3 Things You Must Do Differently After 40 to Stay Strong and Agile | Jason Hardrath

Ageless Athlete Recording - Jason Hardrath
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Kush: [00:00:00] Jason, I always start with this question, which is, where are you right now and what did you have for breakfast today? 

Jason: Awesome. Yeah. I am in keto Ecuador with a couple of my friends. We're gonna climb some 5,000 meter peaks while we're here, and I'm hoping to get to paraglide off at least one of 'em. so yeah, off on a break from teaching and getting an adventure in and, I've actually not had breakfast yet.

I've just had a cup of coffee.

Speaker: I love it. I can see just from your background that you are literally in the middle of an expedition. I see your, your big, yeah, your big, halback behind you. so great to have you today. In the middle of. What I'm sure is a very well, very tightly packed trip that you have in the middle of your, your winter break from [00:01:00] teaching.

tell us a bit more about what you're hoping to accomplish while you're in Ecuador, Jason. 

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. I, I came down here originally just I had two friends, two longtime friends. We've met each other through the FKT world, the fastest known time world. We all love chasing mountain records, moving through the mountains quickly and efficiently as a passion of ours.

And, it had been a number of years since we'd spent time together and they were like, Hey, we're gonna go down to Ecuador. We're gonna book this nice place. We're gonna go tackle some peaks while we're here. Do you want to come join us? And I was like, it's been a minute since I've been down to Ecuador.

I came down once before in 2016 just to climb Razzo, the tallest peak here. it was my first 20,000 foot peak, a very formative experience in my journey into the mountains. and I was like, yeah, it'd be good to go be back in that space again. And now I've taken up paragliding and speed flying and I was like, 

Speaker 3: Ooh, 

Jason: I wonder if I could climb another one of [00:02:00] Ecuador's tallest peaks and fly off of it while I'm there.

And they're like, let's try to make it happen. So yeah, booked the ticket and hopped on down here. And yeah, the mission is we've been checking the weather and the cloud base, the wind on a variety of peaks. And it seems like Neesa North is gonna be the one that's gonna offer the highest likelihood of getting a flight.

So we actually just minutes ago booked the rental car to drive out there tomorrow. And it seems like that's gonna be the best weather day. and yeah, we're gonna try to climb it and hopefully get me a flight off from 5,000 meters. 

Speaker: Jason, we were exchanging messages, you mentioned that you were in Ecuador to fly and that immediately caught my eye because in my head I think of you as somebody who runs mountains.

Can you tell us more about the kind of flying you do? 

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So I do what's known as, paragliding and a [00:03:00] subset of paragliding called speed flying, where you fly a smaller wing that, flies steeply down the side of the mountain and you can do barrel rolls and kind of carve with the terrain.

And yeah. What led me into that? I faced a really big setback with COVID. I impacting, my whole system. I, I had the brain fog, the mood issues, cardiovascular. Suddenly I just was like, I couldn't train like I used to. I was exercise intolerant where I, my whole life, right?

Exercises since middle schools, since, I was a kid. Basically exercise was the thing I reached for as that oh, I had a frustrating day. I'm gonna go for a run. I'm gonna go exercise to feel better. And I learned that at a young age that my brain, my mood, everything was better when I exercised and suddenly post COVID, it was like backwards.

It's If I reached for that as a coping mechanism, I felt worse for days afterwards. And I had to relearn my relationship with myself. And during that time [00:04:00] where I was in the deep struggle with it, 'cause anyone that knows me knows that I've built up a whole like identity and lifestyle and dreams and missions in this mountain running space.

And so I was in the midst of like seeing those dreams and goals like evaporate and disappear in front of me. And I knew I needed something. New to focus on while I was trying to figure out the health related issues, which there wasn't much information out about. 'cause the whole COVID thing and how it impacts people in the long term.

a lot of people are still just oh yeah, you're just getting older or whatever. It's no, this isn't how that goes. Like I know the data on aging, endurance athletes and you don't just suddenly go from, I can, climb six peaks in a day and move for 20 hours straight to a one hour run is like gritting your teeth to, to get through.

that's not the process of aging. You don't just wake up one day and can't do it. So it's been really difficult to sort that information out, but I [00:05:00] knew I needed something positive and I'd seen an X Alps video, which is like the Super Bowl or the, the World cup of paragliding of hike and fly.

I'd seen that way back in 2016 or 2017 as I was getting into running the mountains, and I was like, oh, yeah, that seems really cool. That seems like an amazing experience. Maybe when my knees start hurting on the downhill, I'll take up flying and, my knees weren't hurting, but my whole body was.

So it was like, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and reach for this new thing. That gives me a domain for growth and mastery and a new experience, a new way of looking at the world to find adventure that's not just based, like everything I'd done in my early life was all based on fitness and endurance, and like health and wellness.

And so it's like I'm gonna reach for this thing that even though I don't feel good, like at least it gives me like a skills based. Where even if I'm just for the time being, getting a car ride up to the top of a normal launch, I can have something I'm learning and [00:06:00] mastering that's positive. And so it gave me, it, it worked really well.

It gave me that thing where as soon as my feet left the ground on the first flight, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be a part of my life. and yeah, it gave me that thing to see growth and positivity and hope on the horizon, opportunity on the horizon. While all of the health stuff was still a giant unknown, like what would I get back to being able to train?

Would I get back to being able to run? and yeah, now I definitely am not all the way back. I'm still figuring stuff out as I go. As new information comes out, I'm still trying new things. just recently, excuse me, just recently in the last, six weeks or so. I've been able to actually get back to a stable routine of consistent training with weights and with some cardio and not have it spiral into feeling bad at some point.

So it's it feels like I've crossed another threshold of figuring things out. and so now it's kinda [00:07:00] okay, how can I blend this new skill, this new passion, into sort of this old love of going out and moving in big terrain and moving in the mountains. And yeah, it's been a really cool journey.

And yeah, I think it's something we all face these big setbacks in life that were unexpected and trying to decide whether we persevere with the same thing. And is it like a buckle down and keep going and this, I'm gonna transcend this experience with the same process that's always worked, or do I need to pivot and.

Invent some new ways of expressing myself and finding something that I love. And yeah, it was definitely a repeated journey of that. 'cause I definitely faced that with a big car accident that I had. I had been like chasing ultra marathons and Ironmans and marathons, and I had a big car accident in 2015, and that one was easy, right?

you go out a car window in an accident and your body's messed up [00:08:00] and, like it's,it's acute, it's traumatic, you're injured. So it was like very clear that I would have to like, reinvent myself. And, at that time I created a clear distinction in my mind. oh yeah, that former me, he died in the car accident.

I'm like, he lived an awesome life. so cool. The things he did. I'm so glad he chased the dreams he chased when he had the chance. But now this is a new me and I'm not gonna live in the shadow and compare myself to that former self. And so I was able to create a clear distinction for just celebrating, I remember celebrating the first time I could, 'cause I like tore my ACL and LCL apart in the accident and had to have it surgically repaired.

And so just celebrating, being able to bend my knee 90 degrees again and celebrating the first time I shuffle, jogged a single mile and not living in the shadow of oh, but I used to run, a two 50 marathon and I'm, how can I'm not there yet. So instead of measuring in my own shadow, it was like, no, just celebrate the new growth.

[00:09:00] And that one was easy to do that with in a way. Like it was hard, but it was like more distinct, right? You could see. I have to do this 'cause I, my body's been seriously injured with the long COVID, it was harder to identify it 'cause it was so slow and like chronic. And when you get sick you go, oh yeah, I'll feel better soon.

Maybe I just started training too soon. maybe I'm just still feeling off or maybe I got sick again. you make these excuses that draw out that awareness that it's oh no, the relationship with myself has changed. And so finally it like dawned on me that it's oh, I'm in a similar situation here where I need to be willing to like, let go of my former self.

Let that chapter close if need be and start fresh. And yeah, so it was a repeated journey. I became aware of this being willing to let a chapter close and being willing to write a new one. and that was what? Flying was for me [00:10:00] was adding in this new element, this new aspect to Jason Harrath that hadn't ever been before.

And I guess snuck in a little bit of my backstory there. 

Speaker: Jason, thanks. I didn't quite expect that answer because on a personal note, I I've had a few friends over the years including a close friend of mine who have taken up flying paragliding.

