Rich Roll - How To Live An Ultra Life

Full transcript: Rich Roll on London Real

5:52 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Rich Roll the American author, public speaker, plant-based nutrition advocate, and vegan ultra endurance athlete, whose Men’s Health named as one of the 25 fittest men in the world.

6:17 You’re a former entertainment attorney who transformed into a top finisher in the Ultraman, a three-day 320 mile double Ironman distance triathlon and later raced the Epic Five. I love how that sounds: Five Iron Men on five Hawaiian Islands in just over five days. You host the wildly popular Rich Roll podcast and your best-selling memoir, Finding Ultra, now updated and rewritten, tells your inspirational story of addiction, redemption, and optimal health.

6:43 Rich, welcome to London Real. Delighted to be here. Brian, thanks for having me. It’s awesome to have you. You know you’ve definitely been in my head the last six months on my own journey and endurance, and I want to get to that.

6:54 But how is London treating you? What’s it like being here? How’s the food, etc.? I love it. I live in Los Angeles, a little northwest of the city, in a pretty rustic rural part of town, which is fantastic for training, and the lifestyle is amazing, but I miss that energy, that vitality of being in an urban environment.

7:14 And I’m staying here in shortage and it’s just fantastic. I’ve never been to this part of London before, and there’s just so much youth and excitement you can kind of feel it as you walk around. and it’s great. You know, that’s just something that I don’t get on a daily basis. I walked around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon when I got into town, and I think I counted four or five vegan restaurants in a, you know, half mile radius.

7:40 So there’s something happening here. It definitely is. Yeah, I love this part of town. And how is it here for endurance sports? I mean, is the UK and Europe, are they known as some of the top competitors in the world?

7:52 Do you remember bumping into them at ultras and those kinds of things? Yeah, of course. There’s a rich tradition in this part of the world. Last weekend was Roth, which is a huge that’s the biggest Iron Man race of the year in Germany, aside from Kona. In Britain you have the Brownlee brothers, and you’ve got Tim Don, who I know has been on your show.

8:12 So a rich tradition of British athletes, and I think the culture is alive and well here. But you know, I’ve never trained here or raced here, so you might know more about that than I do. Well you know, I know a little bit about it, and you know you were a huge inspiration for my recent Iron Man 70.3, and you know we had you on the show for Iron Man, and I really appreciate, you know, you being there. And it’s weird that I found you kind of at this time because I had heard of you for the past few years, and I’d watch your podcast, and I knew your story but it wasn’t until, you know, I met John Joseph, who I know you know as well, that I really started looking more into you, and it happened right around when I was, John was kind of pushing me to go to New York, and I was reading his book, me this for [expletive], and you wrote the intro, and so I read that, and then for some reason I finally got into your book, and I was listening to the whole thing while at the same time, kind of weirdly flirting with this idea of not only doing my first endurance sport, also going 100% plant-based, but then also, you know, facing some of my old addiction issues.

9:22 And yeah, like you might have been responsible for stirring a lot of that stuff up at the same time. And so, you know, first of all, I want to thank you for all that, because it was a real big part of the journey for me. But I also wondered if you could maybe tell people, you know, a bit about your journey, because not everyone knows kind of your story, and how you even got into ultras, and I know what happened in your 40s, and again that resonated with me even more.

9:46 Right, right, right. It was really like the right place at the right time, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t meet you earlier, right? Because I might not have taken it seriously. You know, I appreciate the kind words, but you did the work, and it’s been really fun to kind of watch the journey, because you know, I watched all the Iron Mind episodes. You know, John, one of my best friends in the world, so he hit me up after you guys got together.

10:08 He’s like, “Yo, Rich, you gotta watch this. What do I’m doing with this guy, Brian?” You know, and I just got hooked on the series that you created. So it was really fun to watch you prepare for and then compete in that race, and even more than that, to see that you’re still totally engaged with your fitness and your nutrition, perhaps even more enthusiastic now than you were prior. Which is really cool.

10:33 You kind of made an eerie prediction when when we were on that Skype call. Yeah, you’re like, Ryan, you’re gonna go one way or the other, right? You’ll either never do this again, or you’ll get into it. And I think I know which. If you’re in the latter, yeah, you just need to do one more thing, which is sign up for the next race.

10:47 That’s the thing, right? That’ll really hook you in. Yeah, no, you’re right. And, no, I appreciate you, you saying that. And how did you know John?

10:56 Because you guys are kind of an unlikely couple, like I am with him, but John is my brother from another mother, and our backgrounds could not be more different. But from the first moment that I met him. I met him at, like, some vegan event in New York City many years ago, and I just connected with him immediately, and we just have become closer and closer and closer over the years. And when I had him on my podcast for the first time, when he told his story, like, in long form, I was just, I was so moved by it.

11:26 And after that experience, I just felt really connected with him, and we’ve stayed close ever since. Wow, yeah. Wow, and then when he asked you to write the forward of the book, yeah, it happened. Yeah, yeah. Well, he said could you write, like, I think he gave me, he’s like, could you write a short little paragraph or something like that.

11:44 And I was like, I’m gonna, like, write. I’m gonna, he doesn’t know it, but I’m writing the forward for this book, and I just, you know, blast it out like this manifesto and just sent it to him. I was like what do you think of this? And he’s like, oh, this is going to be the forward, you know? And I just wrote the forward.

11:58 I just sent him the forward for his new book that’s coming out. I don’t know when it’s coming out, maybe this winter or maybe the summer, actually. The PMA book, PMA. Yeah, yeah. You wrote that was a serious forward you wrote.

12:09 Yeah, I was like, this guy’s not playing around. Yeah, yeah. Does that take you a while to write that? I mean, I think of all the things that I do, writing is the thing that I do best, and I probably should do more of it. So John’s just given me the opportunity to express myself in that way.

12:25 So Yeah, I love the writing. Yeah, and it really resonates with people. So all right, take us back to 39 years old. 39, so people kind of know why you’re even here, because I think, like, most people listening and watching, they might be in a space right now where you were at, which is, I mean, I’m guessing you can tell me where I’m wrong, but kind of a professional doing work, had some success, maybe not completely fully committed to the work, right? It pays the bills.

12:54 But also kind of forgot about the reason you have a body, and you know why we’re eating what we’re eating, and just kind of in a weird space that I think a lot of people find themselves around 40 years old. Yeah, so with 39 I was really on the cusp of achieving everything that I had ever set out to achieve. You know, the American dream being sort of the driving force in my life as far back as I can remember, which is what, what is that? get the upwardly mobile career that’s safe and secure, that’s socially approved of, that your parents are happy about to be earning at a level where you can afford all the toys, and you know, the night I had a nice sports car in the driveway.

13:39 I had all the stuff, you know, all the stuff that you’re kind of programmed from a very early age growing up in America, are the things that you’re supposed to be chasing you’re supposed to aspire to the career, you know, study hard, get into the best college, get into the best grad school, get the best job, show up early, work late, you know, impress your job or your boss, move up the corporate ladder, all of that stuff, right? And I just intuited that my entire life without ever sort of stepping back or taking a moment to pause and reflect about what I actually wanted, or what actually moved me, or what I wanted to express, that was never really part of the equation, and I think implicit in this quest or this search to, you know, achieve this level of social status is this idea that you’re going to be happy, that you’re going to be fulfilled, that you will find your life purposeful, and for some people that’s true, but I think for a lot of people, myself included, it left me feeling not just empty, but really disillusioned with this path that I had chosen for myself, and really hard on myself, because I’d never really felt secure enough in my own being to take stock in inventory, or have the courage to seek a different path that might be more attuned to you know what I’m here to do.

15:08 And I think sort of to understand where I was at 39 you know, I have to kind of go back a little bit further. You know, when I was growing up, I grew up in a very education-focused family. grades were very important, and I was very good at playing that game. By the time I graduated high school, I was a top student, I was a top athlete. I got into every college I applied to.

15:32 You know, I got into all the Ivy League schools and ended up going to Stanford and competing on two NCAA championship swimming teams there as a benchwarmer. I was training with, like, Olympic champions and, you know, gold medalist world record holders and the like. But you chose to go to Stanford because that’s where the best were, best school, best swimming program at the time. I chose it over Harvard. And you got seduced with California as well?

15:57 I did. Yeah, I got seduced by California. So my point being that I was somebody who had quite a bit of promise as a young person. Then comes the introduction to alcohol, which started out really fun. I had a great.

16:12 I was always somebody who was insecure and had trouble making friends. I was not a, I was very socially awkward, and alcohol really helped me. It helped me kind of get comfortable with myself, and suddenly I could go to a party and crack a joke and talk to a girl, which was all very new to me. But you had your first drink at 18 at a college campus, and your family didn’t have a history of drinking. No, yeah, no, I grew up two loving parents, still married, so it wasn’t, it wasn’t a function of being around alcoholism growing up, right?

16:43 And it found that now the introverted, awkward Rich was now, in your mind, the life of the party. Yeah, suddenly social animal, you know, the last guy to leave the party, and all the kind of stuff that happens when that, like, kind of switch gets flicked, and the relationship with alcohol goes from something that’s fun to something that is quickly becoming dark. You know, how long did that take to happen? it took, you know, a couple years, but, you know, there were plenty of you know, incomprehensibly demoralizing scenarios that I found myself in very early on, and they just became progressively worse and worse and worse.

17:21 And the denial mechanism gets dialed up, so you’re able to, like, justify it or slough it off, but it was pretty clear to me, pretty early on, in my unconscious mind, that I had a very unhealthy relationship with this substance, and that it was likely to be causing me increasingly more dramatic problems if I continue to pursue it. But pursue what I did, you know, for 15 years I kind of had this career as a professional alcoholic. I moved to New York City, and that’s like Disneyland for alcoholics.

17:51 And that’s where it really kicked in, you know. And I never thought of that, but you see that in your book I was so right, and you don’t have to drive, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it’s just everywhere. There’s a bar open any time of the day, all the time, every flavor you want. It’s just there.

18:05 Yeah, okay. So this went on for many years. Meanwhile I was able to still sort of function, you know, I got into law school. I was able to get through law school somehow, I don’t know how, and get a good job at a, you know, a good law firm in Los Angeles, but I was leading this kind of double life, and it was only a, you know, it was a ticking time moment, was only a matter of time before these worlds were going to collide, and disaster was going to ensue, and that’s certainly what happened ultimately.

18:31 You know, alcohol brought me to my knees. You know, at the end it was really sad and pathetic. There was nothing romantic or rock and roll or sexy about it. It was just kind of pathetic, frankly. Have you seen the movie Leaving Las Vegas?

18:48 Of course I remember vividly seeing that movie. It must have been what year was that? Mid-90s, early 90s, ’94. Yeah, I went with a friend who is not an alcoholic, and he was horrified, and I was like, oh, I get it, you know? He’s just trying to have a good time.

19:05 Like, I was with him the whole way. Like, I understood where he was at, you know right, in the suitcase full of alcohol. Yeah, you knew what that’s like. Yeah, I know because I know as well, like Yeah, is there going to be enough alcohol? Do I need to bring an extra bottle, you know, for sure?

19:22 So you saw that movie differently than other people. Yeah, for sure. And for you it got bad. It was like DUIs, even when you finally checked in, they’re like, wow, you’re in a pretty bad state. DUIs car crash.

19:33 I got two DUIs in the two-month period, 0.27 0.29, like really high blood alcohol, rear-ended an elderly woman and injured her. Lots of scowling judges. I was facing jail time, you know. At the very end I was the guy who started the day with a vodka tonic in the shower and, you know, a tall boy between my legs as I drove to work, and sneaking drinks throughout the day, and hiding my empties, and, you know, just looking forward to that oblivion, that blackout, you know, once work was over and weekends were just gone, you know, gone.

20:06 And then that kind of two-day period of trying to come back to life, with the shaking and the sweating and the inability to sleep. Like it was a job, you know. It was a job, and it took its toll on me. And then I had that moment that you hear with people in recovery, you know, that epiphany, that reckoning moment, where I woke up one day hungover, and it wasn’t that different than so many other days, but I suddenly just was blessed with the willingness to, like, face this in a way that I hadn’t been courageous enough previously to really own what was going on, and to do something about it.

20:46 You know, that moment of clarity. Everything that day might not have happened. Oh, I mean every day I think about that. Every day I think about that. I mean, is that like a touch from the Divine or is that inevitable, that day happens?

21:00 Because there’s probably a lot of rituals out there who never had that moment and then plowed on. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s when the elevator is going down, at some point it meets your pain threshold, you know, and that’s different for everybody. I think it’s a function of how much pain you can tolerate before you’re actually willing to do something about it, where the fear of the unknown is trumped by the fear of your current situation. you know, for me, pain has really only been the only true motivator of getting me to change any of my errant ways.

