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All right, we're back in the saddle to talk to you a little bit about my failed attempt at running 100 mile race, which literally turned into a 40 mile walk. But before I do that, I want to talk about this whole concept of back in the saddle. When I originally came up with the solo podcasts, starting with from the Saddle or Being Back in the Saddle, it was prior to committing to riding my bike 2000 miles from Mexico to Canada. And the saddle now has a very negative connotation to me because most cyclists call the bike seat the saddle, which to me, I have no understanding as to why still logically doesn't make any sense to me, but it has caused an immense amount of pain for me day in and day out. But I'm going to stick with it. We're back in the saddle now. When I set out to run this a hundred mile race, I was doing it because one of my good friends was running this 100 mile race the year before. He had done a 60 mile race. I had paced him for about the last 13 mil. He was committing to running a hundred mile race again this year. My initial response was, I am not doing this. I've done two marathons. I promised to myself I would never do it again. Uh, but he talked me into it. But I made the commitment to run a hundred mile race with one stipulation and that was that I was not going to train for it. I had set my mind that I was able to do it without training at all. Now, to give you some context, this a hundred mile race was the first weekend of February. And, and the last time I had run leading up to the race was at the end of November. And the furthest I ran in the entire part leading up to the a hundred mile race was three miles. So here I am, a guy who hasn't trained at all to run a a hundred mile race, who hasn't run in over eight weeks trying to run a hundred mile race, and a guy who the furthest he ran prior to it only did three miles. And as I reflect on this failed attempt at the a hundred miles, I really extracted from it three core lessons. And I'm going to give you a little bonus four at the end. But I want to share with you the three lessons I learned on this journey, which actually turned into a 40 mile walk through the woods. The first lesson I learned is that ambition is cheap and preparation is expensive. Signing up for the a hundred mile race was exciting. Telling people what I was doing was exciting. Watching people's response to hearing the fact that I wasn't training was exciting. But actually putting in the boring miles to train while nobody was watching, I realized was the price of admission. I paid some of that price, a whopping three miles of it, but I didn't pay at all. And what I really recognized was with this bike ride coming up, a 2000 mile journey, the preparation that was going to be required to do this on a much bigger scale for a much bigger cause was going to cost me a lot more time and a lot more energy. And from failing at running the hundred mile race, I recognize just the level of commitment that I was willing to make to train for the bike ride. For instance, this morning I got to the office a little after 3:30 and I knocked out four hours on the trainer prior to the day even beginning now. Four hours might sound like a lot of time to you on a bike, but in reality, with this bike ride coming up, I have committed to riding 150 miles on day, on, on average every day for 13 days in a row. If I can average 15 miles an hour with the hills, with the headwinds, with all of the conditions that are going to be thrown my way, that means there will be 10 hours a day on the bike. And that does not take into the account that I'm going to stop and hydrate and eat and use the restroom and all of those things. So four hours in the grand scheme of the universe is a long time on the bike. But when you look at what I'm gonna do, four hours is not that much time. But again, from this hundred mile race, which was a 40 mile walk through the woods, I learned that ambition is cheap. It is one thing to talk about doing something, it is a whole nother to actually committing at the level required to do the thing you're telling everybody. So many people love living a life where they have ambition and they get rewarded for their ambition, not the results. People give them applause, people give them congratulations and they just live their entire life from ambition to ambition to ambition, without ever actually accomplishing anything. Now my 40 mile walk taught me that the preparation, the most expensive part of the mission to doing anything you want to do in life is the most important part. And if you take shortcuts, you will pay for it eventually. So you might as well pay the price of admission for preparation on the front side so that on the back side, you're not paying it in pain, in suffering or in defeat like I did. Now on this 40 mile walk, it started off perfectly well, except for the Fact that we didn't have water and we didn't eat breakfast. But other than that, it started off perfectly. We were averaging a 14, 15 mile pace. There was a ton of people everywhere. It wasn't really as exciting or as exhilarating as I thought it was going to be, but everything started off good. About two, three miles in, a guy was running alongside of us, tripped and fell on a rock because of course, I didn't just sign up for a hundred mile race, I signed up for a hundred mile race that was through the woods, five 20 mile loops. And so there was rocks, there