Man in the Arena with Craig Spear

Pushing Limits: My Experience Running 5 Miles Every 4 Hours for 48 Hours

• Craig Spear

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What is the true power of pushing past your limits? In this episode of "Man in the Arena," I uncover how setting ambitious goals and enduring physical challenges can unlock new dimensions of personal growth. 

Inspired by David Goggins' famous challenges, I share my experience of taking on the 5x4x48 challenge. We explore the importance of stepping out of our comfort zones to cultivate discipline, stamina, and mental toughness, and how these efforts can inspire those around us, especially our loved ones and clients.

Preparation is everything. As I recount my meticulous planning for a challenging run, set on June 13th, you'll learn about the significance of strategic preparation. From choosing the setting a date to avoid bailing on yourself to the rigorous 75 Hard challenge that kept me accountable, every detail played a crucial role. My structured training approach, focusing on progressive overload, zone two running, and integrating strength training and rucking, highlights how essential it is to build a robust foundation to prevent injuries and boost performance.

Facing the mental and physical hurdles of endurance running, I narrate the highs and lows of my rigorous schedule, running five miles every four hours. Despite the initial excitement, fatigue and soreness crept in, presenting the ultimate test of mental resilience. You'll hear about my recovery strategies, mental fortitude, and the critical support systems that kept me going. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, this episode offers invaluable insights into maximizing your endurance potential, emphasizing the remarkable capabilities of the human body and mind. Join me for an inspiring discussion on embracing challenges and the transformative journey of personal growth.

Did you find this episode helpful insightful or motivating? If so, let's connect! You can find me on....

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Hey, welcome back to man in the Arena. Thank you so much for stopping by today. I'm so excited to talk to you today because I have a really special episode or at least what I think is a really special episode where I'm going to talk about pushing limits. More specifically, I'm going to talk about my experience running 5x4x48 challenge, and if you're not familiar with what this is, it's where you run five miles every four hours for 48 hours. So essentially, what you do is you're covering 60 plus miles, over 100K over the course of two days, and it's a really unique challenge.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is something that I kind of adapted from another challenge, a guy named David Goggins. He's a former Navy SEAL. He's an internet kind of sensation. He created this challenge a while back. I don't think he's run it in a while, but it's essentially the 4x4x48 challenge, where you run four miles. Now I wanted to add an extra mile every lap, simply because when you run four miles you get to 77K. I wanted to get to 100K over two days, so that's how I kind of adapted it to be my own.

Speaker 1:

Now, in today's episode, I want to share. You know, why did I do this? Why would I do something like this, this intense, this kind of crazy? And I want to talk about why you should consider doing something like this or a challenge of your own. I'm also going to kind of talk about how I prepared for this, how I dealt with setbacks, and then I want to kind of share. You know what it was like to experience this kind of run. So you know, a friend of mine, a client of mine, he, you know, told me about Goggins and his challenge. He also told me about a friend of his who is doing what's called this misoji, and a misoji is this Japanese Shinto practice of purification where essentially you bathe yourself and you wash yourself of sins and different thoughts and emotions, and basically it's purification, right. So it's since been adapted more in Western cultures, I guess, to be this yearly challenge that people create for themselves, and it's usually physical in nature and the whole purpose is kind of get them out of their comfort zone, and so I've heard a lot of different guys do different things each year, and so I thought, why not, let's do something like this?

Speaker 1:

Now, that's one of the reasons why I decided to do this, but there's other reasons as well that I think are more important to highlight. Now, most importantly, I think that we should all have a goal, right, and especially when it comes to our health and our wellness, we need a physical goal that kind of helps you become someone different in the process, right? That's what having a goal is all about. It's about who you become in the process of pursuing and attaining that goal, and so when you do a challenge like this, you know you have to become someone who's disciplined, someone who has stamina, someone who has mental toughness, and certainly that's one of the reasons why I decided to do this is I knew it would get me out of my comfort zone, which is another reason why I wanted to do this. I was sort of, you know, still working out, still eating well, but I didn't really have anything I was particularly focused on, and, as a former athlete, I know the value of having a goal out in front of you, because there's a lot of days where you just don't feel like doing the work, and so you know you can't always rely on motivation, so sometimes it helps to have something that keeps you disciplined. The other reason why I wanted to do a challenge like this perhaps the most important reason was I wanted to be an example for, first and foremost, my daughter, who I want to model certain behaviors and certain mindsets for her, so that she knows what it's like to set a goal, to prepare for it, to overcome setbacks, and then what it's like to achieve that goal. But also I want it to be an example for my clients as well, because I know the struggles that they go through, I know the challenges that they face, and I face a lot of those challenges as well. But what also happens as we pursue goals is we step up, and I think that's what's really important. I wanted to kind of be an example for my clients, so pushing my limits, getting out of my comfort zone, you know, be an example for people around me, people who are in my life, and then having something that would sort of challenge me to become the best version of myself. So that's kind of why I did this challenge.

