this time. And, you know, I’d love for us to kind of talk a little bit about your latest adversity. So you, you are able to recover from your previous injuries or everything that you just talked about, you were able to accomplish so much in the world of OCR, which is totally incredible. And then your latest diversity just a year or so it goes with your heart surgery. So, you know, let’s dive a little bit into that. And tell us a little about what happened there.
Josh Koehler 1:11
Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting one. So a little more than two years ago, in November of 2020, I had what’s called an aortic dissection. And for the viewers at home, that is essentially where the, the inner lining of your aorta gets gets stripped away, I essentially got a hole somehow, on the inner lining of my aortic arch. After that happens, you know, it can be a short amount of time or an almost instantaneous time, you know, the, the skin kind of peels back a little bit. And once blood flow ends up catching that little flap of skin that’s on the inside of your, your aorta, which is the main artery coming off of your heart, and it’s, you know, supplies blood to all of the other major arteries in your body. If that happens in your aorta, where there’s a lot of blood pressure, a lot of blood pressure, excuse me, the blood will eventually catch that kind of like sticking your hand out of a car window and letting the air catch your hand depending on you know, how you turn your hand, the blood will essentially catch that and end up trying to push through the different layers there and create, you know, different channels for blood to push through and essentially rip away the inner lining of your major artery. They’re in your your aorta. So that’s essentially what happened to me. My upper aortic arch ruptured, and burst all the way through and ended up having major internal bleeding. I had several strokes, which may in fact have been what kind of leads you know, to this day to fumbling my words a little bit. I’m I’m a stroke survivor, I had several several strokes. I coded for two and a half minutes at the hospital during the ordeal, which is a stroke and it in and of itself, because you’re essentially dead for almost three minutes. I was thankfully revived by the wonderful people at the local hospital. And I was rushed to emergency open heart surgery, I had to have a coronary artery bypass and have a large section of aortic not aorta, but artery or vein from my leg taken out and put into my chest to bypass my coronary artery during the surgery. It was like a 10 and a half or hour ordeal. I didn’t I didn’t really realize what had even happened until I woke up from the surgery like two days later. And to this day, I don’t exactly remember what happened on the day of the event. I just remember waking up in the hospital and like what’s going on kind of deal you know, the anesthesia is wearing off I had been through major surgical trauma. You know, open heart surgery involves cutting through your entire sternum and flaring it open. And you know, so by my chest had been cut through with a bone saw and put back together with metal clips after doing the heart surgery and everything. And so I’ve got inflammation, fluid retention, soreness, brain fog, you know, stroke symptoms and anesthesia wearing off all at the same time. And I don’t remember any of it happening. So I’m like, you know, as you can imagine, it was pretty crazy. Family starts explaining what was going on. The doctors tried to explain what happened. And you know, it took me a little bit, but within hours, I believe I had told my wife you know, one of the first first things I told my wife was called Joe and tell him the lineup my next race and she really gets onto me on me she’s like, you know you’re you’re really lucky that that you had expressed your love to me before expressing your love Daskal course raised but
Richard Conner 5:00
The, for the listeners your when you mentioned Joe Joe de Sena from Spartan. Right,
Josh Koehler 5:05
right. Yeah. So,
you know, my crazy journey had taken me to where I did 80 overall races in 2019, including 53 Spartan Races, you know, I did the whole Trifecta chasing, trying to get every Trifecta I could around the world, you know, and so, you know, fast forward to what was happening in 2020. I was like, you know, call Joe and sign up my next race, my mindset was different. I had then, over the course of 2017, through through 2020. At that point, I had met tons of people, cancer survivors, leukemia survivors, you know, injured war veterans, I had run with Team Oscar Mike, multiple times, if you haven’t done so I highly encourage that. I had been involved a little bit with more hurt than scars. And they take adaptive athletes through courses and show people that no matter what your injury is, or limitation, they’ll work with you and be a team around you and get you through courses, like really tough Spartan Races and whatnot. I love those guys. And there’s so many, you know, whether it’s team Oscar, Mike Moore, Heartland scars, Operation Enduring warrior and so many other amazing organizations I had, I had been acclimated and acquainted with all of those people over the last few years. So not only did I have in my life, examples of coming back from things, examples of extraordinary perseverance from other people, but I had also finally gotten over myself with my own personal injuries and had adopted a different mindset for myself personally. So between my personal experience, and what I had witnessed from other cancer survivors and injury survivors, and you name it all across the amazing community of obstacle course racing, you know, it wasn’t even a remote possibility that I wasn’t going to come back from this, you know, I asked the doctors right away, you know, can I come back from this? And they were kind of like, you know, maybe, and I was like, Cool, maybe is all I need? You know, I wanted to I wanted some realism, I wasn’t completely naive to the fact, you know, I, I wanted to know, is it even remotely possible? Because if it’s remotely possible, I’m going to make it happen. So I, you know, I really dug into the questions with the doctors. And I wanted to know, I don’t care what average is, I don’t care what the typical prognosis is, what is the upper limit is, you know, is it even possible for this to heal enough to, you know, have a little bit of athleticism? And, you know, they were very cautious in their answers. And, you know, they were honest, that it would most likely not happen, and not be, you know, some, you know, crazy thing. But that was, that was all, all I needed, you know, a 1%, or a 100th of 1% was enough for me, because of what I had been through personally. And what I had then seen over the last couple years with other people, and it was on, they told me, I was going to be in the hospital for anywhere from two weeks to two months, most likely, they said it would probably be close to forget now, but I believe they were saying it would probably be six months to a year before I really did anything semi mobile.
