Latest / The Steep Stuff Podcast / Darren Thomas | The Future of Mountain Running

Transcript

Darren Thomas | The Future of Mountain Running · The Steep Stuff Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Guys, what is up?
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the steep stuff podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, james Laurielo, and today we've got a really special episode for you guys.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: None other than Darren Thomas joins the pod.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Um, what a fun episode, really fun, uh, getting to talk to Darren just before the 2024 Pikes Peak marathon.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Um, darren was in town for the race.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Uh, he's a hometown guy, so it was really exciting just to kind of chat with him, get to learn more about Darren and just what his goals are and what his plans were for the rest of 2024.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I think you guys are going to get a kick out of this one.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: We get into all kinds of fun stuff.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: We talk about his season.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: We talk about a whole bunch of other stuff too.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We talk about kind of his years growing up in Colorado Springs, kind of his formative years.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We talk about college.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We talk about his tussle at the Barclay Marathons, which is something so cool and unique.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Talk about Bigfoot.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We talk about Pike's Peak you name it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We get into it.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Even AI was a good one, one of my favorite ones.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Really want to thank Darren so much for coming on.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hope you guys enjoyed this.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: One Personal favorite of mine Without further ado, darren Thomas, it's time.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, we are live.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Darren Thomas, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah thanks for having me.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's so nice to finally get to meet you and chat with you.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of us competitive athletes in Colorado Springs are chasing the ghost of Darren Thomas on Strava all the time.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: It's been a while since I've lived here, but I keep coming back because my parents live here still.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: So, um, great training ground, great place to live.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing place, man.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Now you grew up in Colorado Springs, right, I did.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy man.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: So do you think that like kind of more or less, like kind of influence, like the athlete you are today, like just this outdoor mountaineer?
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Like my parents live right by you Valley Park and Garden of the Gods, so I never even ran roads, really ran trails from elementary school through middle school, through high school and my elementary school gym teacher she was an olympian for australia for the marathon and so we had like elementary school cross-country meets which really got me into trail running and there's so much to explore around here and I didn't really appreciate or notice it until I left and came back it's fair enough and where did?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Where did when you left, when you moved, where did you move to?
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: uh, I went to college in virginia on the east coast.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Were you virginia tech or where were you?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: virginia tech I'm.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I went to miami, so we have a little bit of a little bit of a go hokies yeah fair enough, fair enough how.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: What was your experience like there?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: so I I ran cross country for one semester and it was not really the right thing for me.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: It's division one, very intense, I kept getting injured, just an unhealthy culture.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So I met some friends.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: They started a trail and ultra running club and so I started doing ultras out there and it's a really amazing excuse me, amazing community.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, did my first 100k, did some 50ks, did 100 mile even.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow and then finished that and moved back to colorado nice don't they have like ultra race champions out there and all that?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Did you do that race as well?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I did do that.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that used to be out here.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Oh and then it moved to Virginia, I believe.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: I don't really even know if it exists anymore.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know you know I every now and then I don't know if you get sucked into the same thing.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I'll like go and just ultra sign up and just kind of click results and just go through and you see, like it at one point in time, like like anybody who was anybody was doing it, yeah, kind of wild.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, but I did grindstone a hundred miler.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: That was before UTMB acquired it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: That's a classic race.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Hellgate 100 K these are all kind of the races that everyone out there runs.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: You see the same people every time.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: So it's really good community.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Technical running too right.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it is techie.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: And bigger mountains than you expect.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I loved um.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I've never ran in Virginia but I've done a couple of races like the black mountains area, um like outside of Asheville and like North Carolina and New York as well.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Those are burly.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are, it's good climbs and just like super techie, just not like I don't know.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I think when people think of like colorado springs and like running there, or just like colorado in general.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: People with outside of the know would think like, oh, it's more technical, but our trails are like pretty carpeted here.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, with the exception of a few spots.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, blodgett blodgett yeah, love blodgett.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, you got some like historical like times on there.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Like I've looked at some of your stuff just because, like strava, we always everybody kind of knows what everybody's up to and seeing them like I know I train on blodgett a lot and I just yeah, it's so fun.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was up there a couple days ago.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Nice, that's fun.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, I had to resist doing it on this trip, did you?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when did you get injured?
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, that's fair enough.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: How's the taper been going?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: You feeling good?
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: uh, pretty good.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I've had a weird kind of training block because I was training for occ, yeah, and that was a disaster.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: I got sick and then I was sick for like a week and a half after that, oh wow, and so it's really kind of been a train or a taper since before that.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Like, I've had some good runs the last week or so, but not really sure what to expect.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It's been a different build than usual.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Nice man, what was your experience?
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, despite what the result was.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: What was your experience like?
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Is that the first time out in Chamonix doing?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: all that?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never been to the Alps before.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Oh wow it's amazing.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, never been to the alps before.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Oh wow it's amazing.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like people, people talk crap about the, the, how big it is and how commercial it is, but it's really amazing what they got going there, like every aid station is thousands of people screaming the whole night that's crazy, yeah yeah, it's really cool.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: And then the, the, the mountain access.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: There's trails everywhere.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: There's like restaurants way up on the mountain.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It's a whole different thing.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: They don't have the wilderness that we have, but yeah, it's amazing event.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Did you, did you like stay at like a Solomon house and do all that?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Like how, how was that?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: No, I just stayed with some friends that were racing various different distances.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Nice yeah, dude was that?
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: No, I just stayed with some friends that were racing various different distances.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Nice yeah dude.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So I mean you're pretty like very well known, I'd say in the north american, like sub-ultra scene, like were you like recognized over there, like people come up and be like oh my god, it's darren thomas, or like it was that no, not, really, not yet okay you're, you're on your way there.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I think they'd be pretty sweet yeah, like I know pretty much every american that was over there yeah so I had a lot of friends there.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: But you know jim walmsley's walking around, yeah, people that have raced that before that's cool.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nice man.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: What so I don't know, you don't have to go too much into this.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And you said you're feeling kind of crappy at occ.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Like how did the race unfold for you like?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: was it like felt shitty, start to finish basically feeling sick, or yeah, well, I I made the mistake of, I guess I just because of work I had to get there like two days before the race, oh man yeah flew over, the time difference was rough and I just didn't really sleep for a couple days.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And then I woke up, started the race and the first climb was like losing my vision and getting dizzy.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Oh dude, yeah, oh my god yeah, and I made it about halfway and I left that aid station and started the biggest climb of the day and I was like stumbling around falling over myself and I looked up to the top.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: It's called cold aoldebaum, it's like a 3,000-foot climb and I just was like there's no way I can even make it up there safely.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So I turned around, dropped out, which I'm happy I did.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was definitely a smart move, dude.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, holy shit yeah.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I've changed my perspective about DNFs.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: It used to be finish or die, but if you're not going to hit your goal and you're just going to walk, I'm not.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: That's not something I'll be proud of.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, finishing well, I think the thing is to and it's actually something fun to unpack and like kind of talk about, because I know people kind of adopt that mentality of the finish or die, but like for someone as an athlete, especially of your caliber, um, but obviously it sounded like it was definitely unsafe to finish, like with the blurry vision, but even too, it's like you can save that fitness for something a week and a half, two weeks later, like the Pikes Peak Marathon Right.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Show up to Pikes Peak and probably have a great day out here, you know when.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in there.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: If you're just trudging along and it's not, the only thing you're going to do is hurt yourself, it's not worth it, you know, yeah, yeah, it's.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: It's interesting how people uh, I don't know, I feel like there's like that culture in the sport where a lot of people adopt that, um, the DNF or die aspect.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember I did run, rabbit run and steamboat.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I used to live in steamboat and I walked the last 50 miles and I finished.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: It's horrible.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: I finished and I immediately was like I should not have finished.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I wasn't proud of it, I just couldn't run for two more months.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow, that was terrible, man.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you you strike me, uh, and not even strike me like your results speak for it.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Like you, hands down, are one of the best like vertical runners in the country.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Like you're like watching you at the broken arrow.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Vk is like been one of the great things to do, I think over the last like five, four or five years, I mean really for like 2021.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Like you took I think it was 2021.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: You took the dub there.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: You had a group.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Is it 21?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I can't remember you would know better than You've had some great finishes and great results there.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Um, what can you speak to from your training that you think like translates so well to me Like is it genetics?
