Building Incredible Athlete Experiences with Endeavorun's Jake Tuber

But by putting everyone on that oval together, even though some people were running four hundreds in 70 seconds and other people running them in three minutes, you were there with everyone cheering for everybody in a way that, that collective experience of fatigue and struggle that everybody was going through was shared throughout the entire group. Hello and welcome to the RaceMob podcast. This is episode number 79. I'm Kevin entrepreneur technology and fitness nerd. And I'm joined by the head coach of RaceMob and master motivator at the incomparable Bertrand Newson. This week, we welcome Jake tuber. The founder of endeavor run onto the podcast. His company, offers premiere retreats and camps for the everyday athletes. During the episode, we talk about Jake's introduction into running and how he got into long distance running later in life. We also discuss how he leveraged experts and little social psychology to help him stay motivated. We dive deep into the way that Jake organizes his camps to help facilitate group camaraderie while also giving personalized attention. This is a really fascinating discussion that leverages Jake's advanced degrees and his vast experience in his professional life. Plus we get to discuss some of the upcoming retreats, including one scheduled in February, featuring our friends, Matt Fitzgerald, and our very own Coach "B". This was taking place in Austin during the Austin marathon. And you won't want to miss it. If you're interested in attending this retreat or any others please check out the show notes online at RaceMob dot com slash podcasts without further ado here's our conversation. Hello, RaceMob family we're in for a real treat today. As we have Jake tuber founder of endeavor run a runner, competitive runner smart as they get super witty, which you will see, and it will be able to talk about the nation's premier fitness retreat for runners and triathletes. With the next one coming up in February in Austin, Texas. Welcome, Jake. Thank you so much, Coach "B" and Kevin, I have to say, though, we talked off air about setting the bar a little lower for today's episode, and now I feel like I've got some high standards to live up to. So I might ask you to rerecord that, but I guess for now, we'll leave it in and I'll, I'll see what I can do live here. I left out the fact that, and I said, you are super smart, but I didn't, I didn't drop Columbia in Georgetown as well, so. Too late for that. So now your audience knows potentially smart, definitely pretentious and the jokes better be good. So I've really been set up for success here. Thanks guys. So really it's exactly the kind of welcome I want it. And then we'll start getting into the accolades. We'll start getting into the 40, under 40 and the other stuff that we've put onto the bio. But first Jake, before, before we jumped into all of that, all everything. Talk to us a little bit about your athletic journey. We know. You talked to us a little bit off air about being a runner and then coming back to the sport of running. So talk to us a bit about how you got into initially got into the sport of running and then what drew you back to it? Like every runner I got into it training for a different sport. I want it to stay in shape as a high schooler. And I had had some running experience prior to that loosely. My father was a very good high school runner and was able to run in college before getting injured. And so, you know, I knew running a little bit. I was a pretty competitive high school sprinter and jumper for a small school in New York and wanted to play soccer and run in college. So I opted to go to a D3 school for it. Immediately decided not to play soccer, played, ran track for a little while. Sprinting a jumping burnt out of it, transferred to try to go to a more prestigious program and get focused, got injured was in a terrible place mentally and didn't do it. So by the time I was 20, I was done with running. And then when I was turning 30, I was in decent shape. I was participating in recreational sports and whatnot, but I realized that running was something that I missed, that I wanted to learn about. Especially distance running, distance running is a different sport when you're trained as a sprinter. The idea of running a 5k, doing a five mile run. I, gosh, I can remember when I was 29, trying to get back in. One Sunday morning, I went for a five mile run and I spent the entire afternoon on the couch exhausted. And my wife, who was a collegiate distance runner herself, she was my girlfriend at the time was looking at me like what in the world is going on with you? That is this standard training run. I didn't know what I was doing. I ran too hard for that easy run. And, and obviousl. But when I was turning 30 years ago, I decided to get back into it. I did a big charity motivator. I knew that if I had some external accountability that would really drive me to take my own health and my progression more seriously. So did a big campaign to run a lot of races, enlisted the help of you know, someone who many of your listeners already know of either from this podcast or others my now dear friend, Matt Fitzgerald, to coach me in that experience and got really back into it and discovered longer distance running middle distance running for most folks. I've still never gone for a run longer than 16 miles consecutive. Those spirits are jeans die hard, but I'm working on it there. And sort of became the, the sport really became really central and the both usefulness of the sport in my own personal development as an actual mechanism for it as a metaphor for my work as an executive coach really kind of took off and I learned a lot about the sport and the physiology behind it as well to do a little bit of coaching start endeavor on a couple of years ago, recently I've been injured. I've had horrible, terrible last two years of injury and