Good morning and welcome to The WSJ Leadership Institute’s new “Executive Resilience” series—and a special Saturday edition of the Morning Download. A quick word from Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds, editor and host of WSJ Executive Resilience and author of “Not Too Late.”

In this series, we learn from top executives how they make physical and cognitive resilience a critical component of strong leadership. It’s part of a new initiative from The WSJ Leadership Institute where we share tools, technology and performance protocols from scientists, military leaders, authors and experts in the longevity and health fields as part of our programming and content.

The goal is simple: provide newsletter subscribers and our council members with actionable strategies and inspiration to lead and live better, longer.

We’re kicking off with a profile of Peloton Chief Technology Officer Francis Shanahan written by technology reporter Isabelle Bousquette—a marathon runner herself and part of our Executive Resilience team. On Monday, Shanahan will set off on the Cocodona 250, a brutal 253.3-mile trek through the desert and canyons of Arizona. Shanahan tells us about what it was like running the race for the first time in 2024, the role meditation plays in his training and what he takes from the scorpion-infested trails back to Peloton’s corporate offices.

I look forward to hearing how you think about resilience in your life and leadership. As this lands in your inbox, I’ll be crossing the starting line of a rainy 21K Spartan obstacle course championship race in Fayetteville, N.C.—and hoping my own resilience holds!

Have a leader to suggest for a profile? Or an expert you’d like us to interview? Email us at ExecutiveResilience@wsj.com. And welcome to our community.

— Wendy

It wasn’t the rattlesnakes, scorpions, altitude, 90-degree heat, joint pain or 100 hours on almost no sleep that nearly stopped Francis Shanahan, now 51, from completing a brutal 250-mile trek through central Arizona trails two years ago.

Less than 60 miles into the Cocodona 250 race, as he stopped to vomit for the second time, the thing that had him almost tapping out was actually his own brain.

“You always try to show up on race day prepped and in good shape, but the muscle between your ears is the most powerful one in this,” said Shanahan, chief technology officer of fitness company Peloton. “All the time you’re battling: Am I pushing things too far?”

At a race like Cocodona—a punishing 253.3-mile course with 38,791 feet in elevation gain and 33,884 feet in elevation loss, taking place over five days—it’s hard to imagine that any athlete isn’t pushing things too far. Many run with pacers or dedicated crews that help them refuel at aid stations along the way. Shanahan was going it alone.

“I wanted to see where my limits are,” he said. Ultimately, he did, completing the race just before the 125-hour cutoff. “I barely finished and that’s exactly where I wanted to be,” he said. 

Shanahan didn’t have a lifelong love of fitness or running. He doesn’t even consider himself an athlete. He discovered the sport in his 30s, as a way to manage the stress of caring for his partner, who was going through cancer treatment.

From there he jumped straight into ultras—a category of outdoor trail racing that typically spans 31 to more than 100 miles and requires a lot more than the 4 to 5 hours of physical endurance needed for a traditional marathon.

“I like to think it emptied me out and filled me back up again,” he said about Cocodona.

“You just really need to understand that you’re not the boss out there,” he said.

Ironically, back at Peloton’s Manhattan headquarters, Shanahan is quite literally the boss as far as technology initiatives go. But he’s finding that the same philosophy applies back here, where fitness trends and the AI hype cycle make it easy to get overwhelmed.

“You need to really focus on: What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Throw everything else away,” he said.

The experience also built resilience, teaching him how to cope and make progress even when everything seems to be going wrong.

“You will find the lowest, lowest points in your mental game,” he said about the race. “But that’s OK. That's the message. You just have to keep moving forward, stay focused, stay on the path, literally and figuratively, and things will work out. And I think that speaks to lots of Peloton’s journey. We've had our ups and our downs.”

Peloton’s stock boomed during the Covid pandemic, but has since slid more than 95% from its 2021 peak. In February, the company reported that revenue was down in the fiscal second quarter on falling subscription numbers and projected further declines going into the third quarter.

“It's been a difficult economic environment. But what's kept me centered and kept me focused is that we are providing genuine good in the world,” Shanahan said. 

Cocodona is about learning how to take a punch in the face and keep going, Shanahan said, an attitude that’s also critical when it comes to building resilient technology systems.

“We deliver a quality product and we can't assume that everything's going to go smoothly. Rather the opposite. We should proactively test what happens when our systems have issues: Are they able to maintain integrity under those less than ideal conditions?”

Days before heading out on his second Cocodona, which jumps off May 4, Shanahan told me he wishes everyone in the world could attempt a feat like this at some point.

“When I first heard about races like this, it just felt so incredible to me that anyone would ever want to do something like that, let alone be able to do it,” he said. Now, he said, the reasoning is clear as day.

“It's opened my eyes to a lot of different things about myself, about the world, about other people that I just was frankly not aware of. And so I want that for other people.”

Despite the pain, the fear, the danger, the doubting, and the vomit, he added, “It's been one of the most joyous things that has happened to me in my life.”

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.