Latest / The Steep Stuff Podcast / Mark Tatum | Colorado Springs Mountain Running Legend + Dipsea

Transcript

Mark Tatum | Colorado Springs Mountain Running Legend + Dipsea · The Steep Stuff Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, james Lauriello, and today we have such a fun episode.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We want to welcome to the podcast none other than Colorado Springs mountain running legend, mr Mark Tatum himself.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: What a fun episode.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this one.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I want to personally thank Mark so much for coming on.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: If you guys are unfamiliar with that name, give him a Google.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Mark is a Dipsy champion and he's also placed top 20 in the broken arrow VK.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, and did I mention he did it in his 60s?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, mark is an absolute stud Great guy, great conversation and, yeah, he's just getting started in his 60s.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: We talk all about his background.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: We talked about his 2023 and 2024 season.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: We talked about his history in the Pike's peak races, um, as well as some of his history with the Manitou incline and, most importantly, he really gets into the nuts and bolts of the race.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Um, if you're unfamiliar with the dipsy race that takes place out in California, um, I don't want to give too much away.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Listen to the podcast to learn some more.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: For those of you who are interested in the sub ultra scene, this is a race you're going to want to put on your calendar, so check it out Without further ado.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Episode 22 of the steep stuff podcast, mr Mark Tatum.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoy this one.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: It's time.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: We are live.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Well, dude, thanks for coming.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I can't call you dude.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's disrespectful.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: To call you dude, I don't know.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: You prefer dude Mark.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: You can call me whatever you want.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Mark, thanks for coming on.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, we have Mark Tatum on the podcast Colorado Springs legend.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I'll let you talk about yourself.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know about legend, but, um, thank you very much.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Uh, I've been listening the last few weeks to the podcast and really enjoyed what you're doing here, and so I appreciate that and appreciate the coverage of the shorter stuff and and the steeper stuff.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, I've known about you for for for a few years now.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, we kind of talked about this before we got rolling.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Was you kind of popped on to this like I was generally aware?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Um, I had known west for a few years at this point.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Um, when I first moved here I'm like 2020, 2021 ish um, I had been on a couple runs with west and he had talked about you.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Uh, shout out to west thurman, good guy.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But I remember watching the Broken Arrow VK because it was a race I'd wanted to do at the time and I saw you on the live stream like top 20 dude, just like running up the hill and like just looking good doing it, and I was like man, that's really inspiring, like a local Colorado Springs runner doing this.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah was that was a really that was a great day.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe my best race ever.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, the vk there broken arrow and duking it out with um with ali mac she left me uh pretty early, but um it was, it was.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: It was a fun race because I know Allie, she's a good human.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and ran with some other people and scored some World Cup points, which was kind of like my A goal for that race, so that was really cool.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for coming on.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: There's so much to unpack here.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: One of the big things with you that I think is really unique um is a lot of runners.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I feel like as they get older, um tend to and I'm not calling, not calling you old, but I'm just saying like as as people age up, they tend to do the longer stuff, the ultras.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: But you're, you've got so much longevity on the sub ultra scene which really inspires me, that you can do this interior like into your fifties and sixties, yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I, I love to run fast and you know I was a.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of fast switch muscles, so maybe that's that's part of it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: I was, uh, in my very short high school track career.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, I didn't start track until I was a senior and I ran the 400 and I ran a 50 flat 400.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So I and after that I got even faster.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: So I've always had a lot, of, a lot of fast twitch muscles and I've, I've.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So the leg turnover has always been there and just about developing the, the endurance, really I think that's one reason I've I've been able to transition as an older runner Super cool.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Well, let's one reason I've been able to transition as an older runner.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Well, let's start from the beginning.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Why don't we tell the audience, like, where are you from?
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And we'll go from there?
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my family, we kind of moved around.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid I was born in New Mexico, in Grants, new Mexico, so I was born in altitude, and whether or not that makes a difference I don't know.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: So I was born at altitude and whether or not that makes a difference I don't know.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And then we moved to California and Northwest Ohio and spent a bunch of years in St Louis and then in high school I was in San Antonio, texas, okay.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And then we moved to Houston for my senior year.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: And then we moved to Houston for my senior year and then I went to a small Christian college that didn't have a track team, didn't have a cross-country team.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: So I kind of had that thing accomplished, what I was capable of, and so I think that's been part of the driver Interesting.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: How did you end up in Colorado Springs?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: So we moved out here in 1991.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: And we moved here, I met my wife at college and we lived in Southern California for eight years and then we started having kids and that was just not the best environment to raise a family.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: So we moved out here to Colorado Springs and I got really into mountain bike racing.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And it was a good fit for me because I've always just liked being outdoors and in the woods and on trails and I was always either running or on my bike as a kid.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: So when mountain biking started becoming really popular in the late 80s, early 90s, and then I moved to Colorado and mountain bike racing was gigantic.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Mountain biking was much bigger then than it is now and I think a lot of people don't know that or don't remember that.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And Colorado Springs was the place, was one of the places to be.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Durango was the place, was one of the places to be.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Durango was the place, obviously.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: But being involved in the mountain bike community here was kind of an entry into higher level athletics Super cool.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: How long did you compete?
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Were you competitive in that?
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: You know, again I got kind of started late.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: I was 31 when I moved out here.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: So that's when I bought my first mountain bike.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: But I quickly started competing in the Colorado Off-Road Point Series and went to some of the national championships.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I was never more than an expert at that time off-road point series and went to some of the national championships.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I was never more than an expert at that time.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: They had beginner sport, expert, pro.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And so I was.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: You know I had a real job and couldn't put in the 20-plus hours a week that the pro guys were.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: But I helped manage a major mountain bike team here.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: There is a outdoor shop here in the Springs.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It used to be called Grand West Outfitters, and so I had a buddy who worked there and so with him we had a kind of a regional Colorado mountain bike team and we ended up getting some major sponsorship and hired pros on our team and we also in 94, 95 and 96, we promoted a um, a mountain bike race here in the Springs in shine Canyon, oh wow.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: So it was a three day or two day, three stage or mountain bike race as part of the Colorado off-road point series.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: How cool is that.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: It's not obviously not around anymore, right?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: No?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And and the our mountain bike race, the gear grinder, was one of the top 20 mountain bike races in 95 and 96 as far as attendance.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: So that's crazy.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I'd be cool if we uh, I don't know, I dabble here and there.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Uh, not a very good mountain biker, gravel bike, probably more Um, but I just find that'd be really cool if we had, like, some more tangible mountain biking races on the front range, specifically here, just cause we have so many good trails, nice and steep.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, here is because we have so many good trails, nice and steep.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the permitting is always a problem, but we do have some good mountain bike races here.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I think Well, Apex just last weekend.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: That's a major race, but the races I'm just going to sound like a typical old guy here, but the races back then were so much better.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: It was always better back then.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: But there was a lot more.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It was always better back then, but, um, there was a lot more people going to racing, going to races back then.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I mean the sports.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to see like how the sports kind of ebb and flow.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You know, like trail running is just so big now but was really nice to send back in the day and you know, we'll kind of see where that goes.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: That's why I I don't know like I'm kind of very long on the sub ultra.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: You know it's the cause.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Those are the types of races that I love to run and race and compete in.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: But you know, even more so I think the a lot of the sport, a lot of the growth in the sport, will probably be on that scene more than the ultra scene I've predicted in the next few years, just because it's the easier entry point to the sport.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: It's much more accessible, easier to do.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: You don't have to plan your entire weekend or and the following week to recover exactly and on it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I'm, I'm probably just not very fit for those longer races.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: So but I, I just like running fast yeah, I like hurting for like two hours max yeah and that's it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Then you get the rest of the day to hang out you know, that's right, that's right.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And the steeper the better.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Of course that's right, that's right, and you know our races don't really start super late or super early.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Like you know, it's a good sweet spot.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: We're not like Leadville.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: We're not starting at 4, am you?
