Episode 445: Jeff Garmire | Cocodona, Media, & Doping Control in Ultra

Jeff Garmire is a professional ultramarathon athlete, coach, author, podcast host, and one of a very few to have participated in all Cocodona 250 events. Long ultras are not even long for Jeff, as he has also completed some monster through hikes like John Muir Trail, Arizona Trail, Continental Divide and more. He is currently gearing up for an unsupported attempt on the Appalachian Trail in August.

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Episode Transcript:

Jeff, thanks a bunch for taking some time to chat with me. I was kind of just looking over some of the stuff I wanted to talk to you about, and I went down the Jeff Mayer rabbit hole, and I was, you know, I usually do this when I have a guest on. I'd like, listen to some podcasts, some work that they've done and all that stuff just to kind of get an idea of where the topic is going to be interesting. And with yours, as I was going down the rabbit hole, I quickly diverted down one channel, which was, the trail team, TMZ and the The Jeffrey Awards, which took up a lot of time, but it was very much worth the while. So I do want to chat a little bit about just kind of like your style with like, media and social media and just like your YouTube channel and things like that, because I think you've got a really interesting approach with it all. I believe one thing you mentioned was that, in the ultrarunning space, we've got this sort of growing amount of media, but it's just a lot in some cases, just a lot of the same stuff. We just have more of it. And you wanted to kind of bring a new, fun aspect into that space, which I think you're very much doing. Thanks. Yeah. I didn't know where you were going to go when you mentioned the rabbit hole. I mean, there's some weird old YouTube videos out there. There's all kinds of media from the past. But yeah, I think the big thing is when I got it. I don't know how you even frame it, but when I got into the sport, or at least was a fan and stuff, it was like I was setting facts and things, but there wasn't any money in it. So the whole point was it had to be rewarding in some other way. And for some people, that's pushing limits or redefining things or getting the most out of themselves. And I love that. But it also had to be fun with how much money I was putting in, especially compared to how little money I was making that I had to really enjoy it. And I think adopting that mindset when no one was watching and no one really cared, that just helped when I slowly developed an audience in a few different platforms, that that's really the only style I like to look at any of these things is it's really fun when someone's really intense and racing really hard, such as like a Hayden Hawks. But you can also have fun and point out how that's really fun to watch as well. It's not like everyone has to have this fun, jockey personality, but we should at least acknowledge the fun and watching greatness or the fun in someone's personality or something is, I think, just keeping that through line of fun somewhere in the sport, because the 99% of people that do it, that kind of fun. The entries for elites and help these races continue to go are usually in it, because it's some aspect of a hobby or fun or entertainment or something that they want to spend their time doing. And the best way to keep doing those things is if you're having fun in some way. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's one of those things where like it's, it's sort of like when you get into the space that I think we have a lot of similarities, similarities in how we've approached the sport where there's like the competition side of things, which we obviously want to prepare for and do our best in. But there's also this sort of, well, what else am I going to do during that, as well as prepare myself for a point in time when I'm no longer competitive and I'm not maybe signing brand deals and things like that. So like, what's kind of like what are the things that I can like, do that are still fun and rewarding, that kind of work alongside that. And it's just an interesting world right now with that too, with like, the growth of social media and YouTube and podcasting and things like that, where there are a lot of options to kind of brand build and storytelling and dive into that stuff and create something that's maybe a little more sustainable than a typical professional athletes career. Yeah. And I think the big thing is you are a better asset to brands that you work with to if there's more depth to your personality, to your character other than just your race results, and there's probably just such a narrow sliver at the top on the top of that hill where you can just stand on your race results and everyone on those tiers under it has to offer something more. And maybe that is great insight or coaching relatability or just knowledge. Or it can also be fun entertainment, or just the willingness for people to give you their time and attention. And I think I come across a lot as being happy and lucky and stuff, but it is also like thinking that it's going to help me be able to have a career and a life a lot longer than my best results in this sport. If I continue to be relatable, have opinions that are fun, spark conversation and say hi, and are nice to people during races, even if I'm having my worst race out there. So I always keep that in the back of my mind, as if I'm just a better person than, you know, sometimes the easy way out of I'm having a bad day, so I'm going to be grumpy and not so nice is that easy? Way out only comes back to hurt you. So that mindset of just if you are a good person and kind of true to what you like, which for me it's fun, enjoyment, laughter, jokes, that kind of thing, then it just really snowballs into maybe it's more of a career covering the sport or putting out media or content or something like that as I get older, but it opens those doors a lot more when you can't just offer superior race results or facts to a brand. Because, you know, I think our time in our prime is so short when we look back at things too. Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. And I think even if we narrow down on some of those inputs to where it's like with coaching, I've looked at it through this lens now too. It's like, you know, sharing those experiences where it's like, all right, I had a bad day and I had to problem solve or this went wrong and I made a mistake. I made a decision. I don't want to do something that I'm not really comfortable with. These are things that most ultra runners are dealing with, like bad races, DNFs, like asking myself, did I really need to drop out? Was I mentally weak? Was it really? Was that knee really bothering me that badly, or did I just want to quit? Kind of like these sort of things that are kind of going through people's mind when like someone like yourself who's had a lot of success, especially in the longer ultra side of things, you know, I think people hear that that's just the reality. And it's not just all about how great you can be all the time. It makes you more relatable. And, you know, I've had just like I try to pay attention to this stuff sometimes too, where like, people will talk to me about coaching or something like that. And every once in a while someone will say like, oh, I didn't, I didn't realize you just coached like normal runners. I'm like, that's like the vast majority of my coaching clients are like, you know, busy professionals, family, you know, families, the whole thing when they're, you know, the running thing is a passion and something that is really interesting. They want to do the best they can within the framework of their life. And, you know, I think just, you know, by being open like that, I think you make yourself a little more relatable and then people are maybe a little less shy about approaching you with, you know, potential of working with them and things like that, too. So there's a lot of interesting stuff in that. Yeah. And I think coaching to the most fun people to coach are those where running is a complement to their life, or the ultramarathon has to fit in to having a family and a job, because then my job as a coach is it's really fun because I'm working with someone really motivated, but they have this amount of time they can commit. So it's like, how are we going to best maximize this? We have to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and coach those and then prepare you for this race based on what's also going on in your life. And I think that's the most fun. Whereas when you coach someone that is maybe younger or a leader with a lot more time, it's like, well, I can do anything ever. You can give me as much as you want. And it's like, well, there's no parameters here. Like, we got to explore some of these things. You're coming with the blank slate. It's a little more fun when we know how running really slots into your life versus how you think it's going to slot into your life. Yeah, I think consistency is the big variable in most cases. And it's like there's more than one way to prepare for these events. And I'd be curious about your thoughts on this or just your experience with this too. Because when I first got into the sport and started getting some notoriety and started coaching people, there was it. I always felt kind of like I was trying to talk to people through the lens of like, you can do this. Like your people were looking at like, say like 100 mile distance as something like, oh, I could never do 100 miler. And it might be someone who's very equipped, like there's a sub three hour marathon runner and things like, so you can, you can definitely do 100 miler. And there was kind of like this maybe a hurdle to get over to talk people into, thinking that it was even an option they had available to them. And as the sport has grown, I think just different groups of people have come into it. And then, you know, we have these kinds of big characters that have come in from non-traditional backgrounds, like the Goggins and campaigns of the world that I know I get a lot of people coming to me with like, oh, I want to do this hundred miler. I want to do this like coca Dona 250 and then I'm like, oh yeah, so what's your background like? And they were never even runners. It's like so now it's almost a reverse to some degree where people are like they're getting more open minded to like, hey, I guess they just saw examples that they needed to see and that people respond to, like, if they can do it, I can do it. And when they see someone that maybe maps their lifestyle a little bit closer, they start wrapping their head around it and start giving themselves a chance. Yeah. And I think that's huge, it's mostly a compliment to a lot of the storytelling out there that emphasized a lot of different ranges of skill level time. Like front of the pack, mid pack, back of the pack, even like the live streams showing some of the final finishers too, it makes it feel a lot more attainable if you go back to the original, like unbreakable. All the content from back then is in front of the pack, and so you think that you just have to run every step of 100 miler, or run without a shirt or gels or water like Anton to be able to do this. And I think that a credit to the whole space in general is it showed a bunch of different people doing it a bunch of different ways, and made it seem at