Run More! - Ep 621

0:00One, 20! One, 20! Go! One! Two! One! One, 20!

1:01One, 20! One, 20! One, 20! One, 20! Hey everybody, welcome back to the Wendrady Podcast. Before we get into this next episode where we be rate you for not running enough and compare you to recruiters and MTIs that are actually out there putting in mileage, we would absolutely appreciate all of you heading over to Wendrady.com. There we go. So you can hit the shop. Right? We've got merch to... Oh, what's that? LGB. LGB. T. Oh, look at that. At least. Kind of weird if all the proceeds went to the TACP Foundation too. That'd be cool. Wild. Yeah, so we do have some merch here for everybody, right? But if you are in the market for some training stuff, you can see all our partners here as well. But you need equipment to train with. You need Alice Rucks. You need masks, snorkel, fins, booties, that kind of stuff, right?

2:03So if you click on any of these links that we put out there and now we'll have to swap screens real quick. This is my favorite part. Jerry's, Petrus, sent you a discount code. Yeah, because Trent and Aaron actually hate you guys. This true. So it's only me. I'm the only one that cares. And then you hit that redeem code, generates a code, copy, paste it in there, get yourself this count. They've got all this just your podcasts too. So if you're new here, there's the Jared Petrus podcast. He lets us say one's ready. It's whatever. Also he's the only one that provides you discount codes. You're early here because I allow you to be here. So if you need some boots too that are good for uniforms as well, check them out right there. And now enjoy this episode. Oh, yeah. Before operator training summit.com, we've got two events coming up one in October in Ohio, another one in Vegas in December.

3:03You don't want to miss any of these. I promise you. But Jerry will wear an Elf hat for the Christmas in Vegas one. I have one of those and I probably can do that. Should you got to sign up? No pictures. It's got to sign up. All right, everybody. Enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the one's ready podcast. She's in the team room. We've got Trent and I with you and we're just discussing how I am living a life of FOMO fear of missing out right now because all the boys are in Pennsylvania doing an operator training summit. And what do you think is not me? Was not able to make it out. What do you think they're doing right now? In the starch, movie references, academics, running, stretching. Yeah, I mean, it's 10 o'clock. So they're probably in the middle of running right now, running and rucking. Oh, boy. Yeah. Good times for them.

4:04Lucky. They're so lucky. Yeah. So yeah, operator training summit out at Pennsylvania, specifically, I think right now they're in Hershey. They're out at CrossFit Hershey. So using their one mile route that they have measured out and then they've got the gym for the rest of the day. So all the pull-of-bars and indoors and stuff like that, stay out of the weather a bit. But it looks like they've got really nice weather right now anyway. So. Oh, yeah, that does sound nice. But here we are. Here we are. The podcast must go on because I think we actually fell behind a little bit last OTS. Maybe not fell behind, but it's hard to have enough stuff to release on the base is that we released stuff on. So maybe it's a good thing that we're here and not there. I want you to do that to me. Let me live in this, like just guilt-ridden FOMO. Just the misery. Because that may be sad. It's not just the like, oh man, I'm missing out.

5:08It's the dammit. Because I'm, you know, I've said it on here. I'm a massive dude. And I say I'm going to do something. I'm going to do it. Regardless of the circumstances, now obviously there are circumstances involving me not for resulting in me not being there, which is unfortunate. And it's probably the right move, but it's still just like, oh man. Yeah. I mean, there are good things. I think some of the guys, we have a brand new guest and a structure that's there this time that's never done before. Former guest on this podcast. So it'll be fun to have a little more space to get him involved, I think. Yeah. Because when there's a pile of us there sometimes, it's like, okay, like, who wants to do the most talking? Because you don't want to overtalk things, you know? No, no, no, no, you definitely don't. So since we're talking about operator training summit, we're talking about Taylor's starts

6:08running and all that kind of good stuff. I don't know if it's going to be a mixture of, hey, a shout out to some people that are putting in work or if it's going to be more of a shot across the bowel because for people that aren't running and training enough. And I say that because I didn't have a plan coming in here to, on how to attack this, but it's just some things I wanted to highlight because it's what I've noticed. Now, we've done, I think eight or nine of these operator training summits. Fair number. Yeah. And so we've got a decent amount of data. Plus, there's continued conversations with all of the candidates or all of the, you know, OTS alumni and Taylor and us consistently saying, you need to run more. You need to run more.

