Running Raw With Tim Van Orden

Raw vegan runner extraordinaire Tim VanOrden joins the show to discuss his journey with food, how he re-discovered a passion for running that led him to 9 U. S. Masters Trail Championship victories, his holistic approach to life and how he makes it all work on a 100% entirely raw plant-based diet. Along the way, we talk specifics about: * aerobic zone training * finding the joy in racing & training * the perils of becoming pigeonholed by labels * the importance of microbial health * what it's like to race up the Empire State Building * his thoughts on supplementation, and * the ever-present protein question I thought I knew a lot, but Tim enlightened me on more than a few issues and it was a pleasure interviewing him. NOTE: apologies for the poor audio quality of the Skype interview. There is a persistent static hum that I could not eliminate and the levels are — well, let's just say — a wee bit off. I am still new at all this and obviously still have a few things to learn. Production quality is important to me, so I am truly sorry for the issue. Hopefully Tim's passion and sagaciousness will overshadow the annoyance, and all I can say is that I promise to do better next time. And if you have a moment, we'd love it if you could toss a quick review up on the iTunes page. It's most appreciated! Thanks for the support and hope you enjoy the show! SHOW NOTES * NY Times Sunday Magazine: How to Make an Ironman Whimper (and Cough): * Running Raw Blog: runningraw.com/blog * Running Raw on Facebook: facebook.com/runningraw * Tim on Facebook: facebook.com/tim.vanorden * Tim on YouTube: youtube.com/user/runningraw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:10Rich Roll?

  Episode 15. We're back. How's it going, everybody out there? Welcome back to the show. Welcome, all you plant eaters, you athletes, you nutrition fanatics, you dads, you moms, you yogis, you meditators, you cyclists, you triathletes, you runners, you crossfitters, whoever you are, thanks for tuning in. If you've been listening, thanks for returning to the show. We hope that you've been enjoying it. Like I keep saying, I'm having a blast doing the podcast. I absolutely love it, and I feel like I'm finally hitting a bit of a groove here. I put up two in succession last week, and already got this one in the can for today,

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  uploading Monday night. And I got two more interviews scheduled for later this week. On Wednesday, I'm having James Wilks join the show. James "Lightning" Wilks, who you might know if you're a fan of the UFC or MMA. He's a plant powered beast and an incredibly smart articulate, articulate, much more so than I, much more articulate than I, fellow, a fine young gentleman. He's going to be coming on Wednesday. We're going to talk a lot about eating a plant-based diet for performance and the documentary that he's working on, which is all about plant-based athletes. He's a fascinating guy, just another guy that I've met along

• 2:40Rich Roll?

  the path over the last couple of years. So I'm excited about that. We're even thinking of trying to film that episode. So like I said, I'm trying, I'm working on upping the production value of the podcast. And then also on Friday, back by popular demand, Vinnie Torterich, one of my most popular podcast guests to date in the short career of this podcast. People seem to really like him. He's fantastic and he's agreed to come back on the show on Friday and we'll get into it once again. So that's pretty cool.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  He'll be my first repeat guest, besides my wife, my sometime co-host. But today, we have Tim Van Orden on the show, who is quite a remarkable gentleman in his own right. Tim's a guy I've been following for a couple of years. We've actually never met face to face, astonishingly, because we sort of have a similar story. We kind of do some of the same stuff and are passionate about the same things. And I'm surprised that our paths have not crossed to date, but for whatever reason, they haven't. Tim's in Vermont. He used to live in Los Angeles, but he lives in Vermont now. So he is coming to the podcast

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  right at you today. And a little bit about him. Tim is a multiple US Masters champion at various running disciplines. He specializes in trail running, but I shouldn't even say that he specializes in any particular running category because he is a

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  ...beast in that he's incredibly prolific across a number of running disciplines. The guy is quite outstanding at distances as short as the mile, but also excels at the half marathon distance and even the 50K distance. I mean, the guy does it all. He's super fast and he can go long. And not only that, he'll run up mountains. He participates in snowshoe running races. I don't even know what you call it. I guess, snowshoeing, where they run up mountains in the snow. And he is also quite, quite the specimen when it comes to this new craze known as stair climbing. If you saw my tweet the other day, or you read the New York Times, you might have seen the article in last Sunday's

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  New York Times Magazine on the new craze of stair climbing with a blah, blah, specific focus on the Empire State Building race, which Tim has competed in, among others, like the Sears Tower and a couple of other ones. He's a fascinating guy, and his perspective, more importantly, on sport and food and life is very refreshing. Despite his countless podium finishes and race wins, et cetera, I mean, there's too many to count. If you go to his website, runningraw.com, you can see his race results, and I can't even keep track of it. The guy races every weekend somewhere. And more often than not, he either

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  wins the race or lands on the podium. And he's 45 years old. That's not enough for you? The guy subsists, trains, and races on a 100% raw vegan diet. What does that mean? You know, I've been on a plant-based diet now for six years, but I wouldn't characterize myself as raw. Raw means that you don't eat any cooked food whatsoever. And I eat tons of raw food. I would say that I eat predominantly, if not entirely, raw throughout the day. But even I enjoy a cooked dinner, especially if it's cooked by my wife, who's an amazing cook. So I do eat cooked food, although I would say the preponderance of the foods I eat are raw.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  I've never gone entirely raw, so I was really interested to hear from Tim on his sort of journey through nutrition, how it all happened for him. There's a lot of overlap in our stories. He had dealt with some depression. He had, you know, a good number of years as a couch potato and stumbling through veganism and ultimately kind of landing on his feet through this raw vegan regime of his that seems to have rejuvenated his life completely and energized him to get into fitness and running. And his results speak for himself. It's quite extraordinary what he's done. But like I said, more importantly is his

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  very unique and interesting perspective on life. He's a very humble sort, but very knowledgeable. And I really enjoyed hearing his, his sort of take on why he does what he does and what's important to him. And like myself, he's really in it for the journey. You know, he really embraces the journey aspect of what he's doing. It's not about race results. It's really about finding the joy in what he does. This sort of active meditation of racing and training and how that has affected his mental state, his spiritual state, his perspective on life,

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  and essentially everything. So he's really fascinating. And we had a very long conversation, which was great, and I hope you enjoy it. A couple of things, though. We do have some low-grade static in this interview. We did it by Skype, and I am still new to this podcasting thing. I'm trying to find my legs and work out all the technology. And the minute I think I have it all sorted out, I get hit with a new sort of dilemma. So I don't know. I tried for the life of me to try to figure out where this static was coming from. We stopped and started the interview at one point. And I've tried to remove it in post-production, but

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  it's still there. So I did the best I could. So please bear with us through the kind of technical audio issues that arose.

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  Throughout this interview, and I hope that you can still enjoy it despite the amateur sort of sounding quality of the interview. So that's it. This is another really long interview, so I don't want to bog you down with too much more introductory matter. But I would say if you've been enjoying the podcast, we really appreciate the support. The audience is continuing to grow, which is great, and I've been inundated with emails, which I love getting from everybody who's out there listening. It's been fantastic. And I always try to respond to every email that I get, but I have to admit that I am losing the email battle.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  There's just no way that I can keep up with it, and it's sort of been overtaking my life lately. So if you sent an email and I didn't get back to you, or I haven't gotten back to you yet, please don't take it personally. I'm going to try to get back to as many of you as I can, but know that I received the email and that I read it, and it means a lot to me. So keep them coming, and we really appreciate it. Want to support the show? Please leave a comment on iTunes. It means a lot to us, and it helps out with the iTunes rankings and all that kind of good stuff. And if you're going to buy something on Amazon, do us a favor and click on the Amazon banner ad on Richroll.com.

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  It's not on the homepage, but if you go to the blog or the podcast page, you'll see it on the right-hand side, this little black and white square banner ad. Click that, buy whatever you're going to buy anyway on Amazon. It won't cost you a penny extra, but it will throw a few nickels in our bucket and help keep the lights on so we can keep doing this. This podcast will always be free for you, no matter what, but we do have a few costs that we kind of have to manage. So it would be most appreciated if you could just click through that banner and be awesome. What else? I think that's it. I think that we should just get right into Tim Van Orden and his journey of joy, food,

• 10:54Rich Roll?

  running, life, everything. The guy's awesome.

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  So without further ado, let's meet Tim.

• 11:12Rich Roll?

  Well, thanks for joining the show.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for inviting me.

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  I appreciate you taking the time and you're an inspiration and you're a thought leader and a leader among men in this world of vegan endurance sports. And I was really excited to be able to talk to you. It's surprising that we haven't come across each other or met yet. I feel like I know you already, though.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Well, that is the funny thing. Thanks to the internet, I can follow what you're doing and you can follow what I'm doing. And we've never met, but we know more about each other than most of the people that live within a mile of us.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  That's very true. I think that's true. So you've been at this for a long time and you've just been... You just post one amazing result after the other. Just I can't even keep track of all your victories and podium finishes and all these races. I mean, you're constantly racing. You're constantly out there. And it's just really impressive what you've been able to do. So I'm a huge fan.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Well, thanks, Rich. Likewise.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  And I think that we have... You know, there's some similarities in our story. You know, we're a little different, obviously. But I'm interested in hearing kind of how this all began for you. You know, you kind of had this sort of humble couch potato beginning, which I can certainly relate to. So I was hoping you could kind of take me down memory lane a little bit and explain a little bit how you kind of arrived at the place where you're at now.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's funny because I do interviews quite frequently and blog about this and I'll make videos about the beginnings. And I've noticed over the past seven years that the story keeps changing a little bit.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And it's not that I've been dishonest with anyone at any point in time in telling the story. It's just that as I've grown and learned about myself as a person and about this process and also about diet and exercise, that my focus is different now. So it's interesting to look back now and see it from a completely different perspective than I didn't see before.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  In what regard? Like, what do you mean specifically?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, initially, it was...

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I'll start the story as it was previously told. I was an actor, photographer, and restaurant manager in L.A., living at Venice Beach, and was vegan. From 1998 to late 2004, I was a hundred percent vegan. But my health was failing, and I wasn't really doing anything physically at all. Even though I was vegan, I was eating a lot of vegan junk food. Fruits and vegetables were not really a part of my diet at all. Everything was a grain product or a potato product, you know, some sort of flour, fried, baked, cookie, tofu, pup, whatever it might be, but it was vegan.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Less of fake cheese analogs and, you know, fake meat analogs. And my health declined to the point where I developed chronic fatigue syndrome. I dealt with depression pretty much all my adult life, but that really spiraled out of control to the point of being debilitating. And just everything went south in a heartbeat. And I found myself without a job, without any energy, without any desire to do anything, without any, really, without any options. And some people that I had met through the restaurant, because I worked at a vegan restaurant, so I kind of became an ambassador for veganism in Los Angeles.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Right, which restaurant, actually?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Real Food Daily.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did, oh, really?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  Back in, this was 98?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started at the Santa Monica location, and then I went over to help, I was part of the opening crew for the West Hollywood location.

• 15:06Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  And then I became the director of training and a manager, and I actually personally opened the Beverly Hills location, which then closed a few years later.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  And then I went back to West Hollywood, but I worked with them for seven years.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Are you there all the time? I know Ann at Chentry a little bit.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. I love RFD. It's still one of my favorite places, even though I eat differently than, you know, the food they serve, but I still think it's a fabulous restaurant. But I met all the vegans and raw fooders, and at that point, I thought they were freaks. But I met all the freaks in, you know, Southern California. And they made a lot of good friends. So when I started going down and I lost my job there, some people reached out to me and suggested I try a raw diet, which I thought was the silliest thing in the world, you know. It's incredibly restrictive, there's nothing fun to eat. It's just fruits and vegetables, which were the two things that I weren't eating.

• 16:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And I would imagine you were also getting pressure from other people to, you know, abandon this vegan thing altogether, or saying that, you know, it's because you're vegan that you're feeling this way, and it's, you know, it's time to, you know, go back to something more traditional.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people said that that was the case, that I needed animal products. I was hearing that from many different sides of the equation, even vegans. Because many vegans live in fear and doubt. They hope that veganism works, they hope it's effective, but they're really not quite sure.

• 16:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  So even they'll question, they'll say, "Well, maybe you do need, you know, some eggs, or some dairy, or some meat, or some animal protein." And that put a lot of doubts in my head as well, but I'm, I hate to use the word ethical, because I don't think that's really an accurate description, but...

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Why not, why not? I mean, I think I know what it means, but...

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I choose to be vegan because I don't want to harm animals.

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  How is that different from saying it's ethical, though? Or is it because you think that that places you on some kind of higher moral ground or something?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Well, I've studied a lot of philosophy and ethics. It's a hard, it's a hard, it's hard to prove that something is more ethical than anything else. So I just, and I don't want it to appear as if I'm being self-righteous by saying I'm an ethical vegan, because I don't feel I'm superior. It's just I make choices that, that work for me, and that choice for me is all about not harming any other creatures.

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  Right, and I, not to digress, because I want to hear the rest of this, but I think it brings up an interesting point that I think you have opinions on as well, which is just the issue of these labels that we use in general, whether it's, you know, vegan, or plant-based, or fruitarian, or raw, or what have you. I mean, once you sort of adopt a label, and it's easy to do, and it makes it sort of, you know, it's a thumbnail way of sort of understanding where somebody's coming from, but it also creates problems and pitfalls, and pigeonholes people, and is limiting, and all of that, and I struggle with that a lot.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in 100% agreement with you. At first, like when somebody first makes the plunge, they're scared to death, because they've moved away from their peer group, they've probably moved away from their family, and they're in uncharted waters, without a lot of support. So, it's very easy to jump into this new community, but the community says, "Great, we are vegan, we are raw, we are this, we are that, we're gonna give you the label, we're gonna give you the vegan tattoo, we're gonna give you the vegan clothing."

