Ultramarathoner Mark Dowdle

**Theo Von** (0:00)
The wild world of college football continues Labor Day Weekend. On Saturday, East Carolina looks to shock Alabama, and Baylor and Auburn battle it out in Atlanta in the Aflac kickoff game. Then, Clemson hits the road, looking to spoil Lane Kiffin's Death Valley debut.
Sunday night, it's Louisville versus Ole Miss in Nashville, in the inaugural Liberty Mutual Music City kickoff game. College football Labor Day Weekend continues Saturday and Sunday on ABC and the ESPN app.

**Mark Dowdle** (0:30)
He's an ultra endurance athlete, known for running some of the most brutal marathons in existence. He just completed the last Seoul Ultra in Germany, 395 miles in four days. I enjoyed my time with today's guest, Mr. Mark Dowdle.
You can drop this down just a touch.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:08)
Yeah.

**Mark Dowdle** (1:09)
And if you need to move it or whatever, if something's getting weird, just do whatever you got to do. Okay.
Yeah, dude, you're a freak bro. Like a nice freak.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:18)
I appreciate that.

**Mark Dowdle** (1:19)
Not like a carnival one, but the race you just won, it's called the Last Soul Ultra Marathon. You ran 395 miles in just under 94 hours without sleep. It's a backyard ultra.
For our listeners that do not know, can you explain what a backyard ultra marathon is?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:40)
Sure. Yeah, a backyard ultra is when you run 4.167 miles or 6.7 kilometers every hour on the hour until one person's left. So it's also people call it the last person standing. So you have 59 minutes and 59 seconds to complete this four mile loop. If you run it in 45 minutes, you get 15 minutes of rest. If you run it in 52 minutes, you get eight minutes of rest. And you just keep doing this same loop over and over again until either you time out, you physically can't go anymore, or you mentally just are done. And the real obstacle of this race, yes, is the physical aspect to it, but it's dealing with the unknown because you don't know when the race is going to end. And so it's a constant battle between how do I stack up against these other people? And it's a big game of trying to bring yourself back to the present and not compare yourself of how you perceive your pain, because we're all experiencing pain out there. But I can only feel my pain.
And then I look at somebody else who might be doing a good job of posturing, and I will perceive myself as worse off or less than or not capable enough because of a perception that I've created in my mind about who they are compared to myself.
And so the thing I love about this race is yes, it's a physical thing, but it is like every loop. I have to make a commitment to say the story in my mind that I'm creating is not the full truth. And can I take one more step? And it is a constant re-commitment to that process of like, I can do this if I take one more step. That's evidence I can keep going. And the race has blown up a lot over the last couple years. And I think a lot of it has to do with how accessible it is. Like if you've never run a mile in your life, it's more digestible to say, I can try and complete one loop of four miles over, I'm gonna sign up for a half marathon and do months of training to get to that point of being able to run 13 miles or 26.2 miles.

**Mark Dowdle** (4:02)
So you might have a lot of people signing up just to like, oh, I can do four miles and I can at least do one loop.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:06)
And that's the beauty of it, is we're all on the same loop at the same time. And so I go for almost four days and somebody out there went for three loops. And the relationship to hard is equally as difficult for that person as it is to me. It is both of us trying to figure out how far can we go?
And then when we come up with obstacles, how can we just take one more step forward?

**Mark Dowdle** (4:31)
You said like the story in your mind that you start to create, that I guess it's like a story of like defeat or that I can't. Like what stories do you notice your mind start to create?

**SPEAKER_3** (4:42)
That's a great question. I think it is, I'm not good enough. I'm not capable enough. I'm not worthy enough.
This race, the outcome of this race is gonna determine my value or not. Like all of these things that I know aren't true.