Rachel Entrekin Runs On Joy: How She Won The Cocodona 250 Outright By Letting Go Of The Outcome

29:41It can motivate you to make a plan for how to manage your current situation. But if you're just upset, that's not, that's not a useful emotion to have being upset. And it's just your reaction to things that you don't like, that you wish were different, that you have no control over. Right. And it can be low stakes, like somebody's being difficult with me and my job, or high stakes where, like, I don't know if I'm going to survive the next couple miles. Yeah. I mean, kind of. And it's funny because we talk about - And not for nothing, somebody passed away at Coca-Dona. Like, somebody died. Yeah.

30:19So if you had to translate that into a life lesson for somebody who's watching this or listening to it, who isn't an ultra athlete, maybe they're not even an athlete, what is the kernel of truth that is applicable in our daily lives? I think mindset and response is something I learned in therapy, are the only things that we really have complete control over. The mental kind of therapy, not the physical therapy. Yeah, mental therapy, not physical therapy. say it again because I interrupted you I'm sorry I think mindset and responses my responses that I give to the world are the only things that are under our control and they are under your control even if it feels like things are happening to you you get to be in charge of how you respond to those things and nobody is going to make you act anyway nobody is going to convince you to do anything that you don't want to do.

31:16Yeah. This idea like that person makes me so mad. Like that person does not mad. You're deciding that it has nothing to do with them. It's all about like how you choose to respond or react. Yeah. One of the things that I've, I've had to reframe a lot over the last couple of years is this idea that people cause me to act a certain way or things cause me to act a certain way. And they don't, I choose to allow them to influence me. yeah it was really frustrating because when things are hard i like to blame or i liked to blame now i don't like to blame it's it's just easier it's easier take some of the stress off of us um but that just because it's a hard pill to swallow doesn't mean it's not true um and so nobody makes you any certain way you allow them to let you react that way and so yeah you're in charge Don't forget that you're in charge.

32:09And you can practice that in your daily, everyday experiences or under extreme - Sports, yeah. ... situations like going and running a 250-mile race. But fundamentally, it's a mindfulness practice. Like when you're present and aware and you can buy yourself that extra moment to really think about how you want to show up in a certain set of circumstances, that's kind of how you put it to use and to work, I think. Yep. Sleep deprivation. Oh, yeah. So 19 minutes of sleep over 56 hours is insane. Your first nap didn't even happen until you were almost at the 200 mile mark. Right. So you hadn't slept at all.

32:54Nope. Hadn't. Yeah. And then that nap was like five minutes. Yeah. It's funny because Courtney, Meg and I were all on a panel. And one of the questions was, do you train for sleep deprivation? and all three of us were like, no. Can you? I don't think you should. I mean, even if you tried to, I don't know that it would make you any better at it. What my plan is going into the race is I try to really make sure that I'm sleeping as much as possible, 10 hours, every single night for a week. Because I know that the night before the race, I'm probably not going to sleep that much. You have to wake up at three.

33:31You're just not going to be able to sleep that much. And then I'm obviously, if the goal is get to Flagstaff as quickly as possible, that means that I'm not going to be sleeping. I'm going to be mostly running. And so, yeah, just try to build up that reserve. But yeah, I've always been somebody who can function on very little sleep. I do think that that is a superpower that I possess. Yeah, I was going to say, I think it is like some people can do it better than others. They just can. And I also don't really hallucinate. So I'm just really good at staying awake for a long time. and being relatively lucid.

34:07And for me, one of the ways that I check to see how okay I am is can I make a stupid comment or like a joke? And if I can, then I'm doing okay. But yeah, for me, my plan, you know, and again, I've done this race two times now, and I think this was my sixth or seventh 200-mile race. And so I've learned what my body needs with regards to sleep. I'm not going to be someone who's able to plan sleep. I know Jeff Browning, who's a really accomplished multi-day runner, he's like, all right, at mile 87, I'm going to take a 25-minute, like, I'm not going to do that. I can't plan these things. So I just go until I'm tired.

34:44And once I am literally falling asleep while running, I'm going to curl up on the ground and I'm going to set a timer for five minutes. And if I wake up and I'm not ready to go, I can set another timer for five minutes. But I'm going to do it in five-minute increments. I know that when I am ready to sleep, I'm going to be able to fall asleep if I'm actually tired. Usually, once I start to feel sleepy, I think, okay, well, am I sleepy or am I just bored? Do I need to eat something? Do I just want to try some caffeine? Do I need to just talk to somebody? Because you're out there a long time by yourself and maybe you're just bored.

