Jon Eisen: 0:11

Hello and welcome to Running With Problems. My name is Jon Eisen.

Miranda Williamson: 0:14

And I'm Miranda Williamson. She's back everyone. I'm back. No more solo intros with Jon.

Jon Eisen: 0:20

Running With Problems is a podcast about runners and the problems they inevitably face. Miranda, how are you doing?

Miranda Williamson: 0:27

It's good to be back. I really missed you. I missed Summit, I missed our home, but I had a great time, which I will not share on this intro because we're going to do an episode on Runcations.

Jon Eisen: 0:40

We can tease it. We can tease it. I had a great time. Next week we're going to have a whole deep dive into runcations. That's running vacations. Is that? Would you call that a portmanteau? Is that a portmanteau?

Miranda Williamson: 0:53

Yes, good job.

Jon Eisen: 0:55

Yeah Well, thanks. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm feeling really good. After Never, summer Recovered really quickly Ran. After Never Summer Recovered, really quickly Ran my eighth skyline of the year, my skyline project of running one skyline each month. This year is eight months in. Technically I'm nine months in a row because I ran one in December, but my target is to get to December. And I got through the three hot months. This was my crux.

Jon Rea: 1:18

It was.

Jon Eisen: 1:18

June, july August. If I could get through June, july, august, I can definitely finish.

Miranda Williamson: 1:23

Yes so.

Jon Eisen: 1:23

I'm really excited to have gotten through the crux. I have been heat stroked and heat exhausted on Sanitas enough. I'm good. I can't wait for cooler temperatures when I can run PR times or maybe not PR times, but good times. So, yeah, feeling good, I'm signed up for. I just got a transfer bib for Telluride Mountain Run, so I'm going to be down there in Telluride, just planning how to get down there. So that's a couple weeks away, and then we're off to Dark Divide 100 in Washington and it's going to be so much fun. I'm really excited for all this running coming up. I've been planning what I'm going to do in training for Cocodona. So, yeah, I'm just really excited about running right now, love running and I'm stoked about today's guest.

Miranda Williamson: 2:07

Oh yes, today's guest John Ray.

Jon Eisen: 2:16

John Ray is an aspiring pro runner, definitely an elite runner. He's been top 10 at Western States. He lives here in Boulder and we had him on to discuss all things about his current life. At the time that we had the interview, it was just after Western States, which John Ray couldn't run because of a severe bone injury, a sacral stress fracture.

Miranda Williamson: 2:36

But he was there crewing.

Jon Eisen: 2:38

Yeah, he was crewing Chris Myers who spoilers got second place.

Miranda Williamson: 2:44

Not spoilers, because it already happened.

Jon Eisen: 2:45

It already happened guys, you guys should know. You should have been watching the live stream. Chris Myers famously wore a snorkel when he crossed the Ruckie Chucky River.

Miranda Williamson: 2:53

Because he didn't want to take it too seriously.

Jon Eisen: 2:56

Well, he didn't take it too seriously all the way to a second place finish, I know the interview with John is oh, go ahead. I appreciated that mentality, that like I'm still gonna have a good time doing this I think the there was an article, I don't remember which publication had it, but they said you know, it was like western states, you know what we learned from western states?

Miranda Williamson: 3:18

and it was like silly is fast I really enjoyed our conversation with John Ray. I enjoyed us talking a little bit about injury and how he navigates that and how he works with his partner and how she supports him through that. I enjoyed that portion of the conversation a lot.

Jon Eisen: 3:40

Yeah, and we also deep dive into Western States. John's project, I guess you could say, is, you know, trying to get better at these races, and he's really worked hard at Western States I think he's run it four times Sorry, my memory is a little hazy and trying to get better every single time, which is something he's done throughout his career to improve, which is something that he's done throughout his career to improve. And I really enjoyed the conversation with John about choosing to put more and more time into this sport, like making an active choice, not being dragged in by some unconscious need, but like making an active choice to invest more to get more out of it, and I thought that was really cool when we talked about that in the interview.

Miranda Williamson: 4:27

And I did check John Ray's socials. Well, I follow him on socials now because I really enjoyed our conversation and our time together and he is working on recovery. He is actively working on recovery. So he's in that mode right now, recovering from this injury.

Jon Eisen: 4:41

I saw him on one of those fancy treadmills where they take part of the weight off you and he was running, yes, so congratulations, john. We're really excited to see you come back.

Miranda Williamson: 4:53

And we're excited to drop this episode because I hope you all enjoy him as much as we did.

Jon Eisen: 4:58

Yeah, it's going to be exciting. So we're going to drop next week. We're going to drop the Runcations episode and then in two weeks we'll see. Our pipeline is now empty and we need to record some more episodes.

Miranda Williamson: 5:07

We have some ideas, though, good ideas.

Jon Eisen: 5:10

Very good ideas, and if you have good ideas, let us know. If you want to be on the podcast, let us know. We'll talk to you for sure and without further ado. Here is John Ray.

Miranda Williamson: 5:22

Enjoy.

Jon Eisen: 5:32

Welcome to the podcast. John Ray, I believe you are the course record holder at Javelin 100.

Jon Rea: 5:38

Yeah, I am Thanks for having me.

Miranda Williamson: 5:42

What is that course?

Jon Rea: 5:42

record 1243. Jesus Wow.

Miranda Williamson: 5:44

It's record 1243. Jesus.

Jon Rea: 5:46

Wow.

Jon Eisen: 5:46

It's very fast, thanks, very good. I remember the first time I heard of you I had just run the Dirty 30 back in 2021. Yeah, and I was attending the awards ceremony and that day was so hot and I ran so poorly. I think it was like a nine hour run for me. And then I heard you won the race. I was like who's this guy from Boulder?

Jon Rea: 6:13

Yeah, that was an important one for me. Actually, really Dirty 30 was my-.

Jon Eisen: 6:17

Their summit.

Miranda Williamson: 6:19

He always intrudes in the podcast.

Jon Rea: 6:23

We don't mind. Yeah, dirty 30 was my first ultra, really okay really. And they had a similar experience where, like it, just like this was an unfathomable experience. Uh, like I cried at mile 20 during the race when I knew that I was going to finish it. Wow, that was like a breakthrough moment to be like I, I'm going to do something. That seemed impossible, uh, and you know, the winners were an hour in front of me and so that was a really big race for me that I came back the next year and improved by a lot. And then I came back again a couple of years later, improved by a lot, and I came back a couple of years later and I won it, and so that was like a great benchmark and full circle thing. Where's my first ultra? And then it was one of my first wins, um, but yeah, really formative experience.

Miranda Williamson: 7:09

And what made you decide to run an ultra.

Jon Rea: 7:14

I think I just read born to run at the right time, I mean you must be the first person to yeah yeah, the only one, but you must have been a runner before that.

Miranda Williamson: 7:26

A little bit, yeah.

Jon Rea: 7:28

A little bit. I did run cross-country in middle school and for one year of high school, but I dropped it because it's not as cool to run as it is to play basketball or baseball. So I grew up playing those sports and runners for the kids who couldn't dribble basketball.

Miranda Williamson: 7:43

And where'd you grow up?

Jon Rea: 7:44

Palo Alto California. Oh my gosh, I'm a.

Miranda Williamson: 7:47

California girl.

Jon Rea: 7:48

Yeah.

Miranda Williamson: 7:48

Northern California as well, but I claim Southern California.

Jon Rea: 7:52

Oh, why is that?

Miranda Williamson: 7:53

Because I went to college in San Diego, and so I just say San Diego, yeah, but you know, I'm Chico area.

