How Endurance, Faith, Family & Service Equate to Success (Part 1)

Today's guest is a guy I relate to on so many levels. Like a big Venn diagram of overlapping circles — ultra-endurance multi-sport athlete, dad, husband, Ultraman competitor and EPIC5 finisher. Today's guest is unique in that he is the only guy I have ever had on the show who, like me, has competed in both the Ultraman World Championships and EPIC5 (not that there are very many of us – I think only a few). Today’s guest is also unique for his strong sense of faith, directed purpose and commitment to giving back in service to others the blessings bestowed upon him. Today’s guest is Christian Isakson. Christian and I first connected online several years ago on the eve of his 2011 attempt on EPIC5 (one year after I completed that challenge). Christian absolutely rocked it, completing the distance within the five day period I strived for, yet fell short. In the wake of that effort, I vividly recall several conversations in which I encouraged him to ply his trade at Ultraman. Ironically, Christian was unsure — at the time not yet wholly confident in his abilities despite the potential I clearly saw in him. Yet he obliged. To be clear, not because of me – I just gave him a nudge. And at this past year's World Championship in Hawaii, he proved his mettle and then some. His race was far from perfect, but Christian more than distinguished himself as a future contender for the top podium spot, putting his imprimatur on the race with a stunning Day 2 bike effort that had him leading the field for the majority of the brutal 170-mile day. Since our first Facebook exchange, Christian and I have been e-mail pen pals and phone buddies — corresponding consistently over the years about everything from balancing parenting & marriage to nutrition, training strategies, racing, the role of faith and most importantly service — how best to give this whole ultra-endurance experience greater meaning for others beyond mere race results. And yet Christian and I had never actually met in person. But no matter — from our first conversation we have been close; meeting in person existing as nothing more than a formality. All that changed a few weeks ago when Christian came down to Los Angeles for a short overnight visit with me and my family. The hug he gave me when I picked him up at the airport just made our brotherhood official. Today we sit down and sift through it all – the pain, passion, love and faith that fuels and drives him. The unique push-pull allure of ultra-distance racing. And how he balances this brutally demanding lifestyle to maintain a healthy and happy marriage, great relationship with his kids, and a rewarding career as a paramedic / firefighter. But what makes Christian really tick is his faith. His fidelity to his church. And how service plays into his success equation – from his endeavors with various church organizations to his involvement with Chris Lieto's non-profit More Than Sport and Ameena Project – an NGO which took him to Kenya recently to provide much needed medical care to underprivileged in urgent need. I can attest to the fact that Christian returned from Kenya a changed man. A better, more focused man with a keener sense of priorities. His short documentary on the experience tells the tale: In all honesty, it's rare that I get an opportunity to sit down with a guy with whom I share so many things in common. As a result, this conversation is long. Really long. 3 hours long. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 83 with Ultraman Triathlete Christian Isaacson.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  What's up, everybody? Welcome to the show, to the double RP. I'm your host, I'm Rich Roll. Where each week, I bring to you the best, most forward-thinking minds when it comes to rethinking and reimagining our current wellness, happiness, and human performance paradigms. So what does that mean? That means thought and action leaders in health, fitness, diet, nutrition, creativity, art, entrepreneurship, and above all, life transformation. My goal is to help broaden your horizons, help you blow through the glass ceiling on your innate human potential, not just physically, not just mentally, not just emotionally, not just professionally, but also creatively, creatively, creatively, creatively, creatively,

• 2:08Rich Roll?

  and spiritually. Why? Because true health means attention to and balance across all aspects of the human experience. And more often than not, in my own personal experience at least, it's the overlooked thing. It's that thing you don't want to really work on. That's the thing that is holding you back. To wit, the goal in a nutshell is to motivate and inspire you to take your life to the next level, to help you discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. So, before we get into today's guest, I have a little bit of an announcement. It's a special announcement, so I'm going to take a little bit of a detour here. If you're a long time listener, then you know that I'm guilty of making the occasional,

• 2:50Rich Roll?

  alright, so maybe more than occasional, announcement regarding our plant-based nutrition course that we produced in partnership with Mind Body Green. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, three and a half hours of streaming video content, blah, blah, blah. You've heard me, you've heard me talk about this a lot because I'm really proud of it and we offered it. We put it up about a year ago, and it's been really a smash hit. People have really enjoyed it. We're proud of it, and I think it's been of benefit to a lot of people. And so, as a result of the success of this course, the door has been opened over at Mind Body Green for me to do another course with them. And I think it would have been a no-brainer for me to kind of do another plant-based nutrition

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  sort of course, maybe around athletes or something like that. But I feel like there's so much information out there already on that, and I really wanted to reach beyond that and, and stretch myself and go deeper, you know, and it compelled me to think about what it is that I have to offer that is unique to me, that's unique to my experience, that could be of benefit to other people. And I started thinking about a couple blog posts that I, that I wrote recently. The first one was called "The Art of Living with Purpose", and the second one was called "Why You Should Stop Hacking Your Life and Invest in the Journey", and both of these posts that I wrote, I don't know, a couple, maybe two months ago, really hit a chord. They're, they're definitely the most popular blog posts I've ever posted

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  on my website, and then I posted them on medium.com, and they kind of blew up and went crazy haywire.

• 4:26Rich Roll?

  Viral, this got like tons of reads and a lot of amazing feedback on that. It really went bananas, which was really cool, but it really provoked me to think more about the subject matters raised in those posts, which have to do with how we're living our life, what's important to us, how do we access something more personally meaningful and express that more deeply in our daily experience. And it made me kind of understand in a deeper way that I have accumulated an arsenal of a lot of powerful ideas and opinions and tools on this subject matter of how to embrace a new and more fulfilling, personally meaningful approach to life, you know, how to uncover

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  and embrace latent passion, how to properly set and achieve a goal, in essence, how to transform your life and become your best, most authentic self. In other words, the exact, you know, predominant theme of this podcast, of every episode of this podcast. So, the long story short is, I did that. I put together a new online course. It's entitled "The Art of Living with Purpose: How to Set and Achieve Goals, Transform Your Life, and Become Your Best, Most Authentic Self." And this course just went live on Mind Body Green today, the date that I'm sitting here in London, Ontario, recording this introduction. It's May 1st, the day of the recording, and I'm really excited.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  It came out really great, and I'm just pumped to tell you guys about it. So, it's gonna involve, or it does involve, over two hours of streaming video content that's divided into six modules and 14 sessions, an array of downloadable tools and resources addressing everything from the fundamentals of transformation, like how to properly set a goal, how to erect a roadmap that works, how to create structures and momentum and community and accountability around your goals, and why people traditionally fail or fall short, and the essential foundational principles and practices behind every successful sustained life transformation, what's worked for me and what hasn't, etc. So, I'm really pumped about it.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  I worked really hard on it, and I do think it has a lot of value. It's a toolbox that contains everything, basically, that you need to make the changes in your life necessary to become the person you always wanted to be and deserve to be. So I could go on all day about this subject matter. I won't. Let's leave it at this. Just go to MindBodyGreen.com. It's on the homepage. You can check it out, or check the show notes for this episode at RichRole.com, and there'll be a hyperlink up for you to learn more about it. Okay, today's guest. Today's guest is a guy that I personally can relate to on many, many levels. Today's guest is unique to this show in that he's the only guy I've had the

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  pleasure of having on the show who, like me, has competed at both the Ultraman World Championships and has done Epic 5. How about that? It's the first time I've had a guy on the show who's done Epic 5, which is gonna be pretty cool. So today's guest is also a husband. He's a father. He's a guy driven by a strong sense of faith, purpose, and giving back the blessings bestowed upon him in service to others. Today's guest is Christian Isaacson. I was first introduced to Christian several years ago. It was on the eve of him attempting Epic 5 in 2011, which was a year after I did it. Jason Lester put it on again and

• 7:59Rich Roll?

  invited a few select people to make the attempt for the second year in a row. And since then, Christian and I have been fast email pen pals and phone buddies, and we correspond pretty consistently and have done so over the years about everything from family to nutrition, to training, to racing, and many conversations that I've had with him about which races I thought Christian should be doing and why. And after his excellent Epic 5 performance in 2011, where he was able to compete that distance, complete that distance, complete the all five Ironmans within the five-day period, which was amazing, I really encouraged him to go after Ultraman. He hadn't done Ultraman at that point.

• 8:43Rich Roll?

  And I just knew that it was the distance that would really allow his talent to shine. And it did this past year. He had a stellar debut at the Ultraman World Championships 2013, this past Thanksgiving, and today, finally, he's coming on the show to tell us all about it. The odd thing, the ironic thing, is that I hadn't actually ever met Christian in person until he came down to LA from where he lives in Portland recently and stayed at my house with my family for a night. It was a couple of weeks ago. So, today, we sit down, we go through it all. We go through the pain, the passion, the faith that fuels and drives him, the unique pull and allure of ultra-distance racing, and how he balances his lifestyle with his marriage and his kids and his profession,

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  and his fidelity to his church and his faith, which is very important to him. And also, we talk a lot about how service plays into this equation. Christian has worked with various church organizations, and he's more recently become involved with something called the Ameena Project, which is a nonprofit with whom he traveled to Kenya a couple of months ago to help provide needed medical care to those in desperate need. In fact, he made a little short documentary about it that I'll post on the blog post for this episode. It's pretty cool. It's embedded there, so if you want to learn more, go to richwell.com. Anyway, so it's rare that I get an opportunity to sit down with a guy with whom I share so much in common. It's like Venn diagrams overlapping

• 10:12Rich Roll?

  all over the place. And as a result, for better or for worse, this means that our conversation goes on pretty long, really long, in fact. It's almost three hours long. So that gave me a choice. I could either put up the entire three hours at once, or I could spend a bunch of time, or have Tyler spend a bunch of time editing down the conversation to its essentials to get it more around an hour and a half or so, or the third option, which is the option I chose, which is to split the interview up into two parts. So this week, this is part one. It's going up. This is what you're listening to now. It's probably Monday if you're listening to this right away. The second part is going to go up.

• 10:53Rich Roll?

  Thursday, so that way you'll get both parts in the same week and that creates a RRP twofer for the week. Instead of one episode this week, you're going to get two and that'll keep us on track to bring a new interview with somebody new the following week. Anyway, Christian is a really solid guy. He's one of those guys who walks his talk, one of those guys who shows up when he says he's going to show up, a guy with a really strong moral compass and sense of direction, you know, with a handshake stronger than any contract and one of those guys whose word is solid gold, you know, he's old school. It's almost as if he comes from an older generation, like the generation of my grandfather,

• 11:36Rich Roll?

  when things like that seem to mean more than they do now. But the point is, it's rare to find guys with such a strong moral character and Christian is one of those guys. It's an honor to know him. It's an honor to be his friend and it's an honor to share this conversation with you today.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  You have the dubious honor of being the first person to get on an airplane to come here and do this, so I'm quite honored.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think I'm the one that's honored, Rich, so thanks.

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  No, it's, it's great to have you. And it's funny, you know, we were talking about this earlier. Actually, we've talked about this a number of times, but this is the first time that we've actually met in person. But I feel like, I mean, I've talked to you so many times on the phone. I've followed you for so long that, you know, I feel like I've known you forever.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, same way, same here. I mean, I feel, you know, putting stuff on Instagram today saying, going to see my friend Rich. It's, you've always been so supportive of me and before my races, some of the, you know, biggest races of my life, you've always been the one that I've called and the one that has just lended a hand of support and direction. So, thanks, man. You know how happy I am to be here.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  No, it's great. I was trying to remember what the first point of contact was, though. Was it, was it, uh, must have been around the time you did Epic Five?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was Epic Five. Yep, and I had, I had, I knew about you because you guys had done it the year before. And I, uh, so I started to kinda keep tabs on you and, um, one thing led to another, leading up to Epic Five. And you and I first, um, started to chat via, you know, email.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Text and stuff. And then we started talking and then we started writing long letters at night to each other.

