The Gunks Cast
The Gunks Cast
#114 Cody Claussen - Beast Maker Challenge 2026!
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In this episode, we welcome Cody Claussen, founder of the Beast Maker Challenge, a grassroots movement that has grown from a local passion project into a thriving community of endurance athletes. What started as a personal challenge has evolved into a shared experience that inspires people to push beyond their comfort zones, embrace adversity, and discover what they are truly capable of.
The Beast Maker Challenge is a demanding 12-mile course through Shawangunk Mountains, featuring 9 technical rock scrambles and rugged terrain that tests both physical endurance and mental toughness. More than just a hike, it has become a symbol of perseverance, resilience, and community.
Cody joins us to share the story behind the challenge. He also takes listeners step-by-step through the course itself, describing the scrambles, landmarks, obstacles, and mindset needed to complete the challenge.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But feel feel free to say what you want. Jeff curses all the time. Yeah. Come on. Oh, we're back to Billy Eilish. Very chill. This is what kids listen to these days. It's okay.
SPEAKER_06We're trying to sell the gung's cast to the kids.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're trying to get it.
SPEAKER_05We're trying to hit the demographic, the 14 to the 19.
SPEAKER_03We tried Pokemon last week, it didn't work.
SPEAKER_05Alright, everybody. Good morning, everybody. Yo. Whoa. Woo! Wow, that came close to woo! Uh oh. I'm not gonna although look at my man up there. I see, I saw it earlier. See my little Rick Flair? I should have pulled the Rick Flair.
SPEAKER_03You should have him mounted on your microphone. I should get it. He should be there.
SPEAKER_05I should have it. You could get it like a little bit of Dylan, Dylan, limousine.
SPEAKER_06Do you know who this is? Ric Flair? Yeah. Oh yeah. He's like, yeah. Nature boy. Yeah. Um all right. So good morning. Good morning, gentlemen. This is um this is our third cast into um season five. Season five, baby. This year, season five, listeners, the gunks cast is gluten-free, dairy-free. Okay. All right. Just wanted everyone to know that.
SPEAKER_05Is it okay that I just ate that apple cider donut up there? Hell yeah. Okay, good. So anyway, we got another amazing guest. Long time guest. It's perfect. I mean, really, this guest is in our exact wheelhouse. It is in our wheelhouse. Good dude. Hijinx. All of it. Just random crazy stuff in the mountain. That's why we live here. So let's introduce our guest.
SPEAKER_06Well, you can introduce the guest. Alright, so um I'm gonna read I'm gonna read something first because I think it was just such a great statement. And then I'm gonna introduce the guest. Okay. So this guy sitting with us now, listeners, is doing some really, really cool stuff. Very cool stuff. Stuff that you're gonna be like, oh man, why did I think of that? Well and but just stuff that's just so like uh original and really cool. Alright, so the Shuangongs have secured a secret space available to a select few who have the gumption and the drive to push themselves to a place they have not gone before. With great internal suffering becomes an amazing discovery in a place like no other. This is the Beast Maker. I love it. Boom! That that deserved like a music freaking thing. But anyway, listen, any Cody thing, go ahead. Cody Clausen, welcome to the podcast. Welcome, Cody. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Listen, any any quote, any phrase that uses the word gumption is an immediate winner for me. That's a great statement. Who wrote that?
SPEAKER_07So uh it was kind of meant to be a little uh secretive, but it it was actually Sherwood, Alex. Freaking Sherwood.
SPEAKER_05That's amazing. Our number podcast of all time. Number two. Number two.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's a great statement. He he did a good job. He did a great job. And you know what? So I would ride with Alex, and he's been telling me about this for years. Before, like right when you hatched the idea.
SPEAKER_07I've got this on the podcast his first time around.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, he did. He taught he's talked about it, and uh he was excited. So let's get into it. Tell ever let's tell everybody, give them some broad strokes. Who were you, where did you come from, how'd you wind up here, what do you do, and tell us mostly about the Beast Maker.
SPEAKER_07Right. So uh I grew up in the Midwest and uh relocated here. Where in the Midwest did you grow up? Iowa. Iowa Southwest specifically. Um what town? Atlantic. Okay. Yeah. So it's you in Iowa or Iowa State Guy. Uh so I Iowa. My wife and brother both graduated from Iowa.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. I'm a big college football fan. Yeah. Yeah. Big big out there. Big out there nowadays. Yeah. Uh yeah, so I grew up out there and uh my wife and I relocated here for recreational purposes, uh mostly rock climbing, biking, hiking, that kind of thing, uh, in 2015. Okay. And that's actually when all of this started was uh I work at the mountain house and so I became familiar with the ridge very quickly. And uh it was maybe we'd been here six months when we started realizing that we should try to put together a situation where we could hit all of the rock scrambles or at least a big bulk of the rock scrambles in a continuous uh loop and make a make a pretty big day out of it. At the time it was a hike.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Uh and so that's what has uh in the past years since then gained the name the Beastmaker, sometimes referred to as the Beacmaker Challenge. Uh so do you have a website for this? Uh no, Instagram and Strabo. I see. I'm a follower on Instagram. Yeah, the the Beastmaker Challenge, I think, is the Instagram. Who runs that? Is that Ben or you? No, that's me, but Ben Ben uh yeah, Ben Bryant helps with with a lot of the artistic side of things. He made the logo uh and then he puts out a zine. So Ben's gonna listen to this podcast, no doubt.
SPEAKER_04Because he listens to us. Yeah, he's a listener. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Ben. Yeah. Ben. Well, throw your name out there, Ben.
SPEAKER_06We love the zine, dude. Yeah. So um, so how many times has the Beastmaker? I mean, what's cool about the Beastmaker is that it's it's official, but it's also purposely unofficial in that way, right? It's real. You can you can do it, but there's not like this whole infrastructure around creating the race. It's like you show up and you go and do it.
SPEAKER_07Right. So we use the tagline officially unofficial, and if you read any of our stuff, we start off with things like this is not a race, this is not a real event, this is nothing except for a suggested place at a suggested boils down to is it is a very specific route, and a lot of people do it uh at different times, not just on the day that we call the race day. Uh so yeah, it's it's about it's like twelve little little under twelve miles and does nine rock scrambles, and then there's been so Cody.
SPEAKER_05If I want to do this on just some random day that wasn't the official day, maybe after I got some Beastmaker stuff. I saw that. That's pretty cool. Which is amazing. Uh so people, this is what I love about this is there's an official thing where this unofficial thing may or may not be happening, but it's also like, hey, I just did the Beast Maker on a random October Tuesday. Right. Uh and that's cool. The ethos of the ultra, right?
SPEAKER_07And that's what I really think is special about it is is that I'm me and a few other people, uh, Ben and Mike Cohn and and uh you know put a a lot of effort into making sure that it's effortless.
SPEAKER_05Is this Mike Cone who lives over here who's the PA? Yeah, okay. Yeah. I his wife Miguel. Yep. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So yeah, he uh he's one of the people that have been kind of involved in supporting uh making it like some of our gimmicks that we do. Uh he has always ran. Yeah. But uh had never done anything like official or any race. He just ran on his own for exercise. I see him running a lot. Yeah, and so uh the first Beacmaker that we held like an official day of was his first race ever. Which is cool. How cool. So now you know he's done uh with us like we a bunch of us did SRT uh last year, bear, you know, Bear Mountain, 50K, escarpment. Like so now he's like gotten into it. And that's really what what it's about.
SPEAKER_05What's about, man? That's that's the culture, it's the it's the fellowship of the whole endurance training, man. My like same with Jeff. My friends are all I hang out with. My kids are like no stranger than like random cyclists rolling in the driveway and like taking a nap in the yard, getting some water and leaving.
SPEAKER_07Right. And that's like if someone wants to hang out, that's what you're doing. That's what you're doing. Yeah, running in the woods or biking or something.
SPEAKER_05Right. Right. So um I love that this is because the Mohawk's dear to me. I worked there for a decade and I'm very intimate now. I have a lot of Mohawk knowledge. So I love the fact that you have some of the lesser known rock scrambles that people didn't even know exist in your event. So why don't you can you walk us through it?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, let's walk through it. Yeah. So uh yeah, I'll try to do it pretty quickly. But so don't rush. Don't rush, man. This is it. Part of the part of the beauty of it that I think, and like you pointed out, is that it starts and stops at the same spot. Yep. And it's a spot that you can get to uh to hike from. And so it can be done at any point in time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And honestly, if you are trying to show up on race day and do it even slightly competitively and haven't done it a couple of times, you aren't going to do well because it's it's a big whole field of dance. Yeah, yeah. So it uh nothing's marked, you know, un we, you know, unsupported, unmarked, unofficial, unregulated.
SPEAKER_05It's kind of like before you would even try this, you might show up and make a hike out of it. And like, let me see where this is going. What's going to be my way, and how am I getting through here? So tell us, where does it traditionally start?
SPEAKER_07So it uh traditionally starts at the Mohonk Mountain House Day hike lot, which is right off Mount Gress Road at the gatehouse. And so uh when we first started doing it, it would start on the bridge, which we don't come back. Yeah. Uh so we start just on the other side of that, and it essentially goes straight out uh to Bonicue, but around the the right side of the lollipop that goes to Bonicue Scramble. You go up the scramble, up the face. That's the first one is Bontacue. Yep, bontacue. Which is a great scramble. Right. And it's a really good way to start the the race because it's like just a little over a mile of decent carriage road running to get things moving. Yep. And then you hit those rocks and and it changes things, right? By the way, Jeff, we still gotta get in the cave there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you gotta do that. You should make that part of the ride. It's kind of cool. Oh yeah, yeah. We didn't have to be a good one. You could hide in the caves.
