S8E12 -- Ohana Guest : Ted Lomicka | Triple Maui Nui Ultra Swimmer

Nearly 24 hours in open water changes what you think you know about fear, focus, and what you are capable of. Ted Lomicka joins us from Franklin, Tennessee to tell the story of completing the Triple Maui Nui, a nonstop three channel swim from Lanai to Maui to Molokai and back again. Ted describes starting in a thunderstorm, navigating bioluminescent “stars” below when clouds hide the real ones, then facing cold brackish water near Molokai alongside the threat of a shark fin. At his lowest point, a captain’s short question reframes the choice and gets him moving again. On the final leg, sensory deprivation gives way to awe when a baby humpback whale swims beneath him and meets his eye, a moment that turns endurance into meaning and seals the lesson: dream big, live the dream, and share the dream.

Ted is also a healthcare executive and an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University, so we zoom out from the ocean to the real world impact of innovation leadership. We dig into ambient AI scribes in healthcare, how AI drafted notes can improve physician patient communication, and why giving clinicians 30 to 90 minutes back each night can boost satisfaction, retention, and outcomes. Along the way, Ted shares how he evaluates new ideas: technologically feasible, clinically relevant, financially viable, and scalable, then pilot small and iterate fast.

The heart of our conversation is mindset. Ted breaks down the framework behind his upcoming book, First Of Five: The Five Hammers Of A Do Anything Mindset, forged in ultra distance triathlon at the Anvil race series. We unpack the hammer of passion, humility, mindfulness, equanimity, and transcendence, plus the idea of overriding the “evolutionary governor” when your body insists it is done. If you care about endurance training, Ultraman, channel swimming in Hawaii, or performing under pressure at work, this one is built to stick with you.

Subscribe for more stories like this, share the show with a friend who needs a bigger goal, and leave a review so more athletes and curious minds can find us. What would you attempt if you trusted your mindset as much as your fitness?

Reach out to Ted on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedlomicka/

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ultraman Florida
• Ultraman World Championships
• Mammoth Endurance Anvil
• Triple Maui Nui
• Sebring International Raceway
• Vanderbilt University.
• Music City Triathlon
• Memphis in May triathlon
• IM World Championships
• IM Chattanooga
• Ecuador Eco-Challenge
• Alenuihaha channel
• Snowdrop Ultra

Shout outs and mentions in this episode:

• Natascha Badmann
• Michelle Lomicka
• Vance Poss
• Ivan Pancic
• Plato
• Marcus Aurelius
• Josh Kiecker  
• Michelle Cevicherria
• Jurand Czabanski
• Neil DeGrasse Tyson
• Albert Einstein
• LaToscia “LT” James
• Trixie Smith
• Dr. Steven Minaglia
• Andy Joca
• Katie Blair
• Terri Dietz
• Tina Neill
• Michael Spalding
• Jill Spalding
• Michelle Simmons
• Dr. Harry Huffaker

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Larry 0:28

Thanks, MJ. Today's office is one of those athletes who has moved on to even longer ultra speed tests with lessons taken from the 515 distance. If you are looking for something that still scares you, maybe one of his stories will inspire you to dream even bigger. They say that ordinary people can do extraordinary things with the right mindset. But today's guest is here to show us the actual blueprints for how that's done. By day, he's a healthcare executive and an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University. But when he steps out of the boardroom and into the elements, he transforms into a resilient endurance athlete with 35 Ironmans under his belt. We're talking about a man who finished Ultraman Florida and the World Championships in the same year and then took his exploits even further. He was the first athlete to complete the first five races in the Mammoth Endurance Anvil Ultra Distance Triathlon Series. Earlier this year, he made history in Hawaii, becoming the first man and the second person to complete the Triple Maui Nui, a nonstop three-channel swim, where he spent nearly 24 hours in the water, guided by the stars. And as you'll hear, some very special deep sea companions. He is currently writing a book on this level of performance titled First of Five, The Five Hammers of a Do Anything Mindset. He lives by the personal motto Dream Big, live the dream, and share the dream. Joining us from Franklin, Tennessee to help us hammer home what's truly possible when you harmonize body, mind, and spirit. Ted Lomaika, welcome to the podcast.

Ted Lomicka 2:10

Larry, thank you very much. It's an honor to speak to you today. And certainly I'm really excited for your vast audience and things that we can share with them.

Larry 2:19

Oh thank you for taking the time. We we appreciate it. This this Maui Nui uh is something that we haven't had on the podcast before. So this is going to be a great story to hear for sure.

Ted Lomicka 2:30

Very cool.

Larry 2:31

Yeah. So uh I said you're from Franklin, Tennessee. Now, can I assume that that is named after Ben Franklin?

Ted Lomicka 2:38

Ah,

Nashville Life And Racing Cars

Ted Lomicka 2:39

that's a great question. I I know it as a suburb of Nashville, and Nashville is you know regarded universally as an its city. It's one of the funnest places in the United States. It's actually the Bachelorette Capital of America. Las Vegas still holds the best bachelor parties, but Nashville can throw a phenomenal Bachelorette party.

Larry 3:00

Yeah, I've been to Nashville before, and I definitely saw a few of those when I went through town. Well, given that geography, it it leads me to wonder a little bit, how does a guy living in Tennessee get to drive his car around Seabring International Raceway? I understand that's a hobby of yours.

Ted Lomicka 3:18

I I love that. I really do. You know, I I love intensity. And uh, you know, my one of my many sidekicks is sports cars. I've always loved them. And so more recently, I've taken to the racetrack and the drive down to Florida that I drove down in basically a street legal race car, uh, and and then had two wonderful days on the racetrack at Seabring, uh, which is if anybody saw the movie Ford versus Ferrari, there were three epic races: the 24 hours of La Mans, 24 hours of Daytona, and the 12 hours of Seabring. So I can tell you, driving an automobile at high speeds around that track is really incredible. And I had a uh professional coach that was in my passenger seat, and he would shout to me through the microphone. And yes, we did have to have microphones. The fact we're just about uh 18 inches apart, we still could not hear each other because the engine was that loud. Oh, wow. And so he said he said to me, he said, Ted, full throttle. Can you hear me? Full throttle. So that full throttle, it's been a mantra for my calendar year 2026. And so far, I've done a pretty good job with it.

Larry 4:28

Oh, awesome. Yeah, that's that's a you seem to be a man who lives by motto. So uh maybe we'll get into a few of those as well. Right. Um, getting back to your introduction, uh, I saw that you were a graduate of Vanderbilt and now you're an adjunct professor there. Um what does

Teaching Healthcare Finance At Vanderbilt

Larry 4:46

it mean?

Ted Lomicka 4:46

She's got that right.

Larry 4:47

Okay, what does it mean to be an adjunct professor? Do you just kind of go back and teach one course once in a while? That's exactly right.

Ted Lomicka 4:53

I teach healthcare finance and I teach it to MBA students. I got my MBA there in 1998. I absolutely loved it to your full-time experience. And I guess if I had to say, what's my love language? It's business advice. Uh so it was it's really cool to come back. I got an opportunity in 2014 to be able to teach MBA students and also students getting a master's of management and healthcare. That second class is predominantly physicians and nurses, a lot of whom are professors themselves who teach clinic, clinical expertise to folks getting their uh credentials in the practice of medicine. It's a wonderful group. We go deep, we talk about the financial ramifications of healthcare. I spent Friday night um and all day Saturday teaching that class, literally. We started at 5, we ended at 9 Friday, we started at 8 a.m. We ended at 5 p.m. uh on Saturday. Me, me is the only professor. So, you know, that in itself is almost an endurance event of an intellectual nature.

Larry 6:00

Absolutely, yeah. Um, so are you the creator of the course as well? Did they come with you?

Ted Lomicka 6:05

I have total discretion, total discretion with the creation of the course. Um, I'm a you know, financial expertise is my background. At one point for my company, Community Health Systems, I was vice president and treasurer. Um, and I had the opportunity to help them refinance $10 billion in a single year, which was a lot of fun. And now I help them with innovation. So, you know, I bring that action that I have for business, for healthcare, and for finance. And the next is I get to teach that to the next generation of really smart, enthusiastic men and women that are ready to make their uh bold career moves and do big things in healthcare. So that's how I expand my purview and help other people have success. And that's part of my legacy. That's that's my dream.

Larry 6:52

Oh, that's awesome. That's great. And I guess nowadays, when we're talking about uh finance and and health, there's got to be an AI component in there. Is that fall under your course at all? Or is that gonna be in another Well, we talked about it.

Ted Lomicka 7:08

It's one

Ambient AI Scribes And Better Care

Ted Lomicka 7:09

of the first things I talked about, and I'm actually doing that. One of the things we're doing at community health systems, we're delivering ambient AI capabilities to our physicians, which you can think of it. We used to have human scribes for some of our physicians, and now we'll have an AI scribe for essentially all of our clinic physicians. Yeah. And then we'll have that same capability for our emergency medicine physicians, our hospitals physician. The AI will draft their note, the physician will review that, the physician will edit that, and the physician will approve it. So it's it's an augmentation of human capabilities. It gives them their time back, it gives them anywhere from 30, 60 to 90 minutes back of their own personal time in the evening so that they can spend more time with their friends and family, and they love it.

Larry 7:52

Yeah. I I think I was listening to a freak economics episode recently where they were talking about that and they were saying that it was the time that they're getting that they can now put back into patients, or I guess into their free time if they're taking away their free time to do it.

Ted Lomicka 8:06

Yeah. Two things that are beautiful about it. One, they make direct eye contact with their patient, and because they want it in the notes, they describe everything to the patient in terms of what they're thinking for the diagnosis and the prognosis, and the communication is wonderful. The patient walks out of there thinking, I've never had such a great conversation with my physician. They really care about me, they understand me, and I'm gonna listen to them and do what they say. It's really wonderful.

