KHC 164 - Kilian Korth

Kilian Korth - professional ultrarunner who made history by winning the Triple Crown of 200s, a series of three grueling 200-mile races: Tahoe 200, Bigfoot 200, and Moab 240. Kilian swept all three outright and set a new cumulative time record of approximately 156 hours, surpassing the previous mark set in 2019. Join us for a conversation about what it takes to win a triple crown in 200 mile ultramarathons, how Kilian went from a full time job to full time athlete, and how his childhood and schooling made him who he is today. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Killian: https://www.instagram.com/runtoughmindset/ Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Forged in Failure (Upcoming Documentary) & Kilian’s First 200 Mile Races 00:09:47 – Mental Struggles While Faces Failures 00:15:17 – A Race for First: Racing Against Other Runners 00:19:43 – Forged in Failure Trailer 00:23:01 – Blisters from Ultra Races & Mental Games of Pacing Races 00:34:01 – What Kilian Changed: Efficiency in Being More Fit, Overtraining, & Fuel 00:45:54 – Advantages of Going Professional & Being Rewarded for Talent 00:51:25 – Aid Stations, Dirt Naps, & Babies 00:55:30 – Kilian’s Childhood & Growing up on a Military Base 01:03:12 – Kilian’s First Marathons & Facing the Elements with Humility 01:07:43 – Facing Near-Death in Alaska 01:17:33 – A Love for Philosophy: Going to School to be a Politician 01:22:17 – Physicalist, Stoicism, and a Path to Enlightenment 01:28:42 – Who Inspires Kilian in Ultra Running 01:32:14 – Grand Ideas, Goals in Running, & Support from Kilian’s Sponsors and Wife 01:41:09 – Getting Past Self Doubts 01:43:32 – Using Experience and Failures to Train Better Runners 01:52:05 – Warrior in a Garden Mindset: Strength & Endurance 01:56:46 – Being Honest with Your Goals 02:04:23 – The Road to Nowhere is Long 02:06:42 – QA: F**k, Marry, Kill: Moab, Tahoe, Bigfoot 02:10:49 – QA: Is a 50K an Ultramarathon? 02:16:51 – QA: Who Kilian Would Swap Minds with for a Race? 02:20:08 – Final Thoughts Thank you to our sponsors: Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Use code CAM for 10% off Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off optics Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv use code CAM for 10% off MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Cameron Hanes?

  This is the Keep Hammering Collective. I'm with Killian Corr. Dude, it's an honor to have you here.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Honor to be here. Yeah, thanks so much for having me in the hospitality so far. Fun run this morning. Got the full Oregon experience.

• 0:29Cameron Hanes?

  Well, it wasn't raining. It wasn't pouring. It was supposed to. We were geared up for it.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:35Cameron Hanes?

  And then it turned out to be humid.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  And kind of hot.

• 0:39Cameron Hanes?

  Taking stuff off, but we got a couple summits in on Pisgah. Got to the monument up there and yeah, it was awesome.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, fun times.

• 0:48Cameron Hanes?

  And we are, so you're in the same seat as the king of Moab's out there, Max Joloff. And now you are the king of the 200s this year. You won every, well, all Destination Trail 200s.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the triple crown.

• 1:03Cameron Hanes?

  The triple crown, right. So that's Moab, Bigfoot, Tahoe.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Correct, yep.

• 1:09Cameron Hanes?

  You're the man.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  It happened this year. It's been a goal for a long time. So it still feels kind of surreal hearing it said out loud, but yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 1:17Cameron Hanes?

  Well, it's, you know, I've done, I've lined up on all those starting lines and they are tough.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Tough, yeah.

• 1:25Cameron Hanes?

  And to do it all and win them all in one year.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29Cameron Hanes?

  Amazing.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  It's a, I don't think I really realized how hard it was going to be till after the first race. So yeah. It's very different than trying to peak for just one race during the whole series because you just, you just don't have nearly as much time as it feels like you should between them.

• 1:46Cameron Hanes?

  I just tell, I just say I'm peaking for one race, even though I only have one race in me a year. So I just pretend like that's my peaking. And that's still hard, but what we're going to do now is we're going to have a little different start to this. So you have a film coming out, which I'm, I'm addicted to documentaries. And I love good documentaries. So I've got high hopes for yours, but tell me about this one. We're going to watch the trailer for it.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  I think this will live up to high expectations. It's going to be called Forged in Failure. I'm working with my media team, LIU Creative Co. Yeah, if you're listening, follow them on Instagram. They're great people.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  They're also bow hunters. You guys would get along.

• 2:28Cameron Hanes?

  Nice.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they hunt the San Juans. But they contacted me after Bigfoot because they were there filming for Avery Collins, who came third in that race. And they were like, hey, we've been following your year. We know some of your backstory. So they already knew a little bit about my history at the 200 mile distance. And they wanted to make something telling that story. So it's called Forged in Failure. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about the the past few years of, you know, trial and error at the 200 mile distance, to put it lightly. But yeah, that's it's it's focused on Moab and that that'll be the the culmination of the documentary. But the story definitely, it goes all the way back to 2022. So.

• 3:08Cameron Hanes?

  So it's not focused on the three, the Triple Crown. It's mostly on Moab?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Mostly Moab because that's what we have the footage from. That's where where they were filming. We'll have a little bit of footage from the other races. But yeah, Moab will be the primary focus. But I'm hoping to tell the story of, you know, getting knocked down quite a few times at the 200 mile distance. And then finally, you know, tasting some success in 2025. Yeah.

• 3:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a well, it's amazing. It's but you so just like the Cliff Notes version, you DNF'd or got injured on was it three 200s before this year?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So 2022 was my first try at a 200 mile distance. And that was at Cogadona. I tore my hamstring and then ran 24 more miles, which I don't recommend doing.

• 3:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Bad decision. But that was, you know, my longest ever layoff from running, probably the most like physically painful experience of my whole life. Horrible.

• 4:02Cameron Hanes?

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• 4:42Cameron Hanes?

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• 5:28Speaker 01

  You know the Fane Ranch section?

• 5:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So awful.

• 5:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, very muddy this year.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, really. It wasn't muddy, but I was in that kind of off trail bit as you're approaching Mingus.

• 5:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And I was looking at my phone because trying to figure out where I'm going because I couldn't see markers and whatnot. And I ended up tripping over a ravine and just like reaching my right leg way out in front of me and just cranking on it.

• 5:51Cameron Hanes?

  And tore it loose?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  No, but so it hurt pretty bad right when that happened.

• 5:56Cameron Hanes?

  Higher down low?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Down low. So like right where it can, it's actually where your hamstring connects to your tibia, which is an unusual place to get hamstring injuries apparently, but I've had two there on different legs. But yeah, I ran up Mingus and then down Mingus and coming down Mingus, I looked down at my leg at one point because it's starting to hurt and my calf was so swollen. It looked like someone had taken like a basketball pump and just blown air into my calf. Like it looked like a cylinder. And I was like, oh, that's a bad sign.

• 6:24Cameron Hanes?

  That's not good. You got a long way to go still there.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Long way to go. So I ended up calling my wife who sent one of my Pacers back up toward me with poles because I didn't have poles because it's all downhill, you know, I'm planning to run. And then it took. About eight hours to do like six miles. And I didn't stop, you know, that was just me hobbling at like a nine or a 10 out of 10 pain the whole time. Like I would, you know what that section is like, it wasn't muddy for me, but it's rocky, you know, and I'd catch my toe and every time my leg like twisted, it was so bad. Sounds miserable. Yeah. So that was a, a good 12 weeks off from everything and 16 weeks off from running. And then, uh, later that year, I, my first race back was the DC Peaks 50 with the next day station guys. So that's how I met them. They're very toxic. Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  That's why we love them. Yep. I love them. Yeah, me too. Jake and Mitch, they're, they're amazing. Um, I actually won that race. That was cool. And then 2023 came back to Cogadona. Uh, this is turning out not to be the Cliff Notes version. It's fine. We, hey, we've got no, whatever, we can talk about whatever. 2023 came back to Cogadona. That race was going really well. I was in the lead and basically until mile 220, I had noticed breathing problems right around halfway, uh, but hadn't really thought much of it. Cause oftentimes in desert races, especially, you know, they're dusty, you just get a little bit wheezy and it's normal. But then, uh, coming out of Sedona,

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I was coughing up like black tar from my lungs, basically like, uh, not stuff that looked healthy, you know? And then got to Fort Tuthill, which is the second to last crude aid station in pretty bad shape, left with my pacer. It's like 214 or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Left with my pacer, was kinda running, kinda going really slow and, uh, my breath sounded like a baby's rattle, you know, just in, out, awful. Started climbing and then had like a moment of actual fear, like panic set in where I couldn't really breathe much. And I, I just had to slow down to, you know, a crawl. Um, I got really cold.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  My, I like had a full physical and mental breakdown is how I'd describe it. I mean, I was like crying in the middle of the trail. Cause I'm like, oh my God, I'm about to, I was gonna win and now I'm gonna DNF. Cause I'm picturing like climbing Eldon and it being cold and being unable to breathe. Like, I'm just having all these panic thoughts. Got to that aid station after getting passed by a bunch of people, including Mike McKnight, who when he passed me to get into the lead was, you could tell he was excited at first. And then when he saw me, he did that like immediately turned into, oh no, something's wrong with you. So he was nothing but a gentleman.

• 9:03Cameron Hanes?

  That's great.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Which is cool. I mean, he's

• 9:04Cameron Hanes?

  He's such a nice guy.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Really nice guy. So got to Walnut Canyon. My O2 saturation was 82%, so not good. Ended up getting a nebulizer treatment, which is like super inhaler, basically. Took like five hour, took a five hour nap, ended up finishing, came 11th still, which you know, could be worse.

• 9:25Cameron Hanes?

  After five hours?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:26Cameron Hanes?

  Geez.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  So then I finished and later that night, I was trying to fall asleep and I just could not get to sleep. Like I'm, I'm taking in a breath and then coughing, taking a breath, coughing. I'm coughing up blood and finally I get up because I'm going to spit out some more blood and I look in the mirror and my face is super blurry and it's not like, it's not just because I wasn't wearing glasses.

• 9:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  It's like something was really wrong. So I was like, all right, hon, I think we should probably go to the hospital. And then I got to the hospital and the nurse took my O2 saturation and it was 72%, which is really, really bad. And I heard her gasp.

• 10:01Cameron Hanes?

  This date is dangerously low.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So I got put on a, the step below ventilator. I think it's called a BPAP machine that forces air into your lungs. I had pulmonary edema, made a pretty quick recovery from that. So all good, but not a fun experience, you know? I like got into the ICU and you know, you're, my feet were totally mangled. I hadn't learned how to take care of them yet.

• 10:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  And in the ICU, they just start ripping the tape off my feet, you know? And I was like, stop, stop.

• 10:26Cameron Hanes?

  Just holding together my body, that tape.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Please don't do that.

• 10:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  So that was, you know, a tough experience. Ultimately, what I took away from that though was I can be competitive, you know? Like I was in the race.

• 10:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Would have finished obviously much stronger had that not happened.

• 10:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I'm not a could have, would have, should have guy. So I won't say like I would have won or whatever.

• 10:46Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  You know?

• 10:48Cameron Hanes?

  The math says you'd have been better than 11th and 11th is good and you had a five hour break in there.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And then finished Bigfoot later that year, had an okay race. Then 2024 rolls around and I'm in Cogadona and the Triple Crown. And so in my head, I'm like, all right, I'm going for the win.

• 11:05Cameron Hanes?

  You can do four 200s.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then I DNF Cogadona with the same breathing issues. I didn't let it get as serious. So I had, I DNF to ride around mile 150, but then I had all this mental awfulness happen because I didn't push to my limits.

• 11:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  So my brain is like, oh, well, you're just a loser.

• 11:22Cameron Hanes?

  Do I have what it takes to even do this?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then a month later, DNF Tahoe with a hamstring strain. So that was, you know, what, probably the darkest moment of my life from a career perspective in terms of just like, can I do this? Is my body built for this? You know, like, am I just delusional?

• 11:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  With what I think I should be able to do?

• 11:42Cameron Hanes?

  If you're looking at the results.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not good.

• 11:45Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, you can believe you're the best in the world, but you gotta prove it at some point.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:51Cameron Hanes?

  And you hadn't really done that yet.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  I know. And I'm someone who really believes in being honest with your goals. So I'm going into these races, telling everyone that I know, like, I want to win this, you know? And to like, not only go in being like, I want to finish, but I want to win. And then having your failure writ large on a live stream and, you know, people talking about me as one of the competitors going into 2024 in Cogadona and then just failure. So that was pretty tough mentally. And, uh, you know, getting through that was very difficult. Ultimately, a good experience.

• 12:23Cameron Hanes?

  So how, did you talk to anybody like a sports psychologist? Or how did you get through it?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So I talked to-

• 12:29Cameron Hanes?

  That's hard.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I didn't talk to a sports psychologist, but I did, you know, my wife is extremely supportive. So she was very helpful. And then what really happened to me was I was in this negative thought cycle, you know, you suck, you have nothing, like, look at your, you think you're a coach. Look at this failure. Like, who do you, who are you to think that you can coach people to be successful? When you can't be successful, you know? You believe that you could be competitive at these and you've never even finished one well, really. You know what I mean? In term, not, not well in terms of like 11th is fine, but not well in terms of I'm competing for the win.

• 13:02Cameron Hanes?

  Not, it's not elite.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  So there's this like stark contrast between what I think I'm capable of and what's actually happening. And what I ended up saying to myself, I was like, listen, when someone you admire DNFs, so I pictured my friend Alyssa, who's a professional with ON. And she had actually DNF'd a race right before Cook Donut.

• 13:21Cameron Hanes?

  Like Mick McLellan or something?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Uh, her name's Alyssa Clark.

• 13:25Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah. No, okay. I'm thinking of somebody else.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  She's, she's great. I mean, top 10 at UTMB.

• 13:29Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Very good runner.

• 13:30Cameron Hanes?

  She's a stud.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  So I pictured her and I was like, would I say the things I'm saying about myself, about her when she DNF'd her race? Am I thinking, oh, Alyssa, you suck. You know, you're a piece of shit.

• 13:41Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  No, I'm not. I would never say that to her.

• 13:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  So why am I being so unkind to myself in this situation? Right? So that really helped me kind of turn around the, um, the mindset at least. And then I was like, okay, we're going to defer the Triple Crown to 2025 and I'm going to focus on different things. I'm going to have fun because going into those races in 2024, I had so much, I had put so much self-imposed pressure on myself that I wasn't having fun.

• 14:05Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  You know, I was getting into those races and I'm literally running tight. Like I remember the feeling of like having my fist balled and being like, having these egotistical thoughts where like, oh, think about what this could do for my career rather than, hey, enjoy the process. Like we do this because we love it and I'm not doing it because I need approval from myself or other people. You know, it's like, this is what I love to do. And so reinvigorating that inside myself. So I focused on shorter races. I ran a hundred miler and a hundred K, which they're not short races, but they're shorter than 200.

• 14:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  So did a bunch of speed work, different training. I ended up winning the hundred miler, the Mogion Monster, which is a hard race. And then I won the hundred K, uh, the Red Rock hundred K in November, um, outside of Vegas. Two great races, totally outside of my comfort zone as far as what I had been working on. And then entered 2025 feeling fitter and happier than I had at 2024. So.

• 15:02Cameron Hanes?

  And this is all just self, self-diagnosis and self-talk. Just change that mostly?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. The mental side of things. I mean, I've got a great physical therapist, uh, who she is a legitimate expert on the world of ultra running. So, uh, you know, she helped me with the physical stuff. I wouldn't be successful without her for sure. Uh, Katie, if you're listening, thank you. Um, but.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  The mental stuff, it was just a lot of learning, self-reflection. I like to journal, you know, doing things that require introspection of you and kind of, you know, you need to be your harshest critic, but you also need to learn how to be kind to yourself when you are trying hard and failure's not, failure shouldn't necessarily be this like big negative, you know, like if you have big goals, you're just going to fail sometimes. It's just the way it'll work. And so, learning that, I've always been someone who needs to learn from experience, unfortunately, or fortunately, you know what I mean? But that was probably the biggest lesson. You know, failure is not the opposite of success, but it's an integral part of it. And so, moving

• 16:11Speaker 01

  forward into 2025, I was like, alright, I'm gonna train smarter, but I'm also going to focus on having fun. Like, I want, you know, going into Tahoe, for instance, I was like, I want the first 60 miles. I know what that course looks like. Those trails are amazing. I want it to be fun. And so, running relaxed is going to help you use less energy, literally, you know, physiologically, but it also just helps your mindset, being like, listen, this isn't all about the result. You know, process over outcome has been kind of my mantra for this year.

