Borderlands.

Somehow we're still not learning Borderlands.

We still suck at running.

Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast.

My name is Josh Rosenthal.

I'm the host, the founder.

I'm on a walk today, headed to my office here in Paris, which is just a coffee shop on Ile St.

Louis.

I'm passing the Notre Dame right now.

You can hear some of the construction behind me.

Today we have another episode of Wolfie's World, Wolfie's World of Running with my dude, Bryan Peterson, goes by Wolf Runner.

This is new.

We started this last week.

If you want to get caught up to speed, there's a link in the show notes below of last week's episode.

But also you can just dive right in on this one.

The idea is that it's A a weekly 15 to 25 minute monologue from Brian.

I don't have any editorial control over it.

I want him to be able to say whatever he wants and needs to say because I think he's got interesting insights.

I'm not saying I agree with all of them.

In fact, I may agree with none of them.

I also may agree with everything he says, but that's not necessarily the point.

The point is to give him that microphone and that platform to be able to say the things because I think they're interesting, I think they're material and I think we can all learn from them or be challenged by them.

At the very least, correct them and all be better for it.

Before we jump into that episode, go to Borderlands cc.

That's sort of becoming the central holding place of everything I'm doing.

So much of Borderlands these days is the podcast, but that's not everything it will be in the near future.

Our app is going to be releasing in quarter one of next year, Wilder.

It's the place to find new run clubs, to find group runs in your area.

We also have our open range races, which is right now just the Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races presented by PATH Projects and then also Robie House, which is going to be a Western States media activation that we're driving forward.

Beyond stoked about that.

So many announcements coming up for that over the next two weeks and without any further ado, here's my friend Bryan Peterson, Wolf Runner on episode two of Wolfie's World.

All right guys, welcome back.

Wolfie's World Episode two.

Wanted to take a quick minute just to really personally thank everyone that reached out directly or shared that first podcast with your friends.

I sincerely appreciate all the support and encouragement that's been received.

So I'm back here again doing this solo.

Hopefully you guys are out running.

My vision for this show is really for it to be kind of like your virtual running companion.

You know, a lot of us do a lot of our running solo and, you know, sometimes podcasts where it's conversational, you know, there's multiple guests.

I think sometimes they can be a little disruptive or distracting from just that natural runner's flow that we can get into.

And sometimes I like the solo podcast, makes it a little bit more meditative where I can just focus in on one voice and kind of think and sit on some of the thoughts or concepts that I hear.

So hopefully you guys are out running, getting your miles in and.

Yeah, with that said, let's dive into today's show.

Today I wanted to talk about carbohydrates and fueling, but of course, not in any sort of traditional sense.

Right.

So I'm talking more today about carbohydrates and fueling your mind.

So what exactly then do I mean?

Right.

How do carbohydrates have any application to your mental strength in ultra running?

So I always like to communicate in ways that I think are easily to act on or to conceptualize with the audience.

And so I come up with something or set it as a one off, and it really stuck and then really exploded into what I thought would be useful for an entire show to be dedicated on.

And it was just the simple saying that confidence is a mental carbohydrate.

And so we're going to unpack that just one simple saying a few different ways today.

And I think should have some value for each of us to insert into ultra running.

No matter if you're a beginner, intermediate, or, you know, you're.

You're experienced, you've got dozens of these ultra events under your belt.

So when you think about it, like with so much of the conversation right now, in running for trail running and ultra running, around fueling your body with carbohydrates and, you know, how many carbohydrates can you consume an hour?

How many calories can you continue to fuel your body with?

A lot of times it gets overlooked or we just kind of shoot different concepts around the idea of mental strength and confidence.

A lot of the elites or the professional coaches, I think, speak in ways that are hard for the 99% of us to really understand or take tangible action on so that they have a benefit and an impact in us being successful.

Whether that's, you know, just getting the finish across the finish line or reaching, you know, time goals that you've established for yourself, you know, not.

I don't even think a majority of ultra runners now come from athletic backgrounds.

I would say it's probably mixed, which is also fascinating as well.

And it just kind of gets assumed sometimes in the professional space or in those conversations that a lot of us know the principles of confidence in the way that it relates to athletics and sporting.

And I don't think that's always true.

I think having confidence in ultra runnings is really just the act of believing the person that you are today is possible of becoming the person you need to be on race day.

And so I know that sounds pretty right, it's eloquent and easy to say, but you really got to believe and trust that you're the type of person already today that's capable of putting in the work and being disciplined so that you can show up on race day with the mental strength, the tactical skill sets that you need and just the physical abilities and training to be successful.

100 miles, like we've always said, is a difficult task.

And what I really think is with confidence, I really believe that that is a foundational principle.

I think that's what we build all of the physical attributes on top of.

And so just a warning or something to check in with yourself on periodically is where is your confidence, your self belief in where you're at and what can you do to better build upon that?

The stronger foundation that we have mentally, I think the more that we can get out of the physical talents that we build on top of it.

So when I think about how we fuel our bodies and how carbohydrates play a role in that.

We always look to show up at the start line with our tanks full.

Right?

I mean, it makes sense.

Nobody at all suggests coming in dehydrated or fasted physically.

Right.

We always look to top the tanks off with a pre race meal.

You know, you're, you're, you're, you're pumping electrolytes into the body before the race starts.

So that way you're, you're good to go because you know that eight to ten hours later you're not going to be able to refuel these tanks at the level at which you're, you're losing the carbohydrates and calories and everything else that we know we put our bodies through.

Now just take a minute and think about now that concept of what I said about confidence being a mental carbohydrate.

I think a lot of us show up malnutritioned when it comes to our confidence mentally on race day.