Jon Rea: 8:02

Okay, cool, my grandparents lived in Redlands so we would make a biannual trip to Southern California at least, but mostly Bay Area. But yeah, I played baseball in college and so between junior and senior year I had a bunch of downtime. I think that's when I read Born to Run, started going on the hikes and stuff by myself, started running on those trails, and so that was the initial impetus. And then when I came to Colorado for grad school, then it was just part of the culture here and that's what got it going. And people talked about the Dirty 30 as the coolest local trail race to go. Do it is, so it got me in.

Jon Eisen: 8:41

I guess it's now no longer I'm so sad about that, very sad.

Jon Rea: 8:46

Yeah, it's been a couple years. It seemed like it was in the wrong direction when they moved it to a Friday and then no longer allowed support crew, and then it was yeah, this isn't going the right way.

Jon Eisen: 8:58

We know the race director, Megan Phinnessy, and a lot of those restrictions were coming from the state park. Yeah yeah, that's tough for her. They just wanted to allow the regular visitors to use the park instead of the race, which I don't know. I wouldn't make those same choices, but it seems like a lot of American permitting agencies make those kinds of choices.

Jon Rea: 9:20

Yeah, which? Yeah, it's too bad because I do think it brought more attention there. I think I know a lot of people around Boulder or the surrounding area that have never heard of Golden Gate Canyon State Park. But it's right there and it's really beautiful and just crazy that no one even knows about it.

Jon Eisen: 9:34

But they would if this race still existed. Last time I was there it was slammed, yeah. But yeah, I don't know. It's really nice. It's got so much trails and that race for being a race that people like thought of as a good first-time race, I believe it was published as like a great race for your first ultra. It's actually kind of hard.

Jon Rea: 9:57

It's really hard, yeah, I don't know why. Yeah, it had good support and really good yeah culture around it. I think that's what supported it and it was hard enough that, like, if you believed you did that, then you felt like you could do anything.

Jon Eisen: 10:14

Yes, yeah, megan did a really good job of like encouraging people to run their first altar there.

Jon Rea: 10:21

I know, yeah, so I'm very sad it's gone. We got to bring it back.

Jon Eisen: 10:25

Oh, we'll see.

Jon Rea: 10:27

Well, I mean every year she was trying to find someone to take it on and become a new race director, and she didn't find anyone.

Miranda Williamson: 10:33

What about you, John Ray?

Jon Eisen: 10:37

Don't you have a day job?

Jon Rea: 10:40

I do have a day job. Yeah, I work for RMI. It's a nonprofit clean energy think tank. So I grew up doing engineering but did engineering in school and still work, mostly as an engineer. You have your PhD from Mines. Yeah, PhD in material science from Colorado School of Mines. Did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering at MIT.

Jon Eisen: 11:06

And now you're working in the renewable energy space. That's what RMI does.

Jon Rea: 11:10

Yeah, rmi covers all sectors of energy, and so I work on the electricity team. The big problem that we're trying to solve is incoming electricity demand from data centers. That are growing really really fast for AI support.

Jon Rea: 11:28

And so it's a new source of electricity demand that the grid hasn't really been ready for. And so all these utilities are trying to figure out how they can put that much new load on the system, how they can build that much more generation capacity to support it and, ideally, do it with clean energy. The tech companies, you know they're only going to wait so long before they're going to build something. Uh, so they want it to be zero carbon, but, uh, if we don't figure out how to get rid of, uh, the barriers in their way transmission line constraints, etc. Then they're just going to build a gas plant or whatever they can, because they, they definitely need to build their data centers.

Jon Eisen: 12:06

Definitely. Yeah, I mean, I work for the problem at Apple but we have a zero carbon promise and I'm just going to leave it at that. That's good, we'll do our best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jon Rea: 12:20

There's a lot of people who are trying and have the right intentions but it turns out it's actually a hard problem to solve, yeah. And the energy cost of generative AI is incredible, like insanely large compared to thinking and hopefully all the algorithms will get more and more efficient, and so they'll become less and less energy intensive.

Jon Rea: 12:39

There is work on that, but there's a lot of uncertainty on that and that could change the future electricity system a lot. It could be only 10% of the system, but it also could be 100%. Yeah, Depending on how much we use AI and how much it takes over.

Jon Eisen: 12:52

I mean, I think there's a lot of work on trying to make it more efficient, but right now everyone's driving to make it just more intelligent, more human-like. Intelligent, more human-like, and that can have exponential growth in the number of parameters, which has exponential growth in the energy cost, because parameters scale exponentially with cost.

Jon Rea: 13:12

Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that, because you're a data engineer for Apple.

Jon Eisen: 13:17

Yes, yes, I'm a data engineer for Apple. I work in speech recognition.

Jon Rea: 13:22

So, yeah, we work on all this stuff. There's a lot of smart people in the ultra-running world, this stuff.

Jon Eisen: 13:25

so that's smart people in the ultra running world there are a lot of smart people in the ultra running world. Yeah, um, yeah, I don't know I I remember my first obsession in ultra running was about barkley, like I was just totally obsessed with that race and a lot of the documentaries go over the fact that, like, most of these finishers are like phds and engineers and master's students and yeah, it just reinforces that. I think there's definitely something to. I'm not sure what it is. Do you have a thought?

Miranda Williamson: 13:53

Maybe quieting the mind.

Jon Rea: 13:56

In high school it always felt like the best endurance kids. The kids on the cross country team were also the kids with the highest SAT scores, so I don't know. I thought that was true even since high school.

Miranda Williamson: 14:07

So do you think running makes people smart, or smart people seek out running?

Jon Rea: 14:12

I thought it was just overlap between people who were able to put up with tedious tasks because, like reading or having the attention span for class, was like also difficult, and so if you're willing to stay focused on something that's kind of boring for a long time, then you can do it, then it works both ways, yeah.

Jon Eisen: 14:31

Right, like over intelligence. It's like the ability to work through the school system and like excel there.

Miranda Williamson: 14:37

Translates well to the running world. Yeah, I don't think it's just innate intelligence.

Jon Rea: 14:40

I think it's like how much time you spend studying.

Jon Eisen: 14:42

basically, I do know a lot of dumb PhDs and smart people. Without them, you'd be surprised.

Miranda Williamson: 14:50

And so when you moved for grad school, you stayed.

Jon Rea: 14:55

Yeah, yeah, I loved it here. Yeah, I was in Golden, Colorado, and it's just a fun place to live, for sure. So why would I leave? I?

Miranda Williamson: 15:04

know right, it's beautiful here.

Jon Eisen: 15:08

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'd never want to leave. I don't understand how people live in Atlanta. That's where.

Jon Eisen: 15:15

I'm from Nothing against Atlanta. Sorry, I guess my mom might listen. She still lives there. Sorry, mom, I got a question. So you, you got into ultra running. You're running these, uh, this, uh, dirty 30, like every year, trying to improve at it, and at some point you transitioned from local races like dirty 30 or Never Summer to running these more nationally renowned races like what did we say at the top of the hour? Javelina Gosh, my brain and Western States.

Miranda Williamson: 15:55

CCC. Ccc.

Jon Eisen: 16:01

Very big, competitive, globally competitive races. When did you make that decision? Or I guess not when, but like why did you make that decision? Or I guess not when, but like why did you make that decision to race at that level?

Jon Rea: 16:11

I do remember the conversation I had with my wife. It was like winter in 2019, where I'd been doing a few of these local races and things and getting better and better just like a couple percent better every year and starting to think about the amount of time and effort. Like every year, you just put a little bit more into it, sacrifice a little more social life. You sacrifice a little more something else. There's always something to add, so each year you take another step up and it was like, okay, like how many more steps up of this are there before? Like you're actually giving up your entire life for this, and is that what we want to do right now? Are you actually going to get good enough to do that? Um, and I did want to see it out, and so I that was a really clear conversation decision point. I'm like I'm going to get a coach. I'm going to start being really specific about it. I think I could be top 10 at Western States someday, and so I'm going to take the clear steps to work towards that Cause I want to have no regrets that I look back on this time and there wasn't opportunity to be a professional athlete.