7:09Need time when to feed and that kind of stuff. And that had me thinking because I started, you know, we follow a lot of Air Force members, a lot of recruiters and that kind of stuff. And I noticed that the recruiters are putting in some serious work. And they are a mixture of, you know, POL. So fuels people, maintainers who we obviously love. I'm actually, I've heard that calling POL fuels and fuels POL. I think there's two different career fields. And I'm pretty sure they get upset about it. Good. We're like, there's like, oh, maybe it's like fuel systems. I've learned a lot about the Air Force in the past year and a half. I bet you have. It's been interesting. I was like POL fuels. It's all the same thing. It's like, no, no, they're not. Whoa, whoa, okay. All right. Tech P's controller is same thing. Yeah. Kind of reaction, right?

8:10So there's a couple of recruiters that we follow that have been putting in some work. A lot of work. And one in particular, like so tech-sardoned, alone, ran in one week as a recruiter, 40.9 miles. That's that's a good number. Why? Because tech-sardoned is just says that she just does it for her mental health and just because she enjoys it. She's not training for anything in particular. She's just put in work. We're just training for life. That's crazy. It's crazy talk, Jared. Right. I know, right? Another one ran 20 miles and this was one day just on a random, like, yeah, that's what I'm doing. You know, like, geez.

9:11These folks are your everyday recruiters and actually, I've got one more to, I just got to find it because I wasn't prepared. But these are your everyday recruiters and MTIs. Which love the episode that you did with MTI love. Don't tell them I said that. It looks so weird out of the office. Yeah. So you've got recruiters and MTIs that are out here putting in work. Okay, this one, I found it. 20 to 25 miles a week and weight train every day with conditioning and that kind of stuff. So probably a total of six hours of strength and five hours of conditioning a week. And, and this one admits that it's high rocks focused. Like so that, you know, that's, they're into the high rocks that they're doing that. I mean, it's, it's, it's fun to do like the internet things.

10:12It's like, oh, high rocks is for people that can't lift weights that, or otherwise it would have done crossfit, but like you're working out at the end of the day, like, yeah, high rocks from what I understand is a lot more running focused. So obviously I, if I wanted to get in really good shape again, I'd be more of a high rocks guy because I was always a little bit better at the running. It was at the lifting. But the fact is, is, is, I like what you're saying here is, is they're not training for a pipeline. They're not training to do anything, you know, crazy. They're not training to, to guard their body against the, the rigors of diving and jumping out of planes and explosives and all the other crap that these other people, you know, when we talk about it all the time and Taylor gets real, real heated a little bit during these discussions. He's like, dude, he's like, his, his example is typically, he's like, I know like this 60 year old grandma that is putting in more hours running for a 5K. The new guys are for some of the hardest pipelines on the planet. You know, and then you're a crit like, what, so like, I guess the question is, is what

11:15of these recruiters and MTIs and these Air Force folks figure out? Like what, if they're not training, they're obviously not training for just a two mile run. What? Yeah, I'll definitely not. What do they figure out that made them want to put in this amount of, you know, aerobic conditioning and all this other stuff? So that's a question that I haven't asked them because I did, what I did do is I, when I saw them hosting their stuff, I was like, oh, no kid, and that's kind of, not just curious. How much are you guys actually putting in a week? So I didn't ask them and I should ask them why or not, not why but, shit, what was the question you asked? What changed? Right. Like, like, did or did something change or is this like, what is, what is the, the method behind the madness of this lifestyle that they're living where, you know, we talked to some people that are like, I want to be special warfare. And like, they're not doing this type of stuff. So like, I think for us, the dichotomy is, is kind of wild, you know, because

12:17obviously we, if I was going to be training for the pipeline again, we've talked about this all the time. It's a ton of running, a ton of running in these kids are like, well, I got to pass my mile and a half to get in. And it's like, no, I mean, yes, but also, but after that, you need to be held to run a lot more than a mile and a half. It's so true. Yeah, I don't know. So I do wonder, was it, like, is it a new, a new thing that, you know, now that they're an MTI and outside of their career field or now that they're recruiter and outside of the career field that they found it? Now, one of the recruiters I did remember, or she said, hey, I'm here representing the Air Force and I'm a lot of times the first person that a family or a person sees in the military and gets the interact with. And I want to, I want to promote a positive image and a, a, and I'm like, are you promoing something right now?

