Sanjay Rawal On Running As Spiritual Practice

Most contemplate running as exercise. A physical practice we reluctantly endure. An uncomfortable discipline we tolerate for the sake of fitness. For weight loss. Or to competitively measure ourselves against ourselves and others. Running is about metrics. Pace maintained. Distance covered. Calories burned. Energy expended. And results quantified. But ask Sanjay Rawal and he'll tell you that definition isn't just limited — it misses the point altogether. Running is so much more than podiums and aesthetics. At its core, it's a most primal activity that unites us all. It's about growth. It's about self-understanding. And for many cultures dating back millennia, it's about spiritual growth. Survival. Healing. And even transcendence. Running as devotion. Today Sanjay and I explore this theme in a riveting conversation focused on the inherent and indelible power of this shared human experience to better understand ourselves, our environment and the unseen world. A graduate of U. C. Berkeley with a B. A. in Molecular & Cell Biology and Neurobiology, Sanjay was on the fast track to a career in medicine when he began to question his path, seeking answers and solace in meditation. This quest led to becoming a devoted student of Sri Chinmoy, an Indian spiritual teacher based in New York. What followed is life committed to spiritual expansion. And a calling to improve the collective human condition. Sanjay spent a decade in human rights philanthropy before realizing he could deepen his impact by turning a lens on cultures and communities worthy of notice. Hence was born a career in documentary filmmaking. Sanjay's oeuvre includes Ocean Monk*, Challenging Impossibility, and Food Chains*, which takes a hard look at migrant farm labor exploitation. Sanjay's latest offering, and the focus of today's conversation, is 3100: Run and Become. A behind-the-scenes immersion into the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race — the world's most elusive and elite, multi-day running race. Held annually around one utterly unremarkable half-mile urban sidewalk block in Queens, New York, it demands competitors to complete at least 59 miles daily for 52 straight days. The goal? Not glory, but rather the promise of personal expansion and a deeper sense of self. The film also explores the historic and current relationship between running and spirituality through intimate visits with the Marathon Monks of Japan's Mt. Hiei; the persistence hunters of Africa's Kalahari tribe; and Arizona's Navajo Nation. The act of running to transform oneself is as old as time. Ancient man and woman ran not just for survival, but to connect with Nature and the Divine. This is a conversation that explores this essential truth. Because to run is to be human. I sincerely hope you enjoy this very special exchange with a truly remarkable man. And make a point of seeing the movie. 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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• 1:05Sanjay Rawal?

  Running unites us. At one point, every single culture on Earth relied on running. So it's literally baked into our DNA, and it's baked into our culture. We've been running for millions of years, and it's an activity that we're going to continue doing for hundreds of thousands more, regardless of what the political state of humanity is. If we can go back to that state, I think we'll all realize that there are things that unite us that are much stronger than the things that we think divide us.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  That's Sanjay Raghav, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? This is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Hope you guys are doing good. Got a great show for you guys today. Before we get into it, I wanted to say that the best and the easiest part of this whole podcast experience for me is having the conversations with the guests. I love that. Comes very natural to me. But the hardest, the most awkward aspect of doing this is recording these intros. There's just something about me being by myself, talking into a microphone, that just feels unnatural. And I know that it comes off stiff and a little bit stilted.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  And so I thought I would mix things up today by doing something different. Today, I have a co-host for the intros, my man DK, David Kahn.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  How's it going, man?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  It's good. I like the way you do the intros of the show. I don't think there's anything stiff.

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  It just feels like, it just doesn't feel, I don't know, like it just doesn't feel as natural or as like flowing. It's just easier to talk to somebody else when somebody's sitting across from me.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I get it, because you have to do work and you have to write it out and you're trying to like.

• 3:07Rich Roll?

  I get all up in my head. You know, that's the thing. Now I get to look at you. We're going to try this out as an experiment and we'll let the listeners decide.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  All right.

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  How do you feel? Do you feel the pressure?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  They should just be generous when they, when they send you notes about DK's performance today.

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  Right. So DK, for those of you who don't know, is my main man. We've been friends for like 20 years, right?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  And DK came on board the podcast to manage all the sponsor relationships and he's doing a great job.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  We're getting such great sponsors for the show. All the sponsors that we have now are companies that I really believe in, that I love, products that I use, and that just feels really good.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Hey, man.

• 3:47Rich Roll?

  It's your hard work, man.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  You do all the hard work. I do a little bit of work.

• 3:50Rich Roll?

  No, it's been good, dude. So today, we have a great conversation for you guys. It's with a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker called Sanjay Rawal. And he's a super interesting cat. This is a guy who's got a very diverse, dynamic background. He started out in human rights and philanthropy, got into documentary filmmaking. And this is going to be a conversation about running predominantly, but not running in the context that you might expect. This is about the spirituality of running, this idea of running as devotion, running for enlightenment, running for spiritual growth,

• 4:31Rich Roll?

  which is a topic, a theme that Sanjay explores in depth in his new documentary that he just directed called 3100 Run and Become, which is a great film. You guys should all see it. Why 3100? I'm going to tell you guys in a minute, but first.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  All right, Sanjay Rawal. What do I want to say about him? Well, I guess I would say upfront, Sanjay is an award-winning documentary film director based in New York City. And before I get into his films, I think it's worth mentioning that he's got this really interesting background. This is a guy who graduated from Berkeley with a BA in molecular and cell biology and neurobiology. So he's super smart, but instead of going into medicine or research, like I think his parents would have, would have preferred, he ends up going on this wild spiritual quest. He gets super into meditation. He becomes a devotee of Sri Chinmoy. Do you know who Sri Chinmoy is?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  I do.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I actually had one of his books when I was younger.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of my friends gave it to me and I checked it out.

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  What did it tell you?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  The only two things I remember, one of them was you absorb all the principles of whatever you're eating. And I remember it was the first time that I stopped eating eggs and meat for almost a week.

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  How old were you?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Twenty-three.

• 6:05Rich Roll?

  And look at where we're at right now.

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  But it's interesting that you still remember that.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  I remember that. It had an impact on me immediately.

• 6:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. So Sri Chinmoy, he's since passed, but he was kind of this legendary guru in the Hindu tradition that lived in New York City. And there was something about him that really just captured Sanjay's fascination. And he ends up moving to New York City to become a devotee. And professionally, he gets involved in human rights and philanthropy. He ends up developing, I'm talking about Sanjay now, developing projects in over 40 nations, working with all kinds of people like luminaries, and heads of state, and business leaders, and celebrities, and private equity funds. And they were all initiatives designed to make a measurable positive impact on the world. But then he flips the script. He turns the page and he becomes this documentary filmmaker. And over the years, he's made

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  a number of films, including The Ocean Monk, a movie called Challenging Impossibility that is about Sri Chinmoy. He made a movie called Food Chains that you might have seen. And his newest film is called 3100: Run and Become. And that's the focus of today's conversation. I met Sanjay through my friend Tom Scott, who you might remember from being on the podcast. He's the founder of the Nantucket Project. And Tom just thought that Sanjay and I would hit it off. And he sent me the trailer for this movie, 3100: Run and Become. And I loved it. And I knew like, right away, before I even met Sanjay, that, or even seen the movie, that he would make a great guest on the show. And I think my instincts were

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  correct and intact, because this really is an amazing conversation. We talk about Sanjay's incredible personal story. He's a guy who grew up in, or was born, I should say, in Nigeria. Lived in Colorado and Oakland and, and, and this search that he goes on to find his, his own path and how that led him to meditation and spirituality and Sri Chinmoy. We talk about who that guy was, which is an amazing tale in its own right. And then we get into this movie 3100, uh, which is a beautiful look, a beautiful journey into this nexus, this connection between running in like its purest form and spiritual

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  growth. And in telling that story, Sanjay explores a number of different subcultures, including, uh, the story behind and all the personalities behind this crazy race called the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100, which is, get this DK, a 3100 mile running race that takes place every summer in New York City where I think there's like about, I don't know, somewhere between 12 and 20 every year, show up to run circles around this one half mile loop in Queens. It's basically just a very average city block around a high school in Queens.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  That's the same distance as running from New York to Los Angeles.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  Right. So they just do it like they just keep running in this circle. I think every day they switch, they go counterclockwise one day, clockwise the other day, but they have to do it. Um, I don't remember the number of days that, that the cutoff is. I think it's like 57 days or something like that. So they literally have to average about 60 miles a day to keep pace and get it done, which is insane.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  Had you, living in New York City, had you ever heard of this race before?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  I never heard of it.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  I had heard of it, but I, I think I just dismissed it as apocryphal. Like I couldn't believe that people actually did this, but it's been going on for decades.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  And so Sanjay really goes behind the scenes of this race and, and the people that participate in it. And then he goes off in the movie on these tangents where he explores other cultures that. Have historically used running as a method for expansion. We visit the Kalahari Bushmen in Africa. He goes to commune with the Marathon Monks of Mount Hie in Japan. Have you ever heard of these people?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's crazy. It's this sect of Buddhism where they believe that enlightenment can be achieved through running. I don't want to spoil it because the story that Sanjay tells about this culture is totally amazing.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I'm gonna have to start running more.

• 10:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna start running, period.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  You do, man. Well, you're wearing your ahs, right?

• 10:35Speaker 02

  I know, but it's hard.

• 10:37Rich Roll?

  We'll go running together.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  I know. I did that once with you and you're like running up the hill. I'm like, I'm walking. You're like, come on, DK.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  We're gonna do it together. We're gonna do it together. And he also visits the Navajo tribe, which has a rich history in running as well, which I wasn't familiar with. So that's all pretty cool. So all of these cultures, kind of, the thesis of the movie is looking at this culture of running, or these cultures where running is used as devotion, where running is leveraged to, as this vehicle to transcend, to survive, you know, running for enlightenment and running for healing. It's a super cool movie. Sanjay is the perfect person to tell this story and this conversation is amazing. So with that, should we dig into it?

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanna, I wanna listen to this.

• 11:26Rich Roll?

  How do you feel about how this intro went?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  I think it went well.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  Was it good?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  I like, it made it easier for me, man.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  That's all that was important.

• 11:33Rich Roll?

  It's an excuse for me to talk to you.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  No, it's great.

• 11:35Rich Roll?

  It was good, man. So everybody out there, let me, let DK know.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  You don't have to let me know.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  You don't want, you don't want feedback?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  No, I got a little bit of feedback, but I'm sure they're gonna be like, hey, why, why, why's that guy on Rich Roll's show?

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  You gotta mix up the format every once in a while, man. You can't be afraid to experiment.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I know. I feel like I'm gonna have to go on a better diet and be healthy, just so I can sit here next to you.

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  That's my, that's my ultimate agenda. Good luck. All right, so this is me and Sanjay Rawal.

• 12:08Sanjay Rawal?

  So she pronounces it Jaya. The Sanskrit and North Indian pronunciation is Jaya. Right. We go by Jaya with our daughter. Nice. And we've got a friend who's got a child named Jaya as well. Oh, cool. So it seems to be in the, uh, in the air. And my, my name is Sanjay, which means with victory. Oh, I didn't know that. The same root, J, Jaya. Oh, that's cool. In Sanskrit, my name is Sanjaya. Uh huh. And Jaya, the, the loose translation of Jaya is, is victory. Yeah. Jaya is, is, is a Sanskrit word for victory. Right. So where, where are your parents from? My dad's from Gujarat, which is on the border of Pakistan, west, northwestern India. Mom is from Madras, uh, kind of southeastern tip of India.

• 12:53Sanjay Rawal?

  And when did they immigrate? They met each other in their first jobs in Nigeria, which is where I was born. Oh, you were born in Nigeria? Yeah. And then they moved to Colorado pretty quickly to teach. My dad had gone to the school, had gone to school in the States. And worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in Africa, collecting indigenous seeds. So that's where the human rights, uh, genetic material kicks in for you? I think so. I ran away from it for as long as I could. And it just rubber banded you back? Yeah. And the funny thing is like, my dad was a geneticist. And after kicking and screaming, I ended up working with him on like a tomato genetics company. Um, you know, like all the tomatoes that you get at Whole Foods, the ones that are in the clam shells, uh, from Baja are all his varieties.

• 13:38Sanjay Rawal?

  Oh, wow. So I kicked and screamed every way possible and was roped back in like the most brutally harsh way. Yeah. What do you mean brutally harsh? I, I wouldn't, if somebody had told me that, I would be following in my father's footsteps when I was like 18 or 19. Cause everything inside of you was to do something different. To, to like.

• 14:00Sanjay Rawal?

  Like forge my own path.

• 14:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 14:02Sanjay Rawal?

  And it's like, you know, we follow the footsteps of those who walked before us.

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:06Sanjay Rawal?

  As much as, you know, we don't think we do.

• 14:09Rich Roll?

  Of course, man. So you grew up in Colorado then?

• 14:12Sanjay Rawal?

  Colorado and California, Oakland, and then went to Cal. And then met a student of Sri Chinmoy's at Cal. And as soon as I graduated, I wanted to get as far away from like academic rigor and like materialism as possible. Moved to New York where Sri Chinmoy was based, but you know, I was at $400 or $500 per month in terms of my own budget.

• 14:34Rich Roll?

  But the original impetus to move to New York City was really to be a devotee of Sri Chinmoy.

• 14:39Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, that's exactly it.

• 14:40Rich Roll?

  Wow. What did your parents think of that?

• 14:43Sanjay Rawal?

  They freaked out.

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Did they?

• 14:44Sanjay Rawal?

  They both have PhDs.

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  They're like, you're supposed to be a professor.

• 14:48Sanjay Rawal?

  And all my relatives were like, why are you in America if you want to follow a guru?

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. You went to America to follow an Indian guru. You're gonna come back home, right? Instead, you go to Queens.

• 15:00Sanjay Rawal?

  I go to Jamaica, Queens. And for people, I don't know if you've been to Queens, but or been to Jamaica, other than like on your way to JFK. But it's like bottom of the barrel, New York City.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:12Sanjay Rawal?

  So.

• 15:13Rich Roll?

  It's very diverse.

