Beyond the Horizon: Simon Guerard's Journey of Ultra Miles and Medical Insights

Hi, welcome Simon. Honestly, it's a pleasure to have you. I've been so excited to have this interview. Yeah, honestly, can we just go ahead and jump into it and tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do, and yeah, just kind of where you come from.

Sure, absolutely. And I think we're going to talk a lot about running, but sometimes I like to say a few things about my non-running life, because it does exist a little bit on this side. So I'm Simon. I'm a French Canadian, which explains the little je ne sais quoi in my English. I'm a scientist by training, work in life science, but also an avid trail runner. My happy place is in the mountain. That's how I met my wife. Well, that's how we found our happy place together. And now I'm a YouTuber.

ultra marathon running a hundred mile race pretty much every month having fun doing it and trying to share it with others so that people can get into the sport and trying to break some myth about the sport also in general.

Okay. Nice. So, you know, let's kind of just jump into it and say, you know, what inspired you to embark on the journey of ultra marathon running, you know, and can you share the moment when you decided to take on like your first ultra race?

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I think I'm more of a hiker and someone that loves the outdoor than, um, an ultra runner. I think what makes the sport beautiful is that there's a lot of different backgrounds. Some people will do that to push themselves to see if they they're capable of doing it. There's definitely a midlife crisis kind of vibe for certain people. For me, that was not it. I've always been an avid hiker and just.

slowly getting into the process of, okay, I'm doing 15 miles. Okay, I could do 15 miles a day, and then you do 20, and you're still hiking, and then 25. Oh, maybe I should run when it's downhill. That just turned into doing maybe 35 miles a day, which technically would be an ultra marathon. It's more than 50k, and not even knowing that ultra marathon were a thing. Then eventually, I kind of found out about that.

And it was just a great way to be able to see a lot of things. But what, and that's how it started, but the way I was hooked was more the people and the community, it's a very, very supportive community. People are helping each other. It's, it doesn't really feel like you're competing against each other, but more we're all working on ourselves. We're setting ourselves ambitious goal.

the guy or the girl next to you running is someone that you want to help achieve their goal because they're going to help you. And that's really what hooked me. So I would say like the, how do we say that, like the gateway drug or whatever it was, the beautiful mountain. And then like the addictive part was the community and the people.

Mm.

Okay, yeah, so actually I kind of want to dive into a little bit, right? So the community, it sounds like it's known for its camaraderie. So how has being a part of the community impact your journey and how can you also share a memorable experience of support or encouragement from your fellow runners?

I have short term memory problems recently I've been so busy working why was the first question of the two?

Yeah, I just like, you know, how is being part of the community impacted your journey as an ultra marathon runner?

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, I think there's almost contradiction in ultra running. And I've had that discussion with many people where you wanna be by yourself on trails. You wanna experience that for yourself. This is your own personal journey. This is your own personal growth. And as such, it is an individual sport.

But at the same time, it's really not. And it's hard to express it in words until you actually live it. But I think that if you go there and you only do things by yourself, you're having half of the experience, which is a significant part, but that's something that you could do by yourself. That's something that I could go this weekend and go on trail and run, you know, 30 mile, 35 mile, no problem.

But on race day, it's a little different. You could do the same thing by yourself than you do on a race, but you wouldn't have the people. So I think it's an integral part of it. And the experience can be what you want it to be. You don't have to be social. You don't have to be silly.

But you can be and nobody will ever judge you one way or the other. And I think that's something that is very freeing the way I would behave at work. And the way I would behave on trail is very different. I think people at work would be a little surprised of how I am on trail, how silly I can be and vice versa. Maybe people on trail would say, wow, like

this guy is actually working seriously when he's working, he's getting things done. And I don't think that's necessarily a contradiction, but yes, I think that's an integral part of the experience, it's the community. And how you start by trying to work on yourself and be all you can be. And at one point, I think there's a switch in your head that you realize that part of growing...

is helping others grow. And I think that is something that we're all helping each other. And sure, you know, I make videos about how to run, but it's a two-way street. People have helped me and I help people. I think one of my first race experience that...

Wow, I was so happy to not be by myself. It was in the middle of the night, it was pretty cold. It was a trail that was difficult to fall in the desert. So with just the skylight, it would be hard to know what's a trail and what's just walking in a random direction towards a cliff. And my main battery, my main headlamp died. So I switched the batteries. Oh no, the lamp was actually dead, not the batteries. Okay, it's okay, I have a backup battery.

And then it stopped working. And then I was, I was in the middle of nowhere. And then someone just came and they could have just run by and do their things. But they said, you know what, like, let's walk together. Let's walk together to the next aid station. And obviously they must have lost 30 minutes to an hour doing that.