least attainable in that respect, too. It almost swung the other way, I think. People don't realize how much work some of the people have put in just to finish a few minutes before the cutoff, too. I think I've noticed that a bit with coaching is the very lofty goals that are achievable, but it's just like we need to set expectations on how much work and time does go into this because it is really hard. Most people can do it, but it's got to be something you really want to do, not just you got inspired by seeing the live stream. Yeah. Yeah. There's the part where the way I usually unpack it is like let's, let's first figure out what your availability is to train. So we're fitting the schedule like you were describing. There's life beyond training. So we need to make that fit. And then like I like to kind of tear it to some degree to where it's like, okay, these are like your non-negotiables that like, you just can't really like to sacrifice these. Like you can't stop showing up for work. You can't just ignore your family. You know, there's things that you're just going to have to work around. And that's just the reality of things. And then there's kind of these gray area things that are kind of non-negotiable in the long term in the sense that you're not going to give them up forever, but they might be temporarily negotiable. So it's like, well, maybe we work within a larger list of non-negotiables during some of the earlier phases of training, and then you make a sacrifice in like the final build that's a little more specific to the event where you make some sacrifices on some activities or things that you enjoy that are going to be off the table maybe for a month or two. But then once you finish the race and kind of ease back into things, you can kind of get back to them too. So it doesn't feel like, oh, I got to give up all the stuff I like just to become an ultra runner. Yeah, totally. And I think there's really those two mindsets and people kind of realize where they fall within them too. Some people are like, all in type A, this is what I want to be my hobby. And then others get going. It's like, well, actually I did really like playing pickleball on Wednesdays. Is there a way we can still work that in? And it's like, yeah, definitely. But it's all kind of like you have this much time to use and it all kind of relates and we can use that. But I think that's why coaching and even the sport in general is so fun is that it can be such a balance and especially the rise. And I think you posted on it too, of cross training in general, and especially biking and stuff too, and how that's working a lot more into training, even more than we would have thought a few years ago to and how it complements. And I think just the rise of that really is going to help a lot of runners, like lifelong runners, to avoid more burnout, too, because I think throwing these massive builds to like two hundreds and stuff is, is a lot. But if you're able to, you know, take one of those longer days out in exchange for biking, it's just a lot more enjoyable experience, I think. Yeah, that's a really fun topic for me, I think. And I think my, my theory and I'd love to hear your take on this because you've got way more experience than like the multi-day stuff. The longer the event becomes and the lower and the intensity is, and then the more varied the terrain is, the more applicable. Something like a cross training modality or input becomes because you're, you're we're we're already doing multiple things on a course like Kokoda where I think people think like, okay, I got a train running, but they're probably hiking the vast majority of that. So we're already not necessarily really zeroing in on the skill set that they're going to use, or at least the ratios of it. So I like to think of it like that too. It's like, well, at a certain point when we add volume to your training plan, we should probably consider the hiking walking portion of it. Because if we can get you a few percentage points better at hiking, that could make up a pretty meaningful point in your progress. But then there's also things where I think, like, you know, like hiking uphill. Running uphill isn't too unspecific to hopping on a bike and pedaling, and some of it's just kind of getting used to your body moving for long periods of time. And the actual impact that we drive from running isn't always necessary. So how do we remove some of that limiter and open up this world of cross training and all that stuff? Totally. Yeah. And my favorite thing to do, and my background is 20 years ago, starting with backpacking. I've coached some people who love backpacking, and we'll just find a few weekends and work that into the training plan because it's loaded, weighted hiking, which is fairly similar to Kokoda, even more on the muscular side of putting more weight on them. They love it. It's enjoyable. It doesn't feel like a long run or anything, and we can get 40 miles into a weekend and they come back like motivated and everything. And I think when you do that and get a little bit less specific on, like whether it's longer cycling or backpacking or more hiking, I do think you have to hit more of the speed work a little, a little bit more regimented as well. I think just because hitting that running motion and reinforcing the biomechanics too, but I love working in the backpacking side of it. I think it's just like the last couple of years, it's been this revelation of like, yeah, let's not tell people to go do their long run. If they love backpacking and want to do it, let's just kind of restructure training so that they can get both these in. And then the mental side, which I think is so underrated in these 200 mile builds or even 100 miles, is just like you have to be excited to race by the time you get to the race. And I think that can be a hard thing if it's just like every weekend, it's a long run and can feel draining for people. And if we break that up with a couple backpacking trips, we didn't really lose too much training and we also just created some stoke that just keeps going. Yeah I love that. And I think of that the same way where you're, you're kind of, you're on this like kind of a balancing act of doing enough of the long run stuff so that you're prepared but not doing so much of it so that you show up at the start line, like hating what you're about to do for sometimes days because like, if you're if you're already mad about what you're about to do because you've worn yourself out on it from training, it doesn't matter if you had some like picture perfect Strava build up to it. So there's I think you're spot on there. I think that's a lot of mental and it's a lot of just feeling like it's, there's a light at the end of the tunnel to some degree, and being able to kind of drop that stuff in is, is powerful. Yeah. And I think the big thing I want to throw in a little caveat too, is like there's so many different types of races, whether it's two hundreds or hundreds, and we've both done Javelina and there's like a 200 miler in Nebraska and stuff too. So not all this stuff applies to everything perfectly. I think some of the general principles are pretty good, but yeah, something with a lot more running or more stout cut off or something. Definitely focusing a little more on the long runs. But I do think in general we're learning with some science and studies recently that things are a little more flexible as long as you're getting in the right aerobic zones and you can develop different modalities of exercise. And it's really more complementary than exclusionary, as people probably thought 20 years ago. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I do want to kind of hop back on like the media side of things a little bit here because you're a very unique individual in what you've done, I think you've done Coca Cola every year since it started. Right. Yeah. I have an addiction. So yeah, that's one way to put it for sure. There's, because I'm just curious on your thoughts on like, this trend, which I imagine is just going to get more multifaceted and just continue to grow, is just kind of like that live stream coverage of it or the content because like the live stream of Coca-Cola this year, it was just it was like a party in there where, I mean, we had so many different characters from like, what kind of what we talked about, like the guys and gals who were like, okay, they're going to absolutely crush this thing and break the course record. And then we had these big kinds of public figures like the Andy Glazer's of the world, or the campaigns of the world where they're not going to be up front, but they're going to bring a huge group of people with them to watch and spectate and check in on them. It. I kind of see it kind of kind of going a couple different directions, and then probably a bunch more is like you kind of have the main live stream, which is kind of going to be kind of that central hub, but then you're not going to see a ton of like Andy Glaze and a ton of campaigns on that necessarily. But those guys are probably bringing a bigger audience in their own little brand to it where like if they're out there, like putting up short form stuff on Instagram over the course of it, you kind of have that side of it, too. So it's like we almost have these like multichannel inputs. Or another way to look at is you kind of have your formal channel, and then you also have all these kind of side side channels that are kind of getting getting the word out, getting momentum around it that revolve around like what they're able to do, or in some cases, like they bring a camera crew out with them because they're they're that big of a personality. And then you kind of have that going on too. So like, what was it like kind of because I'm trying to remember back the first Coco Dona, I'm sure there was live coverage, but I don't remember if it was even on YouTube. It hadn't been to some degree, but I'm sure it wasn't nearly to. The capacity is now what was. I guess my question is just like, did you notice that trend kind of evolving over the years that you've done Coco Dona and your thoughts on kind of how that is now and how it's. The direction it's heading. Totally. Yeah. I think now it's sort of like Taylor Swift with the NFL of, like, people bigger than Coca-Cola are bringing in way more people into the Coca-Cola atmosphere of. Yeah, whether it's Andy Glaze or Cam Heinz has like, I don't know, a few million followers that he's a we'll just call cam Heinz is our Taylor Swift. So yeah. But yeah the first year was really really interesting. So I didn't do a lot of ultrarunning or especially racing for the longest time. Barkley in 2021 failed like everyone else. And then Jamil asked if I wanted to do the inaugural year of Coca-Cola. So Coca-Cola was actually my second ultra marathon ever, and my first was a 50 K, so I didn't really know anything going on. I had to learn about drop bags and stuff, but they had a live stream and I didn't have a pacer or anything for most of it. So I called in to the live stream and just talked to the people on the air. They were on YouTube only, probably a few hundred people watching. I'm still pretty good for the first year, but yeah, they just stayed up for like 48 hours or something, broadcasting straight and pulled off the live stream. And every year it's really grown and they've dialed in the live stream, too. And I think that's really a testament to