And they have been, slowly working on me over time to get me to come out and try the sport. And I figure at some point I will break down and join them. And so your story of coming into the sport as. A tool that helped you get back into discovering this joy of progression, this feeling of being outside that we all love.

That story is so powerful. 

You were able to take that, that COVID [00:11:00] illness and channel that into this new sport. Where did you get that? Wisdom or that maturity, which I'm sorry, but it's just seems, it seems almost unusual for somebody who's a bit younger. I think 

Jason: for as long as I've been alive, I've always been the old soul, if you will.

even way back in high school, I was like the kid that people from different friend groups would walk up to and have conversations about what was going on with their friend group or, yeah, I've always had a ben toward the philosophical and the psychological. I've always been very drawn to like deeply understanding that and sorting why I do what I do.

and why [00:12:00] others do what they do. yeah, the books my whole life, the books I pick up have been things on, writings on understanding intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation and,books on understanding your why and books on philosophy and books on like psychology and how to, how different emotions work, whether it's fear or love or these deeper concepts.

And I've always been drawn to people that study and speak on these topics that sort of guide us along the higher values, the higher aspects of ourself. and like one, one thing that I think really. A couple of things that helped move me forward is, I remember as a 16-year-old reading a book called A Million Miles in a thousand Years, and it proposes one that at this, a storyline that, all of us have heard at this point.

I think if we're in this, or most people have, this might be insightful to a few people, this idea that, okay, if we're drawn [00:13:00] to these movies and these books that tell these incredible heroic storylines, the hero faces, the dragon, the hero goes on this grand adventure and faces incredible ordeals to succeed on their adventure.

and those are the things that captivate us and guide us through a whole series of emotions where we, cry or feel joy while experiencing this fictional story. then why do we go out and live the equivalent of a car commercial where man wants beige? Volvo man works five years, man buys beige Volvo, where if we paid money to walk into a theater, if we paid money to walk into a theater, to watch a movie, and it was that we'd want our money back, it's that's boring.

But we go and live that life and then wonder why we feel depressed and unmotivated and unstimulated by our life. And I remember oh, like I want to live an adventure story. that's, I'm wired. But I could see that in myself. I want these physical [00:14:00] challenges. I want these to find these things to test myself against.

I want this discomfort, I want this unknown. And so from a young age, I realized that was of high value to me. And then also another thing that really helped guide me forward was, on identity sorting. Within sort of psychology, oftentimes with language, we'll misidentify things. 'cause you can sort things like something as a behavior, like this is a thing I do, I ride a bike, I go for runs.

Or you can state it as an identity. I am a biker, I am a runner. And oftentimes, we'll, when we're expressing ourselves to others, we'll identify, we'll use something as an identity. We'll phrase it. I am a teacher. no, teaching is something that I do. I'm passionate about moving people forward and helping them have breakthroughs and all that.

But teaching is just something I do. Running is just something I [00:15:00] do. It's a way I express these inner passions that are who I am. And you can almost think of it like. An artist, right? An artist can have the art inside them, these ideas of things they want to express, and then they pick a medium, whether it's paint or sculpture, to express that into the real world.

And if you've watched the life of artists, like sometimes they'll get very good at something. Maybe they become a world class painter, and then they stop painting and take up sculpture or welding. And it's to those of us that are driven by extrinsic things, we've learned to be extrinsically motivated.

It's no, you've made it, what? You're making money, you're selling these paintings or lots of money. You're getting these tours and having your art displayed in, art galleries. you're getting all this success. Why would you stop doing the thing that you're succeeding at? And it's no, I need a new medium to express.

'cause I have other things I care to express, other experiences I care to have. I wanna learn and grow again. So they [00:16:00] go and reinvent it. They pick a new medium. And so when we realized that the things we do are simply the mediums, we're painting ourselves, our self-expression into reality with it, it gives a lot more flexibility when that injury happens.

You can go, oh, like this was just the medium I was using. This isn't who I am. This was just the medium I have been using. And so I could choose a new medium and still be who I am, still paint myself into reality through a new medium to get back to some version of what I love. That's the phrase I love to use, is like what you're aiming for is that flow state and that expression.

And you can do that through a variety of mediums. And I think it gives a certain nimbleness and flexibility when you remember to frame it that way so that when the thing happens, like humorously but not humorously like. Darkly, if you will. I've said since I've made this discovery and pondered it, it's oh yeah, if I was in a car [00:17:00] accident tomorrow and I woke up in the hospital and I looked down and my legs were gone, I would reach over for a phone and I would start shopping for racing wheelchairs.

It's like still got arms, It's it, I would just, okay, this is a pivot and I'm gonna, I'm gonna find the next tool, the next thing to express who I am, the drives and the passions that I have, these loves I have for this push into physical challenge. I'll just reach for the next thing.

And I think, yeah, it does give us, it gives us a nimbleness with how we can navigate those setbacks in life when we can make sure that we're sorting things in the right bins. Whether it's just a behavior we're doing or a medium we're using versus who we are. and I think that's really helped me through the years as I've faced these setbacks.

That's, that have already come my way. and I think also like a [00:18:00] final piece to that is zooming out and it's really easy to think about ourselves in the now, right? Like you are Kush now at the age you're at now. And I'm Jason hard now at 36 years old, gonna turn 37 here in a few days. And it's really easy to frame like our relationship with ourselves and our motivations and interests and the mediums we're using in the now.

But if we zoom out and we go, okay, like there's been me since I was a baby and me at eight years old and 8-year-old me had all these dreams and hopes for the world. And there's gonna be me hopefully at 80 years old. hopefully proud of all the things I've done, and there's gonna be a whole progression.

there's been a progression up until now and there's gonna be a progression, of that person into the future. And so people would ask me questions, as I was in the FKT and Mountain Running World, people have [00:19:00] these big name mountains or big name trails that everybody knows.

one I would get a lot is, oh, are you gonna climb Everest? Or, oh, are you gonna, are you gonna do the PCT? because, everyone knows the name of the PCT trail here in the States. And I would always, my response to that with the, like PCT Everest, it's, I don't know, sometimes it seems like too much of a circus show.

I don't know if I'd ever actually be interested. but with the PCT I'm like, oh, talk to 50-year-old or 60-year-old Jason. I think that's gonna be his speed. He's gonna be ready for that, as a retirement gift to himself to go hike the PCT. But Jason, right now. Especially when I was like in the FKT world, like he's, 29-year-old Jason, 30-year-old Jason, he's interested in mountains and like being on some high risk like scramble routes in the high alpine.

Like he doesn't wanna be on a trail that doesn't stimulate him. He wants the flow state that comes from being out in this high exposure with grand views and sense of place and [00:20:00] a little bit of fear tingling inside of him that he has to focus through. that's what 29-year-old Jason is about. And understanding yourself over time and understanding that like different things are gonna have their place along that timeline.

They don't need to happen right now, but they might be great in the future. like the thing with the paragliding. I saw the video and I'm like, that seems so cool. And it was like, yeah, but not right now. I love running up and down mountains, like downhill running. Was awesome to me when I was in my twenties and thirties and I was good at it and I was fast, my legs were strong, so I could do it really well.

Like why would I wanna fly down? I love running down. That's my, one of my favorite parts. Just, running a six minute mile down the side of a mountain leaping over rocks feels amazing. so I think that sort of sense of self over time and understanding that different things will fall along that timeline, when something crosses your radar as a potential opportunity [00:21:00] you could be interested in, you can go, oh, that's probably gonna be good for me to try in the future, whether it's paragliding or doing the PCT or whatever it might be, and be like, yeah, cool.

I'll remember that when I get to that age and I'm like asking myself, okay, I'm older and slower now, what do I want to go do? It's oh yeah, there was that adventure that I've never done. That probably would be perfect. Now, I wasn't necessarily interested in it back then, but now it would be the perfect outing.

I think that helps navigate 'cause you're pre-building some of those potential future experiences and explorations and adventures. 

Speaker: I sense that the people who suggest to you that you should do something like the PCT or Mount, as a climber, like that's the first thing people ask me is, Hey, when are you gonna go and climb Mount Everest?

