Category: Podcast

Speaker notes:

It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.

This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain. The irony is that there are no references showing Mark Twain saying these words. And yet the uninformed continue to credit him with this proverb.

Mark Twain did write an essay called “What is Man?”

He talks about how people tend to discover “truth” and then never question it again.

They “know” they’re right and anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot (racist, bigot, homophobe).

Star Trek: the Motion Picture

V’ger returns looking for its creator.

Doesn’t believe humans were capable.

Crew of Enterprise finds confirmation code & sends it.

V’ger burns out the data connection.

Doesn’t want to see the proof.

Same thing happened to Galileo in 1632.

Published idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

Catholic – Earth is the center of everything.

Other astronomers who disagreed wouldn’t even look in the telescope.

Galileo branded a heretic & sentenced to house arrest.

You might think we’re different. Scientists now look at evidence and discover new truths about our world.

Max Planck wrote this about how science works: Scientific progress doesn’t come from scientists being convinced by the evidence. The old scientists die out and the younger ones are more familiar with the new theories and adopt them.

You and I do the same thing!

There’s a psychological principle called “confirmation bias”. 

We accept ideas that agree with what we believe to be true.

We question ideas that disagree with what we believe to be true.

The danger: you end up a prisoner in your own mind.

You have a sense of security.

But you can’t grow. You are stuck.

You’ll be that old man or woman who tells the same stories over and over.

How do you get unstuck?

1. Find your anchor truth. 

This is your stake in the ground . . . the thing you believe in your core.

Not unquestioned belief or blind faith.

But you’ve examined this truth and resolved your questions.

My anchor truth is this: God created all there is in this universe. All power that is used by human or spiritual beings originates within God.

2. Ask questions. 

About what you think you know.

About what you know for sure.

About what you’ve been told.

3. Question the “experts” – status and education.

Remember that experts can be wrong (often they are).

Look at other experts who disagree w/ yours.

4. Consider opinions that challenge your truth.

People who think differently may not be idiots (racist, bigot, homophobe).

They have reasons they believe what they do.

Even the Flat Earth Society has reasons for what they believe. 

Ultramarthon mindset: durable, flexible, adaptable.

Every race is different. There is no formula for success.

Success comes from mind and body working together.

If you get locked into “this is how it has to work”, you’ll fail.

Ultramarathon mindset for business success: durable, flexible, and adaptable.

That’s what I help my clients do.

Getting things done in short bursts

 Dallas played soccer and basketball as his usual sports in high school and never ran long distance races. When he decided to run track for a couple of years, his longest race was the 800. H says he had sprinter’s legs and sprinter’s body type so he never ran long distances, although he tried several times. 

Ten years ago he signed up for a 10K race. On race day the temperature was 27 degrees, and he didn’t have the right gear. He hadn’t trained properly for a trail race. He only trained on paved running trails. He came in about 30 seconds before the time cap, and he was the second to last person. He realized that his mindset is not that of an ultramarathon runner. Even when life is a marathon, he chooses to run it in short sprints and then take the necessary rest. So it’s not that he doesn’t like to run, it’s just that his mindset for running is a different style. 

He does crossfit and says he would rather run 400 meters or 800 meters and then do pull ups or burpees or something with a barbell or box jumps and then run some more and repeat than do a long distance run.

His 10K trail race was the result of his practice of setting 90-day challenge goals for himself. He makes sure the goals he sets are true challenges, often things he’s never done before. Sometimes it can be a race, sometimes a crossfit competition. The lesson he learned from his 10K trail race is that it’s good to research the course so you can prepare for the conditions.

Dallas says he’s never experienced the runner’s high. He heard about the legend and the reports made him eager to experience it. But, as many runners discover, a runner’s high is often elusive and many never experience it.

Nine years ago Dallas was diagnosed with depression and severe anxiety disorder. His therapist told him something that he found amazing and that he shares with a lot of people, he said: ”Congratulations, you have a tremendous imagination. The problem is that your imagination is geared to the wrong outcomes.” He still works to keep his imagination headed in the right direction.