• 16:40Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Yeah. What does it, like, in those races, if somebody goes, did somebody go off hot in any of those? Like, and did you have to check yourself on, okay, I'm just gonna chill, enjoy the process, let them go? Or were you in the lead on all those?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  So, for Tahoe, I was in the lead at the 50K and never gave it up. I had one other guy with me for a while. Bigfoot, Avery Collins, he's a fast guy. He went out pretty good for the first 50K. And I remember seeing him like a mile ahead at times and seeing him running up stuff and just being like, I'm not running up that, you know? And honestly, it never worried me, because part of it is like, if I give, if I leave everything out there and I come second, I'm not gonna be that upset about it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm a competitive person, but there's only so much you can do, right? But also logically, I was like, this is the first 30 miles of the race. I'm not gonna race till I'm at mile 100. It was kind of my plan. But then I ended up passing him at mile thirty five ish and he didn't look great.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  We have this huge climb up Mount Margaret after that and it's the highest point of the race. And I sort of broke my own rule and I was like, well, if he doesn't look that good, I'm gonna kind of crush this. So I raced a little earlier than I wanted to in Bigfoot, but and then in Moab, I was running with Brody Chisholm for the first.

• 18:00Cameron Hanes?

  The whole rest after that?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Okay. I didn't see, I didn't see anyone ever in Bigfoot for the rest of the time. Well, in Bigfoot at with twenty miles to go, though, my brother got phone service. He's pacing me and he goes, oh, Brody's caught you by an hour. He's only fifty eight minutes behind you. And I was like, oh, my God, like, and he Brody's fast in the last ten miles of Bigfoot are on a road, you know? And I was like, this can't come down to a race on the road. Like, I will lose. I'm just gonna get my ass handed to me. So the descent off of Pompey Peak is super sketchy. And we flew down it like we had a couple of nine fifties coming down that terrifying descent. It was dawn too. So the worst possible light, like there were a few times where I took steps that if it had been, you know,

• 18:45Speaker 01

  inches to either side of these branches and down trees, I could have just, it could have been bad, but it all worked out. Bigfoot was the most fun I had because being caught like that injected so much energy into both of us at that point. So that was really fun. And then in Moab, I was with Brody for the first fifty miles. He was having some stomach issues, but at fifty miles, we ran an eight fifty eight first fifty. And I sort of, I told him that because I like to lap my fifties on my watch. And I looked at him. I was like, dude, we just ran an eight fifty eight and we were both kind of like, hmm.

• 19:20Cameron Hanes?

  Oops.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was like, well, the grenades, the pin has been pulled out of the grenade and like, we're just gonna hold on to it now. So then he ended up slowing down right around mile fifty two. The aid station was at fifty four and I didn't see him after that. So I was alone for the rest of Moab too, except for pacers.

• 19:38Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha. Hmm. That's interesting.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  But I like being in the lead, you know? Like, some people want to chase, but I find it motivating to, you know, like, come. Me into one aid station at Bigfoot. I knew that I was only about 10 minutes ahead or thereabouts. And I was like, I don't want them to see me, you know? I don't want them to have any hope.

• 19:57Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  So there's like some fun mind games that happen with competitors at that point where it's like, I like that feeling of being a ghost up front.

• 20:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's cool. That's just competing and there's, there's tricks to competing and

• 20:12Cameron Hanes?

  you don't want your competitors to have hope for sure. So you're doing all, you know, the little things like covering up the headlamps. So you don't turn around so they can't see your headlamp or like getting out of there quick. Or, you know, you know how it goes. If so, if you know somebody who's behind you, you push hard to get around the corner. And then you're like, oh, because that is killing me. But you put on a show. So they're like, oh my God, how strong is that guy?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, or you run into the aid station and you're just like, yeah, I'm feeling great. So that the aid station volunteers, they'll tell the next guy like, oh, he looks good. And then you get like 10 feet out, you're just like, oh.

• 20:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know. It is such a, there's a lot of mind games though.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 20:50Cameron Hanes?

  Some of them are for your, your, yourself. But, uh, yeah, it's good, good stuff. Well, that was a good intro into the film. So this is, is it forged in failure?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Forged in failure.

• 21:01Cameron Hanes?

  Forged in failure. We're going to watch the, the trailer for it right now. I'm pumped. Uh, are we ready?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited for you guys to see it.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Killian's determination. The first times I saw it was probably when he was about three or four. And he was taking swim lessons. He had an opportunity to earn a 1500 meter badge, so about a mile swim. And he refused with all his heart. He was also born with this innate, like, I'm gonna do this kind of thing.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  This is my prediction. This guy right here is gonna win. Going into the last race of the Triple Crown in the 240, I am feeling sort of overwhelmed by the journey. You know, I DNFed Cogadona when I started it the first time. I tore my hamstring. I almost won it the next year in 2023. Finished the race, but ended up in the ICU. And then 2024, I believed I was gonna win the Triple Crown and Cogadona and DNF two races in a row is probably the hardest year of my life. What was the ever course record, which is 55 something? Um, Brody and I were together for a long time. He's having a little bit of stomach trouble. Dude, I mean, he's at a sub nine. You run 30 miles in mud.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Dude, my first 100 was in 1928. Right, left, right, mix. I mean, bad. That's what you ask, bro. I know. Dude, you have that large gauge needle.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Okay. Dude, I think what's messed up my feet is the mud. I mean, I mean, he was 30 miles ahead of the next competitor. Watching you for a day. Thanks. Kickin' ass, man. I'm really lucky right now. Like, I just ran nine hours, Jack. And now I'm gonna go run some amount of hours with my friend Blake. And my brother's gonna finish it with me. Like, how cool is that?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  I am, uh, stomaching what I can stomach. The mud has made this, like, so challenging.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  You set the new Triple Crown record, which was held for six years by Michael McKnight. He previously had it 162 hours, zero minutes and 51 seconds. And you, uh, beat it by, I think about five and a half hours at 156, 30 minutes, 20 seconds.

• 23:43Cameron Hanes?

  That's good. I like it. Yeah, that's sick. That's uh so impressive. I can't wait to see the the full film. So that was two minutes. The full film is um gonna say an hour?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, something probably like that. I'm trying to I think if we get footage from Cogdona 2023 in particular, like I want that to be kind of the first big touchdown.

• 24:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  That we could get potentially around 80 minutes, just because I think there's enough there. But yeah, we'll see. Come supposed to come out something like Marchish, like end of Q1.

• 24:17Cameron Hanes?

  Looks great.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 24:18Cameron Hanes?

  It looks great.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shout out to Nolan and Rachel, LIU Creative Co. They're they're amazing.

• 24:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that I mean, some of those shots were perfect, but yeah, just capturing the one that stands out, of course, is popping the blister.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:31Cameron Hanes?

  That that kind of stuff that's like, there's just going on in these ultra races.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Cameron Hanes?

  You know, for most people, you know, like in regular life, you get a blister. It's like a pain in the ass.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, oh, this sucks. I, you know, don't want to put on my shoe. That's just the name of the game in ultras.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, what was crazy is for the first two races, so 400 miles of racing through Tahoe and Bigfoot, no blisters, you know, I wear Creeper's toe socks. They typically do the job for me.

• 24:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  But when you go through, well, so it was humid and wet to begin with. So my feet were wet for the entire race. But then you go through 30 plus miles of mud and your feet, like I wear ultras and I like to wear them pretty loose typically, but my feet are, you know, sliding around with the articulation in the mud. So my toes just got mangled.

• 25:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Like, I typically will tape my first and my my big toe and my second toe. And the tape slid down between my toes and cut the webbing in my foot. So like, there were points during the race where that webbing was flapping around and it would flap under my toe. So then every step I would be pulling on this like cut piece of my webbing between my toe. And then it would then it would leave. So it wouldn't be painful. Then it would come back. It was crazy.

• 25:43Cameron Hanes?

  What what I think, or here's what I I do myself is I envision like all that shit like you just explained happening. But then sometimes I'll take off my shoe and it's like, that didn't happen.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:54Cameron Hanes?

  But I had in my head that all my feet are just torn to shreds and like this and that. But you can create issues in your, you know, but that is, that was very, I'm sure that was happening with yours with that tape sliding down.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:08Cameron Hanes?

  You do, you think you're mitigating a problem and then it creates another problem.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:14Cameron Hanes?

  Because sometimes that, the tape and the blisters and the, all that shit you try and it, ah, man, some of, nothing works sometimes.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I don't actually know what to do with wet feet for almost 60 hours, you know? Uh, so that will be something I need to learn for the future, but I, at about halfway, I just gave up trying to take care of them. And I just put on a pair of socks that I didn't take off till the end.

• 26:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, just dealt with it.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then at the end I took them off and there was water pouring out of my feet. Like not out of the sock, but like liquid coming out of my, the like near trench foot crevices in my foot. It was so gross.

• 26:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that is, yeah, it's so hard on your feet because you figure, but you know, say 200, 200 miles. That's gonna, generally it's about 2,000 steps a mile just in regular life. So 400,000 steps for 200 miles. That's a lot.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 27:12Cameron Hanes?

  When do you ever do that? When do you ever ask your body to do that other than in those events? So 200,000 steps, because people have these goals like, oh, I want to lose weight. Like maybe even first form, one of the goals is 10,000 steps a day, maybe. I don't know. Do you know what it is? Like for their 75 hard?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly, but I'm sure that's been a part of it. Yeah.

• 27:33Cameron Hanes?

  That's for most people, 10,000 steps is a legit day.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:37Cameron Hanes?

  Is a legit day. So 400,000 or 500,000, your feet, your body's going to take a beating.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, well, and then you add the 40 more miles. So you're talking 480,000 for Moab.

• 27:49Cameron Hanes?

  And the climbing.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  So did you have it in Moab? I think it's funny. I've done the 240 and I've done Cogadona, you know? And in my head, when I was like, so I've got the Tahoe 200, the Bigfoot 200 and the Moab 240. Like the 240 doesn't sound that different from a 200, but then you get to mile 200 and you're like, holy shit, I have 40 miles. And 40 miles at that point sounds so far. You're like, oh no.

• 28:14Cameron Hanes?

  Cause sometimes, you know, like when you're tracking those races is you're looking at their pace, you know, and it's always like, normally, if you can get up to four miles an hour, you're doing pretty good late in the race.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:26Cameron Hanes?

  But sometimes you look at those, that pace at the end. So if you're say from 200 to 240, and whoever's running is like two point something miles an hour, it'll take a while.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Cameron Hanes?

  It's gonna take a while. No, 20 hours.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  20 hours. Yeah.

• 28:41Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, in 20, that's a whole nother day.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I know. That's crazy.

• 28:46Cameron Hanes?

  It's, but you, sometimes it's hard to, that seems so slow. And I remember like on Max's film, King of Moab, there's a section towards the end where he's just dragging his poles. You remember that?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:58Cameron Hanes?

  Going, probably not even one mile an hour. And when that happens, man, it seems like this race is, the race is never gonna end.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. You look down at your watch and I really try not to do this, but it happens every race regardless. And you're like, timing out, how far, how much longer you have left? You're like, okay, I got 10 miles left. I'm moving at, you know, three miles an hour. I've got three hours.

• 29:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Like, okay, I can do this. And then all of a sudden you start climbing. You're like, all right, I'm moving at two miles an hour. I've got five hours. It's like, oh no, you get sucked into that. It's like, you can't let that happen.

• 29:29Cameron Hanes?

  No, and that's, I mean, that's kind of the name of the game on those ultra races. You're always looking at your pace. You always know the distance. You always are doing math, like over and over. What I do is I have these goals and I'm like, like at Coca Dona, I was, I go, thinking to myself, I gotta get in the seventies. I want to get in the seventies. That's my goal. So you're doing this math non-stop and I didn't get in the seventies. I was just over that, but, or 84, I think. But the whole time it was a math problem.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Cameron Hanes?

  And you're just like, okay, I gotta push here. I gotta push. How much time do I got? What time is it? And then towards the end, I'm like, okay, I gotta get this marathon done and this much. But yeah, it's just non-stop.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I try to not do the math, you know?

• 30:11Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I'm like, I'm, I'm someone who, I don't want to look at my watch. I'm not, I don't want to, I, I try not to think about the data, the data very much.

• 30:18Cameron Hanes?

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• 31:03Cameron Hanes?

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• 31:47Cameron Hanes?

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• 32:06Speaker 01

  Well, I do set like little intermediate goals. So in Moab, you know, you have the marathon from Dry Valley to Road 46, which is basically a road marathon. You know, it's 600 feet of climbing total or something like that. And my goal for that section was to run 1030s. So I told my pacer, I was like, we're going to sit at this pace. And he just ran that pace and then I didn't look at my watch at all. And I think we ended up with an elapsed pace of just under elevens for that section, which when you stop at an aid station, it's not too bad, right? I ran pretty much every step of it. And so I like to set the intermediate goals, but really I'm just trying to focus on the moment, or if I, if I save music for when I'm really suffering. So I'll like try to really focus on tunes, you know, like I'm listening to music that I love. Like,

• 32:51Speaker 01

  let's focus on that. Sometimes I'll, I'll try to trick myself where I'm like, oh, just focus on your arms. Your arms don't hurt that bad. Pretend that they're what's moving you forward, you know? And then you just like, really focus on your arm drive.

• 33:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Well, that's not a bad, because when your form goes, everything goes. So I think you see people who are struggling, like even in a road race and their form is just went to shit. So if that, I would think like focus on your arms helps you have better form.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  It does. And then I think, you know, keeping your feet moving pretty quickly. Like, I think you can get stuck in the half walk, half jog shuffle. And that was something I attempted to avoid in all the races. I was like, I want to be able to open up my stride at the end. So in Bigfoot, for instance, I think mile 181 was like a 930 mile going downhill, but solid. Like I could still open up my stride.

• 33:42Cameron Hanes?

  Turnover, yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then there was a section of Moab going down, getting out of Little Souths. There's like a really low tech, slow meandering G bro that's all downhill. And I ran roughly like 10 minute miles for about six miles straight. So that, and then that section, all I was thinking was I am a metronome. Like this is, all I am is just click, click, click, click, click. The turnover on my feet. So I was focusing on that one sensation. And some of that, those like mental skills, I think come from a background with meditation where you like focus on one, you're attempting to, you know, center your attention on one thing. And so if you only are turnover, like there's no pain there. You know, so you can kind of trick your mind in those situations.

• 34:25Cameron Hanes?

  It's, have you heard Courtney describe her pain cave thing? So it's sort of like, you know, she's, I always thought it was like, she's just in her pain cave, kind of like, Accepting pain where it's really she's hitting that chisel with a hammer.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Cameron Hanes?

  And it's just rubble is kind of falling. All she's not focused on pain, running, focused on work.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:46Cameron Hanes?

  Just hitting the end. So that seems similar to me. Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  And I think probably everyone who's managed to to break through at some level and like, you know, no one's feeling, I wasn't feeling good running 10 minute miles, you know, but I'm managing to deal with the discomfort in a way that's productive. So I think there's probably a limited amount of ways to do that. So it's not surprising that like other people who are managing that, you know, come to similar conclusions.

• 35:13Cameron Hanes?

  And they're all fair, sort of similar.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:16Cameron Hanes?

  In their approach in that you're just focused on something other than the the running.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just have, you can't, you have to both embrace the pain and decide that it's not worth your attention to some degree. Like both, it's like a weird balancing act.

• 35:32Cameron Hanes?

  Both could be true.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:33Cameron Hanes?

  And you just have to, I don't know if you can master it, but yeah, they're tough.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  So hard. I think people don't, I don't think people know how hard they are. And like, I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day named Ryan Sullivan, who's a really fast hundred guy. And he was saying he kind of gets a little chafed and annoyed when people are like, oh, but you know, someone in the back is working way harder than you because they're doing it for longer. And it's like, take nothing away from the people in the back, but the front of the pack is, is they're, we're having different experiences, you know, like someone who is finishing Moab in 100 hours could be sleeping, you know, they, they, they might not be sleeping a ton.

• 36:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  But when you've only slept 11 minutes and you're attempting to run down Porcupine Rim, that's a different experience than having slept even an hour.

• 36:22Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  You know, like it's, it is just, you're like right on the edge of, I think, what is possible for, for me at that moment. I definitely was. I think anyone who's pushing that hard is going to be there. And when you're like, your pedal is down for that long, like, I just picture a car like driving along, held together by zip ties, you know, like, oh, come on, please make it.

• 36:45Cameron Hanes?

  Just make it up this hill and we can coast down.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Everything's starting to rattle.

• 36:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I had a, I had a Toyota four wheel drive pickup like that and I had big tires on it and it was a four cylinder. I'd have to get a run at the hills to make it up and over. It reminds me of that, like, starts to slow down and kind of, then you get there, then you're like, okay, now we're made. But yeah, it's like just, just praying it holds together.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 37:08Cameron Hanes?

