The Art of Manliness - #99： Conquer The Gauntlet with David & Stephen Mainprize

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so mud runs

00:00:20.640 obstacle races they're all the rage right now it seems like they've replaced 5ks as the thing you 1.00

00:00:26.160 do on the weekend the big ones you some of you probably done some of them spartan race tough

00:00:30.620 mutter warrior dash what's interesting besides these big national international obstacle races

00:00:36.600 that are going on there's also several regional obstacle races that you can only go to them in a

00:00:41.860 certain area of the country and there was actually a regional race here in tulsa oklahoma it's called

00:00:46.640 conquer the gauntlet it's owned and operated by two brothers stephen david main prize and i really

00:00:52.660 enjoyed it was it had a lot more obstacles than i than some of the other mud runs that i've done

00:00:57.060 but what i liked about it there's just a little more low key had more of a community feel to it

00:01:01.620 than some of those big giant ones that i've been to and so after the mud run i wanted to get them

00:01:06.520 on the podcast to talk about the business of regional obstacle races and mud runs and what

00:01:12.400 it takes to run and set up an obstacle race so here on the podcast we're going to talk about

00:01:17.780 why these guys started conquer the gauntlet and what's involved in running a race that has over

00:01:23.840 30 obstacles and the logistics that it takes to put something on like that so let's do this

00:01:28.940 steven and david main prize welcome to the show thank you so much we're glad to be here we're

00:01:36.700 pumped about it we're we're grateful that you let us be a part of the all the manliness that's going

00:01:41.120 on over there well i can see you uh in the video you guys can't see me my camera's not working but

00:01:45.480 one of you has an awesome beard that's steven hey i'm working on it david you got a lot of

00:01:52.120 catching up to do yeah i just started all right so you guys are the founders and owners of an

00:01:58.080 obstacle race um called conquer the gauntlet uh it's based out of uh i guess that is out of tulsa

00:02:05.080 oklahoma all right so um how did you guys tell me the story why did you guys start an obstacle race

00:02:11.520 when there's a whole bunch of different obstacle races out there i mean what's the background

00:02:15.700 well we started in uh probably late 2011 uh early 2012 when we actually kind of formed the business

00:02:24.040 uh and kind of around that time that these races were kind of picking up in popularity

00:02:28.680 but uh at that time there was really only races that were backed by really big corporations really

00:02:36.300 big companies that uh kind of cared about one thing and that was making a profit at the end of

00:02:41.780 the year there was basically the really big ones you know your tough mud or your spartan your warrior 0.93

00:02:45.380 dash really those three and then there were local ones which were kind of seen as a mud run or a joke

00:02:50.660 like they weren't really for the elite runner so we kind of wanted to start one that wasn't based on

00:02:56.180 like how do we make 70 million dollars a year but more how do we connect with 70 million people and make

00:03:02.600 and push themselves and not be worried about how much money we make so i think that's kind of where

00:03:06.880 the the passion for why we started it yeah was there something in particular that i mean i guess did

00:03:13.420 you do mud runs before you started the the gauntlet we i we had all talked about uh doing the warrior dash

00:03:19.520 when i think first came to tulsa in 2010 or 2011 i'm not sure but you know at the end of the day we were

00:03:25.440 like well that costs a lot of money it looks like a lot of lines a lot of fees and not a lot of really

00:03:30.260 cool obstacles and so we decided well why don't we make something that has as many obstacles as

00:03:35.500 maybe a 10 to 12 mile race like a tough mudder but it's maybe a little bit shorter and running

00:03:39.620 distance um that's kind of where the the melting of the idea came from and then we just kind of went

00:03:44.960 from there and it just snowballed okay so yeah whenever i look at these obstacle courses i've done

00:03:49.660 a few of them and i whenever i look at them from like a business perspective i'm like

00:03:53.380 these things look like they're just crazy to put on i mean the logistics look nuts you have to find a

00:03:58.820 location uh i mean can you tell us what goes on into putting on and a conquer the gauntlet obstacle

00:04:06.140 race uh you wouldn't believe the logistics i actually it's funny you bring that up the the

00:04:12.120 find the land is sometimes the toughest when you got to find 200 acres that also has parking uh with

00:04:19.000 someone that's cool with you you know digging up huge 25 by 10 foot wide mud pits um and all that

00:04:25.580 that's one of the tougher things i mean where are we our last event in 2014 was september 22nd this

00:04:32.820 year in little rock and on october 1st so eight days later we're already planning our first event

00:04:39.180 for 2015 and we are a little bit smaller i'm sure a lot of the other races that have huge overhead have

00:04:44.020 people that are just constantly doing that but really it's me david and my wife courtney the three of

00:04:49.640 us do everything we don't have any other hired uh people that do anything for us so the logistics of

00:04:56.680 just volunteers porta potties trash dumpsters mud pits water trucks backhoes forklifts two by fours

00:05:04.120 we're out of screws uh all that kind of stuff is it's definitely it's worth it because it's awesome

00:05:09.640 but there's a lot of a lot of that logistics that people don't see uh when they come to the event

