Lance Armstrong Is Moving Forward

Everyone has highs. Everyone has lows. But few people on Earth have experienced the unimaginable level of success enjoyed by this week’s guest. Fewer still have undergone a more precipitous fall from grace. What exactly is it like to go from global hero to pariah overnight? This is the story of Lance Armstrong. One of the most decorated, fiercely competitive and controversial figures of our age, today Lance joins the podcast to mine the depths of his infamous dismantling. We explore the demands required to rebuild his life. And together we consider his journey forward. But first, allow me to contextualize. I am well aware that Lance is polarizing. Emotions run hot. And nobody lacks an opinion. Perhaps you have been eagerly awaiting this conversation. Maybe you’re outraged. Either way, I get it. If you hold a strong opinion, this conversation isn’t likely to change that – nor is it my goal. As an athlete immersed in the culture of multi-sport who has closely followed the Lance story for as long as I can remember, I grasp and appreciate better than most the issues and controversy that swirl around the world’s most famous cyclist. This podcast is about exploring humanity in all its incarnations. More than anything, I’m interested in what makes people tick — why they do what they do; what they have gleaned from their experiences both good and bad; and how we can collectively grow from examining the lives of others. Among my favorite conversations are those with convicted murderer Shaka Senghor; registered sex offender Joseph Naus; felonious insider trader turned FBI informant Tom Hardin; and a battery of reformed reprobates that include alcoholics, drug addicts, and drug dealers. I state this not to draw any comparison whatsoever to Lance, but rather to illustrate my interest in the complex, dualistic nature of the human condition in all its incarnations. I too was once broken and lost. I cannot begin to compare my experience to that of Lance’s, but I do understand what it's like to be dismantled. I know intimately what is required to confront and overcome one's past. And I have great empathy for the degree of difficulty required to rebuild a life. It is with this spirit that I approached this conversation – not as an investigative journalist, nor as judge and jury. But rather, with heart open — my only agenda to have an honest dialog with one of the most prominent figures of our time. Of course, we discuss his iconic rise, fall and efforts to move forward. But I also endeavored to explore terrain beyond the scandals – subjects like mindset and preparation that often get eclipsed in the grand conversation about Lance. We talk about therapy. We explore his history with anger. And we delve into the evolution of his hyper-competitive nature. We discuss the differences between training as a professional cyclist versus his preparation for Ironman and other ultra-distance events. I asked him what it’s like to contend with a $100 million lawsuit hanging over his head. We discuss common mistakes many athletes make and how he would approach coaching young professional athletes. And finally, I gauge his thoughts on the future of clean sport. This is not the definitive Lance interview. We only had an hour. There were plenty of subjects I wish I had more time to explore. That said, I found Lance to be both open and demonstrative. I think you will be more than intrigued by the discussion. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I know the way I operate as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a host of a podcast, as a teammate, as a businessman, as a anything, is far better than it ever would have been. And I have great memories, but when I look back on the people that sort of populated that scene, you know, those weren't friends. And not that they were bad friends, or they were mean, or they were vindictive, but they just weren't friends. They're there for the ride. And they're gone, which is a bummer, but the most important thing is I know,

• 1:47Speaker 01

  and I say this all the time, I know who my friends are.

• 1:51Rich Roll?

  That's Lance Armstrong, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:06Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What is happening? What's the latest? How are you feeling? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Big show today, really big show today with somebody who truly needs no introduction, none other than Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong on the podcast today. And rather than do my typical opening, I thought I would do something a little bit different this time to help provide a little bit of context and nuance and background on this episode. So I have David Zammatt joining us. Say hi, David.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  Many of you guys know David's the photographer, the filmmaker, hailing from Malta, who I've been working with over the last two months. And David came along with me to Austin to help document this podcast, along with the podcast that we did with Rip Esselstyn that's coming up soon. And I thought it would be fun to discuss a few thoughts about Lance in the episode with David in a more conversational way, rather than just me doing a monologue. So by way of background, I had never met Lance before. We have some mutual friends and acquaintances in common, but we'd never met prior to this. And when the opportunity arose to do it, I jumped at the opportunity because, of course, I would want to talk

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  to Lance Armstrong. And I didn't know what to expect. I went into it with an open mind and an open heart. And I think it's important for all of you guys who are listening to understand that I'm not an investigative journalist. I'm not that interested in rehashing a bunch of terrain that Lance has spoken on ad nauseam in the past. And I really tried to explore and mine some new terrain. And as for, you know, my overall perspective, and I've said this many times on the podcast before, I have a tendency to really be able to see the gray in everything. And I don't see my role as host of this podcast to judge,

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  you know, in terms of the cycling community and all of that. You know, I wasn't a professional cyclist. I was not part of that culture. But I am somebody

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  Who is a member of the triathlon and cycling community at large, and I followed sport and Lance closely forever. And I understand well, perhaps better than most people, all of the issues that swirl and surround Lance, all of the controversies. I get it. I get that Lance is very polarizing. He is an emotional figure and people have very strong feelings about him. I get that as well. And upfront, I just want to say that I don't think this conversation is likely to change people's opinions. If you're coming into this with a strong opinion of Lance, this conversation probably isn't going to move the needle one way or the other for you. And leading up to this, I had put it out on social media.

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  There were a few tweets and social media posts about this episode, and I got plenty of comments from you guys out there, ranging from people who are very excited to listen to this, and then a couple of people who expressed their outrage that I would have Lance on the podcast. And I get that as well. I understand that having him on the show may not sit great with everybody, and that's fine. Like I said, I'm not an investigative journalist. I'm not judge and jury. This is not about applauding or reprimanding. I'm really interested in the human condition, what makes people tick, why they do what they do or did, and what they have learned from their experiences, both good and bad,

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  and how we together can learn from all of them. And towards that end, look, if you look back on the history of this podcast, I've had all kinds of interesting people on the show. I've had a convicted murderer. I've had a registered sex offender. I've had a convicted insider trader turned FBI informant. I've had a whole battery of reprobate but reformed alcoholics and drug addicts and drug dealers. And some of those episodes are among my very favorites, and some of those people are among my very favorite people. And for the very reason that those conversations mine, they expose, they explore the human condition in all its forms, in its failures, in its lessons, and I've learned from...

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  From all of these people and all of those experiences. And so it is with that spirit in which I approached this conversation because whether you love Lance or you loathe him, Lance truly is, it's undeniable that he is one of the most prominent figures of our time and a figure that really transcends sport. I mean, there are very few people in the last century that have achieved such incredible heights of glory and such lows. And I'm really interested in what that's like and what we can learn from that.

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  Lance is one of the most fierce and intense competitors on the planet, for better or worse. I think those are traits that both have served him well and also paved his downfall. And that's inherently fascinating. And as I said to Lance before our conversation, I know what it's like to, to be broken and lost. Not that I can in any way compare my life experience by any stretch of the imagination to that of his, but I do understand on some level and have great empathy for the difficulty of taking inventory of your actions of your past and, and attempting to rebuild and move forward.

• 7:40Rich Roll?

  You know, Lance is all about moving forward. His podcast is called The Forward. And that's something that I really wanted to explore with him, to see where he's at with all of that, how he's moving forward. And to be frank, I gotta say that I found him to be really open and not defensive in the least. I mean, what did you think, David?

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought, you know, I thought it was a really interesting interview. And even just for me, myself being there, you know, um, he's been, been a big, I guess, inspiration for me from a very young age and someone I always kind of looked up to, to an extent. So yeah, it was really, really interesting just being there.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's fascinating just to be in that guy's presence and to be able to have a conversation with him. And again, look, opinions on this one are going to differ and that's totally cool. This is by no means the definitive Lance interview. We only had an hour. And in that hour, we were able to explore what I think is some pretty interesting terrain. Terrain I really tried to mine in areas perhaps less discussed in the conversation around Lance or often overlooked in what we see and what we read about with this guy. And of course, there were a million questions and topics that I wanted to get into with him that we just didn't have time to explore. So it kind of is what it is. But what did you think?

