Hello, and welcome to Running Inside Out Podcast, where we talk about the races we ran in, the races we're not in, and getting outside to see what's going on inside the Rochester running scene. In this episode, after guesting on two panel discussions, Dan Ostrander is finally on his own episode. Well, mostly. Dan shares stories of running, exploring, sitting on logs, and going further than you have ever gone before. Margaret, or Miss Parisi, as she is known to her close friends, joins us to talk about what it's like to crew for a baller like Dan.
Along the way, we learn a little bit about what got Dan running, how a DNF at Leadville helped him gain perspective, and ultimately how a breakthrough performance, I call it that, he doesn't, at Twisted Branch helped him finish Burning River 100. Also, we learn what really attracted Margaret to Dan in the first place. And trust me, it wasn't putting anti-chafing gel on his ultra toes. Speaking of anti-chafing gel, you can pick some up when you check out our first sponsor, the Rochester Running Company. Come on, that was a pretty sweet segue right there. I mean, writers would kill for that kind of segue. Anyways, fine. Rochester Running Company is a new running store in town located on Mount Hope Avenue in Collegetown. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Collegetown. It looks a little bit intimidating when you first go there. Mount Hope can be busy at certain times of the day and things might feel a little bit hectic.
You know, one could get a little bit overwhelmed, you know, when you just show up there. You might be driving and think, there are so many shops and I don't know exactly where Rochester Running Company is. I don't even know where to park. I'm just going to drive on past and head for the quiet serenity of Mount Hope Cemetery. And that's an option. It is quite a beautiful cemetery, especially this time of year, what with the foliage and all that. But hit up the cemetery after you visit Rochester Running Company. Here's a pro tip. Turn into the street that runs through the middle of College Town. It's called Celebration.
Once you turn on that street, there's a huge parking lot right in the middle. Free parking lot. A giant lot. Don't worry about the street. Don't pay for the ramp. Just park your car in the lot and then go for a stroll. Rochester Running Company is on the main drag. Come out of the parking lot and look towards the little park that's opposite you. And the Rochester Running Company is right in there. Once you get there, you'll find that visiting the Rochester Running Company is a lot like a great run. Once you experience it, you want to do it again as soon as possible. Friendly staff, cool brands you can't find anywhere else, clean towels and cold water for their frequent and free group runs. You just can't get enough.
Additionally, the Facebook page is full of hustle and bustle with many pop-up runs or running-related activities constantly being discussed and organized. Bring your friends, bring your running group, make some new friends, and meet other running groups. Rochester Running Company. Run our city. Together. Thanks to Rochester Running Company for sponsoring this show.
And as always, you can find links to some of the things Dan and I talk about, as well as links to the episode sponsors, including Josh Stratton. More on him later, including that coveted $15 off code. The episode show notes are in your podcast player or on the website located at runninginsideoutpodcast.com slash 038. I implore you, go out there and find a single typo in them. Find a typo. You can't. You can't do it. Anyways, with that, let's get into the trails, training, food, friends, and yes, even feelings of Rochester runners.
Burning River, right? Want to start there? Start in the middle, go to the beginning, go to the end. Go Tarantino style? Yeah, that's what we do. We could do that. Smash cut, Burning River. Whatever you think. All right, so you've been on two shows now, two panel shows, right? Yes. You were on episode number two. No, you were on, yes, you were on number two, Rothrock. Mort told me to do it. Mort told me to do it with Green and Lesher. Yes. And then you were on the Twisted Brains preview episode. Yeah. Almost bookending the podcast. Almost. One of the very first ones and one of the very recent ones. And you are almost going to be on one.
by yourself this was going to be an exclusive dano episode and then margaret's joining us right hi margaret hi yay see how easy it is you could do this we'll see yeah so we have dano strander and margaret would you like to be would you like to be addressed by your last name margaret sure okay parisi i'll just do that i'll just miss parisi how about that oh i thought you meant like use my last name you can use my last name you have to dress me with my last name and miss parisi uh if you could stay for the court that's terrible Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Dan, we at Burning River, we were talking about like, we're going to do, this is it. You're doing a hundred mile. You finally have a thing that you want to come on the podcast and talk about all your own. Yes. No. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about, you had talked to me about that before the race.
And I think the best thing that ever happened was at mile 92 of the race. That was at Botsam. Walking you out of the aid station. I said, all right, Dan, you just got 10 more miles. Just see you in a bit. And you were like, I don't want to do the podcast tomorrow. That's what you said to me. At that point in time, I had been grinding for 20 plus miles and still had 10 to go. I don't want to say I was over it because obviously I didn't want to quit and I was going to absolutely finish. But I don't know. The thought of...
getting through that ordeal, sleeping and then waking up and recording like an hour plus, you know, two hour podcast just sounded at the time. Absolutely terrible. Oh yeah. So I was just like, if I just, no, I'm just gonna say it now, be done with it and we'll figure it out later. Like, cause it just would have been, I didn't, it would have been.
A chore. So can you imagine if I had like a microphone right there and I was like, Dan, you're at mile 92 of Burning River. You should look into doing that. Getting a horrible setup, just like running down the trail with a boom mic, doing on course interviews. I'd have to get a lot tougher to deal with all the punches in the face. True, true, true. Although the last 10 miles of Burning River was pretty much on a flat crushed limestone path and I walked like 85% of it. So this would have been a good place to do it because I was just walking and the terrain was very...
flat i can imagine that'd be miserable though just having somebody ask you lots of questions about how you're feeling and thinking yeah so so now here we are we're cut to what three weeks later yeah you recovered you've gone for a run yeah i i seem to always tell myself give it two weeks of no running and then test the waters and see how things are going i've kind of i always tell myself i'm gonna do longer after my bigger efforts like after my first 50 miler i told myself i'm taking a month off two weeks later i was running um trans rockies told myself a month off because it was such a huge effort took two weeks off right back into it. Like it just sort of seems to be twisted branch was the same way. I told myself, you know, at least three weeks off, this thing destroyed me. This is, I need time to recover. Two weeks later, you know, I get the itch and I get back out there. So same thing with this. I told myself, all right, I know it's not gonna be a month. So I told myself two weeks and then we'll see how it feels. And a week to the day, Sunday after the race, I went out to quote unquote hike at Durand by myself. Cause I figured recovery hikes would be a good way to explore trails. Just.
i don't know i just get on stuff i'm just walking i can look around i can kind of figure some things out so i went there with the intention to hike and i got out and just kind of loosening up and was like i feel pretty good and ended up actually running and yeah i mean like five or six miles and it fell fine so i i don't want to say i'm fully recovered like i'm not ready to jump back into 50 mile weeks but everything seems to be working and there's no injuries to speak of so yeah recovery's going really well nice that's a good thing yeah absolutely so and last year after twist the branch you sort of had that you had like one day of misery and then like instantly recovered right yeah pretty much the night I finished was terrible. I couldn't walk. I couldn't take my socks off. I couldn't bend over. Couldn't get into bed. I couldn't climb into my bed. Walking upstairs was terrible. Downstairs was terrible. Doing everything just hurt. Just chafing and soreness and everything was horrible.
And it really, really stressed Margaret out big time. Yeah. That was like the first time you had ever seen that, right, Margaret? That was the first time I crewed. Yeah. Yeah. And you had ever, first time you had ever seen him like after an ultra. Cause that twisted branch was your real big race last year, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was the goal race. And yeah, I mean, she had been to, you know, Medved Madness, Muddy Sneaker, Ontario, like she had been to races, but not the kind of stuff that like annihilates you. It's just like, Oh, I'm a little sore cause I ran for four hours and then I'm fine. You know, like, but this was a, you know, almost a 15 hour effort and it was obviously a tough course. And so, yeah, she, she took me, she, she.
I was extremely concerned about whether or not she could crew for me in the future. She gave me a stern talking to. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can see you do this to yourself. This is really hard for me. It's hard for non-runners to understand that it's the training, it's the race, it's the recovery. It's the whole process that is part of it. The next day, I woke up, hopped out of bed, hopped in the shower. We went for a three-mile walk in the village. I was kind of...
like night and day and she's like i don't what is happening why you were dead yesterday and now you're like fine and i'm like well good night's sleep and you know what it is i've historically been good at recovery so i know that i just need to take a day or two from the total carnage and i'll usually bounce back pretty quickly so um that obviously put her at ease yeah i felt a lot better after that seeing you better the next day so then she knows and then one year later you're like i'll totally do 100 mile with you like let's go do it right that's exactly what you said no word for word it was exactly that but Well, it was scary because I had heard so many stories about over 50, over 60 miles. When we were at your house, Chris, planning, you had told that story about Jamie and how you saw him at mile 70 and he was talking and not making sense. Yeah, at 70K, he was just... And he was holding a nacho in his hand. And that freaked me out. And then we also listened to Mike and Jamie's Burning River podcast on the way to Ohio. Just to hear someone who's been through it all.
I've listened to it before, but it was a good refresher. I tried to learn from Mike's mistakes, I guess. I typically don't change shoes and socks very often during races. historically, but hearing about his foot woes last year made it way more top of mind than it would have been otherwise. My feet are super resilient in general, so I don't typically have to think about that stuff. But hearing how his feet got shredded, I was like, well, I don't want to deal with that with so many other unknowns, so I tried to be a little bit more proactive with that and listening to that. There was one line where he said basically all the stuff that was going on with my race was things that my pacer was telling me to do, and I was ignoring him. So I was trying to pick up on that and make sure I was diligent about all the stuff I could control.
So you had the idea that Margaret was going to be your crew, right? We had our big crew planning meeting where we kind of like decided what time we're going down in hotels and eating dinner and all that kind of stuff. And then Burning River, the idea was Margaret was going to crew you. It's her first real gig, right? I mean, she did Twisted Branch. Okay, yeah. So, I mean, you had some practice, but this was the big one, sleep deprivation and all that, right? But she's, yeah, like you would never have known that it was her first time at Twisted Branch crewing.
Like she was exceedingly good at it for never having done it or really been around the ultra community. Like I had, she was where she needed to be when she needed to be there. And she had what I needed when I needed it. Right. Almost pretty much the entire day. So all three races, like there was very rare other times where I was like, I need to, she was like, Oh, I have no idea. I don't have it. It's gone. So she, you know, she got really good at it really quick. So I knew that even though this was uncharted waters that we were going to be in good shape.
She was prepared. She had a big list. She was taking notes and all that. All right. So we sort of set the stage for Burning River a little bit. We talked about Mile 92. So a little bit of a spoiler. We know you made it to 92. And we talked about you as your crew, Margaret. And we talked a little bit about Twisted Branch. But coming up to all this, one of the things we mentioned was talk about the story of Dano, the beginnings. The idea that you decided you wanted to start running these long things. We all have some sort of reasons, right? And maybe you don't know all the exact reasons. But how did you get into running? What was the thing that sort of got you doing this regularly?
Running stemmed from, I used to drink booze a lot to the point where it became a problem. And so I decided to cut it out of my life before it ruined it. And so I kind of took this big, you know, to me negative thing out of my life and I wanted to replace it with something. positive um and so running my brother had been a runner for four or five years he'd done you know a couple marathons half marathons that kind of stuff so it was nice to know that i had um a resource that was in my family that if i had questions or concerns or problems or things i was curious about i could just say you know i could text him call hey what about that and he could you know help me through it it was nice that i didn't have to I didn't have to join a gym. I didn't have to take lessons. I didn't need a coach. I didn't need anything. No strings. Humans run. From the time you were a kid, I grew up playing sports. I always ran. I never ran to run, but you play basketball. You play sports in the neighborhood. You do a lot of stuff. You're running. I knew how to do it. I figured I could probably dig up a pair of sneakers to run in from my closet. At that point in my life, I was definitely not in the greatest shape, had a few extra pounds on me that I definitely didn't want. I figured these are all good reasons to start doing this. I just started walking.
and kind of sprinkled in some jogging here and there, and it just kind of took off from there. How old were you when you decided that? I quit drinking in 2008, so it would have been probably early 2009 by the time I started saying, I'm going to run. So around 30 or something like that? I was, yeah, 31, 32.
