Piece of Work with Danielle Tantone
Piece of Work with Danielle Tantone is a podcast about resilience, real life, and the messy, meaningful work of becoming who we’re meant to be.
Hosted by nurse, author, and resilience coach Danielle Tantone, this show blends honest solo reflections with thoughtful conversations and interviews about life, health, healing, and growth — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Through personal stories, real-time processing, and practical insight, Danielle explores the moments that shape us: relationships, parenting, recovery, identity shifts, purpose, and the courage it takes to keep evolving.
If you’ve ever felt like both a Piece of Work and a Work in Progress, you’re in the right place. Because you are also a Work of Art, still unfolding...and you are not alone.
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Piece of Work with Danielle Tantone
No Limits, No House: Lessons from an Ultra Triathlete Who Did the Impossible
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What do you do when the opportunity of a lifetime lands in your lap — but you’re $20,000 in debt and the entry fee alone is $15,000? If you’re JD Tremblay, you sell your house.
JD is an ultra triathlete, naturopathic practitioner, volunteer firefighter, and the founder of Hungry Warrior Academy — a high-performance program helping men grow physically, mentally, and spiritually.
In this episode, JD shares his journey from military service to competing in the EpicDeca: ten full Ironman-distance races across all six Hawaiian islands in ten days. Yes, you read that right.
We talk about what it really takes to push past your limits, why discipline doesn’t have to feel like punishment, and the difference between feeling your emotions and being ruled by them. JD brings a grounded, faith-based, facts-first philosophy that’s as refreshing as it is challenging.
Fair warning: this one will make you rethink every excuse you’ve ever made.
If you want to connect with JD, check out HungryWarriorAcademy.com. And if this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who needs a little kick in the direction of their next big thing.
Welcome back to Piece of Work. I'm Danielle Tantone, and today I'm here with JD Tremblay. We were chatting right before about how to say that French name incorrectly. He's from Montreal, from French Canada, and I'm excited to have him on here. He is an ultra triathlete. He's a naturopathic practitioner and he has a program called Hungry Warrior Academy for men. That helps them physically, mentally, and spiritually become stronger in all different ways. So I'm looking forward to getting to know him and what goodies he has for us. I'll let you, JD, do a little bit better of a brief intro to yourself and how you found yourself here on the Piece of Work podcast today. Yeah. Thank you Danielle, for having me on the show. You're welcome. I'm the director of High Performance at Hungry Warrior Academy and as you mentioned we do help men grow with clarity through our DECA system. Tell us more about this DECA system. You tell, you were telling me about it right before we hit record, but how, first of all, where does the name come from? Tell us about the EpicDeca and all of that. That's pretty exciting and crazy. Yeah, definitely. So the EpicDeca is an event that happened based out of a company called Epic5, which was built by Rich Roll. He had done a lot of Ironmans and then an ultraman, and then he said there needs to be something more. So he billed the Epic five. The Epic five is five Ironman distances on Five Islands in five days. And for the person who's listening who might not know the Ironman distances, can you go over what is one Ironman? Pretty incredible. Correct. It's far from the guy who's in his basement building a metal suit talking to Jarvis. It's 140.6 miles of swimming, biking, and running. So 2.4 miles of swimming. 112 miles of cycling, and then you follow it up with 26.2 miles of running. A full freaking marathon after doing all that other swimming and right biking. Because it's never enough crazy because a marathon by itself isn't enough. When you look at the origin of the marathon it's quite the story. Philippe the messenger was sent from Marathon to Athens, to say that the war was over. He ran 42 kilometers, and when he got there, he delivered the message and then fell down and died. And we decided this would be a good idea for us to just do this for fun. Exactly. For sports. And then they said how about we do. A swimming marathon and then a cycling marathon and mash all of this together crazy. And then later throughout the history. There are 10 people that decided this would be a good idea to register in a race where you would do 10 of those in 10 days on all six Hawaiian Islands and just hop from one island to the next Thus the EpicDeca. That is exactly so crazy. So now it becomes 1406 miles of swimming, biking, and running throughout all of the islands in Hawaii, which is quite beautiful. If I just lived the experience differently than watching from the bus. You explored Hawaii at a different level. Yeah. But it is amazing having not done at all anywhere close to that level of athletic endeavor, but having experienced running and biking and stuff in beautiful places, it is an amazing