Mantras don't get you through an ultramarathon, g-d does

Reflections on racing 50 desert miles with my team

There’s no room for lying in sports

I remember the brutal honesty of the truth of the first Tribal Training Team Ultra Experience. Zion National Park in Utah, 10 committed athletes all looking for individual glory through a team victory in a 100 mile ultramarathon in the desert.

We set out with one singular goal, start as 10, move as 10, finish as 10. In the end, only 3 made it across the line. Despite this result, we mined the experience for deep meaning and each individual on the team found a personal breakthrough in the camaraderie and struggle of the challenge in real time.

We won big. Facts.

But we also didn’t come close to our original goal. Also Facts.

Rather than hide from the truth and make excuses, Tribal Training head coach and founder

Ryan Dreyer

and I spent the last 10 months probing deep inside ourselves, our plans, our intentions, and our experiences.

All of that soul searching led us to Cave Creek Arizona this past weekend with 13 athletes, 2 pacers, and 1 amazing crew/photographer/videographer to take down the Elephant Mountain 50 miler as a team.

Back to the desert we went. But with different purpose, different conviction, different aim, and ultimately an entirely different experience and result.

This isn’t going to be a ‘race recap’ article. We recorded a 2+ hour team podcast the day after the race that covers the experience. Check out the ‘Tribal Training’ podcast for all your listening needs

This is another experiment in mining the experience for meaning and deep understanding. This is real life athletic philosophy. So let me take behind the curtain of our hearts and minds to bring you inside the amazing ideals we’re living out on the team by taking on these epic adventures together.

Aim is always most important

My biggest takeaway from last year’s team ultra was the need to focus more on mindset and camaraderie in preparing for the race.

I believe each sport calls forth different virtues, and Zion represented a tactical approach to a larger spiritual challenge.

• What gear are we using?

• How much fuel and when dominated our team discussions going into the race.

• What was our drop bag strategy?

While good questions, they missed the mark.

At the end of the day a 100 mile ultra is about guts. It’s not about a perfectly executed plan, it’s about figuring out how you can keep moving forward when everything is seemingly going wrong and all you want to do is quit.

The focus on tactics turned the team into a collection of ace mercenaries brought together to complete a task. That might sound harsh, but it was a bit true. We had 2 months of group calls on zoom so we weren’t strangers. We had a private telegram channel where we posted our workouts and saw each member hit the same training milestones. And we bonded well in the team house before the race as well.

This created a sense of shared experience, but not deep bonds of team unity. It turns out, we relied on the pressure of the contest to produce moments of camaraderie, in those times of deep struggle we thought we’d be able to find the strength to pull together and get the job done.

Not only did we make some tactical mistakes but we completely miscalculated the emotional and spiritual demands we placed on individuals on the team. We didn’t have a true sense of shared struggle to rely upon in those dark moments of adversity that challenged us far earlier that we thought.

It ended up taking our feet our from under us and was a main contributing factor to 5 of 9 athletes bowing out at the 51.8 aid station, just over half the race distance (1 of the athletes had to pull out on race eve due to illness, you always need some luck to get to the start line). All the focus on tactics made us miss the true mark. And when things got hard, we didn’t have the right ammo to fire back.

Remember, mantras don’t get you through a 100 mile trail race.

The power of the OPEN HEART

Things were different this time. We set out with the right intentions. Instead of trying to bring all of our minds together to solve the challenge, we started tying people’s hearts together through shared struggle, vulnerability, and understanding.

Our team calls were entirely different. Gone were the struggle sessions around fueling protocols, in were deep prompts about fear, wonder, and intention.

Out were individual efforts that masqueraded as team efforts. In were true team challenges in training.

The best example being the Tribal 24 challenge, a play on David Goggins 4x4x48 challenge. The prepare for running when you don’t want to run Coach put this one on everyone’s plan to break limits and find more of the spirit needed to gut out an ultra.

Out athletes ran 4 miles every 4 hours for 24 hours. What was cool was seeing people starting at different times and having a constant stream of messages and photos in our team chat at all hours of the day over a two day period. When it was time for one athlete to run at 3am for example, they looked into the chat to see another athlete who didn’t want to run at 1am but finished that portion. NO CHANCE you are quitting or taking the easy road when you see a teammate pushing their limit.

Experiences like that are paramount in creating a real team that can rely on each other to push through dark times. We didn’t have anything like this in our Zion build, not even when we all went out on 5 hour trail efforts.

We carried this intention through in our team house experience. All of our ‘team building’ sessions in Zion were around tactics

• Race pacing

• Gear checks

• Fuel, Fuel, Fuel

• Drop bag strategy

We combined all of these sessions into one final ‘gear check’ session the afternoon before the race, but it was over in an hour and it was informal to say the least.