I think when I would in 32 when I quit it was just after my 32nd birthday when I quit so I was yeah in my early 30s and I decided because I never ran track in school I never ran cross-country I never I know like even at the schools I went to we never ran the mile like there was nothing that like would have exposed me to just pure running when I was a kid I was just like it wasn't there So with that, then you just decided you're going to start running. You didn't need any of the formal structure. You wanted none of that. You're just out there running for day in. Yeah, you open the door and go. And I like the idea of that freedom to just be able to kind of go wherever I want and do it whenever for however long. Like, you know, if you want to do other more structured sports, like you need a court or you need a field or you need like a lot of equipment or, you know, there's. So you pretty much started just running out your door and you're just running the road. So fair point. No, actually, before that, my dad used to go to the gym at the Parrington Rec Center and work on like the machines to stay fit.
And I used to tag along with him whenever he would go, and there's a track that's above the basketball courts. It's 16 laps for a loop per mile on the inside. 17 on the inside, 16 on the outside. And I went and it was me and pretty much, you know, 70 year old women up on the track. Um, and I started out, I somehow, I somehow was smart enough to not just start running. Um, I think that might, that's probably a mistake a lot of new runners make where they just walk out their door and start running. They had a quarter mile down the road, their heart's going to explode out of their chest. They can't breathe. And they're like, why would I do this? I hate this. So it's the worst. I started walking just to do something. And then I kind of just started sprinkling in, you know, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, a couple minutes of running, or I would run until I'm tired and I stop and walk. And then I'd alternate back and forth.
you know, kind of just started that way. Um, you know, then eventually I think I signed up for a 5k and then that's when I kind of started running outside because I was thinking I'm not going to run a 5k in this gym. So I got to get outside and run on the roads to see like the simulate, like what's actually going to happen on race day. So, um, that's kind of how it all began in the beginning. And then it just sort of went from there.
So the RIT has one of those tracks above the basketball court and it's like 10 miles, 10 laps for a mile. And I thought that I was like, there's no way you can run multiple miles on this. And when you walk up the stairs to go to it, they have multiple miler club things. And my RA, I always thought he was a little bit weird and a little bit sketchy and just an interesting duck. And it turns out like he was at the tops of the charts having run like thousands of miles on that track.
Yeah. Humble beginnings, innocent beginnings, right? Just, you know, simple in the beginning, but you know, that nature, we hear it so often, you swap out something for your life, you take out some bad thing, you put a good thing in there. And the idea of so many people think ultra runners are addicts or reformed addicts. And like you get addicted to running instead of getting addicted to something that could kill you. Well, yeah, I mean, I have a very addictive personality as it is. So, you know.
I like sneakers, so I end up having over 100 pairs of sneakers. This apartment is not that big. I like running, so naturally it's going to progress up to running 100 miles. When I collect something, when I throw myself into something, I want to do it to the most extreme level. That's kind of how it was with drinking. It wasn't just like, oh, I'll have a couple beers and then I'll go home. It was always like, two turned into six turned into ten or whatever. It doesn't surprise me that I've taken running where I have based on where I've been.
mostly positive. Yeah, so how did that transition start happening? You did that 5K, your heart didn't explode. Yeah, I ran my first 5K in, I think it was October of 2009. It was the morning of my buddy Chris and Natalie's wedding. I ran 25.57.
Wow. And I was mad. Did you do research for this before or you just have that locked in your brain? I have the bib somewhere in a frame. My first race bib. I have every race bib from every race I've ever done. I have every one except for Twisted Branch. Really? Oh, you have to be able to pull it. Yeah. That's Tim Holland. He's following orders. And now it's gone. Scott can't find it. So yeah, I have every bib from every race I've ever run. And I write on Sharpie pretty much on all of them. Dates, times, races, sometimes a place. And they're all in chronological order.
The collector. Yeah, it's bad. Definitely a collector. The only ones I don't have bibs for are the races that don't have bibs. Like, there's been a handful of races where they just didn't either have, like, Cast of Shadow, I think, this year didn't have bibs. Oh, really? One of the Snowshoe Nationals races, I think, had, one of the some snowshoe races I did recently, like, within the past couple years, they had these little plastic tags that we used as bibs, and we had to give them back when we were done. So, like, there's a couple random races I don't have, but pretty much everyone is there. But, yeah, I did the 5K, and I was like, oh, 5K, that was fun. And then that following November, I did a five-mile race.
the Southeast Y Turkey Thanksgiving Day. Turkey Trot? Yeah, it wasn't. It's not called the Turkey Trot. It's like the Southeast YMCA. It's in Pittsburgh. Thanksgiving run. And I ran the same pace that I ran for my 5K for the five miler. And I was like, oh, wait, that's, you know, there's little things of progress in the beginning. And then I want to say from there I was, I wanted to do a half marathon. So I did Flower City.
in april yeah that that's not a bad one to pick and then cool the second i crossed the finish line there i was like i want to do a full marathon so i yeah so i registered for the rochester marathon that year so that september i did rochester and it just kind of went from there um but i remember like At this point, I was still not thinking anything super long distance. I was kind of just like, you do a 5K, you do a 10K, you do a half marathon, you do a marathon. I kind of dipped my toes into trail running, but it was still really new, and I hadn't really discovered the world that was there. And you're still doing this mostly independently? You're not doing it with groups or friends or anything like that? Just kind of you, solo? Yeah, a lot of the running early on was alone. Just walk out the door and go. Explore neighborhoods. I've always liked to explore.
um when i go out running um i know a lot of people like to just you know they do out in back so they just do like a big square yeah i don't want to deal with that's me i do the known route yeah i love the thing that you're doing these days with stringing together five or six parks to make like a 20 miler yeah you know corbett's and you do you do like three or four different strings of parks that and make 20 mile runs yeah that's pretty solid yeah i i like i said i kind of just pick a section of the city that has trails i just explore everything i just i run every Every turn, every split, every fork, I just run every one of them. You know, a lot of times it takes you either to someone's backyard or a horse farm or a road or it just disappears and it's a deer trail. Some of them loop back in. I just run all of them until I know where everything goes. And then, you know, once I learn a certain section, I just kind of move on to a different section. So I've kind of just been moving from like area to area, trying to like figure out where everything is and how it connects. And yeah, it's really...
i don't know i don't i'm pretty good with direction so i don't really worry about getting lost yeah and so it's nice to be able to kind of just go anywhere and run and know where i am at all times do you purposely avoid like places that you know will you be like oh i've been down that before and purposely make a different turn not necessarily i mean because like there's only there's a finite amount of trails in rochester so like i can't i mean i guess i could explore more and run new stuff but you know i've run the crescent trail a ton like every which way you possibly can i still enjoy it because it's a great trail but um you know every now and then i just like to you know pick an area the most recent area i picked was um Ganondagen, Historic Site, Dreyer Road, and the Seneca Trail. I guess that would be the south end of the Seneca Trail. Bowden Park and the Apple Farm and all that stuff. There's a lot more over there than just the red Seneca Trail that cuts through the whole thing. And if you care to take the time to learn it, you can really get some interesting loops. Sometimes you have to run bits of road to string them together, but I'm completely content doing that because I come up with these really interesting loops.
and i really enjoy it like so it's super fun i can i can stand to use a little bit of that i somebody asked on facebook the other day does anybody have a map of the the mendon 10k loop and i was like yeah check check every third run on my straw yeah yeah i did see that well that's the thing like you know i i mean honestly to each his own i'm not trying to talk crap it's helpful to do but i just when i see someone go for a long run in mendon and they just run the 10k loop three times it just frustrates me but i just don't understand it that park has 25 to 30 miles worth of trails and then you pick a six mile loop and run three times like Just because of my nature and how I like to explore and learn the trails and come up with super interesting, intricate loops. I don't know. It just doesn't appeal to me to go somewhere where there's tons of trails and just run this little tiny section. But I guess...
i don't know i can't tell you why i i've done that i've done an 18 miler on the 10k loop and i've done a 20 miler by doing the 18 3 10k loops and then up to the water tower and down twice yeah you know there's no you know there's no arguing that i mean the 10k loop is it's a tough loop and if you want some serious vert and you want to climb like that's a great way to do it but i don't know i just loops like repeating loops seem monotonous to me like mind the duck sounds monotonous to me like the equicenter overnight one candlelight or whatever seems monotonous like I think there's something to be said about not having to think though. Yeah. And I know that's what that stems from. People are like, I don't want to think about where I'm going. I just want to run. Yeah. And so, I don't know, for some reason I'm able to still enjoy running, but also enjoy like exploring and navigating and getting lost. And I mean, there's like when I was recently, I mean, if anyone's ever run dryer road, they know how insanely dense the trails are there. It's very, you're on like, yeah, take a step off the trail and you're on another trail. And it's really easy to get turned around there. There's not a lot of like logic to how it's set up. So when I was in there trying to figure out, and I haven't like, I would love to learn that park, like the whole thing.
So I know where I am at all times, but it's super confusing and there's so many trails in there. Like, you know, it's so easy to get turned around and it's not frustrating, but I like kind of just running aimlessly through the woods. I don't make me feel like a kid, so. Yeah. Well, like what Margaret said, there is something to the predictability. Like, I know it takes me an hour to run that 10K loop.
So I need to run three of them. And I also know there's a bathroom right there. It's always nice to know that there's one of those nearby. So you run two loops, you go, I've got to go to the bathroom. It's less than this many miles away. But I have been starting to now go to Menden. I'll go to the beach lot like I'm going to do the 10K loop and I'll go, okay, before I'm allowed to go to the 10K loop, I'm going to go run to the other side 100 acre and try to make it back. So I've been doing a little bit more of that.
I don't know. There is, there's something to familiarity. Um, but I do need to, as you said, there's a ton. I've gone to try on to try to explore once and my four mile run turned into like a seven mile walk because I'm like, where the heck am I? Well, try on has a lot of similar pitfalls as a dryer because they're mountain bike parts. They have a ton of trails that are designed for bikes that twist and turn and loop around. And there's a lot, there's a lot of trail in a small area. So it's, it makes it trickier and easier to get turned around. Um, it's not like running around Quaker at Menden where you just keep the water on your left and go, there's lots of twists and turns. So yeah, try on.
I've gotten better with, um, cause that was a whole nother project that I did when I was learning the wetlands and try on and Ellison and linear and Corbett's Glen, like trying to figure out all of them and then figure out how they link together. Um, and yeah, try on is definitely the toughest part of that exploration. I went to try on and ended up in Abraham Lincoln and I'm like, Oh wait, how did I, you know, I had, I had to go through some, you know, but it's just one of those things where, yeah, I think it's, it's interesting because the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with that, you know, Mertzak's that way a lot. He'll just go out and just go wander around. And now it's a little bit better with the Charles Rock app, because if you do take your phone, you can wander around a little bit. I use that app so much when I'm trying to figure out routes. Because if you want to look at how stuff connects, you have to bring up a map of...
