Keep Going

Man, this podcast is so fucking cool. I mean, it certainly is an acquired taste - like nattō or Limburger cheese or Mr Twit's Odious Ale - but when it hits, it hits. This episode (88) should be paired with the next episode (89, duh) in terms of full on Keep Going. We sense we are getting into rarified air, if lack of oxygen is your thing, in these two epsiodes of sharing our personal experiences alongside some pop culture references & our continued anti-running culture vibes. We are't likely gonna win over any new listeners with tour views, but we will continue to explore the liminal spaces of running experience.  
We really can't categorize these two episode so just trust us: a mouthful of nattō is NOT a bad thing. 
Godspeed, expeditionaries, godspeed. 

Creators and Guests

MK
Host
Michael Krajicek
Host
Steve Sisson
Coach, podcaster, writer, runner, accidental philosopher, guide. Exploring running as soulmaking.

What is Keep Going?

Two guys - a shoe designer & a coach - talk shit about running, mostly. This podcast is our therapy & fills a critical need for human conversation in our lives. Welcome along for the ride.

Michael:

It's not nihilism.

Steve:

I mean,

Michael:

there are people who see it that way but it's not. But what is going on? That's what I don't understand. When you don't care and then you can perform

Steve:

I mean

Michael:

How do you plan for that or can you should you not plan for it? That's the thing going into Let me let me let me tee this up for you. I am loosely thinking about the Chicago marathon. What do I want from it? Not that much.

Michael:

A good experience. Don't know what that quite means. Would like to run it and finish it and do great. Hey, maybe I'll even go for something. Maybe I'll even try and go for it fast.

Michael:

But when I'm trying to think again, where it's like it's like a it's almost like a it's like a redo of a conversation we had before my last Ironman race, which is like, oh, I don't really have any plans, man. You're like, gotta have plans. I was like, okay. Well, let's talk about it. But there's the there's like, how do you why do we do good when we don't care?

Steve:

So that's the real topic. So people might've got confused that we're gonna talk about a marathon. But no. Michael just ran a 10 k, and his wife just ran a 10 k, and I had another athlete just run a 10 miler at Cherry Blossom, and they ran out of their minds.

Michael:

I don't know. I didn't even know what my time was. I didn't even look at my time because I had two warm up miles on there before. I was like, oh, probably I I think I got under 40 I think I got under 40. It was, like, probably in 30 low 30 nines, high 30 eights or something.

Michael:

I'm like, that's pretty good. Like, I remember that's kinda like NPR territory. I don't know it because I didn't look up the time. Mhmm. But I remember racing it, and I did not it was so funny.

Michael:

It was just like, well, try when you're going up the hills and recoup when you're going down the hills, and that's all I was thinking. It's like, don't run too fast up the hill, but don't, like, turn it off, but don't turn it on. Then I get to the end, and I'm like, oh, I finished a race without puking and probably negative I had negative split thing. It was beautiful splits.

Steve:

I mean, of course you're negative. That that course is That course is almost impossible. I mean, if you go out way too fast, you won't negative split because you'll blow up, but it's a fast course on the back end. I had another athlete who has had an injury, been dealing with an injury and suffering from it. Just ran Cherry Blossom and ran not their fastest time, but they ran something equivalent to what they were doing when they were training consistently with me.

Steve:

And so they're like, The question was, should I train? Why am I training? And then she went out there with some friends, with a friend who's been training with me consistently, and that person didn't have such a great day. He didn't have a terrible day, just didn't have a great day. And it's like, for the person that didn't run fast, watching the person that does run fast, they're like, what the fuck?

Steve:

Why am I doing all this work? Why does this hap why does this happen? You know?

Michael:

Well, I was coughing up a little bit of blood, but, like, not too much. Just that metallic taste

Steve:

in it. I had blood in my urine, but That no

Michael:

was part of the game.

Steve:

No. I think this is something that's interesting. I think many people have had an experience. They took a break, came off an injury, took a rest, jumped back in, and they're very, very surprised, pleasantly surprised by the performance that they have without any block of training and they end up improving, but maybe not improving to the level that corresponds to the effort that they put in. And then the question is, why put the effort in if I can have that original experience?

Steve:

One of the analogies I always think of with this is when I bowl or play pool. And I haven't played in a long time. And the first couple, you know, ball rolls down the bowling alley, and I'm smashing No, they're not. Right off the bat, I almost I always have go back

Michael:

to it,

Steve:

I just crush it.

Michael:

You go back and get into the lanes the next week and you're

Steve:

just Or an hour later, all of a sudden start thinking and then you start planning and then you start screwing up. Or playing pools especially this way with me. I'm so much better when I'm just like, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just having fun, and it starts to count. He starts to worry about

Michael:

Mission putt for me is like that. I'm like, oh, shit. Just nailed it.

Steve:

Another athlete and I were talking about, he's a golfer. He played golf in college, and he's like, was like, putting. Shouldn't putting get easier?

Michael:

It's almost like just gets harder. What is what's going on? I know. It's funny. It's funny thing.

Steve:

Is this a physical thing? Is it a mental thing? Like, what the fuck's going on? That's our episode today. Yeah.

