What do you do with the time you have left? | Spartan Trifecta World Championships Day 1 | Ep. 25

I guess the other theme too is like the reason why I'm happy we're doing this is because my dad passed away at 53. So if I live as long as my dad did, I have got 25 years left. And that's like a recurring theme that I've been thinking about is, you know, I might not even have 25 years. Yeah. And so it's so important to do the thing, do the thing that you want to do and give it a shot.

Welcome to the Rising Tribe. I'm Jared and I'm Austin, and our goal is to help young men 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. This is our first in-person episode we've ever had, and we just came off the Spartan course for the 5K. Yeah.

Yeah, epic, dude. So this is the sprint. So, so Austin and I are doing the Spartan Trifecta World Championship race in Sparta, Greece right now, uh, and so today is the sprint, which is a 5K. And a 5K is— it's a lot more than 5K, but they call it a 5K. Then tomorrow we have the super— is tomorrow the super? And that's a 10K. And then Sunday will be the Beast, which is the 21K. Um, and so it's supposed to be 5, 10, and 21, but today's 5K on the board, like the map showed it as 6.6, but then when we tracked it with our watches, both of us clocked it exactly 5 miles, which I don't know how many kilometers that is, but that's a lot more than 5 kilometers. Uh, and then tomorrow's 10K is plotted to be 11.6, so who knows how much that actually is. And then the 21K is plotted to be at 22.6.

My guess is we'll be running 10 miles tomorrow.

I sure hope not.

And then on the, the 20K, I think we're gonna be doing 20. Just gonna be sick. Dead.

Just absolutely dead.

But I, I think this is so cool because I think me and you talked a little bit, like, we're in Greece up in the mountains, and you guys can't see the view right now, but outside of our Airbnb there's this amazing view of this valley that we drove out of in Sparta, because we only drove 10 minutes to the mountain and then we drove 20 minutes up. Yeah, but it feels like— I mean, I think it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. Yeah, um, but we're in this Airbnb like 30 minutes up here in Sparta. What I think is cool on this mountain, what I think is cool is me and you had this idea and we created it. We're here doing it.

Yeah, because you, uh, it was back in— it was back at the beginning of the year, you just sent me a video of the World Championships. You're like, dude, wouldn't this be so dope? And I was like, yeah, that would be dope, but like, can we even make that happen? Like, I don't even know if we could actually do that.

Yeah, and you know, I think this— we gotta give a big shout out to Jared. His last day doing burpees was yesterday because he did burpees from the day I Got him kind of roped into it until yesterday.

Yeah, yeah. So insane up until— because the first race today is November 1st, um, and so I committed to— we committed to doing the burpees through October 31st up until the race. Um, and you were doing burpees from March 19th is when we first started to—

I made it to June 15th. Yeah. And then, uh, life. And yeah, it was excuses. But I think what's so cool is I let excuses stop me and you just did it. I think that's amazing. And I'm so freaking proud of you for doing that. Um, I got you. I mean, I signed you up for it. Um, but it's cool because I think one of your goals for the year was like, I want to be consistent. And that's just a huge vote for you that says, hey, I can be consistent in something. Right. I think that there's anything else you want to be consistent in is probably going to be easier than what you just did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of things are easier than 38,000 burpees.

Sick, man.

But yeah, dude. So yeah, we did the math. Um, from March 19th until October 31st, it was, so in the month of March, it was 130 burpees a day. Then in April was 140 a day. Then in May, 150, and you add 10 more every day, every month. Uh, so October was 200 burpees a day. Um, so all of that adds up to 38,090 burpees. And then today I failed the javelin throw, so we had 30 punishment burpees, so 38,120. But what's, um, I think what's, what's cool about it is James Clear talks about it in Atomic Habits. He says, uh, that you don't have to— like, to change your identity, you don't have to have a, a unanimous vote. And every action that you do, um, is a vote for or against the person you're trying to become. And he says you don't have to have a unanimous vote, you're just working towards a majority. And so there are plenty of areas in my life where I am still very inconsistent, but I am consistent, or I was consistent with the burpees. And so now that is something I can kind of depend on or rely on or use just as like a strong evidence for, um, like I, I am consistent, I could do this thing.