Larry 8:29

Yeah, and instead of the physician who's listening but writing or typing at the same time. And oh, absolutely. That's great.

Ted Lomicka 8:36

Yeah, you turn your back on a physician. I mean you yeah, as a physician, you turn your back on a patient and you lose them. And and look, make eye contact with them, you engage with them, and it's a game changer.

Larry 8:46

Yeah.

Ted Lomicka 8:47

It codes for greater compliance and you know, we'll get better health outcomes. Uh, better documentation is is a wonderful thing as well.

Larry 8:55

So let's let's talk a little bit more about your full-time occupation then in career health services. Tell us, tell us what it is that you're doing as your as your regular full-time job.

Ted Lomicka 9:04

Yeah,

Innovation Leadership In Hospital Systems

Ted Lomicka 9:05

my regular full-time job at community health systems. We own and operate acute care hospitals and health systems. So we have 65 hospitals in terms of revenue. We're about $12.5 billion in net revenue. We're in uh 13 states. And I help champion innovation, which is a really cool role. I work with teams. And I have teams, and I am the conduit between our executive suite and the team working on something that will have a major impact for the overall organization where we're driving an improvement in patient care. We're solving for better physician satisfaction, physician uh recruitment and retention improving, and other important goals to us. So, you know, we ask ourselves questions like is it technologically feasible? Is it clinically relevant? Is it financially viable? Those are the things I'm looking for. And can we have an impact with it? Boy, if we get that. You know, we always start. We always start thinking big. Yeah. And then we we start small with a pilot project, and then we move fast by iterating these solutions and asking ourselves the question, is this truly scalable? Will it have the impact we believe it will? And if that answer is yes, then we broadly scale it. And that's what success looks like.

Larry 10:17

Yeah. When you are looking at your own life, and it sounds like you have a very kind of structured life. You're you live in an intellectual world. Um is that something that maybe led you towards seeking the messiness of doing ultra events? Is there anything that you need the yin and yang to balance there?

Ted Lomicka 10:39

Yes,

Why Ultras Create Compassion

Ted Lomicka 10:40

there really is. And you know, I'm I'm a strong practitioner. I want to really understand deeply um the mind-body balance. That's that's something that's always been passionate to me. But I mean, you look around uh and and you say, I'm in a temperature-controlled environment. It's 72 degrees all the time. It's absolutely wonderful. I'm incredibly comfortable. And I'm also, if I were to only do that, would I have to ask myself, would I be truly fully human? And so we have these opportunities to really pressure test ourselves through endurance sports. And I think in doing that, we learn so much about ourselves. We learn so much about life when we do that. And the result is we've experienced what some people call suffering. I prefer to call it distress because we can stop that at any time. Yeah. But it gives us something called compassion. And that's one of these intangibles that we walk away from after completing these bigger races. The bigger the races, the bigger that impact is. We go through this personal growth. It's just so beautiful. It's it's bigger than simply running circles in parks, as I've done many, many times over at the anvil.

Larry 11:51

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you you talk about this growth mindset. Um and in researching before doing this conversation today, I saw that one of the things for you was to rebel against your father's fixed mindset. Um can you take us back to like maybe when was that turning point for you? When was the moment you realized that ordinary is not what you want?

Ted Lomicka 12:16

Yeah,

A Childhood Lesson On Mindset

Ted Lomicka 12:17

I was nine years old. And and I had well one year prior to that, um, we had a health, we had a country club that we belonged to, and they had a pool, and the pool had a deep end. And I remember inching myself over the wall and going deeper and deeper and gazing back and looking at the vastness of that pool and thinking, this is so cool. I love this. I love being in the water. And it was one of the last days before the pool closed. And I'd stayed in there almost all day. The water was not fully heated, my lips had turned blue, but I absolutely loved it. And I told my mom, I said, Man, I really love swimming. And she said to me, she looked at me and she said, You can swim all day long. And I said, Do you mean that metaphorically? She says, No, if you wanted to do that, you could do that. And she said, We've got to get you on the swim team. So they got me on the swim team. And so now I'm nine years old, I'm on the swim team. And Larry, I'm absolutely terrible. I'm absolutely terrible as a swimmer. And I go and I'm in the 100, and the swim coaches recognized I didn't have much in the way of talent. And so they they snuck me on to the eight and under, and that's where I was competing. And we would I would do the 100 freestyle in a 25-yard pool. I would go up back on my third lap. I would gas out. Right. And and I would just try to make it. And it was my last meet, and and my dad looked at me and he said, as he described it, he saw the lifeguard step down from the chair looking at me to see if I need to be rescued. And he said to me, He says, Ted, you can't swim anymore. I said, But dad, I love to swim. He said, You're terrible. You're an embarrassment to spam. So I asked some other family members. I channel checked that. And I and they said, You love to swim, keep doing it. But that was the difference. I realized that was the difference between how my dad thought about things and how I thought about things. The club had golf. He opted not to be a golfer because he didn't believe he had a natural inclination to be a good golfer, even though his own father, my grandfather, was phenomenal at golf and absolutely loved the game. Um my mother took up tennis and he tried tennis. He got hit in the eye with a tennis ball, cut his eye. And he his reaction was, okay, no more tennis for him, no more tennis for my mother. So he couldn't golf, my mother couldn't play tennis, and I couldn't swim any of her members of the club. All we do is get together and eat, and it was nice. So I thought of myself as a bad swimmer. And it wasn't until I got to college where I took a PE, you had to take a minimum of two PE classes, Tulane was where I did my undergrad. And one was ballroom dancing, and the other was swimming. And the instructor measured how well you did from where you started to where you ended the class. Well, I started as horrible as I was when I was nine years old. But I ended the class, which at the time was a beautiful S-stroke with that reach and roll, that pivot, getting up on my side, and I learned a lot from that class. And I actually realized I love swimming.

Larry 15:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, is you can learn it.

Ted Lomicka 15:24

It's a growth mindset. People can learn, they can learn things. If they love it, keep at it. You're gonna get better.

Larry 15:29

Yeah. And is that about around the same time when you started to take up Iron Man then? Because you started around 2006.

Ted Lomicka 15:35

So Iron

Ironman Volume And Ultraman Calling

Ted Lomicka 15:36

Man was much later in life. Yeah. I mean, you go and I I looked at it and I said, it was 2022 when I started getting into triathlon itself. And I would do my favorite race was Music City Triathlon. And I liked another one, Memphis and May. And you know, that era, uh, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, Memphis and May was where the big names for the world championship they showed up to the race. And I'll never forget a conversation I had with Natasha Badman, um, Swiss Miss, and she was telling me about her cheetah, which was her carbon fiber bicycle. And I had this great conversation. I was so excited. I told my wife, I said, Michelle, I met Natasha Badman, and she told me all about her cheetah. And she says, I don't even know what that is. And had such a, you know, such enthusiasm. So years later, at the Iron Man World Championship in 2016, I'm doing the event. My wife volunteers, she works a couple extra hours because she she's an athlete catcher, she can only catch the women. And one of the women, she misses catching Natasha Badman in one of her last races by just two people. And it just, you know, full circle, right?

Larry 16:55

Yeah. Oh, that's great. And and so you you've you've done, I said in the introduction, 35 Iron Man races.

Ted Lomicka 17:04

And like most I've done 35, yeah, Iron Man branded Iron Man races, and I won shy of an even three dozen. And so, gosh, you know, I really hope Chattanooga 2026, Iron Man, September. That's that would be uh the capstone in that in that quest to get an even three dozen.

Larry 17:26

Oh, great. Okay. Well, you now you're you're getting ahead on my questions because I want to ask what's coming up, but you're jumping ahead on me. Um but like like most Iron Man athletes, um at some point you start, well, what's bigger? And and you find out about Ultraman, you uh you take off to Florida again and and participate in Ultraman Florida. And uh it was a fairly big, big field that year when you did it. Um I I was looking at your results right now, and uh it it looks like you're you know you're that mid-pack guy, you're you're doing great in the in the results, yeah. Um, and then you moved on to the world championships in the same year. Uh I did. Swim slightly slower as it is in that uh swim. Um but but you you became the last official finisher at that race. I was so tell me go you go back to Florida first and then and maybe the the world championship. Tell me some of the the highlights of what what you took out of that that's that's leading you now into the the five hammers too.

Ted Lomicka 18:33

Oh, you got it, you got it. And so, you know, I'm my athletic ability is absolutely ordinary, right? And I've been able to do some extraordinary things, and that's attributable to my mindset. I really loved when Iron Man came out and said, we have a legacy program. And our legacy program is if you do 12 Iron Man branded finishes, we're gonna let you in the big show. You'll get into the world championship. Right. Yeah. And I was training with some buddies of mine, we were really into that. That sounds wonderful. So we upped our ante instead of doing one a year. We started, I started doing two a year, sometimes three a year. I had one year, I did four a year. Uh it was just a little too much travel, a little too much expense. Um, Iron Man became my quarterly test of fitness, which was really cool, but it was just a little too demanding. Yeah. Um, so I dialed that back. But I went and I did that, the Iron Man World Championship, and that was a highlight, and I loved it. You know, five years of just building those. That actually was my 21st Iron Distance trathlon when I finished that. Um, and it was epic, as it is for everybody that gets a chance to do that great race. And I realized, you know, with the legacy, they give you one chance. You can't come back with the legacy. And so I looked at it and I said, I love this experience of doing this epic trathlon, this world championship in Hawaii. And I'm locked out. I can't go back to that. What else do I have as an option? And that's where I stumbled on this other race, this little-known ultraman, which your audience knows incredibly well, so many of them have lived in, and it's just remarkable. Um, and I looked at it, and there was, as I was reading about it, they said that this race will challenge you physically, mentally, and spiritually. And I looked at that and I said, fantastic. I'm really worried about the physical aspect, but that's only one third of the race. And maybe these other two things, maybe that's where I can really excel. And so I was really jazzed by that. And and I, you know, lo and behold, I said, I'm gonna try it. My very first Iron Man was in Florida, so it just was fitting for my very first Ultraman to also be in Florida. And I had a great time, really gelled with the crew, um, had a wonderful crew, loved the experience, finished the race, which was incredibly remarkable for me to be able to get across that finish line. That was the longest run I'd ever done in my life, that double marathon. Um, and I picked the best runner, my good friend Vance Foss. Um, and his legs were feeling pretty weak at 47. I had him riding the car. So, in my own effort, I could do the last part. But it did, you know, leave a question in my mind. The best runner I know is in the car right now. You know, how am I going to do in the next seven miles? And I did really well, got it under that threshold. Um, and then went to the big show in Hawaii and absolutely lived a dream. I've I spent so much, you know, it it occupies a lot of space in your mind. It's a lot of real estate, and there's not a single day of my life that's gone by since I finished that race that I don't reflect on a moment of those wonderful experiences of swimming, biking, and running in that most epic of races.

