Awesome. Well, Akshay. Welcome. Welcome back to Austin. I guess you come here somewhat frequently. As far as visiting other cities go, it's been. Yeah, it's been a good bit recently, right before Antarctica and now and now being back here. So thank you for having me back, brother. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you've got your busyness that doesn't end for you. It's just one thing after another. So you're working on another book right now. Yeah. Working on another book after Nirvana was the first one. Now working on the next one called Step Into the Storm. And I'm actually also co-authoring one with my wife, which will be around relationships. Oh, cool. She went through her own journey and how we got together and everything and helped high performers. How do you build a thriving relationship while striving for big goals? Yeah, I would imagine nowadays that topic in general would be of interest to us because we probably have more dual income households. Yeah, more than almost out of necessity in a lot of cases. Yeah. So careers on both ends can make it a little bit of a kind of competing challenge to some degree. And managing that, that variance. Absolutely. And we went through quite the journey together. You know she was running her business. I was training full time for Antarctica. And even in the first year together, we had spent three months in Alaska, seven weeks in Norway. I was out on expeditions in Iceland and Greenland and navigating all that, she was supporting me, unbelievably supportive while running her own business. So we learned a lot ourselves. Plus, love is her thing. Love, relationships. She loves it. She's read hundreds of books on that topic, so it's something she really wants to support people with and help people with. Sometimes high performers struggle with that, right? We're so single minded. You get it, and you're obsessive on your craft. It can consume you. But but there is a way to create a thriving relationship while also striving for your big goal. And and she's also a high performer. So to your point, both people doing big things, but there's a way to manage that and build a relationship that's beautiful. We've been together two years now, and the whole time we've been together has been, at least in my world, solely focused on Antarctica. So it's been quite the journey. Yeah. Only now reintegrating into normal life without that being the top priority. Yeah. It seems to me like. Whether it's a career or some other hobby. Yeah. If if you both have a passion, it doesn't have to be the same, I don't think. But as long as there's something where it doesn't feel like to the other person or just an understanding where like, like, say you go for a long run and she's got something that she's passionate about that maybe you're not always doing, but she wants to be. She doesn't want to have to sacrifice that to be in a relationship with you. Yeah. It kind of self creates blocks of time where you do your thing, she does her thing and then you finish and you meet up and share stories and whatnot. Absolutely, absolutely. I couldn't agree more that there's this kind of misconception that you have to have the same hobby. She was not she wouldn't consider herself an outdoor person before meeting me, but she was at least adventurous enough to try. So when we spent three months in Alaska, literally right after we got married, we did a court wedding. Two days after getting married, we went to Alaska for like, so I could train. And my friend had a cabin right on a frozen lake. So I'd be out there pretty much every day dragging the sled. And so she tried cross-country skiing. It's not like she wanted to do it for hours and hours like I needed to. She has no desire to spend 60 days alone in Antarctica, but she was open to at least trying it, you know, so we would cross-country ski together. She's a big dancer, so that's way outside my comfort zone. So she's gotten me to dance. We do that together. We can play in each other's realm. And that, I think, is the key, where at least that was an important virtue for me. Is someone adventurous and adventurous does not mean only going to Antarctica or something, just at least open to try things, you know? And then we play on that edge and see wherever it takes us. Yeah. Curious minds exactly. Kind of like each other. Exactly, exactly. Absolutely. Cool. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, Nicole and I both run ultramarathons, so there's not a lot of friction there. Yeah. And the interesting thing though is, I mean, the world of I mean, as you know, like, I mean, you and I are both ultra runners, but we couldn't possibly be doing different types of races. Yeah, yeah. And Nicole and I are kind of like that too, where she tends to favor more of the trail mountain type stuff. And I like the more runnable stuff. So there's ones where they cross paths nicely where like, of course like javelin 100. We both love that course because it's very runnable, but it still has the trail aspect. Yeah, yeah. And she's a good runner and has trained on flat terrain most of her life, despite kind of favoring mountain races at times in her career. But yeah, a lot of times it is kind of like, you know, she's going to support me on a short loop track event and then I'm going to support her at like Leadville or something like that, and oh, that's awesome. She's doing Leadville. She did it last year. So yeah, this year she's doing Fat Dog 120 in the fall. Snow joke. Yeah. Yeah, that one will be a challenge for sure. Yeah, but I think it'll be a fun experience for us. Very cool. Man, that's cool that you all do that together. That's really badass. Yeah. But yeah. On the other side of it, too, it's just like. I mean, she's got a full career outside of the sport, and I've kind of built a career within the sport outside of the training and racing stuff. So we kind of have our day jobs as well. But yeah, they're both remote so we can work from home on it, which is nice because when she's doing her stuff, I'm doing my stuff and then we can run together at times and that's awesome, man. In fact, we do this workout together from time to time when our schedules line up, where, it's kind of an interval. Well, it's definitely an interval session where it's, you know, it's the type of workout where if you can have a partner, it's like anything. Right. You're doing track workouts. It's like if you're doing it with a group, you're probably going to get a little better quality out of it, or you just get a little, you get extra gear if you need it. Yeah. And so I'll pace her for like a two minute interval or something like that. And then once she finishes, I roll right into like say a one minute interval at my intensity. Okay. And she does her recovery jog. I stop when I finish mine. And when she catches up we repeat it. And we do that for a certain number of rounds. And that's very cool. Yeah, that one's always a lot of fun. I jokingly say though, like when she's in really good shape and I'm not, I stay away from that workout because it just gets way more difficult for me the faster she is. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. So no, it's fun. It's a fun balance when you can figure it out. Yeah. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. Cool. Yeah. So last time you were on here, I don't remember when the exact date was. I'll. I'll put the episode number and stuff in the show notes. So if people are newer to the show and want to check that one out, because I think that was one of the actually, I think you might have been. One of my first, if not my first in-studio guest when I put this studio together. So okay, that one was an interview I remember thinking back on as like, oh yeah, there's such a value in having an in-person conversation. Yeah, and nothing like it. Yeah, it's just a little bit more there longer usually just because I think you get deeper into conversation and it's less like point to point. It's kind of like tangents and stuff more authentically. but yeah, that was a really fun episode. So I think if listeners didn't check that one out, that's worth following up with this one. If you're on a long run and you can knock out two episodes in one run. Yeah. Or ride? Absolutely. Yeah. Or sled. Push or pull or dragging tires. Exactly. Whatever you're doing works either way. But yeah, that one was kind of a focus on just your preparation and planning and eventual, like, launch of the Antarctic project. So maybe we kind of start with that, just kind of talking about what that project was all about. Yeah. So the goal was to be the first person to do a coast to coast crossing of Antarctica without dogs or kites. So the mission would have taken 115 days dragging a sled that started at £420 to go 1750 miles from coast to coast across the continent. Not only had it never been done before, it had never been attempted before, and many said it was impossible. Even people who. The company that organises logistics and expeditions in Antarctica. They're called Antarctic logistics and expeditions. They said that more than likely, anyone who attempts this will probably fail. So it was a daunting expedition, to say the least. When we met, I was training to prepare for it. You were incredibly helpful, which I'm so grateful for in planning the nutrition, because I was carrying all my food, all my supplies for the entire time. So to your point about sled dragging, I was dragging two sleds with all 150 days worth of food, fuel and everything to survive out there. That was the goal. That's not how it ended up going. I and I got out there and I mean from so, you know, I was the goal was to go coast to coast and starting on this side which I started on, it meant you're climbing uphill from day one, uphill, £420. The other side would have been about 30 days of flat terrain before you start climbing uphill. So there was a huge advantage to starting on that side, but the problem was to get to that side is about a 12 hour flight from the main base camp, Union Glacier, and that's very hard to to get good weather, you need not only good weather at the pickup, I mean the place where you leave Union Glacier and the landing, but good weather in two separate spots where you land to refuel the plane. The plane lands in the middle of Antarctica. Refuels. So that's very, very hard to do. And we didn't get good weather, so I didn't have a choice. I had to start on the side, which meant climbing from day one. And that was brutal. Yeah. Absolutely brutal. We also got hit with. An extraordinary amount of soft snow. More so than normal. There were 3 or 4 other adventurers attempting different kinds of records out there. Everybody failed, except expeditions that normally took 40 days. Took 50 days. The soft snow was brutal, and that, combined with the unrelenting uphill dragging, the heaviest sled that any man pulled from the coast of Antarctica unsupported. It was, I mean, hard as putting it mildly. It was unforgiving. And about day 45 to day 48, I knew that the crossing would no longer be possible. The math just wasn't working out. No matter how hard I tried to get the distance I needed, I couldn't do it. It was just. Just so hard. I mean, there were four times on the expedition where I would cross 20km, which was a milestone I really wanted to keep hitting. And that night it would snow. So four times I crossed 20km and it snowed. And then the next day the kilometers would drop, even putting in the same hours. I mean, the first time it happened, I hit 21.9km and it was about a day, I think 15 or 16 something around there. And it snowed tremendously. And my kilometers went from 21.9 to 17 to 14 to 13. And putting in the same hours. And on that last day, the 13 kilometer day. I mean, every three steps, the two sleds would get stuck in the snow and I'd have to kind of fight it out, and then it would get stuck again. And this would go on for nine hours. And that day. It was a particularly hard one, to say the least, I remember. Usually when I stop for food and water, I just