Mastering Mountains: Bigfoot 200 Recap with Ultra Runner & Wildsense Co-Owner Jason Hanley

Announcer: 0:00

Discover wrong. Inspiring stories from runners who've been right where you are. This is the Choose to endure. URunning Podcast With your host. He's English, not Australian. Richard Gleave.

Richard: 0:20

Alright, welcome back to the Choose to Endure podcast, the show dedicated to you, the back of the pack runners, who are redefining possible one epic mile at a time. In this episode, we are chatting with the utterly fantastic Mr. Jason Hanley. Jason is not only co-owner, with his wife, Kathleen, of the very excellent Wildsense All-Natural Ultra Running Body Products, which are specifically made for endurance athletes like you and I, but he also happens to be a veteran of multiple 50k ultra finishes, a couple of 100 mile finishes, including Brazos Bend 100, and, very impressively, the Habanero 100 in 2019, which is a notoriously difficult race to complete due to the extreme weather, and he's probably crude or paced more than he's raced. But he's here with us on the show right now to chat about his most recent and arguably biggest conquest to date the Bigfoot 200-miler up in Washington State this past August, one of the three Triple Crown 200 races. So, jason, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing, sir?

Jason: 1:32

Thank you, I'm doing good. I kind of recovered all the way. By now, feeling good again, I can get back to training.

Richard: 1:38

Fantastic, yeah. So maybe to get us kicked off, maybe you can talk a little bit about the Bigfoot itself, Like what is the race, what is Bigfoot all about and why did that race kind of speak to you?

Jason: 1:52

So Bigfoot is one of the destination trails 200s. Those races are meant to be very difficult 200s. There's a lot of elevation involved in those. That one really spoke to me because it was so remote. That was the big draw to it. It was supposed to be the most remote 200-miler in the nation or ultra of that kind of caliber in the nation. It's pretty out there it was. I mean, we didn't have signal the majority of the time after basically day one your signal for any phones for your crew or yourself, it all just disappears. The roads out there are notoriously really really rough and rugged. That's just on the crew end. That's not as far as where we're at. We're so far back there you have no way out but forward, essentially, if anything happens. But that's really kind of what drew to me is I wanted to do something that I saw as the most difficult thing I could put myself into, to just see what it was like.

Richard: 2:54

Yeah, and I think that one isn't that in the blast zone of Mount St Helen, so I'm sure there was some pretty different, interesting and unique scenery as you were going around there.

Jason: 3:05

Day one is in the blast zone, more or less day one. It's surprised. For all the places I've been in Washington, this was the most exposed that I had ever been in. It reminded me with all the ash from the volcanic ash that was still there At parts of it, I felt like I was at Habanero. It was really hot that day and I'm walking through this sand again. And then there was a section of it that they what did they call it? It was just, essentially just the boulder field. That's what it was. But the boulder field where I've seen that in other places. Typically you think of rocks that are maybe twice the size of your head, or boulders that could be a thousand pounds. These were as big as you or I but are tall but round and you couldn't even use your trekking poles. You had to kind of go by hand, but you almost needed your trekking poles when you were stepping from one to one so you didn't fall in the gaps in between. And that went on for I don't remember how long, maybe miles. It was crazy.

Richard: 4:14

So yeah, so scouting your ultra sign up prior to talking with you here, it looked like you've done a bunch of races gone up through 2019. And then it looked like it was almost a year between your last race prior to Bigfoot and actually doing Bigfoot yourself. Had you been running at all in between pacing, or had you been doing anything in between, or did you go straight in?

Jason: 4:41

So in part of that, well, kind of in the last year, coming up to it, I actually either swept crude and paced or at least crude in some capacity at all the other big 200s, including all the destination trails and Coca-dona, except for Bigfoot. I had not seen Bigfoot until we got there. So I was very active, kind of, within that scene. I was really focused on learning everything I could and I've never if you kind of look back, I've never been one in part a lot to work schedules but never been one to run just a ton of races. I would really select when and what I wanted to do. So yeah, for like that last year, there really wasn't anything I put on the calendar. I'd thought about it, but I'd worked through an injury, I was trying to launch a company and the thing that just made the most sense was to just really dial in the training and be focused on making sure everything stayed right.

Richard: 5:37

Yeah. So let's talk about the training a minute, because I think you mentioned there's a lot of vert in this. There really is I think it was it 40,000 feet of vert, maybe more. It's supposed to, I think like 42 or. There's a lot of climbing in this one. There's a lot of ups and downs and obviously I think you're here in the Houston area, much like myself, so we're flat as a pancake around here for anyone who doesn't know our local terrain. So, just yeah, we talk about your training. How did you approach training for a race like that when we live in a very flat place, and were there any other challenges you had from a training perspective leading up to the race?

