From Alcohol to Ultra: Jeff's Inspiring Journey

Summary

In this episode of the Ginger and Chocolate podcast, host Lindsay Hiken speaks with Jeff McGregor about his transformative journey from alcohol dependency to becoming an ultra runner. Jeff shares how the pandemic heightened his stress and led to increased alcohol consumption, but ultimately, he found solace in running. Through his experiences, he discovered a supportive community of sober runners and learned valuable lessons about mindfulness, resilience, and personal growth. Jeff's story highlights the healing power of running and the importance of finding healthy outlets during challenging times. In this conversation, Jeff MacGregor shares his experiences during ultra marathons, focusing on the importance of pacing, mental resilience, and the emotional journey of endurance sports. He discusses the challenges faced during races, the support from pacers and crew, and the lessons learned that can be applied to life beyond running. The dialogue emphasizes the interconnectedness of physical and mental strength, and how endurance sports can foster a sense of community and personal growth.

Keywords

ultra running, sobriety, mental health, mindfulness, community, personal growth, endurance sports, running journey, addiction recovery, trail running, ultramarathon, pacing, mental resilience, endurance sports, personal journey, emotional health, community support, running, ultra running, race experience

Takeaways

• Jeff moved from Canada to California with his family.
• The pandemic increased Jeff's work stress and alcohol consumption.
• Running became a healthy outlet for Jeff during sobriety.
• He discovered a community of sober runners in ultra running.
• Mindfulness in running helped Jeff cope with life's challenges.
• Jeff's decision to get sober was influenced by his running journey.
• He progressed from running a half marathon to ultra marathons.
• The trail running community provided support and friendship.
• Jeff learned to manage physical and emotional challenges in ultra running.
• Preparation and mental resilience are key to completing ultra marathons. Pacing can significantly impact performance during long races.
• Mental lows are a natural part of endurance sports.
• Community support is crucial in overcoming challenges.
• Recognizing when you're in a low can help you push through.
• Having a positive mindset can change the race experience.
• Preparation and crew support can make a big difference.
• It's important to focus on the journey, not just the finish line.
• Endurance sports can teach valuable life lessons about resilience.
• The experience of running can foster deep connections with others.
• Emotional strength is as important as physical strength in endurance sports.

Sound Bites

• "I found myself drinking more and more."
• "There's a community of sober runners."
• "This too shall pass."
• "I was way ahead of where I should have been."
• "That's a marathon right there."
• "I was in a low at that point."
• "It made the difference."
• "I had a pretty big crew."
• "I was able to recognize that I was in a low."
• "I was severely und

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Transcript

Lindsay Hiken (00:01.335)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Ginger and Chocolate podcast. I'm your co-host, Lindsay, and this morning I am flying solo with my guest, Jeff McGregor, who's gonna talk to us about some ultra running adventures, sobriety, all the stuff that we love. So welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff MacGregor (00:21.544)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lindsay Hiken (00:22.975)
Yeah, of course. I've met you before, but I don't know really anything about your story or very little about your story. So if you want to just take us back and talk a little bit about kind of where you were and how you got to where you are now a little bit, that would be great.

Jeff MacGregor (00:38.83)
Sure, happy to. So I am originally from Canada, Toronto area, and moved to California about eight years ago. I moved here with my family. moved for a job. you know, typical family setup. I have a daughter, one daughter and a wife and a dog, and we're kind of doing our thing, just getting through life. And then a big giant pandemic happened.

And I was working a lot during the pandemic. I was working probably 14, 15 hours a day. And I think everybody's job is high stress. But the stress of my job was really, I was feeling it and I was finding myself sequestered in my home, working on a computer on Zoom nonstop.

Lindsay Hiken (01:22.261)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (01:37.522)
trying to maintain some sort of normalcy outside of that. And for me, that ended up, I guess my, my outlet ended up becoming, alcohol using more and more alcohol. And I found myself getting into this routine where I would just work, try to be, you know, a normal family person. And then in the evenings, I would just stay up and watch mindless television and I found myself drinking more and more.

We took a family trip to a, we got an Airbnb sort of in the foothills of the Sierras in central California. It was a place with a pool. It was a place where my daughter was able to sort of be a kid again, know, not wear a mask because we were, you know, pretty isolated out there. And it was like a forest gump.

Lindsay Hiken (02:26.135)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (02:34.944)
Incident with me. I woke up one day and I started running I hadn't run in Years and years before that Probably high school. Maybe I had done a 10k at one point But I just got up one day and I had a slight hangover and I just said I'm going out for a run And I think I ended up running maybe seven or eight miles that day Yeah, which was probably a bad idea

Lindsay Hiken (02:35.607)
Lindsay Hiken (02:57.269)
Wow.

That's not recommended.

Jeff MacGregor (03:04.845)
But it just felt so good. And I remembered that feeling. And that picked up my career again. I don't know if you'd call it a career, but hobby.

Lindsay Hiken (03:18.337)
So let me just jump in really quickly. So you had been a runner previously at some point.

Jeff MacGregor (03:22.798)
Not really, I ran. I think I maybe did cross country in high school, but really poorly at it. I think I did a 10K once in Canada. Yeah, yeah. And that was the extent of it, really.

Lindsay Hiken (03:27.146)
Mm.

Lindsay Hiken (03:32.009)
okay. Okay.

Okay so this is a pretty new thing when you picked it up.

Jeff MacGregor (03:39.104)
It was a new thing, but what it did for me was it just gave me a sense of a healthy outlet. gave me the feeling of euphoria, being outside. It was exactly what I needed. I was pretty overweight for my body at the time. was probably 30 pounds, 35 pounds heavier than I was now.

And so when I got into it, I'm the type of person who when I get into something, I get into it to excess. Whatever it is. Yes.

Lindsay Hiken (04:17.751)
You don't say. I feel like every person who has had to go through getting sober can relate to just being able to get deeply into any anything that we.

Jeff MacGregor (04:36.984)
Right. And for, you know, that's work for me. That's, you know, whatever activity I end up putting myself into. As you say, just go in full-fledged. And so I started running a lot with no real idea of what I was doing. No idea of how to stretch or take care of my body or...

you know, all of that stuff. it's not, sometimes these things kind of naturally come together where you think, well, if I'm going to go and get up early in the morning, I probably don't want to run hungover. and if I'm going to, you know, get up and run in the morning, eating pizza all the way until two in the morning or whatever the Cheetos or Doritos isn't going to help either. and so.

Lindsay Hiken (05:13.681)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (05:23.243)
Hahaha

Lindsay Hiken (05:28.292)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (05:31.342)
The, think running for me, that outlet gave me something that I didn't have previous. And it gave me a sense of identity outside of work and outside of whatever my identity was at the time. It allowed me to expand who I was and what I was capable of doing. And.

