The Daily Stoic - Ultramarathoner Courtney Dauwalter on Building Mental Strength

Episode Date: April 2, 2022

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

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

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Hey, Brian Members, you can listen early and app free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. It's funny, I was researching for today's episode and some places, you know, you have kind of like a sense memory of places or time. So I grew up in Northern California

in outside Sacramento. What was, what's Placer County, but Placer County is like enormous. It basically goes from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. So as I was reading about my guest today, Courtney Dewalter, one of the great endurance athletes of our time, she's finishing a race at Placer High School where I ran many, many across country races. She's running in home with California where I grew up spending most of my summers, not just running, but riding bikes and skateboarding and swimming in Lake Tahoe and then the winter, skiing and snowboarding,

just this sort of evocative memory of my time there as a kid. And I mean, we're really excited to talk to Courtney because she's one of the absolute crates at what she does. She is the world's best female ultra runner. And when it comes to races over 200 miles, she is hands down the best any person alive. She is the two time ultra runner of the year. And it's been named one of the 50 fittest athletes

in the world by sports illustrated. She's won multiple races including the Moab 240 where she beat all men and women not by 10 seconds, not by 10 minutes, but by 10 hours. And she credits her success in this extreme sport, not to her conditioning and strength, but her mindset. She runs, even when we talk about this and the thing, when you look at a picture of her, she just looks like some lady out for her run. She's not wearing like the latest gear.

She wears these unorthodox, like long shorts. She doesn't have a training plan, but what she talks about is the pain cave. That's where she goes deep. And she's a humble master of mental grit. And I was just so excited to have this conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy it. I'm forgetting the name of this place that I used to get

tacos whenever my cross country team would run in plaster high school. But I remember that being pretty much the only thing that motivated me to run there. I run now, I love running, and it's part of my life, and if I don't do it, I'm miserable. But as a kid, there was some part of me that didn't want to fully commit to it, thought it was a joke that I'd never pushed myself the way that I could. Certainly, whatever, whatever problems there are with Courtney's diet, I mean, I, I, everything, as a kid,

I remember showing up to a cross-country race with like a 50 ounce soda and like two cheeseburgers from Carl's junior and my coach just looking at me with complete disgust. So I never reached my potential as a runner then, but it did plant a seed in me, which, which is there to this day. And it certainly appreciate the intense difficulty of athletes like Courtney Dewalter, who today's guest, you can follow her on Twitter at Courtney Dewalter. That's, you can follow her on Twitter at Courtney Dewalter. That's co-URT, DAUWALTER. And obviously, the links in the show notes,

or on Instagram at Courtney Dewalter. She's a beast. If you like this episode, do listen to my episode with Amelia Boone, one of the other great female endurance athletes of our time. It was that was a great conversation too. And my interview with Dean Carnassus is also along similar lines and I'll

link to both of those in today's episode. I've run many races at Placer High School and in Homewood as a kid it's sort of where I grew up. Oh cool. What a great area to grow up. It's a great place for running too. I mean at least when it's not too hot. Yeah, definitely gets hot. Well, I'm really excited to talk. I thought we'd start. So one of my favorite

lines from Seneca, I think it applies to running. He says, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind, right? And I guess what I've found as a runner over the years is that makes sense, but it's also more complicated because sort of like your mind is bossing your body around, but your body is also bossing your mind around. And that's sort of the tension of the whole sport, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. So, how do you think about that? Like, I am sure almost every single one of your races, both parts of you want to quit. Yes, it's been a really cool kind of experiment that I've been doing with ultra running. When I first got into ultra running, I didn't actually understand that connection very well. Like growing up, I did a ton of sports

and I had excellent coaches who were always like, encouraging us to stay strong in our heads, but I hadn't connected it actually in ultra running until I tried my first 100 mile race and when my body was begging me to stop, I didn't understand that my mind could overpower that. And so when my body was thrown in the towel, my mind really quickly became just this negative space and it threw in the towel soon after and my race was over.

So I ended up quitting that first attempt. But it triggered for me this whole understanding of what our minds can do and how important it is what we say to ourselves in our brain because it directly correlates to what our body will do for us. And it goes the other direction too though, right? I would imagine for me it's more like, I know I should go for a run, I should go do the thing, but I have these re, like the mind is having to sort of will the body to go do it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think, riding that roller coaster between the two, so, you know, when your body can pull the weight versus when your brain can, you know,

do most of the grout work, is just as important as understanding that they're connected and that they can help each other. So one without the other isn't, it's not as fun, I don't think. Well, isn't that a weird part about running two where, like, let's say, you're starting to feel some pain in some part of your body, or even when you get a sideache, right? Your body's telling you to stop.

