Tackling Florida’s Toughest Adventure Race

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Hello and welcome inside another episode of between the Lines with Virtual Academy. We are a podcast going beyond the badge to allow members of law enforcement, public safety, and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. Your co host, Brent Henson, extending along a happy new year to everyone just a couple of days past January 1. Looking forward to what 2024 has in store for us as a podcast. And of course, speaking of the new year, if you’re the type of person who makes resolutions, specifically ones to get in better shape or to challenge yourself, our guest today may have upped the ante for all of us because he’s taking part in a true test of endurance, navigation, and teamwork.

00:57
Brent Hinson
Coming up during the last week of February 1 that has been ranked by Red Bull as one of the ten best adventure races on the planet. Michael Warren I ran a half marathon in Nashville about ten years ago. After I came across the finish line, I said, never again. It was too much for me. And since then, I don’t do too much of that kind of stuff.

01:19
Michael Warren
The warning flags went up as soon as you said Red Bull, okay? In our line of work, that’s what we call a clue. All right, let’s just be honest with each other. And you know what, Brent? I’m so depressed because I would have sworn under oath I would have passed a lie detector test that we recorded our first episode for 2023 just a couple of months ago. And I’ve heard that’s a sign of old age, where years seem like a couple of months now and see if so I’m old.

01:49
Brent Hinson
I’m appreciative. See, I’m not in the depressed one. I’m the appreciative. We’ve got another year under our belt, and we just keep continuing on. And we’re going to start off with a guest this week, our very first one of the year that is really going to put us to shame. I think I’m going to walk away from this going, man, oh, man, oh, man.

02:11
Michael Warren
Listen, bring the shame. Bring it on. Just a little bit of extra encouragement that maybe you and I need and maybe some of our listeners need to get this year going properly. By the way, this guy is not only someone that I admire, he’s also a friend of mine. So I’m looking forward to the conversation today. Although if he says the wrong thing, that’s why we have editing. So just throwing it out there.

02:39
Brent Hinson
Well, our guest today started his career with the Western Kentucky University Police Department in 1998 as a patrolman before moving to Henderson, Kentucky, to take a position with the Henderson Police Department. He’s currently the training coordinator for the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office.

02:55
Jeff Welch
Just right at the road from where.

02:56
Brent Hinson
I’m sitting at Madisonville, Kentucky. And next month, he’s going to captain the virtual Academy race team, consisting of three active law enforcement officers from the state of Kentucky for the sea to sea expedition race across Florida, where, over the course of 72 hours, they’re going to cover a distance 300 miles that includes everything from mountain biking and paddling to orienteering. I’ve even heard there might be some gators and snakes involved in all that. Ushering in the new year as our first guest for 2024, welcome Jeff Welch to the podcast. Thanks for making time for us today, sir.

03:34
Jeff Welch
Not a problem. Thanks for having me on.

03:36
Michael Warren
I’m already just a little bit off kilter because in Brinsick introduction of you, he used some words in relation to you that have never been used in relation to me. Number one is captain. Number two is race. Okay. Two things have never been done.

03:54
Jeff Welch
This is the first time I’ve had the rank of captain. I never made it past sergeant, but I was the guy who brought the ideal up to my two cohorts. And so they said, well, then you’re the team captain. And I was like, that’s scary, me leading two other guys.

04:10
Michael Warren
Are they still speaking with you at this point? Just checking.

04:12
Jeff Welch
Oh, yeah. It’s us against the world, because everybody else that we talk to about this and our agency thinks that we are absolutely nuts for doing this.

04:21
Brent Hinson
I’m glad to hear that. We’re not the only ones that think hand raised.

04:25
Michael Warren
Just say.

04:28
Jeff Welch
When I went to the FBI NA conference down in Nashville and got to see Mike and everything, all the guys down there said, you are absolutely have lost your mind to do this. And I was like, nah, you start.

04:42
Michael Warren
Doing stuff like this is how people end up getting committed for evaluation.

04:47
Jeff Welch
Yeah.

04:48
Michael Warren
This right here is proof that it’s going off well.

04:52
Jeff Welch
It’s one of those things that has to be done. Win, lose or draw, we got to get it done.

04:57
Michael Warren
Well, good man. As we typically start off our program here, and I like your story. I like your story. I would like for you to tell our listeners how you came to the law enforcement profession in the first place.

05:12
Jeff Welch
Well, it started a long time ago. My dad was in the military. He was a military policeman stationed at Fort Campbell. And growing up, I never had aspirations of being, one, in the military and two, being in law enforcement. But as time went on, I went to college, played college basketball, used my degree for a little bit afterwards, and there was just a point in time in my life where I got all the immaturity out of me. And so I started late in the business, 30 years. I was 30 years old when I went to the academy. And to be honest, my dad begged me not to go into profession. He said, man, coach basketball do other things. He really set me down and had a long, hard talk, and I was like, dad, I just think this is what I want to do.

06:00
Jeff Welch
This is where I want to be helping people. You can’t find another job like this. I tell matter of fact, Friday I’m going to speak to some high school kids, and my big talk is you will not find another job in the world like that of a law enforcement officer, because every day is different, every call is different. And I say a lot of times in my training that law enforcement officers don’t like change. Yeah, we do. We like change because we have to change every day. We have to change our tactics. We have to change how we go to calls and our mentality. And God bless the people that work in buildings all day long, but I can’t be confined. I like to have that freedom of being in a patrol car, riding around, seeing different things, being out in the weather.

06:45
Jeff Welch
So it was kind of a natural calling. I had it in my blood from dad. I just fought it for a while and then finally gave in. And I wouldn’t trade my career for anything. I wouldn’t go back. I haven’t second guessed a decision I’ve made in this profession. And my wife thinks I’m crazy, but I got a nine year old son that all he wants to do is be the police, and I’m all about it. Hey, I’m going to train him better than I got trained and he’ll be fine. But we need those people in the world. We need this younger generation to step up and say, hey, I don’t want a job. I want a career. I want a profession. And that’s what law enforcement is. It’s a career. It’s a lifestyle that you have to live.

07:28
Michael Warren
Living a life that matters should be everybody’s aspiration, no matter what career path you choose. But making a difference for the positive should be something. But Brent, I hope I get this right because I’m going to try to use some of your jargon right here. I think that Jeff may have buried the lead in there because he said that he played some college ball.

07:50
Brent Hinson
Well, he’s not the first guest we’ve had to be in the basketball realm or the athletic realm. I was kind of curious, too, where.

07:58
Michael Warren
This tell us about that.

