Lessons on Race Directing and Longevity with Speedgoat Karl | Koopcast Episode 38

what's going on trail and ultra runners welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your host coach Jason Koop and on this episode of the podcast we have the one the only the incomparable the original speed goat carl melzer for the uninformed carl is the winningest 100 mile runner on the face of the planet today and dare i say for forever in each of the last 18 years he has won a hundred mile race just think about that for a second it's really difficult to get a hundred mile race right and he has won one at least one in each of the last 18 years and that might be something that we never ever ever see again and we talk about when or if that record actually might come to an end is it covet that actually takes speed goat carl out maybe maybe not but carl is so much more than just a runner he is an icon in the sport he is one of the originals and he is a race director i caught up with carl at his house in sandy utah just after the speed goat 50k which is one of the most difficult 50ks on the planet and certainly the most difficult 50k in north america and we have a wide range in discussion starting with what is it like

to race direct in the era of covid what do we think about virtual races and what does carl think about his accomplishments his many accomplishments that he has had over the years i had a lot of fun with this conversation carl is one of my absolute favorite people to see at the races as a runner or as a spectator or in this case as a race director i hope you all have a lot of fun with this conversation as well in an effort of full disclosure there is a little bit of salty language throughout the course of this podcast it's not a good one for the kids to listen to you have been forewarned so without further ado here is my conversation with the one the only speed goat carl melzer so so the wave start was it mandated by the county or anything like that something that you guys did yeah well you know we couldn't do a mass start okay i think in utah the thing is 50 people the gathering is what the yeah yeah yellow whatever it is what it is so we just did 20 we did 20 because um that just fit every 10 minutes we started 20 people corralled as many people it was just we just figured that was right we did it an interesting way you did do it an interesting way i couldn't find the pattern no there was no pattern i was all in my head so the very slowest who i see to the elite

slow a elite slow b wave went at 5 30 and 5 40 and the elite wave went at 6 30 the reason the elite wave goes at 6 30 is because the tram ride to the top takes x amount of time oh it's about tram operation and getting people out on the course and then from there we went age groups which we which which mixed everything yeah which was kind of cool because each wave went spread apart instantly right right and they had a 10 minute gap so when i saw runners on the field when i come down and mock the last six miles uh yeah i mean runners were 200 yards party every every runner was 200 right it was like no it was nothing together so but who was the first wave the very slowest and you did that off the ultra sign up results um some of that and then some of it off i looked at people's results so you're hand tabulating i was hand tabulating those 40 people you know what it kind of reminds me of and you'll you'll remember this race because i know you've done it's coyote two moon totally yeah totally yeah of course that's how i mean that's how chris did it and yeah so i you know i look at our races i saw some guy ran way too cool in 328 that's pretty fast but then he does a hard race with any technicality and he runs seven hours for the 50k it's like well yeah i mean that's just an idea situation right but um yeah i just tabulated myself and didn't take me that long took me like an hour really wow that's quick for a field of how how many 40 people 40 people so 220 waves yeah yeah yeah it wasn't that bad and then the rest of it so it was the rest of it i knew the

elites i seeded the elites you know and then that was pretty easy i don't go off after a sign there were some people that said i really want to be in the elite field and i looked them up and like they'd have this really good result yeah and i'm like and we had room sort of room for it so like okay i did it you know i mean it was 26 people on the elite field line not 20 but yeah well we'll come back to the elite field in a little bit because i want to get your impressions on that because i do think there's some interesting takeaways but let's let's go over let's go over the rules for the 2020 edition right speed go i mean you're not you're not notorious for like listen you got to take care of your own shit this is trail motor running like take care of yourself we're going to put together killer aid stations this is different there are a lot of rules out there let's try to encapsulate what the what the runners had to abide by well we had we had to do you know we had to do wave starts we had to do sanitization of everything in the world um everything had to be clean so i went to a couple different races beforehand i went to bryce i went to squat peak i heard from the logan peak trail run my wife went ran twisted fork 64k two weeks ago they did wave starts and we just went and watched and i didn't get involved with anybody just went and watched and what that did is gave me ideas and thoughts about how to do things you know at bryce they had a pedal for the water they had this like drum pedal you could press down to get water from their buckets i thought that was really cool yeah huh right it was interesting instead of like putting

your thumb on the cooler or whatever right so that was cool but standing there watching everybody do it you know one out of four people hit the pedal sure okay so i'm like well that's a great idea but i don't think i'm gonna get and get involved with having to hook that up so we just had we just said we'll serve you you know i said to some people it's like going through the drive-thru yeah at a restaurant you know or going to a restaurant getting takeout food i worked in the service industry um restaurant industry a long time and i know how to do that you know i know how to put gloves on and um so that for me was kind of easy you just had to like place things in the right location so um people would hit the hand sanitizer at the finish line it was like right there in the middle of the arch 10 feet when they you know it was like hit this first and your time will stop that was the joke we thought you guys died for it that was classic right it's awesome right so um and everybody complied there was not one guy or male or female any runner that complained and bitched about anything they just like okay i get it and they did it huh so and then they masked up when they came to the aid stations i think that was a first i don't think the other races we saw people have to put a mask on at the aid stations but again that was easy um and you had the borders defined like i've got this great i took a i took a picture from the hidden peak aid station where you know it's just a sign it was almost like one of the signs you'd see at the sign of marathon like go joe right but instead it said entering mast area yeah right right and yeah and that's what snowbird has all around the resort too so um we took that idea and

it was just like everyone complied i mean we didn't have to really turn spectators out of the way it wasn't like a typical year we'll let spectators ride the tram at 6 30 7 6 45 and 7 in the morning so on the bigger years of the race those three trams were packed with right 90 people each and there was 200 people on the summit cowbells cheering and all that stuff might have been a little more complicated with more people but just got to have the marshals you know yeah um and we i think we handled it really well i mean not one person gave me grief about anything um one guy complained about having to wear a mask but you know there's one out of 100 that's okay you know no big deal um he was still a good guy he was a cool uh everyone had to comply the hand sanitizer was everywhere i went through a fair amount of that you know and just people had to play masks and i hate wearing a mask it's hot yeah but you have to do it right now so well and your aid stations are typically at the tops of climbs or towards the tops of climbs and so you got to think about it like the athletes are climbing up there yeah so they're out of breath the most it's at the highest you know high high peaks of elevation 10 000 feet or whatever they've been working hard all climbing they have to like mask up and try to communicate to the volunteers like what's going on and things like that yeah we a few people were dying out there when they had to put it on because they were sucking wind coming over hidden peak but uh but again no complaints people didn't complain they just did it they left they were psyched to take it off when they started running again and then off they went and you know what's amazing about the whole thing about all the races now it's like people seem to go more self-supported you know you mentioned

i like to be do things alone and not really use that much crew um everyone i think they'll look they're going to learn from all this stuff that you can actually do a 50k unsupported you can actually run 100 mile or without crew 100 is different than 50k but you know it doesn't take you don't have to sit down at every aid station you don't provide the chair don't provide the chair nobody sits in the chair right that's true um we did have chairs but it was really rare that someone sat down yeah we had sprayers to spray down the chairs just like um just like restaurants are doing you know like i said i have that experience so we just did that kind of stuff and and uh it wasn't that hard uh rds that are in locations where races can be held if they're bailing out i'll leave my mouth shut yeah you know um it can be done you just have to take take the precautions and do the right thing when you were setting this up i want to try to i want to try to understand a little bit more about like what you had to go through as a race director to pull the thing off well you know it's funny that many people believe that i had to do all these special things all these hoops to run through uh first off snowbird is 100 on board like they're in the event business right they're a ski resort they want the event to happen if it's can be done safely and and properly and i know that the president snowbird day fields he's a friend of mine from way back of ski days um i know everyone at snowbird and everyone knows that i can i do it right i know how to do it so they trusted me

