133: The Real Foundations of Endurance with Chadd Wright

I've been waiting to get Chadd Wright back on the show for awhile now. Today is finally that day. Chadd shares his reflections on the power of intention, the challenges of comparison, and the importance of consistency in achieving dreams. He recounts his recent Yukon 1000 kayaking race and the lessons learned from enduring a grueling, unsupported expedition with his teammate, David. As Chadd covers the spiritual aspects of his journey, he discusses the profound impact of sitting with his dying mentor and the value of scripture in shaping his life. CHAPTERS: 00:00 The Power of Hard Work and Mental Toughness 01:13 Reflecting on Personal Growth and Achievements 02:25 The Journey of Building a Business 16:31 The Yukon 1000: An Epic Kayaking Challenge 52:06 The Reality of Physical and Mental Preparation 01:05:03 Building Belief Through Training 01:13:46 Upcoming Races and Goals 01:17:26 Spiritual Reflections 01:28:39 Mentorship and the Power of Scripture 01:43:45 The Role of Faith and Transformation 01:58:46 Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude CONNECT: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member FOLLOW: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Chadd: IG: @chadwright278

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

• 0:00Nick Bare?

  You can't out mindset the physical abilities that is required to do this stuff.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  And when you put in that work, the work is what makes you mentally tough. You ain't getting no more mentally tough on race day.

• 0:18Nick Bare?

  No one knows what they're doing. Everyone's just figuring it out. And I don't think that that ever ends.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  The result that we set out to achieve no longer becomes attainable. How do you react to that? We forget that really the standard of who you are as a human being. That's the thing that's going to make the lasting impact. I pray every day, Father, come form me into the image of your son, Jesus Christ, at all costs.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  He's going to call you to suffering.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Just me and you in here.

• 0:59Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Nice, intimate.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  I like that, man. It makes for a good environment for a focused, intentional conversation.

• 1:10Nick Bare?

  That's what I'm hoping for.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  It's cool, man. I mean, Nick, man, do you ever, you have to look at this some days and just be like,

• 1:21Speaker 01

  how did this, how did this happen? Like dude, this is unbelievable, man. Like it's so inspiring to me when I come here because I can look at this place, this team, these products, everything that you've done. And it's like such a great example because I know you, I know you're just a, you're not a normal dude, but like you're just a common human, like every other human.

• 1:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  But what any of us can accomplish purely out of our, a passion for something, a dream, a direction and consistency, like those key ingredients and like, look at this dude.

• 2:09Nick Bare?

  Anything is possible.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable, man. How old are you?

• 2:13Nick Bare?

  I'll be 35 tomorrow, actually.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  35, look at this dude. At 35 and not to mention you spent a big portion of years in the military.

• 2:24Nick Bare?

  Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's, um.

• 2:30Nick Bare?

  You know, I think the, the reality is that comparison is the thief of joy. And I've been, I've been learning this the hard way recently that sometimes no matter where you're at, you're looking at what other people are doing and you become discouraged. And um, I've kind of just completely flipped the script the last couple of months and just say, I'm going to focus on what we're doing, the team, ignore the noise.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58Nick Bare?

  And, I mean, moving into the space was absolutely surreal. But it feels like it happened so fast. You know, it feels like, it literally feels like last year, we were, it was two of us packing orders out of an old warehouse.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I love watching your OG YouTube stuff when you first started. Like I've seen some of the, the original videos of like you just, I assume with a cell phone camera or a GoPro or something like that.

• 3:30Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  And then you're talking about, I want to add to what you said, like a lot of times when you look at what other people doing, sometimes it can, you know, have a comparison is the thief of joy is the kind of the word you use, but I look at what people like you are doing and it fires me up. So like it can go, it can go both ways, you know what I mean?

• 3:53Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Well, what is it that fires you up?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Just realizing the potential that exists for someone like me, because we're similar in a lot of ways, like the potential that exists for me to go as far as I want to go. Like I see so, I see the potential here because you have went so much further than me in terms of business, you know what I mean? And just knowing that that potential exists, whether I ever take that direction or not, whether I ever want to move in the direction to where I have a facility, even half this

• 4:39Speaker 01

  size, like, but I know it exists because I've seen you do it.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  You've shared it with me. Like, if you did it, I can do it.

• 4:49Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Like, that's what fires me up. You know what I mean?

• 4:52Nick Bare?

  I, I used to, I used to limit what I thought was capable, I was capable of, the potential. Because I believed I didn't have the tools, the skills, the education, the experience, the resources to get there. And at some point, and I can't pinpoint exactly when this was, at some point, I realized I had everything that I needed to get to where I wanted to go. And I was recently listening to this podcast. And it was this gentleman who built and sold a business, and then he went and worked in private equity.

• 5:31Nick Bare?

  And then after his stint with private equity, he was contracted as a consultant to go in and work for these Fortune 500 companies. The best of the best of what they do. Huge companies with huge executive teams. And he said, he went and worked for these teams as a consultant, thinking that he was going to be overrun by experience and knowledge. And he said, he went and worked for these organizations and came back and thought, no one knows what they're doing. Everyone's just figuring it out. And it gave him so much confidence.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:05Nick Bare?

  And that's a reality is, none of us know

• 6:09Nick Bare?

  the exact right or perfect or best way to do things. We're all just figuring it out as we go. And I think, once you truly accept and realize that, you then have the power in your own hands to go create and build, whatever it is you want to build.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  That's it, man.

• 6:26Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I know, I don't know if you've ever read the, the, uh, in the SEAL teams, they have a creed. And, uh, one of the lines in that creed talks about how

• 6:39Speaker 01

  The standard for us is not to think that we are some special type of person, but simply to realize that we are all just common humans with an uncommon desire to succeed. That's really all of us. It's a level playing field. Like, we're all, like you said, nobody has this top-tier education that's taught them the way that everything has to happen and they get it all figured out before they ever start. Like, nobody has all the answers. Everybody that's out here pushing, striving, building,

• 7:19Speaker 01

  training, working towards something better, we're all just common humans. And those of us who go further, we go further simply because of an uncommon desire to succeed. Simply because we don't quit, we keep showing up because that's just who we are. You know what I mean?

• 7:40Nick Bare?

  So it's a will?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just the, yeah, it's just, it's just that uncommon desire to succeed, that will to, to keep showing up, right? Even, even in the midst of all the noise and the failures and everything else that happens, like, that takes time, though, and patience, and, you know, there's a lot of ingredients in, that go into that. But I agree with you 100%, man. I still, with, with the, with the business I have, I mean, we're still just figuring stuff out on a day-to-day basis, you know what I mean?

• 8:13Nick Bare?

  So are we.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  We're still thinking about what, what's the direction we want to go? What do we want to put the most energy into, like? But it's fun, dude. You know, to me, it's fun. It's stressful. At times, it's heavy. At times, on the micro level, it's not fun. But then when you step back and you look at the entirety of the, the journey, you're like, no, this is, this is fun, you know?

• 8:40Nick Bare?

  There's a, a huge weight that is lifted, too, when you have the humility to...

• 8:49Nick Bare?

  To recognize that and vocalize that. I believe so many people along the way, and I look back to when I first got started. 2012, small college apartment.

• 9:01Nick Bare?

  I didn't want people to know how small my business was then, so I documented very little. I didn't want people to know it was a one-person team. I didn't want people to know that I was operating out of a 10 by 10-foot bedroom. So I was afraid to showcase, and I wanted people, potential customers, to think that VPN was larger than it really was.

• 9:25Nick Bare?

  And that got me to a certain point, but then I realized that ego wasn't going to get me any further. And it's better to just have humility and be honest and, you know, I'm

• 9:41Nick Bare?

  2012, I'm 13 years in building this business right now. Been documenting my life on social media for 11 years now. And I'm still figuring it out. And I'm in a chapter and season of life right now that looks much different than my life did four or five years ago. And I don't think that that ever ends. We don't ever figure it out.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  I hope it never ends. I hope it never ends. I mean, how boring would it be, you know, if it

• 10:19Nick Bare?

  To have the answers.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you ever get to the point where you have all the answers, it means you've stopped. Like you've stopped gaining new ground. You know what I mean? You've stopped pushing into new territory.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  It's so good, man. And you talk about documenting your life and like how in the beginning you didn't show everything because of ego and and I can see how there's in, I can see from a business perspective, how there is some strategy in that. But there, you know, I guess a piece of that is also ego. You don't want people to know how small you are.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  But I think, man, it seems like nowadays even more so maybe than in the past. Like, people are so hungry for like, just people who are gonna be real.

• 11:18Nick Bare?

  Authentic.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Authentic. People are not only gonna show their successes, but show their big time failures, man. And like, the Yukon race, for instance, uh, we didn't finish that race, me and David didn't. We made a film out of it, like, well, what are we gonna do now? Just scrap the film because we didn't achieve the desired result? And it's like, no, we're going to make the film and we're going to show the result. That happened. We're gonna show the failure.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Because I think there are a large number of people who are going to relate to that. And who hopefully can see in that film how we dealt with that failure. And continue to follow us as we move forward and how we respond to that failure in the future. Uh, because I mean, how many people listening to this podcast have signed up for a race? And didn't finish the race? Or didn't hit the time that they wanted to hit for the race? Or, or how many people have started a business and failed their business? Or made a big mistake and it set them way back?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Like, we gotta show those things to each other. Uh, so that we can, one, encourage each other. And two, so that we can learn from each other how to properly respond when those things do happen. Because they're gonna happen. You know what I mean?

• 13:01Nick Bare?

  Yeah. I do wanna talk about the Yukon 1000. But what you just brought up makes me think, as a creative and someone who leads a creative team here at BPN. It can sometimes be our downfall before we go into a project and you can apply this to all areas of life. Before you go into a season of life or a project, you try to plan everything perfectly as it's gonna happen. Before even this story starts developing, you already know what story you're gonna tell. You set these expectations and then as soon as something changes, a lot of people in this case would have said, "Film's done."

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Nick Bare?

  "We're not creating this film. The story that we plan to tell isn't there." Yeah, but now there's a new story and this story could be even better.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  That's what I'm hoping.

• 13:50Nick Bare?