Not all the time.

You know, this is very fluid.

But I think at every hundred mile race there's probably a good majority of those athletes and participants there that don't fully believe in themselves.

And I want to just try and impart a few tools or ideas that have worked for me and hopefully can work for you to build upon and how to become somebody who always is going to show up at the start line with their confidence levels at their utmost highest.

Right.

So I think confidence is something that is a unique characteristic for all of us.

And what makes me confident isn't always going to make you confident or the guy or girl next to you.

David Roach talked about this with the Rich Roll podcast, talking about how he had to create almost an avatar, a caricature of himself.

Who was the confident David Roche?

Because in his daily life, who he is, he understood or recognized that the ambitious or audacious goals he had at Leadville were going to require a level of confidence that wasn't comfortable or natural to himself.

And that's how I'm interpreting the message.

And so he was able to project all of these goals upon his avatar and were able to build up the avatar with all of its confidence, almost speaking in third person, if you will.

But he understood, right, that there was going to, it was going to require an insane amount of confidence, almost an out of body amount of confidence for him to reach the physical goals that he knew he was scientifically capable of based on his training.

So if we put that all together right, again, confidence is the foundational principle that unlocks our full physical potential.

And David Roach really justifies that in some of the things that he's putting out and saying.

And so we got to just step back and we got to think about who we are, who's our authentic self, what resonates with us?

When do we genuinely feel most confident?

Is it through the difficult workouts that you do during training?

Is it through things that you do in your career and workplace?

Is it through the identity you have as a husband, as a father?

Whatever it is, whatever gives you the personal connection to be confident, build out upon that in an intentional way so that you can show up on race day with the most confident version of yourself?

I think, you know, there's things that are out there in the ultra running space that give us the opportunities to train these confidence building activities.

So ice baths, I think for one, or cold water immersion, right.

These types of things that Give you this mental adversity day in and day out are putting you in a way in an environment where you can respond in a confident way.

And it does so in a way that doesn't require any sort of physical toll on your body.

That's kind of what I like about the cold water immersion or ice baths, right.

Is that you're doing something that really brings you mentally to the point of wanting to quit without your body having to be broken.

So that's one idea.

You know, volunteering at a race I think would be another environment that can give you confidence being around the community.

We don't race very often.

Sometimes these races probably are an intimidating event to pull up to.

So the more you can surround yourself in the community, surround yourself around the race day atmosphere, hopefully the less the jitters, the less the self doubt and the stronger their confidence would be on your personal race day and then in training.

I think something that's unique about ultra running, specifically at the hundred mile distance, is that it's, it's very acceptable or easy to log training that avoids workouts that are very mentally difficult.

So as I said in episode one, I was in high school, ran cross country and I can remember specific workouts that were at threshold VO2 max efforts where you're mentally wanting to quit for, you know, whether it's three minutes, five minutes, 30 seconds of that workout.

And again, that's just building more confidence that when you are mentally going to encounter that in the race, you've already gone through it in the workouts.

So again, if ultra running training, if you're doing it for the love of just being out in nature and being out in the trails and you're building up fitness, but you're not attaching these difficult workouts that bring you to the point of mental doubt, maybe add those in, I think they would be great on both the physical and on the mental side for your development.

You know, something else that personally works for me is trying my best and I can always do better.

But living a disciplined life, I think there's a sense of confidence and freedom that you have just some, some general power and autonomy when you're capable of making your own decisions, right?

Like when you live a disciplined life, when you're giving up things in pursuit of something better than yourself, that gives you confidence.

There's a lot of confidence there.

So again, I think treating confidence as a mental carbohydrate and understanding how critical it is to make sure that you're fueling your mind.

These confident carbs, I Think it's really going to help all of us just to be the best version of an ultra runner that we can be.

Now, when you think about kind of where ultra running is at as a sport and as a participation sport, again, I think a lot of us in the community don't come from a traditional athletics background.

A lot of us don't come from other high level competitive sports that require some of these competitive juices and some of these believe before you achieve mantras.

So I don't know, I think ultrarunning, I think it really could do itself a service by trying to embrace some of these tough learning examples.

I mean, when you think about different sports in general, like when you think about basketball, right, like somebody who's going through a slump during a game, you know, they can't make anything right.

Like there's a saying, you've got to shoot your way out of a slump.

And what that basically is saying is that you've got to have confidence in who you are even when things aren't going well.

Same with baseball.

A lot of confidence goes into the success when you're trying to hit a baseball.

You know, just getting into the science of it.

You've got a round object and you've got a round bat and you got to try to square this up and you've got something getting thrown at you 90 plus miles an hour.

So your reaction, I mean, it's just a difficult, difficult thing to do athletically and you just got to have the confidence.

The message I want to close with is that, you know, I appreciate so much the humility that ultra running brings into my life, but I think it's a slippery slope and one that we have to guard our confidence and our mental strength against is that being self deprecating or insecure are not virtues.

And again, I think ultra running, it's this slippery slope where the sheer audacity and the sheer challenge and difficulty of completing these altered distances up to 100 miles and beyond it challenges and constantly is always trying to chip away your confidence and humility and bring you into a place of really self deprecating on yourself and becoming maybe insecure of the physical talents that you have and the abilities that you've already developed to be successful.

So again, I want you guys to find your own brand of confidence as far as what resonates with you.

I want you to lean in to owning your confidence as a virtue.

And at the end of the day, I really want you to just show up on race day fueling and topping off your mental carbohydrates.

I think it's going to make us all better.

Ultra runners, I thank you.

Appreciate you guys being here, and I'll see you next Tuesday.