Meet Dante Liberato, the man who ran 500 miles while on psychedelics

[00:00:05] Welcome to a special interview episode with The OutThere Colorado Podcast. A very special episode today, interviewing Dante Liberato, who has made headlines around the country for a run that he did 500 miles from Colorado Springs area to Moab. And the real kicker there is that he was on psychedelics during that run. The headline just writes itself, you know? So I got to ask a first question that I'm sure everyone watching is wondering.

[00:00:35] You're doing this 500 mile run across the American West. You made it there in 11 days on psychedelics. How much of a trip were you having during this run or was it more of like a microdosing scenario? It was both and. Both and. I would say the amounts that I ended up taking were, it would culminate in a full dose by the end of the day.

[00:01:05] But I would choose to usually trickle it out throughout the day to not ever have a moment where it was like really overwhelming, but that I had enough in my system to keep going. Did you have any moments where it got overwhelming? Yeah, multiple. And the, I guess you'll see that in the movie happens, happens three or four times. And the only way through was just letting tears flow. And then the energy came back. But yeah. Yeah. Very interesting.

[00:01:32] So I think the second question people are going to wonder is like, why? Like what's, what's the benefit of, of doing this? Or is it like, you know, like why, why did you decide to do this? Yeah. Um, you know, originally I signed up for this hundred mile race and I did that because I just wanted to feel something. I had stepped away from trying to pursue professional fighting for a while.

[00:01:58] I mean, I did that from the time I was seven years old up until 18 and I just was kind of anxious and depressed after that. So I signed up for these races just looking for, I guess, a suffer fest, like an opportunity to, to feel something. And I felt so amazing during that first hundred mile race that I, where I experienced running on medicine for the first time.

[00:02:19] Um, I had the idea probably in the last five miles of that race that I was going to try and prolong that and do it for a week so that I could just enjoy myself longer. So you're covering about 50 miles a day at that point, probably. Yeah. I know the, a lot of the articles said 11 days. It was, it was nine and a half days though. Really? It was probably, it was probably me that just misspoke on the beginning, like doing some of those interviews right off the, right off the end of the trip.

[00:02:46] Um, but a lot of it was also like email interviews and things like that. I think some of the stuff just kind of got lost in translation, but I was back home within 11 days. Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Um, were any of them running with you or were you kind of running on your, on your own and then they're in like a chase situation? I had, I had probably three people running with me at all times.

[00:03:15] Um, and for the fellows that went out there ran over 200 miles with me during that stretch. And then my fiance and, um, three other friends that came out to kind of just crew, they all ended up running their first ultra marathon, just hanging out for a day and running along the road with me. That's awesome. Yeah. So everybody got some miles in. So you're doing 50 miles a day. That's, I mean, the amount of calories that you have to be consuming too must've been very high, I would imagine.

[00:03:43] So like, what are you doing to sustain yourself over such a prolonged run? Yeah. The goal was 8,000 calories a day. If I could try and consume that, I was burning closer to 12 or 15 and just couldn't really stomach more than eight. And biggest thing was like high carb mixes in the bottles all day, like just constantly drinking syrup water essentially. Uh, and then stopping having a big meal in the morning that was like non-negotiable. I wasn't allowed to leave the RV until I had a big amount of food in my gut.

[00:04:13] Um, and then stopping for lunch. We had, I don't know if you've been to Huevones. It's a food truck over by bread and butter. Oh yeah. Yeah. I know that one. Amazing food, but he, he followed us the whole week. So we had, uh, twice a day. He, that's where he, we hired him to cook lunch and dinner every day. So we'd meet on the side of the road. He has an overlanding set up with his truck. So he, he just brought his truck and his mobile kitchen and it just had an amazing setup for us on the side of the road somewhere in the middle of the day.

[00:04:40] And then we'd roll into camp at the end of the night and he'd have this massive meal for the whole crew. That is a way to do it. Yeah. That is awesome. Yeah. It was easy to put the calories down when it was, when it was his food. Um, so as far as like the route you took goes like, would you mind chatting about that a little bit? Like, was it pavement trail, a mixture? Like, how did you, how did you go about route planning? Um, yeah, I tried to get as much trail as possible.