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's training?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Do you think like what plays into being so good at that?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: It's a mix of both, um, but I tend to train with a lot of vertical and do a lot of hill intervals, a lot of steep intervals and a lot of strength training.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, just the more you do after 10 years of doing it, the better you get at it.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah that's crazy man and I'm sure there's a genetic component.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I'm there's people I race against that are just way better at vertical and they seem to not even run vertical.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Like Chad Hall or someone.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have Hall genetics.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Those are kind of those are up there yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: But it's really just hard work.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's amazing yeah.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it's been like one of the great things in our sport to like watch.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Every year you come to broken arrow and you're just like always, you know, up there at the front competing and it's like the vk just is so fun with you in it yeah, it's so fun.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Now that's a local race for me because I live in reno yeah so it's always good to get up there and it's getting way more competitive, dude this year was crazy.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was happy they got walmsley out there.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: That was kind kind of cool, it was fun.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And Patrick.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Obviously, you know Patrick's amazing.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he is on another, on another level.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, dude, the field was just, I feel like, so deep this year it was crazy.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, so you, you plan on being there.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Obviously it's local, it's cool because we just had the rut too.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Is that something that ever like popped onto the scene for you?
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, always it's just a weird timing like with I like to do pike's peak.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: It's usually around the time of the us golden trail series yeah races, which is has been pike's peak.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, I'll get there eventually actually it's a good question for me to follow up on too.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Like, so obviously, this weekend you kind of had a decision to make between mammoth or pike's peak.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious, why pike's peak?
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: is it just the history for you, or yeah, I just think the race is a much better race.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: It's not to uh talk bad about mammoth yeah, great race uh, it's just.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Pike's peak is one of the races where you can run up a mountain on a single track trail the whole way, and most of the races in the us mountain races are on ski resorts and that's just due to permitting and wilderness restrictions.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And mammoth is the same like.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I go down there a lot to train and it's probably the best mountains in the country in my opinion, but the race isn't allowed to use any of them because they're wilderness so it's mostly mountain bike trails on the ski resort and it's highly competitive, which is a great thing I I was struggling with.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: A lot of my friends are there, but I love coming to pikes peak every year and I still haven't never won.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: This is my ninth time.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I've run really well, I've run really fast, but I've never won.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: So that's my goal.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Interesting, yeah, dude I love to hear it.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Uh, all right, so let's unpack that a little bit.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So is he?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So it's your ninth time running the marathon, correct?
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah okay, and you've done the ascent, so 11 all together.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because you ran it when you were like really young, right?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: yeah that's cool.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I've done the ascent twice, okay, yeah.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So what do you think like would be?
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: What is your strength here?
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Because you've ran I mean both.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I think it was like you've ran really fast ascents, I think your your fastest ascents, like an, like an hour, 20, like your fastest ascent, is insane.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: What is 17?
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Okay so what do you think?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Is your like more your strength then going, ascending or descending for this, uh like path to victory?
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: yeah, I, I probably used to say uphill and this year in particular I've been kind of struggling on the uphills, I don't really know why, and I've been just shredding on the downhills.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So I think downhills this year and it's not really technical like speak, except for a little bit at the top, so it's just a really fast downhill.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it's kind of even.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: You have to be good at both.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: It's interesting this year too, with the snow and, like we were just talking about before the podcast, like you know, possibly six inches of snow at the top, like it's going to be very interesting to see how that unfolds and how that kind of plays out at the front.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, because typically I would want to get up first, but I think if you're creating new footsteps, you're wasting a lot of energy For sure.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So there might be some strategy involved with letting people go and packing it out a little bit and then trying to catch up smart, especially on the downhill.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this I know I've heard whispers.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is actually true.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I've heard, uh, david sinclair's coming, I don't know if that's on the list.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's always a mystery man he is.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I never know if he's gonna show up.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Uh, you're one of the few people that has beaten him at like yeah, I think you beat him at the broken arrow vk, I believe years past.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: You're like one of like a handful of people I've ever met in my life that's actually beaten him, which is kind of crazy so it was funny.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I had um mike sinceri on the pod like a while ago.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: We were just like last month we were chatting about it because, like, not too many people have beaten him, which is kind of wild.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So it'll be fun to see that duel if he does show up.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: David's come here multiple times.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I've raced him many times here, so it'll be fun to see you guys take each other to the woodshed.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hell, yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So, dude, you like you had it like a really I mean even still like amazing season this season, like you just got back from y's trail fest.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It was like a month and a half, two months ago in july yeah, what was that?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: experience like that was a great race.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It's a new race, maybe first or second year, and that's part of the golden trail national series.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: So I've never raced in oregon before and it was really nice like flowy trails in the woods and then it really steep up and down on the volcano.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: So a lot of variety, a lot of fast people came from.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of like bowerman, oregon people liam moreau and yeah, he won, yeah, yeah one.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Uh, that was a lot of fun.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I hope they keep that going in the series.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, are you, I guess, broken arrow?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, broken arrow is a part of the national series too, correct?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: It is okay, so how many do you need to like qualify for the final?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Is it just two or three or something like that, or to be?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Honest, I don't know okay yeah, nice, nice, is it like, is it this like?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Is the same final like in the same area, like, or same like it is?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: yeah, it used to be different.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: So I I won the national series in 2021, yep, and then got to race the national series final in the azores, which was a stage race, and then, since then, they've combined them.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: So the final series of the golden trail international series is the same, but there's a different categorization interesting.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool dude.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: What's it like running for solomon?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Is that like a dream?
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Is it amazing?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: yeah, it's pretty cool yeah yeah, support to go run these awesome races.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, there's kind of a disconnect between the international and the national team and I think they're working on that.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Uh, but it's been a dream to be able just to have the opportunity to go race in Europe and all around the U S.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's shoe technology that they keep coming out with is crazy Like really good stuff, the best trail shoes.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, it's interesting to see all the new.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I just feel like they're at kind of the forefront of the sport, along with up there with a couple other brands, are just kind of like breaking trail, if you will, with like new innovative stuff and I don't know.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Kind of like mix that with like the golden trail series, which is just caught, like caught on and really just like caught storm over the last few years.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: That it's kind of fun, you know yeah, it's just like broken arrow.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It's been more and more competitive every year.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like this last race in the headlands.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: We're in headlands last weekend, dude, that was wild to watch.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Huh, so fast.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: They dropped the guy who won.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: They dropped like a 14.15 5K at the end.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, al Hussain's a monster dude.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a total like.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And then Philemon and it's interesting too, because, like Philemon, philemon's a monster as well.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, granted, like altitude seems to be like a little bit of an issue with him, and like when we did our race previews, like I was more, I thought Patrick was going to like dust everybody.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I figured, just because, I don't know, patrick has a lot of dominance, especially, um, I don't know, he just seems to have like a stellar, amazing running economy.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, phile, a stellar, amazing running economy.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, philomon shocked the hell out of me he's, he's so good man plus series and all he took.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: He took killing to the woodshed this year, which was kind of fun.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, what a cool sport, what a fun, yeah it's fun to watch.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, so you do a lot of like sub ultra and like you have mixed it up in the past with ultra.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Like what are your, what's your take on that?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Do you just prefer sub?
