The Dailey Edge Podcast
Join hosts Trent, TJ, and Todd Dailey as they explore the intersections of technology, culture, fitness, and personal growth. Through engaging discussions and personal anecdotes, the trio dives into topics ranging from childhood gaming nostalgia and cutting-edge fitness tech to the pursuit of happiness and lifestyle choices. Whether reminiscing about epic gaming marathons, sharing tips for staying on the forefront of fitness trends, or unraveling the complexities of modern life, The Dailey Edge delivers thoughtful insights, lively debates, and relatable stories for listeners of all walks of life.
The Dailey Edge Podcast
Episode 28: Wisconsin Ragnar Trail, Why Shared Suffering Creates Unbreakable Bonds
What happens when accomplished road runners tackle their first trail race? A humbling, transformative adventure through mud, darkness, and pouring rain that redefines their understanding of human potential.
The Daily brothers and their friends arrived at the Wisconsin Ragnar Trail event expecting to dominate. As veterans of multiple road Ragnars where they'd set course records, they anticipated another strong showing. Reality hit hard on the first loop—literally—as they discovered that navigating roots, rocks, and constant elevation changes on narrow forest trails demanded an entirely different skillset. What would be a comfortable pace on road became nearly impossible on trail, with times 90-120 seconds slower per mile.
Then came nightfall. And torrential rain. Runners who had struggled in daylight now faced the same technical terrain in complete darkness, ankle-deep in water, guided only by headlamps that fogged in the downpour. Two team members rolled ankles badly yet refused to quit, hobbling through their remaining loops on injuries that would later swell to "softball size." When weather conditions deteriorated further, with lightning delaying sections and trails transforming into rushing rivers, the team discovered something powerful: their capacity to adapt exceeded anything they'd previously imagined.
The experience revealed how shared suffering builds unbreakable bonds. As Todd notes, "You want to talk about building a strong relationship with somebody quick? Put your money where your mouth is and bury yourself before these seven people." The psychological reset from conquering something so challenging transferred to everyday life—tasks that once seemed daunting now felt manageable by comparison.
Looking ahead, the brothers are exploring challenges that balance competition with adventure, like the 48-mile Zion Traverse. They're also considering how to introduce their children to appropriately difficult experiences, believing that learning to do hard things early builds character and resilience. The wisdom gained from this mud-soaked adventure continues to shape their approach to challenges both on and off the trail.
Ready to push beyond your comfort zone? Find your community and discover what happens when you do hard things together.
Welcome to the Daily Edge, where we bring you the latest insights, opinions, and thought-provoking conversations to give you that competitive edge in life, business, and beyond. Let's go. All right, welcome back to the Daily Edge. We are here with my brothers, TJ and Todd Daily, uh, ready to jump right in. Uh, we just had a another fun adventure together. We went up to Wisconsin and hit the Wisconsin Ragnar Trail event. Um, so we're gonna share kind of a recap, a lot of stories. First trail event for all of us, uh, very, very different. Um, but also probably just kind of form that in with continuing to put hard things in front of us. And Todd, you were the one that kind of everyone sending the text out, you know, like let's get together, let's try to do something, and we talk about it. And I think so many times in life it that that is life. Like, all right, let's plan to get together sometime. And then if you don't set it right there, you just like next time you see him, man, this was fun, let's get together again. And so you took the initiative, you booked the trip and said, Hey, we're doing this, who's in, and kind of so why don't you go ahead and kick us off? Yeah, it's tough. I think as you get older and you have so many competing priorities, everyone has good intentions to do something like this, and I think it but it's uh it's never urgent. Important it falls into that important but not urgent category that's so tough to prioritize. Um, and I say important just from a community perspective. So it's something we did our first. So everyone knows a Ragnar is a very long relay race. Uh, the first one we ever did was in 2019 uh for TJ's birthday, I think his 40th birthday. And then we did one in Michigan, we did Hood to Coast, uh, another group did Hood to Coast another year, and those were all 200-mile relay races where you have two vans, six people in each van, and you just continuously rotate until you get there. Um, this was uh, and we just I would say I'm I mean, me personally, but I think everybody uh enjoyed the communal nature of those. You're accomplishing something together, working on things together. Um and so we a lot of us didn't do the second hood to coast in 2023. We didn't do anything in 2024, and so for me personally, I really wanted to get a group back together. I felt like you even saw people's fitness fall off. You actually saw people's fitness changing, they didn't have a goal to shoot for, they didn't have accountability to stay in shape, and it just felt to me like like the right thing to try to try and pull everyone together. So uh I just had to book it. I think I booked it when it was just maybe me and you that were definitely confirmed. Um, and and just to touch on what the Aragnar trail race is, so it's a little different. Uh road races are point to point. Uh, why don't TJ, why don't you introduce? Why don't you tell them what that difference is?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so road races are point to point. So there's a lot more involved from a logistics standpoint inside of the race itself. You know, all of these races, most of them typically are destinations, so you're traveling to get there. But for a road race, once you get there, like Todd said earlier, you have two different vans with six people in each, and you're moving from a one point to another. So the first six people they go in order one through six, and then you hand the baton off, if you will, to the next van. Van one goes and sleeps, the next six goes, and so on and so forth. And there are 36 legs. So you do six, each van does six legs three different times, uh, and then uh you get to your destination and and you then have to travel back the 200 miles you just ran in the car. And so it gets to be pretty exhausting, especially because you know, getting to these hotels after you do the major exchanges, you don't normally get a whole lot of time to get off your feet, and then you're having to like shower and get back in the car and go back because you're gonna get the batons back um, you know, in in pretty short order. With the trail race, the cool thing is there's there's only eight people, and there are three loops of different lengths at these campgrounds, if you will, that you run. Each person runs one loop of of each length one time. So the cool thing about this is you don't have to be in a van, you're not going point to point. There's a central campground that everybody comes back to every time. So that's kind of removed from the equation, and it makes it a little less stressful when it comes to uh the non-running part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So I thought. Well, the non-running part of it is less stressful. So, as you said, there's three different loops green, yellow, and red, and everyone runs those same three loops. Whereas different from the road race where everyone's running a different segment because it's 36 different segments as opposed to we've got eight guys each running the same three uh loops, which was was different. It was kind of cool because you could compare um a little bit and talk about the different loops because you were running them in different orders at different times. Um but it was very, very different. So, Trent, why don't you talk a little bit about I think road racers coming to a trail? You were the first one out, you ran the first loop, and I remember we were all kind of sitting there, and uh, I think we were expecting slower times, but a little bit slower, right? So um on a road race, obviously you've got a wide open road, you can hammer in trails where there's some obstacles, but all the trails that we had, you know, like a Katewi or uh, you know, even Eagle Creek, it's kind of more paved, open. Uh Eagle Creek, I guess, is less of that, but uh Trent, what was your first experience like? Well, um, I will get to that in just a second. So with this race, we actually had tents and we had we were on one actual location. So