Dallas says that the key to success is managing your energy and managing your mindset. He talks about lactic threshold training. When your body reaches the point of lactic acidosis, lactic acid builds up in your muscle fibers and literally floods the muscles. And an intriguing thing that can happen is that you can train your lactic threshold so that it can push beyond that.

He remembers learning that interval running is a good way to burn calories, especially if you’re training to get your heart rate up. So he keeps going to a local gym a couple of days a week to do interval cardio training and it’s like warming up for a couple of minutes and increasing the speed every minute to strive for a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Dallas’ approach to life is to break hard things down into a series of smaller steps. He tells the story of John F. Kennedy when he said that at the end of the decade he was going to put a man on the moon. And for that they had to start preparing with small steps. Each Apollo mission had a particular mission to achieve the dream at the end of the decade. So he does a work backwards mentality, and it’s something he does with his coaching clients as well. They set a goal or a place they want to be in the future and they plan small objectives to achieve their goal. He asks himself, what do I have to do each quarter physically, spiritually, professionally to get there?

Dallas believes that an important lesson to consider is that we are competing only with ourselves and we are trying to be better than we used to be before. When he is having a bad moment or bad thoughts he focuses on creating a new mental space. He asks himself where he can go in his memory and find a place where he can just stay focused on the imagination. He doesn’t let all the negative things that are in his own brain overwhelm him.

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What does independence mean to you?

Fourth of July – Independence Day

“We’re not going to take it any more.”

Remember when you were a teenager – looking forward to independence . . . being free to make your own choices.

At some point you realize that independence = responsibility.

You’re free. And you can succeed or fail. And it’s all on you.

Today you’ll see posts and memes about freedom and independence. And it’s good to celebrate. Freedom is better than living under socialism or communism.

Fire up the grill, crack open a beer, watch the fireworks.

And take a minute to think about what freedom means to you.

For me, it was the freedom to look at my life and decide I wanted something different, something more.

And I saw that I’m responsible for what I get in life.

I wasn’t happy with the way my life was going, so I made different choices and went a different direction.

I broke free from my limiting beliefs. I changed my mindset. And now I’m doing more than I ever imagined possible.

That is what I appreciate about freedom. My success and my happiness is up to me.

My assignment is to help as many people as I can live free as well. If life isn’t working out the way you’d hoped, you can change.

Mindset and vision to go the distance

Chase lives in Hays, Kansas, has lived there for about 20 years, worked at UPS for 14 years and went to college at Fort Hays State and graduated there with a degree in health and human performance. 5 years ago he and his wife decided to go back to school for nutrition, and she got her master’s degree at Hayes and psychology. Then they both finished getting their master’s degree in nutrition. So he quit working at UPS and they started the ultra-endruance-athlete supplement company Ultraverse.

He was always interested in nutrition, and when he was in college he never thought he would be smart enough to pass biochemistry and all that goes into getting a master’s degree in nutrition. But Ultrarunning was what opened his mind to learn that we are much more capable than we think we are. When he did his first 50 mile, he was going for mile 40 and he was in an extreme amount of discomfort and he thought he could pass biochemistry because there is no amount of studying that is going to suck as much as this. So he put it all together and then within a couple of months he said to himself that he wanted to find the best online nutrition school he could and he was going to enroll.

In high school Chase refused to run more than 200 meters ,but he was always a decent athlete in school. He liked soccer and weight lifting and just ran to stay in shape but never more than a mile. He decided on doing the Colorado 14ers (the mountains over 14K feet) because he enjoyed hiking. But after only doing one he got wiped out and thought he really liked doing that so to step it up he would first have to work on his cardio and getting in shape. A couple of weeks later he ran 2 miles and then just trying to increase his mileage it became an obsession with how far he was capable of going. At the time he had no idea ultrarunning existed so at that point he thought he was going to try to run a marathon. His previous max distance was 5K. 

