Episode 637: Croix Sather

0:09Jason Fitzgerald: Welcome to The Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. Whether you are a brand new runner or you already have a great mustache, we're here to help you increase your running knowledge and present it at a practical level. This is The Running Public.

0:30Jason Fitzgerald: When you're ready to take your training or racing to the next level, go to the running public.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching.

0:44Croix Sather: Again, go to the running public.com and check out our offerings.

0:48Jason Fitzgerald: Where are you sitting right now, Croy? It looks gorgeous behind you. Where do you live?

0:53Brendan M. O'Malley: I am in Connecticut. Got a nice little river there.

0:58Jason Fitzgerald: that goes around the whole yard. Oh, wow. Do you live on your own moat there? Or what is the situation? Where is the dragon guarding the castle there?

1:09Brendan M. O'Malley: He's around the...

1:10Jason Fitzgerald: There's his house.

1:11Brendan M. O'Malley: You can see the dragon's house.

1:13Jason Fitzgerald: Oh, I see it. So do you literally live... Does that creek just wrap around your home back there? Is that how it works?

1:20Brendan M. O'Malley: Yeah, I live on an oxbow here. So the river goes around two sides of the property. It's why I bought the house. I wasn't even in the market for a house, and this one had a for sale by owner. And so I drove down the driveway, which is an 800-foot driveway. And I get to the bottom. The house is just kind of bland looking, but the property was just extraordinary. So I bought the house, and then I rebuilt the whole property, rebuilt the house. So I bought the property and then rebuilt the house.

1:49Jason Fitzgerald: Brecken, do you know what an oxbow is? An oxbow? Yeah, it's a term I use often, actually. I know what it represents. I don't know what a real oxbow is. Well, an oxbow would be like a curve in a river, a creek. Right. Sort of makes a point. But why is it an oxbow?

2:06Croix Sather: I don't know why it's called an oxbow. Entomology-wise, I have no idea what you're talking about.

2:12Brendan M. O'Malley: I think it's because it looks like the thing that the oxen wear that has that curve on it, it's a little bit more than a 90-degree turn. So the river comes down, creates a loop, and then keeps going.

2:25Croix Sather: That's called an oxbow. It's called an oxbow.

2:29Brendan M. O'Malley: It's a yoke. A yoke. An oxen, that's a yoke.

2:33Jason Fitzgerald: All right, we're lost already. Well, I learned something today. That would make sense. I didn't know origin of oxbow. See, not that I need to get into what I do with my free time, but a little bit. I spend a lot of time in the woods and around creek and river systems, and oxbows are things that I look for, so I'm intrigued by oxbows. But we'll move on. Why? Do they bed down in the tall grass in the oxbow? It's often you can play it based on the wind or, yeah, some of the topography for that reason, yeah. But I'm a deer hunter, Croy, and so oxbows and me, we get along. Yeah. So fill me in. So you're down in Kentucky.

3:09Jason Fitzgerald: Are you in hill country down there? Connecticut. Did you say Connecticut? Sorry?

3:13Brendan M. O'Malley: Yeah, Connecticut. At the moment, I'm in Connecticut, but I'm more nomadic than anything.

3:19Jason Fitzgerald: Well, that's kind of the problem with you, isn't it?

3:22Brendan M. O'Malley: It has been for a long time, yes.

3:28Croix Sather: Did you read up on Croy? I did, and we haven't done this in a while. But I feel like this is one where we just need to go all the way back to the origins and then work our way up to present. Kind of do.

3:40Jason Fitzgerald: Are you sick of telling your origin story, Croy? I listen to some of your TED Talks.

3:46Brendan M. O'Malley: I don't know if I get sick of it. I don't think that would be the right way to say it, but I definitely have told it many, many times.

3:53Jason Fitzgerald: Well, present day, how old are you as of today?

3:58Brendan M. O'Malley: 55.

3:59Jason Fitzgerald: 55. And how long have you been pursuing endurance feats, we will call it?

4:06Brendan M. O'Malley: Since 40. I started late. I started at 40. Oh.

4:12Jason Fitzgerald: Okay. I assumed it was earlier.

4:14Brendan M. O'Malley: No, I was not an athlete before 39. Technically, I started late 39, but we can just say 40.

4:21Jason Fitzgerald: Well, I want to rip the bandaid off, Bracken, if you don't mind, and tell the listeners what this gentleman has done. And then I want to not talk about any of them until we find out how you got here. So do you know, Croy, that you are the third person we've had on the podcast who's run across America? Do you know that?

4:39Brendan M. O'Malley: That's interesting. Who are the other two?

4:41Jason Fitzgerald: Mike Wardian, if you're familiar with Mike. And then Betsy Mueller, who did it, how long ago was that? Last year. last year into this year mike wardian went for all this year no it was last last may yeah but mike wardian went but you've done other things too but i want to talk about this because i want to see what parallels are with that experience um you've run a hundred consecutive marathons

5:08Brendan M. O'Malley: 100 consecutive days is that accurate uh 100 yeah 100 marathons in 100 days from california to new

5:14Jason Fitzgerald: york okay wow and i assume that was part of that process right what do you mean process oh sorry running across america oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and then uh death valley uh pursuit would just

5:26Brendan M. O'Malley: self-supported i believe is that correct yep a solo self-contained crossing that happened a year after run across america and then it just happened two weeks ago again so you've done it twice uh Three times, actually. So I DNF'd twice and I broke the record once. Wow.

5:44Croix Sather: Are you recovered today as we speak?

5:49Brendan M. O'Malley: That's a complicated question, actually. Physically, more or less, yes, I've recovered. I only made it 41 miles this last time. And that's nothing for me in terms of distance for my legs and body. But the heat at 124, that kind of wrecked me. and so I still have a little bit of remnants of that in my chest and then I nearly had heat stroke and I was literally within miles of just passing out and dying. Finally, my team, luckily my team took me off and they talked reasoning to me and saved me from myself and took me off the race even though I didn't want to. It was a smart thing to do and that actually saved my life.

6:30Jason Fitzgerald: And that was just two weeks ago?

6:31Brendan M. O'Malley: That was two weeks ago yesterday.

6:35Jason Fitzgerald: Wow. All right. Now we're not going to talk about any of that yet. I do want to know where you came from, how this, you ended up at 40, finally finding all of this at 40. So bring us back. Can you bring us back just a little bit? Like, I know you had an interesting happening as a young child, of course, but like, where did you grow up? Did you have a background in sport? Any of that?

6:57Brendan M. O'Malley: when i was a kid i was a great swimmer and i was 13 years old and i was competing against the 18 year olds and i was placing them at the top three in every race so swimming swimming comes natural to me i've been swimming since i literally since i was an infant and well learn you know started when i was an infant and it was something i really really enjoyed but at 14 years old i was in a bad car accident where i was riding home on my bicycle and a drunk driver came over the crest of the hill, didn't see me, crossed over the W-O line and hit me head on, crushed my bike below her big metal bumper.

7:31Brendan M. O'Malley: I hit the windshield, flew 50 feet into the air. They brought me down to a local hospital where they couldn't handle the trauma because it was so severe. So they sent me down to New York City where the neurosurgeon said that from where I fractured my skull, that I'd be a vegetable for the rest of my life if I even survived the night. And so from that event, which was a coma for four days, weeks in the hospital, years of physical rehab, learning how to walk and run and doing all the things that you take for granted. Through that process, I lost my drive to swim. And so I have never really done anything athletic ever since I was 14, other than working out in the basement of my dad's house with my brother.

8:11Brendan M. O'Malley: It was the only thing I've ever done. But I had watched a video of Stu Middleman, the legendary runner who still has records today, even though he's been long retired from running. And I watched a video of him that he ran across America and he tried to break the record at the time. I think it was 57 days he did it in. And I saw that. I'm like, that is the coolest freaking thing I've ever heard in my life. I've got to do it, but I wasn't a runner. But I decided to do it. And then a year later, I was running across America, starting in San Diego, underneath the statue of Rocky Balboa. There are two statues, one in Philadelphia, one in San Diego.

8:43Brendan M. O'Malley: And so I started it underneath that statue and then I ran across America on a marathon a day for 100 days.

8:49Jason Fitzgerald: And that was a year after discovering this was a thing and you had not run prior to that?

8:54Brendan M. O'Malley: Literally, I had one year of training before I started running across America. Literally one year.

8:59Jason Fitzgerald: Oh my goodness. Well, I want to ask you about that accident, if it's okay to talk about that. Do you remember anything from that time period, the days immediately out of the coma? Talk about how slow that recovery really was. I guess, first of all, do you remember anything about that really, or is it not so much?

9:23Brendan M. O'Malley: I remember the moments before it, because my friends and I, two of my buddies and I, we were at McDonald's and we were getting an ice cream. And I had, I forget if it was, I think it was$300 or$400 in my pocket because I was going to buy a remote control car that day, but I didn't for whatever reason. And so we'd go get ice cream, we're heading home, and it was just about the half mile after that that I got hit by the car. I don't remember getting hit. And I only remember one moment of it while I was in the ambulance getting transferred from one hospital to the other. And I remember waking up and seeing the bright lights on the ceiling of the ambulance, realizing I'm in some sort of a vehicle.