on that we put together some protocol they wanted me to do that which was not a big deal that took me about an hour to whip that up on a you know little word document and say okay this is what we're going to do and i learned again i learned from some of the other races and uh you know i presented that to them they're like yep looks good okay check out that box piece of cake i talked to the forest service uh i have a five-year permit and this was year four so that the permit was in place but i had still i still needed to talk to them to make sure that they were going to say hey carl it's okay we're not going to shut you down three days beforehand so that confirmation with that conversation came about three weeks before the race and when i talked to ben at forest service he was like you can do it just got to follow the guidelines i'm like check off box number two yeah third box was watershed um there which is really restrictive in utah usually it's restrictive and it's definitely restrictive don't get me wrong uh but they they will issue permits if they know you like i've our first our second year at speed goat was a problem with watershed now i didn't even know about the watershed permit stuff and so you know the one guy was laying in the water because he had heat stroke or it was he was awfully really hot and watershed shows up get a guy laying in the creek so i said okay well you know they were upset and i don't and you know i take all the blame for that 100 percent uh but i said when the next year came around i said we will take care of that and we did we put signs up the fences had marshals and you know i made everybody say i won't go in the water right

which is key they all remember that silly stuff and nobody went in the water everything was clean and now you know 10 years later it's they're like yeah you're good so i don't even i don't even need a permit from so unless i get unless i get port-a-potties but that's different it's a different thing but so i mean it sounds like but that's it it sounds like all of the all the permitting hoops that you had to jump through really weren't that many no i with me with it snowbird it's in toronto ski resorts so there's some easement to property in the back you know so those things are normal but uh i didn't have to go through uh the health department okay because that's you never do in the first but because you're on snow but it's sort of all kind of weaves through snowbirds permits yeah if that makes any sense uh so you know there were some forms that came up about that but basically the health department wanted my protocol list of what i'm going to do and you know we can provide that no problem and then we were worried about health department more than anything but they were it's no problem just follow the guidelines huh you know um every county around here is different and this race is in saltwick county and utah county so the other races that did exist which was bryce squat peak twisted fork they're all different counties in saltwick county which had a little bit of spike in the covid uh cases and so i was concerned about that but it didn't you know it didn't matter they didn't go to code orange code i think orange which would have been 10 people or something it was it's 50 people was the gathering size so we did 20 so is it fair to say that you were looking at this

from uh if we're allowed to put this on we're gonna put it on yeah standpoint absolutely i mean i'm a i'm the kind of guy that will move forward i don't like to sit back and wait and never to see what everybody else does um i'm not trying to push the limits you know i just said you know we can do it safely why can't we do it if we can do it safely it's just a matter of doing it right and i think maybe i'm not trying to set some standard here but maybe it'll show other race if this is still going on next year which oh my god i hope it's not yeah right um you know i was asked will you have it again next year if it's this situation i said we'll do it better nice right because i mean there was a few tiny little things that i saw out there that you know i mean little tiny things that didn't matter um yeah i mean i'll try to do it better maybe this will show other race directors that yeah maybe you know we'll learn from all these earlier racers that started doing it and then they'll learn from it and they'll then we'll try to have our race like run rabbit run is trying to happen yeah you know fred over there wants to make the race happen and he's got really mixed feelings he's got a bigger field there's 600 people in those two races not 200 and there's a little bit more traveling going on um but he's proactive he wants to try to make it happen if it's okay and he was here volunteering so you know fred if anything you maybe learned one little thing about run rabbit run too yeah so hopefully those guys can you know make the effort to put it on you know never summer 100k happened yeah that's colorado right and that's not that far from running steamboat right i don't think

uh i'm not exactly sure yeah it's close fairly close enough yeah um and there were other races that happened too so it's just other races are they seem to be a little under the radar yeah you know they like they're keeping it quiet but um but it's doable and i'm the kind of guy that will go forward do it yeah i don't even want to just sit back well i think a lot of the race directors and like event managers they some of them even though they could technically pull the races off or the events off they're choosing not to because of a whole host of issues they don't want they don't want people to get sick right they don't want their constituents to you know fall fall ill due to covid but in in addition to that the amount of effort that they have to like put into the event has like quadrupled or quintupled and they kind of look at it and go man i don't i don't know if i want to do this anymore well it's easy to say yeah i don't want to do it and then nobody nobody's going to give you much grief because it is a safest way to go is to say no yeah right but yeah no i totally i totally understand that races i canceled early when this was going like westerns um broken arrow i kind of understand that when that situation was like we have no idea what's going on right so that i you know fair fair case there but you know we we took temperatures of people before the start line everybody had their temp checked so that's like at least another step forward to say nobody's walking in here with 102 degree temps got it through their speed code because it's my bucket list that i

came from wherever um everyone was checked volunteers were checked we kicked people out that didn't have that wristband on yeah i saw that i don't know if you see i saw some of that yeah yeah a couple people got a little ugly with that they didn't like it but but i was like you know this is our rules get out um you know and the runners all understood it you know every time i had to we had four chairs under a shaded tent at the finish line and those four chairs like when timmy part across the line and jesse run small for the short race across the line it's fine if they hang out for a few minutes 20 minutes even if there's no one around let them hang out you know they had to we had to sort of tell them to put their mask on but they're sucking wind give them a chance to breathe for a minute so you know we just played the distance thing there we gave them a little shade but once a few more people came in it was like it was very easy to watch people we either easily want to gather and shoot the shit but we just said hey you guys okay your time's up and everybody was totally was like cool and just moved on and it felt like a funeral sort of there um it's weird quiet it's weird uh and even our speaker system we pull a speaker so we didn't have good music but usually we have the best music from john nobody's got a great play another casualty another casualty of covid um but but you know people were really complying and um you know you get a couple people that try to slip over the fence and things like that but we just policed it and uh you know people don't read some we figured out another thing we learned at this race is that people don't read signs they need pictures they need pictures if you have no runner you got to put across across the runner the runner guy yeah and you got to have the

biker guy like to write by a runner left and uh i think in the future what's what's funny about that is that if you go to europe it seems like there's more signs and pictures and and things than just actual read the sign yeah yeah you can say do not enter that doesn't work you need a you need like a a guy with a thing across yeah don't enter this way it's weird um but did you did you accidentally give anybody high fives or fist bumps no no no i didn't i was gonna get you're totally compliant the whole time because i've seen you at the finish line before no i always do no i didn't touch anybody i just like i should hit the sanitizer wow and then i basically gave them that finisher mug and we had a guy handing that to me and i handed that to them and then that was pretty much i didn't touch anybody wow there's a few people that wanted a photo with me at the end and when i did that i just you know i mean i got close to him but i have a mask on yeah i didn't give him the big hug thing yeah so i just you know play by the rules everybody understands that so so temp checks beforehand you roped off some of the porta potties yeah so we had three porta potties after your temp was checked only temp checked people could use those porta potties it's like the velvet rope for the port yeah yeah yeah okay you're okay and we only had waves of 20 right so we had three porta potties there for those people temp checked and then we had some more on the parking lot for you know when people shut up that way no one's going to get stuck in line at the port yeah right there was no line right there's always an open door so that made it like easy nobody was gathering around the porta potties so we held these little precautionary ideas of like how we can slowly

