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[upbeat music] Leadville 100 is that race. It's, it's so iconic that I want to-- I wanna accomplish it.

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I wanna, I wanna knock it out because by the time I'm about to die, hopefully a long time from now, much older and wiser, I wanna look back at the accomplishments, the things that I've done, and just have this list of, "This is what I did.

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This is what I did for myself", and to see how far can I push myself physically, mentally, emotionally before my day comes.

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[upbeat music] Welcome to For The Long Run, the podcast exploring the why behind what keeps runners running long, strong, and motivated. I'm your host, Jonathan Levitt.

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Through personal and professional connections in the running world, I have the privilege of getting to know some amazing athletes.

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I've always been fascinated by the psychological aspect of running, and this podcast is aimed at exploring this and much more. I hope you enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Goodr.

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Summer is here, and Goodr has the slickest shades around for only twenty-five and thirty-five dollars. They don't slip or bounce, and they stay on my face way better than more expensive sunglasses do.

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If you'd like to support me and the show, treat yourself to a pair or two or three of Goodrs and head over to goodr.com and get fifteen percent off your entire order with the code FTLR.

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That's fifteen percent off at goodr.com, code FTLR. Your face will thank you.

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[upbeat music] Welcome back. I have Nick Bare joining me on the podcast today.

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Nick, thanks so much for taking some time to chat. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm excited to dive into all things running related and, uh, now ultra related. [laughs] For sure, and likewise.

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So the first question on this podcast is always a tough one, and it is: who is Nick? Oh, man. Well, I think I would define it a little bit differently than my, my wife would want me to define it.

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[laughs] Um, so I'll kick it off that way, I guess. I am a husband, uh, recently married. My wife and I got married in October of this past year.

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I am a veteran of the United States Military, and I am the CEO and founder of a sports nutrition company called Bare Performance Nutrition.

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Uh, so my true passions in life are building a team and that team working towards a mission, a goal, and I really learned this through my time in the military as a infantry platoon leader, and that's what I love doing.

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I love building a team. I love building businesses. I love training and everything that that encompasses.

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Very cool, and you've put yourself in the position to be able to live that out every single day with what you're doing for work and also for play. And, and thank you for doing what you do and have done for our country.

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Let's roll into the, into the running side of things or into the performance side of things, since this is by definition a running podcast, that sort of sets the stage for the, the extrapolation or comparison of what we learn in running into life.

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So let's set the stage with, with this one. Do you remember your first run? I'm sure my first run was not by choice. You know, in, in high school, I played sports. I played baseball, ice hockey.

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From Central Pennsylvania originally. Right.

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And then I ran cross country for a year in high school, and I, I vividly remember my first ten-mile run, where it was the middle of cross country season and this was the first time I remember running from one town to the other feeling effortless, and I loved this feeling.

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And then I joined the military through college. So when I was a junior in high school, I received an Army ROTC scholarship to go to college.

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I went to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania to study nutrition, and this is really where more of my running was progressed or I ran more. You know, we would do military PT training sessions Monday through Friday.

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We'd run probably three days a week, at the most, maybe six, seven miles. And I never really loved it, because someone was making me run, right? So like that's all I remember about running was it was this forced thing.

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I loved going to the gym. I loved training. But running was something that was never a choice or a passion.

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And then after college, I graduated, degree in nutrition, commissioned into the Army, and again, running was that thing that I was being forced to do. And I was always a bigger guy.

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Like, naturally, me and my brother, we sit heavier. We're into lifting weights and strength training. And for always being a bigger guy, I was always a decent runner. I could hang with the skinny, fast guys.

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And when I transitioned out of the military in two thousand and seventeen, I said, and I, I said this on a YouTube video, I said, "I will never run a day in my life again." And I, I really believed that.

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I thought I was never gonna run again, and that was May of two thousand and seventeen. By February of two thousand and eighteen, I was running my first marathon. [laughs] And that was the Austin Marathon.

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And what I found is when I, when I left the military, I thought I didn't wanna run, and it's because someone was making me run. But when I left the military and I was in the civilian sector, I missed it.

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I, I really truly did. And when I started running again, it felt like I was, I was doing something I, I needed to do. And what, what was that cognitive switch?

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Was it a light switch or was it a, was it a slow experience into like, "Wow, I'm doing this for myself. I love this. I need to keep doing more"? It's kind of a slow transition.

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So in the military, in the Army, I loved the feeling of being beat down, tired, and exhausted after certain things.

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Like going through Ranger School, I remember being just physically exhausted, but there was this rewarding feeling when you were done.And we'd also do a lot of forced ruck marches in the military.

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So we'd hold a ruck on our back that weighed, you know, fifty pounds, and we would ruck twelve to twenty miles. And that would take anywhere from three to six hours.

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And I loved the feeling of just being fatigued, tired, but accomplished when I was done with it. And then when I left the military, I mi- I missed this feeling. I felt like I wanted it back.

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So I actually signed up for some ruck marches.

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I went to White Sands, New Mexico, and I did the Bataan Memorial Death March, which was a twenty-six point two-mile ruck march in, uh, the high desert of White Sands, New Mexico.

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Uh, I ruck marched from Austin, Texas, to Houston, Texas, which was a hundred and fifty miles- Wow... over the course of a few days, and we did that to raise money for Hurricane Harvey.

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And when I was done, my feet were blistered, my body was exhausted, I was beat down.

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But it also, at the same time, like, fed this need to reach this level of accomplishment or this level of exhaustion, and, and it was like this, this high, essentially.

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And that's what eventually evolved into signing up for my first marathon. It went from ruck marching to, well, let's remove the ruck and let's just run. What was that first finish line like? It was tough.

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I remember- [laughs]... that first marathon, I didn't know how to train. Like, I really didn't. Um, I didn't have a Garmin at the time. I wasn't tracking anything. I wasn't tracking paces. I would just go out and run.

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And I think my longest training run for my first marathon might've been nine, ten miles. And I, I remember hitting mile sixteen thinking, "I got ten miles left."

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My body was cramping, full seizure, and I crossed that finish line, I think it was like three hours and fifty-seven minutes. And I mean, I was happy that I, I ran sub four.

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And I remember crossing that thinking and knowing, "I'm gonna do it again. I'm gonna run another one, but next time I'm gonna be more prepared."

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And then the following year, I did the Austin Marathon again, and this is where I really started to try to learn more about endurance.

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And what's, what's funny is that the military, we run so much, we spend so much time running, but we don't actually know how to run properly.

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Like, when I would run in the Army, they would just say, "Hey, go run for forty minutes." There was never a heart rate, there was never a, a rate of perceived exertion. There was no measurement.

