#110 Jay Steinberg - Hight Endurance Athlete / Ultramarathon Runner
Jay Steinberg - Hight Endurance Athlete / Ultra Marathon Runner & Personal Trainer.
Tune in as Jay Steinberg joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss running long-distance races, ultramarathons, marathon racing, ironman competition, performance diet, running the Grand Canyon, Colorado, outdoor life, and much more.
Please subscribe or like us on social media platforms for updates on shows, events, and episode drops.
www.themountainsidepodcast.com
Sponsor Links:
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off all Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
Mountain Side listeners use Discount code TMS to receive 10% off ONNIT products!
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off Origin & Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Jay Steinberg - Hight Endurance Athlete / Ultramarathon Runner
Our returning guest for this episode is my friend Jay Steinberg. Jay recorded with us when we first started this show. He was in episode two. He has been a friend of mine for a long time but above all that, he's an absolute savage and a great person. He's an ultra-marathon runner and high-endurance athlete. It's always good having Jay in the studio. It was a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it.
What's up, Bobby?
It's awesome to have you back in. It has been a minute. One of the coolest things is that you were in episode two. You saw us in our infancy when I didn't know what I was doing. We had a rough ride on that one. I feel like I've owed you one since then. I'm super happy to have you back there.
It's all good. I'm excited.
How has life been? You've been busy. You've been traveling a little bit.
My family keeps me busy. It's draining. It's enough to keep me out of trouble.
You did an Ironman or something in Mexico. We were talking before.
I was down in Mexico. I did my first Ironman distance triathlon.
What does that entail? It's a swim, run, and bike.
It's a 2.4-mile swim. I wanted an ocean swim for my first full Ironman. It seemed right. It's followed by 112 miles on the bike. You run a full marathon to close it out.
That's a good stint. Where was it exactly?
Cozumel, Mexico.
Was the weather nice? You're looking pretty tan there.
It was warm for a Colorado guy. It's a little humid for my taste but it's beautiful weather. I spent six days down. It's amazing how much goes into it. You've got meetings, a bike drop-off, a practice swim, and all of these different things you have to get done. We were down for four days before the race.
You get acclimated a little bit too. I'm sure that helps.
It was nice. We were able to ride the course and check out the bike course.
How many laps is that? You're doing laps at that island at that point.
The bike is more or less three laps. It's 40 miles. From where the race starts, it's not a full lap to get to the finish.
Do you have to travel down there with your bikes and stuff? Did you fly with them?
I flew with my bike in a case. I was very nervous because I have seen them loading those planes before.
Those guys do not give a shit.
It's a lot of gear to get down there but we had a blast. Two other friends of mine who are experienced Ironmen came down. It was nice. I asked them 1 million questions, "What do we do here? How does this work?" It's nice having some support down there.
As far as getting in the ocean stuff or the water, it's the Pacific on that side, right?
It's the Caribbean.
That's not too bad then.
The water was warm.
The water temperature is a little bit warmer. Were there wetsuits full-on?
There were no wetsuits because the water was warm enough. You're wearing a skin suit.
When you get out of the water, is there time to change? Are you full-on running off the beach Navy SEAL-style and getting after it?
It was long. It was about a quarter of a mile from getting out of the water to where you could mount your bike and get on your bike. I put on socks, cycling shoes, and a helmet. I was pretty much out of there. I spent eight minutes maybe in that first transition zone.
I don't know how you do it. You're an absolute animal.
I know dudes who used to train to do centuries on road bikes. They would train to do it on top of a swim and a run. It's absolute madman shit.
I need some advice because I'm not much of a runner. I hate to run. I want to work on a goal. One of the things that I'm working on fitness-wise is to be able to do the Murph Challenge in under an hour. That's a feat for you. I need to get better. I could probably run a ten-minute mile but I know that you're a run coach.
You've done these incredible runs like Ironmans and Bighorn. You're an ultra-runner. How do you ramp yourself up? What I'm doing is a mile run before the circuit and then it's a mile run after. If you wanted to run a mile as fast as you possibly can, how do you build up to that? What kind of training regimen? Should I be full-on sprinting?
That's why I'm an ultra-runner because I can't run fast. It's a lot of interval work going on the track, starting at that ten-minute mile, and not going out there on day one thinking, "I'm going to run 800 meters full out." Start running them at 9.30, go to a 9, and keep working up. It's like anything physically or endurance-wise. It takes a long time to get there.
I've noticed that with the pushups because I'm trying to get 200 pushups within 20 minutes. I've been working on that pretty heavily, and the air squats but I fucked up my shoulder doing it because I was going too hard and too fast. I need to build into it a little bit slower. I have this residual pain I have to get looked at because I think I tore something. I hope it's not bad.
That's a problem for a lot of people that are motivated. I'm not motivated. A lot of people who are trying to find a fitness routine as well go all-out right from the get-go. You're motivated. We're coming up to the New Year. People want to get in shape. They want to start to build those healthy habits. People realize that you got to the point where you are now over a long period. If you want to get fit, it's going to take you a long period to get there. It doesn't happen.
It's putting in that daily work too. That's what I've noticed. If I skip a couple of days, it's almost like starting over again sometimes for me.
It's interesting, I heard a story about a personal trainer who started working with this guy. For the first six months, the guy went to the gym for five minutes, went to the locker room, and got dressed. He could be on the gym floor for five minutes. He would go back to the locker room, change back, and leave. All it did was build that habit.
Anybody could do five minutes. That's simple. It's when you go in there, and you're trying to pound out an hour or an hour and a half. It gets monotonous at some point, or life gets in the way, especially when you have kids or something like that.
Scott Adams talked about that. I don't know if that's who you're talking about but it's building up that habit. You can get that routine down. That's the part that's lacking in everybody.
It's a disciplined routine or something you can do every day.
For me, one of the hardest things to do is take a full day off. A full day off for me might be strength training, or it might be going and training jiu-jitsu. That's more or less a day off but it's hard to sit around when you get to a certain point. That becomes what you do. It's what makes you the person you are.
It's hard to sit around when you get to a certain point; that just becomes what you do and what makes you the person you are.
It's so good for me mentally too on the days that I don't do something, whether it's jiu-jitsu, which I haven't rolled in a long time, or if I don't go shoot my bow. I love going to the gym and lifting. That's my one thing but if I don't at least get that in or do a quick kettlebell workout or something, I am not happy.
That's why I like to get it in the morning. Go first thing. Nobody can take it away from you. Work doesn't get in the way. Family doesn't get in the way. At 5:30 in the morning, it's tough to have any distractions. During the week, we do a 5:30 run. We only run for an hour, which sucks because the first 45 minutes of my workout hurt. I'm still tight. I'm loosening up.
You're getting warmed up by the time it's time to call it.
I go with some buddies. It's my social time. It's time out in the woods and on the trails. It's a good way to start your day and start focused.
I prefer to do mine in the morning too. Although lately, I've changed my whole diet regimen and stuff. I like going a little bit more in the afternoon to break up my day. I have some long days ahead of me where I'm busy with the show and live production now that it's back. I'm busy with some other side projects I've got going on and then the family. If I go in the middle of the day, I found I'm happier because if I start first thing in the morning, I have all that shit in my head, "I have to get this accomplished." I don't spend as much time.
If I get some of that out of the way, it has been my new routine, "I'll go to the gym at 10:00." I've also found that there's nobody there, which is nice. There's nobody in your way. You're not waiting to get on a machine. I've been doing the Airdyne bike and the rower but the thing is always taken because there's one of each. There are 49 ellipticals. I like getting out and hiking and doing that stuff too but if I work out in the morning and then do a hike in the afternoon or something like that, that's always awesome too.