He then did a 10K and then a marathon program of his own in about 6 or 7 months, successfully finishing the the Colorado Marathon. He discovered ultramarathons when he saw someone wearing a shirt from a 100 mile trail race. He was impressed because his marathon left him hardly able to walk for several days. 

He did some research and found out what it was all about, and then the next thing he did was sign up for the  World’t Toughest Mudder with the goal of doing 50 miles in the obstacle race.  Then little by little he decided that 100 miles would be an incredible goal for his life so he went through the 50K and then the 100 mile program which lasted 6 months each. It took him 3 years to get to the place he could run 100 miles. He thought it would be a life goal, but he realized what hard work could accomplish and how quickly you can achieve something that seemed unbelievable before.

After a few years of racing, Chase and his wife, Casey, decided to become race directors.. When he first got into trail running it was at Wilson Lake, in central Kansas, and he says it’s very different than most of the trails in Kansas and it has incredible views. He tries to get in at least a couple of times a month to run there and he would always talk to his wife since they are also big campers they thought why not have a trail race right there. It’s such an awesome place it could be one of the best showcase races because of how beautiful the land is. So they were always talking about it and finally they said that they knew enough about the sport and they like to organize events so they could work together on something like that and it seemed like a really fun thing to do so they did it. Their goal was to organize a good race and they liked it so much that they decided they wanted to do more races because it was an incredible experience.

The race they host is called Hell Creek which is a 20 mile and 100 mile race, and this year they also incorporated the 140 mile race called Pure Hell 140 mile. They also do a last-man-standing race called Eternal Damnation. And this year they created a new race called the Cowboy 200. It will be a point-to-point race on a rail trail in Nebraska. 

Chase says that in the last man standing race a lot of people get carried away with the amount of rest they’re going to get between laps, and that he prefers to take it easy and have only 5 or 6 minutes of rest in the laps, just enough time for his crew to help him refill the water bottles. He says that the slow pace is better than an extended rest because the impact on your legs is going to build up. In this race it’s a little different because on every lap everyone has a chance to drop out. It’s not like a 100 mile race where I have to do 100 miles, otherwise you don’t reach your goal and you fail. In the last man standing there can only be one winner.

Chase tells us that he always tells people who want to do 200 miles that they can do it if they’ve already done 100, that it won’t be any harder on your body because you’re moving at a much slower pace. It’s a lot of hiking energy, and there’s not as much impact. You’re better off moving at a slower pace, and it’s more of a mental game than a big physical effort. Lack of sleep is a major issue that must be dealt with. Chase in the Moab 240 finished in 96 hours and slept 6 hours so it was about 6 hours of sleep in 4 days. He started having auditory hallucinations. He heard people whispering to him and he knew he was alone there and that’s how he knew he had to sleep.

He just finished an attempt at the Cocodona 250, and it is an extreme race. The terrain is much more difficult than the Moab, in his opinion. It has a lot more elevation and one section was just rocks on rocks, and he was really beat up after that section. The heat of the day and not having slept made him start having hallucinations and he felt terrible. He says that led him to make some terrible decisions. He decided he needed sleep, but he only had a few sips of water before he went to bed so he hadn’t rehydrated his body all day. After that he started again and he was only good for about a mile and he started to get confused again because of dehydration. He got sick to his stomach, and he was just walking from tree to tree. He was lying under a tree, and he says what he should have done is turn around and go back to his team to sleep and rehydrate. But his 96-hour goal was still on his mind and he wanted to keep going but he couldn’t, and he laid down under a tree. He called his crew and they were able to find him. The trail he was on wasn’t far from the road. They realized he probably had internal bleeding from severe dehydration. So they went to the emergency room and he was diagnosed with heat stroke and severe dehydration.

When he was in school to get his masters in nutrition, originally his wife and he had talked about opening an online nutrition consulting business focused on athletes but he also wanted to primarily transition on an individual basis. So that was the plan until almost the last Semester of his school and he started looking into the different supplements and things that he was taking as he wanted to learn about them and he found that most of the supplements out there are very mis-dosed for the most part. They really don’t conform to what the scientific literature says so he started putting together his own formulas and he told his wife that he should try that because it will be fun and it could potentially lead to something where they could live their dream and have a business they could do from anywhere..

