—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
The Open Road Awaits: Living A Limitless Life With Diabetes – An EPIC Journey With Tracy Herbert
Introduction
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the show. I’m your host, Zander Sprague. I am so honored to be joined by Tracy Herbert. Tracy, introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do.
It all started back when I was seventeen years old. That’s when my life totally changed. I was diagnosed with a horrific disease while I was in the ICU fighting for my life and the doctor walked in. He puts his hands on his hips and says, “Young lady, you’re going to be dead in twenty years. You’re going to die with horrible complications. You will go blind. You’re going to have your legs amputated. You’ll be on dialysis for the rest of your life. You’re also going to have to take shots several times a day for the rest of your life.” He turned around and walked away.
I had no hope. My parents and I were sitting there like, “What did he just say? I’m sorry, I don’t think I understood all that.” He’d also mentioned that I would never be able to have children and my life was pretty much over. Everybody wants to beat the doctor up but I am thankful for that physician because that physician had me start changing my mindset while I was lying in that hospital bed.
Back then, it was called juvenile diabetes. Now, it’s called Type-1 diabetes, which most of the world has Type-2 diabetes. We’re not going to talk about diabetes or anything. This is the one you have to start taking insulin shots for the rest of your life because there’s no cure. Everything I started doing, I was in the hospital for about two weeks. Every class I went to and committee thing I went to was all the same thing, “You’re going to die in twenty years. You’re going to die with horrible complications and there’s no hope.”
I’m sitting there, maybe it was a blessing that I was a seventeen-year-old smart high school senior because I kept saying, “That’s not true.” Everybody looked at me like I wasn’t willing to accept my diagnosis but I was. What I wanted to do was, again, change my mindset. On my first outing, all my friends and I went to a movie. We went to see Animal House, which probably most people remember that movie. I don’t know how many remember it from when it first came out.
My mom reminded me as I ran out the door, “Tracy, remember, you can’t eat anything.” She didn’t say it because we didn’t have the money or to be mean. What she was doing was helping me learn what it going to be like the rest of my life living with this disease. I went up to the concession stand clerk after all my friends had ordered the popcorn that you smell when you walk in and the soda and everything else. I asked for a small cup so I could get a cup out of the water fountain.
I got a drink because I didn’t want to be that different from everybody else. The concession stand clerk looked at me like I was out of space. She said, “No.” I said, “I’ll be glad to pay for it.” She said, “No.” I ran out of that movie theater, crying, screaming, and raising my arms high up screaming, “Why me? As I got into bed that night and still sobbing as a seventeen-year-old child. I said, “Tracy, you have two choices. You could either be bitter or you could be better. What are you going to choose?” At that moment, my life changed. I’m still living with that many years later. I’m going to be better no matter the situation.
You could either be bitter, or you could be better.
Truly an epic journey there, Tracy. Again, tying into so many of my themes, the epic unexpected. Who would have thought? Certainly, Type-1 diabetes is something that affects many people. I’m not going to spend a lot of time here on diabetes, but it does certainly require that mindset of, “I’m not going to be that person or I will do everything I can to not be that statistic and not to lose my leg, go blind, and all of that.”
Passion For Road Biking
It takes work and I certainly know. In many of my epic journeys, there’s a lot of work involved. Another thing I know about you is we share something in common. You do a little further than me, but we both like to road bike. I love being able to get out on my bike and explore. If I am correct, you did a bit of a ride a couple of years ago.
It was just a short little ride. Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge. I finished at the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City on the Dr. Oz Show. It was 3,527 miles.
Who’s counting?
The 27 miles, I counted because I got lost the entire trip. I did it because I wanted to have the right mindset. Many people I meet are without hope. It doesn’t matter their age, diagnosis, or they’re just tired of all the negativity in the world. I started this more as a celebration because I was “celebrating” my diagnosis 40 years earlier saying, “Wait a minute, Tracy, look what I have to celebrate.” I decided to go for the bike ride and didn’t know what to expect.
