About this episode

Doug Mayer discusses his experiences with ultramarathons and the insights he gained from them.

What happens when you strip away sleep, ego, and every external measure of success for 330 kilometers? Doug Mayer, founder of Run the Alps, former Car Talk producer, and three-time Tour de Géants finisher, has spent years trying to answer that question. His new graphic novel, Last of the Giants , is his best attempt yet. In this episode, Doug joins Zoë and Brendan to talk about leaving a 25-year career in radio to build a trail running tour company in Chamonix, why he kept going back to one of the world's most grueling ultramarathons, and how he translated the experience of hallucinating in a snowstorm at 3am into a visual story. He shares what he learned from interviewing neuroscientists, a Buddhist monk who specializes in suffering, and the world's leading expert on pilgrimages, all in service of understanding why we do hard things and what we bring back from them. The conversation touches on "meeting the dragon" (a Buddhist concept for the moment when your usual tools stop working), the hero's journey, why Tour de Géants feels like "the PhD of ultrarunning," and how Doug accidentally started dating someone mid-race because her prefrontal cortex was too exhausted to know…

People in this episode

Hosts: Zoë, Brendan

Guest: Doug Mayer

Topics covered

• ultramarathon
• personal journey
• mental endurance
• trail running
• graphic novel
• Buddhism
• neuroscience

Keywords

• Tour de Géants
• ultramarathon
• mental challenges
• graphic novel
• trail running
• Buddhism
• neuroscience

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Run the Alps, Car Talk

Books & works: Last of the Giants

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