Heber Cannon once ran eight miles into a marathon in Death Valley before the heat pulled him out of the race. Eighteen years later, he went back and finished it, on what turned out to be the hottest day ever recorded there. In this episode, the filmmaker behind CrossFit's biggest documentaries and the Buttery Bros YouTube channel talks about failure, obsession, and what it actually takes to keep showing up.

Heber traces his path from a childhood spent bouncing between roller hockey, jujitsu, marathon running, and almost any other sport he could try to a career filming CrossFit's biggest names, and the moment in 2018 when he chose to not pursue his previous dream of filmmaking in Hollywood and build something of his own instead. Nathan, Matt, and he dig into the Death Valley marathon that has bookended his adult life: the failed attempt in his twenties, and the return trip 18 years later on the hottest day the location has ever recorded.

The conversation moves through how his relationship with fitness changed as he got older, from chasing raw talent without effort to respecting the grind, and how a series of sport specific training blocks after turning 40 (strength, then Olympic lifts, then endurance) reshaped how he trains and why. He tells the stories of his last minute decisions to pace a marathon in the mountains for his cousin and another joining alongside James Lawrence as James completed his 100th consecutive ironman length triathlon.

Heber also opens up about training his 9 year old son to run a full marathon before turning double digits, and what that process taught him about coaching a kid through the mental side of endurance, not just the physical. The episode closes on where he's headed next: the Leadville 100, a race that has sat unfinished in the back of his mind for years, and why the runner's high in a beautiful, remote place still beats anything he's felt on a gym floor.

Guest bio

Heber Cannon is a filmmaker and endurance athlete based in Salt Lake City. He spent over a decade producing content for CrossFit, including six feature length documentaries that topped iTunes' best seller list, before starting the Buttery Bros YouTube channel, where he travels the world training with elite athletes and documenting all of his and his friends' adventures. He has completed multiple Ironman triathlons, ultra distance runs, and self-supported endurance challenges, and is currently training for the Leadville 100.

Joseph Cabrera has fallen off a mountain, pulled a friend out of a swamp in the dark, and spent a year on an outpost eight thousand feet up in the Afghan mountains with one job: keep the bad guys at bay. He has also, by his own account, never quite figured out what to do with his hands when he's not the one holding the microphone hosting podcasts versus being a guest on one.

In this episode, Joseph walks through the path from a South Texas kid with no mountains in sight to West Point, Ranger School, and years of combat leadership in some of the most physically demanding environments the military has to offer. He talks about the log-walk drill Ranger instructors run over and over, not to see if you can cross it, but to see if you can cross it calm. He talks about smelling like sulfur when a body starts eating its own muscle for fuel. And he tells the story of the moment the ground gave way beneath him on a mountain pass in Afghanistan, and the only two words he could think to say to the men around him.

This is a conversation about what actually surfaces when everything else gets stripped away: not bravado, but humor. Not panic, but calm. Not who you perform as, but who you actually are when there's no energy left to perform. Joseph's answer to the show's closing question reframes the entire idea of pushing physical limits, not as a personal accomplishment, but as a way of becoming useful to the people around you.

About Joseph Cabrera Joseph Cabrera is a West Point graduate, Army Ranger, and combat veteran who led an airborne reconnaissance unit on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He later founded Wyld Whisper, which places executives and adventurers into immersive, high-intensity environments from Alaska to Africa built around shared hardship and team performance. He is also a longtime podcast host.

Aaron Coleman has spent five decades chasing mountains, rivers, and the outer edge of what his body can do. In this episode, he sits down with Nathan Baumeister and Matt Carlson to trace how a childhood in Idaho and years of team sports built the foundation for a life defined by outdoor pursuit.

Aaron walks through his first real test: summiting Mount Rainier in roughly 24 hours with a friend who packed a tarp instead of a tent. From there, the conversation turns to a backcountry ski trip in Alaska that nearly ended in tragedy, and the gut check that comes when six goal-driven friends have to choose between pride and survival. Aaron also opens up about his annual eight-day wilderness float trips in remote Alaska, including one night when a teammate's hypothermia turned a fishing trip into a real emergency.

Aaron Coleman is a sales leader, coach, and lifelong outdoorsman based in Boise, ID. Over three decades he has summited countless mountains, run backcountry ski lines across Alaska and the Rockies, and completed more than 20 multi-day wilderness float trips through remote river systems draining into the Bering Sea. He has coached baseball, football, softball, and rugby, and has spent his career in sales leadership, work he credits directly to lessons learned in the mountains.