By Tim Clifford

When asked what her favorite aspect of the Pacific Northwest is world record holder Katie Spotz gave a unique answer.

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this or not but I feel like your air tastes so good here, like every time I’ve been here,” she replied bashfully.

Speaking at Evergreen High School on Jan. 15 Spotz made a stop at the campus as part of the Seattle “leg” of a 5-city-tour she is doing for the organization H20 For Life, a group focused on raising awareness about clean water availability around the globe. Beginning in Minneapolis in September the speaking engagements have rolled through Nashville and Seattle and will continue through New York and Phoenix starting next week.

The last time that Spotz was visiting the Pacific Northwest she officiated the wedding for a bicyclist friend and his wife at the base camp for Mount Rainier. Only speaking engagements were on the schedule this time around.

Currently pursuing her MBA at Cleveland State University the 27-year-old Spotz seems even younger than her age with her chipper demeanor and girl-next-door looks. Below that visage however lies the work ethic and hard-nosed tenacity of a world-class and record setting athlete.

“When I was a kid I was on tennis, swim team, track and soccer and the one position I seemed to excel at was the bench,” she said to the student body audience.

Before her career as an endurance athlete, Spotz started out by challenging herself to complete a one-mile distance run in high school, eventually working her way up to running her first marathon at 18. Shortly after Spotz participated in the “Big Ride Across America”, setting off from Seattle to Washington D.C. on a bicycle in a race that managed to raise a quarter of a million dollars for the American Lung Association.

Spotz first gained both national and international attention in 2008 when at the age of 21 she became the first person to swim the entire length of the Allegheny River. Spanning a distance of 325 miles, Spotz and her safety kayaker began by hiking 27 miles to find a swimmable depth in Roulette, PA and finishing less than a month later at “The Point” (where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River) in downtown Pittsburgh.

Inarguably her most prolific achievement came in 2010 when Spotz set out from Dakar, Senegal to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean and land in Georgetown, Guyana.

Inspired by a brief conversation with a man on a bus who told her about a mother and daughter rowing team who had successfully crossed the Atlantic Spotz, who did not own a boat and had zero rowing experience, became obsessed.

“I had two options: “A” I was going to row across the Atlantic or “B” I was going to spend my life wondering why I hadn’t,” she described of the decision.

Spending just over 70 days in a 19 foot boat named “Liv” Spotz had just enough room for food rations, 300 chocolate bars (for energy), 4 iPods, and two sets of oars. An 8 foot section of the craft was covered to work as a shelter when Spotz slept. Dodging near collisions with oncoming freight liners and being close enough to reach out and touch dolphins there were few nights of restful sleep and long days of rowing.
When Spotz touched land in Georgetown she became the youngest person (22-years-old at the time) to have ever rowed solo across the Atlantic and the first American to have successfully rowed solo from West Africa to South America. She is also only the second woman to have completed the trek alone following France’s Sophie Macé in 2007.

Adding to this feat was the fact that Spotz had to alter her route to avoid a storm and be able to come ashore without a tow from another boat. This alteration added 400 miles to her trip, clocking her total mileage in at 2,817 miles.

“Basically, I wouldn’t have rowed the Atlantic if I didn’t run one mile when I was 18. If I didn’t run one mile I wouldn’t have thought that I could run 2, and if I didn’t run 2…,” answered Spotz when asked if there were any tips she could offer aspiring athletes.

Becoming an overnight celebrity of sorts Spotz found herself in the midst of celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts and Fergie. She was interviewed by Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper and even Oprah. That same year she was named “Woman of the Year” by Glamour Magazine.

As she tells it to the student audience at Evergreen, everyone that she met kept asking her why she had done it.

“I told them all the same answer, because 1 billion people on our planet don’t have water to drink and someone needed to do something,” she said bringing the focus back to H20 For Life. During her voyage Spotz raised over $50K for the Blue Planet Run Foundation dedicated to providing global access to clean drinkable water.

The message of the talk for the students was a mixture of amazing stories from her young life, a call to social action, and inspiration to reach for one’s fullest potential. The story of being forced to complete a second team bike race across America with a broken pelvis using a modified hand bike was a stirring end note.

As Spotz explained while students were leaving the auditorium she is engaged as a speaker with H20 For Life for the next three years and intends to focus on reaching as many schools as she can during that time. While not every audience is comprised of teenagers it is the younger crowds that she prefers.
“Don’t underestimate the first step,” she advised to young students and athletes.

“It’s the idea that it doesn’t matter about the speed of progress it just matters about what direction you’re heading in.”