[00:05:02] Um, but it was about, I was like half and half, maybe 60% trail or, or gravel road. Um, but there was a good 200 miles of highway, like running down highway 50. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was trying to kind of plot that on Google maps and I was like, I wonder how he got there. Um, yeah, that's so cool. Um, so did you battle any like injuries along the way with just that many days in a row of that much mileage?

[00:05:31] Um, I had, I had a few things just kind of come up in the first couple of days that I think was more just stories I was telling myself, trying to, trying to deal with nerves and things like that. Um, and my ankle ended up getting pretty swollen by the end of it. That was just, I think the start of some shin splints. I had never experienced that before. Um, originally I was going to do it in July and I had torn my IT band training in the grand Canyon.

[00:05:58] So I had to, I took a couple of weeks off of running, tried to work on healing that. And then like also simultaneously had a torn labrum and hamstring and got hit by a car somewhere in that process too. So there was like a whole bunch of stuff and I was just, I didn't really get anything checked out cause I didn't want, I didn't want x-ray results in my head the whole time. So once I was done, I got MRIs and x-rays and found all that stuff out.

[00:06:23] But during that training process, how many miles were you putting in like on a weekly basis or so? Um, I was hoping to get up to, I got up to about a hundred and then like a hundred a week on my feet. And then was also cycling a bunch, like two to 300 miles a week on the bike. And then once I hurt my leg that went way down, the cycling went way up. And then I was able to work myself back up to like a 90 mile week before I actually started the run.

[00:06:49] But training was pretty, um, pretty tight, like leading up to the actual run. Cause I was coming off that injury. Were you, uh, would you say you were mostly like running or were you kind of like doing like the, how they switch back and forth and a lot of ultra marathoning? Like, uh, were you mostly running the whole time or, um, how did you approach that? I would say I definitely ran more than I walked, but it was, uh, by the end of it, my run was most of my friends power walk. Like most of them could power walk and keep up with me.

[00:07:19] And I just felt like the, the little shuffle was more efficient for me than trying to stretch my legs out and walk. Uh, yeah, so there, there was a lot of walking for sure. But also any, anytime I could run, anytime it was downhill was, was encouraged by the team to start moving my legs and run. Yeah. And in case people that are listening to this or watching it, um, aren't familiar with ultra marathons, like that is a pretty typical approach that you tend to see people take where it's kind of picking your battles when you're, when you're running and being most efficient

[00:07:48] in terms of just energy expenditure. Um, so let's get back to the psychedelics though. Um, I read that it was, uh, you were taking psilocybin and you were taking LSD. Yeah. And, uh, two CP as well. Okay. Um, so I guess what benefits would you say that you got from doing that opposed to just running without that?

[00:08:13] Uh, well, during the run itself, I, I felt like the, I don't know if you want to call it a message or the insight that I had was that I, I didn't actually need the medicine during the run itself because I had so much community and people around me. And I feel like I was getting medicine from that and all that love and support.

[00:08:39] But in the training process leading up to it, like runs that I had done on my own beforehand, my experience is just that it removes, it's not giving you more energy. Like physiologically, it's not doing something to my red blood cell count, or it's not interacting with my body like caffeine. Well, it's just, I think removing limitations that we place on ourself. And obviously like it's, it's flooding our brain with some kind of serotonin or happy chemicals. It's interacting with those receptors and can obviously go either way.

[00:09:08] But LSD is typically more consistent for me than the mushrooms is mushrooms. Do whatever they're going to do with you. And I think LSD gives a more consistent experience. So it really helps, um, with that, that kind of mental battle. Yeah. Yeah. People oftentimes will just, you know, they drop out of a race because their knee or their hip is hurting and then they sit down for 15 minutes and then they stand up and their knee feels fine. And it's just because they were watering a bad seed. I think it takes that away. Yeah, I did. I've done one ultra marathon.

[00:09:39] Oh, sweet. Um, trail run over at Palmer park is 50 K. Okay. And, uh, there was a stretch on the backside of that where I kind of got in my head and I got to the point where, um, I had a leg that was cramping and just really struggling called somebody and from the trail and was like, Hey, I'm going to need a ride from the back of Palmer park. Uh, they told me they were like, no, you got it. Just get to the next stage aid station, which was like a mile away. So it was, it was, uh, took me a while to get there at one point.