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It was just go out and run. So if you tell some infantry soldiers to go run for forty minutes, we're gonna run as hard as possible- [laughs]... for forty minutes.

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So I applied this mindset and mentality to my second marathon. I thought, "If I wanna get faster, I need to run all my runs as fast as possible." And I ran my second marathon worse than my first.

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[laughs] I ran my second marathon four hours and fifteen minutes, and I was just like, "You know what? I'm not, I'm not a runner. I was not born to be a runner."

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And after that second marathon, I did another, another ruck march. Did a hundred-mile ruck march.

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And as soon as I finished that ruck march, what I did was I signed up for an Ironman Triathlon the next day, not knowing what an Ironman was.

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The only thing I knew of an Ironman, I knew it was a triathlon, and I remember being on a plane years prior, and there was this big guy in front of me, and he had all Ironman gear, and I thought it must be some sort of like Spartan- [laughs]...

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extreme race. So I sign up for this Ironman Triathlon, and then I do some research. I'm like- Did you have a bike at the time? No, I had nothing. [laughs] I had nothing.

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Signed up for this Ironman, and I realized, all right, it's a two point four-mile swim, hundred and twelve-mile bike, twenty-six point two-mile run. So I gave myself six months to train.

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I went into a local bike shop, and I think bike shops are one of those places that are pretty intimidating if you're not a cyclist.

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I walk in, and I could tell instantly they were judging me just 'cause I'm, I'm a bigger guy. And I, I said, "Hey, uh, I just signed up for my first triathlon. I'm looking for a bike."

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And they said, "What race did you sign up for?" I said, "Ironman Florida." [laughs] They said, "You signed up for an Ironman for your first triathlon?" I said, "Yeah. Why would I not? I'm going all in."

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So I trained for this, uh, this Ironman. It was Ironman Florida. It was a great learning experience. Uh, had to pretty much learn how to swim, learned about the bike, learned more about running.

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Finished Ironman Florida in eleven hours, twenty-eight minutes, and still at that point, I wasn't really educated or informed on endurance sports and how to train properly.

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And right after I finished the Ironman, I felt on top of the world. I said, "Okay, next thing I'm doing..." For my, my entire life, it's what's next? What's next? What's next?

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So my next thing was I said, "I'm gonna run a sub three-hour marathon." And I made a YouTube video saying, "I'm going to run a sub three-hour marathon," and the entire world doubted me.

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I mean, there's articles, there's forums online saying, "Nick Bare will never run a sub three-hour marathon."

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So this was in November that I announced it, and my plan was to run a sub three-hour marathon at the Austin Marathon, which was in February. So a few months after that.

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And I, I worked with a coach, and that coach, again, didn't put me through any type of heart rate training. It was all paces.

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So I'm going out again, and I'm running all my runs at these fast marathon paces thinking, "If I wanna run a sub three-hour marathon and hold six forty-five minute per mile paces, I have to do all my runs that way."

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[laughs] So I ran the Austin Marathon, and I went out for this marathon with no strategy. I went out with a, with a mindset of, "You know what? I can do anything for three hours.

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I just have to hold a six forty-five minute per mile pace for three hours. My mind is strong enough to do that." So I go out on that first six miles, and I'm clipping like six fifteen paces.

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[laughs] And at mile six, I realized I was burnt out. There was no way to do it. So I crossed that finish line in three hours and twenty-four minutes.

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Still big jump from four fifteen the year prior, but a ways off of sub three.

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And that was an eye-opening experience for me because I really wanted this sub three, and I was all in, but I knew I needed to learn more about endurance training. So I hired a new coachAnd her name was Natasha.

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She's based out of Austin here, and she pretty much took me under her wing and taught me all things endurance in terms of Maffetone method, heart rate training, using speed work, all types of different fueling and training systems to get to where I wanted to be.

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And we trained up, and by January 30th, 2021, we had a race. I ran a two fifty-six twenty-seven and got the sub-three.

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You know, during that training block is where I learned the most about endurance sports, utilizing heart rate, running slower to get faster, building in speed work, proper fueling during workouts.

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And shortly after that, I did Challenge Cancun. I did the, the triathlon in Cancun this past May, and the last three years, I have put my name in the lottery system for Leadville.

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And this year, it was the middle of my last triathlon prep, I got the email saying, "You've been selected. Your ticket's been pulled. You are running Leadville one hundred this year."

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So here we are, a few weeks out from that race, and that's been my, my evolution of endurance training. I love it.

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That's quite the backstory from ten miles between towns back in the day to hating it and then loving it and then opting for this lovely jaunt through Leadville, a nice little fifty-mile out and back in, in the mountains.

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I really resonate with that sub-three journey. So I made sub-three my own goal, I don't know, in twenty-fifteen. Along that way, I also ran a four oh one, [chuckles]

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uh, and, and didn't even break four in, in one of those races. In twenty-nineteen, I finally hit that goal, and it-- for me, it took...

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I ran two fifty-nine forty, and for me, it took backing up from the number and focusing, as you did, on the fundamentals, on putting in the quality work, on eating the right foods, on, on sleeping and, like, these unsexy approaches or the, like Ben Bergeron says, "Do the common uncommonly well," and do these things that, like, it's not, you know, the coolest recovery tools.

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It's not the, you know, all the stuff. It's like eat well, sleep well, train well, and be in a good head space to dig deep when you need to dig deep.

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So I'm, I'm curious to know where your head went in that three twenty-five when you hit mile six and you're like, "Well, shit, I can't, [chuckles] I can't continue this." What do you think you learned there?

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You talked about the part where you learned that you can't just out-muscle a marathon, and you learned the fundamentals of, of endurance training.

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But talk to me about the, the mental win that you had there when you-- or loss when you realized, "I can't just push and, and get what I want."

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I think it was one of the best things that has happened to me is not getting that sub-three, you know.

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Because it was, it was a big goal that I set, and over the past couple years, I've built a platform on YouTube and, and Instagram and social media, and I think it was great for people to watch the failure- Yeah, yeah, yeah...

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to watch the miss because what happened the next day is we were right back at it. We weren't training, but we were planning to come back at it and, and go after that sub-three.

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So it's just because you, you miss doesn't mean you stop. It means you, you readjust, you refire, you retrain.

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And missing that was so good not just for me, but the people that were watching the process and the journey because that's what it is.

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But I remember that, that mile six on the Austin Marathon knowing I wasn't gonna do it, and it was just defeating because I could tell the effort I was putting out was way too high.

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And at mile six, you know, I had that feeling where legs were heavy. I was drenched in sweat, and the pacing groups would slowly pass me. [laughs] I'd see, like, three hours, three oh five, three ten, three fifteen.