Jon Rea: 17:14

That I missed, because that was one of my dad's biggest regrets that he told me about that. He had an opportunity to play internationally play, uh, internationally baseball. Uh, he's gonna play in germany, um, after after college, but he chose not to um, and so that stuck out to me that, like being a professional athlete would have been a dream come true. That was one of my dad's life regrets, and so I didn't want to have that same regret.

Jon Rea: 17:38

Um, so I was going to get a coach and start doing, trying, yeah, trying to get better to get to the point, and I was. I think I was more focused on getting my ability to a high enough level that I could be at that place first, rather than worrying about results or going to the big races yet I just like actually needed to get fast enough that I could win some things. Um, so, yeah, that was like a really formative conversation in 2019. It was a clear decision point. I love that intentionality, yeah, but still slow. I don't know. It's not like I quit a job and gave up everything. That was still like a few phases.

Jon Rea: 18:18

It was still like incremental steps, I think.

Jon Eisen: 18:20

But you were intentional about taking your current investment level and increasing it year over year.

Miranda Williamson: 18:29

Yeah, Now are you a competitive person by nature.

Jon Rea: 18:34

Yeah, definitely, probably not the most absolute competitive. Like, if someone else does something that is better than what I can do and they beat me, then like I can appreciate that and be okay with it. Someone passes me during a race. I'm often like, oh, good for them, like I'm not. Like, oh no, like I'm going to do something about this.

Jon Eisen: 18:56

But, yeah, always want to play sports and play games and stuff and yeah, do you find that you can find that extra 5%, 10%, when, when the wind's on the line?

Jon Rea: 19:08

Yeah, definitely. And um, but it's not always five 10% of effort. Sometimes increasing the stakes or the effort, uh, doesn't improve performance. So I feel like someone's getting to that point. You actually have to relax a little bit more. There's a lot of places where I feel like this shows up Uh, what's coming to mind actually is playing, uh, like table tennis. Okay, relax a little bit more. There's a lot of places where I feel like this shows up what's coming to mind actually is playing like table tennis. Okay, like our Asia-Ole community has like a yeah, a table in our clubhouse.

Jon Rea: 19:36

Okay, and whenever I'm playing against a friend and I'm like oh, I really want to win this game, like I really got to hit this ping pong in the right spot, like don't want to miss a shot, um, but like I often find that the I need to not try too hard or not think about too much the score or the points, or like whether how I'm going to hit a shot or something I have to like actually just like live in the moment.

Jon Rea: 19:56

More it's more mentally let things go um and and let that happen, but clearly I'm competitive enough that I'm like thinking about this while playing right like this is know a zero stakes table tennis game. But so I pay attention to those kinds of things and try and see what will improve performance the most just, naturally, rather than having to force it.

Jon Eisen: 20:19

It's interesting. Yeah, we, I play chess a lot and, like you, when you really want to win, when we call that tilted like cause. Then you, just your your play gets just drops precipitously. It's very bad when you're tilted, when you're, when you're like, oh, I have to win this game, it's like it just goes away.

Jon Rea: 20:37

You just have to relax, reset, play at your original level yeah so you find that in running too I think so, uh, yeah, yeah, we'll see. But, like with the, how competitive are you and like how you go about it, I think, yeah, personality really shows up in the hardest events, in the biggest races, and so, like what your biggest most internal motivations are really reveal themselves, and so that's why I think you can learn things about yourself during a race or like during an ultra, that you can't otherwise. You put yourself in that situation and you're like you might surprise yourself with how you respond. You might be surprised that well, like you were okay with getting passed and you, like didn't care that much.

Jon Eisen: 21:20

It's like oh it turns out.

Jon Rea: 21:22

I like, was okay with getting 10th place. Um, or sometimes you find out like, nah, like I was able to, I was willing to, like break myself and, you know, do some things that were going to have long-term consequences in order to finish this thing. That's like Zach Miller, yeah.

Jon Eisen: 21:39

That guy will throw everything. Yeah, the fucking wall. You said internal motivation, and I wonder are you internally motivated or externally motivated, or a combination?

Jon Rea: 21:48

Definitely both yeah.

Jon Eisen: 21:50

Yeah, because I find that some of these hardest events that don't have that prestige are much harder to get through that difficult point without some sort of internal motivation. Yeah, but at the same time and maybe I'm wrong but in order to like win or like desire to be competitive, you have to be externally motivated because you have to want to be this random people next to you yeah, or maybe not so random. Yeah, maybe your friends.

Jon Rea: 22:24

No, I think the amount of effort you can put in is different if you're going for first place than if you're going for 38th place, Like it's just not possible to care quite as much. But it's not like you can control that or force that and you can be like oh, I'm going to try as hard as I can, but like what is as hard as you can. It turns out it's a little bit harder than that if the stakes are a little bit higher and you actually do care that much more. But so I think that shows up with some of the external um motivation. But I think there's plenty of like um.

Jon Rea: 23:00

Yeah, I'm thinking of going to smaller races where I have a clear purpose or intention that's different than the big races where, like, there's a big result, you know like winning this race or being on the podium of this race would be worth so much and it would, you know, allow me to get paid yeah, have a contract and stuff like that. Or you know status and like access and things as like other motivators. But I've shown up to plenty of smaller races where I just like had an intention that I really wanted to prove something to myself or teach myself something or like get to a moment that I know I would be in and get through that thing, and I've feel like I've gone through as much personal growth in those smaller races. Uh, like devil on the divide was one a small, really, really tiny yeah, it's a tiny race.

Jon Rea: 23:46

Tiny race like there's like yeah, there's nothing going on there, but that one really mattered to me. Um or earlier this year I did, uh, a couple of smaller races in moab and salida. That, yeah, definitely no one outside really cares about run through time but still, yeah, I did the, yeah, the the run through time run through time but still yeah, I did the run through time marathon Run through time.

Jon Eisen: 24:09

Yeah, exactly, but those ones just needed to prove to myself that I could go through some race motions and practice a couple things.

Jon Rea: 24:22

Summit is barking at something outside. Sorry about that. Yeah, so I don't know if that means it's intrinsic or extrinsic but I imagine it does.

Jon Eisen: 24:29

I don't know. There's probably a range between athletes. You know, at the mid-pack level, where I'm at, the internal motivation is king.

Miranda Williamson: 24:38

Right.

Jon Eisen: 24:39

Because no one cares.

Jon Rea: 24:42

But yeah well, there's plenty of people in the middle of the race who still care a lot about passing the person in front of them.

Jon Eisen: 24:48

That is true, or?

Jon Rea: 24:48

about like hitting a time barrier, you know, like going under four hours in the marathon or something, is still an external motivator, regardless of whether you know.

Jon Eisen: 24:58

But I think it can be just as much as of a negative. You know sometimes that external motivation can turn on you. Yeah negative.

Jon Rea: 25:07

you know sometimes that external motivation can turn on you. Yeah, if you thought you were going to be going for first place and it turns out you're in 14th place, then like why do you care? And then it becomes so much harder to just do the thing.

Jon Eisen: 25:16

Cool, all right. How was your trip to Western States?

Jon Rea: 25:22

It was amazing. Yeah, I think it helps that my buddy Chris, who I was crewing, got second place. That was amazing. Yeah, I think it helps that my buddy Chris, who I was crewing, got second place. That was incredible, he was running out of his mind. Out of his mind.