But what's the option is to leave that guy in the middle of the desert by himself in a cold night or walk a little bit. And then afterwards he actually had, he had an extra headlamp in his drop bag. So at aid station, we have some equipment and he just gave it to me. And I've never seen him again. I was never able to repay the favor directly to him, but I have helped other people and I think that's, that's something that is important. He gave part of.

his race to me and he saved my race, which I think is very beautiful. The kindness of strangers. Especially, I don't want to be too philosophical, but I think there's a lot of bad things happening in the world in general and sometimes it's easy to become very negative about how...

selfish or cruel some people can be and seeing that seeing that kindness gives you a little bit of faith in humanity and helps you be more positive. You know like I don't want to be part of the problem I want to be part of the solution and these little things matter. Obviously like a headlamp is I think is a big deal but usually it's much smaller than that it's just the race experience that you experience the experience that you will have in a race

and that others will have depend on each other. If everyone is a dick around you, then you'll have a terrible experience. So maybe don't be a dick yourself to other people around you and everyone will just have a better day. And if we could just agree to that, like, let's just, I'll be nice. It's just all smile. It's just how say thank you. Like the little things actually matter and it adds up very quickly.

Right.

Yeah, I love that. Like, yeah, I'm very curious to, I'm not a runner, but now you kind of get me in like excited and wanted to just go visit the community. So let's kind of tie it back a little bit back to, you know, you're talking about going through this situation where now you're in like, you know, everything's pitch black and you don't have your lamp and stuff, right? So obviously, this is this is pushing beyond like your physical limits and your mental limits. So can you describe a race or experience that truly tested?

your endurance and just kind of like your mental strength and how you manage to push through that challenging moment.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would even start by saying I think I have one race in like my 100 mile out of 33. One out of 33. That would say that went very well and

like I actually shit myself. So I'm saying it went well, but I literally shit myself. And that's a good race there. It's impossible to run that kind of distance, even 50k or anything like that. You will hit the wall at some point. And I think that's part of the adventure. And running is just one way to do that. But there's so many other ways to do that. Like, you know, if you're not into running, that's totally fine. There's other things, but you will hit the wall.

this? Am I committed to doing this? Or, that's it, I'm going home, I had my fun, it was fun running with people and right now I'm in pain, I'm struggling and there's really no point in continuing. I think that's a personal decision. I tend to be very stubborn and I say, no, I'm doing that. But yeah, a specific example, I think one of my...

most challenging and easy to explain experience was actually mountain biking. That's also on my channel and I'm not a mountain biker and I'm someone who's kind of scared about injuries to some extent. So mountain biking is a great way to get injured. And, uh,

It was my main mountain biking race of the year. I was super nervous about it. It's a 12 hours and two hours in, I crashed pretty hard. Um, and I thought while I was flying in the air, I was already thinking, you know, this is, this is it. Like I'm.

I'm not finishing this and I'm not going to be able to run for a while. Then I landed, then I broke a rib and I was kind of banged up a little bit and there was definitely a moment in my head where I was like, all right, I guess I'm done for the day. But I go back to thinking about

why am I here anyway? And did I really start the race thinking it would be easy? No. And now I'm facing something that is difficult and it's not an excuse to stop, but it's more, well I guess this is what we came for. I guess I came here to test my limit and I guess right now this is the limit of physically. I have a broken rib. I didn't know it was broken, but I knew something was not normal. And I have...

10 hours ahead of me of I need to use my lung a lot. I need to breathe a lot and a broken rib for anyone who's had that. Like that's, they know that's extremely painful as an injury. And you know, you're going to be in pain for 10 hours and you could just quit. Like nobody would think any less of me for quitting after crashing my bike. Like that would be a very normal thing to do, but I said I would do it. I said I would push myself and then I just did it.

Yeah, I don't think there's necessarily magic trick. I think there's a lot of mind trick that you need to develop and that you will develop running long distance. It's physical at first and eventually it's not. Eventually...

Your body is destroyed and the more fit you are, the later that will happen. But that will not happen if you run a hundred mile, that will not happen at mile 99, like that will happen at mile 20, 40, regardless of if you're very fit. Professional is another story. Like they're not human, but, but normal people, they will struggle very early. And then that's where it becomes mental.

Well, I can still make one step. So at least let's do that one step. And well, I'm between two aid stations in the middle of the first. I should at least reach the aid station. Like I shouldn't decide I'm quitting now. Let's wait and go there and oh, can I make one more step? And there's little tricks like that. I think finding purpose helps. And I think that's true for any aspect of anyone's life. Like I work pretty hard. I work and part of that is we're making medicine for like...

rare disease patient, children. I think that there's a strong purpose there. So if I work late at night, I mean, I could say, oh, well, fuck it, you know, I work nine to five, but I think there's a purpose that just like running, I think there's a purpose on working on yourself and being all you can be that.

will help me push a little bit further. I think things like humor are helpful. I think camaraderie is helpful. Just talking with someone and that's part of it. If we're in the middle of the night and we're talking to each other, we're gonna go further than if we're isolated. So yeah, little things like that.

Right.

Yeah, so actually on that, right? Like you sound like, I mean, like this mindset, like, is kind of solid in you now, right? Like this, this stubbornness that you call it. So did you always have that? Or was that something that kind of came about after, you know, an event or something, like how did that come to you?