00:05:14.440 like oh why do we have to wait the line for two seconds it's like well there's 2500 people here so

00:05:19.580 we're trying to get them all through this thing in four hours so it's not going to be that's one

00:05:24.440 of the things that's frustrating i guess yeah yeah well the funny thing is when we started i mean you

00:05:29.800 know it sounds great to have a four mile race with 25 obstacles i mean that sounds pretty awesome who

00:05:34.380 wouldn't want to own that and i mean you know we could tell you some more stories from the beginning

00:05:38.820 when there was just two of us or three of us or four of us out there trying to set up all night long

00:05:43.320 before our first race but you know as we've gone through we've kind of you know created a standard

00:05:48.120 operating procedure and we we have a setup that takes you know a certain amount of time for each

00:05:52.400 race um you know we show up about two weeks before and it's just really our us and our family and our

00:05:57.940 friends that uh help create everything that we do so you guys actually build the obstacles it's like

00:06:03.440 you two out there there's not anything out there that anyone else has built it's just us we go to

00:06:11.080 lowe's or home depot or maybe a lot of times i try to use local companies here in tulsa m&m lumber is

00:06:16.820 one of them we'll just really we call around and search to see who has the cheapest price on

00:06:20.680 two by four two by six six by six two by eight whatever we need that day and we'll go pick it

00:06:26.300 up in my my beat-up old 1989 chevrolet pickup truck and load that thing up till the tires are about

00:06:32.680 to pop bring it back to the warehouse and start designing something well how do you guys come up with

00:06:36.900 obstacles because you because i did the the race uh i guess it was in august i think yeah that was

00:06:42.620 our last race i think probably our biggest one we've ever had yeah august 23rd was the tulsa one

00:06:47.260 yeah and then like some of these things were pretty nuts like i had never seen any things in in like in

00:06:51.720 other mud runs that i have done so how do you guys come up with the your obstacles i think uh well me

00:06:59.060 and david both played a ton of sports growing up in high school david actually played college uh soccer

00:07:04.000 so we're both uh pretty physically fit i do crossfit every day here so we i think we try to

00:07:09.260 think of things that'll push us but also that are at least attemptable by someone that's never

00:07:15.520 done an event before a lot of people that come to our race have never done

00:07:20.040 an obstacle course race that might be their first fitness event ever so we really make

00:07:23.740 every effort to be creative in a unique way that young and old extremely fit and those new to

00:07:30.620 fitness can have fun doing it but still something that if me and or him were to try it it's going to

00:07:36.260 be difficult to do and not extremely easy yeah the one that got me i was doing pretty well and i was

00:07:42.020 like i was pretty felt pretty good at myself and i got to the one where it's like it's like stair steps

00:07:47.020 but you had to use your hands stairway to heaven stairway to heaven then i got to the other side and

00:07:51.720 there was i don't know what you guys had there what what was that devilish stuff you put on there like

00:07:56.020 i just slipped and i just fell into the the mud pit it was probably vaseline to be honest that's

00:08:01.020 the first event we've ever done that with we've had uh i guess kind of mixed reviews on i will never

00:08:07.520 do it again i don't think that was cruel man we had a lot of people complain about it some people

00:08:12.220 liked it a lot of people didn't so uh i don't think we'll be doing that again but even without

00:08:17.060 that it's still it's still pretty difficult it was beastly and i guess you had some vaseline on

00:08:21.380 the monkey bars at the end i didn't have any problem with that yeah but what did you think of

00:08:25.740 the five walls in a row was it hard for you that was tough that was really hard um and i mean yeah

00:08:31.400 there's some crazy stuff so the monkey bars was pretty it was insane uh the stairway to heaven

00:08:36.160 was difficult uh you had one where you had to bust out some american ninja warrior skills where

00:08:42.540 you could just uh yeah it's like a board that wouldn't cross like a pond and you just had to like

00:08:47.660 like do it rambo style like a balance beam pretty much yeah but with your hands turned up on it oh

00:08:53.760 yeah that was like a that's a dead man's drop yeah that was hard too that was tough yeah that was

00:08:59.000 difficult one of my favorites is that is one called tarzan swing it's kind of like the the monkey bars

00:09:04.120 but it's just one like olympic type ring on a on a chain you just swing from it and grab the next one

00:09:10.260 that one's that's kind of a fan favorite oh yeah i bit the dust on that one too yeah that one's uh i mean

00:09:15.840 kind of back to your question um steve's really the the master of the course if you will he's the

00:09:21.100 brains of the operation when it comes to obstacles um and so he kind of came up with a lot of the

00:09:26.620 the marquee ones that we have you know our big ones and and going back to kind of our overall theory

00:09:31.900 we didn't want to have small obstacles you know kind of the way we broke in in the market was having

00:09:36.220 so many and having them not just be you know oh there's a little mud hill or yeah you crawled under

00:09:40.980 some barbed wire like you got to have big boys out there and that's kind of what we want to be known for

00:09:44.940 yeah that's i i love that um so yeah i was talking about some of the things that we kind of hit on

