Miles, Team Olive, and 29k | Spartan Trifecta World Championships Day 3 | Ep. 27

What matters is that where they are going and that they are on this road moving towards, uh, towards improvement and towards getting to where they'd like to be. Because everyone who's like in the best shape of their lives now wasn't at some point in time, right? And I think we fall into the trap of admiring people who are in the best shape of their lives and overlooking everybody who's on their way to getting to the best shape of their lives. Welcome to The Rising Tribe. I'm Jared, and I'm Austin, and our goal is to inspire young men to build strong families and discover their potential as men, husbands, and fathers.

And we'll do this by having authentic conversations about faith, family, health, and business as we strive to level up our lives and the lives around us. Welcome to our third episode of the Sparta series. We actually Finished up our Spartan Race 2 days ago, and we are in Athens wrapping up our trip. Yesterday just got, got away from us, and we weren't able to record last night, but boy, we have got some fun updates from the final day, which is probably my favorite. I think my favorite day just because the people we met, the laughing we had, and You know, we can talk more on this, but Jared and I had done, you know, we did the 5K and the 10K, and me and you just like trucked through both. But the third day was a beast, and that's why they call it a beast. Yeah. And early on in the race, me and you saw this crew that had been pacing with us the, the two days that we were running. They were with us like every 10 to 20 minutes, they would intersect with us. And so we found them early on in this race on the Beast, and I just thought, dude, these guys seem like they're fun. They were laughing, they had music, and we had heard them call themselves Team Olive. And so we're like, hey, can we just be a part of Team Olive? And we just got taken in as honorary members of Team Olive, which implies a lot of things. But, but short story, like, the guy The guy, the name's Mark, one of the guys that was part of the team on his first day took an olive off of an olive tree thinking it was gonna taste really good and he almost threw up, like everything.

I'm pretty sure he did throw up the first time he ate one.

Well, because of that they named the team Team Olive. So we became members of this team and it was so cool 'cause we just got to laugh the whole time. Um, I loved it.

Like, it was fun because there it was 4 of them, uh, so Mark, Steve, April, and Kim. And they all met each other— well, uh, April and Steve are a couple, but they, the 4 of them all met up at a hotel. I think they just all happen to be staying at the same place.

Now they're amigos. Yeah.

And so then they started running the days together, and then that 3rd day, uh, they let us become honorary members of Team Olive, and then we just ran the next 5 and a half hours together. Uh, and yeah, and I think one of the, one of the best parts of it was that we were just laughing and singing Disney songs and freaking just having the blast, like the time of our lives, while we're carrying stupid heavy chains way longer than we were supposed to. And like, dude, it was wild. But I think one of my favorite parts about, uh, about that day was that we, we got to see so much of something. Oh yeah, like the views, because they sent us way freaking up in the mountains. And so we had some incredible views, and it wasn't just that it was a beautiful view, because I've seen some beautiful views all by myself, but I found that every time I see it by myself, it just— like, views seem to, like, lose their meaning because I'm the only one to see it. Kind of like a, you know, if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, did it ever fall? And you're like, like, yes, it fell. But also, I understand, like, if you're by yourself, dude, like, it's um, it just takes on a different— the whole race has like a different purpose for you if you're doing it by yourself. Because there are plenty of people like Miles who's freaking out there like achieving incredible personal goals by himself. Yeah, but like, this is from the beginning, the purpose of us doing this trifecta was, was not so we could compete in any of the elite pro categories, but so that we could do something really fun together. And so we met up with, uh, these awesome people and we got to just be with them and share in some of the beautiful views of Sparta, get to share in these like awesome experiences together with people that we did not know 72 hours before.

Yeah, and we know them really well now. Like, when you're on a trail with somebody, there's a lot of time to talk, especially on the uphills, like just getting to know somebody. And got to learn a lot about other people. Like, oh, I actually caught Miles like I walked with him for a little bit. Yeah. And he finished around the same time we did because the guy just walked the entire time, like a solid pace the entire time. He finished around, if not a little bit after we finished. But, um, found out a little bit more about Miles. Uh, Miles used to weigh like 170 pounds and he was a fighter, and then during COVID he hit 380 pounds. And then he got back into Spartans, and Spartans have— Spartans have helped him drop down to 260. Insane.

Yeah, and what was really cool about that was, I think on our first debrief episode we mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, we talked about how, like, what would his life look like? But this was before we knew any of this. Yeah, we were like, dude, here's this dude out here who's like— he's a big dude. He's probably 6'4" and probably weighs like 270 or, or more, like big, big dude. And he's just out there just chugging away every day. He like, he does not stop. He'd like hit a rest station, maybe grab a banana, and he's right on through. Like, he, he would not stop. And we were just wondering, like, dude, a guy with that kind of determination, like, even though he's not at whatever the ideal weight would be for someone like him, like, there, he would probably be so much less disciplined and probably wouldn't be showing up in so many other areas of his life if it weren't for what he's doing with Spartan.

