We started seeing, and we started learning, and it started getting better, and now after 20 years it is so fascinating because now we're learning. I mean, I feel like maybe just this year, I think Farmer gets all the credit for it, but we can't fly roads. We have to fly over the mountains because that's where all the lift is. And holy shit, if we're just learning this now in 20 years, imagine what we can learn in the next 10, 20 years. It's magnificent.
Some funny words there from Nate Scales. He was in the last episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem podcast. If you want to laugh hysterically, I encourage you to get the rest of that one. Go back and check that out. It's a fantastic podcast. He's just got so much wisdom. And great stories, and talk about the 2007 X-Alps, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I think you'll really like that. This week we've got kind of an in-between cast. I was down in New Mexico a couple weeks ago with Ben Abruzzo, my trainer and very good friend, who trained me for the X-Alps this year, as well as was kind of my mountain goat during the race. So he was in charge of basically my ground game over there with Bruce. And we just had the most...
It was the most phenomenal time, and we've had so many questions over the last few weeks since the race about how we got ready for it. So we thought we'd shed some light on all of that. If you're not interested in the X-Alps or not interested in physical training, this is certainly an episode you could pass up on. But it was super fun sitting down with Ben. We were in his backyard, so there's all kinds of insects and bugs and dogs and airplanes flying over. But we thought it sounded really cool, so we stuck with it. I think you're going to really enjoy this. We go super deep into all... All the training that was involved. You know, I basically hit the pedal October 1st last year, about a year ago. So we had a little over nine months to prepare for the race. As he likes to say, I've got a cartilage wasteland in my knees. And so it was pretty interesting to see how he got me to a place where I could do, you know, 100K on the ground day after day.
But he got me exactly where I needed to be, and how he did it, I think, is really cool. So I think you're going to enjoy this. Ben's an awesome personality. Find him online on thesnowgoat.com. And without further ado, Ben Abruzzo. Call
the X-Alps the hardest race on Earth. There's a lot of hard races on Earth, and Ben's done a ton of them himself, which he'll talk about. But to give you some perspective, the end numbers after the X-Alps were pretty preposterous. I think it flew 1,560 kilometers, walked 498, and scaled... Did vertical... 52,000 meters of vertical in 10 days. So think Everest five times. Why I say that's preposterous is because I have no cartilage in my knees. As Ben calls it, my knees are a cartilage wasteland from years of ski racing when I was young. I'm like a middle-aged white guy, 43 years old. And when I got really excited about doing this race, I realized that was going to be my major weakness.
And, you know, I've never run a marathon. I've never done any kind of endurance racing at all. So... But... I really like the thought of participating in this just wild and crazy event. So, anyway, luckily, I knew Ben was an animal and trained people, Olympians and all kinds of badasses, to do really hard things. And he'd done a number of hard things. So I'm going to interview my trainer and very good friend, Ben Abruzzo. You're hearing a lot of noise in the background. We're in Ben's backyard. We're having a little bit of bourbon, enjoying the evening. And there's crickets and insects and dogs and all kinds of stuff. So, forgive us for the background noise, but we thought it sounded pretty cool. Hey, dude. Hey, man. How are you doing? Great.
Thanks for having me in your home. I'm thrilled to have you here. It's been fun. An adventure of sorts.
So, you and I were skiing with your dad up in northern B.C. like almost two years ago now, right? Yeah, it was two years.
It wasn't
last year's trip. It was the trip before that. And I said that I really wanted to... Well, I was kind of like, I think I should maybe, I think I'd like to, it looks kind of cool, but I'm scared to death, do the X-Alps. And your response, you knew I had really bad knees. That's right. Yep. But your response was what I want to get into right away. You were like, yep. Why? Did you feel like you could even turn my knees into something that... Like, I'd been living with pain for 20 years. Sure. Pretty bad pain.
You know what? Part of it is just because I think your adventure sounded cool and I wanted to be part of it. But after I thought about it a little more, it seemed to me that we could do this. That, you know, there's so many people out there with problems like yours and they just don't go about it the right way. You know, there's an amount of whatever medical condition, pain, destruction that you can't get back. So, I'm going to give you some tips on how to get over it. But at the same time, we were there skiing and I'd seen you rip. So, we knew you didn't have an instability problem. So, it was like, well, how do we do this that you're comfortable so you can haul ass?
And how can you get through without exploding? You know, if you had super unstable knees and you had giant knee braces, I might have thought a little different about it. But, you know, it's been a good portion of my life training people to be fit. And doing stupid stuff myself and carrying heavy packs in the mountains is kind of one of the niches that I've done for myself and for others. And it just seemed like with your background and, you know, I knew you were an animal and would try hard that we could pull this off.
What do you kind of look for in an athlete? Because you've trained a lot of athletes. You've got some heavy guns under your belt right now that you're training. And you own... Owned for five years a CrossFit gym. Yeah, five years. Yep, CrossFit Albuquerque. And you don't own that anymore because you're running ski areas and doing some other things. And also, you're doing more personal training like with me.
Yeah, I... So, I spent... You know, we might get into my past later. But, you know, I spent a lot of time working with past military guys and not in a paid way. Just trying to find the way through fitness for myself. And others. I started geeking out on it a long time ago. And then I got into CrossFit for a while and started a gym. And, you know, for five years, I was a co-owner of CrossFit Albuquerque. And I was kind of the head coach and programmer where I put together, you know, CrossFit programming for people who... We sent a team to the games, the CrossFit games. They got third. Multiple athletes going to a very high level.
And at the same time, I started... Getting folks in that wanted to go to pararescue school or special forces school. I had some elite marathoners that I trained. And in that, part of what I learned is I love training athletes and not necessarily the general public. Which is part of why I don't own the gym anymore. But I do love training athletes. And so, you know, to answer your first question, what I look for most of all is just commitment. I think... I think people talk a lot and they say they want to be a badass. And then you say, okay, here's the way. And then they don't do it. And a lot of times they give you excuses.
But it's really just because it's hard. It's hard work.
One of the really cool things, you and I have talked about it a lot. But I
had never used... I wouldn't say, you know, my ski racing days. I ski raced for a long time. And you always have a coach. That's a very integral... Right. You can't do it without a coach.
But, you know, I hadn't gone to a coach, someone like yourself, in 25 years since that ski racing was done. And one of the things that I was so overwhelmed by in the process, which we'll talk process, but was that I kept thinking right off the bat, like, I don't think I could do this. I know I couldn't do this on my own. I think people have a tendency, depending on their personality, is they either overtrain or undertrain.
Totally. But they
don't train the right way. And for me, it was just having the accountability to you.