was roots, there was stumps, there was leaves, there was soft ground, hard ground. It was crazy. And I didn't understand how much energy and focus would be required for me to make sure that I didn't get injured. And little did I know, I didn't have the ability to focus on not tripping and getting injured. At mile seven, I stepped on a tree root, more like a stump, and rolled my ankle. Now, I don't tie my shoes when I run and I think it was a blessing that my shoes weren't tied because had they been tied, I probably would have snapped my ankle. But by rolling my ankle on that tree root or on that stump, I tweaked my knee and I was able to power through it for a short amount of time. But what happened was because I had pain in my knee, I changed the gait or I changed my stride when I was running, which ultimately then put stress on my Achilles tendon. So by mile 10, I was not in a good place physically. Mentally, I was in a great spot. Fueling wise, I got myself in a good spot through the first two aid stations. But physically, the pain I was feeling in my knee was not comfortable. And the pain I was feeling in my Achilles tendon was not good either. Just to give you some context, this was in my left knee and my left Achilles. Couple years ago though, I ruptured my right Achilles twice. And so I am probably a little oversensitive to the feelings and the sensations and the noises of the Achilles tendon because the last thing I want to do is hear that popping sound again in the back of my leg. And so from about mile 10 till about mile 20, I just kept pushing through the pain. It was a lot of run, walk, run, walk, run, walk. But we just kept moving and from a pacing perspective, we were doing just fine. And when I say me, Logan, content guy, camera guy, he was along with me for the journey because he thought it would be a Fun idea for us to do it together. I think he later regretted that, but we were doing great. We got through the first loop. So 20 miles in, got to the aid station, got some food, got some water, had some conversations with Rob, the crew chief, who's also crewing the the ride, had some conversations with my wife. And I just basically said, like, I'm gonna keep going, but I'm in some serious pain. And I told Rob and I told Melissa leading up to it, I want you guys to push me as hard as you possibly can without sacrificing the upcoming bike ride. And the one thing I'm very sensitive to is my Achilles tendon. Now, I had thought the one I ruptured twice before was going to be the one to bring me all the problems and the issues, but nonetheless, I do not want to rupture my Achilles tendon again. It is not a fun recovery process. And that noise, that feeling, that sensation is something that has stuck with me ever since. To this day, I'm not a big fan of box jumps. To this day, I'm not a big fan of running uphill or even walking up steep hills. It's just hearing that gunshot in the back of your leg and feeling that pain is not something I would wish on my greatest enemy. It's a miserable experience. So we're about 20 miles in, and the pain's real, but we're continuing to go, like, beautiful day, and just finding joy and gratitude in the opportunity to be out there. And as I kept pushing forward, the pain got worse and worse and worse. By about mile 30, I had recognized that if I was going to get this hundred miles done, I was going to basically have to walk the entire time, because the only time that I didn't feel this shooting pain in my knee or this clicking and grinding in my Achilles was when I was walking. But as I went up hills, my Achilles felt as though there was, like, gum on it. It was very, like, clicky and stretchy. And so I started walking uphill sideways because I was super paranoid that I was gonna pop it again. When I saw Rob and Melissa again at about that 30ish mile aid station, Rob had given me some walking poles. Rob came to the race far more prepared than I did, by the way. Like, I literally showed up with two pairs of shoes, a backpack, and a couple snacks. Like, I just thought that my ambition would get me through at that. Mile 30 was when I really started to wrestle with this idea of. Of quitting, of, am I truly going to make it? And as I was walking from mile 30 to mile 40. What I recognized in that moment was lesson number two, which is failure is information. It's not my identity. I rolled my ankle at mile seven. I tapped out just after mile 40. And from about mile 30 till about mile 40, I was convinced in my own head that I had failed, that I was gonna fail, that I wasn't gonna get this done. But as I got closer and closer to mile 40, I started to challenge the definition that I was giving. Failure. And I started to ask myself, is this truly failure or is this just feedback? My body was telling me exactly where the gaps were between who I wanted to be, which is a man who ran the a hundred mile race without training at all and what I had actually prepared for, which was I am not training for the a hundred mile race. And as I got to the aid station at that 20 mile mark again, which at this time was mile 40, I was convinced that even if I didn't achieve this, failure was not going to be my identity. Because I think there's so much information and wisdom that can come from quote, unquote failure that can allow us to have more awareness and more information for the next opportunity that shows up in our life to choose. As I got through that second aid station, which was mile 40, I was