It's Just Walking. 1 in 3 Don't Finish.

Marc Hodulich1:18

I mean, I loved all sports, right? I think a normal childhood. Couldn't wait for my dad to get home from work. He ran every day after work, so I would run with him or I'd wait for him to finish his run. We shoot hoops, we throw the football.

But really, baseball is my sport until I realized like I wasn't that good at it.

I mean, I mean, I was good enough to play in high school, but my high school team sucked.

Marc Hodulich1:45

Oh, I know. I read your book. I I didn't realize you thought you were going to play in the NHL. And like you think you're good. You make allstar teams and then you get to play like kids that are really good and they're throwing an 88 mph fast and you're like I didn't even see the pitch come out of his hand, right? And you just realize like am I really going to do this for three more years and I started to run? And so I ran I'd always run with my dad.

I'd run like track meets and I'd run 5ks and stuff but I ran in high school and then

I was a mileer, right? You know, I was good in cross country and I love cross but I was a mileer and like two mileer. You run the 1600 and the 3200 in high school. So that's what I did.

Marc Hodulich2:22

High school 1600 meter was 421.

Marc Hodulich2:26

Which smoking it's all right. And like Alabama was really good,

Marc Hodulich2:31

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich2:42

Yeah. And I was like a 920 two- mileer.

So it was it was pretty good. But like

When you realize you compare yourself to other states and it's so easy to compare yourself in track in other sports it's tough

It's just like this is your time and how's that compared to kid in California kid in Georgia kid in New York and you start realizing like uh like I was good in Alabama I wasn't really good in a lot of the really competitive states but but I didn't have to be right and so it was a big lesson like going and running at Auburn in the SEC of like now you're not only comparing your kid to kids like in other states

It's like you're comparing yourself to like the best runners in the world at that age a lot

Marc Hodulich3:19

Yeah. And I think for too long in my life, like I hung that as like an achievement.

Marc Hodulich3:24

No, and it was to get there. I think it was much more so like a recognition of how good I was in high school and what potential I potentially had. And that didn't pan out in college. And I think looking back, I'd have been a far better runner had I gone to a less competitive conference

Because I would have been more competitive, if that makes sense. Like I wasn't competing. I was competing to not come in last place in the SEC when I would run a mile. Yeah. Right.

If I would have been in another smaller league or division or conference, it would allow me to have been more competitive and I think run faster. It's really tough when you're competing in high school to win races and you go to college and you're trying not to be last on the track, right? And that was that was two years of college running for me. Was literally not trying to be last and like that's just tough to like take a win is like, oh, I set a personal best, but I was 18th out of 19 people.

Yeah,

That happen relays. It doesn't feel good, right? So, I keep it in perspective of like, oh, was I proud I was good enough to run in college? Yeah, but did I really maximize my potential? Did I really get to see how good of a runner I could be? No. Cuz I didn't have the confidence when I stepped on the track. I did the training. I did all the work. When I got on the track, I was intimidated by everyone around me.

Yeah. Oh, that sucks. Well, how was it

Marc Hodulich4:30

different now than it was back then. Like back then we had to go to this gear room with this guy named Ed and these old track shorts and you had to like beg for a pair of shoes and some gear. We had Russell athletic gear and I'm not knocking them.

Like it's not Nike or Vori or whatever you're wearing now. Yeah. No, but look, it it felt awesome to like put on the school colors and represent the school. And like you said, it sucks. Like I'm hard on myself looking back at it. At the time I was just frustrated I wasn't running faster. I look back at it now and realize it was a confidence thing. Yeah,

Right. I didn't believe in the training that I put forward. I didn't trust the process of what I was doing. I got on the track and became intimidated by what everyone else was doing. But looking back on it, like I was so blessed to be on the track with athletes. I was on the track with Olympians, national champions on my track team. Like it was pretty special. The football team at Auburn was of course everything. And you had football players come out and run track and then get to see the difference between football speed and track speed.

And that was always just like something like I felt I had an inside lane to and I kind of understood what some of the best athletes in the world could do and how it differed from what you thought the best athletes were doing and say basketball or football when it came to like speed and agility. I got to have a first class ticket to seeing that on display every single week.

Marc Hodulich6:08

Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that. Like, I look back on it and I'm really proud that I was able to do that. And when I was a senior in high school, I literally just wanted to sign a scholarship letter. Yeah.

Like, I wanted the ability to take my pen with my parents sitting in our living room and be able to sign my name to a scholarship. My scholarship was a book scholarship. People don't even know that that exists.

I would have taken They literally paid for my books is what they paid for, but they paid for something. And for me, that was just a huge validation of all the effort and all the hard work that I put in came out to that moment of being able to do it and then like reporting to be part of the track team. Yeah. Right. Like that just was something that was such a confidence boost. And I think a reward for having worked so hard and what a lot of people don't know is my sophomore year I was really competitive, but I ran on a broken foot for 5 months.

Marc Hodulich6:59

Right. And I thought I was really tough. I'm not Ken ride out tough, but I thought I was tough. And I would ice my foot in an ice bucket after practice because it hurt so bad. And I finally went in to get an X-ray and get it scanned at the end of track season. They're like, "You're never going to run again." Right? It was my torso nvicular, which put Bill Walton out of his career. Greg Odin, like many basketball players, when you have this, obviously I'm not a basketball player, but puts great athletes out for their career.

They had to take bone from my shin and put it in the top of my foot to help the bone regrow and then put two pins across my foot. So, I had to go to three different orthopedic surgeons to even find someone that thought I could run again. And I tell that story because I appreciated so much more about being able to run and be athletic afterwards.

Marc Hodulich7:43

That I didn't realize before. It was something I did with my dad. It was something that I was good at. I was competitive. And then it gets taken away from you. And you think like you have a lot of doctors tell you're never going to run again. you're like, I'm just getting started ever again. And now I look back and you I'm 46. That was 30 years ago.

The pins are still in my foot. My foot is still held up, you know, and I'm very appreciative of things now that I thought I wasn't going to be able to do when I was 15 or 16. And then the fact that I'm still able to do it and how much I try to take care of my body now and recognize those little things and address those pains cuz that was just really stupid. It was immature. It was trying to think I could run through it, not realizing the damage and the risk I was putting my body at.

Marc Hodulich8:36

Yeah. And like there's nothing wrong with being a fan. It's different when you compete for your school.

Yes. I completely agree. And it's just so much different the passion and the connection you had to the community and the support because even if there weren't that many people coming out to watch the track team,

You still were representing your school and you still felt an immense responsibility to represent not only yourself but Auburn well, right? I'm part of the Auburn family and so when I go back and cheer for the team,

It's it kind of feels like I need to support that community that I was a part of and still am a part of. And it it just feels different. It's funny that you noticed that, you know, and like it's

It's something I can't turn off. Like I'm passionate about it and I just felt this very familiar communal feel from the first time I went there.

Marc Hodulich9:21

Maybe not on your level.

Marc Hodulich9:32

Thank you. I that's probably the biggest compliment I could receive. I mean, my my my true goal is to be as present and show as good of examples as that I can for my kids. I think until my boys turn 18 and out of the home, my number one job is to raise

Respectful, honorable, honest, good men. And I have nailed that in spades. Much to my wife's credit, too. Stacy's amazing. But Chase and Dylan are amazing young men. And, you know, I I surround myself with people who are great dads. my business partner,

My closest friends, the people I spend the most time with, the one common denominator, they're all great dads.

And so it's a thing. But but I'm competitive with my kids and

Marc Hodulich10:14

Yeah. And and what did I tell you when I came to your house today? I want to play with your kids, too. You know, that's that's I'm still a kid at heart. I want to play, but I I still want to win.

Marc Hodulich10:22

And and you know, sometimes you don't want to beat anyone more than your own kids. And then they beat you and then you're proud that they beat you. I'm not giving them any W's. That's right. I don't give him any W's. They have to earn them against me.

Marc Hodulich10:58

No. I mean, I had I've had moments like that, but I've also had moments where my older guy in golf, he was like he quit travel baseball, decided to focus on golf, and he was pretty good. He was pretty good. And then al all a sudden, he was out driving me. And now I realize like

I'm never going to be able to hit a golf ball further than my son.

Marc Hodulich11:13

I'm proud that he can hit a ball 310 yards.

Marc Hodulich11:16

But I can't and I probably won't ever be able to. And it's kind of it's kind of interesting when you see them bypass you in certain things. this what you want. But you also have to be able to quiet that ego of like wanting to win and being like, "No, don't you want your kids to be better at you in everything? Don't you want them to have a better life?" But in that moment where they're beating you,

It's tough to turn it off. You know, cuz you're kind of like, I I still want to be able to win.

Marc Hodulich11:37

So, it's funny.

Marc Hodulich13:26

It's something I'm actually actively working on, you know, like I'm I'm worried about that hole that is created because I wait for them to get home from school.