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Oh my God, this is giving me, uh, flashbacks. [laughs] And what's crazy is some of the guys that were in these pacing groups, they were watching my channel and my journey, and they'd say, "Come on, Nick, you can do it."

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And in my head I'm like, "Hey, guys, I, I wanna, I wanna keep up with you, but I am not conditioned. I'm not there."

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Like, if your, if your body is not conditioned and you go into a race with no strategy, and I've, I've learned that the hard way, you can run a race or you can race a race.

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It can absolutely blow up in your face, and that's what happened to me that day. Yeah. I think these big swing, big miss experiences are so essential. I mean, I too like to share my journey.

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My audience is [chuckles] a little bit smaller than yours, but I found that when I keep putting myself out there, people really appreciate the, like, human nature and the human struggle of, like, life's not easy.

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You put yourself out there and you fail. Like, that's good. It's good for other people to see that it's not just all...

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You know, I posted today, it's like I had a below average workout, and there were a bunch of sunflowers, you know, next to where I was doing the workout. I was like, "It's not always sunflowers and unicorns out there.

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Sometimes it's shit."

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And I think people need that reminder that for people with a large platform like yours, like, not everything is perfect all the time, and of course that's true, but we see social media as generally this highlight reel where people are just, "Hey, I'm winning.

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Hey, I'm doing awesome. Hey, I'm perfect." We need that balance, and then it gives other people the ability to say, "Hey, I'm gonna shoot my shot and see what happens when I, you know, take this big swing."

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So speaking of big swings, let's talk Leadville. Let's do it. So you're three weeks out from Leadville. I know you talked about entering the lottery a couple times, but why hundred miles?

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I think it's just one of those milestone things.

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It's, you know, when I, I was thinking about this this past week, whether it be my business or personal goals, professional fitness goals, I like thinking that the last decade of my life, you know, I started my, my brand, it was two thousand and twelve.

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Last decade of my life, it wasn't going from zero to a hundred.

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It was these small incremental steps where it was, if we're talking fitness, I first started going to the gym, and then I started running, and then I signed up for a marathon, then a triathlon.And then bigger goals of sub three, another triathlon.

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And it felt like the perfect time in my life where, you know, me and my wife are getting ready to start a family. So I thought, "Hey, now's the time to run a hundred miles."

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[chuckles] And, um, I really do enjoy where your mind and head goes when you're in a really dark, deep place.

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I relate it to different schools in the military that I went through or some of the, the training we've done, and your mind goes to this spot where it's, it's dark and it's deep, and it's almost empty.

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And that's why I love running so much, is because it is my most creative state. It is my most deep state.

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There can be a million things going on in my life, but it's the one time in my day where I can focus on one singular topic. And Leadville 100 is just that race. It's, it's so iconic that I want to...

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I wanna accomplish it.

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I wanna, I wanna knock it out because by the time I'm about to die, hopefully a long time from now, much older and wiser, I wanna look back at the accomplishments, the things that I've done, and just have this list of, "This is what I did.

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This is what I did for myself," and to see how far can I push myself physically, mentally, emotionally before my day comes. I love that.

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I had a conversation with Mike Wardian on the podcast who, a couple years ago, he raced more miles than most people run in a year. You know, I think he raced, like, seventeen hundred miles.

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And I asked him, like, "Why do you race so much? Why do you run so much?" And he was like, "It can all be taken away at any point. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and die. I could lose my legs.

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I could, you know, whatever. Fill in the blank here." And so it's a celebration of the ability to do it. Um, and I think it's a...

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I think that's a really powerful place to be of-- like, I consider it gratitude, um, that you can do this, so why not do it?

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I wanna comment on the, something you said there, being in a deep, dark place, and, like, where does your head go when things go sideways and things get really hard.

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I could not put a specific experience to that comment until this past weekend.

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As we were talking about prior, I paced a friend in a hundred-mile race, and I picked her up about twenty-two hours in and ran seven hours with her, and halfway through that, she was struggling hard.

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And it was the second, start of the second day. We were on a four-thousand-foot climb up to twelve thousand feet.

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And [chuckles] I kept asking her questions, and she was like, "I honestly can't tell you the answer to this. I'm empty. I got nothing."

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And it's so fascinating to see somebody get to that point and have no other option but to keep moving. She was like, "This is the hardest thing I've ever done." I was like, "Yeah, and it's gonna get harder.

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What are you gonna do? Are you gonna take a helicopter off the top of this mountain, or are we gonna get on up and get on down?" She's like, "We're gonna get on up and get on down."

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And it's-- So I started this podcast to explore those moments and what happens in that moment, and how, how do you keep moving forward when you're completely wasted and there's nothing left and you don't have another option?

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So, let's fast-forward to Leadville. You're, call it sixty-five miles in, and you're experiencing a low point. Why do you put your next foot forward? We have this brand motto, and I have it tattooed on my arm.

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It's actually right next to my watch, so I can see it every time I'm running, and it says, "Go one more."

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You know, I, I see moments like this as an opportunity to gain a new perspective on what is actually difficult and what is hard because you and me could go through the same exact race, the same exact tragedy in life, and we can pull completely different perspectives from it.

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And I look back at, like, my time in the Army, especially going through Ranger School.

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So Ranger School is a sixty-one-day course where they deprive you of sleep and food, and I ended up spending a hundred and forty-five days in this sixty-one-day course because I failed two phases.

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[chuckles] I spent over four and a half months there, and I lost about thirty-five pounds through the process. You sleep maybe an hour, two hours a night.

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But what was great about that experience is it gave me a new perspective on what is relatively hard in life and difficult.

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And what was also amazing about that experience is it removed all distractions from the outside world, and I think that's why I like running so much too, is because we're constantly consuming so much on a daily basis, from your phone to your computer, to the TV, to the people around you.

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You're just consuming so much content all the time. When I run, I typically run with no music. I don't have my phone on me. It is just me and my thoughts.

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I'm not consuming, and that is the one time where I can clearly focus on one specific task, and that's what Ranger School was for me. There were no distractions. You don't talk to the outside world.

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All you're focused on is graduating that course and getting that tab. And that's what I see these races as, in pushing my, my mind and body to that point.

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It is an opportunity that we're granted that we can eliminate all distractions from the outside world and just focus on one thing.

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And for Leadville, that one thing is just completing the hundred miles and getting across the finish line. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of obstacles along the way. I under- understand that and realize that,

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but I can just kinda zone out. Doesn't matter what's going on with the business, work, the news, other parts of the world.