  So how do we pivot and adapt and adjust? But so many people get to that point where, well, no, like my predetermined course of action is gone. Just trash it all. There's nothing there. No, there could be so much more there. Maybe this was what was supposed to happen and this is the story that's supposed to be told. That's gonna be much greater and better.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  It's hard to submit to that though. Like, it's hard.

• 14:19Nick Bare?

  I mean, if you have faith, you gotta just know and hope.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  You have to be mature to submit to that. Cause you know, if this would have been the case for, you know, me and David, looking at the Yukon specifically, say five, six years ago, I might would have said, "Ah, well, we're scrapping the film." But like, I'm mature enough now to realize, no, there's still so much value here. That's relatable in a totally different way to a very large audience of human beings. Cause we're all the same in that we all experience

• 15:00Speaker 01

  failure. We all have something in life, some challenge, some effort where we, the result that we set out to achieve no longer becomes attainable. How do you react to that?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Well, your fallback is maintaining the standard that you've set for the person that you want to be. Like, that's all, that's, that's the major lesson in it, like, you know what I mean? When the result is no longer achievable, do you just all of a sudden turn inward and get poopy pants and stomp around and, you know, act like a baby about it? Or do you keep pushing? Like, do you keep showing up as the person you want to be? You know what I mean? The standard? Are you still meeting the standard? The standard is what's important, but we put so much emphasis, especially in social

• 16:03Speaker 01

  media land, in filmmaking, in endurance events, we put so much emphasis on the result, you know what I mean? And we forget that really the standard of who you are as a human being is, uh, that's the thing that's gonna make the lasting impact throughout the course of your life, you know?

• 16:27Nick Bare?

  I want to go somewhere with that. But first, can you give a brief overview of what the Yukon 1000 is?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So, the Yukon 1000 is the longest kayaking race in the world. Uh, it starts in Whitehorse, Canada, which is in the Yukon Territory, way up in the north western part of Canada. And it runs from Whitehorse, uh, a thousand miles down the Yukon River. You have 10 days to complete the race, and, uh, it finishes, uh, just at a, basically a roadway crosses the Yukon River that, it basically is a road they built in to maintain a, a gas pipeline. And, uh, that finish line is there. But the unique thing about the Yukon 1000 is that it is a completely unsupported

• 17:19Speaker 01

  race. And a lot of people get this confused with self-supported. Self-supported means that if you need to resupply, or you need something along that thousand miles, you could potentially pull off the river and go into a little hut or a village and get something that you need. Medical supplies, food, water, whatever it may be. Unsupported means you start the race with every bit of everything that you need to complete this 1,000 miles. And you cannot get anything along that journey to resupply yourself.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  It also means you cannot have any form of communication with anyone else. So you're totally isolated in what is the most remote environment that I have ever been in. And now, I'm a man of the country, you know what I mean? I live on 700 acres in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I know the woods and the wilderness, and that's my environment. But this place was next level. You know, you go into this, this type of backcountry, and you realize, you know, you're easily,

• 18:40Speaker 01

  at times, 150 to 200 miles from the nearest human being. And the nearest human beings, it may just be a little village that's a collection of a few shacks with a dirt airstrip that, you know, they bring food and water in by way of these boat planes and stuff. And you realize, holy crap, I can't make mistakes out here. This is for real. If something happens out here, no one is going to be able to get here.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  It's gonna be days before someone's gonna be able to make it in here to to help us if we run into a situation that we need assistance.

• 19:29Nick Bare?

  Have you ever felt that before in your life in any other situation?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I've been to some third world countries and stuff while I was in the Navy, you know, and you knew that, you know, there was medical care available, but it was at a very low level, you know what I mean? You know, you could you could get some simple medicines or stuff like that. And we always had a doc with us and but but I have never felt that type of aloneness that I felt out there. I mean, you know, you would stop paddling and you would realize this is what complete silence sounds like. No airplanes, no traffic,

• 20:16Speaker 01

  no nothing. Just complete silence. So that's the Yukon 1000 kind of in a in a nutshell. And this has been the direction that I've the last two years that I've really went with my personal journey as an athlete. The last two years, I've kind of moved out of the traditional like ultra running racing type of space. And I've been for the last two years moving more into these more like expedition type races, you know what I mean? And I love it because it pushes you in different ways. Like in ultra running, it's there's a lot

• 21:01Speaker 01

  of grit involved and it's just you keep going. The training can be very specific. You get to focus on, you know, running. That's what you focus on is running throughout your training block and, you know, a little bit of nutrition and hydration and stuff that goes along with that. But with these expeditions, like the Yukon 1000, you have to be able to perform.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Like, but you have to be, you have to be able to perform physically, but you have to be thinking about all these other things like navigation, um, eating, drinking, the weather, uh, you can't ever get behind, like, so you have to be able to do all of these things, different things to survive out there. Plus, you have to be performing physically, which is exhausting. And so, it's a cool experience. I highly encourage you to do some sort of challenge like that one day.

• 22:08Nick Bare?

  It sounds so interesting.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  It will make you grow. I mean, it will really make you grow as a, as a, just a complete human being, you know?

• 22:15Nick Bare?

  What was traditional ultra running not providing you any longer that you were searching for?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Um, it's the, so, it's the realization that there are going to be real consequences if I make a mistake here. Like in a traditional ultra running race, and, and please guys, don't take this as I don't like running anymore. I still love, I mean, I have, I have plenty of plans to do other hundred milers and other races in the future. But, you know, when you're running a traditional race, you're usually no more than six or seven miles from the next aid station. You know, sometimes if you're doing like the Cogodona 250 or something,

• 23:02Speaker 01

  you may be 18 or 20 miles from the next aid station. But, uh, but the trails you're running on are generally easily accessible. Uh, there are roadways within proximity that, you know, if you had a real issue, you're wearing a tracker or you have a cellphone, somebody's gonna be there within about an hour to, to pick you up.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  But when you go out and either the Yukon 1000, last year I did the Colorado Trail Race, and you realize I'm in the middle of this wilderness and I'm 100 miles from the nearest civilization. And there are no roads here. Like, there's no way out of here but through. It's that element that sharpens your mind, your skills, your proficiency. It takes the seriousness of it to the next level because in a real sense, your true life and well-being depends upon you doing everything right in that environment.

• 24:05Nick Bare?

  You really can't go into autopilot in some of these expeditions. I mean, if I think about some of these races that I've done, or ultras, you can pretty much go into autopilot. You follow the lights that are in front of you. You follow the signs. You follow the path. You know, if it's five 20-mile loops, every 20 miles, you're gonna hit the checkpoint again. And you just gotta put out during that effort.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Which is a beautiful thing. It's a great experience.

• 24:35Nick Bare?

  You can still unlock a lot of

• 24:37Speaker 01

  100%.

• 24:37Nick Bare?

  great undiscovered compartments of your mind during those races.

• 24:44Nick Bare?

  But the thought of an expedition like that, where the only way I can think about it and describe it is, this organization sets the conditions very loosely for you to go and try to survive and complete this expedition.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  That's the perfect way to describe it, Nick. It's like, these are the easiest, if you ever want to be a race director, these are the easiest events to put on, you know what I mean? Because it's like you said, it's super loose, you know? It's like, with the Yukon 1000, that's a hard river to navigate, by the way, which I know sounds crazy. What, you have to navigate in a river? Like, but it becomes super braided in places, meaning there's different channels that are going in all these different directions. And if you take the wrong one, it's gonna add literally 10 miles potentially on to your route if you take the wrong channel. So, there's a lot of navigation. But it's so remote that you, once you get past Dawson City, there are no maps of the river.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  So I, we as a team for that expedition, you have to go online and create your own maps of the route. Like I have to look at satellite imagery. I have to overlay the satellite imagery with, with UTM grid lines because I have to be able to call in grids in the case of an emergency. I have to have these maps printed out and I have to, to have all of the, um, the, the available airstrips, uh, pre-plotted on every one of my maps. Like, I can't just go and purchase that stuff. I have to build all of that out.

• 26:26Nick Bare?

  I didn't realize that.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's all part of the training. Yeah.

• 26:29Nick Bare?

  It's a huge preparation.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  It took me hours and hours and hours to, to build these maps out.

• 26:37Nick Bare?

  How, how many times did you get turned around or lost?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  We took, we definitely took a few channel, a few, you know, turns that we shouldn't have took. Uh, probably on four or five occasions, uh, during the, the course of the 435 miles that we covered on the river. Um, and you pay for it, man. Because when you get out of the flow, like when you get out of the main flow of the river, uh, it, you slow down substantially. And so that's another aspect of this particular race is, uh, knowing how to read the river. Um, because you may have a channel and say that channel at the fork, if you take that channel, it's going to cut off, let's say three miles. Let's

• 27:24Speaker 01

  say you have a big bend in the river and the main channel follows that bend. Well, you've got a little cutoff that's going to cut that whole bend off. So you're saving three miles, but you get out of the main flow and you try to take that cut through.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  And you realize you would have been faster if you would have stayed in the main flow and even added three miles to the course. So like, I didn't realize how important that was until me and David, we're cranking, we're paddling, and we have another race team beside us, and that race team takes that big three mile bend and they stay in the flow, and we take this little cutoff, and we think, oh man, we're gonna gap them right here, you know what I mean? And by the time we get out of that cutoff, that team was so far

• 28:24Speaker 01

  ahead of us, we could just barely see them on the horizon, because they stayed in the main flow of the river. So eventually, after about three days, I realized, I have to watch the surface of this water so carefully, and look for any little ripple, or any little evidence that there's flow. And I have to chase that flow, like I have to hunt the flow as we go. And you even learn how to read it from the wind. So if you have a tailwind coming behind you, as that tailwind hits the surface of the water, wherever the flow

• 29:04Speaker 01

  is the strongest, the water's gonna be the flattest. You see what I'm saying? Because if the water's moving in this direction, and the wind's coming from behind you, the water's gonna be smoother where it's moving the fastest. If you have a headwind, and that wind's coming against the current and hitting you in the face, wherever the water is the roughest, or the most turbulent-

• 29:31Nick Bare?

  The little ripples?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Wherever the ripples are the biggest, that's where you know the flow's gonna be.