9:59Brendan M. O'Malley: And I leaned up, I actually sat up and I said, where am I? What happened? And the paramedic that was in the ambulance, a relatively big guy. He puts his hand on my shoulder. He says, don't worry, you've been in an accident. We're bringing you to the hospital. And with his hand on my shoulder, he helps me rest back down. And I remember those three or four seconds of it. And that was it for four days. And then when I wake up, I remember the first thing I see is my mom with her beautiful blonde hair and my dad, who was a big burly construction guy, standing behind her. And that was the first thing I remember waking up is to my parents, like basically saying, thank God that I've come too.

10:34Brendan M. O'Malley: But that was the beginning of two weeks in the hospital. And then it was a year of physical rehabilitation for my knee, where I had fractured my knee. So behind my growth plate of my knee was in bad shape. And then for years after that, I used to have headaches from where I had fractured the back of my skull, that when I would have an episode, it would drop me to my knees. Like the pain was just debilitating that I would end up on the floor for a few moments. That eventually went away. But that was, I don't know, that was a couple years or so before that eventually went on. And then I had some memory challenges for a long time after that, but I learned to reprogram my mind, I guess you could say, to have a, I guess I would have an average memory at this point.

11:14Brendan M. O'Malley: You know, for all intents and purposes, I'm normal, I think. Although you could argue that by what I've done with running across America to Death Valley, I might not be too normal after all.

11:27Jason Fitzgerald: So what were your injuries exactly from that day?

11:30Brendan M. O'Malley: I fractured the back of my skull from where I had landed on the blacktop after the car, or maybe it was the windshield, who knows. And I broke my knee, fractured the growth plate of my knee. So my knee had to be in a cast for, I forget how many months it was to allow the growth plate to heal before I was starting to walk again. And then the memory problems that lasted for, I don't know, a bunch of years after that. Was it like swelling in your brain as well, like the reason you were in a coma, just the brain trauma, I guess, simply put? I assume so. I don't remember. And I don't know if the doctors really knew back then.

12:10Brendan M. O'Malley: It was a different time. This was back in 1984. So doctors were a little different. The trauma units were a little different. And doctors even spoke different. I mean, he told my parents that either I'll die tonight or I'll be a vegetable for the rest of his life. And they don't use that kind of terminology, of course, anymore. And sort of the ironic thing is that I was a vegetarian for a long time.

12:35Croix Sather: And had you been wearing a helmet at the time? No, there were no such thing as helmets back then.

12:40Brendan M. O'Malley: Three helmet times. Three helmet times. I mean, we used to ride in the back of pickup trucks and, you know, the back of station wagons facing traffic. You know, yeah, there was none of that stuff back then.

12:50Croix Sather: And do you recall how long it took to gain acceptance or understanding that you had gone through what they said you did? Like from the time you woke up to the time you were like, all right, I was in an accident. This is what happened. Like 100 % clarity that that's what happened.

13:09Brendan M. O'Malley: I accepted it immediately, I think. It was just sort of, you know, you're 14 years old and you're just a kid and you just sort of go through life as, you know, what your parents told you. But what I learned from that circumstance or that event was, one, my parents would always tell me, my dad was a pastor, my grandfather was a reverend. So I grew up in a very religious family. And my mom and dad would tell me, God saved you for a reason. What are you gonna do with it? And so I always had this impression on life for two things. One is that I'm here to do something with my life. I had no idea what it was, of course, only 14 years old.

13:43Brendan M. O'Malley: And in some ways, I was 55. I still don't know what that is. I'll try to figure that out. But it was also that life is precious. And so I've had this zeal for life that I don't see in many other people. And generally, the people I see it in are people who have been through some sort of traumatic situation, whether it's an accident or some other near-death type thing or surviving some difficult situation. I usually only see it in people like that. And I almost kind of wish that people would go through this experience. Not that I want anybody to have to go through this, but to get that understanding of the world on how important life is, how fragile it is, and how you should live life to your fullest that you possibly can.

14:19Brendan M. O'Malley: Now, it hasn't been all rainbows and roses. It's come with some challenges too. I've been nomadic for the last 10 years and different things like that. It's brought me down paths of running across America and running through Death Valley, which nearly killed me, and other things that have really nearly taken my life. So my zeal for life often has pushed me to the very edge of living. And it's brought me a little too close to death a couple of times. And that's probably not such a great thing. Although I will say it has been a very interesting life.

14:51Croix Sather: So there's a gap there from 14 to 39 that what am I going to do with it? What did you do with it for those 25 years? Is that accurate, Math Kirk? That's a lot to ask.

15:03Jason Fitzgerald: I think that's about right. Not a math guy, correct. 26 details.

15:09Brendan M. O'Malley: When I was 16, I became a carpenter like my dad. I actually started work for him probably younger than that on weekends and summer breaks and things like that. My dad was a carpenter on weekends. He was a pastor. And so I became a carpenter like my brothers, like my dad, my uncles, and most of my family were in the trades of some sort. And so I became a carpenter. And I did that for about 20 years until my mid-30s. And I was good at it. And financially, it was very good to me. But it wasn't something I wanted to do for my whole life. I saw my dad and his buddies. They're all in their mid-50s and 60s, which are my age now.

15:43Brendan M. O'Malley: And these guys were like ancient at that time. They were beat up. and most of them had some sort of injury that had really screwed them up. Some of them were missing fingers or bad backs or whatever. My dad one time had a crowbar land on his head and knocked him out of work for eight months. And so all these injuries, I kept hearing these war stories about these injuries that would happen. I'm like, you know, this isn't the life I want, and I don't want to be old men like these guys when they're only in their 50s. And so I started looking for something else, but I didn't know what it was. And I go to this one event.

16:12Brendan M. O'Malley: It was in Boston. I'm in Connecticut. It was in Boston, so a few-hour drive. it was about it was a multi-speaker conference and i was going because there was a guy speaking about real estate and at that point i was in real estate i was flipping houses investing and so you know financially real estate and carpetry had been really really good to me at that age and i go to this multi-speaker event and you know guy comes out about the stock market guy comes out about real estate some taxes law whatever else it was and then tony robbins comes on you the motivational guru, especially of that time. This would have been, gosh, early 2000s, I guess.

16:51Brendan M. O'Malley: And so I go see Tony Robbins and he's talking about the power within and you can do anything and all this motivational stuff. And it really brought me to life. And I'm like, that's what I want to do. I didn't know you could be a speaker and make a living until I went to this event other than being a pastor. And pastor was definitely not going to be in my future. And so I had no idea this was like a legit kind of career. And so when I saw Tony Robbins and then all these other guys on there, I was like, this is what I wanted to do. So I immediately joined Toastmasters. And I was in college at that time.

17:20Brendan M. O'Malley: It took me 15 years to graduate college. I've been going part-time since I was early 20. I was going to college at night. And so I started taking speaking courses and communication courses. And I started making that transition in life. Even though I was doing carpentry during the day, I started speaking on the side. But I wasn't getting any paid gigs. So I'm like, how do I compete against astronauts and NFL football stars and these business moguls and all these guys in these high-paid speaking gigs? How do you compete against that? And so what I figured out is like, I got to do something extraordinary.

17:51Brendan M. O'Malley: And that's when I saw the video of Stu Middleman running across America. I'm like, that's perfect. One, I was like, that's the coolest thing ever. And two, that'll help me launch my business career. And so all of these things weren't just about running. It was about launching the whole business career, writing books and doing everything like that. So it was all sort of like a publicity stunt in a way, as well as doing something really, really cool.

18:13Croix Sather: Difference being you can't fake this type of publicity stunt. That is a, the shine wears off that real quick. But you saw it through.

18:26Brendan M. O'Malley: Well, I got lucky too. they say when you decide to do something that the universe will conspire to help you succeed. So once you choose something, you start taking significant action in the direction of your dreams, that things will conspire, things that will just fall into your lap that wouldn't normally happen. So in this case for me, when I decided to run across America and I started training, Stu Middleman happened to be coming to New York City, which is just right down the road from me. And one of my friends sent me the notification of Stu being in the city and he's running a runner's clinic.

19:00Brendan M. O'Malley: So for 99 bucks, I got to go down to New York City, be in a runner's clinic with Stu. And at the end of it, I invited him to dinner and told him what I was planning on doing and asked him if he would mentor me. And he did. And so he taught me the difference between running one marathon for your personal best as compared to one running a marathon a day, which is a totally different strategy. So the strategy on that is, how do you end up running a marathon and still have enough energy to get back and do it again the next day? So two totally different techniques. One is clearly slower and the idea of conserving energy and conserving muscle strength.

19:33Brendan M. O'Malley: And the other one is to get the best time you could possibly get. So I got lucky that that happened. And other things just sort of fell into my lap that wouldn't normally happen. But that's the idea that if you go after something you really, really want, doors open up for you that wouldn't otherwise open up.

19:48Jason Fitzgerald: You talk about what you were doing professionally for the abyss of 25 years, but you didn't touch once on what you're doing physically. I know carpentry can be physical work, but athletically, let's call it, or physical fitness-wise, what were you doing before 40?

20:10Brendan M. O'Malley: I was just a carpenter. I was always in relatively good shape, generally trim anyway. And I'd work out on and off with weights for most of my life, more often on, but I definitely had some pretty good strength for a relatively small-framed guy.