Jason: 6:15

That was one I knew that was going to be really important for me and I've always. I like elevation change in everything that I do. I always typically try to seek out races that they're going to have some kind of change in it. Even in the Texas region, where we don't get a whole lot, of course you mentioned the exception of Brazos did that One time I ran a flat race so I really kind of focused on that. And I live off of one of the bayous down in the heart of the city and there's some trails that they've built on that that actually have rolling hills and where most people try to only run a little bit of them. I mean, every day I would run, I would hit that at least the trails that were Memorial Park, while they're not tall, they do have a lot of shifts and elevation and grade really. And then I had one spot like my special spot that I kind of found between a levee and one of the bayou levees that actually had a really good grade on it and I would go out there in the middle of the summer you know it was practically 100 degrees and just barrel back and forth on that thing for an hour at a time, do fully packed runs on it, really trying to make sure that my ankles and shins and everything were really getting training. They needed to be strong in that situation, not just the climbing alone and of itself, and it paid off. It worked out really well.

Richard: 7:41

Yeah, I mean this. So I think Bigfoot is it. It's in August, isn't it? So you're training. Not only are you training for, for avert and massive boulders that we clearly don't have here, but you're also training through the heat of a Southeast Texas summers, and that's pretty wild. Did that help you from a mental perspective? So I know you know 200s. I've always thought 200 is is just as much a mental challenge, I think, because it is, if not more, than a physical challenge. Did that help you kind of develop any mental strategies to tackle this race? And, if so, kind of what was your thinking there? What sort of strategies did you come up with?

Jason: 8:18

So we've my wife and I, have tried to go up during the summers a lot and get in the mountains. We just love being there and running there and hiking and everything. So part of it, you know, that did build some strength, knowing that if I could handle the heat then it should be. You know, I should be good in other weather and typically the cold if you're on top of a mountain in the middle of the night is not the same kind of cold we're actually having here right now. That dry cold usually fills a lot better anyway. So I knew I would be strong from the weather perspective of it and I did. I mean I spent days with full packs on and I'm looking at the weather knowing by the time my long runs over it's going to be pushing 100. But I'm going out, you know, with a full pack and I knew that that was really. That really gave me some confidence that I would be okay in those situations. And, as it occurred, they were kind of having a. They had a lot of heat there at the time, so it was 100 degrees one of the days when we got up to one of the peaks. So it kind of paid off.

Richard: 9:17

Yeah, yeah. So let's get into your actual race experience, because I'm fascinated by 200s in general. I've done a couple, but I think everyone is different and if you ran the same one three times, you'd have three different, completely different experiences. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm, I'm just I'm fascinated to kind of learn your experience from Bigfoot. Just knowing that it's out there, it's a pretty wild environment, it really is cut off. So I imagine you, you kind of feel that when you're, when you're going through the yeah, walk us through your experience on the race, when you know you're standing on the start line, you've done all of this training, what's going through your head as you, you know you hear the anthem and you're getting ready to go.

Jason: 9:58

I was unbelievably calm. I had I would kind of step back to my preparation for it right. So, having been at all the other races throughout the that year and previous year, kind of just in order, I really spent a lot of time kind of, I guess, just naturally like studying what was going on and what worked and what didn't work. Because a large, I feel like the further distance you go, it's about what you know and smart as well as being in shape, whereas you know a shorter distance race, you can be in really good shape and just push through it and still get it done and do well. The bigger distance stuff you have to be really smart about. And when I got to the start line I had done everything, I had felt the right way. So I was really really calm Like I've never been that calm at a race, really casual, just felt like I was going out for a run with people or whatever. And then we took off and it didn't take me long to just find my comfortable groove and just kind of roll with it. Start of the race is on a kind of Jeep road Right Going up the mountain, so you had space to it wasn't one of those where you got out there and you're like, oh crud, I'm in the wrong spot in the conga line and I'm going to have to power through here really hard or get out of the way, or I'm too far behind. Yeah, it seemed to be pretty easy for everyone to find that comfortable groove.

Richard: 11:26

Did you have a strategy going in? I'm going to run, walk I need to get here by this time or you just kind of going by, feel, and it's going to be what it is?

Jason: 11:36

I've really learned to kind of just get comfortable. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, yeah, do whatever you can at the time and do it as well as you can. I'm pretty strong on the climbs and just making a strong climb out of that and see where that kind of left me after there. So I put in the work on the climb and just started trying to get in that groove and I mean I fell right in it perfectly fine Again. I think being really comfortable and calm helped with that. I had a good plan of when I was going to rest and everything as well, so I didn't have anything to be nervous about and it was just get out there and enjoy every bit of being in nature that you know I could.