surgery and pandemic nightmares that have not helped me recover, but I'm trying to get on the mend. I'm trying to make some public commitments. Maybe I'll let myself make one by the end of today's podcast for 2022, if you're lucky, but we'll, we'll see, I know promise you have to work me into it. But that's me as a runner. That's already, it's not terribly interesting, but that's, that's my running history, little teaser. Well, teaser there. Well, talk to me a little bit. You mentioned when you were 29, that you wanted to get back into the sport or get into the sport. You had not done long distance running. You gave us a couple of tidbits in terms of accountability. So you said, you know, let's say the help of a coach, you did some charity you signed up for some races and all that, but what was kind of that internal motivating factor? What was, what was it that was driving you towards wanting to either try long distance running or you know, or, yeah. why at that point. It was a combination of factors and, you know, Kevin, as I think about it now, it is amazing to me that what was probably a much more pronounced, obvious elevator pitch answer. I don't have any more, it's been obscured both just by my immersion in the sport. And also probably the pandemic has just been obscuring. Anything, you know, there was sort of the time period of our calendars is now like BC, which is before COVID, which is 2019. And so I feel like that was pre-history in a way. But in thinking just briefly about it, I think there was an element of one wanting something that I knew I would benefit from physically that as I was getting older at the time, I didn't feel quite old yet, but I knew that it would be good to do this now. And I think there was also a recognition of someone tapped potential or some unrealized possibilities there. I felt like I had left something on the table and I didn't really expect that I could just from a physiological standpoint, necessarily attain some of the peaks that might've been possible five or 10 years earlier. Ironically enough, as I learned about distance running, I learned that I actually might still be relatively possible. Although I had sort of foregone about a decade of pure aerobic development, which makes those mid thirties peaks a little bit more realistic. But there was an element of unrealized potential, there was an element of sort of dedicated myself to something to ring in a new decade. And I don't know, that's something that's been a lot of my mind. Now we're recording here in mid December of 2021. And a lot of folks are listening, thinking about ringing in a new year. And hopefully as the pandemic begins to at least become more predictable, if not ideally with our out with vaccine promulgation, ideally, maybe start a new era for themselves. And that's what it felt like to me. I felt like I wanted to start a new era in my thirties and I wanted to see if that could be something that would be a part of it. And the entity that has allowed all of our paths to cross is Endeavor. And certainly, as you mentioned, coach Matt, who's been you know, a member of our podcast on two occasions. How did that brainchild come to fruition and to talk about the first retreat in Boulder, actually, where Kevin went to school. So the small circles. A lot of people in Boulder, we're talking about Kevin. We were, you know, you'd be on a trail and you'd run into a pro runner here, a pro triathlete there. I'm not laughing. I'm just saying like 10,000 Kevin Chang in this world. So, you know, are you sure it It was surprising to me too. It was really surprising. I wasn't sure they named the right one, but they had some pictures on their phone. It was interesting. We were, you know, the place we stayed in Boulder was it was the off season from a school perspective, but it wasn't far from frat row. And I think that had something to do. There's how well known you were in local circles. It was really interesting. I didn't expect that myself, but it was, you know, really did bring us together. The, the origin story for endeavor. Actually does date back to Matt Fitz. So I had asked Matt Fitz to coach me through this project that I was doing when I was turning 30. My goal was to try to run in 30 different races over the course of one calendar year and raise at least $30,000 for a children's summer camp that I've been involved in through the YFCA. And that's a big part of my past life and current life as well. And I reached out to Matt and said, Hey, I really love your book, it's really introduced me to the sport. Any chance you've got any coaching spots that would want to do this. It was just a shot in the dark cold email and he responded and he said, this sounds really cool. But I'm actually spending the summer in Flagstaff, Arizona embedded with the professional distance team, Hoka Northern Arizona elite to see how they live and train. But maybe when I get back, if there's still time, we can do something. And we did. And we, he coached me for a while, became fast friends, and then learning about his experience, which has now been chronicled in his book, running the dream. There was something about him going away to this. For the full summer that I thought, wow, as an amateur, I would so love to do that. It's unrealistic timing wise, but is there a way that we could potentially take some of the outcomes of this, which besides just, you know, living in altitude for two months and Flagstaff, the outcomes being specifically dedicated guidance around planning for nutrition, training, strength, training, mental fitness, building the comradery of a group, going through an experience. Is there a way we could at least supercharge that as much as possible in a package for people who are looking to do this because people want to train like pros, they get coaches the way pros, do they get strength coaches, the way pros do, you can get blood data, you can get supplements. I mean, people do everything in their