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  Here's your t-shirt and your membership card.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Membership card, and, you know, so people get caught up in it, and they really embrace that label at first, and they feel like they have a new group, and it's a powerful group, it's a very prideful group, and that's exciting. But the longer I've done this, the less comfortable I am with that. And now, even though my website is running raw, and even though I'm vegan, and I eat, you know, unprocessed raw foods, I really don't want to use those labels anymore, because I think, not only is it just a tiny fraction of who I am as a human being, nobody else defines themselves by their diet.

• 19:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Like, is that all we are? Is just the food that we eat? I'm vegan? Really? That's it? That's all I am?

• 19:31Rich Roll?

  That's, I got news for you, that's it.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Thanks. You are what you eat, right? That's it.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you know, there is a sort of, I think there's a natural human inclination to kind of join a team or be a member of a team or a community and, you know, that's natural and we all gravitate towards that. But yeah, I mean, I think it's tricky and I think that when you start, you know, people are very passionate about food and very opinionated. And I always say that it kind of ranks up there with, you know, religion and politics in terms of being a hot button issue for people. And when you start throwing these labels around, people get defensive or they have preconceived notions of what it means and it causes a lot of judgments. And, you know, like yourself, I mean, my goal really predominantly is to get people to sort of rethink their choices and try to make healthier

• 20:23Rich Roll?

  choices. And it doesn't have to come with a label. It's just about being more open-minded and maybe entertaining something you're scared about or what have you, and all in an effort to get healthier and to grow as human beings beyond, beyond what's on your plate.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's the main focus of my project now and what I'm doing. Not to convert people to veganism or raw foodism, but simply to hopefully lead people down a path of greater awareness and more fulfillment. And of course, the choices I'm going to suggest are going to involve, you know, plant-based foods, but that's not all I talk about anymore either.

• 20:59Rich Roll?

  Right. So let's just get back to the story though. So you have these people saying, hey, you should check out a raw diet. You have other people saying, you know, time to go back to meat and this leaves you at a crossroads. But meanwhile, you're battling with chronic fatigue syndrome and depression and all of these things. So you have this choice to make.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there was also one thing I have not talked about in sharing this story before, but it's becoming very clear to me right now. Right at the very end, the end before I was reborn as a raw vegan, I was having a really hard time digesting anything. Everything that I ate made me feel sick. So it got to the point where I didn't even wanna eat anymore. And that was, that was probably the scariest thing of all. Uh, food was no longer fun. It was, eating anything, just, it was a horrible experience. So I, I tried it. I really didn't have a choice. As far as I was concerned, I was gonna end up homeless in Venice like so many other people do.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  But I, I tried, uh, raw food. There was a, a restaurant in, um, Culver City called Leaf. I'm not sure if it's still there. Leaf Cuisine.

• 22:12Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I, I don't, I, I've been to that, but it's been a long time. I don't know if it's still there.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Rod Witandi, who opened the restaurant, he didn't advertise raw or even vegan. It just, it said Leaf on the sign and that was it. So I walked in and they had salads predominantly, salads and smoothies, which is the bulk of my diet now. But I thought, okay, I'll get a salad and we'll start there. Cause I understand salads. Salad's an easy access point. You know, many of the options that people are introduced to are very, very different than the foods that they are um, familiar with. Everybody knows what a salad is. You may not like salad, but you know what salad is. So I started with salad and

• 22:59Speaker 01

  it was a really good salad and it was really filling and I didn't feel terrible after eating it. I didn't have that inability to digest or that nausea or the complete lack of energy after eating. So I committed to eating there for a week every day.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  And like I said, the salads were good, so it wasn't a, a real struggle. And at the end of the week, I just, I felt great. Like there was a huge shift in my physical experience in a single week.

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  Hmm, and what were you eating, other than the, the one meal you were eating there every day? I mean, were you maintaining a raw diet outside of eating at Leaf?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I was getting, uh, a salad there and then I would take a salad to go and then I would get a smoothie and

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I don't remember. I think that's all I was eating. Cause I wasn't, I had lost my appetite leading up to this. So I don't think I was eating a lot of food anyway. So I think it had been two salads and a smoothie a day at that point, and that was about it.

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Um, so it was kind of calorie restrictive at the same time.

• 24:01Rich Roll?

  But uh- This is, this is like back in like 2004?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Late 2000s.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  I have no birthdate, is when I started. It's funny, I now consider that to be one of my birthdays. I have two birthdays.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  (laughing)

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Cause it was such a huge shift for me. Uh, you know, I don't remember my own birth clearly, but I do remember this.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  A profound experience. So I just, I kept adding time. I, I tried it for two weeks and I felt even better. And then I tried it for a month. I felt even better and just kept going along. And as I progressed in time, I started, you know, doing a lot of research and talking to people and going to lectures and talks all over Southern California and started adding other things to my diet. Tried, you know, other nuts and seeds and seaweeds and just kept expanding things and kept feeling better and better for about three months. And then I went through what most people would call the detox phase.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  And that was pretty tough. I went through two months where I lost a lot of body weight, uh, muscle.

• 25:05Rich Roll?

  What were you, what, when this began, how much did you weigh?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I was-

• 25:10Rich Roll?

  Do you remember?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I was probably like a hundred and sixty pounds.

• 25:13Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And I went down to maybe a hundred and forty-two.

• 25:17Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's really like, how tall are you?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Uh, five-nine.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  So, which a hundred and forty-two pounds, uh, against the runners that I compete with now is, is a heavyweight.

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  Right. I was gonna say, yeah, you're not that tall. So that's, that's like, you know, that's elite runner, you know, kinda, you're in the ballpark there.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then I bounced back after going through that, you know, quote unquote detox period, I bounced back and my body physically changed. I wasn't exercising, uh, cause that hadn't been a part of my life, um, for, you know, 17 years, maybe.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  But I noticed that my musculature was changing, the shape of my muscles was changing, their size was changing, my skin was changing, a lot of things were changing, say, five to six months in.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  When you were going through this detox phase, though, I mean, did you experience a lethargy or, or?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  You had these physical symptoms, right? So how were you able to identify this as something you had to weather to get to the other side as opposed to, hey, this isn't working, like, I don't feel good, I've been doing this for a while and I'm starting to, you know, tank?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Well, this is one of the places where jumping into that label and jumping into the community can be an advantage, it can also be a serious disadvantage. Um, because I was told by the gurus of the, of the raw world that I was going through detox and I just had to go through it, this was all part of the process.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  So you were able to, you were willing and able to put your trust in that and get through?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that could be potentially dangerous as well, you know, that could get you, everybody has a different physiology and, you know, maybe I had a severe deficiency or maybe I had come down with, you know, some other illness, who knows? Um, but, you know, I was, I believed in it, so I went through with it and I came out the other side.

• 27:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  But now, I, I wouldn't recommend that someone just take it on blind faith. I would recommend that someone go to, you know, a doctor and get some blood tests done and see if they have any deficiencies, uh, see if there is something that is truly problematic and not just, you know, quote unquote detox symptoms.

• 27:24Rich Roll?

  Right, but in truth, I mean, there, there aren't going to be very many doctors that if you went and sort of, as an open book and said, this is what I'm doing, that are, that are going to say, keep going. They're going to try to talk you out of that, right? I mean...

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I wouldn't give full disclosure, but I would just say, hey, I'm feeling a little weird, do you mind, uh, get a blood test?

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Do I have any deficiencies that are showing up? Yeah, full disclosure with many medical practitioners is not a good idea. And as I've found as a raw vegan, full disclosure with many alternative practitioners is not a good idea either.

• 27:59Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  I remember getting acupuncture in LA, probably in 2005, and I was all proud of my diet. I was so proud that I was 100% raw vegan. And they were, you know, giving me needles and testing my pulse and whatnot. And they asked me some questions about diet and this and that. And I said, "Oh, I'm a raw vegan," all proud. He's like, "Oh, no, that's terrible. That's terrible." So the woman ran out and got me some hot soup and hot tea and was trying to force it down my throat.

• 28:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, there's still, you know, there's still a lot of work to be done to raise awareness about this. And that's why I think being an athlete is so powerful and so important. You know, it's a very different thing than just somebody who's doing it and is telling you, "I feel good." Or, you know, maybe their skin glows and they look good. But when you're able to, you know, get on the podium and win these races and do the kind of things that you've been able to do on this diet, I mean, that speaks, you know, profoundly to the benefits that you've been able to actualize and realize by living this lifestyle. I mean, before this, I take it you had had some background in running, you know, cross-country in high school or whatever, but when you started to run, and we'll get into that story,

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, it was still sort of uncharted terrain for you. I mean, you weren't competing prior to this at the level that you are currently or, you know, did during, you know, the last five or six years, right?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  No. Basically, what happened is after a year of being raw, once again, the labels, they sound strange coming out of my mouth now. After a year of eating this diet.

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  Well, your website's called Running Raw.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  But I'm moving that more towards a raw living, a raw, being vulnerable, being open, being open to whatever shows up in life and embracing it. That's a kind of rawness.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  I like that. Yeah, there's definitely a deeper meaning to that word.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm transitioning.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  But I had a party, a birthday party, a raw birthday party, and I was talking to a lot of people and I was just, you know, sharing what had happened to me. Most of the people at the party were not raw. Most of them were vegan, but not raw. And I was talking to someone who was a filmmaker, a friend of a friend at the party. And he's like, you know, you really need to document this. You should have you thought about doing a film about this. I'm like, no. He's like, well, this is, this is really cool. But, you know, how do we, how would we show in a film that these changes are actually happening? How do we show that your body is transforming? How do we show that you feel better? He's like, how would, did we go to doctors? Do we get medical tests? And I thought to myself,

• 30:40Speaker 01

  you know, I used to be a runner in high school and first up to sophomore year in college. Running is a great metric. It's a great way to, to measure fitness. It's a great way to measure energy. Maybe I should try running again. I wonder if that would work. I mean, now that I'm in my late 30s, it'd be fun to see if I could run as fast as I did, you know, when I was 18 or 19. So it was just a question. And he got excited about it and we became friends and decided to make a documentary about this, which was Running Raw. That's what we called it.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  So I started running. And it was hell at first. It was absolutely-

• 31:19Rich Roll?

  How long, I mean, how long had it been since you, since you had been running?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Well, I, like I said, I retired from athletics in 1988. And mainly because of depression. I just, I wouldn't do the training. And I watched my friend become a two-time Olympian and many of, many of my friends actually became Olympians. And I wouldn't do the training. And I wanted to. I had the same goals they did, but I couldn't get myself out of bed. I couldn't get myself to get dressed. I couldn't get myself to train. And wanting to be an Olympian and not doing what it takes was making me suicidal.

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's a spiritual crisis right there.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I decided that I, I had to never, ever again be an athlete. And I completely burned all those bridges towards athleticism. Burned them. Couldn't, couldn't even look at it. Because I wouldn't survive if I did.

• 32:11Rich Roll?

  Right. So all this time that you're in Los Angeles, where did you grow up, by the way?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  In Vermont.

• 32:16Rich Roll?

  In Vermont. So then, so you came out to LA to pursue acting and you're working at Real Food Daily and all of that. And during that, how, how many years was that going on?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  I moved to LA in ninety seven.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  And had been a computer consultant and a high school coach for skiing, which is mostly just standing around in the cold.

• 32:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Not really anything athletic, you're just standing around in the cold, helping the kids that keep falling down. Um, so I was either standing in the cold or fifteen hours a day at the computer, you know, in my consulting job.

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  Right, so the, but the point being that during all these years, there's, there's no physical activity, you're not going out, you know, in Santa Monica or Venice for a jog along the beach occasionally or anything like that, there's absolutely nothing going on.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  No, there was no jogging, there was no hiking, there was, um, I did lift a little, a little weights, but not seriously, um, but no cardio whatsoever, you know, just, you know, the usual actor thing, try to get some biceps.

• 33:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  You know.

• 33:19Rich Roll?

  Right, so then the documentary project comes along and this spurs your interest in, in checking out running again, which is interesting, cause you would think it would be the reverse, you'd start running, you'd be feeling good, posting some good results, and then the documentary would surface, but it was the other way around with you.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was the, the chicken before the egg, and...

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of the recipe for the best documentaries, where you start out and you don't know where it's gonna lead, and the story's gonna unfold as you kind of move forward through it, right?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly the way I looked at it, like, I was curious. It wasn't as if I wanted someone to say, hey, look at me, I'm doing these great things, come film it, it's like, I have no idea what's possible, let's find out.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  And that became the tagline for Running Raw, which is, "To see what's possible, to be what's possible."

• 34:06Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  And I still use that line, um, quite a bit in, uh, my materials, but that's what it was all about, let's, let's see what's possible, I don't know where this is gonna go, and I really threw my hat over a really tall fence. Uh, I wanted to try to make the Olympic trials at, uh, ten thousand meters.

• 34:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Which is absolutely preposterous, but if you don't try, you never know what's possible.

