Episode 374: Dr. David Heitmann - Couch To 100 Mile
Dr. Dave will be challenging himself to complete the Javelina 100 mile in 2024, going from the couch to the 100 mile distance in a years time. Dave has an extensive background as a medical director, treating thousands of patients, including: Olympians, National Champions, sports teams, and professionals. After losing his own health in the pursuit of helping others find theirs, Dave and his family embarked on a wild journey that included living in a bus, working on organic farms, traveling the country before ultimately landing them in Austin, Texas.
Episodes mentioned:
Episode 337: The Long Run Considering the Variables
Episode 344: Endurance Training Simplified
Episode 346: Short Intervals Simplified
Episode 348: Long Intervals Simplified
Episode 352: Proper Aid Station Navigation
Episode 356: Easy Run - Simplified
Episode 363: Mental Training For Endurance
Episode 366: Race Course Specific Training
Episode 369: Speed Work Distribution & Double Threshold Sessions
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deltaG: deltagketones.com - IG: @deltag.ketones
HPO Sponsors: zachbitter.com/hposponsors
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Zach’s Coaching: zachbitter.com/coaching
Dave: mindofdave.com - IG: @mindofdave - YT: @mindofdaveMOD
Zach: zachbitter.com IG: @zachbitter Tw: @zbitter Substack: zachbitter.substack.com FB: @zbitterendurance Strava: Zach Bitter TikTok: @zachbitter Threads: @zachbitter
Episode Transcript
Dave. Welcome to the show. Nice. Love it. Yeah. You are the first in-studio guest for the Human Performance Outliers podcast 2s I've done. Hear that applause for the audience there. The audience is excited. Yeah. I've done some in-person guests, I suppose, but not in a studio. So they were more just like, oh, cool. I have an opportunity to talk to you in person. Let's put the iPhone on and put some lapel mics on and try to do this like a little bit more personal, and they're a lot more fun. So that was kind of the taste I needed, I think, and just going on other podcasts that do in-person stuff, I think it was just something where it's just better. It's better to do it when you can and you're in town. So yeah, right down the road. Right down the road. Yeah. It's not even that hard of a trip for you to come over here and record. So Austin, Texas. But obviously we have you on here for a reason other than that. And it's because you've got a really fun project coming up or I guess the start of it's coming up. What do you have on the to do list? Yeah, yeah. Well, Doctor Dave and I'm just honored to be here. This is actually really, really cool, really exciting. It just kind of is all magically coming together this year. I decided to say enough is enough in my health journey. And I went through, long story short, I went through severe burnout, lost my health, and over the past couple of years I've been slowly getting it back. And then two months ago, I went on kind of like a spiritual journey through the mountains of Colorado, and I was hiking up this mountain, and it was just it wasn't even that big of a deal kind of thing. And as I'm huffing and puffing and barely surviving, going like walking up this little trail, these two gentlemen that probably were like 65 years old. Like sprinted past me, laughing, chuckling and like talking, telling jokes back and forth to each other. Yeah. And I'm like, there I am, like sitting there like, what the hell? These guys just, like, ran faster than I could run faster on a flat ground. And it just hit me like, I've never considered myself a runner. I always used to use the word hate when I would talk about running, because I came from a different type of athletic background, and for some reason it just smacked me across the face. I was like, I should challenge myself and do an ultra. I was just so inspired to be in the mountain range and see those. Those people go past me. A few minutes later, this 75 year old gentleman was riding his bike and just zoomed right past me. He wasn't even breathing hard and he was going uphill at this crazy, insane pace. And it was just so inspired that I literally declared to myself, like, okay, couch to 100 miles. I've never heard of this before. Let's give this a try. So couch to 100? Yeah, it seems crazy. Yeah, well, it's the right sport for crazy. Yeah, I'll say that. It's. You see a lot of different kinds of approaches to it. You know, it's actually interesting because one topic I've gotten more interested in over the last maybe two years, three at most, is just people coming into ultramarathon running that aren't traditionally runners. And I think the sport's always had some of that because it was especially the trail side where it was sort of this thing of like. I want to go on this journey of self-discovery, and I find these cool places in nature. I see more of it if I'm moving quicker. Therefore, start learning to run and like you get. If you want to get to the top of the mountain, there's not a whole lot of other options other than by foot. And if you want to get up there quickly and see more of them, the faster you do, the more of them you see. I think that's kind of the general thought process there, and it's just been something where the last few years, though, I've seen just a whole bunch of people coming in that are having athletic backgrounds, perhaps, but more interested in I'm going to do a challenge versus I'm going to always be just working year after year on the same skill set. And then I guess the hybrid athletes, probably the way to describe a lot of them. And so, I mean, just from a coaching standpoint, I've seen a lot more interest from a wider range of people than I had prior to that. And the sport is, I guess, growing. And I think the pandemic and some big signal boosts from large podcasts that got interested in it, and then maybe non-traditional people getting a pretty good following, like your Goggins and your David David Goggins in your campaigns of the world. Like. These guys are, you know, they're coming from different backgrounds that don't scream endurance runner necessarily, even though those components were both in their lives. Like, if you're going to be doing what David Goggins was doing with the Seals, you're going to have to have endurance. If you're hunting the way campaigns hunt, you're going to need endurance. So it's like those inputs were there, but they maybe weren't highlighted. And it was a means to an end versus an activity. And those guys, I think, did an amazing job of saying like, this is a big piece of it. You should look at it as something that is a big piece of your life, too. And it's been cool to see the impact of U1 that, of who's coming and stuff like that. So. So what got you? Why 100 miles? Is there any? It seemed crazy and stupid, like, I've been trying to think about that for the past two months, since I since I thought of it as like, why a hundred miles? Like, it just seems stupid. Yeah, and that's exactly it for me. I had to do a lot of self assessment. So my background in athletics is very much, you know, football, rugby, baseball, bowling like all the things that way. And then when I had my sports medicine clinic, which we'll get into a lot, but I mostly helped endurance athletes. But still, even at that time when I had my clinic, there was barely anyone running 100 miles. The classic was like a couch to five K or marathon or marathon was really standard. Yeah. And if you really wanted to get up there and that was the big challenge, right. And I've always considered myself a very internally competitive person. So I've never enjoyed external competition. So in other words, like I loved winning football games of course. Right. But for me, the reason why I was good at football was because I cared about my footwork. I cared about putting in the plyometric training. I cared about getting the jump roping in, you know, all of the things that were like the little tools to get me there that I was internally competitive with. And through my middle age, I feel like I completely lost that. And so for me, getting into this 100 miles, I know just from the little bit that I do know about the the distance of the practicality of it is that there's a lot of mindset and there's a lot of like internal competition that has to happen versus like if you sign up for A5K, it's very easy to fall into the trap of external competition of like, I'm going to beat the person in front of me, and you got the rabbit situation where you're like trying to chase the rabbit, whereas the 100 miles seemed more appealing to me because it can be just you out on the course and like in the middle of the darkness. Confronting your own demons and hallucinating about it and still having to keep moving forward. And to me, that's some sort of sadistic appeal. I guess that to me, 100 miles is like that. If I can do that when I turn 85 and I'm looking back at my life and I want to make sure that I don't have regrets about my life, like, this is one of those things that, yeah, I want to do this. