I got my pack down to 20 pounds, and quickly learned to not eat just protein bars. I was the only one who’d never run a marathon before and people looked at me like I was nuts. Sixty people started, 48 finished, and I was 40th. “I just looked at it as aggressive backpacking. I’d done the John Muir Trail, Annapurna Circuit, Everest Base Camp, and thought, Yeah, that sounds cool,” she said of the 170-mile desert adventure in Utah. Those early adventures led to greater opportunities though and McMahon was a part of the first edition of the Grand to Gran d stage race in 2012.
Payge spreading her mother’s ashes at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. “I’m really frugal, I went up Kilimanjaro with a $25 Walmart coat.” People started writing to me that I was inspiring, and shit, I’m just trying to figure this out.” She keeps going with an example of just figuring it out. And then I started this webpage so family and friends could follow me. “I wanted to know as much as I could, it made my back feel better,” she said of the motivation. McMahon climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2008, and then cycled around southeast Asia before completing her yoga instruction training in Thailand.
She left her career track, went through a divorce, and started gaining the skills and experience needed for outdoor adventure. But who leaves a great job? It goes against society’s norms.” McMahon did just that though. I just thought, I have to finish her list, and spread her ashes in these places. “When I found that list, it was like an epiphany. Two years after her mom’s death, she discovered her mom’s incomplete bucket list. Things changed again when her mom, a non-smoker, died from lung cancer just after her own retirement. She recovered, still with pain, but her then-competitive softball career stopped and she followed a traditional path into corporate America, marrying at age 24. Payge McMahon running the 2012 Grand to Grand stage race. Crushed my T12 and L1 vertebrae, a burst compression fracture.” A broken back just sounds so all encompassing, but McMahon knows the spinal column and simplifies it, “It crushed down and jutted out. “He was goofing around, lost control, slammed into a ditch, and I flew forward. “I was a passenger in the back seat, a 1979 Bronco,” she recounted of the fateful trip to McDonald’s with friends. When she was 16, a car accident left her with a broken back for the first time. McMahon traces her path into adventure through a number of major life events.
The program is named for creator Diamond Dallas Page, a retired pro wrestler and McMahon’s boyfriend. She credits her ability to still travel long distances to yoga and is currently an instructor for DDP Yoga. The 46-year-old McMahon is a two-time survivor of a broken back and an endurance adventurer.
It’s rare for my childhood love of pro wrestling to bridge to ultrarunning, but McMahon connects those dots, and she does it through DDP Yoga. The program’s tagline sometimes reads, “It ain’t your mama’s yoga,” after all.
She’s friendly about it and I start to get the point of DDPY, or DDP Yoga. “Don’t call it yoga,” Payge McMahon does a virtual hand slap and I apologize. Thanks to Patagonia for sponsoring this week’s Catching Up With article!