• 29:38Nick Bare?

  Did you know this prior to going to the race?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I had no idea. It took me three days to figure it out, dude. There's just so much that goes into it that you learn and has to click for you to be successful out there.

• 29:51Nick Bare?

  That's a wild experience. How many teams started this race?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  I want to say there was about 30 teams this year.

• 30:02Nick Bare?

  How many finished? Do you know?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  I don't remember. It was, I don't remember the numbers of how many finished. I know there were a good handful of teams that were not able to finish the race for all kinds of different reasons. Some people had issues with their boats or their equipment. Some people capsized multiple times. In the first day, you have to cross a big lake. It's about 50 kilometers across this lake. It's called Lake La Barge. And we get out in this lake and the wind kicks up and we literally had two, two-foot,

• 30:43Speaker 01

  two-and-a-half-foot waves hitting our boat, basically rear quartering into our kayak for seven straight hours. And we're just, you know, we're in a little sea kayak and it was extremely cold. The water's glacial runoff, so it's freezing cold. And there were multiple teams that capsized multiple times in the crossing of that lake. And, you know, those teams weren't able to finish because, you know, you capsize in that water in those conditions, you can't just get back in your boat and keep paddling.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  You have to get your, hopefully you don't lose your boat. You have to swim your boat to shore and then you have to immediately set a shelter up and re-warm yourself or you'll become hypothermic.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  I mean, in less than an hour. So you're gonna be in your shelter rewarming yourself for two hours probably before you, your core body temperature has come up enough for for you to safely get back out in those conditions.

• 31:53Nick Bare?

  Have there been people who have died?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Not yet. There will be. There will be someone who dies.

• 31:59Nick Bare?

  How long has this race been going on?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly how long. I think the current race director, who has really taken the race to the next level, he's made the standards a lot higher in terms of the cutoff times and really the structure of the race. I think he's been running it for maybe the last five or six years.

• 32:18Nick Bare?

  Okay.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:20Nick Bare?

  And then you guys pulled out at what mile marker and for what reason?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  We pulled out at 435 miles at the last possible place that you can extract, which is a little town just before you cross the border into Alaska called Dawson City. And so the caveat to all of this is my teammate, David Charbonne, which I wish David was here with us today. I went through SEAL training with David, both BUDs and SEAL qualification training. And David was my teammate. Now, shortly after we graduated SEAL qualification training, David had a parachuting accident.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  And he had a significant spinal cord injury and was paralyzed basically from the waist down.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Well, David got to the point in his life after being paralyzed for 13 years. And he said, Chad,

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I don't know this body that I'm in right now. I don't know what the limits of this body is. I want to figure out what the limits of this body is. I want to go on an adventure. I want to push myself. He was like, "Do you know of anything that we can do together?" Because I had hit David up and I was like, "Hey, man, let me push you in your wheelchair for 100 miles." Or like, "Let's get you out and let's do something together, you know, hard." And he's like, "You're not pushing me for 100 miles." So he was like, "Do you know anything that we can do together?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I've heard of this really crazy kayaking race called the Yukon 1000."

• 34:08Speaker 01

  And so, he went, he went, he really didn't respond to it. And I didn't know, over the course of two years, after mentioning that race to him, he lives in San Diego, he linked up with an Olympic paddler named Chris Barlow in San Diego, who coaches Olympic athletes. And he spent two years with Chris Barlow, learning how to kayak. And had literally went to the world kayaking competitions to qualify for the Paralympics. And like, he got really good at it. And he just calls me up one day, he's like, "Hey, man, I got really good at kayaking. Let's do this race." He like, he called my bluff.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  And so, we didn't know how far, or if we were going to be able to finish this thing. Because no one has ever attempted this race with David's condition, being paralyzed.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  You, you know, we look at people in a wheelchair, and we think we can relate to them. Like, we, we think we can imagine. Well, alright, I get it, you, you can't use your legs. Like, I can imagine that. Like, I can imagine figuring out how to get around in a wheelchair and kind of carry on with life, right?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  You don't see the intricacies of what they have to do on a day-to-day basis, just to perform tasks like going to the bathroom.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Like, you don't understand the issues that, that people with that condition have with circulation in their lower body. Cause they, they can't, their muscles aren't pumping to move blood in their lower body, right? Like, that causes a lot of issues.

• 36:09Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Um, you know, we're out in the backcountry, Nick. If we need to take a poo, we're gonna dig a little hole, we're gonna squat down over the hole, and we're gonna poo in the hole, and we're gonna go... He can't do that. How does he, how does he poo in the woods? Like, so much that he had to overcome to be out there in that environment, that we so take for granted, man. And, uh, we didn't know. Nobody's ever attempted it. We're going down the river, man. Everything's going great, we're rocking and rolling. Didn't flip the boat over. Our rule was no swimming. So, David's a great paddler, you know?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Those waves were hitting us, you know? We even went through some rapids, like, he's really good at bracing the boat with his paddle and, um, but he had told me, he said, "Look, man, the main thing that I have to watch, look out for is what's called pressure wounds on, on my butt." Cause we're sitting in this kayak seat for 18 hours a day. We're pulling 120-plus mile days in this boat, 18 hours a day. He said, "Uh, I have to check every night for these pressure wounds." And we get through day one, no issues. Get through day two, no issues.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Get through day three, and we just pull up on bank to camp.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And I get the shelter set up. I'm out kind of moving the boat around, taking, tidying up some gear. Um, getting ready to bed down for the, you know, three hours that we get to sleep. And by the way, it never gets dark.

• 38:03Nick Bare?

  Really?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Sun's up 24/7. Yeah, that's weird.

• 38:07Nick Bare?

  That is odd.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  It's weird. And so I'm tidying up camp and I hear David, David's doing his checks in the tent on night three and he says, "Oh, that's not good." I heard him say that in the tent. And I thought, "Man, I know what he's talking, I know what it is." I knew immediately what it was. And so he was like, "Chad, come in here and look at this." And of course, him and I are tight, you know, like, "Look dude, these old bodies that we're in, these are just flesh suits, right?" Like, so he rolls over and he's like, "Check my butt out for me." And I checked, and so the way he would check it, he would use his phone just to take a picture.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  And then he would check it, you know, but he rolled over, I checked it, and sure enough, there was a, a pressure wound. It basically looks like a deep bruise, kind of right on his sit bone. And it was about this big, real dark spot. And, um, if the, if he continues, uh, sitting, and it's, it really has to do with not only the pressure of sitting, but also just the poor circulation. If he continues and the skin breaks, and it becomes an open wound, there's a very high probability that it will get infected because of poor circulation.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It would, it takes months for their wounds to heal if they take damage to their lower body. And so David's like, You know, if I take a, get a cut on my leg or something like, he's like, we'll keep pushing because worse comes to worse, they can amputate my leg. But if I take a wound on my butt, you can't amputate your butt.

• 39:57Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  And like, his life, his mobility is his wheelchair, which requires him to sit. And even if it doesn't become affected, they then, or infected, they then will have to spend potentially months laying on their stomach, allowing this wound to heal. And so when we saw that, he was like, "Yeah, man, like, I cannot go another 500 miles

• 40:27Speaker 01

  with the way this looks right now." And there were no questions asked. Like, it wasn't like I was gonna try to convince him to, to put his health and his, his time and responsibilities as a husband and as a father after the race was over. Like, there's no question, like, no, we're, yeah, it's over for us. But we still had

• 40:52Speaker 01

  a hun- a little over 100 miles to go to get to Dawson City from that camp.

• 41:00Nick Bare?

  To be extracted.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  To be extracted. There, and there was, like I said, man, we're 100 miles from the nearest civilization. And we were like, "Yeah, well, it is what it is. You've still gotta go another 100 miles on it."

• 41:19Nick Bare?

  That puts things into perspective.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:21Nick Bare?

  You're not being extracted right from where you call it. It's get to the next point, which is 100 miles away.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  You have no, you have no other choice.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And so we got up the next morning and we paddled hard. The cutoff, there's a cutoff at Dawson City and it's real tight. You have to get past Dawson City by a certain time in order to continue the race. And there were a few teams that didn't make that cutoff because it's, it's, you gotta work to get past that cutoff. Like, to do this race in 10 days is a big, big effort. Even just to finish it in 10 days.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  So we said, we made a commitment. We said, all right, we know our race is over. We got 100 miles left. There was, I'm not gonna lie to you, we were pretty beat down.

• 42:20Nick Bare?

  Physically?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Physically, yeah. I mean, your hand, like, my hands were like sausages, dude.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  My hands swelled so bad that over the course of the last two weeks, all of the skin on the tips of my fingers have peeled off. Cause my hand, my fingers got so big, I guess it like stretched the skin.

• 42:43Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like the opposite of ultra running. You know how beat up your feet get in the off? That's your hands in this paddle race and your traps, your lats, your core, everything is just so, it's exhausted, man. It's, it's hard.

• 42:59Nick Bare?

  How many calories you think you were consuming a day?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I think, uh, probably 6,000 calories a day, right around there.

• 43:07Nick Bare?

  You need to carry all of that, too.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all gotta be in the boat.

• 43:10Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, but we made a commitment to each other. On day four, we said, we're making this cutoff. Like even if, even though we know our race is over, and that gets back to what we were talking about just a little bit ago, man. The result was no longer achievable. We knew that. No questions asked.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  We could have just got up out of camp on day four, and we could have covered that 100 miles

• 43:43Speaker 01

  over the course of 15, 16 hours, and just kinda took it easy, getting down to Dawson City.

• 43:51Nick Bare?

  Which most people would do.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Which, that's the temptation, right? Like, like, you can know, you're not gonna finish the race. But David and I both looked at each other and said, no, we're, we're making the cutoff. And so we paddled hard, dude. And, uh, we pulled into Dawson City with, with over a half hour to spare. We covered 100 miles on day four by 4:30 PM. We covered 100 miles in less than 12 hours.

• 44:29Nick Bare?

  Wow.

• 44:31Nick Bare?

  That's impressive.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was big, dude.

• 44:34Nick Bare?

  Were you guys, when you were on the water, were you guys talking the whole time, or was it silence?

