#100 - Hard Things Build Stronger Humans Who Have More Fun - Andrew Vontz x @Blakeoftoday
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Six years ago, I launched Choose the Hard Way to inspire more people to embrace the idea that doing hard things builds stronger humans who have more fun. My guests are among the very best in the world at what they do and I’ve been lucky that they’ve graciously shared their stories here.
To celebrate 100 episodes, I’m doing something different and sharing more of my story--a story about a friendship that has pushed me to do hard things for 15 years and counting.
This podcast isn’t about hacks, tricks and shortcuts. It’s about the powerful things that happen when you choose the hard way--and I hope my guest’s stories inspire you to go do hard things with people you love and have some fun.
That’s the best part of life and it’s available to everyone willing to answer the call to adventure.
I have a request: please pick something challenging to do, invite a friend to do it with you and leave a comment or shoot a DM to @hardwaypod on social and tell me how it went.
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Joining me today is @blakeoftoday. In the past year, Blake has become one of the most popular storytellers on Instagram because of his distinctive storytelling style focused on family, fatherhood and jiu-jitsu. He’s the host of the Grappling with Fatherhood podcast, the author of the Blakeoftoday substack and one of the only humans I know who organically grew his Instagram following from less than a thousand followers to nearly 200k followers in a year.
Blake has joined me on this podcast in the past to deconstruct our path to podium finishes at the gravel race now known as the Unbound 100 in 2014 and 2015. Today, we’re talking about how our chance meeting while volunteering at a shelter for unhoused people in downtown Los Angeles led us to start doing workouts at a park in Silverlake that were brutal and would have been total nonsense if they hadn’t been so much fun--and how that led to friendship, rivalry and both of us pushing each other to go bigger and bigger.
And so can you.
Choose the Hard Way is a podcast about how doing hard things is fun. Please help more people find this podcast. To do that, just hit subscribe and rate the show five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this episode with someone you care about.
Go to choosethehardway.com to sign up for the newsletter and if there’s someone you think would make a great guest, DM @hardwaypod.
Choose The Hard Way is a Big Truck Production. Anthony Palmer at Palm Tree Pod Co is the producer and editor and Emily Miles is head of digital and marketing. Jeffrey Nebolini is the world-renowned designer behind our brand identity and the Choose the Hard Way logo. The content for this show is created by @vontz.
In This Episode:
Blake Kasemeier Instagram
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Andrew Vontz LinkedIn
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Andrew Vontz 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to choose the hard way. This is Andrew bots. And this is actually the 100th episode. And we're gonna do something a little bit different today. I started this podcast six years ago. And the point of the podcast was to explore the idea that hard things, build stronger humans who have more fun. And I've had some incredible guests on the show during the past six years, I hope you've enjoyed hearing from them. I know I have. And I know I've learned a lot from their stories, they motivated me, they've inspired me to try new and different things. And they've also reminded me how important it is to have someone in your life who you love. That's a great friend, that you also have a lot of fun competing with someone who you can push yourself to be better when you spend time with them doing the things that you love. I have one of those friends with me today. Blake Kazmaier, aka at Blake of today can find him on Instagram and Tiktok. And you know this podcast, I love having my guests come on and share their inspiring and motivating stories. The more I listen to podcasts, the deeper I get into this game, the more I've learned that, you know, most of the podcasts you listen to things go in one ear and out the other, but you remember how they make you feel. And most of the tips and tricks you hear are things that are lost somewhere in the RAM up in your brain. And the stories stick. So Blake and I today are going to talk about some of our experiences back in the day in Los Angeles, where we met some of the workouts that we did during that period of time. Which that might sound slightly strange, I don't think it is there's some pretty memorable things happened. And normally there's not a call to action in this podcast. But today there is what I would ask you to do is to find that person in your life who you love spending time with who you love, who you also like to compete with, and I want you to go find something that's hard and difficult and uncomfortable to do. And I want you to go do it together and push each other. Wow, this is sounding kind of
Blake 2:11
Yeah, Andrews intro to just have a chill podcast where we talk about like the crazy stuff we did in LA, you know, all 15 years ago. And now this is sounding like I'm like at the top of like hero mountain and I'm going to have to have some sage advice instead of the notes that I picked about you showing up to our first workout wearing a like a big potato man sweatsuit.
Andrew Vontz 2:36
Yeah, well, anyway, hopefully you enjoy this. We're gonna I've got more great guests coming up more interview style podcasts on the way. And yeah, so we're just going to try something a little bit different today and see how it goes to celebrate 100 episodes of choose the hard way. And again, thanks, everybody for listening and for making those podcasts a huge success because ultimately, it's all about you, the people who listen to it. So thanks for reaching out at Hardway pod on Instagram and Twitter. Choose the hardware@gmail.com to let me know what you're into who you want to hear from. And yeah, thanks for being here and for listening. So Blake, let's, let's talk about it. I think we've covered the cute meat on previous episodes when you've been on. We met each other and I think it must have been 2008. And we were volunteering at a at a shelter downtown that was serving food to unhoused people, which that was the first time I had ever volunteered at that specific spot. For me, at that point of time, I was going through some challenging things in my life. I think I was quite depressed. And I was there with my girlfriend or my partner at the time you were there with your partner. And, you know, we looked across the service line. And I don't remember how but somehow the topic of CrossFit came up, I think which I was not into you were into it. You're I think you're doing main site main site was at the time is that right?