And I, at this point, I just smile and change the topic. But I said that people who ask that question, they likely don't understand [00:22:00] the complexity and the challenge of the type of accomplishments. That you have and the goals that you set up for yourself. So yeah, yeah, hiking the PCT, I'm sure you will get to that at some point.

Something you said earlier caught my eye. You said something about how most of us, we are drawn to these, these tales of adventure, of daring to, of risk and bravery, of big precautions. But in our everyday lives we succumb to the why do you think that dichotomy exists? 

Jason: Oh, to me that one's, again, the love for psychology that That one's pretty straightforward to me. we always have a duality in our own minds, where there's a big [00:23:00] chunk of our brain that just wants to keep us alive long enough to procreate. that's what it's wired for. Okay? it's that survival part of the brain that just says oh, don't, fear is bad.

Don't take risks. just keep yourself comfortable and alive and safe. and that's good. It service us. you meet the people that, that part of their brain isn't maybe working right? And you watch people take risks that are undue risk, right? There's a difference between doing dangerous things very intentionally and very carefully with purpose.

and just going out and taking want and risk for risk's sake. And I think, yeah, it's that's that part of our brain that yearns for something more as well, that wants to face a challenge. And I talk with my students about this, even in something as simple as introducing them to running the timed one [00:24:00] mile,I propose it to them as yeah, this is something that isn't, it's not the most stimulated, it's not the most fun by itself.

you can definitely, video games are definitely more fun. Moment by moment. You sit down and you play this virtual world where you get to be a soldier, you get to build things, you get to do whatever, and you have so much power and so much ability and you can accomplish so much. like it can be way more stimulating for sure.

But do you really ever feel proud of yourself when you only do the easy things? And what I propose to them is. Doing difficult things. and I help them identify this as they like, even if, even the kid that, they jog every step of a mile for the first time they finally cross that threshold where they don't walk during the one mile.

It's that's a big deal. Like, how did that feel? Like I, I feel good about it. I feel it's yeah, you feel proud of yourself. Right now, all of us want to live a life [00:25:00] that we can see is somehow admirable. That we came up against a resistance. We came up against a test and we found ourselves able to stand that test.

we want to know this about ourselves. We wanna be able to look in the mirror and be proud of the person who's staring back at us. And I think the only way we find that is by doing difficult things well. And I propose that to them as something that's really important to have throughout your life.

Because if you do succumb to simply being comfortable, you get to that threshold of having the job and having the house, and then you just stop. you just cut off access to ever feeling proud of yourself again until you like, are willing to step in. And there's a, there, there's a multiplicity of adventures you can step into, through which you can feel proud of yourself again.

You can be proud about the parent you are, you can be proud about how you take [00:26:00] risks and step into the unknown with your career. You can be proud of the adventures you go on with rock climbing or running or climbing mountains. you can experience it in a multiplicity of ways, but it's that knowledge that you need at least one frontier adventure.

At least one grand experiment. In your life that you're running, even if you stabilize everything else, your relationship is stable, your home life is stable, your career is stable. Okay, now the grand adventure I'm going on is what maybe you and I consider a typical adventure of going into the mountains.

I don't know if I can climb this peak. It's higher than I, I've ever gone. I don't know if I can succeed at this rock climb. It's a harder grade than I've ever climbed. I have a track record that gives me optimism. Like I've built skills, I've built self-regulation skills with how I manage my emotions in difficult places.

But I don't know, maybe I'll crack with this one. I think we need an aspect of our life where with some regular interval, we're [00:27:00] running these experiments that push us into the unknown. And that's how we keep that sense of that pride, that, that self understanding, that being able to look in the mirror and being like, yeah, I went into the storm, I went into the unknown.

I'm the kind of person that steps into that. and I like that about myself. So I think that's kind why that duality exists of like, why we succumb to simply being comfortable and doing the easy thing. I think sometimes we can get stuck inside of our own story as well, where we've had some success with a certain story, oh, I'm a climber, right?

That identity sort again. And so we just get stuck inside doing the same routine. It's the same process. and it, that rep can get deeper and then it feels harder to break out, like being, one of my favorite quotes is be brave enough to suck at something new. and I think that's a really, especially when we face setbacks in life, that's a really important.

To have to be keen on okay, I need to be brave enough to suck at [00:28:00] something new. I need to be brave enough to step into an unknown. because then I get to have that whole journey of doing a difficult thing and struggling with myself and all the emotions that come along with not being good at something.

I get to walk through that journey and that's how I'm gonna feel proud of myself. That's how I'm gonna be stoked on the growth and the adventure. 

Speaker: Jason, for sure. You seem to live that, that maxim in your day to day, because not only are you pushing yourself athletically in these feats of adventure, you seem to also stretch what could be the definitions of these, of these ultra sports.

you haven't just done some of the classic ultra runs, alter races, and maybe you did do that at some point of your career, but what stood out to me was this, [00:29:00] these kind of adventures, which seemed just a little bit different the way you have gone and combined certain things.

For example, I happen to find this video of you doing, I think, what you called the toomi picnic. And, yes, I don't think it was any picnic because what you set out to do, certainly boggled my mind because I have attempted a small part of that and I know how challenging just.

Climbing some of those peaks and chaining them as in the series. So maybe I should ask you this because you have done things which are so unique. What might be one adventure in the last, or let's say in recent memory that you are personally the most proud of, even if it did not make the [00:30:00] biggest news?

Jason: That's a great question. I think I'll go, I think I'll go two, two ways with this. I love that you brought up the Yosemite picnic. Yeah. the Yosemite picnic is that one. because I feel like that one really, it demon, it demonstrates the value of. what I've been saying about being aware that these different things we follow our growth journey in, become mediums that we get to paint ourselves into the world with.

'cause with the Yosemite picnic, it is a big difficult bike ride. Two of 'em on the way up from, you start at the base of El Cap and you bike up to, Tami Meadows, to to Nile Lake. Then you swim right through the middle of the lake. So it's a difficult bike ride right into a difficult long swim through a high alpine lake, at 10,000 feet elevation, cold water, swim.

You get out on [00:31:00] the other side, and then you go and chain the Tumi Triple Crown, which is, climbing the slabs of Tenaya Peak, running over doing the mile long rock climbing traverse of the Mathis Crest, and then running over and soloing up or climbing up, cathedral Peak, three of the classics of Tne Meadows.

Then you run back down to the lake, you're fatigued, you're tired, you've been through a long ordeal already. You have to swim back usually into a headwind, across the lake. you're fighting cramps, you're fighting being cold, you're fighting a lot of stuff, and then you get back on your bike and have to, have the skills to handle the bike on a very downhill, fast paced bike ride back into the valley to finish at the foot of LCAP again, and Right.

It's like you have to like, expand my timeline. there was the journey with running. Taking my running to a place that I would have the ultra running skillset for running and being in the high alpine. There's that [00:32:00] skillset, like understanding how my body performs at Elevation. There's the rock climbing skillset and how I had to go through the whole journey to be in a place to be confident that it's yeah, I can make 5, 6, 5, 7 rock climbing moves off of a rope even while fatigued.

there's the journey with biking, like my whole like Iron Man journey of getting really good on the bike so that I understood how to perform and handle a bike and push hard on the bike and know how to keep that balance. and getting like that one, getting to bring all these different like growth journeys together into one experience and to paint this thing that other people have loved as an addition to the Yo Yosemite scene, which is a really big scene for creativity, was just like.

A beautiful sense of expression to be able to create this multi-sport experience, to just be in, be out in the mountains moving with a variety of skill sets and mediums, a variety of sports in a single day. and it's to, to me, one of the things I, again, I say to my students is, success [00:33:00] builds bridges to further success.

every time you bother to go through a growth journey to to grow and master a skillset, to really learn it and learn the ins and outs of it, it's like you get to then have that tool to maybe gr reach back for later on and go, oh, okay. I do know how to prepare for something that mixes biking and swimming and being in the high alpine and rock climbing, and ultra running.

I,I can reach for all those things. I have an understanding, I have a toolkit to go, like the yin and the yang. it's. It's order and chaos, right? Order and chaos. and anytime you're growing your skillset, you're pushing into the unknown, the chaos where nothing is understood, everything is confusing, and you're growing your sense of order, right?