move people to the start line and get it going without gathering so temp checks you have the next time you do the roped off porta potties you need like a bouncer there like some big dude yeah just like i got some nightclub or something like that like that would be pretty funny yeah uh wave starts wave starts up 20 masked entry into the aid stations all of your volunteers had masks on all day yeah i should mention yeah everybody's getting handed stuff with tongs total full service stuff yeah i mean i'm thinking of anything else i mean those were the main points of you know what to do we told people you know when you pass another runner put your mat you know put your mask not everybody can just go yeah you know i mean the buff was a little easier but i mean you know when i went down marking the course or to make sure the course was properly marked for the finish um i didn't have my mask on i was wide open by myself it's like but when runners would pass me i'd step way off the trail and get away that distance you know and kind of play that so we just made sure we did all those little things and and it really did work great are you encouraging the runners if anybody if anybody contracts covet afterwards to contact you so you can do contact tracing um that's that's a good point i actually did not say that but i didn't say i didn't say that um another thing left behind another thing but i think with everyone being their temp checks um if something happens you know if say joe schmoe whatever can contact the covid um you know i guess it would be good if he told us you know we could try to contact

trace people we thought about doing that at the beginning where we take their temperature yeah have them write their name and their email down what it's not easy it's not easy with even though we only had 50 we had 50 bibs left to give away at race morning we did 150 bibs from my house on thursday over a five-hour period so those people what we did is eliminate um more again more gathering at snowbird right waiting in the parking lot or whatever by coming to my house over a five-hour period and those people just slowly waved in like one at a time right and it was great so we got rid of those 150 bibs on on friday we had a did about another 80 bibs at the start line friday afternoon very slow moving nobody's around and then on the morning of the race you couldn't check in more than or less than 20 minutes before your start so you're spacing out every trying to space everything out like a you know robots go this way robots go that way and uh everyone totally complied and then it never made all these people waiting in the parking lot yeah to go to their little wave you know so i think we did the best thing i think contact tracing is really hard you know it's it's a great idea in theory but who's to say that you didn't go to the grocery store yeah to get it either i mean it's like you don't know it you no one can say no one can say even with all the things that happened with the riots and gatherings in solid city and other cities you still can't say you got it from there yeah i mean you can you can suspect that for sure but you don't think i don't think you really know that you know well i'll tell you what just i mean personally running around on the course and i went

around to a couple of the aid stations i talked to some of the volunteers there and things like that i feel way safer out there than i do at the grocery store or any other place that i have to go to every week to you know do do whatever well yeah and it's the same thing like i play a lot of golf and golf here in salt lake was shut down for a couple of weeks where i have a pass it was shut down for a month and a half and i was like foursomes okay yeah four guys yeah well you don't have to know each other but everyone's separate cards they totally space things out like that too yeah it's like one of those things that can still happen if done properly yeah you know you can't have big events of course but it's it's stuff it's doable if you space it out just gotta you just gotta figure out how you can do that properly did you have anybody in advance of the race say i'm out like i don't feel like traveling i don't want to come out here what was the prevalence of that yeah most of our owners were from utah colorado most that drove here you know there was some california too but mostly the people that drove here um we had we started a wait list and i think i was the first person to suggest this to mark at gilligan at ultra sign up is let's start a wait list because nobody gets charged any money right there's no risk so we had the we had 180 or 190 people on the wait list and when i finally opened it up to go to the start list you have to accept or decline so you you know i wasn't just taking your money and say okay let's run about 100 people declined and you know and a number of those people said you know hey due to covid i'd rather not come and i said well i'll comp you

one of the next two years done cool you know so not just next year but you have another year especially if you're traveling yeah yeah sort of plan it better i think people like that a lot but i respect people that wanted to bail out you know yeah some of our volunteers um we have rooms for all not all of our volunteers for our key players like 10 rooms friday and saturday night i get snobber yeah and a couple of those volunteers didn't want to stay in the room and go out to dinner with us and that's not because they don't like us they were just like didn't want to and that's fine you know so it's it wasn't that hard to really put up that was another the volunteer thing was another thing i wanted to get your take on because that's such a huge part of how races operate is this big volunteer you know database that that they can pull from did you have any volunteers just say listen i don't feel comfortable coming at all um you know you'd have to ask my wife that more because she hands all the volunteers but generally speaking all of my key players how many volunteers do you have by the way do you know 60 60 65 maybe something i'm guessing somewhere around the ballpark we had one volunteer who would rather not didn't want to come but that's fine you know fine i'm not going to give him grief and he's sort of one of the uh one of the key players but other than that all the key players were like we're all in and they told me from the beginning that they were in like there was no that's what are you going to do carl about this well i'd say well it's free for all you know i'd get him i'd jokingly say that and they know i'm joking around but of course like we follow these protocol and they're just like no do it so they were all they were all no problem wow yeah it was amazing i mean i'm sure there were a few that didn't want to do it but but cheryl handles mostly

most of the volunteers that don't work every year are the ones that say i didn't want to do it you know but the key players were all in wow that's uh i got a lot of support yeah no i mean that that's that's a big part of the fabric of how these races work and i think once again from a race director's perspective when they're looking at pulling these things off they have to have that volunteer base to draw from and if 50 of it evaporates because they're nervous about whatever race can't happen yeah i mean we we we were worried a little bit about it but once i said the key players were in uh even if we had to go super skeleton crew i mean everybody knows what they're doing when a week before speed goat i'm not scrambling around running around with my head cut off really i'm basically just press the button yeah and then this aid station knows what he's doing i don't tell anybody where to go we had a meeting like three or four weeks beforehand of course you know and we talked about it a little bit and it's it's an easy like turnkey operation now it wasn't at the beginning beginning with a mess never oh god but uh but now it's like you know everyone's like i'll be back next year like our age station at pacific mine down the back side that's kind of complicated it's a nasty road getting in there yeah but craig lloyd who ran that one this year he's like i'm i'm good the next five years i'm like all right wow yeah it's awesome good for you yeah let's um let's pivot a little bit and talk about the elite field you've you've always tried to put together a good field here you put up prize money you bring people in and that's not easy you know you know how those things manifest you've got to invite 30 people and out of those 30 15 yeah we

talked about this before right out of those 15 you know two of them might have a good race and then you know what's the you know what's the net result of it yeah this year was different because i i get the sense in working with and then just following a lot of the elite crowd that come you know march or april everybody was just where i'm gonna do personal projects this year i'm not gonna worry about the racing scene because we don't know what's gonna happen and things like that but you still tried to orchestrate it in elite field like what did that look yeah i mean i didn't i didn't go out and contact everybody about it you know i certainly you know how i am i'll definitely invite elite runners but i think uh i kind of let them just enter i mean some some bailed out i was hoping sage would come sage didn't come michael sinceri bailed out i don't know what the reasons were for bailing out they didn't tell me anything but uh you know i like to get i definitely told some of the faster girls like i wanted to get anime here and she was doing something else she didn't mention covet or anything but i contact him i want to see a race you know and i want to see someone challenge wamsley's time which i don't know if it's possible but except maybe by gym again but uh we usually had enough elite field i think there was stronger elite fields back in in maybe 2012 13 14 when it was at one time a sky running thing which was important for international obviously that wouldn't happen this year but um i like to see a good race it's because i'm competitive you know i'm not old and slow now but back in the day what could you do on this course now course record is 508 right 504 um i don't