air also broadcasts and live streams, a lot of their other races. And I think that's true. Help them to get the reps in practice to kind of nail this Coca-Cola. Live stream. As you know, they embark on five days straight of coverage or whatever, but it's grown significantly, I think, from maybe Sally 2023 when Sally MacRae did it, I think that was a pretty big jump. And then from there it just kept snowballing. And it's really interesting to see, because the point of how it's almost fragmented coverage of everyone can tune into the live stream, but then you can also pop over to influencers or people at the front. A lot of them will have someone posting stories and stuff too, is it's created this thing as someone doing it where you almost have to have stuff going up on your own page, or things going on your own social media to capitalize on the attention, because it's going to be the most attention you'll get for the entire year, probably, even if you did Western states, because coconut is so unique that even the winner, you get to know them slowly over two and a half, three days and you feel like you care know about that person. You're rooting for them. Western states, it's sort of like just, you know, 13, 14 hours of knowing someone, then it's over. So you don't create that same personal bond through watching them suffer and run. So I think that's where coconut has really nailed it as far as storytelling and getting people super invested if you go to bed and you wake back up and you want to check out how your favorite runners are still doing out there. And that's really the beauty in what storytelling is all about, because you create some emotional connection rather than watching superior athletes run really fast at 100 miler, and it's kind of over before you know too much about them. Yeah yeah that's a great point. And it also I think to do your message there with your comparison with western states and Coca-Cola. I think with Western states, that's gotten to be such a big competitive thing for that discipline where someone who's going to be in the lead at the end, we probably have a lead up on them where like, you know, they've most likely won a golden ticket race or we're in the top ten the year prior. And like we've had stories about them, we've had some time to dig and hear their background. Whereas with Coca Cola we have these folk kind of popping up sometimes where it's like you, they were doing well, but they maybe just flew under the radar. I think like Dan Green this year was interesting too, because dude's fast. He's broken 13 hours at Javelina, but he's kind of like, he's kind of like a little bit on the outside looking in where, like, he didn't break the course record. He was just behind it and he didn't win it, or he was just outside the golden ticket for it. So it's like just a great performance, but not enough to like, have the whole ultra community be like, oh yeah, Dan Green's here this year. Look out. And then all of a sudden he just rips through that course and like you said, now we're all kind of catching up live, which has a totally different feel to it than, you know, as Jim goes ripping through Forest Hill, it's like, oh, we know a ton about Jim, or anyone who's in that position for the most part. So there's that difference for sure. Yeah. And it's just so long. So much can happen. The front runners can drop out. Things can happen. Fall back. It's just. Yeah. Just writes its own storylines. And that's what's so interesting about it is you don't know if someone like Dan Green can run 250 miles, and that's the fun. Is he going to do great or is he going to drop out Mike Versteeg, he's won it, but he's dropped out a couple times too. It's like an endless wild card. If you never know what's going to happen next and sort of how it feels at 100 milers, and especially as they've gotten more dialed in, there's a handful of people who have a pretty good shot of winning, and it's not very often you see someone unknown break into that. And I think coconut feels like it's up for grabs a lot of the time between 20 or so people. Yeah. It feels like with the sport of ultrarunning too, we have this passion for that storyline. So as different events get a lot more competitive pressure and we kind of lose a little bit of that, then there's this fascination of like, well what's the one that hasn't quite got like every elite looking at it yet that's going to give us those kinds of interesting wild cards. It's kind of almost like March Madness where, you know, you get like that 14 seed who, like, gets to the Final Four or something like that. We want to still see that. Yeah. In the. The coolest thing that's even better than traditional sports is the chat going on like there's interaction between other people. And even if you're watching a grainy video of someone near Sedona, you can just be reading and interacting with the chat and not as focused on the action if there's not a lot happening. I think that really builds on itself and shows that there's this community all, you know, sometimes cracking jokes or asking about things, and it's a really cool place that they've created. I'm really interested to see what it becomes because it's I mean, it's only going to get bigger and and wilder and it's like, will it have a home outside of YouTube that kind of harnesses and captures that community may be year round because current day it's only five, five days of that. But it seems like there's this community that's interested in it year round. Every time I put up something related to Cocoa Donut does way better than anything else. It's just something that spectators love, athletes love. It's. Yeah, it's a very unique event. It's amazing what Jamal came up with. Yeah. To your point with like the the chat too. It's I'll be curious how this evolves because right now it's big enough where there's enough going on in there where it's really exciting and there's a lot of moving parts that are fun to engage with and they kind of keep you there, but it's still just small enough where it's not like one of those live streams where you see, like these big content creators who have live streams, and it's just like a stream of text because people are going so ballistic on there. Like you can't even see anyone's message because it moves so fast. I wonder, like at some point it probably gets to that point where now all of a sudden you can't really see anything through that noise. I wonder like what you said, if they'll be, like, off channels where, you know, or like, like different channels where you can chat about specific things or. Yeah, maybe there's the Sally McRae fan club chat on one part and then there's like the, the, the, the leader group chat or something like that where you can kind of pick like which one you want to really kind of dive into the weeds for. Yeah. I mean it's just how big do they want to make it. Because I could see something where there's static cams at most the like a number of aid stations, and you can click into that because Andy Glaze is coming through and all his fans want to see that and just different types of streams, I think it's really endless what they can do with it, because it's so many miles long that you could kind of you could do that type of thing. I think there's the opportunity and they've started doing this, like recaps at the end of the day, almost like a Sportscenter type thing of like what happened and more. I mean, they're hiring videographers out there to film stuff throughout the day or focus on individual athletes. It's pretty endless as far as the storytelling ability, which I think has been if we just broaden it to it's been really good for the sport of just seeing that there is so much demand for well told, or at least decently told stories, and people are interested in what's happening out there during races rather than just sort of like training montages and like vlogs and stuff. I think that a number of athletes have built and started YouTube channels in the last couple of years, really on the backs of seeing the success of the people just wanting to watch what is going on during a race, before a race, after a race, and I think it's good for the sport. I think it also just puts a ton on athletes' plates. If it's like, well, not only do I have to train 20 hours a week between recovery and running and cross training and strength work, I also have to be putting out content of my own and showing my personality. And then at that point it's like, well, well, does the pay that they're receiving ever catch up to the work that's required to be put in? So I don't know. It's creating this very unique moment in the sport where to keep up and to be relevant and with your competitors and right there with them, you need to do all these ancillary things to just running fast too. Yeah that's a really interesting point. And I was thinking about that because I was listening to one of your episodes where you were talking about this, where there is like, you know, there's the live stream and now these organizations are getting big enough and capable of getting us more access where, you know, you might be running alongside you with a video camera recording. You go through an aid station catching you in a low point or something like that. And it's almost like this interesting dynamic of like, how much is that just okay, you signed up for the event. You if you're doing well or if you're a hot story for one reason or the other, we're going to get you on camera and we're going to ask your crew and we ask you questions and we're going to just drive content that way versus like you as the athlete saying like, or having some parameters there. And then like that sort of opens up a whole nother aspect to of what you were talking about, where we've kind of gotten to a spot where there's all these opportunities for not just the top tier athletes, but like, I mean, there's there's plenty of like non-competitive ultra runners who just have, like, really good at storytelling, really like entertaining. And they can start YouTube channels, stuff like that, and they're creating content and stuff like that. And that might be their primary goal because of their, you know, where they're falling in the podium or the finishing list and things like that. But I do wonder about that. Like, at what point does the live stream coverage become lucrative enough for some of these? These companies and then the brands that support them where they're like, you know what, so-and-so is in the race this year. I'm just going to pay a photographer to get that content for them and help them out along the way and do the storytelling for them. And then all they got to do is do the training and chat with them a little bit while they're doing it, and try to ease that burden a little bit versus them. Kind of like getting their own set up and spending a lot of time editing and doing all the stuff because I'm sure, as you know, with podcasting, everything, there's a lot of hours when you're not recording that go into it as well. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I'd love to dive into this a little bit because it's so interesting. Let's like a number of the bigger sports or even endurance sports. They'll have an organization and there's like appearance fees or things like that for people to show up. So they're getting money and then they profit off, say like the Boston Marathon stream. They'll make their money from the Athletic Association there. And then some of that goes to the athletes for the appearance fee. There's not necessarily that in trail running. And it seems like within the next few years it will get to where there is enough money in that content game of putting these streams out there or brand partners or whatever, that it seems like there's going to have to be some sort of shift and that some of that goes to the athlete that they're filming, that's creating the the buzz and the reason for that stream to be there. So yeah, I just think it's a really interesting place, let's say in five years, coca is getting a million views a day and doing pretty well. It's almost like those athletes, you know, part time runners, part time, 9 to 5 jobs that are leading the race or something to it seems like there would be some sort of rights deal or something with the athletes as well. But yeah, it's just I think some I've been pretty vocal, or at least talking about a lot of the growing pains that we're going to see, because I think a lot of these things feel like it's still a small sport, but I think they're a lot closer to happening than than we realize. And I don't think anyone's at fault. It's just going to be one of those things. When numbers start to have 6 or 7 zeros as far as income from races or coverage, that there's got to be something more beneficial to all the participants, all the participants from, you know, aid stations to runners to videographers and everyone like that because, yeah, it's it's a grassroots dirtbag sport that's getting to be a lot more polished than people want to admit. Yeah, well, it's kind of like a touchy thing, too, because, like, you don't want to be that athlete who is like, all right, I'm invested in this event. But in order for me to do my best, I want as little attention from the outside as recording me when I'm in a hard spot or something like that, or going through aid stations, things like that. And then they sort of start to police that because like, unless you have everyone sort of like grouping together and saying, hey, you know, like we need our crews to be cared about us and not necessarily chatting with the live stream or, you know, trying to talk to us when we're trying to take a nap or whatever happens to be. But if there is like that structure in place where it's like almost more inviting for them because they get a piece of that, whether it be just like financially incentivized to be like, all right, well, we're going to, you know, let's put some list of stuff on, on, on the things that you're going to want to capture and that will be receptive to, then then you can start kind of teasing some of that out perhaps. But yeah, it's an interesting world for that sort of thing. And I think it's going to keep growing. And then on top of it all, there is also just like we have way less middlemen now than our potential for it anyway. Now with personal brand building and stuff like that to where, you know, in the past it was like, I think I was talking to, I was talking to an agent who had been working with a lot of like, pro marathoners back before, like social media was a thing. And they said when they would negotiate athlete contracts, they would tell these brands to assume something to the degree of like, I think it was like 30% of what they paid that athlete to also invest in the marketing side of that athlete because it's like, yeah, you pay this athlete all this money and they go and they run a it's a marathon or maybe 2 or 3 races, and you hope maybe one of them goes really well and there's like some recognition for that. But then for the brand to really capitalize on that, you know, they have more power in a lot of cases back then to, you know, work with the publications and put that athlete out front and center, put their poster up in the run specialty shop and all that stuff. So there was kind of this like two tiered investment of like, okay, we got to pay the athlete so they can have a lifestyle that's. Lucrative enough to be able to do what they're doing. But then we also have this chunk of money that needs to go to the photo shoots, the promotion and getting their name out there. Now it's like we have like we there's I'm sure that's still there, but it's also like a brand can kind of look at it through the lens of, well, I could pay this athlete and assume some of that, or I could pay this influencer who's already got the attention and they've already got the camera crew. So I really like paying them more than I would pay the athlete, because they're kind of internally assuming some of that price tag that I would have to invest in from the marketing side on their own already. And that's sort of what I'm paying for when I give them money as well. Yeah, I would love for it to be more focused on that, developing the story with the athlete as far as investing and say you pick athlete A and they're going to run Black Canyon Western and let's say Pavilion of Things. People know. And it's like all three of those we're going to storyteller around. You might run other races. You just have to do a before and after interview, and then the videographer will shoot it and we'll cover the costs. And that's kind of just within the contract. I think that would benefit both the athlete as building their profile and the brand and storytelling, because it sort of feels like with some athletes that are good athletes, it's gotten to the point where, you know, they run an X shoe brand, and that's fine, but you don't get any more depth to what happened out there. Maybe you see, they came in at this split or just checked the live results and see how they finish, but I think that should be a little bit more on the brand is partnering and putting those resources in place, because I think there's a lot of demand. And just talking about Coca-Cola, we know there's the demand there that that is really where things grow and a brand can add that personality to it. And that's all. That's what marketing's become in the 2020s is, you know, that emotional connection, what's beyond the pair of shoes? Who are the people, the type of people that wear those and creating those stories with those races, I think is going to be a huge thing. I know Tara has done some of that, and I think that that's really the next step for a lot of these brands, especially with. The younger runners too, that are in their early 20s. I think that if they're breaking onto the scene now, these are like the times you don't want to miss out on. Of course, not that many people know about them and you catch their breakthrough moment. That's a huge hit for the brand and the athlete and capitalize on that. And especially at a fairly affordable thing of just a day rate for a videographer and an editor. And, you know, you're probably betting on that athlete, but they're not huge yet, so you're not paying a ton to them either, is I feel like that's a big thing that we're going to hopefully start seeing, and also a way that there can be that decision with brands and athletes where they don't have to choose to invest in themselves and have to hire a videographer or something, but they can work with a brand that they're already working with. To storytellers out there, and in some conversations and knowing athletes, it just feels like a lot of brands aren't quite there with recognizing that that's valuable yet. But I think it is. So that's my opinion on it. Yeah, you you spoke about this at one point, too, and I could totally relate to it because as I have been doing more biking, I'm coming off on a I'm thankfully I'm in a good spot my Achilles right now, but I'm really interested in just that input in general, just as a standard versus okay, I hurt myself, now I have to ride the bike. Yeah. And you know, through that journey, one thing I started realizing was, you know, when you're on the bike, I'm doing all indoor biking for the most part. So it's like, well, what do you do? Like, I stare at the white wall, or I would like, watch some YouTube videos and I'm usually going the YouTube video route versus staring at the wall. And so as I'm consuming that type of content more frequently, I'm just like getting into like these pre-race type series where it's almost like the momentum and the, the really big awareness part is the thing leading into the event itself versus the actual result of the event and the aftermath of it. And I mean, there's value in that as well. But like, I guess the best example of this right now is probably David Roche, right? So he's, you know, he's crushed a few races. So he's got a big spotlight on him. And he could at this point he could go to Western states and just totally implode. And he's already banked three months of YouTube content just like the process and everything going into it. And you know, he's kind of out there enough where there's a little bit of polarization with it too. So he gets like the, the, the growth from the people who are loving him and loving everything about it and the people who are like. You're an idiot for wearing those ankle weights. What are you doing? Yep. So. So, like, to some degree, it's like, from a marketing standpoint, he's already sort of tapped into a ton of the value of what the Western states experience is going to be for him without even taking a single step on the course yet. And the thing that's interesting about that, too, is I think it opens the door for not just us being like, oh, we've got this sport where we've got these top tier runners that have all this content and stuff around them. You could have awesome stories and, and awesome content and lead up for, for just about anybody in the field if they're able to kind of put that right structure in place and get the message out. So, I think there's an interesting like avenue there too, about like just branching out from the event itself and the race recap type stuff to, where it'd be interesting to see if there was a way to get the metrics on, like the how much, how much, what percentage of your of your exposure is like that? I'm going to announce that I'm doing this race. And then the next four months or whatever happens to be I'm going to be doing like a weekly YouTube series about how my training went and and where that all falls. Yeah. And I would love an athlete to come up or, and publicly to, take a contract with someone where it basically is that you get some amount of money, but then some amount is going into building your own personal brand, and let's just call it like a weekly YouTube series where the brand funds that. But YouTube is yours. I think that would be so beneficial on both sides because like, something on, let's just say like the Hoka brand web YouTube channel is not going to garner the same type of person watching it or the same feelings as, say, an athlete who runs for them. And I think that would be really impactful because you're building and promoting a brand through an authentic lens and through an athlete. You're showing the behind the scenes of that athlete. And part of, say, compensation is helping that athlete to build their own personal brand and platform. I think those types of things are what's going to bridge that gap of brands. I Wonder if they should promote and sign more influencers or more athletes. I think it's bridging that gap. And what are the skills that an athlete probably lacks? A lot of the ones that an influencer has developed. And so contributing some of that funding and that power into building that building, that