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Is that more your game?
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I?
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: still don't really know.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I started out in doing ultras.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Actually, the longer the better.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: I even tried to do Barkley.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Did you really yeah?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Let's hear about that.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I made it two and a half laps.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody knows that about you.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that on a podcast.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was right before the, the documentary came out, so it wasn't as popular.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: It was the year before what year would that been?
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: That was 2015.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow, yeah, so I.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I won the barkley fall classic, which is a race that laz puts on, yeah, in in frozen head, and the winner got entry to the real barkley.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So it was an adventure for sure it's all off trail right, there's some on trail.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, a little bit interesting, but mostly you're going up and down really steep briar patch, uh, hillsides and the leaves it's wild.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never hallucinated like that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: So two laps.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: I was out there for about 40 hours.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: What time did they call the shell or do the shell thing?
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Was it like in the middle of the night for you or no, it was in the morning.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: So I started, I think, around 11 am.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: That's not bad yeah.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: So first lap was just kind of following people learning the course.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Second lap was in the dark and I started hallucinating real bad near the end of that lap and I finished that lap with all my pages.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And then the third lap was counterclockwise okay, so a whole different perspective and just losing my mind, like seeing people walking through the woods that weren't real, like a playground that wasn't real.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, and it made me just go the complete wrong way, and so I just spent so much time and ended up quitting halfway.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Wow, dude, yeah, yeah, that's a whole, that's a whole nother story.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It's like an hour long story.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Listen, we got time here.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people know about obviously your sub ultra stuff and obviously you've had so many amazing accolades, but like other than John Kelly who I've spoken to, like I know John Kelly is a teammate of mine for Las Partidas but like he's never gone into depth.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So like, how does it?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: How do you even get into this race?
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Like isn't it like a special like approval process or something like?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: that yeah, I'm not allowed to say exactly, but you you have to send an email at a certain time to the list serve, which is like an old school email list.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Um and that.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And for me, I got walked through all this because I I won that Barkley fall classic race.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know how other people find out about it, just become friends with people who have done it Interesting.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: And one of my really good friends in college he had done it before so he he helped me out a little bit.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Wow, so there's some culture to it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: How far is like for like?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: So in 2015,?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: You must have been in college right, that makes sense makes sense yeah, okay, so you were in school at the time.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Wow, so you're like, how do have been one of the youngest, if not one of the youngest people to ever start right?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: if I would have finished.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I would have been the youngest to finish, wow, and nicodemus holland, or nicodemus de la rosa?
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: now, uh, he was, he still is the youngest to finish I think he was 22 or 23 you get something you'd ever want to go back and do I hope so.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a toll on my body and it's just it's in the spring.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: It could ruin this, the summer racing season probably.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm not sure I want to do it before laz.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's getting old, so I don't know how long he's going to be doing it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't think it would be the same without him.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: No, he makes it what it is.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure he's such a character man.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, such like an iconic person of the sport he is In a lot of ways.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, true Himself.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: He sits there and smokes cigarettes right he just hangs out and just watches everybody suffer.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: He actually walked across the whole country a few years ago.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I didn't know that about him.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: He's an interesting guy, very interesting guy.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: He was like he did run at some point in time, right Like or back in the day.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: He was like a.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know there's got to be more written about this guy, I don't know.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: One of the things I want to do with the podcast is do more like historical stuff, like we just did an episode about like the history of Pike's peak, and I just feel like there's so many with Mark Tatum right.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Local legend.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I love Mark Tatum Good guy, um, good luck to him on Saturday.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: But one of iconic and historical things in our sport that I feel like, with the sport moving so fast and continuing to get like more competitive and more commercialized whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I just feel like we're we're starting to.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want people to forget the past and like how we got here.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It's like one of those things.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm keep coming back to Pike's peak, pike's peak and things like Mount marathon.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: I did it this year.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: It's the 96th year of that race that's so crazy let's talk about that because that's a race I'm going to try to get into for next year.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I'm really pumped to try yeah, you should do, you go back every year now, or is that like your plan to go back in?
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: three times okay I.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: The first time I went, solomon was sponsoring it and they had some, some sponsor spots, yeah, and I got top 10 so I was able to keep getting in and I got second last year and then seventh this year, so I can keep going if I want.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: It's an amazing race, yeah, and it started a very similar way to pike's peak.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: It was like a pike's peak was like a smoker yeah, smoker for some yeah but mount marathon was just a mining bet.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: they just bet who could race to the top the first Kind of like Kendall Mountain yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And 96 years later, they're still doing it.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: That's so crazy.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: I love how and you could speak more to this because I've never been there but just how the town basically comes out for it and there's just thousands of people, not just the town, like all of Alaska Really, basically comes out for it and there's just thousands, not just the town, like all of alaska, really like.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Because it's on fourth of july, so they have a parade, separate men's and women's race, which makes it even more fun to watch.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's it's the vibe.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Everyone's there.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you like it?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Like you're, you know, basically all these guys are running shirtless with gloves and just like it's as bare, minimal, like as you could possibly get.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Like what do you like more, the ascent or the descent on that?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Like what can you open it up around?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: I like both.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the ascent is really just.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: You're redlining the whole way.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's three thousand feet in a mile and a half, but more like a mile, because it's a half mile on the road.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, so you just have to suffer, and then the way down has nothing to do with training.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: It's a half mile on the road, yeah, um, so you just have to suffer and then the way down has nothing to do with training, it's just grow some balls and send it throwing yourself off.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's it like?
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Um, I don't know.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Like.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: What is it like just running down?
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, because that's the one of the few races that breaks strava's algorithm for great adjusted pace on the descent.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: It's so fast.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Do you have any hesitation running yourself down that?
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Or is it just like just go for it?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You have to block out the hesitation because you're going to get passed by everyone who doesn't have the hesitation.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: It's not as bad as you think, really, because most of it's in this loose shaley scree so you can kind of just stick your heels in, kind of pat it a little, at least the top section, um.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: But there are a few spots that are like hard pack, so you have a few steps of hard pack where you think you're gonna die and then you're back into the shale okay, yeah and then near the bottom you go they call it the gut.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: It's like an avalanche chute and it's there's waterfalls and it's a lot more rocky, so it slows down a little bit there and then you go down the cliff at the end and then half mile screaming on the road to the finish are you a cliffs or roots guy going up?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I've only done cliffs, okay, but I this last year, max took roots and he was one of the few to do it and he popped out ahead of us.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I've done it in just like course recon yeah and I've timed it from both ways and I still think cliffs is faster, but not if you're stuck behind someone, right?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: So if it bottlenecks, then you're.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Not a lot of people take roots Interesting.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a Meg Cook who ran it.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: This year she came on.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, I met her up there.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I stayed in the same house.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, did you?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: really yeah, she's rad, super cool girl.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: She, yeah, she gave me course record, so maybe next year, I don't know, man it's yeah so the way I want to try and time it for next year if I could get in is doing that.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And then there's that cirque series aliaska race, which is a few weeks later, yeah, which is I don't know.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Mount marathon has the history, which it so exciting, but also that Cirque Aliasca race just has a really rad course.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: The course looks sick yeah.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like one of the few I would say in North America in general, that's a pure mountain race.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: That looks legit, yeah, so yeah, have you done any Cirque races.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I've done one.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I've done Alta, done alta okay a few years ago.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: That's a fun one, yeah, yeah I did the whole most of the series this year.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I did brighton, alta um and targi.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Sorry, they're a lot of fun, so much fun yeah and it's cool because you don't really they're short enough, you don't really have to taper or recover much yeah from you can just race the whole year yeah, it's a fun.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: It creates like a fun season because you can kind of mix them in with longer stuff which is dope, yeah, yeah.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So back to uh, mount marathon.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: So like the whole, I say like the whole town comes out plus all of alaska.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You have all these people cheering.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Do you prefer more of like the afternoon start of the morning spot start when you have for the men's, like when that, because I know it's like every other year, right?