Steve:

We're gonna unpack it or try or meander around it, see what happens.

Michael:

Yeah, I think

Steve:

If you haven't had this experience, for the listener who hasn't had this experience, you probably haven't taken a break in enough time.

Michael:

Yeah, you probably should take a break at this point time.

Steve:

Yes, exactly.

Michael:

And I don't know. I I think that there's something that when you when you when you reach for something too hard, keep pushing it out of distance and training training seems to offer way too many situations where you're reaching for something as opposed to kind of exploring. So I think you probably get some afterburner bonus points by not having any, reaching penalties, overreaching penalties during the the time spent. So you're it's more it's more fun. I remember distinctly in the cap 10 k, it was like there was no option for burnout.

Michael:

You know, I wouldn't gonna blow up because I was just running it. I was like, well, if I wasn't feeling good enough, would like, slow down, recover on the downhills is basically what that kind of was the symptom of what was the the nihilist approach to the day. You know, it's like, I recover on the downhills and then run up the uphills and then finish the race. Know, was like, it was rudimentary. But I wasn't reaching for anything and possibly pushing reality away as I was reaching for it too much.

Michael:

And training just just like why training pisses me off sometimes and why I get so like think I I was thinking specifically back to that day that we were on golly. The Brentwood Loop, and I was just like, fuck this. Just so done. Why does that even happen? Why do you you're like, why I'm so done?

Steve:

Well, that day, you were super stressed out that week from a work related thing.

Michael:

I get that. But here's the interesting question, is in a race when you're having fun, you don't risk. Like, you don't you don't you're not reaching for something enough to where it's like you're or compromising that straw that broke the camel's back like it was on that day. Mhmm. Now, was another option for that day which was, you know, maybe sleep in, maybe take a knee on the week and and make it feel like it's more going on the downhills, recovering on the downhills.

Michael:

It was just a workout. So, I think that overreaching has something to do with it.

Steve:

I definitely think Well, there's a couple pieces here. You know, there's planning, there's overreaching, overtraining, there's no expectation.

Michael:

Yeah, something great about that.

Steve:

And then there's, also, with that is a level A no expectation sort of extension on that or what that leads to is usually some sense of freedom. And, you know, it goes The antithesis of that is the planning. I think that's a good place to start is why when there's no plan do you do better than when there is a plan? And so then why should you create a plan? But I think almost anybody, you know, one of the things, you know, go back to the beginning of this conversation when you said, maybe I should just go through this training cycle with no goal at all.

Steve:

And at that time, said, no, I think you need to have one because you didn't have a frame. But I would say that you could probably do Chicago pretty easily without having a goal because you already have a frame of reference from the last cycle. Whereas coming out of triathlon training, you might have overextended what you were ready for because fun

Michael:

to have a frame of reference now. It's just useful. Yeah. It's just like, that's where you were.

Steve:

You use it as a frame and you say, hey, you know? It's like taking a beautiful landscape that may be, like, eight feet by eight feet square and your frame is a two by two. Right? So you could take that frame and put it on that giant painting somewhere that makes a good two by two photo picture, but you could place that frame anywhere on that whole painting and get a really good shot. Right?

Steve:

Get something good out of it. So you're flexible with that. You can go places with it. I think that that's an important lesson from Cap 10 k to take away is you you want a plan because that allows you to be a little more loose and flex allows you to know basically navigationally where you're going. If you don't have a plan, then maybe, you know, you Well, you don't really need one.

Steve:

You're gonna go to Chicago, you're gonna get on the starting line, and you're gonna cross the finish line. I mean, really, no matter what anybody else's goal is, whatever they're trying to do, that's all that really people are trying to do. And this other thing about running a time or getting a place or having an experience is really just relative to somewhere between the start line and the finish line. And so being flexible is really good, but some people can't take that. It's too it's too number one, they feel there's nihilism around their training.

Steve:

It's the opposite nihilistic situation. Right? Like, well, if all I do is just go out there and just kick it, then why do any of the other work? I mean, really comes down to this

Michael:

Take an expectation. It points to an expectation.

Steve:

And desire. Yeah. It just reaches back to desire creates suffering. Always desire creates suffering. And with Cap 10 k, there was zero desire except to go out and have a fun time.

Michael:

It's interesting. The more races you do for the pro level, pro triathletes will do 10 triathlons a year, and it's a lot of, like, you know, varying distances and stuff like that. So they never really place all of the importance on one race. They so they they kind of lose the expectation for each race, and they look at it more as a season or, you know, which is way more fluid. It points to an expectation but the stakes are different.

Michael:

Think like when you're when you're in the I call it a hobby runner, but we're not hobby runners. We take it more seriously than that. So when when when you're not in the pro class of runner, then I think the expectations are just really inflated to these events, like single events that we can pay $2,000 to get hotels and plane tickets and food in Chicago or whatever the hell it is. It's always expensive. So you're like, well, not only am I gonna spend six months doing it, I'm gonna do I gotta spend, you know, a couple thousand dollars on the race, and and, you know, it's like, it's all riding on this, and I don't wanna just go off and screw off.

Steve:

But you don't do that for your vacation. Yeah, exactly. I think this comes back to this ongoing, keep going thread of the culture's a little bit fucked. And we don't have to accept it. I think sometimes you want to.

