Harvey Lewis: The 47-Year-Old High School Teacher Who Ran 450 Miles and Broke a World Record

Last fall, Harvey Lewis captured the international spotlight at Big’s Backyard Ultra in rural Tennessee. The high school teacher broke a world record, running an astounding 450 miles in 108 hours—more than the distance from DC to Boston. But—I implore you—don’t let his humility deceive you. Inside Harvey roams a myriad of animalistic tenacity ready to be unleashed. A beloved teacher at Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts, Harvey redefines human capability with 27 years of ultra-running experience, 115 ultras, podium finishes at Badwater 135, and a five-time USA National 24-hour Team member. Today, we explore Big’s, including Harvey's readiness to run through another night, his approach to sleep deprivation, spirit animals, transcendence, and mindset. Harvey guides us through his coach-less training and the motivations behind his extensive running feats, racing for the Brighton Center, a Kentucky non-profit supporting families. Additionally, Harvey’s fiancée, Kelly, provides exclusive insights into his personality and kindness, sharing charming details like stopping for lightning bugs and hosting popsicle parties. She discusses her ultra-running experiences and participation in Netflix's Squid Game Challenge. I immensely admire Harvey. He embodies humility, champions gracefully, and exudes a delightful presence—a hero the world needs. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: CamelBak: Get 20% OFF with code RICHROLL 👉camelbak.com Bon Charge: Enjoy 15% OFF with code RICHROLL 👉boncharge.com/RICHROLL Squarespace: Get 10% OFF 👉squarespace.com/RICHROLL Plunge: Use code RICHROLL for 150$ OFF 👉plunge.com AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 FREE AG1 Travel Packs 👉DrinkAG1.com/RICHROLL 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.

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• 1:06Harvey Lewis?

  Even when it seemed like there was no chance, I was determined to not stop. That last day, every second mattered. I basically had to be hyper-focused and be really calculated about what I did with the time I had. I don't care about any of these punches anymore. You can hit me another 100 times, I'm not gonna stop.

• 1:27Rich Roll?

  This 47-year-old guy with a full-time job just did something absolutely unfathomable. You ran 450 miles over 108 hours, four and a half days. The Biggs Backyard Ultra. Basically setting an entirely new bar when it comes to human capability.

• 1:49Harvey Lewis?

  How we see ourselves is one of the most important things in the world. I've been running ultras for like 27 years now. I didn't even know that was even feasible. We are all so capable of such incredible feats. No matter what your pursuits, we mostly can go so much further than we ever see ourselves going.

• 2:08Rich Roll?

  What is the engine that gets you through four and a half days without sleep and is continuing to propel you?

• 2:23Rich Roll?

  Harvey Lewis back in the house.

• 2:26Harvey Lewis?

  Wow, it's like a dream.

• 2:29Rich Roll?

  So good to see you. I can't wait to get into all of this. You're such a delightful presence. We had fun just chatting with you and Kelly, who's here as well, who might pop in a little bit later. We'll see. A lot to unpack, but let's start with when I saw you last, which was a couple of months ago in rural Georgia at an event called Running Man that our buddy Jesse Isler put on. You showed up for a day. You joined us onstage for a panel. You traveled from your home in Cincinnati. You had been teaching. Were you teaching earlier that day or the day before?

• 3:09Harvey Lewis?

  The day before.

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  The day before. You came out, showed up, did the deal, happy to be there. Then you went back home to Cincinnati to teach because you never miss a class. And then you traveled to Bell Buckle, Tennessee. God knows where that is.

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  Showed up for another round at Biggs Backyard Ultra and toed the line with just three hours of sleep. Is that correct? Do I have that right?

• 3:40Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, the sleep aspect of the three hours happened later in that week. It wasn't tied to the Running Man Festival. But it was a busy week and it was a busy week also with teaching. And my mother moved to Maryland, so then I had to move some final items out of the house on like that Thursday night before the next day where I went down to Tennessee after my classes. And so it was a busy week. You know, I was in the first day of the race. I was thinking, did I maybe push a little too much going down to Running Man?

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  Not exactly an equation to set you up for success at, you know, perhaps the biggest race of your career.

• 4:21Harvey Lewis?

  Maybe, yeah, maybe.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  You're like stacking the deck against yourself.

• 4:28Harvey Lewis?

  Maybe, but you know, the thing was so powerful was getting to be down there with you guys. And it was such a cool experience going in the saunas. I had such a great time doing the sauna and then just being in the sauna and like meditating on what's coming. And just the energy that we had down there with like the panel and the questions from Chris. I just really set me off with a lot of positive energy. The people we ran into down there that were at the festival, they just were excited to be out there participating. For me, it was electrifying to get me going to the next weekend.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a little love letter to Jesse and his compadres with the All Day Running Company. They put on this extraordinary event that was a couple hours west of Atlanta, like near the Alabama border. And it was essentially Coachella for people who are into running on this incredible plot of land where there was all kinds of food trucks and experiences and a main stage with all types of panels. That's what we did. But in addition to that, like musical acts and running races of all kinds. And everybody was sort of camping in tents on the perimeter of this field.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  And the kind of highlight of the whole thing was the world's largest sauna. It was literally like, you know, bigger than this. I mean, it was, I don't know how many square feet this thing was, but I think there was something like over a dozen of the ovens or whatever you call them, inside saunas and people lingering around in that and then going back and forth between that and all these other kind of saunas that were peppered around the field and these cold plunges. I don't need to, what is it? I can't think of anything else to compare it to.

• 6:25Harvey Lewis?

  Really? It was wild. I mean, it was crazy and. Yeah, and then you had the giant sauna and then you had some smaller ones that were even hotter. And I just remember going into the really hot sauna and then going directly from that to get into the cold plunge. And I don't know, do you do a lot of the cold plunging?

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  I do now. Yeah, I've got one at home and I've got a, I've got a sauna now also. That's a recent addition. I love it.

• 6:51Harvey Lewis?

  You just got those two?

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  Fantastic. I've had a plunge for a while. They've been a great support to me and they just released their own sauna. So we just had that hooked up and online. So it's pretty great to have that at home. It really is, you know, sort of physical benefits aside, like mental health wise, like it's really been a great addition to my routine.

• 7:15Harvey Lewis?

  I agree with you so much.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  There was also like a trailer that was a cold room.

• 7:20Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  Only Jesse, you know?

• 7:24Harvey Lewis?

  He is a character. Yeah, I mean, he goes to nth degree.

• 7:27Rich Roll?

  For sure. I texted him earlier and asked him if he had any questions for you. So I wrote those down. I'm going to hit you up with those and we should definitely FaceTime him at the end.

• 7:37Harvey Lewis?

  Oh, have you a blast.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  But in any event, that's still, you know, an energy expenditure on your part to show up and be around a lot of people and, you know, give everyone your love and all of that. I mean, it's a side aspect of your part-time job. Not to mention your full-time job as a high school teacher, but I remember leaving that event and, you know, I needed a day of rest after that. You know, and I just went home and got back into my, you know, daily routine. And you had all these other things that you had to take care of before you showed up at this enormous race to throw down just this absolutely all-time legendary performance.

• 8:13Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, it's hard to say, but that, that whole event definitely brought some momentum into Biggs as well. And it was the energy from the people that I, I just took in so much positive energy.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  Well, let's not assume that everybody watching or listening to this enjoyed our first episode and spend a moment to just explain what this whole big backyard ultra thing is so that everyone understands what we're talking about.

• 8:42Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. So basically, this is a race that began in this rural area of Tennessee that was created by the iconic race director Laz Lake, Gary Cantrell. He basically came up with this vision about 50 years before he put it into action when he was back in high school. And he dreamed up, well, I'm not the fastest person on the track team, but I sure can run a long time. And I think if I could just have a race, he was thinking to himself, where every runner had to cover 4.167 miles, which equates to 100 miles over 24 hours, then I think I have a chance of maybe win.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  So self-serving, this idea.

• 9:29Harvey Lewis?

  Laz is one of the great, great characters of all time in, in sport or just in general. I mean, he is an enigma and fascinating for so many reasons. People may be familiar with him from the Barclays marathon documentary that I think it's on Netflix. It's free now. Like you can look on YouTube. It used to be on Netflix and it's the race that eats a young. So I mean, it's a classic, almost like a cult like following of the film and stuff and like around Barclay. Laz is full of many contradictions and mysteries.

• 10:09Harvey Lewis?

  And he's just an absolute wizard when it comes to his, his writing. And with this race, he puts out usually a new post every hour. And I don't know how he manages to do that, where he'll like describe what's happening in a race. He'll like take some element of it. And it's really interesting to read how he puts it out into his own words.

• 10:31Rich Roll?

  He's sort of a mashup between a backwoods survivalist who's living like off the grid, mixed with this kind of philosopher king sensibility to him that is confounding because he doesn't appear to be someone with that type of intellect. But I think wasn't his dad like a NASA scientist or something like that?

• 10:53Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, his dad was a NASA scientist and he helped to engineer the landing for the lunar module.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 11:02Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, and many people might assume that he's just like a hillbilly living up in the hills. But he scored thirty six on the ACT, so he had a perfect score.

• 11:13Harvey Lewis?

  So he's quite a mind.

• 11:15Rich Roll?

  For a long time, wasn't he?

• 11:16Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, he was accountant and he also coached with the local sports teams for years and years and years. And one of his greatest dreams in life is to give a million dollars in charity. And I don't know his entire accounting for that, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's already surpassed that with the race that he put on during the pandemic. This virtual race across Tennessee had over like twenty thousand people sign up for it. And but he's really someone who gives a lot to the whole like ultra running. He just adds such a layer of additional like races.

• 11:55Harvey Lewis?

  Like, I mean, he's got all these, he's got like eight different races and they all have some unique element to them.

• 12:02Rich Roll?

  Right. So the Biggs is a race that takes place on his property, right?

• 12:09Harvey Lewis?

  It's like, it's a hundred and fifty acres that he owns.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  So he basically, he doesn't have to get permits or anything like that. It's like on his own private land.

• 12:17Harvey Lewis?

  Right, it's actually named after his dog Big.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:20Harvey Lewis?

  Who he rescued, a big giant pit bull. Dog had showed up on the front of his land shot. And when he first saw it, he thought, there's no way this dog is going to survive. And he ended up living to be sixteen, which is really old for a big dog. He just passed away last year. But this race began in two thousand and eleven, has now spread to seventy three countries. And there's more than four hundred backyard ultras across the globe. And in addition to that, now more people hit running a hundred miles under twenty four hours in the backyard format than all other hundred milers last year combined.

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  It's astonishing, but also not surprising because it is a brilliant conceit. Essentially, you're running a four mile and change loop on the hour, every hour. Everybody starts at the same time and people, you know, kind of fade away when they can't make the one hour time cutoff until there's just two people left, until that one person falls off and then there's a winner and the winner has to then stop. They can't continue, which is an added little interesting quirk because if you win a backyard race, the other competitors aren't quite sure how much was left in the tank. So even if you said, oh, I did this many laps or whatever, you can't really gauge

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  whether they were able to go further, which creates a little bit of a question mark when you line up with the world's best for this kind of thing, right? And then the second thing that I think is really interesting is that, first of all, everybody gets it, like you can understand this, like even if you have no connection to running, you're like, okay, I understand it. It's sort of like a game show. It lends itself perfectly to a format like television where it's gamified in a certain way, right? And this year, there was a live stream, I think there was when you won two years ago also, right?

• 14:23Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Two years ago, Solomon actually set up a film team. And then this year, a videographer from France, Fabian, he actually had a whole team there. So, I mean, it was, it's quite incredible. They had like drones and honestly, I really just loved having the opportunity for people to be able to see the race transpire.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Harvey Lewis?

  And so like, you know, once we entered into the woods, there were only like maybe three standing like cameras that, that were not like, you didn't really even notice it much. Once in a while, there would be someone with a camera kind of like run into the woods, falling behind you. It was nice to know that my students and my family could like see what was happening, you know, versus just hearing third hand, like what was going on in the race. So like I, I felt like I was connecting with people back home by having that there. And most of my ultras, like throughout this entire year. There's not been any other ultra ran where you have that sort of like video coverage.

• 15:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:27Harvey Lewis?

  Which was amazing.

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so the coverage from your point of view was relatively unobtrusive and you had had this experience two years prior. So you knew, okay, this is being documented. But the live stream was handled extremely professionally, like they did an incredible job. And I don't know how much awareness you have around this, but as somebody who is watching from afar and kind of following along on social media and checking in on the live stream, there was a ground swell movement that took place, probably in large part due to Jesse's just unbridled enthusiasm, because he was on Instagram constantly on stories like, you gotta, everybody's gotta check out this live stream. You have no idea

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  what's going on. There's never been anything like this before. Like, he just was going on and on and on. And there was a ripple effect where all kinds of people from all over the world, people who have no connection to running, let alone ultra running, were hopping on board and sharing stories and spreading the word about this event that was taking place as it was sort of mounting, like as it progressed, like not just on the last day, like on day two and a half, it felt like it really hit like a pivotal threshold. And it became like a mainstream thing. I don't know how many people were watching this live stream, but it was a lot. And I just noticed the larger world jumping on board

• 16:59Rich Roll?

  to celebrate this incredible thing that they'd never heard about before, which of course, after your victory, translated into all kinds of mainstream press, like you got an article on CNN and in the Guardian, like. That must have been surreal to you because this is an event even amidst ultra events that is so rooted in the history and the organic nature of what ultra running is. Like this is, hey man, there's no frills here, there's no prize money, this is not UTMB. Like this is like as backwoods as it gets by design, by Laz's very design. And yet it captured the imagination and the fascination of the world.

• 17:45Harvey Lewis?

  It was something I'm speechless about even now. The race format is like nothing I've ever seen before in the sense of like, it just causes like this growth of like people following it each day, more and more people follow it. And I mean, I, once I got home in Ohio, like there were people coming up to me in my city and saying, I don't run, but I got addicted to that and I didn't get any work done.

• 18:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, people, a lot of people are like, man, I was supposed to work today. And I'm like, watching the show like it's a Christopher Nolan movie or something.

• 18:18Harvey Lewis?

  It's so funny. And then people come up, they're like, man, I would go to bed and I would wake up the next morning and you guys are still running.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Harvey Lewis?

  Like what? And so, yeah, this particular race format, it just causes this continual build, build, build of more and more people kind of seeing what's gonna happen now.

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  It's sort of like if Mr. Beast was designing an ultra race, right?

• 18:44Harvey Lewis?

  That would be a blast.

• 18:45Rich Roll?

  This would be it, right? I'm sure your students are all Mr. Beast fans, right?

• 18:48Harvey Lewis?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  Or it's the ultra distance version of Squid Game, basically.

• 18:54Harvey Lewis?

  Right.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, nobody dies. Well, I guess they could, but like, you know, nobody's trying to kill anybody. And we have Kelly here who actually was a contestant on the reality TV show version of Squid Game.

• 19:06Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  And I was saying to you beforehand, like, there's a weird Venn diagram overlap between you two, because there is some shared DNA with, you know, somebody who would sign up for something like that and what you do.

• 19:17Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, we definitely train together and we have like these kind of quirky ways we do training sometimes. Like for the Squid Game, we kind of anticipated that there would probably be this red light, green light game. So we would be out running in the neighborhood and hopefully the neighbors weren't watching. We'd be like, all right, red light. Then she'd have to stop and like hold her pose and then... Yeah, we have fun with it. It's nice to have a partner that's like kind of shares some of the ventures together.