The wetlands. And then if you want to look at Tryon, you have to bring up a separate map of Tryon. And then you have to look at both of them that might not be on the same scale and try to figure out where they are geographically and how to orient them. And it's annoying to try to figure out loops like that. And then God forbid you want to look at Ellison as well. You look at Ellison and then you've got three separate maps you're trying to figure out. So the fact that you can open the app and just look at five or six different parks zoomed out and you can see all the trails and you can be like, oh, wow, those are all right there. Right there next to each other. That's really easy to link up. And it really helps to kind of see the big picture and see how much stuff is there. And there's so much stuff that's not on there that I know about that,
Even with what's there, it's awesome, but there's still so much stuff that's not on there that would make it even better. I know it takes time to get all that stuff in there. Submit your routes. Just send them in. I find that an extremely valuable tool. Anybody that's trying to get into trail running, I tell them, download the app and look at it. There's so much stuff on there. The next version is going to be adding public water spots. That's coming soon. Mike and I talked about that somewhat recently. It'd be nice to be able to mark water spouts and water pumps and water fountains because that obviously can help.
when you're trying to do route planning. If you can do one less water drop because you know you're going to be at a fountain eight miles in, then it's really cool to build a app. So that's awesome. Yeah, I love the app. I use it a lot. So armed with your tool set of the gift of exploration, you're linking together trails and you suddenly start finding yourself on trails running just three, four hours at a time exploring. Is that how you got into this long distance stuff? No, I started running trails. Mike Ryan had a couple friends who had a Medved Madness team.
And they needed a third. This was back in 2010, I think. Um, and at the time I was like, I've never even stepped foot on a trail. Like I don't, I'm not in any position to do that. And he's just like, I'm sure you'll be fine. Um, I had just, I was either, I think I had just, yeah, I just run a flower city when it kind of came, fell into my lap. So, I mean, I was in, you know, good enough shape that I could run a road half marathon. So I'm sure, but it was just, you know, more of the unknown. I didn't, I've never run on trail before. I didn't know where they were or anything. So I went and did, um, it was a Thursday night trail run in.
probably late april where we previewed leg two of medbed madness it was like my first trail run ever and like i was physically fine and more than capable of managing it and um it was really fun it was like different i mean it's still fun i mean i still enjoyed running on the roads but this was different and a lot of fun and just a different atmosphere and i really enjoyed it that's kind of like where i started getting excited about running on trails um the long distance stuff didn't really come until later um you know, total broken record here, but you know, my brother had bought me born to run for Christmas and I read it and you know, obviously you finished reading the book and you're like, I'm going to go run 50 miles tomorrow. Give me a Canyon. Yeah. Like it's just, it's, you know, say what you will about the author, but you know, it's a great book. It's a great read and it's really, um, you know, it gets you thinking about that kind of stuff. As crazy as it sounds. I mean, I still remember thinking like 50 miles, like, Oh, you know, like no way. But you know, it was, it kind of put it out there and opened my eyes to a world that I didn't even know existed. Just need a, just need a pocket full of chia seeds and you can go forever. So, um, you know, so there were a lot of seeds planted early and you know, but
yeah, I don't really know where I started, like where the, like the real long stuff started coming in. It was kind of just like a natural progression. It was like, you know, I ran that Medved Madness was my first trail race. I did like two and I ran well and felt fine and enjoyed myself and it was awesome. And then, you know, I want to say maybe the following year, I think I ran, I started, when I first started running, I raced a lot. I really enjoyed racing. I ran a ton. I don't know if it was, I think it was 2011. I ran like,
I mean, it's not Prem levels. Prem Kumar, the 55 races. Yeah, he's a prolific racer. But it was up there. It was in the 40s. And I'm talking snow cheap, dirt cheap, freezer roofs, road 5Ks, the Thanksgiving races, all the turkey trots, 4th of July. Anything I could get my hands on, road, trail, anything. It was awesome. I mean, it got to a point.
where it was it was it was getting to be too much like it stopped being fun yeah you know when you're lacing up for a freezer and it's like negative 10 out and you're running on long pond road and you're just like why am i doing this like i do this again you know and i mean if you look back at my garmin stuff like there's one month where in like december i think i ran like you know 10 times and i think like eight of them were races because it was like it was snow cheap it was freezer and then it was like winter fest and then it was like fleet feet used to do a snowshoe half marathon out in webster and then there was like winter um there was a whole bunch of them so it was just between snowshoeing and snow cheap and freezer like i was racing like once or twice a week you already signed up and paid for yeah it was just like like i said it was fun it started out fun it just got to be too much and so i kind of scaled back and was more purposeful with what races i ran and so as far as you know the the sort of the big stuff that we've been that you've been sort of alluding to what what i know is the trans rockies run that you did yeah uh leadville 2014 uh cayuga 50 um or twisted branch yeah
Cayuga 50 and then Burning River. Those are like the big ultra long endurance efforts. Dances with Dirt was in 50 miler. I skipped the 50k. Went right from marathon to 50k. I guess this is...
kind of annoying to some people but i thought what's the point of going from a trail marathon to a trail 50k like if you're trying to push boundaries and find out what you can do like the training plan for a 50k is exactly the same as the training plan for a marathon it's the same thing i mean i know there are different races there are flat there's mountain i mean like a flat road or a flat trail marathon versus a you know 50k sky race i know it's like night and day but i figured if i can run 26 i can run 31 if you're in shape if you're in shape yeah so i wanted to test myself and so i jumped straight to 50 miles um and that was dances with dirt in 20 I want to say that was 2011. Wow. Okay. So way back. I think. Let me think. Yeah. Dances with Dirt. No, I think Dances with Dirt was 12. Dances with Dirt was 12. Trans Rockies was 13. Leadville was 14. Twisted was 15.
burning river was burning river so you pick one each year one big one major like you said you scaled back get more purposeful i mean we still run i always say like you know you still run madness you still run muddy sneaker those you know those are races yeah those are some of my favorites yeah exactly you know and this year even though burning river was always the the a race like the main goal for the year i ran muddy sneaker in april ran my fastest time i've rubber run out of six races um i want to say i also ran madness and i think i ran my fastest time of any of those i also ran spf like three weeks before burning river and wasn't going to race and ended up racing and put down my fastest like a PR on that course by like 15 or 16 minutes. So, you know, I still enjoy the shorter stuff and I like running fast, but, you know, going long kind of took over for a while. So I can't help but notice that you're setting all these PRs during the time that you and Margaret started dating. Yeah. Well, I don't want to be away from her. Yeah. So I have to run faster so my runs are shorter. No, she's extremely supportive of what I do despite the enormous amount of time it takes to prepare for what I like to do.
you know, if you're going to survive a hundred mile race, you have to put in the work ahead of time. You have to put in 50, 60, 70 mile weeks, like week after week, after week, after week. And it's like, you know, during my peak training for Burning River this year, it felt like all I did was eat, sleep, run and work. That was it. And you're also thrown in strength training classes, right? Going to Muscles for Mileage with Rossi. Yeah, I go see Josh every Monday with the class. I feel like once you get into longer stuff, like you can...
Running fitness, I think, will only get you so far. I mean, everybody's different, so some people cannot do a lick of strength training and still excel at the longer distances, but I thought, logically, if I was going to start being out there 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 plus hours, when you start to fatigue, you stop picking up your feet, your form breaks, you become more inefficient, and it just beats you up even more, and so, like, you need to have, like, strong arms and shoulders and core and back, and, like, you want to have strong hips and all your stabilizing muscles, especially for trail running, you want to have, you know, strong... um, stabilizing muscles. Otherwise you're going to get fatigued. You're going to cramp and you're going to get beat up. So you can, you can tell like, so I started going to him when I started training for my first 50 miles away back in, you know, 12.
as a way to supplement the fitness I was getting from running. And it's still, you know, for a while I would go maybe one or two extra days a week and kind of do some weight stuff just to supplement all that. But it's really, for the bulk of it, just been one day a week of that strength stuff, you know, 75 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever. And it's, you know, it helps me handle the high mileage training, helps me recover quicker, and, you know, keeps me fit enough to handle. late race miles um the thing i noticed over this year i mean when when we'd be running the few times we ran on just little group runs or something there'd be say a log across the trail and most people will stop and they're you know running their kid and still stop to put one leg over the log and another leg over the log and go back running you just put a hand on a log and basically hop over it you don't break stride you got ups to just jump over a log you pull pull everything together up and over and keep going yeah and and a lot of that i think is you know that's all non-running fitness like it's weights and squats and deadlifts and all that stuff like And the best thing about going to work with Josh is he's a runner. He's run 50-milers. He's run Pikes Peak. He's run 90-minute half marathons. He's run 18-minute 5Ks. He's run all the different distances, road, trail, and he gets it. So when I tell him, hey, I'm planning training for a 50-miler, I need supplemental fitness from running to kind of get through it. And he's like, okay, I've done a 50-miler. I know what that's like. I know what I need to do to get you into shape. And he's also incredibly smart with all of the gym stuff. So if I just go see a trainer who doesn't run and I tell him what I'm doing, they're just like, you're going to run 50 miles? Like, why? Like, what the hell? Yeah, so it's nice to know that.
He has the running knowledge as well as the gym knowledge to get me where I need to be. It's fun. The class is fun. I enjoy it quite a bit. If I want to know, how does this help me running? He will break it down in scientific terms. This opens up your kinetic chain. He'll explain exactly why it's helping you and how it helps you and why you need it. I got to a point where I just stopped asking. I trust him and I know that we're doing it for a reason. I'm in a class with a bunch of runners and it's all running specific. I just stopped asking and have fun with it. I think it's been a huge part of my success over the last four or five years since I started going longer.
Yeah. So you got, like you said, you got 70 miles, you're running four or five days a week and you got your Monday strength training going on. You got work. Um, so yeah, full, full calendar. Yeah. But it's, it's tough. It's tough to juggle everything. And like, you know, there were definitely times, especially with Margaret where I was like, I feel like I'm being a bad boyfriend because I'm, you know, because I work till five, I get out, I have to run 10, 12 miles on the trails. I clean up, I eat dinner.
it's like 9 30 10 o'clock yeah like you know and she's going to bed in the next hour or so so it's you know unless i wake up and run for you know two plus hours before work it's hard to kind of juggle everything but you know like i said she's been incredibly supportive and understanding um she also appreciates an early a race date yeah you know august you know if i you know one thing we talked about after twisted was that eating up our summer while you're when you're training we can't do anything we can't take trips we can't go camping i mean we can but it's a lot harder and a lot more complicated right because you want to go run for eight hours on a saturday that's one of the things that i did this this summer i was like okay i'm gonna do less races to spend more time with family which i did i did less races and i spent more time with family but that meant fourth of july we were camping and i'm like i should be putting in a 20 and a 10 yeah and instead i'm putting in an eight and a four yeah that's six weeks out from your goal race yeah that should be like borderline peak yeah but i made those i made those like no we're going family camping this weekend and that's the trade-off and so yeah a lot of that suffered i think a late summer ultra is hard uh it's hard on the scheduling and everything and when i was single i never had to check with anybody else about what races i wanted to do and when and where like
I'm going to Colorado for 10 days. I'm going to run in the mountains for six of them and it's going to be the best thing ever. You just go do it. You just pay for the race and you get your gear and you go. Now I'm not only having to take myself into consideration for this stuff. You know that January, February, March time of the year where everyone starts freaking out and signing up for everything and getting all these grand plans for the summer? There was a lot of dialogue about going to Oil Creek.