I think my wife would say that I've always been very stubborn. I would agree with her. No, it's interesting. I think it's easy to isolate things in your life and think like, this is my running, this is my work, this is school, or whatever, my personal life. And you...

By running so much, you will develop things that could help in other aspects of your life and vice versa. I think some other aspect of my life has helped tremendously. Just kind of getting seamlessly into running. And one of them is, yes, I've always been stubborn is the funny way to say it, but I think the nicer way to say it is if we were in a work interview, I would say I'm goal oriented and I'm a problem solver.

And the way to phrase it is, well, I said I would run 100 miles. And sure, I don't have a headlamp right now in the dark, or I'm leaving a trace behind me, number two. Okay, okay, let's find a solution. Because what is not an option is to not do what I said I would do. I'll find a way to get there. And that has been true for my PhD, that has been true at work, that has been true in my personal life.

difficulty is not an excuse to not do what I said I would do. It's just something that you need to overcome. And if you have that mindset in your personal life that will help in running or any endeavor, you know, the gym or anything like that, the problem solving instead of quitting mindset is very helpful. And I say that, but at the same time, just to be clear, I...

Totally understand and have quit myself on certain occasion, understanding what's a futile effort, what is impossible and what is possible, what can be solved. I think understanding that is also a part that is pretty important. Um, the, the costs sometimes of, of continuing, I think for running, the obvious one is not pushing past injuries. Um, for me, that would totally defeat the purpose. Uh, running is decently, you know,

injury prone sport and pushing through an injury is just not the smart thing to do so you need to understand when to pull the plug.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So I mean, you sound like you're kind of, you know, I kind of mentioned earlier that you're bionic, right? Like you're kind of going 100 all the time. So balancing the demands of ultra marathon training with everyday life, like, I mean, that sounds like it might be an issue, right? So how do you strike a balance between your passion for ultra running and your personal and professional commitments? And, you know, what advice do you have for anybody that might be navigating a similar balance?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I think one of the reasons I can alter run is because I've always been pretty busy.

people that have been busy for a very long time tend to be good at time management. The thing is that everyone thinks they're busy all the time, which is always funny. And I'm sure we all have that experience of you see someone being, oh, I'm busy. Like I can't do this or like, yeah, like I can't meet up for whatever. Like, you know, I have too many things and you look at what they actually do and you realize that they don't do that much because there's a lot of time wasted. Uh, so number one is to be a little bit more organized and conscious of the value of time. I think time is.

probably one of the most valuable thing that we all own and not necessarily realize. You know, there is the obvious health is pretty important, but time to end.

And anytime you spend an hour doing something, that's an hour you could be doing something else. And there's definitely some time burners that are easy to just cut. And one that people say often, and I'm like, this is the stupidest thing you've ever said, is like, oh, you can't sleep like three or four hours a night. I was like, dude, you're fucking stupid. I'm going to sleep. I need my sleep. But there's other things. I was like, well, why are you scrolling?

so long like unanswered. I mean, it's normal to do it. I mean, obviously they, there are smart people doing something addictive. So it is addictive, like not judging, but like clearly maybe you could be running instead of scrolling for 30 minutes. And maybe at the end of the day, you would feel better about yourself. If you did, yeah, you had done that. But yeah, so it's time management, understanding the value of time, therefore not wasting it. And then the other one is definitely, definitely understanding priorities.

because running is important for me, but quite frankly, it's not that high. It's probably the highest is probably family, I would say. I don't have kids, which is like the secret weapon I have right now to be able to run so much, by the way. Like I say a lot of things, but like, I don't have kids. If I had, it would be very different. So like, I understand everyone with kids. I know that you see what I do and say, how can you travel so much? I'm like, I don't have kids. That's.

That's the one solution. But yeah, so family, so, you know, my wife and everything, and my relationship to the people very close to me, then friendship similarly, then probably it's work.

then it's running and then it would be my YouTube channel. And I think someone that knows me very well would actually be able to notice when I'm getting really busy because say like I don't upload on YouTube, for example, and then all of a sudden you can go on my Strava where all the runs are logged and all of a sudden like I'm cutting out my runs a little bit. There's two reasons why I would cut on my run. One would be if I'm injured, but the other one is just because I'm way too busy with work. But...

The funny thing is I didn't go there at the beginning, but one of the reasons I started ultra running beyond just like it kind of was a natural evolution from hiking was that I was extremely busy at work before, extremely, extremely busy. The type of like you're working until one to three in the morning and then you're up at eight and traveling for work. That was not pleasant. Yeah, that was something that was temporary. I knew it. Everyone knew it, but it was not great. And that was for two years.