For those of you who are listening, the way we would do it, because Ben lives in Albuquerque, I live in Sun Valley. And I traveled a lot last year in the run-up to the games, to the X-Alps, because I wanted to also fly to other places. And Sun Valley is not a great place to fly in the winter. So I had to get hours in the sky as well. So Ben would put my program... We called it the X-Alps Domination. It's like a Google Docs. And he would put on every week, every Sunday, he'd put on the next week from Monday on. Typically, Monday was a rest day. So that kind of worked pretty well. And I would just follow it. And then I would put in the results every day. And then also everything I ate. And then we tracked everything with the Suunto watch, the Ambit 3, and put everything up in moves count.
So he could track all the metrics, which was really interesting. As time went on, that was incredibly valuable. But you wrote up in your blog about the training that we did that one of the really cool things about the training we had was that I never questioned anything you ever did. I always just did it. And I'm not patting myself on the back. The beautiful thing of that was that when you have a trainer, when you have somebody that knows a lot more about it than you do, I just would have felt like... If I was doing it on my own, I would have always felt like I wasn't doing enough and it wasn't the right thing. And I probably would have done too much. I was surprised how much rest there was. And I was surprised how much time there was for recovery.
Yeah, I mean, there's so much there in what you just said. Because, you know, I was talking to one of my other athletes and someone asked her, like, what are the qualities of a good coach? And, you know, she gave various answers, but I think it was like five qualities. One of the qualities was trust. And I think because we had a personal relationship, I trusted you. And you don't have to have a personal relationship with a coach. But I trusted you because I knew you, that you would do the work. And that sounds dumb to people, I think, sometimes because they're like, well, what do you care? Well, like, I care because I'm putting the effort in and I wanted you to put the effort in. And then you trusted me not to tell you to do something stupid.
Right. I think that was kind of like the key cornerstone that I don't really think about a lot, but I think was super important.
And then as far as, like, how to do, what to do, when to do, I mean, you know, there's the, like you said, do the wrong things. That's just the knowledge part. That's you're here to help me fly right now because I don't know a microscopic teaspoon of what you know about being in the air. So you go find people to help you fly or you're going to crash and bad things are going to happen. And fitness should be like that. I think sometimes it's not. You know, you can pick up men's health or any other awesome piece of crap on the Internet and make yourself smarter, theoretically. But there are a lot of people out there that are geeking out and learning stuff and testing stuff. I mean, that's a big thing is I've been trying stuff out on myself and a lot of other people for a long time.
So you learn things. But then the biggest part is exactly what you said, which is you. Never get it right for yourself. Even when I am doing a big event, I tend to actually get other coaches do my programming because I know I'll make it too hard.
And I think a lot of, you know, not type A, fairly loose people might make it too easy, but you would have just killed yourself. I mean, that was guaranteed that you were just going to murder yourself. And recovery is actually when you get fitter. I mean, you do the work. It destroys you. But. The rest time is when the muscles grow and your body relaxes and it adapts. And it's just too hard to do for yourself. I've tried it and I always screw it up. And pretty much everyone I know screws it up because you just make it too hard.
So tell me about when you we started October 1st. That's right. So we had a little over nine months and nine months and five days to get me where I needed to be at the time. Walking 5K without a pack was actually we started off. And about that five to 10K, like some pretty easy days. And my knees hurt and I was really scared. Remember, I was like, dude, I don't know about this. And we that was kind of our thing. We were like, let's give this a month and see how the knees feel. By the end of that month, I didn't have any pain. I never did. Right. The rest of the time, all the way through the race, never had any pain. So but did you before we started October 1st, before my first week that went on the domination, you know, Google Docs, was there a lot of thought that went in? You know, or is this just automatic for you?
Like? Did you kind of know? Because from my perspective, you know, a month and a half, two months in, I was like, where in the fuck do you come up with this stuff? I read these things like I was down in Australia. We're talking about that. But, you know, hypoxic swimming and burpees at the end of the laps and like, like weird stuff, you know, like I could, you know, a lot of it obviously came from some of your CrossFit background. We didn't do that much CrossFit. It was it was like, but you it seemed to me, I mean, one of the one of the. One of the reasons that I never had to question you is because it seemed like right from the beginning, I could tell you had your eye on the long ball. You had your eye on this long game, even though you were always talking about, OK, what this month is going to look like is hell.
And the next month is going to be more hell and more hell. And we're good. But we need to create this base so you can handle a lot more hell. And so but did you if you have you just done it enough that you knew or was this a totally different exercise? This is a completely different kind of. So
you were actually a unique situation based on two things. One was the state of your your knees that we've talked about. And two was the duration. I mean, and the type of exercise, because, you know, 100 mile foot race is really long, but it's not 1600 kilometers. I mean, it although it's done differently, it's at a high heart rate instantly. And what we were doing was a little different. But those were so you were definitely unique situation in the vertical game. You know, I train a lot of guys to go uphill fast, but not for 10 days in a row.
So that being said, I think the methods that I was going to use on a kind of micro level were those are the ones I just keep in my head from having done this for so long. And then what I do, what I did for you and I do for all athletes is I write out a long range training calendar, which is basically you go backwards. You start at the race and you go back to your start point and you say, here's how many days we know we have a taper. We know that we want to hit these goals at these times and just kind of work backwards. And that kind of gets you started. And then, of course, you adjust as you go. You know, I wrote that the first little bit, a lot of it was kind of like it was like a buy in. It was like, we're going to put you through two or three months of work.
That is not super specific. It's going to allow you to do the work that's going to matter later. So you're kind of earning the right to actually train, if that makes any sense. And it didn't feel like it. But I think people shortcut that a lot and they like, OK, I'm ready to go. Let's go now. And then they implode because their body's not actually ready for what needed to be done, which is why you're doing 10K walks. And later, you know, 10K was. You know, an hour and you weren't even warmed up yet. You still had four more hours to go. And it was just kind of buy in. But that was built all off the long range training calendar. And again, just you. We wanted to suss out, OK, what are you good at?
What are you not good at? What's working? What's not? Because, you know, some of it I definitely changed as we went through from what I'd maybe originally planned as we kind of saw how your fitness got better. Or worse or not worse, but how it didn't adapt the way I wanted it to. So then you change the training.
But definitely a plan to start with. I think that's super key.
And you it seemed to me and I've gone back and looked at our Google Docs a lot of times and I can't specifically pick it out there. There was always a big email every Sunday night that talked about that week. And it was typically three weeks. First weeks. Less hard. Second week's more hard. Third week's the hardest. Fourth week's kind of recovery. And then, bam, we're back into the new thing. But in general, there seemed to be, to me, like trimester. There was three three-month blocks that were really focused on different things. And you've talked about that being a little bit backwards of how you're often training for. Because this was a unique race in that there was a lot of strength involved because we're carrying the pack. And there's a lot of endurance involved.
