 Hello my friends, and welcome to episode two of Running With Ryan. This is a series where I go running with runners and we chat about stuff. And today, I'm really excited to meet this guy. I've never met him in real life, but I've been following him for two years on his YouTube channel. He's a Nike Pro Trail athlete. He's been top 10 in Western states. He's won a ton of marathons. He got a degree from Stanford. He's a smarty pants. He ran for Stanford. He was a teammate of Ryan Hall's. And he's recently relocated to Boulder. Beautiful Boulder, my hometown. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Mako. Look, there he is. It's Chris Mako. High five, bud. I found my diva sunglasses in the back of my car, so pretty excited. Chris just asked how many miles I want to go. What do you think? Your call. Down for anything. Two or three? Maybe 15 to 20, two or three hours? Yeah. I bet there's some Mako show fans out here. There may be, although I hope they're at work right now. This is time of day. But this is Boulder. This is a town where I don't know where people get their money. Nobody ever seems to work. They're always at coffee shops. Yeah, expensive coffee shops at that. I know. Well, we'll work with it. We'll work with it. We'll work with it. I'm gonna hold the camera today. You just get to run and talk. How do you think about that? Pretty much my dream. Yes, sir. So you just won the Chisholm Trail Marathon in Wichita and your calves, oh, not your calves, your quads were bleeding from chafing so bad. My number one goal has always been get back to Western States. I surprised myself and qualified in January. I've got a goal. So a lot of that pressure was behind me and I decided to go 100% in on the road scene. Nice. And I wanted to run really fast. That was the number one goal. Yep. Go Mako! And sure enough, as you alluded to, started having a little bit of pain in my upper thigh. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, I mean, I was properly lubricated beforehand. I'm actually sponsored by Squirrel's Nut Butter, which is the top. I love the number one rated lubrication brain in the sport. That's true. I love those guys. And as I crossed the finish line, I looked down and I'm just covered in blood. Fortunately, the scars have healed both mentally and physically. I think the viewers are still scarred. I'm a mama's boy. I love the video of you and your mom running into the Arizona rock and roll. My name is Maddie Mako. I'm 68 and I'm running my second half marathon tomorrow. Yeah. Talk to me about what it's like to cheer on your mama. Cause I do the same thing and there's no better feeling in the world than seeing your mom do something they didn't think was possible. Yeah. Well, I have a very vivid memory of about say sophomore year of high school. I'm at summer camp and the coolest kid in the camp, Remington was his name. Like so cool, you could pull off that name. Yeah, Remington gets settled into his room. It's an overnight camp. And in the middle of the entire suite front of all the other campers, gives his mom a big hug. Kisses her goodbye. And I'm like, what? You're allowed to do that. At that time it was like shunned to have like any affection towards your parents. And all of a sudden I realized like, hey, the coolest kid can do that. Maybe parents aren't so bad. Yeah. And ever since then, I've been a little bit more proud and affection towards my family. And it's crazy that we go through that time. I just remember looking back like, man, we can be pretty bad to our parents sometimes. Let's have a shout out a moment for all the parents in the world. Yes. Love you mom and data. So I saw some of your first videos or flashback videos. Yes, I love this. Embrace the mom. Embrace the mom. Especially in late 20s. That's even better. Exactly. Thank you Remington for inspiring that. If you're watching out there, Remington, this is for you. Yeah, my mom is so inspiring. If you know her story, I mean, five years ago she was not running at all. Not a step. And there was some mental barrier for her. She's very fit, but like the thought of running 200 yards frightened her. Short of breath. And it was something that I could not relate to because I'm like, I've been doing this for so long that I just don't know what it's like to struggle like that. She decided she wanted to run an entire 5K. She walks them all the time, but wanted to actually run. I set out with a plan for her and my dad to both finish a 5K. They both did it. And then I was like, let's step it up. And for that Christmas, I got them registered for a half marathon. And they did an amazing job of knocking out the training. Like, I think there's something not only inspiring for me to see them doing these workouts, like six by hell repeat, that sounds impossible. They just go out and do it like blindly. Might be naive, like not knowing how hard it's gonna be, but they did an amazing job. They both finished the race. Big finish, mama. Just so inspiring getting these emails every week. Like, oh, couldn't sleep last night. My legs were hurting so much. Is this what it's like to be a runner? Like doing long runs, the nervousness before workouts and just being excited and finding the joy, which like takes so much time. Like people are like running is the worst. It's so hard. Why would anyone do it? Like it's the punishment for most sports. If you do it consistently enough and you have something that you're shooting for, it just makes it so much better. Yeah. And she nailed it and it was incredible. How'd it go? I finished. How did you do? How did you make it? We're gonna go do a bathroom break. A few moments later. All right, out of the bathroom. High five. Oh, hopefully we didn't wipe with that hand. All right, so we need to go. We're going to be running south today because the wind is just way too strong the other way. Your story to me and to others is, I think, very inspirational. You really wanted to be a pro runner, but you had a real job. It's hard to do both. And you decided to give up the job, take a huge risk, make way less