Blake 4:05
Yeah. So I actually so the conversation started, we were on the service line, it was me, my ex girlfriend, and then you and I was like, Oh, who is this handsome fellow? This just like 25% better version of me standing to the left of my girlfriend. And you introduce yourself to her. And you know, you're you're working your way down the line. And you said yeah, I'm a professional journalist. I'm bike racer. I meant to electric music and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, yeah, that guy is like, just 25% cooler than me. And he's the one talking to my girlfriend. And she was like, hey, like, he's doing all the things that you want to do. You should talk to him. And I was like, oh, cool, man. And you were super nice and stuff and you invited my girlfriend at the time and I to go on bike rides with you. You were like yeah, do you guys ride at night? Like do you like Moon parties? Or whatever? Your thing was at the time. And I was like, Sure, man, hey, you and I took your email and I was like, Cool. I was also very busy. I was going to school full time and waiting tables full time. And, and dating this woman admittedly, like, not full time I was I was not a great boyfriend at the time. And when she and I broke up, there was, that's a different episode. Like, there was a window of time in my life where I was like, Oh, I have these like, few number of hours that I can fill a week, I should have a friend. And like, I literally was like, Oh, that I met that guy at the soup kitchen with her. Let me like, send him an email. And I was like, Hey, man, like you mentioned that you ride bikes. I'm about to buy a bike, any pointers, and you responded to my email, and you were like, Hey, let's hang out, which is not an easy thing to do. I mean, I was in my early, I was in my mid 20s, you were in your early 30s. It's not an easy thing to do at that stage in your life. And, and it's just so weird that we that we found each other and became friends because we're into the weirdest, most niche things that two people can be into. They're just not fun things to do. Normally, I think for most people.
Andrew Vontz 6:17
Yeah, I think at least within my circle of friends, because I had a you know, I was connected to a competitive cycling community and also to, I don't know what you would call it, recreational cycling activist community because there was critical mass and then also midnight riders in a bicycle kitchen in LA. So there were a lot of people advocating for pedestrian transportation. There were many large scale rides with hundreds, between hundreds to several 1000 people on Friday nights. I don't know if they still go on and away. But it was a cool was a special time in Los Angeles that I've talked about before. But I think the thing that really brought us together and and kind of got our friendship moving was we were like, hey, like let's go do a workout. You know, can you spot me one of those types of things? Not really. It wasn't a get on the bench press and bench type of thing but there was a park in Silverlake it had like a pull up our I don't remember if it had or didn't have like a climbing rope but it had some kind of like that there's some apparatus
Blake 7:23
that went all the way up and it had rings. I think that hung all the way down had metal
Andrew Vontz 7:28
rings. Yeah. Yeah, you know what, it had dip bars as well. So it was like a very rudimentary setup for a workout and yeah, I think that would maybe was the first thing we did was said cool. Like, let's do a workout Blake was into doing main site wads off of CrossFit if you're not familiar with that, at that time, CrossFit was posting a workout of the day every day on their website. And I wasn't into that I had met Randy, who is the former Navy SEAL who started TRX I have an interview with him in the archives, if you want to go check it out. So I was I was getting into lots of different types of strength training and functional training to supplement my bike racing that I was doing. And yeah, so we decided to meet up at the park and then that's when the fateful
Blake 8:19
day I was spending at that time, I was spending like two and a half hours at the gym by myself every pretty much every day, and which is at the Bally's in Hollywood. A lonely place. It's the valleys in Hollywood it's like a dark was a dark cave of a workout place just no windows or like natural light. And not like a cool like Louie Simmons. You know, Westside barbell way it was like just just a gross gym. But I had signed up for a Bally's membership which Andrew had a membership to that gym as well. I think
Andrew Vontz 8:57
yeah, had more of it had more of a like you're gonna get staff on the app machine via that's how I kind of characterize the
Blake 9:04
so the battle I had a person who wanted to be who wanted to exercise with me, I was like, okay, but like I'm a psychopath, like I'm not or whatever, that might not be an appropriate term. I'm not a normal person when it comes to this stuff. And I so we set a date and a time to meet at this park and Andrew walked up, literally wearing a weight cutting suit. Like a like a Michelin man. You know,
Andrew Vontz 9:34
plastics are called plastic, you
Blake 9:36
know, like he like he like the kind you can find kind of in the discount bin at TJ Maxx and walked up wearing that and he was like carrying like probably chains and a TRX Suspension Trainer. And he was like, Hey, man, I was like, This guy is probably as crazy as I am. I think this is gonna work out Yeah, I
Andrew Vontz 9:55
think. I don't know if it was the first workout but am I To bend this park was about, I don't know, it was probably a 15 minute walk from where I was living at the time. And there was this substantial amount of Vert because it was a very hilly neighborhood. And I had gotten into sandbag training Blake and I were both doing a lot of manufacturing of our own equipment to train with. That was just the thing at the time, I didn't really have money to buy a ton of fitness equipment. I'd been reading about sandbag training. So I had a a duffel bag full of I think 80 pounds of sand that I had put into a backpack that I had gotten for free. I wrote something about it for some magazine, I got to keep it. It was not a go rock, which I got later. This was like a backpacking backpack and 80 pound sandbag in it. And I figured this will be a good workout to walk over to this park with the sandbag. And then you know, we can do some stuff with it. So yeah, and I rolled up the plastics, I think I was just ahead of the time on he climatization, which can has a lot of great health benefits increases your red blood cell count, among other things. But yeah, I was sweating profusely, it was hot. And I had an 80 pound sandbag and a TRX. And a couple other things. This was a
Blake 11:18