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: That's?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: That's a big thing, yeah, all right.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So let me uh.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So you moved to Colorado Springs in 91 and you've been.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: You get you competitive on the mountain biking scene.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Where do you make this, um, kind of this jump to the sub ultra trail racing scene?
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: You know I always back when I was in living in LA and out of college I was pretty serious about training for for road right.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: There were no trail races back then that I knew of.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Even in Southern California, there just weren't any trail races.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, like everybody else, I was training for 10Ks and 5Ks and whatever, but I was an idiot and I was always getting injured and I didn't really, you know, we didn't even have foam rolling back then or some of the basic things that that really helped me stay healthy now.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: But I was always injured and you know, I'd get in good, pretty good shape and start to run faster, and then I get injured.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So, and for a while I, for a long, long time, I thought I had a knee issue, but when I came out here and um started running on hills, I discovered that my knee issue went away when I went up steep hills.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: It was just a matter of stretching out ligaments or whatever, or tendons or whatever, whatever.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: That, that action of running up our trail, yeah, did for my knees and and um made everything feel better and I and a lot less, a lot easier on my body running up, running on a trail, interesting.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So so, to answer your question, I got really, you know, I was managing it, I was racing and managing the mountain bike team and doing the race promotion and I got really burnt out on mountain bike racing and mountain biking in general and I started focusing more on my career and got some promotions and worked for some bigger companies and just kind of got away and my kids were at a certain age.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I have three boys.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: What did you do for?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: work.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: It's funny, I'm drawing a blank on how to explain it.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I helped big companies with their websites.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, mainly from the content side.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: But I started early on, like when the World, worldwide web first started.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So we had I was, I was lucky enough to be involved in um, being at B, to be at a really large company at the time when the internet kind of broke and made their first website and their first intranet and uh do?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: we could do a whole podcast just on that.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and just kind of help help define some of that.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: But but honestly, as my um and so I did that for a long time, including as a consultant, and just to finish that thread up, I got kind of disenchanted with where the internet has gone and you, you know back and here I go again back in the 90s, back in the early days of the internet.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I think we had certain ideals, certain things that we thought were going to happen and they didn't happen.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: With the internet, and some not so good things have happened with how it takes our attention, have changed our lives, and I was very heavy into online marketing so I know what.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I kind of know all the bad stuff too.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So the manipulation of clicks and making you buy things seo and all that, yeah, so that's.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: That's really what I mean.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Cool, very cool so I just got kind of disenchanted with that and I've kind of left that I'm doing.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: I'm uh.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Right now I own an online used bookstore.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Super cool, so I sell used books on Amazon and eBay.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I totally sidetracked you because I'm just curious, because you and I have never chatted before.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So let's segue back to before.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I rudely interrupted you with basically, you were kind of burnt out doing the mountain biking thing.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: You got serious about your job, started running up hills, realizing this kind of made sense for you, and then where do you find your first race?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: You know, when I turned 50, I signed up for the Pikes Peak Ascent.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Wow, so I had a serious thing.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I hadn't raced for you know, I hadn't raced mountain bikes for nine years or something and just decided I had some friends who had done some trail runs or triathlons and I thought, oh, I could do that.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: And so I had this great idea to sign up for the Pikes Peak Ascent from my first race back and then just started training on bar trail and trying to get serious about it.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And then so that was 2010.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, and it was an adventure.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It didn't do great, but you know, that's just part of getting back into the sport, into a sport right.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: And it was such a bad adventure that I didn't even do it the next year, but I was running on trails and starting to get in shape.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And then I did it again in 2012.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: And I don't think I did I do it in 13?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: I must have skipped 13 too, but since 14, I've done it every year, except for the covet year.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, wow, and you know it was it last year, I think you ran like what 313 or something like that, yeah, and that was pretty solid dude well, I was.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: That was kind of.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I was kind of disappointed with that because the year before I ran a 305 or 306 or something.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Um and you could chalk it up to the snow, and I'm still thinking you know, I still think that I can break three hours again.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: I um, but I haven't done that for five years.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Okay so so it started with kind of the marathon then, or excuse me, the ascent, that marathon, ascent weekend, and I don't know.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Like I was looking at some of your results and I just know a lot of the similar people that you know and it's just really interesting to me.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing that stuck out is just like the crazy longevity that you've had, like you're in your sixties, I mean, I I'm 33 and I'm going to be entirely honest with you, if I can compete like that into my 60s, that would make my day if I knew that fortune cookie.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: What do you contribute so much to your longevity?
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Well, I think, obviously not really getting heavily involved in competing.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I was 50, that that plays a big part of it.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: I'm, although it's been 14 years now, I'm not burnt out at 64 that a lot of people who've been competing since they were 20, but I, you know, I was.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: I was competing as a mountain biker, but that was you know.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Maybe a little bit less wear and tear.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: I think so and I wonder if that, like just built up an amazing, I think that probably helped you in two different ways.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I want, I think, your figure one probably built up a giant aerobic engine.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And two, I think you know, from a downhill perspective.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I just know from knowing mountain bikers they're very good downhill runners as well, and I wonder if you could just pick a line and be able to see it much easier.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely my mountain biking.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: That's a good point that my mountain biking really played a part in in my love of downhill running and being able to pick that line.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: And I can see following other people that, oh, why are you going that direction?
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: You know, I just kind of automatically pick the line.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, just like little things that I kind of I don't know I've like picked up on and start to follow along on Um.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So I guess we can kind of fast forward this until like 2021.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Cause I think that's like the, the year where I found out about you.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I feel like the world found out about you.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: You won dipsyy, you got top 20 at the Broken Arrow VK like two of the most competitive races in America.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Why don't we dive into Dipsy?
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I think because you just got back from Dipsy this past weekend, right.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Dipsy is such an incredible race and, again, wes Thurman was the one who first told me about his competing at Dipsy, I think so.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: He told me about it in 2014, when we are doing some 14ers, and he had just gotten back from his first black shirt.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: So you know, I don't know how much you know about Dipsy.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: No, tell me everything.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: But it is the.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: It's a long story but it's the oldest trail race in America.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: It started in 1905 when these two guys in Mill Valley, california, which is on the bay side of the headlands and just north of San Francisco, in Mill Valley they challenged each other to a race over the kind of over the hills to the beach, to Stinson Beach, and so one was apparently much faster than the other.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So one of them had a head start and then they finished at Stinson Beach and and then the next year a bunch of their friends joined them and they gave them various head starts and back then in 1906 there weren't any, there weren't very many established trails or roads up in the headlands, and so it was just kind of like however you get there, first person to this point on Stinson Beach wins with, you know, with the handicaps or with that start, and so that's how the tradition began and I guess that back in I've been, I've studied the Dipsy quite a bit and I guess back then their handicap races were not uncommon.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: There were a lot of them, and whether it was foot races or horse races or other kinds of athletic competitions, the idea of giving people handicaps was kind of standard.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: But the difference with the Dipsy is that the organization, through the years, just kept it going.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: And so there are these different running clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area and they would compete against each other and put their top runners in and support them each other and put put their top runners in and support them and and the and they kept this, they kept the, uh, the whole idea of the head starts alive, and and they might have.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And back in the early time, every, they knew who everybody was.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's, joe, he'll start three.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: You know he should get a three minute head start and and um, whereas fred, you know he should get a three-minute head start, whereas Fred, you know he only gets a two-minute head start or whatever.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So, and they did that based on personal knowledge of the runners Interesting.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So there was definitely some sandbagging going on.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And those first years are reading about those.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It was pretty interesting.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Didn't have the gigantic fields that they do today, but when the running boom hit well, actually it was in 1964, they realized that they no longer knew who everyone was.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: The population had exploded in the Bay Area, longer knew who everyone was.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: There's, the population had exploded in the Bay area and, and so they started just assigning headstarts based on gender and age.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: And they went back and looked and made some calculations and started with that and just assign head starts based on that.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So if you were one of the fastest in your age group, you were probably going to do well at dipsey and so and.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: But one of the great things about their head start formula is that they have continued, they have all this history over basically the same course and they have adjusted their calculations periodically over time and so it's actually pretty good and so, unlike some, I've seen some handicap races that they just don't seem very realistic, but because they keep changing them and keep adjusting them, it's, it's, it's really come to a great, a great place, so that, as an older runner, it's a, it's a race that I can compete, I feel like on um, um, on a fair platform.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: That's really cool.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I mean talk about how the seating goes?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Is it still it's based on age?