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  So you ran 450 miles over 108 hours, four and a half days, and completed this race just before seven o'clock on October 25th. Previously, two years prior, you had done 85 laps, right?

• 20:04Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Rich Roll?

  How many miles was that?

• 20:06Harvey Lewis?

  354.

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  354. You won that. We talked about that last time. But this is a big difference.

• 20:15Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  85 and 108 laps? Is that?

• 20:18Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  108 laps, right?

• 20:20Harvey Lewis?

  That's right.

• 20:21Rich Roll?

  That's not an incremental improvement, RV?

• 20:24Harvey Lewis?

  It's wild. You know, it's very interesting. Like, this race actually happened from 2011 to 2021. No one had gone over 300 miles. This year, 22 runners went over 300 miles, which is incredible.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  What do you make of that?

• 20:41Harvey Lewis?

  The whole equation is it's important to look at every single runner. So we had 75 runners from like, I guess, about 45 countries. And so it's really important that every runner matters in terms of the final distance it's able to be achieved. And it's wild how that's the case, but it is because the more runners who make it further, it pushes more runners further and the next runners further. So we had six runners who made it to 400 miles, which is really phenomenal. And then we had Eeyore who made it and pushed me to, as an assist, to 450.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Right. I want to talk a little bit about him. He certainly is deserving of quite a bit of celebration. And he's young, like, he's like 27, I think?

• 21:32Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 21:32Rich Roll?

  So in many ways, you know, perhaps the heir apparent to this little subculture, right? It'll be interesting to see how he develops over the years. And he's Canadian Ukrainian, right?

• 21:46Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, right. He lives in B C. Actually, we did a race together in Alberta in August. It's the Canadian death race.

• 21:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 21:53Harvey Lewis?

  And it's just an iconic place on the planet. Grand cache is about four or 5,000 people. And you go up and down about three pretty sizable mountains. But he beat me in that race by two hours.

• 22:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:07Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, and he almost, he just missed the record on the course, which is an old course, the old ultra, by just minutes. And it's pretty much because they had a mismatch on the course, which caused him to miss that.

• 22:20Rich Roll?

  I saw a quote where Laz said something like, "It was a standoff at the very end between the clearly stronger runner," meaning him, "and the guy who just won't quit," meaning you, right?

• 22:36Harvey Lewis?

  Right.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  So, how did you emerge victorious? I know there's an interesting story around the lap that preceded the final lap that involved a little mental hijinks.

• 22:48Harvey Lewis?

  There's so much to the whole thing. Because probably at some point we want to talk about the sleep deprivation.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, we're gonna get into that, yeah.

• 22:56Harvey Lewis?

  But yeah, that last day was just a matter of seconds. Like, every second mattered. And so, when it got to like, we were beyond the world record and there were like four or five runners still left, then I knew I basically had to be hyper-focused and I had to be really calculated about what I did with the time I had. So, I mean, I was just finishing laps at that point, like by maybe five minutes, like, so 55 minutes. And in this course, in this race, of course, that gives you five minutes to possibly do what you want to and you have to be back in the corral when the...

• 23:39Harvey Lewis?

  Whistle goes and ready to go again. So in that four or five minutes, I was like laying down and putting my feet up, getting ice on my body because it was a warm day. And I was even taking like 60 second naps, like not every hour, but I did take a couple of 60 second naps because I was so tired. I could literally just fall asleep and it felt like gold to me. Like I was like, wow, I get up 60 seconds later. I'm just so thankful I could get 60 seconds of sleep.

• 24:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:11Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah. So when it got down to Bartos, the Polish runner and Eeyore and I, there was like three of us. Then, you know, there were some signs I saw of Bartos, just a phenomenal runner. He said something to me. He said like, I wanted to go home, you know? He said like at one point, and I knew he was kind of like on the edge of like, he went further because I think he said at one point, I'm just going to go one more lap. And then he like, I was like, oh, you're still here. It's like another lap beyond that. So he kept going, but I could tell like he was really starting to feel it. And Eeyore, after the race, people told me that they had seen that he had said some things

• 24:56Harvey Lewis?

  in front of the camera, but I didn't know any of that. Like in terms of like, you know, maybe his foot was bothering him. I was just so focused on just getting myself reset with that five minutes and like not falling down on the trail that I was not like entirely like, I was just focused on making it, just keep going. I wasn't like really reading everything he was saying at the time.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  But the lap previous to the victorious lap, didn't you sprint off the line and, you know, try to like, you know, screw with him a little bit, like?

• 25:33Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  By putting in like a huge effort all of a sudden?

• 25:36Harvey Lewis?

  Well, no, maybe like that was the last lap. I think I went off, but maybe I did do it that lap too. I basically got in front of, front of him. In this course, there's like a 300 meters, 400 meters on the road before you enter the woods. So I went off the line pretty quickly, but he caught up to me going down this hill on the road. And then he was in front of me and I passed him going up the hill. And when I passed him, I ran really fast back through the, the starting gate. And at that point, you know, I was really determined to give it a, a strong lap. And part of that was I wanted to reset anything I wanted to do for like the road laps,

• 26:21Harvey Lewis?

  because that was the last trail lap. But also part of it was to send a message that like, I'm still here. You know, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere. And that was kind of my logic. And he had a little trouble. So when he got up there, I don't think he saw me run through the camp really fast. But I know he like had, uh, you stopped for a moment and was just like, maybe teetering on the idea of like, you know, what's my purpose of continuing at this point? And Laz said, to win, go get him. Uh, and then he went and to his credit, he ran a very strong lap and came back around. And so, you know, we wouldn't gone out to the road had he not put in that effort.

• 27:06Harvey Lewis?

  He almost caught me on the trail that lap nevertheless.

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  So why do you think that you were able to beat him?

• 27:13Harvey Lewis?

  Ultimately, you're saying? Uh, well, you know, one or interesting thing about that in that whole race, that was the first lap I finished first across the whole 107 laps. Like I had never done that in that particular race at that day.

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  Interesting in its own right.

• 27:29Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, it is. There's a psychology to that. Why did I beat him? Well, it's hard to say exactly, but, uh, I was determined to not stop. I mean, everyone that went there had some idea of wanting to go really far. And I'd say at least a couple dozen people wanted to win the race. And had similar ideas that I did, but I just never lost that idea, that vision. I just, even when it seemed like there is no chance, like all the odds are stacked against you, especially for example, in like day one and day two, like I was really feeling tired.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Day one, when you said was your worst day?

• 28:07Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Rich Roll?

  Or you felt the worst on the first day?

• 28:10Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, well, actually, day one and day two, like were, I was more tired and I knew I was more tired than any previous year I had done the race. So like knowing where you've been before.

• 28:21Rich Roll?

  That's got to rent space in your head.

• 28:22Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:23Rich Roll?

  You're not supposed to feel this bad this early.

• 28:25Harvey Lewis?

  You're not supposed to feel like, I'm, I'm like, well, I remember the 2021 year and when I was in day two, I was just kind of like, felt like I was almost floating. And I remember this year and I'm like, oh my God, I'm feeling kind of tired here. You know, it's like, I feel the tiredness.

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  Maybe I shouldn't have gone to Running Man.

• 28:40Harvey Lewis?

  Maybe I should have gone to Running Man. Maybe I shouldn't have been like moving things on Thursday nights. Maybe I should have taken a day off from work versus driving down after work on Friday. There were a lot of things that kind of went into my mind in the night before the race. One of the three worst sleeping nights ever, I only got like three hours of sleep and I woke up at like 2:00 AM and I just laid there and I just, my mind was like thinking about everything. I couldn't calm my mind down and I couldn't fall back to sleep. So I went to the starting line, knowing that I only got three hours of sleep going into the race, that I will need the most amount of sleep of in my whole life. So that is not a good omen per se.

• 29:24Harvey Lewis?

  And then in the first three days, I didn't sleep at all. Like I actually laid down and I really believe there's a true physiological and mental impact from just laying there with your eyes shut. I, I could say maybe it's like 60% or a little more than that of the same benefit of actually sleeping, because if you were awake, it's different than just laying there with your eyes shut. But I couldn't sleep at all for three days. And so it wasn't until the fourth night, John Noel and I, another American runner from our, our team, he and I were running together and I was doing like 55 minute laps. And we, we just got to this point where I was able to like, fall asleep for like,

• 30:06Harvey Lewis?

  two minutes. And it just was like, oh my God, this is the best sleep I've had my whole life. Like, just sleeping for two minutes because going for three days with no sleep. Was that by intention that you weren't gonna sleep for the first three days? Or that's just the way that it played out? No, it was just the way it played out. Like, I practiced sleeping. I talked to Todd at the Running Man Festival. And he had some really great ideas about how to like, you know, breathe before you fall asleep. All these things were really like, things that I should have done better to practice that element leading up like, for a couple of months. But yeah, in my, my training, at lunchtime, I'd go and lay down for five minutes. In my classroom. You're trying to train yourself to fall asleep quickly?

• 30:50Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I would fall asleep. I could literally do in my classroom, I'd fall asleep, three minutes, bam, get back up. Even like on runs, I did like, running, I'd go to the park, I'd like, lay down in the middle of like, the park for like, three, five minutes and get up. But when it came to the race, I was just so worked up. And then after like, day two, I'm drinking like, Tailwind and Coca-Cola and drinks that have caffeine in them. So I mean, that probably also like, added an element of not being able to fall asleep. It was my dream to want, fall asleep and like, sleep more than ever before. Because there's another story I'll share about it in Australia, with that whole like, madness of not getting enough sleep. Go ahead, do share it, yeah.

• 31:34Harvey Lewis?

  Okay, so, basically, I was in Australia this summer, and we did this incredible race. Tim Walsh, Dead Cow Golly. Tim's got this ranch in the country of Queensland, goes back to 1877. So it's kind of ironic that a rancher, you know, he, he has like, a cattle farm, would recruit a vegan from America to come and run in his race. But yeah, he was just a phenomenal guy. His race attracted like, runners from New Zealand, from South Africa, and the top runners from Australia. So, the race went to a new world record, which was kind of interesting,

• 32:15Harvey Lewis?

  because this was just a race that no one had really heard of outside of Australia too much. And we were able to push it to Phil Gore beat the Belgium record. And Sam Harvey was his assist. So those two guys, and I was the third runner. What happened to me is I made it to 375 miles. And I was again, struggling with the sleep. And also I had gotten really dehydrated in the, in the middle part of the day. So for about 10 hours, I hung on by literally like strings. Just getting myself into the corral with like minutes to go. At 375 miles, I finally tapped out and I told our runners, we were out in the middle of the woods on the road. I said, you guys, best of luck to you.

• 33:00Harvey Lewis?

  As soon as they went off like 50 meters, I started the greatest hallucinations I've ever had in my whole life. Like the most incredible, I never had anything even remotely close to this. I mean, I had seen shadows that I, my brain interprets as other things. But this is a whole nother level. It was like Stranger Things, like the grass became grass people. There were the trees were alive, the whole forest, like the sounds like were super acute. And then I would like sort of fall asleep for like just a millisecond. And I'll wake up like this as I'm standing there. I wasn't scared. I wasn't, I was totally aware what was happening. But it's just like, everything was an absolute hallucination.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:43Harvey Lewis?

  That was just strange. I'd never experienced that in running.

• 33:46Rich Roll?

  Your brain's releasing its DMT into your system.

• 33:49Harvey Lewis?

  Unreal.

• 33:50Rich Roll?

  Were you running while that was happening?

• 33:51Harvey Lewis?

  No, I had paused. I was just walking and kind of like talking to the woods.

• 33:57Rich Roll?

  Oh my God.

• 33:58Harvey Lewis?

  Like actually, if I go back to that place ever again, I'm not sure I'll ever go back to that again. I think I can actually run through that. Like I think it would just be like a wild experience, but I could just still run through that whole thing.

• 34:11Rich Roll?

  You're like a psychonaut, exploring the outer edges of sleep deprivation.

• 34:25Rich Roll?

  Showing up only on three hours of sleep, then not sleeping for the first three days of this whole thing, and then all told, like your cumulative sleep for the entire bigs?

• 34:39Harvey Lewis?

  Four and a half days, not counting the three hours before, would have been like, maybe like 20, 25 minutes?

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  25 minutes total for the whole four and a half days?

• 34:49Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, something like that. And I didn't have even a single hallucination, like during that whole period. I don't know what happened. I mean, in 2021, I would sort of hear sometimes noises, like someone's running behind me, or I would see some sort of light, and I'd like interpret it as like a dog or whatever. I didn't even have that. Like in this one, I had like no hallucinations. But on the fourth night, I did start to go into this like phase of being like sort of running, sort of dreaming. So I would fall asleep and like trip a bit, and somehow I didn't ever fall down on the road. This race, which I didn't mention, if someone's just tuning into this for the first time, you've got 11 hours on a trail, and then it has 13 hours on the road.

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  The nighttime, you're on the roads at night.

• 35:33Harvey Lewis?

  Exactly. So on the trail, the trail is more difficult. Like there's 450 feet of climbing. You have rocks and roots, and you have areas that if you fall, you're gonna possibly hurt yourself pretty good. On the road, you have basically maybe 150, 180 foot of like climbing and descent, and you have an out and back of 2.1 miles. So if you fall, you're just gonna scratch your elbow, your knee, or whatever. In that mode, I was starting to like go into a different mental state at times. Like with John running next to me, I would start to like say things that didn't make sense. Like I was like, I don't have streaming services. And like, I remember saying that. I'm like, why did I say that?

• 36:18Harvey Lewis?

  Like I wasn't... And John would be like, what are you talking about, Harvey? It was just like this like flow of thought that just like you get in the dreamlike state, where you're, that's very interesting. It's like, it's like you're dreaming, but you're awake. And so like your flow of thought... Is just uncontrolled like it was, I was not in any control of my flow of thought in many times in that fourth night. And in fact, at about five hours into the fourth night, I said to John, I was like, how many of these laps have we done? And he's like, I think like, uh, two. And I was like, yeah, I think two as well. And then we looked at our watches. Wow, we've done five of these and we forgot like, where'd it go? I don't know where it went. So that was something totally new to me. I mean, I've been running ultras for

• 37:03Harvey Lewis?

  like 27 years now. I didn't even know that was even feasible to do something like that. And I mean, I saw somewhere in a publication, uh, where, you know, you get some like different feedback from different folks and someone said like, well, Harvey, it really was impressive what he did with so many things, but like that sleep stuff was just total luck. And I was like, well, you know, the funny thing is, is like, really, none of this is really genetics or luck. A lot of it really is, uh, building up like your endurance. And like, when I first started doing this, uh, when I was 20, I ran a 24 hour race. And I can remember like the hardest thing of that 24 hour race was surviving the night. I remember

• 37:43Harvey Lewis?

  getting up 1am, 2am, 3am. And it's like, it's something that is like having a car on top of yourself. You're like trying to just stay awake with everything you have. And so it took many years. In these backyards, I can remember going back to Courtney nine 2020, where I tapped out at like 270 some miles. And that, that was like, uh, a large part of that was building up like the ability to endure like that sleep deprivation as well.

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  Could you have imagined then that there would be a day where you would go 180 miles further than that?

• 38:19Harvey Lewis?