way to see a place and to really get to know it. I ran the Berlin Marathon in 2013. And that's by no means a feat like what you have done, but it is, it was pretty darn cool to like literally jump over the Berlin wall and be like, oh here was where the Berlin Wall was. And I just hopped over it in my marathon and that was neat. So there is something special about running, by the ocean or running through the forest or running through a city. You're experiencing it at a visceral level I think. But that said, even though I'm trying to show some sort of connection to what you're doing. That is incomprehensible to do 10 in 10 days. So there's no sleeping, you have to travel from one place to the next. Tell us a little bit more about what that involves, what skills and strengths allowed you to do that, and then how that translates to the work that you do for other people. My whole. My childhood, my, my upbringing, the military service, everything brought me to that place where now I was just ready for it. I joined the military from a young age. When I was a child, everybody was telling me the military has a lot of discipline. Then when I joined, I noticed that a lot of people are undisciplined. Now, there are some military members that are disciplined, but the contrast was that there are some people that follow the structure and then become disciplined, and then there are some people that are completely undisciplined because they don't follow a structure. So that's what I discovered and that's what I again, am able to impart. with the clients. The way that people see discipline is that it's not fun and you have to wake up at a certain time, or you have to put on your running shoes and you have to go run or, so what I came up with is a fun way to build discipline in their life, because a lot of people are talking about making their bed like Jordan Peterson. It's a great advice, but it's for someone who is at the point where they want to end it all. This is, you have no other choice but to do one thing in your day. And if you have only that one thing, then you will survive. Making your bed is at the very basic right, but even if you forget to do your bed. Here's another way to build discipline and then enjoyment, and then also find your capacity, and it's to find that non-negotiable. As for me, I'm, even if I ask you the question, what is my non-negotiable? So within my 24 hour period, what do you think I did? And you would not be too far off if you said it has something to do with fitness. So I did work out for sure. Today, I am going to work out later on because I'm training for a big race coming up So again, I understood that this was my capacity. Now, for some people it might be cooking. It might be that they like to work on cars, or it might be that they're enjoying dancing or singing there are other ways to build that discipline. But if you wake up every morning, you enjoy dancing. You wake up every morning and you start dancing, you will become better at dancing, eventually. You're building that discipline. What you'll discover is that eventually it will trickle down to other parts of your life because you build discipline with one part which you enjoy. So now at that point, you don't have to wake up at four in the morning. You don't have to do a cold plunge. You don't have to do all of, you're dancing like this is your non-negotiable. That's it. Why? Because this is what you are enjoying, but then you're building discipline over time. And that's what I discovered with, again, with the military, with me, my experience, I saw that I was built for for working out. Now, I enjoyed pushing weights, but then when I got injured, I had nowhere to turn to, so I turned to triathlon. And I started swimming, biking, running, and then I really enjoyed it. It really helped my mental state, and then I built the discipline over time. Once I got to the EpicDeca. To me, it was a no brainer with going for the EpicDeca because I wanted to be different. I wanted to do a race that nobody had done before. So to be the first in history to cross the finish line in a race like this, or to be the first one to, accomplish something that others would think that it's completely crazy and completely impossible. Like my grandfather. My grandfather was crying. No. My grandson is going to die. Now, was there any point during that race when you did think maybe I should stop, maybe I am actually endangering my life here? Or was it, were you always sure that No, I was always in, I was always in because when I registered for the I was registered for a lot of other races, but I had spent my money to register for races. So you can tell that I was single, because no one would've told me that it was a good idea to just spend your money on all doing a lot of races around the world and yeah, they're not cheap. Yeah. Oh yeah. So now this race comes along. There was this doctor, he got hit by a car. He was one of the 10 people to register for the EpicDeca. They were only taking 10 people because it was for their 10 year anniversary for the Epic5 He says on Facebook, I cannot do the EpicDeca anymore because I have to go through rehab. There was a voice in my head said, how about you inquire if you can buy it from him? Which I'm$20,000 in debt and$15,000 is needed just to