“Sometimes it’s just as valuable knowing what you don’t want to do.” -Dr. Amy Kruse, former DARPA program manager Look, excellence doesn’t transfer. It’s a common mistake to think it does, and one that many SOF vets make.

I know, I know, you were an excellent soldier. You were a medic, or sniper, or intel guy, or drone pilot. You worked for Orange, or Green, or Blue, or Black or whatever they’re calling themselves now. Your CV lists all the impressive credentials you have: Leadership experience, 18 Delta, weapons authority, driving expert, PSD, dive supervisor, Tac Air, and on and on.

Now you’re out and faced with a tripartite quandary: First, contracting is the same thing you’ve already done with slightly different rules, higher pay, and less stability. It’s nothing more than a transition job and you know it. Second, you’re overqualified for jobs you know how to do. Third, you believe you’re woefully uncredentialed for the work you want to explore. You (believe you) were excellent and now you’re nothing. Excellence didn’t transfer. So, here you are, wandering in the wilderness of your post military time. You yearn for a clear mission and a community of pipe-hitters in the civilian world. You wonder why you got out, why your skills aren’t valued in this new world. This new world requires a willingness to stretch your mind into unexplored territory, an acceptance and embracement of mistakes. Many of the mistakes you’ll have to make yourself. It’s how most of us are wired; we don’t believe it until we experience it. You were a superb soldier, so you’re not used to making mistakes. Failing at anything is likely to be foreign to you. The military cultivates a “success” mindset of 4.0 evals. This is reflected in achieving safe perfection over imperfect learning. Hidden in that perfection mentality is the source of your future success: You have been taught and programmed by one of the most effective mind-shaping organizations that ever existed to pursue excellence. The mistake many veterans make is to confuse the value of their hard skills, like shooting fast or coordinating comms between 9 different assets, with their value as a human. Those hard skills have little value in the civilian world, and the realization that you’ve spent years perfecting skills that no longer matter can be crushing. While the skills don’t transfer, the method absolutely does. Your experience of the method of building skills from non-existent to mastered is the biggest advantage you have over most of the rest of the civilian world. The extraordinary bonus is that pursuing excellence creates stoked humans, no matter where on the path they are. The idea of exploring unknown territory is equally as crucial as applying your ability to pursue excellence. When you begin to explore unknown territory and pursue excellence, you’ll discover in your mistakes the deep value of knowing what you don’t want to do. Knowing our dislikes creates a healthy contrast that increases our pleasure in those work environments we enjoy. At this point, with you out of the military and being unsure of your next step, the specific directions I can helpfully give you become less and less accurate; what worked for me may not work for you. The mistakes I made in learning that excellence doesn’t transfer were extensive and at times nearly mortal, but individually are of little use to you. The dream I have and have had will almost certainly not be yours. Still, if you can acknowledge the existence of your own dream and apply yourself to producing excellence, knowing that someone else has engaged successfully on the same quest you’ll get much further down the road then by remaining ignorant of it. At our end of service, we vets walk out into the wilderness of civilian life. The maps we’re provided to navigate this wilderness don’t always match the territory. For many of us, the only information on the part of the map we must explore is the same phrase that thrilled the heart of many an adventurer before us: “Here be dragons.” Many of us have wandered this wilderness before. You are not alone, though you will feel alone much of the time. Others are out here, shining a light in the dark. We have found a place to clear a patch of forest and build a house of excellence, to lay down roads to other clearings, to begin to understand the new wilderness we inhabit. You can do the same, and if we veterans are to build the next, brighter version of the world we wish to inhabit, we share the responsibility to develop that world using the tools we’ve been given of learning to achieve excellence.

The people I like most share two things in common:  First, they have open minds.  Second, while they appear normal, they are in at least one aspect of their lives, utterly bat shit crazy.

To be fair, I’ve got my own quiver of crazy, here’s one of my favorite arrows to draw from it:

I shit in a bucket and I have for 10 years.

Let me go through the thoughts in your head (yeah, I’ve had this convo before.)

********

That’s disgusting!

Why?

Gross!

Wait a second…what do you do with the shit?  Oh my God!

*********

Let me set the stage for you.  I own a house with a flush toilet that works, my wife (and most guests) use that toilet.  I live within city limits on a 3,000 sq ft lot and have neighbors on 3 sides.  I’m not way out back of beyond, and we’re connected to the city sewer not a septic tank. There is no reason (based on your flawed understanding of poop management) that I should shit in a bucket.

There’s no easy way to slide into this conversation.  Shit is just too powerful a concept for someone to immediately nod their head and understand that what they’ve been doing their whole life is complete madness.

Let’s just start with a few truths that you may not have considered:

First, the fact that shit seems toxic and disgusting.  That’s incorrect.  Your poop was just IN you.  YOU created it.  If anything is toxic or disgusting, it’s because there’s a problem in YOU.  Shit is not a food, you don’t have to immediately eat it or build with it or make shit castles in the sand.  In fact, you don’t have to touch it.  Shit is a resource, not a problem. You just have to learn how to use it.

Second, why does it make sense for you to shit in drinking water?  Yes, drinking water.  That’s what’s in your toilet.  A lot of time and energy went into getting that water drinkable, and you just shit in it.

Third, after buying the drinking water and shitting in it (adding value), you send it back!  What kind of American does that?  That’s like buying coffee in a paper cup then pouring it into a nice ceramic mug and handing it back to the barista to sell to someone else.  WTF?

You have to understand that your poop is just a step in an endless cycle.  If you think for one second that the food you are eating was made in a cute little vacuum without fertilizer, water, earth, or animals, well, you’re just flat out wrong.

When you try and distort or break a natural cycle you end up with much bigger problems than the simple act of distortion.

You waste thousands of gallons of drinking water.  You increase the taxes you have to pay because every time you flush you affirm your part of the agreement that we should shit in our drinking water and then manage it.  Not cheap.  And dumb.  Is that really you?  A tax loving and profligate idiot?  Wait, we just had a very close election.  Never mind.

Like I said at the beginning, I’ve been shitting in a bucket at my house for 10 years.  I’ve been using that shit (along with all our kitchen scraps) to make compost.  I’ve used the compost to grow fruits and vegetables. I’ve freely fed anyone who came by with peaches, berries, figs, pomegranates, and veggies grown with that compost. All the produce grown on our little plot is super healthy and delicious.  I’ve had zero complaints about taste, health, or any kind of follow-on sickness.

In fact, our house is well known in our neighborhood for having the healthiest and tastiest garden around, and we are constantly asked how we do it.