still pretty committed to getting it done. From a pace perspective. It was going to be tight. You have 32 hours to finish this race and I needed to average somewhere around a 15 to 16 minute mile from mile 40 to mile 100. The sun was still up, it was still beautiful outside. I had night coming up and then all day the next day to still get this done. And I was doing some calculations in my head realizing like I wasn't really going to be able to stop at the aid stations at all. And because of how I was feeling, I wasn't going to be able to run. So I was going to have to walk at a pretty gingerly pace for the entire time without stopping. Like, yeah, I could take a quick bathroom break, yeah, I could take a quick stop to fill my water bottles, but I couldn't have any meaningful rest. I just had to keep going. Coming out of, of Aid Station 2, I guess at, at the 20 mile mark. So again we're at, we're at 40 miles. I was walking, I was actually eating a hamburger and a man came up alongside me and he had these, these walking poles and he was moving pretty good. And we started going up a hill and we started chatting and I started going up the hill sort of sideways. And. And he said, hey, man, are you okay? I said, yeah, yeah, I'll be all right. Just my Achilles is giving me problems. And this man asked me in that moment a very simple but yet incredibly powerful question. He said, well, what's your goals? I said, well, look, dude, I really want to finish this 100 mile race without training at all, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the next mission for it. And in that moment, he said, well, tell me about this next mission. What is this next mission? And I began to tell him about my plan to ride my bike 2000 miles from Mexico to Canada in an effort to raise a million dollars to spotlight overlooked communities and provide direct impact to the people living inside of them. And as I told him what I was up to, he literally looked at me and said, what in the bleep are you doing out here? I said, look, man, I'm a goal oriented human being. I set the goal. I have a plan. I'm going to get this done. He's like, no, let me tell you my story. He said, two years earlier, I was running this same race. I was just past the 60 mile mark. It was the middle of the night. Everything was going perfect. My body felt good, my fueling felt good. I was on a great pace. Everything was going perfect. Until it wasn't. I stepped on a rock, rolled my ankle, and not just rolled it, I snapped it and had to drop out with a broken ankle. He's like, if everything is going perfectly for you, there is still a giant risk on this course in these woods that your next mission is going to be compromised. Get off of the course. Your next mission is far more important. And I wouldn't necessarily have taken his feedback so intensely had he not also, in that moment, messaged his wife to make a donation to the ride. He was so inspired by what we were doing, he literally pulled out his phone to message his wife and tell her, hey, go to gobundance.com, backslash the ride. Let's make a donation. What this guy is up to is really cool. Turns out he was actually getting ready to be deployed. Lives in clean Texas. And he said if he would have been stateside while I was doing the ride, he was really going to ride with me. But unfortunately he was being deployed two weeks prior to when we kick off the ride at the end of May this year. And as he talked to me and I contemplated this idea of quitting, I realized this third lesson, which is quitting once doesn't mean I'm a quitter. Stopping that day was not going to define who I was as a human being. Stopping that day was actually more powerful from a statement perspective as to who I am and what I stand for than continuing to push forward. Now, I think once you quit, what you do next is what matters the most. Do you retreat from the arena or do you adjust and come back stronger? You see, most people I believe, quit and then disappear. They don't quit, stay in the arena and then come back stronger. So I made it my mission to quit the 100 mile race, which again was a 40 mile walk in the woods and stay in the in the arena. Talk about the failures, quote, unquote, talk about the quitting, quote unquote and use it as a way to gain more information. Because I made a commitment to myself in that moment that just because I quit this hundred mile race that I didn't train for, didn't mean I was a quitter forever. It actually meant that I had an issue with the goals that I had set for my life, which is the fourth bonus lesson that I took from this whole experience. And that forced lesson was really this concept of conflicting goals. I really started to contemplate this idea of conflicting goals around the 28, 29 mile mark. As I started to really feel more pain and started to just continue to walk further and further and further, I began asking myself why I thought it was a good idea to run a hundred mile race that I didn't train for on the heels or on the front side of a 2,000 mile bike ride, all for a cause and a mission bigger than myself. I asked myself why every year when I set goals, I didn't pause and go through them and not look at them as individual goals, but ask myself collectively which one of these goals is in contradiction or is conflicting with another goal that I've set for my life. And as I was having this conversation again with myself in the woods because nobody was around, I really learned that moving