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  Did you think, you know, we got some good stuff, right?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure. And I think also, you know, myself as an amateur athlete, I was just really intrigued and curious, you know, to be around this guy who, you know, has such an incredible mindset and has, you know, kind of win at all costs. And just to see that intensity, it was just really interesting.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  And what do you do with that win at all costs mentality when now you're faced with rebuilding your life and you're no longer a professional athlete and you're aging up? And, you know, what is he trying to achieve with the podcast? And how is he moving forward? And I think those are all really interesting territories to explore with him. And I did my best to do that.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  For sure. And I think, you know, like you rightly said, I think, you know, from all the different guests that you've had on the podcast, like we can all learn from people, you know, whether they've done, you know, whatever they've done in their life. And that was one of my biggest takeaways from this was that.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  Okay, Lance, this happened. We actually did it. We got a conversation with him. I think it's pretty cool. Like I said, you know, go into it with an open mind, you guys. There's a lot to learn from somebody who has experienced life in all its forms on such a massive scale. And we explore all kinds of different things with him. We talk about. Certain things that I think get eclipsed in the typical conversation around Lance, his mindset in the prep and training for Tour de France, you know, all the Tour de France's that he competed in. Beyond the doping conversation, you know, what was he doing that others were not and what can we learn from that? Of course, we track his iconic rise and fall and comeback in the world of cycling and how he's moving forward

• 11:00Rich Roll?

  now. We talk about coming back from being public enemy number one and how he's grappling with the emotions that swirl around that with, that get sort of packed into rebuilding your life. And we specifically hone in on his anger issues, which I think is super interesting. We talk about therapy, living with his story, dealing with the public reaction. And then we get into the differences between training as a professional cyclist versus his experience participating in Ironman's and then as an ultra runner. In other words, what it's like now as he ages and his relationship to his inherent competitiveness has to be

• 11:41Rich Roll?

  sort of metered to, you know, encapsulate his, you know, the fact that he's getting older and that he's not, that he's not a professional athlete anymore. And how do you sort of contend with that and navigate that? We talk about how he's moving on, his podcast stages and his podcast, The Forward, his new company, We Do, and, you know, what it's like to wake up every day staring down the barrel of a $100 million lawsuit that this guy has hanging over his head. And then we get into, you know, his perspective on the future of fair sport in today's world of quickly advancing science, whether it's genetic engineering, CRISPR, all the things that are sort of coming online right now

• 12:24Rich Roll?

  that, that make the prospect of fair competition all the more complicated. One of the things that I asked him in the podcast was whether he has seen the new documentary Icarus that was directed by Brian Fogle. Unfortunately, he had not seen it yet. I wish that he had because I think that would have made for a really compelling, interesting discussion about that movie and its implications. But Brian is coming on the podcast next week to talk about that documentary. And I think it'll make for a really great bookend to this podcast to kind of continue the conversation that we began today with Lance. So that's it, man. You have any further thoughts, David?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I think it was, yeah, like I said, just an amazing experience. Yeah. And I'm sure the listeners are really going to enjoy it.

• 13:14Rich Roll?

  All right. So without further ado, I give you my conversation with Lance Armstrong.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it. It's great to be in your studio. And you're definitely somebody who I've wanted to talk to for a long time. And like I said earlier, you know, our social circles overlap. We got lots of mutual friends and, and it's just, it's exciting for me to meet you and to talk to you, man. I think the first thing I'm interested in, in, in hearing a little bit about is just this podcast journey that you've been on. You know, I started mine five years ago. It's been transformational in my life. It's just, it's enriched me in so many ways. It's been an incredible thing. And so I'm interested in, you know, what, what motivated you to decide to get into this? And what the experience has been like for you?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  I mean, five years. Wow. I've been at it a year or so, just over a year. And it really was almost on a whim. Like my, I think most people know the story, the arc of the story.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  We were, we being me and my manager, who I'd been with for a long time, who's stuck with me. He, you know, he was trying to figure out a way for me to just do something. Sort of as the cycling platform and sports platform went away, the cancer platform went away. You know, what is a platform that we could, we could find or, or go and get? And so he was on me for well over a year. Dude, just, just start a podcast and you know, everybody, you know, everybody's still, you know, who are your, you know, your, your true friends want to sit down and rap and just, just go do it. And it's like, I don't want to do, I didn't want to start it actually, because I was afraid I'd just kind of get sick of it.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Weekly show, as you know, is kind of a pain in the butt.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  It's a lot of work.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  It's a lot of work. Yeah. And so I just started it on a whim and, and it's been, it's been great. It's been great to talk to people. It's been great to quote unquote, work, you know, because I try to not, I don't just have somebody on and sit down and go, okay, what I'm, what do you want to talk about?

• 15:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Like I, I dig into their lives. I spend days thinking about their lives, reading about their lives. So reading about somebody else's life has, has been. You know, I haven't done homework in a long, long time.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it is homework. I mean, if you want to do it right and you really want to deliver, you know, something solid, you gotta, you gotta put the time in, man. And I think people don't really appreciate how much time it takes to do it well. So, and you've been doing it well. And I, I feel like you really found your groove with stages. Like, that's just, that's compelling, you know?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Right, to that being the spinoff, yeah. The, the spinoff of the forward, which again, was, was totally random, last minute, started as, um, one idea that didn't materialize and then morphed into another idea, which I didn't think would work. And then I just, you know, recruited an old friend who was a, who you just met at this.

• 16:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, I'm at this event, I'm speaking, and he's the dude who's like filming the whole thing. And he comes up to me after I talked, he's like, I love your talk, gives me a we do hat. He's like, you know, we should connect. I was like, wait, I know this guy. Right. And I was like, I just, I've been trying to connect with like, cause like, you know, I'd connect, I'd email you, and then a couple of days would go by, and I'm like, I don't know if this is happening or not. And he's like, I'll ping him, and then you would just email me back. So, here we are. No, but that's cool, man. I mean, are there, you know, who, who are your, uh, who are your dream guests that you're trying to track down? Like, who'd you really like to sit down and, and talk to?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Uh, on the weekly show, God, who do I want to talk to?

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, somebody asked you the other day about Oprah, right?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  About who?

• 16:53Rich Roll?

  Oprah.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Oprah, yeah. I'll talk to Oprah. She'll be, she'll, she owes me. She'll come on the show. Who was it? And somebody asked me the other day, and I didn't have a great answer.

• 17:06Rich Roll?

  Like, I don't, did you read Jon Ronson's book? So, uh, he, he wrote this amazing book called, uh, So You've Been Publicly Shamed. I think that's the title of it. And it's kind of about, you know, what happens when somebody missteps, and then the internet piles on, and then lives get wrecked in the wake of that, and people just kind of move on. It's, it's a, it's a cultural phenomenon that I think we're seeing more and more of.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  Um, it's, you know, something that you lived through and, and, you know, have a unique perspective on. But I think in the context of, you know, of that, and, and, you know, what I said. In my email to you, like, I'm interested in how you move forward from something like that. And as somebody who's faced adversity in my own life and kind of weathered certain storms, not on the level that you've had to, of course, but how do you pick up the pieces and move forward?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  And, you know, obviously, the name of your podcast, and that's kind of the theme of how you're trying to live your life and rebuild this. And I think in the context of the conversation that surrounds you, what gets eclipsed are all these other qualities that made you successful, because the doping thing loomed so large that we don't get to talk about these other aspects of your career. And, you know, you're a kid who, at 15, you're out there mixing it up with Mark Allen and Mike Pig, like, you know, just basically this raw talent who took his talent and fueled it with mindset and extreme preparation and focus that no one had ever seen, you know, in your sport, that took you to a certain height. And so I'm interested

• 18:34Rich Roll?

  in the mindset piece of that, you know, that focus and what you think it is about you that allowed you to kind of, you know, achieve that height.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  That all got lost, Rich. You know, the reality is, here's the truth, right? And the problem with the whole story is that we still don't have the truth, right? Which is sort of a fucked up thing to think about. So for all these years, we hadled, for lack of a better word, a narrative, a story. So the training was harder and more cutting edge than anybody else. The technology piece, the testing, the reconnaissance, the composition, all these things, we said were the reason that we were the best. There was

• 19:26Speaker 01

  one part of it we didn't talk about, right? Doesn't take away the fact that all those things happened, and they all made the difference. The last part, unfortunately, the generation that we were in, everybody had to have that part, but they didn't have the first 10 parts. So literally overnight, it shifted to, and again, this is what you just talked about, when the internet piles on, and the media piles on, and people pile on, and commenters pile on. It shifted to, ah, it was all about that one thing.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  And all these 10 of the things, the training, the reconnaissance, the composition of the team, the tactics, that was a bunch of bullshit. He just gave us a bunch of bullshit for 15 years. So while this rise wasn't totally true, the fall isn't totally true either because what happened in the middle is you had an agency in USADA who came and said some very intense, damaging, and untrue things. They said that this athlete, that the athlete at the center of it all is the biggest fraud in the history of sport. Think about that. They said that this athlete and his team ran the most sophisticated doping program in the history of the world. Think about that.

