Jocko Podcast - 545: The Journey Through Pain, Purpose, and Resilience. With Mason Wright.

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< Mason Wright ("Buff Runner") went from childhood trauma, loss, and depression to completing a 1,000-mile run around a high school track. In this conversation, he shares how sports saved him, how he survived some of the darkest moments of his life, and why suffering can become a tool for growth. A powerful discussion on resilience, discipline, and refusing to quit.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 545 with Kerry Hilton and me, Jocko Willick. Good evening, Carrie. Good evening. At just day one, there were heat and stomach problems. Day three brought foot pain intense enough that he said he cried. And by day four, he had logged 150 miles on very little sleep. Later, he wrote about blisters, nerve pain, and the strange mental grind of repeating the same oval thousands of times.

Still, Mason Wright kept connecting the suffering back to the reason he started. In one post, he wrote that single parents don't get to quit just because things are hard. Later, as the finish got closer, he said the run had become about resilience, pain, and discovering what he could handle. After finishing, Wright wrote in his final journal entry that he was still trying to process what he had done. quote mentally i don't know how i am okay i don't know how i kept moving i don't know how i did this and that's what makes me proud end quote and that is in a little excerpt from an article from runners world and is an article about mason wright who operates under the instagram call sign buff runner which is a bold claim by the way and this article is a best article is a best of

the thousand mile run that Mason just completed in April around a high school track. And Mason's done a bunch of other things in his life and he's having an impact beyond just running. And he's here tonight to share with us some of his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Buff runner, that is a bold statement, right? Oh yeah, big time.

What makes you classified as buff? What body weight do you have to be to be buff? Or is it just a, is it a body fat percentage? It's a mindset. Oh, okay. That's a mindset. Okay. Cheque.

Jack. Mason, thanks for joining us. Let's, let's, we're going to get into all the kind of things, things you've been through in your life. And let's just start at the beginning. So you're born where? Vegas. Yeah, I was born in Vegas. And then what was going on with your, with your entry into the world?

What was happening? What was happening? What, 1997? Yeah, 1997. So what's going on? Born in Las Vegas, lived in Green Valley, Henderson area. This is just like, what is it, north or whatever direction. I don't know what direction it is.

We say outside of Vegas. Yeah, it's outside of Vegas. Whatever direction. But it was, you know, it was a nicer area. You know, my dad, he owned a mobile wash company for a really long time. And he did all the dealerships and, I mean, everything from all through California, Nevada and Arizona. So it was a massive operation.

So we lived very well. and that's again that's just like where my life started was in Vegas and it you know it was normal as far as I know I you know when I was four is when we left and so there's you know there's there's very little memory the memory that is there is broken and most of it's just from the traumatic things that happened a lot of domestic violence drugs a lot of stuff like that we were that I was experiencing so that's a lot of what my memories are um So it's a little broken. So your dad at this point, he's got a successful, like it sounds like a highly successful business.

And yet there's drugs and domestic violence in the home. Yeah. He basically took drugs to work more. That was like his, his addiction was work. And he used another addiction to feed the other addiction. And so he basically would, you know, whether it was crack or cocaine or whatever, he would use that and then go to. the next like just a drive from state to state managing all of this just so and he would go days without sleeping just doing drugs to stay awake so the drugs in the home was again more of like

his like there weren't like drugs just like out and about it wasn't a drug house again we lived in a very nice area that you know that stuff wasn't going on directly in the house but I mean it was he was using it every day and then of course domestic violence uh which inevitably led to the, you know, moving. And what do you were through your early memories of that? Because I, I were trying to think back with what I remember when I was a kid. And I mean, I don't, quite honestly, I don't remember much. But you remember, like, some highlight of something that happened.

And it seemed like, it seems like domestic violence would be the kind of thing you would remember. Yes. Is that accurate? Yeah. It's, it's, it's funny. I'm actually writing a book right now. And part of it, you know, I'm obviously telling my story.

And I was actually writing about it today. And I was writing about it today. And I was writing. about this, there's one specific memory that I have. You know, I remember a lot of shouting, a lot of screaming, a lot of things like that, but there's one memory I have where I, you know, our couch, who knows the layout of the actual house, you know, I was four years old, but I remember shouting and screaming in the kitchen, throwing things and I just stuck my head, like, in between the couch cushions just so I didn't like have to hear it. It's a weird, again,

it's broken. A lot of these memories, I was four, you know, so it's how true is it? But I do remember, you know, I stuck my head in the couch cushions to like just stop hearing it essentially. So that's like kind of what a lot of my memories are is that type of stuff, right? Like trying to block out the screaming or the yelling or whatever it might have been. And so then this, the marriage falls apart. I'm assuming. Yeah. So there was there's a lot.

And I, I tend to not show this part of the story publicly just because it's not my story to tell. I have my side of the story is the things that I experienced. But what happened that led my dad to go to prison is not my story. to tell. So I just, for my mom's privacy, for my dad's privacy, I leave that. I just don't share that part. But my dad ended up getting arrested. And that's another memory I have is I remember him in handcuffs, like saying goodbye and then getting put in the back of the car. Again, a very broken memory. I don't actually know what he said. I don't know what I said to him if we hugged, whatever, but him getting put into the back of a police car. And this is, it's wild that this is all happening

while he has this successful business, a nice home, and this is all going on in the subsurface area, and then it comes to the front because your dad's getting rolled up by the cops. And so then what happens? Yeah, then we move back home, or back home. We moved to Utah, which ended up, that's home. I was born in Vegas, but Utah's home. So we ended up moving, we ended up moving and kind of bounced around with families. family members. My mom just got a job that she could get. She worked at a, it was a Delta,

but it wasn't for Delta. It was like their company. They subcontract out for all their mechanic work. I don't know if that's how they still do it, but this is getting this is 20 plus years ago. But she ended up working as a receptionist for them. And we bounced around families, houses, just trying to figure it out and then lived with my grandparents. Yeah, that's another. It's almost, you know, what is it? The higher you are, the harder you fall. So for your mom, I'm good to go from like a pretty stable income and all this stuff to all of a sudden she's just screw. I mean, it was it was luxury.

I mean, we lived to Vegas luxury like the leopard print stuff all over the house. Like very much 90s Vegas. Like you, that was the house. The house was 90s Vegas. We had camel heads like taxidermied camel heads on the wall. I've never actually even heard of that. But yeah, it's great. Yeah, it was weird 90s Vegas style.

We all know it. You can see it like minus the gold. We didn't have the gold all over. but like, you know, so she lived, you know, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, all the things to nothing. And now she's working for a subcontractor for Delta at some menial task job. Yeah, just like basically just trying to keep food on the table. Okay. And how long is that last for?

Yeah, so we lived in my grandparents until I was seven. And this is her parents? Yeah, this is, yeah, this is her. Yeah. So my dad's, my dad's grandma Jeannie, she died when I was two. three no I was three I have one memory of her and I don't even know if it's a real memory so yeah yeah she lung cancer um he doesn't know his actual dad he knows a stepdad but yeah we I mean no relationship with them um so yeah no this is my my mom's uh parents and they're up there in Utah

yep just having Bountiful just north of Salt Lake City and then what's what goes on your mom how long is your mom stick in this situation because I'm sure she's not not super stoked to be living back at home. No, it was also like, what do you do? Yeah, yeah. I mean, what do you do? We lived there for, it was safe. It was nice.

I mean, my, my, that side of it, like, we don't come from money. My grandparents, so we, I grew up Mormon. My family has very deep ties in the Mormon church. My grandpa was in that 70. I don't know how familiar you are with the Mormon church, but that's like an archbishop of the Mormon church. Essentially is like the best way to put it. So he's really high up, but it's still,

it's still a service job. So there's not, again, there's not a lot of money, but it was safe, it was modest food from, like my grandparents helping with that. I mean, my mom could barely afford anything. We had,

I mean, we had nothing. The state took a lot of what we had in Vegas because there was a lot of, there's a lot of drug. Again, the prison side of things, it was more than just domestic violence.

So the state took a lot of stuff, leaving my mom, like she didn't get money from the house. house, like nothing. All this stuff got seized, assets taken. So literally we had, we had nothing but her 2002 Corolla. And that was the, that's all basically we, you know, we got in that and came home or came to Utah. So yeah, we're, uh, yeah, we're my grandparents until I was seven. Uh, and she started dating my stepdad, Chad. Um, and I mean, we loved him like out the gate. Uh, We loved him obviously because he bought us a GameCube and, you know, those times of things.

I remember, I remember it's such a love as a low bar at this juncture. At that, at that age, at seven years old or six years old, I remember I came downstairs in my grandparents' house. And my mom and chatted, I said have been dating about a year at that point. And he's just sitting on the floor playing Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. And I'm like, oh, no way. Freaking out. You know, he got to say it was like the coolest thing ever. And I'd like just recently met him too

Because like my mom is just very private with her dating life And he was the coolest dude So yeah they dated for a couple of years Obviously there's still like a divorce that's ongoing Because that doesn't just Just because my dad got arrested It doesn't mean the divorce has gone through So and it's a lot harder once he's in prison

Because there's other layers you have to go through So it took a while for the divorce to go through Just because of legal layers It wasn't really anything How long did he get sent to prison for? So he got sentenced for, he got sentenced for eight years, but served 4.9, basically. It was like four years and 10 months or something like that is what he served. And what did your stepdad do?

My stepdad was a periodontist. So he, that's a gum, it's a gum doctor. Okay. Yeah. So he, so that you have. Yeah. I saw the face. Yeah.

But yeah, so he, so you have oral surgeons and you have periodontas. Oral surgeons are the bones. Periodontists are the tissues. Okay. So it's like an orthopedic surgeon versus a general surgeon, like bones versus tissues. It's the same thing just the dentistry world. So he was a peridonist. And again, it was, it's just funny how it works.

Like again, back, you know, so they get married just before I turned eight. And again, right back to that like lavish life. I mean, he's a periodontist. They make very, very good money. You know, we bought a house in Farmington. And it was, it was, a life was wonderful again, you know, is anything. Did you have brothers or sisters?

Yeah. So I have, uh, I have 10 siblings, but only one full sibling. So my dad, or sorry, I have nine siblings.

There's 10 kids. Nine siblings, but only one full sibling, my little brother Graham. Uh, but yeah, so he was, he was with me this whole time,

but he, when he was six months old is when my dad went to prison. So all of, he has zero recollection of anything. Any trauma that he has from it is all just that subconscious, trauma of like being held while domestic, violence is going on that type of stuff. But yeah, so he, yeah, he was there the whole time.

But yeah, I have a bunch of half siblings that actually have good relationships with. And these were from your stepdad. No, these are from my dad. Oh, okay. My dad. So my dad has, has, has, there's six baby mommas in the family. Wow. It's, it's, it's, that's a whole other, that's a whole other story.

But yeah, so I have, I have nine other siblings, eight that are alive, one passed away. But yeah, so there, but again, all of them are. halfs except Graham. Okay. So now your, your mom gets married to your stepdad. Yeah, Chad. And then you guys are now back into like a pretty nice lifestyle with the

paradonist. Am I saying that right? Periodontist. Periodontist. Sounds like a dinosaur. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does.

So things are kind of, things are kind of. Periosaurus. Things are on the up and up. And so how old are you now? You're like, yeah. So they got married ripe.

It was, they got married in May. I turned eight in June. So a month later, I, you know, I turned eight. Yeah. And, I mean, it was, it was wonderful. I mean, it was like the perfect neighborhood for a kid. Typical white picket fence. All the homes are beautiful.

Kids running around. It's safe. It's in like a tucked away in a corner in Farmington. Now that whole area is developed. It's pretty wild. But, yeah, it was a brand new development in the area. It was one of the first developments that was built over there. and it was great.

Life was fantastic over there. You're using past tense. It was. So what happened? So when I was 10, he tragically passed away. It happened out of nowhere. So he had a heart condition. And he had to take his medication every day to keep his heart functioning.

And they basically he forgot that he took his meds. and it's not like, I mean, people forget to take their meds. He forgot that he had taken his meds. And so he took another dose, which with this medication, it's like, it could happen, it could not, but it ended up causing cardiac arrest. And he died leaving work. He was the last person out of the office, but didn't make it out of the office. So it was one of those things that it was like if it was 10 minutes earlier, he'd probably

still be around and it gets it's pretty crazy but yeah he uh he passed away uh when i was 10 um which was obviously really rough but and and so then what happens do you did he have insurance did you anything like that no no no so it this yeah it i mean the story like it was a crazy morning finding out like it's this is one of the most vivid memories of in my lifetime is i remember I didn't see him the night before. We, high school musical two came out that night. And I remember my grandma, so his, his mom, and his sister-in-law came over to the house at like 9 p.m.

You know, and every Friday, we'd go to Blockbuster, we'd rent a movie and we would get pizza from Pizza Hut because it was like the old-fashioned, we're talking Pizza Hut. And we do this every Friday. It was the thing, stuff crust pizza, you know, we'd get a movie from Blockbuster. And it was movie night on Friday.

Fridays and he obviously didn't come home. And so we're just kind of like waiting. And so my grandma and my aunt come over. And I'm, I'm young enough still that I'm like, I kind of was like, what the hell? Like this is weird, but also young enough that it didn't really register. It was just like, oh, hey, grandma's coming over. I don't actually remember how it was pitched to us. But how it was pitched to us is we get to stay up and watch the premiere of high school musical at midnight.

So we stay up. Obviously, Chad doesn't come home. Wake up the next morning and I'm like, where's Chad? Like where's dad? I want to see him. So I go to my mom's room and he's not in bed and I'm like, the hell. I go look out the window. I'm like, oh, maybe he left for work or like I had to go to the office or something.

So I go look out the window and his Lexus is sitting out front. I'm like, okay, maybe he's in his office. So I go downstairs and my uncle is just this is my mom's brother just sitting on the couch and I'm like it is 7 a.m. Why the hell are you sitting on my couch right now? Like this is you know and we don't like we don't have the best relationship with him. So I was really confused and he was just like I don't you just go upstairs and come back down a little bit and I don't know how much longer it was, but we went downstairs and my mom told us that he died. I remember that's that's the word that she used. She's like Chad died last night. It was, I mean, you can't.