know i i would say if i hit seven hours i'd be ecstatic i'm not kidding i was out mark so i'm the guy that marks the course i don't let anyone else mark the course right because i just don't i don't trust people's field of vision you know some guys they mark the course and they get the ribbons kind of dangles in the tree you get stuck in the bushes you don't see the damn thing so i do it myself and i was out there marking the course i marked from hidden peak all the way the entire backside basically back to the tunnel which is about a 14 mile leg of marking the course we start from the top of the tram we can't get a tram till 10 15 so we're basically starting out in the heat of the day right which was like last sunday we did it it's brutal last monday we did it it was brutal and it took dave and i about eight hours seven seven hours to seven and a half hours to mark that 14 miles it's not bad two miles an hour putting pin flags you know it's a long time out in the heat and i say to myself why would anyone want to run this race because when you're marking the course it's just a part of it i'm just nearly dying out there and i'm like because it's just hot and you know um it's it's just tough man i mean it's i don't know it's a hard race it's a hard it's a hard race seven hours when i say seven hours honestly i don't for the condition that i'm in right now because my fault my spring wasn't very good i'm not see if i was super fit 640 okay okay if i'm super that's what i wanted to get out of you if i'm super fit 640 7 i'd be hard pressed right now and i think i'd probably be happy with seven and a half you're at least an hour and a half off the course oh yeah

at least i mean just no i can't even do photo shoots with those guys because my stride length isn't long enough okay so the elite field this year like it sounds like you're you're more passively trying to get people to come into the race versus you're usually pretty aggressive about that i've been i've been more aggressive in the past yeah and i think there's so many races out there too i understand when other guys want to do certain projects other different things i get it um UTMB is always a big focus for a lot of guys i mean tim taulton was going to come but he said he refocused on a different project i don't know what that is but but whatever you know that's cool mike sinceri was coming there were some other three or four other guys that were quite fast and would have made him anyone who breaks six on this course i say is is definitely pretty high-end elite um and no abroad in him the guy who won he ran 529 he was he when he finished he was like i can't believe i won because i was racing hayden hawks i was racing anthony costalis um and a number of other guys that are went sub six and no one just had a good day you know and hayden didn't really have a good day jared hayden didn't have a good day you know those guys are like top of the class yeah and uh you know so they were there sometimes at the top of the class you get two guys that drop out two guys that have a slow day and it doesn't look like the elite feels that good but what they were there they just blew up on the speed goat course that's the way it always happens and the harder the course is the more that that gets exposed you have 10 quality people that enter the field half of them are going to have a decent race so then it's a five person race and then the course chips away at those five even more to where it's like a two or three person race towards the end

every time without fail that's that's what happens in trailball turning it's not a marathon where people can hang around till 20 or 22 miles and then see what happens yeah this course is really it's set up the way i have it set up it's it's hard mike mason a friend of mine ran and mike's mike's like yeah he he got down to pacific mine he got down there i'm not sure what his time was it was about three and a half hours like oh i should be able to get done about seven then he turned around and started coming back up the hill mike finished so much my finished in 8 30 so it's a demoralizing kind of course that you leave pacific and climb 3 000 feet you drop down you get about 10 minutes of downhill then you're going straight back up the hill again for 2 000 vert well you have what's the total vert it's it's about it's about 11 6 yeah i mean that's cramming a lot into 50 kilometers yeah and it's the same as as bird as hard rock it's not quite as high but it's uh but it's tough bird and the way it's set up it sort of is set up to mentally demoralize you as well it does it's it's intimidating the last ridge line circ is that when you're at the bottom of that you look up and you're like oh my god i've got to go to that and it really isn't that long but it's just intimidating it's the intimidation factor and the last part of the finish of when you okay the final descent's about six miles you go down about a mile and a half or something and then there's just four little really steep bumps and it does nothing but raise your heart rate like to pop through your chest you know and it's just demoralizing that didn't used to be there the years earlier years it wasn't there but i put that in like four years ago and it's just another bumper that makes mentally tough so do you

want to bring that quality of the elite field back that you had a few years ago i'd love to bring the quality back you know um it i don't think prize money is going to bring it back i finally determined and almost understand that prize money doesn't really unless it's really bigger prize money that i don't think it matters that much what's really bigger i mean well i would say you need 10 grand to win at least then it's like a substantial okay 10 grand is 10 grand two grand is like thanks not bad i paid my trip plus a little more um you know the first race i had real prize money was run rabbit run and i won the thing and that 10 that 11 grand that i won that day was like wow you know i was all doing the calculations in my head when i won on the last descent if i come in second i'm gonna lose six thousand dollars to me at the time was huge but to race for a thousand difference between one thousand two thousand and one thousand five hundred yeah i mean it's nice but right i mean is it no i get you i don't think you remember this but i was pacing my wife at run rabbit that year who was in the tortoise division right and you went by us right when you passed dylan oh like it all happened like right at the same time i remember i was like wow carl's gonna go win this thing now yeah and he's gonna be really happy because he's gonna win 10 grand i was pretty psyched and the master division yeah that's right that's right so yeah that was i mean that was exciting it's exciting when you're when you're in the field to run for money that's fair decent amount of money it's it's it's fun but there's only two races that really does that yeah broken arrow was one you know broken arrow was some some good

prize money you know run rabbit run and seventy thousand dollar purse that's to me that's real prize money and uh what else is there i mean other one anyone who gives you know a couple hundred bucks i mean it's nice but it's not no one's really racing for that money it's i don't think so it's more like just they're just it's a nice bonus so how are you going to get elite runners back if it's not the prize money uh try i don't know it's a tough question try to make it as competitive as possible you know i mean people like competition that's why they all go to UTMB they don't offer a massive amount of prize money but they want competition if you can say you know i i'll comp them you know but that doesn't get the elite right to come you know they usually don't pay for it anyway um because sponsors take care of them but i just want to want to see a good race you know um i mean i could definitely do a little more marketing i'm not a market i don't do any marketing i'm like i said before like i don't proactively go after every single person i know to get in get in and get in because i can't i can't provide you know the hotel room everything that travel accommodations i don't have a budget for that there's no way i don't i didn't i mean i hardly made any money this year i spend all my money on my volunteers right i spent four thousand dollars this week in a snowbird on dinners you know yeah but i'd rather i'd rather i like that i enjoy it so my volunteers like it so it's a tough it's tough to get those fast fields and i think it's the it's race saturation too i mean there's i think there's so many races out there right now um even for the elites it's there's so many options and there's so many cool courses that in my career now it's like i'd rather just go run a good course doesn't

matter about competition but um it's it's hard to it's just hard to really start writing your hard work it's too close to western it's too close to utmp i want to run this other 100 i want to set this fkt yeah and all people disappears and like you said you get 30 to shine up 15 show up five don't show five have a good day it's a three-man race yeah yeah so it's impossible it's impossible there have been some novel this is turning away from spigot for a little bit but i think it's poignant there have been some attempts over the last few years to try to consolidate those fields with gold trail series and ultra trail world tour and they've kind of gone i guess the best way would be kind of in fits and starts where they can't really like capture all that competition in way that they were like initially designed and i don't know what the code is to cracking that but i'm kind of of your i'm i'm i'm of your same mind where i want to see that code get cracked because it's i think it's important for the longevity of the sport to have competitive fields of marquee races well you look at the the the world marathon majors right right right right there's some they don't run all six of them right there's just too many marathons a year can't do that yeah right maybe not tools yeah exactly but um you know that even that sometimes you don't get all you don't get everybody in all those fields you know right i mean in ultra running if if there's no way to get runners to travel all around the world to pay all their expenses um you're not going to see a series