Yeah. And look, once your kids get their license, as you're starting to realize with Tensei, like

They're out of the house, they're mobile. We're the house everyone comes to.

Marc Hodulich13:44

And I wanted to create that magnet for other kids to come. So I got more moments with my kids, but it's helping me prepare for when they're gone, right? And I think it's important that you have things in your life that are more than just being a dad and a parent so your life doesn't stop when they leave. Because it's a big thing that I'm worried about. I've made them the priority for so long and I will. It's just the way that I'm going to serve them in the future is going to be with wisdom and certain moments.

It's not going to be with hours and hours of time like I have now cuz they're going to be doing their own thing. They're not going to have the hours to give me. I'm always going to have the hours to give them. So, it's it's going to be a shift in the coming years that I'm trying to prepare myself for.

Marc Hodulich14:24

Uh, finance and accounting.

Marc Hodulich14:27

I graduated in O2.

And what did you do from there? immediately moved back to Birmingham where I grew up and worked at a financial consulting firm and I thought like my road was going to be Wall Street and I always wanted to live in New York. So my main thing was after college I felt like it was more expected for me to go to Auburn like in Birmingham you're going to go to Auburn or Alabama for the most part and I had an opportunity to go to Ivy League schools and some other places and run and and I didn't.

I went to Auburn and it was by far the best choice for me, but I worried if I moved back to Birmingham and stayed like it felt like the expected life that I was going to have. And I always loved the unknown of what was going to happen. And so it was all working for an opportunity to go to New York. And after a year living at home and working, I moved to New York and lived there from 2003 to uh 2012.

Marc Hodulich15:17

So man, I I did a lot of things. I first moved there. I sold payroll door to door for ADP. My zip code was 105, right? I literally had like in in the south like that would be like five square miles. In New York it was like three blocks, right? I had certain number of buildings that I could go and solicit and knock at.

And it was just so I could have interviews at at other firms, right? I worked at a catering company. I sold dress shirts at Thomas Pink.

Marc Hodulich15:42

Right. cuz like I wanted to go out and live like bottle service and like be where the hot girls were and stuff. Well, you can't do that selling payroll. So, you know, I had three jobs at the time while I was interviewing and then I landed a job after a few months at Tower's parent which was a management consulting firm

And I did that awesome place to learn and so I was a senior consultant. I worked there for about 6 years.

Marc Hodulich16:05

And uh I mean really great learning, really great people. Well, it wasn't necessarily like the subject matter that I wanted to be in, but it allowed me to grow a lot. I mean, a lot of it was executive compensation. It was strategy around like board compensation. So, we worked with

Marc Hodulich16:26

Or, you know, we have a sales uh force and we need to figure out how to motivate and incentivize them. And we would come up with a plan. Here's the metrics. Here's what you do. Here's how that's going to translate into revenue for you. you helping you hit Wall Street's targets, whatever it might be, right? So, it could start at a high level, but then it got pretty down to the tactical. Y

I worked with great people. I got a lot of opportunity, but I wasn't passionate about it.

Marc Hodulich16:51

I worked a lot of hours and I worked really hard. We also had a lot of fun. I mean, I just came in with a class of people that I'm still really close with now. And your first couple years in New York are like your first couple years of college, but with money,

Right? Exactly. And you can get in a lot of trouble. You can also have a lot of fun. and we worked and played really hard together. And it was a really great period for me of I think trying a lot of different things, but also having real responsibility. I had real clients with real expectations and I had people that really held me accountable and I think we did some really good work together, but it wasn't a passion, right? I think I had a partner come to me at one point in time and say, "Hey, you're really good at sales.

You really lack the knowledge to be someone that can come through and be like the IT consultant in the room." Yeah. So, are you going to put your head down and learn that knowledge or what else do you want to go and do? It was kind of a wakeup call of like, hey, you can probably be a partner here, but like is that going to make you happy? Is that what you want to do? And it wasn't kicking me out the door. It was just saying, hey, look, like you have skills that are really going to translate here, but you have to have a desire to want to go really deep in a certain knowledge area, and you don't seem to want to go deep anywhere, you know?

And I appreciated the conversation.

Marc Hodulich18:00

Yeah. I was like, "How do you know?" You know what I mean?

Marc Hodulich18:03

Yeah, he's good.

He called my [ __ ]

Marc Hodulich18:07

Right. He knew I was good at the sales part, but then I didn't want to do any of the other work. And now I really smart analyst to do the work. And he was like, "Yeah, that's what we do as partners." Yeah.

Because we've learned that. We haven't learned that part. So, do you want me to be someone that shows you how to learn that or is there something else you're going to want to go and do? and he didn't know that I'd started kind of this event off to the side called the Wall Street Nathlon that I that I ran for years with a college buddy of mine and it was a good business and it was a fundraiser at the same time. So we were raising money for pediatric cancer research at Memorial Suncetering but we were selling tickets to the event and we also had great sponsors, right?

And so we were making money from ticket sales and sponsorships and then we were raising a lot of money and all the money went

Marc Hodulich18:53

It started off at $1,000, right? We had about 150 people.

Marc Hodulich18:57

You know, so me and my partner got to cut that up after expenses, but then we had real sponsors. Bentley Motor, Panerai Watches, Krue Champagne,

Sold a seven figure sponsorship to a title sponsor, a big bank. And so, like, we

We at a certain point were making more money from running this two-day event than I was as a management consultant. So, like when this partner kind of called me out, I was like, "Is there something else you want to do?" I was kind of like, I'm already doing it, right?

Marc Hodulich19:23

He didn't know.

Um, but then we were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal at one point for being donors of the day and raising millions of dollars with this idea and concept that got televised on CNBC. And so it was a certain point in time when like I couldn't hide it.

Marc Hodulich19:35

And like I broke my moonlighting clause. No one who was a part of the firm cared. They're like, "You're doing this great thing on the side while you're working 60 hours a week."

And then I just kind of felt the nudge to like you need to go and do this. I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur,

But I was scared to quit. Yeah,

Right. It was like I had I had a pension. I have a 401k and a match. Like who has a pension? I had a pension. I had a 401k. I had a good job. I had all this paid leave. I could work from home like in the mid 2000s. Like really, who could do that? We had a VPN. I used to have to type in the numbers to get on my IBM Think Pad.

Marc Hodulich20:10

Yeah. So, I worked from home like one or two days a week.

Marc Hodulich20:13

At that point in time? I was living um I did East Village when I first moved to New York. I live in the East Village,

Marc Hodulich20:25

I was a little grittier. I was I was a little grittier. I was closer to the East River. Then I lived on a uh Bleecker and Carmine. That's nice.

I lived dude Father Demo Square directly AC above Joe's Pizza 7 Carmine. It was unbelievable. I rented a place there and then my wife and I bought a condo on Spring and Greenwich.

Marc Hodulich20:46

Yeah, it was good. Um, and so yeah, lived there until moved to Atlanta in 2012.

Marc Hodulich20:57

Doing this from Inquiry Bank before we got into Ironman. He was he was crushing it at our event.

He was like, "Hey, you want to do the

Marc Hodulich21:03

It started off like I think a lot of things do of who's the better athlete. Yeah. Amongst a bunch of guys drinking at a bar one night and we had a range of different college athletes, right? I was the worst of them because I ran track, right?

You know, we had a soccer player, a football player, baseball player. And the events were kind of like

Every man events you could do without training, but if you focused on them, you could really improve. So, the amount of See if I can get all 10 right. It was a 400 meter to start the day.

Marc Hodulich21:34

Yeah. 500 meter row on an URG. This is before CrossFit. Yeah, we started this thing in like 2005 2006. So 500 meter URG um the amount of dips, body weight dips you could do,

Marc Hodulich21:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Hodulich21:53

Uh amount of body weight dead hang pull-ups you could do.

Marc Hodulich21:57

Uh that was event the fourth event. How far you could throw a football? You had three throws. How far you could throw a football was a great one. Um, an 800 meter is what we ended with.

A, uh, five cone shuttle drill for agility.

Marc Hodulich22:11

Which was really good. Oh, 175 pound bench press. So, the combine and NFL is 225. We did 175. You can have animals do like 50 60 reps. It was insane.

Marc Hodulich22:24

175 pre the triple.

Marc Hodulich22:27

I could do like 12.

Yeah. Now, I did 175 just yesterday and I did four sets of five and I was smoked.

Marc Hodulich22:36

152.

Marc Hodulich22:39

I was lifting a lot of weights early in the year and then I spent all the time swimming on the bike and I lost a lot of strength. I lost like 10 lbs through that through that training process. But that event was awesome just in in terms of seeing what people could do.

Marc Hodulich22:51

Right. And everyone was working on Wall Street and like we had buy side sell side kind of bets. We had uh we had some really great people in high up positions, but just like a lot of great former college athletes that just came out and put on some really impressive performances.