have some food, drink some water, and keep going. That day I sat on my sled and I just looked up and I was like, come on, give me a fucking break. Yeah. You know, just so exhausted and and it was, it was frustrating, like those 20 kilometer days. And then next time I cross 20, I'm like, sweet. I can keep going. And then again, it snowed. So eventually, you know, day 45, we knew that the crossing, the math was no longer possible. Day 50 I took my first full recovery day because the body started falling apart. And those last ten days, between day 50 and day 60, the body was crumbling. I had a few days where I was so dizzy I fell over. I felt like I was drunk out there, just kind of stumbling. And when you're alone, it's dangerous if you faint. Yeah. And that was a genuine concern. If I faint, that's a huge problem. And I actually found out later that another adventurer did faint out there. And thankfully, he woke up and set up his tent and he got evacuated. waited, but he got frostbite on his fingers and toes, and he got lucky that he's alive. So I was concerned about that. There was another day where I couldn't bring my breath down to normal. Even after three steps I would be panting heavily. So my body started getting anaerobic, started cramping. And then finally on day 58, I got shooting pain in my gut. Pretty, pretty debilitating pain. And the doctor said, if it doesn't go away, we're going to have to come get you. So I went away. So I thought, all right, let me keep trying to fight in. Day 59 took a recovery day. Day 60 started skiing again. And within 15-20 minutes the gut pain hit. And at that point, we called the expedition. So I ended up getting 60, 60 days alone out there. Got 500 miles with a £420 sled, so made some good distance covering the steepest portion of the climb. So it was very, very, very hard. And what I found out later was I got diverticulitis, which is an infection in the colon. And if you don't treat it with rest and antibiotics the colon can burst, go into your bloodstream, get septic and you die. You get what's called peritonitis, which is fatal. And actually, eight years ago, one adventurer did get killed from peritonitis because. Essentially push too hard and and on knowing that that was when the gut pain hit. I knew that he had died. I didn't know at the time that I had diverticulitis. I found out later, but I knew that it was a gut issue. So that was the thing. All right, you know, coming back home alive was obviously the priority. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because you think of just like, what the failure points are for an ultramarathon or an expedition like that, and it's like you think of just a lot of the physical, like muscle breakdown or digestive issues, but to the extreme that you have where it literally becomes life threatening versus, am I going to death march this in or not? Yeah, it's kind of a different set of variables to be considered. Yeah. Especially being completely alone when you're on a solo expedition. Those factors are always relevant because I mean, if somebody comes to get you, it takes a while. It's not going to just happen instantly. Yeah, yeah. So the other interesting thing about this is that, like, it's not it wasn't one of those things where you get out there and realize, okay, this is going to be slower than I thought. Therefore, I take an extra 20 days to finish or whatever happens to be. Because if I remember right from when you were talking about it, there was a timeline in which you had to arrive at the other side, or there just wouldn't be the resources there for you to be taken back, essentially. Yeah. So when you get to the point where you're like, okay, this is proving to be something where that timeline is not going to match up any longer. What's the motivation to kind of keep going just to get as long as you can and then have to pull the plug anyway, but further along and say, I got as far as I could. Yeah, that was part of it. When we knew the crossing was no longer possible, just how far can I get? And being alone out there, it's a very spiritual experience and so I wanted to see where else. I could go within. What else would be unearthed in the solitude and the hardship and the struggle? What other moments of awakenings and enlightenment could I experience in that level of hardship and solitude? You know, when you push so far out onto the edge and you know this as well. You get to open doors into the soul that are very rarely opened. And especially in that silence, the one. One of the most challenging things about Antarctic expeditions is for most of the journey there is flat, white nothingness. Now there was part of it where I saw mountains, but most of it was flat, white nothingness, so there's no stimuli to engage you. Every day looks the exact same. Every day you're doing the exact same thing. And that monotony. Your mind wanders and you start thinking about things. And where that takes you is a fascinating journey. Some moments were pure bliss. I mean, paradoxically, even though I was completely alone, I felt more connected to all that is to God, to myself, to my wife, to people I love, to earth. And she sees moments of absolute bliss and then other moments of absolute hell, you know, and it becomes this beautiful paradox to, to, to experience all edges of one human life in this microcosm of time. So that was the draw. Let's see where else I might be able to go. Yeah, no, that makes sense. You'd want to like, wring that lemon or whatever, dry as much as you could with what you had left. And on top of it too, it's not like, I mean, ultramarathons are expensive, but this in particular was very expensive. So it's not something you probably want to do. You want to give yourself every last ounce that you can tolerate before you decide to say, all right, let's call it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. To your point, we had to raise $1.1 million for the expedition, which was in many ways more brutal than the expedition itself. Even though the expedition was extremely hard, I kind of thrive in that arena. That's my playground. That's where I like it. The pain is part of the process, obviously, you know, but raising the $1.1 million, that was brutal. The amount of training expeditions it was. I mean, it took four years, four years of prep for this thing to even give it a go. And as I said, it was the first time it was even attempted, let alone completed. So it was the first time pushing that far that hard in, with those with those conditions. So it was a brutal attempt, a beautiful, beautiful life experience. And to your point, I wanted to see how far I could get. And ultimately the body broke before the mine did, which I'm proud of. But it was still hard coming back. You know, coming back. I really struggled with the mental side of it. Just like an Olympic athlete, you devote four years of your life your body, your soul, your mind, your money to these, to this thing, one thing. And even though you know the odds are stacked against you and the odds of success are so small, it still hurt, you know it's still stung. And I debriefed with all my polar mentors, my polar coaches and friends, and there's nothing that we could have done differently to have it go any different. I gave it absolut my all, you know, but it was still really hard to sit with. Yeah. Is there any like information or medical like diagnosis as to like why what potentially what happened that results in you. How do you say diverticulitis. Yeah it's it's a tongue twister. For me. It was a tough one for me too. Now I've gotten used to it. You know, I found out from the doctor. When we came back home to Arizona where I lived, got met with the doctor and got checked up again. The doctor is in in Union Glacier, the base camp there. They were the ones who mentioned that. That's probably what it was. And the doctor at home confirmed. And he said that he he said people in normal life get it and it's caused by stress. And needless to say, I was under a good bit of it out there. obviously a lot of physical stress, the mental stress that was that was also part of the beauty, the spiritual journey was navigating the mental stress, because every time that happened that I would break 20km and then it snowed. It was so frustrating that I'm trying everything I possibly can. And there's I'm not hitting. I'm constantly below the distances I need to be hitting, you know, and navigating that. But then you have to bring yourself back into the present and say, you know, all right, there's just this next day, there's this next hour, not even the next day. And then sometimes when I wake up out of my tent and I look out and it's snowed, you know, it's going to be a horrible day for you, but you still have to keep going. And this is something you can relate to. As an ultrarunner, you have to be present. You can't be thinking about the next day, or the next hundred days, or the next 20 hours, or whatever it may be, you know, bring yourself back into the now, over and over and over again to stay here and to be present. That was the whole battle and it was constant. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if it was the additional stress that eventually led to that versus because you've done huge projects before. So like the physical and mental stress of just a big undertaking isn't something that was unfamiliar to you, but maybe just the random variables that were uncontrollable that happened to line up for this one. Added to that, to a degree where it took you over that threshold, I think. Yeah, that combined with the fact that this was the heaviest sled, I'd pulled heavier sleds in training, but it wasn't at that level for that extended period of time. Because, you know, when you're training, you're not going to do that. That's going to break your body, not build your body. Right. So I had never pulled that much for that extended period of time, going uphill and then getting hit with unbelievable amounts of soft snow that really just put such a toll on the body and the mind. And I kept bringing my mind back to the now, to being centered, even when I knew it couldn't do the crossing or it still just be take it day by day, take it day by day, hour by hour. Often I mean every day. The first hour was pretty brutal because as your body is breaking into skiing after a night of sleep, everything would hurt. And then it would kind of get in the flow. And the last few hours, almost every day, was brutal. Yeah, it was brutal. And I kept saying, all right, those last few hours, you have to fight to hit. The goal was hitting an average of about nine, ten hours. Ten hours. And as the sled got lighter, I would have extended the hours to go longer. But, but, you know, by the, by the by that time after day 50, the body just started breaking down. And you were pulling two sleds, right. Two sleds. Yeah. For most of the journey. And then condensed everything into one sled. Yeah. Yeah. So they got later on. Yeah. So it starts out at 400 plus pounds. And then it just probably I guess it progressively gets lighter as you get lighter as you eat food and use fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're really looking forward to that final stretch when you're just pulling a really light single sled. Probably. The goal was to get to the South Pole. So the South Pole is at about 9500 ft. So I was going uphill. And after that, after the South Pole was the halfway mark, after that I would have been going downhill and then ending on that flat terrain, which I would have started out and had I started on the other side of Antarctica. So the goal was to get to the South Pole with enough energy and enough time to still be able to. Now book it when your sled is lighter and you're going downhill. But it was. I truly believe that starting from that side, I think the journey is impossible. And this is someone who, like. I wouldn't say that lightly. Right. I've assessed it. I've broken it down, thought about it. I mean, for the first two weeks I came back. I barely slept because my mind was constantly running about. Analysing the journey, debriefing the journey. I think the only way it can be pulled off is from the other side, which is just you're very it's very dependent on luck to get the good weather window to fly out there. And if you do start on the side that I started on, you have to be blessed with some of the greatest conditions in Antarctic history to actually be able, because when I did get hard snow, I could cruise a ten hour a day, hit 22km without taking such a massive toll on my body. Nothing out there is ever easy, but it was relatively easy. So had I gotten hard snow every day, I could have, I think, still had a much better shot at pulling it off. But that's the nature of Antarctic expeditions you're very dependent on. I mean, it is an absolutely hostile, unforgiving place. There's no life out there. There's only penguins in one corner of Antarctica, but most of Antarctica has no life. And so it is unforgiving, to say the least. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting when you think about like, because obviously, like, weather is uncontrollable, you can't predict that, you can't change it or anything like that. Did you? I guess since you were planning on going from the other direction originally, maybe this wasn't done, but I'd be curious. Like just looking at the weather patterns and seeing like, okay, there's like a 15% chance I get this type of condition on average versus like a 5% chance I get this extreme stuff lining up the way it did. And like, I wonder how much calculus there could be done for that sort of thing. Yeah. You know, I mean, I knew that I would almost certainly start on the side that I did because it was easier to get to. So I figured that's where I would start. So I was mentally kind of ready for it. Although the other side had the advantages of the flat, just being that it was much easier to get to, and I knew the weather was hard to get to the other side called Bay of whales. So I was mentally ready for a Berkner start. And Berkner Island, the place where I started, is known for soft snow, so I knew I'd get soft snow on Berkner Island. That was to be expected, but what I did not expect, and I chatted with a lot of other polar adventurers who'd done portions of the route that I was on, on the ice shelf and the polar plateau. You almost never get soft snow. That's a hard surface, but it just didn't go away. So after Burner Island, I got soft snow on the ice shelf, soft snow on the polar plateau. And it wasn't till. Somewhere around day 50 plus that the snow disappeared and things got worse. The surface got harder and so that just wasn't wasn't expected. Didn't see that coming. You know, that just hasn't really happened. but it is what it is. It offered other kinds of challenges and struggles and opportunities. You know, had I gotten hard snow every day, it would have been way easier. And I wouldn't have had to go through those moments of unbelievable mental and emotional turmoil that I had to tap into something in the spirit to transcend. And that transcendence is part of the spiritual journey. You know, so it's starting from the other side. Is there a path forward if you were to do this again, just to say, like, okay, I'm going to set things up where I can guarantee a start from that side, or is it totally up to chance? You can't. It's totally up to chance. That's what makes it so hard. You could theoretically, let's say, and the costs are going up every year because of the fuel costs. So next year it'll be 1.2 million, let's say. And so let's say I raised 1.2 million and I go out there to try this again. And if you don't get that start side, because when I got to Union Glacier, so I flew, it took firstly we got about a week delay from flying from Chile to Antarctica because of weather. And so a week is now gone and I got to Union Glacier. We looked at the weather patterns. There were five days of bad weather to get to the Bay of Wales side, so I could wait 2 or 3 days and see if it clears out. But that's a risk because now I'm eating into the time that I have from the expedition where starting on Berkner Island, the start the side I did start on, we could fly out the next day. So I had no choice. I had to take it. And if I raise the $1.2 million to try it again, and you don't get the window to go to the Bay of Wales, it's gone, you know. So that's what's so daunting and so challenging about it. It's very dependent on a lot of factors, a lot of luck. The nature of the beast. Yeah. Yeah. And you think it's just not doable from that side now? I don't believe it is. If. I mean, if somebody in my lifetime proves me wrong. Awesome. I'll be the first to celebrate with them and shake their hand. You know, I think to start on the Berkner Island side and to actually successfully pull this off, you would need extremely good conditions. And even then, it's borderline I mean, as I said, the Ailey themselves, when they're told that we don't believe it can be done more than likely will fail. And they said there's probably five people on earth who even have an expedition resume enough and a desire to do a solo crossing. Yeah, that would approve because you have to get a permit to go out there. You have to show that you have the resume to handle. It's not just like anybody can do it right. So I had enough of an expedition resume to show that I could even attempt it. And, And but but they said that more than likely, anyone will probably fail. Wow. And so. And even other adventurers said it's probably impossible. One of my polar mentors called it the boldest Antarctic expedition in modern times, because it was just it had never been even attempted before. So I'm, you know, no regrets for attempting something that's impossible, even knowing the odds stacked against you. And that was something I struggled with coming back, though. You know, had I done a smaller expedition so you could do, for example, a partial crossing of Antarctica without the ice shelves and just cross the landmass? And if I had done that, I would have, I can say with 100% certainty, I could have pulled that off 100%. That would have been 1750 miles versus had like half the distance, you know, much shorter, much less climbing, much easier to do just the landmass of Antarctica. And then the expedition is viewed as a success, right? Yeah. Because you did the thing here. You're attempting something so big that's never been done, but it's now viewed as a failure, right? Yeah. And that was the hard thing. I'm not going to lie. Because, you know, you can, we could all say you don't care what other people think and all that, but it kind of hits you a little bit. Yeah, I'm definitely not a slave to what other people think, but I would. I'd be lying if I said it didn't enter my mind. And then thinking that. And then the world now views it as a failure. You know, it's perceived as a failure. And the fact of the matter is, from the mathematical standpoint of I didn't hit the distance that or the target, it was a failure. I didn't hit that, that target. You can't deny that. But. That's the challenge of attempting something that big. You're more than likely going to fail. And is it still worth it? And I believe it is. You know, it was a success to me that we got in. Getting the start line was massive. An expedition to raise the $1.1 million to train the way we did, just getting to the start line to attempt something that had never been attempted before to cover 500 miles, pulling a £420 sled, pushing the body till the body broke before the mind did. But in all those senses, I'm damn proud of that. It was a success. It was really an expression of fear, of honor at its highest right. But it was hard to wrestle with that distinction when I came back. Yeah. Balancing kind of where the wins and losses were or. Yeah. You know to some degree it's like if you walk away from that looking at it now, being out there and thinking okay, like the way that this is currently set up or the resources I have available to me to set it up the way that it currently is is just not feasible. Like answering that question, your mind has to be a little bit of a relief too, because if you had just decided, wow, this is a cool project, I want to be able to do it. And then like for whatever reason, you decide not to because you look at the funding being insurmountable or just, you know, just self-doubt, whatever happens to kind of keep you from doing it and you never do it. You spend the rest of your life thinking, what if I would have tried? Exactly. You know, so even if, you know, sometimes at least going and trying something and learning, okay, maybe this isn't something that is doable in the way I have it set up. Yeah. Is a peace of mind that you can live with versus answer. And what if. Absolutely. To your point. You know, even raising the $1.1 million when we started getting ready for this journey, I told Aly, this is what I want to do. And every polar adventurer knows this is kind of the last great adventure in Antarctica that hasn't been completed yet. People have crossed Antarctica with dogs, with kites. Other various records out there, but this is the last one that hasn't been completed. So every polar adventurer kind of knows it and was eyeing it, wanting to do it. But Aly told me that I was the first person who, when they, when I got a sense of a quote, actually tried to raise the money because originally the quote was 750 K and it's not their fault, like they had never put together a logistical plan. So this was the first time a logistical plan was put together for an expedition of this magnitude. So at first they were like, we estimate around 750 K. And apparently when somebody else had heard the quote, they didn't even try. So we were like, all right, let's try. And then I remember this. We were in Norway training my wife and I, and we had hit 697 K when the target was 750. So we're in the homestretch. We're almost there. And then they told us the quote, the actual number is now 1.1 million. And that was so crushing. Yeah. Because now we're like we have to raise another quarter of $1 million. Yeah. You know, and we had sleepless nights navigating that. But all of that to get to the start line to do this. I mean, what a magnificent adventure. You know, what an opportunity to face those struggles and keep fighting forward and then somehow. Something else happens and you raise the money. I mean, now, a person became my friend, Ryan Nadel. He runs this company called MIT 45, and they sponsored us with $225,000. Oh, wow. And right when we were on the home stretch, if or when we had, when we found out the number went up and suddenly now we're boom, you know, we're closer. So he was one of the primary sponsors of the expedition, MIT 45. And it was just unreal to go through that whole experience, to see the amount of people that came together. I mean, your support, the amount of people that supported this, whether it be in supporting through wisdom, through knowledge, like yourself and doctor Mike, you guys were so helpful or supporting even through crowdfunding. We had a crowdfunding campaign. People donated anywhere from $9 to $200,000. Yeah. You know, that was such a beautiful experience to see thousands of people coming together to believe in something. You know, and I feel humbled to simply have been the messenger for that. Yeah. You know, which was really, really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting if I, if I remember correctly from when you were on here last time, like, the majority of that price tag is the fuel costs. So there's two reasons why this expedition is so expensive. One was they had to extend the season just for me. So the normal Antarctic season is about 85 days. In order to pull this off, they had to extend the season. To do that, there had to be a skeleton crew at Union Glacier. That all comes with the cost of keeping the plane for longer. All of that comes with the cloth, so that comes with the cost. That's the number one reason why it was so expensive. The other