Full transcript: IRONMIND, Episode 7
0:00 This week, on Ironminds. My body feels beaten up. Turn around. Vitamin B-12 shot.
0:13 My name is Brian Rose, and I host a show called London Real. A few months ago John Joseph, the frontman of the hardcore punk band the Cro-Mags walked into my studio. He’s the complete opposite of me. But something happened, he challenged me to race the Ironman Triathlon in Chattanooga Tennessee on May 20th on a hundred percent plant-based diet. Last week Ironman trainer Samantha Murphy pushed me to the limit, and I got to see some old demons.
0:48 John Joseph showed me the spirit world, and I spoke openly about my heroin addiction for the first time. I returned to London and was told by Charles Poliquin that competing on my plant-based diet was impossible. I’m 47 years old, and have never run an endurance race in my life. But they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This is my journey to the Ironman.
1:29 Would be great to consult a doctor, maybe have them look at my blood to see what’s going on. I mean, I just jumped into this diet, I don’t really know what I’m doing.
1:49 Hello. Hey, how are you, good to see you. I’m good, nice to be here again in different circumstances. I know, it’s been a while. It’s been a while, last time it was all about, sort of optimising and living well, and now you’re doing some crazy Ironman.
2:02 I’m a little curious what the results are. And by the look of your face I’m a little worried. Well, I think there’s this misconception often in this sporting or even well-being world that actually endurance sport and Ironman is good for you, when actually we know that it’s really not. So, depending on what you want to achieve, whether you want to live well longer as opposed to performance or cost. I think there has to be a balance somewhere.
2:27 I mean, I just came in from a, I guess would be a hard weekend session. I just got to where I didn’t even want to be around in life. Like, I was just, Of course I went to the gym and I went to a dark room, and I was just angry. And so, and I couldn’t explain it, I couldn’t explain it really, it was weird. You know, you could imagine evolutionarily speaking, how we used to do periods of really stressful activity.
2:50 Chasing down, hunting down tigers, or whatever we used to eat. But then we used to literally get in the cave and sleep. And now everyone wants to do everything, right. We want to do Ironman, we want to do our, you know, be really successful at work. We want to have good family and relationships, social life.
3:05 Something has to give; the way you felt was due to inflammation. You’re training hard, you’re working hard, your sleep’s going, and you’re having a somewhat restricted diet, it’s very difficult to get that balance right. Should I be worried here. You know, the whole process is the Ironmind, right? That it’s mind over matter that will get you to the finish line, you know.
3:26 And I’m very aware of that given my history as an Ironman athlete. You know, I had a history of eating disorder, borderline addictions, perfectionist mindset. And for me, triathlon saved me. This culminated in me winning Ironman UK. It was one of the most amazing days of my life.
3:48 Retrospectively I found that I was like 12 hours pregnant on that day, so . What do you see when you look at my blood. So even though your testosterone levels are kind of okay-ish, though on the low end, this little thing is , and that’s a biological adaptation to get you to conserve energy, okay. It’s trying to get you to slow down. It’s also going to commonly reduce libido.
4:12 Why would you want to be fertile when your training for an Ironman, or trying to be everything you want to be. My body is It’s trying to divert resources to where your mind is telling it it needs to go, yep. Pretty smart that human system, huh. B12 is the main thing you need to supplement on a plant-based diet. Even supplementation doesn’t work, so the way to bypass that, you can get your vitamin B12 shot.
4:37 So, right, alcohol wipes, isoline syringe. Turn around. Let’s do this. And then you go in slightly. A little bit of a sting.
5:10 Hey. Hi Brian. I’m here to recover. Yes, you’ve come to the right place. I need some help because, my body feels beaten up.
5:19 What we do here is Cryotherapy. Cryotherapy involves going into a cryo-cabin. It goes down to minus 130 degrees. It tricks the body into thinking you’re going into hypothermia but you’re not. Hey, here we are.
5:36 Okay, here we are. Are you ready for this. I don’t know. Really cold. Really cold.
