The Undeniable Leader with Rob Cressy

Gritfest: Lessons From The 2025 Chicago Marathon

• Rob Cressy

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What does it really take to run 26.2 miles and become someone new in the process? In this episode of Built For The Game, Rob Cressy shares raw, identity-shifting lessons from the 2025 Chicago Marathon. From physical grit to mindset mastery, he unpacks the real-time breakthroughs that now define his new standard. This is about more than running, it’s about becoming built for whatever game you’re playing.

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Hey, before we start the podcast, if you're a return listener who gets value from this show, then spread the love and share this with someone exceptional. Whether you shoot them a text or a DM or share on your social media, it would mean the world to me, and this is how we can help each other grow. Sending tons of good vibes your way. 26.2 miles, my favorite city in the world, and one of the hardest challenges of my life. Welcome to the Grit Fest. And what I wanted to do was share the best lessons and wisdom from running the 2025 Chicago Marathon, ranging from mindset to identity to high performance to business and everything in between. What's good? I'm Rob Cressy, and this past weekend I completed the 2025 Chicago Marathon, an accomplishment that is a life bucket list item for me, something that I lived in Chicago for more than a decade. My friends still live in Chicago. Moving to Chicago when I was 26 years old was a dream of mine. It's a city that I have such a great connection to. And what I wanted to do was unpack this journey in a variety of ways to help you grow and see what I saw so that you can have some inspiration for your journey as well. And I'll start with some foundational things, some things of note. Number one, I used the run walk method by Jeff Galloway, something that I learned from Jesse Itzler. My strategy, both in training in and running the marathon, was very simple and very consistent. Run one mile, walk for 30 seconds or a minute, or to that tree, to that mailbox, to that light, right? So I wasn't concerned on how long I'm walking. It's more of a what am I feeling right there? And this is an absolute game changer for anybody who wants to enjoy running. Look into the run walk method, absolutely changes everything because it allows you to have active recovery as you are doing this. Number two, this was part of me creating my 2025 best year ever. This same time, one year ago in October, I looked at what I wanted my 2025 to look at. And I know that, or I knew that if I completed the Chicago Marathon, the journey leading up to that and the execution of it would help me create my best year ever. My only goal for this, finish. I do not care what my time is. I no longer try and run competitively for myself. All I want is the accomplishment and the earned confidence. I ran for the V Foundation to support cancer research. I raised over$3,000 for the V Foundation. If you want to see that story, go to runrobrun.com. So on this journey, I was running for more than just myself. I was running for my friends, my family, my supporters, the V Foundation, and more importantly, to help um find a cure for cancer and be part of that solution right there. And then last but certainly not least, I gotta show love to my wife, my son, and my friends who supported me every step of the way in the city of Chicago. Man, they showed out and showed up. So let's get to the good, good here. And my one word for this 2025 Chicago Marathon experience, grit fest, because it was the epitome of gritty. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. And this is with me training for this for an entire year. So there's the long term, hey, what happens before you go and run a marathon? Then there's also the day of experience. And the day of experience itself was the hardest thing right there. And to sort of like give a little peek into this, man, that wasn't the case to start. The first 12 miles of running this marathon, man, I'm loving this. I've got no headphones on. I'm running through the city of Chicago. There's so much love, so much positive energy, so much outpouring. I'm just running through all the neighborhoods, just thinking about all the stories from my 20s and 30s when I'm just having the time of my life in Chicago. I'm smiling ear to ear. There's people with signs all over the place. There's just so much goodness going on. But then guess what happened? Mile 13 happens, and I get a pain on the outside of my left knee. I was like, ooh, this doesn't feel good. Guess the marathon starting right now. And this happened exactly when I was in Westloop, was the last place that I lived when I was in Chicago right there. So uh now mentally things changed because I went from no headphones to I gotta change the narrative in my head because the narrative in my head right now is wow, my knee hurts and I gotta run for another two and a half hours. So this was the start of the grit fest right