How old was he? He was 42. Oh, man. Yeah, sudden cardiac arrest. So it was instant for him, which is, which is a good, it's a comforting, you know, feeling to know that it wasn't suffering, but. So then, so they doesn't have insurance? No insurance.

No insurance. No will. No insurance. No will. And because it was a medication. issue, the state of Utah basically deemed it as suicide. And so he, yeah, and in the state of Utah, just because of the, you know,

there's a lot of influence with religion in the state of Utah. And so suicide, if you don't have a will, it basically the state gets everything. And so he, with my mom again, everything got seized. And so it's one of those things, again, we're against back to zero or back literally actually we're back to negative because my mom got all of us dental school debt because that school loans unforgiven so everything gets taken they're like

oh by the way here is 80,000 dollars you have no degree good luck paying this you have 250 dollars a month of medical school loans that you're dental school for 40 years or whatever so um it was I mean it was we're back to zero again um it was uh it was uh it was a it was a it was a I mean, this is where like my memories and understand like when he passed, it completely changed my brain chemistry. It's, my wife's a therapist. And so it's been cool to like talk about these things over the years and, uh,

talk about just the mental side, like the how trauma actually impacts the brain. And it's, it's, I mean, it completely rewired my brain. I went from, I mean,

I was, you know, I was in the, I was in a smart kid program at school. I was reading it. college level in second grade and or fourth grade sorry and I mean I mean it was it was just a star student like I was very smart athletic like it was everything was it was like a star student kind of thing and I went to barely being able to read at a kindergarten level I couldn't do basic math

I basically went from the special class to the special class okay it flipped the opposite ends of the spectrum yeah it was uh it was it was it was really uh It was something that now that I'm an adult and I can think back on it, it really is it such a interesting thing to think about of how my brain chemistry legitimately just flipped over on itself. And is that what, like, what does your wife say? What is that? Yeah, so it's a trauma response. You know, whether you know from combat experience, when you experience these extreme traumas, seeing a death or whatever, whatever the trauma might be, it literally, you, you emit different hormones. hormones change in the mind. The neuroplasticity that our minds have also rewires to essentially protect itself. And that protection can go positive or negative, but when you're young, a lot of the times there isn't that understanding of like the resiliency factor in these types of things.

Naturally humans are resilient, but it's still you're not developed enough. And so it just basically flips your brain over when you're young. So it's almost, I mean, the way it sounds like some sort of protective measure that your brain is taking that it's not going to become too attached to anything. It's not going to overthink the thing. It's like, hey, just dumb this thing down right now. Yeah. We just got to move forward and be able to do basic survival stuff. Yes.

You know, eat, sleep and whatever. And therefore, we're going to kind of tone down this other part of the brain that would be thinking about all this stuff. Yeah. Is that, am I even close? I have no, no, no. That's spot on. I think a good, like a very acute version of this is. I've seen in like buds or anything like this with like, hey, what's two plus two?

What's your name? Or like if they're rescuing someone, those basic questions, you got to just make sure their mind is there. And that's a very acute, like that thing that fixes itself. But that can happen on a large scale with a severe trauma where you literally lose the ability to compute simple, simple things. So then what happens? So now your mom, she got to go back to work? like what's the deal? Yeah, so yeah, so she wasn't working. She would basically just help at the, you know, the typical tax loophole, you know, working at the office, but she actually did do a lot of

paperwork at the office. And yeah, she had to just find another job. She worked a couple jobs at one point, but where she ended up, where she still is actually to this day, was at the hospital in Salt Lake working as an MA at an orthopedic clinic. It was my uncle. his brother, so this is like her brother-in-law, his brother is a spine surgeon. And he was like, yeah, I need an M.A. She can come work for me. And she went and worked at this orthopedic clinic. And now she's jumped around to a couple different doctors over the years.

And she's still there. But that's where she kind of ended up. And we got really, this is where, you know, I tell this story, but it's, you know, there's always someone who has it. there's always someone who has it whereas I had it like in reality it was not as bad as it could have been we we were able to go live in Bountiful Utah

after instead of having to go to a women's shelter in Vegas we were able to have support from family which a lot of people don't have we were you know we had we had things that a lot of people don't get and so it was able to put us in positions that have you know allowed me to be where I'm at and made it easier to be where I am And, you know, this is a blessing, a curse and a blessing in disguise all at the same time.

My aunt, she had very severe rheumatoid arthritis. So my mom's older sister. And it ended up causing her kidneys to fail. And she passed. So she passed in May. And then Chad passed in August. And my grandparents had to take care of her most of her life because, like, her hands were stuck in this position. She couldn't really take care of herself.

And so basically she was taking care of. but she also was, she wasn't, like she wasn't mentally handicapped at all. So it, she could live a life. She just needed physical help. And so she had her own place. My grandparents owned it, but she had her own place. She'd just passed. And now there's this vacant condo. And so it was this blessing that there's now, instead of having to go to like low income housing, you know, out in, you know, West Valley or whatever, out in Utah, we're now in a very affluent area living in a, in a nice condo. It was a small condo. My brother and I literally shared a bed until I was 16 years old.

My mom couldn't afford to get bunk beds. We just used the bed that we had. Use the same mattress for 15 years. Like, you know, it was, we just, we did what we could. And, but that's, thankfully, we were able to end up there and live there. My mom actually, funny enough, so when my grandparents passed a couple years ago, they owned the condo. And so the family was trying to figure out what to do.

and my mom and her new husband actually bought the place. So they still live there. But yeah, that's where I ended up and stayed there in Centerville just kitty cornered a bountiful. So did you start to get refocused over time, like in school and whatnot? Did you go from, you know, did you start to recover from the kind of mental lapse that you had? I really, the mental side of it? Yes and no.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I always struggled with school. And I didn't really get my that confidence back. I think my mind came back. I mean, I barely, I mean, I never went to class in high school, but it was still graduated with like a three three or three four or whatever, just like showing up and taking the test and then not going to school for two weeks again kind of thing. But so like I was still like I got that back as far as like I was still, you know, smart enough to never go to class and still, you know, score high.

But I didn't get that confidence. back until college when I started doing really well and you know across the board confidence are you talking about just like intellectual confidence intellectual confidence um my I I I've always kind of had a spark there's there's always been a little bit of a fire there um even though you know obviously there was all the all the things that we know we dealt with like there was always that spark I remember in eighth grade obviously I'm I had behaviors I had behavior issues obviously. I, you know, like domestic violence, drugs, death, a lot of things going on trauma-wise.

And so there's, I obviously had behaviors. You know, I was loud, I was outspoken. I, what kid wouldn't be, you know. And so teachers obviously wasn't their favorite. But I had an eighth grade English teacher who in front of the whole class told me that I would be a failure and that I would amount to nothing. Her words, almost word for word is what she said to me in front of everyone. This is a full class with all my friends. And I just said, watch me.

And then I left the class. And then I got suspended for leaving class. Or I got in school suspension for walking out of class in the middle of class. And this is the eighth grade. This is an eighth grade. So like there's that fire that fire's been there that, you know, Gaggins calls it the it factor like that. I don't know if that's the it factor, but there's always been that little bit of fire that's been there. that's, you know, fueled whatever's going on.

But yeah, there's that intellectual confidence that I really struggled with for a long, long time. And then what about sports? Because you were an athlete. Yeah, sports kept me from doing drugs and drinking and all the stuff. Sports are, and my girlfriend also kept me away from that stuff too. She's like, if you ever do that, I'm going to break up with you. I'm like, okay. She's now my wife, by the way.

That's good. We've been dating since ninth grade. But, yeah, so, but sports really kept me out of trouble because I loved football. Football was my entire life. I dedicated every waking moment of my life to that sport. And so if I'm doing drugs, I never went to class, but I made sure I had good enough cranes to keep playing football. And like if I was drinking, doing drugs, if I was getting in trouble, like, this is,

that was my only shot out. Sports was my only opportunity to escape. I mean, you hear it all the time with NFL athletes. It was like football was what got me out. Football is what saved me. And that's kind of how it was, obviously not as extreme as some of these other situations, but it was a similar thing where it's like football is what kept me from digging myself into a hole. And so I, you know, and I mean, I did pretty much every sport.

But football, track and wrestling were my core three. I quit wrestling early on in high school just because of didn't get along with the coach. So I ended up not continuing past 10th grade. But yeah, sports kept me very much kept me out of trouble. And it was the reason I'm in the position I'm in now, honestly. It's taught me a lot. So you were into football. So does this mean you were into football enough to be like,

you're lifting, you're trying to get strong, you're working on your speed. You're in the whole nine yards. Oh, yeah. I'd wake up at 4 a.m. in high school and go to the gym before school. And then I would go to football class and lift, agility, film, whatever it was that we were doing that day. And then if it's off season,

I'd go to the field and I would do drills. Or if it was in season, we'd have practice. If it was a winner, I would go to the gym again. And my senior year was very regimented like that. And that kind of started in my junior year. My sophomore year was just figuring things out. Kind of thought I was hot shit starting varsity as a sophomore and thought I could just, you know, do whatever.

And then I quickly learned, oh, yeah, that's not going to fly if I want to play college football. But yeah, I mean, I trained my ass. off in high school. And your plan was to play college football. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I had the scholarships. Had all the scholarships.

D1, D2, D3. All of it. Really? Yep. University of Utah, all Utah schools. And then a lot of like the D1A. What position do you play? Defensive end.

I used to weigh 285 pounds. Damn. I was a big boy. I can show you really quick. I was a big, big boy. What were your numbers like? I ran a 474. Yeah, I ran a 474.

74 um i had a 38 inch vertical um no yeah i was a big boy and then all my lifts i mean i had 450 pound bench i squat over 600 i power queen 315 like i was okay beast mode yeah no i was a i was a unit so this this was me at the all-star game beast yeah no i was a big boy i was a big boy um but yeah and i just yeah again i had it all lined up uh you know defensive MVP the all-star game like it was I was I was good I was good I was all state the whole thing and I ended up just being like I don't want to play I was going to go to Weber State I was going to do track and football there this is pre-N I'll you want to get paid you got to do two sports this is way before N I'll and yeah and then I was just I just I quit day one because I was like I

don't want to I'm not with my boys I'm not you know I don't want to and I also and also school like I got I I can't dedicate my life to football and to school. And like, I was good at football, but I also understood the reality of, sure, maybe my, you know, I could bench 225, 32 times at 17 years old. These are combine level stats. But I also understand there's a difference between combat combines stats and being good enough to play in the NFL. And I knew that I knew that I could, if I worked my ass off, I could probably get there.

but did I want that, like was that the career trajectory I wanted to take and potentially damage my body, my mind, or do we focus on school? And I, you know, I had conversations with a couple people and I didn't have a lot of male role models growing up. Social media wasn't really around to find those people in that way. And also just like there weren't a lot of men in my life. And so a lot of this was kind of figuring it out on my own. But the few people that were around, I have the conversations with them of like, like, what would you do? I don't know what to do.

And there was one in particular that was like he played, he played one year of college football and was like, you either pick football or you pick school, but you can't pick both. And that was kind of the decision maker of like, I'm going to school or I'm going to focus on school. Was there something that you were super interested in? Yeah, so I actually got accepted to dental school in the end.

So that was the, I was going to go to dental school. I was following in Chad's footsteps. We were going to go to VCU, which is where he went. You know, he was, you know, he was top of his class, peridontist at VCU. So it was, I, like, wanted, I wanted to be a peridonist. I want to, like, the whole, like, I wanted to, I wanted to follow those footsteps.

And I was, I was all in. I mean, I literally went the whole way until having to move and was like, I don't know if I actually want to do this. Because I was kind of doing it, there was a part of me that was doing it because I felt like I needed to follow in his footsteps, but also the financial piece where I, we never really had much. You know, at one point, my mom, we were on food stamps. Like there's, we never really had a lot. And so in my mind, financial freedom was the only, the only path.

Like, I have to do it because of the money. And I realized, like, you can do anything you want. You have to, sometimes you're going to have to work a little bit harder. Like, sure, I've had to work way harder now. than I would have had to as a periodontas because I would have gotten my salary. It would have been easy to start a practice. Like there are those things that it's just it's your doctor. It's a little bit easier.

You had to obviously go to dental medical school, but that business side of things, it becomes a little bit easier. But yeah, there's a definite well-worn path. Yes. That's not an easy path, but it's well-worn and you can see where it's going to go. And if you stay on the path, you'll end up in a certain place. Exactly. Whereas when you're when you're doing something in the open,

You know in the open ocean of the world like there's a lot of things and there's no well-worn path and you can make a wrong turn and it can take you a while to recover from so yeah there's definitely some risk there yeah so that's that's but I just decided I'm like nutrition is I love nutrition it's I built my meal plan for my football team in high school like I loved it but I always saw it as a hobby I saw it as something that was like fun and I was like why can I have fun for work why does it have to be so serious and so I was like I want to be a dietitian I want to be a dietitian. And so I had to go back to school to just take a couple of prerex. I had all the science and everything. I mean, biochemistry, organic chemistry. I mean, all of the whole list of stuff. So I had, I think we had the whole science background. And I just had to go take a couple of nutrition classes so that I could basically apply to these programs and went and became a dietitian.

And then what's going on with your physical activities at this time? Because you can't just be that addicted to athletics. and then just say, okay, I'm out. Yeah. So, you know, we go back. I stopped playing football. And I didn't know what to do. I was just lifting heavy still in the gym.

I naturally lost a little bit of weight because you're, when you're that heavy, you have to eat to stay that heavy. And so like I naturally lost like 15, 20 pounds. I weighed like about 265-ish. And it was just like in the gym, lifting. No real direction, not sure what to do. with my life, not sure where to go. And my wife, or my girlfriend at the time,

now my wife, her family was running a Spartan race. It was a Las Vegas. It was a, I think they do a sprint and super, but it was a sprint, which is a 5K with 20 obstacles. And I was just like, all right, what the hell? Like, why not? Like, what do I gotta lose, you know? And but I was like, if I'm gonna do this,

and whenever I've done anything in my life, it's like you've, if I'm gonna do it, you gotta do it. can't just show up, go through the motions. You got to do it. So I started training. My first run was on a treadmill. I, for some reason, cranked the miles per hour up thinking I was fine and passed out after half a mile, thinking that I was just like could keep going.