lives. The one thing that I found like was really missing was that training camp. And I really felt like it was the comradery and the collective nature of going through that experience as its own journey. That was really the differentiator I was having. A friend of mine, who's now one of the professional runners who's helped get endeavor and off the ground. And, you know, she's on our site as well as a lot of others who have really kind of helped make the brainchild that we had years ago into a bit more of a reality. And we were really talking about how the collegiate experience for runners, the main differentiator was to some extent, a little bit time. And you know, you have a little bit more freedom to dictate when during the day you run or. But it was also that collective experience of going through something with others. And so Matt and I's original conception of endeavor. One was something a little bit more programmatic than it is today, at least in its current form, which was kind of training camp, kickoff retreat, ongoing program, leading to finishing results. And because of COVID because of other demands, we had to scrap some of the longer term programmatic inclusive pieces of it. But the retreat piece really stuck. Because there have been camps been about coming and spending a couple of days in the woods with, you know, somebody who finished ninth at Boston back in 1978, and still wants to tell the story, or, you know, there's one athlete that everybody likes and you really just going to meet that celebrity. A camp that was really focused around development, excitement, comradery, building a community and supercharging the parts of your training. You already have maybe doing a little bit are already thinking about that. Wasn't really there with the breadth of expertise we wanted and that led us to create Endeavor Run. And we had our first pushback. Thanks. COVID but we did it this past summer in Boulder. You dropped Kevin's name everywhere down on drag there. Pearl street got us into a lot of bars late night, you know, got a lot of freebies there. Thanks to Kevin. And it was great. We had a, we had a really nice group in Boulder. We had about, oh, around 20 athletes or so, and a handful of coaches, Lydia, our sports dietician was there. Matt Fitz was there. We had a handful of pro athletes come through to hang out, pace us through runs, be part of our podcast panels and recording Jason Fitzgerald from strength, running an old college teammate of mine was there and really had a great experience. A lot of people were coming for different reasons and they each found what they were looking for. And hopefully a little bit more. It's been so cool to see them all stay in touch. It's just been really neat to see the community kind of grow organically in that way. And so I'm really excited for the next upcoming running one, which is an Austin, as you mentioned in February, kind of similar to the Boulder experience. And then at the moment, we've got some triathlon retreats that our 80/20 Endurance partners are helping us to put on in San Diego and some other stuff going on as well later. That's how it started. That's sort of how it's going. I'm happy to talk more about it, but the opportunity to bring people together in today's world around it has been really gratifying. It has been, it has been really cool for lack of a better term. It's been really cool. Yeah. Jake, I'd love to talk a little bit more about the structure you said, you know, there are some running camps kind of around the country that we've seen. We've talked to, even our good friend and podcast guests. Sarah Manderscheid had had one in Boulder kind of over the summer as well. So I know that there is probably a difference between kind of, you know, a loosely formatted run retreats where there's kind of a run in the morning, maybe an expert panel in the afternoon. And what you're talking about, which is potentially more structured or potentially more geared towards athletes who are trying to get a little bit more serious in the sport. So talk to us a little bit about the structure of endeavor runs and you know, how it's gone and, and what you're planning on doing kind of going for. When I use the word retreat, and this is pure, just marketing that I've made up. So this may not make any sense, but when I use the word retreat, I think of it as a combination of a camp and a workshop. That's what I see as the differentiator. There've been a lot of running camps out there you go to a place, you go for a jog, there's an event, you have dinner. And I say that, I worry. It sounds disparaging. That is awesome. Like that is really cool. It's just not what everybody wants or needs. We want it to add something else. The ideal way to have an experience in my mind is that I'm on the back end being really thoughtful and passionate about why we do this before this and why this activity comes after this activity and who kicks this off and why we have this much downtime or why we give this free time. Then all of this is built around theories on group and team dynamics on individuals, in group settings, on the actual learning acquisition on all these philosophical elements that I bring into kind of high stakes corporate work. I try to bring it to the running experience. So ideally everyone just feels like it makes sense and they're having a good time. So the burden is on me and then by myself, virtue of kind of encouraging and assisting the coaching staff, Coach "B" and others to help deliver that in a way that feels seamless. There's no kind of marionette and going on behind the scenes, but there's a lot of thought we put into, for example, people are worried about coming in and if you're really introverted, what am I'm going to have to go through a large group icebreaker on day one, that alone is enough to meet and to not show up for a treat. So we don't do that. We're going to do a zoom call the week beforehand to introduce the