register. Wow. And then I need four people to crew for me on top of that. But I inquire anyway. I said it doesn't cost anything to just ask for it. So I asked Joe if I can buy it from him. He said yes, I found four people to crew for me. It was in the middle of COVID too. Wow. And every, even the governments, they were looking for nurses and somehow I had two of them that already had done either an ultraman or crewed in those types of events. So it was fitting perfectly. So I said I have four people. The two nurses Sarah and Michelle were the crew chief in their own respective teams. And they were two on, two off. So or two on, two off 2 1, 1 day it's one crew, and then the next day it's another crew. And then they would alternate. So they got to rest. But not you. No, no rest for me. So I still needed the money. I wrote down on a piece of paper how much I needed. I prayed about it and a lady came to clean my house because I was doing renovations, but I did not want to clean all the dust. And she came to clean. She said, have you ever thought about selling your house? And I said yeah, I've been trying to sell it a few years, but it doesn't sell. She said I have my real estate license. Okay, since you have your real estate license yeah, maybe you can sell it. So she said, yep, I can sell your house. So I sold my house. Wow. Now I am homeless. Homeless, but you can afford the race. But I can afford the race. Like I, that's the exact same way that I looked at it. I said, yes, I can afford a race. Yeah. I can afford a new bicycle. We all have our priorities for our money. That is. Exactly. It's totally legit. I was really committed Danielle, so I sold my house. I still don't regret it at all. Flew those four people I paid for their flight tickets. All the the flight tickets the hotels the food, all the incidental, like everything, just everything with my crew and me. And then, and this is back in 2020? 2021 you said? 2022. Yep. Okay. Yeah, it was 2022 and May. Yeah. So really it's coming to almost four years. Yeah. It's been already four years since which again, a lot has changed. Now I'm doing very well financially. Like it's, I'm, it comes around that now. Do what you love and the money will follow, right? Or something like that. It's some form of a passion. But the hard times were after the EpicDeca. Not necessarily during or before. So that's why when your question was asked did you at one point think that you would not finish? No, I showed up on the start line and it was, I must finish. Because I just this is my house. So I. Showed up on the start line fully knowing that I would finish. I even told the organizers too, I was on a Zoom call and they said, oh, you were looking for the money for the race. How did you find it? And I said, oh, I sold my house. And they said we can't allow this. This is not gonna be a great story. What if you don't finish? And then I just started laughing. Eh, I just, ah, yeah, I sold my house. Ha. I never denied. It didn't lie, but they said, oh yeah, it's a joke. Yeah, this guy is a joker. Yeah, definitely. No, I really did, but I never told them after that, it's your prerogative. You don't have to own a house. You could rent. It was after coming back to a storage unit, sleeping with boxes and like little air mattress and then having to rebuild everything from the ground up. Yeah, that's where I was questioning a little bit if I did the right choice. But during the race, no. I showed up on the fourth day and I, my crew chief, based on the numbers that I was pushing on the past three days, she said, you're not gonna make it. For the final run. For this run for tonight. So between the bike and the run of the fourth day, she says, she sat me down in the hotel room as I was in my transition and she said, JD, you're not gonna make it based on the math, like you're stopping too much and you're not gonna make it. So I said no, I have to finish. She said, look I can find another way to maybe switch you to the Epic five.'cause the EpicDeca was going and it was six Island, but the Epic five was going at the same time, just different days, essentially. So I said, no, I am here for the EpicDeca, and I must finish. I said, JD if you tell me why, then maybe I can help you. And I heard that before. That's what the police uses all the time. That's what all of these people, that's what they use. I'm here to help you. And then you find out they're not. So I said no. I'm not telling anyone why I knew in my head. Oh, I knew. Yeah. Why were you so determined not to tell anyone? Because the organizer said at the beginning, Selling your house is too drastic, so you can't race if you sold your house. That's so silly. That doesn't even make sense to me. You don't want people to be selling their houses to go on races. Hey, I'm still not advocating for, selling your house and going to do a race. I'm still not advocating for it. It worked out for me. I had a plan in place, but again, you don't wanna show this. And. The other part is I do not really know these people either. Yeah. When you don't know people, like it's different than if my, my life is in their hand right now. You don't wanna show too much. So you wanna make sure that you are still in control and they know that you are in control of the situation. I'm go, I was going