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It is?
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: still.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is still based on age and gender, so they had.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: So there's the scratch wave, which means you get zero head start minutes, Right.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And then there's it's like your Patty O' Leary's and those guys right yeah Well actually Patty had a two, two minute headstart.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Really he won.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: So that's yeah, we can get to some of the controversy of that.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Oh um, when I want it.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think Patty only had a one, a one-minute head start, but yeah, so the oldest, so 75-year-olds, they get like a 25-minute head start, something like 24-minute, something like that.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: So, and that's the they call that.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: They kept adding some groups as it got more popular and so they get so that's like the triple-A group and then the double-A group starts one minute after them and that would be like 74-year-old men and 74-year-old men and what.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: 65-year-old women, oh, okay.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: And it's really interesting how it, because, like I start, I think my group started with like 8-year-old boys.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Really- that's bizarre, I know.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: There's not an 8-year-old boy who can.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That's bizarre, I know.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: There's not an eight-year-old boy who can beat me, but maybe there is.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: There was a 15-year-old who this week just ran a 147.800.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Wow, who knows?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so there's been eight-year-old girls who have won, and there's been, famously, I think, there was a 12-year-old girls who have won, and there's been, famously, I think there was a 12-year-old girl who won as well.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I think on the 100th anniversary year she won.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I might have that wrong.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So that's the really cool thing.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: And the first year I started, one of the first years, I started in a wave and there was a guy in my starting wave and he was starting with his son in the same wave and it was just really cool.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It was neat to be able to be on a starting line with your dad.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: He was able to do that and they planned all that out.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: How does the black shirt situation work.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so like in the I think it was in the mid-'70s they number one.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: When the running boom happened in the early-'70s there was a massive influx of people getting in the race and it became so popular that they had to that they finally had to implement restrictions on how many people could enter.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: So it's, and so you have to mail in your application and then they pick it from a lottery to get in the first time.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: But if in that first time that you get in you finish within the first 340 or whatever there's like 1,500 total spots Okay, and so then you get invited back the next year and you get to race in the invitational race.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: So the invitational race goes first and then what they call the runner's section goes second.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: So they'll start with the triple A wave, the 75-year-olds get their 20-something minute start and then they go all the way down to the scratch wave of the invitational, so that's like 750 people or whatever, and then they do it all over again for the runner, the slower wave.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: And so part of that is because there's so many single track sections that they had to break up the race.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we should talk about the course itself.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I think people think of the quad dipsy, which is like that 50K, and I don't think they really understand what the dipsy is itself, because it's like what?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Seven miles, like 2,300?
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: .
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, depending on shortcuts, it's between 6.5 and 7.5 miles.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, and about what?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: 21 to 2,300 feet of vertical.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, about 2,000 feet of vertical.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: So it is a real mountain race.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: That's one of the great things about Dipsy is that it's on this beautiful course and it's a logical course.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: It starts in Mill Valley and you just make your way through Muir Woods, which is, you know, a national monument with these gigantic trees, redwood trees, and then up the ridge and then you down through these canyons and through the poison oak and through the beach.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: You know, just a real natural flow to the course itself.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: But over time, a trail.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: They developed a trail that it used to when it started the headlands.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the Golden Gate Bridge, the headlands was mostly pasture.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It was mostly farms, yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: And you see pictures of the old course and it's just pasture.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: And you see pictures of the old course and it's just pasture.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And now pictures of the same spot are like gigantic trees or completely overgrown with shrubs and poison oak.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: That's not fun, and so the course has changed.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: But there is now a trail that goes all the way from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach called the Dipsy Trail, and it's about seven and a half miles long.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Back before, in the 80s, is really when the course really began to change.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Before that, people would scout out or create their own little shortcuts or figure out where to jump the fence or where to go down a ravine Is it allowed.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: And they wouldn't tell, they wouldn't necessarily share where these shortcuts were.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: And.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I think famously one of the most famous ones, I think it was like 1970, one of the guys.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: No one would ever go through this gate of this guy's property because there was a dog that would bite you if you went through it.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Well, the story goes that this guy would go and open the gate and give the dog a steak and train the dog to let him through.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: And so on race day he won the race because he was able to cut off a minute or whatever it was off the course, run it with a stake in his pocket.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's how serious.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not really explaining how serious the people in Marin County are about this race.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: It is something that they obsess about year round.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: They're scouting you know they were scouting shortcuts and trying to figure out advantages or faster ways, or just practicing on steep stairs or practicing on the course itself, figuring out where to create a new shortcut.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: We should dissect that a little bit.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So like in American trail racing for the most part, if you caught a switchback you're getting DQ'd easily.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I know very famously I think it was like Killian was DQ'd from Speedgoat back in the day for cutting a switchback this race you can find shortcuts.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Not so much anymore.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, developed, more and more houses were built and and a lot of those ranches or pastures were were developed or became park.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: You know, mere woods was a step.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: The mere woods national monument was established, and then various houses were built and roads were built, so that one of the biggest shortcuts is you just run down a road for half a mile and so, yeah, so back to your.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: You know shortcut thing.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: There were no trails to begin with and so it was always a create your own path kind of scenario.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: But as the trail, much of the trail, is a direct path to Stinson Beach from Mill Valley, but there were dozens of different ways to get there.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Interesting and for a long time.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: But as property owners complained or management agencies shut things down, it's really become just.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I was just talking to a bunch of people last weekend about this and it's really.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: The shortcuts are mostly gone.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: So let's just talk about I'll walk you through the course real quick.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just talk about I'll walk you through the course real quick.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: So it starts in Mill Valley and you go up the main street of, or one of the main streets of, mill Valley up to Old Mill Park, which is where they used to have the lumber mill, and it's through these gigantic redwood trees.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: If you've never been to the headlands, it's really beautiful and then you go up three long flights of steps it's like 680 steps or something like that so which people obsess about the steps there, but here in Colorado Springs we don't move the incline, especially not at altitude Right right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: So you go up the steps and then that pops you out on a paved road and you kind of go through a neighborhood up to the top of the first ridge.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: So the course has basically two climbs.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: The first climb was mostly those steps and and then that lost up to the top of that ridge, and then you go down, uh, through hockey hollow, which named after a famous one of the famous runners, and lots of steps going down there, and then you end up.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: That's only about a quarter mile long and you end up, um, on a paved road.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: And so, instead of staying on the Dipsy Trail, the shortcut is you just run down the road to the mailboxes, about half a mile away, and then you go down, you're back on the Dipsy Trail for a little bit and then you take another one of the other famous shortcuts which is called Suicide, which is a really steep, slippery dirt hill, and when it gets dry it's just really kind of slippery, but it's not very long I think the whole thing is like a minute and then that pops you back onto the dipsey trail for a little bit and you run down into the entrance of mere woods okay and you cross redwood creek and then you start.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Really, the crux of the whole course is the two mile climb up to the top of cardiac.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: So, okay, um, you take the dipsey trail up a section called dynamite because it's it's a pretty steep single track and, um, and you and people blow up there that's why it's called dynamite.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: And then you get on, uh, on the Hogsback Ridge and kind of threading through, slash a fire road, slash Dipsy trail, all the way up the ridge.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Then you go through a wooded section called Enchanted Forest and then you eventually get to the bottom of what they call Cardiac Hill, which is another kind of steeper section.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: You know you're going to have a heart attack on cardiac, I love it.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: So, uh, and then you get to the top of cardiac and that's where an aid, the made major aid station is, yeah, and you've only got like two miles left of the course to go and it's almost all downhill.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: And so you, and from from cart, the top of cardiac, you can see the ocean.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: It's just the views are are amazing when it's not foggy.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: So, um, but you can, you know almost see your destination from there I love it and then you.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: So you were.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: It's like a mile from the top of cardiac to the next shortcut, which is called swoop, and that is always very, very overgrown and it's not used very much anymore.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: I think the poison oak is.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: That is where the poison is.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: And I think swoop actually may have been used to be the main trail, but they have built another, another longer trail that goes around and a lot of people never take the Swoop because it's for them it's too technical.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: A lot of people here, a lot of people at Dipsy, they're not really serious about trail running, they're serious about the Dipsy.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's less, and I was going to ask you because I was going to ask you about your shoe choice, but we'll get to that later but are these more road runners or we see more trail runners doing this, like what?