Speaker 1:

Now, what I want to offer to you is why should you do something like this? Not necessarily the 5x4x48. That might be a bit too intense for you right now, but you should consider doing something, whether it's a 5K, whether it's a marathon, should consider doing something, whether it's a 5k, whether it's a marathon, whether it's, you know, a really long hike. There's lots of great trails that out there that you can go and hike. It doesn't have to be endurance related either. It can be completely different. It could be a push-up challenge, could be a pull-up challenge. You know something along those lines. But the main reason why you should consider a challenge is it is a great way to get unstuck. So, if you're in a rut and you're stuck, setting a challenge that you know will be difficult but also attainable is a great way for you to start to eat better, start to feel better, start to get on this virtuous path of personal care and success. So that's why I think you should consider doing something like this. All right, in addition to all the reasons I mentioned, for myself as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, how do you prepare for something that is as physical and intense as a two-day running event? Right, what I want to offer to you is it doesn't matter if it's a two-day running event, it can be anything, and I think the approach is the same. You want to have focus, you want to have accountability and you want to have structure. Here's what I mean by that. So focus for me was I set the date well before I started training for this. I decided ahead of time I'm gonna do this event on June 13th, 2024. Okay, decided this well in advance. Now, what's difficult about this is this is not a challenge you do with other people. This is not a challenge that you show up to, and a lot of you you know running races and endurance events. That's one of the good things about them is there's a date that you know you're going to compete and participate in that event. So for me it was a challenge because I had to just say this is the date and then stick to that right, because it could have been very easy for me to say, no, I'll push it. You know, I've got other things going on. No one's going to know, you know. So I made sure that that was my focus and and I kind of created some parameters around it.

Speaker 1:

Why did I choose June 13th. Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is it was a super week for me, so this is a week that I I take off one-to-one coaching and I do stuff behind the scenes. So I knew I wouldn't have any one-to-one calls with clients, so that was helpful. Another thing was we had a friend coming to visit us from out of town and so I knew that that person would be coming on the Monday and that would be after the run.

Speaker 1:

I also knew strategically because you have to run through the night that you know June 13th, where I live, is around the time of year when we get the most sunlight. Right, the sun comes up at about five, it goes down around 9.30, 10. You still have some dusk there. So I knew that I'd really only have to run in the dark at around one o'clock at night. Okay, I'll kind of explain the structure and whatnot later, but that's the focus that I had. I set that date, okay. So you need focus, you need a deadline. That's really important. The next thing that you need, or that helped me prepare, was accountability. Right, I didn't have a training partner. I didn't have anybody that was going to do this with me, so it was really important that I create a layer of accountability for myself to make sure that I was disciplined and I stuck to the training and I stuck to the date that I set.

Speaker 1:

And so something I did that I felt was a really important strategy was I followed something called 75 hard. Now, 75 hard in and of itself is another challenge, so I did a challenge to create or to complete another challenge, and 75 hard is this process where, every day, for 75 days, you drink a gallon of water, you do two 45 minute workouts and one of those has to be outdoors, you read 10 pages of a book, you take a progress photo and there's something else I'm missing there as well. But the purpose of this challenge is to basically just stay committed, stay consistent, day after day after day, and I knew that because this is a physical challenge, the training was going to be so important. So I wanted to do two workouts a day, especially when you get into the meat of the run on the day of the run. You're running every four hours anyway, so it was important to be able to do two workouts a day, and that really served me well. Also, staying hydrated. Oh, the other part of the 75 hard that I forgot was sticking to a particular eating regimen, and so, for me, I decided that I was going to reduce or eliminate, actually sugar and flour for my diet, and so I did that for 75 days.