coaches, see each other's faces, and we get there. We're going to do a large group discussion and opening ceremonies, but there's no, let's go around the big circle and toss the ball and, you know, say which ice cream flavor you would be and why, and that kind of stuff. And not that there is not sometimes value in that, but we try to make those interactions more organic. You know, we one thing that came up during Boulder for example, is we wanted to put folks through an opportunity to experience what we call the pro track workout, which was a start to finish sort of a reflection of how the pros would run a track workout. And we had professional runners for Nike, like Addie Bracey women's mountain runner of the year, several times. Kate grace, us champion and Olympian who were there in Boulder, who came by, we did a long dynamic warmup, a kickoff walkthrough, talked about the structure. One of the questions I got from somebody a day later was Jake. This was great. Why did you schedule a track workout? And to give you a little bit of look behind the curtain, my thinking was with a group that particular size, it would be really beneficial to make sure that subgroups didn't form that the community, everybody felt a part of was the entirety of that group. That was the tribe. There was not the fast group in the slow group or the young group. You were there as a runner looking to get better at a variety of things. And that was the common thread. So one of the things I explicitly wanted to do was have the first run that we all did together, be in the same geography. By putting everyone on that oval together, even though some people were running for hundreds in 70 seconds and other people running them in three minutes, you were there with everyone cheering for everybody in a way that, that collective experience of fatigue and struggle that everybody was going through was shared throughout the entire group. So we try to be really intentional with the order of programming with what comes first, not in some weird way that suggests we're pulling anything kind of puppets behind the scenes, but recognizing that there is going to be an order there is going to be a structure by default, let's at least approach that with some intentionality let's approach that with a deliberate nod, to what we know group psychology and learning is best likely to be promoted from rather than just, well, it seems like it would be convenient to do this at this time, so let's go do it. There's a lot of thought that goes into everything from, you know, the timing around we're going to do this and have this kind of meal because the next morning we're going to be doing something a little bit faster. So I want something that's going to be a little bit less kind of carb heavy the night before. And so if we're going to be doing this kind of talk where we're going to be at this place where it's really conducive to eating pizza, we have to recognize that that maybe isn't the thing to do Friday night, if that's a Saturday. So a lot of little things like that ideally just feel like they make sense at the time. Hopefully are the kinds of things we're doing in the background to make it a really calculated, useful experience. Yeah. I mean, I think this is extremely fascinating and I'm going to want to pick your brain a ton about this because, you know, yeah. You know, when I think about RaceMob and what we're trying to do at RaceMob, and oftentimes we've done challenges in the past, and we, we oftentimes want to ask, you know, what is your goal? What are you working towards? Because we want to find whatever their weakest link is and help them kind of overcome those weak links and are early on in the programs. But I do see that as potentially fracturing kind of a larger group or you know, kind of social situation into the smaller subgroups and maybe, you know, splintering some of our resources and, and, you know, as we could potentially build one larger group, so. You know, asking you a similar question on your endeavor runs or your retreats, or, you know, thoughts about that. How do you go into it with, you know, people having different goals and trying to accommodate those different goals? Or do you go into it with, Hey, the shared goal, the shared learning, you know, the shared experience overall. If there's enough time, you can have a shared experience that promotes different. I'll be it probably complimentary goals. You know, you couldn't have the experience where one group really wanted to spend all weekend, just like working on strength, training to run a hundred meter dash, and everyone else wanted to go out long runs and have a truly like that might be, they might be too, too much polarity there, but generally speaking, you can't. So one of the things that if you were attending our Austin retreat, for example, Kevin, you would find is about three weeks beforehand you'll get an email with a pretty detailed. That is asking you, not just about your racing history and running injuries and the like as one should, but about your goals for the year, as well as your goals for the retreat, as well as your learning style, as well as what's worked for you in the past, in situations where you're in new groups, what kind of things do you respond typically? Well, to, from a coaching perspective, what are you most curious about? What are you most nervous about with these kinds of things? And one of the things that me and the coaches do the day before everyone arrives, I call them line by lines. We sit down and I go through what basically is the profile of every single attendee. What is it they're working towards? What is it they're passionate about? What might be concerns that they have, that we can work together. And from there comes the sort of allocation of responsibilities to our different coaches, which might be to say, Coach, "B" this, person's really talked about, trying to think about how they're going to embed running in their lives