21:37 And the truth is, change is available to all of us, all the time. We just have to make a choice and a decision. It’s just that pain makes it easier to make that choice, and that’s the quote-unquote rock bottom kind of one. Yeah, that inflection point where, okay, now I have to do something. Yeah, I think John said there’s rock bottom, he said, but then you can actually go lower.

21:59 Yeah, there’s always lower. Yeah, there’s always lower. Yeah, there’s always lower and you hear that in the recovery community. You know, people that are still struggling, they’ll say, well, you know, I didn’t I’ve never gotten a DUI, or, you know, I’ve never been fired, or, you know, my wife or husband hasn’t left me so you can use those as rationalizations to continue your unhealthy behavior pattern. But the truth is, it’s only a matter of time before those things happen and a matter of whether you’re willing to step off before those things happen.

22:36 I saw an interview with Sean Penn a while back, and he said something like he used to drink and party a lot. You know, he said something like, maybe, a maybe I had to use alcohol to process that at that point, and I couldn’t handle it otherwise. And I was a really strange thing to say, and I was wondering, do you even think that you could have been capable of 25 to do what you did later in your 30s? I think, I think he makes a valid point. You know, I look back on my relationship with alcohol, and I think it would be disingenuous for me to say it’s all bad.

23:12 Like, I think it gave me the ability to navigate a social environment in a way that perhaps I never would have otherwise. so I have some gratitude for it, for that. it’s a high level of forgiveness. Yeah, it just, but it turns on you, you know, and I don’t regret, you know, I don’t, I don’t regret anything that has happened. All of those experiences have made me who I am today, so I wouldn’t change anything.

23:39 You know, certainly it’s not fun to endure that kind of suffering, but I think it’s made me a stronger person, ultimately. Yeah. What was that rehab experience like? Because you went into a pretty serious place for quite an amount of time. I mean, not a lot of alcoholics would do something like that.

23:58 I went to a treatment center in rural Oregon, outside Portland. And at the time I remember, I’m just going to go here for a couple, you know, a couple weeks. I’m going to spin dry, you know, get back to my super important career. You know, I know I got to sort some things out, but, like, you know, I got things to do, and when I arrived there, I realized the gravity of my situation. I was like I’m in a mental institution, you know.

24:24 I think I’m this smart guy but the truth is, the decisions that I’ve made about how to live my life had culminated in me arriving in this place, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I realized, like, I better make the most of this because I don’t ever want to come back to a place like this. And I made a decision to really do everything they told me to do, to, like, take all of my questioning or doubt out of the equation, and just show up and have the willingness to take direction, and I started sharing about how I was actually living for the very first time with the groups and with the counselors And I remember one counselor, after I’d been there a week or so, pulled me aside, and he said, he goes, “Rich you know, you have a case of alcoholism that we generally only see in, like, 65-year-old lifelong drinkers, and if you don’t make this your number one priority, you know, you’re probably gonna die.

25:20 And he wasn’t being overly dramatic about it, but he wanted me to really understand what was actually happening, and I was able to hear that. And is that your physiology, or was that your mental state? I don’t know, you know. You know, you can spend a lot of time, like, thinking, analyzing why am I an alcoholic, what led me here Ultimately I don’t find that to be that fruitful or helpful in terms of how to move forward. I try to focus on the solution and how to live today.

25:50 But I think hearing that made me realize, like, oh, this is serious, you know? And I better take this seriously. So I ended up staying in that rehab for 100 days. by choice. Yeah, by choice, by choice.

26:05 It’s a long time. It is, you know, yeah. And it wasn’t a nice place. I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like a fancy resort-like experience, but it wasn’t boot camp either, you know. And why stay for that long?

26:22 I needed, I needed to completely overhaul how I was living from top to bottom, and I needed a new toolbox. for that. I needed to learn new tools for how to treat myself and how to be in the world, you know, I needed to develop a spiritual relationship with myself and with some something greater than myself, which was a brand new experience for me. You’re, I know, your parents kind of give you an ultimatum even before you check in and said, look we, like, we don’t want anything to do with you anymore, because you’re probably drunk whenever they were around, and they saw the destruction, and they, I know, they even kind of started seeing their own organization, you know, to kind of deal with some of that trauma.

27:11 And you know, with my story with Iron Mind, when I went back to New York City. I ended up meeting some people that did the same thing to me, basically walked away from me when I was at my lowest point, and for me that was one of the reasons I actually hit the bottom, and I was just wondering if you ever thought that way about your parents, as in, thank them for pushing you away? Is that always the best thing that people should do if they’re around an addictive person?

27:38 I don’t know if it’s always the best thing. I mean, I think what happened to me, and it sounds like what happened to you, those are acts of great compassion, you know. Those are acts of love, and you need to hear the truth, you know. That’s what snaps you out of the denial when you realize that the people you care about the most are no longer on your side. I think that allows you to kind of perceive your reality a little bit differently.

28:01 It really kind of cracks the veneer of how you’re perceiving your reality. So yeah, I think it was a great act. It wasn’t fun and it felt horrible, but ultimately it was a great catalyst that helped me get into recovery. And I think it’s important, you know, for people that are watching or listening that if you know somebody, if someone close to you is suffering, the first thing you have to understand is it’s very difficult to help somebody who doesn’t want help, and you have to take care of yourself first, and part of that is disengaging from the codependent behavior that contributes to the acceleration of that disease, and part of disconnecting from that kind of codependent relationship is letting that person know, like, hey, I love you when you’re ready to get well.

28:53 I’m here for you. 110%, but until then I can’t participate in your life. The way that you’re living right now, and that can be effective. It wasn’t my case, at least. Yeah, me too, and ultimately I could even, fairly soon after, I could see that they were making the right call, you know.

29:11 When you have someone going down those depths, spiraling down, you just need to get the hell away from that before you get taken down with it. And, um, it’s funny. I talked to him later, and they said, Brian, we, I’m just so happy you’re okay. It was really emotional, because, like, they were actually, you think they’re abandoning you, but they were trying to love you, right? And you weren’t allowing them to.

29:34 And until you made the choice, it was pointless. So, when that happened to you, did you get angry? What was your reaction? You know, I think I was, I think with me it was just like, I think since a kid I was kind of like expecting people to let me down, right? So for me maybe it was just a confirmation that I am all alone, and f*** them all, and that so I don’t think I ever was like, oh, I can’t believe she left me.

29:59 I think I saw that it made sense, and I think it helped in me hitting my bottom, you know, a few months later and taking some action. So, um, and then after that it was just so much pain and shame that I never wanted to contact him until this whole thing happened, right? But yeah, I wasn’t pointing the finger. It was, it was definitely nuance what was happening there, but those were clear signals that you’re screwing up, because you can run your own narrative when you’re in your head and justify everything and tell yourself you’re doing X, Y, and Z.

30:29 Of course, yeah, but it’s those people, and it’s the greatest, and I actually thanked them, like in a weird 12-step way, which I don’t even know the 12 steps, but I, I was like, thank you for doing that to me, because they’re the ones that, you know, gave me those signals. Um, what was it like coming out of that hundred days, because that’s, I mean, that’s got to be a weird situation. You’re probably very fragile, and yeah, I had to make my way back into the world very gingerly.

30:57 You’re living in this protective womb where it’s all about personal growth and discovery, and then you’re just back into your life again, and you have to then return to that place of work and reconnecting with your friends and your family after having this experience. It’s disorienting, so it was a challenge, but I was committed to basically, you know, two goals coming out of that experience. One was to create the most solid foundation for sobriety that I possibly could.

31:32 Like, that was my number one priority. I was very clear on that. That had to come before everything else if this was going to work long term for me, and second to that was repairing all the wreckage that I had created as a result of my drinking and using, which meant learning how to become a productive, responsible member of society again, learning how to show up when you said you were going to show up, to tell the truth, or look people in the eye, you know, all of that stuff that when you’re in your disease eludes you, right?

32:02 And so I was successful in that. You know, I was really committed. I was going to, like, two meetings a day and just very active in the recovery community, showing up for work. You know, I was clear, like, listen, maybe corporate law isn’t for me, but, um, my firm supported me when I went to treatment, and I felt, uh, the right thing to do was return and work there at least as long as I was away, and and so I stayed in that environment for another year. ultimately ended up leaving that and starting my own little practice, but you know, fast forwarding to 39, and you went celibate for a year as well.

32:42 You were really, I did. Yeah, I did. You did your research. Yeah, I went celibate for a year. Well, when I was leaving treatment, one of the counselors said, look, I think it would be a really good idea if you didn’t date anybody for a while.

32:55 Like, my relationship with alcohol was so intricately intertwined with my relationship with women. It was a very confused, like, I would just associate going out partying or whatever, talking to, talking to women, talking to girls, with alcohol, and I needed to relearn how to be social with the opposite sex without a mind-altering substance, and to really, uh, redefine how I related to women for myself and my own personal growth. So yeah, so I committed to one year of total celibacy and not dating.

33:33 I would say it sounds daunting, but it was one of the most empowering things I ever did. I learned so much about myself, because when you remove that from your daily equation, it clears up so much energy and creates so much clarity, and that sort of focus turns inward, and you go on this kind of personal inward journey, and I learned a lot about myself and what makes me tick, and fundamentally I think that allowed me to um, have a healthy relationship with a woman for the very first time, you know. So I met my wife right on the cusp, the very end of that one-year experience, and we’ve been together ever since.

34:14 Wow, yeah. The first person that I dated in sobriety is now my wife and the mother of my children, and 15 years later, 20 years later. Wow. And you made, you guys have done this great book scene, etc. Was your self-esteem really low?

34:28 Like, were you kind of the shell of a man, or did you kind of get back up to speed fairly quick? Um, my self-esteem was very low. I had a lot of shame. A lot of insecure. I mean, I’d always been insecure, always self-conscious, and you know, alcohol allows you to overcome that, right?

34:47 You remove alcohol, that’s not the solution. Alcohol is the cure. Like, that’s the answer to the problem. You remove the out, and then it’s not, you know, it turns on you, but when you remove the drugs and the alcohol, then you’re left with yourself, and that’s where the real work begins. So yeah, I had to go on this journey of trying to repair all of that, all of those character defects.

35:16 You know, I’m still, you know, it’s an ongoing battle. I still think I’m a pretty insecure person. I’m a people pleaser. I always defer to what everybody else wants to do. You know, I have a hard time standing up for myself, and you know, it’s just an ongoing process of trying to become better every day, and some days I do well at it and other days I don’t.

35:37 And the recovery in the 12-step program was very important in the early times. Do you still use those techniques and do the meetings thing? Or yeah, that’s still my number one priority, and I’m, I’m a very active member of that community in Los Angeles. Yeah, it’s still super important. Well, you’re not supposed to.

35:54 Yeah, yeah, that’s how that works. There’s a tradition against being explicit about that in press, radio, and film, so I don’t talk about that in that way, but um, yeah, it is. It’s the number one thing that I do. It’s the most important thing in my life to this day, and it’s probably the number one most effective way for most people to beat something like yeah, I think it works, you know. And it’s interesting, every couple years somebody will make a splash with some new way of getting sober or staying sober, and that’s fine.

36:30 I think we should always be innovating and looking at ways of treating addiction. I just know that this is what works for me. I’ve seen miracles happen in other people’s lives, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. It’s incredibly powerful and profound, the impact that that, uh, that, um, this program is out of my life and a lot of people that I’m close with. Okay, so 32-ish you meet Julie, uh, you know, your wife now, and the story could be, and happily ever after, and what, what changed that?

37:06 Uh, a bunch of things. Well, well, let’s see, where to begin with this? From 32 to 39 it was all about trying to become successful in my professional career, but I became a workaholic. A lot of my addictive, obsessive personality traits got transferred into my profession, and as a result of that I became quite unwell. I was 50 pounds overweight, sort of semi-depressed, lethargic, never morbidly obese or anything like that, but just kind of this guy sliding into middle age, you know, just sort of tolerating life.

37:56 You know, I love my wife. We were building a family from the outside looking in. Everything looked fantastic, but on the inside there was this growing seed of discontent, like almost this existential crisis about these choices that I had made about my professional career, and that all kind of came to a head shortly before I turned 40 when this existential crisis kind of collided with my poor health and manifested in a bit of a health scare when I was walking up a simple flight of stairs to go to bed one night and had to pause.

38:28 You know, here I was, this former world-rank swimmer who had swum at Stanford, and I would still look in the mirror and think that that was the guy being reflected back at me and couldn’t see the reality of my current condition, which is that, you know, I hadn’t been taking care of myself. I hadn’t exercised in as long as I could remember. I’ve been subsisting on a fast food diet on a daily basis for the better part of my adult life, and when you’re young you can kind of get away with a lot of that stuff, but it catches up to you, and it caught up to me on this staircase, where, yeah, I had to pause.