time when so in 2008 Feels like a not that long ago to me in my head. But in the world of like fitness it was completely different. So there were not really physical CrossFit gyms, people were doing CrossFit workouts like you mentioned off of the main site, and then taking those workouts and like doing them in their homes or in big box gyms. This was before the affiliate program existed, etc. This was before you could just go out and buy us a weight vest, a weighted vest, like on Amazon, you know, that means before you buy anything on Amazon, really other than books, it was before you could get a medicine ball really you'd have to you'd have to find, probably buy that through like perform better or like an actual, like, retail, like a wholesaler for fitness equipment. And the same thing with sandbags. With the weighted rocks that you're talking about, like this stuff didn't exist, but we were like reading about it. And we would go home. Like go to the dollar store or go to like a sporting goods store. And like who Okay, cool, I got like a $2 basketball, I'm going to turn this basketball into a medicine ball. And so we were both experimenting at home with how to do this. And the tactic that I think we would one of us settled on was that you had to carve a hole you had a puncture a hole in with a the thing that you use to plug it a tire like a car tire, and then fill it painstakingly like fill it either with like a funnel or whatever it is with sand and then one grain of sand. So slow, and and then you have to like put that that a car tire plug in, plug it up and send it out. And so you would it would take us, you know, hours of time to develop these devices. And we would take them to the and they would be
Andrew Vontz 13:10
Yeah, the medicine the medicine ball thing also never worse. By the way. I think we read that. And yeah, I got a subscription to their CrossFit journal around that time. It was a PDF you would get once a month and it just had articles from interesting people doing interesting things with strength and conditioning. And one of the articles was about how to make your own medicine ball. So yeah, we both got those, like many basketballs is blank, describe, poked holes in them, filled them with sand, then plug them. And then it never works like this. The sand always leaked out. We weren't really thinking about the concept of opportunity costs, and how much time and effort it took to make those but it was also kind of fun. It was super
Blake 13:55
fun. Yeah, they would explode like violently at the park. And this is a public park. Like there are people with kids there. And there are other people there. And they're like, What are these guys like? Doing? Actually, I will say that we turned very few heads. There was a lot of abnormal behavior at that park. I think we just kind of
Andrew Vontz 14:14
yeah, there were other or some other things going on in the park that I think maybe rated a bit higher than what we were doing on the abnormality scale. But yeah, those the workouts you know, Blake, you were big into the main site, there were a lot of push up and pull up ladders. You are you really deeply into kipping pull ups at the time really committed. And I'm definitely gonna I'm gonna go in the archives and pull out photos from some of these workouts. And I think we actually, I think that there are a couple of things on YouTube that I posted because I made videos of a few of the workouts and I'm either gonna make them private, pull them down, or maybe I'll share them. But they tended to be Yeah, like it was like TRX sandbag stuff body weights. stuff and these workouts lasted for a while we would be, I think we would often pick, I don't know if we'd say, hey, let's do a 10 to one one to 10 ladder and this thing and that thing, and it was almost always, like two straight hours of training tip.
Blake 15:16
Yeah, and just like, like, totally not aware of how much time it would take it was like, Oh, we could do this thing and this thing and this thing. And it's like, you know, it's 90 to 100 degrees in LA under the sun. Just sitting out there at the park, doing this stuff, and then I had to go wait tables that night afterwards. But I think another thing that I want to talk about too, is just, you know, getting into bike riding. So we were at the time doing I had just gotten into cycling and you were doing your My coach my mentor in how to how to get into competitive cycling.
Unknown Speaker 16:02
So why did you get a bike? Why did you get a bike? Blake? I
Blake 16:05
don't even know I because I they were cool. I don't know. I didn't really have a reason I wanted to start riding bikes. Yeah, first, I just thought it was cool. I'd also had my car impounded a couple of times at that point. And I was I thought an alternate form of transportation might have been a good idea. Yeah, my car was impounded for completely preventable and stupid reasons. I had like a fix it ticket that went to warrant that I already fixed and just never filed the paperwork to show that I fixed it. So when I got pulled over again, they're like, Hey, you have this ticket? And like, yeah, fix the thing. They're like, that's not how this works. I'll have your car now.
Andrew Vontz 16:45
Yeah, la. It's also the for people who haven't lived in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is also the kind of place where they really like to tow your car. Like, there's nothing like a good tow I think I've told you this story, Blake. I was in. I was in a band. When I was in LA, I think it was like 24 or 25 years old. And our rehearsal space was on Hollywood Boulevard. It was just just west of vine, I think. And Linkin Park was like the next rehearsal room over I remember that. They had slightly more success than we did probably because they went to art center. I went to Cal Arts. But I remember one night going in there go into practice. I had parked in front of one of the Church of Scientology's many, many, many buildings. In Central Hollywood. I definitely illegally parked and when I came out, my car had been towed. And I was, you know, naive enough at that time that I was positive my carbon. So it's like, and I had a cheese. I was driving I think, Gosh, what would I have had just like an early 90s Ford Taurus. It's not the type of the Ross, you know, it's a nice vehicle. He got me around, not the kind of vehicle I would think would be your first target. If you're going to steal a car in central Hollywood, there's some typically some nicer vehicles out there on the street. And then I walked over to the Hollywood police station, which I think is two blocks from the location I just described. And I went and reported that my car had been stolen. And they like looked at my VIN number. They're like, Yeah, your car got towed. And then you know, and then I had to pay for it, which sucked because
Blake 18:33
I had the reverse. And a lot of great story servers happened where my car got towed, and it actually got stolen.
Andrew Vontz 18:41
Sure, where are you? Yeah. Oh, by the gallon.