is the flight to the other end of Antarctica to the Bay of Wales. That's the fuel cost that you're referring to. That was, from what I understand, about a 200,000 plus dollars, $200,000 plus flight. So collectively, those two reasons are why it was so expensive. A normal like let's say for example, I just was starting at the coast. I started it and ended at the South Pole, where there was another British adventurer, Freddie, who was doing that. So he started at the coast, ended at the South Pole, and he kind of passed me on day 20 or something like that. He passed me. We had this really beautiful moment. Yeah, two random, two people completely alone, and suddenly I'm skiing and I'm like, hey, Freddie, I knew he was out there. So, you know, we had a beautiful moment. Yeah. Hugged each other if we chatted for a couple of minutes and he went on about his way, and that so that journey, it's, it's your sled was about £150 lighter, but that would cost 150 K. So it's just to give you context, you know, it's not to say 50 K is cheap, but it's way cheaper than 1.1 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you, when you come back from something like that, does your brain immediately go to, okay, I got to do something big now or does it go to. All right. I've had my fill for a while. Let's change direction and then wait for some, some drive to maybe do it again and just let it naturally kind of. I actually had the desire to go. So I called the evacuation on day 60. They didn't come get me till they were 61 because of the weather, and needed to come in the plane and get while I was sitting in my tent that day processing. I already had the desire to come back. Yeah. And the goal? The thought was I wouldn't come back to do a full crossing because as I said, you have to. There's too many factors of luck involved and you could just end up losing $1 million. But what I had a desire to do was to do Berkner to pole. So the coast to the pole. It would not be an easy journey, but start. My sled would start at £150 lighter, so it'd be way easier, but still challenging enough to be worthy. And right now, I think there's only 8 or 9 people who've ever done Berkner to pole solo, so it's still a very small number of people who've done it. It still would be a 60 day journey. So that desire did come up. It was my wife and I who had some challenging conversations about that. I shouldn't have brought it up. Three days after I'm back from being gone for 70, give it a year before he started playing that it was just consuming me and I brought it up and we had hard conversations and my wife is absolutely incredible, so supportive. I could not be more grateful to her. But understandably, she not only doesn't want me gone for 60 days at a time, 70 days. If you include time at Union Glacier, but also the worry for my physical health and all that. So right now I'm not. It's not top of mind. I'm sitting with it. I'm going to process it. be with the experience. And right now, as I said, I also focus on making some money building the brand a little bit because it's sharing the lessons from the journey. I was essentially a sugar baby for the year and a half before, before Antarctica. My wife was taking care of our life. Anything I was making, I was putting into the crossing beyond the $1.1 million we had to raise. We funded training expeditions, travel training trips in Norway and Alaska, all of that. And so it was a very, very expensive proposition to go into all of these, all of this, this whole thing. And so now I'm going to focus on that a little bit. But before I even think about what might be and obviously I'm always going to be someone who trained. So I'm back to training now. You know, pushing myself physically doing all of that. I'm back to running again. I'm sure I'll run some ultra in the next year. I hadn't run ultras in years. I used to do that. But then I stopped when I got into polar training and focused on polar training. But I'm back to running again now and may get into an ultra run later this year. But as of right now, focusing on the book, the brand, the lessons. Yeah, well, you're in a perfect spot in the Phoenix area for just jumping in random ultramarathons. It's like everybody has like 50 events at this point, so. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, it's a beautiful area. I just enjoy long runs out there. When I came back, the weather was still gorgeous. We're not in the thick of summer right now, so I started getting back into some longer getting into longer runs. Did a three hour one right before coming here so slowly. The first month or so my body was in really bad shape. I would do light things that normally wouldn't even faze me and I'd be dying. I'd be winded. So it took about a month for my body to start feeling. Normal again? Yeah. Right now, there's still a lot left. We got a blood test done, and there were a lot of problems. Kidney, liver, a thyroid, prolactin, high, all kinds of issues. It's just the doc was just. You just put yourself under an immense amount of stress. Yeah. So it'll resolve itself. It's nothing permanent, nothing to worry about. It's crazy that that's the case. Like it can look like that. And then your body over the course of a month, just sort of normalizes itself. Yeah. And you could see very tangible data on what was wrong when we got the blood test, which was fascinating. It was a lot more wrong than even I thought. Yeah, a lot, a lot of issues. A lot of numbers were off what they were supposed to be. But it's all good. I'm on some supplements and, you know, it's normalizing. Yeah, I guess nowadays that's probably a little bit more precise because you can go in and figure out you're not just throwing stuff up against the wall, trying to figure out what's wrong. You go and you get tested, you find out exactly what needs the most attention, and then you supplement accordingly. And you don't have a bunch of extra stuff that could potentially be added baggage along with it. Exactly. We're very blessed with the great doctor in Arizona that we've worked with and trust, and he's awesome. Provides invaluable counsel. He must be an ultra marathon runner. He actually is not. He does train, but he does. He's in the lens of not only sort of Western medicine, but eastern as well. So he has this beautiful duality of playing on both those edges, naturopathic as well. So it kind of has, you know, different takes that he incorporates into his lessons and wisdom. And I was, he would say, his most unique client for sure. Yeah, exactly. but it's been, it's always been helpful to your point to know what's wrong and know what to fix. And again, I'm always going to be someone like you physically training. So I wanted to get back in the arena pretty quickly. You know, I think I maybe took six days off before I started exercising again. And then it was maybe a little too soon. I was still hurting and my wife was like, calm down. I was like, I need to do something, you know? So well. You also probably have like a little bit of the angst from just having it end early. What makes you kind of almost like once you've sort of gotten through those first few days of just like, okay, I'm no longer like out here in the middle of nowhere and these terrible conditions and this time of year in Phoenix is great. So, like, stunning. Exactly. You want to be outside? Yeah. You're probably. Yeah. There's a drive probably to try to want to go out and almost redeem yourself in your mind for some, for something or another. You get it. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask when. You have to have a resume. Like, I couldn't just go and say, hey, I want to try this ice shelf, the ice shelf crossing. They would laugh at me and say, they don't even bother fundraising, like go, go and try to maybe cross a northern state first or something like that in the middle of winter. So like when you propose that like what types of projects are you showcasing to say like, hey, this is what I've done. This is what makes me qualified. This is why you should let me take this small chance of making this work. I've done a one month crossing of Greenland that was dragging a sled, I think £190 for 350 miles across the ice cap. That's one of three major polar expeditions: Greenland, North Pole and South Pole. So I had crossed Greenland. When I started doing all this, I had gone to Antarctica four years ago, where my team and I became one of only 26 people to climb up this glacier called the Axel Heiberg. That's where, if you remember, I lost two fingers to frostbite. But I had experienced Antarctica. I had done multiple solo expeditions and other expeditions in the Arctic, in northern Norway, in Svalbard. I'd done a solo expedition in Iceland, so I'd shown that I'm competent in the polar regions and on solo trips. So totally. I've spent right now, including Antarctica, about 100 days solo in the polar regions, 100 days completely alone. And then I'd also shown physically, I'd run ultramarathons. I'd been in the Marine Corps. So physically and the mental aspect of all of those, but specifically they want to see a combination of that and your ability to handle the polar skills, like in your case, for example, you're obviously extremely fit. You have the mental wherewithal to handle long and distances, but they would want to make sure you can handle the polar. Yeah, the specific technical skills of being able to survive out there. My resume would be like, well, I ran in a 50 below wind chill day in Wisconsin one winter. Does that count for anything? It was like it was only 11 miles. Oh, come on, man. Get back out there. Yeah. Because that's part of it obviously is the physical thing. But you know, handling the polar regions technically is its own nuance and skills. Working with the stove, the tent, setting up, breaking down the tent when the wind is hammering you. Can you do all of those things? And like anything, it's practice. I had done it enough by the time I got to Antarctica that I was never in any real danger out there. I mean, while I was cursed with tremendous soft snow, I was also blessed with epic weather most of the days when they got sun out, clear skies. But I did have a handful of whiteouts and a handful of very windy days. And I'm comfortable enough to not only mentally be okay when the wind's howling at you, but to set up my tent and break down my tent in those conditions because I've done it before. Just like. Just like anything. It's a skill set. Yeah, yeah. Do they, do they inquire at all about things like, what you're going to do to prepare for it? Like if because I know you went on a few different kinds of training camps essentially. Are they looking for that too, like that. You're actually checking your checking your. Yeah. Checking your training. You know I'd constantly be keeping them in loop. Hey, I'm spending three months in Alaska. Here's what I'm doing in Alaska. I got to the point that I was dragging up to a £530 sled, you know, so weigh heavier, £100 heavier than what I dragged in. Antarctica. Just as training. So I told them constantly. I did the Iceland expedition last year as well, and all of that. So they were, I was keeping them in the loop to follow you on Strava. Yeah. And they do. They check on Instagram to make sure to see what you're up to. I mean, even when I did Denali three years ago now, I didn't realize they would do this, but they called the Denali Guide that I went with just to see how I performed on the mountain. And they and I didn't know. And I think it's a good thing they do that. They should do that, you know, to make sure that when something got bad on the mountain, I didn't break down crying or something, that I was okay. You know, we were carrying this guy up on our back. Exactly. So I'm really impressed and I'm glad they did that. That's one of the problems. Now, you see, in mountaineering, this is one of the big complaints that people have about Everest. People who have no business being on the mountain are going there. Yeah. And things go wrong, you know. So I