there. Because five miles later at mile 18, all of a sudden, I got a cramp in my left hamstring. And cramping is something that has not been part of my training journey, nor any of the other marathons that I'd previously run. I have already completed uh two other marathons before this. I ran the Pittsburgh marathon and I also ran the um Clearwater Marathon. And in both of those, cramping was not an issue there. But I do know what it like, it feels like to get cramps when running. And man, it feels like you're just shot in your leg and you can't move. And what you learn is you cannot stop when you get a cramp because if you do, everything else is about to cramp up as well. So I'm literally running at mile 13. It's now a walk that looks more like uh a baby deer walking on ice. I'm holding the back of my hamstring, moving forward, moving forward. And one of the things, and I'll unpack this a little bit more in a second, that served me so much in this that was part of my strategy was speaking things into existence. So going into this race, I had mantras, I knew what I was going to be talking about. And with this, one of the things that I learned from Jesse Itzler, and he was saying this to his 29029 uh participants, is when you're feeling this pain, you speak, my body responds. And then he secondarily has another story which I learned from when he was on 30 Days of Excellence with Mark Brown and Chad Wright, when Jesse was running his 100-mile race and Chad was there crewing him, and Chad would say, Jesse, how do you feel? And he would say, I feel outstanding. So the second my knee started to hurt, and the second I got that cramp in my hamstring, my body responds, I feel outstanding. My body responds, I feel outstanding. Well, guess what? That cramp in my left hamstring ended up becoming the onset of a cramp in both my left and my right calf. So for the next two and a half hours, I had to tap into, as David Goggins would say, the cookie jar. There was the, hey, the race is starting, you're running through pain. Now there's the welcome to the grit fest, you're about to get as deep as you can get mentally for this. And the entire from miles 18 to 26.2, my legs felt like they were about to cramp up both both calves or my hamstring at any second. Thankfully, they did not cramp again, but it was a delicate balance because anyone who's ever experienced this before, you can feel it. It's about to happen. You step wrong, you run wrong, you walk wrong, it it's gonna go off. So now, not only am I managing the pain, I'm mentally I'm managing my mind and my body all at the same time, right here. And through all of this, with a little self-reflection after the fact, this is now my grit resume. So when I'm looking at this experience with the 2025 Chicago Marathon, I'm like, hey, this is the grittiest thing that I've ever gone through or created. Also on my grit resume, uh completing 75 hard the first time, completing the entire live hard program, and then also my near-death experience running the DC Marine Corps Marathon and for 20 minutes um fighting for my life. And essentially, if I close my eyes, I'm about to die, and I did not die, and I had the uh mental fortitude to speak myself into life. That was the single grittiest moment of my life, those 20 minutes. But this gets a little longevity because it was two plus hours of nonstop grit. And one of the things that I chuckle at, and anybody who's ever run a long race can relate to this is because I'm running mile to mile, so 13 to 14, cool, then I can walk, 14 to 15, then I can walk, and so on, because I've got this strategy that serves me there. Sometimes when you're running, you're like, did they forget to put up the mile marker? Because I feel like I've been running for a while. And one thing that's a part of how I experience a marathon or training is I do not look at my watch. I don't care what the time is, I don't care what the pace is, and I don't care how far I've been going legitimately. Why? Because that's not my measure of success. My measure measure of success is get to the next mile marker. So that's why I was considering this the ultimate grit fest on top of everything that I'll share from a recovery and after side of things. So one of the things that I'd mentioned too is the thing that really helped me overcome this and create through this was speaking things into existence. And one of the things that I've shared so many times is all around the phrase of abracadabra. I create as I speak because so much of what I've done on my own internal worker, as Byron Katie would say, the work that you do on yourself is around identity, the declarations, your I am statements. And for this, I had a series of declarations or mantras that I repeated hundreds of times over the course of this entire marathon, but especially at the end. So, once again, number one from Jesse Itzler, my body responds, I feel outstanding. My body responds, I feel outstanding hundreds of times. Number two, I am built for this. Name this podcast, built for the game. And this