But there was, you know, like the beginning, like you're talking about, was kind of building the base, like the first three months was like building the base for the hell that was to come. And then there was a huge aerobic period that was, you know, just hours on the treadmill and hours on the rower and hours. I mean, I became like famous in town for the dude walking in tights, just walking down the road six hours on the road. You know, like you said, it went from 10K to we were often doing 50, 60K on the ground. But what was your, talk about that methodology, you know, is that even right? Because it seemed like it was like each three months was kind of its own thing.
Totally. And it is a little backwards. So, you know, classic endurance programming, you, so we called your first three months the base. But it's not what most people refer to as the base. Most people refer to the base as your low heart rate, big, long endurance training. And you do that kind of early in the season. And then you work on your intensity and your speed the closer you get to your race. For you, what I called the base was because this was such an all-encompassing sport of you needed to go long. You needed to toughen your feet. You needed to be strong to support your pack. And we'll talk about all that. But, I mean, it was everything.
So, the base was just, like I said, buying in the ability to train hard. And we focused on strength a lot in the beginning. Because, you know, you can't become an endurance beast and get really strong at the same time. Like, your body just doesn't like doing that. So, we wanted to, while we were building your base and getting you your miles on the road, A, we needed to start small because we needed to let your knees work into it. And B, the whole point was to make your legs strong. Above and below the knee so that you could take some of that stress off of your knee. Well, to do that, we had to do the first part. So, we did the strength in the beginning while kind of breaking you into the upcoming endurance.
But the big difference was we did your speed work, your intervals, before we did the big aerobic base.
And part of that was because we were just never going to have you run. Like, that was not going to happen. There's no point. You're not going to win. You're not going to win the X-Alps running. But we wanted to make you fast to go uphill if you need it. And we ended up needing it. I remember a specific day right near the end. But, you know, we knew you were going to be in Europe for two months leading up to the race. And I wanted your high mileage, heart rate, all of that functioning. And, again, you can't really train it all at the same time. We did. We put little pieces in. You can always do reminders.
But we did your big interval phase more in, I think it was January, right? And that was to kind of take your strength, start priming your engine, and set the stage for your body remembering how to go fast. And kind of my goal was we were going to make you really fast and then know that you were going to lose 20 % of it. But it was probably still going to be faster than everyone else while we got there. So you got your aerobic engine going, you know, headed into the race. So it was a little backwards. But I think it was kind of the right way to go for as weird as this race is.
I'm going to jump ahead. And maybe this isn't the right way to do it. But because it's fresh in my mind, I kind of got crushed. Like the only time in the whole time, you know, it was like we would do, starting in January, we would do like race.
What do you? What do you call them? Like race emulations. Yeah, simulations. Simulations where we would do like in January, we did two days. In February, we did three days. In March, we did, I think, again, three days. April, we did four days. May, we did five days where it was like, okay, depending on, you know, in February, obviously, we got a lot of snow. So we're not going to be flying a ton. But we would be like, okay, up at 530, exercise, do stuff all day, go to bed at 1130. You basically, you know, simulate what the conditions of the race were in terms of sleep and in terms of physical output. Right. And those were always these just massive psychological boons for me because, one, it was a real gauge of where I was. It was like, holy shit, I could go 12 hours a day. I mean, remember the one we had in April where it was do as many hike and flies as you can in a day.
I did like eight, you know, massive amount of vert. I can't even remember what it was that day. It was huge.
It was huge, yeah. And then,
you know, then it got too windy to fly. And I texted you and said, hey, what do I do now? And you said, okay, go to the gym and do a half an hour on the row or a half an hour on the ski. ERG, a half an hour on the bike, a half an hour on the treadmill, and then swim for a half an hour. You know, I was like, holy hell. And I got done with it. I felt great. Right. You know, and it was almost a 7,000 calorie day. That's a big day. Huge day. You know, so, but then in May, the day started to get like, you know, we were talking about this taper in June. The day started to get like, I was looking at it the other day, you know, there was like 4,000 meters and then 20K. Yep. And then another day was. It was like 50K with the pack and then, you know, some CrossFit types of stuff. Like, they were big days.
And I remember I emailed you at one point and just went like, dude, when does this taper happen? Right. But you had, again, your view on the law and you just kept saying, trust me, you're going to, if you hurt now or if you're like, remember the one, at one point in the winter, I was like, is it okay that I've been sore for 40 days straight? Like, if you're sore now, that's okay. You won't be sore then. Right. But I guess. I guess I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, you, the viewer or the listener, I don't want to make this sound like it was hell. It actually wasn't. It was really fun the whole way throughout because there was never a time ever actually where I was like, I can't do this. Right. I'm fucked. Like, man, I need you to, I need to come cry on your shoulder. It was always like, dude, I actually, I feel really good. Until like late May and I was like, when is this backing off?
And I think some of that was psychological. Totally. It was like, when is this fucking taper going to happen? Um, but how, tell me about tapers. Tell me about that process, the end process. And again, like I'm jumping ahead, but it was a fascinating time for me. Yeah.
You know, the, and I'm going to back up just a hair, you know, part of what you said where it was like three weeks and then a deload week, which is my term for the, it's not a rest week because Gavin was still doing stuff, but it was significantly reduced volume is about, uh, training hard. So your body is stressed. And then it compensates and tries to get better, but you got to give it time to get better. And that was then the rest week. So the whole cycle, the whole, whatever we did, six months, nine months, nine months was one never ending push of compensation in the bigger picture towards the taper, which was then when your body was theoretically going to hit its ultimate peak and you'd be ready for the race.
Um, and peaking's hard. There's all kinds of people way smarter than me that, you know, try and peak downhill ski racers, Olympic weightlifters. And, and this one's a little easier because there's so many more variables. We can be off by 2%. It doesn't matter. But, um, part of it. So then we were trying to make it, you don't want to taper too early and you don't want to taper too long and taper stuck because when you're actually tapering almost universally, you don't want to taper too early. I had a few athletes, like they'll come to you and say, I'm getting less fit. I'm not sleeping good. Um, I hated it. Yeah. I mean, but everyone's like that's universal because your body, I'd have
these like muscle twitches at night that would go for hours and hours and hours. Like I'd had them in my biceps, my legs and it's pretty
universal just like the taper sucks. So you can't make it too long, but you have to do it. Or you, even if you feel great, you're going into the race tired and that's just stupid. It so part of it, you being in Europe, um, and and we had discussed that, okay, you're in Europe. What's the most important thing to do is fly the course. So I knew that everything I put on that sheet, if I got 70 of it done by you, and to tell the audience, Gavin did 100 of everything all the time. But when he got to Europe, that wasn't, that wasn't intelligent, because if he had five days of good weather, we knew you'd be hiking, uh, but you need to go fly, um, so part of it was I put too much in there and
Assumed you wouldn't get it all done, and you didn't, uh, but you got—you got a lot done. And I think that's one part of it was the that you worked your ass off, um, and that's why you probably started to feel pretty bad. And, uh, and the second thing was just like I said, I—I think that the the overall goal was to take you to the absolute limit as much as we could, and then let you go on the big coast down to the race, well
And I think that was, you know, um, I didn't want to make this not sound humble or overconfident, but it was really interesting being there the week before the race around everybody else. There was a lot of fear, yes, in a lot of people. You know, a lot of those guys looked really scared and, uh, and and a lot of the guys that have been in the race before looked really scared. And I think that was something that was—it's just a huge for my psychology, my head before the race, because this long taper was in a really good place, right? Because, um, I think that training for most of the athletes in the race was was pretty limited to hike and fly, a lot of hike and fly, but we had this incredible and we'd done so much effort to else that I, I basically like, I, I knew one thing that actually didn't end up coming true.
