Michael Mazzara: CEO of Rogue Expeditions on Running Travel

DFW Running Talk: Michael Mazzara - Rogue Expeditions
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Chris Detzel: [00:00:00] Welcome to DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, so let's get started.

Alright, welcome to another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Tetzel and today we have a special guest and a little bit different. Michael Zaro. He is the CEO of Rogue Expedition. Michael, how are you?

Michael Mazzara: I'm good man. How are you?

Chris Detzel: Doing well. Now. I heard that you're people call you Mass or Michael and you tell me what I should call you.

Michael Mazzara: I go by Ma. It's way more distinct. I think yet another Michael in the world. The nineties was a big time for Michael's.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, my middle name's Michael, so I hear you. It's a lot of Michaels out there. So one of the things that I wanted to talk, I wanna talk a little bit about your running journey. We'll talk a little bit about rogue expeditions as well and how you get into that.

But I'm interested into how you became a runner, like in your interest in that you live in Austin, Texas.

Michael Mazzara: When I started running, I was in Brooklyn.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Michael Mazzara: And it's a funny story. I can't tell if it was funny while it [00:01:00] happened, but it's funny in hindsight, I was working at a company for six or seven years and I didn't realize it at the time when I was bored.

And I would wake up every day and just try to set a goal for myself. So I came up with a. Instead of a New Year's resolution, I said, I'm gonna set 30 day goals to do something extreme. Oh,

Chris Detzel: okay. Extreme

Michael Mazzara: and extremely, I would go vegan for a month or I would wait at four o'clock for a month. And one of the things was see if you can run a half marathon without training and then see if you can train for 30 days and run a marathon.

Chris Detzel: All right, so just go run a mar a half marathon without doing anything. Half

Michael Mazzara: marathon, no training.

Chris Detzel: Were you lifting weights or doing anything like that? Let's just make sure that

Michael Mazzara: I was a water polo player in college.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Michael Mazzara: What I learned is that you really distinctly thought it was mind over matter, uhhuh, and the half marathon proved, at least for me, that distance, it was a possible thing to do.

Doable. So I ran to Manhattan, did my 11, came back over [00:02:00] the Brooklyn Bridge, hit 13 one, and then sat down on the Brooklyn Bridge and couldn't get up. So

Chris Detzel: it's doable. It's just your body

Michael Mazzara: wasn't feeling good about it. It's doable. And I had to call my former girlfriend soon to be wife now, or actually now wife, and she had I, I like hobbled the whole way back to my home.

Makes sense. And I thought for a moment that this was an achievable goal. So I started training. Would just rip out 10 miles a day.

Chris Detzel: Okay. And

Michael Mazzara: in bad shoes in both my knees, within about seven to 10 days. It was just a bad thing because it wasn't mind over matter. Your body needs to adapt. I learned a lot about just human mechanics in between one part and another.

Chris Detzel: I feel like you went the David Goggins way, in a way. The mindset, if you will, like he trains. So let's be real, but just with that mindset of I'm just gonna go fucking do it. And I can do it. I know I can just train 10 miles a day, but it wasn't true. Yeah,

Michael Mazzara: exactly right. Yeah. And it was I was so [00:03:00] stupid because I was just asking friends.

One of my closest friends who's a runner is was like 230 pounds, six, one runner, and I was like, what you're wearing, I'll buy those and. Friend of mine did that too. I was like, I'm like mid five feet tall, a hundred pounds less than him. And think that I wasn't like, go to a run store, ask what they're, what you should wear.

I was just like, he runs. So that's probably a good shoe.

Chris Detzel: That's normal. That's a normal mistake that people know they don't know.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah, so I, I ended up after probably taking three or four months off of running and then getting back into it, I ran a self-guided marathon through the streets of Brooklyn with a friend.

I think it took me four and a half to five hours. I think I maybe had 20 to 30 gels. I didn't, I don't think I hydrated really at all. And it was there. What's the furs furthest distance you go when you train?

Chris Detzel: It depends. Like on a marathon, maybe 20 miles, there's 22 is the. The biggest,

Most don't go the 26 Yeah.

Point, [00:04:00] 22 to 23 I guess.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. There was a point in training, either for the marathon or doing the marathon where I entered this place that was very out of body. I. It was super surreal and it was the sort of thing that felt very primal. I was like more in touch with my body and reality than I had ever experienced before during the first marathon, during my first self guided marathon.

Okay. Yeah. Wow. To a point where I was in so much pain that I like, forgot how to do things. I forgot that I like where I lived. I was like trying to think of it and it was just exhaustion, but there was. In it. I could reflect back on the experience and was like, this is amazing. This like a part of being,

Chris Detzel: this is amazing.