Well, transfer— like, it'll bleed into other areas of your life for sure. And it's cool because now you're like, you earned your ticket. And what is— what was the cost of the ticket?

Like, the cost was €650, so that would be just over $700.

Yeah, that's insane. Like, it's— that's really cool. Um, I think it's cool how this all worked out because I got my free ticket from doing the burpees for a week, and then I'm like, dude, we should do this. You live 2 hours— you have a 2-hour flight in.

Yeah, yeah, it was super quick.

I took off from Atlanta on Wednesday. I landed in New York later that afternoon. I took out— I took off from New York Wednesday night and I landed in Athens Thursday morning. Well, then we met up and then drove here, and the drive out here was beautiful. We crossed— we drove by the— is it Adriatic Sea? Yeah. Yeah, we drove past the Adriatic Sea. I hope I said that right. And, uh, just to think, oh, there's bathrooms on the interstate here. That's cool. We need that in America. Uh, but it's so cool to see how this other part of the world functions. And I think the craziest thing is, as me and you were driving up here, we're driving through this little mountain town.

Yeah, dude, Sparta is a small— Sparta is a small, small city.

There is nothing.

And it's quiet. There's nothing— there's not much going on aside from this race. Like, but sorry, we say that as in like there's not much going on. Like, there are just a bunch of people living their regular lives, just this normal life. And the Spartan race is like came and invaded and like is doing this crazy thing. And you know, everyone's selling all their stuff. But like, we leave and it goes back to being just a quiet, beautiful town. And everyone's just like— kids are running around like riding their bikes, playing, you know, going to the playground and like doing the regular thing. And just this totally different part of the world. I think it's crazy.

I think what you said too, I was looking at this little town we were driving through and I'm like, what do these guys do? Like, and I thought about it, I'm like, well, they have families and they probably have some goals and that's it. Like, yeah, I guess it was just an American way of thinking of like, what? Yeah, why are they not like going out to the city and building things, or like— but they— I'm sure these people in these mountain towns are probably happier than a lot of folks that are always go, go, go, right?

Because we were like, we're like, dude, what do all these people out here do for a living? Like, do they all own businesses? Do they run businesses? Everyone can't run a business. Like, so how is everyone out here making a living? And the answer is the same way people have been making a living all over the world for millennia. And it's— we just— it's so easy for us to come from, or like, to look at anything that isn't what we know, anything that isn't what we already do, and say like, how do you even operate like that? When in reality, they're probably looking at us like, what are you doing with yourself? Like, well, why don't you guys just like calm down and like live your life and spend time with your family and, and take care of people that are important to you and, and stop chasing You know, all of these, uh, like these elusive dreams, these moving goalposts, like, like, can't you learn to be content with—

how do you think they think of us, like, running to get these medals?

Dude, they probably think we're freaking bananas and they're like, and you paid what, $700 to come do this?

Like, free, but right, but you know, like, but we earned our tickets. But it's, it's cool because we've met the coolest people here. I, I had the farm experience earlier this last year. We got to have lunch with all the people I met from that. Yeah. And I had somebody from my collective group that was here today, and we spent an hour talking to her and her mom.

Yeah. And super, super cool people.

We're in Greece and we're just chilling with friends and eating delicious food. Good food. What have we had? I had, uh, moussaka. Moussaka. We had gyro.

Gyros.

Gyro.

And, uh, we've had some souvlaki, um, and tonight I had a steak.

Oh yeah, special word for that.

Yeah, I don't remember what that word was. And then a burger made of the same steak meat that your steak was, and it was all good.

So very good food this trip, uh, and I think it's cool that we're kind of taking it day by day. This morning we just kind of used to like get set, kind of settle in to kind of overcome the jet lag, and then went out and did our 5K. And it— there, the part, the coolest part for me was when we ran through the ruins at the very end, because in my, in my brain I was thinking like, whoa, the Spartans are like, literally, we're here, they trained here. And then the very end where it's just obstacle after obstacle, and it's just this big morale boost of everybody there. Yeah. So it was just super fun to me to see it all kind of come to fruition, and we get to do that 2 more times. Tomorrow we're gonna be pretty dang tired. I do predict that on Sunday we will be hobbling with a lot of like, you're finishing like a champion, but our bodies are— I'm surprised how sore I am.