  No way, no way. I mean, honestly, when I first came to that race, it was so funny because they're handing out the race numbers. I just remember him saying like, yeah, well, maybe, like, it was just meant as a joke. Like, maybe someone will, yeah, I think this is gonna go to 300 miles. And like, uh, everyone's like, no, no, I'd never do that. And I remember back to when I was running these 24 hour races and I thought, I would really love to run 130 miles. And that seemed like some- Giant Mount Everest, so far away. It was insurmountable for myself at 20. Like, I mean, that was, I ran 81 miles, like, in that 24-hour race. And, I mean, it took me five years to get to breaking five hours in a marathon.

• 39:03Harvey Lewis?

  It took me another, like, 14 years to get to breaking three hours from that point.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  Seventeen years to qualify for Boston. I mean, your whole life is an ultra. It's like a life's commitment. You know? It's not just showing up and suddenly you have this capacity or this prowess that, you know, you didn't even know that you had. You've been working on this for the better part of your entire life.

• 39:28Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, it's been a long journey. It's definitely been an ultra experience. And I love, like, the Count of Monte Cristo and, like, that, hammering through that tunnel. And, like, we all have tunnels in life, and we all have something to hammer through. And just, that's where I was at when I finished, when I was on my last loop in the bigs this year. And I was coming back, and I knew at the moment where I actually saw there was no Ehor. And I was like, I cannot believe that this was a dream that I had for so long. And for this whole year, it was something I really just envisioned so strong.

• 40:08Harvey Lewis?

  But it was like, the probabilities of getting there seemed so infinitesimally small. When you thought about, like, all the competition, all the runners, all the things that could go wrong, I just had to, like, say a prayer and, like, just slow down and, like, just soak in the energy of, like, my surroundings. And then just be grateful for having that opportunity.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  What do you extract from that about human capability?

• 40:39Harvey Lewis?

  That is the place that we are all so capable of such incredible feats. And no matter what your area of specialization or what your pursuits, we mostly can go so much further than we ever see ourselves going. And it's so important where we see ourselves. How we see ourselves is is one of the most important things in the world. So, I mean, for example, I always visioned myself as, well, I'd love to be a fast marathoner. But I always envisioned myself as being like, maybe for a long time, it was like a four hour marathoner. And then somewhere along the line, I thought, well, I started seeing myself as maybe a 330 and then maybe 315 and then I, well, maybe I can be a sub three hour.

• 41:21Harvey Lewis?

  And now I was like, well, wow, maybe I can be, so I got to 245, 58. And now I'm like, you know, I'm not sure if that's like my pinnacle or maybe I can actually go further than that, even though I'm at my age right now, 47. It seems counterintuitive and I have my PRs from four years ago. You know, maybe it is actually possible if I concentrate my energies and and also adopt like the knowledge that's available to make that happen.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  Is that on the bucket list to try to go back to the marathon and and just throw down and see what you can do?

• 41:54Harvey Lewis?

  I think I'd love to do that. Yeah, I'd love to do that. I think this year, I'm not sure about this year. I've got a lot of things on the agenda, a lot of races. But I would definitely like, I wouldn't want to sacrifice the ultras I'm doing now. But I think it's actually possible, which I've done in the past. I've always gone faster in the marathon. At the same time, I'm getting faster in ultras. A lot of times people think, oh, it's not possible because if you're working on 100 mile race, no way you're going to get faster in a 5K or a marathon. But I think it's actually possible to perhaps have them work side by side. However, for like getting sub 245, I'll probably have to dedicate myself for like, maybe three and a half months or three months to real specific training.

• 42:36Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:37Harvey Lewis?

  But yeah, I would love to do something like that. Maybe, maybe like, I hit 50 or...

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  It'd be super interesting. You could, you could literally just discard the weekly long run.

• 42:46Harvey Lewis?

  Right, right.

• 42:47Rich Roll?

  Like, I got the endurance part covered.

• 42:49Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Rich Roll?

  All I'm gonna do is go to the track like three times a week and just throw down, you know, 400s at race pace or whatever, and just forget about any distance stuff whatsoever, and just fine tune some speed and try to get your tempo up to par and then just show up, you know?

• 43:06Harvey Lewis?

  I think I'm gonna need your, uh, your side, your cold plunge.

• 43:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, some cold plunging might be involved. Um, I gotta ask, and I'm sure you've been asked this many times, but again, back to the quirk, like when the other guy doesn't show up for the next lap, you win, but the story that isn't quite told is how much further you could have gone. Could you have kept going? And if so, how much further do you think you could have run? How many more laps? Loops, whatever you call them. Laps? Loops?

• 43:42Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, you could, yeah, it's laps. Yeah, we call them actually yards.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  Yard.

• 43:47Harvey Lewis?

  Yards technically.

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah. You know, I got into this incredible space in the fourth night, like, uh, I felt like I found some sort of frequency with running, and I feel like there's a mathematic equation to it, and it's like with pacing. If you hit a certain pace mark in your marathon, uh, you can go so much faster than if you miss it by like, your mile splits by even like 10 seconds, you can throw that off. So I feel like I hit some sort of frequency where I just felt like I could go forever. But, uh, there are so many things that can go wrong as well. So by the time I, I hit that fifth day of running on the road, I definitely felt like

• 44:29Harvey Lewis?

  it was possible we could have just kept on going that whole night, uh, because only major impediment possibly at that moment would have been like sleep deprivation.

• 44:41Harvey Lewis?

  But I felt like it was possible. So we maybe could have gone back to the trail for a fifth day, I guess that would be. Yeah. So then you have the element of the trail again. And so like, that can be tricky. Like, I mean, I didn't fall at all the first three days that I can remember. But the fourth day, I fell a bunch more. And I started falling like the more towards like one, two, three in the afternoon.

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  Cause your depth perception gets thrown off from the sleep deprivation.

• 45:14Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I was wearing my road shoes on, on the trail. So I also like beat my road shoes up at that moment. Cause I had worn them through the night where I like fall asleep and like on the road, but I was also wearing them on the trail. So that probably also didn't help things. But yeah, you could entirely not knock yourself out by falling on some rocks or something like that, like Maury Mori did like in 2021. And then also in 2021, I fell down on the third day. And like just fell poorly on my hand. I'm really good at falling. I fall a lot. But I fell and broke my hand. So this time I was really good about my falling. It just, you have to be so careful because there are any particular points.

• 45:59Harvey Lewis?

  If you're not getting enough nutrition every hour, then you're just gonna like, you're just not gonna be able to go. So I mean, you have to like constantly be aware of your like nutrition. You have to be aware of like, you're pacing yourself. You can't get like overly carried away. Like I was maybe showing at the start of the lap, I wouldn't want to do that, like a sprint through the whole loop, you know?

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  And one trip on a route and you go down and you're out.

• 46:26Harvey Lewis?

  You could. Yeah. So you have to be really conscious of what you're doing. So I feel like it is definitely possible that we could have gotten back to that fifth day. And then I feel like it's possible to go beyond that too. So I really didn't see any finish. I was just gonna go until the last person. So I mean, I was prepared to just go as far as the.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  You're not gonna lay a number on the table here. 550? What are we talking about Harvey?

• 46:54Harvey Lewis?

  As far as.

• 46:55Rich Roll?

  600?

• 46:56Harvey Lewis?

  I think that a lot is possible. I think it's, it may be possible to even do something like that for sure. Yeah, I think it's possible.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  A lot of athletes in these multi-day events suffer from all kinds of digestion problems. The stomach gets upset, they can't hold calories down, and that ends up, you know, basically, you know, toppling the best of them. But you didn't seem to have any kind of issues with that despite taking in something like 40,000 calories or however much food you ate over the course of this four and a half day period. Like, to what do you attribute that? And is that also something that you practice and try to train and prepare for?

• 47:38Harvey Lewis?

  Most definitely. Like, I can remember being out on the course and hearing other runners like squabble about digestion issues. Like, maybe, I don't know what percent, I heard at least 10% complaining about, you know, some digestion, digestion issues. So it is a big, big, big impact to be able to like consume 300 or more calories every hour. And then, I mean, 40,000 calories across four and a half days, like they, that's a lot of calories. I mean, that's incredible amount. I don't really practice it, like, in terms of like my monthly routine of like training. It's like these races help to inform that. So like doing bad water in the summertime where the temperatures are over 120 degrees,

• 48:23Harvey Lewis?

  I get a real good sense of like what I can consume at any temperature possible. And I've done races ranging from like bad water in 2021, I think it was like close to 128, to like the Arrowhead 135, which, you know, that race can get down below zero quite far. So it's like more than 100 and some degrees of like temperature range. And with bigs, the plant-based foods make such an incredible impact. Like, not having the dairy or the meat, it's easier for my body to digest things quickly. So I'm able to digest more calories

• 49:05Harvey Lewis?

  quicker. And if it's warm out, that's where it's also, you know, definitely gonna help you even more. Because I don't have like any issues with like the speed of digestion and the inflammation too, like that's another thing. I know, you know, at least another runner, I heard, they had to actually change their shoes to like, because their feet swelled up so much, they had to borrow another European shoes for size fourteen and a half. I think that they started like a twelve size. So, I mean, it's like, I don't know if that was entirely attributed to like the nutrition, but I can say when I do see other runners, like I know that

• 49:45Harvey Lewis?

  they talk about like swelling their lower legs, near their shins and ankles, and I didn't have any type of swelling in the race. During the race point, I had no, no swelling that was visible. So like that has an impact on like minimizing your, your risk of injury and also like impacting your performance. I try to eat foods that are easy to digest. So I'll eat like lots of fruits, but I also have like soups with noodles. I'll have like avocado wrap with like hummus. I have like lentil soup. So I'm also getting protein in there. If I'm only running like a hundred mile race, I'm like, have zero care about

• 50:30Harvey Lewis?

  like really all the dynamic of like the makeup, it's more important like the number of calories. I'm getting like salt and fat. But in these longer races, I'm also being more mindful about getting protein and like a race over a hundred miles, like especially bigs, that I'm trying to eat something more than just a gel or like tailwinds. I'm also trying to get like some real food in me, maybe as much as like every two hours. But I know a lot of runners would have difficulty doing that if they didn't get practiced with that, but I've just been doing it for years and years and years. So I mean, maybe if I think back to when I was doing that in my early two thousands, I would come back and just

• 51:12Harvey Lewis?

  be like, oh my stomach is like roaring. But I've conditioned my stomach to be able to like just eat a burrito from Chipotle and then just go. Yeah, it's like kind of wild how you can condition your, your body and your mind to adapt.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  Talk to me a little bit about the recovery. We're not that many years distanced from a period of time in which conventional wisdom was if you ran a marathon, then you should pretty much, you know, take the rest of the year off because it's going to take a long time for your body to bounce back. Then we enter this world of ultras and then the idea being like, well, if you're going to run a 50 mile race, 100 mile race, like maybe just do that once a year. You, my friend, competed in 10 ultras this year and not just like, we're not talking 50 kilometer races, we're talking insanely long distances. And you seem to have this preternatural ability to bounce back and be right back on your feet,

• 52:11Rich Roll?

  back teaching, back running into your daily routine without more than a blink of an eye after a race like this. So walk me through what is going on here.

• 52:21Harvey Lewis?

  I've kind of got a full formula, but movement is really important. So for me, like the day after a race, I think even getting out to walk for like 20 minutes is like dynamite compared to if you were to not do anything at all. So some sort of movement is, is critical daily to our self existence. Like, I mean, I know this from like breaking my neck back in 2004. From that experience, I didn't take any painkillers after I left the hospital and I was feeling a lot of discomfort, especially the first like week. But what I found was like not moving was far more painful than moving my body and walking.

• 53:05Harvey Lewis?

  So walking is actually like lotion to your body. Like it is like, it is incredible. So with these, these races, I do like one mile run after the race, kind of keep my run streak, although that kind of-

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  Like the same day?

• 53:19Harvey Lewis?

  Ah, no, the next day.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  Or you mean the following day?

• 53:21Harvey Lewis?

  The next day.

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  Okay, all right, thank you.

• 53:23Harvey Lewis?

  And then I, I basically am not going very fast. I mean, it's a slow mile. It's like usually over 10 minute mile. And then I'll like just build on to that. So if it's like a shorter race, like maybe a hundred mile race, maybe I feel pretty good and I'll just go run like, you know, three or four miles or I'll run to work three miles, run home from work three miles. I have like that run streak to work is like 10 and a half years now.

• 53:48Rich Roll?

  Without missing a day?

• 53:49Harvey Lewis?

  Without missing a day.

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  10 and a half years.

• 53:51Harvey Lewis?

  10 and a half years.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  Of running to and from?

• 53:53Harvey Lewis?

  To and from work every day. I love it. I honestly say like, well, if someone were to offer me, if I, I'd have to give it up for Ferrari. I would like not take the Ferrari. I love, I love the Ferrari. It's a very nice car.

• 54:04Rich Roll?

  I have a hard time seeing you in a Ferrari. That feels like very, you know, anachronistic.

• 54:11Harvey Lewis?

  We saw one last night. We were having a debate about what kind of car it was. I was like, that's a Ferrari. And Kelly's like, that's not a Ferrari. But the motion is like lotion. It's real critical. Like movement is so important for our bodies, whether you're able to do it at a higher level with yoga, or you're just simply making a walk. Like that's powerful in itself. So I mean, that's another thing with like, I think ultra running and top athletes in different genres. I don't think that walking is too valued. Like in terms of like, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't, I don't see a lot of runners talking about hiking and walking all the time. But for me, I feel like walking, I try to incorporate

• 54:54Harvey Lewis?

  some level of walking, especially when I'm training for like a big race. Like walking in the woods is really fantastic and I value that. We're walking with a group of friends in the city. We have like a Thursday where I get together with some of my friends that aren't runners and we just do a walk. It's really nice. Like that was one of my best training buildups to bigs was getting together with my friends who are not runners and like doing the walk with them. Because some of them, my one buddy, Charles, he's a professor, economics, and he's, he's been, you know, struggling with some of the health issues over the last few years and trying to get his weight down. And so for him, it was really powerful to be able to get the walk in.

• 55:37Harvey Lewis?

  And for me, it also was powerful for me because I'd already done all these miles running and getting that walk in was like getting that last pump in like a bench press. It was like, give me that extra little extra is like that 1% that makes an impact.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm. In terms of the training, how structured is it? You run to and from your school every day and then you're competing in these ultras, which are part of the training, I assume. But is there a program? Is it periodized? Do you have a coach? What does that look like? Or is it just something that you figure out and go on feel?

• 56:16Harvey Lewis?

  It's like the Wizard of Oz and that guy behind the scene pulling up. No, because honestly, I don't have-

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  You don't have Chris House like sending you a program telling you what to do every day?

• 56:25Harvey Lewis?

  I have no coach. I've never had a coach in my life.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  You've never had a coach.

• 56:27Harvey Lewis?

  Never had a coach.

• 56:28Rich Roll?

  You and Courtney.

• 56:28Harvey Lewis?

