Mm

... driven me kind of to the, the bike packing, uh, you know, Colorado Trail Race, TNGA, Hurricane, those types of events, Four Ridges Challenge.

Like, what has drawn me to those and kinda drawn me away from ultra running, and I, I, I think the thing that I l- that I love so much about the bike packing community, and, and I know the big races are different, like the f- big, fast races like Leadville and the races you guys do.

But the long stuff, man, they ha- It, it's, it hasn't been commercialized.

It, like, there's no, like, there's no entry fee.

There's no official registration.

You have to figure out how to even send an email with your intent to ride the route.

Mm.

In process.

Yeah, in process and will be a lifelong process.

I think that the biggest one that I could put my finger on, and there's many, many things that we could go into, but maybe this will be common and resonate with many of the people listening, is pride.

And specifically pride.

When you become a SEAL, they put you through a training pipeline and they really do warp your mind.

They strip everything from you, every ounce of identity, even down to the clothes that you wear and the way you like to comb your hair or whatever.

wear a beard or whatever it may be.

What does following Jesus look like in the right house on an absolutely ordinary Tuesday? Yeah.

So how are you going to navigate all of this? I'm assuming that some practices are already underway, but the air quality is lousy.

Yeah, our fall sports started on Monday.

And so we are just...

Constantly watching the AQI and seeing what that number is and what it allows us to do.

It definitely throws a little wrench in the work sometimes when it goes up because in the fall, other than volleyball, we're pretty much outside.

So that really limits our indoor space also.

Yeah.

Early mornings, late nights.

I look forward to it every single year and it just never gets old.

Yeah, there's just a buzz and an electricity that goes through that.

Lots of excitement.

You know, everybody is coming in new at something.

So sophomores are coming new into high school.

Juniors, hey, we're no longer sophomores.

It's that next stage.

I know early mornings, late nights.

Yeah.

Are you in that? Uh, Yeah, I'm the star of that show because I happened to win that year.

So yeah, that's a great film.

If you guys want to see kind of what the mindset is and actually what it looks like to go out and win a race like that, that film captures it very well.

So what's the race? That particular race is called the Mid-State Mile, and it's in Tennessee.

It's a one-mile loop.

But the one mile has about 340 feet of elevation gain and loss per mile.

Yeah.

something about

that just drew me to it um I don't know.

I think it was that it was the hardest, supposed to be the hardest one.

And that was really the first time Navy SEALs came on my radar.

And I started doing a little more research into it and decided that was what I wanted to go and attempt to become is a Navy SEAL.

And so I joined the Navy in 2007, I guess it was.

And went all the way through bootcamp and I had kind of left everything.

Amen.

Uh-huh.

All it was was a one-mile repeat.

All you gotta do is run one mile over and over again until we tell you to stop.

So I'm out here like, "Heck yeah, dude.

All I gotta do is run one mile at my own pace on a sunny beach on Coronado Island." But that was the single evolution during Hell Week where we lost the most guys.

Certain people just could not focus on that mile, dude.

They, they... all they could think about was all the miles in front of them, which they didn't know if this was the last one or not, so they, they looked at it as a big picture and they just couldn't handle it.

And they're like, "Okay."

Yeah, can still get the job done.

You know? We can still get the job done.

So for me, that, that's, you know, that's essential, is, is to stop looking at each other like...

Look at me, for example, bro.

I'm some old country dude from North Georgia.

Could, how could I have ever dreamed to go and serve at the tip of the spear-

Mm-hmm.

From, from, so from noon to the rest of the day, up until 5:00, 6:00, sometimes 7:00, that's my, that's my work time.

Right.

I began to read in the book of Matthew and I began to, uh, well, I, for the first time in my life, I realized how all of that applied to me (laughs) as the hopeless, wicked, ugly, depraved human being that I, I...

Like, my mind was awakened to my own state.

Like, I didn't realize how ugly and depraved I was.

Like, when I let my f- when I, when I passed up on my friend and he killed hisself, like, I didn't think nothing of that.

I just had this, th- s- this revelation of who I was and why, why I so needed something to save me from that.

I- and when I had that revelation, literally by the po- the grace of God opening my... making me spiritual- spiritually alive, able to discern the Scriptures, when I had that revelation, I read about Jesus, His life, His death, why He died according to the Scriptures, His resurrection, what that means for me, I...

Right.