And I was like, I’m gonna shatter all those, you know, so I had my wife bringing organic fruit into the hospital, I had her bringing protein bars. I had her bringing some olive oil, you know, we’re big fans of, of healthy olive oils. I was having her bring all that stuff into the hospital because there wasn’t a lot that I even wanted to eat at the hospital. I wanted to get moving. I wanted you know, when they would try to get you out of the hospital bed and move around a little bit. I wanted to do as many laps as they would absolutely let me and long story short, I got out in 10 days about I think a day or two later. It was within three days. It’s a little a little fuzzy for me two years ago, but within a few days of being out. I went on a walk with my wife I was supposed to do about a quarter mile but when I did, I had so much atrophy already and a lack of muscle activation in my legs from being in the hospital bed for two weeks and laying in a certain position for almost half a day for for a surgery and being stretched and positioned in different ways. You know, it wasn’t just my chest being sore. It wasn’t just things being you know, needing to heal on the inside. I had, I had major issues with glute activation, I had major issues in one of my calves, I had issues in both legs in different part parts, you know, so I would have, it would be something crazy like my, my left foot, my right ankle, my left calf, my entire left or right thigh, you know, both the quad and hamstring and my left glute would all be having like pain, or they would feel dead, like they were asleep. Like if you slept wrong on something and, and that muscle was just dead and not active, and it needed the blood through. So the idea of trying to walk a quarter mile was extremely difficult. My wife went with me, and I got a wild idea, you know, let’s walk to the lake and back. And so we did, it took, I think, like three hours or something. But I ended up walking eight miles, just a couple of days after getting out of the hospital, it was still just under the two week mark, since my open heart surgery, I believe, incredibly slow. And it was incredibly painful. Some of the muscle activation issues and the weird sensations in my muscles didn’t go away during the whole eight miles, some of it actually got worse. So there was there was a lot of anxiety there. But I knew I wanted to get moving, I wanted to get up more more often than they recommended. I wanted to walk way longer. I started what they call the cardiac rehab at the hospital, you know very shortly after that, and I realized that they had my best interests at stake and they didn’t want people to just start pounding you know, lifting the weights and, and sprinting on the treadmill and all this stuff, you know, you do have to walk before you run and and when you have an ordeal like I did, you know there’s you step back even even further. But I was always pushing up against their maximum of what they would allow me to do in house, you know, with all the EKG wires strapped up to me and they they were constantly getting on to me for raising my heart rate too high or going too fast on the handbike or, you know, having me do you know, 10 reps with a three pound dumbbell and I’m just sitting there. And if they weren’t paying attention, I would do 3040 50 reps. And until they told me to stop and and that was how I approached saying that and I was doing it intentionally, you know, I would basically do as much as they would let me get away with and I just kept doing that and and I was doing even more I would continue to do the same things outside. So I got back to the the weightlifting and everything but movement was huge. The shift in mindset was huge. And I have some very real limitations for the rest of my life. I have what’s called a fully dissected descending aorta, a CT scan that was done a few weeks after I got out of the hospital that this was driven by the fact that I was already pushing the doctors to clear me for returning to races, they first did a wanted to do a CT scan to check the integrity of the rupture repair. I basically have a flexi pipe, it’s called a dacron graft in my upper aortic arch that replaces the portion of my aorta that completely ruptured. What they discovered in the CT scan that they didn’t know before is that my dissection, the damage and separation to the inner lining of my aorta had extended far past the ruptured part. And basically went through my entire aorta and down into my iliacs, which is where your your aorta splits off into your hips before it stopped dissecting. And so the surgery report and the CTA report from the specialists who did that talked about all these false lumens and false pathways and false tunnels, that blood is going through how one of my kidneys is supplied by a false lumen, or one of those false channels that made me ineligible for a stent to try to, you know, reinforce my aorta in any way. Because if they were to put a big standard across, you know, throughout my whole aorta, I would potentially lose one of my kidneys, for example, because if they put a stent in the main channel of your aorta, and one of my kidneys is supplied by a false tube that goes between that channel and the other one. A stent basically, is where it almost looks like a Chinese finger trap, but they put it inside of an artery and expand it. So it’s like a reinforced wall inside of your artery or inside of whatever vein or artery that they they put it in, and they can’t really do that to my aorta, because I would I would lose at least one organ went So it’s pretty crazy. So I have an aorta, which is severely weaker than anybody else’s. Except for the very few handful of people with my same condition, I have lifting restrictions that the doctors, even the ones who reluctantly gave me permission to start going back to races and everything, they don’t want me lifting more than half of my body weight for the rest of my life. Blood pressure management is huge. For me, I was on blood pressure medication for a while. And even now that I’m off, by way of using natural alternatives, off of all pharma products, and I’m proud of that, and my blood pressure is still under under control, I still have the reality that an aorta, essentially a long tubular balloon, and my balloon is thinner than everybody else’s. So I still have to watch, I’m still not supposed to do any kind of straining, I’m not supposed to do pull ups, I’m not supposed to do anything where I lift heavy weight and hold my breath, all of those things drives up acute blood pressure. And that’s the that’s the thing that I really have to be careful of. So those who have seen me on the obstacle racing course have seen me pausing before obstacles and doing a lot of breathing in any obstacles that I chose to disobey the doctors on. And, and do, despite not having permission, I would do those with a straight arm, and try to breathe through the whole thing and just kind of swing from certain obstacles and use my grip strength as the method of sustaining me on the obstacle rather than then pulling myself up. And using, you know, powerlifting moves and bicep control and everything. And you know, and that’s a stark contrast to how I used to do obstacles, which would be to muscle through everything, do it as fast as possible, oftentimes holding your breath. And you know, I couldn’t do any of that stuff anymore. So I have throughout my return to obstacle course, racing, I’ve had to make a lot of adaptations, I’ve had to do a lot of penalty loops and penalty burpees instead of doing the actual obstacles, especially at first, it’s been crazy. It’s been a wild ride, it’s been full of enormous amounts of anxiety, enormous amounts of second guessing, I would come off of obstacles or finish races sometimes, and I would have weird sensations in my chest. And I would be like, Oh, no, you know, did I just do something that’s going to end my life? Now? Did I get too stupid? Did I selfishly returned to do this race that I didn’t necessarily need. And now I won’t be able to walk my daughter down the aisle. You know, I constantly have dealt with all of those things over the last two years. But the thing that kept me going, I tried to be as sensible as I can, while also pushing the envelope as much as I can, you know, there’s a balance there. But basically, doctors had said that sports would be insanely risky. They told me that if I went and did the Spartan Races, especially if I did more obstacles than what they approved, of which I ended up doing, that it would be a big risk to myself. They also said that if I went the opposite direction, and decided that I wasn’t willing to take the risk, and I went back to my previous lifestyle of sitting on the couch and watching TV, that it’s likely that I would get depressed because of how much I love the loves sports and how much I had loved. Finally getting back to it, and how obsessive I was with it, that the diet would probably slip the emotional health and mental health would probably slip. And they said if you get sedentary and depressed and everything and you’re wasting away on the couch, you could die from a hard sneeze, because your arteries will get hard and because they’re already thinner, you could rupture again from a violent sneeze. So it was when I heard that after poking and prodding with the doctors and having these conversations where I’m asking why and why but but why? Why specifically, don’t you recommend this? You know, you know, at first they wanted, you know, just know, to the Spartans, you know, chill out, you know, dial things back, I kept asking why, and not just why that why specifically, what is the specific danger that I’m facing? And is there a way that I can adapt to that? Is there a way that I can make an adjustment so that it’s not as much of an acute danger? And that’s when I’ve, you know, got these additional details and we had the deep discussions because they, they knew that I wasn’t going to drop it and they told me about you know, potentially on one end of the extreme dying from a heart sneeze and, and that’s basically when I made the decision. it, okay? If it’s going to be risky no matter what, if I’m gonna be darned if I do darned if I don’t, I don’t want to be the person who dies from a hard sneeze, I don’t want to die on a Spartan course I don’t want to die in the middle of a triathlon, I don’t want to die period. But I certainly don’t want to die. Having lived a life of fear and die from something as stupid as sneezing. So I made a conscious choice that you’re going to return to sports. And I did, and I did it in a in a very big way.
