Adam Neiffer | The BIG Give Away | Live Call In

Sevan Matossian (00:00):

You’re like me. You’re in stealth mode too. 6:00 AM right?

Adam Neiffer (00:03):

It’s 6:00 AM

Sevan Matossian (00:05):

Where are you?

Adam Neiffer (00:07):

I’m downstairs in my house.

Sevan Matossian (00:09):

And you’re using your indoor voice?

Adam Neiffer (00:13):

Yeah. Or maybe just my 6:00 AM voice.

Sevan Matossian (00:16):

Right? Right. Is your family still asleep? Sleep.

Adam Neiffer (00:21):

My kids and my brother are asleep. My wife is at the gym for 6:00 AM class.

Sevan Matossian (00:27):

No shit. Okay.

Adam Neiffer (00:29):

Yeah. Yeah, she’s there.

Sevan Matossian (00:31):

Because when we scheduled you, I know it was last minute and Susie said, Hey, can you come at 6:00 AM I’m like, there’s no way this dude’s going to do 6:00 AM he’s West Coast like me. And you’re like, no problem. I’m like, holy shit,

Adam Neiffer (00:43):

Dude. 6:00 AM is kind of the best time.

Sevan Matossian (00:47):

All right. Now we know Adam Nier. 6:00 AM

Adam Neiffer (00:49):

6:00 AM Anytime

Sevan Matossian (00:52):

CrossFit Fort Vancouver.

Adam Neiffer (00:54):

Heck yeah.

Sevan Matossian (00:57):

I just read you guys de affiliate because you don’t want to pay the extra fee. No, I’m joking. How many years have you guys been an affiliate?

Adam Neiffer (01:04):

Oh, we’re just about at 15 actually. Yeah, we’ll be at 15 here.

Sevan Matossian (01:12):

God, you’re awesome. The drama free, chugging along, killing it, making people better. Jim CrossFit, Fort Vancouver.

Adam Neiffer (01:21):

Go ahead. My voice is gone. We hosted the CrossFit Fort Vancouver championship this weekend, and it’s a competition that we do at the gym. It’s amazing. It’s 11th year that we’ve done it. And so yeah, my voice is getting fully recovered still.

Sevan Matossian (01:40):

Hey dude. Tell me about that. By the way, your newsletter is beautiful. You sent me your newsletter yesterday so I could get some of the nitty gritty details about what we’re going to talk about today, which is nuts.

Adam Neiffer (01:51):

It’s epic, it’s awesome.

Sevan Matossian (01:53):

Nuts. I can’t believe someone said, Hey, dude, you got to get Adam on about this race. I’m like, blah, blah, blah. Who cares about a race? But I like Adam, so I invite him on anyway, and then I read the details. I’m like, oh my. They weren’t joking. So we’re going to get to that in a second. But tell me, set the stage for some people. How many years have you been to the games as an athlete,

Adam Neiffer (02:13):

As an athlete? 10.

Sevan Matossian (02:15):

10 years. And then you had obviously one of the greatest to ever do it. Justin Maderis as a athlete. You have Ellie Turner as an athlete. You have Trista Smith as an athlete, and you have some young man who has games, aspirations also there.

Adam Neiffer (02:30):

Adam McAdams. Yeah, but he’s actually not young. He’s like 30. He’s an old guy in the CrossFit sport, but he is, yeah, he semifinals for his first time last year.

Sevan Matossian (02:40):

Awesome. Crazy. And then also you have a hundred pound weight loss stories that have come out of your gym. Yeah, yeah. Nuts. And you’ve been around forever. I’ve seen you at events as long as I’ve been around. You’re a staple in the community,

Adam Neiffer (02:56):

Man. The CrossFit’s changed my life, man.

Sevan Matossian (02:59):

And you’re a father?

Adam Neiffer (03:01):

Yeah. Two girls.

Sevan Matossian (03:03):

Any more coming?

Adam Neiffer (03:07):

Nothing planned. No sir.

Sevan Matossian (03:10):

Any of them are. Come on. Yeah. Okay. So tell me about this championship thing. You guys do a competition that’s just your gym,

Adam Neiffer (03:24):

The championship? I’m biased. I think it’s the coolest competition out there. It started in I think 2012 or 13, and the initial idea was regionals at that time I think were so unique and so incredible, but they only happen once a year. And you remember at the end of regionals, everybody was just on this high that was indescribable. And we were like, why don’t we do this more often? And so we went to,

Sevan Matossian (03:57):

By that you mean get the community together, affiliates showing up in their shirts. It had a really festive feel to it. I’m thinking specifically about Delmar, California.

