Ultramarathoner Courtney Dauwalter on Building Mental Strength

Ryan talks to ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter about the balance between listening to your body and pushing through pain, prioritizing happiness and enjoyment rather than optimization, her metaphor of the pain cave that she visualizes when pushing her body, and more. Courtney Dauwalter is the world’s best female ultra runner in the world, and when it comes to races over 200 miles, she is, hands down, the best. She is a two-time ultra runner of the year, and has been named one of the top 50 fittest athletes by Sports Illustrated. She’s won multiple races, most impressively the Mohab 240, where she beat all men and women by 10 hours. Courtney credits this success to her mindset. From her unorthodoxically long shorts, running without a training plan, to her ability to go deep into what she calls “ The Pain Cave,” Courtney is a humble master of mental grit. Amelia Boone on Excellence and Endurance: https://dailystoic.com/amelia-boone/ Dean Karnazes on the Virtue of Self-Discipline: https://dailystoic.com/dean-karnazes/ Try Surfshark risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/STOIC. Enter promo code STOIC for 83 % off and three extra months free. Right now, when you purchase a 3-month Babbel subscription, you’ll get an additional 3 months for FREE. That’s 6 months, for the price of 3! Just go to Babbel.com and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC. Terms and conditions apply. Stamps.com makes it easy to mail and ship right from your computer. Use our promo code STOIC to get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale. Go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in STOIC. As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Courtney Dauwalter: Instagram, Twitter, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's funny, I was researching for today's episode and some places, you know how you have kind of like a sense memory of places or time? So I grew up in Northern California, outside Sacramento. What was, it's Placer County, but Placer County is like enormous. It basically goes from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. So as I was reading about my guest today, Courtney Dauwalter, one of the great endurance athletes of our time.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  She's finishing a race at Placer High School, where I ran many, many cross-country races. She's running in Homewood, California, where I grew up spending most of my summers, not just running, but riding bikes and skateboarding and swimming in Lake Tahoe. And then in the winter, skiing and snowboarding. Just this sort of evocative memory of my time there as a kid. And it made me really excited to talk to Courtney because she's one of the absolute greats at what she does. She's the world's best female ultra runner. And when it comes to races over 200 miles, she is hands down the best any person alive. She is the two-time ultra runner of the year.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  And has been named one of the 50 fittest athletes in the world by Sports Illustrated. She's won multiple races, including the Moab 240, where she beat all men and women, not by 10 seconds, not by 10 minutes, but by 10. Hours. And she credits her success in this extreme sport not to her conditioning and strength, but her mindset. She runs, even, we talk about this as a thing, when you look at a picture of her, she just looks like some lady out for a run. She's not wearing like the latest gear. She wears these unorthodox like long shorts. She doesn't have a training plan. But, but what she talks about is the pain cave. That's where she goes deep. And

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  she's a humble master of mental grit. And I was just so excited to have this conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy it. I'm forgetting the name of this place that I used to get tacos whenever my cross country team would run in Placer High School. But I remember that being pretty much the only thing that motivated me to run there. You know, I run now. I love running and it's part of my life. And if I don't do it, I'm miserable. But as a kid, there was some part of me that didn't want to fully commit to it, thought it was a joke, that I'd never pushed myself the way that I could. Certainly, whatever, whatever problems there are with Courtney's diet, I mean, I ate everything as a kid. I remember showing up to a cross country race with like a 50 ounce soda and

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  like two cheeseburgers from Carl's Jr. And my coach just looking at me with complete disgust. So I never reached my potential as a runner then, but it did plant a seed in me, which, which is there to this day. And it certainly appreciate the intense difficulty of athletes like Courtney Dauwalter, who's today's guest. You can follow her on Twitter at Courtney Dauwalter. That's, you can follow her on Twitter at Court Dauwalter. That's C O U R T D A U W A L T E R. And obviously the links in the show notes or on Instagram at Courtney Dauwalter. She's a beast. If you like this episode, do listen to my episode

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  with Amelia Boone, one of the other great female endurance athletes of our time. It was, that was a great conversation too. And my, my interview with Dean Karnazes is also along similar lines. And I'll link to both of those in today's episode.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  I've run many races at Placer High School and in Homewood as a kid. It's sort of where I grew up.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. What a great area to grow up.

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  It's a great place for running, too. I mean, at least when it's not too hot.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it definitely gets hot.

• 5:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I'm really, I'm really excited to talk. I thought we'd start. So one of my favorite lines from Seneca, I think it applies to running. He says, "We treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind." Right? And I guess what I've found as a runner over the years is that makes sense, but it's also more complicated because sort of like your mind is bossing your body around, but your body is also bossing your mind around. And that's sort of the tension of the whole sport, don't you think?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  So how do you think about that? Like, I'm sure almost every single one of your races, both parts of you want to quit.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yes, it's been a really cool kind of experiment that I've been doing with ultra running. When I first got into ultra running, I didn't actually understand that connection very well. Like, growing up, I did a ton of sports and I had excellent coaches who were always like, you know, encouraging us to stay strong in our heads. But I hadn't connected it actually in ultra running until I tried my first 100 mile race. And when my body was begging me to stop, I didn't understand that my mind could overpower that. And so when my body was thrown in the towel, my mind really quickly became just this negative

• 6:28Speaker 01

  space and it threw in the towel, you know, soon after and my race was over. So I ended up quitting that first attempt. But it triggered for me this whole understanding of what our minds can do and how important it is what we say to ourselves in our brain because it directly correlates to what our body will do for us.

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  And it goes the other direction too, though, right? I would imagine, for me, it's more like, I know I should go for a run, I should go do the thing, but I have these reasons, like, the mind is having to sort of will the body to go do it.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think riding that roller coaster between the two, so, you know, when your body can pull the weight versus when your brain can, you know, do most of the grunt work, is just as important as understanding that they're connected and that they can help each other. So, one without the other isn't, it's not as fun, I don't think.

