What Spartan Racing Taught This Combat Veteran – Tara Pipia

The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena

Spartan Races

Fitness, Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, 792700

4.7 • 870 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Joe De Sena sits down with veteran, coach, and author Tara Pipia to explore how Spartan Racing and military discipline can help you overcome life’s greatest challenges.

Tara shares her journey from serving in Afghanistan to rebuilding her life through community, fitness, and purpose. Together, they dive into how doing hard things—whether on the battlefield or on the Spartan course—can heal emotional wounds, build resilience, and create lasting transformation.

If you’re looking for real-world strategies to thrive through adversity, tap into grit, and find meaning in discomfort, tune in now!

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:43 Meet Tara Pipia

01:44 Military service & leadership lessons

02:08 Sara’s most challenging experience

03:36 Lessons from doing hard things

05:21 Turning pain into progress

06:58 Growing up tough in New York

08:02 Family lessons on resilience

08:59 Joe’s story on kids quitting the camp

09:36 How Spartan race inspired Tara’s book

12:40 Spartan race & recovery

14:20 How to live an optimal life

15:31 How to connect with Tara

Connect to Tara:

Website: https://www.tarapipia.com/

Instagram: @spartandekadog

Facebook: Tara Pipia

LinkedIn: Tara Pipia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Being in that position where you're uncomfortable, healing in that sense.
0:05.3	So I think doing hard things makes you want to be a better person and appreciate the things when they're easy.
0:11.1	So there's nothing that happens to me in life that I say, oh, I can't get through this.
0:15.5	We think we have control, but we don't.
0:17.4	So knowing that, understanding that, embracing that, I think is very transformative.
0:21.8	Welcome to the Hardway podcast with Joe DeCena,
0:24.6	founder and CEO of Spartan races.
0:27.9	We're teaching you how to overcome your obstacles in your life
0:30.8	the same way we teach our 10 million plus Spartans
0:33.2	to overcome obstacles on the course.
0:35.3	With insight from the smartest,
0:36.7	must accomplish experts from every corner of the world. Get insight from the smartest, most accomplish experts from
0:38.0	every corner of the world, get ready to elevate your life today. Joe DeSenter here, CEO and founder
0:45.1	of Spartan and host of the Hardway podcast. I've got a buddy of mine Tara Pipia on. She's a professor.
0:50.8	She's an author. She's a veteran. She's a coach, she's super human, just wrote an
0:56.1	amazing book. Thank you for doing that book, by the way. It's going to help a lot of people
0:59.9	will talk about it. Where are you right now? I'm in California, Redwood City. That's a campervan.
1:06.6	That's the style in California, so that's where I am.
1:14.6	So you were in the military, 2010, 2019?
1:16.0	Yes, correct.
1:17.0	About 10 years.
1:17.8	How was it?
	...

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