Dr. Stephanie Casey has had to master the art of juggling family, work, and competition in her long career as one of the top race walkers in the United States. A 40-year-old family medicine physician in the Portland, Oregon, area, Casey has four kids and has been putting in the work as a race walker since her childhood, spurred on by her dad's love of the sport. A veteran of the World Championships, Pan American Games, World Team Championships and World Cup, Casey has been at the elite level of American women's walking for more than 15 years. Here, in honor of Mother's Day, she tells her unique story in her own words: Q: How did you get started in track and field? SC: That would be through my dad [Jim Bean]. My dad was a race walker and a race walk coach. He was coaching well before I was born, and I just grew up going to the track with him for practices. I was watching guys compete and he was coaching at a developmental level, but they went on to compete at the Olympic level. That was my life from being just a wee little one. I have an older sister and a younger brother, and my sister has never race walked or done anything related to track and field a day in her life. My younger brother did a little bit of race walking for a while, but never got into it like I did. I don't know that I was destined to be a walker, maybe it was just a combination of opportunity and being something that I enjoyed. I don't know if there is anything necessarily interesting about race walking, it was just what I started doing because my dad was coaching, and I was good at it. That kept me going through my youth years and I was able to compete at a national level at the Junior Olympics, but as I got into high school race walking was definitely not the cool thing to do. I did stop for a while, going into college, and during that time I met my husband. He always jokes that race walking was not something he signed up for when he married me. In college I injured myself running a marathon and my dad told me I should get back into race walking while I recovered. I did, and that's when I kind of fell in love with it all over again at an adult level. I started doing a little race walking, to see how it would go, and my dad said in like 2006 that if I put a little effort into it I could qualify for the 2008 Olympic Trials. I said sure, that sounds like fun, and that is kind of where my elite career took off. Q: Back in 2008 did you ever think your career would last as long as it has? SC: Not at all, no. I qualified for the 2008 Trials and had also gotten accepted into medical school that year, and my husband and I were leaving for that within a few weeks of the Trials, heading across the country for me to start school. He was like, "This is it, you're done. The end of the race walking. We're starting a new chapter." He was hopeful there for a minute, but no. I kind of kept at it through medical school and I think I even made one national team while I was in school and went and raced in Mexico in 2010. My first child was born in 2009, and that was the rougher time, being in school, having a baby, training, all of it. I was still racing at a national level through school and residency, and then it was really post-residency when I got back into it at a more elite level. Q: You have been to all the majors in race walking in your career, except the Olympics. Is that something you had in mind when you were falling back in love with the sport? SC: When I got past the residency level and was into my doctoring career, I had my fourth baby, and it was coming back from that one that I started to get back into it. With my last two kids it was the only time I really got any sort of maternity leave, because that doesn't exist in medical school. You just kind of have the baby and go right back. So, I was like, "I've got 12 full weeks off with this new baby!" I went to my two week checkup after giving birth and my doctor said I was cleared to go back to anything I wanted to do. Everything was good. I got home from my appointment and my husband asked how it went. I told him the doctor said I could do anything I wanted to do, and he said, "Your doctor really has no idea what you do, does she?" I said, "Nope, not at all." He said, "You're gonna go race walking, aren't you?" I was like, "Yeah, you wanna take the baby?" That's when I really got into it. I remember that maternity leave. My husband said, "You're not going to qualify for the Olympics on your maternity leave, you need to back off." It was shortly after that when I cut back on my work schedule because I had been working full time as a doctor up until that point. It was probably mid-2019 when we made the decision for me to cut back to part-time and really see if I could qualify for the Olympics. Of course, not long after that was when Covid came, and the 2021 Games didn't pan out for me. I am still in pursuit of that goal. Q: How did training for and competing in race walking affect you during medical school? SC: It helped in that I had a distraction. I had something else. I know a lot of my colleagues, especially in residency, it was really challenging because you deal with a lot of really tough patient care situations, and they would go home at night and kind of just perseverate on everything that had happened during the day at work. They would even be checking in on labs to see what was going on. For me it was quite different. Once I went home that was my time with my family, and I was able to transition away from that work stress and focus on my kids. It was the same having the outlet of training. I was able to have a space where I wasn't having to be a parent or be a doctor, and I was able to just turn my brain over into training mode. I think it helped me to be a better parent and a better doctor to have those other avenues to focus on at times. Q: How was it different for each child you had? SC: It was very different. I had two of them when I was in medical school, the first one in the summer after my first year. I was still in the classroom part of medical school, so that was very different. The next one was born in the clinical rotation years when we were switching locations every four weeks and so every month life would totally change to something different, a different rotation. My third child was born after I graduated residency, kind of right as I was transitioning into my career, and I guess you would call my fourth one the most normal baby. I was more settled in my career when she was born. Q: What advice would the "now" you give to the "then" you? SC: I don't think when I had the first child that I had any idea where we were headed. I really thought then that I would be done with race walking. I don't think ever I saw myself coming back, definitely not to the elite level. I would tell myself to hang in there, there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. In medical school you're feeling very varied with life and trying to be a parent at the same time. Just stay strong and it's gonna get better. Q: What is the very best thing about race walking, putting on your event evangelist hat? SC: It's very different. It's its own unique thing. For me, what keeps me going is the relationships I have built. I think there are some of the very best people out there in the race walking world. We are kind of a dysfunctional family of sorts, but I love them, and that is really what I think makes me stick with it. There is certainly a technical piece to the event, and it came more naturally for me because I started so early, when I started walking. I know a lot of people got into it later and they have been able to do very well with the technique. Probably better than