When you go to a race you base your diet on a liquid diet with water and electrolytes. But he knows that there are people who travel and depend on seasonal food and his advice is to imagine what food you are going to find at the aid stations so that you can integrate it into your training diet before the race.

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Speaker notes

The worst movie my wife and I ever saw was Seven Six-Gunners.

Rented VCR. My wife likes westerns. The summary sounded interesting.

Bad acting (bartender – hippie off the streets reading lines from cue cards). Plot was lost in the sagebrush. Camera work and sets looked like a class project from 1st year film student. End was like almost sneezing.

Ten minutes in, we commented on how bad it was. We watched the entire 90 minutes.

Why?

Sunk costs

Sunk costs is the feeling that you need to keep going because you’ve already invested time and/or money and made a decision.

Here’s another way it shows up:

We went to a Mexican restaurant. I ordered a burrito. Picture made it look small – ordered a side of refried beans.

Burrito was huge.

I ate all of it and half the beans – because I’d paid for it.

Another example:

You’re in a job that you used to love. But now you’re just going through the motions. You get an offer for a job that will give you the chance to develop new skills. But you’ve spent the last 12 years working your way up. Career plateau – but sunk costs will keep you stuck.

Sunk costs – will keep you stuck in bad relationships, bad job, house, neighborhood you really should move away from.

In business or investments – throw good money after bad.

You think that if you keep going and keep trying that you’ll recoup your investment.

Gamblers have the same motivation. Keep playing and I’ll get it all back.

How do you keep from getting sucked into the sunk-cost vortex?

Coach’s question: “How’s that working out for you?”

Is what I’m doing getting me the results I want?

1. Step back and imagine what you’d say to someone in exact same position.
2. Look at cost of opportunities you’ll miss.
3. Reconcile sunk costs as lost.

Let the past be past. Let it go and decide what kind of future you want for yourself.

If life isn’t working out the way you want, change your mindset and make it work for you.

The Spartan Death Race requires a strong mindset and body.

Cliff Moitt’s Spartan journey started with a TV show in the 80s called ”The Battle of the Network Stars,” and the stars were going through these obstacles. When he saw that he realized that the body is meant to do something different, something epic. At the time he was running 5 and 10K races. When the movie “300” came out, he was impressed by the Spartan culture and toughness. One day he was checking Facebook and a friend asked him if he had seen the Spartan race so he clicked and he couldn’t believe it. He says it was like a steroid version of the “Battle of the Network Stars.” So he signed up and entered the race. He noticed at the top was something called the Death Race and he thought he could do it so he did a search and realized it was something special. You couldn’t just sign up.

This was in 2014 and he was doing ruck events, carrying a heavy backpack in competition with other runners. He had some injuries in his ankles that sidelined him for a few years. But the Spartan Death Race was on his bucket list. Then the race was postponed a few years in 2020. Now, he is turning 50 and he is entered and will run it the week this episode is released.

First he had to ask his wife’s permission because she is a fundamental part of his team. She asked him why he wanted to do it but she supported him even though she was worried because the name of the race had the word ”death” in it. When he started training he realized that his age was starting to show, it was hard to move as well as before, he had to take more breaks, he had to stretch and do yoga and many other things so he decided he had to play smart and understand what his body needs versus what his body wants.

Cliff says that running is a sport that could be done alone because they do it alone, although you can train in a team and have a team when you go out to race you do it alone and sometimes it’s hard to invite people into your world. He loves running because he is responsible for everything he does and there is no one to blame so it is always a learning experience for him.

He tells us that the Spartan race is interesting because it has levels. He likes the idea of adventure racing, but the challenge with these races is that they are very expensive. He says that what Spratan wanted with this one is to create an event similar to adventure racing that could get someone off the couch and get them moving. He says it’s not about who comes in first or second or third or fourth or fifth, it’s about finishing. 