Larry 21:41

Yeah. Well, when you when you think about the the spiritualness of the Hawaiian island as well, what what are the the really lasting memories? What are the stories that you you find yourself telling over and over again about doing that race?

Hawaii Moments That Still Echo

Ted Lomicka 21:55

Yeah. I mean, when I was swimming in the water and the sun peeked out over the top of the Volcano and the beams of light hit that beautiful blue water and they go down and you're you've 200 feet of visibility. So you can see these beams dancing and moving in that shimmering water as you go. And I said, I know that's music. I know that's music, and I know that's a beautiful sound. And it's such a wonderful feeling to be swimming here about a half mile off the shore on this 6.2 mile journey to parts unknown. And it was so cool. And I thought, Did me beach, this is where we start Iron Man. And I remember turning around at Iron Man and coming back, but I really wanted to continue. Here I get to continue. And we get off our bike, we ride our bike, and we like kid you not, as you know it, we ride out the side of the volcano. Yeah. And it's the coolest thing.

Larry 22:48

Well, over the past few years since COVID, you've been very busy taking on marathon swims and the anvil races, um, which has inspired you to write this book and do the triple Maui Nui swim. The the anvil races are tied to your book. So perhaps we can discuss those first and then move on to this nice big swim and take you back to Hawaii again uh at that point. Yeah. So that'd be great. So your book is called First of Five, which was a slightly controversial topic around Ultraman World last year. But yours is built around the five hammers of the different race series. That's right. Yeah. Do anything mindset. Um before we break them down individually, can you just explain um what does the first to five in relation to the anvil race theories uh mean?

Ted Lomicka 23:41

Yeah,

The Anvil Series And First Of Five

Ted Lomicka 23:42

the anvil race series, um, it got its start. It was almost it was about a couple years offset. It's actually started uh around 1985, if I think, uh around that circa 1985. So we we were 78 for the Iron Man World Championship, but it's a group of guys, former military guys, and they said, Man, look what's going on in Hawaii. That's really cool. The distances they're doing. Let's do multiples of those distances. And I just thought that was such an outrageous idea to do multiples of the Iron Man distance, and yet they do it. And so it was it was the triple that really I heard of people doing the triple, and I said, that's incredibly outrageous. I would love to do that.

Larry 24:27

Yeah. So uh the the five though is in relation to doing like a single, a double, a triple, a quad, and the quint is that that's the five, right? You've got it right.

Ted Lomicka 24:39

And so the distances, you know, you start with the one, everybody knows that's 140.6, the double is 281.2 miles, the triple 421.8 miles, the quadruple, 562.4 miles, and then the quintuple 703.0 miles. It's basically like a half iron man without the decimals.

Larry 25:04

Uh so you've you've been the first person to do all five of those. That's that's what our first thing is.

Ted Lomicka 25:10

I've been the first person to do all five of those hammers in the anvil race series, which is the American race series. Yeah. So, you know, I'm looking to see if I'm the first in the world. I can tell you this there have been 29 men uh who have done the uh the um the 4x, the 4x. So the quadruple has been done by 29 men. So the question is have any of those 29 men done one? Probably, two, probably. Uh have they done the three and the five? I don't know. We're we're searching that. So, but I can claim the title for the first at the Anvil series. Um, they haven't hosted the quadruple uh that frequently. There were actually two of us, and I was able to get the win, and it was a wonderful experience.

Larry 25:58

All right. Well, that that makes it definitely very unique, and it gives you the opportunity to take that analogy into your books here. So tell us how did you decide to take the hammer analogy and place that in with your book?

Ted Lomicka 26:12

Yeah, it was really a matter of practicality. So Ivan Pantick is my one-man show in terms of my my crew. So he does logistics, he does race support, he does a wonderful job of finding how the strategy should change in terms of pacing um diet and nutrition during the race. He is just wonderful, but he also does the sports uh psychology as well. And so he comes up in these each of these races. I've showed up to the race and he says, okay, the mindset, what you need to get through this race is this. And it's been spot on. And I call them high performance affirmations forged at the anvil alter distance race theories, and there are five of them.

Larry 26:57

Right. Well, let's uh let's take a look at each each of the five hammers that that we have then. Uh please don't give away too much because we want people to get your book. But uh let's give them enough of a tease so that they're that they're interested.

Ted Lomicka 27:12

Yeah, I'll do that. I'll I'll give

Hammer One Passion And Purpose

Ted Lomicka 27:14

you each of the five ones. And so I named them. I gave each of my five hammers because at the end of the anvil, they give you a hammer and they have an anvil out in front of you, and you strike that anvil once for every multiple of the iron distance that you just completed. Right. I like to do them in continuous fashion. You can be doing one per day, but I like continuous. Right. And if you they say this, if you accidentally hit it with one more strike than what you did, they send you back out on the course. So you want to have that excellent precision and a really good means of accurate counting.

Larry 27:48

Yeah, you don't want that little bounce in there. No, you don't. Don't bounce that. Okay.

Ted Lomicka 27:53

Well, yeah. So the number one hammer is Yeah, the number one hammer, I named it the hammer of passion because passion is that that absolute skill that you have to have. And I've seen people go incredibly big with passion. And I describe passion as why that's important. It's the mindset that gives you the opportunity to harmonize spirit, mind, and body to optimize human performance. Think of that as flow state. That's passion. And you've got to have your why. That's passion. Yeah, you've got to have passion. The root word is suffering, right? And so you're gonna suffer that day. So, you know, you've got to think, you've got to have that why. That why's gotta be really powerful to keep you motivated. Passion for purpose.

Larry 28:35

Yeah. Well, when I was reading that title, I was thinking, is this your modern application of Plato or perhaps Marcus Aurelius in the Stoics?

Ted Lomicka 28:46

Is that is there something there for your your I almost think it's too, I almost well, I yes, I think that's right. I think, you know, when I look at myself and you know, going through this personal growth and development, one of the things I've wanted to be is, you know, trying to find, you know, let's be more human, right? Let's let's experience things like suffering and distress and let's manage that. That's an integral part of the human condition, and you know, in this wonderful, comfortable office, I just don't get enough of that. Yeah. And so, you know, that's what I'm after. But so, you know, is it stoic or is it emotive? I would say it's more emotive. That passion comes from a deep-driven emotive desire, and we can then channel that into the other facets. You know, what's the intellectual component of that? What's the spiritual component of that? Let's pull it all together and let's use that to drive us forward continuously until the job is done.

Larry 29:35

And and I guess that also relates back to the appeal you found in Ultraman because they said they were going to challenge those three things.

Ted Lomicka 29:42

That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct. And if you think about it from an athletic flow state, it's the alignment of those those things. You've got the mind, body, and spirit. When those align, the athlete can get into that flow state. And so you have to have that unifying passion that creates that harmony between all three of those realms.

Larry 30:01

And of course, with the Ultraman, you have a crew that's that's helping you out. And maybe this relates to your hammer number two.

Hammer Two Humility And Gratitude

Ted Lomicka 30:09

Hammer number two is the hammer of humility. You're taking a step beyond what we know as the Iron Man distance, and you're stepping beyond. And you've for me personally, look, I've seen people go all the way, I've watched people complete a DECA, which is a 10x, 10 times the iron distance on nothing other than passion. And it is absolutely beautiful to witness. But I needed something more. And so for me, that hammer of humility, here's how I describe it: it's an attitude. Give thanks and receive your positive mental attitude. Continually give thanks. Start with your crew. Thank them for what they do. They're there for you. There, it's their blood, sweat, and tears too. And they're pouring their heart out so you can have an opportunity to be here. They deserve a thank you. And a thank you from the bottom of your heart. And when you do that, you recognize that what they're doing is part of it. They, they, this is their win as well. This is their success as well. It's really important to recognize that and to give that tribute. But simply saying thank you, reset your mental state into one of appreciation that wires you for a positive mental attitude. The small things that happen that are big distractions that could start to build up as this wall of negativity never starts to form. If all you do is start with that sense of appreciation and say to yourself, I'm just so glad to be here. And I've done that on many races. And I've used these, you know, I use these hammers over and over. Uh, it was the quadruple where I was running so late at night and I'm on the course, and I've got, you know, just some phenomenal people that I'm running with, uh, Josh and Michelle and Gironde, and all these phenomenal people. And I'm just so delighted to be here with them. Their athleticism so dwarfs mine. And yet here I am, right there with them, step by step, and such a beautiful thing. I'm so fortunate to be here. And some of these things, like, yeah, sure, my feet hurt, but it's it's an honor to be in this presence of these great people.