over the next couple of years. And they're really hoping this retreat can give them some ideas to that. I want to make sure that you and this person sit down for a one-on-one by Saturday afternoon and have had at least a 30 minute conversation with them about their goals. So that when we do this reflection exercise as a group on Saturday, they can actually apply that conversation themselves. Or Kevin you've come in talking about how, you know, you need to do strength training, but you just can't figure out how to build it in. Or you don't know where to get started, or you don't have access to the gym that you want. I'm going to go ahead and make sure that coach Asher who's our PT and is going to be doing our injury analysis workshop that she does around the country, running groups or corporations like Google, where you go in and you do all these exercises to see where your imbalances are and what. She is going to write you a prescription, right? So I'll say to Asher by Sunday morning, I want Kevin to have a prescription in his hand. That's basically like on Mondays, you do this, it takes you this amount of time. And on Wednesdays, you do that before this particular run. And here's how you think about your particular plan, giving your goals. So we do these line by lines for each participant, so that the activities we actually put together, whether it's an easy run where people are going to be varying and paces by as much as, you know, eight minutes per mile on one end of the spectrum, running seven minutes for easy pace or faster other folks kind of jogging through at 12, 13 minutes, you've got half injured folks like me who may not be able to run that morning. We'll find out when our hip wakes up and decides if it's hurting or not. You know, we, we have disparity in that, but there's a through thread, which is that every coach has some awareness of what each person is both working on. Wants to achieve that weekend and more globally, and also what might make them tick. You know, some folks are gonna do really well and are going to want to approach you as coaches and have organic conversations. Others are going to really want more one-on-one time and trying to parcel that out. So I really do think you can build a collective experience that still allows for a pretty, pretty solid range of individual differentiation with goal achievement. And, you know, to your point earlier, Kevin, I don't think necessarily splintering into different groups is going to inherently fracture. A large group piece is just another variable to keep track of. And it's all dependent on a couple of things that you can predict. And a couple of things you can't predict. You can generally predict how much time you have. You can generally predict things about the context and the setting and how, you know, certain personalities who are guaranteed to be there. We'll speak and we'll bring themselves to show up and set the tone. The unpredictables are things like the group dynamic and who exactly is. And what I hope that we do that differentiates is recognized that actually, even though it seems like an elusive mystery group dynamic is still relatively predictable. There are only so many different patterns that groups behave in. There are only so many different types of social roles that can be in a group, especially for a short period of time, bringing new people together on nurse. A lot of interesting psychodynamic elements of our personalities and how we can set up creating the experience in the room, so to speak so that the best parts of people are much more likely to flourish and show up. And the parts that make you nervous or might make you feel uncomfortable or awkward are not only, I would say dismiss cause that's unrealistic, but more bluntly are attended to. If there was a true differentiator beyond just the breadth of experts and true world-class experts that we are able to bring to endeavor run, that is probably different from a lot of other. It's this sort of secret sauce that I have, as you mentioned earlier, Coach "B" spent way too much money and way too much time overpaying on in order to bed myself in formal education. So that's exactly right. If you like our podcast and sign up for our newsletter, where we give you weekly tips on how to run your best race and have fun in the process. Just go to RaceMob dot com and sign up today. Yeah. And thank you for that, Jake. I mean, I'm, I'm, I want to re just rewind briefly if we can going back to 2020, we all know what happened in 2020 with the pandemic. But I remember when I started seeing social media buzz about endeavor run and the location of the initial site and who was going to be there. It was going to be in an Olympic year as well. Right. And Eugene I remember knocking on the door talking with you and coach Matt and trying to get there just as a participant. And I wanted to do the same for Austin and, you know, by the, the grace of God. We'll we'll go biblical. I'll be a, I'll be an instructor. Being able to pay it forward to our one community. What goes into the planning of the locations? Because you have some fantastic locations, Eugene, Boulder, Austin, San Diego, Martha's vineyard. What goes into the thought process on those, those locations? It's really just where I want to go. You know, I'm just kidding in a similar fashion, in terms of constructing the experience, there's a, there's a few variables that are kind of circling each other. That there's no, there's no perfect algorithm for it, but I can put enough together to be like, Ooh, yeah, that would work. So for example, if it's a running retreat, I want to get people in a place where I know the weather has the best chance of being great to run. You know, so Boulder in early August, the biggest risk was smoke and fires. We figured we'd get there a little bit before the season. And we did, it was actually a little smoky. It wasn't too. Austin in February 57 degrees on softer running paths around