Richard: 12:19

Yeah. So you know, I've seen it done both ways, right where people have a plan for I'm gonna sleep at these particular places and then the other way is, I'm just gonna go. When I feel like I need to stop and crash, I'm gonna crash. So did you have a sleep plan going in, or were you kind of in the latter, where you were just gonna, hey, I'm just gonna go as far as I can, and then we'll see what happens?

Jason: 12:41

Having seen all of the other you know races unfold in some capacity, I knew that my goal was to get to an 8 station at night where I would have my crew, which had a van. The goal was to get there sometime in the night and we kind of figured out which ones those should be and even later like which ones we would flex on if I was ahead or behind of things, and my prep on that worked out pretty well. I mean, I hit the first one a few hours after dark. It was I don't know 11 o'clock or so. So I was nice and tired, I was easy to get a good first night's sleep and it fell that way on through the rest of the race as well. Just kind of good preparation on that part. But I knew as well that if I needed to sit down and take a you know take a dirt nap, I could do that and I guess my plan to that would have been I wasn't planning on sleeping out in the middle of the forest, but I would take a little you know 15 minute dirt nap to really wake myself back up and then move on to the you know 2 set 8 station that I was gonna rest at.

Richard: 13:48

Yeah, yeah, so day one has gone pretty well. You've got to your sleep station. How did it go from there? Because usually once you start getting you know closer to halfway, that's when the ups and downs start to hit and stuff can go sideways pretty quick. So how did it work out for?

Jason: 14:06

you I was having a great time. I mean, I really had pretty much the perfect great day. Thought I had a near bear experience that probably was a probably was an elk in the first day and got in, got good sleep, got back up and that was the going into my second day. Basically was when I got my first pacer. That was my wife, and you know a lot, of, a lot of people will say like your spouse, it's not always good for your spouse to be involved in your race because they're the person that will let you find some way out that you care too much for each other. Well, she and I are definitely that exception. So anytime we end up in something together, it gets done and it gets done very well. So she was my first pacer and everything went great. We actually I keep saying we dropped the van before the next day and station we were supposed to meet. Oh no, we actually ended up just a few minutes ahead of them. They were on schedule, we were ahead.

Richard: 15:06

Yeah.

Jason: 15:07

And it was a really long drive out there. So no, no thing on their fault for it. Like we got the aid station, got a few things done before they pulled in, that rolled out perfectly into my next pacer. My next pacer from there was a guy that had been on a guided trip we did up around the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier through a spire adventure running. We became friends with him and he really kind of knew that whole Washington area and he jumped in to pace and kind of get to go to a new part of the new area he hadn't really been in and he we went into some sections that were supposed to be pretty tough, like somebody had mentioned how long the climb was. After the climb that we, one of the climbs we went through with him and I didn't even realize it, like we just had such a nice easy time Just working out there and enjoying being in nature, yeah, I wouldn't have realized how far we could climb.

Richard: 16:08

I wish I could go like that. That's the holy grail of climbing right there.

Jason: 16:13

Oh man, he was a great pacer, I mean, but it was finding those right people for the right job, you know.

Richard: 16:18

Yeah, absolutely so. It seems like you're ticking along pretty nicely at this point. Have you had any challenges up to now? Is your nutrition and hydration working out?

Jason: 16:27

Everything's working fine. I had learned I mean, this really was the dream race Like everything unfolded, learning and learning things over time really paid off in this. Like my nutrition was on. I had learned some tricks about things in these multi-day races where if you eat things that are kind of too sweet or too sour for too long, it'll start almost making your mouth raw. So I would really pay attention to that. If I got anywhere near that, I would shift what I was snacking on and what I was drinking to avoid it, and everything just continued to go the right way on through from there.

Richard: 17:09

So I know, when I do these, I try to stick to real food. Do you go real? How do you deal with food?

Jason: 17:18

When I'm at the aid station. It's definitely real food, but I do try to snack along the way a bit. I'll use some strewwaffles throughout the day If I need a snack. Surprisingly, I've really found that, like gummy worms work really well when you just kind of get down and really tired. They're a real good shot of sugar to wake you up, and so I'll do some of those. That's probably the really not so natural thing that I do regularly, but I enjoy those. I'll use a few gels along the way If I'm kind of moving and don't feel like I really want to, I guess, eat something heavy at the time, and I usually use Huma because they're basically just fruit puree.

Richard: 18:03

Yeah, real food.

Jason: 18:04

Yeah, but that's I mean, those are probably the things that are furthest from normal. And then when I get to the aid stations, I eat meals.