I always like to sneak in a lunch workout. Caffeine only has so much of an effect on you but with a workout at lunch, I'm twice as productive in the afternoon. It's like jet fuel.
I've been tailoring my caffeine too. I won't do my caffeine until almost the afternoon after my workout, or sometimes I do it before. It depends on when I'm going but generally, I've been listening to Andrew Huberman. I don't know if you've heard any of his stuff. He's a neuroscientist. I strongly suggest that if you haven't listened to Andrew Huberman, go check out Huberman Lab.
He's got a ton of different subjects on a multitude of stuff. I don't listen to him enough but one of the things I picked up from him was caffeine use and what happens to your body with chemicals that are released in your brain. If you wake up first thing in the morning and pound coffee, there's some chemical. Go listen to Andrew Huberman. I'm not a neuroscientist. He is.
It does something to where you start to crash in the afternoon because it's something with your circadian clock, what dopamine is released, and when dopamine is released. There's also some other chemical that's in your brain from that. He's like, "The best thing that you can do like you going on a morning run is going out into the sunlight for 10 to 15 minutes and having something moving in your peripheral. Go on a walk. Go for a run."
The faster stuff is moving in your peripheral, the more receptors are going off in your brain. The more dopamine it's releasing. There's all this crazy science behind why you feel good after you get out of the gym or if you do that first thing in the morning. I've found that caffeine doesn't affect me. I'm drinking this now to the point where I can go to sleep. I could go to sleep in an hour if I wanted to.
I've learned to push. I hydrate first thing in the morning. I get sunlight. I get a walk. That's fundamental for me because I'm at the computer a lot of the day. I've pushed my caffeine intake out about 90 minutes to two hours because of the way the caffeine interacts with the adenosine receptor. You can avoid the afternoon crash if you allow your sleep to completely clear your adenosine and not block those receptors.
You can avoid the afternoon crash if you allow your sleep to completely clear your adenosine and not block those receptors.
A lot of people are waking up a little bit sleep-deprived, drinking coffee, and blocking their adenine receptors. In the afternoon, they crash when the adenosine dislodges from the adenosine receptor because the adenosine makes us sleepy. If you push your caffeine intake out a little bit, what's interesting is even though you're not sleeping during that time, there's some evidence, and Matt Walker and I are talking about this because there's more that needs to be done, that the adenosine continues to be cleared in a way that it can't if you're drinking caffeine early. I do that. It helps.
It has made a night and day difference for me. No wonder I didn't remember adenosine.
I listened to that. I heard that.
He's a savage.
Coffee gets me out of bed in the morning.
There's something about the smell. I set it up so that at 5:30 in the morning, it's brewing. I'm up at 5:45.
I found that since I'm doing this, there are days when I skip it though. I'm bummed because I'll be like, "I forgot to drink coffee.” I love coffee but I used to get up first thing in the morning and put the coffee pot on or do a pour-over. I was drinking a lot.
You do it in the morning.
I'll get up. It's still part of my routine. I'll do my protein shake or whatever I'm having for breakfast if anything at all. Typically, I've been pounding the LMNT salts lately. I don't know if you've had any of those. Those things are awesome. I do salt first thing in the morning. I have something to hydrate. I'll brew the coffee but then I put it in a Nalgene bottle and throw it in the refrigerator because I like iced coffee. Black Rifle sends us some coffee. I've been using their Black Rifle espresso.
I like the ritual. I do it the night before and put it on a timer so that when I walk out, it's done. I look back at myself from the night before and go, "You're all right." I'm happy about the guy who made it for me the night before. I'm like, "That guy is pretty cool. He hooked me up."
I clean the coffee pot. I have this weird thing. If it's outside the bag, it dries out, especially in Colorado. Some of the times you get that Black Rifle stuff, it's wet.
I've got a whole sealed system. I like the dude that makes me coffee the night before.
What about you? Are you a coffee pour-over dude?
It's freshly ground in the morning. I brush my teeth and feed the dog. I'm down making coffee. By 4:30 in the morning, that coffee is starting to drip.
At one point, I remember talking to you. You were putting some oils or fats in it or something like that.
I was putting MCT in it. I've tried putting ghee or butter in it.
Are you a cream guy at all?
I drink it black. I want it strong. I might make it a little too strong for my wife's liking.
My wife won't drink my coffee.
People pour out the bottom with the grounds. I'm like, "Why would you do that? That's the good part there."
Are you still putting the MCT oil or ghee butter in there?
I'm just drinking a black.
What were you doing for that, to get some calories?
Calories, fat, and good slow-burning energy.
That's one thing I've noticed with being pretty much on this paleo diet. My energy level has gone through the roof. It's the slow-burning energy that you get from those fats and not having any carbohydrate crash or anything like that. What diet are you sticking to doing these ultras? Do you work up into a specific diet when you have a race coming up?
I don't change my diet all that much. When I was doing MCT oil, butter, and such in my coffee, I was going very high fat. I try and get blood work done every year. My numbers were starting to creep up a little bit. Cholesterol was starting to get to higher levels. I thought, "I'm active enough." I changed some things in my diet. I try and eat a lot of whole foods. I eat a lot of red meat and meat in general. Breakfast is usually a protein shake. I have been eating more fruits, vegetables, a salad for lunch every single day, and a lot of eggs. I'm trying to eat whole foods.
I've been on this pretty much all-meat diet. I was telling you this before we started. I started a deal with Sean Baker. I'm down 55 pounds or something at that point. Some of that is muscle mass. I'm going to say that for sure. I'm trying to get that back and get some balance with it. I never realized this. I've said this before on the show. They would have you eat something for three days and pay attention to how your body feels and your energy levels. Almost keep a mental note of it two hours after you eat. I would eat, set a two-hour alarm, and then log it.
I found that eggs don't make me feel as good as having ribeye. The wild game makes me feel the best. Hunting to me was so critical. I was like, "I have to get some meat in the freezer." I went through my freezer from being on this diet. That's one difference that I noticed even in proteins. Some proteins made me feel better or worse. Eggs were one of those that I don't feel 100% great on but it's great to break up the monotony a little bit.
When I got my blood work done, I had a food sensitivity panel done. Red meat and eggs both came back high for me. I've been thinking to myself, "Do I do an elimination? Do I start to be more cognizant of how those foods make me feel?" Ribeye is delicious. I would eat one every single night but do I feel different than if I ate chicken, pork, or another protein?
It takes some time to notice it because what they had me do for the first 30 days was, "Eat whatever you want. Only eat meat, eggs, and straight-up protein. There are no protein shakes, butter, and seasoning." Baker was like, "If you're eating ground beef and you need to sprinkle a little bit of taco seasoning on it to get it down, if you can afford it, eat a ribeye for breakfast and a dozen eggs every day." I was eating ravenously. I can't believe I could eat a two-pound steak in one setting and be fine.
If you can afford it, just eat a rib eye for breakfast and a dozen eggs daily.
How were you cooking the eggs?
Every way like hard-boiled.
Have you tried slonking them?
What the hell is that?
You crack them and throw them right off.
I'm not going Rocky Balboa. I can't do it.
I want to try that.
I did that once on a bet. I told the guy I would do it if he did it. He cracked it and popped it. I was like, “Shit.” That was the badass thing in the '80s. Was it Rocky that cracks the raw eggs?
There has been this renaissance of that old school.
Is it like Liver King?
Those dudes were jacked back in the day. What were they doing?
They're eating raw meat and stuff. I've seen guys take a full package of hamburger that's uncooked and eat it.
That seems a bit unnecessary. I heard that the eggs are not nearly as bad as you think it is. We should do that.