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: yeah, I like the morning, I like going first.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because then you don't, you're not sitting around getting nervous yeah, that's true.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like, oh my god, like having to listen to the like the whole thing go down with the women's race and it's just a lot of energy before it is, you know, yeah, and it's so exciting watching the women too.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially the place I like to watch is the cliffs on the down.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: It's like a half mile left because there's a huge sea of people.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: They're all screaming.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: It's really fun, yeah that's cool, you know we do.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I just wish we had more of that in like north american races, like more people, like the more of the community getting involved to like go out there and like cheer people, yeah, and that's what it's like in europe too, yeah, like I've done zagama, which is famous for that, yeah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: And then UTMB week it's.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: I think it's because people live in the mountains there, yeah, and so it's easy for them to to hike up, uh.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Uh, like, a lot of our races are pretty remote, but Pike's peak, I think should be bigger.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: It's right next to a major Metro area.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: There's, there's definitely one.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: It's probably one of the biggest cheering squads of North American trail races.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I would say yeah.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: But still has.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of work to do.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: We do?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: We do yeah, and I challenge anybody to listen to this.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Like during that weekend.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Do we do?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: We do yeah, yeah and I challenge anybody listen to this?
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: like during that weekend, come out and cheer people on.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, more people come and watch the car race at pike's peak.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: I think really, yeah, oh man.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: The only year I've ever done so, like I moved here a few years ago.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Last year was the first year like I was actually in town around enough to like watch the ascent marathon and the atmosphere is just crazy like we had the cowbells out.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going crazy, cheering people on, especially last year Cause the golden trail series year.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I feel like it was wild, but like this year, I think even the fact that, like it's not a golden trail series year is more of an opportunity for like more of the community to come out to support and get people out.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of a throwback to when I first started doing Pike's.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: It's more like really fast colorado people.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, dude, the fields are deep.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm excited.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: It's going to be interesting to see joe for the ascent go after his fifth win.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: If he could get it, seth's going to be hard to beat it's gonna be tough, his brother.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: It's always a beast um yeah, it's.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to see what kieran can do on that course as well for the ascent and then on the marathon, like I don't know, with with the snow and everything that kind of mixes stuff up, it's going to make it really fun.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, yeah, I think it actually might play to my strengths against someone like Jonathan Aziz.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Cause he's a lot faster than me.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Like road wise, speed wise, he's a beast, yeah, and I think the slower the courses I'm, the better the beggar shot I have.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, horses, I'm the bit the bigger shot I have.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what aziz does.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I know he's been like just talking to him.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: He seems very confident, very prepared I've actually never met him.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Oh really yeah super cool guy, yeah, yeah, a really interesting character, um very sciencey guy, so you get along with him really well, like he's.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: He's a phd in aerospace engineering I think oh wow, I think I made him upset.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I asked him if we went to the moon.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Valid question.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: He didn't like that very much.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was uh, yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: So it'll be cool to see him.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: It's going to be just fun to watch all of you guys Like it'll be, you know, see him go for his third.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: If he can get it you know it'll be, I don't know lots of fun up the front, up in the front, and then on the women's side too, like I'm looking forward to watching, because now ali's in the race and ali might.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know if she's going to be in the marathon.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: I know she's in the ascent, she's in both lists yeah, I don't know what she's going to do um yeah, just seeing her and anime flynn like take it out up yeah, it's gonna be fun to follow, yeah, yeah back man.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I keep going all over the place.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: So I I know you've raised the gamma.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Have you ever did?
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Did you ever do series at all?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: No no.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: I was all set to run it and I got injured and ended up not going over.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow, what was yours?
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: A gamma experience, like cause that's such a big, like interesting race.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, unfortunately I was kind of injured going into that and I ran it anyway, so I kind of just jogged the whole thing.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Great experience, still Jogged limp the whole thing.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: But still what we're talking about the amount of people cheering up there On top of the mountain.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: People start early, they hike all the way up.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: It's like the Tour de France.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, you're running through tunnels of people screaming vuvuzelas, horns, cowbells, like I think my hearing went out yeah, everybody says their ears are ringing as they go through that.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: And keep in mind I was like the mid-pack, and they were doing that for everyone, so cool yeah, is that?
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: it's super technical course, I know?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a couple years ago I was watching the um there's sections yeah there's some fast sections, but it's it's pretty technical seems like slick when it's wet yeah, muddy, rocky you're.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: A lot of sections are on like cow trails through grass, so if it's wet it's really slippery you're going flying, yeah, and there's a lot of climbing.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: It's not altitude, it's not huge mountains, but it's a marathon.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: It's got about nine or ten thousand feet of climbing which is more than pikes, peak, wow but still, I mean just like that area, the basque region, like that culture is so cool yeah, the culture too.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to go out for like a week and a half for that one and stayed in the countryside there ate a lot of cheese had a good time, nice little experience, so the problem is, though, in spain, no restaurants open till like 9 pm for dinner.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: That's just how they do it there, interesting, and as a fat american I'm used to eating whenever I want, so I had to kind of plan around that.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: But zagama is cool I would recommend it.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Oh dude, another one of those classic races so on the topic, reason I ask is because on the topic you're a race director.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Now I am so let's, let's chat about that man.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: It's exciting yeah, so I'm putting on the inaugural peavine peak hill climb.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: It's in a month from today, I believe October 19th from yesterday.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: In Reno, where I live, it's just on the mountain that I do a lot of my training on.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I really just wanted to learn what it was like to put on one of these races.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Mine's going to be very low-key, especially this year.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: It took a long time to get permitted.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: I had to go through the city, the County, the forest service, private landowners, and it's very, very involved.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: So props to all the big race directors out there.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, uh, I have a limit of 200 people and I'm hoping for for that many hundred to 200 people and just wanted to get to learn what it was like and get the community, get community together.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, we have a lot of road races in Reno and not many trail races.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Most of them are up in Tahoe, so I just thought it would be a great thing to bring.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: I love it, dude.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I'm excited Cause I mean I have so many questions for you just because, like I, I mean this is not a secret.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Anybody that knows me knows that some point in time, like I, want to start a sub, some kind of sub ultra race, whether that's a mountain classic and then throwing in like a VK and it's like a cool descent race, I don't know.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I've got like different ideas, but the permitting has something I've always been scared of, if you will, just because it seems like such a like an insane process.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: If you will, just because it seems like such a like an insane process.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is it daunting at first to try and like how did you know what paths to take and who to talk to and where like even go for this?
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: uh, so I I messaged a local race director have you heard of silver state 50 mile?
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: yeah 50k.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: That's one of the biggest races in reno.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It's still very low key, but the race director I know pretty well and he kind of walked me through what he did and hit.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: That race is actually on the same mountain as the race that I'm putting on.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: It's just a different part of the mountain, um, so I got a lot of help with that.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It was very daunting for the permitting process, especially cause it's not just Bureau of land management or someone, it's like three or four different entities, yeah, but you just have to start and they're usually they're pretty helpful and in walking you through it, the forest service or whoever you're going with- um, how many months did it take for to like, finally like get everything finalized?