Marc Hodulich23:08

We had an awesome trophy, a Panerai watch. Like a Jerobomb 6 L bottle of Krug champagne, you know, none of those guys drank.

Marc Hodulich23:18

Um so it was great.

Marc Hodulich23:21

Kick in a car. They had a car on the field. Yeah.

You know what I mean? So sponsor for that.

It was cool. It was really cool. It was a great event. We did that for years and then, you know, my business partner kind of bought me out and then he went and expanded that across the country and I went pursued some other stuff which became 29029 eventually.

Marc Hodulich23:40

Uh it was uh Royal Bank of Canada.

Marc Hodulich23:43

Yeah. Close. Yeah. And you know they were they were kind of big in the sport sponsorship at that time from golf tournaments.

And I learned a lot about I think how I run 29029 right now

From things we learned at the Decathlon, right? You go from kind of taking care of your participants is job number one. You don't have partners or sponsors to selling a title

Title sponsor. They're a great partner.

Marc Hodulich24:07

But they're like here's what I need for my sponsorship dollars.

That doesn't necessarily align with what participants need.

Bentley Motors is a great partner. what they want us to sell a car to one of my 150 Wall Streeters. They don't really care about making the event better, right? And so I think what I learned was when you sell those sponsors and partners, their objectives are not necessarily aligned with what your objectives are. And there's a reason why at 29029, we don't have any paid partners. Yeah.

9 years in.

Marc Hodulich24:31

Right. 11 sold out events this year in an unbelievable demographic and we don't have any paid partners because I want our sole focus to be on our participants and their experience and I don't want to get distracted the way I did before. It's not there's anything wrong in having sponsors or partners. They're fantastic,

But they have to really align with the mission of what you're trying to do. And the partners that we have are providing product or services in kind.

Marc Hodulich24:53

Because I don't want to take the money and have it take away from something I would otherwise do as an alternative for one of our participants.

Marc Hodulich25:11

Yeah. Yeah,

Marc Hodulich25:28

thing is a is a person who accomplish it that finishes last. Yeah.

Same thing.

Marc Hodulich25:51

You were at you were at the second event ever in 2018. You, Rich, Rob Moore.

Yeah, it was amazing. It was a good crew. You know, 29029 started. Uh my partners are Colin O'By like 12 time world record holder. He probably has 13 or 14 now. He'll correct me at some point. send me a text and tell me he's got a few more world records. Jesse Ller, one of my dear friends, another great dad like Colin. Um, you know, Jesse and I got to be friends through our kids.

I was coaching his son in flag football and I was running to our football practice and my wife would drive the kids cuz I didn't want to sit in 30 minutes of traffic. It's four miles and took like 28 minutes to get there. I was like, I can run there faster. You know, I'm not in your shape, but I was in pretty good shape. So I would run to practice and at some point in time he was like who are you like running a practice? What do you do?

And I kind of told him about this Wall Street event and what I was doing. He found it interesting and you know he was just someone who was involved in many different businesses and liked to have a big challenge on his calendar every year and was into like marathoning and ultra endurance running. And we both kind of started talking about things that we felt like were lacking. I wanted to be able to sign up for a really cool event, have it be turnkey.

Marc Hodulich26:57

Right. Like I just wanted when I did my first Ironman, my only one, I wanted to be able to like pay more money and have a hotel room booked for me, have my dinners booked, have my massage therapist book, tell me who my coach is, hire my coach, make it simple for me cuz it was overwhelming to sign up for something, then have to figure out all the logistical details. And Jesse agreed, right? And so we started this business. We brought Colin on who had actually summited Everest.

And our idea was like kind of like own Everest. Yeah.

29,29 ft is the height of Everest. and give people an opportunity to hike up a mountain, take the gondola down, and repeat it over 36 hours with the goal being to walk or hike up 29,029 ft in those 36 hours and make it not a race. Make it much more community, you versus you, but you do something together, right? And so it becomes much more communal when you're not trying to beat the guy next to you or the woman next to you. You're trying to figure out where they're from, what their goal is, and it's walking.

Yeah.

You know, it sounds pretty unsexy.

Marc Hodulich28:01

I mean, we're at mountains from, you know, Stratton, Vermont, which is low altitude, but is going to be wet and cold in October, which our last event of the season, but we're in Sun Valley. We're in Whistler, you know, we did Aspen last year. I mean, we're hard mountains, right? And

It's not easy, but we made it easy to say yes and to sign up. And I think our thing was that we realized like more people want a big story to tell. They want adventure in their life, but they don't feel welcomed in a lot of the events that may have a low price point. Right.

But it's pretty intimidating to sign up for a 50 or 100 mileer.

Marc Hodulich28:36

Right. I mean, I've done a couple hundred mileers. You've done way bigger things than that. It's great. They're great community events, but there's no easy onramp into trail running. No. You kind of just have to just take a leap. And there's a lot of people like, "Well, I like to hike. I like to be in nature. Well, we're the other side of it.

Marc Hodulich28:53

Right. And we're kind of saying, hey, look, we'll set you up with training. We'll give you a place to stay. We'll give you the access to the best nutritionists. We'll give you access to the best mindset experts. We have people like you come and speak. We will do everything to prepare you to have this amazing experience and story to tell, but you're going to have to put forward the work for 24, 30, 36 hours hiking up this mountain and taking the gondola down and repeating it.

And you know, we just found this amazing formula, I think, where you can you can take people who are kind of stuck in life and you can take a lot of people who have been incredibly successful in many different areas of their life, but they keep doing things that they're good at.

Marc Hodulich29:31

And it makes sense.

Marc Hodulich29:32

But they don't try anything new. And this makes them very vulnerable. And they're like, "Wait, I haven't asked for help in 20 or 30 years." And you know, the inside cover of your book says for anyone trying to get better.

Marc Hodulich29:43

This is for people who want to get better.

Yep. And if you can hike and be patient and be present and put your phone down and ask for help and lean in and be human with people on a mountain, when you're in a moment of discomfort or suffering and being hard, well, you can wait as you do readouts before we get shoot this podcast. You get stuck in traffic and you get behind a school bus, you can wait. You can find a little more patience and grace in your life and realize, oh, there's other areas of my life that this is applicable to.

And I think we're opening people's eyes up to like ultra endurance sport isn't for ultra endurance athletes, right? anyone who wants to achieve something great can do that and this is a welcoming place to start and then it's much easier for them to go off and do other things if they want to. That's why I love trail run. I love that community. I love the other races that are out there that may be too intimidating to someone day one, but they come and do our event and then they realize like, oh, I want to do a 50k.

I want to do a 50 mileer. Well, there's a reason that we're not hosting those events. There's a slew of them out there that are going to do it better than maybe we would. But start with us and then see where you want to go. And luckily a lot of people decided to just continue to come back to us because they love that turnkey environment that we created and they love the community that surrounds it.

Marc Hodulich30:55

Uh we rented out the entire Fairmont there. Yeah. And you came to to Tahoe as well. We were at the Ritz Carlton.

Marc Hodulich31:02

Yeah. But to me that's earned luxury, right? Anybody not anybody but most of your listeners can probably afford to go and stay at Ritz Carlton. Yeah. It's different to you came to a trail event which is three mountain marathons in three days.

You hike, jog, walk, run a mountain marathon three different days in a row. You're earning that shower. You're earning that bed, right? You're earning that hotel room in a different way. And you appreciate those comforts that are still luxury.

Marc Hodulich31:30

But those earned luxuries you appreciate so much more when you've been out on the trail for 8 or 10 hours and earning it. Maybe you are only out there for 4 hours, right? But still, that's a long marathon for you, right? Cuz you're climbing 5,000 ft. You're at altitude.

Um they're tough conditions. You appreciate those simplicities of life better.

And and so yeah, we may be at nice hotels, but you're going to work really hard to get to enjoy that hotel room or the food that we serve or the massage that's included in those types of things.

Marc Hodulich33:44

Oh my goodness, so many. I mean, first first we didn't have a recognition for really what we were doing. Yeah.

Right. We we knew we were going to put the customer first. We knew we were going to put on a first class event, but we were trying to be too many things to too many people. So just initially it was, you know, uh kind of a LinkedIn networking event, right?

Marc Hodulich34:05

We're going to a great group of people there from New York cuz both Jesse and I had great networks there.

We're going to have amazing food, like farm-totable food and dinners.

And then we were going to have like amazing bands cuz we wanted great entertainment.

Marc Hodulich34:16

None of that matters to an endurance challenge. Literally none of it. And we left that first event and all anyone could talk about was the challenge.

Yeah. And one that we like dismissed the challenge. But it's like, okay, we need to go allin on the challenge and what is our core belief here as a company is that if you challenge people intensely enough, they have an opportunity to evolve into a better version of themselves. Well, everything we need to do needs to support that. So instead of farm to table meal with like line caught salmon, people may just need mashed potatoes or French fries, right? Like that's what they need. They need pizza, right?