is a living representation of this. And this is something that is earned confidence. It's not just built for it in the moment. I got 15 years of earned experience being on this self-aware growth mindset journey. So for me, I am built for this. It's everything in the past and in the moment itself. Number three, activating McLaren mode. And this is something that is all about being my future self now. And one of the things that I shared in a previous video is around how I used my vision board and put it into ChatGBT to then build as my future self now. And one of the examples that I gave is a picture of a McLaren that I put into there. And ChatGBT mirrored back to me all these varieties of things. I was like, boom, this is McLaren mode, Rob. This is future Rob. Because what I did is I envisioned myself sitting in the McLaren, putting my hands on that steering wheel and thinking about the version of me that owns that and drives that. And you know what I thought to myself? I am that dude right now. What I'm experiencing, all this pain, all this training that I did, I am that dude who is sitting in that car right there. So I was compressing time in being my future self now from a visualization side of things. And this is so important because all of these are tiny and deep anchors in my identity, in my mindset, and in my vision while I'm in 10 out of 10 pain running for two and a half hours straight. This is just the back half of the marathon. The next thing that I anchored in, don't give up, don't ever give up. The mantra from Jim Valvano in the V Foundation. I know why I was running, who I was running for to support cancer research. I wanted to remind myself I was doing something bigger than myself to anchor in the people who donated, who supported me in this journey. I also anchored in my friends, my wife, my son, the people that were there cheering me on. Because with my son, I'm doing this to show him an example of what is possible. Not because he has to be me, but because this is what you can do too. Because we are mirrors for our children and for my wife, continually being the best version of myself for her, because that's what she deserves, right? So all of these things are coursing through me. I'm also coursing through this is what a millionaire does, right? We're popping into McLaren mode. It's like, boom, this is what you do, dog. Uh, another one, my word of the year, fearless. I am fearless. It's one of my declarations I speak every single day. Another one, I am, that I have a world champion mindset. And this is something that I'm a part of the Arte Syndicate with Andy Frasella and Ed Milette, two of my mentors. And man, they are the best in the world. And the people who are a part of this, we are the best in the world. In this mindset that we have, it is earned, it is bulletproof. And you build this by doing hard things by design. And this is once again collecting the evidence that I am, that I have a world champion mindset. And of course, I'm channeling my inner David Goggins and Jesse Itzler before the race. What I did is I reread my book notes from David Goggins Can't Hurt Me, right? Where I'm tapping into that cookie jar. And one of the things he says that I said to myself, and I even put this on Instagram at Rob Cressy, is uh I'm about to take some souls, right? Like I got as deep as I can get, and one of the things is uh it's a side of me that I probably don't get to share as often. Uh yes, I'm very positive and happy and energetic and supportive and all the content that I create, but this was tapping into the absolute dark side of me in the best way possible. So that's what I was going through mentally and how I was speaking this into existence to keep on moving forward. So let's now move over to the race day experience itself, the city of Chicago, the Chicago Marathon. And it was such an incredible race. It is the best, my favorite marathon that I have ever run because I have such a connection to the city of Chicago. I love Chicago. As I said, it was my dream to live in Chicago for more than a decade. And even though I live in Florida, I still consider Chicago home. When I get to Chicago, I'm smiling, I'm radiating, I get inspired by the big buildings. I still think about uh before I moved to Chicago when I was in my young 20s and I was visiting my friends that lived there from college, and for the very first time when I was in the city when I'd never experienced the city before, I remember just looking up at the big buildings and being like, wow, look at how big these buildings are. And if you've never experienced that before, if you've never came from a big city, which I didn't, I was like, this is so inspiring. I've never lost that. Because for me, there's a connection to Chicago equals my dreams and inspiration right there. And the thing that I loved about Chicago, and I always love, is the people. And the reason I didn't run with headphones for the first 12 miles is because when you're running down Michigan Avenue or Lincoln Park or River North or Old Town or