forward in my life, I am going to pause after setting a goal before putting it in stone and ask myself what does this goal and the commitment to this goal and the preparation required for this goal contradict with? And if it contradicts with anything, I'm going to have to have a hard conversation with myself in that moment as to which one of these is more important. Because I truly believe you can have an abundant life. I truly believe you can have it all. But I also recognized from my 40 mile walk that if you want to have it all, you are going to have to jeopardize or put in conflict some of the things you say you desire from life. Now, looking back, my wife asked me on the way home if I would do anything different. My answer, of course, because I'm a stubborn individual, was no. And the reason is because I truly think that the lessons I gained walking those 40 miles in the woods were lessons that I would not have been able to gain any other way. If you would have told me 12 months ago that ambition is cheap and preparation is expensive, I probably would have argued that. I probably would have said ambition isn't cheap either. Because I like to think of myself as a high integrity individual, which means when I have ambition and I communicate what I want to do, I'm going to do it. But I learned from this hundred mile race that ambition is cheap and that the preparation is expensive. Because when you're putting in those miles to train, when nobody is watching, when nobody's standing at a finish line to clap for you and there's no aid stations out there, it is really hard to stay on the path of preparation. It's expensive. The other thing I would have tell you, I would have said there is such a thing as failure, but only if you stop trying. Like failure only occurs if when you get knocked down, you stay knocked down. I would have never contemplated this idea that failure is only information. It's not your identity. And this walk, this walk in the woods taught me that. And the last thing I would say is I never would have truly understood that. Quitting doesn't define me. And quitting once doesn't mean I'm a quitter. I don't like to quit. I don't like to give up on things. I don't like to give in. I mean, when I ran the second marathon, which was a Chicago marathon, I was having a ton of ankle pain during training. And so I actually stopped training leading up to the race because I'm a stubborn individual. I ran that whole marathon just like I did the other one, with my shoes untied. There was a lot of moments in that Chicago marathon I wanted to quit. I had a giant blister on the bottom of my foot. I had a ton of ankle pain. But that race was one that I was running for wounded soldiers, people who have lost limbs or had been injured in battle. And so the entire time I wanted to quit. The entire time I wanted to stop. When I was running that Chicago Marathon, I told myself, I'm doing it for people that can't. I'm doing it for people that don't have a leg or had an amputation, or will never have the opportunity to run with their own two legs this race, just like me. And so quitting would have defined me in that moment. Quitting in that moment would have meant that I'm a quitter. But during this 40 mile walk, that lesson of quitting once doesn't mean I'm a quitter, was again, something that I don't think I could have learned any other way. And then when you tie in this whole concept of conflicting goals and having goals in your life in different buckets or different gardens that contradict one another or conflict with each other, again, I've been a goal setter for the last 13 years. So clearly it took a moment like this, a failed attempt at running 100 miles, for me to recognize that lesson and to learn this concept of conflicting goals. So that's why I wouldn't change it. That's why I would do it exactly the same. Because I believe that from action we gain awareness in our lives. From choice, we can actually gain more information and context as to what else can be true or what else we should be choosing. And for me, I don't think there is any other place or any other way for me to learn these lessons that I shared with you today than on a failed attempt at running 100 miles without training at all, which ultimately turned into a 40 mile walk through the woods. Now, if you want to learn more about the ride and that upcoming mission and see if I truly am a quitter or if I can get that done, or seeing if I truly learned anything from the failure of this 100 mile race, I would encourage you to check out gobundance.com the ride you can follow along on the entire journey. You can ride with me on the journey if you desire. You can see our route, you can see the direct impact we're providing for people. You can even make a donation if you feel called or inspired. But if none of that lights you up, if none of that excites you, no problem. The only thing I could tell you is do something that you don't yet feel qualified to do. Do something that scares the hell out of you. Not with this judgment or this perspective of I have to get it done or who will I become on the other side? But with this understanding and awareness that objects in motion stay in motion. And when you find the way or make the way to put yourself in motion, even when you're facing something super scared that you're not prepared for, you certainly will discover far more about yourself in those moments, in those dark moments than you ever thought possible.