• 34:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So I didn't start training like somebody who hasn't run in seventeen years, who wants to do a five K and, and maybe break twenty minutes. I started training like someone who's gonna make the Olympic trials.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Coming off the, basically coming off the couch for

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  A decade or something like that. So, so wow. So we're talking trials in for 2008?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  2008, yeah.

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And so, so tell me what happened?

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Well, I was gonna be 40 in 2008, so I wanted to see what I could do at 40. Like, can I make an Olympic trials at 40? Not having done anything for 17 years.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  And I trained with abandon, but unfortunately, connective tissue cannot keep up with cardiovascular improvements.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  Right. And I want to talk about that too, but I want to hear this story first.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  So I kept getting injured and half the year I would be down with injuries. Literally, six months out of the year, you know, spread out throughout the year, I would be down with injury. My knees, my ankles, my hips, my lower back, constant. You know, I trained for a month and I'd be down for a month. Cause I was doing too much too soon.

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  And that was really frustrating. So when 2008 did roll around, uh, my training never really got up to speed. So that, uh, didn't happen. Um, the documentary died the first year because the filmmaker that I was working with, um, really wanted to, well, he, he thought I was gonna be an instant success. And I knew it was gonna take time. And, you know, we started this in 2006, so I thought, okay, I got two years to put in. Let's, let's film for two years and then see what happens. But he was hoping that something great would have happened sooner, so he walked away from the project. Understandably, you know, you need to make money.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  But I kept at it. And when 2008 came around, the Food Network heard about me, uh, Al Roker Productions. And they decided to do a documentary about me, about me trying to make the Olympic team as a raw vegan at 40. And I told them that my training had not been sufficient and that it was not gonna happen. But they still wanted me to do it anyways. And I tried to talk them out. I thought, let's, let's move you in another direction. I'm doing okay, but I'm not great yet. And they really wanted the high drama of me going to the Olympic trials. And which I hadn't even qualified for. They didn't understand that.

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  And people don't realize how difficult it is to make those trials cuts, you know, I mean, you're the, you're the, you're the absolute elite of the elite just to make the, make the Olympic trials, whether it's track and field or swimming or, or many of these other sports.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  And to make the Olympic trials cutoff for the 10,000 meters, I would have had to have broken the American record for 40 year olds by a minute.

• 37:21Rich Roll?

  Oh my God.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  So I would have broken the American record by a minute just to get into the trials.

• 37:26Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was, it, yeah, I was far away from making that happen. But anyways, they decided to film this anyways and it was a huge disaster and they decided halfway through the filming that they, that they were going to get a lot more views and the ratings would be better if they made me look bad rather than make me look good.

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  Oh no. So it's turning into Honey Boo Boo.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, they tore me to pieces and when that show aired, oh, it was, it was hard to watch.

• 37:53Rich Roll?

  Oh no. I didn't, I didn't know that.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was a really, it was a terrible experience and stair climbing is my best sport.

• 38:02Rich Roll?

  Right. I want to talk about that too.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll, I'll finish this up and then we can get into more details, but I'm sorry for dragging with it.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. So, all right. So, so you've kind of run the gamut with these film projects, but the,

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  The important thing though, is that you kind of recaptured this love for running and, and you were starting to see, you know, maybe not these grandiose results, but you were seeing improvement and you were enjoying it again and, and kind of saw the, the long-term potential if you kept at it.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Well, it was that and it was also I felt I had done people a disservice. I, so many people had put their faith in me. Um, at least this is how, you know, the story that I told myself and I had let them down. So I kept at it no matter how many times I fell on my face. I just kept at it, kept at it, kept at it. And then I started getting quiet about what I was doing. So instead of advertising, you know, what I was gonna go for and I just kept it to myself and started this internal journey, which, you know, I'm still on today. And that's when I started to get good. And that's when the training really came together and that's where everything shifted. So now it's a completely different project for me.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  At four, I'm going to be 45 in two months. I'm still improving. I'm getting faster all the time. Like it hasn't stopped yet.

• 39:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, and I don't see you stopping anytime soon. I mean, you look at your results page on runningraw.com and I can't even keep track of all the wins and the top finishes in all these races. You're very prolific in your racing. I mean, it looks like you race almost every weekend.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes twice a weekend.

• 39:37Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. So, all right, so, you know, let's talk about running and training and the like. I mean, I think that you brought up a really important and interesting topic for discussion, which is this idea of trying to do too much too soon. And, you know, there's a lot of listeners here who are runners, or they're triathletes, or cyclists. And, you know, a lot of guys our age, I mean, I just turned 46, so we're basically the same age. You know, guys who want to kind of recapture some of that, who, you know, like you and like me, maybe spent too many years on the couch, but they want it right away. You know, they want to, you know, show up at that marathon and qualify for Boston, or, you know, qualify

• 40:18Rich Roll?

  for Kona, or, you know, whatever it is for bragging rights, or, you know, sort of their, you know, "I'm turning 40 and I need to do something." But, there's a certain impatience, and I know it because I've been there, and I know what that feels like, to have it happen, you know, right away. And, you know, what I've realized is, you really have to, if you really want to do it, and you're enjoying it, and it becomes, you know, more of a lifestyle thing, and you are willing to kind of check your ego at the door, and have a little bit of patience, and turn it into more of a four or five-year plan, you can have these dramatic and drastic improvements. But, it's not going to happen in one season. And if you try to

• 41:00Rich Roll?

  make it happen in one season, you're going to end up like you did, with all these injuries, and, you know, back on the couch.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Well, this is what, it's not just people our age. This also happens in college, where a coach is going to have someone for a few years, and they want to get their money's worth, especially if this kid is on scholarship. So, they push these kids to the point of potentially great results, but most of the kids just get in, get up, they get injured, or they lose interest. And they're done with the sport.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  And if that-

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  They're overtrained.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Or they're overtrained, and if that can happen in nineteen or twenty, imagine what happens, you know, in your mid-forties.

• 41:38Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, when you're nineteen or twenty, you can get a, you can sort of get, a lot of guys can get away with that, at least for a while, or they can kind of, you know, um, sort of see their way through it, but when you're forty, or your late thirties, or mid-forties, or whatever, you just can't, you know, it's an inescapable truth that you have to reckon with.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yep. Well, one of my best friends, who was a two-time Olympian, he said to me when I was first starting this project, you know, because I was getting guidance from him, he said that, when he started with the Olympic Development Team, his coach told him, he said, "You're not going to be good for six years, but if you do this training in six years, you're going to be incredible."

• 42:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  "But it's going to take you six years. Are you willing to commit to that?"

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  And my buddy's a very patient guy, and, and he did, he committed, and he was US Champion, two-time Olympian, but, you know, his coach kept saying, "It takes six years for the adaptations of this training to become fully in effect." And that has nothing to do with diet, that's just the physical adaptations of training.

• 42:46Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you can't cram, there's only so many, so much performance gain that you can realize in a year, and if you try to surpass that, then you're going to start moving backwards.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was six years of, actually, it was five years of running, when I started running RAW, that the results really started coming in.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  And now it's, uh, 2000, it's 2001, so now this is seven years.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  And like last year, 2012, was, you know, a really exceptional year, and that's, that was the six-year mark, like, my body is adapting, you know, it's really, it's getting there.

• 43:22Rich Roll?

  Right, and you have to allow your body the time to make those adaptations, I mean, they just don't happen, they don't happen overnight.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  No. Well, see, here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize, your body is- Constantly changing and modifying itself, even if you're doing nothing. Like, for instance, the lining of your intestine changes every three days. The cells are sloughed off and new ones grow. Your skin changes, you know, every few days. Every part of your body gets turned over on a cycle. Ninety-five percent of your body gets turned over every seven years. So if you're training for six to seven years, by the time all those organs and systems and bones have been turned over, they've now adapted to this new training stress. But also that works with diet, too.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  So if you've changed your diet over the course of those seven years, those new dietary patterns and pathways are going to be incorporated in that new body. That will be the physical adaptations of training. And then you're going to see an enormous benefit. But you gotta wait it out.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  So what I ask people, you know, a lot of people come to me for coaching and they're like, "I want to do this now. I'm going to do it this year. I'm going to PR on my 5K, you know, in two months." I say, "Why? Why do you want it? Like, what does that give you? Like, if you get a PR, if you win this race, what do you get? Like, what emotionally, what is the feeling you're going to get?

• 45:03Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's also informed by this, the culture that we live in, which is, you know, we're all about instant gratification and, you know, what's the shortcut and I want it now. And, you know, we've lost kind of the art of patience and an appreciation for the journey as well.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and that's the whole point. Like, people, they get it and they're so far away from being present that when they get it, they're not even present to what they got.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  I agree with that.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  And then they just go looking for the next one. "Okay, well, I PR'd that race. Now I gotta do this and now I gotta do that. And I gotta do the Tough Mudder and I gotta do the, you know, triple triathlon." It's like, "Why?" You weren't even present to the result you got last time. What makes you think this is going to be any different?

• 45:50Rich Roll?

  Well, it's not dissimilar from, you know, I mean, I, the analogy that I use is it's sort of a, there's a hole in your spirit, right? And you're looking for that thing that's going to fill it and make you feel okay, make you feel whole, make you feel happy. And it's, it's this incessant chase to, you know, either accumulate material possessions or what have you, but to fill that hole with externalities outside yourself. And a race can be the same as, you know, a sports car. It's like, oh, if I can just get that thing, then I'll be okay, or I'll feel better. And then you get it and then you realize, oh, wait, that didn't work. Well, I must, you know, I gotta chase the next thing now. And you're just on this habit trail that never ends.

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  And, you know, and it never will end until you kind of shift that perspective and that focus and, you know, do the internal work and learn to be present and appreciate the journey. Because that's, that's where the value and the beauty is.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's when you finally get good, too.

• 46:45Rich Roll?

  That's right.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  When you stop caring about being good is when you get good.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  Interesting, and, and, and I think it's also interesting how you train. And I want to get into your training philosophy a little bit. I mean, you know, I think you've gone through, you've, you've gone through these over training periods and, you know, logging tremendous amounts of miles. And, and, you know, I'd like to hear your perspective on, on training volume and also on training intensity, because I know you do a lot of your running at a very moderate pace. You know, a pace that, you know, a runner of, you know, at your elite level, people would think, well, why are you running so slow? And, you know, why are you putting in all these junk miles? And so I'd like to talk about that because I have some, you know, strong opinions about it.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I've tried, excuse me, I've tried all the programs and the protocols. I'm an experimenter, so I, I've tried it all. And what I've found is that if you understand human physiology... The vast majority of the time, you should be burning fat and not glycogen or sugar. And if you're training your body to burn sugar, it's going to need a sugar fix all the time. And you're also gonna get lactic acid buildup because that is the byproduct of burning sugar. When you're burning fat as fuel, it's, it takes a much greater adaptation to burn fat as your primary fuel source.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  But there is no lactic acid byproduct and you have an unlimited supply in your body regardless of how low your body, you know, I'm like four or five percent body fat. I still have enough fat for days worth of running.

• 48:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't matter how lean you are, how low your body fat percentage is, you still store a tremendous amount of it. You will never, you will never deplete your fat stores.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  No, but you deplete your sugar stores quite quickly. So, you know, if the human body was designed to use sugar as its major fuel source, we would be the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Uh, not only does fat have more than twice the calories per gram, fat is nine calories a gram, carbohydrate is four calories a gram. But fat can be, fat molecules can be stored right next to each other, whereas glycogen needs to be stored with six times as much water. So you've got four calories being stored in an area six times as large as the sugar molecule because of all the water required. Whereas fat, you can jam it right next to each other at nine calories for every molecule.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  So in order to store enough sugar for a day's worth of activity, we'd, you know, be a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand pounds. You know, just to be able to house all this sugar. So I train for fat burning. I train for aerobic efficiency. To me, it's all about running economy and adapting towards aerobic efficiency and that's all about putting in the slow, easy stuff. I'm teaching my body to burn fat really efficiently.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Right. And I hate that word junk miles because they're not junk miles.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Such thing, no.

• 49:50Rich Roll?

  You are, you, you, absolutely, when you are putting in that low intense, those low intensity miles, you are doing exactly what your body, what you just said, which is training your body to, to more efficiently utilize your fat stores for energy and also building those metabolic pathways.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  Increasing mitochondrial density and, you know, improving blood flow to those areas. All of these physiological changes are occurring as a result of those miles and you, you, you know, you may go out and do that run and feel like, well, I didn't get enough out of that. But, you know, trust me, those changes are occurring, they're occurring slowly.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  They are occurring and the more efficient that you can become at running, you know, at that, at that intensity level, the much better runner you're going to be or, you know, cyclist or swimmer or what have you over the long run.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's also about neuromuscular intelligence as well. It's not just the biochemical pathway, but it's the neurological pathway, like a pianist. The more you practice, the stronger the neuromuscular connections are, like, are you familiar with the term myelination?

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Uh, yeah, but why don't you explain it, please?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, all nerve fibers have this sheath on them and the sheath is called myelin. And the thicker the myelin sheath, the greater the insulation around that neuron, around that nerve. The greater the insulation, the stronger the signal. So the more you do something, the more you build this protective insulation, this myelin sheath on your neurons and the easier it is for you to do that activity. So someone that plays, for instance, Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours in the book, Outliers, that if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you will be one of the world's best. And it's all about this myelination.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  You're insulating those neurons so that that activity is completely instinctual for you and you no longer need a cognitive brain to do it. It's insulated so well that it's effortless.