Richard Conner 20:32
That’s amazing. That is so incredible. And, you know, it’s incredible how you ask the right questions, you really probe and ask the right questions to find out, how could you return to sports? And how could you maintain some level of the lifestyle that you’ve built, you know, since your previous injuries? So thank you for sharing that. And what’s next for you? You know, you’ve you’ve been able to come back and do OCR, not in the ways you were able to do before, but still kind of maintain that. Where does this take you next? Where are you going?
Josh Koehler 21:03
We’re at a kind of exciting transition. So I did return to sports like like we both said, I did over 100 Spartan Races in the two years that followed my open heart surgery. That’s how I got the world record, you know, Spartan Race has this thing, or or they had a thing. I think it’s discontinued now in favor of another program. But for many years, Spartan had had a thing where, if you do three races in a year, each of their main distances, it’s called a trifecta. And then if you want to be one of the crazy people who, you know, goes in for the season pass and you compete against all the other crazies try to see who can get the most trifectas. You know, there’s, there’s kind of a subgroup of people within, within Spartan racing, that, you know, we compete against each other for the trifecta account, which have to travel all over the world. So I did that I had done it in 2019. And I earned an award, which is basically a presentation of a huge porcelain shield to you. It’s a word of the people who get 13 trifectas in a single race season, which is very difficult to do, it takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of logistics, your vacations are pretty much race patients only, and everything but if you pull it off, and you go to the trifecta World Championship, you’re awarded this this huge replica Spartan shield, and I earned one in 2019, I swore at the time, I would never do it again, because of the toll it takes on your body, the expense, the the buy in from your family and everybody around you to be able to pull that off. You’re having to get help from family members, you know, washing your gear or staging your gear or prepping your gear or prepping your food. It was a family effort. You know, the family did a lot of the races with you. But a lot of it is kind of selfish if you’re going to try to get a shield. And so I had done that had no desire to ever do that, again, 2020 was going to be my year of of going for podiums. I was so close at the end of 2019, just from doing so many races, my fitness level had grown so much, you know, then the heart surgery comes, I decide to return to sports anyways as an adaptive athlete. So part of my goal in my return was I got the wild idea of I want to be the first person to earn a Spartan shield after open heart surgery. So I spent 2020 Trifecta chasing, again doing every Spartan Race that I could possibly logistically arrive at financially afford, et cetera, et cetera. And I got to the races, I was having to do a million burpees. At first, I was ungodly, slow, fully adaptive athlete, you know, severely compromised on the inside, I had to be super careful with all heavy lifting, super careful with a lot of the upper upper body obstacles like Olympus. I didn’t get Olympus successfully for the first time until halfway through the 2022 season. You know, so I did. I did 2021 Having a burpee out or take a penalty loop on Olympus and several other obstacles. You know, but I did that. And I did everything according to age group or elite rules because I wanted to know that I earned every single race you know, I was going after this shield, this prestigious award. I think only 14 People had gotten it in 2019. And I wanted to get it again. But I didn’t want there to be an asterisk by it. You know any? Any asterisk that was attached to me getting another shield I wanted it to be a positive thing that Yeah, I did this. Despite having a torn rotator cuff despite having all of those previous surgeries despite having open heart surgery, despite being slower and having to be exposed to the cold and the heat you know longer than everybody else. Despite having the races be hard. err than what they used to be. I did it, I wanted those to be the only possible asterisks associated with my goal. I didn’t want to have, oh, you you got this award. But you basically just walked the course, you know, you walked around obstacles you didn’t do the penalties. People do that sometimes depending on their fitness journey and their injury, your journey, and that’s fine. I’m not dogging on anybody. But for me, since I was going for that shield again. And it was to try to set that huge comeback goal for me being the first person earn one after open heart surgery. I wanted to do it to a tee. So I insisted on doing all obstacles, all penalties. You know, the freezing cold dunk walls, no matter what you know, and just try to adapt my gear and fueling and tenacity, raise that to the task at hand. And just get through it. And I did that in 2021 only to have the trifecta World Championship canceled at the last minute. So that that was going to be my last hurrah, and then transition to something else. Since I got cancelled. I didn’t get my shield, I didn’t get my goal. You know, like, I technically accomplished the goal. But I didn’t get the fruit of my labor, I had nothing to show for it except my stats.
So 2022, I did it again. And I wanted to not only do it again, and get to shields at the 2022 Trifecta World Championship. You know, I wanted to also beat my previous trife personal Trifecta account, you know, I upped the ante. I had done 17 trifectas in 2019. And I wanted 18 Plus in 2022. So I finished the season with 20 trifectas, which is, you know, that’s a minimum of 60 Spartan Races that count towards the 2022 season. And I had a wonderful experience. We did this journey, my daughter joined me, I had used safety partners and a lot of my races and in 2021, it was oftentimes do more harm than scars, or other friends in the age group space. Leo Bryant is one of them that would run with me sometimes and sacrificially give up his placement in age group to kind of not help me, but run side by side to kind of keep an eye on me. And there are so many amazing friends who would do stuff like that. You know, some of you in the OCR world will know Leo Bryant is Doc be one of the finest humans you’ll ever meet. And you know, look him up on Instagram. Great guy, great friend, love you forever, brother. People like that got me through in 2022, I was kind of more on my own. But my wife didn’t want me doing the races completely solo. So my daughter would go on all the trips with me at first and she ended up having the goal of being the youngest person to get a shield, which she did. So she kind of stopped after getting 13 trifectas because I was more than enough. She’s got a super busy life and taking college classes with dual enrollment and everything. You know, my my family, just wonderful. But, you know, I kept going and you know, the whole family went to Greece, you know, my daughter got her shield, she said a record as the youngest to get one, I got my two as the two time person to ever get one after open heart surgery. Between that, I wouldn’t say that I got burnt out on Spartan Races, but I’ve done enough of them that I’ve had my fill, I will continue to do Spartan Races in a limited capacity. The intention going forward though, is when I do Spartan Races, I will usually be doing them as a guide on course guide and serving with, you know, Operation Enduring warrior team Oscar Mike, or more hardened scars as a guide helping other people. I had spent the last two years basically chasing after personal glory and personal goals. You know, I wanted to have all those in your face moments to all the negative people who doubted me and everything. And you know, I accomplished all that. So, you know, realistically, I can’t ever go for a podium and in something as intensive Spartan Races anymore. So I’ve kind of accomplished everything that I can accomplish in obstacle course racing. I don’t have anything left to prove. I don’t have the financial resources left to you know, Trifecta Chase indefinitely. So we’re kind of dialing things back from a Spartan Race standpoint. And we’re just going to do a couple of venues. The plan going forward is to do triathlons. So a big change in our family’s lives is that we’re going to do triathlons and we’re going You know, because triathlons are so expensive, we’re gonna stick mostly local on the East Coast, instead of, you know, taking it worldwide, like before. But along with that, I kind of realized that I wanted a mission that would kind of be more than just about myself. Part of that was, you know, the decision that when I would do OCR is again, I will do them mostly as a guide, helping other adaptive athletes, I will be chasing a little bit of personal goals and personal glory in the triathlons. But you know, with my page being so OCR specific, and me kind of wanting to a different avenue to have a little bit of a mission. I started a website, a second