I'm just having that perspective of like,

this is supposed to be the celebration of the work you've put in, not the culmination, but I think doing the internal work is the most important thing to me is what this does for me, this activity does for me as a person. I think if you can tie your motivation and everything to that, you'll be able to do this for as long as you want to do it. And that's ultimately my goal for some. Welcome to Trailhead, a trail runner nation where we go on virtual trail runs with you. Hopefully we're in your ears today and we go on virtual trail runs every week that help us become better runners, healthier humans, and maybe kinder and gentler humans. Well, there's no doubt about this one, Scott, we'll be better people. We're talking with Adam Kimball about the book, The Sweet Spot, written by Paul Bloom. We're gonna answer the age old question. Why do we do this, if it hurts? Real tips from real runners. This is clarity on the trial presented by Tafosi Optics. We're helping you see the path ahead more clearly with listener submitted gold and Tafosi's world class lens technology. And we've already gotten a lot of really good tips that you guys have submitted This week we're gonna get one from Missurly. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. We'll reach out and make sure that Missurly gets a pair of the new Sanctum SLs, which we're gonna talk about here in a minute. This is their Golden Nugget. Definitely the value of consistent, healthy training over monster efforts to mix sports metaphors, singles and doubles win games. I love that. You don't win games by just hitting home runs. It's getting something done every single day. And if you want to get yourself a free pair of the Sanctum Sells, all you need to do is go to the deals page at trailrunnernation.com, all the instructions

are there on how you can possibly get a free pair and you can get a discount of 10% with the coupon code there. To foceyoptics.com. What do I say? Welcome to? What do I say? Scott, I don't remember. I'm not going to tell you. Thanks for joining. No, I'm a welcome to. to another edition of Trail Reigner Nation. My name is Don Freeman.

I'm Adam Kimball.

And I am Scott Warren. Today, we're doing another book review. This is a book by Paul Bloom called the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning. And you just read that title and and if you're an ultra runner endurance athlete, you're going, okay, maybe I need to read the back cover of that, baby. Well, we did. And we ended up reading the book. And of course, as always, Coach Adam Kimball came on because he's our philosophical book reviewer. And he usually finishes the book. Don and I make it, you know, halfway way through. We always count on Adam finishing the book. Don and I have many DNF. Spoiler alert, Scott. There's no fear of that. Now this book is fun because it's a practical field guide for endurance athletes. The author Bloom describes something runners know in their bones but rarely articulate. We voluntarily sign up for discomfort because it produces meaning, focus, and satisfaction. Now Bloom is a psychologist and he explores why humans seek out these challenges, sometimes painful experiences and why those moments often become the most rewarding parts of our lives. In this episode, Adam is going to come on, he's going to help us digest this book with some of the ideas like I think it's chapter one or chapter two, the term benign masochism and what that means for runners and how embracing that struggle might actually be the key to finding our sweet spot on the trail. Did you catch that Freeman? How I magically, artfully, wove back in the title of the book into the end of that? Yeah, I'm just surprised that you brought your best thing forward, right at the beginning of the podcast. podcast. The way I see this thing is we've all asked ourselves on the trail. Why are we doing this? I'm never doing this again. We signed up for this. We paid for this. We hope to get in and here we are suffering. There's a reason for that and we hope to discover some of that with this discussion. At least that's what I'm hoping for. So here's the opening question I'd like to ask Adam and you, Don, if you can remember back when you first saw the title of this book, what did you think it was about? Don and I were started reading it months ago and then we thought, hey, this is something we can get on with Adam and so we let Adam have the book. Adam, what did you think when you first saw the title of the book? What did you think it was about? Yeah, I was kind of anticipating it being like discussing the idea of sort of the mental sweet spot of the idea of doing hard things and why you do it, but also what keeps you coming back for more. And I think to some degree it was about that,

I also think it touches on a lot of other things.

And this was one of those, as we get into this conversation,

this is one of those books that I feel like it,

I left, sometimes you'd leave with like grand ideas

or things that you're gonna implement in your life.

This book left me with a lot of like little takeaways

that I think are really applicable

and fit us well as trail runners.

When I started listening to it,

that's a nice take, Adam.

I had no idea what it was gonna be about.

I thought maybe it's about a tea party

and people are drinking tea.

I didn't know, but as I started reading it,

I said, wait a minute, this is exactly for us.

This answers or taps into that question, why do we do hard things and why do we go back to do more of it? And what do we take away from it? And when I found out that he is an endurance athlete himself and he's run marathons and so he's touched and tasted some of the same things that we do. And that really brought home to me that there's something in here besides a tea party. Now because this is an honest review we will stay and we had a conversation right before the podcast started. If you're going to get this book you need this reading this book is like running a long race. You're going to feel good it's going gonna really make sense for parts of the book.

Another part you're gonna go, ah, man, I just don't feel good about this. And it kinda ebbs and flows that way. We don't want to discourage you from eating it because there's a lot of good stuff in there, but it's not good from cover to cover. At least that's my opinion. I didn't find that. Adam, did you find that? I think Scott's on his zone island there unless you join him.

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