SPEAKER_05You could get in there for like get lost. There's like yarn in there. Yeah. Sure. Great. Yeah. Anyway, let's get back to the scramble. I'll be texting Cody.
SPEAKER_06I'm lost. Can you find me?
SPEAKER_05I'm in a property. What uh he could be part of the beast. Look at the that would be good beastmaker lore. There's a guy in the cave. We don't know if he's still there or not. He may or may not be there.
SPEAKER_07Last year, while it was going on right in the middle of Bonnecue, they had the rattlesnake next. Yeah. So there was that sign. And so that added a little bit to it. It's like, okay, we'll just there's gonna be a snake nest right in the middle of the first scramble.
SPEAKER_05Any any rattlesnake signs always definitely brings some excitement to an event. Right. What do you come down the path?
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, so you would hook left and then come down to northeast. Yeah, and hook back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_05Which in itself, the little path from northeast and then hook back up, it's not a little gritty.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so that that section is definitely a spot where you have to think about whether you're gonna power hike or run because you can bark.
SPEAKER_05I mean the trail runners are running. Right. If you're not because it's kind of technical.
SPEAKER_07And that's what this whole thing, the whole idea, and sometimes because there are quite a few people who run it, uh I like to point out that hiking it, jogging between the scrambles and taking your time on the scrambles, whatever the case, whatever you want to do, is completely fine. We have people that do it, we have two people that have done it in sub two hours. We have people that if you hike it, it takes about six hours. Yeah. Uh, and everybody in between. So I run into a lot of people that are like, Oh, I I can't do it on the race day because I won't be fast.
SPEAKER_05Like, yeah, which honestly is like they're missing the central component of the whole event. Right. So we want you here.
SPEAKER_07The only thing I say is that I ask everybody to only complete it at a pace to which they can do so safely. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's that's good good advice. Yeah. So that's like, you know, we're always writing the same like little taglines on things, and that's one of them.
SPEAKER_05Is it I'm super impressed the fact that you got these you got brochures out for this. These are swanky.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so so the zine is is Ben, Ben Bryant's uh art piece. So this uh second year has come out, so most people don't have that one yet. Uh but there's some cool stuff in it.
SPEAKER_05He was kind of trying to go for this one, stick or snake, because I'm on the trails all the time. I'm riding or running, and I'm like, I see it coming up. Is that a snake? I know.
SPEAKER_07That top one's a doozy, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And like I see it all the time. I'm like, holy shit, that's a stick. I'm like, nope, that's a freaking snake.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it's almost worse when it's the other way. If you jump, if you jump like and scream like a little girl, and then you're like, that was a stick the whole time.
SPEAKER_06I've stopped and like just stood there staring up the trail, waiting for something to move, because I'm like, I don't want to get that close to figure out that it's not a stick.
SPEAKER_05I actually had a run ruin because I was running up towards Duck Pond and there was a giant snake in the path, and I was like, kind of made a motion to get by him, and the snake was a it was a copper head. Didn't want didn't want to go let me pass, was kind of getting agitated, and I just ran home.
SPEAKER_07Time to go home, yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, I don't know. The zine, uh, there's a lot of cool stuff Ben does in it. Uh I've kind of been describing it as a cross between like an 80s and 90s like punk zine and then uh a 90s flyer for a PTA event.
SPEAKER_05It's a great way to explain it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07It's a great description. He definitely has a style.
SPEAKER_05So is is Ben an art guy?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. He graduated SUNY and he does a bunch of shows around.
SPEAKER_05He won the first annual uh milk run last year.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. 10K. Yeah, which that's coming up again. Yeah, in October.
SPEAKER_05So what's your next screw? Well, maybe hit on that. Come out for that if you want. That's a good event. So wait, did we finish the walkthrough? We didn't even get no, we're not even there. It's like, wait, we don't have to. You get out of the scramble. Now where do you go? So you uh there's some running now.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so you this is the long one of the longest stretches. Is so then after the scramble, you come up back to where you went down back onto Bonnecue Road and uh to what I always call the five-way intersection. Yep. And you go down Crag Trail. Yeah, I know it. Uh and so Crag and then not your first left but second is uh Cedar. Yeah. Uh and so these are things that like for people who were hiking it when we first came up with it, you know, 10 years ago. Uh I changed few a few little details about it because um originally we never thought of it as being like a big bulk amount of people doing it. So we used to go up the face of Bonicue and just turn around and come down the face again.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And then we used to take Bonicue Road over to the next scramble, which is Rock Rift, but you have to cross the hot the uh Mountain Rest Road just you know without a crosswalk or anything. So we those were the two major changes I made, which was to come down around so you're not coming down the scramble and then Which makes a lot of sense, and then cedar with the bridge. So you cross the bridge, that's how you get across. Get across the bridge now. Uh and so it's kind of funny because when we first started running it, I put together this idea in my head that sub two hours is possible. Maybe not for me, but for someone. And at that point in time it was a little over 10 miles, and then we made these changes, which made it like closer to 12 miles and never changed that idea of the sub two hour goal. And so on last year's events, Ben, Bryant, and uh Martine, who uh is a super fast racer, he did SRT yesterday also. Um both went sub two by like 40 seconds, but yeah. Okay. Wow. Yeah, really fast. Yeah. Right. So back to Rock Rift.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so one of my favorites. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07So you take Cedar to old Glen Anna. Uh these are the some of my these are some of my very favorite places in the house. And and they're some of the lesser traveled.
SPEAKER_04I love those.
SPEAKER_07Rock Rift Road, Glen Anna Road. Right. So you dump into Rock Rift and of course do it uh as a general rule of thumb, we ask uh like arm's length from the blaze marks. Yeah. Just because obviously in the scrambles you can cut things off and go weird ways.
SPEAKER_05You go Rock Rift, your Glen Anna and come down and pop out on Cedar, you go from Cedar and pop out up on Glen Glen Anna.
SPEAKER_07So Cedar, then the hard left up uh Glen Anna, and then a right into the start. Yeah. Uh yeah, and so you'll end on Rock Rift Road. Gotcha, yeah. Yeah. And so you go through the scramble proper, and then on Rock Rift Road, if you were to go straight, that would be Rock Rift Path. Yeah. Uh so you don't do that. You take a right.
SPEAKER_05Um if they're not used to it. You can get lost there. Which is why I Which is why there's that two-page document that's filled with directions on what the hell to do. So I love Rock Rift. If you're riding your bike there, which I and I've I've been under that's my favorite one. People just pop out of the ground. Right. So it's like they're hobbits. All of a sudden you're like riding your bike and walking, like whoop, someone just pops up.
SPEAKER_07And it's honestly hard to do that one without getting like a little dirty.
SPEAKER_05So you're always dirty out of the ground and you're like, it's cool, man.
SPEAKER_07It's usual there's usually some sections where you have to like balance on rocks because there's water flow in the bottom of it. So that adds so people get through that pretty quick though, I bet. Yeah, people who are familiar with the moves. Yeah. Like if it's I would say that that's one of the ones that uh is easiest to boss in. Uh no doubt about that. There's an article in the in the zine that's uh um Jordan Dennis, who's uh local run runner, she wrote a redemption article. Last year she had some pretty big races. She did New York City Marathon and uh she did uh Rock the Ridge and did really well on it, and then uh got lost and turned around in Rock Rift and had to scoop back and do it almost twice because she popped out in the middle somewhere. Oh wow, whatever.
SPEAKER_06So yeah, so you if you're that's what makes this kind of cool is that it's not you just it just is what it is. It is what it is, right?
SPEAKER_07And that's can't to me that's there's no one to complain to. Right. So that's that's kind of the is because it's n you don't pay anything other than your fee to be in the you know, to hike there. Uh so and there's no prizes, there's no anything, you know. The there's a a roast article in this, which is my absolute favorite thing, uh called I think it's called A Good Way to Ruin a Day. Uh right, right. Uh yeah, and it says the the only prize is uh kudos on Strava. Right. Uh which I think is is pretty perfect.
SPEAKER_05It's a pretty awesome prize though.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So when you're the day fee you mention, when you're running this, people parking at the lot at Mohank or they park somewhere else.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so uh I would recommend the easiest way is to park at the lot at Mohunk. So you pay the Mohunk day fee. Because that you start and finish. Uh I I don't think a ton of people know that if you have a preserve membership, that's that that's cheaper. Way cheaper. Yeah. So I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's like 10 or 15 bucks as opposed to like 30 something.
SPEAKER_05Oh, is that right? It's ten dollars. I actually didn't. And that's ten dollars only on weekends. I think if it's weekdays, it's two.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so there's there's a thing. And and a lot of the people who are running it for training, you know, to practice it, are doing it on weekdays so they don't run into the labyrinth crowd. Oh, right. So which is also part of it. You can be running. It's just the labyrinth is part of the Beacmaker. So that's the last scramble.
SPEAKER_05Which is which is probably the signature scramble on Mohawk. I mean, it's not my favorite, but it is amazing.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, there's elements to it that are unbeatable.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, there's no doubt. But I like, I'm seeing your map, and my favorite is the Giants Cathedral, all that whole jammed up spot there. It's cool.
SPEAKER_07Right. So, yeah, there's a cluster in the middle there. So uh, all right, so we did Rock Rift. Yep, and then you drop down Rock Rift Road, Cedar back to Cedar Road, back to Mossy Brook Road. Uh up Mossy Brook, which would be a left. Uh, and then there's a little jaunt you can pop onto Mossy Brook Path. Okay, you go past that. And then there's that footbridge right where Maple would be. So you take that right across that footbridge, and then you take Maple through the rock pass, the rock cut there. Yep.
SPEAKER_05Which is kinda cool.
SPEAKER_07To the end of uh Laurel Edge. But before you even do that, you drop right onto Plateau Path.