00:09:49.660 them a little bit um but the big difference is between you and the other mud races out there 1.00

00:09:54.600 so for starters you're you're four miles long uh but you cram in 25 to 30 obstacles that's correct

00:10:01.980 yep and the tulsa race you did we had 32 actually which tulsa will usually have one or three or four

00:10:07.700 more because it's just less money to transport you know everything so we can save cost on transporting

00:10:13.020 our tents and tables and maybe throw some more obstacles up but we we've never had an event

00:10:16.940 with less than 25 okay and um i mean how what's the average on other mud runs your competitors

00:10:24.120 the average on their mud runs well your your warrior dash is going to be nine to twelve

00:10:29.160 um the spartan races they have three races spartan those um and they range from probably nine to twenty

00:10:38.480 uh i know tough mudders claim is 25 but i've done some tough mudders the ones i did had

00:10:44.620 21 or 22 so i would definitely say we have the most obstacles um of a race especially one that 0.81

00:10:50.780 travels around you'll occasionally find one in some nook and cranny in some kind of weird place in the

00:10:55.740 country where they just have a standing piece of land and they do their event like five times a year

00:10:59.740 and that's a little different because they're not coming and setting it up but i think the average is

00:11:03.840 probably between 10 and 20 let's say for for most so we're we're trying to i mean you've got you've

00:11:08.440 got your 5k basically races that have 10 obstacles and then you know like your spartans or your

00:11:14.440 tough mudders they're going to have longer races with more obstacles ours is kind of we want to you 1.00

00:11:19.340 know pack everything into a smaller uh area of running if that makes sense yeah yeah and i i when i did

00:11:24.820 that i've done a couple of the other ones and i feel like with some of the other ones i feel like i'm just

00:11:29.480 doing a lot of running yeah yeah you know i'd be like we wanted to cut out was if you want to you

00:11:34.580 want to go run 12 miles find a treadmill if you want to do an obstacle course race come do like

00:11:39.760 you're going to at the heart you're getting an obstacle two every quarter mile maybe even two

00:11:43.880 every eighth mile um at the ones that have 30 obstacles so you're not just jogging and like you

00:11:49.480 know mindlessly running for a mile without seeing anything which is i think why tough mudder people think 0.99

00:11:53.960 it's tough it's the tough thing about tough mudder isn't the obstacles it's that it's a half marathon

00:11:58.080 yeah none of the obstacles are that tremendously difficult compared to you know like a spartan

00:12:03.080 sprand or even our race it's just when your legs have to do 12 miles of running that's you're going

00:12:07.580 to seem tired but it's not that necessarily the obstacles themselves that for some reason i think

00:12:13.840 they can charge 200 because they're setting up 20 obstacles because they found a piece of land that

00:12:17.660 has 12 miles while running on it yeah so let's talk about that so you have it's more obstacles but

00:12:22.740 then your pricing is you know refreshingly different from the other guys can you talk a bit

00:12:28.660 about your pricing model um compared to the the big guys yeah what we did was we found out what we had

00:12:34.380 to do just to stay in business and uh didn't try to make it so much more than that as far as the profit

00:12:40.980 side of it um another thing that you'll find with the other races is sometimes people go to our website

00:12:46.900 and go oh it's it's 59 right now or 54 to sign up for conquer the gauntlet they'll hop over to maybe

00:12:52.340 wordash and go oh it's 55 for wordash too but what's overlooked is that pricing model is kind of

00:12:58.180 a lie because by the time you get through like that all of the i don't know which other races you sign

00:13:04.320 if you sign up online you go through the steps of the registration process and creating a profile and

00:13:08.860 but that by the time you get done with it that 55 turned into 72 because there was an eight dollar

00:13:14.200 mandatory like insurance fee or some type of uh convenience fee for online registration which is

00:13:21.440 the only way to sign up which is ironic and so by the time they're 55 it's not the same as ours if

00:13:26.240 ours says 55 it is 55 and the sign up page is one you just oh we need your information your name date

00:13:33.160 of birth what's your shirt size are you a dude or a chick oh okay pay us 55 now to do the best run

00:13:39.360 you're going to all year so i think it's that's one thing it's a big difference is like even spartan

00:13:44.380 it says 60 bucks but you by the time you're done there's a 13 dollar insurance fee and a seven dollar

00:13:49.540 um convenience fee so that now you're you went from 70 to 90 and you pay 20 bucks or parking 20 bucks

00:13:56.920 for your spectators i mean yeah that's good there yeah i thought that was nuts um about the um

00:14:03.460 the spectator fee you know people paying i think one of them charged like 40 bucks yeah yeah and it's

00:14:11.140 just weird and we had a we had my wife's uncle did a tough mutter and he kind of he did a wrote a

00:14:16.680 review about it on our site and he just thought it was weird that they're charging 40 to see like

00:14:21.580 people trump around in the mud yeah and he's like you could go to the boston marathon and see

00:14:27.820 world-class athletes for free yeah yeah yeah it is true those big races they they got to make money

00:14:34.400 for the corporations behind and that's what it's all about well i mean i guess one argument they say