Miranda Williamson: 25:36

So he's a friend of yours.

Jon Rea: 25:37

Yeah, we trained together a good amount. I did get injured this year so I would have been able to. I got ninth place last year, so earn a spot to be able to race again this year. Got injured so I couldn't race myself but, um, I was able to do some sauna sessions with him, as like the amount of training that we were able to do together, Um, but yeah, the whole experience of being there could have been sad because I wasn't able to race, because I was injured, but it turns out I didn't.

Jon Rea: 26:06

it was an extremely good experience. I had the most fun. It was just like three days of, yeah, one of the best weekends of my life. It was like really, really fun, both to be part of that race because it was a big success, but also there were so many kind words and like nice comments made by a bunch of people that I really, really respect, and that feeling of being part of the community and people sharing their stories of going through similar injuries and missing out on stuff just felt so good. So it was fun. I felt like I was part of the race and had a huge success because Chris Myers just crushed it and then it was also just really community building that I felt like I was just in the right place.

Miranda Williamson: 26:49

it was really, really fun what was that like to crew someone who was crushing so much?

Jon Rea: 26:56

I mean, I'm sure it was exciting and stressful at the same time yeah, no, it just felt like we were in the race a hundred percent. Uh, like every little thing that we could do and the tiny details and like things you're checking in on, both in the quiet periods where you're still just going through mental checklists of like, do we get this right? Do we get this right? Like okay, like that's a similar thought process, so I'm doing my own scans of things while I'm running, like if he's actually at the aid station for you know the 30 seconds while he's there, then the flurry of activity is also just so focused and so intentional that like, yeah, both the slow periods and the intense moments felt a lot like being in the race.

Jon Eisen: 27:36

Have you ever crewed somebody at a race like Western before?

Jon Rea: 27:47

I haven't been to Western before, but I have crewed and paced at leadville and hard rock and and several other races. So I've done plenty of crewing and pacing, but never with stakes like this. Wow, because this is yeah, it was career defining. That was a huge, huge breakthrough. Uh, second place at western states are you kidding me?

Jon Eisen: 28:01

what is?

Jon Rea: 28:02

it. What was he like?

Jon Eisen: 28:03

yeah, chris was just what was the time? Like eight minutes back of first. Yeah, like the third fastest time in history.

Jon Rea: 28:10

Third fastest human.

Jon Eisen: 28:12

I think fourth fastest time or third fastest human. Jim ran faster twice. That's right. Jim did 09 and 14.

Jon Rea: 28:17

Chris was good at clarifying that he wasn't going to overstate his accomplishment, but it was still really big. Yeah, riding in front of Killian, yeah, right in front of Killian.

Jon Eisen: 28:24

Are you?

Miranda Williamson: 28:24

kidding me Wow.

Jon Eisen: 28:25

Dude Killian was running so fast at the end.

Jon Rea: 28:29

Yeah, he was closing.

Jon Eisen: 28:31

He had dropped all of his. We had one of his pacer. One of his friends was at the house. We had a watch party and this girl was at our house and she said her friend was pacing Killian. And then we see Killian on the screen. He's got no pacer. He dropped him long ago.

Jon Rea: 28:47

Yeah, yeah, chasing down Chris man. He was only two and a half minutes behind at Roby Point. It was like a little over a mile left and I was like two and a half minutes, that's not enough. Our WhatsApp group had a bunch of all caps messages saying go, go, chris go.

Miranda Williamson: 29:03

So exciting. We recently did a podcast on like, talking a little bit about what it takes to be a good crew what, what did?

Jon Rea: 29:13

it take to be a good crew. I think, yeah, just investment, like you had to care. Um, and it was funny that we, we were mostly on top of our stuff. Um, we went to Duncan Canyon, mile 24, dusty corners, mile 37, forest hill, mile 62, 62, and the first one was just like everyone's in a pack, it was just a flurry of activity. It was like whoa, that was a rush, that was crazy. But then at dusty corners, chris comes in first that's why he made his move.

Jon Rea: 29:39

He's like a couple minutes ahead and after we get him in and out of there, the mood of our crew changed. It was like there is no limit to the lengths that we will go to make sure he's got what he needs. Like if this car breaks down, we're going to like we'll run, we'll run, we'll figure it out. Like if, if someone drops something, like well, I don't know we were going to figure out any problem, but it was just like everyone was just fully invested. It was like there's no problem we can't solve. We are all. Our needs are tiny right now. I don't need to eat or drink the rest of the day. Like we're so focused. So I think you just took the investment because that was like the logistics and planning and stuff is definitely key and critical and just like being on time to things. But I think those naturally just like show up and happen if you're just invested enough. So it was, yeah, the tone shifted when he was in first place. We were like, yeah, we're fully invested here.

Jon Eisen: 30:36

So cool. The Western States is a very complex crewing situation.

Jon Rea: 30:41

Yeah.

Jon Eisen: 30:41

So most of the elite runners have two crews, right? Yeah, really. Yeah, most of the elite runners have two crews, right yeah, really yeah, because the aid stations are so hard to get to and the runners run so fast that you just don't have time to have a single crew vehicle get to each aid station.

Jon Rea: 30:59

Yeah, so we were leapfrogging each other. So we'd see him, then the other crew would see him, then we'd see him, then the other crew would see him.

Miranda Williamson: 31:05

Oh Wow, that is logistically challenging, yeah, and also there's no cell service yeah, exactly on the side we were on, so like we didn't actually have great communication, but it was like, well, he didn't.

Jon Rea: 31:17

Nothing happened between the time we saw him before and we saw him this time. So the other crew must be doing their job too, but did you learn anything?

Jon Eisen: 31:25

you might take to your assuming you go back? You were able to go back to Western States and try again. Yeah, Did you learn anything?

Jon Rea: 31:35

Definitely some logistics notes. I think a well-organized trunk of a car is useful. Yeah, you want to make it really easy to find things. Yes, um, yeah, I was watching.

Jon Eisen: 31:52

I was watching some of the john caldy's like videos, uh, and one of his crew was saying was talking about how organizing things in the crew car. It's like oh yeah, like I don't know, like you just want to know where to find everything yeah, very quickly yeah and I thought I don't know like you just want to know where to find everything.

Jon Rea: 32:08

Yeah, very quickly yeah, and I thought I was organized before. Like you know, I labeled bags, yeah, and so like that seems like it's enough, but actually I think labeling bags and knowing exactly where they go, and like well, it's complicated enough because, like you got, you have ice, you got things that are chilled, and then you have dry goods, you got a gear, you have the nutrition, so it's like you got six categories of things and they all have to be handled differently, so they do have to be in different places, like you're not gonna throw everything into the ice chest. But I think, yeah, a better organizational system is something I got to improve on next time I go, if I can.

Jon Eisen: 32:42

Yeah, so do you want to go back? I mean, you were planning on going this year. Yeah, and the entry doesn't roll over, right?

Jon Rea: 32:50

It doesn't roll over, so I'd have to—.

Jon Eisen: 32:51

You'll have to earn your way back.

Jon Rea: 32:52

Earn my way back, whether it's lottery spot or a golden ticket, or we'll see.

Jon Eisen: 32:58

What is—so? You've run Western States for the listeners. You've run Western States three times correct.

Jon Rea: 33:03

Yeah three times. Was it like 14th, 5th and 9th? Did I get those right? Uh, a little worse than that. I think it was 16, 14 and 9. Okay, okay, so successfully improving yeah, wow, yeah, and I went like almost 19 hours and 16 and a half hours and then the last time was just over 15 hours.

Jon Eisen: 33:21

So I was like yeah, how does just over 15 hours get ninth place these days times they?