And it really felt like, okay, like there's really not much to life right now other than work and I need something else. And for sure, at least for me, working out is kind of a guilt free pleasure. If I spend one hour watching TV and I'm super busy.

and I go to bed like one hour later, I'll feel super bad about it. Because like that was kind of silly, but doing that is, I can't feel bad about working on myself. Now, sure, if I would go on a four hour run, I would say maybe that was not needed, but reserving a little bit of time for my wellbeing mentally and physically.

was kind of needed and I think it's similar people procrastinating. I remember I was not like that, but some of my friends when I was in college, their guilt free thing during exam period is cleaning the house because you can't feel bad about vacuuming. You did something good. You did a chore, but at the same time, that's a way to just disconnect. Well, for me, it's running. I can't feel bad about going on a run. Like I'm working on myself. Are you kidding? But obviously I did that so that I could disconnect and that was

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can see that.

That was very helpful in finding ways to prioritize and not be lazy about it for sure.

Okay, so I'm gonna put a pin in, because I also do wanna ask you about what your life is like outside of running, right? Because you sound very passionate about the work that you do. But first, you talk about maintaining your health, especially when you're doing all of this, right? So running these races, it puts a immense strain on your body. How do you approach not only just recovery, but also nutrition to ensure that you stay physically and mentally resilient throughout your training and your races?

Yeah, yeah, I mean it that's very true and I'm

For those that have never seen my YouTube channel, I try to be as transparent as possible. I see a lot of people that have big ego and will say things like, entries don't exist, and I absolutely have dealt with minor entries. And it's about first being smart and recognizing when something is wrong. So it's best to say, well, okay, something's happening to my ankle or something's happening to my knee. I'm going to first, instead of making it worse and ignoring it, I'm going to dial it down.

one is to understand your own recovery phase right now. But even doing that, I do have to be careful and mindful and that will mean doing some PT by myself, strengthening exercise. Again, it's more prevention than treating. Then after a race, I do take the time to, usually it's about the week where I won't really be running much. I think active recovery is great. So

Not running just for me just means like maybe I will jog maybe I will go for a one or two mile very slow jog or walk just to get My muscle activated a little bit and have some blood flow and just the ligaments and everything just stretching a little bit I think it's helpful but not putting actual real strain on them and I think active recovery is super important Then in terms of nutrition, I'm not the best at it

I think that's something that interior could work on, but it has worked pretty well. I think part of it is trying to not be too restrictive about it. Not necessarily eating junk food, but not necessarily being too careful. And I.

have good faith in biology and that natural evolution have taught our kind of body to crave food that we need to some extent. I know it's kind of miswired sometimes and we'll crave like high energy food just because you know back in the days we didn't have a high energy food but for running that's not so much an issue that you would have too many calories but say I feel like I really want something

salty or sugary. I feel that my body is telling me, hey, Simon, we need that right now, have it. And then I won't be counting calories or anything like that. And then it's little things. I don't buy into things like ice bath, but I do ice. If I have tendonitis, I will do that. Yeah.

Okay, cool. So, you know, this just takes immense dedication, right? So can you actually walk us through a little bit about like your training regiment and like, you know, how, how do you prepare for one of these races?

Sure, absolutely. And...

I think there's the theoretical and then there's the practical. They're not the same. And also one huge complication, so I'll talk more in the past than in the present. Because I'm racing every month or sometimes even every three weeks, at some point there's just no time to train specifically for a race anymore. If I race, then I have one week and just healing, then maybe one week of training, then one week of taper. That's not actual training. That's more maintaining.

talk about that, but more when I was training for my first 100 mile.

I think it really helps a lot to have an actual training schedule and to write it down. I strongly believe that this is more of a template, this is more of a guidance, and just to your real-life circumstance. Unless you have the best schedule in the universe and your life is extremely predictable and therefore extremely boring, it's hard to stick to it. But at least you have some guidance. I said I would run 20 miles Saturday.

I can't because I don't know, I need my car to be fixed or something, I waste the whole day. Well, I knew that I had 20 miles, so maybe I moved out to Sunday and then you adjust. But writing down that schedule is pretty important. And then the way it looks, and I have done a video on my YouTube channel for anyone who's getting into running long distance, if they want like the super specific on how to run your first 50K, I walk you through how to go through that. But for me, when I was at my peak for that, it was a range of about 70 miles a week.

running probably six days a week. So I tried to have a day of rest and typically that meant a lot of mileage in the weekend. So about maybe 20 miles, Saturday, 20 miles Sunday, mostly for practical reason, but also just physically, it's good to have these back to back long runs. But I work Monday through Friday and because I don't have kids, the weekends are definitely more free. So that's a good time to go for like a three hour run. In terms of hours, I probably in training run at an average of seven mile an hour.

That's about 10 hours of pure running, but you need to add to this things like a strengthening session. So I tried to do that to prevent injury. It's about two sessions of 30 minutes a week.

And then sometimes it's cross-training, some cycling or some swimming, just to get goings and adjusting based on how I feel. Like if I feel pretty banged up from my running, I might switch a three-hour long run to a three-hour session on the indoor cycling, indoor bicycle. So yeah, so I think all in all, it's probably like...