00:14:38.840 is that these things are so expensive to put on they have to do that i mean is that i mean has that

00:14:43.580 been your case and you've seen that in your case i mean they are expensive to put on sometimes people

00:14:49.220 they're like they'll look at your race and go oh my goodness you had a thousand people pay you fifty

00:14:54.740 dollars you just made a boatload of money it's like yeah that's fifty thousand dollars but an

00:15:00.200 event itself costs between 50 and 60 so for us if we have a thousand people me and dave and courtney

00:15:06.740 we got to work for free that race and we're that's the thing like we're not just going to start charging

00:15:11.360 spectators but the thing is when you get tough mutter they get 10 000 runners that paid 120 plus

00:15:16.480 parking you look at the money they're making they don't need to charge spectating to make a profit

00:15:20.820 that's pretty much a bunch of malarkey gotcha the thing the thing the other thing that was

00:15:26.360 important to us is having a a place where people could come and encourage and cheer on their family

00:15:31.820 and friends and really become part of the conquer the gauntlet family and community three of the

00:15:36.600 things you'll always find our website is character commitment community we want to provide an

00:15:42.140 environment where people could show their character enhance their commitment and connect with

00:15:46.500 their community and it's really hard to connect with your community if you're charging your

00:15:50.200 community just to come watch so since community is such a big thing for us i don't need to make

00:15:55.200 money off someone that wants to come cheer for their husband if their husband was maybe overweight

00:15:58.820 two years ago and he trained for a year and a half just to be able to do it i want his wife and his kids

00:16:03.880 to come be able to cheer for him and be proud of him not have to fork out 80 bucks to do that

00:16:08.840 gotcha and another thing i appreciated about you guys was that you kept the heats pretty small

00:16:13.860 whenever we looked at breaking into this market i mean we didn't just do it on a willy-nilly

00:16:19.520 we we had a lot of time and and planning and that went into it you know first of all you've got the

00:16:24.640 the shorter distance race with as many obstacles as we have and you've got the lower price with

00:16:28.440 less fees and then you've got you know just what happens there on race day we we time everyone most

00:16:33.480 races actually don't think any races do that anymore so every single person gets a timing chip and then

00:16:37.780 you've got those every 15 minute waves so instead of just hurting you know 600 people together

00:16:42.080 every hour we break it up which is a lot harder for us and more expensive but it gives i think

00:16:47.960 people a lot better race experience there's no lines out there you know you're not just running

00:16:52.520 with 600 people at one time and so that that's those have kind of been those couple of keys the

00:16:57.780 ones you're hitting on are the reason why we've kind of seen the growth that we have yeah the the

00:17:02.300 being timed i really appreciate it because we've done the warrior dash before it's for several years and

00:17:05.880 they timed you and then like last year they just like there's no timing chip and we were like

00:17:09.840 right you have to be in the elite wave at that point to get a timing chip with warrior dash i

00:17:13.140 believe now and and the thing that's cool for us is like you know it doesn't matter if you're

00:17:16.920 running a two-hour time you still want to know yeah you still want to know so you see if you beat

00:17:22.220 yourself exactly you want to get better and you want to see your name on that list of someone who

00:17:26.820 conquered the gauntlet you know that's important people definitely so uh here's a question i have

00:17:31.280 right now you guys um limit your races to a pretty small geographic location where you got where

00:17:36.180 your race is at right now we're in kansas city oklahoma city wichita kansas pulsa oklahoma

00:17:44.900 little rock arkansas and then this october we're planning either a tennessee or a texas event we're

00:17:51.500 kind of we're actually in the next three weeks we'll be running some pre-registration ads just to

00:17:56.040 see if there's interest in those areas and then really between uh kind of looking at three spots

00:18:01.100 memphis nashville or kind of like a west texas area whichever one of those we have the most people

00:18:06.620 wanting our race we'll bring it to them um so planning six events next year but yeah kind of

00:18:12.040 in this i guess you'd call it like a midwest slash southeast area um that's kind of i guess that the

00:18:18.700 feel of tulsa is kind of like a southern slash midwest and we kind of everything right around there

00:18:23.520 is where we'll go so it's because it costs us you know because we're not getting 10 000 runners but

00:18:28.620 we try to we're hoping to get 1500 to 2500 runners and keep growing on those numbers because they're

00:18:34.440 not huge we can't pay as much as other races to go everywhere also another thing people forget when

00:18:39.860 they're looking at your cost is is your marketing a lot of other races will spend between 80 and 90

00:18:44.460 thousand dollars on one event on online ads we obviously don't have that budget so we have to do a

00:18:50.220 lot more grassroots marketing things uh to get people to hear about us and then hope that they'll

00:18:55.560 sign up for usually when people sign up for ours uh they'll come back we have a tremendously higher

00:19:00.840 return rate to every other race because a lot of other people are let down whereas ours they come

00:19:05.580 once like that was really fun and affordable so i will be back so that's one thing that we do save

00:19:10.580 costs on is return customers return runners but uh the initial marketing is so expensive if you say oh