Our intention was geared towards minds and spirits, less so than bodies. Ryan prepared our guys with months of excellent programming. Just like pro athletes gearing up for their biggest game of the year, we needed to get in the right mindset.

We started out early, having our first mindset preparation session on Thursday night once all of our guys arrived (minus hero firefighter Jamie). To frame the entire race experience we explored the idea of Freedom vs. Slavery using the Exodus story as our guide. It’s an idea I’ve been exploring in depth for a while, how we are both at once Moses the reluctant hero who acts on faith in g-d to deliver his people but also the Israelites who question the journey towards freedom and always wish to return to the comforts and familiar life of slavery.

It’s a powerful frame for our life, how we sink back into the known and settle instead of striving out into the unknown to become a hero and reach our true potential.

We wanted to get our guys thinking about what’s going to happen inside the mind when the pain of the 50 mile effort hits. When you want to quit. How are you going to respond? Take the easy road out and say ‘I’ve done enough’ instead of battling through the adversity to ‘find out what I’m truly capable of doing.’

The second intentional mindset sessions we led came Friday morning. Ryan led the guys through a breathwork and visualization session. He prompted the team to find the one moment in training where their best selves emerged. Everyone shared what they saw in the mind’s eye.

We then channeled that energy into a writing exercise where we asked the team to explore their ‘why’ for the race.

• Why travel to the desert away from family, friends, and work obligations?

• Why take on such a gigantic physical challenge?

To create brotherhood bonds, we put them into small groups and asked them to find the commonality behind their why.

Our intention was simple, get guys inspired by their own process, remind them that they can rise towards their best versions in moments of adversity, and to build trust and openness between teammates.

After these sessions, we were ready. And as always, the way it played out in action was the best type of ‘research’ an athletic philosopher could hope for.

How I saw it PLAY OUT

In the House

The first lesson emerged directly through that first mindset session on Exodus on Thursday night. Without planning, one of our athletes

Matthew Bank

, prompted the rest of the team to share how they came to join Tribal Training and why they believed in the power of the team, coaches, and specifically the leadership of our head coach to bring the best out of themselves. We learned the deep backstory behind our teammates intentions and hearts. When it was time for the coaches to share the tears flowed (I was able to keep most of my composure but only cause I’d been telling myself to ‘keep it together’ a dozen times already). In perhaps the most raw and beautiful moment of the entire weekend, Ryan laid his heart open and poured truth, love, gratitude, humility, and appreciation into our hearts with a powerful speech.

We won the weekend in that 45 minutes of personal vulnerability. Everyone in the room felt it. This type of thing doesn’t happen in a room of people, most meeting in person for the first time, on the eve of their biggest challenges.

From my view standing up at the front door leading our team I could see the smiles and focused attention on us. Everyone was “in.” Everyone felt like they were in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, doing the right thing, for all the right reasons. Collective flow. It reminded me of my days lecturing as a prof when you have the entire classroom wrapped around your finger, the students all listening on the edge of their seat, realizing they are learning something profound from someone who can communicate that meaning in a way they never imagined.

In my share, I called all of my tribal brothers my graduate students on this amazing experience of athletic heroism. We are doing the work. We are probing the mind and heart for truth. We are open to the experience. We aren’t afraid of what we find, for we have strength in our brothers beside us to be gracious, understanding, and compassionate.

We also realize the strength it takes to be open is the exact strength needed to look 50 trail miles in the face and say, “I’m ready to take you on, no matter what unexpected challenges you’re gonna throw my way.”

Feels weird to say we won the race Thursday night, but ask anyone who was in that room, they’ll tell you that was the TRUTH. Thanks Matt, you can add this to your MVP stat sheet for the week.

This made Friday smooth. Strangers were now brothers. Questions flowed easily. If someone had nerves they had 14 other people to explore them with. If anyone had questions, it was easy to approach 14 other people to see what they thought. The open heart led the way towards calm and appreciation as the main feelings on Friday.

The laughing, the good natured ribbing between dudes, the collective anxiety being taken down many notches, it was palpable. That’s what I mean when I say we already won the race.

On Course

The way the race unfolded exemplified our intentions in preparing this group differently. In any ultra you have to expect the unexpected. But when you’re traversing through nature, and most of the time through rugged nature, you’re up against an entirely different challenge.

I must have said this at least a dozen times out on the trails but there is no lying out there. Nature gives you the truth, you’re but a mere speck in the vastness of the cosmos and you have to bring everything you have to move through the chaos with purpose, intention, and love. It’s something I’m keenly aware of, running in every type of weather on some gnarly trails on the Bruce Trail in rural Ontario. But a lot of the team had never been on such harsh terrain, let alone for a 50 mile endevour.

