[laughs]

'Cause it was about 4:00 in the morning, and, uh, it, it had been a long journey up to that point.

Uh, I started out with, uh, you know, fairly solid run up until about mile 30 when I, uh, took a, a great tumble, which I'm really good at.

I am very good at not lifting my feet and catching a toe and, and then doing a nice drop and roll.

In this case, I didn't pull my arm over quite far enough and landed pretty heavily on my, uh, chest and, and cracked a rib, uh, which made for an interesting next, uh, you know, 40 miles or so.

Um, I had picked up one of my pacers, Dan Turpin, who's been a good friend of mine for decades, and, uh, as we were going through the night from Michigan Bluff, or actually Forest Hill, uh, to Rucky Chucky, uh, I started to see the time slowly slipping away.

And by the time we came into Rucky Chucky, uh, I figured that we were probably 30 minutes off pace for getting the sub-30 hour finish.

Tell us a little bit about that dynamic and, and, um, the relationship that you've created with your adult son.

Yeah

... apparently had, uh, developed a stress fracture in my iliac crest, so the backside of the hip.

And then I had to, uh, couldn't run Boston that year, and really couldn't s- do any training until, like, early June.

So I had literally, you know, like two weeks of training for the Western States previous time and, and it's just too tough a course to, you know, try and fake it.

Uh, so this time around, um, you know, older, nine years older, I don't have the, the physical capabilities that I had back nine years ago, uh, but I did have some great coaching, who really helped me to, I think, train smarter and to approach the race a wh- a whole lot smarter.

So, uh, probably not as much high mileage, uh, more smart training than, than I'm used to doing, 'cause I like doing high miles and I like doing really long, you know, eight hour-

Yeah.

And I picked up, uh, Chris Russell at that point, and, you know, Chris Russell looked me in the eye, and it was like, "You know, we're gonna do this." And it was, it was 100%, "We are going to do this." And he said, "You're gonna hurt." He said, "This is, you've, you've put in 78 miles of work, uh, and you've, you've run thousands of miles to get ready for this moment, and we're not taking it easy from here on." He says, "You are, you're gonna need to push the red line the whole time." And through his section, and then my son picking me up to take me up Robie Point and then to the finish, I have never worked harder than I have in my whole life.