• 13:31Rich Roll?

  I know, my pen pal.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  My bromance.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  So where does it all begin for you? I mean, I, I pick up your story. It's funny because I picked you up at the airport and I was already learning things about your life that I, that I didn't know. I mean, my, my sort of reference point for where your life begins is, is kind of, you know, Epic Five and some of the Ironmans that came after that. And then the lead up to, you know, your, your incredible performance at Ultraman this year. But I want to take it a step back.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, well dude, if it's, uh, from the very beginning, I, you and I have close ties because we both grew up in, you know, initially we have ties in Michigan.

• 14:08Rich Roll?

  We go way back.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Way back.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  We crossed on the playground back in Detroit.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. I grew up in Detroit, um, uh, in, uh, well, in the city at first. And then it moved to, to the suburbs, you know, Plymouth Canton outside of Ann Arbor.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  I was, uh, born to my, my dad who recently, actually three, through about three and a half weeks ago, passed away. I was, uh, my, my father and my mom, um, my mom's from Austria. My dad met my mom in, in, you know, in Europe after Vietnam. My dad.

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, my dad.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  He's a Vietnam vet.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. Decorated, um.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And, and, and basically lived in Vietnam for the, for the duration of his life until he died three weeks ago.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. I didn't know that part.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, uh, I've got, um, my, my, you know, talking to you a little bit about, um, my, my history, um, my dad was, made such a big part of my life and it, I don't think he intended to do so, um, but he was probably the closest thing to a demon that I think I've ever seen. As harsh of a word it is to use for my dad, he was an evil, evil man. So I grew up in a pretty broken home, um, with my mom caught in the crossfire, um, in Michigan. And then, uh, as soon as high school, um, ended, I was gone. I took off.

• 15:34Rich Roll?

  You left home after high school?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I was seventeen years old. Yep. I was seventeen years old. I wanted out of the house.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, how did your mom, do you have brothers and sisters?

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've got a younger brother and an older brother.

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So you were in the middle and grew up with, I mean, your dad didn't, he was, he was around, he was physically present when you were growing up in high school?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was physically present, but he was, he was, uh, he was a firefighter, Detroit firefighter, um, but he was a severe drug abuser and alcoholic. Um, and he was, uh, when he was around, it wasn't good. Um, you know, I was physically abused pretty consistently, emotionally abused constantly. Um, so I chuckled because I was like, I'm going to tell you things I haven't told people, um, ever before, but, um, I've alluded.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  It's just us, Christian.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yep. It's just you and me. Yeah. Uh, but my dad was, uh, he just did some twisted stuff.

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  Wow. I mean, is that a result of stuff he saw in Vietnam or was that, was his father that way? Or where, where does the pattern, or is it just, is it just being a drug addict?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I come from a long line of people that have a, a pretty, um, ingenious way of dodging the truth. Um, and you know, I, I always struggled with the, the disease being the label of an alcoholic and a drug abuser when it was the only disease that I could, like, early on in my, in my childhood, when I was even eight or nine years old, I always used to question like, how can A disease be brought on by an act of will. It was, it just confused me. I was that kid that got picked up by my dad at school when he was hammered. You know, I had to drive home with him while he's drunk in the car and. And he, uh, he was horribly abusive to my mother, um, unfaithful to my mom, just, he's just a bad guy.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  And, uh, my mom was just kind of, you know, bless her soul, just caught in the middle.

• 17:25Rich Roll?

  Right. So she's just trying to do the best that she can.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Keep things together.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  I mean, did your, did your siblings have the same experience with your dad?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were times I, you know, I, if you talk to my brothers, they would be the first to admit that I, I probably received the brunt of the physical abuse. And, and the emotional abuse was kind of twisted as well, but we all suffered in our own way. As a result of my dad's unwillingness to step up to the plate and be a father. And it was confusing, man. I mean, it was just confusing.

• 17:54Rich Roll?

  And then when, when, when you and your siblings were grown, he went back to Vietnam?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think mentally he never left.

• 18:01Rich Roll?

  I see. So you're, you're basically saying mentally, he was never, he was, he was always there.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Mentally, he never left. And then, um, it was, uh, it, it just spiraled out of control. And I, I mentioned, uh, earlier to you in a, in a conversation we were talking about, um, it just seems like every once in a while, um, the cockroaches that I find in the past of, of some of the footprints that my dad's left in my life are still kind of buzzing around. Not in a bad way, um, but it, when I found out that he died three weeks ago before I left for Kenya, it was, I was like, he died on the table getting a liver. And I just wasn't surprised at all. And luckily for me, about four years ago, my dad and I had a good three years where I really tried to, um, make amends.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  And, and tell him that I love him and tell him that I care for him, but he just never has been willing to, I think he's just never been willing to forgive himself. So.

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  Of course. I mean, the pain that he must harbor, I'm sure is, you know, probably a hundredfold of whatever, you know, is inside you. And, you know, that imprinting that takes place when you're a youngster, that doesn't go away, man. You know, that's, it takes a lot of work to kind of overcome that and those. Patterns and and kind of those buttons that get pushed when you're, you know, sort of probably in the orbit of somebody like that. Or who's some somebody who's putting out that kind of energy.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, toxic. It was just really toxic.

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  Sorry to hear that.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That's all right. It's it. You know, I I can talk freely about it. And it's probably the first time I've actually talked about it since I heard of my dad, you know, I was leaving for Kenya, the then, you know, the night that I found out. And, you know, I I didn't attend the funeral. And I know that, like I said, it it's it's an after school special on drugs. Basically, as far as what my family life was like. So when I was 17, man, I I hit the bricks.

• 19:50Rich Roll?

  You're out of there.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I was gone. Yeah.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  And is that when you went into the army?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yep, I went into the army to get college money to pay for art school.

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I wanted to be an artist.

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  Who goes into the army to be an artist?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 20:03Rich Roll?

  That's like out of some weird Stanley Kubrick movie or something.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Dude, I was, I thought I was a lot cooler than I was, man. I went into the army as a rebel.

• 20:12Rich Roll?

  Where did you do your like base training?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. And then I went to Sam Houston at the the Academy of Health and Science. It's kind of where I started to dip my toe into medicine and became a medic. And then I went to Europe and started to kind of slide down the same slope my dad did.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  It's funny how that happens.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  Despite every fiber of your being like saying, I'll never be like my dad.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, I really.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  Were you conscious of that when it was happening or what was going on?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yes and no. I mean, you know, going to Germany.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Where were you in Wiesbaden?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  In Bamhöller. I've been to Wiesbaden though. Yeah. You know, I had I had met Rhonda by then, you know, my wife and I had met. She was in college and I was in high school. I saw my wife when I was in seventh grade and I was gone. I I love I love Rhonda more.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Every second of the day, I just I so I was totally.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  You guys got married at 19. So you were a year and a half into the army or something like that?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I came back. I came back. I actually, I've never told this story. Publicly, but I actually.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna make you say that a couple of times today.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Well, dude, you know what? If you're nice enough to have me here, I'm nice enough to bleed all over you. I'm laying the groundwork here for a, for a great finish.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, I went to Europe and Rhonda went to Japan. She studied in, she studied at the University of Michigan. Japanese. And I went to Germany and thought I was a rock and roll star. So I, I lived the life. And I was committed to Rhonda, but.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  But you're still in the army? So you're moonlighting as a musician?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, I knew that that's where, that's kind of where the seeds of music started to be planted. You know, I went, I went and saw, I went and saw concerts and started to kind of tinker around with the guitar. But I also.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  Who were the bands that were?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Dude, I went and saw Soundgarden. I was on stage with Chris Cornell.

• 22:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  I saw Soundgarden.

• 22:09Rich Roll?

  How did that happen? Hold on a second.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  He, uh.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  We went to a really small club and it was on his, um, Super Unknown. Actually, it's the 20 year anniversary of Super Unknown. But, uh, oh man, all these women were throwing, um, bras up on stage. And he said that he'd like somebody to throw some underwear, some pants on stage. So.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  So you took your pants off?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  I took my pants off and threw them up on stage. I had my underwear on and.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  That's a dad move.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Dude, I got, I crowd surfed up to the, to the stage and he handed me back my pants and then I was yarded off. And the next Rolling Stone, it talks about a stupid GI threw his jeans up on.

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's in print?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  So that was my, uh, 15 seconds of fame over there, but.

• 22:57Rich Roll?

  So did you form a band with some guys in the army?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  No, but I, I started to play. Um, you know, I'd met my closest friend Brandon in the military. We were both, um, we were listening to headphones at the same time and I looked over at him and he looked over at me and we both thought, we were both like, who's that cocky looking jerk? And we were listening to the same U2 album. Um, so.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  It was destiny.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  It was destiny. It was, it was destiny in the, under the Joshua tree.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  But I started to play music and started talking to my brothers about forming a band once I got out of the got out of the military. So.

• 23:32Rich Roll?

  So then you come you come back to the US and.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yep, I came back, got married, went back with Rhonda, spent the first year and a couple of months of our marriage there. And that's when I figured out.

• 23:43Rich Roll?

  They're being.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  In Germany.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's where I figured out I better get a handle on my alcohol. And I was only 20 years old and I knew something was brewing and Rhonda told me we had spent a weekend in Spain together. Rhonda's like, I love you too much to see this happen for the rest of our lives. So it was New Year's Eve. She's like, you better figure something out. And I haven't touched a I haven't drank a beer since.

• 24:10Rich Roll?

  Wow, good for you.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  That's, yeah, that could have taken a very different turn for you.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really it's tough being 19.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  That's really young, too.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then and then just, yeah, it was it was a whirlwind. The first 20 years, I think, were quite like, as much as that of me talking there for the last couple of minutes, it was that much of a whirlwind for me. It just seemed like I was starting to build the bricks of endurance racing and I didn't even know it.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  I mean, how much of that, like, sort of experience of growing up, you know, essentially a single mom, you know, abusive household and and the patterning that takes place there? I mean, how much of that do you think informs some of the decisions you make today or like how you certainly, I'm sure it informs how you parent your kids.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:00Rich Roll?

  You're a great dad and all of that. So it's pretty clear and evident there, but kind of like behind the scenes, like whether it's with your, you know, the charity work that you're doing or the work that you do with your church or your racing and all of that. I mean, how does it?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it actually, you know, in the tail end of my teens, my mom and dad started going to church and it screwed me up. It really jacked up my idea of who these people were telling me God was and who I saw God being in my home. It just things didn't make sense to me. I wanted nothing to do with it. I seriously wanted nothing to do with Jesus, nothing to do with God. I wanted I wanted nothing to do with any of that because to see my dad, my mom in church on Sunday and then Sunday night, my dad kicking the crap out of us.

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  It just didn't make sense.

• 25:47Rich Roll?

  Too much dissonance.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and having said that.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  That obviously plays a big role in my example towards Ian and Evelyn. You know, as a, as a Christian dude in a, um, in my home, man. It's, it's challenging enough as it is to be a dad, let alone trying to mix it up with, with crap. You know, I mean.

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  I mean, do you feel like, so, so when you're young and you, you're, you're drinking too much or whatever. And you're like, oh, man, you know, I'm sort of showing shades of my dad that, you know, I didn't think that I had. I mean, do you, do you feel like some of that stuff, do you have to work like over time to overcome some of those, some, maybe some of those things that might be more inbred in you that, that you care to admit because of just, what you grew up around?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I, I think, I think at 19 and 20, like when I went over to Europe before Rhonda and I got married, that year and a half, two years that I spent over there alone, I just chalked it up to, to, to paying my dues.