Steve:

Sometimes you want to belly up to the bar and see how much you can drink. Sometimes you want to go for pro.

Michael:

I've often wondered this thought, and it's gonna be a weird thought, and everybody who hates that we kind of down play speed sometimes when in fact we're not. It that's what's funny about this is We're reframing speed. We're reframing it. Yeah. We're just reframing it.

Michael:

But you're you're gonna hate me now. That if I'm taking, like, a very positive, honest assessment of what I run, let's just put, like, time figures on it. Like, I think Detroit was, like, 57. My PR is 52, two fifty two. I could I should I should probably point towards a two fifty five for this training cycle and go, alright, Detroit was just a probably an interesting execution.

Michael:

That's probably your time. Now you can go shoot for that PR and then 57 on the high end, 55 in the middle, and 52 on the front. It's like, just great day. Alright. That's that's fine.

Michael:

But my weird thought to myself is, is that, like, is that the the goal reaching me? Because this February circumstances were really, really much different than who I am today. I had so much, like, hate in me. Also, a lot of excitement. No attachment to anything.

Michael:

I was single. Know, I I mean, I was just like, like, things were different. This is just way different. I was living with my grandfather at the time who had like he was like in his last months of his life. I was like, all I had was going to the track on those mornings, you know.

Michael:

I was like, I'm not there anymore. Like, my life is good right now. You know, even relative to my business being compromised by whatever the hell is going on right now. So like, I'm it's good. It's good.

Michael:

I don't

Steve:

think enough people realize They'll take their goal or they'll I mean, they'll take their personal record, and they'll strip all context from it.

Michael:

You can't And that's what I'm saying, you can't strip it. If I'm being totally honest, I'm a three hour guy. Mhmm. I'm just running really good for a three hour guy. Mhmm.

Steve:

You can go six fifty all

Michael:

day long. Where I put

Steve:

that two

Michael:

fifty two on my name is hilarious. It's like, nah, you're not a two fifty two guy, man. You're just a three hour and you're awesome about it because you went and performed three minutes under what is probably more realistic. So I'm also saying like, when we think too far in the future about all these goals, I think that there needs to be and I'm not saying we shouldn't go for it. I'm not saying I won't I will fail to stop trying to run at those times and, you know, training for it and doing everything I can.

Michael:

I'm just saying like, there is something there's something so much different between the two comparisons. One is, like, running cap 10 k, which is, like, pretty much close within a minute of a PR, you you know? And, like and then running something that you plan six months for, they're fundamentally the same. One of them you're better prepared for, but you risk kind of overreaching and overanalyzing and overdoing everything. And one of them you, like I said, you just get like booster points for not having any of the baggage.

Michael:

Baggage being like and then I challenge myself even after saying it's like, what? You're not a three hour guy, you're not a two fifty two guy, you're not anything. You're just capable obviously of going at varying speeds where like, go mess around with it and then train like that. And I'm not saying we can't

Steve:

I would argue you're fitter now than you were when you ran two fifty two.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah. I mean, if you think aerobically, for sure.

Michael:

But I was playing around more in that race without any baggage, and that's the other thing.

Steve:

I think this is something people need to realize is you're You're always within ten minutes of fitness. I think if you're in two forty five shape, you might be able to run a two thirty five and you might run a two fifty five.

Michael:

Yeah, sure.

Steve:

I don't think there's any reason why you Because the marathon doesn't require specificity the same way a five ks does or a 10 I ks think that if catch a good day, the circumstances are right, you're feeling good, you put less pressure on yourself, you might run that fast. But if things go rough, if your cat dies, if you roll into it with a high level of pressure, if you just paid your taxes or haven't paid your taxes, if you're going Boston and you're not feeling good. But I mean, all these things could come into play in a way that affects the way a person runs.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve:

Think what people are doing I also think there's a real problem what people think they're doing when they're training. People think There's definitely a disconnect. They think that they're training for the race that they're running, but they're not. They're doing what Des Linden says. They're training for life, motherfucker.

Steve:

And they're just targeting this race. Now, occasionally, the vibe of a training group or your own personal mission or where things are lying in your life, a certain race will generate more energetic value, and that can work for you and make you run faster. It could also work against you, in where it turns you run slower because of pressure. But I do think that like, I think people think they're training for one race. And if that would be true if they were Olympians every four years or they were training for or they were gonna drop the mic after they ran a race and said, I'm never gonna run another race again.

Steve:

But that doesn't that doesn't happen. Mhmm. People just keep racing after race after race, and so

Michael:

Like, they're on their little discreet It's like, oh, we got eight months. Like, let's get I

Steve:

think it's an eight month thing? Yeah. I mean, you learn actually, what happens is you're learning something in each one of those cycles that plays out. You're learning things that might play out in this cycle. It might play out in some future cycle.