the city with great barbecue. When most people are experiencing those winter blues, that's a no brainer. San Diego is like the triathlon capital of the United States for good reason. It's super easy year round to spend a couple of days there knowing that if you're going to invest that much of your time, you're probably not going to get rained out. And if you do there's triathlon training facilities there. Martha's vineyard retreat is pretty interesting. That's something we're doing over the summer for a lot of folks who are already planning to make that trip or have always thought about doing a week's vacation out there. It's a big family place to go. It's, it's actually a place that I was fortunate to go a lot as a kid with friends and family, and the thought is okay, if you're going to be there with your family on vacation for a week, why not make the mornings yours? Why not? From six 30 in the morning to nine, get in a breakfast, a workout, and a workshop, and then have the rest of the day with your family or to just work remotely. We're doing. Remote work retreat in in Eugene this spring leading up to Memorial day weekend, where the idea is we get together for breakfast and a run in the morning and we get together for dinner and some sort of clinic or talk and hanging out in the evening. And the days people have to themselves to either explore or work remotely. One reason we picked that, for example, Coach "B" is the weather's great. And Eugene, that time of year for running, it's a place that's pretty accessible in terms of the running community. And obviously the running space. There's a lot to offer that particular weekend is the weekend of the diamond league Prefontaine classic meet at the new Hayward field stadium. So track and field fans who have been dying to go to this stadium since it opened during COVID and couldn't go last year to the trials are able to, if they come to the Oregon retreat in Eugene for that week, stick around and watch the best athletes in the world compete. And some of those athletes will be spoilers. At our athlete panel, I've already talked to a few of them and gotten commitments. We're going to be announcing that probably after the first of the year. We're focused a lot on Austin from a market perspective, as you can imagine, cause that's coming up. But a lot of them will be there. So you get to meet some of those athletes as well. So a little bit of it is like where in the world is going to be good. Running wise, both in terms of weather, in terms of location, where do we know people will be able to find housing? Cause one of the things that endeavor run does is typically speaking. We don't plan retreats where we restrict you to stay in our housing. We want people to be able to use the hotel points and credit card points and airline miles that they've been saving up exactly for this kind of thing, whether or not they knew it. Although I will say. The whole easily use your Amex points. And Amazon has been killing me lately because if there's ever a book I want, and it's like $8, I just throw away 8,000 points like that free book the next day. So that's been kind of eating up my points, but that aside, this is the kind of thing people save their points for. So we try to pick locations that are accessible, that are good weather that are probably linked to an event. You know, we timed Boulder last year to be during the Olympics so that when we had downtime, we'd be livestreaming the Olympics on the TVs, around the team house. This Austin retreat is the same weekend as the Austin marathon, half marathon and 5k. So a lot of the folks who were attending are planning to run in one of those events, not necessarily race it, but just run it, you know, like get that experience in there. Do it maybe if they're feeling really good, you know, decide to put on their speed shoes and do the 5k or. If there had been thinking about doing a long run and would love the push of making it a full marathon, even if it's not a serious one for them answering that others will just take a long run that morning and go cheer our butts off for everyone else. Who's there and running. And you already know there's going to be a fantastic running atmosphere in the city all weekend. There's something really cool about marathon weekends when you're just walking around those cities and you just see runners everywhere, you know, you're like, Ooh, those shoes, that guy runs. Ooh. Yeah. That new jacket. I saw that on Tracksmith that guy runs, right? Oh, that woman. Yeah. She is definitely a runner. Just look at the way she holds the door open for somebody else while she manages to look at her watch, right. Like, you know, there's runners everywhere. So it'll be a really cool environment. So there's a lot of those factors. We also rely on the recommendations of participants. We are considering a couple of things for late 20, 22 or 2023 that are really based on demand. And that we asked folks to say like, where do you want to go? That's pretty big too. So, so there's a lot of little factors. The nice thing is, you know even though the country feels hard to access as a whole, from time to time, let alone, during a pandemic, it's got a lot to offer. There's a lot of different, really cool places around this country, which are really amazing for running a different experiences. So running triathlon, we've got a lot to work with. We're really lucky in that way, Thank you. Incredible. Incredible. Well, thank you so much, Jay, for joining us on this podcast. I think that it's going to be one of many, I mean, I think we've left enough tidbits and nuggets. We're definitely going to want to chat with you again, especially after the experience in February. Hopefully we have a lot of athletes that go out there hanging out with Coach. "B" hang out with mass Fitzgerald, hanging out with Jake and the other coaches that are going to be there, create your own plan for the year, but then also, you