  And, uh, so, um, yeah. What changed from the struggle and the DNFs to all the success? I mean, did it, did you change your training or coaching or diet? What, what was a breakthrough?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  So there's multiple aspects. Uh, and I, I wrote a piece about this on my Substack just called, what did I change? And, uh, it's kind of everything that could have changed, changed. So my approach to training changed, my mindset changed and my, you know, fueling, like all of that shifted big time. So.

• 37:47Cameron Hanes?

  That's a lot of changes.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  A lot of changes.

• 37:48Cameron Hanes?

  Cause most people change like one thing and try this, but and maybe, maybe over time that's how it worked.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Totally. But my, I think the most important was the mindset, you know? I don't think you can underrate how important the mental side of all this is. So going into 2024 with the DNFs being really hard on myself and with all this, you know, self-imposed pressure about like where I need to be for my running career, like blah, blah, blah. You know, mostly thoughts driven by having, you know, like paying too much attention to your ego. I think like self-centered kind of selfishness in a way, you know? Uh, and then focusing on having fun was just a big piece. Like that sounds kind of silly, but it's like, I had to reconnect with the love of what I'm doing.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  And so that was a, a big piece of it for me, just being able to know that like, like Bigfoot, I pretty much had fun from start to finish. No real lows, no. Well, I did have a shin issue that lingered after that race. So I was about to say no unexpected pain, but basically, I mean, I was just having fun. Like, I'm running with people that I love and through places that I love, you know, so like focusing on the joy there was a big piece of it. In terms of training, you know, I don't think it's necessarily what people want to hear, but I did less, you know, I was just kinder to myself from a recovery standpoint. So I was I've definitely been overtrained in the past, and I just really tried to pay attention to when

• 39:16Speaker 01

  I was getting signs that I needed to take a day, you know, especially in between the races, like going into Tahoe, best training cycle of my entire life. I was mostly training in Yarra, Colorado, San Juan's, super steep. I was doing long runs with like 26 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing at like a 13 minute pace, you know, elapsed with water stops and everything.

• 39:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I was just crushing these long runs and I would do the same thing the next day, you know, so all the signs were there that I was in better shape than I'd ever been. And I think part of that came from focusing on shorter races, doing speed work, getting my just pure cardiovascular fitness to be much better than it was previously. So some training changes there.

• 39:56Cameron Hanes?

  Wait, I'm curious about this. So the cardio, why do you think that makes such a difference when really you're not pushing the pace cardio, you know, heart rate wise?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  So what I tell people that I coach is that speed work for ultras is to make your easy pace faster. So going in like in January of 2025 as opposed to January of 2024, if I just went out for a five mile easy road run at a heart rate of like 115, so super easy, I would have probably been in 2024, I was probably running an 845 to a 915. But then in 2025, I was running a 745 to an eight minute mile, same heart rate.

• 40:35Cameron Hanes?

  Just, just much fitter.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so what you want is your I can run forever pace. If it's a minute per mile faster, like just think about what that does for you over the course of 200 miles, right? Like that's, you know, almost, that's more than three hours of time you have saved just being fitter. So like that, I think is a huge piece of the puzzle.

• 40:57Cameron Hanes?

  And do you think that like the fitter you are, so cardio wise, your heart wise, you're not having to? It's not working as hard. Your heart isn't. Your heart rate's down. Do you think that that efficiency, that pays off? I mean, you're not taxing. I don't know what you tax. You tax everything in an ultra, but I'm wondering how the heart and being efficient and if that helps recovery or why, why that top in speed and efficiency helps in a long race, I guess?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I think mostly, I think it's everything you mentioned. I bet you recover faster. Speed work makes you literally like physiologically, muscularly more efficient in your stride. So you're getting to be a better runner, you know, like better at the skill side of running as well. So I think all of that plays into it. And then just like if you can make your easy pace faster, you're, you're golden. You know, like that's a huge, you, you want your 200 mile or to the first 100 miles to feel super mellow. But if that's super mellow feeling is faster, a minute per mile faster than what you were before, you know, you're obviously at a huge advantage.

• 42:10Cameron Hanes?

  It's when you say that, uh, so, so you were overtrained. What's that? Like, so everybody has, so 100 miles a week, 14 miles a day. Sometimes you do speed work, it's less, you do a long run. That's how you get to 100. So like, what do you call overtrained?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  So for instance, when I did Bigfoot in 2023, I finished it, but I felt tired at the beginning of that race. And what I, what had happened to me is I got obsessed with 10 to 12 hour days. So every single week I was doing at least one 10 to 12 hour day in the mountains, which is just, that's just too much. You know, I was doing like 32 miles with 15,000 feet of climbing in the Sawatch or somewhere in Colorado, you know? And that you're just not recovering from in time for the next one. So like, when you're overtrained, what you'll notice is you're just plateauing. So like week by week, you're not improving. Like when I was having a lot of success in May of this year, training for Tahoe, every single week I would go to your rate and every single week my runs would feel easier and

• 43:09Speaker 01

  faster, even though they were getting harder. Uh, so it's just not improving. And once you reach that stage of plateauing, like the only way to get past it is to pull back. So, you know, and then if you get injured, obviously you're going to be forced to pull back. So there's like a mental and a physical side to overtraining. And honestly, part of that is just learning to know yourself, you know, like. I think a lot of people look at someone, you know, like Andy Glaze is an example. And they're like, that guy's running 100 miles a week. Like, I should be able to do that, you know? And Andy's a freak in the best way possible.

• 43:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  No one's, people aren't that durable, except for him, right? He's, he's one of a kind. And so, or you look at David Goggins, you know, someone like that. And I think you can get caught up in kind of emulating your heroes and these people you admire. Or like someone like Killian Journet, you know, like no one should be training like he does. Cause your zone two isn't doing 15 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing, right? So I was kind of caught up in that mindset too. Like, I want to train like these people I admire.

• 44:10Cameron Hanes?

  More is better.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 44:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And ultimately, I ended up just embracing a quality over quantity mindset. And that doesn't mean I was doing low volume weeks, you know? I topped out at 24 hours of time on feet, which in the desert equated to roughly like 120 to 130 miles. And in the mountains was more like 90 to 100 miles.

• 44:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  So still big weeks.

• 44:27Cameron Hanes?

  Still a lot.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  But not what I was doing.

• 44:30Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, 24 hour, you said 24 hours?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, that's a lot.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 44:34Cameron Hanes?

  That's it. You know, I think like we get addicted to numbers, you know? And like the, like I said, more is better. And if somebody's doing this, it's like, well, I gotta do more than.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:45Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, I'm that. I'm like, I'm not talented, so I have to outwork. Well, that can be, that can be negative too.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 44:52Cameron Hanes?

  If you're, when your body says, yeah, we get what you're trying to do, but not going to happen. So when you said you pulled back, you were doing 10 to 12 hour days, once a day a week in your A. What'd you pull back to?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I was doing more like a seven hour day, followed by a five hour day, six hour day, followed by a three hour day, you know? So I was still doing back to back long runs and I was still doing objectively big weeks, but just not to the level that I had been previously. And another piece of it is I changed my fueling. So I used to be much more focused on like the low carb stuff than I am now. I still am probably lower carb, but I periodized my carbohydrate intake. So it's like more complicated, but now on my long runs, I'm making sure to feel like I will on race day. So I'm taking in 90 grams of carbs, almost exclusively from gels and drink mixes. And, you know, that has made a big difference to how I'm feeling day by day and recovering too.

• 45:48Cameron Hanes?

  So does it help the training as well as the racing then?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 45:51Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, so you can push harder in training, which means you're raising your ceiling, which means you're going to perform better in the race.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  You're just less depleted after a long day.

• 45:59Cameron Hanes?

  And I think your body, I mean, sometimes I, you know, you, this is probably stupid, like most things I do, but sometimes I like to go out and run with no water or fuel to be like, if I can do it under these terrible conditions and still get it done, then in the race I should be even better because I'll have fuel and I'll have calories and I'll have hydration, everything else. But you're not being able to push as hard in the training because you'll have anything with you and you're also depleting your body. So the next time you go out, you're not able to push on that day either.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:31Cameron Hanes?

  So it probably doesn't make any sense.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  I, I mean, your muscle glycogen just isn't going to recover in time.

• 46:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  If you're not replenishing it on the run. And I mean, I'll still do under two hour runs that are just recovery runs. I'll still do those fasted with nothing.

• 46:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Because I do want to just every now and then test my body's like innate fat burning capacity because I still want it to be there. But I just want to do my long runs the way that they're going to be on race day. And you also just have to train your gut too, if you want to eat 90 grams of carbs an hour. And then I'm also sympathetic to people, you know, who I work with who are like, well, fueling is really expensive because it is.

• 47:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Like if you're, if you're feeling like David Rose, who's doing 100 to 150 grams an hour, a six hour run is going to cost you $60 to $80, right?

• 47:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I never thought about that.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Who can, not that many people can afford that, you know?

• 47:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  So.

• 47:21Cameron Hanes?

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• 48:02Cameron Hanes?

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• 48:47Cameron Hanes?

  count on. Whether you're running deep in the backcountry or just stacking meat for the weekend, Grizzly is built for that grind. Right now, you can get 20% off at grizzlycoolers.com with the code KEEPHAMMERING. And that's all one word. And I'm not going to spell it. Keep hammering. Again, keep hammering, one word for 20% off. Don't roll with weak gear. Go Grizzly.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Once you kind of professionalize in the sport and you're either getting stuff for free or discounts, or you just have enough money to afford what you need, like you are then now at a huge advantage. You know, that's another thing I noticed this year is like, okay, so like, this is why people take big leaps once they get sponsored. It's because all of a sudden, they're able to afford all the things they need to train perfectly and they don't have to be like, hmm, what runs can I fuel on? What runs can't I fuel on? Right?

• 49:38Cameron Hanes?

  Well, and even, I know, like, when I had a full-time job, it was hard to get in, like, the recovery part, the sauna, the cold plunge, the massage, because I get massages twice a week now, let alone the fueling and the diet, and then to sleep. I mean, I never slept because I, something had to give if I wanted to train and work full-time. So the sleeping is, you know, I know Olympic athletes, that's basically their training.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:06Cameron Hanes?

  It's just as important as putting in the work, you know, the recovery.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 50:09Cameron Hanes?

  So when you, when you add all that up, yeah, that's when you're, and so that's the challenge of, you know, ultra right now is how many people can be, get sponsored or support enough to do it full-time without a job?

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:24Cameron Hanes?

  Not a lot.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Not a lot, for sure. It's a small number. It is growing, you know, as money comes into the sport and the sport gets more popular. But you're right. I mean, if we're talking about like my weeks, like 24 hours of time on feet, that doesn't count. All the time I'm walking my dog for an hour a day. So you're adding seven more hours. I'm at 31 hours of physical activity. That doesn't count lifting. All right, I'm at 35 hours of activity. That doesn't count sauna. I'm probably at 37, you know, mobility, like mobility you add in everything. I'm easily at 40 hours, right?

• 50:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  And so

• 50:58Cameron Hanes?

  It's a full-time job.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And so for a long time I was doing a full-time job that I'm not getting paid for and another full-time job, you know?

• 51:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  That I'm, and I worked kind of a bunch of random jobs that allowed me flexibility to take off time for races and stuff. But yeah, it's, is you're like, you're, to be really successful, you're basically devoting your life to this thing, not knowing whether or not it will ever be lucrative. And that's obviously not the why. That's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I love it. But uh, it's nice.

• 51:28Cameron Hanes?

  To be at your best.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Cameron Hanes?

  You need time.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 51:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's, that's where, I mean, I want the, you know, in some ways, and we've talked about it with different people, but I like the, like the dirtbag style of ultra, just kind of like, they're just, we do this because we love the mountains and I like the little races and things like that. But I also like seeing people crush it and be rewarded for all the training, all the effort, all their talent. I mean, to have talent, you know, I want to see the ultra in the Olympics. I want to see

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 52:02Cameron Hanes?

  I want to see people get what they deserve. And this is one of the hardest sports in the world because the training, getting your body to perform. I want to see it celebrated in the Olympics.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:13Cameron Hanes?

  And that would bring everybody up, you know, basically.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Man, I want to touch on that Olympic thing for a second because I've had ideas about this too, where imagine if you had a, like all the distances, 50K through 200 miler, and you made one-time courses. So like, US is hosting the Olympics and we allow them to run through Yosemite or something like that.

• 52:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Like one time, you offer a one-time permit and that's the only time that course will ever be run.

• 52:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I think that would be incredible.

• 52:41Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that'd be sick.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:43Cameron Hanes?

  Dude, that, so what do you mean like the 50K to 200? What do you mean?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  So you just have all the distances available. So you have 50K. You've got, and they're all on trail. You got 50K, 100K, 100 miler, 200 miler.

• 52:54Cameron Hanes?

  All on the same course at the same time?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:56Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, okay. Gotcha.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Different days. And I think you could even, like, we have so much available i- in like, most places that the Olympics are being held have enough available that you could make those courses.

• 53:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  All different, all in different places.

• 53:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Imagine if the 50K was in Canyonlands and the 100K is in, you know, Glacier or something like that. It would be so cool to have these one-off courses. Like, they're not going to ruin the land.

• 53:19Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  You know, we're not giving a permit to a million people.

• 53:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  And just have it be like this one-time special event that will never happen again. That's my idea for ultra running in the Olympics.

• 53:28Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, I'd, I'd love it. Like, well, the, the chances of that happening with all those races is probably not great, but if you had to pick one distance, what do you think would be best for the?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  100 miles.

• 53:39Cameron Hanes?

  100 miles.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:40Cameron Hanes?

  And, uh, would you be fired up to try that?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  I would definitely give it a go. It would depend on what like, what, what the qualifying course looked like for if I had any shot, you know, if it's hard rock, maybe. If it's western, no shot, you know, so.

• 53:53Cameron Hanes?

  Or Havelina.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:55Cameron Hanes?

  Those, those, yeah, because we have 100 mile races, but so different.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Cameron Hanes?

  You know, you get hard rock, what is it?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  33,000.

• 54:03Cameron Hanes?

  Feet of gain?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:04Cameron Hanes?

  And what's Havelina?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  6.

• 54:07Cameron Hanes?

  6,000?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 54:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So it's completely different races.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:11Cameron Hanes?

  But still 100-ish miles. But yeah, it would just be, I know people would love it because they tune in, you know, it's 10 days. The Olympic Games are 10 days.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:20Cameron Hanes?

  They would watch this shit.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  And they tune into Cogadona.

• 54:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, like 800,000 different people watched Cogadona last year on the live stream, which is, I, I always think it's funny that people watch this because it's mostly watching zombies shovel crap into their mouth while they're sitting in a chair looking like a half-dead person.

• 54:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It's, it's rough. It's a, that's what's hard with ultra films. I mean, I love good ultra films, but it's hard to get out of aid station footage.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we specifically were like, we're not making an aid station movie. For one thing, like, my aid station stops were averaged about two minutes.

• 54:55Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, fast.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  They're fast. So there's not a lot of time in aid stations. And the filmmakers, Rachel and Nolan, they are also ultra runners. So they ran collectively more than 40 miles of the race with me.

• 55:07Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, great.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  So we've got running footage and then they gave my Pacers a little handheld DJI.

• 55:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Like, we've got some footage of the awful muddy sections. One thing we don't have footage of that I wish we did is I fell like neck deep into a puddle at one point.

• 55:21Cameron Hanes?

  See, that's.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wish we had that, but uh, like, we've, and then we've got a footage, like, one of my Pacers took footage of me waking up from my second dirt nap. And that's pretty funny, you know, and.

• 55:32Cameron Hanes?

  Look disoriented and.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  It's, it's weird. I look really comfortable and then I'm just like back. Cause when a dirt nap works, you're just like.

• 55:39Cameron Hanes?

  Crazy.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  You're in the dark, in the nether regions, and then you're back, you know?

• 55:43Cameron Hanes?

  I always said it was like a control, delete, like back in the day when you have to do that.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 55:48Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, I guess I'll pu- unplug this thing, or maybe I'll just try this first. That's when a dirt nap is.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  End task.

• 55:55Cameron Hanes?

  Everything, whatever, you're just pushing all sorts of shit, but start back over. And that's what the dirt nap is. I've, I did that one time. I think it was Bigfoot, actually. And my brother Taylor was pacing me and I think I, or maybe it was Moab. But I woke up and I was just like, it felt like I'd been there forever. I was like, how long was I asleep? He's like, one minute.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Cameron Hanes?

  He's like, let's go.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  We're doing it.

• 56:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, that's how that, I don't, I don't know why that works or how it works. Do you?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  No, physiologically, I feel like it makes no sense. And when you tell people who haven't experienced it.

• 56:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  They're like, there's no chance that works. But I'm like, no, five minutes for each of the first two races this year, that was enough for me to get to the end.

• 56:32Cameron Hanes?

  It's crazy.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  It's very weird.

• 56:35Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, it's not sustainable.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 56:36Cameron Hanes?

  For sure. But for a couple of days.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  For 60 hours or less.