money, at least for now, and just go for it. Talk about what motivated you to do that. And maybe if you have any advice for somebody out here there who wants to pursue a dream, but they're a little scared. Yeah. Big question. I think it was a combination of a couple of things. One, I was just burnt out and that's something that I'm actually learning to identify more of. It's like, hey, if you're not doing well, you're not happy. If sleeping is a problem, something is going on and you gotta address it and tapping a lot with training recently and we might talk about that later, but with work, it was just this constant cycle of not being super happy with what I was doing and I did not initially see it as I'm the go pro in running. I saw it as I need a break. I'm qualified for Western States. It's in four months. I'm gonna do something that I've never been able to do and commit the training my butt off for four months and seeing what happens. Or your thighs off. Or my thighs off. Yes, my thighs actually did get quite a bit smaller, but it was an amazing opportunity and fortunately, I've been working for 10 years. Anyone who knows me, I'm rather frugal. Shop at Costco, only 24 year old with an executive membership at Costco. By the way, he's still looking for that sponsorship. But yeah, I gave it a go and things could not have gone much better. I put $10,000 in my bank account and said when that hit zero, I gotta get a job. And won a couple of races, got the attention of some sponsors, found myself in a really good shape and before Western States signed a deal with Nike. I mean, the most important thing for me is working with companies that I actually believe in and their product and Nike is no exception and almost like a startup within their company. It's such a small niche in their entire company. Like Nike gets a bit of a bad raft sometimes because it's this massive corporation and the vibes that you see on the trail center is completely different. And yet Nike trail, like their kind of marquee brand is this Winnebago that's just decked out in trail gear and it's just so different than what you think of when you think of big corporation. If I look back, graduating from college, I was surrounded by some of the best runners in the country, the best athletes in the country and a lot of them went professional and that was certainly not an option for me. I knew where I was talent-wise and that meant barely making the top seven, fairly qualifying for NCAAs, but always improving and still loving it. And it took a decade after college to sign my first contract. And so whenever I see it hits much madness right now, whenever I see those 99% of college athletes will go pro in something else other than sports. I'm now like, you are one of those guys. I'm one of those guys. I come from a very conservative family when it comes to careers. My parents both worked for the government their entire lives. My brother looks like he's gonna be a lifer as well. And so the idea, not only switching jobs after just a couple of years, but it being my third job. Yeah. Not to mention that third job was gonna be, oh, just gonna run full-time. That was scary. Yeah, mom, I'm gonna make it work. Don't worry. And I think they are understanding it more. Like I bought them a copy of Once a Runner. They're both reading it now. Try to understand a little bit of the psyche that makes us tick, but they've also now experienced it through racing as well. So step one is, get your parents signed up for a rock and roll race. Yeah, so they can relate to your joy. But yeah, I think that it's just this awareness that if you're not happy, you need to change something. But I also think being a little too, it would be the right word there. Impulsive can also be risky. So I was definitely very conservative in my approach. And I basically decided around November, I'm not happy something needs to change. The thing I wanna try to do is this running thing. So while I still worked, I started investing more in my running because if I couldn't do it at like 80% with a job and find happiness, then how was I gonna do that at 100? Yeah. And sure enough, after three months, it was working out pretty well and I was ready to make the leap and definitely pretty major life decision and I'm very grateful for it. Pause. We got to cross a road. Gotta look both ways. Gotta be safe for Mama Mako here. Where were we? I think we were taking bets about who's gonna fall first on the street. Yeah, we're not really paying attention too much. We're like talking, blah, blah, blah. That's how beautiful it was. I knew that running was important to me but as many of you probably know, if you put 100% of your energy into training, there's two things that are not gonna happen. One, probably gonna get in pretty good shape. And two, you're very quickly gonna burn out because while it seems amazing to just exercise all day long, it's not sustainable. Your body needs to rest. You don't have something to do during that idle time and unfortunately I've watched about every Netflix show that exists so that wasn't gonna be an option. It would be particularly fulfilling. I had to find something to do with my days and so that's where YouTube is coming to play. That's where I do in a couple side projects, consulting has helped past the hours but I'm really focused on making sure I'm getting in my training but also finding something that gets me excited and really motivated to finish the run so I can get to this other thing and as funny as it sounds, Ryan probably knows, YouTube can be pretty fun. It's way fun. It's also pretty tiring, it takes a lot of time. Yes it does. And so that's been one great outlet but you have to find the outlet that works for you. Morning. Morning. I forgot that when you run with a pro, they go really fast. Woo, slow down, Chris. This year is a lot about redemption for me. I had a lot of missteps last year, last two years really and this year is about going back to those same races, finding redemption and so far it's worked out pretty well but Havelina is definitely one of