That was my first run ever. That was nine years ago, half a mile. And then like a week later, I went and ran one mile up the switchback. That was just near where my mom's house is and took me forward. minutes because I just like couldn't like trying to get up this hill and but I I just kept at it I just kept at it I knew I needed to lose weight so I focused a little bit more on when I was eating and dove into the whole Spartan world and really really I used I fell in love of it so how many how many like races were you

doing a year or whatever yeah so I was I mean I'm still in college and so poor college students so I was doing I was just trying to get the three the trifecta And so that's that's what I was doing is basically I was doing three a year. So that's a thing for them? Yeah. You get a trifect. If you do the sprint super and beast in one calendar year, how big is the beast?

It's a half marathon and with 30 obstacles. And then the super is a 10k with 25 obstacles. Got it. If you do all three in a year, you get the trifecta. You get a trifecta. It's like the metal. You have a metal and then there's like a, like a, not a quarter. It's a third of a metal.

And then at the end of the year, all three of them connect into one bigger medal. And so, yes, I got really into those. And I mean, running, running, there's running and my wife saved my life. Because, I mean, at this time, I have no, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. And the one thing I dedicated my whole life to is now gone. And I thought I had no purpose in life. And, yeah, I mean, there was a point in time that, you know, I had. had the plan. I was staring at the gun at the top of the closet. I was ready to go. Um,

but, you know, it was my wife. I was just thinking about her again, my girlfriend at the time. And I was like, I can't leave her. That's not fair to her. And then right after that, she invited me to run this race. And it completely changed the trajectory. Damn, dude. Wait, that's like a little bit of a excursion you just took. Yeah. Hey, we were working out doing Spartan races. I quit football. Yeah, this goes back to like right before Spartan races. But yeah, no. I mean, it was, I didn't, I didn't know what I was doing with my life. It was, I think it's something that a lot of young men go through. You have this transition in life where you go from high school to having to figure out to be a man.

And if you don't have those figures in your life, if you, you know, if you're too caught up in social media, if whatever it might be, if you're not exercising, if you're not doing these important key things and you don't have these key things around you. And we see it, it's one of the most unfortunate statistics. And what is it? It's like a couple hundred men a day. And it's a very real problem that we have. And it's, you know, it's something that I'm weirdly enough grateful

that I actually experienced that and went through that because it's, I think it's helped me through a lot of these big things that I've now done in my life. How long were you in that mindset for? Quite a while. Like weeks, like months? I mean, it was long.

It was months, like almost a year. And this is while you're going to college? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it was, I can tell you my breaking point was, uh, I had a professor at Weber state. And I was in anatomy. I was in the class with my buddy. It was just me and my buddy living in this shit apartment.

I mean, we were paying, we were paying 600 bucks a month for rent total. It was, I mean, someone got murdered like right out of our front door. I mean, it was, it was a hellhole. And it was just like, like the walls were peeling horrible, horrible place. So like living in that environment was terrible. But we had this and we had this anatomy teacher that. it was just really unfortunate timing for us. He was a medical school anatomy teacher at Yale.

Wife gets her dream job. So he moves out here. Couldn't get a job at the U because the U has like a world renowned anatomist who ended up taking anatomy from later. And so he's just like, well, I don't like where can I get a job? Ends up at Weber State. Wife cheats on him, leaves him. And he's now stuck in Ogden, Utah after having his dream job,

hated life and just took it out on us. And so it was a it just we were doing like 60 hours of homework a week on top of like everything else we had to do. And it just, I mean, it broke. It broke us. And then on top of the fact of just like the, you know, again, it's all of the stuff of trying to find purpose in life, not feeling like I'm good enough. I also know, you know, I'm dealing with the anxiety and depression of all the traumas that I've experienced that I've never processed all coming up at this time. And so it was this, it was the perfect storm. that led me to this very, very dark place

where every day I thought about it. Every day I thought about ending my life. And then there was the one night. Thankfully, it has only been one time that I had a plan. The gun was loaded. But I think it was that thought of like leaving my wife or again my girlfriend behind that stopped it.

But I don't, it's hard to know what it really was. I don't know if it was my own fire that stopped it. I don't know if it was a mix of them, but something stopped it. And I'm very, very obviously grateful. I'm still here. So do you, the next day, do you then wake up in the morning and you're like, that's behind me? Did you get that kind of a eureka moment? Yes and no.

The depression, even now, you know, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. I'm so at peace with myself. I'm in the best place mentally I've ever been. but those thoughts, those depressive thoughts are something that kind of stay with you forever in a way. They don't take hold. They don't own you anymore. But it's one of those things that's just kind of, it kind of is almost always there. And so the next morning, it was a good way to put it is kind of like, it's kind of like after you finish a race or you do something really hard and you just wake up exhausted.

That's kind of what it was where I just woke up. up and I was just like, oh my God, and like, I'm just mentally a blur and just really tired is exhausted. That's kind of how it felt the next morning. But it's, it's, you know, we were talking about it when we were doing some interviews earlier, the mindset of like never make a decision in the dark is what I say. And this darkness is not just physically in the dark like in a hundred miler. It's the middle of the night. It sucks.

It's really easy to want to quit when it's pitch black. freezing cold and you're in pain. But don't make that decision in the dark, but then you also have the mental darkness. Don't make those decisions when it's dark. And because you're going to wake up the next morning and you're going to have that clarity again. It might not be perfectly crystal clear, but you're going to feel better. There is always light at the end. The sun always comes back up. And so that's kind of, you know, again, it was a weird, it was a weird day. But it was almost like it's another day. Like, let's just focus on today now.

And that's kind of where my mind started to go was like, okay, let's just focus on getting through today. And then we'll deal with tomorrow. Man. So did you start to kind of see a path for yourself? Now you're starting the Spartan races. You get the dietitian goal. Is that, do you kind of start to see like,

oh, I can be a productive human being with value to the world? Yes, it was running. It was running where it was like it started to give me that that purpose again That feeling of like I can be someone I can I can build a life I can be what I want to be I can do the things that I want to do And the understanding that it's you're gonna have to work for it and that was something that I think I was struggling with at the time was I went from not having a lot to having even less living in this POS apartment and it just felt like This was going to be my life forever. I'm, this is, this is my life forever.

I'm just always going to be poor. I'm always going to have nothing. This is my life. And I didn't want to live that life, but then it's, you know, now I'm starting to see, hey, I'm actually pretty damn good at this Spartan thing. Well, let's see where this goes. Like, we'll at least see where this goes. And then we can, you know, we can figure it out later.

And that's kind of the mindset that you, you almost have to have when you're navigating those suicidal thoughts is like, well, let's just, let's figure this thing out. And then we'll revisit this later. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, there's also this. Oh, I'm pretty good at this. And then it kind of starts it. And this is how, that's at least how it worked for me. We're now Spartan. It's like, oh, I'm good at this.

Let's see where this goes. And I mean, little did my wife knew that she'd open Pandora's box when she invited me to run that race. But it really was like it's what set that trajectory of understanding like I can do difficult things, not just running, but in life. It gets, you know, things are going to get hard, but you can do hard things and you're good at it. Did you share any of these thoughts with your, with your girlfriend at the time? No, no one actually knew that I was dealing with this, which she's got to talk about it. It's just something, like, it's no one's going to judge you. It's, it's the hardest part of it is saying something because you don't, I get it.

I've been there. You feel weak. Like I wanted to say something. but I felt like I'd be weak if I said something. And so I'm not going to say anything. Whereas if I just said something, I would have never had that night because I would have been able to talk about it.

I would have been able to talk to people about it where I just held it to myself. I didn't tell them for years. Years. I think it was like three or four years later that I told my wife. Yeah. And I think one of the big things that comes out

is people go, oh, yeah, you're, oh, the world's a big place and it can be scary sometimes. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the way, that's pretty normal. Yeah. That's, oh, you're not sure what you're going to do? Yeah, that's pretty normal. Oh, you feel like you're not doing a great job right now? Yeah, that's normal.

Oh, the pressure feels like it's so much, like all those things that people feel at some juncture that can be a crushing burden on your soul. Yeah. But, like, everyone that you're walking by on the street, almost everyone's been there at some point and said, yeah, yeah, I had this happen. I had that happen. And I had another thing happen. People just go through this life.

Yeah. You know, people go through some heavy things. And sometimes it definitely seems like, oh, this is, this doesn't seem like it's going to end. Yes. This pressure or this weight doesn't seem like it's ever going to be lifted. And if you have that feeling and you don't tell anyone that goes, oh, yeah, well, let me tell you what happened to me. Let me tell what happened to my brother. Let me tell you what happened to my sister.

Let me tell you what happened to my dad. Let me tell you what happened to my buddy. And everyone goes through these challenges and tribulations. And it's like, yeah. you're going to get through it. Yeah. And you're going to come out the other side. And that's,

that's an important message. But if you don't tell anyone and you think it's just you, that's, I think, very isolating and problematic. Well, and I think this is, you know, something that a lot of young men experience in particular where, and you know, in my situation, there weren't a lot of male role models in my life. So I had the only visual I had because of where I grew up

was these super successful men, but they were successful. the way that I visualized that success was because they had the family and they had so I never I was like oh I can't do that like how am I ever going to get there how do I don't I barely even know what a hundred bucks in my pocket feels like let alone a two million dollar house and so there's also that factor of like I felt like I was genuinely alone because there wasn't I didn't I felt like I didn't have anybody to talk to when you you obviously do. It's, you know, but I think with young men, it feels like you have to have a man that you can

talk to. And you might have male role models in your life, but they might not be the right ones who are people you can actually talk to about this, who are just like, well, suck it up. Don't be a bitch. You know, like, and that's, that's not what you need to hear in those situations. And so it's, it's, it's, it's a problem. I mean, we, you know, we all know it, like that this is an epidemic that, you know, that we're dealing with in the United States and across the world, quite frankly. But yeah, it's, uh, you just kind of talk. And we're all going through it. We've all been there.

Yeah. Yeah. Life's rough, man. Yeah. Life's rough. Dude, it's something that like, it's funny. It's a quote I just heard recently that I think is so helpful for just younger adults. And just people in general, we're dealing with stuff our whole life. And is this something that would have really helped me because I felt like even 18 years old that I was so far behind because we had so little.

And so I just felt like I was never, ever going to get there. It was never, ever going to be the person sitting in this table right now. And it's that the compass was invented before the clock because people back then didn't care how long it took, they just cared that they got there. And I love it. It's so powerful because it's true, you're not behind. Life's going to take you where it wants to take you. You know, life is like water. It's going to go where it wants to go.

But if you just keep moving forward, you don't give up. You don't quit and just focus on following True North. Do everything in your power to follow that line. You're going to get there. You're not behind. Again, the compass was invented before the clock. Yeah, it's part of the gig too. It's part of the deal.

I remember I drove a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan with a window tape shot on the driver's side because it was broken and I didn't get it fixed. And then my wife and I, we lived in a really small house. and when you walked through the front door of the house, on the right-hand side was the couch with the TV on the left-hand side, when you walked through the front door, was our bed. And because I had three kids at the time,

two-bedroom house, two girls in one bed, the boy in another bedroom, and my wife and I were living in the living room. And the thing is, what's crazy is I look back at, like, I did not give a shit. I was like, hey, this is what we're doing. This is how we're rolling. This is what's up.

This is kind of the lore. of life. Yeah. Like the lore of, hey, this is what we're going to do. We're going to make things happen. I don't know. I never really was too focused on. Like, I knew that it was the right path to be on.

Like, this is what you got to do. You know, I wanted to buy a house. I wanted to own a house. It was 934 square feet. You got a, what's that, a five person family? This is what we're doing. Yeah. Like, this is how we're rolling.

And I never even felt frustrated about it. Now that I think back, I mean, I'm just thinking back right now for the first time, kind of from this perspective of being in, a spot where it's like, oh, this, it kind of, if I look at it right now, I can admit that it kind of sucks. Yeah. If you'd ask me at the time, I wouldn't have thought it sucked at all. I would have been like, oh, no, dude, we, look at this. All my kids are going to come out into my bed in the morning.

All three of them are going to pile into this bed, which is on the floor in the living room. And that's what we're going to do. And it's going to be fun. So I think that framing things up right. Perspective is everything. Yeah. Yeah, and again, now it's like, well, you know, I have my own room. And it's, I have a, you know, my room right now in my house is on the second floor.

And it's got a little office and my own bathroom with my, my wife. We have her own freaking wing basically, right? You know? And it's like now, he's like, oh, I can't imagine living in the living room. It's like, bro, at the time, I didn't care at all. So I think you got to look too. Hey, where you are right now is not necessarily where you're going to be. forever and especially if you're thinking strategic about hey there's little sacrifices I'm

making right now it's going to be okay well make sacrifices now and they'll pay off in the future you got to do hard things things have to suck before they get better yeah that's that's just life it has to suck before it gets better if it doesn't suck it's never going to get better so what was the transition from from spartan races to ultra running it was it was covid hits i'm you know i get invited to be on Team USA. You know, I'm running as a pro. I just ran in Spartan World Championship. They're about to like roll out like this whole, you know, like world tour.

I'm going to be one of the athletes. For the Spartan race. Yeah. I'm going to be on Team USA. Like, this is, this is sick. And then COVID. And what else is there to do but to go run in nature? So I actually was running the Grand Canyon right before everything shut down.

So I went ran the Grand Canyon right before everything shut down. Like everything was. kind of up in the air. And that was like my introduction to ultra running was the Grand Canyon. Quite the introduction. But then again, COVID hits. And I'm like, I don't know what else the hell to do. Well, let's just go run to the top of this mountain.

Let's go, you know, just run far and see what happens. So, you know, I run the tallest peak in Utah. It was about 34 miles or whatever. And then 2021, some ultra races started to come back. I now had a taste for it. I'm like, well, let's just go run an ultra. Like, I had some friends that were running this 100K. Or it's actually a 90K.