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For me, in that moment, I get thirty hours to just focus on myself getting across that finish line. And for me, I really dig that. I really love that. Yeah.

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I think that that is a reason that a lot of people go to these places.

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I'm way too connected to my phone, to my email, to my computer, and I've never connected my love of adventure to the disconnection from the outside world as succinctly as you've put it there.

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I've, like, subconsciously experienced that and been like, "This is fucking great," because I don't have to deal with, you know, all of that stuff, but I think that's fantastic.

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And the ability to do that, not around a track or, like, something like that, but in these beautiful places-I think it's very therapeutic, and it gives us that, I don't wanna call it an escape, but more of like a, like a refresh to get back to basics.

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This is about as primal as you can get. Go from start to finish, and nothing else matters besides putting one foot in front of the other.

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I did, um, I did rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon twenty nineteen, and I hit that low point, like, ten hours in with a few miles left in the climb, and this concept of nothing else matters besides forward movement or, as you say, go one more, really hit home there.

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I was so spent, and I was talking to my phone as a distraction for, like, how much discomfort I was in, and I'm so glad I did it because I have this video of myself saying, "This is hard, but nothing else matters besides putting one foot in front of the other."

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That's it. That's the secret. And the part I love about that so much is that's true in life, right? Like, things get hard in work, things get hard in relationships, things get hard in, you know, whatever it might be.

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The only secret is just keep showing up. Put one foot in front of the other. Just keep doing it. You can get through hard things, and I think that...

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I was on a podcast earlier today and, and she was asking about, like, lessons learned in running applied to life, and running is a sandbox, right?

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You can make mistakes in running that generally don't have too negative of an outcome, and you can take that confidence of shooting a shot, taking a chance, doing things that are hard, and apply that to starting a company or starting a family or whatever, where the implications of failure are a little bit bigger than if you DNF a run.

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Um, so I think that piece is really empowering that, like, there's less at stake and more to gain in this arena than anywhere else. Oh, no, I agree.

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I think one of the things too with, with running for me is, what I found especially this past year, is if there's something that is going on in my life that I'm trying to avoid, like this is a clear example.

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About a year ago, we had this employee that I knew deep down I had to fire, and I knew it was an issue in my personal life because every time I went out for a run, I couldn't think of anything else but this. Yeah.

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It was just in my mind. So until I acted upon it and actually fired this employee, I didn't think about it anymore on my runs.

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If there's ever a problem in my life that needs to be addressed, I know because it keeps showing up in my runs. It's all I can think about.

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But I'm able to dissect it and digest it and break it down and look at it completely differently

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as opposed to if I'm in my office and people are walking in and my phone's going off and my computer's popping off and stuff like that. For me, running just gives me this insight where

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I can really just absorb and, and see things so much more clearly. Why do you think that is? I-- And I ask that, um, I was thinking about this on my run last-- or two Fridays ago.

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I was like, "Why do I do my best thinking on these Friday morning short and easy runs?" But talking about that experience, is, is it something you consciously choose or just like, "This is on my mind.

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I gotta work through it"? It just pops up. I think it's one of those things where you fall into a rhythm where you're breathing comfortably, you feel good. It's typically on, for me, routes that are normal.

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Like, if I'm on a new route, a new trail, I'm focused on looking at the birds or, or the mountains or the trail and, and where I'm going.

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But if I'm just road running on a road that I run three days a week and it is mindless and I'm just running, I completely zone out, and it just pops in my head. I don't have to actively think about it. It just shows up.

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Sometimes what I'll do is I'll start counting subconsciously. I don't know why. I just start counting in my head, and then that quickly turns into this issue that I'm dealing with just arriving.

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It's one of those things that when I go into the run, I'm not really thinking about it. It just shows up. Very cool. Um, switching gears a bit, talking about success and what that means to you.

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It's a term that I think is-- it's very subjective, and it has evolved over the past decade of my life. I think in the next decade of my life it'll even evolve more.

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Where in the beginning of, like, starting my business... Like, when I started my business in two thousand and twelve, I've told this story before, but I told my dad, said, "I'm gonna make a million dollars this year."

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I started my business- In the first year. First year. I started my business junior in college and, uh, took out a twenty thousand dollar loan,

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found a manufacturer in the States, and I told my dad, I said, "I'm gonna make a million dollars this year." And he said, "Nick, if it were that easy, everyone would do it." I said, "I'll prove you wrong."

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And we didn't do that. We made twenty thousand dollars in revenue the first three years. We, we failed, and I couldn't figure it out. And I realized success isn't just given.

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It's not an entitlement, or reaching these levels of accomplishments and, and goals aren't just given. They have to be earned. They have to be awarded for the work that you, you learn and, and you achieve.

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So success for me is, you know, I've learned through failures, lots of failures. I've had some wins. I've had some accomplishments achieved, but along the way there's been more failures and losses than wins.

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And success for me is when you set this goal and you set it really far, and you don't necessarily always get towards it, but you get closer, right?

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So, like, Grant Cardone has the 10X rule, where if you have a goal, go 10X past that goal.

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You're probably not gonna hit that goal that's 10X away, but you're gonna go a whole lot further than you would have if you haven't pushed your, your goals that far.

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So success for me is just showing up in my true self every single day, pushing the needle a little bit further. Just constant improvement.

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I'm not trying to win tomorrow or even in a week, but over the course of a lifetime, I wanna see forward progression. If I keep making forward progress, that is success to me. Yeah, that makes sense.

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So you, you're basically outlining process versus outcome in terms of growth or goal setting. Has it always been that way for you?It's pretty much always been that way.

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I mean, even when I started my business, there was never a, "I wanna reach this number, then I'm done." I quickly realized how hard it was gonna be, and I was in it for the, the long game, right?

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Like, I love the journey. You're supposed to say, "For the long run." [laughs] For the long run. [laughs] I love the journey. Like, the journey is why I keep showing up, right?

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I, I don't want to reach the end because I want this journey just to last forever. I want the process to last forever, and that's where all the memories are created. That's where we learn all these lessons from.

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When you reach the outcome, it's like, what else is there to learn? Totally. Yeah, I think, I think that that's an important piece, and these wins along the way are data points or losses along the way are data points.

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So as we're talking about, I, I also had that sub three goal for, I don't know, four years, and for so long I was focused on outcome versus process.

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I thought I deserved sub three because I was fit and young and athletic and all this stuff, and I got beat around and beat up by the marathon a couple of times, and I didn't give it the respect it deserved.

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And once I shifted to that process-oriented approach and looking at race day as a celebration of the last few thousand miles, like, it didn't matter what happened on that day as long as I executed and pushed when I needed to push and didn't give up.