Where oh, now this thing that seemed crazy and unknown, like biking a hundred miles or being at high elevation or route climbing, like this thing that used to be scary and unknown is now to some degree known and ordered. And [00:34:00] I think it's a really cool and beautiful thing when you've gone through that journey of pushing into the chaos.

And then you get to again, step into that unknown, that frontier adventure with a whole like, toolkit of orders, right? You've built this, these different structures, but now you get to run this experiment with all of them that pushes you again into the chaos, the unknown. And you, it, to me, it's a really cool thing.

It's not only is this unknown for me, but known for lots of other people, which I think is like a really important toolkit as you're initially building a skillset is like asking yourself the question like, have other humans already done this? It's oh yeah. Other humans have run a hundred miles before there.

There is an ordered way through which lots of people can succeed at this adventure, this endeavor. Have people climbed high mountains before? Yes. Okay. People figure that out. Have people rock climbed these routes before? Yes. People have figured that out, [00:35:00] but it gets really cool when you reach to, when you reach a place where you're like, oh, I'm actually now stepping into a frontier adventure that there isn't another specific human I can call upon and be like, oh, if someone else has done this before, I'm actually running an experiment that like has this.

Unknown element of the oh, I'm not just like crossing into the unknown for myself. I'm crossing into the unknown for others too, and being like the first person to do a thing like I was with the Yosemite picnic. Or another one that comes to mind is doing the Washington Bulgers Washington, the list of Washington's a hundred tallest peaks.

Like lots of people had climbed them all before, but over the course of like multiple years. and I was curious, like it seems like this list can be done in a single season and it's gonna be a wild adventure to pull it off. It's gonna be crazy with bushwhacking and glacier travel and rock climbing [00:36:00] and so much route finding.

But it seems like with, and I had to do months of compiling information and calling up different mountaineers and having conversations about linkups that they did and being like, all right, is this line faster or would this way be better? Should I do B three peaks together or should I include this fourth one, or should this fourth one go with this other group of peaks?

'cause it's in between. and like answering all these like the question of the line and the flow and the creativity of it, and then getting to run the experiment of being the first person to climb them all in a season. And now since then, four other people have climbed them in a season and it's that field of dreams thing, right?

If you build it, they will come, like someone has to go first. And it's a really cool thing if you get to be in a place where the experiment you're running is this experiment that answers acts as like an answer to others who follow after you and acts as inspiration to others who follow after you.

and so I think those are the things I've found [00:37:00] most meaningful is when I've gotten to be in that position of oh, like I'm actually manifesting something new and unknown that I think is gonna be inspiring, that others are gonna wanna follow in these footsteps. And yeah, it might be a very small niche of humanity that like also has the toolkits to do this thing, but to those people, this is gonna be like, oh, I want to do that.

yeah, I think those are the ones I found most meaningful where it puts, put some first steps out there that others could be stoked to follow in. 

Speaker: Yes, you certainly have the psyche of a first assumptionist or. In common language, maybe a trailblazer, but you really stretch that boundary because some of these things, they leave me gobsmacked.

You're combining multiple [00:38:00] disciplines into one. I, yeah. I can't imagine how you up these adventures. Do you think it is more the solving problem aspect that draws you in or is it about pushing your personal limits?

Speaker 3: I think, 

Jason: it's tough to decipher. Like which one is more important, I think. I'll answer that this way.

I think you have to chase the next step that motivates you. And maybe at this moment, in the now, that next step seems like everything. Like maybe it's running a hundred miles for someone. Maybe it's running their first 5K. I don't know, maybe like what, whatever the step [00:39:00] is, there's like this really motivating, intermediate goal that keeps you, it, it easily keeps you moving forward, because it's like out on the horizon, but it's close enough to feel very real and right.

Chasing. I feel like that's like chasing what you love, right? To bring this love aspect into it. it's chasing this passion, this drive this,I know I need to go do this thing. And I, and I believe. It's something I'm capable of. you follow that journey and understanding that when you achieve that step, there will be, maybe you can't see it yet, maybe it's out in the fog, right?

that part's still shrouded from you. But when you, as soon as you move toward that goal and arrive at that goal, something will reveal itself to you that you're like, Ooh, now, I've watched, watched people go through the journey with oh, I'm gonna run my first 5K, I'm gonna run my first 10 K, half marathon, 50 K, 50 mile.

I've watched people change their lives with just even that progression, where it [00:40:00] like set their life in a new order. I like to call it an upward spiral, where suddenly they're taking better care of themselves, they're sleeping better, they're not drinking alcohol. they're, eating better.

They're better with their families. They're in better shape. They're able to do their job better, right? they start this upward spiral in their life. And More things start landing on the horizon of possible because they've improved themselves. And so now there is a new horizon that they can see.

and so I think at the intrinsic inside level, there has to be this strong element of pushing personal boundaries, personal fulfillment and growth, that moves us forward. And I've liked to say that, like my experiences, the things I've pursued, the adventures I've had, the memories of that and the growth from that, those are for me.

But a keen reminder that I like to give other athletes and I [00:41:00] remind myself of is that the stories I then tell. Those aren't for me. Those aren't to get people to worship me or admire me or think of me as like someone that's so set apart and this incredible adventurer an athlete. It's like that's not the goal of those.

The goal of the stories I tell, those are for those who come next, it's to inspire and invite them into their own adventure, into their own progress, into their own upward spiral. so anything I say about what I do should be in service to those who come after me who need a similar journey to my own, for their life.

I think chasing that journey that speaks to you personally is really important. 'cause that's where that, that keeps you aligned with that intrinsic motivation.

And I think that this was another one I had, I was keen on, at an oddly early age, I noticed that [00:42:00] other kids in school would join, sports teams, would join a sport to be like a part of that sport for the season and right, they weren't really embodying that sport prior to the season starting and they didn't continue to embody that sport after the season ended.

For me, when I ran as a part of a track team, it was because it was just one way for me to express my love for running and my growth in running. And I would train in the off season, I would go for runs in the off season. I loved being out, training and pushing my body like all the time. And I think right.

Understanding the difference between the personal journey and when, what other people are doing. And it's good to be in community and it's good to have others around you to motivate them and them to motivate you, but like understanding that there are two separate things going on there [00:43:00] and that staying in touch with that intrinsic motivation, even if it deviates from the behavior of the group and the what the group sees value in, is sometimes the most important decision to make.

That it's time to move on. It's time to step into something new and that you will find a new community. you will find people who love that thing in that new space, as you go. I feel like that's really important to have as a piece of your roadmap, because those moments do happen where you need to like.

To continue to grow and express yourself and find that next medium,that you want for your own personal story. 

Speaker: You have spoken of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation a few times, and it is such a, such a common expression that is thrown around or used in the adventure world because I personally, [00:44:00] fully believe that, I'm just an average athlete and I do things I do because I love doing them.

And I think that's true for almost all athletes that I know about in, in my world. And I'm curious the, For you or somebody like you as a professional athlete, are there situations when the intrinsic motivations and the extrinsic ones they clash and how do you get past them? 

Jason: Yeah,a really simple example I can reach for is when I was at the height of chasing my F kts and that, that whole journey where I was chasing what I loved in the mountains and I was loving, moving fast and efficient in the mountains, multiple people said to me like, Hey, if you really want brands to notice [00:45:00] you and you wanna get more brand deals, like you should sign up for more races and get some like podiums and see how you stack up in like the formal racing world.

And Right. They gave that advice, which is reasonable advice 'cause a lot of. Brand attention if you're trying to make money in the sport, is in the formalized events. They have the media, they have the attention they have, the backing and the prize money and all of that. It's where eyes are. And I remember like listening to the advice and like thinking about it and just being like, no, that's not like I, I I don't feel drawn there.

Like I could do it and would it be fun and be enjoyable? are races fun to go to? Is it fun to go line up on a starting line and see how you do racing other people on a marked course or whatever? It's yeah, that's great fun. But I think my highest personal journey is calling me into more of this out in the unknown, more of this, these experiences where I'm just out by myself in nature [00:46:00] exploring something and figuring something out.