Lindsay Hiken (05:39.703)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (05:56.608)
It was pretty early, was, you know, was able to see that I was not able to keep drinking, nor did I want to to drink the way I was. Scotch and runnix just don't go together whatsoever.

Lindsay Hiken (06:04.343)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (06:10.071)
my gosh. The idea of drinking a bunch of scotch and then running the next morning makes me, gives me the chills.

Jeff MacGregor (06:17.261)
Yeah.

There's this sort of low-lying headache for me that happens right over the eyebrows. You just can't get rid of that. know, the idea people say, well, you'll sweat it out. It's, I don't know. It's, it's fun. It's pleasant whatsoever.

Lindsay Hiken (06:30.455)
No. It's true that you probably will sweat out and smell like booze, which is unpleasant for everybody around you, but it's not going to get rid of that headache. That headache is bigger than sweating.

Jeff MacGregor (06:47.306)
Exactly, exactly. The interesting thing about running, especially long distance running in my experience, is there are a lot of people who have similar stories, a lot of people who have made the decision to get sober. And so I found quickly within the running community, a community of sober runners as well, which was a complete surprise. I didn't expect that. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (07:14.903)
Super cool. Yeah, that's cool. I feel like of all the endurance athletes, I know they're either sober or they're normies to the point where they, and I think a lot of our listeners know what normies are because we've talked about it, Mike and I have talked about it before, but in case you don't, normies is just a way that people who are sober refer to normal drinkers that don't need to get sober, that don't, you know, they might have a beer or something and then.

drink like a normal individual. But every endurance athlete I know is a normie to the extent that they don't ever really overindulge because they have other goals that that doesn't support or they're sober. Yep.

Jeff MacGregor (07:57.794)
Yeah, yeah. What I found in ultra running, there's this process that I go through, and I've heard others say the same thing.

where you put yourself into this state of suffering. There's no way around it. Running for hours and hours and hours at a time and climbing mountains and doing all that stuff can be a suffer fest. And I think for me, was something in going into those states in a sober mind and body and exploring what...

what lies within that experience. That was, I've healed a lot. I've learned a lot about myself, my own trauma, is my own background and experience through running and through putting myself into that state. Because you have to figure out, it's just you and your brain and your body, right, exactly. And...

Lindsay Hiken (08:58.741)
Yeah, yeah. Because it is just you and your brain.

Jeff MacGregor (09:09.998)
And there's this sense of mindfulness that you need to put yourself into. I have really, really great running coach who's also sober. And she had all these really wise lessons for me about what happens when you get into these running, into these states of suffering. And if you get cramps, that's your body saying you need salt. If you get...

If you get into a really, really low state and you think, I'm never going to do this. Why am I out here? The imposter syndrome sets in. That's usually just a calorie deficit. And so there are these very specific things that one can do to fix their current state. And I think that that applies really well in sobriety and getting through some of the things that we go through.

Lindsay Hiken (09:43.349)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (10:06.251)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (10:06.412)
you know, when life gets lifey, how do you deal with those on their own terms?

Lindsay Hiken (10:12.023)
Yeah, yeah, I like that idea of just kind of having a practical way to cope with something that's cropping up and maybe that's food or salt or another tool, the emotional tool you've learned in sobriety. I know that that's helpful to me to just go, okay, well, I feel hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Like, what can I do? Okay, well, I could eat something. I could talk to someone else, usually a sober person. You know, I could.

I could take a little nap, which is the way I love to do when I'm crabby. And I feel better instead of wallowing in this like, you know, it's all gonna, it's all coming, it's all gonna crash down and I suck and this is horrible and life's over. It's like, take a nap. okay. And then I'm like, maybe it's not all gonna fall apart.

Jeff MacGregor (11:00.493)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (11:05.398)
Right. It's that, it's that beat. there's this saying that I learned both in sobriety and in running and especially ultra running. that's this shoot, this too shall pass. You you can feel just absolutely wonderful on the trails. and if you're to be out on the trails for 30 hours, that'll pass and it won't feel good for a little while. And you will, you will experience all these emotions and just knowing that those are temporary states.

Lindsay Hiken (11:24.989)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (11:33.623)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (11:34.286)
when I feel those in real life, you know, when I get really frustrated over a situation or over an outcome, you know, I know that that's just a temporary state and running is a place where I can go to have those lessons bashed into my head again.

Lindsay Hiken (11:41.569)
Lindsay Hiken (11:50.763)
Yeah. So let me quickly just go back. You started running. You did your seven miles when you were on vacation. And was that pretty much you started running and then at some point, pretty quickly, it sounds like you realized I don't want to drink and and run. And that's the point where you got some help and just were like, I'm I'm kind of done with this. Is that what happened?

Jeff MacGregor (12:14.348)
That's, there's more to it for sure. I, you know, I think for myself, my decision to get and stay sober, there was a lot of elements that went into it for sure. You know, I got to a place, I think emotionally where I was done, you know, where use of alcohol was no longer working for me.

Lindsay Hiken (12:17.141)
Of course.

Jeff MacGregor (12:42.126)
And I didn't, I could see very clearly that it was not having a positive impact in my life. I wasn't showing up to be the type of person that I want to be. I don't think I was meeting my potential whatsoever. And so there were definitely more factors than that. think running was a helpful...

Lindsay Hiken (12:57.697)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (13:06.784)
helpful piece of the puzzle that just sort of put me over the edge. It was a way that I could, you know, I could see it as a physical part of it. The other, you know, lows that I was getting into were, you know, emotional, depression, all that sort of stuff. And I just wasn't being, I wasn't getting out of it. And I was in this cycle where

Lindsay Hiken (13:11.169)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (13:15.798)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (13:26.295)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (13:29.632)
it was no longer working. was no longer the thing that was giving me an escape from my own anxiety and depression. So I think it wasn't the only reason by any means, but it was really helpful in making that decision for me.

Lindsay Hiken (13:38.91)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (13:42.817)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (13:46.379)
Yeah.

Yeah, there's always something that kind of pushes people over the edge. know, sometimes it's catastrophic. Sometimes not. And in my case, it wasn't catastrophic. had all these horrible things happen as a result of really just Chardonnay. You for me, it was just Chardonnay. But, know, it just was ruining my life. And none of the catastrophic things that happened were what pushed me over the edge.

It was like I just woke up one day and was like, I cannot. I just can't. Same kind of feeling of like I have no potential this way and it's never going to stop unless I. Actively do something about it. It's not I'm not it's not magic. not just going to suddenly be like, hey, I'm healed and I'm not going to drink anymore. So I feel like it's a moment of it's lucky to have that moment of clarity where you're like, I can't.

Like you're talking about where you're like, can't have the life I want. I can't be the person I want to be. You know, unfortunately, I think a lot of people who are in the position we were both in don't get that. I'll get that lucky moment. So good for us.