12 hours a week at peak, 12, 13 hours a week, which is a lot. Like that's average two hours a day. And finding that time is difficult, but there's definitely some tricks like I'll bike to work and, or back in the days that it was easier for me to run to work also. And you know, if it's four miles in the morning, four mile in the evening, that's eight miles, we had a shower at work.

then you're good for the day. If you're good to the more specific and you're really able to have a good plan, it's good to have some slow miles and some fast miles. So having some interval or these sorts of things really helps in terms of performance. I tend to not do it so much lately, mostly because of injury prevention, but for performance and increasing cardiovascular is super helpful.

Okay, so I love the segue there. I would still like to talk about you running to work and like you know initially what people's reactions might have been. But first, you know, I want to cut back to, you know, you talk about how you're really into nature and how that's really what kind of got you into this, right? So how has the experience of running in diverse natural environments influenced your connection with nature, right? And do you have a particular race or trail that holds a special place in your heart?

Yeah, that's a beautiful question. I think, I don't know if it changed my connection to nature because I was already pretty connected, but it definitely changed my connection to the US. So, I'm from Canada, I'm from Montreal, and I live in Switzerland and Sweden before coming to the US, and then I was mostly living in Cambridge and knowing the Northeast, but ultra running has brought me to very different climate in the US. And that really has helped me see the wide breadth

landscape that there is. I kind of knew it, you know it from movies, like you see places like in the desert in like western movies and like you see the montanas and these things, but actually being there is very special and that also helps connect with different communities and different places that behave a little differently. So just the traveling part of it is very interesting. My favorite race tends to be mountain racing Colorado or Utah. I like the high mountains

One that the views were absolutely gorgeous and the course was absolutely crazy is called Ure 100, which is in the Southwest in Colorado. It's some of the tallest mountain in the US and some most beautiful scenery. But there's also a race close to Zion that I very much enjoy. And that's the thing, like the landscape is totally different. One is more kind of desertic and red rocks and cacti. And the other one is above treeline, snowy mountain top.

steep cliff and yeah it's the breadth of it is what interests me a lot and that's very often how I choose a race is based on that I feel like oh I'm due for a desert race okay let's book a desert oh I'm due for the mountain let's book a mountain race

Mm-hmm.

Nice, it sounds like also like a great way to just kind of get the chance to experience to travel. But a question I had was, so you're kind of facing all these different terrains, right? So then how do you prepare for that when it comes?

Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't put that in my kind of preparation, but that's a big part of it for sure. It's good to run on what you're gonna run, but it's also impossible if you...

If you, for those who have lived in Boston or Cambridge, if you need to run a mountain race, that's not a good place to train for that. What I was doing was I was straight up going to, it's funny sometimes I do look at my old training schedule, I was going at the stadium and I was just working up and down the bench of the football stadium because that was the biggest hill you could find in Cambridge really. And that was cool. That was a good workout. I was going to hill repeat.

and I'll see you next time.

Climate is one thing and then technicality of trail is another. So running on road, a road is a road I could close my eyes and probably run on a road until I would hit a car. But you don't need to watch your footing so much. Whereas on trail, sometimes it's like that, but sometimes you really have to be good about knowing where to land. That's something that is hard to teach, but easy to practice. The more you do it, the more you're comfortable and the less likely you fall.

So practicing that and being comfortable on trail is a big part of it. Now because I come from a more...

trail running and hiking background. That's something that I already had, but for people that are not used to that, that's a little bit trickier. And then the climate, yeah, so I raced Badwater 135, which is a famous race in Dead Valley. Dead Valley is still named because there's nothing living there and that's because it's pretty hot. When we were there, it was 127 at some points, so like above 50 Celsius for,

Camille's Alt area. I've adapted to the Fahrenheit so I'm good. But yeah, it's really hot and 120 is really hot but 127, you feel the difference and how do you prepare for that? I mean it's not a sustainable, livable temperature and even less so if you're running but you can train for it.

You're not running in an oven.

Yeah, I mean, that's how it felt when you open an oven and the air comes in your face. That's how it felt when the wind was picking up. You're so used to the wind being associated to cold because it's bringing fresh air, but in this case, it's bringing hair that is even hotter than you. So it really felt like, oof, you feel it and then especially you have the paved road. So if the wind is in the wrong direction, it picks up the air that was getting warm

because of the dark paved road and it goes on you and you really feel it. You go to the sauna, you do some training session, that's the best way to train for heat. It doesn't take so long. In one week of sauna session, I visibly saw the difference in terms of sweating. I sweat so much now. It's disgusting, but that's what you need to do in these climates, especially in a place like the valley. It's so dry.

you don't even notice that you're sweating, but you are sweating an insane amount. And then the flip side of that would be mountain race.