5:43 Okay. Any questions? It’s very scary sounding. I know, I know, it is, but. I already feel recovered, I think I’m good.
5:56 Get in! Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Okay. Because your body thinks it’s going into hypothermia, so it triggers the fight-or-flight mode.
6:15 The blood gets oxygenated, flushes out toxins, and releases endorphins. And five, four, three, two, one, and I’m gonna open that for you. There you go. But then, magic happens when you step outside, and you start to warm up, and that oxygenated blood flows to areas where you’ve got the muscle soreness and inflammation. How do you feel?
6:48 So here we are, Normatec compression therapy. The science is that it gets the blood flow to go in a direction where it helps to push the lactic acid out of the system. Do you want to show me what training you’ve been up to? I have this thing called training peaks. Which is an app that I think a lot of athletes use.
7:07 It links in with my Garmin watch. So my Garmin tracks my heart rate at all times, my GPS. Excellent, yep. And every time I do a workout like a swim, it tracks everything. My trainer, Samantha, is in the states, and then she’s programmed all of my workouts for the next coming weeks.
7:23 So tomorrow I’ve got to cycle for an hour, and then I’ve got a cycle followed by a run. And then Friday I have a swim, and Sunday I have. Brian, can I just stop you there. Where’s the recovery in all that? You can’t keep going at that pace, you need to stop and recover.
7:35 This is the problem. It is. It’s really surprising you’ve gotten away without having an injury or anything so far. I’ve got twenty-some days left. I know, but you’ve come in to do recovery right at the end when you’ve only got twenty-something left, you should have been coming in from the start.
7:51 Come on Maria. No, sorry. Help me out here. I am, I am helping.
7:59 It feels like, yeah, the blood is draining out of my feet right now. Awesome isn’t it. Ah, it’s like a James Bond villain torture device. Oh my gosh. That’s solid.
8:50 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose, my guest today is Tim Don, the triathlete, olympian, and Ironman world-record holder. Two days before the coveted Ironman World Championships in Kona Hawaii, you were hit by a car while cycling, and suffered a hangman’s fracture to your neck spending the next three months recovering. Last Monday, six months after being injured, you returned to compete in a Boston marathon. Tim, welcome to London Real. Hey, thanks for having me, appreciate it.
9:16 Two months ago I got challenged to run my first Ironman 70 point three. I’ve never done an endurance race, so exactly 30 days from today, I’m in Chattanooga Tennessee. Chattanooga’s quite a hilly path course. I think he set you up a little bit there . Wait, tell me more about this.
9:33 Have you done much open water swimming. No. You’re gonna get dunked. It’s a bit water-polo-esq. But, you need to get on people’s feet, you know, to get the draught, and then the bike literally at four miles into the bike, it’s a four mile climb, I think it’s a really honest climb.
9:51 And the worst thing you can do is feel like you’re a king, because it’s early in the bike. And then you hit the suburbs, and it is real, honest hell. What you’ll find is, ah I get to the top, I’m running downhill, but by then your quads are probably a bit fatigued from the cycling, so you need to make sure you’ve taken in enough electrolytes, enough salt. What about just the anxiety of everything. I mean, is there any way to just kind of, because it’s the first one, so you can’t really teach that right?
10:20 Do I just have to stay calm? Yeah, but it’s maybe not as easy as that. No definitely, I mean, everyone deals with it a bit differently; how I like to do it is I’m very practical, bad preparation, bad performance. I’m a big believer of what you put into life is what you get out of it, and commit 110 percent, and don’t look back.
12:20 You can put me in these in cryotanks, and these Normatec boots, and foam rollers, and all that stuff, but, I think when it really comes to true recovery, is being out here in the heath, you know, in the nature, jumping in the ponds, running through the trees; now I feel recovered. Next week on Ironmind. The addiction wasn’t your problem, your problem was that you had a lot of emotional pain that you didn’t know what to do with. I got over this addiction, but I don’t think I solved the problem.
13:04 You need to be mentally prepared to, for about the first two to five minutes, be completely out of control.