• 44:39Speaker 01

  So, we talked, uh, a good bit in the mornings. And then, the hardest part of the day would usually be from about 2:00 PM until maybe 6:00 or 7:00 PM. It was just a hard, for some reason, that was just a hard part of the day. And we would get kinda quiet then, but we would still check in on each other. Um, and then usually in the evening, we would get some, you know, new energy and, uh, conversation would pick up, sometimes the pace would pick up. Um, but, a- and a lot of times, it's, all, communication is also situationally dependent out there because, um,

• 45:20Speaker 01

  the wind can get so bad, especially if it's a headwind, that, you know, in the boat, David and I are about the same distance apart as you and I are right now at this table. But the wind would be so bad that there was no way we could hear each other talk, even this close. And so, during those times, I mean, you would have periods where the wind was just, just hammering you for six, seven hours at a time, where you could not talk to each other. Like, you were, you were basically on a, on an island by yourself with a dude this close to you, but there was no way you could hear each other.

• 46:04Nick Bare?

  So what were you thinking about this entire time in all this solitude?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Ah, I was trying to take in the beauty of what was around me.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Um, and it, it became difficult for me, especially on day four. Uh, one of the bad things I started thinking about is I started looking at this dang watch too much. And, um,

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Just like when you're putting in back to back days, back to back to back to back days that are 120, 130 mile days, like that starts to get to your head.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And so I started getting way too, let me check this watch, oh dang, I've only been a half a mile.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And so what I, I started getting thinking too much about like how, how much ground we had covered and how much ground we had left to cover to get to that Dawson City. And so what I actually started doing Nick is I would reset my watch every 10 miles. And because for me, I could mentally say, if I can look at my watch and it says four miles, I can say, okay, I can get from mile four to mile 10. I was tricking my mind because when I would look at my watch and it would say I had already

• 47:38Speaker 01

  been 70 miles and I knew I had another 50 to 60 miles to go that day. And I was already so beat and I had already went so far. It was like, it was crushing me mentally, man.

• 47:56Nick Bare?

  I can imagine, yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  And so David would ask me, he'd be like, what's our mileage for the day? I'd be like, oh, eight miles. And he'd be like, what are you talking about? I'm like, dude, I had to start resetting my watch every 10 miles.

• 48:08Nick Bare?

  It's smart.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And it worked, it really worked, man.

• 48:10Nick Bare?

  It's smart. It's like when I run ultras, say it's a 100 mile race, I break up into 10 mile sections.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Nick Bare?

  All right, like section one is zero to 10, then 10 to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 40. Because you get like 70 miles in and you're, you're hurting, you're in pain, you realize you have 30 miles left, 30 miles, and you start thinking, well, that's more than a marathon. I have more than a marathon left. And it's this much time per mile, it's this much time on my feet. You get in your head.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 48:41Nick Bare?

  You know, it becomes overwhelming, so breaking it down into small chunks, you can, you can manage that.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  It's critical, it was critical for me, man. It always has been, yeah. And it's funny how you can trick your mind, as smart as you are, you can almost outsmart yourself, you know?

• 48:56Nick Bare?

  Well, it's like me on the bike right now, since I'm in Ironman prep. I'll break it down into these small like five to 10 minute sections. And I'll go as long as possible without looking at the clock on my watch. Some of these workouts, you know, you have like 35 minute intervals at certain power. And when you're in an uncomfortable position for 35 minutes.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  It's a long time, dude.

• 49:21Nick Bare?

  So I will put my head down and I'll close my eyes and I will try to get as far as possible without looking at the clock. You get to a point where you're like, I'm sure I have like eight minutes left. You open up, you look up 14, like, no.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:35Nick Bare?

  No. It isn't, it's, it's, it's a mind game the entire time.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I, I wanna, I, I wanna talk to you about something on mindset that I'll actually learn from the race, your race.

• 49:45Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Just, I don't know if you wanna talk about that.

• 49:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I'd love to.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  But, um, so by the way, congratulations on this success of the BPN race this year.

• 50:02Nick Bare?

  Thank you.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  There, ha, there's nothing that compares to it. Like, not only was it an amazing event with amazing people, well ran, just clean, tidy. Everything about it was an awesome experience.

• 50:20Nick Bare?

  I appreciate that.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  But you guys have brought the sport of ultra running really to the mainstream. And I know that wasn't your intention. It just happened. Like, I, there's never been another race that, that got the amount of exposure that that race got basically on the first year. Like, just right out of the gate, man. And I know that wasn't your goal. You didn't put the race on so that you could cause a big scene. That wasn't your goal, but when you bring a bunch of awesome people together and they start doing awesome things, like, sometimes that just happens and it happened this past year.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And I was so, one, thankful to be a part of it, but so proud that you guys, you and your team put in the work to make it happen. But what I wanna talk about, what I learned there is, um,

• 51:18Speaker 01

  So at that race, I think I only ran 84 miles or something like that. And there were a lot of people, I think, who thought, "Well, what the crap, Chad? You only ran... We thought you were gonna win the race." You know what I mean? Like, a lot of people. And I get that, right? Like, because I'm a runner. That's like my bread and butter, right? But I was actually proud of how far I ran because I had not been running at all. I had been training for this UCOM 1000. I'd been paddling, like, literally I had...

• 52:02Speaker 01

  My running was four or five miles a week. You know what I mean? And I realized that there were a lot of people who have followed me for a long time who thought that... Who thought that I was going to be able to do well purely based off of mental toughness. And this really opened my eyes that in some... On some level, there is a belief that exists out there

• 52:44Speaker 01

  that you can just get mentally tough enough to show up and perform at a high level without putting in the necessary work.

• 52:58Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  There is... This has happened. It's not anyone's fault. If this has been your perspective, be honest with yourself. It's because of what has been portrayed through the highlight reels of social media.

• 53:14Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  This state that people think exists where you can become mentally tough enough to just go and perform anytime without putting in the proper, specific, intentional training that you can just go perform because you have built this level of mental toughness. This does not exist for any human beings.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Not me, or any of the other guys out there who portray themselves as 10 times more mentally tough than me. It don't exist for them either. If anyone out here is ever successful at a high level in athletics, it is because they have put in the work to be successful.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And when you put in that work, the work is what makes you mentally tough.

• 54:21Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  You ain't getting no more mentally tough on race day. You're like, it's all, everything's done on race day. Like, you shouldn't be learning really much of anything new on race day. But the reason people want to believe that you can just train your mind to this level, that you could just go and perform without the work, is because then it gives them an excuse to not do the work, which is the hard part.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  People want to believe, "I can just use this little hack that Chad just told me where I reset my watch every 10 miles, or I can break things down into small digestible segments, or I can just, you know, decide to be patient, or stay present. I can be really deliberate. I can just do all these things and I can perform. Like, that's gonna, it's gonna trick my mind into this state where I can just keep going." No. You have to be physically prepared, and then you have to apply all of those mindset techniques, layer them on top of the physical preparation, layer them on top of the work,

• 55:37Speaker 01

  strengthen them throughout the process of the work.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And that's how it all comes together to win. Like, those guys that were at your race that, that, that were in, in the, in the final hours, that went for 50, 60 hours, however long they went, like...

• 56:01Speaker 01

  I could be more mentally tough than Kendall all day long. Maybe I am. But he'll beat me every day of the week. Until I show up and put in the amount of miles that he had put in to show up and to perform the way he performed that day.

• 56:22Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying, man?

• 56:24Nick Bare?

  I mean, it makes me think back to what you're explaining right now. When I went for my first sub three hour marathon. I knew leading up to that race that I was not in sub three shape. I did not put in the work. I did not hit my splits. I couldn't stay on track with the training. And when I toed the line for that race, I told myself, you can mentally outwork your inability physically to run sub three. I told myself that. I said, you just gotta just mentally work through it. So I went out. I knew I had to hold a six forty five minute per mile pace.

• 57:06Nick Bare?

  I went out at six forty for the first six miles and then I dropped off to like a seven forty five minute per mile pace and I crossed that finish line at three hours and 24 minutes. I missed that goal by 24 minutes. And that was a huge realization for me. I knew that failure because it told me and it taught me. You can't out mindset the physical abilities that is required to do this stuff.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Thank you for the confirmation on that.

• 57:36Nick Bare?

  100%.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Nick.

• 57:38Nick Bare?

  But I do believe we are in this, this weird time here on earth and within social media that people are putting more time towards the mental preparation, which is absolutely critical and necessary. And I think it is almost a hedge to the physical work that is required.

• 58:01Nick Bare?

  You know, I, the way that I like to think of it is sometimes people will put so much work into the theory and the thoughts and the study of a certain thing. But then when they actually are put into the practice and real life application, they fail and fall apart. You know, for example, Yukon 1000, you get to have someone who studies that route for years and, and reads how to, you know, maneuver a kayak and, and reads how to, uh, watch and monitor the water and the waves and the ripples. And you put them out in the water and they go, holy crap. I know nothing. I know nothing. You have to match that mental preparation

• 58:45Nick Bare?

  and readiness with the physical test and readiness.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. And the, the load when to, to truly prepare, uh, for a sub three hour marathon, for a performance like, uh, Kendall and what was the other guy's name?

• 59:05Nick Bare?

  Kim.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Kim put on at, uh, the BPN Ultra, uh, to truly prepare for that type of performance, you need to have like, I, I, you need to, I, I want to be honest with you right now. The load of that type of preparation to perform at that level.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  You don't understand, you probably don't understand the level or the, the, the load or the weight of the training and preparation that goes into a performance like that. Like, it's not, I'm just gonna go out and I'm gonna run for an hour every day. Like, I'm gonna go, I, I'm gonna make a commitment to run every day. Like, no, man. It's like, for, for guys to perform at that level, it has to, it becomes this thing that consumes them. It has to consume you.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  By the way, to the detriment of everything else in your life, all of your other responsibilities are going to suffer. Like, if you want to perform, if I want to perform at that level, I have to have a conversation with my wife. I have to have a conversation with my guys that work with me at 307 Project. Like, hey, I'm gonna make a conscious decision to allow this to consume me because it's that important to me that I'm successful at this specific event. That's the load we're talking about.