• 51:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And it's the same thing, these long, slow runs are creating these incredibly efficient neuromuscular pathways. So your body doesn't have to really think about what it's doing anymore, it's just running on autopilot and that's incredibly efficient.

• 52:10Rich Roll?

  And so what would you say to somebody who says, "Well, if you want to run fast, you've got to run fast," because you're running fast where the vast majority of your training, not including these races that you do every weekend, which I'm sure stimulate your higher-end anaerobic systems. But people will say, "Well, you're never going to run fast if you're not running fast all the time."

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I agree with that, but my definition of fast is anything 800 meters or less. If you're running anything over 800 meters, I don't consider that fast.

• 52:43Rich Roll?

  So even if you're running the mile?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Even the mile. You're not burning sugar. Well, you are burning sugar as your primary fuel, but you're also burning fat for the mile. But when you get up to 5K, which I consider to be distance, a lot of people think 5K is... You really should be burning mostly fat in a 5K, and then towards the end of the race, you're switching over to primarily sugar burning. But most of that race is fat burning.

• 53:13Rich Roll?

  But it's only fat burning if you've put in those aerobic miles, because I think what people don't understand is that when you're doing that aerobic zone training, you're pushing your aerobic threshold up, so that over time, you'll be able to run a lot faster while you're still in the fat-burning zone without tipping over into the glycogen zone. If all you're doing is high-end, super-intense interval training, you're never training that fat-burning mechanism. And so as soon as your effort starts to ramp up, even in your training, you're going to go right to the glycogen.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yep. So it's not... There are two thresholds, and people often confuse them. There's the anaerobic threshold, which is when you're going from using oxygen to not using oxygen. And then there's the lactate threshold, which people often think is the anaerobic threshold. But the lactate threshold is actually at a much lower heart rate, and the lactate threshold refers to the point where your body starts producing more lactic acid or lactate than it can handle. Because you're always burning a little bit of sugar. Even sitting here, I'm burning 20% sugar, because my brain requires it.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  But eighty percent of it's fat. But as I increase my heart rate, I will eventually reach the lactate threshold where I'm burning fifty-one percent sugar and forty-nine percent fat, and I have now tipped. And once you get to that threshold, lactic acid will accumulate and then your performance will slowly decline. But by training just below that threshold, and it's not even a height, for most people it's probably a pulse rate of one twenty-five or one thirty, if they haven't trained it. If you train it just below that threshold, you can keep bumping it up.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  For instance, they say that the Kenyan runners, their lactate thresholds are right around ninety percent of their max heart rate. So those guys are out there running at a heart rate of one seventy-five, one eighty, and they're still burning fat as their primary fuel.

• 55:12Rich Roll?

  Right, because they built the house from the ground up.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yep, built it from the ground up.

• 55:15Rich Roll?

  As opposed to top-down. And, you know, I think, sort of harkening back to what we just talked about where you have clients who, you know, tell you they want to break their 5K record in one season or what have you, and there's a certain impatience with that, and how that is sort of societally or culturally influenced by this, you know, need to have things happen right away.

• 55:38Rich Roll?

  You know, that sort of paved the way for this new kind of CrossFit movement, and there's a guy called, I don't know if you're familiar with this guy, Brian McKenzie.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  There was just an article about, an interview with him in the new Outside magazine, or maybe it was last month, and he's pioneering and kind of pushing the envelope with this new way of training that's all very intense, and his basic point, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but his basic point is something like, you know, you can, you know, beat your PR in the marathon without ever running more than thirteen miles, and I'll do it for you in eight weeks. And it's a very kind of crash course, CrossFit-oriented program that is sort of robust with a lot of high-intensity work and no, you know, quote-unquote junk miles and no real aerobic efficiency.

• 56:28Rich Roll?

  And his position is that you can improve your aerobic capacity through this high-intensity type of working out. And I don't, you know, I don't, I've never tried that. Um, I don't have any experience with that. It's just, you know, it's sort of this new thing. I'm going to try to get him on the podcast too, so he can explain it, he can explain it all to me. But it's just a very different way of, you know, maybe, you know, sort of getting to the same place. But, you know, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  I have lots of thoughts on it. Because one of the protocols that I tried, uh, I think maybe 2009 is when I was introduced to it. It's called TIBATA, which is the original high intensity training protocol. Uh, TIBATA was the name of the Japanese scientist who discovered this. And it's a four minute workout where you do 20 seconds all out to failure. So whatever the exercise is, you can do it with anything. You can even do it with running. So you're basically sprinting 100 meter speed for 20 seconds, all out to failure. Then you take a 10 second rest and repeat eight times. So it takes four minutes of 20 on,

• 57:38Speaker 01

  10 off, 20 on, 10 off. And it is the most excruciatingly painful thing you can ever imagine. And his results show that you can improve VO2 max using this protocol more than any other type of training. So this is where all these other programs have come from, is this work done by Dr. TIBATA and his, you know, results in improving VO2 max. But if you look at, and I did see benefits as far as stair climbing is concerned, because it's a power sport.

• 58:10Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you're right on the rivet the whole time when you're doing that.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  But as far as, uh, you know, long distance running, trail running, mountain running, I didn't really see a benefit. And secondly, uh, which I'll get into in a moment, uh, I dreaded working out. I dreaded it. But if you look at VO2 max, it's traditionally been thought of as the indicator of running performance. So if somebody has a VO2 max of 60 and somebody has a VO2 max of 80, the guy with 80 is always going to win. But we know now that that's not the case.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, my understanding is that it's actually not really that informative. And also, there isn't that much that you can do to improve it. Or if you do improve it, you can only improve it incrementally. And that it doesn't ultimately have that much to do with, you know, how well you're going to do. I mean, is that...

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, all of these programs are based on Tabata's research showing that this method improves VO2 max more than anything else. But my point is, so what?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're improving something that really doesn't make an enormous difference in performance. Now, we thought it did, but we're now realizing that aerobic capacity, lactate threshold training is much, is far superior in regards to at least long-distance performance. Now, if you're a sprinter, yeah, you gotta do the high-intensity intervals, no doubt. If you're a powersport person, yeah, no doubt, that's what you've gotta do. But if you're into endurance sports, you know, it's a shortcut to injury more than anything else.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, I think you're gonna have to require, you're gonna have to put a lot of focus on rest if you're gonna be doing that kind of high-intensity work, or you're gonna get injured pretty quick, I would imagine.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Rich, one of the things that really has become the forefront of my message when I make my videos, blogs, and whatnot. I want people, I don't want people to exercise. Just like I don't want to label myself as a raw foodist or as a vegan anymore. I don't wanna label myself as an athlete either, and I don't wanna say that I have to go work out, or go train, or exercise. I don't want those to be distinct things from my life.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Just like growing up here in Vermont. You know, in Vermont, you just, you live. But when I moved to Los Angeles, people would always say to me, "Hey, let's go out and go out in nature today." I'm like, "What?" What do you mean go out in nature? What does that mean? And they'd be like, "Let's go to Griffith Park," or "Let's go to Topanga Canyon," or, you know, whatever it might be. And I'm like, "In nature?" That's a strange, like, like, there's this distinction. There's life, and then there's in nature. And, see, I don't see that distinction. To me, everything is nature. And I don't think that exercise should be something different than life. I think it is life. So, rather than telling people to train and exercise and push themselves,

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  I want people to just move swiftly through the world as part of their life.

• 1:01:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  So, when I'm out there so-called "training," what I'm really doing is exploring the mountains, going, looking for caves, finding cliffs, looking for moose antlers in the woods, climbing to the top of a mountain so I can take pictures of a sunset. But in the process, I'm getting in great shape, but I never see it as a workout, even though I may put it in the training log so people can follow what I'm doing. It's my life, and it's rich.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  It's an expression of who you are and a very holistic, you know, perspective of it.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when I see so many people moving towards the, um, I don't want to single anyone out, but towards the high-intensity movement, these hardcore intervals, um, with some pretty aggressive names, I see people punishing themselves. And this whole "no pain, no gain" mentality is coming back in really strongly. And people, "I want to hurt myself. I want to dominate myself. I want to beat myself into submission. I want to suffer. I want to..." And it's this very aggressive, testosterone-saturated, uh, violent, um, complete disconnect with your life and with your heart, if you want to call it that.

• 1:02:35Rich Roll?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  It frightens me. I don't like where it's going. And I want people to get out there and enjoy their lives. And enjoy the process of getting fitter.

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  I think that's a big challenge for me, you know, I've sort of, you know, achieved a couple sort of performance goals that I wanted to and, and now, you know, for me, and I talk about this with my wife all the time, it's, it's about how do I, you know, how do I just engage with the joy of it on a daily basis and, you know, yeah, I want to improve and I want to be the best that I can be, um, but, but I do want to just, I want to do it for the love of it as just, you know, an expression of who I am as opposed to now I'm training, now I'm not, like, yeah, that was very beautifully said.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, as long as that distinction exists, there will be a resistance to do it and the more it hurts, the more the workout hurts, the greater the resistance and that creates stress. You know, that's the reason that I moved away from athletics back in 88 because the level of stress I was experiencing was off the charts because I had this battle going on inside of me. I had these ego goals, I want to be an Olympian, that's a complete ego goal, that has nothing to do with my reality. My reality was very different. I, you know, I had some pain clearly that I was not dealing with and I wanted to impress people or I wanted to prove myself to people. I didn't feel worthy and that, that's where the Olympic goals came from. But I didn't want to go through all the training and all

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  that, I just wanted people to like me. You know, and I thought if I'm an Olympian, they'll like me.

• 1:04:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  And for so many people, like, you know, why do you want the PR? Why do you want to win the 5K so you can brag about it on Facebook? Because then people will like you? They'll probably like you a lot more if you're not trying to rub something in their face and if you're enjoying your life and it's, it's rich with experience. They're going to want to hang out with you, but if all you're doing is boasting about your PR, you know, we're not that impressed.

• 1:04:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  And here's what I've learned, like, I'm, if it wasn't for my project, I wouldn't post my results anywhere. I wouldn't tell anybody what I've achieved. It doesn't matter. It hasn't changed my life one iota that I've won national championships. Who cares? You know, it's great for the vegan movement and, you know, I, I put it out there, but I'm almost embarrassed to tell people when they ask me, you know, what are your results? I, I feel shy about it. It's like, well, it's not really important.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  You know, what's important is that I'm experiencing extraordinary growth. That's what fascinates me.

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about that. I mean, where do you see this sort of connection between food, running, and personal growth? Like, what is that nexus for you? And how do you feel that that has sort of catapulted your mental, spiritual, holistic life approach and health?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  I think one of the problems with modern America, and especially our definition of health, is that we have specialized to the point of extreme reductionism, where we don't have general practice. I mean, there are general practitioners, but predominantly, most medical professionals are specialists, and they specialize in one very specific thing. And if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you don't study science. You study, you know, a particular piece of a protein that's so small that it can be only seen under electron microscope, and you spend 30 years studying that one active site on this protein.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  You know, our knowledge has become so reduced in its scope, and I think that that has created these massive distinctions. Because in my experience, you cannot talk about diet, exercise, or mental, spiritual, emotional health apart from each other. They're all the same conversation, and it's really irresponsible to talk about one and not the others. So my approach is to find a way, I'm working on my own unified theory.

• 1:06:46Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  How to unify those three conversations into one very succinct conversation that people just get, like, the one thing that makes all of those just fall into place.

• 1:06:57Rich Roll?

  Well, it's so elementary on one level, and so beyond obvious, and yet, so, you know, it just eludes people. You know, it's very difficult to comprehend and implement that kind of approach into our lives, and yet, it's, I think if you just grabbed somebody on the street and said, you know, "What do you think would be in your interest to do if you were to change, like, exercise more and eat better," or, you know, whatever. I mean, it's not like people aren't aware of that, but there's this massive disconnect.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and exercising more and eat better, what does that actually mean to most people? It means losing weight and looking better and therefore being more attractive to other people.

• 1:07:40Rich Roll?

  So that people will like you.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  So that people will like you.

• 1:07:43Rich Roll?

  It always gets back to that.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  As opposed to, yeah, if you, you know, I always liken it to the adage of, you know, water rises to its own level. And, and I think a lot of people, you know, we're talking about, well, race results or getting a sports car, you know, getting your, your PR and your 5K, you know, will put you in a place where, you know, then you'll be happier about yourself and more attractive to a potential mate or whatever. But if you discard all of that and just focus on, you know, working on your interior life, on your spiritual life, however that, you know, may be in your individualized self, and, and become more self-sufficient internally, where your happiness is not dictated by these

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  externalities, that that water level will rise in your own glass and, and you will be a beacon of light, attracting the, you know, people that you want to have in your life automatically, as opposed to going out and trying to seek approval, or try to get this person to like you, or, you know, get that job, or, or whatever the case may be.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, Rich, I've dealt with shyness my whole life. And what I've learned over the past few years is that shyness is a form of narcissism. I always wanted people to feel bad for me for being shy. Like, oh, you know, they're shy, oh, he's a shy little boy, she's a shy little girl, whatever. But really, it's narcissism. Shyness is, I'm only concerned with what you think about me. I don't really care about you at all. I don't have any curiosity towards you. I just want to know what you think about me, and I'm scared that you think badly about me. That's what shyness is. So for most people, we live in this state of, you know, narcissistic fear.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Everybody's got some degree of shyness. We all want to fit in. We all want other people to like us. We want to be accepted by our peer group. And it's all about, well, what do they think of us? What were, what you were just saying reminds me of a quote from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, where she says, "Before you can say, 'I love you,' you have to know how to say, 'I.'" And this is what I'm really embracing now. The rising water, I'm simply a vessel. And I can't try, I can't rely on the outer world to fill that vessel. I have to fill that vessel myself. And once that vessel gets full to the top, it's gonna start pouring over. And then that liquid, that water, that me, that richness,

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  is going to spill out and it's gonna reach people at a distance. And it's gonna wet their feet and they're gonna look down and say, wow, that's, that's kinda cool. What is that? And then they look for the source. And yeah, you'll attract people into your life, but not because you're trying to. But just because you have a richer life and, and people wanna be around that.