I got lost and it turned into 100K. So my belt buckle says, my belt buckle says, what, 92, 90, whatever it is, but I ran 100. Dude, an eight-click excursion. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was rough. But, yeah, so I just signed up for this race. Zero, no idea what I'm doing. And mile 20, I actually tore my posterior tib.

ran 40 miles on it and finished the race. I got second to last place with 30 seconds to spare to get my buckle. Damn. Yeah, it was sweet. How many hours is that? It was 16 hours, basically. 16 hours. And that was your first 100, that was 100K?

100K. So that was like my first legitimate ultra. And you know, you'd think I tore my posterior tip. I couldn't run for six months. And, but I had this itch. I was like, that was awesome. I want to do that again, even though it sucks so bad. But I get back into Spartan because I did have a injury that I had three doctors tell me I'd never run again.

So and I'm like, you like I'm going to go run again. Like go to hell. And you don't, you can't tell me what to do. You're freaking sitting there just sitting behind a desk. Like you don't know what you're talking about. Eat it nerd. Yeah, exactly. Eat it nerd.

So I'm like, you know, so I do the physical therapy. I do all this stuff and I'm like, okay, we need to, I didn't get my mojo back. Spartan. It's 22. Spartan's back. Like, let's go. So I signed it for a few races, podium. Cool, Mojo's back.

Let's get the hell out of here. Because I want to go back to Ultra. 2023, I have a whole list. Did you feel like you had more of a capability in Ultra? Or did you just like it more? I wanted more. Spartan was great. It was fun.

But it was fun. And, you know, there's kind of a pattern in my life where it's like, yeah, it's fun. Can we go a little bit, can we do a little bit more? Like, can we go a little bit further? Like, what else can we do? Um, and ultra running also was fun, but it was like, I had to earn that shit. Like running a Spartan race is quick.

It's a couple hours at most. That, that type of suffering. It's suffering, but it's, it's not suffering. It's acute. It's a cute pain for a minute. And, but like, I was like, I want to, I want to feel that. And it goes back to a lot of the. trauma of everything.

And, you know, there's a part of it that's running away, but it's also a part of me that's chasing it. And we can kind of talk about that in a minute. But it, I just, I wanted, I wanted that suffering. And so, but I needed my mojo back. I needed to make sure I could even run again, again, go partying, podium a few races. And like, okay, cool, ultras, let's go. And you're not built like an ultra runner.

No, no. I wait. Yeah, I wait right now. I think I'm back about like 202 last time I weighed. I'm probably 202, 205 somewhere in there. What's the official like Clydesdale weight class? I think it's 200.

200. Yeah, I think so. It might be 225. I forget. They've changed it a few times. But yeah, it's basically like 200. And so,

but this is how much I weighed during the time. It was funny. I have a picture on one of the podiums. I'm as tall as the dude standing on the first place podium. I got second place. I was tall, like I'm, like these dudes are like,

buck you know a buck 40 buck 50 and I'm 200 pounds almost a foot taller just like you know crushing it in these races and uh but again it just like and I was kind of I was kind of because this is still like ultra running hasn't because right now it's yeah it's on fire it's on fire still relatively new at the time. Goggins was starting to really take a foothold from like a social media perspective at this time um and so like it's kind of starting to like get its thing here um but But I kind of was pushed out of the ultra community a little bit because I didn't fit the narrative. I didn't. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a hybrid athlete. You know, like it's, it's that whole hybrid athlete thing. And I just, I didn't fit this narrative of this. Were you still lifting?

Oh, yeah. I, I, even training for these thousand miles, I was lifting the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you. Respect. The gym is, the gym, as much as I love running, the gym is my safe place. There's a reason I own a gym.

It's like I love the gym. I love lifting all day. But yeah, it's, you know, again, I'm again, we're getting into the ultraspace. I wanted that. I wanted more. So 2023 comes around and I have a whole list of ultras and I'm going to go around. Getting ready for all of them. And June was my first one.

And I actually suffered a pretty severe cardiac event. I was just training so much and opposite. So I was full-blown powerlifting and full-blown ultra-training. You can lift weights and you can run. You can power lifting, you can run, but you can't do the extreme because you have extreme aerobic and extreme anaerobic happening. The heart just can't do that cross that many times. So basically what I was diagnosed with, what I was diagnosed with was a unspecified major

cardiac event where basically it happens in triathletes where your heart essentially just like tries to stop. It's just like, I'm tired, bro. Peace. And then it obviously can't. So it stops and then starts again and it ends up causing heart attack like symptoms and the hospital for a couple days and doing a whole bunch of tests. So actually didn't run.

I ran a couple of like their search series in Utah. Now, in fact, they're actually all over the place. But they put you on some kind of protocol. Are they like, hey, this is what we're going to monitor? This is what we're going to look for? Yeah, so I did a bunch of tests. Why are you deadlifting 500 pounds and running 500 miles? Yeah, so it was actually really funny.

They couldn't do the test might. They couldn't do stress testing in the hospital. They didn't have the equipment for it. So they gave me this special heart rate strap and like a couple of like notes and said, hey, we need you to go trail running three days after you just had this freaking like heart attack. So I'm having a panic attack running up this mountain because my heart rate's spiking. and I also just had a heart attack basically. And so I'm panicking.

And that was actually a really big mental piece for me that really flipped my mentality of I can do, you can own yourself. You can own your mind. That's what I was, I was on this run and I'm panicking. I'm just like, I'm going to have another heart attack. Especially after what happened to Chad. Yeah.

This has got to be in your brain somewhere. Yeah. And it's, you know, I'm scared of my mind. a heart attack. I'm in the mountains. Like, what if something happens? I'm really starting to panic that. I used to have panic attacks. I think I would have been running laps around a hospital if I really, never mind the trail. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a weird protocol that, like, I'm just, I was panicking. And I used to have these panic attacks when I was, you know, suffering from, you know, dealing with all the depression. I would literally curl up in a ball in the

corner and just shake. Perhaps my panic attacks were so bad. This happened every day for months on end. That also added into the whole depressive thing. But I, you know, I, so this panic starts. I haven't had a panic attack in years. And I'm like, oh my God, like what, what is happening? And I just took a deep breath and I said, own yourself. Stop being a bitch. Own yourself. Own yourself. Own your mind. And I actually started just repeating, own yourself. Own yourself. And I lived like my pace got faster. I got more steady. My heart rate dropped. And it changed. It really changed my mentality of you can do you have control over everything. I mean, my shirt, it says pain is a mindset because it's all a mindset.

And that was where I'm like, we got more in this tank. Let's figure this heart shit out. And we'll go from here. But we got to get this settled and then we'll go from here. But yeah, it was I just own yourself. Own yourself. I've repeated that to myself that day. So you get kind of back on track and you end up going to Missouri.

Yeah, St. Louis. And that's to get your degree in what nutrition? Yeah. So the actual degree is called applied nutrition in dietetics. So I'm a master's in that. But I had to go do clinical rotations. So to be a dietitian, it is a medical. I'm like, you know, you become a licensed medical practitioner.

It's a different type of medicine. You have nurses. You have doctors. You have dietitians. They all fall into that scope. And so you have to do rotations, just like a nurse and doctor. My daughter went to college. My middle daughter went to college and she did nutrition science and some of her friends

carried on to become diet. So I kind of watched her friends go through that cycle of doing the working in the hospital and the whole nine years. Yeah. So that's what you were doing. Yeah. So I was in Missouri. And that was a time.

It's funny. I was actually in a worse mental place there than I was in Ogden. but I just understood where I was and I knew that the pain is temporary, the pain of his mindset. Like this is where that whole mantra started to exist that come to play that pain is a mindset. It's all temporary.

And it sucked. Missouri is a hellhole. St. Louis is terrible. Most of my rotations were in like north of Ferguson. I mean, we all know the Ferguson riots. This is where most of my rotations were. So we're in the, I mean, literally the most dangerous place in America. that it was number,

it jumps between one and three at this point. But when we were there, for three years straight, it was number one. So I not, I not only have that stress for myself, but I also brought my wife here with me. I didn't want to bring her.

Obviously, I wanted to bring her, but like, I didn't want to bring her to St. Louis. Like, I don't want to put her in this situation. And so there were a lot, I had a lot going through my head. And so ultra running was my escape,

where it was like, let's go run an ultra. Let's go to this. It's like, whatever. Like I ditched a couple of my rotations where I called in sick and I went and ran Ultras just like on a Tuesday. Just by yourself. Yeah. One of the times I was running with someone who was running across America. Another time was also with someone running across America. I would just go run by myself. There was one day. I just worked like 60 hours that week.

And I'm sitting there. It's Friday. It's like 10 p.m. I'm like, fuck you, man. I said this to myself. I'm like, you're such a bitch. I packed a lunchbox, woke up at 5 a.m. and I went and ran a 50K around the park just because I need to feel something. I just had, and this is where like this like other side of the ultra

because it was just doing it. I wasn't signing up for races. I was just going to the park running a 50K. I ran, this is when I, and this also was at this time, I was actually planning on running across America. And it was something that had been on my mind

for a couple of years, but it's like, this needs there needs to be a bigger purpose not just for the sake of the running of like I need a I need a better why to get me out of bed I need to have there there's this is already a selfish endeavor so there needs to be a better there needs to be a bigger purpose and it needs to be something I'm genuinely passionate about I can't just be like well I'm gonna go run for cancer because you know cancer's a problem it needed to be something that came from like the heart and so I was like if it comes great we're going across America we'll do the thing if not

whatever, but there has to be a genuine purpose to what I'm doing. And then one day popped into my head, I'm going to run for single parents. This is my life. My life stems from that. And there's so many single parents that did not have what we had and are doing it alone. So I'm like, I'm going to run for single parents. So I found an organization. They just happened to be in Utah.

And I kind of kicked off this project to run from Seattle to Miami. But I knew some things needed to happen. I knew I needed to practice. So run across Utah fell into the project. I wanted to kick off the project with something. So I did 24 hours around a track. And I, you know, I start, so I did that while I was in school. I actually flew back home, did this, you know, or did this 24 hours around a track,

flew back, continued. It was just running these random ultras at the park and just like down the road or whatever when I was out there. How far did you run in 24 hours around the track? I only made it 70. I had some pretty serious stomach problems. I overconsumed electrolytes because the temperature flipped on me. It was just uncontrolled variable.

Shit happens. It's an ultramarathon. Still made it 70, but I should have been able to clear 100. And how long were you out in Missouri for? A year. We got there and we left. Like it was, we lost, we bought a house because we were like, you know, we can buy a house. They're cheap.

We could turn it into a rental property. And we said, nope. We lost five grand on the house and said, we're getting, get this the hell out of here. We got an RV actually. Because it was, dude, it was six grand to move back home. And so we're like, fuck it. So we went and bought an RV for 10 grand, put all of our stuff in it, drove back to Utah, dropped our stuff off in a storage unit.

And then when lived on the California coast for four months. And after in our RV, it was amazing. It was like some of the best months of my life. You get some good running in on the California coast. Amazing. Yeah, we drove from just north of the San Francisco Bay all the way to Oregon. and just like stayed in different places over a couple of months on the way there. California.

Somebody hit me up on social media the other day and said, when are you, you know, when are you going to move to Texas or Florida and get out of the failing state of California? I love California. And I wrote, I'm not leaving. We're going to fight for it.

Oh, yeah. I'm going to try and keep it real out here in California. I love it. I'm northern California. I honestly think California should be, this is a whole separate discussion, but I think California should be split into two states.

because northern and Southern California are completely different places. Well, it's pretty awesome that they're one big giant state. And they not only have, you have the coast, you have the Pacific Ocean, you have the desert, incredible. You have the Redwoods. You have the Redwoods. You got Yosemite. Unbelievable. Sierra Nevada's, which is incredible, like Lake Tahoe.

It's just, it's wonderful. It's an epic place. And yeah, we've got some interesting things to deal with that we'll sort out. But I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. They don't. They think they want me to leave, right? They're trying to put pressure.

They want you to leave, but I'm staying. I'm not flighting out. I'm not fucking leaving. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, yeah, the Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, the Wolf of Wall Street. I forgot.

I was losing there. Well, because you went, you lived in your RV on the California Coast. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah, I've got some beautiful runs. And it was amazing. It was a good time to just decompress. You know, so much of my life.

life and shout out to my wife. I mean, when did you guys get married? We got married in 2018. We were young. Oh, okay. We got,

we were young. We were 20. Oh, wow. Yeah, we were young. So this was during college? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It was honestly, like, we'd live together for some time and we were just like, we can get a fat tax return if we get married. So we got, that was the tipping. We were,

we were going to get married. But it was just like, you can get the taxes. Why not? So, yeah, we got married in 2018. but I forgot what we were talking about.

So then you did the trip to California. Oh yeah. You're running beautiful runs. Beautiful runs in California. And it was just a time to decompress because this whole, this is what I was going to talk about. You know, again, the shout out to my wife for just being along for this ride. Because at any point, she could have just been like, dude, you're insane.

I'm out of here. She could have. And I would have never held it against her because there was, there's always been that part of me. It's like just like almost like just wait like we're we're gonna get there normal stuff will happen. Yes. We're going to get there. We're going to get there.

Like I, I probably like, you know, I have I had my I had my shit that I dealt with. It's not like I just magically got better. Now there was no no abuse, none of that. But like, I mean, I was, I was an angry guy. I had, you know, I would, I would have these outbursts not towards her, but just like in general in the house. It's not, that's not healthy to be around. And, you know, I had. I had issues.

And what would make you mad? Stupid shit, man. I stub my toe and I'd throw something at the wall or stupid things. Just like unprocessed trauma that just led to stupid behaviors. And I love my wife. She is my world and my light. So none, like never ever was any of it towards her.

Even if like something she did upset me, that was the one thing that for some reason never triggered something. But yeah, so I had my issues and it was I was just like just wait toward just I promise when school's over like I'm gonna make it it it would be better and like you know there was always like this and she stuck around. I don't know why she stuck around. Thank God she did because she is my life. But we went together. We did it to kind of decompress and we both just went through hell. We watched people get shot in Missouri. Like it was I mean we it was a war zone there. Genuinely. So much gang violence. So, I mean, it was, we're looking at, it, it was, yeah, it was, it was a war zone in St. Louis. Gunshots constantly. You're just, you're constantly on edge because you don't know, you piss off the wrong person at the grocery store. You're going to get shot. It just, and so it was, we just needed this time to decompress.