think with polar travel you're not seeing that yet. That's the distinction between polar travel and mountaineering. It draws much fewer crowds than mountaineering does. And they're doing a really good job of vetting you, especially if you're attempting a solo expedition. It's another thing if you're doing a guided expedition, your resume doesn't have to be as stacked. But if you're doing it solo. Because if I do something wrong out there, somebody has to risk their life to come get me. And that's not fair to do that unless you know what you're doing. Like in my case, when they came to get me, it was a safe evac and all those kinds of things. And it was a very extreme scenario. I had pushed the body to the brink of death, but I was comfortable enough solo. Right. And I needed to be. Otherwise. It's not fair to other people as well. So in those it was like two days when you kind of called in before they were able to pick you up or 1 or 1 day. 24 hours. Yeah. So I mean you have all your supplies and you know, you can just rifle through them if you need to at that point, but you're just hanging out in the tent at that point. Exactly. Sleeping. Probably just sleeping as much as possible. I honestly didn't sleep much because it was, you know, even though I knew the crossing was over at that point, there was a bit of finality to when you're finally called the evac. And so just processing that, thinking about it. Chatting with my wife on the sat phone, just waiting, just waiting it out. I had enough supplies because I still had 55 days more worth of food. So I could have been out there theoretically for 55 days if I wanted to record a camping trip. It would have been exactly. And that even at the end, you know, there was a part of me that it was kind of like, there's no if I, you know, if let's say I'd stayed in my tent for another week, could I have potentially recovered more to keep going? Maybe, you know, but I didn't want to just be out there sitting in my tent. I wanted to move. I wanted to keep going. And at that point, the crossing was out of the question. Anyway, Had I been one day away from the crossing or something, would I have gone? Obviously? Yeah. You know, I would have probably pushed. And seeing what I could do to hit that home stretch. But I was so far away from the crossing there was not even a chance. Yeah. Did that guy that you crossed. I think you said you were 20 days in something like that. So he must have been getting close to his final. So he is. Yeah, he was getting close. He did end up reaching the pole. I think it was in 58 or 60 days. I can't remember exactly. But yeah, he reached the pole. Super nice guy, great guy. We were kind of in touch on the phone, texting each other a little bit here and there and just sharing it. And an awesome, awesome guy. And he's. Yeah, I think like I said, only I think only less than ten. I believe it's nine people who've done Bergner to pull solo. So it's still a hard expedition. Nothing in Antarctica is easy. It's one of the harder ones. But the draw for me to go back and potentially do that would be it'll still be challenging enough, but doable. Like I feel confident I could do it, but it would still not be easy. And my sled would be £150 lighter to start with. Yeah, yeah, it's just it's kind of a bummer that the financial hurdle is so high for that. I mean, it has to be. Otherwise the challenge is in there really. Because yeah, in order for it to be the grandness of the challenge, there has to be a lot of hurdles to get there and to be out there and that sort of almost self feeds. It's the expense. But I always wonder, like, you get some of these, these like guides in Nepal or something like that, who they're just living subsistence lives essentially, but probably about as good of a candidate as possible. It's like, at what point does someone like a hyper billionaire? Just say like, you know what? I'm just going to, like, take a few million dollars and grab a few of those guys. Yeah. Say like, hey, I know you probably enjoy your life to some degree, but let's turn you into a professional athlete. Just see what we can do here. Yeah. The Sherpas of Nepal, some of the greatest, strongest mountaineers on Earth. They're legends. I mean, I've seen some of them, even when I've done some mountaineering trips in Nepal. And I was fit, I was not not fit. And they'd be flying past me with way more weight in flip flops, you know? So they're just savages? Yeah, they're so strong. I know that's the mountaineering regions, but they're very, very strong mountaineers. Yeah. And I wonder I mean, again, I'd be super curious to see people now like again, there's a handful of polar adventurers eyeing this. I'm super curious to see what else. If anybody else attempts this, how it'll play out, and I'm the first to support them. In fact, I already have a few polar adventurers reaching out. I'm sharing my. It's a very supportive community. Yeah, so many people supported me and now I want to give back and share everything I learned along the way. Well, I mean, if someone does go and do it like. And then it proves that there is a path forward here. Now you may consider trying it again. My wife might murder me, but we'll cross that bridge down the road. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, there's a big world out there. A lot of hard things to do, a lot of beautiful things to do. And as I said, you know, there's a small desire to go back to even do the pole expedition, but. Well, yeah, taking a kind of step at a time, at least where to focus the energy, you know. So I'm always going to be training. My wife even has, like, she kind of jokes that she has PTSD from the word training because I use the word training instead of working out. Yeah. So she's like, you're working out. You're not training. I'm like, I'm always training. Yeah. When you start saying training, she starts thinking there's a problem. It seems like there's something you're training for, but it's just my DNA. I just always say training, you know? So even if there's nothing to kind of specifically train for, I'm training. but right now, I'm still just keeping it. Staying fit. I actually saw I lost about £17 out there, as you know, I'd put on a lot of fat. And then the first week or two weeks I came back, I didn't care. I was like, I'm just going to eat all the foods that I missed. So I put on back about seven, £8, and now I'm starting to lose a little bit again and kind of getting into a more regimented diet, not just the polar diet that I had before, where I was just eating everything to get right, to get fat, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually an interesting point too, because you had to sort of gain quite a bit of weight. Yeah. Just to make it doable in terms of essentially turning yourself into a mobile aid station. Exactly. And then like, you don't get to the finish line. So you retain a lot of that mobile aid station. but the thing I'm interested in is like when you're because it's not like you're eating little and you're burning most. I mean, you're burning a lot of body fat out there to lose £17, but you're getting in sort of a habit in a rotation of eating, probably, what, 789000 calories a day? I was eating 5750 700, okay, because I had to carry all of it. So theoretically you can take as much as you want, but that sled gets heavier and heavier. Yeah. So when you get back then is it like I mean it's probably not just a switch where you're like okay well now I'm just kind of relaxing and maybe burning a couple thousand calories a day. Your mind and digestive system is probably still looking towards 5 or 6000 calories and like, what's the drive to eat like, I guess. First few days it was pretty heavy. definitely feeling more pangs of hunger than normal. Yeah. so the first few days it was pretty heavy, but then it normalized. At least it felt fairly quick. And then eating, you know, obviously not eating 4 or 5000 at that point, but I was eating whatever I wanted because I was eating all the foods I missed. Yeah. You know, that I just craved being back in civilization, kind of enjoying life, enjoying the foods that I missed before I started being more conscious. Yeah, but I mean, when I ran ultras many, many years ago, I was £135. I got to 185 before Antarctica. So I put on a ton and I'm naturally not a big guy even right now. Like I'm about 173, but I'm a lot of it is not just fat, it's a lot more muscle that I've put on as well, but I don't think I'll ever go back to ultra on her skin. at least not anytime soon. I think I'll maintain some muscle mass, and I think I'll probably get to the point, maybe one 6170, which is still bigger than what most of my life has been. Yeah. And what I've been used to. But like me, my wife and I, for example, we're going to do an actual wedding last night, we just did a court wedding. So the ceremony is later this year. So we've come up with the mission. And my mission personally. I'm just going to get jacked up. Yeah, yeah. Keep that muscle. Exactly. So get ripped for the wedding. So that's my kind of training target, you know, because what not. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. So when you were preparing for this, there were a lot of, I would say, nontraditional training techniques because you're getting ready to pull a sled at very low intensity through like, yeah, well, it probably equates to beach sand essentially. Yeah. And now that you kind of have just all the options on the tape. Because you're not specifying. Yeah. Have you started gravitating towards any other type of, like, training activity that has just sounded more fun than others? I do love endurance stuff. So I'm now running. I'm still getting back to longer runs. I spend a lot of time hiking in the stepper, and now I've added more strength training into the regimen as well. So definitely doing more strength training and strength training in parts that like before, I wouldn't necessarily work out my chest a lot because who cares, you know? Yeah, but now I'm getting into the more traditional bodybuilding type strength training, which is the intention of purely aesthetics, just because right now that's it's kind of fun in its own right to get the aesthetic goal of looking ripped. but I always love endurance, so, like, endurance is going to be my jam for, I think, for the rest of my life. I love the long, slow stuff because that, as you can relate, is the mental challenge. Yeah. You know, when I do short, high intensity intervals, it's way more suffering in a very condensed period of time. But when you do long, slow suffering, you have to deal with the mental challenge of knowing that you still have hours of this left? Yeah. And that I enjoy. That's what fuels me more than anything else. So during the short interval sessions, like I'm doing a lot of interval sessions on the stepper and that's super fun. Very very hard. Drenched in sweat after it. But I'm enjoying that kind of thing as well. But I love the mental battle of the long, slow stuff that lights me up and seeing where the mind can go. Yeah. If you really wanted to mess with the endurance and strength world communities and rile them up, you should have taken like a picture at your fattest. And then like when you get jacked, take a picture and be like, this is what I look like when I was training for endurance and this is what I look like. I love it. I think we do have some more and we'll have some after shots. Exactly. Yeah. That's interesting. I yeah, I've always found that when you go through not necessarily like one training cycle where it's very specific or sometimes monotonous, if you do that enough times, there's just such a value in sort of doing something different for, for a training cycle and then going back to the thing that maybe you liked the most anyway. Yeah, it just kind of resets the mind. You know, like when I ran my fastest 100 miler that came off the back end of a six month block race training for the San Diego hundred, which is more trail mountainous. And it was like I kind of