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, isn't that a weird part about running too? Where like, let's say you're starting to feel some pain in some part of your body, or even when you get like, when you get a side ache, right? Your body's telling you to stop. But if you keep going, suddenly the pain just like disappears, right? Like, it's this weird thing where it's like, it's like it's sending up these warning flags that you don't, in both directions, sometimes it's from the mind, sometimes it's from the body. But like, you have to be able to discern which ones to listen to and which ones to ignore.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and sometimes I feel like it's just a like feeble attempt at sending up a warning flag, because that would be the easier thing to do, you know? It's always easier to stop. And so, maybe your body is just seeing if you'll take the easy exit that time. And sometimes the warning flag is, you know, a big red one and you should actually pay attention to it. So, it's not always like, pushing through all situations isn't the bottom line. Like, it's paying attention and trying to figure out what the warning flags are, and if they're just like, kind of test flags, almost, of like,

• 8:49Speaker 01

  hey, if I throw this little flag up, maybe they'll just sit on the couch instead, which is way easier than pushing through for another couple of miles, or whatever it is.

• 9:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like, it's your body's job not to, it's not your body's job to reach the full potential of you as an individual or as like a human being. Your body's job is to not let you kill yourself.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Thanks, bodies. Yeah, and we really appreciate that.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  So how do you, but it seems like it almost like, like if you listen to your body, no one would ever run 50 or 100 or 200 miles, right? Because the body's like, this is a terrible idea. Definitely don't do this. Stop right now and do literally anything else. So how do you, how do you question? So you question that, but also when your body's like, hey, you're about to blow out your knee. You know what I mean? Like, how do you, how do you know what to listen to and not listen to if you get in the habit of ignoring the test flags? Or if you start to view them all as these, as these false positives, basically?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  For sure. I think, oh, man, it's so tricky. And there's no, there's no like list of things I go through for myself where I'm trying to assess the flag and how important or how loud it's screaming at me. I'm trying over the years to just in general, listen to my body more and get in tune with what it's telling me more. So that when the flags start going up and I'm, you know, on mile 90 of 100 or, you know, 100 of 200, I can try to figure out which flags are telling me something about

• 10:45Speaker 01

  an injury or, you know, some situation where I really should stop for my health and which flags are the ones that are basically just kind of reminders that this is something hard, but not anything to stop me from pushing past them.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  Well, like the races, because you, you have stopped a handful of races. So when you look back at those, is it like, oh, that was really me listening to the warning sign and I couldn't continue? Or do you look back at that and go, I should have just pushed through. I, they, my body deceived me. Like, how do you, how do you look at those, those do not finishes?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Initially, so my first 100 mile attempt, I did not finish around mile 60. And after that, I had kind of the attitude of, um, I'll finish anything now. Like, I'm gonna figure out this sport, I'm gonna push through every situation. Because that first time I quit the race, I didn't need to. You know, those warning signs weren't anything different than what anyone feels at mile 60 out of 100 miles. It's, it feels hard. And I threw in the towel when it felt hard. Um, and so after that, there were many years where I was like, I'm not gonna quit a race ever, I'm gonna push through everything.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  We can push past, you know, any obstacle that's put in our path. And I kind of had a little like, uh, I don't know, like, a little wondering or worry that I wouldn't notice the big flags when they showed up. But then, um, just a few years back, I did end up quitting a race due to injury. And those were all, you know, huge flags going up during the race that something not right was happening with my legs. And that pushing past it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the move to make if I wanted to keep enjoying this sport for many years to come.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And so I was kind of reassured from that scenario of like, okay, you have been getting in tune with your body and learning it. And, um, you can trust yourself a little bit more to listen to those big flags. But it's so individual and so much of it is based on just like knowing yourself and knowing what the signs are and what you're even, what those flags are even saying.

• 13:23Ryan Holiday?

  No, that makes sense. It's like by quitting before, by stopping when you still could have kept going, now you have the experience of doing that and then finishing all the way. Then you know what that's supposed to feel like. And then having stopped for good reason, now you at least have some understanding of the full spectrum of the possibilities and what quitting for the right reasons or stopping for the right reasons look like, stopping for the wrong reasons look like. And then also just how terrible it's supposed to be, even in a successful one.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's so cool. And this sport is so special because what we can do, what we're capable of is way more than we think usually. And so if you're gonna try something, it's going to hurt a little bit to do that. But then you make it to the finish line and you realize like, man, I didn't think I could ever do that. And I just did. And how sweet is that?

• 14:28Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was thinking about this on some book projects I'm in the middle of is like sort of, when do you ask for more time, right? When do you push through? How do you know if it's going well or not? Well, that's like, that's it's afterwards, you have the clarity. You're like, oh, I should have asked for more time or afterwards, I should have just pushed through. That was just a couple of bad days and it felt worse than it was. But it's like, your body would always, as you're saying, your body always wants to quit. Your body always wants more time. And sometimes you just, you have to, it's like what they say when you're, when you're in hell, keep going. Sometimes you have to figure out what the other side is. So then you're like, oh, yeah, this is an acceptable amount of suck.

• 15:10Ryan Holiday?

  And it's just part of the process. And then I've got to imagine, as you've done these races, you're now aware of the different depths and heights of the experience. And that allows you to have kind of more of an even keel because you don't, you don't extrapolate out one way or another too much from a temporary state.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try to. I think of it like a file cabinet in my brain of just all these experiences of the lowest points I've been at in races and all the problems I've encountered in these races. And so when they come up during a race, I try to stay really fact-based and not get emotional about it or like get overwhelmed by how awful it is in that moment, but like go into the file cabinet, go to the folder that's appropriate for what's happening and see if I have any other examples of when this has happened that I could use to help me just move past this problem that's occurring right then.

• 16:18Ryan Holiday?

  I guess it's the tricky part of distance running is like, not to say that Usain Bolt is not also cerebral, but like in a nine-second race, you're not reaching into any file cabinets, right? Like it's so, it's like hitting a baseball. You're just like, see, hit, right? Like, and so much of what's happening is deeply in the subconscious, like in the muscle memory. Whereas, you know, in a 42-hour race, that's a lot of time inside your head and it's, you're having, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  For sure, it can be both. And that's where like your brain and your thoughts become so important. And in those, you know, many, many hours of thinking, if you're continually letting your thoughts travel down a negative path, it's going to feed back into like what your body is able to give you and how it goes out there. Like, if you keep telling yourself that you're awful and this problem that's happening is ruining your race and that, you know, you shouldn't make it to the finish line. The odds are getting smaller and smaller as the hours pass that you're actually going to make it to that finish line, you know?