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And so I think that, I think that the process versus outcome is, is powerful. Um, and so kudos to you for always having been on, on that end of it. I think a lot of people struggle with how to focus on the day-to-day.

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So for you, why do you think it's been the way it is for you, where it's less about...

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Like, you've identified a lot of tangible wins and losses along the way, the Ironman, the marathon, the next marathon, the sub three marathon.

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How do you go about picking goals along the way of this overall process towards, towards getting better?

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I think really long term, and I think that's what's, I don't wanna necessarily even say wrong, but different in a lot of the world or in society, is everyone thinks in this short-term approach,

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and it's probably because our attention spans are smaller and there's more distractions. But I am thinking at all times fifteen to twenty years from now. And I implement backwards planning.

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I learned backwards planning in the military. It's a common sense approach, but it is the most game-changing thing when you realize what it is and how to implement it.

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So backwards planning is essentially you start from a goal, and maybe that goal is twenty years from now, and that goal for me might be to sell my business for X amount of money.

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So then I start building this plan from that point to where I'm at now, and what are the things, what are the small things I need to accomplish and do from now till that point twenty years from now in order to make that happen?

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Obviously, throughout the process, things will change, evolve, and pivot.

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But when you set your goal, no matter what that goal is, and you backwards plan to where you're at today, it lays out the structure for you to, to map out the process.

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You're not just throwing darts at a dartboard hoping that one sticks. I mean, that was my plan when I first started my business. It was, "I don't know what I'm doing.

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I'm just gonna throw paint at the wall hoping to hit something." And I did that for three years, and I learned that it doesn't work that way. But backwards planning, it's powerful. Very cool.

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I wanna ask one more question about the endurance side of things, and then I have some questions on, uh, on the entrepreneurial side. You said you're, you're always planning ten to fifteen years out.

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So fast-forward fifteen years, what are you really proud of accomplishing? Fifteen years, I think, you know, my, my biggest, like, love is building a business.

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So in, in fifteen years, I wanna have the largest sports performance nutrition company in the world.

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I wanna have hundreds of employees, but I, I'd wanna grow where the culture of the environment that we work in is the same with three hundred employees as it is with twenty-five today.

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And I wanna make sure that I am developing and taking care of all those employees with the systems and infrastructure that's been built.

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'Cause I see companies build, they build so fast and there is, there are secondary and tertiary effects to building that fast at the expense of, of people.

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So for me, it's getting the business to a certain point where I can transition out eventually, but I've impacted hundreds and thousands of lives along the way.

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In terms of fitness, I, I don't know what I'll be chasing in, in fifteen years because it's always that next thing, and it's always pushing myself.

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But I would love to eventually get to a point where I'm doing fitness events with other people rather than, you know, a lot of these things about myself right now.

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I'm a big fan of this author, Donald Miller, and he has a book called The Story Brand, and this is the approach we're taking actually to document Leadville, where in Donald Miller's book, The Story Brand, he talks about how there is a, a hero and there is a guide, and you don't wanna be the hero.

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The hero is the guy that stands on top of the mountain and says, "I did all this work. Follow me."

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The guide is the person that says, "I have done this in my lifetime, but now I wanna help you accomplish these same things." If you focus on being the guide, you'll be more fulfilled,

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more passionate, more accomplished, more successful, more respected. So I say that because with this Leadville video we're filming,

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our intent going into it is to document and show what it takes to run a hundred mile race, because it's not just the person putting one foot in front of the other.

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It's the crew, it's the pacers, it's the event organizers. There's, there's so much that goes into it, and you can go so much further together than you can alone.

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You can go fast alone, but you can go far together.Thanks again to Goodr for supporting this episode. I have a few different styles of shades, and I've been loving them on runs or while at the pool.

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At twenty-five bucks a pop, you can leave a pair in your car so that you'll never be without some shades.

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You can feel good about your purchase too, as one percent of Goodr's annual gross sales, not profits, go directly to environmental nonprofits working towards making our world a better place.

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If you'd like to support me and the show, treat yourself to a pair or two or three of Goodrs and head over to goodr.com and get fifteen percent off your entire order.

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That's fifteen percent off at G-O-O-D-R.com with the code FTLR. Your face will thank you. And now back to our conversation.

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[upbeat music] For anyone who's never been to a hundred-mile race, the aid stations are spectacular. Like, there's no way to describe the selflessness that exists at these aid stations.

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If you wanna, you know, if you need a refreshed view on humanity, show up at two AM to a, a hundred-mile aid station, and you'll, you'll be quite pleased with [chuckles] with what you see. I think we need that.

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That's a clear example of how people should treat people, right? Like, especially today, where there's so much selfish acts. And to be selfless in this world is, it's rare, but it is so powerful. Yeah, totally.

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Again, I just-- I think that the environment and the people that it brings bring out the best in people, and as you said, it's this refreshing reminder that this can exist in the world, and this does exist in the world.

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I, I love the guide versus hero approach. So I think that's really powerful. And just in terms of, like, how we can carry ourselves. It's not like, "Hey, I've done this. Follow me."

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It's like, "I'm gonna help you do this. I'm gonna help you experience this." Talking about your crew at Leadville, who are you bringing, and, and who's running with you?

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We're taking our entire BPN staff pretty much here. Um, so part of our crew will be strictly focused on documenting and filming the event, and then we'll have crew members that are moving aid station to aid station.

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Uh, Leadville has put some restrictions this year, so there's certain checkpoints that crews can't go to, and your crew can't be larger than two people on the course at a time.

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Um, so I'll have some other runners with me that I know from social media or meeting in person who have done ultras as well, who, who'll be pacing me as well.

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Um, but we've been working with the, the employees and staff here to practice crewing. What does it mean that someone's gonna devote their entire weekend to helping you move from the starting line to the finish line?

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What does that feel like?

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You know, when I talk about business and when I talk about these social media platforms and the things that we do, I'm not gonna say I'm perfect and never say I, but ninety-eight percent of the time, I always refer to we.

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If I went and ran a marathon last weekend, if it was just me there, I still say we ran a marathon last weekend. If I finish an Ironman, it's never I finish an Ironman. It's we finish the Ironman.

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And I say that because I can never have done all this stuff together. I started by myself. I did. But to get to the point where we're at now and the things w-that we're able to do, it's been a we thing.

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That's where my team, family, wife, brother, every- it's-- everyone's been involved. So I'm, I'm super grateful and fortunate h- for the team that we have, the people who are in my life.

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There's never an individual thing that's accomplished. It's always a, a team thing. Tell me more about gratitude. Is that something you practice intentionally? It's... I, I don't wanna say it's intentional.