Adam Neiffer (04:07):

Yep, a hundred percent. We hadn’t been to Delmar yet. We were still in the northwest region at that time, but very similar

Sevan Matossian (04:13):

Kids and families and people jumping rope and hugging and bumping into friends you hadn’t seen in 10 years. It was cool,

Adam Neiffer (04:20):

Dude. But also savage, high level competition, right? Yes. It wasn’t, I mean, there was

Sevan Matossian (04:26):

Serious as a heart attack for some people.

Adam Neiffer (04:29):

So we went up to Rory Zabar and Emily Carruthers and Kevin Simons and some of the top athletes from regionals. And we were like, Hey, do you guys want to do a competition before the season starts as a partner competition, just to get that regional group together to kick off the season and have a good time? And they were like, heck yeah, let’s do it. So when we started it, it was an invitational for any regional athlete from the northwest region to come compete. And the first several years, it was awesome. It was high level. It was like Cole Sagers first competition. Sam Quant came up and he competed early

Sevan Matossian (05:13):

On. How could it be Cole Shaker’s first competition if you had to be a regional athlete, could other ways of qualifying too?

Adam Neiffer (05:19):

Yeah, I don’t know if Cole, I might’ve said that wrong. Cole Segers first competition that he won.

Sevan Matossian (05:25):

Okay. I think he got early. He was a baby.

Adam Neiffer (05:28):

Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Those guys competed up here. And then as the sport of CrossFit grew somewhere, I don’t know, five, six years later, we were like, Hey, let’s invite masters athletes. Let’s invite scale divisions. And so it’s grown from there and now it’s scaled ’em RX divisions. We used to host it. I think the biggest it got was like 300 athletes at the Clark County Event Center at the fairgrounds. Dang. And then the last time we did it there was January, 2020. And then from then on we started hosting ’em in the gym. And so that’s where we’re at now. And man, it’s so, so fun. There’s a lot of athletes, of course, from our gym, but also local athletes from around the area that just come together and we try to give ’em an experience that is really high level professional. Like the CrossFit games, obviously it’s not the CrossFit games, but if you’re a scaled division athlete, you are hopefully treated just like the top athletes anywhere in any competition. The way it’s ran.

Sevan Matossian (06:28):

Hey, next year if you’re going to do it and you’d like some extra eyeballs or publicity on not, please let me know and come on before. I’d love to talk about it. I’d love to support that. I love the fact that you’re doing it in your box. It’s cool.

Adam Neiffer (06:42):

It’s so fun. Yeah. It’ll be almost the same weekend, like middle of December.

Sevan Matossian (06:47):

Hey, is that expensive? Does that break the bank? Does that scare you? It sounds expensive.

Adam Neiffer (06:52):

No, we used to run it. We used to run it a lot bigger. I would say that this year the costs were probably around 15,000 to put it on, and the revenue was probably, I got to look at it, but probably 4,000 or 5,000 above that. And anything extra goes to, we have something called The Way Foundation, so anything above breaking even goes to the foundation. And we’ve never lost money on the competition.

Sevan Matossian (07:25):

Kind of grand to fucking watch a football game and shit can get crazy. So I could only imagine doing something like this and it being scary. That’s why I asked.

Adam Neiffer (07:35):

Yeah, I was watching this weekend and it’s like, man, some of those judges on the floor have been judging there for 10 years. Some of the volunteers, like the two volunteer leads, it’s their 11th time doing it. So we’ve had some practice, which is awesome.

Sevan Matossian (07:53):

Yeah, that’s awesome. Hey, are you friends with Austin Stack?

Adam Neiffer (07:58):

Yep. Austin Stack. He was one of the original competitors in that.

Sevan Matossian (08:02):

Okay. Did you know that he’s a performance coach over at Mayhem now?

Adam Neiffer (08:06):

I knew he went out there. Yeah, he used to be in our area. He was in Northwest Guy, Southern Oregon.

Sevan Matossian (08:11):

Oh, he lives there. He lives there. He moved to, I dunno

Adam Neiffer (08:15):

Where he lives, I dunno

Sevan Matossian (08:17):

Where I saw it in his Instagram profile and I was tripping. I was like, holy shit. Austin Stack went there too. In a good way. I’m stoked for him. It sounds like a fucking perfect fit, doesn’t it?