we had a couple of tents set up just to give you a little bit more of the logistics, and it was about a three-minute walk to the the main tent where everyone would come out of and come into for these loops. So uh as Todd said, I got leg number one, which I gotta be honest, I'm tickled to death. I kind of lobbied for leg one. I've always been in the last couple of vans and everything we've done, and I think hood to coast, I was number 12 actually. Um, and uh so I asked and luckily got leg number one. And and you know, you kind of set goals, so it's like, all right, it's supposed to be three point one, or I know I think it was supposed to be three point three, and I'm like, okay, three point three. I'm not in great shape right now, but I want to stay sub-eight, you know. Like I'm thinking I can run 730s and just really push hard, and and uh so I go out and I go out, you know, hard, right? Like that even out of the gate, I'm not really into anything, and I'm like, you know, trying to stay on it. There's four people that kind of just started to work themselves away. And then I we we started in the last group, so this is also time starting. So they started people from 8 a.m. and the last start time was 3 p.m., which is where we we were at, just based on finish time. So I get out there and I'm starting to kind of go to this trail, and I'm about half a mile in, I'm breathing really hard. Like, you know, the whole like don't go out too fast, it's hard to reel yourself back in. I went out hard. And you hadn't really gotten into the actual trail portion, yeah, right? No, so there's kind of an entryway because then all three, you kind of all three take the paths, and it's like green goes this way, yellow this way, red this way. They kind of start to break up and then they do their own things. And so I'm like, there's a couple of rollers, but I'm like, this is this, you know, and so I'm going hard and I get a mile, we start to get into the trail, and I'm a mile in, and I'm like, and I run the first mile at 7.15, which contextually after doing all this, is is it would be like a six-minute mile. I mean, I was like, I could not, I mean, I was sitting there like and I just kept thinking of mine, I can't quit, I can't quit, but I was completely spent. And the last two miles I just hung on, and it ended up being 3.5, 3.6. And so this trail is it's a narrow, and it was just a bunch of turns. But if you can picture yourself in a woods, um, in the green loop, all loops are different, but this green loop, you're in the woods and you're running uphills, downhills, and around things, and you have tree roots everywhere, tree roots and rocks. So you're planting your feet, and it's almost like your whole time you're just looking at the ground, and it's like you're just trying to go through. So I got through that, and it was like I ran the hardest 5k of my life, and I think I rolled in at like 27 or 28 minutes, and I looked at you guys, and I felt awful because I was like, be ready at 25, maybe 24, and I just couldn't communicate. I like I wanted you guys so bad to know what I just went through because it was so like I just couldn't even describe it. I'm like, this is no joke, and then I hand the baton to you, and then you came in, and uh you you had talked about how you hadn't run fast in forever and how you were gonna run 745s, which when you came in, and we didn't know at that point, I had no idea you ended up had run 3.6, so I thought, okay, you know, Trent just had an off start, he hasn't been running, he's just maybe a little slower or whatever. So I get out there and I am a mile in, and my heart rate is way up here relatively. Basically, it was it was around where I would typically finish uh a half marathon uh or or more, and I am I mean it's exactly what you said. I mean, it was just a complete punch in the face trying to I mean, you take what 1,500 steps a mile, give or take. So I was out on the yellow loop, which was five miles, every one of those 7,500 steps. I'll call the vast majority of them because there was the entryway and a little bit of straight coming out of it. The the vast majority, we'll call it four miles of those those five thousand plus steps, you are look you are having to intentionally look for. And so sometimes you're taking short steps, sometimes it's long steps, sometimes you're like planting off of a rock, sometimes you're leaping, sometimes you're I mean, it was just like nothing that I had ever done in my life. And I came in and I had absolutely hammered that. I mean, it was one of those where you go out way too hard, way too fast, and you put out way too much effort, knowing you've got two more legs left. And I ran an average of I think 740. It was like 39 minutes that time, and I feel like I'm in shape probably in a road race to one run 615s for that distance, give or take. So it was a good 90 seconds per mile slower. And I I just I could not believe it. Um I think the first time was eight. Eight is great. What's that? Well, he looked at me.
SPEAKER_01:You looked at me because you handed to me and you said, take it easy, like dead serious, take it easy. 7:30 is plenty.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um and I think though, like I'd love to talk about this at this time because I think this is part of the reason we do these things, and part of the reason that we've we gain so much from these every time that we do them, because it gives us, you know, we're we we do these differently than a lot of people. Um, a lot of these races are run for the accomplishment of finishing the race, you know, and that's awesome. I I think you know, we'll talk a little bit later, but I encountered someone later on that night that was running it for herself and not understanding that like everybody approaches this a little bit differently. But I think what was cool about this is we bleed in these races. It is if your heart rate is anything lower than zone four, like nobody's gonna say anything, but you'll feel it. You know, like you're going out there and you're, you know, like Trent said, I can't stop. The guys are waiting for me, I can't do this. And so having done road races our entire, our entire running careers and having had success, right? In the Ragnarod that we've won, we set course records in both of them. You know, Hood to Coast has a thousand teams, we finished seventh and 11th for perspective. Most of the people on our team, if they're fit, are close to and or are sub-three marathonners. So, like, we've never like anybody who's a roadrunner, and kudos to you, trail runners, because there were people out there that were doing things that we didn't think were humanly possible in terms of the way they were navigating those trails. And if you ever watched a professional trail runner that can mob through really tactical trails at six flat pace, there are people that can do that, but your foot placement has to be kind of second nature. But, anyways, we've never experienced anything like regular roadrunners. You've run on grass and like a cross-country course, and maybe it's 15 seconds a mile, or you've run hilly loops, and maybe it's 10 to 20 seconds a mile, not 90. And so I think one of the things that was taken away, especially early on, was that you know, we've got to recalibrate here, and we really have to figure out a different way uh to measure ourselves and the people that you know we're competing with. And we came in with this sense of just to give you a just again some more context, we researched these a little bit. I do it and and and Corey does it a little bit, but we went and looked out for the course record. You know, what's the course record? What wins this race? You know, and and granted, for the distances that these laps were, most of the people on this team could run between 6 and 630 a mile, some a little faster, some a little slower for these distances. Well, the course record or the winning time from last year was at 823 pace. And we were like, oh yeah, we'll break this, no problem. This is easy. We're gonna break the course record by two hours. Well, we did not run 823 pace. We ran actually fairly close. I think we were 13 minutes off of last year's winning time. Um, no, we weren't we were an hour and 13 minutes off last year's winning time. Um, but probably closer to nine minutes. But I think it speaks to, you know, one of the things that you take away when you do these hard things and you can apply to life is that like sometimes you need to recalibrate on the fly, and you need to figure out a better way to measure whatever it is you're encountering versus you know, always trying to measure things the same way and being stuck. So, yeah, I I'd love to talk to love to hear your thoughts, both of you, on kind of how you were able to do that quickly, or or kind of where your minds were, you know, when you came in and you were like, Oh god. And same with you, like how how that changed it for the rest of the uh the time out there.