I asked him about it. I was like, dude, tell me how Spartan has changed you and changed your life. And he's like, it's crazy 'cause I have something to work towards. It's helped me get back into shape. He's going to try out for American Ninja Warrior once he gets down to that 220 range. And I opened up to him a little bit 'cause I love doing the OCR racing, but I'm a bigger dude. And so I opened up to him like, dude, thank you for being an inspiration to me. I'm a bigger guy and I'm trying to, you know, do these races. And he goes, hey, just keep— stay consistent. Don't, don't get discouraged if you don't cut weight fast enough. And he just had the greatest perspective because he's been the guy that's, you know, 300-some-odd pounds. Mark in our crew used to weigh 380, 400 pounds. I think I overshot Miles' weight, but he's down to 260. I know that he was over 300, but Mark, a guy in our group, hit 400 pounds at one point, 380 pounds, something like that. And now he's down to 200-something, dude, 220. Like, he was— looks great.

Yeah.

And said he was into powerlifting and everything, but there was one day when he just bent over to tie his shoe, he got super, super tired, and he was like, yeah, I'm done. And he decided to kick it into gear and now he's in great shape and his whole life's better.

Dude, well, and I think what's so cool about that is that when you like, if you were, you just showed up, let's say like you know nothing about any of these people, right? You just show up and you're just watching who's running in the race. You'd be like, okay, well, they're all your like super fit people who do this a whole bunch. And then you'd see all these people who are maybe aren't in the best shape of their lives. Some of them who are maybe look super overweight. You look at them and you're like, Why are these people here? Like, what are you doing here? You know, like, you're not super fit, super athletic, um, like some of these other people that are racing. Like, why are you even here? But that's— it's a terrible way to look at it because you're just getting a snapshot into everybody's life at like different— but what you don't see is the direction they're moving. And so what you don't see, if you just like snapped a picture of the racers, is you don't see what Mark looked like a year ago.— or 2 years ago. You don't see what Miles looked like 2 years ago and where they are now. Like, that doesn't matter. What matters is that where they are going and that they are on this road moving towards, uh, towards improvement and towards getting to where they'd like to be. Because everyone who's like in the best shape of their lives now wasn't at some point in time, right? And it— we— I think we fall into the trap of admiring people who are in the best shape of their lives and overlooking everybody who's on their way to getting to the best shape of their lives. Because, like, you've got to do the workouts, you got to do— or in this case, you got to do the races. You got to keep going to them, and you got to keep showing up week after week, month after month. And, like, why— I feel like we often are just waiting for the end, the end result, when in reality, dude, like, Miles is just as much an inspiration right now as he will be 6 months from now, a year from now, when he is at his ideal weight, when he is, you know, competing on American Ninja Warrior. But right now it's so cool to see because he's not there yet. Yeah, but he wants to be, and he's like, he's made a lot of progress, but he's still going.

Yeah, I think it's, it's part of the, part of people's stories. Like, when, when people reach a goal, that everything leading up to it was super important too. That's where, you know, when you see these movies and you read the stories about people that went through hard stuff, like, that's the stuff that we like to hear. Um, but yeah, we met some really, really, really incredible people. Uh, made those 4 friends on our trail, hung out with Miles on the trail a little bit more. And really, it was just a brutal race. I mean, I was telling— I was telling you the morning of, I'm like, dude, prep for 20 miles. Just mentally think 20 so that whatever is the— whatever the race is, it's less. And it ended up being 18, about that.

Yeah, yeah, because the first day was a 5K. We knew it was going to be more than 5K, turned out to be 5 miles, so that's a lot more than 5 kilometers. And then the second day was supposed to be a 10K, turned out to be 8 miles, a little over 8, so it was 13 kilometers. And so then we were like, okay, so at 21K, that's double what the 10K was going to be and some change, but there's no way it's going to be double an 8¼-mile race. And it was, and it was more than double. It was freaking— what is it, 29 kilometers?

It was, it was 29 kilometers. So the sights were incredible because the, the cool video— and maybe we can like splice this into like what I'm talking about right now— but the cool video I have of you is where you go up the mountain and there's this like plateau. It's one of the highest points in the mountains and they put the spear throw on the top. This is your first spear throw that you actually hit.

Yeah, because I missed the spear throw the first day. The second day I missed it and then I got so upset that I threw several times until I got it, but then still had to go do my purpose for it. But I actually nailed it.

You're overlooking the city and then all of these mountains, this huge mountain range, which kind of reminds me of Colorado Springs, the mountains out here.

Yeah.

And you nailed your spear throw. It was— the word that we keep using for this trip is just epic. But it was so cool to see. I got that spear throw as well. But on the second spear throw, we found out that alternative way to do it where you just rest the spear on the metal rod and just push the rod, push the spear.

Underhand, yeah, like lob the spear.

It's like the old school two-handed basketball throw, like underhand throw for the free throw. Um, but it works really well. So yeah, the race was so cool. At that spear throw, they, they did make the race a lot harder. Uh, I was starting to have flashbacks to when I went to Joe's house and they just started doing random stuff just because they wanted to see us suffer. But when we finished the spear throw, the second spear throw at the very end, I thought that we were on our home stretch.

Yeah.

And right when you go down this little hill, they had these massive, massive chains, and they just made you walk. I would probably say it was almost a quarter mile.

I would say— no, I would say it was more than that. It was more than a quarter mile, dude. It was, it was a trek.

And they hurt your shoulders.