• 26:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, part of that, you're just young.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, young and stupid, you know? Um, but after that first year that, uh, Rhonda and I were married, there was a couple of instances where, um, I, both Rhonda and I took a step back. I'm like, man, what's up, dude? Um, so from that point on.

• 27:04Rich Roll?

  Meaning like, what do you mean?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Like, meaning like, like, uh, you know, I smoked, I was a smoker for a couple of years before I realized, even before how health conscious I am now, that I just felt like crap smoking. But, um, you know, like the time that we came back from Spain together, Rhonda was like, you know, babe, do, do, uh, this is not good. Like, do you realize last night I helped you off the floor? Um, you know, in a pool of your own sick by the toilet. Um, and I'm like, I know, I know. And, um, it just, there was a couple of occurrences there where Rhonda loved me enough to be, you know?

• 27:38Rich Roll?

  I'm sensing a pattern here.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:40Rich Roll?

  With, uh, Rhonda.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:42Rich Roll?

  Basically keeping you in line.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Well, no. Come on, dude. Yeah, initially, initially she steered me on course, but now, but now, uh, now I wear the pants.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, in fairness, yeah, I, I get the idea that your marriage is, is, is quite an amazing partnership.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Dude, it is.

• 27:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  20, dude, we're going, it's, what is today? Today is the, uh,

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  March 22nd.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  So 22 years, three years, 22 years, three months and

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a long time. Getting married at 19 and still be, you know, in love and have a functional marriage and all of that. I mean, that is not easy to do. That's crazy.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  No, man, I, I feel blessed. I, I just, I, I do. I physically, spiritually, emotionally, I'm just more attracted to her than, than anything.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  So.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  All right, but back to the rock and roll dream.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Right, rock and roll dream. So we laid the groundwork. I'm, I'm screwed up. I'm on my way to be a rock and roll star. I get my crap together before I come back to the United States and I call my, my older brother and my younger brother and say, I'm, let's, let's do this. Let's, let's start a band. And.

• 28:52Rich Roll?

  They were musicians too.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  We all just kind of picked up the instruments at the, at the same time.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  And we struggled.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  Did you come back to Michigan?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  No, we went to Michigan. I didn't want to stay in Michigan. I wanted nothing to do with it. So we took off to, to Utah. My, my older brother, who was in the air force, got kicked out of the air force.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And he's just stayed there. So I moved, we moved there and my, my younger brother, Daniel, came out from Michigan. And then another guy who ended up being one of those guys that you hear about in bands that just was a total, the most selfish, self-centered, egotistical, maniacal person you'd ever meet. But you don't recognize it because you want the band to happen.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  Every band's got a guy like that. You kind of need a guy like that too.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, he's, he's literally another one of the most twisted people I've ever met. But nonetheless, the, the core, the core band that my brothers and I had, we lasted for about six years.

• 29:49Rich Roll?

  That's a good run.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was good. I mean.

• 29:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, what do, were you touring?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did. We, we did a couple of, we didn't tour like you would think like tour, tour, but we opened up for some bigger local bands and had some, some moderate exposure in Salt, in the Salt Lake City rock scene. And then I broke off and left my brothers. I, I just couldn't take it because they had, they liked to enjoy other things that they're, you know, I just. It's the the age old artistic differences kind of separated us.

• 30:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And then I joined a couple of different bands and had my.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  I mean, were you doing that full time?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  No, I was. Yeah, I was working as a CNA, man. I was a certified nurse assistant at an old folks home. Just trying to get by.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  And then the first thing that kind of knocked me off course was when Evelyn, my daughter contracted encephalitis. And she almost died.

• 30:43Rich Roll?

  How old was she?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Three, she's three. Yeah, we spent about two and a half months in the hospital and she she went from three year old to one week old. Physically and mentally, she just, yeah, it was it was one of the one of the big, big things in my life that I I've come to the conclusion and finally figured out that there's nothing that God won't use that we consider too important for him to draw us back to him. And when I saw how

• 31:14Speaker 01

  out of control I really am with my daughter, she just spiraled and we spent, it was, it was a nightmare. So.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  So that snaps you into kind of adulthood, I suppose.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  Right? So so encephalitis, that's like a viral infection of the brain, right?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  She fell into like an undiagnosable bracket where they couldn't figure like, they couldn't figure out what was going on with her. She started to seize. She lost her ability to to talk first. And then walk and then move. And then she was.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, she just literally just shut down from the outside in. And then.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  Was she hospitalized?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we were in the hospital for two, over two months.

• 31:57Rich Roll?

  So how did you get to the other side of that?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  I really do believe that this was one of the first wake up calls for me. Like I said, spiritually, I don't know that I ever really got to the other side until years down the road. I mean, it was years of rehab for Evelyn, physical therapy, learning how to talk, learning how to write again. I mean, she was, you know, she was an active. But that kind of was a big jolt for me, which is one of the reasons why we have such a such a span between Evelyn and Ian in six years because I got gun shy, man. I'm like, I can't handle that again.

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's heavy stuff, but it is interesting how that sort of created a new trajectory for you kind of spiritually or interpersonally. And it's just weird how it takes, you know, painful, traumatic events to trigger that. It's like, I kind of wish the human system was wired to be more prone or open to personal growth without the jarring crisis.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Dude, your book catalyzed it.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  You know, dude, that's your book, man. I mean, your book from front to, seriously. I didn't have a daughter with encephalitis. I mean, I think that we all, I think we all have things that happen, right? And so the question becomes, do those, like, are you aware enough to see the signals or to pay attention or to kind of understand that maybe, you know, you should reevaluate how you're living your life or not?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  It was, it was such a wake up call for me. And I didn't have, like, I didn't have a foundation. I don't have the like, I didn't have the, the relationship with Christ that I have now to get, I just, I was like, I was freaking just, I was, I was just flapping. Um, and, and it, it, Ron and I suffered tremendously from that. Like, it was just, it was, it was one of the, the cruxes of my life that, like I said, dude, like, like, like in your book, when you talk about, um, the hundred days that you'd spent, like, it just, um, you know, C.S. Lewis always says that pain is sometimes the, the whisper, or pain is the, the voice in the megaphone that God uses to rile a deaf world. Like, all right, fine,

• 34:15Speaker 01

  idiots. If you're not going, I mean,

• 34:18Rich Roll?

  Let's shake it up a little.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's not, not to say that he, not to say that he like, um, you know, it, it doesn't, he doesn't cause that. And I know that's kind of a deeper subject, but at the same time, I realized I'm running from this. Where I go for the rest of my life depends on where I run to. And like, I, I remember thinking to myself, I had heard at the time, um, everybody thirsts, but a lot of people drink from the toilet. And I'd find, that was the first time I realized, like, Man, I've been, I've been trying to quench a part of me and my family with this musician dream band and it just, it's, it was very similar to an athlete training and the effects that it has on your family when you're in a band. Cause you have to dedicate just as

• 35:03Speaker 01

  much time, just as much money, just as much effort. So it definitely-

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  You know, I think it's, it's a question of what, you know, ultimately your destiny was meant to be. Like if you were, if you were meant to be in a successful rock band and maybe your intentions were, you know, more true and maybe it wasn't, you know, about your ego or whatever like-

• 35:26Speaker 01

  And we didn't suck. Like, no, I mean, seriously-

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you weren't supposed to be, that wasn't the path you were supposed to be on.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:33Rich Roll?

  So it's sort of like this, this little, you know, earthquake happens that, that course corrects you. So for somebody else, you know, maybe being a rock musician is what they're supposed to be.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And luckily at the time, it was, it was kind of in vogue that you really didn't want to play your music, like your instruments. That was cool. So-

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  What year are we talking about here? So this would be like-

• 35:52Speaker 01

  This would be-

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  It's like 94.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, no. We, cause Ron and I were married in, I got back from the, back in the States around 94. So yeah, like 95, 96, 97, 98, those are the years that-

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  So it's a little like post Nirvana.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, yeah. Post Nirvana, like pre, like Mud Honey, Green River, the, the whole Seattle scene was moving, but-

• 36:15Rich Roll?

  Pavement.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Man. Fugazi was big. Well, actually Fugazi was earlier.

• 36:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they were earlier.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, but Rollins Band, you know, that's when Henry Rollins started, he came out with Wait, which was a killer album and School of Fish and-

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  You were into like kind of the hardcore stuff.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I do-

• 36:33Rich Roll?

  It's so funny. Cause when we, I picked you up from the airport and we're driving back and we get a FaceTime call from John Joseph.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  From the Crow Mags.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  Crow Mags, yeah. And if you've listened to the podcast, you probably heard our couple of episodes with him.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I, when I, when we moved to California, I was in, uh, the band that I was in out here called Something About Today. I actually recorded in San Francisco, um, with, uh, with Dave Silva, who was in Bad Radio, the band that Eddie Vedder took off from to go join Pearl Jam.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  And the drummer went to Four Non Blondes. Well, I hooked up with Dave Silva in Palm Springs and we started this band, um, and went and recorded a, a small EP in, uh, where the, in San Francisco where Santana, um, uh, recorded. And, uh, that was probably the closest thing or the closest time I'd ever had.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  You were like brushing up against.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was really, really cool. Um, he was playing me, uh, early recordings of Better Man that Eddie Vedder was writing. Just really cool, um, really cool stuff.

• 37:42Rich Roll?

  So there's that, but then there's, then there's real life. There's family, there's kids.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:47Rich Roll?

  There's this crisis encephalitis, but you get, you get to the other side of this slowly, right? And, and, um, and I take it that around this time, you know, you're starting to get serious about what you're going to do with your life.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Like, so is this when being a paramedic comes in?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. I, I, um, we were living in, in California and, um, I had just found out that, we had just found out that, uh, Rhonda was pregnant with Ian. Um, she had, she was a massage therapist and she went back for a seminar and came back to California. She had a cold sore on her lip. I was like, man, that's kind of jacked up, babe. You don't usually get that. And she's like, yeah, well, a week went by and she caught another one and we're getting ready to cook dinner. And I was like, I was like, dude, you are pregnant. And she's like, I am not. I'm like.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  I didn't know cold sores are like an, an indicia of pregnancy.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Dude, I just knew. I, I just, I was like, she's like, I am not pregnant. So I was like, I'll be right back. I literally picked up the keys and I got in my car and ran to the store on the corner. This is when we were in La Quinta and, uh, I grabbed a pregnancy test and dude, it was like, it was like the sky was opening, like she peed on it. I was just like, no. The plus sign came up and she's like, what happened? I'm like, what do you mean what happened? Um, and

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  Biology happened.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  It scared the crap out of us.

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  But at that, at that point, your daughter was in, she was out of the

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was, yep, she was, she was recovering. She still hadn't like some neurologic deficits. She still had fine motor skill problems. She had very like weird space awareness where she'd lose balance.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  Is she fine now?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  She fully recovered?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:25Rich Roll?

  And, and I think you said that you, you ultimately ended up homeschooling her for part of her education?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, Rhonda, actually, when we, when we finally moved from California to Oregon, starting out my transition from just getting into medicine and following my passion there. Yeah, Rhonda homeschooled Evelyn for a number of different reasons.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And one being the medical problems that you, that we faced with her, but the other one was just probably for the same reason why you guys homeschool your kids.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, we did that for a couple of years and, um, and I just started it like, like I said, I started down the road to being a paramedic. And, and

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  What was the reason for moving up to Portland?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  For that.

• 40:06Rich Roll?

  For that.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, we were in Palm Springs and my wife and I were like, okay, we've been here for two years. And, um, we had just gone through some of the most difficult things in our marriage. It was, it was rough. We had a really tough time. Um, we really had to work through some things that I think lingered from when Evelyn almost died. Just some stuff, man, just some crap that people go through. And that's, that is the part of my life when I feel like God finally got a hold of my heart and said, all right, dude, check this out.