That’s why the open heart is crucial in this environment. When things inevitably go sideways, you need to pivot quickly from anger, frustration, and regret to patience, acceptance, and grace. And you have to do it WHILE MOVING THROUGH THE COURSE. People always see the physical challenge of an ultra as the scary part, but the terror comes in your mind and spirit. It just needs the body as the vehicle.

The first sign of problem came when one of our athletes began to struggle WAY TOO EARLY in the race, think mile 2-3 of the ultra. We started out with the steepest climb all day right out of the gate, with the added difficulty of inhaling all the dust the 58 racers taking on the 50 miles kicked up with our collective feet. Poor preparation and an eye on the wrong aims put this athlete behind way too quickly.

Right away I went into coaching mode, shouting strategies like “Consistency over Urgency” and “We’re totally fine moving this way all day” to provide calm and assurance to the teammates in the back, struggling towards the first aggressive cutoff of the day. I saw the power of the open heart work it’s magic. The one athlete who was already deep in the pain cave found new life when we picked up another athlete running solo, his good buddy from home who never believed he could run, let alone take on a massive ultra. He went into service and we all battled together to make the first aid station with 12 minutes to spare.

Throughout the day, Ryan and I shuffled back and forth helping the struggling athlete at the back of the pack and providing stern guidance to a larger mid pack of athletes, most taking on the biggest physical challenge of their life. Some members who had run ultras before, and M‘MV’B (Matt MVP Bank) in his first, pushed ahead. Watching some athletes take the lead, everyone taking a chance to inspire the others with their bold confidence again proved the power of the open heart. People who questioned their own ability suddenly started guiding and leading others with a sense of shared duty, we can all do this together if we share the load. When leading on the trails, you are in charge of navigation, safety, and perspective. It’s draining and tough. But a team that’s ready to go to battle for eachother solves it with their hearts together.

This was during the first gut check of the day, a 12 mile section through gnarly terrain and no aid stations. Through the desert, during the rising heat of the day, with thorns, cactuses, steep climbs, loose rocks, and narrow single track the entire way. It was a technical technical course.

One of our athletes hit his limit, but again the open heart led the way. Instead of lamenting his physical pain and knowledge that he wasn’t going to make the 50 mile finish he smiled, remained light in his heart, and found peace and gratitude instead of frustration, regret, and despair. He regained his faculties after rehydrating and immediately went in to service mode, helping out each teammate at the next aid station.

Having someone enthusiastically take your empty water bottles and fill them up with fresh water, electrolyte mix, liquid fuel, to bring you that sweet hit of coca-cola, grabbing what ever food you need, willing and able to inspect your muscle pain, and offer words of encouragement make ALL the difference. Each runner felt a massive lift leaving that aid station because our teammate who’s race ended as a runner had only begun as a crew member. The open heart wins AGAIN!

I could go on and on and on and on, that’s how prevalent the heart stood all day long and into the late hours of the night. But I’ll just share one final story to help us all appreciate the power of the heart.

Our one athlete who’d been in the grinder first, and never seemed to get himself quite out of it could have let the initial negative emotions and gut punch to the ego carry his spirit the entire day. As he and I came into the second to last aid station, right before the day turned into night, we ran in the final mile with a stranger turned friend named Kevin.

When Kevin asked how our days had been going my teammate turned and honestly said “I had my soul taken away from me way too early, it’s been a hard day.” While I appreciated his honesty I had to instantly correct him. “My brother, you did not lose your soul, if that were true you would have quit a long time ago. You just got guy punched, and then when you were on the ground kicked in the ‘salted peanuts’ as well.” The irony of the situation, this athlete wasn’t so much upset about his own time, but that he was in a position to need service instead of pouring it out. During one of our many conversations in the pain cave (there needs to be a Plato reference here!) I reassured him, “You will have your time to serve, it just won’t happen the way you imagined it in your mind. Be open, keep your heart strong, and the opportunity will emerge.”

During one final stretch with this athlete and head coach Ryan in the dark, I yelled out in encouragement “Your heart is strong, keep moving with it.” A few minutes later we came up on another teammate, deep in his own pain cave and about to dig his own grave. He was angry, dehydrated, naseous, muscles cramping, despondent, and hopeless. Even the coaches were stunned and a bit flustered. We were 9 miles from home and for the first time in hours, we didn’t know if we could help bring everybody out on course to the promised land, the finish line.

But our athlete, the one who’d been in his own cave all day became the light. His heart opened up and because we’d been tying them together for months, he hit his teammate right in the heart. “Dude, I’ve been here, take a seat and drink this coke, it will make you feel better.” I offered a topical pain cream to help take away the muscle cramps, the hurting athlete couldn’t even listen to me, but the second his teammate offered it was on his legs. The open heart found it’s partner and the connection opened up the closed heart of our struggling teammate. He just needed to try. Those first few sips of coke opened up his stomach but then he felt better, enough to stand back up and start walking.