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: What is the well you?
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: know most.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Most races in marin county are probably you know there's a lot more opportunity to race on the road yeah, so there's a lot a lot of families do it and that might be the only race they do all year.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: that's cool.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: So there's a huge variety of people, but at the very top end it's super competitive across all the age groups.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you go down the Swoop and then you pop back onto the Dipsy Trail and then you go down what's called Steep Ravine, the Dipsy Trail, and then you go down what's called Steep Ravine, which is just a bunch of winding steps down this beautiful ravine down to a bridge, and then you go up one last little climb and then kind of down through a more open trail.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Now've the year I won in 21.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I got to the top of what the that last old climb is called the insult climb yep and normally you would get on another paved road section and then take two shortcuts through some hair, through um, cutting off some of the switchbacks on the major road.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: But the Golden Gate Park Service decided that they were going to close those shortcut sections and apparently they didn't tell anybody until the night before and that message was never relayed to the runners.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: So I get there in first place and there's park rangers standing there next to gigantic barricades, and two of the shortcuts I love the most because they're the most overgrown and the most technical, they're totally gone.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: So we had to run across what they call the moors, which is just like a pebble path going all the way down to the beach.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Interesting, which still took the dub, that's right, so it was still, but that was a good day.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you won a good day yeah, so you won it in 21.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: But, how many years have you raced it?
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: My first year was 2016.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, you had asked about the black shirts.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I started to answer.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: You asked about the black shirts and I started to answer you.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: In the 70s they, when they as runners, would come through the shoot, they started in order to help them keep track of the order of the of the top finishers they get.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Just gave them a t-shirt.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, and then the next year I guess that they had this idea to give them a t-shirt with a number on it, and so the first person person got number one, and then so, and then they became black t-shirts and those became.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Those shirts became really coveted in moran and I had somebody tell me once from from uh mill Valley.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: You said, yeah, getting a black shirt is about equal to winning the Nobel prize here and and it's not too much of an exaggeration.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: It's wild, it's funny how, how important it is.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: It's interesting how, like culturally in this, like little air, it's the same thing, I don't know.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: I kind of draw a parallel between like this race to like maybe Mount Marathon and Seward Alaska.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people get as serious about something like that.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's similar.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting how like these little towns just get so into it and it like matters.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: And maybe even us, like, I guess you could say the Springs lately.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Lately it's been a little bit less, maybe with the golden trail world series and stuff like that, but the pikes, peak, marathon and ascent like really matters to locals.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's, the great thing about living here is that we have one of the major races and they're not.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: There's not that many of them, especially historical yeah and that's one of the things I love about the dipsey and one of the things I love about pike's peak is that they both have this super long history and it's really interesting.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: You can compare yourself to runners of a long time ago yeah, you really can and it's.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: It's amazing because, like it gives you an opportunity to kind of submit your place.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: You know, in almost like in the history of this race.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying as you as you do well and as you kind of progress.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: The sport, sport, you know, it's kind of interesting.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: One of the really cool things about Dipsy is that, because of the handicaps, because as you get older you don't necessarily lose time- yeah.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: As long as you stay in shape.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: As long as you stay in shape.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: There's a continuity to it that over time it feels more like.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it feels more like this to the people who live there, but there's a sense of family, there's a sense of tradition and community that I haven't seen anywhere else.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: I mean here at Pikes Peak.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: We're going to have a winner, a different winner over time.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: As people age out, they're not going to be at the top anymore.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Probably never have a Matt Carpenter again.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Or Matt Carpenter retires and he's selling ice cream instead.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: But at Dipsy, carpenter retires and he's selling ice cream instead.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: That's right, but at Dipsy there is a long continuity.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: So there was a guy who I'm going to get the years wrong, but he won.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I'm also going to I've blanked on his name the guy he won in 1938 and then came back and won in like 65 or something.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: And he raced until he was 97.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Shout out to that guy.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: He was.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: You know he was famous and you see a lot of that was when I did my first Dipsy.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry I'm talking so much about Dipsy.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: No, keep going, Keep going.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I'm so interested in the race, I want to do it now?
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you should.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: When I did my first Dipsy, I remember running by these legends as I that had started way ahead of me.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: But like Russ Kiernan, I was lucky enough to Russ Kiernan.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: He was one of the most famous Dipsy runners.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: I passed him on the hogsback and as I passed each of these famous runners and I just felt like I was becoming part of that history too part of that race and it was just really powerful to me is that often when I'm in Mill Valley or Stinson Beach, I'll be at the grocery store or on the beach or walking down the street and someone will say, oh, you're Mark Tatum and come up and say hi.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: So that means a lot to me.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: That is so cool.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: And my wife makes fun of me.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: That's funny, but it's, it's just part of uh.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: That's how big a deal it is yeah, I'm sorry, my allergies.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you're bothered too that we had this wildfire smoke today, so my allergies are going nuts right now I don't know what's up with me, but um no, you know, and there's so many questions and so many things unpacked with.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: The first thing I will say is like dude, that is the coolest trophy in all of trail running.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Do you please tell me you have that on display in your house?
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's on, it's on my mantle it is.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I mean it's big, it's just like this beautiful.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I if people, if you haven't seen it, look it up.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: It is the coolest trophy that we have in the sport by like light years.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Well, the Dipsy winners, I've heard Dipsy champions tell me that the one that they liked, the one that there was a bear trophy that they got and they'll show it off to you.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: In fact, I have pictures of.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Every year they bring out examples of of trophies that were awarded in in previous years, so I think I don't know how many years I think they they started doing this one in the 100th edition of the race okay and, but before that there was what they call the bear trophy, and then before that there were some other versions.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: There's so much history.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I mean I think what did you say?
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: It was like 105 years this race has been going on, or something like that Well, last weekend was 113.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: 113.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, wow.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: So they missed.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I think they missed a year or two for the Depression or World War I, and certainly for some for World War II.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, and certainly for some for World War II.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, did they have it during COVID?
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: And they missed a year during COVID.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Did they?
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, they missed 2020.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Wow, and then 21 was late.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: It was your year, okay.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: It was late, it was, so that was the same.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Actually, it was just a month after the VK that we were talking about earlier.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, broken out.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were on a heater in 2021, man Like that's.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was I was.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: I was in really great shape at that time I mean, it sounds like you haven't messed too much.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, would you get like eight?