Jeff MacGregor (14:57.282)
Right. Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (15:02.446)
Good for us, good for, I think you're 100 % right. And I think, you know, in my case, I wanted to believe for a very long time that if I fixed these other things in my life, then I could also, then drinking would be a part of that. And I had to get to the place where I knew that.

Lindsay Hiken (15:20.021)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (15:27.2)
It didn't matter how I rearranged the pieces. Drinking could not be a part of my life if I was going to be the type of person that I want to be, the type of father, the type of human being, husband, human being, all of it.

Lindsay Hiken (15:43.403)
Cool, and okay, so that all makes a lot of sense. And I'm grateful you were able to go through that and get there. With the running, you started at maybe like a seven mile early run, and then how did you progress to ultra? Because you don't just, or well maybe you do, but most people don't just get up and go, well, I think I'm gonna run, okay, I'm running seven miles, I think I'm gonna do an ultra today, or I'm gonna sign up for one. So how did that happen for you?

Jeff MacGregor (16:12.472)
For me, there was always this bucket list in the back of my head. I'd love to be able to run a marathon. If I could just ever run a marathon, just once, you know, I think a lot of people have that. And I put that dream aside for many, many, many years. And I just, it was something that I never thought that I would be able to do. And so as I started running, I realized that if I worked really hard at it, I could get to 13.1.

Lindsay Hiken (16:27.157)
No.

Jeff MacGregor (16:40.622)
I can get to a half marathon and I signed up I think in 20 whatever year the SF marathon was back on after the pandemic. have been 21 or 22. I signed up for the half marathon and I ran it barely. It was a sight to be seen. And which was huge for me. It was absolutely massive. And I remember thinking that was...

Lindsay Hiken (16:40.757)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (16:50.58)
okay.

Lindsay Hiken (17:02.742)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (17:06.464)
Incredible and really hard and probably is there's no way I could ever double that and I don't know what it was. It was just it's the same. It's that that push to excess that push to excess I got really Running became a larger part of my identity. I started training. I found a plan I found a coach and I ended up the next year running a marathon

Lindsay Hiken (17:20.267)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (17:27.063)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (17:34.857)
Okay. And what marathon did you run? Okay, okay.

Jeff MacGregor (17:38.414)
It was the San Francisco Marathon. Yeah, so I came back and ran that ran the full route, which is beautiful marathon. And they always say it's funny. They always say, oh, it's such a hilly marathon and it's going to be really difficult. Then you get into Alters and you realize that hills means something different. live I live in Half Moon Bay in California and I live in arguably one of the greatest, most beautiful, accessible trail areas, I think, in the entire country, if not the country.

And so I realized, I think it was my third marathon. I was running in San Diego. I started running a lot. I started just joining races and upping my miles. I started getting into trails more and more and realizing, you know, if I'm gonna spend this much time on my feet and put this many miles, you know.

Lindsay Hiken (18:20.225)
Uh-huh.

Jeff MacGregor (18:29.198)
I don't want to be on pavement all the time in the city on a freeway. The San Diego Marathon goes actually at one point through the freeway. And I thought we'd go to Mission Beach and I thought we'd be doing all this, you know, Baywatch type stuff and that wasn't the case at all. And I decided after that that I really wanted to move over to running trails because you can just get out in the middle of nature, be completely on your own.

Lindsay Hiken (18:37.747)
yeah.

Ha ha

Jeff MacGregor (18:57.302)
I can go outside my backyard and hit a trail that'll take me up into the Santa Cruz mountains and I'll be lost for hours and hours at a time. know, I see anybody, it's a mountain biker or a fellow runner or something. And so the trail running community, I joined a club, running club on the coast called Coastside Running Club, aptly named. And...

Lindsay Hiken (18:57.387)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (19:05.932)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (19:19.787)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (19:23.95)
You know, the community that I discovered was so welcoming, so friendly, willing to share any tips, active, you know, all of the things that in my newfound sobriety and the extra time that I had on my hand, that I was able to find a community of people who, that I was attracted to. And then within that, sober community as well.

Lindsay Hiken (19:41.803)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (19:47.915)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Those guys are nice. When I moved to Half Moon Bay, ran with them for a little bit. I ended up staying with my team, my triathlon team over the hill. So I didn't stay with the, the, Coastside group very long, but they were definitely like a welcoming, group when I moved here and didn't hardly know anybody over here. So they're awesome.

Jeff MacGregor (19:59.758)
you

Jeff MacGregor (20:12.878)
Yeah, yeah, it's been really, really great. I've learned for a long time. I just ran solo. I didn't want to run with anybody. It would often just be me and my headphones, but I learned to allow people in, which was hard for me. like. Yeah, and so when you run trails, my experience has been it quickly does not a lot of.

Lindsay Hiken (20:22.625)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (20:26.615)
A whole journey in itself.

Jeff MacGregor (20:42.43)
of races that are under 50K, a lot of trail runners end up being older runners. And so then I discovered that there's such a thing called the 100 miler. And Western States and all of these sort of these big races. And I thought, I wonder if I could do that. I wonder if I could, you know, and so I basically went from marathon to a goal of running a hundred miles.

Lindsay Hiken (20:46.07)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (20:55.83)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (21:08.808)
wow, little jump there.

Jeff MacGregor (21:10.7)
Little jump, yeah, yeah. And so I got a coach and we mapped it out and it was a very, very short time. I think it was maybe eight months. I went basically from running that 13 miler to running 100 in a year and a half. Really, really short time. But we worked at it and I, you know, I had this sense of discipline.

Lindsay Hiken (21:25.844)
Wow.

Jeff MacGregor (21:35.982)
that I was, I've always had a pretty decent work ethic and I was able to apply that discipline to, you I wanted that buckle really, really, really badly. And so I was able to, you know, I started running races, 50K, 50 mile until I was able to finally get to the hundred mile distance.

Lindsay Hiken (21:45.289)
Nice.

Lindsay Hiken (21:51.595)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (21:55.063)
Were you running the 50, 100K, 50 mile sort of here in Northern California or were you going all over the state or all over the country or what were you doing?

Jeff MacGregor (22:06.348)
I think, so most of them were in the area. There's so many races in the Bay Area. And I'd run up in the Headlands and down in LA or wherever work was taking me, I would run. So that was the other beautiful thing about discovering this. I traveled a lot. So I ran all over the United States, wherever I happened to be, and in Europe as well.

Lindsay Hiken (22:10.039)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (22:29.535)
Nice.

Jeff MacGregor (22:30.53)
But my race is, think the farthest away that I had run was the Cascades up in Washington state. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (22:35.255)
Oh, okay. Mm hmm. Yeah. Did you by any chance run the American River? They are 50. It's up in. Mm hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (22:42.866)
No, I've ran up there. The hundred miler that I Rio del Lago is up in Auburn area. And so I've ran those trails a little bit, but I didn't run a specific one.