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh, first of all, I think you know, the appreciation for something different, it just gives you context, right? We talk about trying different stuff all the time. Before that, we would have not like, oh, a guy ran out and did a four-mile trail run at 10 minute pace. Like, what's he doing? Like, now we have this completely different mindset. I think the hardest thing for me is I could when I came in, I couldn't describe it. I was like telling you guys, like I spent 75% of my run in zone five. Like, I was like completely pegged. I'm like, I just don't know what happened. You know, it's like I got punched in the face, and I'm like, I don't know what happened. I want to give you guys context of like maybe it, you know, you're like, maybe it's me. Maybe I wasn't in great shape. And then when there was a little bit of relief when Todd came back in, he was like, and you know, with his pace, he was a little bit above where we thought he'd be, and he was like, Oh my god, like I just crushed that. Yeah, I just crushed that and ran eight eight minute miles or seven forty-fives. And so I was like, Okay, see, I'm not crazy. I because you know, you start to get like, Am I in that bad of shape? Should I have trained more? I had all this guilt build up. Um, but as I rolled into my second and we kind of got through the legs, and you came back and you did the red leg and and you hammered the red leg. I mean, out of all what, two thousand runners that day? Is that about how many there were? Yeah. About 2,000 runners, you had like the ninth fastest time?
SPEAKER_01:I had the fastest time on Strava for the day. On Strava.
SPEAKER_00:Ninth all time. Yeah. So you and you ran that in 740, 740.
SPEAKER_01:So it was either 736 or 743.
SPEAKER_00:And that was the ninth fastest all time in the history of that race or anyone who has run that loop, which is unbelievable, which is insane. And so as people started to come back in and everyone could gathered context, what I did, so I was green, red, yellow. And so I was going out for red, and I I was asking everybody that ran the loop. I'm like, okay, what do you think? And like TJ was like, okay, you know, a mile and a half, you got about a mile to a mile and a half. It's kind of open, take advantage of it at the beginning and at the end, but that four miles in between, buckle up. And um, when I went into that one, it was pitch blackout. And I was like, dude, the green one is legit. It is hard. You don't see the tree stumps and the things, and every I think every single one of us fell at some point. So let's talk about that for a second. So all of our first legs, most of them were in the in the uh daytime. Yes, and it was dry, which was great, uh, at that point in time, and then every eight, you know, we run eight, each person runs a loop, and then we get back to the second uh round, right? So we ran eight, every runner ran one, and then we get back to you to start again, and now it's pitch black out. So we've added this whole other element. I mean, dry and daylight, we're all like, what in the world just happened? Yeah, and then it is pitch black, and I believe by the time you had gone, it had been pouring rain. Was it before it wasn't raining while Corey got rained on the first his first race, and he was eight. So yeah, it rained while Corey was out there. We had a we had an hour delay, right? Before Corey ran his first lightning delay, and so but it had that was the lightning delay, but it had been running for the better what raining, excuse me, for the better part of a few hours. So we're going back out in the pitch black and soaking wet. So so I mean, it it just is it's comical to look back on. We were so freaked out about this in dry daylight, yeah. And then all of a sudden you go pitch black and you think about tree roots and rocks and leaves, and you add rain to that. I mean, and mud and it's your worst nightmare.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I think that speaks to something important in again, kind of back to doing it. I mean, there was there was fear there. Like we'll talk about that, right? There were some people that I mean, I had fear for you because on that red loop, those miles you're talking about in the middle, it is by all standards, and I run more trails than anybody else on the team, and then not many, right? I probably run trails a hundred times in 13 years, um, 14 years. And and I was like, there were a lot of pods of rocks that you just you know let's put it this way on one of the loops, we got a report on the way back that two runners on different teams broke their legs. Um, and there were there were three people on our team that had like rolled ankles and one that was severely swollen. And so I'm like, I barely made it through myself on that on that loop, and now Trent's going out in the pitch black, and I'm like, I don't, I don't feel good. Like it became more about dude, don't hurt yourself.
SPEAKER_00:That was kind of the comment. It's like don't hurt yourself. So I go out um dark. I I've got some I've got some you know context. TJ's talked about it. I I know what the green one was was three three, this one was six six. And so as I started to approach this, I said, okay, I am going to take it as a normal race, but I'm gonna kind of settle in, I'm gonna focus. And um that comparatively to the green loop, which had a lot of tree roots, hidden truths, and stumps, this was it felt like 70% was rocks. I kept laughing because every now and then you'd see like a little cautious sign, and it's like, why here, right? I mean, you know, you could have literally just you know flashed red lights everywhere, and these are like the undulations and the and it had 500 feet of climb. And I think you guys were like, Man, if he gets back anywhere close to an hour, an hour and five, like that'll be it'll be a miracle. A lot. So it's slick, even I don't have trails or injuries.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was wearing racing, I mean base Boston 13s.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I had some, you know, so but about a mile and a half in, I had my music going, I was settling in, and I love to downhill ski. I'm kind of a risk, like I kind of live on the edge. I like to push it right there, and I just kind of got in a rhythm. And I it wasn't car the first loop was cardio, like I because I just pushed my cardio so hard. This one, there were times that I pushed my cardio to like that, but I couldn't physically run fast enough to get myself into a zone five anymore because it was so technically challenging. And when you're when you think about running a mile on a road, and then you think about running a mile in in a woods up and around, climbing, tip tapping, you feel like you're out there for hours. Like you can't believe, like, I think I was two miles in, and I'm like, okay, I gotta be like four and a half or five. And I look down, it's like 2.2. It just because you have to be so mentally. I had TJ's belt lamp face down, I have my headlamp, and I'm just literally dancing all over the place. And this, we are in the middle of nowhere. Um, so I just kind of got in a zone and I got in a really good rhythm. And then when you come out of it, you have that last mile that had some rollers in it. And I think um, you know, the the internal miles were probably in the tens, which when you came in and Corey came in and had context, I don't think it was Corey, I forget who else it was. It was like I gave myself permission to be like, okay, hey, TJ and Tim both ran the second mile like nine and a half to ten minutes, so I didn't freak out about it. Yeah, so using context from you guys and other racers, and then it was it was nighttime and it was slick, so I think I came in at like 58 minutes, which I think everyone was pretty surprised. But it it was very, very challenging and very mentally exhausting. But my first my first leg was my worst leg because of the way I went out, and it got better for me as I went on because I I reset my expectations, it was about sur survival. TJ, one of the things you said was and survival is right, is fear. So, one of the reasons we do some of this too is when you put yourself in these uncomfortable positions, it will expose your weaknesses. I mean, it will shine a huge spotlight on your weaknesses, and it and it totally did for me in that regard. So I'm thinking, first of all, I hate running in the rain. I fortunately it wasn't super cold, but it was low 60s. So when you got wet, if you weren't like in the middle of a run, so I'm I'm here like at this point, I'm still dry because I've been in the three hours of rain. We had gotten a tent, we're sitting under this tent, which is a whole nother thing. Trent and I left the the went all the way several miles to a shuttle to get our car, to get to Walmart, to get a yeah, it's a whole nother deal. But if we wouldn't have got that, by the way, that we would have had the canopy. Yeah, so I'm sitting here for for multiple hours just thinking about this trail that I had just gone out on and was a complete nightmare in the dry daytime, and I'm going out in the middle of the night, it's gonna be so slippery and so wet, and like I'm just thinking about I mean, I'm thinking about getting injured. I am. I'm thinking about rolling an ankle, breaking an ankle. What races am I not gonna be able to do? What if I smash my face on a rock? I mean, you're and your brain just starts going and the fear just starts compounding. And uh it's it's the blessing and the curse of these types of things, it just exposes your deepest vulnerability. And I went out on my second loop, the green loop, and I would say, well, I still felt like I was you know, I was I didn't mail it in by any stretch of the imagination, but I was not kind of you know, I wasn't all in just kind of picking this apart as fast as I could because that underlying fear I just couldn't get out of my head. What if I get injured? So I ended up running probably, I think I want to say like upper eights, 845, 850 on the shorter loop, on the green loop, just and again, I felt like I was running hard, but I was, you know, my first priority was don't get injured. And that um talk a little bit just about that for you guys if I you know being a skier, that kind of uh I think probably expose that in a positive way. Your your willingness to take risks and do those sorts of things. But like talk about mentally where you guys were at this point.