• 17:40Ryan Holiday?

  When it's a spiral, right? The thoughts spiral. So you start to go down and then they build on each other and all of a sudden you're having this, you've mapped out this insane scenario in your head and really like, nothing has changed and you have no new information and you're talking about a theoretical possibility 50 miles from now.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I now understand that spiral and have so many experiences of it in so many miles of running. And it doesn't go away, like the number of years that you do the sport, I don't think suddenly makes you immune to the spiral. But when it starts now for me, I try to, you know, just switch gears, like tell myself a different story, even if it feels like storytelling at first, you know? Even if I, I know I'm like, if I'm throwing up in the bushes and I'm telling myself that everything is great, I know that's not totally true, but I try to just flip the script even

• 18:44Speaker 01

  in those hardest moments because the spiral is really hard to stop when it gets, when that negativity gets spinning.

• 18:52Ryan Holiday?

  The, I think the other crazy thing is just like, if I told someone that they had to do anything for 42 hours, that'd be like an endurance sport, right? Just like you have to, you, you like can't do anything but one thing for 42 hours. Is there a part of you that like, how do you just turn the mind off entirely? I feel like there's kind of, you can't be thinking positive thoughts for 42 hours or maybe you can. Is there a part of you that just goes like, if I can just lock into something, you know, two or three hours will pass and then I'm that many percentage points closer to being done?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I sometimes just try to turn the radio entirely off in my brain and not think a single thing and just like listen to my breathing and it helps me not have thoughts. If I'm just focused in on the breathing or just looking at, you know, the trail and where I'm headed, I can often find, often find some peace in those moments. But it's hard, like turning off your brain anytime, no matter what you're doing, is really difficult. And if I am able to find those moments, I feel really grateful and just like, I don't

• 20:07Speaker 01

  know, it's so special to be able to do this thing that I love so much for 42 hours or whatever the length of time is. So I'll remind myself of that and try and keep that in the frame as well of like, how cool is it that this is all I'm in charge of right now, running and eating and getting to this finish line?

• 20:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's something special about, I think especially at night, when it's like you're hearing your footsteps, your breath, and essentially nothing else. And it's just this kind of like rhythm. It's obviously you're doing it, but it's also like you're kind of this passive observer of, like, it's like you're riding a horse or something, but you're the horse.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So cool. Night running is especially cool for those peaceful moments.

• 20:59Ryan Holiday?

  Do you listen to music or anything when you run, or you're, you're really stuck with your own thoughts for 42 hours?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  I usually go no music, but I will sometimes have it as a tool for late in a race where I might put it on because it takes up some of the brain space or helps me just be a little bit distracted for a minute to keep pushing to that finish line.

• 21:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I, I, I find that like listening to something on repeat also when I'm writing, it helps me like get into that flow state, which then it speeds time up.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you just do the same song then?

• 21:41Ryan Holiday?

  Usually when I'm writing, usually and often when I'm running, like it's the, it's, it's because like if you're listening to it on shuffle or whatever, you could find some of the songs are working and some of them aren't. But when I find a song that's working in that moment, I'm just like, I want to inject this directly in my brain and have it be the only thing that's going on.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  So is that a song with words when you're writing?

• 22:05Ryan Holiday?

  Usually it's usually like, it'll be some song I hear and I'm like, I like that song. That's like right in the emotional, mental space that I want to be on. And then I just use it up. Like I just use it on repeat for, you know, maybe I get a hundred listens. Maybe I get 200 listens and then it stops having any emotional power to me. And then I have to like move on from it. And then every once in a while, maybe I hear that song two years later and I, it's, it's fresh again. But, but I'm like using, I'm like, like a vampire, just like sucking the energy out of it until it's, it's worthless to me. And then, then I'm, I'm moving on.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  That's interesting and really cool.

• 22:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I like it. Uh, but I don't, I don't know how you could go that. I'm just so in awe of being with your own thoughts for 42 hours. To me, that's like a meditative experience that like even I think like a Zen master would have trouble with. It seems, it seems like, like to just be stuck with your own thoughts that long as, especially as those thoughts are saying, hey, we'll go away if you just slow down a little bit.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Um, and I think like in a race this long, my thoughts go all over every topic possible. I'll usually, you know, talk to my family before the race. And so they'll tell me, you know, what they're up to. So I could like think about them and what they might be doing at that moment or whatever. But I also love just going down memory lane or, um, thinking about like, I don't know, different things that have happened ever.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And just staying in the moment of like that simplicity of of moving. I think running for me has always been when I think really clearly. Like even in high school and college, I remember like running and writing a paper in my head. And then getting home, you know, and and cranking out the paper I just wrote. So it's always been connected to thinking for me and um being out there for multiple days of it. Like it's definitely not constant thinking. It rolls in and out of like deeper thoughts and then just ridiculous silly thoughts.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Thinking about food or jokes usually and then, you know, blank space of like turning the radio off.

• 24:35Ryan Holiday?

  Do you ever get like, it's almost like stuck in like an Eddie or like a a a spot where it's like just some thought pattern is just repeating over and over and over again? Like, like, do you ever find that your mind can get kind of like, it's almost like a CD skipping or something? And you're just like, can't get out of whatever that is?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's the worst.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  I think um but then I'll just try to like talk out loud. Sometimes I'll even, you know, by myself running, just say some things out loud to try and, I don't know. I don't know, maybe like hearing it come in my ears and in my head will help change the tune a little.

• 25:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think what journaling does that where you're forced to like actually write out this insane thing that you're thinking or focusing on. So I imagine saying it out loud forces you to have some distance from it. And you're like, yeah, that's that's insane. I should stop thinking that.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, move on.

• 25:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it kind of gives you a glimpse into like OCD or people have eating disorder. Like you're like, oh, the brain, the brain is this magical thing, but just, you know, sometimes your car, just like something goes wrong inside of it and it has to be fixed. And you're just like, this super powerful thing, it's just, it, something glitched and now it can't get unstuck and it's just doing this broken thing over and over again.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll even, sometimes I know I've been with a pacer. So in these races, you can sometimes have a friend run with you for some of the later sections.