Richard: 18:12

Yeah, how were those aid stations? Did they have a lot of food choices at the aid station? Everybody here seems to have quesadillas for some reason, no matter where they are.

Jason: 18:24

Yeah, and it's grilled cheese or quesadillas, they're both about the same, just a slightly different amount. Yeah, they would have those, but they also. Hamburgers were typically my go-to. They had some wraps, these chicken wraps, but I'm kind of funny. Anytime I have something with avocado with preservatives in it. I love avocado but the preservatives taste rancid to me. So I knew like I think I grabbed just a bit of some of that and took a little taste and was like, oh no, this isn't gonna work. So I had to avoid those the whole time because I knew that would just make me, that would probably make me sick, even though there wasn't anything wrong with it. Just my body was gonna decide I didn't like it Otherwise, like a lot of hamburgers I'm trying to remember what else there was a couple other things I would eat there. We had some stuff in the van and that really worked out well. I've learned. The first van we used when I was crewing was when my wife did Moab and I thought I was gonna cook meals for everyone. But nobody ends up on the same schedule. So we've learned find a van with a microwave. You almost don't need any like. If you have the microwave as much as I, it's not like the regular thing to use. Then you can just throw something in and go with that. So there was a lot of like thick Campbell soup and things of that nature worked out really well, oh man, but those taste good at night too, and it's chilly up there.

Richard: 19:47

you get some soup going on. Oh yeah, yeah, the soup was good. Yeah, so you mentioned your support team, your wife and Paces the van. It seems like they played a pretty active role in your overall success in this race. Take us through that. How did you build your team? How did you find the folks? How did the team operate? Because I think that's really and we talked about it being really remote that's a challenge, I think, from a crew perspective, to get to the various places, let alone set up and get your runner going.

Jason: 20:20

And the success of these. To me and there's people that do it out there without anyone, don't get me wrong and you can Sleep stations to me would be a little rough. I kind of have this weird thing about just being in some place with people rustling all around. I mean, even when I take dirt naps I could hear every single person that came by, knowing that I was full on in a crazy dream. But the team and the van situation I learned work really well. I mean you can do it without the van, but being at Bigfoot it's so remote they can't just go to an Airbnb or hotel Once they're out there. They are out there and I mean it is literally you have to just keep going to the next station and that's the only option you have. So the van made sense for them to have a place to rest and also for me to have a good place to rest. It was comfortable enough that when you get in it you can knock out without any issue and, having done the other races, like, we kind of saw what would work and what would not. And we had a process of when I got in exactly, you know, one of the guys, javier, would take all the electronics and he would start charging everything, even though maybe it didn't really fully need it at the time. Batteries would get changed, things like that, making sure that everything was fresh for the next day, essentially and in case you know, we ever something came up when we missed them at an aid station that I was fully in front of everything, that there was never a worry on that end. And then my wife would help me work through any you know, any Clothing changes, physical issues, things like that I needed to deal with Make sure shoes were getting changed as your feet swell and they get larger and you have to wear bigger shoes. And then the other guy was kind of everything else in between making sure food was right, making sure the pack was repacked with what needed to be in there. So I didn't have to focus on that too heavily. I mean, of course I made sure of it, but they kind of knew what to expect each time. Each time I came in to what needed to be changed and what needed to be checked, that was really an integral part of it. And Then, having really good people, I would say too, I had the one guy that you know had been a guide for us before my wife, who knows me backwards and forwards as far as everything. And then we brought in the young man, javier that I was talking about. He was 19 years old, just starting college, worked at a running store in my old hometown, but he was really smart about the way he learned everything running. He'd only ran a 50k and but I knew he wanted to see this kind of thing and I felt like it would be kind of giving back in a way to bring him on this really crazy journey. But he was smart enough to Learn and listen, because you don't want to bring somebody out there that could be detrimental, right. And and he did. He learned, he listened and I felt like that was providing really good energy back into the running community so that it would reflect in my race going well, if that kind of makes sense.

Richard: 23:23

Absolutely, and he was good. I mean he's done, he done a 50k, but he yeah.

Jason: 23:27

Now the first aid station he came into. He ordered two hamburgers as soon as he got there. I for a second. I was like oh, you got me one too. He's like oh, no, that's just for me. But you didn't even let me order food Other than the appetite. Yeah, he was fantastic.

Richard: 23:43

The kid can eat as he should. Now, did you have a peso or assistance with you pretty much all the last half of the race? So did you? You were alone on any of that? Did you run with other runners as part of your, you know, because sometimes you can kind of group up, especially at night or if you go into a rough patch, and did you guys pick anybody else up?