Steve:

And so that piece is an important thing I think is very underrated. You know, you you're there's a global thing here. There's a there's a cross, a long term, a five year or ten year window of somebody's running or large seasons in life. You know, like you said, you were single, a little angry, free, and rage could play

Michael:

You hang a your even translated into something more joyful than the way it Yeah. Would translate

Steve:

don't mean to oh, let's channel it. It was just more like, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm trying to figure that out, that kind of thing. Angst maybe is a

Michael:

better word than But,

Steve:

yeah, it's intriguing to me. You know, I think people will probably think I'm crazy by saying what I just said, that training you're not really training for the cycle you're in. I do think you are, and I think it's good to keep that vision, but just be aware that these things play out over time. I mean, my group right now, I've been coaching some of the same people for, you know, four, five, six years, and some of them longer than that. And yet, for some reason, the group generally is now five minutes to ten minutes faster.

Steve:

Like, why? Was something special in this cycle? I don't think so. I just think sometimes it's just the way things play out. And so you think we think we're in control.

Steve:

Control. We We think think we're we're in in control, and we're not as much in control as we wish we were. And when you run if you're running a marathon, that's especially challenging because it's gonna fucking win. If just you jumped into a marathon instead of a cap 10 k, probably would have been a little bit different because you would have been like, oh shit, it's gonna really hurt. Did I really ready?

Steve:

Am I ready? Whereas you run over six miles every time you walk out for a run, so the question of coming across the finish line, and then you had no objective in terms of how fast you were gonna run, just try not to go out too fast, and then recover on the downhills, already you've gotta But see, why couldn't that race plan be the race plan if you were teed up, ready to go, and we peaked

Michael:

you Yeah. Before half ten Exactly. But even for the marathon, you could take your long run sequence, which is handfuls of 20 plus mile runs, and just and treat those as just the walk out the door runs. You've mastered walking out the door and getting over 20 miles. That is a That's a hard enough thing to master.

Michael:

It is. Why try and beat it? To believe or to believe

Steve:

that it's valuable or know that it's gonna be okay. I mean

Michael:

That's an interesting thing too. It's like if you're with just doing the thing, then why would we go out there with a mindset that's like, oh, I'm actually gonna do it and execute a specific plan. It's like, haven't even received anything back from it yet but we're telling it what to do. To me is like the problem of my own training where it's like, you go out there and it's like, damn. Alright.

Michael:

We get that first twenty twenty mile run and it's like, damn. You know, it's like trying to figure out if I'm doing it fast or slow or feel good or not feel good, it's like, no, just do it and then assess where you are and then go forward. So that'd be the same thing. It's like, you strip race or training away from it. It's just It is what it is.

Steve:

Yeah. The marathon's hard to do that with because it's hard for people It has been since the 70s or the 80s where there was a cultural vibe that you could run a marathon every day in training. It used to be. In the 70s, late 70s, early 80s, most people were running 150 plus miles a week, you can do the math there, it's 20 miles a day. They were doing that every single day and there resiliency was and a toughness and way of just being comfortable with it.

Steve:

Now, don't do that because it's way more than us hobby joggers need to do, but that's why I do handfuls of 20 mile long runs because I think they're very valuable.

Michael:

Can you split them up? That's just an adjacent question. What do you think

Steve:

I don't think you're gonna get the intended result of that particular run. I like to say you need to feel achy breaky. You gotta have your hips locking at some point, your knees feeling that way. Now, you do eight to ten, twelve, 20 mile long runs, you don't have that achy breaky anymore, but there's always that first two, three, four, twenty mile plus runs where it's really achy breaky, and you just have to get used to that. It just, your body kinda locks up.

Steve:

And then I have people who, when they do those consistently you know, our cycle is one week, three week cycle. The first week is typical for the long run, it's typically over distance, easy run. And, you know, for most people, it's three hours. And if you're a two thirty five marathoner, like, that's three hours is thirty minutes beyond what you're running on race day, you're doing that every three weeks, you're not gonna have any problem stepping up and wondering whether you're gonna finish the race at any level. It's just, can I finish the race with my fueling appropriate, with feeling decent, and can I have a little extra juice at the end?

Steve:

How does that all play out? And so I think that actually has physiological effect, it has a neurological sort of nervous system effect, and then, of course, whatever there is in terms of the mental is like, oh, it's not a big thing. And, you know, there's other programs that they do up to 16 miles, It's the longest run. I I I could not feel prepared doing it that way. I don't I just know.

Steve:

I couldn't I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If that model works for people, that's great. I know it wouldn't work for me. But that's what makes the marathon so unique. Like, we can't really do in training what we do on race day.

Steve:

I've said this before, but if, you if you're training for a five k, you can do four miles at five k, four miles worth of work with breakups in it at five k pace, which is significantly beyond. It's 25% more of the race distance, and you're able to do it and manage it.

Michael:

It leads just to such a

Steve:

weird know it'd like 30 miles at marathon goal pace. Like, who Like, we don't think that that's reasonable. And it's probably not, physiologically. Although I do think it's always good to question. Maybe you could.

Steve:

But we certainly can do that for a five k. No doubt. Me and my marathoners do 12 miles at a marathon goal pace, but they're gonna do that this weekend, two weeks before they race. They're gonna do 12 miles at their half marathon pace. Not all in one shot, but 12 miles.

Steve:

That's three

Michael:

by four ish.

Steve:

Yeah. They're like 90% of their volume 90% of their volume is done two weeks before. We're doing 20 miles for my marathoners, 18, really, of quality, right? And they still have eight miles to go on race day, so it's a big difference.