Instagram page and kind of just a new venture, where it’s called Second Chance racing. You know, I wanted a place where it wasn’t going to be just about obstacle course racing. I’ll always love obstacle course racing, I will continue to do a handful of races each year. That’s the plan. But we’re trying some new stuff and I want to be able to feature other people. So we’ve got the the new Instagram page called Tusi racing, it’s to see dot racing. So I’ve got to see underscore OCR, which is Second Chance obstacle course racing. That’s my old trusty account, I got to see dot racing, which is Second Chance racing and outdoor sports. And what this endeavor is I want to share some of my continued journey from multiple standpoints. from a nutritional standpoint, injury recovery standpoint, you know, cardiac warriors standpoint, and sports other than just OCR. But I also want to regularly feature other people who are also doing the same thing. So the goal is to have regular features and stories and posts that talk about other people, because it’s not just about me, I am not the only one accomplishing things, I am not the only one overcoming things, I am not the only one going through things. And oftentimes, other people are going through even bigger, more astronomical things than I am. I want to tell their stories, not just mine, it’s not about just me. So we’ve been able to do three features. So far already. We’ve had, we’ve had an individual with an incredible weight loss journey. We’ve had an individual who had cancer and came back from the cancer and did a full Ironman shortly after being declared cancer free. And my first, my first feature on the page was a an amazing young lady named Jenna, who has a spinal cord injury. And we’ve got cancer survivor spinal cord and weight loss journey. But you know, we’re going to have other cardiac athletes, other injury recovery journeys featured, you know, people who were overcoming the stigma of, of age, for example, you know, there’s I’ve met some people who were like, over 70, and they’re just absolutely crushing it in their sport and doing things that everybody told him that they’d never be able to do. But they’re proving people wrong, I wanted to have a place where, if you’ve got a similar story as mine, you know, you’ve, you’ve had this major injury, and we’re told to basically pack things up, and you decided not to, I want to, I want to see that story. And I want to share it, you know, that’s basically that’s, that’s going to be a big focus for us going forward. I had a soft launch of my my website, which is to see racing.com There’s a lot more to come. It’s basically just a summary of what it’s going to be about right now. And then a referral back to the the to see dot racing Instagram page. But, you know, we have plans to build that out further and get content and blogs up there. And we just want to give back to the community that has helped us and I got a new logo and some personal branding that kind of goes along with it. I actually have it on my desk, we we just got some custom swim caps going on. So we’ve got this, you know, the two C stands for the second chance and they the EKG blip at the top. You know, one of the mottos for this is that, you know, if you have if you still have a heartbeat, you still have a chance to get back at doing the outdoor things that you love. You know it if you’re not in the ground, you can get back you know, it might not be in the same capacity. It might not be in the capacity that you want. But you can do it you know, and we want to build a community of support. We want to build a community of income her judgment, just with a couple features that we’ve already done, we’ve been able to touch some lives, not only give encouragement, and an outlet for the people that we’re featuring, but to show people in different walks of life, male, female, you no matter what your race is, your ages, your sport is your gender is, you know, people are accomplishing thing that people are going through very hard things. And we want to be part of that community. You know, we want to tie into that and be another source of encouragement and a dark world. And that’s where we’re going, you know, triathlons is going to be our family’s personal avenue of sports going forward with a little bit of obstacle courses, right? Or obstacle course races mixed in. I’m going to do my first ever marathon this year, actually, to Marine Corps Marathon and the Richmond marathon are both on my radar. But But yeah, other than doing those from a personal personal health standpoint, we’re promoting the the to see racing and trying to bring other people into it. So that’s, that’s our big endeavor.
Richard Conner 36:11
All right, well, congratulations on your new endeavor. And, you know, congratulations on everything that you’ve been through. With your personal journey, I mean, your personal journeys, inspiring alone. And it’s wonderful that you’re going to share the journeys of others. So, you know, I appreciate you taking the time to share this with our listeners. And then if I kind of recap some of the things that we talked about that really resonated with me, you know, kind of going back to your mindset, and wanting to make a change in your life after kind of seeing where you were, and not being where you want it to be. And having that mindset to do that. And, you know, kind of the movement piece, I love what you did to kind of push the envelope there. But still, you know, understanding that there are some limitations and doing what you could and asking the right questions, to make sure that you want it to get to where you wanted to be safely. And I love what you talked about, you know, family, having, you know, family kind of do these races and support you that’s super important. And you’re right, not everybody has that. And that’s not only motivation to keep going, but that’s the support that you need to do, you know, the incredible things that you’ve done and overcoming the adversity that you did. And you know, one more thing about, you know, finding that not only finding balance, but also the variety of things in life, right, whether it’s in nutrition, whether it’s in fitness, or, or just in other areas of life. So you just shared so many wonderful tips and stories, and I am really, really grateful that you took the time to do so. So what I’ll do is I will put your information in the show notes for our listeners to find you and follow your amazing journey online. And once again, I just want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing your journey.
Josh Koehler 37:54
And I want to thank you, you know, I don’t remember if I said it at the beginning, but thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for giving me a voice on your podcast, you know, I don’t I don’t have a podcast. Thank you for giving me the airtime thank you for letting me tell my story. And being an encouragement to me, you’ve been an encouragement to so many people you’ve done through your podcast, what I hope to do eventually through to see racing and that’s to, to give other people an outlet to share their stories, you know, because sometimes one person story is the roadmap to success for somebody else, you know, I, we talked about earlier, I didn’t really have any kind of a roadmap like that, and kind of wasted a decade plus in my life, you know, so to speak. And I want to prevent other people from from taking that long to find their roadmap, back to recovery, the roadmap back to success. Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Thank you for your kindness and generosity. We believe that that God has big things in store for everybody. We’re a faith based family and, and God has worked so many miracles in our lives. And it’s, you know, we want to use that in the correct way. We don’t want to, we want to live a you know, a purpose driven life. You know, we don’t want to just be that person who succumbs to the negativity and takes the path of least resistance, you know, we we want to live an out of box, you know, somewhat inspiring, adventurous lifestyle, you know, and show others how to do the same and encouraging other people and just loving other people and helping other people is what we have a passion for. So I thank you again. It’s an honor to be on your show and it’s an honor to be your friend.
Richard Conner 39:48
Of course, of course we are going to be cheering for you as you move into this next phase. So thank you so much again, Josh, and have a great day.
Josh Koehler 39:55
Thank you.
Intro/Outro 39:57
That’s it for this episode of Inspire to Run Podcast we hope you are inspired to take control of your health and fitness and take it to the next level be sure to click the subscribe button to join our community and also please rate and review thanks for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Everyone welcome to part two of this two part series, where we continue the conversation with Josh Koehler, and hear about his incredible journey back to good health and racing. After open heart surgery, we’ll talk about what he did to recover faster, avoid injuries, and how he’s paying it forward to help other athletes Hope you enjoy.