And it, again, it, I, it was, it's not an I'm right, but it was like, I knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. and we just had to get to the end of this, end of this path, and that light was there. So what was your plan for like financial life after you got done with college? So it was building, building my private practice, where I was in the process of, I actually started building my gym while I was in Missouri in Utah. We started the whole process of that.

I have my partners in that. And, you know, social media as well. Like I've, you know, I've started to build something with social media. why I'm sitting here with you guys right now. And, you know, there's that side of it. And then I also own demolition subcontracting company as well. And so, you know, building all of this. And that was also something again, shout out to my wife for just like understanding that just because we graduated school does not mean that all of a sudden everything is fine and dandy.

Like there's, you know, we're and she's also building her own. So she's building her private practice. She's a therapist and we found a really good flow and shit's great now. And it was great then. It's, you know, it's, I look back and it's always been great. It's just, you know, you just get it's a perspective shift that we talked about. But at this point now, it's, you know, I run across America is still priority. You know, this is like, I want to do this.

I understood the social media side of things. It's like, can I need if I want people to, if I wanted this to be possible, if I want I want to be a professional athlete. If I want to, you know, to make a career out of this, social media's got to be a part of this. So we start, I start getting into the whole social media side of things. And I'm like, okay, now I need to do something that will get me ready to run across America. Let's start prepping to run across Utah.

So I started that training in California. Best way. Best way to train. So I did, you know, the first half of that training block living out of the RV. Great mental training because I would, my wife is a therapist. There's HIPAA. We're living in a. 50 square foot RV with two dogs.

I can't be there when she's doing therapy. So I would basically just go run all day and just go do stuff because I'm like, I have no job. I have a couple, you know, I've picked up a couple clients at this point, but I basically have no job. So I was just like running and running and training for this race. We moved back to Utah in November. I kept training and went and ran across and said to Utah April of last year. and run across America is not actually going to happen. But because of what I discovered running across Utah,

I don't actually think I want to run across America now. It's a logistical nightmare, dude. One of my buddies did it, Rob Jones. Yeah, yeah. And he is a double above the knee amputee. Wow. And he ran across America like a badass. That's unbelievable.

How long did it take him? I forget the actual time. But it was, it was not crazy. Like, I mean, he was running, he was running massive amounts. He was impressive. Oh, no, sorry, he biked across America. He biked across America. He was still insane.

But he did 31 marathons in 31 days. In different cities in America. Wow. So. Oh, no, okay, I do know who this is. Yeah, Rob Jones. Yep. Uh-huh.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, he biked across America, which was a total gut check. And again, he's above the knee amputee. Yeah. And he's on a, he's not on a hand bike. He's on a bike. How do you do that?

That's insane. Yeah, it's freaking, because he's just like the, built different. Yeah, he's just a mentally toughest dude. And then, yeah, and he ran 31 marathons and 31 days. So you do this and you've got a documentary on YouTube. It's called Worn Legs. Yep. And the title of the book that will be coming out.

Okay. Check. 421 miles. And it's, man, I watched the, uh, the documentary. It's a problem, dude. Like, it's rough. Yeah.

I can, you know, I've done things in my life where I was really, really hurting. And, you know, you have that moment where you know you have to keep going, but you've taken a break of some kind. And when you get back up to get back into it, there's that moment where your mind hasn't shut off the pain yet. And it's usually like four minutes, you know, like literally standing up. getting your shoes on or doing whatever you got to do and you're in such agony and you just you just have to push through that. Am I?

Oh, you're nailing it on the head. Like this is what I kept seeing like each day. I was like, oh, there it is again. Oh, he doesn't want to get up. Oh, that hurts, doesn't it? And it's funny. There's a each day you kind of spray paint a mark on the ground of where you were like a line. Hey, this was day three, day four, day five, day six.

Like starting like day six or day seven. You're just like so hurting. Even when you bend down to spray pain, I'm like, oh, he's, he does not want to be doing this. But not wanting to do it has nothing to do with actually doing it. That's why I did put. That's why I do pushups. Yeah, you do pushups every day at the end. Every day.

And same thing with a thousand. Every day, 10 pushups. You can always do a little bit more. Always go a little bit further. That was the whole premise. The day might be over. It's not over. I might have to go to bed, but it's not over.

We're going to do 10 pushups. Yeah. day six of that run you're like in you can't you can't I'm watching the video that you can't put any weight on your ankle no you do sound swollen it was yeah it's just total disaster so you just tape it up just tape it up day seven yeah well that's so that's where the never make a decision in the dark that's where that that's where that saying essentially came from my buddy he is a badass he is kind of an under unknown ultra running. He's beat Goggins. He's beat McNight. He's beat these guys in their prime in these 200-mile races. This is back in the day. And he's a he's badass. Nate Williams. He is a like I have a I have my list of people who have inspired me to do these things. You know, you, David Guggins, Nate is on this list. A couple of other people who fall in that list. And he he was there. They came and ran like roughly two days with me. It was like a day and a half.

and he's there. He's the one that when they picked me up and drove me 20 feet because I couldn't hobble back to the van. That was him. He's the one that drove me over. And I'm sitting there. I'm like, I don't know if I can do this, man.

Like none of this is on video. And I'm like, I don't think I can't do this, dude. I don't know. How am I going to get up? I can't put any weight on my foot. And I'm like, I'm ready to quit. My crew actually had fully prepped to go home. They didn't do any of the prep for the next day.

They prepped to go home because they thought they had to quitter on their hands. They just thought it was over. My leg was swollen. And Nate goes, never make a decision in the dark. That's all he had to say. And I said, let's do it again tomorrow. And I went to bed.

And it's, uh, and I woke up. And we, I just, you saw the video. It, it, it hurt. It hurt. But you just, I was like, I, I, I, I, when I woke up that morning, I told myself, this is going to day seven. I told myself, you give this 100%. I don't care if you only make it five miles today.

You cannot go home without, and this was the mindset every day. Every day I had to give 100% of whatever I had. But this day was you give 100% of everything because you don't know if you're going home. And so it was, I just, I went, I went as hard as I could, given the situation I was in.

This day now we've got 40 mile per hour, headwinds that have started and that we're running into and it sucked and it hurt. And, you know, I just, I set the goal. It was like, if we're going to keep going, you have to run 40 miles in your time limit. Because I had a time limit because of sunsets and different things. And so there was this basically, I'm like, you either, you give it your all and you only make it five miles, whatever. But if we get past that five mile point, because that's what I was essentially giving myself five miles to make sure that I didn't have a broken leg. because if the bone's broken, not much you can do.

And then after that, it was like, you go to 40. And then you do not, you give everything, everything to get to that 40. And we get close to the end of the day that day. And I have 28 minutes left and I have a 5K. And I'm like, I'm not going to fucking make it. No way. I got to run a sub 10 minute mile and I'm 280 miles in. And it's 282, I think, was the exact mileage at that point.

And or 281. So what's driving the cutoff time? Sunset. But is that, is that like a safety protocol? Yes, because I'm on the, it's, I'm running on state highway. Because there's no rules. Is there rules? No, there's no rules, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I'm running on state highways.

If it's dark, I already got, dude, I got hit by a car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got hit by a car on day, what, three, four, whatever it was. And that was in the middle of the day. It was broad daylight.

So if it's nighttime, like I'm either, there's no way. So I, we had this cutoff just for safety. reasons. And yes, I had 28 minutes left before, you know, sunset. And I've had 5K. And I just said, fuck it. I said I was going to give. I said I was going to give 100 percent. We're going. So I had poles because it just, I had to take the body weight off. I knew the poles were going to slow me down. So I clicked them up. I just, I just went full send. It ran as hard as I could. And my crew, like, they'd stop every mile or mile and a half and like give me water. And I just blasted past the van and they're like what the and they followed me and I just put my hand out

they handed me the water I drank it I threw it back in the van like all this is happening while I'm running because I'm like I'm not I'm not stopping I have 28 minutes I'm hitting this I told myself we're doing this in the 13 hour limit you're not stopping and so I just kept going and I kept going and ended up being 24 minutes 24 minutes it was an absolute salute burner at 280 miles in. And we just, you see it in the documentary and I've posted about it a couple times on social media. It was silent.

You just hear my cameraman in the video. You're from my cameraman because my cameraman chased me for like a half mile, but he was struggling to keep up because I'm just, these guys know. These guys know. Like they know from the thousand miles. Like I don't, they're just this switch flipped. And I just stood there and just stared off into the sunset and into the road.

And it was just like, holy. just soaked it in of what and I just it was another one of those moments in life it's like again there's so much in the tank always there's all and I was like all right we're gonna finish this shit there's nothing that can stop me if I can do this there's nothing there's nothing that can stop me and we just kind of all we drove home drove home we drove to the campsite in silence just in the van because we all were just like holy shit what just happened it was epic yeah Yeah, the documentary is great. And it's probably like, it's probably like 45 minutes long or something like that.

It's 53 or something like that. Yeah, it's not like a, not like a two-hour documentary, but it's, it's badass, man. I was watching it again, you know, I've, I've done things that have required a lot of physical exertion before. And I remember just going, oh, yeah, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again, yeah, over and over again until you get it done with the, Fastest known time. Yeah, it did get broken. By one of your buddies, right? Yeah, my buddy, Adam, Adam Burns, shout out.

He, Adam and I are really good friends now. And I, you know, I helped him with his run. Records are run to me broken. And I wanted to help him break it. How much did he beat it by? Seven hours, 11 hours? Barely. Barely.

It was a close one. I think if I had run it a day faster, I still think he would have broke it. I think he had a gas in the day. He had a number. Yes, he was like, okay, I just have to do this and I'll break it. I think if I think he had more gas in the tank. I think he could have done it a little bit faster. But it was that mind, like you can very much set those limitations on your mind.

And like your mind will stop you. It's pretty crazy. What made you, you know, you mentioned that during that run. You kind of figured out you didn't want to run across America. Yeah, it was just the logistics of I don't, I just, it's, they're tough, man. The logistics of these runs are tough. You're, you're, it's, it's no joke. There's plan, like planning the route, knowing where the campside,

are running across America, you've got to know where laundromats are. You've got to know what grocery stores are. You have to know how to refuel, restock, all of this the whole way across America, not just a state. We're talking 13 states, you know, and it's places I've never been before and for the most part. It's the middle of nowhere for 90% of the run. You cross through a couple of cities and you try to avoid the cities because of traffic. And so you got out under like the logistics of it are just such a nightmare. I'm like, I don't want to do that. If someone was like, hey, I got the logistics. If someone, this is, this is where I'm at now. Now that I've done what I've done, I don't want to be away from my wife that long. The, without the thousand miles was,

you know, it was long. And I was home. I was just 20 minutes up the road. And I only sell my wife three times. And it was very difficult. So there's that. I don't want to be away for my wife. Someone would have to pay me a pretty significant amount of money. And the logistics would need to be, what I would basically do, there's a buddy of mine. His name is Rob. crew chief Rob is like his his thing he's done a couple of runs across America you know the relay do you guys I don't know if you guys any of you have seen the relay across

America that's happening right now Wyatt Moss is another influencer another running influencer he put together this relay to celebrate to celebrate 250 years it's a run across America and there's like a thousand people across like the entire country

where people have like signed up for segments and Rob is doing the crew chief for this whole thing So I would essentially pay Rob to do it for me. And then again, someone would need to pay me. That's the only way I'm going to do it is that I would need to get paid so that my wife could be there, not need to work. And then I would do it. Did you enjoy, I mean, did you enjoy the running part of it? Or at a certain point, are you like, hey, I can't feel my legs and I don't think this is healthy?

When you're doing it, when you set the goal to do these things, you understand what you're getting into. You understand there's, you know, and we can talk about it now, but like when I was getting ready for the thousand miles, my mindset, I would have these, I would sit down and I would manifest, I would do manifestation and visualization.

And I would visualize myself running in circles and crossing the finish line and I would manifest success. But part of that manifestation, I would repeat to myself, nothing will stop you. If this is the last thing you do, this is the last thing you do.

permanent injury will not be the reason that you quit. I would repeat that to myself because I knew that it was my only out was going to be the thought of, well, this is doing permanent damage. I can't do this to myself. So I knew that I had to tell myself on repeat if this is the last thing I do,

this is the last thing I do. And you kind of have to have that mindset with this type of stuff. Because any little discomfort can be in your mind manufactured into permanently disabling yourself. Yeah. And there's obviously a chance that you really could.

Yes, exactly. And so you kind of have to have that mindset. So there's, yeah, there's a couple of things in it with that. But it's, again, the run across America, it would basically need to be almost hand, just because it's the logistics. The running, I'll do it. I'll do the running. It's the logistics. It's such a nightmare planning.

I mean, this thousand miles, I didn't even have a track until the Friday before. Because it was so hard to find a track to do this on. It's just these logistics are a nightmare when it comes to doing this stuff. And so it's just something that's like, I love doing hard things, but I am done planning logistics for these runs. They take so much of my time and energy. So then what point did you decide you're going to do the 1,000 miles? And why the 1,000 miles around a track? So running across Utah, I realized I don't want to run across America.

And so I didn't know what I was going to do next, trying to figure it out, trying to figure out just what's next. what's the next big thing I'm going to do? And I actually was planning a run across the UK. John O'Grout's to Land's End, 1,100 miles. Had it all ready to go. I had the route. I was ready to go. You know, I was kind of thinking like,

oh, I have an opportunity to explore the world a little bit with this. You can go run across Italy, run across the UK, like these shorter distances. My wife gets to go to Italy. My wife gets to travel the world with me. You know, she gets to explore the world while I get to run. It's like, what a life, you know. And so I'm planning this run.

I'm like, I can run 1100 miles. I can run across the UK. I can run 45 miles a day. You know, I did 42 running across Utah. And my training was a mess for that run. I was super injured going through training. I had to swim for a month. I swam to train to run across Utah.

Like, that's ridiculous. So, like, there's those things that I knew I could have run. And there's limitations because of parliament and different things running across the UK. So there's some legal things. I just didn't want to jump through those hoops. So I was just like, you know, it was my 45 miles a day. And I was like, I can do that.