Michael Mazzara: It was a part of being alive, had an experience. It's like somebody showing you a different color and that was just a crazy experience for me that I found that I really loved running those longer distances. [00:05:00] I really loved being in touch with my body and. I lived in Brooklyn, so I did that a lot just through the streets of Brooklyn.

And then when I moved to Texas, I found that. I just went to, there's a place right out 45 minutes outside of Austin to the west called Rymers Ranch. I've been recovering from an injury that and for the first time got out there and just spent two or three hours, like running around this 800 acre ranch summer.

Chris Detzel: Y

Michael Mazzara: it was like last week. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Oh, okay. Alright, let's back up. So when you went to Brooklyn, or when you're in Brooklyn, how many marathons and things did you do you know, were you becoming an experienced runner then, or was it more when you came to Austin?

Michael Mazzara: Yeah, I'll tell you something fun.

I've signed up for maybe 15 to 20 marathons and I think I've completed three. That's great. The reason is because. I get injured every sometimes through a freak accident, and then like I'll fall off a curb. But most of the time it's [00:06:00] just. People will look at me and go, you, your body is probably telling you that you're not a runner.

And I was just supposed to run a 50 mile race that two weekends ago, and I was getting up to 70 or 80 miles a week. And through no acute injury at all, like I wasn't doing anything outta the ordinary, I wasn't doing a tempo run. I wasn't pushing myself. All of a sudden I pull my groin just like in the middle of a regular run, and it's.

It is really disheartening to be,

Chris Detzel: All that training is definitely disheartening.

Michael Mazzara: I, but I love the process of training. I love, there was no part of me going out there and being not looking forward to today's run. And, but it just, then when you get injured, there's that I, you spend every.

15 to 17 minutes on WebMD and you're like, okay, if it's a groin pole, it's WebMD. If it's four weeks, that puts me two weeks out. So can I still regain my, so then I go to the search that says, how long can I stop running before I lose my fitness gains? And it's like a week. And you're like, okay, fuck, I can't.

I

Chris Detzel: don't think you [00:07:00] need WebMD anymore. You can use Chat GPT or clot or some of those. It probably gives you pretty good answers nowadays. Huh?

Michael Mazzara: They're all kind of copies of one another and I'm looking for whatever information tells me that it'll take a two week re if they told me it was a three day recovery time.

That's the authority On the map.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Mazzara: And whatever tells you what you wanna hear. Yeah. Do whatever's the most optimistic. Yeah. Got it. And chat GBT will invent these terms where they're like, oh, it's a tier one sprain. And then I'll go to a doctor and I'm like, it's a tier one sprain.

And they're like, I don't even know what that is. That's not really tier one sprain.

Chris Detzel: You should say doctor, you just don't know your books because, look at chat GBT.

Michael Mazzara: Let's go to the chat. Let's go. It's right here. Yeah, so it ended up being this thing where I signed up for a whole bunch of races.

I canceled Chicago Marathon, I think two or three times, dropped out of a 50 mile race, dropped out of a whole bunch of half marathons, always with an injury. I was, it was this phenomenon where I was either running or an injured runner waiting to run. Again, it never really crossed my mind that I was gonna opt out [00:08:00] of the running game.

Chris Detzel: So I have a question relating to one of your philosophies. So one of your philosophies, from what I could tell, or at least this thought was this stop racing mentality and go on trips that are really awesome so you can run but not have to race. Is that why? Because, hey, I'm getting injured.

Screw this. Let's just go for a nice trip and running. I

Michael Mazzara: think it realized was one of the hardest things about racing for me was that injury and waiting to see if I'd be okay. For a long enough period and I would be able to still not drop outta the race. 'cause I had flights and I had all these people that were showing up or traveling with me and they all were so excited.

And I did this thing where I created a bunch of accountability for myself. I set goals with other people and you'd get three months into training and everybody would be so excited and then you'd be like, I am, I'm dropping out. Yeah, it's a

Chris Detzel: let down for not just you, but obviously

Michael Mazzara: you really people down.

Yeah. Feel

Chris Detzel: guilty.

Michael Mazzara: And one thing that I started to observe was in cross training, you look at cycling and you talk to a bunch of cyclists [00:09:00] and you go, are you a like competitive cyclist? And they're like, no. And I also don't even know any, anybody who competes in a race. And you're like, so what do you do?

You're like, I go out on the weekend with my friends and then I. Cycle. We like go to Italy every year and cycle around, and I was like, that sounds way cooler than going to Indianapolis to run a race. And then you look at these other recreational sports, let's say running is a recreation, golf trips.

You have yoga retreats, you have cycling trips, and then all of a sudden you have running and it's everybody's racing. Yeah. Everybody's signing up for a race. Everybody's committing to a half marathon. People will ask you if you're training what your distance is or what your time is. Yeah. That's right.

And I can't tell if the barrier to entry in running is so much lower that if you're golfing, you just wanna do it's not as intuitive that you would compete. You assume that you have to be at a higher level to compete where running created more accessibility to racing, so then it, the default, like linear outcome.