• 56:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. But after that, who knows? You, then you need the math, I guess.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:47Cameron Hanes?

  But you know what's interesting to me? Oh, first, tell me about this bracelet. I've noticed that, that.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's a, so, uh, this was made for me or given to me by, um, Woodsy is the name of Nolan and Rachel's youngest kid.

• 57:01Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  I think he's two. And so he wanted to give this to me like the whole race. And so he ran up to me at a dry valley and just. Gave me this bracelet and I wear, I pretty much wear it every day now. It makes me so happy.

• 57:12Cameron Hanes?

  I like it.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  He's such a cute little kid and their kids are like the most polite, three children I've ever met in my life and so fun to be around. So yeah, it just gives me a little happiness when I look down on it.

• 57:23Cameron Hanes?

  It reminds, I mean, that's like a baby bracelet, which reminds me of James hates babies. And he was gonna, you, you were gonna punch one or you did, but whatever. So that's like our bonus question. Would you punch a baby on a plane if it was crying full force?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Whew.

• 57:45Cameron Hanes?

  Or would you just half?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  I think half, half, half body shot.

• 57:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Or yeah, I, I think if people would say where?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:55Cameron Hanes?

  Where like head or body? So okay, body shot half. Okay, that's cool.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Maybe go for the parent full force, depending on, on how proactive or not proactive they're being.

• 58:04Cameron Hanes?

  Why did you, why do you hate babies? By the way?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Uh, because they're always sat right behind me and crying, screaming their heads off.

• 58:14Cameron Hanes?

  And they always shit your pants.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:16Cameron Hanes?

  They shit your pants.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  People got mad, but all I was saying is that if you're a parent with a baby, you should be with the luggage below the plane.

• 58:28Cameron Hanes?

  So James, he was trying to act like he had his first haters. It's not even really hate.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:32Cameron Hanes?

  But so he read this on Shit Tucker's Weekly, something about, what did he call you? Boss man?

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Boss man.

• 58:39Cameron Hanes?

  Boss man.

• 58:42Cameron Hanes?

  Anyway, this guy's telling, telling James he doesn't know what the is talking about, which is true.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  But I mean, you know.

• 58:47Cameron Hanes?

  I'm not gonna argue.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:49Cameron Hanes?

  So speaking of babies, um, you told me a cool story when you were seven, I think seven, right? Tell me about how you, how you grew up and, uh, it made me feel better about abusing my kids. Because I used to make them run the mountain, the mountain we ran all the time, but that wasn't anything like what you did when you were a kid. Tell me about that.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, when the summer I turned eight, so we started when I was seven, uh, my family bicycled from Fort Collins, Colorado to Seattle, Washington. And you weren't miserable, from what I understand. I'm sure there were some miserable moments. I mean, at one point on the trip, I got a chicken bone stuck in my throat. And so I didn't eat for like a full day of bicycling. And so there's a picture of me, we took it 1500 miles and I look like pale and like deathly. Because I hadn't eaten for a full day before that. My throat was so swollen, I like had to make myself vomit a bunch. Did they, did you, your parents know about this chicken bone? Um, well, they tell a story. They're like, so we stopped at this restaurant, we were bicycling and then all of a sudden Killian's asking all these questions about like,

• 59:54Speaker 01

  is it possible to get a chicken bone stuck in my throat? Then apparently I'm like sitting on the back of this bike coughing and I'm starting to like spit. And my, my, my mom is all of a sudden like, oh shit, he's got a chicken bone stuck in his throat. So I remember sitting behind a Kmart, having bought syrup of like Epicac syrup to make you vomit. Yeah. Cause they tried a lot of things. They, they like, we tried all this stuff to make me vomit, like putting fingers in my mouth, not vomiting. I tried, uh, eating a spoonful of salt, like a big spoonful of salt. This turned into a thing. Yeah, like not vomiting. And so then we had to get drugs to make me vomit and we're sitting behind this Kmart in the middle of nowhere. And, uh, all of a sudden I'm just.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Did it come out? It did come out, yeah. But I still felt like garbage and it sucked too, because we ended up in, uh, I think it's called Leavenworth, Montana. That night and it's like a German town. We, uh, we love Germany and I grew up in Europe and we were all looking forward to getting German food like schnitzel and spazely that night. And so then I'm sitting in the hotel, only able to like, just eat a tiny bit of ice cream at a time. I couldn't even eat like, I wanted a Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen. I couldn't even eat the Oreos because it hurt my throat so bad. There were moments that were miserable, but that being said, the whole trip, you know, you, you look back on it as like one of the coolest experiences, right? I was looking forward to turning eight because that was like in my family when you got your first pocket knife. So like, I got a Swiss army knife and

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  every night I had this stick that I'm like carving and I'm, I remember. Was this on the trip? On the trip, yeah. And so I remember carving the stick into like a sharp point and we were going to stop for a while at this lake in, uh, Washington, Lake Shalan. It's known for having really clear water. It's a beautiful spot. So we were there for a couple of days and I remember like diving under the water, trying to spearfish with my sharpened stick, you know? So I'm like, uh, it was, it was really good. And then, uh, going into Seattle, we were bicycling across, uh, these bridges, um, on Lake Washington. And I'm on the back of tandem with my dad and at some point I just start talking to him and I'm like, hey, you know, I was really excited to get to Seattle and now I'm feeling sad, you know,

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  like that this is going to be over. I think that what this might have been about has been about the journey and not the destination.

• 1:02:06Cameron Hanes?

  You said that.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I said that as an eight year old.

• 1:02:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I'm pretty sure my parents were probably like, hallelujah. Like you got it. You figured it out here. And so, you know, four and eight year old to be saying that and having had that experience is like pretty powerful. And then, you know, obviously in my head, that is like a direct line to ultras. But it's funny, like talking to my mom at some point when I was getting into 200s and she's like, what do you do? Why are you doing this? I'm like, mom, like, think about what we did.

• 1:02:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's a, so how far is that trip?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  I think it's something like 1600, 1700 miles. Took 46 days.

• 1:02:42Cameron Hanes?

  46 days.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Cameron Hanes?

  That is awesome.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So cool.

• 1:02:45Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, what a great experience for a parent to, to share that with their kids, you know? I mean, because the fact that they had 46 days to take out of their life. I mean, what, what's, what's your mom and dad do?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  So they were both teachers. So they got summers off.

• 1:02:59Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, nice. And is that why you grew up in Europe?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my dad is, was a teacher for the Department of Defense School System. So he taught on an American Air Force base and that's where I went to school too.

• 1:03:10Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, okay. And how long, like, tell me about growing up. How long did you live?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  So I was born in Germany, lived there for three years. So don't remember much of that. Moved to England and I was there till I graduated high school.

• 1:03:20Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And my wife, I met my wife in high school there too.

• 1:03:25Cameron Hanes?

  And how, how was it growing up over there?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  It was cool. I mean, England is not, it wouldn't be the spot that I'd go back to. Like I'd kind of joke about how, like I live in the desert now where it's always sunny and I've just had enough rain for my entire life, having grown up in England. And unlike Oregon or, you know, the Pacific Northwest, the, the beauty of the countryside didn't really make up for how terrible the weather is.

• 1:03:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah, I see.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  The rain was a bummer. But no, it was really cool. I mean, for like, when I was going to away swim meets in high school, we would fly to Sicily or Germany or Spain or, you know? So that's amazing. Like having had those experiences, I learned how to ski in the Dolomites, you know, in Italy and like, As a kid, everything feels normal, you know, I'm just like, oh, this is what people do.

• 1:04:13Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  But now, looking back on it, I'm like, wow, what a, what an awesome way.

• 1:04:16Cameron Hanes?

  I've never been to Europe and I'm, you know, almost 60. So, yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Cameron Hanes?

  It's, uh, there's definitely some positives to that experience and just being worldly and just different, you know, societies and seeing how people interact, just like it had to really enhance just your youth and how you grew up and matured. Yeah. I mean, it's great perspective for, for sure.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Without a doubt. And like being on a, on a military base and kind of military schools, they're not like super, that's, it makes it sound like you're, they're like disciplined, like military schools. This is a normal school, but what was great about it is like everyone, except for the teacher's kids. So I only had one person from kindergarten who I graduated high school with, also a teacher's kid, but everyone else is only there for two or three years at a time. So like, there's no, there's not really cliques. Like everyone has this inherent insecurity that like they're going to go be the new person at some point. Or for me, like my friends are all gonna leave or all on this like churn together. And so it forces you to interact with people who are different than you.

• 1:05:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Like the military is a diverse place regardless. And so you end up having the ability to just like agree to disagree and to interact with people who are just come from vastly different backgrounds. And I think that's a, a huge bonus of just having grown up in that type of environment.

• 1:05:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I would think. Cause like, you know, in school, that's the worst thing about school is when you're not in the clique.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Cameron Hanes?

  You know, when you're the outsider, but there's like, everybody's recycled through basically because parents are moving in and out of different bases. So, yeah, it's just like, that probably is a huge positive to growing up on a military base. But, yeah. And you were able to compete in sports and swimming. Did you, did you run then?

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  No, I hated running until I got, graduated from college, basically. So I was a swimmer all the way through high school, swam in college. And then, once I was done swimming, you know, it was like, I'm either going to become a fat person or I'm gonna do something else. And I had done a marathon in 2017, the year before I graduated, hadn't really trained for it. I had the classic like bonk at mile 18.

• 1:06:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Zombie walk it in. I mean, I, I finished in an okay time, but I was like, I'm never doing this again. This is the stupidest thing in the world. Why does anybody do this? You know? And then, when I actually trained for a marathon in 2018. I ran a road marathon in Virginia called the Blue Ridge Marathon. It's a road marathon, but it has 7,500 feet of climbing. So it's a big road marathon.

• 1:06:43Cameron Hanes?

  That's legit.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I actually trained for it, did pretty well. That's still, no, it was my marathon PR until last year.

• 1:06:50Cameron Hanes?

  Seven thousand and 26 miles?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Cameron Hanes?

  That's a lot.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, they bill it as America's hardest road marathon, which might be true.

• 1:06:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  There's a lot of climbing and I didn't really realize that at the time because I didn't have anything to compare it to, you know? But I'm like, oh, this is fun. So that was 2018 in May. In July, I ran the Leadville 50. And then even before I ran the Leadville 50, I signed up for 100 in Texas. So I had got the bug, you know?

• 1:07:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  The addiction had fully set in. And then I went from running a marathon to running 100 miles in less than five months, which now that I'm a coach, I'm like, that's really dumb progression. But it worked, you know, my first 100 didn't go well, but I finished. I lost seven out of 10 toenails. So that was pretty, that was an experience.

• 1:07:33Cameron Hanes?

  What, which one was that?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  It's called the Cactus Rose 100. It's in Texas. And it was a, it's since been changed a little bit, but it was basically a self-supported race where you provided drop bags and then they took them to aid stations. So there's no volunteers or anything, right? And so all I had, I tried to, all I fueled on and all I ate was Cliff bars and bananas. And so then I just didn't eat anything for the last 40 miles.

• 1:07:58Cameron Hanes?

  Cause those suck.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Terrible, dude. You ever tried to chew a Cliff bar when you're really tired and your mouth is dry?

• 1:08:04Cameron Hanes?

  So worse.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Impossible.

• 1:08:05Cameron Hanes?

  They're not even good. You got everything with you to drink and eat. Like they're okay if that's all you got, but yeah, it's rough.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cliff bars and bananas for 31 hours.

• 1:08:15Cameron Hanes?

  And then, so you're, as you know now, or everybody knows, is your feet swell. So I guess your shoes probably are a little bit too small.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was, I was running in La Sportivas, so narrower, narrow already in size 10 and a half. And now I run in size 12 ultras. So big difference. Yeah. There was, so it was loops, it was four 25 mile loops. And before the last loop, I'm like changing my socks, my cotton socks. And I take them off and I just vividly remember how much dried blood was stuck to my sock and three toenails just ripped off with the dried blood.

• 1:08:50Cameron Hanes?

  I remember those, I used to wear cotton socks like for basketball in high school.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Cameron Hanes?

  You just put on two pairs of socks, right? That's what I guess what people did, but it seemed like those white cotton socks were like sandpaper new.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Cameron Hanes?

  I can't imagine what they're doing to your feet in an ultra.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Oh, so bad.

• 1:09:08Cameron Hanes?

  It's just like, as we know, foot maintenance is like one of the biggest challenges. Those socks definitely don't help that shit.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  No, I, I mean, before that race, I didn't even do a Google search of like, hey, what, what, what do people eat during these races or how do you train for these things? Like nothing, you know, I was just like, bro, how, how different can running a hundred miles be from running 50 miles? I remember saying that out loud.

• 1:09:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It reminds me when Tru was going for the world record for pull-ups, the first one, the 40 or no, 80 100, he was like, he had trained so much, he's like, I don't think it's gonna be that hard. Like, oh, well, you were wrong.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 1:09:45Cameron Hanes?

  Cause you only did 4,000, but yeah, so we get, we can get kind of overconfident, but uh, yeah, that's all part of the process because you don't know until you do it.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  No, and I mean, I, I was totally infected with the, the young man in his twenties who thinks he's invincible.

• 1:10:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like I for sure had the, I know everything, I can do anything attitude.

• 1:10:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And like not approaching it with humility. And then you just like, I had experiences outside of races, just in the mountains, you know, in Alaska, I almost died in a crevasse, like I got lost in the Colorado wilderness one time. And then after those experiences, you're like, I, I, I used to kind of think when I would like climb a peak, I'd be like, oh, I'm conquering the mountain. That's how I would phrase it to myself.

• 1:10:30Cameron Hanes?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  And now I'm like, no, no, what actually happened is I got lucky today that the mountain didn't kill me.

• 1:10:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  You know, like it doesn't care about you. No, like you, when you face the elements, you know, you, if you're not approaching it with humility, like you're gonna die.

• 1:10:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  And so, once you have a few experiences that could have gone really wrong, that ended up not going wrong, then you either change or you're a moron.

• 1:10:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  And so thankfully, I don't think I went the moron route.

• 1:11:00Cameron Hanes?

  We are mortal, unfortunately, but what happened on the, in the crevasse?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  So I did this big trip to Alaska where me and one other friend. Yeah, I'll take some.

• 1:11:15Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know how much we got here, but I'll give you at least half.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's definitely good.

• 1:11:21Cameron Hanes?

  See if I got enough. I'll give you some more if we got. Oh, it's getting down there.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  I'm good with half. Yeah, that's, that works.

• 1:11:30Cameron Hanes?

  No, you're gonna have to give me your half so I have a full cup.

• 1:11:34Cameron Hanes?

  Do you want some cream?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:11:37Cameron Hanes?

  I'm hiding it over here.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Is this a Black Rifle?

• 1:11:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:11:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yes, AK-47 or something like that is a blend.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Nice, that's what, uh, yeah, one of my buddies gets too.

• 1:11:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's good. Uh, okay. Yeah. So tell me about that crevasse.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  So in Alaska, uh, the, can I go through the like, kind of the whole story?

• 1:11:58Cameron Hanes?

  Go through all of it.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  It's a pretty good story.

• 1:12:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Um, so one day in Colorado, I was just, I was going backcountry skiing and I was going by myself and I was going to camp with my dog. And we were just going to do really Miller stuff because I was by myself, but I met these two guys who were from the Air Force Academy. First time meeting them just happened to be out there at the same time. We ski together a little bit and then share each other's. I give them my phone number. And so the next day I get a text from one of them, Evan, and he's like, hey, I'm planning this trip to Alaska. So we had skied in maybe April or May. Um, and then he's like, you know, you mentioned you were a raft guy that's going to involve rafting. Like you want to come? And I'm like, well, obviously the answer is yes.

• 1:12:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 1:12:37Cameron Hanes?

  Adventure, yes.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we skied together a few more times, um, get to know each other a little bit. And so then the, the other guy that was going to be involved ends up having to bail. So it's just the two of us. And, um, basically our plan was to, our plan A was to fly into Juneau, get a ferry up to Haynes, fly into the, um, Mount Fairweather, ski Mount Fairweather, and then hike to the Alsek Lake, raft to the Pacific, hike up to Yakata. So.

• 1:13:02Cameron Hanes?

  It's a good trip.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Ambitious, right? We end up not getting a weather window to fly into Mount Fairweather, but I think that actually worked to our benefit for it being cooler. Cause we got flown into the Grand Pacific Glacier, essentially traversed the entire Grand Pacific Glacier over the course of about 12 days. Those were like the purest 12 days of freedom that I've ever felt in my life.

• 1:13:22Cameron Hanes?

  Love that.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  We're just pulling our pack rafts of sleds, using them as couches, lounging in the most beautiful place I've ever been. We're like, oh, you want to go ski that? Yeah, let's do it. Oh, you want to go ski that? Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:13:33Cameron Hanes?

  That's living.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it was the best thing of all time.