Oh, because at that point, I think we were, uh, we were— let's see, it was 18 miles. We were at least 14 miles into the race. Like, we were, we were well into it. We're already super beat up. And so putting those suckers on your shoulders, dude, we were like crying our way to the end. And it was actually on the last, last kind of stretch, uh, I was— let's see, uh, April and Steve were kind of up in the front and I could hear them singing, uh, uh, I'll Make a Man Out of You from Mulan. And I'm like pretty far behind them, but I could hear them, so I just started singing along as we're like— yeah, we're just singing. We made it to the end.

It took them—

they said it took them the entire song to make the full loop. Like, it, it was a long freaking walk. But, uh, but yeah, it— I mean, just getting to do this with so many other really cool people just made it that much more fun. Like, not just like bearable, like fun. Yeah, because I mean, we were on the trail for like 6 and a half hours.

Yep, I think our final time was— was it 6 hours 18 minutes? Yeah, but it felt so cool. Every single time that you'd run through—

every—

at the end of every race, we would run through the Spartan ruins and then back. It was this big hill, they call it the, uh, Uh, the Acropolis.

Yeah, every—

we, we think that every ruin here is called the Acropolis, wherever you're at. But we would run through this Acropolis where their ruins were at, and then we'd go into the city, uh, and it was like this huge adrenaline rush every time you ran through the streets and everyone's screaming and, you know, ringing their bells and there's music going. And you get to cross the, you know, you run to the finish line, there's people dressed up as legit Spartans with gold shields, and it was such a cool feeling. But more than anything, to finish the race, that felt so fun because it's like, we did it, right? This 3-day brutal experience was coming to a close, and it felt cool to actually see a goal come to fruition because we got to see everything. I mean, The one thing I was gonna add earlier is the Saturday race was through the city and through the towns, and yeah, we ran— we talked about it— we ran around a church and everything. But on Sunday they closed the church down, and so they just shot—

they closed all those roads down. Yeah, the church is having services.

Yeah, they're gonna have Spartans running by the service, you know, during the middle of church. But yeah, they closed those areas down, and we just got shot up in the mountains. And they just gave us these brutal obstacles in the mountains. I remember doing research the night before and looking at the obstacles, and then there's— out of nowhere, we see these huge chunks of marble that we have to carry along a ridgeline. And like, this wasn't on the map. This— yeah, yeah, this wasn't part of the plan. And they go, oh well, they wanted to add it last minute, so they just threw it in there. I'm like, that is a very Joe DeSena thing to do.

Yo, hey, let's just, uh, while we're at it, how about we build a wall and we're gonna have you guys carry these slabs of marble around to—

yeah, that's what Joe's— Joe's done that for his death race. He's made the racers carry like 500-pound rocks and he made them build a stair step up his mountain. That was the death race. So he just, you know, manual labor. So, but I think overall, man, I'm so happy that we did this. I think this will forever be a trip. This will be a trip that I remember forever. Yeah, right, because it meant something. We got to come do this race together. It was something I've always wanted to do my whole life, is to see like where the Spartans lived. Yeah, and the cool thing about it is just this little town in the middle of Greece, and really, really cool town. It's not like a lot of tourism— tourist happens— that tourism happens there. You just go there for the Spartan Race and That's kind of it.

Well, dude, and we didn't even talk about the freaking fire that happened on the mountain. So I don't know how many miles we were in, but it was— we were tired. It was getting towards the end and we were running through. We were like finally coming out of the hills for the most part. And we had seen smoke kind of like coming off the mountains throughout the race. And then we start seeing flames and we're like, that's a fire. There's a fire out there, right? Like that hill is on fire. And then as we like, we kind of like turned a corner and then the road that we were, or the trail road that we were running down, went straight towards the fire. And we're like, wait, do we keep, do we keep running towards that? Because there's a fire at the end of this. Uh, so we start like hustling down the road and we're like, well, maybe we just got to run fast enough and maybe this, like, the trail will actually curve away from the fire. Um, but we, we started getting worried like Dude, if we don't hurry up, they're gonna shut us— they're not gonna let us finish this race.

That was your insight into a little bit of Spartan culture, of we're more worried about not hitting— not getting the medal than we are our lives, it seems. We were all talking about that after. They're like, there's no way we're not getting the trifecta medal. Run into the fire!

You know, like, well, and so the trail went to like— it went basically right to the base of this little hill where the fire was. Um, like you could see the top of the hill from, from where we were. Like, it wasn't very far, um, and there were several different like pickup trucks and like these super tall but like skinny off-road fire trucks.

The Mercedes-Benz ones?

Yeah, yeah, those ones are super cool, but like build off-road and wheels that were like driving through these super narrow roads and then getting off-road and climbing up the hill to get to this fire. But we were running through smoke, we're like covering our mouths and, um, just trying to get, trying to get out of the hills.

I looked up at the hill and I— we saw the fire was going and then it caught another olive tree and the olive tree just, you know, they're super dry.

Oh yeah, the whole place is super dry.