Lindsay Hiken (22:48.299)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Yeah.

That's on my bucket list. I've never done an ultra, but that's on my bucket list. So we'll see someday. Maybe I can get my running back. I had an injury and so I'm still not running. I'm doing a lot of writing, but but that one's I've heard it's beautiful. I heard it's pretty challenging, but you know, especially with the I've heard that the beginning many miles is on sort of a flattish rolling. So people kind of go a little too hard.

And then it has this section in it they refer to as the meat grinder because it you can go hard and then all of a sudden it's up and down, up and down. And it's like, oh, I didn't I didn't save my legs for this. But yeah, it's beautiful up there.

Jeff MacGregor (23:39.438)
I have extensive experience with the meat grinder. When I did, I ran Rio Del Lago, which is Hunter Myler in, I think, want to say it's in early November, late, That was my first one. Yeah. And you have to go through the meat grinder twice. You go through, I think the 40 mile marker and then around mile 85 or something on the way back.

Lindsay Hiken (23:51.287)
Was that your first one or? Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (23:58.379)
Ooh.

Lindsay Hiken (24:06.583)
yikes.

Jeff MacGregor (24:08.61)
Yeah, it's deserving of its name, that's for sure.

Lindsay Hiken (24:11.671)
Okay, well that's scary for me, but I am, you know, it is still a bucket list item and I'm glad I know you. can get some tips on the meat grinder when I get ready to do it.

Jeff MacGregor (24:24.768)
Yeah, my biggest tip is make sure your headlamp has batteries. When we went through on the way back, my pacer and I, you make mistakes when you run that distance. just make, your brain doesn't work and you start, often make silly mistakes. And we, due to a series of unfortunate events, found ourselves in the meat grinder in the middle of the night with no headlamp. We had run out.

battery, both of us. And so we were using a single iPhone flashlight to get through that section. And it's a long section, and it's a dangerous section, and not one that's helpful with an iPhone flashlight.

Lindsay Hiken (25:03.126)
my gosh.

Lindsay Hiken (25:09.911)
I was gonna say an iPhone's not known for holding their batteries. there's. Okay, so you did a half marathon, you did a few marathons, you were doing the 50Ks, I mean, sorry, 50 miles, 100Ks, those kinds of things. And then Rio de Lago was your first one. And.

Jeff MacGregor (25:13.452)
No, no, that's all you have. It's pretty scary.

Lindsay Hiken (25:35.895)
Just tell us a little bit about like sort of the emotional journey leading up to or, you know, that the day before the day of did you have nerves, that kind of thing.

Jeff MacGregor (25:44.564)
Yeah, it's really hard to, I think, especially for your first, it's really hard to, you have no idea what to expect. I mean, the longest that I had run going into Rio was a 50-mileer. I had done that a couple of times.

when you start tapering off, it's, you know, you get these phantom, I got these phantom pains, all of a sudden my hamstring was feeling weird, my hip. And so every single day there seems to be something in my body that's telling me, you're not gonna be able to make this. You're not gonna be able to do it. You're not 100%.

Lindsay Hiken (26:11.767)
Mm.

Lindsay Hiken (26:21.266)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (26:21.848)
It's hard to eat, you're carb loading, you're doing all these things. And then of course the night before, you know, it's really, really difficult to sleep. So they always say it's the two or three nights before a race is where you really wanna pack as many hours of sleep as possible because the nerves will come up. And so I didn't really sleep very much the night before, maybe three hours at best.

Lindsay Hiken (26:24.663)
.

Lindsay Hiken (26:29.823)
Uh-huh.

Lindsay Hiken (26:38.441)
Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (26:45.974)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (26:48.078)
And then like you say, the goal is to really run slow at the beginning, run really, really slow because you're be out there for so, long. And so I ran fast at the beginning. I was kept up with the herd, if you will.

Lindsay Hiken (26:53.825)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (26:59.991)
Of course.

Lindsay Hiken (27:08.171)
the experienced runners who that's slow pace or something.

Jeff MacGregor (27:11.21)
Exactly right. Yeah, so I should obviously be with them. But the funny thing is the first 40 miles of that race, especially 30, were just absolute heaven. know, everything was going really, really well. I had my nutrition dialed in. The energy was great. The sun was coming up. It wasn't super, super hot that day. It got hot. got into the 80s, but it wasn't bad for that area, up in Auburn area.

Lindsay Hiken (27:14.423)
.

Lindsay Hiken (27:23.479)
Mmm.

Jeff MacGregor (27:41.486)
Um, and I was good. I remember I came into an aid station. My goal was to run this thing around 26 hours, 25, 26 hours. 24 is usually the gold standard. And I came in around 30 and I asked my crew member, um, you know, how I was doing. And he just looked at me with this face and he said, you know, you are on pace to run like a 23 hour, 22 hour.

Lindsay Hiken (27:51.637)
Okay.

Yeah, okay.

Lindsay Hiken (28:10.559)
okay.

Jeff MacGregor (28:12.014)
So I was way ahead of where I should have been and I just said, uh-oh, that's not good.

Lindsay Hiken (28:20.627)
Yeah, you'd think it would make you excited, but then you're like, I've got 70 more miles or, you 60 more miles.

Jeff MacGregor (28:24.814)
Right, and I've expended probably way too much energy at the beginning of this race. I put too much on my legs.

Lindsay Hiken (28:32.097)
Whew. What time do you start that race? Because you're talking about the sun coming up.

Jeff MacGregor (28:37.102)
I think that race starts around four or five in the morning and it happens on the day that the hour changes, which is little funky. So you have to stay on the daylight savings, the one before throughout the race. So you might finish at seven, but it's really eight and it adds that one extra fun layer of complexity to your brain. It doesn't work when you're playing. Yeah, it's a little rough.

Lindsay Hiken (28:40.371)
Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (28:47.106)
Lindsay Hiken (28:54.775)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (28:59.131)
That's a little evil.

Jeff MacGregor (29:07.502)
But yeah, I mean, it wasn't until about 40 and when I hit that big grinder the first time, it's miles of jagged rock. unless you're, I don't know how these elites do it, but I don't know how they go through it as fast. It's just, you have to be really careful with your feet and make sure you're not gonna twist an ankle or anything like that. And that just, that totally slowed me down. And so.

Lindsay Hiken (29:27.104)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (29:32.62)
You you get into these, like I said, you get into these lows and highs and you're trying to make sure that you're continuing to eat and taking calories. I think just the, you really feel the weight of what you're trying to do when things start going bad, which is, think, part of the point. What do you do when things aren't completely perfect?

Lindsay Hiken (29:52.555)
Right.

Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (29:59.765)
Right, right. So just a technical thing. One of the challenges I have is going running downhill. That's where my body's like, nope, nope. Did you have any just a physical thing that you felt like was a challenge for you? Just physically and technically speaking, besides the fatigue and the mental aspects of it?

Jeff MacGregor (30:10.67)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (30:25.492)
In that race, no. I was actually, I was really, really well trained going into it. I'd done a lot of hills, a lot of descents in ones since then and races since then for sure. And you know, I've had probably for better or for worse, I've had to take cortisol shots in my feet and knees and stuff like that when things just creep up that I can't quite fix.

Lindsay Hiken (30:38.26)
Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (30:50.079)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (30:50.734)
And so a lot of that I have found is just experimentation, know, ultras versus hokas, you know, all the types of equipment to see what works right for my body. But yeah, downhills are tough and I go sort of back and forth on my, I guess, my speed with them.

Lindsay Hiken (30:58.741)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (31:04.938)
Right, right.

Lindsay Hiken (31:17.279)
Yeah, technique, too, I feel like is a big thing for the downhill. I mean, for running in general, obviously. But I've tried a couple. I mean, I've tried some techniques and I've some are better than others for me. I've I've I've executed, you know, on a technique that's good for downhill running. I see these pros or elite athletes just bombing down hills. And I'm very jealous because I'm like picking my way down and my hips are like, no, no. And I'm like, I'm barely even running. I'm not. I'm walking basically.

Jeff MacGregor (31:39.629)
Yes.

Jeff MacGregor (31:45.614)
And it makes a difference at the beginning versus in the middle versus at the end. love hills. I really, really love the uphills. Downhill's not so much. It totally, for me, depends probably more on my frame of mind than where my body is. If I'm willing to take a chance and speed downhill versus approach a little bit more carefully.

Lindsay Hiken (31:50.967)
Sure, sure.

Lindsay Hiken (31:55.457)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (32:08.087)
Sure. So OK, so you're a little over 40 miles in. You've got meat grinder going on. It's not starting to be as fun and free as it was in those first 30, 40 miles. And what's OK, so let's pick the story back up from there.

Jeff MacGregor (32:26.636)
Sure, so it was probably around halfway through the race, 40, 50 miles in, I was able to pick up my first pacer. And that made all the difference. Finally, I knew if I could get to that point, I'd have somebody to pace me, to be with me for the rest of the race. And my first pacer is, his name is Scott Clark. He lives on the coast. runs Dad's Luncheonette. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (32:34.164)
okay.

Lindsay Hiken (32:54.723)
yeah, yeah. I didn't know he was a runner. okay, cool.

Jeff MacGregor (32:56.352)
Really, really, really great guy. Yeah, yeah, he's a great runner, yeah. And so he and I are friends and he was going to pace me for 25 miles, which in and of itself is ridiculous, right? That's a marathon right there. And he had to pick me up, it was late, it was evening by that point, so we were gonna go into the night and go through what ended up being the darkest part of my...

Lindsay Hiken (33:10.294)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (33:24.695)
Emotionally dark, mean? Or.

Jeff MacGregor (33:25.282)
race. Emotionally, literally all of it.

and so I was, I was in a low at that point. I was hurting. was starting to have to walk. was in a calorie deficit. started hallucinating a little bit in the night. We were in so much. were, there was actually a bear in front of us at one point and they just didn't want to tell me. yeah, the funny thing about predators, I'm always worried about mountain lions.

Lindsay Hiken (33:49.591)
Mm.

my god. That's terrifying.

Lindsay Hiken (34:01.271)
Mm.

Jeff MacGregor (34:02.798)
But when you're that tired in a race, what I learned, I've experienced this a couple of times, it's actually, I get to a point where I don't want to expend the energy being worried about. My brain actually gets to a place where I do the calculations. The chances of me getting eaten by a bear or a mountain lion are so small that I have to put that out of my head.

Lindsay Hiken (34:15.146)
Uh-huh.

Lindsay Hiken (34:20.108)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (34:25.077)
Right, right.

Jeff MacGregor (34:25.646)
again is this really helpful, useful tool to have in real life when anxiety comes in and you can say, a minute, this isn't a real fear. The chances of this materializing and becoming a thing of my life is really low. I can cast that aside.

Lindsay Hiken (34:32.662)
Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (34:42.379)
I'm afraid of human predators being a woman running solo. You know, I have been a true crime fan and I have to stop listening to it or watching it because it's made me think about, you know, going out on the trails and there's a there's a true crime podcast that's dedicated to true crime that's happened in national parks solely and which is still the same level of the odds are still super, super tiny. But you're right that that worry has.

Jeff MacGregor (35:00.802)
Right.

Lindsay Hiken (35:11.349)
I've had it ruin some runs, you know, where I've passed someone who's like, maybe it looks weird, but they're probably just walking on the trail to be honest, you know, but I'm like, what is this person, you know? So, but you're right, that mental energy can really, really negatively impact your ability to physically do the job at hand.

Jeff MacGregor (35:15.329)
yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (35:21.23)
Right.

Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (35:34.722)
Yeah, it really shows you how interconnected these things are. So Scott was out of a movie. He was like the Pied Piper at one point. There was just runners, these runners that looked like they'd been through a war. They were limping, and everybody just gravitated behind him.

Lindsay Hiken (35:38.601)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (35:58.542)
He would say, know, I know you're feeling, you know, what's what's good? He would say that over and over. What's good? I know you're tired. I know you're sore. I know your quads are hurting, but what feels good? And everybody in the little group that he had assembled on this trail, well, my ankles feel good. Good. All right. Lisa's feel good. We would do that over and over. And he injected so much positivity into a really, really

hard section of the course when you are so tired and you still have 45 miles to go. It's so daunting. And to have him in there, not just for me, but for all of these other runners, we ended up being a little herd of runners on a single track trail in the middle of nowhere. And he just kept on making it a positive experience. And that made all of the difference.

Lindsay Hiken (36:46.988)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (36:55.691)
Mm-hmm.

I'm sure changing that helping you guys change your perspective has got to be invaluable.

Jeff MacGregor (37:04.866)
He had all of these runners that were just coming up and saying thank you to him. You know, know who he was or who I was, but he was just, it was really, really needed at that point. I think there's a lot of folks who run Rio solo. And so him being everybody's pacer at that time was really, really, it probably saved a lot of races for folks.

Lindsay Hiken (37:08.247)
Ha ha ha.

Lindsay Hiken (37:18.664)
Lindsay Hiken (37:29.559)
Oh yeah, they must have just been so stoked to come across you guys. If you don't have a pacer, that would be, I can't imagine not having a pacer that, know, mile 50 to 75 or 50 to 100. can't picture that, but yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (37:34.68)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (37:46.38)
Yeah, it made the difference. You know, I've ran two races at 100. The second one I just ran in Zion a couple months ago and I wasn't going to have a pacer for that one. And friend of mine at the very, very last minute came out and ran and crude and paced me solo. And again, she probably saved my race for sure. I finished that one without her.