35:23So I usually try to kind of sit with that feeling. I have a 20-minute rule. if I notice something, I give it 20 minutes before I decide whether it's something that I need to actually address. And yeah, but every time I, cause I took a five minute nap at about 200. And then I took two seven minute naps at somewhere between like two 20 and two 30. Um, and yeah, each time I was literally unable to keep my eyes open. And the first time I took a nap, I was running into my pacer because my eyes were closing and I was like drifting into my pacer. It's like, okay, I need to sleep and I need to sleep right now.

36:02And shockingly, five to seven minutes makes a huge difference. Huge difference. You wouldn't think, but suddenly you're like a different person, which makes me think like, well, maybe a few more five minute naps because it seems like it compensates for so much, right? Yeah. I don't know if my body or my brain maybe just needed to do something else for a minute. Because, you know, all I'm doing is running and eating and drinking and like that's navigating, I guess. And so you get you just kind of it's almost like when your computer is going haywire and you just turn it off and back on again. Like, I think that's what I need to do is I just need to reboot for five minutes and then I'm good to go.

36:45Usually. So crazy. Yeah. That's all you slept. Yeah, it is pretty weird. I think I only slept, I don't remember what I slept last year. It was under 30 minutes, though, last year. And then in Mammoth 200 that I did in September, I didn't sleep at all. And it was 214 miles. So over the course of 44 or 46, I don't remember what my time was, zero. You mentioned that you don't really hallucinate, but you did hallucinate in this race. You had kind of a crazy one. This year? Yeah. Did I hallucinate something? unless I misread. One year I saw myself. You saw yourself. Okay. I want to hear about that.

37:23But what I read is you met a Native American woman. Oh, that was real. Yeah. Oh, that was real. That was real. Okay. Yeah. And I did, I'll talk about that because I love that story. I think it's super sick. Well, tell it. And I do know that it was real because I found it on the live stream. I found the moment on the live stream and I was like, yes. You weren't sure that it was real? I knew it was, but there was a lot of naysayers that said, wasn't um but okay so i'm going up the last climb so mount eldon which i have a personal history with of not having a good time and then deciding i'm going to have a good time with a pacer so i can i can offload some of my mental anxiety to that pacer last year this year there were no pacers allowed and so i really liked that idea because i went from failing to succeeding with help and now i get an opportunity to succeed by myself so yeah going into this climb i was i was really looking forward to the story that I was going to get to write.

38:24And yeah, so I'm going around, you know, I start climbing up, you go around Little Eldon first, and then you get to this junction where you're about to start the big climb up to the top of the summit. And it's about five miles or something. And there's this woman in street clothes standing in the middle of the trail in this junction and I know she's real and um and I had a camera person following behind me and we weren't talking because I didn't want to I wanted to do it by myself I didn't want so I just pretended like she wasn't there but I do remember the woman saying hey I would like you to not film this and so there's a moment where you see the woman on the live stream and then the camera turns away and I found that moment so it was real but yeah and so this woman is she starts talking in a it's like a mix of English and whatever the native language was but she told me that she was a Hopi woman and she's holding on to something and she you know it her presence was so shocking that she starts talking to me and I just immediately stop I'm in the middle of a race and I'm winning and I don't know how far Killian is behind me but like I'm stopping right now because it just feels like what I'm supposed to be doing is I'm supposed to stop and I'm supposed to receive what this woman is about to tell me and so she she tells me like she's not a runner and she's never followed this race before, but she heard what was happening.

39:45She heard that I was leading and she was just flabbergasted. Like it was, it was amazing what I was doing. And to be told that when you're about to climb up 1500 more feet is pretty cool, admittedly. Um, and you know, she told me that like the implications that I had for women in general, like athletes or not was massive. And it was beyond what I could comprehend. And I was, you know, I'm just out of my mind. I've slept 19 minutes. And so I'm just sitting here weeping when this woman is telling me all this stuff, because it's just, it's like, it was so comforting to hear this. And so she gives me, she's holding, it looks like sand, but she gives it to me and it's cornmeal.