I knew I wasn't going to get blisters. I was bragging about it to everybody because we had trained so much on concrete and so many different shoes and always wet feet, and and I'd been over in Europe in the wet shitty weather in May and June and right, and we'd and I'd walked a lot and never had a blister. So I knew I wasn't going to get blisters. Um, that didn't end up working out, but, uh, and and I knew I could do it. Basically, I knew I could walk 100k a day, day after day, if the, if the weather was just crap, right? And that was amazing. You know, when you look at the numbers I think you posted on your blog, you know, by the time we got to the race, I'd done 2,000 kilometers in like 200, 200
meters vertical
Was that in your head before you started, or is that just how it ended up playing out?
Um, kind of both. So, when we first started, I had no real idea because I didn't know how you were actually going to respond to it. And then, when we got to January, it was kind of when I started putting in my mind and putting on paper, like, okay, you know, by um, May, we need to be trying to do whatever 10,000 meters of vertical gain a week, and we need to be trying to push 150 kilometers on the ground. And then you kind of work backwards from that. And so, I didn't have a final number, but that's just... I knew where we wanted you to get, and we wanted to build there. So then it got to that point, yeah.
Talk about the pack, um, because that was—that was really interesting to me. Um, the whole race, I know you and Bruce would laugh at this when I say this, but I didn't actually feel the pack.
the pack
Never bothered me ever, you know? I would always, I'd be kind of pissed off when you guys would push a big battery, battery on me or something, because I knew I was carrying more weight than everybody else. You know, I had a heavier wing. I ended up changing to the Ice Peak right at the last second, and I wasn't going with a lightweight wing, so I knew I had two extra kgs.
And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna have to do this, and I'm gonna do this, and"
I just knew that was making me slower, even though I didn't feel like it, but it was, but
i knew
It was, and so I would piss and moan, but I actually didn't feel the pack the whole race. It was always just like a joke, you know? Um, even in all the vertical, you put a lot of time into that. That's not something I would have anticipated, you know, because I think of like a 9 kg pack as a joke, you know? But you really put a lot of time into strength, yeah.
You know, I, um, uh, kind of my start in the fitness world was, I was a young infantry guy in the army, and what you do is you carry packs a lot, and, um, I was a 150 pound, 22 year old kid who'd never lifted weights, and I could run really far, and I was fit by that definition, and, um, I remember my company commander was a 240 pound ex West Point football player, and I, he couldn't finish a five mile run, but we went on a foot march, and he would destroy me and everybody else, um, and a foot march like 30 miles with 60 pound packs at 13 and a half minutes a mile, which if you've ever carried a pack is almost running, um, and part of what I took from that was you got to have a frame, and it, you don't need to be 240 pounds, but you got to have some, some meat and some mass that's functional to, to carry your load, um, and then fast forward 10 years of you racing and training PJs and various people, you, I just kind of started to figure out that you, you know, the, the aerobic fitness part is super important, um, there's no doubt, but you got to be able to move a load, and even if it's only nine kgs, and I think yours, I mean, with your water and everything else, it is more than that, yeah, and, and go
Do that for 60 kilometers and tell me how you feel. And most people, if they haven't built a good frame and trained enough, they're going to feel worse about the pack than anything else on their body. I mean, it—it folds people over, it changes their posture, and then when they change their posture in their upper body, it makes their—their walking posture change, and then their hips hurt, and then their knees hurt. And, and with your knee issues, I just knew that, like, that couldn't happen. You needed to have your normal walking posture, whether it was 300 kilometers or not, or 10 kilometers in, um. So, kind of what we went about doing was trying to build a frame on your torso, uh, and your legs, but that was also part of the—the knee strengthening that we talked about, and just the ability to go uphill fast.
But we put a lot of effort into your torso, which was You don't want weight for weight's sake, so I didn't want to make you heavy. And we had a lot of discussions about trying to make sure you didn't bulk up too much, and and you're the kind of guy who can actually put on mass, I think, pretty easily. But there was an amount that was worth having because you 10 pounds less than you are now, I don't think, would have liked carrying that pack as much, right? So we went about it, kind of, you know, classic in a lot of ways. Um, you know, like you said, we didn't do a lot of quote, crossfit. There weren't a lot of, uh, your classic, you know, here's a workout and do it till you throw up, kind of thing.
We did a lot of sets with reps. You squatted a lot, uh, you did a shit ton of pull-ups, we made dips, your friend, and we just tried to get you freaking strong push-ups. And then our favorite move was the sandbag get up. For those of you who've never tried it, go build a sandbag. And when you start, if you're a man, make a 50 60 pound sandbag, and if you're a woman, 20 pounds less. Lay on the ground, put it on your shoulder. Um, and basically you get up with it, and there's some technique to it. But the simple thing is stand up and then get back on the ground. You do that for 10 minutes and or 20 minutes, or however many minutes you decide to do it. Uh, you build a lot of durability and strength in your core, in your midsection.
That, that will help you carrying a heavy load, so the
Uh, I think the sandbag, the get-ups, I don't know how many thousands of those fucking things I did, but they, you know, the first thing I went when I went to Europe, before I went, actually, you know, 20-pounder, 60-pounder, 100-pounder, you know, have those three bags, bring the sandbags with you, fill them up with whatever you can find when you get over there, because we didn't have a gym anymore, right? You know, we were moving around, um, but I think those more than anything else. Well, the kettlebell workout was pretty brutal too, but was, was one of those things where you'd get done and you could see your body go, yeah, just grow, yeah. You know, it was incredible. It was, it's of all
seemed to be the most kind of just, it would just tighten me up and make me feel really strong. I always just felt like I was kind of like Hulk at the end of those things, like I could just walk through a wall.