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because you do have that. I mean, you have enough experience with life to be thinking about, what am I going to be thinking about what I'm doing now when I'm 85? So yeah, it's an interesting thought. Well, I always put things in two frameworks. I always look at it as I re-ask myself. Would my 16 year old self be happy with myself now, and would my 7585 year old self look back on this and make sure that this was the best decision? In other words, I have no regrets in the decisions that I make. And right now, if I were not to do this, I'd be very unhappy with myself. When I was 85 and my 16 year old self that made a promise to myself never to get out of shape would be very disappointed in myself right now. And so I'm like, at those two convergences of thought processes that are actually, like really motivating to me right now. That's an interesting way to think about it. Like if you because I can think of a host of things, my 16 year self in 85 year old self would disagree with one another about. But when you can find those points of agreement between those two, that might be a sign that that's something worth investing your time into. Totally. And I would have never thought about that had I not lost my health either, like in my 30s, just blatantly going through life not thinking about those two equations led me down the death trap of severe burnout and health issues. And so. I now have that awareness because I went through the struggles. And so yeah, now I can now I can do that filter or that framework of is this good or not? And I think it'll help me ultimately, in the end of pushing through to get to 100 miles through all the pain and everything that I'll have to go through, because I'll just simply ask myself, hey, what would my 85 year old self do? Yeah, yeah, it's a good perspective. The other interesting thing is, it is a little bit of a pivot from what we've been talking about, but just the reason we're sitting here together today versus you going about this on your own. Unbeknownst to me, we have a mutual friend or acquaintance, Justin Wren, who was doing a I guess we may call an exhibit or a showcase of his upcoming speaking, speaking engagement stuff. So we got invited to go to the presentation and to hear about the process, I suppose. And we hadn't met yet at that point, but we had a mutual friend as well there, Brian Sanders, who I believe you had gone with and you had just been kind of thinking about this with him, and he had said, oh, you should talk to Zach. Yep. And then we just happened to bump into each other getting goosebumps right now because it's so crazy. The story of yeah, it was literally three days before that event where I met you. He's like, go on Instagram and check this dude out and I think you'll be inspired by him. Like he's got all these things going on for him. And so I checked out your Instagram and I saw a Wisconsin plaque. Yeah. In the back of your first video that I looked at, I was like, oh, this dude's from Wisconsin. And I didn't even know who you were or what you did or anything. I just wanted to see where you were in Wisconsin. And I was like, oh, he lived in Madison at 1.0. He did his world record thing and Milwaukee like. Yeah. And me being from Wisconsin, I'm like, okay, I geeked out, so I started scrolling, which I would have never scrolled through someone's profile just off the random chance of being like, oh, another endurance athlete. Yeah. But it was because of that weird connection. And then three days later, there you are, sitting like three chairs away from me, still with a little bit of my Wisconsin accent. Yeah, yeah, we both have them. Yeah. Everyone thinks I'm from Canada, but yeah, that's actually funny when I because I was in California for three years after I was in Wisconsin for 20 years and then three years in California, but those three years in California, everyone would ask, like, are you from Canada? Yeah. And I would at a certain point I would just say basically, yeah, almost, almost. Front door step is what I say up front doorstep. Yeah. So yeah. And that was the other interesting thing, just kind of going down that path. Talking about the different spots in Wisconsin that we've both been and just those jogging, those memories of Wisconsin's got all these interesting city names, your town names in some cases where it's like you kind of forget about it, and then all of a sudden you hear someone talk about like, oh, I know where that is. Yeah. Manitowoc. Yeah. Manitowoc. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's jump into that. So what originally brought you to Wisconsin or. Well, that's where it all began. Perhaps it's. Yeah, I'm originally from Wisconsin. So for me it was I had no choice in the matter. My parents drugged me there when I was three years old. I was technically born on a military base in North Carolina, and then my dad retired, and then I was only three years old. We moved to Milwaukee, and then when I was six, we moved to Wausau, which is the center of the state. So I basically consider myself raised there and through and through a Wisconsin person. I went to undergrad and Okla there and then went to chiropractic school in Saint Louis. And then I had two life choices in front of me. I could either go to New Zealand and work with the rugby teams there or All Blacks. Yeah, the All Blacks. It wasn't the All Blacks that I would have been invited to work with, but another rugby team. Or I could go and be the first chiropractor to work at the university system in their medical system for their sports medicine. And so that was the longer term goal of everything anyways. And so. Went to Madison, Wisconsin, opened up a business there for ten years and developed three clinics there, multiple chiropractors working with me. I was a team doc for 12 different sports teams, worked with the Badgers Rugby, Madison Rugby Club like you name it, all the way through out there and then just got burnt out, quite frankly, and closed shop. In 2017, I traveled the country in a school bus that we converted into a home, did that for a year, and then landed in Austin, Texas for the sunshine and tacos. Yeah, yeah, no, let's jump into some of that stuff. I think that's interesting because we were actually in Madison to some degree. Well, not to some degree. We were there for a period of time because I would have been there from, I want to say 13 to 15 if I'm remembering. Right. Yeah, 2013 to 15. So it was brief, but I was also in Baraboo, Wisconsin when I was really young. Yeah, my parents dragged me to Wisconsin when I was eight, not quite three, but I was at my dad's side of the family, though we're all from Wisconsin for the most part, so it was kind of for him, I think going back home or closer to home anyway. And we bounced around the state when I was younger and then obviously when I went off to school and then started working within the state and the education system, you could do a little bouncing around in that case too. So I got to experience a pretty good scope of it. But yeah, Madison was where I was last and man, if it weren't for running, I'd still be there. And even with running, there was a good chance I could have stayed there because it was where I wanted to be with that part of my life. But Madison's a great endurance town. It is. I mean, it's just a fun city, like there's just so much to do. And then the surroundings are great, too. You're like, maybe a 30-40 minute drive to Devil's Lake where you can get the bluffs where you would forget you're in Wisconsin for a little bit if you didn't know 100%. Yeah. Or you could go fishing on Lake Michigan and feel like you're in the ocean. Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, head up to Door County and or if you go up to the if you go even further north, I can get on the Superior Lake Superior area and stuff so you can really find some interesting spots but yeah. So how long were you in Madison for then? Ten years. Ten years. Yeah. And that's kind of where your career began. And then and then you burnt out. So what would it be like? The catalyst of the burnout is there? Was there a point where you could say, if I, if I had wanted to be in that world for a longer period of time, say, 30 years? Were there some points here, like if I would have had to do that differently, that differently, or anything that sticks out? I had gotten myself into trouble from the standpoint of I grew my business way too fast and mentally I just wasn't ready for it. And so what ended up happening? Long story short, and we'll get into little bits and pieces of these along the way. In chiropractic school I started like just becoming the normal overweight stuff, sitting in a classroom from seven in the morning till ten at night and then going and partying that night. Right. And it just led to really bad habits and then the stress of the business. I was one of those hyper achievers. And I over did everything in business. I was working seven days a week nonstop. I was only sleeping like six hours a night because I couldn't sleep. I would be so obsessed with helping patients. I would think about patient cases all night long. I would think about business all night long, like, how can I do this contract? How can I get this sports medicine thing going? How can I fly over here? And I was doing all sorts of crazy stuff. And then really what started happening is I grew too quickly. My overhead was too high. I bought a bunch of real estate before 2008, so I was upside down and a whole bunch of real estate. I was like, too big of an office and one of my main locations, and things just started crumbling. Apart from the standpoint of I had all of these opportunities and I didn't know how to run a business, it was really what it came down to. I was really good at chiropractic, and I was really good at sports medicine and rehab and performance and all these things. But I didn't know how to inspire teams. I didn't know how to be a transformational leader versus a transactional leader. And some of these basic business principles that I now know. And so what ended up happening was I drove myself into the ground. I became that fun social drinker where I was networking and doing all sorts of stuff to try to drink myself to sleep at night. Sure. So I was working 13 hour, 14 hour days, and then I would go home and try to sleep. I would just like pound alcohol watching Netflix because I couldn't sleep and I was like an insomniac. And then that's really where the health problems just started compounding. I got to the point where for several years my joints were completely swollen, I couldn't extend, I didn't have full range of motion in my joints. My abdominal area, tissue ripped open, my teeth started falling out. I started getting stress fractures everywhere. I had brain fog so bad I couldn't do simple math or I couldn't do any calendaring. And basically, quite frankly, we thought we were thinking I was dying of unexplainable cancer, essentially. Wow. Yeah, that would be the summary of it. And so enough was enough and we closed everything down. And that was the precipice of there were quite a few things that inspired that to happen, which we'll get into another time, but basically it was just like, I need to change something or I'm going to die. Yeah. And really like the defining moment was there was this aspect. I remember sitting on the couch and this is pretty, pretty rough. I was reading a report of some chiropractors who committed suicide over their finances, and I was just like, whoa, this is just not worth the the struggles that I'm going through right now. It's like I have no urge to get to that point, right? 1s Why don't I change my life around? And so that was when really we made the decision to completely go 180. Like when we went into the bus, we decided not to put electricity into it or running water or any of those sorts of things. And I started practicing stoic philosophy. And so that's where the journey in the transition has, has come from. Yeah. How was your family at the time? My wife was the office manager. So she was just as stressed in as many problems. And she saw it all happening. It was part of it. Yeah. Yeah. The whole family was wrapped into it. We raised our kids in the office. And so, like, patients would help us take care of kids in between. And we tried to be close, but that was another driving factor as they were starting to get they would have been 4 or 5 years old at that time. 2s We started to realize that we were losing touch with them because I was working so much, and even though they were literally in the office with us that I barely saw them, it was this crazy concept of like, I never saw my wife, I never saw my kids, and they were literally across the wall from me. And so, like all of those factors go into it if they were part of the problem and part of the solution kind of thing we all decided this together. That is an interesting point because I know, like Nicole and I both work from home, so we do see each other every day for the most part, at least during workdays. At a certain point, you do have to kind of like take inventory of what have we actually done together? That isn't us just being in the same proximity as one another. That kind of makes all this worth it. And then finding those spaces to step away from that and go and do something, even though, like in there's a part of your brain that processes is like, I've seen a lot of you, why am I now going and doing another thing with you? Kind of my mindset. But yeah, it's kind of weird. I don't know if it's just different because that's not usually the case. Like usually when you're with somebody, it's because you're engaging with them versus them just kind of passively being there. Yeah. But yeah, it's a weird dynamic. It took us like five years from the start of my office. It took us five years to take our first vacation together. And during that time we didn't have a single date night like there was. There was never a date night. There was never like, oh, let's go do this one thing together. You know, that kind of thing where it was like an actual set aside time? Of course there was. We went and did stuff together, but it wasn't like I hey, let's celebrate us kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So then you had all the opportunity in the world to be engaged with your wife and kids when you moved into the. There's no way around it at that point, right? 280ft². Yeah. So where did you get the bus? Was it just like, oh, where does one get a bus? Right. That was the first question we had. Yeah, it's crazy because we're at the time. Well this is one of those things when you're burned out and you're looking for ways out. We really idolized the tiny home living kind of thing. And we were obsessed with watching little farming videos and stuff like that. 2s And we were planning on trying to do like, the RV life and. Randomly, a YouTube algorithm started feeding me bus videos and I was like. You know, I showed my wife like, look at these stupid people. They converted a bus kind of thing. And she's like, oh, yeah, that's pretty stupid. And then like, I don't know, maybe two weeks later in the bus, videos just kept coming. I was like, oh, this is a cool bus. Look at this, you know? And it just snowballs and then suddenly you're just going down the rabbit hole of, okay, how do you buy a bus? How do you convert a bus? What are the laws? All of those sorts of things. It turns out every state is different, but in Wisconsin they have to retire school buses when they hit 175,000 miles, even though the engines are good for like 400,000. And so what ends up happening is these huge graveyards of buses that, even though we went through part of the process, we went through bankruptcy and we didn't have much money. We went through and bought a $2,500 school bus. Okay. So that's what a school bus goes for 2500. Well, anywhere from 2500 to I've seen school buses go like once you start to outfit them, they easily start to cost 100,000 150,000, right? Yeah. But we bought a raw one right off of the graveyard. And I spent three months and we only put, I think 800 bucks or something like that into it. Most of the stuff we scavenged for free on Craigslist, and I basically turned it into my full time job like rehabbing the school bus and turning it into my little house. Yeah. Okay. So how long did that take before you got the bus? And it was all right. We're on the road now. Three months. Really? Okay. Yeah, it was a real fast turnaround because it's. And YouTube allowed me to do everything. Like, do I know how to unhook a radiator hose for the heater in the back of a bus? Heck no. YouTube teaches you everything. And so it was just like, you've got your phone and you've got your tools, and you just sit there and you watch a few videos, you do a few things, you watch a few videos and do a few things. Yeah, it's interesting because a generation probably before mine, it would have been like. Guys and girls in some cases know how to fix cars because dad taught him how and his dad taught him how. And it was just that thing you did and you had some working knowledge of the basics, so you didn't have to take it in for every little problem that occurred with it. It's like auto mechanic mechanics for big problems. And now it's like if you're if YouTube is that dad, right? It's like the one where you're going to go and look for that, like, how do I change this? Or 2s okay, so you're leaving Madison on the bus. Was there any planning in terms of we want to kind of, I guess maybe. By the way, I should ask, were there some short term objectives and long term objectives with the bus or was it all just like, here's the first objective. We'll figure out step two once we get there and move on or yeah, it