  No, no. And I think in some ways, Courtney and I are very similar in some domains when it comes to training. Like, I don't have a definitive plan for each day. Like, I kind of leave it flexible. So, for example, today, I had no plan. I just know I want to get out there and use the time I have. And so this morning, I woke up, kind of both woke up about 4:30. And I was like, oh, you know, hey, I'm in this beautiful place. I'm just, honey, I'll be back in a few hours, a couple hours. And I went up the mountain. I didn't know I was going to do like the mountains above Agora Hills this morning, but it was just perfect for like getting into the Barkley Ass and being nighttime,

• 57:11Harvey Lewis?

  dark still and like getting some like vert in. It was phenomenal, but I didn't have it on my agenda. It's just like trying to work with what I have. However, like I do know, week to week, I know like I want to get this many miles or I want to like build this much climbing in. So I have like a weekly plan and then I have, with races, I'll have like a pyramid plan in my mind, like that I'll kind of trace it backwards. So I say, okay, like two or three weeks out, I want to be at this point. And then I build it backwards and I say, okay, where am I here? Okay, so am I get from here to that point? What do I have to do to get from here to there? And then so I'll just gradually build up the mileage.

• 57:52Harvey Lewis?

  And I'll also be thinking about like each race, I want to simulate what's happening with the race. So for bigs, it was like combination of half the time trail, half the time road. So I can't just focus only on one or the other. I have to be strong in both. And also I don't have to be that fast. Like for bigs, it's just about being out there and surviving the longest. So getting used to running at not the fastest time or doing the walking with my friends. Like I'm not doing that right now in my routine, although I wish I could. But just tweaking things so that it fits whatever race you're going after. And that's one of the things I love about ultra running so much is that it has such diversity. There's so many things you can explore.

• 58:35Harvey Lewis?

  You could go for really fast race on a track or 50K or road race. Or you can go out and like do a stage race in like Mongolia or something. I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do. So I've never had any coach, but I have people that are like, have inspired me.

• 58:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:52Harvey Lewis?

  Including yourself.

• 58:53Rich Roll?

  No, come on.

• 58:54Harvey Lewis?

  No, it's true.

• 58:55Rich Roll?

  But there is a, there is a level of intentionality that you're bringing to it. And to your point about the similarities or the shared sensibility that you have with Courtney. You know, I look at the two of you, and I think I maybe talked about this last time you were on. But I see very similar personality types as well. You're both incredibly affable, grounded, humble people who are grateful to, you know, be doing what they're doing and almost seem bewildered by their own success on some level. And I can't help but think like, what is that about? Like what you do and what she does together?

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  I mean, you guys are at the top of the mountain in terms of, you know, human capability in ultra running. But I have to think also that behind the scenes, there's some sort of hidden engine here that I'd like to know a little bit more about. But I think. Your dispositions are so generous and I think it dispels, maybe somebody who doesn't know so much about this world, dispels their preconception that in order to do the kind of things that both of you do, that you have to be this really hardened person who's a "take no prisoners" type of personality. And you're not that. Like, you're a very

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  kind of loving, open, graceful, gentle human being. What is that about?

• 1:00:29Harvey Lewis?

  Well, Courtney is much more humble. She is. She is. I greatly appreciate the compare, you know, comparing me in any way to Courtney because Courtney is just the best in the world in so many domains and-

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  True, and you ran 450 miles. Okay, so, keep going.

• 1:00:50Harvey Lewis?

  Thank you. I think like the basic, one of the things about Courtney and I is that even if we weren't like winning races or even finishing the first front half of the group, I think we would still be out there enjoying the experience. We're both very competitive people, but we also, I think that the base energy which we operate is that we just love the whole piece. We love running, we love the people, we love the nature. So, I mean, I feel like, and there's a lot of people that have those same energy

• 1:01:30Harvey Lewis?

  forces that propel them. But I feel like that for us, it's not just about being the first runner. We're both very competitive and we strive to be the best we can be, but- I hope that even someday, you know, hopefully it's many, many years and decades from now. But someday when I'm finishing in the very back, I'll still be out there and enjoying it. You know, having fun with just whatever that endeavor is or venture is like, it's just an adventure. So I think that to me, there's more important things in, in life.

• 1:02:11Harvey Lewis?

  It resonates with me, the adventure of it all is something that I, is priceless to me. Like there's nothing, so I'm just grateful to have this experience. It's, it's just for the young person is under my layers that was chunking goonies.

• 1:02:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Harvey Lewis?

  That, that was, you know, working for years to get under five hours in a marathon. You know, I never saw myself as a strong runner in middle school or high school. Yeah, I never saw that. I wasn't as disciplined with things. I, I didn't know that it was even feasible to, to grow into that sort of mode. I guess I took it as like more genetics or that it was just not feasible.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  Hmm. To your point, a lot of people share that sensibility with ultra running. The appreciation of the community, being outdoors, nature, pushing yourself, like all of that stuff is not unique to you nor to,

• 1:03:14Harvey Lewis?

  No, no, no.

• 1:03:15Rich Roll?

  Nor to Courtney.

• 1:03:16Harvey Lewis?

  No, no, no.

• 1:03:16Rich Roll?

  So I guess, you know, the question remains like,

• 1:03:20Harvey Lewis?

  What is it?

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  What is the differentiator for you? Is it the accumulation of all of these experiences? And the level of discipline and intentionality that, that you've kind of brought to this experience incrementally over a long period of time? What is the difference between you running 450 miles? And the person who craps out at 300, 250, whatever like?

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  What is the secret weapon under the hood? If I pop the hood, you know, into Harvey's soul?

• 1:03:51Harvey Lewis?

  I'm very driven, like with the running.

• 1:03:54Rich Roll?

  This is the hidden thing. It's like behind the smile and the affability is, this is what I'm getting at. There has to be some kind of killer instinct deep down under there that you try to hide from everyone?

• 1:04:07Harvey Lewis?

  I'm not as.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  Where's the darkness?

• 1:04:09Harvey Lewis?

  I'm not as pacific as Courtney. She is, she is, she is so.

• 1:04:13Rich Roll?

  There's no darkness there. I tried, I tried to find it. I couldn't, I couldn't unearth it.

• 1:04:16Harvey Lewis?

  But I am bad. I use my imagination in sort of some wild ways at times. And like, you know, like I, I have like the honey badger, spirit animal.

• 1:04:26Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. You got a couple of spirit animals.

• 1:04:29Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I have a couple. This race I was, it was a honey badger. Like the honey badger just never stops.

• 1:04:33Rich Roll?

  It's a choose your adventure, spirit animal? Like you, you swap them out?

• 1:04:37Harvey Lewis?

  I do. Yeah, it depends on the environment, but it only happens for like my big A races. So next one will be Barkley. But it's the honey badger, the Mongolian horse, because Mongolian horse just keeps on going. And I would be like in the midst of the race, I'd be like going like that because it relaxes your face. It helps relax your shoulders. It's actually has, it's a technique that the horses use.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's why they do that?

• 1:05:00Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, so I think so.

• 1:05:01Rich Roll?

  Okay, all right.

• 1:05:03Harvey Lewis?

  I'm making that up.

• 1:05:03Rich Roll?

  An anecdotal theory.

• 1:05:05Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, it's my theory, but the runners would be near me and be like, Harvey, what are you doing that? Like that, like I'm like, that's my, I'm just like relaxing myself, you know? It's like I'm a Mongolian horse. Yeah, and Courtney has like a dragon like thing, but I'll have to let her tell you that because it might be a secret. Yeah, but.

• 1:05:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've never heard that.

• 1:05:26Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, dragon fire.

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  Did you just divulge something that was pretty?

• 1:05:30Harvey Lewis?

  She could, she could tell you, it's a technique, but.

• 1:05:32Rich Roll?

  You also have an unlikely spirit animal, a third one. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:05:38Harvey Lewis?

  The dragon?

• 1:05:39Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:05:41Harvey Lewis?

  Well, there's a monarch butterfly. Yes, thank you. Yeah, so the first day in Biggs, I actually kind of took on the monarch butterfly because Anthony from Quebec is a friend of mine. And he ran from Quebec to Mexico to draw awareness. He's, he and his wife are attorneys. They took time off from their practice. And they want to draw awareness about the plight of the monarchs.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  Because that's their migratory pattern. They fly from Canada to Mexico.

• 1:06:11Harvey Lewis?

  All the way. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible on a single life cycle to go all the way from Quebec to Mexico. They're trying to get people to plant milkweed. There's like a loss of perhaps 90% of the monarchs. And there's also a group that come up here to California, too, that there's a real loss of these. But anyways, I saw a monarch on the first day when I was running. And that was absolutely, uh, that gave me a little spike of like energy, you know, just like, just to make that connection with my friend Anthony and like monarch butterflies don't seem like the proper spirit animal for this sort of engagement.

• 1:06:46Rich Roll?

  It's a very counterintuitive spirit animal.

• 1:06:47Harvey Lewis?

  They gotta go like this way for 15 meters.

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  What's interesting about it is that it's this tiny fragile thing. And yet it can go all the way from Canada to Mexico. So it's defying your expectations, which kind of plays into this personality type of you being this, you know, kind of affable guy who is living your life, who has this capacity that he can unleash at any moment and defy everybody's expectations.

• 1:07:15Harvey Lewis?

  That's the magic of it. And there are some other things, too. So the week before the race, I think I went to Whole Foods on Thursday night with Kelly. She came down for a night from Circleville. And anyways, I ran into this old lady back by the cereal aisle. And she kind of reminded my mother she had this real fancy hat on and she was lonely, I felt like, you know, and I wanted to just strike up a conversation. And I said like, oh, I love your hats and this and that. And then we got to the checkout aisle and this lady happened to be behind me and I was wearing my two times you gear. And it has a big X here and she looked over at me and it's like, you know, the week before Halloween and she's like, are you an X man? And I was like, well, kind of. So.

• 1:07:57Rich Roll?

  I'm a two X man.

• 1:07:58Harvey Lewis?

  Two X. So then amidst the race, I have to be honest, like on the second day. I did have like this sort of moment where I just like was envisioning myself as Wolverine. And I'm like, all these other runners, because there's 75 runners, it can be really intimidating that all these people are like very strong and look fast and all the other things. And I'm like, you guys are all gone. It's bad of me to say, but yes, I had that moment.

• 1:08:25Rich Roll?

  Why is it bad for you to say that? You feel guilty, like owning your space and planting your flag.

• 1:08:32Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, so I'm just like, yeah, everyone, you guys are all, you're in for something coming. Yeah, it was bad.

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  The storm is coming?

• 1:08:40Harvey Lewis?

  The storm is coming. It was like, nah.

• 1:08:41Rich Roll?

  In the form of Wolverine?

• 1:08:42Harvey Lewis?

  In Wolverine, I'm like, yeah, in the terms of running. Like, I'm just gonna run you two down.

• 1:08:49Rich Roll?

  There is an interesting psychological thing about the alter ego. Like, when you step out of the frame of who you think you are, and you step into the, you know, exoskeleton of a superhero, there is an energy boost with that. Like, it is a common thing, whether conscious or otherwise, that, you know, tons of high performers do. I mean, there's a difference between David Goggins and Goggins, you know, or Mark Cavendish and Cav, or James Lawrence and the Iron Cowboy. There's a million examples, and I think there's something very intentional about having that moniker or that archetype that creates like another gear for a performance

• 1:09:33Rich Roll?

  that the Harvey might not be capable of, but the Wolverine, or the Monarch Butterfly, or the Honey Badger, or the Mongolian horse, you know, might be able to...

• 1:09:42Harvey Lewis?

  You gotta use like every single tool in the toolbox.

• 1:09:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:44Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, so it is a wild thing, because when I'm in my classroom, I mean, I'm trying, and I give my full effort, but there are days where I'm like, I want to step into my character that comes after four days. It was like, I build into this different being of myself at times, where it was like, I'm very calm and subdued and relaxed, and then... But there are times where I was out there on like the fourth day, and I don't know who else was running near me. I wasn't cussing at them, but I had like a soundtrack that sounded like David Goggins, like a bit. So I get into like different modes. It wasn't complaining, it was just like psyching myself up. Yeah, just getting myself psyched up. It is an interesting thing. I think using your power of your imagination...

• 1:10:30Harvey Lewis?

  And creativity and like when I didn't put myself in that Wolverine character like every day, it was like that second day and I sort of smiled like laughed about it and it just actually like was entertaining to me. It was like just kind of fun and it also kind of propelled me. Later that night, I probably felt maybe I was really tired like on the second night. That was one of my tougher points and I like said to my buddy Randy, because you're only allowed to have one crew member there, but my buddy Judd was doing a DJ event in Indiana. So we were allowed to have my crew trade on the third day.

• 1:11:09Rich Roll?

  He's like, I love you Harvey, but I'm out of here. I gotta go spin some records.

• 1:11:14Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, he's like, well, my one friend Randy had to go to dentist appointment. My other friend Judd, he had to come from like doing that, but Judd is an amazing crew person. I always say like with these events, the crew is like quintessential in so many ways. With Randy, he also like was able to say something powerful. So like the second night, it might've been like, maybe it was even the third, start of the third day. It was a simple point he said. He's like, uh, one of your team members, uh, Kevin, he was on the USA team the year before and he was also running the race. He's like, the film crew asked him who they thought would be the last person to survive. And Kevin's like, you know, without a doubt Harvey. And so my other buddy told me this, it caused some sort of physiological change even in me.

• 1:11:58Harvey Lewis?

  Like I felt like that fatigue and, and tension I was feeling, like that was going through my back and I was just feeling really tired and a little bit stiff. It was like that just went away and I felt this like new energy. And I was like, want to like live up to that expectation there. And like also it felt really good that Kevin said that. Like it was really such an incredible compliment for him to say something like that about me. Cause I was, my mind was always teetering on like losing that faith. And I was always trying to keep that, that dream of being the last person going the furthest cemented together.

• 1:12:41Harvey Lewis?

  But there were many times where I had to really fight to keep it from crossing over the other boundary. You know, keep that that positive mindset that it's still doable. When I'm going for three days without sleep and I'm feeling more tired than the previous year. And it's like, but then by the time I got to the fourth night, it seemed like I got to that frequency where I was so hell bent on like being the final person. I like lost a sense of like fatigue to a degree like I those things became less visible to me. Like my brain was so hyper laser focused on being the final outcome. That all the other things just didn't matter anymore. I was like.

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  You transcended fatigue.

• 1:13:25Harvey Lewis?

  I transcended fatigue. It was a different state like I I went through a metamorphosis where it just left me. I was like, I was fighting it like it was like when I was in with Jesse and the cold plunge after doing the hot sauna and I got in that cold plunge. I'm not the best at the cold plunge yet. Like I'm in there for 20 seconds and I'm like just like this and Jesse's like, just relax into it. Just relax into it. Relax your breathing. And I mean, I only made it like 30 some seconds or whatever, but the whole experience, you're kind of transcended over to biggs with like you get to a point where you relax into it.

• 1:14:08Harvey Lewis?

  And then it's like you're anticipating like the punch coming. But once the punches have come, you're just like, well, I fuck it. I don't care about any of these punches anymore. You can hit me another 100 times. I'm not going to stop. So it just pulls you and that's where it really attracts me this because I I can't get to that sort of place and running a marathon or running a 100 mile race. This takes you to a whole nother place I've ever seen before.

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's so wild. Uh, yeah, it's it's something that can't even be described in words. Like it's so experiential. It's like trying to explain to somebody what your ayahuasca trip was like, right? Like you are a psychonaut in that regard, like it is as much if not more a venture into the beyond of, you know, the brain's capacity and.

• 1:15:02Rich Roll?