I want to do something I can't do. Because I want to, I want something that I can fail. I don't want something because again, I don't want something I know I can do. That's not the point. I want something that when I, when I set out for this, there's the very realistic possibility

that I never crossed the finish line. And so that was, I was like, well I want to run a thousand miles. And so I was like, a track. Who in the right mind would do that shit? Sure enough there's only been two other people

who were dumb enough to do it. I mean, they'd get two other people who didn't almost died. Ned Brockman's, even, I was messaging him, like he's, he's a dog. Like, he was not okay. He still, to this day,

says he still has problems. And so, but I don't know, why I just, I wanted that. I wanted to prove that I can accomplish a pop, not myself. I wanted to prove to others that you can accomplish impossible things. It's all here. It's all in your head. It's all something that you, if you set those limitations, then you're not going to get there. And you can truly accomplish things that are genuinely impossible. And that's, again, that's why I picked it, because I wanted to do something that I would fail. I would have to

dedicate so much time and energy and effort and a whole piece of myself towards something that might amount to nothing. How much, when you're looking at doing a thousand miles, if I said to you, all right, I want you to do a thousand miles, but I want you to do it in a really healthy way and I don't care really how long it takes. Would you run like 18 miles a day, 20 miles a day, 22 miles a day? and what drives you to say, hey, I got to do it. You know, you end up doing it in, what, 18 days?

What is the goal? What is the bar set at that you say, hey, I'm going to do 45 miles a day? I'm going to give it 100%. So that's like max, that's like in the red. Yeah. 45 miles a day is in the red. So I was doing 54 a day out there. 54 a day is, that's in the red.

That's pretty much. And it was, I could, this is, this was some. something that was really interesting about this run in particular is I actually my original goal was 66 a day. I actually think I could have done it, but I had some pretty severe nerve damage really early on that physically prevented me from moving fast enough. And maybe it was something, maybe it was something I needed to learn. I don't, maybe I could have. You know, you never know, but for me, this, that was my max effort. That was my max effort.

That was that 54 day. And so that was the whole point was we're going all, we're going max ever. we're going all out. It wasn't like I'm not, I'm not here to pussyfoot around. I'm not here to, I'm not here to go through the motions. I'm here to do something that is,

feels and sounds and is impossible to not just represent single parents and their choice to not get to quit every day. And when I wake up in the morning and I'm in agonizing, excruciating pain, so are they. So I still get to get, I still got to get up and I got to go, run my miles. And so and then also just again, it's that factor of how far can I actually push?

Because again, I know I can run 20 miles a day. I know I can run a marathon a day. I know I can run 45 miles a day. How and I know I can run through a beautiful country. But what about running in a circle? And I had I mean the mountains were beautiful, you know, right there against the track and there was a beautiful track. But I also saw the same thing, four thousand times or whatever it was. Like late good old lane eight you know so it's a little less than 4,000 because it was lane eight but when you're prepping how many miles a week we're doing in prep so my training is a little bit different because of how much I weigh I'm not mad Johnson I'm not these guys who are you know about 40 book 50 I can't run 130 140 miles a week so I did I did a hundred hundred

mile week and then the rest were 70s and 80s and then a lot of you know lifting building durability versus volume was my approach because I understood if I go for the volume and training, I'm going to end up costing myself in the run. So we're going to focus on building durability so that I can then put on volume in the actual run. That was the approach. Have you ever seen there's a show on TV?

I think it's called Alone. And it's people that go out, they get dropped off alone in the wilderness and they just have to survive. Have you ever seen this program? Well, one of the things that's happened in this program is like people just try and bulk up with fat.

They try and get as fat as they can because essentially what the contest becomes in many cases is just a starvation contest. And so you're just like you eat as much as you can. You get out there. You're not really preparing for what you're going to do out there. You're just getting as fat as you possibly can. So it seems like for you being 200 plus pounds in preparation, you can't break yourself before you enter the race. Exactly. You kind of are doing like, you know it's going to, you know every day is going to cause wear and tear.

That's eventually going to stop you from running. Yeah. I mean, eventually you're going to get there. So you have to try and enter this thing with as much conditioning as possible, but also as healthy as you possibly can. Yes. Yeah, that was a huge approach. And it was actually interested. So I actually try and put on weight is what I try and do for these runs.

I got to give a huge shout out to muscle drive right now. That is sponsored but not sponsored, but like kind of sponsored. Um, jocco fuel muscle drive. Yeah, jocco fuel muscle drive. I, so I did 10 grams of creatine and muscle drive the two scoops. Yeah. Every day. I, during this training block, um, I gained, uh, I gained about five pounds.

That's awesome. But I lost three percent body fat. That's muscle drive all day. It was on, and I'm running, I ran 1,200 miles in five, five and a half months. Yeah, that's sick. And I put on a couple pounds of muscle. The muscle drive has been, you know, we design it for a, well, fighters in mind that are cutting weight.

Also, there's a lot of people right now that are taking, what are those drugs called? GLP ones. GLP one. No, GLP one. Is that a peptide? Is that a peptide? Yeah, it is a peptide. Okay.

That stuff that's making people skinny, right? But it also, when they get skinny, they're losing a lot of muscle mass, which is obviously horrible. Yep. And so that in mind and now like someone like you who's trying to maintain their muscle mass as they're doing something, you know, this is the same thing with like fasting. Actually, one of the, one of the names that was proposed for muscle drive was muscle fast and I actually like that more

but uh but anyways because because a lot of people myself included like I fast sometimes and when you fast it you're gonna eventually you know after a day or two you're going to start losing some muscle mass but if that's really protective that's what we designed it for so that's the uh fancy term for muscle converted to glucose we like that we don't like that but we like the yeah The science-effective terms. And just the stress. Like when you're putting the muscle under that much stress, you know, we talked about this, the H&B and the muscle drive and everything and how that, you know, it was just great for preserving that muscle when you're just demanding so much from it.

Got to have the dialysis too. 100%. Yeah. So you're actually gaining weight and you're trying to condition yourself and be as healthy as possible going into it. Yes. So you said 70-mile weeks? Yeah, 70, 80 kind of drum back and forth. I had one little blip of an injury, very normal in these things, where I dropped up,

but I just went right back up. It was a week off. I was, you know, I've trained a lot of jiu-jitsu in my life. I don't think I've ever been more nervous training jiu-jitsu with someone than I was when I trained with you because I, you know, here you are, you are, I don't know, a few weeks away from starting the, the thousand miles. And these guys are like, oh, we're going to bring, you know, we're going to Mason in. He's going to, you know, he's running a thousand miles.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I know. I'm like, he wanna train Jiu-Jitsu with him. And I go, you know, and I figured we'll talk through some moves and, you know, I'll show you a couple moves. And of course, Kerry's like, hey, you, he's trying to be all cool about it. He's, he's always using the, uh, the leadership techniques for Eschlam Front, one of the one of which is the indirect approach. And he's all like, hey, you know, you think you might wanna, you know, just get a, you know,

just couple, maybe get a couple live rounds. And I was kind of like, not really, but I'll show him some moves. He's like, hey, you know, look really good if you did the, you know, just went live a couple times. And the whole time I'm thinking, bro, like, all I need to do is just some weird movement or you do some weird movement and you hurt your ankle, hurt your knee, hurt whatever. And I'm going to be, feel so bad. So I was so nervous, but I did do it because Kerry's like, you know, it really would look good. You know, really want to see people. And I'm like, okay, fine.

So I had zero, zero regard for Mason's. I was so freaking nervous. I knew I was going to be fine. Yeah. I knew I was going to be fine. Um, I know I'm a durable guy. 100%. that wrestling backdrops.

I'm not built like you, but I'm a durable guy. Yeah, but gosh, all it takes is one little slip. Ligaments are only so strong. So I was, I was nervous. Dude, I had fun with that. That was a lot of, yeah, it was definitely fun and good times, but I mean,

I'm glad that you didn't get hurt. You kicked my ass, but yeah, I mean, I trained jitza. We didn't, you know, if we did a running contest,

I don't think I would fare too well in that. And we did talk about, you know, focusing on, you know, hey, sometimes you focus on the long term, and sometimes you got to focus on what's right.

I have talked about front site focus with not just during the run, but with so many people now. I use that. I'm like, one time I got to sit down with Jocko and we talked about front site focus and front. And I love that analogy of,

you know, sometimes that object in the distance gets blurry and you have to focus on your front site. And then when that gets where you've got to focus back in the distance. And it's, oh, I love. And it was so helpful in these thousand miles because it's true.

Like, I was talking about these guys earlier, you know, what did it feel like after that first lap? Well, I wasn't worried about the thousand. I was worried about the next lap. I was worried about getting to the first marathon. I was worried about finishing the first day. Like it was, you know, and then sometimes you do have to think about the thousand. And it's that back and forth. I was thinking about that the whole time that helped that. Huge. Well, that's good to hear. Huge. Good to hear. Life changing. And you got the new, speaking on Joccofield got the new endurance product that we got coming. We actually have advanced

copy. And I love it because as soon as you... My little secret black bags. Yeah. As soon as you look at the ingredients because you're a nutrition scientist and all that, you were like, oh, this is freaking good to go. Yeah. So super stoked that that worked out well.

It's, uh, it really helped. I had some digestive issues that just it, because of day one, um, you know, it was 100 degrees. I couldn't heat train because it was just winter. And I was able to, I had some very severe muscle, or not muscle. I had some very severe stomach problems. And so I actually, on day two, had to completely overhaul my nutrition strategy that I had been training because you have to train your nutrition. You don't just train, you don't just train for the one thing.

You train your nutrition as well as the running. And so I spent months training my nutrition. And it's like, oh, day one, out the window. So I had to completely overhaul overnight of what we're going to do. And I had a chef. This guy was amazing. came and cooked all my meals for me. I'm like, hey, we need to, you know, so I'm a snacker when I run.

I like to eat throughout the day. And I go, okay, we're going to do big meals six times a day. Six meals a day, or six to eight. How many calories are you taking it a day? 10 to 15,000. Nice. Yeah, it was a lot. The first day I was in a 7,500 calorie deficit.

Dang. Yeah, it was really rough. I was in a hole. And so I was like, I know I've got to fix this. Because if we go another day like this, I'm screwed. It's over. There are, you can do impossible things, but you can also very much your body can just say no. Yeah, there's, there's impossible things and then there's the laws of physics.

Yes. Exactly. This is kind of, if you ever hear me say this, like, hey, you can't break the laws of physics. Whatever we're talking about is not possible. Yeah. Like any, I mean, if you're going to, you can't break the laws of physics. You can't do it. No.

You can do all kinds. Human beings can do all kinds. of things, except for change the laws of physics. Exactly. So, yeah, but I, so I had to completely overhaul my nutrition strategy. I'm still just constantly having stomach issues. And, you know, I had a limited supply of this stuff. It was, you know, we were just like doing some testing on it and, no, flavor and different

things. And, but it ended up becoming for a couple of those days, it actually became a huge part of it. It helped, it helped me a ton reset my stomach because it just, you know, I got the carbs. I got the electrolytes. I got what I needed. It really, it was a game changer there for a couple days. And then I saved, I saved one bag so that I could have it towards the end in case anything went wrong later on.

Because I only had a couple bags. But no, it was a, it was a game changer. And again, I was having so many completely uncontrolled variables. Again, control your controllables. Sometimes most of what's going to get thrown at you is going to be uncontrollable. And this was just one of those things. And so I took the few things that I can control. changing what I was doing, implementing little things like this new product that's coming out.

And it's, yeah, it was big. So what physically is happening to you? This is 18 days, 13 hours, and 11 minutes. Like, you're acquiring injuries as you go. I like the term acquiring. Right? I mean, you're acquiring injuries. I'm earning them.

And they're, because they're, like I said, like little nagging pain eventually becomes a legitimate pain, which eventually becomes an injury, and then that injury just escalates. So what were you dealing with as far as acquiring injuries as you did this? Yeah. So out the gate, my shoes just failed. I don't know what happened. I don't know why my shoes failed. I've been running in these shoes for years. Not the same pair, obviously, but like the same style of shoe. And I don't say what shoot is because they're a great company. They make great shoes. I don't want people to think they're bad shoes. It just was an unfortunate. I think I maybe got a bad pair for manufacturing. I don't know. This is an extreme event. Not every, you know, you don't ever, you never know what's going to

happen. So I ended up destroying my feet on day one. And did you not, how many pairs of shoes did you have? I had, what, six pairs with me? But I had to scrap them all. They were all the same. Oh. And so day one, my shoes fail. How does this shoe fail? I don't know. Okay. But you're saying like blow out this. Yeah. So basically what, basically what, Basically what it was is it felt like the padding just disappeared and I was just running on the ground. I don't know why it happened. I don't know how it happened. I don't know if I got a bad pair.

Either way, I did very severe nerve damage to my feet. Day one. Day one. Yep, day one. And so I'm now trying to navigate this. I had another pair that was a little bit more cushion. They were old. But I brought them just in case.

It's like an emergency. Well, we had an emergency on day one. So day two, I put these shoes on and I'm just in so much pain excruciating. I could feel foot pain in my quad. Unless you've experienced it, that's the best way I can explain it. I had pain so severe. And you had trained with these shoes. So these were, this was just a shocker.

Yeah, it really, there's so much happened on day one. We had extreme heat that I couldn't train for. We had stomach issues because of the extreme heat, which you just deal with. But now I'm in a 7,500 calorie deficit. My shoes have failed on me that I've been training in for months. It felt like on day one, everything was over. So I'm just like, what the hell? Day one, what am I, like, where do we go from here?

What do we do? How do I navigate all of these variables at the exact, because you can't take one at a time. You have to attack all of them at the exact same time. You know this. Different type of attack, but you know this. It gets, you have to attack all. all of these things at the exact same time.

You can't take them one by one or else everything else will fall apart. And so we're tackling all this at the same time, trying to figure out shoes. I get through. I'm like, okay, maybe these shoes will work. Maybe it's just like, because you have weird pains that pop up. So I'm like, maybe it's just, I just got to get through the second day. So it's just deal. Let's use these shoes get through the second day.