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: oh man like eight wow.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is why I just opened registration, like last week, okay, and I was hoping to do it earlier, but that's just how it went.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, that's really interesting, so crazy Like how I don't know in America it's very involved.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: It is yeah.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Which is not a bad thing.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I get it, yeah, but it is yeah, which is not a bad thing.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I get it, yeah, but people really want to help because they want to see these events come to life and it's their job.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: So is this kind of like, almost like an experiment for you to see, like maybe you can, the start of something beautiful that you can kind of grow and give you know it's your opportunity to give back to the community and do something.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, exactly cool.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I just want to see put this race on and show people my main training grounds.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: It's 9.4 miles, 3 000 feet of climbing and descending sweet, so it's.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: It's not exactly a sky race really, but it's.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of climbing.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty hard it's your style of running, like your style of thing you love runnable, but barely okay.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I'll tell you how many times like I've looked around manitou not that I'd say how many times like I've looked around manitou, not that I ever want to, just because like I I don't know, like I covet, like the manitou area and I think just pikes is so important.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: But like how many times I've been on like longs ranch road or like areas like that and I'm like, oh there's, you could put on some sweet races yeah, there's a lot of opportunity, oh yeah there's good climbs, so many good yeah.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: And I know Aravipa puts on some good events here.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Cheyenne Canyon and Mount Rosa area.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few, and like even Aravipa.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: And what is it?
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Madmoose, that's it, yep.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, madmoose has got some good local ones.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I want to see more to this.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: To like even aerovipa, like let's get like some sort of vertical race, like I want something short and steep you know yeah yeah, I've talked about this with ace before you gotta get insurance for that one.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Someone's gonna die, someone's definitely gonna die.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: What oh dude on that topic do you have to like, do you have to have like race insurance and stuff like that too, like how does that work?
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: yeah, it's actually very easy.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Um, mike foot, the director of the rut, walked me through this and you just register your race with usatf, okay, and you just do a brief training course and then you can get insurance for I think, like 200 that's not bad at all, 50 bucks yeah that was way easier than I expected and it covers uh, you could, I need to look at the details but I think it covers like a million dollars of damages okay uh, and then I have search and rescue coming to just a couple people there nice.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: yeah, what's the timing situation like?
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Do you have to like because I've looked at this before and it seems like it's very expensive to have all these like like fancy like timing mats and all that stuff or do you just do normal, write it down?
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I'm lucky Reno Running Company is helping with that.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: One of my friends works there and they're testing out a new software, so he's doing all the timing for free.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, dude, that's amazing.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: I just have to order bibs, which are pretty cheap, and then he kind of takes care of the rest.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Super cool, well, dude yeah it's not a one-man show.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: It takes a lot of other people oh yeah, plus aid station planning and stuff like that, yeah volunteers yeah uh, just planning out parking, talking to the city, because I the race crosses a road at the first, like right away, and the city requires cops to come and do crossing guard stuff, so it's very involved.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Logistics man Wow.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Every step you think you're done, then the city adds another step you have to do Interesting.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Wow, so hopefully this is a race that keeps on going.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, gets bigger and bigger, we'll see.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: And then there's a lot of opportunities for other races in the area.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, best of luck to you, man.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Like I hope, like if I wasn't going to be away that weekend I'd I'd be flying out to Reno to go do it, and I hope people listen to this like hop on a flight to Reno and go give it a go airport right in the middle of the city.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I've been to that.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Every time I go to broken era, that's where I fly to.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Is the reno airport?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest little city, right?
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you like reno?
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was planning on just moving right back here after grad school, but I made a lot of friends.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: The community is amazing.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: The size of the town is great.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of community events and concerts and things, and then outdoor access is incredible.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like lake tahoe is 30 minutes away.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: There's all the desert trails and then everything down the east side, mammoth all that is super accessible yeah, that's true skiing and running and it's like you're not far from a lot of things like vegas is not far, like everything's kind of close vegas is far.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I did, I did that so I did that drive last year.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: After, uh, broken arrow.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I was an idiot.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Instead of like I don't know why, my wife was like, hey, let's, let's just fly from reno to vegas, because we had to catch a flight for a wedding after like the weekend after and I was like, no, let's just drive, it would be fun.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's like a 12-hour drive yeah, yeah, you can get spirit flights for like 10 bucks from reno to vegas didn't even look man it was.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: It was a big mistake, yeah and then a lot of people go in the winter and spring down to auburn area that's really close auburn, san francisco even, yeah, so it's a great place to be, not far olympic valley is right there, which is crazy that like you can like train on the broken arrow course whenever you want.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Like it's pretty dope.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you ski at all?
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I do, yeah yeah, I've been getting into a lot of backcountry skiing since living there, because when I lived here, when I lived in steamboat, the snowpack in colorado is just dangerous it's not the best in utah, so I just kind of skied up and down the resort there.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: But tahoe snowpack is a lot more safe and so I do a lot of that in the winter nice yeah, cross-country skiing too.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I'm very bad at it, but it's.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: It's a good training stimulus, I think dude, I just invested in a set of roller skis oh nice, I've never done that, I, I, they haven't come yet, so we're gonna find out.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Don't crash, I'm gonna do my best to live.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: But I feel like it's like such, it seems like a great training stimulus, like for yeah david sinclair does it a lot, does he sophia lockley too?
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it looks fun, like looks dope.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know I remember a few years ago I was staying at the solomon house for this pike speak marathon and uh, petter engdahl came.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he brought his roller skis and he was planning on roller skiing.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: The road pikes peak oh dude, that'd be dope and he got up there and the the park rangers didn't let him.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they confiscated him yeah, yeah, that's actually really funny yeah, like I guess, because well, you could bike to the top.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I wonder why they wouldn't let you roller ski.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: That's a really funny.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like I guess, because well, you could bike to the top.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I wonder why they wouldn't let you roller ski.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: It's a bummer well, they don't have brakes yeah, I think you.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: So the ones I bought, you pay extra 50 bucks and you get the ones that I got.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was I.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I don't want to die like I'm such a dude, but yeah, I think the good ones, the really, really good ones, yeah, it's it.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: I w.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I would be terrified to go down it, but it makes me kind of like interested now that maybe I'll like sneak out, go to elk park and try and like start from there?
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, we'll see.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, it seems like fun.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: The just like skiing in general.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Once you get good enough at it to make it fun, it's, it's a blast.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and such a good workout.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot really quick because this is something kieran brought to my attention in the last podcast that I did with him.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: You have a really interesting and like it's just a very interesting and very cool like talent in painting with the painting dogs with that instagram account.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: we can cut this out if you don't want it in there, but I just thought that was really cool that you have this like really cool thing that you pursue on the side.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: That's like very different.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't done that in probably six months.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, Painting, just I've been so busy.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: But yeah it's, I'd started, me and my wife just started painting our dog and it turned out really well and it was a lot of fun.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: And I had done a lot of painting when I was younger and that kind of artistic side of me, creative side of me, kind of went by the wayside and but that's just something I think everyone should do.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Uh, and so I just started painting for for friends dogs and then just got better at it and I started doing it for more people and selling some artwork.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: So that's so cool, if you want your dog painted.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Hit me up and I might have to, I might have to give you a photo of the girls.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, just a good creative outlet so cool and it's just.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because everybody has different like forms of creativity in the way they'll express it and I don't know.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Just find that one to be kind of a fun one, yeah, and you're very good at it, I think running can be very creative too.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, root design, and I'll tell you, uh, race directing is creative.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: It's just a lot of problem solving, yeah, um.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: But yeah, painting is, it's meditative, it's really fun.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: That's cool too on the topic of route design.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: You're, this is a long time ago.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: You posted something on Instagram that really inspired me.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: It was a Sangre.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: You did this really sick route up, was it Marble Mountain?