Speaker 1:

And again, talk about accountability. That kept me really accountable in my training. One of the things that's held me back in the past when I've done endurance events whether it's a marathon, an Ironman is you can really get in your head about what you're allowed to do in terms of overeating, right, because you burn so many calories while you're training for those events that you can let the foot off the gas a little bit. And that's what I would often do in the past. I'd eat whatever I wanted. This kept me more in align with what I wanted to achieve over the course of the training and then, of course, when I did the run.

Speaker 1:

So you have focus, you have accountability and the last thing is structure. So you need a program, you need a plan in place that you're going to follow, and certainly the 75 hard is a is a, is sort of a framework. But you need a more detailed program and something that really helped me was the program itself that I've created in my arena, in the arena group that I coach and work with, we've been doing this year-long training program. It started back on January 1st and every four weeks we have a new phase that is predicated in progressive overload. So every phase gets a little bit more challenging, gets a little bit more difficult, and I cannot tell you how essential that has been or how that was leading into the run itself, right.

Speaker 1:

So something that was really important was I did a ton of zone two running, a ton of zone two training and zone two training. If you're not aware, I've done other podcast episode on this, but this is where you train at about 65% of your maximum heart rate. So very easy training. You're not exerting yourself in a crazy way, and why I decided to do that type of training was that's what I wanted to emulate when I did the fivex4x48. It's not about intensity. You're not trying to run fast, you're not trying to run for time, you just want to complete the challenge, and so having this really strong aerobic base is really important, and that's something that I built into the program itself. Now other guys are doing it, and so there's a ton of value for them to do a lot of zone two running or training as well, including, you know, fat loss and, like I said, just building out that aerobic base.

Speaker 1:

But that was one of the main focuses and there's a couple of ways I did that. So one was obviously just light, easy jogs, you know, through the trails near my house, so it was really low impact running that helped me stay injury free. And then, and then the other thing I did when I, you know, when I had already built up enough running volume, was I did a lot of rucking, which is where you do essentially weighted hiking, so I put a weight vest on and I'd go out for long hikes, which would get me into about zone one, not necessarily zone two, but again, it was really great for building the muscles in my legs and developing muscular endurance, which helped me, as you can probably imagine, in the running itself. Okay, so that was the first thing I did as part of the program. The second thing I did was I did lots of strength training, and this is something that endurance athletes typically avoid or they don't prioritize. And I really saw the importance of doing strength training for this endurance event because I knew that when I started running and over the course of 48 hours, my muscles would break down, and when your muscles break down, you get a lot more soreness that sets in and you increase the risk of injury. Okay, and more so when you finish the run, you have a lot more soreness and you don't recover nearly as well. So that was something I really prioritized Lots of lower body strength training, lots of upper body strength training, because it really helps you in endurance events and it's something that's often overlooked. So that's kind of how I prepared, and that focus, that accountability, that structure just really gave me a lot of consistency.

Speaker 1:

And, of course, there were setbacks. It wasn't that simple. There was things that I had to deal with along the way. I'm still working. I'm still serving my clients and my way. I'm still working. I'm still serving my clients and my community. I'm still a father, I'm still a partner to my spouse, so there's a lot going on in my life. It's not like I just had this training to do and that was it. So managing and balancing all of that was really really difficult at times, and so how did I manage that? Well, the plan itself kept me accountable. It kept me focused and consistent, but also reminding myself of my why was really key. I wanted to be an example for my clients and my daughter people in my life. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone, I wanted to push my limits. So I kept going back to that, especially when I faced the challenge of balancing my life and this training.

Speaker 1:

Now, another setback that I dealt with was an injury, and luckily it was just one injury, but the timing was really difficult. So you know, typically when you go into an endurance event like this, whether it's a marathon or an Ironman, you do something called a taper, and what that means is the intensity and the volume of your training goes up into a certain point, usually about 14 days before the event, and then you drastically pull that back. And why do you do that? Well, you give your body a chance to recover, to rest, so that you're peaked and fully ready at the time of the event, rather than just training all the way up until the event, where you wouldn't be at your best condition. Now, 10 days before the event, I was doing a pretty intense lift session. I was doing some split squats and I felt this pop in my left upper hip, kind of my hip flexor area. I immediately knew that was not good. I put the bar down. I put the bar back on the rack and I felt immediate pain in my hip and I thought that is not good.