The company that sent me the other shoes, they sent me more of the shoe, these cushioned shoes. I'm like, okay, maybe these will work. Day three, I wake up. It's even worse than it was a day before. for and I'm in so much pain. I'm crying a good chunk of the day. And I just so, the nerve pain, I can't, I've never in my life experienced pain this extreme.

I don't know how I can experience more pain to be completely honest. I feel like the next level is like near death, pretty much or death, which I guess there's no pain with that. But like, like there's really, I don't know how you could genuinely experience, more than

it was it was pain so extreme that pain in my feet was radiating into other parts of my body like from like nerve sensations it was it was because it's nerve pain and this is only day three this is day three so I call my

I'm at mile 45 on day three and I'm Jeffrey I have a video Jeffrey just like held the phone like this at his hip this is my crew chief and just recorded me just like crying and I can't fucking do this man like what are we going to do and he's like dude it's fine like just keep moving you know what you're

doing you've done this before like he's he's he's very he's very soft he's very soft spoken he's very kind a very different approach than you know which is interesting for me because i am a very like you would be a great crew chief for me just very direct very like just you know do the shit um but for some reason coming from geoffrey it works and he's just like just go just keep moving You got five miles left today. You can go for five miles. Like, suck it up. Go, you know, we got five miles.

I walk with you. And still just bawling my eyes out. I call my buddy. He does shoe reviews. It's like his social media thing. And I'm like, this is the only person I know that can help me. So I call Eric bawling my, he's like a dinner with his family. And he's like, oh, hey, man, what's up?

I'm like, I need help, man. I'm just like bawling my eyes out. And he's like, oh, oh, just so caught off guard. Like, I need the max. cushion. I need the shoe with the most cushion. What is it? He's like, well, there's two shoes. There's like the A6 superflies or

the Brooks glycerin max twos, which I actually have on my feet right now. And he's like, those, the ones have plates, the Brooks don't. He's like, I would go with the Brooks unless you want a plate, like a carbon fiber plate they put in shoes. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to find these glycerin max

twos. Brand new pair, brand new shoes like just came out. And we find, I mean, I need big, I because my feet are swelling now. You know, your feet swell when you do these things. So I now need a size 15. Already hard to find. Thank God they make 15s in these shoes.

We find one pair in the state of Utah at the Shields and Sandy. Oh yeah. Shields. Shout out. Yeah. I call my wife. Again, still crying. I cried for like four hours straight.

And I'm like, I need you to go to Shields. I need you to get these shoes. And I'm going to have Mac. who's my chef, meet you in Salt Lake, and he's going to bring me the shoes tomorrow. So she minutes before they close, gets there, gets the shoes, meets my, meets my chef, he gets the shoes, he brings them the next morning. And then we ordered, Brooks ended up actually sending me a pair like, thank you guys. Yeah, they sent me a pair of Salt Lake Running Company, which is a local running store.

They sent me a pair of shoes. And then we also bought a couple of pairs of shoes. Spent $750 in shoes like that. because they're expensive shoes but they save the day and I was able to run in these you guys now have a pair in the office no break in period for these shoes

you just get in them and go I have insoles I have insoles I have insoles in I mean at this point it's like what it can't get any worse yeah there's not like it worst cases it ends because so it's like I've got to do everything in my power to make this happen

so it's like we're just going to put on their shoes and go see what happens and I ended up obviously working out. But it was a rough couple of days. Just like not. There was so much unknown. I didn't know. I didn't know if I was going to get the shoes.

I didn't know. And then we didn't, none of the shoes that got delivered. All of it got delayed because we had a massive storm. The third largest rainstorm in the last 25 years. So all the shoes got delayed. So this is day seven or whatever. And all the shoes are delayed.

I have one singular pair of shoes running with trench foot. my foot split open because it was raining so much. I can't change my shoes because I have one pair. They already have 250 or 270 miles on them. I need another pair of shoes. It was a rough week. That first week was hell because so much went wrong. It made it look like I didn't prepare for this run.

It really did. Like from an outside perspective, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these guys came back and were like, what the fuck's this guy doing? Who is this guy? Like, what does he think he's going to do this? And I, get why a lot of people.

I had so, you guys were some of the only people who believed in me from day one. I couldn't tell you the amount of brands, people, whatever, that straight up tracks. Yes, I had,

I had track facilities tell me, we don't want to be associated with you failing. I had brands tell me they didn't want to be associated with a failure. Damn. Like, I had people tell me this. And, I mean,

it just gave me fuel of the fire. But I, from an outside perspective, especially in that first week, I can totally understand why people, why someone would say that because I looked like a mess. Were you able to recover at all? Like once you got the shoes that were working well, did you feel recovery or did just steady state of pain? So, but it didn't get worse.

Make on worse. Yeah. Yeah. So this, this is where things get really interesting with these runs is the pain did get worse. It doesn't, it doesn't get better. It's not going to get better until you stop. It's just like if you hurt yourself, you got to stop. It's like you get a, we get it.

You all know, plantar fasciitis. It's a really common thing. The only way to get rid of it is you stop running. It's how all of this was. And so, like, I had stress fractures develop at mile about 600. I had stressed. So I ran about 400 miles of stress fractures. Where were the stress fractures?

My fibula and my foot and my right leg. So I have stress fractures. The nerve pain is continuing to get worse because it's now damaging other nerves and it's going up the leg. So I'm dealing with. just continue to get worse. But this is where these, again, these runs get interesting where you adapt.

You all of a sudden, this switch kind of flips. And on day nine is where this switch kind of flipped, where I'm now this pain is, the pain is basically, it's there. It's getting worse. But your mind's kind of like, well, I guess we're fucking doing this.

So we'll figure it out. Even though it's such an interesting feeling because you feel all of the pain, but you're able to just kind of like exist with it. It's a very interesting, unless you've done things like this, it's something that you can't, it's something that's really hard to understand unless you've experienced some sort of long-term hardship

where you're physically or mentally brutalizing yourself on a daily basis. And then all of a sudden, and I'm sure you experience this, you know, in combat with these, like it's weeks on end of stuff. And then all of a sudden there's like a day. where it's not better, but it just all of a sudden is better.

It's just acceptance. Yeah, there's a type of acceptance, but then there's also the physical, the physical adaptation or the mental adaptation to what's going on. It's a really interesting feeling, a really interesting experience where, again, the pain,

it got worse every single day, but you just kind of figure it out and deal with it. It's a, you've heard of the baton death march before, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But one thing that's crazy

when you read people that were that went through that is like the Japanese were just going to kill you if you stopped walking and you know the thing of like oh you can always take another step well it's like actually no there's points that people get to where the guys you know I've read read books where the Japanese are going to kill you if you stop and guys would just be like I'm stopping I can't do anymore I can't take another step and they would just get extra executed on the side of the road. Yep. So it's like getting to that point of where you just cannot go any further.

And this guy, one book in particular I read was like, your will to live had to just be so strong that you would just not going to stop no matter what. So that's what I was kind of thinking about when you were saying, if I permanently injure myself, it doesn't matter. I'm going to keep going. This is the last thing I do. It was the last thing I do. it was it was pretty awesome too seeing it from the outside and just getting reports from the field where like oh mason only got like 25 miles you know this morning or today or like in those early days where you were having all that trouble and we were like damn dude like he's going through it and then about the time that switch flips for you and we were you know we weren't there for the whole run we were there for kind of beginning and the end and stuff but you know getting those reports reports like oh no he he just clocked a 55 mile day oh in another one in another one you know and we just watched it pick pick up steam again it was like he's he's got to see 65 57 yeah he's gonna get it

like he's going and it was just super awesome to watch man but yeah those early days were gnarly yeah they dude they were they were it was hell yeah i went through hell was there any moment where you said look it's only the first day i'm off to a bad start let me let me recover for two weeks and then take another crack at this. No, absolutely not. And that's why? Because you had all the logistics in place. That's quitting. That's quitting. That's quitting. If I stopped on day one to start again, that's quitting. I quit because it was hard. That's what that would have been. If at any point, unless it was weather, even then, if at any point I had to take a day off, I would have not claimed any of the claims that I've claimed. Is that what the, is that kind of the rules?

I would say so. You know, because I don't know. You make up, right? Yes, there's, there's kind of an unspoken rule with this where it's, it's a, it's essentially a continuous effort. You can't leave the track. Like it's, you know, there's obviously you have to sleep so it's not continuous. But there's. But you sleep in an RV or something?

I slept on the side of the track in a, in a trailer. Like, you know, there's, there's kind of that, you know, Ned Brockman slept, like in the building, like, that was like attached to the track. I don't know what Janus did, but. Um, like there's, you know, you stay there. You do not leave. You live and breathe that track. I did not step foot off of that track for, I lived there for a month basically or three weeks. Like I did, I did not go anywhere except about a hundred feet to the trailer and back.

And then the, the 20 feet to the bathroom because I did that a lot. So you end up raising $50,000 for the single parent project. Yep. you're the first American to do this challenge. You're the third person in history to do it. You just mentioned the other two gentlemen. When did they do it? So Yonnes did it in the 80s, if I'm not mistaken.

And then Ned Brockman did it in 2021. Do you know Ned? No, we've messaged a little bit on Instagram. I messaged him. I was like, hey, you have any pointers? He's like, good luck. And I'm like, no, do you have any pointers? And he was like, look, man, I'm fucked up.

Like, you know, he, again, this is, I have to preface this. What happened out there? I am dealing with stuff still. I still have nerve issues that will probably take me a couple years, if not lifelong. They're minimal at this point. But there's stuff I might permanently be dealing with for the rest of my life. My body was able to manage this because of my weight.

My body was able to manage this because of how I trained. This is not something that people should go do. I have to preface this because. Ned, he legitimately, his shoulder muscles literally deteriorated to the point they had to tape his arms into place because his body was eating itself alive. Like this is, this is something that is so because you don't, when you run across America, there's terrain changes. There's visual changes. There's different things where the body actually is experiencing change almost every step. with this, it's the same plane.

It's the same direction. I also, I didn't switch directions, but still, all the exact same muscles, mentally you're in the exact same place. Mentally, it takes significantly more of a toll. And physically, despite what you would think, you'd think maybe the hills would maybe harder. You're using the exact same muscles nonstop. That never changes. It doesn't because there's no elevation change. So at no point do your muscles, do you use?

any different muscles. So this is something that it should be taken. I've had a couple of, you know, kids, a lot of younger, you know, younger men reach out to me, like, I'm going to do this. I'm like, I'm like, I will support you. I will be in your corner. I will help you. But I'm warning you, this is not something that should be taken lightly because it is something that, again, I might be dealing with lifelong repercussions because of. So it's just, I have to preface this because I feel like people saw what I did and were like, and that's the whole point of this, is to achieve those impossible things and go for those big things.

But I also just want to make sure that people understand it comes at a cost. They always, and this is a big cost that might not be worth it just so you can post on Instagram or something or flex or whatever, whatever your reason is. So it's like one out of 10 do not recommend. Honestly, yes. So kind of the thing that I've come up with,

out of this is find your thousand. Find your thousand. It doesn't legitimately have to be a thousand miles. Find that thing in your life where you go for something. You dedicate six months to like three years of your life. Dedicated to one soul thing. You give every ounce of yourself, your soul, your mind, your body to this thing. In the knowledge, with the knowledge that you will likely fail,

getting for that. And that I technically failed. My goal was 66 miles a day, 15 days. I technically failed my original goal. What was Ned's? Ned's was 13 days. Damn, dude. They fucking insane.

He's a dog. Like, I'm insane. But I, but you dedicate all this time to this one thing. Whatever it is. It doesn't, it can be a business. It can be a thousand miles around a track. It can be, you just need to find your, thousand. Find that thing that is impossible, that sounds impossible, dedicate everything that you have

to that one thing, knowing that it will likely fail and it might not work out and that you just did all of this one time in your life. It's not a, it's not a misogi. You know, you have the misoggi where you, you know, you do that one big thing every year. This is one time in your life. Pick that thing that alters the fabric of your reality. with the knowledge that you're probably going to fail. So that's what I think people should do. Instead of destroying your body, which maybe that's a thousand.

Maybe it is what I, maybe it is a thousand miles around a track. There's, there's a, you have to, you have to look at your risks. You know, pros, cons, however you want to word that.

You got to look at your risk and make sure it's worth it. But then go for that thing. Once in your life. Because it might change your life. It probably will. It's going to change your life. no matter what you do.

And it's going to change your life for the better, no matter if you fail or succeed. Failure is not the opposite of success. We all know this. So it's one of those things that it will change your life and it will change your life for the better. I am a new man. I'm a new person.

I feel so, again, I'm so at peace with myself. I found myself on that track. I found a version of Mason that I didn't know could ever exist. I didn't think it could exist. You know, we talked about all the shit that I dealt with him, you know, the mental stuff and all of it. And I did not think this version of myself could exist.

And I just, I'm a new person. And it's the best, even if I had failed, I know that I would still be this new person because I gave everything to this goal. And it changed me. I think everybody should, everybody should strive for that one thing. So where do you go from here?

So that, you know, it's to do the one thing. in your life and now you're like okay now i got to do something something else right yeah maybe it won't be as big you do you set your sights a little bit lower now or set you're like what's next no so it's just you know there's there's a couple of things i have in the works um you know the big thing that i'm really focusing on right now is my life i people don't realize with these things i have to so much get sacrificed time money energy people i'm giving that now i'm getting that back my wife giving that time back to my wife, focusing on building my businesses to build my family and focusing on that side of my life, using, taking what I've learned, taking that ultra

mindset into life and applying it to these things. Doesn't mean I'm not done running, but I'm probably not going to do something this big. I don't know if I'll do something this big ever again. Just because of the financial, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual toll that it takes, on everyone. It's not just me. I'll go do it. If it didn't impact anyone else,

fuck yeah, I'll go do it again. Like, let's run it back. But it impacts so many people. And I just don't want to put people through that again. And but so next, next thing, next year, the next big, big things we're going to go for is I'm going to start focusing on trying to win some 200-mile races. Still very big goals, still very big races.

It's just a different, it's just a different animal. It's in a different realm. So that's like the next, that's my next, like, you know, the next years of my life, essentially that I'll dedicate as far as like the sport goes. Next is in a couple of weeks, as insane as it sounds as I'm talking about nerve damage and stuff. We're going to be going for a world record to celebrate 250 years of America. I'm going to be, I will set the world record running the most miles and laps around the Washington Monument, a 0.1 mile loop. and we're going to go set the record. Dang.