Adam Neiffer (08:24):

Yeah, dude, that guy’s such a stud. Oh my God. Yeah. But I know he moved out of the northwest. I think he’s out there somewhere.

Sevan Matossian (08:32):

He should be in movies. He could play the thing or the Incredible Hulk or he should be some sort of Marvel hero

Adam Neiffer (08:38):

Dude. He’s got that voice to go with the physique too.

Sevan Matossian (08:41):

Yeah, what a freaking nature. Okay. Coaching at a athletes at a crazy high level, running the day-to-day of a gym, having a championship, having two daughters. And then I didn’t know this was a yearly thing. By the way. Your newsletter is beautiful. So tell me about this race. Is it three years in a row that you’ve been putting to assembling a posse and going out on a run?

Adam Neiffer (09:10):

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Although I cannot take credit for assembling the posse. It was actually a friend of mine that I met through the gym that introduced me to a sport that I had never even heard of it. I didn’t know it was a thing, but it’s called adventure racing. And he was like, Hey, do you want to do this race? And I was like, sure, what is it? And he was like, oh, we’re going to go run bike paddle across the mountains and we’ll have some fun. And I was like, okay, sure. Sounds awesome. He didn’t tell me it was six days long or something like that at the time. What I said. Yeah. So yeah, I think that was 2021. We did our first expedition when I was competing eight hundreds and sometimes a mile, but I wasn’t a long distance runner. I have done more running for sure since I got out of competing in CrossFit regularly just because I really enjoy being outside and just running on trails and seeing some country and getting out in the mountains. It’s just something that it doesn’t feel like working out or training. It’s just fun for me. So yeah,

Sevan Matossian (10:23):

This race that you did was dangerous. This last race you did was dangerous. I think it’s so dangerous that if your wife knew ahead of time, she may have asked you not to do it.

Adam Neiffer (10:37):

You’re probably right.

Sevan Matossian (10:38):

You have two daughters. I mean, the audience knows that I’m a bit of a pussy, but it’s It’s hairball.

Adam Neiffer (10:48):

Yeah. I don’t know if it was dangerous.

Sevan Matossian (10:52):

You swam with poisonous snakes and someone took a needle into the leg so deep and a pocket knife was used to try to extract it and a decision had to be made to leave the needle in there from the yucca plant because the cut with the pocket knife was too deep. It’s fucking dangerous, dude.

Adam Neiffer (11:11):

Yeah, I mean some poor decisions were probably made, but the sport in general, basically what

Sevan Matossian (11:16):

Happened, and it’s in Mexico. Yeah,

Adam Neiffer (11:18):

It’s in Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. But just to paint a picture so people know what the sport is, it’s basically what it is, is the race organizers are going to give you maps, a set of maps. In this race there’s probably 30 maps, and so they give you a bunch of maps and there’s no set race course. There is just a series of checkpoints and transition areas. So on these maps, there’s a bunch of dots that are checkpoint one through whatever, and then there’s transition areas. The transition areas are where you switch from running to biking or biking to paddling or paddling to biking. So you kind of alternate between paddling, biking and running. And of course there’s climbing and canyoneering and every

Sevan Matossian (12:13):

Race. Not of course, not of course. Adam normal races don’t have that. Not of course.

Adam Neiffer (12:18):

So the race organizers

Sevan Matossian (12:20):

Really, and there’s tons of sleep deprivation.

Adam Neiffer (12:23):

Yeah, there’s a lot of that.

Sevan Matossian (12:24):

And hallucinating

Adam Neiffer (12:26):

The race organizers like to highlights the local terrain and what’s around there. And so each race is unique. The elite division is teams of four. You got to have at least one man or one woman on the team. And so you basically try to get from the start to the finish hitting every checkpoint and transitionary in between and do it as fast as you can.

Sevan Matossian (12:51):

Tell me about these checkpoints, the transition areas. I completely understand you have to get there because that’s a moment when the team changes modalities. Right? Okay. Take off your running shoes and put on your biking shoes, but tell me about these checkpoints. There’s some crazy stories about a particular checkpoint in your race.

Adam Neiffer (13:09):

Yeah, A checkpoint is basically something that is stolen from orienteering. It is a little orange box. It’ll be hanging from a tree or from anywhere. And then is

Sevan Matossian (13:20):

There anyone there? Are there supplies there or it’s just a like, Hey, you have to say you were here.