Michael:

So even when you're prepared at marathon, do you still think you're playing around?

Steve:

Going You're into always going into uncertainty. But I think that also creates, for some people, that's a playful space. This is something I try to work on with my athletes is to teach that as a playful thing. It's why I'm so focused on trying to remove that word expectation from any

Michael:

I think almost, but it's so weird. It almost feels dysfunctional. It feels like you're weak or, you know? It's such a weird thing. I don't think expectations should be in there, but if you ask me if I have them, it's

Steve:

like, yeah, you definitely That's our culture. That's the thing I'm raging against. I'm saying this is not good. Just like I think capitalism isn't good. At least at the way To me, it's like, so there's nothing wrong with competition and there's nothing wrong with wanting an outcome.

Steve:

I don't think there's anything wrong with those things. But it's when you move into certainty that you run into trouble. This is our financial model. I'm so grumpy about capitalism. I wanted to have this as a topic for discussion today.

Steve:

Decided But to pivot my feeling about that is there's an expectation of return. So the whole model, the capitalist model, at least at the level that we're talking about, is shareholders expect to make money. In what world, in order to make money, somebody has to lose money? I'm assuming, not just all up and to the right, for everybody on the face of the planet. Right?

Steve:

So somewhere, somebody's fucking losing in order for some other people to win. Yeah. And why do we have to have that model? I know that that's the way, but that's not nature. That's not nature.

Steve:

That's an aspect of nature, but that's not all nature is. Nature's also taking care of things and cyclical processes and, I mean, it's just not all up and to the right. And I think that that's what we've got is we've got a financial We've got economic system running our entire worldview, and it's fucked and wrong, and I'm trying to say there's nothing wrong with capitalism per se, but there is a big problem when everything's all supposed to be up and to the right.

Michael:

It's not natural. I'm gonna come in through a different door because

Steve:

Because I'm because because It's boring now at this point.

Michael:

No. No. No. No. Let's just pull that thread.

Michael:

Look. Pull it. You know? Let's see if this shirt falls apart. You know what?

Michael:

I don't know if I can. I am truly fatigued by the the the what has happened in to me specifically, along with so many other people in the past forty eight hours. It's been profound. I get messages from people saying, oh, just I I can't even go into it.

Steve:

Sorry for If anybody wonders what we're talking about, go to Atreyu's go to their YouTube page, and Michael has a thing called the Tariff Talk, and he will he will shoot you straight. You'll get the full you'll get the full Monte there.

Michael:

You'll get the thing. And, you know, what I always think about is, you know, expectations are woven into What I'm hearing you saying is that expectations are woven into the system of delivery of information. We call it culture, whatever it is. But really, it is It it's coming from a culture of expectation, which is so fascinating. So it's like, imagine, I always like to tell people, well, hey, let's pull this tariff thing all the way down.

Michael:

Like, imagine if everybody just stopped buying shoes. Internationally, we wouldn't have any great running foams or anything. We'd be running on polyurethane or maybe even cork. Who knows? Harachi.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah. Maybe somebody's gonna create a league of Harachi running and it's taken as seriously as the marathon. Imagine not having that culture implementation where it's like you can expect that these are the best training shoes, and these are the best racing shoes. What does the best mean? Best means you can get better because you deserve better because that's what you expect.

Michael:

Put all this time and training

Steve:

Nike said you could get 3%, and then they said you could get 4%. Yeah. Yeah. People did because they said they could.

Michael:

Yeah. Exactly. So it is it is fascinating. So, you know, if we release all that, it's not just, like, times and expectations that we kind of relinquish. It's more like, oh, the shit we need to go perform well.

Michael:

It's like, can you imagine? I often think about like how much I love those old, you know, running flats of like the two and they're just all so great. Jeez, they were so great. Just imagine having a league of runners that just

Steve:

Stayed in that.

Michael:

Stayed in that. And that was cool culture.

Steve:

But see, this is one of the things that made me so upset when I worked on the shoe floor back in the '90s and the early aughts, then I owned a running shoe store, and I did that game. It's like, people would come in and they had found their shoe, and six months later that shoe was gone. Not only Sometimes the shoe would have just gone through another iteration. And sometimes it was just gone. Like, not even in the lineup anymore.

Michael:

Everybody says that, which I find fascinating.

Steve:

I mean, it was a thing all the time. People are like, I

Michael:

just want

Steve:

the same shoe I

Michael:

had still is a thing. And everybody says that, but the the really interesting thing when it, like when you're when you're sitting in the tray you see, you notice that when we make a new release, day one, we might sell a 100 pieces of something. These are just made up numbers. A 100 pieces of something. Day two will be 50.

Michael:

Day three will be 25. Day four will be 12.

Steve:

And

Michael:

this every single thing, like the half life in consumer culture is literally exactly that. It's the half life. Everything is split in half depending on how you tranche it out. You know, unless you've kind of become you you poked through and you were able to go in orbit like a Nike Dunk or an Air Force One or something like Lifestyle Line, Adidas Gazelles. These things just stay in circulation.

Michael:

They call them legacy models.