Speaker 1:

Now I also understood the importance of staying optimistic, staying positive, and so at that point I decided immediately and this is something I tell my clients I'm going to turn this seemingly difficult setback or challenge into an opportunity. And what I knew at that point was I had about 10 days before the start of the run, and so I was going to use this as an opportunity to just rest and recover and taper anyway. So I immediately stopped all lower body training. I stopped, you know, I couldn't run, so I, you know that was something I just had to stop doing anyway, and I focused on what I could do. And so I started doing more foam rolling, more stretching, more dynamic movements, and I think that really helped me because my injury healed pretty quickly. Of course, I did ice and I did all the other things ate well, got good sleep but it helped my legs recover from the intense training that I had done up until that point and, to be honest with you, I was feeling quite a bit of quad soreness. Anyway, I think I had a lot of micro tears from the training that just weren't healing enough, and so I could leverage that injury into an opportunity. So that's what I want to offer to you when you face setbacks, can you turn that into an opportunity to maybe work on a weakness, work on something that you've been avoiding or haven't been prioritizing and you know, I stayed positive throughout, so that's important as well. Manage your brain, manage your thoughts around what's happening and then continue to, um, to work on what you need to work on. Okay, so, um, that was kind of the training and the preparation and the setbacks leading up to the event.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to kind of explain what the experience was like. What is it like to run five miles every four hours for two days? This is something that I anticipated, going into the event, being really difficult, not necessarily the running itself, but the two-day span of it. I'd never done anything for two days and I'm someone who really focuses on sleep, so to experience this lack of sleep was something I anticipated being really difficult, and it was. That was definitely one of the hardest parts of the challenge was just that every four hours, you're up and you're doing something like this. Okay, but let me kind of start from the beginning Now.

Speaker 1:

I decided to go my first run at 5 am. So 5 am and then every four hours, which meant 9 am, 1 pm, 5 pm, 9 pm 1 am. So that was the first day, and then I just repeated that again the next day. Okay, so that meant that my last run was going to be at 1 am in the morning, and the reason I decided on this was I typically get up at 5 am anyway, and so I decided that that's probably the circadian rhythm my body is most used to, and so I wanted to sort of mimic that as much as I could in the run.

Speaker 1:

Right, one of the most important things that they teach you in endurance events is that you shouldn't really do anything new leading up into the run or the race. So if you're doing a 5k or a marathon or something along those lines, you know what's really important is no new equipment, no new running shoes, no new shorts or t-shirts or running shirts, no new nutrition. So don't start eating foods you haven't eaten before, don't try new gels, right, don't change your routine at all. You want to keep everything as consistent as possible. That was something that I knew going into this run, something I wanted to keep in mind.

Speaker 1:

First run was at 5 am, I got to tell you because I rested and I recovered. I felt amazing, felt amazing. First run. Felt great. It was going to be a hot. Recovered I felt amazing, felt amazing. First run, felt great. You know it was going to be a hot day. I knew that, saw the weather. So the first or the two days I anticipated it being into the 30s in terms of Celsius here where I live. The other thing was the route. The route that I picked is near my house, so it started right from my front door and it's 8.33 kilometers, 5.33 miles or something along those lines, and it was very hilly, so I didn't choose a flat run. It was very you know these kind of rollers and these gradual inclines, so it wasn't an easy run. But it was in the forest, it was beautiful weather, so I had all of that going for me in terms of doing the run.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, first few runs felt amazing. By about, I think, 9 pm, that would have been my fourth or my. That was my fifth run. The 9 p, the 9 PM run, I I started to feel the fatigue. I started to kind of feel the soreness. And then the hardest run that I did was the one P 1 AM run on the first day. That was by far my my hardest run. I felt fatigued, I felt nauseous, um, I started to feel the pain in my legs and muscles and I started to feel my calves really not cramp up, but I felt them get really tight and my biggest fear was that I was going to pull a muscle, I was going to strain one of my calf muscles, because that was something that I'd been dealing with throughout the training is these tight calf muscles, and so I was afraid that I was going to strain a muscle and then have to stop.

Speaker 1:

Now, fortunately, I was able to kind of manage all that, and let me talk a bit about how I did manage in between each run, because it presents a bit of a unique challenge. It's just enough time to change your clothes, you know, get some food, get some water, but not enough time to get some full rest and recovery, and so I think that was really unique. Part of this challenge is you have to balance all these different variables. It's, you know, because when you're eating and sleeping or, sorry, when you're eating and hydrating, you can't sleep, and when you're sleeping you can't do those other things. So just managing those variables was really important.