I had no ultimate plan except I knew I was going to get on my bicycle. I was going to take one day at a time and just ride like we did as kids. Everybody kept saying, “You need a plan. You need to do this.” I was like, “Of course, you have to have a plan. You have to have a good GPS.” There’s a lot of things. As you as a long-distance bicyclist, you know as well. You get on your bike and you ride just like we did as kids. No agenda except to have a great trip and try to meet as many people.
I am planning on riding 30 miles or 50 miles or 100 miles. I talked all the time about creating some structure for your journey because it helps all of us to say, “I know that I’d like to end up here. Whether it takes me 5 hours or 8 hours because, along the way, I stopped and had a great lunch by the side.” Very impressive to ride across the country. What route did you take? You started in San Francisco, but did you drop South or the Middle of America or North of America?
More middle of America because when I wrote my first book, I did a lot of TV appearances. I had connections throughout several cities that I was going to be writing through. I wanted to spread my message of, “No matter your diagnosis, your setbacks, or your age,” because I was a grandma of four at that time. Now, I’m a grandma of six. Very few grandmas get on their bicycles and ride across the country.
No matter your diagnosis, your setbacks, or your age, you can get on your bicycle and ride across the country.
I wanted to specifically get on some of these TV appearances to be able to spread that message of hope. I started in San Francisco and then wound down to Sacramento. It was a crazy little thing all along Salt Lake City, Utah, Reno, and Nevada. I’m going out of order now but you know it. You have to think through your mind, where have you been?
It was a strangest thing. For example, in Sacramento, I was waiting for the light to turn green. I had that gut feeling that there was somebody I needed to talk to at the bus stop. She looked at me and I looked at her. She said, “It must be nice to ride a bike across the city.” I said, “I’m going to New York City.” I got off my bike and we started talking. Such a sweet lovely girl. Probably in her mid-30s, I would say. Beautiful smile but she was extremely overweight.
She was telling me how embarrassed she was because she was waiting for her brother to pick her up. Her house was 4 or 5 houses down, but she was unable to walk that far. The health coach in me started coming out and saying, “Can you do this? Can you do that?” She’s like, “I can’t.” I said, “Could you walk into under your driveway?” The same as me lying in my bed crying and screaming, “Why me?” She had that light bulb moment. She said, “I think I can.” I said, “Walk into your driveway, walk back, and rest. Every day expand on that. When you can go further, walk to your neighbor’s house.”
She started crying and saying, “She’s my best friend and she has to always come to my house.” Which is so sad. I still get goosebumps. As I was riding my bicycle really close to New York City, I got a message from her. She said, “I have to tell you, Tracy, I signed up for my first 5K walk.” That’s 3.1 miles. I didn’t even realize the weight would start falling off. She said, “I didn’t change anything else. Every day, I would walk as far as I could and walk back.”
It’s not like it’s rocket science but so many of us are setting that mindset that I can’t versus I can. What a joy because she started losing weight, but most importantly, she started having more energy. That’s what I was so excited about. I met people like that. I would get off my bicycle and I would talk or like in Wyoming, which I don’t know exactly where you live, but there were a lot of mountains in California, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. I’m a Texan. Born and raised in Texas.
I don’t see many mountains but people would roll their windows down. They’d honk and they’d say, “You can do it.” They’re tough things. In life, we need teamwork. That’s what I felt so much of this bicycle ride. It was meeting people. People stop and give me water, and buy me lunch when I’m stopped in small towns across the United States. It was such a huge eye-opener for me because I was in the mindset of thinking, “Everybody’s bad. Everything’s horrible.” I found the complete opposite.
One sweet construction lady was a traffic control making sure that people could get through on bicycles, you hit traffic sometimes and construction. She reached into her cooler and gave me her last bottle of water. I said, “No, you keep it. You need it more than I do.” She said, “No, Ma’am. You’re going further, so I need you to drink this water.” Sweet people like that.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area, so I know that I can’t ride very far without going up a hill. This body goes downhill well but it’s much harder uphill. I’ve also driven across the country a few times. You’re right, they are tactically beautiful and you meet incredible people along the way. On your ride, what was the most challenging section that you did? Was it the mountains through Utah and Wyoming?