know, create this. Tribe, right. Partner community the sense of belonging to a wider group and doing things, not just for yourself, but you know, for the wider audience and also the self-reflection, which I think is so tremendously important. You know, we've talked to over 70 guests on this podcast and running really means something different for every athlete. And so finding that for yourself, what it means for you, what it means for you right now, right? It might mean something different to you right now than it did even five years or 10 years ago. So that self-reflection, I think is tremendously important. And we've loved this conversation because yeah, I mean, I think it helps us reflect on what it means for us and how we can bring that forward to a wider audience and more of our community. So thank you, Kevin. I mean, it certainly, you know, Any mucker, any learning that's not mechanical or sort of basic associative or simulative learning that we take place reflection for adults is the core piece of that. And so the facilitation of reflection, both in the experience itself after and through the experience is the catalyst for any learning. That's significant, right? If we think about, again, we're not talking necessarily about, you know, mechanical rote, instrumental learning, but truly more accommodative or even transformative transcendent learning experience reflection is an absolutely essential ingredient of that. And so the, the intentional deliberate use of that as a tool is something that I think, I mean, I know it works in, in other spaces and I think running is the perfect vehicle for it because you mentioned kind of feeling part of that group, part of that tribe. And generally when we're as humans, as sociologist describe it, we can kind of belong to tribe and we want, if we want to improve that trial, we can do it. We can go up or down, meaning that we can think about the group that we're in and we can elevate up and say that others can join our group and be part of that. Or we can kind of drill down and say, even though we're part of a group right now, we have a larger shared group we're in, which is humanity. And I think that anytime you're running and have a real experience because of the nature of running because of its sort of physical primal nature is an activity in the fact that you were exhausting yourself, you were taxing yourself, maybe even getting into a flow state, mentally, you are getting in touch with a part of you. That is a really raw human element. And when people talk about the running community, which is this broad esoteric, worldwide group that you can both be a part of and not be a part of on any given day, depending what you want. That's facilitated by everything from Instagram to big events, to small events, to local running clubs, whatever it is that makes you feel part of the running community, which we all talk about and know, but nobody can do. The defining features. I see it is really just that it is a very basic expression of a community. We're all part of, which is humanity. And so it is a very easy, obvious way to connect to that core tribe that in a world where we're much more fractured for reasons of social isolation, due to pandemic reasons of social isolation station due to the last 200 years of industrialization due to the internet due to belief systems, what have you, that core threat is biologically wired and running gets us right back to it really quickly. And so I think that that thread there and being able to reflect through and unexperience as an element to bring humanity up for that group is there. And so I'm thrilled that you've given me this, this opportunity and forum to share a little bit about my excitement about it. I hope. Put too many of your listeners to sleep. I know Kevin, you've got a new board, a coach and just got your vaccine booster. So you guys have probably taken all kinds. We've been wide awake this entire time. We're going to talk, we're going to talk about energy at the retreat, six to nine milligrams of caffeine for every kilogram of body rate of power exercise. That's the kind of physiological knowledge we're going to get into. Thanks to our partners, run gum and rise, coffee treat. I can plug them here. That that is the level of specificity we'll get into too. But thanks for having me. And please, if your listeners are out there, particularly interested in any of the topics we talked about, you can tell, I get way too jazzed about this. I could go on for hours. So as long as the listeners are up for it and they feel it's benefiting, I'd be thrilled to come back anytime. Any of these different threads, we've begun to pull on any direction. There's some, some pretty interesting sweaters for us to unfurl as we start tugging on those threads. So my thanks to you for letting me explore this with you. I've really enjoyed it. And I'm excited to keep thinking about it. So thanks for doing that for me. Absolutely. Absolutely. And where can our audience find you online? Where can they follow you? Sure. Well, first thing to do is obviously endeavor, run.com. It's endeavorun.com and when our Instagram page and we have a Facebook page and those are going to get revamped by the way, we're bringing on somebody to do a little bit more help and interaction there. So that it's a little bit better use. We're not on Twitter. It's too negative, a space for running and what we're doing, I am on. At Instagram, if you want to see me make sarcastic comments that in references to the movie, eat on Twitter, you can find me at, Hey coach potato, which is a triple pond, by the way, if you can figure out the triple pun between, Hey, coach potato, not that hard to figure out that's where you can find me on Instagram, on Twitter for sort of running and adjacent content. Certainly if you're just interested in, in these topics in other settings as well you can find me on LinkedIn. My company's website, Ticonderoga advisory Tycon advisory.com