SPEAKER_08I know it.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so Plateau Path uh runs just below Laurel Edge and So you come right out of the the cut of maple and dump on plateau. Yeah, so right to the right there. Uh and then Zadies Bower, which is one of my favorite is cool. It's kind of a mess. Like there, it's like barely a rock scramble in some parts and then incredibly scrambly in other parts. So yeah, and it's a lollipop. So you drop down lollipop Zadies uh counterclockwise. It's kind of like that's the fourth. Uh third.
SPEAKER_06That's the third.
SPEAKER_05I mean Zadies is cool because no one really does Zadies Power, and when you do it, like there's kind of like I guess there is a setway, but you kind of could do your own thing in there.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So you could kind of like, like you said, it's like, okay, this is easier, like, where am I?
SPEAKER_07Right. And for for years running it, the curve coming up around the back, like after finishing the proper part of the scramble, that was where I was hitting like a wall, like physically, where that really felt like where it got hard. Uh and I was able to train out of that, but for several years that was where it was like, okay, this is real. Like we're we're we're running. You're at that point, you're like about six miles in.
SPEAKER_05And you got quite a bit of elevation. You've already hit the Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And a couple of long stretches. So yeah, you have the first run, which is pretty long.
SPEAKER_05Do people really power walk the whole thing in six hours?
SPEAKER_07So so just a like a regular hike is six hours. Like a br like a fairly brisk hike is six hours. If you're if you're running it at a comfortable speed but still running, like three is a lot of people shoot for that sub three as a goal.
SPEAKER_05So if you if I was to go out and bang this out sometime midweek, because I sometime midweek, I'm retired and I have lots of jobs, but I can make time to do cool stuff like this. Right. So if I was just to go out in the next couple weeks and just like, hey, I gotta some time for the day. I'm gonna sound like a wonderful way to spend the day. You just ask the people Strava it and like, hey, look, I just checked it out, great course, thanks. And that's kind of it.
SPEAKER_07Or yeah, so there's so uh aside from the walkthrough, there's also uh Gaia, Cal Tapo, and Strava map links all in the bio link of the Instagram. Instagram. Yeah, so that would be my my suggestion is look at that map before you go out. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_05I I would 100% do this because I'm telling you I'm gonna do a mental walkthrough. I'm gonna do that. I'm doing this this fall. Yeah and I'm gonna probably do a power walk with a slow jog on the long stretches.
SPEAKER_07Right. So so that tends to be like that four, you know, I'm gonna be a four-hour guy, which is still uh pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, so four hours means still 459 is four hours.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh I need to get I need to get out there and do it. We should do it.
SPEAKER_07So that being said, I guess the the officially unofficial day is is the 26th of this month. Of this month. Yeah, you got yeah, yeah, it's coming up.
SPEAKER_05So the 26th, I knew that because I follow the straw, the Instagram, and I know Ben. It's hard to sort through the Instagram sometime through the rest of our our antics, though. Well, listen, I like the antics because I'm an antics guy. So people are like, what the hell are you doing? Right. So I I appreciate the antics, so I have a built-in way to filter through that stuff. But I just have to go to a wedding that day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Oh. That is what it is. That's just it. Yeah. You know, so uh the first year that we did the official, like officially unofficial meetup day. Uh, I think we had maybe 10 people, and there was somebody that had something and he uh just ran it the next day.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's kind of the whole thing I do with the cabin challenge. People are like, I gotta do something that day. I'm like, dude, you can do the cabin challenge any day you want.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_05And they go do it, and I have a swag bag for them on the porch.
SPEAKER_07That was actually Tim uh Tim Kay, which he has one of my favorite quotes of uh That's a man's race, and I've been training like a boy. Which I've been using that as a tagline ever since he said it, because that's gold. It's pretty good.
SPEAKER_05So how many people are you expecting at the unofficial?
SPEAKER_07So once again, that's tricky because there's no registration, there's no sign-up, there's no Does anyone sort of declare their coming on on Insta? So we have uh I I set it as an event in the Strava Club. Okay. Uh and we have I don't know, maybe a little over a hundred members, and I think last time I looked, like twenty people have have joined the event, like the Strava event. Uh I would expect somewhere in the mid 30s, maybe low 40s, we got weather dependent.
SPEAKER_05This is gonna be a weather-dependent thing.
SPEAKER_07It is, but for me personally, aside for lightning, uh, but you're hardcore. Weather dependent is just my my pace. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh everybody's hardcore. If it's raining, I'm still.
SPEAKER_07I don't think you're you're showing up to do something.
SPEAKER_05You're not you're not in the beacmaker world and you're like a fair weather runner. You're like, let's get that straight. But there are guys who are like, I'm gonna do the beastmaker, I gotta shift my day around, and then looking at it two or three days out, like shit, it's gonna be miserable weather. I should just get this done anyway.
SPEAKER_07Right. I I also think that that's an there's an interesting level of entry because the longest run between rock scrambles is only two. Two miles, right? So break down cedar, it's flat as well. Yeah, you you run, you take a little break, and we're nice, nice, pleasant rock scramble.
SPEAKER_05So then another mile run, and then here's the most fascinating thing to this for me is the fact that like this goes against everything that or organized events want, which is like insurance, registration numbers, the fact that this is happening on the property is pretty cool.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so I guess uh unfortunately there's not like a way to put it other than that we kind of operate in a gray zone where you gotta stay in the gray zone. You if you get to that property legally, meaning that you pay for a day hike pass or you're an employee or you're whatever the case may be, if you get to that property legally, you're allowed to use mountain house property and you're allowed to use preserved property. Yeah, all of these trails are in your they're open. They're open.
SPEAKER_06Right, they're open to anyone who wants to use them. Yeah, right. Provided you came in proper channel.
SPEAKER_07We are just suggesting a very specific route of those trails.
SPEAKER_08Which is great.
SPEAKER_05You're just trying to keep people safe. Hey, if you want to do all these wonderful rock scrambles, we're advising you to do this this way. Right. And like that's great. And you know, the gray area is a good place to be.
SPEAKER_07And there, you know, there's so many people that live in this area who've never even gone to the rigid or they've never been in Minawask. And the even of the people who have, how many of them have what percentage have done Zades? Have done nobody these are the these are the spots where drawing people into these areas is is a lot.
SPEAKER_05Listen, so I'm looking at the map, right? Now, like I said, I lived in Mohawk for 10 years in a dorm. I did a lot, all the hikes. Right. Avid hiker, avid runner. So these were things like, oh, that's cool. But the uh the normal person, even hikers who are in the ridge, they're they don't know what cathedral rocks are. They're I mean, giants, sure. Rock riff, maybe, bontaque. These are like all of them. Right. So you know you have even Cliff Scramble on here. That's the ascent I'm talking, right?
SPEAKER_06The quick story about Mohawk fireworks is that after Glenn lived in the dorm for 10 years and he left, they had a celebration and they started shooting off fireworks. Right. And then someone was like, Oh, we should do that on the fourth, and they're like, Yeah, it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_05Double dip on the fireworks. Let me tell you a quick little story about the fireworks, how it did come back, which is Jeff, this I'm not disputing that could have happened. The timing is about right. And there was certainly celebration for me leaving the property. No, no doubt. There was nobody who wanted me to stay there. As a matter of fact, on my first date with Mel, my it was actually my first where it took Mel to the fireworks, or like I took her up the hike. They're like, I'm rolling through the gate, and I was like, I don't know how this is gonna turn out. Because one of John Levin at the time was a manager, and she's like, What do you mean how it's gonna turn out? I'm like, I was kind of asked to leave the property. I'm like, I don't know if I'm kind of well, and he was very sick. He's like, Yeah, how's it going? He was great. It was a couple years later, yeah. But they filmed the movie Road to Wellville at Mohawk when I was working there, and I was a I was a Mohawk liaison to the movie, so I hung out on the movie set the entire time with like Anthony Hopkins doing all this cool stuff, Matthew Broderick. So they basically were blowing up the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which Mohawk was serving as the sanitarium, that's why it was set there, and the movie was shot there from the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend to like December 23rd. The hotel was cleared of and it was just filled up by movie people. So the fireworks they did was uh blowing up the sanitarium was on fire, which was the culminating scene of the movie, and it was so cool that the family was like, We should bring back the fireworks that we haven't had here in 95 years. Yeah, they did an illumination. Yeah, I I dude, I saw the illumination every year, and it was wonderful. It was cool. Like a light show, I guess. No, it was flares. Yeah. It was highway flares that would start at the bottom of like where you get out for the SOS, and the illumination would like the gazebos were all lit up with lights going up the mountain, and then the illumination they'd unfurl a flag and they would light up different colors with highway flares. And they stopped. One of the reasons they stopped doing the illumination was because the fireworks were cool. Yeah. And they couldn't get the different colored flares anymore. It was becoming difficult. But they've kind of incorporated some of the illumination with the current fireworks show because they still do the trumpet and they still have the gazebos are lit up. So it's a good mix. And I was present for both of them and the fireworks. The Mohawk fireworks are the greatest fireworks you'll ever see. Yeah, they're really good. Yeah, they do a good job. Yeah, I took Mel there as one of our dates. And quick, nice work, buddy. Uh, we hitchhike down because we had to get out, and we can't we can't go down Fox Path. I was parked at the golf course. So all of a sudden the car goes by and the car stops. Like, you guys want to lift? So I hop in and I'm just chatting away with Mr. Milne. And like and Mel's like, we get down there, and they were so nice. Oh, how's your mom doing? I'm like, how's your kids? We're going through the whole thing, and we get out of the car. Mel's like, Who was that guy? I'm like, that was AA Mil's grandson. She's like, Winnie the Pooh. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh wow.