Jason: 24:05

I'm trying to remember the exact mileage that we it was. Cold water lake is where you could pick up your first pacer, so it wasn't too far in. I want to say it was like 40 something or 50 something miles in yeah so I just had to make it through the first day on my own. I didn't see them at all for the first day until I got there right, there was potentially another aid station, but it's so difficult to get from that aid station to cold water lake that I Just told him to skip it. I'd be fine for the first day I did. I bumped into a couple people that I knew and ran with them for a few minutes really talking. I met one guy out there that we were really on pace with each other for quite a while that first day. Mm-hmm and enjoyed his company some. But typically I I've just learned to kind of get in my groove. When you're in a race that long, trying trying to run it with someone can be Detrimental if you're getting outside of your gate and outside of your comfort level. For some people it's really good to just have the company to keep your mind off things, but for me I like to just make sure that I'm really comfortable where I'm at and I enjoy just the presence of being in nature. So I spent some time with people that first day, but probably more than half of it Was just me on my own.

Richard: 25:22

Yeah, and then. So you had a pacer from that point forward. Once you picked up, I did your wife and then, moving on, you had paces the whole way. Brilliant, correct, yeah, yep. So how did the second half of the race go? You know it can go either way. I think there was, there was there was.

Jason: 25:39

There was only one section that got a little rough and it was notoriously known, as there was one climb that they seemed to say was the roughest, and I didn't really find that so. But I had the the guy Ryan that had been our guide, out there with us at that section and we just, we just climbed, we just did work and enjoyed it. And then the other section was the click attack session section. Mm-hmm and it's notorious for downed trees and being super remote and raw. That one we did in the dark. I did it with Javier, so I did it with the rookie, which I didn't really realize I was doing it with, and, and when you got out there you you just realized that section is going to be slow moving. It's a 20 mile section, so you're going out the. The only place you're gonna be able to get any water is two lakes and the one thing in the whole race that we probably didn't do right is when we got to that first lake, javier had been told that we should go to the second lake. It was a much better lake. You know, anytime you're filtering water you want to make sure it's not gonna make you sick in some way. I've never had a problem in Washington. I'm very confident with you, know pretty much anything there and we didn't quite go over to that one, but I took the word of the word that he got somewhere that we should move on to the next lake and that I would do differently and will do differently when I pace there again, I will make sure we use the. We go ahead and get the water from that lake, because the second lake in the middle of the night no one could see. Oh, it was down a hill and there was trees all around, and there was. I mean, there's been stories, I've heard of all kinds of stuff, but no one like we weren't the only ones no one could find it. So then you were doing 20 miles and by the time you got to that you realized, oh crud, I probably don't have any more water. So we, we did have water, we just had to be rather conserved with conservative with it. And a large portion of that section is on a really kind of sketchy ridge. It's not a, it's not a ridge that doesn't have vegetation. It is really really raw and sharp or anything like that. Part of the problem is that there is as vegetation, but it's so steep. When you put your trekking poles down they would almost just slip between stuff and you could tell there was nothing there. Or if you stepped there you wouldn't have anything below you. Oh yeah, you could probably catch some of the vegetation, but you could not tell where you were gonna go, other than that it was super steep and even there was some two-way traffic on that. You went out to the aid station and then turned around and came back for a portion and that was really uncomfortable when you were having to pass people. It slowed things down quite a bit and that was probably the first night where I was tired enough to feel like I needed little dirt naps here and there, but there was nowhere to stop to take dirt nap because you're on this really steep, sketchy ridge.

Richard: 28:46

So you, you did the fight of the, the sleep fight where you, you try to keep going and you, dozing and moving, and dozing until you get to Somewhere you can.

Jason: 28:57

I suppose, and Javier had gotten really quiet, and that was not normal, and he didn't want to tell me why I didn't know. So then the then being this the senior runner at the same time, I feel like I'm, you know, responsible for making sure he's okay, because at that point I know he doesn't. He's not as knowledgeable as I am, but he's. I could tell he was trying to keep something in, but he wasn't really wanting to say it. He was really tired too, is what I found out, but I didn't know it at the time. I was just trying to make sure he kept moving ahead, but we made it through it fine. I think if we would have gotten water earlier, we would have been a little more confident. There was a. We passed right by what I'm quite certain was a bear den that I just looked over and was like, oh that's, that's definitely a freshly bear den with fresh dirt dug out of the hole, because that or it's a 700 pound gopher, which I don't think they have there unlikely.

Richard: 29:52

Yeah, did they? And I mean, that's the second time you mentioned bears too, did they? Did the race organization give you any kind of heads up on right if you do come across a bear? Here's, here's what you do, or best practice.