They need things that can help them fuel for an endurance event. They don't need fancy. They need what's actually going to help them. They need practical is actually going to help them. So, I mean,

Marc Hodulich34:58

It is, right? Like, we have great, right? We really do take unbelievable care of people. And so, I think initially, yes. Do we get some things wrong logistically? Did we tell people year one, you don't need poles to hike? Yeah. I mean, it was that was dead wrong, right? Like, if you're going to hike straight up,

Marc Hodulich35:18

Probably didn't cuz I would tell my friends like, you don't need poles, you've done way harder stuff. And then like you realize like the amount of weight it takes off your lower back and your hamstring and your glutes from having poles and like it's the best thing in the world to have poles if you're going to do nothing but hike straight up a mountain, right? So there are certain aspects of this that we got wrong. But I'll also say like nine years into this, what I'm so proud of is that we've stayed so committed to the things that we got right and that is just this unwavering commitment to taking care of people, right?

And really wanting the best for people and listening to their feedback. You can't do everything that your customers want, but like I care about their experience so much. When you come to my event, I care about your experience so much. And that doesn't mean that you're going to finish. A lot of people don't finish. You know, our finisher rate since inception is 68%. The finisher rate of your average marathon is like 98%. Your average Iron Man's like 91 or 92%.

It's hard.

Marc Hodulich36:10

Right? And and there's an o an eyeopening experience for people to have too of just they see these stories of people finishing. They see themselves having that moment where they walk down this red carpet and put on the red hat.

Marc Hodulich36:22

It symbolizes that you finished and they want that moment when they don't realize is the path someone took to get there and the sacrifices that t person made and then what they went through during the event to get there. And a lot of people aren't willing to accept sometimes what it takes to finish an event like that. And it's it's to me very hard when you care about a customer as much as I do. You sometimes have to tell them a lot of things that they don't want to hear.

Yeah. And it's like, quit feeling sorry for yourself. Yeah.

Do you want this to be easy? Did you expect it? Did you expect walking up this mountain for 30 hours to be easy? But some people are like, I didn't want it to be this hard.

Marc Hodulich36:57

And like very hard.

Yeah. I feel for them in that moment, but they're like, well, I can't eat. My stomach hurts. Well, we're at 8,000 ft of altitude

Here in Park City. it it's going to be hard to do anything at altitude, you know, but that's part of it. The the woman to your left who's finishing has found a way to eat and you haven't.

Marc Hodulich37:15

And it's not that I think because I care so much about people, I have to be willing to tell them those things, too. Like, hey, like this is what it's going to take and I don't want you to like let this opportunity slide because you get so so few opportunities in life to be great.

Yeah. And this event gives people an opportunity to be absolutely freaking great. Y

But you don't get that moment at the end unless you're willing to put in the work when it gets really messy in that middle part, right? And that's what separates so many people is a person just says,

"Man, I've been putting in I put in 12 hours hiking today. That's a lot. I just want a good night's sleep." It's one night of sleep in your life. Yeah.

Who cares how much sleep you get? Who cares what your whoop says in the morning, right? Mine always tells me the next day 1% club. Yeah.

Like don't move. Guess what? I have a few more hikes to do. I have to, right? It's one night of sleep.

But I know what it's going to do for someone if they leave that event realizing like, oh, I'm capable of so much more. It's what you say. It's what's on the other side of heart.

It just opens your whole world up. And you're suddenly like, man, I've had all these self-limiting beliefs my whole life, and I'm realizing it. Our average participant is 50 years old.

Marc Hodulich38:23

Like, they're between us, right? They're 55 or 46, right? They're right in between us. and they're saying, "If I've been leaving all that on the table, what else can I do? I want that so bad for people." But sometimes people aren't willing to just realize what it takes to actually get there, right? And sometimes it takes them a few reps and I have to give them grace of realizing like, "Oh, I've been doing this stuff since I was 14, 15 years old trying to see how fast I could run a mile."

You do this every single day with your 10 mile runs. It's a learned skill for people. And so sometimes they just have to fail a few times. We've failed a lot. I failed more times than I have. I have more losses on my record than W's

Marc Hodulich39:00

Way more. And I'm not hesitant to talk about them, but I get to see people get their losses and I'm gutted for them. But I hope it leads them to their future wins cuz it's going to be that much sweeter afterwards.

Marc Hodulich39:32

Well, you're always willing to leave it all the way out there.

Marc Hodulich40:08

But that's a moment of like a big quit.

Marc Hodulich40:11

Right. But you've avoided that for so long cuz you have so many opportunities every day when you decide like you you're a wild man. You go out and run in the middle of the day.

Yeah. You go out and run in the heat of the sun in Nashville in humidity.

Quitting is not doing that run that day. Oh yeah.

Quitting for you may be doing it at 6 a.m. before it gets hot. It doesn't sound like quitting to someone else cuz you're still going out and running a 10 minute I mean 6 minute miles for 10 miles, but you're making it harder on yourself on purpose.

That's what I see from you. Right. And what what's so hard for people to realize about doing something like this is when they see rain in the forecast and they have a long training day and they say, "Okay, I'll do my indoor workout today and then I'll do the long training day tomorrow. I'm going to move the puzzle pieces around."

Well, when it rains at their event, they're not tough enough for it.

Marc Hodulich41:01

And it it can be beautiful and 55 and you're in this old growth forest and it's amazing. Or it can be raining and miserable and snowing at the top. Well, if you haven't trained in those hard conditions and given yourself opportunities to quit in training and learn that grit muscle as Jesse talks about, learn to work through and get those little W's each time, then it becomes really hard when you get that big moment, right? Because you haven't built up that mentality and that reputation with yourself of every time it gets hard, I find a way to lean in and push through the discomfort or do the hard thing.

If you don't do that in training, you don't do that every single day, then you can get to this big moment of quitting where it's very visible to everyone else. Yeah. But you've been quitting on yourself and you've been having these little losses that you haven't learned from for a very long time by taking the easy way and convincing yourself that you're doing the training. What you're not doing is doing the training for your mind.

Marc Hodulich41:51

To where if things don't go right on event day or race day, suddenly you fold. Right. Very little will an athlete, Very few times will an athlete have everything go right on race day. Exactly.

And I wish everyone gets a perfect event.

Marc Hodulich42:05

Right. But the best people are able to perform almost at their capacity in the worst conditions when they're having a bad day. They're not going to set a world record. They may not win the race, but they almost get their best because they've prepared themselves to operate under any condition.

And I just wish people could learn that in doing this that it's not about a perfect day. You're going to come to our events. I want you to have a memorable experience. the memorable experience is going to be if it was harder. If the conditions were worse, I only remember the ones that were almost awful going through it.

The ones where you breeze through,

You're kind of like, "Oh, that was nice. That's a great finisher photo."

Marc Hodulich42:42

Right. But the ones that are really messy and really hard and test you the most are the ones that are most fulfilling. Like I was telling a friend the other day, like fulfillment comes before the finish line.

Marc Hodulich42:52

For me, it's in the moment when I'm physically just wrecked. My mind wants to fast forward to the comfort that's coming after this. And I sit and I say, "This is why I'm doing this." Like this exact moment, the way I feel right now when I want to be anywhere else in the world doing anything else in this right now. This is actually why I'm doing it.

Marc Hodulich43:12

So, I'm going to sit here. I'm not some psych psycho who wants to hurt. I'm going to sit here and think about everything that went right.

Marc Hodulich43:19

I'm going to sit here and think about all the sacrifices people have made so I can be here today doing this event. Like when we did the trip a couple weeks ago, I thought about that so often of,

Oh my god, like so many people along the way did things, supported me, did things for me, so I can be here right now and I'm going to wish this moment away. I'm going to wish it was easier.

No. Like if it's hard, you're going to get so much benefit out of it on the other side. And that's what your whole book is about. And I think to me, I get to watch people go through that in real time 8 to 10 times a year. And sometimes I want to like shake them and tell them like this is why you're here, right? But they get it when they get to that finish line.

Marc Hodulich43:56

Like when they put on the red hat or they cross the finish line at our trail event, then they feel it and it and they they do appreciate it. But in the moment when you're new to something like this, it's really tough to understand that that's why you're doing these hard things.

Marc Hodulich44:13

I just had one in Sun Valley last week.

Marc Hodulich44:18

Yeah,

Marc Hodulich44:22

Snowbasin. still have glamping there. We have glamping in uh at Mount Rainier.

Marc Hodulich44:29

Ritz. Yeah. I know. And I think that's a natural progression that we find too. Like people who who are new to our brand in our community do a glamping event. They're safari glamping tents. They have turnown services. They're awesome tents, but they're still a tent,

Right? And they do one and they're like, "Oh, I checked that box. I did it. I can say that I've done a 29 and glamped. Now I want the Fairmont or the Ritz." And that's fine, too, right? You have options for people. I'll tell you, do you remember that that Snowbasin event? I was in the tent with um Rob Moore and we I never laughed so much in my life

Marc Hodulich45:32

Back up the truck.