But if you keep going, suddenly, the pain just disappears, right? Like it's this weird thing where it's like it's sending up these warning flags that you don't in both directions. Sometimes it's from the mind, sometimes it's sending up these warning flags that you don't, in both directions, sometimes it's from the mindset, it's from the body, but you have to be able to discern which ones to listen to and which ones to ignore. Yeah, and sometimes I feel like it's just a feeble attempt at sending up a warning flag

because that would be the easier thing to do. It's always easier to stop. And so maybe your body is just seeing if you'll take the easy exit that time. And sometimes the warning flag is, you know, a big red one and you should actually pay attention to it. So it's not always like pushing through all situations

isn't the bottom line. Like it's paying attention and trying to figure out what the warning flags are and if they're just like kind of test flags almost. So like, hey, if I throw this little flag up, maybe they'll just sit on the couch instead, which is way easier than pushing through for another couple of miles or whatever it is. What's like, it's your body's job to reach the full potential of you as an individual or as like a human being. Your body's job is to not let you kill yourself. Thanks, bodies. Yeah, and we really appreciate that.

So, how do you, but it seems like it almost, like, if you listen to your body, no one would ever run 50 or 100 or 200 miles, right? Because the body's like, this is a terrible idea. Definitely don't do this. Stop right now and do literally anything else. So how do you question that, but also when your body's like, hey, you're about to blow out your knee. You know what I mean? How do you know what to listen to and not listen to if you get in the habit of ignoring the test flags or if you start to view them all as these as these false positives basically. For sure, I think, oh man, it's so tricky. And there's no, there's no like list of things I go through for myself where I'm trying to assess the flag and how important or how loud it's screaming at me.

I'm trying over the years to just in general listen to my body more and get in tune with what it's telling me more. So that when the flags start going up and I'm on my 90 of 100 or 100 of 200, I can try to figure out which flags are telling me something about an injury or some situation where I really should stop for my health. And which flags are the ones that are basically just kind of reminders that this is something hard, but not anything to stop me from pushing past them. Well, like the races, because you have stopped a handful of races. So when you look back at those, is it like, oh, that was really me listening to the warning sign and I couldn't continue, or do you look back at that and go,

I should just push through. My body deceived me. How do you look at those do not finish? Initially, so my first 100-mile attempt I did not finish around mile 60. And after that, I had kind of the attitude of, I'll finish anything now. Like, I'm gonna figure out this sport.

I'm gonna push through every situation because that first time I quit the race, I didn't need to. You know, those warning signs weren't anything different than what anyone feels at mile 60 out of 100 miles, it feels hard. And I threw in the towel when it felt hard. And so after that, there were many years where I was like, I'm not going to quit a race ever.

I'm going to push through everything. We can push past any obstacle that's put in our path. And I kind of had a little like, I don't know, we can push past any obstacle that's put in our path. And I kind of had a little like, I don't know, like a little wondering or worry that I wouldn't notice the big flags when they showed up. But then just a few years back, I did end up quitting a race due to injury.

And those were all huge flags going up during the race that something not right was happening with my legs and that pushing past it wasn't the move to make if I wanted to keep enjoying this sport for many years to come. And so I was kind of reassured from that scenario of like, okay, you have been getting in tune with your body and learning it and you can trust yourself

a little bit more to listen to those big flags, but it's so individual and so much of it is based on just like knowing yourself and knowing what the signs are and what those flags are even saying. No, that makes sense. It's like by quitting before, by stopping when you still could have kept going, now you have the experience of doing that.

And then finishing all the way, and then you know what that's supposed to feel like and then having having Stopped for good reason now you at least have some understanding of the full spectrum of the possibilities and what Quitting for the right reasons or stopping for the right reasons look like stopping for the wrong reasons look like and then also Just how terrible it's supposed to be even in a successful one. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's it's so cool in this sport is so special because what we can do, what we're capable of is way more than we think usually. And so if you're going

to try something, it's going to hurt a little bit to do that. But then you make it to the finish line and you realize like, man, I didn't think I could ever do that. And I just did. And how sweet is that? Well, I was thinking about this on some book projects I'm on the middle of

is like sort of, when do you ask for more time, right? When do you push through? How do you know if it's going well or not? Well, that's like, it's afterwards you have the clarity. You're like, oh, I should have asked for more time. Or afterwards, I should have just pushed through. That was just a couple bad days. And it felt worse than it was. But it's like, your body would always, as you're saying,

your body always wants to quit. Your body always wants more time. And sometimes you just, you have to, it's like what they say when you're in hell, keep going. Sometimes you have to figure out what the other side is. So then you're like, oh yeah, this is an acceptable amount of suck. And it's just part of the process. And then I've got to imagine as you've done these races, you're now aware of the different depths and heights