SPEAKER_05Damn, I had her right there. Yep, that was it. Hook line and put the ring on her. Anyway. All right. Keep going, Cody. Cathedral.
SPEAKER_07We're yeah, where are we just got out of Zadies, right? We're out of Zades.
SPEAKER_05We're heading into Cathedral and Giants.
SPEAKER_07We're heading into so you you pass uh you get up onto Laurel Edge Road and you go all the way to Giants. That's cool. Giants is cool. And you do Giants Scramble and then continue on Giants Path all the way up to uh to the carriage road.
SPEAKER_05Which to me, that it doesn't get any better on Mountain House property from Laurel up the carriage road, the Giants Path, the workshop, all those, that's great.
SPEAKER_07So technically not Mountain House property. Is that still preserved? Yeah, so the only two scrambles that are on Mountain House property are Eagle Cliff Ascent and the Labyrinth.
SPEAKER_05Where is the div is the is Laurel the dividing?
SPEAKER_07Uh well, so at the uh the horseshoe turn on Laurel called the Rock Pass, Maple is the line. Yeah. So then Laurel is the line and then uh copes uh path uh or copes lookout and then Humpty Dumpty. Yeah. So all of the cool yeah, so when you are on Humpty Dumpty Road, the edge of the path is all the property line. Amazing stuff. Uh yeah. So anyway, so you get all the way up to uh right uh to Humpty Dumpty Road and hook left to Cope's Lookout and go down those stairs uh to go down Cathedral. Okay. So this looks cool. Yeah, so this is the only uh double back. So you go all the way down cathedral, uh tap the little start sign of cathedral, and then come back up to go right on Arching Rocks. Uh because that runs below that runs uh across the bottom of the cliff. You get people getting lost in there? Uh not yet. Yeah, I mean there's kind of people lost the whole time if they didn't that's kind of part of it.
SPEAKER_05Here's what I say when people talk about getting lost, because I run a lot of cycling events and stuff, like I got lost, and I say, were you really lost, or you just were off the trail? And there's a difference. Right. You might be off the mark trail for a bit, but you're not lost. You're not in the woods, no idea where you are sending up.
SPEAKER_06Right, you're on a road. And so this is on a bike ride. It's the road, dude. Right.
SPEAKER_05There's a stores next door.
SPEAKER_07So on this on this route specifically, it's not marked as a race, but all of the trails are marked. Yeah. The preserve and the moundhouse do a good like wonderful job. Yeah, it's not that totally all being off being off the trail than just being on a different trail. Exactly. You're not lost. So anyway, yeah, sometimes in that cluster would be a good spot to get turned around just because it's four scrambles. Four scrambles. Right. And uh so when you get to the top of Giants, so backed up a little bit here, when you get to the top of Giants uh scramble before you go up Giants Path, uh that's the trail coming from the left is the end of Arching Rock. Yeah. And then the trail going to the right is Humpty Dumpty. So then you go up and go down Cathedral, come across Arching Rock, and then you're back to that same intersection, and then you continue straight to go on Humpty Dumpty, uh, which I think is also uh underrated.
SPEAKER_05Very underrated. And the views there are are good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07So you end uh that ends on Humpty Dumpty Road, you hook a right.
SPEAKER_05Uh it ends right at the summer house there, right? The gazebo?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so right so right before this cluster of four summer houses is about halfway mileage. Hey, could we just pause for a second?
SPEAKER_05Now you build summer houses. I do. This is a story in itself, so let's quickly just talk about right now. People are gonna listen. You build the gazebos, the summer houses.
SPEAKER_06Is that what they call summer houses or the little gazebos on property?
SPEAKER_07Uh we don't have enough time for me to get into all the details about that, but you you uh the summer house phrase dates back to Andrew Jackson Downing in in the 1840s, uh landscape architecture of the Hudson, Hudson Valley, trying to have like a uh English tea house situation, but with the he described it as the ruggedness of the Hudson Valley. Uh huh. So that's where a summer house was born. Uh and it's basically a rustic gazebo.
SPEAKER_05If you keep saying gazebo shirt when you're talking to Alex of like summer house, right. So yeah, because that's a nice gazebo, but summer house.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah, he he's got a few of those. He hits me sometimes with uh um referring to the mountain houses at the hotel. He'll be like, no, that I'm like, well, it's both. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So anyway, we don't have to get deep into it. But I just want our listeners to know that we're talking to a dedicated Mohawk employee who's responsible for building wonderful gazebo slash summer houses.
SPEAKER_06Wasn't aware of that distinction, so that's good to know. But um for for the the larger audience that may not really know what we're saying when we talk about.
SPEAKER_05Everybody who's listening to us, they all have come across the gazebo.
SPEAKER_06When you've gone on to Mohawk property, and if you haven't, you should someday try to do that. Um there's these little I'm doing air quotes here, gazebos placed uh all over and beautiful views uh to sit in them and and to just take a rest, but to chill out, and then they're all like strategically placed. Um really beautiful, rustic looking, and uh and this is the guy responsible. Yep.
SPEAKER_07So yeah, so we have 121 of them on the property. I don't think people realize there's a lot. That's a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Sometimes you're walking and all of a sudden you see one, you're like, oh, I didn't know that was there.
SPEAKER_05Some of them are very basic, and some of them are very, very elaborate, multi-tiered, and they're over like pretty precarious rock ledges.
SPEAKER_07Right. Some of them are are hanging off of the faces, and you get out there and do those. Yeah, which is where the the the rock climbing background helped a lot with that, being able to be comfortable maneuvering on the faces.
SPEAKER_05Where do you guys the the logs you get, the cedar logs? It must be one mil you're getting those from.
SPEAKER_07Uh so I get them from everywhere I can. Uh I get a semi-load generally from Indiana. Uh there's a guy out there, he's a broker that just has uh feelers out to tree companies and farmers and anybody else, and they basically and cedar. And so that would be like our standard railing material. Uh that's just kind of more basic stuff, uh, which I should mention I've got about 2300 sections of railing on the property also. So you guys do the summer houses and all the railing? Yeah, and the benches, and then uh any bridges and ladders and any of the rock scrambles on so Eagle Cliff and the Labyrinth, all the bridges in that. So if you're doing this route, you're definitely coming across a lot of this stuff.
SPEAKER_05You know, the the bridge down at the Mountain Rest that was wiped out, which I was riding like literally almost when the bridge went out. The truck was like I was coming up, and the truck was like coming up with its hazards. But that's been a real problem because like organizing the ski race, yeah, you know, running events, cycling events, that bridge being out, it's a real conundrum. It's a problem. Let's go, Cody. Build a new bridge. No, it's something with the Department of Transportation.
SPEAKER_07I think it's a a a three-part, uh, you know, not to get I don't know a lot of the details of it from my understanding is is that it's a three-part thing between the mountain house, the Department of Transportation, uh, because it's a state road, and then um also the insurance company. Yeah. Because I I think the state wants it to be wider, and then the insurance company's going, well, we're only replacing a bridge. Yeah. So there I don't really know any of the DOTs involved. Yeah, so so I I think that that's like there's a bunch of different agencies all but that's gonna make it real quick.
SPEAKER_05I believe that that it's still a work in progress. Anyway, sorry for the sidebars. Yeah, how we roll. No, that was good. You come up from Humpty Dumpty, then where are we heading?
SPEAKER_07Right. So you hook a right uh on Humpty Dumpty Road, and then you make that hard left onto short woodland. Uh and right when you, I don't know, maybe 150 yards is the left onto Eagle Cliff Ascent. Which is a very cool little route. Yeah, it's short, it's definitely the shortest. Is that the shortest? Yeah, it is the shortest. Yeah, it's it's very short. It has a decent, it's probably about the same distance as Bonace. Bonnecue's short also. Yeah. It just goes up a lot. It's just steep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So Eagle Cliff Ascent is something that people probably hit and don't even know if unless they see the sign. Because you could kind of scramble. It's a great way to go from like short woodland up to Eagle Cliff.
SPEAKER_07Right, yeah. So it's really the only way to get up onto Eagle Cliff proper without going all the way back to uh the next point would be like Lambdon's Glen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So you hit Eagle Cliff scramble, and then you work your way down around the around the back the front side of the lake? Right.
SPEAKER_07So uh yeah. So you right when you come out of that scramble, uh, there's a summer house right there called Artist Rock. Yeah, it's a great one. And there's a little cut-through path uh that you take.
SPEAKER_05They cuts to the other, I mean you just cut right the eagle. Yeah, but you go over the left.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, maybe 40 feet.
SPEAKER_05But it cuts off a decent chunk of the room. Right.
SPEAKER_07Otherwise, you're you know, and we've I've seen people coming around where they'd missed it, and that's just kind of part of it. If you don't know the route, then you're gonna add on some little extra legs here and there. So yeah, so you do that, and then you're over on the part of Eagle Cliff that looks towards Skytop. And so as you're running down there, you have Skytop to your right tower. Yeah, yeah. Uh and there's the carriage road meanders and does a few like loops. So there's cut-throughs on all of those loops. So the cut-throughs are the are the route. So it's kind of going from carriage to cut-through, carriage to cut-through. Right. And so you just take the shortest distance where the lake and the tower are on your right. That's the idea, is you're just staying lakeside all the way down to where you come across, like through the granary area, uh across the bridge by the beach there, and then right before the hotel, uh, the mountain house, which would be the spa on that end, uh, there is a path uh right on called Pine Bluff. The area. So you come down Pine Bluff. So you go up uh above the beach, there's a path to the right, and it goes between the hotel and the lake. So it's just kind of a rough little rocky path. You empty out on the porch. Yeah, so you empty out on the porch, so that's the one spot. And if you read any of our.