• 20:43Rich Roll?

  But there's truth in that, isn't there?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  No. And the worst is this athlete forced young impressionable men to put deadly substances into their body. Think about that. So I get it. I get that they, they said that. That was part of, as, as the report came out and as the takedown took place, they needed, they needed PR points, bullet points, talking points, and those were their points. And so I understand. I'm not, I know why Travis Tigert says those things because he was about reinforcing his report. There's a lot of truth to the report. But those things, those bullet, those talking points are not true.

• 21:23Rich Roll?

  So when you, when you measure up-

• 21:25Speaker 01

  And not that it matters.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  But it's hard to recover from those things.

• 21:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, when, that, that's the primary narrative. And you're somebody who's always, you know, you're very savvy with the media and you've, you've always done a very good job of trying to control the narrative and the story. And that was a situation that you couldn't control.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  No, you can. And I, and I, and I, for the rest of time, I won't be able to control it.

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  But that's the beauty of having your own podcast.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  You think the other teams had, had, had protocols that were as sophisticated as postal?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna boil this down to you very, very simply and, and, and straight out of the truth here. In the postal case, and this is not, this, this is, and this is not off the record, these are public transcripts, the, the world will and should know. In the postal case, we have to depose everybody. One of the depositions that we've taken is Tyler Hamilton. The line of questioning to Tyler Hamilton was, because Tyler, to back up a little bit, Tyler goes from postal to CSC to Phonak. You probably know enough to, but.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  And then he was on like rock racing at the end.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Right, but that's a whole other, so the line of questioning goes like this. Was there more doping at postal or CSC? And the answer was CSC. Was there more doping at CSC or Phonak? The answer was Phonak. So our system, look, it doesn't matter. I mean, they were all, we were all dirty, the teams were all dirty, the team, they were all at, at the game. They were all playing the game. But, and again, I feel silly talking about this because it really doesn't matter what I think or what I say, but we, I'm just telling you, we were not the most sophisticated system in the world.

• 23:16Rich Roll?

  But you're the bullseye.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, that goes back to me understanding why they, why they did what they did and why they said what they said. I'm not, I'm not, by the way, I wouldn't change a thing.

• 23:27Rich Roll?

  That's something that I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  I wouldn't change a thing.

• 23:32Rich Roll?

  Your life, I think I've heard you say like, you know, you, you're, you like your life better now.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  So all things being equal, if you could go back, if you didn't make the comeback and all that kind of stuff, and you could have continued to live with this.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, none of this, then I would have.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  And, and would you, would you trade what's going on now for, for that life?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change a thing.

• 23:50Rich Roll?

  Because why?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Because, and, and, and, and by the way, too, there's a lot of stops along this train here that could have been, none of this could have happened, some of this could have happened, or what happened, happened, could have happened.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  And so, the option of nobody ever finding out, it never being exposed, me continuing to, to, you know, live the life I was living, I wouldn't, I don't want that.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  When you were in that position, though, did you like feel the weight of trying to No. carry that lie?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 24:25Rich Roll?

  Or did you just compartmentalize it?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was completely compartmentalized. I mean, that was the way the game was played at the time. And, you know, some people don't like to hear that for a variety of reasons, but that, that's, that's the way me and my peers played the game. And so, and then the next option is, is some sort of a hybrid option where you sort of wants to work together and, you know, my deal is the same deal as everybody else. My deal is the same as George and the same as Levi and the same as Tyler and the same, same as everybody. Which is, you know, this six-month offseason suspension and come help us and, but that wasn't the deal. And so I didn't, I didn't, you know, the message to me was loud and clear, hey, come out with your hands up, we have you surrounded.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Which that, that never works well with me. So I said, fuck you.

• 25:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  But it, but it, but it wasn't, it wasn't the same message, but it did, it's neither here nor there. So I say fuck you and it's World War III, total meltdown. Everything goes away, all the platforms, all the sponsors, the lawsuits pile up, everything. And so that's, it's been five years. And I think, not back up, I don't think, I know the way I operate as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend. As a host of a podcast, as a teammate, as a businessman, as a anything is far better than it ever would have been.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  And so how did you?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And that's important. Sorry to interrupt.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  But the most important thing is I know, and I say this all the time, I know who my friends are. Whereas go back six or seven years.

• 26:16Rich Roll?

  Well, when the shit hits the fan and everyone, you know, flees or whatever, that's, that's.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  When I look back on, and I have great memories, but when I look back on the people that sort of populated that scene, you know, those weren't friends. And not that they were bad friends, or they were mean, or they were vindictive, but they, but they just weren't.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  They're there for the ride.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  And the better, and they're gone, which is a bummer, but the better thing, or the real highlight is, is there are people that, while there are people that surprise you because it turns out they weren't friends, the shit hits the fan, and you're public enemy number one, and all of a sudden there are people calling going, hey, let's go get a beer, let's go play golf, let's go for a bike ride. I'm like, where'd you come from? So they weren't interested in kissing ass, toasting the champagne, you know, riding around in the team car. They didn't care about that, but they were a friend.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  And so the journey from, from that place to where you are now requires like, you know, grappling with anger and resentment, you know, it's like as somebody who's like, you know, a long time sober, they kind of say in recovery, like, you know, justifiable anger is like your, your death knell, like to hold on to that, even when you're right, like, do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:36Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you're somebody who's fueled by, you know, in many ways in the past, like, you know, there is an anger component of what has fueled you. And, and that's, I've, I've noticed, you know, from the sidelines, that's slowly dissipated. I mean, because there was still a lot of that, you know, in the Oprah interview era, right? And so how have you traversed that to kind of come to terms with that and begin to let go of it?

• 27:59Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I mean, I've done a few major interviews since it went down. Obviously, there's, everybody points to the Oprah one, which they should. And Oprah had its reasons for happening. Oprah wasn't, while it certainly appears that the timing wasn't right.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  It had to happen then. And it didn't go well. And you're right, I was, I was, I was a certain guy at the time. So if you compare Oprah to Joe Rogan, two-ish years ago, to Howard Stern, six months ago, those are different. I mean, I got so many, like after Rogan and Stern, people were like, dude, why didn't you just say that on Oprah?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  We'd have been fine.

• 28:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But you weren't, you weren't that guy.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I wasn't ready. No, I mean, and, and again, Oprah felt rushed and maybe in some senses it was, but that's a different person and that's, that's not.

• 28:56Rich Roll?

  It wouldn't have mattered if she wasn't rushed, I don't think, right? Like you were just, you were holding on to a certain perspective on the whole situation at that time. And that was going to come out, no matter who was interviewing.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  And that's a whole process of, of me just living my life and living with this story and living with people's reaction and living with therapy, living with.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  What's the therapy all about?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Well, just, I mean, just no, no kind of special magic there. I mean, just standard therapy that I do solo. I do with Anna, Anna does solo, we do with the kids, just more just conversation on,

• 29:34Speaker 01

  on our lives and, you know, obviously with the children, we tried to, to help them navigate this as teenagers as best they could.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  But to be honest, I mean, the, the more important element is just, has just come through, and it's, it is therapy in a sense that just in conversations with people, whether they're in an airport over a cup of coffee or even over email, I mean, just understanding where people were when all this went down and how it affected them. So that, that to me has been the most important part. And so I just let go of. Like, I mean, you saw it, I get it. I get it. I don't, I don't, I don't think they're necessarily honorable or, or honest, but hey, I don't care. I mean, I'm not, that, that, that is, I cannot change that.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  And so, you know, almost, almost all of it's gone away. Not all of it, but almost all of it.

• 30:35Rich Roll?

  Well, you got one big thing looming over you right now. You got the one big lawsuit. Is that, is May the trial date for that? Sometime in May? I mean, what's that like to wake up every day with that?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  I never think about it.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  You don't think about it?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  We're gonna win the case.

• 30:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's the Lance Armstrong mindset. Back to the mindset.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  We're, we're gonna win the case. And the government cannot prove damages.

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, it's an interesting thing, yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  They admit this. So, look, the case, the case is about one thing. It's not about who's a good guy, bad guy, nanny, nanny, boo boo, none of that. It's about damages. And, and they freely admit that they cannot prove that they were damaged.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's liability and then there's damages. I mean, liability is, you know, it looks like it's pretty clear, but how do you establish? I mean, is there anybody walking around who says, you know, I love going to the post office and waiting in a long line, but now I'm not, now I'm gonna use UPS because of what happened? Like, that's, that's a tough.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna send my Christmas cards.

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  No, it, it, look, in the, in the trial- Do you never use the post office?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  No, I use them all the time.