through. Certain types of injuries, like blisters, and my shoulder was hurting, but again, I was determined to keep going and finish this race. I sold my house, so yes. In my mind, I was going to finish. Definitely I did not burn the ships, in essence. I sold the house, so right. Alright, so you sold your house, you finished the race, and then have you done it again since then? Or is that, was that a one time thing? Yeah, that was the only time that it happened because it was for the 10 year anniversary. The 10 year anniversary? Yeah. Nice. So then I finished it. Even that day, I just ran a lot more and I just kept priming myself knowing that I had this deadline, so I had to finish much faster than all the other times. I did finish, but as soon as I finish, I took a shower real quick. I, we slept for not even half an hour, so my legs did not even have time to recover. I was carrying my NormaTec boots I was in my underwear. And then my crew would just zip up my boots, plug them, and I would fall asleep in my boots for half an hour. Oh my gosh. And then they would wake me up and I just, oh, there you go. All right. We gotta go to the airport. Let's go. Can't even imagine. Yeah. Half an hour of sleep. Okay, let's go. Then I get to the airport on the fourth day. That's that's when it really kicked in. Because now my IT bands are tight. It was my birthday at the time. Oh. And then, oh, it was a memorable one for sure. I was gonna say how old were you? Turning 30 what? 36? Yeah. I'm turning 40 in a couple of weeks. So Wow. Yeah. Forty's a good one. Don't worry. Oh yeah. I'm going to the island of Malta for the Trail half Marathon World Championship. So I'm racing the best in the world, and that's what I'm doing for my 40th birthday. I got a lot more miles on this body. Totally. Yep. You can keep getting stronger. So my it band is shot. I have difficulty walking. I minimized on a lot of civilian clothes or clothes that were not meant for the race. So I only brought one pair of shorts and a t-shirt and someone stole them. So now I end up with a girl's hoodie. And in my underwear in a, at the airport, wait, why did you need to minimize your stuff so much? You had a crew, couldn't they carry your stuff for you? Yeah so we were taking small airplanes. So our crew, they were not allowed to have a baggage under the plane. Wow. Only their carry-on. And that's for all four members. And then for me, I was only allowed to have, I think it was two bags, and then my bike. Yeah. So we were very limited. And then I wanted to maximize on the amount of nutrition that I was carrying. I even went as far as carrying my own breakfast. So I would carry like a greens and a type of protein and some oatmeal. So I would have everything. I would have a plastic container with a plastic spoon so I can eat in the plane. Nice. And then now I ate, I maximize all my time so I can sleep a little bit. Then just keep going and not have to digest. So what are the lessons that you learned through that? We all have to face some challenges in life, and we always think that the limit is right in front of us. We have those limiting beliefs. Sure. Understanding that we can't achieve more and then all of a sudden we reach another stage and somehow we see, oh, there was this, I am able to accomplish a half marathon, or I'm able to finish a marathon. Or it can be that I didn't think I was able to, go to this country and be free, and all of a sudden you end up in this country, you're traveling the world. And and I'm saying this because there are some people's limiting beliefs. It's they don't even want to travel. They don't even want to leave. I know my grandfather was like that. Never left the small village where we live. Totally. And always stayed like this. So all of a sudden you challenge your beliefs and then you end up in another world having a different perspective of how you can achieve more. I always say, if your goals don't scare you then set the bar higher, and so I definitely did set the bar really high. Yeah. And I wanted to push it even more. So yeah, I keep doing these events and that's what I learned about it. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah I experienced that on a much smaller scale when I first started running and I was in my thirties and I had always hated running, and then I got involved in this running group, but it all started with I wanted to run a triathlon. I, I was into cycling and I was like, okay, I can learn how to swim. I know how to swim, but I can learn how to swim in a sportive way, and then I can learn how to run surely. So I started running and then I eventually worked up to a half marathon. I ran, I finished that half marathon. It was in San Diego in like 2010. And I said, okay, that was cool. I, but there is no way in hell I could ever run twice that. I can't even comprehend that. There's no way. And then the next weekend I was doing my long run with my group that I run with and we ran 14 miles. And I was like, wait, I just ran another mile more than my 13 miles that I ran in the half marathon and it wasn't really any harder. And if I just increased by one mile every week or two. I'll pretty much be at a marathon pretty soon. So like what you were saying, you realize, okay, I just did something I thought was impossible and now I