• 1:00:49Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  It's not just the daily grind. It's not just the daily maintenance, like the gym, or like, it's so much more than that to perform at that level.

• 1:01:03Nick Bare?

  I mean, I was the one that was standing at that start and finish line at the top of every hour for majority of those hours. And deep into the race, when Kim and Kendall would line back up, you can tell when someone is, has the mental capacity to keep going, they have the will, but their body isn't matching. That physical readiness isn't matching the mental readiness. They would line back up at the top of every hour, deep into the race, looking just as equally mentally sharp and physically sharp. I mean, they were hurting,

• 1:01:45Nick Bare?

  they were struggling, but they would finish those loops consistently, hour after hour after hour. And if that storm didn't come in and completely destroy the course and the race, I think those guys would have gone another 24 hours.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Nick Bare?

  Like, they were not slowing down, but they were physically prepared to handle that amount of volume. They put in the work.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're talking about thousands of hours of running to put on a performance like that, you know?

• 1:02:15Nick Bare?

  For one performance.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  For one performance. That's it, man. Thousands of hours of running.

• 1:02:22Nick Bare?

  Yeah, whenever I go into these big fitness preps...

• 1:02:27Nick Bare?

  And I think most people think that I go from one race to another, to another, to another. And I think you're the same way as me where we pick our expeditions or our challenges very strategically and intentionally because we know what is required when we go into that process. It is all consuming and you have to make sacrifices and you say no to a lot of other things. Before I went into this Ironman prep, having the conversation with Steph of this is what it's going to require. Having the conversation with my team, this is what it's going to require. Knowing that at the end of each day, I am absolutely wiped, especially after spending time with the kids and the family.

• 1:03:08Nick Bare?

  And you know, that's a huge priority in my life, being present for that. You do that for 18 weeks, you're pretty wiped at the end of it. But you can know when you complete it, you put everything you had into it. And you were physically prepared to manage and handle what you're about to endure. That's the beauty of a prepping ability.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  It, it really is, man. It really is. Yeah. When, when you, when this clicks with you, what you're gonna, talking to other athletes out there. When this, this really clicks with you, you, you're going to reach this state where when you commit to a big effort, you are going to feel the burden of that effort at the moment of commitment, if that makes sense.

• 1:04:01Nick Bare?

  I can, I feel that in my soul.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Thank you. Like if, if you're not feeling that, it means that you're not really committed. It means that you are not going to perform as well as you can perform. It means that you're go, you have left yourself an out somewhere. Like you should feel the burden of that commitment from the moment that you commit in your mind to doing this thing. And it's heavy, man.

• 1:04:27Nick Bare?

  Heavy.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  It's really heavy. And I just want to be real with people, man, like.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  This is what is behind these efforts and I went running with a good friend of mine, Mason, this morning around Lady Bird Lake, which by the way, I'll never forget our run around Lady Bird Lake, man. That was one of the highlights of my run, like as far as training runs.

• 1:04:51Nick Bare?

  It was a great night run.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  It was one of the highlights of my entire running career was running with you that 10 miles around that lake and the guys were out there.

• 1:05:00Nick Bare?

  We shared some melons afterwards.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, filming it and like that was so much fun. But yeah, I was running with my buddy today around Lady Bird Lake and he signed up for a last man standing race and he was like, man, I know I have to believe I can win to win. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. I said, but how do you build that belief that you can win? I said, the only way that you can believe that you're going to win is by putting in that, that training, that specific intentional training on the front end. Like that's how you build that and it

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  is essential that you must believe you can win to win. If you don't believe you can win, but you're not going to win. But to truly believe that you're going to win, you build that belief by putting in that specific intentional hard training prior to the event. You only get to experience this very few times really in your athletic career. The biggest time I've experienced it was when I won the Mid State Mile of the second year. There's a film on that called Just One Mile on Amazon Prime if you guys are interested

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  in watching it. But I remember showing up to that race and I didn't care, like literally, I didn't care who else showed up. Courtney DeWalter could have showed up. David Goggins could have showed up. I didn't give two craps who showed up to this race. I knew for a fact I was going to win that day. No questions asked.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  How did I arrive at that place? Which is a, dude, you want to talk about a freeing feeling when you toe the line with that type of mindset? Like, to your core, you don't care who shows up. No one's beating you. How did that happen? It was because I spent four or five, no, six or eight months prior to toeing that line with the singular focus of preparing to win that race. Singular focus.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  That's how I arrived that day, in that state, with that mindset.

• 1:07:45Nick Bare?

  When it comes to racing and competition and winning, are you in pursuit of the win to beat everyone else? Or is it to honor the commitment you made to yourself to be the best?

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  I have to answer that question honestly. It's to beat everyone else.

• 1:08:08Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  It's to say, "I'm that good."

• 1:08:15Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:08:17Nick Bare?

  I appreciate the honesty there.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's the honesty, man. I love competition. I love it, man. I actually, I'm starting to miss it, you know? Like, that's another thing I learned at your race. Although, you know, I was happy I was able to show up and run 80-some-odd miles with zero training. I thought, okay, that's great. But at the same time, it pissed me off. Because I realized I wasn't in good enough running shape anymore to be competitive. And I love competition.

• 1:08:51Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  And so it pissed me off, dude. Like, I've been running like a, like, since Yukon was over and, and that was done, like, I have been running long every single day. Uh, because it pissed me off that I couldn't be competitive in a sport that I love.

• 1:09:15Nick Bare?

  Are you coming back for next year's race?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Uh, Lord willing, man. Lord willing, yeah.

• 1:09:19Nick Bare?

  We're moving it to April next year, so it'll be a little cooler.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Thank goodness.

• 1:09:24Nick Bare?

  I know.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  That was brutal.

• 1:09:25Nick Bare?

  I know.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  But I mean, it was part of the experience, dude. I'm not gonna complain about the weather out there because it was just part of the experience, you know?

• 1:09:33Nick Bare?

  What, what I loved about the Go On More Ultra, and I didn't expect this. And we definitely didn't expect the race to just catch as much attention as it did in the moment. We thought maybe that once we published the film, which we're releasing September 5th, we thought maybe then the race would gain a lot of popularity, but we didn't think in the moment it would blow up like it did. But there were a lot of people guessing who was gonna win the race. You know, a lot of people were saying either you or Truitt, one of our athletes, Johnny Davies, he was going for the win. There were a lot of assumptions on the table.

• 1:10:15Nick Bare?

  But Kim and Kendall were these unassumed underdogs that came out of nowhere.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Nick Bare?

  Who were able to run the race because their names were selected in the lottery.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Nick Bare?

  These were just two guys who've been putting in work for a long period of time to be given the opportunity to show up and throw down.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  What a beautiful, what a beautiful opportunity too, because that won't be the case for them next year. Like, they won't get the same opportunity. Like, I mean, I can remember those days as an ultra runner in 2018, 2019, when I could show up to a race and I knew, I was tuned up back then. Like, I knew I was gonna run in the top three, but nobody knew my name. I mean, that, that's a cool position to be in.

• 1:11:04Nick Bare?

  It's a, it's a cool position to be in.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  It really is, man. And it, you know.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Truitt, what a crazy athlete dude like

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  pull-up world record, fast marathons and genes. But it like it was amazing to me how many people were so adamant that Truitt was gonna win. Truitt's not an ultra runner.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Again, that goes back to this whole concept of people's belief that someone who's mentally tough, which Truitt is a mentally tough individual. You do that many freaking pull-ups in 24 hours? You have got a strong mind.

• 1:11:48Nick Bare?

  For sure.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  But it goes back to this whole thing. It proves the point that people believe that a mentally tough individual can can step up and perform when when they haven't put in the specificity, the specific training needed to perform at that specific event or challenge.

• 1:12:09Nick Bare?

  That's the exact word. Those are my mind as you're getting there. Specificity.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:12:14Nick Bare?

  Like you, you can't take these. You can't make these broad stroke statements of like this person is good at this thing, so they're gonna be good at everything.

• 1:12:24Nick Bare?

  You have to train specifically to achieve a certain outcome. Like if I if I think back to my my last marathon, I I made a PR of 239. That was almost three years ago now. To say that just because I ran a 239 marathon, then I can go run a 239 marathon now. So now those three years ago, my my training in the last three years has not been specific enough to go achieve that outcome right now. Just because you did one thing once doesn't mean you can go do it again. It requires a whole nother block.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  So true.

• 1:13:00Nick Bare?

  To get there. You know, and like that specificity is so critical and vital for anything you're going after.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  And you can never base. Future performance off of past results.

• 1:13:17Nick Bare?

  Never.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Like, it's an impossibility.

• 1:13:20Nick Bare?

  Never.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Especially when you're talking about high level. Like, you know, you get to that, to the, you get up and you start playing around with the top tier, you know, in any sport, running, kayaking, whatever, man, you're splitting hairs. Like, you have to have, your training has to be so specific in order to perform at those levels.

• 1:13:45Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:13:46Nick Bare?

  So now that you're getting back into more running, what's calling you?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  So, we are signing up for a 100 miler in June that I've always wanted to run since I started ultra running in 2018 called the Old Dominion. It's the second oldest 100 miler in the nation, maybe in the world. It's the Old Dominion, it's in Virginia, and it is a, it's one of the few races, as the sport of ultra running has grown, ultra running has changed quite a bit. Just, and not in a negative way, it's just different. Ultra running used to be, even in 2018, it was still very grassroots, you know, $20 entry fees,

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  you know, the winner of the race would get a loaf of homemade bread, or, you know, something like that. And there was just some guy at the start line who blew a horn, and everybody went off and ran, and, you know, that's a cool experience. And the Old Dominion is one of these races who has, they've really maintained that type of, that old spirit of ultra running. And it's a, it's a course that has, it's changed very little over the course of however long it's been running, decades it's been running. So you get to run the same course that, you know, guys were running, you know, 30 years ago. And I think that's another cool aspect of it.

• 1:15:16Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Where's it at?

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  It's in Virginia, so it's like, kind of like in the Shenandoah Valley, so it's...

• 1:15:24Nick Bare?