13:18Because holy shit, that's exactly what we've been saying. Dude, I don't know what this pushback is against not having a professional image from people. It doesn't matter if I could, if I have a small waist and all these other stuff and I look a certain way in the Air Force. Look, the people that we always point to that maybe don't have the, the, physical features, but are also physical monsters, right? Like the, there's always that one index case where it's like a guy's a little chunky, but he can run faster than everybody else and do all the things. And it's like that, that's not normal humans, right? There's nothing wrong with saying I want to look a, a very specific way. I want to project capability through the way that I look to, to make impressions on people like as a representative of the Air Force or whatever it is that you're representing your brain or organs or the things like that's, that is such a good thing. And when people push against that, they're just being lazy. They're just looking for excuses to be lazy. No, no one sees me sitting behind my computer and blah, blah, blah. I, you know, it's weird. I don't hear odds often from like flight line guys because they're like,

14:21they have real complaints about boiling out in the sun and doing their job as opposed to I ate too many Cheetos and I don't have enough like actual physical confrontation in my life. But yeah, I don't know. I think that's worth asking them. I know that that's at least one reason, but yeah, it'd be good to figure out like what kick started this or did they, I mean, maybe they came from a family, like it was just a, like, yeah, that's what we do. And, and all that kind of good stuff. But a pretty legendary comic control chief, I remember it was weird because he said he came from a family of people that absolutely do not work out and are overweight. And the dude was a, you know, he was a monster. So is this somebody we can say their name? I don't think I'm going to. Okay. He's, he's, he's long retired. But yeah, you would know who he is. Come on.

15:22I don't doubt that. The comic control chief's network, you know, you got your text. No big deal. Yeah. And that's one thing that, you know, Taylor's going to be preaching all week. And, you know, we, we break these, these OTS groups up into, you know, high mileage and low mileage weekly, you know, it's just not because we're trying to single anybody out. But more of like a, hey, it's just more efficient training. If I can group everybody that runs a whole lot, we can, we can cover the same thing but cover it in a different way as we're going to cover things with the, the lower mileage, you know? It's, yeah. And, and, and, and boys girls, everybody out there. If you're trying to get into the pipeline, the numbers that are your PT test and everything else, that is, that is attached to your identity. Like if you were a slow runner, everybody will, like, there, there, there is no hiding from reality anymore. There's no fludging your numbers. There's no, none of that stuff. So being broken out into groups or whatever else it is, like, you're going to find out real

16:24quick where you're racking stack with everybody else on the, on the physical scale. It's a, and it, and it means something. It does. And it's sobering to like, what? Dude, when I, when I get around Taylor or, or Aaron or even some of our guest instructors, I'm like, man, I thought I was doing, thought I was doing pretty well. I was just doing all right. Yeah. I guess some, some, uh, good news is Aaron's back above a 200 again. So he's, he's a real man again. Yeah. He's not victim weight now. I'm a parent like, I would love to get, I would love to get back below victim weight. Right now, yeah, not below weight, victim weight, I would like to be back in victim weight. Yeah. Well, and I think that's another thing that happens with some of these folks, like you look at these, like, uh, the tech sergeant, right? So the tech sergeant, like, just doing a little quick math is probably in their 30s. And, and you start to look down the road and it's like, okay, maybe I got 10 years left in the

17:28air force, maybe more, uh, but like, then you, you start to see the rest of your life. Like life doesn't end at 40. It keeps going for a while. You could have 30 solid years in you before your body really starts slowing down. Um, and then, you know, are you going to be there for your kids or you're going to be there for your family or you're going to be there for all these other things? Are you going to be capable of like enjoying your retirement? Uh, you know, like when you, there's nothing worse than like, I'll go on vacations or the vacation spots and see people on vacation and I put that in quotations. They, they can't do anything. It's like, how are you so fat that you can't even enjoy what's around you? You know, like it's almost killing them just to walk around some of these sites and do the stuff. It's just like, man, keep all your options open. Enjoy life a little bit more. Stay in shape. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, OTS is two days long. It's one day in the land and one day in the water. And it's not a selection. So, and, and we're not doing like days in the pipeline.