If you buy a pair of running shoes, you're racing. I was like, it's, it feels wrong. Like I [00:10:00] like. I feel mismatched to the service or the product that's being recommended to me exclusively. And I want people to know that my mission is to create another channel by which you can experience the joy of running.

I think run clubs did that. Now I think local communities do that and they're huge in Dallas, by the way.

Chris Detzel: There's literally 50 running clubs or more in DFW.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah,

Chris Detzel: I can't even count 'em anymore.

Michael Mazzara: I think what the. Big thing that happened was run clubs became the reward themselves, where if you were training for a half marathon, you were like, I am going to struggle through the training in order to tell people or myself that I got to the point where I ran the half marathon and that's my goal, and then all of a sudden you could go, my goal is just to show up to run club on Wednesday.

Then you didn't need to fill the, and now I'm running a race or there's some other component to my running experience. So I think that was like the biggest unlock for me was to realize that the running community [00:11:00] today, or the running opportunities that are afforded to us are a little too one dimensional and opening a new channel for, that's important.

Chris Detzel: I think that's pretty cool. I think. As I kinda look at running clubs, people really like the community, right? They want to exercise, they would like to run, they have certain goals, whether it's, just to run with friends or run fast and hit a marathon or half marathon at a certain time, run with these people that help you.

And push you to get to those certain times. And that's why you see these mini, some of 'em are mini running clubs. Some of 'em are bigger running clubs and things like that. So I believe it's really more about the community of getting together and doing things with your friends on a consistent basis.

And in this case it's running, but we do it all the time and. Everything that we do,

Michael Mazzara: yeah. And running's one of those things that it's like all blank space. The same way that golfing is golfing. You have to be in, most people don't golf by themselves. It's a crew of four and running. The idea that you go out and go through 30 to 60 minutes of looking at nothing and thinking about nothing is [00:12:00] like a good opportunity to actually link it up with a community-based effort to distract yourself.

So like the mechanism itself actually lends itself really well to community. And I think. It's not exclusive. It tends to be overhyped that like all Gen Z people are running to like date. But it did become a thing that people drank less and the opportunity to then go out, I. At least in New York was very centered and maybe the same is in Dallas.

The barrier to entry on seeing somebody is high because there's other things. There's traffic, and so you have to make it into something and so you have to make it into a dinner or we're going out drinking, and if you can replace that with something else, it has to be worthy of your

Chris Detzel: time or mass.

Sometimes in the running club, we have this Thursday night kind of group that gets together and during the summer we will either hang out and not run at the local trail or. We'll just get a local bar.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Especially when it gets cold, yeah. Or rainy and nasty outside. So anyways,

Michael Mazzara: a great way to experience the city.

Like I think, Dallas is huge, but in Austin you can [00:13:00] run from one side of the city to another and experience every different type of local bar. That's hard to get to. And I feel the same way about any sort of running and travel that when I would go to Mexico City. They would go run in that park, but not to that park.

And I was like, what's wrong with the streets? And then I went to Japan for my honeymoon and I ran around Tokyo. And the difference between walking a city and being in an Uber on a city is very vast in terms of a peak inside. What that local city culture is like. What does it look like to eat breakfast in Tokyo?

Amongst a bunch of Japanese people. And I think running is that beautiful, like that middle girl where bicycle, you have etiquette, right? Am I on the sidewalk? Am I not on the sidewalk where running? I think is that real? It's like a grassroots, you're in the scene without. Being too die tied down to it.

And if you can do five or 10 miles within a city center, man, you're really feeling it. You like see every part of what's going on the inner working. Sure. How these cultures exist.

Chris Detzel: Unless you're [00:14:00] racing, if you're in a race, then you're probably not even paying attention. You're just trying to get through the race.

Michael Mazzara: You're just, you're crying the whole time and you're worried about your nutrition and yeah. It's like a fake experience of a city because people come in for it. It's all barricaded up. You're not actually getting the experience of what it's like to be in Dallas and it's different. But I think each race is indicative of the running community or culture because the people too try to build courses around what's unique about that city.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. So let's get into that. I'm interested kind of in the experience, the runnings. My wife and I have done a few things in the past, and as a matter of fact last September we went on this trip to France and the Alps. It's a company called Run the Alps. I think, Doug got this great experience.

We went to Shaman and Sha Re or. Whatever. It's ran in the mountains in both Switzerland and France for five days. And we even did this Colorado trip a few years ago that was all in the mountains to 120 miles, one 20 or 20,000 feet of gain just [00:15:00] going from one place to another in Colorado, so we do love doing those kinds of things, and it was the experience about.

You, the French trip was more about the experience of just running in the Alps. And different kind of, you go to different things, you get to go kinda, I forget what they call 'em, but you go to the top of the mountain and they have this place where you can, eat a lunch and have a coffee and eat some sweets.