I have no desire to do that. I've done it so I'm out.
What was it like?
I don't mind a runny egg a little bit. Honestly, it wasn't bad. It's down before you know it. It's like oysters. It's flavorless with a little Tabasco on there. For the next three hours, for sure I had salmonella poisoning or something like that. That's what worries me about meat, especially if it's beef that's bought from the grocery store. You don't know what that shit has been drugged through, how long it has been sitting on the shelf, if the sticker is right, or if it got mixed with some strange shit.
It has been sent to how many countries.
That's another thing. It was crazy. I was looking into buying some elk because I ran out of elk meat. I started looking into it. I was like, "Maybe I'll buy some." A ribeye makes me feel incredible but a wild game makes me feel ten times better. I don't know what it is. It's energy levels and cognitive. It's everything. I don't know if it's because I hunted it myself or if there's some correlation there, or because I genuinely like the taste of it. It does taste more nutritious. When you pull it out of the packaging and stuff, it's this dark purple color. I started to notice that in meats.
Wild game makes you feel ten times better, and they taste more nutritious.
I was getting some beef from Colorado Craft Beef. Those guys were awesome. Here's a shout-out to those guys for hooking me up. I noticed that their beef doesn't look like beef that comes from the grocery store. I did some research. They dye beef at the grocery store with beet juice and all this other shit. Sometimes there are additives in there too.
I was so pissed. I went to a QDOBA because I was on the road. I ordered steak. I'm eating. I'm like, "This tastes weird because it has all the seasoning and shit on it." I come to find out they add flour to the steak to make it fuller. They're putting raw flour in. I was so pissed. I was like, "You can't sell this as steak. You could sell it as breaded steak, fried steak, or something like that but this is not a steak."
With wild game, you think about an elk around here. It's living a hard life. You're running away from mountain lions and surviving cold winters. There's got to be more power in that meat.
You would think. They're so much faster and agile. I wouldn't say they're meaner than a bull. The bulls get pretty spicy.
I stay away from them in the fall.
If you've ever hunted elk, it's insane. You can glass them on a ridge and get to them. If you blow them out or wound one and don't hit it in the sweet spot or not in an ethical shot on an elk, good luck finding that. They will go two miles like that. You're talking about running over mountains. They're super athletic. Jeremy, see the nutritional facts between store-bought beef and wild game. It has a ton more nutrition in it.
I started talking to my doctors and stuff after I got the specter cell back. I found my sweet spot is to eat wild game for two days, and then I start to feel a little bit deprived. I'm constantly hungry. It's because there's no fat. If I eat a ribeye, it holds me over for that for two days. It's a big, juicy, and fat ribeye that has a lot of marveling in it. I feel all right. To get some fat, I've been using beef tallow.
I'll put a cast iron skillet on the Traeger and then sear the deer steaks on them. You want to talk about fast food. I can cook a deer steak in about a minute and a half or 45 seconds on each side. It's pretty much done because they're thinner cuts. That is another thing too. Since I've been on this diet, I went down from eating a steak medium. Now, I prefer bloody as shit. It might as well be rare.
Are you going to eat bull testicles next on Instagram? Is that what you're going to do?
I have had testicles, the Rocky Mountain oysters.
The first hit right there is your difference. That's on a couple of different sides.
Between elk versus beef, elk meat is lower in cholesterol because it has hardly any fat.
It's lower in calories. It contains less fat.
Are there any nutritional facts? That's the thing with it.
It has more protein, iron, and B-12. Right here, it was saying, "Omega-3, CLA, and all the good fats." There's more of that in that. If you're just eating that and you're not diluting it with a bunch of other shit like everybody else does and you're doing beef, and then every once in a while, you slam down one of those elk that you took out of your freezer, you're probably going to feel the difference.
You taste the difference too. It's more earthy.
It's gamey. That's why my wife won't eat it.
I've never gotten that. It depends on where you get them too. If you shoot a deer or an elk that eats sage all the time, I've tasted that before. They taste way different. If you shoot a whitetail that only eats corn, they're incredible. There are tons of fat on them, not just a fat layer. The muscle density is still super dense. I will probably stick to this for life. That's how good I feel. I don't feel deprived. I don't feel like I need sugar or anything like that.
That's awesome. I walked in and was amazed.
The last time you saw me, I was at the height of the worst shape I've ever been in my life, probably. I was still pretty active. At that time, I was going to jiu-jitsu. I was way more active then than I am now because it was at the back of my mind. It's working out at least once a day and then going to jiu-jitsu sometimes twice a day. You know how many calories you burn doing that. A big part of it was preservatives in food. That's my honest opinion because you start eating a lot of processed stuff or whatever it is. Even if you're eating healthy like quinoa or whatever you're getting, there are still some preservatives in it. Some of that shit starts to leak over at some point.
It all starts with your diet. I always say, "You can't outrun your fork." If your diet is not there, it's tough.
It's not the heaviest thing to lift either. Portion control has been big. I started bringing it back to those 30 days to get eliminated. What they had me do was, "Eat whatever you want." I go through that ketosis much more than I did on the keto diet. That was an issue that I had with the keto diet, "Here's a keto cheesecake." You're eating all this bullshit, all these artificial sweeteners, and all this crap that's in there. You can find just about keto-anything. You can find keto donuts. What are we doing here? There are keto brownies. I get it but it's counterproductive for me anyways.
It wasn't helping me. It escalated the situation. I started to get in those first 30 days. You start to get headaches. It was much worse. I felt like crap for at least two weeks. I was on the ketogenic diet before I started this. You go through that. I was eating ravenously a good two meals a day and probably four pounds of meat a day. It was crazy. Thank God for LMNT because they sent me a bunch of packets of salt. I was using that. That was my little cheat hack.
I would blend that shit up in a Nutribullet and eat it like a slushy at night or something. You felt like you were eating sorbet or something. That's super important that you add salt to this diet because if you're not adding any seasoning and you're just eating straight meat, you don't have salt in your body. You have some natural salts but you're supposed to get anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams of salt a day. I was doing a minimum of 2,000.
If you're not adding any seasoning and seeing straight meat, you basically don't have salt in your body. You have some natural salts, but you're supposed to get anywhere from 2000mg to 4,000mg of salt daily.
After you get over that hump, then you start doing that. You will eat eggs for three days straight. You can eat them scrambled, over easy, or how you want. Stick to eggs and stick to the same brand and all that stuff. Log it in and notice, "Has my energy level gone up in those three days? Is it depleted? Do I feel worse?" If you're just eating and you don't know, something could affect you a day and a half later from ingesting it. By the time it gets digested, maybe it gets into your colon or something. You don't know unless you stick to something like that.
You were eating eggs for three days. Was there no meat in that period?
No.
Did the salt help your headaches?
Big time. The salt was huge. I stick to that regimen. I get up in the morning. If I don't have my LMNT, I'll drive to Greeley to get it. I have to have that stuff. Luckily, that stuff is flavored. The only spot where I veered off a little bit or cheated is that I did use some seasoning on some steaks once I got down that road. I have tailored it. I'm seasoning everything. I don't care. I'm buying good shit or at least some organic seasoning that doesn't have a lot of bullshit in it.
A lot of those seasonings have sugar added to them. You're pouring sugar on top of a steak. You have to be careful of that. If you want to stay in that ketosis, you can't have any sugar. I've been addicted to these things. I went back to a protein shake to break it up a little bit and have something that's outside of it. That helps me mentally a little bit too. I did that with eggs and fish. I went to chicken.
That had to be a rough three days.
Chicken sucks. Get the fuck out of here with chicken.
You're not a fan.
I did beef and pork. This diet took me away from pork.
Is it because of the way you felt?