There’s a stark truth of ultrarunning, when you really want to quit, you’re likely at least 4 miles away from being able to quit. They don’t send helicopters into the middle of the desert to pick you up when you decide ‘enough is enough.’ You have to make a type of death march in to the aid station. So either way, you’re going to have to walk through it. Instead of that dreaded resolve, we collectively found the strength to hit negative splits in the final 5 miles of the race, in the dark, in the desert, the magnet of the finish line pulling us closer and closer.

5 of us crossed the finish line with 4 minutes to spare before the official race cut off time of 10pm. We had all out teammates waiting at the line with bated breath. They thought we were going to miss it. We knew in our hearts we were getting it done.

Like a scene out of a sports movie, we locked arms as brothers, and triumphantly crossed together, a team. Immediately we were swarmed by our other brothers, who had waited for hours after they had finished their own races to share that moment with us. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

Even COOLER, we have all this captured on video and camera but there was a technical error that saw this dramatic movie scene go uncaptured. In a world where everything is documented to consume, this perfect moment now lives on only in oral history, no document, no record, just memory, myth, and lore. PERFECT ENDING FOR THE HEART. The brain craves the finitude, the heart lives in peace though the mystery.

What YOU NEED TO LEARN

I always like to end these articles with actionable steps for you to incorporate into your lives. How do you resolve yourself to open your heart? That’s a difficult question.

Perhaps the best thing for me to offer here is a profound idea on what it means to put your‘self’ into the heart. On my first run back from the desert I hit a stream of consciousness that flooded me with incredible revelations of deep truth. Running is a spriritual practice for me, it’s prayer, atonement, revelation, and transcendence. During this run I hit upon perhaps the most profound, wise, and true thing I’ve even thought about, of had revealed to me through my thoughts.

“The proper place for the ego to live is in the heart. It’s the only place it can be truly embraced in humility and then given up for righteous service.”

We need our ego’s. But we also need to give them up. Putting it in the heart aligns us to our higher selves. Our achievements becomes eternal gifts we give away. The heart aims our excellence towards helping others with our unique skills, talents, passions, and creativity. We live as subjects, individuals, in bodies separated. But our hearts are transmitters and the send and receive signals towards eachother, we’re all connected through the heart. When that heart is OPEN I’m ready to receive all the signals, when it’s closed I’m shut out from connection and knowledge.

My practical advice is for each of us to meditate deeply on the idea of the open heart.

Here are some general prompts to put you into the proper frame. You don’t need to do anything other than put them into your conscious mind so that the subconscious can start to work a little magic behind the scenes. After the prompts I’ll give you some activities you can do to ‘churn’ the ideas around intentionally. Whatever speaks to you, this idea must come to dominate your spirit.

Prompts:

What does it mean to open up my heart? In action? In thought?

How have I closed off my heart in the past? In action? In thought?

Where is my heart aiming me? What are my passions? What would I love to create?

How is my open heart signaling me to help other using my unique skills as an individual.

Activities:

Journaling - Write one of the prompts and just let your pen or pencil loose, write anything that comes to mind. It could be words, sentences, bullet point, a diagram, etc. Be open to what flows naturally

Intentional Visualization - Get into a comfortable position and close your eyes. Visualize yourself in the act of opening the heart. See the actions. Feel the emotions. Imagine the possibilities. Be open to what forms in your minds eye.

Active Meditation - Go for a run, pedal on the bike, hit the trails for a hike, and let your mind circle around the ideas. Get outside of your body by moving it and see how your spirit and mind intertwine to give you knowledge. Keep the open heart on your lips and in the front of your thoughts. Be open to the wisdom you can receive.

The biggest part of these exercises isn’t to determine a conclusion or a purposeful goal that needs to come as a result of the action. The exercise IS the end in itself. This is how you start to train yourself to become open. The take an open stance towards life and experience. To open your heart to the vulnerabilities that will end up striking, scarring, and hurting the heart. Why do you think so many keep it closed? To keep them from the hurt that the truth leads us to understanding.

If you want to learn deep lessons from sport and exercise, to use them spiritually, to activate their power to help you self-actualize, this puts you on the path to being open to seeing and living sports in an entirely different framework.

My teammates and I lived it on the desert mountains. My coaching clients and I live it day to day as we learn and grow together. I always give you everything you need to put these ideas into practice on your own. But if you need a guide, like so many of my teammates did during our 50 mile transcendence, I’m ready to help activate your heart to open it up towards the truth. Use the button below to send me a message and let’s connect our hearts together so you can strive towards your best self in body, mind, and spirit.

Happy training team!