• 1:13:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  I, it is. Indescribable like purity of experience. But then we're getting to the Allsec Lake. Well, on the glacier, at one point it starts raining. And then we've realized that the tent that we had gotten from the, the mountain club at the Air Force Academy wasn't waterproof. So this four proof tent, we, you know, obviously we should have tested out, but at one point we were bailing our tent out with pots like, like we were, you know, drowning sailors on a rowboat. Like it was absurd. Yeah. But uh, so tent not waterproof. All of our stuff is wet, so everything's heavier. We're to get off the glacier, you know, once you get below a certain elevation, it turned out to be about 3,000 feet. You end up having no more snow and it's just ice.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  So now you're just on crevasses. So we're roped up and going across this maze of death. So you're walking on like something that's two feet wide with crampons. We were carrying about a hundred, 105 pounds on our back. And there's death down there and down there. And so it's like 200 feet crevasses on all sides, you know? So we have one day of this where it takes about 16 hours and we end up going a total straight line distance of like point four of a mile. And the whole time we can see the lake we're trying to get to. So close. See the lake. And so like, there are a few times we set up ice rappels and where we dropped down and we're like, that felt like changing the level to the game because there's no way we're getting back up. Yeah. So we dropped down and like, okay. And then that night we end up just setting up our tent in a boulder field, like sleeping on

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  rocks because you're like so tired, it just had to happen. Next day it was ended up being another 16 hour day, but towards the end of the day, we're in this really confusing terrain where like had the mountain on one side and then the glacier on the other, but the glacier was covered in dirt. So it's really hard to tell whether or not you were on ice or on dirt. Yeah. And so we had stupidly taken off our crampons because we thought we were on the mountain. Turned out we were not. I ended up sliding down towards this crevasse that then like put out into this big, huge pond, basically in between the glacier and the mountain. And there was a huge waterfall creating a ton of noise. So my buddy ends up going over the crest of this ridge and I like self arrest with my ice axe. So I'm sitting there, I can't get out. I managed to put on one crampon on my foot with one hand while my ice axe is,

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  you know, buried in the ice. My pack weighs a hundred pounds and I'm sitting there. I'm like, I can't get out of this, you know? And so one thing I'm pretty proud of is I managed to, so my, my GPS phone was in a pocket of my bag and I managed to put it in a pocket of my jacket so that if I did fall in and I had to ditch my pack, we'd have the SOS button, right? So I was pretty proud of how clear headed I was. But then my friend ends up, I don't know how much time it was, because when you're in that moment, time slows, right? He ends up coming back roping me off. And then after I get roped off, I like had a moment of like, kind of panic and I start shaking. I was like, holy shit. Like, that

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  was pretty close to being really, really, really bad. And then we go a little further down, we raft across, across the pond and then pack it up and then a hundred yards down, we find this beach at the lake where it was maybe double as twice as wide as this table is long, like tiny with a 50 foot wall of ice and a thousand foot cliff on the other side. So we get to, we get to the beach and the world is like hooting and hollering. We're like, we're not gonna die. We're not gonna die. So that like the next day, we paddle across the all sec, his boat springs a leak and it's on the zipper, the one place we can't repair it. So like, I was testing out these icebergs so that he could hop out

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  onto these icebergs on this lake and then blow up his boat. And then we get to the river, the river is running way faster than anticipated. And we're literally moving 22 miles an hour going down the river. And it was pretty easy rafting, but if you like, what are, what are we gonna do if you flip? And then at one point, we pass an iceberg the size of a house that's stuck in a hole in the middle of the river, getting recirculated by the water. Yeah. And we're just like, dude. That's death. You get stuck into that, everything's done.

• 1:17:42Cameron Hanes?

  That's dangerous.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was crazy. We got to, we ended up getting to the Pacific Ocean, but then we didn't end up hiking to the town because there was a little airstrip and my bag broke. So like the strap that connects my shoulder strap broke and we carabinered it, but the carabiner dug into my hip.

• 1:17:59Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  And so we're walking, literally like hunched over, calorie deficit, carrying what was a hundred pounds, but now I probably weighed more because it's soaking wet.

• 1:18:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  And I remember sending my wife a message with the GPS phone. I was like, don't worry, we are physically safe, but spirits are broken.

• 1:18:16Cameron Hanes?

  That sounds nuts.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  You need to get us out of here. So we ended up getting flown out of this like tiny little airstrip.

• 1:18:22Cameron Hanes?

  Did she get ahold of somebody to get in there?

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  She did. She called every single person probably that lives in the town of Yakata. Cause we were like, we're eating dinner at this lodge when we finally get there and, um, you know, we're kind of talking about the trip and some guy next to us is like, oh, I talked to your wife today.

• 1:18:40Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that's, that's sketchy though.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:43Cameron Hanes?

  I mean,

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:18:44Cameron Hanes?

  But what an adventure.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  It was amazing. I mean, it, I, I would, I would do something like that again, but I would do it much more intelligently. Cause like you said earlier, like what you don't know, you don't know.

• 1:18:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  We learned a lot.

• 1:18:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Cameron Hanes?

  For sure. No, it's a, that sounds, yeah, like a good hunting trip, but you just weren't trying to kill something.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Cameron Hanes?

  But a good adventure. That's, I love Alaska just because it's so big and unpredictable. And yeah, but it's like, you never, you, when do you ever feel more alive than trying to survive the elements? And yeah, you know, just like the little things like that, like, you know, you could get one crampon on or just barely get your GP. He's like that. I li, I like when there's, everything matters like that. Like there's consequences.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Cameron Hanes?

  I like life with consequences, you know, because most, it feels like most people go through life and whatever you fuck up, you do stupid shit. Doesn't really matter. Not really.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:45Cameron Hanes?

  But there it matters.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 1:19:47Cameron Hanes?

  And I like that stuff.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, not having the crampons on.

• 1:19:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Was so dumb, you know? So. Yeah, mistakes matter and just like it's the purity of the experience.

• 1:19:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  I definitely tend to romanticize, you know, the hunter gatherer time period of human history. I think that there'd be something about the purity of that experience that I find compelling, right? But you can have that now and you know, I like having days like that where I love scrambling in the mountains where if you fall, you're gonna die, you know? Cause, cause you're running, you know, it's actually kind of hard to get into a flow state.

• 1:20:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Because you're not doing something where if you end up paying, not paying attention for a second, you're gonna die. But when, when that's the consequence, you have, there's no effort to get there.

• 1:20:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  You're just there. And like, that is as close to, you know, the like base level evolutionary, you know, brain stem function that I think we can get to and it is great.

• 1:20:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it is. It's a, yeah, it's amazing. Um, but how, but listening to you describe like anything, I mean, you got a great vocabulary. You've been educated. It's like, tell me about like your just like you have master's degree in political science and shit like that. It's like, how do you go from, from like the intellectual type or education or higher education type thing to ultra running?

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  So, uh, when I went to school, I was a hundred percent sure that I was gonna become a politician. So.

• 1:21:20Cameron Hanes?

  Like what was your goal as a, like what politician?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  I probably, I wanted to, I was saying, I'm gonna be a senator, you know? I was like, I was humble enough to be like, I'm gonna be one of a hundred rather than one. You know, I'm not gonna be the president, but I'm gonna be a senator, you know? I'd done model, United Nations and all this debate stuff in high school and you know, I'm like, was fairly knowledgeable about these things and I'd always loved philosophy. And so I considered myself, you know, to be able to, that, that didn't seem like a ridiculous goal, right? Um, but then you get to, I got to college and you know, I was a complete idealist. You know, I'm like, I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna change things, you know, I'm earnest. I believe things, you know, and then you just learn a little bit about how the system works.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, like.

• 1:22:10Cameron Hanes?

  This can't be fixed.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  I, I'm not a scumbag.

• 1:22:15Cameron Hanes?

  And a liar.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, I can't, I don't want to do this, you know? And I had this really intense experience in the woods of West Virginia camping alone, where like, I was kind of depressed for the first time in my life. And I didn't know why, I'm like, what's going on?

• 1:22:30Cameron Hanes?

  How old were you?

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  I'm 21, I want to say. So I'm, I'm about two months from getting my master's degree at this point. And I'm like, what's, what's happening to me? Like, I've, I'm, I'm dispositionally like a very cheerful person. But I'm in the woods, I'm alone, I'm camping, I, you know, it's like my first time really backpacking. And I just kind of have this realization moment where I'm like, oh, like, I don't want to do this. Like, all this stuff I've been studying, it has been leading me to a career that I'm not enthusiastic about anymore.

• 1:23:01Cameron Hanes?

  That's sobering.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  It is, but, and like, there's two ways to take it, right? I could be like, oh shit, I wasted a bunch of money. I, I wasted my time, my parents' time, my, all this, blah, blah, blah, you know? But instead, I took it really positively where like, at least I know this.

• 1:23:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  You know, like, what if I had dove into a career of 10 years, a decade of unhappiness and then found out?

• 1:23:22Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  That's, that's the worst, that's a worse option. So I came home from that and was like, something needs to happen. What do I want to do? And then I was like, oh, what I want to do is have more experiences like that. Like, you know, West Virginia is a weird place because the towns are so poor, but the land is so rich.

• 1:23:41Cameron Hanes?

  Rich, yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  You know, so, and I, I just kept going back to West Virginia over and over and over again.

• 1:23:46Cameron Hanes?

  So why, why West Virginia?

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  It's close, you know?

• 1:23:49Cameron Hanes?

  To DC?

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Close-ish, two hours, you know?

• 1:23:51Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Virginia was close too, but there was something about West Virginia that I liked more than Virginia. It felt wilder, there's a little bit more variance to the terrain. You know, if, there's a place called Dolly Sod's, which is the only place on the East Coast. They have snowshoe hares because it gets cold enough on this plateau. Like, it's just a unique environment and I really liked it, you know? So I, I kind of discovered, I was like, this is what I want to do. How do I do this? You know, how do I make a career out of this?

• 1:24:17Cameron Hanes?

  You just wanted to be immersed in the wild or nature or?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  I want to explore mountains, you know? That's what I fell in love with.

• 1:24:24Cameron Hanes?

  That, did you do a lot of solo trips like that or is that?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Cameron Hanes?

  One of the first?

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  I did a lot of solo trips like that and so.

• 1:24:30Cameron Hanes?

  What, what'd you like about that? Just?

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  The time to think, you know, um, and I've, I've always been a writer and I journal and I, I would write poetry in the mountains and stuff and maybe it was terrible, but I enjoyed doing it, you know, and I would think about things, you know, I would listen to audiobooks, I would read, you know, that's the first time I read, uh, you know, Albert Camus, who's an existential philosopher, like was, was in a tent and I read it all in one day. It was raining out and so I just decided to sit in my tent and I read The Stranger in one day, you know?

• 1:25:05Cameron Hanes?

  That sounds like a perfect day.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:08Cameron Hanes?

  Basically, kinda, doesn't it?

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I'm having all these like intense experiences, both on a physical side of things and intellectually where they complemented each other so much that I kind of realized, I'm like, you know, if I was a video game character, you know, I would want to be a warrior poet. It's kind of how I describe myself and I, that's sort of jokingly because I'm definitely not a warrior in any traditional sense, but it's like, I want these two sides.

• 1:25:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. How did the philosophy compo- like you said, like, um, the physical and the philosophy, how does the philosophy make you better physically?

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  So, one, I think that I, I, I would describe myself as a physicalist and what that means is that I think that there is no mind-body separation. Like, I think your mind is, is, is just a physical process, basically. And so when you're improving one, you're ultimately improving the other, you know, just like, um, you know, I'm sure there, we've, we've all eaten an unhealthy dessert or something like that and then felt cloudy later, right? So even if you think there's a separation, they're obviously connected, right?

• 1:26:12Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  So nourishment for one is nourishment for the other. And I mean, I am a big fan of Stoicism. So like Marcus Aurelius, who's a Roman emperor and Seneca, who was a slave, they were the, kind of the founders of the school of Stoicism and They couldn't have had more different experiences. You know, one is basically a god, a mortal god thought of by his people, and the other is a slave. But they're both coming to these same conclusions about how best to live your life. You know, like be the rock that the wave crashes upon is a famous phrase from Marcus Aurelius. And it's like, you want to ultimately be able to deal with the challenges in daily life by kind of being level headed about it, right? And what's the best way to train yourself to do that?

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Is to have intense, physical experiences where you're forced to be level headed or you're gonna die. Like we're like, it connects to like we're talking about earlier, right? And so I might not have been having that intensive experiences from the get go. But I knew somewhere inside me that this was the path to what you might call enlightenment. I'm not claiming to be enlightened, but I'm just saying that like this, the striving towards that is both a physical and an intellectual goal that I think ultra running and pursuits in the outdoors ultimately are emblematic of that struggle.

• 1:27:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, so define for me, like I've heard the term path to enlightenment and age of enlightenment. Describe that for me. What does that mean?

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  So there's a, there's a historical period called the enlightenment, which is totally different from like the philosophical idea of enlightenment. And everyone's going to describe this differently. And I don't know that it's, it's one of those things that I don't know. It's like, is it actually possible to reach enlightenment? I'm skeptical of that, but it is, what I think of it as is just this ideal that you strive to. You know, you think of like the United States founding documents are focused on freedom, liberty, yada, yada. When those were written, people had slaves, right? So you're not, they're not living up to those ideals at the time.

• 1:28:20Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  But the reason we're able to improve as a society is because we have these ideals that although we will never reach perfection with them, that we can continuously say like, this is what we're shooting for, right? And so enlightenment is kind of like that on a personal level where it ultimately means that I want, I just want to be able to.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  When, you know, I'm in an argument with my wife or something, I want to be able to step back in that moment and not be focused on whatever the problem is and be focused on the fact that I love this person and have that, you know, infect my judgment in the conflict.

• 1:28:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  Infect is a weird word to say there, but you know what I mean.

• 1:29:02Cameron Hanes?

  Influence, yeah.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Infu might be a more positive connotation there. And same with, you know, being in the outdoors, you know, when I was sitting on the edge of that crevasse, I managed to be calm and get my phone, my GPS phone into a pocket on my purse.

• 1:29:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Right. And so like, those two moments are very different, but they're kind of, they, they sort of live and breathe what I think of as like moments where I was enlightened.

• 1:29:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Where I was able to separate myself from the situation. I didn't let the wave crash upon the rock and break the cliff face off.

• 1:29:36Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  I was the rock and I was sitting there.

• 1:29:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  With all this chaos going around and I was able to make clear headed decisions. And I think that those moments are that like emblematic of what I think of as enlightenment, if that makes sense.

• 1:29:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that does. That's a, yeah, I mean, I like that, um, the path to enlightenment. It reminds me, um, I was talking to Jelly Roll when we were running the other day and he's 41 and just kind of getting into the running, losing, you know, weight and doing everything that he's doing positive. And, uh, you know, somebody might say like, you know, wasted all the way to 41 years old before you figured this out, right? Before you figure out to exercise and diet and bow hunting and all the stuff he's doing now. But what I told him, I said, you're on the path now. Some people, they're over here their whole life. They're never even close to the path.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:29Cameron Hanes?

  Some people have been on the path for a long time. Some people might get on it after you and pass you, but you're on the path going the right way.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Cameron Hanes?

  That's a win. And we just keep going. We just stay on the path. So to me, it's like, you'll never reach that true. Place of enlightenment, but you're getting closer to it.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Cameron Hanes?

  And as you do get closer, you're growing, you're evolving, you're becoming more of what you seek to become. And that's, I think that for men especially, that calm and chaos, that is the key. That is what our community, our society, our family needs. They need somebody to be, hey, when everything's going to shit, who's the guy everybody looks to?

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:15Cameron Hanes?

  That's who we want to be. When, when they need somebody to have the answers or be the strength or be just somebody to, to help them, that's who we want to be.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you think about it, when we used to live in tribes, like you needed that person or your family might die.

• 1:31:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  You know, like you, you talk about living with consequences. It's like when, I think when we live in relatively affluent places, removed from consequences, it becomes easy to fall off the path.

• 1:31:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Because it's not necessary to be on the path for physical survival.

• 1:31:49Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Yeah, no, I, I like that. Um, so when you think of ultra running and, you know, you're, I mean, very talented, but like who's been, who inspires you in ultra running? Or who has been, has anybody been like, I want to be like that, but my own way or better or whatever?

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, what inspired me originally to get into the triple crown was hearing about Mike McKnight break the record in 2019. So I knew right away that I was like, and I knew from being a kid, you know, you play like touch football at lunch and I'm, I was like, I'm not fast.

• 1:32:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  So, you know, you don't, you know what I mean? When you're, you're a kid and you're like, oh, that part, like that guy, he's fast.

• 1:32:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  I'm not catching up to that guy, right? There's no amount of work I'm going to do that's going to get me to run a 202 marathon.