It’s not magic, it’s a simple system, and if you followed it you’d be happier, healthier, and wealthier.  But you’d be considered weird, and most folks place fitting in over happiness, health, and wealth.  The odds of you doing the right thing are heavily against you.

Luckily for me, when it comes to fitting in, I also have a field of fucks I grow.  Cast ye thine eyes upon it and thou shalt see that (unlike my garden) it is barren.

Ok, saving water and money isn’t enough for you?  How does living in a war zone sound?

Humans fight wars for resources.  Right now we’re finishing up fighting for oil, and if you thought the oil wars were bad, wait until we’re fighting over water.

Those cute little bumper stickers (on the backs of oil guzzling cars) that say “No war for oil”?

There won’t be any of that when your family is dying of thirst.  You won’t have time for hypocrisy, you’ll be too busy curb stomping your neighbor for watering their grass.  Trust me, you’ll fight.

You can ride your bike if gas gets expensive enough, but there’s no alternative when you don’t have water, not at any price less than blood.  I’d prefer to contribute as little as possible to starting World War III, especially if the alternative is as easy as buying a three dollar bucket and spending a day building a toilet stand and two compost piles.

Common Questions:

Q: “Did you tell your neighbors that you just fed them a poop-berry?”

A: No, I didn’t.  In the same spirit that the current source you’re getting your fruits and veggies doesn’t tell you that they sprayed the food you’re eating with insecticides, grew it with fertilizer made from oil, harvested it from massive tractors that destroyed habitat and in the process mixed up insects, animal turds, and small animals with your “organic” tomatoes, then washed them off with a chemical/water spray you wouldn’t drink and wrapped them in plastic that you throw away where it will last a few thousand years in a giant diaper, aka a landfill.

I don’t feel like rubbing it in my neighbor’s face that they just made the best possible ecological choice completely by accident, and if they knew about the right choice they probably wouldn’t have made it.  I tend to try and protect people from their own ignorance and stupidity, even if it means temporarily withholding the truth.

Q: “Doesn’t it stink?  I mean, you’re shitting in a bucket!”

A: Shit stinks, that’s the hard fact.  You flush it down a toilet (we’ve talked about the insanity of this already.)  I cover it with coffee chaff, which is a waste product that comes from roasting coffee.  My toilet actually smells more like fresh coffee than poop.  I have neighbors who are just 10’ away from my toilet.  It was 8 years (YEARS!) before they built a deck and were able to look over my fence and realize (surprise!) they now had an excellent view into my outdoor bathroom. Not only that, they quickly realized that I squat on the toilet, native style, so we had a talk about that too.  I’ll save squatting for another article.

Back to smell management:  When I dump the bucket into the compost pile, I cover it with about a foot of dry straw.  No, the smell doesn’t get out.

Q: “Doesn’t it stink when you spread it out on your garden?  I’ve smelled horse manure compost before, and that stinks!”

A: By the time I actually use the compost (formerly shit and kitchen scraps and straw), it’s been resting in the compost pile undisturbed for at least 6 months, and sometimes a year.  It is compost, not shit, and smells like fresh healthy growing material for plants.

Q: “Do you have to turn your compost pile?”

A: No.  We compost aerobically, not anaerobically.  We do this by placing lots of layers of straw in our compost, which creates interstitial spaces that promote aerobic digestion.  Ask any 14 year old what interstitial means, it’ll give you a good indication of whether or not they’re getting reasonable schooling.

Because of all these little air pockets throughout the pile, we don’t have to turn it.  We just add a layer of shit ’n scraps, then a layer of straw.  The worms and bacteria cruise slowly upwards through the pile and convert our waste stream into high grade top quality fertilizer.

Q: “Isn’t it dangerous?  I mean, shit is really scary stuff full of bacteria and toxins!”

A: Stop it.  Seriously.  It just came out of you!  If there’s anything harmful to you in it, it would have killed you already.

Q: Ok, ok, what about when you’re sick, or have food poisoning?  Aren’t you creating a compost pile full of listeria ready to turn humanity into constantly flowing shit spigots?

A: No.  Within the active part of the pile there are “thermophilic” bacteria.  They come from your healthy gut, and as their name suggests they LOVE heat.  In fact, they make things so hot that everything else around them can’t take the heat (including all those bad bacteria you just fire-hosed out your ass), and the bad bacteria are burned to death.  It’s pretty awesome.

Q: Ok Nik, my mind is opening up just a little bit to this.  Where can I read more (so I can prove you wrong and convince you to shit in drinking water again)?

A: The bible on this is The Humanure Handbook, by Joe Jenkins.  Buy it, read it, live by it.  The dude is awesome.

In the vein of continually getting better, I just started sending out a "pre-interview" request for the Paleo Treats podcast.  This one went out to Gavin McClurg, a paraglider.  They'll probably change as I go along, but I thought you'd enjoy it. *******BEGIN PREP EMAIL ******** Gavin, Tomorrow we are going to spend an hour or so on Skype having what is literally a contrived conversation. For both of us it will be a relatively tame adventure, but it is, as of now, an unknown. We've never met and yet I'll be asking you to share some of your private thoughts and life with me and more importantly, my audience. In order to make this conversation between us better, and deeper, and more effective, I'd like to make a few requests. First, whatever your "go-juice" is in the morning, drink deep. Whether you're a coffee snob or a cocaine freak, load up. No half-measures please, no holding back. Finish the dregs, drink to the Lees, snort like a bull 'til the end of line. If you're not a substance abuser, knock out a hard workout with heavy weight, the kind that has you prowling around the house looking for phone books to tear in half. I want the best, the fullest, the most intense version of the Gavin McClurg experience possible. Second, about 5 minutes before we get on, pull up a video online or from your computer that makes you laugh hard. I'm a fan of the ol' Butter Floor Prank, but anything that makes you guffaw is good with me. Third, just before time starts, take a look outside, breathe deep from wild and fresh air, and remember one of your best moments. Could be totally public, could be intensely private. I won't ask you to share it, just to remember it as intensely as possible right before we talk. Ok, I know those are a bunch of weird requests and probably intrusive. Hell, some of them could be downright insulting, especially if you think I'm serious about the coke. Still, do the best you can and know that on my end I'll be doing the same. Coffee is my drug, max bodyweight squats my workout, and the clean sea breeze just sniffable from my rooftop in San Diego my final breath before coming in to my sound room. Ultra fucking stoked! NFH *********END PREP EMAIL******