can do it a little bit more. Yeah. So that was, which goes to other parts of your life and that's why I say start with something that is your non-negotiable that is fun. Maybe it's dancing, and then all of a sudden you end up in competition about dancing on stage. You win a million dollar and then you're excited about it, but you would've never reached that level had you not just started with finding that non-negotiable and started with something that you enjoy, which you're gonna build discipline and it's gonna navigate you into other parts of your life. Very cool. Yeah. That's what I learned from the EpicDeca. The other one that I learned was how to remain humble. So yes, I did achieve a lot. But there's nothing special about me. I am courageous. And the definition of courage is to create some form of action in spite of fear. It's not a superpower. I still have fears, but I choose to perform even though I am scared. I was really scared and I don't think I've ever said this on a podcast, but I don't cry often, but I remember, I got accepted for the EpicDeca I had sold my house. I had my son, I'm in the northern part of Quebec. It's in the snow, and I had built a harness that I would carry my son up mountains. And I just put on the harness and I told my son, you have two minutes to be in that sled, or I'm leaving. Like I, I have to go. I have to go right now. I'm going for a run. And so he hurried up. He loves going outside anyway. Hopped in the sled. So I had my ski goggles and just running and it's on the snow. And I cried. I was scared. I was really scared, but I also understood that I was going to do it. I was committed. How else, right? I was doing everything I could to make sure that I was going to finish that race and that I was going to push those limits. I had no idea how it would all turn out. I just needed to have faith. And I'm talking about faith as in not even knowing what the outcome is going to be, but knowing that everything is going to work out. Knowing that God had all of the other variables that were in. In his control. He has the control over that. And then for the rest I'll take care of it. To me it was it was like that. So That's beautiful. So you mentioned earlier when we were chatting before we started recording, that you're not really big on talking about feelings. I want to explore that a little bit and what you mean by that. Because, even when you were talking about crying, it were almost like you're, you said, I don't cry very often. Yeah. What's this deal with the feelings? What do you mean when you say you think we get caught up on feelings? I don't necessarily disagree with you, I'm just trying to understand what you're. No, it's based on facts. Because we have laws in Canada, right? One of them is firefighting. If I have the equipment and the training, I touch a door and I hear screaming, and there's a high likelihood that if I go through the door and I pull, I, I can save someone. If I radio in and I say, I don't feel good, or I don't feel right. Legally, the fire chief has to pull me out like this, out of the fire and then replace me. And by the, by that time, you're losing precious seconds because a fire generally grows every eight second, it doubles. And so that's, depending on the type of materials that are inside of it, that's a different story. But again, based on feelings, based on emotions based on facts, it's. So you're not saying don't feel your feelings. You're not saying, bury your feelings or don't feel joy, don't feel sad, don't feel angry. You're talking about not living your life, not making decisions only based on feelings. Exactly. Is that now a firefighter understands, I am sad. But I have a job to do. I don't know if I mentioned that on top of everything else that you do, you're also a volunteer firefighter. So you literally rescue babies out of burning buildings. Yeah. In your free time. Yeah. That in my spare time. Yeah. When you do like a, what do you do on I don't know, a Friday night? You're hanging from a firetruck or climbing a mountain. The idea, the concept is that those feelings are there to experience life. You're going to be sad. You're going to be happy. It's not to suppress these feelings or these emotions, it's that despite having these feelings and these emotions, you're able to be a functional human being. Is that now you're basing. Your decision based on facts, logic, science, not on some entity that you can't recreate. Even if you pick the same person in the same context, you might get a completely different result with this exact same stimuli. So you're not able to have a true statistics. That's human nature. That's the nature of dealing with humans is that we're not robots. That's not how they're teaching you in universities how to behave. And that's why to us, we are completely different than all of our competitors. Now, they have their target market, they're making money. That's fine, but. Going on these retreats, getting yelled at and using profanity is a certain target market. What will happen is it will appeal to someone who, need this form of sadistic transformation and is somehow required to have this rite of passage by being yelled at. Tell me about your system. What do you offer that's different? Yeah. It's more of that. Special Forces. In the Special