Westloop or anywhere, there's just people everywhere showing love, the signs, the fun. Like uh there's people with malort shots. One of the things that I did was I was very conscious of creating while I was doing the marathon. So I was shooting videos, I was taking pictures, I was engaging the crowd, I'm having a legitimate good time. And it comes from my framing and positioning of uh how I do these things and why I do these things because I do not run for a time. I do this for the earned confidence, for the story, and for the experience. So the thing that I was most looking forward to with this marathon was the city of Chicago, reliving all of these memories. So now let's fast forward to mile eight. And we're about to roll into Old Town, where I lived in two separate occasions. And the first one I lived right at Sedgwick in Lincoln. For anybody who's familiar with Chicago, it's right next to where Stanley's used to be, right there. We actually lived right next door to where Sedgwick's was. And I was getting ready to take a picture of the exact apartment that we lived in to send to my friends. And as you can imagine, there is always people on both sides of the street the entire time you're running the marathon. And when I get outside of our apartment, what do I see? A grow, a group of what was probably eight or ten bros with a keg. They were literally the exact same version of me 15 years prior. And they're sitting there and I'm about to take a picture, and boom, I roll up and they've got a keg right there. And by no means was I rolling into this marathon being like, I'm about to have a beer on the course. But guess what? For old time's sake, I had to have a beer on the course. And guess what? Those bros erupted. And no, I did not have a full beer. I had maybe two sips of the beer, and actually it tasted incredible because up until that point I'd only been drinking water. And I had those two sips of beer, and I was like, wow, this is fantastic. But what ended up happening was this gave me such a jolt of energy because the group of bros they went nuts. I'm like, give me a beer. They give me one of those red solo cups. I take a few sips, take a picture and a video outside my old place, and boom, I move on and I go and I send it to my friends. And that's the beauty of Chicago, and that's also the beauty of you can both be a high performer, somebody who used to live that life. I don't drink very much at all. Uh, the entire weekend, I maybe had uh, a course four of car across four days, maybe two total beers, because I knew what my goal was. But at the same time, uh, I don't see it as a bad thing, it's just part of the experience. So, boom, you've got that. You've got people, and this is a terrible idea, trying to give you malort shots. It's like, hey, who wants a malort shot? Those are terrible no matter when you do a shot. God forbid, you're at mile 17 and you're you're dying going through a pain cave, and all of a sudden they're like, hey, who wants a shot of Malort? That's a no for me, dog. So that was the city of Chicago right there. Um, the signs were amazing. My favorite ones were the ones that say, push here to power up or push here to level up, and they'd have a drawing of a Super Mario mushroom. And I always made it a fact to go boom, hit it, brup, level up to legitimately give myself that sort of energy right there. And then the last thing from the race experience actually happened, I'm gonna go to the very end of the race, mile 25. So, mile 25, it's really like a two-plus mile stretch of just straight down what is probably Michigan Avenue. You're just running and running and running, and finally it says mile 25. And I get there, and my wife and my son, my friend Carolyn, they're all there to cheer me on, and I'm taking pictures and videos and just having a good time right there. And I was like, cool, I'm gonna go finish this race. And I was there with them for maybe, I don't know, three or four or five minutes because it's a moment for everybody in the family. So I go on, and 30 seconds later, I see this guy in front of me, and I always made it a point to run closer to the sides of the street, either the left side or the right side, because I was always aware, hey, I'm looking out for people that I might not that I might know, that might not know I'm running or I can see them, right? So boom, I've got some visibility there. And there's this guy that I see, and the best way I can describe it is he looked like an airplane that was about to crash, where the wings are going back and forth and back and forth, and he's wobbling. And I can tell he's about to go down in front of me. And this is only 30 seconds after I leave my wife, and he falls down on the ground. And luckily for him, the best person in the world was immediately behind him. So I Run up to him and we're at mile 25. There's one mile left. This thing is done. And his name was either Alan or Alex. I know I started with an A. I don't remember which one it was, Alan or Alex. And let's call him Alan. And I was like, Alan, you