• 26:15Ryan Holiday?

  Your husband does this, right?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, my husband, I have some great friends who've done it. And sometimes I'll be stuck in one of those things where like, just this thing is grating in my brain for so long that I just have to say it to the pacer. And then, once I've said it, it just feels like, okay, now we can be done with that. Like, I told you that thing that has been bugging me for hours, now we're done with it because I said it to somebody else.

• 26:44Ryan Holiday?

  That's a great little bit of self-talk. Like, uh, let's be done with this. Like, whatever that thing is, like, we're just not gonna do that anymore. And that's not to say that it's not right, there's not some kernel of truth, but like, we've, we've taken that as far as we're gonna take it and now it's time to, to put, to put, put the childish thing away, or the destructive thing, or the short sighted thing, and the selfish thing, we're gonna put that away.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's not actually helping me at all to dwell on it for more hours.

• 27:18Ryan Holiday?

  What I was, what I was interested reading about you that I was sort of surprised by is, like, usually when you talk to sort of professional athletes or people who are like world-class at what they do, they're, they're very focused on optimizing, they have lots of routines, they have lots of structure, they, they look at all these little things. I don't know if I'm making this up, but it seemed like you, you're much more flying by the seat of your pants than I would have expected.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That's probably an accurate way to say it.

• 27:50Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I was just looking at like your diet, or even like what you wear in some of the races. Like, is it partly that you just don't want to overthink some of the things that people tend to obsess about, and you just want it to be more chill so you can do what you do? Or what is your, what's your approach?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I think, for me, I do really, I do much better in all things in life if I'm enjoying them, and not holding too tightly to any piece of it. And so, by keeping my training plan really flexible and loose, I have a ton of fun with training. Training still feels like really fresh, and I want to get out the door every day. And it helps me tune in to what my body is actually wanting to do that day, how hard I can push the gas pedal down. Same with food. Like, I don't want to hold too tightly to any routine or

• 28:54Speaker 01

  types of foods. I want to have fun, and that means eating what looks good, or sounds good, or is the most convenient in that moment.

• 29:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't know. It just seemed like, yeah, from like the diet, or, yeah, your routine, your training, it's like, usually they're like, this is what I do this hour, this day. It's all sort of scheduled down to the minute, and it's all optimized. And it seemed like you were, you were approaching it from a less rigid, more, sort of, energy, like you were like tuned into whatever energy you had at the moment, as opposed to like, here's what the coach dictated I must do today.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's like individually going to be different based on how each person ticks. And so for me, just knowing myself a little bit,

• 29:54Speaker 01

  if I had a coach give me a plan every week, I would wanna be the best student that they had, you know, and I would wanna nail every workout on every day that they put for me. And I wouldn't actually listen to my body or, you know, the days where it needs rest or it needs to not do intervals. I would be following it like a recipe. And I think that wouldn't work as well.

• 30:25Ryan Holiday?

  So is this partly a way to, in what must be the danger of what you do, like sort of what they call overtraining syndrome or overdoing, is it partly that you're so naturally disciplined and driven that if you don't create space that way, you'll end up overdoing it? Is that sort of the idea?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say my default mode is all the way go. Like gas pedal, slam down, I'm gonna do all the things. And having no plan like I have, I really, every morning, wake up, drink my coffee, and sort of do like a full systems check of like, how are my legs? How's my brain today? How are my, you know, lungs and heart and emotions feeling? Like, where am I? And then maybe I'll start to formulate an idea of my plan for the day. Or sometimes I even can't tell, you know? I don't have a good read, so I'll just put on shoes and go run.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  And I'll see if I get to, you know, that certain hill I really like to do repeats on. Maybe I do them or maybe not, just depending on what signals I'm getting.

• 31:41Ryan Holiday?

  I guess that probably wouldn't work if you didn't like actually love the craft of it, right? So it's like if you're if you're someone who's genetically really well suited to the sport and maybe you can, you enjoy, let's say, winning, but like if left to your own devices, you'd be doing something else. Obviously, then you need structure and systems to channel you towards getting the best out of yourself. But if you're like, no, this is what I was born to do. I love doing this. And even if I wasn't doing it professionally, I'd still find myself doing it, then maybe you can flourish in a less sort of boundaried system.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  For your writing, do you have a set structure?

• 32:27Ryan Holiday?

  I do. Like, I'm very sort of routine based in that I like to have my days sort of very similar. And I like to do it in the mornings. But like, my dream is a day where nothing is scheduled. So like, it's the idea is like, if I have the whole day, I'll spend that day doing as much of the thing that I like doing the most, which is the writing. But if like, if you told me like, I had, I guess, I really love writing, so I try to protect that space. But then within that space, I like to sort of do it like you're talking about, have freedom. And like, I'll go where it takes me. I don't want to get in a space where it becomes like a chore.

• 33:14Ryan Holiday?

  I've thought about this actually as a as a parent, too. Like, I feel like a lot of the people that I one of the things my wife and I really decided was like, we're not going to turn this into a job and suck all the freedom and spontaneity out of it by like, trying to optimize something that should be pretty natural.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same. Like, I'm doing, running is currently my job, but it's also this thing I want to do for my entire life. And so I don't want to wreck it by, like, doing a structured training, or, you know, only eating certain food groups, or whatever. Like, I want my experience with running to be one where, whenever I'm done racing, I still want to keep running and doing it because I still love it that much.

• 34:08Ryan Holiday?

  In a way, it's like about being disciplined about yourself, disciplined. It's sort of knowing, like, hey, I am capable of sucking the fun 100% out of this. And so I have to create some almost lack of seriousness about it, so I don't grind myself or the people around me into dust by taking it. Like, the Bill Belichick system, like, it eventually, it's not sustainable, really, unless you're that guy. And so you have to create, I think, a little bit of room inside of it if you want to do it for a long time.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  So crazy.

• 34:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's, I don't know. I feel like, um, I feel like too, uh, the success at the thing shouldn't be a form of punishment, where like, like getting, being able to be a professional runner, a professional writer, like, that's the dream. Like, how many people would kill to have that? And then, if you turn it into something that sucks, like, you screwed up, you know? Like, it should be, it's called, like Bruce Springsteen says, "It's called playing for a reason," not like working music, right?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:21Ryan Holiday?