And that was, part of the whole experience. And then you go back down the mountain and, it was, it's this luxurious ish. Kind trip, but for running every single day in the Alps, and yeah. And I know that, that was not about racing. It was just about, running and the Alps and doing crazy things.

They'd kinda, people were about your fitness level, which was crazy how they did that. It's cool. This really this cool guy that, we had two guides. One of the guides was used to be an elite trail runner, and you could tell like whenever he had run, he was just like, like a, one of those animals that just go anywhere in the mountains.

It was like, damn dude. Like his name's Gideon, but and then they had this cool dinner, with Doug and all the, some other people that were, people that were help. [00:16:00] I don't know what they were doing there, but there was some executives or whatever there. But I got to sit down by, Doug had this long conversation 'cause he's, he's a journalist and all this stuff, so it was really, for me, it was a really great experience, and I think that's what Rogue is doing.

Right? Rogue expeditions. Tell me more about that. You acquired them back last year, right? And then they've been around for 12 years. They, and then you bought them.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Maybe I'm going too much in there, but look, I love these ideas and as a matter of fact, I was looking at the Patagonia trip.

My wife and I were like. Think about that later in the next couple years, yeah.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. I think like I was saying about the other, like Doug is ahead of the game in terms of, we've actually been around for about as long as he did. Rogue was started in Austin, Texas by husband and wife team. The wife was a former professional marathoner.

She won the Austin Marathon and full times, the husband was big into the outdoors rafting guide, things like that. And it made sense together with their combined skillset and. I think what Doug really did was he [00:17:00] became one within the shaman culture and UTMB over the last 10 years has gone from 2000 people entering for 2000 spots.

Chris Detzel: Trellis has exploded. Dude there

Michael Mazzara: for 25,000 people applying for 6,000 spots. They launched. OCC and a bunch of the different other verticals. And so even though if you're in trail today, you're like, another MP blanc like video series that comes out, but is, there's just nothing like it in the world.

So it's it's really unique and it's awesome. It's awesome. You've had the experience and I've told Doug this before, is. I view him as really having that ownership of that market. I think other people come in and they try to produce the same tours from a lower price point, and I think that's okay.

'cause a lot of people don't have attachment to run the Alps and don't need the prestige within the trail community that he has. But for me, I think I would do or go to Shaman maybe like once in my lifetime. Yeah. And then I think the rest of the world. That is interesting. And if you look [00:18:00] at the greatest mountain ranges in the world, the people talk about the Atlas Mountains, they talk about torso pain, national Park in Patagonia and talk about if you've ever been to Iceland before, it's like going to another planet.

There's I heard about

Chris Detzel: that.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. Ava Rock everywhere next to glaciers. It's phenomenal. And so the idea is. When you can travel to another country and you're a runner, often what happens is if you have a non-running spouse or if you're a runner, you fit in runs, you're on all trails and you're like, okay, like Reikis interesting and can we go to this neighborhood?

And then you check all trails or Google Maps and you're trying to see if there's like you like drop your pin into that. Corner and you're like, is that sketchy or is there graffiti? Is that, is graffiti normal? And then that's just the city where there's like really good infrastructure for figuring out how to run.

And then if I told you, Hey, if you go to Iceland, you have the most pretty thing that you could run around. It's not Reykjavik, it's actually at the top of a glacier, or it's just like massive waterfall that's like hundreds of feet tall and do you wanna figure out how to get there and where to park your car?

Or how to take the [00:19:00] ferry to this other island that has six people and sheep that live on it? And do you wanna run around that island? Do you wanna figure out how to do that yourself? Or there's a company that's been doing it for 12 years. We go and spend a week in Iceland. We meet a bunch of Icelandic people and runners.

We meet an on the ground tour operator that usually does it for hiking or rafting or something like that. And then we teach them the ropes about what we need for a trail running trip and what's specific about it. We go run all those trails. We try to assemble, we anchor each trip in saying, this is a country and we're gonna pick the best running routes.

You're also in that country. So it's not just about being in the, like running on the trails of the Atlas Mountains. It's about being in Morocco. So expect to have a tea ceremony with our tour partner and his family in Morocco on each of the Morocco trips. And it's all these different things, doing the local

Chris Detzel: things.

Michael Mazzara: The way you could also describe it is like immersive, like cultural travel for runners. And [00:20:00] I think in getting into the business, that's more of the thing that I've learned is. That running as a service can be commoditized because a lot of people live in cities and a lot of people run. What are you offering distinctly that's different?

It's saying, okay, we cater to a specific individual or we know how to select partners, or we select hotels at a certain quality and we cater to people who come from the United States that have a certain set of standards. We know what they like. We know what immersive travel looks like for them, and it's never gonna be dicey or unpredictable or whatever.