20:27Jason Fitzgerald: No aerobic work consistently, though. There was no, I went for jogs or I enjoyed skiing or anything. Your work was demanding, and once in a while, you lifted some weights outside of that for 20-plus years?

20:43Brendan M. O'Malley: Yeah, before I was 39, I essentially did no cardio other than when I was a teenager swimming. Ever since 14 to 39, I basically did zero cardio, um i'd occasionally try to take a jog and i'd make it like a mile and i'm like screw this crap this sucks and that would be about it but what i did have going for me is that my dad worked like like an animal and so did his brothers and all the guys that they worked with the generation above me i mean these guys worked hard and so i grew up learning how to work hard and so for me working a 14 15 16 hour day was normal and i did that for a lot of years so when the one thing i had going for me was not that I was a gifted runner, because I'm not, I'm still not.

21:24Brendan M. O'Malley: I'm a clunky runner. I'm a big guy, relatively big guy as compared to most of these guys that are doing three-hour marathons or two-and-a-half-hour marathons are better. So I'm a much bigger guy than that. But what I do have going for me is that the worth ethic that my dad taught me is just relentless, that you just keep going and you don't stop when you're tired, you just stop when you're done. And so I learned that from my dad and from my brothers is that you work your ass off until you get the job done. And that's what I had going for me. So running slow and long was a whole lot easier for me than trying for me to break a four-hour marathon is nearly impossible for me.

21:58Brendan M. O'Malley: That's my best time I ever had was a four-hour marathon. So I'm not a fast runner by any means. So I'm sitting here

22:05Croix Sather: trying to put myself in your shoes. I get excited by tasks and pursuits easily, so I get that. But But if I'm the person who sees an ultra endurance adventure feat and says, I got to do that, my mind would say, I think I'm going to do it in my venue, which would have been like swimming. As someone who just self-admittedly couldn't go much more than a mile, why did you choose to do running? Why didn't you try swimming for like swimming across the English Channel or all those different swimming endurance feats? Why did that not become it? Why was it running?

22:43Brendan M. O'Malley: I don't know. I saw that movie or that short film about Stu Middleman that ran across America, and he literally saw the country by foot. It just excited me. And I thought that has got to be one of the coolest things I've ever heard of because I didn't know that was even a thing. I didn't even know what ultramarathons were. And, of course, I had heard of marathons and 5Ks and things like that. I hadn't heard of them. I had never done any, but I had heard of them. But I had never heard of ultramarathons. So I didn't know that you could run 1 ,000 miles like Stu did. And I think he still holds that record, if I'm not mistaken.

23:13Brendan M. O'Malley: And then run across America and run around the Grand Canyon Rim and Death Valley. I had no idea these were things. It's like I didn't know speaking was a thing for a career. But I saw it. I fell in love with the idea. I was like, I want to see the country by foot. And at that point, I had never even driven across the country. So I had never seen most of America at that point. So it was just this whole adventure thing that I could do. And so, of course, I go and I tell my friends and my family, you know, I got this idea. I'm going to run across America. I'm going to run a marathon a day for 100 days, and I'm going to go from California to New York.

23:43Brendan M. O'Malley: And on top of that, every day I'm going to speak. So I'm going to have a motivational talk every single day, and then I'm going to run a marathon. And of course, what do you think they all said? You're crazy. It's stupid. Or my mom's favorite is what my mom would say. You're going to kill yourself. So these are the things that I used to hear. But it was like I was infected by this idea. And so I had to go and do it. And that's when I started training. I met Stu Middleman, and in one year, I made all these plans to be able to make it happen.

24:13Croix Sather: So from the day you decided to do it to the day you embarked, what was that duration? Nine months. Nine months. And how long had you been speaking for?

24:23Brendan M. O'Malley: At a professional level, I hadn't really spoke before. I think I had, no, at that point, I had not had any professional speaking other than, you know, a couple hundred dollars here and there for little things where you got what we call an honorarium, which is basically a tip.

24:37Croix Sather: Yeah. So when you decided to do this, you had not yet run a marathon and you had not yet had a professional speaking gig and you decided to do 100 of each consecutively.

24:49Brendan M. O'Malley: Exactly. It makes total sense.

24:51Croix Sather: Okay. So what did your preparation look like then from day one until the end of month nine? How did you prep for both of those pursuits?

25:01Brendan M. O'Malley: And I wrote a book at the same time. Of course. So just got to make it a little bit more difficult. I wrote the book in three months. I basically, that was my full-time job while I was writing it, which was just a few months before Run Across America. And so that would take up most of my day. And then I would run whatever amount of days it was that week. So my running actually wasn't that hard because I'd go run as far as I could. And then I'd take two or three days off. And then I'd go run as far as I could. And I'd take two or three days off. And as my body got stronger, the rest days got less and the distances got longer.

25:36Brendan M. O'Malley: So by the, I guess it was a month before Run Across America was winter here. And so there was snow on the ground. And so there was one path in the town next to me that was a one mile loop that was, the sidewalks were plowed or shoveled. And so I could run one mile flat loop. And I used to do that for four hours a day for five days a week. So I was running for four hours a day, five days a week, and then I would do all my work and organizing and planning this trip. And I wasn't making any income at the time. I was living off of savings and money I had made in the past, credit cards and home mortgage and things like that, equity mortgage.

26:11Brendan M. O'Malley: So I was taking my savings and the income I had from previous things to support me throughout this whole thing.

26:18Croix Sather: So no advance on the book. You just sat down to write a book that no one had asked for.

26:23Brendan M. O'Malley: Yes.

26:24Croix Sather: What was that book?

26:26Brendan M. O'Malley: It's called Dream Big, Act Big.

26:28Croix Sather: That seems accurate. it.

26:33Brendan M. O'Malley: Well, the book was the philosophy of what I was doing kind of in real time in a way. I didn't really tell the story in real time, but it was my philosophies on how I got there, which were the philosophy that I had learned from Tony Robbins and many others over the past bunch of years. So now I was 39, I was turning 40 while I was training for this. And so I had been into personal development. I had gone kind of crazy on that for a while, like really drank the kool-aid since i was 36 that was like three almost four years that i've been drinking the

27:01Jason Fitzgerald: kool-aid and and this was the results of it anybody anybody throw the term midlife crisis

27:08Brendan M. O'Malley: at you then croy well other guys buy ferraris or something or torvettes i i go and run across america it wasn't even midlife yet that's only 40 i hope that's not midlife i know i i kid i uh

27:20Jason Fitzgerald: i well one question i was going to ask you and you just started to talk about it right away as is like i always my mind just instantly thinks like the financial side like okay this guy worked hard to work in a trade and and build these businesses and then suddenly i'm not gonna say throw it all away but the risk at 40 to like i'm not going to make any money doing what i used to do and work so hard to position myself doing and just like risk it all call it 40? That takes, I mean, that takes no one. I mean, some people, probably people who love you very much are like, Kro, are you sure about that, brother?

27:57Jason Fitzgerald: Are you sure about that? Right? Like, did you ever backpedal? I guess is what I'm getting at.

28:04Brendan M. O'Malley: In 2008, when the market crashed and I was a million and a half dollars upside down, nearly lost everything, including my personal house. And so a mentor of mine was told me, you know, get out of the market now, whatever it takes, get out. So I was dropping the prices on the real estate I owned, not my primary house, but everything else. And I was dropping the prices and I ended up losing 50 grand on that and physical money. And then after taxes and stuff, losses and things like that, it ended up being kind of a wash at the end of the day. But I wasn't making money in real estate anymore anyways.

28:38Brendan M. O'Malley: So I was like, well, if I'm not making money and doing that anymore, then why not just go full into the career I really want to do? And so for there was a bunch of years that was very, very lean. It was very, very difficult financially, you know, burn through all my savings and credit lines and everything like that. It was rough for a while, but for me, it was worth it because I didn't want to be a carpenter for the rest of my life. And I know people who have gone down to like the corporate career or they've become attorneys or something. And I've met many of these people that it wasn't until they were in like their fifties or sixties where I was saying like, man, I wish I would have changed or I did change finally.

29:11Brendan M. O'Malley: And I gave that all up. And then now I'm doing something that I love. And I didn't want to end up being one of these people in my fifties or sixties that I'd just done something because it paid the bill. I wanted to be able to do something that I truly loved. And speaking and doing these athletic, you know, insane events is what lights me up. And it's why I went back to Death Valley just two weeks ago.

29:31Jason Fitzgerald: What I like about that is people are so risk averse and I've never been risk averse. So I do things all the time. People are like, well, the risk isn't worth the reward. And I'm like, well, I can always go back. Like, heaven forbid I pursue a passion and I have to walk back with my tail between my legs for a short amount of time to get myself square, but I have to try, right? Like, it's really not, nothing is that risky because you can always fall back on something if you had to. Now, you don't want to and your mission is to never, but I'm saying, like, taking the leap like that, I think people get really scared of things that they shouldn't be scared of because there's always going to be a plan B if you need it.

30:10Jason Fitzgerald: You know what I'm saying?

30:12Brendan M. O'Malley: I could always go pick up a hammer and a saw and go back to making$150 ,000 a year without a problem. And I could start it today. And I'd probably have work by the end of the week in a day or two. I'd have a full schedule of work, especially now because it's really hard to find a good carpenter or a good contractor. And so that would be no problem. That was always the thing. I could always go back to carpentry. And to pay the bills, there's been many times throughout the years that I went and I picked up side jobs just to be able to pay the rent and stuff like that. And so I wasn't so, I don't know what the word would be, but I wasn't so ego that I wouldn't go back and pick up a hammer.

