Zack Bitter Plans to Run Across America

You are doing something really bonkers right now, right? You're attempting to run across the entire country and to break the record. Yeah, so this is kind of in its infancy a bit from the planning stages. So it probably won't happen in the immediate future. But someone you're very familiar with, actually, Justin Ren. Yeah. He's got the fight for their gotten. I was actually on the phone with him last night. And one thing I've kind of been interested in since I started ultra running is this route. It's a 3,100 mile route, basically. It goes from San Francisco to New York. And it's been done by quite a few people, both walking, running. Pete Kostelnick, he's got the course record. I know he averaged like 70 miles a day. Yeah. Yeah, so it's a pretty insane route. And I've always been interested in doing it. And I just haven't really been motivated, I guess, to really attempt it. Or I guess I just really didn't know when I would do it. I just kind of had the idea I would. Last year, one of my sponsors, the F-bomb, those nut butter sachets. I love those. But my friend RZA and John L. Rollins, they believe that the name should be changed. They believe nut butter has a negative connotation to heterosexual males who think that it sounds like something comes out of your dick. Any thoughts? A name change would maybe be good. I guess in their defense, theirs is called F-bomb, not nut butter, right? Right. Right. F-bomb. F-bomb's better. Right? It's a better name. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. I love their stuff. Yeah, no, they make a great product. And they had actually proposed last year. I think they just were maybe spitballing a little bit. But they were like, hey, would you be ever interested in doing that? Like go running, doing that cross-country route. And I was like, yeah, I've been actually wanting to do that at some point. I just haven't gotten around to actually planning it out. How funny is that as a statement? Yeah, I've been wanting to run 3,100 miles across the fucking continent and try to beat the record, which averaged 60 to 70 miles a day. God damn, dude. How would you prepare for that? Yeah, I mean, I'd be in super uncharted territory because I just haven't done anything like that before. So it would be difficult. You'd be a lot of learning on the fly. I think really the big key thing there is you're managing a lot of stuff with that. Like you want to make sure you're sleeping well throughout that. Because obviously, if you're not sleeping well, it could end badly for you pretty soon. So then I think you just end up trying to do as much specific things as you can to prepare without going overboard. So just a lot of time on feet. I mean, you can imagine the pace is going to be incredibly slow. There's probably going to be walking breaks. Certainly not going to be running 6 to 4k per mile pace. But my first thought is I'll probably target a 12 to 14 hour range per day. And whatever I get out of that 12 to 14 hours is what I get. And then that gives me the flexibility to have at least 10 hours of buffer to prep and sleep and get ready for the next day. Do you know who Eddie Izzard is? The comedian? Yeah. Are you aware of what he did? He ran the entire length of the UK, or on the outside of it? With no training, right? He's an animal man. He really is a special person. Really is a special person. I remember only knowing of him as a comedian and had seen him do a lot of stand up before. And then I watched this documentary where he's running, I mean, how many different marathons was it? It was like 26? 27 and 27 days. 27 marathons and 27 days. He did wind up taking one day off. His feet were literally mangled from blisters. Can't even imagine. He wasn't in shape, which is just fucking crazy. He's just sheer willpower. I mean, just to do one marathon when you're not in shape. I just can't imagine. Just a fucking sheer amount of just will, just pure will that it takes to do something like that and to just keep pushing. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. Even though everything in your head, your brain, your feet, everything, stop, stop, stop. Fuck you. Left, right, left, right, left, right. I mean, he ran, how many thousand miles was it? The entire length of the UK, all over the outside of it? He did 43 marathons. Oh, Christ. He did one in South Africa, right? 43 and 51 days was his first one, and then 27 and 27 days was his second one. 43? 43 fucking marathons? The article in 2009, comedian L.A. We were celebrating after finishing his 43rd marathon in 51 days. He's a really, really interesting guy. Yeah, it's amazing what you can do. He's Eddie Izzard, but he's a cross-dresser. So he's like, he comes out as transgender, I think, but not really, because he likes women, and he likes women as a man. He just likes dressing as a woman. He's just a really unique guy, but he owns it, you know what I'm saying? He is who he is. Sub-five hour marathon. The connection was aimed at finishing on a sub-five hour marathon, missed his target by 30 seconds. Give it to him. Yeah, let's round down in that case. Christ. Give him an honorary 459. Such a fucking interesting, interesting, thoughtful, intelligent person. Really enjoyed talking to him, but when he's talking about these marathons, you're like, good Lord, man. Like, it's hard enough for someone to do who's like you. Like, for a guy like you to run 40 what? How many marathons? 