SPEAKER_05I had no idea you ran through the hotel porch.
SPEAKER_07So if you if you read any of our documentation, that's the only like thing where like give us a little respect when you get to that end of that last bridge, you walk until you're across the porch. Yeah, and stop walking. And it honestly went through pushing people out of the way.
SPEAKER_05So you come down the stairs.
SPEAKER_07It adds an element to it because you, you know, by this point, you're you're obviously sweaty, you're probably very dirty, maybe bloody. And you gotta walk across the lake.
SPEAKER_05And your porch hanging out. You're coming into super close proximity of guests because they're all the guests facing the lake. They're right there. There's porches there.
SPEAKER_07Well, they're generally on that porch. The rocking chair is having breakfast if you're fast enough. Right.
SPEAKER_05So you come, you come off the rock and you could go up the short thing of stairs to the parlor.
SPEAKER_03So you go down to the grab some bacon off somebody's plate as you're going through.
SPEAKER_05And since we're coming so close there, it's I gotta point out probably my famous fave favorite room in the hotel is you take that immediate left into the study. Right. That's a cool little room to hang out in. Yeah. I spent many a work shift in our killing time. So you come across the porch.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and then you hook a right and go right in front of like where the dock is. Yep. And then there's a tiny little crevice right there that I I deemed uh Lakeshore Crevice. Okay. It doesn't have an official name, but I don't know how much now, baby. All my paperwork it does. So uh and then you pop out right at the Lakeshore Bridge, and just across the bridge on your left is where the labyrinth starts. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so then you do the labyrinth. And can I say something? The labyrinth, in my opinion, has gotten a tiny bit tricky when they did all the tree work, and they have um they really cleared it out. So now you see that one pole standing there, and it has the arrow that points crevice. Right. So I took my nephews there and I've hiked this. I put that pole there. I know, I figured you did. And it's great because it provides great direction, but the the pole hasn't been there that long. Uh yeah, maybe I put it in like eight or nine years ago. So I was going through there and was kind of getting in an argument with my nephews at the time who were like ten, and we kept going. On to we're going and going and going. All of a sudden I'm like, I think these are pinnacle stairs. Like we come around.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, to Birchin and City Cliff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So we bushwacked up there, which was probably not ideal.
SPEAKER_07But yeah, now it's now that we have the Via Ferrata and the Pinnacle Edge Tour, like that's even less of a good idea. Yeah, it's not a good idea. It's monitored and all sorts of things. There's cameras out there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, so that scramble uh birch into staircliffe is on what what we refer to as a super beast, which is an alteration that has happened.
SPEAKER_05So the super beast is so you have the burgeon scramble.
SPEAKER_07Right, yeah. So uh last year I came up with uh a modification and told the regular guys who were training for it all the time that I would release it for lack of a better term when uh somebody went sub two hours on the original route. And so that happened at last year's event. So uh um the Super Beast adds uh you go from the start, you run down uh Lenape and take a left on Woodside. So you start, you're talking you come from same spot, gatehouse. Down Lenape to Yeah, like that mile and a half down. Which is not like a quarter of a mile, mile and a half, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Not even half a mile, maybe.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, but then it adds it adds about three miles because then you take Woodside. Yeah, you're way you're going down, then you gotta circumnavigate the whole ridge.
SPEAKER_05Come on. Woodside's rough. Yeah, it's pretty rough.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I don't know what it is about it, but it it wrecks me when I'm running.
SPEAKER_05You know what I figured about Woodside, which was weird to me. I would study these, I'm an avid hiker runner of the whole thing. So I was always getting so tweaky about the woodside slash northeast trail where it would end and start, and like one mountain rest road, it was northeast. And then I was talking, I think Alex, and he's like, Yeah, they kind of changed it for purposes of uniformity. So it became woodside all the way, even if you're hiking up Lenape Lane, Lenape, to the right used to be Northeast Trail. I mean, it goes on the aqueduct on the other side, but they changed it to whatever. I don't know how they changed it to Woodside, so now it's got the same.
SPEAKER_03There's part of it that comes down the aqueduct, right? The aqueduct there, and then they have the single track, the single track. All that's changed. Yeah, they're not there on the maps anymore, but the trailblazers are still there.
SPEAKER_05So they named it. So anyway, you woodside, then you circumnavigate up to Virgin.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, uh well so Forest or wherever you call it. To Bonicue. So that that uh for the Super Beast alteration, that takes you to Bonicue. Uh and then the only other change is uh Oh, you go that way, you cross Mountain Rest Road then. Yeah, and take take northeast all the way to for for this alteration uh to Bonicue. And so that's the only change at the beginning, and then at the end, instead of going to the porch like we just talked about, you take a right on Landon Lambdon's Glen Stairs and go around the lake. Yeah. Uh and down Partridge Barry. So you're passing uh entrance right there, and you jump down Forest and go Birchen uh and do Birchen to Staircliff to that post you were referring to, and then you go down out of the exit to scramble to Spring Path and then do the lavender. So you come up from Birchen. Oh wow, Super Beast is.
SPEAKER_05So you come so you come out of Birchen and uh you just scramble up the rocks, it's like overhand kind of it's a big sled. You're coming up, and then you get to that pole.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and then there's uh the sixth exit of the labyrinth is to your left because that pole's a three-way intersection, so then if you go down, uh so there it's actually Diego, who's uh uh one of the international employees who came to Mohawk in the summers for the last few years, he's been doing all of this. He did escarpment with us, which was really cool. But uh he did the first uh attempt and completed what we call the Beast Marathon, which is a super beast lap followed by a beast lab.
SPEAKER_05There's always somebody that's gonna beast and a beast together.
SPEAKER_07Damn, just like in that 27 miles, 19 rock scrambles, and 6,000 foot elevation game. Oh my god. That's much.
SPEAKER_05Let's go.
SPEAKER_07Dude. That's a big day.
SPEAKER_05So it's a long day. I'm still stuck on something.
SPEAKER_07That's an amazing day. I think at 6 45, I think it took him, and he's fast.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. That's like a 12-hour day for me. 100%. What uh well, the big loop I have to decide the 30, I put together, I have an event called Big Year New Paul, which is a year long endurance. So I have a 33-mile loop that starts from Spring Farm that goes all out. I mean, we're talking Gertrude's nose. Right. That's pretty savage. Goes up the lemon squeeze to end and then back down to your car.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we actually need to talk because it seems like this needs to be on the list of big year new pals. 100% loop in there. I don't know why that wouldn't be. Well, I just push it.
SPEAKER_05It's a work in progress. I just keep adding as much stuff as people have.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah. So I guess maker anyone who's looking to do big year new palts, guess what?
SPEAKER_06Just got a big thing. You're doing the beacmaker.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So out of the people like, shit. I signed up already. I was almost done. Yeah. I'm listening I'm doing this this fall.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so where are we in the labyrinth? We're in the labyrinth. Uh and quick, quick uh PSA, if I can take an opportunity, the the crevice is the crevice, and the labyrinth is a whole rock scramble. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah. Lemon squeeze, however, is a move in the labyrinth that is not in the crevice. It's before it. Yep. And it's so insignificant that you won't even remember it. So people get hung up on this. Right. We you know, we have shirts that say like I survived the lemon squeeze.
SPEAKER_05And I'm like, Yeah, people are like, I want to go do the lemon squeeze. Right.
SPEAKER_06I I we we all bought one. They're naming restaurants.
SPEAKER_07There's only a 50% chance that you did it because it's the one spot in the labyrinth. You know, the if you're following the red markings, yeah. And the trail splits and comes back together in that one spot, if you go right, that move is the lemon squeeze. And left, you don't do it. Oh, interesting. Uh and so if you're running, like if you're racing in this, you almost go left. It's it's right away.
SPEAKER_05Cody, if I get to that pole that you put in going up towards the lemon squeeze, and I go to the right, it's a red blazes right down Birch, and that's Birch right there.
SPEAKER_07So if you continued straight, that would be uh um staircliffe to Birchin Path. If you went right, that would be the exit down to the spring path, which takes you right to Lake Shore. If you're doing the Beastmaker, you would want to go into the crevice. Yeah. And so you go up the crevice, uh, you go uh up the finished scramble up to the carriage road, and then hook around to go to the tower. So you go to the tower and then you go to the top of the tower. Yeah. Oh, you do clearly.
SPEAKER_05So you gotta go to the top and by the way.
SPEAKER_07And that's why in in the zine we have a a little Diego, the guy I was telling you about, uh, he had a quote that says uh the tower, I think it says the tower is the cherry on top at the top, is his quote. So that's a good one. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So I really have a problem with people who go up the sky top and they don't go to the top of the tower. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I mean, come on, who are these people? Like they get up there. They just look at the tower. Yeah, they walk up. Okay, the SOS is different. I get that. You do the SOS race, you know, you don't have to go to the tower. You should. Some people do. I do.
SPEAKER_07If you've yeah if you've never been there before.
SPEAKER_05But like people that come up, they hike up the le the labyrinth or they go up the path or the road or whatever, and they get up there and they look around, it's beautiful, then they just kind of walk back down.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Just go up the tower.
SPEAKER_07Especially if a race is going on. Yeah. See what you can see. No, going up in the tower is pretty great. It's great. You can probably I mean you can see swimmers.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you can. That's cool. 100%. You can uh from that point. Listen, I think you can, right?
SPEAKER_05Listen, I'm I don't know if you can from that. I don't work there or any you definitely can. Yeah, yeah. You have a whole view of the lake. So no, the not the whole view, the yeah, they're if they're you could see if they swing a little out, you can see that you could certainly exit. You only see the whole second half of the lake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05From like uh what is the the little beach over there? Open camp. From open camp in, you could see.