08:00
Jeff Welch
So funny story on that. Dad being in the military, being enlisted, being a first sergeant. I’m an only child. My dad came to me early and he said, son, I can’t pay for college. So you got one of two choices. You can either go in the military, which I was not going to do that. I’d spent 17 years on a military base. Wasn’t happening. He said, or you can find something that will pay your way to college. Well, academics wasn’t going to get it because that wasn’t going to happen. So being in Kentucky, I picked up a basketball at a very young age and got pretty good at it. I was good enough to earn a scholarship to the University of Central Arkansas.

08:38
Michael Warren
Central Arkansas?

08:39
Jeff Welch
Wait, Scotty Pippen? Yeah.

08:42
Michael Warren
Do you see what I’m talking about there? Buried the lead right there.

08:45
Brent Hinson
Well, let me ask you a question real quickly. How tall are you?

08:49
Jeff Welch
Six one.

08:50
Brent Hinson
See, I’m six four. I have no athletic ability, so I apologize to you. I just wanted to get that out of the way. I’ve never played basketball in my life. Coaches look at me and they say, well, you’re a basketball player. And then they see me run down the court and say, never mind.

09:03
Michael Warren
We said basketball. Basketball did not cooperate. So there we go.

09:07
Jeff Welch
Yeah. So Scotty’s first year in the NBA was my first year at Central Arkansas. So I didn’t get to play on the same team with him. But during the summertime, he would have camps and I’ve run up down the floor a bunch of times with Scotty.

09:22
Michael Warren
To schooling?

09:24
Jeff Welch
Absolutely not. But here’s the cool thing I always got picked by was because he knew I’d throw in the ball every time.

09:35
Michael Warren
Everybody’s got to have a role. Just saying, everybody plays a role.

09:38
Jeff Welch
Absolutely. But if you got on Scotty’s team, you never lost. So you played all day. No, he had to keep passing the.

09:45
Brent Hinson
Ball to MJ all the time. He wanted somebody to pass it to him.

09:48
Jeff Welch
Exactly. And actually, there was a guy that I played with that was had he been two inches taller, we’d have had the second coming of Scottie Pippen. And that’s Clifton Bush. He lives down in New Zealand now, but he was a phenomenal player. And those days there, I often go back to my college days, and were very good. We were number one team in the nation in Nai. My senior year, we lost in a national title game. We had a very unique team. We had six African American guys and six white guys, and you ruined on the road. You ruined with an African American. We didn’t see color. We were a so a lot of those lessons I carried with me into the professional law enforcement. And the team still talks.

10:36
Jeff Welch
We got a big Facebook page, and the past few years have been tough on law enforcement. I leaned on those guys and told them, hey, don’t believe everything you’re reading. All right, guys, there’s a false narrative out there. It’s not all bad against us. And I’ve had great support from all of my teammates that I played with. They were like, hey, we’re proud of you. We know you’re trying to do the right thing, and stuff like that. So my college days were great. I wasn’t all American. I did start. I played every game. I got a degree from it, so mom and dad didn’t have to fork out a whole lot of money for me. But those days really made me as who I was when I got in the law enforcement profession.

11:21
Jeff Welch
And it’s weird because your shifts need to really be like a team. You’ve got your superstars on a shift, and you got your guys that always said I was part of the wagon pullers. I pulled the wagon for the superstars, but at the end of the day, we won. And that’s kind of the philosophy I took when I started supervising, is, hey, we’re one team. Everybody’s got a role. Everybody does it. Everybody goes home.

11:48
Michael Warren
Know, Jeff, you make such a good point there, and it’s something we’ve talked about on this podcast before. The concept of a well rounded team I think is much more powerful than a bunch of well rounded officers and allowing people to utilize their strengths and their passions and working together. And that’s where the leadership really has to come into play. You can have a team full of superstars, but you’ve seen it in basketball. There’s some of the dream teams. You can have the best superstars, but if they don’t work together as a team, we don’t get the results that we need. And in law enforcement, that means our communities don’t get the results they deserve.

12:27
Jeff Welch
Absolutely.

12:30
Michael Warren
You make this transition into law enforcement and you brought up your teammates, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring this up here. Just about a month or so ago, we had a gentleman that I came to know through virtual Academy, not police officer. He was a civil rights leader from down in Alabama, Greg Townsend. And we did some work with him. My former partner and I, John Bostain, they did a recording together talking about community relations. And Greg and I, we didn’t agree on everything politically, but we became friends, and I could bounce ideas off of him and we could talk back and forth. And it was so refreshing having a different perspective because, listen, I got all kinds of thoughts in this big old melon of mine, but what they often lack are perspectives of others. What they often lack is empathy.

13:22
Michael Warren
And Greg was one of those guys that helped me see that. So I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize his contribution to society and tell him how much he’ll be missed. My prayers and thoughts are with his family and friends. He was one of the good guys, but all of us need somebody like that. And it sounds like you got that from your teammates. But Jeff, let’s be honest with each other. I think sometimes we’re missing that internally in law enforcement.

13:51
Jeff Welch
Oh, absolutely.

13:52
Michael Warren
Where people that we work with, our teammates, our brothers, our sisters, are unwilling to have that talk with us when they see us do something, perhaps not the best way, have that talk with us so that we don’t make a worse mistake or even the same mistake again. Did you find that working in a team environment like you did it help you? Did it prepare you to have those conversations with those you work?

14:15
Jeff Welch
Yeah, absolutely. I was the point guard on the team, so I was an extension of the coach. And you got to have those courageous conversations. And the one word that I think a lot of law enforcement, especially the males, that is hard to come out of their mouth is to tell a fellow officer, hey, I love you. For whatever reason. That word, it’s almost taboo now, the agency I work for now at Hopkins County, that word is standard, and it’s not a cliche. We don’t just throw it out there. We truly mean it. Hey, brother, I love you. Please don’t do this again, or, hey, I see you’re sliding. Know what’s going on at the workplace, at the home place. Let’s go have you know I found a home in Hopkins County. That man, it’s a family environment, and that’s kudos to my sheriff.

15:12
Jeff Welch
He has made it that way. Family first. We hold each other accountable before anybody else can hold us accountable. So we’re harder one another. And you’ll see that in our talk with the race. Me and the two other guys, we’re holding each other accountable. When somebody’s sliding, we’re saying, hey, get it in gear, because we depend on you to get it done. So I wish more folks would, in the profession would drop that macho, drop the ego. I was told early on in this career, there’s no hall of Fame at the end of it. They’re not giving you a green jacket. They’re not building a statue. So what you get out of it is to pull your buddies with you to get to retirement so you can enjoy retirement healthy, wealthy, and wise is what I like to say.