• 15:14Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, and Sri Chinmoy's thing was like, don't hide from the world. And so like most gurus like live in Kauai or Malibu.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  Right, and he's in Queens.

• 15:25Sanjay Rawal?

  He's in Queens. So, you know, I learned fast.

• 15:28Rich Roll?

  It's a trip. I mean, what was it about Sri Chinmoy that connected with you? Why did you feel this pull?

• 15:35Sanjay Rawal?

  In high school, I was in a really conservative community, a suburb of Oakland, a weirdly conservative community. And my senior year, friends of mine started getting into, just to kind of rebel into the Dalai Lama and like, you know, Jonathan Livingston Siegel and those types of books. And when I went to college, it was Berkeley. You can't, you know, you can't avoid it. And so I started meditating and started trying to find a spiritual path. And most places I went to.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  What was the driver behind that, though?

• 16:06Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, because my parents were so academically minded, they had made me do everything I did, like from sports to music to like overachieving. It was, I did exactly what they wanted. And when I got to school, I realized I was still doing exactly what they wanted, and I needed to find my own way.

• 16:25Rich Roll?

  You're being a good Indian son.

• 16:27Sanjay Rawal?

  I was being-

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  Are you the oldest? Do you have siblings?

• 16:28Sanjay Rawal?

  I don't know if I was being, I was being the average Indian son.

• 16:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just doing what you were expected to do.

• 16:34Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  And so you, you what, you had, you experienced some kind of void in trying to figure out what it was that made you you?

• 16:44Sanjay Rawal?

  I realized like I was so deep on a path that wasn't on my own choosing, and I needed to find a way to choose my own path. And I realized quickly that couldn't be through academics. Like I had to go on an inner search. And you know, the writings of Sri Ramakrishna really, really inspired me. And that's when I realized like, I've got professors, you know, like, why can't I have like a teacher for what I want to do in terms of self-realization?

• 17:13Rich Roll?

  Right, well, that's, that's also going back to your Indian heritage.

• 17:17Sanjay Rawal?

  It is, but it was almost like osmosis, because my parents' generation moved to the US to get away from that. It was the first time that Indians in the modern era could like, you know, have material aspirations. And so they were all about the material life. Now they're not, but they were then.

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, and they're trying to acclimate you to become American, so to speak.

• 17:39Sanjay Rawal?

  Oh, big time. It was like Kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburgers.

• 17:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:42Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, like now I love curry. I go like, I can't believe like, I didn't eat any of that stuff when I was growing up.

• 17:48Rich Roll?

  And so when you start meditating and going on this path and, and your parents must have been, well, I would imagine it must be somewhat mixed. Like on the one hand, like, okay, he's verging from this trajectory that we've sort of established for him. But at the same time, there's something, you know, beautiful about you connecting with what, you know, could be characterized as, you know, your, your sort of inherent native traditions.

• 18:15Sanjay Rawal?

  It's true. The one thing that everybody has a difficult time with, especially in the West, is how much obedience you need to follow a teacher. Whether the teacher's a Zen practitioner, whether the teacher is, is your martial arts teacher, or whether it's an Indian guru. And so I literally put myself at the feet of Sri Chinmoy. And I asked him, you know, my parents really want me to go to grad school and want me to be a doctor. You know, from an inner standpoint, you know, what's your belief? And Sri Chinmoy meditated and said, in an almost otherworldly tone, your soul does not want you to be a doctor. Your soul wants you to strengthen your heart. And so the first thing I did is I went to my parents and was like, I asked Sri Chinmoy what I should do.

• 18:58Sanjay Rawal?

  And he said, your soul doesn't want you to be a doctor. And they're like, what, what does that even mean? Like, no, you know, like you are becoming a doctor. And then Sri Chinmoy told me cryptically, you know, that I still had to please my parents. So it's like, it was almost like a koan, like, Right. don't please your parents, but please your parents. And what does strengthen your heart actually mean? I had a hard time understanding that because I think as, as, as men or boys in this country, we're not really, you know, at least when I grew up in the eighties and nineties, we weren't really encouraged to find those qualities of the heart, like love and sympathy and generosity.

• 19:43Sanjay Rawal?

  And, you know, academic life obviously strengthens your mind much more than your heart. And I realized like I needed to develop qualities of love, of sympathy, of joy, not for anybody else, but for myself. And that would actually give me the strength to like be confident with my convictions. And what was the process of, of exploring that for you? It was totally detaching myself from that Western track. I mean, I went from like 4.0 at Cal to working at a, a health, a community health food store in Queens at a hundred dollars per week, living in a house with 15 other dudes. Were they all devotees? They all were. And we all had our own little rooms, you know, rent was $200 per month. And, you know, going to morning and evening meditations.

• 20:29Sanjay Rawal?

  And that was it. That was it? Wow. That was it. And a lot of service, like we gave a lot of free meditation classes. And there were like athletic races that weirdly enough, you know, this Indian teacher really wanted us to participate in. And I traveled with him. And I did that pretty much nonstop until a point when he said, you know, he didn't say this explicitly, but he was like, you know, you're ready to do more. And that's when he kind of pushed me into this sphere of human rights.

• 20:55Rich Roll?

  We were chatting the other week when we first met and I was sharing with you that my only real awareness of Sri Chinmoy was when I was living in New York City right after college and I would see people running, you know, in Central Park or all over the city, wearing Sri Chinmoy t-shirts. And I was like, who is this Sri Chinmoy? Is he like a coach to a running club? But there seemed to be this almost cultish conglomeration of people everywhere I looked who were running all over Manhattan, wearing paraphernalia that was advertising Sri Chinmoy. And I thought, he must be some kind of cult guru

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  or something like that. And I didn't really explore it any further than that at that point. But I've since come to learn and what your film, which we're going to talk about in a minute, so beautifully explores is like who this man was, what he stood for and the impact that he's had, not just on you spiritually, but on, you know, a vast community of people and how that sort of intertwines very beautifully and naturally with the running community in New York City.

• 22:05Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, it's hard to believe that marathon running at one point in the 60s and even mid 70s was absolutely counterculture. I mean, if you read the early New York City marathons, which were just, you know, five or six laps around Central Park, the people that did those were thought to be crazy. And when Fred Lebo decided to do the 1976, you know, big five borough marathon in honor of the bicentennial, I think that's the first time that marathoning kind of reached the mainstream. And Sri Chinmoy was in New York at that point and, you know, was very, very supportive of this flourishing of people's aspirations to try to do something that was seemingly impossible. I mean, now, like from your five ultras to now 50 ultras in 50 days, that bar has been pushed.

• 22:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:51Sanjay Rawal?

  But in 1976, 1977, like 26.2 miles was like the edge of the envelope.

• 22:58Sanjay Rawal?

  And you know, it's New York City in the seventies. So before the 1977 and 1978 New York City marathons, the day before Fred LeBeau and the New York City Roadrunners would have Sri Chinmoy lead meditations. So you had an Indian guru in a dotty in Central Park with runners meditating.

• 23:15Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. Yeah. And just, just to kind of provide a little exposition on this. I mean, for those that don't know, Fred LeBeau is a legendary character who really can be credited with contributing to the explosion of interest in distance running by virtue of the work that he did with a, was he the president of the New York Roadrunners Club?

• 23:36Sanjay Rawal?

  He was.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  He really, did he, he founded it too, right?

• 23:38Sanjay Rawal?

  Actually Ted Corbett.

• 23:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, I don't know about Ted Corbett.

• 23:41Sanjay Rawal?

  Ted Corbett, African American, 1952 Olympic marathoner for the US in Helsinki. Ted is known as the, as the father of modern ultra marathoning, just by accident. He, he lived in the Bronx and his training weeks were sometimes 200, 300 miles.

• 23:57Rich Roll?

  Whoa.

• 23:57Sanjay Rawal?

  In New York City.

• 23:58Rich Roll?

  In the 50s.

• 24:00Sanjay Rawal?

  In the 50s and 60s. He would leave his home at seven or eight in the morning and he would run. And he would come back and he'd do these, you know, 12, 14 hour runs every Saturday and Sunday just for fun. And Fred was the founder, I mean, Ted was the founder of the New York Roadrunners Club. And Fred ended up launching it into what it is today.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  Right. So Fred pioneers this craze of marathoning. And I, you know, I remember as a 10, 11 year old, 12, whatever. There was this period of time in which marathon running kind of exploded into mainstream awareness. And you had guys like Jim Fix who were writing books about it and people were discovering this for the very first time. And, and Manhattan and specifically the New York Roadrunning Club and the work that Fred was doing, was kind of the, that was like the Mecca for everything that was occurring at that time.

• 24:54Sanjay Rawal?

  It really was, and I think Fred's imagination was unbounded. He had heard that in the late 1800s, there was this phenomenon of pedestrianism. Six-day races held in Madison Square Garden, where people bet on the man or woman who would do the most miles in six days. And Fred wanted to revive that in the 80s. So with the help of Sri Chinwai and his marathon team, they started a six-day race in Flushing Meadow Park. And that brought out the people that had the feeling and that knew that they had the capacity for more than 26 miles, like the great Stu Mittelman, and all these characters that wanted to go well beyond the 26-mile limit, and well beyond the 100 or 200-mile limit.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  So, these races in Madison Square Garden, like, when was that going on?

• 25:41Sanjay Rawal?

  They were hugely popular, late 1800s to the early 1910s. Extraordinarily popular. And if you look back, even before the first Olympics in 1896, people were doing like cross UK walks, you know, these epic walks in the United States, too. And they were races, where people would race almost Tour de France style, trying to get from point A to point B in the fastest time, taking help from villagers or town folks, etc.

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  That's like lost history, though, because I've never read anything about that.

• 26:12Sanjay Rawal?

  And it's the foundation of what was known as multi-day running. I mean, these days, ultra-running is more popular than ever, and the multi-day idea has kind of been lost. But, you know, in the 80s and 90s, it seemed much easier to do larger events around half-mile or one-mile loops where the situation was controlled. Of course, now, like, you know, with the Leadville and Hard Rock 100 in western states, the idea of mountain running and point-to-point hundreds have really, really exploded.

• 26:43Rich Roll?

  But it's so fascinating that, you know, in the 70s, when marathoning really came of age, that was considered like the ultimate distance that a human being could run, and it completely belies the true history of these crazy races that preceded it, which get no ink.

• 27:02Sanjay Rawal?

  And sadly, the marathon was considered to be the greatest distance a man could run. It wasn't until the 1984 Olympics that there was a 10K for the women. Or a marathon for the women.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  When did, so was eighty-four the first time there was a women's marathon?

• 27:16Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, in nineteen eighty, in the, in the Russian Olympics, there was an exhibition ten K. And it wasn't until eighty-four where women had been running professionally for eight to ten years. Of course, there had been women that had, like Katherine Schweitzer, that sneaked into the Boston Marathon, you know, fifteen years or so before, twelve years before the nineteen eighty-four Olympics. But it wasn't until, I think, the, in my opinion, until the multi-day race circuits happened, that people realized that the capacity, the difference between men and women really wasn't that great. You know, there's-

• 27:48Rich Roll?

  The longer it gets, the, the narrower that cap is.

• 27:51Sanjay Rawal?

  It's true. There's, there's almost no running distance under, actually, there are no running distances under twenty-six miles where the top ten men, you know, where the top woman is in the top ten men. But when you got to twenty-four hours and forty-eight and seventy-two and then six-day races, you know, it wasn't unusual for a woman to actually win the entire event.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  And now you have people like Courtney DeWalter, who's just crushing the dudes in these super-long races.

• 28:18Sanjay Rawal?

  It's unreal, you know, and that, and that goes to the heart of, I think, why Sri Chinmoy was really into these races. It's the concept of self-transcendence, you know, going beyond what people tell you your limitations are, what you think your limitations are, digging deep into your heart and trying to pull out an energy that transcends male or female.

• 28:37Rich Roll?

  And for a little bit more exposition, it's, it's, it's worth kind of exploring the history of Sri Chinmoy because for him, running wasn't something that was tagged on top of his spiritual perspective. Like, he himself was a champion runner. He ran the hundred meters, ran his whole life, was running, you know, races, essentially up until, you know, the day he died. And, and running very much was a part of his- Perspective when it comes to this idea of self-transcendence.

• 29:08Sanjay Rawal?

  He grew up in an ashram in South India that was run by Sri Aravind. Sri Aravind was one of the original revolutionaries in India. And he had a spiritual revelation and, you know, basically renounced his revolutionary ways and moved to then French India, which was Pondicherry, to escape the British and started an ashram. And a lot of the revolutionaries that followed his, in his essence, like semi-terroristic ways, you know, ended up renouncing themselves and moving to follow the spiritual life. But after India's independence, a lot of Europeans came to the ashram and, you know, brought this dynamism into Indian spirituality, which had been absent for a few hundred years. And Sri Aravind really encouraged track and field.

• 29:53Sanjay Rawal?

  He really encouraged the development of the physical body to be a true vessel of the spiritual energies that people were aspiring to.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  And so Sri Chinmoy was a disciple.

• 30:04Sanjay Rawal?

  He was a disciple.

• 30:05Rich Roll?

  From a young age in this ashram.

• 30:07Sanjay Rawal?

  And he competed in the 100-meter dash and the decathlon there. And then when he moved to America in 1964, I think there was a gap of six or seven years where he was so focused on being a spiritual teacher and serving people's needs spiritually that the athletic side was absent. I don't think it was until the early 70s and running really began to revitalize, especially long distance, that he saw the corollary between long-distance running and spirituality and the metaphor of us running towards a spiritual goal and using outer running as a way to practice that, too.

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  Right, so he starts as a sprinter, later realizes the potential of long-distance running to serve a spiritual end or goal or pursuit or journey. And he moves to the United States. I mean, this is also an interesting period of time where there's a, there's sort of a group of Spiritual leaders who are arriving in the United States from India. You have Krishnamurti, you have Yogannanda, who comes much earlier. And what, so what is the, you know, what was the rationale behind him leaving India to come to the United States?

• 31:20Sanjay Rawal?