39:00 I was bent over. I had tightness in my chest and started, you know, dripping sweat on my brow, and scared me. You know, it scared me. Heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather had been a champion swimmer, captain of the University of Michigan swim team in, like, 1929, was an Olympic hopeful, an American record holder, never smoked, never overweight, but died of a heart attack at 54.

39:23 And my mom would always say, like, you know, you got to be careful. I’m named after him. I look like him. You know, she’s like, you got to be careful, but when you’re young it’s just in one ear and out the other. You don’t really listen.

39:35 You don’t heed that, but, but in that moment it kind of all became very crystal clear to me that I needed to change how I was living, and I think I was able to recognize the power of that moment, because in many ways it was so similar to that day that I decided to go to treatment. You know, you have these moments in time that I think we’re all visited upon, all of us, in different ways, that if we have enough awareness really hold the power to transform our lives if we can recognize them when they’re happening. And because of that experience of waking up and deciding to go to treatment, I realized once again, on this staircase, that this was just like that, and if I could summon the courage, the wherewithal to take some pretty swift action, that perhaps this provided me with another opportunity to change the conditions of my daily life.

40:38 And it did, you know, it did. I was able to harness the fear that I experienced, the pain that I experienced in that moment, to change my relationship with food, and ultimately my relationship with fitness and then my professional career. It sort of set in motion this domino effect, this cascading effect that has led me to the very moment where I get to sit here with you today, but it really all began, you know, on that staircase. Do you ever wonder about that moment, if it hadn’t have happened?

41:06 You know, because yeah, you could argue that alcoholism would have come to some type of rock bottom, but that’s a weird moment, where I read it in your book, and a lot of people would have ignored it and gone to bed. You know, and maybe it would have come up five years later. Maybe you just would have died. You know, do you ever think of, or, yeah, I mean, I could have had a heart attack, or I could have just said, you know, what, I should probably eat better.

41:27 You know, what does that mean? It’s such a vague statement. You should, you should probably go to the gym. You know, what does that mean? Um, and maybe I would have for a little bit, uh, but I would have quickly reverted back to my old habits, and I think my experience in sobriety taught me that if you want to make a change, you have to be decisive, and you have to, you have to establish, um, some very well-defined action steps that will then create momentum and ultimately shift your trajectory.

42:03 Okay, so we can thank some of the structure, of course. Oh yeah, for this whole next plan. Yeah, fascinating. How, yeah, you can be grateful to the alcohol again. Yeah, well, I think it’s like when you’re in alcohol, you’re like, if you’re a drug addict or an alcoholic, you are attracted to the extreme, right?

42:21 And I’ve learned how to kind of harness that and channel it in healthier directions, so I can take that obsessive nature that perhaps I have, and in that moment on the staircase go, all right, well, let’s move that over here and just place that keenly upon changing my relationship with food. And the thing about alcoholics and drug addicts is that they work so hard every day to function, high, it’s a lot of work. Over, and you push through it, and you do this, you’ll do anything that day to make sure that you’re going to get that fix.

42:59 Yeah. It’s this weird, relentless outlier, that, yeah, focus correctly, you can do things that most other people wouldn’t do. All right, and so then the plants come in. Now, you know, that wasn’t an obvious choice. You know, how did that happen for you?

43:17 So what happened was, well, the first thing I did was I realized I needed to go to treatment for food. So I looked at it through the lens of my experience of getting sober and thought, well, what can I do to have a similar experience that’s going to really shake things up in terms of how I connect with what I have to put in my mouth every day? So the first thing I did was a seven-day, like, vegetable juice cleanse, detox thing, which my wife helped me out with.

43:48 And yeah, I’d never gone a single day in my entire life without eating solid food, and had nothing to do with the science of detoxing my body. It just seemed really hard, you know, and it seemed like the closest thing that I could conjure that would be similar to detoxing, like being in detox, like the first couple days of treatment where you’re just getting off drugs and alcohol. So I thought, I’m going to do that for food, and it was very similar to that.

44:17 You know, the first couple days, lying on a couch, like groaning and having no energy. It was just like getting off drugs, but then the fog clears. What was that, a sugar addiction coming off, or it was caffeine? It was just junk food. It was sugar.

44:33 It was all of it, you know, and then going to just basically drinking vegetable juice and, and like this beet broth, and, you know, like literally almost nothing, but then the fog starts to clear, and at the end of that week I felt incredible. I had this insane resurgence of vitality and energy that I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager, and that was profound, because it taught me that food really is medicine in certain regards, that by doing, by making a simple change, you can drastically alter your experience. And then it became about trying to find a way of eating.

45:19 The alcoholic in me is like, well, I’m just going to juice forever. Like, I don’t need to eat food anymore, you know? My wife’s like, no, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. So then it became about finding a way of eating that would allow me to recapture that good feeling. Like, how can I eat and feel like this all the time?

45:36 And that sent me into, like, a six-month experience or experiment of, like, trying a bunch of different diets to see what would work. Okay, and your wife, Julie, wasn’t vegan necessarily at this point, but she, no, she knew a lot about, you know, different ways of eating and cooking, and she was a yogi, and I mean, having her there was very helpful and instrumental. None of this would have happened without her love and support, and I don’t think she gets enough credit for everything that I’ve accomplished, because it wouldn’t have been possible, not just the day-to-day support of like, okay, let me help you do this, but just really the emotional and spiritual support of understanding that this was profound in my development, and even when things were really hard, her having the foresight and the backbone to say no, we have to keep going, has been completely transformational.

46:29 And the really hard stuff came kind of after. Yeah, problems and all kinds of stuff that we can talk about, but in this moment, yeah, you know, I met my wife and yoga class. She’s always been a spiritual seeker. She’s, you know, a yogi, a meditator, and she wasn’t eating a totally 100% plant-based diet at the time, but she, she was eating really healthy. You know, when I was eating junk food and you know, hot dogs and whatever, you know, she was eating kale and drinking kombucha and doing all those kinds of things.

46:58 I was like, that’s fine, that’s your thing. You know, this is my thing. I’m a guy, this is what I need. And she never harangued me about it. It wasn’t like she felt like, I, you know, she was trying to impress her lifestyle upon me.

47:11 But when the moment arose and I was really ready to make that transition, she was available to lend a helping hand to that, and I think there’s a profound relationship piece to this that I’ve come to really understand and appreciate. And I think maybe, um, some people, you know, people are watching, might be able to relate to, like, because my wife was always healthier than me, and I was, like, really attached to a bunch of unhealthy lifestyle habits for a long time. She was trying to help me change.

47:45 She could see that I was suffering, that I didn’t feel good, that my energy wasn’t good, and she wanted to, you know, why don’t you not eat that and eat this? And the more she did that, the more I kind of resisted it. You know, because nobody wants to be told, you know, to do something different than what they like doing. You know, that doesn’t really work, and she finally got to a place where she had, like, a reckoning, okay, this guy isn’t hearing me clearly.

48:13 I’m right, you know? He should be doing these things that I’m doing. Um, but I, she understood, like, that she needed to release herself from her attachment or expectation that I was ever going to change, and she had to make a decision: like, if he never changes, do I still want to be with this guy? And she realized that she did, and she really let go. She let go of her, of that need for me to be any different than I was, and she, she describes it as the difference between personal love and divine love, like when you’re in a relationship with somebody.

48:55 Love is generally conditional, right? Like, I love you as long as you’re doing all of these things. Like, I love you, but the minute you step out of that and do something totally different, you can remove that love right there. There’s a transactional aspect to human love. Divine love doesn’t discriminate.

49:14 The sun doesn’t decide who it’s going to shine on. It just shines on universally, and so she kind of really intuited that and decided, okay, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna love this guy, and, and a divine context as best as I could. And I think that was happening around the time of this staircase episode, so when I had that experience I could feel the difference. Not that she was ever a nag or felt like she needed me to be different, but when she really released that energy from me, what it did was it turned the mirror on myself, and suddenly, without anybody on me, I had to make those decisions for myself, and I think what it did was it provoked me to ask those questions for the first time, like, wait a minute, why am I eating all this?

50:05 Like, why am I treating myself like this, I wouldn’t treat my friends like this. So that was kind of swimming around in my mind, so when the staircase episode happened I was sort of preconditioned. I was like, ready to make a change, and if she hadn’t made that switch, you know, you could argue that you would have just resisted, and he would have dug in. So that was a big move. Yeah, big.

50:24 And in the book, Plant Power Way Italian, she’s got these kind of pieces in between some of the recipe chapters where she, in my opinion, kind of gives some of that guidance to people that are reading this book, and it basically says, look, it’s not your job as a 100% plant-based person to project onto other people. Let’s just do your thing and be you, and let them choose their path, right? And that’s powerful, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure.

50:52 It was transformational in my life, and, and really like I said, you know, set, set in motion this domino effect, but it really all begins with her strength. You know, okay, and she wrote a song for you? Yeah, yeah. She’s, she’s written many songs. She’s a multi-talented person.

51:10 Yes, she’s really an artist, you know. She’s an artist, uh, and a seeker, and she’s chosen different mediums, whether it’s music, painting, or food, you know, and I think that’s reflected in the cookbooks that she’s written. Okay. What are the next, what’s the next year like for you? What’s happening to you, your body, your mind?

51:31 So, playing around with a bunch of different experiments in diet, nothing’s really working. I kind of settled into, you know, what was really a junk food vegetarian diet, and then the denial starts to kick in, like, well, I’m vegetarian, that’s healthy, right? But then I, you know, eat Pizza Hut pizza. I just leave the pepperoni off it, you know, go to Taco Bell and just keep the beef off, you know. So certainly that’s not healthy.

51:56 And I think after six months of playing around in that way, there I was, back on the couch, lazier than ever, fatter than ever, and really, um, starting to get despondent and thinking, well, maybe at 40 you’re just supposed to feel lousy, or maybe I just don’t have it in me to do this. But I realized there was one thing that I hadn’t tried yet, which was going 100% plant-based. And I hadn’t tried it yet because it sounded terrible, and I wasn’t excited about it.

52:27 And the idea of going, like, quote-unquote vegan was something I never really kind of identified with. When I thought of a vegan, I thought of, you know, guys at Humboldt State, you know, kicking hacky sacks with dreadlocks, or going to a Grateful Dead concert, which is all awesome, you know? It’s great. It just wasn’t me, and so I think I, I couldn’t see myself trying that because I couldn’t connect with it emotionally, but I still knew that if I couldn’t figure this out for myself, that, you know, I was headed for some pain, you know, because, this, you know, my grandfather who died at 54, he wasn’t eating at McDonald’s every day, wasn’t around then.

53:10 You know, I was treating myself much worse than he had, and he wasn’t an alcoholic. You know, like, there were a lot of reasons why this was, uh, important for me to figure out, and as unappealing as it sounded, you know, I wanted to live, and I really, I did want to recapture that sense of vitality that I experienced on that juice cleanse. So I went ahead on an experiment of eating only plants, close to their natural state, nothing with a mother, nothing with a face.

53:41 I figured I’d do it for a week, it wouldn’t work, and I could check the box, and then I could say, I really tried everything, and go back to, you know, eating the way that I had been eating. Was there much support online or anything? Right now, I mean, there was. There was. It’s not like it is now, right?

53:56 You know, this was 2006. Um, there weren’t all the Netflix documentaries. I mean, there’s resources, of course. One thing that was helpful to me was a guy called Rip Esselstyn, who I had swum against when we were kids in high school, and he had swum at the University of Texas. I didn’t really know him well, but I knew who he was, and we were Facebook friends, and I noticed in my Facebook feed that he was plant-based, and he had been a pro triathlete after a swimming career, and he was on the precipice of releasing this book called The Engine 2 Diet, and I reconnected with him there, and I was like, tell me what you’re doing.

54:38 Like, this is, you know, I started doing this plant-based thing. I’m having good results. I’m feeling really good. Um, tell me, you know, how you came into this and what’s going on. So he was my first kind of um, support person, and that book came out and ended up being this massive New York Times bestseller, and that set in motion really kind of the movement that we’re seeing today.

55:02 But he was, he was instrumental in helping me in those early days. And there was another guy called Brendan Brazier, who had been a pro triathlete, who had written a book called Thrive that really got into the nitty-gritty of nutrition, so that was very helpful as well. Um, but yeah, within a week to 10 days of eating nothing but plants, this magical thing happened, which was that I felt like I did on that seventh day of the juice cleanse. I really felt fantastic.