The levels of Spartan events are the Sprint which is 3 to 5 miles. the Super which is 8 to 10 miles, the Beast which can be 13 to 15 miles and it depends on the course because it’s different all over the world. Then you have the Utra which is over 26 so it can be 26 to 20 miles. Then you have the Hurricane Series which is based on hours so you have a 4 hour or a 12 hour or a 24 hour and then the Death Race which is completely different.

This race is going to put you in an awkward position so you’re only left with the option of learning about yourself. Cliff says that’s what it comes down to In the Death Race you can get the email the day before that tells you the time it starts and when you get there. They only give you a range of starting times in advance. The first challenge is a puzzle. If you can’t solve the puzzle, you are finished before you even start. 

One year there was a challeng where they had a 700 pound tire that had to walk 26 miles through the woods. Another year where they had to go through the mountains barefoot. Another year where they had to cut wood for hours. And there was a portable toilet they had to carry through the woods for miles. The challenges vary every year.

The race lasts about 72 hours so you need 3 days of food with you. He always carries a sleeping bag, extra clothes, his 3 days of food, life jacket in case they do something in the water and this year they told him to bring a power tool. With this instruction they told him to choose wisely.

Cliff’s physical training plan is immense. He has been a fitness trainer for almost 30 years so he writes a program based on what people can’t think of. He confessed that he doesn’t lift weights because that doesn’t mimic what he is going to do in the Spartan races. The first thing for him is running. And for him burpees are the best exercise because it combines various movements and exercises, He does push-ups and focuses on understanding why he does what he does and what his body needs to do to perform on that particular run. so his training consists of running a lot, walking a lot with a heavy backpack, and a lot of calisthenics. Sometimes he wakes up at night to train and tries to get uncomfortable himself so his body remembers that he has been there before.

For the mental part Cliff says that there are things that a person must first understand about themselves in order to understand how to run their race. In the beginning he would run with music or listen to a podcast or something and just go down the road and have fun but now he doesn’t do that. Now he listens to his feet, or he goes along counting with the alphabet and numbers like ”A1, B2, C3, D4” and if he makes a mistake he starts over.

Bridge Questions:

Cliff’s running essentials are shoes and a water bladder.

The strangest thing he has seen when running is a kind of bear and when it got closer it looked like a giant turtle and it was some kind of strange animal that he still doesn’t know what it was.

His phrase or philosophy of life: Inner peace.

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Speaker notes

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

Life coaches & motivational speakers often ask this hypothetical question.

The idea is to get you to look at your life and discover those epic dreams you have for yourself that you’re afraid to go after.

You’ve probably heard this question before. 

Have you thought about an answer yet? What challenge would you take on if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Intro:

Star Trek 7: Generations 1994

Captain Kirk stuck in alternate dimension.

Scene: Riding a horse and jumps over a gully.

Captain Picard (also stuck in alternate dimension)

Kirk: “I’ve jumped over that gully 50 times. Scared the hell out of me every time . . . except this one.”

Conclusion: None of this is real.

The question: What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail.

Think about this question for a minute.

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

I want you to notice something here. I asked you to think about the question. I didn’t ask you to come up with an answer to the question.

The way our minds work – answer the question.

Questions bypass critical thinking.

Hook for salespeople: “Quick question . . .”

You feel compelled to give an answer.

So when a coach or motivational speaker asks: What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail? –you don’t step back and ask, “Is this even a valid question?”

If you question the question you’ll realize that the risk of failure has to be there if you want to feel the joy of success.

And the bigger the risk of failure, the better you’ll feel about your success.

Imagine how you would feel if you got the results of the “could not fail” scenario. 

A few people will be satisfied. (Runners cutting the course or riding in cars.)

The appeal of ultramarathons is the fact they are hard. They require the best you’ve got and have a high risk of failure.

So I want you to forget about the “no failure question.”

Here is a question that will get you started:

What would you be willing to attempt that would require you to dig deeper inside yourself than ever before and offers some amount of risk that you could fail anyway?