  The way Sri Chinmoy tells it is that he would have been content to stay in India and meditate, you know, 12 to 18 hours a day, as he'd been doing. But he hadn't experienced, like a lot of these teachers did, of the supreme, of the divine, you know, basically instructing him that his destiny lay in the West, to be of service to sincere seekers. So he just got on a plane, like no real visa, other than a tourist visa. There were students of Sri Arbenos that lived in New York that were his sponsors, but he just came based on inner obedience. And it was Greenwich Village in 1964. And, you know, it was pretty quick that he began to attract students.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a soft landing, Pat.

• 32:01Sanjay Rawal?

  It was a very soft landing.

• 32:02Rich Roll?

  For the kind of ideas that he's, that he's talking about, right?

• 32:06Sanjay Rawal?

  And so by 1970, he began leading twice a week meditations at the UN. And there was a rapid, rapid acceptance of his philosophy, because it dovetailed so much with, I think, what Western seekers were looking for. But at the same time, he didn't require a complete outer renunciation. Like, nobody wore robes and nobody had to move into caves.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  Right, so you're not walking around like a Hari Krishna?

• 32:29Sanjay Rawal?

  No, not necessarily. Hopefully, we're all, we all have the same spirit within. But, you know, he didn't, he didn't pay much attention to the same type of outer signs or outer decorum that Indian spirituality traditionally required, like the robes and, you know, the markings and the beads and things like that.

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  And did he, I assume he must have run the New York Marathon himself many times?

• 32:54Sanjay Rawal?

  He did. He ran the New York City Marathon a few times. But then, you know, he started a 47-mile race in honor of his 47th birthday, which I believe was in 1978. And that was the first time his students began running ultras. And he enjoyed it. And then he began pushing that and doing 100-mile races, 200-mile races. And when Fred LeBeau came to him in the mid-'80s and said, "Let's do a six-day race." I mean, Sri Chinmoy and what became his marathon team was ready.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  And so where does the 3100 come into play? Like, how is that birthed?

• 33:30Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, I think spiritual teachers develop...

• 33:34Sanjay Rawal?

  Vessels for consciousness in the sense that I think if he tried to start, obviously, if he tried to start a 3,100 mile race in 1976 when the marathon was limited, you know, that would have been like, somebody would have checked him into some type of facility. But after the six day race, it became a 10 day race. After the 10 day race, it became a 700,000 and 1,300 mile race. And people were doing really, really well at that. And by 1996, he decided to almost double the 1,300 and make it 2,700. And people did it. You know, there was one woman and three men that did it. And then in 1997, he said, okay, this is the distance. I'm not going to go beyond it. It's 3,100.

• 34:19Rich Roll?

  Right. 3,100 miles. This race has taken place every year since 90, what is it?

• 34:27Sanjay Rawal?

  1997.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  97. And this is a race that entails running 3,100 miles within a period of 50.

• 34:37Sanjay Rawal?

  52 days.

• 34:38Rich Roll?

  52 days, which means each runner is going to have to complete on average about 60 miles a day. The kicker is the course is essentially a half mile loop around a high school in Queens.

• 34:53Sanjay Rawal?

  On sidewalk in the summer.

• 34:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Sanjay Rawal?

  It's ridiculous.

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  It is absolutely insane. And I'd heard whispers of this race over the years. And I think I just filed it away in my brain as apocryphal. Like I thought, well, this can't actually be occurring in New York City because you don't really hear about it. It doesn't get any press. And what was so amazing about seeing it in your movie is that this occurs without really any fanfare whatsoever. There's how many, there were 12 people that that did it and that that were documented. What was it last year that that you followed these individuals?

• 35:31Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, 2016, there were 12 participants.

• 35:33Rich Roll?

  And they just spend their summer running around in a circle. They alternate the direction every other day or something like that. There's a couple of buses and campers parked out on the sidewalk. And, you know, some volunteers there to hand out food and write down their, how many laps they've done every day. The course is open from 6am to midnight and it just goes on until it's done. And when it's finished, they're like, okay, you did it. And then essentially, that's it.

• 36:02Sanjay Rawal?

  It's mind boggling. You know, I'd lived in that area since 1997, and I frankly was frightened of that race. I'd run by it. It's on like my one mile point on my morning runs.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  And we didn't even talk about the fact that you're a runner, like you came from a competitive running background.

• 36:17Sanjay Rawal?

  But that distance just frightened every single pore of my body. You know, I didn't understand how or why anybody would want to do that. And after, you know, I guess a career in in human rights, and when I started getting into film, I started wondering why a film hadn't been made on that race. Of course, it would be the most boring film in the world if any film was just about people going in circles. But I was encouraged to do a six day race, you know, to try to feel what people might possibly get out of a 3100 mile race.

• 36:51Rich Roll?

  Was that when you were kind of contemplating the idea of trying to find a way in to make a movie about this this event?

• 36:57Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, it was even more elementary than that. I before trying to make a movie, I needed to understand like, why to make a movie? You know, what could possibly appeal to a non 3100 mile runner about this race? Like, why would anybody want to do, why want to watch a movie about something that's so beyond what we might even want to consider doing? And so I did a six day race on the same course that Fred LeBeau had started in 1986. And I didn't really train much. The interesting thing about ultras is that, you know, you see people from 18 to 70 years old doing ultras. And particularly since

• 37:41Sanjay Rawal?

  a lot of older people do ultras, I went in without much training, thinking like, if a 70 year old could do it, like, why couldn't I? You know, I did about 50 miles the first six hours, then I got injured. It's like I felt my hamstring twinge.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  50 miles in six hours. That's pretty good.

• 37:56Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, I didn't know what to do. I didn't, I didn't know how to approach it. But then I felt my hamstring twinge. And as it twinged, a few 75 year old ladies walked by me and asked me how I was doing. And that's when I realized. I can't quit, you know, it's like if these women are doing this race.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  And also, the nature of how you approach and conquer an event like that is very different than the mindset, you know, of the typical runner or whatever your background and running experience was.

• 38:26Sanjay Rawal?

  And so the next four days, actually, the next four and a half days, I was out on the course 18 hours and I was barely doing 32 miles. I had a pulled hamstring and all I could do in those four and a half days was pray. Pray that I would get to run again in the race. You know, I was never more conscious of like my frailty than having 75 year old men and women chatting with you and then apologizing, saying, you're slowing me down and then moving beyond. But I would say, almost miraculously and without hyperbole, what the day left, my hamstring felt normal. It just, in an instant, felt normal.

• 39:11Sanjay Rawal?

  And then I took off. It's like I channeled, I'd held like five, almost five full days of prayer in my heart. And when that prayer had been answered, I took off. And for the next about 21 hours,

• 39:26Sanjay Rawal?

  I was honestly in the highest meditation I'd ever been in. And, you know, it's like, we all say that, like, people sometimes say like, when I chop onions, it's meditative. And I don't mean like repetitive. I don't mean that my mind was turned off. I mean that every single spiritual pore of my being felt like it was about to have the biggest awakening. My imagination felt like reality. You know, I was like feeling Hanuman. I was feeling like every Indian mythological story I'd ever read. I was feeling the presence of those beings on that course. And no matter what I did, whether I stopped to eat, I stopped to fix my shoes, as soon as I'd start running again, those experiences came to the fore.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  You were having a transcendent experience.

• 40:07Sanjay Rawal?

  I was.

• 40:08Rich Roll?

  So what do you make of that?

• 40:10Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, when I talked to runners after that who did the 3100, they said, This is why we do it. And I said, does it, does that experience happen in minute one? They said, no. But after four or five or six days, regardless of, of injuries like I had in the six day race, after four or five or six days, they find that their mind shuts off, finally surrenders to the inevitable fact that they would have to be running for the next, you know, 52 days. And the heart comes to the fore. In some cases, the soul comes to the fore. And they get experiences that are extremely challenging to get through silent meditation alone.

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you hear stories from people who are, who are quite expert in meditation that it takes a very long time, perhaps years to, of consistent diligent practice to get to a place where you can have that kind of experience. But once you have it, you develop the acuity to drop into it a little bit with, with more facility, right? And I would imagine for some of these runners, maybe they, they can, if they're experienced in this sort of thing, they can drop into that state perhaps sooner without having it to be, you know, on, on day six of the, of the six day run.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  So do you think you have to reach a certain level of, of suffering and pain to arrive at that place? Or what is the, what's the trigger?

• 41:38Sanjay Rawal?

  I, I thought I did. I thought that, I thought that was the trigger. After the six day race, I realized that there was a movie to be made. If I could capture that spiritual essence of ultra distance running, it, you know, it might, it might be of some service. I wanted to explore traditional practices of running. And of course, people who've read Born to Run know about the Roromari, the Taromara Indians, that are connected culturally to the Indians in the southwest of the United States. So I, I went to Santa Fe to meet a friend who ran an organization called Wings of America, which really focuses on Native American running culture and revitalizing that. I met one of the board members who is an ultra distance runner.

• 42:19Sanjay Rawal?

  On the Navajo Nation. And when I went on a morning run with him, I realized that his attitude towards running was totally different than mine. I started my watch, you know, I was looking for the GPS signal. It's like, this is gonna be a great Strava run through this canyon. And it was a canyon that people who weren't natives weren't allowed to run in, but we had permission to run in it. So I was like, I'm gonna get some course records, all this stupid stuff that like, you know, technology and like competition, you know, kind of, you know, for me to believe. But he was running for different reasons. The Navajo run towards the east in the morning, because that's where the rising sun is. And I could tell that this fellow, Sean Martin, who's an athletic director in Chingley High

• 43:04Sanjay Rawal?

  School in Arizona, he was receptive to the idea that this run, this regular morning run, would make him a better person. It could also give him an exceptionally spiritual experience. And that was his attitude for running. And that had been baked in through 32 years of cultural training on how to run. And so that's when I realized, like most spiritual teachers say, like, suffering isn't the only path to enlightenment. And I think it's the same in running. It's like, suffering isn't the only path to the ultimate running experience. Carl Lewis used to say the same thing. He used to be so against the idiom,

• 43:48Sanjay Rawal?

  no pain, no gain. You know, there's a different attitude to approach sports. And I saw it in Sean Martin that day.

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  Through the movie, you explore the culture of the Navajo Nation. You travel to Japan and spend time with the running monks of Mount Hei. Is that how you say it?

• 44:16Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, I would say that you pronounce it as perfectly as

• 44:19Rich Roll?

  As an American could.

• 44:21Sanjay Rawal?

  As any American ever would.

• 44:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Which is fascinating. And I want to dive into that more in a minute. And then also, the Botswana tribe of the Kalahari, right? And the culture of kind of persistent hunting and how running plays into that. And in your, your kind of

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  Learning process, your discovery process of trying to understand these cultures and how running and spirituality form essentially who they are. Like, what is it that you have discovered about this relationship between spirituality, transcendence, running, and really, you know, the title of your movie, which is Running to Become? Like, what does that mean?

• 45:07Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, to practice it all, colonization has been a really bad thing for running cultures. You know, from the British colonization of India to the Black Botswana government's colonization of the Kalahari, to Anglo-European colonization of the United States, there haven't been many cultures that have been able to keep this connection to running in the past 500 or 600 years, or maybe in the past 10,000 since we've been agrarian societies. But in the last few hundred, the remaining running cultures have been forcibly separated from that tradition. And first and foremost, that's been really sad to see. And it's not just,

• 45:51Sanjay Rawal?

  you know, white Western Europeans. Again, the Botswana government is black African. And the Chinese, for example, destroyed a culture in Tibet of longgum pot running, which we tried to explore. And this almost sounds like woo-woo, but people were sequestered into caves for two or three years at a time. And they sat in lotus position and using their prana, they would gradually try to burst upwards. And at the end of two or three years, they were able to, in lotus position, burst up three feet. And that gave them the kind of pranic, the metaphysical approach to a different style of running. There was

• 46:33Sanjay Rawal?

  a German priest and a German nun in the 30s and 50s, respectively, who witnessed runners running across boulder fields in Tibet, going at what they estimated was, you know, equivalent of now six-minute-per-mile pace, where these runners would fixate on a star at 8:00 PM and run towards it till 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. And that's a 12-hour run, where they're going six-minute pace through this longgum pot running.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 47:00Sanjay Rawal?

  And when the Chinese took over Tibet, they didn't destroy the monastery, but they killed all the monks in that monastery. So as we explored these ancestral traditions of running, we found that there were very, very few. Native American running culture was extant until really about 150 years ago. Now, they didn't have horses, you know, in a modern sense, until about 1680, 1700. Before that, they relied on runners to run 100, 200, 300 mile, you know, trading and spiritual routes. So that was, you know, kind of an exhilarating discovery, especially when we saw that alive and well in Botswana.

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  Well, the sort of most well-known of these cultures is probably the Tarahumara in Mexico. And I would imagine that a big reason why it serves as such a test case, a case study, is because the Copper Canyon has done such an amazing job of protecting them from the outside world, preventing that kind of pollution that's occurred, that's sort of undermined these other, these other tribes. And has sort of allowed them to continue their ancestral habits, which prioritize running as essentially a lifestyle. I don't know

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  what the spiritual connection is with the Tarahumara, but I did have one experience where I ran with one when I was in Mexico City. And it was amazing. It was, it was an event that was sponsored by Runners World, and it was on a track in Mexico City, and it was like kind of a expo-type situation. So I had the opportunity to run around a track with this guy, and he's in his traditional garb with the sandals and like the whole thing. And I almost felt, it was almost like he was a fish in an aquarium. You know, I was like, I wasn't even sure that he really understood what was happening. Like, he'd been flown out there, almost put on display. But I could tell, in running with him, it was so natural, it was so pure. Like you said, there's no, none of the trappings of

• 49:07Rich Roll?

  our modern culture of running. There's no GPS watch or anything like that. And his gait was so effortless and beautiful. And you could tell that this is just an extension of a lineage, lineage that goes back, you know. Many, many, many generations.

• 49:23Sanjay Rawal?

  I mean, that's the great thing about running, you know, my colonization rant aside, running unites us. You know, at one point, every single culture on earth relied on running. Again, we weren't agricultural. No one was agricultural until 10,000 years ago, which meant that we were all hunters and gatherers. And the fastest, strongest runners were the ones that were most adept at hunting. So it's literally baked into our DNA and it's baked into our culture if we can rediscover that.