Sometimes it's below freezing, sometimes it's hailing, sometimes it's very windy on these mountain tops. You have to know, that comes also more from experience from hiking, what's the minimal amount of gear that you can have and be able to do it? Because you can't carry everything, but if you needed a windbreaker and you don't have it and you're climbing a mountain, it can be actually kind of dangerous and some people will actually drop race from

that, especially the one that I really loved is pretty famous for having really bad weather. I was lucky, but usually it's really, really sketchy weather also when you're at like 13,000 feet, huge storm, you don't see anything, it's hard to navigate, rocks are slippery, you're getting cold. Because it's in the mountain, it's easier to warm up when you're like...

on the road and you can just run and activate your body, but when you're on a cliff and it's getting rained and it's slippery, you can't run anymore, you can barely move. That can get very sketchy very quickly. So experience is what really helps here. Knowing what to do, knowing little things like...

Before the night, I will change my shirt to a dry one because otherwise I'm gonna be cold all night, even if I put layers. And knowing these little things and preparing for them, like the race logistic is part of experience that is difficult to master, but that one at least is easy to explain. And I try always to be vocal in my own kind of recap, like saying what I'm doing so that people can think, oh, he brought in extra layers because he's worried about the cold, maybe I should do the same thing. So experience helps for that.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, man, honestly, that's very, I mean, from my opinion, it's very inspiring. Because I mean, I can't imagine, you know, having to go through something like that.

I am-

mountain men. Part of why it came so seamlessly for me is ever since I've been a kid, that's what we would do. My grandfather used to be, I don't know the name in English, but essentially he would go way up north where there were no trail or nothing. He was the guy kind of marking terrain and doing the map and things like that. Not necessarily an explorer, things were already known, but kind of putting markers. He would go out there and that means that

or like paving the trail. Oh, wow.

we would spend time together in summer. That's kind of what we did. The typical winter holiday break, what we would do as the bigger extended family is we would have a cabin way up north in Quebec in the big snow. And hey, the kids would just, we take some snow shoes and we're just gonna go wherever. There's no trail, there's nothing, but we're gonna go one mile in that direction and then we're gonna come back and try not to die and nobody died, so that's good.

but you become very resourceful and you know, you get, I think, a level of respect for the wilderness. Nobody's gonna fucking save you sometimes, and little things can have.

like huge consequence and it's you look like at national park people get in trouble all the time and like silly play sounds like but what were you thinking but that's the thing they were not thinking and didn't have the proper respect kind of used to civilization a little bit more whereas obviously you know i'm civilized i'm used to civilization but i'm also i know like the switch of like well i'm not in civilization anymore like little things just like

Luis (37:35.undefined)

Right.

I don't have anything to carry water with me. Could be a big deal. So it yeah it comes from experience for sure.

Right.

So on that, I'm kind of curious, before you got into all of this, would you say you have any inspiring figure that kind of made you wanna jump into, not only just ultramarathon running, but at this point, you sounded like this big wilderness man, right? It sounds like your grandfather, right? It was kind of a big inspiration, but maybe anybody else that's out there?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. Like my two grandfathers.

were definitely figures that I respected highly in their own right, and they both had like pretty gnarly experience in the wilderness. So him was doing that. The other one, I think he was more working like on construction site, but more like remote construction site than like he was in a helicopter crash and like had to survive for a while. And yeah, like the kind of thing I was like, wait, why is there no movie? I guess it's more common than I realized, especially back in the days.

Especially the reason they crashed my understanding is just some...

mistake they did in the navigation and it just went in the wrong direction and then they just flew until well we don't have gas anymore so it was not like catastrophic crash it was more like well I guess we're crashing now and like that's what it was um so they're a pretty big one um I found a lot of inspiration on youtube as I was getting into all for running which is definitely partly why I'm making movies myself trying to show what the sport can be

I think some YouTuber like resonate more with me than others and some movies resonate way more with me than others. And like trying myself to put kind of my drug there. I think one that I really like is a movie called How...

How to run a hundred mile, I think was the name, but it's a pretty generic name, but it's a very big one, like millions of views. It's Brendan Leonard. It's two friends racing together. One of the races that I actually did in Colorado, run, rabbit, run. And just the dynamic between the two, I felt was very interesting. And it went a lot into all the preparation that goes before the race. Because.

It's hard to run a 100 mile or any ultra marathon, but what is really, really hard is to be prepared to run a 100 mile. The actual doing it is more of an acute kind of pain. It's more a bandaid, you want to remove it right away. It felt a little bit more like that. Like, yeah, it's going to hurt a little bit, but you can get it out of the way. But...

The months and months of dedication to it, to the process, the setbacks that you're facing, that's very difficult. We talk a lot about mental toughness during the race to not give up, but yeah, 30 hours is a long time to be suffering.

But six months to a year of maybe, especially if you have a family and you have to go wake up at four in the morning to go running, that is a different kind of mental toughness and resilience that I think is very impressive. And seeing, for me seeing those average guy doing it was something that resonated with me much more than seeing professionals. Maybe because I put them on the pedestal, but

professional what they do is unbelievable. And the more you know about the sport, the more when you see what professional do, you're like, what? Like, yeah, that is like, for someone who's never run a hundred mile, me saying I run a hundred mile is impressive. I understand that, like I'm not stupid.