Just, yeah, dude, my ankles are like, my ankles are pretty sore from all of the uneven ground, all the rocks that we're like, like dodging, um, and whatnot. And so I think, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm more beat up today than I thought I was going to be. And so that means tomorrow's probably going to be rougher than we thought it was going to be. And the 21K will be probably pretty, pretty rough.

Afterwards we get the really cool medal, dude.

And sorry, go ahead.

No, I just— I think it's cool because, uh, we've talked about this before, but the medals are one, one-third of a full medal. So you get a full circle, then one-third. And so we'll finish our, you know, puzzle piece of 3, but then we'll also get this special edition Spartan medal Greece, which I think is going to be so cool, dude.

Well, and, uh, and we've already bought our, uh, our t-shirts and our hats, or yeah, our hats, our t-shirts, and the, the towels that have our names, uh, printed on them, which is pretty sweet. Um, but like, dude, more than anything, like, I've been— I'm usually not pretty big on like buying like tons of souvenirs and stuff, but, um, this is like a— this is a really cool moment that we— what kind of this cool experience that we created out of nothing.

Right?

Um, if you hadn't said like, hey, why don't we try this? Like, why— this would be crazy, but what if instead of like, oh, that would be crazy, and then like that, leaving it at that, instead like, that would be crazy, and how cool would it be if we made it happen? How do we make this happen? Like, what do we do? You know? And then, and then trying to get the, the free tickets. We got the free tickets, and then, okay, and then we got to get a hotel, we got to get flights, and we got to get a rental car.

And you, you did a lot of this through your credit cards. If you guys all know, Jared does travel rewards for military members and you were able to swing a good deal on all this stuff.

Yeah.

Which is way cool. Yeah. We've got 2 more nights here. We sleep here tonight and then tomorrow night and then we're gonna spend 2 nights in—

3 nights in Athens.

3 nights in Athens. Mm-hmm. And then the next day we fly home.

Yeah. You'll go back home to Georgia. I'll go back home to Italy and then I'll repack that night and then the next day my whole family, we're going to California for a wedding.

Amazing. Yeah, I think it's, uh, it's, it's, it's been cool. I've been traveling a lot for work recently. I think me and you have both been on the road a lot. Yeah, yeah, Jared is always gone. Like, yeah, like, and I've been gone a lot too recently. Kaya's been like, you're always gone recently. I've been on the road a lot for, um, some blitzes I've done, and then just We're gonna go out to Arizona. We're going to— been doing this. It's been really a cool past like 3 months. Kaya and I are gonna go to Arizona. Well, my mom's coming out and then Kaya and I will go to Arizona and then I'm done after that. Like, I have no more— no more traveling until January for me. Yeah, but we do want to crash at your guys' place one of these days.

Yeah, you'll have to come out for sure.

Like And Frankie's a little bit older.

There is a, uh, there's this farm that we go to and it's just like a cow farm. Uh, and the cows are all like, like you pull up and all the cows are like there watching you. But you, um, there's like a vending machine and you just like put in a euro coin and you bring your own glass bottles. You put your bottle in and, uh, it just dispenses milk like into your bottle. And so we, we bring like several liters of milk or several, uh, empty liters. Uh, and we just like pay, we fill up our milk, and like the cows are all watching us like buy their milk from the vending machine, and then we freaking leave. Like, there's, there's so much cool stuff to go and see where, uh, where we're at in Italy.

Um, I think traveling, uh, next time I go leave the country, I think we'll do one trip to visit y'all before you end up moving. Yeah, but next time I come to Greece, I told you I want to take Kaya here, and then we don't have to do any of the Spartan stuff, we can just do all the island stuff. Yeah. But it's just a cool place. I— oh, tonight, everybody here is really healthy. People take care of themselves. They're beautiful people, like, in Greece. And dinner tonight, I can share, I went up to the guy afterwards and I'm like, do you have any dessert? And he just grabs me on the shoulder and he goes, no, it is not good for the body.