Blake 18:46
I actually lived Yeah, kind of actually lived a couple blocks away from the Galleria, and I parked on the street. And, you know, I was like, I was late. I just gotten back from work. And I was sure I just parked illegally and didn't realize it. And so then I went and looked it up. And they're like, No, we have no record of your car. And I was like, Oh, my car. And did you ever get a deed? Yeah, I got it back. So I I was getting ready to I was used to be a musician. And I was getting ready to go out on tour. I was going out for a very long tour. I was going out for like four months. And so I was also trying to I was moving all of my stuff in storage and moving out of my apartment and downsizing. So it kind of happened at a time where I was like, this is actually kind of convenient to not have to worry about where my car goes and I'll sort this out when I get home. I did not report the car stolen. So I was just like I didn't know that that's what you had to do. My car was was stolen. I reported to my insurance. I just didn't file a police report anyways, so I and the night before I leave for tour, I get a call from an impound lot in like Marina del Rey. And they're like, Hey, your car is here and I A I was like, No, my car stolen. They're like Yeah, exactly. Like your car has been parked it like this, you know, this strip of road and Elsa Gundo for like two months and finally got got impounded, there was somebody living in it. And so the night before I went on tour, I went out there, they're like, Okay, here's the deal. It's a 250 bucks to get your car out. It's 500 bucks to leave your car here, and we'll dispose of it. And so I went home, and I put it up on Craigslist, you know, take car as is $500. And somebody called me, within 30 minutes of me posting it being like, I'll take the car as is. So I went back to the impound lot. And I was like, Cool. I'll take it. 250 bucks. It barely drove. The person met me. Give me 500 bucks. So I made up my head. I was like, I made $250. Because I had already written off and forgotten a car, but and then I left for for four months, the next morning.
Andrew Vontz 20:59
What do you got the car back what was missing? There's always something super strange that's happened to the interior of your car when for anybody who hasn't had their car stolen? I feel sorry for you. You're missing out on a really interesting and terrible life experience. But when you get back, there's always something weird has happened to your car. And you know, something happened in the car that you don't want to know about? What was going on inside of that vehicle.
Blake 21:21
I mean, someone was living in there. So there was nothing. There was nothing missing. There was a lot of new stuff.
Andrew Vontz 21:27
All right. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah. So that's how it happens. But getting back to the park and Silverlake, I think what I quickly discovered about Blake and I think Blake discovered the same thing about me is, you know, there was just like this incremental competition in the sense of us, pushing each other and almost daring each other to do do something more or more horrible. Every time we worked out. So we started doing these really high rep, pull up and push up bodyweight dips, whatever workouts. I still had functioning triceps and tricep tendons at the time. Shout out to my Boise, if you're listening, you know who you are. And yeah, so that's when I went on a I was on a shopping trip to Home Depot to get something and I saw that you could buy goodbye the links of chain, like whatever length of chain you wanted. And I probably seen somewhere something about training with chains for variable resistance. So I ended up buying these giant chains. I still have them. They're down in my, my workout space today. And I don't know they're probably like 40 or 50 pounds. So then we started doing the pull ups with chains to have some extra weight and it's kind of moves around you have to stabilize your body more. It's a hard challenge. Then like Man, we were doing a lot of interesting things but every workout it was always like a very friendly type of competition, but it was definitely a you know, like, Yeah, fuck you. Can you do one more rep type of deal. I
Blake 23:03
remember specifically we were was the first time we rode over. Not Hollywood. in Griffith Park. We had been riding we'd met a couple times and ridden on the bike path and on I was on a like a Schwinn preemie from like 1988 that had a you know, cages clips.
Andrew Vontz 23:22
I don't I don't even remember this bike. This was before you got the giant
Blake 23:27
Cannondale which got cracked and then Giant was got so
Andrew Vontz 23:30
I don't even I don't remember the,
Blake 23:33
the candidate the candidate looked just like the giant so that makes sense. It was a little bit too big for him. But it was so I was on the premiere and I was wearing like Dickies shorts and probably like a tank top or something. Like, like a Smash Mouth. Exactly. And you're like, do you want to try and climb up the back of Mount Hollywood and like, you know, downtube shifters, the whole nine and I was like, let's go. And like my first time climbing up there, I'm probably climbing in the drops in my big ring, like standing up and half wheeling you the whole time. And Oh, nice. And like this is my first time doing a climb that's like over probably, you know, a few 100 feet and this is like a 1200 foot climb. And I was talking I said something like yeah, like I really liked cycling you know, this is fun because I'm like not really a competitive guy and you went I was like, I'm not a competitive guy and you thought I was making a joke because of how I was like, on the most how competitive you are. Like you could ride trying to half wheel like a guy who was like you were at your cat two on the road, right?
Andrew Vontz 24:41
I was I was quite a cat three. I got to a higher cat in other categories.
Blake 24:47
You know and you're in proper kit like you're a legit cyclist and I'm like trying anyways and you're like, Ah, you're not competitive. Hmm. But yeah, so everything was everything was definitely like a fun It was a type of competition. That's it's like steel sharpens steel where you're like, I'm not gonna, I this is only making me better I wouldn't have done this had I been on my own. I you know that one extra rep, because the person next to you is doing one extra rep and you just want to you want to be as good or better than they are.
Andrew Vontz 25:21
Yeah, kind of that I can only hurt you because I love you. And the best way possible in the context of this work. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, it was that type of thing. And as you got into cycling, you know, you of course talk to it. Because you're, you're a fit person who's who's generally looking strong. And you know, that's when I discovered the kind of one of your primary defining characteristics during a robic activity that's quite uncommon, is you like to chew bubble gum and blow bubbles? And yeah, when I'm, when I'm introducing people to Blake, that's probably one of the first things that I tell them is that, yeah, this is the guy that blows bubbles in the middle of difficult efforts on the bike to try to kind of play with your mind. And this is the guy who says looking strong pod to writers that he passes. But yeah, once we kind of got cooking on that you took to it quickly. And I definitely initiated you into, you know, the art of some of the technique that you need to learn in order to ride in a group. And if you're listening to this, I know a lot of my listeners are cyclists. But if you're not, when you're riding in a group of people, for example, you've ever watched the Tour de France and I'm, I'm not in any way analogizing what we were doing to that and at an effort, or ability level, but the thing that is similar is like you're in kind of in constant contact with the people around you. And not the CRM software I'm talking about, you know, you're bumping elbows, your shoulders touch, there's this typically, that just happens when you're writing in a large group of people. And it's a very uncomfortable and unsettling feeling when it happens. And if you don't know what you're doing, and if you overreact, or you don't know how to absorb the weight of someone leaning on you, then you'll definitely wreck. So that was kind of one of the first things I tried to teach you, Blake, was, hey, here's how you do this. So st. Park, and Silverlake, we started taking our bikes over there. And I use some of the drills that my coach David Brenton, who also is, he was my coach at the time. And I'm a great guy, multi time national champion Olympian. He's also you can find an interview with him in the archives. But yeah, he taught me a lot of great contact roles, which I then taught to you, Blake. And I think that David, he was super attuned to. And really great at teaching people how to do that, which is not commonly something most coaches teach. But he was a martial artist, a stunt man and professional cyclists. And how ironically, the years later, you know, you're a very high level martial arts practitioner yourself. But yeah, that was so like, we started doing that. And then we started going out and doing bigger and bigger rides. And then we went out and sorry to
Blake 28:19
cut you off. Like, yes. So I'm on a Cannondale, I'm on this.