SPEAKER_06So I quick question here.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Cody. You've done uh the Beastmaker a number of times. Right. How many times you've got to be available. I presume you've done the Super Beast. Yeah. I've only done the Super Beast once. Okay. It was hard. So Yeah, I bet. So when when are you how that is? When are you gonna do the other race? That's the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Hmm.
SPEAKER_05Well, you know what's that race called?
SPEAKER_06The SOS.
SPEAKER_05So I gotta get on something. I gotta ask you.
SPEAKER_07Swimming is is certainly my downfall. I worked on it quite a bit and I did get my my MDSA and put together uh Yeah, we talked about that the idea of the Beast Try. Which you just did. You're right. Yeah, so that was requested by Ben and my wife.
SPEAKER_05And I you there's another person we share similar uh friends with, Riley. Right, yeah. I know uh Riley's older sister, Erin, is a swim coach.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_05The Clunes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07I actually, you know what? It's funny, I didn't know they were sisters. Riley is Ben's girlfriend.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I know. And I didn't know this until I follow Ben on Strava. Right. I had Ben and Masters this year. So I've taken an interest in how he was gonna do an SOS. We would swim at SUNY together, I'd see him and I'd give him some suggestions. So he comes in, I just was following him on Strava and the Beastmaster uh uh Beastmaker post on Instagram, and I saw that they were running this together. Yeah, and I said to my wife, I'm like, Riley Clun and Ben, they must be an item. And then I saw the Clun's at SOS because Ben was running.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And so um the Beast Try. Right. Tell me about tell us about the Beast Tri. That's kind of that was a cool event.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so I guess that this kind of falls into that same category where because this isn't like a real thing and it's not official, it can morph to be whatever you want it to be. Yeah, yeah. So some of the the people who uh have ran it or are interested in it asked for a try version, and so uh the idea was the same thing to to function in that gray zone where everything's completely uh allowed, but you know, uh fits into what we needed. So start still starts at the um Mount House day lot, and so the idea is that your car is there, so that would be uh a repeat spot you'll come back to, so you're eighting out of your own car, so it's self-supporting, right? So uh and transitioning, you know, putting your bike back. So uh it is I came up with a 35-mile it was pretty savage day actually. Yeah, carriage road uh ride that uh goes out to Minawasca, and then so this is the the loophole is that if you had your MDSA, so we did it at a time when we got there and we had another person there so that we had all of the qualifications to swim for MDSA fulfilled.
SPEAKER_05Uh what you do, this is what you do by the way, because I swim there all the time, and there's never people there when I get there. I just zero chance I would not swim. So I go in and swim, and I've been yelled at, and they're like, You shouldn't swim. I'm like, there was someone here when I was in. How am I supposed to know they left? They left. Thank you for telling me.
SPEAKER_07Right. So, yeah, so anyway, so then uh so that's 12 miles into the bike route. Okay. So then you uh transition off of your bike. So if you have like uh, you know, a small pouch or something for your your uh depending on like goggles or whatever, right? So then you swim four laps of the rope and then get back on your bike and finish the bike route, which goes back around a wasteing and then up castle point and then ends up back at the mountain house gate uh gatehouse. So it's a 35 mile bike bike route with the swim in the middle at twelve at mile twelve. Nice. Uh and so then that brings you back to the gatehouse where your car is, so you put your bike in your car and do whatever you need to switch to running, and then the running route is the beacemaker. And then you do the beacemaker. That's freaking great, dude. So it it it seems like we're bringing them up a bunch, but so Ben is the only person to fully do that.
SPEAKER_05So then you're an animal. Yeah. So you know what I love about you, the Beacemaker. You've this is your thing. It's kind of like the Cabin Challenge. You make up what you won. Right. And there's no obligation. Like, this is what I got. Right. And then you can give cool names to shit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06What's what's talk about the um coming in first eleventh place. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07So uh the actually this will probably be the uh the first almost everyone's hearing about this, but uh we were talking all of these ideas come from too long of runs where you're thinking of ideas, and then generally what happens is I'll get a stupid idea and I'll call either Mike Cohn or Ben and run it by them, expecting them to be like, no, that's stupid. But then when they don't, then it becomes a real thing. So uh so this happened with the idea that we wanted to do something to acknowledge like some sort of prize, but to stick out of like to stay away from feeling liable for making people run fast in rock scrambles. Yeah, the idea was we didn't want to give up prize for first place. Yeah. Because then if someone was going too hard, yeah, and they'd be like, Well, I wanted the prize, even if it's something stupid, people get competitive, right? Uh so we came up with a concept uh that we are giving a prize to what we're calling the first 11th place finisher. Uh so we had a uh uh a stuffed teddy bear uh made that has the Beastmaker logo on his stomach on a t-shirt and it says uh first eleventh place finisher and uh 11th place will get a prize. So funny.
SPEAKER_05And you have your own in-house council, right? Right? Because Mike could take care of all that.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_05By the quick thing about Mike, he swam for me when I coached Seahawks back in the 90s. He was a swimmer for me. He was a good kid.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah, I think I think he's been swimming a little more lately because he's injured.
SPEAKER_05So some of his some of his buddies were spectacular swimmers.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um and then can you talk? I'm looking at your zine for this year, and then can you talk about the if you get call me if you get lost?
SPEAKER_07So so I I have to I have to once again point out that this is Ben's uh like artistic piece. Okay because the zine is him doing this. Yeah, he puts things in there for reasons that I don't question. My my uh my role in it is uh the less fun part. I reach out to the people like Ben and I will talk and I'll reach out to people and ask them for the content. Like, hey, could you write an article on hey, could you do this kind of thing? So that is uh on a page that he was he had an idea to make like a yellow page ad article, like to kind of make it look like the old yellow page ads. And so he just wanted like little blurbs of different things. That is actually happens to be my brother's cell phone number, and he didn't know. Uh and he's not who you should call if you get lost.
SPEAKER_06So funny.
SPEAKER_05Let's talk about this. Is a awesome yeah. Everything's Ben does this pro he's the editor, yeah. He gets contributors to come put stuff in. You do it once a year. Is this you have two editions out?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. We did it.
SPEAKER_05When does it come out?
SPEAKER_07Uh so we try to get it out so that we can hand them out during the officially unofficial.
SPEAKER_05So how many how many do you guys print?
SPEAKER_07Uh I may end up doing more, but like right now, the first print I did was I think I did 70 copies.
SPEAKER_05Where do you print them?
SPEAKER_07Uh just at uh staples. And how much are they to print? No, to print? Yeah. Oh, don't worry about that.
SPEAKER_05They're free to to No, I know, but what I'm trying to say, like, maybe CC Endurance could sponsor the Beast Maker. I could, you know, be kind of cool if you're interested in that. Yeah, we could talk.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we could talk about it. Um Yeah, the I I love how the simplicity of it is just seven pieces of paper, printed two sides, you fold it in half and stave it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07All hand drawn. I have this. Yeah, Ben has the style uh he likes, and I love it also, where he writes just with Sharpie on paper and then takes pictures of it. Oh, okay. All of this is just his writing in Sharpie.
SPEAKER_06That's great. It's just got a very that whole the whole vibe of being officially unofficial and the whole vibe is just is just really great. So um So we're on the tower on our walkthrough.
SPEAKER_07We we haven't finished the race yet.
SPEAKER_05That's how it goes. And I'm kind of I'm really kind of intrigued about how you're getting from the tower. You run back out. To back out, but that's not a short route. It's gotta be pretty close to the longest ones.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so you go it it's broken up a little, so you go down uh basically to Lily Pond.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And then around the back, like we you go behind Lily Pond.
SPEAKER_05We ran that boot camp. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And then um at that next intersection, you hook a right on Fox and then Foxpath. You take Fox Path down to the Woodland Bridge area and cross over to you know the Glen Anna Trail and then Whitney right back out to the parking lot. It's gotta be close to two miles. Yeah, and it it's it's about two miles, but it feels a little broken up because of Fox Path.
SPEAKER_05And that's a great way to end because, like, okay, your sub two or three hour days is is within can you just suck it up?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, the two guys that went sub two hours were you gotta run looking at their watch, like, oh, am I more than a minute away from the parking lot? You know, right. I think I think Ben's time was like 159.44 or something. Oh wow. Yeah, like I I don't know exactly, but it would it was within a minute. I'm gonna be 454.04. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Still four hours.
SPEAKER_07I love this, man. Yeah, so then yeah, so then you're done with that.
SPEAKER_05You know what I most appreciate. That's the Beacmaker folks. The dedication that you have put into this, and I this resonates with me of starting the cabin challenge, and just like you put everything into some ridiculous cycling event. Right. You make shit up, you're kind of winging it, people love it. It's taking on a cult classic uh following. You have the zine, you got merch, you got stickers and shirts. People are into it, man. This is their jam. Yeah, the gr the grassroots thing is is cool, right now. Everything's grip better grassroots.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and it's uh it's make it. It's kind of like you've set this thing up, this this outline, and then people just have to figure it out. You give directions, but otherwise it's like here, go do it, don't do it, stop in the middle. Like you don't care. Right. Right. Yeah. No one cares.
SPEAKER_07Like if if you get lost or whatever, like I at the beginning of the on the day I give everybody right. If you get off course, uh I give everybody my cell and uh ask them uh to try not to get lost for the first two hours so that I can have a chance of running.
SPEAKER_05So if I just did this on a random Thursday in like October, I could see you out there on some summer house.
SPEAKER_07Like, no day. Yeah, for sure. Halfway through. Yeah. Uh I mean I uh I was just thinking, I think another thing that's like some people have kind of gotten into the running club side of it because we have the Strava Running Club. Yeah. And I don't know if they ever intend on doing it.