was definitely both. It was. 1s We had. We had a short term goal of going and working on farms. So we signed up through this website, which is like Airbnb but for organic farmers is called Worldwide Organization of Organic Farmers. And you basically sign up through this app and you go work on farms and exchange. They feed you and they let you stay there for free, okay? And you work like 2 or 3 hours a day, and then you get your day to yourself to go do whatever you want. And so we were really big into researching from a foundation of health standpoint, like trying to fix myself all these years. I really realized that a lot of the foundation of all of our health issues as a society comes from the lack of nutrients in the soil. And just a blanket summary, like our monoculture agriculture system is really, like massively responsible for most health issues across America. And so permaculture and food forest, there's one solution that is completely anti-establishment. Yeah, but we wanted to be on the bus and go experience these farms. And so we specifically set out with the task to learn how to farm and learn how to farm in many different ways. And then we also set a few targets to visit family that we had never visited before. So it was kind of a blend between farming and family. And like there were times where we reversed the bus into a lemon orchard and could literally open up the windows and grab fresh lemons to eat every day. There were goat farms. I built a huge duck pond for 100 ducks. 2s I built a rabbit farm. I did all sorts of crazy cool things. We lived at Cato Mounds, which is a National Historic Monument in East Texas, and I helped build the Snake Woman's Garden according to traditional principles like the. I went and harvested bamboo to make fencing and poles, and then laid the mounds out the way that they grew agriculture back then. So it was just a really cool, deep, rich experience that way. And then from the health journey standpoint, we wanted to be as. Non-traditional as possible. So almost no technology. Yeah. You know, like I said, it was water buckets. Use as little water as possible. Soak up the sun and outdoors as much as possible. So every night it was like playing games with the kids, teaching them how to build fires. Most of our food was cooked on a fireplace outside. Yeah, we foraged for food. We learned how to forage. We did all of that type of more primitive thing with the purpose of resetting our nervous systems. And honestly, like, this is a crazy sounding thing, but it was about month three into the journey and like, that's when you could feel our nervous system starting to relax. Like, we had no idea how stressed we were until we started hitting that mark. You normalize it over time. It's like it starts with a little bit of extra stress, and then that becomes a little more, and then you find yourself ten years into a career and it's gotten to the point where you break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was the long term goal. The short term goal was farming. Long term health. So yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I was entirely clueless that you could actually sign up for something like that. And because I'm thinking about that, it's like if you had like a block of time and you wanted to see a lot and do a lot, but essentially like live modestly, 2 to 3 hours a day is a very small commitment to to and if you're only goals at the time are to have shelter over your head and food and water. That gives you a lot of flexibility. It makes me think of just like I was thinking about this not too long ago, where just the cost of living, how much it's gotten because you presumably we need all these things that are modern, that come with a price tag, and then you have to work and earn in order to everything from phones to utilities. Now. And just like cost of living in general the whole year, I think if I remember our budget right, we spent $12,000. Yeah, for the whole year as a family of four. Yeah, yeah. So it's really like that and that's what I was thinking. I was like, is it really that living costs more, or is it that we've normalized so many inputs that we assume are absolutely necessary? That's driven it up, but in reality, you could get by with a lot less if you had to. And then the cost of living wouldn't be any much any more aggressive than it would have been, say, a hundred years ago. But you almost have to remove yourself from society like a large portion of society, I should say. Obviously, like the organic farms around aren't viewing it that way, or they wouldn't have that sort of a setup. Yeah, well, there are a lot of times we just went and parked in the National Forest and it's crazy. So like there's these things called BLM land, which is like 500 million acres or something like that, where you can just go stay for free, like, yeah, you can go live there. You got to be like 100m off the road nearby or something like that. Yeah. So we learned so much about that, like comfort creatures. Like your point, it's, you know, we all think that we have to live in 72 degree nice internal temperature and have running water and all these things. And we survived perfectly fine on a little five gallon bucket of water and living with the temperature to whatever. There were nights where it got down to like 25 degrees in the bus, and we just cuddled up and sleeping bags, right, like it's on our beds. So no issues. Perfectly fine. Made us feel better. Actually. It's also one of those things where, like, I think when people think about living off the land is probably the extreme way to say it. And it's like, how would you do that? How would you find all these things and learn these things? But in reality, when you think about it like when your only goal during the day is to find water and food and enough shelter so you don't freeze or whatever at night. Then you have such a small list of what you actually have to get done. You can invest a lot of time into it, and then obviously, you probably need to know what you're doing to some degree in order to start either of those things. But once, once you start, like fine tuning your skills within that very short list of things you have to do, you probably get pretty good at it. Yeah. Well, and it was really crazy too, because it was the perfect time for the kids. Everyone always asks about the kids like, oh, how did they handle that? Like they handle it way better than adults do because to them they don't know any different. Like them , it's just a big vacation and fun. Yeah. And it was the perfect time for their brain development because they really got a sense of community like we did. There's lots of bus meetups, there's lots of community around this. So we establish some really lifelong friends and things of that nature. But more importantly, they saw the importance of things around family and community where like if you didn't do the dishes, there was no room for dirty dishes to sit there, right? You know, and they would feel the effects of like, if you're parked in a wrong spot and you've got ants coming up into your bus because you leave dishes out that are dirty. Yeah, they saw a direct correlation of like, this is why as a family, we do the dishes together. Yeah. The natural consequence is right there in front of you. Yep. Yeah. It's not down the road. Really crazy. And that's stuck with them. They're now 11 and 12 and they have no issues doing household chores because we do them as a family together. There's no money exchange. There's no pain. The kids do things like yeah, it's just oh this needs to get done. Okay, cool. How can we all do it? Yeah. I mean, I briefly met your children at Radio Coffee not too long ago. And I remember when you said your daughter was 12, so she's 12. Like, she was like, well, she's also like, freakishly large for a 12 year old. But yeah, I mean, she is more so than that. Just like her, her general demeanor did not scream 12 years. I mean, I taught 12 year olds. I was a seventh grade teacher for, for two years. So like, I get the kind of the general vibe of that age demographic fairly well. And she seemed to. Older than what you would imagine for that, for that. So it's like you wonder about how much just that sort of a process gives to a kid in terms of how they actually develop and are self -sufficient. They learn how to entertain themselves, they learn how to find things to do. They actually learn a lot more of what they like and what they don't like. And so it's been beautiful. We've homeschooled them from the beginning with the intent of passion driven learning and education, where whatever they're into, we just help facilitate the max capacity of that. 1s And then our goal was to teach them reading, writing and math as the basis. And then, oh, you're into X, Y, and Z. Cool. Here we go. Oh, you're into cooking. Let's learn math around cooking, right? Yeah, it's super practical. It reminds me of when I was in Madison, the reason I was in Madison, actually, is I had moved from my first full time teaching job in Marinette to Madison, where I was going to be teaching in Middleton Cross Plains, which was just, you know, right next to Madison. And they had the Middleton Cross Plain in high school which was a big, very successful high school in the state. But they had to convert their alternative schools. Most big high schools have an alternative school of some sorts. And they decided that they didn't think that path was best for those students. So they said, we're just going to convert this into a project based school. And it would be like both a charter school as well as part of the public school. So they still had they were still affiliated with the public high school, but they also had a charter license and then had like a board and everything like that. So the idea there was kind of like what you described, where let's help students figure out where their interests and passions actually are, and then show them where the math, the science, the reading, the writing fits into that. So you start with their interest and then embed the education first, jam the education down their throat and hope they find where that lies within their passions, which they may or may not actually do. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if I had stayed teaching, that's where I would be. That was like such a perfect setting for me. 1s Yeah. So I was just thinking, like, your bus tour would have been just something that they would have loved to have as, like, a guest speaker come in and talk to the kids. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this is exactly what they were doing or what they're trying to facilitate with less of a less mobile setting of that and more, you know, as much as much structure as you can as you need to put around a school in order to cross your t's and dot your eyes and still have that experience in place. So they were involved in even building the bus like it's crazy, like a five year old was out there with a power drill. Yeah. Helping you know. Well, imagine being that age and knowing like I am not just a member of this family by default. I'm an input that is necessary for this thing to function. Because if I don't do this, then things fall behind that are very apparent and obvious. That's a beautiful way to think about it. Most five year olds aren't thinking that way. Yeah, yeah, they definitely don't have an awareness of that, that just there's an outcome that happens because of it though. Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. So then you ended up in Austin. So what was, was that just the final stopping point. And then you decided, hey, of all the places we've been to, this is the best one. We've been here for paleo effects. Okay. Yeah. I think you and I had chatted about that as I'd been here for Paleo Facts, just because I was huge into the natural health community. And 1s during paleo, my wife and I had sat down on the curb and it would be like one day it would be cool to live here. Yeah. And so when we were exploring on the bus all the different cities of options that we were interested in, Austin just kept calling us. And it literally was for the tacos and sunshine. There's tacos for everything here. There's breakfast tacos, lunch tacos, dinner tacos and. That sounded really fun. Yeah, there is something about Austin I know. Nicole. She. She went to school at Northwestern, but then got her law degree from Baylor, so she was just around the corner from Austin. So a lot of her classmates ended up moving to Austin. She went to Dallas but she always thought, like, Austin is the spot I want to be. But you know, as life, you know how to go. It was ten years later. It's like you're still not in Austin. Yeah, but eventually that path opened up for us and she was just like, man, I should have done this sooner. I remind her, you might not have met me then. And she's like, oh yeah, that's right. Right, right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You can't go back and change the path. I know it's too bad you can't. You can't fine tune it, but it is what it is. But we're here now so we're excited about it. But yeah, Austin's got a certain kind of feel to it where it's just you just kind of find that being a desirable spot to hang out. So it is. Yeah. The culture here, the people are nice on top of everything, but more importantly, it's just a fostering community of people who want to do big things here. And. 1s You know, as much as I loved Madison, people wanted to do big things, but not in the way that Austin wants to do big things. And so for me, like, I didn't know what I wanted to do in my next phase of life other than explore. But by the fact of moving here and I started coaching, I started doing high performance coaching for CEOs and came across a bunch of tech people. And then the next thing you know, like I'm thinking about building an AI in 2019 is when I started, started looking at building an AI company, and it was purely because I changed my environment to Austin. Yeah, I would have never, ever probably gotten into technology, even though I was pissed off and frustrated coaching athletes from 2008, and people chasing Garmin heart rates and running themselves into the ground, going from Wisconsin to Arizona and overheating and not understanding why their heart rate was different. Yeah, like all the frustrations that I wanted to change out of technology, I would have never imagined myself being able to do that myself. If I would have stuck in Madison, I would have just kept doing the same thing. Whereas I moved to Austin. And you get around a completely different subset of people that have just these crazy dreams and different ways of looking at things. And that's what inspired me to get into technology. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that. So you're now in Austin or you have been in Austin. What are you doing now with the tech stuff? I know you got some. It's a health health input to tech, right? Yeah, exactly. So I basically make better meaning of data out of all these fitness trackers and advice. So I'm creating personal insight agency engines, which. This next level of health that's coming is right now everything's population based. Oh, it's great to get eight hours of sleep. Perfect. Yeah. You know, and even the best like whoop and Garmin like the advice that they give on their personal insights are not personal. There's a population. It's just population data of how I got up before. And Huberman is great at promoting the basics, which is what I really love is to get out in the morning, get their sunshine, your 20 minutes of sunshine before noon, and it'll help reset your rhythm and things. But like for you, what is your deep sleep ratio versus your REM sleep ratio? And what are the tactics for you that we know that get your deep sleep deeper and your REM sleep deeper so that you know that you're recovered more that work for you as an individual. Right. And so that's the big question. And I think that that's where the future of health is actually going. Okay. And is that going to be just improvements in wearables and then like databases that can collect that information and make a sense of it? Yeah, I'm big. I'm actually speaking at the Solar Park Solar Punk Festival this weekend, which is a huge decentralized community talking about regenerative agriculture, decentralized health, and all sorts of crazy stuff. I have a big topic that I talk about is that your bathroom is going to replace your primary care, okay? And so in your bathroom, like imagine a stool sample kit, your mirror is going to be able to monitor the moles on your skin and be able to detect when it starts to turn cancerous, like your urinalysis is going to happen on a regular basis. You're going to be able to have your, your, your bacterial swab and everything right there in your bathroom that everything will be connected into a central data hub that you own and that you have access to, not a health care system. And you are going to be able to tell it which inputs that you can put in. And all of these great sensors that are out there. This isn't something of the future. I'm not making this up. All these devices actually already exist. It's just no one's bringing together. They're all siloed right now. Sure. So, like one of my main constructs is to try to silo everything and get it all into one place for an individual where your Garmin is just as important as your LinkedIn data, which is just as important as the amount of Netflix documentaries that you watch, because then we have a better understanding of who you are and where you need help, and where your roadblocks are. So that's why primary care will actually start to go away. All of these baseline things will be automatic without even having to think about it. Our body will start to like what we saw through Covid and, you know, being able to check your HRV, starting to tank and all those sorts of things. If you start getting sick before you feel it, your biometrics show it. And so we'll be able to have those as signaling systems to warn you that, hey, your body's starting to get off, like totally avoiding the primary care situation, which will then unburden the health care system to allow them to be really great at what they're doing, which is the top 4% of everything the cancers, the get your bones broken, put them back together. Right. Like that's what the health care system is designed for. It's not designed for all these lifestyle modifications, which is a vast majority of the health care burden right now. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things you could go into with that. I mean, you said Covid, so let's go with that one. You can quarantine a virus with that information essentially, can't you like because it's like not I don't I don't my, my understanding isn't that people are like, oh, I have Covid, I'm going to go and spread it because screw you. It was more like, I don't know, I have Covid, but I can't not go to work or I'm not going to like, disrupt my life. So I'm going to go out. Exactly. Eliminate all the like, wear a mask. We eliminate all the lockdowns because like if you have Covid in that screening, your bathroom tells you of Covid, you know? You get through it. And then and then you quarantine that particular person versus the whole populace until they. And then you get the resources to the people who need them versus just casting a wide net and hoping it hits, but even even bigger, which is crazy to say. Even bigger. A bigger problem right now is diabetes. Heart disease, like the Peter Attia calls it the Four Horsemen. Right? Sure. Yeah. These things that are actually the biggest causes of death in our society are all lifestyle related. And so imagine being able to predict and help foster people in a good environment in their home. Yeah. Well, before something actually needs to take real action against. So in other words, if we can start to predict that now we call it right now pre-diabetic. But even before that, we have earlier signals. It's just the health care system doesn't promote getting these yet. Yeah, but we have all these ways to start to predict these things are going to start to get side-decked and we would be able to create interventions in your home rather than having to wait until it gets bad. Yeah. The adult with type two diabetes, they didn't see the decisions they were making as a kid that led to that as being the consequence. So it goes back to what we're talking about with your kids. They had immediate consequences. They showed up. So they made changes right away, and they learned right away versus figuring that out when there were adults like, oh man, I wish I would have been better at this when I was seven. They knew right away. So they developed those routines early. It sounds like this is the information people need to recognize, like the consequence they're heading down by the decisions they're making in the short term. And right. It gives them that scope. And of course, not everyone is going to do the work. But that's the beauty of human nature is we have the choice to write right now. We don't have the choice to because we don't have the information being provided to us that we are making bad choices, like in my particular health case. Right? I was strong headed, I thought I knew it all. I was one of the top experts in health and wellness, and everyone was flying from all over the world to see me for their health and their performance. And then there's me with my own actions, doing the wrong stupid stuff with no awareness that I was even doing it to myself. Like I had no idea I was redlining the whole time, that I wasn't getting sleep, and even the sleep that I was getting, you know, there were no fitness trackers that way. That was like easily telling you, hey, you're not getting any REM sleep like that might be bad, 1s you know? So now we're going to get to that phase of our society where it'll give me the option to be like, oh, oh, okay, I see that that fourth drink that I had did mess me up. Yeah, yeah. That's the exciting part. Yeah. So you can make the mistakes, but you know, you're going to make them right away. You know you're making them right away. Yeah. And you're not going to make them as consistent. Right. Because you'll see the cause and effect. And then just as far as the health care system goes. You're hoping for a high enough percentage. People take that information seriously, which they probably will, that you have a smaller percentage of the population dealing with these Four Horsemen type situations on a regular basis, where we don't have the structures to support an entirely sick populace, trillions of dollars. Yeah. If you can make a dent in 2% of that, like that's a huge equation. Yeah. And so if most people on the borderline, if we look at stats of the general population, 15%, we know through a lot of population studies and cooperation studies on this, 15% of the population really wants to take care of themselves. They're the you category, right. Like let's stay fit. Let's stay healthy. You know, I want to actively take care of myself. Yeah. 85% of the population in that there's probably going to be 60% of them that want to do something, but they're so overwhelmed and have no idea what to do that they end up choosing to do nothing, or they choose the wrong things for themselves, thinking that it's making a difference and it's not. And so that's where if we can get some of that percentage switched over and flipped to get them healthy for themselves, we're going to have a huge impact on society. Yeah. It's interesting. It's. It's one of those things where I think everyone who pays attention knows there's going to be big technological changes coming very soon, faster than most people probably would, maybe even want them to. But people have no idea what's in store for the world. Yeah, and I mean, you can always look at that through different lenses, but like, this is obviously a positive one where like, here's we're going to get answers to questions that are just basically like. Even if we have. Answers for them. We don't have good applications of making resonating with the average person to the degree where the changes get made. So there's just too much disconnect between that. And this sounds like the bridge for that for a lot of it. Yep. The exciting future is near, way nearer than people were thinking. Yeah, well let's zoom back into your particular situation here. So we're coming up in November or the end of October, I should say. And for the ultrarunning fanatics out there, they know the end of October means javelin 100. Yeah. And for me, this year means a race. So I'm doing the hundred mile at Javelina. But that'll be the end of my current journey from a training and racing standpoint and sort of the start of yours, because you've been kind of moving things around in a way where when you're one year out from the hobbling 100, you're going to start your process of couch to 100 miles. So. Tell me a little bit about what your thoughts are within that. I mean, I can tell you some thoughts too. I guess there's going to be coaching you for it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So we're officially going in for everyone out there. This is we're helping each other out on this. Yeah. I'm super excited to chat with you in this podcast because basically, you know, so like I said, I was in the mountains of Colorado two months ago. And so I've been trying to slowly get into things, and it was last week or the week before, I, for the first time in like eight years, I was able to run two miles straight. And when I first started two months ago, I couldn't run five minutes. Three minutes was like torture for me, right? 1s And so originally I was going to give myself this year of like, oh yeah, let's do Javelina the next year. And now, like, the immediate competitiveness stepped into my brain and I'm like, oh shit, should I bring this up to him on the podcast? I was like, can I do it faster than a year? Like so? On one hand, I want to take my time because I don't want to get injured. And I have a lot of fear behind running, and I have a lot of fear behind doing this, this thing just in general of the time commitment and all of the things that go into this. 1s But then there's this other side of me that's the competitive side that goes, oh God, if I go really intense, can I get it done in six months? Yeah. And I know, I know, there's a yes to both. But walk me through what in your brain has the experience of training so many people at the 100 level. Like, what kind of considerations should someone like me be having? Because I do feel like I've got numbness in my toes. My back goes out, I've got severe arthritis, my hips go out and I can't bend over. I don't poop right like my when my back goes out, I have to crawl around on the ground. Like there's all these things that I have to deal with when trying to ramp up something like this. So what are my considerations on the timeline six months versus a year? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think when it comes to endurance sports, I would say there's never a like, oh, that timeline is too long. Like where it's like you have to do something sooner. I mean, you can, you can, you can get kind of nitpicky with that and say, like, you should try to capitalize on potential experiences along the way that are going to help you with your end goal. But like if you told me, hey, I want to run a hundred miles in five years, I wouldn't say, oh, that's too long. I would say, okay, well, that's the timeline. What is the process to getting there? One year is just another timeline. So within one year, I would say, like, you have plenty of time to get yourself to a point where you'll be able to do the race. And the question is, for me, I always like, that is a big goal. It is your big goal, I should say. And big goals tend to be further away in time. And that kind of puts you in a position where you have this like, is this like the New Year's resolution thing? Right? Like someone decides at the end of the year to, to transform their health in some way. And that is kind of like a longer journey, but they're excited about it. So January 1st, they have all this momentum and all this excitement. And then as the days, weeks and months trickle on and things happen that they didn't expect, that shiny experience they're looking to achieve becomes less motivating. And they don't have that kind of drive to kind of be consistent. Continue. So when we're looking at year long goals, my first question always is we need to set up some scaffolding around where are the wins between day one and day 365 that you can really be proud of, that are going to be motivating you along the way so that when you don't have the excitement of crossing the finish line and have a to motivate you, you have something else. And you also have all these checks that you're kind of marking along the way that are also giving you the sense of accomplishment, like when you were into your career, obviously you were passionate about it, or you wouldn't have driven your health in the ground in order to pursue it. Yeah. So like along the way, there were milestones. I'm sure that motivated you, that kept you kind of determined to be able to drive your health into the ground in order to achieve those things. So we want to think of it the same way as we want to build those motivators, but we want to make sure we're doing it at a pace that is going to make this something sustainable for you. Beyond Javelina, versus just getting you there in a position where you can cross the finish line and then you mean you don't want me to be one and done? Yeah. I don't want you to be one and done. And you can be one and done with a hundred miles. But I don't want you to be one and done with your pursuit of health and excitement because, like, if you finish Javelina and you say, that was great. I have a body and a vehicle now that can do a lot more than it could a year ago. And I saw that change occur. But maybe now I want to do something completely different. Maybe I want to do a strength based activity or something like that. And that's where you turn your passion to. I mean, I think that's great. It's about making that part of your lifestyle to where those goals start showing up very intuitively versus feeling like you have to like, really sit down and plan them out. You start knowing, like, okay, I see how this process works and where those goals tend to get established along the way. So sometimes I think that means. Let's put a race on the calendar. That's sooner than javelina. So you have a more immediate target? Totally. Yeah. You want to do the 20, you know, the ten K the marathon and the 50 K, and. Yeah. And it does make sense because like, it's one of those things where when it comes to training for $100, the big thing about 100 miles is you just don't do anything really that close to it before the day you do it. So you have this kind of dark area of unknown where it's like, I don't really have a reason to believe that I can do this because I never have done it. So you're battling that side of your mind that that that side of like just not having a personal experience of traveling 100 miles, even though you're trying to give yourself all the reason to believe that it's possible and you've seen other people do it, so you know it is, you can close that gap a fair bit by doing other events. And even if it's not, you know, something where that experience gives you the actual act of crossing a finish line that's long, but not 100 miles, but just knowing, like, well, this is kind of how I feel the week before a race. This is how I best perform by doing these sorts of things. This is what the day Before feels like. Oh, maybe I shouldn't do that on Javelina weekend because I did that for that 50 K and it did not end well for me. Kind of a mentality. So you have a chance to maybe run through the system a few times and catch where the little spots are that could potentially be mistakes and refine your decision making. So when the inevitable happens at Javelina, which is that I didn't plan for this to occur, I have to problem solve on the fly here. Your mind goes to when this happens. These are the 2 or 3 things I should choose from in order to go forward versus this just happened. I have no clue. I'm going to start throwing stuff up against the wall. Yeah, okay. Well, so then we'll have to get a 5050 miler on the books, because to me that would be my nervousness. To me, a marathon doesn't make me nervous. Like, I know I could probably push through that mentally with zero training. Yeah, and I would pay for it dearly. But we don't want you to pay dearly. Exactly. So I think a 50 miler for me in the books would be really motivating. There's a lot of great options from the 50 K to the 100 K, and they're basically all over the place. You wouldn't even have to leave the state, and you could probably pick something basically any month of the year if you wanted to. There's some great race organizations here in Texas that put on events frequently. So if you want to travel, I mean, then the world is your oyster, so to speak. And that's part of this too. So maybe I'll back up and help the viewers and all of us kind of understand the perspective that this isn't when I was on the mountain. There were a lot of things that came up before this that led to my decision on the mountain. Obviously this has been an eight nine year struggle for me of I'm restore my health. So there's that point that this has been a long term transition happening. In the beginning of this year, I went into some sort of organ problem and my triglycerides shot up to 700. My cholesterol shot up to 370. I was getting symptoms and issues again. And because of that, at the beginning of this year, both my wife and I stopped drinking at all. Like, even though we weren't drinking, drinking like we just had zero alcohol, we hammered in our nutrition. I started eating two £2 of meat today. Not just meat, but protein really just getting a lot of protein in because I realized that I was under nourishing and I tried to get back into weightlifting because I used to just love weightlifting, and it just wasn't motivating for me. Like there was. I realized through all these years, the reason why I loved the health and fitness side of things was because I was always training for a competition when I was younger, and so I had been searching for several months for the thing that I wanted to do that would be an external competition to drive my health. And so all year long I've been making health transitions already. So psychologically, this isn't a New Year's resolution where I'm saying a year, I'm just going to start doing this, right? Right. So there's a slight difference that way that is leading up to this. So I think that that's really cool to put in perspective of. For me. This is. 2s Yeah, this is about a whole aspect that I've already been on the path to, and it's going to be very easy for me to adhere to this and not get lost. Yeah. I'll say one thing to kind of add to that. And what we've been talking about is like when I'm coaching someone with a goal like yours or in a situation like yourself where this is like a big project relative or a pivot, more or less. Yeah. My goal is not necessarily to get you to lean and feel like you just absolutely like to destroy javelina above and beyond what you could, like, hit your goal. I mean, I'd love you to hit your goal, but I see that as the cherry on top. So my goal is to cross the finish line. Yeah, yeah. And I mean that's phenomenal . I mean, how many people have crossed the hundred mile finish line is a tiny percentage of the population. And 1s my goal though, like if you went to have Lena and had a