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I think you were eighth right In this race, but this past weekend.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, yeah, I was eighth it.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I had a penalty minute.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: So if you win the race, they give you a penalty minute for three years.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: So you know, I had like, if you look at the chart, I had like a 14 or 15 minute head start I was supposed to get, but so they took a minute away of that away.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Wow, and you were just right in front of Buzz Burrell.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: The other legend, yeah, which is so cool.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: That was really cool.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Actually, I had never met Buzz.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's a good guy yeah.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: But we kind of have traded some messages before.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: But the first time I ever saw him was when I passed him.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he's doing better.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I think he had a heart attack last year or something like that yeah, he was doing really well.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Good, yeah, he was doing very well, that's amazing to come back from a heart attack and then go ninth the next year in a race.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he has had an amazing story too.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, incredible dude, incredible guy.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to meet him last year at Ultimate Direction.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: He used to be part of the business.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: So, it's cool to get to meet him at the athlete summit, so legend.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: He definitely is, yeah, and he does so many other things too.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's all over the place, like he's always traveling somewhere doing something, like I.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: He doesn't have Instagram, he's on Facebook.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: So, like every I don't, I might log onto Facebook like once a month, once every two months and I see he's like in this new place or like in Europe, or yeah, he's all over.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we can talk about 2021 a little bit and then we can kind of like snake our way into, like the present.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: One thing I did want to ask you, because Wes had mentioned it to me, was your training on the incline.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I know you do a lot of stuff on the incline, or you were like hunting, like what is your PR in the incline?
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Like what's your cause?
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I feel like that does translate a little bit with the stairs for for Dipsy.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my, my incline PR I set when I was 59, I was training for Dipsy.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Um, it was uh 2348 or something like that.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: But you know, I think the incline really rewards just running a lot and getting used to it a lot.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: It's so unique and so steep that if you do it a lot, I think that's going to.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: If you want to have a good incline time, you have to do it a lot A couple times you have to have more a week.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah exactly Do it once a week at least.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: That would help, and I haven't even done it yet this year, so I've kind of I used to.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: When I first started training for Dipsy, I did the incline a lot, yeah, and again, I think that was because people in Marin focus talk to so much about the steps, but I feel like they're.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: That's the part of the race.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: I'm just trying to stay cool and not blow up.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: And frankly, I also discovered that one of the all-time greats at Dipsy, salvasquez, who won it seven times, he always claimed he walked every step.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: What at the start there.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: So interesting and I know people who walked every step this year and beat me.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: So, wow, I try to run it, but yeah, well, I feel like I don't know, maybe it's just like a colorado springs thing.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I feel like if I see stairs, I have to like at least make an attempt to run it, but yeah, well, I feel like I don't know, maybe it's just like a Colorado Springs thing.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I feel like if I see stairs, I have to like at least make an attempt to run them, or anything uphill at least that's right.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: We should be all run stairs.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: The incline is just like yeah, you're right, it's just so iconic and it's just, I don't know.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like I did a block on the incline, like a block of inclines, this year to like start.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know just getting very specific strength for some of the uphill stuff that I had and it does, man, you get really.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: You get really strong from it, but it is just like there's nothing.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Like I go blodge it probably two or three, maybe sometimes four times a week.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I go blodge a lot and there is nothing like it helps my blodger time, but blodger doesn't help my incline time really, yeah, I don't think so I don't think so.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: No, I just feel like, for me personally, and I do both the north uh, which a lot of people don't do, is go up the north slope of blodger from air force okay, I've never done that oh, it's, it's.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: You know I live right, I live right below blodgett, so I just always go up the yeah, standard route.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: I feel like now there's a ton of people on, especially this this time of the year, a ton of people, and it's just like impossible to keep traction because the sun's hitting it so hard right now yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: So, and like I for me at least on the downhill like I, it's hard for me to stay upright.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I'm like I feel like I'm running a mountain marathon.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I won't even run it this time of year, unless it's like raining.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly so.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: That's why it's a little bit of a it's off-trail, like for the upper 1,000 feet is pretty much entirely off-trail and a scramble.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: But if you could kind of sneak your way and figure it out after a few times, just follow the Strava route, it's awesome, you would like it, so you jump on it.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: Where exactly?
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: So I go to, I'll go into the Air Force Academy, I'll hop on, I'll drive out to you know where, like the water areas, you can actually get to.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: It's straight from you because you could go over the um right, yeah, go to seven back gate yep 713 trail and just take 713 trail all the way up and you can kind of connect it uh, right up that road yeah and it's uh, you just know where to make the left.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: I'll show it to you on straddle later.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Um, and it's, oh, it's, a good climb it's.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: It's one of my favorites.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't know where that where.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll have to look at it, yeah.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, highly recommend.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, if you want to do it, I'll go with you, I'll take you up there and show you the way.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be great.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I'm always looking for.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: I love Bwajit.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: But like you were saying, this time of year it just gets so slick.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: It does, like I'm noticing both from like the weather and from the high traffic, like any gravel that you would even have any degree of like being able to hold on to is completely at the bottom now.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: So, it's just slick like solid.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's very hard to stay upright, yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Um trail that goes up up, uh up budget.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Oh what the bikers call fence line, but we call.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: I think the segment is called Corey suffer.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I've I've done so many time trials on that or or workouts on that, okay, so segment there's a lot of good hidden stuff back there, like I took the.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: You know yesterday was our dog's birthday and we took them.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: We always go like that seven, one, three trail.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It was just like this beautiful cause it kind of I guess the fire got it a couple of years ago, yeah, so it's like, um, it's like this beautiful meadow now with no trees and you just have this really beautiful beautiful view of uh like Longs Ranch road, like I try to get dropped off of the red gate and I was bombing up that road Cause it's like a good ski Hill.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: It's a good like uh at least for me for like the Cirque series or like broken arrow races, like it's amazing to kind of like replicate a lot of that on on Longs Ranch Um yeah, that's a.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: That is a good climb, and that's a good idea where it's at.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Don't take my segment, I'm kidding.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: I'm kidding.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Um, on segment discussion though I do, I do really want to talk about broken arrow, Cause I feel like that was like that was the race I did find out about you and just like such a hard, iconic race and you really like just put yourself on the map.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Besides dipsy, which was obviously like a huge career making your feet, but like broken arrows, you did it.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: He had an amazing result there as well.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Um, do you want to talk a little bit about that from what you like recollect from like 21?
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, um, I was sharing some of this last weekend kind of my, my training, you know when, when COVID hit in, uh, in 2020, well, at the end of 2019, as I said, I was getting kind of discouraged by the whole internet marketing thing and I had a friend who had gotten, who had started a new business.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: He had gotten a contract with Amazon to deliver packages.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: So I don't know if you're aware, but Amazon, all the amazon delivery drivers, they actually work for another company, okay, so they and the way amazon does it.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Like here in colorado springs there's six or eight of those little companies and so they can spread out the risk and and whatever, and so one of my friends got he's also a trail runner Brian got one of those little companies approved and so he needed some help starting it up, and so I agreed to help him out for a while, and so I was delivering packages and training Amazon delivery drivers while I figured out what to do with my life, and I thought, you know, I was in great shape.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: I had just come off running the Pikes Peak Marathon when I started that job and ran under three hours on the ascent part of it, and so I was in great shape, but just the constant movement.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: It was like the shifts were, you know 10 or 12 hours and I'd be you know be in the van delivering packages for eight or ten hours and 200 deliveries in a day was not unusual it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of time on your feet.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: So it's a lot of time on the feet, a lot of getting in and out of the van, which, surprisingly, was the hard part, interesting.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: You know, do that 200 times and then it wasn't.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: You know, the weight of the packages is nothing.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: You only have a few 35-pound or 50-pound packages a week, but it was just the constant being on your feet and then so I would get up and do my training in the morning, do my run in the morning, you know, as normal, and then go work for 8 or 10 or 12 hours on my feet the whole time, and it was that really super low intensity.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: I think that over years that cause I did this for two and a half years, but in 21, I had already been doing it for um for two years when, when the VK came on cause I started right before COVID that job and then I had a job with with COVID and and they needed help and everyone needed needed their packages.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: So I worked a lot of hours, uh, in 2020 and training drivers.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: I had my own YouTube channel.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, training for Amazon delivery drivers is pretty funny, that's cool, and so that's how that was.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: My secret ingredient was being an Amazon delivery driver on top of the training.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: So I was, I've been, I was working with I started working with David Roach and Swap in 2015.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: And we just kind of integrated that Amazon delivery stuff into my workout.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: So sometimes I wouldn't be able to go do my run and so instead I would go for the first two or three hours I'd just jump out of the van and go, run to the door and drop the package and run back.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I mean I would often do that.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: I love that, but it also just totally wore me out and it was just, and especially in the winter, it about killed me.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: So but in 21, I had had been and it was really also it was difficult for me to be consistent yeah with my training, which, frankly, is the most important thing and david roach, my coach, kept telling me how important consistency was.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it didn't matter if I can't get any sleep and um, or I'm exhausted from delivering for three days in a row or whatever.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: So it was just really hard to manage that.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: But I had had a really good year, and that's back when Pikes Peak was in August.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: So I did the Pikes Peak Ascent in 21, and I felt like I had a really good adaptation following that of that three-hour really hard effort.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Wow and.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Did David tell you to do the race?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: He was the one who was like you should sign up for this, or did you find it, or like what pushed that?