18:31Right. These are, these are, this is not special warfare assessment selection days where you're averaging, you know, 25 miles a day on your feet. This is, hey, we do some rucking. We do some running. We do some ability to teach you how to warm up correctly. You know, there's the walking to and from what are in its walking. It's not double timing or anything like that. It's not a jog. And, but we usually started eight and we ended, you know, six p.m. or something like that. Maybe a little bit lighter, but nothing crazy. And people are smoked smoked. Like, yeah, I mean, we are too, but we're also not used to it. Like in terms of walking around and we're, it's a little bit different when you're teaching and you're instructing and that kind of stuff. But, but man, people are smoked and tired. And, you know, we feed them Saturday night and we, we give them high protein and

19:34carb dinner at, you know, five or six p.m. But guess what? By the time they get back to the campsite, they're hungry again. And they usually get some uberies or they go out the dinner again or, or, or get something on the way back to the campsite because they're burning through that many calories. That's what you've got to prepare for is when I'm the whole point I'm making. Yeah. I mean, we typically have one to two people that don't show up for day two. Not because of sickness or whatever they just like, I'm not, I'm not doing that. And, and we're not pushing hard. I'm we're not like, we might him the group up once on the day, land day, right? Typically, about one time, just to like walk them through kind of what it's like to be dropped. And what it, what it, what it feels like to try to hold your feet up or stay in the front leaning rest while everybody else is, you know, you all have to be the same before you're going to get recovered. But it's not, it's nowhere near like the duration or intensity of a, of a pipeline

20:37smoke session. If you've done something wrong, but it, it's a, it's a lot of volume. And I think one of the great things about, especially the land day of OTS is it does highlight for a lot of these folks like, I am not putting in enough work, like going for a few runs a week and spending, you know, three hours for whatever five, six hours in the gym per week is not preparing you for this. And maybe, maybe it's enough for some of these younger folks. And but like, understanding that like when they get into the air force and they get into the pipeline, at least now they know these are long days. Like you are going to hit the sack every night and you're going to lose consciousness, don't even call it sleep. And then you're going to blink and the alarm's going to go off and you got to do it all over again. It's relentless. Unless the cadre come in at, you know, well, sometimes we're like, I know they're getting tired of hearing their alarm every morning and like, you know, it's pretty, so like as a favor, I will come in and wake them up and just get their

21:42day started. And I'll give them instructions. They don't have to think about anything. I'll tell them exactly what to do. We'll get it going. And that way, you know, like it's just, we don't have to worry about people sleeping in or any other stuff. So, you know, as a favor, sometimes the cadre will go in there and get you up and tell you in no uncertain terms what the expectations are for the day. And you're welcome. It's pretty nice of them to do, actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very considerate. And, you know, and they also provide nice, clear instructions during that time. They really enunciate and project their voice sometimes using a megaphone as well to help. We don't want anybody to go in there and not know what they need to do. Yeah. I mean, they're tired. You know, sometimes when you're tired, it's hard to hear and your vision gets a little blurry and all these other things. So like, we're just going to be as clear as possible about what, what's happening, you know, and it's because we care about coms. Coal lives matter. They do. They do. They do.

22:42They don't have souls, but they, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's those are some good mornings, you know, and maybe we woke up a little bit earlier because here's the thing. We wake you up before, like, you know, there's always that guy down the hallway who wakes up way too early or has a alarm goes off way too early. And he's snoozing it for like three hours. And everybody has to hear it. That's the worst. So usually we'll show up, you know, three hours is early. That way we can bypass any of that annoyance. So that way you can start to start the day clean. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's all everything that they do and the cadre do is for you. Everything. That's mostly, I mean, I can't say that a little bit's not for my, my personal entertainment. I've, I'm pretty open about why we're doing some of the things that we do sometimes. All right. I was to the cones. I don't understand why we're doing this. Cause it makes me happy. It was my little sergeant segment.