Apparently this race in past years, it's very— it's a very wet race where you're, you know, low crawling through water and you're running through streams, but there is none of that this year. They said do not Remember that? Do not eat fruit on the trail. And we're like, why can't I eat fruit on the trail? And what they really meant was don't pick the farmer's fruit on the trail because they've had a really rough year with the drought. But man, we walked out of there with— you've got a collect— like a total of 5 medals if you count your wedges. Yeah. So you have a 5K, a 10K, 21K, a trifecta medal, and then you have your wedges that you put together. Right. And then I got all of that, and then I also got like a 2x trifecta, which is like a little bit bigger of a medal, uh, for my second trifecta. And I'll get my third one in like 2 and a half weeks. Yeah, in Arizona. Do this again, more, more trifectas for me. So it's just cool to have these medals too because they mean something.

Like, yeah. And something we talked about, like, that makes this race different than other races is other races usually do the 21K first Yeah, and then you do the 10 and the 5 the next day.

Yeah, you do the 21K first and you can do a 10 and a 10, or I think you can do a 10 or 5 that same day. The 5K is typically on a Sunday though, so you do a 21K. Some people do 21K and then they tack on a 10K and then their Sunday is just, you know, show up and do a 5K. The way I attack my trifectas is 21K on Saturday and then a 10K in the morning of Sunday and then a 5K in the afternoon. Gotcha. So it works and it's fun. I think my body— this is just a way harder race than anything I've done, like, other than the ultra I did in Colorado was very hard.

Yeah, that's a totally different monster.

Yeah, there's a different monster, but this was very, very, very hard.

Yeah, because you, you have the, you have the 5K the first day and you're like, okay, that was like that was manageable for sure, but maybe a little harder than I thought it was gonna be because it was like twice as long as we thought it was gonna be. And then the next day you're like, okay, now we got the 10K. And now by the time you're starting the 21K, you're already like, you're already pretty, pretty worn out from the other races.

They don't let you do it fresh. No, no.

But I'm really glad we did it. I mean, this is my first race, my first trifecta, and who knows when the next time I'll do one is. But like, I I really, really enjoyed it because it was such a unique, uh, a unique experience. First, it just like— I've never done— I've done obstacle courses like in boot camp and stuff, but like this was really cool, really cool to do this. And then to do this in Greece, like in Sparta, um, and to be surrounded by so many other people from other countries. One of, one of the guys we talked to said that in the States you mostly have people from the States, but international, you have people from everywhere, like all over the place. Like we ran into, ran into people from, from Chile running the race, running, people in Hungary and Croatia and Italy and France and Slovenia, like people from all over Europe. But then there's a team from the Philippines and I don't think we saw anyone from Africa, but several people from, from South America. We saw some, there were some Brazilians that I saw, Argentinians.

Argentina, we saw today was from Argentina. She got like 3rd place.

Yeah, in her age division.

Gosh.

Which is wild. But it's just so cool to talk to all these people and everyone knows different races around the world, which ones are notorious for being super hard, for having bad weather, for all these things. And then on top of that, like, we got to meet some incredible people and we got to race with them. Like, run with them, have a really good time. I mean, several, several hours just hanging out. Yeah. I said just hanging out. I mean, we're freaking busting our butts, but like having a really good time talking to them. It turns out April like owns a gym and is a WWE wrestler. Yeah, the UK. Uh, and then she and Steve are from Wales, and Steve used to do WWE wrestling and like got April into it, and he manages a gym. And like, yeah, it's like really interesting people. And Kim, she freaking flies on to the middle of nowhere in, what, Alberta? Yeah, uh, working in— working— she's a mechanic on the vehicles they use out in oil fields.

Crazy.

And she works like 7 days off, 7 days on, 7 days off, 7 days on.

Like, what?

Yeah, dude, how wild is that? And here we are, we all just met up in Greece like to run this race, and now we're best friends. Yeah, did we just become best friends?

Little group chat. Yeah, yeah. All right, it's got some cool GoPro footage, and everyone's just still connected. But that's what's cool. Like, I felt the same thing with like the Farm Experience crew that I was with. You just— when you suffer with people, you become good friends with them. Yeah, when you do hard stuff with them, the bond that you make with them is really, really, really strong. So I mean, I'm stoked. I, uh, we got to Athens 2 days ago and— no, actually yesterday we technically got here. Yeah, at 2 in the morning, right?

Right. It was super early.

But, uh, we got to go look at the Acropolis today. And the biggest thing I feel like me and you keep talking about is like, how did these people build this thing? And maybe they just hired, uh, maybe they just had like a Spartan race like Joe does, and they're like, hey, go build this thing and we'll give you a medal.

Um, no, maybe that's it. No, like, oh, you put this up there, we'll kill you.

The stones are massive. So that's the biggest thing. Every time I look at these structures, they've been around for thousands of years, and I'm thinking, how did you make that with very little technology? Like, they didn't have the stuff that we have now.

They didn't have computers, they didn't have spaceships, but they knew things that we don't know, I think, and that's incredible. That's absolutely incredible.

Yeah.