• 31:38Rich Roll?

  You do?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And I said it on Stern, like, I loved, I loved representing the postal service. Riding around in Europe with the United States, anything on your chest, standing on the, the top step on the Champs-Élysées with the National Anthem with the United States Postal Service. I loved that. Like, I wasn't ashamed of that. I wasn't, I didn't think that was a goofy sponsor like some people thought. I was proud of that. And so, but look, I mean, in Judge Cooper's courtroom, we had a summary judgment hearing and, and, and he pushed them. He said, you, you gotta give me a number. He said, Your Honor, we don't have a number. And this is a public proceeding, so I'm not saying anything out of class here. And he pressed them three or four times. He said, we don't have a number. And Judge Cooper said, okay, well, I'll make

• 32:22Speaker 01

  it real easy. Name one client that you lost because of all this.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  Was that in summary judgment proceedings?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Right, in November. And he's, and they said, Your Honor, we can't, we don't have one.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  It's still got by summary judgment, though.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's hard. It's almost impossible to win on summary judgment. The judge, they don't want to be appealed. They don't want to get appealed. They don't want to get overturned. It's easy for them to say, I'm just going to let the jury decide.

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  Let's get back to the mindset piece. You know, I'm interested in kind of exploring that. You know, as an athlete myself and a lot of athletes that listen to this show, you know, what is it that you think? Back to the original question, really, like, what is it that you think set you apart and allowed you to, you know, sort of succeed on the level that you did, everything else aside? I mean, you know, one of the things you did is you kind of came into cycling and you reimagined the schedule, first of all, because everyone was doing all these races and you're like, the only one that matters is Tour de France. I'm just going to focus on that. I'm going to sidestep all this other stuff. That was new and different at the time and the ability to just kind of hone in, you know, with that singular, you know, ability to just lock in on one thing and, you know, really

• 33:44Rich Roll?

  set up your entire life around that one goal, I think is interesting. And just, you know, what is it, you know, what is it you think when you look around at other athletes, triathletes, cyclists, whatever, that you think that you have that other people didn't have? And what can be learned from that?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  The scheduling part wasn't, I mean, Endurain did that too, although some of those years he did the Tour of Italy. But he, you know, he figured out in his home country of Spain, the biggest bike race in the world and the only bike race was really the Tour, but that's the same in every country. So especially as Americans, we certainly don't know what the Vuelta is or the Giro or the Classic. They don't know any of that shit. And we know the Tour because of Greg LeMond and so it was easy for me to just say, okay.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I'm coming back from, from cancer. Nobody thinks that I'm going to amount to anything anyways. I mean, I could barely get it. I mean, I begged to be on the Postal Service team and you know, this all meets, the comeback meets the team firing Johnny Welch, hiring Johann Brinil and, and really, I mean, a lot of this had to do with his vision, his genius that he was and still is. But that was a, you know, for he and I, we formed a perfect partnership where I was willing to do the work. He was motivated to lay out the agenda

• 35:14Speaker 01

  and the plan. Of course, you know, I'm not going to discount or ignore the fact that McKelley Ferrari was an amazing trainer, the best in the business and probably still is to this day. So the way that all came together, the athlete, my willingness to work hard, the training, and then Johann's vision of how we were gonna, how we were gonna do this. And he truly believed it. Like he, and all that mixed in with this sort of fuck you attitude because, you know, certainly at that time, the fact that we called 20

• 35:54Speaker 01

  teams and 19 of them just literally hung up within five seconds. I mean, the chip on my shoulder back in 98, 99 was tremendous. And so that worked. And, and I think a lot of athletes use that as, I know a lot of athletes use that as motivation. And even if there's not a real reason to have a chip, they'll go make one up. I'd make them up.

• 36:17Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah. I remember you said on Rogan that you used to concoct stories about competitors.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Did you see that? Did you see that quote?

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  And then carry that out of the race into the real world and get yourself in a bunch of trouble.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And turns out they're great guys.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  It's not a, ultimately, it's not a sustainable fuel source though, right? Is it? And like now you have to find a new, you know, a new motivation to get out on the bike and do what you do and, and you know, a different, you know, a different set of ground rules for that. So, you know, what does that look like?

• 36:47Speaker 01

  I don't compete.

• 36:48Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  If you could, you would, though.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  I can't, but I can.

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  You can. What is, so you can compete?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  I can compete in anything but cycling.

• 36:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, you can. Oh, so that's been lifted. Right on.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Well, the, the, you know, the, the fine print says that after four years, an athlete given a lifetime ban, that after four years, they can compete. It's a little bit limited. Couldn't go do Kona. Couldn't do, anyways, there's a bunch.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  There are certain races you can, right, right, right.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  But like I, like last spring, I started riding a lot and I got back into riding for a couple of reasons, but I started riding a lot and I started feeling fit and I was like, I'll go do some of these gravel races. They're all unsanctioned. A bunch of cool people do them. They're hard. And I'd get in these races with these young kids. Forty, I'd be forty, I was forty-five at the time. I'd get in a race with a twenty-five-year-old pro and, you know, next thing I know, there's two guys left and it's me and him.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And I'm like, well, yeah, of course I'm here because I'm me. I'm supposed to be here. But the twenty-five-year-old pro lives and breathes and is obsessed with cycling and he eats perfectly and he trains perfectly and he rests a lot and me being me, who just kind of rides for fun, gets in that situation. So my head says, of course I'm here, but then all of a sudden, the body, the warning lights start coming on.

• 38:10Rich Roll?

  Right. But you still have the, you still have some semblance of the when it all costs mentality that's going to percolate up.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  But for me, it's either just ride for fun, ride to stay fit, ride to be with your friends and not compete, or you're all in. You live like a monk.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  You, right.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  You completely dedicate all of your, you know, every aspect of your life for a goal. And I don't want to do that anymore. I don't. And that's.

• 38:41Rich Roll?

  So you have to make peace with the fact that you're, you're going to get your ass kicked here and there by these young kids.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I, I, I had, I had. You know, I did four or five of them. And after like the fifth one, I was like, you know, I'm sick of like the morning lights. It's like, dude, just chill out. Like your summer's coming up. Go to Aspen, just ride with your friends. And if you're alone, if you need to suffer, just go a little harder.

• 39:05Rich Roll?

  But that's, that's a, that's a maturity. That's an evolution, I think. You know, and as you inch up, what are you 47 now?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Forty-six.

• 39:12Rich Roll?

  Forty-six. Yeah. So as you inch towards 50, you know, how do you, you know, and you know that you can't, you're not going to be able to be, you know, at that level that you're used to being at, like being okay with that.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  At 50, the only, look, if somebody waved a magic wand and said, okay, you can, at 50, you can do Kona. You can go race Kona.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. You go back in the cave.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I don't know if I would or wouldn't, but you, at that point, you wouldn't, you were not competing for the victory. You just, I don't care who you are. You're not.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I mean, unless everybody else crashed or drowned.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  But I could see you thinking like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this everything and see what I could do. Cause that's the one thing that you haven't been able to do.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  But then you're, then you're, then you're, there's a different type of result. I mean, you could say, oh, as a 50-year-old, could you be top 10? Like, that's, that's like winning.

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  So you, could you set that as the bar? Yeah. But at 46 or, I had this conversation with Andrew Messick the other day, and we were talking about a lot of things. And I said, you know what? I'm glad I didn't go to Kona in 2012. I would have been lit up. I'd have been crawling down the road.

• 40:22Rich Roll?

  You think so? Why?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Cause it would have, because it took me, I wouldn't, the nutrition, hydration, I wouldn't have had dialed. I would have, the pace, you know, it just, that event in my, my sense that is that that event takes a lot of experience. And it took me a long time, seemingly a long time, just to figure out halves. But the fulls are, you know.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  They're, they're almost not even comparable. It's a completely different thing.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I would have completely screwed it up. And I just, I told him, I was like, thank you.

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, when you listen to Mark Allen, who I know you just had on your show, and I've had him on my show as well, you know, how long it took him to master that. And even McCormick, you know, with all his brash, brashness and talent, you know, how many years it took him to conquer that as well. So.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, then, you know, that. Then you get into 40 and then you're just getting farther and farther away from, from that, that magic. It doesn't, yes, you're getting experience, but by the way, you're becoming an old man. And so.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  What about the difference between?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Did you swim this morning, by the way?

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  I did, man. Where were you?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  I know I had kid drop off and I was trying to manage, like I do, I'm a morning person and Anna is an evening person. So I get the kids up and start to get, you know, get them fed and get, get their day going. And then she likes to sleep in. So she sleeps in a little bit and then we both get up or she gets up and then we take them to school. So, but then I, having said that, I'm the person that's, you know, boots up at nine o'clock and she's, stays up till midnight. So I couldn't figure out how to.

• 42:02Rich Roll?

  Make it all work. Well, you also said you, you were going to do the group ride at 8:30 and the swim practice started at like 7:15 and it's out of town. So I was like, there's no way.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  I was going to get out early. I don't swim the whole time. I, my, my, when I'm first back in the pool, my, I swim 2000. So I can, I can, I would have been out of there by eight.

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  Ah, Rip's pretty fit, man. He was looking good.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  He's always fit.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  You know, he's a freak. He's a freak. I know. But I'm interested in, in, in the differences that, that you've experienced between, you know, cycling, which is a team sport and then moving into, you know, triathlon, which was your original sport. Anyway, you know, the individual aspect of that. And then kind of what it's been like to dip your toe in the water of the ultras and the ultra running and the lead fills and, and, you know, what kind of, you know, how did that impact your preparation? Um, you know, your mindset throughout those races? Like, what are the differences between those two worlds?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  I mean, when I was running a couple of years ago, it was, it wasn't structured. You know, all of those cycling had structure. Triathlon in 2012 had structure. After that, you know, after the reasoned decision came out and I wasn't allowed to compete, I mean, there's just no structure. I don't have a coach. I don't, I mean.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  In those days and in those years, I knew exactly what I was going to do every day for a week and then I'd get a new program and then it would just, and then we would adjust or you would test and so way more scientific. And since then, it's, I literally wake up, check the weather, or maybe arrange it the night before with some buddies, "Hey, you wanna run?" I mean, it's so casual.

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  But, and with that too, those years that I was, or that year that I was running, I was just, my program, if there was one, was I just kinda followed what everybody else was doing. So if these fast guys in town were out doing a workout, I would attempt to sit in on the workout, right? And that would be my structure, but, and they were way faster than me, way lighter than me, and ended up getting injured in runnings.

• 44:14Rich Roll?

  You got a little injured with that, right? Recently? You're back into it?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Well, I'm starting to run a little more now, but I got, yeah, I just, my, both of my psoas is just gave out.

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Which is an important, turns out it's a really important muscle for running. If you get, your first psoas is shut down.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  Well, also as you get, I'm about to turn 51, like you get, you have to start paying so much more attention, all that annoying stuff that you don't really wanna do, the foam rolling and all the rehabbing kinda things.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And you get those niggles much more easily than you used to. But, you know, you go out and you ride with these young guys, Los Incredic or whoever, you know, like fast, young pros. If you, you know, what would it look like if you were to, you know, in an alternative universe, if you were to start coaching some young, some young athletes, whether triathletes or cyclists, like, what do you see people doing?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  That's a terrible idea.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Because I never, I never coached myself. How am I gonna, I just listened to-

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, and this goes back to the original question, which is what gets eclipsed in the conversation about you, is that you have this, you're sitting on top of an unbelievable amount of experience, right? And so, you know, how, what is it about that experience that we know less about, you know, that could be helpful to young athletes? Like, you know, when you're out with these guys, like, and you're looking at them, you're like, "Why is he doing that? He should be doing this."

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:36Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's more, I mean, I think- I mean, look, let's just use Lawson as an example, right? Because I, he does live here in Austin and he is on the world tour and I do train with him. And so last winter, he's, he's, he says, you want to go for a ride? I said, sure. And I said, how long are we going? He's like, six hours. I said, okay. I said, well, what do you do? He's like, oh, I have three, one hour and 15 minute intervals at 290 watts. And he's not a big guy. And I said,

• 46:11Rich Roll?

  For those that are listening that don't know,

• 46:14Speaker 01

  No, I said, what, what did you just say? I said, and mind you, it's November.

• 46:19Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  I was eating fucking apple cobbler and bluebell ice cream in November and drinking beer and staying up late. And I'm like, wait, what did you just, you're telling me you're going to do three hours and 45 minutes of intervals in November on a six hour ride? He says, yeah. I said, okay. So I go on the ride and at my age and at my level, all I can do is sit on the wheel, but I can stay on the wheel. But I'm sitting back. So to your point, I'm sitting there going, what the fuck is this kid doing? This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

• 46:55Rich Roll?

  You mean to be that early in the year and like hammering that hard?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yep. And there was a lot more to it, which I won't bore the listener with. But I said, who is, who told you to do this? He says, JV's doing the training, Jonathan Votters. I said, well, figures. I mean, that, that is so ill advised and just, nobody can tolerate that.

• 47:18Rich Roll?

  Because what? Like, what's the lesson? Like, what is it that you're trying to communicate about preparation?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I think you have to.

• 47:23Rich Roll?

  You gotta, you gotta like play the long game.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Not to say that nobody couldn't handle, maybe there is some person out there that maybe Eddie Merks could have done that. Lawson Craddock can't do that. And it almost felt like an experiment. And I just thought it was, and I tell Lawson this, and I would tell JV this, that's, that's not a fair experiment. This is a kid who's, he doesn't have that engine. And what do you, what do you, what makes you think that's going to work? And fast forward, it destroyed him. I mean, this kid was on the sideline the entire season. And if he wasn't on the sideline, he was the first guy getting dropped. So to your point, I mean, for me, I don't want to sit here and go, okay, no, not

• 48:08Speaker 01

  three hours and 45 minutes of intervals. How about we do five, 10 or make up? That's not my thing, but I can look at it from my own experience and go, eh, I don't think that's a good idea. Checking that it's November, checking that I know the athlete, checking that, you know, a lot of other boxes and, and say, no, you gotta, you gotta find a better option here. Or you can, then you get into the technical parts of cycling or strategy. I mean, those things I know, but I mean, as far as, you know, creating a training plan, I just, I was a listener. You know, I, I always did, all the way from swimming age group, swimming at 12 years old, all the way through, I just said, okay, what are we doing?

• 48:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but at some point, you, you must be taking more and more ownership of what you know, works for you. Right?

• 49:03Speaker 01

  The only owner, the only in the sense that I gave a lot of feedback. And so we were very, the relationship between Johan and myself and Ferrari and myself was, there was constant communication there. So if something, if I felt like something wasn't working, or like any athlete with any training plan, you're tired, you need a little more recovery, you have a slight injury, like that has to be put on the table. And there's, doesn't do anybody any good hiding that or being ashamed to talk about that. Fuck it. Just say, you know what? I'm, I'm destroyed. This is what Lawson Craddock should have done. He, he didn't. He just kept running the plan and digging a hole for himself. Just tap out for a little bit.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  Right. So the message underneath that is you gotta know when to, when to let off the gas and that perhaps too many people are going too hard too often.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I think most people go too hard.

• 50:04Rich Roll?

  It's hard. It's a different kind of discipline to know when to hold back.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  And if you talk about tries, I mean, the try world is, you know this, I mean, the makeup of that athlete, that's the way they're wired, at least for a few years. And inevitably, they all burn out, or get injured, or just say, okay, I've had enough.

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  But they're wired to just go hard and commit their life to this. And, you know, that might work for some, but I don't know that that works for most.

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  Well, in the amateur context, it's, yeah, it's unbelievably expensive and unbelievably time consuming. So it doesn't lend itself to longevity.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  And in the pros, you know, there's so few people who can even make a living doing this, you know, it's crazy. And the amount of energy and time and discipline and focus that goes into trying to compete at the highest level of Ironman, it's unbelievable. Like unless you're in the top percentile of those athletes, like, I don't know how these guys get by. And it's a systemic, you know, issue that needs to get addressed and fixed somehow, especially when you have this organization that's just making so much money.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  I know, but that's, this sport is not about the tip of the spear. This sport's about the middle of the pack.

• 51:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's why when we did the stages, when we did stages for Kona, and I had Mark Allen on and Dave Scott on, you know, while you have to talk to them about 1989 and the Iron War and what that was like, I've watched enough interviews that Bob Babbitt did with them to know what they, that what they're gonna say. So you gotta cover it, in case your listener hasn't watched those interviews. But I'm way more interested in saying, okay, Mark, you know, there's 2,000 people in Kona today that are about to do a full Ironman in four days. Like, what can, like, speak to the middle of the pack.

• 51:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I mean, Jan Friedano, he knows what he's gonna do.

• 52:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  You know, Miranda Carfreid knows, they all, they got it. So don't, let's not talk to them. But, and, you know, when you watch the NBC coverage, when it comes on, you know, well, it's all about those special stories.

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  That's the bread and butter of the whole thing.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  So that's all, I mean, Messick and Ironman, I mean, that's, I think they try to be sensitive to the pros and prize money and that part of the sport, but.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  By the way, I mean, with their ownership structure now, that that that ownership is not at all about who's going to win this weekend. I mean, it's it's about growing the business, building out more events, numbers, numbers, numbers.

• 52:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you know, and cycling has its own problems as well. I mean, that's just a shit show in so many ways.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was easy to take over. It turns out it's easy to dominate a bunch of stupid people. I mean, really, let's be honest. I mean, really.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  So, explain that.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Well, the way, and I don't mean to, I'm not trying to sound like a jerk or say people, but the way Johan and I came in, this was a sport that was easy to take over. They were stuck in their ways. They were, we were coming in the late 90s. They were, they were still, you know, treating the sport like it was the early 80s. You know, I mean, it could be, you know, the mentality towards, well, I mean, the biggest barrier that probably still exists today is their attitude towards women. You could never have a woman's one year. You could

• 53:47Speaker 01

  never have your wife at the race. You could never have her visit. I mean, it was, it was totally old school. So that's.

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  I didn't even know that.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  And I think, and that seems to have changed, but just the ability to, or the willingness to explore other things, whether it's technology, or wind tunnel, or, I mean, when we first went, I mean, it sounds so obvious to go do reconnaissance. You have 10 major climbs in the tour. Go spend five days and get to just, even though if you think you know them, go there alone when there's not a million people on the hillside, and just go do it. It was crazy. The first year we went in 1999, we didn't see anybody. In 2000, we didn't see anybody. But they started to figure out that we were going in 2001.

• 54:38Rich Roll?

  So, none of these riders were going off and riding, you know, riding the course?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  No, of course not. And so then we took it from seeing the mountains to seeing all the time trials. And then, after five or six years, they're all there.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  Everybody's doing it.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  So, that is so, I mean, I'm embarrassed to even say it's so obvious.

• 55:03Rich Roll?

  Have you, uh, have you seen the Icarus documentary?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  I haven't.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, you haven't seen it yet?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  But I've been asked about 5,000 times if I've seen it.

• 55:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  And I only haven't, I haven't really-

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Do you have a resistance to watching it?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. I'd love to see it. But I don't watch TV at home. I watch movies, documentaries. I love, love, love documentaries. But I only watch them when I travel. And so I can, in my, you know, dumb self, the only way I know how to download anything is through iTunes.

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. You don't have Netflix?

• 55:34Speaker 01

  I have Netflix at home. But, but you can't, apparently, and this is what I'm told, and I think it's right, you can't download a movie from Netflix on your computer. And all I have is a computer.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  No, you can't download it. You stream it. You can stream it anywhere, on your laptop or whatever.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  On a plane?

• 55:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, not on a plane.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  The internet's not strong enough on a plane.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  No, so I-

• 55:54Rich Roll?

  So you mean, you only watch them on planes?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  When I'm forced to sit in a seat for three hours-

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  That's how I pass the time. So you can download it to a mobile device, your phone or iPad. I don't have an iPad. A phone, I don't want to watch it on my phone. But anyways, I'd love to see it. I met with, with Fogel years ago, when he was, when the, when the movie was the original movie. You know, where he was-

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  Right. Just the, the original conceit of the movie.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay.

• 56:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 56:24Rich Roll?

  Did he interview you on camera for that?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Uh uh.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, he didn't? Uh huh. Yeah, I had him on the podcast recently. I haven't published that interview yet. But it was, I mean, you should definitely watch it.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  It's incredibly fascinating. And it, it will, it will just change in color your perception of sport and clean sport. Not just in cycling, but, you know, sport wide. And when you, when you, he really is able to tap into the profundity of this problem in a massive way.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  And, and when you, you realize the level at which, you know, these practices are being perpetrated, it's, it's, it's shocking. And it's, you know, as a kid, you know, I grew up, I just, there was nothing I loved more than the Olympics. Like, that was just the greatest thing ever. And, you know, I swam at Stanford and had I shown up, I was like a, basically a walk-on, you know, but had I shown up-

• 57:19Rich Roll?

  And I found out, you know, all my heroes on that team, there was some kind of program going on. Yeah, I don't know what I would have done, you know, I probably would have done, who knows? You know, I don't know, but, but, you know, I can't shake thinking about this movie. And the extent, I mean, basically, these guys are saying like, nobody's won an Olympic medal is clean. You know, like, I don't know whether that's true or not.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  But with these, these people who are sort of sitting atop this world of doping and anti-doping, to hear them say that, it's, it really, you know, makes you think, it makes you question the future of sport and what can be done to create an even playing field, whether that's even possible, especially with all the crazy technological advances and CRISPR genetics and everything that's going on. Like, it's gonna get fucking crazy, you know? And I don't know what that's gonna look like.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I'm still waiting, I'm still just trying to get a eclipse from being the most sophisticated doping program in the history of the world.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, I think you're gonna live with that for a while, unfortunately. You know, that is what it is, but, you know, I think when you watch this movie,

• 58:22Speaker 01

  I don't think that's true.

• 58:23Rich Roll?

  Well, it, it pulls covers and, and makes you realize that this is a, a problem that extends much more broadly beyond cycling, you know, that, that sort of takes the brunt of it. And when you look at the way that certain sports are treated versus the NFL and the NBA and, and how we kind of, you know, take a blind eye to those other sports and, and the vested interests that are at play there, like, you know, I don't know, I don't know how to even begin to unpack and address the larger problem.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 58:56Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Well, you should watch the movie.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I will. No, I will.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  What, you know, how do you, how do you communicate with your kids about all this? I mean, I know that's an ongoing conversation. You've got a son who's like a big time football player right now.

• 59:12Rich Roll?

  You know, this has to be something that comes up all the time that they're dealing with, especially the younger kids as they're growing older.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, you know,

• 59:22Speaker 01

  So there's, there are, there, there, there are two waves of kids. There's the older ones who are high schoolers, two sophomores, and then a senior, and then the younger ones who are first and third grade. So obviously totally different conversations, you know, experience, or, you know, experiences with, or interactions with their classmates. But I have to say, you know, my older ones lived through it at a really key point in their life when it was, you know, they understood and they could, you know, either hear about it in the hallway, or hear about it on social media, or, or however. And they really, and this is, I think it's a testament to Austin, and to the schools here, to the counselors,

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  to the teachers, to their friends, to their classmates. We had very little drama, for lack of a better word, with the, with the older kids. And, and at this point, it's never a conversation. Because I've been so honest with them, and so transparent with them, and it's, it's an open door policy that if they ever do have a question, let's talk about it. It's just not, it's just not an issue anymore. And, but then that gets you to my younger kids, who of course, when this went down, had no idea. They were, they didn't even walk. So then, you know, the society that we live in now, which everything

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  sits out there and is forever, whether it's Oprah, or Tyler Hamilton's book, or a New York Times article, or what, or this podcast, it sits there forever. So while my older kids can obviously go tap into that, they probably won't, because they know, they know everything, pretty much. The younger ones are gonna grow into it. And so then they're gonna, they're gonna potentially, you know, watch a documentary, or read a book, or watch Oprah, or listen to this podcast. And then, and then, you know, then it's a whole nother wave of conversations. So, but I, but you know what?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I'm fine with that.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  I mean, that's not. There'll never be a time and place where I say, nope. I'm not talking about anymore.

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have to, you have to continue that.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:46Rich Roll?

  Um, what would happen if? You know, Luke came home and said, you know, they're doing steroids or, you know, I'm told I should be doing this.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  Or, or maybe I did do it or, you know, have you thought about that? Have you had that conversation?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting because it. Well, I think that this fight, this, this anti doping fight is, you know, I get asked all the time, should we just legalize everything? And my answer is always like, no, you can't, you can't do that. That's, that's crazy. But they have a lot of, so you had, so they had, so they need to exist. These agencies need to exist, but when they exist, you know, they have a lot of messaging that really, that I don't know that. I mean, between USADA and Jeff Nowitzki, who was the federal investigator who took down Bonds, took down Marion Jones, took me down. You know, his main thing that he always, these, these high schoolers, steroids in high school, steroids in high school.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  My son plays for Westlake High School. He's a senior. They're undefeated. They, they have, they've had 10 NFL players come out of that school. They've won multiple state championships. They're ranked third in the state today.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  And this is Texas football.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  This is Texas. This is, this is.

• 1:03:04Rich Roll?

  This is Friday night.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  We want to talk about the tip of the spear. This is, this is the tippiest tip that you can get tipped.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  The war, yeah, the war is being waged here.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  And so. And let me tell you something, there is none of that.

• 1:03:18Rich Roll?

  That's interesting.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  None of it. And if there was, I would know.

• 1:03:23Rich Roll?

  And he's, I would assume he's got aspirations to play college ball.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:28Rich Roll?

  No. Is he starting?

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  He starts, yeah.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Tonight's our biggest.

• 1:03:32Rich Roll?

  Why doesn't he want to play? Why doesn't he want to play in college?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Because he, well, he gets letters and gets offers. He doesn't want to, he, he doesn't want to play at a, at a D2 school or a smaller D1 school. I mean, if, if, look, if he was at the level where Florida and Alabama and University of Texas and.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  Be different.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  It'd be different, but if he's getting, you know. I'm gonna make up some name and piss off some of your listeners, you know, Southern Kalamazoo, you know, tech. He doesn't want to do that.

• 1:04:04Rich Roll?

  Right. Where's he want to go to school?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  He wants to go to Alabama.

• 1:04:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  He got accepted. We toured. We had a great tour. He loved it.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  But he don't, he's not the level where he could play ball there.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a whole different.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  That's a whole nother.

• 1:04:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  But it's interesting. I mean, I just, so to me, it's like, wait, but that's the way politicians operate. They have these things that they, that they put out there to drive a little bit of hysteria, to drive their agenda, but is that really happening?

• 1:04:36Rich Roll?

  Cause I don't know.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Well, no, I'm telling you what's.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  So you're seeing it.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  In true Friday night lights. And I'm not saying that there's not some kid in Dallas or in Houston.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be happening though.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Right. But I'm telling you, on the best football team or one of the best football teams in the state at the highest level.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  He's not seeing it.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  That isn't even remotely a conversation.

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. Wow. Well, you know, it's, it's weird how it penetrates amateur athletics too. You know, you hear these stories about these amateurs and Iron Man and stuff like that. You know, it's like.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  And cycling.

• 1:05:09Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, you know, yeah, amateur cyclists, um, where it's, it's not their career. It's not their profession. And gosh, you're getting caught doing this, man. What do you?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  All these anti-aging clinics and I mean, come on.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do you?

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  People are competitive.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, says the most competitive man on earth.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  But I mean, even, even. You know, age group triathletes, they don't want, they want to, they want to either win their age group or get a PR or.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  And then that all fits or meets this whole, and you've probably had a shit ton of people on the show talking about biohacking and, and whether it's diet, whether it's supplements, whether it's pharmaceuticals, whether it's some new technology. I mean, it's people.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that line becomes very gray.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  Or murky, you know, what is that, you know, it's if you, you know, I go to the doctor.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  But do we care? But do we care?

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's a, it's a, it's a spectrum, you know, when it's on the extreme, yeah, I think we care. You know, what does it mean for a cyclist to get a cortisone injection versus an NFL player to get a cortisone injection?

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Well, don't, we need another hour.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  I read, I read this morning that the new president of the UCI is going to completely ban corticosteroids, which is sort of a tricky way to say it. I mean, it's really cortisone. The, the media loves saying corticosteroid because it has the word steroid. But when in reality, as you well know, cortisone is a catabolic agent, not an anabolic agent. And so it's a very different thing. When, when, when the, when the public hears corticosteroid, they think anabolic steroids. But it's not an anabolic steroid.

• 1:06:58Rich Roll?

  It's an anti-inflammatory.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  It's a catabolic agent, not an anabolic agent. So, yeah.

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  Well, we could, we could bark up that tree forever.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  It's forever.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  So, you know, as, as this incredibly competitive person, we kind of explored this a little bit already. But, you know, do you think that you're, you, you still have that in you or is that dissipated? Like, do you, I mean, that's part of who you are, right? So when you launch a podcast, do you apply that mindset? Like, oh, I have to be, you know, in the top 10 in iTunes or it's, you know, I'm not going to settle for anything less. Like, do you apply that to everything that you're doing or have you, are you, have you chilled out?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  I think I've chilled on that. I, the, I'm curious, you probably do the same thing, but I'm curious weekly on how the public receives certain guests and the numbers that you get, how many downloads that you get, how many.

• 1:08:02Rich Roll?

  Do you get caught up in checking that stuff a lot?

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I don't. I don't ask. I get told. And if I don't get told, then I don't know. And, and I, I prefer it that way. But that all sort of changed when we did stages because stages was last minute. I didn't know, I had very low expect, I didn't want to have any expectations on how it would do. But as it went from first week to second week to third week and the numbers just started to get crazy. At that point, I was like, okay. I don't, I don't even know what to think. I was, I was, I was shocked, humbled, honored.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  And then, and then it was, then I got to this place where it's, it was cool to see. I mean, it was for me personally, you know, to, to, to generate that kind of interest.

• 1:08:58Rich Roll?

  Does that feel redemptive?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's ironic. It's, you know, it's ironic that the one person that the entire sport is banned from mentioning, spur of the moment creates a brand, a channel, content that is now bigger than, or ended up being bigger than anything else the sport was doing. That's a little ironic.

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  And, but, but at the same time, old Lance would have been like, fuck these motherfuckers. Let's go. This Lance has to be.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's make this the biggest.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  Let's show everybody that, you know, I can dominate this.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to be thoughtful with, with it. And yes, the numbers are great and, but you know what? They could be down next year. I don't, I mean, that's, my mentality has to be that, that, that, because I know this better than anybody, you know, nothing lasts forever. And so, you know, how I go about just building that show, developing that show, if we expand the show. But there can't be a, I can't be in a place where it's like, ha, ha, told you so, or fuck y'all.

• 1:10:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's not going to work for you.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, and I'm not there. I'm not, it's like, wow. That's what I tell people, I'm like, damn.

• 1:10:23Rich Roll?

  So that's not in the back of your mind?

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  What do you think are the stones that you still have to overturn? Like in terms of just emotional development? Like what are the things that you still struggle with, that you battle with? You know, the demons that you know, you need to kind of work through that are still kind of looming out there and trip you up?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't, there are still things that get me aggravated, but I mean, this, dude, this process that I've lived through is, you know, I always gauge it based on like, when I walk down the street or if I'm like, last weekend, I went to ACL Fest around thousands of people. You're walking through a thousand or you're walking in an airport or you're walking in New York City. Like, how are you walking? How are you feeling? Like, are you, when you see somebody, they look at you, do you, are you like, why are you, or like, what's, what's my confidence level? And confidence is different than arrogance. And man, the way I walk down the street now is so unbelievably different. My confidence

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  level today, if I walk down Fifth Avenue in New York City versus 10 years ago, even 15 years ago, where it was, couldn't have been a bigger story. You can't even, you can't even begin to compare those two. And it's weird. And I, and I, I'm not bragging, I'm just being, trying to be, trying to explain this and be honest about it. But it's, it is fucking lovely.

• 1:11:50Rich Roll?

  There's something about removing that dissonance between what you're saying and how you're behaving that kind of integrates, you know, the human spirit in a certain way that I think allows you to, to be that way, you know? And I think for me, that's been a big part of the journey. You know, one of the, one of the kind of core principles of sobriety, of recovery is, you know, not just owning your past and aligning your, you know, your actions with your words and all of that. But also-

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  I'll give you, I'll give you an example. So we go do, and then we gotta run because I gotta go.

• 1:12:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  I take this podcast to the race in Colorado. And there was a whole lot of drama around it because they tried to ban me from doing that. This is crazy. But that was, they actually did me a favor when they did that. So I, I rent this Airbnb and I'm, and across, and it's this cool part of Denver called Rhino, where it's all breweries and cool restaurants. And, you know, that's where all the cool kids hang out. So the Airbnb is right across the street from this brew pub. So I'm waiting on my Uber to take me down to the race and I'm with Liz Krutz, who's photographed me forever. She's like, oh, you've been spotted. I was like, okay, whatever.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Long story short, the Uber pulls up, not in front of the house, but in front of the brewery. So we got across the street and it's starting to rain. So we're about to get in the car and, but there's still people out on the patio drinking and having a big old sundae. And one of them goes, hey Lance. And I said, what's up, man? And he goes, fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck. And he didn't stop. And then there's like eight of them and then they all start, fuck you, fuck you. It was unbelievable. And I was like,

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I've never, that's never happened. It happens in social media. It happens on, you know how it happens. And I'm just like, In person to your face. I'm like, oh my God.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  And Liz was like, get in the car, don't do anything. And I, and I was, I was like, okay. So I got in the car. And they're just, of course, while we're pulling off, they're just keep, they're like, it was like a chant at that point.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  And I'm in the car and I said, okay.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  I have to do something. I can't, I can't just let this, I can't just let this go.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  So I called the bar. I said, let me talk to the manager.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  And the lady's like, what's this about? So I was like, see anyways, he gets on the phone. I explained to him everything that happened. Guy says, man, I'm really sorry. That's, that's super fucked up. I said, okay, here's the deal.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Here's my credit card. The whole tab is on me. But I want you to go out there and tell them that I picked up the beers and food and whatever they had. And I said, my love.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  And the guy's like, are you serious? I was like, yeah. So he goes out there. I mean, then he called me back later. He's like, okay, this is what happened. So.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  The moral of the story is that, you know, 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, maybe even less, that would have been a fight, a physical fight. And it just me just going, you know what? Because it rocked me, because it has never, that's the first time that's happened. But also getting in there going, I have, me being me, has to do something. But my do something today was, you know what? I'm going to lean into this one.

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  It's contraraction.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Rich Roll?

  Do you think you could ever get to a place where you can forgive the David Walshes of the world?

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  I mean Walsh is a, Walsh is a special one, and we'd need a whole nother hour for him. Walsh is, I know David very, very well. And David, this is going to sound weird, but David and I are very similar. I was a win at all costs guy. David is a win at all costs guy. He'll tweak, he'll change, he'll manipulate, he'll lie, he'll deceive. So he, you know, he has, it was, it was, he made it an industry. And fair play. He's, I think that's shifted for him. He wasn't much interested in an apology. He was more interested in the lawsuit and getting paid. And he got that.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  That's exactly what he got. And so if that's what he wanted, he got it. But I also know David too, and I know this story way better than anybody else. So I'm very close, not so much with him, but I know him well enough that I feel close to him, and I'm very close with Emma O'Reilly. So I see how he's, so somebody that he used as the pillar of this story to, to come after me. I've seen the way he's treated her, and she's seen the way he's treated her. And I can tell you, it's not, it's not an honorable. So I don't, I don't, I'm not uncomfortable with where I sit in the world with regards to him, because...

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  The the ploys along the way, I know where they sit.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, that's David. I mean, that's, that's, God, I didn't even, you know.

• 1:17:20Rich Roll?

  Right. But I, the, the bigger point I'm really getting at is, is in order to really be free, you gotta like, release these resentments, or whatever these women things are.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  I don't have any resentment towards him.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  And I'm not saying, and I'm not saying David per se, I'm just saying in general, you know what I mean? Like, in my experience and, and kind of what I've gone through, it's like, even when you feel like you've been wronged, and like, this person and that person, or whatever, it's like, you're the one who's suffering.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  You know, you're the one who's paying the price for that resentment that you're harboring. And if you can get to a place of like, truly like, letting go of that, then, then you can walk down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and, you know, be integrated.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  And I would say, and I said this at the top of the show, there are still a few things, right? And the, the postal case being one.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  But almost all of those have been, and it's a process. I don't think anybody's, you know, goes on a ayahuasca trip, or goes to counseling once, or goes to AA and walks out and is like, "Okay, I'm good. I'm forgiving everybody. We're cool."

• 1:18:20Rich Roll?

  This is, this is, this is your life.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  It's a long hike. And so, you know, they're, they're getting shed. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you or anybody listening and said, "Okay, they're all gone." I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you and say, "It doesn't fucking make me livid and pissed off that Livestrong did what they did," because it does. So, yeah, it's, it's there, but, hey, I'm gonna work through it. And I'm committing, and it's, and if you, if you just said, "I'm not gonna work, or I'm not gonna do the work," well, then you, then you have a problem.

• 1:18:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  And so, but, you know, Walsh, Walsh, Walsh, Walsh elicits no emotion in me. Travis Tiger elicits no emotion in me. I get it. I know, and I'm good with that. And I'm me. I wake up as me every day, and I like waking up as me. And it's not called forward for nothing. And so, yeah, there are a few more I gotta pick off and, and make right. And they might, it might happen next month. It might take three years. I don't, I don't know. But the key is that you should, you know this, is that so long as I realize that, that, that is a process, and I am committed to making, to shedding that.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Pretty powerful.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  It's a good place to end it, man.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thanks, man. That was great.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Sorry, I know this is short for you, but...

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  No, I know. Yeah, man. I go, I don't go Rogan length, but I, you know, I go a couple hours.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  We got all hands on deck meeting at noon, so I'll be the bad guy if I don't.

• 1:19:51Rich Roll?

  All right. Yeah, no problem, man. Thanks for your time. So you're easy to track down on the internet.

• 1:19:58Rich Roll?

  At Lance Armstrong, WeDoSport.com, Stages Podcast, Forward Podcast.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all there.

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right on, man.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  I'm not very good about leveraging and promoting and pushing that stuff out, but there's some good ones out there if people are interested.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool, man. Thanks, dude.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  Peace. Lance.

• 1:20:21Rich Roll?

  All right, that happened. We did it. It's done. What'd you guys think? Hope you enjoyed it. Again, I was really hoping that Lance had seen the documentary Icarus. It would have been great to be able to discuss that with him, but as I pointed out at the outset, Brian Fogel, the director of that amazing documentary, is next week's guest. If you have not seen that documentary, please make a point of watching it. It's on Netflix prior to next weekend. I think it will really help inform and contextualize that conversation. It's a very powerful documentary and relevant to today's podcast as well. And I loved it. Really looking forward to sharing that one with you guys.

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  Until then, please check out the show notes for this week's show on the episode page at Richroll.com. Lots of links and resources to take your infotainment beyond the earbuds. Also have a full video version of this podcast up on YouTube. Go to YouTube.com forward slash Richroll and you can check that out and a couple other podcast episodes, recent episodes that we filmed. If you would like to support this show and my work, a couple of ways to do that. Share it with your friends and on social media. When you go to a cocktail party, ask people, what's your favorite podcast? That gives you an opportunity to tell them about this show. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Hit that subscribe button. Super important. Also, we have a Patreon account set up for people who would like to support my work financially. Thank you to everyone.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Everybody who has done that means the world to me. And thanks for all of you who are supporting me on that platform. I agreed to do a monthly Ask Me Anything AMA, video AMA for you guys. This week, we were supposed to do it, ran into all kinds of technical difficulties, major snafus that derailed that whole adventure. My apologies for that. I have since been in touch with customer support on that video platform to make sure that it goes off without a hitch next time. And I've rescheduled that AMA for November 16th at 3pm Pacific Standard Time. Again, that's only available to people who are supporting on Patreon. It's the least I can do for showing me that amazing level of support. How's your plate? How's your plant

• 1:22:26Rich Roll?

  based diet? Are you guys on track? Are you struggling? Check out our meal planner, meals.richroll.com. It's got everything you need to dial up your health on your plate three times a day. When you sign up, you get access to literally thousands of plant based recipes, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. Everything's metric system compliant. For those of you who do not live in America, it's all personalized and customized based on your goals and your food preferences and your allergies and your time constraints. You can set it up to prepare dishes for one or for however many people are in your family. It generates these amazing grocery lists that you can then take to the grocery store to get everything you need. But in I think over 60 metropolitan areas at this point, you can get your groceries

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  delivered. It will automatically input all the ingredients to prepare the recipes that you have selected and those groceries will be delivered right to your door. It's unbelievable. This is such a powerful tool. And one of the things I'm most proud about this product is not only that it's unbelievably helpful, but that it is affordable. $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. So really love this program. We're getting amazing feedback. As I've said before, people are really enjoying it. So if you struggle, or you, maybe you're not a great cook, or you're not somebody who likes to spend time with cookbooks and all of that kind of stuff, we tried to Create this program to take all of the guesswork out of eating healthy. And again, I'm really proud of it.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  So go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. That's it. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music and help on the show notes. He's doing more and more work. Thank you, Jason. Shawn Patterson for all his graphics work. He's the one who creates all these cool Instagram videos and with the text and all that stuff. David Zammatt, who you heard in the intro for his beautiful photo portraits and video work and theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. Again, hope you enjoyed today's episode and we'll be back next week with an amazing episode with Brian Fogel, the director of the amazing documentary Icarus. Check it out. Watch it. It's on Netflix.

• 1:24:39Rich Roll?

  Watch it before next week. You won't be disappointed and I think it will really enhance your enjoyment of next week's podcast. All right, until then, be well, you guys. Much love, peace, plants. Namaste.