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

I guess that's a tricky part of distance running is like not to say that Usain Bolt is not also cerebral, but like in a nine second race, you're not reaching into any file cabinets, right? Like it's so, it's like hitting a baseball, you're just like see hit, right? And so much of what's happening is deeply in the subconscious, like in the muscle memory,

whereas in a 42 hour race, that's a lot of time inside your head. And it's, you're having, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For sure, it can be both. And that's where your brain and your thoughts become so important. And in those many, many hours of thinking, if you're continually letting your thoughts travel down a negative path,

it's going to feed back into what your body is able to give you and how it goes out there. If you keep telling yourself that you're awful and this problem that's happening is ruining your race and that you shouldn't make it to the finish line, the odds are getting smaller and smaller as the hours pass that you're actually going to make it to that finish line, the odds are getting smaller and smaller as the hours pass that you're actually going to make it to that finish line. You know? When it's a spiral, right?

The thought spiral. So you start to go down and then they build on each other and all of a sudden you're having this, you've mapped out this insane scenario in your head and really like nothing has changed and you have no new information and you're talking about a theoretical possibility 50 miles from now. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I now understand that spiral and have so many experiences of it

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

but I try to just flip the script even in those hardest moments because the spiral is really hard to stop when that negativity gets spinning. I think the other crazy thing is just like, if I told someone that they had to do anything for 42 hours, that would be like an endurance sport, right? Just like you have to, you can't do anything but one thing for 42 hours, is there part

of you that like, how do you just turn the mind off entirely? I feel like there's kind of, you can't be thinking positive thoughts for 42 hours or maybe you can, is there a party that just goes like, if I can just lock into something, two or three hours will pass. And then I'm that many percentage points closer to being done. Absolutely. I sometimes just try to turn the radio entirely off

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

And just like, I don't know, it's so special to be able to do this thing that I love so much for 42 hours or whatever the length of time is. So I'll remind myself of that and try and keep that in the frame as well of like, how cool is it that this is all I'm in charge of right now, running and eating and getting to this finish line. Ah, the Bahamas.

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It's obviously you're doing it, but it's also like you're kind of this passive observer of, like, it's like you're riding a horse or something, but you're the horse. Yeah, yeah. So cool. Night running is especially cool for those peaceful moments. Do you listen to music or anything when you run or you're really stuck with your own thoughts for 42 hours? I usually go no music, but I will sometimes have it as a tool

for late in a race where I might put it on because it takes up some of the brain space or helps me just be a little bit distracted for a minute to keep pushing to that finish line. Yeah, I don't know. I find that like listening to something on repeat also when I'm writing, it helps me like get into that flow state, which then speeds time up.

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

Usually, it's usually like, it'll be some song I hear and I'm like, I like that song that's like, right in the emotional, mental space that I want to be on. And then I just use it up. Like I just use it on repeat for, you know, maybe I get 100 listens, maybe I get 200 listens, and then it stops having any emotional power to me,

and then I have to like move on from it. And then every once in a while, maybe I hear that song two years later, and it's fresh again, but I'm like using, I'm like a vampire just sucking the energy out of it until it's worthless to me and then I'm moving on. That's interesting and really cool. Yeah, I like it.

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

my thoughts go all over every topic possible. I'll usually talk to my family before the race and so they'll tell me what they're up to so I could think about them and what they might be doing at that moment or whatever. But I also love just going down memory lane or thinking about different things that have happened ever.

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

thinking about food or jokes usually and then blank space of turning the radio off. Do you ever get like, it's almost stuck in an eddy or a spot where it's just some thought pattern is just repeating over and over and over again? Do you ever find that your mind can get kind of like, it's almost like a CD skipping or something and you just can't get out of whatever that is? Yes, and it's the worst. I think. But then I'll just try to talk out loud.

Sometimes I'll even buy myself running, just say some things out loud to try and I don't know, maybe hearing it come in my ears and in my head will help change the tune a little. Well, I think what journaling does that where you're forced to like actually write out this insane thing that you're thinking or focusing on. So I imagine saying it out loud forces you to have some distance from it and you're like,

yeah, that's insane. I should stop thinking that. Yeah, move on. What kind of gives you a glimpse into like OCD or people have eating this sort of, like you're like, oh, the brain, the brain is this magical thing, but just, you know, sometimes your car, just like something goes wrong inside of it and it has to be fixed and it was like this super powerful thing. It's just it's something glitched and now it can't get unstuck and it's just doing this broken thing over and over again.

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

okay, now we can be done with that. Like I told you that thing that has been bugging me for hours, now we're done with it because I said it to somebody else. That's a great little bit of self-talk. Like, let's be done with this. Like whatever that thing is, like we're just not gonna do that anymore.