23:42There's heart needs to get warmed up guys. So we're going to do some stuff that has nothing to do with really anything for my personal entertainment. Go. Listen, guys, I'm sorry I had a fight with my wife last night. But you're going to pay for that fight. You know, I never did that. I never did the whole, I could never come in actually grumpy, not like that. I remember. Maybe not the spouse fight thing, but you know, it was a different time kind of when I went through and there, it wasn't an endoc. But there may have been a school. It was, it was the locker house. It may, it may have been a school that I went to where a cadre would be. I had been drinking a couple alcoholic beverages and that kind of stuff. And it was like, you know what?

24:43I want to visit the cones and then come see us and then find out that one of the guys had a How does that make you feel though? He's, he's drinking. He's feeling good. And he's like, you know what? You, the cones came to mind. That, that's got to make you feel good. That he was thinking about you. He was thinking about it. He couldn't get us out of his head. You know, one of the other guys out on Keesler. Yeah, if you've been the Keesler, you're familiar with the triangle, right? And so we, at the time we were there, we were a permanent party, meaning we're essentially like a normal activity assigned to that based and folks in the triangle, airmen in the triangle are students. So they're in a student status and they're not permanent party or anything like that. So we were not, and if you're permanent party, you're not allowed to have relationships with, yeah, students. Yeah. So, but of course that happened.

25:45What? Yeah. And so when, when the cadre came over because they were thinking about us and they wanted to check in on us after a night of enjoying some alcoholic beverages, when they start seeing one or two triangle chicks fleeing the Balakar house, things usually turn a bit south. And how do they know those the cones? What if those girls were trying to break in there, you know what I mean? Well, see that's the thing is there was a lot of assumptions made. And in, in the military, the thing is unfortunately, and this is actually true, is you were not innocent until proven guilty. You were guilty until proven innocent, which is backwards and it's messed up, but that's just the way it is right now. And then there's cone, and then there's cone's are just always guilty, no matter what. Yeah. So we, yeah, we paid for that. And how's the foot speed for the, the females fleeing the Balakar house?

26:46Was it pretty good for the quick? They definitely put in mileage. They were definitely running a lot. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, they're running a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you can do that like a lackline now with the way that the, the BMT structures are all set up and everything now, huh? Do, like, go in there and smoke them or whatever? Well, I mean, like, they can't really, you know, escape. Like the BMT complexes, can they? Yeah, I mean, if you really wanted to, you could still escape. Really? Okay. Those, those ginormous buildings, they're, they're weird. They're different. I get lost every time I walk into one of those buildings now, like the new ones, not that I didn't get lost in the old ones. The old ones were also, you make it up a stairwell, two turns. And it's like, I have no idea where I am in space. It's, they're the most confusing buildings. But I mean, you know, if you're, if you're in basically training, you really want to get away.

27:47It's not that hard. You also go where you go to go though. You're on lack one. Yeah. And it's pretty spread out. Well, you can still see like the Valley high gate probably. And I still remember being in the basement. It's the weirdest thing I couldn't understand it. And maybe this is because, you know, I'm like four years at a high school. I'd had a bunch of jobs. And so the Air Force, while it wasn't maybe necessarily what I wanted to do with my life, I was able to recognize through a little bit of life experience that what we were going through was not that big of a deal. But the guys that could see the McDonald's sign that's still there from the dorm or whatever. And they all they talked about was McDonald's. And this is like a week in and it was like, dudes, what are we talking about? This is not, this is not bad. This is what we signed up for. Did nobody else watch like military movies before they got here to like prep themselves? Maybe overprep themselves and think that they were joining the most area instead of the Air Force and was very confusing for a little bit that we weren't getting smoked.