Adam Neiffer (13:26):

There’s a punch. Think of it like a paper punch. It has a unique kind of set of spikes. You have a passport, so you punch your passport with the punch and that proves that you were there.

Sevan Matossian (13:40):

And that is a component of the race. You have to hit all of these checkpoints. So when it’s a race, it’s not necessarily, we think of a linear race like me and you start here and here’s the finish line. It’s like, Hey guys, here’s the map, here’s the 10 check. How many checkpoints were there?

Adam Neiffer (13:55):

This race? There was 28.

Sevan Matossian (13:57):

28. Oh god, dude.

Adam Neiffer (13:59):

Which is not many at all for a race this long. Yeah, really? Yeah. Yeah. It’s not long at all.

Sevan Matossian (14:05):

And how many days does the race take?

Adam Neiffer (14:07):

We finished in six and a half days,

Sevan Matossian (14:13):

So that’s four or five checkpoints a day. So that’s not a lot. God, that seems like a lot. Wow.

Adam Neiffer (14:18):

No, no, that’s not a lot. The length of this race would probably have double that.

Sevan Matossian (14:21):

And they don’t tell you the order to get ’em. You have to decide all of that, right?

Adam Neiffer (14:28):

Yes and no. There’s a pretty intuitive order in a race this long. Certainly. Sometimes if there’s a collection of checkpoints that are close together, lots of teams might take different paths. But the trick really is the navigation because you’re given these maps and there’s no GPS or anything like that. It’s a map and a compass to get from point A to point B. And it’s not, like you said, it’s not a linear race, but think of it as an amrap. Your goal is to complete and to get as many checkpoints as possible. And if you clear the course, which means you get all of the checkpoints, then the team that does that, the fastest wins.

Sevan Matossian (15:06):

Is there a final checkpoint? That has to be the final one.

Adam Neiffer (15:09):

Yeah, the race. You got to get there to finish.

Sevan Matossian (15:11):

Okay. Okay. Okay. There’s some sort of line. It’s not like,

Adam Neiffer (15:15):

So if you get all the checkpoints and you finish slower than me, but I get to the finish line first and I miss even one checkpoint, then you win. I didn’t get all the points.

Sevan Matossian (15:28):

How many teams?

Adam Neiffer (15:30):

So this race was unique in that there were a lot of different distances. We were 500 k, there was 200 K, 100 K,

Sevan Matossian (15:38):

500

Adam Neiffer (15:38):

K 30 k. So I think there was like 80 something teams in in those different divisions.

Sevan Matossian (15:47):

What does that mean? 500 k? That means you guys had to cover 90 kilometers a day on average, 80 kilometers a day.

Adam Neiffer (15:56):

Yeah, it was supposedly 500 kilometers. There was one team that had their tracker said 592 kilometers, so I don’t know how long it was. I just know it was like six and a half days.

Sevan Matossian (16:08):

Oh, here we go. Got it. So you’re telling me you and these three other cats from your gym, are they all CrossFitters from CrossFit Fort Vancouver?

Adam Neiffer (16:20):

Three of us are from CrossFit Fort Vancouver. One of our teammates is actually from Canada.

Sevan Matossian (16:25):

CrossFitter also.

Adam Neiffer (16:27):

She’s not, but she’s an honorary one now.

Sevan Matossian (16:30):

So three 19 to from 320, somewhere between three and 400 miles. You guys moved?

Adam Neiffer (16:38):

Yeah, but a lot of that is also on a mountain bike, so it’s not like you’re just running 300 miles,

Sevan Matossian (16:44):

But also some of it was on a boat

Adam Neiffer (16:47):

In this one, almost all the water was in canyons like canyoneering.

Sevan Matossian (16:51):

So swimming.

Adam Neiffer (16:53):

Yeah, swimming, jumping, repelling. Yeah, all that stuff. A lot of hiking over rocks in water. That’s not that deep.

Sevan Matossian (17:01):

Any, did you guys do any paddling? Did you ever get in a canoe or anything?

Adam Neiffer (17:04):

Yeah, there was one paddleboard section. We were on a lake at night in a crazy windstorm, and it was only a couple hours.

Sevan Matossian (17:15):

I know this is out of order and you probably want to tell the story in a certain order, but I’m going to ask anyway. There was another team there that you talk about a lot. They’re called the Silver Riders.