Lindsay Hiken (37:57.942)
Mm.

Lindsay Hiken (38:08.204)
Mm-hmm.

So you had a second pacer or more than two?

Jeff MacGregor (38:14.966)
So for Rio, I had a crew of four people. I had a pretty big crew. It was really neat. was my friends, my neighbor came out, everybody was sort of behind me to help me cross this bucket list item off my list. So I had three pacers, one of which didn't quite work out. He...

Lindsay Hiken (38:18.432)
Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (38:35.53)
Okay.

Jeff MacGregor (38:39.958)
He wasn't very prepared to be a pacer and he didn't really know what he was getting into. And so I had one person who was sort of ended up being a bit of a liability on the course, which was a good lesson in itself. You you want to have people that are, you're not worried about them or their ability to navigate you or, or, or do the distance, you know, to do it safely.

Lindsay Hiken (38:41.707)
Mm.

Lindsay Hiken (38:45.879)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (38:52.855)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (39:05.109)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (39:08.396)
And so it wasn't, you know, there was some complexities and some dynamics that happened in there, but essentially the crew and the team that I had were amazing. I didn't have to think about.

what nutrition to bring on the next nine miles or the next seven miles between aid stations. They would remove everything from my vest and fill up my liquids and make sure I had tail wind and all the stuff that I needed so that I could just sort of concentrate on, all right, I've got six miles to the next aid station, seven miles to the next aid station. And it made all the difference.

Lindsay Hiken (39:44.075)
That's awesome. That sounds perfect. So ideal. Okay, so let's see what's happening coming into sort of did you well, so did you hit another cycle where you were feeling good again?

Jeff MacGregor (40:01.324)
I did, I did. I remembered what my running coach said, that this too shall pass. And so I was able to get out of, I was able to recognize that I was in a low with Scott's help and get out of it. And all of my, all of my runner, all of my pacers with the exception of one person were just, they were on, they were super positive, telling jokes, telling stories and very clued into what

what I was doing or saying. so, you know, they had been instructed by my coach, you know, watch how many times he pees, watch how many times, you know, is he going left when he should go left, like just little cues to make sure I wasn't falling deeply into a calorie deficit, but also just taking my lead on if I wanted an hour of quiet and headphones, that was okay. You know, it's a...

One of the interesting things about ultra running is you do get the opportunity to be really selfish in those spaces. Because it's, you know, the way I was taught, maybe this is wrong, but the way I was taught is it really is about you and your paces are there to help you in whatever situation you're in. So if you need somebody to just tell jokes, then they can do that. If you need quiet or if you want to talk about politics, I wouldn't recommend it.

Lindsay Hiken (41:08.406)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (41:29.687)
fueled by anger is probably not the best way to go.

Jeff MacGregor (41:30.53)
They can do that too. but it really is. no, it's not going to get you in any, any good state of mind. but yeah, my, my team, my crew there was phenomenal the entire way. And it really made the difference going into stations and seeing them and knowing, I mean, right down to having a chair and a blanket and change of clothes and all of that stuff. It was like that.

Lindsay Hiken (41:50.635)
Mm-hmm.

Mm hmm. How long would you stay when you would hit like a aid station?

Jeff MacGregor (41:59.84)
The longest I stayed at any station at Rio was, I think, 10 minutes. And that was enough to stuff in some quesadillas, change my shoes and socks, clean my feet, and go. Everything else was going to know quickly.

Lindsay Hiken (42:11.383)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, because I think about, you know, I haven't had this experience, but I know friends of mine have experiences even with long writing, like the death right or something where they get sucked into an aid station, you know, where they just can't get out and that ruins their ability to finish on time.

Jeff MacGregor (42:35.054)
Well, there's good music, there's hot food, there's, you know, at Zion they had fires and it was really cold at night in the desert. And so it's really easy to stay in an aid station. At Zion was different for me. I only had one crew pacer and I didn't, she didn't, wasn't able to jump in until 70 miles in.

Lindsay Hiken (42:42.135)
Lindsay Hiken (42:56.331)
okay.

Jeff MacGregor (42:56.69)
and I got really, really sick the last 50. I couldn't keep anything down. So the aid stations became more for me of I needed, like at one point I needed to take a dirt nap. I'd just get my stomach fixed. So it became more of a medical risk for me. But yeah, you're right. Generally, you want to get in and out of those stations pretty quickly because it's really easy to get comfortable in those.

Lindsay Hiken (43:01.047)
.

Lindsay Hiken (43:08.671)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (43:13.183)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (43:18.977)
Mm-hmm.

The legs would be settling too, I would think, and wanting to get tight. Okay, so let's hear about the end of your race.

Jeff MacGregor (43:25.102)
Exactly.

Jeff MacGregor (43:29.848)
So the end of my race, we did the meat grinder in the dark with this one little light. And I remember I was right at the very end of the meat grinder and I came really close to just falling into this crevasse and breaking my leg. It was like...

Lindsay Hiken (43:36.202)
Again.

Jeff MacGregor (43:48.142)
I was under five miles, I think, probably to the finish. that's how you just can't take these things for granted, right? Like you'll have to get to the finish line. So that was a scary moment. And I knew that...

Lindsay Hiken (43:54.807)
All right.

Jeff MacGregor (44:03.118)
I knew mathematically that all I had to do was just walk it in at this point. I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of walking for me in ultras, especially at that distance. But I knew that I was so well ahead of time that I didn't have to worry.

Lindsay Hiken (44:06.838)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (44:11.456)
Of course.

Lindsay Hiken (44:18.871)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (44:21.164)
And there's this thing that happens. I've experienced it a couple of times when the sun comes up that second time and you realize that you have been out for an entire day. You've seen the sun come up twice in the single run. You get so rejuvenated. just, it feels like you've had a full eight hours sleep. And so those last few miles were very.

Lindsay Hiken (44:41.141)
Huh.

Lindsay Hiken (44:44.597)
Really?

Jeff MacGregor (44:49.164)
Yeah, it's just everything changes in my personality. It's an indescribable feeling. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (44:51.691)
Huh.

Lindsay Hiken (44:55.223)
That's great. That's so good to hear. That's awesome. I I envision people just dragging in and being like, when's it going to end? I didn't think about the the the beauty of the sun coming up again and how rejuvenating it can be, especially since we live in Half Moon Bay and there's very little sun here where we live. So, OK, so you you went.

Jeff MacGregor (45:18.232)
Right.

It's absolutely mad.