me because I still have room to improve on my technique. Q: What do your parents think about what you have done? SC: My dad would be so proud of me. He was proud about all of my race walking accomplishments. My mom is proud of me, but she is not nearly involved in the world of race walking as my dad was. Q: What did your medical school think about your race walking pursuits? SC: It was definitely something we talked about when I was interviewing for med school. You're always looking for something in the interviews that is unique and will make you stand out. Race walking was my big thing and I think that was the focus of my interview because it was so unique. It made me stand out from all the other applicants. I had already made a national team and I was getting ready for the Olympic Trials when I was interviewing, so that stood out. Most people assume that when you start medical school you're not still going to be competing, and for sure not when you are further into it. It was something they were excited about because it made me a unique applicant, but I don't think they saw me continuing to pursue it, and definitely not at such an elite level. I actually had some issues when I got selected for the Mexico team in 2010, because they didn't want me to leave campus and go to Mexico to compete. I had to do a lot of finagling there and it ended up not being a good race for me because we had to work the travel and I could only be gone for a certain number of days. I had to fly the day before I raced, and my flight got canceled so I flew in the morning of my race. I left very early from Des Moines and connected through Texas down to Mexico. In hindsight that was not a good idea to travel that way. I flew right back home because I had to get back to school. Q: As a society what do we do well for mothers, and what do we do poorly? SC: As a family I feel like I have a lot of support here for my kids, and I don't think I could do what I do if we didn't have so many friends to jump in and help out with things when I am gone. It's still a very challenging role, though. There are a lot of societal pressures to be a perfect mom and raise perfect kids and do all these things. Especially if you look too much into the social media world where it seems like everyone is always doing amazing things with their kids. That can create a lot of pressure for people to try and meet those expectations. Q: When times are tough, what do you turn to? SC: My faith in God is what gets me through all of this and what allows me to do any of what I do. We have great support through our church. My husband and family are amazing. There have been a lot of rough times through all of this. My faith shapes everything. Having God as my guiding light in all of this gives me an identity that isn't going to change despite how my racing is going or despite how my parenting is going, or how being a wife is going. I have that solid ground to stand on and that is what allows me to sustain what I have been doing for so long and kind of ride the highs and lows. There have been some really, really great times, and there have been some really, really challenging times. Without God to get me through it, I don't think I would still be doing this. Q: Would your kids say you are the easy touch, or is dad the easy touch? SC: That's a hard question. Because we have somewhat reversed roles in that I am the primary breadwinner and my husband is stay at home dad, he does a lot more of the child rearing than I do. He gets the rap for being the more hard-nosed one, while I tend to be the easier-going parent. Q: How did you decide to become a family medicine doctor? SC: A lot of people go into med school with a specific goal in mind, and then it gets changed during the process. I went in pretty open-minded. My mentor when I was in my pre-med program was a family physician. That's who I shadowed a lot. When I got into med school I thought about going into surgery because I really enjoyed my surgical rotations, and we did some more specialized surgical stuff that I enjoyed. I didn't like that lifestyle though of being a surgeon. With my family, my kids, all the things I had going, I wanted a lifestyle that would allow me to be there more for my kids. I think family medicine has been a great fit for me. Q: What are the most important things you see as far as lifetime health for your patients? SC: Oh, well, my eight-year-old would tell anyone that if you want to be healthy you have to get good sleep and you have to eat good food and you have to get your exercise. Those are her three points that she preaches to everyone out there. I agree with her, but I can't preach it as well as she can! So, yeah, sleep, exercise, and nutrition. Those are the keys. I think the one thing I would tell patients to stop doing is smoking. That's the behavior associated with the most negative health outcomes. Q: When you talk to your patients about exercise, what are your recommendations? SC: If they're asking specifically about what I'm doing, I usually say there's a certain level where it becomes unhealthy, and we're all trying to find that balance. I don't want to be the role model for people because I realize that what I'm doing as an elite athlete is not what the average person should be doing for exercise, or what's gonna be healthy for them. We really have to find that place for each individual person where they're gonna be living a healthy lifestyle. And I think all of us have some areas that we can improve in on a regular basis, even if we're already somewhat healthy. I try and eat well, but I know I have room to improve in some of the things that I'm doing, so I just try and share that with my patients. We all have places to grow. We all have things we can do. Q: What sage advice can you give to young mothers? SC: The thing I see most with young mothers is just all that pressure to try and do it right. And I remember that, especially from my first baby. You just feel like you have to do everything right. And I think what I'd like to tell them is just to try and relax. You know we're all doing the best we can as parents. Try not to put that extra pressure on yourself to make things perfect. You're gonna be a great mom. You're gonna get through this and you need to lean on those supports around you. You don't have to do it alone and there's a lot of people out there who can help you out and who will. Try not to put that pressure of perfection onto yourself. Q: What goals do you still have? SC: I'm getting to a point where my husband is getting ready for me to actually retire from race walking. I feel like I am not quite there yet, so we're trying to decide if I am gonna go for the World Championships next year and make that my last season. I would love to stay involved somehow, I just don't know how quite yet. I still just want to be an athlete right now. Q: How can the event grow and get more people interested? SC: I think we have to get more developmental coaches out there, like at the youth level, getting kids walking, because there aren't too many. I think it would also be great if we brought it more into the high school track programs. I think there are still only a couple of states in the country that have race walking as part of the high school program. I think that would be the thing that would make us more mainstream. Q: What is your best memory of your mom connected to your sport? SC: Like I said, she has never been super into race walking, but last year she came down to watch me at the 35K national championships. It was so fun for me to have her there and for her to see me qualify for my second World Championships. It's always special for me to have her there.