30:49Brendan M. O'Malley: And if I had to today, I'd go do it again.

30:52Jason Fitzgerald: Yeah. Reminds me when I left the corporate world, left a six-figure job at 25 or six, you know, young, and left it to become a personal trainer and coach, right? People are like, are you kidding me? You didn't do that? And I had to get help by parents for rent for a month or two. But I can always go back to sales. Sales will always be there. And then just when I was on the cusp of it, Croy, it was like, I'm not making enough as a trainer. I got a second job teaching at an Orange Theory Fitness, being like, I need to scrounge to make the bills. It was like some floodgates opened on my business and they just kept walking in the door suddenly.

31:25Jason Fitzgerald: And then it, you know, worked out. But it was always that that safety plan was always there. And they were like, you're going to do what at this age? Leave all that for a job to work in sweatpants and you have no clients? I'm like, yes, exactly what I'm going to do. I can go sell crappy whatever later if I have to. But anyways, the other question I wanted to ask you was, I've been running 50 to 60 miles a week for decades, Croy. And if somebody said, Kirk, you need to go run across America, I'm like, I'll last four days. And I'll have a stress fracture, or I'll have plantar fasciitis so bad I can't walk, or I'll be so bored out of my mind that I would rather do anything else.

32:02Jason Fitzgerald: But I know I'm going to be injured. That's a guarantee. So then I take somebody who has nine months and no resistance to impact and spent no time on feet. And I try to like wrap my head around that. Like, Brackett, don't you think you'd end up with some overuse injury? It would be my entire concern. My entire concern. And I've spent my whole life running. This is my life. It's what we do. And I can't even fathom my body holding up for that. So like from that lens, Croy, like how did, how the heck, what did you do to make sure your body held up? Because that's a big ask after running for nine months.

32:36Brendan M. O'Malley: And not knowing anything about running or about most of these injuries that I now am very aware of, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I just would go, like I mentioned before, you know, I'd go out and run as far as I could on one day. I'd take three or four days off and then I'd go do it again. And it just, it built up the resistance. But what I had gone for me is all those years of carpentry. And so, you know, it's hard work, lifting weights, climbing up and down ladders all day. And so my body was physically strong. I wasn't a runner, but it was physically strong. And I think that helped a lot.

33:07Brendan M. O'Malley: And then I never listen to anything when I'm running. So I never have earbuds in. So no podcast, no audio books, no music, nothing. I've never done that. I've never listened to anything. And the reason for that is because I wanted to be in tune with my body. Whenever I put earbuds in, that was when I got hurt is because I stopped listening to my body. So I play Rocky music every once in a while. I take a pair of earbuds with me and then I'd go get hurt because I'm running too fast and too far or something like that. Once I took the earbuds out and I stopped using that, I never had an injury after that again.

33:38Brendan M. O'Malley: And so all of run across, all of the training to run across America and run across America, I didn't have any injuries. It wasn't until this one, now that I'm 55 and I went from basically zero again to running through Death Valley, which was 146 miles. This one, this time I was kind of plagued with injuries, nothing major, but there were little injuries all the time. My knees were hurt, my calves were were hurt and different things. But the problem I have now that I'm having a really big problem with, which has really nothing to do with running other than exacerbates an existing problem, is that I've gotten medium level scoliosis of my back.

34:14Brendan M. O'Malley: So my lower spine is all screwed up. And training this time to get ready to run through Death Valley again, it flared up my back so bad I ended up in the ER two times. And so this might be the limiting factor to my running career going forward. But it's not because of anything else, but the other injuries, they get better and they heal and they're fine. But I think it's all because that I listen to my body and my body says, slow down. I actually slow down.

34:39Jason Fitzgerald: You're muted, professional Bracken. Rookies.

34:43Croix Sather: You guys are such rookies. I got sirens going on like crazy here and I'm not handling it well. With Death Valley being so hot, especially this year and being unsupported or self-supported or unsupported?

34:59Brendan M. O'Malley: Self-contained. Unsupported self-contained.

35:02Croix Sather: You're just going to have to carry so much water. I assume you were training with a big pack. Is that part of the back issue?

35:10Brendan M. O'Malley: No, no. The back is injuries from when I was a kid. I mean, is that what flared it up this time? No, I'm actually pushed through Death Valley for solo self-contained. I'm actually pushing a cart. We joke around, call it the ice cream cart because it looks like I'm selling ice cream. And so that had this time 17 and a half gallons of water. So the water weight alone was almost 150 pounds plus all the other stuff. And by the end of it, I was 240, 250 pounds pushing this cart up and down the hills in Death Valley at 124 degrees. But the back injuries was from the car accident for one because the one leg is shorter than the other.

35:48So now my hips are slightly at a tilt or at a tilt.

35:52Brendan M. O'Malley: And so that compounded over 55 years of life or 40 some years since then. That has just caused the problems. And I've had problems with my back since then and other injuries I've had in carpentry. So you're lifting all these big lumber and everything and you fall down once in a while and it's just injury after injury. I never had an injury in running really, but I've had a lot of injuries in carpentry. And so everything just compounds and it's really screwed up my back. And so now I'm wondering if I keep doing this stupid stuff, am I going to end up in a wheelchair before I'm 70 or something? And so now that really scares me because for me to be in a wheelchair, that's not a life I can imagine or want to live.

36:31Croix Sather: I imagine you would instantly go for some sort of wheelchair endurance record. I watched a documentary when I was a little kid. My dad had us watch it. It was a part of it was this guy who did some sort of trans something record. He had no legs below like mid thigh. And so he would just plant on his knuckles and swing forward. And I'm with these gloves on his hands to prevent the crazy blisters. But like at all levels, there are people like you who have something wrong with them that can't accept the limitation. And they just, they pursue it.

37:10Brendan M. O'Malley: But why should we accept any limitations? Because for most of us, the limitation is the limitation we place on ourselves, psychologically, mentally, even spiritually. These are the limitations that we have. And then you don't know how far you can go, as the cliche goes. You don't know how far you could go until you've gone too far. And that was this Death Valley trip is me going to the very edge of going too far. The second time in my life I've come within minutes of dying.

37:37Jason Fitzgerald: and i want to get to that here um uh i still can't like going up and down ladders and carrying lumber is not 45 000 of the same exact step in a row overuse injury so talk to me about this listening to your body thing uh and not getting injured when doing so is there any more to dive into that? Like, can you give me, because I've been injured chronically chasing things. Bracken's been injured chronically as of late, late recent years. Help us, help some brothers out here, Croy, that get injured once in a while. What's your hot tips? Like, what do you mean listen to your body?

38:17Brendan M. O'Malley: Your body is much smarter than you are. It will give you signs. It'll give you warnings most of the time. And it will tell you. But if you got your earbuds on and you're listening to whatever music or whatever you're doing, you're not paying attention to those subtle signs because often they're very, very, very subtle. A little twinge here, a little tweak there. And if that's ignored long enough, then it'll turn into some major problem. And that's what most runners do. They have the earbuds on, they have their music going, they go out for a run. They've got a plan that I'm going to run a seven minute pace for 11 miles this weekend.

38:53Brendan M. O'Malley: And they stick with that plan regardless of what their body is telling them to do. Now, sometimes your body tells you to go farther and faster and better because everything's aligned, everything's working. But other times it's telling you, dude, this is not the weekend to go get a PR in a half marathon. But we don't listen to our body, especially in a race or coming up to a race because we're trying to get ready for it. And so if you take the music off, let your body tell you what it needs to tell you, you'll avoid most of your injuries. You may not be injury free, you, but you're going to avoid a lot of them.

39:26Jason Fitzgerald: So how do you extrapolate that over a hundred consecutive days with a hundred consecutive marathons when you have to, you must press on, right? That's the idea. Like you must press on. So you didn't have, you had no speed bumps on the injury front that way, or was it one of those things where, yeah, if something bothers me, like I will walk and still accrue mileage with minimal risk. Like how did you approach that?

39:50Brendan M. O'Malley: Well, Run Across America was definitely walk, run, walk, run, kind of the Galloway. Yeah. And some of the days I was super strong. My fastest marathon running across America was four and a half hours during the Dallas marathon. I just happened to be in Dallas when they were having a marathon and somebody sponsored me to run the race. So I'm like, well, I'm just going to run it. And so I did. And I got 436 or something like that, which was my, at that time was my fastest marathon I had ever run. But going to run across America, most of the time it was walk, run, walk, run. And depending on the day is depending on how fast or how slow I would be.

40:26Brendan M. O'Malley: And some days, especially like around week two and three, I think I was only walking, maybe a little bit of jogging as my body broke down severely because my body just wasn't ready to run a marathon a day yet. And it was on mile 21. It was at 10 o 'clock at night in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where my body just literally collapsed. And I ended up sitting in the street, still five miles left to go that night and tears are coming down my face. I'm in so much pain. I get myself up, I walk a quarter mile and I collapse again. And I do this several times. Eventually, I lay down on my back and I put my legs up in the air against a wall trying to maybe flush the lactic acid out or do something that's just going to help my legs feel better.