55:29 It was undeniable. And as unappealing as it seemed to only eat plants and to part ways with these foods that I’d eaten my entire life, like, you know, like yourself, my whole life I’ve been taught, “Beef, what’s for dinner?” milk does a body good, you know. If you want to be healthy, these are what you need to eat, right? And certainly if you want to perform as an athlete, and here I was feeling better without the very foods I’ve been told my whole life were essential.

55:58 So that was strange and disorienting and also revelatory, but it was undeniable how much better I felt, and that was when I kind of thought, well, let’s see where this can go. You know, and that’s what got me interested in fitness once again. I had all this energy. I was bouncing off the walls. I had an interest in moving my body for the first time in a long time, and I was driving my wife crazy.

56:23 She was like, please go outside, and so I pulled an old pair of running shoes out of the closet and went back to the pool. And as long as I could remember, my wife bought me a bike for my 40th birthday, and that’s how it began. You know, it began very casually. It was not, I had no designs of returning to becoming a competitive athlete. I was just enjoying the feeling of reconnecting with myself in a physical way for the first time in a long time, and I had this spark of joy because I had forgotten how much I loved swimming as a kid, how much of a part of my life that was, and how much meaning it gave me.

57:02 And so, in a very childlike sense, it felt like I was allowing myself, giving myself permission to tap into that thing, that innocent thing that just made me happy as a young person, and it felt really good. Yeah, swimming. That’s a weird thing, of getting you back to when you were five or six or seven, because that’s play. It is, right? You know, unlike, I guess, those other sports, women, I guess, then they teach you as kids, it does start off as play, doesn’t it?

57:31 And you associate it with summertime, and yeah, you know, an innocent period in your life where life was more simple, at least for me. In your book you talk about the run, and it was this, I think, this one run that you did maybe it was a few months after this started happening, where you just kept going and going and going and just felt this incredible feeling, and you didn’t know how long it was. And, um, I was, I was kind of waiting for my version of Rich Roll’s run when I was training.

58:05 Yeah, I definitely had moments of that, where I was just like, wow, I just never knew I could feel this way doing this, what looked like a repetitive exercise. But can you talk about what that moment was like? Sure. Well, you just ran a marathon like last weekend, right? So I think you’ve had it.

58:20 Um, yeah, it was about three or four months into this experience of eating plants and trying to get fit again. Uh, and I’d only, like I said, it was very casual. The longest I’d run was an hour or something like that, but that was great for me. I was like, I couldn’t believe I could run an hour, and it was a weekday morning, and I went to a local trail near my house, and I set about doing my one-hour trail run. It was, you know, I had stuff I had to do at work that day.

58:49 It wasn’t like it was a Saturday or anything like that, but it was just one of those days where anybody who’s a runner, or even, you know, a creative person, anybody who has a passion, when you tap into it, time kind of goes away, and you’re just present. Uh, they call it being in a flow state these days, I think. Uh, I had that experience. You know, I just felt fantastic, and I felt like I could keep running and keep running. Every mile I felt stronger, so I just kept going, and I ended up running 24 miles that day, which was longer than anything I’d ever done.

59:28 Like, I couldn’t believe that I could do that. It blew my mind, and it made me think a couple things. I mean, the first thing was this idea that perhaps I’d unlock some dormant gene that I didn’t know that I had. Like, I’d never been a runner, so I didn’t know that I could run long, long distances. And also this sense that eating this way was agreeing with me in a way that was even perhaps more potent and profound than I had earlier realized, and it made me kind of connect with the power of the human body to heal and to adapt, and also it reframed my perception of potential in such a short period of time, of making some pretty basic, pretty simple changes in my life.

1:00:26 I could go from that junk food, couch potato guy, to running 24 miles, and I only did a couple things differently. And I thought, well, where can I take this? And what other areas of my life have I been blind to, because I’ve just been in this rut, in this, you know, routine of living in a certain way? And that started to broaden my aperture, not just with respect to food and fitness, but to all areas of personal development. I think so.

1:01:03 You have that run, and over the next, you know, a year or so, you decide to go compete, but you want to skip the Iron Man and go into these ultras. You know, and I know, on so many levels, I know you tried a half Iron Man, and, you know, it started a little bumpy, but, you know, in the book when you just leapt past it into the ultras, you know, it is something that maybe needs some explaining from your personality. Like, how did we get there so quickly? I mean, I didn’t really know anything about the world of Iron Man or triathlon in general.

1:01:36 I tried one half Ironman and DNF’d it because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was intent upon trying to find an Ironman race to do, but I thought you could just go online and sign up for whatever race you wanted. I didn’t realize that these things, you know, sell out a year in advance. And, um, and when I realized that I got kind of frustrated. I had hired a coach at this point, and I was really intent on, like, trying to test the limits of my potential in endurance, and then I came across, in a triathlon, in a triathlon, um, and as you mentioned, like, my, you know, the beginning of this career was less than auspicious.

1:02:19 You know, I DNF’d it at a half Ironman, so it wasn’t like I was showing tremendous potential to be becoming somebody who was capable of even finishing these races. DNF, one, though. Yeah, do not finish. How did that happen on a half Ironman? I just, I didn’t know what I was, I was training.

1:02:35 This is before I hired a coach, and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I thought I was sort of fit. I went to this race called Wildflower, and I just blasted out the swim and got out of the water, and you have to run straight up this hill to your bike, and, you know, I threw up after the swim, and I thought, oh man, like, this is hard. And I got on my bike and started riding, and everybody was passing me, and I was like, my heart rate must have been 180, and I just wasn’t, I didn’t have an endurance base.

1:02:59 So by the time I finished that bike leg, which was very difficult, my legs just cramped up, and I couldn’t even, I couldn’t even walk. You know, I walked like a half mile in Baghdad, and I realized, like, I have a lot to learn here. Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing at all. So I hired a coach. Thought I was going to do an Iron Man.

1:03:18 Realized I was gonna have to wait another year. Didn’t want to wait another year. Came across an article in a magazine about this race called Ultraman. Really, the article was about David Goggins, who’s this incredible Navy SEAL who had gone from being a very overweight guy on a dead-end street to becoming this incredible specimen of a human being, top-flight Navy SEAL. And to honor the passing of some of his fallen brethren, he decided he was going to tackle the 10 most difficult ultra endurance challenges in the world, and he set about knocking them off.

1:04:04 He had done the Badwater 135-mile run, and then he had just done this race called Ultraman that I’d never heard of before, and there was an article about it. It’s a 320-mile, three-day, double Iron Man circumnavigation of the big island of Hawaii. The first stage is a 6.2-mile swim, followed by a 90- mile bike. The second day is 171 miles on the bike, and then the third day you celebrate this lunacy with a 52.4-mile run that brings you back to the town of Kona, where you began.

1:04:37 And I was reading this article and about how David Goggins had gotten second place in this race after having never really been on a bike before. He didn’t even have the right pedals. He had to duct-tape his running shoe to his pedal. It was this incredible story, and I thought, this guy who had once been tremendously overweight, who had never really even done a triathlon before, who went from being a powerlifter to participating in races like Badwater, if that guy could do that, maybe there’s a possibility that I could do something like this.

1:05:12 And beyond that, the way this race was described, it just sounded like nothing I’d ever heard of, because it was less competition and more spiritual odyssey. It talked about the spirit of ohana, which is the Hawaiian word for family, and how this, um, hand-selected, invitation-only group of 35 athletes would go around this island over three days with their crews. Every athlete has to bring their own crew. Support, uh, in support of each other. It’s a world championship event, and certainly the elites are trying to win it, but the most important thing is that everybody who partakes in this experience, whether you are on the crew or one of the athletes, has a transformative experience as a result of undergoing this adventure.

1:06:06 And that just captured my imagination in a way that Iron Man didn’t, and it was probably just the way this article was written. And something changed in me when I read that, and I had this deep knowing that somehow I was going to find a way to do that race. I didn’t know how, and it seemed crazy, and I couldn’t believe a human body could even do this stuff, but I could not stop thinking about it. I could not stop thinking about it. It made no logical sense.

1:06:36 I was a guy who didn’t, my biggest career achievement was failing to finish a half Ironman, and here I was walking around obsessed with this race called Ultraman that I’d just read about, and this guy called David Goggins. And because I couldn’t shake it, I ended up calling up the race director out of the blue. I said, my name is Rich Roll. I read about your race. I really want to do it.

1:06:59 You know, what do you think? Because you have to be invited to participate. You can’t just sign up. And Jane Bachman is her name, lovely woman who’s run this race for many years. She said, well, Rich, what have you done?

1:07:14 I said, I haven’t done anything, but if you let me in, I promise you I’ll be ready, and she said to me, why don’t you check back in with me in a couple months? Which was amazing, because she didn’t say no. If she had said no, I would have, okay, I would have put it in the past and I would have moved on, but the fact that she didn’t say no gave me that little sliver, that little slight possibility that I could make it happen, and that was enough. That was all I needed, and I just decided that she was eventually going to say yes, and I just started training for it, and my coach put me to work and got me ready for that race, and ultimately, um, I, I used my lawyerly skills over the next several months to lobby her, and eventually she did say yes, and so I was able to squeak into this race that I really had no business being at in the first place.

1:08:12 How do you train for something like that? It’s a better question for my coach, Chris Hauth, uh, who, without whom I could have never done any of the things that I’ve done. He is the wisdom behind everything that I’ve been able to accomplish. And in 2008, preparing for this first race, he set about getting me ready by creating a program that ramped up the volume. I had seven months to prepare, and during that seven-month period we were very diligent and cautious about not doing too much too soon.

1:08:59 The goal was just to finish. It wasn’t to race it, per se. It was to finish, and I think a crucial component in the success was building my fitness up on the bike rather than on the run, because you can ride for hours and hours and hours with an elevated heart rate and develop your aerobic engine without overly risking injury due to increasing your run volume too quickly, because what happens with a lot of amateur triathletes and runners is they get to a certain level of fitness where their heart and their lungs feel good, and they want to go faster and longer, but if you do it too quickly, all of the connective tissue, the ligaments, the tendons, the joints, they’re not ready for that yet, and ultimately people end up getting injured.

1:09:50 And so I was very cautious about the running. I never ran two days in a row. There was always rest days and rest weeks, being very diligent and mindful about recovery, and when that seven-month training phase was done, I was able to show up at that race not with any sense that I could be competitive, but with a glimmer of hope that perhaps I could finish it. And you’re in your 40s and plant-based right now. What are people telling you now?

1:10:23 Well, or at that time, well, I wasn’t really that out in the open about the plant-based thing. You know, and, and like nobody was paying attention, you know? No, it was just my wife and my family and me and my coach, and I was going to go do this race. You know, it wasn’t like it was a media event. You know, there was no reason to tell anyone much about what my diet was like, because no one was interested in it.

1:10:46 Um, I think I certainly had friends who thought, why are you doing this? You’re this lawyer, like, now you’re training for these crazy races and you’re doing it plant-based. Like, that’s bananas. You’re gonna hurt yourself. You’re being irresponsible, like, have you started drinking again?

1:10:59 Like, what are you doing? Like, call your sponsor. You know, this seems very alcoholic, all this. Um, but I, I just felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt like over that seven-month period of preparing for this race, it was like my compass was getting calibrated, and yes, it’s just a race, and I was preparing for this physical challenge, but there was something more going on.

1:11:20 Like, I felt like I was finally kind of, um, getting comfortable in my own skin and becoming this person that I was meant to be. You know, it was proud of it. It’s, you know, there’s the physical aspect of this challenge, but really the whole thing, pillar to post, has been this spiritual journey of trying to better understand who I am and, you know, my place in the world and what I’m here to express. And when you are training for an ultra endurance race, I think this is ultimately what magnetized me to this world the most, is that you’re spending an unbelievable amount of time by yourself, and you’re pushing yourself to a place that you’ve never gone before, that’s so exhausting and so trying and so difficult that it literally strips you down to your core.

1:12:18 All the artifice goes away. All the masks come off, and you meet yourself as you really are. It’s very similar to recovery. That’s what recovery is all about. Like, how can you more deeply connect with yourself in the most honest way?

1:12:36 And when you’re, you know, this from racing Chattanooga, when you’re so depleted, even the mildest external stimuli is overwhelming, because you can’t, you can’t handle it. You’re like, so broken down, right? You can’t lie to yourself anymore. It’s a very honest place to be, and that’s what I was searching for, and I think that’s what the training and these races present to people, you know? And I think that’s why we’re seeing a greater and greater interest in them, because they really are personal spiritual odysseys.

1:13:12 How did the ultra go? 2008 went better than expected. Like I said, you know, my only goal was, like, don’t die. You know, just play it safe. I was there to celebrate 10 years of being sober and just this renaissance that I was experiencing, enjoying being fit again.