And that creativity, that's a part of that process as well. where you've gotta figure the route out. You have to figure your food out, you have to, right? All of the variables are on your shoulders. And I like, loved that part of the experience. 

that same, it's that same thing where I mentioned an artist becomes such a good painter that people are buying their paintings and galleries are paying them to display them. and then they choose to pick up a medium. They have no right. They don't have that same credibility.

And it's that's that choice, right? Like the, when the extrinsic motivations present themselves where you have this opportunity for an identity and money to be made, do you prioritize that and the path that leads to more success in that domain? Or do you continue to center yourself? no, like the thing that matters more to me is the personal journey and where my passions and interests are taking me.

Even if it means it'll sometimes be a detriment [00:47:00] to my progress in this extrinsic success domain. so yeah, they can come into conflict with each other. and it is a conversation and when I sit down with other athletes that are, signing contracts with brands, it is a conversation that like we have along what is it you feel drawn to and drawn by?

And what you want to express in your athletic journey while you get to have this season of life where you're at your best. what do you care to paint into existence versus what will serve to maximize the dollar amount Like where is the overlap in that so that you can have, especially if it's an athlete that, you know me, I've always been a teacher, so I always have my professional income to help make that decision really easy.

'cause it's not if I don't get the contract, I don't get to feed myself. for some athletes that is a part of the decision 'cause they are trying to make their whole income from being an athlete and so that does have [00:48:00] to like, weigh into the decision to some degree. but like trying to search out like what is the overlap and then what are the relationships you can develop that will serve your actual passion and direction Where say a given brand would want to be associated with what you are already interested in versus partnering with a brand that's gonna want you to follow their path and it won't serve your own journey as much.

yeah, it's definitely, those are conversations we do have. 

Speaker: Jason, I thought, I would ask you a little bit about training because you are combining multiple disciplines and executing these monster challenges, maybe just to help, provide maybe some framing, maybe the Yosemite picnic where, you know, in one day you biked [00:49:00] long distances, you swam across a cold freezing alpine lake.

Not once, but twice. And then you also speak, climbed these alpine technical peaks. And you did that all in the course of one day. So how does somebody prepare oneself for rising to this challenge?



Jason: I'll say this about that. obviously with progression into something that mixes a reasonable, reasonably high level of multiple sports, you have to be willing to go through the process correctly, right? there's not any shortcuts. Those of us in this sport, like we, we know that shortcuts often hurt us more in the long run and help us.

so you have to be willing to go through the progression with the different [00:50:00] disciplines at the appropriate pace, and put the time in. You can't force how quickly the penon strength develops in your fingers and hands. you can't force how, quickly your body needs to acclimatize to being at elevation.

You can't. These are things you have to learn. You have to go through the process of it, learn for your body. and so I think within the training you go through, and I think this is the beauty of the racing scene where you get these controlled environments, right? That's what you're paying a race director for.

okay, take the food variable for me. Take the, to some degree you still obviously have your own nutrition plan. take the course variable for me and have a marked course and I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna test my fitness. In, the running domain. I'm gonna test my fitness in the biking domain.

I'm gonna go through the process of training and preparing and then run an experiment based on that [00:51:00] data of oh, okay, I think I can bike at this wattage and this heart rate for X amount of time, which should get me through the finish line of the race. Or I can run at, this vile pace at this heart rate, for this long of a race and I should get to the finish line before I balk completely or go start having cramps.

so you, you have to go through that growth journey and learn those data points with the different sports. And obviously, I definitely wanna say this, there's always going to be carryover. If you master any single domain, it's gonna give you a schema. It's gonna give you, you're gonna know where to look.

To more quickly learn another similar sport. even my transition into paragliding and ski flying, my understanding from mountaineering and rock climbing on how to manage and regulate fear and risk and to [00:52:00] understand the difference between the two of oh, this is a perceived fear versus an actual fear where this fear is founded in something that's happening in the here and now that I need to do something dynamic to adjust the risk factor.

Like I need to get out of this fall zone so I don't get hit by falling ice or rock. Versus like some perceived fear of oh, what if the route is melting out on the other side of the mountain? It's that's for future me to figure out. Like me right now just needs to manage the actual risk factors around me.

and also learning to trust gear. Like at first when you rock climb, you're absolutely gripped and terrified of taking a whipper above your gear. But after you've taken a hundred whippers or so, you just are like, yeah, that's, you fall, sometimes you fall 20 or 30 feet and then the rope catches you, and that's just part of the sport.

and you like get a much better, not that the fear ever completely goes away, but you get a much, much better [00:53:00] management and understanding of how that fear integrates as part of the experience. And so bringing that across to. The sport of flying. Now it's that same like process of learning to trust the gear, learning to understand what the wing was telling me and what things were actually risky versus things that it was like, oh yeah, no, that's something that just happens.

Like sometimes you'll get in a weird bubble of air and part of your wing will collapse and snap back open and you just go on flying. You just take a deep breath and go here. All right, here we go. so like anytime you, you go through that journey of growing with the sport, it does give you, especially if you're keen and aware and are like thinking intentionally about the experience you had and what it meant and what parts of it were like.

Real, like hard data points versus what are the data points that it's oh, this is me learning to manage my emotions. learning to imagine, learning to manage my, yeah, emotional landscape, my subjective experience within the objective [00:54:00] sport. you get to carry those across, and so it does make you faster at learning and developing skills in other sports.

so I think that's a big part of, like these multi-sport journeys is that, and so say doing the Yosemite picnic, I knew the wattage that I could bike at to not be crampy or bonking for the rest of the effort. I knew the heart rate that I should be at for the bike. I knew the same, I knew the pace I could swim at, without it being too fast or too hard.

so I knew how to drop into that long endurance swimming pace. I knew how my body performed in the cold. I knew the nutrition intake I would need to take in over the course of the day to make it so I didn't bonk out and wasn't able to finish the second swim or the final bike ride. I was very keenly aware of my strength with rock climbing and the moves I was capable of making, like on and off a rope at the time.

And so I went out and I pre-rehearsed all of the climbing routes, knowing the lines I would [00:55:00] take and where the cruxes would be, where I might wanna stop and pause for a minute and take some deep breaths and make sure that there was no pump so that I could like really cleanly climb a crux.

And I had that crux, rehearsed in my head so that it was choreographed. So I knew it was like hand here, foot there, hand there, foot there, and then I'm through the crux and then it's back to just scrambling. Okay, cool. so I knew that about each of the routes I was climbing. so you like.

Have these different skill sets, and you also are assessing your fitness. climbing, there's this element of like strength and power and, making sure can I generate the necessary power to make that reach for that one move, while fatigued. And it's oh yeah, that's, within what I'm capable of right now, like in the climbing gym, I can be, two hours deep into a climbing session and I can make that move every time.

Cool. That's, that, that is a quality sense of trust, that it's, there's a data point that says, when I'm out there on the route, it's [00:56:00] almost a hundred percent sure that I'm fully capable of doing what I'm setting out to do. so it's, yeah, it's knowing like which data points you need to assess yourself on.

To bring the whole route together. And I think in a way you think about it what are the key, like the principle hazards of the endeavor. what are the cruxes, what are the points that are like a hinge point of the whole project? the second swim was another one. the, I mentioned the cruxes in the rock climbing thing, but that's, I need to know these moves.

I need to know, I have the strength and power even while fatigued. but then that second swim, like I need to know that I can come in after a long day and swim a cold water swim and that I won't cramp up. And that even if I do cramp up, which I did have cramps during the second swim, when you stop using your legs and they're floating in cold water, the reduced blood flow tends to trigger any of that, [00:57:00] like fatigue or if you're a little behind on your nutrition or hydration, It's gonna show. And I did have cramps in my calves and in my legs as I was doing that second swim and just being like, yep, that's okay. that's fine. Like my arms are still pulling, I'm still moving forward. Sure this cramp hurts. It's very uncomfortable. But if I just keep stroking and breathing it, they'll come and they'll go, they'll come and they're, they'll go, these cramps will flow in and out.

And it's just a part of this experience of doing this second swim. and being aware of like how intense an experience might be and that it can be an intense experience and still be okay. I think all of those things play in and yeah, then just like balancing the training, like knowing what amount of time I needed to be spending on the different disciplines.

but once you know the data points to look for, it makes it really easy for you to look at your current fitness profile. Like, how strong am I at climbing right [00:58:00] now? How fast am I at running right now? How fit am I on the bike right now? And look across the disciplines and go, okay, based on where I'm at currently, maybe it's my bike fitness this week, or maybe it's my swimming fitness this week.