Barkley Marathons – started in 1986

100 mile trail race – designed to be almost impossible.

Only 15 people have finished.

Hundreds apply every year to run.

Lazarus Lake: Something in us that craves an almost impossible challenge.

So how will you answer this question?

What would you be willing to attempt that would require you to dig deeper inside yourself than ever before and offers some amount of risk that you could fail anyway?

I talk about living an epic life.

This is what I’m talking about.

You have more strength inside yourself than you ever imagined.

You can do more than you ever thought possible.

But you will never reach that potential if you’re answering the question, “What is possible if I know I can’t fail.”

What will you attempt that will demand your absolute best.

May not be running or endurance sports. Maybe it’s being the kind of dad or mom you never had. Maybe it’s starting your own business. Maybe doing volunteer work. Running for office.

I believe you’ll know what it is when you consider the question: 

What epic thing is inside you that is worth the risk of failure?

The mindset for fueling for Ironman

Dana Eshelman was living in Colorado when we recorded her previous episode. Dana is a nutrition coach working with endurance athletes. She was looking to complete a full Ironman when we last spoke. She decided to enter the St. George Ironman in Utah. She knew it would be hot when the race was held so she decided to move to Arizona to train and be a little closer to family.

Even though the climate was warmer, she still did some of her training sessions on a stationary bike. In her workouts, she focuses on quality over quantity. Her coach wanted to make sure she was hitting certain zones at certain times, basically to simulate a longer session. The stationary bike also had the advantage of a power meter to help Dana get the best from her workout. She is also very conscious of time and where she spends her training and what is going to serve her mentally and physically. 

Dana says the treadmill is a great tool if you want to improve your pace and your legs have to understand what it feels like to move for a given distance. But there is a difference in resistance between running on a treadmill and running on the road.

She mentioned that training for a long endurance event is like having a part-time job. It takes time for the training, but also the attention to plan for how to fit it into work and the rest of life. She said it felt like her second job was eating. She was often hungry and had to make sure she was maintaining her nutrition.

She had some mental challenges in her training as well. She got an injury and it persisted through her training. She worried that she wouldn’t be able to finish the race because she wasn’t able to run for more than two hours without pain. She sought the help of a chiropractor and physical therapist. She was able to recover. And she learned that she had to understand and trust the process for healing and recovery.

Dana says that for anyone who doesn’t get paid to do sports it’s a challenge to recover because all recreational or group athletes have a job outside of their training. It makes recovery a challenge. What she does to help her recovery is to make bed time non-negotiable.  And then another big part of her recovery is the integration of stretching and yoga.

She talks a lot about how we tend to be a carb-phobic society. She says that actually carbs are important in high performance training blocks. So when she increased her training she realized that her body needed carbs and she needed to find a balance with her protein and eating food with lots of color. Her training sessions usually start at 4am so she would wake up earlier to make sure she had something before heading out the door, toast with peanut butter, or she also needed small energy bites, which are like peanut butter and honey. And she always added protein powder as she is an athlete who struggles with her appetite after workouts.

She had a long history of disordered eating so she doesn’t count her calories and is quite economical with the amounts of calories she is eating but over the years she has gotten in tune with her body and understood what is called intuitive eating and what her body is asking for at any given moment.

Dana usually eats 6 to 8 times a day and she plans her nutrition by the month.  She makes adjustments when she does special workouts because if it is hot you naturally lose more sodium and use a little more carbohydrates. When cycling she can’t eat solid food. She usually eats honey sandwiches on the bike, usually with some salt every hour and also has liquid nutrition.

There is no one-size-fits-all nutrition plan, she says. You have to use some trial and error on training runs to find what works best for you. It’s important to find out what kind of food your body tolerates and uses efficiently. She says it’s good to have a backup plan in case you find that your original plan isn’t working that day.

The strangest thing she has seen in a race is having to pee on the bikes, which is something in the triathlon world and is a skill you have to master.

And her phrase or life philosophy is to run the race you’re in and focus on being present in the moment.

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