Jon Rea: 33:25

get so fast. I know and I knew some of the splits. It was funny, like 30 miles in I knew my split and I was like I knew Courtney's split to there and I was 30 minutes in front of it and Courtney ran 15.30. And I was like we're 30 minutes ahead of 15.30 pace. I mean, so we're in 14th place. Or I was in like 13th place. I was like this is crazy. So I was trying to talk myself down, being like you're not doing anything wrong. You're running.

Miranda Williamson: 33:49

Well, it's okay, you're crashing.

Jon Rea: 33:51

You're not the numbers. Check out Like you're doing well.

Miranda Williamson: 33:55

Yeah.

Jon Rea: 33:55

So, like I don't know, keep doing it and hope for, like someone falls back.

Jon Eisen: 34:09

Well, it feels like the only way to run Western at the elite level these days is the Eric Clifton method of you either run as hard as you can or you die or not die sorry, dnf, but you know or or you fall back and you just accept that you won't win. The only way to win is to run with that front of the pack.

Jon Rea: 34:20

Yeah, I don't know. There's a yeah. That seems to be the mood. Uh, I'm not convinced that it's true. Uh, listening to Adam Peterman talk before the race, he wasn't fully convinced that that was totally true.

Jon Rea: 34:31

But yeah, that is how most people are racing this year. Yeah, it's like. What's standing out to me is there was an hour gap between 6th and 7th place for the men, and so, of the 20 to 25 elite runners who showed up to try a know, a quarter of them got it and then the other ones didn't, and that hour gap was the line. So, it was like yeah, there were six hits and everyone else missed.

Jon Eisen: 34:58

But three of them were within 10 minutes.

Jon Rea: 35:01

Yeah, the top guys, yeah, which is?

Jon Eisen: 35:04

yeah, so like if you're going to, I guess. So there is definitely still some some room for error in the top 10 yeah, yeah, there's a little room within that, for sure, because if, if all 25 of those guys ran smart races, you probably see much tighter based smart racing.

Jon Eisen: 35:22

I just mean like within themselves, right to what their body could do that day, then they're probably all but they bunch up and then. But if everyone's trying to run for the win and 20 of them fall back, then you see, that's why you see that big barrier, big gap.

Jon Rea: 35:41

Yeah, it could be true. I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know, stuff happens. There's a bunch of uncontrollables and maybe the same amount of uncontrollables would happen, no matter how hard you try, basically. So I don't know, yeah, there's. I don't know yeah.

Jon Eisen: 35:55

There's no way to know.

Miranda Williamson: 35:57

So going, you go back home, because Western States is kind of close to home for you.

Jon Rea: 36:01

Yeah, it's a couple hours. So Auburn is, yeah, a couple hours in the Bay Area. So, yeah, when I've gone it's been really great to have a bunch of family who still lives in the Bay come visit. And so it's not exactly like a hometown race the same way it is for, like, cole Watson or Emily Hogg Good, I live there, but, uh, but it still feels a little bit. You know, it gives me a little bit of a yeah, this is like my place, and so a little more attachment to the race, I think, because I'm from California, even though I'm not from that town, but it's close enough that I'm like, yeah, I'll take that, I'll take whatever excuse I can have to have more meaning.

Jon Eisen: 36:36

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, build that. So I guess I got off topic. I was going to ask about, like you know where, what's the motivation? I think I think I know, but I guess, from your perspective, what's the motivation to keep going back to Western States, um, and improving?

Jon Rea: 36:54

going back to Western States and improving. Yeah improving feels so good. I think that's just like personal growth is one of the most valuable things that I can do and go through, and so I've done that each of the times I've gone, and so wanting to continue to do it. Of course you know that you can improve and then, of course, you want to.

Jon Eisen: 37:16

You did it with. You talked about doing that with Dirty 30 initially when you're getting into ultra running and it's similar motivation like just trying to keep being getting better at this one thing yeah, which is like I don't know, maybe now I'm like thinking too hard about this.

Jon Rea: 37:35

Like. Why should I want to just like? Take something and just get better at it. There's an end point to that where you're like you feel like you've done it good enough, and then you're like satisfied, and you're done.

Jon Eisen: 37:44

I mean, at some point maybe I think some people like Courtney, she's satisfied consistently and changes what she's doing a lot, Right, like you see, with her selection of races, that it is not often choosing the same race over and over. She'll do it a few times, yeah, and then move on and and I think your selection races to personal choice or like some sort of desire to, like you know, see this improvement in this one controlled environment.

Jon Rea: 38:20

Yeah.

Jon Eisen: 38:21

Right, like it's not like. You can't even compare years of Western states because the different heat levels and different snow levels and different and rucky chucky's you know a raft versus swimming and Rucky Chucky's a raft versus swimming but at some level it is as much control as you get in the ultra running space to run the same race over and over again.

Jon Rea: 38:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe Courtney gets bored and needs to do something that actually challenges her, and I'm just not bored yet, because it's still a big challenge.

Miranda Williamson: 38:49

It's still a big challenge.

Jon Rea: 38:56

How the heck do you prepare for a 97 degree heat. Living in boulder, yeah, mostly just saunaing with john.

Jon Eisen: 39:02

We did meet in the sauna yeah, this was good.

Jon Rea: 39:05

Yeah, the south boulder rec center, uh, that's some good sauna sessions. Yeah, some good people in there, um, yeah, sauna sessions and then uh do you take trips out to arizona or anything like that to prepare? I haven't in the past, but I'm like jealous of the people who have, so I feel like I should I feel like I signed up for cocodona next year and we're gonna.

Jon Eisen: 39:29

We're booking time to go even harder time of year. Yeah, we're booking time to go down Even harder time of year. Yeah, we're booking time to go down and spend some time in San Diego. Yeah, in the winter because it's like I don't think sauna. I'm bad in the heat, so I don't know why I keep signing up for hot raises. But just got to, the exposure is very important, I think, more than the sauna. I think the sauna helps, but exposures.

Jon Eisen: 39:54

Yeah, I think the physiology part of it is about equal, but the mental part of like actually experiencing being hot while running and overheating is pretty useful it's a, it's like um, I don't know like the feeling of being cooked by the sun is a little different than the way the sauna feels, I think yeah I had we early this year we were at Transgrant Canaria and in February, which is just an awful time of year to race if you live in Boulder.

Jon Rea: 40:21

I think I mean although you've probably run Black Canyon though. Unless you really love.

Miranda Williamson: 40:28

Gold Hill, yeah right.

Jon Eisen: 40:29

God, I hate that run. Do you like that run Sometimes?

Jon Rea: 40:33

We did that.

Miranda Williamson: 40:35

It was like a 23-mile version of that in training for this Trans Grand Canaria. It was by far the most helpful run for that race, but the most brutal.

Jon Eisen: 40:46

Yeah, stupid, brutal. So how are you feeling about being injured? Where are we in the injury?

Jon Rea: 40:54

Yeah, so five weeks ago I had an MRI showing a stress fracture. I was able to completely forget it. Well, I don't know, be okay with it and accept it the last couple days, because I just was riding high while at the race and talking to people there, but I didn't forget it because most people were asking me about it and talking to people there. But I didn't forget it because most people were asking me about it. But yeah, it's been the longest I've been injured in my athletic career, I think, even since, like you know, playing high school sports through college and things.

Miranda Williamson: 41:24

When did you first notice it?

Jon Rea: 41:26

Yeah, it was end of April.

Miranda Williamson: 41:27

End of April.

Jon Rea: 41:29

Yeah, and it was a tough sequence of events really. I had a really good like three plus months, uh, at the beginning of the year basically, when the calendar year changed, and then I went to do the gorge waterfalls 100k and I was super motivated to try to make the world trail mountain running championships. Team.