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I think it's just something that I've learned growing up, and I learned a lot from my mom growing up. My dad's side of the family, my mom's side of the family were both very different.

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Dad's side of the family, they were all dairy farmers, Central Pennsylvania. Mom's side of the family was mostly military, my grandpa, uncle, cousins.

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So it was this very interesting dynamic to grow up with because I learned hard work by watching them. They never had to tell me what hard work was or what being grateful was or any of that.

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I j-I just watched the way they treated other people, they treated themselves. And my mom, she was a teacher. She was supervisor of special education.

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She coached Special Olympics in our local town along with my dad, and I, I just learned so much by watching them.

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And from learning from them, I've realized that to tell someone to do something is one thing, but to show someone how to do something is another thing, and that is forever impactful.

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So I've learned a lot of my morals and values just by watching my parents as a whole, but specifically my mom in the way she just lived her life, the way she treated people, the way she worked, every part of, of the way she lived.

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I think this hundred mile is a celebration of all that. It's like, this is the epitome of hard work, bringing people along for the journey and showing up for yourself and, and your community. Yeah.

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I think fitness has that power. It really does, and it, it motivates people. The-- One of the other reasons I love doing this kinda stuff is I'm not a professional athlete.

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You know, and the things that I'm trying to accomplish and do, most of them I'm learning for my first time. Like, my first Ironman I ever did, I documented, and I showed how much I messed up.

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When I trained for m-my first marathons, I documented, and I showed how much I messed up. But it's relatable to people, and it makes other people who are watching this journey realize

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the only way to get started is by getting started. Right. And anyone can do it, right? Like, you don't have to be born this natural athlete to do a long race.

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You just need to be consistent with the way you train and show up, and I think there's a lot of power behind that where, especially with running, almost anyone can runYou don't have to be the fastest, you don't have to be able to run forever, but the way you get started running, and I get this question actually all the time, "How do I get started running?"

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Just do it. You just gotta start. Yeah. You just gotta start. And when you realize you just get started, and you take action on that, and you just keep showing up consistently, you realize how much better you get.

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And it-- the, the potential is endless. It truly is.

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I've learned that over the past couple years, that, and I, I don't, I don't say this to be cocky, but it's, it's more of, like, a confidence thing where I truly believe if there's something I wanna do in life, I can do it.

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I don't think that I can do everything in a day, but if I eliminate other distractions, and I prioritize something, I think in my mind, truly, if there's something I wanna do, and I prioritize it, I can make it happen.

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It might take a day, week, month, decade, my entire life, but I truly believe that, and I, I believe that anyone has that ability. I think that's the special part about endurance sport, right?

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Like, we can't all be NBA stars.

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We can't all swing a, swing a bat and hit a home run out of a ballpark, but literally any- almost anyone can put on a pair of shoes and go for a run and experience the process of getting better with consistency.

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I think that's the special part about it. Like, you're not a professional athlete, but you can strive to be better every single day, and people who follow you can say, "Hey, I also wanna be better every single day."

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I think that's the unique dynamic of why are professional runners and professional trail athletes, like, way more relatable than team sport athletes. That's why. Anyone can do it. Yeah, man.

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I m- I remember growing up in high school playing sports. I was an average athlete in baseball and hockey.

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My brother was three years younger than me, and he started playing sports then, you know, b- so by the time I was a senior, he was a freshman. My brother was a stud.

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He had offers for D1 baseball, football, and I, I stopped playing sports at that point 'cause like, man, I'm just not an athlete. So people will see me and come up and be like, "You must be athletic.

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You must, like, be really good at sports." No. I'm just- [laughs]... I'm pr- I'm pretty good at working out, but [laughs] I'm not good at sports. Pretty consistent.

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One of the things you talked about was documenting everything and, and sharing the journey.

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There's a pro running team based out of Flagstaff, and their motto is, I hope I don't botch it here, but, "Train hard, share the journey, the highs and the lows."

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Do you feel any sort of pressure to, with the audience that you have, to do that and to be on so often? Oh, absolutely. This last Ironman prep, we documented.

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I think a lot of people don't realize how much goes into documenting it, especially when you're training. So up until this past triathlon prep, I filmed all my own videos and edited.

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So for the first six years of YouTube, I filmed and edited everything myself. Wow. Hundreds of videos.

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And then for this last triathlon prep, which started as Ironman Texas, but then Ironman Texas got canceled, so we did Challenge Cancun. I hired two full videographers to document it.

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Every training session, we would film, plan, edit, and these guys worked seven months straight, seven days a week, to get a video out every single week, and there was so much that went behind it, and by the end of it, there was a level of mental and physical exhaustion from a creative standpoint.

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So with this Leadville prep, we decided not to document it, just because I wanted to just soak up and enjoy the training and learn.

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And we've shared some things on social media, but there is, like, a pressure of needing to focus on the training, but then also documenting. And documenting does take away from the training at some point. It really does.

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It, it interferes in certain aspects. How do you balance that? It's a good question. [laughs] It's, um, it's kinda one of those things it's just head down, do what we gotta do, and make it work.

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I think that's, that's been my common denominator of building a business is there's really no clear answer. It's just figure it out and make it work, and w- we typically make it work. That's awesome.

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Jumping back over to the business, you talked a lot about entrepreneurship and your love of it and growing a team. Where does that come from for you?

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Yeah, I get this question a lot, and growing up, I didn't know really any business owners. You know, my grandfather was a farmer, but he didn't have, like, many employees.

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It wasn't an e-commerce-based business by any means. And I decided to start my business between my junior and senior year of college.

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Up until that point, you know, I'm studying nutrition in college, and I love the supplement industry, where I would buy ingredients in bulk. I'd mix up my own supplements in my dorm room.

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I'd sell them to kids on my floor. I mean, it looked like I was selling drugs in college. It did. [laughs] Yeah, I was gonna say. I had this food scale in my apartment, and then- Little white powder...

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I'd mix up these white powders. [laughs] And then people would come to my dorm, knock on the door. I'd hand them a baggie of white powder- A baggie... and th- they'd give me, like, five bucks.

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And I was doing this, and then between my junior and senior year of college, I went to this military assessment camp called Leadership Development Assessment Course, where essentially you get assessed by these instructors against all the cadets in the nation.

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That determines what job you do in the military. And I scored pretty well here, so I came back with this newfound confidence.

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And literally right after doing that, I took out a loan for $20,000, found a manufacturer, started a business, learned the hard way that it wasn't easy.

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But where I really found the passion of building a team, you know, I found the passion of building a business between 2012 and 2014.