Steve:

The whole skateboard shoe industry is basically the same shoe.

Michael:

Aside from that, you know, I've never seen something that's designed to be aspirational like that, performance aspiration, you know, kind of goods, the half life is just too fast. It's too fast. Like, you know, so that is the materialist side of the of the equation, is just like, even if you wanted to, and I wanted to, believe me, I'm like, dude, I would still be on like, I would still be on no. I've always wanted to change. I think, theoretically, it would be the equivalent of me saying, like, I'm happy with my shoe right now.

Michael:

I plan to give it to the fans in perpetuity. And that just the reality of that would would be that even even that would be half, depending on where you go for it. And eventually, I wouldn't be selling enough to make a living. There's also the creativity piece.

Steve:

Yeah. Especially for someone you. If you use the same analogy or the same metaphor for music, we don't want Radiohead just to keep playing If they keep doing Paranoid Android, then we'd never get creative.

Michael:

And everybody wants it deep down inside they want that, but only for that period. Right. Until they find something else.

Steve:

And then they always come back

Michael:

to it.

Steve:

That's the problem with shoes, don't have these That has started. A little legacy thing has gone about. But people are wearing them for style, not for performance.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's maybe the materialist materialist side of it all, but I think in terms of why do we perform better when we care less and, you know, could that happen with the commodities aspect of it as well? It's like, yeah, I think I think it's all interwoven. I do I do think that, you know, that I I do like this idea.

Michael:

Sometimes when I think about fueling for a race, for example, too, I think about, you know, you have to think like this when you're in long distance triathlon. You have to think how what am I feeling for right now, and what am I feeling for in, like, eight hours? So it becomes, like, pretty visceral, like, when you for me, that was specifically switching from, like, from going U Can to like Coke or gels, like serious, like sugar gels. And I would have a a stream, a constant stream of U Can for like 80% of the race. But I would start fueling the gels at like 50% the race because I knew it would take me into Mhmm.

Michael:

Get me topped off the tank. It's like a like a maybe it's like a margarita with a Grand Marnier float. It's like that's that's the it takes the two pieces to make that drink. So I think I think that there's this stream of one of them is training and one of them is the high octane experience driven aspects of it, which is like the thing that gets us to the end. So I think I I think maybe we're mixing maybe we're interchanging our fuel during training from the intense stuff or the playful stuff, and we're kinda mixing and matching it.

Michael:

We don't know exactly where the intention is, why you get everybody to write a brief or, you know, keep a journal or a log. Like, the amount of times that we're probably doing something that we think we're doing but we're not But it's completely the opposite.

Steve:

Or you're not really recognizing there's layers to You go out and you do six times a mile and all you're thinking about is the physiological Yeah. And not realizing there's a bunch there's a number of other things going Exactly.

Michael:

And that's why you're that's why you're it comes back to your argument too of, like, depending on the cycle that you kind of, like, book in the whole deal. Is this training for this race or is it training for, you know, the long the longer haul, like the UCAN version of it as opposed to the race being the the jail version. So so that's kinda that I I think I think it's easy to get caught up in the weeds there. And it's frankly, it's fatiguing and sometimes frustrating and hard to see through. I think I think I think there's a lot.

Michael:

My final statement, I think, on it is that I think training offers way too many opportunities for us to do the to make some stupid mistakes. Does that make sense? Yeah. Whereas, like, if you don't care, you don't have enough time to make enough dumb mistakes, you can maybe make few, but you know what the mission is. The mission is just to cross the finish line.

Michael:

It's like, alright, cool. Got it.

Steve:

The largest of those mistakes, the one that's the biggest, we've been calling this we've said the problem is expectation, right? And I use that frame, expectation, just so people hear if they haven't heard this before. The opposite of that, in my opinion, is opportunity. I was looking at it like that goal time that you're running, an expectation will create a nervous system reaction that feels like you absolutely have to do it or you're gonna suck. And if you say it's an opportunity, then there's a little more play.

Steve:

There's something about what it is about humans, mammals that like to play. We like to see. The expectation reason is so problematic is that its real root, the real thing it's indicating, what you're saying when you're saying you have an expectation, is you want certainty. You want to be certain. And when you ran Cap 10 ks, you were open to being uncertain with what would happen.

Steve:

In fact, it was the entire premise. I'm not sure what's gonna happen. Let's go see. But when you went to Detroit Now, you were really loose with Detroit. Most people will say, Oh, I expect I need to be certain of what I'm gonna create, and that creates a immediate visceral closing down, shutting down, protection, and your nervous system reads it way ahead of whatever, and it reads all of the subtle cues that you're either internalizing, the self talk that's that you're not maybe aware of, and that certainty.

Steve:

And this goes back into that economic model that I was raging against from the capitalistic at least the the kind of capitalism we have now. People want the certainty certainty that their investment is going to make more money. And there's something baked into the entire model that says, yeah, you can be certain of that. When people the reason why the stock market seems safe is because people think they're gonna make money from it. They're certain.

Steve:

Then when they don't, they're like, what the fuck? You lied to me. Well, no. No. No.

Steve:

No. No. No. No. You're missing the whole point.