  And so it should be, there should be an element of fun and play to it. You are, you are doing, you know, a childish thing professionally. It should, it should have that.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also, like, I think, um, I mean, I think our time is so short here that we better enjoy as many moments as we can, you know, every day and every week and every month. And if it's just like making yourself miserable doing this thing that's supposed to be fun, I think, yeah, like you said, you've missed the, you missed the boat.

• 35:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I, I think like, sometimes I, I'll get this from people who want to be riders, like they're, they're like, what tools do you use? What's the right software? You know, like they, they, people really obsess about these like tactical things. And I imagine you see, like, again, when I see pictures of you running, I was like, I was like, this looks like a lady who's out for a run. And then meanwhile, I, you know, you drive by and you see some middle aged man and he's like head to toe in like hundreds of dollars of expensive gear and he's got all this stuff strapped to him. And you're just like, you're, I don't know, it feels like you're taking the least important part of it very seriously.

• 36:36Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I see people taking, like, really obsessing about optimizing for these things at the margin, when the important thing is like, do you love doing it? And, and have you conquered that sort of inner willpower thing that allows you to, to keep going when your body wants to quit?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:54Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, do you think that maybe though you leave some gains on the table? Like, if you were more, like, let's say diet, or, um, you, you know, you, you plan more, do you think that would be reflective in your times? Or is it like, I was reading about one of your races, like, the person who finished third behind you, like, was like 10 hours behind you? Is it also that, like, the, the margin is so big in your sport, that maybe thinking about these things at 1% here or there don't matter as much as they would in a sprint, let's say?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I mean, I've I've thought about it for sure of like, you know, should I restrict the things I eat or how many beers I drink or whatever. But for me, the scale then like the thing I'm weighing against is like enjoyment of life and enjoyment of the daily, you know, what how am I spending my hours? And I think that I get more benefit personally from just enjoying life than I do from, you know, counting however many grams of, you know, whatever, like

• 38:09Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  I think that maybe, um, I'm sure there's a lot of people who could tell me all the things I could change about my diet. Maybe it would have some payoff, but the thing I would lose is all of this joy. And I think the joy is has a much higher value.

• 38:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's this financial guy like I've had him on the podcast. His name is Ramit Sethi, and he talks about like, people get obsessed like in finance, like with $3 questions versus like $300,000 questions. So, you know, they'll obsess about like, I gotta cut out my Starbucks habit, right? Like, it's costing me $6 a day, which means this much a week, which means this much a year. And then meanwhile, they're like, you know, not maxing out their contribution to their 401k or they like, they're actually underpaid. Like, if they did the research, they'd be like, hey, most people in your position make 20% more. And so you need to go like, you're being paid below market rate. You need to go ask your boss for a raise. Meanwhile, you're sweating, you know, how whether whether you can afford

• 39:15Ryan Holiday?

  Netflix, right? And and so you're you're focusing on these minor marginal things instead of the big things. I got to imagine it's like, let's say someone said, hey, if you optimize your nutrition, you'll be 5% faster. But if you liked running 10% less as a result, that's a terrible trade off. And it might cut it cuts your entire career short as opposed to improving your times a little bit per race.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And

• 39:45Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I'm in this sport as my job and I want to race really hard and leave it all out there and do as well as I can. But at the end of it, I want to create memories with people and those shared moments are what I'll take with me, you know, through the rest of my life. So I, I don't actually, I mean, I, I don't need like records or wins or certain times or things like that. And so I think that factors into like the joy I'm experiencing in my daily life is

• 40:23Speaker 01

  like weighted way higher than trying to cut 20 minutes off of a race time.

• 40:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, that, that's interesting. It, it's, it's a balance though, right? Cause if you didn't care about your race time at all, you wouldn't be able to do it professionally, right? Like, so it's, it's like you have to care, but not too much.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and I do care. Like I'm, I'm racing because I love it and I wanna compete. I love to compete. And when I race, I wanna leave every bit of myself on that race course that day and see what, what I'm capable of, what's possible. But like, when I'm 90, I'm not gonna care about 20 minutes on our race time or, you know, if anyone remembers what race I won, you know, I'm gonna remember the, those shared moments. And so that's what I meant. Not that I don't care about racing, I just.

• 41:25Ryan Holiday?

  When you probably care more than 99% of the population, maybe you just don't care as much as the most driven person in the sport, who by the way, might be, and I don't know who this person is, but you tend to find those people at that, at the, like, you know, you watch like the Michael Jordan documentary and you're like, maybe he actually cares an unhealthy amount and it's holding him back in some way. So it's, you're really comparing yourself not against the average person, but against the extreme of the extremes, which might actually not be the best way for anyone to be.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh man.

• 42:06Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, so when you're running, are you running to, are you running to win? Or are you running to finish? Or are you running to not, not finish?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  I'm running to compete. And when I line up at a start line, I wanna put everything I have into every mile, every step, every hour along that race course until I get to that finish line. Where that lands me, you know, if I cross a finish line and I'm middle of the pack or whatever, but I left every ounce of myself out there, that's a satisfying race for me. And if I left everything out there and I won, then that's a satisfying race too. So I think my thing is always just not to feel like I could have or should have

• 42:59Speaker 01

  done something better during the race. But I never go into a race with like a time goal or a place goal. I think in these really long events, those can be a little bit tricky because you are riding such a roller coaster the whole time. And so if you're attached to certain splits, well, certain splits can change a lot over the course of 24 hours or 48 hours of running. Like you can ebb and flow through some really good moments and some really terrible moments. And then your splits maybe get totally thrown off.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  And if you're attached to that, it can mentally feel really hard to come back from.

• 43:46Ryan Holiday?

  So it's competing.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Even if it's like, even if it's like this split is at mile 30, hour 36 of a race, you had hoped to be at this aid station at 36 hours. I mean, you could miss that by a lot of hours if you've had some rough moments. And then how do you convince yourself that that's fine still? And I think that's the dangerous piece of getting attached to times or splits like that.

• 44:17Ryan Holiday?