I felt like shit. It was pork chops. I had some tenderloins and pork chops for three days. There were three days when I had some bacon. I didn't eat just bacon for three days but I added it in. I was like, "I'm not going to do bacon straight for three days." I like a piece of bacon here or there but even now, it ruined it for me. It's pretty much beef and game. Now that I got through that period, all the blood work that I had done came back. There were very minimal vitamin deficiencies.
I was deficient in B-12 and vitamin D. Those are the only two things that I added back. I added some zinc back but for different reasons. The testosterone levels went up. My blood pressure dropped off. I was on blood pressure medication before I went on this diet. If I would have gone to a normal doctor, they would have told me I was crazy, "Stay away from red meat. Stay away from high fats."
Cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight went down. Everything dropped off like a rollercoaster. It's insane. Now that I'm back, I started reintroducing some berries. I love blackberries, raspberries, and that sort of stuff. I've introduced those back in. There are no issues. I don't do it on a regular basis. I'm not pounding packages of those now because they're expensive and I don't want to veer off too hardcore. In the morning, an evening snack, or something like that.
That's when I'll eat berries. It's in the evening. If I do feel like something sweet, I have a handful or two of blueberries.
I was a bear in my former life. I know it for a fact because I can eat a whole container of blackberries in one sitting. I have no problem. Those things are addictive as hell. Speaking of that, have you seen the trailer of this new movie that's coming out, Cocaine Bear?
No. I heard about it in passing.
I've been dying to watch it.
My brother said it was Ray Liotta's last movie.
Ray Liotta died. He died making this?
I don't know if he died making this.
I don't know if this is true or not but it was based on a true story of some drug dealer. It says that it's a true story there. I'm already scared of bears. I don't need them on cocaine. Imagine if there was a meth bear. I've seen enough of the trailer. I expected something way better. The bear looks fake. I'm still going to watch it though.
With a title like that, how can you not expect something better?
It's a horror comedy.
It's like Sharknado.
That was not what I was expecting.
I was expecting something way darker and cool.
That was a bummer when he died. He's so cool.
I don't know if I'll spend my hard-earned money to see that.
I'll wait until that one comes out on the streaming services for free.
Hidden War: How Special Operations Game Wardens Are Reclaiming America's Wildlands From The Drug Cartels
I would imagine that happens with some wildlife. We had John Nores on. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He has written a couple of books like Hidden War. He was a California game warden that was your average game warden. He ended up fighting cartels and taking down illegal grow operations. They were using all these crazy pesticides and stuff. That's a great episode. I enjoyed that interview with him. He's a super cool guy. His main book is Hidden War but he has written a couple of others on that same issue. I would imagine that at some point some bears or some wildlife have been all coked out or on meth like some Breaking Bad stuff.
Those are Alabama bears.
This was in Tennessee.
It looked like it was a grizzly or a brown bear.
That's a Hollywood bear. They got little bears over there.
Have you seen those elephants that get trashed from that fermented fruit in Africa?
No.
It's so funny.
If you think about mushrooms, I'm sure there are a ton of animals out there that have eaten psychedelics. The hippos are on the shit too.
"They no longer have a zest for living like their country cousins out there in the inhospitable desert. Here, life offers no challenge. Many of them have become slobs and easy riders. The only excitement in their lives comes in high summer when the Marula trees are in full fruit. At first, the Marulas are very tasty and hard to get at. You have to be either agile or strong."
Is it just the fruit that ferments, and then they get wasted off of it? Everybody is wasted like monkeys.
I wonder what's in it. Is it alcohol?
Psychedelics?
It turns into alcohol. It's fermented.
How does it not kill them? Do you get alcohol poisoning from something fermented? Does it have to be concentrated and distilled?
I don't know but they're looking forward to it from what they were saying. It's once a year.
Who doesn't look forward to a good glass of whiskey?
I don't know that guy.
That's crazy. That’s wild. Drunk elephant fights would be bad outside of bars. One thing I've tailored off is alcohol. I haven't been drinking lately. When I do, I feel like shit. It's from eliminating all that stuff and then adding it back in. If I have a glass of whiskey, I'm paying for it the next day hard.
I notice a huge difference. It affects my sleep. I've got a pretty good tracker.
What do you use for your sleep tracker?
I've been using a WHOOP strap. It's a ton of great information.
Is it better than Garmin? I've always wondered that because I have a Garmin. You probably use a Garmin watch or something.
I have a Suunto watch. It's a little bit more detailed. They're relatively close but I've had two different situations of back-to-back nights within a minute of the same amount of sleep, one night with alcohol and one night without. It's not a lot of alcohol. We're talking about a glass of whiskey. Who doesn't like a glass of whiskey? My sleep numbers on that night when I drank were a night and day difference.
Sleep is so important too. It's overlooked sometimes. Is it tracking REM? It tracks everything because my watch breaks it down to REM sleep. Have you looked into what a normal human is supposed to get? Are you getting that?
I haven't. I'm not a good sleeper. I've always said that I don't need a lot of sleep but I need to treat my body in a way to where my sleep is higher quality if I'm going to get six hours of sleep in the night.
Even when you think you don't need a lot of sleep, you need to treat your body in a way that your sleep is of higher quality.
I did notice on this diet specifically that when I only meat, my sleep is great. If I add any carb or anything to that where I veered off a little bit like how I veered off from one of the kids' birthdays because they were on my ass, I felt like I drank a glass of whiskey. It affected my sleep at the same time too.
One of the things that I like about the WHOOP strap is that every morning after, it calculates your sleep. It has a questionnaire. You can tailor that questionnaire, "Did you drink alcohol? Did you take fish oil?" It goes through probably 100 different things that you did that day, "Did you commute to work? Did you work from home?" Every week and every month, it starts to put that data together and give you, "This is a detriment. This is a positive for your sleep."
That's cool. Do you wear the WHOOP strap during the day too?
I do.
Do you wear it constantly?
I've worn it every day now for almost a year.
I've always wondered about one. I haven't pulled the trigger. You like the other features and stuff. Does it track heart rate, heart rate variability, and all that stuff? Is it pretty accurate?
It does heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiration. It gives you a lot of data. After a long race, it will come back and show me those metrics. It will be red. My resting heart rate is high. If I'm sick, it does skin temperature. It's giving you all of that information.
I've always wondered about those. Are they super expensive? This isn't an advertisement for them either. I'm just trying to figure it out.
I got the device for free, and then it's a monthly subscription. It's about $1 a day.
That's not horrible.
It suspended my account for a day. I was back online reinstating my account. I got into that routine and that data. I'm trying to figure it out.
Do you base some of your training around that? I noticed training when you're already depleted or something like that. Are you tailoring some of your training around that data? Do you use some of that?
That was one of the reasons why I suspended my account. I'm like, "What am I doing with all of this data?" They sponsor a ton of pro-elite-level athletes. That's their job. If they've got a workout that they're supposed to do, and they had a poor recovery, they can put it off until tomorrow. I've got to get it in when I can. I'm not tailoring my workouts or having an easy day when it tells me I have a bad recovery because this is what my training plan shows. I've got to go to work. I have all these other responsibilities. Although the data is nice, I don't know what I'm getting out of it. Am I doing something productive with that data?
I got to the point where I stopped because it became a distraction. It was more time added to my day getting it set up. I used to wear a chest strap in the gym all the time. I used to track it on the watch. The only reason I wore the chest strap is that I found the watch wasn't as accurate heart rate-wise as the chest strap was. I don't even go into the gym and turn the watch on. I just go and work out. There's one person that made me realize this. I've been following this dude. I'm sure he is all roided out. It's Mike Van Wyck. This guy is massive. He breaks it down. Look up Wycked Training on YouTube.