Steve:

There's an uncertainty principle baked into the entirety of that model, but you just don't see it because you're so focused on the certainty aspect. Then you start patterning and planning. This goes into your now, I do not wanna critique the conversation you had in your I was thinking this a little bit. One of the things you were you were pleading for to the powers that be, the tariff, whoever these people, whether it's one person or a whole group of them, right? You were saying, hey, it's hard for the little guy to be able to do what we can do if we can't plan.

Steve:

But that's not the model. There's a there's a there's an uncertainty baked into all of it. And, yes, you've been given the illusion by absolute badass purveyors in China that things could be consistent and that the tariffs were gonna stay the same, all these things are gonna stay the same. But maybe there really wasn't any of that really at the base level. And that may say to you, then you might say tap out.

Steve:

Too much stress, too much risk, I'm not willing to do it. And of course, there's that. But I do think there's something that we all have to take some level of responsibility for, is that life is fucking uncertain. And when you're in a certainty place, you're in a comfort zone. When you're in a comfort zone, you're not pressing outside the edges and you're not being as creative as you could be, and maybe that's what Maybe it's not an We're looking at the fruits of all those labors as up and to the right, but maybe what we should just be taking is the general experience of creativity and adaptation and learning and fun and play.

Steve:

I mean, if we were guaranteed to win every time, it wouldn't be fun. If you were guaranteed to sell every one of your shoes no matter what, there would be no risk. Risk. Right? So I think And I'm saying I'm not saying this as a critique of what you're saying.

Steve:

I think that in some way, in order to even play the game, right, in order to be a shoe designer, you need some level of certainty. And what's going on right now is too it's if if it continues in this way, you're not gonna be able to do what you need to do.

Michael:

Well, then maybe that's where that's where performance comes from, is maximizing certainty within your circle of influence. Your what you can control. Exactly. So that's like so the question is like, well, why don't we just to the to the person who's like, well, I did better not caring, why don't I just go out and just phone it all in and just have a good time? I think that's where we do it for the 10 margin, you know?

Michael:

If you're gonna go for the ten minute margin in the performance, then that's actually justification to certainty within your circle of influence.

Steve:

And that will create risk. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That will create risk. Yeah.

Steve:

If you stay in the comfort zone, you're safe. Relatively safe. Because you know your level of caring. But I do think this is an interesting Relative to this is where care sits in this. When I say care, I don't mean like I care about you.

Steve:

I mean at the deepest level. It's almost a form of love. It's actually a form. Care, deep care is love. It's just not got the romantic attachments to it.

Steve:

And when we care a lot, we want to be safe because it in itself is risky, Right? Mhmm. And I think that that's I think I believe, even to our own identities, our egos, ourself, like We have no assurance that we're gonna make the next day, the next hour. We have no assurance that there's something after this. No matter what.

Steve:

Anybody that says there is, they don't know.

Michael:

I'm pretty sure. I'm just joking with you.

Steve:

We've got people who tell us, but nobody has a direct experience. They have NDE people, but even then, you don't know what's going on then, with the near death experiences. We could just have a full on hormonal and cocktail going on in the brain that creates a whole I mean, we take a couple of drops of a particular substance and we have a completely different experience. We go to sleep and we have an entire dream world. Why would we think that the NDE, the near death experience, would be anything other than some kind of crazy cocktail on the brain, like a psychedelic, right?

Steve:

So I think that we don't have any assurance of anything at all, period, scary. I think that much of the suffering in this world is related to ways of trying to create certainty. Ah. That's not a bad theory. The Buddhists kind of argue for that.

Michael:

It's so much more profound than my feeble brain is ready to analyze, but I would spend time analyzing that. I think that's quite an elegant way of putting it.

Steve:

I had a deep conversation with a group of people last night where we were talking about challenge and adversarial behavior and ways of managing that kind of stress, you know, that you might find. And I said to them, It's my view that if you step into uncertainty, then you're gonna bring your best and you're gonna be aware that there's no guarantee and that mostly the guarantee is what makes us tighten up and freak out. And this is a way And there are models, especially

Michael:

Maybe there's the more Taiwanese people buy shit online if you have a return policy.

Steve:

There you go.

Michael:

There you go. It works in both directions. It does. Yes. Oh, fuck it.

Michael:

I can send it back.

Steve:

And then they don't?

Michael:

Yeah. No. Not all the time. You're right. Oh, Jesus.

Michael:

Pain comes pain Steve's theory is that pain comes from attaining certainty.

Steve:

Yes. There's no doubt. In my opinion, I don't I have no

Michael:

It's, like, definitely the most Western dilution of of Buddhism. Yeah. Like, there there is. And I kind of that's where I just I vibe on this so hard because it's so such an easy way to do it. It's such an easy way to be like, oh, is What's going on?

Michael:

What's going on with your thought process? Oh, no.

Steve:

I do think, though, that the worry there is what you said at the beginning of this conversation, is there nihilism? Do we become nihilistic in that way? Then do we care about anything? Because it's a lot easier If everything's uncertain, then why should we care? I think that that's We're supposed to suffer personally.

Michael:

I don't

Steve:

think we're not supposed to suffer. I think that's the if there's a contract we made, whether we're aware of it or not aware of it, it seems to be the contract nature has given us, which is you're gonna fucking suffer.