40:29And I guess in Hopi culture, that's very symbolic of like community and, and yeah, like, I don't know, togetherness and strength. And so for her to give that to me when I needed it most was, it was almost like she knew I hated that climb and she was giving me the strength to do it. And so she was like, you know, this, I want to give this to you. This is yours. You can do whatever you want with it. And she just gives me this cornmeal and I'm standing in the middle of the trail holding this cornmeal. And I'm just like I don't know what to do with this so I put it in my pocket and then I have some cornmeal residue on my hands and I just like wipe it on my thighs and that's the moment that I decide that I'm climbing this entire thing I'm going to run this entire climb and I do and it was awesome and it was like it was almost an out-of-body experience because I it's almost like the race like I would have never predicted that I won this race outright I would have never in a million years been like oh yeah I'm gonna climb the whole Eldon climb but I did I mean I dropped my camera person my camera person who was fresh could not keep up with me and I had just run 240 miles and that was like I remember in the moment being like holy crap like I'm dropping my camera person but just being like yeah it doesn't matter like keep running like you've got to keep running and so I got I didn't make it to well I did make it to the summit obviously but I remember there's a section of single track and it's really beautiful it's very heavily wooded there was some snow and so it was just really magical.

41:57And I remember there's like two little climbs and then you go down and then there's a forest surface road to get you to the top of Eldon. And at the top of the second climb, I'm still on single track. I remember I like just stopped and I get my hand in my pocket and I just like take the cornmeal and just yuck it off the side of the cliff. And I don't know, I don't know why I did that, but it just felt like the right thing to do. I remember thinking like this gave me so much strength like I want to give I was thinking about Killian actually because I knew that Killian was somewhere behind me and I also knew from my crew that he was struggling really hard and so it's like well this is for whoever's behind me you know I was given this and now I've I'm good so like it's time to pass it on yeah it's not yours to hold on to you it gave you what you needed and now it's time to pass it along yeah well not a hallucination so So she blesses you with this extra, I mean, it feels like a hallucination.

42:54It felt wild. Yeah, I'm going to decide that it still was. I don't care what the live stream said. Like, it's a better story. That's fine. I just magically had sand in my pocket. But she, yeah, the ineffable was made material for you, right? Maybe.

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46:09What have you learned about human potential? Like you've tapped into something that I would suspect, you know, I don't know, five or eight years ago, what you wouldn't have imagined you were capable of. Certainly not. I think it's kind of what we've what we've been talking about is I shouldn't assume that I'm not able to do something just because the data doesn't necessarily support it. Like, again, if we're looking at my spreadsheet, I was 6130. and obviously I beat that by I don't do public math but I beat that by a considerable amount I mean I did 56 hours I knew that I'd put in a lot of work it wasn't foolish optimism but it was Killian Korth calls it delusional self belief like it's not necessarily delusional I think we're talking down on ourselves a little bit but like I had put in the work I had had success previously I had shown improvements I think what drove me at this Cocodona was a curiosity more than it was anything else.

47:11Like, all right, well, I'm running really well right now. How long can I run this well? I don't think that trying to discover that outer limit, that's not going to be something that I need to chase. I think I'm just going to naturally get there by being curious. But I think, too, this year's Cocodona was so fascinating because if you do look at Killian Korth, who I'm going to give his flowers to, like, nobody picked him. I didn't even pick him to win because he's never had a successful race here. You know, he has allergies and he tore his hamstring and he's DNF'd this race twice and then finished in like 20th once.

47:47How in the world? He PR'd that race by 24 hours. Oh, wow. Or 25 hours. Like wild stuff. A day. A day. A full day. Like I'm not an idiot for not picking you. I was just using logic. But I don't know. I think that the chase for human potential does involve some sort of like, it does involve some sort of, well, why not? Like some sort of delusional version of self-belief kind of has to be there in order for you to believe that you could accomplish something that nobody else has. Well, there's the belief and then there's the objective potential that somebody has, right? In order to tap into that potential or manifest it, you need that belief.

48:29and the more, the deeper, you know, that you want to tap into it, the more kind of elevated the belief has to be. But fundamentally, like we all have untapped potential, right? Like you've been able to tap deeply into yours, but you know, could have gone like, it's not like you were running competitively, collegiately and have been your entire life. Like something, some switch could have gotten flicked and you would have never even gone into running, you know, and you would have lived your whole life not knowing that you had this capacity, you know what I mean? Yeah. All right. Well, let's take it back.