[00:10:08] Some hikers passed me, but sure enough, second, I got the aid station, had a drink of water. I was able to run out the rest of the race and just, and felt totally fine. It was, it was like that mental battle though, just any long run. Um, yeah. Just telling you to quit in, in a sense sometimes and just like, Oh, you're getting tired. Oh, what if this happens? Oh, that little tweak in your knee or that, that foot, how your foot hurts a little bit, like worry about that instead of focusing on the run.

[00:10:34] So I can see where that benefit comes in of something that would take your mind off of, off of the, the very strenuous task at hand. Um, yeah, that, that chronic pain, which is kind of how I would describe it, right? If I didn't roll my ankle or have some kind of acute injury, the pain is becoming chronic in some way. And that type of pain is processed in the same part of our brain that emotions are. And I think that that's what people could just kind of tap into their emotions a little bit more or give whatever's coming up a little bit of space.

[00:11:03] Oftentimes that, that pain just drifts away. Um, have you ever seen any sort of like studies on this topic or something behind like maybe like what made you decide to do that where you'd seen some reporting or something like that? It was, I mean, the, uh, I, there, there's a lot of research out there on where like, you know, low back pain or just chronic pain in general. I've, I've heard someone say as, as American as apple pie.

[00:11:30] And there's a lot of Americans that struggle with that stuff. And when you look at the way it's interacting with the brain through MRI or whatever, whatever kind of scan they're using, the parts of the brain that light up are the ones that are more in tune with emotion and not the ones that you would see light up if I like snapped my arm in half or something. And I think that that shows that there's with psychedelics, you take something that's going

[00:11:55] to put you in a potentially more positive state of mind or allow you to be more present with your environment. You're just not going to be, your emotions are in a different place. So then the pain never even comes up. And that was kind of what I realized through, I'm a somatic practitioner. So I work with people that are dealing with chronic pain through like a therapy or movement lens and the stuff that I've seen people kill from just through visualizing and, and being

[00:12:22] mindful of their injury instead of just trying to crank through a bunch of exercises like a PT would have you do is it's pretty cool to see what can happen. Let's talk about that a little bit. So it's somatic. Is it? Yeah. Therapy. So, uh, yeah. Like what do you do there? Like, is that part of your, um, like I know you own the gym in the two, uh, does it come into that a little bit? I also know your own couch milk. Yeah. Yeah. One of the, yeah. One of the founders.

[00:12:50] Um, so yeah, I mean, how does that play into these other ventures that you have going on? Yeah. I guess the easiest way to describe the somatic approach would be most talk therapy is we'd consider like a top down approach, which is you're going to come in and we're going to talk about what are you thinking about? And then maybe we don't even get to how you're actually feeling. We're just going to talk about where your head's at and somatic therapy. If you have a good somatic practitioner, cause you know, that's a word that like people slap

[00:13:17] it on everything now and people don't actually know what somatic means, but soma, the root word like of the body is what it means. And if you have a somatic practitioner, their approach will be bottom up. So if you came into a session with me and we were going to do like talk therapy style, instead of talking to you about how your day was, like, well, there might be some small talk on the front end, but then there would be a drop in and we would track what's coming up in your body. And that might be, I feel super anxious right now.

[00:13:45] Can you figure out where the anxiety is sitting in your body? How do you know you're anxious? Are you like, is your chest tight? Is your skin warm or is there a memory that's in your head that you just can't shake and you just follow whatever's naturally there? And that oftentimes leads to a more profound healing experience. I think than just coming in and getting some technique to work with my irrational thoughts or something. Very interesting. Is there a, is there a psychedelic component to that as well? Or is it? Yeah.