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  Do you, so when you hit these rough spots in your marriage, I mean, what were the tools that you used to get through that? I mean, was that where

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Myself.

• 40:45Rich Roll?

  The church came in?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  No, you know,

• 40:46Rich Roll?

  Or therapy or how did that?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I, I, there, there was a time where I, I didn't want, I didn't want to have anything to do with the big church as the big C church. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do with religion. I didn't want to have anything to do with ritual. And I didn't want to have anything to do with myself because I kept on telling myself, like, I can't wait for like five years from now or 10 years from now when I get to the person that I'm gonna be. And the problem with that theory and idea is if I'm always trying to fix myself with myself and I end up with myself, ultimately, I'm still dealing with a broken self.

• 41:20Rich Roll?

  Well, you're trying to solve the problem with the problem.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like trying to fix money with a credit card.

• 41:25Rich Roll?

  It's like when they say in recovery, you know, your best thinking got you here.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  You're gonna solve this problem with your brain because your brain is what got you in this problem to begin with.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Dude, I figured out nobody lies to myself more than me. I mean, seriously, you don't, even today, nobody lies to me more than I do, even when I don't think I'm doing it. And I just, I just felt like I'd gotten to the point where both Ron and I just felt like we were like, if this is the pinnacle of what you get is your human experience on this planet,

• 42:00Speaker 01

  and we're screwing it up this bad, where do we go from here? And I think the biggest thing for me was, there was a point where I met a couple of guys from a church in Palm Springs. It was a mega church and they were, they were just cool guys. They were musicians and they were flawed. And it was the first time ever I had somebody tell me, dude, God loves you. He's not an angry God that's pissed off because you're a piece of crap and you're like, my idea of God was so wrapped around my idea of my own father, it freaking screwed me up, dude.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  And I didn't realize that until that time, but like when I hear people, when I started hearing people telling me, hey, man, God loves you. God loves you. And I didn't want to hear it. It didn't, it didn't start, it didn't make sense. But that's when we started going to church. That's when I started to realize it's not about religion. It's about a relationship. And I realized seeing people in my life that were very religious around me, up until that point, religion either left them feeling very pride, like proud because they could check the boxes or in the bar because they didn't check enough. And it just didn't, it didn't make sense to me. So that's when Ron and I were like, all right, we're getting in the backseat. Take charge.

• 43:21Rich Roll?

  So was that like, was there like a specific moment where you remember that happening?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:26Rich Roll?

  Or was that a, what exactly triggered that?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Um, it's, it just was a series of, um, I think it was a series of events that led both Rhonda and I to a counselor that said, um, you either go all in or you go all out. Um, and if you're going to go all in, um, and you, you do it without Christ, then you'll end up the statistic that so many people do. Um, and for us, that was what we decided to do. We're like, all right. And this was like seven, eight years and, you know, seven years or so in and, um, dude, I thought I had figured it out. I really did, Rich.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  I really thought I had, I really thought I figured it out. Um, and so did Rhonda and we didn't.

• 44:17Rich Roll?

  Well, I think that, that, that sort of brings up this idea of, you know, when you say you figured it out, it kind of means like, okay, like I'm on cruise control. Like I've been married seven years, eight years.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:28Rich Roll?

  You know, she knows me, I know her.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:30Rich Roll?

  We're in our pattern and we can just ride this thing out.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  And life doesn't work that way. You know, you're either, you're either growing or you're regressing.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Dude, I totally.

• 44:40Rich Roll?

  Your relationship is decaying or it's becoming stronger. And that's something that I don't really want to embrace and something that I forget on a daily basis in every aspect of my life, from my marriage to, you know, sobriety, to fitness, to, I mean, it's, it's obvious in fitness, you're either getting stronger or you're getting weaker, you know? But it's very applicable to, you know, all areas of personal growth, spiritual, emotional and mental. But it's very easy to fall into like, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna relax into this. And I think the moment that you do that, at least I, I should just speak from my own personal experience, if I do that in my marriage, if I do that in my career, if I do that with endurance training, that's not gonna go well.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Dude, the, the theme throughout your book and Rhonda and I, cause Rhonda read the book too, is comfort retards growth. I'm like, seriously? Whenever anybody gets comfortable, and, and I say that all the time, like, life is dynamic. You are either growing or you're dying. Um, and I know that's a very like romanticized way to look at it, but dude, it's the truth and it doesn't have to just correlate with, um, sport or.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Parenting, but it can, it can be, it, it, there's micro and macro elements to life and

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Dude, every single one of them have that theme in it.

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  And you know, I think that there's a lot of value in embracing that concept. I mean, that, that was, that's kind of in part what motivated that blog post that I put up about like, stop hacking your

• 46:08Speaker 01

  The hack, life hacking?

• 46:09Rich Roll?

  Cause I just, I'm getting so turned off by this culture of, of let's find the quick fix or the end run around the thing. So we can get to the finish line quicker and easier and more comfortably. And it's, you know, my experience is it's not about that at all. It's, it's what you just said. It's embracing the discomfort, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, like welcoming the, the pain and the suffering and the challenge and the obstacles and, and all of that, like the whole thing. And that's where the beauty and of course the hardship, but, but the true value and the meaning and the sense of satisfaction ultimately comes from.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:51Rich Roll?

  Well, and you know, Epic Five, Ultraman, those are, those are metaphors for those experiences.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Totally dude.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  You're not gonna like hack your way through. I mean, I suppose you could, you could find a way to like train the least amount for that race and, and get through it. So you can check the box.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Thing, but, but how do you feel on the other side of that? Like, I know that you know, when you cross that finish line at Ultraman this past year, that you did absolutely everything you could to put in the maximum performance that you were capable of. And that was demonstrated by your aggressive race tactics throughout of pushing the limit, you know, very early on.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  And, and, and all of that. And so, you know, lose or win or fall or stand tall. Like when you, when you were done with that experience, I can guarantee you that you'll tell me that you have a sense of yourself and a sense of satisfaction that is irreplaceable.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yep, totally. And, and it's, um, well dude, I talk to you every day in Hawaii. Before my stages, just for a little bit of encouragement and guidance and direction. Ditto, man. I mean, you, you, it's the same way with you. I watched you do it through the Epic Five first though. I think that's what kinda lit, lit the fire for me is just, uh, watching you perform.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  And dude, I don't know that you necessarily, this is the part of the podcast I told Ron that might make you feel uncomfortable, but I don't think you realize, like, you know, I was telling you in the car earlier today that I watched another interview with you last night before I came down here. And dude, the way you're doing what you're doing is really amazing, Rich. Like, it's really, really good, dude. And watching you race, or watching you compete, or watching you talk, or reading what you write, or listening to you speak, you're just doing it in a way that is wholesome. And I really, really, really, really want you to know that I'm not blowing smoke. And I do, I just, for those of you that are listening, I've been talking nonstop since I

• 48:49Speaker 01

  got here. And it's not because I'm nervous around Rich, but I think it's because I'm maybe too comfortable. But I just want you to know that.

• 48:58Rich Roll?

  Thanks, man.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. I know, dude. And I really, really just am glad to be your friend. So.

• 49:05Rich Roll?

  The feeling is mutual, man.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Right on, dude. Moving on.

• 49:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's, let's, I'm flustered. I'm blushing, Christian. No, I appreciate that. Thanks very much.

• 49:17Rich Roll?

  So you find this solution that's working for your marriage and is giving you maybe a greater sense of purpose and belonging in your life. And you could be just cruising along for the remainder of your life. You have a good career. Your marriage is on track. You have two healthy kids after this crisis. And so where is this, you know, where, where did this itch to kind of get into endurance sports start to creep into your life?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  I think initially, it was when Ron and I finally made it up to Oregon, which we've lived, we've lived in Oregon longer than we've lived anywhere else, 12 years now. So we feel like it's kind of our home, for sure. We started going to West Valley, West Valley Community Church, which is a really cool place. I play in the worship band there and have for the last 11 years. And I had a speaker come from Eastern Europe and talk about, and Gergiu Romania, talk about a program that's over there that once a week, these kids from these outlying communities get to come and bring their clothes and have all their clothes washed and take a hot shower. And it just resonated with me. I'm like,

• 50:28Speaker 01

  I love comfortable, you know, I love comfortable t-shirts and I love hot showers. And I said, I told my wife, I'm like, I'm gonna do a marathon and I'm gonna raise 5,000 bucks for this organization. That's what I did.

• 50:43Rich Roll?

  So it came really from a place of, I want to be of service to this organization as much as it came from a place of, I want to challenge myself physically?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, because I've always, I figured out by then, Rich, that I was built to be kind of a runner, kind of like a Dean Karnass, it's kind of a little bit shorter, a little bit stockier, a little bit, but I could always, I just,

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  You're not shorter than Dean.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I'm not, huh? No. Well, pictures can be deceiving, but I think I have more of a, well, I guess, dude, how tall are you?

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Barely six feet.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Okay. Cause when I was standing next to you today, I'm wearing these awesome flip flops that have lifts on them. It just kind of dawned on me, I'm like, yeah, I feel a little bit taller next to Rich Roll.

• 51:29Rich Roll?

  I'm not that tall. Come on, go ahead.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Anyway, dude, where was I, man?

• 51:36Rich Roll?

  Talking about like, no, what I was really driving at is this idea of integrating service into,

• 51:44Speaker 01

  It's because it's how I'm wired.

• 51:46Rich Roll?

  And that seems to be like, from the very beginning, you know, sort of first and foremost in everything that you've done. And we're going to get into all of the kind of more current stuff. But I didn't know that that was kind of part of that at the inception.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  The funny thing is too, is I flew to Vegas for this marathon. I found the one that, you know, and I resonate with what you write in your book too. Like, I found it, I had a focus, I had a goal, I'm gonna do the marathon. I flew to Vegas, because that's where Rhonda's family lives. And I ran the marathon, raised this money, got it to the people that needed it. And that night, Rhonda and I went to a spa and relaxed. And low and behold, I lean over and pick up a tattered magazine that says, Ironman Kona Qualifiers. And on the front of it is Chris Leado, who's got his fingers up. And I told my wife, I'm like, man, when I was eight years old, I used to, I watched this Julie Moss on TV, crapper pants and crawl through the, you

• 52:44Speaker 01

  know, and I've always told people, you either have two responses to that, is when am I gonna do it? Or why am I gonna do it? And I told my mom, I remember saying, Mom, I'm gonna do that someday. So I told my wife, I'm like, babe, I'm gonna do the Ironman. She's like, What?

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  So the flame was lit, but like backing it up had, did you play sports in high school?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I tried. I was a really good baseball player.

• 53:03Rich Roll?

  But you weren't on the cross country team?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  No, no, I tried track for a year and they threw me into two mile. I ran two mile. I sucked at it. I came in last all the time.

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  I played a little bit of baseball. I tried football for a year. I was like, this is stupid. And then I was in the school play for the final years of my high school. And dude, my, my buddies always make fun of me. They're like, dude, you wear black turtlenecks and listen to Peshmo.

• 53:25Rich Roll?

  Right. So, I mean, in high school, were you like hanging out with the, the, the party crowd or the jocks or like, did, what clique did you fall into?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  The lame clique.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  I, I was, uh, I, I was good buddies with, with people from kind of

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  The different groups.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  The different cliques. Yeah. I really, but, but dude, I was kind of a, I was kind of a dork, man. I mean, um, and my wife tells me now, no, you weren't babe. You, people liked you. And I'm like, thanks, Stuart Smalley, but, uh, but I, uh,

• 53:58Rich Roll?

  All right. So you're a dork. You didn't, you, you could barely run the two mile.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:02Rich Roll?

  You didn't have any real experience with endurance training or kind of athletic performance in any kind of real way.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Not into the military.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  So, yeah. All right. So the military gives you structure, right? That probably gave you the tools that you needed to kind of set that goal.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they forced, yeah.