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's also trying to understand what makes you tick. Trying to tap into, you know, your latent passions or what you have to offer. What brings joy into your life? And then finding a way to express that more fully in a more authentic way.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  And if you can do that, then that's truly, you know, a road to, to happiness that becomes infectious.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, it's not about domination. It's not about competition. It's not about vegans are better than meat eaters. It's not about, I'm a better runner than somebody else. It's just simply about, let's all rise together. You know, it's funny, the, the whole point of me racing is to bring awareness to a plant-based diet. But the race that I had the greatest impact in was in St. Louis, not St. Louis, Springfield, Missouri. Uh, I was traveling on a speaking tour and

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  when I was checking into the hotel that night, I saw a guy with running attire checking in as well. And I asked him, is there a race in town? Cause clearly he looked like a runner. And he said, yeah, there's a half marathon tomorrow morning. What time? Seven o'clock. Okay, cool. Maybe I'll show up. So I set my alarm and missed it. So seven o'clock rolls around and I'm still in bed. The race has started and I'm like, oh crap. So I get up, throw my clothes on, drive over to the start. They're taking down the start. They're taking down the course markings. It's been forty-five minutes now since the race started. And I thought, what the hell? So I asked a guy, I'm like, which way did they go? And he's like, well, you go down here and then you turn a left on Cherokee Street.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  You turn right here. And like, I have never been to Springfield, Missouri. I don't know. I'm just running around a city I've never been in. The markings are down. And I just started running. And they were taking down the mile marker when I got to it. So I knew I was on the right track. And I just, I was running, you know, all out. And it was kind of fun. And then after about three miles in, I saw the police lights ahead and I knew that was the tail, the tail end. So I started catching up to the walkers. And when I would run by them, they would get scared. Because here I am running, you know, I was probably doing like five fifteen, five thirty pace, blowing by them. And they didn't expect this, you know, the runners are up in front. Nobody's going to be running by them.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  So I would scare the, and they would jump and scream often. So I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So I started warning people as I was coming. I'm like, you know, runner coming, runner coming, you know, coming on your left. And so people would turn around and look at me. And I had my Running Raw shirt on and which on the back says Powered by Raw Food. So here I am getting their attention by letting them know I'm coming. And they're turning around to look at me and they're looking at me like, holy cow, what is, why is this guy way back here? Oh, look how fast he's running. And then they would read my shirt. And as I would go by, I would hear people say something about powered by raw food. And I went by another group of women and like, I heard about that raw food thing on Sex in the City. And I was starting conversations throughout the whole race.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  And I probably passed three or four thousand people. Um, you know, I finished in the middle of the race because I was so late. But thousands of people were talking about my shirt and the guy that blew by them at what seemed to them like 100 miles an hour.

• 1:14:06Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, because more people saw you and took notice of you by running by them quickly and drawing attention to your shirt and that creates a dialogue and then there's a ripple effect of that.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, but had I been in the front pack, running with the leaders, three or four people would have seen my shirt and that's it.

• 1:14:24Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  And the people that I really wanted to reach, which are the ones in the middle of the race, all the way to the back, those are the people I really want to reach. I finally reached them and I finished, you know, 4,000th in that race, but I reached more people by not winning than I ever have by winning.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  Right, and they're the people that have the most, they're probably more receptive and have the most to gain or benefit by, you know, entertaining this new way of looking at food. I mean, the elite athletes, you know, they have their way of eating and you're not going to change that, most likely.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, here's something that I've had a unique opportunity to experience in New England. When I came back here in 2007, I left Los Angeles in 2007, came back to Vermont, I thought about getting into Nordic skiing, cross-country skiing, because I had done that in high school as well. But it was so expensive to get into the sport. I thought, well, I'll run, but it's really hard to run here in the winter. The roads are icy and the shoulders get narrow because of the snow on the side. And a friend said, hey, you should try snowshoe racing. We've got this snowshoe circuit that we do. I'm like, oh, that sounds stupid.

• 1:15:39Rich Roll?

  That sounds hard, is what it sounds like.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, running is hard and now you want me to run in, you know, zero-degree temperatures with these heavy things on my feet, up mountains in deep snow? Are you kidding me? And they encouraged me to go to a race and I did and I loved it. Believe it or not, it was the hardest thing I'd ever done and I loved it for some crazy reason. And now I've been competing as a snowshoe athlete since 2007 and it's my favorite sport. And it's not just the fact that you're doing something incredibly challenging, but it's the people that show up to the races.

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's gotta be an interesting crowd of people.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Only really hardy, really motivated, really positive people show up to a snowshoe race.

• 1:16:25Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's no, because there's no, nobody's gonna be paying attention to that. I mean, you're only gonna do that if you love it.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  And there's, we have them in the middle of the woods, so there's, for the most part, there's no lodge, there's no place to get warm. Uh, there may be a porta potty, there may not. You're standing outside before the race for an hour, you race and then you stand outside for an hour after the race in the cold. But it's a completely, uh, how shall I say? Even though there are winners and there are mid-packers and there's people that get last place, everybody's equal. Everybody talks to everybody. The guy that wins the race is probably really good friends with the guy that got last place. And it's this incredible community where everybody just shares in the experience of going out and they're doing a snowshoe race.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Nobody cares who won. Um, and the people that show up are the top trail runners and marathoners in the country. I mean, like, uh, we had a race, uh, just a couple miles away last week. There were five national champions in the race.

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  You know, either trail running, mountain running, road running, there were American record holders. And these are just local people who are out there having a blast. And there is no elitism. There is no, I'm an elite athlete and I can't talk to you because you got last place and you're 80 years old.

• 1:17:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  No, we all hang out. In this wonderful, equal community and has completely changed my experience of sport. And this is one of the reasons that I've started moving away towards this whole, you know, I'm a champion, I'm gonna win, my results matter.

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting. I mean, that's really, you know, I relate to that a lot. I mean, that's really the same kind of thing that originally attracted me to doing Ultraman is because it seemed so different from all these other triathlons because everybody had to bring their own crew and they bring their friends with them and then the crews help out the other athletes and, you know, it's a race, you know, there are people that want to win, but it's not really about that. It's about this collective journey that these 35 people and their crews are taking around this island over three days that just seems so remarkable and unique in the world of sport where, you know, it's not about the victory, it's about the journey. And I think that, you know, being able to tap into that

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  and, you know, what you've been able to do, you know, by being so diverse in your career. I mean, you know, you're racing everything from one mile races, maybe even shorter, all the way up to these 50 Ks and then you're doing these snowshoe races and then these insane stair climbing races that I want to talk about.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, once again, this comes back to my insecurity, which I've learned to embrace as an asset.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  Which is meaning what?

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, you know, I grew up a shy person, but I realize now that that's not necessarily a quality that I want to embrace, at least wondering what people are thinking about me. But at the same time, this insecurity that I have never allows me to rest on my laurels. There's always something more to do. There's always something bigger, better, and harder to do. And it's not about... Proving anything, even though there might be a part of me that wants to prove something. But when, you know, I let the, the, the higher part of me, um, do the training and do the racing, uh, it, it goes to a different place.

• 1:19:50Rich Roll?

  But I see, I, I sort of see you as an extremely secure athlete because an insecure athlete would say, all right, well, my best event is, you know, whatever it is, 50 kilometers, let's say, for the purpose of argument. So I'm going to stick with that and I'm only going to enter those races because that's where I have the best chance of distinguishing myself or, or placing high. But you're putting yourself in all these different scenarios, you know, really without regard for, you know, whether you're going to do well or not, just out of the joy of it. And so I see that as being someone who's extremely secure.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Well, I do it for the joy, but at the same time, it's like, okay, I've got nine US trail running titles now. But the insecurity in me says, well, who cares? Nobody cares about trail running or mountain running. Yes, those are incredibly hard sports, but most people don't even know they exist. So I've got to do something more mainstream or then I'll, I'll do steroids.

• 1:20:44Rich Roll?

  Like snow shoeing.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? So, but then when I do it, when I enter a sport, it's like, okay, I'm not just going to do it. I'm going to find a way to be one of the best at it. And, but I'm going to do so in a way that I enjoy. I'm not going to make it a suffer fest. I'm not gonna, I'm going to show people, which is what my videos are all about, showing people how to achieve a high level of anything that you want to do and enjoy the process. Like you want to be a national champion? Here's what I do. But look, I'm actually having fun and it's interesting and it's beautiful and it, it doesn't have to suck.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  You know, but when I throw my, my hat into a ring, I really, I go all out and that's the insecurity. Like, okay, I'm not just going to try snow shoeing. I gotta be the best. Okay, I'm not just going to run up the Empire State Building. I gotta be the best.

• 1:21:33Rich Roll?

  Right, well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about running up the Empire State Building because this is fascinating to me and it's a world that I know nothing about.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  You're lucky.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Extremely, you know, it's an extremely arguably marginal sport, but more and more people are starting to learn about it and it was fantastic to see the article in the Sunday New York Times last weekend in the magazine. They had a big article about stair climbing racing in the Empire State Building race and all of that. So, you know, take us behind the scenes on what that's all about.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just had a big write-up in Esquire magazine last week as well.

• 1:22:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Which I was quoted in. One of the reasons that stair climbing is really taking off is that, well, two reasons, three, I'll make it bigger. There are three. One is that this whole high-intensity interval craze where no pain, no gain, how much can I suffer? It's attracting that crowd because it is a suffer fast.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Right, the tough, moderate, CrossFit crowd.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Yep. And two, people want to, it's unique. It's some unique achievement accomplishment that you can brag to your friends like, "Hey, I ran up a building." People think you're crazy and people want other people to think that they're crazy. You know, everybody's trying to impress everybody. And thirdly, it's one of the few sports that is attracting athletes from hugely varied disciplines. You're getting Olympic rowers, you're getting Olympic cyclists, you're getting world champion mountain runners, you're getting stair climbers and that's their, you know, sole sport. You're getting 212 marathoners, you're getting

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  all, triathletes. Chrissy Wellington?

• 1:23:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Chrissy Wellington just did it. That's right, I forgot about that.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  She did it this year and the woman that won was a world champion rower. So, you know, you've got all these athletes from different disciplines coming together to see which athlete is the toughest of all. Oh, you've even got ultimate fighters doing it. Anton? Apollo Anton Ono, he did it.

• 1:23:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did, wow.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  You've got, everybody's coming to see who is the master of the staircase. So it's, it's

• 1:23:50Rich Roll?

  How does it work? Like, if you, first of all, how many people are, for example, do the Empire State Race? Empire State Building Race?

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Well, they just changed it. It used to be invitational only, and it was basically the top 100 fittest men and women in the world of all different sports. You had to submit a resume, and it's really, really difficult to get into. This year, they, somebody else took over the race, and now it's a money-making machine. They quadrupled the entry fee, and they let in 900 people.

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  Wow, so how do they, how do they do that, though? They, they let people up in, in heats? Or you, people go every 10 seconds? Or how does that work?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Well, in other races around the country, there's a time interval, either 10 seconds, 15 seconds, or 30 seconds. The Empire State Building, because it was unofficially the World Championships of stair climbing, they would have two heats. So, you know, 50 in the first heat, 50 in the second heat, whatever the, the number was. And it's a free-for-all. If you're running, okay, you start in a lobby, which is maybe 15 feet wide. Slick, polished granite floors. You have 20 feet of lobby before you have to go through a door, a little over three feet wide. So you've got studs, like the fittest people you can possibly imagine.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Punching, kicking, elbowing, tripping, getting trampled, getting slammed into the walls next to the stairwell, getting trampled before they get into the stairwell, getting pushed down the stairs rather than going up the stairs. Like, somebody will knock them into the down, because there's two flights of stairs that go down from where the start is, and people get knocked down the stairs. Uh, there's blood.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. So yeah, it's, it's, I mean, and people are gonna be gunning, you know, immediately from the gun, right?

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Rich Roll?

  To be the first to hit the stairs, because once you're in the lead, like, it's, it's probably hard to pass people, right?

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:25:54Rich Roll?

  So it gets very congested.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's an old stairwell, it's built in the 30s, so it's not, um, it's not wide enough for two people to go by each other, so it's very difficult to pass. And people will hold on to the railings on both sides, so it's very, very hard to get around them. And the worst part is the adrenaline rush at the beginning because of that melee, um, and it's like you're, you're doing battle just to get into the stairwell. You're so pumped with adrenaline that it's very hard to get your heart rate back down to a reasonable level to finish the race.

• 1:26:26Rich Roll?

  Right. And so how many stairs or, or how many floors is the Empire State Building now?

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  It's, the stairwell goes up to the 86th floor, which is 1,576 steps.

• 1:26:39Rich Roll?