Man stands in an empty ball field at home plate. It’s night. Half a moon, maybe less. A few clouds scud across the sky. Dull glow on the horizon, some distant city. Enough light to see, but barely. The wind moans through the batting cages. Lonely. The man holds an old, well loved wooden bat in his right hand. Work boots, well worn jeans, untucked shirt, forearms scratched with many cuts, t-shirt flecked with dark slivers of glass. Stubble, un-combed hair. Skin creased. Eyes intense. Behind him an enormous pile of lightbulbs. All the way behind him to the fence, twice as high as he is, they flow down to his feet, perfect in their manufacture. The ground directly around him covered with shattered white glass and the metal screw bottoms of broken bulbs. Thousands. Holding the bat loosely, he turns and steps back. Shoes crunching on broken glass in the quiet. He leans and reaches for the pile of bulbs, picks one up. Steps back to the plate, faces the mound. Turning the bulb in his hand, he inspects it. White glass, perfectly complete. Flipping it in his hand, he catches it by the bulb. In one smooth motion, he lightly tosses it up, brings the bat to his shoulder and swings mightily. The bat catches the bulb perfectly. In slow motion the bulb shatters, filament giving off the briefest small spark that dies in the night. The metal screw bottom flies crazily into the blackness. A slight stagger as he follows through the swing. Glass crunches again. He pauses, breathes, wipes his mouth. Turns, and selects another bulb. Repeats process. This time a tiny sliver catches him under the eye. It bleeds, but not much. Pulls out the sliver, smears blood. Wipes his fingers on his jeans. Turns, selects another bulb. The stars swing ‘round overhead. The mound of bulbs shrinks and moves and grows like a breathing being. The man swings again and again. Glass shatters, screw bottoms veer unsteady into the night. The moon begins to set. The broken glass around him ever deeper. Over and over, they break, unable to stand up to reality. Over and over, he swings. The lights of the city sputter in the distance. Light is not unavailable to him, but it is his own light that he seeks. The man swings, the bulb explodes, again and again. A thousand times. Ten thousand. Ten thousand and more. He turns again to the pile, selects a bulb. Holds it, inspecting. Perfect white bulb, perfect screw bottom metal. He spins it in his hand, holding the bulb. Pauses, breathes in. In one smooth motion, he lightly tosses it up, brings the bat to his shoulder, and swings mightily. The bat catches the screw metal bottom perfectly. Sharp, grunting exhale at contact. The connection, the angle, the power, all in alignment. Slow motion, the bulb shivers but holds, arcing away, racing off toward the fences. The man watches, mouth open, hoping. Intense silent prayer follows the arc. As it flies, the bulb tumbles, the screw bottom metal now leading the way. The screws catch the air and it begins to spiral, to spin. We see its destination now, in the distance but closing rapidly. A row of black poles, sentinels at the far edge of the field. A socket looms on some far lamp post. The bulb flies closer and closer, riding the curve of its arc, dropping out of the sky toward the socket, sliding through a perfect trajectory. Still spinning, it closes through space to the socket, halving the distance infinitely. At 1,000 frames per second we see the puff ring of dust pushed out of the socket as the bulb enters it. The spiral motion forces it to seat itself, the bottom makes contact. The bulb blazes brilliantly, reflects off the cloud of dust motes shaken loose by impact. Temporary victory, heralded only by the screaming lonely night. The far off seething city knows nothing. To the left and right of the blazing light stand more socketed and bulb-less posts, black in the night. They stretch all the way around the ball field, to the edge of the world, each empty. Back to the man. He sees the light in the far distance, his pupils widen then constrict back down. He smiles crookedly, raises a hand to his eyes to shade them. Turns back to the pile, selects a bulb. Trust me kid, you’ll never run out of bulbs. Just don’t run out of game. NFH

No, it wasn't on purpose. I went to go pick up dry ice in my little car.  I paid for it in the office while a nice fellow loaded 100 lbs of it into the back of the hatchback. I got in the car, closed the doors, turned on the A/C & drove off.  The dry ice shop is in the Point Loma area and our office is 15 highway minutes south, just south of downtown, in Barrio Logan. I called Lee via the magic of bluetooth and the car stereo link and was going through what we had to do biz-wise that day, but I felt a bit breathless.  Weird, because even though I'm not in ultra-marathon shape I'm not out of shape, and I certainly don't feel breathless often. Talking with Lee, it got worse.  It wasn't like I was fighting for breath, it just felt like I couldn't finish my sentences. I'm trying to focus on my conversation with Lee, but it's hard to finish sentences, to even think.  I know something's wrong and getting worse, but what is it?  I'm healthy, godddammit! There's a part of me that thinks it's drinking too much coffee that morning; 2 cups instead of 1.  No, that can't be right.  What else could it be?  Something is wrong, work the problem Nik. Feeling the prickling of sweat prior to blackout, the kind you feel when you stand up suddenly after laying down for a while.  On the highway, rolling at 70.  Something is seriously wrong, think, Nik, THINK! I needed time.  To think.  The world.  started.  to.  close.  in. Breathing shallow, like when you turn the O2 off on a Draeger, shallow puffs, darkness closing in, you CAN NOT pass out on the highway NIK, THINK GODDAMNIT! Stop trying to talk with Lee and figure out your life, NOW.  This is getting worse, not better.  You've got less than 30 seconds and you don't know it.  What the fuck?  Be cool.  What the fuck!!?  Calm, work the problem.  Wait, Draeger, shallow breathing, O2.... CO2!  It's the CO2, it's the 100 lbs of dry ice sublimating in the back.  You idiot!  Just as the first heavy wave of nausea and faintness hits and my head bobs I get the windows down. Air rushes in and I raise my head.  That's it!  Just hold on, dammnit! Now I'm focused, I know what the problem is, I can solve it, just have to hang on.  Dizzy.  Deep breaths out the window, hand out focusing the air into my face & mouth.  Breathe deep the air, my friend.  Today, you live. The nausea passes, the faintness fades.  No horns honking, no cars swerving, nobody even noticed.  I tell Lee what happened.  She (rightly) thinks I'm an idiot.  I'm no longer breathless.  I hang up the phone via the steering wheel controls. Off at the exit, windows still down. What the fuck?  Did that really just happen?  Was I really that stupid?  I've driven with dry ice in the car before with the windows up, why this time? END Lessons learned: -Don't be a fucking idiot with dry ice, make sure you have enough air to breathe.  Shit. -Dry ice sublimates MUCH faster when it's single wrapped; this was a new place to buy from, the old place double wrapped it and taped it. -You don't always get to choose when you have the rest of your life to figure out a problem.  Learn to stay cool even when you're freaking out. -Don't ignore small problems.  They can get big so fast you won't have time to solve them. -The deadliest danger can be where you least expect it.  Picking up dry ice for your business can be just as lethal as running around Syria waving a US flag if you're not paying attention.  Death doesn't care where she finds you. -Be thankful that you live, and remember you've only got one chance sometimes.  Remember to enjoy the warmth of the sun, the coolness of morning mist as you walk the dogs, a kiss from your wife, the breaks that do go your way. All's well that ends well, thought you would dig my brush with death via the cookie business.  Stay safe out there! Big heart, NFH