• 1:32:38Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Or a 12 hour Havelina or a 14 hour Western States. So like, remove all of that from the possibility. What does Mike McKnight have? And you kind of said it earlier, like I, I think what the two, what's beautiful about the 200s is that normal people who, who don't have tons of the natural gifts of being a lean life, you know, gazelle like runner, you know, can succeed at 200s.

• 1:33:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  And so that's what really drew me to it. And I was like, okay, what, what do I have that's a strength? I've got the mental piece. I think I've had that from the very beginning. And I have the the fortitude to just keep going.

• 1:33:13Cameron Hanes?

  Well, so you say the mental piece, though, but you didn't. Did you have that even when you were DNFing?

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Cameron Hanes?

  Or and you had it in your body, just wasn't cooperating, but you you knew that that was your strength.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the mental piece has never been a question.

• 1:33:27Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so seeing Mike McKnight have success at the 200s and him having the story that he has of, you know, not feeling athletic, being overweight, having, you know, breaking his spine and skiing accident, like all of that. I was like, okay, here's another normal guy who's succeeding in in pushing the limits that no one really thought was possible. Right? And so he was the inspiration for me to get into 200s. But I mean,

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  talk about who I find inspiring. There's like too many people to name in the sport of ultra running, you know, like it it just really is. That's one. That's the thing I love about it is there's not really many people who are doing this that are boring.

• 1:34:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  You know, everyone's got a story. And so, you know, I've I've been inspired by you. I've been inspired by David Goggins. I am inspired by Rachel Enchikin, you know, she's pushing the boundaries. I'm inspired by someone like Killian Journe, but in this way that I find him to be like an alien, you know, where like, what certain people do, it seems attainable, you know, what he does does not.

• 1:34:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, he's a freak.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Using him for inspiration is kind of weird because I'm like, well, okay, like, yeah, excellent. I'm never going to be there.

• 1:34:39Cameron Hanes?

  It'd be like it'd be like a young basketball player watching Michael Jordan.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:44Cameron Hanes?

  Kind of. And it's like, it makes you want to play and love it, but you know that that's tough.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, but he's also older than you. Who knows where where your the future holds for you, really?

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  And like, you can have different strengths.

• 1:35:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  It's it's it's not that. You don't have to, you don't have to value them differently, but you do, I do think you have to be honest with yourself about like what seem, you have to play to your strengths to a degree, right? Like what does seem attainable? And like, you know, does, like I said, does like a 14 hour Western states attainable? Like I don't think so. So it's like, I want to focus on the things that both scare me, but also seem like they're potentially in my wheelhouse.

• 1:35:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  You know, longer stuff, FKTs, that sort of thing.

• 1:35:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And so 200s obviously are right in your wheelhouse. Do you think that longer efforts would even be lean into more of your strength?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I have no proof for that yet, but uh, I mean, I wrote something on my Substack earlier this year called delusional self-belief. So I've got a lot of self-belief.

• 1:35:53Cameron Hanes?

  Hey, it all starts there.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But I do see my career trending towards that. So what I would really like to do, and I've got like a few ideas of just pie in the sky things, like how cool would it be to three consecutive years, set the AT, FKT, the CDT, and then the PCT? Like, like have all three of them at the same time, you know?

• 1:36:15Cameron Hanes?

  What's the middle one?

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  The continental divide trail.

• 1:36:18Cameron Hanes?

  Is that, so that'd be Montana then?

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it starts in Montana and ends in Mexico.

• 1:36:21Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Basically goes down the Rockies.

• 1:36:23Cameron Hanes?

  Oh yeah. So the AT all the way. Yeah. I mean, that'd hit all of them.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:27Cameron Hanes?

  That'd be amazing.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a year, like three years in a row, do all of those. And so I have these ideas of just these kind of like big, grand things I'd like to do. And what's nice about this space is that I don't need to do that right now.

• 1:36:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Like, I think that it's totally possible to set those types of FKTs when I'm in my 40s, you know? So, you know, I'm 30, I'm focused on races right now, potentially the Colorado Trail FKT next year. And so there's lots of options, but it's the adventure that calls me. And so, do I see myself doing the triple crown again? Probably not. Like, been there. I've done it. I loved it. And now we're moving on, right?

• 1:37:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Like, it would take a lot to get me to go back to do something again. I mean, I'm going back to Cogadona because I've never had the race there that I know that I can have.

• 1:37:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  But I don't foresee myself doing a lot of repeat things, you know? There's a lot to do in this world. There's a long trail that runs the entire length of Chile and Argentina, basically, like through those mountains. Imagine setting the FKT on that.

• 1:37:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  What is it? Who knows? How established is it? Who knows? But like, there's so many experiences to be had, like, I'm not going to limit it to, you know, what we think of as like the main races.

• 1:37:43Cameron Hanes?

  What is a limiting factor on those? Do you think, is it sponsorships and funding? To be able to make those dreams realistic? And then tell me, so you said you're inspired by a lot of people in Ultra. What I've noticed in Ultra is a lot of people are kind of like,

• 1:38:03Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, they train alone, by themselves out there all the time. We're kind of used to be like not talking a lot, like kind of in our own thing. That doesn't make, for characters on a, for a movie or documentary, you need personality, you know? And we're like inherently, because we train all the time, we're just like kind of in our own head. So we're not great at like conveying entertaining messages. But you seem like unique in that way. I mean, like I said, I like your bright glasses, the hairs, you speak well, and you have the performances. So it feels like you're set up for a great future. How do you get the sponsors?

• 1:38:46Cameron Hanes?

  And how do you get that people to believe in what you can do?

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  So I think, you know, this is, the ultimate answer to that question is, I don't know. But here's, here's my theory of the case here. I think, you know, part of it is the social media side of things. So being able to create your own hype around stuff is going to be huge. You know, I'm working with First Form. They've been incredibly supportive. They basically told me like, do what you want to do next year. And we'll try to make it happen, right? So FKTs, you know, you talk to shoe companies, they're not super stoked about FKTs. They're like, we want to see our shoes on podiums.

• 1:39:21Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Right? So.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  How do you make that worthwhile for companies to invest in? I think part of it is, you know, I said, I'm not in a rush to get into those long trails necessarily. It's like, I need to build a profile for myself of, okay, when he says he can do something, that it's likely to happen. Right? So I have no doubt that I'm going to fail at things probably in the next two years, you know, right? Hopefully, nothing this upcoming year, but who knows? You know, if I DNF at Coca Donut 150, you'll know why, and it's because I can't breathe.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  But hopefully, that doesn't happen. So I think part of it is just like having, you know, before this year, you looked at my results page on Ultra Sign Up. You're like, wow, this guy frigging DNFs everything, right? Oh, he had a good race at this 100 in Arizona Mogollon, you know, like, okay, cool. What does that mean? Nothing, right? So I think part of it is just having the results to speak for themselves, to be like, hey, here's, when I say that I'm going to do something, it's, you know, likely to happen. And then, you know, I think that I'm not particularly talented at like the, the objective self-promotion. But I do think, and I really like podcasts, I like the long form content.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  And what I'm working with, with First Form, you know, is some episodic storytelling going into Coca Dona. And I think that that will play to my strength as to what I'm effective at, you know? Conveying reasonably like, like longer messages than things that typically are on social media. And, you know, I think my Substack is a good forum for me. I love to write. I think I'm a pretty decent writer. So I, this is a long-winded way of saying, I don't know. But I think there's lots of paths to get there. And, and really what it all comes down to is like your whole thing of keep hammering. You know, like, you just have to keep putting in the work.

• 1:41:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  And if you put in the work, you believe in yourself, the rest will come. And so just like I kind of talked about being process oriented with a race, with specific races, rather than outcome oriented. I think what's going to get me to the point where I might be able to say to a company, like, send me to Chile and have me run this long trail, is being process oriented and not thinking about like, how do I get to this thing?

• 1:41:36Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you say like, shoe companies care about podiums, but you know what they all care about? Attention.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:46Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, if people are paying attention to you. That's all they care about. Yeah, I mean, so whether you do that by getting on the podium, or by setting FKTs, or by just being a great storyteller, or by just great performances, if people care, then your sponsors care for sure. And it's like, I think you do a great job. It's, you know, being an ultra runner, being on social media is hard for a guy anyway. It's like, girls have a huge advantage, but being an ultra runner is like a niche thing, but you're ascending so fast, you know, with, with the followers. And it's not like a space where people have tons of followers generally. So you're doing a great job, but I think that, yeah, your personality

• 1:42:27Cameron Hanes?

  shines, your performances, of course, are, are the key. But yeah, it's just storytelling and coming up with, with giving reasons for people to care.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Well, thanks. I appreciate all of that. And thanks for, you know, giving me a platform to further tell the story, you know? And I, and I really hope that, you know, the documentary, Forged in Failure, when that comes out, I hope that can play a role in, you know, lifting up both me and the people around me. And like, part of it, that's part of what's so rewarding about being in the position that I'm in now is that I can, you know, help the people who've helped to get me here, right? Like, you know, my coaching company that I work for, Everyday Ultra, I was able to quit both of my jobs before I even got a sponsor because I'm coaching for, for Joe Corcia and, and his company, right? Like, so I'm, he's a sponsor of the documentary, Everyday Ultra is, my sock company, Creepers, they believed in me when I was failing, you know?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  And like, now, I'm not. And so they made like a good investment, same with Ultra Spire. And then, you know, First Form obviously came on this year, and I hope that I can repay their belief in me for the future. But then, more than the companies, like, my wife has been supporting my lifestyle for seven years. Like, I've got a master's degree, and I haven't had a real job for seven years, and never once did she say to me, you need to get a real job. And so, her believing in this crazy, there's not that many people making money in ultras. And her believing that it could, could possibly happen, is the only reason I'm able to be here talking with you. You know? And like, Being able to, we've talked a lot about it and she would never phrase it like this, like as

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  a sacrifice, but objectively speaking, being able to like pay back her sacrifice for me

• 1:44:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  is like the most rewarding experience I've ever had in my life, you know?

• 1:44:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Not like she made a good investment with time and, and you know, loving me and believing in me and like that is just, it's hard to put into words how meaningful that is.

• 1:44:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Did, did you, so did you ever have doubts that you could make it?

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:34Cameron Hanes?

  And, and like, how'd you get past that?

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  All the doubts.

• 1:44:37Cameron Hanes?

  Cause I think self doubt sabotages many dreams.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean,

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  you know, when I DNF'd the two races in a row, like, how could you not have doubts? You know, I'm just like, okay, I know I have the mental piece. So I'd never doubted that I could mentally push through something, you know what I mean? But I'm like, what if my body doesn't hold up? I've always had this like paranoia that I'm like pigeon toed, my toes go in. I'm like, what if this is the end of my running career? Because I have this weird thing, right? You know, what if my body just isn't made to run 200 milers?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  How do you push through those doubts? Delusional self belief is the answer. Like you might not have any evidence, but you just have to, you just keep working. That's, that's the only answer. You know, the only way to rebuild confidence after losing confidence is to rebuild it brick by brick, you know, one step at a time, literally. And that's what you have to do. Like you're just, otherwise what's going to happen when, you know, like if you get in a car accident and someone T-bones you and you break your leg, they might pay for your surgery, but you've got to do the physical therapy.

• 1:45:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Right? Like there's no getting around putting that work in. And so, yeah, I, I don't have a great answer other than just like get back to work for how to push through doubts because it's the only thing that gets you there.

• 1:45:55Cameron Hanes?

  Well, I mean, I have product that says, nobody cares, work harder.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:46:00Cameron Hanes?

  And it's like, yeah, you lose your job, you get a promotion, you win this race, you lose this race, you lose a sponsorship, you get the.

• 1:46:09Cameron Hanes?

  Nobody cares.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:46:10Cameron Hanes?

  Get back to work.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's like success, failure, doesn't matter. The key is work unless you're you're done. Like that's the end of your life, but other than that, there's no substitute for just grinding.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  No, there there isn't a cheat code. It it and they're like, you you can get lucky in life and you can get, but but can you really get lucky in ultras? Like, there's a lot of variables that you can be lucky with, whether whatever, right?

• 1:46:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  But you you no one's getting anywhere because of luck. Like, no one's finishing a 200, let alone winning a 200, having been like, you know, just gonna sign up for this thing.

• 1:46:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, it's very intentional.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  It's not the way that it works.

• 1:46:47Cameron Hanes?

  No, no, and that's that's what I love about it, too. So tell me about like, how has, you know, you said you're coaching for Everyday Ultra, Joe Corcione. Tell me how his that partnership or how how was he coaching you or or?

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  No, so I've never actually had a coach.

• 1:47:05Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  I like the puzzle. So that's one of the reasons I like being a coach is I'm making the puzzle for other people, right? Or helping them make their own puzzle.

• 1:47:13Cameron Hanes?

  Talking to Truitt on the phone today. I I talked to my son Truitt and you were giving him kind of coaching advice or like listening to what he's doing and chiming in. It's like, I like that.

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I wasn't necessarily trying to give him advice. I would, I I I wouldn't say that like.

• 1:47:29Cameron Hanes?

  Because we don't know shit.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say that marathon, road marathons are where I've got all my knowledge. But I mean, the the coaching side of things, I think everyone who coaches will say this. If they're a good coach, it makes you a better athlete. You know, because you get to see how other people are successful. Your your your athletes you're working with and you get to see, you get to be inspired by them, you know, for one. And like, I think one of the reasons I'm a at least a pretty good coach, I like to think, is that I went through all the struggle, right? Like, you know, you think about any of the traditional sports. It's rarely the best players who make the best coaches.

• 1:48:09Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Because is Michael Jordan going to be able to talk to some?

• 1:48:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  New NBA player and be like, this is how I did it. Like, I don't think he's thinking about how he does it because he's too busy being really amazing.

• 1:48:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  But some guy who's really good or even average for a professional player is probably going to be way better at explaining how he got there. Right. And so I think having the story that I have of failing a bunch of times and coming up with all these ways to overcome mentally and physically allows me to translate that well to the people I work with because a lot of the things they deal with, I've dealt with, you know? So that's, that's one of the, the positive things going in my favor there. And then, I mean, what Joe is building with Everyday Ultra is just, I think, a beautiful thing for the community. Like, he is really focused on the community side of the company. So, you know, you're signing up for a coach, but we also have, you know, group calls.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  He is hosting an entire Everyday Ultra Cogadona Training Camp, you know? Fly to Phoenix, the training camp is free, we're going to go on all these runs together. You're going to meet people who are interested in the same things you're interested in, right? And so what he's got going on and being a part of the growth there is super rewarding because I want to see the, the community thrive. Like, not just the Everyday Ultra community, but the Ultra community as a whole, you know? Like, I think that, you know, at some point, you're probably going to be able to get an AI coach who can give you a good plan. But are you going to be able to get an AI coach who can help you with, who can tell you what happens on the second night? And what to say to yourself to keep moving?

• 1:49:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Like, that, to me, seems like it requires a human.

• 1:49:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And so when...

• 1:49:51Cameron Hanes?

  AI isn't going to set up a group run in Cogadona.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:49:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  So it's, it's nice to be able to, to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself within the sport itself, because I'm just, I'm so enthusiastic about the Ultra world as a whole. And so, you know, I'm, I'm, I've never been the best at social media. I think I'm getting better.

• 1:50:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  But Joe's amazing.

• 1:50:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  And so, like, one, learning from him and contributing to the project as a whole. It's just like another piece of my life this year that's been like a massive highlight, you know? And like I mentioned earlier, I was able to quit both of my real jobs in August after Bigfoot because I had enough athletes I'm working with. And so at that point, I was like, running is my career. Like, I've made it. This is, this has happened for me.

• 1:50:35Cameron Hanes?

  That's exciting.

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  Which is just like, I can't thank him enough for that and for, and just like... How absurd is the dream, you know?

• 1:50:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  How many places in the world could I have been born and ended up living where like my job title reads, professional trail runner and coach?

• 1:50:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, here.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, hardly anywhere else. Yeah, it's a, I like what Joe's doing too, and I like his, his energy is just so positive.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:03Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and he's just, he's immersed in it. He's good too.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Cameron Hanes?

  He's a good runner.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  He's a good runner.

• 1:51:09Cameron Hanes?

  But I love, I like, I mean, I love what he offers, single track. I like distance to empty because those guys, you know, Kevin and I don't know what the other host's name is. Peter? Yeah, but I, I listen to all the ultra podcasts. I love it. I love hearing about people's stories, about the journey, about the successes and the failures. And it's just such a pure sport, it seems like just getting to the mounds and pushing your body is, uh, it's just beautiful, you know? And they're struggling, suffering involved with it too, and that's life.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  And what other sport is as supportive as ultra running?

• 1:51:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Is there anything like, you know, I, I always just go back to the example of Carl Meltzer and Scott Jurick. Like Scott Jurick sets the Appalachian Trail FKT, literally the next year goes back and helps Carl break his record. Like there's no Roadrunner doing that. There's no cyclist, there's no, like, there's no sport where that happens.