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  In terms of the marathon.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And you gotta run every day for hours.

• 54:19Rich Roll?

  Did you get like some online plan or like just how did you figure out what your program was going to be?

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Exactly that. I, I like to read. So I got a book, studied. I didn't do 12, ran like a 330. It wasn't anything or 340. It, it was not good. Um, but, uh,

• 54:34Rich Roll?

  But that's a huge accomplishment.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, for a first marathon and a guy who's never been a runner.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  You know, like you, you went well under four hours.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I guess I shouldn't say it's not good. That's, that's probably crap. It's, it's for the 330, 340 runners. It's really good. Uh, how do I get out of this?

• 54:51Rich Roll?

  You're, you're stuck.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  All right. It wasn't, it wasn't to my potential. It wasn't to my potential.

• 54:55Rich Roll?

  To your potential.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  And kind of some of the things that you've done since.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  Right. So you did it, but that spark was immediately lit.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Instantly.

• 55:02Rich Roll?

  It's, it's either one of two things. Either like, I'll never do that again, or like when, you know, when's the next?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  No, dude, it was, it was literally like, I remember Rhonda ran with me for a couple, couple hundred yards at mile 18 and I knew that it was, it was game on for me and that was in 2000.

• 55:19Rich Roll?

  How old were you?

• 55:19Speaker 01

  I was, so that would have been 2006. No, no, 2004, 2004. 2006 was my, the first time I did Ironman Florida. But 2004 is, I ran the marathon.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  All right. So the sparks lit and then did you, what did you immediately go out and get a bike or what happened?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yep. Over the court, over the course of, over the course of the next two years, I did, I started pre-med, then I, I went to paramedic school. I started paramedicine, started to, to, I was dabbling my, my hands and fingers and all kinds of stuff because I was working in the emergency room. I, I had kind of a knack for medicine. And then I started to look into running my next marathon, which I did. And I ran a sub 330. I'm like, okay, I, I'm figuring this out. And then I got a coach and did 12 triathlons my first year.

• 56:12Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  So.

• 56:14Rich Roll?

  Gung ho.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Dude, it was great. I did excellent too. I made, uh, the first or second year, I was, I made the US team to go to France. Age group nationals, which I didn't take, which was kind of cool. It seemed like a bigger deal at the time, but it's really kind of just like a way to get, a good way, but.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  And so where'd you learn how to swim then?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Uh, oh, I grew up in like, like, I mean.

• 56:37Rich Roll?

  So you just grew up swimming in the lake?

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, because we were in Detroit for like six or seven years, then in the suburbs for another couple of years. And then we moved to the upper peninsula. So I was up on, on lakes.

• 56:47Rich Roll?

  You lived on the UP?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  In the winter time?

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  Oh dude.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Dude, it was.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  Were you like ice fishing and stuff?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  It was bizarre, oh hell. Yes, dude. My dad would ice fish all the time. He'd, he'd drink and ice fish.

• 56:59Rich Roll?

  Fairs and stuff?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  He'd maybe sit in the living room and look out the window and watched when the chem lights would come on and go, dude, I hated it. I, I was not an outdoor guy. I hated hunting. I hated fishing. And I work with a bunch of firefighters that work. That's all they do is hunt and fish and work on cars. Some of them.

• 57:17Rich Roll?

  You're the crazy guy with the shaved legs. I mean.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, seriously.

• 57:20Rich Roll?

  Things like you're the whack job, right? All right. So 12, 12 triathlons in your first year, but, and so you're kind of showing immediate promise though. If you're like, you know, getting selected for these teams and, and the like, right?

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was more just an, just a example of willing yourself to do something versus, because I, I don't think I'm a raw, talented athlete by any means. And when I say something like that, it's not by, by any stretch to make myself look like, it just, I, I just kind of, that first and second year, you have that like honeymoon phase where every, you get better and better and better with every race. Until the plateau phase hits and then you're left, you know, like crap, what do I do?

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, so, so Ironman just is the, is a progression of this idea, right? So, so when's the first Ironman?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  2006, I went down to-

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  So two years after your first-

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Marathon, yeah. Ron and I drove across country to Florida.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  It was a blast.

• 58:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You found the flattest, the flattest Ironman, right? I guess Arizona's pretty flat, too.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Well, no, Arizona's not as flat as, as Florida, but Florida, Florida's flat.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  And so how'd that go?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I got like a 11:30. It was, it was tough, man.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  I didn't know what I was doing.

• 58:36Rich Roll?

  But you finished.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I didn't know what I was doing, though.

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  And so you're not like this immediate overnight success at Ironman or anything like that?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 58:43Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And so what was the takeaway from that?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  The takeaway was I want to go to Kona. Like, seriously, I became obsessed, dude. Obsessed to the, to the oomph degree.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  So you just fully geeked out?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  I did, man.

• 58:56Rich Roll?

  All the magazines.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I drove, I do, I drove my wife totally, I drove my wife and everybody around me insane. At work, at church, at home. It's, it's a bad place for somebody with ADHD to be, dude, because, um, uh, and I say that with all kindness. Uh, I think everybody has a form of ADHD, but, I own it now, dude. Um, but yes, I became obsessed.

• 59:22Rich Roll?

  And how did you balance being a dad and being a father, you know, being a husband?

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Well dude, it worked out perfect because my wife became a school teacher. So during the days that I don't work, my wife goes to school with the kids and I have, you know, 48 hours, sometimes longer than that, depending on what days of the week, by myself. Um, so this is when I started-

• 59:42Rich Roll?

  It's a schedule that can either get- You into a lot of trouble or you can channel that into something obsessive activity like this.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  I think God wired us wired men especially to be tired. I think a man with energy is a dangerous thing and I found that out many times. So

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  I'd agree with that.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, the fatigue incurred by it was an asset to say the least.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. So that's what happened, bro. I just started to

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  So you made this plan like this, like a one year plan or a two year plan? Or what was the idea?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  No, dude, at first I don't think I was that for I didn't have that much foresight and thinking. I just wanted to, I was like, man, I'm going to next race in the qualifier. Next race in qualifying for Kona.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  You start like hanging out with all the triathletes in Portland and

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  No, not really. I became friends with one guy who actually started later than I did and became better than I did.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Which was cool, but I, that's when I kind of became affiliated with the athletes lounge. Became good friends with Gary there. And then that's when I met Chris Boudreau.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  And for the listener, athletes lounge is like, is it a shop or it's like a

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  It was actually voted one of the top 10 best triathlon retail stores in all America last month.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  But it's, it's also kind of like a hub of the community, right? Like I know Torenzo who's been on the podcast, who's spent time training down here, but he goes up there and trains in Portland and is part of that.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Barb Linquist was just there last week. They have cooking stuff there.

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  And Chris Boudreau is a very successful

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, he's a stud.

• 1:01:15Rich Roll?

  Professional triathlete who ultimately became your coach.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And really good friend. He is a, now if there had been triathletes like that around when I first started, I would have loved to hang around. But I was insecure and unsure of myself. So I just thought, man, I gotta stick with this. I gotta, I gotta coach from a fitness club. And spent hours reading books.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  Were you like one of those guys who just went out and just hammered as hard as he could every workout?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  No, because

• 1:01:37Rich Roll?

  You'd read up enough to know.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I did have some direction and I wasn't, I could see, I could see I had something brewing here. Like I knew, okay, I gotta suss this. Could I be good at this? Yes. But no, dude, I didn't just go smash fest like Simon Lessing does every time he goes out the door.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  So, so, so how does this play out? At least on the Ironman landscape?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  It took me.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  I used it as another tool, obviously, to do some more fundraising, which was pretty cool, because I was able to affiliate myself with organizations that I felt strongly about. And then I got a good coach, I got a really good coach, David Cavarella, up in Portland. He is a really decent athlete, and he coached me. And four weeks before I was racing Ironman Coeur d'Alene, spending a year with him, having him build me to the point where I knew I was going to qualify for Kona, I got offered to go to Haiti. And that's when my overseas bug got in me, where I'm like, ah, this is it, man. So I remember, I was on the trainer, and I called David, I'm like, hey dude, I got a curveball thrown at me, I'm going to be going to Haiti. He's like, you're not going to Kona then. I'm telling you straight

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  up. He's like, you're not going to Kona, dude. And I'm like, I gotta go, I gotta go. So I went over there, and that first trip changed my life.

• 1:02:54Rich Roll?

  So what year was that?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  That would have been 2007?

• 1:02:58Rich Roll?

  2007.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  2007, 2008, somewhere in there.

• 1:03:01Rich Roll?

  So it's just, again, it's this interrelationship, or this balance of service and endurance sports. And again, like, the service aspect of it, kind of trumping the athletic component.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Dude, it changed my life. I saw stuff over there, and things happened to me. Like, I remember Dave telling me, dude, if you can get out and run, and I was going to a sketchy part of Port-au-Prince, this is a little bit, like, two years after, when was the earthquake?

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to remember.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  So it was a year or two after that.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  You were there after that, but not immediately.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Right, correct. And I remember thinking, you know, we were going to a compound that was walled, and it was in, you know, outside of Port-au-Prince a little bit, but there's super climbs up through the villages. And dude, I was leaving at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, and running up through the villages. And this is when endurance hit me. One of the things that the lady that ran the mission said, she said, of all the medical stuff that you did, the biggest effect you had on the people in the village was a white dude running up through the mountains in the mornings, and not... Thinking twice about it. And dude, I was cutting off gangrene. I was, I had a guy come in that

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  you know, pretty swollen foot. And it was at this time, I told myself, I don't care if I ever go to Kona. This guy came in on crutches. He'd walked for four hours to get to this clinic and I saw his foot swollen up, but it didn't smell. Like usually I'm like, ah, it should smell really bad. And he laid down on the table and I started talking to him and I looked at the bottom of his foot and he had a hole about the size of a baseball in the bottom of his foot.

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  What?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And I was trying to gather myself because I'm an emotional guy and I took a tongue depressor and a flashlight and looked in the bottom of his foot and it was filled with maggots. To the, to the, I mean, crammed, like when I, when I, when I pulled down, like maggots were falling out. And it was right then and there that I knew I'm like, this guy is gonna lose his foot. Like he's gonna, he's gotta walk back to Port-au-Prince to go get his foot chopped off. And I remember thinking to myself, this is one of those things where I feel like God whispers in my ear. And this is one of those times where I, I thought of my own sin as a human being.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  How I can look at the part, wear the mask and be doing what I think I'm doing and not have it smell. But when you lift up the veil, there's maggots or and

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  Right. It's this metaphor.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Dude, it was a huge metaphor for me. I, I remember I, I took the soles out of my shoes and put them in. It was, he had these like really crappy plastic Birkenstocks and I talked to the, to the guy that was running the, the medical clinic, the, the Haitian national that lives there and off the guy went to get his foot chopped off. So

• 1:05:47Rich Roll?

  What? I mean, how does that even hap- like, how did he, what happened to his foot? How did he get a big hole in his foot?

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Just infected. And he lives out, he kinda lives out, you know, outside of Port-au-Prince and infection turns and there's not

• 1:05:58Rich Roll?

  How come it didn't smell?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Dude, because the maggots were eating away the dead flesh. Yeah. But there's no infrastructure there, dude. Like

• 1:06:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So yeah, a year and a half, two years. It's, it's sort of like the new cycle of it's all about Haiti, right? In the aftermath, but But then life goes on and we move on to the next story.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  And we forget and you know.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  There's so much crap going on over there.

• 1:06:20Rich Roll?