Adam Neiffer (17:26):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (17:27):

And at one point I thought if I was reading correctly, you guys came across one of their members who’d been separated from the group.

Adam Neiffer (17:35):

Yep.

Sevan Matossian (17:36):

How does their team separate? Is that like a major fuckup? Did you guys ever lose anyone on your team?

Adam Neiffer (17:42):

No. It is a major mess up. Yes. Especially where it happened was we were shoot, I think four days in on top of a mountain called El posi. And I mean this stage of the race was probably 15 kilometers to get to this mountain. We had ridden our bikes to a transition area, left our bikes there. It was 15 kilometers to get to this mountain. And then the mountain is like, shoot, it’s over 12,000 feet. It’s up there, it’s high. It was just raining sideways, crazy windy. And you couldn’t see probably more than 50 meters. Yeah, that’s what it looks like. It’s funny. We could see maybe 50 meters. It was really rainy, foggy, cloudy up there. It snowed as we were coming down.

Sevan Matossian (18:35):

Dude, that is nuts. You rode your bike 12,000 feet?

Adam Neiffer (18:39):

No, no, this was on foot. This was on foot.

Sevan Matossian (18:41):

Oh, okay. Either way. And then there’s sideways rain.

Adam Neiffer (18:45):

Yeah, it was a cold, cold day and actually,

Sevan Matossian (18:49):

And a lost racer.

Adam Neiffer (18:54):

Yeah. So he had gotten separate from his team. They were looking for, I know it looks really easy to find the top of a mountain, but they were looking for a path to the top of this thing and had just gotten separated, which is actually against the rules of adventure racing. You got to be within a hundred meters of your team the whole time.

Sevan Matossian (19:13):

How did they lose him? Dude, that is so fucking sloppy. How did they lose him?

Adam Neiffer (19:16):

Man, it’s kind of crazy. You’re kind of looking around for maybe a route or maybe a checkpoint. There was a checkpoint on top of that mountain. You’re looking for stuff and it is dark. You can’t really see anything. You’re

Sevan Matossian (19:32):

Not, did that guy have a compass? What was that guy’s plan? Because nothing’s marked right? It’s just a find your own way, right? Yeah.

Adam Neiffer (19:38):

I mean his plan, you have a emergency gear, so you have a whistle. He blew his whistle. That’s

Sevan Matossian (19:45):

How when you found him, was he blowing his whistle?

Adam Neiffer (19:48):

He wasn’t blowing his whistle when we found him, but he was blowing his whistle. Actually. We told him where the top of mountain was, and right after that he blew his whistle and his teammate was close enough that they heard him.

Sevan Matossian (20:00):

So what would you have done? You had a moral responsibility to take him with you though, right?

Adam Neiffer (20:05):

Yeah, exactly. If he wasn’t able to reunite with his team, he would’ve just joined us and we would’ve gone to the next transition area with him and his teammate would’ve found him. His team would’ve found him eventually. Dude. Yeah. But that’s scary. That’s scary. If you’re separated from your team, there would be no way to communicate with them. You know what I mean? So that would be,

Sevan Matossian (20:27):

No one has a phone. No one has a phone.

Adam Neiffer (20:31):

A lot of teams will carry one phone as an emergency. You got to have it in a seal container so that you couldn’t use it for navigation. But every team has a radio that you can SOS in the case of an emergency. But not every individual has that. So yeah, anyway, you’re not thinking that clear. When you’re out there though, you think about three, four days in with minimal sleep, your decision making just isn’t sharp. So that

Sevan Matossian (21:04):

Where so day one starts and you guys start racing, do you start on foot?

Adam Neiffer (21:09):

Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe first 50 K was on foot.

Sevan Matossian (21:15):

And are you jogging?

Adam Neiffer (21:17):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (21:18):

Do you have all your food with you or do they supply food?

Adam Neiffer (21:21):

No, your team, your team has allotted a couple of bins. Let’s think of bins where you would store your Christmas ornaments. You see your bins at your transition areas. So you bring enough food and supplies to get you to your transition area. So that could be six hours away on a short leg, or it could be 36 hours away on a long lake. So you make sure you have enough supplies, clothes, layers, food, water, whatever to

Sevan Matossian (21:52):

Get you. So you have to put water in that bin too?

Adam Neiffer (21:55):

No. You carry water. We have just water filters. So yeah, you carry those so you can get water on the way. Some transition areas, it depends on the race. Some transition areas, they might have water at ’em, other ones.