15:58
Jeff Welch
That’s what I want to get my guys to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. And we have this thing called a thin blue line, and everybody’s got a different definition of it. And my thin blue line is we’re walking down this line together, and when one of our brothers and sisters steps off that line, it’s our job to pull them back and put them back on the line. As we travel down the path, we miss that. I think it’s getting better in law enforcement, but, man, sometimes just going up to an officer saying, hey, man, I love you, brother. Keep up. Doing what you’re doing does wonders. Does wonders.

16:38
Michael Warren
And it’s sad. This is talking about society as a whole. I think telling somebody that you love them has kind of really gone down in society as a whole. And you wonder how many of those people that you talk to at your agency that if they didn’t hear that from their fellow workers, they may not hear it that often.

16:56
Jeff Welch
No, absolutely.

16:57
Michael Warren
And we need to be loved. I mean, even people that call themselves introverts and people that like being away from other people, they still want to be loved, and I think it’s missing in society.

17:10
Jeff Welch
Oh, absolutely.

17:12
Michael Warren
So, Jeff, you get on the road and you’re doing this work. Was what you thought law enforcement was going to be. The stuff that you learned from your dad, did it turn out to be pretty dag on accurate once you started doing the job yourself?

17:27
Jeff Welch
Pretty close. Obviously, dad was policing in the came in the late 90s, so think a lot of the tactics and stuff like that had changed. But as far as the overall view of no, he was pretty accurate about some of the things, and dad was more talking to me about not necessarily the work stuff. He knew I would get the training to get me through that. When you take the uniform off and all the trauma and everything else that you see, how are you going to handle that? Dad talked to me about the pitfalls of falling into alcoholism and things like that. He was pretty spot on with it, minus the tactics and some of the training, and the equipment is obviously way better now than it was when I started.

18:19
Michael Warren
Absolutely. Yeah. Think about that. When you and I first started, cell phones were still a bit of a novelty.

18:24
Jeff Welch
Yeah. You had to pull up to a pay phone and dial 911 to call dispatch.

18:30
Michael Warren
And why’d we call 911? Because we’re too cheap to put a quarter in to call the business line.

18:34
Jeff Welch
Exactly. When dad tells me a story all the time, that when he started. He had call boxes. You just pulled up to a telephone pole. But sometimes I’d love to go back with no cell phones for a while. That’d be great.

18:49
Michael Warren
Oh, my goodness. I can’t even imagine. But you’re going through the career, and at some point you felt the calling. Because I truly believe that with people like you, it is truly a calling. You felt the calling to become a trainer. What was it that drew you to the training side of the house? Because quite honestly, it’s a niche job. In many cases, it’s a thankless job that requires more work. But yet still you went over there. What was it?

19:19
Jeff Welch
It was day one coming out of the academy. My dad talked to him and he said, as soon as you get out, do not rely on the agency to train you. Go seek out your own training. Now, I was very fortunate because this time, dad’s working for the Tennessee Law Enforcement Academy as the assistant, I had easy access to training. I could run down to Donaldson and jump in a I started I was a PPCT instructor year one. I mean, my first year of my career, I was already an instructor. Now, good or bad. Probably looking back on it probably wasn’t the best thing for me being an instructor right off the bat, but I tried every year to we get 40 hours of training in Kentucky. I tried to triple that every year, whatever it was.

20:05
Jeff Welch
And early in the career, we get wrapped into the skill stuff. We want to run and gun and fight and shoot and all that stuff. So I spent a lot of my own money, a lot of my own vacation time just attending training to try to make myself better. And dad told me, he said, in this business, you got to set yourself up for retirement if you’re going to work patrol your entire life. And people don’t realize this nowadays. These guys that are getting ready to retire, they will scarf up law enforcement in a heartbeat because of the work ethic, the work conditions, the shift work that you’ve done, your ability to communicate with people and problem solve. Pretty quickly. Training was just kind of like coaching. Now I’m the coach.

20:46
Jeff Welch
I can go in and set my guys down and say, hey, this is what we’re going to train on this year, and just fell in love with it. I love being in front of a classroom. I love imparting what knowledge that I’ve gained over my career to folks just like my predecessors. And I had great mentors along the way. Mike, you’re one of them. I’ve sat through your classes. John Bostain Alita it’s kind of ironic.

21:09
Brent Hinson
Though, in all the ways your father tried to talk you out of getting into the profession, he actually set you up for a successful career in the absolutely.

21:19
Jeff Welch
And there’s not a day goes by I don’t thank him for it. I still talk to him every day. Even though I’m not working the road anymore, he’s still involved. I run all my training stuff by him and say, hey, what do you think? And a lot of times he tells me, hey, it’s way past me. I don’t understand that. But yeah, he did. He allowed me to progress. After the day after I retired, I started calling around saying, hey, you need a broke down trainer and a guy I went to the academy with the sheriff here, Matt Sanderson, said, yeah, I need somebody to come in and build me a training program. And I said, Well, I kind of know a guy, and I can help you out with that.

22:01
Michael Warren
But you know what, though? Tying back to what you said earlier, I saw a quote this weekend from I believe was eddie Robinson, a legendary football coach, says that coaching is all about loving the people you coach. If you don’t love them, then you’re not coaching. And training, to me is the same way. If you don’t love the people you’re training, then you’re doing it for yourself, and there’s no way you’re going to be as effective as you can be.

22:26
Jeff Welch
Everybody has people that come to training that they’re like, oh, my God, here. He know you have those two or three students? I don’t have one at Hopkins County. I really don’t. I look forward to every one of my guys coming in. They’re always upbeat. They always want to learn new know. And I learn more from them than they probably learn from me, to be honest, because we got a good blend. We got some young guys, and then we got some older guys that work. And man, they leave their egos in the car and we get after it in training, and it’s refreshing. People ask me all the time, I’m 55. They say, how long are you going to go? And I said, until you guys quit loving it.

23:05
Jeff Welch
And when you quit loving it, that’s my sign for me to step aside and somebody else needs to take over.

23:11
Michael Warren
That’s fantastic. But for our listeners who maybe aren’t in the training world, training isn’t always or doesn’t always go the way that we have planned whether scenarios our classrooms, what do they say, the best laid plans of Mice and men. Right. What are some of the mishaps that perhaps you’ve had training that maybe you wish people didn’t know about? So know?