• 49:54Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So when someone says to you, "We were born to run," like, what does that mean to you?

• 50:01Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, the book was really, really inspiring. But I think there were some parts of the book that might have been misunderstood. There's a fascination with these traditional ancestral, call them ancient running cultures, like the Tarahumara, like the Navajo, like the Hopi, like the Bushmen, that they have some deep genetic advantage, that they're superhuman, or they have special DNA, or that it's their food, their chia seeds that make them...

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  Right, the pinole.

• 50:32Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, that make them better runners. But they're better runners because they work harder at it and they feel it's more important. I mean, for someone who wants to run to lose weight, or run to win a race, those are really, you know, strong and powerful motivations. But if you feel that running is a form of prayer, you have a different attitude. And our Navajo character, who actually is the race director of the Tarahumara's Copper Canyon race, he told me, he said, "Running is a prayer." You know, when you're running, your feet are praying to Mother Earth. You're breathing in Father Sky. Running is a celebration of life. It's like when you run, you appreciate everything around you. And running is a teacher, you know, it teaches you about who you are. It helps you get through hardships.

• 51:18Sanjay Rawal?

  My high school running coach never said anything like that to me.

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  He might have gotten fired if he did.

• 51:25Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, it was like run to win and that was it. And if you were second, even if you PR'd, it was just like, that's three points, it's not five points.

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's super interesting. I heard you tell a story about one of the participants in the most recent iteration of the 3100, who I think was, is a semi-pro runner from, where was it?

• 51:51Sanjay Rawal?

  From Israel, Kobi Orin.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Who kind of showed up guns blazing, laid down a torrid pace for the first thousand miles or whatever it was, and then had a little bit of a reckoning that led to an epiphany that kind of speaks to what you just said.

• 52:07Sanjay Rawal?

  Kobi Orin, and I was in one race with him. And in that race, he wasn't ultimately successful, but he was trying to break a 10-day record of 901 miles. Like, that's the level that he's on. He was, you know, he's on pace to do 90 miles a day in that race until the last couple of days.

• 52:27Rich Roll?

  That's insane.

• 52:28Sanjay Rawal?

  So he's, he's a really good runner and like all Israeli citizens, he has a military background. So he came in to the 3100 race this last summer, 2018, with a plan. It was just like Operation Control, everything tactical that you could need, you know, he had it. And in the first thousand miles of his 3100-mile race, that thousand-mile split set an Israeli national record for a thousand miles. And he was racing. He was racing this fellow from Russia named Basu. But then, something softened in Kobi, and not softened in a weak way.

• 53:10Sanjay Rawal?

  Kobi later recounted that there was a point in the race when he realized that he could race, he could race the race. And, you know, he could be just pushing his physical limits, but he would have missed the point entirely. And he felt that if he'd done that, maybe he would have won the race, but he wouldn't have remembered anything significant about it. He had the epiphany that that 3100-mile race wasn't a journey from point A to point B or zero miles to 3100 miles. He said the race is a pilgrimage. And that separated himself from even the kind of like... Micro focus of like lap by lap by lap. When you're on a pilgrimage, everything that you do is a ritual.

• 53:54Sanjay Rawal?

  And he realized that each one of his steps was a ritual. His motions, his attitude were rituals. And that reminded me explicitly of the marathon monks of Mount Hei, the running monks of Mount Hei. You know, they choose one aspirant every seven years to do a thousand days of running, split up into ten, hundred day chunks. Each hundred day cycle will have a set mileage. The first one is 11 miles a day. The last one is 56 miles a day. And all of their cycles occur on a mountain that's about 3,000 feet in, in net elevation. So they're going up and down the mountain at least once. Towards the end, they're going up and down two or three times.

• 54:35Sanjay Rawal?

  And they're so precise in their footsteps that every single day, every single step is in the exact same place. I mean, that's next level.

• 54:47Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 54:48Sanjay Rawal?

  That's how much they're just focusing on the moment.

• 54:51Rich Roll?

  That's so Japanese.

• 54:52Sanjay Rawal?

  It's so Japanese.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  You know, but I love that idea of running as ritual, you know, and, and, and, and I think it was somebody in the movie said, you know, I'm just trying to be the best person that I can be with each stride, right? This ritualization, running as, as ritual, as prayer, as this act of, of, you know, as this act on the journey toward self-transcendence. And, and I think the, the example of these running monks is the most powerful and demonstrative. I mean, a thousand days of doing this, 10, 100 day cycles. And the penalty for failure is suicide, right?

• 55:36Sanjay Rawal?

  You should say that again.

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  The penalty for failure on this quest to literally.

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  For a thousand days, go out and do anywhere between like 11 miles and 50 something miles, right? If they fail, suicide is the penalty. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's, they select one person at a time to attempt this, correct?

• 55:58Sanjay Rawal?

  And their selection process has become so rigorous that in the last 150 years of this now 1500 year tradition, no one has had to take their own life, but plenty have. And they said, and this is the interesting thing, they said that when they start this quest, no one is thinking of suicide. It's like they're thinking of bliss. But they feel that because the penalty is so great, they've been able to keep this practice absolutely uncompromised for the last 1500 years.

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  It's been going on that long.

• 56:33Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, that's the interesting thing to me. It's like, the stakes are so high that the only people that are gonna do it are ones who are going to basically establish the deepest commitment to that goal, where they're willing to sacrifice their life.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you have to be so dialed in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to come from a place of joy and gratitude and bliss rather than fear. I mean, the American, the Western perspective on that would be to just be terrified the entire time.

• 57:06Sanjay Rawal?

  I mean, it's absolutely insane. The ridiculous thing too, I mean, from a Western standpoint, is that there's no aid, there's no aid stations, there's no helpers, the aspirin starts in the morning, usually without even as much of, as a cup of miso soup, just some liquid. And after about two thirds of the way through, sometimes 30 miles, has an aid stop, takes some tea, and then continues to the end, and then has to make his own meals at the end of this 56 mile day.

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  And they're not really running though, I mean, they're essentially hiking.

• 57:42Sanjay Rawal?

  They are. It's like, it's a very steep mountain and the... Aspirants are all wearing sandals.

• 57:49Rich Roll?

  Well, they wear this beautiful costume with this amazing hat. I don't know what you call that, but it's incredible.

• 57:55Sanjay Rawal?

  It looks like Star Wars.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, it really does.

• 57:59Sanjay Rawal?

  And so they're in this garb where, you know, without getting too crass, I think it would be really hard to disrobe if you did have to go to the bathroom. So they're, they're very light. At the same time, you know, we were up there with the aspirant and no one had been allowed to film up there since 1984.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  Is that when they made that really grainy documentary that I saw?

• 58:20Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, there's actually a lot of things wrong in that documentary because I used it as research and when I presented those facts to the monks, they were like, where did you get that from? And I said, from this movie. They're like, none of that's.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  Like what was incorrect in the movie?

• 58:32Sanjay Rawal?

  There was a lot of numbers that were wrong. Daily mileage, you know, and, and I think that movie established them as with the moniker of Marathon Monks. And like you said, they don't run and they hate, even though I called them the Marathon Monks, they hated that, that label. But when we were up there, the aspirant on flats is doing about 11, 11 and a half minute mile pace. So it's like, he's walking, but you can say he's walking with an incredible amount of purpose. You know, we could, we, we didn't even attempt to keep up with them. We had to spend two days to be able to kind of cover his one circuit just because it was

• 59:16Sanjay Rawal?

  impossible even in a car to get to places before he would.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  And if you were to ask these people, what is the purpose of this? What is their reply?

• 59:29Sanjay Rawal?

  This is the interesting thing, you know, in order to get permission to do this, I met the head monk three times. And this head monk had actually done this quest. He was the, the last finisher. Everything I asked from a Western standpoint, he didn't answer in a Western way. So when I said, what is the purpose? I actually asked him that. He said, I don't understand the question. He said, "We do this because we feel that we are the go-betweens, the intermediaries between the Buddha and humanity, and that our prayers actually have an effect on the prayers of sincere aspirants worldwide."

• 1:00:13Sanjay Rawal?

  He basically intimated that the purity of their quest raised the bar for every practitioner of Buddhism, whether or not they were aware that this quest was existing.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. It's almost an ascetic practice of purification that somehow penetrates consciousness.

• 1:00:38Sanjay Rawal?

  Sri Chinwai said something similar. He said that faith is collective, that your faith is my faith, is everyone's faith, and that power of faith essentially is like a bank that we all from different cultures draw upon. And I think that's what this marathon monk, this monk of Mount Hia intimated, that they were basically depositing large sums through their quest into a vault that aspirants were drawing from around the world.

• 1:01:06Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, it's part and parcel of the kind of core perspective of Buddhism being that the best way to better the world or improve the world is to improve yourself. And this is like the ultimate process of purification, like their version of that.

• 1:01:24Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, the interesting similarity that I found between these monks and the main character in the movie, Ashpri Hanal, was that they have no lethargy. I mean, imagine what lethargy means. It means comfort. It means sitting. One might say that we're in a very comfortable position right now, sitting. These monks, they don't sit. Like, they'll sit to pray, but they'll sit and pray with intensity. And when that's done, they'll move on to the next activity. And the monk that we were interviewing, the last aspirant to have completed it, He's physically active from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep.

• 1:02:07Sanjay Rawal?

  Like, every minute is accounted for. He's not wasting a single second. The word comfort, relaxation, is not in his vocabulary at all. And the people that do the 3100, the one similarity is that, at least in that period when they're doing those 52 days, there's not an ounce of lethargy. It's like they're looking at every moment as though it counts.

• 1:02:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Sanjay Rawal?

  If they're resting, they're resting. There's no cell phones, there's no music, there's nothing. But they'll find that they can get enough rest from a 10 or 15 minute nap to get back out on the course and do 20 or 30 more miles. Whereas, the normal human being would extend that 10 minute rest into a 5, 6 hour rest.

• 1:02:49Rich Roll?

  Of course, yeah. Well, this aspirant, this Japanese monk, did you feel like you could, like, connect with him? I mean, does he, or is he just such a foreign creature that you almost feel like he's a different species? Like, does he have a humanity to him that you can relate to at all?

• 1:03:09Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, not to even mildly toot my own horn, but, you know, like, my life, even though we don't dress as renunciates, it's very much an aesthetic life. Like, I've never married, you know, we're celibate. Don't eat meat, don't drink, don't smoke. So, when I went up to Mount Hei, I had a daunting task. You know, a lot of people, I mean, I think every week they field media requests and they turn down nearly all of them, except for some photography requests of people wanting to see the monk coming or going from, from his domicile. But a nun in Kyoto made the introduction between me and one of the head monks.

• 1:03:54Sanjay Rawal?

  And, you know, as a triathlete, it's like, when you're with other triathletes, you can speak a certain language. And it's like, they'll know how many triathlons or what, what your approach has been, just by the language and, and the verbiage you use and the reference to certain races and certain courses. And so, I immediately began speaking with the head monk, you know, on that purely spiritual level. And it was unusual, I think, for him to have a media request from somebody that wasn't your, like, prototypical...

• 1:04:26Rich Roll?

  Right, this isn't the BBC rolling in.

• 1:04:28Sanjay Rawal?

  No. And...

• 1:04:31Sanjay Rawal?

  My question to him wasn't whether he would give me permission to do what I wanted to do. I asked him, I guess in a very Japanese way, if he would give me permission to do a film that he essentially would direct. And then he was a little taken aback. And he said, I've never thought of this in this way. And I said, well, you know, if, if you were with humility, if you were to make a film about this, how would you do it? And then for the next hour and a half, he laid out exactly how he would do it. And then at the end of that, I said, I promise you, I will do exactly that. And so it was that kind of like

• 1:05:13Sanjay Rawal?

  spiritual recognition that I think got us in the door. And when I saw the monk, I understood, he was doing the quest. I understood how serious his commitment was. Not that I could relate to it. It was on a level that I'd never experienced, but I could recognize that he had a tremendous amount of purity, a tremendous amount of honor, and a tremendous amount of heart. You know, you're in a state where you're praying to the divine. And the Buddhist wouldn't, Buddhists wouldn't use the word divine. They'd use the word light or soul. But you're praying to the highest. You're praying to the Buddha with all your heart's devotion.

• 1:05:56Sanjay Rawal?

  And, you know, in the purely Indian sense, like devotion's a beautiful, fluid thing that's full of love. And I recognized that in him. It's like his commitment was serious. Like he did not want to be messed with. He did not want to be disturbed because he was communicating with his beloved. He was communicating with the divine. And it's like, if you weren't going to be exactly a part of that, then he had nothing to do with you.

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  Or if you had the inability to appreciate or really understand that that's what was happening.

• 1:06:27Sanjay Rawal?

  Exactly, and we couldn't have done it without his permission. So in his offseason, the winter, they don't do the quest. In his offseason, he consulted with the head monk as to what we wanted to do and what the head monk thought would be possible, and gave his explicit permission and then made his own requests. So in essence, even though we weren't communicating with him verbally when we were up there, you know, he would recognize when we were doing something that, you know, that he'd already given approval to. And there was a few things that it was embarrassing that he did twice because he recognized that we didn't exactly get it the first time. There was one spot where he would sit and he would pray.

• 1:07:09Sanjay Rawal?

  And he did a second take, especially for us, without us even communicating that we needed for him to do it a second time.

• 1:07:16Rich Roll?

  Because he realized you didn't quite get it or something like that?

• 1:07:20Sanjay Rawal?

  It's like, imagine being the star of a narrative film. Like, let's hear your Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie when you do your take and you realize that there's a little bit of chaos.

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  I didn't nail that.

• 1:07:31Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah. Or that the DP and the crew didn't nail it. Like, you did your best part and they kind of screwed it up. You could either just go like, "That's it, I'm not doing this scene again," or you could go like, "Okay, I know you guys didn't really get that."

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:45Sanjay Rawal?