SPEAKER_01:I think there's a couple, I I mean, I think that happened for a couple of different people on this this trail. For me, um, it didn't happen until the very end. One of my small goals for this, I do I don't like running trails because as a lot of older runners, I have a very low foot like uh knee knee raise, right? So I do not get my feet up high. And it seemingly every time I run a trail, no matter how long or short it is, I'll catch a toe and do that like you know, fall over and your whole body tightens up and you feel all, you know, and sometimes I'll hit the ground and broken, uh, I feel like I've I've broken a rib or or you know, at least at least stretch fractured my hand before catching myself doing stuff like that. So one of my small goals was don't fall. Um, I would say the first two, I I full scent it for sure. And then seeing everybody else come back in and seeing them win those battles because you eventually won the battle. Phil, same thing. You know, he went out, I think it was on his second loop as well. And, you know, again, you know, certain people and a lot of roadrunners, you get out there and it is pitch black and it's raining, and you're seeing these puddles and early in the night, and even later in the night, they're kind of avoidable. Like, oh, I don't want to get my feet wet, so people are picking around them. Well, not realizing that when you're around, when you're around the puddle, that's where the mud is. You're sliding on the mud, you know, trying to get around it. So you're actually being less efficient, but you're being very cautious about where you put your feet and where you go. Um, so hearing people come back in, especially after their second loop before my third, it was like, no, we're just gonna go. Like we're gonna run through the puddles, we're just gonna send it. But for me, uh, with a mile to go in my entire race, my legs are pretty gassed. Um, and I and I just couldn't get them up. And so I probably left a minute out there on the course just because I'm like, I'm gonna bust my ass. And I've been I've been on my feet this entire time and run really good laps again, contextually speaking. Um, and I was not I I I I let fear get me that last mile because I didn't want to end up on my face.
SPEAKER_00:So um which is probably a wise choice, but one of the things you mentioned there, just talking about getting your feet wet, because a lot of us had one pair of shoes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, you're thinking about blisters, or you're thinking at this point, again, it's low 60s. A lot of people who haven't run are freezing cold, and you're thinking in your head, well, you know, again, the compounding of that fear. What if my shoes get wet, and then I gotta put my feet back in wet shoes to go back out on the the third lap, right? That sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Um I mean, as roadrunners, it's everything you you fear. You know, I I remember talking to the guys, so yeah, we had these two, we have a 10-person tent, 10-man tent, and we had a little four-person tent where we put our gear. And then, yes, Trent and Todd went out and grabbed a canopy for us as well, so that we could put our chairs under a canopy. But there was a moment when it was thunderstorming heavy where water was starting to drip inside the big tent. Not very much of it, just a drop at a time. And I was legitimately like, what happens if this floods? Because there was a river running under that tent. And when you walked out to the front porch area of the tent, it was underwater. So we're like, are do we just sit here and shiver in the freezing ass rain for the next seven hours and run these? Because like nobody was in and again, like I we didn't talk about it a lot at the beginning, right? But the like camaraderie and the do whatever for for whoever, you know, you know, this group um is fun because it's always changing. There's a core group typically, but not, you know, like there, there's obvious there's us brothers that run most of the stuff together. And then, you know, we've got Phil and Tim that we've known our entire lives, and I've known Corey for a really long time, but he didn't come into the running fold with the group until about five years ago. And then we have we've known the Eckerly family our entire lives, but Patrick, you know, he's eight years younger than me, and so um didn't really know him growing up. He came into the fold with us in 21 um for that for that coast, right? Uh, and then Ricardo, you know, I he his daughters and my daughters are best friends, and Ricardo and I have gotten to know each other really well over the last couple years, but this was his first race. And so you've got somebody, and I think he it was fantastic because you have somebody who doesn't know anybody, he's met a handful of us because Ricardo helps run prairie on fire and he's run the Full Mo a couple times, so he's part of the crew and has been for two years or whatever, but doesn't know these guys deeply. He had said you guys had never really had a deep conversation, you knew each other. And Ricardo goes out on his first loop and rolls his ankle, and he rolls it bad to the point where, like, I'm holding him up as we're walking out of the corral, and everybody's like, Is he gonna finish? Is he gonna finish? Is he gonna run? Is he gonna run? And like three hours later, we're laying in the tent. And somebody out of his Tim, somebody speaks up and is like, Are you gonna finish? And he goes, I have to.
SPEAKER_00:Like, there was no We talked for 15 minutes about who was gonna pick up his second two legs. I mean, it was like, who'd you do this? Do we double up? Does does eight pick up seven? And or does six pick up seven? Like, there was a lot of conversation about that. And in that same, was it the first one as well that Tim rolled his ankle? Second. No, it was Tim. Tim rolling the first two. It was the first as well. It was the end of the first. I'm I'm 100% sure. Now at that point, I don't think he knew the severity of it. He said it kind of got worse over time. But we had in that first loop, two of the runners had rolled their ankles to the point where we weren't sure they were going to be able to finish. I would say they were they were decent ankle sprains. Both of them, I mean, they were blown down and got it to the point where it got wrapped. They were icing it, taking ibuprofen. Like we're not talking like, oh, I kind of just I think every person there had that ankle, you know, when your foot just kind of doesn't have to be a little bit more than a little bit. Everybody, yeah, everybody had that a dozen times. If you land on it hard, that's when you tuck it under and pop it. Most of us had probably 15 plus like slight ones. Like you just you were just moving so quick. Yeah. So to go back to the question of like the fear, I think for some of us it probably did close and narrow the gaps. I actually never thought about or was standing out there with fear. Like to to me, for whatever reason, I wasn't like, oh, I mean, I was watching closely, I was working hard, my mind was going a million miles an hour watching it, but I never thought to myself, oh, I'm I'm gonna get hurt, or oh, I need to back it off, or whatever. I was just kind of in it and going as hard as I could, even though when I had the little small ankle turns, it would rent it would reel me back a little bit, right? I'd be like, okay. And generally that would happen because I wasn't focused or I was kind of drifting, or it's you know, it's two or three in the morning and I can't see, but um, I think that actually helped me to be able to push it a little bit harder because I just for what whatever reason it didn't trigger. Let's talk for a second just about the human body. Like I continue to be, I think I've I've said uh on this podcast several times, can continue to be completely blown away by the human body and its ability to adapt, and you think about the way we push it is just a fraction of how our ancestors pushed it in environments they had to live in hundreds or thousands of years ago. This was another experience where the capability of the human body just absolutely blew me away. Like if you look on paper and you think about people moving at uh you know eight-minute mile pace, give or take, and you think about the number of steps that are happening per minute, the brain's ability to process where the foot should go and how you're going to attack this in real time is absolutely insane. I mean, especially when you when you found yourself really going after it and you had kind of taken off the governor on the loops that we were able to do that. Insane. Talk about that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, we what we got to talk about is you ran you guys.