49:09I want to hear the, you know, the hero's journey, the origin story. You're from Birmingham, Alabama, Southern girl. Yep. Were you like athletic as a kid? Were you playing sports or no? I was playing sports. Yeah. I would say I was good at exactly zero sports, but what I lacked in skill, I made up for in enthusiasm. I played basketball and soccer, I would say the most. And both of those are sports that involve running in some capacity. But I tried out for the cross country team in high school and I did not make it because I was too slow. You didn't make the cross country team. Yeah. You had to run five miles and I think it was an hour and I did not do that.

49:53Usually there aren't even tryouts because like no one wants to even do that sport i don't think i was formally cut but it was kind of this understanding of like if you can't do this you don't need to come back wow so i didn't make it or i saw myself out i feel like you need to go back and visit coach gains yeah i know i know at least send an email yeah hey by the way i'm not sucking now yeah no i i mean i think i i always liked running if there was a purpose i didn't understand that running could be the purpose at the time. But yeah, I played sports, but I wasn't very good at them. I was overweight as a kid, had zero self-esteem at all.

50:33And so one of the things, my origin story with running is a little bit muddy because one of the big reasons why I got into running was actually because I was anorexic for a while. So my junior year to my senior year, a lot of personal drama and family drama and relationship drama happened. And I just like, I had had poor self-esteem growing up, um, mostly around my body image. I was, I was really good friends with a girl who is literally a model. And so I was kind of always getting seconded because everybody really wanted to talk to her. And I was just like the funny fat kid kind of thing. And what was going on at home that was contributing to the low self-esteem or was that outside was that just your friend circle that was driving that i don't think anybody was saying anything i think it was just you know i growing up in the late 90s early 2000s there were people on the covers of magazines and they did not look like me um in the sense that like i was overweight and the idea of beauty was not what I looked like.

51:45And, you know, my parents and my friends and all these, you know, they were always very positive. Like no one ever was like, well, you're fat. So that's why your life sucks. But I told myself that enough that eventually it became true. And so, you know, I had a couple different, like I said, family and personal drama that basically convinced me that like, well, if I'm thinner, things will be better and I'll be better. And I'll, you know, if I can't have happiness, at least I can have this. and like I can be beautiful, you know? And so, and as it turns out, I was, I'm very good at doing one thing.

52:20And so the thing that I decided to be good at was not healthy, not healthy. And I discovered running in that way because it was, you know, obviously, we know how calories work. And when you exercise, you know, you burn them. And so I would go to the gym kind of as a way to escape my home life too. I would just go after school and I would just run on the treadmill for hours. And even when I wasn't calorically meeting my own needs, I could still do it. And I liked how I felt when I was doing it. And so, you know, obviously that had a short shelf life because eventually I got to a point where I recognized that I needed help and I was not going to live very long if I kept doing what I was doing.

53:01And I wasn't able to stop. Working out like a maniac, not eating at all. Bulimic too or just? No, just anorexic. sick. Thank goodness, because I can't imagine how much more difficult it is to have to manage that, I think. But but it's I mean, all of them are hard and all of them I was unable to fix on my own. And I recognize that, like, all right, I need I went to rehab actually twice. And you were when you were in high school. I had just graduated from high school when I like instead of going to college my first year, I went to rehab twice. So I missed the full year. But, you know, I'm. I don't know.

53:36For me, it was like I was always going to have to go to rehab twice because I needed to learn it the hard way, as is my custom. I faked it. I've been there. We fake it. We're like, oh, we'll be fine. I just need to get out of here so I can go back to doing my thing. Yeah. And get these people off my back. Exactly. Like, they don't know what they're talking about with talking about my feelings. And so, you know, I faked it for three months. I got out within a month. I was like, wait a second. I'm still miserable. I still hate this. I'm still lying to my friends. I'm still lying to myself. And I don't want to live this way anymore.

54:08Like I want to believe that my life does not have to be this grim. And at the same time, I loved the confidence that running gave me. Even when I wasn't feeling properly and even when I was like early in my eating disorder and I didn't look any differently, I felt more confident and I felt more capable after I ran. And so I knew after, once I got into rehab the second time, I knew I was like, okay, I need to figure out how to do this safely when I get out of here. Because I obviously just tried to do it unsafely again and got the same result. So if I want this to be a part of my life, if I want to use this to build confidence, I need to figure out how to do it properly so that I can do it forever.