As usual, success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure.  After two years of failure, (2013 & 2014) I made it this year in 28:46:45 (that's 28 hours, 46 minutes, and 45 seconds), or about an hour and 15 minutes ahead of the 30 hour cut off. As context, where does that put me in the pack?  Just aft of the middle.  Out of 650 who picked up race packets, only 319 made it across in under 30 hours. I finished in 185th place, or at the 57th percentile. As a "wow" tidbit, that means 134 people out of 319 finished in the last hour and 15 minutes.  The winner (Ian Sharman) knocked it off in 16:33, which gave him 12 hours to sleep while I slogged on. The major takeaways aren't groundbreaking; long term planning (8+ months out from the event) increases your odds of success substantially, focused & disciplined training pays off, and hard work works. I had intended on putting in a max week of 70 plus miles, but about a month and half before the race injured my Achilles and had to take a few weeks off for it to heal.  That meant my max weekly distance was just over 50 miles, and most weeks after March were 40+. I had a great time with altitude prep at CrossFit Flagstaff, in Carbondale, on top of Ajax Mountain and up at Weston Pass Hut; if you're looking for a beautiful place to stay above 12k' in Colorado and don't mind not having electricity or running water then WPH is a rippingly good choice. The two unusual pieces of race prep & execution this year were the experimentation with fat adaption, which made race day nutrition pretty much stress free, and the power of community. Fat adaption starts with the idea that most of us privileged First World denizens eat a carbohydrate rich diet and focus on specific carb intakes on race day, but it's not the ideal or only way to fuel for performance. By slowly adapting your body to burn fats instead of carbs you can burn longer, stronger, and cleaner.  It's a fairly complex topic and it did take some significant lifestyle changes (what you eat, when you eat it, and education as to why it works) but it worked very well for me. As a teaser, for the entire 100 mile race I ate 2 GUs, 4 bananas, 4 cups of ramen noodles in chicken stock, and a handful of chips.  I drank water (20 oz of water to 1/4 tsp salt) throughout, but that was it. That's all that powered me through almost 30 hours of steady energy output above 9,000' elevation.  I had no GI issues, energy never dropped radically, and I felt strong throughout.  In fact, from mile 60 I started to gain in strength and speed while my heart rate dropped down below 140. I did slow down in the last 5 or 6 miles, but hell, I never ran more than 26 miles in training so 95+ miles was new territory for me. If you'd like to know more about fat adaption for endurance performance I strongly suggest checking out Barry Murray's viewpoint, here. We did a podcast for the Paleo Treats show a while ago and I was so intrigued I followed up by hiring his services for Leadville. Barry was kind enough to take me on as a short term case (less than 2 years of fat adaption and not a full time athlete) and his advice & diet plan were integral to my success at Leadville.   He is a wizard out on the bleeding edge of nutritional performance and I'm grateful for his help. The other big piece that I underestimated was the power of community.  The past two years (2013 & 2014) it's just been Lee crewing me.  Lee is awesome, and the fault for not finishing those 2 previous years was entirely mine. Realizing that I was putting a lot of work on Lee to crew the race, this year we called for reinforcements and had my sister, her boyfriend,  as well as my Mom come out along with 2 friends (Dave Rutherford & Shauna Sledge) to pace me from mile 60 on. That made a HUGE difference; all that energy and love at each of the aid stations was a strong rallying cry, and it allowed me to focus more on the race and less on the struggle.  Having someone to chat with during the second half of the race made it easier to keep going, and I treasure the conversations I had deep in the wee hours of the night with my pacers. I wish I had more wisdom to give, but as I said before, success doesn't teach as much as failure, and I'm thankful that this time I succeeded at a tough race.  Should you or anyone you know have any questions about Leadville prep please feel free to reach out. Cheers, NFH

