The No Soap Era

For my birthday, we did a beer mile on a college campus. Allison doesn’t drink, so she did a seltzer mile instead: four warm seltzers and four laps. It turns out that’s way harder than a beer mile. She explains why, and it involves six total burps and a lot of regret. I ran 6:43 and spend some time thinking about whether I could get into the mid-fives if I actually trained for it.We also tell the story of the night after our wedding. A foot of snow was sitting on my car, Allison was trying to be helpful, and she found the sunroof button. Allison talks about phone banking for the first time and how it’s less scary than you’d think. Mostly it’s just letting people know their voter registration is inactive. I talk about why I’m running Pinhoti 100 (I need a Western States qualifier) and my mantra for it: make every step count. Then we get into Halloween costumes, including Ella Vader, the grilled cheese sandwich, and a frontier dress that made a drama teacher think Allison had joined a cult. Plus a quick correction on La Llorona and the stone tape theory.Subscribe, and tell your mom about the Hopkinsville Goblins.Support our Sponsors: Janji (code: Freeoutside): https://snp.link/a0bfb726CS Coffee: CSinstant.coffeeGarage Grown Gear: https://snp.link/db1ba8abSubscribe to Substack: http://freeoutside.substack.comSupport this content on patreon: HTTP://patreon.com/freeoutsideBuy my book "Free Outside" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/39LpoSFEmail me to buy a signed copy of my book, "Free Outside" at [email protected] the movie about setting the record on the Colorado Trail: https://tubitv.com/movies/100019916/free-outsideWebsite: www.Freeoutside.comInstagram: thefreeoutsidefacebook: www.facebook.com/freeoutside#Trailrunning #Runningnews #Outdoors #Outdooradventure

Allison saw her first ghost. Or a college student got into a car really fast. You decide.She was driving home through the MSU campus, watching a woman with a Stanley Cup hug her friend goodbye and step into traffic. Allison locked onto her because she once watched someone get hit by a car in LA. Then the woman was gone. She didn’t cross, she didn’t open a car door, she just disappeared. I’m still on team “just a human,” but I’ll admit I don’t have a better explanation.From there we go deep on ghosts. We cover the black mass Allison saw over the basement heater as a kid, the Savannah ghost that just wanted a Bible opened to the right chapter, and why you should never ask La Llorona what she needs. Allison explains how she mentally negotiated with dead miners on a candlelit mine tour in Georgetown, Colorado. We also rank the scariest things you could run into on a trail: the creatures of the Uinta Basin we won’t name, Bigfoot, werewolves, and a Hawaiian race photo that actually creeped Allison out.Then Allison explains the MLB playoffs, including the mystery team “I L,” why she’s rooting for the Rays (Durham Bulls loyalty), and her review of Bull Durham (“way too much kissing”). We do baseball and football announcer impressions, which go about how you’d expect.We wrap with Moab 240 and the flooding at Bridger Jack, and why Sinister Sports earned a lot of respect from Allison for how they handled a last-minute race change and refunded her entry.

We got married! After a week of wedding obligations, very little free time, and apparently sleeping about 10 hours a night, we’re back with a full wedding recap.We talk about the parts that went well (especially having enough food), the choreographed first dance to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” the ceremony stories from our officiant, and how Ted D. Bear—the life-size stuffed bear who has ridden shotgun on many of Jeff’s adventures—ended up at the wedding. We also revisit the early days of our relationship, including the time our friend Luke started asking when we were going to get married after knowing us for about six weeks.Then we test our newlywed knowledge with questions about each other’s shoe sizes, favorite colors, hometowns, and families. One of us does a better job than the other.This is a wedding recap, relationship update, and newlywed quiz all rolled into one Free Inside episode. And there’s a ghost story coming next week—Allison says she watched a woman disappear right in front of her.

With four days left before our wedding, Allison takes a very outdated test to determine whether she actually knows her future husband. The result: a respectable C+.From there, we try to determine where all the paperweights went, investigate one of America’s most haunted houses, debate whether people can mentally create ghosts, and read horoscopes that want us to buy zebra print and knock down a wall.We also get into disappearing TV remotes, lonely sock baskets, Yellowstone’s dangerously hot water, and the story of a ghost who may have helped solve a murder.Just another completely normal conversation before marriage.

This week, Allison and I recap the third annual Montana Meltdown, including what we learned from watching people run in circles for 24 hours, why a completely runnable course can destroy you, and how consistency usually beats speed.Then we quickly lose the plot.Allison explains why she can only perform one accent at a time, takes us inside the strange world of theater school, and tells the mysterious story of the Jamison family disappearance. Somehow, that leads us into wilderness survival, cannibalism, and the proper freshness of human meat.We also revisit one of our first dates, reveal why marriage is how you win the flirting game, and remember our first backpacking trip together—when I led Allison over a mountain to a dried-up lake, fed her an unreasonable amount of rice, and accidentally got us adopted by a tribe of mountain goats.Also, our wedding is next week, and I still need a ring and an outfit. Everything is going perfectly.