  It's still happening.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yep, I went back again because I wanted to stay plugged in and same sort of thing. I remember, you know, I was doing things for people. Cutting off gangrenous, I mean, we were just doing like gorilla medicine, dude. And I had people trying to give me their chickens and that's like giving a car away here. It's like their sense of food. That's what they, you know, that's their sense of food. So that's when the cause got into me and I thought it's more than the finish line. It's more than Kona. I mean, having said that, I still spent the following two years trying to get there.

• 1:06:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So how, I mean, how long were you there? So you get back and you've missed this training and.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yep, I went to Coeur d'Alene and got freaking hammered. I had a non-displaced rib fracture. I got a broken rib in the swim.

• 1:07:03Rich Roll?

  What, did you get kicked in the ribs or something?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  I did. The second lap going around, I got kicked and I didn't realize it was messed up until the run. And my coach was there next to me on the bike and I'm like, something's wrong with my lung. And he's like, dude, you're in 11th place. I was in 11th place. He's like, keep going. And I'm like, crap, I could do this. And I folded around mile 19, went and got x-rays two days later and I cracked, I had a messed up rib.

• 1:07:25Rich Roll?

  And that was 2007.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  No, that was 2008.

• 1:07:27Rich Roll?

  2008.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  2008, yeah, somewhere in there, 2009. And then went back to Haiti again, had another, did Canada a couple of times and then.

• 1:07:38Rich Roll?

  But the thing is, is like, you're not, you're not like stamping some major imprimatur on the Ironman world. Like, you know, you're struggling. You're, you're a struggling age grouper.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:48Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe if you could put together a whole season without getting sick or having to go to Haiti, you know, you'd be in the mix to go to Kona. But you're not like lighting everyone up. So there isn't, there aren't like, you know, Christmas tree lights going off saying, you know, your destiny is to become this, you know, endurance athlete.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  I wanted to though, dude.

• 1:08:05Rich Roll?

  Guy, right?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Dude, I had.

• 1:08:06Rich Roll?

  So you have the passion, you have the focus, you're gung ho, you're fully tri-geeked out, the whole nine yards, right? But you're having trouble like actually converting.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  I, dude, I broke an hour in a sprint. I thought I was a king. I was like, that's a big deal for me. I came close to breaking two hours in a, in an Olympic. The, the, I got a roll down spot for Worlds for, for the half, but the Ironman is where I wanted to really like. I don't know, I got sucked in.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  You want to be like Chris Lieto and you want to be pointing to the sky, right?

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  I got, I got.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  Crossing the finish line from that magazine that you saw.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Well dude, how did you, how did you avoid, I mean, because did you ever want Kona?

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  I guess I did, you know, I don't know how, I was very, um, of course, uh, but I was also very impatient and I didn't want to wait like a full year to go do an Ironman. I was like, because I didn't know, I didn't know, well, first of all, I didn't even get into the, like you, like in 2007, I was just beginning, like I hadn't done anything yet. And I'd started working with a coach and I, and I wanted like a big goal, like a really, I wanted a goal that scared me.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Who were you working with? Was that when you went to Hoth?

• 1:09:16Rich Roll?

  With Chris Hoth, yeah, I was with him from the very beginning.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and all the Ironman races were kind of sold out for that year. You know, I was really going to have to wait another year. And I was, I'm trying to remember the timeline exactly because I don't want to speak out of school, but essentially what happened was, you know, I could, I could wait another year and get into like Ironman Canada, you know, if I'm, if I'm ready at the computer or the day that tickets go live or whatever, or I could take a, you know, a trip down the wild rabbit hole and, you know, try to get into this Ultraman race. And I, I, I just couldn't get Ultraman out of my mind, I think because it scared me to death.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  There was something about that that was very alluring because that was, for me, that was what the journey was about. It wasn't about Kona or being like atop the age group ranks or anything like that. I needed to do something that really shook, shook me up to kind of connect with myself.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Dude, what did you say?

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't about competing and all, it was a different sensibility, I suppose. Not that I wasn't intrigued and interested in Ironman, of course I, of course I was. And had there been the opportunity to go and do an Ironman in a, in a way that worked with the calendar and the kind of progression that I was making, then I would have done that.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  When I read your book, what did you say to, like, how did you just call up? Cause that's kind of like, you don't hear about that anymore. You, you don't hear like.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  Well, now like, you know, Ultraman gets a lot more press and there's more people that want to do it, even though that race has been around for, it's, what is it, 30 years now? Yep. So it's been around for 30 years. I mean, in 2000, so the first time I did Ultraman was 2008. So I would have been calling Jane in like, very, it must have been like 10, 11 months before the race. Yeah, your book said you had like eight, eight months to train. Right. But I mean, that was from when I got the green light that I was, I was about, yeah, I must, I must have called Jane about nine months before the race. I know that it was before the window was open that they were accepting applications. And I called her

• 1:11:23Rich Roll?

  simply because I wanted her to tell me that it wasn't going to happen. So I could like, put it out of my mind and stop thinking about it. Cause I was like, I read this article and I was obsessing about it and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I was like, I'm just going to call her up and she'll, she'll like set me straight and then I can go back to living my life and sleeping at night. And I just, you know, like on active.com or wherever, where they have this stuff, there was a phone number or it was from the website, one of those two. And there was a phone number and I just called her and she picked up the phone. Just. And, uh, yeah, it was probably her house, you know?

• 1:11:59Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and I just had, I just, I was just very honest with her. I was like, look, I read this article. I can't stop thinking about it. I kind of have no business calling you, but like, I'm really fascinated by what this is all about. And, you know, I'm totally green and I don't know anything, but you know, I'm really interested in this and I want you to tell me like what it, what it would take to be one of those 35 people to be selected. And if I'm a lunatic and, you know, please just tell me, you know, disabuse me of this notion that it's going to happen. And that was the moment where, you know, she could have or probably, possibly should have said, you know, why don't you go and do a couple of Ironmans or at least run a marathon or do a couple of other things and call me in a year or two years. And then we can have a serious discussion about it. But that's

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  not what she said. What she said was, you know, it's really cool that you're calling and you know, it's really early on and Ultraman is much more than just finding, you know, the, the fastest athletes. It's about finding the right people that are suited for this journey. You know, it's like, I kind of had this like, You know, soul surfer conversation with her about like where I was in my life and you know, why this was intriguing to me. And I think there was something about that that must have connected with her and, and you know, allowed her to be more open minded about the possibility. So she didn't say yes, but she said, you know, why don't you call me in a couple of months? We'll have another conversation. She didn't close the door. You know what I mean? And so it was little like breadcrumbs of, you know, okay,

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  well, maybe I will move over in this direction a little bit.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Well, dude, one of the things she said to me before I left the islands and ultra Manawaya, she's, she knows that we're friends and she's like, hey, next time you come back here, make sure you bring Rich with you.

• 1:13:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I love her. She's a, she's a dear, dear person. And what she does with that race is really special. I think it would be, it's interesting because I look back on it and even in the midst of doing it in 2008 and 2009, I'm looking around going, well, you know, we could like really improve this race if we got sponsor money and why don't they do this? And why don't they do that? And we could, you know, like, why isn't there any media here covering this such a fascinating story? And I couldn't understand like why she was so, I understood why she was protective over it and its legacy, but I think at that time I was feeling that she was maybe a little overprotective. But now in hindsight and looking back, I understand completely why she's made the decisions that

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  she has. And, and I think that that has really preserved the integrity of that race and allowed it to maintain this sort of, you know, austerity and purity that you just don't find in other races. I mean, certainly you can find that in, in plenty of ultra races, but you're hard pressed to find something like that in the triathlon world. And it's because she said no to, you know, a lot of opportunities that have come down her way. And it's her baby and she gets to make the decisions and it's a monarchy and she's the queen.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  No kidding, man.

• 1:14:59Rich Roll?

  I'm fine with that.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  And me too. I am too. And I feel blessed to know her. I mean, she's, she can run at how she wants to if, if it keeps producing, you know? And dude, look at the door. I mean, it's just cool that you. What a doorway for you to walk through, man.

• 1:15:13Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, I don't, you know, I'm always conscious of, I'm not trying to like profit off the experience.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  No, I'm not saying that.

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to share the value of what it meant to me.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  In the form of a story or a narrative that people might be able to emotionally connect with.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  In kind of a metaphor kind of way. But I'm always very cautious or, you know, kind of a conscious, I should say, of, of making sure about how I speak about that race because I have so much reverence for it.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:15:45Rich Roll?

  And for how it's conducted.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Yep, I totally agree.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  And for the other athletes and the, and the crew members and the volunteers and the, the sort of, you know, the Ohana of the whole thing.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, right on.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  So let's get to this part now.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Because that's what everyone wants to hear about anyway.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Rich Roll?

  So, so, you know, you're, you're doing your thing in Ironman, but you know, you're just, you're not really distinguishing yourself. So, so where does this Epic Five kind of, I mean, that, that's the next.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  Thing, right?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Epic Five was, um, yeah, that opportunity came, um, and I took it.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  And so how did that opportunity come though? There's a lot of people would be like, well, how did that even enter into your mind?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Jason asked, you know, Lester got ahold of me or we, I talked and.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  I mean, how did that, how did you even?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  I, I, he was being coached by the same guy that was coaching me.

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  I got you.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  That's kind of where.

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  There was a connection.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of where the window opened. Um, and then, you know, over the course of a couple of conversations, um, and that's when I, I found another opportunity to work with, uh, Craig. Uh, that's when I worked with, that's how I met Lieto. I worked with XXX Church, the online accountability program.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Where you can.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  So explain what that is.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  I know what that is.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, XXX Church is an online accountability program where, um.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  It sounds dirty though.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  It does sound dirty. It's, uh, it's pretty cool actually. Uh, and dude, it pisses off a lot of people on the, on the conservative, like even on the conservative front, dude, it's like, like. Like I'm way more conservative. I'm just not pissed off about it. You know what I mean? But these guys catch a lot of crap, but the service that they do is it saves people's lives. No kidding. I remember meeting people that said, dude, that saved my life. It's an online accountability program where you put your, you pick three accountability partners. Like for example, my wife, my son and my daughter all know where I go on the internet. It's just a, it's just a fail.

• 1:17:50Rich Roll?

  They had access to your.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  They get a report.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  History or whatever.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  And it's not because I'm some porn junkie, but I could be. And I spent a lot of time on the computer. You spent a lot of time on the computer. Dude, there are pitfalls out there and I've fallen in them before. Whether willingly or unwillingly, and now it's become so, um, it's just, I see people and talk to people all the time struggling with porn addiction.

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  And it's a big problem. I mean, I think, you know, all kinds of sort of internet related addictions are cropping up and this is new terrain.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  And I think, you know, it becomes a big problem. It can be devastating to people's lives.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Dude, it, it really can. It really does. It wrecks the home, man. And, and I, and I have guy, like, I remember when I was, when I was, you know, I had a Jeremy Frichette, my buddy from New York, the photographer that's been working with me. He flew out and took pictures of us. They, they came in from California and I remember a couple of guys coming up to me going like, dude, why are you so against sex? And I'm like, what do you mean so against sex? He's like, well, you run it for porn. I'm like, dude, I am rah rah for sex. I'm all for sex. Sex, the way that's supposed to be designed with your wife is awesome, but with the daughter and the son, especially his son, dude, my, my Ian is asking me questions like freaking crazy.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  And this is just a great avenue and a great tool to talk to Ian about like, dude, man, you gotta watch it online because it can suck you in, man.

• 1:19:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it's interesting to hear you explain it because, you know, when we first got acquainted, you know, through email or phone or whatever. And I was like, uh, who's this guy? And I'm checking you out and I, and I noticed you were doing advocacy work for this group and not knowing, not having ever met you and not really having a frame of reference for what this organization was, you know, I, I was like, oh, this is some kind of. You know, you're, you're the guy who's like out with a, with a, you know,

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  A picket sign, you know, shaming people.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, because it's easy to, it's easy to draw that conclusion from the limited amount of information. You have to be very careful about how you kind of frame the whole thing.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right, dude. And they do, they do a pretty cool, like they go on, they, Craig Gross and Ron Jeremy, they do college tours together and they have debates. They're very good friends.