He was a former bodybuilder but his whole thing is lifting properly. I've been trying to put back on some mass. He's like, "You don't build it by being in the gym for hours. You build it by working out hard. Your muscle is built on recovery outside of the gym. Why would you want to be at the gym for four hours? It's pointless. Get in there, work out, leave, recover, and then do it the next day or whatever you're going to do."
There are all these workouts. He's old school with it. It's more of an anatomy type of thing. He's showing you how to stretch out the muscles and get a full range of motion in them so you get the maximum amount of build. He's a Canadian powerlifter. I have noticed that I leave the gym a lot more sore by following some of his techniques than I would be going in and doing bench presses. There's a whole other level to it.
I feel like if you're doing an exercise and you're doing it correctly, it's one thing but if you're intentional about doing that exercise with good form and thinking about how that muscle is contracting and how that muscle is working, there's a lot more benefit in that than throwing weights around with good form but being in tune with what your body and your muscles are doing.
There are all these distractions in the gym now. It's not just the hot girl on the treadmill anymore. You have your phone and earbuds. You've got people in your way. They have social influencers that are doing their thing. This is why I built a home gym at home in my garage. One was COVID. I'm having all those distractions. Sometimes I'll listen to music but not very often. I'm trying to be in the moment with no distractions. You can put your phone down. Don't even have it around you because it's easy to pick it up.
The next thing you know, you're on Instagram for a minute and a half for what should have been a fifteen-second rest period. That adds a minute and a half to the time when you could have been working. It's that mentality. I started noticing things like that. When I come home at night, I put the phone away so I'm not on it in front of the kids when they want attention, especially with a four-year-old. She always wants attention. You know her too. She's a savage.
At the gym too, it's the same thing. It was like, "I'm doing this at home. I need to practice this at the gym." I put it away. I don't care if anybody calls me. They can wait for 45 more minutes. I'll be done. I can call them back. I don't need to check my email. Instead of thinking about in between, "I've got a resting period. I'm going to look at my phone," it's more about going through, "Did that feel right? What am I going to do next?" The pre-planning has helped me a bunch too.
I'm always wearing my heart rate strap. I could be on a run within a couple of beats what my heart rate is.
For cardio, it's good.
I will never look at my heart rate from a workout but I'm looking at the week as a whole. You're looking at the volume of that week. I look at that, "How did I perform versus last week or the week before? What was my full training load?"
That makes a lot of sense. I've never looked at it on a weekly basis. If I'm on the rower or the Airdyne bike, I don't because I know what my heart rate does on that thing. It's something where I need to keep pace. I don't know how accurate those things are. Sometimes I feel like I'm exerting a fuck ton, and my heart rate is still low. It's like, "I have to go harder." On the Airdyne bike, I know it's happening because everything is moving to get into those zones. I will wear my chest strap when I hop on that but as far as rolling around the gym, lifting, and that sort of stuff, it's a distraction for me. What do you have coming up? You ran an ultra in 2022.
I ran the High Lonesome 100 in July 2022. It's a spectacular race here in Colorado. Days later, I was in the pool getting into swim shape for Ironman. I ran a week later. I went right from 100-mile training to triathlon training. After the triathlon, I've been trying to enjoy a little bit of an off-season. I'm looking forward to 2023. I didn't have any luck in the lottery draws.
Explain that to me.
For Big Horn, you sign up. High Lonesome was a lottery.
Is that because so many people want to race in that race that they only have enough entries?
It's permitted through the forest service.
It's like a hunting license or something. They have to have a license to access the area.
High Lonesome is a 120-some entrance. It's pretty small. It was the Hardrock 100 lottery down in Silverton and Western States 100 out in California.
Is that something that you put in for every year? Do you get some preference points?
Western States is continuous years. The more years, the more tickets you have in that next year's lottery. Hardrock is the same way but it's not continuous years.
What do they do as far as an entry fee? Do you get part of that back? Is it a hunting license? We pay $7 or something to enter the draw. If you win the lottery or the draw or are awarded that, then you pay the full price up for your entry fee or out of the entry fee every year.
All of the 100s are a free lottery. In Hardrock and Western States, you have to run a qualifying race to be able to enter the lottery. They will send you an email if you get selected. You have a set time period to be able to sign up.
What's the workup into that? You have an ultra coming up. What are you doing prior to that? Do you start ramping up your runs? Do you try to get 100 miles in before you go on one of these 100-mile runs a couple of times?
It's very different from a marathon. If you're marathon training, you're going to run 20-miler to get ready for those 26.2 miles. In 100 training, that's pretty tough to do. You may have six weeks before you run a 50-mile race but the bread and butter of 100-mile training are back-to-back long runs. That second day when you go out, you should be fatigued already. You're going out on those fatigued legs and teaching your body to continue moving when you're tired.
How would you do that? You would break it up because you can't replicate exactly what you're doing. You would do a 20-miler and then do a 15 behind that or something the next day.
There's a twenty-miler the next day as well.
What support do you have? Are you solo when you go out and do these things?
Props to the guys and gals that go out and do them solo. They have drop bags out there with the race.
They go and pre-drop bags.
The race will. They will have aid stations. Some of them will have drop bags where you can pack your stuff. I am lucky. I've got an amazing group of friends that drop what they're doing and are happy to be out in the middle of the mountains. It will be mile 50. You look down. One of your buddies is taking your shoes and socks off, has baby wipes there, and is cleaning your feet for you.
That's a pretty good friend.
I've done it for friends before. That is not a fun job but they're out there doing whatever they need to. It's a selfless act of service. You can't do it alone. I need a team behind me, making sure that I have the things that I need and making sure that I'm taking care of myself, changing clothes, and getting the food that I need. You roll into an aid station. You want to sit down. They will take your pack and refill it with water and get you the food you need. They get you back out of there. Normally, in the second half of the race, it varies per race but then you can have a pacer with you.
Some of those guys will run with you for a portion of the race. That's helpful.
They see some dark times. At High Lonesome in 2022, I had a tibialis tendon. It felt like somebody was hitting me with a hot poker in it. I started at mile 53. At least I could climb. We had to climb up to the continental divide. I came to the next aid station. When I saw my crew, I wanted to quit. Another buddy picked me up. All we could do was walk but we kept moving forward, walking, trying to work through problems, problem-solving, and continuing forward. In the last twenty miles, I picked up another buddy who was going to pace me. He cracked one joke. It was off. We threw down for the last twenty miles.
What was the injury that you had?
It's tibialis tendonitis on the front of the shin bone. It's an overuse injury. I had a medic at one of the aid stations that asked me if I needed anything. He looked at it and helped me massage it out. I got back.
If they give you drugs, you can keep running.
They can give you ibuprofen and Tylenol. If you need an IV, you're done.
How long is this? It probably depends on the course because some are much harder than others but what does the day look like for you? Are you getting up at 4:00 in the morning and starting, and then you're done the next day at 4:00 in the morning? Is it a 24-hour period? How long are some of the times?
In some of the faster races, the pros will go for sixteen hours. You could be 24 to 36 hours.
What are you doing for sleep? Are you taking a nap anywhere in between?
I've thought about sleeping while running but at least I was with it enough to know how that was going to end. There's no sleep. If you're sleeping at an aid station, that's the beginning of the end.
As far as nutrition while you're on this run, you're burning an extensive amount of calories. How are you replacing those? Are you relying strictly on what's on your body as far as fat content?
You're never going to replace all the calories that you're burning. You're going to be in a deficit. It's anywhere from hydration drinks that have calories in them, bars, and chews. Gels in 100 usually don't work very well for me.