54:50Yeah. Well, psychologically, they're both ways of exerting control. Yeah. whether it's through food or whether, you know, movement, exercise, fitness in these things. And if there's, you know, chaos at home or whatever, it's a, it's a, it's a very comforting. Yeah. I choose this. Yeah. Anything can be unhealthy, you know, so. Yeah. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Like learning how to do it in a healthy way. Yeah. Is still confronting you with that control impulse and forcing you to figure out how to balance that against like the obsessive version of it. You do it by running 250 miles.

55:32Yeah. Super normal. It took me a while to, you know, I got out of rehab and I was healthy and my brain was still just like halfway in and halfway out, but at least I was halfway in. And then over, over the years, like I, I realized that if I want to be like, I'm, I'm good at running. I was always, you know, as soon as I started long distance running in particular, I ran my first marathon as a freshman in college. And I did that and I was like, holy crap, like I did pretty well. And I also don't feel that tired. So I think I might be good at this. And then I realized if I want to be good at this, then I have to treat eating like it's a part of my job.

56:14And so it took me probably four years to figure out how to do that, how to bring enough fuel on runs where I wasn't bonking. And obviously that's a work in progress as the things get longer and longer. And now I've just somewhat outsourced it to professionals who can just put gas in the car and I just run. But, you know, too, I think that is a skill in and of itself. Because I remember at Chianti, Precision puts out data. And they had three athletes there. I was one and then there were two more and they put out all of our grams of carbs per hour that we were doing and with eating disorders or any addiction a lot of it is a comparison game and I remember you know mine was 60 a person's was 120 and then another person's was 80 and my first thought was like how do I get that number higher like they're all here and I'm down here and like maybe if I get that number higher I could unlock even more potential and that was my first thought and then my second thought was like holy shit have I come a long way because if I were still ill my first thought would be like I only did 60 I'm better because I did less and I'm I'm somehow this like superior person because I can do the same thing on less and that's like yeah and so I remember in that moment being really proud of like how far I've come yeah it represents this shift in perceiving running not as a, like a weight management strategy or weight loss strategy, but as a, you know, like a, a performance, you know, minded relationship.

57:51Come a long way. Yeah. Come a long way. Cause I mean. So, but, but I'm sure people say to you all the time, like you traded your addictions or this is just an addiction. I don't think this one's going to kill me fast enough. That one, I mean, anorexia until like fentanyl came around was the, or I guess eating disorders were the number one mental health killer in human beings. I don't think if I'm, you know, and I say this again, understanding that people die during ultra marathons sometimes, but like, I think I'm a little bit safer on this one. So what is your message directly to the person who is struggling with an eating disorder right now?

58:30I mean, I guess it's sort of similar to, you know, running is just this like life in a day, right? Why not believe that it can get better? You know, why not choose right now to make the choice that has the potential for long-term positive effects? For me with anorexia, I mean, my number one issue was intake. Once it was there, it was my job to work through the feelings associated with, you know, eating. So all I could really ever do is just like, all right, like believe that this is the right thing. And like, don't try to undo it. Like, don't try to, oh, I ate something. Now I can't eat for the next day.

59:16Or now I have to go and I have to like work it off in some way. Like, no, like the correct thing to do is like, do the right thing and continue that up with doing all the right things and believe that it's going to get better. Believe that you're going to get to a place where you truly believe that nobody cares how you look and like you love the person that you are regardless of how you actually look um so yeah just believe do the right thing and believe that it'll get you to a place that you want to be well you have this joyful relationship with running and and with your sport and clearly you've figured out how to tap into gratitude and and you know like the, the kind of happiness quotient with, you know, this torturous sport.

1:00:05But I would imagine at the beginning, at least there were times when running was what you would use to punish yourself. Like if you would, Oh, like I, I, I ate too much and now I have to go run 20 miles or whatever to work it off. And that's a, that's a negative association. Like I have to, I have to like martyr myself yeah because i'm bad because i ate whatever i yeah you know yeah i might have done that some when i was sick but i think a big part of that actually came when i was like when i was little because we would do sports and if you messed up you'd have to run laps and like that kind of associated running with this punishment so it's been fun to kind of take that back of like nope this is actually been that way yeah it's like oh you're in trouble now you have to go run like Like running is what you do when you're being shamed.

