A lot of people will tell you that distance running is about who crosses the line first
but even if I'm not finishing first I'd still like to say that I'm having the most fun.
Finn Gessner, a recent graduate from Madison LaFollette High School, is one of the most
accomplished high school runners in Wisconsin state history. He's a two-time state cross
country champion, a two-time state two-mile champion, and is also a two-time footlocker
high school cross country all-american. Because of all this success, Finn was recruited to
run collegently by programs across the country. In the end, he wound up choosing a school
located just 15 minutes from home. All this success might lead you to believe that Finn
was a runner all his life. But that's where you're wrong. It wasn't until eighth grade
when he finally took an interest in running. Before that, Finn was a ski jumper.
Ski jumping was easily my first true love. I started ski jumping when I was four because
my grandpa ski jumped until he was 68 years old. He just got us into it as soon as we
could. He just got started in the sport, just put us right on some little jumps. I did that
for 10 years for a good part of the beginning of my life. Ski jumping caused a lot more
injuries than running has so far. A few broken bones. There's Finn on the 90, first time
ever. There he goes, in the track. What do you do? I went sideways. Some stitches, bruises
obviously, but it was really fun while it lasted. I stopped when I was 14. Right after
my freshman year, to just focus all in on running.
After walking away from ski jumping, Finn was ready to find his success in running. During
his sophomore year, he was fortunate enough to compete against two current Wisconsin runners,
Nolan Hacker and Ryan Namath. They helped springboard Finn straight to success. Everyone
knows how to get fast. Like every coach knows what it takes to get fast, but that can only
go so far. Everyone's 70 miles a week. Everyone's doing three workouts a week. When you get
to like a higher level, people are doing very similar things and then it just comes down
to mindset. On a hot thought about it, whoever refuses to lose, it's going to be the one
who's going to be great.
As Finn progressively got better and better, he began winning more and more. That said,
when you've known Finn as long as I have, you know he's not the type of guy that's
going to hide his emotions. A lot of people, honestly, are going to call it cocky, but
anyone that's out there drinking some hatred and calling my post race activities cocky,
they've probably just never been in that situation themselves. They don't know how it feels.
I'd like to see someone put themselves in my shoes and then finishing one of those races
and having the feeling that I had, knowing that I came from the kid that ran a 730 mile,
so the kid that is now winning his conference meet and having enough energy to throw up
in an imaginary baseball and hit a home run. It might be a little cocky, but it's just
expressing myself. There's no other feeling like just finishing a race and knowing that
you just killed it. You killed yourself mentally and physically to get there. You can call
it cocky and just understand how good it might feel to be in that situation.
Regardless of how you view Finn's actions, you're never going to stop him from having
this fun.
Finn Gessner here. Finn, great race.
I was a semi-professional tattoo artist and a volunteer fireman for four years, and then
when I got to the fourth grade, I decided I was going to stop being a semi-professional
tattoo artist and quit my job as a volunteer fireman.
Seth got a little bit of ants in his shorts and he started pushing, so I was hopped on
the pain train. The second lap came through the two miles. I was like, oh baby, if I hold
on to this, then I'd deserve a hug from someone.
Finn Gessner was very loose and very relaxed in his interview with me a couple days ago.
He even said if he has a great race today, that would be awesome, but maybe even better
would be to get a date with one of the girls that he mentioned.
Well, I feel like what a lot of people do when you see the super average post-race interview,
they're like, oh yeah, those conditions were good. The competition was good. Those are
people that are just doing all they can to hide what they are really feeling after race.
I don't really try to do it. I'm just being myself, and some of my greatest sports heroes
were the same way, like Alan Iverson, he came into NBA. He changed how it looked, man. He
made it how he wanted it to be.
His big personality has attracted thousands of people to follow him on social media, and
you can trust me when I say this, he never disappoints.
A lot of the times I'm just kind of using it as like a joke. I don't know, I think it's
kind of funny just posting something out that has nothing to do with anything else, just
completely random posts.
I actually just think it's super funny.
A lot of people just post like, oh, super good workout this morning, and then put their
workout out like, oh, what a good race, man. I just PR'd in the 5K. I don't know, people
get sick of seeing that, so I'll give him something else to look at.
In addition to his riveting Instagram account, Finn also has his own YouTube channel. I made
a trip to Walmart to get the new pickup, and I think I found my right size, so I'm going
to go try these out.
Well, it kind of started off as making scooter videos on my Snapchat story, and people seemed
to be interested in that, so then we were like, let's make a YouTube video, people will subscribe,
and people will watch the videos, and then you can't just make a video of just scootering
the whole time, because I'm not nearly good enough at scootering to do that. So let me
just start doing random stuff, and it's pretty fun to make, and I'm in the mood to go swimming.
However, what many people don't know, is Finn was on YouTube way before he was running.
Oh, Johnny, it looks like trouble over there. Stay cool, Johnny.
I don't know, making skiing goat videos was probably one of the most fun things, thus
summer when we were younger. You would always come up with the ideas, and no one else could
even come up with ideas close to as good as yours, so you kind of just mastermind all
of them, but you're kind of just your actors, and they were all super funny.
I'm Finn, and I got this board 13 years ago, and I use it as a table every day.
As hopefully you've come to see, Finn Gessner is one of a kind athlete, both on and off
the course. He does things his way, and definitely has his mind in the right place.
My biggest goal is to keep having fun, because that's what it's about. I'm Finn Gessner,
and this has been a look-in on my running career, and kind of the rest of my life.
Here we go.
Nice, nice.
I love jam and jellyfish beneath the sea floor.