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But in 2014, when I got stationed in Texas, I had the opportunity to be a infantry platoon leader and leading 40 soldiers and non-commissioned officers, and that's where I really fell in love with developing people and leading people.

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And I had this opportunity to be a platoon leader and work with some of the best soldiers and non-commissioned officers in the world in the US Army, and it changed my perspective and my willingness and ability to, to build a team and lead because I found so much passion behind that.So when I left the military in two thousand and seventeen, I said I wanna build my employee staff roster, my team, just like a platoon in the military.

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And would you say that's servant leadership? I would say so. Fits right into the guide versus hero, right? Yeah, I think that's a clear example of...

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You know what's so interesting about the military leadership that, that I really learned and took away?

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You know, joining the military was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life, and what's different about being in the military and, and leading as opposed to corporate America is that in corporate America, there's an influence to follow someone based off of, uh, monetary benefits.

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Maybe you're, you're making more money if you work overtime, or you're getting a bonus or a commission payout. But in the military, it doesn't matter if you're working twenty hours a week or a hundred hours a week.

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Doesn't matter if you're gone seven days a week in the field, or you're working in the office. Your, your pay stays the same.

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So I s- I say that to talk about in the military, you have to learn how to lead people that will follow you and trust you based off of true leadership with no incentives.

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And that's what I took away from my military experience is you learn how to build relationships. You learn how to actually take care of people and their families.

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And when you actually care about the people, and you invest in the people, the return is massive. Yeah, I think that that's the secret to management, right?

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I had Kevin Rutherford, the CEO of Noon, on, uh, the podcast, and he talked about leadership styles and, and servant leadership, and, you know, you can have the best product in the world, but if your management sucks or if your management style sucks or, you know, your human capital is poor, doesn't matter, you're gonna fail.

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People are everything. There's this thing that I hear other high-performing brands say, and it's that people build brands. Sports don't build brands. There aren't events that build brands.

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That people actually are the ones that build brands.

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And when I first started my business, I thought that building a team and hiring more employees was an expense, and I quickly realized that that is furthest from the truth, that hiring employees and making payroll, that's an investment in your business.

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What are some of the unexpected things you've learned as CEO when it comes to other humans? Man, I learned a lot. I think- [laughs]...

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one of the biggest things is probably that as a CEO, as a leader of a business, you have a responsibility to develop.

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And what I say by that is, I think a lot of times what I did early on is I would go into a situation, and I would assume that someone else was thinking the same thing I was.

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I had to learn that you have to set expectations and intention behind everything.

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And it's a leader's responsibility to develop subordinates, develop their team, give them the s- the skills, resources, training they need to successfully do their job, and you can't just assume that they're coming in knowing everything.

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One of the hardest things in the beginning was delegating because when I started BPN, I was the Swiss Army pocket knife. I was our customer support. Yeah.

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I was order fulfillment, product development, working with manufacturers. I was doing it all, you know?

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And when it was finally time to delegate those responsibilities, because I knew how I wanted to do them, it was tough.

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The hiring, you know, I think when you hire your first couple employees, that's the hardest because you're handing off things that are overwhelming you.

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And my first big hire, you know, I brought my brother down, my friend Joe, he came and worked for us. Our now warehouse manager, John, was working for us. But I hired a creative director, his name's Jordan Utter.

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He still works for us. He's still our creative director.

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And when I hired Jordan, I realized how much it helped the brand grow, and that made me realize that if you hire the right person for the right job, you know, just bringing in a body to fill a role is the absolute wrong thing.

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I would rather wear multiple hats until I find the right person, but when you find the right person for the right job that fits the culture, that is truly bought into the vision and wants to be a part of a team, it's not an individual.

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And when you bring many people in like that, it is just-- it's, it's powerful. But there's one person that can ruin that entire culture, that can ruin that energy, so you have to be very strict with the hiring process.

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That's where my passion really is, is making sure we're hiring the right people to do the right job that add to the culture and don't take away. And how big is the team now?

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So right now we have twenty-five full-time employees. Uh, by the end of the year we'll probably have thirty full-time employees. Very cool. This is another example of the journey, right?

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You've seen this go from just you to thirty, and what's next after that? It's, it's fascinating. I've been, I've been at the same company for seven years.

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I was one of the first ten, and we've got ninety-five now, and the mission is always hire the right people because it's really expensive and painful when you hire the wrong person.

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[laughs] You learn that lesson once, and hopefully once is enough, but it's a lesson that you need to learn. Oh, I've, I've learned that lesson once.

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[laughs] And that was, that was one of those lessons that I could not get out of my head on a run, and it kept showing up on a run, kept showing up on a run.

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And I, I mean, I learned through that process, but I think you need some of those sometimes to, to learn what is right and what is wrong. You really do. Totally.

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So I could talk to you for hours about long distance running, building a brand, all this stuff. Uh, I think I've just got a couple more questions, and one of them is, what do you wish people knew about you?

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And as someone who's fairly public, do you keep things close to your chest that you don't want shared, or are you just fully out there? For the most part, I'm fully out there.

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I think one thing that people don't always realize, and sometimes they get a glimpse of it, is that they see me as, like, this guy who's hardcore fitness, building a brand, was in the military.

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And all my employees would say, and all my team would say, that as serious as I am a lot of the time, I also love to just kick back and laugh and bullshit and have fun.I do.

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I, I enjoy that part just as much as I enjoy the serious getting down to business part.

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You know, for me, life is this collection of stories and journeys and relationships, and I want to experience as much as possible that entire time. And I think sometimes people think you have to be one or the other.

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You have to be the funny guy or you have to be the serious guy. You have to be the athlete or you have to be the entrepreneur.

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And I like to think that there is no box, and I wanna be the example of showing that you don't have to be put in a box.

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Like, I think a lot of people get mad because I lift weights and I run, and they want me to either be a runner or a weightlifter, and I enjoy both, and I always will.

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It's one of those things that do what makes you happy, do what you love, because if you're not doing what makes you happy and you're trying to please other people, man, you're gonna die an unhappy person. Amen.

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So you just said life is all about the experience of stories and experiences along the way. Have you ever thought about why you're, why you're here? I think this is truly where I'm supposed to be.

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Like, I think that all the things that I have experienced in my life early on... 'Cause when I look back, I think I've built a pretty good story so far, but I know my story's just getting started.

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You know, like I know we didn't dive into this, but I think my story really started, and this is why I'm so involved in nutrition and training, 2004, when I was 14 years old, I had a very severe eating disorder.

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It almost killed me. My body was essentially shutting down. I was starving myself for months, and I was literally just skin and bones, and I had unhealthy relationships with food for a really long time.