And I think it's been fun because like when we were sitting up there, dude, um, Marisha and I, we refer to as, uh, watching the elephants, where you like show— you just go somewhere, you just sit and you just watch, you just look around, you know, and you try to like take everything in just like detail by detail. Um, because it comes from that one time where, uh, we were in San Diego and went to the zoo. We had, uh, annual zoo passes, so like we went to the zoo several times. So there's one time we went to the safari park And we, we like went from the entrance and kind of like went straight to the elephants because we wanted to go see the elephants. And we sat down and we watched the elephants for like 2 hours, just sitting there just watching elephants. And elephants are not fast creatures, you know, like they are, they're slow moving. There's the whole herd of them and they're just like living their life as elephants, you know, in the zoo in this huge, huge, um, habitation. And we just sat there and we just We talked, sat in silence, talked a little bit, just watched the elephants and just like took it all in. And it was one of the most memorable visits, if not the most memorable visit to the zoo that we have. And we've talked about it many times, just how awesome it was to just like really to like breathe in the experience, to breathe in the moment. And so then like yesterday, last night, when we sat, uh, we sat on that hill right next to the Acropolis And because we got to the Acropolis late, and so we couldn't even go up it, so we sat on this hill next to it and we just took in the views and like stared up at the, at the Acropolis and stared out at the city of Athens. We sat there for like 2 hours. Yeah, like you called your mom, uh, we sat, took pictures, and then just like sat and watched the sunset and then stayed there well after the sun had set. And like all the lights are coming on, we're just like talking about all sorts things, but just like breathing in the city of Athens, you know.

It was really cool. It was better. I, I usually will like to do like a tour guide, but in this scenario it was just cool to just look at everything and just see the entire city lit up. I think where a tour guide comes into play, where it's like, why is it like that? Why is that this way? But I think just taking it with a tour guide too. I was telling you earlier, when I've done trips in the past, the tour guide will take, take you through every single thing and it's really quick, whereas it's just good to just sit and look at it, right? So I enjoyed that, man. It was— it's been an incredible trip. On our radar, we've got going down to Poseidon's Temple. It's one of the last things for the week, and we'll catch sunset there. It'll be cool. Epic.

The whole drive down there is along the coast.

So yeah, just going to stare at the ocean, get a beautiful drive, a good restaurant down there. From what I hear, we've had Greek salad every day. Still, still some of the best food I've ever had. And this has just been an incredible trip, man.

This—

thank you for points and miles. You know your stuff really well. Thank you for organizing the hotels and everything, man. This has been really cool.

We didn't talk. Okay, real quick, because I know we got to get going. But this morning, this morning we opted to hit the sauna. We found out the hotel also has a cold plunge. So we go down like we had, we had a nice slow morning. You got up earlier than I did doing a bunch of journaling. We went and got breakfast. But yeah, dude, this morning we forgot to talk about it. So this morning you got up earlier than I did and you went, you went up to the breakfast lounge and we're getting— you were, you were journaling a bunch about the trip and the things that you've learned from it and how great it's been. But I got up, I went to the lounge and got, yeah, just got some food and relaxed. And then we met up downstairs for the sauna, 'cause the hotel's got a sauna and a cold plunge. The sauna was great, dude, friggin' just sweating out all the nasty, all the cuts and scrapes, dude, are still hurting. But then, dude, hopped in the cold plunge. I was not ready for how painful that was gonna be, because like, we hopped in there, like I've been taking cold showers for years, but I know it's not quite as intense as doing an actual cold plunge. But, uh, yeah, hopped in, dude, and instantly all the sore muscles just like tensed up like you're freaking squeezing a dish rag. And then also all of the skin, all of the scrapes, because I fell a couple of times during the races, so like I'm all scraped up. And all of the skin, the way it just like tightened all up, dude, it was extremely painful. Um, but we did our, you know, our 3 minutes, we hopped out, showered, and, uh, we went walking around Athens today and Feeling like pain-free, dude. Like feeling so great right now.

I think the massage that we did yesterday plus the cold plunge and the sauna today made a huge difference. I almost passed out in the cold plunge, but I knew that. I was like, hey dude, just catch me if I start to float.

Because your heart rate dropped.

No.

It started at what?

It was like 110. And then within, if my watch is accurate, I was down to 46 beats per minute. So I went like neck up into the water. But the cold plunge is so much fun because more than anything it just pushes you to see what you can do. So we kind of had like 2 recovery days in Athens if you think about it. We saw the Acropolis and then In the previous cut of this, we talked about going up to go see Poseidon's Temple, and then it like the audio got cut off, but we did go, but it was closed. So it's okay.

So we watched the sunset like the whole drive because we're driving on the coast, so it's really beautiful as we're watching it. But apparently the temple closes at sunset, and so we got there like just after sunset and it was, it was closed.

So But it's fine. I think usually the plan— like I was telling you, the plan B is usually better than the plan A. So we found this seafood restaurant off the road and just got some great seafood. Fried feta was a little strong for me.

A little much. It was a little much.

But everything else was fantastic. Just good food here, man. You wonder, like, a lot of people are somewhat healthy because they eat a lot of meats and vegetables. That's the overall theme I see.

Yeah, yeah, it's not like, it's not like super bread heavy or—

yeah, a lot of olive oil. So like in the sauna today, me and you were sweating out olive oil, I'm sure. But yeah, I think overall just an amazing trip getting to see— the one thing I think we talk about is getting to see the Acropolis, like the amazement of how amazing it is that these people built what is up on that hill with the technology they had. And I don't know what technology they had 100%, but it's amazing what they were able to do. My favorite was the horse head on top of the Acropolis, on top of the Parthenon. They were just chilling up there, got smashed.