are finishing this race. Get up right now. And I immediately go into coach mode, right? Because this is who I am. Um, I know the experience of being somebody to run a marathon and at mile 25 and above, at mile 25, something happens, right? It happened to me at mile 25.7, where I can see the finish line. So with this, I try and help him up, and he's probably about 200 pounds. So uh he's an average-sized guy, but he's not small by any means. And I try and grab his hand and get him up, and Alan immediately goes back down. And once again, I'm accepting my energy in him. I'm like, Alan, you are finishing this race. Get up. How can I help you? And I try and get him up again the second time, and he falls back down. And when that happens, now my legs are starting to get near cramping and seizing. Because as you can imagine, I've just run for uh four hours and 50 minutes of running a marathon, and we're in the final stretch right here. And I'm trying to help this guy finish his marathon as well because I know he will appreciate that thing. But now my body's taking its toll because it was not expecting me trying to lift a 200-pound man. And when all of this was happening, finally a medic runs over to try and help him. And unfortunately, Alan is completely out of it. He's not really responding to me. He's there, but he's not there. And I estimate this entire experience is 45 seconds, a minute, maybe a minute 15. It's me and Alan until the medic gets there. And at that point, because my body is about to seize, I've got to keep going. But it was the last part of my marathon journey right there that I'm very proud of because that's what I would have wanted somebody to do for me. And I knew if there was anything that I could do to help Alan get that extra last bit of strength, that I'm willing to do that for him. So that was really the marathon there. And then you would think the last mile is all puppy dogs and rainbows because you can see your goal. You're about to accomplish this big thing in the Chicago Marathon, but guess what? It is still the absolute hardest because you've been running for five hours. So for me, in the Chicago Marathon, you run down Michigan Avenue and then you make this right turn. And anybody who's ever been a spectator or run it, you know what this is. You make the turn, and then all of a sudden you go up the only hill of the entire time. And this thing is just, man, I when I trained for nine months for this, I trained for this hill. I saw this every single training run. I turn right into my neighborhood and I'm envisioning myself going up this thing. And while all this is happening, my body is at like a one out of a hundred, right? My the whole cramping issue that I have from this point on, there's pain cave and grit zone, and then there is a maximum pain cave and grit zone. Because I feel like my entire body is about to shut down. My legs, especially, to where it's not can I walk? It's more of like, will it immobilize me? Because if you get cramps in both of your legs, you just can't move. And I could feel what was about to happen. But at the same time, I can see the finish line is I don't know, um, 400 yards or 400 meters away. So I get up over that big hill and then you turn left. And it's like, all right, dog, let's finish this thing running. And every intention, you can see that finish line, we're gonna finish strong. And literally every single step that I took, I was one second away from, oh my God, I feel like both of my legs are about to explode right now, to where I had to like gallop like a horse. So it was somewhere in between a run, a walk, a walk, run, a walk, a run, a walk, a run, and body, please don't fail me right now. I'm obviously gonna finish, but this is a matter of like not necessarily how I expected the finish of this race was going to be. But guess what? You can't control something like that. And thankfully, this is where my self-chatter to myself, my body responds, I feel outstanding, I'm built for this. My body responds, I feel outstanding, I'm built for this. And this is full-blown Terminator mode. The focus in my eyes, I'm staring at this marathon finish line, staring daggers into this thing over and over and over again, speaking into existence, my body getting better. And then boom, I cross that finish line, and my words that I say, yes, both fingers up in the air like this. Yes, yes, yes, because it's an accomplishment that was a year in the making. My body did not fail me. I used everything that I knew, the tools, the identity, the speaking things into existence to get across that finish line. And it was just the best feeling in the world to do all of that. And of course, that opens up a whole new can of worms because once you're done, you're not done because uh now you're feeling the effects of it. But in that moment, it did not matter because you're just sitting there and you're soaking in it, and they give you this medal right here, and they give you a banana, and there's 312, and they give you a beer, and there's Stan's Donuts with these