28:48But I don't know, it was just weird. It's not that bad, guys. And your MCI is again, they're on your side. They have to take, understand, like if you, like sometimes you ever ask your kids like, hey, if you were the parent in the situation, what would you do? And like as a thought experiment, just to see if they could like come up with something. Say that again. Do you ever like, if your kids mess up, do you ever like step back and beg, okay, hey, if you were me, if you were the adult, the parent in the situation, what would, what would it be an appropriate response in your estimate? Giving them the option. Yeah. Yeah, we've probably done that a handful of times. And it's funny because it's either nothing is very worse. Yeah, my kids are a lot older now than like you know. So you forgot everything and things that I would do different. Right. My own failures, not the failures of the kids. But for all, for all your youngins out there, take a moment, think about who you are

29:52and how difficult it is to deal with you. And imagine 60 check all heads from all over the country showing up and and trying to deal with them. Like there's, there's only a few ways that you can get those all that group of disparate civilians that come from all over the place into and create a single team. And they only have seven and a half weeks. And so like to come in and think it's something personal and they're yelling and screaming at me in this matters. It's like, no, no, no, no, the volume increases because we have so little time to get you all to do the exact things that we need you to do. So you can graduate and move on with your with your Air Force career, right? So I think people just lose sight sometimes and fall into victimhood and all that other nonsense. And it's been happening for at least 20 something years since I was there. You could, you could watch it happen. Well, and I think so you're talking about how nice the cadre are and how nice the MTIs are and that kind of stuff. Like when you, in all seriousness, when you take a step back and you actually look at

30:53their resourcing, how they're entrusted in building the next generation week after week of airmen and guardians and stuff like that. And then, you know, things that are going on at BMT, I'll just call it 3.0. I think is what it's called, but you know, with the the F 16, the C 130 didn't put there. The the the airfield getting put their millions upon millions of dollars being thrown into it. It's it's time that the Air Force definitely cares about the investment in you without it out. Yeah, yeah, I may be cut your MTI a little slack because they still have to worry about their professional development, their emails, their family, you know, gate traffic, all the things you don't have to worry about as a as a training. And they still manage to show up every day working say an hour and get the job done. So you're welcome, little trainings, you're welcome.

31:55You're welcome. Yeah, so I know we were kind of all over the place with that one, but if if you guys are interested in joining Air Force and all that kind of stuff, you guys know that you guys, especially special warfare, you know, we we talk about all the career fields, but we are typically special warfare. Aligned, consider and that's what we came from. So you can head over to Air Force calm though. And if you click connect and then find a recruiter entering your zip code, interested throw in there, what you're interested in doing in terms of, you know, enlisting officer and that kind of stuff. And then once you click that, there's another one that if you want special warfare. And then that'll take you to one of the 330th recruiting swadger and recruiters, they are station all over the US and they can get you where you need to be. If you don't have one near you, that's fine. You can still reach out to them. And you can also hit up a normal recruiter as well and enlisted a session recruiter is what they're called.

32:56And they can get you linked up in process and stuff like that. Take care of some of the baseline stuff before getting you to a special operation or a special warfare recruiter. So go find you one of them recruiters that's putting in the miles. You know, I mean, it's going to be great. I think, I think we may paying that recruiter and see if see if she wants to come on and talk about it. And that's a great question to ask her is terms of what But kicked her off on that. So she's like, well, I wanted to run. It's going to be though the shortest episode ever. It's like, why do you run? She's like, I like it. We'll be like, all right. Next time I'm going to everybody. Like, subscribe. Boom. All right. All right, everybody. You guys have a go and don't forget to check us out over on oneDrader.com. Pick yourself up. Peace and merch. And then operate or training. Send me dot com and register for University of Miami in Ohio. Or maybe it's Miami University in Ohio. I always mix that up. And then we've got Vegas in December. Cool. Vegas in Vegas is Christmas OTS. Yeah.

33:57Is beautiful. So if you are in our sitting here going like, what am I going to get my teenager or my family member or my friend for Christmas? This is a good option. You're investing in them. And they're it's it's fun. It's good time. So all right. Don't forget to like subscribe. Hit that notification bell. And we're out here. See you later. You guys are going into special warfare assessment selection is an attribute based selection model. What does that mean? Are we running right out to get better practice? So there's a holistic picture that we're looking for. The instructors are giving you input and we're expecting an output. And everything is for a reason. If you guys haven't heard my spiel yet, everything that we do, every single exercise has a connection to the job that you're trying to do. We don't want people at in docs, special warfare assessment selection, whatever they're going to call the new course when it inevitably changes somewhere down the road. I don't care what they call it.

35:01What I need is you to show me the raw materials for the things that I want to build you into. Just like everything else, it's a crawl walk run.