1:13:32 Um, but I got, I think it was the second fastest American and 11th overall that year, which was certainly, you know, exceeded my wildest expectations of how I could perform. Did you feel like energy over there that you hadn’t felt before? Did it feel good, or was it just hard? Or it’s hard. It was incredibly hard.

1:13:55 I felt very well prepared for it because of Chris’s tutelage. Um, and you also can, the energy there, there’s a very specific energy on the big island of Hawaii. It’s magical in the best way, but it also can be dark, you know? Like, there’s a heaviness to it. Like you feel like you really need to respect the island when you’re there.

1:14:22 Don’t have that sense? Yeah, like if you, if you remember, like, asking out loud for permission to be there, you know, to Madame Pele. You could feel it. You know, I think if you go there and you disrespect the island, it will crush you. I definitely had a palpable sense of that.

1:14:44 Um, but it wasn’t, it was an extraordinary experience, you know, and it, and in the wake of that I felt like I, I had more to say, you know, so I wanted to go back and, and try to really raise it after having the experience of just trying to complete it. Okay, and that was the year later in ’09. What was that experience like in the training for it? Um, you know, training volume ramped up. Now I had, like, you know, that seven months of training under the belt, and I could now go back to the drawing board and really, um, leverage what I had learned and take it to the next level, and I was super focused.

1:15:23 I was very intent on trying to have the best performance of my life, so the training became quite all-consuming. I mean, at its peak it was almost 25 hours a week, which is fine if you’re a professional triathlete, but if you’re a dad with a bunch of kids who’s juggling a law career and you’re trying to make ends meet and maintain your marriage and being a present father, it was a juggling act. Everything non-essential in my life had to go, and I had to get very clear on how I was spending my time throughout the day.

1:16:01 So that was an intense period of time, but yeah, I showed up for that race ready to go. Ready to go, and the first, I got out of the swim with a 10-minute lead on the field, and I held that lead throughout that 90-mile bike to win the first day stage by 10 minutes, which to this day is probably my greatest, you know, athletic achievement. I just thought, like, I’m a 43-year-old corporate lawyer. Like, what, you know, like, how am I, it was crazy. And how did you do that?

1:16:32 I trained my ass off. I ate incredible plant foods that powered me. I had a belief, and I think I had something to prove, you know. I think alcoholism prevented me from realizing my athletic potential. It crushed my career as a swimmer, and I think I’ve always, in the back of my mind, felt like there was an unfinished business there, so I think that was part of it, and I think it was really affirmation that this crazy, illogical, unjustifiable path that I’d suddenly chosen for my life, um, that perhaps maybe there was some sense in it.

1:17:24 You know, it was affirming in that regard. I think, yeah, day two doesn’t go so well. Yeah, day two didn’t. About 30 miles into that bike, Iraq um, on a section of the Red Road, which I think is now covered with lava as a result of a volcano, um, went down pretty hard. Landed on my knee, and my shoulder broke.

1:17:45 My pedal broke on a section of the road where they don’t allow crew vehicles, one part of the race where they don’t allow your support team to follow you. Uh, knee swells up, blood everywhere, broken pedal. Gingerly got back on the bike and had to pedal with one leg about a mile to reconnect with all these, my crew and all the crew vehicles who were waiting at the end of this road, and just thought, the race is over. You know, I’m done. I’m not going to ride 130 miles on one pedal.

1:18:16 Um, and my knee was locking up on me, and I started to just think about what it would be like to go to the beach with my kids the next day, and felt like, well, I found a really convenient way to drop out of this race, and no one can judge me for it, you know? So the competitive switch flicked off, and I was like, I checked out, kind of, you know, old demons came up. Yeah, I’m like, I’m done, go to the sofa. Yeah, I’m done. And then when I got to the end of that road, a crew member for one of the other athletes came up to me and he said, oh, you broke your pedal.

1:18:58 Like, what kind of pedal did you have? Or do you need it? And it’s like, why are you asking me that? Like, I’m done, you know. He looked at my bike.

1:19:06 He disappeared. He came back, and he had a box with a brand new pedal, the exact model and make that I needed, because bike pedals are very specific. Not every pedal will work with every shoe. The chances that he would have the pedal that I needed, I can’t even imagine. And I saw that, and I was like, oh no.

1:19:27 You know, he’s like, you put the pedal back on my bike, and he’s like, you’ll be fine. Keep going. He goes, your family, see your wife, your kids, your family over here? They didn’t come all this way for you to stop right now. He’s much bigger than me.

1:19:40 Looking up at him, I was like, I gotta get back in this. So I had to ride 130 miles that day on a swollen knee, is the most painful thing I’ve ever done. So certainly I wasn’t in the lead anymore. I’d blown all that. Like, the idea of being on the podium or being competitive in this race had kind of gone out the window, and it was just about survival.

1:20:02 But I finished that leg and thought, well, I did that, but, like, running, running, I, I can’t run. Like, I don’t know if I could run a mile, like 52 miles the next day. Like, that’s not happening, you know? Went back to this house where we were staying that evening, and I couldn’t walk up the stairs to go up to the bedroom. So the chances that I was going to be able to participate in the race the next day seemed pretty grim.

1:20:29 But I showed up at the starting line the next morning and in solidarity, in the spirit of ohana with this race, I thought, well, I’ll show up and I’ll walk with everyone. You know, I’ll see how my knee is, but you know, I’ll probably bow out after a while or two, when I realized, like, running’s not going to happen, but started walking. It loosened up a little bit. Started jogging. I’m way at the back of the pack, you know, everybody’s gone off, and and then I started running, and it felt okay.

1:21:00 Started running a little bit harder. It’s like, oh, it’s holding up okay, and then I thought, well, I’m just going to go for it. You know, I’ll just, if it gives out on me, fine, but I’m just going to start running, and then it held up. You know, I started picking people off up the field throughout the course of the day and worked my way back up the field, and finished. I finished sixth overall in the race and was the fastest American.

1:21:27 So I think I might have, I think if I didn’t, I think I negative split the two marathons. If I didn’t, it was close. Yeah. So it was crazy. It’s crazy.

1:21:40 I would have never thought, Brian, in a million years that I could have accomplished something like that. It’s divine moments. Yeah, it was, it was, it was really special. Yeah. And it’s weird, you know, I get to sit here and I get to talk to you, but I’m under no illusion about my athletic abilities.

1:22:04 Like, I’ve never won a big race. I’m not a world champion. You know, I, I’m just an average guy who set a big goal and went about trying to achieve it, and did you know, I’ve been able to accomplish certain things, but, you know, I don’t look at it. I don’t look at it as if I’m any different than anyone else in that way. Like, I don’t think I, I don’t think I’m athletically gifted.

1:22:27 I think that we all have these reservoirs of potential. You know, and if I could say anything to you, to the people that are listening, it’s that if you can attune your attention to connecting with yourself in a more profound way, that you have greater ability than perhaps you imagine that you do. So you’re done with ultras at this point, but you got a crazy buddy that keeps saying the words “Epic Five” to you. Yeah, and so this is something that you decide to go do, right?

1:23:09 So I have this friend, Jason Lester, uh, who’s an incredibly inspirational figure. He competes in these ultra races without the functional use of his right arm. He’s not an amputee. He has an arm, but it just, it doesn’t function. He has to tape his hand to his handlebars.

1:23:28 He has to swim with one arm, and nonetheless he’s competed in a bunch of ultramans. He’s run across China and Australia. He’s done amazing things, and he had this harebrained idea to do this thing called Epic Five. Meanwhile, like in the wake of Ultraman 2009, like, I thought I was done. Like, I proved everything I needed to prove to myself.

1:23:48 Like, I didn’t, and I needed to kind of get back to my life a little bit. It’d been out of balance with all his training. Um, but he came to me, and he’s like, look, I really want you to do this with me. It’s going to be five Ironmans on five Hawaiian Islands. We’re gonna do it in five days.

1:24:03 Like, let’s do this together. And I said I would think about it. You know, it’s a family decision. I can’t just make this decision selfishly when I have people that depend on me that I’m in relationships with. And I did think about it, and I thought it made me think about all the amazing things humans have done in the, you know, pantheon of adventure.

1:24:34 Every peak has been scaled. You know, Ross Edgley’s swimming around Great Britain right now. Guys have run across the Sahara Desert. Benoît is going to swim across the Pacific. You know, like, people have done insane things.

1:24:50 But it’s also, it was also this sense that, like, everything had already been done. Like, what’s left, other than, like, going to Mars? But here was this challenge. Certainly nothing like going to Mars, but it was like a an incredible challenge that no one had thought of ever doing before. So it seems interesting to me.

1:25:10 Why has no one tried this? And I just felt like I can’t really answer this question that I’ve set for myself about my potential when I have this friend who’s presenting me with this opportunity, and so I just felt like I had to do it. You know, and uh, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. Why? You know, I talked about how participating in these races and the training and all of that strips you down to who you really are.

1:25:39 They’re learning experiences, their teachable moments in every imaginable way. And that experience, because it wasn’t a race, it was just an adventure two friends were going on together, was the most depleting, exhausting thing that I’ve ever done. And I thought I had met myself in my moments of weakness and vulnerability before, but that took it to a whole different level. Whole different level. Um, there’s one story, if you’ll allow me to tell it, that I think kind of encapsulates the whole thing, and it happened on the fourth day in Maui, our fourth consecutive Ironman.

1:26:21 The rubber was really coming off the wheels at this point. You guys are, like, barely making flights. Yeah, get to the next island. You’re getting permission from these islands and people to do the, I mean, it’s, it’s logistically tricky. Logistically, it was as challenging as it was physically.

1:26:39 We had to finish these Ironmans by a particular time every day in order to make the last flight off the island to get to the next island. We had some people helping us, but it wasn’t like a professional situation. It was very much fly by the seat of your pants, and so we weren’t getting checked into these hotels until, like, two in the morning. We’re getting, like, two or three hours of sleep, and we had problems with our bike parts. We had all manner of, like, unforeseen obstacles that we were facing that were, like, that was pushing the timeline back and back and back and making us progressively more and more fatigued.

1:27:11 And when we were in Maui, it was the hottest day. I was the most exhausted, and I remember the last five miles of that 112 miles on the bike. Just, I started weeping out loud. I was so tired. I just couldn’t even hold the bike upright anymore.

1:27:31 Uh, and just finishing that bike leg was so difficult and trying that when I finished it, my bike just dropped to the pavement in a little parking lot by the beach where we had started that day, and I just thought, I’m done. Like, I can’t. I can’t go a minute further. The prospect of running a marathon that night was impossible, and it wasn’t a matter of will. It was, it was literally like a physical, it just felt like a physical impossibility to me, and I was ready to tell Jason, like, I’m done, man.

1:28:05 Like, let’s go back to the hotel. Maybe we can pick it up in the morning, but, like, I just can’t go any further, you know? And Jason was hurting, too, on some level. I felt like he wanted to say that to me, but it was a game of chicken, like, who’s gonna say it first? And we were sitting on the bumper of this van, on the cusp of calling off the whole affair.

1:28:28 At least I was in bad shape, and I noticed, coming up from the beach, this woman in the periphery of my vision, and she walked underneath, like, one of those halogen street lights in this beach parking lot. She was wearing a teal tank top. Her skin was all leathery from being in the sun too much, and she had a brown paper bag with a bottle in it. And she stumbled over to our ragtag group of volunteers and Jason and I, and kind of surveyed us, trying to make sense of why there’s this group of people.

1:29:05 It, like, honey, it was like 10 o’clock at night at this point in this parking lot, wearing athletic gear. And she was kind of swaying like this. I could tell she’d been drinking for a while, and for some reason she Brian. She, like, locked eyes with me, and she walked right up to me and stood above me and kind of leaned over me, stared into my eyes, and said, “Hey, man, do you want to party?” I was like, do I want a party?

1:29:35 No, I don’t want to party. I don’t know. I was like, you know, when you were talking about being in Chattanooga and just being exhausted, and like, you can’t, like, don’t talk to me, you know? That was how I felt. I was like, please go away.

1:29:45 Like, I can’t handle this. Like, move along. Like that, and kind of stumbled off into the darkness, and I was like, good riddance. But as she kind of faded into the darkness, I had this other thought come into my awareness, which was, like, maybe that wasn’t an accident. Like, why did that drunk woman come up to me of all of these people?

1:30:13 And I’ve chosen to think about her, a mad experience, as if I was visited by an angel. It was like this angel who came to me to remind me of, like, how far I’d come in my life, because had I made a couple decisions differently, I could be living her life. You know, I could see myself in her. There wasn’t that big of a difference between how I was living and what she was doing in that moment, and you forget. When you’re sober for a while, you forget what it was like.