1:00:54I know. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think when I was struggling with my stuff, I don't think running, I don't know if I ever really, I used that as an example earlier. But looking back, I don't ever think I used it as a punishment. I would always do the run because I enjoyed it. I would just follow it up with behaviors that were not productive. um but i i always i don't know what i guess it was that switch that flipped when i needed it to when i needed to feel good about something running was there to be like actually you feel good when you do this because yeah i've never necessarily looked at it as like a way to punish myself yeah that's good which is nice yeah um there's so many different kinds of running there's there's the you know, recess, you're in trouble run.

1:01:43There's track and field, there's cross country, you know, the hundred meter dash. Uh, and then there's the super long ultra trail runs, which I associate with being perhaps the most primal, like kind of DNA embedded sort of type of running because of our ancestry as persistent hunters. Is there a spirituality to any of it? Like just being in the largesse of nature out there? I mean, I'm thinking of your stints in rehab. Like, I don't know what the healing modality was, but in typical 12-step addiction recovery, you're introduced to ideas of surrender and turning it over to a higher power. And it is a spiritual program, fundamentally, at least the 12-step version of it is.

1:02:37And so I'm curious around your relationship with that with respect to your recovery from eating disorders and your relationship with being an ultra runner and how your immersion in nature contributes to that. I think that being particularly being either alone in nature, especially when I'm way out there, or with being with a small group of people that I love and trust. When I'm out in the middle of nowhere, solo or in a group, it feels so big and it feels so beyond me. It's like it's insane. I don't know what my stance is necessarily on religion, but it's hard not to just feel like in awe of however this came about.

1:03:28But it allows you to inhabit awe and wonder more easily. Yeah. Yeah. And there's undeniably like this, it's clear like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Like you're living in integrity with who you are. Like you're on your correct path. I think so. Yeah. And I and I think, too, particularly when you do get an opportunity to share that experience with somebody else, even even Coca-Dona, I was one on one experiencing it with my pacers and my crew. But I feel a connection to every person that even towed that start line because we all were in the same place trying to do the same thing.

1:04:11And so I've talked with Killian quite a bit about this idea of like universal human consciousness. I don't know if that's necessarily tied to spirituality, but that is something that I fully think is, I understand that part of it. Like the oneness of everything. Yeah. I'm very into like this. It's almost like a yogi principle of like, we're all in this together, you know, and what you put out into the world, you're going to, I like to believe that you'll get that back. And so if I'm putting out, you know, if I'm if I'm choosing to be this positive, happy person and I'm putting that if I'm throwing the cornmeal off the top, I'll get the cornmeal back at some point.

1:04:50And I'm not doing it so that I can have this quid pro quo of like, well, if I'm good, then I get stuff to like, no, I'm doing it because I think it feels like the right. It feels like the correct path for me to be on. I feel like I want to give back to the world that's given me so much. and assuming a just world, like maybe there's a chance that I can get something back from that too. Yeah. I think that the reason why so many addicts in recovery, you know, end up at the starting line of these ultras, you know what I mean? It's too lazy to just say, oh, they transferred their addiction. I think that fundamentally, you know, addicts are seekers and they're seeking answers to very uncomfortable and difficult questions and they end up doing it in very unhealthy ways and bottom out but they're still seekers and i think these ultra races are like incredible like spiritual odysseys that force you to confront yourself in ways that you can't run away from.

1:05:59So there are opportunities for self-understanding and, and they have their moments of transcendence. You know, you can't go 250 miles without meeting yourself exactly who you are. Haggard and stacking rocks. Yeah. Like having to confront, like, you know, there's, you just cannot run away from whatever you're compartmentalizing. It all comes up. Right. And you have to contend with that. And then you have these like, you know, breakthrough moments of feeling like you're at one with everything and they are transcendent by, by nature. I think they are really like, they're not athletic competitions.