  And you're not saying it, so like, "Let me do it again." So he was very wary that he was a focus. And we had, you know, like, I wouldn't say like, non-spiritual crew, but we had crew that, you know, this was their first experience with someone like him. And at the very end, these were like, young ACs and, you know, assistant camera people. At the end of our shoot, we hustled to like, this point in the forest where we knew that he would stop for a minute if devotees came to ask for his blessings. So there was a row of Japanese ladies, and then there was a row of us, and like, you know, twenty-something hipster Brooklynites in their like, you know, jean shorts, on their knees with their hands folded.

• 1:08:29Sanjay Rawal?

  And he came by, and he said prayers over us, and then he looked at us, obviously knowing that we speak English, and he said, "Thank you."

• 1:08:39Sanjay Rawal?

  And for these like assistant cameramen, like these 22, 23 year olds from Williamsburg, like they were blown away because after a few days with them, they recognized that he was on a higher level than any of us. And when he recognized their work and said, thank you, they just became like putty. They couldn't stop talking about it.

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  That's so wild. How long were you up there?

• 1:09:04Sanjay Rawal?

  For the shoot, we had to spend two weeks on location, planning every shot. The head monk and his assistant stipulated that everything we did was planned effectively with the same meticulous nature as everything they do on that mountain. So from

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:22Sanjay Rawal?

  pans to zooms to, you know, cables and dollies and everything.

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  The shotless and everything.

• 1:09:27Sanjay Rawal?

  They went through it.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:09:28Sanjay Rawal?

  And we rehearsed it because we knew that, number one, as you know, from our movie, 3100 Run and Become, there's no interviews, there's no talking heads. At the same time, like watching running is really boring if it's just people passing by a camera. And the question was like, how do we put people into the spiritual mindset of this aspirant if we don't even get to talk to him? So our shots were planned with great detail. As you saw in the movie, we shot a lot at night. The monk carries around at night a single lantern with a single candle to light the five feet in front of him. And it's mystical. It's beautiful. And we didn't want to miss the opportunities that we had.

• 1:10:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Where do you stay? Do you have to hike up the mountain every day? Like you weren't staying in the monastery, were you?

• 1:10:16Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, a lot of these big mountain monasteries, they have hotels, but the hotels are run by monks. And Japanese temple cuisine is an absolute delicacy because you can't find that in any city, in any restaurant. You have to go to these temples and people make reservations months in advance to go and eat effectively Japanese vegan cuisine. And dinner will be 26 to 28 items. I mean, there'll be like an udon soup preparation that's literally two slurps in a little tiny bowl on a little clay pot lit by a single candle. And you'll have 25, 26 things like that. So

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  That's cool. That reminds me of that beautiful Korean monk chef woman who was the subject of chef's table, who's on a monastery, I believe it's somewhere in South Korea, who prepares just the most exquisite cuisine. It is an art form to her. And there was an amazing New York Times profile about her.

• 1:11:22Sanjay Rawal?

  This is in that tradition, although the quality is probably not at her exceptional level. You know, when we were on the mountain, we were immersed. And that definitely helped us in our own mindset for shooting.

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, amazing. What a gift. I mean, the first, you're really the first people to be able to go up there and observe and document them in decades. It's shrouded in so much mystery. I mean, I know there's that, I've watched clips from that grainy documentary, and I know, I've seen the book, what's it called, The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiey. But that's really it, right? In terms of documenting this incredible culture?

• 1:12:02Sanjay Rawal?

  That's it. You know, there's been a couple of short pieces, like to actually even be initiated into the monastery, people have to do 100 days times 11 miles. Everybody does. And they don't get the whole uniform, they don't get the big bamboo hat and the staff. They have to do 11 miles a day for those 100 days. If they don't complete a single day, they don't have to kill themselves, but they don't get to be a part of the monastery. So there have been films about that, which look visually similar, but there haven't been people that have been allowed up on the mountain while an aspirant is in this thousand day quest.

• 1:12:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:38Sanjay Rawal?

  You want to hear something that's even wackier?

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Sanjay Rawal?

  I say wacky in the most spiritual sense. At the end of the sixth cycle, the aspirant has to do an eight and a half day fast. It used to be a 10 day fast, but too many aspirants died during it. It used to be in the summer, but too many aspirants rotted from the inside out, because it's not just no food. It's no food, no sleep.

• 1:13:02Sanjay Rawal?

  The aspirant has to sit up, lotus position, 24 hours a day. There are monks by him chanting with him to keep him awake. But the third caveat on why it's so dangerous is no water. No food, no water, no sleep.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  For eight days.

• 1:13:16Sanjay Rawal?

  Eight and a half days.

• 1:13:17Rich Roll?

  How is that possible?

• 1:13:18Sanjay Rawal?

  I don't know. I don't know. Traditionally, the aspirants have said that, number one, on the most human level, they can smell what you've eaten the last three meals. Number two, they can smell any food that's being cooked on the mountain. Number three, and this is where it's actually spiritual, they're so close to the verge of death that their senses are hyper-attenuated. They can actually hear, they say, the ash falling off of incense. And so after you've crossed that threshold, or you've straddled that threshold for a period of days, and you come down, I don't think anything makes you afraid of death anymore.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  That is wild. And I would imagine the purpose of that is to even heighten that level of attunement.

• 1:14:06Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, it's an interesting thing because

• 1:14:11Sanjay Rawal?

  the monks are doing something exceptionally physical in this quest. The mileage is just mind-boggling. But they're told over and over and over that the mileage isn't important. The main monk that spoke to us refused to talk to us about the mileage. He refused to put anything, you know, any numbers on camera because he said, "It's only about the prayers. It's only about the prayers." But there's recognition that the body is as vital to this quest as the heart, as the mind, as the soul, as the center of prana, the five major centers.

• 1:14:46Sanjay Rawal?

  But to hammer that point home, after you've had six and a half, or six years effectively, of this deeply spiritual, physical practice, I think they want to kind of send you off on your last 400 days with a little bit of a higher recognition that like, nothing can stop you. If you made it past that fast, it doesn't matter, you know, what comes your way.

• 1:15:10Rich Roll?

  That is so wild.

• 1:15:13Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 1:15:14Sanjay Rawal?

  And there's one last thing they have to do.

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  It gets crazier.

• 1:15:17Sanjay Rawal?

  They say this is harder, although it doesn't sound as hard. At the end of their 10th cycle, they have to sit for 10 days for 12 to 14 hours a day in front of a big bonfire and drop in bamboo sticks that are, that have prayers of individual devotees of the monastery. So they have like a million bamboo sticks, which they basically have to, I believe, read and throw into the fire for 12 to 14 hours a day. And the monk that we spoke to, who had done this, said that was more difficult for him because he said that, you know, you're not allowed to drink water during those 12 to 14 hours. He said he got more dehydrated every single day and felt so, felt closer to the end every

• 1:16:01Sanjay Rawal?

  single day than he did

• 1:16:03Rich Roll?

  Doing that.

• 1:16:03Sanjay Rawal?

  Towards the end of that eight and a half day fast.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  And once you complete this, then what?

• 1:16:08Sanjay Rawal?

  They say you're a living Buddha. They say that you've, you've now crossed the threshold and your life is only to be of service to aspirants. So the, the monk that, that was the previous, previous finisher, who was our guide, you know, all he does is he administers to devotees, you know, 20, 21 hours a day, all he's doing is serving his disciples. And it's exceptional because it's like, there's not a single minute in his day that he doesn't use.

• 1:16:36Rich Roll?

  And it's really just one person, essentially every generation.

• 1:16:41Sanjay Rawal?

  More or less, you know, that, that, I think that every once in a while, by the weird math of, of years, there's a crossover where there's two people that are doing it at the same time. But no one's ever really on the course at the same time.

• 1:16:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's wild. What a, what a gift to be able to experience that. And, and I think another thing that's interesting about that quest, um, as being, you know, very, very Buddhist and very Japanese, that kind of distinguishes it from

• 1:17:13Rich Roll?

  A Hindu pursuit is the idea that the body is essential, right? A Hindu perspective would be more along the lines of we're trying to transcend the body. The body is just this, you know, bag of bones that's here to carry our consciousness, but there isn't attention to it in this very specific way.

• 1:17:32Sanjay Rawal?

  I mean, in my own humble way, India's downfall in the last few hundred years was disregarding the physical. But if you go back to the Bhagavad Gita, the physical is absolutely essential.

• 1:17:44Rich Roll?

  It's a warrior text.

• 1:17:46Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, the greatest spiritual figures had understood the power of their body. You know, they might have gone to the forest, like some of the great sages, and meditated for 10, 15, 20 years at a time and practiced great austerities. But a lot of those austerities came through physical practice, and nobody ever disregarded the physical. It was an essential part of our spiritual being. It's just been in the last 300, 400, 500 years that there's kind of been an infection in Hinduism, this idea that the body is Maya and that we should disregard it. And I think that's led to a lot of ill in India, including being colonized. We weren't strong enough to like fight off this tiny little island, for goodness sake.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  You guys weren't doing enough yoga.

• 1:18:30Sanjay Rawal?

  I know. It's like, come on. It's like we're the land of Krishna, we're the land of Arjuna, and when these like pasty guys came off of boats, you know, we surrendered.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  Well, let's get back to the 3100.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  I just, this is so fascinating, this crazy race. And one of the things that really struck me that's just undeniable when you watch the movie is when you take a gander at these 12 competitors that show up to do this.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  You may be thinking, these people are going to be serious athletes, are about to tackle like the craziest thing you can possibly imagine. And then you look at them and they just look like, it's not that they don't look, it's not that they look unathletic, but they don't strike you as examples of the athlete you might be imagining. They're like everyday people.

• 1:19:29Sanjay Rawal?

  It's shocking. And to put it in the most derogatory or discriminatory language, one of the best runners is a plumber. And it's like if somebody told you he was a plumber, you'd go like, yep, I see it. But if somebody told you that like, you know, he can run 3100 miles, I'd agree. We'd all say like, nope, I can't see it. Little stocky, missing a few teeth, 48 years old.

• 1:19:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:55Sanjay Rawal?

  And you're right, it's like, people aren't ripped.

• 1:19:57Rich Roll?

  They look like weekend warriors.

• 1:19:59Sanjay Rawal?

  They do.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  You know, and the true protagonist of the movie is this guy Ashpra Humal.

• 1:20:06Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  Ashpra Humal, who is, he's a paper boy from Helsinki, right? Is he like 45 or something?

• 1:20:14Sanjay Rawal?

  Forty-four years old.

• 1:20:15Rich Roll?

  Forty-four.

• 1:20:16Sanjay Rawal?

  But, you know, the paper boy aspect kind of belies this incredible focus on a Spartan-esque lifestyle. He's chosen to be a paper boy because he can train for 12 hours a day. You know, he's pushing a little cart through the streets of Helsinki, going up and downstairs, delivering mail. And for him, it's the ideal lifestyle. Like, he's on his feet 12 hours a day. At the same time, he lives in a little tiny cabin, you know, like a teenager. He eats ramen, chocolate, and soda all day long. And his six-day mark, actually, his 10-day mark is 833 miles, which means he ran 83 miles a day for 10 days.

• 1:20:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:57Sanjay Rawal?

  He's ranked on all-time rankings of races, but it's like, like you said, it's like, the question is like, how does somebody who does not look like the prototypical ultra-runner achieve things that the prototypically-built ultra-runner probably couldn't even dream of?

• 1:21:16Rich Roll?

  Well, it's because, I don't, it's because all of these people are first and foremost devotees, and secondarily, runners. Not necessarily devotees of Sri Shinghoy, but they're devotees of...

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  On this path towards higher consciousness and the athletic aspect is really just a vehicle for that.

• 1:21:40Sanjay Rawal?

  That's exactly right. There was a gentleman from Germany named Wolfgang Schwark, who has the second best 24-hour race time of all time. I believe around 180 miles done in 24 hours. And he came to do the race in 2004 and averaged 76 miles a day. And he looked like an ultra runner. World champion in a number of different races, tall, lean, athletically built. But for a German, he had actually taken up the name Madupran, an

• 1:22:21Sanjay Rawal?

  Indian name, and he was following another eastern spiritual teacher. So he had an attitude that was beyond competition, even though he was a globally ranked ultra-distance runner.

• 1:22:32Rich Roll?

  Have you thought about what you think might happen if suddenly, you know, Rob Car, like the current crop of like elite ultra-endurance runners showed up to tackle this race? What might happen?

• 1:22:46Sanjay Rawal?

  Well, you know, we did a pre-screening of 3100 Run and Become in Denver, and Claire Gallagher was there and Chrissy Moll. And Mike Wardian had just finished, I believe, the Hard Rock. And he lives on the East Coast. And his kids had wanted to see Ant-Man. And so he goes into this random theater in Denver where we're doing this pre-screening, and he sees Chrissy and Claire. And he goes like, what are you doing here? And they're like, aren't you here for the running movie? He's like, no. He's like, I'm here to see Ant-Man. And they're like, come see the running movie. He's like, absolutely. Pushed his kids into Ant-Man. And after the movie, he said, you know, we all have known that this race existed, but it's not on social media. You know, there's no real way to learn about it. You know, it's

• 1:23:30Sanjay Rawal?

  like when people climb Everest, there isn't like documentation in the New York Times. Once a decade, the New York Times writes a story on the 3100, but that's it. And he said afterwards, I'd always been curious about this race. Now I'm a lot more curious. And, you know, he's vegan. He meditates. And I think he also was once kind of sponsored by Carnival Cruise Lines to run some crazy distance around the deck of a ship. So, you know, he's got everything you need. He's, he's got the inner attitude. He's also got this like mindset where you can run in a circle uh for countless hours. And you could see the movie sparked something in him. Camille Heron, who I think has the 50 mile world record for females, uh, won the comrades marathon.

• 1:24:15Sanjay Rawal?

  She emailed me that she's always been interested in the self transcendence race. I think there's so much mystery around it. And I'm hoping that the film will unlock some of that mystery.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Sanjay Rawal?