I thought that would be a good option, but it's in November, October. Yeah. So that's late in the year. So if I'm going to strain for four or five months, that's just, that is the summer just gone, you know? And I think the early date of burning river early August, you know, yeah, it's gonna be hot, but as of August 7th, my.
year is over right well and what's interesting though is you ran cayuga 50 which in itself could be an a race for a lot of people and that's in june yeah you know so june june 4th this year i know i felt like okay i did a 50 miler in june that means i'm pretty set up for the august races because i'm already hitting a 50 miler yeah and that's exactly why i ran cayuga um you know it had kind of been on my radar since they had started it you know four years ago or whenever they started it and it kind of worked out this year that it would have been a good tune-up, not tune-up, a test of fitness. If I can run 50 miles relatively easily two months out, I think I'm in a good place for the 100. And you were in a good place. I battled at the race. I dealt with some cramping, and it slowed me down a bit, but I just buckled down and dealt with it.
I finished just over 11 hours. The race could have gone better, but I was happy. I'll be a little beat up. But the best part about that race was I took Sunday, Monday, Tuesday off, and then I was back at Medved on Wednesday for the Wednesday run and was fine. Wow, just like that. So it wasn't so much that I had the race of my life at Cayuga, which I definitely didn't, but three days recovery and right back into training for Burning River. So the recovery and the fitness was definitely there. So even though I didn't run the race that I necessarily am capable of or thought I could have run.
It did exactly what it needed to do. If anything, it helped me out more because it made me grind a low point and get through some really tough miles, which was obviously going to be the case in Burning River at some point. So it was good. Yeah. So then that's June 4th. And then, like you said, going into Burning River August 6th. Now, we had a whole crew go down to Burning River. And again, you had, as we covered, you had Margaret as your crew. Margaret was like the main crew. But I also had Mike Ryan and his wife, Kristen Ryan, come out and support me as well.
We had done this twice before. Mike and Kristen had never really accrued for me. They've accrued for each other. They were familiar. They've run wrong races. They know what to do. Those three were pretty much there for me. Mike and Kristen also doubled up and did pacing duties as well. Between Laura and I, we were rolling 10 deep. There was a lot of people there. We got together and we set up a pacer plan because we had all these people. Everybody's like, I'm going to pace. I'm going to accrue. You had a plan of...
kristin first and then mike and then mike weldon yes so you had a guy who ran the race previously the year before you listened to his podcast you knew his mindset and you had him for the last 25 miles of the race yes so that was sort of your your setup yeah i just figured with 100 mile distance um i tried it once before in leadville um missed the cutoff coming back over hope pass It still stings because it's literally my only DNF. I guess if I'm going to have one DNF, that's a good one to have. But there's so many unknowns for the distance for me that I wanted to try to control what I could control. I can't control the weather. I can't control the distance. I can't control the course. There's nothing I can do about it. But I can control who my pacers are when I pick them up, and I can let them know what I want and how this is all going to work out or whatever. So I wanted to try to control that as much as I could. And so, yeah, I wanted to know who I was going to get and when. So that was – yeah, Chris was –
50 to, I think, 66. 62? 60. Was it? Yeah, let's consult the church. So I remember you had talked about your night on Hope Pass, and you had said there's a lot of salvaging that because of the evening and who you spent it with, and the fact that you're under a million stars, and you had done 100K. Yeah. Right? And so you are taking something. I'm asking because I just had my first DNF last week. And so I'm like, I'm sitting there going, ah, you know, I'm only not happy about the last five minutes.
Everything else, I did wait. And then you think about it more, and you're like, well, no, I could have did something else. Like I said, Leadville definitely, like, there's times where I think back, and I'm like, I still can't believe I didn't finish. Like, I nailed my training. I was in incredible shape, and I don't feel like I executed anything poorly while I was there. But obviously, something went wrong because I didn't finish.
You know, at the time, it was the farthest distance I had gone. My farthest run at that point was a 50-miler, and I had gone like 62 or whatever, 100k. I think Twin Lakes 2 is at 60 miles. So I had gone farther than I'd ever gone. There's a success right there. I think I had climbed probably at that point like over 10,000 feet total, which was more than I'd ever climbed at a single clip. And then...
The time on feet, I got to the turnaround in just less than 14 hours. And I think by the time I was all said and done, it was a little over 20 hours on my feet. So time on feet was almost twice as long as my previous max. Right. All PRs. So ran farther, climbed more on my feet for longer than I ever have been. But it's like, it's hard. It's easy to say, well, I didn't finish the race, so I failed. And like, you know, like I said, it still stings a little bit, but I definitely didn't look at it as a failure. And yeah, I got to go over Hope Pass with one of my best friends at night.
on like a comically clear sky starry night where it looks like super fake and it was just calm and peaceful and quiet and gorgeous and amazing. And like, that will never not happen. So, you know, it's hard to look back at the race as a failure. I mean, I guess I technically failed to finish the race, but outside of that, there was tons of valuable experience to gain. And, you know, it also helped that burning river big time because the first uncharted territory was really like anything after 20 hours on my feet. And so, cause even when I got to a farther distance than I'd ever been, I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm farther along than I've ever been, but.
I've still been on my feet longer than this on a single effort so you know it was less scary being like well I know I've gone 20 hours up in the mountains in colorado and survived you know so i feel like in ohio i can also do that and then some more so it definitely gave me some perspective that i wouldn't have had otherwise right and the other thing you mentioned is you had had the perspective of doing really well at 100k distance in twisted branch so you had that sort of level of confidence of oh like 100k i can do that now easy peasy yeah in a way i looked it from where i was sitting yeah i mean i know at the time it was definitely I can look back on it and be like, yeah, it wasn't too bad, but there were definitely some really bad low points. Well, after he finished the race and he was chafed and couldn't move, he said to me, I don't think I want to do this again. Yeah, we all say that. And then the next day.
It was a completely different story. Yeah. So with how hard I thought Twisted Branch was last year, I'm like, oh, that was really hard. A lot of things went wrong. I could do so much better next year. I could not stop at the aid stations eight times, spend almost two hours in aid stations. I can breeze through it. No, actually, now doing it this year, I have perspective on how much actually went right last year. So much went right when I'm sitting there thinking about, oh, these few little things went wrong. I got lucky last year is what I've come to believe now with a week and a half in perspective I got.
Really lucky. I guess it's only a week. That was this time last week. Yeah, so Twisted Branch sort of let me finish last year in a way. Yeah, it's a tough course. It's an amazing race, and it's awesome trails, and it's a great event. But I don't have any urge to go back and run it again because I feel like I'm happy with what I accomplished when I was there. Yeah. And it was really cool to be a part of it this year at an aid station.
to kind of see it unfold from the other side of the table. Yeah, it would have been nice to come in and actually greet you with a smile. That would have been neat. Yeah, we were in a tough place. I think everybody was in a tough place. Well, yeah, I meant literally we were in a tough place, like distance-wise, but yeah, there was a lot of carnage out there, and it was a tough day. But you had that confidence of that 100K success, so all of a sudden sign up for the 100 miler. Why not, right? Yeah. And so we keep almost getting to the start line. So one of the funniest things about that start line, the 6 a.m. start, right? Yeah, 6 a.m. start. Of what?
Not burning. No, sorry. It's 4 a.m. start. 4 a.m. start was we had all came over from the hotel, which wasn't too far away. And then as you were walking over to the start line, you had left. And Margaret forgot to take a picture of you. Yeah. She came over to me in the crowd of starters, like seconds before the race was about to start. The picture on my cell phone actually says exactly 4 a.m., which is what I think they started the race as I took the picture.
And I was definitely, I mean, it was kind of just like, all right, I'm going to go do this race. Like, I'm in the zone. I'm in race zone. And then she comes over, no, babe, I got to take a picture real quick. And I was like, oh, okay. That's the one thing I realized that I haven't taken a lot of pictures before, so I wanted to try to. Which is good. And you also had a lot of people that weren't there that wanted to see you and know how you were doing. Yeah. The Dano, the Dano fanos. Yeah.
So, um, yeah, so she takes that picture of you and then, um, happily for, for me, we got to spend a better part of the day together, kind of going from station to station. Um, and like you said, she had a plan for, for every aid station and, and we would sort of consult in between. She's like, okay, I'm going to mile 12. You know, I don't think he's going to need this. I don't think he's going to need, what about this? Do you think he's, you know, and she had like, she was making plans in between each of the aid stations sort of ready to go. I learned a lot from ends of longer races, like ends of muddy and, and.
some of the other marathon trail races and how there were moments where, like, I'd put a wet cloth on you and you would, like, kind of scream. Yeah. Like, you're dripping and slap, but you, like, you can't. So I kind of stored all that stuff in the back of my mind. Well, yeah, I mean, it's weird what you like at certain points in the race, and then as quickly and as much as you like it, you hate it. Yeah. Like, for the whole first half of Burning River, you gave me grapes at every time, every crew aid station, and they were the most refreshing, best things ever. And then...
At some point, after mile 50, you were like, here's some grapes, babe. And I'm like, ugh, no more grapes. With so much dripping with disdain. Get disdain away from me. And she's like, oh. She doesn't know what I've gone through on the trail where I transitioned from grapes for amazing to ew. And throwing the grapes in the river and being like, I never want to eat a grape again. I got to a point where I was like, now they're just annoying and I don't want them anymore. But she doesn't see the transition. She just gets the other side of the coin when I get to the aid station. I'm like, no, these are disgusting. Get these away from me. And it's like, oh, well, you've been, okay. Just take logic out of it. Don't try to figure it out.
And that's just, it's hard because I don't know. It's hard to tell her what I want when I don't know what I'm going to want. So you have to have everything kind of ready. And not take offense when one thing is turned on. And I know that I was crabby with a lot of people during the race because it's just, it's a strenuous, stressful day and night and day. Yeah, that's the thing. Where it's just, you know. But you were a little tripper in the early miles. You were okay. Well, yeah. I mean, the first half of the race, I was cruising. The second half was more of a grind. Yeah, you had a 10-hour first half. 10.30. Yep.
10.30 for 50 miles. And I was going conservative, too. I was like, I've got to chill. I'm going to kill myself if I keep going too fast. You were going way faster than I thought you would. Yeah. The first half. I almost missed you at an aid station because you were going so fast. So one of the other things that Margaret had that she said she sort of insisted upon you, forced it upon you, was the cold towel that you have, that cooling towel. She said she wanted to think of a unique gift to get you that you didn't have, and you already had 100 pairs of shoes and blah, blah, blah. So she came up with this cold towel. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Well, I gave it to you, and you were like, oh, thanks. And then I had it for you.
Twisted? No, it was after Twisted. I think at Kaiyuga, and you're like, this thing is awesome! And now you love it. You get it wet, and it's just an ice-cold towel. It holds the cold a little bit longer. It's a Mission Endura Towel. There's technology that keeps it cold. When you're burning up at a race, and it's 1,000 degrees, an ice-cold towel on your forehead is awesome. It's not ice. At one of the aid stations, I was running with Kristen. We were somewhere in the 60s.