[00:14:14] I mean, it pairs, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do psychedelics. With somebody that doesn't have a background in somatics. I think that that's really important. And that's how I got into somatic therapy. I wanted to be a space holder. I wanted to do medicine work and then just realize that you don't, you don't need medicine to, to get there. It can be really helpful. And that's, I think the best approach if you're doing psychedelics, you should be thinking about the somatic experience in your somatic landscape. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:44] Very interesting. Um, so with couch milk, tell me about that. Cause I saw the name floating around a little bit here and there and, uh, looked into, looked into it a little bit, but I knew you were coming in. So I wanted to hear it from you. Yeah. Yeah. Right now couch milk is a, it's essentially a collection of resources for athletes who use psychedelics. And when I say athlete, it doesn't mean you have to be a competitive athlete. It could be, you know, somebody who signs up for their local 50 K and is thinking that,

[00:15:11] you know, this time maybe I'll try a little micro dose of LSD cause it got a little dark there for one moment. Um, so it's, it's essentially, it's an app right now where you can track your dosage, connects to your wearables and allows the coaches to the co if you choose to work with a coach, it allows them to see how your physiology is impacted by the medicine that you're using. Um, but for the most part, we just want it to be a collection of resources for people

[00:15:37] to understand how to be in right relationship with medicine, just first as a human, but then also as an athlete, because it's nothing new. You know, there's the most common comment on any of those viral videos, I think, or that somebody else, like I ran this distance on mushrooms, or I ran this distance on LSD, or I biked from here to here on psilocybin. It's super common in the endurance space and in the martial arts space. So we just want to normalize it and get the word out. Yeah.

[00:16:04] You do hear about it a lot more and more, especially nowadays, it seems like as some of these, as some States are kind of, you know, relaxing the laws around psychedelics, Colorado included. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is obviously, so it's going to go out on a national scale here on July 11th. So, um, and we'll talk more about the release and everything here in a little bit, but, uh, how do you think on the national scale, how do you think, uh, your movie is going to be received?

[00:16:36] I can, I can tell you that it'll probably be the only running documentary that people want to watch more than once. I think that there'll be just an entertainment factor to it that, that people are going to really enjoy whether running is your thing or psychedelics are your thing or not. Um, it's just, there's a lot of really funny moments and heartfelt moments. It feels a lot more like a movie that was produced, I think in Hollywood than like a normal ultra running documentary.

[00:17:03] Um, so I hope in that sense that it'll be received well and that people will just enjoy watching it. But I imagine it'll continue to be maybe this like 50, 50 split where it's either you, you love it or you hate it. You know, there's going to be a lot of guys that see how much I cry and have a lot of words for me, I'm sure. And there's probably gonna be a lot of guys that watch it and feel positively about seeing another man share emotion. So it's, I think it's still pretty going to be split down the middle. Yeah.

[00:17:32] Do you, do you think it will, uh, maybe I would imagine get more viewership in places in the American West to post it? Cause like I'm from Indiana where like if, uh, they'll probably be the last state to ever legalize marijuana or anything like that. Right. Um, very conservative, uh, especially in the sense of how they approach drugs from a legal standpoint. Um, do you think that, uh, you'll get backlash from certain parts of the country at all?

[00:18:00] Uh, or do you think it's people will approach it more so with like just the level of curiosity that prevents that?

[00:18:31] Um, yeah. Yeah. I totally get the side of if you're breaking rules or if you're competing, getting paid for something and we agree to not dope or use other substances, like those people should be clean for sure. But if you're just somebody like myself who wants to go on the run with their friends, um, I don't think anybody should really care what I'm putting in my body. But I think that there's a lot of people who do care for sure. And there's probably going to be some, some big time runners. I would imagine that would not be fans of what I'm advocating for.

[00:19:01] It'll be something that I will be following to see for sure. Um, yeah, it's interesting you bring up the Cameron, Cameron Haynes stuff because I was kind of, uh, tuned into that already. And, uh, essentially, yeah, he used peptides to heal. Was it a broken foot? Yeah. I think it was a broken foot. And then when he, and he's not getting paid to run, right? He's just, he's just signing up for the race. Just like anyone else would be signing up for the race. Might be part of his, like, you know, being an influencer. Like he does this race, but he's not, he's not trying to win the race. It's not like his thing.

