 I thought it was a new one! What am I, Brad? What am I, Brad? I thought it was a new one. That's gonna be the next one. So I'm gonna be up on the mountain for probably six to eight hours of training today, which means a lot of sun exposure, which means a lot of sunscreen, you know? And yeah, we just, this is it, baby. This is the hard workout. I'll tell you what I'm doing at the base of the mountain. The Halo headband is on the way. It's on the way. Oh, man. All right, so for today's run, Uppikes Peak, I'm going to use a Nathan handheld. I'm gonna carry my debit card, stick that in there, because there's a cafe on top. And so it'll make more sense once I tell you what I'm doing. And then I'm gonna put a little tailwind in the water bottle, and then two spring energies in as well. And then the GoPro, of course. Going with a Bobobar for breakfast. That's right. There it is. I don't know if you can see that little Bobobar. Oh, yeah. Boom, butter, boom. Oh, little chocolate in there. That's so good. Oh, yeah, everybody. We made it to the base of Pikes Peak. It's a lot busier today. I think folks are realizing that are racing in two weeks from today, two weeks. They're realizing, okay, now is the time to put the work in as much as I can before race day. So it's busy here in the parking lot. What am I gonna be doing? So I'm running up the peak at a pretty good clip, okay? Going lighter weight. So I'm just carrying the handheld, two gels, the GoPro, and then my debit card. Because once I get to the top, gonna eat some food. Hopefully they have some decent food on top at the cafe. And then I'm gonna run back down three miles to Tree Line. And then I'm gonna do a fart lick workout between Tree Line and the top. So this is the toughest workout of the training block, no doubt. And then, just like two or three weeks ago when I was here, pitch hike off the top because you can drive to the top of this mountain and hopefully somebody picks me up. If you know what I mean. So it's a good day to get some work in and yeah, I'm trying to think what else. I'm just excited. Like this is, and I'm trying to mimic race day as much as possible, waking up a little earlier. Okay, so no phone, which means no music, no podcast, just nice and quiet, calm, relaxed. That's my strategy for race day is I'll probably listen to classical music on the weight of the race. I just like to remain as calm as possible and so anyway, I'm mimicking today for race day. I'm mimicking race day today. All right, I don't even know what else to say. I'm ready. This is why I have to do a bunch of stuff other than just tighten my shoes, so let's do this. All right. We will see you. So I'm not going to film it all on the way up, but I will do some filming once I am at the top. We'll see you back at the car in like six or eight hours. And I'm back. Oh man. You're probably wondering what happened and you're probably wondering, Seth, where's your water bottle? Oh my goodness. Let me explain what went down on Pike's Peak today. I'll get you the stats for the run back at the studio. It was a great day. It was a great day. I'm happy. I'm positive. And guess what? I still love the person who stole my water bottle on the top of Pike's Peak. That's right with my debit card, my GoPro, and my water bottle. I basically got to the top after running up the mountain and then the goal for today was to go back down the mountain for three miles and do a fart lick and that's what I did, but I didn't want to carry the water bottle for those last three miles of fart lick work. So I hid it under a rock right next to a post. There's hundreds of people up there because it's a very popular place to drive to. Somebody must have seen me hide the water, hide the water bottle under the under the rock and I got back from the fart lick and it's gone. My debit card, my GoPro. So I didn't do a ton of filming today, but the shots that I did and okay. So I owned, I owned two GoPros as of two weeks ago at Jackson Hole. You know, I lost it and then it never was, it never was returned. If somebody found it, I don't know. Well today, somebody just straight up stole it. So ah, so I'm out on GoPro, so I'm going to have to ante up and get a new GoPro. But anyway, that's what happened. That's why I haven't, that's why I can't show you any shots from today's run. But I will show you a shot from six months ago and I actually filmed an exact shot from today at the exact same location. But in order to reach your goals, you got to do the work when nobody else is watching. So this is me on Pike's Peak six months ago in the dead of winter, putting in the vertical time, getting the altitude training. So just like it's like when you don't want to get out of bed early in the morning, when it's snowing out, when it's raining out, you don't want to go for your run. It's like those are the times when everyone else is staying in bed, drinking their hot cocoa, eating their cookies, you're out there putting the miles in and that is the difference between reaching your goals and not reaching your goals. So anyway, I love you all. I love you whoever stole my water bottle and we live to fight another day. I'm off to get a little treat and it was a great, it was a solid run. I'll tell you about it once again, back at the house, back at the studio. Hi, we made it back to Denver and yes, I'm pulling into the Best Buy parking lot keyword optimistic. I'm optimistic after today's run and I'm also optimistic that this YouTube channel is going to survive despite cameras being lost or stolen. Listen, when you come back faithfully to watch the channel every day and yes, get through those ads every now and then, maybe not every day, but every now and then, that allows my family and I to pinch pennies, build up a little nest egg to replace camera equipment because it does, it's, you know, these cameras, this audio equipment, it just doesn't happen. But you guys being here every day, I have a little nest egg built up, so we're not going to let a bad egg, whoever took my GoPro and my water bottle today, we're