41:10Brendan M. O'Malley: Raise your legs kind of thing. And it didn't really help. It took me four hours to finish what should have taken me an hour or so. I get back to the RV, because me and my crew, we're all sleeping in an RV, get back to the RV, I fall asleep, I wake up four hours later, and I start the whole thing over. Speaking big first thing in the morning, and then running a marathon. Or in that case, it was barely walking a marathon. And for the next bunch of days after that, I was barely, barely walking. But after a few weeks of this, I started getting a little bit stronger, a little bit stronger. And then I remember waking up on day 54.

41:44Brendan M. O'Malley: I don't even remember where I was, but I remember being day 54 for whatever reason. And I woke up and it was like my body said, okay, you idiot. I get it. You're just not going to stop. Let's go do this. And then from then on, I was getting stronger and getting stronger and I was running more and more and more. So by the end of the last few weeks, I was running like eight and nine minute miles for the whole day. And that was my run. And there was very little walking towards the end. And in fact, I was a little behind schedule. So I was running 30 to 35 mile days for the last several weeks to make sure that I got in an average of a marathon a day to make up time.

42:19Brendan M. O'Malley: But the thing I discovered is that from day 21 when my body literally collapsed in the street to day 54 when my body was like, okay, I get it, dude, we're going to do this. In between, even though I couldn't really tell, my body was getting stronger even though it felt like it was getting weaker. So I'm recovering and recuperating and repairing all the time. I felt like garbage and my body just hurting so bad. But it's actually getting stronger through that process. And it wasn't until day 854 that I actually realized it. And that's when I felt it in my body, my mind and my body kind of aligned at that point.

42:53Brendan M. O'Malley: But the whole thing was a risk. To answer your question, Kirk, it's just, the whole thing was a risk. And I could have been taken out at any day by pulled hamstring or Achilles or whatever. And I just got lucky, I guess, that it never happened. Although I did listen to Rocky music one day running through Texas somewhere and I was on a dirt road and it was night and I didn't have a flashlight on because my eyes would adjust to night and I I wouldn't use a flashlight. I would run a lot at night for the Run Across America. And I didn't see the ravine coming up. And all of a sudden I'm running and like wildly coyote, like the road just disappeared underneath me.

43:24Brendan M. O'Malley: And I never saw it and I fell. And I did get hurt from that one, but luckily it was nothing significant. But I ended up walking for a couple of days after that because my knees and my legs were all bashed up from end up falling on the ground. And that was the only time I listened to anything on my Run Across America and it was the last time I listened to it.

43:41Croix Sather: So what was the general structure and plan for how to accomplish each day? You said you were living out of an RV. So you would sleep there at night. In the morning, what would be the protocol? Did you go to where you left off the night before? Or were you just trying to run a marathon each day? It didn't matter where you ran it from.

44:01Brendan M. O'Malley: We would go back to the place I was before, or at least somewhere close in the area. So it wasn't a true linear progression across the United States. It was more or less, but there were a couple of gaps in there, and that's why it's only 2 ,600 miles as compared to roughly 31, which is the actual route. But every morning, just to get up out of bed and to walk from my bed in the RV to the kitchen, which was literally like nine feet away, would take me 15, sometimes 20 minutes just to be able to sit up, stand up, take a few steps in my body to support my own weight. And then I would get some oatmeal and I would have some other things.

44:41Brendan M. O'Malley: I would take in the food. The lady who I had a massage therapist with me who also did my nutrition, she'd prepare me a little breakfast. Then I'd immediately go out and get on the road. And so the first two or three miles was me walking, eating breakfast, and just shaking the rust off every day. And then that would turn into a little bit of jogging, a little bit of walking, and then a little bit of jogging. And as the trip went on, it was easier and faster every day to get to the road and then get to the mileage. And the last, like I said, the last few weeks of the run, I was literally a machine at that point.

45:13Brendan M. O'Malley: Like I was, I just get up, go put the, I was sore as anything in the morning, but I'd get up and just put the miles in and get them done. And I'm done in five hours or so every day. It was shocking how strong I got by the end of this. And then after Run Across America, I trained for another year to run through Death Valley. And by the time I got to Death Valley, just the level of physical intensity I had was, I think about it, and it's just absolutely extraordinary the way, how bionic I was in a sense.

45:43Croix Sather: And where did the speaking fit in? Did you manage, how many of the 100 days did you manage to have a gig?

45:52Brendan M. O'Malley: Every single day, if you include the podcast that I had, which podcasting wasn't a thing back then. Not really. And so I had a few podcasts. I had one event that nobody showed up for. So I still gave a presentation for the one person who organized the event there, and they screwed up or whatever they did. But there was one person in my audience, so that was the person who got to hear my talk. So I actually spoke every single day, and then I read Ameripod every single day.

46:16Croix Sather: Who arranged all of these speaking events?

46:21Brendan M. O'Malley: I had a PR team. I had a PR team that did it. It cost me about$80 ,000 to hire this team and to organize it. And then it cost me another 80 grand for everything else, food, RVs, team on the ground, everybody who was working on it. It was 14 people to help me run across the country. What were those roles? I had a massage therapist with me. I had a photographer, a videographer, and a manager, I guess you could call them, that were with me in the RV. Then I had a personal assistant that was remote living in New York City. And then I had whatever number of people were in total for the PR company. that made that happen.

46:58Brendan M. O'Malley: And at any various times, that was between two people and six people working in that company.

47:03Croix Sather: How many people were in the RV that weren't paid?

47:07Brendan M. O'Malley: I was not paid.

47:08Croix Sather: Just no friends, no family, no support, just you were there, it was business, and that was it?

47:15Brendan M. O'Malley: They were there, and the team was there, and they got paid. They didn't get paid a lot, but they did get paid. They got paid$100 a day, which wasn't a lot, but they were in it for the adventure and a little bit of pocket money.

47:27Jason Fitzgerald: What the heck was going on in your head when you were running? That's a lot of time in between your own ears, Croy. What goes on in your head out there?

47:37Brendan M. O'Malley: A whole lot of nothing, actually. After two or three hours, my mind would just literally kind of go into zone mode and just kind of blank out. Other than just looking around, and that was a thing that, while extremely boring, as you could imagine, especially in Texas, the panhandle, there's nothing to see. except for those machines that take the oil out of the ground. There's just nothing. And it's the same thing over and over, day after day. They're the same desert, the same oil rigs, and there was nothing until I got to near the border of, what is that next, Louisiana, I think is the next state.

48:11Brendan M. O'Malley: And so it was just boring as hell, so my mind would just go into kind of a zone mode. And the thing that kept me going is that every day, either in the speaking event in the morning, or something that we would serendipitously stumble upon at night. Those are the things that excited me. So the morning events were the speaking events. They were for addiction centers, homeless shelters, United Way, Wounded Warriors, all these amazing groups of people that had some sort of a challenge. Rural high schools were part of it. Rural high schools that normally don't get a public speaker because they don't have the budget for it.

48:48Brendan M. O'Malley: And so you meet all these amazing people. And it was the stories of the people that I met that gave me the motivation to get through the day. So I met one girl who was told every morning that she woke up. This was a girl that was long line. I was at a high school, real high school, somewhere in East Texas. And it was a long line for kids getting one of my books. And, you know, I'd sign them and stuff. And she's just sort of off to the side. Kind of a heavy set, frumpy girl, disheveled, like her clothes are a mess and everything. And she just, I see her just standing there on the side. all the other kids had left and then she finally kind of meekly walked up to me and she's like I want to tell you something every day for as long as I can remember in my life this is a probably a 15 year old girl every day for as long as I can remember from my life I've woken up and my mom has told me you'll never amount to anything you're useless I wish I never had you now get the f out of my house and don't come back until dinner and I'm kind of of course shocked by this But I had the presence and state of mind at that particular moment to just pause and just let her find her next words.

49:54Brendan M. O'Malley: And it was an awkward long pause, even though it was probably only 10 seconds or so. Then she says, you know, after hearing your speech, I realized that her words do not have to become my reality. And I can make something of myself. And she gives me a hug and she walks away. I go back to the RV and I just cry myself to sleep because I can't imagine having parents that would say something like that. I grew up in a very poor but good family, wholesome, good family. We had a good life even though we didn't have a whole lot of money. And this girl didn't have any of that. And that wasn't the only story I heard about that.

50:32Brendan M. O'Malley: I heard stories of rape and abuse and abandonment and all these other things. And not only from kids, but I've heard it from adults. And because my stories in my keynotes and my speeches every morning would tell some of the stories of my life, like the accident we talked about and different things. And so people would come up and kind of confess their sins in a sense, if you will. And so I got to hear all these stories and those are the ones that kept me going through the day because I knew I was making a difference. I wasn't, not that carpentry was bad, but carpentry wasn't making much of a difference in life in the way that I wanted to make a difference.

51:03Brendan M. O'Malley: But this was, and that's what kept me going.

51:05Jason Fitzgerald: Is that what stands out to you most from the whole time on the road would be more interactions like that versus the, I don't know, the 10 p.m. miles alone on the dirt road? Like, what are some of the highlight core snapshots of that trip? Is it those conversations or are there others as well?