[00:19:31] He does happen to be incredibly fast, especially for his age. So like he's, he's crushing it. Yeah. And that's what it was, right? He like won his age group or something or placed in his age group. So yeah, I think he did win. Oh, he won in his age group. Okay. And I think he did. I think he was faster this time around than when he was a little bit younger. Oh, okay. Before the broken foot event. So yeah, I've seen that controversy kind of popping up here and there. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense from a standpoint of like, if it's the Olympics and there are clear

[00:20:00] rules on what you can and can't do. For sure. I mean, that's why, that's why the Olympics and all their drug testing exists, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So local race, you know, who cares? Like not, not even the guy who, like even Rachel, I don't think she got paid anything to win the race by the race organization. They might get paid by sponsors, but I don't think our life was paying the winners of those races. Yeah. To my knowledge. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know for sure. But yeah. Interesting. You bring that up though.

[00:20:28] So what was it like having a film crew with you during this? Like it was a, was the filming very like invasive in a sense, or was it just, you got used to it and it's just kind of there? Yeah. I would say at times it was very invasive and there was times that I would try to ignore it. It was an interesting piece, you know, like, especially the emotional moments. It's like, there's some where the director Fernando, he did a great job of catching me

[00:20:58] in some moments where I had, I had no idea that the camera was there on. And that's what I asked him to do at the beginning. Like, especially once the run started, it was like, be ahead of me, mic me up when you need to, but like, I'm not going to retake anything for you. I'm not running backwards. And I really don't want to stop and have to deal with getting mic'd up and doing all this stuff. And he did an awesome job of just kind of rolling with the punches, being off to the sides of

[00:21:23] the road, using the drone at the right times, um, making it not even obvious that he had the camera, but the moments where I would say maybe the first two or three days, like when I was having a harder time, my, my ego had a hard time being filmed for sure. And I would just maybe avoid the cameras a little bit more, which was hard to do. Cause there was, if Fern wasn't the only guy out there with the camera and, um, I was like, why there were so many people there.

[00:21:49] So it was, it was a different experience than I anticipated and I wasn't as present with the run itself because of the cameras, but I think the cameras will give me an opportunity to do more of that stuff in the future. So, yeah. Um, yeah, that makes sense. Um, so, uh, with this, with this movie, right? Like what made you decide that you wanted to turn it into a documentary?

[00:22:16] Like at what point in, in this whole experience, you know, uh, from when you came up with the idea, like when did you decide you wanted to make this into a documentary? And then how did you go about maybe connecting with Fern, uh, Fernando and, uh, and doing that? Um, first word that came to mind was never cause I was, I was planning on doing it. Um, like this is Fern's been in the film industry for a little while, you know, he's done, he's

[00:22:44] always excelled in whatever he's done, but this is his first baby in terms of like executive produced and directed documentary. So, and he doesn't ever talk about his story, which is, which is frigging awesome. So I'll share a little piece of that. He, uh, had a psychedelic experience that led him to live in a Buddhist monastery for a month and on his way home from the monastery, he decided that he was going to chase his dreams of making a movie.

[00:23:12] It was something he wanted to do from the time he was really young. Uh, so he came home and decided he was going to make a film and he started talking to one of our friends who had done the medicine work with him and he wanted to talk about psychedelics. He wanted to advocate because it helped him so much and got him to where he was. And then my friend mentioned this run that I was planning on doing and it wasn't going to be like at the time it was the route was like 400 something miles.

[00:23:42] Um, and it was just, I wanted to go to Moab and I knew at some point I would probably take some LSD or some mushrooms, but it wasn't this like 500 miles on psychedelics thing until, until Fern came along. So, so we went to stir and got some coffee and, um, essentially he asked if he could make a film about the project. And as an athlete, you know, it's something that I think most athletes would be pretty stoked about.

[00:24:09] I thought that something like that would happen through the sport of martial arts for me, but, um, yeah, I was, I was all about it and that was about two years ago and he just has been kind of a fly on the wall in most rooms I've been in since then. Yeah. That's wild how that just kind of fell into place like that then in that regard. Um, so you mentioned martial arts and this is played a very big role in your life, at least from what I can, what I could gather from trying to try to prepare for this interview. Yeah.