Those are the squeeze gels that you have on the run If you're doing a marathon or something like that. That's what they're designed for.
At Ironman, I specifically ate gels and pretty much gels only but that's an 11-hour event, not a 30-hour event.
What are you carrying with you at that point? You want to be as light as you can but you're also going through the elements of rain or snow. It depends on the time of the year.
A lot of races have mandatory gear and safety gear. You're carrying some food and bars. In the mountains, you're going to carry a waterproof jacket, gloves, and maybe a Buff. There are races where you have to carry an emergency bivy, an emergency whistle, and waterproof pants. The list goes on and on of things that you will have to carry. I'm always looking forward to the aid stations because they will have real food and bacon.
I was in an aid station this summer at High Lonesome. This volunteer asked me, "Would you like a piece of pizza?" We were in the middle of nowhere. I'm like, "Yes, I would." She goes, "Do you want pepperoni or cheese?" I'm like, "How do I have a choice? We're a long way from the nearest road. You're cooking up pizza in two different kinds." I went with pepperoni.
You have to have some meat on there. That's pretty ambitious of her. Does she have a pizza oven out there?
I have no idea. I had my issues at that point. The next aid station had a charcuterie board.
What the hell is that?
It's meat with hard bread and cheese. It was good.
Do you stop for a second, change your socks, and then you're back on?
I usually change socks and shoes once or maybe twice in an aid station. If your crew is not there, concentrate on eating real food. It helps your stomach get together.
Concentrate on eating real food. It’s the most satisfying thing in the world when you do.
Is that the most satisfying thing in the world when you do that?
Absolutely.
It's like getting new tires on the car.
On some of those long gigs, I would pack an extra pair of socks. If you're working a 24-hour day, change your socks in 12 hours. You're a brand-new man. It was years ago.
It was about the time I heard about 100-mile races. I'm running down a rail trail. It's paved. I see this old guy. I catch up to him and start talking to him. I cannot remember the guy's name. He had run tons of endurance events. I told him that I was interested in running 100s. We're chatting about it. He goes, "I'm going to give you one piece of advice. When you run one, pack a toothbrush." In the middle of the night, you brush your teeth. You talk about a new man. You put on new socks and brush your teeth because you're eating sugar and all this junk all day.
Not to mention what's going on, I'm sure at some point, you're getting cottonmouth and all that other stuff from dehydration.
After a race like that, my mouth hurts. You would think you want to go and have Chipotle burritos or something. It hurts so bad.
Your face is probably fatigued too. If you think about it, the new thing in CrossFit is to wear a mouthpiece so you're not grinding your teeth because a lot of those people are exerting so much all the time. They're starting to have teeth issues. It's another reason. Do they make any running mouthpieces or anything?
I don't think so. At first, I thought it was dirt because I normally trail race but I had it after Ironman in 2022. It's 24 hours. All you want to do is eat. It is excruciating. You would rather be out there at mile 90 again. There's less pain running around mile 90.
When you're lifting or something, there's a lot of exertion that's going on in your face and all those muscles. I never thought about that.
It could be something to do with that because anytime there's a race photographer, I always have a dumb look on my face, "Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. I hope you didn't want me to buy that picture."
You're probably not smiling at that point. How many of these races have you done? How long do you anticipate doing this? How many are you doing a year?
I do one 100 a year. It's tough. I've come to learn that I can be back to running after a week but it takes a full 30 days. If you know your body, you're not right for at least 30 days even from a sleep deprivation standpoint. One is enough. I've talked to my doctor about it. He's like, "There are probably better things that you could do but one is okay." I enjoyed that Ironman. That was relatively low-impact and a shorter day. I would like to supplement the 100s with that and lay out my season of one Ironman and one 100.
Going from running a 100-mile race to an Ironman or a normal marathon, does a normal marathon feel boring as shit to you now? Is it way easier because of the mental aspect of it? I'm putting words into your mouth. Running a 100-mile race is not only physically challenging. I don't think it's more mental than physical but there's a huge part of it that's mental. I'm sure that you want to quit. I want to quit after running a mile sometimes.
Here's the mental side of it. If I go out for a 10-mile run, I get to about mile 9, and I'm thinking, "What am I going to eat for breakfast? I'm ready to be done." If I do a twenty-mile run or a marathon, I'm ready to be done at the end of it. Where's your head at going into it? I'm going to run 100 miles. It's going to be a long 30-hour day.
A good friend of mine back in the day and I always used to say, "You should always be able to run a marathon. You should be in marathon shape. If you have to run one, you should be able to do it." I thought about that and came up with this challenge. It's a month of marathons. Starting in January 2023, every month, you didn't have to run a race. You had to log 26.2 miles in one session. I rolled into the Ironman and came off that 112 miles on the bike. I was like, "All I have to do is run a marathon."
That's a sick thought.
It almost made it to where it's like, "I've done 9 or 10 of those at that point. I can do one more." It's all mental. You talked about friends helping you through a 100-mile race. It's interesting. I've had more friends doing 100-mile races now.
It has turned into a whole culture now. Social media has driven it through the roof.
Ultra Marathon: More people are doing 100-mile races now. It’s turned into a whole culture, with social media driving it through the roof.
It's more mainstream than you would think it is but I've been able to see the other side of a race. If you're crewing somebody, you're pretty sleep-deprived as well but you're seeing the looks on people's faces at mile 98 or 99. What's interesting is when you're standing there at the finish, waiting for your runner, and seeing other people finish, they go from looking like death. They can barely walk. When they get to that last twenty yards, they're running it in. You see that there's always something more in there. This guy went from hardly being able to walk to sprinting across the finish line. They crossed the finish line, and then they're back to that death state but it showed me you're not God.
If you dangle that carrot or if there's some incentive or something right in front of you, you can change. I would imagine that some of that is an adrenaline dump at some point, "I finished this."
There are a lot of emotions at the end of a race like that.
Hunter did an Ironman.
I missed it. I need to reach out to Hunter.
He's a yolk dude. To do that, he's carrying a lot of weight. It was on his Instagram. I saw a story or something. He didn't train for it. He completed it. He didn't break any records or anything. In the last run, he was starting to break down. He was charging right through it but he was talking to somebody, "I feel myself breaking down. This is what's happening. I should have prepared better for this."
I should be better at that. I've taken a break from social media. I apologize, Hunter if you're reading this. We love you, buddy.
I don't know where it was though. They go on all over the place. I'm sure it wasn't the same one as Jay.
Lately, I've been over social media. I don't know if it's my feeds or the algorithms that I'm getting. I love seeing my friends. I love seeing them do stuff but I'm starting to get all these ads when I'm scrolling through it. I have to be on it for the show and my personal stuff. I do have some responsibility for being on there from a business standpoint. I have to be on there for some things but there's propaganda on there now all the time.
A lot of the people that we have had on this show are former operators and stuff like that. I don't know if it's because I'm following them that I start getting all this shit about Ukraine. Some of it is a nuclear threat, this, or that. I don't want to look at this. I'm only looking at it at certain times of the day. Before you came in, I was trying to get some pre-production stuff for this one. I noticed you're not on social media anymore. What's up with that?
There was no good in it for me.
I thought it was me. I thought I couldn't find it. I'm like, "Idiot, he's right here. You've seen him before."
I remember you went off, and then I was trying to search again. I was like, "He dumped his account a while back."
It's a waste of time. I have better things to do.
You're not trying to be one of these influencers or anything. You're pretty set in life. You know what you like to do. One thing I love about you is you're very humble. You're not a guy that's like, "This is what I do." I have to pry information out of you, Jay.
I'm not good enough to have any influence.
I beg to differ.
There are a lot of people out there that do what I do.