little mini donuts and things, and you're just soaking in on the accomplishment, and that's what the experience was like for me, and it's one of the proudest moments of my life because uh one of the things I say often, and it's such a part of me and my coaching and and who I am and how I create, is you earn your confidence, you pay your dues through action, right? And that's the beauty of it is this is accessible for all of us. All you've got to do is choose to step into the arena and let's go. And this is gonna move to sort of the lifestyle design and vision side of this. And it's so important because yes, this story is about running a marathon, but this is applicable to everything in life, including business, personal growth, and AI. Because all of this started with a vision in October 2024. I started planning my year ahead because I always start planning three months before the end of the year for the year ahead. And I was like, what's gonna make this the best year of my life? My best year ever 2025. I was like running that Chicago marathon. Cool. So, to do that, what needs to happen before that? Well, I know the Clearwater Half Marathon put on by the all-day running company and Jesse Itzler's company, that's in January, and that's just right up the street for me. That's an hour away. So I'll sign up for the half marathon in January. And by doing that, that will guarantee that I'm ready for the marathon because if you run 13 miles in January, yes, I'm not gonna just fully train all year or just straight marathon running, but I stay ready. I'm born ready, right? This is just part of who we are. You always stay in shape. So that had me training three months in advance for the half marathon. So October, November, December 2024, training for the half marathon. January, boom, there's a clear water accomplishment. Let's go. We've planted the flag. This is gonna be the best year ever. And then I estimate four months before the Chicago Marathon, which of course is dead summer in Florida where it's 100 degrees with 100 uh percent humidity. Now, time for me to do my training. And that was the design of the best year ever because I know when my body and fitness is dialed in, my mindset is dialed in. And when those things are dialed in, all the other areas of my life flourish as well, including my business, including my standard. And it's just something that radiates there. So, for yourself, if you want to create your best year ever in 2026, start thinking about that now and start architecting it. Because when you have this vision, you can create the roadmap for how to do it. And one of the things that really served me along on this journey was how I leverage Chat GBT because I put that vision into there saying, hey, this is what I'm looking to do. Here's the benchmarks, here's what I'm seeing, and boom, it built out a roadmap, it bit out some mindset, it built out some other things because guess what was unexpectedly happening? About, I don't know, two months ago, I got an injury while I was training. It wasn't actually anything I did. I just woke up one day and my left knee started to hurt, and it felt like it was shooting electricity in my knee to where all of a sudden I couldn't run. I was more like a baby giraffe on ice, where every time I took a step, it was like shooting electricity in me. So I couldn't really step, so I had no strength and stability in it. I went into Chad GBT, I knew it wasn't a major injury, but it was also something that I knew if I'm about to do training runs of 14, 16, 18, and 20 miles, probably not smart to run a couple uh hours worth of running if you can barely run on your knee, because the goal is not to train 16, 18, and 20 miles. The goal is to be healthy at the start of the Chicago marathon. So the hardest part of my entire training was actually my non-training. I had to take one month off in August to heal my body. And man, that is one of the hardest things that I've ever done for my mind because one of the things I'm really good at is I'm a model of consistency. I set the plan. Cool. We're gonna do a minimum of three runs a week. We're gonna do a three mile, a four mile, and then a long run on Friday mornings. And we're gonna go from on the long runs, six miles to eight to ten to twelve to fourteen to sixteen to eighteen to twenty. In doing so, we'll have a two-week taper before the marathon. Boom, I'll be set. The same formula that I used for the other two marathons. So I'm this model of consistency, and then all of a sudden, life's like, nah, dog, we got something else in store for you. You're actually gonna have to go down to zero again, and you're gonna have to rebuild your mindset. And in doing all of this, leveraging Chad GBT and sharing my thoughts, my challenges, what I was feeling, my vision for what I was doing really helped with all of this. So, my encouragement for you is when you're planting that vision, step one, you gotta have that vision for what it is that you want to do in your business and in your life. And then number two, leverage