Larry 32:06

Yeah,

Hammer Three Mindfulness In Motion

Larry 32:07

yeah. Well, um, moving on to hammer number three, it says, hammer mindfulness. Don't dwell on the past, don't fret on the future, just live in the moment. And now, right away when I read that, I thought of Neil deGrasse Tyson, who often says, We are prisoners of the present, stuck between the past we cannot reach and the future we cannot know.

Ted Lomicka 32:33

That's correct.

Larry 32:34

That sounds like the exact same quote.

Ted Lomicka 32:36

I love that. I mean, the man is absolutely right, and he knows it, right? Equals MC squared, right? So you've got Einstein that solved for this for us, but time and space, they are relative, my friend. And so you've got the past that we can't get back to. We've got the future, we can't step in there. They are actually there if you listen to what uh Einstein has told us. That's the even wild thing. We can't access them, but they are there. And yet, I kid you not, we still have free will. Um, and the other thing we can turn this into a mantra. You're absolutely right. You read it out in full, the hammer of mindfulness. Don't dwell on the past, don't fret the future, just live in the moment. Let me truncate this so it becomes a mantra. Don't dwell, don't fret, just live. Tell that to yourself over and over in your next race. Forget about the distance you've already completed, forget about the distance you will yet complete, stay in the moment. And you know, I use some of the I really love um physics. And so I use this concept. And my one, you know, there's this the human brain, you can think of it as three parts. You've got the subconscious, the conscious, and metacognition. And so, in the triple, in particular, it's so long and it just happens all at once. There's very little time to rest. I had 90 minutes, that was it. And it gets overwhelming really fast. And so, in order to stay in the moment, your subconscious will ask you, when will this race be done? And so I can hit it back with that physics construct. Never. This moment never goes away. This moment is eternal. Yeah. And just enjoy it. And then I I reflect, I said, at some future point, we're gonna look back on this moment and we're gonna be so pleased with ourselves from breaking through a barrier of what we thought was impossible. And we're gonna reflect on this moment and we're gonna try to relive that moment and as vivid a memory as we can. And I tell my subconscious, is this that memory? And if if we're experiencing it in all its glory, that's what we want to feel.

Larry 34:43

Yeah. And and I think that all ultra athletes have gotten comfortable with being in the moment, being with the pain, and actually enjoying recognizing that they're alive because that's the moment they're in. That's correct.

Ted Lomicka 34:58

And so we don't train so we don't feel the pain, we train so we tolerate it.

Larry 35:04

Well, I think that goes a little bit into uh hammer four, then. Why don't you introduce us to hammer four?

Hammer Four Equanimity Under Pressure

Ted Lomicka 35:10

I love this one. This is the hammer of equanimity. And so, equanimity, we want to stay cool, calm, and collected. We want to let distress become eustress. Use stress is a word we don't hear much of. E-U-S-T-R-E-S-S, good stress. So here's here's how I get there, right? It's easy to think of distress, bad stress, and it's almost feels like a lateral move to move bad stress into good stress. But once we've done that, we're still stressed. We actually then take it to the next level and we stay calm, cool, and collected. We just chill. And so I use this, you know, I was I had 11 miles to go at the quadruple, and Latasha James was ahead of me by more than a mile, just barely over a mile. It's a one-mile course, so I see her run by, and she was sponsored by Trek. She worked for Trek because Trek values her. The CEO of Trek came and showed up at that race with 25 people unbeknownst to her. Oh, they put a chart together, they took turns running with her, they they were so happy. And every time I passed them, I said, Congratulations. It was such a wonderful thing to see. It was so cool. Yeah. And Ivan said, I really need you. You can do it. You can get out. You can get out ahead. And I said, Ivan, I don't know if I want to do that. He says, Yeah, I want you to do that. And I realized he wants me to do that. And I said, I it's probably a smart thing for me to do because I need a carrot to run after. I can get this, you know, it'll be a finish, right? It's a two-person traff line. It's my opportunity to get a win. And and I think I can do it. The danger if I don't and I'm by myself and I'm running tight on time, if I didn't have a goal and I started to slow walk it, I could just simply allow that time to erode by. I may not finish. So I realized my best chance of a finish was to get the overall win, which is kind of a funny thing in triathlon. And when they get small, it can be real. But I remember sitting in the chair, I was resting my legs, getting a little bite to eat, and we were talking about this construct. You know, this is where equanimity happens. Calm, cool, and collected. There goes Latasha James and a crew of five people. And you can make it, and you'll pass her in about eight miles of the 11 miles that remain in this race. And I just sat back and I was eating my cliff bar, and I just took a few more bites, totally relaxed, realizing every second I wait is a second I have to run faster. And I was totally cool with the concept and got ahead and just in the last three miles. And it was, it was just really just an amazing moment to be able to finish that race to use that skill set. I did meet a, you know, at a healthcare conference, or actually, I'm sorry, a financial conference. I did meet a man who wrote a book. He was a monk, and he was a practitioner of mindfulness, and we did a wonderful job of applying it to business. So after he gave a one-hour lecture, I asked him afterwards, I said, What do you know about equanimity? And he looked at me and he said, Ted, I've heard of it. I said, Congratulations, my friend. You found a way to live 15 years in New York red-free.

Larry 38:34

Well, I think you know, you're talking about your corporate life as well. Yeah, in the corporate world, you would call that.

Ted Lomicka 38:41

Oh, I've got one more hammer.

Larry 38:43

I know. I we'll get to that ever. But in the corporate world, you would call that performing under pressure, right? Oh, absolutely. And and for you now, you seem to have adopted the idea of being able to be calm, cool, collect it. It's gonna carry over to the to the workplace. Where where did it start? Which one did you start to develop this this construct from this motto?

Ted Lomicka 39:08

It was really 2018. And the 2018 was a big break for me professionally. That was my pivot from going from vice president and treasurer to vice president and all things, special projects for the CFO that morphed into innovation. And so it was a different mindset and a different skill set. Treasury, it's transactional based, it has a strategic component, and then moving though over and pivoting into innovation, which is certainly very creative. It has its underpinnings in finance, but it takes a lot of creativity. More important, it's working with teams. And so it's a matter of being really effective and working with people, putting together teams and having everybody work at their best. And so I really put a lot into it to first know myself. And so I can better then know other people and appreciate that and find and tap into what they really like and appreciate. Um, you know, I had always led with kind of an intellect. And what I needed to do is realize I need, I need a second gear. I need to be able to lead with empathy. And so, you know, that ability to lead with empathy, so you've got more than one toolkit because sometimes that's a much more effective, usually that's a much more effective way to engage with people. Um, and and so I've learned how to do that, learn how to get really good, really fast at teams. And the fact that when I'm doing these events, I've got a team supporting me. You get beyond the Iron Man and you know your team really well. You know, Iron Man says, you know, thank the volunteers, and we do, but man, hug the volunteers at Ultraman, hug the volunteers at Anvil, hug the volunteers who've helped you achieve a swim that was, you know, a marathon distance. And so, you know, that comes really easy. And so, you know, learning these skill sets is is pretty good. You know, one of the things that that Ultraman really taught me is I'm running and I'm realizing in Florida, I'm totally dependent on my team. My physical well-being is in their hands. Why would I not? And they they tell you that, you know, they will disqualify an athlete if they're abusive to any member of their team, and that's so critical. But I can't imagine doing that when my life is literally in their hands.

Larry 41:25

Yeah. And and and uh you're seguing yourself well into your fifth hammer, then, where you have to listen to to that voice in your head. So tell us. Oh, it's right. What's your fifth hammer?

Ted Lomicka 41:37

Yeah,

Hammer Five Transcendence And The Governor

Ted Lomicka 41:38

it's the hammer of transcendence, and you know, that means it's override your evolutionary governor. And so, you know, when you're doing a 703-mile trahline, which for those who have not done it, I will tell you this is as hard as it sounds. And your body so wants to stop. And so it's a matter of saying, What does that voice in my head really want? And so it's it that voice is trying to keep you safe and it's trying to keep you protected. And doing a 703 mile distance trathlon is not safe, and that's not how your body stays protected. So it will tell you emphatically, stop. And then when you don't listen, it will try to trick you any way it can. And so that's this inner dialogue in your head, and you've you've got to satisfy that. I this seems kind of funny, but uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I love those. And so I had a box. They can you can get them 10 in a box, and I had two of them. So I had 20 of those sandwiches, and I had that in in Ann Village. Um, and it was sitting on my table of my food and where I have everything out there. Ivan Panzik, that's where he sits and hangs out. And every time that I pass by on the bike, I can look at that and I say, There are those sandwiches. So subconscious mind. We've got all the food we need. So yeah, chill there. We got this. And and it's this battle. And the other thing, you know, one of the things I kind of watch on the run, you know, my feet hurt, and I watch pain interval. And so, you know, one and two, largely we can ignore that. When it gets three or four, it's like, ooh, that's something more serious. But if you tell your mind and have that conversation with yourself, a lot of times you can go from four back down to two where that pain really is. Your subconscious can elevate that pain artificially. Um, and so just you know, those things are really important to have that sense of mindfulness and the ability to override our evolutionary governor. It's it's a skill set that we can rapidly learn. I was, and that's what I mastered on that race.

Larry 43:41

Yeah. And and I think the more endurance you do, the the the better you're gonna get at telling the difference between yes, this is the serious, I've got to stop, versus no, I I've got a lot left. Um, sometimes it might be your crew that are concerned about you and be like, oh, I don't. No, if he's to carry on and and you have to figure out like where you where you stand on those things. So obviously all of these different experiences, you've you've tuned in to to where your limits are.