Jon Rea: 41:47

Wear a team usa jersey right, because the 100k was, yeah, the long to get top two, it was the auto qualifier and I I just felt really, really ready to do that, like my training was there. And then, like race day, I also just felt amazing off the start line and I knew who else was in the race and I just thought I was going to do it. Um, and we all started pretty conservatively and I just felt amazing and I wanted to be patient and take my time and I was like I was ready to make the second move, like I was ready to. Someone was going to make the first move, I was going to match it and then I was going to make the second move. I was like I was going to call and raise. That was going to be my strategy.

Jon Rea: 42:26

But one hour into the race, I stepped on a rock the wrong way, sprained my ankle, and that was the first time I've had an injury during a race. That happened just at a single moment and so it was like it's supposed to be an eight hour race. But one hour in, I just like took one bad step and all of a sudden I couldn't run anymore. I was just like limping so hard and I tried to walk for a couple of miles, but it was just clearly I couldn't put much weight on my ankle anymore, and so that was a yeah, a really difficult moment to handle. It was just so immediate and I was just like you know, open mouth. Uh, what just happened? What do I do about this?

Jon Eisen: 43:08

Wow, um, those are so frustrating moments.

Jon Rea: 43:11

Yeah, I was like, well, what did I do wrong? Are so frustrating moments? Yeah, it's like, well, what did I do wrong? Right, god, dang it like um, did you? So it was just a state of shock, basically. But uh, yeah, I don't know. Like I had to walk for a couple of miles and then call my wife rachel to come pick me up and then, I don't know, I guess I go take a shower, like what. So just took a shower, sat on the couch and like cried for an hour and then went back out to like see the second half of the race and see Buddy, adam and other people running the race and I was like, okay, well, I'm here. But that was so. That happened, like you know, april, like mid-April and third week of April, and then it actually felt like it healed really quickly, like three or four days of nothing. And then I started to run a little bit again and it felt really good, yeah, with those kind of injuries you just run to feel.

Jon Rea: 44:06

Yeah, I don't know, the ankle, like it's like an ankle sprain, like, yeah, once it feels comfortable, you think you're probably in the clear. So I did. Once it feels comfortable, you think you're probably in the clear. Um, so I did, like a three hour run by the next weekend, um, and so the next week was a full week of training. But then I don't know if that was related to it or not, or if it was just coincidence of like, I had another injury coming, um, but yeah, a week after that I started feeling some tightness in my right side, um, which ankle did you?

Jon Rea: 44:34

roll my right ankle yeah and then, uh, yeah, a week and a half later, once I was really into training again, I felt like my right side just started being a little bit tight, uh, and I noticed that. And then I had a couple of longer runs because I was doing full training. I was like, okay, well, gorge didn't work, I didn't make the world champs team, but I still have have States as like a really, really big goal, and 10 weeks away it's about crunch time to really get into that block. But yeah, the tightness didn't seem too bad while I was doing those runs. It seemed like it almost went away after the first 20 minutes of warming up and felt like it was okay.

Jon Rea: 45:13

So that felt like normal tightness symptoms. But after the third one of those days, that evening it just tightened up so much that I didn't want to get up from the dinner table to put my dishes away Like yeah, but I still just thought it was tightness. So like troubleshooting injury can be hard.

Miranda Williamson: 45:29

It is so difficult.

Jon Rea: 45:30

Yeah, like you don't know it's wrong. It's so difficult, yeah, like you don't know what's wrong. It's like yeah, clearly something's wrong, but like what is it Like? I don't really know.

Jon Eisen: 45:36

I definitely feel like the experienced ultra runner knows their body more and they know which pains are coming from which areas, and that experience of learning your body just takes time.

Jon Rea: 45:50

Yeah, when stuff's recurring. So, like you know, you're're like susceptible to certain things, but I thought it was susceptible to like having some hamstring tightness and like. So I was like, okay, like that's kind of normal feels pretty similar.

Jon Rea: 45:59

I don't know, it's a little different, but like a variation on it. Um, but yeah, it was just really really tight. So I had to take a couple more days off and uh was troubleshooting whether it was just muscle tightness or sciatic nerve tightness. And then, a couple of days removed from that, the tightness had gone away. But I still had a point of pain basically under my right butt cheek. I was like, hmm, that still hurts a little bit, so it feels a little bit less like it's tightness causing the pain. The pain feels like it's separate from the tightness, maybe the tightness was like a response to protect me from the pain.

Jon Rea: 46:33

And then I was like, hmm, that's a little dangerous. Went to one PT. It was like, yeah, let's probably do some imaging it's never a good sign.

Jon Rea: 46:40

So yeah, so I scheduled imaging. But then I still did, like he had me do, a couple of tests. I did a pogo jump test, just 10 big. Oh okay, Probably not a stress fracture. Then Seems fine. So I was convinced that it wasn't. But I had scheduled my imaging. So I was like, okay, I'll still go ahead and do the x-ray, do the MRI kind of thing. But I had convinced myself that I was going to be better, that it was going to be not a thing, Like, yeah, I passed the test, it's not a stress fracture, it's going to be okay, I don't have to give up on future goals. This is just.

Jon Rea: 47:15

It's just like I don't really know what it is, yet but like, maybe it's a muscle thing, maybe it's a tightness, it's going to be fine. It's just going to be a couple of days, if it's not a stress fracture.

Jon Eisen: 47:26

Can I pass the?

Miranda Williamson: 47:27

test.

Jon Eisen: 47:27

We could do a whole podcast on the psychology of. Am I injured?

Jon Rea: 47:29

Yeah, Well, because it can feel like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Like if you tell yourself you're injured?

Jon Rea: 47:35

you definitely are, but if you tell yourself you're not, maybe you're not Right. So I was trying to talk myself out of it, you know. And so I did the day I did my MRI, like immediately there were some trails right next to them and so I went and ran for an hour because that was like where I was in the progression of coming back to running. Ran for an hour at like seven minute mile pace and it felt like a little off still, but I was like I don't know, it's progressing, still feels better than it was before. But then, like an hour later, mri impression came back and I was like, yeah, stress fracture. And then I was just like what? I had just gone through this whole sequence of like thinking I'm okay, not okay, no, I really am okay. And then no hard evidence, you're not okay. And so that was another, another moment of just like sitting and crying for an hour or two. It'd be like what a loss, like it. Just man, I just went through this thing.

Jon Rea: 48:23

I gorge with my ankle that just came out of nowhere and then two weeks later I'm like oh okay, you thought you had backup goals for your goal. So you thought you had backup goals for your goal, but no, just give them all up.

Miranda Williamson: 48:36

Does your wife support you during these times?

Jon Rea: 48:42

Yeah, she's really really good. Yeah, she was sitting next to me on the couch while I was crying, you know, and she still traveled with me to these things and yeah, stuff for her to have to deal with someone who's like more emotional and like more irritable and things, because like yeah, I need attention, I need help, I need support. And so if she's got her own stuff too, then like how is that going to work? Because I clearly am not capable of helping something else because I'm overwhelmed by my own stuff at the moment.

Jon Rea: 49:13

So I want to even that out. You know I got to pay back.

Jon Eisen: 49:17

I'll solve some of her problems too.

Jon Rea: 49:18

She's like so you have problems.

Jon Eisen: 49:20

But other people do too. Yeah, you're describing that. Miranda definitely thought of times when I was.

Miranda Williamson: 49:29

Yes, I was putting myself in your wife's shoes during that moment.

Jon Rea: 49:35

Yeah, how come you don't care about me enough? It's like.

Jon Eisen: 49:39

I have a stress fracture in my foot and I can't do anything. Nothing matters anymore. I don't think I'll ever run again.