SPEAKER_00:Need all you can see.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I put contacts in because I knew based on prior experiences, I had contacts with me. I'm like, I cannot go out in this rain at the dark because my glasses will fog up or I will get so much moisture on there, I won't be able to see. You didn't have that. So you want to talk about the human brain's ability to like you ran a large portion of that second loop.
SPEAKER_00:Who's the third?
SPEAKER_01:Blind.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that was again my worst nightmare. So I'm thinking going into the second loop after the day and the dry, then I go into the second loop and it's and it's and it's soaking wet. It wasn't raining, thank goodness at that point, but pitch black and soaking wet, you know, going off of headlamps and waistlamps, and then I get to the third loop and it's all of that plus it's pouring rain, and I've got my glasses on, and I can't, I I didn't realize this until about a half mile in how bad it was gonna be. Because I initially had a hat like this, and I was gonna try and protect it, but the headlamp up here wasn't doing the the bill was blocking the headlamp, so I had to turn my hat around so the headlamp actually I could see where I was going, but my glasses fogged up and got so much rain on them. I was I it was again, it was an absolute worst nightmare. And although what was interesting about it, it pushed me past a point about three miles in where when I I basically thought a rock was a ended up being a puddle, almost a kiddie pool at that point. It had to have been this deep, and I basically jumped right. You're on the red loop, yeah. I was on the red loop, and at that point I was like, I don't care, and I just it was a full send from there, but I I couldn't, I can't tell you how many times it had to happen a dozen times. I didn't even know where the path was going. Like I would have to I would go off the path a little bit, and then I would see nothing, and then I'd have to go back a few steps and like figure out where the path went. It was just I was seeing shadows and like just formations, and it was almost it was just a complete feel, and the brain's ability to even though you know it took me off track because I I didn't have any clarity. Uh, you could see, I don't know that we can maybe we can share the picture, uh, but it was just I was just seeing kind of foggy, you know, things, and and that at that point it was just go for it. And that was again my brain's ability to process that and even the foot's reaction time when I stepped somewhere that I didn't think I was stepping in, its ability to just kind of adjust and go, actually never fully fell down on that last three miles, and I was just it was just a full sin.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, Phil said it too, you know, that full sin. I mean, that goes back to what we were just talking about a few minutes ago with the like just crossing that threshold. And and Phil, Phil, I think when he came in off his second loop, said something about, and he he always champions this. He's like, it is amazing what you'll do for everybody else there. It's like there's not, and I think that's what makes it fun. You know, I was looking at the results and there, and it again, this is this can be you can do this any way you want. I think just getting out there and for you know, getting out there and developing new context and trying something different. That's for for us, it was really humbling. It would be like us doing anything like this, going out and you know, doing uh something, you know, akin to uh one of those races where you're it's like a Spartan race. You know, we got second place in this race. Um, we lost by like an hour, but we beat 200 teams, and in getting that second, it was a super humbling experience and really um you know pushed us to do uh and really really I pushed us to rely on that drive from this whole community thing. And it was I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I want to hit on two things that you talked about. First, the community, because I wouldn't have sent what I did when I did if it wasn't for Ricardo running through a rolled ankle, uh Tim running through a rolled ankle, you guys full sending. There was a point where it was just like my brain had gotten me so worked up, but the inspiration from what the what you guys you were getting faster every loop, you had you had again full scent everything. It was like, what am I doing at this point? What was the interesting thing is a lot of times when you're distant from something, it feels worse than it actually is, right? The fear from a distance. When I was sitting there after running a dry loop in the day, and you start thinking about the night and all those things that mentioned several times, the fear compounds. The reality was people fall all the time. And the reality was nine out of ten falls, or maybe 49 out of 50 falls, is not going to be an ER trip. It's not gonna be, you know, so that that kind of hit me at when you know, after I got completely soaking wet and mud, because I was doing a lot of dancing to keep my feet dry. It was just like, okay, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Yeah, I might fall. I'm gonna likely catch myself. I might get scraped up, might get bumped or bruises, but it's like, okay, at the end of the day, that's not a huge deal. I had really built it up in my head of I'm gonna lose my teeth or I'm gonna break my neck or break a leg or whatever. The reality was when you're moving at a 10-minute pace picking this stuff off, there's only it's only so far hard that you can fall. But it was the combination of that inspiration from everyone else, the community that that uh really broke me through that threshold. Well, I want to zoom that way out.
SPEAKER_01:I think because I think there's a really, really interesting thing there. The reason I think that it for for us since 2023, for a large portion of us, we haven't done a race is exactly that zoomed out. Gosh, I don't want to go do hood to coast, I don't want to go do a Ragnarok because it's gonna be hard and I'm gonna hurt, and I'm gonna be the guy that's not fit. And, you know, and I think you zoom out even further and you look at life in general, and that's why we do these things. Because if you sit at home all day on the couch and you worry about social engagement with people or whatever it is that is your scary thing, it just gets worse. Yeah. And and so, you know, thank goodness for people. And if you're involved in a community, you'll have a Todd who's like, you know what? Screw it. I'm sending the email out, we're doing the race. And then that same thing that pulled you through the fear, people are gonna see, well, Todd's doing it. Okay, TJ's doing okay. I'm all right, we're in, and then all of a sudden, then you get there, and then you're in, then you're zoomed in and you're you're tackling these things. And coincidentally, or whatever, the things that you're tackling make all this other stuff that we worry about when you zoom all the way out seem so inconsequential. Uh, and and and that is huge, I think.
SPEAKER_00:It definitely does a reset. I mean, this has been the biggest race year I've had in I think my life. Yeah. Episode one, TJ's like, okay, I was like, set my goals, and it was full mo, and then it was prairie, and then Todd slid this in there.