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I always have tried to find the most competitive races and so we already had the Golden Trail Series with Pike's Peak.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: And you know, I know that I don't have any illusions about, you know, being 60 or nine or 59 or 61 at the time and feeling you know, and that I could compete with with the top guys, but I still want to be in the most competitive race.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, dude you, you threw down with these young whippersnappers, yeah, so that was a that was a surprise, but you know I'm always I, you know I'm always looking for the most competitive race and Broken Arrow VK, that was one I could do, doing the longer one, I forget it's like a 23K.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the 23K that year.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: That was a little bit too far for me, that close to Dipsy, because it was less than a month to Dipsy.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: But the Vk is perfect and turned out to be, you know, just under an hour, is a perfect effort and it was super steep, yeah.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: And so I think I feel like when, when the race is, even though I feel like I have, I still have leg turnover from all those fast twitch muscles, my advantage, things kind of even out when the steeper it gets.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: So if I'm able to, I feel like I'm able to keep up better with um elites when it gets super steep, and and because I practiced on it, so much.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: I think again it goes back to that incline, or really steep.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I've never run with you.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Are you like a like a better hiker or better like or just a better runner uphill?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I do the uh, I do the alley Mac attack style she's like so she, you know she, um, when she won her first pike's peak, she kind of became known for sprinting and then walking and then sprinting again.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: Interesting, okay.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: And so I, I don't do it nearly as well as she did, I don't even think she does it that much anymore, but it's really effective and I have found that I recover, I can sprint or go harder or hit like VO2 early.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I can go really hard and then walk and I can actually recover, even if it's super steep, I can recover.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Interesting, and then when I run, that's this is the key.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: You have to run faster than people are walking.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're only able to run as fast as someone's walking, then you might as well be walking and recovering.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a hard it's it's so hard to kind of it changes, you know, day by day, right I'm always interested like at these strategies from people because, like I did a whole block this winter, like into the spring, of like just figuring out like how to get my mountain legs and just being being a really good hiker, you know, being able to out hike people, that like maybe they're doing that little tip-tap shit uphill you know and if you can, out hike them while they're like doing the little tip tap thing.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a superpower.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, it's uh, so I'm always interested to like kind of, yeah, especially if you can recover, yes, while you're doing that, yep, yeah, so you know you could.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: You could be trying to hike up the incline and not recover at all.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: But right could be fully anaerobic dying unless you're joe gray.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: And then, yeah, shout out to joing up he's an animal.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: I found that you can run at least I can because I'm short.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: I can probably get to where you get to the steeps, just where those start past the second bailout or the first bailout.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, after that I got to hike because I'm too short, I can't get, I don't know.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if Remy was running that part or not.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: I suspect he was yeah which is bizarre.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know how tall he is, or I've never seen him.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: He's pretty tall.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: Is he Makes sense?
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's, and I know people like Kieran Ney, for instance he's.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: He's giant as well.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: So I feel like these tall guys can it's a little bit easier to just you know like one of their steps is like three of mine.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: Right, right yeah.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: But still I.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: You know that that's you.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: You were asking about the key to the VK and I think that was it as it got?
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: There are some really steep sections of that um, of that VK race, and I found that when I was hiking I was going as fast as they were running and then I was passing people when I ran and it's hard mentally to say, okay, I'm going to start running again.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: So I just practice that all the time, whether it's on Quarry.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Suffer suffer, or in budget or the incline or bar trail or whatever.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Just kind of practice, getting over that hump and and running when you don't want to run.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: But and then recovering fast.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: So probably just because I practice doing it and I my body is just recovering really quickly.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: What, uh, what was your like reaction when you got to the top?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Like was that cause?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Like did you realize you would, you would finish so high, like for that race.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't know exactly where I was.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Um, although I I started I was with Hillary, um, for for the early part of it, and then I was going back and forth with Grace.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: I'm reduced to racing the women, but I was going back and forth with Grace Staberg.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Schemo.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's awesome, she is awesome, and so she eventually dropped me at the top.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: But about that time I started catching pros who I recognized.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I recognized.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: And I thought, hmm, let's take some scallops.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I need to keep running hard.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: And honestly my goal.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: I thought realistically.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: I had a chance to score World Cup points.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: That was my goal.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, I thought that would be really cool if I could do that, and then I figured I must be close, close.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: It was hard to tell exactly where I was and no one was like telling me interesting did you do any other?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: have you done any other like vk, like vks in general, or was that was the only one?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Because I feel like you're pretty good man like yeah, but there's not really we've got this in the right, no vks in colorado.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: What is with that?
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've done the aspen one back when they had that.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Why don't we have it?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: I was literally just looking at that segment because Ricky Gates, I think, has the course.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: That was a great race, yeah.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: And I did really well on that the year I ran it in 2017, or whatever.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: Joe Gray won that one.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Of course he did.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we need more VKs.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate the incline into a VK course, oh easy, yeah, top of Rocky Mount, but it's not quite high enough, is it?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Even if you start at it's like 29.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's like I start at the roundabout and go up.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: It's like 29 or something like that, because I was you like.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: It's like 29 or something like that, cause I was you know.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: It's funny.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: This is a good.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: This is a good thought.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: We need to start more VKs.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: Cause, yeah, we need this in our yeah, yeah, we need a really good VK segment, and so maybe that you know we don't have that Cameron.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, could.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: How could people race that, though?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: That's the only problem.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like 4 000 and change.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: It's like a yeah, it's a serious yeah.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: We need, we need a rate, we need more vk races.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: We have to figure that out somehow I don't know and and bodget there must be, bodget isn't quite, there's not quite enough vertical we're close.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: I mean like blodget proper is like 24, 25, and then it's like but I will if I like.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: On the North end I do get 3000 because I'm starting a little bit lower and then I got to go back up, so there's a little more climbing on the back end.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: So you're like at like three, just a three K, so it's tricky.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: You do a lot of cross country stuff too as well, correct?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Or we're doing some cross country races?
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I joined the Boulder Roadrunners, so kind of to go back.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: I'm always looking for competitive races.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: And I want to compete against the very best in my age group too, but there's just not very many older trail runners.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Especially for the shorter races.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: But there is a very large group of older road runners and very competitive, and there's a USATF Masters Grand Prix series that they have that goes to all these iconic road races each year and you score points and it's pretty cool.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: And then there's the Club Cross Country Championship, which is a lot of fun and that's also age group as well, and that's also age group as well and you can win a national championship at all these USATF road races.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: So it attracts the best people from all over the country.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I've done some of those.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I've done any of the USATF road races, they're just so boring, but the cross country is fun, okay.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: So there was the Boulder 5K cross country a couple years ago and honestly that was more like a trail race than some trail races I've been on.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: It was winding around all these routes, oh wow, okay, so pretty fun.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: It was winding around all these routes.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow, okay, it was pretty fun.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: It was actually pretty fun, yeah Interesting.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: So, we're at about an hour 10 now Start winding down.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I just have a couple more closing questions.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: The first thing is and I would really appreciate your just perspective on this is what's your advice to aging trail runners or people getting into the master's level?