them. Probably the low point in my season last year where I was starting to get really good fitness. Physically I was there but mentally I was completely checked out of the race. I heard this up and coming YouTube star from Boulder was gonna be in the race. Yeah, I've really intimidated the heck out of them. And yeah, I just wasn't there mentally and wanna go back in such a beautiful course and such great energy there. Woo, what's up? Yeah, look at you. It's hard entering a race where you don't feel like you can win for me. I like to be competitive whenever I can. I'm also very well aware of my limits and so for a lot of these ultra-distance races, unlike a marathon where from the gun I try to run for the win, stay with the leaders, make sure that I have a chance to win the race with ultra running. It's very much about, okay, we got some technical down coming up here. Technical downhill, pause. I said we were supposed to go conversation pace. This is not conversation pace. We were just talking about, there's only one goal and that's winning. Winning and also fighting a home on the street that you can actually afford. Yes, that's the true goal. I was just telling Chris, I would love to live on the street someday but these houses are 2 million and above so gotta start making a little bit more of that YouTube money. So I'm gonna amend that previous statement and have a lean of the goal as to try to win. But in general, it's about just running to my potential. And if you try to run someone else's race in an ultra, it almost inevitably is gonna go poorly where if you let somebody else dictate the pace and it's a pace you're not comfortable with, you've got 50, 60, 100 miles where things can go wrong. And instead I've adopted a very boring but very practical racing strategy where I run completely within myself, get to the halfway point, race is already halfway done and then start to race. I like that. And there's no better feeling in the world than picking people off, right? Absolutely, no better feeling than passing runners who are walking, throwing up. I just passed a buddy in a race who's nearly unconscious, which was not a good moment, but us tall boys have some issues with low clearance and he slammed his head on a trail, on a tree, on a narrow trail, so. But in general, it's nice to pass runners if they're not having a seizure. Absolutely, and it's so easy to get caught up in the excitement, Boston Marathon's next weekend. I've run that twice, failed twice and a lot of it's because, oh, there's so much energy. I'm running downhill. There's these women who are willing to kiss me in Wolsey College just for being a runner. This is amazing. Let's talk about YouTube. You know, you're one of the few pro runners who's really dedicated to a YouTube channel and sharing your stories, sharing your ups and downs and your failures and being really honest and genuine, which is hard. But your viewers love it because you're so real. I just completely underestimated the distance, the heat, the terrain, all of the above. I definitely saw it, not at first realize it, but now see it as a really great opportunity to connect with the trail running community. And it's not the largest community ever and I'm very well aware, like, okay, if I want this to be something a lot bigger, I need to start thinking about search engine optimization and having the right titles that are like five tips for faster marathon and eight ways to lose weight from your gut. That's how I'm going to title this video, by the way. I think more important than that is, yeah, building a community of super passionate, engaged fans and I don't see it every day. I show up to a race. It is so validating. I see, especially Avalina, where you're going back and forth on the same trails, the number of people cheering for you, calling you C-Money, a made up name that I gave myself on the YouTube channel. It is really, really awesome to see that and it's motivating for me and it also allows some level of accountability when I share my workouts and training plan. I now have a couple of thousand people who are checking in on me, looking at my Stravas. Hey, you're supposed to do five by three minute hill today. What happened? I realized that there's not a lot of top tier athletes. I say that very loosely with myself because there's quite a bit. Hey, you're on the same team as Colin Kaepernick now, dude. You're Nike, he's Nike. And we probably shouldn't comment on that subject because it's polarizing. As important as it is to have an opinion, probably not the best one, but I do appreciate that Nike's still willing to take a stand, even if it's not something you agree with because it's a lot easier to tiptoe that middle line. But yeah, I'm guessing you've gotten some really amazing inspirational messages from people saying, you've changed my life or I started running because of you. Am I right? I wish there were more, I wish there were more. But I'm sure you've gotten some. Yeah, well, I think there's one thing that I've done that was important. It was sharing a lot more about my personal struggles and I had a couple of videos, went on a couple of podcasts talking about eating disorders and how eating has been impacted a lot of my athletic and personal life and it's about something specifically called binge eating disorder. So when you think running, you often think about anorexia and bulimia, runners trying to get skinny as possible. Binge eating disorder is kind of the opposite side of that. We can't control your eating. I had no idea it was even a disorder because I've assumed that feeding your body too much, well, yeah, you're gonna put on weight, but at least it didn't get the nutritional value it needs and just didn't have any awareness for it. Decided to share that story. I think that alone has made this entire YouTube journey worthwhile because the number of messages I've gotten from people who, one, were embarrassed, didn't, two, didn't know who to talk to about and three, just weren't aware that it was a thing at all and I'll definitely put me in a very vulnerable