00:19:17.980 i'm going to go to 20 events you better have a lot of money for those for each event you're better

00:19:22.560 have it just to market with and that's kind of one reason we're a little bit smaller i think also

00:19:26.520 just we just don't want to get we don't want to get too big and just that whole idea of smaller waves

00:19:30.960 less races is good too sometimes in america it's seen as bigger as better and we don't agree with

00:19:36.460 that necessarily i think it's quantity over over the uh or quality over the quantity we want to have

00:19:42.140 more great races and not just have junky ones that are just put on just a oh tough hunter does this

00:19:48.980 tough hunter is going to have a race in oklahoma this year i'll guarantee you that's not the same

00:19:52.820 race they're putting on a new york city they're going to put on a much smaller race with less 0.99

00:19:57.060 obstacles less staff and spend less time setting it up than their race in chicago la or new york 0.96

00:20:03.540 because if they can get 8 000 people in oklahoma to do it they don't that's not as big as if they

00:20:09.000 can get 17 000 people to do it in new york city we don't want to do that we always want to anything we

00:20:13.060 do we're going to put our whole heart into it and make it as good as any conqueror they're not

00:20:17.440 big to go to yeah i mean i was i'm curious about that because as you guys grow in popularity and

00:20:22.700 it's it's it's nice to hear you guys say you're you're okay with not getting too big too fast but

00:20:26.980 it seemed like with some of these mud races as they've gotten bigger the quality has gone down

00:20:32.080 in the race there's been some there's been some big name high high dollar races that have completely

00:20:37.600 gone out of business um the ones that had million dollars backing them you know and we started

00:20:42.780 with literally an idea and a pickup truck and we kind of had to slowly build sort of to where you

00:20:48.540 know you see these races they might have 3 000 people at a couple of their runs and then they

00:20:52.720 decide to try to go to 30 cities well those races don't even exist anymore yeah you know when we go 0.98

00:20:57.680 into a city we want to be able to obviously put on a good race but then there's i mean we can't market

00:21:02.460 at 20 new cities it's not possible so that's kind of that's kind of how that works good deal so uh

00:21:09.820 staying small is part of the plan that's great being able to just just expand one or two cities

00:21:15.680 a year and being able to do those in a quality way to where people will come back that sounds like a

00:21:20.340 southwest airlines approach yeah it's similar to their business model yeah the thing is even as slow

00:21:26.740 as we're basically trying to grow at our rate not the rate that our competitors are or maybe

00:21:31.160 other maybe our runners like man why don't you come here when you come there it's like we just can't yet

00:21:35.020 and so instead of sacrificing that quality just to have another event we'll take our time and grow

00:21:40.100 at our pace but at the same time we kind of have a cap like we're not ever going to be a 40 events a

00:21:45.720 year even if we took 10 years to do it we just don't desire to be that because you have to think

00:21:50.740 about there's 52 saturdays every year if you're doing 40 events that's just back to back to back to

00:21:57.100 back and it's like it just you just turn into it you're just running people through you're just

00:22:01.180 cattling people like herd or like just people are going through like cattle you're hurting them

00:22:05.440 and that's what we don't want to be we want to be if you come to our race you're an extremely unique

00:22:10.580 conqueror and this is your day to get our best event the best we had so we would probably never go over

00:22:16.120 uh 10 to 12 events even if we got the 12 events we wouldn't really do more than that we wouldn't do

00:22:21.680 more cities than that we would just focus on making those events better as opposed to trying to go to

00:22:26.540 one place it's definitely unique and it's kind of odd and i'm sure spartan owners were listening to 0.83

00:22:32.220 this they were morons but we just want to be different than them those other events that go 0.69

00:22:36.600 everywhere already exist there's at least five of them that's another thing is we just they exist if 0.99

00:22:41.300 you want to go do a 5k and act tough at a warrior dash and then chug a beer at the end you're more than

00:22:46.140 welcome to that event already exists we don't we didn't see the need in duplicating that event for the

00:22:51.100 50th thousandth time every other events pretty much the same come run get a watered down experience

00:22:57.080 here's a beer not that there's anything wrong with that that's just why ours is different because if

00:23:01.620 you want to do that it already exists we didn't see the point in duplicating it again in the cities

00:23:06.100 we go to very cool um so here's a question i have it's sort of personal because i've always wondered

00:23:11.280 about like how do you train for these things because like i'll sign up for one and then i i kind

00:23:15.180 like i i'm a pretty fit guy but you know obstacle races are different from you know your typical

00:23:22.560 i don't know how do you train for this so that you know you can manage every obstacle you're about to

00:23:27.300 handle yeah i mean i think i think first of all i mean you've got to have the cardio you've got to

00:23:33.160 be able to run four miles at a good pace and another thing is like you know what are you trying

00:23:38.040 to do are you trying to have a an elite time or are you trying to just get through it you know

00:23:42.300 with our race i would say grip strength is probably an upper body strength are tested in our race more

00:23:48.440 than any other race in the world i i would venture to say yeah it was tough that's that's what i went