not going to let a bad egg ruin our day. And so I'm going to go into Best Buy, get a new GoPro, I just checked and they have a little, a little deal going right now. So I think I can swing it financially, but it's, it's frankly, it's because of you, just so you know. So I, I, there's no way I could have done this a year ago if this would have happened in last summer, 2018. All right, we're not going to let him keep us down, right? We, we don't let him keep you down. We're going to win. We are going to win in this world. Huh, what you making over there? I love you. I love you. Oh, my, my, the huge, hello, my goodness. That is what I'm talking about. I love you. No, there it is. There it is. That's going to, that's going to be the next T-shirt. I'm, I'm, I'm just cause of life, I'm thinking around October. I just need a good design. I'm going to take a hot second. Yeah, we just need a hot second. Just a hot second. Oh, I think Khan actually, by the time this publishes, almost guaranteed we will have passed 25K cause of, cause of all of you. Oh, we love you guys. You all are the best. 25,000. That's amazing. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's your hard work. That's his true grit. Oh, come on. I get it. I get you guys. I get what you see in him. Come on. Come on now. We're just, we're just one day at a time. He's the real deal. Not, not, not letting the, not letting the thieves get us down. And onward and upward. Here we go. Delicious dinner. Gonna go eat second dinner here in a little bit. And yes, put down my daily dark chocolate. I don't know about you, but when I'm running more than 60 to 70 miles a week, like, oh, I just love chocolate every night. Like, it's just like the body needs some good. Dark, it's gonna be dark. No milk, gotta be dark. In my humble opinion. Okay. Today's workout was the last hard, hard workout of the training block. Not the last hard workout. The last hard heart. Meaning today, I wanted to be pretty tired by the end of it. And sure enough, I was. Now next week, I'll go hard a couple more times and then the actual race week, I'll go hard once. But a couple of people were a little confused about my tapering. So when I'm talking about tapering, I'm talking about volume reduction, not necessarily intensity reduction. In fact, volume goes down, intensity goes up. So just wanted to clarify, a couple of people were confused on Strava. That is what I mean when I'm talking about tapering. And today's run was 19 miles, 9,300 feet of vertical gain, or 30 kilometers, or 24. Hold on. All right. And I'm back, a little situation in the house. So in meters, let's see 20, 2800 meters of vertical gain today. So the workout was actually 13 miles up the mountain. Exact same course as the race in two weeks. And then I ran, once I got to the top and put my water bottle down, I ran back three miles to treeline. So from 14,000 back down to basically 11,700. And then all the way back up doing a fart lick. And the fart lick was three minutes on, one minute off by eight. And then that didn't quite get me to the top. So I just jogged it to the top after that. And by the end, yes, I was very tired, a little disappointed about my camera being gone. But other than that, it was an amazing day. I feel very good about the effort, optimistic about the effort. And it's not like I'm just excited for next week to really start to tapers I'm still gonna hit about 80 miles this week, which is down from a hundred. And then next week will be about 50 to 60, probably about 50, depending on how the legs are feeling. So basically cutting my mileage in half from the two weeks prior. Okay, and finally those words that I repeat to myself on hard workouts and in hard races. Okay, you're ready for this? And I'll be curious to hear what you have to say in a minute. So today I felt very good. The first three miles were actually the downhill traffic from all of the people doing the incline was insane. Like I probably passed 200 people. So I had to yell, runner, runner. Cause I was going up and everyone was coming down. So that was a little cumbersome to the workout. But the first three miles was fine. But then from mile four to 10, I was just boom, boom. And I was telling myself, what was I telling myself? Eyes up, quick feet, pump your arms. Okay, that's what I repeat to myself over and over and over again. Eyes up, quick feet and pump your arms. I probably said that to myself a hundred times today. The other thing that I repeat to myself is float it, don't fight it. And especially with uphill running, it's tempting to want to fight the mountain and want to attack the mountain, but instead float, it's like that dancing. Mountain running is dancing in disguise. Float up, it's like, it's such a, it's hard to describe other than your light on your feet and you're trying to float up rather than dig, dig, dig, dig. Cause when I dig, my legs get tired a lot more quickly. Did I say that right? A lot quicker. So anyway, that is what I repeat to myself up on hard workouts in hard races. And yes, of course I will repeat those words over and over again in the race in two weeks from today. When you're watching this on Saturday and I repeat a couple other things, but I think I'll save those to tell you after the race. And yes, the question of the day, what do you repeat to yourself over and over again? Do you have like a mantra or a saying that I think it's actually pretty important to have something to lean on to, to help you refocus. Cause in a 13 mile race or a marathon, it's even a five case sometimes it, sometimes you get a little spacey and you start daydreaming, which isn't the worst, but at the same time you, then you realize, wait a minute, I've slowed down a lot or my form is off. And so anyway, what helps you focus? What do you repeat to yourself? That is the question of the day. Thank you for being here. Thanks for your patience with the GoPro footage. What are you gonna do? We arise again tomorrow and we will do it again. All right, seek beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.