You're not gonna feel bad. And also like the other thing that's hard, when you look at back roads or you look at Intrepid or all these big companies, you'll look at hiking trips. You'll get cycling trips, rafting, all the things. You won't see any trail running trips. And the reason is 'cause it's a lot more complex to produce these trips because you have somebody who's 65 years old and somebody who's 35 years old on the same trip, running at a se separate pace.

And when you're hiking, everybody's [00:21:00] together. We be a cycling, you have an e-bike and a regular bike trail running. People are like, I don't even know how this works exactly

Chris Detzel: on.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. And so for us, the thing is we have, I feel really proud that we work with our two lead guides. One's name is Kara, she's Canadian, she's an ultra runner, she's badass.

She's like our lead, lead guide. She's like our head of trips. And then we've got this guy Lynn, who does 15 or 20 trips with us. He's a Santiago or like Chilean ultra runner. And they, we have two guides on every trip, either one of them and then a second local guide. The lead guide runs the front, basically of the group and marks the trail behind them, and the second guide stays with the person at the very back of the group and does a swing.

So basically picks everything up and everybody falls in between. I'm sure on the opposite. It the same way.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, that's exactly what they did.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah,

Chris Detzel: it's, I think they, it's interesting on their guides 'cause I think they're more contractors than anything. And these guides aren't full-time with the company, from my understanding.

[00:22:00] And they go from guide company to guide company, and they're hoping to pick up, run the, they love run the ops, but it, there's different ones, and then sometimes they'll get person, like this one guy. He goes, yeah, I'm gonna first do a tour to this group of people that hired me directly 'cause of maybe run the ops or whatever.

And they were like paying him to go to Portugal and do this thing. So he had to do, so the point is they're interesting in themselves. To me, like I love just talking to 'em to understand their jobs better and how, how they, how do you make money on a consistent basis, for them it's doing different jobs, it's not a full-time gig at Run The Alps, for example.

It's just a, they do it for a season and then they go somewhere else for a season.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. I think thankfully for a lot of these guides you have to be wilderness First Aid certified. Yeah, that's right. Really hard thing to do. And then they also have a mountaineering. Type certification, which is also a harder thing to come by the hard thing.

Like we do trips to the Dolomites in Italy, which is probably the second most popular destination trail running destination on the planet right now, [00:23:00] by the

Chris Detzel: way. I hear it's their most people's favorite tour to e or thing to go do. So yeah, I think maybe that's an next one or something if we go back out there.

Yeah,

Michael Mazzara: We have these, you'll have to, you talk to me. We have a really good one. Generally, I think the Dolomites is just like spectacular. It's Italian culture. We do this thing where our, the assistant guide on that one has. Three or four generations have owned a hotel at the top of the mountain in, it's a Refugio in Italy.

And so that's one day where you actually can't take a vehicle to it. You have to fast pass or you have to take your belongings for that night. Cool. And you climb up to the top of this and then stay and eat dinner as the sun and the entire valley turns orange. And then you sleep there and then you run down in the morning.

That's one of the most badass things that you can do there. I think it's all it's really interesting that we're entering into this. I love Doug because I think what he's doing is it raises awareness for it because I think so many people wanna go run UTMB, but it's so [00:24:00] freaking hard. I don't know if you have, but I watched the Jim Wamsley documentary, the Wahoo one, where he's in UTMB and it is so inspiring, but he's also the best ultra runner.

Yeah. Ever lived, ever. And he is del by the end of this run, the middle of the night. And so if you, I have a friend that did it, took him 33 hours and he shredded his knees from mile 99 to a hundred and whatever. And if you think for a second, I'm anywhere interested in doing that, the answers you're wrong.

I'd rather go with Doug to go hang out and eat a blueberry cake in the mountains.

Chris Detzel: Me too. I'm not a, like my wife has done a hundred milers and things like that, wow.

Michael Mazzara: Amazing.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. But I'm not, we'll do epic trips. Yeah. But I'm not gonna go run a hundred miles in a day or however long it takes, to do it and, or 50 miles for that.

As a matter of fact, I don't even run marathons anymore. I run half marathons and, I'll do day long or five or six day long trips that are 20 or 25 miles, but not, I'm just not [00:25:00] a big. Ultra let's do all these things. I've done. A few 50 Ks and things, but I'm with you.

Like I'm not just too much.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. I think there's something really interesting that happens, and I think about this a lot because obviously it's the business, but when you, there's so many different types of exercise and when you grow up, people are, will tell you to go to the gym and you then learn that the people who are the most cardiovascularly or physically fit are like.

People whose physical activity was play to them and they were long distance skiers or they just rode their bikes or they rode or they canoed or something like that. And those were the people who actually reaped the greatest reward of like just loving to move. And I think that part of my journey was falling out of love with the fact that people told me like, you have to essentially go to the gym for, it was as if though.