  The relationship between consciousness and physical activity, like in a new and different way, that isn't just about the typical conversation around like, "Walk me through your mantras when you reach that point where you can't keep going." Like, this is the PhD version of that, where you're almost on a different plane and a different relationship with your own body and level of self-awareness, because the fatigue is so profound.

• 1:15:30Harvey Lewis?

  It's like a point of opportunity to like, I feel like there's some sort of, there's an enlightenment that does come from like this, this period and like, uh, exploring those spaces of the human mind.

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  So what are you returning to report back to us, mere mortals? About what you learned from that, you know?

• 1:15:59Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  What is this doing for you?

• 1:16:00Harvey Lewis?

  It's part of our DNA. Like, I feel like, you know, as humans, we are driven to the unknown. There is a point of death. So, I mean, things are not, you cannot infinitely go forever. But in a human evolution and in our time on this planet, humans have experienced those points before. I mean, you look at like feats of survival. The six days, the man trapped under the rock. I've lost his name right at the moment, but...

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, the one they made the movie about? Yeah. He had to basically break his arm off?

• 1:16:34Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah. I mean, it's just an incredible story. Or someone lost at sea for weeks. I mean, it's like, uh, those are far more remarkable, but it's like pushing to that same, uh, that we have more in us than we realize. And like, the very interesting thing was like, after the race, I sat down, we had like a little celebration and I did some chat on like, with the live feed. And then I walked, um, over to the like tents with my, my buddy Judd and another friend. Next to me, and I mean, I walked, but I was relying on them a bit too. Like, I mean, I was definitely like, and my body was like, yeah, we're done. We're done. This is it.

• 1:17:19Harvey Lewis?

  But the, the thing that's wild is that my mind, I really believe I could have just run through that whole night. And I think that it's possible that maybe we could have kept going through into the next day. And then how far beyond that, I'm not sure. But in terms of my body, my body was just cooperating, like at that point, my body surrendered to my mind. My body just gave up and it said, I'm, I'm tired of resisting this brain, you know? And it says, we're gonna go, we're just gonna go as far as we have to. And there's no debate about it. We're just doing it.

• 1:17:54Rich Roll?

  But the minute the race is over and you're like, I'm done, everything.

• 1:17:58Harvey Lewis?

  Then it goes back to the, the body gets majority control.

• 1:18:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:02Harvey Lewis?

  And then it's like, no, we're gonna lay down, then we're gonna take our time, we're gonna go to the restroom over there, we're gonna take one minute to walk to the restroom.

• 1:18:11Rich Roll?

  On the subject of higher planes of consciousness and, and the kind of transcendent aspect of this, it feels like a natural race for you to pursue would be the 3100. Is that on the list? Did we talk about that last time?

• 1:18:27Harvey Lewis?

  No, we never have, actually. Have you ever had a guest on from that?

• 1:18:30Rich Roll?

  Uh, no, well, I had Sanjay Rawal on who made the documentary about it.

• 1:18:34Harvey Lewis?

  Nice.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  And I know people who have competed in it. It's not a backyard format, but it's not dissimilar. It's like a stage race. You have certain hours where you can run and you just run around the city block.

• 1:18:47Harvey Lewis?

  Right.

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  That's only a mile loop, right?

• 1:18:49Harvey Lewis?

  And how do you say the name again?

• 1:18:51Rich Roll?

  It's Sri Shimoy.

• 1:18:53Harvey Lewis?

  Sri Shimoy. Yeah, because I think that he is a fascinating character. I mean, he pulled airplanes. By himself.

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  I didn't know about this.

• 1:19:02Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, like he's the one that developed that race. He's since passed away.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but he's like the patron saint of running, especially in New York City. He's had a major impact on running culture dating back to, you know, the early 70s, I think.

• 1:19:17Harvey Lewis?

  That's really interesting.

• 1:19:18Rich Roll?

  As a sort of spiritual leader and who's the guy, the New York

• 1:19:21Harvey Lewis?

  Ted Corbett.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  Road runners. Well, there was Ted and then who's the guy who ran the New York City Marathon in like the 70s and 80s? I can't remember his name. But I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe he was heavily influenced by Sri Chinmoy. And there's such a strong running culture in New York City. And I think you can't understand the origin of that culture without understanding Sri Chinmoy. Who is like this spiritual guru.

• 1:19:47Harvey Lewis?

  Right.

• 1:19:47Rich Roll?

  Who had this philosophy that running was a path to transcendence.

• 1:19:52Harvey Lewis?

  That's, I love that.

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  The ascetic nature of running and that's the origin of this race, the 3100, where you run around the city block in Queens, totally nondescript, like not urban, but not suburban kind of city, you know, layout until somebody gets to 3100 miles.

• 1:20:11Harvey Lewis?

  Right.

• 1:20:12Rich Roll?

  And hopefully self transcends in the process of that. All right. So this has to be on your bucket list.

• 1:20:18Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, it would be. It's, uh, it's in the summertime, so it's almost possible to do with my teaching schedule. But, uh, you know, I did learn from like the Appalachian Trail that when you do a really long adventure like that, even with my like methodical way of like eating plant-based foods, movement, hot and cold treatment. It's, it's difficult to balance your body back in like six months. It takes maybe six months or eight months. So it would take some time, but I, I'm, I love the, you know, the exploring.

• 1:20:57Harvey Lewis?

  That does sound like it could be.

• 1:21:00Harvey Lewis?

  It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time commitment.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  For sure. I mean, it's basically like your whole summer.

• 1:21:05Harvey Lewis?

  It's my whole summer.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  I think I was, I was in New York City, I think it was October, and it was going on while I was there. So it goes into the fall. That would cut in. I mean, you're.

• 1:21:15Harvey Lewis?

  It's tough.

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  You know, very committed to not missing a day of teaching.

• 1:21:19Harvey Lewis?

  Well, I do miss days and I think that everyone in my school is very, like the rest of the staff are probably like, oh Harvey, why you, yeah, you get to take all these times off. But I take it unpaid leave and fortunately like I do get the time off, but I usually take maybe two weeks to do races in a year. That race is like also involves, I would feel like, I like having crew members also for these bigger events. And that would be a major commitment to be away from Kelly and, or to have, I don't think she's gonna want to come longer, like a few days or a week maybe to that type of race.

• 1:21:55Rich Roll?

  But you know, she could, she could shack up at a nice hotel in Manhattan and pop in every couple of days, just make sure you're still alive.

• 1:22:01Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, there's actually right now I have on my Instagram under stories, the opportunity to vote for one of my races for 2024. And like going back to 2017, when I did bigs for the first time, the reason I decided to do bigs is I put four different races out there. I had like a six day race, a stage race in Oman, maybe it was like Leadville and also bigs. And bigs won like with 80% of vote. So that's why I did that race the first time. I would have never discovered it had like people not voted for it.

• 1:22:35Rich Roll?

  Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna do this again and I'm gonna campaign. I'm gonna lobby for the 3100 and then you're in big trouble.

• 1:22:42Harvey Lewis?

  I'm in big trouble.

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  Right? But let me ask you this. So you have a full-time job, teaching. We talked about that at length last time. And ultra running is also a full-time job. I don't think it would be fair to call it a part-time gig. Like you're very serious about this. Obviously you're at the pinnacle of your career and performing, you know, at the highest elite level, but. Your life is full. And I'm interested in how these two worlds nourish each other. Because I would have to assume that if a brand came to you, I don't know, you know, shoe brand or an apparel brand and said, Harvey, we just, you're the best. We love you. We think that you are the hero that we need and the ambassador that we want on our roster.

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  And we're going to write you this enormous check and we want you to just run. Would you take that deal if that meant that you had to retire from teaching?

• 1:23:38Harvey Lewis?

  Well, I have this amazing shoe company already behind me with Newton's. Honestly, I am so, so loyal to them. I've already been offered something that maybe exceeds that by quite a long distance, but I've been with Newton for over a decade and like I truly

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  Let's say it's a non-competing brand. I know you love Newton. It's great. And I want you to

• 1:23:59Harvey Lewis?

  Even if it was a hundred thousand dollars, I'm not going to that.

• 1:24:01Rich Roll?

  Let's definitely love on Newton for sure. And let's say it's a food brand or Whole Foods comes to you and says, we're Amazon. Just name your number, Harvey.

• 1:24:10Harvey Lewis?

  Right, right. Would I do that?

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  We know you like that Ferrari. You can have that too.

• 1:24:15Harvey Lewis?

  Well, honestly, I would probably be open to doing that for like a leave of absence. So like for a year or maybe for a few years. But then again, like after I, I really love the teaching aspect. So if I, if I went that direction, I did that, then I would want to also be doing something like relatable to youth as well. So then I would have to like start a program like Ray up in Quebec. He's a hop. He has

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, he's a hop, yeah.

• 1:24:48Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, Ray, he has like a really neat, neat adventure. He takes kids several times a year to like these remote places on the planet. And then they, they broadcast what's happening for like lesson plans with like Canadian National Geographic. And it's like, then he's into the classroom. So he's impacting more than just a single classroom. He's impacting classrooms all over. So if I had a dream, like, I would absolutely, absolutely love to be able to impact more kids and be in more classrooms. That's where I would be, oh, I'd see the opportunity with that. But with my school, SCPA, it's a, it's a really amazing place. It's a very diverse, like, art school, like, what your children have.

• 1:25:31Harvey Lewis?

  And it's hard to replace that. But if I were to have an opportunity where I could do something in that respect of like,

• 1:25:40Rich Roll?

  You could scale the impact.

• 1:25:42Harvey Lewis?

  Scale it to a larger.

• 1:25:43Rich Roll?

  That you're having on young people.

• 1:25:44Harvey Lewis?

  Now, I would a hundred percent be in. Or, or if I could do like a sort of running travel TV show or something.

• 1:25:51Rich Roll?

  What's the status of that? Cause I know you've, you're trying to make this happen.

• 1:25:55Harvey Lewis?

  We got to talk to Kelly on that. She's, she's kind of helping.

• 1:25:58Rich Roll?

  I want to bring Kelly on, but I have one more thing I want to talk to you about before we do that, which is the why behind all of this. I'm sure this is another question people ask you. Why do you do this? What are you getting out of this? Why do you have to run so far? And I just know in the course of kind of sharing your story and the stories of other people who are on the outer edges of, you know, this world, that amidst the celebratory, you know, kind of response that you get, there's also some pushback from people who are like, why are you sharing this? This is unhealthy. This isn't good for anybody. Like, these people must have some kind of psychological problem. Like, why, you know, like, like, there are better people to celebrate.

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  There's something not right about this, and maybe you shouldn't be promoting it. Right?

• 1:26:45Harvey Lewis?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you get a little bit of that coming your way.

• 1:26:48Harvey Lewis?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 1:26:49Rich Roll?

  So what's the why? And, you know, what is really driving this behind all of it?

• 1:26:54Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, is it Maslow that has the hierarchy of human needs? Like, sort of paralleling that. Like, I feel like there's a hierarchy there. So, I mean, at the base level, it's like, there's like a physical element to it, like a chemistry, like a dopamine impact, you know, like, from like, running, what running brings you positive health and brings like positive, like, you know, feelings both while I'm doing it, as well as like, In the afternoon, when I'm like reflecting back on that experience. But then there's like the social aspect.

• 1:27:30Harvey Lewis?

  Like, I mean, I've met people that have overcome numerous life challenges because of running. And it's like, part of that is also that social dynamic. Like what they get from like being a part of something. So there's that social dynamic that's large. And then you get the sort of like elation that comes from like beating yourself, like to to push yourself to another level. And to continuously be, even when you're in your your sixties, your seventies, or like my friend Mike Fremont, who's a hundred and two in February. Right. Friend of the pod, still kicking. Still kicking.

• 1:28:14Harvey Lewis?

  Out there, getting it done. He does pull ups every night on his way to bed. It's like, and he he wears your shoes. Not my shoes, On. He likes his Ons. Yeah, he wears Ons and he he collects the little pebbles. Uh, he's got a little like jar that's about this big of like the pebbles he's collected from this year. That gets stuck in the soul, yeah. He likes to bring it back to the shoe store and like give them back. But it is like a love. Um, there's like a spiritual element to it as well. Like once I recognize like the highest points, it's like, I feel like a closeness with the energy of the universe. I don't know what to say. I can't really describe it.

• 1:28:56Harvey Lewis?

  But I feel that like power sometimes when I'm like in a in an event like bad water out in the middle of the desert. And I can see, you know, for as far as human can I can see. And I just like take my body and just, it feels so primal to be moving across that landscape and doing things that my younger self was thought was like absolutely insane. So. That's something, but then there's also at the very high level, there's also like this giving back. So like this year, we actually teamed up with the Brighton Center. And like, we didn't finalize everything. That was another thing I was working on the last eight days. That came together at the last minute.

• 1:29:38Harvey Lewis?

  The last eight days before the race. I was like, we had been talking about, but we didn't finalize the details. And we're going to aim to raise a hundred thousand dollars, which was far, 10 times more than I've ever raised for any group. Uh, I got to speak to the people working on the ground. This organization helps like over 20,000 people in Northern Kentucky, Greater Cincinnati. It's like family planning, right? Yeah, it's everything. They have shelters. They have like, uh, food banks. They have like, help people get their first houses to overcome like addiction. There's all different like facets to this organization, but they're nonprofit.

• 1:30:16Harvey Lewis?

  And so it was at that point, it was also another drive, like knowing, like when I had my friend Tracy Outlaw, who does all my social media, like in these races and is a really good storyteller, but he, he was relaying to me that we were up over fifteen thousand dollars and way over 20,000. And that gave me more motivation as well. So, I mean, we end up raising now over forty four thousand dollars. So, I mean, it's like knowing that, yeah, that was connecting with other people and, and knowing that we were impacting other people. It impacted me and like that, that was also like motivation in it.

• 1:30:59Harvey Lewis?

  And also like, I really love to like influence our culture around health. In, in Ohio, we're not, uh, really at the same level of California. We have even, you know, higher obesity rates. Uh, I feel like there's fewer options for healthier foods, especially in rural areas like Circleville where Kelly and I live. I live half my time in Circleville. And so I kind of like honestly, like when I'm running to work and back home from work and I'm racing the buses, I kind of consider myself like a human billboard. So it's like trying to get people to move beyond like, uh, you know, what they can do to, you know, take the people that, that are more sedentary and get them out and like

• 1:31:44Harvey Lewis?

  walking. I mean, I try to do that with my students. That is something that I, I try to do. I try to encourage people to eat more whole food, plant-based foods, you know, even if they're not going to like, you know, become vegetarian or vegan. Like, I mean, if they're incorporating more of that into their nutrition, you know, my mom had a stroke when she was like 54 and she almost died. And as a result of it, it, it impacted her speech and her mobility for the rest of her life. And fortunately she is still alive at 84. But for 30 years, it's been a, a different experience. Like she, you know, she does not have the same, uh, abilities and it's very frustrating for her. So I mean, much of what

• 1:32:28Harvey Lewis?

  happened to her at 54 could have possibly been different had she been eating differently and had she been, uh, had a routine and had less stress in her life. You know, those, those things absolutely I don't believe she would have had the stroke. So I feel like, you know, DNA does play a role and it does impact us, but we can also fight back. And like, we can also, you know, I have an end date as well, but it's like the quality of life. Like, I mean, my buddy, 102, Mike Fremont, he's still doing pull-ups at 102. I mean, that's remarkable. How many people can do a pull-up? I mean, across the whole population? That guy's unbelievable.