Ted Lomicka 44:12

I tell you this, it was I was, you know, that the run on that uh quintuple, it's 131 miles. And I was getting pretty close to the 100 mile mark, and I was eating one of my Inquestable sandwiches. I dropped it on the pavement and I was like, I do want to eat that. I want to eat it and I need to eat it. And so I slowly reached over and I said to my friend Josh Pegar, I said, five second roll. He said, Yeah, five second, you may need more. And I said, Okay, 90 second roll. Took me a little while to pick it up. It's funny how the human body works. You know, the the muscles in movement, they work a lot better than the muscles that are not in movement. Yeah. Um, but that was that was a cool race. I love that. You know, we we literally saw the leaves of the trees change colors during the race. Oh, I had uh advice from a good friend of mine, Chris Stark, who's done a lot of the uh adventure racing. He loved that series. He did the Ecuador Eco Challenge, and he said, Ted, don't take time to shave, it takes too much time. You know, over the course of five days, that could be 20 minutes. You could run a little bit more than a mile in 20 minutes. And so I grew a beard during that race.

Larry 45:18

As you should, as you should. Right, right. Go through the setting. What what was the do you know the total time of that race for you?

Ted Lomicka 45:27

Yeah, I do. Um, so in that race, uh, I finished in 125 hours, 59 minutes, 49 seconds. So call that 126 hours. We had a total allotment of 132 hours to get that finish. Oh, and yeah, and it was really uh my good friend Trixie Smith um did a really, really impressive performance out there. And since I ran 131 miles, it was my intent when I finished to put in four more miles to get to the 135-mile mark. Because I mean, that's the badwater distance, right? And yeah, yeah. We know people that have done that, right? And that would be really cool. And so when I hit that hammer, right? One, two, three, four, and that fifth stroke, the spell was over. I no longer had the ability to override my evolutionary governor. And I said, I am so physically exhausted. I said, Evan, I I I haven't passed it. Get me the back of your car, drive me to our cabin because I am toast. I'm done. So I wasn't able to get out there, but Trixie Smith, I mean, the time elapsed, the time ended. They took down the finish line, they put down, took down all the tents, and my good friend Trixie Smith was still out there because he was going to finish what he started. And all of us were so impressed with that. He did not get an official finish, but he got a finish. And he was by far the athlete-selected champion of that race. And we all signed his hammer personally. It was just the coolest thing we'd ever seen.

Larry 46:56

Oh, that's great. Yeah. And we see that, of course, in Ultraman as well, where there are the unofficial finishers and the people that will go on to day two or go on to day three, even if they DNF one of the earlier days. And and that spirit of the racing is is always seen there.

Ted Lomicka 47:15

You know, it's really cool. And when you think about it, you know, you've got, you know, Aloha, Ahana, Kakua, those three concepts. You build a culture. And, you know, my race team, they've seen it and they're like, Ted, when I thought this, it sounded a little hokey. I wasn't sure. And and it, but it works. And we absolutely love it.

Larry 47:35

Yeah.

Ted Lomicka 47:35

It's so cool.

Larry 47:36

Yeah, it definitely sounds like something that came out at California. It's a hippie uh and yet it works, right? It works, yeah. So you've been you've been working on writing this book now for a while. Yeah. Um do you have a publisher? Do we have a publishing date? Do we know when it's coming out?

Ted Lomicka 47:53

We

Writing The Book And Dream Big

Ted Lomicka 47:54

we do not yet have a publisher, so I'm open to publishers that would like to publish this book. The date is I've got I'm working through chapters. There will be 10 chapters, there'll be a lead-in and 10 total chapters. Um, I'm working on writing chapter 10 right now. Uh so you know, I've got more than 90,000 words. Most publishers like a book somewhere between 70 to 80, which is a wonderful thing because I'll be actually condensing and teasing out some of the best parts. So it's in terms of authoring a book, I'm at a phenomenal place. Um, but yeah, the first to five, the five hammers of a do-anything mindset, when I think about it, you know, it's it's really um almost a book that really helps people discern what, you know, for me is really important. How can ordinary people do extraordinary things with the right mindset? And so the book really tries to tease that out. Most of these mindsets have really been forged in adversity, they've been proven in extremes, and I get to describe the mental framework behind what I regard as extraordinary execution, which is really predicated on having a phenomenal team. Um I think of it, we could also think of it kind of as a blueprint, a blueprint for high stakes performance with examples of how to commit deeper, take decisive, decisive action, and achieve lasting success in endurance sports, business, and other important life goals. And you'll see elements in that book that really codify my personal mantra. Dream big, there's a caveat to that. It's that dream has to be big enough to scare you. And then once you've had that dream, you've got to live that dream, and then you've got to share it with others. Because once we get to the point that we've done the things that have really given our life that sense of enrichment, we need to help other people live that same experience. And their dreams might be quite different, which is perfectly fine, but we need to help them in that regard. I'm at that point in my life where I get to help, and that's a really cool phase.

Larry 50:03

Awesome. That's great. And then your giving back is awesome too. Thank you.

Ted Lomicka 50:07

Yeah, I loved it. I love the opportunity to give back. And so if there's anybody in your audience that that took something away from this, as I'm sure there are, uh, you know, that's a that's a huge, huge win for me. It's one of the reasons I enjoy teaching so much.

Season Finale Preview With Scott

Larry 50:22

We will be right back to my conversation with Ted. But first, I want to give you a quick preview of what's coming up on July 24th, which will be the final episode of season eight. My guest in that episode is none other than Scott McDermott. Many of the listeners will know Scott from racing with him over the years. Here is a short clip of what you can expect from our conversation.

Scott McDermott 50:48

29 years old and I felt like I was 60. And I was like, this is garbage. Like, what have I got another way to do this? And I finally went to a doctor that just said, well, you gotta eat right and exercise and take care of yourself. Oh, I think I can do that. I joined a gym, met a trainer, and within five months I had dropped 40 pounds of fat from 18 pounds of muscle, and I got a sick pack, and I'll everything was different, everything was better. And then pretty soon there's just 50 people in the office, and they're all kind of like walking up to a desk, like, I can do that. Yeah, because at first they were making fun of Oh yeah, yeah, three tournaments getting out each sugar. Like they didn't believe it. But then all of a sudden, you couldn't help but notice. I was a completely different person. And so then I got my certification, so then I started working in a couple different gyms in the weekends and meetings, part-time. Um I loved it. And I went to a personal development course, like a Tony Robins kind of thing, where you walk on fire, we do all these things, and I came back to work on Sunday night and Monday morning. I was like, okay, here's my resignation. Two weeks from a Tokyo partner. And they were like, what are you what are you doing? My mom, what are you doing? My wife, what are you doing? Like, I'm on the top of the ladder on the wrong building. I can't. This isn't what I'm supposed to do with my life.

Larry 52:07

In July 24th, to hear Scott talk about how his life changed after that fateful day and what he's doing. Hear about some of the challenges he has met as a result of participating in Triathlon. Now, let's get back to speaking with Ted and hear about his ultra Maui Nui swim experience.

Triple Maui Nui Swim Overview

Larry 52:29

All right, well, let's get on to your your big event that you took on this February, the the triple Maui Nui uh non-stop swim. This is across three highly technical channels. It goes from Lanai to Maui to Molokai and back to Lanae. Um can you give us the uh the the breakdown of what this looks like, just so we're clear on what this feat is, um, and then we can kind of go into them leg by leg.

Ted Lomicka 52:57

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, this is a pretty arduous challenge. Um, we it is a swim, and and uh we decided to swim it, and I I took the advice, uh, the great advice I got from so many different people. Um, but Dr. Stephen Menagula, Steve, he gave me the advice. He's from the Hawaii Channel Swimmers Association, and he said the best way to do this swim is to start on the island of Lanai, swim to the island of Maui, swim to the island of Molokai, and swim back to the island of Lanai. So that's the approach that we opted to take for this swim. Um, it's incredibly technical in terms of the landings. The landing on Maui is absolutely beautiful. It's a picturesque beach, uh, Ka on a Pali beach. A lot of your viewers will probably recognize that if they've vacationed on the island of Maui. It's beautiful. Um, the the beach, our landing spot on Molokai was incredibly technical. Shipwreck beach is where we landed uh to conclude the swim at Linai. As the name implies, it was pretty treacherous.

Larry 54:07

Yeah. Okay, well, let's let's break these down then uh one by one. The leg one, the translation for ow ow is take a bath. Um you were doing a little more than taking a bath. How'd that first leg go for you?

Ted Lomicka 54:21

Yeah,

Leg One Storm Night And Stars

Ted Lomicka 54:22

it was pretty good. I would almost call this you taking a bath and taking a shower at the same time. Uh we we actually started in uh a thunderstorm. It started with a light rain, became a heavy rain, and then it became a thunderstorm. So, you know, this is what it looks like to really lean into your crew and accept their expertise because I had a 10-day window uh in which I was going to do this swim because I had, you know, I can only took two full weeks off uh from my work to go to Hawaii, and that gave me 10 days to swim. And I left it up to the crew to pick the best day. Well, I call this the calm between the storms because of that 10-day window, there was only a two-day window, really a 24-hour segment where the this the trade winds calmed down to the point that it looked even swimmable by a human. Okay. Um, and so, yeah, and so when the rain happened, I didn't really bat an eye because I realized I trust my crew so much that even the fact that we're now in the midst of a thunderstorm, this is still my best opportunity to finish the swim. And they told us, they were really frank with us. Captain Andy Joker, he said to us, he said, we're watching the lightning. If the lightning comes within five miles of where we are right now and strikes the water, the swim is over. There's no questions asked. And I said, You're absolutely right, safety first. We totally get it. He said, Good. Now that you've heard that, as it stands right now, the lightning is actually parting where we are and it's all around us, but it's really nowhere near us. And so there was one bolt that struck from the lead of the storm, and it struck within six miles of where we were swimming. But that was the closest bolt that came to us. So we had permission to continue our swimming.