Marc Hodulich45:41

Yeah. I mean I I I had like that time where like you laugh so hard it hurts and you're crying. And look, I think you have those releases at after you've done something really hard, too. And the thing that was so awesome about the experience I had with you and Rob there was like you two were you like were on the everyman jack team at the time. You're world class triathletes. You're world class marathoners. Each of you individually and you showed up and thought it was going to be easy.

Marc Hodulich46:08

day one, you were like, "MOCK, THIS IS SO HOT. LIKE, THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER." NO, I remember I remember

Marc Hodulich46:32

We have amazing support for that kind of stuff. It's a it's a low impact event. Your heart rate isn't high. It just it takes place over a long period of time alitude. And look, if you've been at the end of an IR, you haven't ever been at the end of an Ironman. You've finished, you've taken a nap, you've eaten dinner, and then you've come back and seen who's finishing at hour 15, 16, 17. A lot of those people are able to continue to go much longer.

Marc Hodulich46:55

That's a lot of who we have come to a 29.

Marc Hodulich46:58

And you know, the ability to keep pushing as we had this gentleman, we had a gentleman Jim Fischer has done our event twice at 80 and then 82 years old at the 80s, right?

Marc Hodulich47:08

His quote is the best ever. He says, "This is frustratingly doable."

Yeah. The first time he hiked Whistler, which is you get 3,800 ft of gain in one hike, that's a big mountain. You know, Whistler's a big mountain.

He did it and he looked at his watch and was like, "That took him like 4 hours." And he was like, "I only have to do this seven more times.

I can do this if I don't go to sleep. If I don't eat inside the lodge, like I can do this." And that was frustrating to him. Like it's it's doable at a slow pace for a really long time. Yeah. Right. So, look, we've learned a lot through the years, but the thing is is that no matter what, it's hard to do. And people have to be prepared for the duration of how long it's going to take. And that's almost harder for the best athletes to accept, right?

But they also recognize that well, we don't time it and there's no awards for finishing first. Let's just say the person who finishes first, it takes them 16, 17 hours.

Marc Hodulich48:01

Your first place in an Ironman is what, low seven hours? Yeah.

Marc Hodulich48:11

It's just a long time. But then I think you get so much respect for the people who were doing it for 30 hours to 34 hours where you're like, "Oh my god, it's not easier to go slower. It's actually more time on feet, more calories I need to consume, less sleep that I'm going to get."

And it it I think it humanizes everything to where when you're sharing the same mountain or trail with people.

Marc Hodulich48:31

In an Ironman in a marathon, you never see anybody after the gun goes off. You see so few people cuz you're such an elite athlete here. Even if you're an elite athlete, you're on the same track. You're looping past people. You're like, I can't believe that Jen is still going. Can you believe Jen is still out here? And the next day, like you've showered, you got your red hat on, you're having a beer or open bar, and you're like, Jen hadn't slept.

Marc Hodulich48:54

still with a smile on her face, still hiking.

Marc Hodulich49:34

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich49:53

You shouldn't want it to be easy.

Marc Hodulich49:56

Yeah. Well, and some people have to learn that the hard way. Yeah. Right. And I think

Marc Hodulich50:12

Well, and it's also hard, too, for an elite athlete like you who's like, "Well, what's the point?" Yeah.

There's no trophy for me to get. There's no course record. There's no age group to win. Why am I going to stay out here and suffer? Do I really need to do that? And then you start negotiating with yourself. That's right. Like, do I really need this? I can get home. If I get on this flight, I can be at my kids, you know, whatever. And you start thinking, you start fast forward ahead rather than just being like, "No, this is a proper challenge. I'm just going to stick it out and do it." It does give you a lot of opportunities to negotiate with yourself and quit.

Right. And and that is part of the beauty of it that I think we realized early on of like, hey, that's the magic that we need to protect.

It's not about going up different sides of the mountain and having different trails and seeing different views. is actually like doing the same damn trail over and over and over again, right? Because that is part of the challenge is continuing to do that same process and get lured by the comforts of the lodge, the bed, the hotel, the massages, whatever it may be, and saying, "No, I want what I'm going to get by staying on the mountain." That can be for when I'm done.

Marc Hodulich51:15

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich51:19

Right? I think it's it's different than a lot of other events where you're competing against someone. And look,

I don't know this cuz you're a boxer, right? You're a boxer, you're into MMA, all all that all that type of stuff, and you know that world. But what I would equate it to is in most competition, you don't necessarily get an opportunity to bond with your opponents because you're competing against them. The reason I bring up box and MMA is I think that they build the most amazing amount of respect and you see that shared in the ring afterwards, right?

That to me is like the pinnacle of it, but everywhere else like there's they're just names that you don't know. You're just racing thousands of people in the New York City Marathon. Tens of thousands of people. You don't really care about any of them. You you have may have one guy or two guys in your age group that you're thinking about. That's it.

Marc Hodulich52:04

But then you don't make any friends though, right? It's a solo pursuit and you have respect for a few competitors. That's it. At at 29,

You're sharing a whole weekend with these people.

Marc Hodulich52:13

Right. And so it is a little bit different because you're not competing against them and you're actually start to root for them

Because you get to understand their story. And for a lot of people who are not as fast as you are, they also just have an opportunity. They're just walking and talking with someone, you know? I mean, like it's pretty unsexy in the sense that like you are just hiking. Yeah.

And yeah, it is hard. And there are parts of our mountains that are really steep. There's parts of our mountain that require you to take some big steps. And maybe there's a rope at some parts in Whistler, right? Like it's it's not just like this benign trail.

Marc Hodulich52:42

But you can have a conversation just like you and I are, right?

Marc Hodulich52:45

And what happens is I think it strips away a lot of the the false pretenses that people have and a lot of the [ __ ] that people have.

You get someone, you ask them a question. First of all, I think the person that's asking the question actually cares about your answer. Yeah.

Like they're already engaged and you already feel part of a selected community just by being there.

And then they actually want to listen to the answer.

That doesn't happen a lot.

Marc Hodulich53:07

Right. Like you ask a lot of times someone how they're doing. You don't really care about the response. You just think you're supposed to. I truly believe at a 29 most people ask like, "Ken, how are you feeling?" They want to know, "Ken, how are you feeling?"

And rather than you just saying, "I'm okay," you could be like, "I feel like shit."

And here's why and here's what I'm going through. And I think you genuinely bond with people because you're being honest and authentic. And we don't get a lot of opportunities to do that anymore in this world.

Marc Hodulich53:34

Yeah,

Marc Hodulich53:35

It is. I think when I first started as an entrepreneur, if you would have asked me like, "Are you a creative?" I would have said, "Hell no." Like I don't think I'm that creative.

Marc Hodulich53:45

The more I got to actually running and managing this business, the more I realized like these ideas that I had was a creativity that I wanted to pursue. And part of the beauty of like just having my partners Colin and Jesse, no outside investors, no one to report to, no board, is the fact that we don't have to operate this business for profit or for growth or for scale or for some private equity objectives. We get to pursue what we find interesting. And I was like, wow, I'm really interested by stage races.

You did the GOI march. It's a big part of your book, right?

I saw Marathon DAB and these other things. I was like, man, these things are sick.

Marathon DAB is exactly like what I did.

Marc Hodulich54:17

I saw what these people are doing and I'm like this is incredible. These people are doing these amazing races over vast periods of time. What an incredible story to tell. But again, like a really, really, really high bar.

Marc Hodulich54:34

And athletes of your caliber, even questioning like, do I want to go and do this and suffer on this level for this long?

Marc Hodulich54:46

Yeah. Well, you did.

Good for you. You did. So, you don't have to go back. And I was like, I'm curious about that. I'm curious about doing a stage race, but it not being a race. Yeah.

Getting people's fitness and giving them the confidence to cover a lot of different ground and see a lot of different things. Like I'm very curious about where your fitness can take you. So when I did Leadville, the most beautiful part of me to Leadville, other than crossing the finish line with Stacy and my two boys, right, which was a wonderful thing,

It was the training I did in Telluride. And I could go on with a pack that had nothing in it but some salt gels, two gooze, and a rain jacket and go out for six hours and run 20 miles and cover seven or 8,000 ft of elevation gain and loss and see some of the most beautiful sites that other people have to camp at and take days to go and see. And I was like, this is so cool that my fitness and the work that I'm putting in can allow me to go and see all this stuff that other people have to make huge backpacking expeditions around.

Yeah.