51:24Brendan M. O'Malley: There was so many different things that happened. I gave out a first pitch at a minor league game. I just happened to be in the town and somehow my PR company arranged this, which was very cool. I spoke at some really big events, big high schools and some super tiny places that were literally just three or four people. One of my favorite stories is speaking at a prison in Louisiana. So now I'm in a maximum security. I don't know if it was maximum security, but it was a high security prison. It was a transitional prison from maximal security to going into the real world. So these were people that were being rehabilitated, if you will, people that were going to the end of their prison term and going to go out into the real world.

52:03Brendan M. O'Malley: And so all of these guys are in orange jumpsuits, head to toe, they're wearing jumpsuits. And so I get into this thing, and these guys are like tattooed, big guy, and these guys look like the worst of the worst of society. But I don't really see that in them. I see me if I had just made one or two decisions different in life. I came very close to ending up in jail. I got into a lot of trouble as a kid. And so these guys weren't the worst of the worst to me. These were guys that just lost their way. Granted, I'm sure some of them were the worst of the worst. But generally speaking, I saw dads and brothers and men that were just lost.

52:38And so I had this idea that I'm going to make an example.

52:43Brendan M. O'Malley: I'm going to show an example on this speech. And so I go and I pick this biggest guy that I could find. I'm five foot nine and a half and a half. Make sure you count that half.

52:53Jason Fitzgerald: It counts.

52:55Brendan M. O'Malley: I'm five foot nine. And I picked this guy that had to be like six, two, six, three. And he's like bubble, if not triple my weight. So I intentionally picked the biggest, meanest, ugly looking guy in the group. And I have him come up to the front of the stage. And so I'm telling the stories is that somebody else's problem doesn't have to become your problem. And people are going to literally push their problems onto you. And what you do about it is going to make a difference in your life. So imagine you're in a gas station. You get out of prison. You're in a gas station. You're filling up your car.

53:23Brendan M. O'Malley: You're minding your own business. You're pumping your gas. You happen to glance over to some other guy. And he stares at you and he stares you down. and he says, what's your problem? And you're just pumping the gas. You just got out of prison. You know that if you throw a punch, you're going back to jail. And then he comes and he gets into your face. And he's like, what's your effing problem? And so now I start becoming very physical to this big guy in the orange jumpsuit. And I start like chest bumping out. I start pushing him. And I start trying to get this guy riled up. Now he's laughing at me, of course, because he's like triple my size.

53:54Brendan M. O'Malley: But I keep pushing him to the point that he's about to lose it. And then I stop him. I was like, wait a minute. And the whole audience, all these guys are like, oh, shit, here it goes. And I stopped this guy, this giant, like, imagine the Green Mile. This guy kind of looked like the guy in the Green Mile. He was just a huge, huge guy. And so I was like, I stopped him. I was like, wait a minute, right before he was about to throw a punch. I was like, what's happening here? And he's confused. He doesn't know. And so I go to the audience. I was like, what happened here? And he's like, he's going to throw a punch.

54:23Brendan M. O'Malley: He's going to knock your ass out. It's like, yes, exactly. Exactly, but it's not your circus, not your monkeys, not your circus. That guy has a problem. He lost his job. His girlfriend's cheating on him. Whatever's going on in his life, he just happens to make eye contact with you, and he's going to come over and start a fight with you. You're going to throw the punch. You're going back to jail. Now, if you walk away from it, say, hey, not my problem. Get in your car and go on your bed. You just go about your day, but if you throw that punch, you're going to end up back here in an orange jumpsuit.

54:51Brendan M. O'Malley: Now, do you want that, and do you want to end up back in this prison for another three to five years. And of course, every guy says no. And the message gets heard by these guys. And I told him at the end, the same thing I told you, I was like, I don't see guys in orange jumpsuits. I see dads and husbands and brothers and nephews or whatever it is. I see all of you guys as men and I see me and you and I see how I was lost. I almost ended up in an orange jumpsuit just like you guys. It was one of the most impactful lessons, I think, for them, for many of them anyway, and also for me. But I got to go to like huge Texas barbecues.

55:26Brendan M. O'Malley: This happened to be in this one area in town and they're having this big shindig, whatever it was. And they invited me to hundreds of people there and they're doing their cowboy rodeo thing. You know, I'm not from Texas, so I'm not real familiar with other than that. And we got to go there. And at the end of the night, of course, the fight breaks out. And so I was like, come on, to my crew, I was like, come on, we got to leave now before we all end up in jail. Because somebody starts throwing punches, I'm not the one that's going to easily walk away. especially if it comes to like hurting one of my crew I'm going to be the first one to jump in and stop it but it's just all these different things that I saw through there things that I got um April 13th uh 2011 is Cory Sather day in Baton Rouge Louisiana somehow I got connected with the one of the senators from Louisiana and or I'm sorry state representative from Louisiana and he He named the day after me and got a proclamation.

56:18Brendan M. O'Malley: So all these really, really cool things. I could go on for hours for all of the stories that happened that were absolutely amazing. And these are the things that kept me going through all of the boredom, like your question was before. Why am I pushing through hours and hours of running of pain and boredom and almost getting hit by cars and things like that? It was because of all the people and the interactions.

56:38Jason Fitzgerald: Yeah, see, I'd want to, I don't know, go have dinner and go to bed. every like i would i would compartmentalize very hard uh in a sense where like i would be very selfish with my energy i think and put it all towards you know that the very narrow focus for me to have the capacity to go entertain others every day while on this pursuit that takes i mean the energy just had to be flowing out of you i mean like there had to be a a big come down after all this please tell me there was tell me you're human or was there not or was there a loss or was

57:12Brendan M. O'Malley: this was it was there a depression afterwards well look luckily i was warned about the depression that would come after this from running a marathon a day to stopping because when you're running there's adrenaline endorphins adrenal gland everything's going off in your body you become a chemical factory creating all these feel-good uh chemicals in your body including your testosterone through the roof, you know, creates all of these different things. Plus the speaking also gives you a very similar feeling. And so I'm getting this from two different places. And I'm only sleeping four or five hours a night because that's all I had time for.

57:45Brendan M. O'Malley: But at the end of Run Across America, because, and I don't remember which ultra running legend told me that because I was in communication with a bunch of them. Might have been Marshall Ulrich. I'm not sure. But one of them had told me that when you stop, your body's going to want to go into depression. Your mind and your body's when I go to depression because it's not going to know what to do with the lack of adrenaline, endorphins, testosterone, and all of these other things. And so I was aware of that. So I took a week off, I think it was nine days, and then I started running again and I started finding a new purpose again after that.

58:15Brendan M. O'Malley: So I had planned for that so there wasn't a big crash. But there certainly was, and this run in Death Valley, it was much, much worse because of how close I came to death from heat exhaustion and nearly dying of a heart attack out there. This one made me come within literally minutes of my mortality. And the PTSD that came from that messed me up for a while. It took me a good nine or 10 days before I started seeing the world straight again. And I'm still learning to see the world straight now just two weeks later.

58:46Jason Fitzgerald: Well, that's what I wanted to ask about next. And you just opened the door. So that's the main thing. What is the death, what is the label on it? Not self-supported, but what was it?

58:57Brendan M. O'Malley: Solo self-contained.

58:58Jason Fitzgerald: Solo self-contained. So basically you're bringing your own groceries with you in a sense, right? Solo self-contained. Talk about the distance, the vertical gain and loss, and the conditions.

59:12Brendan M. O'Malley: So a normal race would have, especially in an ultra Death Valley race like this, there'd be a crew. So whether it's water stations, aid stations, or a crew that follows you, which in the case of this kind of race, there would be a crew and a van with ice water food and all the stuff you need. That's a normal ultra marathon. This one, I'm pushing a cart that has the food, the water, the ice, everything I need for 146 miles. The elevational gain is about 20 ,000 miles. There's 14 ,000 of actual gain plus the up and down gives you a total of almost 20 ,000 elevational feet of climb. Over 146 miles.

59:50Brendan M. O'Malley: And on the day that I did it two weeks ago, it was 124 degree heat. In the shade, in the morning, it's over 100 degrees.

59:58Jason Fitzgerald: Is this trail or road or what is this?

1:00:01Brendan M. O'Malley: This is road up until the last 11 miles and then to the top of Mount Whitney becomes 11 miles of hiking trail, which parts of it are fairly technical, not crazy technical, but a little technical. And the rest of it is just a really nice trail through the woods.

1:00:15Jason Fitzgerald: And what was the main objective of this for you? Because this isn't an official race, right? This is you doing this on your own event. It's just you.

1:00:24Brendan M. O'Malley: It's just me, but it is an official race, an officially recognized race, but it's a fastest known time race. Meaning it's just me against the clock. Like a lot of other races that are through Death Valley that are solo crossings, not unsupported, but different kinds of crossings. Like when Marshall Ulrich did the double, the first person to ever do a double. Then he did a quad. And then there's been others that have done different things. So they're all fastest known time races where the clock starts and it stops whether you DNF or you finish. So the goal of this was to break the record that is currently there.

1:00:56Brendan M. O'Malley: Marshall Overtz set this record, Pushing a Cart, back in 1999. He did it in 78 hours and change. It was there for 13 years. Lisa Badwater became the second person to ever do it. And then I became the third person to ever finish this crossing. And I broke Marshall's record by almost five hours. And then Bogey, I forget how to pronounce his last name, but his nickname is Bogey. His name is Bogden, but he goes by Bogey. bogey broke my record four days after i broke the record that marshall had for 13 years and then he tried it again the next year and didn't succeed and then he tried it again in 2014 and that record is still there since 2014 and that was the record i was going after i was going back for my revenge on bogey and his record trying to break the record except i got the hottest day that death valley had seen in years and i had to run on that day because you need to get a permit to do this.