Larry 56:10

Oh, yeah. And you you mentioned that when you're on this first leg, um well, you know, right now, before I get into that, as we're recording this, we just um as a civilization have witnessed the journey of Artemis. And and you you referenced this uh as part of the leg one of that overview effect that you get that the astronauts get when they get out and see the earth. Now you were pretty much in the earth, but you were getting this overview effect as well. Tell me, tell me about that connection that you had.

Ted Lomicka 56:46

It's really wild. I, you know, I've swam at night before, and for your viewers that haven't swam in the open ocean in the middle of the night, it's exactly like you think it is. It's very scary. Um, the first time I ever did that was off the island of St. Lucia. I was doing a really amazing swim on the western shore. And I had four hours to swim after sunset of what had been uh more than a 10-hour swim. I it was actually more than 12 hours in the total swim duration. But my good friend and swimming mentor, Katie Blair, for a short period of time, the rules will permit you to have a companion swimmer for up to an hour. And she jumped in the water of twilight as it started to get really dark. And I said, Katie, I'm so glad you're here. This will be my first time swimming at night. And I'm a little apprehensive about it. And she looked at me and she says, Yeah, it's really scary. I said, Katie, why do you say it's a scary? Oh, come on, Ted. You can't see what's under us. We're swimming over a coral reef. You know what's there? It's scary. And I said, I said, okay, but if she, former professional triathlete from Germany, turned marathon swimmer as accomplished as she is, if she says it's scary, fear is the right feeling. And so I had that, and so I knew. And so here we are at, you know, in the middle of the night at the ILO channel, in the midst of a thunderstorm, means we have cloud cover at night, means we cannot see the stars. And so, for again, one of the beautiful effects of swimming at night is every arm stroke that you take, you have bioluminescence from the phytoplankton that creates a burst of light. And it's beautiful. It's it's a vibrant blue light. And so you'll see that, and you'll you've got basically eight to 12 sparkles, and they look like shooting stars. So I said, All right, I don't have the stars up ahead of me in the sky, I have the stars down below. Um, I had a companion swimmer, Terry Deeds, who started with me. Um, the water was 74 degrees. Unfortunately, she got hypothermia and had to be pulled. And so you have a sense of loneliness without my companion swimmer. And so here I am, all alone in what feels like a starry night. It's easy to get disoriented where the stars are blue below you instead of above you. And I see the shoreline, and I've I've had been with my family when we'd stay at Annapali Beach, and you see the hotels, and I'm getting closer and closer. And it almost feels, as I'm getting closer and closer, that I'm being attracted to the beach almost as a gravitational effect. So it's really easy to imagine I'm an astronaut in space, uh, a sense of loneliness, a sense of solitude, and just looking at humanity and wanting to be a part of that, wanting to be part of the family, wanting to be part of my family on that beach, and having the moment of silence to reflect. That overview effect is you remember it and it changes your perception. I imagine what I'm experiencing in the water must be similar, but perhaps not as dramatic, certainly not as dramatic as our astronauts have experienced it. But I can attest from my own personal experience in that limited scope, it does feel incredibly real. There's a longing and a sense of, you know, a sense of a disconnect, and that creates this deeper longing to reconnect with humanity. Borders disappear, uh, disputes become nothing more than futile. And that sense of compassion is what we really long for.

Larry 1:00:14

Yeah, you you seem to keep coming back to that idea of the empathy, the compassion. It's it's it's a driving force for you. And I'm guessing um deep in your soul that you're you're you've been living this now for a while.

Ted Lomicka 1:00:28

I have been. I have been. You know, that's one of the things that I've really derived from endurance sports uh is this sense of connection. And, you know, you look at a lot of religions, and suffering is an integral component where people reach a deeper understanding of themselves and of other people. And you know, the root word for compassion, as I mentioned earlier, is in fact suffering. So there must be some type of connection there because I feel it is real.

Larry 1:00:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's move on to the second stage. Um, they they call the the Pailolo. Am I saying that right? I'm not with my Hawaiian, the the crazy fisherman. So I'm wondering, yeah, did you see yourself perhaps as Santiago from the old man in the sea who keeps going out every day, getting that training, but not getting what you want, and then eventually you get into the big fight with the fish.

Leg Two Cold Water And Shark

Ted Lomicka 1:01:29

I love that analogy. I absolutely love that analogy. So, yeah, I mean it's look, it's tough, right? It's 34 miles. This is a mile, a 34-mile swim. And you know, when I made landfall on Anapali Beach, I had had swum for five hours and 54 minutes before I immediately jumped in the water and started the Pailolo channel. And I'm swimming and swimming, and my gosh, it's it's just a lot of swimming. I've swam 9.5 miles in the first channel, and now I'm tackling an additional 14.8 miles. Um, this is a very, very long channel, the crazy fisherman, and they call it the crazy fisherman because it gets hit so directly by the eastern trade winds, which come in and typically blow 20 nautical miles per hour. We like to convert that to statutory miles to make sense of it. 23 miles per hour is how that converts to. Man, if you're riding your bike at 23 miles per hour, you're set up for a phenomenal race. I've never done it. Uh, I have my I have one Iron Man in my 35 where I average 20 miles per hour, but just one of those, right? So, man, that wind blows and it really upsets the water and agitates it and creates some pretty significant wave action. So it's a long slog. Yeah. Um, and as you said, uh I had a special, special uh set of events waiting for me at the end of that channel.

Larry 1:02:53

Well, tell us tell us more about that. What was the special event?

Ted Lomicka 1:02:57

Yeah, there are two actually. Um three, actually. So we get close to it, and you know, we're almost nine hours and 48 minutes into this particular channel. We're getting to the finish. We actually have to get out, step onto the beach, clear the high water mark, and get back in. But getting to that beach is a logistic challenge. Um, we're in a waterway that has coral reefs in shallow water that have protrusions like fingers. We're finding, we need to find a path into the beach so that the shallow water doesn't beach me and I don't get cut on the coral. Yeah. You almost liken it to navigating a labyrinth. Uh, if you like Greek mythology, there's a minotaur in a labyrinth I'll tell you about in a moment. But the challenge of it is finding our way through the maze. And here's the other added challenge there is fresh water that's running down the volcanic mountain, hitting the water at the beach and entering the ocean. Because it has a lower level of salinity and it's cold, it's actually able to stay on top. Cold water typically goes below warm water, but because of the lack of salinity, it's less dense, it stays on top and it permeates. And I'm a little bit cool at 74, the average temperature. And I can tell as we get closer, it's 72. And I can, because that's a perceptible temperature grade, it's two degrees Fahrenheit. The human body can perceive that. And you're like, yes, I realize that. That's cold. And then it dipped again. And I said, All right, it's clearly 70 degrees. It may be lower, but I will not admit to my body that it's lower because I don't want my subconscious mind to realize it's probably colder than 70 degrees right now because that's crazy cold. And what time is what kind of day are we arriving on the beach? Oh, it's it is not yet daybreak. So we're we're at uh just before the pre pre-dawn at this point. Um, I uh we're about 6:30-ish a.m. Okay. And we're getting closer and closer, but we have to go slow because Captain Andy uh Joka, he's trying to find the path in and he's trying to navigate, and we don't quite have enough light, and we're getting closer and closer. We're using some of the navigational tools from the boat. The boat told him the boat can't get close to us. So the boat told him over here, and then the boat takes off. And so we're the two of us, we're navigating, and as we get a little bit more and more ambient light from the sun that's not yet risen, the topography becomes a little bit more certain underneath us. Coral is incredibly sharp, and I don't want to get cut. And so Captain Andy Jacob does a wonderful job of finding me that pathway where I can walk out right out of the beach onto the sand and then clear the high water mark, which eventually I was able to. Do. But before I did that, I had this ominous sense. This ominous sense almost as if I'm being watched. Um, Molokai is such a beautiful island. Um, sometimes the people are not as friendly as you might find on some of the other islands. So sometimes I say Molokai, it's the opposite of Aloha. So, you know, I wondered if that might be some of the foreboding experience that I have, but I thought, no, maybe it's something a little bit more, a little bit more real. Um my boat crew was able to see it. It was a shark fin, and my my boat crew knows sharks incredibly well. I've got some phenomenal swimmers on that boat crew. Uh, and so they know what they were looking at. I'd like to believe it was um a bull shark because bull sharks love brackish water. In all likelihood, it could have been a tiger shark, but it was probably a Galapagos shark just getting an early bite in the morning. Uh so you know, clearly swam amongst that shark, at least one. And so there's the Minotaur reference, uh, Minotaur in Greek mythology. Uh, it's the body of a man, the face of a bull, the tail of a bull. And so, you know, the question is who's the menotaur, right? I've got a body of a man, maybe I've got the face of a bull.

Larry 1:07:13

Yeah, there was definitely one creature in that labyrinth.

Ted Lomicka 1:07:16

There was deciding who the monster was. Yeah, that's the challenge for us, right? All right. So when I'm on the beach, you know, that was that was the darkest moment. I come out of cold water and look, I'm uh I can hold my own with a shark because I can look a shark in the eye, and we can have that heart to heart. And and you know, I I've had to do that before um on one of my swims, not this swim, but another swim with an eight-foot hammerhead shark. Um, but the thing that's really important um is to also realize there's laws of physics that are immutable, and that's entropy, and that's what makes the water cold. And that means the warmness of my body is going into the Pacific Ocean, and that's something I can't control. And so that takes a toll, and I try to forestall that for as long as I could. But when I got out on the shore of Molokai, I said to Captain Andy, I said, Andy, I think I'm done. Look, I've swam two channels and I feel like this is complete, and I'm walking back in and I'm walking back into the water and starting to eat um one of my cliff bars. And he looked at me and he said, Ted, he said, think about how you feel right now, and then think about how you'll feel for the rest of your life when you finish this swim. And and that was just such a beautiful, short, concise speech. And from that, I start with my swim and I do one stroke of uh a butterfly, and then I start with a really nice, strong freestyle, and I set it. And now I can just, you know, think about and reflect on that moment. And I realize he's absolutely right. I need to do this for myself. But more important, I need to do it for him and everybody else that's on that boat, that's here with me, that's endured a pretty heroic night, um, thunderstorm, coldness, getting doused with the rain, being rocked at the boat all night long. And they're here and they're here for me now, and they want nothing more than to see me do this finish. And so the Kolohe Channel, I did that for my crew.