  And so how long is this taking guys like you to do?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Uh, the top guys will be between 10 and 11 minutes.

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  Ah, it's unbelievable.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  And it's, I got into stair climbing because I was injured. I was running mountains in Los Angeles, um, and doing it all wrong, as we talked about earlier, constant knee injuries. And I couldn't run for a month. But I could do the stairs in Santa Monica, from Santa Monica Canyon. I don't know if you know those stairs?

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  Of course, I run them all the time.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I was training there, and that didn't hurt my knees. So a friend of mine said, hey, you know, they've got this race in downtown LA up to US Bank Tower, which is just a little bit shorter than the Empire State Building. So I thought, I'll try it. So I did the race, not knowing what to expect. And I've never experienced so much pain in my life.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  But I got third place and there were like 2,000 people in the race. I'm like,

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  Oh wow.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Wow, I got, I got third place. First of all, that sucked. Secondly, when's the next one?

• 1:27:41Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  And that's when I realized I was good at this. And then I went to the Sears Tower, which is the tallest building in North America in Chicago, and then the Empire State Building, and now I've, you know, probably done 50 of these races.

• 1:27:53Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. And this is, I would imagine this is just gonna continue to blow up.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Rich Roll?

  Happening all over the place. Now, who, who do you think are the best sort of naturally, you know, athletes that are, that are naturally acclimated to doing this? Because it is a, you know, it's very, you know, VO2 max oriented, it's strength oriented, you know, it's, it's not gonna be the marathon or who's necessarily gonna be the, the guy who's gonna just automatically win.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  No, it's, this is where it gets really interesting. Uh, first of all, I'm quite a bit older than most of people in the race. And one of the guys that used to be, he hasn't competed in probably two or three years, but he was one of the top guys in the US. I think his best at the Empire State Building is fifth. And he's won a lot of races around the US. He is a professional cyclist.

• 1:28:41Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  And he, uh, was one of the top guys in one of the stages of the Tour de France in the mountains, you know, five, six, seven years ago, I'm not sure. But I was interviewing him for one of my videos and asked him how this, how stair climbing compared to biking up, you know, the Pyrenees. And he said, not even close. The Pyrenees, he said, are easy compared to this. He said, people think that cycling hurts. He said, not even close to the pain of a stair climb.

• 1:29:11Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  And he said, I've got a lot of quit in me. He said, we all have a lot of quit in me. And he said, the guy that gets to the top of the stairwell first is not the person with the strongest leg or the biggest lungs. It's the guy who doesn't listen to the voice of quit.

• 1:29:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  And this is what I've learned. Like, I have beaten people that are far superior athletes to me. But they give up faster than I do. Cause it's really, you're pushing yourself to the point of so much pain that you literally, you don't know if you're going to survive. Every part of your body, your legs are so beyond filled with lactate gas that the pain is so extreme that you're dragging your legs up the stairs and you're pulling on the railings with your arms until they don't work anymore. And the dirty dusty dry air burns your trachea to the point where it feels like somebody put a blowtorch down and it starts to swell up and close off.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Every breath hurts like somebody's jabbing a knife down your throat. It literally is extreme pain through your entire being. And the reason that I do this sport, one, I'm good at it. Two, it allows me to investigate places that I'm scared to go just by myself. It allows me to investigate who I am when the going gets tough. Like, do my belief systems still hold up in the stairwell? Does my character still hold up in the stairwell? Am I still a nice person in the stairwell? Am I still kind? Am I still compassionate when I'm in that much pain? Who am I?

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Because, you know, there are a lot of compassionate vegans out there that as soon as they find out they have a B12 deficiency or some bone deficiency, they run to animal products. You know, like, do the things that you say you believe in, do they hold up when everything is falling apart?

• 1:31:14Rich Roll?

  And that's when you get to learn the most about yourself. And for me, that's the whole, that's the ballgame.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Yep, that's it, that's why.

• 1:31:21Rich Roll?

  That's what it's all about.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Every race I do is an opportunity to find out who I really am. Not who I am on a nice day, but who I am on the worst day of my life. Cause that's what racing is. When you're in the race and you're really going for it, it's the worst day of your life.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that's why, you know, when things don't go your way, which, you know, they're want to do, especially in longer races, they're just opportunities. They're opportunities to lean more into that, you know, which is, what am I going to learn about myself today? If everything goes great, and you know, you do the race and you feel awesome the whole way, and it's, all goes according to plan, well, you may have had a, you know, a great performance, but in some respects, it's almost a loss, because like, what did you learn about yourself, other than that you were able to execute a plan, or that your training plan worked, or whatever you're doing is working properly? But it's when things go wrong, and not according to plan, that's when, you know, you find out who you really are, the kind of, the ugly, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly,

• 1:32:21Rich Roll?

  and all of that, and that's where you create the fertile, you know, sort of, you know, a fertile place from which to grow.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, comfort means with strength. That's what the Latin word means, you know, calm with fort, strength. People think comfort is about sitting around and not doing anything. Comfort is actually having strength in moments where you really don't want to have strength. You know, that's, that's where ease comes from.

• 1:32:56Rich Roll?

  Or you didn't think that you were capable of having that kind of strength.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, to me, it's meditation. Racing is meditation. It's like, okay, I'm going to put myself in an extremely uncomfortable situation, and I'm going to breathe into it, and I'm going to relax into it, and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna notice it. I'm not going to judge it, I'm just going to notice it. This is, okay, I'm experiencing this extreme sensation. Okay, let's go with it. Let's just, let's work with it. That's what I've got right now, so let's work with it.

• 1:33:24Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. That's beautiful. That's very eloquently put, and I love that, because for me, that's, you know, like I said, this is really what it's all about. It has nothing to do with other people, or their performance, or beating anybody, or winning, or anything like that. It's all about, what can I learn about myself? How can I grow? How can I improve? How can I expand? How can I more fully embrace this, this journey, not, not just of the race, or the training, but of, of life in general?

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Well, you know, people call, in sports, there's practice and then there's the game, or there's training and then there's the race. But to me, the race is the practice, but it's the practice for life.

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Like, that is, like, people say, "Do you meditate? Do you have a practice?" And I say, "Yes, I race."

• 1:34:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  That's my practice, because if I can, if I can check in with myself and be a good person and be clear-thinking and be compassionate and generous in those conditions, then when my life, when I come back into normal life, when things are clearly going to be easier than they are in competition, then I can be much more generous and I can be much more compassionate.

• 1:34:41Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Because I've been practicing doing it under the most extreme circumstances.

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Right, absolutely.

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  Well, cool, well, uh, I feel like, uh, you know, we can't even top what you just said, because that's, you know, that's, that was amazing. I appreciate that tremendously. But I also cannot let you get out of this interview without talking a little bit more about food.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:07Rich Roll?

  Or I'm gonna get a lot of hate mail, like, "You had a raw, you had a raw-food athlete on, and you guys didn't even talk about food."

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:35:13Rich Roll?

  So, uh, I, you know...

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  I know, really. I mean, you've been walking this path longer than I, and, you know, I've been on a plant-based diet now for almost six years, uh, but you take it to a whole new level, you know, with the raw thing, um, and, you know, I wouldn't characterize myself as, as being someone who's on a raw diet, but I would say that I probably, you know, I don't know, you know, seventy, eighty percent of my diet is raw, you know, I'll have cooked foods for dinner. But I'm very curious about, you know, about how you've done it and how you make it work as an, as an athlete, um, and so, you know, we're gonna have to ask the question you get asked every day, I'm sure, which is, "Where do you get your protein?" You know, I mean, I get, I get to ask that question every day, and I have my answers

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  to that, but, you know, some of my protein sources are cooked foods, so I would be interested in hearing, you know, how you, you know, how you manage that, and also what your perspective is on protein in general, and, and kind of how, uh, you know, conventional wisdom dictates that we have these, you know, huge protein needs.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I, once again, moving away from the labels, also moving away from the distinction between raw food and cooked food. And what is a much better metric is food that makes you grow and food that makes you sick. There are foods that are cooked that make you grow. And the idea of raw foodism is more of a dogma or an ideology than anything else, much more so than it is a diet. Because if you ask people, you know, "Why are you choosing this diet?" "Well, because it's the healthiest diet." "Well, are you sure about that?

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Do you really understand, you know, the biochemistry of cooking and the physiology of the body?" This was an experiment for me. Running raw was an experiment. I wanted to see what I could do as 100% raw vegan. But what I have learned through ridiculous amounts of research, I've put myself through so many biochem and physiology courses, is that steaming and boiling are perfectly safe. There is nothing wrong with steaming or boiling your food. You're not going to create any toxic compounds. You may degrade some of the vitamins and nutrients. Chances are they're in the water that you cook them in if you boiled it. So if you're consuming the water, you're still getting those nutrients. But if you're consuming a lot of fruits and vegetables, even if you degrade some nutrients,

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  you're still getting sufficient nutrients. Steaming, the nutrients are still there and predominantly intact. But if you're eating a wide variety of fruits and veggies, any nutrient that was degraded, chances are you're going to get it somewhere else. So the idea of being a raw foodist, to me, isn't necessarily the best choice. For a lot of people, it's very restrictive and causes stress, emotional stress, family stress, whatever it may be. And many people end up rubber banding and going back towards crappy food because they just couldn't handle that stress. When all their friends were having fun, going out, eating, you know, normal American foods and having a good time, and they were sitting alone and eating carrot sticks and some little cashew dip that they made.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Which wasn't the healthiest choice anyways. So, the whole cooked food thing, so what? Does that food help you to grow? If the answer is yes, knock yourself out. It's either toxic or it's healthy. Many foods, toxic compounds are produced at high temperatures. Baking, broiling, frying, grilling, roasting, a lot of toxic compounds are produced. That's just... And this isn't coming from raw foodists, this is coming from the FDA, this is coming from foods...

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  The oxidation that takes place with the oils and all of that.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Acrylamide formation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heterocyclic amines, I mean, on and on and on. All these compounds that we know about are formed in food at high temperatures. So, staying away from those is a good idea. But if it's causing you stress, stress is also toxic. So, once again, excuse me. I wouldn't advocate that somebody just jump in 100% to a raw food diet. Because that, you know, being so strict could be causing stress and they may end up getting sick anyways. So, it's really about moderation, at least at first. Finding your rhythm, finding your groove within any diet.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  But, what do I eat? Or my competition diets, predominantly smoothies and salads. Big salads with avocado as a fat source and sometimes some olive oil as a fat source. Lots of different vegetables, lots of different greens. A salad will be from 2 to 5 pounds. And that would be my, you know, nightly meal. Then, wake up with a big 32 ounce green smoothie, lots of fruit, lots of greens, tons of kale. And then, you know, nibble on fruit or whatever else throughout the day. As far as protein is concerned...

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Before I get into protein, it's the diet that I just described is a diet that's really efficient to process. So the digestive load on the body is minimal, especially with the smoothies because you're blending a lot of the harsh fibers. You break it down to a small size so your body can access the nutrients faster. I can go running within half an hour of a 32 ounce smoothie and I have no digestive issues whatsoever. So it's really about how quickly can I get out and exercise? How much does the food slow me down throughout the day? If the food slows me down, it's going to impair my workouts.

• 1:41:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think you, you know, there's not enough emphasis on a nutritional density, but also secondarily like the net energy gain. And I know Brendan Brazer talks about this a lot, but you know, looking at the tax that it places on your system to digest the food and assimilate that, that requires energy. And if you eat a steak or you know, something that's very difficult to digest, you have to marshal all of these, you know, resources, internal resources to break that food down and make it available to you. And you get tired and you gotta kind of like sit around for a while and wait as opposed to something that is very easy to assimilate, like you were talking about, like these smoothies

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  that will just go right in and give you that immediate energy boost without having to do much work to get there, the net gain.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what a lot of people don't realize is that all these digestive organs require blood. That's, they need a blood supply in order to function. And when you're digesting a large meal, your digestive system can take 60% of your blood supply.

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  So, you know, you've had your bacon, eggs, sausage and toast before your race, you've lost 60% of your blood supply for that race.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  Because it's all in your GI tract.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  It's all in your GI tract.

• 1:42:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  So, and you know, blood does circulate, but it's going to be, um, you know, the body can preferentially send blood to one area over the other, which is also part of the fight or flight mechanism, preferentially sends it to the, the muscles. Which is why when you're scared, you don't digest food. So before races, people often wait, you know, three to four hours. Um, or they eat three to four hours before a race, just so they can have a chance of digesting it, at least some of it. Because the, uh, the fight or flight from nervousness has moved blood away from the digestive system. So, you know, that, that's a huge performance, um, boost right there, just getting that blood back. You know, and not having your digestive system dominate your physiology while you're trying to train.

• 1:43:15Rich Roll?

  And I think people would be surprised, you know, to hear, uh, how few calories you actually eat. Like, I think people would probably assume that, that, well, if you're on this, you know, restrictive, to use your, your term, diet, that you must be eating all the time, eating all day long. And, and, you know, when they hear that you, you know, the number of calories that you're actually taking in, they either don't believe it, or they think that you're some kind of freak or something like that. But, you know, I, I'd like to hear you talk about that a little bit, and then I have, you know, my perspective to share on that as well.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, you know, in the raw world, there are several camps, um, or dogmas.

• 1:43:56Rich Roll?

  No, you don't say.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  And I try to, uh, um, separate myself from all of them. You know, this is just purely my experimentation and my experience, uh, based on a lot of scientific research and then experimentation with, you know, what I've learned from that research. But...