Andrew Vontz 28:25
This look like I wonder to people. Yeah, because we're riding around in a grass field in the middle of the park, when cycling was not like a cool thing in LA at that time. In general, I would say it's like a cool hipster. thing to do now.
Blake 28:39
Yes. So by the time by the time Andrew had convinced me to go on this, we were getting ready to go on this Montrose ride. Or, you know, maybe go to the Rose Bowl, which is also a very scary competitive ride. Or maybe go to Nichols Canyon. So these are like, these are the rides that you know, competitive cyclists who have a lot of experience go out and do and Andrew, when he's like, You like cycling, you're gonna love it in this environment, because you're competitive. And it's really exciting. However, if we don't get a few of these things down, it's not going to go well. And I was the part I liked about cycling, is that it's really hard and you go fast and all this stuff. That part I do not like about cycling is anything technical. I'm a terrible bike handler, and I don't have a good stomach for risk. And so we were at this park again, there are kids there there are civilians there. And we're going like, I don't know, like five miles an hour like doing like figure eights and little like going through little chicanes. Well, Andrew it's aggressive, aggressively elbow, and head Monday me to see if I can get comfortable like being able to do this in a pack of people. And so like he's like, definitely over indexing on the aggression. And in order to do that, if you've written up Like before, if you're in a PAC, you kind of have to counter that. That same kind of intensity in order so that you don't fall over. So you have this as hard as somebody's pushing against you, you have to push against them just as hard so that you don't topple over. And in Andrew was way, way better, he still is way better at it than I am. So it's just hilarious watching this like this almost as bike bully, like bullying over his little friend. Like jumping off of a bike guys, I was riding the 61 centimeter Cannondale, I usually ride a 56. So it's huge. I just looked like my big brother, which is pushing me all over the park on my bike. It was very fun and very funny.
Andrew Vontz 30:43
It would be it would be interesting to, you know, the next time we're in the same place at the same time and go on a bike ride together, which I hope is soon. It would be very interesting to repeat that experiment. Now that you're a high level jujitsu practitioner, I wonder if your ability to do that is different, right? Because yeah, I can only imagine how your capital era would apply to this,
Blake 31:07
my fight dance. Um, but one thing that Andrew is like, really good at is his bike handling like he is he'll talk himself down on this, but like, strategically when he races he can when he's doing a cyclocross race. He can say like, oh, I'm going to take this turn in this way to wedge out someone over here, right, like in a fair, like, tactical way. And that's something I can't do as a cyclist, like I'm praying to make it through that turn, however I make it through. And Andrew can think tactically about how he's going to enter and exit that turn. And so that's just something that like, you've had the patience to work on and you have like, the natural ability to do and I'm awkward in space. I feel like, I don't know that jujitsu can help.
Andrew Vontz 31:53
It's just reps, man. Yeah, it's just yeah, you know, how does, it's just reps. And yeah, so eventually, the ride start getting longer and longer. And again, if you're listening to this, if you've got a friend that you love doing things like this with, call that friend or send them a text message right now and plan something for this weekend, or whenever you all, have some free time, and then send me a message I want to hear about it. I want to hear about how it went what you challenged each other to do, because that's what happened. With Blake and me. We just continued to progressively push each other and to do more and more challenging and sometimes inadvisable and incredibly stupid things. Athletically and one of the things that we did so like kind of the progression with the writing was yeah, we started to go out and do these group rides. And you can find these all over YouTube. Now. Most of the rides we just described at the time we were doing them there were definitely professional athletes doing these rides like Tony crews from Postal Service, kale Leo Grande, who you know later left the sport Resava hottie they're like there are all kinds of people coming out and doing these rides they were very fast
Blake 33:11
TT bike and try and ride away from the ride. Like he would he would like that's how like it was it was super competitive like people were Yeah, like you had big hitters who were doing this for a living coming out to do this with us.
Andrew Vontz 33:23
Yeah, yeah, so I was like, great. The logical next step for this person Blake who has been riding bikes for like six months is like let's it's time to bring him out to one of these one of these rides and see what happens I don't remember if this was the first time we did it because we did we got into this habit of, of we would go out on Saturday to the Montrose ride the Montrose ride would leave South Pasadena from the Trader Joe's shout out to all of my South Pasadena Trader Joe's customers you're listening.
So I think the first time Um, we did it. We did the long ride, which was 50 miles, is that correct? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So we sued right over there, we would do the ride, and then we ride home. And that's probably I think that's around 70 miles, probably if you ride from east side to Hollywood and do the long ride. So we got into the habit of doing this. I don't I have no idea of I don't think we've ever talked about it. Do you remember the first time you went out? And did that ride?
Blake 35:24
One? Yeah. 100%. I got I got a pinch flat on some railroad tracks very early on. So you know how it would you would go over the railroad tracks. And then you would go down to the section where there was a short contested sprint kind of early on in the
Andrew Vontz 35:41
road to the right, where you veer to the right, yeah. Yeah.