  So when you think about, when you say your goal is to compete, do you mean compete relative to the other people in the race? Or you mean competing against yourself? Or is it competing against nature? Like, what is that? Well, I think when people hear the word compete, they almost always think relative to other people. They think the standards, or sorry, the standings. So is that what that word means to you? Or what does it mean?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Um, I think compete for me means

• 44:47Speaker 01

  giving everything I have of myself on that day. So usually, like, people might tell you during a race, like, how far back someone is, or how far behind someone you are. And that information, to me, is usually not important in my racing, because I'm already smashing the gas pedal down as best I can on the day and trying to, you know, keep it at this race level and navigate all of the problems throughout the course of the race. So what the other people are doing in the race

• 45:29Speaker 01

  is usually not a, like, variable that changes what I'm doing in that moment.

• 45:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I remember I watched a race. Uh, I'm forgetting who was in it, because they, uh, it's not a sport I follow too much. But it was a women's cycling race. I think it was mountain biking. Uh, it was some, some really long distance one, because that's the only place this could happen. But, you know, they're showing the woman, and she finishes, and she thinks she won. And she didn't realize that actually she, she'd like lost track of the other racers. And there was one, a person who finished like 10, 15 minutes ahead of her, right? So again, it's only the sports with the long distance where this is possible. But like, you know, she comes in, she, she thinks she won. And then they're like, no, no, no, so and so already got the gold. You have silver. And I was thinking about that because it's like...

• 46:19Ryan Holiday?

  Either that's soul crushing because you thought you were winning and you were coasting, like you didn't actually give your 100% best, or it's almost a totally irrelevant fact to you because had even if you'd known, it would have, it means like if you were truly giving 100% like not and put out the, oh, I gave 110%. If you actually gave 100% of what you were capable of, the fact that someone beat you is irrelevant because it means you could not have gone any faster. So even if you were neck and neck, you, you would have finished with the exact same time because you were not capable of more. And so that's where this sort of doing your best thing has to come in because either, either you were coasting

• 47:04Ryan Holiday?

  because you thought you had this in the bag, which would be so disappointing, or you're like, man, they're just 10 minutes better than me. That's all there is to it.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I try to be on that side of like, it wouldn't matter, you know, if I get beat by 30 seconds or 30 minutes, or I beat someone by some amount of time, like it wouldn't matter because what I had that day was what I got my, like, that's what happened.

• 47:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  That's how it played out and those are the facts, you know? So that's always my hope going into a race and that's what I consider to be competing.

• 47:46Ryan Holiday?

  I, and I think that that's a, that's an attitude that can apply outside of sports. Like for instance, with money, you know, you're like, wow, like this person has so much more money than me. And it's like, well, you did choose not to start a tech startup, right? Like, like, you know, like, or, or like, let's say you're a classical musician and then you look at some, you know, you look at Adele's earnings or something. Well, you're like, she chose a different kind of artistic path than you. It's preposterous to think that you would earn that much or be that famous. So you have to figure out sort of what, what you're doing and then what the ceiling of what you're doing is and then not be like totally tuned out or in.

• 48:28Ryan Holiday?

  Different to all, the question is like, are you maximizing your potential, earning potential, physical potential, artistic potential? And then if the answer is yes, then that's the end of it. You can't then go, but why don't I have what this person who works on Wall Street has? Like, you chose to get into public service. How did you not understand that there was a ceiling on the earning potential of X, Y, or Z?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting comparison. And I think, like, one of my reasons, or my why for why I'm in this sport and why I keep signing up for these really, really long races is that I want to see what's possible. So physically and mentally, what are we capable of if we just keep chipping away at it? Like, I call it my pain cave and I'm trying to make it bigger. So I'm hoping that this ceiling or back of my cave can be made bigger if I just keep on going into it

• 49:33Speaker 01

  and trying to do something a little bit harder or push a little farther than I've ever gone before. And then to keep looking for that, like, what is possible? Like, what if our brains and our bodies can work together? And we can train and put ourselves in these situations to just try? Like, how far can we go or how fast can we do it?

• 49:59Ryan Holiday?

  So you want to know how far back the cave goes, basically?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to keep exploring that cave and see how big it can get and what that means. Like, as it gets bigger, what will that look like physically and mentally?

• 50:15Ryan Holiday?

  And how do you know when you're in the cave?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Um, it's kind of like... When you reach that feeling of like it's impossible to go another step, like I'm not sure how I'll keep moving forward. That's when I know I'm like really back in the back corners of the cave.

• 50:36Ryan Holiday?

  So, okay, so, so the vast majority or a big chunk of a race, you're not, you're, you're, you haven't even gotten to the cave yet. The cave is where you get, the cave is, you're entering the cave when you, when you start to butt up against your limits. And then you're like, you know, you know what I mean? Where they're like, the first 50 reps don't matter. It's the 51st rep that it's where the muscle is being made. Is that sort of how it is?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Kind of, but I would say in these running races, sometimes you're shocked by a very early cave appearance. Like just whatever happens with the day or the terrain or, you know, for some reason you might hit the cave much, much sooner. Or maybe you just pushed really hard, really early, you know, and then found yourself at the entrance of the cave like way sooner than maybe you should have. But then I don't think that necessarily means you shy away from going in. I think that's when you dive in and keep working the cave in different spots, you know?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Maybe it's not the distance part of your cave where you're seeing what's new for, what's possible for a new distance, but maybe it's like the effort or how efficiently you could be pushing up this mountain or whatever, like making it wider in some areas or tunneling different parts. And I'm really visual, so when it gets to be that state when I'm running, I'll actually picture the cave and holding like a chisel and a hard hat and just like getting to work on making it bigger.

• 52:16Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, so, so you, when, not to extend this metaphor too ridiculously, but so you don't even think about it as you're exploring the cave. You actually think, if you're saying you're, you're holding a chisel, are you even, you're, you're expanding the cave? Like you're, you're, so it's more of a mine than a cave? And you're, you're trying to go further deep into the bedrock?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I think that's like. The part where you know, you think this is the limit of yourself. But if you went in the cave and just made it a little bigger, the limit suddenly is a little farther back. So, you know, in high school, 10 miles was like our long run and we would be knocked out for days after, like so exhausted and so shocked that we had run 10 miles. And then as you know, you keep going in that distance, that number keeps growing and your ability to go deeper into the cave gets a little bit bigger.