1:30:51 You forget that default mode, what separates you from being that person. And I was able to really feel that in that moment. I had this unbelievable sense of gratitude, like, wow, look at her, and, like, look what I’m doing right here, and it just gave me this sense of, like, empowerment, like this surge of energy. And it’s weird, because I don’t even really remember. It was almost like I went into like a fugue state after that.

1:31:27 I don’t remember saying, like, okay, we’re gonna go run now. It was almost like I woke up out of a blackout. Like, I weirdly lost consciousness, and all I remember next is that Jason and I were walking. Like, I couldn’t, I wasn’t even ready to walk at that point and that walk turned into a jog, and then we were running, and we ran through these cane fields that were under a controlled burn that night, so the whole sky was glowing in this orange hue, and we had to wrap our shirts around our faces to, to prevent us from inhaling too much of the smoke.

1:32:03 So the whole thing, like, on the surreal meter, was at, like, a 10. You know, I was like, it was a bizarre, it was very, like, bizarrely cinematic, and somehow, like, we finished that marathon that night, like, just before dawn. I mean, it was like the slowest marathon ever, but, like, we finished it. You know, and I had done something that, it just showed me, I went from physical impossibility to completing a marathon that night, and it made me realize what David Goggins always says, which is, when you think you’re done, you’re not done.

1:32:40 You’ve only tapped into about 40% of what you’re truly capable of. And it’s easy to dismiss that as a platitude unless you’ve had that kind of experience, but I can tell you definitively that I was done. I was convinced it was physically impossible. So I truly believe that adage. You know, it, and it’s only when you put yourself in those kinds of scenarios, in those situations, that you give yourself an opportunity to prove that to yourself.

1:33:13 And so it’s not, you know, like these experiences, they’re not about podiums or beating people or anything like that. It’s about that sense of self that you get when you mindfully and purposely put yourself in that kind of scary situation and allow yourself to be vulnerable and to fail, and to receive that teachable moment and to prove something to yourself. That’s where you get your sense of self. And for me, it’s given me a whole different perspective on the human experience and capability in general.

1:33:53 And so you went on to finish that Epic Five. Finished it. Yeah, we got a good night. Well, we finished at dawn, so we had to go to the big island. We slapped, so we kind of got a rest day, like a forced rest day.

1:34:04 Started the next morning. All I remember about the fifth one was that it felt easy, which was crazy, because I literally could not function, you know? When I finished that marathon, Jason had to literally carry me to my hotel room. This guy who only has the usability of one arm had to carry me up a flight of stairs. Like, like this.

1:34:27 You know, I was in such bad shape. Give me a day of rest, and literally it was our fastest Iron Man. I felt like better on the fifth than I did on the first. It was like a celebration of the four that preceded it, like an afterthought. And I think what I take from that, again, it’s not that I’m unique or special.

1:34:47 I think the body is just unbelievably adaptable. It was almost as if it said, oh, you’re not trying to kill me. You just need to do one of these Iron Mans every day. Like, I get it now. Like, I understand why.

1:35:00 Didn’t you tell me, um, the human body is extraordinary? I just think it’s capable of so much more than we tend to believe. Yeah, and you had Goggins later on your podcast, and yeah, you really got to connect with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing.

1:35:16 To this day, like, my most listened to episode. Yeah. You get back to the mainland, and you write your book, um, and the whole world starts to hear about these stories. I’m guessing they’re starting to hear a little bit about you when these things are happening, the second ultra, right, Epic Five, maybe. Um, what’s that like as you start now to become kind of a public person, and you’re now kind of, you know, the poster boy for Men’s Fitness in your 40s?

1:35:44 What is that transition like for you? It’s been interesting, and a little odd, and unique. Like I said, you know, like, I never want to race. Like, why am I the poster boy of this for so many people? Like, there are plenty of better athletes out there than me in all manner of disciplines that are plant-based, but for some reason, you know, I think, I think what, what I’m able to do is connect with the every person.

1:36:17 And I remember when I was writing Finding Ultra, I found out that at the same time I was writing this memoir, Scott Jurek, who’s the most heralded ultra runner of all time, who’s also plant-based, was writing his memoir the very same time I was running mine. And these books were going to come out at the same time, right? It’s like two volcano movies coming out at the same time, you know? And I’m like, well, who’s gonna, who would want to read my book? Like, here’s this guy, the greatest ultra runner in the world, he’s plant-based, he’s writing this book.

1:36:49 Like, what is the point of me even writing this book? And I realized that the value of what I had to say would be directly proportionate to the extent to which I was willing to be really vulnerable and honest about things I’m not proud of, about the challenges and obstacles that I’ve faced and struggled with, and in that way perhaps I could connect with people emotionally, um, such that it would resonate with the average person. And that’s always been kind of the touchstone of everything that I do.

1:37:29 I’m sort of a cipher for the struggles of the average person, and I think people are able to kind of see their own personal, um, struggles in my journey, and I think that that has put me in a place where I can be um, a trusted source for this information, and I take it very seriously, you know. It’s as shocking and bizarre to me that suddenly I would be on some level, you know, at least in a small internet culture way, like a person who is known. And so everything that I do, whether it’s podcasting or whatever I share on social media, it’s important to me that it stay true to that spirit of being authentic and being real, you know?

1:38:22 Uh, and that’s not always easy. You know, I imagine yourself being in a similar situation, that’s something that you have to, like, think about quite a bit and calculate for yourself. Yeah, but when you start calculating, you’ve usually, right? Exactly. That’s the death of, and all of the whole thing.

1:38:40 Yeah. Right. Was it hard, right, in that book, when you’re getting into those details, or once you decided to go all in, was it like, let me be as real as I can? Um, it was hard, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t in the sense that I learned all of this in sobriety, in recovery. You learn how to own your story, and you learn how to tell it and share it, and you learn a way to overcome the shame and, you know, put your past in the rear-view mirror and reframe your relationship with it so that it doesn’t own you, and you can leverage it for the benefit of helping other people.

1:39:15 Something I learned in sobriety. So in many ways this was just another act of sharing in service of others. At the same time, it was, there was a profound sense of vulnerability with it. Like, I had to write it as if I was writing a personal diary that no one was ever going to read, and then I would have the occasional flash of, like, oh wait, this is a book that’s going to be like in a bookstore that people are going to read, and then I would panic and seize up and be paralyzed for a couple days until I could kind of get over it and get back to it.

1:39:48 So, that’s interesting, you write it as a diary? Yeah, why would you think about it? Yeah, so that way you can be honest with yourself, and the more details the better, because you can try to re-remember these things. Um, did you think it was going to be such a big success? No, no, no.

1:40:05 I didn’t. I didn’t think I didn’t, I didn’t think so at all. You know, I didn’t think so at all. Uh, that being said, like, I put a lot of work into trying to birth it into the world, because I realized that it was an opportunity for me to create, or to plant the seeds for a new career path. You know, thousands and thousands of books are written every year.

1:40:26 Most books come and go. Here I was gifted with this unbelievable opportunity. I couldn’t believe I was even getting the opportunity to write a book. It was unbelievable to me, and I thought, well, I’m just going to put everything into this, because if I do this right, and I devote 110 percent to the writing and to the kind of birthing of it into the world, that perhaps this can create a foundation for me to do something new, because I desperately didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore, but I had no sense or idea of how I could possibly segue out of that into something that could support my family.

1:41:02 And this is something you talk about in the new revised version of the book. They say, after the ecstasy comes the laundry, right? And so you’ve got the two ultras, the Epic Five, the book, you know, CNN, and then it’s kind of now what, right? And so then what happens now? What’s, because it’s tricky.

1:41:20 Yeah, it was really. It was really tricky. Like, one of the themes of the book is, if your heart is true, the universe will conspire to support you. It’s kind of a recurring refrain throughout the book. Uh, and then in the wake of writing the book and it coming out, there was a little bit of success around it, and then life kind of settles back, and I’m like, okay, I’m ready for the miracle.

1:41:43 Like, my heart is true. Universe, I’m ready for you. Tell me which way to go. And the phone didn’t ring, you know, and we went through an extended period of time, a number of years, where it was very financially difficult where I thought, I have to go back to being a corporate lawyer. Like, this isn’t going to work.

1:42:04 Like, we’re going to lose our house. We had cars repossessed. We couldn’t pay our bills. And again, it goes back to Julie. Julie was like, no, you have come this far.

1:42:15 This is what you’re supposed to do. We’ve moved forward. We do not go backwards. And without that level of support, I probably would have, I would have retreated back and done what I know how to do to make a living. And once, you know, she was so committed.

1:42:34 She’s like, it doesn’t matter. We have to lose the house. It’s like, this is where we have to be spiritual warriors on the path. We need to adopt a Jedi mindset and become totally neutral about these material things. And we burned in that fire, and I think we emerged out of that like a more polished stone, that I think gives resonance to the things that we get to talk about today, because we had to weather through that.

1:43:08 What kind of things happened? Two cars repossessed, and they were like, we treated it like a game and a spiritual exercise. So I had, I only had a Land Rover that I was in love with. It was beautiful. It was orange.

1:43:24 It was super cool. Couldn’t pay, couldn’t pay the monthly on it, you know? Uh, repo guy comes to take it away, and I’m freaking out, and Julie goes, oh, hi. She greets him at the street, brings them in. She’s like, do you want, do you want some tea?

1:43:42 Why don’t you come on inside? Guys, totally freaked out, because he’s used to people fighting him and screaming at him. She’s like, okay, here’s the car, here are the keys. Like, you know, do you need any help? Do you know where you’re going?

1:43:54 She just flipped the whole equation, so we don’t have to, we don’t, we don’t have to identify with our credit scores. We don’t have to identify with these material externalities. We make a choice to do that, and then we suffer, but we have another choice. We have another choice available to us, which is to understand that we are more than our credit scores, that we’re playing a different game. It’s hard, but it was, it was crazy empowering.

1:44:27 And it would be like, okay, how are we going to weather this? Can we remain neutral? What would a Jedi warrior do in this instance? The worst was the absolute nadir of the whole thing. It’s so embarrassing.

1:44:42 We couldn’t, we couldn’t pay to have us humiliating. We couldn’t pay to have our garbage removed, which I think we owed like 80 or something, so they came and they took our bins away, so we didn’t have bins, and we had this crappy, broken-down minivan that we were driving at the time, so we would have to take our, put our garbage in there and then find, like, uh, like a dumpster somewhere where we could dump it, like behind a grocery store or something like that. I mean, you know, but we just, we remained neutral through the whole thing, and miraculously, from a financial perspective, we should have lost our house.

1:45:24 It’s shocking and amazing that we did it, because there was a huge amount of time where we couldn’t pay the mortgage, and we came within 48 hours of it being foreclosed on. And it’s, you know, it’s a house that we built. You know, there’s a lot of love in it. It’s very easy to overidentify with it, and as a man, you know, that sense of masculinity, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a provider?

1:45:48 All of that was tested and called into question. You know, it was very difficult for me, but we were able to get through it. We were able to, like, re-, at the last second, we were able to refinance the house, and, like, through a series of events that occurred that make no logic, every real estate person, every banker, person, every money manager person is like, you’re losing the house, you’re never gonna, this, this is not gonna work. And we were able to persevere.

1:46:15 So ultimately I think the universe did conspire to support us, just not in the way that we would have liked, or on the timeframe that I would have preferred. Right? Yeah. You didn’t get what you want. Yeah, and that’s the way that it works.

1:46:28 You know, that’s the way that it works, and it’s beautiful. What was this North Star that you were focused on? Was it, was it just that we want to keep promoting this way of thinking, these principles, this ethos? What was the long game you were playing? I wish I could tell you that it was fully formed, and I have this vision for what it would look like and what it would be.

1:46:54 That’s what that wasn’t. What it was, was this sense that there was something about what I was doing that was connecting with people, that was helpful to that, and it was making a decision to devote my life in service to that. What that would look like in terms of content or whatever I was doing, I had no idea, but I was getting all these emails from people who had been impacted by my story, even before the book came out, and of course in the wake of the book, and I just felt strongly that I needed to continue to pull on that thread.

1:47:26 And so the marching order really was, like, how can I be of maximum service in a way that could be as positively and profoundly, substantially impactful for other people, and trying to find avenues of doing that in a way that would also support my family and not undercut that message. So the podcast was the first stab at that. You know, and I started that in the winter of 2012, when no one was listening to podcasts and people didn’t even know how to get them.

1:47:57 It was wonky, and you had to download them on your desktop and then bump them to your iPod. There was no iPhone, you know? No one was listening back then, but that was an act of service that I just loved. Like, I got to have conversations with people, and you know, this better than anyone, and then share them, and if only a couple hundred people heard it, like, that was cool. You know, and I just kept doing it.