SPEAKER_05What is a Strava Running Club? The Beastmaker Running Club?
SPEAKER_07Uh it's uh Beastmaker exclusive club. That was that was that was a Mike Comb thing, yeah. So where do you guys do this? Uh well I just mean it's just it's a Strava Club. Oh, just your club. Yeah. Uh and so I you guys post stuff in there? I post some stuff in there. I try to just double post between Instagram and and there, because I occasionally lead this as like a guided thing so that people know how to get there. Uh but the unconventional format, uh I don't know if you guys have heard about this, but I came up with this format, and once again, this was like I was gonna ask you to talk about the unconventional. Yeah, this I love this. This is even cooler. I think that it's a a new idea. I hadn't I haven't heard of it before, but uh This is right up your alley, dude. I put everything he's talking about. Wait to hear this one but good. So brother I never had. I frame I frame this as that when you're training for a hard race, like something of the caliber that we're talking about, like your your ultras, your tries, your iron man, like any of that, you're accepting being uncomfortable to a certain degree. Yeah. But whether it's subconsciously or consciously, you're still saving some comforts. So if you have like your your schedule says, Oh, I have a long run this weekend, and then you look at the weather and it's gonna rain on Saturday. So you're like, oh, I'll do my long run on Sunday. Or you get off of work and had a uh a rough day, like you might rest for a little bit or whatever the case may be. There's all of these things that you do to like still make it as comfortable as you can, even though you've accepted a level of discomfort. So I came up with a format to take that away. So I I refer to it as the unconventional format, and we've done I think we've done four or five of them now. And uh so uh we actually set the ones that we're gonna do for next year, and they're all there's a list of them in the zine. And then the pink zine of the green scene. The pink zine, yeah. So so this year's. So I uh put it to I tied all four of them to a holiday. Uh so we'll have like the Independence Day unconventional. Oh, I heard about this. Yeah, and so uh essentially what happens is two weeks before I put out an Instagram and strawberry. It's gonna show up. And every no, you so so it's it's tech it's virtual, but you gotta do it then, right? You message me and you give me your cell number, and then the night before a set week-long gap, you I put everybody into a group chat and a an impartial party, uh, a guy I work with named Larry Funk does it for me every year. So he's in this group chat, and then a bunch of people that want to do this race. And then in that set time, generally a seven-day period, at any point in time, Larry says go.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so that's someone was just telling me about it.
SPEAKER_07So you don't have to you can I might have been telling you about this. So like D Diego did it in Mexico. Like, like you can be anywhere. So I got I got on the list for like may that last. We were in the text, yeah, but but just a couple days before, right?
SPEAKER_06Right. It was it was late. It was late in the whole thing.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, Jeff's not getting out of bed.
SPEAKER_06I I didn't actually did because it came out, it was like 10 o'clock at night or nine. Yeah, the last one.
SPEAKER_05So So what are the rates like the running or cycling? What are they, Cody?
SPEAKER_07So oh, so it's all running and uh how how long? I gotta So they all vary. Uh I do uh what I call the between the holidays, which is it starts the morning, six a.m. the morning after Christmas, and so the gap is uh six a.m. the morning after Christmas to six p.m. New Year's night. So at any given time during that period, you could get a text that says go. And that one was a 5k. Okay. The first one I ever tried, I did as a half marathon. And that's 6 a.m.
SPEAKER_05after Christmas.
SPEAKER_07That's what it's all loaded with eggnog.
SPEAKER_05Christmas dinner.
SPEAKER_07That was two years ago, and I guess the idea at the time was was most of the people that we were talking to, and like we were training for for ultras. Yeah. So our long runs were much longer than that, so it didn't seem that crazy. But having to do it at a moment's notice really makes it much harder.
SPEAKER_06I I loved the the exchanges when I from that that last the one I was on, right? Where it was like at 9 45, 10 o'clock. That was the 4th of July one, right? Yes. And it came out and it just said go. And then all of a sudden people start responding like, God damn it, I just put the I'm putting the kid to bed, or like they're in the middle of something. So you have to go that minute. You don't have to.
SPEAKER_05So not during the work day, right? Not like I have a job, but I like the workday.
SPEAKER_07I try to encourage Larry to not take an thing into consideration at all. So it could be.
SPEAKER_05When I'm sometimes you get sick.
SPEAKER_07When I'm doing it, I have a bag in my truck and I'll punch out. And like leave. Yeah, and take a take a lunch in the middle of the day.
SPEAKER_05The only thing that makes that better, Cody, is you not punching out.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_07So hell of a day, kids. Uh and it could be the middle of the night. It could be so the the um and all it is the first one to finish. So that's what I think is really beautiful about it is because it's not the fastest. It's the first one to finish. So if it comes out at 3 a.m. and you get out of bed and run a 45-minute 5k, you could still be first if I don't get out of bed. Right.
SPEAKER_05So basically the distances are going from 3K to half marathons.
SPEAKER_07Uh so three miles. So this last one, the one that that Jeff was on the feed for, uh, because of request from some of the people in it, it got harder. They wanted it to be harder, which shocked me. But what we did for that one was we did uh I used to do a 30-minute um warning. So Larry would send out a text that says race is in 30 minutes, and then he'd say go. Okay. Uh so you'd have time to like, you know, whatever you want to do with that 30 minutes. Uh so peep the people, the masses, uh, all 12 of them, right, wanted uh that removed. So we took that away.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I would support that being removed.
SPEAKER_07And then and so that's never coming back.
SPEAKER_05That it's no warning. I like much better.
SPEAKER_07And you're like, oh damn it.
SPEAKER_05Because that got slow guys like me.
SPEAKER_07People are brushing their teeth, or you can see.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you could be in the middle of a family dinner, and you're like, guys, I gotta go. Yeah, I gotta go run right now.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we had there's uh a couple that both did it and they were on a family vacation, and so their parents they were in like a like a rental house, and their parents uh were there, so the kids were already asleep, and they're like sitting down with a glass of wine, and they're like, All right, I guess we gotta go running in the you know, the hamburger. Which if it's like five miles or less, it's not a super commitment, but if it's like six miles or more, it's like okay. So the other challenge that they wanted to try on this last one was a surprise distance. So not only did it say go. Oh, that's right, it said four miles go. Yeah, so Larry got to pick and I or whatever. It was like four, right? Uh yeah, I think four, maybe. Yeah. This last one. So Larry, so Larry picked the only thing I decided to put some parameters on it was I said two to ten. So at any point in that seven-day period, Larry sends out a text that says go and whatever the distance he picks, two to ten miles.
SPEAKER_05What what are the holidays you use?
SPEAKER_07Uh so I I've got the here, let me yeah. So we do the between I I have one coming up. Uh Thanksgiving. Where did I even? Sorry, I'm oh wait, there. Yeah, there it is. So the officially unofficial unconventional event. So we're doing the turkey unconventional, which is gonna be a 10 miler. So that'll be a set distance, and that's the longest one.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's a good turkey burn, too.
SPEAKER_07Right, and it's a turkey burn. That time of year where where it's not, you know, 10 miles. A lot of people who are into running that time of year. Yeah, they've been running all year.
SPEAKER_06Right. Right.
SPEAKER_07Uh then the between the holidays, we're gonna keep that a 5k because generally the weather is bad. The the one last year was at maybe seven o'clock at night, which it was dark.
SPEAKER_05So you're talking from Thanksgiving to Christmas, or New Christmas to New Year's, I see. Yeah. So that could be any time.
SPEAKER_07So I'll all when we when I send it out, I'll give an actual like seven-day period or whatever, but just to give people I have it in the zine here just to give people.
SPEAKER_05New Year's Eve. Right. 10 PM. That would sink some folks.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And then uh Jeff's already passed out by then. We we did one in uh May, so because I was attaching the other ones to holidays, we we picked Cinco de Mayo. Love it. And uh decided to make it a five miler for that reason, which is also kind of funny because it's it would it's in miles. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and and then uh the independence unconventional, which is the one that you were on. So we're gonna keep that.
SPEAKER_05I that's when you were telling me about this. Like, I gotta get up in the middle of the night and run. I was like trying to do a swim meeting. I'm like, Jeff, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So we'll keep that one surprise distance. So we'll have the 10 miler, 5K, 5 miler, and surprise distance. So the Beast Maker exclusive club on Strava. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Nice. I'm gonna check all this out. By the way, on Strava Cody, I'm D. Cooper. Okay. You know who that is? I do. Rob the plane. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, hijacked. Still unsolved, but that's me, D. Cooper.
SPEAKER_07And he ran Is that no, that's not the one that uh Barclays, the prison break that Barclay was. That was that was the prison break. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_05D. Cooper just got on a plane, long story. It was like I need $200,000 for a pair of shoots, and then he jumped out of the plane, never saw again. Right. Done. So anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna join the exclusive. I'm on the Beast Maker. And you run your social media yourself. Yeah. It's not easy, is it?
SPEAKER_07Uh once again, I don't feel like I like owe anyone anything, so I just kind of do whatever I feel like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Know what I'm doing this year? I was like, I struggle with this because I'm trying to like stuff and follow stuff. I'm like, I don't have time for this. I'd rather do. So contacted SUNY. I'm like, I could use an intern. Oh wow. And like, yeah, we can work something out. So I'm in the process of working something out where some SUNY student. I'm like, I need you to do like five hours a week. Here's my like stuff, make some posts, here's my wheelhouse, here's a hundred pictures, put something out every day. Running, cycling, climbing, swimming, yeah, like like stuff.
SPEAKER_07I I try to stick to like if if people in the the Strava group tag it, yeah, all post it in the story. Yeah. And that's basically what I do a week.
SPEAKER_05Though I'm asking my kids, like, you're so old. Are you gonna help me or make fun of me?