I need to log, I need to log more swimming time, to make sure that I don't cramp up in my arms on the swim, which would stop my forward progress. maybe it's the climbing power, ooh, like I am not feeling very secure with making a move like that. I need to get in the climbing gym a bunch more and dedicate more time to that particular, improvement.

So it's once you know where to look to know whether you're there or not, it makes it pretty easy to like shuffle where the trading hours go to feel ready with those sort of principle hazards. so that you know that when those crux moments happen, you have that particular fitness, need addressed.

Speaker: I love it, Jason, and it really shouldn't be a surprise, but sometimes we just need to hear this message [00:59:00] over and over again. That preparation is, that's 90% when you showed up for any of these things in Yosemite, for example, you knew so much about where you stood with regards to the challenge in front of you.

One part that you said earlier, and I think in some ways your whole arc points to the fact that yes, indeed you you have the sophistication of a young athlete, but you also are, Also because you are indeed so thoughtful in how you approach not only these challenges, but just how you plan these different seasons of your life.

So if I can ask you, how are you [01:00:00] training today to be able to continue doing these things that you love, whether it's doing the PCT at 60 or something else that's in front of you? Yeah. yeah, in a way 

Jason: it's the same mindset that I just described for being prepared for something that's high, highly complex.

It's Life and aging and disease and sickness and setback and injury. When you're on that zoomed out scale is highly complex and there are decisions you can make to prepare for cruxes you're gonna face in the future. and so it's I'm 36 going on 37, which is still super young, especially in endurance sports.

but I'm not in my twenties anymore and especially post COVID, stuff impacts my body [01:01:00] differently. inflammation gets triggered differently, body pain gets triggered differently. also, I'm not at that age anymore where if I just think about a weight set for five minutes, I put on muscle mass.

now I actually have to start lifting some weights and maintaining some strength if I want it to be around. And, I think that's something any aging athlete when they're past their pride and it's oh, okay. Yeah. A huge portion of how you stay mobile as you age is strength, muscle mass, like keeping that around.

It's how you prevent injury, it's how you keep mobility. so starting those habits, yesterday is always better. a year ago was always better, but starting it now, so that you have the habits that are gonna maintain that throughout the whole aging process. And yeah, like adding weights into my routine when I, as an endurance athlete when I was young.

I almost couldn't go touch the weights because I come from a family that like tends to be [01:02:00] bigger built. so I remember that one season in college I got in with some dudes, some, gym bros that were like lifting heavy. And this was over the winter between the collegiate cross country season and the collegiate track season.

And so I'm like going in there and I'm like putting up 720 pounds on the leg press and just like repping it out and doing this stuff with them, lifting heavy weights. And I show up to the track season and I'm sitting with the other distance runners and one of the coaches walks by and looks down at my legs.

we're all sitting there in short shorts, 'cause it's college and that was what you do. And my legs are just like twice the thickness. Of all the other endurance runners around me. He's are you sitting in the right spot? and I'm like, okay. I probably hit the weights a little too hard.

I'm a bit heavy for a endurance runner right now. and so it wasn't something I had to worry about at a younger age 'cause I could lift even a tiny bit and have all the muscle mass and more that I needed for endurance. But it's definitely not the same as [01:03:00] it used to be now at 36. it's, I'm still able to like, if I put the work in, see good development and growth and improvements in strength, but it's like I do actually have to have it as a part of my routine.

and I want to have that routine so that I understand it and I understand how to very keenly right, adjust that training load based on what else I'm doing or not doing. so that as I, I age more, it's easy to keep it as a like functioning part. Of, one of those chess pieces that I know how to move around, as I start to age.

And I think like decisions like that, when you think about the long game, 'cause that's what you, we all know, that's one of the issues we face is keeping muscle mass and keeping, speed and power as we age. oftentimes the endurance will stick around, but those speed, power, elements will start to fade and fade quickly.

if we don't maintain them. I also, make sure that I run at top speed. Like I make sure I integrate stride outs, I make sure I include [01:04:00] those things. I always love it when, that Instagram reel that sound pops up, that talks about how it's like most human beings hit the age of 30 and never run at their top speed ever again in their life.

And it's yeah, that makes sense. Like I don't see very many adults sprint, like maybe they'll occasionally jog. To get somewhere when they're in a hurry, but they never run at their top speed ever again. And I'm like, I'm gonna make sure I run at my top speed. sometimes I'll jump in and race my students just to go run at top speed,hop in with my sixth graders and they're so sure they can beat me.

Yeah, we can take you, I da and be like, okay, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw it down. Let's have, let's race. You guys wanna race, let's race. Let's go. Let's go all out. and having it be a playful and a fun thing, right? going fast should feel fun. And so keeping that as a part of life, I think is really important to maintain that strength and that power and that speed.

those are some things that are on my mind as like that sort of long [01:05:00] game, progression so that I can still be able to say, at 60 years old, throw a pack on and. Walk good mileage. 'cause I know I'm not just gonna wanna do it slow. I'm probably gonna wanna do, 30 miles a day or something like that.

and so if I want to be in a place at 50, 60 years old where that's possible, like I'm gonna have to still be strong, I'm gonna have to have maintained myself so that I don't have some kind of giant recovery to make to be, for that, to be possible for me. so yeah, just building those habits in early to still be in a good place, down the road.

Speaker: Jason? Yes, hearing you loud and clear, strength training is important and then maintaining power and speed and being intentional, for example, by taking every chance to go sprinting.

yeah, many people listening here. Are not looking for big breakthroughs. They're looking [01:06:00] to stay durable and continue doing what they're doing for a while. Maybe a couple of things you've learned about, for example, staying injury free and being able to preserve connective tissue and cartilage and some of these things, which tend to wear out a bit more in athletes because you're just putting them through the grinder at a greater pace.

Jason: yeah, obviously eating right and getting proper protein and getting proper sleep and getting, starting to think about things like collagen and other things like that can be like on the side of Just how you eat and how what you put in your body. cutting alcohol out has been a big thing, in recent years.

'cause it used to be like, I didn't start drinking at a young age. Like I didn't drink till I was 26. and so it was never a big part of my life, but I used to, it also used to never be a problem. if my friends wanted to go out and have a few drinks, it was like, oh yeah, okay, maybe I feel a little bit [01:07:00] bad for a few hours the next day.

And then by 10:00 AM the next day, it's okay, back to the normal. but now it's oh, I feel bad for two or three days afterwards. my body feels inflamed and my brain doesn't feel all there. My motivation doesn't feel all there. It's that's not worth it. that's, I can't be like knocking out my motivation and my like messing with my pain thresholds for three days each time I choose to go have a drink with my friends.

So like decisions like that stack up, when you look at the big picture of like, how many days are you missing? and then yeah, being, even though I just was like encouraging, like running at top speed and lifting weights, like I definitely don't lift weights like I did when I was in my twenties.

Like, when I would hit the weights, I would just do huge sessions. And even if I was doing like big weight, I would still do lots of sets. and it's no, I can get the adaptations I want by lifting reasonably heavy. I still like putting up heavy weight, but [01:08:00] I'll do three sets. It's that'll, that's enough.

Even if I feel like I could do another two, two or three sets and get through it, it's no, I don't need that for the adaptations. I want. I'm not trying to be a power lifter. like I just want to maintain muscle mass and stay strong and stay powerful. Like three, four sets of, six, six reps or something like that.

Gets it done. Move on to the next muscle set. I don't have to drain everything. To get the adaptation. So like adjusting that training load where it's okay, this is enough load to get the desired result and no more. versus, when you're young, sometimes you just wanna like battle and tell the demons inside are dead.

it's okay, I don't need to do that anymore. and so adjusting those training loads and how much you're doing those things, I think is something that's gonna continue to be increasingly important to be keen and aware of as I continue to age. And yeah, like [01:09:00] I, I would say it's something I'm still learning.

I'm getting it figured out for now, but that relationship will change again in the future. what is an appropriate training load to maintain strength now? Might be too much down the road. Maybe I'll have to adjust down the weight more, or, maybe even do fewer reps. but figuring out what that load is to get the desired results without any excess training load that increases my risk to injury, is that's the name of the game.