• 1:33:12Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, he went up all, 102. I mean, he came to my classroom, he walked up all four flights of stairs. I mean, and like, there are a lot of people that come into the school that don't do that. They are 20 and 30 years of age. So I mean, to me, like, I'm only one person, you're one person. We have a whole bunch of people out here and ultra-running and like different like activities like this. But I feel like if I can influence, uh, a few people or more people, I would, that would be the best thing in my world. Like, you know, just to have more influence and getting people that higher quality of life. So it's not an inconvenience. It's, it's far from that.

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  Answer complete? Yeah, I'm sorry. That's the end of your answer? I'm sorry. No, because I'm gonna... No, I want to hear you. I want to hear you out. Right. And you can get Kelly up here to hear the honest truth of it. Trust me. She's making much of it. That's coming. She's coming in hot in a minute. But before we get to her, I'm not going to let you off the hook on this. If I heard you correctly, your answer to the question of why you do what you do and push yourself in this very specific way is because of the community social aspect of it, your love of nature, this feeling that you get from pushing yourself and kind of suffering,

• 1:34:33Rich Roll?

  you know, the kind of downstream impact that that has on your life, the spiritual piece to it, then we have the fundraising piece, and then there's this role that you can play in terms of influencing the health of others. All very laudable whys. And yet, I'm feeling, I'm feeling like you didn't, we're not quite there in terms of getting to the bottom of this. I think that all of these goals could be pursued, short of running 450 miles and not sleeping for days on end. You could go to the turkey trot and maybe run the New York City Marathon every other year and still raise money, enjoy the social peace, get out in nature, have a, you know,

• 1:35:17Rich Roll?

  a spiritual experience and the like. If I was going to create my own Maslow's hierarchy of these whys, I think I would put, in terms of like your pure honesty in answering this question, I would put the spiritual piece and the suffering piece at the top here, because those are the two that I think might be inching a little bit closer to the answer of why you go as long and as hard as you do, because all of these other goals can be achieved, short of you practicing five-minute naps in between classes and, you know, spending every commute for the last 10 and a half years, running to and from school. All the, like, it's very extreme, right? Admittedly. I get it, bro. I love you.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  But to the person who is the person who's posting, like, I don't understand this, like, this is, like, let's go a little bit deeper here. Let's get into the darkness. Like, what's the real push? Like, what is, what is the engine that gets you through that third day and into the fourth day and into four and a half days without sleep and is continuing to propel you beyond your enjoyment of nature and it's cool to hang out with some other people when you're running around in the woods?

• 1:36:40Harvey Lewis?

  Well, I mean, I just

• 1:36:42Rich Roll?

  And I'm not saying you have to, I'm not saying you have to know the answer to that.

• 1:36:46Harvey Lewis?

  It's a, it's a, yeah, you're so good with like diving in and peeling back the layers. You did that last time. Actually, I had a couple, at least one epiphany in the last time we met that was something I didn't even quite get until we, I left that space. But I want to just go as far as humanly possible. And I have this aching desire to want to always go further and to push myself into like some zone that doesn't make sense. But I don't know, you may have to get Kelly up. She may, she may give a better answer.

• 1:37:26Rich Roll?

  And let's do that. But I will offer this. And I think, and please correct me if this is at all off base. I think there's something inside of you that owns and knows that you're very good at this. Like, it's not the normal person who, you know, a couple of days into this decides like, who looks around at the other competitors and says, yeah, these people, they're not going to beat me, like, and just knows it. And maybe that's Wolverine, but that's also Harvey. And so I think you know that you have this in you and you know it's special. And there's something really beautiful about honoring that. And that's okay, you know? And it is exciting to see if you can go further than anyone else. And to explore

• 1:38:11Rich Roll?

  the outer edges of what happens to your body and your mind when you go further than anybody else ever has.

• 1:38:17Harvey Lewis?

  I'm still exploring it. It's still like, I just, I think you're right. You've said things that are true. Like you're absolutely right. And there's, there's more layers to it. But I'm also sort of multifaceted in a sense. I may be feeling one area. Like at some time, I might be having that hunting phase where I'm like lured myself in the back. And I'm just observing every, every single possible detail of every person. At like a level that no one realizes it happening. And then there's other times where I'm just in there and enjoying like a great conversation. And like, we're totally working as a team.

• 1:38:56Harvey Lewis?

  Like the, the third night, there was like seven of us that ran many of the loops to finish as a unit at 300 miles. And like for me, running as that unit brought me such incredible gratitude.

• 1:39:15Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty cool, that's a pretty cool thing.

• 1:39:17Harvey Lewis?

  It was so cool because there were some of these runners that were like, they were on their way out. But because we like worked as a team and like I called the, the go, when to go and when to slow. Like I, so like we would like run to a certain point. And I said, okay, now we're gonna like walk for like 20 seconds, relax yourself. You guys are doing, I just say, you guys are doing amazing. Keep moving. Okay, we're gonna get this. And I said, okay, uh, we're gonna start running again. We run and I was just like speaking to the group most of the time. And like just calling it out. To me, that was fun. It was like being like a commander of a group. But as myself, every single person there added energy to me. It was like animals moving in nature.

• 1:40:02Harvey Lewis?

  Like, I mean, animals moving in nature move more efficiently than in individuals. So like, there was a strategic element to that as well. I wasn't thinking of like, you know, taking out the person next to me. I was thinking of all of us are moving further together.

• 1:40:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:15Harvey Lewis?

  And we're like actually working as a unit. And this is freaking amazing that we get to 300 miles. Yo, three years earlier, no one had even made it 300 miles. Now, we had 22 people make it to 300 miles and seven of them were in our group. So it was so cool. That was probably one of my favorite experiences of the whole race was running in that unit.

• 1:40:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that is cool.

• 1:40:40Harvey Lewis?

  It was fun.

• 1:40:40Rich Roll?

  All right, let's get the truth. Let's get Kelly up here and we're gonna put all your bullshit to the test.

• 1:40:47Harvey Lewis?

  There you go.

• 1:40:50Rich Roll?

  Kelly, welcome.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:40:52Rich Roll?

  Thanks for joining us.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  It's an honor to be here.

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  Have you ever done a podcast before?

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  No, not like this.

• 1:40:57Rich Roll?

  All right, well, welcome. Let all of this like disappear.

• 1:41:02Harvey Lewis?

  Nice little surprise.

• 1:41:03Rich Roll?

  I'm delighted to have you here. Let's just begin with, if you're giving Harvey a report card on the veracity of what he shared, like, what's the, how's he doing? What do we not know? What hasn't come up? Who's the real Harvey here?

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  I would have to give him a C+.

• 1:41:20Rich Roll?

  C+ there, what? Scathing.

• 1:41:22Harvey Lewis?

  I thought it was like at least A- or something.

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  Maybe B-.

• 1:41:26Rich Roll?

  B-.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  It was, no, he's, I think he's still figuring himself out a lot. So when he kind of, I feel like dances around questions sometimes and you do a very good job at bringing him back to the original question. I think a lot of it is he's still searching for what's inside of him. There's also a reason why I'm still with Harvey after over 10 years.

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  I want to understand this.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  And that's a compliment.

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  You guys have a unique relationship and...

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  We do. I'm still trying to figure him out, I guess is what I'm saying too. And I think that's one of the biggest attractions is I learn something new about him almost daily.

• 1:42:11Rich Roll?

  So if you had to answer the why question, or if somebody asks you like, why does Harvey do this? Like, what's beneath the surface here?

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  I would say that when he talks about wanting to make a difference in other people's life, I would say that is pretty much the number one reason.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  I can see that.

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  It truly, truly is. I've never met anybody, and he's never said this, I'm just saying this from what I take from him, I seriously think... He just wants to leave this world a better place. And anything he can do to bring more goodness, positivity, if he can help others discover what they're capable of doing, that's his life goal. Like, that's what he wants to do.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  And certainly running further and longer than anyone else. It's just as good a way as any other.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  It's a good place to start.

• 1:43:02Harvey Lewis?

  It's the only stage I got.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, well, that's the card you're playing, right? It's a good card.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, I think you are correct when you say that he's this like, lovable, you know, kind, human. Me and my daughter joke, we always say, we're gonna get a bumper sticker made that says, "I break for lightning bugs," because we have gotten whiplash before. Because we've been driving on a back road and a lightning bug flies in our path and he's gotta brake really hard, so we don't.

• 1:43:31Harvey Lewis?

  No, I don't do that all the time, no.

• 1:43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Harvey that people see is, they see runner Harvey and schoolteacher Harvey. People don't get to see Harvey as my partner, which is, I mean, it's who he is, but it's like a whole other piece that nobody gets to see.

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  And what is that like? I mean, you, I mean, you're an ultra runner yourself, right? So you understand this lifestyle and you're engaged with it just the same. And you have this unique relationship because you don't necessarily live together all the time.

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, so we've been together for over 10 years. We don't live together. We live about an hour and 45 minutes apart. And I can honestly say that Harvey's training has never impeded our relationship, which is huge.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  Is that because you're training with him? Or because he's so conscious of making sure that...

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  And when he says, when he says he doesn't have a plan when he gets up for like what he's gonna do that day, he's, he's serious. That is where we differ in training, because I am more, "Okay, Monday, I've gotta run this many miles and I'm gonna run at this pace." And Harvey is more like, "Okay, so I'm feeling like 20 feels good today, but I'm gonna do my 20 here, here, and here." So it doesn't affect any of our plans for the day. I don't feel like training has ever impeded us. And in the teenage years that we've been together, he drives to Circleville every weekend. And in over 10 years, never once, never one time has he said, Kelly,

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  I'm really busy this weekend and I've got a lot of stuff to do and I'm not going to make it up to Circleville. That is huge.

• 1:45:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  And what, yeah, so those are.

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  So my heart is warmed, my heart is warmed. In fairness, Monday through Friday, this guy can, is like running all the time and like teaching. And that's pretty much it, right? I imagine it's fairly monastic during the week for you.

• 1:45:29Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, so I kind of really consider it as like I 100% live in two different places. I live with you, you know, three nights a week and in Cincinnati, four nights a week. And so, yeah, like for the last like five or so years, I've been really involved with also taking care of my mother. So that would be a couple of nights a week in Cincinnati. And we just moved her to Maryland to be near my sister. But otherwise, my teaching day, and I do a lot of like running related stuff. You're right, Monday through Thursday, every other thing, like friends and stuff like that.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  And that's another thing that people don't see of you is that up until just October, two days a week, you were driving 40 minutes round trip to go care for your mother and not just stop in. Hey, mom, how are you? And mom, let's get up and let's go for a walk. Let's go to the store. Let's go out to eat. Let's socialize. So two days a week, you also were doing that.

• 1:46:25Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I was busy.

• 1:46:28Rich Roll?

  Basically, I need to abandon this quest that I'm on to like uncover the darkness here. Like there, this is like Harvey is as you see him, right?

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Like. And more.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Which is, you know, I have hope for humanity. Thank you for that.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  I do, I truly do. I, I really, I feel like he is everything that everybody sees and so much more.

• 1:46:51Harvey Lewis?

  Thank you. That's very sweet. Well, we were going for the record for longest engagement, but we actually like have put a date on, on our, our wedding day now.

• 1:47:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:01Harvey Lewis?

  June 1st, like, yeah, so we're actually getting married. But we've really been like. Practically, we've been married like the last 10 years.

• 1:47:10Rich Roll?

  You've been together for 10 years.

• 1:47:11Harvey Lewis?

  We've been married.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  What took you so long?

• 1:47:13Harvey Lewis?

  I know, right?

• 1:47:13Rich Roll?

  You're just turning the engagement into its own ultra?

• 1:47:15Harvey Lewis?

  It takes our time. But we actually met in the North Coast 24-hour race. We met in this 24-hour race. Kelly is always very supportive of me, so I couldn't do the types of things I do without her encouragement, like being on my team, even if she's not there. She may think that some of my ideas are a little delusional at times, perhaps, but she always has supported me. So, you know, like when I was doing that Biggs Backyard, another thing that gave me like oomph, you know, I mentioned some of the things already, but like Judge is like telling me, "Hey, Kelly and Carly, our rescue dog, are out running this morning."

• 1:47:59Harvey Lewis?

  And just by the fact that they're out running, you know, and I'm on my fourth day, like I could like kind of connect with that energy. It just, it definitely made me feel better. It just made me feel like, you know, they, well, we're both running in different places in the country, but we're both like, it's a connective energy, which is really nice.

• 1:48:16Rich Roll?

  And what's your relationship to ultras and racing these days? Like, what does that look like?

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  I have been running ultras for, let's see, I think my first one was in 2011.

• 1:48:31Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Does that sound about right? And I think we met in 2013. Yeah, so I've done 24-hour races, 100-mile races. I ran Badwater in 2022.

• 1:48:42Harvey Lewis?

  You had a remarkable experience with Badwater because it was like just making it each cut off by like literally a minute.

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  By seconds.

• 1:48:50Harvey Lewis?

  Like seconds in some places. And I mean, she hallucinated, she had like, every reason was there to like have quit multiple times.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I did have an amazing crew.

• 1:49:02Harvey Lewis?

  And you had this phenomenal crew.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  Phenomenal.

• 1:49:04Harvey Lewis?

  And it's something about Kelly also is like, her training doesn't necessarily always come together. But for whatever reason, she is a very strong with executing the race. It's like some people, they train really, really amazing and get all together and then like they get to the race and it just doesn't happen.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  I'm opposite.

• 1:49:21Harvey Lewis?

  She's the opposite. Like she, her training can just be raveled and like, I mean, before, oh my God, and I'm like, wow. And it's not necessarily like maybe some injury happens or this or that. But then you get to the race and you are just like a machine. You're like, I'm going to finish.

• 1:49:36Speaker 02

  I know. And then I'm always like, wow, what, I wonder how I would do if I could actually like have a solid training block.

• 1:49:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's so interesting. The person who's so regimented about their training though, tend to be the people who are less resilient when things go wrong in the middle of a race, right? Cause it's a control thing.

• 1:49:56Harvey Lewis?

  And sometimes.

• 1:49:56Rich Roll?

  To have the wherewithal to go into a race, knowing that your training wasn't great and still execute is illustrative of somebody who has a tremendous amount of resilience.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  And you.

• 1:50:08Harvey Lewis?

  That's cool.

• 1:50:09Rich Roll?

  Bad waters, no, no joke.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  No joke, no joke. I mean, I seriously, and I had been out there for years prior to me even applying and running. So I knew what I was getting myself into, but then there was this small part of me that thought, maybe it's not that bad. Maybe it really, the hype of the heat and you know, just all of it, maybe it's not that bad. Oh my gosh.

• 1:50:33Rich Roll?

  No, it's terrible. The whole thing is terrible.

• 1:50:36Speaker 02

  It was so hard, it was so hard. And I have experience with ultras and the biggest thing that threw me for such a loop out there was the depth perception. So you would run for hours and hours and hours and the mountains would never.

• 1:50:54Rich Roll?

  They don't get closer.

• 1:50:56Speaker 02

  Or this little line that goes through this mountain over to the side is still there. 20 miles later, I look over, oh my goodness, there's that line. So the depth perception is the one thing that really threw me for a loop. Panama coming off of towns pass, you see Panama in the distance.

• 1:51:12Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, it's like.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  It takes forever to get to it.