needed that reset because I had had a race that I had done prior to that, where I was just kind of like, you know what? Like I love running flat stuff. I still want to try to run a faster 100 miler, but I kind of need a break from it mentally. I got you and then when I. Yeah, yeah. And so then like, you know, instead of running around the track for a long run or on a straight flat canal pass, I was going to like Mount Ord. I've been out to Mount Ord yet. Over. Just like maybe an hour outside of. Maybe a little less an hour outside of Phoenix. You should check out Mount Ord. It's actually a fun fact. It's. I think if I remember right, it's the highest per capita congestion of mountain lines, which you probably won't see on the Mount Ord path. Yeah, but that area I. Guest has a lot of them. Cool. But essentially, what's cool about it is you park down at the bottom and it's a seven and a half mile run about almost 5000 ft. Climb up to the top and they have like a big observation tower. So I think it's maybe a cell tower or something like that up there. Yeah. And then you come back down. So when I was training for San Diego 100, I would do like on a long run weekend. I would go up it, come back down, hit my car as an aid station, up and back down again and get like a 30 mile long run with like almost 10,000ft of climbing and descending. Yeah. Yeah. Really callouses the legs for the trails when you. When you can do that. So that. Yeah, if you get sick of the stair stepper, you can do seven and a half miles up and then come back down. But you can like camp out there and stuff too, like, oh that's cool. There's a spot kind of mid way up where there's some campsites and stuff. Yeah. So there's an interesting spot that I didn't know about when I wished I would have known about it when I would. I got into Western states kind of late in the game through a sponsorship spot in 2018, and we had just moved to Phoenix that winter. So I still kind of figured in the lay of the land and where the training spots were and stuff. And in hindsight, I wish I would have known about that before, because that would have been great. I'll have to check that out. Great. I had heard of that one. Oh, good. That's good to know. Yeah. Check that spot out when you get a chance to head out there. Okay. I can't remember why I brought that up. Oh, because, just switching things up, so, like, that was, like, such a different, just kind of training program and a lot of newness. And probably after a lot of the flat running to just good mechanical variants where, you know, you can dial up a zone two effort at a low impact with a little more strength component going up that climb. Yeah. And then when I returned back to the flats and training, I just felt like I was pretty durable and still pretty fast. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then you kind of carry that strength into a speed phase. And it just kind of works a little better. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? Now I'm enjoying the variety of not doing tire dragging. Right. So that's been my because that was my world for years. And I'm that sucked. So I did it because it had to be done. But so I'm so so running is kind of a newer like my variant for right now at least. You know, because I wasn't even running at all. I was just doing tire dragging as my cardio before Antarctica, tire dragging and hiking. So this is running. It's fun. It's been fun getting back into running. I bet. What part of Phoenix are you guys in? In Scottsdale. Okay. Scottsdale. Yeah. So you're kind of near the McDowell's, then? Yes. Nice. Very near McDowell. Yeah. There's so much good trail out there. Beautiful. It's beautiful. So I'm really enjoying that. I like that again. It draws me to the mental side more than anything else. That's the thing that lights me up the most is, is, is with the endurance, you're forced to go within to hear that inner dialogue. You know, that's like that. The studying, the mental side of mental mastery is everything. My whole book, Nirvana, is based on that. The next book is building on that, you know, and that's what lights me up. That's why I love the endurance side. That's why I mentioned in Antarctica, when you're in the flat, white nothingness, to be with the stillness of what's up here, that's the most fascinating element of pursuing these hard things to me. Yeah, yeah. I remember the last time when you were talking about this. Darkness retreat that you did to prepare the mind and for that, sort of like no exposure to the visually anyway. Yeah. And how long was your. You're the first time I did the darkness. I spent seven days in the darkness. And the second time it was ten days. Okay. Wow. Ten days alone and pitch darkness. Can't see your hand in front of you and just go within. And I mean, in the darkness in that level, you start seeing lights that are as real and as bright as any of the lights here. They say that in that level of darkness, your brain starts to release DMT, hence these very hallucinogenic type experiences. But just to sit still with yourself there, there's no way external for consciousness to latch on to. So you open doors within yourself. And part of the beauty of these experiences is you don't know what's going to come out on the other side of those doors. It's not just sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, right? It's the darkness. It's the demons. And you have to face that. It rises to the surface. And I may have even shared this last time I was here, but one of my favorite quotes that really illustrates the process of mental mastery is from Carl Jung, who says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And all these journeys from the darkness to Antarctica. It's making the unconscious conscious. It's bringing the darkness to the surface. To face it, to be with it, to use it. And that's what draws me in these experiences. It really is a very spiritual experience, because you see how both in a very literal sense when I was in the dark, but in a figurative sense, how darkness and light can coexist. You know, when I push out in nature these experiences, they show you how the dualities that encompass the human experience can actually coexist as one. And what I mean by that, actually, it developed into a concept that I now call the paradox of oneness. And what this is, is the paradox of oneness is the realization that all opposites that encompass the human experience pain and pleasure. Light and dark, masculine, feminine, ego, humility, life and death, so on and so forth. All these opposites, they are not separate. They are, in fact, two parts of the same whole. And it's the conceptual mind. It's our rational mind that creates divisions, that creates duality. But true inner peace, true freedom, true mastery comes from not either resisting or clinging to one edge, but embracing both sides and exploring both edges. And what? I'll give you a concrete example of what I mean by that in Antarctica. You know, you feel so humble out there, so humble. I remember looking out one day when I had just climbed the very steepest portion of the route, a place called the Jack Ridge. And looking out at this completely alone for hundreds of miles away in the distance, I can see my small tent just a dot in the distance, and I'm so small in this nothingness. But when I'm being hammered by a polar storm, I also feel so powerful in that moment I am. It's godlike. It's this feeling. And you get to feel both these dualities coexisting. You know, you feel all powerful and yet nothing in simultaneously. And that's been this whole journey of mine. In the US. Seeing and experiencing this awakening, this moment of two seemingly contradictory forces. Seeing how they can coexist in the darkness in a very literal sense. I saw the brightest light I've ever seen in my entire life, in the dark. It was so bright. It was blinding. I was covering my eyes. And you can literally feel and experience and know that they are two sides of the same hole. Yeah. Is there a certain like a cross over time from or is it probably varies from experience or person to person. But like I imagine like the first six hours, you're not getting any of these experiences like that. And it has to escalate to a point before you start kind of finding that it is there. Like, what is that? What is that kind of early stage of like the darkness retreat, like the early stage to your point? You, you're just kind of acclimatising into the darkness. A lot of us are to some degree, some degree of sleep debt. So I think I just slept a ton for the first day and a half. Yeah, but even after that, you're starting to get used to it. You have to. The way I like to think of it is you have to earn the right to get those experiences. And that means riding through the first three or 4 or 5 days, which are hard. There's moments of boredom, moments of hardship. But in that stillness. But once you move through that, then you expose yourself to those moments of calling it what you want. Awakening. Enlightenment. Experiencing pure oneness. You know, you get to see all of this even in Antarctica. Like the other duality of control and surrender, right? You have to surrender to Antarctica. You can't control anything that happens out there, but paradoxically, you feel more in control because you're exercising the muscle of control. I control my reality over here. You don't kind of think about control. You just go about there's rules and civilization over there. It's on me to set up my tent the right way. And if I do it the right way, I can now survive that evening. And even if the wind is howling. So you exercise the muscle of control. So you feel in control. Even the duality of pain and pleasure. I told you about those moments of pure bliss. And often there, while I'm in tremendous pain. I'm sure you can relate to this when you run ultras, right? Yes, there are some terrible moments, but there's these moments of glimpses of pure oneness, of transcendence. And so I think. But they come after you acclimate into that new reality and it becomes your reality. And then you get to transcend. And that transcendence is what draws me. It's not the suffering in and of itself, whether it be running ultras or doing these expeditions on the edge. The suffering is the means. It's not the purpose, it's the door. What it's what gives me access to. And that access is the shedding of the masks that we wear. When you're in this world, when you engage with people, there's a mask. There's the constructs that shape our reality in that suffering, in that isolation, in that hardship, in that silence, the stillness, all that illusion is gone. The constructs of reality are gone. The mass we wear is gone. And you get to experience a truly raw experience that is full experience beyond conceptual thought. And what I mean by that is, you know, when you put words to an experience, it's inherently coming from conceptual thought. So even in a very simple way, when I see this, I think it's a black curtain. And how do I know that that's what it is? Because at a young age, I've been taught this thing I'm seeing. Is called the curtain. And that color I'm seeing is black. So I've been taught these things. So it's based on conceptual minds on constructs. So this is how you perceive reality. But there's a moment between the constructs of our reality and pure reality. And when you're out on the edge, you get to experience pure reality. And that pure reality is oneness beyond all constructs. And you see non dualism exists if that makes sense. Yeah. When I try to compare that to just some of the ultra stuff I've done, you sort of have this process where even a smooth race that goes like, okay, I executed that well and I hit my goals and things generally worked the way I wanted them to. You still have that ebb and flow between like, oh, I feel really good right now. Like better than I probably should. And that might come at 60 miles into 100 miles or something like that. When you're there's obviously fatigue in your legs and your mind, but for