  And show that like Ashpri Hanal, he doesn't care about nutrition. He doesn't care about anything other than the meditative aspects of the race. Other people are much more regimented, but they all, like you said, have that same type of inner attitude where they're expecting to become better people through this race. And that hope and belief and reality is what helps them make it through the miles.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, he repeats time and time again that this is his meditation. That's why he's doing it, right? And the, and the race each day starts with a one minute meditation. And he, you know, you could see his head is bowed and his eyes are closed. And, and he kind of begins that run with his sort of offhanded shuffle that he does. You know, it's like you see him going and you're like, look at that form. How's that guy possibly going to run 3100 miles?

• 1:25:14Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, to your previous question, I think people like Rob, Timothy Olson.

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  Tim Olson, yeah.

• 1:25:19Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, people like that, Clara Gallagher. There's a whole crop of people that have popped up. Scott Jurek, I'm obviously, you know, incredible runner, um, who've done these like epic races with this like, like other worldly focus. You know, if they use that determination and also they probably have it, but built the patience, understanding that this is a 52 day race or 45 day race, if you're going really fast. I think they'd have exceptional experiences, you know, and do exceptionally well. You know, our, our Navajo character, Sean Martin's dad, Alan Martin, who's in the movie as a medicine man. And the Navajo hadn't ever allowed people to film their running prayers.

• 1:26:02Sanjay Rawal?

  And for some reason, he wanted to open it up to us and got permission from other elders. And so he was asking me, Who were the keepers of the land of the 3100? He's a very normal, very deep and beautiful man. And I'm not trying to make this sound like he's some like, you know, like shaman up in the hills. But he said, like, who are the keepers of the land of the 3100? And I'm thinking like, this is a sidewalk around Thomas Edison High School bordering the Grand Central in Queens. And so I said, well, the Lenni Lenape tribe used to be there, but they left in the 1600s, 1700s. And he said, they've kept this land sacred. And I said, does that mean that they they knew that the 3100 was going to be there? He said, of course not.

• 1:26:47Sanjay Rawal?

  But it's like anytime, and this is what he said. He said, anytime there is a sacred race held on a particular piece of land, that piece of land was destined for that race. For the Navajo and a lot of Native Americans, it's like places have consciousness to a greater degree than than they do for, you know, any of us in the West. It's not just the beautiful mountains that have consciousness or that deserve prayer and worship. It's everything. It's the rock faces. It's the rock walls. It's the pathways. It's the plants. It's the it's the the consciousness of of the dirt.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Sanjay Rawal?

  And so he basically said that this course has been consecrated for time immemorial. And even though it's crazy to think that like sidewalks have consciousness, you can either say that runners have attributed the consciousness to it or they've drawn drawn out the consciousness. That course has this exceptionally deep peace for the location that it's in.

• 1:27:48Rich Roll?

  Right. It's so ironic and bizarre, though, because you just it it it it defies any notion of what you think that course should look like.

• 1:27:59Sanjay Rawal?

  And back to Kobe Orin, it's like, here's a guy who's so set on competition and so good at it and, you know, so expectant of of being able to set records that he even realized that the race is dictated by the course. And the course dictates that you look at this as a pilgrimage. And a lot of people have done the transcontinental, like from San Francisco to New York. And the logistics of going up the Sierras, the Wasatch, the Rockies, and then the flats and the rolling hills of of Nebraska are exceptionally challenging. And it's very difficult from seeing people who've done that race, you know, to to. Disassociate your mind from the trucks whizzing by, you know, the lack of aid every half a mile.

• 1:28:43Sanjay Rawal?

  But this course allows a type of flow.

• 1:28:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's almost, you know, the simplicity of it, the fact that it is so banal, contributes to the ultimate goal, which is to kind of, you know, transcend physical place and, and, and, and reach some kind of higher state of consciousness. And the repetitiveness of it, it's almost like repeating a mantra, you know, or, or using a, you know, a mala or a prayer bead. It's a, it's a, it's ritualized in its own way, the repetitive nature, the fact that it's only a half mile and not a two mile course, the fact that you're constantly passing the same thing. There's something about that that almost creates that trance-like state or, or allows

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  that to, you know, percolate to the surface, perhaps with a little bit more facility.

• 1:29:34Sanjay Rawal?

  I mean, there, there's two outcomes for discipline, right? There's, there's austerity, which is suffering, but with, with a lot of determination. And there's joy. I'm sure people have had the experience of austerity in that race. In fact, I know for runners that, you know, oftentimes the first six to 10 days are filled with exceptional suffering, where the body, the mind, the heart are getting used to the pounding, to the repetitiveness, to the monotony. But at some point in that race, like for Shawn Martin, when he leaves his door in the Navajo Nation, his discipline is translating to joy. In the 3100, those of us with the Western mindset find that, or see that it takes six

• 1:30:19Sanjay Rawal?

  to 10 days for the runners to overcome suffering and channel that focus and that discipline into joy. But even the craziest, most sociopathic, psychotic, loony, insane person on earth could not complete 3100 miles. So the question is like, why are they doing it? It's not because they're crazy. It's not because there's like a, this is a path of austerity or suffering compounding into more suffering. It's because there's a legitimate feeling of joy and dare I say bliss that these runners feel. And you end up seeing it in their faces. If someone wants to go there, you know, the race is usually from mid-June to August.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's not like there's a big crowd of people there. You could just walk right up and be right there.

• 1:31:05Sanjay Rawal?

  And all the runners will come up and greet you. They want to talk to you. They want to, they want to offer their joy. Not just because they're lonely out there, but because it's like they're feeling these like deep, deep emotions and feelings. And it's, it's like the Japanese say, it's like when you're feeling that, it's like you want to be an emissary between, in the Japanese sense, the Buddha and humanity, or here, between your soul and humanity. You're feeling something that you feel that other people are looking for and you can offer it. And so these runners, they're like little vessels going around in a circle.

• 1:31:39Rich Roll?

  How come it doesn't get more attention? You'd think like, okay, here it goes again. It's been going on forever. You're in New York City, you know, media capital of the planet. Why aren't, why aren't people writing about this and talking about it more?

• 1:31:53Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, and this is why I wanted to do this movie. ESPN and a few other filmmakers that tried to do a movie on the 3100. And the only way to approach it, I found, is through the spirituality. And if you're looking at making a movie, something has to be inherently visual. The 3100 isn't visual. That's why we have the Kalahari Bushmen, the Japanese monks, the Navajo. People that have come to write about 3100 have either just focused on the mind-numbing, that like, like foot-splitting realities of the mileage. And it's only so often that you can write about that. But the deepest articles have been about the spirituality. And that really relies on the writers.

• 1:32:35Sanjay Rawal?

  That relies on the editors to recognize that this isn't a one-day assignment. I mean, we were out there for 52 days. This is a 52-day assignment because drama happens in moments. And you have to be there when someone has kind of like a flowering of, of a spiritual experience.

• 1:32:53Rich Roll?

  Does it make you want to do it?

• 1:32:55Sanjay Rawal?

  It does. You know, filmmaking is really, is a really hard lifestyle for me because we're always traveling and, you know, I've been told that my body type is like of a bird, meaning, and, and the practitioner who told me this was like, what does a bird need? And I said, worms. And he said, no, a bird needs a nest. So it's like, you aren't meant to be traveling, but I'm always traveling. So I, I still do 45 or 50 miles a week, but to train for this race, apparently the way to do it is, you know, five or six mile runs, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 45 or 50, Sunday, 35 or 40.

• 1:33:32Rich Roll?

  That's what everyone says. That's the way to go?

• 1:33:34Sanjay Rawal?

  It's like stacking. It's like you want time on your feet. And even then, it's like, you don't need to worry about pace. Like I, I did, it was one of the best training runs of my life. I did a run with one of the 3100 mile runners. Well, we started in Queens, I had my, my, my MasterCard. We ran eight miles to a donut shop because you have to train and eat.

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Sanjay Rawal?

  We ate donuts.

• 1:33:53Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the thing about running in New York. There's always someplace to go.

• 1:33:56Sanjay Rawal?

  I know.

• 1:33:57Rich Roll?

  Jump in and eat. You're never too far away.

• 1:34:00Sanjay Rawal?

  And so we ended up doing a 30 mile training run that was just going from like smoothie bar or ramen shop. And that's the way they train.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:34:07Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, they run 40, 50 miles on like Ted Corbett on one day and they try to repeat that to get their body used to the idea of like maximum mileage with zero rest.

• 1:34:17Rich Roll?

  Well, Ashprenal, he, he, he sort of said he doesn't really, he didn't even really train, right? He just lives an active lifestyle where he's kind of moving all the time and he didn't really put too much thought into some kind of race specific program.

• 1:34:29Sanjay Rawal?

  So I, I asked him, and again, he'd, he'd done the race 13 times before.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  And he's won it how many times?

• 1:34:35Sanjay Rawal?

  Eight times.

• 1:34:36Rich Roll?

  Eight times, right.

• 1:34:37Sanjay Rawal?

  So I asked him like, what's the most important thing? And I think every ultra runner knows this in their heart. Your ability to finish a race is directly proportional to your ability to overcome problems and to realize that most problems aren't actual problems. And so Ashprenal tries to change activities.

• 1:34:56Sanjay Rawal?

  Every chance he gets to during the daytime to keep his mind nimble and to realize that it's like you can have a problem and you can push past that problem by changing the way you approach it, changing your activity, changing your mindset. This part's not in the film, but we ended up going with Ashbrighan Alt to Japan where he was climbing Mount Fuji as a way to train for the 3100.

• 1:35:17Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. It's so counterintuitive because you would think the best way to train for this is to run as much as possible and to really connect with what it feels like to stay in it in that same repetitive motion for as long as possible irrespective of the level of discomfort that you're experiencing. And that would mean just doing the same thing as long as possible.

• 1:35:41Sanjay Rawal?

  I think there's two reasons why he tried to climb Fuji. Number one, he wanted to do it in the winter with no preparation. So by the time he got up the mountain, his feet, his shins were covered with blisters and he knew he could, he would never have worse blisters than he did on that trip. And the physical challenge was so enormous. Again, he knew that he'd never face anything like that in the 3100. At the same time, like when you are going around the block, you are relying on your power to visualize and being in those exceptionally beautiful areas gave him the imagination, you know, to be able to like just transport his mind.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, there was that other guy who had horrible blisters.

• 1:36:21Sanjay Rawal?

  Vasu. Vasu had a blister.

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  Those were horrific.

• 1:36:25Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, honestly, the size of like a lemon.

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Sanjay Rawal?

  You know.

• 1:36:29Rich Roll?

  I've never seen blisters like that in my life.

• 1:36:30Sanjay Rawal?

  And he did 700 miles.

• 1:36:32Rich Roll?

  And he just kept going with those, with that, like, I can't believe he didn't quit.

• 1:36:36Sanjay Rawal?

  Vasu is also like the sweetest, most sincere person on that course where like he's just overflowing with gratitude. I mean, like, that's the culmination of spirituality, right? Trying to be grateful to everything. And you see him, he's just like, just this like mush ball of gratitude and he's pounding out 72, 75 miles a day.

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  And you'd expect to see these athletes throw temper tantrums once in a while with their crew and you don't see any of that.

• 1:37:01Sanjay Rawal?

  They do.

• 1:37:02Rich Roll?

  They do. He just beat, that didn't make the final edit.

• 1:37:05Sanjay Rawal?

  No, no. As people will see in the movie, one of the, one of the first time participants, a woman named Shamita Akenbach-Koenig, who's a professional cellist, you know, 1,000 mile, 10 day specialist. She decided to bring her husband as her handler. And for people who've done, you know, stage races or 50 milers or 100 milers with crew, I think they'd all agreed that like your worst handler is your spouse.

• 1:37:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what they say.

• 1:37:34Sanjay Rawal?

  So he was her handler and you can't lose them. Like if you're in a 100 miler, you lose them for 10, 20 miles and then you see them again. You know, every half a mile, he was there with, you know, pure love, but also pure concern for her.

• 1:37:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he kept telling her like, you gotta drop out.

• 1:37:52Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, and people will see this in the movie, but in 1996, she did an ultra in Vienna, 100K race where, you know, she was hot. It was 80, 85 degrees. She overheated and she was in a coma for two days. And the 3100, an 80 day, 80 degree day is cool. You know, a couple of summers ago, even this summer, it was 95, 98 degrees for six, eight days in a row. And that's not even heat index. That's just like air temperature.

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  And how many people dropped out?

• 1:38:22Sanjay Rawal?

  Last year, there was, I should say, very few Americans have done this race. There's been one woman named Supra Bubekor from DC who did the race 13 years in a row and finished it. The first finisher was a man named Ed Kelly. There was another American man that did it too. Last summer, an African American woman, 60 years old, named Yolanda Holder, finished with 15 minutes to spare. And she was a race walker. So there's only a certain pace that you can keep up. So she had a couple of bad days and she couldn't make it up by doing a 70, 75 mile day. She had to do like one lap extra every day. She came back at 61 to do it this summer. But unlike most summers, the first two weeks of this year's race, the temperatures were already hot.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Sanjay Rawal?

  And she had blisters the size of osso, it was like the size of like half lemons after 12 days, ulcers in fact.

• 1:39:15Rich Roll?

  And nobody's young.

• 1:39:16Sanjay Rawal?

  No. Well, the youngest finisher was 29.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Really? Was that recent?

• 1:39:21Sanjay Rawal?

  That was about 10 years ago.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, they all look like they're in their 50s and 60s.

• 1:39:25Sanjay Rawal?

  And I think that speaks to the kind of spiritual strength that you need. It's not brute physicality, because unless you can tap into a deeper energy, you're not going to get joy out of it.

• 1:39:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Let's talk about the Navajo a little bit. I didn't realize that there was this rich, running culture that infused the Navajo Nation.

• 1:39:48Sanjay Rawal?