And that's not to say that it's not right, there's not some kernel of truth, but like we've we've taken that as far as we're gonna take it and now it's time to put to put put the childish thing away or the destructive thing or the short-sighted thing and the selfish thing, we're gonna put that away. Yeah, because it's not actually helping me at all to dwell on it for more hours. What I was interested reading about you that I was sort of surprised by is usually when you talk to sort of professional athletes

or people who are like world class at what they do, they're very focused on optimizing. They have lots of routines, they have lots of structure, they look at all these little things. I don't know if I'm making this up, but it seemed like you're much more flying by the seat of your pants than I would have expected. That's probably an accurate way to say it.

Like I was just looking at like your diet or even like what you wear in some of the races. Like is it partly that you just don't wanna overthink some of the things that people tend to obsess about and you just want it to be more chill so you can do what you do or what is your approach? I think for me, I do really, I'm do much better in all things in life if I'm enjoying them and not holding too tightly to any piece of it. And so by keeping my training plan

really flexible and loose, I have a ton of fun with training. Training still feels like really fresh and I want to get out the door every day. And it helps me tune in to what my body is actually wanting to do that day. How hard I can push the gas pedal down. Same with food. Like I don't want to hold too tightly to any routine or types of foods.

I want to have fun and that means eating what looks good or sounds good or is the most convenient in that moment. Yeah, I don't know, it just seemed like, yeah, but from like the diet or, yeah, your routine, your training, it's like usually they're like, this is what I do this hour, this day. It's all sort of scheduled down to the minute and it's all optimized. And it, it seemed like you were, you were approaching it from a less rigid, more, uh, sort of energy. Like you were like tuned into whatever energy you had at the moment, as

opposed to like, here's what the coach dictated I must do today. Yeah, and I think, um, it's like individually going to be different based on how each person ticks. And so for me, just knowing myself a little bit, if I had a coach give me a plan every week, I would want to be the best student that they had, you know, and I would want to nail every workout on every day that they put for me. And I wouldn't actually listen to my body or, you know, the days where it needs rest or it needs to not do intervals, I would be following it like a recipe and I think that wouldn't work as well. So is this partly a way to and what must be the danger of what you do,

like sort of what they call overtra training syndrome or overdoing, is it partly that you're so naturally disciplined and driven that if you don't create space that way, you'll end up overdoing it. Is that sort of the idea? Yeah, I would say my default mode is all the way go. Like gas pedal slam down, I'm going to do all the things. And having no plan like I have, I really every morning wake up, drink my coffee, and sort of do like a full systems check of like, how are my legs? How's my brain today? How are my, you know, lungs and heart and emotions feeling? Like where am I?

And then maybe I'll start to formulate an idea of my plan for the day. Or sometimes I even can't tell, I don't have a good read, so I'll just put on shoes and go run. And I'll see if I get to that certain hill I really like to do repeats on, maybe I do them or maybe not, just depending on what signals I'm getting.

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

I'd still find myself doing it, then maybe you can flourish in a less sort of boundary system. For your writing, do you have a set structure? I do. Like, I'm very routine based. And I like to have my days very similar. And I like to do my days sort of very similar and I like

to do it in the mornings, but like my dream is a day where nothing is scheduled. So like, the idea is like, if I have the whole day, I'll spend that day doing as much of the thing that I like doing the most, which is the writing. But if, like if you told me like, I had, I guess, I really love writing, so I try to protect that space, but then within that space, I like to sort of do it like you're talking about, have freedom and like I'll go where it takes me,

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

Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same. I'm doing, running is currently my job, but it's also this thing I want to do for my entire life. And so I don't want to wreck it by doing a structured training or only eating certain food groups or whatever. I want my experience with running to be one where whenever I'm done racing, I still want to keep running and doing it because I still love it that much. In a way, it's like about being disciplined about yourself discipline. It's sort of knowing like, hey, I am capable of sucking the fun 100% out of this. And so I have to create some almost lack of seriousness about it so I don't grind myself or the people

around me into dust by taking it. So like the Bill BellicEx system, like it eventually, it's not sustainable really unless you're that guy. And so you have to create, I think, a little bit of room inside of it if you wanna do it for a long time. So crazy.

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

And so there should be an element of fun and play to it. You are doing, you know, a childish thing professionally, it should have that. Yeah, and also, like I think our time is so short here that we better enjoy as many moments as we can every day and every week and every month. And if it's just like making yourself miserable doing this thing that's supposed to be fun, I think, yeah, like you said, you missed the boat. Yeah, I think like sometimes I'll get this from people who want to be writers,

like they're like, what tools do you use? What's the right software? You know, like the people really obsess about these like tactical things. And I imagine you see like, again, when I see pictures of you running, I was like, this looks like a lady who's out for a run. And then meanwhile, you drive by, and you see some middle-aged man, and he's like head to toe, and like hundreds of dollars of expensive gear,

and it's got all this stuff strapped to him. And you're just like, you're, I don't know, it feels like you're taking the least important part of it very seriously. Like I see people taking like really obsessing about optimizing for these things at the margin when the important thing is like, do you love doing it?