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And I think that is what led me to this passion for finding fitness and nutrition and eating healthy, and that then led me into joining the military, which then led me into this confidence of starting a business.

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And there's this concept of like winning. I just finished reading Tim Grover's book, so I've been talking about it a lot. Tim Grover was, uh, the coach of like Kobe and Michael Jordan.

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And in his book, Winning, he talks about how when, when you win, you want to accomplish a win after that, but to keep winning, it always costs more.

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So I, I look at my life kind of this way, where you accomplish something, you, quote-unquote, "win," but in order to win again, you have to start from scratch, and you have to build back up.

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So to get that second win, you go into it with this newfound confidence. With every win you get, you have this new confidence, but that next win always costs more in terms of sacrifices, money, time.

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It always costs more, but you build this confidence. And the Nick Bare 10 years ago had a lot smaller wins, but had a whole lot less confidence as well.

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So as you keep going for that next win, it's gonna cost more, but you're also gonna build this confidence to go after that next win. I appreciate you sharing the backstory there. Um, like this is the why.

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This is why you're here. This is why you're doing what you're doing. Um, I think it takes a lot of confidence to talk about that experience in 2014, particularly as a guy.

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We don't hear enough of guys telling their stories like that. I had my chiropractor on the podcast, and, um, he had professional triathlon aspirations, and his eating disorder helped to make that not happen.

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And at the time, you know, nobody was talking about this for men or women, and it's been pretty taboo for guys to talk about.

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I think hearing someone like yourself who's, as you're saying, winning or doing the amazing things you're doing now, talk about being on the other side and talk about everything that's ahead and everything that you've been able to overcome, I think is really important to hear.

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And, and so thank you for sharing that with my audience and, and with your audience. Talk about sharing that for the first time. What, what was that like? Yeah, I didn't share it for the longest time.

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So to give some backstory, when I was 14 years old, 2004, going through all of this stuff, my parents were taking me to and from doctor's appointments. They're trying to figure out what's going on.

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The doctors were putting me through multiple tests, trying to figure out what was going on with me, why I was losing weight. They thought I had celiac disease. They thought I had a worm.

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I knew the whole time I was starving myself. I just went along with the game.

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And this one day, we're going for another routine doctor's appointment, and my mom, instead of pulling into the regular, like, ER, pulls into these outpatient clinics.

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And we pull up to this one building, and it says, "Eating Disorder Clinic." And I knew right there I was caught. I just started breaking down crying. I lost it.

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And what's crazy is after, like, that day, we slowly started, like, forcing me to eat more food. And I remember coming back to that house that day, realizing I had to eat more food.

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First thing I pulled out of the cupboard was a bag of Pop-Tarts, and I looked at the nutrition facts and it said 400 calories, and I was mind-blown. It's like I haven't had 400 calories a day for months.

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And I, I tell that story just to give some context, but me and my parents didn't really tell anyone. Like, my grandparents didn't even know. I don't even know if we told my brother what happened.

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It was, like, kinda kept hush-hush, and I was embarrassed. Like, I really was. It w- it was, it was embarrassing to me, and I didn't talk about it for the longest time.

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And then finally, after years of building back to this healthy relationship with food, I made a, a YouTube video on it one day, and so many people resonated with the story.

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So many people reached out saying, "Thank you for sharing this. I'm going through the exact same thing." And when I realized it was helping people, I became more open to talking about it.

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And what's crazy is you realize how similar all the stories are of people who are going through eating disorders.

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And I will say in the fitness industry, especially in the endurance community, I found there's a lot of unhealthy relationships with food and eating disorders. It's very common.

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But I remember this day where I posted a video, it might've been a year ago, where I talked about the whole story of my eating disorder, and this father reached out to me and he said, "My son is 14 years old right now.

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He is anorexic. He's in the hospital. He's about to die because he won't eat food. Will you call him and talk to him?" So I did.

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I called him and I talked to him, and it was almost like when I was talking to himI was talking to myself at fourteen years old because I could relate to everything he was saying, everything that was going through his mind, the things that he was doing, the little tics that he had.

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Like, I remember this one thing I would do is every night before going to bed, if I wasn't starving, I couldn't go to sleep.

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I had to go to sleep if I was starving, or after every meal, I would grab my hip, and I'd make sure I could feel my hip bone still, and this kid was going through these same things.

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So I talked to him, and his father still emails me once in a while, and he's still struggling with his eating disorder. But it made me realize that sometimes people just need someone to relate to.

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Sometimes people just want someone to know that they're going through the same exact thing or have gone through something similar that they have, and that's why I talk about it openly now. Very cool.

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I appreciate you, uh, sharing that and, and doing that.

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As someone who also works in the nutrition space, I, I see this as rampant, and the conversations that happen behind closed doors or between friends is only happening because of this destigmatization of, like, there are so many people struggling with this.

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It doesn't make it easier, but it makes it, uh, maybe a little more manageable, I, I would imagine. I think the, the industry is trending in the right direction, right?

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We understand that food is required, and the, the need to treat your body well and give it what it needs is the only way to continue to stay healthy and improve. So I, I think we're getting there.

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We're not there yet, but it's largely in part due to conversations from people like yourself with these large platforms who can reach people who need to hear exactly what you're saying. Yeah.

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I mean, mine, my evolution of training has been just as diverse as my evolution of nutrition and eating, right?

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Where when I was in college, it's when flexible dieting and tracking macros and if it fits your macros was super popular, so it was, "What can we eat that fits into our macronutrient goals for the day?"

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Doesn't matter what it is, but I became so obsessed with hitting certain numbers. I had to hit two hundred grams of protein. I had to hit three hundred grams of carbs.

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I had to hit seventy grams of fat, like, right on the dot, and now I don't track anything at all, and I focus on food quality, sourcing, plant diversity, high-quality foods to feel better. Awesome.

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I think that's a good place to wrap. Uh, for those who, who don't follow you, where can we find you on your corner of the internet? Yeah. It's, uh, Nick Bare, B-A-R-E, Fitness on Instagram.

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YouTube, if you just search Nick Bare, you're bound to see a, a YouTube video somewhere of me running shirtless, and then my company is bpnsupps.com. Very cool.

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Nick, appreciate it, and, uh, have fun out there at Leadville. Thank you. [outro music] That's it for today's episode. Like many long runs, it's sad when it has to end.

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I hope you join in next time on For the Long Run, and in the meantime, happy trails. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it so that others could find it and enjoy it too.

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This podcast and the accompanying music has been produced by Brian Walters of Singletrack Sound. For the Long Run's logo was created by Vanessa Wolf of Sterling Wolf.

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[outro music]