1:01:49Brendan M. O'Malley: And my permit just by random happened to be that day, August, started August 5th of 2026, this year. And so I had to start on that day. Luck be the draw. I got the, one of the hottest days they've seen in a long time. And so I had to race in it. I, for the first 20 miles, everything's going perfect. I'm on target. I'm going to beat the record. I'm following my pace, hydration, nutrition. Everything is working perfect. I'm following my pacing. Everything thing is great, except I'm fighting the cart a little bit. The cart's giving me a little bit of an alignment issue. Not much, but it's taking a little bit of extra energy and frustration out of me.

1:02:27Brendan M. O'Malley: But other than that, everything's going perfect. By 26 miles, I'm starting to fade a little bit. Not a surprise. By mile 30, I start realizing I'm really starting to lose this battle with the heat. The sun starts coming around from the back of my head to the side to the front. and once the sun gets on my face, I start losing the battle with heat. So now I got 124 degrees, the sun's beating down on my face. I'm using ice water to cool me down and I'm losing at this point. So I stopped, my first break that I've taken in 30 miles, I take my first break, which was only a few minutes. I'm putting ice water on me and I'm cooling myself down.

1:03:05Brendan M. O'Malley: I'm only a quarter mile from the peak of the first big hill, not the first mountain pass, but the first big hill. and I get to, and I cool myself down enough to get to the peak. I know it's a long downhill. It's going to go flat for a long time before I get to stovepipe wells where the first mountain pass starts. And I'm like, okay, I just got to get to this, this downhill in the flat. And if I just take it easy and I take it slow, my body can cool back down. The sun's going to come down in a couple of hours and I'll be able to adjust. I'll regain my, my control over my heat and everything, my body cooling, and I'll be okay.

1:03:38Brendan M. O'Malley: Sun goes down. I'm at mile 39, mile 40, and I'm starting to lose the heat battle. It's dark. It's nine o 'clock at night, and it's still 120 degrees. And I'm running out of ice water because the ice that I had in it didn't freeze solid overnight like the plan was. And so I know I can't break this record. And my body is... I was a medic for six years. So I was a firefighter medic for six years. So I know all the signs about heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and what can happen when you're out there for too long. So I'm very, very well aware of what's happening and that I'm losing this battle with heat exhaustion and I'm bordering on heat stroke.

1:04:19Brendan M. O'Malley: And my crew comes over and they're like, what's going on? Because I took another unplanned break. And I was like, I can't keep myself cool anymore. I'm just like, this is going really, really bad. And I don't have enough ice water to finish. I had enough water, didn't have enough water frozen to be able to get me through the night and through the next day. I was like, I don't know if I can finish this race. And these guys are talking, they're trying to figure out a plan whether they should pull me from it or pull me from the race. Videographers are there, tens of thousands of dollars to make this race happen.

1:04:48Brendan M. O'Malley: The videographers are there and they're going through there. They're having their discussion. It's like, I can't stop. I got to keep going, you guys. And I start racing again. I start going down along my path after about 10 minutes. And these guys catch up to me one more time and they stop me again. It's like, well, wait a minute. something's not right here. And they start asking me questions and I'm staggering around. I'm starting to hallucinate and doing like my physical body's not acting the way your physical body is supposed to. And they're like, you got to stop. And so Scott, who's one of my mindset mentors, he's also a movie producer.

1:05:21Brendan M. O'Malley: And he's like, Roy, this is going on and you're hitting this, you're doing this. And he's pointing out all the things that I already knew, but he's verbalizing them. You know, the heat exhaustion, you're stumbling, you're not talking very well anymore, you're getting kind of ornery with us, you know, and you're ignoring anything that we're saying and you're just trying to push on. And you should stop. And he gives me a bunch of reasons to stop. And of course, I didn't want to hear that. And so I just want to keep going. But then the sponsor who had put up all this money, and it was a lot of money that they sponsored me, and a good friend of mine for 15 years that runs a successful company called Local Handyman.

1:05:56Brendan M. O'Malley: So local handyman and my friend Colin, they're the ones that I put up this money, but then I don't want to disappoint Colin, one, because he's a friend, and one, because he put up a ton of money. And so I don't want to stop because I don't want to disappoint him and I don't want to waste his money. But I look over at Colin and he says something, but I don't really remember what it was. And he looked at me and had he looked at me with this disappointment or like, come on, Croy, you can do it. You can keep going. Had he had one of these sort of interactions with me, I wouldn't have stopped that.

1:06:32Brendan M. O'Malley: I would have just kept plugging along. But he looked at me with a little bit of fear and so much empathy. And the only thing I do remember saying, Croy, you need to go home to your kids. Don't be stupid. And that just melted me because he knows that my kids are the most important thing in my entire life. They're now 18 and 20. And that gave me permission to be smart and not stupid and not keep going. We get back to Stealth Pipe Wells, which is literally two miles away. We go into the restaurant. I'm sitting in the restaurant, and it's air conditioned, but my body's not cooling down. I'm still overheating, and my temperature I could feel is getting hotter and hotter.

1:07:12Brendan M. O'Malley: And I tell one of the guys, and I didn't care who it was. I was like, somebody's got to walk outside with me because I'm afraid to go out by myself. I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack. And I got to go cool off. I got to put some ice water on my head. And so we go to go out to the van to get some ice water. And there's a pool right there that's attached to the hotel restaurant thing that we're in. I was like, let's go to the pool. I go sit in the pool. The water's cool. It actually happened to be basically a perfect temperature for what I needed. Not cold, but cool. Cooler than body temperature.

1:07:40Brendan M. O'Malley: It was probably like low 80s in temperature. So most everybody would feel like this is too warm to be swimming in. But for me, it was perfect. I'm sitting in there. And for 10 minutes, my heart rate is going higher. My pulse is going harder and I can feel my temperature still going up. And I'm scared to death that my heart is just going to stop. And the guy, one of the videographers came out with me. He's taking a little camera video of me. He's like, oh, Croy, what's going on? I'll explain to him, my heat's still rising. I don't feel comfortable. And I'm actually kind of scared right now. But the guy doesn't have any medical background and he kind of missed the point of what I was telling him.

1:08:19Brendan M. O'Malley: But I literally thought I was going to die right there. About 10 minutes later after being in the pool, I could feel my body is finally starting to go down in temperature just a little bit. I could feel I'm finally starting to move in the right direction. I'm submerged in water up into my neck to cool off the carotid arteries and get my whole body cooling down. And that pool saved my life. had it not been for that pool, I don't know if I would have made it through the night. And I don't think I would have made it back for the two and a half hour drive back to Las Vegas to a hospital. And I couldn't tell my crew any of this because none of them have any medical history or medical understanding of what I was going through.

1:08:57Brendan M. O'Malley: And I didn't want to panic them for no reason. But I knew I was literally on the edge of taking my last breath or my last heartbeat. We're driving back in the air conditioning SUV and my body is going through waves of the temperature going up and the temperature going down. I got all the air conditioning blowing on me and I'm hydrating still. And I wasn't certain I was out of the woods yet. And it wasn't until we started getting into, I could see the skyline of Las Vegas. I could see the skyline of Las Vegas that I realized that this is probably is not going to be my last night and I'm probably going to be okay.

1:09:33Brendan M. O'Malley: But I wasn't certain if I was going to go to the ER or not. We get back to the hotel and I'm feeling good enough that I'm just going to go to bed. I go sleep for seven or eight hours and I wake up and I'm out of the woods. And I wasn't 100 % certain I wouldn't go to the hospital yet, but I was certain that I wasn't going to die in that moment. And then after a couple of hours and everything else, it was, you know, luckily I'm still here talking with you guys.

1:09:57Jason Fitzgerald: What do you feel physically? You're talking about your temp, you know, rising and falling and not being able to cool down. but physically, what are some of the symptoms that you were feeling?

1:10:10Brendan M. O'Malley: Physically, muscular-wise, I felt fine. 41 miles isn't a big deal for me, especially even in the desert and everything. It's just 41 miles. Now, it sounds kind of ridiculous to people who have never run 41 miles before, but when you're trained to the level that I'm trained, it's like anybody who runs a marathon. Running a marathon, yes, it's hard, but it's just hard. And so physically, I felt fine. but my resting pulse rate is still 109. My normal pulse rate is in the mid 50s. So I'm more than double of what I should be. I'm in the air conditioning. I know I've hydrated well. I know I've done the hydration, the salt, the electrolytes, all of that.

1:10:48Brendan M. O'Malley: I know I've done that well. So I'm not struggling from that. I'm not under hydrated or over hydrated. I know I've got that it balanced pretty well. So my body was simply to the point of heat stroke where my body was going to just stop working because of the trauma from the temperatures. And so I can feel this going in my body. I know what is happening and there's nothing I could do to control it. And that's what scared the crap out of me is that I knew that I just had to just wait and pray that I would survive the next few hours. And if I survive the next few hours, then I'm most likely going to survive altogether.