1:06:36They're like, they're, they're more like psychedelic journeys. You know what I mean? I definitely, I feel like that's part of the allure for, you know, somebody who comes from that, like, you know, kind of struggle. Yeah, I think for me, running has become this thing where it makes me a better person. And whether that's, you know, I think particularly where you, you have a good point with, you're unable to run away from who you are when you're out there by yourself. Like, there are thoughts that are going to come up and you alone have to manage and deal with those thoughts. And that's the opposite of addiction, which is using something to run away from whatever it is that makes you uncomfortable.

1:07:18Like you're running towards the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Yeah. When I sign up for a race, I fully understand that at some point out there, I'm probably going to cry. And it could be good. It could be bad. It could be I'm having to, like during Cascade Crest. I mean, that race, during the time, it was the worst and I was very unhappy. But like looking back, I'm so grateful for that experience because it showed me that I am focusing on the wrong thing. And when I was out there, I very quickly came to the conclusion, you know, I'm yakking up my guts at mile 80. And I'm just like, boy, focusing on winning, not making me very happy.

1:07:57Like this is something that I'm going to have to do a lot of uncomfortable work on improving. and without that negative experience, without signing up for that race, I would not have gotten that opportunity. And so, you know, again, I don't think I'm endorsing everybody going out and running ultra marathons in order to find their nirvana, but I think we are in a society where we can pick up our phones and we can, we're talking about offloading our response, like we can offload the responsibility of looking inward onto like, well, I'd rather watch this reel of a guy punching a penguin. Like we're almost addicted to not being uncomfortable.

1:08:33nowadays. And I think that when we're sitting by ourselves and we're forced to not turn away from our uncomfortable thoughts, that's when a lot of work is done. And that is what running does for me. Maybe I would have found it with something else, maybe cycling or maybe meditation or maybe knitting. I don't know, like whatever. But I just I hope that we become a society that's a little more okay with confronting uncomfortable thoughts and then not turning away from them the moment that we notice that's what we're doing. Like they're uncomfortable because it means that something needs to change.

1:09:12And you have the power to enforce that change. Sure. But you have to give yourself the space to even notice it first. What's your pitch to somebody who's now flirting with the idea of getting involved in this world? I mean, please don't go out there untrained and die. But like, I don't know if why not try to do you're going to learn a lot more about who you are if you try to do something that sounds crazy than you are if you're just going to sit there and wonder what would happen if you were to try. Because I mean, I flirted with the idea of doing Cocoa Donut for years before I signed up for it.

1:09:44And then I remember in 2024, I didn't have the money to do it. I didn't know how I was going to do it. But I was like, you know what? It'll it'll I'll figure it out. I'm just going to sign up for it. and it wound up being the start of this incredible journey that I'm so stoked happened to me. Yeah, I think you can. It changed my life. It's fair to say that. I mean, it changed my life and it changed it only for the better. And it's given me tons of opportunities since. So yeah, I mean, if you're flirting with the idea of doing something that sounds crazy, it probably means that you're thinking about things the right way.

1:10:16What's coming up for you? What are you training for right now? The UTMB. So that sounds crazy to me. The UTMB. Yeah. The big loop. The Super Bowl of ultra running. Yeah. And again, I'm not, I, it's the first time I've done this race. I have no expectations on any placements. My goal is to have a good time that week. I think it'll be really fun. I'm going, I get an opportunity to go out well in advance. I'll be leaving at the end of July to go and I'll do the whole loop before I do the race. So I'm, you know, I'm doing something crazy, but I'm setting myself up to at least be able to complete it safely.

1:10:55So I feel like I'm trying to put myself in a spot where I can perform to my potential while still remaining curious about what it's going to look like when it's all said and done. So I'm really excited. Well, you're super inspiring. You're really a bright light in this world. And I appreciate the service oriented kind of commitment to giving back, like understanding that your success comes with not just a responsibility to make this world better and make it more accessible and and aspirational for people. but that that is like just it's not a responsibility like a burden it's more like oh this is this is the way of living you know what i mean like this is a way of life and i think that's applicable to all of us in whatever kind of you know context yeah is it the spider-man quote that's to who much is given much is expected that's something that i've had to really try to apply is like i've I have been given a lot.

1:12:05And so there should be a lot of things that are expected of me. And I am in a place where I need to try to do them when I can. I think you have been doing this for a long time, but I also feel like you're just starting. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly this part. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, I'm a super fan. Oh, stop it. And this was really fun. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thanks for doing this. And best of luck at UTM. Thank you. Cheers.

1:12:33you