personal brand is only going to benefit both sides. So hopefully maybe someone will be able to negotiate that kind of contract, because I think that is the magic way that if you bet on yourself that's using someone else's money to build your platform, and you can kind of create whatever you want to create at that point. Yeah, yeah, it's a really interesting point. There's there's a couple things in there. I was thinking, I've been thinking about this too, or it's like because I live in Austin, so there's influencers everywhere here. Yeah. and I've gotten to know a few of them. And it's the. I always wonder because I think you're spot on with that. There's this like, there's this strength and weakness, kind of polarization there where the influencers are great at storytelling, they're great at getting, you know, eyeballs on them. But in a lot of cases, you know, they're doing the best they can, but they don't always know what they're doing. So from a training and pacing standpoint. So it's like where's the opportunity for the athlete and the influencer to say, hey, you're doing Coca-Cola, I'm doing CocaCola. Why don't we just do a content series together where we lean on my strengths as a coach and an athlete that's kind of gone through this a bunch more times, and I help you on that side of things, and you're the expert with the media stuff. So you loop me in on some of that stuff and we do a collab leading into it, and you kind of have like both those skill sets just kind of feeding into one another. And I think that would be kind of cool. And it might also help with the whole, like influencer versus athlete debate where there's Matt Johnson on the podcast, a while ago at this point, and he gave me a, like a beautiful sound clip, during the podcast, he's like. The athletes fucking hate us. So it's like, okay, there's the reel for that episode. Yeah. No kidding. And I was thinking about this as well. Yeah. Like why does that have to be I think there's like it's one of those things where there's essentially an unlimited amount of attention available when you really get down to it. So how do you broaden that exposure point? By working together versus thinking about it through the lens of, oh, there's X number of eyeballs on this sport, and the influencers are going to gobble up some of those, and then this is what's going to be left for us athletes. And we got to compete with them versus work with them. But then like what? Like what you said you like , that's sort of a collaboration. Brands are going to be all over that because it's going to hit everything they're trying to do. You know, it's going to hit, especially if the influencer is more like an Andy Glaze type influencer, where he's going to be out at a ton of races. You're not going to see him on podiums in most cases, he's going to speak to the person who's out there grinding and, you know, and he still works a full time job. So like, people probably relate to that a lot more than they do. Someone who's just training and racing all day. and then and then, yeah, you have kind of like every little box checked with that, with that brand works with those two individuals. So I mean, there's an endless number of opportunities, I think. So the more you think about this, the more like kind of fun, like ideas pop into my head. Oh yeah, my mind is going, I really want to see, like, a day in the life, like each day switch. And so like the influencer goes and does what the pro athlete does in a day and then probably is like dead after the workout and the strength session and the, the sauna session and whatever, and like how much they have to eat. And then someone goes and has to hang out at the fire station with Andy Glaze and run like a mile at a time and do 100 miles in a week. I think that would be such fun content of just showcasing what the difference in the two is, but also how equally demanding. It's like, okay, you just did your 25 mile run and now we have to sit and edit for two hours and it's just like, yeah, what? I want the most awkward athlete to get paired up and then have to do TikTok dances. That would be the move. Yeah, yeah. Like Jeffrey James, Benny paired up with Jim Walmsley and taught him, like, TikTok dances after a run. That's the content I'm here for. It would be. It would go so viral. It would be so amazing. Like just. Yeah, you just get, let's do like Kilian, Jim and Hayden all have to get taught a TikTok dance and you just film like the whole 20 minute process of them learning the dance and trying to record it. So that's all you got to do? Yeah, you'd have the final cut for Instagram and then you'd have like the 12 minute YouTube of them learning the dance and yeah, into it. Learning the dance would get way more views. Yeah it would. That'd be funny. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, outside of media, I do want to hop into just kind of like your career as an ultrarunner, too, because another thing I find really interesting about the sport in general is just kind of the direction people come from and how that kind of feeds into some of their success, to where one of the most interesting things to me about some of these 200 milers is it seems to be kind of this almost perfect medium of we've had the growth of the 100 mile distance. It has gotten a ton of love over the last decade plus. And then we have these like also this growth, maybe not to the degree of the 100 miles, but these long haulers like these transcon runners, Appalachian Crest or Appalachian Trail stuff, Pacific Crest Trail, John Muir, all these things that are like more like multi-day or sometimes multi-week and these like kind of, I guess you'd call them like shorter multi days. It's sort of like this kind of like, well, if you're really good at 100 miler, you've got promise there. If you're really good at going much longer than that, you've probably got some promise there too. So we sometimes have these kinds of fields sort of meet in there and you get like just a more diverse group of focused individuals kind of meeting up where your story sort of comes from. Having, like, really long, like backpacking, essentially, right? Like that's how you got into things. Yeah, yeah, I started hiking when I was 20. I was not that into college. So if I was going to quit college, I figured I needed a good reason to tell my parents. So I told them I was going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, and that was my reason for quitting college. I didn't really know that much about it. And so, yeah, successfully through hiking. That started out with the £55 pack and just learned how to become an adult. I think that when you get I mean, you're just finally faced with real decisions. Like if I don't buy enough food in town, I'm going to be really hungry for the next four days. So I need to learn how to plan. I need to learn the consequences of my actions. It was like this perfect ground to just learn how to exist as an adult person at 20. And then, yeah, that fueled a love of the outdoors. And I turned that into, just finding different goals and going after them. I climbed all the Colorado fourteeners in a summer while working full time, and then that turned into I quit and did an 8000 mile through hike that I was, I guess, the youngest person to do and wrote a book about that. And then I did a 7000 mile one. And at that point it was like, I'm never going to have a girlfriend or a family or anything if I keep leaving for 8 or 9 months at a time. And so I started looking into Fkt and what could I do in a week or two? And so I did a number of those like Arizona Trail and Colorado Trail, Long Trail, John Muir Trail, and then that just kind of naturally led to the Barkley Marathons. And from there I started ultrarunning. And even the coaching side kind of followed the same thing of some through hiking, I guess you call it more consulting. And then it was turned into coaching some facts. And then that translated a little bit more into trail running and ultra running and racing from there, and I've always really loved the science side of it and poking around studies and things like that. And it's always fascinating how little people will dive into the abstracts, or even just like the footnotes of a study to lead to another study. And just like that. So I just became fascinated with science and kind of built on that and started ultrarunning. And, from Kokoda, I just decided I wanted to try all the races. So I've done everything from fixed time to stage races to last person standing to all the distances. So I think in a nutshell, I just like to do everything. Yeah. No, you've definitely shown that. And and you've, you've even compressed some of these things into a pretty tight time frame. Didn't you do like five long haul routes in like less than a year at one point? Yeah, I think it was. Yeah like five. Well, I'm not even sure which year. So I've done similar things a few times. But yeah, like 2019, I think it was like five facts in a year that were all multi-day things like that. And then the Great Western Loop, I think is my favorite thing. That was a A7000 mile loop where you just connect five different long distance trails and make this loop around the west, and you have to draw up your own route across some of it and find water, and you cross the desert and stuff. I had like a 70 mile water carry that was pretty insane. And yeah, I just love adventure, new things. And I like to say I'm ultra ultrarunning and even like a mountainous 100 miler. It's awesome. It's adventurous, but it's only like 75 to 80% of the through hiking thing. That's my true love. I just can't have a normal life and go on eight month adventures every year. Yeah, yeah. No. It's fascinating. I think like when you get in, especially when you get into those really long things too, it seems to me, just from the people I've talked to that have done those where, you know, we're going week after week after week, there's an endless number of like logistics and things you could try to account for. And at the end of the day, like you have to do enough planning that you don't like, totally like blowing yourself up with something that's easily preventable. But then you also just have to have this like mental flexibility of, yeah, there's going to be things that I can't stress about going into it that I'm going to just have to learn on the fly or adapt to as they come to me. And I find that to be just such an interesting, just mental space to be and, you know, going into this thing that's going to consume a huge chunk out of your year and also knowing like there's going to be a lot of uncertainty in here. And if I'm not able to adapt to it, then it's not going to be successful. Yeah I think that's where I shine. And my favorite thing and just watching you, you're very regimented dialed in stuff. I'm very much like, let's plan this, but I know it's not going to work and that's going to be super fun. That's like how I go into all these things. I was just pacing with a friend who has gone for the Pacific Crest Trail record and supported me. And that's what it was. It was just like endless problem solving. And, I don't know, I think that's the most fun thing in life is if I knew everything that's going to happen for the next 40 years, I don't think I'd be that into it. But since I don't and I can do anything I want with that and things will go wrong and I'll have to figure it out on the fly. I think that's where the magic happens. Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask you about that actually, just in general. But also I was, I was listening to some, some of your content around, I think it was maybe Kyle Curtin when he did the Colorado Trail, he sort of came up with a new because you have the supported and unsupported. Right. So supported essentially means you can have a person pacing you the whole time then. Yeah. So supported even more than a pacer in a race. They can carry everything. They can mule you like. I was carrying five liters of water and running at the same pace as Nick. Nick Fowler who was doing it and carrying most of his food. He just had on a little running vest. And, you know, we're doing 40, 50 mile sections, and I'm getting the water and everything. I don't know, I've never done a supported fkt and I don't know that it's my style. I'm fine. And it was fun to help out and stuff, but it's just too weird, I think, to give up that level of control. And it would be for me personally if I'm low on food or I'm low on water or whatever. I want to know. I want to be the one coming up with the solution. I want to be able to decide what I'm eating. And I don't know, it's just it's very weird because it's even in ultras if, especially Coca-Cola or longer hundreds. I just did Bighorn hundred a couple days ago and you see people with pacers and they sort of turn their brain off. The pacer can kind of be like, do you want to jog a little bit here or let's get this much water, this much food or something? And I don't know, I just find that to be a really weird existence that we can go into as humans. And I don't really like it. So I think I'm kind of averse to the supported style to that degree. I've done a couple of things with another person. It's like, unsupported, but team kind of thing, and those are pretty fun, but you're kind of in charge of yourself. But yeah, it's just weird when you can go into that mode of, I'm letting go of all control. My team around me will take care of me. We'll see how this goes. Yeah. I think this is a really fun topic in general because it's like. You, especially when we get to this really long haul stuff, because you have the unsupported and supported on the surface that looks like, okay, well, that's pretty self explanatory. If you're unsupported, it's going to take you longer. It's just kind of a different thing. And then you're supported. It's just about getting there as quickly as pot. Not that the unsupported isn't. It's got that component to it, but you don't really compare the two. Like I wouldn't say like, oh well, this person did it unsupported and they were slower than this other person doing it supported. Therefore they're not as good. It's like they were doing two different things. But then when you start unpacking it even further, you have like I guess with the unsupported, it's a little clear, you're just not supported. Right? But then supported, there's a whole range of different levels of support you can take on. And I wonder if that's probably just growth of that sort of a project now where like in the past, even as a support through hikers going to get much less support than if they actually set that structure up to the degree where, okay, I'm never going to carry anything. mostly probably because people just didn't necessarily think that that was an option or didn't have the access to the resources to be able to like, you know, essentially have multiple people carve out the same amount of time you are to, to babysit you the entire time. Totally. It's almost like a technology breakthrough where, like, I kind of look at it this way too, with like, okay, like. If we want to look at the marathon like a super shoe and Pre-super shoe, it's like there's going to be almost no comparison at this point. And it's like almost the same thing with like, okay, supported to the max versus kind of traditionally supported. Maybe he's the way to look at it. Yeah. And it's really hard with support because like Francois when he set the John Muir Trail record the Solomon backing Francois Dion, he had all the Solomon backing and they could hike in a bunch of stuff and kind of have even aid stations set up for a 220 mile route that crosses no roads. And that's pretty insane. It's awesome. It kind of shows what's possible, but I kind of think of it as sort of the breaking two project versus running a traditional marathon if you have this support that maybe ten people in the world could get to do this type of thing. So the pool of people you're competing against is probably a lot smaller versus when it's self-supported or unsupported. You have this, it's basically wider. It's wide open to more people that can achieve that type of thing. They can, you know, mail out the stuff to themselves, resupply however they want. Think of it in that way. But support is also cool in the sense that it can show what truly is possible. Like could a human break too, if we kind of found all the rules and went up against them with everything except for they just have to run all the steps themselves. And that sort of feels like what? Support is starting to become of how much can we eliminate everything except for that person having to cover every step? Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like it's yeah. It's similar to the breaking too. And now they're doing the breaking for, for, for the women's mile. kind of that same same energy almost it seems. Yeah. You know, I just think like, maybe the sport will get big enough where this will be, like, an option. But I think it would be so much more fun, especially once you start to get onto the trails to have, like, more like divisions where it's like, okay, this is like no crew, no pacer and or just have events that are like, hey. Our call. And I think there are events like this, but they're just not very well recognized. But like, I think that's just such a different skill set at the end of the day of like, let's say you had to do Western states with no pacer, no crew. And I mean, you could get into like you could get no headphones, no electronics. Yeah, that'd be cool, right? I think that'd be so awesome. and I think there's, I think there's an appetite for it, too, because I think there's enough people in the alternate community who would rather have it that way. but, like, I mean, it's good to have that option, too, because, you know, it kind of gets into the, the, the inclusivity side of things where it's like if you have a ton of support. You probably have more people who are just able to do it. In general, unless we get into the world of like very, very soft cutoffs. but then you also have like what you said where like it's like you sort of get inclusivity in one side where, where, where on one side you have it and the other side you don't. Because, like, if I look at it through the lens of the way you described it, you have to have a lot of money and a lot of resources to do a really thoroughly supported event. Like even at the 100 mile distance. Like if I go to Western states and I have two crews with multiple people and, you know, elaborate setups and things like that, it's just going to be much faster for me than if I go there and just do it completely on my own with no crew and no pacers. So to some degree, it's like having a structure where you don't need to have all that stuff to be competitive opens it up to more people. And I think having a category like that would be really interesting, especially with the sport where it is now, where like sometimes you kind of have to race your own, race yourself towards support, where like no one's going to just bet on you if you've never done anything. So then those first few races, you're spending thousands of dollars just to do them at the same capacity that an elite athlete is. Yeah. We're yeah. Now we're putting it up against experience versus competitiveness too, because I think what you said is so true that having the most ability for the most people to be successful within reason at an event is really cool. And what you're aiming at someone to break through their limits is to finish the 100 miler. But the level of support they get is also the support that the first place person will get to kind of blow the roof off the doors compared to what people got in the past, too. So it's kind of tricky in that sense of, yeah, if they get crew and pacers and swap everything in every eight miles, then they're going to be way faster versus that might be what it takes for the last place person to to even finish. Even this past weekend, just me and my girlfriend drove over to Sheridan and ran Bighorn and saw her three times and just grabbed some gels and no pacers. It was a really fun experience. I didn't take headphones or anything, just sort of ran the race, enjoyed the course, got the hard Rock qualifier and then we drove back that afternoon and it was awesome. But it's not the fastest way I could have run the course either. So I think, yeah, I kind of I was thinking about that a lot of it's so interesting how it feels like in some of these aspects, whether it's fkt or races, that sometimes you're choosing between the experience and the result a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It gets interesting too because I think like that. With, with, with the stuff that I've done historically. True. Like the real runnable stuff, where on the surface you would think, okay, well, I'm running around a 400 meter track, like it couldn't get any more simple in terms of access. It's like anyone can replicate that training environment for the most part. So, like, it's very inclusive in the sense that like. Yeah, like, you know, like if you decide you have the time and the ambition and the desire to try to run a fast hundred miles on a short loop that's really controlled, you know, you don't need a lot of support because one person can essentially help you. And if you make a mistake, they can remedy that really quickly because you're coming back around in a couple minutes. And then on the other side, it's like, that's great for access to that style of event. But when you get into like record chasing within it, which is a kind of a big component of that, because like, why would you go on a 400 meter track, do anything other than try to run as fast as you can, like you might as well go to the trails or something more scenic if you're just trying to get the experience. And that's where it gets really unintrusive or like it limits the number of people that could be competitive because like, if I want to decide to go after a world record for the 100 mile, or if you want to get even more in these multi days where there's even less opportunities. You have to be willing to, like, travel to a spot that has all the measurements done. They've got like a US ATF agent on there to drug test you afterwards and like all these other things that go into making it record eligible. It, you know, starts costing a lot of money. So now all of a sudden it's like, where is the line between we want to make sure this is recorded properly. And we don't have people like running 95 miles and claiming they have a 100 mile world record or doping, and they're not getting tested. And I feel like in the sport of ultra, we're at kind of this spot where we kind of know what we need, but we don't have enough to do all of it. So we do like these half measures, and these half measures are kind of like stepping stones to where we want to be. And I've debated