• 53:17Ryan Holiday?

  My, my son is obsessed with these, and I've had him on the podcast too. My friend, my, my, my son is obsessed with this ghost town in, in California where the guy goes and he explores all these abandoned mines that were, that were dug, you know, by hand or by pickaxe, you know, like a hundred, a hundred years ago. It's right, it's a right near Mount Whitney. So like a, like 8,000 feet over Death Valley. And anyways, so I've learned more than I would want to know about mining. But one of the things I thought was really interesting that sort of goes to this metaphor you're talking about is so, you know, you're tunneling, you know, you're chipping away. It's this giant rock face and you're just, you're digging this little tunnel, right? And you're going back and back. Do you know what a stope is?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:01Ryan Holiday?

  So a stope is you're, you're digging and then suddenly you reach a hollow place inside the rock. So it can be like a massive pocket of, you know, space and land that you didn't have anything to do with making, but like suddenly it's just there. And so I imagine.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  It's unlocked for you.

• 54:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. So I imagine it's kind of there. You're like chipping away at it. It's super slow going. And then suddenly you're like, oh, you just had to get past all this stuff. And then there's this whole thing that you didn't even know was possible, but it's actually easier going for that little bit than you thought. And then suddenly you're back against a wall and you're chipping away again.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  This is perfect because I think that is what it's like. You do reach those moments where it's like. Yeah, you've gotten your cave bigger and it's a little less effort to keep them diving into that back part.

• 54:59Ryan Holiday?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a picture of this one that he found. It's incre- you know, he's like, he's going through these tiny tunnels and then suddenly it looks like he's in the middle of like Penn Station. Just this like enormous space, right? And you're just like, where did that come from? And it just, you know, it just appeared. It's kind of incredible what's, what's back there.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  That's awesome. And it's really cool that your kid's obsessed with that.

• 55:24Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, he's, he's totally obsessed. It's like his favorite, it's his favorite thing in the whole world.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 55:29Ryan Holiday?

  I don't know if I want him exploring mines, but we can watch videos of it.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so another, another sort of cave analogy here. Do you know the, the allegory of Plato's cave?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not sure.

• 55:43Ryan Holiday?

  So Plato's cave is basically that we're all trapped, this is a sort of an allegory about knowledge, that we're trapped in this cave and it's dark in the cave. And then he says basically, if, if you come to have understanding or insight as to what's going on in the cave, like you get out and then you're able to see, you know, sort of what's in there. He says you have an obligation to go back in the cave and explain to people what they, what they're seeing, right? What's in here? What do you feel like you have learned inside the pain cave? Not just about yourself, but about, you know, the limits of, of, of ourselves. What do you feel like you've learned about pain or life in the cave that, that you, we need to understand?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I, I think we've spoken about a lot of it. Like, some of the pain just being those, you know, little teaser warnings of, you know, trying to take the easy route out or choose a path that's much simpler or takes less energy to travel on. I think-

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Like, the biggest one that I just keep being reminded of is how that cave is connected to our body and like for me for running, it's physically connected, but um the, your headspace and your brain are definitely the drivers of that and um, that connection is just like so interesting to keep on exploring and like finding myself in those situations where I mean, I try to really just notice like, what am I thinking right now? And how is that, you know, domino affecting some things? And then if I flip the script,

• 57:37Speaker 01

  what does that do when I just change a very simple thought in my brain?

• 57:43Ryan Holiday?

  Does exploring the sort of the pain cave as a runner, has it changed how you approach pain or difficulty in your, let's call it your civilian life?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  I think where I um can like most explicitly experience it is still just running. I haven't been able to branch it and connect it to a lot of other things in my life, but I also currently feel like I'm investing just a lot of myself into exploring the running piece of it. And so I'm not sure that I've even like dove into any other parts of the cave or if there's separate caves, I'm not sure. Um, I mean, it still hasn't made like sitting in traffic easier. I haven't connected those two.

• 58:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, to me, that's what the allegory of the cave is about obligating us to do, which is like you're on this sort of frontier of like the human limits. And so if that knowledge only remains for you getting a little better at running, I mean, obviously that's, as fans, that helps us. But what I would hope is that you discover some things out there on the frontier that you can bring back to us that we can apply, just like, you know, we get all these inventions that came from exploring space, you know, have changed our basic understanding of our basic technology here in life. I would love to know what, what we learn on those outer limits of the pain cave.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I ponder it a lot, but I'll have to get back to you on some like concrete things.

• 59:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I hope you write a book about it someday. I think that would be, I think that would be a way to do it on the exploration thing. Well, so what do you think of the argument? Because I've seen a bunch of articles sort of speculate on this with you. The idea that like men or women have different sort of not pain thresholds, but that perhaps there's some, they sort of called it like a female advantage or edge. I guess the thinking was, men should be, not should, but extrapolating how it works in other sports, men should be overwhelmingly dominant in the times. But then you're sort of like right up there, if not often beating it. Do you think that that pain is an equalizer in that sense?

• 1:00:11Ryan Holiday?

  Or what do you think of the fascination there with with the sort of male female discussion?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool. And it's a great time to be in the sport right now because there's tons of women, you know, trying to see what's possible and just more and more women getting into ultra running. So we have more information. But I haven't actually ever seen like a legit study about it. So everyone, I think, is just hypothesizing, you know, what could be the reasons where the longer distances seem to make it so men and women are a little bit closer in ability. And I don't know, when I stand on a start

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  line, I'm not thinking about like muscle size or comparing my calves to the next person calves. I'm trying to just think about like what I can bring to this race to try and be my best version. And maybe my muscles aren't as big as the person next to me, who maybe is a man, but maybe I can be a little more like mentally tough, or maybe I can problem solve a little more efficiently, or like things that have nothing to do with the fact that I'm a woman, you know? So I think that ends up being a factor in those

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  really long races is the things that can help you keep moving really strongly through two days of running. Aren't totally tied to being a male or a female.

• 1:01:53Ryan Holiday?