And I get to an aid station, and it's just midday. It's blazing hot. And one of the aid station volunteers was like, do you want me to put some ice, like, on your back, like, to cool you off? And I was like, yeah, I'm dying. Like, I mean, I was taking my shirt off every, you know, six to eight miles and wringing it out because it was just completely drenched in sweat, and it was just, it was bad. I was like, yeah, that sounds refreshing. She poured, I swear, it was, like, dry ice. I don't know what it was, but it was so cold that it, like, made me, it, like, made my heart skippy, and, like, I, like, jerked away because it was so incredibly cold. And I was just like...
oh my god like yeah like it was not refreshing at all it was actually like stressful but like the towel is just cold not freezing not painfully cold but it's just like cool and refreshing and it's like it's awesome so yeah i think having that thing handy is yeah it's really great everyone is very different looking from the outside in other people crewing and people coming in like everyone wants their specific food at their specific time some people want ice down their back and other people don't and it's everyone is super specific so you can never assume that's another thing that i was doing at the aid stations burning river is i was putting ice in my pockets of my shorts and just letting like the ice sit against my hips and i would just melt and run down my legs and But then you changed your shorts at one point, and you tried to put it in a different pair of shorts, and you're like, this is horrible, I hate this. Yeah, because the pockets were in different spots, so the water was just dripping all over my shoes and making my feet wet. And I was like, get this ice out of here, this is killing me. But up until that point, it was the absolute best thing ever. Every aid station I'd go into, fill my pack with ice, top it off with water, and then fill these pockets with ice. And I'd go out, and my back would be cool with my pack on, and then I had pockets full of ice, and it was amazing. I'm a genius. Yeah, and I switched shorts, and there's just regular slant pockets on the side, and yeah, there's just water dripping all over my shoes. And I'm like, alright, this is not going to work. So no more ice for the...
better half of the second part of the race. And we had brought, um, freezy pops. So we had the block, we had a block of dry ice. So we had fresh freezy pops throughout the day, which I thought was, um, We were the only ones with the fresh Freezy Pops. Lots of people had Freezy Pops that were juice. Yeah. Because you can't keep them cold. It's hard to. Yeah. So we were rotating those in and out, and there was one point where she's like, you got more of the Freezy Pops? So I took them out, and I gave her four or five of them. She goes, oh, no, not these colors. Give me a different set. So she was all the way down to the color of the Freezy Pop that you were going to eat. So she was vigilant. Yeah, the Freezy Pops are good. It's just sugar and cold, and it's not just like chewing on ice.
I don't think I ate a ton of them during the race, but I know when I had them, I was like, oh, man. Yeah, it's just definitely hit the spot. Sometimes you don't want to hold them and you want to be like, ah, you know, but they're a good way to get cold. On a hot day, they are definitely incredible. I remember getting them at the Trails Rock aid station at Cayuga.
And it was like the best thing ever. I saw someone with one. I'm like, ooh, are there freeze pops here? And someone just yelled, get down to a freeze pop. And I just stood there and two seconds later I had a freeze pop in my hand. That was by far the best aid station ever. Trails Rock knows how to run an aid station. Yeah, Buttermilk Falls. Yeah, it was amazing. And I walked up the stairs out of Buttermilk. I think I had a freeze pop in one hand and a wrap in the other. And I was just eating all this good stuff and it was amazing. And the thing I love about it is it's placed at the end of the run. So you're running 12 and a half miles to Buttermilk.
And you're like, oh, I'll just run back to the start. And then when you're at the start, you're like, hey, it's only 12 and a half miles to buttermilk. So it's a nice beacon at the end of the race. Okay, so we bounced up to 50 pretty easily. You want to spend time between 50 and 99? The first 50 went pretty well. I mean, I didn't really hit a low point until somewhere in the 40s.
Mike insisted I was going to feel terrible at 50k, and I somehow just ignored him and breezed right through it. There were a couple monotonous parts, and I kind of did some run walking, but most of the first half of the race went without incident. I did get stung by a bee at mile 20. That was kind of annoying. I was walking out of an aid station, the one where I almost missed Margaret. I was eating a wrap, walking around this little pond before the trail picked up, and all of a sudden my leg felt like it was on fire. So I started frantically swatting at nothing because the thing just dive-bombed and bounced. But yeah, it hurt incredibly.
and i was swatting away and was just cursing to myself and i was like what the yeah you know luckily i'm not allergic so it was kind of uncomfortable for maybe the next mile or so and then i just kind of forgot about it i can't even imagine if you're if you're allergic and you got to carry the epipen in your pack and so it was uh that was kind of annoying but it was just kind of this random thing um And I want to say, I don't know if it was that aid station. There was one aid station where you had said you were trying to put bug spray on me. And I was like, no, I don't need it. I haven't seen a bug, like, all day. And then, like, I get stung by a bee. I was like, uh. Well, hey, that whole thing about listening to your crew, right? Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, the first half of the race went pretty much without incident. I had a low point in the 40s. And I was walking up a hill. And a female runner came up behind me. And I just moved out of the way to let her go by. And she looks at me and goes, is your name Dan? And I was like, yes, it is. I'm like, I know you. You're Katie. It was Katie DeRusso who had been behind me the first 40 miles and then was moving up.
she was coasting like and and you know people were making comments about she's going really easy she could totally crush this race and she is just coasting why is she coasting i'm like well because she can crush this race you're supposed to yeah because she's smart yeah so um so that was kind of cool to bump into somebody that i didn't even know she was running the race like i didn't really look at the registration list so i didn't really know who was going to be there what was happening um and the funny thing is at an aid station prior to that i had seen nate huckle who was there to pace her but i didn't know that so i just saw huckle and he just happened i didn't bother asking why he was there or what was going on i just was like oh hey and we chatted for a minute and then that was it we were at that one because you came in and you're like hey huckle's here yeah exactly um but i didn't really know until i saw katie and we kind of chatted but i was at a low point then and was completely alone and then she came up and we started chit-chatting and then i just said to myself i'm just gonna do whatever she does and just try to keep the conversation going and just see what happens and we ran it was probably like two and a half three miles um but it got me to the aid station at 46 um which would have been a grind without it and yeah we just chatted and ran and like if she walked i walked if she ran i ran and it really kind of got me
Not only did it keep me moving where I probably otherwise would have been walking, but the conversation made me really think how excited I was to pick up a pacer in five short miles. You know, like, I knew they were there, but, like, talking to someone that I kind of knew and, like, interacting with someone more than just, like, oh, hey, like, how's your race going? You know, like, it was, you know, we ran some of Twisted together, and, you know, so we kind of had a, not a lot of history, but, I mean, we had run together before, so there was, like, something there, and it was, you know, she really helped keep me positive. And then when I came into 50, I was, like, in good spirit. So the first half went pretty well, and then, you know, the second half, The second half was a little bit slower. Yeah, the second half was a lot slower. So 18 hours. Yeah. At one point, I think I was 33 miles in, and I looked at my watch, and a lap time was six hours. And I was like, okay, I'm a third of the way through this race, and I'm comfortably running.
six hours. I was like, obviously I'm not going to run this in 18 hours. Like I know that I'm not that caliber of runner or even remotely close. And that's like the winning time. So I'm like, all right, I know that this is unsustainable, but I feel good. I'm healthy. I'm in good spirits. Nothing, you know, knock on wood has gone wrong. So I started doing some math, which is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes a bad thing. It's all you got to do out there. But I started thinking, I was like, all right, 33 miles. It's roughly a 50 K. I was like, I've run six hours. So if I can run back to back nine hour, like 33 mile stretches, I'm like nine hours for 33 miles. I'm like, that's an incredible amount of time.
I'm thinking like, if I do that, like I'll break 24. It's like, all right. Like that's like breaking it down into like manageable chunks. Not like I have to run 66 miles in this time. It's like, okay, I just did this. I just got to do it again. Except I got way more time to do it. So I started thinking in my head, like, all right, let's, all right. It kind of made me happy and kind of gave me something to shoot for and focus on. Was that the first time that you thought of the sub 24 hour goal? Yeah. I mean, before the race, you know, people always ask what are you shooting for? What do you want to do? And like, you know, I always kind of said something along the lines of like a perfect day would be 24, 25 hours.
Well, like everything would have to go perfectly and everything would have to be like in line and be perfect. But you have to have the right level of cool in the towel. You have to have the right number of grapes in your hand. Yeah. And just like food cooperate, stomach, body, weather, everything just has to work out perfectly. And, you know, I knew that that was a possibility, but I wasn't like going to be disappointed if it didn't happen. So, you know, the goal was always like, I want to finish. Like I tried one of these before I didn't finish. So my goal was like, I want to finish, but obviously the sooner the better. You know, at that point I thought, wow, that's like, I feel like that's really achievable. Like I know it's still early and a lot can happen. I was like, but nine hours, like I feel like I could hike most of that and like still be.
close in the ballpark and so I kind of thought that and was thinking that it was definitely a possibility and then I don't know like I think the terrain got harder the miles started to wear on me the sun went down and like I think all of those things combined kind of just took a lot more out of me than I was anticipating not that I thought a hundred mile race was going to be easy, but like the second half of the race was much harder than I thought it was going to be given how easy the first half felt. Yeah. And I didn't think like, I didn't, I don't think I did anything wrong in the first half of the race. I don't think I executed anything poorly. I don't think I paced. I mean, I might go out a little bit more conservative, but like, I don't think what slowed me down in the second half had to do with what I did in the first half. Like, it wasn't like, Oh my God, I went after these downhills. Now my quads are exploded. Like, you know, there was a point where I was running with Weldon and we were in some terrible section with like technical downhills. And it was kind of like, you know, when you're,
going downhill and you start walking and then momentum takes over and you're like i gotta put the brakes on or i'm just gonna run and like so a brisk walk turned into a run and we just started running this descent and we get to the bottom and he's just like good descent. He's like, how are your quad, like your quads must be fine. Cause did that hurt? And I'm like, no, it didn't hurt at all. He's like, okay, so physically you're in good shape. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just overall fatigued. Yeah. And so, you know, so I didn't blow my quads out. I didn't like knees were fine. Ankles were fine. I wasn't cramping. My stomach was good. There was no major ailment that was like keeping me from running, but like I was just beat. So the, the place where I have a question and we didn't get a chance to talk about this was when you were with Mike Ryan from, you were going to be with him from, I think 62 to 75, something like that to 76. Yes. Yeah. Or no, it was, um,
66 to 76. But you were originally going to be with him. So you took three extra miles with him at some point, right? No, Chris was 50 to 66. Mike was 66 to 76. And then Mike Weldon was 76 to the finish. Yeah, but Mike was having problems with his Achilles, so he didn't know if he would be able to run the hole. He wasn't sure if he was going to... He wanted to make sure there was an option for me for a pacer if he felt bad after six miles. He had been battling an Achilles that was kind of acting up on him. He's like, five, six miles, I know I'm A-OK. Ten, I'm not sure. So he wanted to make sure that Weldon was at 72 just in case he needed to hop in early. And I think that time around there is...
Where at least to me, it seemed like you were having a lot longer stretch in between eight stations than was expected. Yeah. Mike and I, our first section, Mike and I started running pretty well. We were moving pretty good. And then I think the terrain got a little tougher and we had some hills to deal with. And I did a fair amount of walking. But it was the 72 to 76. It was Pine Hollow 1 to Pine Hollow 2. Yeah. Where we had like a 3.8 mile stretch. Right. And it took you like almost two hours. And it took forever. Yeah. And it was all, it was pretty much pitch black at this point.
That's when it got dark. And I'm 72 miles into the race, so even though everything is working fine, I'm still just beat. It's dark. And this was, I don't know what the terrain specifically looked like. I guess it would be on here. But it was hilly and technical.
And really dark. And I was really tired. And so there was just not a lot of stuff that I felt super comfortable running. Just like a full combination of like, let's take it. Yeah. And it just seemingly never ended. It was less than four miles. And yeah, it took like two hours. Yeah. It seemed like that was a long stretch. And when you came in, you weren't quite the same person. Yeah. I remember spending a lot of time at that aid station the second time around. I think I did a full wardrobe change.
In front of the big flashing strobe light. I'm like, Dan, how could you look at that light? You're like, huh, what? I'm like, you're sitting in front of a strobe light. Juice, socks, short shirt, hat, like everything fresh. Another interesting tidbit about that aid station is we walked from where you guys were stationed over to the timing mat to kind of get moving, Mike Weldon and I. And I get to the timing mat, I look down, I'm not wearing my bib. They were on the old shorts and I never took it off and put them on the fresh shorts. So I was just like, oh my God. Mike's like, what? I'm like, I'm not wearing a bib. He's like, ah.