Michael:

If my energy is recycled in the afterlife into another life form organism or whatever, man, I I really hope it's like a oh, man. What would it be? What would you be?

Steve:

I would love to be a sloth. Oh. Go real sloth.

Michael:

You kinda just look like Go real sloth. Go real sloth.

Steve:

Oh, I like

Michael:

Go real sloth.

Steve:

Or I wanna come back as one of my dogs. Yeah. I want a dog I wanna be a dog with an owner like me that lets me go out two times a day for hours a day. Dogs, though, they

Michael:

seem like they have a lot of anxiety.

Steve:

Some do, some don't.

Michael:

Some do. I would be one of the weird ones. I would get stuck in an anxious dog body, and I would just be freaking out all the time. I know it. Oh, yeah.

Steve:

Oh, jeez. We a we went a few places there today. It. It was fun. It was fun.

Michael:

I think it's nice. You know?

Steve:

We've hit on this topic one other time a long time ago

Michael:

But the we've never murder played ridden, but not like this. To be actionable about it, though, is an interesting thing. And I think the moral of the story is there is a need for certainty and there is a need for uncertainty. However, wanna skin that. They work with each other certain ways.

Michael:

Have to be able to work

Steve:

with them both.

Michael:

Training and racing is all a symptom of that push and pull, and I think at the end of the day, the only actionable thing there is is to be aware.

Steve:

And to, yes.

Michael:

When it's add easy at to not be aware. It's easy to overshadow one being

Steve:

in another place. By being in either being certain, in which you're in another place already, or not being present in which you're in another place already.

Michael:

Yeah. I said in that video, dreams are just planning for the future. It's just like good planning is just the same thing as a dream. It's like you're actionable on that. So it's interesting.

Michael:

One of it it's like mysticism. It's like, You can also plan in one hand and shit in the other. One of them is gonna fill up. There's so much there. Even though you're planning for it, which you should or could and maximize and leave room for opportunity or maximization or efficiency or whatever you want, you also are called to live in a very real set of inputs and circumstances of the the the present.

Steve:

Because our culture is that way, there is an aspect of us required to play that game. Yeah. But I think if you can play the game with one foot in uncertainty Yeah. You'll play a lot better.

Michael:

Yeah, I think so too. Keeping a healthy balance of

Steve:

the game. You'll play a lot better.

Michael:

Yeah, man.

Steve:

Alright. And it doesn't mean not I just wanna double click on this.

Michael:

Yeah, it doesn't

Steve:

It doesn't mean not caring.

Michael:

It means being the cool dude in class that you always wish you were because it was like, they didn't give a shit enough, but they were still high performers. It's like, yeah, that guy was

Steve:

It's like nihilism is the fact What is nihilism? It's like that life has no There's no point at all. And what I'm saying is the problem for the nihilist is that there's anything at all. Once there's something like life, the nihilism doesn't work anymore.

Michael:

Life keeps happening. Somebody dies and then somebody's born.

Steve:

So you can't just go nihilism. It's like, oh, I'm gonna die. How do you know? Because another little kid is coming around the pike. Another little flower's growing back up.

Steve:

Another this is nature. It just keeps growing. So the nihilist is somebody who's just sitting in their own little fucking cesspool of shit.

Michael:

On one hand, you have the nihilist, and on one hand, you have

Steve:

Eternal optimist, bullshit optimist.

Michael:

The the yeah. Yeah. That's basically that's basically the idea. Well, shit, man. Yeah.

Michael:

It was fun. I don't know. Hey. We're doing something do you know how we always we don't always. It wasn't it was just last week that I was like, hey, how'd you feel about this episode?

Michael:

I know. I'm just curious. How'd you feel about

Steve:

it? This one? Yeah. Like, great. Awesome.

Michael:

Hey. It's our new segment called Let's Rate Our Shit. We don't even need feedback anymore. We're just gonna give it to you right here. We're gonna tell you what the feedback is.

Michael:

I like this one. I like being open ended. I was actually a little bit I was actually a little bit scared it would get too esoteric, but I'm glad I was able to kinda put a few weights on it. I kinda went off the rails there about the damn U Can and That stuff like awesome. That, but

Steve:

No. People need the specifics. I think it's good. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's good.

Steve:

Yeah, man. Well, appreciate you, all of our listeners. We do. I can't

Michael:

wait to start training for that damn race too, man. It's coming. I

Steve:

know. It's coming. I haven't even gotten there yet. I absolutely need to. I'm so fucking tired of doing my taxes.

Michael:

Oh, yeah.

Steve:

I like almost through the weeds. Oh, I'm almost through here and it's like And then we have a group running and then it'll be like deep breath and, you know, it's hard.

Michael:

Yeah. It'll be alright. One day, it'll be over. You'll Yeah. Only then you'll get to wait around until it happens again next year.

Michael:

So good luck.

Steve:

I mean, speaking of certainty, death and taxes. Right?

Michael:

Yeah. Basically. Basically. I don't know. Do they still have that department?

Steve:

And tariffs.

Michael:

Hell, yeah. Oh,

Steve:

shit. Tariffs. Thanks, y'all. Be well. Godspeed.