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  The calories required, or the calories suggested by the FDA, the RDAs, recommended daily allowances, you have to take several things into consideration. Many of the substances in these processed, standard, American foods, whether they be natural substances or additive substances, decrease the rates, not only the rate of absorption, but also they decrease what is absorbed. So if you're, for instance, meat, you're cooking heat meat at high temperature, you're not getting all the protein out of that meat. Your body can't use it. But when they looked at the steak,

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  when they measured the nutrients in that steak, they did so before it was grilled. Like, they don't, you know, when you study an apple, you don't turn the apple into apple pie and then study what's in the apple. You study the apple first. And that's where you get the nutrient data. That's where you get the caloric data. And so after something has been processed or cooked, a lot of it is no longer absorbable. So many of the calories that people are eating are not being absorbed. And unfortunately, many of the junk calories that people are eating are being absorbed because when you refine a flour or refine a sugar, you make that part of the caloric ratio easier to absorb.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  And the heat process makes other things more difficult to absorb. So a lot of what people are eating is not being used. A lot of the caloric energy is not being used. And when you eat a diet that is very clean and very assimilable, you have much greater usage of the energy that you're consuming. So your body uses it much more efficiently. So if somebody's eating 4,000 calories, they might only be using 3,200 if they're eating a standard diet. But if you're eating a very clean diet and you're eating 2,800 calories, you're probably using all 2,800 calories. And secondly, there are, you know, people in the raw world that try to match the caloric intake of the standard world.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  Okay, if a standard athlete needs to eat 6,000 calories a day, then I need to eat 6,000 calories of fruit or vegetables, which you end up grazing all day on food.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  But what happens in that case?

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Especially with fruit, because that's much more calorie dense than vegetables. You end up overloading your ability, your kidneys' ability to process all the glucose in the blood. Even though it's fruit sugar, even though there are plenty of phytonutrients that go along with that fruit sugar that prevent, you know, harsh sugar spikes, like you would see with the refined sugar, it's still more glucose than the kidneys can process. The kidney is the first line of defense. It's constantly filtering the blood. And it can only put so much glucose back into the blood. So a lot of that glucose is getting excreted. So people that are eating 6,000 calories a day of lots of fruit, they're not actually utilizing much of those calories. The body's like, it's just too much.

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, your body will internally regulate that. It's not allowed that much glucose to be circulating in your bloodstream.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a rate of reabsorption for glucose that the kidneys, there's a limit. And if you go beyond that limit, you're just going to excrete it in your urine. So you've got really expensive urine. Which diabetes, actually, diabetes mellitus means sweet tasting urine. That's how they initially diagnosed diabetes. Their urine was sweet because they were just excreting the glucose instead of absorbing it. So, yeah, I don't eat as much as most athletes because the food that I eat is very efficient. It does its job without a lot of filler.

• 1:48:09Rich Roll?

  Right. And at the same time, you're spending your training time, or the vast majority of your training time, in this fat burning zone.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Rich Roll?

  And as a result of that, your body is becoming increasingly efficient, not just with that kinetic movement, but with the allocation of nutrients to, you know, fuel your body. And so what I found, and it sounds like this is similar, is that, you know, when I first started doing this and I was new to it and I was making a lot of mistakes, and I was new to kind of getting fit again, I ate a lot more than what I eat now. Because now, you know, six years into this, my body has adapted to the training load. It's becoming increasingly more and more efficient in this aerobic zone training.

• 1:48:58Rich Roll?

  And so I don't, I'm not hungry. Like, I'm not, for me to go out and do the training now, just not exact the toll on my body that it did three years ago.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, your body becomes more efficient in all regards. You know, not just its ability to use oxygen, but also its ability to use, um, you know, calories, to oxidize those calories.

• 1:49:21Rich Roll?

  Right. And so I, you know, until my training starts to really get crazy and ramp up, I'm, I'm eating like a normal person, you know, I don't feel like I'm eating any more than, you know, an average person would be. Which is interesting, and I think that that surprises a lot of people, so they think you're either being anorexic, or, you know, you, you must be just some kind of mutant or something.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just that most people are over consuming, or their bodies have not been, you know, finely tuned, that's, that's what training is, you're tuning your body. You're becoming more like a hybrid car than, you know, a typical gas burner.

• 1:49:55Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right, interesting. And I think what's also interesting about, um, your perspective and, and, you know, part of your whole, uh, your whole approach with food, is, uh, you know, you don't take any supplements, um, not even a B12 supplement, is that, is that, is that correct, do I have that right?

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  That was true up until a couple of months ago, when I started taking vitamin D.

• 1:50:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did, okay, uh, interesting, so, you know, most people would say, "Oh, you're crazy not to take vitamin B12," and, and I read something about, you, you know, you had kind of commented on that, and talked about how, you know, the body can become efficient at recycling B12, or whatever, I just, I was hoping you could shed some light on that, because I hadn't heard that before, and I thought that was really interesting.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, what they've discovered from studying vegan populations is that if you have a lot of B12 coming into your diet, your body has no reason to hold on to it. But if you stop, um, adding B12 to the system from diet, the body will hold on to what it has. There'll be an initial drop, and then it'll hold on to it. And they say that, um, it looks like the average vegan can recycle B12 for six to seven years.

• 1:51:07Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  But I also, you know, I do get some in my diet because I live in a farming area and B12 is in the air. If you live in a farming area, B12 comes from microbes. It's not a mineral like, you know, other compounds like zinc or magnesium. It's part of a microbial structure called cobalmin. And when the farmers are plowing their fields and tilling the fields in the summer and all that dust that gets into the air, that's dirt. It's dried dirt that's gotten into the air and it's full of microbes. And when you're breathing in that dirty air, you're getting vitamin B12.

• 1:51:47Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. You're breathing in your vitamin B12. And then also with the produce that you're getting from the farmer's market, you know, of course you want to wash most of the dirt off, but leaving a little bit of that on there. And then eating it, you're actually ingesting that microbial ecology.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And also, you know, we grow a lot of our own produce here and we have a blueberry orchard and, you know, most of my kale throughout the year comes from our garden. I don't wash it at all because I know how we grew it.

• 1:52:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  I'm not worried about it being contaminated by anything. But, you know, if you're going to get it at the supermarket, yeah, you're going to wash it and you're going to remove the B12. But, yeah, if you know the farmer or you go to a farm where you pick your own berries or, you know, pick your own, whatever they call them, and you know they're not using pesticides or herbicides in an organic farm, don't wash it. Just eat it. You know, you're getting cultures and yeasts and bacteria that are living on the skin.

• 1:52:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. And that begs the question of kind of microbial health in general and, you know, the enzym ecology and how all of that plays into, you know, holistic approach to your health. And I think that, you know, we don't really think enough about the fact that we're mostly microbe and, you know, that we're basically a walking host to this incredible array of microorganisms that proliferate in our bodies, particularly in our GI tract. And that keeping that ecology healthy is absolutely critical towards, you know, making your foods bioavailable, towards not getting sick,

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  to being able to assimilate your foods and the like. And I know that you have some interesting thoughts on that.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  Well, I've done a lot of research in this area. And one of the things that really surprised me when I first learned it was that a human being is basically a community of microbes. Now, if you take the microbes out of our GI tract, and you say, "Okay, we're taking these microbes out." And yes, 99% of our genes are these microbes that are living in our gut. And what's left over is this thing called "human." That's also inaccurate. This thing called "human" is made out of cells. And cells are little microorganisms that have decided that it was in their best interest to come together and form tissues, and form organs, and form communities,

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  and then eventually form bodies. And, you know, over millions of years, human beings evolved. But as microbial structures, the individual cell in a human is no different than the individual cell in just about any other living thing. A cell is a cell. They're little microbes. So people think there is a distinction between the microbes in your gut and then you. But they're all good friends. You know, they all know each other. They all speak the same language. They all have cell structures. So it's not like there's this bacteria living in our gut that's foreign and alien. It's all part of us. It's like we are the city, and they're the vendors that are bringing their produce,

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  you know, to the city gates to do business with us. But we're all, you know, we're all of the same type. We're all, you know, based on these cells. And they understand our language. And what we're now realizing is that these cultures living in our gut, because they understand human DNA and human language, because we're cells, they actually, not human language, I didn't mean it like that, but, you know, cellular structure, biochemical language, they regulate our genes. They turn our genes on and off. They're one of the biggest components of gene expression. So if you don't have healthy cultures living in your gut, your genes are not properly

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  expressed and they're realizing now this is where a lot of disease comes from. So it's not just about having good cultures that keep out the bad cultures. It's about having good cultures that are basically turning good genes on and bad genes off. They're regulating the expression of our genes. They're regulating our moods even. They regulate parts of our consciousness. I mean, they're incredibly important.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And so how, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they're thinking, well, how do I know if my, you know, microbial gut activity is healthy or not? And what can I do to improve that or move in the right direction? What would be some things that people could undertake?

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  Well, I saw a study that came out about a month ago. And this was really fascinating. They were looking at, first time I've seen a study like this. They looked at quite a few people who had been on long-term antibiotics, which most people know that antibiotics will often severely deplete the healthy cultures living in your gut. And gut doesn't mean stomach, by the way. A lot of people think gut means your stomach, but they're predominantly in your intestines, mostly in your colon. And they looked at what happens to these people after they get off the antibiotics. So they observed them post antibiotics to see how long it took for the cultures to come

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  back, if they came back, which ones came back. And it looks like in most cases, in about a month, your cultures will bounce back. That the population was at a, you know, a healthful rate after about a month after antibiotics.

• 1:57:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  So, but if people are consuming, you know, meat that has antibiotics in it, dairy that has antibiotics in it, if they're on certain medications and drugs, if they have a lot of stress, which can definitely suppress the function of the bacteria in your gut, you know, changing the alkalinity or acidity of the gut. And that remains constant, then, you know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna survive or thrive, and other cultures which are dangerous can.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  So you've got to reduce the stress in your life. You've got to stay away from harsh medications that, you know, affect the gut. Definitely stay away from food that has any kind of antibiotics in it, which, you know, animal products.

• 1:58:17Rich Roll?

  And then, I mean, even, you know, whatever food you're eating, no matter what they are, you're, they all have their, you know, they're all, they all have microbes on them, right? So, so I guess the rule of thumb would be that, you know, the healthier the food that you're eating, probably the healthier the microbial population is on that food. Because when you, when you eat the food and it has microbes on it, like any organism does, then you're sort of seeding a population in your GI tract, right? And it's like, you know, what, who, you know, who are you trying to populate down there? Right? So what are the foods, what are the better foods? Like, if you're saying, you know what, I'm coming off antibiotics, I had to take them,

• 1:59:02Rich Roll?

  or maybe I shouldn't have, but I did, and now I'm concerned about my microbial ecology, you know, what are some of the foods that I can do to help repair that or get it back on the right track?

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  Well, foods are really a stopgap measure because you've got a vacancy. Like, if you've killed off the microbes in your gut, you now have a vacancy, and it's easy for pathogenic bacteria to move in. If, you know, you're in a toxic environment, they can move in and take up home. So, eating foods, they're not cultures that are specifically designed to be inside of you, but they're not harmful. So what they will do is they will bind to these sites in your gut that these microbes normally bind to, and they'll prevent the pathogenic or dangerous bacteria from binding to these sites. Because when they bind to the site, that's when they regulate gene expression. So you want to make sure that you don't have any bad bacteria, you know, binding to these

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  sites on your cells. So the food sources are really just an interim, you know, measure while your bacteria grows back.

• 2:00:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  But they're not, you know, the cultures in fermented foods are not specifically designed for the human digestive system. Now, they're designed to be out in the world, you know, doing other things, digesting other things.

• 2:00:22Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  You know, every environment is unique. In fact, every person's digestive flora is unique. So, you know, I know a lot of people take probiotic supplements. And once again, that's a good stopgap measure. It's gonna stop the pathogenic bacteria from taking over, but it's not a long-term solution. It's kinda like cutting down the Amazon rainforest and then planting corn. Um, you've stopped the erosion, but you now have a monocrop. There used to be this incredibly diverse, you know, species of bacteria in the gut. There are thousands of different, you know, strains, maybe even millions. We're discovering new ones all the time of these strains that live in the gut. And say they get wiped out and you think, oh, I can take my acidophilus supplement and that's enough.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  No, you just plant, you've cut down the Amazon and planted corn. You know, you've got one thing growing in there. So there may be thousands of different genes that are now not being properly expressed or regulated because the bacteria required to regulate them is not present. So you wanna, a probiotic supplement or, you know, fermented foods are good to get you off of antibiotics, but you don't wanna stay on them long-term because then you prevent your own cultures from growing back. Mm-hmm. Um, which is ideally what you wanna do. And if you're really serious about it, uh, what they'll do, uh, an infectious disease doctor, they will actually, this is gonna sound freaky, but this is what they do.

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  They will take a sample of your stool, I'll use the official term here, your stool, and they will culture it. They will grow it. They will take the stool, you won't have many bacteria left, but they'll be in there. Just their population will be significantly reduced. Culture it, they will grow them back to a healthy level and then they will in, insert them into your. Come back in, right. Back in. Because then they're yours, so they're properly gonna, you know, express your genes. Interesting. That's the best solution, but you know, that's a. Medical procedure, so it's not cheap to do and freaks people out.