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: yeah, all the way around the dry Lake Cirque.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Dude, so beautiful.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: I usually go up there every year.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Now, it's so cool.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: I love that range Dope area yeah, I usually go up there every year.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Now it's so cool.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I love that range Dope area yeah.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: And very underrated.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, but that makes it better.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: There's less crowds.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: It's true, that's true.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody goes back there.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Music Pass area.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: I did that with my younger brother not even knowing if it was possible.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: And the route.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: It was very, very sketchy a few spots.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I still don't know if anyone's done that.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Since I have, I usually go up to I think it's Milwaukee, and then turn around.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Milwaukee's amazing.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Trejas I think it's Trejas, it's the main that 13.6 spire that's in the front, that is, that's a serious peak dude.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's above my pay grade on that one.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the rock's really nice, but is it?
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: You got 3 000 foot cliffs on every side.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Lots of death, yeah yeah, but yeah it's, it's such a cool area.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: But yeah, no, thank you for putting that, because that actually inspired me to go do it.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And now, like there's an fkt on that route now for marble and stuff like that there is, which is pretty dope.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gotten more people out there and it's kind of like gotten a little more.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Um, I shouldn't say probably not much, because still nobody goes in sun grays, but still like a little bit more exposure?
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: yeah, but people go to like crestone, like whatever that basin is called uh, yeah, it's not the dry, is it the dry legs?
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I can't remember, I don't remember there's a lot of people in there.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Just because it's visually stunning, the needle is just so crazy.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: And broken hand.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Have you ever done the traverse the full Crestone Traverse.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, cool.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually did that with Brandon Sapanowicz, you probably know him.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Brandon yeah.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Great mountain partner Legend.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: We were climbing the last headwall up Crestone Needle from the peak which is it's like five, five, five, so it's really committing and there's 3000 foot drop on your left.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: I went up first and he went up and yelled from the middle of the wall he's like I have to go down.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: And he down climbed.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: It turns out his shoulder dislocated in the middle of the climb.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Shit dude.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: That's terrifying.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: He a storm was coming, he popped it back in and basically climbed up with one arm.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Because we're you can't go back.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: No, no, yeah that's.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: That was a wild story dude, that's one of the craziest ones I heard, like erin ton told me one of the podcasts too, where she like uh, it was.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: She stuck out there in the middle of a storm and had like find like a cave to just like chill in yeah, time being like not a good spot in a lightning storm.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: No no, crazy, crazy mountains.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like your stuff in in reno, though, while is not technically difficult like with like hardcore class four, class five climbing, I feel like everything is just, like there's a lot of just beautiful access out there, like it's really yeah, yeah, around reno and lake tahoe there's not a lot of that uh, mountaineering really but we're close to the east side and yosemite and that's like the best scrambling in the world yeah, do you go up there or?
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: yeah, a lot I.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of work projects in mammoth, so I go there I don't know every couple months and spend a lot.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of work projects in Mammoth, so I go there I don't know every couple months and spend a lot of time up high.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Very cool, you're a hydrogeologist, correct?
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I am so cool.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: What a cool, cool job, dude.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: As someone with a geology degree that, like, didn't do much with it after my first like job, like I always, like really am always interested to hear what others are doing with it, just because it's I don't know, it's a very applicable and fun degree.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: It's cool.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of variety in the projects that we do.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: I work for a private consulting company in Reno and, yeah, we do a lot of permitting for mines and things like that.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: So water sampling, spring surveys, and one of my favorite things is doing spring surveys for exploration projects.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: So, places that no one has ever gone in nevada well, people have gone, but very, very remote spots in the middle of, like, the desert.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Middle of the desert and you'd be surprised, in the middle of nevada there's a like thousands of mountain ranges that go up pretty high and they're not really desert anymore.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Like the Ruby Range outside of Elko there's a bunch of glacial lakes and bristlecone pines, so it's a pretty cool state to explore.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Isn't a lot of it owned by the military too, or something like that?
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Southern Nevada yeah, like Area 51 is down there.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to get to that.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the aliens.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Talk about the aliens surprisingly, I've never seen an alien out there no ufos or any creatures no that's so crazy, wow, and you go to like some remote places like I would imagine, I don't know.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look on my strava, occasionally there's just random eureka county nevada, like luckily in nevada pretty much everywhere is uh blm land okay so there's dirt roads to run, not a lot of trails, developed trails, but cool mountains to explore so from my first, uh, environmental consulting job I it was similar, but I was in florida where I had to like a lot of it was like contamination stuff that we had to do, but I would like it wasn't super remote, but I'd be in the everglades like pretty often, like we'd go into the middle of nowhere, yeah, and I was just gonna ask you like do you go by yourself?
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Because I can remember being sent by myself to go do a lot of this shit and I'm just like where am I and what am?
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: I doing.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes I actually prefer to go by myself because then I can have my own schedule to run and stuff.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Um, but a few times I've been out there and I take an in reach most of the time Smart.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Very smart.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: I'm like man.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: It'll take a long time for someone to get me out of here.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's terrifying.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the great basin is vast.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is such a cool state so big, so crazy.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Do you now that, with the new job and doing this and being a race director and being a full-time professional athlete arguably one of the best in the country, if not the world how do you find time to do everything now?
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Is it a lot?
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: It is a lot.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I've actually been thinking about stepping away from my job or at least finding a different one, or working part-time or something.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, this year I've been really focusing on recovery as part like I've never seen recovery as part of training before, but it really it's half of it and I've noticed just getting really tired from consistent uh, not lack of sleep, but in like what's the word?
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Up and down sleep.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, your cortisol levels dude stress from work and stress from life like that throws your cortisol levels all over the place and I'm a baby when it comes to sleep.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: I, I need a lot of sleep same same, um, so it's been really hard, uh, but I have a wife she she loves to see me chase my goals.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Um, she's got her own business as well and she runs as well, so we're we're doing a lot.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Um, it seems like my main way of getting through it is just being really dialed with.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Waking up in the morning, getting the run in.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having the schedule through, it is just being really dialed with waking up in the morning, getting the run in?
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having the schedule before, because you never know, if I'm out in the field, I might not have a chance to run after, or I'm just too tired, yep, so get the run in, and then everything else kind of just falls in place very cool.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a tough balance, man.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: I learned that this year, like with like I put a lot into my running, yes, but between having a full-time job and then starting the podcast and then running and just like life, like being trying to be a husband, trying to be, you know, friend, like it's not easy to balance.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: It's, it's a pain in the ass to balance everything.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah and really my, my social life is really just the people I run with yeah, that's how mine is and barbecues and things like that, yeah, uh.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: But another thing is like I noticed the sport is getting way more professionalized.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to be at the top.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: I've noticed in utmb like people were there a month ahead of time, and that's just something I I would really like to do, because it seems like you're going to get left behind if you don't fully professionalize and you're one of those rare persons that, like, has the talent to be at the very top.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think that's a definitely.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know, everybody's got different life choices, but that's something like.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: If I had that, I would definitely yeah, and it it takes support, yeah, it takes 100 self-marketing, all these things yeah, uh, the support is definitely is super important, for sure.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Um well, let's pivot on to.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see who, who inspires you a lot of people inspire me.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: uh, probably when I first started getting into running, anton was the main guy I followed.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: What's that movie?
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Western States?