  Oh, it's beautiful out there.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is, man, it's a mountain race, a lot of trail, I think there's some road sections on it, too. But, Lord willing, I'm gonna run that, and I want to really try to put down a fast time. At the Old Dominion 100. I think currently my best time on a hundred, a mountainous 100 miler would be, I don't know, 19 hours, 18, 19 hours, something like that. So I would love to go out there and, and PR on my 100 mile. Uh, mountain, you know, it's all terrain dependent. So you have to kind of categorize them as a mountain.

• 1:16:03Nick Bare?

  For sure.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Trail race or something like that. Uh, but I'm looking forward to experiencing that.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  My favorite format is, uh, is Last Man Standing though. It's, it's just, it brings me so much joy when I get to be out there running and competing in that type of environment, in that type of format. Um, so I would love to come back on April.

• 1:16:33Nick Bare?

  The invite is there.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  And, and do, uh, your, and your team's race. Um,

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  so as of now, that's, that's what I'm thinking and, and kind of running that Old Dominion. And then maybe really focusing on, uh,

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  really honing in on that Last Man Standing format. Cause there's a lot that goes into going as far as those guys went. You know, there's a lot of technique that goes into going as far as those guys went. I would love to go 72 hours at a Last Man Standing race. Like that, that would be a, that, that's a, that would be a high goal for me to set for myself.

• 1:17:18Nick Bare?

  I think the race in April is going to go long.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  I think it will too.

• 1:17:22Nick Bare?

  It's going to go really long.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  I think it will too, man. Um, and then I, I, I know it's not running.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  But I gotta go back to the Yukon.

• 1:17:37Nick Bare?

  Redemption?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I mean, like, you know, David is now going back to the drawing board and thinking about how can we manage the swelling that he was experiencing in his legs, which was another thing we didn't even talk about, how we can change his seat up to really mitigate those pressure wounds. He's going back to the drawing board and really getting innovative with what we can do to kind of overcome the issues that took us out this year. And I'm

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  leaving it up to him. Of course, my, my primary choice for a teammate would be him. But if something, if he comes to me and says, Chad, I just don't think that we have the ability to overcome this, these issues that I faced in this body that I'm in right now. Or maybe he needs an extra year for us to come up with some sort of battery-powered Normatec boot that he can wear in the boat to mitigate this swelling and move his blood in his lower body. Like, we, we might have to partner with an engineer or somebody to come up with something like this, you know what I mean? Or some sort of special seat that bolts into

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  the kayak, you know? If he needs an extra year, that's fine, too. But next year, I gotta go back to the Yukon, man. Like, I just, it's, it's haunting me. And, and that place, I've traveled all over the world, that place and that wilderness is the only place I have ever been to in my life where I, as soon as I left, I started counting down the days that I could get back in that environment. Just because the remoteness and the sheer beauty and the isolation, like, you feel like you're exploring a new continent.

• 1:19:46Nick Bare?

  With that level of solitude, you know, one of the earlier questions I asked is like, how much you guys were talking on the water?

• 1:19:54Nick Bare?

  I'm just curious, in that type of environment, that remoteness, alone in your own thoughts for so much time, could you feel the presence of God with you during that effort?

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Yes, you can. I mean, and you can really see it. You can see like, you see creation out there, meaning the environment, God's creation. Like, you see it on a whole nother scale out there, because it is so raw and untouched. And, you know, like, bears and Rocky Mountain sheep, and the trees, and the mountains, and big bobcats, and birds, and eagles, and, like, you're just like, oh my gosh, like, what a masterpiece this

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  is. Like, because we don't get to witness that. Like, even when we go, you know, you go out here and explore a national park, or, like, there's, you're gonna find little pieces of trash, and the trails are gonna be marked, and like, you stop, even we go out to your farm where you run your race, you know, you stop, and you're probably gonna be able to hear an airplane.

• 1:21:17Nick Bare?

  See power lines.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, power lines, but like, you do, you have this appreciation for the beauty of the Almighty's masterpiece. Like, this is as close as I've ever seen it to its original form. You know what I mean? Man has kind of marred it, messed it up a little bit, you know? And that was cool. And David is also a very strong, faithful man. We share a common faith in Jesus Christ, and so, I mean, we prayed together, I mean, multiple times a day, every day, you know? That was really cool, being out there with somebody with

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  a shared faith, and that beauty of creation, in awe of this masterpiece that was made and formed by the Almighty. And then to be able to pray together and share that common faith was powerful, man. Pray for each other, like, lift up our requests to the Lord, like...

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Father, we're going through these rapids today.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Please help us get through here dry.

• 1:22:28Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:22:29Nick Bare?

  For sure.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  It's good, man.

• 1:22:31Nick Bare?

  I can only imagine, like, I don't think I've ever been, no, I haven't been somewhere remote like that. And have experienced something such. And, um.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Well, less people traverse that river each year than climb Mount Everest.

• 1:22:48Nick Bare?

  Really?

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Nick Bare?

  Because of just the, the harsh conditions of, of what it takes to get to.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  There's nothing out there. Like, less people have traversed that river than have climbed Mount Everest. So, yeah, it's just, there's just nothing out there. It's so hard to get to.

• 1:23:04Nick Bare?

  That's incredible.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:07Nick Bare?

  So I have this question for you. I'm curious, you, you made this Instagram post, I think it was one of your more recent Instagram posts. And, um, I'm, I'm really curious, just like the depth of thought behind it. And you said, "Where has gone the purity of the message? Our minds have been eroded by emotion and greed and hypocrisy. I am becoming a stranger and alien in this place. Thy will be done."

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Nick Bare?

  What'd you mean by that?

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Um,

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  so, my appetite for, like, social media and, and, uh, online presence and stuff has, for some reason, like, really fell off. I don't know why, like, and don't, don't get me wrong, guys, like, there's so much good that has come, and I believe will come, from these platforms that the Lord has called us to and blessed us with. But for some reason, my appetite has just fall, fell off, like, fell out because, um, one of the main things that's affected me here lately, man,

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  is, uh, the veteran community on social media. And the, uh,

• 1:24:31Nick Bare?

  It's out of control right now.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Man, dude, it's really affected me. Um,

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  just like the...

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Just the bickering and, uh, I mean,

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  I, I, I had to include hypocrisy in there because like, you know, guys calling out guys for stuff and it's like, man, we so often forget about all the mistakes we've made, like, you know, it's, I, I understand that, you know, we as veterans, like, we have a responsibility to police each other to, to a certain degree, but, um, there's gotta be a better way, man.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  And when I first got on Instagram,

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  I feel like it was a place where people were just sharing and inspiring things, posting cool photos, like, like there was very little, this is cra- I mean, this was 2019. Maybe my perspective, maybe I'm all out of whack, I don't know. But like, I remember getting on Instagram and being like, man, I could go on here and I'm, and look, I'm, oh, so-and-so completed this race, so-and-so's training for this. And, and maybe my feed has just changed because I also got off track for a while. Like during COVID, man, I got really angry about everything that was going on.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  And I got really like into that conversation, political conversations and, and that became consuming to me and like, I contributed for a while to the hate discontent.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  And, and maybe my feed, it's just showing me all this stuff. Maybe it's just my own fault, like.

• 1:26:40Nick Bare?

  No, I don't think so. I mean, I, I'm, I'm seeing the same trends.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  But it's, it's just like, dude, I, I, I wanna just, I wanna be, I wanna get back to being the person that everything that I put out on my platforms is intentional in terms of, I either want it to make you think about something that's important. I want it to inspire you to maybe do something different. Or maybe realize a higher potential in yourself.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Um, maybe at times I want it to make you smile or laugh. And I want it to be based around a, a, a story that's worth telling. You know, I, I just have a yearning to get back to that, man. Like, I'm not gonna quit on social media. Like, I've taken definitely a pause from it. And, um,

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  I think I'm, I, I have already started to change my direction to try to be maybe a voice there, both on YouTube and on Instagram and whatever else comes. That, hey, let's get back to why we even started this page. You know what I mean? Because everything I'm seeing, man, is just, it's just not good for me personally. And, and by the way, everybody listening to this, if you've followed me for years, I sincerely apologize for the times that I've gotten off track. Um, I, I understand it, but, you know, the, the, the, the Lord, thankfully, I think in his grace is just

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  bringing me back into alignment with who he's created me to be. You know what I mean? Uh, through a series of wild stuff. I mean, I spent the last month sitting with one of my biggest mentors in my life as he dies from pancreatic cancer, sitting with him for hours on end

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  as he's dying and like.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Man, like, just so many things have just been happening that are just tuning me up. Like, that whole experience with him has changed me deeply, man.

• 1:29:14Nick Bare?

  In what ways?

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Um, I think first thing I realized, death is the great foe. That, in a way, it kind of stands, death is this thing that kind of stands above man and kind of mocks man's wisdom. Like, it's the, death is this, it's our biggest problem as humans, and we can't solve it.

• 1:29:49Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  And so it mocks all of our wisdom. Like, we want to try to explain the creation of the cosmos, or, you know, we, we, we build these great buildings, or, you know, do all of these advanced scientific studies and all, but like, we can't solve our own biggest problem? And it's ugly, dude. It's a big problem. And it just leads me down all of these different trains of thought about death itself as I'm sitting here witnessing it and, you know, um, do its work in someone who I love. Like, why does this have to happen? Why do we have to die?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Like, what's going, like, it's led me down all of these mature, maturing thoughts that I'm, obviously, I go to, and search the scriptures to, to answer these questions. It, um, it's made me consider how important faith is.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  This mentor of mine was an entrepreneur. He only had a third grade education, couldn't read. He amassed, built an empire, millions of dollars.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Couldn't read or write. I would go and read the scriptures to him because he had faith in what he knew, which was the very simple message of the gospel. Jesus, he saw his own, like, he knew his, he knew his mistakes. Like, he saw his own wickedness, even though he was a good man. He knew he had made these big mistakes in life and like, he had an appreciation for the gospel that Jesus Christ died according to the scriptures. He was buried, that he was resurrected according to the scriptures and that if he will put his hope in that,

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  to save him from himself, that he will be forgiven and that he will spend eternity with his Father, his Creator, in heaven. So like, he had a saving faith in that very simplistic message.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  But I would go and read the scriptures to him. No, nobody else did. But I would read one.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  And you gotta understand, he's dying, like vomiting uncontrollably, like can't be still because he's in so much pain. And I would read a piece of scripture and he would say, "Read another one. Read another one."