So he like I just wanted some baklava, man.

Fat American. But no, like, it's cool because you don't see a lot of, like, overweight folks out here in Greece, like, from what I'm looking at, right, so far. It's cool to see, and, and it's cool to see that belief that they have almost as a culture, just because the guy at the restaurant told me it's not good for the body. And they eat well out here, meats, and their bread tastes way better. Yeah, the food tastes way better out here, dude.

All the Greek salads with the, with the feta and the tomatoes and the onions and the oil. The guy's like, yeah, the, like, we have a farmer dude who like comes, brings us our stuff.

Like, it's, it's— we, we ate farm to table today, basically. So I think I'm stoked for the, for the next 2 days. Yeah. Game plan is to get good night rest, wake up, and then leave here in the morning, and then we'll go to another, another race. Yeah.

And we, we should have enough time to be able to wake up, you know, drink some mate, get some work done, which has been, which is fun cuz we spent several hours this morning working. Um, but we got a good night's sleep, got up, made some mate, and like went and sat down. You were working on stuff for, uh, for your training company. I was working on stuff for my, for my website. And like, with kids, we don't have time to just like sit in quiet and just like work. And it's crazy how 1 hour of uninterrupted, like quiet, peaceful, focused time, also in a beautiful place at this hotel, like overlooking the valley, and like, it's— dude, it's gorgeous. And we're just like calm, relaxed, and just cranking away. Like, the amount of work that you can get done in that short period of time is unbelievable. And so like, even though we're on vacation, like, one of the things that we don't get to do too often is have like quiet, peaceful time to work on the things that we're passionate about. As you're working on building your business, I'm working on building my business. Like, we don't get that time. So what a— what a great opportunity for us to like on vacation, do the thing that we don't normally get to do, which is like some quiet time in a beautiful place, a few hours to just like crank away at some work while we're eating breakfast, like a delicious breakfast here at the hotel. And then we packed up and freaking left and went and ran a race. Tomorrow we won't have as much time to work, but we should get still maybe an hour or so of some work done before we go.

And I think that's something we talked about in the car ride was, you know, when you're able to just sit down, you know, we're on the road, but when you're able to sit down on the road and just get into that flow state and just crank out a lot of work for multiple hours, it does— you do have higher quality work and like the creativity is higher. So that's why when I do— when I want to get stuff done at my house, it's got to be in the morning. Otherwise it's not happening. Like there's— I get the diaper change. This is not me complaining. I don't want to be, but But the diaper change, it might only take like 5 minutes, but it throws off that flow state, and then you gotta get the engine started to back up again. But I'm not complaining, I'm super happy to do that when I'm at the house, but it is cool to have none of that, no distractions, to just go. Right. So.

Well, and I think we also owe it to our wives.

It's amazing.

Because they, one, it's incredible what they do. But then if we are going to take time away from our family to come out and do like this fun thing, like, I think there is, there is a tremendous amount of importance on, in like rest and recuperating and refreshing and coming back like in a better state than when you left. But also like, this is a time where we like, we're away from them and they are taking on an extra burden. So like, we owe it to them to make some progress on this, this thing that you know, like work. And in both of our cases, like, us working is sustaining the family. And so, like, we owe it to them to be pushing, like, as, as much as we can to provide for our family.

