Travis Macy - The Ultra Mindset: An Endurance Champions 8 Core Principles for Success in Business, Sports, and Life

FURTHER PRAISE FOR

Travis Macy and The Ultra Mindset

Immediately tangible and relevant, The Ultra Mindset uses engaging stories and clear advice to crystallize mindset principles for business and sports. I have enjoyed the results of applying these ideas to my own professional endeavors, and Im confident you will too. Fun, motivational, actionablethats The Ultra Mindset.

JACK SWIFT, partner and managing director for Northern Lights Capital Group, elite mountain bike racer, and former West Point varsity runner and Army Ranger

Racing through thick and thin around the world, Travs positive outlook was second to none, and it played a big role in top finishes for our professional adventure racing team. The actionable concepts in this book are very relevant to life beyond racing.

ROBYN BENINCASA, New York Times bestselling author of How Winning Works and World Champion adventure racer

If you seek an improved mindset that will generate wellness and exceptional results in work, family, athletics, and beyond, then this is the book for you. Travis has achieved more in endurance sports over the last decade than many athletes hope to do in a lifetime, and Ive always known that he had something important to teach us. Here it is.

MARSHALL ULRICH, extreme adventure athlete, Seven Summits climber, and author of Running on Empty

Running together years ago at CUBoulder, I always wished I was able to look at my own training with Traviss balanced, glass-half-full perspective. In The Ultra Mindset, he shows us how we can push ourselves in all aspects of our lives while still having fun doing it.

MATT MCCUE, author of An Honorable Run

Insightful advice for all aspects of life from the man I like to call the Indiana Jones of adventure racing. The Ultra Mindset is a way to share in Traviss adventures... and embark on your own.

JOSIAH MIDDAUGH, professional triathlete and ten-time XTERRA USA National Champion

The Ultra Mindset shows the way to maximize anyones success in any area of life with poignant, colorful stories of pain and suffering in the athletic outdoorsand how they apply to the real world.

DAVE MACKEY, UltraRunner of the Year, US National Champion for 100K Trail Running, 15:53 Masters course record at Western States 100

As my endurance coach, Travis was THE reason I was able to recently complete my first ultramarathon. Travis is a regular guy who does amazing things simply by practicing what he preaches, and I guarantee this book will change your life.

CHARLES MARTELLI, parent, sales professional, and amateur athlete

Travis coached me to victory in the 2014 Leadman Series, so I know firsthand that his mindset principles are actionable and helpful not only in my athletic endeavors but also in my business and personal life.

BOB AFRICA, kidrobot CEO and Leadman Champion

Copyright 2015 by Travis Macy

Photos by Jan DePuy, Alexandre Garin, Tim Holmstrom, Wouter Kingma, Chinese Mountaineering Association, Moab Action Shots, Mountain Moon Photography, www.AXSracing.com / www.NewComerPhoto.com, Travis Macy, and the Macy Family

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Book designed by Linda Mark

Set in 10.75 point ITC Giovanni Std by the Perseus Books Group

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Macy, Travis.

The ultra mindset : an endurance champions 8 core principles for success in business, sports, and life / by Travis Macy with John Hanc.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-7382-1815-1 (e-book) 1. Success in business. 2. Success. 3. Successful people. I. Hanc, John. II. Title.

HF5386.M2344 2015

650.1dc23

2014042968

Published by Da Capo Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

www.dacapopress.com

Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Wyatt and Lila.

I wish you happiness and resilience, and I love you.

Dad

Contents

By Dean Karnazes

IN MY FIRST BOOK, ULTRAMARATHON MAN, I WROTE ABOUT MY colleagues and fellow travelers in what I called the ultramarathon underground.

While the number of ultradistance runners has grown significantly since thenpart of the overall, explosive growth in distance running in generalwhat I said about our somewhat exclusive fraternity in 2005 remains true a decade later. I wrote about the phenomenal level of dedication and commitment demonstrated by competitive ultra-marathoners, their ability to withstand pain, the fire in their hearts that keeps them going, and their high level of motivation. These things havent changed.

I also talked about the fact that many ultra athletes run alone (think about it: How many other people want to join you for an eight-hour training jaunt?) and about how, in general, they tend to be a pretty reserved group of people.

Travis Macy, a member of the cadre of younger ultrarunners who are now dominating the sport, takes these ideas a step further (and, as ultrarunners, were always ready to take further steps). Born and raised in the high-altitude Rockies, the son of the accomplished endurance athlete and adventure-racing and ultrarunning pioneer Mark Mace Macy, Travis is a sort of ultradistance-running (and biking) mountain man. He competes in races in the Rockies and the French Alpsthat is, in places where it requires hiking poles to propel oneself up sheer cliffs, and where the air is so thin it would leave even a fit guy from sea level gasping for breath within minutes.

The mountains are Traviss domain. And up there, running alone high in the Rockies, hes had a lot of time to think. What hes brought down from the mountains for the rest of usultrarunners, distance runners, and nonrunners alikeis the realization that, as much as talent and physiology, it is a series of traits and attitudes that enables us to do the things we do in this sport.

Travis has organized these into what he calls the Ultra Mindset.

He believes (and just for the record, I agree) that the components of this mindset can be adopted by anyone and applied to almost anything in life. Not just running 100 miles, as Travis has done. Not just running the length of Zion National Park in Utah in a record-setting time, as Travis has done. Not just winning what some people call the Ultra of Ultras, the Leadman competition, which Travis has also done, and which involves competing in five ultradistance events in one short summer, capped off by back-to-back 100-mile mountain-bike and trail-run races (at altitude, naturally).