Intro/Outro 0:18
Welcome to Inspire to Run Podcast. Here, you will find inspiration, whether you’re looking to take control of your health and fitness, or you’re a seasoned runner, looking for community and some extra motivation, you will hear inspiring stories from amazing runners, along with helpful tips from fitness experts. Now, here’s your host, Richard Conner.
Richard Conner 0:43
You have accomplished so much during this time. And, you know, I’d love for us to kind of talk a little bit about your latest adversity. So you, you are able to recover from your previous injuries or everything that you just talked about, you were able to accomplish so much in the world of OCR, which is totally incredible. And then your latest diversity just a year or so it goes with your heart surgery. So, you know, let’s dive a little bit into that. And tell us a little about what happened there.
Josh Koehler 1:11
Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting one. So a little more than two years ago, in November of 2020, I had what’s called an aortic dissection. And for the viewers at home, that is essentially where the, the inner lining of your aorta gets gets stripped away, I essentially got a hole somehow, on the inner lining of my aortic arch. After that happens, you know, it can be a short amount of time or an almost instantaneous time, you know, the, the skin kind of peels back a little bit. And once blood flow ends up catching that little flap of skin that’s on the inside of your, your aorta, which is the main artery coming off of your heart, and it’s, you know, supplies blood to all of the other major arteries in your body. If that happens in your aorta, where there’s a lot of blood pressure, a lot of blood pressure, excuse me, the blood will eventually catch that kind of like sticking your hand out of a car window and letting the air catch your hand depending on you know, how you turn your hand, the blood will essentially catch that and end up trying to push through the different layers there and create, you know, different channels for blood to push through and essentially rip away the inner lining of your major artery. They’re in your your aorta. So that’s essentially what happened to me. My upper aortic arch ruptured, and burst all the way through and ended up having major internal bleeding. I had several strokes, which may in fact have been what kind of leads you know, to this day to fumbling my words a little bit. I’m I’m a stroke survivor, I had several several strokes. I coded for two and a half minutes at the hospital during the ordeal, which is a stroke and it in and of itself, because you’re essentially dead for almost three minutes. I was thankfully revived by the wonderful people at the local hospital. And I was rushed to emergency open heart surgery, I had to have a coronary artery bypass and have a large section of aortic not aorta, but artery or vein from my leg taken out and put into my chest to bypass my coronary artery during the surgery. It was like a 10 and a half or hour ordeal. I didn’t I didn’t really realize what had even happened until I woke up from the surgery like two days later. And to this day, I don’t exactly remember what happened on the day of the event. I just remember waking up in the hospital and like what’s going on kind of deal you know, the anesthesia is wearing off I had been through major surgical trauma. You know, open heart surgery involves cutting through your entire sternum and flaring it open. And you know, so by my chest had been cut through with a bone saw and put back together with metal clips after doing the heart surgery and everything. And so I’ve got inflammation, fluid retention, soreness, brain fog, you know, stroke symptoms and anesthesia wearing off all at the same time. And I don’t remember any of it happening. So I’m like, you know, as you can imagine, it was pretty crazy. Family starts explaining what was going on. The doctors tried to explain what happened. And you know, it took me a little bit, but within hours, I believe I had told my wife you know, one of the first first things I told my wife was called Joe and tell him the lineup my next race and she really gets onto me on me she’s like, you know you’re you’re really lucky that that you had expressed your love to me before expressing your love Daskal course raised but
Richard Conner 5:00
The, for the listeners your when you mentioned Joe Joe de Sena from Spartan. Right,
Josh Koehler 5:05
right. Yeah. So,
you know, my crazy journey had taken me to where I did 80 overall races in 2019, including 53 Spartan Races, you know, I did the whole Trifecta chasing, trying to get every Trifecta I could around the world, you know, and so, you know, fast forward to what was happening in 2020. I was like, you know, call Joe and sign up my next race, my mindset was different. I had then, over the course of 2017, through through 2020. At that point, I had met tons of people, cancer survivors, leukemia survivors, you know, injured war veterans, I had run with Team Oscar Mike, multiple times, if you haven’t done so I highly encourage that. I had been involved a little bit with more hurt than scars. And they take adaptive athletes through courses and show people that no matter what your injury is, or limitation, they’ll work with you and be a team around you and get you through courses, like really tough Spartan Races and whatnot. I love those guys. And there’s so many, you know, whether it’s team Oscar, Mike Moore, Heartland scars, Operation Enduring warrior and so many other amazing organizations I had, I had been acclimated and acquainted with all of those people over the last few years. So not only did I have in my life, examples of coming back from things, examples of extraordinary perseverance from other people, but I had also finally gotten over myself with my own personal injuries and had adopted a different mindset for myself personally. So between my personal experience, and what I had witnessed from other cancer survivors and injury survivors, and you name it all across the amazing community of obstacle course racing, you know, it wasn’t even a remote possibility that I wasn’t going to come back from this, you know, I asked the doctors right away, you know, can I come back from this? And they were kind of like, you know, maybe, and I was like, Cool, maybe is all I need? You know, I wanted to I wanted some realism, I wasn’t completely naive to the fact, you know, I, I wanted to know, is it even remotely possible? Because if it’s remotely possible, I’m going to make it happen. So I, you know, I really dug into the questions with the doctors. And I wanted to know, I don’t care what average is, I don’t care what the typical prognosis is, what is the upper limit is, you know, is it even possible for this to heal enough to, you know, have a little bit of athleticism? And, you know, they were very cautious in their answers. And, you know, they were honest, that it would most likely not happen, and not be, you know, some, you know, crazy thing. But that was, that was all, all I needed, you know, a 1%, or a 100th of 1% was enough for me, because of what I had been through personally. And what I had then seen over the last couple years with other people, and it was on, they told me, I was going to be in the hospital for anywhere from two weeks to two months, most likely, they said it would probably be close to forget now, but I believe they were saying it would probably be six months to a year before I really did anything semi mobile.