Yeah, so there's a— in kind of the corner of the, of the roof, there's a statue of a horse head coming out. Like, the roof is like collapsed on the horse and like squished its head out.

There's a centaur strangling a dude. Yeah, we mentioned like how crazy would that be if on our government buildings there were, there were pictures of mythical creatures strangling bad guys.

Like, yeah, we don't put like pictures or like stone statues of like our military members like shooting other people. Yeah, or like that.

You're like freaking bald eagle with flaming wings just swooping in to get the bad guys.

Um, but no, it's been, it's been a fantastic trip. And, uh, and yeah, we, we head home tomorrow. Um, but a huge part of what made, what made this trip so memorable, we were just looking at all of the pictures, uh, that Spartan put out. All of our official photos from the trip finally, uh, finally dropped. And so we're looking at them and we just have some awesome pictures with, with our good friends. So we want to give a special shout out to, uh, to Team Olive, uh, So Steve and April, you guys are fantastic, and we are so happy that we now have some new friends from Wales, which we are being told is in England. Apparently they really like knowing that Wales is a part of England. And then Mark, dude, you are crushing it, man. Just like as you were chugging along, just dropping weight and getting strong, man. It's freaking awesome. And Kim, who's just like a total BA dude. She's, yeah, just awesome and really strong out there, dude, as a frickin' mechanic out in the oil fields of the middle of nowhere Canada, which I mean, all of Canada to me seems like the middle of nowhere, but.

My favorite memory from Team Olive, there's two. We already talked about the fire, I think, before it got cut off. Yep, yep. But was, was when April would be like, I think we should trot. And so she would just yell, trot! And so it caught on, and every time there was a downhill, we would just yell, trot! And I have just— I just started saying, I love to trot. And she just started laughing because trots in Wales, where she's from, is like, you've got the craps. So I ended up saying, I've got the trots, the whole time. And it was just hilarious. Like, it's so fun to laugh, and I think that's something to kind of take an audit of, is when was the last time you laughed, dude, hard, you know? And I think it was for us like 2 days ago.

Yeah, like so, so hard. And, and looking at all the pictures, dude, I was actually surprised, and in like the best way possible, that in so many of the pictures they took of me, dude, I am like beaming. Yeah, like we— I just got off the phone with my wife and she's telling me like You've never looked— you look like you've never been happier in your life. And I was like, well, I mean, I've definitely been happier than I've been on this trip, but at the same time, like, I was having just the time of my life out there with all these people that I just met, you know, freaking 5 hours before. And we were running this ridiculous race carrying stones that are way too heavy, chains that are way too heavy, and we're just— we're up there like, you know, what a beautiful place to be carrying 75-pound chains around, you know, what a beautiful place to be carrying this stupid marble brick around. And like, all these pictures, dude, just looking like I'm having the time of my life because I really was.

Yeah.

Um, and I'm so happy that we now have those photos to be able to look back on.

Yeah, and those will spark memories. I think with a photo it just sparks so many memories. That's why the, the, the photos were a no-brainer. Like, yeah, I'll pay $60, what, $70 for 100 photos of you and I running around the mountains pretending to be Spartans. Um, but that was, you know, I, I call my wife as well, and, and one of the things that I did is I posted all the pictures on Instagram And I wanted to be a little cringe, so I was like, couldn't have done this without my Spartan queen. And then the movie that we were watching— we didn't mention this, but we came back the first night in Athens, we just turned on 300 because I, I bought it a couple years ago on Amazon. We're just nerding out to 300, and there's a line where the queen is like, come back on your— come back with your shield or on it. So on the Instagram post, it was like, I will come back with my shield, my queen. So super cringe. But another shout out to our wives too for just watching our kids while we run around Greece and do some of the coolest things ever. I might try to get Kaya to come do this one with me one day, or like I told you earlier, the Athens Marathon, which by the way, if you didn't know, the guy who did the original marathon from Athens, or ran to Athens to deliver a message, and he died. That is why it is a famous race, because the guy who did it first died. So now we all do it for fun. But I think one of the things— so you said you were super, super happy, and it's because I believe that we were living out a vision for our year. Yeah. And with that, we extend an invite to think about what you want to have in the upcoming year. You do not need to wait until January 1st to start thinking of new goals. In fact, my theme for next year is to be all in. Like, just a 3-word phrase: be all in. And I'm starting that now in everything that I'm doing, and it's so exciting because I've got so many exciting things I'm working on right now, and I'm just trying to be all in in all of those different categories. Um, so think about what your theme for the year is. You don't need to know exacts. But if I look at my last year, like all the trips that I wrote down, like I've done, and those have brought some of the most joy into my life. Yeah. Wherever we have some family trips coming up to do more Spartan races in Arizona together to see family. So just get, get thinking what you want to do. I typically will print out my binder. This will be my third year doing a binder, but also consider getting a Google Doc that you can go back and add stuff to. Because a lot of times your vision can change throughout the year and you want to be able to add to your goals as well.