Jon Rea: 49:46

It's like well, I don't know, maybe, Maybe.

Jon Eisen: 49:50

It can feel like the world's ending. Okay. Earlier we talked about how you were increasing investment in running.

Jon Rea: 49:52

Yeah, yeah, it can feel like the world's ending because you're like, you're like okay, earlier we talked about how you were increasing investment in running yeah, right trying to build it towards yeah, you had a goal of being top 10 in Western, which you achieved, yeah, and you want to keep improving yeah, there's another step, there's another level to go to.

Jon Eisen: 50:10

You can do another thing and then to be foiled by a one-two punch of injuries. When you're putting so much work into this, how do you go from there?

Jon Rea: 50:20

Yeah, well, and it really hurt too this year because I took a—so the nonprofit I work for, rmi. It gives you a three-month sabbatical after you've been there for five years, and I just hit that and I timed it. After you've been there for five years and I just hit that and I timed it, I would delay it a couple months so that I could perfectly time my three months to do Gorge and then train for Western States. And so it was like yeah.

Miranda Williamson: 50:44

I'm just going to full time my one focus.

Jon Rea: 50:46

That was the next incremental step I'm going to do the full on thing. I'm not going to work, I'm not going to like, I'm not going to have to think about anything else. A single goal, totally pro. That was the next step that I took this round, and then this is the round in which you know that broke two weeks in and then again two more weeks in.

Jon Eisen: 51:04

What do you do with all that time? I couldn't do either.

Jon Rea: 51:07

Doctors visits and massage and PT and yeah, I felt like I was really busy with that kind of stuff actually for like, uh, yeah, three, four weeks, and then the last month at least, I like made it more just time off, like a couple of camping trips with the San Juan solstice, uh, spend some more time in BV and Salida. So I spent a lot of time just camping and being out down trails and in the mountains. Anyways.

Jon Rea: 51:35

Connecting with race, but yeah, it was pretty disorienting to go from like two jobs with like a lot of ambition and things I really really cared about and goals, to zero jobs with like nothing I can do on either side. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean like hurt. It hurt a lot, a lot to be like. Yeah, I put even more into it. And then like it felt like I just got unlucky and I was like well dang.

Miranda Williamson: 52:03

Yeah.

Jon Rea: 52:03

So, yeah, like it's been hard, like I definitely have been like more emotionally uh sensitive and like reactive to things, and so it's definitely not been the best for rachel either, so she sticks it in there, but man, that's been hard for her too that we should get rachel on the podcast.

Miranda Williamson: 52:23

Yeah, share her side.

Jon Rea: 52:24

Yeah, yeah, I'm a running partner.

Jon Eisen: 52:28

They deal with so much we do.

Jon Eisen: 52:32

Yeah Well, was I bad when I had my stress fracture two years ago? Yeah, Okay, yeah it just. I mean, at least from what I remember, I just feel like it felt like endlessly frustrating to test it and be like, ah, it's not ready and test it. I mean, mine was in my foot, so it was pretty easy to test. I could be like, oh well, if it hurts, then it's not ready yet. And you know, the first, the initial thing was well, you know, probably just be, probably be like four to six weeks. Four to six weeks later, no, yeah, oh, man, okay, that's the.

Jon Rea: 53:10

That's a really hard thing. It's like part of the like self-fulfilling prophecy is like I'm okay. You have to tell yourself you're okay in order to have a chance to be okay, and I do feel like there's science on being positive and having a good outlook does improve healing and make you go faster. So you have to tell yourself like yeah, it's like six to 12 weeks, it's going to be six.

Jon Rea: 53:30

Yeah, I'm going to do good. Like I watched an Aaron Rogers documentary where he got injured and like he also just manifested healing, and so he just healed way, way faster than anyone told me. He just kept on being 100% confident, like, nope, I'll be walking in two weeks. Nope, I'll be running in three weeks, or whatever. Like he just like told people he was going to, even though it was like unfounded, it was based on nothing, but he just forced it to happen.

Jon Eisen: 53:54

It's like Christmas. Yeah, it's like Christmas. On how to ride. It's reminding you of Christmas ride.

Jon Rea: 53:58

But you have to be optimistic. You have to tell yourself like this is going to go well, absolutely. But then it's so hard that, like I try to do that and then each time I go to a doctor and they tell me it's worse than it was before, and I'm like, yeah, then it hurts even more and it's even more and it's more worth racing. I feel like you show up to a race like, yeah, six out of 20 plus guys got it, but like every single one of them had to go to the race, believing that they were going to podium, that they were going to win, that they had a chance to do that.

Jon Rea: 54:26

Um, yeah similar to like playing baseball growing up. Like you have to walk in the batter's box thinking there's a hundred percent chance you're gonna get a hit. Or I've heard jj redd doing interviews where he's like every three-pointer that I shoot there's 100% chances going in, even though you know it's a fact he's going to make 40% of his shots great baseball player. 25%, 30% of the red bats the same numbers in ultra running too. And now with this injury, the same thing, but it's so painful, but I don't know that there's a better way to do it. You kind of just like have to, and then I guess you practice handling the end result afterwards, but like it does hurt more. You want to head, you want to protect yourself, but then you have no chance and so it's like I don't know, you're kind of screwed either way.

Jon Eisen: 55:09

Everyone who shows up to Barkley, you know they all think when I got DNF'd at Barkley, laz turned to me and he was like I bet you thought there was some way yeah.

Jon Rea: 55:20

Somehow. Yeah, if you don't believe it, there was some day. Yeah, you have to you have to believe it.

Jon Eisen: 55:24

I wouldn't have been here if I didn't believe. Yeah, you know.

Jon Rea: 55:27

Yeah, but then it hurts to go to a doctor and then each time they're like ah.

Miranda Williamson: 55:31

Not yet, all Not yet.

Jon Eisen: 55:32

What did they say? Short memories make good athletes, yeah yeah, you got it when are you at in your road to recovery?

Jon Rea: 55:40

Yeah, so it has been six weeks since I talked to a doctor yesterday and so this was like, oh man, it's possible I start running like do a walk-run thing starting this week, but next three weeks will just be a little bit of biking and then we'll take the next step from there. And then I actually have some big uncertainty. On a third thing I guess I had the ankle sprain and then the stress fracture and then when I did my MRI for the stress fracture it had an incidental finding. It's like, wow sweet, they saw something else that they weren't looking for.

Miranda Williamson: 56:11

They were like here's just a secondary thing. It just seems like it's over there, but they weren't looking for.

Jon Rea: 56:14

They were like here's just a secondary thing. It just seems like it's over there, but they weren't looking for it. But they found it. I have a cam impingement on my femoral head, so like the top of my femur it's like ball and socket joint. Yeah, but the ball of the joint has some extra bone on it.

Jon Eisen: 56:31

Oh, okay.

Jon Rea: 56:31

And so when I rotate the joint in the socket into my pelvis then it does a little bit of damage because there's extra bone there and so, like I've always known Is that something you feel? So I've always known that, like, my right hip is much less mobile than my left. Like, if I cross my legs it's easy for me to put my left foot on top of my knee, but it's like if I put my right foot on top of my knee my right knee is sticking way up in the air. It's like not flat at a 45-degree angle, something like that. So I've always known I have a limited hip mobility and I guess now I know that it's because of this bone's in the way.

Miranda Williamson: 57:08

Oh, yeah, so that was like nice, that's kind of a fun finding if there's no consequence for it.

Jon Eisen: 57:14

No amount of yoga is going to fix your little bone. Imprint, yeah, yeah.