And so I started thinking like, well, if our community can hike up a mountain and take a gondola down, could they go out, right? Could we start to teach them a little bit more about taking care of themselves, being a little bit more self-sufficient? And not like Leadville where eight stations are every 15 miles. We have them every 5, six, seven miles. Right. And again, doing three mountain marathons over three days was a way to kind of start to test, hey, you learned going up. Now we're going to teach you going out.

Yeah. And it was just a way to pursue my own curiosity about these events that existed. I wanted to do those style of events, but I wanted to come home to a St. Regis every night, right? And like it's just to say I think that there are other people that want to do that. And maybe there's not hundreds of thousands of people that want to do it. There's not hundreds of thousands of people that want to do the GOI march either, right? So I was like, look, if there's a subset of people that are interested in going and having this adventure and story to tell, then I really want to reward them at the end of every night and come back to a base camp awesome hotel.

But it's going to get progressively harder. You know how the body feels. You have to learn recovery. You have to learn fueling after you don't want to eat, right? You have to learn these new skills. And I think that's what keeps people excited is that they get to put something on their calendar that they really don't know how it's going to go. They know there's a story there. or they don't know how it's going to be written

And then they trust us to train them and get them prepared and and that was the exciting part for me was to be able to present a new opportunity for our community to say, "Hey, look, there's awesome races that exist out there. I do them myself. I love the trail running community and all the beautiful places you can go and do things, but some people just trust us and want to do our thing." So, I wanted to give them an opportunity to go out and do a version of the way that we would do a stage race.

And that's really where Trail came from.

Marc Hodulich57:24

Yeah. No, I know you did. I know you did. And like look, that's okay. I think I think it's realizing like we had a lot of people early on tell us we were missing the mark because we weren't telling people their time improved year over year. We were doing certain things. And I was like that's just not the soul of what we want. But if you got out of it was

You wanting to beat Tyler. I still remember his name, right? Like you know like you wanted to beat Tyler and like you're you're a like early 50-y old man. and you guys had a little rivalry that weekend and that was fine.

But for everyone else on the trail, they just wanted to finish

And so everybody got out of it what they wanted to get out of it.

Marc Hodulich58:10

But but in one of the things you learn in something like that, you definitely did it at GOI. when it ends, you have to prepare for the next day, right? Like the first job you have is to get your body in a place where it can perform the next day. That's way different than doing a race where you run a really hard marathon. You're like, "Oh, now I get a couple weeks to recover."

Marc Hodulich58:29

And that was the biggest thing that I learned about doing this event with my partners a couple weeks ago is just how hard it was to learn recovery. Yeah.

Marc Hodulich58:36

you finished each and every day. But you

Marc Hodulich59:17

Yeah, I mean, Jesse came to me with an idea that he and Chris How um one of our coaches had come up with, which

And Chris is an insane athlete, former world champion in the world champion Ironman,

Marc Hodulich59:31

Yeah. I mean, he's been there since the very beginning with us at 29 as a coach on the mountain and and a mentor and just someone who's all around this world of kind of

Seeing where your fitness can take you coaching elite athletes, Rich Rolls coach for a long time and

Just a wonderful guy. They come up with an idea and and and kind of had come by me and said, "Hey, we kind of want to do 29,000 ft three different ways." Right? The original idea of getting 29,000 ft came from a a cycling group in New Zealand, right? It wasn't my idea to get 29,000 ft. People have been doing this on Straa for a decade. bicycle 29,000 ft on the bike.

Marc Hodulich1:00:11

I didn't. Chris did cuz he's a purist.

Marc Hodulich1:00:14

Uh a handful of us had a van we rode down and and it was literally for the fact that I'm like I don't want to descend down a mountain 10 times. I hate the descent.

Marc Hodulich1:00:24

Unfortunately, it was 87 degrees in Vancouver. It was like one of the hottest days

And you should have done the descent just to chill. Um it was it was to we had B essentially we had 36 hours just like we do our mountain event at 29 to do it on the bike right and choose your own adventure go whatever pace you want to go at sleep go straight through if you want whatever you want to do so you basically had a day and a half to do that next day swim 29,029 ft which is like a 5.5 mile swim I'm not a swimmer so just to dude that is a lot of swimming

Yeah and that was in a lake outside of Whistler so open water but but not ocean and then finish at our Whistler event where

Marc Hodulich1:01:05

We we faced some some conditions. I got proper hard in the swim. The wind kicked up and we got some white caps. But but the idea was to do it as partners, do it as friends. Um and also put ourselves in the same position that our athletes do who are participants at 29. I mean, I've done a lot of hard things. I've done a lot of races, but like I'm a runner.

Marc Hodulich1:01:21

So if I sign up for 100 mileer, I know I can do it. I know that sounds arrogant, but like I know I can do it. I've just been running with my dad since I was 3 years old. I've done other 100 mileers. I know when it gets really tough that I can work through it. I didn't know if I could do the bike.

Marc Hodulich1:01:34

I mean, I had to buy a bike, right? My bike was my bike was I had a an Ironman bike which wasn't going to work.

Marc Hodulich1:01:40

And I have a road bike.

Marc Hodulich1:01:42

Yeah. I had a time trial bike or Sllo and like I had to buy a bike.

Marc Hodulich1:01:46

Um which was a fun process cuz of course I did a custom and it's all kitted out. The 29 logos and stuff was great.

I had to buy

Marc Hodulich1:01:53

It was a Canyon.

Oh, cool. that then I had like sand blasted and then painted and um

Marc Hodulich1:01:59

Yeah, it was light. I needed a light bike. I need all the help I could get.

Marc Hodulich1:02:03

But look, I had I had to learn like really how to sit on the bicycle, right? I had to learn power. I had, you know, I I didn't know my my uh FTP, right? Like these terms like I had to learn all this stuff. Like I'm new to it and not understand what is someone like coming to 29 and being like what is a V2 max, right? What's threshold? What's my lactate threshold? these things that we take for granted. What's zone two training? Like these people come in, they don't know anything.

Marc Hodulich1:02:29

About endurance sport. And I came into cycling not knowing a damn thing really. And swimming not knowing anything. I still left not knowing anything about swimming. I feel better on the bike.

But but I understand what it's like to sign up for something and want something and then also feel like you have no clue how you're going to get there. And it was a it was a pretty, you know, humbling process to go through doing something like that where there was plenty of time to accomplish it. There was also plenty of time to quit. Yeah.

And come up with an excuse for work, life, family, whatever it may be on why you couldn't do it. And you know, the finish line for all of us is probably a different place too, right? Jesse doing it is one thing for him. He's got 10 years on me. It's different for him to do something like this than me. Colin having set 12 or 13 world records and just having spent a 100 days in Antarctica by himself pulling a 400 lb sled.

Marc Hodulich1:03:17

He finished it in March, right? But but like I don't know how long it takes the body to recover. haven't done that for one day, much less 100. But like,

You know, for him to wrap his mind around doing this, he was a professional triathlete.

Marc Hodulich1:03:27

You know, he was a collegiate swimmer at Yale. Like the swim was a workout for him,

Marc Hodulich1:03:32

So, it was different for each person, but still not easy, right? And so, we all came at this with some different goals and what the finish line was going to bring for us, but it was an incredible experience to go through. I think I learned more about our business and our customer in doing that from for really for myself. Um, but for also to hopefully lead by example of like I didn't know that I could finish it. I didn't do I didn't test this. The most I climbed on a bike before I did this was 15,000 ft.

I had to go double.

The most I swam was three miles. I had to almost go double. Like when you start going into new territory

On backtoback days, that's really where you realize where the the body is capable and the mind's just got to give it an opportunity to keep going. What

Marc Hodulich1:04:13

Staying present. And I'm not I'm not bullshitting you. Like the hardest part was not fast forwarding out of those moments. That is the exact reason I was doing it. I spent eight years before this year standing on stage telling people to not wish these moments away. This is why you're here. Put your phone down. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Practice gratitude. And immediately climb one. I'm like, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. It's hotter than I thought it was going to be.

I got to go up this damn hill nine more times. It's a 3,000 ft climb at a 7 and 12% grade.

That is not easy cycling.

And I was like, I cannot believe how hard I trained. This is going to be harder than I thought.

And I texted my oldest son, Chase, that. And he texted me back almost immediately. He was like, didn't you sign up for it to be really hard? Isn't that what you want? And he wasn't talking [ __ ] He was literally saying like in that why you're doing this.

And it was this moment of reality. So, I think the hardest thing for me was day one, I got in a little bit of a groove late day one on the bike, and it was going to take 10 climbs to finish this thing. And each climb was taking me like an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes.

I started doing the math and I was like, I can be done by 10:00 tonight,

Marc Hodulich1:05:20

Like, I can just be done with the bike. It's 5:30, the sun's going down. I'm like, I got a headlamp. I got a lamp for my bike. Let's just get this thing done.