Larry 1:09:25

Yeah, and and I guess that's you know, you you overrode the governor on that one. Uh sure did, but it needed a little extra prodding.

Ted Lomicka 1:09:35

It really did. And I, you know, Captain Andy, I I gotta give you know credit where credit's due. He knew, and Tina Neal, everybody has funny rules, uh, roles on the boat, and Tina Neal was my feeder. And she makes sure I have the food, the water, and the nutrition and what I need. But she also knows because she's done this, she is one of the world's best Hawaiian channel swimmers. Um, she knew, and she told Captain Andy this. She said, when Ted gets to this island, he is mentally going to be done. You've got to say something to him concise, clear, give him the choice, and then hopefully, if you set it right, he's gonna continue swimming. Yeah.

Larry 1:10:14

And I've talked to other ultra athletes about this, and particularly when you're doing a thing like an anvil and you're doing loop and loop and loop and loop. Yes. Just having that finish of a loop every time you have to overcome. Now I gotta go do another one, right? Is that strengthened you to be able to get off that beach? It's like, yeah, it's it's a marker, but it's not the finish line.

Ted Lomicka 1:10:37

It's a lot of mental fortitude. It really is. It's a lot of mental fortitude. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. Uh, so absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I listen to people, and you know, I tell my kids this, you know, you get to choose your friends, and you're the average of your five closest friends. And so choose wisely. Um, and so, you know, on this triple Maui Nui swim, not only do I have Tina Neal, she's one of five people who swam a channel called Ali Nui Ha. That is a channel swim that goes from the big island to the island of Maui. It's 31 miles in incredibly treacherous water, where that channel instantly can just shift on a dime and it can be incredibly violent, tumultuous water. Um, and she's done it. Mike Spaulding is one of the other five swimmers who have done that channel. He was absolutely wonderful. He was our chauffeur when our crew flew from Oahu, landed on Maui. He was our chauffeur to help us get some food at the grocery store, pick us up. He drove us to the docks so we could take our boat ride from the island of Maui to the island of Lanai. After we finished the swim, he picked us up. He took us to his ranch on Maui. And he was, he and his wife Jill were just so wonderful and so gracious. And that's that right there is an absolute dream come true. To be able to meet a living legend. And for that living legend to serve us with such humility, it really means that the things that I have learned, he is embodying those same things, which is really proof. That's the proof of that concept that he he has done so much in the world of Hawaii channel swimming, and he's done that and found a similar path that I have.

Larry 1:12:22

Yeah.

Ted Lomicka 1:12:23

And I'd be remote if I didn't tell you, you know, one of the motivations for me to do this swim. Again, I was looking at really big things. In 2023, I swam the Kauai Channel, which is 28 miles, it's part of the Ocean 7. And it was a swim that I had dreamed about for many years. Um, and I knocked that out on my first try, which is really unique. It usually the world's best swimmers only have a 30% probability of getting a finish their first try. Uh, Terry Deeds was my feeder for that, and she was just so wonderful, so accommodating. Um, and she's a huge reason why I was able to finish that. Um, and on this particular swim, Terry started out by my side. Um, she was my uh tandem swimmer. And that cold water I told you about, she um got hypothermia in the temperature of the water, which was uh 74 degrees. And I'm so glad on that boat that I had an emergency medical technician to care for her um and to bring her back. When I finished my swim at the end, she was just incredibly helpful.

Larry 1:13:27

Oh, that's that's great. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's what the world of Ultra is about, where people are finding these like-minded souls and making those lifelong connections and helping each other out for just even just giving you advice for your next one or actually being there and and being on board with your crew, like it's it's the way it goes, and that's why people go back time after time.

Ted Lomicka 1:13:53

It really is. And you know, when I saw this, saw this starting out with when a new Terry would join me on this one. I had two ways to win. You know, one way was I finish with Terry by your side, and we both get out of the water together, and we both finish triple Maui Nui. My other way is I reach my limit, I get back in the boat, and I get to see Terry finish this race. I mean, it just you know, it it worked out where I was the lone finisher, but it easily could have been the other way.

Larry 1:14:17

Yeah. Well, let's get into leg three here. Um this this translates into the slowness. Now, I'm guessing being your final leg, you're many hours in, maybe you are moving a little slower, or perhaps you're just experiencing it slower because you want to take it all in. What was the what was the third leg like for you?

Ted Lomicka 1:14:40

We've

Final Leg Whale Guide And Landing

Ted Lomicka 1:14:41

actually got some quantified data for that, right? And so we count strokes, and so it's every hand splash on the water per minute. And so you know, the first channel in our ow channel, we start, and you know, the hand is hitting the water, and in the time span of a minute, I get 56 strokes, 55 strokes, 54 strokes, dead on consistent, right? Yeah, um, and then we get to the Cololo channel and we start getting into the high 40s, 49, 48, and then we're into the slowness, and then we see 44. So it lived after the billing of its name.

Larry 1:15:15

Yeah. How how often are you changing strokes while you're out there? Just uh change the muscle movements.

Ted Lomicka 1:15:23

Yeah, I love freestyle. And so freestyle is my go-to. And we start by tradition, we don't do a feed until one hour into the swim by tradition, and then we decided we're gonna do feeds every 40 minutes thereafter. So when they call me over to do the feed, and so I'm swimming beside the kayak, and then when it's time to feed, they call me over. They get my attention and they say, here's the feed line, we're dropping the line in. It's food on a 50-foot rope, right? It's in water bottles. I take all my nutrition via liquid, and I swim over to the boat. And so when I swim over, I do some breaststroke, I do the feed, I'm doing egg beater kicks so that I can get my hands out of the water so I can get the food. It's actually physically draining because now I'm trying to drink a fluid really quick, so I'm breathing as little as possible to get that fluid into my stomach as quick as possible. And then going away from the boat, I'll do the breaststroke and then I'll go back to freestyle. So that's where I do the change up with the breaststroke. Um coming off the island, really, uh, my captain thought it was really cool. But the reason uh on that second uh channel crossing, when I finished that on Molokai, the reason I started that where my very first stroke was one stroke of butterfly was because the water was shallow. I just didn't want to contact the coral. So I never did backstroke, so I did two, I did uh three of the four strokes.

Larry 1:16:41

Okay. Well, um when you are when you're getting into that final leg of it, you know, where where's the point where you're like, okay, I'm gonna make it? And and and how does that feel for you?

Ted Lomicka 1:16:56

The point at which I knew I was gonna make it was when I had 6.2 miles to go. And so my observer, uh Michelle Simmons, who is a frequent uh qualifier of the Iron Man World Championship. So a lot some of your folks may know her. She's a lot of fun. Um she shouted at me and she says, Ted, only a 10K to go. You do these all the time. I thought, well, that's beautiful, Michelle. That means I've swum 28 miles. And I've got six to go, six point two to go. And I thought, oh, this is gonna be tough, right? So professionals, they have an amazing ability to forget. And so here, if I'm gonna kind of step up into that pro realm, I've got to forget about the 28 miles I've just swam, yeah, pretend that didn't happen, and focus on the remaining six and just be in the moment right now, which actually feels pretty good.

Larry 1:17:49

Yeah. Well, again, that comes back to your hammer. You you you just gotta you just gotta live your live what you say. Indeed, indeed.

Ted Lomicka 1:17:58

Yeah, we're definitely overriding our evolutionary governor right now. Revolutionary governor is saying, man, you're toast, get back in the boat. And I would say, no, I'm good.

Larry 1:18:09

So it's so you're you're heading in, you're in your last 10k, you're you're feeling good, you're you're like, I'm I'm I'm I got a chance here, I'm gonna I'm gonna make this. Um but maybe there's still a little bit of doubt. Um, you know, that there's gonna be a hard landing at the beach, possibly. Um but you can take a sign. You can take a sign from from within the the depths of the ocean. What what happened out there that that gave you a little bit more uh enlightenment?

Ted Lomicka 1:18:39

Yeah, Larry, thanks so much for asking. So, you know, I know this is the last 10K, and you know, being a swimmer in the ocean, you you you lose a lot of your senses. My ears fill up with water, so my hearing is not that great. Um, I actually have the daylight is back out, and so the sun is back out, which is nice. And I've I can see 200 feet down in the water, but the ocean's 600 feet deep and there's nothing to see. So it's a lot of sensory deprivation. Um, but there was something that really, really cool happened. I'm swimming along, and since I'm a scuba diver, I like to always look for something kind of unique and exciting. And I swim over something that I don't recognize. I see something that's kind of gray and murky, and I say, well, that's gotta be somehow some topography on the bottom of the ocean, but I'm capturing a glimpse of something that's kind of white, blue, bumpy, big, and I don't know what it is. I say to myself, is it a sea snake? No, it's it's much too big, much too thick for that. And then I think, is it a severed tentacle for some kind of battle between maybe a sperm whale and a giant octopus or giant squid? And I said, No, the water's not deep enough for that, and so I have no idea what what it is. But I have looked and I've shown that I've got a lot of curiosity as to what this is. So, about two or three minutes later, I'm swimming along, and up from the depth, there's a large animal that comes into my range of view. In fact, I can tell as it gets pretty close, it is about 12 feet in length, and it's about 12 feet below me. Uh oh. And I look down at it. The first thing I think I think of myself is I've never seen a shark that looks like that before. This is a quite large shark, but something keeps off. And the visual reference was it kind of looks like a seven Boeing 747, but an organic version of it. And I looked again, as soon as it turned its head to the side, and I said, Oh, I know what that is. That is a baby whale. That is a baby humpback whale uh that is 12 feet below me and it's swimming at my pace, which means it has deliberately slowed down. So when I turned my head to look, what I was seeing was the back end of its fluke that does have white patches and blue patches, part of its camouflage uh for items looking up at it. And it is an absolute room, absolutely remarkable moment to be able to swim with a baby whale. Yeah, it's remarkable that the parents of that baby allowed me to be that close that each of those parents weighs 40 tons.