SPEAKER_01:Two weeks after prairie.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, two weeks after prairie. And so it was there is something about like we all have a ton of stuff going on, and you know, my kids are in a little different phases than your guys's, and there's always excuses. But when you go to these things, you want to be trained up because of what our team, you know, requires or expects, and they want it within the context of like, you know, is I think effort is probably ultimately the most important, but but we still we want people to go out there and be able to fight through and and give it a hundred and we we want to see people exceed their expectations, right? But there is a an amount of pressure that I think we put on ourselves to perform. I don't want to go to a race, a road race, and run eight minute miles when everyone else is running 630s and then we lose by seven minutes and it's on me. So uh there's a lot of pressure in that, but there's um I do believe we get a lot of fulfillment from that. Like when you come back from things like this, you have that context, you have a different appreciation. I've done something that's I never thought I would do at a level that I never thought I would do, and now of a sudden like it does make other things seem easier, and I think it's important to do hard things. Think about the next time you you know, I always when it's raining outside, I'm just like, I don't want to go out in the rain. Yeah. But if it's raining and it's daylight and it's on a road, a path that I can see, it's like it just frames everything completely differently. But you said doing hard things, you and I have talked about the mismasogee. Uh, this is something we've kind of stumbled into through these races, but this is something that's been practiced in other cultures and even here for uh I would imagine hundreds of years. Uh, but why don't you give the group an intro there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean it's essentially that it's essentially that one big hard thing a year. And I think that that is you can do more than that, but I think it's it was probably practiced because it does give you that reset. I mean, I'm sure there are many of you like me. Like, there's times I don't want to approach a uh men. I don't want to ask somebody for where to go in the store. You know, I'll walk around for 30 minutes because like I don't maybe there's a little anxiety around social interaction, or I don't want to appear a certain way to this person like I'm incompetent or that I, you know, don't know how to do something. Um, and then you go and you do something like this, and you're like, dude, go ask a question. Like it's not that scary to ask somebody for directions, or it's not that scary to call customer service and complain about something if you've if something's gone really wrong. Uh you just ran, you know, you just put yourself in a situation in the dark, in the rain with all of these people, and you conquered it. Like, don't be afraid. And I would say that you know, that applies to you know, Trey, you said you know, our group expect something different, but I think you work up to that, you know, just going and finishing whatever it is, what your big hairy thing doesn't have to be this. Um, you know, we have a buddy who his one of the things he did, he spent five days in dark solitude straight. Like, you know, that's a little more intense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that idea.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, there are these these, you know, we talk about some of these guys that run some of our races. Uh Zach Holland, the do hard things guys and the tribal training guys, like uh Ryan and his team and and Jordan, you know, they put together these events for their teams where it's one or two hard things they do every year to bring the community together. Because I think with that community, speaking to like Todd sending the email out earlier, um you the bigger, the bigger it is, and the tighter it is, the more often the more likely it is for people to bring these types of different things forward and keep the group moving in the right direction because you're Trent said it's so easy to fall out of practice um with the kids, and and there's always an excuse, but uh you know.
SPEAKER_00:But you never regret it, right? You come back here and I think I don't know which one of you said it, but there was there's something about the harder something is, the the better memory it is. Like I will never forget Wisconsin Ragnar Trails. And we haven't even gotten to the third loop yet. And some of the other trail runs we've had, like you do something really hard or out there with a group of people, and it's just there's something about it that just it's different. Let's talk about the community aspect of this, because there's relationships formed during these things that have nothing to do with the psychological benefits or the accomplishment benefits. You know, shared suffering is a staple in community building, in fact, fraternities, fraternity organizations across the country. Um that was like one of the primary premises of how they built relationships with pledge brothers is pledge ship. There was a lot of suffering to the point that the hazing had to get dialed back. But when you go through something that difficult with other people, it inherently forms a connection and an understanding and a relationship. Talk about that. Yeah, no, I I think you're right. Um I had that experience in college, and I think when you do hard things together with people, because you think about how do you make memories with other people. You have memories growing up, you have memories with sports teams, and as you were talking, I just kept thinking about well, how did I how do you form relationships? How do you build bonds with people? And it's you gotta be doing stuff with them. And I think it didn't have to I mean, you can build a bond by going to dinner, right? You can do things like that, but there's something about like going out, kinda not really, but sleeping in a tent and being with someone for two days and accomplishing something together. I think that that does strengthen a bond, and um it definitely takes a maybe a new friendship to a heightened relationship really, really quick.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's a really good point. That's kind of the way I was thinking it, you know, as adults for me, you're more skilled in this arena, but it's it's difficult to make those deep relationships. You can go to dinners, you can meet, you know, you hear a lot again with the whole kid sports things, you become friends with the parents of the kids that your your kids play sports with. And I think there's, you know, because you're around them a lot, but boy, let me tell you, we have probably again, like I said, there's there's a base six to eight guys that do these races. But every el every person that's ever slotted, and and and we want, you know, normally the way this works for us is that if you ran the race prior, your first dibs on the next race. So, like if the next thing we do, these eight are in, and then everybody else, you know, um, based on how many they've done in the past or whatever, the proximity to the group will be will will get to do this, or you know, we'll invite or whatever. But like it does. You want to talk about like every person that's ever slotted feels like an a long relationship, like one of those old people that you haven't seen for 30 years, you went to high school with, and you just pick up right where you left off. All of these relationships, um, I could think of probably a dozen guys that we've run with after going through that, it's like, oh, what's up? Like, just like your homies from way back when. And so there may be something to that. If you want to build a strong relationship with somebody quick and and uh, you know, because I think there's a lot to we sit around all the time, and we I'll just say it, we sit around all the time with people and bullshit about this and that, and whether, like you said, like, oh, yeah, let's get together sometime or let's do this. But when you show up at something like this, you're putting your money where your mouth is. Like you're burying yourself before these seven people, and vice versa. And that holds a ton of weight. Like, you know, nobody there owes me anything, nobody there owes any of us anything, and then going out and seeing them, Ricardo running on you know, his his ankle, uh, Tim running on his ankle, which is the size of a softball at this point in time. Um, and yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think that has to do with just the authenticity of it? Like, you think about you go out there with someone and you're doing this stuff, like you know exactly who they are at the core. Like, all the fluff falls away. I think it was I forget which YouTuber it was. This may have been Alex her Mosey that said this. Like, you should take your your wife or your girlfriend on a camping trip if you really want to know who they are. Like, I yeah, to answer your question, I think it's a vulnerability. I mean, you put yourself in an extremely vulnerable spot and you let people in to see you know what we whatever weaknesses are gonna get exposed in that or whatever whatever uncomfortable personal things when you're in something like this, there's just a level of vulnerability that you get to that you don't get with most people. And like the point, and I'll I'll speak to this. Um, we had a uh Exodus 90 group, which is uh uh men's kind of spiritual formation group, and in our first meeting, we had a group in 2022 that still does stuff together. In our first meeting, we had two guys that, and this wasn't a physical, but I see the the parallel here. We had two guys get into uh some really vulnerable stuff that they were struggling with, and some past experiences in their life, like right out of the gate, and that completely changed the dynamic of the group because there was a level of vulnerability, authenticity out there that it just forms you in a different way.
SPEAKER_01:So you mentioned earlier we haven't even gotten to loop three yet. You know, I guess let's let's kind of in closing out the podcast, let's kind of recap kind of how this thing finished out. You know, I I think uh the the peak of it was the thunderstorms at I don't know when that was because we're finishing loop two.