For me, because I’m directionally challenged. It’s been that way my whole life. That’s one of the things my kids were saying is, “How are you going to do this without getting lost?” I’m like, “We’ll figure that out as we get going.” I got lost. Now, I did leave San Francisco okay because I plotted that course out. I thought, “I don’t want to spend six months in San Francisco riding around.” I was leaving Truckee, California. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that area. Beautiful area.
I know Truckee.
It was beautiful. It was always supposed to be three hours from Truckee to Reno, Nevada. It was going to be a beautiful ride. I was looking forward to it. I didn’t have a whole lot of supplies packed with me for that short three-hour ride and I got lost and did I get lost because I ended up climbing over a mountain going into Reno. I have no idea what happened. Carrying my bicycle on my shoulder. I’m crying over boulders. It is big. You’re familiar with that. As I’m heading back down, I’m sliding down because I’m not in proper hiking boots. I’m a big hiker and a backpacker. I was not dressed appropriately for this.
Bike gear is not hiking gear.
What scared me the most was before I got lost, I was riding through this little bit of town in Truckee and she said, “Be careful, the bears are active.” I thought, “I didn’t realize that.” I’m driving by an elementary school and their fences are like maybe six feet high. As I was riding by, I was like, “Why do they have a high fence? I’d never seen that before.” I started thinking. I thought, “Tracy, there are a lot of bears in this area. Be careful.”
Not only am I afraid of bears. I’m carrying my bicycle across and over this huge mountain but then everything I heard was, it could have been a squirrel. I was like, “That’s a bear. What do I do?” When I got to Reno, I went and stopped and bought bear spray for the rest of my trip. Even in Chicago where there are no bears. In Pennsylvania, there was. Everywhere I went, I carried that just in case. That was my security blanket.
Technically speaking, there are bears in Chicago, but they’re a football team.
I almost said that but I thought you might know that because I’m a huge football fan.
I’m originally from Massachusetts, so I’m world champion, New England Patriots fan. Although, not so much a world champion now.
I’m from Dallas, Texas, and that’s all I’m going to say about world championships.
Not Yet Philosophy
There you go. We don’t want this to devolve into which dynasty is better. One of the things that I talk about in my book and I love to talk to my guests about is these two words that are so powerful. I think you’ll like them, not yet. For me, not yet is such a powerful thing for any of us on our epic journey because some of our journeys take a long time.
Your bike ride obviously took a long time. Am I in New York? Not yet. It doesn’t mean you’re not getting there. This means it’s going to take you some time to get there. When you’re dealing with a major medical condition like diabetes Type-1, there’s a not yet. Have I figured out how much medication I need? Not yet. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to. All too often, the answer is no. It’s like that first stop. I wanted to know from you like that concept of not yet. How does that resonate with you? Where has it applied in your life?
Not yet, to me, I always say not on my watch. The same thing. I always say that. When I was riding my bike across the country, I heard about a young lady who had died in the middle of her night from having a low blood sugar with Type-1 diabetes. The first time she’d ever spent the night away from her house and everybody was devastated.
As I was riding that day, I was getting angrier. I kept saying, “Not on my watch. What can I do?” Not what can the world do, but what can I do as Tracy Herbert does to help somebody else? Because of that, we started a foundation that gives life-saving technology to children with Type-1 diabetes whose parents either can’t afford to be humongous. It’s very expensive. We help children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get it. That’s the same as not yet or not on my watch, is never again. We’ve done that since my ride’s been over and helping children all across the country. It’s not yet or not on my watch. Whatever you want to say. – Absolutely, same
The same concept.