Goals: Have the most personally fulfilling race possible at the Leadville Trail 100 on August 22nd, 2015.  Run a sub 12:00/mile avg pace. Overview & disclaimer:  These are the ideas & thoughts I've had regarding preparing for and racing at Leadville after 2 unsuccessful attempts.  I'm 37, 5'8" and hover around 150 lbs/69 kg.  I've been an athlete for most of my life. I took a break in my early 30s, but in my 20s represented the US on the Navy Pentathlon Team, swam competitively for about 18 years, ran cross country in high school along with a few other sports (lacrosse, wrestling, climbing.) No record setting times, the fastest mile I've thrown down was a 5:10 in my late teens and I used to swim 500 free (yds) in the same time.  The last time I ran mile repeats I was hovering around the 6:00 mark.  I haven't swam a 500 free for time in the last 10 years. For every one of these ideas in which I believe & base my training on, you can find anywhere from 5-5,000 assholes who are doing the opposite and getting really good results.  Paleo vs grains, sprints vs LSD (that's long slow distance, hippies!), low carb vs high carb, lifting vs running, etc.  This is what I believe will work for me.  This is not a training plan for you, just a record of what I've learned and incorporated along with what I aim to do. I attempted Leadville 2013 on a training regimen of running 15 miles a week, thrice weekly lifting sessions of squats or deadlifts with pull ups, dips, and the occasional clean thrown in.  I did a fair amount of sprinting in the 4-800m range, with a longest running distance of (I think) 12 miles in training.  Late in December of the 2012 I did the Rim-River-Rim as a test run with a few friends at the Grand Canyon; that was the most I had walked/hiked/ran in 12 years. I made it to mile 75 during the race and missed the time cut off by a few minutes. For Leadville 2014 I doubled my max weekly miles to a one time weekly push of around 30 but mostly in the 20s, headed back out to the Grand Canyon in March of that year for a full Rim-Rim-Rim push and did most of my training in the 8-12 mile/run range.  Aiming to run only on "real" food and a Paleo diet with no testing, I cramped up at mile 25 or so during the race and couldn't move for about 30 minutes.  Once my legs unlocked (after a few salt tabs from some rad trail angels) I made slow and agonizing progress until about mile 38, when I started being able to actually run again.  I rallied from Twin Lakes up over Hope Pass, feeling strong & holding a 14:00/mile pace going up & over Hope, but was so smoked from the cramps that I missed the time cut off by about 30 minutes on the return to Twin Lakes (mile 60.) After the 2014 fiasco, I committed to training for Leadville 2015 in a much more serious way, my previous white trash training methods having failed me.  Zach Negin was right.  Hey, my methods worked when I was 23 and ran a sub 6:00 pace for a half marathon with only a few weeks training.  I was a king once, you know. I kept running after the 2014 race, but quickly overtrained and laid off running entirely from October 2014 until the end of that year.  I lifted heavy twice a week, squats and deads and benches and presses, mostly 5x5s and worked up to a 97 kg squat, 85 kg dead, 57 kg press, 72 kg bench, all for 3 sets of 5.  My form needs work especially in the deadlift & I haven't worked it seriously.   I weigh 69 kilos. I did that to build a base of strength, having gotten fired up on Brooks Kubik's Dinosaur Training book.  Now, he's a weightlifter and I'm aiming to be a runner, so as I was working the lifts on the path of strength, I was researching running in preparation for the 2015 running year. I'm a reader, so I started by ordering a bunch of books off of Amazon.  I read Siff & Verkhoshansky, Tim Noakes, Barry Murray, Phil Maffetone, Bruce Lipton, Volek & Phinney, Fred Wilt, Steve Magness, and Jay Dicharry. I also talked to most of those guys via podcast interviews which you can listen to here. Ok, with all that intro/background out of the way, I'll break down what I've learned into a few categories: Training, Nutrition, Recovery, & Mental. For Training, I follow Phil Maffetone's guidance.  He's a legendary coach in the endurance world, and while some folks write him off as a legendary coach from a long time ago I think his ideas are still good and they form the basis for my training.  In a nutshell, I run by my heart rate and aim to stay between 133-143 bpm, which is 180-37 (my age.)  Dr. Maffetone calls this heart rate your Max Aerobic Function (MAF) HR, and the basic idea is that this is the heart rate at which you can run for days if you train it up.  Once you go above your MAF you move into anaerobic work and start the countdown clock for bonking. If you decide to follow my lead and run at your MAF after training the "regular" way your whole life, expect to run some extraordinarily slow paces.  I was running a 143 and clocking 13:00 miles on the flats, getting passed by fat old men and women.  I'm running closer to 9:00 miles now on the flats at the same HR and feeling much better. Going up & over Otay Mountain on a 20 miler I stayed at an avg HR of 139 and averaged 12:57 with 4,600' of gain over those 20 miles.  All up or down, no real flat sections.  I don't do any sprints, intervals, tempos, or striders.  I may start to add those in, especially the striders, but the vast majority of my training is geared towards building aerobic function.  I'm aiming to average sub 12:00 miles at the race.  For reference, the current male record holder Matt Carpenter averaged around 9:27/mile. I hit my first 40+ mile week in late May of 2015, feel free to connect with me on Strava if you'd like to follow along.  The general aim now is to increase up to a steady 50+ mile week with a possible run at a 70 mile week before the race.  2 runs during the week, 8-16 miles each, and a long run on the weekend that'll top out at 28 miles and 6k of gain.  4 week cycles, 3 week build ups followed by a de-load week of around 20 miles. I'll be out in Colorado (Aspen) by early August, aiming to stay at the Weston Pass Hut for about 10 days prior to the race, and will be staying in town from Tuesday-race day. For Nutrition, in 2013 I raced on Hammer Nutrition's Perpeteum along with an assortment of their pills and powders and had no GI problems.  In fact, I didn't realize how much nutrition was a factor in ultra running because Hammer made it so easy.  It tastes revolting, but avoiding that revolting taste led to a disaster in my "Paleo for race nutrition" strategy during my 2014 effort, and made re-think and study much more about training & race fueling. After reading and talking with Barry Murray and Tim Noakes on the Paleo Treats Podcast, and chatting with Peter Defty from Vespa, I started thinking more about low carb & "fat adapting" and decided to go for it in March of 2015, cutting out any food on runs, running in a fasted state, and starting to really cut down on carbs all the time. I'm still using Paleo as my guide for what kind of food to eat, but need to figure out this LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) thing as I really think it has a lot of potential. LCHF has not been particularly easy, but at the same time it ain't impossible, and I'm certainly not done tweaking my diet.  As it stands, I'm aiming to run the 100 miles of the race on little to no food, no more than a few GUs and probably less, just sticking to a few dates to get glucose to my brain late in the race, and drinking water to thirst. The general idea (I've been told I'm wrong in the details but sort of right overall by Barry Murray) is to run at sub-MAF pace, burn fat or ketones, and only get some quick sugar if my brain starts to fade. After talking with Brian Peterson I've also set a "caffeine plan" up and aim to have butter coffee ready at mile 75.  This is still a "maybe", but that's where Nutrition stands as of May 30th, 2015. For recovery, I've been getting bodywork from Heidi Fearon once a week, usually on a Thursday or Friday after a hard run on Thursday.  Heidi is a skilled acupuncturist with Taliban fingers and lots of athletic experience and has been able to fix most of the aches & pains I've had.  I'm also pressing my legs after runs with a VES device, anywhere from within an hour of running up to 9 hours later.  I think the Normatecs are better, but a friend had an extra VES to lend me and I wasn't willing to spend $2k for a Normatec.  I did end up buying a MarcPro and think it's useful but only if you're working super hard, which most of my runs haven't been. I'm finishing up Earthing and may buy one of these hippie sheets, although I walk around barefoot a bunch so not sure how much of a difference a sheet will make. Finally, the mental game.  I used to teach this stuff for the Navy and have written up a post on the Big Four here.  I was talking a bunch with Brian Peterson (2014 Bear 100 winner), Rich Airey (7th at Leadville 2014), and a few others early in the season about just how far we can push some wacky stuff like believing we can produce more mitochondria and meditating on that, but I haven't put as much time into that as I have into the rest of training.  Mostly I use Big Four stuff, mainly visualizing lots of the race while I'm running and before going to bed. That's the training plan and how I got there.  For the race itself I'm aiming to run a negative split (faster second half than the first), go out at no faster than an 11:00 pace, and not eat much food beyond a few dates if I get woozy.  I'll definitely report back post-race with updates on this blog as I understand & incorporate 'em.  Feel free to comment below. None of this would be possible if I didn't have the support of my wife Lee, who puts up with my long runs, irritability, and generally unpleasant resistance to advice with the cheerful outlook of someone who's in love & committed to excellence no matter its mood.  None of this can be blamed on her. Cheers, NFH