Speaker 1:

But I got to tell you what really helped me was I did three things. I always warmed up using a foam roller before every run and I always cooled down using the foam roller again. And I also used a TheraGun, which is like a percussion massage gun, and I also did cold plunges throughout the day Not every time, but I found that when I did a cold plunge, my next run was that much more efficient and enjoyable. It was just so much more easier to run. So you know what that taught me was the importance of managing your body in other ways. Now, certainly, as I got through the later stages of the second day, I started to sleep more. I felt a lot more fatigue, so I'd get in an hour at the most, an hour and a half of sleep in between each run. So that was really key.

Speaker 1:

Now, what else can I tell you about this run? That was really unique. You know you're by yourself, obviously, the whole time I listened to music, I listened to podcasts, but a lot of times you're just in your own brain and you're managing your thoughts, you're managing your emotions, you're managing your energy, and so it was really unique just to kind of be in that perspective for so long, and a lot of times I went to gratitude because I just thought I get to do this challenge, I live in this beautiful area, I get to do these runs in this great weather, on this trail. Yes, my body is sore, but my body's capable of doing this, and that really helped fuel me mentally, emotionally, through the ups and downs of this challenge. Now, with that, I want to share with you a few things that I learned along the way, and I think they're really important takeaways because they can help you remember how to overcome significant challenges as you're pursuing them, how to overcome significant challenges as you're pursuing them.

Speaker 1:

The first thing I learned is just because things might be going well or might be going poorly in a particular moment doesn't mean they're going to continue that way. So, in other words, there were times on the run where I felt really, really rough. I was tired, I was thinking like, why am I doing this? You know I could very easily just stop this and not have to keep doing this. You know, feeling really low energy, like I could barely even move and maintain the pace that I was going at. But what really helped me is reminding myself that just because things are tough now doesn't mean they're going to be tough, ongoing, and I certainly experienced that I. I I would have a difficult run and then the next run would be really uh, really enjoyable, really easy. My body wouldn't hurt, I had a lot of energy, I just felt really great.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and what's kind of highlighted by that is my most difficult run, was my 1 am run on the first day and my fastest run, my most enjoyable run, was my last run at 1 am on the last day, and you would think that after running for 44 hours straight, you'd be really tired and just done and I was. But just because things weren't going well on one run didn't mean they were going to keep going that way, and that can be true for you as well in your life. Just because things might not be going well doesn't mean they have to stay that way. Okay, another thing I learned is, as I kind of explained earlier, just the importance of consistency in pursuing our goals and overcoming our challenges. We need to have that accountability, we need to have that focus, we need to have that plan in place and when you do, you focus on kind of those little things. The big things take care of themselves, and so I think that just kind of really hit me.

Speaker 1:

When I was doing this event and this challenge that you know, I relied on my training, I relied on my preparation, and so I had a lot of confidence going into this, even when I faced setbacks of fatigue and potential injury and you know just all the other things that came along with it. The other thing I learned is just how, um, how amazing our bodies are in and pushing physical limits. You know like to run a hundred by a hundred kilometers in two days. I know that's like a lot of ultra runners now are doing 100 miles, 160 kilometers in 24 hours and all that sort of thing. That's amazing, but to do that over two days is a unique challenge and I think we should never underestimate what our bodies are capable of doing.

Speaker 1:

The last thing I'll share with you that really hit me was just how important it is to have support systems in place and share with other people what you're doing, because part of this journey, what I did was I shared on Instagram each run and kind of did a little documentation of what I was going through and the amount of feedback I got, the amount of support and people cheering me on. That really helped me through difficult times. And my wife she was just phenomenal. She was great at ensuring I had everything I needed. She cooked me food at five in the morning, at one in the morning, so she was just fantastic. And I think that when you pursue a challenge like this, it's important to do all the work that you need to do on your own right that's part of this process but also surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed and have people in your corner who can help you through the difficult times. All right, guys, that's what I have for you today. I just wanted to take some time and document this on the podcast, share with you different things I learned along the way.

Speaker 1:

I highly encourage you to consider doing something of your own, your own challenge. It's going to push you, push your physical limits, push your mental limits. It's going to cause you to grow as a person and help you inspire other people as well, because you have other people in your life who are looking up to you and they want to see what you're doing, and so when you do something amazing, it inspires them to do something as amazing as well. Thanks a lot for listening. I really appreciate it and I look forward to next week, where we'll have another great chat. Take care, now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path. Better health and weight loss.