Yeah, and, and what— in our vision binders, uh, you can go back and listen to our episode for, for last year as we, as we put together our vision binders, um, is that it's not just— it's not just a matter of setting New Year's resolutions of like, these are the habits I want to build in for next year. Like, next year I'm going to hit the gym every single day, or 5 days a week, or whatever. Or next year I'm going to read every day, or next year I'm going to do you know, X, Y, and Z every day. I feel like we fall into the trap of thinking that, uh, our— first off, that has to be a New Year's resolution, and then that, that resolution has to be some sort of habit or behavior change that we're going to make. You know, I'm not going to eat sugar, I'm not going to drink soda, I'm not going to do this or that and the other for the whole year. But there are so many other things that you can do with a year, with a 12-month period, to build just an intentional plan for your life. That can be That can be something as simple as, I want to do a Spartan Race next year.

Yeah.

Okay, so maybe that means first you buy a ticket, or you pick a weekend, you buy a ticket.

Or you email me, 'cause if you've never done a Spartan Race, like there's always a connection. I don't know if he's still doing it, but there's always a way to get a free ticket, as you know.

Right. But yeah, so you talk to Austin, or just go and pick a weekend and get your ticket, and then work backwards from there, and maybe throw a date out. Okay, I wouldn't like to do it in the middle of the summer, it's gonna be blazing hot, so I'm gonna pick one in October of next year. And then, you know, come March, or, you know, January 1st, whenever you want, you gotta think, okay, well, am I in the shape that I need to be in to do this race? You know, maybe pick a race that's challenging. So maybe the 5K is challenging enough, but maybe a 10K is the right suit for you, or maybe the 21K, or the ultra, or whatever. But like, just pick it, set it, and then kinda work backwards of what do you need to do to get there. And that can be it. That doesn't require daily action. You don't have to be working towards a Spartan race. Daily if that's the thing you want to do, or if you want to run a half marathon, if you want to do whatever. But you can like pick events and just slap them on the calendar and then figure out what things need to happen before then.

And, and the other thing too is not to push out a goal because you think that you need to have a ton of preparation either. Like, it's like your idea with that one buddy, it was like, oh, I want to do a Murph this year. Then you look at him and you're like, dude, let's do it tomorrow.

Yeah, we could do it right now. Like, so you don't need to wait because there's no time requirement. You, even if it took you 3 days to do do it. Yeah, do it right now.

The whole idea of like one day, and that's why like the theme for this trip is like we didn't wait for like the, oh, one day I want to go to Greece. Everybody says that, few people do it, and it's not that hard to do. So if you look at like my vision binder, I told— I talked to you about this at dinner either yesterday or today, but like my vision binder, I'm like 100% on the trips because it doesn't— like with my work goals, I fell short of my work goals this year and some of my fitness goals because it takes like a ton of effort to actually do that. Like, all you need for a trip is the finances to do and the time to free up, which is also hard, but like, it's not as hard as a daily, you know, thing that you've got to do to make a big goal happen. Yeah. So travel is one of those ways where I feel like you can really expand your mind and perspective and just feel alive. I felt so alive this morning just journaling, like, oh, out looking at the Acropolis. Biggest thing that I journaled about this morning was like, this will tie it back to like April, but like my dad passed when he was 53, and so if I live to be as old as my dad, which I hope to live to be way long, way older than him, um, 29 minus 53 is like 24 years. I've got 24 years left to live if I live as long as my dad. Mm-hmm. Dude, like, life's way too short to be waiting for things. Yeah. So bring it back to April. I— we were running and I talked to her about my Spartan Race and the one I did, the ultra I did in honor of my dad. And with her really thick Wales accent, she's like, oh, you're part of the dead dad club. I'm like, what the heck? What do you mean, the dead dad club? I'm like, the dead dead what? She goes, the Dead Dad Club. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you're saying like dead dad? Like what?

What?

And she goes, my dad's dead. And like, we're like, my dad passed and his dad passed and Mark's dad had passed away. And so I got to talk to her about our podcast and what it meant and why we were doing it, um, cuz we both, you know, lost our dads. Like, and you know, it's, it's It's crazy. She was like, I think we're drawn to people that have lost their fathers in some way, you know, and that our whole group, 5 out of 6 of us, and have had no longer have a father figure in our life, right? Which is huge, you know, like it's kind of cool that, that we barely spent any time talking about that, but it's like, wow, that team Ali had something, you know.

How do you, how do you, out of 4, out of 4 random people find each other, you know?

Yeah.

Like, oh, all of our dads have died.

Yeah.

Um, and my dad's out of the picture.

Out of the picture. Yeah.

Did, didn't they say like, oh, did you ask like, well, what about Kim's dad? Yeah. Yeah.

It was so funny cuz I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, yeah, cuz Jared's dad is not in a great spot. He's out of the picture now. And I'm like, is Kim's dad okay? And she goes, oh yeah, he's good. Don't worry about it. Like, like, like, like that.

I'm like, shout out to Kim's dad.