Once every 24 hours, for a scant 15 minutes or so, waves break on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. The break is less than 200 yards from the moorings and I was easily visible as I paddled out to seek solace and perhaps a wave at the change of the tides. Every night somebody would approach me at the Balboa Yacht Club bar wondering if I was the man who had been surfing those little waves, laughing, falling and standing up in the chest-deep water. I would say “yes,” and wait for the inevitable next question: "Are you the guy on the J/22?" "Yes." "Where did you sail from?' "San Diego.” And off we'd go into conversations about small boats and big waves, keels caught in fishing nets, homemade boats pitch-poling in the Bering Strait and that love of the ocean that pervades every true sailors' speech. I would tell my story of how I got into sailing, how long it had taken to reach Panama, who I had for crew, if I had running water, what fish I was catching-- asking and answering the questions all sailors ask each other. I grew up on the East Coast then moved to Indiana when I was in high school. Later, I enlisted in the Navy thinking I'd be in for 20 years.  5 years later, in September 2000, I got out of the Navy and bumped around Australia with a friend for two months before flying back to San Diego and deciding to sail to Virginia in a small boat. I had been on a sailboat a few times with my aunt and uncle in England and a few times with friends of mine on San Diego Bay, but had no real experience beyond that. Originally, I wanted to do the trip in a Lehman 12, but was talked out of it by friends, most of them professional sailors. I settled on a J/22 and bought “Synchronicity” eight days after I returned from Australia. I renamed the boat “Apocalypso” and 14 days later set sail with Jason Bell, a San Diego J-World instructor and a man who would end up being one of my closest friends. The two weeks between the purchase of the boat and casting off from the dock of the Coronado Yacht Club were a maelstrom of organizing, buying and attaching various instruments to the boat.  I bought a Siemens 75 solar panel to supply the boat with power and a 12-volt marine battery. I purchased a Garmin 162 GPS that never failed, an autopilot tiller that failed constantly, a Standard Horizon VHF that kept me in contact with other boats at anchorage and intermittently provided me with garbled voices at sea, and an Alpine CD player with Bose 151 outdoor speakers to keep morale high. I had another reef put in the main (for a total of two) and had a used genoa re-cut to fit the J/22.  I took one main, two kites, a genoa, a racing jib and a working jib. The main, working jib and spinnaker saw me through to the Panama Canal.  After that I used only the main and jib for the slog north. Jason and I left Coronado on December 27, 2000.  We slipped away from the dock, families, and friends and headed out of San Diego Bay to point south, Panama bound!  As soon as we got out of the bay,we put up the chute and took off doing 7 knots down the waves and enjoying our newfound freedom. The first night was amazing.  It was the first time I'd been night sailing on the ocean and I was aboard the smallest sailboat I'd ever been on this far offshore. There was a northeast wind blowing 12 to 14 knots, the chute was up and happily pulling us along.  Scattered clouds passed over the moon and I had the first watch. What a life! We cruised down the coast, harbor hopping along the way. We usually did 300 miles at a crack, occasionally doing more, with a longest distance of 500 miles that took us five days. We got caught on kelp, watched the big Baja sea lions playing in our wake and saw all things in those days to satisfy a soul. I watched dolphins surfing the bow wake, felt the colors of sunset on my face and the whip of the wind as it cracked my lips. I grew tan as only sailors can and built muscle from working the boat. I grew lean and strong on fresh fish, fruits, nuts and vegetables and learned to live and breathe with the wind in the sail.  I connected with the ocean on a level I have felt at no other time, a bond that will always pull me back to the freedom of the sea. Eleven days after we left San Diego we coasted into Cabo San Lucas, spotting an orca in the harbor on the way in.  Two nights later we raised anchor and headed south and east- the stench of packed humanity too much for us in Cabo.  A north-northwest wind blowing 15 to 20 knots dared us to throw up the chute and the fun began. We screamed across the Sea of Cortez in 52 hours, chute up the whole way, the roar of water racing by the hull putting us to sleep every three hours.  When it got bad, Jason would come up and switch with me if I was on watch and I would open food packets and feed him while we talked. When I accidentally jibed in the dark and tangled the chute around the forestay I had to wake him up to untangle it.  He freed it so fast and easily I felt foolish.  As he crawled back into the musty cabin cracking jokes in his Scottish accent I realized he must have done it a hundred times while teaching at work.  By the time we eventually parted ways I felt comfortable doing everything by myself, but until I understood the basics Jason worked overtime. We stopped in El Salvador and northern Nicaragua for emergency anchoring, ignoring what the guidebooks said about the dangers of Central America. We explored an almost untouched world, where pleasure boats are seldom seen and where beer and stories flow freely. It was an awakening of sorts for me, to realize that even in poverty so many still have hope and joy. Two months into the trip, I lost Jason as crew when we pulled into southern Nicaragua and he was offered a job as skipper of the Farr 63 “Northern Winds.” While the friendship we had forged could not be broken, the lure of a steady paycheck took him away.  It took me a month to get the boat together—we had taken a fearsome beating between Puerto Madero and San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.  After I had gotten all my parts shipped to Ricardo's Bar in San Juan del Sur and installed them on Apocalypso, I soloed to Playa del Coco, Costa Rica. It was my first solo sail, and the steady wind and never-ending tasks brought me the discovery of joy in a day’s loneliness at sea. In Playa del Coco an adventurous blonde named Laura signed on as crew. I didn't tell Laura until we were well on our way that I had only been sailing for three months— it just didn't seem to be the best thing to say.  Although Laura didn’t know how to sail she was willing to learn and showed an interest in boats that fueled further my love of the ocean and sailing.  Laura stayed with the boat through the Panama Canal and as far as Key West. Florida, listening to my fluent Navy cursing when our four-horse engine died and sharing the life of bon vivants as we swam with pilot whales and explored hidden anchorages.  In one anchorage on the east side of the Golfo de Chiriqui we met the hermit of Bahia Honda and rediscovered an island town where the natives whispered about Laura's naturally white-blond hair and gave us dried fish and beer. We left Bahia Honda with the boat full of coconuts picked from climbing high palm trees on a deserted beach.  As we sailed south down the Peninsula de Azuero with the fading sun to starboard, the gentle clunks of loose-rolling coconuts brought us out of our daydreams of reaching the Panama Canal. The night before our arrival at the Panama Canal shook my faith in my ability to sail and navigate. We kept getting tangled in fishing nets in the light and variable winds and the compass was difficult to read in the hazy light of the moon. To top it off, I was tired from three days of little sleep as I went over the side on three separate occasions to cut the boat free of fishing nets stretching down into green-gray depths, surrounded by shadows thrown by my tiny underwater light.  After getting out of the cold Humboldt Current the last time, I told Laura I was going to bed and didn't want to be woken until the sun was shining and we were making 4 knots directly toward the canal. I woke to the sound of the engine and hazy pale sunlight on my face.  I looked out of the cabin at the clean, glassy water of the northern stretch of the Golfo de Panama and knew the peaceful relief found at the end of a nightmare. Arriving at the canal was a victory for me.  It meant I was more than halfway through my journey, it meant that I had gotten across Tehuantepec and past the Papagallos, and it meant I could skipper a boat! After staying on the Pacific side for two weeks and battling a barely comprehensible system of bureacracy, we finally got all our paperwork together and shot through the locks in a day. From Cristobal we headed north, stopping at Isla Providencia where we experienced true Caribbean hospitality and the friendliest port captain I have ever met along with townspeople who could not have welcomed us more warmly. From Providencia we sailed hard on a fast reach to Roatan, stopping only long enough to resupply before heading north for Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The draw of returning home became more powerful the closer we got to Key West, erasing from my mind the life I would have to lead upon return to the States and a “normal” job. We took a six-day beating from Isla Mujeres to Key West rather than sit in the anchorage scaring ourselves with weather reports, and only now do I realize the luxury of being concerned merely with physical survival. We pulled into Key West on May 14, 2001, 5 1/2 months after leaving San Diego. Those 150-odd days were the richest of my life and I looked for a way to squeeze in one more journey before selling the boat. After posting countless flyers to sell the boat throughout Ft. Lauderdale, I finally found a buyer in Kingston, Jamaica through the internet.  the only requirement was that the boat be delivered in advertised condition.  After enlisting the help of a fellow I met in a Publix grocery store, I hoisted sail and again surrendered myself to the sea.  Frank was from Berlin, Germany and between his heavily accented English and my high school German, we laughed our way through muddled conversations about girls, beer, toxic chlorinated American water and sailing. We stopped in Nassau, Bahamas, then swept down the Exuma chain to Georgetown. From Georgetown, we headed southeast to the tip of Little Exuma where we ran aground on crystal white sand.  Far from our finest moment, it ended after bumping over six sandbars and grinding into the seventh.  With no other course than to turn up the music, jump over the side and take a long saltwater bath, we waited for the tide. When it finally rose late in the evening, we dried off and headed on port tack for Cuba, the Windward Passage, and my final port of call. We made landfall in Jamaica at 7 a.m. on June 28 of 2001, seeing the lighthouse at Point Moran. We drifted along the shore, smelling land in the smoke of hearth-fires and waiting for the huge convection machine of Kingston Harbor to start cranking. We were sucked west along the southern coast until we turned into the harbor where we had to beat upwind to the yacht club.  The final sail was the hardest part of the trip.  It wasn’t from the feeling of ending a journey, but because the wind really pumps down that harbor; I recorded at least 30 knots on my anemometer!  As we pulled up to the gasoline dock at the Royal Jamaica Yacht Club, I saw four men sauntering towards us down cracked concrete stairs.  They eased up next to my boat as a group, their question broke the silence of a voyage completed.  "Are you the guy on the J/22?"