  Native Americans didn't have any other modes of transportation other than their feet until the Spanish brought horses. And even then, even though the Spanish came in the 1500s, it wasn't until, really, the late 1500s, in some parts, the late 1600s, that Native Americans, indigenous people, had access to horses. What they did for thousands of years is they ran. They were exceptional runners. There's a story of a man named Louis Tuonamie, who was a Hopi runner and represented the U.S. in the Olympics in 1912. And he went back to the Hopi Nation to do an exhibition 10K race. And he and another kind of Anglicized, Westernized,

• 1:40:31Sanjay Rawal?

  there's other reasons why they were Anglicized. They appeared in their singlets. And a couple of elders said, "You're going to dress like that to do a race up here on the mesa?" And this was a person who was actually third place in the Olympics, Louis Tuonamie. And the elder said, "I'll beat you." And apparently, the two elders who jumped in the race were so far ahead of the two kind of modern participants after three or four miles, that one of them, the bronze medalist in the 1912 Olympics, dropped out.

• 1:41:06Rich Roll?

  That's a trip.

• 1:41:07Sanjay Rawal?

  Running wasn't just a way of life. Running was a way to connect with Mother Earth and with Father Sky. It gave men and women, you know, such a deep sense of place and a deep sense of power. In a lot of southwestern traditions, the Navajo in particular, running is still used as a coming of age ceremony. The equivalent of a bat mitzvah is practiced and young girls, as one of their last rites of passage, have to go on long runs. It wasn't just exercise. It's like if you look at one of the most spiritual practices, the coming of age ceremonies, and realize that like long distance running is a part of that, you can get a glimpse into how important it was.

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. What do you, I mean, this is a little bit of scant, but how do you think about that relationship between running and it being this, this, this really primal transcendent experience? Like, why running? Why not something else? Like, what is it about running that triggers that in the human body and mind?

• 1:42:20Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, when we were with the Kalahari Bushmen, and they had been living in an unbroken lineage in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and northern South Africa for more than 125,000 years. And evolutionary biologists say that we might not have all descended only from the San Bushmen of the Kalahari, but each one of us has DNA markers that are only found or only exhibited by the San Bushmen. So it's like we flowed through those people. When we were with them, I asked them, I said, like, you know, and, and they, they, they run to survive. They go on long persistence hunts. And what that means is that, you know, when we were beasts on the savanna, we didn't have a physical advantage over any of the creatures,

• 1:43:04Sanjay Rawal?

  from the large elk to obviously the, the big, you know, the big cats. What we could do was run for quite long distances. We'd sweat through every pore of our body. At the same time, you know, when we took steps, those steps were decoupled from our breathing apparatus. A horse or a dog, when they extend fully their four legs, their rib cage expands, take a breath. When they push off, all four legs come together and the breath is pushed out. They're anaerobic, you know, machines. We're aerobic machines. At the same time, we learned how to carry water. We could carry water in gourds or in skins. And we learned to chase big beasts away from watering holes. And they'd run thirty, forty miles, you know, in a, in a, in a gallop.

• 1:43:49Sanjay Rawal?

  And we'd track them. And we'd scare them away from the watering holes that we knew were in that area. Until after two or three days, they were quivering masses of like dehydrated flesh. And it was easy to approach them with a poison arrow and, and shoot them. Um, so that's how we survived on the savanna. At the same time, there's a deep cosmology among the San Bushmen around running and the practice of hunting. They say when they run and hunt, they're able to access the power of their ancestors. They're able to access the power of the earth to overcome the, the, the, the feebleness and the weaknesses of the human body. And so my, my question posed to one of their, one of their hunters was, you know, what

• 1:44:34Sanjay Rawal?

  came first? Did we, did you build a, I mean, not that he would, he's an anthropologist, but do you know, was, was there, was the cosmology around running built because of the physical reality that running was our weapon?

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  Right, that necessity drove it.

• 1:44:51Sanjay Rawal?

  And he said, no. He said that we hunted because we understood the power of running. Like, running was our spiritual practice. And we challenged that, we, we channeled that into an ability to survive. Running was the first religion. One would also say dance, but running and, and motion, motion on Mother Earth and using the human body to channel non-human or superhuman energies, that was man and woman's first religion that's baked into us as mammals.

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. You know, I'm not sure I totally got that from the movie because when you, when we explore the Kalahari, it's more about the threat to their way of life because of hunting bans and how they're kind of trying to figure out how to preserve this culture of running and their way of life in the wake of, you know, changes in the modern world that have now basically told them they can't do what they've always done. But I didn't, I didn't understand the spiritual depth of how deeply that runs.

• 1:46:01Sanjay Rawal?

  You know, there was a, in this type of a movie where we're trying to combine the 3100, the Kalahari, the Japanese-

• 1:46:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're trying to tell all these different stories.

• 1:46:10Sanjay Rawal?

  And trying to make them all work together. There were only certain ways that they would all work together.

• 1:46:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Sanjay Rawal?

  And some things had to be left on the-

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:46:19Sanjay Rawal?

  Cutting room floor.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  That's the nature of it.

• 1:46:21Sanjay Rawal?

  At the same time, it's like, as you saw in the movie, when you see people still running after animals, it forces us to pose that question, where we try to dive into the cosmology, into the spiritual power that running might be able to afford somebody. And that's kind of the impetus of the movie.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, what I got out of that is, you know, just for people that are listening, a ban has been placed on hunting and the Kalahari are in this position of saying, okay, do we defy the ban or do we adhere to the law? And ultimately, a great peril to themselves, they say, we're gonna do it anyway. And you can look at that a number of different ways. You can say, well, they're just, they're not law-abiding citizens. Or you can say, frankly, maybe they don't have a choice. This is so deeply bred into who they are that they just have to do it no matter what.

• 1:47:14Sanjay Rawal?

  In 1997, the, I'm using the color because it's important in this case, the black butts won in government. Found copper underneath the Kalahari Desert, which is the size of Massachusetts and it was considered an uninhabitable mass. And the Kalahari Bushmen were allowed to to live there unmolested, even though they'd only been discovered less than 100 years before. But once copper and other resources were found, this anti-indigenous colonial mindset kicked in and the entire population of the San Bushmen were relocated, much like almost every single native population in the United States.

• 1:47:52Rich Roll?

  In North America, yeah.

• 1:47:53Sanjay Rawal?

  In North America was relocated. So we actually took one of our associate producers, who's the executive director of Wings of America, the native running organization, with us on that trip. And his face was, he's a dark-skinned fellow, but his face was ashen white most of the time. Because he recognized that what happened to his ancestors on the Navajo Nation in 1868, you know, when four years prior they were forced marched off their nation because a Civil War general thought that there was gold there that could finance the entire Civil War, proved to be untrue. He was seeing that happen to the Kalahari. He was seeing an entire generation that was forcibly separated from the culture.

• 1:48:35Sanjay Rawal?

  And our main hunting character was forced off the Kalahari, and like you said, for the movie, chose to sneak back onto their ancestral home site. Penalty of death and penalty of imprisonment if he was caught hunting. But the hunting ban was placed as an excuse, saying that the San Bushmen, you know, shouldn't be allowed to hunt animals because we have a lot of tourists coming in to look at animals and we don't want them to kill them. The San Bushmen said no animal species have been, you know, extinct in the, you know, wiped out by us in the last 125,000 years. So there's a complex set of rationale.

• 1:49:12Rich Roll?

  That's complicated.

• 1:49:13Sanjay Rawal?

  But the main thing is that the government is forcibly trying to strip these ancient runners of their ability to run and hunt.

• 1:49:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that dovetails into Sean's story on the Navajo Nation. This 100-mile run that he embarks upon, that you chronicle, is really his way of connecting with his ancestry by traveling from the school that his father was, correct me if I'm wrong, the school that his father was, the sort of government school that his father was forced to attend that... Taught, you know, the traditional historical record that is at odds with this person, you know, this tribe's experience, traveling all the way to the, the, his father's ancestral homeland. Is that accurate?

• 1:49:59Sanjay Rawal?

  It's absolutely accurate. It, it was legal in the United States to forcibly remove a Native American boy or girl from his or her parents until 1977. And what that really led from was this notion that by stripping Indian kids away from their cultures, they could, the phrase was kill the Indian, save the man. If you killed the cultural part of the Indian, you would save his or her soul.

• 1:50:27Rich Roll?

  By indoctrinating them into a historical record that basically, you know, tells the conventional wisdom of America.

• 1:50:35Sanjay Rawal?

  And forbidding them from speaking their own language and forbidding them from their ancient practices. So our Navajo character, Shawn Martin, his dad, Alan, was forcibly removed from their property in northwestern Arizona to a government boarding school near Flagstaff. And as a six-year-old boy, he was so traumatized that annually, he began sneaking out of the school and running at night, 110 miles back home. A number of kids tried that.

• 1:51:05Rich Roll?

  The father did or Shawn did?

• 1:51:06Sanjay Rawal?

  The father did. A number of kids around the country that were, that were forcibly schooled, tried that and many, many died. And this was a trauma that young Shawn, Shawn Martin, the, the modern day runner, lived with. He knew that his father had a terrible childhood. At the same time, he knew that running saved his father. He and his brothers became exceptional runners, but they ran to the point of absolute physical suffering because they knew of the suffering that their dad experienced.

• 1:51:41Rich Roll?

  It was a way to connect with that.

• 1:51:42Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah. So in the film, we look at four aspects. We look at running to transcend, like the 3100 mile race, running to survive, like the Kalahari Bushmen, running for enlightenment, like the monks, and then running to heal. You know, either your own trauma or this historical trauma of your people. And Shawn's run from loop outside of Flagstaff up to his ancestral home site was about 110 miles. And I don't know if I've seen anybody.

• 1:52:14Sanjay Rawal?

  Who was shouldering so much responsibility. Shaun's a teacher and a very popular person on the Navajo Nation. And a lot of people knew that he was running in honor of his father. And because they all had relatives that had been forcibly schooled, they all felt that he was running for their relatives. So Shaun carried not just his own historical trauma on this run, but the expectations and the trauma of hundreds of other people.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I didn't realize that. That's a, that's a heavy burden to bear.

• 1:52:45Sanjay Rawal?

  It was heavy. It's hard enough, as people know, like running an ultra. But when you're running an ultra to challenge pain and where overcoming that pain means success. And if you don't overcome that pain, the run was for naught. And so that's what he was doing. He was trying to use this run as almost like a last ditch effort to address the trauma of his dad's childhood. And Shaun's son, who lives a very wonderful, and I would say sheltered life on the Navajo Reservation compared to this young boy's grandfather, Shaun's father, was accompanying Shaun

• 1:53:28Sanjay Rawal?

  in the car and Shaun's dad was too. And so it was just a beautiful experience to watch this family not just come to terms, not just heal their trauma, but expose it and address it for a lot of people that couldn't run the same way that Shaun was running and a lot of people whose ancestors died unlike Shaun's dad.

• 1:53:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and he's running across the most beautiful landscape. I mean, there's no aid stations here. He's not running on highways or roads like he is in the middle of nowhere in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine.

• 1:54:03Sanjay Rawal?

  And I think anyone who's been to Monument Valley, which is on the Navajo Nation, or to other kind of exceptionally beautiful landmarks in Indian country, realize that

• 1:54:13Sanjay Rawal?

  When Native Americans say that Mother Earth is the equivalent of the divine, you see it. You know, it's like if the Grand Canyon isn't like something that transports your mind and heart into other planes of consciousness, you know, nothing ever will.

• 1:54:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What has the process of making this movie taught you or how has it changed you? I guess with respect to running, of course, but also in terms of how you think about and approach your life.

• 1:54:45Sanjay Rawal?

  At one point, I fancied myself as a quasi-competitive runner. I mean, even in high school in a state, the state of California with 30 million people, I was, you know, one of the top-ranked middle-distance runners. Burned out by mid-college, really didn't know why I was running in my 20s. I was still racing a little bit, marathons and stuff. 30s also. Didn't really have a purpose for running. It wasn't until I met Sean, and Sean said again that running is a prayer for the Navajo. It's a celebration of life. It's not punishment. And it's a teacher. It's like, if you're going through hardships, you know, don't just sleep on it. You know, don't go eat like a tub of ice cream or a

• 1:55:26Sanjay Rawal?

  bar of chocolate. Address it, and address it the way humanity used to address it, by connecting to your breath and to your feet. That totally changed my attitude towards running. At the same time, you know, again, I'm, I'm, I guess these days, I'm a person of color. But I reject those types of labels. And I think running is a safe way to show that there are actually things that unite people. Like, you know, when you're on a trailer or you're in a race, there's no red, there's no blue, there's no elections. You're not, you, when you're running, especially when you're competing.

• 1:56:08Sanjay Rawal?

  You only have yourself, and if you're in a relay, your teammates. But ultimately, you have your feet and your breath and your heart. It's elemental. And that's given me a lot of solace. It's like, I know that we've been running for millions of years, and it's an activity that we're going to continue doing for hundreds of thousands more, regardless of what the political state of humanity is. If we can go back to that state, I think we'll all realize that there are things that unite us that are much stronger than the things that we think divide us.

• 1:56:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this ritualization of human behavior. And I like the characterization of running as a vehicle to connect with your breath and the power of breath. When you think of it in those terms, it starts to sound a lot more like a meditation practice than an athletic endeavor.

• 1:56:58Sanjay Rawal?

  At the same time, I think the question is, and here's a question for you, like, how do you balance your spiritual life and the aspect of competitive racing?

• 1:57:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a tricky thing, right? I mean, I think my personal perspective on competition has always been inward-facing. Like, I'm not that concerned with what anyone else is doing. I'm trying to be the best version of myself. And if I can walk away from an event satisfied that I had done that, then that's a win irrespective of whatever the leaderboard says. And I think that's echoed in the movie with these runners in the 3100. As much as, you know, Ashbra Hanal, I don't know how to say that.

• 1:57:42Sanjay Rawal?

  Exactly, that's exactly right.

• 1:57:43Rich Roll?

  Is, I don't want to spoil it. I was about to spoil it, but I'm not going to. He sort of iterates throughout the movie that it is a competition, but that it's really not about that. And I think the more... These competitors, or anybody for that matter, can can get to a place of being able to let go of that externality, ultimately, the better they perform anyway.

• 1:58:10Sanjay Rawal?

  We began our theatrical run on Friday in Santa Fe. And as you know, the film's going to be rolling out around the country, from the southwest to the Pacific Northwest, California, Colorado. But we were really lucky that at opening night, Billy Mills, the Ogallala Lakota 10,000 meter champion from the 1964 Olympics, was the host of the event.