state. I have no idea what inspired me to actually put that on my YouTube channel and, you know, as a runner, the fairly public social media presence when I am dating, type in Chris Mako into Google, even just goofy runner, Boulder, you're probably gonna see the two of us. Exactly. And having like that be one of the first links you see, it's like, wow, this first stage has got very real when they bring up. Oh yeah, I watch your YouTube channel at all. But yeah, I think sharing some of that is very important and a lot of people talk about how Instagram and social media is just showing the happy side of things and I honestly think it's kind of hard to share the negative sides on Instagram. Like, hey, here's a crummy photo of a cloudy day in Boulder. Nobody wants to see that, it's not pretty. But being able to share that, not everything is... Ah, windstorm. Not everything is a tailwind. Exactly, that came right at the right time. One of the resolutions for the year that I've shared with my family is, I don't need to be the fittest, I don't need to win the race, but I want to show up the best version of myself of that start line and I think that's something we all can do a little better job of. Absolutely, whatever your start line is, you know, and I think what makes you relatable to people is you talk about these struggles because all humans go through this, you know? Yeah, it's great to see the good stuff, but when they hear across Chris Mako's, you know, struggled and been to the pain cave and been to some really dark areas, they're like, oh wow, he's a real human. And that's how you build your community, you know? And you chat with them back and forth on YouTube and you're not just some pro athlete, like how often do we get to talk with Peyton Manning? Never, but if you want to write to Chris Mako, he'll probably respond to your comment on YouTube and that's awesome. Yeah, I think it's incredibly important to respond and message back and I don't know how scalable that is and when that stops, but I'm still very aware that I'm grateful to be in the position I am and owe it a lot to the community around me and this is very meaningful loop that you picked out here because this is where I was introduced to Boulder. Really, right here? Wonderland Lake. Oh, nice. These are my home trails. These are the trails that I grew up running on when I was a little dude and wanted to be an Olympian. Right here. And we're both having a special moment and I think we've touched hands a few times already on this run, so we're bros. I thought that was an invitation for another one. I was like, I'm not quite ready for that. So one final thing, somebody's out there watching this. They want to just run a 5K like your mom did. Yeah. And they're intimidated by it. They think it's, you know, a 5K to them is an ultramarathon. How do they get there? Number one, it's consistency. Yeah. And we talked a little bit about before, but the first couple of times you go out running, even the first times I do after a long hiatus, break after a big race, it feels terrible. Yep. And your body doesn't feel like it's working. It's not natural. You're in pain, you're struggling, and you just have to believe and know that if you keep at it, eventually good times are going to come and you're going to start feeling good. Yeah. But point two is you got to start small. You can't, the first day, you can't go run five miles. Yeah. If your goal's three miles, especially, but you got to start small and be realistic. And there are so many free resources available of like, hey, here's a 12 week training plan. Yeah. Get yourself a plan. Start as small as possible. Make your goals achievable. I think the hardest thing for me is when my workouts get so hard that I'm like, I can do a 10 mile tempo and you dread them and you fail to execute them. And instead of trying to overreach, do something that's achievable gets you excited and keeps you motivated and like that momentum going. And I think that's super important. If you set yourself up for failure, it's not going to end well. Yeah. And bottom line is you definitely want to challenge yourself and go past that comfort zone a little bit, but you also want to have fun. It's about getting outside, breathing fresh air, hanging out with friends, you know, join a running team. But if you really want to get serious, you should be looking into coaching, getting a coach. And I offer coaching services. Hey! Oh, shameless plug. But I think what I've seen in my athletes and even with my mom, when you start injecting real workouts and a structure and just the experience of an athlete who's gone through it before, it completely changes you as a runner. If you just go out every day and do the same one and a half mile loop, you're going to get to a certain level of fitness and then it's going to plateau. And if you have a coach who knows what needs to happen in order for you to really jumpstart the system and excite it in different ways, you can really see pretty remarkable improvements in your fitness. Awesome! Boom! My man! Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Mako, go to his channel, subscribe, his videos are very entertaining and inspirational. And good luck this year. We'll be cheering you on. Team Deuzer, cheer him on. All right, Chris, how far did we go? Well, I almost set a 10K record. We did 6.3 miles in 58 minutes, so. Hey! Count it! Yeah, that's actually pretty fast for this, for what we're doing. Usually I like to like barely jog, so we're not like out of breath when we're talking, but I think you have such good fitness, you can do it, no problem. And I'm like, wait, wait! We will see you for the next episode of Running with Ryan, not with him, unfortunately, but we'll find somebody else. Do you have any ideas? I don't think there's a lot of runners in Boulder, so you're probably gonna run on a hard time. Yeah, I guess I'm gonna have to go to Wichita to find somebody. Worst case, I will see you at Javalina. That's right, Javalina under it. We know we love that race. All right, we'll see you guys later.