Glutton. Glutton for punishment. I guess. And what's the, you were telling you mentioned something about the, there's like a charity involved, never surrender USA. Yeah,

never surrender USA. So their whole, they invited me out. And they were invited to be a part of this big celebration that's happening over there. And their whole thing is basically promoting healthy, healthy lifestyles for young adults and especially young men, as well as promoting patriotism. in America.

It doesn't matter what your political party is. We can still love America, but be in different political spectrums. I love this example because, you know, LeBron takes a lot of heat for his political stance. But when he represents Team USA in the Olympics, he represents Team USA.

He holds the flag. Like he, you know, he is very patriotic in those moments. And I think that's a great example of someone who's, you know, a little extreme on one end of the spectrum. You can still be patriotic,

no matter where you sit. And so that's like, you know, their focus is the patriotism alongside the healthy living and young adults and young men. And they've invited me out to do this crazy thing to bring awareness to what they're doing. And bring awareness to that, again, you can do, you can do hard things. You can push the boundaries. You can do cool things. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's a couple of people going out.

There's a guy you guys have maybe seen his name's Iron Snad on Instagram. He just did 100 miles on a treadmill. Or no, he did 24 hours. He did like 130 miles or something like that on the treadmill. So he's going to go see how many miles he can run in 30 hours on a treadmill. There's some dude who's going to see how many pull-ups and push-ups, like two different guys in 24 hours. I'm going to set the world record around the Washington Monument.

So there's some cool stuff that's going to be happening. It's going to be a lot of fun. And it's celebrate 250 years. I mean, that's not very many countries or empires, whatever you want to call it last that long. Check. And in the meantime, you also have your, you're online, like you do nutrition,

you do coaching online, you do race fuel planning and even a race day package. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, so I do nutrition coaching, helping you get ready for whatever races it might be,

as well as like life, you know, not life coaching, but just like coaching or nutrition for life and stuff. But a big focus of mine is, you know, the endurance community, half marathon,

marathon, ultra marathon, so on. helping you just through that process, training for your fueling. But then I also help with the actual race where, you know, I basically, especially if you're 50 miles plus, 50 miles, because below that, these, it's just not worth the money. I don't want to, I don't want to take people to money. Unless you're type A, this isn't something that's worth it below 50 miles, but I'll make a full spreadsheet, mile by mile, aid station by aid station, breaking down what to eat, what to pack, when to eat, how much to eat, grocery lists, everything for them and their crew. so their crew can just be like, cool, here you go.

They don't even have to think about it. It's just the spreadsheet that's ready to go, locked and loaded. Then I can take a step further where you can now have a nutritionist basically on your crew. Like I'm going, I'm crewing a dude who's running across the state of Indiana. Nice. Coming up here, his name's Marcus Wind. He's doing it in September. He's running across the entire state of India.

I guess the length of Indiana. He'll be, I think, the first person to have ever run the length of Indiana, if I'm not mistaken. So he's going to be doing that. coming up here in September, and I'm going to be crewing him out there with him, doing all of his nutrition. I'm doing that whole nutrition plan, and then being on site with him. I've done this for a couple of people. I crewed someone doing the Arizona Monster 300. You know, I've done a couple of these things. It's really fun. I have a lot of fun doing it, but I do that as well. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. And that's what Mason's getting after right now. Does that get us up to speed?

I think so, yeah. I mean, you know, we've got a couple of other businesses always going, But you know, whatever. What are the other businesses? Well, so I own a demolition company. The demo. What's that called? Wright Brothers demolition. Right.

Brothers demolition. I mean, my little brother, own it. And then I have my gym, which is called gym. Gain your movement. It's fun. And then I consider social media. It's a job. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know. It's a real thing. What kind of gym is it? It's a functional training gym. So we're actually partnered with a physical therapy clinic. Nice. And so a lot of, you know, a lot of our clients are,

older adults or those who are just rehabbing who are basically post rehab from an injury trying to get back to things and also a gym you know I work out there every day for sure but our whole focus is functional fitness gain your movement in in in what what cities it in bountiful Utah Bountiful Utah oh Bountiful and people can find you at buffrunner.com you have a YouTube channel you have an Instagram the both those are at Buffrunner yeah and then And then Strava, which I don't have Strava. I'm also a buff runner on Strava. At Buff Runner on Strava.

People want to check in with you. Kerry, do you got any questions? I am curious, just because we got to spend a lot of time with you in Prep before the 1,000 mile run. And, you know, now we're on the other side of it. It's been a little while. What's one of the big things or what's maybe the biggest thing that you've taken away from, you know, that completion of that 1,000 mile run?

since before for prep now coming out the other side of it what's that big lesson i think i think the lesson comes back to that you know you can accomplish so much more than you think there's there really are no limits and i think one of the i will say you know there's there's there's no limits you know i found myself i discovered who i was truly who i was but there's this other level to it where You know, we've kind of talked about this at different points. The reason you aren't going further is because you've set that limitation on yourself. At some point in time, let's talk, let's just put it into running's perspective. You run that marathon.

You get done with that marathon and you're done. You're like, oh my gosh, marathon is so hard. Go run. If you tell yourself, you're going to run 10 miles that day, you're going to get to 10 miles and you're going to be like, oh, my gosh, that 10 miles is so hard. It's, it's a, you're setting these mental and physical limits on yourself because you tell yourself, well, I'm going to do this. And then you get there.

Well, you got there. Now what? And so you can, you know, and there's, there's a mindset where you can continue past, you can continue on. But most people stop because they said they were going to do it. They got there. And then their mind tells them, oh, I'm there. I'm done.

And when I finished 1,000 miles, a thousand percent I got to run 55 more miles the next day. I just did it the day before. Why couldn't I do it the next day? And but because I fit, I hit that thousand miles, my body was like, okay, we're done. And I shut down. My body shut down.

Because I told myself a thousand miles. And I remember that next morning sitting there thinking, I was like, this is crazy. I could have done it. But because I told myself a thousand miles, we're done. I actually ran 1,001, by the way. You gotta give myself credit. But it's, again, it's, I set that limit on myself.

That limit was a thousand miles. Sure, that limit's massive, but it's still a limit that was placed. And when I hit it, my mind said stop. If I said it for 2,000, we would have run 2,000 miles. If I had it for 3,000, we would have run 3,000 miles. Again, it comes back to you're just setting limits on yourself. And it hit me like a truck when I finished where I was like, holy shit. It really is just a mental limit that we place on ourselves.

And so when I go do anything now, I just don't. Yeah, sure. I might have a physical time limit in the day where it's like, oh, I can only work out for this long or run for this longer. Whatever. Again, can't change the laws of physics, but there's, you know, with the business, like my business side of my life,

I basically, the other day I was sitting there and I, I'd worked, it was like a 16 hour day. My wife's like, are you tired? I'm like, no, I don't get tired anymore. Hell, yeah. Because I'm just, that's where I'm at. I don't get tired anymore. That's awesome.

Because I'm not putting that limit on myself. I'm not going to let myself. sure I'll get sleepy but I'm not gonna get tired anymore because it's a physical limit we place on ourselves Sometimes those physical limits need to get smashed and the mental limits need to get smashed yeah and you know what We have a little something for you I know I heard I heard you shuffle yeah We got a little something for you um this right here That is so cool the hammer of discipline the hammer of discipline this right here This is hand forged in America, of course.

Of course. A guy named Carl Dunn, who was in that show. I think the show is called Forged in Fire. He was like one of those guys on that, that forced stuff. And down at Taylor's Mill in South Carolina, he forged this hammer of discipline as a recognition for you hammering through all limitations. That is so cool. And getting after it.

Oh, and 1,000 and 1,000 and 1,000. of course man we got it we don't play around details matter details do matter oh this is this is so cool I have I this late in high school gave me like a cool plaque nice got my name on it says a thousand miles oh yeah I love you guys but this might be cooler this is sweet well right old man thank you well earned obviously you worked your ass off for that you suffered for it you got any final thoughts before we close it out go do hard shit but don't place those limits on yourself. Jack.

Great advice, man. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for talking us through that. Thank you for having me. Yeah, no. It's an honor. It's been great to watch the whole process. You know, we kind of, at Joccofield, we got involved with you.

These guys kind of told me who you were and what you were doing. And I was like, oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Let's go. And so thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing the lesson that you've learned along the way. And, you know, thanks for what you're doing to raise money and awareness, you know, for all the single parents out there, which is awesome.

And now you've got this thing going with this other organization to help with people being on the right path, which is obviously what we're into, people being on the right path. And you have certainly set out a right path for all of us. I just hope someone sees this and knows that they can change their life. Absolutely, brother. I think that is a fact. So thank you. Thank you.

And with that, Mason Wright has left the building. Clearly, he's been getting after it. He's going to be getting after it some more. And he's running, mostly. But he lifts all the time. Running, lifting, training. And working, running it. He was showing me some pictures when he left, before he left.

He's on a job site demoing shit. Representing, by the way. Yeah, he's representing, but it's like, this dude is fully getting after it. So awesome. When you're fully getting after it like that, you need the right fuel. And as you heard, we, you, me, and Mason Wright, we all recommend jaco fuel. Check out joccofuel.com.

We got everything that you need. We got energy. We got hydration. We got protein. Lots of protein. We got that new raspberry gelato, which I had before I came to train today. Well, after I got done working out, I had a little time before training. And I had the raspberry gelato.

and dang it tastes good. It's a little sweetness. It tastes very refreshing. So get in there. joccofuel.com. You can get pretty much everything that you need. And you can get it around the country right now. We're in over 50,000 stores at this time.

That probably includes your retailer, you know, where you buy your groceries and whatnot. If they don't have it, ask for it. We'll get you. We'll get you taken care of. But we got everything that you need to stay strong and stay fueled. So check out jacofuel.com. Also, originusa.com. We're making American-made goods.

We're making American-made jiu-jitsu gear. We're making American-made jeans, American-made boots, American-made t-shirts. We're making American-made gear. And we're not just making it here in America. We're making it with 100% American-made materials. So the cotton, the zipper, the twill, it's all from America. So get yourself some 100% communist free, no communism. It's 100% communist free.

It's heavily tested for communism. There's no communism. OriginUSA.com. Get some. We've also got jocco store.com where you can get your gear to represent on the path. Yeah, look at you, dude. Just jacking your voice claims.

Like I never left, man. Yeah, so we've got the Discipline equals Freedom shirts. We've got the good shirts. You know, these are items we can wear when we're representing. We've also, I got a sneak peek today of some new gear that we got going up on the store. Is that the 250s shirts? Is that shirtlocker or is that Jocco store? That's Jocco store.

Jocko store. We always make a little Independence Day t-shirt to represent. So, yeah, that should be live here shortly. Right on. So keep an eye out for that new Independence Day Jaco Store DefCore. Standard issue? Not quite standard issue. No, it's not standard.

It's just a little hitter. Right on. Yeah. So take out jocococor.com and check out the subscription scenario. Yeah, shirtlocker. So if you like cool designs that are DefCore adjacent, yeah, check out that show lock. Wait, why are they just straight DefCore in many scenarios? They are straight DefCore, but the designs are a little more varied than people may expect from just a regular Jocko store shirt.

But people love the shirt locker designs. I love the shirt locker designs. Subscription, new shirt every month. Definitely worth getting involved in. Right on. Get involved. Let's get him from all. Books.

We got a bunch of books. Apparently Mason writes writing a book, which we'll look forward to that. Put Your Legs on by Rob Jones. Needlead by Dave Burke. We got a bunch of books that I've written, including kids' books. Those are warrior kids out there. Get them on the path. Take care of your kids.

Take care of the neighbor's kids. Let them read a book that's going to help them in so many different ways. WarriorKid.com. Check that out. Also, if you need steak, Colorado craft beef.com, get yourself some good steak and some tallow. You know what tallow is? Beef tallow.

Beef tallow. Yeah. Hell yeah. Okay. So this is, you cook with it. Well, this one, I cook with it. Just throw it in the pan and it greases up that pan proper with that beef tallow. And it's not some formulated chemical thing.

It's beef tallow. And those beef sticks are pretty legit. So check out Colorado Craftbeef.com. We got the muster for Eschlon Front coming July 8 through the 10th in San Diego. So if you need leadership in your world, which you do. If you have issues in your world, which you do, those issues will be solved by leadership and through leadership. So check out Eschlonfront.com. We have an entire leadership consultancy.

That's what we do. And like I said, we also have an event in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th. Come and check that out. We have an online training academy, Extreme Ownership.com. We teach the skills of leadership online. There's interactive courses and there's live events that we do all the time.

So check that as well. If you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, and her incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.

Check out Heroes and Horses.org. Check out Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood. Dot org. Check out Warriors in Need.org. So we had Ben Ingram on the podcast and he's taking service members from all the services that worked in aviation and kind of fast tracking them into jobs in civilian aviation. And there's like 30,000 job openings. and if you want to get one of those jobs, check out Warriors in Need.org. It's cool. After you came on the podcast, a bunch of the big airline companies are reaching out to them.

They need people. So check out Warriors and Need.org if you want to help that out. And then strongholdrescue.org another good one. And finally, single parent project.org. That's what Mason was trying to support

and support it in his thousand mile run. So check, that out as well. If you want to connect with Mason on the interwebs, check out buffrunner.com. And then on YouTube and on Instagram and social media, including Strava, he's at Buffrunner. And for us, you can check out jocco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko. Willink. Carrie's at Carrie Helton. Just be careful because there is an algorithm which is looking to ruin your life. Don't let it. Thanks to all the Americans right now that are stationed around the world in uniform, protecting freedom and defending our way of life.

We could not do any of the things that we're doing right now without your service and sacrifice, and we thank you for it. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for defending us here on the home front. And everyone else out there, the path is hard. and there will be obstacles and there'll be challenges and there'll be headwinds and there'll be injuries and there'll be pain and it will be uphill always uphill there will be fatigue but if you

can just take one more step if you can just take one more step you can overcome and you can achieve that goal so go out there and get after it. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Kerry and Jocko. Out.