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Unbreakable, unbreakable.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: I used to watch that all the time.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: And then everyone's answer is Killian, the things he does from sub-ultra racing, like he just did this year.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: He has a family, he did course record at Sears and all, and then he did that crazy project in the Alps.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Biking in between I think there's all the 4,000 meter peaks in the Alps.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: The range is crazy.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that takes such a variety of skills mountaineering skills, endurance skills, navigation, all that.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: So I think that variety really speaks to me.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: And then just people like Alex Honnold or someone who they just pursue their passion 100% and they don't care about what anyone else says or thinks.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, these people have a lot of detractors in the in the public sphere.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: This guy's gonna kill himself, that kind of thing, and it's just really inspiring to see someone chasing their passion like a hundred percent.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, dude, and killing too.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Killing gets a lot like he's gotten flack in the past, like we're going through this whole thing now.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm sure you're.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: You follow the sport very close, like with the grand teton, fkt stuff with mike sincere with mike and dude mike, mike got a lot of on, in my opinion unnecessary flack for and that's like a different conversation entirely, but like just to see.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: It bothered me to see like a member of our community going after something so like that they they loved and wanted to do and wanted to pursue.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: And then jesus christ, like the amount of like yeah shit that went for him was crazy yeah, yeah, and unfortunate, yeah, and mike is a very capable, capable guy in the mountains.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and sure it involves some risk, but driving here involves risk, yeah.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Another one is Kyle Curtin, when he did the Colorado trail.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: Uh, he finished in the outdoor magazine, or some outside magazine wrote an article that was just focused on how he went to the hospital afterwards.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't read it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was he was pissed.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Well, the thing is too, and that's a good.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: This is like I'm not bashing FKT in any way.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I just find it very interesting that FKT is owned by outside.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: So where is that conflict of interest there?
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: I?
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't know.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: They wrote that, though.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: I'll have to check that out, yeah he did a whole interview with them, like detailing the whole story, and then they published just what happened to him afterwards and he was pretty mad yeah.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: I would be too, man, Like it's just it's a story Like it.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: it stripped him to his core and it was an objective that he wanted for years and years.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: And he has a lot of stories out of it and he wanted to share that and instead it was just oh, you shouldn't do this because it's dangerous.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, is there any any like routes that speak to you, like that something you would be interested in going after, or something like that All the time?
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, cool.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: It's hard to fit in between racing schedules, but, uh, I just did Joshua tree traverse, fkt and such a great route, what February?
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, I did it.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Um, that was a blast.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: And and then I really want to do I've been, I've actually done it twice, or tried it twice the Ruby crest traverse in Nevada Okay, um, that's similar distance, 37 miles.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Um, cactus to clouds, yes, ooh, it's a good one yeah.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: I mean there's so many.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: This is goes back to what we were talking about how races have to be permanent for ski resorts and things.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: This is way a way you can race somewhere where you can't have a race.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, man, I feel very similar.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I um it's funny Like I love sub ultra.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: My running career will probably be mostly centered around sub ultra, but I'd be damned if I would like, wouldn't one day want to just not, I wouldn't even probably even like go after the FKT, but just to do the entire Sangre, like Sangre de Cristo, traverse.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: That line is so aesthetic and so beautiful.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of like little.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Things like that that are a hundred miles and below that, I don't know.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: That are just something I would never race, but just something that it would be fun to test yourself against.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: And things like the Tahoe Rim Trail yes, and things like the Tahoe Rim Trail yes, there's a lot of history on that route.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: The John Muir Trail.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: You're starting to get a little longer, but yeah, that's right, I think it.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, arizona Trail, colorado Trail I think those kind of things are really cool.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'll do them later, yeah.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, something for like late career.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like everybody, when they go to quote, unquote, retire, they'll like pick, like uh, I don't know if timmy olsen's like technically retired but like picking something like really long yeah, and go smash an fkt on that and then right off into the sunset, yeah, so yeah, it'd be cool.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Um, all right, so you've never seen an alien, but what's your take on the aliens?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Pivot yeah, I hope they're real is my take.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I've never seen one.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: I've heard a lot of stories from people, even people I know and trust, that they've had encounters.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: That's so crazy.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anything like notable.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Not no abductions or anything.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, not like that.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Uh, not no abductions or anything.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, not like that, I mean like, but like, yeah, like seeing seeing a UFO or seeing not.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: They haven't seen like a body of an alien, but I okay, I think that they must be real, yeah, Just with the scale of the universe.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if they've come to the U?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: S or to the the earth, but I earth, but I really hope so something.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely kind of a conspiracy rabbit hole person.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: That's why I love asking these questions.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: I'm always curious to see how people think yeah, I know like I love going on joe rogan and listening to like alien abduction stories.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: It's so cool the uh.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: well, dude, the weird thing too, not to go into a rabbit hole about aliens, but like it is awfully strange that 99.9, like I wouldn't say that much, I think it's it's the large majority of UFO sightings are actually in the United States, which is bizarre.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that might actually just be tech.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Like it could be crazy technology.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, army technology, air force technology that people don't even know about.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: So my black black budget shit.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure, yeah, definitely.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of stories from Nevada Cause.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: That's where area 51 is.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Roswell dude Like in New Mexico?
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: I haven't no.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: So when I was studying geology, my senior field camp, we senior field camp, we did a six-week senior field camp.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: That's actually how I like discovered colorado and like we came out here, um, but like we did all around the mountain west and one of the places we stopped I had this like wild russian professor and he just like was so hell-bent on stopping.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Um, we did do a day in roswell and then we went to the caves that were like the national park caves, which are not far away, like way down the road, uh, but dude, roswell, if you ever find yourself in the middle of new mexico, in the middle of nowhere, definitely check it.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, weird place they have like a ufo museum and I'm sure the whole thing it's dope.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do they have alien jerky?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: oh, I don't remember, because the the highway north of vegas is called extraterrestrial highway yep yep, they have stands with alien jerky I feel like the closer you get to vegas too.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I think that was the one we drove last year on our way, dude.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: The other thing too was like the wild burrows that like kind of stuck out to me.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing I didn't know.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: They have desert tortoises too oh really giant desert tortoises yeah, what the hell that's so cool?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, it's and dude.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: The crazy thing too to think about is like all the nukes they tested out there Like yeah, I wonder how many areas like have like radiation, like still if you go to oh yeah, I'm sure, yeah yeah Yucca mountain north of Vegas.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: That's where the all the nuclear fuel rods.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: They're like buried under Yucca mountain.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: That's where it is.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, crazy yeah, because it's like, isn't it like?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the half-life is on, like what that looks like, but yeah, pretty much they.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: They just put them in this big pool and it's it cools them down and it's just really contaminated.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: It'll stay that way forever, but they're trying to just at least human time scales, they're trying to just keep it there and I think it's a good spot for it makes sense.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: All in one spot.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: What's your, uh, what's your take on bigfoot?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: On bigfoot I don't think bigfoot's real I think at one point in time he might have been maybe so I.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: I actually used to work as a park ranger on pikes peak highway oh no way for a year.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: And there's a guy who worked there every like five years.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: He's retired but he still works as a park ranger Every five years.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: He puts on an ape costume and he runs across the road so that someone sees him.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: So the myth is still alive.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my God, I did not know that was a thing.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Because they have.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: There's like a whole Bigfoot statue on Pikes Peak highway.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's a thing yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: So crazy.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I know it's a Woodland park too, Like I don't know.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I've just noticed um actually closer to divide people put like those Bigfoot, like silhouettes, like in the in the woods, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: And I guess there's been sightings in like Oregon and Washington.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I think the PNW makes sense.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: It makes more sense here.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: It seems very like arid and dry and hard to harder to survive, yeah, but like I just don't.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: There's no way people say that they're like a interdimensional being.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: That's, that's a wild one I don't know that might be more likely, I think, than just giant apes, that we've never seen evidence for bones or the crazy thing is, too, is like and, like I said, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but, like the, a lot of like native persons, like stories across, like many tribes, not just in america, though, but like in other parts of the world too all have like this nine foot tall hairy dude, you know, and it's like well, maybe it was like a remnant gigantopithecus.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: It's possible, I don't know.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: It did exist yeah.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: And probably not anymore, obviously yeah.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: There's a place east of Reno called Lovelock and there's there's a historic place called lovelock caves.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Apparently they found giant bones in there and the natives say that there was giants, and then the government came and took the bones away interesting yeah, I love hearing about these things yeah that's nuts dude.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if that's like a, if that like really happened.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: So it came like yeah maybe, but it's pretty consistent in their history, like stories of giants yeah.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: So it makes you wonder like, yeah, could have been jack canepithecus, could have been hanging out and it just didn't like died out maybe a few thousand years after the fossil record indicates, or something like yeah for all.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: We know, you know yeah, it must have been a different species, though, because bigfoot in the desert, yeah, not happening, I don't know.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: Too hairy too hairy, too hot you know like oh, yeah, that's stinky man.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Last one, especially because, like you just came out of a master's program, you're in in the workforce now like what's your take on?