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  Right, but I mean, most, you know, obviously, there's, there aren't going to be very many people that are going to do that. I mean, you know, for the everyday person, it's sort of like, all right, well, you know, eat healthy foods. Try to avoid foods that have lots of pesticides and hormones and the like in them. Avoid animal products, you know, if and when at all possible and allow your own flora to take root.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you basically want to create an environment that's amenable to your flora growing back.

• 2:02:57Rich Roll?

  Right, cool. All right, man, well, I think we got to wrap it up here because we're going on.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Two?

• 2:03:03Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  You asked me about protein, so I'm going to give you my.

• 2:03:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, we got.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Two minute protein conversation.

• 2:03:10Rich Roll?

  We'll, yeah, we'll bookend it with the protein thing, so we can say we did it.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  Save the best for last.

• 2:03:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  It's somewhat tongue in cheek, but when people ask me, where do I get my protein? I always respond with a question. I ask them, do you know what protein is? Or what is protein? Do you know can often offend people, so I'll just say, well, what is protein? And they might know the answer, chances are they don't. They may say, well, it's made of amino acids. Okay, great, what are amino acids? And you just keep asking questions that lead them down the rabbit hole, that show them that they have no idea what protein is. They have no idea what it does in the body. You'll humble them, they'll get off their high horse, and then you can have a different conversation. But if you just, if you allow someone to think that they know what protein is.

• 2:03:59Rich Roll?

  They may not like you, Tim.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  Your ultimate goal of trying to get people to like you may be foiled by that plan.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  No, but it's, it's done really sincerely. It's not, it's not like a, you know, an in your face kind of thing. Well, do you know what protein is? It's like, well, do you, you know, I'm ser, I'm really curious, you know, do you know what protein is? Do you know what it does in the body? Because a lot of people think that, you know, you need animal protein because that's muscle. You need to take muscle to build muscle, but. There's actually, you know, components of protein called amino acids and they're interchangeable. They can be moved around. Your body doesn't take muscle and turn it into muscle. Your body takes muscle, breaks it down and then uses these amino acids for many different things. It does the same thing with plant proteins. And they're the same amino acids, so they can be used, you know, for anything.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  You, you start a conversation, rather than just defending yourself by saying, "Oh, I, I eat hemp seeds," "or I eat kale," "or I eat broccoli," "or I eat asparagus," "or, you know, I eat soy," whatever it might be, because that's not really going to sell them. You, you start guiding them into a conversation of, "Well, this is how protein really works." And a lot of what you've been told may not be true. And it's, people make conclusions and assumptions that are based on no evidence, and they think they have the answer. So, it's, it's a great way to, first of all, you have to know what you're talking about if you're going to have this conversation with people. But, uh, I, I never go on the defensive. I find, you know, just answering the question, um, isn't effective.

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  And secondly, the person asking the question, uh, is seldom an athlete and requires much less protein than I do, but they're worried about their protein consumption. And, really quickly, uh, because most people don't realize this, there are twenty amino acids that the body uses. So, all protein that you eat, I don't care where it comes from, meat, dairy, soy, tempeh, kale, broccoli, wherever the protein source is coming from, it is broken down into its component amino acids. That's just the way digestion, that's what digestion is. Then the body reassembles those amino acids into its own proteins,

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  whether they be enzymes, whether they be muscle tissue, whether they be bone, whether... Protein does many, many different things. Sign, signaling molecules, uh, receptors on cells.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  But...

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  When you digest these proteins into their amino acids, they have to be delivered. They don't just walk to the cells themselves and knock on the door and say, "Hey, I'm here. What do you want me to do?" You need transport mechanisms to get them through the blood into the, you know, tissues that need them. We only have five transport mechanisms for 20 amino acids, which means that they have to share. Some amino acids are much more dominant than others, and it all comes down to electrical charge, you know, what makes something more dominant than another. So you have some amino acids that don't have much charge, and you have some that have a really strong charge. The ones with the strong charge are going to dominate, so they're going to hog the transporters.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  So when people are consuming protein supplements, especially whey, one of the selling points of whey is that it's like super-packed with all of the amino acids and highly concentrated and very assimilable. It goes into your bloodstream very quickly. What's happening is you've hogged all the transport mechanisms with the dominant amino acids because they're all there, and they're all there in high quantity. And the little shy amino acids that are not dominant, they don't end up getting absorbed. And protein going into the bloodstream super quickly is the same as sugar going into the bloodstream super quickly. It's not good.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  You don't want protein entering the bloodstream instantly, just like you don't want glucose entering the bloodstream instantly. Insulin also delivers protein, so you can get an insulin spike from these protein powders just like you would from eating sugar. And once again, you're going to develop amino acid deficiencies because the dominant proteins will always hog the transport mechanisms. And with animal protein, all the amino acids are always present, so the dominant proteins or dominant amino acids are always there.

• 2:08:29Rich Roll?

  So in other words, the sort of weaker amino acids with the lesser charge don't get assimilated and you know, these things are, you're only, you know, that you can't create the protein without the missing amino acid weaker, you know, if it's the weak one that you need to complete building that protein and you don't have it, then there's no, there's no impact on, you know, repairing muscle or muscle strengthening that because you're, you're only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when I say weak, I don't mean not important. These amino acids are all important. It's just some are electrically dominant. They're more aggressive, but they're all vitally important, every single one, regardless of how much charge it has. So what you really want to do is get a trickle of protein or a trickle of amino acids throughout the day. That way you're getting different amino acids throughout the day and you're not getting a lot of them all at once so that they all have a chance to get onto these transport mechanisms and be absorbed. But when people are doing these protein shakes with super concentrated 60 grams of protein, whey protein in one shot, they're actually going to develop a deficiency.

• 2:09:40Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah, I'd never heard that before. That's fascinating.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you can look in sports journals, sports science journals, they'll talk about it. Bodybuilding websites even talk about it.

• 2:09:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you have any links on that kind of stuff, I'm sure people would love to be able to read more about that.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we've known about that for a long time. It's not new. We've known about live transporters probably for 30 or 40 years.

• 2:10:05Rich Roll?

  Right. So then in some sense, I guess you could make the argument that eating, you know, eating a plant-based diet, I mean, you know, if you're eating a wide variety of plant-based foods, you know, they all contain protein and, you know, some concentration or other, not all, but you know, a lot of them do. And, you know, they have different amino acid profiles that are different from meat and different from each other. And some are complete proteins and some are not. But if you're kind of just grazing like this throughout the day, that you're going to be kind of getting this sort of, like you said, slow trickle of amino acids and all different kinds of amino acids coming in at different times and in different amounts and in different, you know, matrices, I suppose.

• 2:10:47Rich Roll?

  And that that ultimately is a better way of, of sort of sourcing those amino acids to go where they're meant to go.

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this also makes an argument for not getting complete proteins, that a complete protein can actually be disadvantageous.

• 2:11:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  That you want incomplete proteins because then you're not going to have, you know, all the dominant amino acids present to hog the transporters.

• 2:11:13Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  And secondly, protein can also turn into fat. And a lot of people don't realize that carbohydrates and protein can both be turned into fat. You know, most of the food you're eating is made out of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. That's predominantly what food is. Protein has, you know, an amino group, nitrogen added to it. But the body can strip that nitrogen off and take the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and make fat out of it, and then excrete the nitrogen. So if you're eating lots of protein all at once and you're not doing intense amounts of physical activity, you're just going to store the protein as fat.

• 2:11:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  And develop an amino acid deficiency.

• 2:11:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  So it's all marketing, you know?

• 2:11:58Rich Roll?

  Doing absolutely the opposite of what you're intending to do.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 2:12:05Speaker 01

  So a lot of misinformation out there just to sell products.

• 2:12:08Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and, and at the same time, that goes hand in hand with the messaging that we get about how much we need. You know, it seems like right now, and I'm like a broken record talking about this, but we're just inundated with, you know, marketing messages that we need protein and every, everything. I think supermarket is labeled with extra protein and protein shakes and all this sort of thing, as if protein, you know, is some sort of crucial, you know, aspect of our diet that somehow mysteriously, all of a sudden, we're all lacking.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, people are getting bigger, but yeah, we need more protein.

• 2:12:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, I know. Are we starving or are we obese? You know, and it's like, well, in some respects, we're both, I guess.

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people don't realize how much protein or how many, how much quality amino acids are in vegetables. For instance, dark leafy greens, lot of protein. Broccoli, asparagus, any of those cruciferous vegetables, a lot of protein in there.

• 2:13:05Rich Roll?

  Right. So yeah, why don't you just, we gotta wrap it up, but like if you could just recount, like maybe your, your five go-to foods. I mean, you just said a couple of them. Are there any more that are readily available for, for people out there who wanna take a stab at it?

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  Well, you know, smoothies and salads, a big fan of kale, big fan of broccoli, eat a lot of broccoli. Sometimes I'll even make a smoothie with a head of broccoli in it.

• 2:13:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do that too. I love it.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, it's great. If you really are worried about the protein thing, and take some hemp seeds, because you're also gonna get some essential fatty acids. It's better to get your essential fatty acids from a whole food than it is from an oil, because it's not gonna oxidize as quickly. But, you know, eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. And if you're gonna do grain products, boil them or steam them. And, you know, you're gonna have a, you're gonna be very successful.

• 2:14:01Rich Roll?

  You're preaching to the choir, Tim Van Orden.

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you sing?

• 2:14:06Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  Do you sing?

• 2:14:08Rich Roll?

  Do I sing? No. That's one thing I cannot do. That's on my wife's side of, of the genetic equation, unfortunately for me.

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  You know, Rich, I feel really bad as we wrap this up, because I haven't asked you any questions.

• 2:14:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm interviewing you, man. They don't wanna hear about me. They wanna hear it from you.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  I interview you, okay? Because I wanna know all about you now, too.

• 2:14:29Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we'll do that on a future date.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:14:32Rich Roll?

  All right. So, uh, so where can people connect with you? I mean, the main thing is to go to runningraw.com, and then you're @runningraw on Twitter. Is there any, is there anywhere else where you want people to find out more about what you're doing?

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, @runningraw on Facebook and @runningraw on YouTube.

• 2:14:49Rich Roll?

  There you go. So, yeah, check out the videos. And there's a couple interviews that I read, just kind of getting ready for the interview on Tim, and I'll throw up those links in the show notes as well. How do you feel? You think we did it?

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is great.

• 2:15:06Rich Roll?

  Anything else you wanna get off your chest? Anything else we didn't cover you wanna talk about?

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm good.

• 2:15:13Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, I really appreciate your time and we're over like, uh, I mean, we're like over two hours now. That was epic. You know, that was amazing. I appreciate you, uh, taking so much out of, uh, your, your busy day to talk with me. It means a lot to me and I think people are going to really enjoy the interview and, and get a lot out of it. So you're an inspiration and I, I can only, uh, sit on the sidelines and, and watch you continue to go kill it out there with all these races. What are you training for right now or what's coming up that's a, a more key race? Cause I know you race every weekend, so.

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  I'm trying to figure that out. I'm looking for a goal of six months out somewhere. Uh, I think I may go for the, um, US half marathon trail championships or the US mountain running championships. That might be my big stretch goal.

• 2:16:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Where's, where and when is that?

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  Half marathon championships are in, uh, Moab, Utah. Uh, I think July and the US mountain running championships are in New Hampshire, uh, late June.

• 2:16:12Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, we'll be cheering for you, man.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And hopefully you and I get to do a run someday.

• 2:16:18Rich Roll?

  I'd like that. Are you ever in LA or are you just hanging out in New England?

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I come back to LA. It's, LA is still my home, I consider. They're both my home. Yeah. So I'm, I'm out there quite a bit.

• 2:16:27Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, you definitely got a, we, we definitely got a hookup next time you come down. And I'll let you know if I, if I come to Vermont, but no, no plans right now.

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  I want to see you come out and do a race.

• 2:16:39Rich Roll?

  I would get my ass handed to me, I think.

• 2:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 2:16:42Rich Roll?

  But it would be fun.

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  You'd enjoy it.

• 2:16:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right. Cool.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  All right, mate.

• 2:16:47Rich Roll?

  All right, Tim. Thank you so much. And, uh, I will talk to you soon, my friend.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  All right. Be well.

• 2:16:53Rich Roll?

  All right. You too. Bye bye. All right, everybody. That's our show. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed Tim. I hope he helped broaden your horizons. Uh, we will be back later this week with James Wilks, UFC MMA badass guy who eats plants. And then on Friday, we have, back by popular demand, Vinnie Torterich, America's angriest trainer. He was a very popular podcast guest the other day and there was a lot of demand. ...to have him back on and he's been gracious enough to be our first return guest. So, looking forward to that. Again, apologies for the audio quality of today's interview. I did the best I could. I'm still navigating some technology issues.

• 2:17:38Rich Roll?

  I obviously don't have it all figured out and I can only promise that I will continue to do better and try harder for you. So, bear with me and I'm sorry. I tried to fix it in post, I did the best I could, but it is what it is and I'll try not to let that happen again, okay? So, I'm @RichRoll on Twitter, you can find me at Facebook on Rich Roll, Rich Roll on Instagram. Julie Pyatt, if you've been enjoying her on the show, she's @JaiSeed on Twitter and @Srimati on Instagram and she's on Facebook too. We'll be coming back at you really soon, later in the week.

• 2:18:21Rich Roll?

  So, thanks again for stopping by and until next time, peace, plants.