Jason: 30:05

Yeah, they, I mean they, yeah they. They make mention of it. I guess they don't make too big of a deal out of it when you're out in those mountains. The Tahoe is way worse for bears. Yeah, so I'd seen him at Tahoe and I had seen him at other places already. You know just previous experiences and I wasn't too worried about them. If you're in the right place, they're not anything to really be too can like, if you do the right things, you, they're not anything to worry about. You just don't want to come up on them and scare them and you definitely don't want to do that If they have little baby cubs but that time of the year from my understanding they shouldn't be baby cubs they're big enough that mom trusts them a little bit. No, is not so protective, and then it's just being aware of them. It helps to talk. You know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere carrying on like conversation, so they hear you and maybe you just don't see that they're hiding out of the way.

Richard: 31:01

Yeah.

Jason: 31:01

They're not just gonna jump up and try to run and eat you. Majority of the time you have to spook them into that. There was a someone behind us had seen a mountain lion, and that was shortly before or after the the parrot in grief, so I got that that could. That section got really uncomfortable.

Richard: 31:18

Yeah, you're sketchy section with mountain lion and and and bears go, yeah. So then you progress down Through days two and three. I think so did you finish it. The third day. Yeah, so I think I. Just looking at your finish time, it looks like you were just over a hundred hours, which is what four and a four and a bit days, I guess. Yes yeah, so how were you at the finish? The finish was good.

Jason: 31:44

The the last section of that day got a really hot too. The night was nice and cool. I picked up my wife as the last pacer after that really sketchy section, clicked that and then we went back down the two-way part of that, which wasn't very fun. But I knew that was the last day and I knew I still felt good, like I had planned everything outright. I wasn't trying to to race, I was trying to finish. So I knew I kept myself in good shape to be able to go go. Day after day after day we went. We submitted the last Pompeii Peak, which was the last real summit of it. The photographer was up there and she she did a really good job of making sure she could get a good photo. She she had pointed out you know, hey, you know you started over about Mount St Helens. That's Mount St Helens over there and you look and it's just so far away and it's really humbling to just think like, wow, like I've been this far on foot, like this is this is crazy. Took a minute and sat down, soaked it up there and then coming down from there was kind of the victory marathon as we started moving from there. It was just time and, knowing the comfort of having my wife there and how strong we worked together, we just started plugging away and I think that day, if you actually looked at it, by the end I was coming in pretty strong. Yeah, no one that it was gonna get done. The body was still in check, I hadn't messed anything up, which was the big goal. And then just we started doing work from there. There was a really cool section of abandoned road that we were on, where it had been washed out and it's just been taken back by nature. It was like something out of the walking dead or something a bit eerie it was. It was weird, yeah, it was. It was cool. I had fun on that Crossed a bunch of logs, tons I mean, there's tons of bushwhacking all throughout it, but there was some of that. And you know, getting there where you, they just took you completely off trail. It was kind of just a point to the next trail man. And, yeah, we just started plugging away and it got hotter and hotter. But again, we train in Houston, so we just knew like we're just gonna get this done, yeah, all the way through the finish and it, you know, worked out kind of perfectly.

Richard: 33:57

Yeah, I mean, if there's one thing we can do here, it's train in the heat and the humidity. I mean, yeah, none of us should have a challenge with that on a race if it gets hot, yeah, so I mean it sounds like you had a pretty good finish, actually for the end of a 200, just reflecting on that and that was in August. So you've had some time to kind of let their motion set set in, and a lot of times people are asked when they cross the line, or how do you feel? And it just I find like it takes a while for it to really sink in what you've just done and all of the Experience that you've had over those four days. So I'm curious just for you, from a reflection standpoint what did that race mean to you?

Jason: 34:35

So I think in part of it what it's provided me with. Now I've always in In the silliest way, I guess I've always kind of questioned Am I really a good, am I really an ultra runner, right, like I mean, look at everything on paper. But up until recently I've never ran a lot of races because I was so buried in work and I'm trying to make changes in life to be able to do more of that but that race really sealed like yes, I I am, and not only that, but I do it well and I know, you know, how to get through these things. I'm very smart about it, I'm full of knowledge about it. I may not be the fastest guy out there, especially anymore, but if you put a challenge in front of me, I can find a way to get it done Pretty much. You know, barring something gets broken in half, I'm gonna get there. And so that was in part. And then the other big thing was I kind of started training for it About the same time we really got into the launch of my company. So it paralleled in that you know, art imitates life kind of way. The training really parallel the business To the point where it was kind of like I felt like if I can do this, then I can take the business somewhere, and it was kind of a confidence booster, but I don't know if I would say confidence booster, but it was more like it told the story of life, both things at one time. When I reflected on it yeah that's really cool not way to describe it but that that was really Really where I was at in life, I guess definitely both.