Lindsay Hiken (45:24.919)
That's awesome. what time? OK, so the sun's coming up. it's what what time? mean, I'm not sure exactly what time of year you're running, daylight savings time, I guess. So is it coming up at 6, 6, 7?

Jeff MacGregor (45:42.574)
Yeah, I want to say it was maybe 6 30 or seven o'clock. Pretty it was pretty Rio is is in the middle of like it's almost the shortest time of the year. So I want to say I think I finished that race around nine and maybe the sun came up around seven.

Lindsay Hiken (45:45.704)
Okay. Okay.

Lindsay Hiken (45:59.369)
Okay. Were you with a Pacer still at this point? Or do they have to drop off or? Okay.

Jeff MacGregor (46:05.55)
No, had my pacer was able to run it into the end with me. So that was really fun. you know, I remember exactly when my watch hit a hundred miles. I think the race was like 101 or something, but knowing that it flipped over and seeing a hundred miles, it's just that next day is just when you know, you've made it, when you know, all you have to do is just walk in. It's like, you want a war, you know, you, you, you came out of this thing, this

Lindsay Hiken (46:10.637)
that's cool.

Lindsay Hiken (46:17.174)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (46:27.937)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (46:33.995)
Like I said, it's like living a lifetime in those, you know, 28 hours, 27 hours, because you feel everything and then you come onto the other side of it and you see, you know, the music and the finish line and they're calling your name and you get that buckle, you know, it's a pretty indescribable thing.

Lindsay Hiken (46:47.873)
Yeah. Yeah.

That's yeah, that feeling is amazing. I haven't done the 100 mile run, but I've done an Iron Man and it's the same thing. You know, I was definitely not in the front of the pack, but I had that experience of like, I could walk the rest of these miles and still finish on time. And when that happened, it was like, and you can see everyone around you is also feeling the same thing. The energy level goes way up because everyone's like, my God, okay. I may be running now, but I could stop. I could walk.

Jeff MacGregor (47:21.527)
Yes.

The hard part is done. Now it's the now all you have to do is just get into the finish line. There's the time for it. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (47:30.815)
Okay, so after you finish and it's exciting, then did you have the feeling of like, I want to do this again. Or did you have the feeling of like checking it off and kind of not sure?

Jeff MacGregor (47:42.74)
It was a never again, never gonna happen again, no chance. And that went away in probably three weeks.

Lindsay Hiken (47:50.537)
Okay, that's not too long.

Jeff MacGregor (47:52.778)
No, it's, you know, it's, think it's one of those things where when you're deep in the pain, the idea of doing it again is the furthest thing from, at least for me, from my mind. And then when that...

experience of being deep in pain goes away and then you start to remember all of the other things, all of the you know the the pied piper in the middle of the woods and the bear that we you know and getting through you know all these little adventures that were along the way and and and then for me personally how I was able to get myself out of low emotional states on my own and then seeing that

Lindsay Hiken (48:18.687)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (48:31.563)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (48:35.886)
play out seeing me myself in real life, be able to do that in other situations, whether it's at work or with family or in social dynamics, recognizing my own ability to pull myself out of negative states and realizing where I learned that from. Then I just want to go back and do it again.

Lindsay Hiken (48:49.303)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (48:55.223)
Mm hmm. Yeah. So was that when so the second one you've done now is Zion? Is that and you just did it recently and. OK, April, OK. And. Just to fast forward a little bit, what would you say the the top things are that you learned doing Rio that you brought into Zion, because I know it's a little different terrain. Like you said, you didn't have the pacer for the whole time or for that 50 miles.

Jeff MacGregor (49:02.732)
Yes. Yeah, I think that's a good one.

Jeff MacGregor (49:19.661)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (49:24.558)
Going into, so I ended up after Rio de Lago, ended up having, I ran probably the best month of my life after that. And then I just had essentially two years of injuries. I had brutal IT band syndrome, I broke my toe, I had just injury after injury after injury, and I essentially couldn't run at all for a year and a half. And I thought I was done. And I think,

Lindsay Hiken (49:39.297)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (49:54.478)
my you know I'm not I don't think I'm somebody who can sustain 50 60 miles a week over 11 12 13 weeks in a row in training and so going into I had all of these races that I planned to run that I had to cancel because I was just injured I was actually going to go and run Bigfoot which is a 200 miler up in Washington

Lindsay Hiken (50:04.094)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (50:11.607)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (50:15.413)
Yep.

Jeff MacGregor (50:17.582)
And so I basically had to cancel everything for a year and a half. It was really frustrating. I thought it was over. And then when this year came around, I decided I was going to cancel Zion because I was still injured. think the longest run I had going into Zion was 24 miles, and that was eight weeks prior. Severely, severely undertrained going into Zion.

Lindsay Hiken (50:39.572)
wow.

Huh.

Jeff MacGregor (50:46.808)
But what I real, I had a mindset change and I decided, you know, rather than trying to beat my record or, or, you know, go in with this mentality that it's finished or nothing, I'm just gonna go.

You know, I paid for this. I won't get the money back. Why wouldn't I just go to Zion National Park? And if it's five miles, 15 miles, 20 miles, and then I have the DNF, who cares? Like, who am I, who am I doing this for? Is it for Instagram? Is it for Strava? Is it to brag? Is it, you know, why am I doing this? And that change was huge for me because it allowed me to take any pressure that I had off of

Lindsay Hiken (51:11.905)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Lindsay Hiken (51:19.799)
.

Lindsay Hiken (51:29.291)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (51:31.424)
some performance goal and just say I'm gonna go to Zion and I'm gonna run in this beautiful landscape and whatever happens happens. So that I think was what I learned. think it made my, it was a level of maturity in my own approach to running that I didn't have before. Before that it was.

Lindsay Hiken (51:39.103)
Right. Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (51:53.802)
If it says I have to run 52.4 miles this week, I would run 60. I'd have to meet it no matter what, even if it means running injured or running at three in the morning to get my miles in. I don't really do that anymore. And I didn't bring that into Zion. And so was a very different race for me from that perspective.

Lindsay Hiken (52:00.246)
Bye.

Lindsay Hiken (52:03.627)
Right.

Lindsay Hiken (52:18.743)
Did you sorry, did you feel the sort of undertraining? Did you feel like backlash from that or because your mentality is different where you just sort of like whatever and just kept going or how did that work out?

Jeff MacGregor (52:32.02)
It was, so Zion, the first 50 again were just magic. Everything just seemed to be going into place. My mindset was really great. And then the next 50 is when the under training kicked in. I couldn't keep anything down. was probably, I probably had some heat exhaustion. I was literally nothing. couldn't keep anything in my body. So I was just, you know.

Lindsay Hiken (52:50.113)
Mm.

Lindsay Hiken (52:53.911)
.