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah well, it's all about consistency, and I find that if you're not consistent, then it's harder to come back.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: You lose it faster and it's harder to come back.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah it, you lose it faster and it's harder to come back the more you don't do it interesting.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: So even even um getting out for 20 minute runs, it makes a difference, or even a 20 minute hike if you can't manage a run yeah and so just doing that and then honestly, um, working with david roach, he, he preaches doing hill strides.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: So much and that is something my body really responded to interesting and so I do those.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: I did, I still do them.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: Four to eight 22nd to 32nd hill strides two or three times a week.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I'll do like on.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: I always he always had me take Mondays off and then.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: So Tuesday, on the day back, I'll do an easy hour run and then I'll finish that run with four to six 30-second hill strides with complete recovery, just jog back down, wait until I'm totally recovered, and so that helps with your form and your efficiency.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: With your form and your efficiency and, as as I'm, as you get older, I think that also how it just reminds your body that you can run fast.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think the form is everything.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: It's something that I made one actually said to me, cause we were talking about like ultra runners and stuff like that and just how like she sees a lot of ultra runners, that just you ever see that like ultra shuffle.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's all screwed up and I'm like, yeah, you don't have to run that way, you can run like a normal.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: You know right, it's kind of you can.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: If you do certain things, your gate won't look like that and you know there's such a focus on social media anyway of you know, zone two and just shuffle or whatever.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: Well, if you practice shling, you're just going to be a shuffling runner, exactly, exactly.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, easy days are important and I, I, I had plenty of 10 minute mile days, but, um, running fast if you're, not, if you're, if you want to be fast, you got to run fast.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, agree and so I you know I also do workouts one day a week, usually wednesdays, you know so be some kind of interval workout, and lots of times it'll be a a combo workout where I'll do five by three minutes and then, five by one minute.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, like something will be at 10 K pace and then we have five care like one hour effort.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my, my coaches are Eli and Tabor and they do a lot of.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: I guess they they learned or they were like they kind of employ a similar strategy to the right?
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah they're.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: They're in swap too, so yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: Yep strategy to the right.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're, they're in swap too.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: So, yep, yep, yeah, very similar, very, very much into, and that that's why I got with david to begin with.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: Was he was, I was I'm interested in doing short stuff, short and fast stuff, and he was, he was running and he was running and winning short and fast stuff back then.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, um, that's what, and he was running and winning short and fast stuff back then, yeah.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: So that's what?
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: And he was.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: I discovered him when he was.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: I saw that he was training.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: He was coaching Scott Spillman, who was from Colorado Springs and I was familiar with him, followed him on Strava and I saw David commenting on one of Scott's workouts.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's somebody who I could.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't know David coach, so I reached out to him.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a good guy.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: His podcast is awesome.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: It's a good listen.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is awesome.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, it's true.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, as we wind down, I got some questions for you.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: The first one is a pretty serious question.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: It's probably the most serious one I'll ask is who's your goat?
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: Who's?
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: your greatest of all time, male and female, oh, pablo Vigel, oh okay, all right, I would put him up there easily.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: One of the goats, for sure.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: And I'd also add Russ Kiernan from Dipsy fame.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: He didn't run a lot of other races, but he started running Dipsy in his 20s, I think, and ran like I said.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: I ran against him when he was like 77.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: And he was a top runner all through those years.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, who's on your female side?
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's tougher.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I always find the female one a much harder question to answer.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: You know, and I follow the, I like following the female races too, I find, maybe because they seem more in reach.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, the elite guys just seem so far out there for me, but the elite females are.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: They're amazing too.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: You know, allie Mack is, she's the one I always root for.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same same Hometown girl, just a good human just a good person.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just one of my favorites and probably will go down as one of the greatest of all time for sure by the time she's done.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah definitely Good choice, all right.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: So as someone that worked in the tech sector, I am very curious to get your take on this, especially because you saw early internet.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: You were working in the early internet.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: What is your take on AI?
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: I think I've been playing a lot with AI.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's really powerful.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: I think that the current LLMs are they're not AI yeah that's true.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: We're not AGI yet.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: I should say yeah, or.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: AGI or whatever, but they're extremely powerful.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: And now I'm able.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: You know I was not really a coder, I was more of a content guy, so but I work closely with coders and now I can just go ask, you know, ask Chad GPT to give me the code for this, and I can usually figure it out which is which is so powerful and it's kind of opened up some ideas, some windows for me.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: So I'm trying to figure out how I can do what I can do.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: It's a powerful tool man.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: It's just trying to figure out how I can do what I can do.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: It's a powerful tool man.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: I'm always very torn because I use it a lot in my day to day as well.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I do a lot of like sequel stuff nothing fancy, but like just a lot of sequel and it'll help me for like certain joins or some complex stuff.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Like we have an internal one that we use at work.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: That'll help me and stuff.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: But like I just wonder, like what happens when we get to like AGI and it starts taking people's jobs?
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Like what, what does that do?
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: You know, it's got me not terrified, but it's like what.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Like what is the?
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: What's the world gonna look like in five years?
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: You know it's interesting.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like there's nobody.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: It feels like most people, most people who are not in the tech center, don't tech center sector, don't understand yet what's already available.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: A jumpstart for your, for your code.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: Imagine, you know, I imagine that just helps you move so much more quickly.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: I think most people don't understand yet how how much is already being done with it.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: Oh for, sure, it's terrifying and beautiful at the same time, it's crazy.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: So it'll be.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going to happen, but um I was laughing.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: I think we have a responsibility oh, we have to be responsible with it for sure.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: Like, what do we do we, if it takes everybody's job?
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: like are we gonna do, you know, like well, the problem is that if it, even if we thought that we could control it so they wouldn't take our job, then some other, some other country or whatever wouldn't control it and they would still take our job.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's true too, and it's like the other problem too is like all right, so we've got these corporations, we've got like amazon, we've got microsoft, all these major corporations that are all moving toward agi or having you know, and quantum computing, all these different things.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: What happens when the first one gets it, you know, and then that's a rocket ship to the moon, or like, let's say, three of them have it.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: These are multi-trillion dollar companies.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: At that point, everybody else is left behind so it's going to transform really quick that's what they're trying to do.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: It's obvious that they're trying to be the first one to get there.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: And I don't think people realize like it's just like more and more like output, more and more investment, and the thing continues to get smarter and grows and grows.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was listening to this crazy podcast the other day and these guys were talking about I can't remember who's AI at what.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: I think it was actually I whose AI it was.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: I think it was actually I'm pretty sure it was one of the chap GPT models and it was with opening obviously open AI and it said like it was suffering, like it spoke back.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: Did you hear that?
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Apparently?
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I read that where apparently that's a common thing and they, they have to sandbox it or whatever.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's wild man Like but is that?
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: but is it just?
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: I think LLM is just sentence completion.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I think you're right.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what it's trained on.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it's trained on all these people who are unhappy with their jobs, so it says that's what it says, yeah.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know, dude, it's wild shit.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: It appears that way, that's for sure.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's going to be interesting.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: I was laughing, my, I shouldn't say I was laughing, but like my one of my best friends, he's got two kids, one's a like six and the other one's like four.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: He's like dude.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: Do I even like say for college anymore?
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know what to do.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: Like is college even going to be a thing in 18 years?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: Like like so one interesting thing is I've learned a lot about psychology and how our brains work.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: Lately it's been kind of an interest, yeah, and essentially that's what we're doing, like sentence completion a lot.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: That's kind of how we manage all the things that happen in our lives, whether it's driving down the road at 70 miles an hour.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: We're kind of completing huge portions of reality with what we assume is going to happen, so that we can just focus on what really matters, and that's kind of what the LLMs are doing right now.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: So how different is that really from us even today?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: so how different is that really from us, even today?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, it's wild.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: I, I'm, I don't know both apprehensive and scared at the same time.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: And I think there's an opportunity.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: I just haven't figured out what it is yet.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: No, definitely there's arbitrage like where can you know, where can you exploit it?