And have you conquered that sort of inner willpower thing that allows you to keep going when your body wants to quit. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that maybe though you leave some gains on the table, like if you were more, like let's say diet or you plan more, do you think that would be reflective in your times? Or is it like I was reading about one of your races, like the person who finished third behind you, like was like 10 hours behind you, is it also that like the margin is so big in your sport that maybe thinking about these things at 1% here, they don't matter as much as they

would in a sprint, let's say. Oh, man, I mean, I've thought about it for sure. Like, you know, should I restrict the things I eat or how many beers I drink or whatever, but for me, the scale then, like, the thing I'm weighing against is like enjoyment of life and enjoyment of the daily, you know, how am I spending my hours? And I think that I get more benefit personally from just enjoying life than I do from, you know, counting however many grams of, you know, what, like, I think that maybe, I'm sure there's a lot of people who could tell me all the things I could

change about my diet. Maybe it would have some payoff, but the thing I would lose is all of this joy and I think the joy has a much higher value. Yeah, there's this financial guy, like I've had him on the podcast, his name is Rumi Tseti, and he talks about like people get obsessed like in finance, like with $3 questions versus like $300,000 questions. So, you know, they'll obsess about like, I gotta cut out my Starbucks habit, right?

Like it's costing me $6 a day, which means this much a week, which means this much a year. And then meanwhile, they're not maxing out their contribution to their 401k. Or they're actually underpaid. If they did the research, they'd be like, hey, most people in your position make 20% more. And so you need to go, you're being paid below market rate. You need to go ask your boss for a raise.

Meanwhile, you're sweating whether you can afford Netflix. So you're focusing on these minor marginal things instead of the big things. I got to imagine it's like, let's say someone said, hey, if you optimize your nutrition, you'll be 5% faster. But if you liked running, 10% less as a result, that's a terrible trade-off. It might cut your entire career short as opposed to improving your times a little bit per race. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I'm in the sport as my job and I want to race really hard and leave it all out there and do as well as I can. But at the end of it, I want to create memories with people and those shared moments are what I'll take with me

you know through the rest of my life. So I don't actually, I mean I don't need like records or wins or certain times or things like that. And so I think that factors into like the joy I'm experiencing in my daily life is like weighted way higher than trying to cut 20 minutes off of a race time. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. It's a balance though, right? Because if you didn't care about your race time at all, you wouldn't be able to do it professionally, right? Like, so it's like you have to care, but not too much.

Yeah, yeah, and I do care. Like I'm racing because I love it and I wanna compete. I love to compete. And when I race, I want to leave every bit of myself on that race course that day and see what I'm capable of, what's possible. But like when I'm 90, I'm not going to care about 20 minutes on a race time or, you know, if anyone remembers

what race I won, you know, I'm going to remember the shared moments. And so that's what I meant. Not that I don't care about racing. I just... When you probably care more than 99% of the population, maybe you just don't care as much as the most driven person in the sport, who by the way might be, just don't care as much as the most driven person in the sport, who by the way might be, I don't know who this person is, but you tend to find those people at that, at the, you know, you watch like the Michael Jordan documentary

and you're like, maybe he actually cares an unhealthy amount and it's holding him back in some way. So it's, you're really comparing yourself not against the average person, but against the extreme of the extremes, which might actually not be the best way for anyone to be. Yeah, oh man. So when you're running, are you running to, are you running to win or are you running to finish or are you running to not, not finish? I'm running to compete.

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

of or should have done something better during the race. But I never go into a race with like a time goal or a place goal. I think in these really long events, those can be a little bit tricky because you are riding such a roller coaster the whole time. And so if you're attached to certain splits, well, certain splits can change a lot over the course of 24 hours or 48 hours of running.

You can ebb and flow through some really good moments and some really terrible moments. And then your splits maybe get totally thrown off. And if you're attached to that, it can mentally feel really hard to come back from. So it's competing. So even if it's like, even if it's like, this split is at my 30-hour 36 of a race, you had hoped to be at this aid station at 36 hours. I mean, you could miss that by a lot of hours if you've had some rough moments. And then how do you convince yourself that that's fine still?

And I think that's the dangerous piece of getting attached to times or splits like that. So when you think about when you say your goal is to compete, do you mean compete relative to the other people in the race or you mean competing against yourself or is it competing against nature? Like what is that? I think when people hear the word compete, they almost always think relative to other people. They think the standards, or sorry, the standings. So does that what that word means to you or what does it mean? I think compete for me means

giving everything I have of myself on that day. So usually, like, people might tell you during a race, like how far back someone is or how far behind someone you are, and that information to me is usually not important in my racing because I'm already smashing the gas pedal down as best I can on the day and trying to keep it at this race level and navigate all of the problems throughout the course of the race. So what the other people are doing in the race is usually not a variable that changes what I'm doing in that moment. Yeah, I remember I watched a race. I'm forgetting who was in it because it's not a sport I followed too much, but it was a women's cycling race. I think it was mountain biking.