Larry 1:21:19

Yeah, that would be the scary part, is like, where's mama? And I did see her. That mouth is opening behind me right now, isn't it?

Ted Lomicka 1:21:27

I did see her. I saw her. She was about less than 200 feet ahead of me. So, mother and father, I did see both of them. And then behind us, we had seven or eight uh adults in the pod that were uh shooting their spouts and they were slapping the water and they were having a good time. And I said to myself, this is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen under the water. It's the best animal counter I've ever had as a swimmer or a scuba diver. And I said, I may never see something quite like this before or ever again. And it left. And then a few minutes later, it came back. So we did uh five a total of five separate swims, each of which lasted about two minutes. And it was the second swim that as I was breathing to my right, leaning into the water, I caught the left eye of the whale that was peering up at me, and our left eyes met. And it was just the coolest thing to make eye contact with the whale. And you look something, somebody in the eye, and you get a sense the depth of the intelligence they had. And this is an incredibly intelligent animal. And I could see that, feel that, sense that. And we had this kinship that developed. And so, you know, that's my guide. And it was just a really cool, this is my protection, this is my guide. And the whales, you this whale was just born, but you know, the parents, they've seen this three times over. They saw it when Harry Hoffaker did this swim 36 years ago, they saw it, which was uh 1989, they saw this when Becca Mann did the swim. That was 2019, and now they're seeing it with me. It's this third human they've seen make this remarkable journey. It's uh a migration that spans three islands and lasts a single 24-hour period. So I think there was certainly some kinship, um, a lot of trust, and certainly this um almost unique bond that I had with this intelligent animal that was just incredibly uh impactful, profound.

Larry 1:23:34

Yeah, that's and and and for you to to have that that baby just like right under you to to to guide you is like following the the the lane. Uh yes, yes, that was my lane line. Yeah, that would be an amazing experience. It was very cool. Congratulations. That was very cool. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Um you you said that at at the end of it, you had a feeling that would equate to walking on broken glass. What what does that mean? Oh yeah, what does that mean? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ted Lomicka 1:24:08

So at the end of it, and uh I had this feeling, um, and it was a tangible feeling. So Mike Spaulding said to me, because Mike, um the first man to ever do this swim, did this swim in calendar 1989. Harry Hoffaker. He was one of the world's best Hawaii channel swimmers, and he was so prolific. He was the first to swim that Ali Nui Haha channel that I told you about that uh both Tina and Mike had also swam. And so this was his dream. He had swam each of these channels individually many times, and so this was his dream to link them all into a single swim. And he attempted it. He got about three miles from the finish, but he never was able to get that finish. And it's really important to get that finish. Mike Spaulding was on his boat at the time, and so he had that and he he lived that experience, he did it all, and he really, really wanted me to get that experience, being the first man to actually do this. Becca Mann had done this, proving it to be possible, but no man had ever finished this, and it would be really cool to get a second swimmer to do that. But there was one thing he told me that was really a matter of caution. He said, Ted, when you get to Shipwreck Beach, which is your landing point, your crew's gonna do everything they can to get you a safe landing. They may not be able to achieve that. You may have to walk out cross the coral and exit the beach. But if that's the case, you you should do that to get the finish of the swim. And I said, okay. I said, won't that cut my feet? He's like, yes, it will. And I said, okay. And I said, you know, I'm just gonna put this in the back of my mind. I don't need to think about it. I realize, you know, we've got a plan, we've got an alternative plan to finish. If we can't get that, I'm just right, uh, we can't get that ideal spot. And so, lo and behold, there's no need to think about it now. I'll think about it at the moment. So, in the back of my mind, in the deep recesses of my mind, there's been this thought I might have to do something equivalent to walking on glass if I really want to get this finish. And so we're about to finish, and Captain Andy Joker, he says to me, because we're getting really, really close to the shore at Shipwreck Beach. It's one of the ones where, again, we're navigating through the maze, right? We're looking down into the coral, finding the path through this the safest path. And he says to me, He says, Ted, we're getting really close. This is really dangerous. I need you to do exactly what I do. When you see me move the kayak, you must move as quick as I'm moving and stay with me. If you don't do that, you can get seriously injured. And I said, Wow, that's pretty heavy. I said, Andy, I will do exactly that. Harry has jumped in the water and she can help me for things. And she comes over and she says, Ted, congratulations. You finished the triple Maui Noe. I said, Terry, I'm not out of the beach. This is the hardest part. And she looks at me and she says, Ted, no one says, This is the fun part. And she's done this channel many times before, and she's got this happy-go-lucky. And she says, Look, if you see some coral, you just turn around, you come back, and you try to find another path in. It's fun. And I said, Great, Terry. I said, Captain Andy will be over here. I'll be right here, and I want you over here, and we'll have like a 15-foot window by which the three of us will be placed. I'll be safely in the middle. And so not only was I safely between the two of them, but in terms of kind of the mindset each of them had, an occupation was safety and a focus on safety that my captain had, and a focus on fun and excitement that Terry Deetz had. And I was right in the middle. And so I was right in the middle in terms of my mind frame as well.

Larry 1:27:51

That's nice to have that balance on your crew.

Ted Lomicka 1:27:54

It was pretty cool.

What Is Next And Closing

Larry 1:27:56

Tell us, tell us what's coming up next. What you you've got these big Or is that it? You're going to retire?

Ted Lomicka 1:28:03

Oh, I'm a ways away from retiring. You know, I'm just having too much fun at what I'm doing. So, gosh, you know, I I have uh I've done some really fun things. Um, one of the things that I've done, and I think it's kind of smart, I put some parameters on it so I know when I'm done, and my family gets a good feel for it. But if I want to get to three dozen, which I do of my Iron Distance Tarathlon finishes, I've got one more to get to that goal that's been on the plate for many, many years. Um, and so coming up in uh September of this year, I am going to attempt to do Iron Man Chattanooga, which is in my backyard, given that I'm from Nashville, Franklin. Yeah. And really looking forward to that event. It's uh it's a beautiful course. Um, for anybody that's a little bit uh intimidated by swimming, it's one of the fastest swims of any Iron Man circuit. It's even faster than Cosimo, which I've done several times and is really cool. Um, and I I like the bike. I'm I'm an avid cyclist, I love cycling, and you get four bonus miles, at least historically. You've given they've given us four bonus miles. Uh so instead of 112, they took it to 116. Oh. Uh yeah, and up and over. It's you know, the beautiful rolling hills of of Chattanooga. It's just a really beautiful course, running over the bridge to finish it. Just a cool course.

Larry 1:29:22

Awesome. Awesome. That sounds uh fantastic. And and any great ultra events that that you're starting to plan or you don't want to share yet?

Ted Lomicka 1:29:31

No, no, it's not that I don't want to share. Um, one of the ones that I've completed recently, I did the snowdrop 55-hour race, and it is a really cool experience. If you've got some folks that have said, look, you know, I've done two marathons in 12 hours. What would it be like? What could I do if I had 55 hours to run as far as I want? Um, that would be that event. You know, the first prize they give out is at 100 miles. What I loved about it is 55 miles, I my distance was 100 miles. Uh, that's what I chose. Walk away with a belt buckle, right? Buckle up buttercup. It was just so cool. Absolutely loved it. And I remember when the race director handed me that belt buckle, they said, Ted, are you coming back next year? I said, no, no. And you know, it's a race that raises money for kids uh that endured cancer. And I have a soft spot in my heart for that. And it's allowed me in that race to run for somebody other than myself. And so that's what gives it that specialness. And so I came back to uh three years, and so I did that three years in a row, and I got that buckle three years in a row, and so that was a really special achievement for me. Um, and so I completed that three-part set. So I like to do things with numbers that are symbolic to me. As far as Hawaii goes, I made a commitment earlier this year that I'm gonna swim five channels in Hawaii. Um, I've done the one, the Kaivi. It was really cool to be able to knock out three channels in a single swim. So now my tally is four. I've got one more to go.

Larry 1:31:03

Ah, okay. So back to Hawaii again. It is.

Ted Lomicka 1:31:07

I love it so much. Yeah, that's a set of five Hawaiian channel finishes would just be the coolest.

Larry 1:31:13

Uh well, Ted, you are certainly living by your personal motto. You've been dreaming big, you've been living your dream, and we thank you for sharing your dream with us today. Um, thanks for coming on the show.

Ted Lomicka 1:31:27

Larry, it's an absolute delight. Great to talk to your audience. Um, you know, I'm sure hoping you've got some folks out there that are willing to take their swims to the next level. And Hawaii is such a beautiful place to make that happen. I know I've got folks standing at the ready. Andy Joka would love to help. Uh Terry Dietz would absolutely love to help. Uh Stephen Menaglia, he would love to help. I've had so many people that we'd love to help. So if there's anybody in your audience that's thinking about it, okay absolutely do.

Larry 1:31:55

All right. Well, I'll put your contact information in the show notes and uh we can get them all set up. That's awesome. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thanks so much, Larry. Great talking to you, my friend. You too. Thanks.

Mary Jo 1:32:06

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