Interview With Katie Visco – Courage, Self Love, and Human Powered Adventures

I have been running since I was in seventh grade. I was somewhat duped into the sport; my friend signed me up for a summer training program, and I thought it was a summer soccer conditioning camp. Turns out it was preseason for Cross Country! I showed up, fell in love with being a part of a team, and I’ve been running ever sense.

The drive to run across America was truly a fire in my chest. I was so excited to make a difference in the world. I just finished a year of service in AmeriCorps working with high school students, and I was completely enthused and enraptured by the idea of changing the world, in fact, I always had been. I had wanted to run across America for a while by that time but I was always looking for a really good reason to do it. I finally found that reason during my year of service working with kids who had never really stopped to consider their dreams; I wanted to go run my heart out in order to inspire others to follow their passions.

You are worth living a bold and passion-driven life. You are worth following your dreams. You are worth giving life to your curiosities.

Ten years ago, when I did that run across America, it was almost 50% speaking tour and 50% running. When I was in the groove of things I would be done running by noon or 1pm and spend the afternoon meeting local people and doing a speaking event with a small group of girls, a larger audience at a school, community groups, whatever. I was on fire and felt I was making a huge impact in the lives of others!

In July you will begin a transcontinental run across Australia. What inspired this one, and why Australia?

The dream to run my way across Australia all started back when I was in middle school when my best friend, Brittany, and I were obsessed with the Australian actor, Heath Ledger. We weren’t the insane stalker types, but rather we simply watched all his movies like it was our religion, put up posters of his dreamy face on our walls, and eventually hosted a candlelit funeral for him under a tree in downtown Boston when he died. Okay, maybe we were a little obsessed. But, it was fun and we were thirteen. Come on.

During those same prepubescent years of drooling over Heathie, my interest in the land down under grew and grew. Sure, Brittany and I seriously thought we would one day fly to Australia to track him down, and well, melt in his presence. But also, I simply started to romanticize the country.

What was the desert like and is the sand really that red? Were people really as carefree as I heard they were? What’s up with the walkabout, the aboriginal right of passage, and can I do one myself as an American woman? Thanks to Heath, I was hooked on Oz and vowed one day to go there, for me.

My junior year in college I needed a break – a break from the cold Minnesotan winter, a break from the hardship of going through my first heartbreak, a break from everything, really. Plus, Australia was calling, so, I said yes; I bought a round trip ticket with my own money, took a leave of absence from school, and signed up for an internship in the nonprofit world.

I was realizing my first ever dream and I’d never felt so free. My three months in Oz was more than I could have imagined. Ask me about it one day. All to say, the experience was my breakthrough from girlhood into becoming a powerful and independent woman.

Additionally, I came away from my three months in Australia in 2006 promising myself that one day I would run across it. That day has come!

Starting this July 2019, I will run across Australia, through her deserts, into her complex and elegant desolation. I am going to the desert to shed a layer off. This is my pilgrimage, to confront all parts of myself in one of the most raw and barren places on earth, to find my Katie again, to reclaim all of my fire, to accept my vulnerability and let it all go at the same time. I want to go to the outside edge again, and love it.

I’ll be completely open and vulnerable with you – I have a fear that my life won’t make as big of an impact as I hope. I want to do great things and make sure that they help other people. I don’t want to have any regrets. I want to make a difference. However, in doing big (and small) things for other people, I’ve got to take care of myself. I need to ultimately give to myself what I need so that I can best give to others. I’m conflicted by my own ambition and this very conflict startles me sometimes. Do I do big things to change the world because I know I can, or can I put that ambition aside for a moment and go do something for me, and only for me? That’s with this run across Australia is ultimately all about, resisting my ambition, letting go, and holding myself with grace. All said and done, my hope is that my story connects with others and allows them to give to themselves fully as well. To love and give to yourself is bravery.

What advice would you give to somebody that wants to complete a similar endeavor?

Since 2006, I have hosted community soup parties. I open up my home, make a ton of soup, invite everyone I know, and all you need to do is bring a bowl and a spoon.

I love building community. These soup parties are something that I am extremely proud of and feel like I have gifted the planet with. Some people have even met at a soup party and then got married! I’m proud of this because it was/is cultivating community in a world where eye-to-eye connection is a dying art.