And I realized I was fast forwarding through the exercise. I just wanted the bike over with. And I realized like the whole thing I said I was going to do is I was going to sit here and enjoy it. That's not doing it. That's just trying to get to the next stage of this thing. And it's not a race. So like no, like just hang it up. And it wasn't that I was in better fitness than anyone or anything else. I was just at a place where I think when you're that uncomfortable, it's easier to just continue to go than to shut it off and start again.

Yeah. and getting on the bike at 6 a.m. the next morning after I've even sat on that harness and that seat for I don't know 10 11 hours the day before it didn't feel good

And you know like it's amazing how the body can respond but I didn't want to have to go through that. I was it would have just been easier to continue to go.

Marc Hodulich1:06:09

And so the hardest part for me mentally was staying in it and being present. The hardest part physically was probably late in the day, lap five on the bike, my abductor started to cramp, not from hydration. I am a hydration dial. I need 1,800s of milligrams of sodium an hour. I've been sweat tested numerous times. I know what I need and I know how to fuel. That's my job and I take care of it and I do it.

It was the fact that muscularly I just couldn't replicate that. I hadn't been cycling for long enough.

And I just remember just thinking like, okay, like if this is the biggest challenge I have to deal with, it's not that bad.

And my legs were cramping and I just remember in between laps like using the the gun and having my buddies like trying to rub out the cramps. It was just like just stay in it long enough to give your body a chance to respond. Yeah. And the body is an amazing thing. If you just slow it down, you let your heart rate come down, you don't panic. Um, that was probably the hardest part physically, but the hardest part mentally was just honestly not fast forwarding through the week and trying to be present and enjoy each moment that the week brought.

Marc Hodulich1:07:09

Again, it was way harder than I wanted it to be, you know, like

Marc Hodulich1:07:13

The swim was something that um always in the back of my head. I was like, even if you just have to brush stroke, you have all day to swim, you can do it. And so, I probably didn't put in the amount of time I did need to do in the pool because I always thought I had that out.

The surprising thing in the swim to me was how calm I was.

Marc Hodulich1:07:31

I'm not someone who's comfortable in the water. And I did a decent amount of swimming in the ocean. We were overseas this summer cuz I didn't have access to a bike.

And I think it just built some confidence of like, hey, I'm in the open ocean for 2 hours and my wife's on a paddle board next to me. Not necessarily like a lifeguard, but it was someone next to me. Right.

Yeah. And the swim when the wind kicked up, I actually said to myself, this is so funny because the whole training process I kept saying like I'm a terrible swimmer.

And if you saw me swim, you'd be like, "You don't have great form. You're not a great swimmer." Mark, right? Middle of the pack, iron man, right? I'm getting out of the water hour 15, hour 20. Not very impressive. That's not very impressive.

I actually said to myself, "You're a swimmer." Like, I've been swimming for, I don't know, 2 hours, 2 and a half hours. I've swam almost three miles and the wind kicks up, there's white caps, and you're taking water in the face. And it sucks. But I was like, you can just keep doing this. Yeah.

I was like all I have to do is swim it. I just have to stay in this lake and swim. And before I knew it, it was over with. And I think I was I was really proud of myself in the swim for not getting overwhelmed by the conditions. I will say, you know, we had three safety kayaks for five swimmers

And we're all kind of staying together as much as we can. When we first got in the water, it was glass. Right now, Chris is a two-time Olympian. He's won Iron Man's Yeah. Olympic swimmer. This is a workout for him. Yeah. It's no big deal.

And so, he's not necessarily worried about having someone watch out for him. He was also kind of running logistics for this with a few people from my team.

And I've been in the water and I think I've swam like I don't know 4,000 yards. So, like a little over 2 miles, which is a long time. I'm coming out of the water for the first time.

Yeah. And I'm walking out on the beach to like have a Coke and like have a Snickers or get some fuel and some hydration

And the waves have been kicking up and one of the safety kayakers who's just a friend of ours, right, who's volunteering

Is chatting it up on the beach.

And Chris is like, "Get in the effing water right now. One of these swimmers takes a wave to the head and they can drown in seconds." And I went from like laughing it off to being like, "Oh my god, like this is serious." Like these conditions are not easy. And mentally I was so at ease. Like I put in the work. I have a safety kayak here. I was like, "Oh man, this is real." You know? And it wasn't that I didn't have a respect for what we were doing.

It was just I was so at ease. And like that snapped me into it of like, "Oh man, like things can escalate quickly." And there was a little bit of anxiety then kicked up in me of like, "Hey, like this isn't just chill. It's like you got a job to do and stay focused." And then I was like, "Hey, safety kayak, you you looking at me?" you know, like wanting to make sure they knew where I was going, wanting to make sure that they were checking on me cuz then I realized like, oh, like I can get tired really fast and what we're doing is really hard.

And it's not like I felt great, but mentally I felt so good. I didn't realize that the cumulative fatigue from the bike the few days before could escalate really quickly in the water. And it was something that Chris's rightful call to action kind of snapped me into, man, this is this is really what we're doing is really tough and it can get really bad really quickly if we don't pay attention to it.

Marc Hodulich1:10:43

Yeah. I mean, you don't take any of that stuff for granted. It's actually why I didn't ride the bike down. I know there's people listening to this podcast and are going to call me names for not riding the bike down. But I was kind of like I'm not great at the descent and I'm going to get nervous and I'm going to get tired and like if I'm descending at 30 40 mph on this road, one mistake and I could be dead.

So like I'll I'll take the barbs of like, hey, I didn't Everest the proper way cuz I rode my bike up and I didn't ride it down. But it was me understanding my own abilities and what I was comfortable with. And the goal for me was to climb the feet and the goal in the swim was to just get it done. Yeah. Right. And we did it the safest way possible. You're right. like it can be really dangerous and you don't really recognize how quickly it can happen.

You can go from feeling great to just being completely out of it very fast and and luckily we have the appropriate support there next to us. But but that moment really like snapped me into it and was like, "Okay,

Like I got to stay focused and get this done. I can't be out here all day cuz my body's not going to hold up all day." And then we still had to go and hike the event.

Marc Hodulich1:11:50

Oh my god.

Marc Hodulich1:12:37

They're they're risking their life, but they're also totally in control. You're like on that edge. And it's beautiful to see. And you can't do it with any hesitancy. For me, I hesitate. I think about the worst case scenario. It's like I tell my kids when we're skiing

And we're skiing through trees. I'm like, "Look for the openings. Don't look at the trees." I don't take my own advice when I'm on the bike. I look at every thing that I could hit or run into or could kill me and that's not a good way to descend. So, I think it's it's kind of understanding and having really good self-awareness.

And that's what I think I brought to the challenge is like I know what I'm good at and I know where I'm weak

And I was really willing to be honest with myself about the things that I would do and wouldn't do and the best way to kind of get through what was really just a very long challenge. Like it just took a long time to do this.

Yeah. What's next? You know, I got asked that during the final hike at Whistler when I'm finishing up this weekend, right? And you know, the bike took me 15 plus hours, the swim was 4 hours, the hike's 20-ish hours. Still a long time.

Marc Hodulich1:13:32

And this woman walks up next to me and she's like, "Oh, so you're finishing the triple and like what's next?" And I was like,

"I'm not even remotely focused on what's next." And like that's not a copout, Ken. It's like I need to sit in this for a while. And and what I realized was in doing it, I learned so much about myself that I need to put into play in other areas of my life. That's what I'm curious about doing is taking lessons learned and putting them in business, putting them in family, putting them into friendships cuz I do have more capacity to do things

And I can be more present. And it started with something you and I were just sharing as friends where I told you I deleted email off my phone.

Yeah. I realized how many moments I am doing the exact thing I want to do with the person I want to be with. And I'm drawn to check email. Why? Right? Like if someone needs me, they'll call me. I check it first thing in the morning.

I check it at lunch. And I check it at night.

Do I really need to be checking my email when I'm having coffee with a friend I haven't seen in 6 months. And I was like, if I can practice this presence for 5 days of doing an ultra endurance event,

I can certainly do this over conversation or at dinner or in the sauna or in other places. So for me, I think it's putting into practice what's what I learned from that event in my own life is kind of the first priority. The other is reverting back to supporting people. I just realized how much I get out of seeing other people achieve their goals. And I don't mean that lightly.

Like I really get an immense amount of satisfaction and just true joy and fulfillment from seeing other people win.

I wouldn't like that in my 30s. I wanted to beat everybody.

Marc Hodulich1:15:01

Right. I didn't understand why the guy next to me was making more money. I didn't understand why his business succeeded. I didn't understand why he got the girl. or whatever it was. Like I was always fixated on why isn't that me?

Marc Hodulich1:15:10

And now I'm like good for Ken.