• 1:51:17Rich Roll?

  Well, good for you. I want to talk about the squid game thing, but before we transition to that, just so we're clear. Nothing else about Harvey that like, we need to know that the, that the, you know, that the passerby wouldn't understand, or, or any, any fast ones that, that he pulled in the middle of the interview where you felt like, that's, no, come on Harvey.

• 1:51:42Harvey Lewis?

  It's okay, honey.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm thinking, I was making, I was making so many mental notes when I was listening. I do like, oh, what did Rich say? He said something and I'm like, think, okay, Harvey, come on now. And I, you never, I can't remember what it was, but, shoot, yeah, maybe it'll come to me in a minute. But, um, yeah, I gave him a C+, a B-, somewhere between there, because I, I think you're still figuring things out as well. And

• 1:52:10Harvey Lewis?

  What, what drives me to?

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  What drives you? I'm still trying to figure out what drives you.

• 1:52:15Harvey Lewis?

  So were you surprised when I won that race, the 450 miles?

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  Good question. That's good.

• 1:52:20Harvey Lewis?

  Like when you were watching this from afar?

• 1:52:22Speaker 02

  Okay, hold on, this is coming back now. This is coming back now. Okay, so Rich said to you, and I, if you remember correctly, right when we were having lunch prior to coming here, I asked you the exact same question. I said, but those other people that are out in the race, they also think they're gonna win. They're also going for the win. You're also going for the win. What makes you different? And you asked that. You said, what differentiates you from the others? You know, they could be looking all around saying, oh, I'm taking you all down. You, you're all done. And you're looking at everybody as the Wolverine, and you're taking everybody down. So what makes you different? And I asked you that exact same question before we came here. And you still, you cannot

• 1:53:05Harvey Lewis?

  That was only day two of the Wolverine.

• 1:53:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:09Speaker 02

  But, you know, a lot of people ask me about Harvey's training. That's what, that's what people typically want to know about. You know, how many miles does he run a week? How often does he do hills? What's his speed work like? I can't answer any of that. And he probably can't either, because

• 1:53:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting and refreshing, you know, especially on social media. It's all about what's your morning routine and, you know, exactly what is your zone too. And all these people get really obsessed with the minutia of the lifestyle habits of high performing people. But in my experience, a lot, not all, but a lot of the most elite people in their respective disciplines and fields have a very different relationship with those kinds of things. It's much more intuitive in nature and not regimented in the way that one might be led to believe if you're watching a lot of reels on Instagram, you know, from people who are not elite, telling you what they learned or what you should do or should not do with respect to certain things.

• 1:54:10Rich Roll?

  And I think there's, I don't know what the lesson in that is, but I think there is a lesson in that.

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it's your mind and it's your psychology that I think separates him from others.

• 1:54:23Rich Roll?

  Well, Laz said it. You're the guy who won't give up. So I think it's more honey badger than monarch on some level. Like it's that, you know, like not a death grip has a pejorative kind of connotation, but like you're latching on to something and you have the tenacity to not let go until you achieve your desired outcome.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  I think something else about you that a lot of people may not know is that for as long as I've known you, he may have had, he may have a goal going into a race, whether it's like a distance or a time goal, I've never seen him disappointed. I've never seen him upset over like, oh, if I would have just done that, I could have, I could have gotten this time. Or if I would have just done that, I could have maybe, you know, been in second place, then third place. He celebrates every single thing he does, everything. If he doesn't hit a goal in a race, I don't think he looks at it as a failure. I think he looks at it as, you know, moving forward. If I want to do something different, I can just tweak something. But every finish is a celebration to him. Would you say that's right?

• 1:55:31Harvey Lewis?

  I think for most part, I mean, it's, I try to find like some positive in everything.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  You do, yeah.

• 1:55:38Harvey Lewis?

  But also like if I don't do as well as I want to, that's actually can be really powerful as well. So for example, like with Australia, I like finished third and like things fell apart in a way. Like you know, with the going through the deep hallucinations and it was powerful because it caused me to want to grow. So like after that, I actually changed some things, some things real small. Like I started taking cold showers, the whole month leading up to bigs, I did cold showers. And I'm still doing them now, like only cold showers.

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  Tell the truth about cold showers.

• 1:56:12Harvey Lewis?

  What's the truth, honey?

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  The truth is you only take a cold shower on the days you don't take hot baths.

• 1:56:17Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, that's true. Okay. I do take hot baths.

• 1:56:22Harvey Lewis?

  Come on, you can't be serious. There we go. Check some balances here.

• 1:56:25Rich Roll?

  This is what I was looking for.

• 1:56:26Harvey Lewis?

  Right, right.

• 1:56:27Rich Roll?

  All right, keep going.

• 1:56:30Harvey Lewis?

  But you know, it's, it's like the, that actually motivated me to elevate like the, you know, different things within my training, like mileage a bit more, like thinking through, what did I mess up with in terms of like maybe my nutrition or like my motivation, my mind, where my mind traveled to, my pacing, all the strategies. Like I thought those through finishing third in Australia and I set an American record doing that. I like finished with 375 miles. So I was like, I was grateful that I got that. And I was also grateful to see Phil Gore get the new record because I felt like I was a part of that.

• 1:57:13Harvey Lewis?

  So even though I finished third, I was delighted that Phil like overcame and got the world record. Like I felt like I was a part of the team that helped him get there. So like for me, that was beautiful.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  A success.

• 1:57:29Harvey Lewis?

  It was a celebration in Australia. But it's like everything we do, sometimes things don't go the way we expect them to go. And that's, that's okay, because then it determines how we take that event. It determines where we'll go with it. You can like take that and let it. Destroy you, you can beat yourself down for something you did. Or you can take that and say, okay, I'm gonna use that to motivate myself to work harder, to like learn new tactics to like grow into. So I mean, I feel like that is important.

• 1:58:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the two lessons that I extract from that are, one, when you make it about something more than yourself, i.e. celebrating your friend, or you know, having the gratitude for contributing to his record, that ameliorates the sting of defeat because it's not about you and your ego. It's about more than that, which keeps you in the sport longer and keeps it fresh and interesting and encouraging, no matter the result. And then the second lesson being this capacity or reflex to develop the muscle of being enthusiastic about what you learn when things don't go your way and being stoked about it. Like, oh, my God, it didn't go my way, but look what I got out of this

• 1:58:43Rich Roll?

  and I can apply this next time, as opposed to the self-defeating, you know, kind of impulse to beat yourself up and feel bad because you didn't reach your goal. And I think those are lessons that are applicable, no matter what you're trying to achieve in your life.

• 1:58:58Speaker 02

  And as a cross-country coach, finding that why, finding something that's bigger than you, because you'll always give yourself permission to quit. If you just leave it up to you, you can almost always find a reason to say, you know what, this is really uncomfortable, like I'm gonna back down. But when you have something that's bigger than you, it's harder to let other people down. So I always encouraged my athletes to find something that was outside of them that they could rely on when it got tough out there in a 5K or when the weather was, you know, not ideal and they still had to race. So I think finding that why and finding that reason that's, you know, bigger than you is. And also, you touched on it earlier when you said about like,

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  when it gets bad, you find like Harvey being Wolverine or a spirit animal. I used to have my athletes like really do some research and find somebody that they find, you know, either a great athlete or somebody that they think very highly of. And, you know, when it gets tough out there, that's when you're going to kind of let yourself go and think, okay, so what would so-and-so do, you know, and how would Harvey Lewis run up this hill? Or how would, you know, whoever they admired, how would that person tackle this hill? So I think getting out of your own body is something that I feel. He does really well at, and I just think it's kind of the key to pushing through hard times.

• 2:00:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about Squid Game.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:00:23Rich Roll?

  So Squid Game was the international phenomenon on Netflix, the show that swept the world and rewrote the ratings books in terms of, you know, audience share. I mean, the whole world was talking about that TV show. Then there was this reality show, game show concept that you found yourself involved in. So I'm, I need to know what this is all about. Cause this is like, this came out of left field. I saw Harvey shared a video and I was like, wait, what?

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the interesting thing about it is we recorded it in January of 2023. So I couldn't talk about anything until now, until it was released. So I've been holding on to all this, you know, information for, you know, a year now. So yeah, Squid Game came out in 2021, I believe. And it was the most watched Netflix series to date, and it was shown in 94 countries. And then in 2022, they decided they were, Netflix was going to produce a reality show based on the original Squid Game. So it was called Squid Game: The Challenge, and it was going to be, all the games and everything was going to be based on the original one.

• 2:01:37Speaker 02

  So it was kind of cool to be involved with it. It was the largest casted reality show in the history of TV with the largest prize pot of $4.56 million.

• 2:01:48Rich Roll?

  Did they have all the cash in a, in like a lucite cube hanging from the ceiling?

• 2:01:53Speaker 02

  Yes, they did.

• 2:01:54Rich Roll?

  How did you get involved with this?

• 2:01:56Speaker 02

  So this is how I got involved with it. I'm not even really a big TV watcher, but we did get started on Squid Game when it came out. And it's kind of dark and I seem to kind of be drawn to those psychological type of thriller type shows. So I loved it. I don't, Harvey is not really...

• 2:02:17Harvey Lewis?

  No, I liked the show.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  You did?

• 2:02:18Harvey Lewis?

  I love the show.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  You did, yeah.

• 2:02:20Harvey Lewis?

  The Korean like culture and all that.

• 2:02:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:22Harvey Lewis?

  And the competition.

• 2:02:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Harvey Lewis?

  It was very interesting.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  Anyway. They started casting for the reality show and it was my 20 year old son that actually had sent me the link and said, you should apply for this. And I think what had happened, he went to apply for it, but she had to be 21. So the next best thing would be his mom.

• 2:02:41Rich Roll?

  You shot one video, just one video.

• 2:02:43Speaker 02

  So he sent me the link on a whim. I sat down, came back from running. I just got back from running like four or five miles. I was like, oh yeah, I've got this link. Clicked on it, filled out the application online. I shot one 60 second video, like in one take. And I watched it and I'm like, yep, good enough. Send it on. It's just those things. I thought, oh, I'll send off. I'll probably never hear anything. Within 24 hours, a casting agent from LA had texted me and we did a phone interview and then it just kind of snowballed from there. So it was a super in-depth process. The whole vetting took from August of 2022 until December of 2022.

• 2:03:20Rich Roll?

  Just the vetting part.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So four months. Yeah.

• 2:03:23Rich Roll?

  Full background check.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Psychological test. Psychological evaluation, social media check, a lot of stuff. Big deal. So it was filmed in London in January of 2023. So they flew 456 of us over to London where we were isolated three to four days prior to filming in our hotel rooms. So we weren't allowed to talk to each other. We could only come out of our hotel room like three times a day to get our, pick up our food. And then we started filming. They put us all on these coach buses and bussed us to the middle of this field with these two big old military hangars. And that's where it all started.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  Wow. And they took you through the challenges, just the way they unfold?

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Pretty much, yes.

• 2:04:08Rich Roll?

  In the show, without the dying part?

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  Yes, without the dying part. But they tried to simulate it as best as they could. So we had, we did have these like ink packs on. So if we were to get eliminated, they would activate our pack and it would explode. So then like, you know, this dark ink would kind of bleed out onto our shirt.

• 2:04:29Rich Roll?

  No spoilers. Everybody should watch the show. The show's doing really well on Netflix. Like, we're recording this in December, but I checked maybe a handful of days ago and it was like in the top 10 shows still. So a lot of people are watching this show.

• 2:04:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:04:41Rich Roll?

  Are you getting like stopped? Do people recognize you now because you're in this TV show?

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I teach middle school. So of course my middle schoolers are like, hey, there's that teacher that was in Squid Game.

• 2:04:53Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  So that's fun. Yeah. And I have got stopped at, yeah, a local pharmacy, actually, when we were getting ready to leave. But they were like, hey. So, yeah, it was interesting.

• 2:05:05Rich Roll?

  It was fun. You had a good time.

• 2:05:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're casting for season two.

• 2:05:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, they're doing it again. Wow.

• 2:05:09Speaker 02

  They think they are.

• 2:05:10Rich Roll?

  Would you ever go to an audio show? Uh, no. I don't think so. No.

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  I always said, no.

• 2:05:17Rich Roll?

  I'm publicly exposed enough. Right. You know, I don't need, I don't need anymore of that. I'm fulfilled with this form of media, I think. I'm okay with this.

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  That was the first time that I had applied to a reality show.

• 2:05:30Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be disorienting to go someplace, be isolated. Sort of like you're on jury duty and you just get bussed around. You have no control over your life.

• 2:05:39Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 2:05:40Rich Roll?

  And also because it's reality TV, of course they're manipulating things and you realize like, oh, this isn't a documentary. Like this is, you know, this is its own entirely, you know, unique thing. Yeah.

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  But the sets were amazing. I mean, when you would walk into a set, it was literally like stepping onto the set of the movie Squid Game.

• 2:06:03Rich Roll?

  I would assume that on some level you were cast because of your background in endurance athletics. How did that come into play for better or worse as a contestant?

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  I think, without giving too much away, I think it helped and it hindered me in some situations. But definitely when I was there, all I kept thinking is like, I ran through Death Valley and it was 124 degrees.

• 2:06:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no one else here did that.

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  Nobody else.

• 2:06:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm the honey badger monarch Wolverine in this scenario.

• 2:06:35Harvey Lewis?

  Survive that cold hangar for quite some time.

• 2:06:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:39Harvey Lewis?

  So that was difficult. There were people that were passing out near you.

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was some.

• 2:06:44Harvey Lewis?

  There was a couple of people passing out in that particular.

• 2:06:46Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, the conditions definitely in the first game was, it was rough for sure. It was cold. It was very cold. Yeah. And you'll see it in the first episode.

• 2:06:57Rich Roll?

  It just bumped to the top of my queue. I'll check it out. We've been going a long time and I gotta let you guys get back to your life, but I do wanna kind of end with a couple of quick questions. I mean, Jesse, as I mentioned, you know, shared a few questions. One of the things that he wanted to know was you, Harvey, being the Superman of running, how do you handle lazy people in your inner circle?

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  That is a great question.

• 2:07:26Rich Roll?

  Cause you're a very compassionate man.

• 2:07:27Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, honestly.

• 2:07:29Rich Roll?

  But you're not a lazy man.

• 2:07:31Harvey Lewis?

  No, no. I try to, try to find like a little way to try to like nudge people in a, in a positive way. So it depends on the situation. Like if I'm in school, like I know I have to be careful with kids and like, leave them with more positives. I have friends growing up that had a teacher say something like, you'll never amount to anything. Like that's outrageous. Like for someone to say something like that. I want to be very encouraging with my words, like where I like am dealing with like students. Like I want to like nudge them in a way that like motivates them. Now, if it's one of my close friends and they're being lazy, or someone in my inner circle.

• 2:08:17Rich Roll?

  You're gonna send Mike Fremont over to their house?

• 2:08:20Harvey Lewis?

  I do try to like, I'm just like, we're gonna go do some, some walking, we're gonna get.

• 2:08:25Speaker 02

  This is where I say he does it in a manipulative way.

• 2:08:28Harvey Lewis?

  Manipulate, honey.

• 2:08:29Rich Roll?

  With a smile on his face.

• 2:08:31Harvey Lewis?

  Right. Ah, no.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  For example.

• 2:08:34Harvey Lewis?

  Okay.

