Veteran mentorship minute
Physical, Spiritual, Mental Fitness
The ultrarunning documentary “Just One Mile” showcases the Mid-State Mile; a one-mile race in a last-man standing format and run on a challenging loop in central Tennessee. Chadd Wright, a retired Navy SEAL, is showcased along with several other runners who repeatedly run the course every 20 minutes until runners drop out or fail to reach the start of the next loop. The winner being the last runner who can successfully run the grueling mile loop.
Chadd Wright is a hoot and is a composite of David Goggins and Jase Robertson; an uncannily humorous and very driven personality. His down home, country boy style is coupled with a killer mental instinct about his approach to ultrarunning, training, and competition. Wright’s approach to challenging himself and striving to compete at the highest levels draws heavily from his training and experience in the SEAL teams. The documentary led me to look up his 3of7project.com which includes a podcast, challenge courses and weapons training. Chadd Wright makes it abundantly clear that, despite retirement, he is continuing to push himself as a warrior, a Christian, and competitor; he offers up plenty of great lessons that veterans, and others, will find valuable.
The 3of7project combines the physical, spiritual and mental aspects of health and wellness. My son-in-law and I had been discussing that relationship for developing young men and ourselves recently and it was that conversation that encouraged me to put down my thoughts on the matter. The genesis of “mind, body, soul” training and wellness, at least in the military, really has roots back about to 2000 in the 75th Ranger Regiment where the Ranger Sports Medicine concept emerged under the leadership of then LTC Stan McChrystal and proliferated organically within the special operations community and later the Army more broadly as Holistic Health and Fitness. The greater public can now benefit from the careers of veterans who were on the ground floor of that back in our younger years and I am glad to see Chadd’s involvement in bringing this experience out in this manner.
Veterans should check out the “Just One Mile” documentary and also the “One More Mile” available on YouTube which chronicles Wright’s experience in the Cocadona 250 ultrarunning race from Phoenix to Flagstaff AZ. Key to Wright’s success are a great group of teammates that keep him going because he is the first to admit that the pursuit of real challenges and exploration of his personal limits is the best way he can continue to serve, share, and shape others around him. Wright’s podcasts have a lot to offer in the ways of spiritual wisdom, experience, training advice and personal mindset.
Colonel Theodore Croy is a retired Army physical therapist and served with the 75th Ranger Regiment and later enabled the Holistic Health and Fitness program. He retired in 2022 and is board member of America’s Veteran Party.