Marc Hodulich1:15:12

And it feels so much better to lean into people and be like good for them. And so I just want to make sure I can take that kind of same amount of passion and and and effort and work that I put into training for this event and take a fraction of that. Like look man, you're still going to be selfish. You're still going to focus on your family and yourself first. I don't want to make it sound like I'm I'm going to live a life of service now and and make it all about the selflessness, but put more effort in supporting other people.

Marc Hodulich1:15:42

Yeah. It just something changed. I have this really close friend, Ray Hicks, who uh is from Alabama. I didn't know him growing up.

Ray Hicks Ray Hicks from Fairhope, Alabama. Actually, Daphne, he would correct me. Incredible entrepreneur, incredible friend, incredible endurance athlete.

But he told me, "Marc, it's a big cup and we can all drink from it." Yeah.

Right. And and it it it's just that abundance mindset and he said in a very simple Alabama way that just resonated with me of like man root for the people that are winning. Yeah.

Marc Hodulich1:16:13

They learn from their losses like you did. Right. So it's like you're releasing a book. It's like how can I help? Yeah.

Right. Friends starting a business. How can I help? Right. Sometimes it's telling them you're not going to contribute to their business. Right. Sometimes it's having a hard conversation or saying like I'm not a believer enough to write a check. It's going to hurt our friendship or whatever it is. But I'm here for you in other ways. Yeah.

And so I'm glad you feel that cuz I think with the people I have in my life, I want to give a lot to them.

And I realized through this process how much more I can give

And selfishly how much more that does for me. And and it's just important that I put that into play in this next chapter of my life. I was I was reflecting a little bit after this and I realized the real power is knowing what you don't want to do.

Marc Hodulich1:16:52

Right. And I know a lot of things I don't want to do and I don't want to chase like a bigger challenge. I don't want to chase a bigger thing so I have something to talk about on Instagram, right? Because that is that is something that is is really hard.

It feels really good when you have something interesting you're doing to put out there. But as you told me, maybe you're not racing as much right now.

Marc Hodulich1:17:12

That's an amazing thing to be able to be like, I'm going to put a lot of effort into something. I'm still going to run every day.

Marc Hodulich1:17:19

But what's fulfilling to me may not be breaking the tape first in my age group right now. And maybe when you're 60, you may come back to it.

Yeah. you know, but

Marc Hodulich1:17:30

Yeah. What impresses yourself right now? What What is Ken Wright out fired up?

Marc Hodulich1:18:02

you think you still need that outlet of the physical exercise and this is added on top of it or is it in substitution of

Marc Hodulich1:19:00

Were you at peace taking that time off?

Marc Hodulich1:19:08

Difficult in what sense?

Marc Hodulich1:19:50

Okay.

Marc Hodulich1:20:38

Is it as advertised?

Marc Hodulich1:20:55

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich1:21:04

"Did they have breakthroughs?"

Marc Hodulich1:21:15

And was this multiple nights you did this?

Marc Hodulich1:21:32

Did you want to tap out at any point in time? Were you like, this is too much?

Marc Hodulich1:21:46

Yeah.

10 more hours from now.

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich1:23:23

I was

Marc Hodulich1:23:38

That's wild." So, what what stuck with you the most

Of everything you went through for that 12 hours? You do that once, you do that twice.

Marc Hodulich1:25:20

It was crazy scary.

Marc Hodulich1:26:01

Man, it was like

Marc Hodulich1:26:32

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich1:26:48

Do you feel like you needed to go through that experience appreciate those things more or did it just shine a light more on how much you care about?

Marc Hodulich1:27:01

Yeah.

Marc Hodulich1:27:29

You're authentic through and through to that. I think that's why we're so close. we can see each other a lot, but I know like I as I think going through like not near as intensive experience, but like going through training for that triple that I did with my partners and then doing the event.

Marc Hodulich1:27:43

I came out of that feeling incredibly grateful for kind of my friends, my family, and people around me

And ensuring that I showed that level of appreciation to them.

Yeah. like on a day-to-day basis, not take those things for granted and uh realize like the flexibility and the opportunity you're building into your life is to make sure you're maximizing those periods of time with them. That's why I took email off my phone cuz I wasn't doing it. It's like, all right, you're a man of action.

Marc Hodulich1:28:10

I think everybody who's listening probably knows you run 10 miles a day,

Right? There's no better way to see someone's dedication and understand they're going to run 10 miles a day at six minute pace or whatever it is. But I think it's also if you have that type of realization, what action are you taking? And for me, that action was simple. It was like, okay, figure out ways I'm being distracted and remove those distractions so I can prioritize the things that are most important to me at that time cuz I know it.

I do an event like that, it calls it to the forefront, but actually creating the action plan to put it into place is normally where it falls apart.

Marc Hodulich1:28:40

Right. And so that's what I'm curious for you is what is that action plan going forward? Now,

Marc Hodulich1:29:45

Yeah. Well, I think it also distracts you cuz like it's never enough.

Marc Hodulich1:29:49

Right. Cuz you're always the more successful you are, the more you're surrounded by a circle of people who are maybe more successful. You see the pinnacle of what that is

And then suddenly they have things that you may think you need. Maybe you procure such things and then you have to make more money to pay for those things that are actually taking you away from the thing you want to do.

Marc Hodulich1:30:06

Right? Like I've been on vacation with friends who are extraordinarily successful who can't enjoy the vacation because they're trying to pay for all all the other things that they have at home that they're not enjoying. Right. And like if you can't learn from those things and like what's the point in doing it?

Marc Hodulich1:30:19

And and Yeah. I mean I remember you telling me one time that there's never been one run you did that you regret it.

Marc Hodulich1:30:27

I mean I tell my kids that all the time. I'm like, I know you don't want to put in the work, but you feel so good after you do the work.

Um, it's funny. Last night, I played pickle ball with my boys.

Highly competitive games.

And I'd already worked out that day. It's 7:30 last night

And uh my older son's like, "Hey, do you want to go for a run?" Now, he doesn't run. He's a golfer. Yeah.

Baseball player. He doesn't run.

And I didn't want to run.

Marc Hodulich1:30:51

Honestly.

And but yeah, my son wants to go for a run. Like, I'm going to go for a run with him. Like, I'm a runner. I'm going to go for a run. And uh and and as we finished the run, I was like, "Why why do you want to go for a run?" He's like, "I just feel so good when it's over." He's like, "I don't He's like, "I don't get to I don't get the runner's high when I'm running." He's like, "I get the runner's high afterwards." And I was like, "That's wild." You know what I mean?

Like there's been a few times I've been on a trail and I've been like, "This is amazing." Like, "I'm so that sometimes." And I'm like, "Yeah, I get the runner's high like in the cold plunge or in the shower or like I'm sitting down having a coffee in the morning." I'm like, "Thank God that's over with." Right? But then you get to look back at your splits or your whoop or whatever it is and be like, "Oh, I put in the work today." And it feels good putting in that work.

It was just so funny to have my son articulate it and be like, "I get the runner's high afterwards." Yeah. That's kind of like the point of a lot of this stuff is you just feel better about yourself having been productive and having done something hard. Exactly. It just makes you feel like you're making progress towards something and you're improving some aspect of your life.

Marc Hodulich1:31:53

Yeah. I mean, we just announced we're going to Europe for the first time this next year. We're going to Verbier, Switzerland.

Marc Hodulich1:32:02

Living right. You're living right, man. It's an awesome town. Um, you know, I had some tough work. I had to go check out a lot of European ski towns over the past couple years, figure out where we're going to go. But, uh, we did a lottery for that which sold out. We overs subscribed for a big lottery. So, we've already drawn that lottery last week. And so, that event will be next year. And then uh look, I'm curious about, you know, I I mentioned this term before, earned luxury.

Yeah. I'm kind of interested in continuing to explore like what different things we could do as a community that are really

I I don't know, storyw worthy, right? And to me, like going to Europe and climbing 29,29 ft, 8848 m, you know, as we're going to Europe, like that's a story that we're going to share together as a community. It's a small group of people like, right? Um I like creating those experiences. So I think for me what's next is continue to protect what we have but do more small curated events like Verbier, explore the countries, explore other concepts that are maybe for smaller groups of our community to really share in those bonds and um and have those memories like we had in Snowbase in 2018, sharing those laughs, right?

Like it's about more of those experiences because that's what I want to do and I want to spend space and time with these people in our community, but I can't go everywhere and I can't be at every event. And so I think for me is to continue to create events that kind of scratch that that curiosity and creative itch, have my partners support me in that, and then meet wonderful people like you. I mean, if I can do more of that over the next 10 or 15 years of of my career, then I know it's going to be a win because I'm doing it for fulfillment and not achievement.

It's not about the size of a business, the profitability of a business. It's about what I gain from being on the mountain trails with these people and doing it in all inspiring places and and and hopefully just getting to shepherd that just more and more.

Marc Hodulich1:33:48

I don't know. You said it all, too, man.

Marc Hodulich1:33:57

You're welcome anytime, my friend. Thank you.