Speaker: Jason, do you work with a coach? 

Jason: I don't right now, no. Yeah, I've actually coached people myself, but I've, I don't know, like I've thought about it in, in recent years just to have that other person to bounce ideas off of. but like I studied, I was a personal trainer before I became a teacher.

I've been a coach at a variety of levels for a number of years, since college. So I always enjoyed the process of sorting everything out for [01:10:00] myself. That was like part of the journey that I took very personally, and I like really loved to have that responsibility for, to be the one who understood my body and to be the one that knew what I should be doing to break through to that next level and get the performance I wanted.

I like, liked that, but yeah, in recent years I'm like, yeah, maybe it would be nice to have somebody with a different perspective and some like different things that maybe they've studied or read that I haven't studied or read, that would give me, some new perspectives and some new, new methods to try.

Speaker: Jason, you mentioned nutrition for a second there and I thought we could, talk about that for a moment. What have you learned about. Nutrition, what's worked for you and what has not worked for you? 

Jason: Yeah, AB absolutely. I'll start with what doesn't work.

I think it's really easy when you're working in your professional life because I [01:11:00] can think back to when I was a young runner and I was in high school and college, like I took my sport and my nutrition like very seriously. And I was thinking not only about what I ate and how much I ate, but also when I ate and like timing when I would eat in the day to optimize like as little food left in my stomach as possible, but as many calories present in my body as possible so that I could run my workouts absolutely as 

near perfect as possible. And then you like get into your professional life and you're just like, oh yeah, okay. had my cup of coffee this morning. Oh, I'm in a meeting. Oh, like this thing came up and now I'm dealing with this student behavior and dah. Oh. Ended up answering emails through my lunch and it's really easy to end up with these massive calorie deficits and then eating at the wrong time, where now you're not like, you either, like eating right before you work out or you [01:12:00] like have been calorie deprived throughout the day.

And so you motivation is feeling off. it's really easy. I feel like it when you're focused on a professional career to just get in the flow of like mentally being in that experience and to leave behind all of the habits that work really well for. Keeping a body ready to perform and train, at the level it should.

And so then you don't train as well. You don't train as consistently and each session is lower quality because you're like coming in and one variable or another is off. and so I think letting your professional life dictate your nutrition habits is a great recipe for burnout for like under fueling and ending up that having the long-term ramifications of like chronic under fueling and that can produce some really negative effects.

And I think that's [01:13:00] something I did wrong for a chapter where I just got in that and would like not eat until lunch or not eat until the end of the workday sometimes. 'cause I would just get in it and wouldn't get the necessary calories to be able to actually build muscle and Benefit from my training, like my workouts, the training load. so yeah, I think that's, I would say on that domain, that's one of the most important things is don't let your professional career dictate how you fuel your body. make that a priority ahead of okay, I will, take my protein shake and eat my breakfast or whatever, whatever works for you.

And I will get my lunch break and I will make sure, even if something comes up, I will be eating while that thing is getting solved. that's how important it is. so that when those times to train whatever those windows are in your day, when those come up, you're able to actually get quality sessions.

and you have enough consistent calories in your body and protein and macronutrients in your body to like benefit from that training [01:14:00] load and not just burn your body out. 

Speaker: that is certainly very. Apt advice because yes, most of us here are not professional athletes. Wish we could completely focus on training and doing our sports, but we also have to do all the other things that seem to be required out of our life.

And maybe this is a little segue into just asking about balance. What have you learned about balance from somebody who does do some extreme stuff in different parts of the world? Oh boy. I think I'm still learning about 

Jason: balance. I don't think I don't think balance is something I'm super good at.

I don't think I've wanted to be good at it. 'cause I prefer contrast. over balance. I like being all in on big adventures and big undertakings. And then, I like being all in on rest and relaxation. so I like. I like having those [01:15:00] big contrasts in life where, I've got my adventure life and I've got my teaching life and it's yeah, I think balance is something I'm still learning how to get the day in and day out.

and learning to appreciate the little things within a daily routine that make me feel better and make me happy to be present in that day. Because I think when I was younger, it was really easy for me to just make everything absolutely spartan in my day-to-day life so that I could go have the grand adventure.

'cause that was what mattered. And so I could be, miserable during the work week and then out having this magnificent adventure on the weekend. And so I think something I'm learning as I'm aging, it's oh, what are the things of the daily routine, the flow of the day to just Have a really nice day that I enjoy being in, instead of cutting everything out of that so I could just focus on training and just focus on the big weekend adventure or the summer [01:16:00] vacation or whatever it might be that's coming up. see, I think that's a domain I just have more to learn in.

I don't know if I have a ton of advice there. 

Speaker: Do you have some habit or routine that you've picked up in the last few years that grounds you during, let's say, some of those mundane periods? 



Jason: I like to take slower mornings. I think that's been good for me. I used to be a person that like, sleep through the alarm until the last minute and then you're just like. Grabbing that quick cup of coffee and like slamming it as you drive to work. like I was never a morning person my whole life.

So like getting up in the morning was never easy. So it was really easy to end up with those rushed mornings. And so that's something I'm learning. I enjoy like giving myself the time to have that slower morning and not be as rushed. And then making [01:17:00] sure I unplug in the evenings. I have an A DHD brain that it's really easy for it to lock in and wanna hyperfocus in the evenings.

so not letting myself get into answering emails or scrolling social media in the evenings. 'cause that's an almost guaranteed disruption of the sleep schedule. 'cause I'll get locked into oh, I can just send, I can just send a couple more emails or, oh, I'm just gonna scroll a little bit longer.

I'm gonna check out what these people are doing in the mountains or whatever. and then it's midnight. It's oh, now I'm definitely not gonna get up early tomorrow morning and have a slow morning. so learning to unplug early in the evenings and let my body follow its natural circadian rhythms to fall asleep earlier in the evening has been really important.

Speaker: I can relate here as well. I am what I like to call an aspiring morning person, which is, I really believe in seizing the morning, but it doesn't, it happens less than I care to admit. [01:18:00] And sounds like you have worked on your morning as well as your nighttime routines. what does, let's say a perfect morning for you look like?

Jason: I think a perfect morning on say like a workday. a lot of us have to face five of those a week. It would involve getting up early enough that I can, I still like my morning cup of coffee, but I can have that in like a relaxed way where I can just sit down and let thoughts flow in and out of my mind where I'm not already sucked into an email I wanna send or sucked into social media or sucked into something else that's dictating what I think about.

just able to sit and reflect and maybe stare out at the hills, outside of K Falls and just soak in the moment and let my brain have permission to flow wherever it wants to. I feel like that's a big piece of a perfect morning. It's just that time to just be and just [01:19:00] think, not be forced into, yeah, being worried about what someone else wants me to think about.

I think that's a big part. Getting some good, some high quality calories in the morning before the workday starts, I think makes a difference in how I feel throughout the day. So making sure that happens. And that's one I've had this again, not being a morning person and then in the past always like my brain jumping into starting the workday or whatever it may be.

it's been really easy to ignore that, with my natural predilections. So having to be like, no, like I need to make the time to, to properly feed myself in the morning. 'cause it makes a difference for the rest of the day. yeah, I think, that's the flow, just that, that time and space to just be and let my mind wander and not be like locked into what, someone else wants me to worry about.

And yeah, just that good cup of coffee. Good food. 

Speaker: Jason, do you have a meditation practice? 

Jason: Not a formal [01:20:00] one. I, I tend to, i, it throughout my life, like my running time, like when I run, I tend, it tends to be a pretty meditative experience. I tend to be pondering myself and my world and tuning into my internal bodily experience, what my lungs are doing, what my heart is doing, the movement of the muscles, the flow of my body.

but yeah,I don't currently have one where I just in a traditional way say, sit down or lay down and have it in that sense. But I've thought about adding that in. 

Speaker: Is there something you've learned about, how do you, let's say, get mentally revved up before a big challenge? Maybe it could be.

It could be a breathing practice, it could be something else, which puts you in that right state. 