Sevan Matossian (22:10):

So wait a second. So not only are you racing, but you have to find your own water. So when you go to these streams, you’re filling up some contraption that filters water for you.

Adam Neiffer (22:20):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s not I

Sevan Matossian (22:22):

Dewormed yourself since you’ve been back.

Adam Neiffer (22:25):

No, I feel pretty good. It’s not that glamorous. It’s literally like a water bottle that has a filter that screws onto the top. So dip the water bottle and you can drink out of there. Or you can put it into another container.

Sevan Matossian (22:38):

Yeah, that’s legit. I can just do that. Can I just go to any stream here in the United States and do that? Is that legit?

Adam Neiffer (22:44):

Yeah, that’s legit. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (22:47):

Could I pee in it? What if I peed in it?

Adam Neiffer (22:50):

I don’t know. You could.

Sevan Matossian (22:54):

It seems like the gold standard for the test. Yeah.

Adam Neiffer (22:56):

Yeah. I’m sure you could,

Sevan Matossian (22:58):

Right?

Adam Neiffer (22:59):

I’m sure you could. Yeah. Most of the time when we get water, it’s like water that’s moving. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (23:06):

Knows. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Adam Neiffer (23:08):

Mean sometimes it’s out of a lake. Yeah, it works. So we haven’t died yet.

Sevan Matossian (23:16):

Crazy. Oh, something like that. Is that what you had?

Adam Neiffer (23:18):

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, that would work great.

Sevan Matossian (23:20):

A serving mate.

Adam Neiffer (23:21):

Yeah. Yeah. Something like that.

Sevan Matossian (23:22):

Caleb, would you do that? You were in the army or something, did you guys,

Caleb Beaver (23:28):

I’ve never had to do that, but I know it’s a thing.

Sevan Matossian (23:32):

Alright.

Adam Neiffer (23:32):

Well in Mexico it’s pretty standard for Americans to drink bottled water anyway because, but

Sevan Matossian (23:39):

I just like microplastics. I like microplastics. I don’t want leeches and shit. I just want chemicals.

Adam Neiffer (23:44):

Exactly.

Sevan Matossian (23:47):

I don’t want worms and bugs. And you could probably take some ivermectin or something just as a precautionary, what’s it called? A prophylactic, what’s the word? Should he take something beaver? I know other people have to take shit, right Adam? When they come back. Dewormer. Ask your team. I bet you they do. I

Adam Neiffer (24:04):

Don’t know. I don’t think so. You

Sevan Matossian (24:06):

Don’t give a fuck. He’s looking a little thin. He might need to check for worms. What do you weigh right now, Adam?

Adam Neiffer (24:12):

Probably like 1 75.

Sevan Matossian (24:14):

And how tall are you?

Adam Neiffer (24:15):

Five nine.

Sevan Matossian (24:16):

And when you were in peak CrossFit shape as a young man, what was the most you ever weighed?

Adam Neiffer (24:23):

One 90.

Sevan Matossian (24:25):

No shit.

Adam Neiffer (24:26):

180 5. 180 5 to one 90, somewhere in there. You

Sevan Matossian (24:28):

Think you had 10 more pounds of muscle on you in your heyday?

Adam Neiffer (24:31):

For sure.

Sevan Matossian (24:32):

For sure. In your ass or in your chest or shoulders or

Adam Neiffer (24:36):

Not one spot? Just all over.

Sevan Matossian (24:37):

Yeah, everywhere. Yeah.

Adam Neiffer (24:38):

Yeah, for sure.

Sevan Matossian (24:39):

You feel better now with that off you?

Adam Neiffer (24:44):

I feel awesome, man. I feel great. Now. I feel better if I’m going to go do an adventure race or run a long ways for sure. But I don’t feel better when I put a heavy barbell on my back.

Sevan Matossian (24:55):

Right?

Adam Neiffer (24:55):

Yeah. But I feel awesome. It’s great.

Sevan Matossian (24:59):

Bernie Gannon. I like Chevy Uhoh. Here it comes. But remarks like that would disqualify him from my adventure race team.

Adam Neiffer (25:07):

No, not at all. That makes it more fun. You need some of that.

Sevan Matossian (25:10):

Someone who’s just paranoid, scared.

Adam Neiffer (25:12):

No, someone that just keeps it light and fun. Somebody that can tell stories and keep people awake in the middle of the night, that type of thing.