Yeah, we haven't wasted time on this trip. Yeah, it's been work and then get to a race, connect with new people. And, um, you're right though, that when you're away from your family, like, you do think of your time a little bit differently. I've been away from my family a lot recently, and it's like I was asking you and like advice and how you kind of manage it. And I think it would be helpful for us. Like, I've been on the road a lot. I'll be on the road a lot this upcoming year. And the time spent away from family, any time away from family, I think, wow, like if I'm going to be away from my wife, my two daughters, I need to use my time well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think like getting a good amount of sleep, like if you don't get a lot of good sleep at home, which like I don't sleep enough at home. So when I'm away, it is important for me to get good sleep, right? Because that's not something I get as much at home. But I do need to like make sure I'm dedicating time to working on my website, to working on the podcast, like making things happen. Because like, you know, I've never— I haven't thought about it in a long time. Somebody had mentioned that like when you get married and if you're— if your wife is a stay-at-home mom, they're kind of they're kind of like giving up a lot. Oh yeah, to do that. And they're giving up a lot of their— of a different version of what their future could look like for this. And it's, it's not saying that they shouldn't do that, but that's part of the, the cost to them of being a stay-at-home mom. And it's incredible, but you like, you owe it to them to make the most of your time and of your productivity and what you can produce like out in the world to provide for your family because they have given up that, like, that opportunity for themselves. So like, you better not be slacking off. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, when I've been on some work trips recently, like, I'm not allowed to be a loser. Yeah, yeah, I gotta figure it out. Yeah, and there's no complaining. Like, even if I've had hard days on some recent work trips, it's just like, I don't even think to complain because I know that my wife's taking care of both my daughters. I'm not going to call my wife and say Oh, it's been such a hard day. It's like, no, buckle up and figure it out. Right. So I spent 3 days watching Georgia Grace while Kaya went to Utah. It was 3 or 4 days. Yeah. And I just experienced her wrath. I have— I did not know that Georgia could throw this like extreme temper tantrum every day around like 3 or 4 o'clock. And I got to figure that out. So tons of respect to Kaya for being able to juggle our kids. And then my mother-in-law's in town while I'm gone. Yeah, just to help kind of hold the fort down with Kaya, even though she can do it by herself. It's good to have—

it's always good to have help.

Yeah, to your point earlier about like our wives like giving up a possible career too. Yeah, to be a stay-at-home mom. I think it's cool to see Kaya embrace that, but also she's trying to do other things as well. As we've had our second kid, yeah, she just got a job at this place called Burn Boot Camp. She doesn't need to work, but it's good for her to be involved in something that she's right happy about. And you know, that's not going to pay our bills, like, but by the time taxes come out of that, it's like nothing. But it's so cool for her to be able to have an impact in the community Yeah, meet new people. I think just being out here meeting new people is so much fun. Yeah, yeah. And we've got to connect with a lot of people from Farm Experience, and I just meet random people walk up to us and say, where are you from? How many races have you done?

They see you because everyone's like walking around, we're all wearing our medals and like our finisher t-shirts because whatever shirts we were wearing before, like nasty. So we all put on the nice t-shirt, and so you get like head nods from people where they'll just stop and like, oh hey, we passed you on the race.

Like, guy that did— this is his 13th trifecta and he'll get a shield. The guy's big. He was not—

oh dude, he was— yeah, I think he was— I think he was as tall as me.

Yeah, probably 270, 280. Big dude, big old big belly. But like, you can tell like this race and this culture has changed his life and he's so excited about it. And he just shared with us. Yeah, so cool. And it's—

yeah, something we were talking about in the car, like, this dude, like, if it wasn't for Spartan Races or for him choosing Spartan Races— because he said he's done a bunch of Tough Mudders and stuff, he said he's been doing those for like 10 years— but like, I would bet that if he wasn't doing these things, um, he would not be showing up in other areas of his life. And you were like, and he'd probably weigh another 50 pounds, you know?

So if you're not doing these races, there's nothing to prepare for. But when you have something on the calendar, you've got to somewhat prepare for it, right? And, um, you know, one of my favorite things he said, he was like, I'm not fast, but I just keep one foot in front of the other. And that, that's a cool thing. So you don't have to be a freak athlete to do physical things. And he said it himself, he's like, I'm a big dude, I'm not fast, but I can keep going. Yeah, that's really all you need to be able to do in life. Is just keep moving forward. So I was happy I got to meet that guy today. Yeah, name is Miles. So shout out to Miles if you're listening. But I'm stoked for tomorrow. I think, I think we'll have some— meet some, meet some great people and we'll get a good night's rest and I'm ready to roll. Oh, one last thing. The one thing, one race event, I don't know, race story from today that I wanted to share. And I would like to hear yours. I was doing the monkey bars today and I reached for one of the last— it was the second to last ring and I couldn't get my whole hand around it. I got my pinky finger and my ring finger on the bar, on the, on the ring, and I'm just looking at my hand like, not like this, I don't want to go like this, and like slipping. And I have my other hand on the other ring and I managed to like pull myself up and get in there and get the whole hand, dude.