• 1:58:32Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:58:33Sanjay Rawal?

  And I got to ask him that very same question. I said, "From a traditional native standpoint, you've told us about the importance of the spirituality of running. At the same time, it's like you made your mark as a competitive runner, winning a race that nobody but you thought you were going to win." I mean, nobody thought that Billy Mills was going to win that 10,000 meter race. And if anybody needs a pick-me-up, just on YouTube, type in Billy Mills Olympics. Greatest last lap, I think, in any modern race. And he said exactly what you did. He said, "I never raced to compete." He said, "Even when I won, I was racing against myself. I was racing against my pain. I was racing against my limitation. I was racing against what my body was telling me it couldn't do. And I pushed it beyond. And it just so

• 1:59:18Sanjay Rawal?

  happened that I won the 1964 Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 meters. But like, that's not how I defined my races."

• 1:59:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was the external manifestation of of a mindset that allowed him to do that. But it wasn't the goal.

• 1:59:33Sanjay Rawal?

  No. And that's the interesting thing, because I think like, once I realized that I could run for spiritual reasons, I became a better competitor. You know, it's like, I was much less dissatisfied with the second or third, even in a local race, than I ever would have been. It's like, I look a lot more to preparation. I look a lot more to the ritual of practice. And I know that if I show up at the starting line, and I've done all the right things, I'm going to have a good experience.

• 2:00:04Rich Roll?

  You sound like you're ready to toe the line at next year's 3,100.

• 2:00:07Sanjay Rawal?

  I would love to.

• 2:00:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:09Sanjay Rawal?

  I would love to. If not next year, then the year after.

• 2:00:12Rich Roll?

  Have you shown the movie to any of the protagonists yet?

• 2:00:16Sanjay Rawal?

  I did. We did a little screening for the stars of the movie.

• 2:00:21Rich Roll?

  You didn't go to Mount Hia though, have you?

• 2:00:23Sanjay Rawal?

  No, we haven't shown it to them yet.

• 2:00:25Rich Roll?

  You gotta show it to them. Well, they probably don't have Wi-Fi up there. You can't send them a link.

• 2:00:28Sanjay Rawal?

  I want to be there and watch them when they see it. But we showed it to a lot of our Navajo characters in Sedona at a film festival, which was our official world premiere in June. And we decided to start our theatrical launch, not in New York or LA where everybody wanted us to, our distributor in particular. Because it's such a southwestern story. And it's like, we wanted to bring it to the southwestern native populations. So we launched in Santa Fe, then Albuquerque, and then Phoenix and Sedona. And then go up to the mountain cities. And I'd say mountain, like outdoor cities, like Portland and Seattle and Boulder and Denver before hitting all the big ones.

• 2:01:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's great. That's very smart.

• 2:01:12Rich Roll?

  Guerrilla marketing as well, to hit the hotbeds of running where people are going to be really interested in this and create that kind of good word of mouth.

• 2:01:20Sanjay Rawal?

  At our premiere in Santa Fe, Henry Rono came. Henry was one of the first Kenyans to come to the United States for schooling in the 70s. He ran for, I think, University of Washington, maybe Washington State. But in 1978, he set four world records from the 3,000 meters to the 10,000 meters. I think even including the 3,000 meter steeplechase in the matter of just a few months. And this is like in the 70s. And so Henry told me, he said, "When I grew up in Kenya, it's like, I never practiced running. We hunted in the 60s." Like, this isn't like ancient history, like these ancient Bushmen.

• 2:02:01Sanjay Rawal?

  He said, "In the 60s, yeah, we all hunted. And that's how we ran. I would run 20, 30 miles, 40 miles for play, you know, and for work. And that's how we trained. It's like, we didn't separate..." This is the interesting thing for me. "We didn't separate running from our way of life." We didn't put on new gear to go running. We didn't take off our old gear to go inside. He said, everything was done in the same stuff because it was all a part of our life.

• 2:02:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you still see that, I think, with some of the cultures in Ethiopia and Kenya, with, you know, these great marathon runners, Kipchoge and the rest.

• 2:02:40Sanjay Rawal?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:41Rich Roll?

  It really emanates from a way of life.

• 2:02:44Sanjay Rawal?

  This summer, Jim Wamsley, who won the Western States, you know, he trained up at altitude and lived basically in a tent the last six weeks in preparation for the UTMB. And you look at that and you go like, that seems so elemental, the idea of just living to run and running to live.

• 2:03:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right, we got to wrap this up. But I think we can close it down with a final question, which is, what is it that you want people to take away from this movie?

• 2:03:18Sanjay Rawal?

  That's a great question.

• 2:03:22Sanjay Rawal?

  I think a lot of people have come in contact with running. Some people haven't enjoyed it because they weren't taught the real purpose of running. I think a lot of us that do enjoy running might not have the words to expand our enjoyment of running. And I'm not saying that I know anything more than anybody else, but the characters in the 3100 bring these perspectives, which I hesitate to say aren't mainstream, but they're so core and identifiable that I'm hoping that when people see the movie, they'll have a newfound appreciation, not just for running, but for physical activity and our place in the world.

• 2:04:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine you come across people who will say, this is great, but like, I hate running.

• 2:04:10Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:11Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 2:04:11Sanjay Rawal?

  Yeah, it's like, if you hate running, that's okay. But it's like, do you like walking? Do you like hiking? Is there a way, is there an activity where you can go outside and put your feet on Mother Earth and understand that your breath is your connection to the heavens? Do that. Like, that's the attitude that we all used to have back before we were encumbered by cars and shoes and Strava and GPS.

• 2:04:36Rich Roll?

  And also, when you see the runners in the 3100 and you see what they're actually doing, it might change how you define running for yourself.

• 2:04:45Sanjay Rawal?

  It's definitely a lot.

• 2:04:47Rich Roll?

  It's not what you think.

• 2:04:48Sanjay Rawal?

  No, and it's a lot harder for me to like cop out of doing a daily workout. Now that I know that, you know, on any of my weekdays of three, five, six, seven miles, somebody out there could have been doing 50 or 60 miles.

• 2:05:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, awesome. I love the movie 31, Run and Become. I was very emotionally impacted by it. You did a beautiful job. It's a, it's, it's really just a fascinating exploration of, of this relationship, this nexus between running and spirituality and self-improvement and how this really is part of what makes us human. And thank you for making the movie.

• 2:05:32Sanjay Rawal?

  I'm, I'm really grateful for the chance to have shown you the movie. You obviously an inspiration to me and to a lot of people. And I hope that, you know, we can all just follow in the footsteps of your work and the other great guests that you have on.

• 2:05:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, thank you. If people want to see the movie, where should they go to find the schedule?

• 2:05:49Sanjay Rawal?

  They can go to www.31003100film.com. We're playing all over the country, four to five shows a day, rolling out city by city.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, excellent, man. Awesome. And I'm going to see you later this week, right? You're coming to the Running for Good screening.

• 2:06:08Sanjay Rawal?

  Super excited.

• 2:06:09Rich Roll?

  It's gonna be good, man. We're gonna do a live podcast. It's the premiere of that movie. Super excited to have you. Thank you for sharing today.

• 2:06:16Sanjay Rawal?

  Thanks so much, Rich.

• 2:06:17Rich Roll?

  Is there anywhere else where people can connect with you? There's an Instagram account for the movie as well, right?

• 2:06:22Sanjay Rawal?

  It's at 3100film, at 3100film. And then on Facebook, facebook.com/3100film. You can message that and I'm the one answering all the messages.

• 2:06:33Rich Roll?

  You're the guy.

• 2:06:33Sanjay Rawal?

  I'm the guy. So hit me up. Let me know if you're coming out to a screening. And yeah, well, I'll say hi.

• 2:06:38Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. We did it.

• 2:06:39Sanjay Rawal?

  Thank you.

• 2:06:40Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 2:06:40Sanjay Rawal?

  I feel great. This is one of the most inspiring conversations I've had in like a year and a half.

• 2:06:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, good. Well, come back again. We'll do it again.

• 2:06:50Sanjay Rawal?

  Thank you.

• 2:06:50Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks, Sanjay. Peace.

• 2:06:52Sanjay Rawal?

  Plans running.

• 2:06:57Rich Roll?

  I thought that was kind of magical. What'd you think, DK?

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm in school right now.

• 2:07:05Rich Roll?

  We're joking because DK has not listened to the podcast yet. It's okay. You're gonna get to it, right?

• 2:07:12Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm just learning, like constantly going to Rich Roll 101 School about my diet, my consciousness. So it's all a good experience for me.

• 2:07:22Rich Roll?

  Will you promise me that you will listen to this podcast?

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. I'm gonna listen to it.

• 2:07:26Rich Roll?

  He's a beautiful guy. I thought that was a phenomenal conversation. I hope you guys connected with it as well. Do me a favor, let Sanjay know how this one landed for you. You can hit him up on Twitter or Instagram, @MRSanjayR, Mr. Sanjay R, or on Instagram, @3100film. I think that's the preferred place that he would like you to find him on the social networks. And the website for the movie is 3100film.com. Go there and you will see all kinds of information about the movie and upcoming screenings. As always, please take a moment to visit the episode page at richroll.com to check out the show notes.

• 2:08:07Rich Roll?

  We put a lot of time and energy into creating essentially like a syllabus for every conversation to expand your experience of the podcast beyond the earbuds. We're really proud of the work we put into that, and I think you will find it enlightening and entertaining. Are you glad that we do show notes, DK?

• 2:08:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's helpful, especially if somebody wants to find some information on one of our advertisers. You can go to the show notes and there's a link and it allows you to test out some of the people that support our show.

• 2:08:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and if you want to support the sponsors of this program, who are the people that literally make it possible for us to do that, I always have all the links up on the episode page as well. And if you want to support the show, support the sponsors. If you are looking for additional nutritional guidance, like DK, to dial up your plate and start eating healthier, what does your plate look like these days?

• 2:09:02Speaker 02

  Lot of fruit and too much juice, unfortunately.

• 2:09:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's not good. You gotta get on our meal planner, man.

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  It's hard, man. It's like, it's not hard. Like, you know, I tried one of our other clients. I tried for a week. I tried a couple of weeks of going vegan and it's, um, it's hard. I can get to like five, 10 days and then I just, and then I just, I fall back.

• 2:09:23Rich Roll?

  Spoken like somebody who has yet to experiment with the Plant Power Meal Planner. This is true. I gotta get you on that, man. Am I gonna have to move you into the house to get it done?

• 2:09:33Speaker 02

  It's super easy, dude. That would be a huge challenge for you.

• 2:09:35Rich Roll?

  Just go to meals.richroll.com and there you will find thousands of plant-based recipes, grocery lists. It integrates with Instacart, so you get all your groceries automatically delivered to your house.

• 2:09:48Speaker 02

  I used Instacart yesterday.

• 2:09:49Rich Roll?

  Easy instructions on how to prepare all of this stuff so that you can eat healthy. It removes all of the excuses. It's fantastic. And it's just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Super affordable. So to learn more about it and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you'd like to support this podcast and all the good people like DK that helped me put it on, the best way, what would you, what would you say is the best way to support the show?

• 2:10:20Speaker 02

  If there's an advertiser that you like, don't be afraid to try it out. Go listen to it. Support the show. Use the link, the promo code, Rich Roll or Roll, whichever one it is.

• 2:10:30Rich Roll?

  And tell your friends about your favorite episode.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 2:10:33Rich Roll?

  That's the best way.

• 2:10:34Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree.

• 2:10:35Rich Roll?

  Make sure you subscribe on whatever platform you enjoy this content. Also, for those of you who might be new, we have all of our episodes now on YouTube as well. We're filming all of them. So you can find that at youtube.com/richroll and make sure you subscribe to that channel as well if you're enjoying the content there. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, DK, for co-host duties and sponsor relations and all kinds of miscellaneous behind the scenes tasks.

• 2:11:03Speaker 02

  Mischief.

• 2:11:03Rich Roll?

  If you, uh, if you're enjoying DK in the co-host chair, let me know. We can make this a regular thing. I'm gonna be in New York next week, so the next two episodes are gonna be me solo, but, uh, we'll, we'll gauge audience response.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  Just be kind.

• 2:11:17Rich Roll?

  How do you feel about that?

• 2:11:17Speaker 02

  Be kind, I'm not a professional.

• 2:11:19Rich Roll?

  It's okay, man.

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  This isn't my first time in the booth.

• 2:11:20Rich Roll?

  It's all love.

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:11:22Rich Roll?

  It's all love, man.

• 2:11:22Speaker 02

  I'm excited.

• 2:11:24Rich Roll?

  I want to thank Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production. He works hard on the show notes and composes the interstitial music and lots of other miscellaneous behind the scenes tasks.

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jason.

• 2:11:35Rich Roll?

  Thank you. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin, they're the ones behind the camera who create all of the video assets that we're now using, as well as all the graphics that I share on social media. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks a lot, love you guys. I'm gonna see you back here in a couple days. We've got two episodes coming up next week. The first one, a midweek episode, is audio from my live event in Dublin with the Happy Pair guys. That was a super fun, cool event from Smock Alley, which is where I did an event with them like a year and a half ago or so. This one's a little bit different, and I think you guys are gonna like it. And then, Sunday night, I'm gonna publish my interview with vegan strength coach, kettlebell expert, Mike Mahler.

• 2:12:20Rich Roll?

  And that conversation is all about hormone optimization. It's good stuff. Your hormones checked out?

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  Not recently. I need to do-

• 2:12:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is another episode you're gonna have to listen to.

• 2:12:31Speaker 02

  I'm gonna have to go to the doctor and get a whole blood workup and everything.

• 2:12:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You're my long-term project, brother.

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  I got the dentist next week. I'm gonna go to the doctor the week after.

• 2:12:42Rich Roll?

  It's a little self-care, man.

• 2:12:43Speaker 02

  It's great. I'm grateful that I get to go to the dentist.

• 2:12:46Rich Roll?

  All right. See you guys soon. Until then, much love, peace, plants. What's your sign off?

• 2:12:55Speaker 02

  Love. Take care of the planet.