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Thanks for checking out the Nik Hawks Show, where my general mandate is to follow the pursuit of excellence. 

My background is in business, adventure, the military, athletic challenges, and working with world class athletes.

Those are all starting points for my guests, though not always.  I've talked to cryptographers, sleep scientists, authors, reporters, climbers, and adventurers.

All of them have useful insight for YOU, which is the reason I make the show public.  

Whether we're talking about cryptocurrency or rowing a boat across the Atlantic, my idea was to share the conversations I was having with radical people.  Lately I've been adding in my own thoughts in separate Nik-i-sodes.

HISTORY

I started this podcast in 2014, but it wasn't called The Nik Hawks Show. My wife Lee and I own the company Paleo Treats, so I called the show the Paleo Treats Podcast.

Over the course of 50+ episodes it became apparent that the podcast didn’t really have anything to do with Paleo. Sometime around episode 58, based on feedback from listeners and iTunes reviews, I decided to change the name to reflect what I was actually talking about.

That should catch you up to speed for now.  

To read more, find the latest episodes and news along with a way to support this show, please visit my site nikhawks.com

Thanks for listening!

Nik Hawks

Aug 5, 2018

There are some folks out there who are a little scary in their pursuit of excellence; they have an intensity about them that is damn near palpable.  Randy Leavitt is one of those people.

Randy is known as a climber, one of America's best.  With just a little bit of Googling you'll see just how good he is, but this podcast ain't about climbing, it's about the pursuit of excellence.

When I first heard about Randy it was from Greg Crouch, another guest on the Paleo Treats podcast.  I had told Greg I was looking for more pursuers of excellence and Greg recommended Randy.  When I asked why, Greg simply said, "Four decades of world class performance."  Well, that just piqued my interest.

In this show we skip past a bunch of Randy's climbing history (well covered on episode 18 of Chris Kalous' podcast, The Enormocast) and go deeper into the pursuit of excellence.

Randy talks about what made climbing his first love, how got into and out of BASE jumping (went off El Capitan in 1980!), when he found kite surfing and why he waited a couple of years before he actually started doing it.

Randy attributes a lot of his results to being a "delayed gratification-ist", something that most of us, including myself, need to work on developing.

We got into his passion for flying and some of the surprising things he had to learn as a pilot that he feels all climbers should know, along with why he stuck with motor planes and didn't get into sailplanes.

Of course I had to butt in and start yapping about paragliding, but I'd like to think I kept it to a minimum.  

I took a couple of questions for this show from listeners, so you'll get to hear a bit about the Jumbo Love story, what goes through Randy's head when he's stepping into a true challenge, and of a clarification of his comparison between the best day climbing and the best day surfing.

Enjoy the show!