Blake 35:45
So as we went over those, those railroad tracks, I got a pinch flat. And so I stopped and I had, at the time, I had this giant, like a top to size hand pump. And I was just frantically like fixing my, you know, my tire. This is the kind of group ride where like, nobody's going to fucking stop for you. But nobody's stopping for you. Nobody cares. And, uh, you were you were out ahead of me, because I think you were trying to contest the sprint at the time. And so I, you know, fixing the flight as fast as I can, but I'm like, months into being a cyclist. So, you know, typically, you know, Andrew was, would sit back and help me do this kind of stuff. But the ride had passed. And so I got on my bike, and I didn't really know the route of the ride. So I just thought in my head, oh, I can catch them. And so I got on whatever that road is. And I just rode so far for so long, so hard, and never saw another cyclist again, and eventually got out there and like, turned around came home. And then you sent me a text later on that afternoon. Like, like, are you okay, man? What happened to you? And I was like, I'm good. Can't wait to do it next week. You know, like, and I was like, Alright, I'm gonna stay like, and I was like, so committed to that point to like, I got to stick with this ride. Like, this isn't gonna happen again. But it was horrifying. This is the first 20 miles or so of the ride that I did. It was really scary.
Andrew Vontz 37:08
Yeah. Do you remember was that the feeling you had been in that group? You were freaked out?
Blake 37:12
Yeah, it's really scary. And then because here's the situation, you're not that fit. I've only been writing for so long. Strategically, it makes the most sense for me to be farther up in the group just so that I am not dealing with like, you know, Whiplash, or the boomerang effect. And I'm drafting, I'm protected. That just makes the most sense, however, because I'm terrified. I'm sitting in the back. And so every time there's a surge, I'm late to the surge. And I'm like, racing, this is kind of like the experience I think a lot of people have on their first big group rides, and you're just reacting, reacting, reacting. And so you're significantly more exhausted on the back than you would be in the pack. Right. And so it took a while for me just to get comfortable with all of that. But seeing you I would remember, I remember seeing you guys the competitive thing was so fun, because Andrew used to wear these jerseys that he would like spray paint himself. So like he would like spray paint a little like, snake on it. And like Hive is orange or something. And so I can see his jersey like, for it was start off and be like, okay, like, he's, he's three wheels ahead of me. Okay, I can I can stick with them. Okay, I can, I can still see him like six wheels ahead of me. I can get up there. I can get up there. And then he'd be gone. And I'd be like, Ah, man, I lost him. And so it'd be like trying to get up to where he was in the ride. Because, again, Andrew and riding bikes a long time. He's a very smart technical writer, but I was not as as tactical. And always start off Andrew be like, I can stay on my wheel. And I'd be like, okay, cool. Got it. And it would be like a test for me how long I could sit on his wheel or how long I could be within a few wheels of you. Because it was it was really scary. I didn't want to be up there. That's how I pushed myself to get better at it.
Andrew Vontz 38:57
Yeah, everything is scary until it isn't just like everything's hard. Until it's not hard and then you got to find something harder to do, right?
Blake 39:05
Yeah, yeah, that's that right is always gonna be a little scary. Yeah,
Andrew Vontz 39:09
I mean, yeah, I actually, yeah, Blake I sent you a link to a YouTubers video whose name we won't mention. That threw up a video this week of a group ride that's out. That goes up the Pacific Coast Highway and watching it almost made me physically ill just watching the proximity of this group to very high speed traffic on the PCH where there have been numerous car on bike fatalities. And yeah, it just it you know, personally, I don't have the same appetite for taking inordinate levels of risk just to go be part of a group and also as you know, Blake, I now, I live in an area where there is a relatively small group of people who ride bikes who are awesome. Shout out To all the mid Coast cyclists here in Maine, but they're not rides like that here. I think Southern California in the United States has to be the epicenter of the large race style group ride, because I think you can do on every day of the week and Los Angeles. And I'm sure that was, you know, that was 1520 years ago when I was doing those all the time. And there are a lot more people cycling now. At least that's what social media is telling me.
Blake 40:31
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a different scene out here, for sure. But it was different than, and I think we should talk about the, like, our big. My first century is the first time ever wrote 100 miles on a bike in a day. It was not it was not a consecutive, but it was an epic, epic experience of, of competitiveness and camaraderie between you and I. So yeah,
Andrew Vontz 40:56
and also also stupidity, which, if you're not doing, honestly, if you don't pick something to do that, it's just kind of dumb every once in a while. Yeah. And I don't I'm not sure you're alive. Because I think that's, that's really where you find your edges, and grow and maybe find some things that you don't want to do again. And yeah, I definitely want to talk about that. Before we do, though, Blake. I wanted to talk about one other Montrose ride. And I know people out there, they're probably they're on YouTube at this point, trying to check out the Montrose ride and series, see what that's all about. But you and I kept going to the Montrose ride. And then there was one week in particular, I think that we were maybe a couple of minutes late, getting there, and we were fast enough to almost catch the group. Having started, I don't know, five minutes after the group started, and we kept getting really close to almost catching the tail end of the ride. And keep in mind, this is a group of about 200 cyclists, probably riding like 25 to 30 miles an hour, I would guess in this stretch of the ride.