23:44
Jeff Welch
Mike, it’s funny because if you’re a trainer, I think you absolutely have to not take yourself serious. You have to you can’t take yourself serious. So a couple of years ago, I’m big into Evoc, emergency vehicle operations. I go across the state and teach emergency driving. So I’m up there doing my thing. We’re talking about probably the number one cause of police accidents is backing, which is inattention. You’re just not paying attention. And so I get done with the class, and I’m headed to the track for those guys to drive, and I’m in my personal truck, and I go to back up. Totally violate every principle of backing because I’m in a hurry. Back to that be quick, don’t be in a hurry. Completely rip the rear view mirror off my truck on a telephone pole.

24:30
Jeff Welch
So I throw it in the truck and I get to the training site, and I got about 30 minutes, and I’m like, man, I got to get this back on here. So I got duct tape hanging on, and I park my truck over so nobody can see. And so my fellow trainer comes over. He goes, hey, why is your truck parked over? I said, man, you’re not going to believe this, but I ripped the mirror off my truck back and out of the parking lot. Then I had one here recently. So we’re doing pursuit training, and the pursuit comes to an end, and we’re doing post termination tactics. And so one of my guys is behind his vehicle stacking on the pillars, and we’re using UTM. And he was like, right now I’d be engaging through my back window of his Dodge patrol truck.

25:13
Jeff Welch
And I was like, Then do it. First round. Boom. Blows the back window out of the like and he just looks at me, and I was like, well, you might as well just keep on going. And so we get done and he’s freaking out, and I’m like, hey, man, it’s all right. I’ll write the memo. It’s a $300 window. Sheriff wants me to pay for it, I’ll pay for it. And I look back now and when I told the sheriff, because I’m a big believer, just go follow my sword and get it over with. And he was like, well, are you going to make that mistake again? I was like, no. We got a new rule in training. Do not shoot at glass in any of our patrol cars. If you’re a good trainer, you’re going to make those mistakes.

25:54
Jeff Welch
Fortunately, I haven’t had anybody seriously hurt. I haven’t lost anybody in the line of duty. And I think that’s the thing I worry about most when you’re doing those dynamic simulations, that you got to be Johnny on the spot and make sure everything’s correct.

26:09
Michael Warren
It is incredibly stressful for me as a trainer when you run those types of training events, all the preparation for the safety side of things on the front end to ensure that no live rounds are introduced and that people aren’t bringing in edge weapons and all those things right there, that as the trainer, you’re responsible for. It’s incredibly draining before your students even get there. And maybe yours is different. I don’t know.

26:40
Jeff Welch
Well, it is, but we have some safety protocols in place. Like, obviously everybody’s a safety officer, but we pat guys down, we look at weapons, we make sure we have the safety zone set up. Drop your duty weapon here. Drop all your ammo. I have a specific guy that trains with me that all he does is go through the vehicle and we pull out everything and guys are like, hey, it’s in the trunk. Don’t care. Put it over there in the box. We’ll lock it up. I don’t want any hiccups whatsoever. And knock on wood, I haven’t had any. But those types of training, the main thing is you just got to slow down, take your time.

27:19
Jeff Welch
You’re not rushing through these because as soon as you start rushing, you’ll miss something and then somebody gets hurt and hopefully nobody gets killed but lose them every year.

27:27
Michael Warren
Exactly. And Brent, it’s one of those things that when you’re running one of these and you start doing a physical search of the person, you’ll get some people that almost take offense to it because I was like, well, you don’t trust me to have emptied all this stuff. So it’s not that not about trust. Yeah, but then one of the dangers I think instructors can fall into is we say we’ll search each other and then you kind of see people half ass in their way and it’s like, man, if I get concerned that they’re doing that, they’re cutting corners in. Training to ensure their safety? Are they cutting corners out there on the street when they should be ensuring their safety?

28:06
Jeff Welch
Here’s how I combat that. So one of the things I think we miss in fundamental policing nowadays is we miss searches. We don’t do a good job. Why aren’t we building that into our training? So when my guys show up, I let them search each other. First you think you found everything, and then I search the person and go, well, you missed this pocket knife. Can this pocket knife kill you? Absolutely. And so it starts driving home of I have skin in this game. Even though it’s a training environment, I need to treat it like the real world. And I missed a knife. That if were out on the streets in the real world. Now this guy has a knife, now he has a gun now. I don’t play tricks on my guys. I don’t hide things.

28:52
Jeff Welch
It is what it is when you come in because if you set up a class and Mike, you know this, if I put up on the bulletin board, hey, we’re doing search training next week, guys would just be like, oh my God. Exactly. So I just kind of throw that into my training. When I do these, when I’m running the VR system or I’m doing Taser training or anything that requires all live weapon systems to be placed outside, I sit there and physically watch them and say, is that how you search somebody on the street? Well, no, this is training. No, this is real life. Because if you let it slide, something back happens. So we kind of build that into our training.

29:29
Michael Warren
That’s a great way of doing it because the more you do things the incorrect way, the more likely it is that you’re going to do it when it matters and we just can’t have that. So you brought up virtual reality training. Why did you choose to go and start implementing virtual reality into your training process?

29:52
Jeff Welch
Man, there’s a bunch of reasons. One, in order to run full dynamic scenarios that is very labor intensive, manpower intensive, to have to keep up with the rounds and the scenarios and things like that. So I was at Alita a couple years ago and ran into Rap VR systems and sat down and talked to Bob BEAMUS, who Bob’s turned into one of my mentors now and sat down there and said, hey, I didn’t know anything about virtual reality. I’m not a gamer. I can’t play Pac Man with my kids. And I said, show me this system. And as soon as they put me in the headset, my training mind started going, man, the things I could do with this back at my agency if you hadn’t played in VR, man, you’re fully immersed. So it’s full, 365, 40, up, down.

30:40
Jeff Welch
You can look in the scenarios, you can look under cars and see the drivetrain so how realistic is that? Two, when you get in the headset, you lose that sense of you got an audience because if you’re running flat screens, if you turn around, there’s the instructor and the chief or whoever watching your scenario. You turn around in the headset and you’re looking at a wall, a car. So the system just has a ton of things. It’s hard to teach communications out in a dynamic scenario type situation because you got to almost scream and things like that for people to hear you. With this system, I’m telling you, we’ve used it probably since we bought it. We’ve had it over two years. We may have pulled the trigger six times. It’s all about talking, it’s all about communication.