You inspire me. There are some good qualities in social media on that side like the inspiration, the letters that we get even being on this, the people, and the feedback that we get, "So-and-so is awesome. Thank you for having them on as a guest. I learned a lot about X, Y, or Z." There's a ton of that. Social media has inspired me to do different things.
There are a lot of people out there that are inspiring on social media. I've got a close group of people. We live in a small community. I feel like I have an influence on those people. In my first 100, I lost a pacer two weeks before the race. Long story, I end up calling a new neighbor of ours because my wife had run with the wife of that household. She was pretty strong. She agreed to pace me. She had no idea what she was getting herself into. She did 17 to 18 miles. I tricked her with ultra-math because you round down this number and up this number. She said, "I'll do it for you but I want you to get my husband in shape." They had moved here from the East Coast.
It was years ago. In September 2022, I paced him for the last 31 miles of his first 100-mile run across the finish line. I looked at her and said, "That debt is repaid. I don't owe anything anymore." It's to have an influence over somebody like that. He's down 40 pounds. It's a completely different lifestyle. It's to have an effect on somebody that you love like that. I like my close circle. I always tell people, "I've been a bad influence a lot of times in my life but now, I try and be an influence for good." I feel like I have a bigger impact on that close circle of people in my life.
You've had an impact on me. It's me knowing you, being around you, and having our kids play soccer together and stuff. I was like, "I should be in better shape. I should be in shape like Jay." Years ago, there was a different Jay.
Years ago, in September, my wife and I got married. We got pregnant on our honeymoon. I stepped off the plane, got home, and jumped on the scale. I was 252 pounds. Now, I'm back to 80.
How tall are you?
I'm 6'5.
I forgot you're taller than I am.
When we found out we were pregnant, I knew I was unhealthy. That was the catalyst for me to change.
Having a kid is an eye-opening thing. That was the biggest thing for me. Taking this drastic change was like, "Everything that I've been trying for the last five years is not working. I want to be around for my kids. I need to take this seriously and seek help."
You want to be a good influence on your kids. My son ran his first half-marathon. That was a goal that he set back in January 2022. It wasn't a race. It was just him and I out on the trails. If he wanted to walk a hill or walk a flat, I didn't care. We had snacks. He went out and did it in three hours. You see him on the soccer field. I'll see his coach ask him if he needs to come out. He's like, "No." He will come to me after school, "Dad, can we go down to the gym and work out?" "Buddy, we can."
You don't ever want to be that guy that's like, "I'm too tired to do this or that. Not now. It's too cold." There are 1 million excuses. You start ingraining that in them. That's one way I feel. I try to be as active and proactive as I can too, "Do you want to shoot your bow? What do you want to do?"
When left to their devices, they are going to be on their devices. Even my kids and the way they eat, I've spent a lot of time talking to them about their diet and what it does to their body, not from a thin standpoint but, "You need to fuel your body if you want to be good at dancing like my daughter or if you want to be good at soccer and basketball." You can't tell them that.
This summer, we were watching the Tour de France. My son looked at me and goes, "Dad, you would be beating all those guys." I had to laugh. They're the greatest cyclists in the world. I would still be back at the start line but for them to look at you that way and be able to go out and play soccer and basketball. It's not uncommon to knock out that twenty-mile run. You still have to be a dad for the rest of the day. You've got to treat your body in a way. Hopefully, everybody else sees that as well.
It's super important too. One thing that gets lost in being a parent or having an outside job is taking care of yourself first before taking care of others. Maybe you're not even a parent but you've got a dog. When you're on the plane, you're supposed to put your mask on first. That's one way to look at it too. That's one thing that I struggled with. I still struggle with that. I always want to please somebody else before myself. That's a definite struggle. Do you find that at all? There's only so much time in a day and your lifetime. How do you balance that with what you're doing?
It's those morning workouts. It's fitting it in where I can.
It's getting up before they're up.
I was getting ready for Ironman. I run at 5:30 in the morning. Everybody is in bed by 9:00. You're down on the bike trainer in the basement riding for an hour or an hour and a half. It's sneaking a quick lifting session in at lunch. It's going to the pool at lunch.
You can eat your lunch on the clock. I used to do that all the time. I could eat in 5 minutes and work out for 55.
Jay, what was the first step that 250 you did? What was the first step that you took?
I started running. I dabbled in running before, and then I had a couple of injuries. I got out of that routine and then started learning more about the nutrition side. That has been quite a journey in learning because there's a lot of bad information out there. It's easy to get sucked into some of those beliefs.
There are some of those influencers too. Some of them don't always have the best information. We brought this up in the last episode. Some of them are portraying certain things that are not smart.
I've had a saying. “Listen to everybody and follow no one.”
We're all different.
A diet or exercise plan works for me. It's not going to work for everybody but still listen, get that information, vet it, and maybe even try it. Everybody has to find their path.
That is so true. Diets are almost like a little cult, whether you're vegan, keto, or this paleo thing. There's the whole war going on against vegans and carnivore people. It's ridiculous. It's stupid, honestly. That was one of the coolest things with all the doctors and nutritionists that I've worked with. Everybody is different. These guys work with pro athletes all the time. Not every pro athlete is the same. Some of them eat this for their diet. Some of them need more of this. Some of them need this to feel better. Some of them need this to function better cognitively so they can strategize better.
There's a whole science that goes behind it. There's a lot that has been figured out but on an individual basis, you can't take a DNA test. Maybe you can but a lot of what's out there is bullshit. You can take a DNA test that tells you exactly what you need to eat, what time, and when. A lot of it is figuring it out for yourself and what makes you feel good. That's why I grabbed onto that elimination diet. The proof is in the pudding.
A lot of people don't know how they should feel. They're not in tuned enough with their bodies.
You have to go through a hard reset to figure that out. I don't think that your body is probably used to certain habits too. If you decide, "I'm going to deprive myself of sugar," you're not depriving yourself. Say, "I'm going to cut out sugar. I'm going to try this for a week." Your body is still adjusting. Maybe you're gaining weight now because your body is like, "What the fuck is going on?" It takes longer periods to figure something out like 90 or 100 days. Try to go to the gym every day for 5 minutes for 90 or 100 days and then figure out, "How has this affected me?"
Everybody wants a quick fix now, "I'm going to follow what this influencer says because they look good with their shirt off."
I feel like more and more, we're dialing it back. That's one thing. Mike Van Wyck is like, "There are all these influencers doing all these crazy lifts with these crazy cables, upside down rows, and all this stuff. Pick up the bar and lift it. You are getting bored with the normal but this is it. This is what you need to do to be successful. You're not gaining anything by holding one dumbbell and curling the other one. That muscle is not active at all." It makes so much more sense. It's thinking about it from an outside perspective a little bit like that. It's more time and work.
It's back to the basics.
Consistency is huge too.
You should get your head tattooed.
How about the throat? The old Mike Tyson face tattoo was a classic. Does he still have that thing on his face?
Yeah.
He's a savage. That guy is hilarious though. Have you seen any of his stand-ups or anything? He does stand-up comedy.
I saw that he and Holyfield are putting out ear-shaped gummies.
They're weed gummies. I saw a meme. Somebody sent me this. They photoshopped Steven Tyler and Mike Tyson. I was dying laughing. It's hilarious. What do you got coming up next, Jay? What's on the horizon?
After no luck in lottery draws, it's trying to figure it out now. In 2023, I might try and do a flat faster 100. Everyone I've ever done has been in the mountains with 16,000 to 22,000 feet of climbing in it. It would be cool to see how fast I could go. I've done 100 in under 24 hours.