We're cruising along, and we get really, really close to catching the ride, we've made it all the way up to the back end of the ride. And the way this particular section of road works, there's a stoplight probably every quarter mile, if not sooner, the lights are timed. So if you make the light, you're just gonna keep hitting green lights, if you're riding fast enough, if you hit a red light, I mean, you're fucked. You're never going to catch the ride. So we kind of kept hitting red lights. But we had managed to ride so hard that we had chased on to the very back of the ride. And we were probably within 20 yards, it felt like we were going to make it onto the ride. And we're going full gas. And yeah, we were writing very, very fast. I want to say probably like 27 to 30 miles per hour, for a short period of time. We're coming up and the light goes from yellow, there are people on the back of the group. And it turns red and this isn't. This is like a SoCal, for waste stop where it's three lanes in each direction four ways. This is not a light that you want to run. You don't want to run this light, you should never run any lights. And I was in front Blake, you were riding behind me. And one of the things you of course, have to have to learn if you're going to be out riding with other people is you, you know, you want to ride as close to their wheel as possible to stay out of the wind because you save about 40% of your energy like 20 to 40% of the energy of the person riding in front of you, depending on how close you are and how many total riders are in front of you. And you also need to maintain situational awareness and be able to look over their shoulder because you're not on a closed road. You're not at the Tour de France, a knife. Shoot, it might be worse. If you're at the Tour de France. There's a lot of weird stuff on the road there. Anyway, I see the lights turning red and I made the judgment. This isn't today that I'm going to die doing this particular thing. And I think yeah, so I thought I think I probably started skidding because I just realized we're not making it through this light. I have to stop my bike and I have to stop it right now. And and I'm watching the ride go away from me and I know like this is Blake and I are now two guys out on a bike ride instead of doing this really fun ride. We woke up at probably 530 in the morning to get out and do Though and what happened on your end, Blake?
Blake 45:03
I mean, what happened? I'm like, as you're saying this, I'm like, the back of my knees hurt. Like the like this, my stomach hurts just thinking about what happened. So I mean, I'm yeah, I'm in the drops, probably standing like going that hard and, and I look up and I see a very still Andrew where there was once a very fast moving Andrew and he's very close to me. And like like right at the edge of the intersection. And I drill into him. Like I think before I even hit my brakes like I don't even think I touched my brakes. And and then the next thing I remember is like us, like just like, sprawled out in the middle of this massive intersection with like people getting out of their cars being like, oh my god, are you okay? And I think I think I hit Andrew so hard that you you might have ripped a cleat off of your shoe and it was stuck in your
Andrew Vontz 46:09
Oh, it was so funny. So funny. Yeah, I felt it was like it was like, if you're just standing there. And I Blake, I don't know what you weigh. Right now at that time. I'm guessing you probably weighed like 175 pounds. Yeah, had like 5% body fat you were. You're very jacked. You're very stout. And it was like someone with that physique. Running Running 30 miles per hour and football tackling you while you were just standing there facing forward, but no awareness of what was about to happen.
Blake 46:45
So yes, we're doing a track stand.
Andrew Vontz 46:52
was so funny. It was so funny. Yeah. So yeah, like, you just you just railroaded into me, plowed me, hit me so hard that it threw me off my bike into the intersection. And I don't remember, I don't remember exactly how you fell. But I think you probably like vaulted over me. And you were five or 10 feet in front of me in the middle of the intersection. And you're right. It was like people were like, is this guy dead? It was a really it was? It was a bad bad scene.
Unknown Speaker 47:23
Yeah, there are multiple people getting out of cars. Just yeah,
Andrew Vontz 47:27
that's Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, that's not like a real SoCal thing. And usually, it's like, oh, like the dead body, I'm gonna step over it and keep moving or like, that's a speed bump now, but this was so bad that people got out of their cars and Azusa or wherever we were. And we're checking on us. And then I mean, the next thing we had to do was immediately get out of the road, because that cars probably got like, 50 miles an hour on that road. We got off to the side of the road. And then yeah, I remember doing an assessment. Because when you have a wreck on the bike, it's you typically don't know how bad it is. I don't know about you, Blake. I always hate. The thing I hate the most about wrecking really bad on my bike, or the moment that I find to be most intense. Is the moment between it happening and when I looked down to see how fucked up I am. Yeah, so it's like, it's like, you feel it and you're like, okay, but like, everything kind of hurts. And you're so numb in certain places from the impact and the shock of it. And then you actually have to look down and see, okay, what's broken or not? What's wrong with me? Do I need stitches, all that stuff? And in this instance, for me, I was relatively okay. I think, I don't know. Maybe I had torn shorts or something. I remember. I feel like you had your did you have your fluid jersey on? Yeah, I was just a
Blake 48:51
bloody mess. I was left in my blue jersey on like, I like, like, probably torn through. And I didn't tear through my hips. I got a because I remember I had those good shorts for a while. See I tore a hole in my fluid jersey. You know, most of them. I think my left side, which is where I usually fall was just, you know, like hamburger meat. Yeah. And but we got there on the side of the road. And I will say we had the conversation of what do you think we can catch him?
Andrew Vontz 49:18
Oh, yeah, totally. Right. Yeah. Do you think we could catch the ride? Yeah, absolutely. I don't. I
Blake 49:25
mean, not even like, like, do you think we should keep he was do it. At some point. We both said Uncle and went back and wrote to Silverlake and got coffee. And SAT?
Andrew Vontz 49:37
Intelligence? Yeah. I think that celebrity Bible study that Justin Bieber does I think that was going on in the coffee shop while we were there.
Blake 49:45
And and then I like I sat out there. We got coffee, and then I set out there bleeding on the patio. And then what's messed up is that two or three days later, I moved to Berkeley. That was the last mantras we had.