forces. They teach you how to operate with others, have some sense of community, change your identity. For us, our standards and our foundation is based on epic and so it's eternal restoration. You need to lean on something or someone that is outside of yourself. Preferably Christianity, you're gonna find out that it's the absolute value. And you'll find that this entity is controlling all of these variables that you aren't. And if you're able to rely on that person, I call him God or Jesus. Then you're basing all of your decision based on an absolute, based, on a true value. And so now you're able to tap into some form of protection that now you understand this has been tested before. It's not just based on my own experience. Which is very limited because we live a short amount of time on earth. Then you got the physical temple, which is that a lot of people are reading or in the Bible or praying. That's all good, right? Meditation is all fine, but at the same time, you still need to take care of your body. So then we can break it down to understanding what are their values, what are their goals, and then we break it down even further with our brain acronym. Blood chemistry recovery, attention inflammation in the nervous system to really dive in to provide them with data points. So that they can make better decision based on it. So who are your I who are your clients? Who do you help? Yeah. We've had a lot of executives and we've had the elite athletes also come through our programs. And is this program in person in Canada or is it online? Or do you have some different options? That's a good question. We have online courses. We have one starting very soon. And then we also have in person. We've been doing some workshops. We have one coming up in California. Tell the person who's listening where they can find you. Do you have a website, social media? Yeah, we have HungryWarriorAcademy.com They can book a call, see if we're the right fit. This is so interesting. I think that our work integrates in a lot of ways. And I'm so glad that you found me. Anything else that you wanna share with anybody who's listening who may be having a hard time and or having a big goal or anything? If they want to reach out to us and see if we're the right fit, then yeah, they can become our friends. Sounds good. Merci! Merci, Danielle. All right. A la prochaine! On s'en voit bientot!
JD is one of those guests who leaves you with a lot to sit with. So I wanted to take just a few minutes to pull out what I think are the five biggest lessons from that conversation because they apply whether you're training for a triathlon or just trying to get through the week. Lesson one, your non-negotiable is your foundation. JD doesn't prescribe a four a.m. wake up or a cold plunge or making your bed. He says,"Find the one thing you actually love doing and do it every day without exception." For him, it's fitness. For you, it might be dancing, cooking, writing. It doesn't matter. That daily non-negotiable builds discipline in a way that actually sticks, and then, this is the important part, it bleeds into every other area of your life. Lesson two, your limits are a moving target. I shared my own version of this in the episode when I ran my first half-marathon, and then the very next week ran fourteen miles and thought,"Wait, I just did the thing I thought was impossible." JD lived that on a scale most of us can't even fathom. The EpicDeca wasn't just about fitness. It was proof that the wall you think you've hit is almost never the actual wall. Lesson three, commitment removes the option to quit. When JD sold his house to fund that race, he wasn't being reckless, he was eliminating the exit. He showed up on the start line knowing he would finish. Not hoping, knowing. There's something powerful about making a decision so fully that turning back just isn't in the conversation anymore. Lesson four, courage isn't the absence of fear, it's action in spite of it. JD described running in the snow in Quebec, pulling his son in a sled, crying under his ski goggles because he was terrified, and then he kept going anyway. He said it himself,"Courage is creating action in spite of fear." It's not a superpower, it's a choice, one that all of us are capable of making. Lesson five, facts over feelings doesn't mean feelings don't matter. That might be the most nuanced thing JD said, and I want to make sure it lands right. He's not telling you to suppress your emotions or pretend everything is fine. He's saying,"Feel what you feel, and then make your decisions based on something more solid than the feeling of the moment." A firefighter can be sad and still do their job. You can be scared and still take the leap. You can be grieving and still get up. The feelings are real. They're just not always a reliable compass. So there you have it. Five lessons from a guy who ran 10 Ironmans in 10 days, slept in half-hour increments, ended up in an airport in a stranger's hoodie and still says he has zero regrets. If you want to connect with JD, check out HungryWarriorAcademy.com. And if this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who needs a little kick in the direction of their next big thing. I'm Danielle Tantone. We are all a piece of work, a work in progress, and a work of art.