When I left the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn’t even think about, “Not yet. I’m not in New York City.” I didn’t even visualize New York City because I wanted to get through the streets of San Francisco, the driving and the hills, and everything else. If I would have said, “Tracy, you’ve got 3,527 miles until you get to the Brooklyn Bridge.” I would have been overwhelmed. Instead, I just said, “I’m going for a bike ride.” You can’t just have the mindset of thinking, “I have to achieve this goal now,” as you mentioned. A 100-mile bike ride is not going to be as fast as walking around the block. You have to say, “I’m not there yet but I’m better than I was yesterday.”
I can say, having run some marathons, that mindset. I honestly wish in marathons that you didn’t get a mile marker until about mile five because as hard as you try not to think about at mile two that you got 24.2 more, human nature is you got it. I can say, “I know where I want to get to. I know what my goal is but I have to deal with the road that’s right in front of me.” It’s fine to say, “I know I’ve got to go up over this mountain pass.” Until you get there, spending 30 miles, “I got this big mountain pass. What am I going to do?” That’s not going to help you.
When you get there, you’re like, “I got to deal with it.” If I have to put my bike up on my shoulder and hike up. That’s what I’m going to do because ultimately, it’s not letting the roadblocks that come in front of you or those detours say, “I’m going to figure it out.” I see this all the time when I’m working with people. We all have epic dreams, big things that we want to do. We talk about, “Someday, I want to go here. I want to do this.”
Oftentimes, people don’t do anything about it and I’m messed up. I’m like, “Why?” Often, the answer is, “I don’t know everything that I need to do but just like you’re out of due. I’m going to have to figure it out as I go, anyway. I’m going to have a relative idea of how I’m getting there. I’m going to take relatively this route.” I’m guessing that you didn’t just go, “I’m on my bike. As long as I’m riding East.” You’ve probably had an idea day to day of, “I need to get to here. Here’s the road I should be on to get there.”
Throughout the country, I did have speaking engagements. I did have TV appearances. I had newspaper interviews and so forth. It wasn’t just like I was all over the place. I did have specific places and times. I tried not to fill it up too much because I wanted to make this also about getting away from things. People always ask, “What books did you listen to? What music did you listen to?” I didn’t listen to anything. It was just me riding my bicycle. Listening to Semis sometimes and birds chirping sometimes and enjoying being free. Does that make sense?
I’m all about you’re out there. There’s so much epically spectacular beauty. Why would you want to wall yourself off and not have a moment to go, “Listen to those birds,” or any of that? That’s great. How long did it take you? I know my audience is probably like, “Zander, how long did it take?”
I could have done it in six weeks. Originally, that’s what I had planned, but it ended up taking three months. I’m very competitive, first of all. I had to tell myself, “Tracy, slow down. Look around. See who you can help.” I had to work with all the TV stations along the way, which took some time then speaking engagements and meetings I had with different people in the medical world.
Some of the who’s who of the medical world, to be quite honest. I had to plan it like that. I was going to take a rest day every once in a while. After six days, I thought, “I’m going to take a rest day.” I thought about an hour later, “My body doesn’t want to rest yet.” I’m very in tune with my body. I have to be when you have diabetes or anything wrong with you, or even when you age. I listened to my body. I would take a break when my body said, “It’s time to take a break.”
One time, I was just on the side of the road. I met a couple and I had a flat tire. I was getting ready to change it. They not only changed my tire but they also gave me extra supplies along the route. They even invited me to dinner. I had people all over the country inviting me to spend the night at their house. I got to meet the first recipient of my foundation. I got to meet them in the lower part of Chicago, the suburb of Chicago. He also had Type-1 diabetes.
He never knew anybody with Type-1 diabetes. I was the first person he’d ever met with Type-1 diabetes. You bet I took that time. His grandmother reached out to me and said, “We’d love to meet you.” That’s what it was all about for me much more so than being so competitive. When I do 100-mile bike rides, I’m going to be very, very competitive, and I have been in the past.
Another question people ask me is, “How far did you ride every day?” That changed every day because like in Wyoming, every 76 miles, there’s a rest stop. That’s where you stop. Every day was a whole different variety. Again, I go with my gut a lot to find out, “Where would be a good place to stop? Who could I talk to?” It’s an interesting story. It sounds like I had no plan but I did but it wouldn’t about me so much as, “Who could I help? Who could I inspire? Who could I encourage?”