• 1:52:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Except for the ultra world. And for whatever reason, you know, from the dirtbag origins of ultra running now to when it's becoming semi-professionalized, like that exists still and I want that to continue because that's what even people who aren't ultra runners, when they're around the races, that's what everybody notices. It's like, wow.

• 1:52:20Cameron Hanes?

  The community.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  These people are supportive of each other, you know, like, like this year when I'm competing with Brody, like I want him to succeed. First of all, I hope I'm out of the 200s by the time he's back in then.

• 1:52:33Cameron Hanes?

  He's good.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Because I'm, we're all just gonna get trashed. It's gonna be bad for everyone else. But like, you know, we're both competitors and friends and those two things coexist not, they're, they're actually complimentary in some ways in ultra running where, you know, I, I doubt that like professional tennis players are, are really that friendly with each other.

• 1:52:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  You know, probably most fighters who are fighting each other, not that, I, I can't imagine there's a lot of love there. You know, like. Soccer players and anything, but it's ultra running where like if Brody beats me or if someone beats me and and I give it give everything, I'm not upset about it. I'm just like, dude, you have moved the ball forward. You know, like we're in a collective pursuit to see what humans can do as opposed to an individual pursuit to see what I can do. That's how I think of it, at least.

• 1:53:23Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that's exactly, it feels like that's exactly what how Courtney looks at it, too. She's always like so supportive during the races.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:30Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, like, asking if other competitors need anything. It's like, what, just, and she's never like, never seemingly cares about where she places. It's just that she did her best.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:44Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and that's what, that's what's, I'll be honest, I'm not that great at that. I mean, I'll, I'm always like keeping track of, I'm not winning, you know, but, but I want to.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Cameron Hanes?

  And it's just like, uh, I'm not, I guess I want other people to do good as long as they don't beat me. So it's like, I don't know, I'm not that great at it, but I'm also not best in the world. Like, you know, like what you are, but, uh, I just, I just love the community.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like if you came across, like if you're, if you're running Cogadona and you come across someone who you're passing, but they look rough.

• 1:54:22Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  You're probably gonna be like, hey, do you?

• 1:54:24Cameron Hanes?

  You okay?

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  You, do you need anything? Like, if you have a water filter or you have like some Ibuprofen?

• 1:54:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Or, uh, you know, um, Imodium or something that might help them.

• 1:54:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Salt pill. You might be like, hey, you need something?

• 1:54:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Like, that is really what I'm talking about. Cause ultimately, it's like, it's like, do I do want to win, right? Like, I'd prefer me to win than anyone else. But it's like, at the same time, or it's a collective pursuit in a lot of ways.

• 1:54:50Cameron Hanes?

  It reminds me of when I would be deep in the wilderness, like doing some of these hunts. I didn't want to see anybody, but if I did see somebody, I'd be like, they worked their ass off to get back here.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:01Cameron Hanes?

  I, I hate that they're here, but I respect it. And that's kind of, that's how I look at ultras. It's like, if somebody passes me deep in an ultra, I'm like, and props.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:10Cameron Hanes?

  Because this hurts. This shit hurts.

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  You know where, what you're feeling and you're like, oh, that person's also just a human.

• 1:55:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And so I'm, I'm down for, but I, I just love the purity of it, too. And, uh, yeah, I'm curious. So, uh, Like we talked about this a little bit, but you're a little bit bigger than like the prototypical ultra runner. Like, tell me about, has your approach or your body size or your diet, has it changed over the years? And, or has it or not?

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  It has changed for sure. I mean, when I was in college, I just ate whatever I wanted. You know, it was like, I, I had like a half gallon of ice cream every day, probably. Like, I'm just, but I was swimming, you know, and, and you're young. And so I was just crushing whatever I wanted to eat, you know? And it didn't seem to affect me any differently. Like, I, I wouldn't have noticed if I had a, you know, a bowl of spaghetti or a steak and vegetables. I'm just like, feeling the same is, would be my thought process back then.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  After a while, when I got into ultra running, I noticed I was just having some like chronic inflammation issues. And I, again, because of Mike McKnight and Zach Bitter, actually, I paid Zach for an hour long consultation to talk about switching to low carb. And he was really helpful. And so in 2021, as a new year's resolution, actually, I switched to full keto. So cut out carbs entirely for like three months. And then I added them back in a little bit for races, but I was still not doing tons. And I was mostly doing real food. So I'd like try to eat like homemade rice cakes and stuff while I was like on runs. And then I sort of stayed in that kind of realm where I was probably getting like

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  40 grams of carbs an hour for a while before this year and doing my faster races last year before shifting my strategy like we talked about earlier. As, as for the body type, you know, I still feel like I kind of have a swimmer's body, even though I'm not tall, but I've got broader shoulders than a lot of ultra runners. And I do think, you know, having some upper body muscle, like pull ups, for instance, that translates to using your poles, right? So there's like some benefits there. There's a vanity aspect to, I want to look good, you know? I don't necessarily want to look like the typical of super lean runner. So there's that. But then, I also think, you know, being able to lift heavy, you know, if I got squat and deadlift

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  PRs just two weeks ago in my offseason and lifetime PRs, actually better than I was in college, which I was very surprised by. I was kind of a pleasant surprise, but I think that is helpful because you're solid, you know? I'm not building tons of muscle, I'm not bodybuilding, you know? But, and I haven't really gained any weight, but I'm just, I want my body to be durable. And I want it to be durable for the long term. And what's going to do that? It's lifting heavy things ultimately. Like, I think, especially once you reach the age of 30, if you're not lifting, you are missing a big piece of the puzzle for human longevity. Right? Like, so I'm not myopically focused on my ultra running

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  performance, although I think it helps. I'm focused on, I want to be able to, you know, I have this dream of hiking the long trails when I'm 70, going like 10 miles a day, like just chilling, you know, with a hand carved walking stick and just doing whatever I want, right? And I want to be able to do that. Yeah.

• 1:58:35Cameron Hanes?

  It's like you got some work to do there.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  A lot of work.

• 1:58:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Well, does part of it go back to the warrior in a garden mindset? Like you want to be, have endurance and strength? It's like you want to be, because a lot of, say, ultra runners, they're not lifting shit. You know, I mean, so they're kind of specialized in endurance essentially, but to be a well-rounded, quote, I guess, man, or whatever, does that require strength and endurance?

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  I think it can. I wouldn't say, like, like Killian Journey, for instance, like, I would call him a well-rounded person. I'm sure he can, you know, when he moves, I'm sure he can lift the couches he needs to lift, right? So, I, but, but for me, I think... With what I'm thinking about doing, like, what is the number one thing that's going to get you to the app through the Appalachian Trail FKT? I think it's durability, right?

• 1:59:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  And so that's what I'm attempting to build with the lifting is I'm focused on that aspect. And then, like I, I mentioned, the, the longevity outside of the sport, you know? But I, I want to be able to run when like I have this idea that I'd like to run 70 miles on my 70th birthday, you know?

• 1:59:49Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  Like, I think that would be cool to be able to do that, right?

• 1:59:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  But, and so I'm focused, I, I'm attempting to focus on the long-term health of my body. And I, I don't really think I'm sacrificing anything in the near term. You know what I mean?

• 2:00:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Um, you mentioned a bunch of goals. Do you write down all these goals? Like, do you journal? Like you said, the 70, what'd you say? 70 miles on your 70th birthday? So do you have these goals written down?

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  I mean, they're in journals.

• 2:00:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Do I know? No. They're not like on a wall. You're a sticky note on my mirror or anything. I do that. I'll, I'll, you know, I like to publish ahead of time, like my year goals. So like on my Substack, I will go through what my goals are for 2026 at some point, because I'm a big believer in just being honest about your goals. Like, don't hedge your bets. Hedging your bets is for wimps. Like, it's not, that's not cool. It's not, it is, like, if you're trying to win, say you're trying to win, and if you fail, it's okay.

• 2:00:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Right? Like, uh, you know who Kamara Usman is, right?

• 2:00:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he said something on, on Rogan one time where when he got KO'd by Leon Edwards, and he was like, I'm happy my daughter was there because I want her to see me fail and be okay afterwards. Right?

• 2:01:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  What, that's, that's the mindset.

• 2:01:06Cameron Hanes?

  That's amazing.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  I know. And, and that, he's one of my favorite athletes of all time because I think he's got the mentality of just a, like, an insane person in a good way, right?

• 2:01:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, his rival, you know, Colby?

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Cameron Hanes?

  You know, he's from here.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Oh, is he? Nice.

• 2:01:22Cameron Hanes?

  Springfield.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 2:01:23Cameron Hanes?

  Went to high school here. That's, that's why I was always like, Team Colby. I mean, he just

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Their fight, their first fight is the best fight I've ever seen.

• 2:01:30Cameron Hanes?

  Dude.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Cameron Hanes?

  It was just like, yeah, it was a great fight.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah, anyway, just a little Kamara Usman note.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  But yeah, so it's, it's that kind of thing where like, I'm just, you know, I know people who hedge their bets, who are like, I don't want to be honest about my goals because I don't want to be embarrassed when I fail. And that's not, that's not the way to be.

• 2:01:50Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  It's, I'm just, I want to put it all out there. And if I don't reach it.

• 2:01:56Cameron Hanes?

  For all they may.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like we were talking about like, reaching for enlightenment. You know, I'm never gonna get there.

• 2:02:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  But I'm, that's my goal.

• 2:02:03Cameron Hanes?

  That's the goal. It's, you know, Truitt puts out big goals and sometimes he comes up short, but we're, we're on that hunt with Jelly Roll the other day and it's Truitt's birthday. And so I was talking to him on the phone and Jelly Roll came up. He's like, hey, you know, he was, hey, can I say something? So he just mentioned to Truitt, which ties in exactly to this, that he likes that Truitt sets these big audacious goals because Jelly Roll told the story about, there was a time in his career where he could sell out like a $2,000 to $4,000 venue and it would be sold out and Jelly Roll sold out. But he had to make a decision. Should he go for those venues or the next venue up, which is say, an eight to 12,000 seat venue?

• 2:02:48Cameron Hanes?

  And he probably wouldn't sell it out, but he could. And would it be better to sell 8,000 at a 12,000 seat venue? Or sell out the smaller 2,000 to 4,000 seat venue? And he said, let's go big.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:02Cameron Hanes?

  He goes, we gotta go big. And if we don't get it, that's okay, because we will get it at some point. And he thought that that was a better option than just the safer bet, hedging your bet. As you said, like, you want to win, but you're not gonna say it.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:16Cameron Hanes?

  Because then you look bad if you don't, or you look whatever. So that was like a perfect illustration of that mindset. And now Jelly Roll can sell out a stadium.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:26Cameron Hanes?

  You know, so would that have happened? Taken, I don't know, maybe not.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Maybe not.

• 2:03:32Cameron Hanes?

  Maybe he wouldn't have worked quite as hard because he had already hit his mark, you know, he'd already sold out. He's a self, you know, he's already like selling out these shows. So that makes sense to me perfectly. I love it too.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  I've got a few things I say along that line to myself. And one of them, one of First Form's mottos is never settle. And I, you know, I love that. Like never settle, well, you do better, you know, keep, keep working, keep hammering, right?

• 2:03:58Cameron Hanes?

  I love it.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  And another one that I say to myself along a similar lines is no limits. Like, all these limits you're gonna set for yourself are arbitrary.

• 2:04:06Cameron Hanes?

  They are.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  When I was going into Bigfoot this year, I was aiming for 48 hours, right? And I finished in 45. And if you had told me beforehand that I was gonna finish in 45, I would have been like.

• 2:04:15Cameron Hanes?

  Forty-five?

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:16Cameron Hanes?

  At Bigfoot?

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:18Cameron Hanes?

  How? That is crazy.

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it was seven miles shorter than the original course, but still.

• 2:04:23Cameron Hanes?

  God.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  It was three hours faster than when I thought was possible.

• 2:04:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  And so after that, I'm like, what? What am I doing second limits?

• 2:04:33Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Like, this is so stupid. Like, no limits, you know? That's like my sign off on my Instagram post now is no limits because.

• 2:04:40Cameron Hanes?

  Love it.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  You just like that Jelly Roll story, you know, if he had limited himself, maybe he's not where he is today.

• 2:04:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  You know, and if it doesn't scare you, is it really worth doing?

• 2:04:50Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Right? Like, it should, your goals should scare you.

• 2:04:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:54Speaker 01

  It should be feel barely attainable, and that's the sweet spot.

• 2:04:58Cameron Hanes?

  And you know, even if, even if you're not saying it, you can't lie to yourself.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:04Cameron Hanes?

  So if you want to win, but you're not saying you want to win, do you really want to win? Or are you just kind of lying to yourself? Or it's like, are you not being honest with yourself, which um, he had another great example about this where he had, you know, he told his family he was going to go on a run, but then it was raining, then he was maybe not going to go on a run. And he's like, they had no reason to believe in me because I'd been lying to myself about I was going to start running or doing this the whole time. And he just had to go out and do it in the, in the run. And then he came back from that run and they were all outside clapping for him. And he never actually even really ran. He's just walking. But it was, you, you, point is, you can't lie to yourself.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:44Cameron Hanes?

  Right? And, and you can't, you might say this, but the people who believe in you, they know. They know that you're not even really being honest. So the true, as we talk about this path to enlightenment, the true, to be on the path, you have to be brutally honest.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. You both need, you need to be your harshest critic.

• 2:06:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Someone shouldn't be able to criticize you in a way that is surprising.

• 2:06:07Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Ultimately, when my wife says something to me and trying to make me a better person, even if I'm, my initial reaction is to be defensive, the likelihood is I've had that thought first.

• 2:06:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  Right? And I'm just ignoring that little freaking boil in my mind that is like poking me, you know?

• 2:06:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  And she might point it out, and that might be the step I need to make whatever improvement that is, right?

• 2:06:28Cameron Hanes?

  And I think some people get triggered by that because they had that thought themselves. And now it's just like, oh, you saw that too?

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:34Cameron Hanes?

  And now you're pissed.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, and when you're defensive, it's like. You're being defensive from a place of insecurity.

• 2:06:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tell my athletes to hold themselves accountable to their goals. So like, that's one of the things I say to them in our last call before a race.

• 2:06:52Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Is I'm like, you know, you're gonna get to a point where you don't want to run. You're gonna get to the point where you want to stop if you're pushing hard enough.

• 2:06:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right? Yeah.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  And in that moment, you need to think about what you wanted to do three months ago. Think about what you've done for those three months and then hold yourself accountable to that work you put in. Because if you don't hold yourself to the standard, no one's doing it for you.

• 2:07:16Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  You know, it's only coming internally. There's like, I always tell them too, I'm like, I can't motivate you. I will not even try to motivate you because that's impossible. Intrinsic motivation is the only way to finish these things, is the only way to succeed at life. You know, and so you have to be the one pulling the strings here. There's no one, no one's, no one can force you to take the next step.

• 2:07:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, I love it. It's true. Tell me about the quote on your arm.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  Sure, the road to nowhere is long. It's from a song by this band Ghost.

• 2:07:50Cameron Hanes?

  We use, we use their music today for our reel.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My, my favorite current artists for sure.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  I, this is, this whole sleeve is a Triple Crown commemorative sleeve.

• 2:08:02Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I made a deal with my wife at the beginning of the year. I could get if I won.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  But what the road to nowhere is long means to me is like, Michael Jordan had this quote where he was like, one is, you're only successful at the moment of greatness. So he wins, he, the NBA championship, he's happy that night.

• 2:08:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  The next day, he's unsatisfied.

• 2:08:25Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Cause he's not where he wants to be anymore. And I think Michael Jordan may not be the best example of being the perfect mentally stable individual. You know, you watch The Last Dance, it's like the best sports documentary of all time, but you're not like, oh, that's guy, that guy is stable, you know what I mean?

• 2:08:40Cameron Hanes?

  But he's a winner.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I want a piece of that. I want a slice of that pie where I don't think that the path to enlightenment, I don't think that the path to being successful in ultra running, I don't think that the path to being a better human ever ends. So the road to nowhere is long embodies that for me.

• 2:08:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  Where like. What am I trying to get to? And I don't have the answer there.

• 2:09:06Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  You know, I don't, I don't have an idea of what, what does finishing mean? You know, like finishing Moab is sure, I'm finishing the Triple Crown, but I'm going to want to do another race. I'm going to want another adventure.

• 2:09:18Cameron Hanes?

  You're not done, you're not retired.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even when you retire, are you done becoming a better person?

• 2:09:23Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  I hope not, right? Like, I don't ever want to be, I want to have kids this year. You know, that'll be a new adventure and that road's hopefully, hopefully that journey never ends. You know, no one wants that. And so like that quote is meaningful to me for so many reasons. Not only because it's, you know, art that I love, music that I love, but it's just, I think it really embodies everything about who I want to be as a person. You know, continuously attempting to improve, continuously attempting to strive to be a part of something greater than myself.