31:30
Jeff Welch
The scenarios that we have, like we have a shoplifting call, put a shoplifting call on a flat screen, what are you going to get? You’re not going to get anything. But now with just a simple shoplifting call, now that officer or that deputy or that trainee has got to learn how to get the proper information. Can I see video? You got to get the suspect. If there’s any of that information, you got to get that. So it builds communication into the training scenario and the VR system. I got a flat range on the VR. If I want them to shoot still targets with a pistol or rifle, I can do that. But I can do it in the friendly confines of a building that there’s no snow, it’s air conditioned.

32:13
Jeff Welch
So the VR game is here and it is going to change law enforcement the way trainers train. And I tell people all the time, if you don’t have a VR system, you’re already behind the eight ball. You got to get one.

32:27
Michael Warren
And for our listeners who don’t, again, aren’t in the training environment when you’re setting up scenarios using role players can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Number one, you have to find enough because you’re already taking people off the street to train them and so they’re running short staff. Well, now we need to bring in some people to act as role players. Well, if the role players don’t follow the script, things can go completely haywire. And with virtual reality, you don’t have to worry about that. So you can do better training with less staffing and you have more control over the training itself?

33:08
Jeff Welch
Oh, absolutely. Love it. Some of the unique things with our system is I can sit behind the command module and I can actually play the bad guy. So it’s not canned responses that I’m picking. I can literally say, hey, pick a street in Madisonville and say, this is the street you’re on. And I can play dispatch. I use our codes and I can play the bad guy. So I can have the dialect of how people talk in and around Western Kentucky. Instead of having a canned answer of well, I’m Robert Smith. I can pick out people that our guys know in the community and say, this is who you’re dealing with. And it’s just phenomenal.

33:51
Michael Warren
And I know that you’re familiar with it, but one of the things that I’m such a big proponent of and science backs up is the concept of interleaving yes. Where we’re training on more than one topic at a time. And it seems like virtual reality really allows you to interleave, but not only interleave, but interleave seamlessly, going from one discipline to another with no hiccup.

34:15
Jeff Welch
Yes, absolutely. And I’ll give you a quick scenario. So we have an employee theft, all right? So they have to go to this warehouse and talk to a manager. And so they walk into the office, and they’re in the headset. I’m playing the manager, and I was like, hey, I had three laptops stolen. They’re $1,500. And I prompt the students to, what kind of laptops? Well, they’re dells. How do you know they’re $1,500? Well, this is here’s the serial numbers. And I force them to try to get the information, the basic information to write a report. They establish a suspect. And so I’m like, hey. So then the next scenario is we have a right. You went to Robert Smith’s house, knock on the door and see if Robert Smith’s there. Well, they knock on the door. I have my role player say, no.

35:02
Jeff Welch
Robert came in last night at midnight. He had a duffel bag with him, but he left, and he went to stay with his girlfriend at the local hotel. Well, guess what I have in queue next? I have a hotel lobby. So they go to the hotel, they locate Robert’s car, and as soon as they walk in the hotel lobby, there stands Robert meeting the description that they got from the employee and the person at the house. So now they got to do a field interview, depending on how that field interview goes. And, Mike, you know as well as I do, we can talk ourselves into a fight, or we can talk ourselves out of a fight. And so if they do very good, I can have the guy go in if they’re going to PC arrest him on it.

35:38
Jeff Welch
I can have the guy walk him in the handcuffing position. All right, turn around, put your hands behind your back. I can make the avatar do that, or the officer doesn’t hit the benchmarks and gets wrapped up in emotional intelligence and loses his cool. I can make the avatar assault him with a knife. Gun. So now we go from very low frequency call to, uhoh, it’s high priority. Now it’s high frequency. I got to get a gun out. I got to find cover, things like that.

36:06
Brent Hinson
Is this too new to have statistical data to show you how effective this training is, or we don’t have the data in on that yet.

36:14
Jeff Welch
Yeah, I don’t think so I look for science at some point in time to probably start studying that to see I can only speak for my guys absolutely love it. They would much rather do that than shoot UTM rounds at one another, obviously, because of the pain penalty. But they love it. They tell me it’s as close as you can get to the real thing.

36:39
Michael Warren
Now I’m going to play devil’s advocate here because my kids will show me these videos from YouTube and everything of people putting the headset on and tripping over things and falling down because they got so scared. Have you experienced any of that or is this a really well done program that, again, if you do the safety stuff up front and make sure that the environment is set up and ready for it’s a safer way of conducting trade. Not only is it probably more than likely more effective, but it’s also safer.

37:11
Jeff Welch
Yeah, you got to have a spotter inside there spotting them to keep them from doing things. But we’ve had guys in one of the active shooter scenarios, you literally have kids running down the hallway screaming at you and you’ll see the student in the goggles dodging them. We have a bridge jumper where they try to run after and tackle the guy on the bridge. And so they try to lean on things like a car for cover, things like that. We haven’t had any accidents, but that’s how real it puts you. We have one traffic stop that it is on the edge of the fog line. And literally this is what sold me on the system. I ran the scenario at Alita and these semi trucks are going by me. I have no room to operate other than pretty much in the A pillar.

38:01
Jeff Welch
And after the scenario was over, I went to Bob and I said, how did y’all mimic the air coming from those semis? And Bob just kind of laughed and he said, that’s what VR does to them. It tricks your brain into thinking you’re right there. And so my guys get a giggle out of it because I put them in that scenario and they’re like, how do you make the sound? How do you get the air? I felt the air. I was like, It’s magic, guys. It’s just magic.

38:28
Michael Warren
But you know our friend Brian Willis, he’s big in the imagery thing and he talks about that if we properly do it, the mind can’t tell the difference between the physical and the imagery. And this takes it up a notch because it provides the visual cues for you, but your mind is still filling in the gaps. Hey, you know what? There’s a truck going by. I should feel the air. Or you know what? I see a car right there. I should be able to lean against that bad boy. And you go to lean against it and it’s not there. It just seems like your ability as the trainer to take them down this pathway, this logical pathway, they should be going down so that it’s not just at the retail store.

39:14
Michael Warren
They have to go to the it seems like it just allows for you to play the game without playing the game.

39:22
Jeff Welch
Oh, absolutely. There’s a DUI one on there that I can make the guy fail. HGN one legged stand and walk and turn.

39:29
Michael Warren
No kidding.

39:30
Jeff Welch
When do you get that training? You get that training now out in the field on the side of a highway at two in the morning, that you can’t make a mistake. Well, when I put them in that, they can make all the mistakes they want in this training environment, it’s really cool. The back end of that is what really impressed me is the training side of it. As an instructor, I can go back and replay everything. So, Mike, if you’re in the headset when we replay the scenario, you stay in the headset and you get to walk around your scenario and see yourself. So you can go to the bad guy and see the angles. I can fly a drone up and go 100ft up and show you the angles of where you were at. When guys say, oh, no, I was behind cover.