• 1:20:02Rich Roll?

  With Ron Jeremy?

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really cool. Ron Jeremy and Craig Gross. And like, when I was over there at the after-party, I had my hand around a guy that had a Hustler t-shirt on and we were both, you know, giving the devil horns, something like rock on. And I just was trying to figure out a way to create dialogue with people. Cause dude, when I was in the military, it was everywhere. I mean, porn was all over the place and you don't, you don't stop to consider it. And I have friends that struggle with it and I know marriages that have broken up with it. And it's, it's really just to start a discussion to say, hey, man, just be careful when you're on the computer. And so, yeah, so I did that. And that's when, you know, going on to the Queen K on the fifth day of the Epic Five, and you know, the Epic Five,

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  it's so cool to be able to talk to you about it. I could spend hours just talking to you about that, but I'm getting ready to take off. I'm the first out of the water on the last day and none other than Chris Leado drives up next to me and is on his bike and puts his hand on my shoulder and says, can I ride with you for the next 40 miles?

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  And you're leapfrogging way ahead in this narrative.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Sorry, dude. I'm, I want to make sure that I'm.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  But I do like, you know, footnoting this, this sort of full circle aspect.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  Sorry, dude.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  Of, of how Chris has played an important part in your life and how, you know, from the moment you see that magazine and that inspires you to go and do, Iron Man to, you know, him joining you for the final leg of Epic Five. And then some of the things that you guys are doing together right now is awesome. You know, it's really cool and it's a beautiful thing. And I think it's, it's, you know, evidence and. Testimony that you're on the path that you're meant to be on. Yep. You know, these sort of synchronous events are aligning for you. So that's really cool, but we're not going to skip through. All right, dude, I'll give you back the steering wheel. I'll give you back the steering wheel. I'm still trying to figure out how you got involved with it. So Jason had a connection to your coach or the like. Yeah. Place Lounge or the Portland community. Yep, exactly. That's how it all came. Yep, cuz he.

• 1:21:52Rich Roll?

  That was the genesis of it. And so the idea for people that are listening, or if you've read my book, like you read about how I did the thing Epic Five with Jason Lester. The idea was that we were going to do five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands and do it in five consecutive days. Correct. Island to island to island, starting on the island of Kauai. Yep. And then going to Oahu, then to Molokai, then to Maui, and then to the big island. Yep. And Jason, this was Jason's brainchild. It's his idea. It was his concept and he's the one who produced the entire thing and made the whole thing happen, which was no small feat. Correct. And he was kind enough to invite me to attempt this with him in 2010.

• 1:22:37Rich Roll?

  And we did it together. It was kind of an experiment. It was a challenge. It was an adventure. It was not a race. Right. It was just the idea of can we do this? And let's try to do this together. Right. And that's what I write about in my book. Ultimately, it took us a little bit longer than five days for reasons I explain in the book, a whole variety of sort of things that happen. Awesome part of the book. When you're going to, you know, sort of tackle, you know, an enormous challenge, there's going to be obstacles and unforeseen events and things like that. And that comes through our timeline off a little bit. We finished it in like six and a half days. Right. Something like that. So we, you know, we didn't, we didn't meet our five day goal, but we did complete the challenge.

• 1:23:18Rich Roll?

  And as a result of that, Jason had an interest in kind of developing this into an annual event. Right. He would grow organically and slowly. So, so 2011 rolls around. Yep. And you're one of the guys that. Yep. That becomes involved in this thing. I mean, what is the mental decision calculus that makes you say, I want to do this or I'm going to do this?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Dude, I think, to be honest with you, Rich, I think, I think I was in the second he asked me. I think that was the year he ran that, the one, the ESPY, and he had met me in Portland for coffee, and he had had his ESPY there, and he says, hey, I got something coming up here, I think, next year.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  And that was before you guys did it. And...

• 1:24:05Rich Roll?

  So he already told you about what his...

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think he'd even mentioned that he's gonna, that you guys were gonna do it. Anyway, I knew it was happening from him before you guys did it. And then after you guys did it, we touched base again, and he's like, hey, I got, I'm doing it with five guys. Do you want in?

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  And I said, yeah. So...

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  Was that, but that had to be a family decision, right? I mean...

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I told her, I told Rhonda, I was like, I played the limp dog, but I was totally in, man. I told Rhonda, I was like, hey babe, I wanna do this, and she's like, oh, I mean, because Rhonda is as supportive as she is, but she's like, man, babe, just freaking chill, but...

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was, it was full-on support. The crappy thing about that was, she couldn't come with me. That was something that I struggled with for a little bit.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Because I knew it was gonna be lonely. And then, it's like loneliness and dog years, when your wife's not there and you're in pain.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  So, once you decide that you're gonna do this thing, how does that change your physical preparation? Like, how did you tweak your training to adapt your body, and your, your mind?

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  Your emotions and all of that to get ready to endure this thing?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Well, I coached myself, number one.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:25Rich Roll?

  That's a bold move.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, well, because I knew, I just, I think I'd been reading, I, I was reading stuff that you were do- How did I, I remember reading, and I talked to Jason a couple of times, but I just kinda was at that point now where, you know, I'd read a lot of Gordo's stuff, and a lot of Joel's stuff, and I-

• 1:25:45Rich Roll?

  Gordo Byrne, he's a legendary endurance coach.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  I emailed him and talked to him a little bit, and it-

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  He won Ultraman before.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, Alan Kuzins I talked with, I was picking- The brains of athletes and people that were way better than me. And I just trained a lot of hours at a reasonably slower pace. And, you know, I threw an interval work and I threw in, but I, I mean, like, I would watch the, I would spend six hours, seven hours on the trainer. I would run for, you know, six hours. I would do, I just.

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  But coming from Ironman training to suddenly getting to a place where you're running for six hours. I mean, that's a big.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  It was a build. Yeah. I didn't just, I didn't just like flip the switch and the next day go, I mean, I, I progressed because common sense dictates, okay, if I'm in Ironman shape, I realize that it's more of a recovery game than anything. You know, like, like, uh, those that recover the best race the best in Ultraman, that is anyway. I didn't know it by then, but, and at the time too, this is when I started to entertain the thought of Ultraman, but I just didn't think I was good enough or fast. I seriously didn't.

• 1:26:50Rich Roll?

  Right. We had a conversation about that after, after Epic Five, but let's stick to this.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Actually, yeah. You, you played a key role in that. But nonetheless, I was thinking about Ultraman at that time. And then when this came up, I'm like, oh, cool. If I do this, there's a good chance I could maybe use it as a, as a.

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  Right. That's a, that's a way into Ultraman.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause, uh.

• 1:27:10Rich Roll?

  Cause people don't, for, for listeners out there, you can't just sign up for some of these ultra races.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:15Rich Roll?

  You have to be vetted. You have to be, um, somebody who can prove that you're capable of covering the distance and you're not going to die. And some of these races, it's, they're like filling out college applications.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  You need letters of recommendation and you have to be able to establish that within the last 18 months, you've done a certain number of races of certain distances, et cetera, et cetera. And now Ultraman is like that. Like you have to have done another Ultraman, or at least, I don't know exactly what the rule is, but I think you have, you can't just go to Ultraman Hawaii.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. It's very, yeah, I was, uh, well, dude, I remember talking to you. I'm like, dude, I don't know if I'm gonna get in and, um, so yeah, I, uh. I got in.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  So, but, but sticking to Epic Five now.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  So, so how long did you, I mean, how long did you prepare? How many months or was this like a year?

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Rich Roll?

  You know, launching up to this?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  10 months, I think.

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  I just remember in my training, you're talking about how recovery becomes more important. For me, yeah, recovery, but also it's, it had so much less to do with the intensity of the workouts than it had to do with being persistently in motion and, and acclimating to being fatigued and training through fatigue.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely.

• 1:28:30Rich Roll?

  You know, sort of experimenting with sleep deprivation. Like I'm going to get up and I'm going to run when I haven't slept at all because I'm going to have to be able to know what that feels like.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  I would stay up at work. I would take the advantage of not having, like not sleeping at work, staying up all night at my job and I would use the next day, I would get into the water and then I would go for a ride and I would literally do that very thing.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  And the intensity that, that I trained for that was very low.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:56Rich Roll?

  It was very casual, but I was kind of always moving. I was like always riding my bike or, you know, it was like this perpetual motion machine where your body just gets acclimated to the idea that it is constantly in motion.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Were you full on vegan then?

• 1:29:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was vegan. I was vegan at the first Ultraman.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  That's right. That's what you, that's right, that's right.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the, how'd you fuel for that? No, you talked about that in the book.

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, that's been an ongoing experimentation.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:31Rich Roll?

  But, you know, trying to eat real foods as much as possible.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:29:34Rich Roll?

  And when you're, when you're training at that lower intensity.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  You can digest that stuff.

• 1:29:38Rich Roll?

  It's much easier to digest.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  Real food, so it's not about, you don't, you actually don't want to be spiking your blood sugar.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  With crazy amounts of sugar.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, your metabolism's working.

• 1:29:46Rich Roll?

  You're, you're trying to train your body to burn fat for fuel. You're trying to be extremely economic and efficient in all of your actions.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  And you're moving at a pace in which you're able to digest food to a certain extent.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  Like regular food.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:02Rich Roll?

  I mean, is that how?

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. A little bit more of a struggle when when gravity takes a hold and you get off the bike and start running.

• 1:30:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  I mean, that was that was.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  It's easier to eat on the bike.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Of course. But yeah, so.

• 1:30:13Rich Roll?

  All right. So.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  Same, same.

• 1:30:14Rich Roll?

  So it's you. It's Juan Cravere. It is Juan Juan.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, Joseph.

• 1:30:21Rich Roll?

  And Yosef.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Our Jim.

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  From Spain and and.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  Flaherty. Mike Flaherty.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Mike Flaherty, right.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  And then Lester.

• 1:30:28Rich Roll?

  And Lester. Okay. So that's a good group.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Rich Roll?

  And you show up in Kauai like what like a week ahead of time.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Rich Roll?

  I was like, what's going on?

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly what I did. And my wife had written.

• 1:30:38Rich Roll?

  I mean, are you scared or are you excited? Like, what is going on in your mind?

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was scared and excited. And I'd never been to Hawaii before, dude.

• 1:30:46Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  And I'd been seeing the videos of you.

• 1:30:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So Jason and I had done it. So you knew it could be done. And and and we had had all these other pitfalls and the like. I mean, in certain respects, you know, the the journey that Jason and I took was kind of a proving ground for for you guys.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  It was awesome, dude.

• 1:31:04Rich Roll?

  That barrier had then exploded. So you guys knew you could do it. And you guys could just go out and and and kill it. And you get it done in five days.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't necessarily say we killed it.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Well, you you accomplished the feat.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Man, dude, I don't even know how to unravel this ball. It was.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  We got to hit the highlights because we could talk for I could talk to you for nine hours.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  These are the highlights for me.

• 1:31:34Rich Roll?

  But I want to hear about like, I want to hear. Yeah, I want to hear about the high highs and I want to hear about.

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:39Rich Roll?

  The low lows.

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  Right on. The high part of it was running with Ian Adamson for me on Molokai.

• 1:31:46Rich Roll?

  Legendary runner, sort of. He's affiliated with Newton.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  Running shoes, right?

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is. He holds a couple of world records, a couple of medals.

• 1:31:56Rich Roll?

  And he kind of came on to be kind of crew help and.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was. Well, he and his wife, Leah Garcia, who works PBR, travels the United States doing the the pro the pro rodeo.