Chat GBT to create the how, the playbook, the roadmap, the mindset, the habits, the routines for how you can do that. Because the next part of this is all around creating an epic life for yourself. Because on this journey of life that we all have together, what stories do you want to have? For me, the reason this was a life bucket list item is because so many people I know had run the Chicago Marathon. My wife had run it multiple times, my sister had run it, my friends had run it, I was a spectator year after year for it. I had the connection to the city. And when I looked at my life resume, I was like, you know what? I gotta have the Chicago Marathon on my life resume. It's a part of who I am, and that's a part of creating an epic life. But then what we can do now is what are we going to do with this? So now let's get to the post race. So I complete the marathon, super accomplishment. At the end of the day, before I go to bed, I look 55,000 steps for the day, the most I've ever had in my entire life, and I don't even know what the next one would be. But that was it. And when, and this is of course being in the city, you have to walk everywhere because they closed the streets for the marathon, so you can't get an Uber anywhere. So you run the marathon and you finish, and then you gotta walk a mile to get out of there, and then you gotta walk another mile to get to your hotel, and you know what? This is just par for the course. And for most people, at this point, it's Sunday at 2 p.m. Central. Normally, during this time, I would be full-blown football mode. I've watched every single Pittsburgh Steelers game for my entire life except for one. And in this instance right here, the Steelers are playing the Browns during all of this. And I've got five fantasy football teams, I've got a guillotine league, all of this stuff. I'm so used to my Sundays being around the Steelers and fantasy football and loving all of that. But in this moment, that was not for me today. Because this Chicago marathon, this race was for me. This was my accomplishment. So when all of this happened, I didn't even look at my phone because I didn't even want to know. I didn't even want to see this stuff because the best way I can describe how I felt after the marathon was if you've ever watched The Simpsons and they jump into Homer's brain, and sometimes they show it, and there's just a monkey going ding, ding, ding with symbols, and there's like nothing going through there. I completely emptied the tank. There is nothing in my mind. I couldn't make decisions, I can barely walk. That's what's going through my mind right there. So logically, it's like, oh, well, Rob, you're probably gonna get something to eat and then go and take a nap. Yeah, in theory, but no, I'm in Chicago for another 18 hours. My friends uh are all going somewhere to watch the PM games. So instead of going to take a nap, I decided with my wife, we got a babysitter. Uh, we went to Gracie O'Malley's in in Wicker Park and watched the afternoon games together. And I pretty much just drank water and sat on a chair and enjoyed my friends. And guess what? You'll never remember the nap you took after a marathon, but you will remember spending more time with your friends. I would do anything for an extra 18 hours with my friends. I don't care if I just ran a marathon because that's part of the journey. And that's what I love about Chicago. That's what I love about my friends. Thankfully, of course, the Steelers beat the prowns, which made me significantly happier about all of this there. But that's where my mindset was there. And we did not get back home to our hotel until 8 p.m. I was up at what 5:29 a.m. for the marathon, got home at 8 p.m., and then we had a flight out of Midway at 7:55 a.m. to head back to Florida. And it's like, oh my God, Rob, that's so early. Why'd you guys do it? Totally worth it. To get to spend an extra night with my friends, I will always do it right there. And now comes the, well, how do you feel post-marathon? And the answer is you can barely walk. So if you like the idea of having a life resume accomplishment where you go through potentially a 10 out of 10 pain experience for roughly two hours, and then when you're done, you get a medal and a banana, and then after that, you feel a great sense of accomplishment, and then you can barely walk for three days. Then congratulations. Welcome to signing up for the Chicago Marathon. And one of the things that I've always anchored in with this came from David Goggins. And I always remember anytime I'd run, and this is both a half marathon or a marathon, because your body still feels it just in different ways. There's always that post-marathon shower, which is the same thing as a post-Lollapalooza or music festival shower. When you go all in on something where you get home and your body's exhausted, you're absolutely filthy and dirty, and you take that shower and you're like, this is the greatest shower in the world. Except when you do that after running a marathon, every part of your