So we had to like, yeah, so we had to like, you know, that slowed us down a minute or two to go find the dirty clothes and get the bag off and get a bib on. That could have been catastrophic had I got, you know, two, three miles down the trail and been like, oh my gosh. So glad I noticed. But yeah, so that was just that four mile loop plus that aid station, like change plus forgetting the bib was like just a big, like two and a half hour fiasco that I was like, oh my God. You know, at that point I was kind of thinking like, all right, I got a new pacer. Like he's been here before. He knows how I feel. He's been on this course. So let's just, you know, try to get moving. And, you know, but at that point I was definitely thinking like how, like I have 30 miles to go. Like I feel terrible.
Where's it going to come from? I'm borderline not having fun anymore. And how am I going to do this? You were just borderline not having fun? Yeah, because there were stretches with Mike where we ran some really fun sections and definitely my spirits were fine, but it was just kind of like, oh my God, this is never going to end. It's on a relative scale, Margaret. That was the lowest point for me, was that aid station. That was horrible.
So the hard part about crewing is that you see someone for a couple minutes, and then you don't see them again for at least an hour to several hours. So you have no idea what happened, how they're doing, because you can't pick up enough information in those couple minutes to know what's going on during the time on the trail. Dan is a perpetual optimist when he's running. He can complain about stuff, but he still sees the bright side. In every other trail race I've ever been at, he's still able to make a joke or to give me a hard time. And that aid station, there was none of that. He was a different Dan.
All I could think about was how was he going to get through 30 miles because you were chafing and you had a sweat rash, which I thought, I didn't know if that hurt you or not, but it looked horrible all down your leg. It looked worse than it was. Yeah. Later I found out. Again, I have very limited information. Well, no, you're correct. When he came that...
that second time he was definitely a change that's why i asked the question about this eight because to me that was where we were like what it's four miles right we're like he's doing 30 you've never run that it's like he's doing 30 minute miles yeah he's got to be sitting like you know it's easy to look back now i think like four miles like even if you're having a bad day like 20 minute miles like so maybe an hour 20 90 minutes if it's like absolutely you're walking the whole thing and it took me way longer than that and it was just like I don't know. It's like the hills, because of nighttime, because of the fatigue, because of all the miles and technicality, walking up a relatively small hill, but all that stuff piled on top of it, you're just plodding along up the hill, and it's like, oh my god. And then you get to the top, and it's right back down, and it's technical, and I'm like, I don't want to run this, because if I don't pick my feet up, I'm going to catch a root, and I'm just going to get pitched, and it's going to be terrible. So I was trying to be careful, and even something as simple as a stream crossing becomes trickier when you're doing it by headlamp versus when you can see the entire forest in front of you. So yeah, it kind of like...
Yeah, that was a tough section. That was a really tough section. I remember being not psyched, and Mike was awesome, and we definitely got through it, and we had the conversation going the whole time. Pacers, I never have been able to finish this race without Pacers. I was talking to a ton of people during the front half of the race, and I asked them, you know, you got Pacers lined up? And they're like, no, I'm here alone. And I was just like, ugh, that just sounds really hard and annoying. I mean, I guess if you're a vet and it's just what you do, that's fine, but I was like, I cannot wait to get my Pacers. And Mike and Kristen and Weldon, I wouldn't have been able to do it without them. Being alone...
in that physical place like in the woods just being in the woods at night and all technical and I feel terrible and everything hurts and like being there alone like even if I was sitting there next to Weldon and neither of us were saying anything I wasn't sitting there alone like there was somebody there who's kind of been in this place before and is like alright let's get moving you know like it really I never been able to I mean maybe who knows what would happen but well I think you also picked I, there may have been just as good of pacers, but I thought you had the perfect pacers at the perfect time. Like Kristen was the perfect pacer to have at 50 because she was, she was chatty and she knew you and she's run with you before. She was all excited too. She's like, this is going to be my longest run. I'm so excited. She was nervous too. And she did great. Yeah, she did awesome. Well, except for, except for that one mile that we were running together. At some point we, we literally like, I don't even know where it was. I could probably find it on the map somewhere, but we were running and I had something on the bottom of my foot was like rubbing and it wasn't feeling good. And I think.
there was no stream that i had to walk through this entire course everything was dry bone dry so all the moisture in my feet was all sweat and the moisture goes away and salt remains and the salt was kind of grinding into the bottom of my toes and so we stopped she had aquaphor on her so we stopped i don't even think i was able to get my sock off i had nothing to sit on so i was on the ground and like trying to get my sock off my legs started seizing so she had to take my sock off and put my um put aquaphor on my toes and help my sock back on and so that was a whole fiasco we wasted like you know four or five minutes doing that but we got up i started running and we're cruising along and i looked on my watch and it says something like like current pace is like 740 or something like that. And I was like, what kind of pace do you have on your watch? She looks at her watch. She's like, oh, like 830. I was like, all right, that's probably right. I must have just lost satellite or something weird. I don't know. We're cruising along. It's this, it's a perfectly flat, perfectly straight crushed stone trail with like rock fixture, like rock formations on one side and trees on the other covered. And we're just cruising along, chatting away. And my watch beeps and it's like 740. We're, I picked her up at 50. So we're somewhere between 50 and 66. I don't know exactly where. And I was like, what the? And she's like, what? I just show her my watch. She looks over. She's like, oh, whoops. And I was like, yeah, whoops, pace her. I'm like.
Why are we running under eight minute pace right now? She's like, I don't know. We're just running and talking. And I was like, I know, but she's like, I probably should be more diligent about how fast we're running. I'm like, no, I guess this eight minute mile, the 740 helps offset, you know, the 30 minute mile we just had a little while ago. But I don't know. It was like, I think she said, I can't remember, but I think she told me that she realized it before you did. And then she got like really scared, but she didn't want to say anything because she didn't want to like.
upset it or ruin it like yeah so somewhere in the 60s we ticked off like a 740 mile so you had more in it than you thought yeah and so i was like all right well whatever it's in the bank now there's nothing to do about it but yeah i was like maybe we shouldn't run that fast anymore she's like well but it was like like i said it was up i just rested for like five minutes getting my toes taken care of then it was crushed stone it was flat straight there was cool stuff to look at and it was totally shaded so it was like the perfect formula for running a fast mile well it's faster faster than one of your miles in your first 5k Yeah, faster than all of them. After you've crossed over your longest distance of 100K. Yeah, exactly. Nice. It was just funny. Dano, digging deep. Digging deep, yeah. Making my move at mile 65 or whatever. But yeah, it was...
And you said that the first leg of your run with, like, Ryan, you guys had a lot of fun. Yeah. There was all these, like, huge rock formations that we got to run through. Awesome trails. I also found 20 bucks on the trail, which was really awesome. I was walking. We were going through a section. There were stones, but there were steps, like, up to this part of the trail. And I was trying not to run up super high things just because I didn't want to trip or I didn't want to, like, you know.
cause a cramp or something. So I was like walking up and I looked down and I see a $5 bill folded in quarters. I'm like, Ooh, $5 bill. I pick it up. This is thicker than a $5 bill. And like, I unfold it and start peeling away. There's four or $5 bills. Like it must've been somebody who's like emergency stash or something that was in like a water bottle or whatever. And it just popped out and I was like, looked around and like, there's not a soul in sight. And I was like, all right, she made 20 bucks. Nice. So I threw it in my running shorts and no, I got it out eventually. But yeah, so I found 20 bucks and we were both feeling good and we were running well and the trails were awesome. And yeah, it was, it was good. It was like a,
I definitely like resurgence. It's easy to talk about the low points, but there's definitely high points, too, where you're moving pretty well. We had a lot of fun there. We happened upon a hiker. He was out there with a big day pack on and hiking poles. He was near a bench. This was the second half of the race. I was very excited about logs to sit on. Benches and logs. We're talking about making a coffee table book of great...
places to sit because i go by laws and i would like judge them based upon their sit on ability and like i would look at them like that one's too low or that one's too rough or it's rotted it's gonna break through or so i had picked out some really good ones and like it was really hard to resist at this point an actual bench where i could put the back that i could just sit for a minute and like kind of regather my thoughts and so We had stopped at this bench and there was this hiker there and he asked us, he could see we're racing and he asks us what we're doing and we tell him about the race and the distance and where we're at in the race and he just kind of looks at you like when a dog doesn't know what you're doing and it kind of tilts his head and he's like, wait, 100 miles and you're what? You're where? Like 70 miles? Like what? You know, trying to figure out logically why somebody would do it.
So we chatted with him for a few minutes, which was cool. So yeah, there was a lot of fun stuff that happened. Well, you know, Hobbs said he couldn't resist the bench during Laurel Highlands. Oh, man. It was insane. I'm sure my pacers were like, let's just keep moving. What are you doing? You're not hurt, so why are you sitting down? But it's amazing how sure you can be of how much you want to sit. I did a lot less running. I'm 100% positive. Yeah, I did a lot less running in the second half of the race than I think I could have. But I think in the end, it just would have been more suffering. It's hard to...
At the time, I was like, we're not running. I'm not running anymore. I don't want to. You know, coming out of that aid station at 92, when I told you I didn't want to do the podcast the next day, I basically five seconds later said to Mike Weldon, if we walk this in 17, 18 minute miles, like am I making the cutoff? And he was just like, dude, you could take a nap for an hour and then we could walk it in and you'll get your finish. And I was like, all right, I don't think I want to run anymore. And at this point, it's the sun's almost up and it's a crushed stone path that's like running on the canal. Like it's probably besides the first 12 miles on the road, it's the most runnable part of the course. And I wasn't injured.
and i had some in the tank and i probably could have run walked like you know run a half mile walk a half mile or whatever and probably shaved an easy 30 to 45 minutes off but like at that point i was just like okay let's walk no that's like um four o'clock in the morning at that point right something like that yeah it was during it was after 92 but before 96 yeah it was somewhere where the sun actually the sun actually came up it must have came up at 90 the sun was up at 92 No, 92 was the guy with the megaphone. It was when we were all sitting right when they crossed over the line into the 8th station. It was between 92 and 86. We got to see the second sunrise and it was such an easily runnable... If I had Kristen with me at that point, we probably would have ripped sub-8s all the way in and I would have finished two hours sooner.
You're saying Weldon's a softie, is that what you're saying? No, not at all. But there would be times where, this is a perfect illustration of where I was physically, where I could have run, but mentally I just didn't want to. We'd be walking, and Mike was completely content walking. He was content with whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to sit on a log, we'd sit on a log. If I wanted to sit on a bench, I'd sit on a bench. If I wanted to run, I'd run. If I wanted to walk, I'd walk. He didn't try to force anything on me, which was nice. But I think if he had been...