00:23:54.240 out on i think there's 10 walls in our race if not more uh you've got the monkey bars you got the

00:23:59.280 steroid of heaven you got the tarzan swing not to mention whatever else is out there dead man's

00:24:03.000 drop that's a lot of grip strength so i mean pull-ups i mean anything that you can work on your

00:24:07.620 grip strength with um upper body strength you know being as lean as possible the the big

00:24:12.100 football type player guys that come out there you know you're six foot three 210 pound massive guy

00:24:16.920 230 pound whatever he's gonna have more trouble than your five nine 160 pound guy so i think you

00:24:24.340 want to be lean you want to have grip strength and upper body strength and see what do you have to

00:24:27.540 add to that i think the key is as far as what you're going to train for train doing body weight

00:24:32.500 things that's going to be tested um if you're i mean not saying you have to totally drop lifting

00:24:38.260 weights if you're a big lifter but go to like more push-ups as opposed to just bench press

00:24:41.920 instead of throwing that mass on it so again if you're if you're just coming through with some

00:24:45.300 buddies do whatever you want to do to get through it but if you want to have a good time and improve

00:24:49.380 on your time from last year pull-ups do pull-ups do pull-ups do pull-ups because that's going to

00:24:54.360 help your grip strength and it's going to make you want to lose weight if you can shed five pounds that

00:24:58.420 that's hit five pounds you don't have to lift everything you're doing a pull-up so i think body

00:25:02.820 weight stuff's the key doing like air squats push-ups pull-ups and then i think another thing

00:25:07.680 people train they go to planet fitness or you know whatever ken jim or one of these just like

00:25:13.260 10 bucks and i just jump on the treadmill and jog four miles jogging four miles outside is completely

00:25:18.740 different than the treadmill with the tv on that terrain we put you on yeah running on grass uh is

00:25:24.620 is huge too some people even run we don't have obviously our race isn't on asphalt there's only

00:25:28.920 one goody race i've ever heard of trying to do that and they went out of business but uh as far as

00:25:33.880 off sport race um but uh doing it on grass i think is key running on grass that's what you're

00:25:39.340 going to be running on trail running trail running doing stuff like that is it's a key to to it body

00:25:44.640 weight stuff cardio running on grass pull-ups if you do that you'll be fine another thing is how

00:25:49.080 different is it to run a couple miles versus running a couple miles wet yeah people forget how

00:25:54.860 bogged down your shoes are going to get when they get wet closure time so maybe jump in a pool then go

00:25:59.260 run a little bit all right so what do you guys uh think is the future of obstacle racing this has

00:26:05.940 been around for i i mean i guess would say five years six years i think six years yeah i think 08

00:26:12.080 or 09 was when they actually started kind of ramping up and people really started getting into i mean do

00:26:17.380 you guys think this is a fad or you think this is something that's going to stick around for a while

00:26:21.300 i mean i'm sure you guys think about that all the time right as as business owners like how long is

00:26:25.820 this going to last and how can we make it last i mean what are your guys's thoughts on that

00:26:28.780 i think it will it will last a long time if the events become more quality i think just like

00:26:36.780 anything if if every time people start keep signing up to you then putting their 50 of faith or 90 of

00:26:43.100 faith in into that a run will be fun challenging and unique and they go to someone they aren't what

00:26:49.460 they expected or they didn't have the obstacle they did that's going to turn those people away from

00:26:53.740 doing the quality ones like we think ours is the more companies that just try to go big and just

00:26:58.260 you know we're just going to have 50 events one every saturday and go to every big city in the

00:27:02.720 u.s to try to make money they're actually hurting the small guys because they're putting on events

00:27:06.540 of less quality and the the common public it's not your obstacle course racer they're just going to

00:27:12.880 see that like oh that's what all those events are i guess so they're they're all kind of just like

00:27:16.420 trying to get my 50 and put on a quick cheap thing i think that's the only thing that could really

00:27:21.180 hurt it necessarily but i i it's grown so much we already haven't you know in just the runners

00:27:27.560 because we have hundreds of runners that come to each of our events that they do seven or eight

00:27:32.000 events a year and it's almost like that's their fitness training it's they they try to do eight

00:27:36.240 to ten a year and it's what they look forward to doing so those kind of runners we love because

00:27:40.960 they come to us every year and they come and say hey your event's still my favorite i did three

00:27:44.240 spartans a tough mutter two worried ashes and yours is tougher you just don't have the money to

00:27:48.260 market it but i wish you did because you're just so much the run is so much more challenging

00:27:52.260 so i think staying quality is something that everybody needs to focus on probably us included

00:27:57.220 there's ways we could improve our quality as well but i don't see it as a fad either way i think

00:28:02.240 5ks and marathons have been around for decades and decades i mean marathons for hundreds of thousands

00:28:07.540 of years and then more recently just five like your local 5k there's there's one a month in every city

00:28:12.260 and all these are just like a 5k or more with more fun stuff so if 5ks didn't die out i don't see

00:28:19.080 how these would really very cool i think with any market you're going to see you know you saw the