Jon Rea: 57:22

I have a good excuse for not having mobile hips. But well, yeah, the orthopedic way, who reviewed that MRI looked at it and said this is actually some cartilage damage in there and I don't know, if you keep running the way you are, then it's possible that this could be damaged beyond repair and by the time you're 50, you might not be walking around and I'm like they don't know that that's a hard thing to hear from a doctor. Yeah Gosh. So yeah, that's like the other thing.

Miranda Williamson: 57:55

Every time I go to a doctor, it gets worse and worse, like I went to a PT like do this test?

Jon Rea: 58:00

Oh no, you're injured, but like it's not a stress fracture. Then I go get the imaging Okay, it's a stress fracture. And then I have the first initial meeting. They're like, yeah, it's actually like a grade four, like it's a legit stress fracture. Then I meet with another doctor and he's like actually had this other thing so it keeps getting worse and worse and so I don't.

Jon Rea: 58:17

So I don't know the status of that thing, okay, but it's just like completely independent of the stress fracture maybe, but it could be related, like maybe it changes my gait a little bit and then that made me more susceptible to stress fracture you put more impetus on one side and yeah yeah.

Jon Rea: 58:33

So I'm doing follow-up and imaging in a couple weeks on that, and so then I'll get a final recommendation from the doctor, because he just saw it and was like this might be a problem. We don't know yet. So I'm doing the follow-up, imaging to see. But that's kind of looming over me right now too. I'm kind of in the middle of this, maybe possible. I'm towards the end of it and and like in a couple weeks I'll start walk running and then I could have some goals that by the end of the year and I could, yeah, do some good stuff, but it's also but it's also possible that, like three weeks from now, I'll find out I need to do some other stuff, to like do surgery on my hip, and then that would be like a end of year kind of thing before.

Miranda Williamson: 59:14

I'm doing anything, so so yeah so you're holding off on setting any goals, making any plans? Yeah day by day.

Jon Rea: 59:21

Focus on the moment.

Miranda Williamson: 59:22

That makes a lot of sense.

Jon Rea: 59:24

Doing work with my sports psychologist to make sure I'm not no forecasting.

Jon Eisen: 59:28

That's a good word. No forecasting is the mantra. Sports psychologist sounds like a good person in your pocket.

Jon Rea: 59:34

Yeah, and it's actually convenient that she also had a similar finding, that she has this cam impingement thing. She's a cyclist and it's like now she's going to the same doctors as me and getting all the opinions from the same orthopedics, and so she knows exactly what I'm going through. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the state of recovery process is like maybe in three weeks after biking for this time, then I can start a walk around program and start doing some PT to rehab it. But it's also possible. I have another thing that will take, by the way. You know, you've got to feel the feels.

Jon Eisen: 1:00:18

Like when it feels hard, you've got to express it, no matter how annoying it is to Rachel. But then at the same time you have to have some optimism that this is just a time in your life.

Jon Rea: 1:00:30

Yeah.

Jon Eisen: 1:00:31

And you will return. Two years ago, Abby Hall was like in the hospital.

Jon Rea: 1:00:35

I really needed that story and I had a good conversation.

Jon Eisen: 1:00:37

And she just won Western States.

Miranda Williamson: 1:00:39

I had a really good conversation with her on Sunday, oh good.

Jon Rea: 1:00:41

And she just said the best, nicest things to make me feel like it was going to be okay. So thanks, Abby Hall.

Miranda Williamson: 1:00:51

Thanks, abby Hall. Hope you're a listener, Abby Hall.

Jon Rea: 1:00:55

Yeah, and I guess on like feel, the feels like that was a strategy that worked on with my sports psychologist also is like post ankle sprain at least, where, like it was just this sudden, immediate thing, like she had me sit down and really slowly remember what it was like in the moment before, during and the moment right after I sprained my ankle and so like because I've rehearsed that visual in my head of exactly like the you know where the sun was and the as during the sunrise like, and exactly what the trail looked like.

Jon Rea: 1:01:27

I know visually exactly where I was and what that looked like, and I know that, what I felt and how I responded to it and I have, like, no regrets, like I you know I couldn't have seen that rock the way I could, because, like I was turning left around this like bend in the trail and in that moment it wasn't like I could have just tried harder and made this rain go away, like I was aware of it and I, like I was thinking clearly, I tried to run, I tried to walk, I couldn't do either of those and so, like, no regrets, like I really really processed it, um, and that makes me feel much better about it now, and so I'm like trying to pay attention to all the decision points that I have right now and like slowly think through them and pay attention to them, because then I think, when I look back on this moment, then I'll know with full confidence that I, I did what I could, I like, I tried, like whether that trying was like the running part or whether it was trying meant like oh wow, that's.

Jon Eisen: 1:02:30

It's a loud bark, you know it's funny. I don't think the barks actually come through on the audio but it's very disturbing. We hear them. We hear Summit barking a lot, I think that's really.

Miranda Williamson: 1:02:43

I think, this person is trying to knock on our door.

Jon Eisen: 1:02:46

Oh, no, no, Let him go away. Oh, okay, All right. Well, let's take a pause. Okay, Pause, All right. We're back from a little break after the dog was barking and I wanted to follow up on I love this processing you did over the sudden entry at Gorge and I actually think this is really something that I would like to use in my life Because, you know, I don't know. Last year I got, I went on a run and by the it was like a little four mile shakeout and three miles in I was calling Miranda asking for a ride home because I had apparently torn my calf and it was like very painful and it took me a lot.

Jon Eisen: 1:03:33

Like I never really processed like how that happened. I don't really know when it happened because I just I just started ignoring it, because it was like I wanted to ignore the injury and and not think about it at all. So I love this idea of like actually intentionally walking, working through it.

Jon Rea: 1:03:48

Yeah, well, it's so easy to criticize yourself and be angry at yourself and like, oh, I should have done this or I should have done that, I should have done this. But, like when you like slow down, you think like, well, like, what did I do wrong? Like should I have done this? Well, I didn't have that information at that point in time, so I couldn't have made that decision. Or should I have done that? Well, like, that was a risk I had to take and, you know, maybe it didn't pan out, but I still had to take the risk at that point. And then so you can, you can respect your past self and not be angry at yourself for making mistakes, and then you can I don't know hopefully be okay with it and just know that it was bad luck or that was just a risk, that a chance, that something like that was going to happen, and then you can be a little bit more okay with it afterwards uh, yeah, well, I'm going to try and use that in my own life next time I get injured.

Jon Rea: 1:04:38

It'll happen, it'll inevitably happen, and inevitable.

Jon Eisen: 1:04:42

Well, john, thank you so much for allowing us to ask you a ton of questions and being very open with us. Yeah, really appreciate it. I know our listeners appreciate it. Yeah, we'd like to end our podcast by asking our guests for a piece of advice. Running or not running related, so I did warn you about this. So do you have a piece of advice for our listeners?

Jon Rea: 1:05:05

I do. My piece of advice is don't take too much advice from other people. That's good. Do your own independent thinking.

Miranda Williamson: 1:05:13

I do like that.

Jon Rea: 1:05:14

There's too much listening to other people's voices, You'll get conflicting signals and they're not always right. So I think you should learn from other people's stories and definitely take their advice, but do your own independent thinking too.

Jon Eisen: 1:05:28

I like to say everything I know about trail running. I learned from failing.

Jon Rea: 1:05:32

So that's all personal, and the firsthand failure is worth so much more than someone else's story.

Jon Eisen: 1:05:37

Definitely. But then, after you fail, you can go listen to those podcasts and be like, oh, that's how you fix it.

Jon Rea: 1:05:41

Yeah.

Jon Eisen: 1:05:42

Got it Well, John. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Appreciate you and appreciate all the listeners who made it this far, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.