40 what? What'd he say? A lot. A lot. Let's say 40. Fuck it. For you to run 40 marathons in 40 days, it's fucking bonkers, right? Yeah, that'd be a bigger training block than I've ever done for sure. That's crazy, and you're a fucking world record holder. You got a goddamn stand up comedian out there running. So what are you thinking about in terms of the timeline? Well, so if I go and try to get close to or right around the record for that, it's about a 40 day-ish timeframe, give or take. So you're really, I think the biggest hurdle or planning thing is to find the timeline where you're gonna run into at least a amount of weather issues, because you're going across the country. So you're going over to the Sierras and you're going through the middle of the country and then all that stuff. So obviously you don't wanna be going over mountain passes in the middle of winter, which you probably don't also wanna be going through the Midwest in the middle of the summer. So some of it's gonna be kind of planning around that. There's probably some good opportunities in the spring and the fall that kind of catch that window of moderate temps versus extremes. What's the gentleman that did it before? Pete Kostalik. Do you know Pete? Yeah, yeah. Man runs from San Francisco to New York in record time. Look at that guy, he's still dazed. Pete's also like, that's not, he also, you wanna hear something crazy about Pete though? So he did that and then that wasn't enough because he, I think this was a year ago or two years ago, he went up in Alaska and went from Alaska down to the southern tip of Florida all by himself with just like one of those push strollers. And he averaged like, I think it was like 50 miles a day or something like that. What? He went from Alaska to Florida. Yeah, yeah. He did, I forget what they called it. Well, a stroller. So that's his food? His food's in the stroller? Yeah. What the fuck, bro? You know, it was funny. I was kind of following him while he did it. That's so crazy, he's got a baby stroller with food in it. What a crazy idea. He did, when I was following him, like he was logging all his runs on Strava. So it was hilarious to see like these weeks after weeks where it was like 50 mile day, 50 mile day, 50 mile day, you know, like 350, 400 mile weeks and stuff like that. And then if you like zoomed in on his routes, you could see like he'd be on this route and all of a sudden you see him deviate a little bit and you'd zoom in and he'd be like, oh, there's a grocery store there. That's why he turned right there. To fill up his baby cart with food. Where'd he keep his money? I don't know. The baby cart? Probably, yeah. Someone tried to steal that baby cart. Where'd he sleep? I think he stayed at hotels if I'm not mistaken. I'd have to look back into the store. So he has to bring the baby cart up the stairs? Jesus Christ. There's crazy people out there, man. There's different kind of humans, right? Like you have this idea of like what a person's capable of and then you see someone like that and you go, okay. I gotta rethink this. People are capable of way more. Yeah. Yeah, it's nuts when you think about it. As soon as you think you find limitations, then all of a sudden someone goes out and does something crazier or bigger or better. Guy took a baby stroller from Alaska to Florida. What the fuck, man? Did you talk to him at all about this idea? I haven't yet, no. I mean, it's been- Are you going to? Yeah, I'll definitely reach out to him. He'll be good about it, I think. He's a nice guy. I know Pete, so. How many people have done this run? I don't even know. It's a documented route, so it's been done. You could probably Google it and find out. But yeah, it's more than you'd think. It just really usually comes down. And actually, Justin worked with someone earlier who did it walking. I think a maybe was a slightly different route, but it was basically the same premise. And he walked 20-some miles a day or something like that and was raising funds and awareness for Fight for the Forgotten, too. So we'll maybe talk to him a bit, too. So the idea is late summer, early fall, something like that? Yeah, that's probably ideal. I think you want to try to catch, you want to get away from winter, but you also want to be done before the worst part of summer. Right. With the global warming, do you factor that in? Depends how fast it ends up coming. Yeah, I mean, it's... The route might be shorter by the time I get around to doing it if the coast is coming in, though. So sometime around this time next year, it should be completed. Is that the idea? Maybe. My thought is it's probably got to either be about a 10-month start point or 18. So I could either do it now, or I guess it'd be a little less than 18. But by finishing. So I would either maybe try to do it this fall, or if I don't have enough in place by then, target kind of the end of winter for 2021. And what would change? What would make you decide to do it 2021 versus 2020? Just, I mean, I'm trying to respect how much planning it's going to take, and I haven't really started that yet. So I don't want to necessarily get... Find out, like, okay, let's say I just put a date on the calendar right away, and then find out, oh, I need to, like... And there's a lot more resources I have to try to acquire to make this happen. And this in terms of logistics, like food, shelter. Yeah, mostly logistics, and getting everything just organized enough to... Because I don't want to screw it up. Yeah. So there's that too.