If somebody said you were going to the gym, you had to compete in a bodybuilding competition. And I was like, what? And they were [00:26:00] like, that's just what you do. They give you a medal for not winning. You get a shirt that you sometimes want, sometimes don't, most of the time throw it away. And then you were like, what if I just wanted to do it for these other reasons?

They're like, I don't know, man. Everybody's doing this other thing. They're all competing.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Mazzara: I love, I really love the idea of just everybody can have their own event. I love that so many new people are coming into the sport. I love that your wife does a hundred milers. I love that a bunch of people buy Brooks Ghosts and it's a shoe that will wear for the rest of their life.

I think so many people, I. Are not so many people. I think it's a vocal minority of people that have strong opinions about what is and is not a runner and what is and is not okay. And I mostly just

Chris Detzel: feel that's all bullshit.

Michael Mazzara: Not important.

Chris Detzel: I think that, yeah I think that, people that run on the road or people that run on the trails, and I feel like, believe it or not, like I've been around trail runners for a long time and they're like, oh, those road runners, they, they just don't believe in whatever.

And I'm like that, that's not true. But we're just as [00:27:00] passionate as trail runners, just in a different way. You, I think that, but I love what you're doing from a, you're bringing this vacation like experience being outdoors, but still being able to go in and, go to the hotel, nice places to stay, when you're done and all that kinda stuff.

But it's really getting out there and join the what's out there in the world. And I like the idea of it's not necessarily race, I have to go and race this thing, and my thought is like, a lot of people here in Dallas, there are, one of the bigger clubs used to be called Dallas Dirt Runners, and they're still a Facebook group for them, but they're a little spread out now, and their own kind of different ways.

But they still manage that. But there's a lot of road runners here, a lot and lots of races and things like that. How do you convince somebody to say, especially in DFW, let's just say, this is really a cool trip for family or for, maybe it's not a family thing, maybe it's your buds or whatever.

Maybe it's a corporate thing. I kinda like it as a corporate thing, yeah. Hardcore people going out, doing some hardcore shit, but it's for, it can be for [00:28:00] anybody. How do you talk about it, and get people kinda interested because. I know for a fact it's amazing.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. I'd say most of our runners are roadrunners doing four to five, half marathons a year. If you think about the idea that if you live in Boulder, Colorado, or you have access to beautiful trails all day, every day, you maybe feel less of the need to be out and, in a kinda surreal, beautiful place. I think most people, it's a challenge with growing the BRI business in terms of how to articulate it.

But I think some people will think, oh, do I go on these things because I'm not a trail runner? Or who is it for? And I think generally, if you're the type of person who goes on any vacation and tries to fit in a run, or you try to experience some of your trip through. Like running that this is the sort of thing for you a hundred percent.

And certain trips are harder. Like we go to Albania and if you're a we want [00:29:00] some. Mountain experience on that one. 'cause we have three back to back 3000 feet of climbing 10 mile or more days. But if you're going to Morocco or you're going to Slovenia, or you're going to Ireland or Patagonia, I.

We have vehicle support, we have shorter routes, we have everything like that. And nothing we're doing is overly technical that you're gonna have to go invest into a hardcore technical Solomon training shoe. And I think the other thing I'd say is these things are designed really to be a vacation and to like index on joy during running.

And if you have to go to bed that night and you are anxious about having to get up. The next day and do the run, get outta town. What kind of vacation is that you stressed out the whole time. So each thing is really designed to, we keep the groups intentionally small so that there's more customization.

And if somebody goes, I can't, I don't wanna do today's run, or I'm not feeling it, or I'd rather do something cultural or historical. Rad let's help you get there. But I think hopefully. [00:30:00] There's people that are just generally curious about having these bucket list destinations that they've always wanted to go.

They're runner, and they thought those things were mutually exclusive. That's like a, an important unlock. What I love

Chris Detzel: about it is that it is like a vacation, but you're active. I. All the time, right? There's always something to do. So even when you're, you, when you're done with that run, whether it's seven or 10, I don't know, however many miles it is going up and down the mountains, you get to see all this beauty.

When you're done, you're ready to rest a little bit, right? So you get an hour or two to rest, then you go to dinner, and then after dinner you're, you wanna go to bed, because tomorrow you have to go do it over again to see this amazing beauty. I'll just tell a little experience because you mentioned, we, we customize it to, hey, maybe the, maybe it's snowing that day.

I don't know, whatever. Maybe we will just adjust the schedule. One day. It was in September when we were doing the Alps. One of the trips we're going up the mountain at the high and it started snowing. Not just snowing a little bit, but just like crazy snow. It's [00:31:00] never, it never does that in the Alps at that time, but it did that day.