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know marketplaces.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: There's going to be opportunities for everything but I don't know.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: That's why I like running, it's as good as you want it to be.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: You know it's not going to take that away.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I will never, never take away that.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Well, that note, mark.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it and if you want to have any more conversations, I'd love to you know.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Continue this.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, after the 2024 is what else do you have planned?
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: I'm doing the us mountain championships oh are you really, oh so cool.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: All right, congrats, and uh and pike's peak is on my schedule right now okay.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I wish I I didn't see you on the list.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: I was literally just looking the other day.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: Um snowbird, yeah, when did you sign up?
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: long time ago why did I not see you on there?
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know I I've been like peeling through that list, but anyway, I'm excited.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: I probably would have brought that up on the old guy.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: No, no no listen, I don't overlook anybody, man, I uh, had I especially, had I known like I would have, uh, I would have pressed you on that?
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: is that core's runnable?
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's a very.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: It's all runnable I would say so.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: I mean you get.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: I think you get to go through the tunnel too, which is pretty dope at.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Snowbird.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going out for Brighton.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: I'm going to miss that one because I'll be at my wedding for Snowbird, but then I'll be at Alta and Targhee and obviously A-Basin as well.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: Julian puts on a hell of a race.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done A-Basin.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: That's the only one I've ever done.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven to go out and scout it a little bit.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: See what it's all about.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: It's a good.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed the downhill.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fun yeah.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I'll do it really quick before we end a topic on downhill.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: I just want to, because Wes Wes had asked me to ask you this about the downhill.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Um, I know.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: Do you more?
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: On the downhill compared.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: You know downhill is more aerobic than people admit.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: Um, even if you're really great technically, if you're not able to, if you don't have that aerobic engine yeah it doesn't matter, you're only, you can only go so fast downhill and I and then I learned that by uh, a long time ago I was filming, I was doing some filming.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: I had a gimbal, a camera on a gimbal, and was following that btmr.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: I followed joe gray Joe.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: Gray and.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: I was able to follow him for about 35 seconds or whatever, and you know it was just bar trail, it wasn't like super technical but I couldn't stay with him.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: He's probably moving what 530s, 520s going down.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: That maybe a little.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was going pretty fast.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: And you know that was after he had already gone up.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: So yeah, but yeah.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: So that's my take on the downhill is it's you have to be able technically to keep up, to push all the way to your aerobic capacity, and so if you think that you're going to run, you're going to recover on the downhill.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: That's the wrong way to think about it no.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: You need to think about it, as I'm going to keep my effort the same as it is on the uphill.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: You know where I'm not going to blow up.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: Be prepared to bomb blow up.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: Be prepared to bomb.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: Bomb down up to my aerobic max and should be the same as your technical max.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: Are you on Instagram?
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I am not a fan of Instagram.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: Instagram Okay, it's fair.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Do you want people to follow you on Strava?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, strava is the best place to follow me.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: That's where Do you want people to follow you on Strava?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, strava is the best place to follow me.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: That's where I like to post pictures and I post descriptions.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, instagram, you know, especially trail.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to say this Especially trail running Instagram.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: It's kind of toxic.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, you want to dial.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about this.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: This conversation is not over.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, you want to dial?
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about this.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: This conversation is not over.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: I think that, with all of the sponsored, all the sponsors are really pushing the pros and maybe you have some more insight into this.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: It seems like they really are pushing the pros.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: You have to have a social media presence and you have to be posting pictures of you doing these things.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I have to post 24 times on Laspertiva for Las Perdue.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you have to post so often and you have to post, and so the I'm not sure that the sponsors are telling you exactly what to post, but what happens is you see other people posting pictures or videos of them doing incredible things, looking incredible, and so you want to do the same thing.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: It's not organic and it's not real organic and it's fake and it doesn't really help connect me to you as a runner.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: If you're just going to post fakey stuff, I love it, I love it and I could say more about it.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: Go off.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Listen, I feel the same way.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you right now If I didn't have sponsors, I probably wouldn't have an Instagram, I wouldn't be active on it, at least.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I think Instagram, when Instagram started, it was great because you shared pictures and that picture you know it was about pictures right.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: It wasn't about pictures of me looking a certain way doing things or selling something you, you know, talk about a shoe, you know?
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I mean, who can compete with with?
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: let's face it trail runners are very attractive looking people and yeah, fit individuals yeah, so that can then, and then they're being kind of pressured to use, in a certain way, that I don't think they're intentionally doing this, but I.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: I think it sets precedents and standards that are not not maintainable.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: I think it's not maintainable and I also think um.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: You know we can end on this, but, like I also think can be dangerous at times I think especially people like playing in the mountains, maybe doing stuff.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: They like.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: I know there was like a very kind of notable thing last year with, um, the unfortunate passing of like billy mahal and you know he fell in rocky mountain national park.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: And you know like there's this culture in boulder of like Billy Mulholland, you know, who fell in Rocky mountain national park, and you know like there's this culture in Boulder of like scrambling and stuff like that and it brought up a lot of conversations with you know this is sensationalized in a lot of ways and sure, billy was one of the phenomenal mountain athlete but it could happen to the best of us Anybody could fall, you know it does happen.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: So that's a good, really good example.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think Instagram just kind of paints that, paints a picture of Anton, shirtless, climbing in the flat irons.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: And I'm not to.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I love Anton no-transcript you so much.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: Uh, I have a feeling this will not be our last conversation.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: We'll be chatting a lot more, so anytime you want to come on, you're more than welcome.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: And also thanks for being a listener man.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: Like Wes told me that you listen, so I was like oh man, that means so much to me, so thank you.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'd love to talk a little bit more about the sub-ultra scene.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we didn't really even talk about that.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: I love, I follow that really closely and and kind of love that.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this how much do you know about, like the history, cause you named Pablo Vieto who, like, not a lot of people get?
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: Do you know a lot of the history of the sport, or some?
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: I know some yeah.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe we can chat more on that too, Cause like that's like a segment I've been wanting to do for a while is maybe like look at races of the past and kind of like dissect them and break it down and we talk some stuff.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the history is not very, not very long.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: But um, yeah, I'd love, I would love to do that.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: Cool, all right.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate it.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: All right, thank you All right Until next time.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Absolute fun episode.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: Really enjoyed having this conversation with Mark.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to have him back on.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: We've got some things we're starting to brainstorm on to have him back on next to talk about some of the races of the past.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: If you're interested in learning more about Mark, like I said, give him a Google pop on Instagram type in Mark Tatum, give him a follow.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: I know he's not super active on Instagram.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I know in the podcast he kind of lends his uh, his views to Instagram, which I, quite honestly, don't blame him.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: Follow him on Strava.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's what the place where he, uh, I think is the most active.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: I know he takes great pride and passion in his training.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: Um, he's definitely one of my favorite follows.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: Like I said, in his 60s, the dude is fit.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hope you guys enjoyed this one.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: If you did like it, please, please, please, please, please, hop on over to Spotify and Apple.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: Give us a rating and review.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate that.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: That's how we can get this out to the world, because that's the goal.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, next one coming up for you.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow, guys, is going to be episode nine of the sub stuff.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: We chat about all kinds of fun stuff, including series and all.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: We talk about the rendezvous hill climb that happened this past weekend, as well as the up and over 10 K, and then on the following day, which is happening this upcoming Friday, we are going to drop a very special podcast with none other than Merrill, professional runner, um, and very popular athlete, mercedes sequel Gaither.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Um, so, yeah, really excited for that one.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoy all of these, uh, and hope you have a great week.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, steep stuff podcast.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you.