that sky running i you know in the u.s sky running has tried a multiple times and they failed a couple times and i the races attract a lot of good runners and i and i love it and i was the beginning of sky running in the u.s but it just doesn't it people can't travel all around the world and it's competitive it's become a global global sport right you know it seemed like for a while uh in the u.s we only knew u.s UTMB brought right the u.s runners to europe and we discovered well hey these mountains are a little bigger uh a little tougher competitions a little tougher um and they started learning but but the travel was expensive you know you want to jump on a plane to europe it's a thousand bucks or more than that depends you know on the times but it's expensive for a lot of people and people have families they have kids and you know i mean i don't have i have dogs i can keep them at home but uh you know things change people have it's a different topic i guess a little bit but things change and you just can't people aren't paid enough like pro golfers or like football players whatever to travel all over the place and do this stuff it's just it's tough to have a series yep all right let's get back to speed go all right did you ever think about having a virtual race no not even close no no no virtual races what is virtual race i don't know exactly yeah well you know that's not in your lexicon virtual sometimes i get a little you know blah blah blah on social media and i say things i probably shouldn't say about virtual races

on this podcast yeah i know well at the virtual race you know it was laz once again did something that went off the chart right he his timing was impeccable right it's 19 000 people sign up to run across tennessee nobody ran across tennessee they ran wherever the hell they ran the hell is that if you can run x amount of miles then you get a medal well everybody does that anyway make your own medal i don't know i i think the virtual race is silly i think it's stupid um the only way you can have you can't like clark zealand i think had i had an idea which i thought if you're going to do anything virtual clark had the best idea was that you have to run the course you got to show your track whatever if you want to get your time if you want to pay your your entry fee and you know not get the option to roll over and you really want that medal you've got to do it on the exact same track you can't do it on your treadmill what what the hell is that one guy raced mike wardian one guy was on a treadmill wardian's running around the block yeah for like a couple of days you know i mean the guy on the treadmill but the treadmill the treadmill like stopped or he like became delirious and like fell off the treadmill or something right i think he forgot to start he like lost track at the time and then didn't start when he was supposed to start he don't sleep for 60 hours it was track of time i mean right totally but mike i mean it's i think that was totally i mean mike wardian will run anything and i love the fact that he does that right and i think it kept him motivated and it's i think it's awesome

um but you can't compare what you do against someone else if you're not at the same venue it just doesn't make any sense to me so not a virtual race no i'm not a virtual race fan i think it's stupid it's it's interesting because initially when all the virtual races started to started to happen like people started to gravitate towards it because it was the only game in town right right right and now that everybody has a little bit of a taste of it some people they like that flavor ice cream they you know they don't have to travel they can connect with people virtually and there's some there's just something to it other people like you and your curmudgeon self yes yes it's not your cup of tea it's not your flavor of ice cream well i mean people were also i think people maybe thought that oh my god this is going to go on forever i'm not going to have anything any goals to shoot for like we both coach people and we both know that when no races are going on it doesn't make it any easier you know it's hard to motivate someone to say okay let's train for this and it might be canceled yeah and then then it does get canceled then train for this and it might get and it gets canceled that's happened with a lot of people you know a lot of different coaches it's tough um the virtual race maybe that inspires the people to to motivate to get out the door and i think that's great if it did that for them got them to for those people that have a hard time getting out the door and this gave them motivation any more power to you but you know um not for you not for there's not gonna be a virtual speed goat no virtual speed goats it'd be hard to recreate the terrain if it's free if it's free what the hell yeah it virtually did speed goat good for you which

don't break wombsley's record five or five and tell me you beat them virtually uh that's not happening oh god okay so speaking of speed goat records you've got this streak going of 100 mile winds yeah um this might be the last year jason um number one i had my chance i won't say i didn't have my chance right yeah i had my chance this year to do it and i still would have been kind of like laughing in the back up back door over there saying i got my one of my win got it in january um but i didn't my it band was jacked after 30 miles of that race i survived 60 of it and after like hobbling just like i just had enough i'm like you know and i i could have i mean if i was if i was uh didn't have that issue i i had a chance to pull away with that win but i've got superior 100 on my list i'm out of shape i'm not really out of shape that bad but if the race is happening i'm gonna go do it and i'm gonna see what and i'm gonna you know i may drive there because i love to drive 20 hours at once it's like running 100 um but i'm gonna go if it happens and i'm gonna give it everything i have but there's certainly no guarantees that the 52 year old legs are gonna pull away with that one the course fits me well because it's technical yeah that helps me a little bit maybe but that's the only thing i got in the bank you're not gonna design a virtual race to win no i'm not gonna run around my yard either make some rocky corners and go into the tree over there either and try to get yeah no how many years it's 18 18 yeah 18 in a row that's incredible it's it

shows some longevity for sure i mean you know in the 2000s i've always i was always after the most competitive race i always ran hard rock you know as opposed to like trying to get in western i kind of wish i would have run western when i was sort of faster and at my peak i just felt i gravitated to hard rock because hard rock i mean as you know is like it's not western no it's quite a bit cooler than western i think the course is itself the race is western's awesome uh you know it got a little less competitive as i got a little older i still ran fairly decent times my last couple that i won i just don't have as much competition but you know at the same time to go back and gravitate to the same race year after year after year is i see a lot of people do it i've only run 100 i've run wash that 15 times but they've never gone to the bear or they've never gone to over in colorado and at this point i'd rather go see a different course and go in blind you know i went in blind at the the cloud splitter 100 which is a small race but the course was awesome you know i'd never been there before so it was all single track just about all single track and uh it was beautiful you know so i went and ran a different race by myself i flew there i drove them myself i woke up the morning i ran 100 miles back in the plane flew home you know it was great i got sick really i got sick before it so it was kind of a nightmare on that end of things but i pulled it off you know um it's cool to see different courses at this point this point in my career that's to me that's more fun and as far as superior coming up um i've never run superior so it's always been on the list always been on the list and so whether i do well or not if it happens i'm gonna go and just see

see what happens but 18 years it's been in a row that you've won 100 miler this is year 19 this would be 19 how over the last few years how important has that streak been to you to keep alive um i think it's dwindling a little bit i think some people say that's sad oh you don't really want to keep winning hundreds i mean yeah sure it's nobody everybody likes to win never gets old right but i mean my desire to i think it's not the desire to not race as much but training is hard you know when you get older you don't we both know you don't recover as fast it takes more effort it's it's just harder you know like marking that course was a nightmare um it's it's just different to train as hard as i used to as when i was younger so the all streaks must come to an end you know um i'm not saying it's at an end yet but um and if i go to superior and i run and actually enjoy it um maybe i'll find something else in the fall to run you know if something even happens yeah you know it's it's not as important to me anymore i think my focus has changed just a little bit um i i i have this thing in the back of my head that i want to just sort of retire so there's no pressure on me to race but i think what if i do that if all of a sudden say hey i'm retired just like michael jordan retired and no i'm not michael jordan but i'm just saying what if when michael jordan retired he came back right yeah right he went and played baseball well i'm not going to go play soccer after my career here running and then come back to running but who's to say when i'm 52 now who's