Allison is back from her longest unsupported adventure yet: roughly 180 miles from Meeks Bay near Lake Tahoe to Tuolumne Meadows.She carried all of her food and gear, refused trail magic, crossed Desolation Wilderness and Sonora Pass, and spent three nights trying to sleep in a bivy sack without a sleeping pad. The result was a series of freezing 20-minute naps, an increasingly slow third night and a very important lesson about ground insulation.Allison shares what worked, what failed and what she would change next time—including carrying less water, packing simple carbohydrates and creating an actual sleep strategy. She also talks about reaching 72 hours with more than 20 miles remaining, having a panic attack when she realized the finish was much farther away than expected and finding a way to reset and keep moving.Jeff and Allison also discuss the strange rules of texting, people who reply to every message, passive-aggressive thumbs-up emojis, Montana “howdy” culture and the danger of getting trapped in an endless goodbye loop.A funny and honest breakdown of unsupported fastpacking, sleep deprivation, food mistakes and what happens when your entire world becomes taking the next step.

Allison Powell decided that her first solo backpacking trip would be the Wonderland Trail—a roughly 93-mile loop around Mount Rainier.As an experienced ultrarunner, three 30-plus-mile days sounded difficult but completely reasonable. Backpacking quickly taught her otherwise. Her days stretched to nearly 14 hours, she arrived at camp around midnight, slept under the stars while a mouse ran across her head, attempted her first solo bear hang, hitchhiked to an off-trail campsite, carried far too much food, and learned that every unnecessary ounce matters.In this episode, we talk about the surprising differences between ultrarunning and backpacking, going into a trip overconfident, doing something alone when nobody else is available, the reality of hiking big miles with a loaded pack, and the practical lessons Allison would carry into her next adventure.There are also suspension bridges, enormous waterfalls, questionable trail math, a missing travel mug, two marmots fighting—or flirting—and a bag of carrots that became the greatest mistake of the entire trip.This conversation feels especially relevant now because Allison is attempting her longest solo adventure yet: an approximately 180-mile FKT from Tahoe to Yosemite.#Trailrunning #Runningnews #Outdoors #Outdooradventure

When Allison and I met, she didn’t own soap, shampoo, conditioner, a bed frame, enough underwear to make it through the week—or, apparently, pants. The strangest part is that she lived directly across the street from a soap store.In this episode of Free Inside, Allison explains the environmental and financial logic behind her no-soap era, rescuing shampoo from a free box, and buying discounted soap containing pieces of packing tape. We also discuss shopping entirely on vibes, the irresistible power of a clearance sticker, Kohl’s Cash, ultra widows, homeschooling, colorblindness, reincarnated children, and why Allison might return as part of a chicken.Free Inside is our weekly, unscripted conversation about endurance, life, whatever is inside our brains, and the rabbit holes we probably should have kept to ourselves.Subscribe for new episodes every week.

Allison is officially attempting her first FKT: roughly 170 miles from Lake Tahoe to Yosemite, carrying everything she needs and hoping to finish in around 72 hours—without a tent, sleeping bag, or sleeping pad. She explains why she chose the route, how she is handling permits, food, batteries, sleep, and the pressure of finally committing to it. We also discuss Jeff’s extremely important early-relationship dinosaur test, Allison getting caught cheating during homeschool, the many unlikely threats ’90s children were taught to fear, and the Andes plane crash that turned into history’s most famous survival-and-cannibalism story. A completely normal morning on Free Inside with Jeff Garmire and Allison Powell.

Jeff Garmire and Allison Powell return for another episode of Free Inside, the spinoff show where outdoor adventures quickly turn into conversations about Bigfoot, ghosts, questionable food, and everything else occupying our brains.We recap our four-day, 72-mile backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada, including swimming in alpine lakes, hiking part of the John Muir Trail, fighting with bear canisters, missing the store by 15 minutes, and carrying ham that may or may not have been safe to eat. Allison also explains how she beat Jeff approximately 100–0 in gin rummy.Then Weird Allison’s Corner takes us into Bigfoot kidnappings, interdimensional Sasquatches, ghosts, reincarnation, not-deer, haunted limestone, and the disastrous first date where we somehow started discussing aliens.Plus, our Appalachian Trail film Rewritten premieres on YouTube Friday, August 28.This is Free Inside. We are both wearing pants.Support our Sponsors: Janji (code: Freeoutside): https://snp.link/a0bfb726CS Coffee: CSinstant.coffeeGarage Grown Gear: https://snp.link/db1ba8abSubscribe to Substack: http://freeoutside.substack.comSupport this content on patreon: HTTP://patreon.com/freeoutsideBuy my book "Free Outside" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/39LpoSFEmail me to buy a signed copy of my book, "Free Outside" at [email protected] the movie about setting the record on the Colorado Trail: https://tubitv.com/movies/100019916/free-outsideWebsite: www.Freeoutside.comInstagram: thefreeoutsidefacebook: www.facebook.com/freeoutside#Trailrunning #Runningnews #Outdoors #Outdooradventure