is there as well. LinkedIn, LinkedIn sends me so many frigging notifications that it's actually become a great way to get in touch with me because they won't. Let me ignore a message. Email me. I can flag it as, as red. LinkedIn is like Jake, J J J J J J. So I can't ignore it. If you actually hit me up there, it's become. Secretly efficient way to get ahold of me. But I'm pretty accessible. I hope you'll find me if you have questions, even if it's a question that I can just point you in the direction of resources ABC always be coaching. So if I can, if I can be helpful in that way I'd love to, so thanks for asking. Yeah. W expect to invite for a town hall, Q and a as a special guests, it's a great way to get a little bit closer to our athletes and get them engaged in Q and a as, especially as we lead up to Austin in February, can't wait. And the announcement that I wait, breaking news, half marathon, J T well, this is, this is my current state of affairs. I, so I, you know, I got injured badly. I had surgery two years ago. The pandemic destroyed my rehab. I've been slowly rehabbing. I, I am still struggling to run pain-free and yeah, listen, I can, I can drag the 5k and if it makes sense for me to do it, I may need to help out or help my priority that morning. We'll be getting athletes who want to run the longer races ready. So I'll probably kind of run on the sidewalks for a little bit. Near folks are handing out water bottles, but I can, I did. I actually ran for a four and a half miles yesterday and I slow, slow pace. I am going back for a procedure this Monday, I'm getting another round of platelet, rich plasma injections, which did seem to help would love to have gotten this injury five years from now when those will actually be in covered by insurance. But I am I am dealing with that out of pocket at the moment that will keep me sidelined for a couple of weeks. So I'm hoping to revamp my nutrition during that time and get ready so that ideally by February. I am better positioned to get some running done and my SSI joint and my hips have both healed up a little bit. I am thinking about throwing my first ever marathon on the calendar for some time in fall. I've lately been feeling like what I've been doing. Hasn't gotten me where I need to go. And so maybe a real rewiring will do that. The problem is I need something to hold myself accountable for beyond just my will, because I am too good at coming up with better reasons later to say no. That's why the charity project years ago was so useful and keeping me accountable. If, if I knew that depending on times I ran or miles I logged, it was going to raise money for a cause. So I might do something related to that. I'm not totally sure. But I'm thinking about trying to put on my first ever marathon in the fall. If I feel like I can run it fast enough, the way I look at it is. Three useful goals in terms of going into a marathon, there's completing it, there's running it or there's racing it. I don't know if I'll be fit enough to race it, to be at a level of fitness I want where I'm like, I'm going to race it. And I don't know if I'll be satisfied enough with myself to complete it because I'm lucky enough that just physically, if I felt like I needed to complete a marathon, I probably could. So that's not that motivating. I wonder if I can run it though. I wonder if I can be like, all right, I'm fit enough to put a pace down where I'm going to be hurting. I'm not going to be breaking any personal records or anything like that, but I'm going to be hurting and I'm not going to be injured afterwards. If I can get there, I'll do that. So if your listeners have any any ideas for how I can motivate to do something like that and put that on the calendar, I would very much appreciate it. Cause I'm, I'm searching for that reasoning. Now I want to do it, but I want to make sure that when I commit to it, if I do it is in a position where if things get tough, as they always. I am accountable for stuff that I can't back away from. And just, if it's just my psyche, I can back away from the Marine Corps would be a good idea. That's in my backyard here in Northern Virginia, could do cool event. Might be a little hilly for a sprinter like me as a first marathon. But not another question. And our endeavor ones, partners, Potomac river, running the local running shots here that do a lot of promotion for that. You know, that's one of the things that endeavor run athletes get. 20% off and free shipping on any shoes. So we've had a lot of folks who enjoy that's. One thing people took away from Kevin from Kevin from Boulder was a discounted alpha flies. That's not worth the hard to come by. If you're looking for a, if you want, I'll tell you what if your listeners are still listening at this point and you want 15 to 20% off a free shipping from a local shoe store. Shoot me a DM and I will make sure to get you a code for that. Cause we can. Incredible. Incredible. And thank you coach for letting us forget the, the promise that he Jake had made for a goal in 2022. Hopefully we can hold him accountable to that. Yeah, absolutely. We've got it on recording. So hold you accountable to that. And we'll have all the links that you've talked about in our show notes online. Just enough though, right? I think I give myself enough room to. I don't know. We'll see how this, how the surgery goes. Have the wrist surgery goes and then maybe we can get a affirm, affirm goal for 20 it's 2024. And I'll give you these, the goal for 2022 that you always wanted. Kevin. No, I, I appreciate that. I, I could use some external peppering and motivation and it's fun to do it with others. So thank you again so much, Jake. Appreciate this and we'll talk again soon. Take care. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the RaceMob podcast. Check out all of the show notes or find a running buddy online at RaceMob dot com. 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