• 2:08:34Speaker 02

  If I'm tired and I'm like.

• 2:08:36Harvey Lewis?

  Oh, you're not lazy. You're never lazy.

• 2:08:38Speaker 02

  Oh, I just feel like being lazy. I swear in the next two minutes, he will say something like, so I talked to Mike Fremont.

• 2:08:45Harvey Lewis?

  No, honey, I did not say that. You're reading into that wrong. I would never say about you, honey.

• 2:08:50Speaker 02

  And I swear, this is how Harvey does it. It's like, that's the nudge. That's the nudge.

• 2:08:56Rich Roll?

  Passive aggressive.

• 2:08:57Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 2:08:58Harvey Lewis?

  I don't think so.

• 2:08:59Rich Roll?

  In a good way, right? All right. That's a good answer, though. I'm satisfied with that answer.

• 2:09:05Harvey Lewis?

  Okay.

• 2:09:07Rich Roll?

  In the Hollywood movie of Harvey Lewis's life, we're gonna play a little casting couch here. Who plays Harvey in the movie?

• 2:09:17Rich Roll?

  This is my question, not Jesse's.

• 2:09:19Harvey Lewis?

  Are you asking Kelly or?

• 2:09:21Rich Roll?

  Well, you should each take a take. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it.

• 2:09:24Harvey Lewis?

  That's so mad.

• 2:09:28Harvey Lewis?

  Well, I mean, honestly, I think Matthew McConaughey is like, he's, he's just hilarious. I love like, like his.

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  He's got the right, right energy for you.

• 2:09:36Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, he's, he's really great with that. So, I mean, I, I would like, I mean, yeah, that would be incredible. But, uh, oh, honey, what do you, what do you think?

• 2:09:46Rich Roll?

  Kelly, who's playing Harvey?

• 2:09:49Rich Roll?

  You're the casting director.

• 2:09:50Harvey Lewis?

  He's so dynamic. He can transcend different characters, like.

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good one. Sometimes I think of like, uh, John Heater from Napoleon Dynamite.

• 2:10:01Harvey Lewis?

  Oh, there we go.

• 2:10:04Rich Roll?

  There's a, there's a knuckleball in your direction.

• 2:10:07Speaker 02

  I know you do. I know you do.

• 2:10:10Harvey Lewis?

  So that's fine.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:10:11Rich Roll?

  There you go. A little bit of a different energy from the McConnaissance.

• 2:10:15Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't know the Matthew McConaughey is.

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  But I, I say that just because of like, he's kind of quirky and even him and the movie about, oh, it's a baseball. Oh, Benchwarmers? Benchwarmers, that's it. Like, he just has this quirkiness and that's a side that a lot of people don't see of you that I love. And it's this.

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  I don't know, like you just say weird things.

• 2:10:38Harvey Lewis?

  That's great, honey.

• 2:10:40Speaker 02

  You say things like, hey, like, how many times have you came, do you guys want to have like a popsicle party or something tonight?

• 2:10:46Harvey Lewis?

  A popsicle party?

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  And my kids and myself, we're like.

• 2:10:49Harvey Lewis?

  I don't think I've done that in a little while.

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  We're like.

• 2:10:52Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I love popsicles.

• 2:10:53Rich Roll?

  Like, are you, is it 1950?

• 2:10:55Speaker 02

  What else? Oh, my gosh, I can tell you so many things that he says, and my kids look at me and they're like.

• 2:11:01Harvey Lewis?

  You know, Mark Wahlberg, I think he'd be pretty good, too. Yeah, he'd be pretty good.

• 2:11:05Rich Roll?

  He's gonna have to trim down a little.

• 2:11:06Harvey Lewis?

  No, no, I'm gonna have to work on it.

• 2:11:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:08Harvey Lewis?

  That's right.

• 2:11:09Rich Roll?

  Or you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to beef up.

• 2:11:10Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I saw the Napoleon film and, uh, you know, that was actually quite amazing, you know, film, too. But there was a preview, like, he's in this new film now where he's doing these adventure races and he's got this dog. Uh, it's coming out in the next few months. I can relate in the sense of our dog, like Carly is my number one training partner, like our rescue dog Carly. So a lot of people don't know that, that our dog is like, she has got such incredible energy and like her, her mindset, like that dog will never turn, like she defends the front of house. Like, there could be a Tyrannosaurus Rex and she would just go straight after it without a doubt.

• 2:11:53Harvey Lewis?

  And it's like, this dog is like this tall, but it's from her pound days. Like, she is just amazing and like for her, running is an absolute gift every time we run.

• 2:12:02Speaker 02

  She's so happy.

• 2:12:03Harvey Lewis?

  Like, she just loves running so much. Like, I don't know anybody on the planet that likes running as much as Carly. So like when we run together, we're out in the country in the middle of nowhere, and we're just having so much fun, just running as hard as we can at times or just cruising along. And it's just a blast. Yeah, like.

• 2:12:20Rich Roll?

  So Wahlberg, because he did this movie.

• 2:12:23Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I like his film.

• 2:12:24Rich Roll?

  He's your guy?

• 2:12:25Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I like his film.

• 2:12:26Rich Roll?

  I got two, I thought about this a little bit. One would be a younger Billy Bob Thornton.

• 2:12:34Rich Roll?

  A little dark, he's got a little darkness there, though. You know, I don't know if that matches up. So I'd balance that out with a young Ron Howard. Because there's a little Richie Cunningham in you, I think, too.

• 2:12:45Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:45Rich Roll?

  What do you think?

• 2:12:46Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, those guys are incredible.

• 2:12:48Rich Roll?

  McConaughey.

• 2:12:49Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:50Rich Roll?

  What are you gonna do, right?

• 2:12:51Harvey Lewis?

  I'm so mad. Well, you know.

• 2:12:53Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 2:12:54Harvey Lewis?

  I'm so mad.

• 2:12:55Rich Roll?

  Final thing. I spent a lot of time thinking about, about the nature of change. Why some people are able to change, others aren't. Why some are able to set goals and achieve them and others struggle. How do you think about, you know, we've talked a lot about human capacity and the fact that we all have latent potential within us that goes untapped. And you're kind of on the outer edges of trying to see where that limit might be for yourself. And that speaks to the broader issue of our, all of our capacities. And I think that's your greatest influence is getting us to reimagine what we might be capable of in our own lives.

• 2:13:35Rich Roll?

  So to the person who does struggle with this, who's trying to level up or shoulder responsibility for a positive change in their life. Like, how do you get that person activated? And on the right track towards sustainable, positive change?

• 2:13:55Harvey Lewis?

  Right now, it's really timing because we're coming to the end of the year and moving into the new year. And every year, I like to, it's kind of like your month that you take away, I think, and reset yourself. I like to, to really put out there a list of goals that I have for the year ahead. Like, and it could be, you know, a couple of goals. For me, it's like 10 or 12 goals. And like, those are the real, like, points I want to really invest time. And like, finding a routine. So routine is so critical. Whatever you start for two days, three days, is not yet a routine. But once you get into like that second week, you've established a new routine.

• 2:14:39Harvey Lewis?

  So just start with. Having some time alone with yourself in a place that you can really get into that deep thought and you can start this any time of the year. But having, maybe it's easiest to start with a few goals, but start with those goals and then show up, show up each week. If you miss a week, that's okay. Like yoga, for example. Kelly started yoga and she's been having trouble with her back. That's kind of led to her knee. And like that yoga, like doing that once or twice a week has been super powerful. And like it's really helped to alleviate some of your discomfort.

• 2:15:20Harvey Lewis?

  And you know, we missed yoga, maybe this week or last week, I don't remember. But then, you know, it's not going to stop us from like the next week of picking that back up. So finding those powerful routines, I'm a person that's like ADHD. I also sometimes run from like being a type A, like super dialed in with every single thing having to be a certain way. But on the other hand, I also see the power of the routines. So like every Monday going into bigs, I had started the yoga. And like the yoga is really powerful because it's not something I routinely do. But in the like five or six weeks leading up, it was also helping with like the mental aspect.

• 2:16:04Harvey Lewis?

  And so putting down those goals, and I feel like writing them down is, is, is so powerful. And even telling someone you trust is so powerful because then it holds you more accountable. Than if it's just in your mind and it's sort of fleeting. When you write it down and then it's somewhere where you see it, like it might be in your calendar, your planner, or maybe somewhere on the wall. It's powerful. And I feel like having something that we're driving towards each year that's involves some level of growth, somewhere with relationships or with work or with our athletics or wherever it is, like that's, that's really something that will give you more back.

• 2:16:47Rich Roll?

  And so that's where I would start with it.

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  I think with people like that are struggling with getting a routine, because I think it starts before that. It's easy to say like, you know, get into a routine of doing this, but something else comes right before that. And that's taking the action to do it. And I think a lot of people are waiting for motivation, or they're waiting for that feeling of like, well, once I feel like I want to do this, you know, then I'll start. My biggest thing that I've taken away when I've coached students and adults is don't wait for the motivation, because that's a fleeting feeling and we can't always control the way we feel. So you have to just show up, whether, and that's the one thing I think you have to make that commitment to yourself with yourself,

• 2:17:32Speaker 02

  that even when I feel like I don't want to go here, even when I feel like I don't want to get out of bed 45 minutes earlier than normal, I'm going to make that commitment to myself right now, that I'm still going to do it. And that's where I think a lot of people falter when they come to like having to create a routine, or make a routine, or set goals, is that they're always like, but I don't feel like doing this. But then, once that routine gets established, that's when you feel euphoria and you feel good and you feel better about yourself. So I think that would be mine, would be that, you know, having people understand that you don't always have to feel motivated to go do this, and you're not. So.

• 2:18:14Rich Roll?

  Very good advice. Yes. In fact, how you feel about doing the thing really shouldn't have anything to do

• 2:18:20Speaker 02

  Anything to do with it.

• 2:18:21Rich Roll?

  With the doing of the thing itself. I beat this drum all the time. Mood follows action. Or to quote Dr. Andrew Huberman, "Action first, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions follow."

• 2:18:35Speaker 02

  100%.

• 2:18:36Rich Roll?

  But we do have this instinct where we want to wait until we feel like doing the thing. And we also want to know how it's going to play out. We want to know what that roadmap is going to look like and where and when the destination will be arrived upon. And you don't get to have that. That's a privilege that doesn't exist.

• 2:18:58Speaker 02

  It's a journey.

• 2:18:58Rich Roll?

  So developing that reflex. To action or that inclination towards action irrespective of how you feel about it is the thing that gets you out of bed when you don't want to get out of bed or out the door when it's freezing cold or raining or, you know, choose your adventure.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:19:16Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, you agree with that, Harvey?

• 2:19:19Harvey Lewis?

  I'd say so. Yeah, it's like, I don't know, I struggle with this with my students. I want all my students to succeed and then like, like my buddy Greg Armstrong, he's a science teacher down in Tennessee and like just, he gets kids out in experiential learning. I mean, he's taking kids to Africa or to Central America every three months and he even built an amphitheater in the back of their school by hand with his students. I mean, it's like those sort of experiential learning, they have like a powerful impact when you get to go and like interact with someone who's like living in a developing

• 2:20:01Harvey Lewis?

  country with no access to water and like they're building these well water with the run for water. It's like that has some sort of spark that goes even beyond these.

• 2:20:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a, yeah, I think that's a really, that's an insightful kind of caveat to this whole thing. I mean, I think what Kelly's talking about is how do you develop the resourcefulness to welcome discomfort into your life? And you're really speaking to the idea of how do you get somebody really excited about the journey of learning and expanding your, the aperture of your life experience, right? And as somebody who's every day dealing with young minds and thinking about how do I get this person interested or excited about this material, there's an emotional connection that you have to create and immersive experiential situations are obviously going to engender that.

• 2:20:54Rich Roll?

  And there is something lasting about that that can then create a trajectory for, for a young person. So I think that is a really insightful thought. I think we did it.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  I think we did it.

• 2:21:06Rich Roll?

  I think we're done.

• 2:21:07Harvey Lewis?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:21:08Rich Roll?

  How you guys feel?

• 2:21:09Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, I feel amazing. I mean, honestly, it was a blast. It was a total surprise. We had no idea that Kelly was gonna hop in for a couple of questions.

• 2:21:17Rich Roll?

  No, it's good. Thank you for leaping in the chair.

• 2:21:19Harvey Lewis?

  We never did this.

• 2:21:20Rich Roll?

  You never have. Good. It's therapeutic.

• 2:21:23Harvey Lewis?

  It is very therapeutic.

• 2:21:24Rich Roll?

  Let's get honest.

• 2:21:25Harvey Lewis?

  It's like.

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

  Harvey's a, he really is an amazing person. I mean, he, he mails me letters. He'll mail me a card in the mid, like I'll just go, honey, you are.

• 2:21:36Harvey Lewis?

  You are not lazy, honey. Like I'll never, and all those things, no, you, you do.

• 2:21:39Rich Roll?

  It just keeps getting better. Harvey just keeps starting to look better and better. See, I, I thought you were gonna come on here and was like, come on, let me tell you. And then you just shine a brighter light on this guy.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  I know, I know, but I really, I mean, I do know, I mean, there are some other things like, but for the most part, no. Yeah, we'll be on vacation and like a month later, I'll check my mail and I'll have like a postcard from where Harvey sent me a, a postcard while we were on vacation together. Like I'm having a great time with you and wherever we're at. And I'm just like, who does this?

• 2:22:11Rich Roll?

  All right, well hurry up and get married, you guys. Harvey, congratulations, like just, you know, so much respect for, for not just these extraordinary athletic feats, but, but really how you comport yourself as a human being and the way that you exude the values that are important to you. And, you know, I really do think it's heroic and it is the type and archetype of hero that we need now more than ever in this weird divided world that we find ourselves in. And what you do cuts through that noise, you know? It really is a signal in the noise and I appreciate you. I'm here to support you. You are my spirit animal.

• 2:22:51Harvey Lewis?

  Thank you.

• 2:22:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not going with the monarch of the honey, I'm going with the Harvey.

• 2:22:55Harvey Lewis?

  When I said you're a hero, like honestly, like I remember listening to your podcast as I'm out there running long runs and just you have been able to do things that are amazing. I mean, the fact that you've had like the number of people you've had on this, just the realm of different like backgrounds, like it's just incredible. So I mean,

• 2:23:17Rich Roll?

  Thank you, it's been a fun journey.

• 2:23:18Harvey Lewis?

  I ran into a runner this morning, like up on the mountain. I was coming down, she was going up and Kimberly from Virginia. And she's like, oh yeah, I love Rachel, I love Rachel. And what he did for his daughter was amazing for her birthday.

• 2:23:33Speaker 02

  That's right, he just celebrated her birthday.

• 2:23:35Harvey Lewis?

  Yeah, so I mean, it's like you, you're hitting people. After our episode, the last one, I went to Cyprus like for spring break, like a few months after that. And like in Cyprus, there were like all these people in Cyprus that had. Oh yeah, we loved the Rich Roll episode. Oh yeah, and so it's crazy that, can you imagine that? You have people in like over 100 countries like listening to you. It's great, freaks me out a little bit. Yeah, that's really wild, man. I get all up in my head or whatever. But this is a team effort, obviously, as you can see. Everyone just sees the black curtains, but you know.

• 2:24:21Rich Roll?

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

• 2:25:05Rich Roll?

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

• 2:25:49Rich Roll?

  Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.