And sometimes I see, like the typical question is, how long does it take you? Well, my fastest was 16 hour. And then based on the reaction, you know if someone has any clue or not, which is totally fine, but some people will say 16 hour, wow, you ran for that long. I was like, you're not an ultra runner. If someone hears that and is an ultra runner, more likely they will say, oh, that's fast. Like...

That's a good pace. It's like, yes, that's a very good pace. I've never come close to repeating that. I don't know what happened. But pros, they do it like the best of the best, for a flat one, it's like 11 or 12 hours. Yeah, yeah, I cannot do a 10k at that pace. It's ridiculous. I'm more likely to be twice as slow as them. And I'm not the bad runner. But.

And when you see them on some of the race, on some of the course, one of the races I did recently with my wife, she did a hundred K, so I was very happy for her. It's a loop 20 mile and some really good runner are there and they do a loop way faster than you and you see them pass. And it's hard to believe that, wait, they've done 20 more miles than me already. Like I'm at mile 30 and they've done 50. I don't.

understand how it's possible and because of that then it's kind of removed from me but seeing the average guy with the normal life doing these things makes it more approachable it doesn't make it any less impressive i think we all face different challenges just like tamac that's a huge one but yeah that's kind of more the vibe that has inspired me and i think it's reflected in my channel trying to like convey that

Yeah, I mean, first off, like, you know, I totally see where you're coming from. Like, you know, I think it's so important for us to hear the stories, right? Like somebody needs to go first in order for somebody else to go next and to really understand, hey, you know, like I can also do I can do this just because we are in similar circumstances. You're like, hey, you're not you're not the six million dollar man or whatever. Right. So let's kind of come back. I wanted to touch up to like on your work.

right? And like, and what you do for a career, cause you sounded like you were very passionate about that as well, especially to when you put it like up there above ultra marathon running in your priority list, right? So can you talk to me a little bit about that and like, how you got into that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, if I sign a sponsorship for my channel and like, I grow, I don't know, maybe I'm going to change, that's definitely not going to happen. And especially the purpose of my work, I think is pretty interesting. But I think I, part of the reason that it's above is the idea that today we do need money to live.

That's like, I can't just go running. That's, that's a hobby. That's something I enjoy doing. And actually, I don't think I would want to have that my full time job. I think that would be terrible. I think that would take the joy out of just.

I race whatever the fuck I want. And if I don't wanna do it, I'm not doing it. And there's zero pressure. If I run a race next month and I don't feel like making movie about it, whatever. Like my boss is still gonna pay me and that's good enough. Yeah, so what I do is I did a lot of things, although always in the same field. So I used to be a pharmacist working with patient like the equivalent of a CVS. So like working with patient, helping people with their health.

but I was always more of a like I think that shocks people.

that know me more for my running and silliness, but I'm way more of an intellectual than a sporty guy for sure. Like I'm not a physical guy at all. And I felt that the job of a pharmacist was interesting because you get to interact with people and help people. Like you help that one person in front of you a hell of a lot, but on the broader scope of society, it felt like you're a drop in the ocean. And like every drop matters, so absolutely not reducing that. But I felt like, hey, I want to do something that is a little bit broader.

doing something big for one person, I want to do something small for a lot of people. And that led me more towards science. So I was doing research in immunology, working mostly on arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. So I was straight up in the lab. I was straight up reading a lot of paper, thinking a lot about understanding these things and how could we improve people's health. And I love that. But that felt like...

a huge puzzle that we're trying to resolve. And I absolutely love my time as a scientist, both as a PhD, but also working in the company. And I transitioned a little bit out of that. I did some consulting for a little bit, management consulting, just to get the business side. And now I'm more in between. I still work in the life science field. We still do medicine.

particularly for a lot of pediatric disease neurology. We do other disease, but that's one of the big one for sure. And my role is I'm kind of the bridge between...

my company, which is a mid-sized company, to a larger company that we have all different things that we're good at in terms of the landscape of how these things work. And my company, I think, is extremely good at early science and early clinical work. And we're able and good at doing other things, but I think our specialty and what we're known for are these earlier things.

And a larger company could have more capabilities when it comes to manufacturing a product, commercializing it, talking with physician, having a sales force and these sorts of things, which is not our specialty. So basically what I do is I go around and say, hey, like our scientists, because I'm not a scientist anymore. I'm a scientist in my heart, but I'm not an actual researcher. Is hey, our scientists did something really cool.

should we work together on this? And that sounds like a salesman's job. It is still a little bit, but what I love about it is much more that what you're trying to do is create a collaboration like a win-win scenario where you're good at something, we're good at something, let's work together and let's bring that medicine to patient. And that's kind of the focus is a good idea is great, but

you need also to execute. And there's a huge gap. And I think every step along the way is important. And I'm finding ways, finding solution. That comes back to me being a problem solver, finding solution to get this good idea that our scientists have and get that to patient to help them.