SPEAKER_07I post a weekly leaderboard. Yeah. Uh the Strava club automatically ranks everybody.
SPEAKER_05So my kid's heading off. I know, same here. Listen. Gotta go get the kid. Right. Do we have time to do our questions? That's the unconventional for us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Get out of here, go pick up some milk for me right now. That's our unconventional call.
SPEAKER_05Which by the way, you guys haven't experienced this, but you will, but don't rush this time, right? When your kids are old enough to drive. Yeah. I mean, you're gonna have to get them a car and it's insured, and then that's you gotta teach them to drive, which is not easy, but you're like, go pick up your sister. Yeah. Go to the store. We need half and half. Bread. It's kind of nice. Yeah. Well, I guess it's a bad trade-off. You're like paying hundreds of dollars a month.
SPEAKER_03You just put hazel on the horse and she can just ride the horse to the colour. Oh, the horse is gonna get, yeah.
SPEAKER_07She'll love that. There was one guy in the unconventional uh who was making a joke in the comments this last one that his uh teenage daughter was at uh a movie in New Palts and when it got called, and he was like, Should I just throw her shoes in my backpack and tell her it's an unconventional pickup? Yeah, and you know, just run to the movie theater and be like, All right, babe, like let's go. Yeah, let's go.
SPEAKER_05So here's here's something for the the another Beacemaker thing, which I talked about to you on the way in the door the horse racing, horse Beacemaker horse challenge. We can put together a loop where like you're racing a horse. Interesting. And that's what that's what our last guest wants to do. Yeah. And like you can work, and you know, she was talking about getting on the preserve, and she asked me on the way out, she's like, if you could make some inroads with the preserve or the mountain house, or we could do this where you either compete against a horse a while a mustang that they have at her farm, or you run tethered where you hold the horse's and you run.
SPEAKER_07Running with Sherman.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's she referenced that same thing, but she has the mustangs.
SPEAKER_06But instead of a burrow, it'd be a horse.
SPEAKER_05And you could do the beastmaker where the horse is coming. Horses are fast guys. Yeah. I'm aware. I explained to her about the Western States 100. Yeah. She doesn't care if you're running against the horse. She wants something or if you're running with the horse. Euront sport. Yeah, endurance sport. Yeah, or you got yeah, you do the beastmaker with the horse, but then someone else does the scrambles and you walk up the road and meet with a horse again.
SPEAKER_07So like Pony Express, the the Beastmaker Pony Express to hand off the change horses every 15 miles, but the rider would go, yeah. Just jump on another horse.
SPEAKER_05So listen, this could be like the Beastmaker Pony Express. This is, you know, we could have Ben could be out there like either racing the horse. I'm sure he would be loving to race the horse. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07You should probably just have a horse run alongside the the milk run, right?
SPEAKER_05She was up for anything, but she wants something endurance. Yeah. You have to make the milk. Plus, you got people doing an out and back on the milk run. Oh, yeah. Kind of dicey of the horse coming down the way. Right. Like out in the wilds of the trail. But anyway, Jeff, get to it. We could be here all day.
SPEAKER_06All right. So, Cody, you've listened to the podcast. You've known what's coming here. So when you grew up, what kind of what's what was your favorite TV show that you watched religiously as a kid out there in Iowa?
SPEAKER_07You know, uh You have TV in Iowa? Yeah, well, yeah, we did. Come on, Jeff. Yeah, so so the answer that popped into my head uh because I just started re-watching it with my daughter, uh, what is get smart. Oh, nice. Yeah. Uh well done. My my book clubs reading uh Mel Mel Brooks' uh autobiography reminded me, and so I I was like, you know what? Like eight-year-olds can get that, right? Is it right there, Tom? Yeah. Oh wow. Get smart. I love the show. So good. It was a great show. The humor is yeah, the humor is is really timeless.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. I was his shoe phone, his shoe phone.
SPEAKER_07Shoe phone, yeah. So great. Kona Silence is what I love.
SPEAKER_05I loved that. I loved Get Smart. It was a good show.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Okay. Uh nice one. I don't think we've ever had a Get Smart. Nope. Um so uh what do you have like a guilty pleasure song you like to listen to? Uh that's a good question. Yeah, the song that's outside of your normal music that you know my range is uh pretty wide, but there's there's a a few.
SPEAKER_07Uh do you know I can't even say the name of it, but do you know that uh the song that was written in the 70s that was uh an Italian guy who didn't speak English? Are you familiar with this song? No, no. I'll have to look it up because the name is Gibberish. He wrote a s a song in Gibberish. Do you know any lyrics? Uh no, because there aren't words to it. Uh I'm just making up Yeah, he made it up to sound like an American rock song. Uh and it's on my run list and it's got like a really, really great tempo. Oh, cool. Uh I wish I knew it. I don't know it. Yeah, that's I Tom's gonna find it. Yeah, we can find it.
SPEAKER_05I'm looking.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I forget what his name is, but that's definitely one that like if I were listening, it Oh, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02I think I may Yeah, I would have to Salantano.
SPEAKER_07That might be right.
SPEAKER_02Let me see if I can find it.
SPEAKER_07The name's really long, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And it's it's it's really a cool song, but he isn't saying words. It's got it's got a good tempo for running to, right? Right. But wait, when he sings, there there's not actual words.
SPEAKER_05Is this the song? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It's just just gibberish. I love it.
SPEAKER_07But it's a good song and it doesn't stay in it.
SPEAKER_06That's funny.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I kinda like it.
SPEAKER_06Alright. Another another another original, and look at uh unique. So last question. Last question. If you had a sandwich named after you, Cody, what would be on it? Which of course the sandwich is the beast maker.
SPEAKER_07Uh so dude, it better be named the Beastmaker. It's funny you mentioned that. I might have to alter your question, but we do a a post a post-race meetup.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Uh the first year we did it. I try to do it with somewhere in town with outdoor seating. Okay. So the first year we did it at Huckleberries. And then last year we did it at I love Huckleberries. I'm sorry they close. I know. We did it at uh I'm drawing a blank. What's the spot behind McGillicuddy's there? Sideshow. Sideshow, yeah. Yeah. Uh and then um this year we're doing it at Lola's. Okay. And they've agreed to make a special dish called the Beast Maker Tent Scramble. Whoa. Uh and so for that day, and it and it and yeah, so the Did you go in and talk to them and they said I'll do it? Yeah, so they're family owned, and uh the the son uh I believe uh was Tyler was running the or at least working at the the new Paltwan and I order there a lot.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's a good place. One of my go-to's.
SPEAKER_07Right. So uh I kind of have an easy answer for that because there already is uh let's let's hear it. What is it? Uh so it is going to be uh garlic ginger rice, black bean and corn salsa, marinated flank steak, pickled red onions, uh an an Aleppo crema, and fried egg and green onions. I'm gonna get it as a bowl. When is this going? So the idea was to try to make it like with the egg, you're trying to make it like a scram. So it's the test. Yeah, but scramble. Scramble.
SPEAKER_05And if it's a sandwich, just throw it on some bread, Jeff.
SPEAKER_07Right, just put it, yeah, scoop it on some bread. Yeah, dude. So what I'm a big I'm a big bread scooper too from when is this going on the when is this going?
SPEAKER_05It's coming up, right?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so the 26th is the the Beacemaker uh officially unofficial meetup. Uh so that's like the race day, and so then the the post-race meetup is two o'clock at Lola's. Nice.
SPEAKER_02All right.
SPEAKER_05So listen, well get the Beacmaker, folks. You mentioned Sideshow, uh, the recovery ride, which is coming up this weekend for alcohol awareness. The lunch is served by Sideshow at Huguenot Street. So 40 bucks. You get a you could do a 50 mile ride or a 33-mile gravel ride and get sideshow lunch. 40 bucks.
SPEAKER_06Nice. Yeah, anyway. I thought there was like an 18 mile. Yeah, there is.
SPEAKER_05There's an 18 mile out and back.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_05Corbett signed up with Aiden. Oh, good. Yeah. Maybe you and Hazel should sign up too. We we we're thinking about it. We might be out of town. I'm thinking and sign up. The old out of town. Out of town, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The old out of town. The old out of town. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05I'm out of town.
SPEAKER_03I got better plans. Got a prostate exam scan.
SPEAKER_05That's a reason to get out of town. Yeah. Yeah. Mother in law's in town. I'll do the hundred-mile or full module.
SPEAKER_01I'm gone all day. Sorry, folks. Nine hours doing the death rattle extension. 10,000 feet of climbing.
SPEAKER_06Dude, Cody, this was really fun. It's been a long time in the making. So thanks for coming on, dude. Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah. We are super excited for this, this whole entire thing. Love everything.
SPEAKER_07I'll I'll uh try to keep up the the gimmicks. The brick is still floating around somewhere. Listen, the gimmicks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Listen, I you're on it because lots of rides and events are losing interest, but we know what people want. They want the grassroots, they want the gimmicks, they want the cult atmosphere of something kind of niche.
SPEAKER_07Well, and I think I think it kind of creates a cool environment because if you don't pay or register or anything, yeah, and the race just comes about, everyone who shows up wants to be there. You don't you don't like feel like that morning you woke up and you weren't obligated by a registration or like telling people you were doing it, and so if you're there it's because you want to be.
SPEAKER_05You know, it's like all these races are dwindling. You know what's not dwindling? Cabin challenge. It sells out in days because people like just being berated by emails about potential Yeti attacks and hillbilly molluscks. Right. They like that.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I always like the the escarpment race always condolence letter.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, 100%. That's it. That's the stuff that people are into. Yeah. You know what's your thing. Anyway, thank you so much for coming in. It's a great one.
SPEAKER_06Thanks, buddy.