Some really long distance one because that's the only place this could happen. But they're showing the woman and she finishes, and she thinks she won, and she didn't realize that actually, she'd lost track of the other racers, and there was one, a person who finished like 10, 15 minutes ahead of her. So again, it's only the sports with the long distance where this is possible. But she comes in, she thinks she won,

and then they're like, no, no, no, so and so already got the gold you have silver. And I was thinking about that because it's like, either that's soul crushing because you thought you were winning and you were coasting, like you didn't actually give your 100% best, or it's almost a totally irrelevant fact to you because even if you'd known, it would have it means like if you were truly giving 100% like not and put out the oh I gave 110% if you actually gave 100% of what you're capable of, the fact that someone beat you is irrelevant because it means you could not have gone any faster. So even if you were neck and neck, you would have finished with the exact same time because you were not capable of more. And so that's where this sort of doing your best thing has to come in, because either

you were coasting because you thought you had this in the bag, which would be so disappointing. Or you're like, man, they're just 10 minutes better than me. That's all there is to it. Yeah, and I tried to be on that side of like, it wouldn't matter, you know, if I get beat by 30 seconds or 30 minutes or I beat someone by some amount of time, like, it wouldn't matter because what I had that day was what I got my, like like that's what happened. That's

how it played out and those are the facts, you know, so that's always my hope going into a race and that's what I consider to be competing. And I think that's an attitude that can apply outside of sports like for instance with money, you know, you're like, wow,, this person has so much more money than me. And it's like, well, you did choose not to start a tech startup, right? Like, let's say you're a classical musician, and then you look at some, you look at Adele's earnings or something. Well, you're like, she chose a different kind of artistic path than you.

It's preposterous to think that you would earn that much or be that famous. So you have to figure out what you're doing and then what the ceiling of what you're doing is and then not be totally tuned out or indifferent to all of it. The question is, are you maximizing your potential, earning potential, physical potential, artistic potential, and then if the answer is yes, then that's the end of it. You can't then go, but why don't I have what this person who works on Wall Street has? Like, you chose to get into public service. How did you not understand that there was a ceiling on the earning potential of X, Y, or Z.

Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting comparison. And I think, like, one of my reasons or my why for why I'm in this sport and why I keep signing up for these really, really long races is that I want to see what's possible. So physically and mentally, what are we capable of if we just keep chipping away at it? Like I call it my pain cave and I'm trying to make it bigger. So I'm hoping that this ceiling or back of my cave can be made bigger if I just keep on going into it and trying to do something a little bit harder or push a little farther than I've ever gone before and then to keep looking for that like what is possible like what if our brains and our bodies can work together and we can train and put ourselves in these situations to just

try. Like, how far can we go or how fast can we do it? So you want to know how far back the cave goes, basically? Yeah, I want to keep exploring that cave and see how big it can get and what that means. Like as it gets bigger, what will that look like physically and mentally? And how do you know when you're in the cave? It's kind of like when you reach that feeling of like it's impossible to go another step, like I'm not sure how I'll keep moving forward.

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

Is that sort of how it is? Kind of, but I would say in these runny and racist, sometimes you're shocked by a very early cave appearance, like just whatever happens with the day or the train or for some reason, you might hit the cave much, much sooner. Or maybe you just pushed really hard, really early. And then found yourself at the entrance of the cave, like way sooner than maybe you should have.

But then I don't think that necessarily means you shy away from going in. I think that's when you dive in and keep working the cave in different spots. You know, maybe it's not the distance part of your cave where you're seeing what's new for, what's possible for a new distance, but maybe it's like the effort or how efficiently you could be pushing up this mountain or whatever, like making it wider in some areas or tunneling different parts. And I'm really visual, so when it gets to be that state, when I'm running, I'll actually picture the cave

and holding like a chisel and a hard hat and just like getting to work on making it bigger. Oh, so you went mad to extend this metaphor to ridiculously, but so you don't even think about it as you're exploring the cave, you actually think, if you're saying you're holding a chisel, are you even, you're expanding the cave, like you're, so it's more of a mine than a cave. And you're trying to go further deep into the bedrock. Absolutely.

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

where the guy goes and he explores all these abandoned minds, that were dug by hand or by pickaxx, like a hundred, a hundred years ago. It's right near Mount Whitney, so like a 8,000 feet over death valley. And anyways, so I've learned more than I would want to know about mining. But one of the things I thought was really interesting that sort of goes to this metaphor you're talking about.