And yeah, I miss my research day a little bit, but I think the purpose is very good. The purpose is definitely very positive and very passionate about that. And obviously, like that's the kind of work that can be very busy at times. But patient, you know, patient are waiting for that sometimes. Some of the, especially the ulcerarities that we have, there's literally no treatment or no good treatment. So if it takes six more months, yeah.

there's direct consequences that the consequence that you don't see as directly as when I was a pharmacist, like you have the person in front of you. But conceptually, you know that those six months matter. Every day matters.

Right, to someone, yeah. Yeah, so on that, I'm kind of curious to see and throughout your history, like, you know, what are some big impacts that you've noticed you've been able to contribute to in, you know, like in the improvement of medicine or like, you know.

Oh, I think my role has been very small, but because it impacts a lot of people. And that's the difference. It's hard to explain it. It's like I haven't done any major discovery, but yeah, I have my paper out there with my name and like this is, like I discovered something new. Is it something that will change the world? No. Is it something that a lot of people care about? Also no. Is it something that like...

could indirectly lead other scientists to new discovery, which eventually could lead to something big? Yeah, yeah, that could be. I don't think so, but that could be. And that's the difficulty of pure science and research is that it's almost impossible that you have a direct impact on patient. Like saying like, hey, I have this cool idea.

And then eventually you see that as a medicine. Like if that happened, usually you win a Nobel prize. Like you're an exceptionally like that's unreal as unrealistic as like me running a hundred mile in 11 hours. Like I know that's not going to happen. Some people do it and that's fantastic, but the bulk of people don't.

But what we're doing is we're all putting a brick into the wall and we're kind of building something bigger. And is my brick a special brick? Honestly, it's not a special brick. But my brick is there. And that's a contribution. Collectively, we don't know which project will actually be meaningful. Because I think I was a decent scientist. I don't think I was the best of the best, but I think I was a decent scientist. Oh.

So yeah, so that would be my contribution. It was a, I mean, we could go into super nerdy detail, but I don't think anyone wants to hear that. And it's been a long time, but like I'm a T cell guy. Like if you have any knowledge, just by any chance, like, hey, T cells best, B cell, man, I don't know. But that's okay. That's okay.

All right, well, I appreciate all of that. So Ultra Marathon is kind of coming back to that now, right? It offers a unique insight on personal growth and resilience. Do you have any key life lessons or philosophies you've taken away from ultra running experiences and how they've impacted your life? I know you've kind of touched up on a few, right, and just building that mindset. But I don't know if there was any others.

Yeah, I mean, it's something that I like, and I'm definitely not the one that created it. You can do more than you think you can. That is something that I think is very important. It doesn't mean everything is possible. Like, I do think there's a roof to the limit of what is feasible, but...

Most of the time we sell ourselves short. We think we would not be able to do something. We have some self doubt. And the risk of that is that you don't try, you don't put in the work to see, well, can I do it? So understanding that you can do more, I think it's pretty important to actually achieve your full potential because then you'll put in the work and you'll have a drive.

Nice, okay. And this will be like the last official question, but you've achieved remarkable feats in ultra marathon running. So what advice could you give to those who are just starting their journey and aspire to push their own limits, whether it's in running or other aspects of their life? What would you tell somebody if you were in that How to Run 100 Mile movie, right?

Yeah, I think.

Take it one step at a time and enjoy the process and trust the process. It's something that takes time. It's something that is complicated. And if you take your time and you enjoy it, you will actually get there and you need to trust that you will get there, but you won't always see progress directly. But

you can look back one year later and see where am I today and you'll see the progress and that would be very motivating but if you're looking for shortcuts if something that just pisses me off there's not many things that pisses me off but it's those clickbaity things like do this do this trick five minute tips and then you're going to be a faster runner and say hey if you're looking for shortcut i don't think you have the right mindset for ultra running or trail running

is that there is no secret. The secret is that if you're looking for an easy solution, yeah that's not a real solution. That's what we call a scam. That's a get rich kind of scam but in running it's a get fast quick kind of scam. That's not a thing.

It's not for you.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thanks. So I kind of told you before, at the end of every episode, I like to ask just a random question, just for anybody. And so today's question for you is, how would you describe yourself in three words?

uh oh my god um i already said three if i had made a bad joke i would have said made in america but i think that's very political and some people would say that's actually two words and that gets extremely political there i know um

three words, shit, sorry.

I think I'm passionate, hardworking, but lazy. Which is four words, but yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. No, that's fine. That's more than enough. But honestly, Simon, thank you so much for today and the interview. You're looking forward to hearing more. And then actually, last thing, where can people find you?

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, you can find my adventure and some running tips on Running with Simon on YouTube and on Instagram. I mostly have YouTube guides because I think there's a lot of information to be shared that just doesn't convey well in a short kind of picture type of Instagram. But yeah, YouTube, Running with Simon.

Awesome, Simon. Well, thank you so much.