And I was like, I’m gonna shatter all those, you know, so I had my wife bringing organic fruit into the hospital, I had her bringing protein bars. I had her bringing some olive oil, you know, we’re big fans of, of healthy olive oils. I was having her bring all that stuff into the hospital because there wasn’t a lot that I even wanted to eat at the hospital. I wanted to get moving. I wanted you know, when they would try to get you out of the hospital bed and move around a little bit. I wanted to do as many laps as they would absolutely let me and long story short, I got out in 10 days about I think a day or two later. It was within three days. It’s a little a little fuzzy for me two years ago, but within a few days of being out. I went on a walk with my wife I was supposed to do about a quarter mile but when I did, I had so much atrophy already and a lack of muscle activation in my legs from being in the hospital bed for two weeks and laying in a certain position for almost half a day for for a surgery and being stretched and positioned in different ways. You know, it wasn’t just my chest being sore. It wasn’t just things being you know, needing to heal on the inside. I had, I had major issues with glute activation, I had major issues in one of my calves, I had issues in both legs in different part parts, you know, so I would have, it would be something crazy like my, my left foot, my right ankle, my left calf, my entire left or right thigh, you know, both the quad and hamstring and my left glute would all be having like pain, or they would feel dead, like they were asleep. Like if you slept wrong on something and, and that muscle was just dead and not active, and it needed the blood through. So the idea of trying to walk a quarter mile was extremely difficult. My wife went with me, and I got a wild idea, you know, let’s walk to the lake and back. And so we did, it took, I think, like three hours or something. But I ended up walking eight miles, just a couple of days after getting out of the hospital, it was still just under the two week mark, since my open heart surgery, I believe, incredibly slow. And it was incredibly painful. Some of the muscle activation issues and the weird sensations in my muscles didn’t go away during the whole eight miles, some of it actually got worse. So there was there was a lot of anxiety there. But I knew I wanted to get moving, I wanted to get up more more often than they recommended. I wanted to walk way longer. I started what they call the cardiac rehab at the hospital, you know very shortly after that, and I realized that they had my best interests at stake and they didn’t want people to just start pounding you know, lifting the weights and, and sprinting on the treadmill and all this stuff, you know, you do have to walk before you run and and when you have an ordeal like I did, you know there’s you step back even even further. But I was always pushing up against their maximum of what they would allow me to do in house, you know, with all the EKG wires strapped up to me and they they were constantly getting on to me for raising my heart rate too high or going too fast on the handbike or, you know, having me do you know, 10 reps with a three pound dumbbell and I’m just sitting there. And if they weren’t paying attention, I would do 3040 50 reps. And until they told me to stop and and that was how I approached saying that and I was doing it intentionally, you know, I would basically do as much as they would let me get away with and I just kept doing that and and I was doing even more I would continue to do the same things outside. So I got back to the the weightlifting and everything but movement was huge. The shift in mindset was huge. And I have some very real limitations for the rest of my life. I have what’s called a fully dissected descending aorta, a CT scan that was done a few weeks after I got out of the hospital that this was driven by the fact that I was already pushing the doctors to clear me for returning to races, they first did a wanted to do a CT scan to check the integrity of the rupture repair. I basically have a flexi pipe, it’s called a dacron graft in my upper aortic arch that replaces the portion of my aorta that completely ruptured. What they discovered in the CT scan that they didn’t know before is that my dissection, the damage and separation to the inner lining of my aorta had extended far past the ruptured part. And basically went through my entire aorta and down into my iliacs, which is where your your aorta splits off into your hips before it stopped dissecting. And so the surgery report and the CTA report from the specialists who did that talked about all these false lumens and false pathways and false tunnels, that blood is going through how one of my kidneys is supplied by a false lumen, or one of those false channels that made me ineligible for a stent to try to, you know, reinforce my aorta in any way. Because if they were to put a big standard across, you know, throughout my whole aorta, I would potentially lose one of my kidneys, for example, because if they put a stent in the main channel of your aorta, and one of my kidneys is supplied by a false tube that goes between that channel and the other one. A stent basically, is where it almost looks like a Chinese finger trap, but they put it inside of an artery and expand it. So it’s like a reinforced wall inside of your artery or inside of whatever vein or artery that they they put it in, and they can’t really do that to my aorta, because I would I would lose at least one organ went So it’s pretty crazy. So I have an aorta, which is severely weaker than anybody else’s. Except for the very few handful of people with my same condition, I have lifting restrictions that the doctors, even the ones who reluctantly gave me permission to start going back to races and everything, they don’t want me lifting more than half of my body weight for the rest of my life. Blood pressure management is huge. For me, I was on blood pressure medication for a while. And even now that I’m off, by way of using natural alternatives, off of all pharma products, and I’m proud of that, and my blood pressure is still under under control, I still have the reality that an aorta, essentially a long tubular balloon, and my balloon is thinner than everybody else’s. So I still have to watch, I’m still not supposed to do any kind of straining, I’m not supposed to do pull ups, I’m not supposed to do anything where I lift heavy weight and hold my breath, all of those things drives up acute blood pressure. And that’s the that’s the thing that I really have to be careful of. So those who have seen me on the obstacle racing course have seen me pausing before obstacles and doing a lot of breathing in any obstacles that I chose to disobey the doctors on. And, and do, despite not having permission, I would do those with a straight arm, and try to breathe through the whole thing and just kind of swing from certain obstacles and use my grip strength as the method of sustaining me on the obstacle rather than then pulling myself up. And using, you know, powerlifting moves and bicep control and everything. And you know, and that’s a stark contrast to how I used to do obstacles, which would be to muscle through everything, do it as fast as possible, oftentimes holding your breath. And you know, I couldn’t do any of that stuff anymore. So I have throughout my return to obstacle course, racing, I’ve had to make a lot of adaptations, I’ve had to do a lot of penalty loops and penalty burpees instead of doing the actual obstacles, especially at first, it’s been crazy. It’s been a wild ride, it’s been full of enormous amounts of anxiety, enormous amounts of second guessing, I would come off of obstacles or finish races sometimes, and I would have weird sensations in my chest. And I would be like, Oh, no, you know, did I just do something that’s going to end my life? Now? Did I get too stupid? Did I selfishly returned to do this race that I didn’t necessarily need. And now I won’t be able to walk my daughter down the aisle. You know, I constantly have dealt with all of those things over the last two years. But the thing that kept me going, I tried to be as sensible as I can, while also pushing the envelope as much as I can, you know, there’s a balance there. But basically, doctors had said that sports would be insanely risky. They told me that if I went and did the Spartan Races, especially if I did more obstacles than what they approved, of which I ended up doing, that it would be a big risk to myself. They also said that if I went the opposite direction, and decided that I wasn’t willing to take the risk, and I went back to my previous lifestyle of sitting on the couch and watching TV, that it’s likely that I would get depressed because of how much I love the loves sports and how much I had loved. Finally getting back to it, and how obsessive I was with it, that the diet would probably slip the emotional health and mental health would probably slip. And they said if you get sedentary and depressed and everything and you’re wasting away on the couch, you could die from a hard sneeze, because your arteries will get hard and because they’re already thinner, you could rupture again from a violent sneeze. So it was when I heard that after poking and prodding with the doctors and having these conversations where I’m asking why and why but but why? Why specifically, don’t you recommend this? You know, you know, at first they wanted, you know, just know, to the Spartans, you know, chill out, you know, dial things back, I kept asking why, and not just why that why specifically, what is the specific danger that I’m facing? And is there a way that I can adapt to that? Is there a way that I can make an adjustment so that it’s not as much of an acute danger? And that’s when I’ve, you know, got these additional details and we had the deep discussions because they, they knew that I wasn’t going to drop it and they told me about you know, potentially on one end of the extreme dying from a heart sneeze and, and that’s basically when I made the decision. it, okay? If it’s going to be risky no matter what, if I’m gonna be darned if I do darned if I don’t, I don’t want to be the person who dies from a hard sneeze, I don’t want to die on a Spartan course I don’t want to die in the middle of a triathlon, I don’t want to die period. But I certainly don’t want to die. Having lived a life of fear and die from something as stupid as sneezing. So I made a conscious choice that you’re going to return to sports. And I did, and I did it in a in a very big way.