Jeff MacGregor (52:57.078)
And I was in these stretches in the desert where I was by myself and you wouldn't see anybody for hours and hours. And that was really rough. I didn't think I would finish. There were times where I thought, well, is this even safe for me to be out here? And I was able to finish that thanks in large part to the person who crewed and paced me. But that was what I learned from that race.

Lindsay Hiken (53:03.67)
Yikes.

Lindsay Hiken (53:11.511)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (53:26.136)
was just how much mental grit I actually have. Because...

Lindsay Hiken (53:29.355)
I was gonna say, it's a very strong person to get sick like that and keep going.

Jeff MacGregor (53:37.356)
Yeah, it was, you know, and again, it was.

It wasn't me alone, it was some random dude who saw me hurting real bad and slowed his race down for seven miles to just hang with me, you know, and get me to an aid station. And another one, two people in that race did that. They almost, I'm sure they changed, you know, their own performance to help me. You know, I tried to do the same for somebody who had ran out of water in the middle of the desert and was not making good decisions anymore.

Lindsay Hiken (53:48.759)
Wow.

Lindsay Hiken (54:10.368)
Right, right.

Jeff MacGregor (54:10.678)
And I think, you know, that's what I love about this community so much is unless you're one of these elites that are at the front of the pack, everybody who's out there is cheering everybody else on and genuinely cares about your physical, mental well-being, and they want to see the finish. There's one person kept on saying, you're stronger than the pain. You're stronger than the pain.

Lindsay Hiken (54:16.343)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (54:37.249)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (54:37.27)
And I just, I'm saying that in my own head. Okay, I'm stronger than the pain. I'm stronger than the pain.

Lindsay Hiken (54:42.175)
Wow. That's this is why I love the sort of intersection of like mental, emotional health and endurance sports, because, you know, there's not that many other places where you can I mean, you can bring it into life. But but what a, you know, way to just bring a focus on, you know, how strong am I mentally and emotionally? Can I make it through something really tough without just saying, well, because it seems like

Jeff MacGregor (55:07.736)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (55:12.085)
I know for me, my brain gives out before my body really gives out. My brain's like, I'm done. I don't want to do this. Why? You know, questioning my life choices and all of those things. So being able to overcome that initial self talk is is such an important tool to hone and endurance sports as you've demonstrated here are a good way to do that. A good way to learn that skill.

Jeff MacGregor (55:20.13)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (55:38.518)
Yeah, for you generally are able to safely and in a controlled environment put yourself into a place where you have to ask yourself the hard questions and you have to sort of dig and and and most often realize wait a minute I I can do this I am strong with the pain I can get through this and this too shall pass this

really shitty moment that you're in is a temporary moment. And on the other side of it is probably a really positive feeling. And all I have to do is put one step in front of the other and keep taking the actions that are necessary for me to get to that next place.

Lindsay Hiken (56:24.407)
So good.

Jeff MacGregor (56:24.588)
And then when you get to that place, you realize this is also temporary, so I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to really enjoy this feeling that I'm having right now.

Lindsay Hiken (56:30.185)
Yeah. Did you have the same experience, you know, of the sort of sun coming up and realizing you're close to the finish line and you could walk it in?

Jeff MacGregor (56:41.134)
And just as you said, the spirit and the energy of everybody around picks up because everybody sort of realizes it on their own at the same time. And it's kind of this, rather than it being the nighttime death march, it's more of a celebratory journey back to the finish line.

Lindsay Hiken (56:47.648)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (56:51.606)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (56:57.175)
you

Lindsay Hiken (57:02.327)
Yeah, that's the feeling. That's the experience that I'm always searching for. You know, when I go to do an event, it's like that moment where you're going to finish, the energy shifts, everyone's excited. I'm excited. And maybe that's because of the experience prior to me to get sober. I was always chasing some sort of like feeling of euphoria that wasn't happening.

Jeff MacGregor (57:16.888)
Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (57:28.012)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (57:29.707)
but getting to do a long, long run or a long ride or a triathlon or something, it's there and it's natural. So you're not going to be hung over the next day, which is amazing.

Jeff MacGregor (57:37.774)
Exactly. And I think you touched on something else. think whether it's triathlons or ultras or whatever the thing is, people don't bring their masks into those races. And the same as when you connect with somebody who's also sober, you you quickly let go of these masks and you have real conversations and you talk about your vulnerabilities and your fears and all of these things that generally in the real world we try to protect.

Lindsay Hiken (58:06.313)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (58:06.902)
And that sense of truth that we often find in sobriety and speaking with others who've gone through a journey to get to sobriety, to have that as well in the running community or whatever the endurance sport is, is a real gift because it's nice to just speak your truth to people and not worry about all of these other, you know, all of the baggage that goes, that we try to carry along in our regular lives.

Lindsay Hiken (58:27.563)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (58:35.094)
Day to day, yeah. I wish that everybody could experience endurance sports and get to this sort of understanding because you meet people who, oh, you're a runner. I don't work out, I don't like it. I tried running, it sucked. You meet people who haven't had that experience and there is such a learning about yourself and then this community thing. For me being a woman of color,

doing endurance sports is one of the few places where I've not felt, even though a lot of, with triathlon, only less than 1 % of triathletes are black, so I might see no other black people out on the course or one other black person, but like you said, those, it's like that childlike mindset where we haven't all of these constructs from society, that we don't have those anymore. I've never felt different than other than,

racism, I haven't felt any of that ever on a course. And that can be said about life in general, you know, for me. So what an amazing, and I'm sure that the people who experience that carry a lot of that energy into life too. Yeah, so, well, we went longer than we normally do. I appreciate you staying on. It's so interesting. I love talking with you and.

Jeff MacGregor (59:36.236)
Right. Yeah.

Jeff MacGregor (59:41.976)
Right.

Jeff MacGregor (59:48.92)
I think you're right. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (01:00:00.917)
Yeah, I really appreciate your time and energy. And I think, you know, if you have any last words, you know, let me know here.

Jeff MacGregor (01:00:10.102)
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. really enjoyed this conversation. you know, I for anybody who is thinking about running or any sort of endurance sport, whether it's a mile, half a mile, 100 miles, one step in one foot in front of the other is is what I've learned is the way to get there. And it really doesn't matter what the distance is. It's about it's about a personal journey.

Lindsay Hiken (01:00:35.691)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff MacGregor (01:00:37.174)
And I think that running and endurance sports in general offer a doorway into learning a little bit more about oneself and then how to carry that into the world.

Lindsay Hiken (01:00:48.439)
Agreed, agreed. All right, folks, we're going to stop it there. So just download, subscribe, you know, do all the things that we talk about every weekend. It helps the show become more visible and maybe help someone else. They listen to this. They listen to Jeff's story. You never know. Someone might start running and go on a personal journey that's that's beyond what they are. They think they're capable of. So please share our show and.

We will see you next week. Bye.