  It also feels like people get really obsessed with like sort of statistically, who's better at this or, you know, in a large group or, you know, even now we have these sort of political discussions about IQ or, you know, what gender is in this field or that field. And it strikes me at the end of the day, none of that changes the difficulty of what the individual is having to do that day, right? So like, let's say it was statistically proven that women did better in these races. Like, it's still really fucking hard to run 200 miles and, you know, nobody is getting a free pass. Like, it's still just fucking hard. And it doesn't change that even in a head to head matchup of you and another

• 1:02:38Ryan Holiday?

  person, like, it more comes down to like, how you both trained for that race, what injuries you have, what the weather's like, what random strokes of luck happen in the course of the race. And then at the end of the day, as you said, like, who wants it more and who doesn't quit?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, yeah, it's still 200 miles and it's

• 1:03:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  still a really long time of running. And that's why these races are also so special and build such a cool community because the finish lines, everyone's just hanging out, cheering for everyone who came in. You know, a person finishing a 200 miler at the time cutoff is, you know, that they were out there for five days covering those 200 miles. And that's the same 200 miles that the people in the front did, you know, it's just as cool and it's just as huge of a accomplishment. And it creates this really awesome feeling of community at those finish lines because of that.

• 1:03:44Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like statistically, when the, when Tom Brady is down 28 to three in the Super Bowl, you lose every time, right? Like statistically, you don't come back from that. But also, statistics don't matter when the individual will and circumstances of a totally unique situation are in front, like, there's almost like a lack of, we focus on these circum, these statistics as if they kind of like, and, and as a result, they kind of deprive us of agency. Like, it's, what ultimately matters is like, what is the individual going to bring to bear on the situation in front of them? It is not a predetermined outcome. It, like, we decide what happens.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So predictions are things, you know, hypothesizing what might happen or what might not happen. And they don't matter. You have to just bring it on that day in whatever that thing is that you're doing.

• 1:04:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and we have, what's so fascinating about your sport is that it's like, it's like no other sport where it's like, just not quitting is like 80% of it.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Ryan Holiday?

  You know, you know what I mean? Like, every football game finishes, right? Like, like, you know what, like, it's just so, it, because it's so at the extremes of the pain cave, to use your metaphor, that it's like, does, does the person, like, actually put that, like, do they push through or do they just stop?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not quitting is huge.

• 1:05:22Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think about that as a writer, too. It's like, it's like, look, I can't edit something that I don't create a draft of, right? So like, the first marathon is just like, getting to the end. Like, it doesn't matter how ugly it is, how janky it is, how much work, like, you can't place in a race that you don't get to the finish line. Like, that, that's the, the first qualifying event is just like not dying halfway through.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just survive it, get to that finish line, and then you can usually look back and see. Oh, here are the things I could try differently this time to try and get to the finish line better on the next attempt.

• 1:06:04Ryan Holiday?

  I got to imagine even that that like it's not a low bar because it's still really hard, but when we're talking about competing, whether it's relative to other people or yourself, it does give you like a bar to focus on that's totally in your control as opposed to outside stuff. I mean, obviously injury can intervene, but it's like, like you're like, my, my goal in this race is to finish the race. Whereas, uh, you know, LeBron James doesn't get in and goes, I hope to make it to the fourth quarter. Like he knows the game is well within the human bounds of, of possibility. So he's, he's having to focus on how many points am I scoring? You know, are we scoring more points than

• 1:06:47Ryan Holiday?

  the other team, et cetera. Whereas like in running, it's just like finishing is a win.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And then reflecting, like, I think you can learn a lot from those experiences. And if you take the time to look back at what happened, you can springboard forward, you know, stronger than you were the last time, which is a cool, like, you know, step stone. You're just building this pyramid or these steps and hoping to, to keep getting better.

• 1:07:21Ryan Holiday?

  Just like, hey, I could have been faster here, or why did I stop here? Or if I'd eaten, if I'd eaten that snack they offered me at mile 13, I wouldn't have collapsed at mile 30, that kind of thing?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Or even in the preparation leading to it, like, ooh, here are some things that I was clearly a little weaker on. I could try to up my game with that for the next time my race.

• 1:07:49Ryan Holiday?

  And as the last thing, I think one of the good things about running, I have to imagine, unlike again, a lot of professional sports where there is this ticking clockness to it, you're probably thinking like, how do I do this forever? Right? Like, how do I get, you know, you're not like, hey, like, you know, Tom Brady is in a race against time, right? Like, and he's already very obviously on borrowed time. Whereas like for you, I mean, obviously, you're still on the pioneering of it. There's not a lot of 90 year olds that are finishing 100 mile races. But you're, the race for you is also, how long can I keep doing this? Right?

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That is part of like, trying to be smart with training, trying to pump the brakes a little with how many races I sign up for each year, like extending the life of it a little bit longer because I think it can be a sport that you do all the way until you're 90, 100 years old, you know? And that would be so cool to still be part of it then.

• 1:08:56Ryan Holiday?

  So it comes down to pacing, right? Not just pacing yourself in the individual race, but how many races you run per year and how you recover from an injury. Like, you're having to pace, if you're thinking of your career as a race, you're having to pace yourself because you don't want to peak too early and not have enough to get over the finish line three decades from now.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Right, right. Which is really hard because it's so fun.

• 1:09:23Ryan Holiday?

  And you're competitive, right? Like, it's, it's hard to lose, not lose, but it's hard to maybe not give everything now at the expense of what you might be able to give a decade from now.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Keeping that big picture in mind, though, is, uh, it's important.

• 1:09:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I had this, uh, this, this, uh, mountain bike racer on the podcast and she was saying her coach asked her, "Do you want to be fast now or fast later?" And I like that. Uh, you know what I mean? Obviously you want to be fast all the time, but would you like to be fast now at the expense of being fast in the race where it actually counts?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Right, right. What did she say?

• 1:10:05Ryan Holiday?

  That's the, that's the balance. Yeah, right. She wants to be fast. She wants to ideally be fast when it counts, not in some, some stupid practice or scrimmage or whatever, uh, that, that the ego is making you be short-term at the expense of long-term.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:23Ryan Holiday?

  Well, this was amazing and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to do it. I'll, I'll let you get back to what I'm sure is a very long run you have planned today.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:10:34Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's an honor. Please spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.