Richard Conner 20:32
That’s amazing. That is so incredible. And, you know, it’s incredible how you ask the right questions, you really probe and ask the right questions to find out, how could you return to sports? And how could you maintain some level of the lifestyle that you’ve built, you know, since your previous injuries? So thank you for sharing that. And what’s next for you? You know, you’ve you’ve been able to come back and do OCR, not in the ways you were able to do before, but still kind of maintain that. Where does this take you next? Where are you going?
Josh Koehler 21:03
We’re at a kind of exciting transition. So I did return to sports like like we both said, I did over 100 Spartan Races in the two years that followed my open heart surgery. That’s how I got the world record, you know, Spartan Race has this thing, or or they had a thing. I think it’s discontinued now in favor of another program. But for many years, Spartan had had a thing where, if you do three races in a year, each of their main distances, it’s called a trifecta. And then if you want to be one of the crazy people who, you know, goes in for the season pass and you compete against all the other crazies try to see who can get the most trifectas. You know, there’s, there’s kind of a subgroup of people within, within Spartan racing, that, you know, we compete against each other for the trifecta account, which have to travel all over the world. So I did that I had done it in 2019. And I earned an award, which is basically a presentation of a huge porcelain shield to you. It’s a word of the people who get 13 trifectas in a single race season, which is very difficult to do, it takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of logistics, your vacations are pretty much race patients only, and everything but if you pull it off, and you go to the trifecta World Championship, you’re awarded this this huge replica Spartan shield, and I earned one in 2019, I swore at the time, I would never do it again, because of the toll it takes on your body, the expense, the the buy in from your family and everybody around you to be able to pull that off. You’re having to get help from family members, you know, washing your gear or staging your gear or prepping your gear or prepping your food. It was a family effort. You know, the family did a lot of the races with you. But a lot of it is kind of selfish if you’re going to try to get a shield. And so I had done that had no desire to ever do that, again, 2020 was going to be my year of of going for podiums. I was so close at the end of 2019, just from doing so many races, my fitness level had grown so much, you know, then the heart surgery comes, I decide to return to sports anyways as an adaptive athlete. So part of my goal in my return was I got the wild idea of I want to be the first person to earn a Spartan shield after open heart surgery. So I spent 2020 Trifecta chasing, again doing every Spartan Race that I could possibly logistically arrive at financially afford, et cetera, et cetera. And I got to the races, I was having to do a million burpees. At first, I was ungodly, slow, fully adaptive athlete, you know, severely compromised on the inside, I had to be super careful with all heavy lifting, super careful with a lot of the upper upper body obstacles like Olympus. I didn’t get Olympus successfully for the first time until halfway through the 2022 season. You know, so I did. I did 2021 Having a burpee out or take a penalty loop on Olympus and several other obstacles. You know, but I did that. And I did everything according to age group or elite rules because I wanted to know that I earned every single race you know, I was going after this shield, this prestigious award. I think only 14 People had gotten it in 2019. And I wanted to get it again. But I didn’t want there to be an asterisk by it. You know any? Any asterisk that was attached to me getting another shield I wanted it to be a positive thing that Yeah, I did this. Despite having a torn rotator cuff despite having all of those previous surgeries despite having open heart surgery, despite being slower and having to be exposed to the cold and the heat you know longer than everybody else. Despite having the races be hard. err than what they used to be. I did it, I wanted those to be the only possible asterisks associated with my goal. I didn’t want to have, oh, you you got this award. But you basically just walked the course, you know, you walked around obstacles you didn’t do the penalties. People do that sometimes depending on their fitness journey and their injury, your journey, and that’s fine. I’m not dogging on anybody. But for me, since I was going for that shield again. And it was to try to set that huge comeback goal for me being the first person earn one after open heart surgery. I wanted to do it to a tee. So I insisted on doing all obstacles, all penalties. You know, the freezing cold dunk walls, no matter what you know, and just try to adapt my gear and fueling and tenacity, raise that to the task at hand. And just get through it. And I did that in 2021 only to have the trifecta World Championship canceled at the last minute. So that that was going to be my last hurrah, and then transition to something else. Since I got cancelled. I didn’t get my shield, I didn’t get my goal. You know, like, I technically accomplished the goal. But I didn’t get the fruit of my labor, I had nothing to show for it except my stats.
So 2022, I did it again. And I wanted to not only do it again, and get to shields at the 2022 Trifecta World Championship. You know, I wanted to also beat my previous trife personal Trifecta account, you know, I upped the ante. I had done 17 trifectas in 2019. And I wanted 18 Plus in 2022. So I finished the season with 20 trifectas, which is, you know, that’s a minimum of 60 Spartan Races that count towards the 2022 season. And I had a wonderful experience. We did this journey, my daughter joined me, I had used safety partners and a lot of my races and in 2021, it was oftentimes do more harm than scars, or other friends in the age group space. Leo Bryant is one of them that would run with me sometimes and sacrificially give up his placement in age group to kind of not help me, but run side by side to kind of keep an eye on me. And there are so many amazing friends who would do stuff like that. You know, some of you in the OCR world will know Leo Bryant is Doc be one of the finest humans you’ll ever meet. And you know, look him up on Instagram. Great guy, great friend, love you forever, brother. People like that got me through in 2022, I was kind of more on my own. But my wife didn’t want me doing the races completely solo. So my daughter would go on all the trips with me at first and she ended up having the goal of being the youngest person to get a shield, which she did. So she kind of stopped after getting 13 trifectas because I was more than enough. She’s got a super busy life and taking college classes with dual enrollment and everything. You know, my my family, just wonderful. But, you know, I kept going and you know, the whole family went to Greece, you know, my daughter got her shield, she said a record as the youngest to get one, I got my two as the two time person to ever get one after open heart surgery. Between that, I wouldn’t say that I got burnt out on Spartan Races, but I’ve done enough of them that I’ve had my fill, I will continue to do Spartan Races in a limited capacity. The intention going forward though, is when I do Spartan Races, I will usually be doing them as a guide on course guide and serving with, you know, Operation Enduring warrior team Oscar Mike, or more hardened scars as a guide helping other people. I had spent the last two years basically chasing after personal glory and personal goals. You know, I wanted to have all those in your face moments to all the negative people who doubted me and everything. And you know, I accomplished all that. So, you know, realistically, I can’t ever go for a podium and in something as intensive Spartan Races anymore. So I’ve kind of accomplished everything that I can accomplish in obstacle course racing. I don’t have anything left to prove. I don’t have the financial resources left to you know, Trifecta Chase indefinitely. So we’re kind of dialing things back from a Spartan Race standpoint. And we’re just going to do a couple of venues. The plan going forward is to do triathlons. So a big change in our family’s lives is that we’re going to do triathlons and we’re going You know, because triathlons are so expensive, we’re gonna stick mostly local on the East Coast, instead of, you know, taking it worldwide, like before. But along with that, I kind of realized that I wanted a mission that would kind of be more than just about myself. Part of that was, you know, the decision that when I would do OCR is again, I will do them mostly as a guide, helping other adaptive athletes, I will be chasing a little bit of personal goals and personal glory in the