Well, I think part of it's that psychological thing, because they're uncomfortable if you've never done them, because getting up and down off the ground is not generally fun. And then, when you hang 60 pounds off your shoulder, they're just not comfortable, and they're freaking hard.
to stand up after a while. So, I mean, it is that kind of full range of motion beast mode. I mean, I don't know, you do 100 of those and it's like running through a wall. I mean, it, it takes determination, so, um, but it's really great.
For everything, totally. It's really good for anything, of course. You get in your core big time, but so yeah, the get-ups... um, tell me about the kettlebell workout, so
You know, I went back and looked and, and in general, you know, you, you had strength training on average twice a week. Um, early in it was three times a week. In general, it was twice a week. Um, and if you took that many weeks times two, uh, probably 80% of the workouts were all different, but of the remaining 20%, there were two workouts in particular that, that we repeated quite a bit. And one was this nine-station workout that you've talked about. Um, and, uh, for those familiar, I stole it from, uh, John Wellborn of, of Power Athlete. Um, and the other workout
Wait a minute, we gotta tell about the nine, the nine. Okay, so the nine-stage workout was, it was just awesome. We did this every week for, for four weeks sometime in the winter. Um, you have, you have 80 seconds at, at each stage to To complete two sets of 10, basically as heavy as you can do 10 reps. Without putting it down. Without putting it down. So, and it was squat, you'll have to help me. out here, but it was squats, bench press, uh, dips, pull-ups, uh, no swing pull-ups, you know. So, what do you call it? The your pull-ups, no kipping pull-ups, strict pull-ups, kettlebells, and the kettlebells worth like 75, yep. Um, front squats, I, I can't remember, lunges, and push press.
That's right. So it was nine, it was nine. So you have nine, nine stages, uh, nine exercises, two sets of 10, 80 seconds to do it, which basically means with the leg stuff, with the hard, you know, the heavy stuff like the squats and the bench press, you basically do it, rack it, and start again. You just, you're basically just putting on the rack and sticking right back off the dips and the pull-ups, you could have a little bit more rest, but my heart rate would always go to my max almost right off the bat. And so it's, you know, it's a short workout, but it's a hard, it's a long workout, and it's a hard workout, and it's a hard long workout with your heart rate that high. It's the kind of thing where you feel like you're gonna puke.
yes and
And, uh, and you're, you end up tossing around quite a bit of weight. Um, but what was interesting for me was, the first one was, was I was just like, "Okay, Ben's actually trying to kill me. This, this sucks that bad." And then, but by the fourth week, and you're increasing the weight every time, yep. Um, but by the fourth week, it was like, "Yeah, I got this." And you're doing more, more load with more load, and that was, but that was a really cool one because it was just once a week, but you could see this massive gain, you know, like a huge amount of weight gain, like just, just, just volume. And, god, it was hard. So anyway, I thought the listener enjoyed that. That was a really cool workout, and
And that one was both for fitness and strategically just for your brain, because I was, of course, guessing that you were going to get better. It would have sucked if you wouldn't have, but uh, I wanted you to... to, you know, part of the problem when we do these very varied workouts all the time is you get no feedback. Um, so hard to get feedback when your workouts are always different. Um, so I wanted to give you something you could chew on and go, "Damn, I'm getting stronger." Um, so then the kettlebell workout... um, so Dan John is this long-time, uh, Highlands Game strength coach, very well-known, kind of underground guy, though, and uh, and he wrote this, this 500-rep, uh, kettlebell swing workout.
And he wrote it for as a quick way, you do this thing four times a week, you do 10,000 swings in a month. Um, and the whole point was just to lose some body fat and look sexy and everything else. I kind of took that and adapted it, um, for a couple reasons. One, if you've ever swung a kettlebell, uh, you swing it once, it's not that hard. Swing it 20 times, it gets hard. Um, when you start getting hundreds of reps, a couple things happen. You got to do it right or bad things happen. It significantly tests your grip strength, which obviously has no direct bearing on the exhalts, but there's a lot of correlation to people with strong grip are just actually stronger everywhere.
Um, it freaking spikes your heart rate, um, and then the biggest thing was it was going to smoke your posterior chain, which is your, your ass and your hamstrings and your low back, and those things are super important for the race. Um, and the biggest reason I did it was it was just fucking evil, and it was a mind fuck to get it done. And, and you know, a lot of what we did in the weight room was not that. I wanted you just to do work and get out because your test was on the road, but sometimes it was cool to have a little spike of, "Hey, this sucks ass, see what you can do," and all those other benefits. So, um, uh, so Gavin did, uh, we did the 300, right? 300 and then 400, yep.
And, um, so you do, uh, you do a set of 10, you set it down, you kind of take a few breaths, you do a set of 15. Oh, you do pull-ups. Yeah, I'm getting there. No breaths, I'm getting there. Okay, yeah, you're right. No breaths. Basic workout is there's, there is, uh, three sets of 100 or four if you're doing 400, and they're broken up into 10, 15, 25, 25, and 50, and in between those you do another movement. Um, it could be pull-ups, it could be goblet squats, it could be front squats. Um, that's where you're kind of taking care of the rest of your body. Um, and the goal is you swing your 10. You're right, you go into your pull-ups, then you swing your 15, then you do pull-ups, and the pull-ups or front squats are kind of lower rep.
Uh, you're not doing 50s of them. Um, and by the time you hit the set of 50, you just look at that bell, because I've done this workout a lot, and you go, "I can't do that." No, it's amazing, you start swinging it and then about and you get through it, um, and then you get set it down and take a little rest before you you hit the next 100, but it's, uh, if you've never done it's a pretty unique experience that
Was another interesting one where there was this radical gain, yeah. The first time with the 300 um, you wanted me to do it with the 53. I started with the 53, I think I made it two of the sets, and then had to jump down to the 44, whatever the next one down is. With the kettlebells, I always forget. The next week, when I did it again, I did all of them with the 53, and then the next week we bumped into 400 and I did all of them with the 53 or the 56, whatever it was, and uh, I still would always look at it and go, "I can't do that." But the first time, I actually couldn't; I actually had to drop the weight because I couldn't hold on to it. Yep, it wasn't really so much, I think, by that point. That was already February, we were way into it, and I was strong, but it was... but the grip strength, yeah, hold on to it.
Yeah, I think it's grip strength, and I think it's grip strength, and then also just learning to basically like you you're like fuck you yeah
You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. There's a lot of that going on. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of grunting on those days. Um, I went to Australia in December and, uh, so this was pretty early on. Yeah, funny when I go back and look at the training I'd already had made some huge games. It was pretty interesting, but went down to to fly with Bruce. Bruce was my supporter for listeners; he was kind of our strategist and flying logistics supporter, and Ben was my mountain goat, and he was kind of—we kind of broke it up—and you were my ground game. Yeah, Bruce was the air game. Um, I went down to fight with Bruce for for three weeks. That was really interesting because we didn't have mountains, uh, to train in, except when we were up in Bright, but for the most part we were in the flat land, so we didn't have mountains to train in.