Shout out to Kim's dad. Keep rocking. But it was just funny, like, I've never had anybody just after I talk about— they were obviously showed condolences. Yeah, yeah, my dad died 8 years ago. She was sorry. And then after I finished telling my story, she's like, oh, you're part of the dead dad club then. I'm like, what? So yeah, that might— that's a possible episode title. Um, but anyways, I, I'm really grateful. Just don't wait to live your life because You know, my dad, you know, my dad passed so long ago, like 8 years ago, but like you never know how long you have. So don't make it one day, like really get pen to paper and write down what you want to do this year, and there's a way higher chance of it actually happening.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And just expand, expand your mind on what, what things you could consider doing for the next year. It does not just have to be a daily habit. It can be an event, it can be a a trip. I want to take my kids to Disney World. I want to join our school PTA for the first time. I want to get involved here. I want to do this thing. Or I'd really like if my wife and I did X, Y, and Z. You know, like, if you, if you and your wife want to have a weekly date night, well then, like, maybe weekly date night isn't exactly the goal you want to set. Maybe you need to go on a date night. Yeah, in the month of January. And set that as your goal. And maybe February you go on a date night, then maybe in March you're going to, you know, like 12 dates is way better than zero dates. Yeah, yeah. What I—

what we run into, I think we'll probably talk about this more when we do like a goal setting podcast again, but like me and you started the year wanting to do 2 podcasts a month and we kept it really well, but like I think we're gonna get— we won't hit 24 episodes this month— this year— for this year, but we'll have done more than 12. Yeah, cool. Yeah, big win.

And Jordan Peterson always says, he says, uh, that's not nothing, you know? Yeah, because it's better than zero, that's for sure.

It's way better than zero. And I'm— the way I look at it is like, as long as you're enjoying the process still, okay, cool, right? We're good.

And if January rolls around, like, first off, you don't even have to wait till January. Like, if you have a goal, like, hey, I really want to get— I want to get in shape and I want to start going to the gym every day, well, you could start that Yeah, start right now. You start right now, and you could have 2 whole months of, you know, off and on going to the gym as you try and figure out how you're going to make this work. Maybe you need to get some new workout clothes, or maybe you need to find a better gym, or maybe you need to start going to the gym before work instead of after work, or like maybe there are some adjustments to the system that you need to make, uh, along the way. But even if January rolls around and you like, you're on it for 2 weeks and then you're off it for 2 weeks, Like, you were on it for 2 weeks, that's awesome. Get back on it now. And even if you only stay on for 2 more weeks the second month and then you fall back off in the next 2 weeks, dude, you're already 4 weeks on the year. You're already at a 50%, like, and you're going to be in better shape over the course of 12 months if you go to the gym for 2 weeks every month than if you go no weeks every month, for sure. Now obviously you'd be in better shape if you went 4 weeks of every month, in the same way that we would be better if we hit every single goal that we put in place. Obviously we would all be better, but perfection isn't the goal. Like, showing up is the goal. And so even if you fell off the train, uh, or even if you fall off the train tomorrow, like, it doesn't matter. In the end, it doesn't matter. Like, just get back on it. Just try it again. Maybe make an adjustment. Maybe make a change. Maybe figure out if there's a different way that you can do this just to make things easier on yourself. But like, it's okay. It's totally okay. And really, the goal— like, the reason we do vision binders, the reason we even talk about this is that we just want to live a life that's a little bit more intentional. You know, a life where maybe life isn't happening to us, but we're building a life that we want. We're not running away from things that are scarier, from problems or challenges, but we are building a life that we can run to. You know, a life that we're excited about. We've been talking about this thing for like 6 months. It was episode 18 where we talked about doing freaking 50,000 burpees. And we haven't done 50,000 burpees, but We've done 38,120 or 150, and that's not nothing. Yeah, that's for sure.

That's not nothing.

I promise you that is not nothing, man. We are done. We are done with the burpees.

Well, thank you for joining us for our Sparta series. The amount of times that I've just randomly yelled Sparta this trip is awesome. Well, thank you for listening to our Sparkta series, Team Olive. Share this with friends if you think they'd, uh, well, share this with your friends because they're going to benefit from it, just talking about real life. Um, and we appreciate, uh, we appreciate our listeners that have been with us from the beginning and the listeners that have just joined. So we look forward to making an impact and inspiring you to hit your goals. And please message Jared and I Jared and I, if you needed a little support to hit your goals. Yeah. That's all I got. Yeah.

And if, you know, all jokes aside, if you actually know someone who's a part of the quote unquote dead dad club. Oh yeah. Well, that's, you know, a little bit quip. Like, we're serious. Like, the big reason that Austin and I even bonded in the first place was one, is because I was in the Air Force and his dad was in the Air Force. Yeah. But second, because shortly thereafter he lost his dad and my parents don't talk anymore. And so I haven't talked to my dad in a long time. And we want to, not that we think we can replace dads in people's lives, but rather we understand that there is a need for inspiration, for motivation, for helping you achieve your goals. And we want to rally people together. And so if you know someone who doesn't have a dad in their lives anymore, be it for death or for other reasons, please share this episode with them, 'cause this, I mean, this is what we're here for. This is what we wanna do, is we wanna be able to help reach out and inspire, you know, especially young men, but to anybody really who's going through a hard time and who wants to make a difference in their life and start living a life a little bit more intentionally. So thanks everybody, and we'll catch you guys on the next episode.

I'll get the cookies out. There. Are you gonna have any? Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Okay, there we go. Sorry, we just got to get the cookies set up, just like Chile. Okay, we're good.