But I was— that whole time I was like, is he gonna— because yeah, you, you grabbed the last ring and all you had to do was like swing from the last ring to hit the bell, but you only grabbed it with the two fingers. And I was like, is he gonna try and hit the bell on just the two fingers, or is he gonna like grab the— that was, that was pretty funny.

That was fun.

Uh, my, my funny story for the, for the race was that, uh, we were running with CamelBaks, which is great because it was super dusty and like mouths are getting just full of dust. And it was at the first water station. I had felt just like a little, just a little bit of a leak in my CamelBak. And I think it was because when I filled up this morning, I spilled a little bit of water in the CamelBak. Not a big deal. Um, but we were just about out of water, so we wanted to top up. And they had pitchers that they were just like pouring into CamelBaks. And I opened my, my CamelBak, and he pours it, and he like pours it too fast, so he misses the opening and just dumps a ton of water just straight into my backpack. And then he like, then he like redirects and puts it in the bladder. And I was like— and he laughed, he's like, he's like, I'm so sorry. And I was like, dude, I've like— all my snacks now are wet, which is not a big deal, but like, at least I didn't have my phone in there. But dude, you just poured water in my backpack. So then for the next— the rest of the race, which is like another freaking 4 miles, I just have like a leaking CamelBak. It's just dripping down onto my shorts. My shorts are slowly getting soaked. And so like the whole back of my shorts, all the way down to like the back knees are just soaked and the water's just like dripping down my leg. And I think there, there might have been a leak in my bladder still, but like he poured a lot of water in my backpack.

Yeah, you got the, the, you know, the wet Spartan experience. This was a dry race really, aside from your, the Camelback.

But you said sometimes you like have to swim in a river or like a—

Georgia, Georgia was awful. Like The one in Georgia, I was crawling through peanut butter at one point and it just— I hated it. I don't know that I'll do the Georgia race again. It was just— I like these dry races. They're fun. Yeah. So yeah, we'll have more stories and this will be cool because we'll have done— get to do one of these every night. Just a little debrief and yeah, epic memories being made.

Yeah, and we, uh, we out of the blue decided to make it happen. You had an idea, we put it together. It cost us about— well, aside from the flights, it cost us about $600 apiece.

That's it.

Um, yeah, and totally worth it.

It's not as hard as you think it is to travel. I, I mean, aside— Jared, you know all the tricks on how to book things for affordable, affordable prices, but it— you literally just have to buy the ticket. And so I think the idea of one day is just so crazy when it's like, no, you don't have to say one day I'll do that. Like, slap it on your calendar and just make it happen. Yeah. And, um, put it on a credit card, pay it off. Like, yeah, not the best financial advice, but like, if you want to do something, like, if you want to like set aside something and, and, you know, make something happen, like, I tell you this earlier this week, I'm like I— you could die soon. So don't go in a credit card, the crazy credit card debt. But there's some things that we overthink sometimes and we're like, I can't do that. Well, yeah, you can. There's a way to do it, right? Or, or go work really, really hard this next week to save up for a trip or something like that. But yeah, but, um, I guess the other theme too is like the reason why I'm happy we're doing this is because my dad passed away at 53. So if I live as long as my dad or like, if I live as long as my dad did, I have got 25 years left. And that's like a recurring theme that I've been thinking about is, you know, I might not even have 25 years.

Yeah.

And so it's so important to do the thing, do the thing that you want to do and give it a shot. Like I told you, I— this has been a fun year for me because I left my company and I'm branching out and trying new things. And all the— I'll have more to come on that later, but it's, it's an exciting time. Like, yeah, not why don't make it one day, just do it. And I think it's so much more exciting to have these memories.

So yeah, I agree.

I agree.

All right. Well, we will debrief again tomorrow and we will see how sore we are after that. But we'll have one more medal and one more free t-shirt.

So let's go.

Pretty stoked.

All right.

See ya.