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  And I would watch these words that I was reading off of these pages manifest literal power in him. Like, his expression would change. He would be comforted. And like, I would go over there and he might would have been in the bed for two days straight and nobody else could get him out of bed. I would come read the scriptures to him for hours and...

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Like, he would all of a sudden be like, "Hey, let's walk out and sit on the porch for a minute." Like, he would get out of bed. Like, these scriptures were manifesting power and hope and courage in him in real time. I was like, "Good night, I've never seen this type of power." Come from literally reading these words off of these pages, and then what I realized is that he was so close to crossing over. This veil between this realm and the realm that he was about to enter, the veil was getting thin.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  And so, he was understanding the things that I was reading to him better than I could understand them. Like, they were more relatable to him.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  And that's how they were manifesting so much power in him.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  And I say this veil was getting thin. I would walk out of the room every few hours to go use the restroom or something, and there was a little camera in his room so that people could monitor him without sitting in there with him, because not a lot of people like to sit with him, because it made them uncomfortable.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  It's uncomfortable.

• 1:34:27Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  So, not a lot of people would sit with him. And they would just monitor him on that camera. And I would watch him on that camera when I would leave the room, and he would be laying in bed, and he would start reaching up and reaching for things above him like this.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  And I didn't know what he was doing. He would stop doing it when I came back in the room with him. But he was seeing something above him and he was reaching for it. And so since I have actually researched that and there are some hospice nurses that have some Instagram pages. And they post and talk about this phenomenon. Where this is a very common thing that they see in people who are very close to death. Very often, as this veil becomes thinner somehow they're seeing into some way into the other realm.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  And they're seeing things above them and they're reaching for them. And many times these individuals will even call out the names of loved ones who have died before them. And in the very end, my friend passed away the day that I got back from the Yukon. He had had a stroke, he was paralyzed, the whole left side of his body was paralyzed. This cancer just kept taking more and more and more from him. And the morning that he passed, he left this tent at 6:00 AM.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  He literally sat up, he's paralyzed on his left side, he hadn't moved his left side in three days. He sits up in his bed, reaches both hands toward the sky.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Lays back down and dies.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  His transportation had arrived apparently.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you know, I don't need all that stuff to believe the way I believe. I believe the way I believe because of the fact that I know the Almighty took me from being a very ugly person.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  To being.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Someone who can actually love others, who can actually love God, not a perfect person, but a person with godly desires. Like, He changed me, transformed me. Like, that's the only miracle that I need, because there's nothing else on earth that could transform me, literally overnight, in the way and to the degree that I experienced that transformation. But I got to see all this in my mentor as he passed away. And it's just so magnificent.

• 1:37:35Nick Bare?

  It's powerful.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  It's so, it just strengthens, you know, our faith. It's a gift. It's a gift, man. And to just also, you know, death is our final race, man. It's the, it's the great foe. The final measure of a man is, in some sense, how he bears the burden of his death. And some of us will have to die a very hard, arduous, ugly death. And He did. And He bore it very well. And I would go in and sit with Him. And I said, I said, "Mr. Don, if you

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  don't want to talk, if you just want to lay there, like, I'm just gonna be here with you." But every time I'd go and sit with Him, He would talk to me, He would smile, He would give me a hug. We would pray together. We would talk about the Scriptures. We would talk about old times. Like, He was doing all of that for me as He was walking through this final challenge of life, this physical life. It's like, man, I want to be able to be that type of man.

• 1:38:53Nick Bare?

  Teaching you and showing you how to be truly tough.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  He taught me to the very end.

• 1:38:58Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Like, I don't need, He was always my mentor, like, from the age of about 13 to the time I left to join the Navy. He taught me how to work hard. He taught me a lot about being a man, responsibility. I worked for Him on a farm. And, like, I'm like...

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  I don't even think he called me in to sit with him, or he didn't call me in to sit with him. His, his wife called me and said, Mr. Don wants to see you one more time. Cause we had kinda parted ways for a while due to my own selfishness. I don't think he called me in to, because he wanted to see me one more time. I think he knew he had more to teach me. Is what I think. You know what I mean?

• 1:39:43Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  So, it's been a powerful experience, man.

• 1:39:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah, you, you mentioned, um, kinda being a little discouraged to maintain this social presence based off of

• 1:40:00Nick Bare?

  the noise, the darkness, just the

• 1:40:05Nick Bare?

  toxic aspect of what social media can be. And I agree with you, I think there's, there's great aspects to it and there can be, and it can be an extremely positive place. But I often think that there's more negativity in consequences that come from social media than positives. If you allow yourself to be consumed by it. But I do think that people like you and me have a responsibility to stay on the platforms, to be that light in the darkness. And like just sharing with you what you have done for me in the past couple of years. You as a a mentor, a guide,

• 1:40:48Nick Bare?

  a follower of Jesus and being very confident in that and being very vocal and public about that has given me a lot of confidence in my transformation of these last couple of years to be that man and to be a man of God. And I, I truly believe you do that for a lot of other people, especially men. And you have to keep doing that because if people like you stop doing that, we're going in the opposite direction. So it's a responsibility and obligation. And I view you as a, a true role model in this space because you are You're tough, but you're tough in the right way.

• 1:41:32Nick Bare?

  And leading a life and leading individuals through the word of God is so powerful, and it doesn't exist out there, so you provide me the encouragement to keep going, keep pushing, keep creating. So I think you gotta keep going.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Man, that means a lot to me, Nick. That's a huge encouragement to me. And I'm just so thankful I've been made useful, man. Like, what an honor it is to, uh, to think that the Almighty would choose any of us, to use us, um, to the benefit of His people, those people who believe and trust and hope in Him. That's the greatest purpose that I could ever serve, you know, or ever fulfill in my entire life.

• 1:42:27Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  It's so important to me, man. Um, yeah, I told you, I told you about the podcast I did yesterday, and it's like, it's, I didn't feel ready for that. Like, that wasn't fun for me. Didn't feel ready. I love coming here and having conversations with you, but that was a hard one. But it's like, I'm just trying to be obedient. Like, Lord, if you want to use me, here I am. I don't feel ready. I can't figure out why you're using me. Because you could have sent a man a lot smarter than me,

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  a lot more intellectual than me, who understands things a lot better and can defend your gospel a lot better than I can. But you chose to send me. I don't know why. I'm not gonna question it. I'm just gonna go, and hopefully you work through me by the power of your Holy Spirit in me to accomplish your sovereign and immutable will. What an honor it is to be a member of the Body of Christ and to be active in it.

• 1:43:44Nick Bare?

  It's very well said. My, uh...

• 1:43:48Nick Bare?

  My like just word that you previously mentioned that has been just front of mind recently has been obedience, just be obedient, just be obedient to Christ. And you know, on the heels of talking about social media,

• 1:44:06Nick Bare?

  the problem I think that we experience in society right now is just conformity. And you know, Romans 12, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will. I think we have a responsibility to, to not necessarily resist or fight against conformity, but conformity that is conforming for the wrong reasons, the wrong purpose.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  You know, in that verse, so those few verses right there, that is the foundation. I do a lot of public speaking and those verses are the foundation of my entire speech.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  The word used for,

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The word used for transformed is metamorphosis. It's a complete metamorphosis that we are going through, that we must go through.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  I just think it gives more meaning when you understand that's the, that's the word that's used to this type of transformation that these few verses of scripture are talking about. You know, the example of metamorphosis that we have in nature is the caterpillar

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  becoming a butterfly, something totally different, right? Like, that's what we are becoming by way of the renewing of our mind. We're working toward this metamorphosis. Another way that you can put it is we are being conformed into the image of Christ, Jesus Himself. Like, that's what this process is that we're going to through. The Holy Spirit is sanctifying us, conforming us into the image of Christ. But now that process isn't always what we want it to be. A metamorphosis.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  implies radical change and radical change can sometimes be very uncomfortable. You know, if you read about Jesus in the book of Isaiah, which by the way was written 400 years before, I think it was 400 years before Jesus came to earth. Here's a writing, Isaiah 53, it describes the life of Jesus perfectly, written 400 years prior to him coming to earth, miracle in and of itself. But it describes one of the aspects of Jesus Christ.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  It says, "He is a man of suffering and he is well acquainted with grief." And so, me going to sit with my friend as he dies, brought a lot of grief that I could have avoided. I didn't have to do that. And I was even asking myself, "Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of, of willfully accepting this grief that's literally, it feels like it's crushing me? I feel like I'm losing my mind."

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  That exposure to that grief was part of this metamorphosis. There are many aspects of it. It's not always what we want it to be, what it looks like. I pray every day, "Father, come form me into the image of your Son, Jesus Christ, at all costs."

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  The first time I prayed that, I left out the at all cost part. And the Holy Spirit kept prompting me, "No, you gotta, you gotta be willing to submit to this metamorphosis at all cost." And so that's what I pray now. And when you, when you're submitted to that at all cost, and that's, that's your overarching goal of your entire life, is to allow the Lord to do the work in you that He wills to be done.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  He's gonna call you to bear grief.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  He's gonna call you to suffering. He's also gonna call you to joy. He's also gonna call you to hope. He's also gonna call you to love in all these things. But those are all the things that we want. But just understand, there are gonna be some hard things along this path of transformation that we all must experience. You know? It's been my experience anyways.

• 1:49:21Nick Bare?

  How do you know, or how do you recognize when what you're going through is a transformation that God is working on you? As opposed to you're making the wrong decisions and going down the wrong path?

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  Well, that all depends on

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  how much you believe you actually have the ability to make any decisions.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  It's a hard question.

• 1:49:52Nick Bare?