whatever reason, you feel better at mile 60 than you did at mile one. Yeah. And then you also have the reverse of that where it's like, okay, you hit a rough patch and you're just like, I don't know if I can do this. My paces are slower. What if this continues for the rest of the race and I have a terrible finish? And it's sort of like in either of those experiences, you have to recognize the finite nature of them, where it's like, okay, I'm probably not going to feel this great for the remainder of the race. So be in the moment, enjoy it while it lasts. But no, you're going to come down from this. And similarly, when you're in that rough patch, you have to be able to use that same mindset of like, okay, this really sucks right now. Yeah, and I need to weather this storm and then it will, but it will feel better. It's not going to feel like this or progressively worse for the rest of the time. And then I think the better you get at just understanding and being able to tolerate those back and forths, the further you can, or the more of them you can do over the course of an event, and the more those you can do over a course. An event just means usually the quicker you're going to get to the finish line. Absolutely. And or if it's a timed event, the further you're going to go within that framework. Absolutely. This comes back to the point of what I mentioned earlier, if not resisting or clinging to what is acceptance of Isness is the foundation to freedom from all unnecessary suffering and unnecessary suffering. So in ultras in this, you're going to suffer. But it's the dialogue that happens in your mind that creates unnecessary suffering and adds suffering onto the suffering if you're not careful. So in my book Nirvana, I call this second art syndrome. And what that is, as Buddha said, we're all stabbed by the two darts of suffering. The first start is the one you don't control, so your legs are hurting when you're running, whatever it may be. The second part is when you spiral into that dialogue. What's wrong with me? I'm feeling weak. This is like, I can't do this. God hates me. Whatever that conversation that we can all relate to in every context of life, we do this. We'll go into that spiral in our head. And if you don't pause that spiral, if you don't become aware of it to stop it, that's when it just gets worse and worse and worse and feeds off the negativity. That's what I call second dart syndrome. And so when you stop and you acknowledge that the first start and you don't have to get caught up in the semantics of is the first dart. The external thing? Or is it thought because most of our thoughts we don't control, they just arise. You know, as you said, when you're running, you'll recognize, oh, this will end or whatever it may be. So the first thought arrives, but as soon as I pause that stream now I've taken control of the second part and I can say, got it? I will just accept what is. So even, for example, when I'm in Antarctica, if I'm feeling frustrated, instead of beating myself up for feeling that, you know, feeling a moment of frustration, feeling a moment of weakness, whatever it may be. Pause. Let me accept it. Let me be with it. Acceptance of illness I'm not going to resist, to, or cling to what is. I'm just going to. I'm just going to be with it, be with it fully. And from that place you can now create your own reality. Yeah. So are you, do you do any, is there any like framework that you try to use in those situations with that second part where it's like okay when that I'm trying to envision, like if you're sitting there before like a race and you're thinking, okay, inevitably there's going to be suffering. And when that suffering arrives, I'll have to navigate the controllable second part. Are you thinking like, okay, here's the message I'm going to give myself to do that? Or is it something you have to sort of adjust and be flexible around when it arrives in order to kind of control that narrative? You can pre-plan certain things, like having certain mantras you use that guide you. But a lot of times, once, once it arises, it's just bringing yourself into the pure presence and awareness of the illness. So in Antarctica, sometimes I would do this. I would say, thank you God, for these perfect conditions. Now with these conditions perfect, I would have much preferred harder snow. But they were perfect because it can't be anything other than what it is. It cannot be anything other than what it is and therefore it is perfect. So that's a simple mantra to train yourself to accept what is without demonizing what is. And also sometimes, you know, that moment I mentioned when I sat down on my sled on a really hard day, I got a little victime. Yeah, I started feeling sorry for myself for a moment, but that's okay. It allowed me to move through it. So I'm not saying I lived in that, I didn't. I barely spent 30s to a minute, if that. But just saying, oh, this sucks. You know, give me a break. And then saying, all right. Stop feeling sorry for myself. I chose to be here. It's a luxury to be here. Let me keep moving forward. Yeah. Bring myself back into the now. Sometimes it's as simple as just. I'll just say be here now. Be here now. And if you find yourself your first art. Going into the pain cave, as every ultrarunner knows, is digging it deeper into it. You know, let me. Sometimes I've even said things I remember once when I ran a 50 miler around a cul de sac. When Covid first hit, a lot of people said, I can't go to gyms, I can't, I can't train. Parks are closed. So to inspire people, I did 50 miles just around a cul de sac, right around my right outside my apartment. It was like a thousand plus loops. It was 0.05 miles. Just this cul de sac going around to show there's always opportunities. And I remember when my shins started hurting when on that run, I actually started praying for things to get worse. Bring, you know, bring it on, bring on every bit of pain you could possibly throw on me. Not. Things are going to break me. And so you're now seizing control of that second part to channel it into something, you know. So sometimes you use the weapon of going deeper into pain, other times escaping the pain. Even in Antarctica, very often I didn't have any music or audiobooks, just being with the mind. Other times I used music to escape. But neither is good or bad or right or wrong. And here's the thing too. Right? That's coming back to that paradox of oneness. These are two seemingly contradictory weapons to navigate hardship, but they both have their place. It's not that one is bad or one is worse. The more you play in the arena, the more you can figure out which weapon actually works for you. So actually on nirvana.com, if somebody is interested, I have a whole tool called 25 weapons to Navigate the Pain Cave, and there's 25 different weapons that I've figured out over the years of doing these hard things to navigate. Not just a physical pain, or an endurance feat, but even mental and emotional pain. And sometimes it's gratitude, sometimes it's escaping it, sometimes it's going deeper into it. You know, sometimes it's being with it fully and just sitting with it, not resisting, not clinging. But there's so many different weapons that you can exercise in the moment to, to move, to keep moving forward in the face of the struggle. That's ultimately what it's about. But I think at the core, even if you find yourself getting into that mode of resisting or clinging. The mission is to bring it back to center quickly. You know, it happens to the best of us. That was a realization for me in Antarctica, and I think actually mentioned you on one of my audio updates where the greats, you know, I always thought when I first got in ultrarunning that the greats like yourself, they don't feel moments of mental hardship. They're just somehow pushing through no matter what. Until I realize the more I hear that everybody goes through it. You know, when I read this, I saw this clip from Novak Djokovic, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, who talked about how even he has moments of doubt. Even he, when he misses a few shots, will spiral a little bit. But the key that I think separates the greats from those who don't push past those hardships and those limits, is the ability to bring yourself back into center when your mind strays and do it rapidly, but that is about what the second art is all about. Yeah. Yeah. And the quicker you can do that, the better. When you're under time pressure like that. Yeah. Like what you described, the most transparent version of that that I've had was when I ran my fastest 100 miler. It kind of played out exactly the way you described it, where I was about 40 miles in, and I had, you know, when I go into these races on these short loops, like this was a 443 meter loop. I know, like, all right, here's the fastest I should be going on any loop. If I go faster than that, I'm probably eating into myself at the end. So I should pull it back a little bit. If I'm going slower than this, I'm starting to lose goals. So. Here's your operating zone. Land in there and work with perceived effort within that range. Yeah. So I started drifting off on the slow end going into the 40th mile. And that sort of confirmation of seeing those slower splits show up on the screen was kind of like planting that seed out of like, okay, maybe this isn't the day, maybe I had an I. It actually wasn't my goal race for that. That half of the year. So I had that other additional kind of like, well, you know, you could just have a strong 100 miler and use it as like a training session for the next race and, you know, all the typical stuff. Yeah. And then I remember for whatever reason, I don't I didn't plan this or come in with this as like a bullet point to reference. But I remember thinking, well, I'm running on an indoor track that is climate controlled at 55 degrees, and at the time it was potentially just a one off event. So like, I don't have another shot at this environment where I have total temperature control on a short loop like this. So rather than conceding 40 miles into a 100 miler. Yeah, maybe just get back on pace for two more miles and see what that feels like. Because really, like, even if it was game over for me, I could do two miles in range. Yeah. So I sort of, reframed it as like, like you said, coming back into the moment, but also rather than leaning into the negative side of it, kind of saying like, well, what can I do now? Versus, what do I have to do for the next 60 miles? And then also appreciating, like the opportunity where it's like, you know, I could be outside, it could be 75 degrees, it could be the sun beating down on me. There could be a wind, it could be raining, you know, but it's not because it can't be inside. Yeah. So I've got this like opportunity and I think like those things all lined up in a way to kind of show me that sort of perspective and like, and that tool that you can kind of use to or those series of tools, I guess, that you can use to sort of navigate those spots and, and then, you know, you start to learn that and then you realize, like, okay, I can dig deeper into this discomfort when it comes up or, or clear more of those hurdles than I normally would. Yeah. And then ultimately have a better performance. So then you can also play the fun game where you reflect back on a few past races where you're like, you know what, if I had learned this lesson back then, what would I have done? Yeah, yeah. Which isn't necessarily the game you want to play other than looking at those. Okay. Those were those steps that led me towards learning this when it worked, and then without them, maybe I don't get there anyway. So you can't necessarily like to go back and start playing the What-if game either. Yeah, absolutely. No. That's a great story, I love that. I think gratitude is such a powerful weapon when you're there. Yeah, even in Antarctica. I mean, I get to choose my suffering. That's a privilege, right? Right. To be wrong. Yes. I worked very, very hard for it. But there's many in the world who don't even get the luxury to choose because they're thrust into some of the hardest conditions we can fathom. And so remembering that out there that I'm grateful I get to experience that place, to experience that level of solitude in this majestic land is truly a privilege. And that's one thing I didn't really struggle with at all was the isolation out there. I thrived on it, I loved it, it was such a blessing to experience that you rarely get to experience. You never get to experience that level of isolation in the normal world, you know, so that in and of itself was a real privilege that I was very, very grateful for. And I think just bringing that back, that no matter how bad things are, could always be worse. And celebrating that for a moment gives you a good perspective and. Brings you back into the now, which is ultimately the only thing that's real. Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting when you say it like that, like we choose our suffering with these things. It's like, yeah, I mean, it could be not that long ago where you're on the East Coast and you're packing up a Calistoga wagon and heading out west, trying to go thousands of miles. Yeah, exactly. In a wooden wagon? Exactly. Exactly. And you have to, to some degree, because, like, you don't have any other opportunities outside of that and. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's interesting that the framework is just different. You wonder what the people's mindsets were like back then where they didn't see it as like, all right, I'm going to like to place this challenge on me so I can actually feel alive to some degree. Yeah. In a modern society where there's a lot of comforts that are a blessing that we have, but that you don't go back very far before those weren't there. And yeah, people were doing this as a way of existing. And to your point about the comforts of modern society, that's, that's, I think, to make that whole concept of the paradox of oneness actionable. One of the things I always do and people I work with, I recommend doing, is look for a duality causing you friction and go play on the other edge of it. So why is this movement now or what we're seeing embracing discomfort? Because we're so comfortable. So seek out discomfort. Seek out pain. But I see it sometimes. Now go to the other edge where people are saying comfort is the enemy. Comfort inherently is not the enemy. They both are. Neither is bad or good. Neither can they both coexist. What makes discomfort valuable is comfort and vice versa. So even for me, I remember many, many, many years ago I was out running and I saw this sign that said five K Fun Run. And I had this visceral sense of disgust at the idea of a fun run. You know, you can't, you can't run for fun. Every run should be an exercise in suffering. Otherwise you're wrong. And that wasn't a healthy way. I realized at the time, because I had gotten so good at playing on the edge of suffering, that I was creating suffering in all areas of my life. And that's actually when this concept or this idea was born of this duality. I didn't I didn't have it crystallized and fully conceptualize it the way I do now. But in some sense, even looking back, my whole book, Nirvana, Fear and nirvana. Two seemingly contradictory ideas that are in fact complementary and they can work together. And so that's what I started doing, as I struggled with joy. So I started going for fun runs, didn't care about time, just being out there doing more light and playful things. And by playing on the edge of joy, not only did I develop new mental weapons to navigate the hardship, it just made life more fulfilling because it's pain that makes pleasure valuable and vice versa. So playing on all edges adds flavor to life. Yeah. And to some degree I think that that sort of background thought process plays a role in your psyche. So like if you start associating ultramarathon or running or exercise as always suffering, then eventually your brain is going to start associating this thing of this resistance to it. Because like us we're going to seek comfort to some degree. Yeah. Yeah. So then that makes sense. You reframe the narrative by going to the five K fun run and reminding yourself, hey, this is actually fun. I can enjoy this. There's no pressure here. And then your brain. Starts associating this as an activity that can also bring joy and happiness. And it's not all just delayed gratification all the time. Absolutely. It's all part of the human experience. And you want to play on all those edges. You can't have light without darkness. You know, if you think about when you're standing on top of a mountain, why is there something low? Because you're high, you know, otherwise it's all flat. So a valley, you need a valley for a summit to exist. And I don't just mean literally figuratively in life. And I think a lot of times I see people are so scared to leap off a cliff and for the fear of falling, for the fear of pain. And as a result, you never really experience the highs of life. You know, if you don't know, to really experience the heights of all, you have to explore the depths of the abyss. And that's the value in playing on that edge of pain, whether it be physical, sitting in a dark room or going into some abyss, the spiritual abyss, the physical abyss. But as a result, you'll get to know more about the heights of all that, what Joseph Campbell called the rapture of being alive. And you get to feel that more fully. That's what makes life so much more flavorful. Yeah. Yeah. And what did you say the name of your next book is? The tentative name is going to be stepping into the storm. Step in the storm. Okay. Is that how far along in the process are you? Very early. Okay. So we had to wait a bit. I just got back. I haven't even fully framed the table of contents yet. Just creating a structure. The general structure of the book will be the before, during and after of a hard thing and guiding people through more framework. So my first book, Fear of Honor, was essentially about how do you build a muscle of courage? Courage is the most important virtue without courage, as Maya Angelou put it more beautifully than I would, you can't practice any other virtue consistently, so to do anything you want in life, you need courage to go out that run the door when you don't feel feel like going out the run to walk up to that girl or that man at a at a bar. It takes courage to start that business, to write the book. Anything to raise a child. I'm terrified of having kids. All of that requires courage. So with courage is the foundation from which every other virtue can be practiced consistently. So fervent was about building that muscle of courage. This next one is now getting a little bit more granular. And how does one do the hard thing? So the three sections of the book, this is pretty much as far as I've gotten, are starting to build out the table of contents now. But the Gogi is the Spartan training ground. So that's the before the arena, the during and then the aftermath, the after. Because I think that's something that's also not talked about. And Michael Phelps did a great job of this in the documentary on Netflix. I think it was called The Weight of Gold about how Olympic athletes go through mental health struggles. Yeah. Whether you win gold or not, there's a downfall that comes as a result of that, you know, and I, I can relate to it in many ways. You spend four years training for a craft, whether it goes the way you want or not. What do you do with your life now? A little bit. So navigating that it doesn't have to be a long down, but you feel those moments and then moving through it. So helping people navigate those three phases of before, during and after any extended heart thing. So it's not just about doing a hard thing once I'm. Anybody can do that in a glimpse of motivation, right? Something happens, you get motivated. I'll go in that cold tub once or whatever it may be. But how do you keep doing hard things? So the tentative subtitle of the book is How to keep Doing Hard Things to get the results you want. Excellent. Okay. Well, I'll be looking forward to reading that when it comes out. Do you have a timeline imposed on yourself? I have, yes. The goal is definitely to finish writing it in the next 6 to 8 months. My first book, Nirvana, because it was my first book ever. I was new to writing. It took me three years. There was 100% some procrastination. Yeah, there was tons of research that went into it, but it also because it took me so long, I almost rewrote the whole book because I had evolved as a person. So I almost wrote two books to get that one book out. So this book, I will not do the same thing. You know what I'm doing now. Like always, you learn from life experience. So this book will take 6 to 8 months, and then the goal is to get it out by next year. it'll take it'll take, you know, with publishing and everything, because I'm not self-publishing it, going with a publisher and then to get it out next year. But then over the next 6 to 8 months, that's my primary focus, is to write and finish, finish the, then finish the course structure of the book. But that's also been a big learning for me since Nirvana. Coming back to that notion of the duality in fauna. Everything was defended by research, every point. You know, there's so much research that went into it, so many scientific studies, and not that that's bad. But since writing that book in my own evolution, I found beauty in playing, in paradoxes, in the duality of not just science, but spirituality. Not just control, but surrender. Embracing the mysticism of the universe. There are questions we don't have answers to, and that's a beautiful thing. You know, so I was practicing and embracing mysticism and like. And the way I made that concrete to make it actionable. I remember I would go around and anytime I had something in life that I'm sure we can all relate to, there's those moments you're like, how did that happen? How did the number of stars that have to align for this moment in time play out this way? I would write it down as evidence of the mysticism of the universe, to prove to my mind, to prove to a mind that needed reasons, that needed that was very controlling, that to be embraced to the surrender of mysticism. And now I've done that a lot more. So this book will be while there'll be research, it'll be more about not only my own anecdotes, but sharing from others and, and from a, from a little bit more of that lens of surrender and mysticism and, and embracing that in the human experience. Cool. Yeah, well, we'll look forward to that coming out next year. Thank you. Some more delayed gratification. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Cool. Well, it's been great to have you back on the show. Such a privilege. I'm so grateful to always spend time with you. Yeah, I know it's fun to catch up where? I know you mentioned a couple times, but where is the best spot to kind of find you online? so Instagram is my primary social media platform at Nirvana, and the book is on paperback, Kindle, audible, and on my website, Fair Haven. I mentioned to have some resources to help people move through not only pain, but wherever we are, on whichever point of our journey, whether we're struggling on the depths of PTSD, suicide, suicidal ideation, addiction to the heights of mastery. I've been blessed to have gone through that gamut in my life. So sharing different resources and tools to guide people through wherever they are on their journey. Very cool. Yeah, I think the 25 tools for the Pain Cave, I think will be an interesting one. That was fun to put together and to crystallize some of some of the lessons from not only myself, but learning from others like yourself into this framework to guide people through their own challenges. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking some time. Hope you enjoy the rest of your time here in Austin. Thank you brother. Thank you. Awesome. Take care. Awesome.