Andrew Vontz 49:56
Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, so we've gone Out of chronological order here and I'm aware, I know you've got a slide. So let's definitely get to like the hundreds workout because this is a 100th episode. And Blake, you started to tell the story at some point and the trajectory of our going out, like we did so many just horrible interval workouts. And there were many more later, we ended up having, you know, it was a lot of fun. We ended up working together at TRX, which was great and we did a lot of really just horrible interval workouts and, and other workouts that we could talk about at a future date. But in LA, kind of like the apex of, of all this stuff we were doing at some point we decided, you as you mentioned, you hadn't done a century we were doing the mantras right every Saturday anyway. So like, whatever we can throw another 30 miles on this not that hard. You like go do a lap around. Griffith Park, head out to Elysian Park. Now I feel like this is the SNL California you know, you like you pop down Sunset, you you hang a left into Elysian Park and you've done 100 miles. And we were talking earlier about a park and Silver Lake where we do these Bodyweight Workouts. Well, we would do, we go to bike workouts in Griffith Park, we do these group rides and then we also would do these sprint workouts and hillclimb workouts in Elysian Park. And that's when we noticed that Elysian Park had that another bodyweight area for workouts, and it had monkey bars somewhere you can do pull ups just like all the stuff that we loved. So the challenge became 100 mile workout and then afterwards, I don't remember which CrossFit workout this is Angie. It's Angie. Okay, so we're like, we're going to do the 100 mile ride, then we're going to do an Angie and Angie is 100 pull ups, push ups, squats, and what sit ups? Yeah, so okay, what's the perfect thing to do after you ride your bike? 100 miles with a really hard group right in the middle? You're gonna do the CrossFit and Jiwan
Blake 52:01
I will I will. I have to correct you on one thing, okay. At the time, you were very into single speed training. And this was your first century on a single speed.
Andrew Vontz 52:16
Did I really do that on a single speed? Wow, I did I did the Montrose ride on a single speed as well.
Blake 52:23
You did a couple times. Yeah. Okay, this isn't when again, this isn't when things were like, easy to it wasn't easy to get a single, like, you know, state bikes didn't have like a stock. single speed. This is like right before specialized, put out the Linkster because people were kind of getting into like fixed gear riding. So you had to create convert a geared bike into a single speed bike, like put a chain tensioner on it, like, you know, get the whole thing figured out. And it was and you're like, cool. I'm gonna take this on the most competitive ride, one of the most competitive rides in LA. And then we're gonna do another 30 Miles afterwards. And the other thing is, the 30 miles that we did afterwards, we decided to do in the afternoon, like we had a second bike ride. We didn't
Andrew Vontz 53:06
hold on, we stopped between rides were which we maybe we changed clothes for some reason. I don't know, I don't know if your costume change or the opera
Blake 53:17
because it was almost afternoon because we had a whole new headwind that we didn't have in the morning. Okay, I was like, I don't know if this is gonna happen. Like it was it was legitimately challenging. Like, in my head, when we got home from the first seven days, I was like, I got this in the bag. And I was like, I got this in the bag. And then we started writing again. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is a different, a whole different beast riding in this headwind. To get the last bit done. It really felt like pulling teeth. And then yeah, we're like, cool. Let's go do these pull ups.
Andrew Vontz 53:52
Yeah. Okay, cool. So we made a horrible thing extra horrible. And as you may have figured out there as there are parts of this, I don't even remember doing so. You know, this podcast number this single speak? Yeah. I don't know, this podcast is not about 10 tips you can do to blah, blah, blah. And it's not about shortcuts or hacks. It's about how doing hard things build stronger humans who have more fun. And I think this is a perfect example. If you do enough hard things you're just gonna forget about it. Forget about some of them. So even in the moment, if it seems particularly awful, but yeah, will probably will fade over time.
Blake 54:28
I will just say that, like this competitive friendship has led to some of our biggest successes as athletes, you know, that we have, right? Like, there's no way without this relationship I ever would have gone to do unbound right
Andrew Vontz 54:44
now. You were never gonna go to Kansas to do anything.
Blake 54:49
Other than play hardcore show, like 20 years ago. Yeah. But like, you know what I mean? Like that was something that I never do. And now I can say, oh, yeah, I finished third place in the unbound 102 years in a row. Oh, yeah. And that never would have happened. Had you not finished second? There you go. And additionally, like, think about this. We have both smashed a 53 pound kettlebell 100 times in under five minutes.
Andrew Vontz 55:16
I don't know if I've done that. Blake, I don't know if I ever met the standard. Well, I don't remember again, either way, probably pretty close to that before I buy. I injured my shoulder so bad that I can't ever do that again. But yeah,
Blake 55:28
but you got probably closer to doing that, then. I don't know, 99.9% of humans on Earth, right. And that's something was maybe true, that wouldn't have happened, had we not had this relationship? And at times, it's been like, antagonistic at times. It's been just goofy. And I think that yeah, like having someone that you that you can do this stuff with? Yeah, is it it makes you so much better. And you don't realize it until, you know, we've been friends for 15 years, 16 years. And so you look back and you're like, wow, like we have done a lot of stuff together.
Andrew Vontz 56:11
Yeah, we definitely have. And I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned earlier, which I think I have reflected on but it would be worth talking about, which is it can be awkward as an adult to make new friends. I think that that's kind of axiomatic. Maybe that's really easy for some people. But I think the older you get, and you know, if you have a family, or if you're really caught up in your profession, whatever the case may be, it can be really difficult to make meaningful relationships with people die, just generally. I mean, there is a loneliness epidemic. It's well documented. It's really it's really bad for your health. And, you know, something that that led to everything that we're talking about is like we took the chance of making some time to go do something with a stranger. That was potentially really awkward. I mean, I can only imagine what it must have felt like Blake when I walked up wearing plastics, like sweating my ass off carrying an 80 pound sandbag on my back. And I was like, cool, it's worked out. But, you know, if you don't take that chance, then none of the rest of the stuff is going to happen. You know, no risk, no champagne. And I'm grateful that you know that we have this friendship that we did take the chance and for all of the fun, sometimes horrible sometimes inadvisable, but always worth it things that we've done. And if you're listening to this, I want to say again, we're at episode 100. Thanks so much for listening to choose the hard way. Go out, do something hard. Take the chance as somebody else you know, to do it with you. Whether there's someone that you've done something like this before, or somebody new like you never know what possibilities are going to unfold if you roll the dice. Take the chance and commit yourself to doing something that is going to be challenging