1:48:20 So I’ve been doing, you know, I did it for three years before it ever generated any revenue. But for me, it’s always been about, like, where’s the ability to be of service, showing up for that, and trusting that that will ultimately open up a door for the money to come later, by putting service first. And it did. Yeah. Again, not on my timeline or in the way that I would have wanted it to, but ultimately, yeah.

1:48:55 And you also made a conscious decision to stop competing and, to what was it, to take that time and try to be of service? Well, uh, yeah. So after Epic Five, I needed to figure out a way to support my family, and that became my new ultra, you know? And doing that in a way that was service-oriented. Um, and it took many years for us to put that together, you know, and that place demands on me that exceeded, you know, any ultra endurance race that I’ve participated in.

1:49:27 Why? Uh, because it was more of an emotional challenge, you know? And again, it called into question what it means to be a man, and, you know, all of those things. Like, it pushed all of those buttons, um, and really brought me to my knees in a different way, and put me into a place of trust and faith, uh, that was even deeper than the experiences I had as an athlete. So it’s been profound.

1:49:56 Yeah, it was really hard. Um, and I didn’t feel like it was the right time to race, and part of that is a service thing. Like, I proved what I needed to prove to myself. I didn’t have anything to prove to the world. Um, now I have this podcast and these other things that I was doing.

1:50:18 What’s the best way to impact people in a meaningful way? Is it to go and train 25 hours a week and do another race, or is it to double down on the podcast and try to find amazing people who can, who can share a message that can impact people? There’s only 24 hours in a day. You can’t do everything, so I made the decision to invest in that, and I think it was the right decision. And then I got back, you know, I did a race last year, so it wasn’t like I was completely done.

1:50:48 I have some ideas of some things I want to do next year, so it’s still very much a part of my life, but it doesn’t take center stage in the way that it did in my early and mid-40s. You said something to me last night. He said, it’s, it’s easy to train, easy to train for a race. It’s kind of something you already know how to do. Yeah, and there’s not necessarily demons in there or new things.

1:51:10 It’s like when you, when you force yourself not to train and go into other places that are uncomfortable, that’s, that’s, that’s what you’re trying to do with challenging yourself. Yeah. I think we were talking about motivation, and people will ask me, like, how do you stay motivated, or what gets you motivated? How do you get out the door and train? And that’s never been a problem for me.

1:51:29 Like, I’m, I’m my preset is to do that. Like, that’s the easy choice. I love the training. I love the lifestyle. It’s never been hard for me to go out the door.

1:51:38 I mean, not every day you want to do it, but most days, that’s the preferred choice for me. It’s much harder for me to say no to that and to then walk into other areas of my life that need more focus. Um, you know, personal growth never ends, and I have plenty of other areas I want to explore for myself, and the podcast gives me an opportunity to sit down with all these amazing people that push me in other directions that are non-athletic. You know, because I think the athlete identity can become as routine, or as rote, as being a lawyer or any other career path.

1:52:16 So I’m always trying to look for different ways of expanding. So I found, I found it sometimes very selfish, too, and, uh, I was, I was also hanging out in New York City with Samantha and John, and I was also joking that it was also almost a bit like a drug addict, because they were like, I gotta get my swim in, gotta get myself, you know, they’re like, kind of like, you know, always thinking about the next thing, and I found myself being just really selfish. It was just me.

1:52:41 You need to get that race done. Um, it can be like that. Yeah. Like, ultimately, for most people it’s not a sustainable lifestyle at that level, you know. And so today, um, you’re publishing books.

1:52:55 The Plant Power Way Italian just came out. You’ve rewritten Finding Ultra. You do these events in Italy, you travel around the world speaking. You’ve got the podcast now, you’re five years in, you know, some incredible guests. You know, Travis Barker, Goggins, these kinds of things.

1:53:11 What else does your world look like now, and what does that look like in the next five or ten years? Like, what, how is Rich doing his maximum impact? I always struggle with this. I’ve never been one to have, like, the five-year plan or, like, where do you see yourself in 10 years? I’ve really learned to just kind of, like, go with the energy of what’s happening in the moment.

1:53:33 And the truth is, Brian, like, I love what I’m doing. I’m so blessed. Like, I can’t believe that I get to do what I get to do, and if this is all that it is, that’s such a huge win. You know, and I have aspirations. There’s things I, I’m setting in motion, like ideas that I have and things that I wanna express in new and different ways.

1:53:55 Um, big project I’m going to be doing next year that I’m not ready to talk about, that I’m very excited about. Um, so certainly I’m ambitious, and all of that, but if all, if the only thing that happened was I get to keep doing the podcast, and you know, do some retreats and travel around and speak to people and get to talk to people like you and help people, you know, that’s it. Like, I don’t know what else to ask for. You know, I can tell you, like, oh, I want to impact millions of people, blah, blah, blah, but that’s not really honest.

1:54:26 You know what’s honest is I get to wake up every day and make choices about how I spend my time, and I get to share a message that is helpful to other people, and it’s, I can’t think of a greater gift. So, and you’ve been to the part where you might lose the house and you have to take the trash. I’m like, I can pay my bills, right? Yeah, you know, it’s a cool thing. Yeah.

1:54:56 And how has the podcast changed you? Because unless you’re doing it, like, I understand, maybe, but how would you explain that to other people? That, how broadcasting and meeting people in person can change you, because it’s, can be unbelievably profound in ways I could have never possibly imagined. I mean, first of all, it gives you this incredible excuse to get in touch with people that inspire you and hoodwink them into spending a couple hours with you and holding them hostage and getting to ask them, you know, all these questions that you want to ask them.

1:55:29 So that’s amazing. Then you get to share it with people who are impacted by it in a positive way, and third, and perhaps the most profound for me personally, and something that I think you understand but most people might not, is that these people become part of my life. You know, there’s a reason why you do it face to face, trying to create this intimate experience, and you walk away from that like you and I are going to walk away from this today and we’re forever connected.

1:55:59 Like, we’re never going to forget what, what happened here. So even if I don’t see you for five years or two years or six months, if I run into you, it’s like, oh yeah, we have that thing, you know? And a lot of these people become my friends, and they become like this extended board of advisors, like this council of unbelievable wisdom that has provided me with guiding principles for how to make decisions, how to be in a healthy relationship, how to navigate sobriety, my relationship with my athletic career, my kids, my diet, my spiritual fitness, my emotional well-being, my progressive growth in all areas of my life.

1:56:45 So it’s been, I mean, profound is almost, you know, not a significant enough, enough word for the impact that it’s had on me. And then to know that there are, however many people, out there listening to it, I think it’s an incredible thing. Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing, and we’ll maybe talk about that tomorrow when I will be on the original podcast. That’s right. Um, because, yeah, looking forward to it.

1:57:10 It’s all that and more, really. Um, talk to me about veganism, and when you bump into people now and you kind of have to explain who you are or what you do, or the conversation happening, you know, globally right now around that topic. It’s changed a lot in five years, and even ten years, new documentaries, new people talking about it, but, you know, what do you normally tell people, and how does that conversation evolve, and where do you think this is going?

1:57:38 It’s an incredible time. We’re seeing mainstream awareness of this lifestyle in a way that didn’t exist even a couple years ago. The way that I kind of approach it is I let the other person take the lead. Like, I, I downplay. If somebody says, oh, what do you do?

1:57:59 Wellness advocate. Like, if it comes up, like, oh, you’re plant-based and you’re an athlete, if somebody’s interested in hearing about it, then I’m happy to talk about it, but I’m not out there to, like, convert or be, you know, somebody who’s in a firebrand way trying to um, tell people they’re living their lives wrong, or anything like that. It’s just not my DNA. I prefer to be a lighthouse, and to kind of stand in my strength, and if somebody is attracted to that vibration and comes to me, then I’ll open up, you know, and talk about it.

1:58:37 And I find that to be a much more effective way of being an advocate for these ideas that are important to me. But I’m always thinking about how to, um, communicate. You know, it’s a tricky thing. I mean, right now we’re in a cataclysmic healthcare crisis. 70 percent of Americans are obese or overweight.

1:59:02 One out of every three Americans is going to die of a heart attack, heart disease, America’s number one killer. 50% of Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic by 2030. Like, these statistics are insane. You know, it’s bankrupting our economy. 75 percent of all healthcare costs are attributable to chronic lifestyle ailments, and when you realize that 80 to 90 percent of this can be prevented or even reversed in many cases through some diet and lifestyle changes, it’s hard to, like, keep that to yourself.

1:59:37 You know, but it’s very um, it’s a very emotional subject, you know, and I’m always sensitive to that. Like, it really is up there with politics and religion, and it can be very difficult to talk about, and there’s a lot of conflicting information and heated debate that goes on, particularly, you know, on the internet, and so it can be dicey. So somebody has to be ready to hear what I have to say, and if they’re not, then I’m not interested in trying to have that battle with them.

2:00:08 And you don’t consider yourself a vegan per se? I mean, I, what does that mean? I don’t know, you know what I mean? I think we can get caught up in terminology. Yeah.

2:00:18 You know, I’m a plant-based athlete. Yeah, I guess I’m vegan, whatever that means to you. Um, I don’t get caught up in that. You know, I just look at a lifestyle that in many ways allows you to opt out from a lot of unhealthy things that are going on in our culture. You know, in addition to the deleterious health impact of the standard American diet, we’re looking at an environmental disaster that’s occurring, right?

2:00:49 And a large part of the problems that we’re having are a direct and proximate result of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector combined. It’s polluting our water table. It’s acidifying our oceans, whether it’s runoff, uh, it’s creating a mass species extinction. It uses too much water and too much land.

2:01:13 It’s like a middleman between the crops that we have to raise to feed these animals and the food that ultimately ends up in the mouths of human beings. It’s a very inefficient system, and it’s creating havoc on our planet. So when you go, you call plant-based, you can call it vegan, you can call it whatever you want. But when you adopt a plant-based diet by eating plant foods close to their natural state, not to be confused with a junk food vegan diet, you can eat chips and Oreos all day and be considered a vegan.

2:01:43 You are taking out an insurance policy against becoming one of those health statistics by, uh, contracting one of these chronic lifestyle ailments, and you’re also voting with your dollar and saying, I am not in support of a food system that is causing these kinds of problems in the environment. And I think we’re all conscious, compassionate human beings that don’t like the idea that a lot of animals are suffering terribly as a result of this system. That’s why the system is set up to prevent us from really even seeing what’s going on there.

2:02:19 There’s ag-gag laws that prevent filming, so the consumer doesn’t actually connect with the actual process that’s occurring. We don’t like the idea that these animals are dying in the way that they are dying, the way that they’re tortured, the way that they’re suffering. And when you go plant-based, you can just say, I’m not participating in that. I’m investing. I’m voting with my dollar in another way.

2:02:44 And that doesn’t mean that we’re living karma-free, or that we’re better than anyone else. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that it is an empowering act, and it’s a lifestyle that checks all of those boxes. It’s better for the environment, it’s better for your health, certainly better for the animals, and you can go out and kick ass in any athletic pursuit you desire. You know, I’m an example of that, and there’s many other athletes out there that are crushing it right now on a plant-based diet.

2:03:14 So it feels good. You know, feels good, and I just want everybody to be healthy and feel the way that I feel. And the debate goes on. There’s still people talking about vegan athletes. Oh yeah, well, the protein myth, and we could do two hours on that.

2:03:33 Um, there’s a documentary coming out. I don’t know when it’s coming out. It might be this fall or winter, called The Game Changers. Yeah, it’s all about plant-based athletes, and I think that’s going to create an interesting discussion around this in a profound way. How do you feel about plant medicines?

2:03:50 Because some of these medicines end up giving this message to a certain extent, to look out for our environment. And I guess they are plants, but also, from someone in an AA standpoint, it’s maybe a narcotic, and, right, something that might also take you over the edge. I know John Joseph is not a fan, because he has his own, you know, addiction issues. But how do you feel about them in general? Psychedelics.

2:04:14 And I don’t, I try not to have, yeah, it’s a great question. I had Michael Pollan in here talking about his book, and, yeah, mainstream, even, all of that stuff. Yeah. I think, I think his book is an important book, and it’s a very important conversation that we need to be having, so I applaud the fact that that, you know, Michael is out there talking about these issues. I try not to have an opinion on things that I don’t have experience with.

2:04:38 I’ve never done ayahuasca, and I’ve never done psychedelics. So far be it from me to say yes or no, or you should or you shouldn’t. All I can tell you is that, a, I think that plant medicines have their place, and I have personal relationships with people who have had profound experiences and have benefited tremendously as a result of those experiences, you being one of them, and many other people who I think are better people, more mindful and more conscious, as a result of having those experiences.

2:05:13 I think for myself, I will probably not avail myself of that opportunity. What happens when I hear that, Iowa, whether it’s ayahuasca or whatever else it is, that the solution to my behavior problems, the solution to my addiction problems, lie in a mind-altering substance? That’s very exciting to me in a way that’s probably not healthy for me, and just that awareness alone makes me real, makes me think I’m probably, probably not for me to explore that. And that’s just my personal choice.

2:05:54 The only other thing I would say, and again, this is speaking as somebody who has no direct experience, when you are taking a, a substance as powerful as ayahuasca, you are opening up your consciousness and awareness to energies that perhaps you’re not prepared for. I don’t think everybody should do ayahuasca. There are certain people for whom I think it’s probably appropriate, and there are other people who I think probably need a little bit more personal development and spiritual growth before they’re prepared to deal with the fact that they are opening up in a way that might leave them more confused than they would be otherwise.

2:06:44 It’s pretty wise words for a guy that hasn’t been there. Yeah, I would agree with all that. Um, the tendency once you have a ceremony is to think that everybody needs to do it right there and then, as well. Yeah, everyone. It sounds like the, the newly vegan person, or the newly sober person, or the newly anointed Iron Man.

2:07:02 Right. You know, exactly. Yeah. There’s a 10, uh, and yeah, the plan has definitely changed my life, and I’m gonna go back in the next few weeks and check them out. But it’s, it’s definitely something, um, I, I view a trepidation.

2:07:15 It’s a serious thing to do, and I agree, it’s, it’s only for people that are prepared. Yeah, ready for that thing. So, um, what, what scares you these days? Stagnation scares me. Um, being afraid to fail scares me, like getting comfortable with where I’m at and not continuing to push myself.

2:07:44 I think scares me a little bit, um, and just settling, because you did that before, I did that before, and you’re good at that, or you could go to that well. Things are good right now, so, like, am I coasting now that I have, like, a thing? Like, am I afraid to lose? Am I motivated by a fear of losing it, because that’s not what got me to this place, right? I think it’s easy to kind of lapse back into that type of mentality.

2:08:30 Uh, what was the best day of your life and worst? Um, oh, that’s easy. The day I went to rehab. Worst day and best day. You know, I think we tend to look back on things that occur in our life that are tragic, or we look at the things that we, we just immediately said, well, this is terrible.

2:08:55 That was a horrible thing that happened. We make these decisions, these value judgments on things that are just events. We make, we, and we make these decisions without all the facts, right? That’s bad, that’s good. We don’t really know until many years pass whether it is good or bad.

2:09:20 You know, I think it’s better to be neutral about them, but I can look back on things that in the moment I thought were the worst things that could ever possibly happen to me, and now I have gratitude for them, because those are your teachable moments. You know, when, Pete, when I crashed in Ultraman, and people, you know, okay, you’re not going to be in the lead of this race anymore, and people are like, aren’t you upset? Don’t you, you want to go back and do, do you think you could have bet on the podium?

2:09:48 Do you think you could have won, or any of that? It’s like, that’s not the point. As an athlete, when everything goes well, you go to Ironman, you execute your race perfectly, everything, I was totally according to plan, you get the PR, whatever time you’re trying to get. It’s great for the ego, but, like, what did you actually learn? You may have learned that hard work pays off, but I think the great teachable moments come in the failures.

2:10:13 When things don’t go well, we go, well, that was terrible, that was awful. But what if you switch the frame and realize that’s your opportunity? You know, when I crashed at Ultraman, who cares? I was in it because I wanted to learn about myself and what makes me tick, and you learn when you’re faced with a defining moment, like, are you going to get back on the bike and keep going? Are you gonna hightail it back to a career that’s familiar to you when things are tough, or are you going to go the other way?

2:10:49 Those teachable moments reveal character and show you who you really are. So maybe rethink or reserve judgments about items that have happened in your past and things that will happen in your future, and reconsider the stories you tell yourself and what they really are. Well, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are are so powerful, but they’re really illusions. We select certain things that have happened in our past and we construct a narrative out of that, out of the untold billions of occurrences in our life or interactions.

2:11:29 Why are we choosing these things and then constructing this story out of it? It’s no more real than what you dreamed last night, and I think we have the power to change that story about who we are and create a new narrative. What keeps you awake at night these days? I have two young daughters. What the future holds for them keeps me up at night.

2:11:59 The political climate in the U.S. keeps me up at night, as much as I don’t like to admit that. Um, yeah, things are very chaotic in the states right now, and I do worry about what the world is going to look like for my young girls. And now, Europe, you’re a media platform, you’re a key person of influence, people listen to you. Do you feel like your job is even more important now? I spent a lot of time thinking about what my responsibility is to my audience.

2:12:40 What is the point of having a platform and an audience if you’re not going to um, you know, speak your truth and use it for the greatest good? I understand that people are tuning into my show for a specific reason. You know, my lane is really kind of health and personal development. Nobody’s coming to me for my opinion on politics or anything like that, and so I’ve made a choice to kind of not engage, um, in that, but I’m starting to rethink that a little bit.

2:13:12 Um, I think it’s important to share openly and honestly how you feel about certain things, and on some level, although I don’t consider myself a journalist, um, people are dialing up my channel because they want to hear what I have to say. And I, and I feel like it’s incumbent upon me as somebody who does have an audience to have a voice. You know, you don’t want to be the person. 10 years from now, I don’t want my daughter to say, like, why didn’t you say anything, you know, when you had the opportunity?

2:13:45 So I think a lot about that. Yeah, it’s a way to really put it in a very sobering way, isn’t it? Um, Rich always asks people a couple questions at the end. I’m going to ask you, uh, if you can make a call to the 20-year-old Rich Roll, the guy that’s necking those 32-ounce beers, yeah, at Stanford, and, uh, in your book. And I mean, it’s obvious that everyone needs to listen and read this book, and you actually narrate it, to an audible, which is key.

2:14:15 But when you talk about that first beer at 18, like you just took me right back to my fraternity house and the way I felt, and you know, just how that, that stuff took, took, took over for me. Yeah, I’m sure we’ll talk about that more tomorrow. But if you could give some advice to that 20-year-old, of all the things that you could tell him, what would you tell him? Stop drinking. Yeah, I wouldn’t have been able to hear it at the time.

2:14:39 It was like, you have no idea how much light, how much better your life will be if you just stop partying. I wouldn’t have been able to hear it at the time, but yeah, stop drinking. I think the other piece of advice I would have given myself as a young person is to, to not feel this pressure to go and chase a career right away, you know. Travel, invest in experience and adventure, and really release yourself from the social pressure to conform to some specific notion of what your career path needs to look like, and really learn about what gets you excited.

2:15:15 And I think travel and adventure and having experiences as a young person is a really crucial, important part of that, and part and parcel of that is living lean. Like, don’t buy stuff, you know, whatever money you like. Live in somebody’s closet. Like, live as leanly as you put, as you possibly can, because the leaner you live, the more freedom you have to make choices. Yeah, the less poor choices.

2:15:39 Yeah. Like, I mean, this concept, the American dream, is something I talk about too, and I mentioned in my movies, and it affected my head as well, until you get to the point where you’re like, why am I doing what I’m doing? Uh, and, and it definitely needs to be really examined, you know, by people everywhere. Um, so I second that motion. Yeah, for people to think about that.

2:16:00 Um, best advice you ever received? It could be, um, from your coach Chris, or from your wife, or from your dad or your mom, or anybody. Um, but yeah, best advice you’ve ever received? My friend Gordy said to me when I was in early sobriety, lastly, to that person that’s watching us who is addicted to something, they know they are, but they really don’t know what to do. You know, it could be, to, to me when I was in New York City, if I had the, the benefit of being able to watch something like this, I’ve listened to this.

2:17:11 I mean, what do you tell them, you know, when they know they’re in the state, they haven’t hit the rock bottom, and they don’t know what to do about it? They’d rather turn this off right now and go get another drink, or go shopping, or go have sex, or whatever it is, their choices. What advice do you give to them? If you are suffering, if you’re drinking or you’re using or you’re gambling in a way that is creating havoc and chaos in your life, you’re not alone, and there is help.

2:17:43 There is help. And so my call to action for anybody out there who is caught in that cycle of addiction, or maybe isn’t even ready to self-diagnose themselves as a quote-unquote addict or alcoholic, but knows that their life is slowly and progressively getting more and more out of control. You never have to drink or use. Yet it is a choice, and there is help available to you, but you have to reach out your hand. You have to raise your hand, and you’ve got to seek out that help.

2:18:12 So my advice to anybody who’s suffering from an addiction to drugs and alcohol is to find a meeting. They’re everywhere. They’re all over the place. Set aside whatever preconceived idea you may have about what that looks like and what it means, and you know, your opinions about what you should or shouldn’t do, and just have the willingness to show up, to set aside your sense of what is right or wrong for yourself, to step outside of that, because clearly that’s not working, and try something new and try something different.

2:18:46 Find somebody you can talk to, tell them what’s really going on, but seeking out that help is the most important and powerful first step towards blazing this path that can ultimately lead you to a life of sobriety. And I will say this: the prospect of getting sober to me sounded like the worst thing ever. Like, all the fun was going to be gone. For my life I was never going to be able to have a good time ever again, and I can tell you that it has been quite the opposite.

2:19:20 My life has exploded and grown in so many amazing and magnificent ways that I could have never imagined, the life that I’m leading today, and it all started with getting sober. So they say don’t quit before the miracle, and that uh, a life that exceeds your wildest imagination can await you. I’m proof positive that that’s true, and I’ve seen it happen in so many other people’s lives, and what’s so amazing about sobriety is this has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life, is seeing people come in completely broken, completely broken, with nowhere to turn and nowhere to go, not only become resuscitated but go on to lead, like, the most remarkable, amazing lives, and that is possible for anybody, but you gotta raise your hand, and you gotta ask for help.

2:20:29 Powerful words. And John Joseph did it, and I’ve had similar experiences. You know, yeah. And uh, yeah, so grateful every day I get to wake up and, you know, not be that guy and not be beholden to those, those things I used to have to do. You know?

2:20:47 Um, and anybody can do it. Yeah. Um, Rich, I think you came into my life at the perfect time. You know, I think you’re sent by some divine way. You know, um, and again, I, I, you were on my radar for the last few years, and you know, I know people that have been on your show, but, you know, we hadn’t really connected, and so I hope this, this show and John and my Iron Man training and our mind and stuff, and so it’s been amazing.

2:21:10 Um, your words were going through my head when I was on the race and uh, a lot of the concepts you talk about in your books and stuff, and it was important to me when I’m training and everything else, and I don’t think that would have been, unless you had been so open and honest about your story. And, um, you know, it’s, it’s tricky when you have to, um, be vulnerable and honest about your past, and I still remember, um, writing that heroin email in my office, you know, and then uh, going to place to press send, you know? It’s just like, well, I’m so glad I did, because I uh, opened so much stuff up, and, uh, you know, now it’s fine.

2:21:47 So it’s like, if anyone’s out there just thinking about not being open and honest, it’s a sort of path forward. Yeah. Shame can’t survive the light, and you think you’re keeping shame at bay by keeping it bottled up, but freedom occurs when you can release it and share it, and then it no longer holds power over you, and that’s what you experience. It’s beautiful. Yeah.

2:22:12 And it holds you back in ways you never realized, you know? It actually, it’s the thing is, is that shame is affecting you every, every single day. You just don’t know it, right? And so once you let it out, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s so empowering, and so, you know, you doing that, I think, is why people really connect with your whole story. So, uh, yeah, thank you for writing that book and being so honest, and thank you for, yeah, all the stuff that you give out there.

2:22:33 Super inspiring. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Yeah, it’s been a great pleasure. Um, and, uh, you know, as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey.

2:22:43 Um, looking forward to watching you in the next years and seeing what you’re up to, and, uh, yeah, thanks for all the help. All right, thank you, man. I appreciate it. Can’t wait to see what you’re gonna do next. You got to sign up for that next race though, man.

2:22:55 I’m gonna hold you to that. If you say that, and I guess I’m gonna happen. Yeah, more on that soon. Yeah, awesome, man. Thank you so much.

2:23:01 Appreciate it. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] do you explain his prowess in the ring? Do you have that obsession, that genius, that magic? Genius is obsession, but it’s in one area. We studied the sweet science for so much of your life. How do you walk away from it?

2:24:14 Do you miss it? You can’t walk away from it. I am in, and even when I dance, the, really, unboxing the credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, the one who strives valiantly. what was the worst day of your life, and how has it shaped you as a human being? When I fought Nigel Ben, I stood like this.

2:24:47 It was the mask. This risk must be taken. That’s why you are not the realist. That’s why we’re here. We’re tired of sitting still, watching it happen, happening for others.

2:25:05 Let’s do it.