I think if he had run more, I probably would have run more. Example, there were times where he'd be walking and he's like, I've never been so tired in my entire life. I might just fall over. He's like, I'm going to run for a minute or two just to get my body moving and then I'll just run back and then I'll keep walking with you. And he would start running and I would, in my head, say to myself, oh, I'm not going to just make him run away and then run back to me. That's silly. So he'd start shuffling and I would start shuffling next to him. Next thing you know, we take off a half mile and I'm like, all right, I'm good. And we stop. And then like 15 minutes later, he'd be like, I'm nodding off. I got to go. And he'd start going and I'd go. And if I had mentally not been so...
beaten down i could have just said hey just keep doing this randomly for the rest of the race and you go i'll go right he kept saying he would he would fall asleep and then he'd be like i need to run to wake up yeah and but every time he did that i'd run right alongside him and we would take off maybe a third or a half mile and so we had a couple although we were primarily walking on these like crushed stone trails that were you know very runnable you know instead of taking away a 1730 walking mile we'd have like a 1350 or a 1410 and it's like so i could have run i just mentally i was just like i don't care like at this point i just want to finish and i want to try to save myself pain and discomfort and that's kind of the way so i walked in almost most of the last 10 miles other than a few random stretches to wake ourselves up um was walking and you know at the time i was completely content with that so margaret how does that sound to you falling asleep walking i was it was when we were walking out of botsam at 92 we were maybe a half mile to a half mile to a mile out of the aid station and we look over and there's a guy wearing running gear with a pack on and a bib just laying on one of the benches just sleeping
I wonder if you took that hour nap. I wonder if you would have had like an hour nap. You would have woke up refreshed and made that hour back. No, because as the race wore on, the longer I sat, the harder it was to get moving again. So it was like, all I want to do is sit. But then when you're done sitting and you got to get moving again, you're like, oh, why did I stop? And so you got to get yourself going again. So I don't think it would have been beneficial to do that. But we literally saw a guy who was just like, I'm passing on this bench. I have never been that tired. There was a guy who went to sleep in the gully at Twisted Branch after the muddy sneaker finish, like around mile 18. He's like, I went walking. He's like,
I think I'm going to take a nap. And he walks over to the side of the road, right down, half a mile down the road from the muddy sneaker finish and just lays in the gully and goes to sleep. Okay. And I was like, all right, dude. See what you got to do, I guess. I mean, whatever works for you. Well, we're kind of up against the clock here already. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I don't know. It's like really weird. I mean, to think I could have run more, but it's like in the big picture, do I say, okay, like is 28 much different than 28, 46? Like, is it worth?
I mean, just because I could have run doesn't mean I would have enjoyed it. I just mean I was physically capable of shuffling along at a 13-minute mile. Yeah, it was just like getting to breakfast sooner. Yeah, and I'm sure more running, and I think that's part of the reason why I recovered so quickly. When you run a 10-hour 50 and then you follow it up with an 18-hour 50 for the second half of your race, I feel like I recovered from the first half of the race during the second half of the race. Because I did so much walking and didn't really beat myself into the ground with running, I feel like I was able to bounce back quicker because of that. And it's like...
Does it really matter that if I could have shaved a half hour by shuffling along that last 10 miles? Like, oh, I ran 28.15 instead of 28.46. Yeah, you got all the lactic acid out of your muscles in that second half. In the grand scheme, it was like, I came here to get a finish. I got it. I survived. I lived to tell the tale. I didn't get hurt. So it was a success. So obviously you had the, why am I doing this moment? Did you have the deep, dark epiphany of the soul? Like, I'm doing this for no good reason type thing? I asked Mike somewhere in the 70s, what kind of effect did finishing this race have on you last year?
you know, and he said something along the lines of, you know, for me, obviously this is going to be different for everybody. He's like, but for me, it was like, I battled through my feet getting destroyed and all these things that went wrong and I just kind of grounded out and I got the finish and dah, dah, dah, dah. And he's like, and it's, he's like, it's hard to go back to like running short regular races because like, now you know you're capable of this, you know, like. how can you go back to a dirt cheap when you know you can go do something like this you know like it kind of like bumped everything up to the next level and i was thinking like that makes perfect sense like you know why would i do these like short little things when i know i can go out here and have this like you know grand epic adventure in the woods for an entire day so i was like okay that you know that makes sense and we kind of talked a little bit back and forth about that kind of stuff and you know even now like i guess we're three weeks out three yeah three weeks out from the finish like I can honestly say at this point, looking back, I don't feel any different. There was no epiphany. There was no life-changing moment. I read race reports. I watch the interviews and all this stuff, and people talk about how training forward and running races changes their life, and you discover all these things about yourself, and on and on and on. That's awesome. Everybody has their own individual experience, but I am completely happy I did it. I'm proud of myself for succeeding where I had previously failed and everything, but I don't feel any different, and I don't feel like, okay, I just changed it. This is a game changer. I changed how I'm going to be running moving forward.
I feel exactly the same as I did before. Maybe I need more time for it to soak in or something. I don't know. Maybe your change happened back on Hope Pass. Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, it already feels like an eternity away. It feels like ages ago that I did the race. I'm already figuring out. I guess maybe a part of it, if you collect anything, it's like the thrill of the hunt. I've been looking for this forever, and now I found it. And then it just goes in the closet with the rest of your stuff, and then you're on looking for the next one. I kind of feel like maybe that's how I treat. I think I might like the process more than...
the race itself because like three weeks out i don't like i said no turning point no magic epiphany moment and i'm already kind of thinking like all right no what do i want to do next like burning rivers in the rearview mirror i got the buckle i got the stories is next is next 100 miler or is it next in terms of like no adventure or so he said to me at mile 70 at 96 he goes i don't want to do this again and i said can you guarantee that and i think even at that point i was like i gave her some weird evasive answer because i just i know how we all are with this stuff i did not have a lot of i did not have a lot of fun at in the bulk of the second half of the race the first half i had so much fun Had some low points, but overall it was fun. Second half was a lot of grinding, a lot of walking, a lot of hiking, a lot of like, oh my God, how am I going to finish this? How am I going to get through this? Where is this energy going to come from? Is it ever going to end? All these thoughts. And then I finish and it's easy to say, I don't want to do this anymore. But I've already, in the short amount of time it's been since I finished, I went out to dinner with Margaret and my mother the other day and I said to them, guys, I've been having bad thoughts lately. And they're like, wait, what? What's the matter? And I was like...
I think I can run a hundred miles faster than 2846. And they're just like, Oh my God, what is wrong with you? I'm like, I'm not saying I want to do it like in the fall or, you know, April or whatever next spring, but it's easy to look back on a race and think like, what could I have done differently to do better? You know? And like, I feel like I can run a hundred miles faster than 2846. But what you said at 96 and even after was that this isn't fun. I don't, yeah. Running is supposed to be fun. Yeah. So I kind of think I want to, I want to do different, I want to run races I've never run. I want to do different stuff.
you know, I mean, it's so, it's so soon. I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but I've been thinking like, I used to complain about like, why, you know, why do race directors make the course as hard as absolutely possible? Like the whole point of running is to run. Like, I don't want to necessarily like run it, go on, race a course where I can't even run because it's so hard, you know? And now that I've run a hundred miles, I think, wait, maybe I do want that change. Like maybe I do want to like do a marathon, but have it take me seven or eight hours because the course is so hard because it's like a whole completely different kind of challenge, you know, like.
I know Mort and our buddy Tim Kent went out a couple years ago and did the Call of the Wilds trail marathon. It's in Pennsylvania. It's the same guys that do all the Piner and Rothrock and Eastern States and all that. End of the world. Yeah, and it's a rugged, tough summer.
East Coast Rocky Marathon. Like, you know, my buddy Tim ran it. I want to say he ran seven and a half hours, which sounds, you know, based on like Sega Hunda and Ontario Summit times, it sounds like a long day. He got like top 20. You know, like that was a good, that was like a strong showing for that race. And even the winners are running five plus hours. So I think maybe something like that would be...
like kind of what I want to do next, like, because I've already done like this real long distance stuff. So maybe I do want to do some shorter, tougher stuff. Well, you have the fitness part, right? And you have all those other muscles you've been building, you know, and I keep hearing all these guys talking about all these races in the Catskills. Like, you know, maybe I want to do something like that where I know it's a lot less runnable, but like, it's a whole different world of like terrain and different kind of racing, different kind of running. And it's like a lot of scrambling, a lot of climbing, that kind of stuff. Like, you know, any stuff that I've done like that has been in short doses, but I've really enjoyed it. So like, maybe I want to do something like that. So, you know, and then I think, well, I like running fast, running fast is fun. Maybe I want to run like a,
you know, a 125 half marathon on the road. Like maybe I want to run a sub five minute mile or a sub 18 5k, like running fast is fun too. You know? So it's like, I kind of want to do some of that. I want to qualify for Boston and I want to run Boston someday. Like they kind of check it off the list. So I have all these things kind of swirling around in my head and I don't really know what I want to do next, but you know, it's nice to have options. So right now you're really enjoying just running trails that are fun.
Like you have already said, like, I had so much fun running today. Yeah, I ran a random trail. Well, like, if you look at the Victor hiking trails map, there's tons of trails sprinkled. It's not just the Seneca trail and, like, the stuff that offshoots it. Like, there's a lot of other stuff that's kind of, like, a little bit more off the beaten path. But there's a lot of stuff out there. And I'm like, I wonder what this stuff is like. So the other day I ran at the Mary Frances Bluebird Haven. And across the street from that, it's called the Monkey Run Trails.
Oh, somebody... It's right where Valentown Road ends. I don't know what it's called at that point, but it's like Victor Road. It pretty much goes between Fairport and Victor. And I drove out there and I ran, and there's like a one-mile loop around the Bluebird Haven, which was really... Like County Road 9, right? Maybe, yeah, I think so. Something like that. There's a one-mile loop around the Bluebird Haven, which was super fun. Rolling hills, woods, single track, pines, like all kinds of fun stuff. Then you cross the street into the Monkey Run Trails, and it's footbridges and streams and rolling hills and climbing and fun descents and...
some fun stuff back there. I got like four miles in and I had a blast. I'm like, it was new trails. It was fun. There you go. It was awesome. Like, and there's nothing on the horizon that I need to prepare for. I can just, if I want to run three, four miles, I can just go do it. Well, chances are while you're running those, that's when it's going to come to you. You know, you're going to go out, you'll be running, you'll have fun and you'll go, you know, I've always wanted to X. Yeah. And that's when you'll decide it. That's when you're out there having fun. Not when you're sitting there reflecting on your greatest running achievements. That's not going to help you set your next goal. And that's the thing. Like I said earlier, I have so many things swirling around in my head about what I want to do next. And like, I can't do all of it next, but like, there's
do i want to do a tough drum marathon or do i want to run a five minute mile on a track like those couldn't be any more opposite but yeah they're both intriguing and they both sound like fun prospects so Or you can go hit a half pipe for a little while. Yeah, I do have to get out and skateboards a little bit. I'm always afraid to skateboard while I'm training for an A race because if I'm dorking around and tweaking ankle and can't run, I would be super bummed about that. So now you've got the whole fall to skate now. That's true. So we are probably deep into this podcast, but I'd be remiss if I missed my opportunity to talk about Dano, the skater, from back in the day. So skating was a big thing for you back in the day, right? Skating, for what running is now, is what skating was then. I started when I was probably...
11 or 12 um i literally bought a how to skateboard book from a fair at my grade school which i which i still have awesome somewhere and there's actually hopefully it made the move into this apartment some i think it's in my mom's basement but i definitely still have it um it's got a stamp from the day that i bought it so i can actually know the exact date that you started that i was like skateboarding seems cool i want to try this um so that book is at home somewhere but yeah i started and i was like 11 or 12 and yeah i just kind of fell in love with it and like that's the time when i stopped playing like traditional organized sports like I stopped playing baseball. I stopped playing basketball. Like, cause I played, I grew up playing baseball and basketball. Like I played basketball in high school, freshman year, all through sixth, seventh and eighth grade. And I was playing baseball, summer league baseball all that time. And as soon as I started skating, all that stuff kind of fell by the wayside and skateboarding kind of took over full time.