• 2:09:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, just a constant evolution.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I love that. So James probably has some stupid questions to ask, but we can, don't focus on the stupidity of what he's going to say, but because we can, we can pull back the, the onion a little bit and get to real shit. What do you got?

• 2:10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, this one will really help you get to some real shit.

• 2:10:18Cameron Hanes?

  Pull back the onion?

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  I'm excited.

• 2:10:20Cameron Hanes?

  What is that? I think it's peel the.

• 2:10:21Speaker 04

  That's Shrek.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:22Cameron Hanes?

  Or pull back, pull back the curtain or peel the.

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  Ogres have layers.

• 2:10:27Cameron Hanes?

  What am I talking about with onions?

• 2:10:29Speaker 04

  That people are onions. You got to peel them back.

• 2:10:32Cameron Hanes?

  Exactly.

• 2:10:33Speaker 04

  One layer at a time.

• 2:10:35Cameron Hanes?

  And then you gotta.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Cakes have layers.

• 2:10:36Cameron Hanes?

  Then you gotta jerk them off.

• 2:10:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I have nipples, Greg, can you milk me?

• 2:10:49Cameron Hanes?

  I don't even know what that was from. That was from.

• 2:10:51Speaker 04

  I don't think anybody knows what that's.

• 2:10:53Cameron Hanes?

  No, it was Robert De Niro in.

• 2:10:57Cameron Hanes?

  What is about the getting married?

• 2:11:01Speaker 04

  Oh, the wedding.

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  Oh, meet the Fockers?

• 2:11:03Cameron Hanes?

  Meet the Fockers.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:04Cameron Hanes?

  That's what it was. That's what it was. Remember? Cause like the cat jinx he had nipples? I don't even know, but let's just get to the question.

• 2:11:12Speaker 04

  That's a good movie. So we do a little segment on here and it's called marry kill. Have you played the game?

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  I've played the game.

• 2:11:20Speaker 04

  All right. So you're.

• 2:11:22Cameron Hanes?

  Trouble with people understanding this, but I think he's gonna get it.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Wow, I got it. Yeah, we're here.

• 2:11:27Speaker 04

  Your marry kill is the triple crown. Moab, Tahoe and Bigfoot.

• 2:11:33Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:11:38Speaker 01

  I'm gonna kill Tahoe. That's an easy, easy one. Uh, marry Bigfoot. I'll. Yeah.

• 2:11:46Cameron Hanes?

  I loved it. You said it so good.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48Cameron Hanes?

  Everybody's usually like, oh, the other one, Moab.

• 2:11:55Cameron Hanes?

  So you loved Bigfoot.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  Bigfoot is my favorite race.

• 2:11:58Cameron Hanes?

  I thought, I thought that was the hardest 200.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  It's gnarly, but it's so different from what I'm used to, you know, like Colorado forest is just

• 2:12:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:08Speaker 01

  garbage in terms of the trees. I love Colorado.

• 2:12:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  I'm not, don't get me wrong. The San Juans are my favorite place, but Bigfoot's like, did you get out of the trees? And there are volcanoes around you, you know? You're like at 5,000 feet and then there's a volcano that's at 14,000. Yeah. Holy shit, that mountain is so big.

• 2:12:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  So Bigfoot, I just think it's the most adventurous of all of them. Um, Tahoe, you get that Tahoe long bullshit. I hate it.

• 2:12:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  If, if I could avoid that, I might feel differently, but Tahoe, I have no desire to ever do again. Um, and then Moab, uh, I said, Moab. I mean, I think I picked it up pretty good.

• 2:12:46Cameron Hanes?

  I love it. Yeah, it's a. Oh, yeah. Bigfoot I thought was hard, especially like I was so dehydrated going around Mount St. Helens at the beginning out in that in Boulder field and all that shit.

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  Sunny, dry.

• 2:13:00Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, God, it was. That put me in a hole.

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's hard if you get dehydrated.

• 2:13:05Cameron Hanes?

  I was running good. I was leading there all the way to the wherever that aid station was up on the ridge. And then just was so dry. I just.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we ended up, uh, we crossed. So we actually skipped windy ridge, that first aid station this year because there's a road out. Um, so that's why it was seven miles shorter.

• 2:13:22Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, I see.

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  But, uh, we, I was running with a few people at the time and we all stopped at this like tiny little stream to filter water. And we're like, oh, thank God. Cause uh, you know who Wes Rittner is?

• 2:13:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know the name.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  Done a bunch of these 200s. He might have the most 200 mile finishes in North America, but I'm running with him and he's like, we're talking about the course. And I was like, Wes, are we going to cross water? You're on a 25 mile section, right? And I was like, are, are we? And he's like, I'm not sure.

• 2:13:49Cameron Hanes?

  And that would, I mean, that's a long way with no water.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  A long ways. Yeah.

• 2:13:53Cameron Hanes?

  God, and it just gets you in a hole. You, it took me a whole day to get out of.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:13:58Cameron Hanes?

  Cause you're still running.

• 2:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:59Cameron Hanes?

  You still have to, so you're still burning fluid. No, you can't stop. It's like, it took me a day. Then by the time I, at the end, I was actually running good. What else you got?

• 2:14:09Speaker 04

  Okay, this is a controversial take I've had, but since you're an ultra runner, I have previously said that a 50K shouldn't count as an ultra. What do you think?

• 2:14:19Speaker 01

  Uh, mostly agree. It depends on the 50K. Uh, there's a 50K around Silverton that has like a tiny finishing rate. Cause it's like mostly off trail and stuff.

• 2:14:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:29Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay, that is an ultra, right? But man, when someone who has run 150K is starts being like, I'm an ultra runner. Am I like, I'm, I'm, I'm like, you've done something cool. I'm, I'm proud of you for reaching that milestone in your life.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Would I call myself an ultra runner after doing a 50K? If I was 22, probably yes. If I was 25, probably no.

• 2:14:56Cameron Hanes?

  I know I did after I did one, but here's what's weird to me is a 50K is an ultra. And the Monster 300 is an ultra.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:06Cameron Hanes?

  How do they both same thing? What are you talking about? We're talking like 10 times more.

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're talking potentially under three hours for a 50K for someone fast. And then.

• 2:15:19Speaker 01

  Three days.

• 2:15:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's like, how were those both ultras?

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we need a different name.

• 2:15:25Cameron Hanes?

  That, that seems crazy to me.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:27Cameron Hanes?

  I'm not, I'm not opposed to counting a 50 Ks in ultra, cause I know I definitely did my first ones. But then the other one should be something else.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Megas. I don't know. What's bigger than an ultra?

• 2:15:39Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know, but it needs to be something.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:42Cameron Hanes?

  Something.

• 2:15:43Speaker 04

  Good. I'm getting some support finally.

• 2:15:45Cameron Hanes?

  I know.

• 2:15:46Speaker 04

  I had a lot of hate for that shit.

• 2:15:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, he, he did get hate, cause he's, he's ba, he's struggled through two 50 Ks.

• 2:15:55Cameron Hanes?

  So, but like seven hour finishes and yeah, so he's really not the one to say, oh, this shouldn't count.

• 2:16:01Speaker 04

  Well, basically, if I said, if I can finish it, it shouldn't count.

• 2:16:06Cameron Hanes?

  It was a self-depreciation. That's what he's getting people. He's so used to talking shit about himself. That's all he's doing with that.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:12Cameron Hanes?

  And people.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm happy for some self-deprecation for sure, but uh, yeah, it's, it's, they're different things.

• 2:16:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right about that.

• 2:16:23Cameron Hanes?

  It feels like a different sport.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:25Cameron Hanes?

  Like those multi-day.

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  You're not carrying a pack for a 50 K.

• 2:16:28Cameron Hanes?

  Well, and, and also.

• 2:16:29Speaker 04

  Some of us are.

• 2:16:30Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, even, I mean, he would be to finish.

• 2:16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you're not carrying three liters of water.

• 2:16:37Speaker 04

  Some of us are.

• 2:16:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's just, and I think also, there's a huge difference between one night and multi-night.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:16:48Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, those are night and day different.

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  When people are like, what's the second night like? I'm like, I, you need to get there because I can't describe it to you.

• 2:16:56Cameron Hanes?

  It's one night is like nothing. Like Leadville this year, I'm just like, I had a shitty day, but.

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 2:17:03Cameron Hanes?

  One night, it's like, who cares?

• 2:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:06Cameron Hanes?

  The multi-night.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:08Cameron Hanes?

  God, that gets brutal.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  I know. And then when you, when you start counting the sunrises you've seen, you're like, oh God.

• 2:17:15Cameron Hanes?

  I know. I was at Coca-Dona this year and I was just like, what, what night is this? And it was like night three and I'm like, I can't go another, no, I can't do no sleep for three nights.

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  No, it's not gonna work.

• 2:17:25Cameron Hanes?

  And uh, But yeah, it's different.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  God is hard. I mean, and it's also, I was so excited when I ran a hundred miler after focusing on two hundreds for a while.

• 2:17:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:37Speaker 01

  For the one night thing, they asked me that at the beginning. I was like, I'm gonna be done in a day. This is amazing. But also, like, having six and seven mile sections.

• 2:17:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:45Speaker 01

  Like, dude, the average section in Tahoe is 18 miles.

• 2:17:49Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Right? And so you're talking a minimum, if you're moving really well, you're talking four hours.

• 2:17:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:17:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  And, you know, when I was moving-

• 2:17:59Cameron Hanes?

  Most people aren't.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  Most people, right, yeah. And when I'm moving at the end, when I can't even breathe, you're talking almost six hours. And like, damn.

• 2:18:07Cameron Hanes?

  Well-

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  That's a big difference.

• 2:18:09Cameron Hanes?

  I remember when I did Bigfoot, it was like, we were like 130 or something like that. I can't remember what it was, but the section was exposed and it was hot.

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  Oh, you're talking about Quartz Ridge?

• 2:18:19Cameron Hanes?

  Probably. And it was like 20 miles or something?

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, was it the one where you start out by the river, you go up, you go down, you go up, you go down? And then, yeah, that section is 17 miles of 7,500 feet of climbing and 4,500 feet of descending.

• 2:18:32Cameron Hanes?

  That's the one.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 2:18:34Cameron Hanes?

  I had, so the guys, it wasn't the first year of the race, but the guys who I was with had done it before. And I said, so what are we figuring for this section for time? And they're like, I would just say two miles an hour. And I was just like, two miles? Holy shit. So if it's 20 miles, you're 10 hours out there? But it was just under, but that's a long time. So when you're thinking about getting fluid and salt and, and height, and uh-

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Fuel.

• 2:19:01Cameron Hanes?

  Fuel, it's like, 10 hours worth of shit?

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:04Cameron Hanes?

  That's a lot.

• 2:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're carrying all the required gear. So you've got all the stuff in case you freeze. And, I mean, yeah, that, that specific section, I think, is one of the hardest sections in any race. Because you lose elevation that you gain for miles. And it's like, pretty technical, it's steep.

• 2:19:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  And you just get off the river, go back down to the river, get off it. Like, if you were in a low for that section, it would suck so bad.

• 2:19:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:31Speaker 01

  Happily, I wasn't. My pacer was with me and we were cruising for the section, right? But yowza, that is a beast of a section.

• 2:19:38Cameron Hanes?

  That was brutal. I remember that. I think I did pretty good in there too. But, yeah, if you're struggling. That could be the descent on that race.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  It is my favorite section of that race, though, because I feel like there is a section of each race that just like, that's the spirit of that race. And that's the one for me. Plus, you pass, I've got the waterfall tattooed on my arm, right here, the Lewis River waterfall. Like, it is one of the most beautiful spots that I've ever been. It's like, yeah, I love that race so much.

• 2:20:07Cameron Hanes?

  Man, it's legit.

• 2:20:09Speaker 04

  Okay, last question. This is a question I asked Courtney, but if you could swap minds with any competitor during a race, who do you think you would?

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  Minds. Interesting. You know, I think going into David Goggins, probably for like, a minute.

• 2:20:30Cameron Hanes?

  That would be intense.

• 2:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that would be.

• 2:20:32Cameron Hanes?

  You'd hate everyone.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  I know. It'd be pretty interesting. It would be a fascinating, like, little detour. Just be like, hmm, okay, I'm out.

• 2:20:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. No, he, whatever his mind does, works perfect for him.

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:47Cameron Hanes?

  And, uh, yeah, I don't think people, uh, yeah, he's, man, I love that guy. I mean, the fact that he, you know, he's put in so many miles. I mean, there was, he's had years, have you read his book?

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  I've read the first book.

• 2:21:01Cameron Hanes?

  The first book? So, or books, I mean, but I think in that book, he talked about, like, 7,000 mile years.

• 2:21:09Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 2:21:10Cameron Hanes?

  20 miles a day for the whole year.

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:12Cameron Hanes?

  And did like, 800s, eight weekends in a row, or something like that. So, to put on that many miles, and he's 50, and he did two 200s this year, and, I mean, that's hard.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And just like where he came from.

• 2:21:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  The, even someone who doesn't like David Goggins, like the persona, has to respect the story.

• 2:21:37Cameron Hanes?

  I would think.

• 2:21:38Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't not.

• 2:21:40Cameron Hanes?

  He gave me this.

• 2:21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool. I noticed that. I, uh, yeah, his would be interesting. I mean,

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  I bet, I'm trying to think of someone who I know that would be like, way smarter than me. Like, if there's someone running who's like a quantum physics kind of guy, I'd like to bop into that mind for a little bit, just to be like, what are you thinking about, man?

• 2:22:02Cameron Hanes?

  I know. Yeah. I never thought, yeah, I don't even know. I wonder what Courtney's mind would be like. Probably just be like, this is so awesome. I love everyone. And me, I'm just like, I hate everyone.

• 2:22:18Cameron Hanes?

  I wish I was dead.

• 2:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:21Speaker 01

  I know. So I have moments in every single race where I'm like, what the doing? Like, I, I chose to do this. I paid thousands of dollars to be here.

• 2:22:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:33Speaker 01

  Typically, it happens in the second night. The first night, I'm like, this is amazing. Look how cool you are. You're running so good.

• 2:22:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  You know, I'm like, this is the best. You're running through the night. What a badass. And by the second night, I'm like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done.

• 2:22:44Cameron Hanes?

  I'm like, can I make up an injury?

• 2:22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:46Cameron Hanes?

  What could I say happened to me?

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  I know. Like, it's, I, I have that thought. And I asked Rachel Endrick, if she ever had, she has those. And she's like, not really. And I was like,

• 2:22:54Cameron Hanes?

  God.

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  Kudos.

• 2:22:55Cameron Hanes?

  Dang it. That, that's a little depressing. Cause I was hoping you were gonna say, yeah, I do, but.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  She said that. And then she also said she never chafes. And I was like, that.

• 2:23:05Cameron Hanes?

  And she also wins every race.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  Superpower.

• 2:23:09Cameron Hanes?

  How does she, and she, how many races has she won in a row?

• 2:23:12Speaker 01

  It's like 21 at this point.

• 2:23:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  Maybe 22. Rachel, sorry if I got that wrong.

• 2:23:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Well, you're, I love, I love her. I've never met her, but she seems like a badass. So I like that.

• 2:23:23Speaker 01

  Whenever you get her on, she'll, you guys will have fun.

• 2:23:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that sounds, that sounds good to me. Well, dude, I don't know. I mean, I, this has been a great discussion. I learned a ton about you. And I'm a huge fan. Love all the success you've, you've been having. I know you're gonna have even more. And it's, like I said, it's an honor to get you on here and talk to you about your 200 mile domination. Can't wait to see the rest.

• 2:23:45Speaker 01

  Well, thanks. I mean, I've had a few moments throughout the day where I've been like, I'm running with Cameron Hanes.

• 2:23:52Cameron Hanes?

  Well.

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  So I, yeah, I really appreciate being here and the hospitality and everything. And thanks for giving the platform to the trailer and everything.

• 2:24:00Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, it's good. I'm sure it's gonna be a great documentary.

• 2:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:02Cameron Hanes?

  Trailer looks great. It's, I'm addicted to good ultra running films, so I can't wait to see.

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's, it's gonna be a good one. I, I have, I have confidence there. But yeah, thanks for everything. Thanks for everything you've done for the sport. Like, I mean, just as far as. I've had this conversation with people. I'm like, who has done the most for the sport? I mean, you, David Goggins, Courtney Killian, you know, it's like easy answers. So just appreciate everything you do for, you know, runners who are putting in the work. I know you respect the grind, so it's awesome that you, you know, both walk the walk and lift up others while you do so.

• 2:24:37Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, thank you. Well, I know people are going to enjoy this discussion and so I want you to blow up. Let's keep it going. Keep hammering, guys. Thank you, Killian.

• 2:24:46Speaker 01

  It's just the beginning.

• 2:24:47Cameron Hanes?

  All right. Love it.