Luckily we had the gear and stuff like that and so you're going through these. I wanna say fields, I don't even know what they are because you can't see besides, big chunk of snow, all over. And so you can't see anything but white snow all over and hitting your face and the wind.

Oh, I'd say I was miserable. But, it's uncomfortable because here in Texas you're not used to stuff like that and trying to climb mountains, say climb, hike mountains. Run mountains. We were running and they were like, Hey, instead of going through this field, we could go this way or the, it is a little bit longer to go this way.

And I said my feet are starting to get really cold. I just wanna go. It was on the road, right? Like instead of in the field and kinda, and other people are like, no, I wanna do this. I like you gave us the option, so I'm gonna do this.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: And you guys can do that. 'cause you have two guides and then one guide was like one guide would go this way, but everybody decided instead to do, because I felt slightly uncomfortable.

Just, look, I don't like to be cold for long. Yeah, and the snow was just, I was like, ah, I don't like it. And it was hitting my knees, when I'm walking through it, and [00:32:00] so Point was, is a great experience. The guides are very open and look, it wasn't with you guys, but it was, sounds just like what you guys do yeah,

Michael Mazzara: exactly right.

I think, yeah, it's really a great product for people that are runners, need like the idea of some adventure in their lives and also are hitting the point. I've talked to a tremendous amount of people that aren't really in running media, like they don't watch runners. I. Or listen to any podcast.

They like the Des Lendon podcast and I, but I think this is the right place for it, where the identity group is runners and the I and people are passionate about their communities that they're participatory in. You don't really care about looking for elite performers. They're not watching conman like they think it, it's like it's.

Cool. But they are doctors and lawyers and they have families, and those things are really important to them, and running is a part of their identity group, and I think there's a part maybe like you've gotten to as well, where when people, let's say you're on the journey of racing, what [00:33:00] you index on, at least at the start is something that you feel like you can finish and so that maybe it's proximity and then maybe it's the ease of the course.

Then once you feel a little bit of confidence in that. You elevate to maybe I'm close to qualifying or getting a certain time that I really wanna get and I'm gonna index on a course or scenery type experience that's optimizing for either a race ca or that qualifying time or something like that.

Then. You hit this like third tier where you're like, ran Big Sur and I did Sedona and there's no other place I really wanna go in the US and maybe I go to like marathon tours and travel and see if I can do the Reic marathon. Like all of a sudden you start to just like. Cross into this chasm where you're really indexing on experience.

'cause you don't know what else to do with your running and you're over pring. You don't go all the way out to Revic to see if you could like PR that marathon. And there's other things you could pr look closer. That's not good cost. Yeah, a couple grand. So [00:34:00] I say that all because I think sometimes when I hear somebody articulate.

The stage of life I'm in, I didn't even realize I was there. I go, oh my God. They're saying what I felt without ever actually having to be there. And so I think one side is did you always feel a little mismatched from the racing experience? Number two, did you just get to a point in your life where the excitement around traveling to races starting to become.

A little bit less about the experience of the race itself and a little bit more about being able to experience different races, race, cultures, locations, vacations type thing.

Chris Detzel: You said it well, man, what comes to my mind is, as I interviewed lately, some really fast people that are hitting these, marathon in Boston and under three hours and stuff like that.

A lot of these people are very focused on race day. So like I was talking to a panel yesterday on a podcast and they're very serious runners. Three women run under, under 2 41. One of 'em is 2 34, one's 2 35, one's 2 37, [00:35:00] and a couple of guys running under two 40, so 2 37, 2 38. And when they, all of them said, this is when I go to a race.

So they're going to Boston. They're spending all this money on Boston. When I say a lot of money, it's a lot of money, right? Like you think about, nobody's getting, paying for your airfare, nobody's paying for your hotel, nobody's paying, all these things that you pay for. It's probably four or $5,000 just to do that, I went, my wife went, she does, she's done 12 Boston marathons in a row, you're paying for that experience, but they're serious and they're not being able to, and maybe they do it afterwards. But during that time, they're not experiencing the whole entire atmosphere.

They're just doing that race and trying to get a whatever the time is. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to hit the 2 34, whatever to what you're talking about. They'd go around doing this at Chicago and New York and Berlin and London and Tokyo, et cetera. It's all the same, and and there's something awesome about it.

I'm not saying that there's not, but a lot of these runners too that I talk to, the marathon runners, not those particular ones, sometimes a little bit easier [00:36:00] for them to get in, but are spending on marathon tours, like to get into Tokyo or to get into London or whatever. You're spending $8,000, just to.

For one person. You know what I mean? And I'm like, okay, there's gotta be like, when you think of what you're giving people, like that's even more, right? You're given an experience that, yeah, it's expensive, but like it's. It's expensive for a reason, right? Like you're, the experience that you get, you're getting hotels a lot of times the food, you're getting the local guides and the guide there that have been through it and have done it and an amazing experience and safety and all this stuff.

