Hello welcome to another episode of Papa Bear hikes.

For most of us when we talk about backpacking and hiking, we're going on maybe a 5, 10, or even a 15 mile hike.

Sometimes it could be for a couple of weeks.

We've spoken to through hikers who have taken

several months to do their hikes.

Today's guest is an endurance athlete.

Today's guest is going to talk about his seven well not all of his 17 records but a few of them. He's going to talk any of us some background on what an endurance athlete is.

He's also founder of Backpacking Routs, author of the book, Free Outside. Writer, mental health activists, and adventurer, and a fashion icon.

Jeff, Legend, Gertmeyer, welcome the Papa Bear hikes.

Thanks for having me.

Now Jeff, I just, and I started doing the introduction,

I was like, you know, just, there's a lot to cover here

with what you do.

You have an incredible level that you work at outside.

Like I said, some of us will think about 10 and 15 mile days of hiking,

maybe running a 5K, that's a lot of work. You do what's called fastest known times, and that's

an endurance that takes endurance athleticism to another level. Could you start off by telling us what a New Earth athlete does?

Yeah, so I've done kind of a combination of these through hikes and piecing longer and longer through hikes together getting up into the

7,000 and 8,000 mile range and then I tried to I've tested myself on speed challenges like fastest known times, which is basically covering a defined trail, let's say the long trail, since that's one of your favorites in the fastest time

ever reported so that's kind of what an FKT is stands for fastest known time. And I guess the pro endurance athlete side of it comes from

a decent amount of my income is pretty tied to, you know, the stories, the experiences, the things

working with brands around some of these endurance things and

...