[00:24:39] Um, would you mind talking about maybe, uh, and I mean, you mentioned that you dealt with some depression after you left that behind. Uh, would you mind maybe talking about what your experience was like there and, um, just, I mean, what you were aiming for, uh, and then maybe why that ended and why your path changed? Yeah. Yeah. I started martial arts because I played soccer when I was really young and I would spend,

[00:25:07] anytime I got put in the game, I would go and pick dandelions and then take them to my mom on the sideline and like sit there and try to blow kisses to my mom back and forth. My dad hated it. So he, he was deployed most of the time, but one time before he left, he was like, this kid's doing Taekwondo. So he put me in Taekwondo pretty much hated every second of it, but stuck with it, got my black belt. And once I was able to like start kicking people in the head and sparring a little bit, I started enjoying it a little bit more.

[00:25:36] And my dad showed me a UFC fight one night that was, um, Anderson Silva versus Chael Son and the first time that they fought and Chael beat the brakes off of Anderson for like five rounds. And then I think Chael celebrated too early. Anderson caught him in a triangle and I was just blown away by the display of athleticism and the fact that you could do martial arts without wearing the funny pajamas, like the Taekwondo uniform I had to wear. So I talked to my dad about it. I was probably nine years old at that point. I was like, this is what I want to do.

[00:26:05] And he put me in boxing, put me in wrestling, Muay Thai. I trained at a team underground fight center here in Colorado Springs for a while. And then was with elevation fight team in Denver. And yeah, it was my whole life. I did online school growing up so that I could be driving to the gym in Denver most days. Um, and only ever fought a couple of times because I was always dealing with major injuries. Like had five or six surgeries before I was 18 and it was big stuff like a broken spine

[00:26:33] and, um, multiple knee surgeries and a couple other broken bones. And once I found there was a day I was in a grocery store and I was just thinking about this, um, it was like constantly visualizing fight scenarios. Right. And I was checking out and this late, this old lady had, had said something to me.

[00:26:59] And I just remember like not seeing her at all and just like visualizing myself off in la la land, like when in a cage fight and realized how not present I was with my experience. Cause this woman was like trying to have a real conversation with me and I'm just completely disassociated. So I stopped working with my sports psychologist that I had seen for like 10 years and found an earth-based therapist, worked with her for a couple months.

[00:27:28] And then she brought up psychedelics to me and was like, I think this might be something you'd benefit from. So I tried MDMA first and pretty much just wailed in her lap the entire time. It was like, I don't think I can do this anymore. My body keeps breaking down. And then I had a little shift and was like, maybe that's why I'm supposed to fight is so I can tell people about medicine and like get this out there to this population of martial artists and fans of martial arts.

[00:27:57] And then I got hurt again when I took another fight, ruptured my quad within the first 30 seconds and was supposed to fight again right after that. The first one was supposed to be like a warmup. So I had a journey, a medicine journey planned in between those two. And I ended up going to that journey on crutches with a big cast in my leg. And again, just wailed the entire time, like face in the dirt in this woman's yard and really was able to, like we structured.

[00:28:27] She held a grief ceremony is what she called it. Kind of asked me to write a letter to fighting. I read it, kind of let it go, burned the letter. And that was the hardest thing I've ever done by far was making that official decision. Like, I'm not going to be a martial artist anymore. I'm not going to pursue this. And then that weekend I took my first like somatic therapy workshop and that was probably four years ago.

[00:28:53] And still been, I still see friends that are in the UFC right now. Kind of like a Corey Sanhagen and then I were good buddies and trained alongside each other for a while. And he just excelled so quickly and I was just always injured. And, you know, he was on a different velocity than I was anyways. But I see guys like that and still wonder sometimes if it's something I could do.

[00:29:19] But for the most part, I think the medicine has helped me get to a place where I'm not like obsessed with that because you see it so often in special forces operators and athletes like high school to college, professional athletes stepping out of their sport. Like when they can't do it at the level that they once did it anymore, it seems so hard. And that's where I think the medicine really helped me. So how do you end up getting into running then?

[00:29:47] Was that just kind of like the natural transition or? Yeah. So, I mean, I guess that the pace that I usually move at in life is I don't think that changed when I stopped fighting. So I signed up for my first Hakomi workshop after that journey where I had finally decided I'm not fighting anymore. I need to do something different with my life. And I had this ruptured quad at the same time. It was like, I need somewhere to put my energy. I need somewhere to go or something to do.