Brooks Kubik is an intelligent contributor to the Iron Game.  He offers a daily email newsletter that covers what's going on with him as well as his thoughts on training. He recently sent out an email about the power of one, and how many of the world's top performers; athletes, businessmen and women, and artists do some of their best training alone.  Here's my response: A man is only a man if he lives by his own lights, curious though they may be to others. Working physically alone, whether lifting, running, or sailing, has delivered many of my formative and peak experiences.  Alone there is no one else to blame in failure and no one else who can claim the victory; both are deeply deserved and heartily felt. For many, the haunting ache of no audience is too harsh; for those of us who live for that fleeting and wild cry found only in the silence of one, the power of "alone" is the backbone of our existence. It reminds me of a quote from the foreword to Lord Grizzly, by Frederick Manfred: "I don't mind [being alone] because I'm part bear, grizzly bear.  Grizzlies, male grizzlies particularly, like to be alone a lot--and the older they get the more they are alone.  But perhaps more importantly, if you're going to do anything creatively, whether it's in architecture, or writing novels, or sculpture, you can't be spending your time in the presence of other people if you want to really explore your ideas." Effort, real physical effort, is for many of our lonely tribe an exploration of ideas.  Can I?  Will I?  Must I?  How we choose to answer it differs only in form, not reason, and we know, deep in each of our hearts, that the only answer to carry us forward is Yes. With thanks for the reminder of the Power of One, NFH