Richard: 36:08

Both challenges, different challenges, but both challenges that you're taking on from start to finish big challenges, big experience type things and you got your crew there and your wife with you on both sides of those challenges.

Jason: 36:20

So yeah, it was really the days where you would think like where, with the company it, we would run into some hurdle? And I would think like, man, can we even do this? Is this gonna are we gonna be able to launch? Is this gonna be able to work? And Then I would find a way to make that work. And then you have the same training days and things where you're like, man, this something's going on and I don't know if I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this can make this happen yeah so it was important to me in a way to make the race happen, to complete that just as much to tell myself I can find a way to make things, you know, to make things work for the business.

Richard: 36:56

Yeah, I really do think that's one of the big takeaways from you know these ultra distances I mean, I'm not the fastest in the world either, but I think that that sense of achievement and the challenge and being able to overcome Is just something I don't think you can get in many other places and it does mirror life really spookily, just to kind of, when you get yourself in strange situations. You gotta figure it out and you gotta keep moving forwards and I love, I love doing the ultra is because of that and I think I would me, I would recommend anybody to go and it doesn't really matter if you're doing a fifty k or you know two hundred miles or you know four hundred miles. Whatever it is, every single race has its, has its challenges, and some races, some fifty k's, are more difficult than fifty miles and oh yeah, every race has its challenges and I feel you know, like you, that learning how to cope with those and strategies for for yourself to get through, I think it's totally valuable life lessons and for me that's part of a large part of why I do the. The ultra is in conjunction with the community and you know, like minded, positive people, I think mindset is another one. Right, you gotta have a positive mindset when you let those negative things start getting in, you know it doesn't lead to a good place. So my findings have been trail folks are typically pretty positive people, generally speaking. So, yeah, you finish big foot, you the two hundred mile, the extremely mountainous two hundred mile, and you've done brazos ben, which is a flat as they come. What is what, yeah, one hundred mile? Any thoughts on? I mean not specifically to those, but key differences between the two hundred and a hundred from a training perspective.

Jason: 38:40

I'm. So the big thing to me and I'll go back to like a fifty mile or hundred k to a hundred is like the further distance you go, the more you have to make smart, smart choices about taking care of your body and nutrition. The longer distance you go, the more nutrition came into play and the more taking care of you know your legs and everything along the way. When you get to the two hundred miles it's it even magnifies that a little bit more. Now you have all the time in the world two hundred mile to completely screw up your gut and figure it out and fix it the days so you can have a bad day and recover from it, and I think knowing that kind of help me stay calm and collected in a certain sense. But it's really about playing things even smarter. And then the other thing, the thing that's the really big twist is now it becomes about rest and up through one hundred miles it's really about how to not have to rest. You know you can in a big mountain I would say a big mountainous ultra one hundred, simply because they may go on into like a day and a half and so somewhere in there you may need a little bit of rest, a dirt nap for fifteen minutes or something to really get yourself through. But most of the time in a typical one hundred mile or you know, you can get through one night and then you can finish the race. And that's not for the elite people, that's, you know, for us normal folks, right. But when you get into the two hundred miles, those are gonna go on so long that you have to figure out how to race, and the people that are in medical teams on these races will tell you that's the thing that they figured out. That's the difference between people that finish and don't, because the people that don't rest Get like delirious and delusional and that's where things become really dangerous. Out there I've seen that sweeping where I've practically had to grab somebody to keep him from going off the edge of a mountain, and, but not only that, other things start falling apart when your, when your sleep is off, when your rest is off, and it's kind of like if you've seen somebody try to not fuel right and eat right in a, you know, maybe hundred K or hundred miler, that's when they start falling apart. Then the legs are given a misuse and other things come up. So in a two hundred mile. It's really about Figuring out how to sleep and the one guy who I kind of met the first day and kind of rolled along with it was his first time seeing one of these and he couldn't he couldn't figure it out. I tried to give him his team like every bit of Knowledge I could just give him about what do you need, you know what do you need to do, but he wasn't in the right mental place, like you've been really excited about seeing his pacers and study, just couldn't get some rest and that's where things fell apart. And that's where I've seen it Kind of fall apart time and again is if you don't, if you don't sleep right, then that's what's gonna happen. So it was important to me to get good rest the first night and then try to just keep it fairly balanced into the next days, and I think that was a big key to it as well did you shoot for a minimum amount of rest ninety minutes minimum per day or did you go? Ninety minutes was typically the goal. But I talk to a guy at a when I was crew, my wife at never summer, that had done like three hours the first day, like man. That's nice, I think I'm gonna get I. And he had such a good time during I forget which race. I think maybe he was a moab, I could be wrong, but I kind of decided, you know what, I think I could give that a go, because the better you rest, the stronger you perform afterwards. Just, you come back that way after a good night's rest. So I did that and the next day, what really? I mean, as I've said, everything went so great I can't say I should have done it any different. In hindsight I maybe I could have done with a little less rest, try to get in just under a hundred hours, but I don't have any regret in that. My goal is to get it done into everything clicked off right. The one time we had a little Bobble in any way, we actually just I was able to turn gears and I click at that section and and still get it done and do everything right, but adjust and you know, ration water for a couple hours and Get everything done fine. So I can't say I would change any of that yeah, wonderful.