  It's a very hard question.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Because

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  when you really, as you go, Nick, like in the beginning of your, in the beginning of our journey, we need to feed off of milk.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Very simple food. We're babies when we first start. You know what I mean? We're reborn, we're made new creatures. And we have to go through a very similar progression

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  as, you know, beings who have been made spiritually alive. We have to go through a very similar progression that we go through as a human being. We have to start off as babies and the Lord continues to work in us and through us and give us more and more understanding of the truth in Scripture for us, His people. See, all things in Scripture, they're all spiritually discerned. Until you're made alive spiritually, you cannot discern or appraise what is being said by Scripture.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  For me personally, before I was made a new creature or regenerated spiritually, I couldn't understand what the Bible was trying to tell me. You know, and even when I was made alive, I could only understand the very basic principles that it was trying to tell me. But as you go, as I've went, I have started to see that the Scripture,

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  oh, it's so unique from any other religious philosophy, because it leaves nothing for man, not even a thread for man to cling to. In other words, you will begin to see things

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  that will start to shape your understanding in a direction

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  that the Almighty, His will for every aspect of your life is sovereign and immutable, and that He actually elected you to be His, and it's not because of a choice you made.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  It's crazy, man. Like, but it's, the Holy Scriptures are dripping with this. That man will not choose God, because man is spiritually dead in his natural state. And so, he will not choose God until God, by His grace, comes into man and makes him spiritually alive.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  And then, man has the ability and will indeed choose to believe upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is deep stuff.

• 1:53:21Nick Bare?

  I like where you're going with that. I like where you're going with this.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  You know, you talk about that, and so my perspective has almost been shaped to a, to a degree where whatever is happening in my life, even if it's seemingly due, in terms of suffering, even if it's seemingly due to my own decisions, my perspective is being shaped into, even if it's seemingly due to my own decisions, those decisions have been predetermined.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  There's a lot more to this, okay? Because this opens up a whole Pandora's box of questions, then. I will ask you a foundational question. We can, those of us who believe in the gospel, I think we can all agree that the Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  To cover the sins of man, so that all men who believe upon him will be reconciled unto God. And when God looks at us who are covered by faith in the blood of Christ, God doesn't see us, He sees His Son. I don't think that God would have sent His Son to die on a cross in hopes that someone would eventually believe in that. You understand what I'm saying?

• 1:55:16Nick Bare?

  No, what's the opposite of that?

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  That God would have sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross. What if God sent Jesus to die on the cross? And Jesus died, and no human ended up believing in the atonement that was made for man by Jesus on the cross? What if no one would have believed? What if it would have just fizzled out? You see what I'm saying? What if Jesus would have died on the cross, and it all just fizzled out after that?

• 1:55:50Nick Bare?

  You're saying it wasn't a hope, it was a no?

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Yes. He knew. He knew those of us who were going to believe in that. He would not have sent His Son just hoping that surely one of these humans will listen and believe, "So I'm gonna take this chance, and I'm gonna send my son. That gon it, I hope somebody believes in him, and I hope this doesn't just fizzle out, because if so, then I've just sent my son to die."

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  No, he sent his son to die because he knew those of us from the literal foundations of the earth.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  He knew us because he had elected us to believe in that gospel from the foundations of the earth. And what we are, we are now the bride of Christ. There's this reciprocal glorification.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  The Son glorifies the Father by dying on the cross and reconciling humans back to the Father. The Father glorifies the Son by taking all of us who are saved by faith, and he offers us to the Son as his own special people. We are the bride of Christ. We are literally a gift to Christ. That's the whole purpose of our salvation is so that the Father can offer us as a gift to his Son.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  And say, "Here, son, this is your own special people who will trust in you, who will worship you, who will glorify you for all of eternity. Here." So, the whole purpose of our salvation.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  That'll give you a little perspective on how important the Son is.

• 1:58:03Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  The whole saga is all, can be summed up in the glorification of the Son.

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  The Father glorifying Jesus, Jesus glorifying the Father. It's reciprocal because somehow this being that exists beyond the realm of our understanding exists as three beings in one being.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  That's why it's all reciprocal.

• 1:58:34Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  I'm talking about some meat.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  I just, just take that for what it is, man.

• 1:58:46Nick Bare?

  How did you get started? Because I'm at this pivotal point in my journey with Christ where I'm all in. And I, I surrender.

• 1:59:04Nick Bare?

  But where did you get started with diving into the scripture? Like for someone, I am not extremely educated in the scripture yet. Where'd you start? Did you just start reading it? Do you dive into certain books and chapters? What was that journey like?

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, man, it's changed so much. I mean, I mean, for, for me, at the very beginning, the very first thing, the very first book of scripture that I read was the book of Matthew. But as I read it, I only understood the core or the foundational elements of the book. When I read the sermon on the mount that Jesus Christ preached and Jesus lays out the true standard of righteousness.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  That, you know, God, God is, right? And he lays out these standards and, and, and he says things like, you know, the first commandment is, uh, the most important commandment is to love God with all your heart, your soul and your mind.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  That's impossible. I haven't done that. Oh, when he's, you know, he lays out these standards on a, you know, if you look to lust after a woman, that's the same as adultery. If you hate your brother, that's the same as murder. Like he's laying out this, this standard of true righteousness that made me realize that good night. I didn't think I was that bad, but if I'm going to measure myself off of this standard, that's no longer a man-made standard, but actually a standard coming from what I believe to be a perfect being.

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Holy smokes, I have sure missed the mark on this, man. Because at that time in my life, I didn't love anybody. I was extremely wicked, but you don't even have to be that bad to miss this standard. And so I understood that core foundational element of seeing my own depravity, right? Like wickedness. And then seeing this, okay, now that I can see that in myself, I can now understand the whole purpose of Jesus coming.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Like God so loved me that He sent His only Son to pay the debt that I owe as a person who's literally born into this sin, who's living under the curse, who's literally born spiritually dead. He so loved me that He sent His Son to atone for that, like to provide, to take upon the punishment that I 100% deserve.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Like that right there, boom. When you see that and you understand that and you put your faith and your hope in that right there, that's it. You don't have to go any further.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  You're good, man. We are saved by grace through faith. And that faith is not of your own so that no man should boast. That faith, that ability to believe in that very simple realization of yourself and realization of Christ, the very faith that you have is the gift. That's a gift that we receive. You can't just wake up one morning and decide you believe that. You have to be made alive. You have to be able to see that. And then you have to be able to believe that and hope in that and trust in that. Not that you don't have doubts.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Not that you don't have questions, but that faith is a gift given to us by the Almighty. Now, I encourage you to go further than that because there's so much more that the Almighty has given us in Scripture. I love to read books by men who have dedicated their lives to studying the Word of God. How much time do I spend reading the Bible every day? Two hours, maybe? Some days, maybe three hours?

• 2:03:47Nick Bare?

  Every day?

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'd say I spend two hours a day, on average, studying, reading Scripture. Okay?

• 2:03:57Nick Bare?

  For how long have you been doing that?

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Um, 10 years.

• 2:04:02Nick Bare?

  Okay.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Let's say 10 years. But I'm never going to become the expert. Only putting two hours a day into something. I'm never going to become the expert. But there are men who have been chosen, I believe, by the Father to dedicate their entire lives to really digging into these Scriptures and figuring out how it all fits. Because the Scripture can't contradict itself. If the Scripture contradicts itself, it is not the Word of God. Because God is a perfect being, He cannot contradict Himself. But it seemingly does.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  The reason it seemingly contradicts itself is because of our own ignorance of how it all fits. It's a big book, right?

• 2:04:52Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  Thousands of pages, written in a language that we don't know. We can't speak. Written to people who are living in cultures and under circumstances that we can't understand.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  Because we don't have historical context. But there are men who have dedicated their entire lives to figuring this out. And so I believe it's great to read books written by these men who were chosen by God and have dedicated their entire lives to this alongside of Scripture. It's helped me tremendously and some of my favorite authors are R.C. Spurrel. Uh, he's passed away now. A.W. Tozer, he's passed away. A man who's still alive now, who's excellent, is a man named Paul Washer.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  Now, I don't think that these men, uh, have the same authority as the Scripture has over my life, but I do believe that the Lord chose them to spend their lives the way that they spent their lives to the benefit of guys like me and you. Who the Lord has other purposes for us within the body of Christ. We can't all be the brain, right? Some of us gotta be the feet. Some of us are the hands. You know, we have all different purposes.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  But I read from these men, an old one, Martin Luther, 16th century. He has a book called The Bondage of the Will. That's the book I'm reading right now. Martin Luther, and again, another man who changed the course of history because he dedicated his entire life to the truth of Scripture. And these men have left us writings that we can, that we can read alongside Scripture. But now we have to vet these men, obviously. We have to, that's why I love reading books from men who have already passed away, because you can assess them based off of how they lived their life.

• 2:07:09Nick Bare?

  Right.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 2:07:10Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  That's kind of a benefit. I don't think it's a necessity, but, um, that's kind of been for me how I have really dug into some of these more weighty and maybe difficult to understand topics.

• 2:07:29Nick Bare?

  I would love to get a list of, if there were... Three to five books that I had to get started with.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  I'll text them to you.

• 2:07:36Nick Bare?

  I'd love to get that list to start diving into.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  That's easy.

• 2:07:40Nick Bare?

  That'd be super beneficial.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  That's easy, man.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Thank you for allowing me to share all that, man.

• 2:07:46Nick Bare?

  I appreciate all of that. I mean, I was glued in this whole episode, in this whole conversation, but like, I felt like you were talking directly to me, which you were, but like, forgetting the cameras were here, forgetting the mics were here, the entire, like, the last, like, 20, 30 minutes. I appreciate you sharing that.

• 2:08:09Nick Bare?

  I guess I consider you and view you as a mentor, and I want to walk with Christ in the same way that you walk with Christ. I'm on that journey, I'm going into that journey. So any guidance, any mentorship along the way, that you want to throw towards me, please do.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Thank you for permission to do that, man. That means a lot to me. Yeah, and I consider you a brother, man. You've been a... You've always been so gracious to me for years now. I mean, you open up your home to me. Like, you've done this on multiple occasions. I don't deserve this, like, you...

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  Again, why? It's like, I'm glad that I can, in some way, give back, man.

• 2:08:59Nick Bare?

  You're doing good things.

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  Thank you, brother.

• 2:09:00Nick Bare?

  You're doing good things. I appreciate you. Until next time.

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  Enough said.