Jason Mullaney is a friend of mine.  He's been in the news as "The Navy SEAL who swindled his brothers" and has been accused of stealing $1 million dollars from other SEALs and a family friend, but from the reporting I've seen no one has presented the other side of a man who has helped, encouraged, and supported hundreds of people as he catapulted to the top of a very unstable structure. First, how do I know Jason?  We served together in the Teams, and I've been friends with him ever since we met in 1999.  He provided a tremendous example for me both physically and mentally, and served as a model character for me in that community. [caption id="attachment_408" align="aligncenter" width="875"] Jason Mullaney (left) & the author on deployment in the Phillippines, circa 2000. This photo is copyrighted and may not be used without permission.[/caption] Jason was the quintessential squared away Team guy.  Physically strong and mentally sharp, he planned ahead for everything, was meticulous with his gear, followed the "2 is 1, 1 is none" rule, and was the guy you turned to if you needed to know how to do anything. He's quick to smile, and quicker to lend a helping hand the instant he sees you need it. He isn't your average one dimensional overly muscled knucklehead; behind the tattooed exterior he has one of the sharpest minds you'll encounter, and he gleefully puts that mind to humor and pranks as quickly and easily as he put together polished ops in the Teams and solid deals in real estate. Whether as a SEAL operator, instructor, or later on in the world of real estate and investing, Jason maintained those qualities.  His paperwork was always in order, he worked exceptionally hard both for himself and others, he was ready with a joke or his unique barking laugh, and always had a ready solution for everything that came up. When he was on top, when the real estate market was booming, damn near every SEAL on the West Coast seemed to turn to him for help with their real estate deals.  He constantly guided his friends, helped them avoid the many pitfalls of buying a house, and helped more SEALs buy houses than anyone else I know. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that Jason Mullaney created far more wealth for the men of the SEAL Teams than he's ever been accused of scamming anyone out of. Jason was also a model of the motto "Do the right thing always".  Let me give you an example. We had swam in "over the beach" in the middle of winter on a training exercise.  "Over the beach" is the classic frogman entrance; you roll off a boat in the dead of night a half mile off shore with your ruck & rifle and swim in.  It's not complicated, just cold and hard. Usually when you go over the beach, you swim in wearing a wetsuit (or drysuit) and then change somewhere on land into the appropriate attire for patrolling; wetsuits are not designed to hike in.  Once you've changed into your patrolling gear you stay as warm and dry as you can, something that is critically important if, like we were, you are going to hole up in a "hide site" and observe the enemy while remaining undetected. A hide site is the smallest possible space you can fit yourself into and not be noticed by folks looking for you.  You don't want to move around too much in it since the human eye is attracted by movement.  Hide sites are, as the name suggests, incredibly effective at hiding what you're doing from people trying to find you, and usually incredibly uncomfortable.  You sleep, eat, watch, and shit from the same little spot for 3 days straight. Jason, myself, and a third team member had come over the beach, changed out of our wetsuits and were patrolling along the ocean's edge up to the spot where we would penetrate inland.  We were patrolling along the water for a good reason; no one would ever think to look there for us. It was 200 feet of steep rip-rap from the waterline up to a busy highway. Rip-rap is loose stone used to armor a breakwater or shoreline from pounding surf, and aside from sunny days in the middle of summer, rip-rap is the one of the worst possible places to walk; the rocks are slippery, the gaps between them can be big & deep, and in the dark of night it's awfully tough to keep your footing. We slowly made our way along the rip-rap in the dark with Jason leading.  We were being very careful to simultaneously stay far enough away from the crashing ocean to remain dry, but not get pushed up the slope sSo Marvel, a small and loveable dog, was so frightened that he signed his own death warrant without anyone explaining it to him, and it was only through dumb luck and the efforts of a few special and caring people that he made it out of the shelter system alive. Carla Naden from Animal Synergy (a non-profit devoted to finding and re-homing special needs & geriatric dogs who have been abandoned by their owners) heard about Marvel through her work with the shelter system in San Diego. She spent 40 minutes sitting with him in his cage, (he was "Tee the Terrier" at the time) letting him know through body language, our best form of communication with dogs, that she was not a threat and that he was safe when she was around. Using the twin gifts of love and time, within less than an hour Carla moved Marvel from cowering & growling in fear to letting Carla pet him. Less than an hour.  Not a month.  Not a week.  Not even a day.  Only the same time, in fact, than the average American spends daily on Facebook: 40 minutes. If, like me, you experience sorrow that a dog like Marvel only needed 40 minutes to be saved from a certain and needled death, if, like me, you are indignant about this wickedness in our midst, if you feel, like I do, that it is not society's fault that these animals are killed but our own, then do something. What can you do?  Devote 4 days of Facebook time (that's 160 minutes or 2 hours and 40 minutes) a month to helping these animals. Work with kennel enrichment programs, walk a shelter dog, foster a shelter dog, donate not just your money or your "stuff", but that far more precious commodity, your time. What will you get for this time?  Why, you'll have the opportunity to participate in a monumental life change.  You'll live the experience of rescuing from the very jaws of death an animal that had no hope left.  You don't have to be a soldier or a cop or a fireman to be a hero, you just have to be willing to give a little time and a lot of love. Perhaps, with your forty minutes you will not worry so much about the "get" but will relish in the "give". As it will for you, this monumental life change for Marvel carried over to us, bringing into our lives a dog who went in one day from no hope to the almost certainty of a long and happy life full of love, caring, and happiness. If you're looking for a dog who is small, sweet, incredibly loving, and who will fundamentally change you (as all dogs can), please think about bringing a Marvel into your life. uy."  Quick with a joke, always prepared, always generous, always willing to do the right thing, that's Jason Mullaney. So what, you're saying?  Those are nothing, those are tiny acts.  A SEAL is supposed to be able to handle the cold, and you're stupid for forgetting your gloves.  That doesn't make Jason a hero. It doesn't, but every soldier knows it's the small things a man does that show you how he'll behave when everything is on the line. I could tell you more Mullaney stories; about how the time my car broke down and went into the shop for a week.  I was a mobile notary and my livelihood depended on being able to drive all over Southern California at a moment's notice. I didn't have a lot at the time; I was busting my butt, slowly salting away money, but I didn't have anywhere near enough to rent a car for two weeks. The first guy I called was Jason.  He lent me his car without hesitation, without thought for the few thousand miles he knew I'd have to put on it, and without asking when I'd have it back to him. Anyone who ever worked with Jason has at least a few stories like that; Jason doing the right thing no matter what, Jason being ultra prepared, Jason being instantly generous.  Small stories or big, helping warm up chilly hands or helping someone keep their job or buy their first house, Jason was known for his generosity and for doing the right thing. It's a potent combination, and one that allowed him to help hundreds of people as his business grew. Hopefully, you're one of those many people he helped.  Hopefully, you're as grateful as I am to have had the good fortune of meeting and working with Jason Mullaney.  Hopefully, you'll reach out in support. I'm not asking you to pass judgement on his case; that's what the legal system is for, as slow, inefficient, and frustratingly uncaring as it may sometimes seem to be. I'm asking you to tip the balance of stories told about a man just slightly in his favor. For every time you slept on his couch, borrowed a few bucks from him, drove his car, had him help you with a real estate deal, had him toss you a spare mag when you were dry, or heard his exceptionally loud voice greeting you in his happy bulldog fashion, I ask that you repay him below with a few quick words of encouragement. For every story written about him by someone who never met Jason, I ask that you write just a few words in support below in the comments section. Thank you. NFH Update, May 6th 2015:  In an emotionally charged court session with supportive statements from a wide cross section of his life including his sister, co-workers in the mortgage industry, former SEALs including investor/victims, Jason Mullaney was sentenced today to 6 years and 8 months.  He should be out on parole in late 2015. Update, May 24th, 2017: Jason is out after serving his time and is working hard in San Diego.  One of his goals is to repay everyone he owed and I'm pretty sure he'll achieve it.