[00:30:15] So I'm going to sign up for an ultra marathon, even though I've never run more than five miles. I'm going to sign up for Black Canyon in six months because that's going to guarantee that I take my recovery process serious and keep my mind somewhere. And then COVID hit. So I started just going for runs and was signed up for Black Canyon, but was also just running

[00:30:40] to the liquor store all the time and getting hammered on the way home because I was super anxious and depressed. And yeah, that's kind of what got me into running was I wasn't in a good relationship. So I would run to get out of the house and I would run around Manitou to the liquor store and then I would just drink my whole way back home and deal with life that way. Have you found, I mean, it seems like you definitely have found more peace than in that scenario or in that case.

[00:31:10] Would you say that psychedelics were played a key role in you finding that peace? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's come in waves, right? Like there's, there's been moments where it kind of jolted me so quickly that I did step back into, you know, another form of addiction and, um, and then was able to connect with medicine again. And it, as my relationship with it has been more and more refined, I've been able to really

[00:31:36] figure out when I'll benefit from having a connection with it. Like when I've benefit from taking a bunch of mushrooms and when I just need to go and meditate or stop drinking so much caffeine. Like it's just, it's brought so much more awareness into my life just in terms of what's, what's going on and what's, what's actually happening. Because I think so many people are just like strung out on caffeine. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah, people, people tend to abuse caffeine.

[00:32:04] That's, that's the pit that I fall, I've fallen into before when, especially when I've been running and I mean, for me running was, I pretty much started running around the time of COVID and got serious about it during COVID because I was living alone. You know, I had nothing else to do. I couldn't go see friends. I couldn't go do anything. So it was like, I really did turn to running just to help from a mental health aspect. Um, just to give me something to focus on that was productive, you know?

[00:32:31] And I think a lot of people, a lot of ultra runners, a lot of, um, people that are hammering out the 14ers and doing a lot of these really strenuous things around the state. Um, a really surprising amount of them have turned to those sports for a similar reason where, uh, it does kind of just give you this level of like self worth and self purpose, um, in a healthy way.

[00:32:54] Um, so I've got to ask what's next, like, what, what are you, uh, thinking will be like you obviously did this 500 mile thing in nine and a half days, right? Are you thinking about something else that's, that's in that same ballpark of just like wildness, so to speak? Yeah. Um, or are you just kind of taking it chill and, and waiting until something pops up?

[00:33:19] Um, yeah, I mean, I got my eyes on, I guess I'll, I'll see what my reputation is like in terms of if I'll sign up for a race or not. I feel like I could compete at some of those longer ones and would love to, to go out there and throw down with some of those guys, like a Coco Donut or, or Bigfoot. Um, but I, I have plans to try and set the FKT on the Coco Peli trail. That'll be sometime like November, December this year.

[00:33:48] And then I, I view the run to Moab as kind of like the first of a four step process. So we have like four directions or four corners, four borders in Colorado. Um, so I want to leave the state and all four directions. I think that'd be pretty sweet and maybe, maybe add a modality each time, like maybe hop on the bike and run next time. I'll, I'll see what that looks like, but yeah, I would love to leave the state all four directions. That's very cool.

[00:34:14] Um, that, that, that run out to Kansas might be a little bit, uh, that might be where I get on the mic. Oh, no, that's awesome, man. Um, so one thing, uh, before we chat about, uh, where people are going to be able to watch your, your documentary when it's released here, uh, we always ask every person that, that we have on the show as an interview, uh, what their favorite local things to do are, whether

[00:34:39] it's food or a hiking trail or just something that you love, um, you're in kind of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, right? Yeah. But, uh, I think we should talk about Manitou Springs. What's your, uh, what's your favorite spot to grab some food down there and maybe a trail that people can add to it? Uh, in Manitou, um, well, I get my burritos from burrito league at toasted and I do think that they have the best breakfast burrito in Manitou.

[00:35:04] Um, but I would say overall like best atmosphere, best food and coffee, I think it's the loft espresso. Yeah. They, I go there probably once or twice a week for lunch and donuts. Shout out the loft. Yeah. Yeah. They're awesome. What about your favorite trails to run in the area? Just getting into like the bar trail area or, uh, what is that? You pass trail that goes to cascade. That's like the one right off the right side of the incline. You can take that so far.