to say when i'm 56 i don't say hey i want to go make take another shot at something you know maybe i take a year or two off of not really being super competitive and just kind of doing things that i like to do and then the fire might turn back but the fire is not much wood left in the in the shed you know what i mean if that makes any sense well you burnt a lot of that wood on the at i i burnt a little wood on the at come on no right to be honest i mean you're out there a few times right and and i think you know when dave horton told me well you use something like that something like that you're never gonna be as fast as you used to be never you know i ran across i ran across the country you know and and when i first ran the 18 2008 you know i heard that line from dave and i was i think i was 41 and i actually when i finished that i was like that's almost when i coined the phrase 100 miles is not that far because after doing 2200 miles it was like 100 miles like child's play it's totally child's play and same after i did the pony express where i did that which is 2010 100 miles was even easier and i still had like that relative speed for 100 mile or anyway to do well made hundreds feel easier then i go back in 2014 and i fail at the at um i didn't start off in very good shape and there was some other issues but so i fail there and then in 2016 i do it and i actually get the record but yeah i mean your legs get slower i mean it took me five months to recover from the at in 2016 after 2016 like five months till i said hey i think i'm

up to speed yeah you know and that's a long time to say i i feel back to normal uh and then and then after that i sort of i can run those hundreds but to run it at really top speed it's just not it's just not all there like it used to be every single one of my athletes that's ever done a big through hike jam t or colorado trail or whatever has that exact same experience they go back to running 100 milers and they're like this is easy bra like yeah come on like it takes 20 hours i'm out of here 24 30 hours whatever it's just like it's one day try doing that every day for 15 hours for 40 days that's it's off the chart i mean it's you your body when you do those at things your body becomes accustomed to after you know a couple weeks of it your body becomes accustomed to waking up at 4 30 in the morning and finishing your day wherever it is it was a full-on autopilot is but can your body handle it that's the thing is you know i had an injury jerk had an injury this girl who's doing it right now who was doing great she's come down with some shin injuries and now she's probably not going to get any records but um they hurt and you have to expect to take a long time i had a client do the azt recently and she did great you know but she's coming back is like i'm like it's not going to be two weeks yeah it's going to be like multiple months before you feel like you're going to feel better and and that's basically what it's been taking so it's tough you and i we both know scott

heimony pretty well and after he set the colorado trail record he doesn't have it any longer but when he said it he i remember him telling me that for months he would drive to like a client's you know place of business and like fall asleep in his car yeah he'd wake up like an hour or two late he'd go to the meeting he'd come back and he'd fall asleep in his car again it's a lot of sleeping going on after those things yeah you got to recover by sleeping well no shit but you sleep all day long i mean i slept after the after the at i mean i you wake up and it's like it's like you're after you had heart surgery i guess you walk out of the garage and you come back oh i'm tired boom hour nap you know then you get up and do something hour nap yeah um i was doing that a lot i mean i take enough naps now as it is you know seriously um but after those long things like that your body is just so fatigued you're just you're just kind of a mess like even jerk was like your endocrine system is just a mess for the longest time but still you won a hundred miler how long after that uh no last year 2019 so yeah and i won two last year yeah i mean i they you know they weren't as fast as they could be but they were still all right i mean 19 hours i don't care if it's flat 19 hours ain't bad yeah you know um and then cloud splitter was actually his 24 000 feet of climb and ran 19 hours you know so i it's i'm i have that autopilot when i feel good that i can i can hold my autopilot and it's just i just don't have don't race in a 50k because i'll get crushed okay that's speed goat no no i'll never run my own race i no thank you mark i was trying to get in shape this year just to

mark the damn thing well leave it to covet in 2020 to potentially put that streak to an end i i hope it doesn't because it's been fun following that i mean i haven't even been ultra running for as long as you've been doing i can do a virtual speed virtual carl hundred let's not do that no just kidding so we know virtual 100 mile win that'll go into a little scrutiny some somehow i think though that somebody's gonna approach you and say hey listen i've got this hundred miler there's like five people entered well i mean i'm not i won't break any names out here but um i've i've also i i claim to hold the record for the most hundred mile wins in a current in a season being for males and tracen won seven one year for males and i won six in 2006 i think it was and someone has won seven a guy i'm gonna say a guy has won seven that's correct but there were 51 20 10 5 5 2 and 2 people in the fields two people i mean you got a 50 50 shot of winning if you walk as slow as possible yeah somebody's gonna go fact check that after well probably and then you know talk to me later but i was like and even in in fair fair to say he's like yeah it's definitely not the same so he's he's not like he's claiming oh i run seven in a year yes you did

well done you know but i mean i won watch that i won bear and they were all fat sandy they were all good times and the fastest race i ran i came in second which was messing up and when the dude beat me there so that was that was a phenomenal year for me that was definitely my peak but uh you know i mean that was that was one of my big claims to fame and when i first won four when i beat eric clifton's or i were clifton won four in one year that's when i was chasing that one year um i've done that multiple times i don't think in this day and age people are going to do that anymore i think people focus on one race or two races which is fair i mean there's nothing wrong with that i just i just changed my focus in the early 2000s said i want to win hundreds you know well i would make the bet right here right now that we'll never see somebody win eight win a hundred mile or 18 years in a row no i doubt it i don't think they'll win 42 either yeah that's another thing too it's like it's just it's just not the focus you know you've got to win multiple ones for multiple years even browning's like the closest yeah he has like 22 but he's 47 you know he's if he was 37 or 40 i might even say hey you know but it's it's going to be a tough record to be yeah i don't i don't think i'd put i'd put a lot of money on that if somebody would let me that's fair i appreciate that is what it is no i mean totally i mean you you you you did a lot of things irrespective of the quote-unquote error or whatever that are that are just simply not going to be touched you know yeah i mean as i you know that was my focus i saved my money in the summer

in the winter time so i could run summer you know i've lived a poor life not really poor anymore but um you live a ski bum life you just and you focus on one thing and just do what you enjoy and that's what i did i did what i enjoyed instead of worrying about anything else or but now i'm you know ready to retire so it's gone by fast hold on is the end is the end of the hundred mile street gonna be like the line of demarcation to when you quote-unquote retire i'm not uh no no i don't maybe i don't know if i had an answer to that but uh i don't want that i don't my one of my buddies a long time ago asked me said hey when you're not competitive anymore are you just gonna retire and quit and i said and at the time i said no way man i'm just gonna keep running this was 10 years ago so i'm gonna keep running and just keep you know going as hard as i can or whatever but i am at the point now where it's like it is a little frustrating to not be to not have the bullseye on my back anymore you know in 2000 they had the bullseye on my back now there's no bullseye there now nobody's nobody darts you know it's like nobody's really aiming at him there's a lot of other guys there's well there's tons and slew of other people that are way faster and i think it's awesome that the sport has progressed to where we're seeing things done that are just like and i was funny i was yakking yesterday i said when i was talking to us our crew at the breakfast table and someone mentioned hard rock in 2001 they're like no one's ever gonna break that record 26 39 no way there's not anybody breaking that and he had 22 41