Tracy’s Books
I see that you have authored a few books. Do you want to share a little about your books? If my audience is interested, what are your books about?
My first book is Diabetes Tragedy to Triumph. I was overwhelmed by the response. It became an international bestseller. What’s interesting is I had dyslexia as a child. Back then in the ‘60s, they didn’t know what dyslexia was. I was dumb and stupid. It’s what everybody called me. My doctor, my endocrinologist, who helps people with diabetes, he said, “Tracy, you’ve got to get this message out there.”
When I was speaking, doctors would come up to me after I got off stage and they’d say, “How are you still alive? What are you doing?” Finally, I thought, “Tracy, you need to write your book and see what happens with it.” That’s what I did. It’s just layman’s terms. More people buy it with Type-2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer than even Type-1 because I’m very limited on Type-1 diabetes because it’s such a unique disease that’s overwhelming for everybody.
I’m shocked that the Heart Association asked me to come speak at one of their events. I thought, “That’s interesting.” The first time my books had ever sold out, that book had ever sold out. The event planner said, “It’s because everything you said is the exact same thing all the doctors tell people.” It was more written in layman’s terms. My second book is Ride for Hope, which chronicles my ride across the country.
I wrote it three different times. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. I did it as a diary because people wanted to know. I had a lot of social media followers. I did social media in the morning and the evening because people wanted to hear what I was doing. I would sing. I would do crazy things. I left my heart in San Francisco is how I started the ride and New York. New York is how I finished the ride. Until the camera started on Dr. Rosha, then I quit singing because I have a horrible voice.
My third book, I co-authored with my husband because I love him dearly. A long time into our marriage, my husband knew what I did. He hears me talking to people all the time. He knows what I do. He was overweight and on three different medications. The doctors were trying to say, “You need to start changing your eating plan and everything.” One day he woke up, again, it’s that light bulb moment that we all get. He said, “I want to change.”
I have his permission to share this. He’s off all of his medication. He’s been able to keep his weight off for maybe 12, 13, or 14 years now. My husband in his late 60s, he and I backpacked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon months ago and spent three nights then hiked back out carrying all of our supplies with us and everything else. We always say it’s not age-related at all. It’s what you put your mindset to. He and I co-authored that book together, which was very interesting but very difficult because we had a lot of squabbles back and forth. I’m just saying.
I get that. I’ve authored three books and what I joke about is the fact that I’m a talker. Not a typer. The fact that I have three books and two of them are Amazon bestsellers blows my mind. If you told me that in college, I would have told you that you were drunk or there was no way. The same as you, I saw some needs that weren’t there. I’m like, “I know that.” I wrote a book. My first book is about sibling loss because I lost my sister years ago to murder.
A friend of mine made off-handed comments. It’s funny how people in our life will say something and it sparked something in us. I met with her about six weeks after her brother passed away and had coffee. I said, “How are you doing?” She goes, “I’m fine. It was weird. I was at Barnes and Noble and tons of books on loss of a parent or loss of a child or loss of a pet but nothing on loss of the sibling.”
As I walked away, I was like, “I know that. I can write a book about that,” and I did in my work around sibling loss and stuff. Parents kept coming up and asking me, “I lost a child, but I have other living children. Why don’t they cry?” That became my second book, which is for parents to understand their living child’s grief and understand what the siblings are going through. All of that to say, just like you didn’t set out to do it, but it came to me. I’m like, “I need to do this. It’s important.”
It has also been well received, which I’m grateful for. I wrote the books because I want to share knowledge and I want to help people. You want to help people and that’s great. That’s why you and I are having such a great time. It’s not about me, but what can I do to help other people achieve those epic things in their life? Clearly, you’re doing many epic things.
You too. I’m not sure we were planning another epic adventure. I’m not quite at liberty yet to share what it is, but it’s going to be probably in ‘25 that we’re going to be doing another big epic adventure.