40:10
Jeff Welch
Really? Let’s take a look. No, you weren’t. So just phenomenal stuff. Again, it’s going to take over law enforcement, and I’m just fortunate we got in on the front end of it.

40:24
Michael Warren
It’s like if you go and you watch a football game and people say, why in the world did the quarterback make that throw? And then they’ve got the technology where they can come and they can get it from the quarterback’s perspective and say, Listen, the defense was disguising the fact that there was zone coverage, and they show you why, and it really helps you to understand why decisions were made. And it’s only after we understand why decisions were made that we can start to influence the decisions that will be made. And that’s what training is all about.

40:58
Jeff Welch
Absolutely.

40:59
Michael Warren
Now, I don’t want to call what you’re doing a mistake. You were just talking about people, they can make all the mistakes they want to in training, but we won’t call it a mistake. But maybe we’ll call it a lapse in judgment. You see somehow I don’t know what mailing list you’re on, but you see something about a race and how did you find out about this thing?

41:23
Jeff Welch
So we come back, me and Tony Purcell, one of the guys that’s racing with us in Florida, went up to the Shannon DOA Mountains and did the Shannon DOA Epic. It’s 100 miles race elevation out the wazoo. You got 24 hours to complete 100 miles on mountain bike kayak in your feet. Went up there. I failed miserably, got hurt, couldn’t complete it. Cops don’t like to lose. We’re very competitive.

41:51
Brent Hinson
You say failed miserably, you got up there and did it while I was sitting on the couch. So let’s redefine our terms just a little bit.

41:58
Jeff Welch
Well, but I learned from my failure. So this is how we’re getting to C. So I come back and our sheriff is huge into physical fitness and just wellness and resiliency. So he sent out a memo right after this race saying, hey, I really want you guys to start thinking about your physical and mental health. I woke up January 1 of this past year, 2023. I weighed 242 pounds, most I’d ever weighed my entire life. And I said, something has to change. Well, I can go out and run all day long, but if I don’t have a goal, I don’t have something to train towards, I’m going to quit about three months into it. That’s just me. I can’t play competitive basketball anymore. They don’t have over 50 leagues where I’m at. Body probably can’t withstand that much anymore.

42:47
Jeff Welch
So I sat down at work one day, and I’ve always been big into the Fiji races and Survivor and all of that kind of stuff. So I just started typing in adventure races, and I seen this C to C three day expedition in Florida. And so I went to Zach, and guy convinced and he also woke up on January 1, said, I got to do some changing. And I said, hey, take a look at this. He’s like, yeah, let’s do it. And I was like, well, I need to call Tony, our third guy. Tony will do it. Tony’s the best. He’s a beast. That’s why I got him as our know. Tony works out every know. He’s a Marine, he eats crayons, all that kind of, so I called Tony, and Tony was like, yeah, but I got to have a commitment from you.

43:41
Jeff Welch
And this is where we go back to those courageous conversations. And Tony said, hey, the last race we did, you didn’t come in quite the shape you needed to. And I’m not going to commit to something unless you’re 100% committed to it. And I was like, yeah, Tony, I am. I’m committed. This is what I’m doing. And me and Tony train together. So he sees me about every three, four or five weeks. So he’s seen me go from 242 down to about 202 right now. So I’ve lost 40 pounds.

44:12
Brent Hinson
Now, hold on 1 second. I have said that’s a tough conversation that he had to have with you. And do you have the relationship to where oh, absolutely. Okay. Because sometimes if someone, even if they’re my friend, I might take offense to that just a little bit. Like you said, that is a hard conversation to have.

44:31
Jeff Welch
Yeah. Me and Tony went to basic training. We were roommates for years. We worked at Henderson for years. And so he’s kind of like my brother, and he had to have that hard conversation with me. And I appreciate it.

44:42
Brent Hinson
But even if I’m really close with someone, that is tough to hear.

44:48
Jeff Welch
Well, but it was good to hear.

44:50
Brent Hinson
Sure.

44:51
Jeff Welch
I looked at it like, yeah, okay, I get why. And if the shoe had been on the other foot and Tony had come in, I would have had the same conversation with him saying, hey, I get it, but maybe you need to come in a little bit better shape next time. Mentally, we’re there. Just physically, we got to get these bodies to where we need them to be to complete this. Now, with that being said, we’re not in this to win it. This is a deal where all three of us agree that our objective is to finish. That’s all we want to do. We want to finish, and that’s a win for us. Whether we come in at 71 hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds, or we come in at 71 hours, we just want to finish it. And so we’re racing ourselves.

45:38
Jeff Welch
We’re not racing anybody else because we’d lose miserably if were racing everybody else.

45:42
Michael Warren
Explain to our listeners, because Brent kind of said a little bit, but what all types of physical activity does it take to finish this race? What does this race include?

45:54
Jeff Welch
Kayaking. Or we’ll be in a canoe. We’ll have a three man canoe, all right? And so you’re going to have various legs of canoe. They’re going to start us in the ocean. So let me back up and kind of explain the race. We’re going to meet in St. Augustine, Florida, on February 21 for a race check in. That morning, we’ll check in all of our bikes. They provide the kayaks and the canoes and the paddles. We’ll get a good night’s sleep. We’ll get up, I think they say about 4430 in the morning. They put us on charter buses, and they drive us back across Florida, just south of Tallahassee, and they throw you out of the buses. They give your maps.

46:30
Jeff Welch
They throw you out the buses, and your first leg is probably going to be a canoe, open water canoe in the ocean in February. Yeah, crazy, but we’re going to do it. And then we’ll eventually make our way up into a river system where we get out of the canoes, and then you’ll either be on foot or you’ll be on bike. Fortunately for our team, all three of us are very strong on mountain bikes. We’ve mountain biked. And again, this goes back to our police training. Me and Tony have been riding mountain bikes since our rookie year, and so it’s something that we bled over into our personal life. Anytime Tony’s in my neck of the woods, he brings his bike, we find a trail, we go wear it out, same as if I go out in eastern Kentucky and visit him.

47:13
Jeff Welch
Hiking is no more than picking them up and putting them down. At some point in time in this race, there’s going to be a gut check of you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re cold, you’re wet. Okay. How’s that any different than 230 in the morning? You’re in a gunfight in an alleyway. Are you going to give up? Are you going to keep fighting to get out of this? And so that’s kind of our mentality is we’re going to see how far we can push the brain. We know our bodies can probably do it, but when are we going to throw in the towel or are we going to throw in the towel?

