550 Mile Races w/ Cody Taylor, Doug Larson, Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #845
Barbell Shrugged
Doug Larson
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
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Summary
Cody Taylor went from living out of a van on a music tour, signed to a major label and playing after Def Leppard, to setting unsupported fastest known times on 550-mile wilderness trails no one had ever completed without a support crew. He didn't start running until 2020. By 2023 he was finishing 100-milers. By 2024 he was carrying a 53-pound pack through 650 kilometers of Quebec backcountry alone, filtering water from mud puddles, taping the skin off his own back, and sleeping on the ground to eventually crossing the finish line. The question isn't how he survived. The question is how he built a body and a mind capable of that.
In this episode, Cody breaks down why strength training is a foundational component of his success in elite endurance performance and what it really takes to go unsupported when every pound in your pack matters and no one is coming to help you. He also covers the mental architecture of doing hard things: why 14 days of solitude in the wilderness will permanently change how you experience a glass of tap water. If you train hard, compete seriously, and want to understand what the human body is actually capable of, this episode is for you.
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| 0:00.0 | Shrugged family. Doug Larson here and this week on Barbell Strug we talk with ultra endurance athlete Cody Taylor about what it takes to go more than 550 miles unsupported, which means he carries all of his own food and filters all of his own water on the trail. He has no outside help. He is completely alone in the middle of nowhere. That means he's running all day, every day for two weeks straight with a 50 pound pack on his back, |
| 0:22.1 | which of course sets us up for a great conversation about the kind of strength, |
| 0:25.5 | durability, and mindset that makes something like that possible. |
| 0:28.1 | We also get into, of course, how he uses strength training to support his endurance training |
| 0:32.3 | and how he's used that foundation of strength to help him set records on these brutal multi-hundred mile long trails. |
| 0:38.9 | He has many great stories to share, and we really enjoyed the conversation. |
| 0:41.9 | Enjoy the show. |
| 0:44.6 | All right, welcome to Barbara Strugg. |
| 0:46.2 | I'm Doug Larson here with coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane. |
| 0:49.5 | Cody Taylor here with us, ultra endurance athletes, and we just found out as well. |
| 0:54.1 | You're a musician. Let's start off with that. You got signed to a label? |
| 0:57.2 | Yeah, well, I mean, it was my last band. It was right before the pandemic. |
| 1:02.0 | So we recorded this album, and it ended up getting signed to a label. |
| 1:07.3 | But like we were funded quite a bit of money, which we had to pay back, which all labels, |
| 1:12.6 | that's just the way it's set up. But I had the opportunity to basically live life on the road, |
| 1:17.8 | but then like I've been with my wife since I was 16, and I already lived life on the road |
| 1:24.1 | for quite a while before the pandemic. And it was a very hard lifestyle. I always said, like, being a musician was like people thrive on the road for quite a while before the pandemic and it was it was a very hard lifestyle I always said like being a musician was like people thrived on the road whenever |
| 1:31.6 | they had a broken home life and I didn't have a broken home life sort of thing so I it was a |
| 1:36.9 | tough pill to swallow I ended up pulling the plug on that on that journey but like my old |
| 1:42.2 | band keychain like we got to tour all the states tour all of the |
| 1:45.3 | caribians um and then like i said we started the new band six cents created the album and then my |
| 1:50.9 | whole goal in life was like okay i just want to be professional musician you know get signed a major |
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