It was wicked hot. Um, I had a pool, you know? So you kind of, when I first got down there, you were kind of like, "Okay, well, what do you got?" and then, okay. And here, here you go. Do this stuff, um, you know, leg thrasher, peck trasher, you know, all these leg blaster, leg blaster. Yeah, my god, but you came up with all this different kind of stuff, but from a coaching perspective, um, you didn't seem to battle very much with... I traveled a lot last year. That was always kind of like, it always seemed like it was no big deal, like in the, in the, you know, I remember doing like burpees and and, uh, you know, I was like, I'm gonna do this, all these funny movements in hotel rooms. And you got your suitcase at one point.
Yeah, I'm using my suitcase a lot and stuff, um, you know, finding rocks and sand and filling backpacks and that kind of thing. But, um, like in Australia, I did all this swimming, like, how do you know how to do? I, I just kept bruce and I kept laughing because the whole time I was down there like, what the hell? Look at this one, a lot of walking backwards, for example. Like, how did you come up? Is that just your experience? Yeah.
I mean, it's really just the experience, you know? The walking backwards, walking backwards. Uh, God, I went to a rolfer like 10 years ago and, um, those—you've never been rolfed? Try it. It's amazing, awesome. Um, and you know, his, his, uh, I went there because I was a bit fucked up and, um, he's like, "Are you a runner?" And I said, "Yeah," and I just run a 50-mile race. And did you need to start walking backwards? And, um, and he was talking about imbalances, you know? You're always moving forward. I guess if you walk to your office and sit down, that's all you do, is no big deal. But go run, you know, 100 miles a week, and it's a lot of forward movement. And he said, "Try walking backwards," and I really felt it. Made a huge difference and just kind of, just kind of resetting me, I guess.
So that's where I got that from. And you know, the other stuff, same thing, experience, you know? I trained, uh, I've trained a bunch of PJ guys. Trying to go to PJ and DOC, which, um, what is that? So, Pararescue man is, is the special forces of, uh, the Air Force, um, and there's a huge swim component because part of their thing is to jump out of the helicopter in the water, uh, and I've also trained a bunch of SEALs, who most listeners know who they are, um, we were going to BUD/S or wannabe SEALs, I guess I should say, um, and so, you know, I'm not a swimmer. I've trained triathletes and, and then these guys, and you just, I spent a lot of years kind of dicking around trying to figure out what worked, and, um, so that's where you kind of started learning some of this stuff, you know, the hypoxic swim.
And basically, there, it's a, you know, the theory is you swim the first lap, and I can't remember, you can take a breath every stroke, and then the second lap you can take a breath every two strokes, and so forth until you blow up, and, um, it's kind of a version of, uh, Mark Twight wrote some kettlebell breathing ladders, I don't know if we ever did those, yeah, and, uh, it's, it's about overcoming panic more than actually a physical, physiological adaptation. Um, because we can all get into panic breathing, and that can seriously fuck you up. And for what you were going to do, it seemed appropriate. Um, you know, if you could have a just completely shit fucking death spiral, you're gonna land in a snowmaking pond at 60 mile an hour's down,
and they might have to do something. You know, if you'd experience the ability to basically go into panic, control your breathing, and do what you need to do. And for you, it's probably always going to be a little easy based on your water background. I imagine you had some terrifying experiences in the water, um, but that was part of it. Um, trying to find something interesting for you to do, and then, uh, just kind of push that anaerobic threshold because we were in kind of the interval stage then, um, and basically see what you could do with a lack of oxygen. Um, and that would bring benefits going hauling ass uphill at altitude. where you're losing a
lot of oxygen, and you're losing a lot of oxygen, and you're losing a lot of
oxygen because you're going really fast up, and there isn't any oxygen to have anyways because you're 4,000 meters, um, so you know it's not like groundbreaking scientific. We weren't measuring your blood; it was just a history of doing things with folks and going, "That worked," and we saw some good benefit out of it, and "This didn't work," and I'm not going to do that anymore. Um, so that's kind of where I came up with that. And then the travel part, you know, I—people, I don't—people make excuses a lot, and athletes make excuses, and coaches make excuses. Coaches are worse. Um, you know, if you're not in their gym and their environment looking at their weights, it becomes hard for them to, to contemplate what to do.
And, um, you know, training mountain athletes and training military athletes, you can't have those limitations. So I kind of just a long time ago learned to just be like, "We're gonna make shit up." Like, there shouldn't be an excuse. You're in a hotel room? Fine, use some luggage, do a thousand push-ups. Maybe it's not the perfect sport-specific thing to do that day, but it's good
You're moving, yeah? You're moving, exactly. Yeah, tell me about the, uh, well, I, I just, I have to emphasize that to, for me, um, the variability of the whole thing all the way through was really incredible because it didn't, you know, I typically wouldn't look at the next day until the night before, which is wise, and, and, uh, you know, but it was never, it was always just like, "Oh my god, this is it's," you know, there was very little repetition, almost none, um, and, you know, in the aerobic stage, there was a lot of just boring stuff that we just had to do. There's a lot of walking, you know, there's a lot of, and I went up the hill behind my house a thousand times, you know, so I got to know the route pretty well, but we always did that kind of differently.
We'd either do as intervals or really fast or pretty mellow. Anyway, that was the, the variability, I think, is, is another thing you get from coaching, yeah? It's just, you, you have a real knack for keeping it fun, so thanks for that. But that, that was, I think, part of what, what made it really engrossing and, uh, it kind of helped me be all in all the time. Was that it was fun? It's actually really
fun, and if it sucks, who wants to do it? I mean, it sucks, like you said, if it's snowing and you're walking 60kmh, you could say that sucks. But if it's just boring all the time, I don't know. You got to be a really hard person to, to do that. So you want to make it interesting. I also think this sport lends itself to that, because there was just, so we just didn't know what the hell was going to happen. So like, I knew all the bases I wanted to cover, but it let me be pretty free form on how to get there. In the kind of micro sense, the daily workout sense, you know? Like, let's make this one interesting because, because we can, because every day in the X-Alps was not going to be what we thought it was.
And sure enough, It's exactly how it was, I mean, they were all different, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, really, all we had to go with was was John Chambers' book, right? You know, we'd seen the videos and everything else, but you know, in there somewhere, he he commented that his average was 60k a day. Yep. And uh, and he did average four times, you know, and he did average four times, and he did average four times, you know, I did it five or whatever he did. I think 120,000 feet of vertical, um, and so that was kind of what we were more or less, yeah, that was our kind of end result. Exactly. They will do 60k day, day after day, and we'll be able to climb average four times. Yeah.