1:11:24Brendan M. O'Malley: But those few hours were literally just coming to terms with your maker, if you will. And the funny thing about this is that the weeks before, even the months before, I had this, I don't know what you call it, but not a premonition, but this understanding, this three knowing that this was going to bring me to the edge of my life. And I had this like dark, ominous feeling before this race to the point where the days before I was calling up any of my friends, even ones that I hadn't talked to in a long time, they're still good friends, but I hadn't talked to in a while, just to let them know that I cared about them.

1:12:00Brendan M. O'Malley: And I left them messages, voices, messages saying, you know, hey, just getting ready for my race. I'm just a couple of days away. Just want to know that I love you. I care about you. And that even though we don't talk as often as I'd like to, just you matter in my life. And so I left a bunch of those messages with everybody that mattered that I wasn't in regular contact with. And I had conversations with my kids and it was like, you know, is there anything you want to ask me? Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about? And I was having these conversations knowing that I might not come back from this thing.

1:12:28Brendan M. O'Malley: And I literally got right to the edge. Now, a reasonable person might've said, this is just stupid. Don't do it. But the thing that drives me to these things to be able to do these crazy things is the same thing as the double-edged sword that is going to bring me right to the edge of my life.

1:12:44Croix Sather: So where's the sustainability piece to this? If kids are number one and you don't want to go over that edge, what is the type of event that will move the needle for you from a training and an excitement standpoint but doesn't take you to that place?

1:13:02Brendan M. O'Malley: I think the golden ticket out of this whole experience is that I finally reached a point that I don't need to push myself to these extreme limits to feel alive anymore. And I think I've, I don't know if learning a lesson is the right verbiage, but I think I could find this joy in other things like I always have. Like I see a kid in a park laughing and being a dad, you know, it just, it brings me joy. Seeing a sunset, a sunrise, you know, these things bring me joy. So why can't I give those as much validity to living as I do with these extreme things? And I don't know if my body will allow me to do another one of these crazy things like this.

1:13:46Brendan M. O'Malley: I mean, I can still go jump out of planes and get kind of my thrill out of that, but that could kill me also too. And so I'm not so sure these things are going to be important in my life anymore. Now, the important things I think going forward is how do I make an impact in life? I've been a speaker and I've done these different things, but how do I take that to a level that is going to have a much larger dent in the world, as Steve Jobs would say? How do I put my dent in the world? And I think focusing on that and doing that, building an audience to say 1 ,000 or 2 ,000 people in an audience and giving a speech to that that changes people's lives through my talks and humor, I think that's going to give me the same kind of thrill.

1:14:26Brendan M. O'Malley: And so that's the direction I'm going to be focusing on now. Not going to say I'm not going to do any of these crazy things anymore, but they won't be as extreme.

1:14:33Croix Sather: So if you really thought prior that you might not come back from this, and now you're saying, well, good, I did it, I got through it, now I don't have to do this thing anymore. Why do you think it was so important to get to do that? If you thought there's a chance, you'd die. And now you're glad you don't have to do that anymore. What was that compulsion to do it with the potential risk?

1:14:56Brendan M. O'Malley: I don't know if it's innate or if it's because of the accident when I was 14 that I need to push life to the limit. And I've been that way for as long as I can remember, even from childhood when you're jumping bicycles over big ravines and stupid stuff like that. I've just always been an adrenaline junkie or the zeal to get as most out of life as I possibly can. And that's led to traveling the world, living nomadically, living abroad for the last 10 years and all of these other things. In carpentry, it was always, how can I make the most money and build the most houses and do all the other things?

1:15:29Brendan M. O'Malley: And so it's always been innate in me. I don't know if I could change that even if I wanted to and still feel alive. I think some people are just wired differently. And I'm one of those. David Goggins is one of those. And Lisa Bliss and the runner that just won Badwater this year. I forgot her name offhand. Or last year, I think it was. She set the fastest time for running through Badwater 135 over even any man. And now this year it's been broken by a guy as well. I think it's just in us. I don't think we can fight this, and fighting this would be to die while we're alive, to not be true to the gift that we have.

1:16:05Croix Sather: I'm hearing two things, though. I'm hearing, I don't need this anymore. I can find happiness elsewhere. And then I'm hearing, it'd be not true to me to not go after the race, even though I thought I might die. So where's the differentiator for you right now? Why do you feel confident that you don't need it anymore, but knowing that you still do need it to move that needle? Where's that line for you?

1:16:28Brendan M. O'Malley: I still need adventure for sure. And I think I could find that in other ways rather than nearly dying. Or I don't know. I don't know if I could give you a definitive answer. I think you might've just called me out on something that I haven't come to full terms with. But coming this close to death, and this is, I should say, this is my third time, the accident at 14, a scuba diving event that I had at 200 feet. and now this one, these are the three times that I've literally come within a fraction of an inch of my life, if you will. I think this time though, I've actually learned a lesson where the other ones, I don't know if I learned the lesson, I needed to.

1:17:09Brendan M. O'Malley: And I would, to be a little bit cavalier over this, even if I had died in this race, that would have been a better solution to me than to not push life to the limits and to find out how far I actually could go. And I think I'm just wired that way. But I think this one scared me enough out of it that I don't think I'm going to be doing anything so ridiculously stupid. The smart thing would have been to say, you know, guys, this is too hot. Let's postpone this to another race. That would have been the smart thing to do. But with tens and tens of thousands of dollars on this thing, riding on it, my friends sponsoring it, and me being in this race, I couldn't say no.

1:17:49Brendan M. O'Malley: And so I had to try. Do I mean it? I don't know if I mean it. The part I mean, you hear people say like, it would have been worth it had it.

1:17:58Croix Sather: Like, had I not come back, it would have been worth it for the attempt. Do you mean it though? Do you truly in your soul believe it would have been worth it if you didn't come back, having gone for it?

1:18:08Brendan M. O'Malley: Of course, you don't want that to be the outcome. But to give it to, yes, I would think it would be worth it for the attempt. And if things go bad, it's like any race car driver or even medic or firefighter, they know the line of duty, there's a potential for death. And so, yeah, living your passion and living to who you're truly meant to be absolutely is worth it. And death, do you want that? Oh, hell no. Of course not. I want to be here for another 50 years. I want to be doing crazy stuff and exploring the world and making an impact for another 50 years. Of course, I don't want that to happen.

1:18:40Brendan M. O'Malley: But that is part of the, you know, in the line of duty.

1:18:44Jason Fitzgerald: Croy, we are just about a couple minutes from needing to be done because I have to go back to work. So I want to make sure we talk about your books. You have three books, is that correct?

1:18:57Brendan M. O'Malley: I have several books, yeah.

1:19:00Jason Fitzgerald: Could you just tell us just a quick elevator speech on each of them?

1:19:04Brendan M. O'Malley: Dream big, act big is what we talked about before. That's the philosophies to living your full life. And then years ago, I wrote a book called Better Body, Better Life, which was about health and nutrition, which was actually the transitional book to go from carpentry to where I am now. That one's not available for sale anymore. But the one that I have now that I'm excited about, which is a digital download, is a journal that will help you figure out what you want to do and then how to create the life that you want. And so that one we could put for a link in the below that you can find that as well.

1:19:39Brendan M. O'Malley: It's a journal that I wrote years ago that was able to temper my radical mind, in the different directions that we go, was able to temper that and control that mind to one laser light focus. And so that's what I'm working on right now as well as writing a new book now that has to do with Death Valley. But that one's not going to be out for another year or so.

1:20:02Jason Fitzgerald: Okay. And do you have a website or social media handles if people want to stalk you, check out what you got going on, book you?

1:20:11Brendan M. O'Malley: My name's kind of spelled unusually, so click the link below this podcast or Google my name. But you can go to doimpossiblethings.com. That's actually the journal, and that will click to other things.

1:20:25Jason Fitzgerald: Okay, and are you on social media, like Instagram?

1:20:27Brendan M. O'Malley: I'm on all of them, yeah.

1:20:29Jason Fitzgerald: Okay.

1:20:30Brendan M. O'Malley: Which is all under my name, so everything is just slash Croix Sather.

1:20:34Jason Fitzgerald: Okay. Cool, I hate to cut this short, but I just glanced at the clock, and I'm like, I got to go. So I appreciate your time today, man. Very interesting. The story is very interesting. I think the biggest takeaway for me, and I think most of the people listening, is why put boxes around ourselves and what we're able to do? We live in confinement most of the time. And I mean, what you came up with and then did is so asinine, right? In a nine-month time period to go from, let's call it nothing, to what you did. It's just like, you know, thinking big, I think, is okay. I think that's the biggest takeaway for me anyway.

1:21:11Jason Fitzgerald: So appreciate that. Bracken, do you have anything else you want to add? No, thank you.

1:21:16Croix Sather: You symbolize to me one of the true threads through people who find running late in life is they don't have the same preconceived limits of people who grew up running by a stopwatch. and it's a I think it's an important distinction to know that a stopwatch isn't the limiter or a preconceived progression rate isn't the limiter or whatever that thing is you don't have that built in

1:21:44Brendan M. O'Malley: I didn't know what I didn't know and that was a good thing

1:21:47Jason Fitzgerald: it sounds like bliss sometimes well appreciate it and yes we will put links and such to what we talked about so thanks Craig

1:21:55Brendan M. O'Malley: thank you guys and Bracken I love your background That is awesome.