47:46
Michael Warren
It seems like that you are leaving out, again, some really important things because it’s Florida, right? And it’s so even though Florida doesn’t get cold like Michigan, that water is still going to be cold. I would just throw out there, too, that Florida is known for some things that are not only bad, but big creepy crawleys and yes. Okay.

48:16
Jeff Welch
Well, the good thing is February, they’re dormant. They’re not really looking for a, you know, as long as you don’t go looking for trouble, you probably won’t find it. But we’ve been told that you will see alligators. And again, as long as you don’t go messing with them, you’re fine. Now, the scary part gets is in the water at nighttime when it’s dark, then you want to be a little more careful with that. But they’ve been running this race for 25 years, and they’ve not had anybody getting eaten by an alligator or bit by a snake or anything like that.

48:51
Brent Hinson
But this is over the course of, what, three days, correct?

48:54
Jeff Welch
Three days, absolutely.

48:55
Brent Hinson
And you’re out there, you’re doing all this physical activity during the day and at night you go back to a comfortable hotel, right?

49:01
Jeff Welch
No, you just keep going. Yeah. Well, they’ll have transition areas, so they’ll have places to where it’s usually at state parks, where you have other race teams come in and they may be sleeping for an hour and a half, 2 hours, and then they get up and start heading toward the finish line again. So there’s a whole lot to this race that’s what makes it very interesting, is there’s a whole lot to it other than just the physical parts. You kind of got to plan, hey, when are we going to sleep? When are we going to eat? And then you got to play in the unknowns of are we going to have a breakdown in the bike? Are we going to turn our canoe over? Are we going to get lost in the middle of night?

49:39
Jeff Welch
Because Florida, what makes this race unique is there’s really no mountain in Florida that you can look at a map and go, yep, that’s where we’re at it’s all. And Tony’s not real good at looking at the stars and going, hey, this is where we’re at via the stars. There’s a whole lot more to it. But if you break all the and this is what we tell folks. We’re going to Florida to do what we did when were twelve and 13 years old. We’re going to go outside, we’re going to ride our bikes, we’re going to get in a boat, we’re going to canoe, and we’re going to walk through the woods, and we’re going to walk through as a team and have a good time. And God knows the conversations we’ll have in 72 hours. All right. Yeah.

50:22
Brent Hinson
I watched a YouTube video and a guy said, one of the best things about this whole race is the interactions we have with the other teams, just talking to them in between.

50:30
Jeff Welch
Absolutely. And that’s how we’re going to pick up, because we kind of want to make this kind of annual thing. Maybe not C to C, maybe look at other races to do. This is our first time, so we’re going to fail miserably on some things and we’re going to do good on some things and come back to the drawing board and say, hey, next year we need to do this and this, and kind of make it annual thing. And again, we’re not trying to win the podium and go to the Olympics or anything like that. We just want to finish. And it glowed after we finish.

51:02
Michael Warren
Exactly. Well, after the recovery period, which at our age is about a so. But can I ask you a personal question, though? This seems to have benefits beyond work and even beyond you personally, because we had a guest on recently, TJ Webb, an officer who was shot in a line of duty, and he talked about how hard he worked to get back to his physical strength, and he talked about the impact that it had on his son. I have to imagine that your son watching you go through and put in the work to do this has to have a positive impact on him, psychologically, physically, just all around. It has to be good.

51:53
Jeff Welch
Yeah, but he still thinks Dad’s crazy. He’s like, dad, I can’t believe you’re going to do this.

51:57
Michael Warren
Not wrong.

51:58
Jeff Welch
No, but yeah, he’s been a big help. He knows that, hey, Dad’s going to do his run today, and sometimes he’ll get out on his bike and ride with me. He don’t make the epic rides that we do, but he’ll get out and do a couple of miles with me and then go back to the house. But he likes the fun part of sitting and watching race day or when the race kicks off, you’ll be able to dot watch. You’ll be real time watching us move across the state of Florida. So he’s looking forward to going to bed and waking up and seeing where Dad’s at. And they can type in stuff. We can’t see it because we have no access to our cell phones or any outside communication for three days.

52:38
Jeff Welch
They can send us messages and we can review it at the end of it. My daughter absolutely thinks dad is nuts. He’s lost his mind wife is very supportive of it. She doesn’t like the idea know, three days in Florida in the swamps, but she sees the benefit of me doing and she actually caught on and she started working out and she’s getting into a routine. So it kind of has it’s bled over into other things.

53:05
Brent Hinson
Yeah, we’re sitting here, we’re joking, and we’re kind of goofing on you about being on the elements and all this, but what you’re doing is remarkable because it’s going to be such a confined space with you and two other guys, and you have to work as a team in order for this thing to work to get to that finish line. And for that, it’s totally commendable to go out and do this sort of thing.

53:28
Jeff Welch
Well, you got to have the in law enforcement trust is everything. I have to trust the guy backing me up. I have to trust the guy that I’m going through the door with. So when we as a team, we’ve had conversations know, there’s going to be a point where you put three type a personality guys together. There’s probably going to be some knuckle mash and some disagreements. But at the end of the day, we got to make the decision that’s best for the team and we got to trust that tony being the lead navigator because if something happens tony, we’re toast. All right. Because I can look at a map, but unless it’s talking to me over know I’m decent, I can get us to the nearest town, but I’m not going to get exactly the same way.

54:09
Jeff Welch
He’s not really good at orienteering, but we’re going to rely on tony to do that. So tony kind of has ultimate say, and the cool thing about a three man team is you take a vote and somebody’s got to split it. So it’ll be me, the team captain, that says I’m siding with Tony this time or I’m siding with Zach this time.

54:28
Brent Hinson
Well bring extra crayons for Tony then just to make sure.

54:32
Michael Warren
Well, I got to keep a strength.

54:35
Jeff Welch
He’s a beast. I have no doubt that tony could do this by himself. I have no doubt. Zach, we’re all going to be fine. We’ll pull off each other because we all bring something different to the table. And again, we’re checking our egos at the door. There’s no rank here. There’s none of that. We’re just three guys, three dads trying to get to the end of the line. But I guess the bigger thing that you got to think about and zach brought this up and this is the reason why zach’s doing it is at the end of the day, when you’re at funerals, what do they always say about the people, oh, he was a good guy. He was this, he was that. And zach said, you know. At my funeral, I want them to say, zach Render lived life to the fullest.