Yeah, it was awesome. And you got pretty good at it, right? Yeah, it was pretty good. Like you had a little bit of a rep, right? Yeah, there was a skate shop called Crudco that's still around. They put a shop team together, and I was like, I think it might have been the second or third guy that Aaron Costa, the owner, asked to ride for them, which was really cool at the time. So he'd help me out with clothes and discounts on shoes and boards and stuff like that. In turn, I would help promote the shop, and we'd do demos, and we would do skate camps, and we'd do instruction, and we'd volunteer, and we'd go all over the place and do all kinds of stuff. It was fun. I still love skating.
A ton. Like, I watch videos all the time. I buy the new videos that come out. Yes, he does. I, like, read gossip and articles, and I want to know who's riding for what team and switching to this, that, and the other thing, and who's sponsoring who. Like, I still love that whole world. I almost think you read and watch videos more about skating than you do running. Oh, I probably do. Like, I watch skate videos probably more than I, like, read I run far. Like, just because it's, like, and I can't help but, you know, when I'm driving around or running around the city or doing anything, like, I'm still looking for skate spots. Like, even though I know I'm not going to skate them, like, I find, I've actually found skate spots running. Like, there are photos that Mike Lesher took of me last summer.
um, skating a ledge and he's shooting it from up on a bridge and that's literally on route 31 on the canal. And like the only way I ever would have found those ledges was running on the canal. And like, I found them and I was like, I got to shoot photos here sometime. It would be really cool. Mike and I went back and shot them and they came out awesome. They did. They're pretty sweet. Yeah. So I love skating and yeah, it's, uh, I just don't do it as, you know, when, when running came along, it like kind of like the passion that I once had for skating that had kind of been waning, like.
running filled that void that like skating kind of left behind um and so i still love it but you know running is kind of like where the passion is now and i never thought anything would come along to replace skating but running kind of has taken the front seat and you know i'm not naive enough to know that like something could come along and take running's place at some point i don't think it will but i never thought skating would take a back seat so you know who knows what'll happen down the road but yeah skateboarding is is amazing and i think it helps me run too it's like you have to be when you're cruising through like a downtown like area city you have to watch out for cracks in the road you look out for manhole covers you look out for tar you have to look out for cops who want to arrest you because it's illegal and then you have to look out for traffic you gotta look at pedestrians you gotta look out for people on bikes and you have to balance figure out where your friends are and you're also rolling on a skateboard and you're trying to do tricks and you're trying to like get to a certain area so like there's a lot going on all at once and i find that that situational awareness like totally helps me trail running like because i'm just i i know where my body's at i know like where my footfalls are going to go. Like it's easy to spot lines. It's easy to pick out like routes and stuff. Like, you know, I think a lot of that obviously balance comes from skating. So like just knowing what I'm capable of also taking falls. Like I'll go jump down eight stairs for two hours, trying the same trick over and over again and just land like a pile on the ground and then get up and do it again and get up and do it again and again and again and again. So if I catch a route and I go down, like.
I've fallen on concrete a million times over the past 20 years, 25 years. So if I catch a root and go down on the trails, I'm probably not going to get too beat up. No, I've seen the old tuck the shoulder, roll it back up and keep going. It doesn't seem like falling is a skill, but it totally is. Some people just go down like a sack of potatoes and you're like, oh my God.
So I used to skate once upon a time. Yeah, like from 12 to 17, I used to skate. So I had a good five years. Nice. But it was right before, like, it was probably around the same time. We were the same age. So it was like early 90s, you know, into the mid 90s. I used to rock Steve Caballero board. Yes. He still skates. Yep, he still does. He's in his 50s. He still killed it. Still young as ever. Yeah. And so we would string together. We made our half pipes with the plywood and the 55-gallon drums, the terrible, terrible half pipes. We strung together a pipe.
you know, with the, um, and you had to, you could do some rail slides, but there was always a gap in the pipe. So the key was, could you make it over the gap? Yeah. And a little part where the pipe joined and stuff like that. Somewhere out there, there is a VHS that we, we did record. Oh my gosh. There's a skate video somewhere. Well, that's the thing that was cool. Like critical made skateboard videos. And like the first one that they did, um,
is like they did they didn't really have names they kind of had colors so there was black there was orange there was blue like the first one was black and um i have a full part in that um i use a beastie boys instrumental song for the music and um there's a lot of like of my like tricks in there and it's cool to have something like that to look back upon um that's as easy as popping in a dvd and not having to like you know dig through and because that stuff's i don't know like i that's what's really cool like i mentioned earlier that mike lasher and i went out and shot photos last summer like For as much skating as I did, not a lot of photos are out there. It's right on the edge of when digital was starting. Yeah, exactly. There was the occasional RIT students that skated that would shoot photos, and then all of the photos would disappear into the RIT student vortex. They'd move back home, and everything would go, and I'd never get copies of anything or slides of anything, nothing. Anything that was out there, very little of it survived, or it's just buried in some vault somewhere.
Um, it was kind of cool to be able to go out with him and get some photos and be like, Oh sweet. Like, yeah. So whenever I would take like a couple months off of skating and then finally like hop back on the board, the first thing I always tried to do was a kickflip. That was like the first, you know, some people hop on and they're like, Oh, I can not leave this. I would always, that would be the thing that I love. It's just a simple run of the mill kickflip. Do you have one of those? Like when you hop back on the board, what's the first trick you rip off? Actually, I think switch kickflips are easier. Like it took me forever to learn regular kickflips when I was a little kid. And like, not that there's a right or wrong way to do them, but like.
I think I learned switch kickflips the right way. And so like, I don't have to think about them. Right. I think the rest you hack together. Yeah. Like I could, I mean, there are some flip tricks that like, I don't think I'll ever not be able to do. Like, I think I'll be able to switch flip. Like we were in my garage not too long ago and I was like, babe, what do you think? Switch kickflip first try. I'm in like a pair of vans that are just like chill shoes and I haven't stepped on a board in months and months and months. And like, I just stepped on it and like landed like three or four switch kickflips in a row. Like they're just, they're there. I mean like when Mike and I went skating to shoot photos, like I hadn't skated in months and I was like, yeah, I have some tricks I want to do. Like got a couple spots lined up and.
You knock the rust out, and the tricks are still there. Switch flips, nollie flips are probably the easiest. 360 flips, I'll never not be able to do those. Were you more into technical tricks, or were you more into big air tricks? I like doing ledge stuff, and I really like doing manual tricks, like wheelies. It's just a lot of precision.
I had shoulder issues when I was younger. Like I dislocated my shoulder a bunch of times and I got to the point where the bigger, the stuff I tried to do, like the bigger the flights of stairs or the bigger the gaps or whatever, I'd have to throw my arms up for balance and I would like actually pop out and dislocate. And so like that kind of forced me to do a lot of low impact stuff like manuals and ledges because like the, like I wouldn't have to flail as much because it's more controlled movements. And then like once I got my shoulder fixed, I never like went back to like some of the bigger stuff. So now I just like skating ledges, doing manuals and just rolling around and having fun. Like I don't really, you know, I don't take it super serious, but.
I do like, although Mike did get a GoPro for his family for Christmas, and we've been talking crap about getting together and trying to shoot some actual video. We did photos last summer, so we're thinking about if we can get a little clip of some footage of tricks, it'd be kind of cool to edit together. Nice little ground-level fisheye action. Yeah, exactly. It's a little tiny camera, but it has all the attachments and all the bells and whistles you can shoot in. I think his shoots in 4K. It's ridiculous. We were thinking about trying to throw something together. It'd be kind of cool, but we'll see what happens. But yeah, skating is, I love it, man. It's the best. So the most important thing about skating is that was one of the...
first things that I was attracted to about. Oh, yeah? Oh. So who knows? If you had never skated, maybe we wouldn't even be together. Yeah, that's true. She can only tolerate 100 milers because you can do switch kickflips on the first track. Switch kickflips wired, though. Yeah, she likes when I, yeah, she likes, like, all my big old puffy skate shoes and, like, big baggy cargo pants and all this stuff that, like, I hate wearing now because it's not my style, but she's like, oh, you should wear blah, blah, blah.
I don't even own cargo pants. I never will own cargo pants. Dano's going to go into the training tank. He's going to come out in the spring with a fade. Dye my hair again. Cargo pants. Oversized tees. The whole nine. Growing up in the 90s never loses. You were skating in the 90s. We dressed terrible. But that's what she identifies with. She loves it. Nice work. Well, you can certainly count me as a member of the Dano Fanos.
I couldn't think of anything catchy fan club rhyming scheme for Margaret, but I'm also a fan of her too. Maybe Parisians? Parisians? Wait, is that taken? Well, I'll check later. I've put a link to Dano's Strava profile in the show notes. You should check it out and see some of the cool runs that he strings together through the city's parks. Or go check out one of I.M. Lesher's photos of him busting out a switchflip. It's really not terrible.
You know who else isn't terrible? Josh Stratton, LMT. That's who else is not terrible. What do you think about that? So Josh is a licensed massage therapist who knows treatments that active athletes need. His office is located inside SportsPT in Winton Place. Use the code MEATBALL when booking during September for 15 bucks off a 60-minute massage. Stratton is a runner and a frequent cross trainer, unlike yours truly. Well, I'm a runner. Isn't that enough? So...
Josh knows where the aches are. He works all these muscles. He knows what it's like to be sore. So he can find them quickly, and he knows the right treatments to help keep you going. He's also very receptive to feedback and can customize your session however you'd like. Like the one time I went in there for a shoulder, a wrist, and an ankle massage. He didn't look at me funny. Nope. He just did a regular massage session, but then he spent a little extra time focused on those things that I asked about. So head out to his Facebook page at facebook.com slash Josh Stratton LMT, or, you know, just find that link in the show notes to learn more and to book an appointment.
Tell him you heard about here on the podcast and use this month's secret code, meatball, and he'll give you 15 bucks off a 60-minute massage. Yep. What is normally 65 bucks for an hour will be 50 bucks. Thanks to Josh for continuing to support the show. Speaking of continuing to support the show...
Man, this episode has just got awesome segues. Speaking of continuing to support the show, this month marks one year since I took the leap and began asking for contributions through Patreon. And it's been one year since Matt Bertrand took the leap and was the first Patreon supporter. I still remember that first contribution in the email. In addition to the financial support, Matt's vote of confidence in the podcast sent me soaring. I was like, on cloud nine. I think that's what people say, they're cloud nine. It was sort of one of those, like, this is the right way to do it moments. So thank you to all this month's Patreon supporters.
Your continued financial support helps me keep improving this podcast, and it also continues to be that vote of confidence. So if you look forward to this podcast each week and it inspires, educates, or entertains you regularly, consider becoming a Patreon supporter. Check out the homepage and click the Patreon banner. Please know that any amount of support is appreciated. Thank you. And if you want to chat about this episode with other listeners, or just simply share your favorite skate tricks, or your...
immature, you know, I was a teenager stories, then join our Running Inside Out Slack, where we talk about all manner of things, from recent episodes to our latest and greatest run. An interesting topic this past week was suggestions for someone's first trail race, and it had candidates such as Fleet Feet's Dirt Cheap, Trails Rock's Ready, Set, Glow, GVH's Mud Slog, and Rock Orienteering's Menden Trail Run, all of which are happening in the next six weeks. Isn't it great to have choices like that? Man, I love Rochester. If that sounds like your kind of chat and Strava, well, if Slack sounds like your kind of place, then either check out the Strava group, find a link in there, or find a link on the sidebar of the website that will get you a Slack invite and come join us. You can also drop a line on the Facebook page, shout at me on Twitter at runinsideout, or email me at chris at runninginsideoutpodcast.com. But start at the website where you can find all of these links.
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