So you're tuddling, you're chipping away. It's this giant rock face and you're just, you're digging this little tunnel, right? And you're going back and back. Do you know what a stope is? No. So a stope is your digging. And then suddenly, you reach a hollow place inside the rock. So it can be like a massive pocket of space and land that you didn't have anything to do with making, but suddenly it's just there. And so I imagine. I'm not for you.

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

than you thought, and then suddenly you're back against a wall and you're chipping away again. This is perfect because I think that is what it's like. You do reach those moments where it's like, yeah. You've gotten your cave bigger and it's a little less effort to keep then diving into that back part. I'm going to send you a picture of this one that he found. It's incredible. He's going through these tiny tunnels and then suddenly it looks like he's in the middle of like Penn station, just this enormous space, right? And you're just like, where did that come from?

And it just, you know, it just appeared. It's kind of incredible what's back there. That's awesome. And it's really cool that your kids obsessed with that. Oh, he's totally obsessed. It's like his favorite, it's his favorite thing in the whole world. That's awesome.

I don't know if I want to explore in minds, but we can watch videos of it. Yeah. Well, so another sort of cave analogy here. Do you know the allegory of Plato's cave? I'm not sure. So the Plato's cave is basically that we're all, this is a sort of an allegory about knowledge

that we're trapped in this cave and it's dark in the cave. And then he says, basically, if you come to have understanding or insight as to what's going on in the cave, like you get out and then you're able to see you know, sort of what's in there, he says you have an obligation to go back in the cave and explain to people what they're seeing, right? What's in here?

What do you feel like you have learned inside the pain cave, not just about yourself, but about the limits of ourselves? What do you feel like you've learned about pain or life in the cave that we need to understand? I think we've spoken about a lot of it. I think we've spoken about a lot of it. Like, some of the pain just being those little teaser warnings of trying to take the easy route out or choose a path that's much simpler or takes less energy to travel on. I think like the biggest one that I just keep being reminded of is how that cave is connected to our body and like for me for running, it's physically connected but the your headspace and your brain are definitely the drivers of that. And that connection is just so interesting to keep on exploring and finding

myself in those situations where I mean, I tried to really just notice, like, what am I thinking right now? And how is that, you know, domino effecting some things? and then if I flip the script What does that do when I just change a very simple thought in my brain? Does exploring the sort of the pain cave as a runner? Has it changed how you approach pain or difficulty in your, let's call it your civilian life? I think where I can, like most explicitly experience it

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

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

Yeah, yeah. I ponder it a lot, but I'll have to get back to you on some like concrete things. Well, I hope you write a book about it someday. I think that would be, I think that would be a way to do it on the expiration. Well, so what do you think of the argument? Because I've seen a bunch of articles that are speculating on this with you. The idea that men or women have different, not paying thresholds, but perhaps there's some that's called it like a female advantage or edge, I guess the thinking was men should be, not should, but extrapolating how it works in other sports, men should be overwhelmingly dominant in the times, but

then you're sort of like right up there if not often beating it. Do you think that pain is an equalizer in that sense or what do you think of the the fascination there with with the sort of male female discussion? It's pretty cool and it's a great time to be in the sport right now because There's tons of women, you know trying to see what's possible and just more and more women getting into ultra running so we have more information but I haven't actually ever seen a legit study about it. So everyone, I think, is just hypothesizing

what could be the reasons where the longer distances seem to make it so many women are a little bit closer in ability. And I don't know, when I stand on a start line, I'm not thinking about like muscle size or comparing my calves to the next person's calves. I'm trying to just think about like what I can bring to this race to try and be my best version.

And maybe my muscles aren't as big as the person next to me, who maybe is a man, but maybe I can be a little more, like mentally tough, or maybe I can problem solve a little more efficiently, or like things that I've nothing to do with the fact that I'm a woman, you know? So I think that ends up being a factor in those really long races is the things that can help you keep moving really strongly through two days of running aren't totally tied to being a male or a female.

It also feels like people get really obsessed with like, statistically, who's better at this or in a large group or even now we have these sort of political discussions about IQ or what gender is in this field or that field. And it strikes me at the end of the day, none of that changes the difficulty of what the individual is having to do that field. And it strikes me at the end of the day, none of that changes the difficulty of what the individual is having to do that day.

So like, let's say it was statistically proven that women did better in these races. Like, it's still really fucking hard to run 200 miles. And nobody is getting a free pass. Like, it's still just fucking hard. And it doesn't change that even in a head to head matchup of you and another person, like, more comes down to like how you both trained for that race, what injuries you have,

what the weather's like, what random strokes of luck happen in the course of the race. And then at the end of the day, as you said, who wants it more and who doesn't quit? Yeah, but yeah, it's still 200 miles. And it's still a really long time of running. And that's why these races are also so special and build such a cool community because the finish lines, everyone's just hanging out cheering for everyone

who came in. You know, a person finishing a 200-mileer at the time cutoff is, you know, that they were out there for five days covering those 200 miles. And that's the same 200 miles that the people in the front did. You know, it's just as cool and it's just as huge of a accomplishment. And it creates this really awesome feeling of community at those finish lines because of that. Well, it's like statistically when Tom Brady is down 28 to 3 in the Super Bowl, you

lose every time, right? Like statistically, you don't come back from that. But also statistics don't matter when the individual will and circumstances of a totally unique situation are in front. Like there's almost like a lack of, we focus on these statistics as if they kind of like, and as a result, they kind of do, deprives of agency.