00:28:23.840 explosion and then last year a lot of even somewhat bigger and a ton of more regional races went out of

00:28:30.120 business to where you're going to you know you're going to get your cream to rise to the top and you're

00:28:33.100 going to have your your couple of races that everyone is going to know about and you'll of course you'll

00:28:37.160 have newcomers as well but you know i don't think it's an industry that's just going to

00:28:40.720 disappear entirely but i mean it will it will wean itself out kind of like the dot-com boom in

00:28:46.460 the early 2000s it kind of went huge and then it bursted and the guys that were really good state

00:28:51.000 i think that's what's eventually going to happen to this is um there's going to be a kind of when

00:28:56.080 the smoke clears in the next decade there's going to be the really good ones left that were able to

00:29:00.360 provide a great product every time they had runners show up they'll still be there and there'll be some

00:29:05.360 of the other ones that will most likely not be so do you think there do you think there's like room

00:29:10.420 for like like regional is that kind of like where the future is for you where you like you guys you're

00:29:15.300 kind of keeping it geographic in your location is that kind of where you think uh the future is where

00:29:20.880 you can actually provide a quality race to a pretty decent size locale but it's not the whole entire

00:29:26.740 country i mean i think i think i mean not to not to be extreme i think you'll always have your tough

00:29:30.720 mother and your warrior dad and spartan race likely i mean those guys are insanely big you know but

00:29:35.740 having a regional race like ours is is i think one of the best ways you know to provide a quality

00:29:41.520 product and make money while at the same time you know sticking around for a while ones like us out

00:29:47.840 there and they're they're some of the most there are a lot that yeah we respect a ton that are that

00:29:51.320 are really really good and they're doing the right thing and and i'm not even i'm not saying like

00:29:55.080 toughner doesn't put on a good product they do i'm just saying it's harder to do 40 good events as

00:30:00.080 opposed to 15 i kind of think of it this way as well when you're going on a 10 to 12 hour road trip

00:30:06.380 there's not a lot of really quality clean gas stations with a great employee manning them

00:30:12.740 but when you go to houston when you go to like tulsa we have a great quick trip uh company here

00:30:18.860 called quick trip they have our great great gas station but you know regionally there's a lot of

00:30:23.000 like really quality gas stations but there's not anyone that has a great gas station that's nationwide

00:30:27.460 because they just kind of get run down they get turned into the bathrooms are dirty the guy

00:30:32.580 working was shooting meth 30 minutes ago no i'm just i'm just generalizing obviously but um you kind

00:30:40.300 of the farther outside of big seas you get the gas station qualities go down i kind of compare it to

00:30:44.400 that maybe it's a bad comparison but just nationwide is really tough to do and stay extremely quality

00:30:50.120 well for our listeners because we have a you know listeners who live all across the country are there

00:30:54.420 some like other regional um races like you guys like in the northeast or northwest that you're aware

00:31:00.320 of um i i know in in the southeast um and they're actually kind of getting into our area but um so i

00:31:08.060 don't want to promote them too much but savage race is they're amazing extremely legit they i would

00:31:13.080 openly admit just because i'm an honest man they have better obstacles than we do um and they're in

00:31:18.040 the farthest west there is texas they're mainly florida georgia i think they're doing in ohio now but

00:31:23.440 they do about seven or eight events a year they went to 12 or 13 one year and they've backed off

00:31:28.620 now to about seven and they're all really really good they bring their a game every time uh for i

00:31:34.220 mean i've never done one i i wanted to do dallas last year it was a conflicting date with some other

00:31:38.280 stuff i had going on but they they're and they're kind of like i guess they're six miles and they're

00:31:42.340 25 to 30 obstacles so they're a little bit more mileage but uh then as far as the southeast they're

00:31:47.460 probably the best local run in that florida georgia area and they do ohio i don't know too much about

00:31:53.260 the west and out in california honestly we don't research a ton over there we do research obviously

00:31:59.180 in the areas we're going to yeah um so i'm not completely sure on that one uh there was a good

00:32:05.100 one in in the northeast called the ruckus race and they actually they're one of the ones that they

00:32:11.000 were in the northeast and they were crushing it and they tried to go like kansas city texas ohio they

00:32:16.780 tried to expand way to the west and then one year they went from like eight events to 10 to 20 and they

00:32:22.240 went out of business they went out of this for uh two years now so they were a really good northeastern

00:32:26.980 one that was local and tried to um kind of get too big too fast that's why we do a ton of research

00:32:32.460 and like kind of know who we are sometimes you're mcdonald's and some guys sometimes you're five

00:32:37.300 guys burgers yeah i just have to know what you are we're just you know quality and small and we

00:32:43.080 don't want to get too big and force ourselves out we don't want to cannibalize ourselves and our

00:32:46.780 marketing dollar yeah very cool so what's in the future of conquer the gauntlet what can we see uh

00:32:52.200 expect from you guys in the next uh in 2015 well i mean the most races we've ever had the most runners

00:32:58.480 we've ever had and probably the most obstacles we've ever had i would say for sure every year we