with myself about this, where it's like, is it better to just do none of the half measures until you're able to just apply the whole thing and then just drop the whole thing on it when it's ready versus like, really kind of making Muddy Waters because now we have like a situation where, you know, like someone breaks a six day world record or the 48 hour world record, and there's debates as to whether it's actually eligible or not. And you get into all these weird little details like, pacing or no pacing, or did they get drug tested within this window of time, or was it like an hour afterwards? And it's, you know, it's just like, I, I, I just like I, it kind of frustrates me to the degree where it's like, for one, if I want to like, narrow in on like the drug testing side of things, it's like we don't have any reasonable drug testing at. No, not at all. None. And like, so if someone breaks a record and they missed the post-race drug test by like a few hours or even a day or whatever it happens to be. I mean, like, I'm not really I don't really care because for one, they could have easily been cheating or if they knew what they were doing and they wanted to cheat, they would have been doping during their training because they're not going to get tested during that. As far as ultrarunning goes right now. And then they were going to do what they had to do to get that out of their system going into the event. So it's like they're not going to unless they made a mistake and accidentally consumed something that was tainted, and then they kind of accidentally doped and got into that unfortunate situation, or they just weren't thinking things through properly and, you know, got caught because they were negligent to their protocol. It's just kind of a silly thing for us to, like, worry about if we don't have the, the, the, like the drug testing protocol to the degree. Or you could get randomly selected in training. Totally. Yeah. There's no out-of-competition testing. So we're just fighting against almost like mistakes and stupidity is basically what we're testing at the moment. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And I was I was thinking about that like just in general too, where it's like what is, is there like a short term measure we could do to kind of get there before being like as sophisticated as we have for like Olympic distance stuff where, you know, if you have any shot at making the Olympics, you're going to have that out of testing, competition tests that are showing up randomly, and then you're going to have the post race. So they got it all to the best that they can. They've got that all set up. and it's still not perfect. So like. What's the best first step? And I actually think the best first step would be more something where it was like, if you're going to go after a record, you should have to maybe announce that within a certain time frame. And then like once you announce that, then you get put in this pool of out-of-competition testing. So rather than putting the resources at the end of the race, first put the resources into the, the, the, the, the lead up to it, because that's where you're going to potentially actually either either catch people or scare people away from even trying because, you know, it could just be the odd chance that you get tested once in a four month time frame. And if you're not, if you're not playing by the rules, you're going to get caught. So even if it's a low percentage, you know, you could still, it's still a risk that you have to be willing to take. That's likely going to be more of a deterrent than what we currently have. Yeah. And I think even if it just was like 30%, just as like a deterrent happens after the event immediately after. And the other 70% of tests that they can afford happen, like out of competition or leading into it, kind of maybe with that same parameters that you have is, I think, just something that just puts it into a more randomized scenario of like out of the let's just take Western because it's this week out of the top ten, three are going to get tested. Who are they where it's random. We don't even know. And then, you know, coming into next year, out of all the golden ticket winners and the top ten returners, seven are going to get tested. Like, those numbers would probably be enough to scare a number of people that potentially would dope out of doping, because that could ruin your career for life, especially the Western states policy, which I think is a one strike one. So yeah, yeah, I've talked about that with some friends and stuff too. I think the number of tests that it would take to help a lot is a lot smaller than we think. We just have to have, like you said, that announcing something ahead of time so that you have the correct pool of people to test. But I really don't think it's this Olympic level amount of money to at least make a major dent in the sport. Yeah. No, I agree in western states are actually set up pretty well for it because you're just not getting into western states. In. Late in the game, I guess. Like what? I guess Canyon's right. That would be the latest you could get in. Would be a golden ticket at canyons. So then you would be put into that testing pool, later than everybody else. But if you look at it through, just like the general got in through the lottery or got in through like Javelina or Black Canyon, you know, the majority of the training is still ahead of them. So you have to accept it quickly too. It's not like you can sit on it and be like, oh, week before I'm going to take this. And then you're doing that intentionally to game the system. You can't even do that with Western. So that probably be the best one to test that out on. Yeah. And I, I think it's more attainable than I think with a lot of arguments and things and I don't think I am as committed as 100 grand to testing. But most of it I think is directly or in competition type testing. So I think there's just avenues. But using some of that, I don't know, I don't like using the term, but like scare tactics or like the potential of getting busted out of competition, I think is going to make the sport a lot better than. Yeah, just like you said, no one's gonna knowingly show up and know they're gonna test positive when they know they're going to get tested if they're doping correctly. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how like, effective even like crowdsourcing funding for something like that would be where you could, because I think you'd probably end up getting like wealthy individuals or corporations and business that would want, would want to match to where like you could I mean, you just see like these different funding campaigns that go up and it's like seemingly people are like, oh, something happened. And then like overnight, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars donated towards them. You'd think with the right like. The right messaging around it and just awareness of it. You just get enough people who are like, oh yeah, I would like to know if the person I've been rooting for and following is doing things by the rules, and you can start to kind of capture that a little bit. I guess the hard part is always like, you know, when we get to Western states, we're narrowing down to like really one aspect when in reality the sport's massive compared to the whole. And it's like, how do you enter the pool? Well, and, and my major issue with some things as far as both prize money and testing and stuff too, is you can't rightfully take someone's entry fee that's going to finish mid-pack and use that for elite prize money or drug testing. And so that's a little bit of what we're coming up against. But then circling back to the live stream and content side that's growing and lucrative, that is benefiting the elites. And also focusing on the elites is maybe where that's where the money comes from. I think there's so many diverse income streams for all these events and organizations that you can Really above board. Use some of the money that is coming in, because people are breaking course records to assure those course records are being broken the right way. Yeah, well, it could even come back to kind of what we were talking earlier about marketing, where like if I have a successful shoe brand or something like that, and I want to like, do a fun like, I'm like, buy my shoe because I'm supporting the support type of messaging is like, that seems like a great way to do it. I do wonder too, just in terms of I think you're right. I think it's not a great strategy to be like, all right, everyone pays $5 more for their entry fee so we can get these doping controls in place because it feels like, okay, we're just catering to the athletes. Then I wonder, though, if, like, if the messaging around testing is more open ended to everybody because, I mean, you also have I think there's probably a healthy amount of cheatin going on outside of the top tier runners because one, it's going to be easier to get away with it in a lot of cases if you're just a middle of the pack or, Maybe the incentive is different, but I think the. I'm actually scheduling a podcast with a guy who's done some research on this where it's like, what is the drive to cheat and like, like, like. And actually it actually ends up being less likely to be the top tier finishers because of all these other social impact things like, you know, getting the results you're looking for, whatever that happens to be. and then it can even get into gray areas up to where it's like, oh, like so-and-so. Some like 44 year old guys on testosterone replacement therapy because he probably needs or maybe doesn't need to be, but like from a life quality standpoint, would prefer to be. And then now they're jumping in these races and no one's no one's really like batting an eye at that. Or if they are, they're just not aware of who there's no one to actually pin it on, I guess, because it's just like, you know, it's there, but there's not a face to it at all. where you could have a scenario where, like, whatever kind of funding, where have you drive the funding from is also includes the entire field where, where we kind of lean into like that, that that percentage risk factor thing where maybe we do 20 tests that are just randomly drawn from the entire field, which I think is what Western did originally the first year they tested, I think they had like the top ten got tested for sure. And then there were ten randomly drawn people from the entire field so you could finish 256 if you were cheating and you showed up in your thing, you could get your result pulled out. so like I to the degree that that matters, I mean, like when I talk to people about it, it seems like some people at least are concerned about that. Like they don't want to finish a spot back, whether it's 250 or third because someone else was taking a shortcut. Well, I think, yeah. And that's the whole basis for racing on that given day, who's going to perform the best? And whether you're in a sprint finish for a hundredth or, you know, going for the podium, I think that's why it's so appealing is we get so many or so few avenues as adults to be competitive with each other in a at least Socially accepted way of racing or wanting to kick someone's ass out there or something that it's I think it's a that's a really healthy in the draw of racing and whether it's like, I live in Montana, like pick up hockey or something like that is these competitive outlets, and you don't want to be going up against someone that is cheating, even if you know they're you're not fighting for a win. I think that's the the hard thing too, is I don't know the solution or how it matters on the grand scheme of things, but ensuring going back to the experience that everyone's getting out there, you don't want to be sprinting against someone who's doping just to get 10% better out of themselves. When you had to work 10% more to be in lockstep with them at the end, too. Yeah, well, we probably aren't going to solve that problem between the two of us anyway. But hey, we could, we could, we could. Maybe we just need the right funding at the end of the day. So our accounts are open. You can donate to them and. Yeah, Zach's going to be the sports czar, and I'll just be the guy making jokes about his decisions. You can make us go viral on Instagram. And. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. So you actually have, you're doing the PCT yourself. You're going after the record, aren't you? Appalachian Trail actually, or Appalachian Trail. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Yep. I was saying Appalachian for a while, but it's Appalachian. All the listeners out there I know now. So yeah, some feedback, some constructive criticism on that one. Yeah. Apparently everyone in the North who says Appalachian doesn't really care how it's said, but everyone in the South, in the Appalachians, they want it to be the Appalachian Trail. So that is what it's what it is, and that's what we'll call it. But yeah, I'm going to Self-supported after that starting in early August. And yeah, it'll be fun mailing myself food about every 150 miles. And the record is, Joe String Bean. McConaughey has it, and it's about 45 days, and we've broken each other's records for a number of years, so it'll be fun to see if I can break this one. Yeah. Are you gonna? Is he gonna do any trash talking about you on the way in? for us. Interested in the. Wrestling side of ultrarunning promotion? I don't know, I think it's the perfect year because after, you know, a decade of trying, he got into Western states this year. And so I don't think he cares too much. I think we have the similar mindset of, I always think if you have a record for a year, that's awesome. And then it's borrowed time, like they're meant to be broken, you broke someone else's record. It sucks if it's broken like a week after, but if you have it for a while, even like your 100 mile record, I mean, I'm sure it's like it's cool to have it, but it's also going to be cool when someone breaks it too, because that's what they're meant to be. Yeah, I mean, I think about that from time to time, too, because like when I first did a real runnable track, ultra, I broke the American record for 100 miles in the world record for 12 hours. No one really cared about the 12 hour one. but like the American record for the 100 miles was something that people cared about for whatever reason. And I remember thinking like, oh, that was my first try at one of these, the world records in shot. And, you know, my assumption was I was gonna be able to do it sooner rather than later. And at the time, I think had I broken the world record in that, I wouldn't have been in a great spot to really understand what that is like, like a good relationship with it, where it would be like, okay, now I have to defend this. I need to hold on to this, whereas it ended up taking me so long to actually break it. It took me almost six more years to get around to actually breaking the world record. By the time I got to that, I was like, I had enough time to sort of like, mature within the sport and really understand, like. What is? What am I going to do once I break it? If I do like it, what's the next step? And for whatever reason, it became clear to me it was like, well, it's going to get broken. Like it is, it's definitely going to get broken. And, you know, it's just a matter of time. So you can't go into that with this mindset of like, this is mine to keep forever. Because if it's just a losing battle, there's no way that's going to win for you, and you're just going to be just kind of torturing yourself more or less. So it's like, yeah, figuring out a way to kind of look at that sort of stuff as like, I have this goal and it's going to be rewarding to go through all the hard work that is never going to take. And then you have that perfect day where things line up and you just crush it. And that's the value there. That's the thing you actually want to carry away with. yeah. And then, you know, just by the act of breaking a record is usually enough attention to the degree where someone who's capable of doing it sees it and is like, hey, I think I could do that. And then, you know, you're basically inviting it to get broken more so than before. Yeah, exactly. And I'm curious on how it feels after you break it, because it's probably similar to an Fkt. Does it feel like a part of you is missing, almost like you've lost this direction that you pointed out for so long? Because that's kind of how Fkt feels like you put everything into this. You get it. Success. And it's supposed to be like glory and everything, but you're sort of just like, okay, but now what? Like I did the thing, I need to find something else because this big part of me is over. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I wouldn't say I had too much of an issue with that, because part of it was I, I, I kind of, I mean, my thought going in was like, all right, when I finish this, the question in my mind is can I go faster? And if the answer is yes, then I probably want to keep trying to see how much faster I can get. If the answer is no, then that just means it's probably time to focus on a different aspect of ultrarunning because like we've been talking about, there's just so many cool different things you can do to some degree. Like when I broke it, I would have probably been it would have been easier. The decision making would have been easier if it would have been like there is if in my mind I was just convinced I cannot go a second faster. Yeah, because then I would have been like, okay, well now it's time to get more into the trails, get more into maybe multi-day or something like that. So, I think the biggest issue is just trying to decide what it is you want to do with yourself within the sport. and then being content with whatever that happens to be. but yeah, I mean, there is definitely like I mean, it's like anything, you know, you spend a lot of time and energy building up to something, and then when it's over, there's that sort of like aftermath of just like you start to realize how much of the motivation was actually like the development of getting to the point of doing it versus the actual act of doing it itself. So yeah, yeah, I guess I don't know if I answered your question or not, but that was kind of how I unpacked it in my head. Yeah. No, totally. I think that really is the case. The basis of, I think everything in life is like that can't be the end goal or anything. You have to have that mindset of like, I'm either pivoting into the next thing or doing this current thing better, because that is because they're in the through hiking world. There's like this post through hike depression term that is thrown around and very relevant because you work for, say, a long through hike might be six months, and then when it's over, it's over. Like your whole way of life has to change because you can't just eat ramen and live in a tent and walk 30 miles a day anymore. That it's just kind of interesting how it applies to the running world as well, and especially FCT and coaching other people too, as it's just a very common mindset. There's so many similarities actually, between the long distance hiking world and ultrarunning, even though ultra runners want to think they're way more athletic and stuff. But it's just that the end goal is so big on your calendar that once you get it, you just sort of have to unpack, like, all right, what was my actual reason for doing that? And what am I going to turn that into the why for doing the next thing? Because the belt buckle wasn't as much of an impact on the person as they might have thought it was going to be. Yeah, that's a really good point, too, because I've had this in the past where when I finish a race and I'm asking myself, it's like, all right, was that worth it? Is it something I want to do again? I think that's always the big question I ask myself is like, what do I actually want to do in those next months when I recover and start building up for something, something else? Because at the end of the day, it's like. You. You have to. For me, I think the why has to be like enjoying that development process, whether it be on the trails or on the flat runnable stuff. And I mean, I've had phases where it's like I finish a track, ultra had a bad race, and then I'm just like, you know, what part of the reason I had a bad race is because I wasn't as excited about that buildup, because I've just been kind of rinsing and repeating too much, and it's time to go do something different for a little bit and kind of regain that desire to want to do that style of training versus the alternatives. I think that's a big one for me, is just really being honest with like, all right, if I'm going to do this build up again, is it going to be as exciting as the last time, or is it going to lose some of that edge? Because if it's going to lose some of that edge, I'm probably going to do worse at the race. And then it's like, all right, well, why would I do something that's not as fun and then have a bad result when I can do something that's way more fun? And then if there is a bad result, at the end of that, at least I had fun doing the process. Yeah, yeah, at least the build is fun. I mean, that's the thing. You want to be the most fun anyway. That's where all the grind happens. You can make a race fun. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, so you said August is when you kick things off. Yeah. Early August, probably that first week. Very cool. Good deal. Well, Jeff, it's been awesome to chat with you. I think I could probably chat with you for another couple of hours, but I'm going to have to. I'm having Megan Canfield come on in a few minutes here to chat about Western states. So, maybe I'll have to do part two with you and we can dive into some other fun topics if you're up for it. Yeah, this was great. I love just seeing where things go and lots of opinions. And it's great when a sport is at the point where there's a lot of things to fix, but a lot of things to talk about because a lot is right as well. So I think it's a really fun time to talk about the sport. Absolutely. Yeah. And I don't want to let you go before you have a chance to kind of share where people can find you, like YouTube, Instagram, website coaching and all that stuff. Yeah. Free outside. Com is the website that has some coaching info there. And then it's, free outside is the podcast, the free outside podcast. And then I think it's free outside on Instagram. But you know, I've made it to the point. You can just Google Jeff Meyer and all that should pop up. So thanks for having me all working in your favor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. No, Jeff has been awesome to chat with. Thanks a bunch. And I'll put all those links in the show notes too. Awesome. Thanks again.