That’s awesome. I was going to say, you seem to me that when you finish and this has been my experience. It’s great you had that big goal, but when you got to the Brooklyn Bridge, you were very happy. Correct me if I’m wrong, it’s like, “Now what?” I had that experience when I did my first-century ride and/or when I ran my marathons. It was awesome. I was so excited to finish my first marathon. Honestly, five minutes later, I’m like, “Now what? I can do this, but now what?”
That’s how it was and it’s been killing me not to do something else epic but then I have to remember, it’s not now, but it’s coming in the future.
It’s been killing me not to do something else epic, but then I have to remember it may not be now, but it’s coming in the future.
It’s coming. It’s not yet and like anything, there are those things. It’s so funny how people are sometimes impatient. There are times when people are patient. For example, if you ask a freshman in college, “Have you got your degree? Not yet.” We all go, “You’re just a freshman.” We give the time. In writing a book, “Has the book come out? Not yet.” Why? It’s because it’s not some short process. You write the book and that editing process can take much longer than you ever anticipated.
For me, I finally put the flame under the fire or whatever the saying is, when I was at, it was either a Tony Robbins event or Russell Brunson or Brendon Burchard. I can’t remember. They said, “Write down something that frightens you,” and so I did. “Now put a deadline on it.” I put the deadline on. They said, “Cross through that deadline and now make a realistic deadline that you can’t deviate from if your life depended on it or your children’s lives depended on it or your families.”
That’s the thing that got me from saying not now to now. I thought, “That’s brilliant.” It’s just like in life, everything in life. I wrote my first book before I rode my bike across the country. Riding my bike across the United States, for me, is easier than writing my last two books because I don’t want to forget something important that I thought was important or I don’t want it to end like my bike ride. When you finish a book and you’ve edited it all then your editor sends it back or your publisher and says, “We’ve got it.” It’s like, “Let me hang onto it for a little bit longer.”
For me, I’m like, “It’s good enough.” We all want it to be perfect. I know when you’re going back and forth, the proofreader sends it and you look at it. You go, “Yes, or no, don’t make that change. I said it the way I want to say it or whatever,” and come back. There was a time with all three of my books where I was like, “I’m tired of reading my own words,” for a moment. I have read my book cover to cover now six times and yet we’re out there. I love my book, but I want to say there’s that period where you’re like, “I have been eyeballs deep in this in my book. I’m done. I’m going to go ahead and print it.” I’ll sit there and go, “How did I miss that?”
It’s done and it doesn’t matter. We sound like we’re very similar people but I always think, “Tracy, that may not be exactly what you wanted to say but it’s going to help somebody. That’s all that matters. We have two choices. We can either go ahead and get it out there so the whole world can read it or the people that want to read it can read it or you can hold it in for yourself to make it perfect. None of us are perfect.
Frankly, no one else is going to know. I know as a speaker, there will be times when I’ll get up and I’ll be doing a speech. I get off then I miss that. I’m the only one who knows that. The audience is like, “That was fabulous. I loved it.” Sadly, we’re sometimes the meanest person in our own life. I’m like, “I missed this or I didn’t say this right or whatever.” Meanwhile, the audience was like, “Tracy, that was incredible.”
We tend to treat ourselves worse than we treat our friends or family. That’s what’s bad is because we hear our thoughts. It goes into our hearts. We think of those thoughts. We speak those thoughts out loud. We have to change our stinking thinking and have the right mindset to speak the right words to be able to go to the next step.
We have to change our thinking and have the right mindset to speak the right words so we can go to the next step.
Conclusion
Tracy, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. You were so inspirational. I want to thank you for helping so many people with Type-1 diabetes and other chronic lifelong diseases. You’re doing great work, and I’m impressed.
Thank you so much. It’s great being here.
No problem. I want to remind everyone that you can go to EpicBegins.com. There’s a course there. If you are interested in one of the courses, if you put in EpicBegins as a coupon code, you’ll get $50 off. As always, I want to remind everyone that epic choices lead to the epic life that you so want.