SPEAKER_00:So we get through loop two. So I was the first runner, second and third. So we went through loop two. It rained, it had rained, so all of us were running loop two, but I don't believe until it hit Corey, who was our eighth runner, and so the finish of loop two, the sky opened up again and it started just hammering. Yeah, it rained from like six to nine-ish, and then it kind of stopped, and we got another four, five hours of obviously it was soaking wet, but it wasn't raining.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And Lori was on he was on his second loop, which he would have been hitting uh he was green, yeah, yellow. No, because I was my last loop was yellow, so he would have been this would have been about 3 a.m. Yeah, so he finishes green, and it is like raining. Torrential downpour starts maybe, and we thought they were gonna call it again. He was out maybe 10 minutes, torrential downpour. We talk about that for a second, by the way. Like anything else that I'm a part of a golf tournament, a kid sporting event, anything, if there's lightning within 10 miles, it is off immediately until lightning has been out of that radius for 30 plus minutes. Here, if a lightning didn't strike a tree within like five feet of the campus, it we were going. We were on now.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, they did delay it for an hour because there were three three definitively separate lightning strikes and they delayed it once.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it is raining as hard as it possibly could. And when Corey came in from his loop, he looked at me and he's like, dude, I just feel sorry for you, right? I mean, I'm going out into I might as well have been swimming in the ocean. And the one thing that I heard a couple people say on the yellow loop was, yeah, I went around the edges for the first few miles. He's like, by the time you get to the third mile, you're in it. So I had mentally said, you know what? I'm committing all in from the from the jump. I go out the chute and immediately I'm ankle deep, feet are completely toast. I go up, which it's it's a muddy mess. Um, water's, you know, kind of coming down. But when I get on my first part of the yellow loop, which is a climb, I was I was climbing up a river. I was waiting in water and ankle deep every single like I just I visualize, I just remember it. Like I'm going up this mountain, and water is just it is rushing down like there's a current, and I'm just going. My first mile was like a 10-minute mile. I like there was nothing I could do. I just literally was like waiting. I couldn't see. It was just, it was I mean, even with the trees, I'm in the trees and it was just pouring, water was going everywhere, and I'm just like, okay, I gotta make sure I keep my heart rate in a good spot. And the interesting part again, like once I got a mile in, like your body and your mind adjust to everything. Like when we did Boston, like it just adjusts to everything. I committed to going in it, and it kind of made me a little bit fearless because when there's puddles on the ground, you can still see the rocks, and you can see the roots, and you can see, and then the mud. I literally felt like I ran 70% of that loop with my ankles below water, and so I just went for it. I just as fast as my legs could take me, I'm like, well, I'm not gonna fall, you know, as long as I don't catch a rock when I go underwater. And there was a couple of times I did fall on the on the last loop. I got my my hand and in my knee. It was when I was trying to get around someone, but um it was like I just don't know how to describe it. There was a piece in there for a couple miles that I was able to kind of just lock in and just enjoy the experience and just appreciate the difficulty of it all, but it was like nothing that I've ever seen. Like I can't, and then I think it started to like soak up before I think you you went out. It was still raining a little bit. You guys got the worst of it that because Corey came in, and shout out to Corey for sending the bad one where you're gonna started pouring and stopped for like 20 minutes or whatever, and then by the time I got out there, I think I got like a mile and a half out there where I was pretty good, but then right when I got into the difficult part, it just because I think the last maybe mile of mine it had a kind of subsided, but that was my best lap. Like my yellow lap, I was I just kept trying to send it and keep my heart rate right on that like teeter totter of like I could barely breathe and you know, just hammering. And uh I think the water actually helped me because I again I you didn't worry about falling as much when you couldn't see what you were landing in.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, shout out to Corey for setting the tone. I mean, he came in after that very first lap and run runs into the campsite just screaming LFG and like this is fun. And Corey was Corey always sets the tone for like, you know, I we talked, we were joking, he said the full send like 30 times. He's like, I'm full sending, I don't care if I die. Like, and and even though we were joking about it a little bit, we all kind of I think took that. I remember because I remember him coming in and talking to me before before he handed off to you, and he's like, I couldn't see my feet. He's like, it was raining so hard, I couldn't see my feet. It was just unbelievable. He's like, Trent's gonna come in after his loop and he's gonna tell us we're going home. He's gonna say, I'm done, we're going home.
SPEAKER_00:Can we talk about that for a second? Because I I'll I I I won't lie now, whether or not this is just a thought or an actually would happen. Thank goodness, I think for a lot of teams, we were kind of trapped on camp. So our cars were five miles down the road, right? On a in a parking lot, that a shuttle stopped running at 6 p.m. And so there was a point there at one in the morning where the radar showed clearly it was just about to open up for six hours, thunderstorms read, whatever. And we're trying to like, I mean, we got a lot going on back here at home, right? A lot of responsibilities, a lot of things, and like we're about to stay up all night and and what our brain had convinced us of, like basically kill ourselves. Like, there would have been, I think, some more intentional, questionable discussion about going home had our cars been on site.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, like I said, we had there were 15 teams that withdrew even with that situation.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, there I didn't know that. I didn't know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there was five or six percent of the teams quit in the middle of the race because it was that like ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I came around there, I like I I shot out a yellow, and I'm just like MTC, and I come around the bend and I didn't see you guys, and I got nervous because we didn't expect because he came in so much faster than we thought. Yeah, I mean, and so and then I get in there and thank God you and Todd were there, and Todd just ripped his shirt off and went. But it was like it was each loop was different and presented different challenges, especially with the water and the yellow loop, because yeah, it was just it's just crazy.
SPEAKER_01:There's so much, like again, encouraging anybody listening to do something that that like there's a fun element to it, but I I really think there's something to pushing yourself, whatever pushing yourself is, um, whether it's finishing a distance or running a particular speed or whatever it is, there's something to that intensity and something to that, like I, you know, Todd said earlier about getting cold when you weren't running when it was raining, and there was a point where um it was before Trent went out on the second loop, I was freezing. I get really cold um pretty easily, and I'm like freezing. And I saw Trent come in off that second loop, and immediately the adrenaline's going, I'm warmed up, I'm ready to go.
SPEAKER_00:And there's something to that, like that intensity is you guys were staring off into the night, and I go by and I make the turn and I go right by and I'm like, it's up T. And they were all like looking off in the distance, like, is he coming and is he coming? He's like, Oh my god, and you guys went in the other way. It was so funny because I couldn't see you, yeah. I just and then I finally I was like I was from here to here from TJ, and I kind of looked over and I just said, It's up T. They were like, Well, I was this on the third loop? The second loop. Oh, the second loop, I come hammering around, I make that whole turn, and they don't, you know, they normally see us coming out and they're like yelling at us and seeing me. And I was like literally running right in front of them, and they were still looking off in the distance, and I kind of looked at them like, let's go, T, or something like that. And they were just all starting going nuts, and I'm around that corner and wow, sent you out into the and everybody. I was gonna say, you said, Hey, do something, get out of your comfort zone. That's so much easier said than done. Because the reality is, as much as we talk about this now, none of us are doing that by ourselves. If we were by ourselves, and so I would just say, as you're thinking about that, find the community that's crazy enough to do it with you, make the commitment and force yourself, just put your back against the wall. That's the only reason we did this, is we put our backs against the wall. First of all, we put our backs against the wall just by being there, you know, just to go through that. But then we had no choice, and you got seven other guys that are counting on you to go out there and get it done, uh, even if it you're gonna put yourself at risk in some form or fashion. So I think a key element to being able to put yourself in those situations is getting I don't care if it's a group of three, five, eight, twelve, whatever, to go do it with you. I think it's it's that's key.
SPEAKER_01:It's kind of akin to like a little bit kind of like akin to atomic habits. Meaning that, you know, setting your shoes, you know, just putting your shoes out every day. Like just put it on the calendar. Just put it on the calendar. I don't care if you have nobody, and then find find a person that you know will push you and try to start building that group together. And then you will get there and you'll have a Corey or you'll have somebody who is okay, well, this is where we're at. We're gonna go do this hard thing. This I'm gonna put this goal out here for us as a group that's just a little past what we think we could do. I mean, you know, we got lucky our first one and won the whole. Thing granted by like 20 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever, we didn't think we could do that, but we had gone into I remember sitting at my 40th birthday dinner, and I was talking about oh, we finished top 10. And you guys were like, you know, we you guys are just but but you put you guys organize it, you put it on the calendar, you started inviting people, you know, we grew up around some naturally competitive people, and then we got there, and then all of a sudden that has jumped off into all of these other things, and and you know.