00:33:02.380 increase our obstacles and we usually gain runners and we are adding events look to do six events this

00:33:08.500 year and then 2016 we hope to add to that we're really wanting to do a uh denver colorado event

00:33:15.780 um in early summer of 2016 we're probably going to start in may and in june of 2015 kind of

00:33:24.700 pre-registering for that and letting people know that we're coming that way um that's somewhere we

00:33:29.320 really want to be um present that's a that's an awesome area we have a lot of a ton of friends

00:33:34.020 that we know from going to college with uh in denver denver area colorado area that are kind of

00:33:40.600 begging us to come out there they think we'd be successful so that's that's what we're looking

00:33:44.460 at doing but as far as this year just better obstacles better quality everything uh this year

00:33:49.340 this year we're doing uh actual finishers metal like a metal piece of hardware you get last year

00:33:54.300 we did like a finisher's magnet because we thought our biggest thing is trying to be unique and different

00:33:58.700 and uh we always try to put our our money we get if we get sixty thousand dollars we're going to

00:34:04.540 give you sixty thousand dollars of obstacles and if you need a trinket you can go to the your local

00:34:09.360 thrift store and buy one so we that's why we didn't do metals and we were just trying to be different but

00:34:13.220 you know we also listen to our runners and a lot of we have surveys on our website people said they

00:34:17.200 really wanted the metal so we switched from doing like magnets that go on a car refrigerator or a stove

00:34:22.300 and we're going to do magnets this year so that's something that's definitely going to be new and i think a ton

00:34:26.140 of runners uh are excited about it that's something and we'll always have the best t-shirts in the

00:34:31.580 industry yeah i love you guys our t-shirts are just by far the best i've done the tough butters and

00:34:37.760 it's just a uh got tossed a t-shirt that just kind of fits but we that's something else we want our

00:34:43.100 people to wear the shirt so we'll have more of the good t-shirts more of the obstacles doing metals

00:34:46.700 going to more cities and bringing more people so very cool where can uh people go to find out more

00:34:51.940 about the conquer the gauntlet conquer the gauntlet.com is the website and we also have a

00:34:57.780 twitter handle which is at conquer gauntlet should definitely follow us there um and then follow our

00:35:03.740 facebook page it's just conquer the gauntlet on facebook and we have an instagram yeah it's also

00:35:08.240 conquer the gauntlet so same name different place google conquer the gauntlet and you'll find us but

00:35:13.340 if you type in conquer the gauntlet.com you'll definitely yeah we actually just uh

00:35:17.960 uh 12 13 days ago we launched a brand new website if you haven't been yet i know you ran last year

00:35:24.100 you should go check it out because we've got tons of new video up pictures of every obstacle all of

00:35:29.500 our new obstacles on there tons of quotes from runners at the day of the event um all kinds of

00:35:34.400 new things going on we're about to have a new page added to it probably in january called the

00:35:38.600 conquerors community and we're actually gonna have our runners and uh different event organizers

00:35:44.260 probably vote on and have a conqueror in the month and get a t-shirt away to someone that we feel is

00:35:49.300 really showing that they're a conqueror in their day-to-day lives just a lot of cool things going

00:35:53.000 on that we're pumped about yeah definitely um as you know uh right you know a lot a lot of these

00:35:58.620 companies run constant sales so they might say the price is going up but it's just it's always the

00:36:03.220 same but with us you know we try to start it out at a price and and move forward with the price

00:36:06.740 going out to where people sign up early get rewarded so you know challenge everyone out there sign up

00:36:11.860 early and uh i don't believe anyone in tulsa last year ran it in under 40 minutes so if anyone

00:36:17.020 thinks they're elite come try to uh conquer we've got a 40 minute club in in tulsa if you finish in

00:36:23.240 40 minutes i'll give you your 50 bucks back because you're probably not going to get it because there's

00:36:26.560 so many obstacles very cool well steven david main prize thank you so much for your time it's been a

00:36:32.140 pleasure thank you good luck with everything man keep being manly oh yeah keep that beard it's awesome

00:36:37.520 and you keep working on your beard i will take these guys we'll see you around and i'll definitely

00:36:42.680 be doing the race here in tulsa this year so i'm looking forward to it our guests they were david and

00:36:48.240 steven main prize they are the founders and owners of conquer the gauntlet you can find out more about

00:36:53.880 conquer the gauntlet at conquer the gauntlet.com they've got a few races scheduled already for 2015

00:36:59.200 i'll be doing the one in tulsa on august 22nd so if you're in the area i'd love to see you there

00:37:05.240 and conquer the gauntlet with me well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:37:13.180 for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:37:16.940 artofmanliness.com and i'd really appreciate it if you could give our podcast a rating on itunes

00:37:22.720 stitcher whatever it is you use to listen to your podcast that would really help us out because it

00:37:27.040 helped more people find out about the podcast so go ahead and do that until next time this is brett

00:37:32.520 mckay telling you to stay manly

00:37:35.520 you

The Art of Manliness - January 31, 2015

#99： Conquer The Gauntlet with David & Stephen Mainprize

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