• 1:32:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. The bull rider.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, on TV. They were doing the documentary for Outside Television. That was.

• 1:32:11Rich Roll?

  That's right. Outside did a documentary.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  So they were like the. The media crew.

• 1:32:15Rich Roll?

  I got you.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Cameras all over the place.

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  When Jason and I did it, I remember when we started in Kauai, it was just Rebecca, who's our friend. And she was the crew chief and took care of everything.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  She's awesome.

• 1:32:25Rich Roll?

  She's amazing. And hi Rebecca, because I know you listen to.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Hi, we were, we were, we were loving you on you about an hour ago.

• 1:32:32Rich Roll?

  Julie says hi. But I remember Jason and I just standing in front of her condo in Princeville. And it was like four o'clock in the morning, whatever. It's like, all right, let's start running.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 1:32:42Rich Roll?

  Started, you know, there was, there was nobody.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Man, dude.

• 1:32:45Rich Roll?

  I think Rebecca snapped a picture on a little Instamatic and that was about it.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  It's awesome, man.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  So it was cool that you guys had, you know, a full film crew.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  Around.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it brought in a whole different dynamic, but I think, I think running with Ian was, it was a really big highlight for me.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  And I got an interview. Oh, another big highlight for me was on day four, I was walking through the airport. I had my glasses on because I had been crying on the plane, getting ready to land. And four guys from my fire department were standing there with a Hillsboro Fire flag. And they crewed me for that day.

• 1:33:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, I think I remember hearing about that.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:33:22Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool. So they surprised you. They flew out to get you.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. That was really, really cool.

• 1:33:26Rich Roll?

  But wait a minute, you were crying on that. What were you, you were crying out of like fatigue?

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Dude, I was just, I was just crying, man.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Just, this is ridiculous.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  I'm getting disappointed because I haven't made you cry yet.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Dude, I.

• 1:33:38Rich Roll?

  Out of this podcast. And now with all the pressure, you're probably not going to.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Rich Roll?

  But anyway.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  There's still time.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I grabbed on my buddy, my buddy, Joe Lennox, who's one of the closest, one of my closest friends. He, he was there with Ted and Matt Dobbin and Larry Yakme. They're all close friends of mine. And they've played a significant role in my life.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Even to this day, like Lennox, Joe crewed me for Ultraman and I went and spent time with Ted and Kenya. But nonetheless, they were there on day four and.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Joseph Arjum was, Juan Carrari came up to me and said, Joseph Arjum told me that you have your friends here. So you are going to fly today.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  It was just a shot in the arm that I needed. So day four was not as difficult. It was the hardest day, but it wasn't as hard as I anticipated it was going to be because I had that momentum.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  You had those boys with you.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty cool.

• 1:34:35Rich Roll?

  Day four was horrible for me.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  It was, it was a hard day for me.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  Jason had to carry me out of the car after that day, carry me to the hotel. You know, it was, it was, I was in bad, bad shape, man.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Dude, is that the day that he was feeding you?

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, probably. Well, I mean, we, we had, we had been dealing with such ridiculous sleep deprivation and, and it.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  You guys had mechanical issues?

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  We had, yeah. So like on the second day in Oahu, we had all these bike problems that you can read about in detail in my book, but essentially we didn't even get going on our bikes on the second day in Oahu until like

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  12:30.

• 1:35:09Rich Roll?

  12:30 in the afternoon or something like that. So we already had like blown hours and hours and hours trying to solve these stupid problems. And so our timeline got all messed up. So that just threw the whole kind of momentum and flow.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, mentally that wears you down too.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  So by the time we got to day four, I was, I was cooked, man.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Rich Roll?

  Just getting through that day was the hardest thing.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pain.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  I remember just saddle sores, not being able to sit down on my seat.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  I know it dude.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  And I, I can remember just like riding along with the, this beautiful coastline, this beautiful beach to my right and looking at it and going, I don't care, man. I just, I want to lie my bike down on the pavement and I could fall asleep in like five seconds.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  I know. I know dude, the, one of the funniest parts of your books, when, when you guys were talking about, dude, just don't talk to me. Just shut, just shut up. Cause, cause.

• 1:35:56Rich Roll?

  With, with me, when I start to get really fatigued like that, like I can't handle external stimuli and I get really grouchy, man. You know, I get really, and I talk about that in the book too. Like I'm not proud of that, you know, but I, I couldn't handle like human interaction. Like I just was, I was losing my shit.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Isn't it weird dude? How when you get like, you just get winnowed down to the core, like everything is removed except the like breathing.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Pretty much breathing. Everything else is like, like.

• 1:36:29Rich Roll?

  Well, you can't, um, I mean, you were saying at the beginning of the podcast, like you, you know, uh, you know, you lie to yourself more than, you know, like you're always catching yourself lying to yourself. But when you're, when you're in that state, there's something extremely pure about that. Like you're just being burned in the flame.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:36:45Rich Roll?

  There is no, no lie can persist because you are just laid bare, you know.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Dude, it's refining. You're just getting refined, man.

• 1:36:53Rich Roll?

  There is no mask and there's, yeah, I mean, you are like at your rawest self in that regard. And I think that's something like unconsciously, I think that I was always seeking. And that's what drew me to the ultra world to begin with is I wanted to have that experience of, you know, what it would be like to absolutely go all the way up against myself to the wall, to that breaking point and see what was there, you know? And I think I learned a lot about myself through, through doing that.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Well, you don't have a choice.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  No, you.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Because you're the student and the teacher at the same time.

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, so yeah, so Maui was rough. I mean, we ended up, you know, we finished the bike and it was, you know, late at night. We, I mean, I just could not believe after I finished that bike that I was going to be running a marathon. There was just no way.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  On earth. And to this day, looking back on that, um, you know, it's, I'm still baffled at how I actually got off the bumper of that car and got through that, that evening. And, you know, it's a, it's a spiritual odyssey.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Dude, it's.

• 1:37:58Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? And there is no, you can't really put words to what it was like to be in the midst of that experience. So, I mean, I want to know, like, you know, what was that for you?

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  I was hallucinating and imagined Demi Moore was chasing me. I, I'm not kidding you.

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  What's that say about you, Demi Moore?

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  Dude. Seriously.

• 1:38:23Rich Roll?

  Where were you when that was happening?

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  That was on day five. I started hallucinating. The, the beginning of the swim, I was out front because day five, I'm like, day five was the only day I'm like, I'm freaking gone. I, I just want to push it. That's when I met Chris, like I said earlier, jumped the gun there. Um, but the end of day four, I remember I was hallucinating. I thought I saw snow leopards coming out of the, just like.

• 1:38:45Rich Roll?

  Under the queen keg.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, and then, uh, the beginning of the swim, I saw Finn in front of me and then another Finn. And I'm like, yeah, this is it. Now here I go. I'm just going to roll over and get eaten like a seal. And it was, uh, dolphins, but I thought it was a shark. I just, you're just, your mind is, that's why like talking to you, you get it. I don't have to explain anything. And you understand, but to other people that you have to explain it to, they'll never get it. It's just kinda.

• 1:39:12Rich Roll?

  Well, try, let's try.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think people are really interested in this. I mean, they're interested in like why you would want to do this to begin with, and they're interested in, you know, what that experience felt like and, and ultimately what you took away from it.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  I think, I think, um, without, without like giving too many canned answers, obviously there's always that desire to see how far I can go before I crack. I mean, that's just an essence and a core element of most people that do this type of sport. At least they, you know, the select few that feel like they want to find out how far the limit is. So that had definitely something to do with it. Number two, um, it's cool. It's a cool event to be a part of. I mean, there's that, there's that selfish part of me that's like, man, this would be freaking awesome. Um, three.

• 1:40:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's much more like the amazing race than it is like qualifying for Kona.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think, um,

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  dude, there's, there's so many metaphors from my walk with Christ and racing. And I think I've found that with many athletes that, that say that that's, you know, the source of. Many Christian athletes that I feel like, especially Chris Lieto talking on that Queen K when we were talking, he goes, dude, why are you doing this? He's like, you look relatively fresh, man. And Chris was killing me. He was freaking hammering and I was trying my hardest to not look like-

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  Well, you're on the bike. I mean, you know, nobody can keep up with that.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  And then he kind of scooted around. He's like, let me, let me cut wind for you right here. And I'm like, dude, Chris Lieto is breaking wind for me. Like, he's in front of me, like, right now, breaking the yaw. But I had some real personal moments with myself.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Like, I resonate, I remember thinking to myself too, like, I could just lay down, I could just lay down right here, and it was in the middle of the day, and not even worry about the cement searing my body, and just fall asleep.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  And in all the letters that Rhonda wrote to me, she wrote me a letter every day, and I had to open it before the race. She struggled a lot, like, why are you doing this?

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  And

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  I think ultimately is just because I just want to, I just want to go somewhere that nobody else has gone.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  And it doesn't even have anything to do with Triple X Church, or, like, I just want to go and be somewhere where I know I can't screw anything up. And a lot of times for me, in the midst of the most uncomfortable parts of the race, I wish I could cash in on the feeling of how serene they are after the race is done. Like, there are so many times where I'm like, why did I waste that 20 minutes, even when I was throwing up? Why did I waste that? Why did I not just kind of like, totally revel in the idea of nobody else is experiencing this at this very moment? And, uh, does that make sense, dude?

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Is that, I know how, I know how like, artsy that sounds, but to push yourself to the limit and then go farther is, it's almost, it's just almost hard to describe.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  That's it. That's our show. Don't forget, part two with Christian is coming up on Thursday, a couple of days, depending upon when you're listening to this. So again, that means essentially two episodes this week, an RRP twofer. So that's good stuff. Anyway, before we close it out, a couple of announcements. Again, my new course with Mind Body Green is called The Art of Living with Purpose. Check it out, mindbodygreen.com. It's full of all kinds of awesome. Secondly, we have an iOS app for the iPhone and the iPad. That's coming soon. It's in development. We're getting close, super close. I'm really excited about that as well. We're almost there. It's going to be a way for you to access the entire catalog of the podcast. As you know, iTunes only

• 1:43:25Rich Roll?

  goes back to the most recent 50 episodes. This is going to allow you to go all the way back to number one, and the app is going to be free. Super cool. More on that as we progress. That's it. Until Thursday, be good, everybody. And if you want to support the show, you know how to do it. Use the Amazon banner at richroll.com. Doesn't cost you any extra on your Amazon purchases, like buying a paperback copy of Finding Ultra. But Amazon kicks us some loose commission change that allows us to keep the lights on. It allows us to support Tyler, who produces the show. Thank you, Tyler, and all that good stuff. You can also donate to the show. You can do it with Bitcoin. Now, we added that functionality, which is pretty cool. You can do that on a one-time basis,

• 1:44:08Rich Roll?

  weekly basis, monthly basis, any amount of your choice. Thank you so much for doing that. The show will always be free. This is not an obligation, but we thank you guys so much for supporting us by going the extra mile and doing that. It means a lot. Other ways you can support, you can leave a review on iTunes. We love that. One of my favorite ways of supporting the show. Put up an Instagram of you listening to the show while you're out exercising, or at work, or commuting, or whatever it is you're doing. I love seeing people enjoying the show in their native environment. So keep that up, you guys. I dig it. Go to richroll.com for all your plant power needs, your provisions, t-shirts, trucker hats. We got beanies. We got nutritional supplements.

• 1:44:48Rich Roll?

  We've got the meditation program. We've got the Jai See Digital Downloadable Cookbook. All that stuff. You know about that. Anyway, I'm out of here. I'll check back in with you in a few days from Beirut. They say it's the Paris of the Middle East. So I'm anxious to see if that's actually true. I think it might be. So full report coming your way. Until then, live wide, love deep, and I'll catch you on the flip side. Peace. Plants.