Did we talk about the last time you were in? That was years ago. Can you believe that? The last time that you were in here has gone by so fast. Have you done the Rim-to-Rim by then? I didn't go back. I should have gone back and listened to it but I can't listen to my old podcaster. I get discouraged. You should go back and listen to it. I'm sure that you were great at it.
I did Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim in 2019.
It was pre-pandemic. I wonder if we talked about it. That was so long ago. You ran the Grand Canyon from one rim to the other in a certain spot.
You normally start in the South because you're doing it usually in early spring. We did it in early spring. The South side is still open year-round. You start on the South side. There are two trails. There's South Kaibab and Bright Angel on the other one.
Is this a common thing? Is it on Strava or something like that where it's a popular run?
It's pretty popular. You run down to the river and then run back up to the North side, which is closed. You get up to the North side. There's a sign that says, "Do not attempt to exit this way." It's 38 miles to the nearest service.
You have to come back.
It's eerie over there. You refuel, turn around, run back, and do it again.
How many miles was that?
We went down Bright Angel and then came back up to South Kaibab. It was 47 miles.
Are you experiencing the boroughs coming down the trail? Is it more of not a touristy spot?
In the mornings, they go down South Kaibab. We went down Bright Angel.
Those trails are not as big as you think.
Running across one of those mule trains would be horrible.
As far as running, there are not a whole lot of safety rails or anything like that.
There's nothing. Maybe up at the parking lot, there's a safety rail or so, especially over on that North side. If you fall off, you're done.
You're running across this. I would imagine that going down would be the real issue but in coming back up, there's more stability there. Do you find that running uphill as opposed to downhill? A lot of those 100 miles that you're running are in the mountains. You're going over the continental divide or at elevation.
You would imagine going down a mountain would be the real issue, but coming back up takes more stability.
Running downhill, you're going faster. If you're worried about a trip and fall and falling off a cliff, it's probably going to be going downhill. In a race that long, you're going to hike a lot of your climbs. It's more efficient. It's almost as fast. It's less effort. You're moving fast.
You can keep a faster pace. I would imagine some of the spots. Do you ever get into a climbing situation at all where you're on all fours at some point to get over something?
In some adventure runs where you have training in the high country with buddies, you might run across. There are people that are doing more of that stuff but it's not necessarily a run at that point. It's more of a scramble.
I was wondering about some of those trails. What is the most hardcore 100-miler out there in your opinion?
Here in the States, it would be Hardrock here in Colorado, down in Silverton. The cutoff is 48 hours. You have 48 hours to complete the race. It's 33,000 or 32,000 feet of climbing. You summit a fourteener.
I don't think people realize how much elevation climb that is, too because the air gets thinner as you go too. It gets harder.
We're sitting. You have 24% less oxygen at sea level.
It has a 66,394 elevation change.
At 8,000, you have 24% less.
We will call it 7,300 feet. You're about 76%. There's 23% or 24% less oxygen than at sea level.
It only got doubled by the time you go to 14,000 or 13,000.
I looked at that not too long ago.
I didn't realize it was that much. It's 24%. How did you figure that out?
My watch tells me. I'm not that smart.
That's one thing that your watch tells you.
It's going off the elevation.
That's pretty wild though. I didn't realize it was that much. Those numbers are pretty high. You don't need any chart or anything to know. Once you get above 10,000 feet, there's a drastic change. People get sick coming to Evergreen. I've seen people pass out on the sidewalk. I'm like, "What's wrong with you?" They're like, "I don't know."
Either of my cars is up over the pass.
It's anything that's carbureted.
It's not even carbureted.
You have to change the jets in a dirt bike, all that stuff, and the carburetors.
It's no joke. That's why when we go on the road and spend a month, I always bitch at you about this. I'm like, "I've been in Florida for three weeks." When I come back home, I feel like I got my ass kicked.
I noticed it for a couple of days too. If I'm gone for a good 10 or 12 days and I come back, I notice it in the first couple of days that I go to sea level. I'm a rockstar. Do you want to go drinking? What do you want to do? Let's party. I don't need sleep or anything.
That was at Cozumel at the Ironman. There's so much oxygen down there. I remember at the end of the swim. I was pushing pretty hard because I started the swim slowly. I eased into it. I was like, "What am I doing? Let's go." I was moving pretty well. A wave hit me. I couldn't get the breath on that. When I went to breathe, I was like, "There's no problem. We will get it on the next one. It's fine."
You're so oxygen-saturated at that point.
That's wild.
I don't know if those guys at the gym still do this because they're starting to have problems. There are altitude training masks that they used to wear at fight gyms and stuff. I was like, "This guy is crazy." You're already exerting. I don't know if that can be good for you.
I don't know if that's a good thing.
I wonder if they're still making those or not.
Eric would weigh in on that one.
There's a huge difference but I'll tell you one thing that fucks with me even living in altitude or something. If you get humidity and heat mixed together like South Florida or something in the middle of summer where it's 95 degrees and 95% humidity, that air is hard to breathe.
It's almost work to take the air in because it's so thick.
It feels like you're cooking from the inside out. You might as well be in a steamer at that point or something. I've always found that to be worse conditions for me as far as feeling. Maybe it's because I'm used to thin and dry air or something like that.
I was surprised. Before I left to go to Mexico for that race, my last run here was eight degrees. I went down to Mexico. It was a high 80s heat index. It feels like 98. It didn't affect me but this summer, in June 2022, we were on a family vacation down in Florida. The first morning, I went for a run and wore a shirt. I'm like, "I'm not doing that for the rest of the week. I'll run but there's going to be no shirt involved." It is tough to breathe.
How awesome does your skin feel when you go to Florida and Mexico? I would love it.
I don't mind having moisture. I've been outside so much and stuff lately. It gets so dry. They start cracking. It's hard if you're working with your hands at all. You're fucked here.
My feet and my heels will start cracking.
I use O'Keeffe's. It's a hand cream and stuff. They make one for your feet. That's a game-changer. If you have problems with cracking feet or something like that, that has changed me big time. I put that on religiously in the morning. Anytime I put on socks, I put that on first. It's a pain in the ass. It sucks because it gets all over your hands and shit.
If you don't, those cracks take a long time to heal.
At jiu-jitsu, I bought some jiu-jitsu booties because I was bleeding all over the nuts. That's bad enough there. It covers up some ugly feet. My feet are how I maintain distance. People are like, "What is wrong with you?"
"What happened to you?"
Running 100 miles.
"That man has talons."
Try marrying a prima ballerina. You want to talk about fucked up feet. You don't marry a ballerina for their feet. That's for sure. Jay, let's wrap this up. This has been awesome.
There's a time warp in this place.
There seriously is. Time flies by. It has been awesome having you back. I would say, "Go ahead and drop your social handles," but there aren't any.
That must feel good.
I'm on Strava.
There you go. Are you still training people too?
I am not.
Go ahead and drop the Strava.
It's Jay Steinberg. Look for me here in Evergreen. We're big-buck bandits. We're out there training every day, having fun, and supporting each other. I've got a great group of friends here. I appreciate all of them and everything that we do for each other. It's super special.
That's awesome. It's a great network up here. Jay, thanks for being part of this too. I always love having you. I'll be seeing you. I see you around all the time, not as much anymore as we used to because our kids were on the same soccer team and all that stuff.
My daughter's dance has changed. I usually see you when I'm going to the high school to drop somebody off, and you're coming in here.
I'm always in here. Jay, thanks. I appreciate it. I always enjoy having you. I love having you as a friend.
Thanks.
Important Links
Jay Steinberg - Strava
Episode two - Previous episode
John Nores - Previous episode
Mike Van Wyck - Instagram
Wycked Training - YouTube
last episode - past episode