This week’s conversation is with Vicki Golden, a professional freestyle motocross rider and four-time X Games gold medalist.

Vicki is the first female member of the SoCal freestyle motocross team Metal Mulisha and also performs in Travis Pastrana’s Nitro Circus Tour.

In 2008, at age 16, she became the Loretta Lynn’s AMA Women’s Amateur Champion.

Three years later, she earned her first gold medal at the Women’s Moto X Racing in the Summer X Games and collected her second and third gold medals in 2012.

In addition to becoming the first female competitor in a Moto X freestyle competition, (which resulted in a bronze medal win in the best whip category in 2012), Vicki was nominated for the ESPY’s Best Female Action Sports Athlete award in 2014.

In March of this year, Vicki laid it down again in Auckland, New Zealand when she landed her first ever FMX backflip off the 15-foot Next Level ramp, ranking her as the only woman who has flipped one of the largest FMX ramps in the world.

I had the fortune of speaking with Vicki only a few days before she performed a record-breaking stunt on HISTORY’s Evel Live 2 where she sped through a series of flaming wooden boards.

She was the first female to break the record which was set back in 2006.

You’ll get a chance to hear how Vicki prepared for this stunt and what was going through her mind in the days leading up to it.

I’ve always had a deep appreciation for those who perform in the world of extreme sports, pushing at the edges of their capacity, where there are real consequences when things go wrong.

We touch on that in this conversation as well.

“I know I have the ability, I just have to let my brain stop thinking about the dangers, all the negative things, and trust I have the skills to handle this.”

In This Episode:

• Her preparation process leading up to an event
• Growing up in an area that was considered a hotbed for motocross
• Dad getting paralyzed and how it impacted her
• Her families’ philosophy: no bad habits, no quitting
• How she pushes on the edges of what’s possible and her process for recovering – both psychically and mentally
• The downside of working too hard and why she struggles with turning it off
• Where passion comes from
• Why striving for progression is so important to her
• How she approaches scary moments where she could get significantly hurt
• The impact her mom’s had in shaping her life
• What it’s like being a female competing with men
• Her mental approach to intense challenges
• How she defines mastery