SPEAKER_00:And even though we finished well in these, I would say our finishes have had a very, very little to do with the overall benefit. We could have finished 10th or 100th or whatever. Now, some of it's the competitiveness and the shared suffering and the extent we're pushing ourselves, do I think amplifies the benefits a little bit or magnifies them?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but you're right. Because like it's it's this trail race showed us that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's just about it's about effort, it's about leaving it all out there. And and the cool thing about this was had this been a point-to-point and had they been significantly different, there could have been a little bit, a little bit of potential friction. Like, oh, you know, if I went out and ran a 610 and you ran an 830 and I didn't get a seat, but because we each got to run these loops together, yeah, we built appreciation for the difficulty. Oh shit, he just ran that five miler in 47 minutes. You do that shit in a in a point-to-point right now, we're fighting. But well, not really, you know, but like having that shared context was awesome. Yeah, and and that really reset it's like it isn't about winning or breaking a course record or being the best team. It's about everybody leaving everything out there, and we did that, and it was that.
SPEAKER_00:And going into I mean, all of us I think outperformed and seeing Ricardo, because we were on the same loop. And so I would tell him kind of what I thought. And I went out there and I'm like, I gave it everything I had and went as technically fast, and he was coming in faster, like by like a 30 seconds, I think, on the red loop. Um, and then Tim goes out, and again, it's like one thing to like run on a sprained ankle on the road, but Tim went out and had to run 3.6 miles on a softball, on a softball on his ankle, and you know, every time you have like when you have that outside sprain, when you roll that, it's like every little thing has to feel like a needle. And I mean, that's I used to roll my ankle all the time. So he went out to the trees to do that for 3.6 miles. And again, I don't think that happens without the the the commitment to the team, and it just calls more out of you. Adrenaline takes in, um, takes over, and you just come commit to doing something that's outside of what you would ever consider doing because you're not gonna let your team down. That's another fun thing. You everyone plays a little bit of a different role and inspires in a little bit of a different way, and that's fun to see come to life. Um, Corey, for example. I think there was a point where we all maybe felt like his social media hype was getting a little out of control. Corey likes to go in and taunt people and get everybody fired up about how well we're gonna do in this race, and um that that set a little bit of a tone. But then you guys, we talked about Ricardo and Tim pushing in different ways. You had Eckerly come out and absolutely set, you know, set the green loop on fire. Fastest loop of the fastest loop of the green of the the time. Uh, it's it's really fun to see people lean into, whether it's fighting through injuries or quietly performing or helping out in different ways with people's lighting or things. I know I borrowed waist lamps and and uh headlamps and things from people, and and you know, in in some instances, you could see different people maybe like getting concerned about, you know, because all these things are battery charged, right? That may or may not last, but everyone knew it was so dangerous out there. It was like whatever you need to go, like I'm here for it. Like, here it is, and and let's go out as a team. It was it's really cool to see different people play different roles.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, everybody definitely played, you know, all the roles you said. Phil, Phil, you know, I I was really inspired by him getting through because he had that bad lap, and and it's hard to come back from that. I mean, if you're in a road race, you normally don't because you know once you've once you've blown your you're you're done. And and he came back significantly stronger because he took the same approach you did. He's like, I'm in, I'm just gonna run through the puddles, and and uh so that was really cool to see. And and everybody like is being so helpful. As soon as you get off, we need to charge a wasteland. We've got to get the wasteland's charged because if these go out, we're in trouble. And um it was it was fun, it was special, it was uh fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I guess at this point it's figuring out how to get the next one on the calendar, which there'd been some discussion about, but uh why don't we just go with close with that? We've talked about doing uh very competitive things, but now we're maybe thinking about mixing it up a little bit. Why don't you guys share share about that and wrap it up there?
SPEAKER_01:You you put it down, you say it, you put it on the chat, or somebody put it on the chat, the Zion thing.
SPEAKER_00:I think Todd did, yeah. So um But you've been out there, yeah. Zion's incredible. I think there's um you're gonna have to there's uh running from end to end of the park, I think it's like a 48-mile run. Yeah, Zion Traverse is what it's called. And so, you know, we've been competing um a lot, and as we get older and we still have that competitive spirit, but running, I I would say for me as I continue to my streak, when I travel, it is one of the coolest ways to see a place. Uh, when I went over to Europe and I was in Germany, and um like when you get out in the morning and go run four or five miles and you go explore an area, it's just such a unique way to get a feel for what a place really is, and you see things. And so we've talked about transitioning to adventures that I mean, can you imagine traversing Zion National Park? Like that place is one of the most unbelievable views, and spending three or four days out there climbing 10,000 feet and going for 48 miles, all I mean, I'm sure it's there's all kinds of stuff. So as we age, I think um maybe that's part of it is like racing is is still fun, and we probably will do that, but doing something around the adventure standpoint would be um hard race one year, hard adventure the next year, something like that. I I say that because not everybody may be doing the race thing. I don't think you have to do the race thing, I think you can put yourself out there. I would say it there is some value to it being some difficult thing relatively for you. I mean, some people covering 20 miles of ground, you know, over the course of a day, even if you're walking, be extremely, extremely difficult, and that would check the box. It doesn't necessarily have to be a race or a competitive thing, but there's a way to get out with others and push yourself.
SPEAKER_01:I wouldn't recommend, you know, but like I think we would agree that if we got out there doing that and something really treacherous happened, it would probably make the experience that much more rich. Like if we walked 48 miles, you know, in 18 hours and it was pretty uneventful, we it'd be cool. We got to see some dope stuff, but you know, adversity is always or or doing something we're not used to doing. I mean, John's really the only person that's used to like packing uh like that, and and so you know, having to do things that we're not normally doing for ourselves, and and I'm sure you know, we'll I think that that is really important.
SPEAKER_00:I like I came back and I'm like, you know what? I haven't taken my son camping, like just setting up a tent and sleeping outside, like doing something like backpacking, like being in the outdoors. I think for people that do it all the time, it's probably second nature. But for for someone like me, just having that experience will push me to take more experiences with with my kids that are outside the house. Well, there's just a lot of fear with that, too. Like for me, it's like, oh, go out there and camping, where will we use the restroom? Where do we get our food and that sort of thing? Your mind starts going, run a plug out to the there to get we get a generator or whatever to carry with us. Uh and it's one thing you bring up kids, I just want to maybe uh mention this last thing too. We've talked about the do hard things, like things like kids with kids. Like, I'm gonna make a commitment right now that we're going to plan something for next year. Uh, I think whether we do it all as all the cousins together or in small pockets, I think kids having this ability to do these hard things and get that context set that much earlier in life and learn some of these lessons because a lot of the stuff we've just learned in the last five to seven years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I think could be really, really powerful. And I think there's a lot of resources just more broadly that could be dumped into that sort of thing. So I agree. Well, um, what an experience. Trail running. Uh, there's a lot of love and appreciation for you, trail runners. Um, now that we kind of have a better uh understanding of what that is. So find your community, keep on pushing on and doing hard things. We'll see you next time.