body is hurting and you can barely stand up. And in that moment, what I always think about is you earn the right to feel this way. This is the pain of accomplishment. It's the greatest pain you can feel in the world because you earned it. And not everybody earned the right to feel that way, right? You can't just push a button and be like, oh my God, my legs feel this way because that's just pain. But you earned the pain in this. So for the last three days, walking around gingerly and legitimately can barely walk up steps, can barely walk down steps, can barely walk the dog, totally worth it. I know after a few days this will all get back to better. I'm stretching every single day, slowly improving just uh day after day on all this. But it's the reality of what you feel like. And one of the unique things that I haven't really experienced very much in my life is um a dip in my energy. So because I gave so much to this, on that Monday when we got back, I had zero left in me. It was like, get back, sleep for three hours, wake up, eat, go back to sleep, barely walk. The next morning, you get up and you're like, wow, I had one conversation with um my friend Colin Scotland for 90 minutes, and at the end of it, I legitimately emotionally felt empty. I was drained. I was like, wow, I have nothing left in me. And you can completely deplete your mind and your heart and your energy there. So I had to be more aware of keeping my energy reserves because I did have a uh a group coaching for AI that I was doing for an organization later on in that day. And then just yesterday, Wednesday, for the first time, I started to feel air quotes somewhat normal energetically there. And really working on the downloading from the Chicago Marathon. And this will get to what did I do post-marathon? So uh knowing this was a big life accomplishment, but also understanding the way that AI works, I wanted to download this. And it's something that's just part of my DNA as a creator. I have an experience, uh, whether that's a coaching experience, running a race, going somewhere, anything. And then I will do a download. And part of that download is I will go into Chat GPT and create a framework that says, hey, create me 11 high-level categories. Ask me a bunch of questions. I'm going to answer them so I can have this self-reflection because I want to anchor in this identity of who I've created myself to be. So this isn't just a passing event. This is now the new floor of my standard because I am that dude. I am McClare in mode Rob. I am built for this, right? This is who I am. And part of this becomes doing the air quotes, the work on yourself. And I used Chat GBT to design this for myself. And then it said, give yourself the gift of an hour, answer these questions. So I answer the questions. Then I knew I'm gonna upload that into Chat GBT and I'm gonna save it to the memory because now I'm seeing this like an AI OS upgrade to where, hey, your system's good. You just ran this a marathon. Here's this experience, here's all the gold, give it to AI, because now it will build everything you do moving forward from this position, as if you're getting a brand new computer or a brand new program in there. And I will end up sharing that um over the course of the week once that's finalized. Um, if that's something that you want access to, the uh integration guide that I created, DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook, marathon, and I will send you the integration guide that I use that you can do. And this isn't just about a marathon. I designed it for me and my clients and for you because that's the beauty of all of this. Yes, I said do this as if I'm the one doing it, but also in a way that anybody else can. So whether it's a marathon, a talk, a big moment in your life, you had a kid, you bought a house, you got a promotion, you had a life-changing experience, good, bad, and anyway in between, you can download that, capture that information as data, and then re-upload that to Chat GBT. So DM me marathon on any social media platform, and I will send that to you. So, to wrap a bow on all of this, looking forward to the future, you're gonna see a better version of me because this is my new floor, this is my new standard, because I got a glimpse of the best version of myself during those five hours of the Chicago Marathon. It was, as Dan Martell says, the 10.0 version of myself. I had the consistency of training, I had the strategy, I had the love, I had the heart, I had the mindset, and I had to dip into the deepest parts of myself and I made through it. And I did so in a way where I could share it with you and with others because if it's accessible for me, it's also accessible for you. So I would love to hear from you. Is there something big on your horizon? For the rest of 2025 or your best year ever, 2026. What is that epic story you want to create for yourself? Hit me up on all social media platforms at Rob Cressy. Sending tons of love and good vibes your way. Hope you have yourself an amazing rest of the day.