triathlons. But you know, with my page being so OCR specific, and me kind of wanting to a different avenue to have a little bit of a mission. I started a website, a second Instagram page and kind of just a new venture, where it’s called Second Chance racing. You know, I wanted a place where it wasn’t going to be just about obstacle course racing. I’ll always love obstacle course racing, I will continue to do a handful of races each year. That’s the plan. But we’re trying some new stuff and I want to be able to feature other people. So we’ve got the the new Instagram page called Tusi racing, it’s to see dot racing. So I’ve got to see underscore OCR, which is Second Chance obstacle course racing. That’s my old trusty account, I got to see dot racing, which is Second Chance racing and outdoor sports. And what this endeavor is I want to share some of my continued journey from multiple standpoints. from a nutritional standpoint, injury recovery standpoint, you know, cardiac warriors standpoint, and sports other than just OCR. But I also want to regularly feature other people who are also doing the same thing. So the goal is to have regular features and stories and posts that talk about other people, because it’s not just about me, I am not the only one accomplishing things, I am not the only one overcoming things, I am not the only one going through things. And oftentimes, other people are going through even bigger, more astronomical things than I am. I want to tell their stories, not just mine, it’s not about just me. So we’ve been able to do three features. So far already. We’ve had, we’ve had an individual with an incredible weight loss journey. We’ve had an individual who had cancer and came back from the cancer and did a full Ironman shortly after being declared cancer free. And my first, my first feature on the page was a an amazing young lady named Jenna, who has a spinal cord injury. And we’ve got cancer survivor spinal cord and weight loss journey. But you know, we’re going to have other cardiac athletes, other injury recovery journeys featured, you know, people who were overcoming the stigma of, of age, for example, you know, there’s I’ve met some people who were like, over 70, and they’re just absolutely crushing it in their sport and doing things that everybody told him that they’d never be able to do. But they’re proving people wrong, I wanted to have a place where, if you’ve got a similar story as mine, you know, you’ve, you’ve had this major injury, and we’re told to basically pack things up, and you decided not to, I want to, I want to see that story. And I want to share it, you know, that’s basically that’s, that’s going to be a big focus for us going forward. I had a soft launch of my my website, which is to see racing.com There’s a lot more to come. It’s basically just a summary of what it’s going to be about right now. And then a referral back to the the to see dot racing Instagram page. But, you know, we have plans to build that out further and get content and blogs up there. And we just want to give back to the community that has helped us and I got a new logo and some personal branding that kind of goes along with it. I actually have it on my desk, we we just got some custom swim caps going on. So we’ve got this, you know, the two C stands for the second chance and they the EKG blip at the top. You know, one of the mottos for this is that, you know, if you have if you still have a heartbeat, you still have a chance to get back at doing the outdoor things that you love. You know it if you’re not in the ground, you can get back you know, it might not be in the same capacity. It might not be in the capacity that you want. But you can do it you know, and we want to build a community of support. We want to build a community of income her judgment, just with a couple features that we’ve already done, we’ve been able to touch some lives, not only give encouragement, and an outlet for the people that we’re featuring, but to show people in different walks of life, male, female, you no matter what your race is, your ages, your sport is your gender is, you know, people are accomplishing thing that people are going through very hard things. And we want to be part of that community. You know, we want to tie into that and be another source of encouragement and a dark world. And that’s where we’re going, you know, triathlons is going to be our family’s personal avenue of sports going forward with a little bit of obstacle courses, right? Or obstacle course races mixed in. I’m going to do my first ever marathon this year, actually, to Marine Corps Marathon and the Richmond marathon are both on my radar. But But yeah, other than doing those from a personal personal health standpoint, we’re promoting the the to see racing and trying to bring other people into it. So that’s, that’s our big endeavor.
Richard Conner 36:11
All right, well, congratulations on your new endeavor. And, you know, congratulations on everything that you’ve been through. With your personal journey, I mean, your personal journeys, inspiring alone. And it’s wonderful that you’re going to share the journeys of others. So, you know, I appreciate you taking the time to share this with our listeners. And then if I kind of recap some of the things that we talked about that really resonated with me, you know, kind of going back to your mindset, and wanting to make a change in your life after kind of seeing where you were, and not being where you want it to be. And having that mindset to do that. And, you know, kind of the movement piece, I love what you did to kind of push the envelope there. But still, you know, understanding that there are some limitations and doing what you could and asking the right questions, to make sure that you want it to get to where you wanted to be safely. And I love what you talked about, you know, family, having, you know, family kind of do these races and support you that’s super important. And you’re right, not everybody has that. And that’s not only motivation to keep going, but that’s the support that you need to do, you know, the incredible things that you’ve done and overcoming the adversity that you did. And you know, one more thing about, you know, finding that not only finding balance, but also the variety of things in life, right, whether it’s in nutrition, whether it’s in fitness, or, or just in other areas of life. So you just shared so many wonderful tips and stories, and I am really, really grateful that you took the time to do so. So what I’ll do is I will put your information in the show notes for our listeners to find you and follow your amazing journey online. And once again, I just want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing your journey.
Josh Koehler 37:54
And I want to thank you, you know, I don’t remember if I said it at the beginning, but thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for giving me a voice on your podcast, you know, I don’t I don’t have a podcast. Thank you for giving me the airtime thank you for letting me tell my story. And being an encouragement to me, you’ve been an encouragement to so many people you’ve done through your podcast, what I hope to do eventually through to see racing and that’s to, to give other people an outlet to share their stories, you know, because sometimes one person story is the roadmap to success for somebody else, you know, I, we talked about earlier, I didn’t really have any kind of a roadmap like that, and kind of wasted a decade plus in my life, you know, so to speak. And I want to prevent other people from from taking that long to find their roadmap, back to recovery, the roadmap back to success. Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Thank you for your kindness and generosity. We believe that that God has big things in store for everybody. We’re a faith based family and, and God has worked so many miracles in our lives. And it’s, you know, we want to use that in the correct way. We don’t want to, we want to live a you know, a purpose driven life. You know, we don’t want to just be that person who succumbs to the negativity and takes the path of least resistance, you know, we we want to live an out of box, you know, somewhat inspiring, adventurous lifestyle, you know, and show others how to do the same and encouraging other people and just loving other people and helping other people is what we have a passion for. So I thank you again. It’s an honor to be on your show and it’s an honor to be your friend.
Richard Conner 39:48
Of course, of course we are going to be cheering for you as you move into this next phase. So thank you so much again, Josh, and have a great day.
Josh Koehler 39:55
Thank you.
Intro/Outro 39:57
That’s it for this episode of Inspire to Run Podcast we hope you are inspired to take control of your health and fitness and take it to the next level be sure to click the subscribe button to join our community and also please rate and review thanks for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai