Gordo Byrn on Making A 1000 Day Plan, Small Promises, The 5:2 Rule, & Designing Your Best Life

In today’s panoply of role models, rare is the story of an everyman transforming his life wholesale—then sharing his process openly and honestly with humility and vulnerability. Today I convene with one of these aspirational, endurance veteran and personal hero Gordo Byrn. Gordo is someone who greatly inspired and influenced my endurance career and mentored me from afar in ways beyond my ability to calculate. This conversation, long in the making, is thus personally special. A former private equity investment banker, Gordo metamorphosed into an elite ultra-endurance athlete, a student of human performance, an endurance coach, and, mostly, a devoted family man. He’s also the co-author of the endurance bible 'Going Long'—an incredible resource for any and all athletes seeking to better understand and apply the principles of endurance. A Web 1.0 blogger and podcaste, Gordo's humble guidance and wisdom was a consistent presence during my heavy training years, a tradition he continues today on Twitter (@feelthebyrn1)—a platform he uses to share his experience on everything from endurance training to marriage, personal finance and parenting. Meeting Gordo was like meeting a lost twin for the first time, and this conversation was everything I hoped it would be. Watch: YouTube. Read: Show notes. The Swedish superstar and multiple Ultraman and Otillo champion Jonas Colting calls Gordo ‘Tony Robbins in a Speedo.’ I agree with this statement, and after listening to this one, you will too. Peace + Plants, 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

  You know, we all have these talents in us that we have no idea about. And we have these paths in our lives that we can take at any time that we never get to see because we never take them. If you know yourself and you can give yourself something to do, you can replace dark thoughts with other thoughts. Make a small promise to yourself. It might be a walk. It might just be waking up before noon. It's a small promise, and you're gonna start really small. And it's gonna seem tiny. And all you gotta do is keep that small promise to yourself. And every positive change in my life

• 1:50Speaker 01

  has built from the ability to keep a small promise to myself. Change starts small, and it's a daily habit of doing the small thing to start the day. And you turn yourself into a winner by having a small win every day. And that's how it happens.

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Although I've done over 700 episodes of this show at this point, and on some level, all of these conversations are special, I would say that this one is uniquely special. And it's special because my guest today is somebody who, although we had never met in person until the date of this podcast, nonetheless, has greatly inspired and influenced my endurance career. He's somebody who has kind of mentored me from afar in ways almost beyond my ability to calculate. His name is Gordo Byrne, and if you're a veteran endurance

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  or ultra endurance junkie like myself, then chances are you may already know what a legend this guy is. But for everybody else, Gordo is a guy who kind of took the road less traveled. He's a former private equity investment banker who ended up transforming himself into an elite ultra endurance athlete, as well as a student of elite performance, a veteran endurance coach, a co-author with Joe Freel of the Endurance Bible entitled Going Long, and mostly a devoted family man. And one of the things that makes Gordo more aspirational versus inspirational is that his athletic journey, this guy who started out as an obese

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  finance guy and turned himself into an elite athlete, really began with a simple walk. That walk turned into a jog, that jog turned into a run, and thereafter, what set in was this obsession with elite endurance performance that culminated in seven sub-nine-hour Ironmans, including an 8:29 for second place at Ironman Canada, and also being crowned Ultraman World Champion in 2002.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  A result at my very favorite race that captured my fascination and really motivated in so many ways my own Ultraman dreams and performances. In addition to some shared DNA that we have in both our backstories as well as our life philosophies, one of the reasons that Gordo was able to so profoundly impact me back in the mid to late 2000s during my most intense years of training and competing is that he was a willing and early adopter of sharing his experience on the internet as a web 1.0 blogger as well as an early podcaster. It's a tradition he continues today on Twitter at Field of Burn, a platform he uses to share

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  his experience and wisdom on everything really, everything from endurance training to marriage and parenting. It was truly an honor to spend an afternoon with a man who has influenced me so profoundly. It was kind of like meeting a lost twin for the first time, and this conversation was everything I hoped it would be. So in addition to chronicling Gordo's life story, among the specific topics we cover, which abound with actionable advice applicable to not just athletes but truly to everybody, we discuss leveraging pain to catalyze a life change. We discuss the dangers of chasing elite performance. We talk about what endurance teaches us about life.

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  We discuss the importance of creating what he calls a 1,000-day plan and how success is really built upon small steps undertaken with ruthless consistency. We talk about establishing credibility with yourself, what that means and why it's so important to keep small promises to yourself. We talk about fitness after age 50, the pillars of health and longevity, parenting kids to fall in love with being active, and just tons more wisdom. Our mutual friend, Jonas Colting, the Swedish superstar, multiple Ultraman and Otillo champion, calls Gordo, quote, "Tony Robbins in a Speedo." And I agree with that.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  And I'm pretty sure, after listening to this one, you will too. Final note, I recorded this podcast old school during my recent visit to Boulder. Just two mics in Gordo's home, no cameras. So although this one is a rare audio-only throwback episode on some level, it's also very much well worth your full attention. So with that, let's quickly take care of business and thereafter dive into the pain cave with the singular Gordo burn.

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do the show.

• 7:08Rich Roll?

  Super nice to be here with you. We're going old school, audio only. Me with my traveling recording suitcase at your home today. I've been wanting to meet you forever. I just tweeted out a little bit ago that you have been like this North Star or compass in my life dating back, I think to about 2007, when I was first getting interested in fitness, endurance, triathlon, et cetera. And you were like this OG blogger going all the way back to like Web 1.0, you know, on forums and stuff like that. One of the few, you know, kind of really cogent voices out there talking about how to do this thing correctly. And without us

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  ever having met prior to today, you've had just a tremendous influence on my life. So, you know, just publicly, I wanted to thank you for that guidance and that mentorship from afar. And so I'm just thrilled to be able to talk to you today.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  It's great to make the connection. I mean, this is a very special opportunity for me. As a triathlete, I had a lot of success. But the one thing I wanted to do, and I was never able to do it, was the big room speech.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  What does that mean? At first, I was like, some of your tweets are cryptic. They're like Zen Koans. I'm like trying to decode them. I'm like, what is the big speech?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  So... I got really fit in 2004, really fit, as fit as anybody. And I raced Ironman Canada and I had a flat tire and I came up a little bit short. And I finished second and it was great. It was a really, really good experience. And the night before the race, I wrote my victory speech. And I never got a chance to deliver it. And it was a, it's actually something I got out of the artist's way. Julia Cameron, you know, just make it happen. And one of the weirdest things about that whole summer is I actually dreamt my finishing

• 9:17Speaker 01

  time a month before the race, like down to the minute.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  And the whole, I mean, I got, I got, I'm tingling because it's all coming back. But it was just such a special block from March to August of that year. We, we rode across America, my friend and I. And then I trained under Dave Scott with his Team World is what he called it. It was like me, Simon Lessing, Michael Lovato, and all these really fit women in skimpy shorts and sports bras after I'd been living in a trailer for a couple of months going across the US. It was just, it was an amazing opportunity for me.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And I came out, came out of that whole experience just feeling, just in the best shape of my life.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And it was kind of, you know, when you have that, you have that great build, you have that opportunity and it all kind of comes together on the day. And the, obviously the flat is kind of something you remember, but so much went right that year, that day. And so it was just a really special experience, but I never got to deliver the speech. I wrote it for my, for my column for X tries, who I wrote for at the time. But I never really got to reach the people and say the things. So I got some things that maybe we get into that I've been kind of holding on to for maybe 18 years.

• 10:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And just to get them out.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  I'm giving you the platform. We'll let it, we'll let it like kind of seep out over the course of you telling the story. But what are some of the general tenets of that speech? What are the principles?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  So, you know, the most important thing. Is really, you know, I got a copy of Finding Ultra on my desk here beside us. And I think a lot of people read that. And it's just such an amazing story, so great and, and so honest. And, and in that, people would say, well, you know, yeah, Rich did all these amazing things, but you know, he was a great athlete, a walk-on at Stanford and stuff. And, and, um, and I really wanted to tell everybody that, you know, we all have these talents in us that we have no idea about. And we have these paths in our lives that we can take at any time, that we really, we never get to see, because we never take them.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  And so I was, okay, in the book, you have your bike crash and Julie comes to you and she's, you know, hey, is it it? If this was it, you know, yes or no? I mean, are you cool with that? And, and so I'm, I'm in Hong Kong and it's, uh, 2000, just got divorced. And I'm in, I'm at, I'm at the top of the heap. I'm a partner in a private equity firm. I'm, I'm making a lot of money, but I'm alone, you know? It's just, it's just me and my mate in the house. And it's a beautiful house. It's a townhouse, Persian rugs, art on the walls. Everything, everything. And we just raised a huge fund.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  And the next 10 years are like mapped out for me. I'm going to be a partner, going to make a lot of money. My boss is great, my partners are great. They let me do whatever I want. I had that kind of support you talk about. I'm, I'm secure in the organization. And, and there's just nothing. I'm like, you know, if I spend the next 10 years doing this, I will have wasted. My 30s, it would have been a complete waste. It's like that moment.

• 12:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, I gotta make a change.

• 13:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that Rubicon moment. I mean, I'm getting goosebumps now hearing this. I mean, there's a lot of shared DNA here. I mean, the facts of your life and experience are different from mine in certain qualitative ways, but there's a lot of overlap here.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  You wrote my book.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  And, uh,

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So great.

• 13:19Rich Roll?

  It's just, you know, the fact that you had all of that makes it all the harder to walk away, right? Like, everybody would claim you're, you know, you're being ludicrous to consider an alternative path when you're reaping the benefits that society smiles upon.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  My family begged me not to do it. Like, they're like, you're nuts. And I was just like,

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  What was the, I want to like, double click and drill down on that moment. Cause I think, you know, to your point of all of us sitting atop mountains of untapped potential that we're completely oblivious to, I think we're all visited with different versions of those moments in our life. But it requires a certain, either a pain point or a presence of mind to recognize them. And then even further to take any kind of action upon that.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Pain point, yeah. Divorce. That was the moment where everything I thought I was gonna do with my life got yanked. And I had the plan. I was gonna ultimately, you know, the whole private equity thing, swing it into the Bay Area, get to Cali. I mean, I had the five-year plan and it was all gonna come together.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  And the marriage was just like a year, right? It was a short-lived marriage.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  It's very similar to the story in Finding Ultra.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  The, uh, the, and you know, but likewise, how you closed out that chapter, where you said, you know, with the benefit of time. I felt my own role. I mean, I was, I created that situation because all I wanted to do was work or ride my bike.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And recognizing that and owning it is, is the only way to free yourself from whatever complicated emotions you have about it.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and, you know, write something about it and publish it. I mean, my, my blog, my writing has been therapeutic for, well, since my teens. I've, I've been writing a lot. And when I, when I write, when I publish, it just goes. I mean, sometimes people come to me about my blogs and tell, and, but they'll just come to me about a personal episode in my life. And I'm kind of thinking, how do you know that? And, and they're like, well, I, I read it a year and a half ago. And it just leaves me when I publish it. It's really good. It's a great way for me to deal with stuff.

• 15:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you've been writing online for like 17 years or something.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Long time.

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  Right. You could, and still you can unearth those archives like Gordo's World or whatever the original, you know, sort of website was.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And I got a-

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  It's still public.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  And I got a hard drive that's got all the other stuff too. I mean, it's just sitting there and I read it and it, and it's neat because it makes sense, but you know, it's gone. Like, like I'm, I'm reliving it in a sense when I go back and read my diaries.

• 16:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, this is a little bit of a tangent. We'll get back to the, the narrative, but yes, you are, you know, prolific in how often you post. It's very much, I don't know if this has influenced you, but it feels to me very much like a page out of the Seth Godin book. Like he writes a blog post every single day. Some of them are long, but most of them are, are pretty short. And yours, you know, as I said earlier, are kind of like, they're puzzles on some level. Like they are Zen Coens. Like you'll have just like seven lines, like really the, the economy of language.

• 16:51Rich Roll?

  Like, and then I'll spend the day like trying to decipher exactly, you know, what you mean. And then you made a choice to kind of disappear from the internet for a while.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  About a decade.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You resurfaced recently, and we can get into later, you know, the reasons behind that. But that's how we ended up reconnecting.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:10Rich Roll?

  You, you followed me and I was like, and then I realized I wasn't following you. And I was like, wait, I know that I was following Gordo. I DM'd you. And I was like, I apologize. I thought he's like, no, you deleted your account. Now you're back with a vengeance posting on Twitter. You're sort of using Twitter as a microblogging platform.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  Posting these threads that get, you know, a lot of engagement.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, well, let's just talk a bit about social media. It's been great. And, and I think it's been great because I'm doing it with intent. And I, and I know why I'm there. And the, and I'm limiting how I'm doing it. So about, say, probably about two years ago, the pandemic was really hard. The homeschool and just the nature of being locked down in the house all the time. I don't do too well with that. And there's a lot of static and drama on Facebook. And I find Instagram creates all this memetic desire in me for stuff.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  It gets me wanting to take my life somewhere that I don't want to go. But I'm powerless against images and video. That's why I mainly read books. I'm very prone to suggestion. So movies, video, pictures. I mean, they just control me.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  So those platforms are really tough for me. Twitter's more a reading type platform. So I can kind of tailor it a bit more and handle it a bit more. So I was just like, you know what? I'm gonna take a 30 day break from everything. And I got to the end of 30 days and I'm like, I'm just gonna nuke it. Nuked everything and started fresh. Now with Twitter, why I wanted to start fresh was I felt that my life had changed from when I was an elite athlete. And so the people in that group knew me in one aspect of my life. And I was like, you know what? I just want to start small with people that I can relate to and relate to me. And I really want to just build this community and get some connection in my life.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  And it's been, it's been really good for that, making me feel connected. And then the other thing, the other, I'm, I'm pretty niched down with my life, exercise, physiology, training, trying to be fit in middle age. And so I'm able to follow people that are world-class experts at helping me go where I want to go. And they'll answer my questions and engage with me. And I just, I, that's just so nuts that I can ask some guy in Helsinki about human physiology and he'll, he'll answer.

• 19:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  And, and, or there's a high school coach in Texas that's teaching me how to get my daughter to jump higher so her starts are quicker in swimming. And, and they're all just there. And you, and you can, you just put something out there and they'll like answer you within 24 hours. And, and, and I think it's, if you use it with intent, it can be a very powerful tool for learning.

• 20:09Rich Roll?

  Mindful curation. I was, we were chatting before the podcast and I was saying that I probably follow too many people and you know, culling is probably in order for me right now. But for some reason, the algorithm, when I open up that app the first time each day, it's basically posts from you, from Alan Cousins, from Steve Magnus and from Brad Stolberg.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  So that's like my initial hit every time, which is positive and always kind of directional, you know, in a positive way. And so it really is about like how you're managing it. And that is, you know, your own responsibility.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  It is. And, and that's In any situation, one of the things I ask myself is, you know, well, there's two things. It's like, what's my role here? And what am I trying to, what's my purpose? And, and I think when we run into situations where we feel like we're getting a bit stressed out, we've lost track of those two things, the role and sort of what we're trying to get out of it.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, let's take it back to the kind of life story aspect of this.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  We jumped right to Hong Kong, but

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Let's go way back.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Let's go way back. I mean, you grew up in Vancouver, right?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:25Rich Roll?

  But were you an athlete as a kid?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  Not at all?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  So I'm reading, reading about you setting summer league records. And that's what my kids do now. They set summer league records. But I didn't have that childhood. My memory, if I'm thinking about myself in elementary school, I'm kind of chubby. I played badminton, you know, I ate donuts.

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  I was not a, I was not an athlete, didn't think of myself as an athlete until Ultraman, which we'll get to in time. And just really, actually, I have this memory of kindergarten or something, when I was like that age, that five or six, and I got some sort of report card. And they told me that in the report card, it said gross motor deficient. And I didn't even know what that meant. And, and I, and I asked

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  I can't believe you remember that.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Well, it was deficient, you know, and gross. It sounded like so big, like such a big deal. And it just meant I was really awkward, you know, didn't, wasn't very coordinated. And I was like, oh, it's deficient. And then we lived in Boston for a couple of years. My dad was going to school. And they tried to, I don't even remember hockey, but they tried to get me to play hockey. And I couldn't, like, I couldn't skate. And, and so then they put me in net and, you know, tried, well, maybe we can make him a goalie, you can just stand there. But I couldn't do that either. So then they just had to, we just had to stop. And so I was a kid that didn't have any real athletic stuff. And then I was always the youngest in the year. And I grew kind of normally, but everybody was always

• 23:00Speaker 01

  bigger than me. And that, that worked itself out by the end of high school. So my, my final year, I was 17 when I graduated. And I was just starting to get an inkling of kind of my physical capacity. And then, yeah, and didn't play any real

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I played football in high school and figured that out by the end. And then in university, I was not a walk on at a national class.

• 23:30Rich Roll?

  You go to school in Montreal for college.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, which was great.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I loved it. I would have stayed there if I could have, if worked in French, but I'm an English speaker.

• 23:42Rich Roll?

  Right. So where does the finance thing come in then?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  So the finance is my degree. So I gotta do it. Oh, well, let's go way back. So I'm a kid, not really good at anything, but I'm very good at math. And then I'm good at math, I'm good at chemistry, anything that's kind of formula driven where you can kind of, if it's black and white, I'm really good at it as a kid. So my dad was, my dad was in finance and I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll track into something similar to him. So I go to McGill and do my finance degree there, do some economics as well. The economics degree, I mean, other than intro to economics, the economics degree was not particularly useful,

• 24:29Speaker 01

  as it turned out, when I went out in the real world, but the business degree in the finance side was pretty useful. And I get an opportunity to do a two month, kind of like internship over in London. And I didn't know it, but the desk they gave me, the guy that was sitting there before me, it had a nervous breakdown because he was working so hard.

• 24:54Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  So they, so I roll in.

• 24:56Rich Roll?

  Foreshadowing.

• 24:59Rich Roll?

  This is your life.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  I roll in.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Kind of like a Dickensian kind of way.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, the life.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  And I'm just really into it. I'm enjoying it. And I, the guy that works right beside me.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  A guy called Alan Haight, he's, he's really good at his job. And we hit it off and he kind of takes me under his wing and he teaches me everything. And because I'm good at the Excel and the math and all that and the accounting, I'm able to learn pretty quick. And so there's six partners in our group and me and Alan. And we, we just do a lot of case studies. And this is 1990 in London. I think interest rates were like 15% and we're doing leveraged buyouts and stuff. And it's really difficult the first year, but interest rates start coming down. And everybody's been beat up. There's been a recession and stuff.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And so all of a sudden we, we start doing deals and I just get an opportunity to do a ton of work for three years. And I end up, I'm in London for four years. And in that period, I was thinking going off to business school, even applied. But then I realized I'd just be asking for my old job back. And so I decided to stay with the firm. And they set up a new operation in Hong Kong. I knew everybody in Europe. They're like, you know, I have no ties. And they're like, why don't you go out to Asia?

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  And we'll promote you. And so I'm, so what would I be? 25 years old and I'm a partner in a private equity firm, heading off to a new region. It was great.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  Right. And so during your tenure in London, what was the state of your fitness? You have that famous photo of you that kind of percolates up in the internet that I remember seeing at the very beginning of, of my journey of you. I think you're on a boat.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  You got your shirt off.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:58Rich Roll?

  That goes back to Gordo World days of you blogging and not looking so fit. Not like hugely obese. You look like a banker, you know? And I was like, that is me. Like I, I just so identified with that image of you at that time.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  So there's another picture that I wish I had saved because it was a picture of me at peak weight at an office function. And I had these big white, cause you know, you're kind of pale when you're in the UK. And I had these big white jowls. So I'm 24.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  With jowls and I'm so pale and I'm drunk and I'm having a blast. And I wish I had saved that one, but it's gone. So all I got is like front of the boat. Like, uh, kinda hairy, kinda pale.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, when you're in that state, you don't, you're not like keen on having your picture taken too often. Right? So it's like the one of me and finding Ultra, like I, I got way heavier than that. I just couldn't find any photos of it. Especially without my shirt on, you know, so.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  I found them a random through the shredder. The, so yeah, let's talk about that. That one moment I decided and I, and I got, and I have no idea why I decided to go for a walk. That was it. I just decided to go for a walk and I, and.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  Because you had some kind of base level disgust with your physical condition at the time? Or what was the inspiration for that?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Be sick of sickness is the only cure, you know? And I, I, I'm just, so I'll dial it back. Maybe I'm 23, 24. I just decided to go for a walk. And it's like, you know what? I'm gonna go for a walk. And then we decide, well, maybe we could walk to the pub. Or maybe we could walk between pubs. We'd go out to the country. So I'm still living the same life, not changing my eating, still drinking all the time. Very much that kind of banker lifestyle, but we throw in some walking. We just start by walking. And there was this, whatever it was, there was this, uh, drive or this desire in me to be just healthier, be better. And, um,

• 29:15Speaker 01

  and then I start bike commuting in London. And, and then I find out I'm going to get promoted. And I'm like, oh, I should probably clean up my act a bit because everybody dressed fancy in Hong Kong. The Brits are pretty, well, I don't know what it's like now, but back then it was pretty, you, you didn't really have to look too sharp. And, uh, I mean, some people did, but you know, they were, they were okay with kind of however, however I looked. We'd, we'd wear a tie, but it wasn't like all fancy. Whereas out in Hong Kong, everybody's wearing.

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  It's all tailored.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like tailored suits and it's more New York, the look. Or if you, if you think back to New York in, um, in the early nineties and stuff before we all kind of went casual. So I'm like, all right, gotta turn it around. And so I roll out to, I'm still not, I'm still heavy. But I'm starting to get, starting to get a bit of fitness. Haven't lost, really lost any weight. I roll out to Hong Kong and don't know anybody. Get back into lifting weights and start lifting weights. Again, start hiking. Hiking leads to maybe a little bit of jogging, jog the downs.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  And then I decide to climb Kumanjaro. Out of the blue.

• 30:34Rich Roll?

  Where did that come from?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I was probably, you know, I always loved reading climbing books. And I had some friends that before there was ever these really nice indoor climbing gyms. The YWCA in Kowloon in Hong Kong took a squash court. And they just drilled holds into the walls. And we used to go over there and climb. And then we'd run after work. So like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, say you do the squash court thing. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, you do a run on Tuesday, Thursday, and then you go for a long hike on Saturday. So the week, that's kind of what the week looked like.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  And it was a group of guys and they were all ultra runners, but I wasn't at their level. So I could do the shorter stuff with them and then kind of hike on my own on the weekends. But over time, you know, I build it up and I, and I start getting more fit. And then when I do these little trips, I do day trips in Asia. So Semeru is a volcano in Indonesia. And I just flew in, climbed it in a long weekend. I was back at my desk on Tuesday. Kinabalu, Borneo, near Kota Kinabalu, that's the airport you fly into. I think it's 4100 meters. These are big, you know, big kind of days.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  But it's not, not too, not technical. It's just hiking. And I, and I noticed that the mountaineering, I just love it.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  One of the things about anybody that gets into ultra distance is that we experience exercise differently than many people. So my internal experience of exercise, something is happening in my neurochemistry, which is different than the average person.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  So talk about that a little bit more.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  I get high. I mean, that's the only way to describe it. I'm buying the kombucha in Whole Foods this morning. Checkout guy says, hey, man, you look really, really happy. You look really good. And I was like, well, I spent the whole morning exercising. And it just gives off a vibe. And it's, you know, and I felt, so this feeling, it's coming to me in the mid 90s, in my 20s, and it builds.

• 33:10Rich Roll?

  Right. But what's so cool is that it is this really slow, percolating progression that begins with a walk, right? And then years later, it's like, okay, I'm gonna hike this mountain. But this is over quite an extended period of time. You trying to wrestle with like, what is my relationship to physical activity and my body and the direction of my life?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so how'd I end up in Traphalan? So I'm married, I'm married for one year, okay? My wife goes and sees a fortune teller. And the fortune teller says, your husband's gonna die in the mountains. So she comes home, she says, hey, fortune teller told me you were gonna die in the mountains. And I'm like, oh, that's kinda unfortunate, cuz I got an expedition to climb Denali coming up.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Anyhow, so she gets the, she gets that. And so I'm like, you know what? And it's like, you know, with mountaineering, it's like, good, great, dead. That's your general progression. And I was like, okay, well, you know, there's probably a chance because I was doing some business stuff and they wanted to do a life insurance policy. And I answered the questionnaire honestly. Right. And they tripled my premium. Premium. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm in good health. And at this stage, I'm not even 30 years old. They're like, sorry, that's, that's just what it says. And so it's these things. So I was like, you know what? I'll just let it go. And so I'm on this bulletin board before we had all this internet stuff. And everybody's talking about this thing called IMC. And I've got no idea what IMC is. And so I researched, I find out it's Ironman Canada.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So I know I can do a 13 hour summit day. And, but I don't know how to swim and I don't have a bike in Hong Kong. But I was just, I'm like, you know what? I'll figure it out. So I, I sign up. And this was back where you could just sign up. So, but it's not like your story with six months to Ultraman or whatever it was. This was one year to an Ironman. And this would have been, I was just about to turn 30. And I start going to masters and I get myself a triathlon bike. And Troy Jacobson. And Troy Jacobson is my first coach.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  And the piece of paper would roll off the fax machine every Sunday or Monday or whatever. This is your plan for the week. That was back then. It just, the piece of paper comes out and that's what you do in that week. And he gets me through my first Ironman. But on the way, you know, I know nothing. And so I'm. And did this supplant the Denali expedition? No, I got, I got. You scrapped that? No. You went and did it. I did. Return, didn't die. But that was. Marriage doesn't work out. But, you know, at least you, you summited Denali. Well, so, so in that first Ironman year, that's my marriage year. That's the, so the, so, and, and we'll get to an interesting story. I want to talk about the race. There's something similar to your experience.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  So the, so we, we, so I'm, I'm, I'm training, I get the bike, but there's all this stuff with triathlon that I, that kind of scare me, like, you know, the open water, you know, I got no background with swimming and oh, the first race I did, I was second to last out of the water. The last guy was 80 and it was me. And so that it was a, it was a sprint try and I had stapled my race number like through my bike jersey to my run jersey or something and I'm all like pinned up and everything. And so I get out second to last and obviously I'm passing people the, the whole day. And so I have a really good experience. I mean, being a slow swimmer in triathlons, not a, not a problem. I mean, it'd be much tougher for you.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  Cause then you have the encouragement of like passing people.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Of moving forward all day.

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  If you're a good swimmer, then you just end up getting passed for the rest of the race.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  And that was actually, I think that's part of why I was able to learn so quickly because I would move through most of the field and be able to see what's really going on. It was really helpful to me as a coach. But so one of my first triathlons, Escape from Alcatraz. So I sign up for that because I figure if you can jump off a boat in the middle of the harbor and get to shore, Lake Ogunnagan in Penticton for Ironman Canada, you're going to be good. Like, so, so I'm kind of, you overload, you just overload the system. And that, that race goes, that race goes pretty well. I mean, there was some breast stroking and a little bit of floating on my back in the harbor because I, I had a tendency to go out too fast.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  And it is, even though it's not a long swim, it's a scary swim. You're way out in the middle there. When you're like halfway and the current starts to go back out towards the bridge, it's, you're like, I'm in a shipping lane right now.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I, I love that race. I did. So I've done that race unfit, super fit. I've done the rock and roll version or whatever it was, the kind of fancy one. And then I did the original where you swim into aquatic park. It's, I, it's just such an amazing venue to race. It's just that water.

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  Pretty technical for a triathlon.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. It's just kind of up and down. A lot of surging.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Do that part where you run on the sand and then you run up the, that ladder, the, the staircase from the beach?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, sand ladder. I had a. One year I had a mustache. So there's a great picture of me somewhere.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  You can't be a triathlete in that era without rocking the mustache, at least at one point.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  So I'm all pumped up, coming up the sand ladder with a mustache on. It was, it's a great shot. I've been looking for it. I can't find it. So I do all these different races and I get to, I get to Penn Ticton. And by then I got, there's some issues in the relationship because I've been, you know, I've discovered this passion for training, whatever. So I go for a swim on race morning. And that was the last time I ever saw my wedding ring. I get out of the water. It was bizarre when I read it in your book. And I was like, wow. And I never found it. My ring is in Lake Okanagan. I don't think I ever told anybody that story.

• 39:38Rich Roll?

  Mine's somewhere off the coast of Jamaica.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  And, and, and we were separated at that stage.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So it was kind of an Iron Man widow scenario.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was, you know, it was more than that. I was a partner in private equity firm. There were some years where I, I would sleep in my bed and in Hong Kong 150 times. So we were in international business and I spent a lot of time on the road and we just, you know, we weren't together. And that was, you know, you, sometimes you got to do things wrong to learn how to do them right. And I got a great marriage now because I've, I basically do the opposite of what I did the first time. And, and it's been, it was, it was a difficult period, but you know, I think we didn't have any kids and we got out of it.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Well, so why was I, I'll tell you the story. Why was I wearing the ring? I was wearing the ring because, you know, I realized that I was going to get divorced, but I was completely committed to minimizing the damage.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  To everyone, everyone in the whole situation, including my, my ex-wife. And, and when people talk to me about divorce, I say, you know, you're gonna have a good reason to go after the other person. And when people are hurting and it's highly emotional, they might even give you that reason. Because there's a sense that they, they, they want it to be your fault. And so they want you to engage them in battle. And you, you have to be smart enough and in control enough to see past the moment and see where you're trying to get to. And where I was trying to get to was out of the marriage. And what's it gonna take to get me out of the marriage? And I don't wanna fight and I don't wanna argue about anything.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  And so I pretty much disagreed to everything and got out of it. And we were young, we, we both had great jobs. There, there wasn't, there wasn't, we could have fought, but there wasn't really anything to fight about. And so, you know, it was an emotional time, but we got, we, we got through it. We both went on with our lives. And then I had that moment on the couch where I asked myself, is, if this is it, you know, if, if, the only thing left for me on that path I was on was money. That was the only thing left for me. I, I was very good at my job. I'd done it for a decade. And I used to sit in my office with that harbor view and I'd look out and I just wanted to be out there. I wanted to be outside. I didn't wanna be in this building. And I was like, you know what?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  So every, my parents tell me I'm crazy, my grandma. I visit her, she's like, oh, you can't, you know, are you sure? And I'm like, I agree to take-

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  Was there, let me, sorry to interrupt, but like, was there a vision of what would be on the other side of that? Or was it just a sense of this is not right? And I'm not gonna be able to figure out what is right until I exit?

• 42:37Speaker 01

  The only thing that I knew that was right was leaving. I knew I had to leave. And I had no plan. So I ended up in New Zealand, but I went to far north Queensland first. I went to Australia for a month just because I had a bike sponsor there and I don't know, I just tried it out and it was okay.

• 42:56Rich Roll?

  Right. So, hold on a second. So, prior to that though, I would imagine, of course, you know, your colleagues and your peers are going to tell you, you're insane. But then there's also the argument of, look, if you're not happy here and you want to figure out something else, like stay here until you figure, like, keep one foot in here until you figure out what the next thing is. Why make the imprudent choice of just leaving? But from what I understand though, they gave you like a one-year leave of absence.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  So, first step, my boss is like, just take two months. Take two months and see what you want to do. So, he's like, he's probably thinking to himself, Gordo just needs some time. He's going to go away, come to his senses.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  He just got divorced. He needs a minute.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. We'll just let him go. So, in my two months, July, August, I start that with the escape from Alcatraz. And then I go to Boulder and I'm in the foot, I'm in the mountains above us. So, I'm living up Sugarloaf. So, I'm living with a nurse, not a girlfriend situation, it was a nurse that had a spare room. And I'm there for about six weeks doing my triathlon training. So, we've ruled, by the way, we've rolled forward now to my second season of triathlon. And it's, I'm swim, bike, run every day. I pack my car up, drive down to Scott Carpenter Pool, do my swimming, do my training. At the end of the day, I drive back up. I really enjoy that life. And so, it gave me a chance

• 44:27Speaker 01

  to train like a pro, but I'm not, I'm not a pro. I mean, by this stage, I'm kind of a fast age grouper. And I go up to Pen Ticton and I have a really good race. And I just love it. I love the whole thing about it. So, after a decade of living in these major metros doing finance, London and Hong Kong, I'm outside, I'm running in the forest. It's beautiful. It's Colorado in the summer. It's great. And so, I go back and then I negotiate the leave of absence. And so, the last time I worked. For the firm or in a desk situation. It's October 2000, say. So I go back for a couple of months and they give me a leave of absence for a year.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  They're like, you know what, you know, if you, you know, maybe come back. But it was also a way, when a partner leaves a firm, it can be a signal that there might be a problem in the firm. So, but there was no problem. I just felt like doing something else. And so it let us manage my exit as well, too. So it kind of worked out for everybody.

• 45:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  Hence begins this dive down the rabbit hole.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  That like, you know, it just is mind boggling. Like you, you go so deep into this. I mean, I don't even think any, like, were there even any pros who were as immersed in this training lifestyle that you were? And I'm interested in your mindset and what led to that. Because yes, okay, you're like an amateur triathlete. You're doing pretty good. That's a far leap from, I'm gonna just make this my entire life.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that says a little something about the ultra personality, doesn't it?

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I mean, that's, that's how I'm wired.

• 46:26Rich Roll?

  To 11 and beyond.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just, I just, I just go deep.

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  Was that driven by a sense of possibility? Like, I think I could actually win one of these races? Or was it just, let me see what I'm capable of? Like, I want to challenge myself and leave no unfinished business on the table?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  So, win one is not yet, not, not yet. So now we're, we're kind of 2000, 2001. I'm in New Zealand. I've connected with a guy called Scott Molina. Scott Molina is one of the original big four triathletes, over a hundred race wins, amazing guy, huge capacity to exercise. And my vibe then is I was born to do this. I feel like I've finally arrived at something that is me. So it's my, um, it's just my thing. That knowingness, intuition. I'm, I'm, I'm on the path and this path is my path for right then.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  The other thing is I notice when I'm doing these long rides, sometimes I'm working through all this baggage, this emotional baggage, karma, whatever you want to call it. I have, you know, this is back before we all had AirPods and, and that. And so I'm just, I'm just out there on a chip seal road, getting blasted by Kiwi winds and stuff, but I'm working through all these emotions and all this tension and everything that was in my body from all those years, sitting in a desk. And so it's very, in some ways, really therapeutic. Sure. And, uh, and it's just great. So I'm, I'm developing emotionally. I'm becoming a better person, but I don't really have anybody to interact with. Uh, other than, other than my swimming partners.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Scott Molina and the monk life, right? And like, didn't you buy a house down there for like, close to nothing, like a five bedroom house for like, almost no money? A hundred and 10,000 US. So crazy. Did you hold on to that? Uh, for a few years, yeah, it worked out. The, the, well, the, the Kiwi dollar was blown out. And you know, at the, at the, at the time, New Zealand was panicking because they thought the brain drain, they thought everybody was going to leave the country. And so, you know, I roll in and it's a hundred and 10,000 to buy a five bedroom house. And, you know, that's kind of like what my rent was in Hong Kong for, and I was like, I'm going to do this. And, and so, so then I get the idea, well, I can, you know, I can rent out a couple

• 49:00Speaker 01

  rooms and now I have, I can live for free. In Christchurch. So I'm viable. So I can just do this for a couple of years. And I only need, I only need a few coaching clients and the whole thing works. And again, not thinking forward, but my present, you know, my, my plan works. I got a sustainable life and I'm loving the training. And then I would alternate hemispheres and I just keep getting faster. So the, let's talk a bit about how I end up at Ultraman. So first, my first season, I signed up for Ironman Canada.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  And then there's, back then, there was this thing called the international. It was the first year they ever had the international lottery for Kona. And nobody knew about it, but I found out. And so I apply and I get a slot. So I'm the new guy at the triathlon swim workout. And I come in one day and I'm like, I got a slot for Kona. And everybody's like, you? And I was like, yeah, I just applied to the lottery and I got it. So I do two Ironmans in my first season. So I'm on the, I'm at the pier that October. And there's just this little flyer, a piece of paper stuck to a lamppost. And it's about Ultraman. That's how you find out about it.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  A janky flyer. What year is this? 2003? No, this is 1999. October of 99. And it's on the lamppost and I'm looking at the numbers. Like swim six miles, you know, like ride, I mean, what is it? 274 or something? For miles, it's 90 the first day and 171 the second day, I think. And then the double marathon. And I'm like, how could anybody? Right. Do that? Like, it's just so far out of my reality. And yeah, so I keep doing it. So now.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  So I get decent, you know, my Ironman times are in the low nine hours. I'm sort of, you'd either call me a really great age grouper or a slow pro or whatever. And I'm like, you know, and I'm, and I'm, and I'm loving the volume. And, and so I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna go do Ultraman. And so this is 2002 and I didn't have any expectations, but I did a lot of training. Cause I'm a, I'm a pretty seasoned Ironman athlete then and did some-

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  And just paint the picture on the volume. Because I, I'm not sure people who are listening really understand the extent of the volume that you guys were putting in, in New Zealand.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult. I mean, sure, we can talk-

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's gotta be 30, 35 hours a week.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's 35 hours a week. It's, I mean, it's 10K. I'm, so I remember the first time I ever swam 10,000 meters long course in a, in a session. And it took me, so what would that be? So, well, I'm not, I'm not as fast as you, so it probably-

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  I had to, you know, I, I grew up with it.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  So it probably took me-

• 52:18Rich Roll?

  Pick that up later in life.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Three hours and 45 minutes. And I get out of the pool and I can't move my arms. And my, my, my roommates had left me because it's 10K back to my house. And I was like, yeah, I was like, I'm gonna jog home because I'm gonna, I know for Ultraman, I'm gonna have to do it. And so I'm like jogging home, I can't get my hands up for anything. So I'm jogging home, hanging my arms. And I get home and I just go to bed. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is gonna be, this is gonna, this is gonna be a tough event. And that was the first time though. And then, then I actually did a training camp in Kona where I, I did a six mile swim in the ocean, three, from Kaua Bay.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  So from the finish, went three out, three back.

• 53:07Rich Roll?

  That's Kailua up here. Oh, three out and three back to Kaua.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  From Kaua, so not from Kailua, so from the swim exit. And that went pretty well. And then I did another 10K. And then I'm noticing, okay, I'm not really getting used to it, but I'm able to function afterwards. And so I start, you know, it turns out I got a capacity for ultra swimming. And we don't, we don't, I don't do a lot of those 10K swims because it takes so much out of me. But it'd be stuff like that, seven hour rides on Kiwi chip sealed roads. So you're getting like vibrated like crazy.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  And is this before you start doing like the, you did the thing where you went all the way across the United States?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  That's later.

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's later. And the epic camps and all of that.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 53:54Rich Roll?

  Did you, you would go like, like you would, you would go the, the north to south or south to north across New Zealand?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  We did that. We did the, we did the length of New Zealand. There was one camp where things got a little carried away. I think I might've done 85 hours of training in 12 days.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Including a marathon on the weekend that was in the middle.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  And my buddy, my training buddy, Klaus Buerling, he ran a marathon too. And he was like holding four minute Ks, like in the middle of that kind of week. And just because he could.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  And yeah, we, we did, we did a lot of volume. And we did, we actually did more volume. Well, the train, the volume was appropriate. What we, what we missed and what, what we would have been helped by was understanding recovery better. Now, nowadays with heart rate variability and the different methods people use to monitor fatigue, we ignored a lot of fatigue.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  And ignoring fatigue is, is great because you can, you can get through it. You know, if you're doing, well, you know, in the book, if you're doing. Five Ironmans in a week and you get to a rough patch in one Ironman or any one day event, you're like, this is just a patch. This is just a moment.

• 55:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, mentally, it's great.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  You're gonna just blow through it.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  For knowing that you can get through stuff.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  So we used to take these regular athletes that were good and we'd take them and we'd put them through the wringer for like eight to 12 days and then they would go back to their races and they'd be at a whole new mental level because it was just a moment and they don't have like the next five days hanging over them or anything. It's like, I just, I just gotta get through this moment and this day's gonna be done before I know it. So that was, that was one of the things. I had a moment similar to your moment. I think it was in Maui where I got so tired that all of a sudden it just left me and tired, you just have this feeling of total acceptance and you're gonna, you're just gonna

• 56:05Speaker 01

  keep moving, you know, and you go beyond the fatigue. The fatigue loses its emotional value or content for you and you just, you just learn how to kind of keep rolling. And those, those are useful skills, but those skills can also get you into trouble in a sense. I mean, both Kloss and I had issues with overtraining.

• 56:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Kloss was sick for three years.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I remember that. That was kind of like in, you know, a pretty, that was a big story. Like he just couldn't, he was, he had such a massive engine and capacity, but he just flamed out from doing too much.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  And nobody could figure out what was wrong. He saw so many doctors and then he connected with one doctor in, I think it was the Bay Area and he had a mold infection. He had Epstein Barr and he had one other thing going on. And this doctor helped him get his health back and then he came back at a very high level. He won Ironman Kalmar. He went really fast in Roth. So he was able to get back, but when he, when he came back, he never went that deep. Again, in training, having learned the lesson. And I think we, I think the athletes from that era and from Molina's era before us,

• 57:21Speaker 01

  we, we took a lot of risks with our health that these days, some risks are necessary, but you can take them much more intelligently as a, as a long distance athlete.

• 57:30Rich Roll?

  You can pinpoint those moments more precisely. When to choose to go deep and when it's best to ease off the gas a little bit.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Well, and, and something, you know, that I, I took 10 years off to raise my family and I come back and, and I'm wondering, is there, is there a need for my voice? And a lot of the issues we're talking about are the exact same issues. They just have different brand names now in nutrition and stuff. But something that is new now is this concept of dynamic loading. So you're going to load yourself when your body is ready to adapt rather than chuck a bunch of load at the athletes and the fittest are going to survive, which is very much the way it was done back in the day, at swimming particularly. You have this super wide pyramid. We're going to throw a ton of work at everybody and whoever comes out the top, we've weeded everybody else out.

• 58:19Rich Roll?

  It's just a roulette wheel. I mean, it was insane. I, I came up in that era and it's just volume beyond, right? And then you just roll the dice on a two week taper and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. And that's kind of it, right? And the training now, like we just, I talked about this on the podcast before, but we just saw the world championships in Budapest and you see 17 year old kids putting in performances that just to me are unfathomable. And when you're 17, like how many years of real training have you even had at that point, right? The training is so different. Like they've really figured out a new approach and methodology that is, you know, miles beyond kind of what it used to be like.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  And the athletes out, if you're an athlete listening to this, you need to learn about dynamic loading. You need to learn about heart rate variability. You need to learn about assessing your readiness, your active readiness. You can, you can tell if your body's ready to load. And you can learn from your errors. You can actually see how you're adapting to the load. You can see when you're not adapting to the load. You know, back in the day, I used to go out and do a seven hour training day and then I go send a email off to Molina and say, hey, my heart rate was a little low today. And I've just put myself further in the hole. Whereas today, I would wake up, I would have my readiness test, I would

• 59:44Speaker 01

  look at my overnight metrics and my morning metrics and I'd be like, hey, this is not a day to go do something like that. And so you get a much better response to your training. You still do the work. You still have to do a ton of work, but the idea is you do the work when you're ready to adapt.

• 1:00:01Rich Roll?

  Right. And the good news is you just published a blog post on this called Dynamic Loading Via Daily Readiness Assessments. It's like a classic Gordo blog post. And if you think it's just about checking your Oura ring or your Whoop score in the morning, oh no. This goes way deeper than that.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  It goes way deeper.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  I was like, do I need a PhD to understand this blog post?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Well, here's the other thing. So who do I relate to in sport? I relate to practitioners. The people, because I've done it. So I relate to other people who have done it. So John Hellemans in New Zealand, Scott Molina, athletes, coaches, doctors, practitioners, people who have done it. I speak the same language as them. So this Active Readiness blog you talk about, it came to me because there's a Swedish speed skater called Niels, who broke the world record for the 5K and the 10Ks, the world champion, gold medal. Now, Niels has

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  a coach called Johan. And Johan has something in common with you and me. He's done an Ottilo, which is this epic. Swim run event where you go down the Archipelago in the Baltic. And so after Niels breaks the world record, he writes his manifesto. And he's probably 25 years younger than me. So not, not quite old enough to be my grandkid, but definitely, you know, it's kind of like a generation removed. So anyhow, so before I read the manifesto, how to win a 10K.

• 1:01:44Rich Roll?

  And we should just say, let me just interject quickly. Sorry to interrupt, but this manifesto that you're about to describe, if you're like in on endurance Twitter, like this just lit the internet on fire. Like, everybody was reading this and dissecting it. It was a, it was a big story. We've talked about it on the podcast before. It was like some kind of Bible has now been, you know, kind of divinely delivered upon us with the answer to how to achieve great endurance.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's how to skate dot S E. If you're an endurance athlete, you need to read it. And if you want to talk about it, just at me on Twitter, because I love, I love it. So, you know, after they break the world record, this tweet just appears from Johan saying to Alan and me, it's just like, hey, I just want you to know, I read your guys' stuff 20 years ago, and it really helped me.

• 1:02:37Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that's cool.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  But get this, Niels is from a small town in Sweden called Trollhotten. Trollhotten is where a guy called Bjorn Anderson grew up. Bjorn's one of my training partners from way back, along with Colting and Bierling.

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  Just a beast on the bike.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Total beast. So like, he had the most amazing legs I've ever seen in my life. He had VO2 like above 80, mid 80s, just an amazing. Specimen, superhuman specimen. And so this little town in Sweden kicks out these two superhumans, Niels and Björn. And Niels writes the manifesto. So I read the manifesto and this is it. This is, so what they did was they took everything from my ultra days, from my Ironman days that I learned from Molina, they took it and they made it better. And how did they make it better? They made it better with radical recovery. This concept where they take the two days off. So five days of loading. So you take a whole week of elite cycling and you pack it into five days.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  And then for two days, you just chill and you do it over and over and over. And you get more and more aerobically fit, like just amazing fitness. And then they, then they put together their, the threshold preparation and then they do the specific prep to break the record. It's an amazing story, but the back also has three years of daily training logs in it. And so, you know, you dig into it. And so for somebody like me, it's just a goldmine. I'm just like looking and he's totally honest. Like he's, he gets wrecked and he has to take a week off and then he goes and does some sort of ultra race and then he has to take another week off. I mean, like, so he kind of breaks all the rules in the early days, but then he connects with Johan and they figure it out. And it's just, it's just an amazing story because you know, then obviously you get the medal, you break the record, it has a happy ending.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  And so, so I see this and I was just, I was so inspired, but there was a little piece of me that felt sad because I was there, I was doing the work. I was, I was doing the work and I was like, oh, that was it, the recovery. So I'm like, well, it's not too late. You know, I mean, I'm still alive. And so what I've done is, and there's a series of blogs about it, as a, now as a 53 year old. Father of three, I'm sort of, I'm like, you know what? Let's see if these principles still work on my body. And so that's what I'm working on now. That's, that's my project.

• 1:05:10Rich Roll?

  And you're working with Johan as your coach.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's just the best part is, is the ability to, to, to, to connect and really go full circle with Johan and help him with his preparations. So, you know, we're, we're taking a speed skater or we're, we're turning him in. In a sense, I'm trying to help him with the swimming. One of the neat things about when you're working kind of elite to elite or coach to coach is you already know how to train. You know, your body really well. And so it's, I, I like to think of it more as a, we're like technical consultants to each other. So we sort of speak the same language and we have this, we have this basis of respect for work. And so he's, he's helping me with some of my blind spots, which is recovery. So obviously if you're training at Niels's level and you don't get the recovery right, you totally nuke yourself. So, but same deal with me.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  You know, I'm, I'm older, I don't recover as well. And so we're trying to put those principles together and then we're also trying to learn and, and trying to make this whole adaptive loading. So we get better loading into the bodies and we get a better result.

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  And by documenting it all and doing the math like you love to do, hopefully there are deeper and greater insights that can be canonized for everybody else.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and here's another thing. It's a form of self-hypnosis. So one of the things about athletic performance is that the more you believe in your plan, the better it works. So, yeah. I mean, whatever plan I have at any stage of my life, I always believe it's the best plan or I have to change it. And so it's, it's very much, I mean, yeah. I, I mean, my friends laugh at me because they're like, yeah, you always think you're right, dude.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  What is the plan for like, what is the, you know, in what direction are you headed right now?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Well, that's the beauty of it. The, my, my account on Training Peaks is always asking me like, what's your race? You know, what's your event? And eventually I got sick of it asking me, so I just said, get fit. And, and the, the date was my 57th birthday. And I'm just trying to get fit. And so, and this gives me a huge advantage because I have nothing hanging over my head. I have no reason to rush. And so I can just do it right and enjoy the process and see what happens and share it with people. And I'm, and really, what am I, I'm living my next book. I'm, I'm living it and I'm blogging it and I'm sharing it with people and what I learn.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  I'm just putting it out in the world. And so it's just a whole experience. And, and one of the, the best, you don't need a, you don't need a race to be winning. You know, you can just, you can just go out and live it. And it's just been so engaging for me to be back into it. And then you get all the positive neurochemistry from base training. If you, if you, if you actually ask endurance athletes, especially ultra endurance athletes, the part they like, the part they love, it's the base training. It's the easy training outside when there's no pace pressure and you're not trying to achieve anything, or you don't have to hit any splits and you can just enjoy it.

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you feel that fitness in your legs when you hit a climb, but you're keeping it all, you know, dialed to a certain exertion level so that it's fun. And you're not walking around like a zombie all the time. That's the part that I really don't want in my life anymore.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  So the 5'2", it's great. And my, and my, and my readiness metrics, if I'm not, I've set up a system where I can't put myself in the hole. It just becomes obvious. You know, my HRV for training app turns yellow and I don't want it to turn red on me. So I gotta back off and, and just so people, if they're not familiar with the app, it checks some stuff going on with your heart, your heart rate variability, your morning resting heart rate. And before, before it tells you to stop, it kind of gives you a yellow light, this, this yellow thing. And, and then I've got my other metrics and I, I just have to back off. And then even if I have a great five days and normally, you know, back in the day, I'd try and just keep it going.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  I gotta shut it down. So you never get too tired. And, and I think it, it strikes me as a, as a neat experiment. The other thing is I talk about it with serious athletes and they say, oh, you know, it sounds good, but I don't think that's for me. And, and I, I was that athlete when I was elite and there's a, a guy called Hunter Kemper. He used to take Sundays off and we thought he was nuts because he was giving us a day, you know, like one, one extra day of training. And, and so he, he was radical then and then Neil comes, does the hardest training I've ever seen in my life and he's taking two days off a week. And you're thinking, well, if it works for him, how about just a more regular guy, you know, some, some guy in his 50s, it's probably, probably going to work okay for me.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  So that, that's where I got the idea from.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  There's certainly no cost. If you can break a world record, 10K skate on two days off a week. I mean, I, I don't know how anybody else could justify that it's going to hold them back.

• 1:10:27Rich Roll?

  Right, right. But isn't there an argument that what he is doing in those five days becomes so superhuman? I mean, he's putting in like just massive amounts of work into those five days.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  So the argument would be, wouldn't it be better if you spread that out over six days?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  I would say come and watch because what I'm doing is I'm compressing my modest week into five days. So I'm giving myself a, my five day dose is pretty good. Last five days was 20 hours of training in five days for, you know.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  That's a lot.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  That's a lot. And it's compressed and so you you get this overload. But the idea is it's overload you can manage. And I think that's part of the reason why it works. I I don't necessarily think the radical part's actually in the training. I think the radical part's in the recovery. I think there's there's something about because you end up. If you actually look at how many hours you get off in the in the two day, it it ends up being like 60 hours. And that's actually and and Niels talks about it in the manifesto. He talks about this hormonal reset. And so you come into each cycle really craving training in a sense. So there's there's probably something physiological going on. Here's another thing I want to put out there for people, too. Another change I've made.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  I'm I'm heavy. And I know you said I look fit when when we met.

• 1:11:48Rich Roll?

  You look very fit.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  I I am.

• 1:11:49Rich Roll?

  You don't look heavy at all.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  OK, well, I'm about I'm about 170 pounds. OK, now, if I was an elite runner on my frame, I'd probably want to go down to 158. And as an elite Ironman athlete, I used to like to get down to about 163. OK. I think there's and one of the things Niels. He was when he was in his base training, he was he was about 11 pounds heavier than race weight. OK, and that was about the biggest swing that I would have. And when I was at my absolute strongest and doing my biggest training, I was relatively heavy and I felt like it was a disadvantage back then. So that's a change I've made.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  I've made a conscious decision to be a little heavy and not to be in this situation where I'm always trying to cut weight or in a in a bit of a slight energy deficit and stuff. And I think this also helps recovery. So when you're doing these five day overloads or whatever overload people are using, if you're a little heavy, a little heavier, and you talk about your avocado sandwiches a lot in the book.

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I I've, you know, I think there's a lot of disorder to eating, especially in triathlon, and there is this obsession with power to weight and being as lean as possible. And I think there is something to be said for for being lean to a certain extent on race day. But during the heavy training, you know, what is the downstream impact on your hormones, for example? You know, how are you able to absorb the training when you are like paper thin at that point? And I've made that mistake when I went to. Ultraman in 2011, I was like 158. It was the skinniest I'd ever been and I ended up getting a respiratory infection and DNFing. Like I couldn't, you know, I couldn't handle it.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  So Klaas and I, when we both went over the edge, we had been very lean for a very long time. And the toughest part about it is, it feels great. So the stress hormones associated with being underweight, combined with the high intensity training, it feels good. So you feel great, right up until the moment where you're done. And so, carrying a little bit of extra weight, I think you get a better adaptation from the training, but I also think it de-risks the lifestyle quite a bit. Like, and, and, but it goes

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  against the mindset and it goes against a lot of the positive feedback that the ultra community gives each other. But I don't have anybody to impress. I don't have a race coming up, happily married to my wonderful wife, and we're good, you know? And so if I'm, you know, if I'm built more like a fireman and an elite triathlete now, it's cool. She's okay with it. So I don't have any real pressure with that. So I want to put that out there. And, because you know, the fastest man in the world right now, he might not necessarily be the skinniest athlete. Molina used to say the same thing, too. He used to say, look, if it was all about weight, they'd have scales instead of finish lines.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  But it's a mindset thing for us in this community. And it's, it's, there's just something about that being greyhound lean, that just feels great. But I don't think it works. And in the sense I think-

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  If you look at Christian Blumenfeld, he doesn't look like that.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  He's great. He looks very powerful and also they know performance. I mean, we should all be paying a lot of attention. And you think back to some of the great athletes over time, great cyclists, people that were able to do some amazing training. Their physiology was like a stockier physiology. And if you're a recreational athlete or even a very serious amateur athlete, I would say, you know, you're probably going to get a better result rolling it a little heavier. And it's, and it's, and the reality is it's a little heavier, but the way it's going to feel to you is a lot heavier. Like I feel gigantic right now, but you know, just because it's just the mindset thing.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  You have that endurance athlete mindset.

• 1:16:02Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, let's get back to, we're still talking about Ultraman, your Ultraman race.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it was so life-changing experience. It really was. It was, it was, it was, um, my brother was there and he was kind of my crew chief.

• 1:16:20Rich Roll?

  And this was 2002?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  2002 is when it went well. And, and so we line up and I'm heading out on the swim and I come out first. So the like, the training works. So I come out, I'm leading the race and I treat it like a one day race. I just hit the bike as hard as I can. And, cause I know I'm going to be okay. I've done a lot of volume and I'm like, at least I'll win day one. And I do. And, and it goes great. And our course is different that year. That was when you start and finish every day in Kona. So we don't go around.

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Rich Roll?

  So you didn't go up, you didn't have the volcano climb.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  I would have loved that, but didn't have it because they were trying a new thing. Might've been something to do with permits or maybe there was an issue with the red road being closed back then because of a bit of lava flows or something. So we, so it goes great. And then day two, it's basically you ride out to Javi on the Ironman course. You go over the Kohalas, then you drop down Far Side of Waimea Saddle, turn around, come back, take the upper highway and then drop into Kailua. Uh, so I just, I, I think we all, it's not draft legal, so we got to space it out. We spaced it out, get a few gaps and I just, I just wait until the climb. And then I just full gas up the Kohalas, just ride away from everybody. And that, that was kind of it.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  I had a bit of a, a low spot around a hundred miles. And, uh, but I was far enough ahead that nobody noticed, but I was actually riding with my feet out of my shoes for a while, um, because my feet hurt so much. But then I got through it and, uh, won that day. And then, so Melina reaches out to me and he's like, okay, so you can win this thing now. And what you gotta do is the only way they're gonna beat you is if they convince you to start fast on the marathon. So you gotta promise me that you're gonna not do that. Because you know, like, cause he knows this is big for me.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Like this, this, and, and so I, I follow, I'm, I'm good at following his advice. And I go out and sure enough, they kind of take off and, uh, Who was the big runner that year? Uh, Fink. Don Fink, I think, was one of the guys that was off. Tony was off the front too, I think. And there is, but it wasn't, wasn't like trying to, it wasn't like trying to run with Peter Cotlin or something like, Cotlin wasn't right. Yeah. I mean, that guy, he'd go like 520 or something like that. So it was, but they, they take off. And so I, I just let them go. I do my thing cause I got a cushion from the two days. And then I, and I just, and I run and it gets really hard.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  There's a picture of me, we went into the, did you go into the energy lab on the way back?

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so we go.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  We started Havi and go straight. So if you're starting in Kona, are you running up to Havi?

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:19:32Rich Roll?

  Start in Havi.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  We, we go halfway out to the lava fields.

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  Out and back.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  But on the way back.

• 1:19:38Rich Roll?

  You go into the energy.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  You gotta go in the energy lab with about, I don't know, 40 miles in your legs or something. And it's so hot coming out. So there's a picture of me at the final turnaround, which is the Ironman turnaround in the energy lab. And I got these baby blue tri shorts on, but, but I'm bleeding, right? And I don't know it because the saddle sores and all the chafe and everything. So I got these two like lines of blood, kind of like on, on the front. I'm so gone and you got no idea like how wrecked you are. And they were giving me mile splits and then they go to half mile splits. And then what I didn't know was I was going so slow that my brother told them just to lie to me about my splits because I was so out of it.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  But he, he knew I was going fast enough to win the thing. So he's like, we're, we're just going to give them the same split. And so it was good. He got me through. And then, you know, there's that magic point. You're 5K from home and you realize you can walk it in and still win the race. And then you start feeling a bit better and kind of stagger in. So I didn't, at the time I was happy to win, but I didn't realize what that race would do to me at the time. Molina just said, hey, enjoy the sunset, enjoy the moment. You're not going to have many moments like this in your life. And, and what happened though, is after this childhood and this, this life in finance, I, it was like a rebirth. I saw myself as an athlete from there on in.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  And that was when I realized I could win an Ironman. When I, when I won that race and it completely changed my identity as a person. And ever since that day, I've thought of myself as an athlete. And so it was a, it was, it was a transformative experience.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  There is something really unique and special about that race. And I remember you saw it first time on a flyer. I read an article in like competitor magazine or something like that. And I think it was the year that, that, that Goggins had done it, but. I vividly recall the way in which the race was described, which was that it was this like spiritual odyssey, right? Like, yes, it's a race, it's a world championship. And I think it was maybe Jane Bakas who was quoted in saying like, but the most important thing is that everybody who endures this experience, athletes and their crew members are transformed in the process of traversing the island. And that really spoke to me. It was like that.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  When I read that, I was like, that's what I'm looking for. I'm trying to, I'm trying to transform my life. Like, this is a vehicle or a catalyst for that. And I think there is something really powerful about that island and the configuration of that race that is conducive to that. And I know lots of people whose lives have been transformed in different ways, but for it to provoke this epiphany in you. I mean, obviously, winning is no small thing. But I think it's more than just winning that race. It's like that place and that specific race, that location, that course, the kind of community aspect of what is entailed in doing that thing is really unique.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  There's a picture on the internet of David coming out of the water. And it's the same swim finish line. And I look at that picture and I feel connected to him. And it's the most wild, powerful feeling to be connected to somebody like that through the race. And I think everybody that's done that race, we all share a connection. And it's just, it was just a wonderful experience. So let's talk about the power of the island.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  So that year, when I win it, I come out of the, I'm leading the swim. I come out and I'm trying to empty my goggle. And what I don't know is I've been stung by a jellyfish, my eyes swollen shut. And I'm terrified because I think they're going to pull me from the race. And I get to my bike and I just, I'm like, I had to get out of here. Like before the docs pull me from the race or something because I got hit by the jellyfish. And it wasn't too bad that year. I ride and after about 45 minutes or so, moving the body clears the toxins and I'm good to go. But the next year off magic sands, I swim through the jellyfish and I go into anaphylactic shock and I nearly die.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  And I get picked up by a boat and they, they drive me to the pier and they lay me on the pier. The ambulance is coming, but they got to get back out to the race in case something goes down with somebody else. And so I'm just lying there sweating like crazy when the ambulance rolls up. And they take, take me to the hospital and I'm getting a lot of attention and that there's 10 people around me. And I can't see myself, but I'm like going full, full shock. And, and for days afterwards, every time I would come off the meds, I'd, I'd start swelling up again and stuff. So we don't know kind of what happened, but that was the end of my open water.

• 1:24:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  My ocean swimming career. And that was the end, that was, that was the end of Ultraman for me.

• 1:24:57Rich Roll?

  Uh, Madame Pele in the island had decided, you've had enough.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:01Rich Roll?

  You got your victory, time for you to move on to something else.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  And I knew, you know, I know this story, but I, I didn't know it was that serious or that bad. Like I thought, yeah, how, how bad could it have been? He got sunburned, he went to the hospital, now he won't go in the ocean anymore, like.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  So my, so I, so I swam through and immediately I feel it's like a huge chemical burn. And my paddler says to me, well, you'd be all right, you know, like, cause the year before we swam through it. And I'm like, no, you need to get, you need to get me to a hospital now. And so it's like right angle and he's powering into magic sands. And then the boat picks up and then we're in the boat and they're like, hey, how you doing? You good? And I was like, you need to call an ambulance. I need to get to a hospital now. Like I have this feeling inside me that things are going wrong very quickly. And so I knew, I knew that it was, it was over at that stage. And so I talked to the doctor, the ER doc, and I was sort of like, all right, well, you know, if you had to.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  If you had to give it marks, how would you score my reaction? She said, well, one is not a problem. Ten's dead, you are nine. You can't go back in the, you can't go back in the ocean again. And, and that was it. Now, there happens to be one place in the world where I can actually swim. And that's Bora Bora because it's a lagoon and the way the wind blows, I'm good. So I did some training there for a TLO. Long, open water, swimming with my wife. So I have done a little bit of ocean swimming, but you know, it's like EpiPen around and you gotta be really careful.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  So what happens when, uh, when you're swimming in the Stockholm Marcapella?

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  Oh, you know that story?

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  And no, I don't know that I know. I don't know the story. All I know is my experience doing it, there's jellyfish everywhere. Now, these jellyfish don't sting, but they are ubiquitous. I mean, everywhere throughout that, that entire day, just thousands and thousands of jellyfish swimming around you.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Koltig and I are doing the race and by this time I'm, uh, we're, we're doing the race. We're leading the race. He's in a, he's, he's a phenomenal athlete.

• 1:27:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  It's everything I, I got to stay on his feet. I mean, I, I might've led, I don't know, 200 meters of the 15K swimming we did.

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  That goddamn guy is so damn handsome and good at sports. It's ridiculous.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  My friend, Justin Dara says it's how a man should be. I mean, he's, if you were gonna, well, I mean, he's the Nordic god, isn't he? I mean, he really is. It's like something out of mythology. He's tall, he's strong, he's athletic. So it's this little bay, it's this little track and, uh, you know, he goes in and he's off. I go in, there's jellyfish everywhere.

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  And there's just nowhere, and so there's just nowhere to go. So I was just like, all right, well, this is it, this is it. And I just started swimming through all the jellyfish and I'm not getting stung. I'm good. So it was, it worked out, but it was, it was definitely a big.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  Psychologically, you know, freaking you out.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  Well, and I had had it in New Zealand too. I had a, did a half Ironman race and I figured I'd be good because it was cold water. It wasn't like the blue bottles that had got me, the Hawaiian box jellyfish. But it was, I was, I had a real tough time on that swim, just trying to stay calm because the jellyfish are all going through, you're having a little bit of a flashback, but I got past the whole thing.

• 1:28:32Rich Roll?

  I think the most impressive race that you've done is, is winning Otillo. Like the fact that you weren't, you didn't grow up as a swimmer and you were able to like compete at that level in that race. I was so humbled in my experience doing that. Like the minute the gun went off and we started, like we jumped into the water and got to the end of the first, you know, swim, I realized like, oh, I haven't prepared for this race properly at all. Like I have no idea what I'm doing. And just got my ass kicked and held, held back like the entire day. I just felt terrible about the whole thing.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Well, we were, we were, we were lucky. We were a very well-balanced team. So I was just fit enough to stay on his feet. And he was really driven at the beginning of the race. And then in the early days, some of the people weren't all that happy the race was going on. And we were so far out in front, we, we got lost on the long run. And so we ended up, I think it's supposed to be, I don't know, I think it's supposed to be like a 20K run or something down the big island.

• 1:29:38Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, there's that half marathon, like two thirds of the way.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we ended up banging out 30K because we got lost and another team got in front of us. And so we get lost because somebody pulled the flagging off. Colting flags down a postman with one of those European bikes that you see like in old paintings. And they start, he's telling this guy his tale of woe, like we got lost, it's not my fault. It's all happening in Swedish. It's like, how do we get back? And so the postman knows the way. So he gets us back and then we find out we're down to the Swedish Special Forces team or whatever it is. And so we, it's like, we gotta get moving. And as triathletes, you know, a long run is probably the only, you know, is a good spot to kind of catch up.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  So we just crush ourselves and we can, we can see them when we get to, when we get to the water and we just, we, we just reel them in, reel them in, reel them in. The last run, the short run, we come out of the water together. With this team and Colting locks up as soon as he stands up. And I'm just like, I mean, you lock up after like seven hours. I mean, that could be it.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  That last run up to the finish line?

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  The hill.

• 1:30:51Rich Roll?

  Just straight uphill?

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Not that one. So there's a little roller though, that you go over before you go down and then run up to the finish line. So he, he's locking up. So I get in behind him and I, I push him as hard as I can to the, to the top of the hill. He gets to the top of the hill. He's not cramping anymore and he's gone. I was like, hey bud, you gotta wait. I can't keep up. And so we, we end up winning. I mean, once, once we gapped the guys, they, they sort of shut it down a little bit. So we end up winning by three minutes or something. But like, I didn't know this, but Colting had like booked like good morning Sweden or something for the next morning because he, he was, he was pretty confident that like we were going to have a good day.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  And so it was all unraveling for him like in the middle. And then it comes back. And so we have this, it was just such a great experience because we, we feel like the days lost, were lost. And then we have to chase up and then we managed to, to win it at the end. And it was, it was a really phenomenal day. And the geography and the nature of that race, just in and out of the water and just being outside all day. It, that was the best day or one of the best days of my entire life. I mean, it's definitely top 10. It was just so great. And the preparation, so in terms of being ready for the swim, I was prepared.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  So I had done a, a ton of swim run. I had done a lot of very challenging five mile swim sets, open water. We'd be doing open water towel drags, open water medley, all kinds of stuff to get our, get ourselves ready for the ocean and just have that strength endurance. And then it, it helps to have Colting along because you, you really do feel like he got a shot. So your motivation's pretty high.

• 1:32:35Rich Roll?

  And he knows the course and he's been doing it forever. And he's sort of the prince at that race. But we should probably point out for people that are listening who have no idea what we're talking about. Otillo is the world championships of something called Swim Run. It's a race that's held annually in the archipelago of islands off the coast of Stockholm. It's a 70 kilometer race, I believe, where you traverse how many islands? Like 35 islands or something like, I think there's something like 52 transitions. You do the whole thing in a modified wetsuit with your running shoes on. The rules are such that you can bring whatever aid you would like, as long as you carry it the entire way. So people have hand paddles and pull buoys strapped to their legs.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  And it's very strange, you know, to see these athletes running around in wetsuits, crossing the island, you jump in the water, the water's freezing. On our day, we had like sideways rain and crazy chop and the conditions were terrible, which kind of made it more epic, although not enjoyable in the moment. And I was, yeah, like, I mean, Jonas was there that year, just doing it for fun. And, you know, I just, I trained by, I mean, I did a lot of swimming, but it was mostly in the pool and then trail running, you know, in Los Angeles. What I did not train for and was completely ill-prepared for was all the technical climbing around and traipsing through the mud and like hauling yourself up on these rocks and sliding

• 1:34:03Rich Roll?

  down on your ass into the water, like just trying, and I had the wrong shoes, they didn't have grip and some, these like slabs of rock that you have to like kind of come out of the water up on, like I'm, and then I'm watching these Swedish Special Forces guys who look like ballerinas on these rocks. And I was like, I'm, I'm just, I'm in the wrong place for this right now.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a neat concept. I mean, just dreaming it up.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  I mean, amazing. What an experience and what a, what a beautifully curated experience that the, you know, the founders and the organizers have, have really manifested. Like it's, it's special.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So why do I want to get fit again? I'd like that to be the last thing. I'd like to be that. How, I mean, it's not the last thing, but I, but I think that I can build up, if I'm fortunate and patient, I can build up about the time my son is able to make it. Cause we're going to cross at some point. I think about the time we're crossing in terms of physical capacities, we might be able to go do something like that together. And so Colting has a, a race weekend and he does a, a short

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  swim run in Sweden in June. So I'm going to take my son there next year and we're going to do a little one to see what he thinks.

• 1:35:30Rich Roll?

  That's cool. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, the other thing we should point out is that yes, you do it in tandem. You do it with a teammate and you have to stay within like three meters of your teammate the entire time.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  And I think that's, I mean, for me, that's part of what makes that event special is that team aspect. And that's probably why I had such a great day is because we each contributed to our day and we had a great outcome. And that, that's, that's part of the attraction from doing it with my son too. It could be something. And it'll also, I think swimming is a great thing for life. And it would give him a reason to keep swimming, uh, is to have this goal out there, uh, in his teens. A lot of boys drop out of swimming, uh, you know, when they get to that high school age. And I, and I think if we could kind of keep him in the game, he'll be glad that he kept it going later in life.

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:36:30Rich Roll?

  Well, speaking of life, you know, one of the things that makes you so compelling to me, I mean, we've gone down this deep rabbit hole of like total endurance geekdom, but what's really resonant in, in who you are and kind of what you do is that you were able to kind of graduate from that on some level. And so much of the advice and the kind of principled way that you, that you live your life is oriented around like what you learned from endurance and how that's applicable to, you know, basically living a good life that's grounded in your values and, and really prioritizes like how you allocate.

• 1:37:10Rich Roll?

  Your resources from time to finances, parenting, etc. So that's kind of like the direction that I want to take this right now.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  I'm so glad you brought that up. So I'm 42 years old. And I'm one of the fastest 40 something triathletes in the world at an amateur level now. And I take a look around. I got a two year old and a baby son at home. And I just look at how we're all living, all of us. And my peers, the elites, the elites with kids. And I asked myself a question, not the question, but a question. I was like, is if I keep doing this, where's this going to take me?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  Where's this going to take my family? And I'm not comfortable with the answer. I'm not comfortable with what I tell myself. And I'm like, I gotta make a change. And that's, and it wasn't to do with how anybody else was living. It was, it was, it was very much internally driven. It was where I wanted to be, the man I wanted to be, the father I wanted to be, where I wanted to take my family. And I was like, I'm gonna leave it. And I did, I left it. And I, I was like, I'm gonna put my, I'm gonna put my marriage first. I'm gonna put being a father first. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. And it was awful. It was so hard at the beginning because you have no skills.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  And if you're a parent and you're listening and it's awful, I know it. I know it's awful for you and it is. And what would I tell you? I would tell you, well, I'd tell you two things, definitely. First, I say it's temporary. It's not gonna last, and I would encourage you to reach out to the best teachers that you come across, people that have been with kids for their whole lives, particularly preschool teachers. If you're gonna get triggered, you'll get triggered by a toddler. Preschool teachers are angels. And if you come to them with an open heart, and you're willing to learn,

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  and use the techniques that they teach you, your life will get better. It's not gonna be great, but you're gonna be able to cut those difficult moments in half. And that can be the difference between falling apart, and not staying involved, and being a successful parent. And I would also say particularly to the moms, you need to be realistic with your expectations of yourself. You need to be taking care of yourself. And really, what's your goal? Well, the goal, my goal as a father is to persist and not retaliate. Those are

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  the two things. Those are number one, and number two. And if I'm having a good day, and I'm skillful, maybe I can de-escalate almost every situation. So it's persist, don't retaliate, and the skill is in the de-escalation. So maybe share an example of that in practice. In practice, it's, there's a lot of distraction involved with kids. I mean, one of the best preschool teachers used to carry a Leatherman around in his pocket. And when the four-year-olds were starting to get a little wound up, he would pull out his Leatherman, and he would just go, "Have you ever seen my Leatherman?" And he would just pull a tool out, and it's kinda shiny. And he would pull a tool out, a screwdriver or something, and the kids would

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  just be mesmerized. And so it's the art of distraction, and just, because the kids don't want, the other thing is, you know, as adults, we put all this stuff on the kid. Oh, they're being that way. Or they're, like, we create this whole story around this difficult kid, but there is no story. The kid is just a kid. And if you can get through the moment, or maybe distract them, or give them a hug, or something, I mean, it's gone. And kids have no memory.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  And oh, and so when you're, you need to remember that the, the child that gave you such a difficult time doesn't exist anymore. That's another really powerful one. Cause you can, you can, you can have this trauma from going through the experience of living with preschoolers and toddlers. You can, you can be really traumatized from all the noise. I mean, anybody that's an ultra endurance athlete needs a lot of quiet time. Noise really affects me. And you can hold these resentments against a situation and a child that doesn't even exist anymore. It's completely gone. The, it's a, it's a different child. And to get around this and to teach myself that, I don't talk about how my kids were. I talk about little Axel, or little Lexi was

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  that way. There's a differentiation and I teach my kids that. I, I teach them that they have this illusion that they are the same person that they were a couple of years ago, but they're not. And they're, and they're free to be a different person. And that person that they used to be doesn't actually exist anymore. And you can even go deeper. You say, well, actually that person never existed. But, but the, you, most kids will be able to get that, this concept that, well, you know, I kind of seem different, but I, but I, but I'm not kind of the same continual person. But as parents and adults and in family systems, it's a, it's a big transition for the parents when you go from kid to adult, and then you go from adult to elder. These are all major

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  shifts and the relationship needs to shift too. So you need to kind of let go of all that prior baggage or process it somehow. And so that, so for parents, that's, that's the persist, don't retaliate. And forgive, forgive yourself, forgive the kids, forgive the past.

• 1:43:16Rich Roll?

  I like that idea of, you know, hitting up the preschool teachers too. It's like, that's a, to me, that's an example of you as a learner, always seeking for the teacher or the mentor, whether it's Scott Molina or whoever it is. Like, how can I find that, that person who can teach, to be teachable at all times and to be the person who has the humility to say, I don't have the answer, but I can find these other people that do, and I'm going to listen to them.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Here in Boulder, there is a preschool that sits under Naropa.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  So it's a Buddhist preschool, but I mean, a Buddhist preschool is, I mean, it'd be different. Well, it's not like you're getting a religion class or something like that, but the vibe. And it's called Alia. And if you're going to spend money on education for your kids, it's going to make a difference, do it when they're preschoolers. That would be my advice. And if you happen to have a boy that's challenged with socializing skills, an early intervention with very patient preschool teachers can really, really help that kid.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  And it'll be in ways that you don't see because the kid will learn skills. So our kids are, you know, they're, they're anywhere from nine to a teenager now, and they're still using the skills, the get along skills that they picked up from three years at this Buddhist preschool.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  And it's transformative. And I saw how well it worked. And I knew that we were clueless. A lot of parents think, I mean, yeah, you have a right to an opinion, but you don't necessarily have any skills. And, and the teachers, the people in the school system, they have a lot of skills and they've seen a lot of different kids and they can, they can really help you out at a, at a very difficult time. Many parents of young children don't realize the magnitude of the stress they're under from the disrupted sleep, from the whole situation. And they, they have this feeling that, that things are unraveling on them, but it's, it's just stress.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  And so one of the things we used to do was we would, we would do date nights, but we would, we would alternate. So we would try and get each of us, once a week, would have 24 hours or at least a one night where we didn't get yelled at by the toddlers. And, and I called it like a nervous system reset. And it really helped me because it, I, I knew that I would get this break somewhere in the week from the, the day in, day out of the bedtimes and, and that.

• 1:46:04Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think the trick is, To, you know, overcome that sense that, that there's, that, that, that that's like self indulgent, or you're being selfish. Like, you can't show up and be the, the parent that you want to be when you're completely depleted. It's back to like the recovery question.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Rich Roll?

  Like, how, it's, it's, it's less about the quantity of time spent and more about like elevating the quality of the time spent. And when you're not in your best state, maybe, you know, take a backseat to, you know, too much interaction until you can kind of recalibrate.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Well, let's talk a bit about that. That's how I've lived my life. So, when we were in it, so, we had three under four when our third was born. And so effectively, two babies and a toddler. And, you know, a lot of people opt into very challenging situations, taking the whole family on vacation, driving places in cars. We, we did the opposite. I was like, you know what we're gonna spend money on? Childcare. So we can spend time with each other. And the approach was childcare is meant to benefit the marriage. And, and it's not meant to give mom a break, or whoever the lead parent is, a break. It's meant to benefit the marriage. So if we're spending money on childcare, we're doing it so that

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  we're making our marriage stronger, because that's the best thing we can do for this family, is keep ourselves together, keep ourselves engaged, and just get through this. Because it, it is gonna end. You'll, you'll come out of it. And I think that's a, a key thing. So if you think you're spending, saving money for college, or you're gonna send the kids off to private school, I would say, reevaluate that, fancy vacations and stuff. Childcare benefits the marriage. And now, the other thing is, I have the capacity to go, to be in a very high paying profession.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  If I do that, the beneficiaries of that will be my adult children that I never spent time with. And I made a choice to spend time with them young and give them a human capital benefit of my presence and my capacity to parent and lead and coach them, rather than accrue assets and financial wealth that I would pass on to them, which they don't really need. They should be earning that themselves. That's their obligation, the way they want to live their lives. And so I took a human capital approach to the family

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  system. And I gave them time when they were young. And the benefit of that is I learned how to interact in a different way with kids. And I bring those skills out to the wider world. Like, if you're not going to get rattled by a four-year-old or a couple of toddlers, you can go out into very difficult situations in the world and still think rationally. And so it's a useful skill. But the other thing is, it gives me a chance to pass my philosophy off to them. And you know, when we're hiking in the hills or stuff like that, we have this relationship. And so we develop a powerful relationship so that later in

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  life, it can be a source of strength for the family. Because I view the family as like a river. In a sense, you know, each of us is kind of coming in and out, and we're not going to be there the whole time. I think sometimes, in the West, we can think of it very discreetly, as, you know, it's like, my family, as opposed to an Eastern philosophy, which is a family over time. And people are coming and going, we're having these life cycle events with births and deaths and stuff. And if you can be in that and pass that philosophy on to your kids, and that's also why I dialed my coaching down. People ask me, well, who do you coach? I was like, well, I coach my kids, you know, because that's where the

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  big gain comes. Because if I don't coach my kids, that could also be a source of big regret for me, is not having taken that opportunity. And it's turned out to be very rewarding for me. But you're talking about the limit, how much you put in and you don't want to, you want to limit it so that your kids are seeing the best aspects of yourself. So that's why I like doing stuff with them outside, in my best environment.

• 1:50:29Rich Roll?

  There's so much in there to unpack, but maybe the first thing that I want to hear a little bit more about is this sort of idea that you're coaching your kids. Like, what is the distinction or dividing line between being your kid's coach and being their dad?

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, so let's talk about, well, first off, as a coach, this is one of the things, one of my difficulties with professional sport, from an ethical point of view and my personal values. So I was an elite. I was not a professional. An elite is somebody that competes at a very high level. A professional makes a living and it's about winning. The rules for a professional are different than the rules for an elite. I followed a different code in my racing and I'm comfortable with the way I did it. But professional sport is very different than it appears to somebody that's not on the inside.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  So similarly, step back with my kids, relationship is always first, always first. It's not about performance. It's not about trying to get them somewhere. What I'm trying to do is deliver a skill set to them so that they can live their life as they see fit. There's no, there's no goal for me. Really, all I want to do is support them, give them a bunch of skills so they can just go out in the world and do what they want to do. And they'll do what they do and they'll have the consequences of whatever those choices are and they'll reap the benefits. So a lot of that is about, well, thinking, first off, I don't want to mess it up. So if we happen to have...

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  An Olympian, a future president, an amazing musician in the house. I don't want my choice to constrain where they can take their life. So I want to, I want to keep as many options open for them as they can. So that, that's kind of more my coaching philosophy. So we're not working towards a goal. But I happen to have a skillset. And if they come to me and ask me for ideas, I can help them. So our oldest wanted some ideas this summer about, well, first you wanted to have a personal trainer. And I said, no, you're not getting a personal trainer. I'm not, I'm not doing that because in, in this town, kids have trainers, personal coaches and all that.

• 1:52:46Rich Roll?

  Do they really?

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  It's so.

• 1:52:49Rich Roll?

  Keeping up with the Joneses in Boulder is a whole, is literally keeping, physically keeping up with the Joneses. It's a whole, I don't know, man, you know, like it's, it's gotta be heavy.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  It's not, you know, it's not just Olympians. It's like, it's like, what medal did you get? I mean, it's, it's like that kind of level.

• 1:53:06Rich Roll?

  This is like an Olympic village. Like I was sitting out at dinner the other day, well, Anton Krupicka rode his bike by, and then like a running group went by. And who, the person I was eating with was like, oh, she's national champion and this and that. I was like.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  So it's, so it's, you know, it's, and that's the environment they're growing up in. So, and they can deal with it, you know? So I also want, you know, we, we have, I mean, they're great athletes, but I'm a little bit torn because I want them to be great people. I don't want them to be great athletes if you're, you know, being laying all the cards on the table. And, and I think that athletic path, if it becomes about winning, it can really lead you astray. One of the things I tell my son who's hyper competitive is like, be the best Axel, be the best you can be. Cause he gets wrapped up in winning and, and trophies and, and, and stuff. And I was like, you know what? I mean, that's great, but you can win and like, and, and really have done not your best effort.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  So you should be the best you can be. So it's, it's value stuff. So I want to kind of pass, pass that on. And then in the coaching side, yeah, if they come to me and they want me to help, you know, we hang out together. And, you know, I like lifting weights and so I teach them how to, you know, lift weights and we do indoor climbing together. But it's really about sharing that experience, sharing.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  An active life in nature, like it's hiking, it's going out in the mountains, it's like climbing 13ers and 14ers.

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  Right, lots of skiing too, you guys ski a lot.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and let's talk about skiing. It's well, first off, it's ridiculously expensive. So you've got to really have your house in order financially before you go down that path. Some aspects of skiing, it puts you in that demographic. Certainly, the Aspen demographic is something that I made a choice to leave. When I left private equity, I find it really challenging. It brings me right back to my high finance days. I get very competitive, I get very focused on the whole competing with money and stuff. When I'm in that environment, it's challenging for me. But we do it, let me tell you how we do it. We do it as a non-competitive. We don't race, we do it together, we have fun together.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  There's no real way to keep score. I mean, it's about style, you know, so my kids would be like, oh, I skied that. And I was like, well, how did, you know, how did it feel? Do you feel like you did that with style? And we're just, it's kind of lower key. And so that's, it's nice to have something we can all do together.

• 1:55:41Rich Roll?

  The, the real kind of like focus of so much of your, your writing and the stuff that you share is really oriented around, you know, crafting the life that you want to live and how to do that, you know, by getting clear on what your values are. And I wouldn't say that it's a minimalist approach, but it is an approach of asking the reader or the recipient of your content to really ask themselves like, you know, what is it that you actually need? And if you're being really honest with yourself, like, is that thing that you're chasing the solution to the problem that you're ignoring? Right? Like you could be at a hedge fund

• 1:56:24Rich Roll?

  or you could easily step back into that world and make it rain cash. And you've made a very conscious deliberate choice to construct your life very differently because you have clarity on what's important to you. And so those choices, whether they be financial or how you allocate, you know, our most precious resource and non-renewable resource, which is our time and attention, to be directed towards those pursuits that, that bring your life the most meaning. So talk a little bit about. You know, how you've crafted that philosophy? And perhaps share a little bit about how people can consider these things in their own lives.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Okay. What one thing, if it happened, would change everything? It's a question I ask myself from time to time. What one thing?

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  So when I made the decision to step back from racing, the one thing that would make a difference in my life was a better relationship with a three-year-old girl that I was living with. That one thing. And I was like, that would really, it would help my wife. It would help, it would help my daughter. And it would really help my family. And so that's why I stepped back. And I was, and I was very focused on that one thing. The relationship with the little girl. And we would do, I had a trailer in my mountain bike. I put her in the trailer and we'd go ride up hills and stuff. Like I did Independence Pass and she had a pillow and an iPad, a lunchbox.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  And, and we'd do a lot of trips, just her and me. And I built, and it wasn't, it wasn't much fun. But I built a relationship and she's a wonderful young woman now. And I got through it and it, and it did, it made a difference. So I'm, I'm very fortunate that some, I picked the right one things. So when I was in Hong Kong, my one thing was, well, getting out of here was my thing. Getting out of here and just trying something different. I'm on the wrong path. So in that case, it was a change. So I'm on the path out there. What one thing? Well, love, love in my life. I'm fit, but there's no connection. There's no woman in my life. I want love in my life. Another one thing, helping people.

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  Connecting, help 100,000 people with my writing. I wrote that down. I've done that and then some with my books and my blogs. So I would say to achieve things, you gotta know what you're trying to do. Otherwise, you just get the default of whatever's coming out of your phone screen at you. And that you end up kind of working towards all these thin desires. But if you can work towards a thick desire, connection with a child, love in your life, or even now, you know, frankly, my, one of, one of my things I'm working on is, is just getting myself aerobically fit again. And I, and you talk about the minimalist, I'm not a minimalist.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  But what I am doing is, I've made a decision to not add any commitments to my life, to continue to have the space to try and become an athlete again. And because it's tempting to like, take little commitments and they're all really attractive, but you have to kind of say no and pair them away so that those, when you're doing, when you got your five days of training, you can still meet your obligations to your work colleagues and your, and your family, but you also have enough space to get your exercise done.

• 2:00:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. One of the big kind of driving principles in all of this, that tracks all the way back to Molina, that I think is, is so instructive and perhaps helpful for people, is this idea of the 1,000 day plan, right? So talk a little bit about that, because it plays right into this thing that I love to talk about, which is that most people over-index on what they think they can do in a year and completely, you know, miss the, miss the boat when it comes to what they could accomplish in a decade. And by casting your glance, you know, much further down the line and making life decisions around that, provides you the capacity and the space to actually achieve that thing

• 2:00:47Rich Roll?

  that continues to elude you despite, you know, making it a New Year's resolution year after year.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  So it's January 2001.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  Scott Molina and I are riding up Evans, towards Evans Pass in Christchurch. And he just leans over and he says to me, "How long are you going to give this thing?" Because he's agreed to take me on as an athlete, you know, former world champion, Ironman Hawaii champion. I mean, it's a real opportunity for me. And it's deeper than that, though. He's, um, I didn't realize, I didn't, I didn't know how great he was as an athlete. And he was actually a little out of shape at the time. So really, he was getting into shape, training with me, mentoring me, teaching me.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, I live 5K from his house. I just turn up his garage and we go ride for five hours and shoot the breeze sometimes. So he says to me, "You know, how long are you going to give it?" And I was like, I was honest. I was like, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I, I'm not sure. And he's like, "Well, before you make any decision, I want you to give it three years." So that's where the 1,000 days came from. You gotta give it, and he just said, "You gotta give it three years just to see where it takes you." So the three years, so you know, like a year, like a year and a half, well, two years in, I win Ultraman. So I get the positive feedback, but he's right, you know, I'm still only just beginning.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  It was another two years after that until I had my absolute best performance in Canada. And so it worked and I paid attention to things that work. And so that, so I brought that into my coaching and it worked great with athletes, people that are trying to qualify for Kona. And I brought it into my life and I'm bringing it back too. I was like, well, you know, I get back on Twitter and I start looking around. And you know, you're the reason I got back on Twitter, right? Do you know that?

• 2:02:48Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't know.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Well, I kind of told you.

• 2:02:50Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, but we don't have to talk about that.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  We should, we should talk about it because if you want to free yourself from something, you might have to talk about it at some stage, right? Okay, so. So I'm watching Rich, okay? You're getting, you're getting more, and the balls rolling with the pod, with the books, and everything you do is aesthetically beautiful. I mean, I look at it and it's, it's not just you on, on the cover. It's, it's, it's the cookbook. It's, I mean, I look at it and it just makes me feel, I was like, ah, it's just so beautiful. It's beauty, it really is. It's, it's art. And I'm looking at it and then, and then as well, you know, there's in, in me and certainly

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  in the people I know and definitely in my kids, we all have this desire to be liked and a desire for approval. And so your snowballs rolling and I'm just watching it go bigger and bigger. And there's this feeling of envy and, and envy is something we don't talk about much as a society. And I read this book called Wanting by Luke. And he talks about your envy tells you there's information there and you really need to pay attention to it. And so I, I acknowledge it and I don't just acknowledge it, I acknowledge it publicly. And I, and I say, wow, I just got this feeling of, of envy. But really, what, what does it mean? It's not about, it's not about, it's never about what it's about. It's not about your success.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  It's about this calling. It's about this need to connect, this need to share my message with people. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to embrace it, but I'm going to do it right. I'm going to do it on a thousand day time horizon. So I'm going to come back to Twitter and I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna try and pump out some good content every single day for a thousand days and just see what happens. So I'm at day 150, I got 850 to go. Yeah. So I'm doing the Twitter thing and then, you know, the, and sure enough, Johan tweet rolls in, you know? We start DMing, there's all this stuff starts happening around me.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  And I was like, wow, this is, there's something going on here. And I'm like, you know what? This is it. I've said I'm going to go for a thousand days. I know I can shut it down and kind of disappear again after it, but I'm going to ride this, I'm going to ride this out for a thousand days and just see where it takes me. And so that's it. I got my, I got my, again, just like training where you have your basic week. I got my basic week on Twitter. I do this kind of similar things every day. I'm just going to roll it forward and just see where it takes me. And One of the neat things is, I was less than 100 days in, and I already got everything I wanted out of the whole process, for me personally. So now you're moving forward with just this curiosity and this sense of, well, I've kind of won.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I really just wanted, I mean, what do you need to have a great life? I mean, you probably need like, you need a few people to love you, a few people to serve. I got that with my, my family. And then, you know, a few dozen people on Twitter that you can interact with and have fun with. It's great.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it gives you that opportunity to, to express yourself creatively, artistically, and to do it in service, like you're giving back. Like you're sitting on top of all this wisdom and experience. And there is such a, you know, a desire for personal growth. If you're, if you have curated your social media feeds properly, like, people want the truth, right? And there's a lot of fucking bullshit out there and people trying to sell you their course or whatever. But I think people have developed much more finely tuned radar or antennae for that bullshit, which makes it easier for the people who are, you know, genuinely coming from a heartfelt place to rise to the surface.

• 2:06:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'm looking around your office and I see there's Steve Magnus's book over there and there's Brad, Brad Stilberg's book, you know, over there. Like, you know, it's like, these are the people who are like, you know, doing it for the right reasons, who have a lot of value and experience to share. And now you're part of that ecosystem in my life. And, you know, that's what brought us together today.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  And that's, that's, yes, and that is a honorable way to live. But there's another side of me, there's another side of all of us that has a dark energy. Yeah, there's a dark side.

• 2:07:23Rich Roll?

  The, the drive to be recognized and valued and, and in a public, in a public way.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  That's not necessarily dark. I, I consider that innate. That's, that's like a human, uh, human thing. I think that, what I'm, uh, let's talk about addiction, you know? And I, I had a tough time last year. And, uh, so.

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  Sometimes, if you know yourself and you can give yourself something to do, you can replace dark thoughts with other thoughts. And you can-

• 2:08:03Rich Roll?

  But ultimately, you're compartmentalizing or just running away from that thing that really demands your redress.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Well, maybe. But maybe the darkness is coming because you haven't given yourself something positive to do. So maybe your dedication to whatever you're dedicated to was a good thing at the start. Your family, your children, being a provider. But you take it too far. And you're doing too much. And you haven't, you're not connecting to your source. You're not connecting to what keeps you energized. You're just trying to do what you think is right. And it leads you to a dark place.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  And you start thinking, you don't start thinking as well as you used to. So you've got to re-energize yourself. You've got to get to your place of power. Point break, surfing's the source. You know, for me, exercise is the source. You know, that's it. It's riding my bike uphill, or walking through a forest, or holding hands with my wife beside, looking at the water. I mean, whatever it is. We each have a source. And you've got to stay in touch with that. And if you can share that with other people, you know, some of these, we all have these kind of dark thoughts and faulty thinking. And whenever, when you're in a good place from a mental health point of view, they just come and go.

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  They just, it's just an idea. And it just comes and goes. It doesn't become an obsession. It's not a big deal. And so, a lot of, I needed to connect. I needed to break that negative cycle. And, you know, this return to writing and engagement does it.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  So, and, and you know, if, if somebody's listening and they're having a, they're having a tough time, you know, like I, I left Hong Kong, you know, I knew I needed to change. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I had to leave. I, I would say, you know, sometimes you gotta, you gotta, I mean, the first step before you can transcend addiction is to replace it. You have to replace it with something that's maybe a little bit more positive. And from that point of positivity, you can work, then you can kind of work on it. And that's, um, you know, cause all I did with my exercise was replace it. And then I just, I mean, I took it to the point where I got sick from doing too much of it and I kind

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  of had to back off. And, and then I kind of came to terms with it and I came to a better spot with that. But you know, until you, and it was the same deal with work. I was, I was working all the time. And, and I, and I, with my drinking, I say that I've got two ways I drink progressively more or not at all. And, and so I was just like, you know what? I, I got kids. Best thing I can do for my kids is just stop. And a few years ago, and, and that was it. And that, and you know, that just comes to my feeling like I need to have integrity when we sit down and we have talks about addiction, alcohol and drugs and stuff. And I'd be like, yeah, you could, you could do that. And at some point you'll be an adult. It'll be your choice. You're not gonna get in trouble. But you

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  gotta, you're gonna have to make a choice about how you wanna live your life. I mean, you know, they've had these childhoods where they were doing stuff all the time. And I would hope that they would stay engaged and continue to do stuff. And so it's really living that example for the kids is, is my approach to it.

• 2:11:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, I really appreciate the honesty with all of that. I mean, obviously that's a reflection of the inner work that you've done to have that kind of clarity on that. I think it's easy for, for a lot of endurance athletes to shirk off the addiction question. But if you're doing ultra endurance and you're so down the rabbit hole, like you have gone and I, you know, I've flirted with, like, you have to, you have to be, you have to be somebody who is, you know, prone to that level of obsessive compulsive behavior.

• 2:12:16Rich Roll?

  Or, you know, straight up addiction. And, you know, I have this history with alcoholism. To be sure, there is, you know, some connectivity between that and like, my love for the world of endurance. And I can dismiss it and say, well, that made my life better. And alcohol made it worse. So these things are not the same. But of course they are, you know, if you're being honest. So I like the way that you describe it as replacing one for the other. But still it being a step on the journey towards transcending it. Because we're learning as we're going, right? And we get better and then we slip and we find ourselves using something else to distract ourselves from our own pain or what have you.

• 2:13:00Rich Roll?

  And like, this is just life, man, you know? And we wake up and we try to do a little bit better the next day.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we, I think you just, you own the way, own the way you are. Limit the damage. Try and be kind. I also, you know, I think the, as, as a coach, I have a, have a friend in town that's very, um, very high level running coach and very good with, um, athletes that have eating disorders. And he says, one of the greatest gifts you can bring to an athlete as a coach is to give them enough self-confidence that they can step out of sport, out of competition, but also out of the compulsion.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  So they get enough confidence in themselves through that athletic journey. And they get this new vision that I experienced in Ultraman. And ultimately, that strength is what enables you to step out of the compulsion to train. As well, as we age, we change.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  And our neurochemistry changes. And men particularly, we're going to become a lot less aggressive. It's also why I would really caution people about supplementing with testosterone and that. You don't necessarily want to give yourself the chemistry of a 19 year old again. You want to let that aging process play out for you because it's, it can be very beneficial to your life to, to do that and to let you fully engage in your family and ultimately become the leader and the elder that your family's going to need you to be later in life and, and develop. And, and I think that'll be part of the, the transcendence.

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  But personally, I'm, I'm thinking, you know, maybe not yet in, in the sense that I'm, I'm not quite ready to, to step all the way out. I, I would really like to get some fitness back and share some of that with my son or the young man my son will become. I, I think I'd find that very rewarding and I think I could offer something to him.

• 2:15:12Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Maybe I'm reading between the lines here, but I do get this sense that part of the challenge for you or what you're kind of grappling with is how do you, how do you kind of quote unquote, like coach your kids and parent your, your children, but do it in a way where you're, you can have some level of healthy detachment from the results of that, right? Like if you're so caught up in like what your kids are doing, the path, the paths that they're pursuing, that can be, you know, as unhealthy an obsession as anything else.

• 2:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you just touched on it. If you don't deal with it in yourself, you're passing it right down the family tree. And that's what happens in this town. That's why I don't go to swim meets. The vibe sometimes there is, is really intense for me. So yeah, you know, you just, you pass, I mean, it's addiction in family systems.

• 2:16:10Rich Roll?

  It's like epigenetics.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  You just, you pass that behavioral pattern right down through the kids. Yeah. The reality, though, with elite and super elite performance is it's not your decision as the parent. The path is so difficult. There's so much work required that ultimately it'll be, you'll have to pass the, basically pass the child off to the adult they will become, and then it's up to them. And that's something I talk about with parents is it's not going to be your decision. You can't make this happen. You can prevent it from happening. You can make mistakes. The other thing is, I would say, work on yourself, you know?

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  Get yourself worth tied up in yourself rather than in your kids. You know, bring honor to your family through the way you're acting under the roof when nobody's looking. I mean, that's, that's kind of what I'm all about because I, this whole integrity thing, I couldn't go out and be a hero athlete and, and have these age group victories and know that my wife was at home with a bunch of toddlers really struggling. I mean, that just, for me, that, that sort of didn't work. And I think that's, that's probably something, well, that's a lot of, a lot of top athletes have to grapple with at some point. And I would encourage the athletes to turn towards the kids.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  Because if you don't, you're very likely, because I've seen it at the other end, you're very likely to have some lifelong regrets. But if you turn towards the kids and things don't work out, in your heart, you'll know that you had done the right thing.

• 2:17:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  For those kids, when they were kids.

• 2:18:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. That's well put. I want to pivot back to the big speech that you never got to make.

• 2:18:10Rich Roll?

  I don't know how much of those themes that we've hit on, but I want to return to this idea of latent potential. You know, your story is so powerful in that you were able to unlock this capacity that you didn't know existed, but you had a tickle in the back of your soul that was telling you to move in a certain direction. So that was expressed athletically in your life. It can be, you know, directed in any number of, you know, millions of different ways, depending upon who you are. But, you know, on the theme of like the speech that you want to make, like, what is it, you know, how can we continue that thread on unlocking that, you know, the potential that we all, that we all have?

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Well, what's your tickle? What's, I mean, what's tickling? So, so you out there that's listening to Rich and me, do you know your tickle? Do you, do you know what it is? Do you, are you listening? Are you able to get in contact with that part of your mind? With wherever, with whatever the muse, with wherever that comes from? Are you able to get in touch with that? Now, here's a way to get in touch with it. You can get yourself a copy of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. You can do the morning pages. You can, you can diarize or-

• 2:19:29Rich Roll?

  Do you still do it?

• 2:19:31Speaker 01

  Well, actually, so in 2000, I wrote 10 things. I did the process. It's, it's like daily pages. You just, you just write three pages of whatever comes to your mind every morning, say for a month, then you, then you just do it. No judgment. And then you go back and you, you read it, you look for your themes, and you just put together a top 10 list. Okay, and I wrote, I wrote, I wrote 10 things down on a piece of paper. And I got them all done in five years. And some of them seemed way out there, like, you know, and-

• 2:20:04Rich Roll?

  Like what? My big like Cheshire grin, so I have to ask.

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

  Ah, you know, I had no experience writing. I wanted to touch 100,000 people with my writing. I wanted, I wanted to, and more than that, I wanted to help 100,000 people. And I don't know where it came from. And that was my goal. And I mean, I, I don't know. I think, I think we sold 50,000 copies of the book or something. So, you know, that was half of it. And the rest was, you know, you get your IP stats on your, on your, on your blog and that. Love in my life. I was really hurt from that whole process of the divorce. If I, if I read my writing at the time, I could see the pain. I was very anti marriage. But when I met Monica, I knew that if I let her go, it'd be the biggest mistake in my life.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  That's how I knew we had to get, I mean, it was like, we have to get married. Like I, this is, you know, it's, I don't know. It's just, I, it's just, that was it.

• 2:21:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  And that feeling, and I accepted the feeling, it was the right, it was, I feel so lucky that it kind of worked out for us. And, and we're different, but we're also, you know, we got that, the, the way we live as active people and our values are a good fit, even though we're very different in terms of approach. So I would say, you know, just get yourself a top 10 list, you know, just write down 10 things you want to get done, look at it every day, change it, work, work on it.

• 2:21:36Rich Roll?

  And if you don't know that top 10 list, just keep doing the morning pages.

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and listen, like, listen to what you want to do. And I would say, you know, in the top 10 list, there, there could be some thin, there could be some thin desires. I mean, not every, like, one of them is just ride up independence, go down the other side and ride back up independence. It's a big climb. It tops out at about 12,000 feet. So it's just something, you know, it just kind of, it just kind of came to me. Some of them, some of them are pretty deeper. I mean, you know, I've, I've got a, I got a friend that just retired from the Navy and I got another friend who's a doctor. And when they listen to me, I really feel heard.

• 2:22:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, you know what? If I could listen just a bit like those guys can listen, it would really change my life. It would be one of those transformative skills. So that's, that's one of my things. And another one of my things is just get fit and expedition with my son. So, I mean, you've, you've got to let yourself know, even if it seems impossible. I guess it's kind of like acknowledging maybe where you want to go. And you'd be surprised. Your brain does a good job of taking you there. At least mine does with, with these things. And, and it's fun to have a project that you're working on.

• 2:23:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I think the issue that, that a lot of people run into is, is just starting to create that connection with self that, you know, has been shunted for too long because we're living our lives and we're on a certain path or a certain direction and we don't have time or bandwidth to really entertain the muse, right? And so to sit down and create a practice out of engaging with your unconscious impulses is really powerful. So if you feel like, I don't know, you know, everybody talks about chasing their passion. I don't know what my passion is. Well, to start writing. And then, like you said, you review these pages and you will start to see recurring themes.

• 2:23:49Rich Roll?

  And I think when you see things that recur, it's a cue to pay attention and to maybe say, okay, why is this recurring? Let me go a little bit deeper into this. And then it's the simple things like, you know, maybe it's just some stupid thing that you kind of always wanted to do that's easy to do. Like honoring that, right? And the more energy that you give to those things, they then, you know, lead you in a certain direction, like another brick gets laid. And I think the problem is most people get caught up in wanting to know the destination. Like when you said, you know, I just can't show up at this office anymore in Hong Kong. I need to do something else. It wasn't because you had a vision of, of crossing the finish line at Ultraman.

• 2:24:32Rich Roll?

  You just had a gut feeling that you needed to be outdoors or doing something else, right? You don't get to see too many steps down the path. And I think that's where a lot of people get caught up because they can't see that destination. They're then too afraid to indulge the impulse.

• 2:24:51Speaker 01

  Easy exercise, light exercise, walking, meditation, cycling. If they're an athlete from your background, it'll be touching the water, easy. It'll get you back in your body. The issue I had in Hong Kong was I wasn't in myself in the sense that there was all this stress and noise and cars and like all that kind of city stuff. I needed to get kind of into myself and what I mean is it's this concept of maybe an integrated self or even just, you know, and that's where exercise is great.

• 2:25:36Speaker 01

  It peels it away. I think part of that for a lot of people, extreme exercise, dangerous exercise, I was a mountaineer before, is it gets you to that state of emptiness. So when you're on a climb and if you make a mistake, you're gonna die, your mind goes empty. And there is this stillness and quietness that you experience that you don't experience at a desk in Hong Kong. And the stillness, you can misinterpret it so that you're attracted to the stillness, you're not attracted to the danger. I think a lot of people misinterpret it.

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  So in the ultra community, you think it's the fatigue that is the necessary ingredient, but it's not. It's the letting go and the stillness that is what you're feeling and it can mislead you. And so you keep going back to the danger if you're pursued as a climber or the free solo. But you know, your goals are available right now. The stillness is available right now if you can, if you can figure out a way to tap into it and you tap into it by kind of peeling all this other stuff away, all these, all these desires and this noise and it's some, it's a meditative practice for many. For me, it's always been

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  exercise outside, particularly with trees around me. I don't know what the deal is. When I'm around trees, I'm totally chilled out. And maybe that's growing up in Vancouver, you know, it was like, there's like rain and water and trees, but that's what it's about. So I would say to people, you know, get in touch, figure out, figure out what that is, you know, whatever that natural source is. And I think you'll find you, if you, if you give yourself that, you know, a little bit of it every day, and it might just be like just walking around the block out of the, you know, getting away from your desk or something. Sometimes I just walk up the street and have a look at the flat irons and then, you know, come on, come on back down just for a bit of a reset. Get in touch with that.

• 2:27:41Rich Roll?

  There is a, I detect a strain of Buddhism in that perspective. Is that accurate? And then I'm, as you're telling that, I'm remembering, maybe my memory is failing me, but did you not like study Buddhism? Did you do a tenure at Naropa? Like, or am I imagining?

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  No, well, actually, it's a, I knew an Indonesian beauty queen called Sita. And when I was in Hong Kong and she, the teachings of Buddha, she, you know, one day she just gave me that book and she said, you know, here you go. And that's it. She gave me the book. And, and that was kind of my introduction to Buddhism. And, and then I read it. And then, you know, like I said, with the whole neurochemistry and kind of getting open up, you know, it opens, opens your mind up, the exercise and stuff. And

• 2:28:40Speaker 01

  then I, that, that was like a seed. And then I, then I studied a lot of Asian philosophy. And so it, you know, it just kind of grows on you. I mean, Buddhism is really just common sense, though, I, I would say. I didn't formally study at Naropa, but I've done a lot of reading of the different traditions, all the major traditions. There's a part of me, though, that's very Old Testament.

• 2:29:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:09Speaker 01

  Very Old Testament. So, so it's, you know, my need for

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  Revenge.

• 2:29:20Rich Roll?

  The baser Gordo.

• 2:29:22Speaker 01

  It's.

• 2:29:22Rich Roll?

  At bay, held at bay.

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  It's there. I mean, these, these ancient traditions are like built on who we are. And I mean, that's, you can learn something from all of them. So I, you know, I feel, and, and also I like a lot of rules. So Judaism, I mean, kind of appeals to me, the code, uh, you know, I, I really relate to that.

• 2:29:44Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I think, you know, the, the codification appeals to your, you know, kind of numbers brain.

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  My sense of structure.

• 2:29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like so much of the way that you think about, you know, living a principled life is, is drilling down to, you know, kind of like these enumerated tools that reminds me of, um, who's the Farnham Street guy?

• 2:30:07Speaker 01

  Shane.

• 2:30:08Rich Roll?

  Shane. Yeah. So it's like, I had him on the podcast and I made a joke with him. I was like, you're, you're, you're a computer programmer. You're trying to, you're literally trying to come up with a coding language for human behavior, you know? And I, I see, you know, a strain of that sensibility and, and the way that you think about these things as well.

• 2:30:25Speaker 01

  You know, so kids have been great in the sense of trying to take things a little less seriously. First website that was ever built for me, the webmaster, she put a quote on it, you know, don't take life so seriously. Nobody's going to make it out alive. That was on the front page way back 20 years ago. And, um, I do take, I do take things seriously and, and I take things too seriously. And, and my friends that operate in the, in the real world, I have some friends that are really good at getting along with everybody.

• 2:31:06Speaker 01

  And that's a skill and we need people like that. Um, you know, so we need, we need folks that are like, you know, um, into duty and service and honor, but we also need other people that are a little more relaxed and able to kind of forgive. The, you know, the wisdom of forgiveness. I, that's, that's something I could definitely do better at. So.

• 2:31:30Rich Roll?

  I want to kind of end this by bringing it back to the walk. You know, like, I think, you know, the fact that this whole journey begins with a walk for you is a really powerful metaphor. Like, if anybody takes anything away from this, it's that if you have an impulse to do this thing that's sort of orthogonal to the way that you've been living, that that's something that you should pay attention to and honor. So maybe, you know, like, let's end this with some principled thoughts around, you know, honoring yourself on this journey towards towards that greater kind of self-integration and authenticity.

• 2:32:10Rich Roll?

  Because when I look at you, it's like, everything you've done is to be just more of who you are and like honoring that along the way and enduring self-imposed hardship on some level in order to kind of bring that to the surface.

• 2:32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we like things to be difficult. I read your book, I connect with that. Most of my friends are that way, too. My wife's a bit like that. I see it with some of my kids. So some folks like it to be difficult. So you need to, so if you can see that in yourself, if you happen to be wired that way, you have to, there's a couple of things. I would say be careful about hurting yourself because you like it to be difficult. You don't need to, you don't need to hurt yourself. You can challenge yourself without hurting yourself and you can challenge yourself without hurting other people. So that's, that's that personality strain.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  But when I went for that walk, I was not that man. I was, I didn't have that capability. That was something that I built up over time. How did I build that up over time? The number one thing. That I would hope, somebody that wants to make a change, I would say, first off, stay in the game, stay with us. You help the world, you help the community by staying with us. Don't check out, stay. The next thing, always stay. The next thing I would say to that individual is, make a small promise to yourself.

• 2:33:53Speaker 01

  It might be a walk, it might just be waking up before noon. It's a small promise and you're gonna start really small. And it's gonna seem tiny and all you gotta do is keep that small promise to yourself. And every positive change in my life has built from the ability to keep a small promise to myself. And this skill has extended to some very difficult challenges. And it grows on itself over time. It's a skill, it's a, it's a strength. And you can build out from that in your life.

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  But you have, change starts small. And it's a daily habit of doing the small thing to start the day. And you turn yourself into a winner by having a small win every day. And that's how it happens.

• 2:34:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and those small wins, when they accumulate, create a momentum that then takes on its own energy.

• 2:35:03Speaker 01

  Human beings are not capable of understanding compounding. That's the number one lesson.

• 2:35:10Rich Roll?

  Says the finance guy.

• 2:35:11Speaker 01

  Trust me. I'm, I'm professionally trained.

• 2:35:17Speaker 01

  I've spent my whole life working around money with investments and I still get it wrong. I still underestimate the power of the thousand days. I would really encourage people to start small, stick with it, and it's going to change your life. It really will.

• 2:35:35Rich Roll?

  Well, I think that's a good place to put a pin on it for now, but hopefully to be continued because this was magical and I'd love talking to you. I'd love to have you back on and explore some of this stuff more deeply. I think you have a gift for helping people and for communicating your experience. I hope that at some point you'll consider writing another book. I think you've got a great book inside you and it's just been great to see you kind of resurface on the internet and how that kind of like brought us together. Finally, you know, you're somebody I've wanted to meet for a long time and I say this like with all of my heart. You've been like so helpful and instrumental and

• 2:36:18Rich Roll?

  kind of guiding me from afar and I just, I really appreciate that and just wanted to thank you for that and for being so open today.

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:36:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Gordo's easy to find on Twitter at Gordo, is it Gordo Byrn One?

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 2:36:34Rich Roll?

  Gordo Byrn? What is it?

• 2:36:34Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:36:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, Feed the Burn.

• 2:36:36Speaker 01

  No, I gotta say it.

• 2:36:38Rich Roll?

  That's the website.

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  So my kids, my, well, the blog is, yeah, it's a WordPress blog. Well, it's Feel the Burn.

• 2:36:46Rich Roll?

  Feel the Burn.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  But it's, but Burn, everybody always says my, yeah, everybody says, everybody says my name wrong. And then Bernie, Bernie comes out, he's very popular in Boulder. Feel the Burn was the slogan. So somehow my kids got on Feel the Burn. So when they go to their swim meets, it's like, yeah, people are going to be feeling the burn today. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna be racing. So it's Feel the Burn with a Y, but on Twitter I'm Feel the Burn One.

• 2:37:10Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:37:11Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks, buddy.

• 2:37:14Speaker 01

  Peace.

• 2:37:21Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:38:06Rich Roll?

  the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica

• 2:38:49Rich Roll?

  Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.