And that, and that brings up a good point too. You know, I, I don't want anyone listening to this to think that at the end of the day we were focused on your sport. And it doesn't matter how many kettlebell swings you can do, it doesn't matter. Your back squat is doesn't even matter. What your 60k walking time is, it's are you gonna do well in the X helps or not? Um, you know, your performance in Europe was all that mattered. And I think we did a nice job of using everything as a tool and never getting fixated on a particular day. And you, as an athlete, did a nice job of that too. You were like, "I feel stronger, I feel better, I had a good day, I had a shitty day." You had shitty days too, we all do. But the whole point was just to be better at the X helps. And um, a lot of people when they get into high volume training get fixated on the training and forget there's actually a sport at the end of it.
Yeah, I think—I think that was another way to say what you're just saying is, you know, there was—there was always more emphasis on "don't miss a flying day ever." Yeah, no, you know, even if Tuesday was supposed to be one of these massive days and I had—you know, we had good weather, we'd always switch those days, always. It was always put the flying first, and that was—um, you know, what we learned even more, so we knew this going into what we really learned in this race is the best pilot wins, you know, yet again, Chrigel won. It's not because he's the fastest on the ground, it's because he's the best pilot, yeah.
And I, and you were very, uh, you knew up front. I remember you telling me like, you know, if I do wellness race, it's because I'm going to fly. Well, um, but you were like, "But it could rain, I still gotta hike a lot, and I need to be fit." And that was always kind of our thought was, let's—and I think it actually, I mean, you became someone in the X-Alps. Gonna hate me for saying this, but I think you were the fittest dude out there, period. Um, but we just needed to make you fit enough, which we did, so that your fitness wasn't a distraction for your flying. Um, and then flew really well, and you know, first American to the raft, and I, I think we did a good job of remembering that.
Um, and just kind of threw out the thing. It was just like I said, everything was about, let's make you good at the X out, so you know we would do x meters when we wanted you to go x fast. And you know, you remember, you and I talked a lot. We had, we had pace goals for Gavin walking on the ground and going uphill, but the end of the day, if he could hike a lot of times, he would mountain and feel good, and then fly his wing off of it, which he did a lot of, um, and then do it again and feel good and do it again. Nobody actually cared what the time was; you just cared that you just did 12,000 meters of vertical gain and 20k on the ground and flew and felt good. That was the goal, you know, because that's, that's what the race is, um, and
I think you're, you've made a comment many times about other athletes that you've trained, you don't. There's no need to make them. What's your quote for you? Only need them good enough, yeah.
Totally, I mean, it's all about economy. You, you just need to be good enough to be good enough at your sport, and good enough is winning in theory. But, you know, if all you needed to do was be as, as an example, if a 225 pound back squat equaled good enough, and we didn't use numbers—like, I didn't care what his numbers were—then that's good enough. Why would we spend time and effort chasing fictitious numbers like, "Gavin, I want you to have a 300 pound back squat"? Well, who, who cares? I just want you to be good enough. And good enough for you was, "Do your knees feel good? Are you hitting some reasonable paces on the ground? Uh, can you go uphill fast?" And then the next day, do you feel brand new?
Those are kind of our, like, standard metrics.
Um, so I'll just jump into the, you know, for the, for the listener to give you a, uh, we posted all this stuff during the race and we were trying to do blogs and stuff. Red Bull's phone completely sucked, so the blog system was kind of a failure, uh, which was unfortunate. So some of them never made it up, but um, the to kind of recap the race, uh, things went really, really well for us, uh, right off the bat, had a couple really bad days, uh, pulled one of my first night passes, I think night three, um, walked all night, my feet really went to hell, um, actually day two, really early on, I was with, I was with Aaron Durogati, I think he and I were
on the same team, and I was on the same team, and I we
Were we were together most of the day, um, and got lost, uh, and hiked up this horrendous hill and and it just trashed both of our feet. We both got really dehydrated. We were, we were in bad shape, but um, because we got lost, took the wrong trail, and then it was wicked hot in the race, and we had this huge, uh, heat wave hit Europe a few days before the race started, and it kind of hung in there through the about the third day of the race, so it was really hot on the ground and very humid, um, and both Aaron and I's and quite a few other athletes' feet went to absolute hell, uh, bad days. And then we had an amazing day, day eight, uh, after a very hard day, day seven, and I just pulled the pin on the whole thing and we rested, and then Ben and I went up to a really high launch above Bellinzona and had a massive day, got back into seventh, and had seventh pretty much wrapped up, uh, until the end of the race, and then I had a terrifying flight and really shouldn't even be here talking to Ben, uh, it was amazing that I lived through that one.
And anyway, that's all on the on the website, but because this is a fitness thing, um, the last we pulled the other night pass that I had to use the second one, um, the last night to try to catch Ferdinand Ben Chelvin, who had overtaken me that day and moved into seventh, so I was in eighth, um, that was kind of that wasn't going to happen, he was too far ahead anyway, but I tried, yeah, and I went really hard that night and my feet were just mangled, so with the exception of that last day, um, I felt amazing the whole race Other than my feet, and even that last day, uh, you know, you and I climbed that 700 meters to do that last little flight that didn't end up working out for us, and it took like three hours, which is three times, you know, three times slower than my normal pace, that would normally be an hour.
So clearly I was worked, yep. Um, but even then, I didn't feel physically that bad. Um, you know, the feet thing is something you and I, I don't think, really have solved yet. We've talked about that a lot, and we've got some work to do to figure that out. You know, some guys in the race and sandals, you know, on the long walks, that was pretty interesting. You know, anyway, we'll do an update for on the podcast when we figure this out, because we thought we had that wired. My feet were just calloused bricks before the race, and so, but they did go to hell. Um, but the, uh, the recovery, so you know, Will Gadd told me one of the reasons he did not want me to do this race when we did the Rocky Traverse last year, um, he talked about, you know, six months, and really a year, like six months for his feet, but it was like a year before he really recovered.
And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm covered." Nate Scales, uh, who was on the last podcast, great podcast, you guys should all listen, that was fantastic. Um, he did it in 2007. He was a year, his feet were mangled for a year. Um, other than my blisters, which were like two weeks, uh, and my feet looking like hell, um, you know, I didn't feel bad ever, right? You know, I, I really, you told me not to move for a month when I got home, you know, uh, don't exercise and get almost kind of like out of shape. which was actually really quite nice, you know? It's kind of a nice thing to do, but um, I'm not trying to brag. What I'm trying to say is like that, that's
Remarkable in a number of ways, um, I, I think. But did we, did we miss anything? Did we mess up? Is that—was that your kind of—could, could you have anticipated that, uh?