But to me, like it's amazing to go into the Alps and see some cool shit that I've never seen, before. And like you said, you get me excited about this because it's just. It's a ton of fun and what you're giving to people is pretty amazing.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I also wanna reiterate that I don't shit on racing.

I love when I watch the quarterback series or the F1 series [00:37:00] or Yeah. Dance. I'm like, man, it would be sick to be a high performance athlete. Yeah. Very stressful, but if my body could do those things, what a joy on earth it would be To push myself. Absolutely. Limits if you worked your, I'm off

Chris Detzel: for competition, man.

I love competition. You

Michael Mazzara: worked your whole dang life to qualify. I have a

Chris Detzel: podcast now. I talk to people that compete because I can't compete like that.

Michael Mazzara: Dude, get I get in there.

I think the reason I, it's funny 'cause I think about how to communicate the value proposition of the, like the business.

And I think it's funny because humans in terms of marketing really aren't great at processing nuanced things. So it's oh, running trip. But if it's for you and who are you? And it things become very. When they become very binary, you can align them with people's identity.

And so you have to communicate in a way that allows people to see what part of their identity it falls into. And so if you feel disenfranchised [00:38:00] or mismatched with your race experience, then if I can communicate in that way that it's for you, then at least that's the opening for you to start thinking about it.

I think these conversations are really important for me and for the business because I think what we have is a narrative problem in the world that it just is not top of mind that people talk about this or know that it exists, and so begrudgingly people continue to do the same stuff over and over again.

Feel some sense of misalignment with it, and then that's the rest of their lives. I think that being able to serve as a vehicle for this message, I don't know if I'm the best person to do it. I just know I'm here right now and at least I'm starting and that's that's part of the equation. That, that, that's all I can just give it my best in that, but.

Hyped. I always try to do the 50 miler. So I'm I do like the idea of racing. I just hate actually racing.

Chris Detzel: You don't get to the race that much.

Michael Mazzara: I know. I know. It's not much to dislike. So at least for me, within my life, it hasn't presented the most amount of value. So [00:39:00] hopefully that resonates with people.

I think that would be. And honestly, if people have questions, I think for this group of people that are probably really well aligned and if they feel curious or passionate, I would just say my email isMichael@rogueexpeditions.com. He can email me direct. It's Expeditions with one E, so R-O-G-U-E-X.

There's another one. That guy has hunting trips and seems like a really nice guy, but we don't do hunting trips. We do running trips. If anybody wants to get in touch with me. You could just email me directly.

Chris Detzel: Ma this has been really great. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing that experience and kinda what you're doing.

And, I feel like I could have talked talking to you for another hour or so, but maybe it'll come on again, but anything that I missed that you wish I would've covered?

Michael Mazzara: No, I'm gonna ask you one fun question that I like hearing people's answers to every once in a while. It's not running related, it's just a general what's something that you think a lot about?

That you don't get the opportunity to talk a lot about?

Chris Detzel: I don't know, man. I'm a talker and I feel like I'm in an interview right now. I think a lot about, nobody wants to hear about what I do for work. You and I [00:40:00] think about work a lot, but I also think about how to, I. I built online communities for a living and done it for a lot of companies and and then even events and things like that.

But I try to push that out to my personal life. So running is the piece I push that out to, so whether it's creating content or getting people, connecting to the community, I. Kind of combine my work life with also my so I probably do talk about it too much, but I don't necessarily talk about how I've got there and what I've been doing for all these years.

But I think about it all the time, and so I think about retirement, and five years, six years, it'd be really nice to retire and close. Yeah. So I think that's, those things don't necessarily. Know, I might tell some people, that's a big one. I don't know if that answers the question, but

Michael Mazzara: Yeah, it does.

I just, I think as. We have our spouses and they get sick of listening to us every once in a while.

Chris Detzel: For sure.

Michael Mazzara: And sometimes some of us are fortunate enough that we go to therapy and we talk about stuff with our closest confidants. Our parents don't really want to hear, at a certain [00:41:00] point you kinda, I.

Talk to them about the things that they like talking about. And then you know, your friends, you move to a socially level acceptable of catch up until you do some meaningful like coverage, but you don't get to the things that you sit and ruminate on a lot of the times. I think that there's not often a forum for people to unlock parts of their brains that sometimes just sitting dormant and sometimes becomes a nice thing to talk about every once in a while.

So that's more just an open.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, it's an interesting thought. I appreciate you asking that question. Just being put on the spot there, it wasn't necessarily the best answer, but it was intriguing. I like that.

Michael Mazzara: Yeah. Ask your future guests, see if you get anything interesting. I

Chris Detzel: think I might.

All right. Thanks everyone for tuning in to another DFW Running Talk. Please rate and review us. Until then, mass, thanks again for coming. Thanks so much for having us.