Jason: Oh, absolutely. like 100%. I would have breathing and focus routines before, I mentioned the 150 different races that I did before I [01:21:00] ever stepped into f is like, each one of those times I would toe the line.

I was like taking myself to a certain, there would be breathing involved. Obviously, there's a whole warmup, physical warmup process. But along with that, like mentally taking myself say it's like a shorter race, it's like taking myself to a degree of like emotional stimulation, right?

Like being ready to go to war, being ready to like face that pain and that frustration and that, that difficulty 

Speaker: of pushing your, can you walk us through maybe one of those I'm very fascinated. What is that? that like buildup. While you getting ready for war? Yeah. getting ready for 

Jason: war.

So like a shorter race. I feel like with a shorter effort, say you're gonna run a fast timed mile, maybe that's something people do for their training. you're gonna run fast repeats on the track, you're gonna do a speed work session intervals. it's 

Speaker 3: in 

Jason: a way it's like almost reaching for a small amount of, [01:22:00] I don't wanna say anger, but like some of those like more powerful emotions.

So that, that I'm ready to fight. I'm, I am in this mindset where I want that. I want, I like, I wanna get hit in the teeth and I wanna face it like that, like readiness for that feeling, that sensation, that like maximum stimulation, like this is gonna hurt and I want it to hurt.

like that means I'm doing it right. and amped up breathing, like doing some, like faster breathing would be involved with that. and this is like in that time before towing the line and then it is like a ramp up. And usually this is in the mix of maybe you're doing some stride outs, maybe you're doing some bounding, maybe you're doing some high knees, like the things that kind of open the body up and prepare it to like really go and you're amping up throughout that, whether it's during a one of those exercises or right before you do the exercise.

And then in the final [01:23:00] moments before I tow the line, there's just some like slower, longer, deeper breaths. Like just maximizing the oxygen present in the body and maybe like coming down just a little from that to start in a slightly. Like slightly calmer state from the level of amp. you're still definitely above your baseline.

and then starting the repeat from there and letting that energy flow. yeah, I feel like the shorter stuff, it's definitely like an amp up. I feel like for the longer endeavors it's definitely there's less of that amp up. 'cause you, you can't. I say, you can't run an entire marathon angry, like that's, there's just you burn out, you run out of that channel.

Like you can close it out. Like you could run the final mile, you could run maybe the final three miles. just ah, I'm gonna get this, I'm getting to that finish line. you could just drive yourself there in those like, closing miles. And that might be important to run an optimal time and be competitive, but you can't stay on that channel, the whole race that you gotta run some of it in a state of calm and in a state of [01:24:00] play.

And so with a longer endeavor to some degree, it's like I'm calming myself down and I'm getting more like relaxed because I want to be at like a low heart rate and I want to be like relaxed and playful and just enjoying myself. oh, this, the race hasn't even started yet. Like this effort in the mountains hasn't even started yet.

I'm just having fun right now. it's not even hard yet. Like this is just play. And then with things that have a crux, there's definitely as as a rock climber, like when you're like maybe on your final rest hold before you go through a crux, like there's a degree of let's get this, get in the right head stake, get it, get physically amped up to pull really hard.

and so you amp yourself up and you move through the crux sequence and then you calm yourself back down. You take a few slow deep breaths, bring the state back down. And now I just want to go back into this like easy flow state. and so I think if you're doing a project that's mixed sport, there's like knowing when to amp up and when to calm back down and when to amp up and when to [01:25:00] calm back down.

like it's like different states whether you want speed and power versus I want to be smooth and relaxed and conserving energy and efficient. It's like the difference between somebody that's like sitting down to play a beautiful piece on the piano versus somebody that's like about to enter a boxing match.

it's obviously those are different states of mental stimulation. so like taking yourself up and back down and up and back down is a part of the process with those like bigger mixed sport endeavors. 

Speaker: I feel more prepared already and I can relate to many of the things you said.

Thanks for articulating some of the things that I have been doing all along and some of the things that I probably need to bring back into my practice. Before we close off, I just wanted to go back to one thing we were talking about at the beginning, which was how you learned how to paraglide, how to fly, [01:26:00] and.

You were already an complex athlete and you picked up an entirely new sport. And yes, there were some carryovers. And I am just very curious because many of us, we get older and we get good at one thing, and sometimes it becomes harder to pick up a new thing because we are sometimes used through success.

So what have you learned about being a beginner at a sport and how to ultimately get good at, I think.



Jason: I'm lucky to have a fabulous set of coaches on this. Each year I get a new batch of kindergartners as a elementary PE teacher, and I get to watch them come in and be absolutely thrilled to miss every single basketball shot they take and to make a terrible football throw [01:27:00] every single time they throw a football.

And to absolutely botch it every time they throw a Frisbee. And to be no less enthused and excited to just keep playing. And it's that reminder of, if we can take that part of our brain out of the picture, that's self judging, that's trying to measure us up against others and our own expectations of ourself.

If we can just tell that to sit down and shut up for a second to, to no. I don't need your input yet. I'm just here to play, I'm here to play with this. When I first took up rock climbing, I was terrible at, I was literally the worst one in my climbing gym 'cause I'd literally ignored my upper.

'cause I mentioned how I put on muscle mass easy. So I ignored my upper body to be as lean in light for running and lean in light for biking as I possibly could. obviously there's a little upper body with swimming. but not gonna put on any real pulling strength for rock climbing.

So I was like, [01:28:00] awful. I didn't have the grip strength. People would be like, oh yeah, reach up and grab that jug. And I'd go to grab it and it's you guys can hold onto this. This is a jug to you. What? and I remember just being awful and it was embarrassing. Like nine year olds would climb harder routes than me, and I'd been, qualifying for world championships in the, Ironman 70.3 distance, and like running Boston qualifiers in the marathon.

And here I am having nine year olds out climb me. and just like really having to be conscious that it's no, I, if I turn that part of my brain off and I don't care what anyone else is doing, and I turn that like quiet, that self judgment voice and I just get up and I play and I do what's fun and feels challenging, but doable for that day.

maybe it's climbing of E zero,it's just doing the simple things the next step and like enjoying that process of the little wins and the victories. oh, I finally made that move. Cool. I can do that. oh, hey, I made it to the top of this route. Cool. Awesome. and just celebrating those wins, being willing to step away from that judgment and just [01:29:00] go through the journey of being excited for each little minuscule win.

oh, I figured out the foot position to get my butt off the ground on this sit start, like celebrating the minutia and just enjoying the process of figuring that out. I think that's the key. Basically be a kindergartner. Just go back to just be, you're a little kid who's there to play. It's a new playground and you get the whole journey of playing and figuring it out, and you can worry about being good later.

and that day will come, if you're willing to play long enough and you're willing to be terrible at throwing that football like the kindergartner long enough, eventually you throw a spiral and. That same process. Like I can remember with route climbing the first time I was up climbing on, it wasn't even that hard of a route.

Maybe it was like a V two or a V three. and I like had successfully pulled through a crux and someone who had just walked into the gym was like, whoa, how did you do that? And I was like, oh, they think I know what I'm doing. [01:30:00] This is a cool moment. someone actually thinks I'm good at this. and that day will come, that day will come if you're willing to just play and figure out the details and celebrate those small wins.

yeah, the day of getting to be proud of what you're doing and getting to be comparatively, not that we should ever spend too much time comparing ourselves, but be comparatively good. that'll 

Speaker: come with time tomorrow. I'm making a point to go out with my 8-year-old niece because right now she's learning to roller skate and see if I can get some pointers about falling, failing, and still enjoying all those moments because yes, when I started rock climbing, it was a long time ago, and each of those moments were so precious and just need to, connect with that again.

Final question for you, Jason, which again, I ask everybody. What does being ageless mean to you?

To me, [01:31:00] 

Jason: being ageless is to never stop chasing the love and the growth to continue pursuing the. The things that make you feel alive, whatever that is, whether it's a complete reinvention or a new way of doing something you've done before, it's about continuing to find that frontier adventure. I think.

I think that's the process. I've always been inspired when you tow the line at a race or you're out at the local Craig and some elderly couple with gray hair rolls up and they're just laughing and getting out and are excited to be there and excited to go climb up something or run their race.

like that. To me, that's it. Like we, when you can be in that love and that passion and that play, yeah, that's ageless.