miserable experience and you can get to the finish line, my goal would be. When you have that experience, do you look back on it and think, what was I thinking? Or do you look back on it? It was like, oh, wait a second. Like, I've really turned my life around here. I've got tools available to me that I would have never imagined. My health is in a much better place. My physical fitness and the opportunities I have because of it are great. So then you're actually standing on the start line of hobbling and thinking, oh, I already won. This is the celebration. This is the part where I get to like, express all the wins that I've accumulated over the last 365 days. And that's where I think the spot you want to be in is. So it sort of kind of has two, two aspects to it. One is it creates a lifestyle and it creates a situation where you are just better as a whole, but it also puts you in a position where, like some of that anxiety and pressure of this is all about crossing the 100 mile finish line is sort of removed because, you know, when you're honest with yourself, you're so much better off before you even start the race than you would have been had you not went on that journey in the first place. So the other way I like to explain it is like you'll run 100 miles next year at Javelina, but that hunter Miles, although at points may feel like an eternity, is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to everything you do between now and then to get ready for that 100 miles. So when you're on the starting line, you're like 99 points, something percent of the way there already, versus I haven't even taken a step yet and I have to go 100 miles. So that's kind of the frame my goal should be to. My goal should be to make it to the race then. Yeah, absolutely. To my athletes that so it's so funny like my own medicine coming back to me. Yeah. Your goal should be to make it to the start line. Everything after that is icing on the cake. Yeah. If you're standing on the start line in a year, it's going to be because you are in a totally different spot physically than you are now. And that's a huge win. And it can't be ignored because if you ignore that, then it becomes something where when you do have self doubt during the race itself, you maybe are looking for the wrong things to motivate you to keep moving versus like thinking about like I think when when you have the process front and center, it really does minimize what you're trying to do. And the goal of 100 miles minimizes what you're trying to do in your mind because you don't want your mind to try to have to wrap around 100 miles or however many hours ends up taking. Yeah. So I'll say one more thing too, because I know there's a lot of just anticipation, fear, anxiety around running 100 miles. 100 miles is a moving journey. So like walking, walking and hiking are a huge portion of that for the majority and in some cases the entire field. It depends on the course and the people who come to it. But there is plenty of walking and plenty of hiking. And if you're looking at just the cutoffs or like the time you need to get to the finish line by, it could be almost all walking. So like looking at walking as not just something that gets you closer to running or a spot that makes a specific run sustainable because you took a walking break versus trying to push through it. Think of that as this is a skill set that I'm going to actually use on race day. So I think that's where the ultra marathon, especially the 100 mile, becomes a little bit different, where somebody might be thinking of training for like a ten K or a half marathon, where the goal on race day is to run the entirety of it. That's almost more daunting in my mind, because now they're at a point where they have to do a walk run to get to where they need to be, and they're thinking, this walk is not what I'm actually preparing for. This is just this means to an end thing, whereas. With Hunter Meiling. It's very much part of race day. So embrace that aspect of it. Don't fear it. And don't be afraid to pull that lever in training when you feel like, okay, I know that I'm supposed to always leave one on the table, so to speak, at the end of a workout, so the next one is doable and you're not pulling like future workouts off the table. Like, that's the thing to keep in mind. Like it's not a step back to walk in training. It's actually probably a value add in most cases. Yeah. Nice. That's a great, great perspective. And 1s so my 16 to 18 minute mile pace right now is okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm not sure what the I'm not sure what the cutoff is at Javelina in terms of what you have to finish by. I think it may be like 30 hours or something like that, but I mean, that's probably the pace relatively close to that type of a pace to get to the finish line. So interesting. You know, it's not obviously there's variables that you want to consider too with the course and everything and stuff like that. Not that you're not experiencing those variables here in Austin to any degree. It's probably more miserable at this point of the year in Austin than it will be at Javelina when you do that race. So yeah, I'll be training because next year then I will be training through the heat of Austin. Yeah. And by then you'll be at a point where your training capacity is much larger now too. So you'll be like, you'll actually be able to put meaningful time out in that weather and experience, like like, okay, yeah, I can actually manage this well. And I actually think. You know, dry heat, relatively speaking, is going to be so much easier because there's just so much more. Well, first of all, your body is better at dealing with it from a topical cooling standpoint. Evaporative cooling standpoint. But it's also like if you're training in this humid Austin weather, even if it's unreasonable or even reasonably worse at Javelina from a weather standpoint, than what some people will get on, like pristine weather races. It's not going to feel that way for someone who's trained through an Austin summer. Yeah. So yeah, no, it's going to be exciting to get things going and kind of see where it all goes and the journey along the way. And for the listeners who are interested in this, we're going to be doing some recurring episodes. So we'll be checking in with Dave there along the way, see how he's doing, and get an idea of what it's like to kind of go on that journey as a first time ultramarathon trainee. And then it sounds like we may have crossed that ultramarathon checklist before Javelina. If I understand you correctly, Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I'm just super excited to be sharing in this journey. It actually motivates me to share this with the world. Like I'm a person that is driven by eyeballs looking at me. And so to me, this is just I'm very grateful for this opportunity. I'm appreciative of everyone. And definitely people will be able to follow along on this. And I think through your podcast, I'm starting a podcast, I'll be doing YouTube content, you'll probably be doing the same and we'll be sharing and all that. And then I think for people following along, we're going to be doing something pretty special that they can follow along as well too. Yeah, we're looking to build this out a little bit so that people who want to go on their own journey have some resources and tools to jump in and join us. Right. So I guess stay tuned for some of the specifics about that. But yeah, we'll be building out some opportunities for listeners, this podcast or anyone who wants to follow along to join in. And it doesn't have to be a hundred miles. It's going to be set up in a way where you don't go crazy. Like, yeah, you could do A5K, you could do anything in between, or it could just be something entirely different. And you're just focusing on improving your health and fitness with some consistency. Yeah, with running as a tool. That's kind of the way that I've been thinking of it, as this great tool to keep the community alive and being social. Most people are social and most people want a community. And to me, the running component of that, I always admired that when I was working with my endurance athletes, that a lot of people had the wrong conception. They were in it to win their five K yeah, I was like, but you're getting so much more value out of the community side of it. You guys are all binding together and doing cool stuff. And so I'm excited about that component of this as well, that we can do some Strava competitions and things like that together. Yeah, it'll be fun. Awesome. Where else can people find you social media links or handles or anything like that? Yeah. Mind of Dave. Com okay mine of dave.com is that's the one thing that people can go to. And then from there you'll be able to link in to my other stuff Instagram and YouTube and all that. Right on. Awesome Dave, thanks for coming on. We'll be doing this again soon. Awesome.