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Ai curious to get your your thought.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm scared of it, okay, yeah me too.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: It just seems like kind of it definitely helps in a lot of industries, but it seems like at some point it'll become unmanageable, and it's.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: I've seen too many movies of robots gaining sentience and then gaining control over humans.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Skynet's going to go live, dude yeah.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to go too far into that, but even just like phone addictions and the effect that technology has on us, I think is mostly negative.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would largely agree with that.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just even myself.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: I find myself sitting on the toilet and like scrolling, and then what the hell am I doing?
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: 20, 30 minutes goes by like what the hell did I just do?
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Dude?
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I find I do just because I work from home and like, if it's like a low point in the day and if I'm not doing something other like the constructive, you know, I'll look up and look down.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Like 20 minutes just went by.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: I was doom scrolling on my phone yeah, oh my god, yeah, that's a problem productive time you're wasting yeah, and I just I just heard a story um on some other podcast, I don't remember, but ai is advancing so much that it's now starting to be able to deceive humans.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, which is like it can fill out captures, and it can.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: I think the story was they asked the computer if it was a computer and it knew that it should say no, and so it's.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that the one where it like baited some guy like because you can like hire people online to do something for you and it like baited some some guy online it was like a chat bot to solving the capture for him and it.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: I didn't hear that one.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a similar story where he like and.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: And the guy asked the ai like is it?
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Um, you're not an AI.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Are you trying to deceive me?
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: And the AI is like no.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: And I've also heard stories of using, say, I have a relationship with my grandma and I talk to her on the phone and this program can listen to my voice through all the times I've had phone calls and it can send a voice message to my grandma asking for money and it's my voice through all the times I've had phone calls.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it can send a voice message to my grandma asking for money and it's my voice and it.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: A lot of elderly people can get tricked like that yeah yeah, it's just like I'm.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm kind of more primitive.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I like being outside and I like the actual world.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I feel the same way man.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really struggle with it and I I think too.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of reasons like I I'm not saying I'm against it because I think there there is opportunities, like in medical usage and things like that, that we can really advance with.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: But the problem is, I think it's just it's moving at such a fast rate that soon like what happens when, like open, ai and microsoft and a lot of these major corporations first of all create the first trillionaires, second of all become more powerful than the government that's another question.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: It's like yeah because maybe the government has a sentient ai that we don't know about, it's probable, but like, at the same time, we don't know, um, and it's like, so who's wielding this technology?
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: Is it government or is it just normal, you know?
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Is it just like some stanford educated schmo that like happens to have be really intelligent and created this is in charge of it.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: So it's just like another argument too.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: And the other thing is like what are we going to do, like with people's jobs?
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Like when the ai becomes, when ai is so marketable and it's able to be basically sent to every corporation, no one has a job.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: So it's like the economy from that perspective as well.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: It's like this is going to be the first economy that doesn't need people for its yeah, and it would really require strong and ethical leadership because you'd have to provide like at that point the government would have to provide people, so it'd be more like a communist, socialist structure it's a weird yeah.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: And that's very easy to have someone get into office and just control everyone and turn into North Korea.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Um, that took a turn.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, but yeah, good question.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I think, hydrogeology, we need people for a while.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Hopefully at least I work in corporate finance and like, at least for now I think, hydrogeology, we need people for a while.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Hopefully, at least I work in corporate finance and like, at least for now it can't create the model like the financial model.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I just feel like certain decisions can't be made by a computer yet.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: But, dude, I listened to like a podcast yesterday.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: It was like the former one of it was like a former Google CEO.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: He was talking like stanford students and he was talking about like how it's going to get so evolved so quickly that like you know how the government's trying to ban like tiktok and stuff like that.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that it's gonna get, it's gonna be so powerful that like, yeah, you can ban tiktok, but someone will just be able to basically just ask your large language model to basically use the python, that like that program to or um that language to be able to create a tiktok for you right with the same shit.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like and like, everybody has the ability to do that at that point in time, and it's like whoa, that is a power that is just unleashed on humanity.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: Like, like, we already can't handle instagram.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's gonna happen when we could just create that shit?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: It's terrifying and I think there's a lot of good people that can use it for, like you said, medical advancement.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: For sure, but there are some bad people out there that want to hurt other people, and it's an easy way to get into people's brains.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: This is why trail running will save the world.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, go up in the mountains, that's right, that's right.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Well, dude, thanks for coming on the pod yeah, I'm looking for it.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to chatting with you a little bit later at the uh at the elite night.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Should be really fun.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Excited to uh talk more on your race and and let the world know more about darren thomas, which would be fun yeah um, yeah, thanks for coming on, and hopefully this isn't the last time we hang out so, yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: This is great appreciate it.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: What'd you guys think?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Uh, what a fun episode.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks day, darren.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: So much for coming on the pod and having a chat, um, just ahead of his, uh, just ahead of his race, uh, where he took I think it was top five of the pikes peak marathon.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: So big shout out to darren.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Guy's a beast.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: Hope to have him on again.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: Guys, some ending notes, a little housekeeping.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: This upcoming weekend, october the 19th, is actually going to be Darren's race, the Peavine Peak Hill Climb.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: If you guys happen to be in the greater Reno or California area, do me a favor, hop on Ultra Sign Up.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: It's not too late to register.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at this as I record this on October the 16th and you guys can register for the Peavine peak Hill climb, which is Darren's race.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's a 9.4 mile race with several thousand actually 3000,.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: It's 9.4 miles with 3,018 feet of climbing.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Um, this is going to be Darren's first race directed and I know he's really excited about it.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: So, guys, if you happen to be in the area or live, reside in Reno or Nevada or the Truckee Tahoe all the way down to maybe San Francisco Sacramento area, and are looking for something fun to do this upcoming weekend, go do the Peavine Peak Hill Climb.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Give Darren some support and, yeah, do do it.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: And yeah, give Darren some love.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Last but not least, if you guys enjoyed this one, also give Darren some love by hopping on Instagram and type in run and D A R R?
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: U?
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: N.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: So it's run, darren.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: Well done Darren.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Very good play on words.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: He's also a really good follow on Strava.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: The dude has a really good pun on basically every everything he does, uh, for his um, for his activities.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: So definitely one of the most fun falls on Strava.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, give Darren, give Darren a follow.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Uh, slide into his DMS.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Let him know what you guys thought about the episode, uh, and send him, uh, just some, some, some words of encouragement.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, guys, hope you enjoy this one.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Last but not least, before you log off or, uh, whatever platform you're listening to this on whether it be Apple, spotify, youtube, you name it Um, hop on, give us a rating, five stars.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: It would be amazing.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: A little rating and review, uh, if you haven't already, um, please do it, would really appreciate it.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: The goal is to follow this great sport, Um, and we can't do that, uh, without the love and support from you all.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: So really appreciate it.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Guys, have a great rest of your week.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: Uh, coming out probably Tuesday or Wednesday, is going to be a recap of the golden trail world series final.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited to chat with you all about that one.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: It should be very fun.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: So, guys, have a great week, thank you.