Sevan Matossian (25:20):

David Weed, Bernie Savon can’t even start a fire. That’s true.

Adam Neiffer (25:26):

You can bring a lighter.

Sevan Matossian (25:28):

I could ride a bike. I can’t even change a flat. Anything crazy like that. Any flat tires. Was there any equipment malfunctions? You’re at 12,000 feet and the fucking zipper on your jacket breaks and you’re like, holy shit.

Adam Neiffer (25:41):

Oh yeah. Stuff like that all the time. We didn’t have any, actually. Yeah, we did have a bike tire that went flat multiple times. We had a derailer hanger that broke on the one athlete’s bike. And so that was a process to kind of figure that out and get it fixed. It was kind of working, but it just wasn’t optimal for a while.

Sevan Matossian (26:05):

And so every time you got a flat someone, you would get off and patch it. You had a patch kit?

Adam Neiffer (26:12):

We had a patch kit. This one was actually just a valve stem that wasn’t seated properly. And so we run tubeless tires that just have basically a liquid glue in there.

Sevan Matossian (26:22):

So

Adam Neiffer (26:23):

If they do puncture, hopefully if the puncture is small enough, they’ll kind of seal themselves up. But this one wasn’t getting a good seal on the valve stem on day two or three, something like that. And so it was constantly just having the slow leak. It just got some of that glue that’s inside of the tire as a liquid, kind of got gummed up and hardened and just didn’t let it create a good seal on the valve stem.

Sevan Matossian (26:45):

You guys brought your own bikes?

Adam Neiffer (26:47):

Yeah. Yeah. You bring your own bikes for sure.

Sevan Matossian (26:50):

God, this thing sounds expensive.

Adam Neiffer (26:52):

Yeah, it’s not an easy sport to get into. Just the amount of gear that it, it’s insane the amount of gear that you have.

Sevan Matossian (27:01):

Honey, I know the credit card bill is 5,900 this month, but I’m going to that adventure race.

Adam Neiffer (27:07):

Exactly.

Sevan Matossian (27:08):

Yeah. I’m going to leave you alone with the kids for six days. I’m going to be wordless the two days before and the two days when I get back. I know our insurance went up this month. I told them I was going to Mexico, went up an extra a hundred dollars a month. But you go, alright, I love you. Bye.

Adam Neiffer (27:23):

This is spot on. This is spot on. My wife Lauren, the day before, she’s like, Hey, have you got that insurance yet? The special insurance for crazy injuries in foreign countries. She’s that yet. I’m like, oh no, I know you sent me that link and she set it up for me. So yeah, that’s

Sevan Matossian (27:41):

Exactly, oh my God,

Adam Neiffer (27:42):

You’re fucking, the conversation you’re having is spot on.

Sevan Matossian (27:45):

Why are you doing stuff like this? Do you have that itch? Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just be, get a Peloton and just pick the scariest bike rides in the world and just do a couple Tour de Frances that seems, won’t your alley get a Peloton? They probably have a button that says the Tour de France and you’ll be like, okay, I’m going to do the Tour de France here in my living room.

Adam Neiffer (28:04):

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just wires. It’s funny, I did a training ride before the race started that was like 145 miles on a mountain bike and it took a long time. And I have a concept two bike in my garage. And dude, I have so much trouble being on there for 30 minutes or an hour. It feels so long to be on there for an hour.

(28:32):

But when you’re outside and you’re moving and you’re negotiating different terrain and you’re seeing stuff, it’s just different. It’s like why do people climb mountains? Because they’re there? Because, and just the challenge of doing something that scares you a little bit, that makes you uncomfortable, the results on the other side of that are so cool. And the ability to see places and do things that you just never ever could do otherwise. And doing that with four of your best friends is crazy. It’s something that is hard to describe, but man, just grateful to be able to do it.

Sevan Matossian (29:18):

I will say this, there’s a four page writeup. I don’t know if it’s public anywhere, but you sent it to me and it sounds like a better time than any concert or palooza event in the desert or any of that. Or Burning Man. It sounds like you got your money’s worth. It sounds like an absolutely fucking epic. Epic adventure. And some of the footage I’ve seen from links on YouTube of people jumping into waterholes and going in those canyons is nuts.

Adam Neiffer (29:51):

Yeah, it’s nuts. And yeah, everybody has different things that they really enjoy or light ’em up. Fire.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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