now and i'm like it can't be broken he just you know um records are you know like the movie says are made to be broken and it's like they will continue to go down because people just they train harder they're younger they're faster just like basketball football players they're bigger they're tougher you know um the refrigerator and football 300 pounds was massive right and all 350 pounds now so it's like you know the world is growing exponentially like too fast what do you think the hard rock course record can get taken down to you well we just saw jim do some pretty fast running out there right so i've always believed too that uh if you can run so fast for you know a 20k race or something like that why can't you do that 100 miles well there's a lot of factors involved there right we all know that but i think what we're seeing with jim is the way he you know he's he gets aggressive and goes for it you know i think if killian really raced as hard as he really wants to as hard as he can on hard rock i didn't go to 21 if jim got a tayrod in five hours i used to get there in seven i was leading to me there in five why can't it go if he's on a 20 hour pace for 70 miles why can't that go longer it's just feeling in nutrition hitting it hitting that fine line of right in the nose i mean you know if you if you can push the limit so hard but if your nutrition can't handle that limit it's like something's gonna break as you're teeter-tottering all the time on the edge you know um 20 hours or you're saying 21 hours i'm gonna pin you down on one of these i think 21 21 i don't think i don't think we'll see 20 you don't think you'll see 20 i don't think so all right you know

we'll have to come back five years you know some guy's gonna come along but matt carpenter was ripping pike's peak apart that record is still phenomenal 316 39 i was there that day yeah nobody might break that that record is phenomenal that is one of the best records in sport right um but in a hundred mile where there's there's so much more room for for time i mean it's a hundred miles it's a 20 hour race it's there's time to shave in a lot of places what if killian didn't sit there and eat that orange for a minute and a half or you know a little shit like that um pike's peak on the other hand is like i mean dakota ran down faster than matt right he did he did so but can you get up to a while too right worse trail right that's what a lot of people don't realize is our trail is in way worse shape now than it was when matt broke that work with all due respect to that who i love and admire a lot he the trail was in much better shape it was california single track yeah it's not yeah i mean i ran that that year mark carpenter didn't it wasn't it wasn't that technical no no i think sub 20 is possible all right all right well 500 bucks all right we'll put it down we'll come over the next couple years yeah i'm sorry not over the entire norm i'm 70 i'm gonna eat 500 bucks because someone broke it that's bullshit we'll have to come over the rules of this bet later right right but yeah i mean i think jim proved that it can be done though actually because he just threw down enough if he was 13 20 at 71 then it's you can be 15 hours at 75 which means it's doable yeah you know and uh and now people

have the marks to go after that's the other thing about these records and especially with uh what we're talking about earlier with the at or any of these fkts every time a mark gets set it gives the next person something to shoot for right which if you've never been in that situation it's hard to comprehend how meaningful that actually is like having this okay somebody's actually done this and i can go a little bit faster like that's a big part of the progressive curve i mean you look at the at record now is 41 days and i think seven hours and change yeah now that is insane right carrell when he said that he had didn't have a bad day yeah and it's different that's hard but that's like incredible to not think you didn't have a bad i had a great days for 18 days and when i was going after it i was a full i was following jennifer splits who i was trying to break i was a full day ahead of her and she didn't even finish all in one big pop so i was like almost a day and a half ahead at that point then my shin kind of like the guitar string broke and i was like then i was like that you know um but she sort of set the bar at that point she sort of set the bar you follow her bar and then jurick goes and breaks that and then you know strength string bean comes along and shows how you maximize your efficiency much better even though he's self-supported he you know if it's six o'clock at night instead of like i'll sleep a little longer in the van oh i might as well just walk for three more hours right and so that's where that's where string bean was so awesome because it's more efficient and then corel takes the hybrid into the picture and boom four more days drop off the record so it's in anything even that long it's like even more efficiency that can break time yeah i think with

especially in ultra running right now and i've harped on this a lot not only in this podcast but a lot of other podcasts it takes a tremendous amount of performance context to really paint the picture of what's possible it's not just one or two great times or even five years or sometimes even a decade of like performances it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people like we've had at western states yeah or that we've had starting to see actually at UTMB to say okay these this is kind of what this is kind of what what is possible even hard rock kind of has that problem because their field sizes are so small every year right that there's not enough competitive depth year after year after year to paint this picture of what's possible yeah could you imagine if hard rock had 50 of the fastest guys in the world go after that course every year every year yeah like UTMB kind of does exactly um yeah there's no reason that that you know you'd get 25 guys under 30 hours yep and you know when i broke that record it was like there was one guy under 30 hours and now it's like you have 25 guys in one year under it hard that will never happen in hard rock we know that that won't happen unless you know someone makes another hard rock on a different date i was i was talking to you'll eat hard rock i was talking to blake wood the other day about this so blake wood's a total badass former hard rock winner nolan's finisher barkley finisher and um uh we were talking about the year that he won hard rock and he said do you know what place my time is on the all-time hard

rock list right now do you just take a guess okay i know what he ranks he passed me it was like 30 hours like just just yeah it was 30 10 yeah yeah yeah but when he passed me coming up buffalo boy buffalo boy and i was like ah and then i dropped but um so he ran 30 10 so i'm gonna say he's 57th no you're not even close it's over 100 it's like 100 it's like 130 or something like that and his his remark that you'll love this carl this is hilarious his remark was is every year there's like 10 more people that passed him around yeah no i should have thought about yeah so you just worked the math out how long has it been since he won right and that was 2000 that was actually 1999 yeah i know the year because yeah um but anyway my point with that is is like it just takes a tremendous amount of time for that picture of performance context to be painted and you and i both remember when the hard rock course record for the men got was under 24 hours everybody thought that was unbreakable right and now you fast forward just a few years and it's like well you know that's somebody's going to be four hours faster than that pretty soon you watch you watch someone will just all sudden boom and will nail it and you know there'll be everybody else to be sitting in the gym it's like just like they were when i broke the record 26 hours like where is it with the cameras yeah exactly you know that'll happen i mean and that was that was pretty classic um got all these memories you know it'll be in a book one of these days is there gonna be a carl book oh there's please let there be a carl i know

but it's gonna be car it needs to be a carl book of stories of just like the funny stuff that happened and all of my life um i've i mean i have a book written right now it's just not exactly what i want yet about your life just about what's it's kind of a but it's not just about i ran this race then i ran this race then i ran that race it's i don't want it to be a chronological order of like what i did i want some people to understand like sort of like what's in my head which i'm not so sure what's in there sometimes but um just my vision on some things why i'm a little sarcastic sometimes you know why you know why you should just do what you want to do and not listen to others why is this book gonna come out man i don't know man i'm still working on it i'm not a writer that's the problem i just like it i have a very short attention span i'm very detailed with some things that i do um but at the same time my attention span is really short and i lose interest in things if i don't really enjoy it that much so it's really been really hard for me to put it together and to be pleased with what's there and i don't want to put something on the market that's not a hundred percent like authentic and that's the hardest thing because it's easy to not easy but it's throw something out to the mainstream and it's you can just write this book it's oh i got a book i'm gonna sell you know 300 000 copies i don't want that book that someone says hey it was all right i want someone to say that was fucking hilarious or that was freaking hilarious i just want um this guy lived a life that like wow everything has fallen into my lap jason from moving to utah to be a ski bum to becoming

a runner to to winning wasatch to to my wife to breaking some records to um to owning my house to finding a piece of land in ridgeway recently to all kinds of things have fallen into my lap random random crap and i've just learned to jump on things when i felt right and that's what i did and the spiegel shoe i mean with all due respect 60 of the field was wearing them this weekend dude i love those shoes they're great you know and i'm thinking about shoes too yeah yeah that fell into my lap in a certain way where i you know in the 90s i was like wouldn't it be cool if you had a shoe named after you i mean you know we're just driving home seeing a jackrabbit running across the road speed goat and wouldn't it be cool that's a great name for a shoe you know you bring it up to companies are like oh yeah good idea carl and then you know now right it's like a freaking phenomenon and i and every day i go running whether it's in the wasatch i mean more localized here you know but i see him everywhere and i'm just like i i don't even know what to say you know it's it's pretty it's cool i mean is that more meaningful than the 1800 mile wins in a row i think it's a cool piece of my legacy to say i got a shoe michael jordan has a shoe right i ain't no michael jordan that's true but uh but uh no speak up carl right but uh but no but not many people can say that you know uh you know when the president of hoka jim van dyne he said yeah let's do this project of putting a shoe together with that name on it um i never really expected them to say yes let's do it but they did it and