55:19
Jeff Welch
He got the most out of it that he could. Even though he ran some crazy race, at least he went and did it. At least he tried it. Now, I’m not saying everybody needs to go run an adventure race, but don’t put off today. Don’t do tomorrow what you can do today.

55:33
Brent Hinson
It all boils down to get busy living or get busy dying. That’s what Andy told us in Shawshank.

55:37
Michael Warren
Absolutely. One of the best lines ever, by.

55:40
Jeff Welch
The way, living the you know, and again, it’s not like we’re climbing Mount Everest. We’re just going to Florida and play with the gators and the snakes and no sleep for 72 hours. So going to be fun.

55:54
Michael Warren
I can’t help but think about what it’s going to be like in March when the race is over with. And now you’re in a training environment with your younger officers, and you’re sitting around on a break and say, okay, what’s your excuse? What’s your excuse for not challenging yourself?

56:14
Jeff Welch
Exactly.

56:15
Michael Warren
I’m married. I got kids. And these are your words. I’m a broke down trainer that’s in my mid 50s. What’s your excuse? And people need to be challenged, not in an ego driven way, but in a way that they reconsider their thought processes, and they say, you know what? I have been slacking. I’ve been cutting corners in my training. I’ve been cutting corners with my family. Because in the middle of all this, in the middle of all the training, you still have to perform as a dad. You still have to perform as a husband and find that’s what life balance is about, is being able to do the things that need to be done in all aspects. And it sounds like you and your teammates have mastered that, and I think that’s a great example for the people that you train.

57:10
Jeff Welch
Yeah, but you know how it is. Stories will grow as law enforcement. I’m going to come back with the 13 foot alligator chasing us in the canoe. That’s why we set record times. But you’re absolutely right. You can throw that in your training of saying, hey, look at 55 years old, I had no business being out there doing this. But I did. I challenged myself. And even if I don’t complete the race or we don’t finish the race, I’m 40 pounds lighter than I was. I’ve got a routine now that I work out every day, so my life is going to better. And I tell my son all the time, I was like, Dad’s doing this. Not for dad. Yeah, Dad’s going to go have fun for three days, but Dad’s doing it to try to extend life for him.

57:53
Jeff Welch
So I’m around longer for you.

57:55
Michael Warren
Absolutely.

57:59
Jeff Welch
He gets it, and my daughter gets it as well. But I don’t know. We get a lot of strange looks and people are like, y’all are crazy.

58:09
Michael Warren
Jeff, let’s be honest with each other, dude, you’ve been getting strange looks for years now. That should be nothing new to you.

58:15
Jeff Welch
This is true. This is true.

58:17
Michael Warren
And I just want to point out here that we at Virtual Academy that we believe so much in you and your teammates that Virtual Academy is trying to sponsor you because we think that what you’re doing is a great message to the people in law enforcement. I think it’s a great message to share with the community, and it certainly has been a great message to your family. And so we’re proud of the fact that you’re willing to do it. We can’t wait to bring you back on this show after it’s over to hear about your adventures. And I, for one, fully believe that you guys are going to finish this thing, and I think it’s going to be great story.

59:00
Jeff Welch
Yeah. And we want to reach out and say thank you to Virtual Academy because we’ve talked about all the preparation, but now you got to talk about the logistical side of it. We got thousands of dollars in equipment. You just can’t go down to Dick Sporting Goods and buy a pair of running shoes to do this. You got to have some of the top of the line equipment, and the sponsorship that Virtual Academy gave us tremendously helped us out to reach those. I think we’ll finish. I think it’ll be a good time. I know there’s some other law enforcement teams that are out there. There’s some guys off the East Coast that I’ve reached out to that are doing it and not throwing a challenge out to law enforcement.

59:43
Jeff Welch
But if you got guys out there that are interested in this that have never done it, or maybe there’s guys out there that have done it, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s make a big contingent at one of these races. Let’s make a law enforcement expedition race to get the sports growing, and anybody can do it. You don’t have to do a 24 hours race. You don’t have to do a 72 hours race. They got six hour races, eight hour races. Me, I’m the type that go big or go home. Let’s just go to the Super Bowl right off the bat and see where we stand and get our teeth kicked in, and we’ll get up like good law enforcement officers do and dust ourselves off and learn from our failures and move.

01:00:25
Michael Warren
Well, I’m excited for you guys. And I’ve been telling Brent and Aaron as we’ve been getting ready for this episode here, that I was excited about talking to you. You’re one of the most innovative, imaginative trainers that I’ve ever worked with. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I love stuff that you do because I steal it and I use it in my stuff, which is a sincere form of flattery, but I appreciate what you’re doing there. I appreciate what you’re doing with the race. And Brent, I feel like I need to reevaluate my beginning to 2024 because perhaps I wasn’t audacious enough in my thoughts and my plans for the you.

01:01:09
Brent Hinson
Know, we all have our benchmarks. We can set where we want to go. His Jeff sapson be a little bit higher than ours, but we don’t necessarily have to go all the way to the top. Right?

01:01:22
Michael Warren
No, listen, okay. Irrational response is equivalent to a snake. All right? So we’re not going to do that. But you know what, though? And you said it already, either get busy living or you get busy dying. And life is short enough as it is and live a life that matters. And I think that’s what we need to focus on in 2024.

01:01:51
Jeff Welch
We’re going to try to take some pictures and maybe some videos with the GoPro so you guys can somewhat see some of the stuff we’re doing and see us in our finest hours of sleeping on the side of the road like homeless people.

01:02:06
Brent Hinson
We want you to send those to us because that way we can update the folks on social media that follow us along, and they can see just exactly how you guys went through this race.

01:02:18
Jeff Welch
Absolutely. You know, the hardest part of this whole race, we can’t carry any weapons, cannot have a firearm. Now you take three cops and tell them you’re going to another state, and you have no access to firearm, which.

01:02:35
Michael Warren
With stuff that wants to eat you.

01:02:37
Jeff Welch
Exactly. So that’s a tough one to swallow.

01:02:42
Brent Hinson
Well, if you’d like to find out more about the race or you’re interested, I think you can still get in a late registration. If I’m not mistaken, I think I saw that on their website. We’ll put that all in the episode page. For this particular episode, the race itself, february 22 through the 25th down in St. Augustine, Florida, is where it begins, and it’s going to be over the course of three days. We can’t wait to hear the outcome. Win, lose, or draw, it doesn’t matter. Just the fact that you guys are going down there. Virtual academy is behind you guys, and we think what you’re doing is amazing, and you’ve got our support.

01:03:17
Jeff Welch
Awesome. We appreciate you guys, and we won’t let you down, that’s for sure.