[00:35:33] That's how I started the run was up you pass and then go into a park. Yeah. And it's just so cool how far you can go and then all the ways it connects if you're on a bike or on foot. Very cool. Um, what was the most scenic part of this run? The 500 mile run. Um, there was this moment where it was, it was the director's birthday and I had had a, um, almost cussed.

[00:35:58] Um, I had, I've had a, I had had a horrible day getting turned around, like smacking in a private property. There was one section of the trail that I did not go out and scout. Like I should have. And it was like, it's by 11 mile. I'm sure it's fine. It was the closest area. And it was the second day that I just kept getting turned around. So I decided to run the Salida instead of Buena Vista. Like I was originally going to, and the director has, you know, everyone's been driving back and forth all day.

[00:36:25] There was like six cars with us and people are constantly like going into town and bringing me random stuff. Cause they're just trying to find something to do throughout the day. We didn't get organized really until the end of it. Um, so the director Fern's going up to this ridgeline coming into Salida and he's like, the sun is going to be setting in 20 minutes and it is going to be perfect. And it's my birthday. So I want you to be at the top of this mountain by the time the sun is setting.

[00:36:52] And yeah, I was just hurting a lot, but we started hammering to get up to this hill by the sunrise and we got there at the perfect time. It was just, you could see, uh, I think it was Shivano and Shavintab and then Mount Princeton off to the North, um, and whatever other mountains are in between. But it was like super cloudy rainstorm over there by the mountains and sun was setting bright orange sunset.

[00:37:19] And, uh, a crow flew by, which was kind of like a, a symbol that Fern and I had connected with early on in our, in our friendship. Yeah. Yeah. So it was just, that was definitely the coolest moment. I think it was the second day, just watching that sunset with the boys on that ridgeline in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. That sounds absolutely beautiful. Um, it's interesting. Uh, you connect over the crow. Uh, that's like one of the Dean Potter things that they mentioned in that recent documentary. Yeah.

[00:37:45] If I don't know if you've seen that, but that was one thing he connected with, um, in a way. Yeah. That was a great story. They did an awesome job. Yeah. Yeah. If anyone, if anyone listening hasn't seen the dark wizard. Yeah. Yeah. So a very good documentary, four part, uh, series there. So many series, um, you can learn about one of the, uh, most extreme dudes to ever, ever live. Yeah. Uh, famous for his, uh, slack lining and high lining, high lining and, uh, famous for

[00:38:14] his wingsuiting and bass jumping. Yeah. Basically invented free soloing. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. In a lot of ways. I mean, definitely, definitely popularized it a lot and brought some, brought some more attention to it. I think, um, yeah, man. I mean, Hey, that's, that's awesome. I think that's a good, uh, a good note to end it on with that, that vision of the beautiful view out there by Salida. Um, but let's talk about, uh, where people are going to be able to see this documentary when it comes out.

[00:38:43] It's called Dante 500 miles on psychedelics. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be premiering at the end center for performing arts in Colorado Springs. That's a big theater center. There are multiple venues in there that UCCS owns right on Nevada. Uh, that'll be July 11th at 6 PM. You can also go to Dante 500.com and there'll be all the info that you need and a link to the tickets there. Very cool. Yeah. I think there's like a little less than a hundred tickets left. Very cool. Yeah.

[00:39:12] That's awesome to see that people are interested in checking it out. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Um, I think you're right too. When you say, you know, it's a running documentary that's a little bit different. Yeah. Right. Like it is, it has that, that twist that I think is capable of making people interested in it that have no interest in running at all in a way where, um, I think you'll see a really wide demographic that, that shows interest in this, in this doc. So yeah, that would be my hope.

[00:39:39] And, uh, in that same day, Saturday at 11 AM, we're going to do a group run from the den as well. And all the brands that helped me out are throwing a bunch of stuff in for giveaways too. So if you were, anyone wants to come and run with us, we're going to start at 11 AM 32 Manitou Avenue. Very cool. And, uh, the den is the gym that you operate. Uh, cool stuff. Yeah. And, uh, your Instagram handles Buffalo warrior. Yes, sir. If people are interested in following along with what you have to say, but, uh, yeah, man. And enjoy chatting. So thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:40:09] This was awesome. Cool.