and now it's like it's like an honor you know it's really cool to see people even people that aren't even runners they're out hiking around they're wearing them you know that's like the running store it's their most popular shoe wall size running center it's our most popular shoe it's like wow i don't think people appreciate how big of a risk that is for a shoe company yeah totally it's huge i mean it's when you know say hey i've got this name speed goat and i've sort of i kind of bought this trademark and how i bought you have this trademark stuff and is it really going to pan out is it really going to be worth it and yeah they took a risk when they did that and you know the first version wasn't really all that great and i that's the truth that's what i feel and then we changed it it was totally different on version two and then all of a sudden it's like this shoe actually works and you know a lot of that shoe a lot of the input came from me initially and just basically mostly the tread and the amount of padding and um cushion and stuff um but i'm not a shoe designer i had to work with those guys just to learn how to make that stuff i don't know how to do that stuff you know i just had ideas and they thought the idea was right and i was in the right position sort of this shoe was sort of a was at the time was sort of the the one of three trail shoes that wasn't that category wasn't filled yet sort of uh for hoka anyway so it was like oh this is a good category get this the hard tough mountain yeah racing shoe and it was like it was sort of a no-brainer to get that category category going and why not attach this guy's name to it i mean it's not it's not it's not the melter

you know it's the speed goat they could dump me and say it's a speed goat then that would be a problem but yeah but you know it's a good name no matter what and uh it's just funny that it all came about you know 25 years later after just yakking about it with my buddies yeah it's that is important to me i think to say that i have a shoe the 18 18 years is is big i think the 42 to me is is bigger um but you know that's just my opinion let's get back to the book because i did not know this before i came over to your house today what's it gonna take to get the book out because i got people yeah you got people i know man i know i need i need help to i need help to remember some stories i need to i don't have those people well it's a few beers a few beers jason we usually get some of that shit going okay we've got beer at the store there's more at the store okay um but those it's funny we're talking we're sitting around the other day and we were talking with some friends and i started talking about the the one year the hal kerner myself ian torrance went to hard rock and i'm like hey you guys want to come out you know come up a couple weeks of hard rock we'll camp and we're like yeah and the thing the shit that happened on those two weeks of just the three of us guys shooting shit hitting golf balls how and how and i and are terrible golfers terrible just they can't hit the thing 20 yards uh we had a little tea time at 7 p.m when the sun went down to hit balls into the spot we'd go retrieve them hal would always have to go to the spa to get a shower you know he shows up shows up with a tiny little pad in the tent with nothing else and ian and i have our

trucks dialed out we're styling out and hal shows up like hal take my tent here's a pad for you you know kerner always flew and always was always on the fly um always shows up late but we just did stuff that was just funny you know and i think people would really like laugh at those stories at times there's so many things we did the breaking my arm at zane gray yeah you know little stuff like that um i just want that stuff to flow in the book like that's i just don't i'm not a writer you know so i have a guy that goes for it was a ghostwriter for a lot of it and he did a great job with a lot of stuff but it's just i just need to weave those stories into it yeah that's a hard that's a hard weaving the stories into it is what i'm missing i have the stories i've got a million stories of things that we did but i have to weave those in properly and that's just i do need a little help with that i need someone to sit here like whether it's yourself or someone else to just be like you know taking all the notes down and say and put one chapter together at a time instead of trying to fill in the whole thing at once yeah you need a proper co-author yeah somebody who could sit somebody who you know or trust or who you trust a lot that you can sit down with and say okay here's all the crazy shit that happened and then you'll call all the people right right their stories and that's the shit that i haven't done and that's the hard part is i gotta call in and tell him to talk about that what happened you know those things those are those are it's a lot of effort involved you know you can't just like scribble something on paper and say that's good uh we're getting this done man okay i'm gonna i'm gonna connect you with some people who can bring these stories to light because i will read the speed goat book for sure the trail and ultra running community needs a book of all the things that you've been well i don't think there are many books out

there about elite runners or past elite runners that have stories of their funny times i mean no not really you know i mean i'm sure there's a few but i just i've lived a weird life man i've been really lucky i've done a lot of shit that just yeah i don't know sleeping in my car running races sleeping in our cars you know you just sleep at the start lines yeah you used to go just run saying great for 300 bucks you know drive down sleep in a car just people don't do that anymore all right we're gonna get it done it'll come out all right 21 all right let's see what happens first 100 mile street comes to an end yeah or the book gets published all right that's a good point we'll see we'll see we'll see which one i'll try to get i better get that home i'll win there all right man well good luck to you for the rest of the season i do hope that that streak continues to remain alive you know i know you're kind of off playing a lot but i think there's a lot of people rooting for you out well i know there's a lot of people rooting for you out there i do think if i if i can run put together a healthy couple of good solid months of training i can get myself back to whatever speed i got left and i'm not saying super speed or any by any means but i have i've had a hard my mix of training lately's been really off and on i have a left knee issue that bothers me once in a while and it's not allowing me to go be aggressive going downhill yeah i can run i can do it but i don't want to feel that you know that's um that's kind of holding me back a little bit and it's been getting a little frustrating because april and may this year or i'm actually more like march and april i had uh

uh i little calf calf muscle issue where i really couldn't run more than 20 miles a week when you're 52 you lose your fitness a little bit faster coming back takes even longer so oh i go run up white pine which is up in here at snowbird 2500 foot climb four and a half miles typical i used to ding ding ding bounce to the top in 55 minutes now i get to the top in 115 yeah you know because i'm hiking i'm hiking more but uh it's just when you start to lose that that punch in your step it's it's it gets harder to come back and the motivation is harder because it's becoming harder you know like that that's the curve is getting steeper for me and uh i hope i can level the curve a little bit um no pun intended i guess but uh we'll see i mean i'm not dead yet i'm not i'll just say that i'm not dead yet so i'll keep trying i mean i will if hopefully if superior happens even if i don't win superior which i don't likely think i will but uh that could spark a fire yeah you know i'm let's hope that it does i mean december 31st is the end of the year that's right remember that it's not it's not september 20th that's right it's december 1st so you know september 31st so we'll see well however it pans out man we'll be watching with all of it yeah yeah right on yeah it's cool the people are still watching yeah man thanks for your time carl thanks very much jason great time and there you have it folks what do you think that was a fun one as i mentioned during

the intro i love hanging out with carl he is an original you always know what's on his mind he is authentic as it comes and a heck of a runner to boot i do wish him the best i hope this book comes together i would be the first one to buy it i would buy 10 copies and give it to my athletes and give them to my friends carl good luck with that thank you for coming on the podcast thank you to all the listeners listening to this podcast today i really appreciate the heck out of each and every one of you that tune in relentlessly every single week week to this podcast if you have not had the chance to do so head on over to apple podcast and give this podcast a rating or a review it helps out a lot it means a tremendous amount to me personally i appreciate the heck out of it and as always we will see you guys out on the trails you