No, I, I'll, I'll be totally frank. I, I thought that you would be in worse shape than you were. I'm
Stoked you weren't. I think it's testament to the work you put in. I think you're obviously a little bit of just a genetic freak, which is cool. Um, I think, you know, I think our ramp ups and ramp downs probably helped a little bit. I mean, you know, you had the ultimate shit fest, which was the race. Uh, taking that break, I think your body probably went like, "Cool, back I remember this part and I can rest and recover." I mean, I just don't know. You turned into a beast, and, you know, I can't say it's not that you didn't go hard because you went balls out every time.
And, you know, for the listeners who didn't know, I was, as he mentioned, I was one of his supporters, so I went up the side of a mountain with Gavin a lot. And he's freaking fast. I mean, you were hauling ass, and you went hard every moment of every day. And that last day should have torched you for two weeks, and it didn't. And I think our training was just good.
Would you
change anything the next time?
I don't know. You know, we were talking about that the other night, and I think I haven't fully digested it yet. I think when we get closer, I'm going to kind of shove my nose into what we did harder.
I don't know. Because
to me, if we could sort out my feet. Totally. You know, I'd like to do the exact same program. You were telling me that you were going to change it and move things around. I mean, for me, it was, like, perfect. Yeah. For me, the last, you know, that last night, you know, we started, I landed at, like, 9 p.m. right on the dot, you know, that amazing flight. And basically started jogging for about three hours, and then I couldn't jog anymore because my feet were killing me. And then walked until whenever we got to pay the next day, 5 p.m. or 4 p.m. or whatever it was, you know, so it was a long, awfully long. It
was a long
night. And, you know, I was hallucinating that night, and I kept thinking that Ferdinand was standing on the side of the road waiting for me, and, like, weird shit went down that night for sure. And then you and I got lost in brambles. That was awesome. That was awesome. That was rad. And, you know, it was, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say it was easy. That was, you know, but it was, I think it was 110K. Well, it was what we said it was going to
be. I remember talking to you that night, and you're like, what do you think, you know? Should I walk or should we wait? Because we had an option. Where we could sit tight, and there was a launch nearby, but once we passed that launch. That was it. That was it. So it was like, do we fold or can we try and fly tomorrow and. Come in sexy
or do we try to beat this guy?
Right. And I had no opinion to Gavin other than, if you go, it's going to hurt. And I think I remember telling him, like, it's just going to suck, but you can do it. And you chose to suck, and you did it. So, I mean, it was exactly what we thought it was going to be. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I guess when I said I would change stuff, I don't mean the overall thought, because I do think it worked. I'm just a tinkerer, so I can't give you the same workouts in the same order. That would feel like cheating. That'd be like a
chef serving the same meal. They just don't do that. Yeah,
you just don't do it. But I don't know. I really can't. I would have no good reason to change much of anything, Because you performed better, better than I even thought you were going to do, and um, and I should mention, because we somehow didn't talk about it, although it was so key, was had nightly recovery and mobility work and yoga and stretching, and a lot of tenets that I've learned from Kelly Starrett that he now uses, and that piece can't be overlooked at how important it was.
Yeah. I can't believe we didn't talk about that. Yeah. Right in the beginning, the first week when we started in October, Ben sent me a list of stuff. Stuff that I had to get, you know, a roller, bands, a lacrosse ball, and Kelly Starrett's supple leopard. I just talked to Kelly, and you guys will all see that here shortly. I think that'll be out. I had a really fun talk with him last week. But for those of you who don't know, he started San Francisco CrossFit, and he's done a lot of Olympic training, and Kelly's a badass. Saints. Yeah. And he has a book called Supple Leopard that we used religiously. I took that thing. I took that thing around the world with me for a year for mobility and keeping my knees good and, well, keeping my body good.
And that was remarkable. And it wasn't hard work. That was always 10 or 15 minutes every night. And then we made it a rule. So the Red Bull, in the race, you have to stop at 1030. You can't move unless you pull a night pass. And our thing always was we'd stop at 1015, no matter where I was. And you guys would set up camp somewhere along the road that made sense. But basically, 1015 was our stop point. We always gave it that extra 15 minutes because we thought sleep was as or more important than anything else. And so we didn't want to cut into the sleep aspect of it. So, yeah, I'd rock up to the van, and you'd have my carpet all laid out and all my stuff and hammer that and then hit the sack.
So I'll close it on kind of a fun story. The whole way through the race, like literally every day. From the time you and I were walking up the Geisberg, you know, like half an hour after the gun started, July 5th, we were like, let's go ahead and do this again because this is rad. Like, it was rad. We had so much fun. And you and Bruce were hysterical. And, you know, as you know, I'm writing this book about this whole thing because it was so fun. I don't know if I've had that fun doing anything. I don't know if any of us have. I don't think I've ever had that much fun. It
was radical.
It was such a fun thing. Yeah. The one sobering moment that I'm still kind of dealing with is the night we got into Monaco, and I sat down with Aaron and Guschlbauer and Petio and all the guys that had gotten in before me. It was like swapping horror stories and stuff. You probably used to talk about it more. Like everybody had these phenomenally scary stories to tell and moments during the race. And I guess, you know, I knew that going into it. We all did. It's the X-Outs. You're going to have some really scary moments. But at the time, I was kind of like, ooh, I think this is an unacceptable level of risk. And then an hour later, I was like, I can't wait to do it again.
So anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. I
guess what he's saying is we'll see you in two years for the next edition.
Yeah. Yeah. It was so awesome. Well, thank you very much. I think that was cool. I hope you all enjoyed that. Thank you. Thank
you. If you have any
questions, please put them in the blog. When I put this up on the Mayhem, there's a place for comments at the bottom. If you've got a question for Ben or me about the training, then we're more than happy to answer them. Ben's website is thesnowgoat.com. There's all kinds of valuable information on there. And he's super, as you can tell, super, super into this. And if you're an athlete and you want to get better, go talk to him. I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did. It was always cool. It's always cool sitting down with Ben. He's quite a personality. That guy is a complete badass. If you enjoyed this podcast or the others, we'd love for you to put something out on your social media channels. You know, hit us up on Facebook or Instagram or whatever you like to do.
You can certainly find us on all those. I finally got iTunes all figured out, so you can now subscribe to us on iTunes. You'll find all those links on my website and, again, Ben's website, if you're interested. If you're interested in training or health or any of those things like he talked about, you can find him on thesnowgoat.com. As always, in light of and following the footsteps of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, one of my favorite podcasts, all we ask for is a buck a show that helps keep us on the air. It's something I'll continue to do. We've got a couple of great shows coming up with Josh Cohn and Mads Syndergaard and Will Gadd. I keep promising Will Gadd. He is a hard dude to pin down, but one of these days I promise I will. And until the next time, thanks very much. Hope you enjoyed it. See you on the next Cloudbase Mayhem.
Cloudbase Mayhem.