Like it's what ultimately matters is like, what is the individual going to bring to bear on the situation in front of them? It is not a predetermined outcome. Like we decide what happens. Yeah, exactly. So predictions are things, you know, hypothesizing what might happen or what might not happen. And they don't matter. You have to just bring it on that day in whatever that thing is that you're doing. Yeah, and we have what's so fascinating about your sport is that it's like,

I know other sport where it's like just not quitting is like 80% of it. like no other sport where it's like just not quitting is like 80% of it. You know what I mean? Like every football game finishes, right? Like, you know what I, like it's just so, because it's so at the extremes of the pain cave to use your metaphor that it's like, does the person like actually put that,

like do they push through or do they just stop? Yeah, not quitting is huge. Well, I think about that as a writer too. It's like it's like, look, I can't edit something that I don't create a draft of, right? So like the first marathon is just like created draft of, right? So like the first marathon is just like getting to the end. Like it doesn't matter how ugly it is, how janky it is, how much work, like you can't place an erase

that you don't get to the finish line. Like that's the first qualifying event is just like not dying halfway through. Yeah, just survive it, get to that finish line, and then you can usually look back and see, oh, here are the things I could try differently this time to try and get to the finish line better on the next attempt. I gotta imagine even that, that, like,

it's not a low bar because it's so really hard, but when we're talking about competing, whether it's relatives to other people yourself, it does give you, like you a bar to focus on that's totally in your control as opposed to outside. I mean, obviously injury can intervene, but it's like, my goal in this race is to finish the race, whereas LeBron James doesn't get in and goes, I hope to make it to the fourth quarter. Like he knows the game is well within the human bounds of possibility.

So he's having to focus on how many points of my scoring, are we scoring more points than the other team, et cetera. Whereas in running, it's just finishing is a win. Absolutely. And then reflecting. Like, I think you can learn a lot from those experiences. And if you take the time to look back at what happened, you can springboard forward, stronger than you were the last time.

Which is a cool, cool like stepstone. You're just building this pyramid or these steps and hoping to keep getting better. Just like, hey, I could have been faster here or why did I stop here? If I'd eaten that snack, they offered me at mile 13. I wouldn't have collapsed at mile 30, that kind of thing.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, or even in the preparation leading to it, like, ooh, here are some things that I was clearly a little weaker on. I could try to up my game with that for the next time my race. And the last thing, I think one of the good things about running, I have to imagine, unlike again, a lot of professional sports where there is this ticking clockness to it, you're probably thinking like, how do I do this forever? Like how do I get, you know, you're not like,

hey, like, you know, Tom Brady is in a race against time, right, like, and he's already very obviously on borrowed time. Whereas like for you, I mean, obviously you're still on the pioneering of it. There's not a lot of 90-year-olds that are finishing 100-mile races, but you're the race for you is also how long can I keep doing this, right? Absolutely. That is part of like trying to be smart with training, trying to pump the brakes a little with how many races I sign up for each year, like extending the life of it a little bit longer because I think it can be a sport that you do all the way until

you're 90, 100 years old, You know, and that would be so cool to still be part of it then. So it comes down to pacing, right? Not just pacing yourself in the individual race, but how many races you run per year and how you recover from an injury. Like you're having to pace, if you're thinking of your career as a race, you're having to pace yourself

because you don't want to peak too early and not have enough to get over the finish line three decades from now. Right, right, which is really hard because it's so fun. Yeah. And you're competitive, right? It's hard to lose, not lose, but it's hard to maybe not give everything now

at the expense of what you might be able to give a decade from now. Yeah, yeah. Keeping that big picture in mind though, is it's important. Yeah, I had this mountain bike race on the podcast and she was saying her coach asked her, do you wanna be fast now or fast later?

And I like that. You know what I mean? Obviously, you want to be fast all the time, but would you like to be fast now at the expense of being fast in the race where it actually counts? Right, right. What did she say? Fast later. That's the balance.

Yeah, right. She wants to be fast. She wants to ideally be fast when it counts, not in some stupid practice or scrimmage or whatever, that the ego is making you be short-term at the expensive long term. Yeah, yeah. Well, this was amazing and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to do it.

I'll let you get back to what I'm sure is a very long run you have planned today. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it,

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