Richard: 43:04

So we talked about hey, what might I do? Is there, are there any Future races or other goals from a pacing or crew in perspective that you've got coming up?

Jason: 43:14

So the I've got a lot of local all well, all the local stuff coming up I'm helping crew and pace at. So that's Brazos, bend, bandera and Rocky 100 and Rocky 50. So all those I'll be at kind of crewing and pacing and with our company that sponsors the races and then Along with that. Then I plan on doing coca-dona, which is next May, and oh wow.

Richard: 43:40

Then will that be your first shot at coca-dona.

Jason: 43:44

I've not done that one. So yeah, I'll do that one. And then I am Pacing the triple crown, I Am crewing and pacing people for each of the other destination trails 200, which I'm excited about. Getting to go out and kind of play a part in all of it, yeah, for sure.

Richard: 44:07

We mentioned your company while we have you here, maybe you would like to give us a little plug, sure, for listeners out there. What products do you offer for endurance athletes, and where could we go if we want to find out more?

Jason: 44:20

So we are a body products company and what we do a little differently is we have chafing products, bug spray, recovery products, which are really amazing, everything from bath bombs, which are made for a bath after your long run, to Some lotions, even some CBD products that are all. All of this stuff is topical. It's not anything to be ingested, and we even do body glitter, which has become really, really popular now, just to make like, make these things fun and it's biodegradable. So it's not, you know, no issues of leaving a trace on the trail or anything like that, and Our intention in doing this was that other companies do one or two of these things. Typically they're not even runners that do it. Yeah, some cases they are. A lot of the companies aren't doing things with just good natural ingredients. We all try to eat well, but we were putting these things on our body that we wouldn't normally want to ingest. So we set out to make the best products that you could possibly find. They've been put through the ringer. There's reviews out there and things. Our chafing bomb, one application for a hundred miler. I was review from run try magazine and we are now working on trying to get into some retail spaces. That's kind of our next big goal. Right now you can find us at wildsense goods calm and actually order products from there. I'm and then we're out also at Tejas trails races, at trot races, trail racing over Texas. We're coming out to those events now so we should be there to be able to sell some of it there as well, and we're working to expand that, hopefully pretty quickly, throughout the nation.

Richard: 45:57

Yeah, brilliant, we'll definitely go out. I want to go out and have a look for any folks listening around there. Go, go, check out wild sense good stuff before we close out on a fun side. But we do like to encourage guests to choose a song to add to the free Spotify. Yeah, choose to end your playlist. So typically it's been something that lifts you up, that motivates you or just gets your butt moving while you're out on the trail. So, jason, do you have a song to share and, if so, why did you choose that particular one?

Jason: 46:26

That would be Wild by spoon had nothing to do with the company name either. I just stumbled on the song and it really kind of encompassed what this training block was, right, almost to like leaving my old job and Kind of changing how life worked in general, and it really inspired me. Every day before I never listened to music when I run, but every day before I would run, when I was getting ready, I would typically put on that song and a couple others and and it's, it's kind of become the theme song to Bigfoot for me. Yeah, brilliant.

Richard: 47:02

I love when you can. You can evoke memories just from from music, for a big foot, in your case, just by by listening to this tune. I think that's fantastic. Well, jason, thank you again for your time, for sharing your story and your insights. Listeners, perhaps Jason's experience has Inspired you to try a 200 mile race I definitely. With the right mindset, they're really doable. Or maybe look into crewing and pacing as an alternative. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to get notified each time a new episode comes out and, of course, follow, share and Review. If you are already one of the endurance nation out there, maybe help a friend discover the show too. You can find us all over social media At choose to endure calm, and we're over on YouTube as well, so be sure to head out over there and check us out if you have a moment. Until then, run long, run strong and keep choosing to endure.

Announcer: 48:02

We hope you enjoyed the show. We had a blast. If you did, make sure to like rate and review, and we'll be back soon. Keep racking up the miles and the stories and we'll catch you at the next trailhead. Until then, remember to run long, run strong.