The Elite Ironman Who Survived a Mid-Race Heart Attack: Tim O'Donnell on Mental Fitness, His Brush with Death & Finding Joy In Training

Not all heart attacks are fatal. But when your heart’s left anterior descending artery becomes 100% blocked, the result is a massive heart attack known as The Widowmaker. Few survive its fatal clutch. But today’s guest Timothy O’Donnell beat the odds. A professional long-course triathlete with over 50 podium finishes, including more than 25 wins at major events throughout the world, Tim is the 2009 ITU Long Distance World Champion, placed 2nd at the 2019 Ironman World Championships in Kona, and became the first American to finish that race in under 8 hours. Tim’s impressive 20-year athletic journey (and, more importantly, his life) nearly came to a tragic end in 2021 when he suffered a widowmaker heart attack in the middle of a half-ironman race. Somehow, Timothy was able to finish the race, placing 11th and making it to the hospital in time to make a full recovery. Tim’s journey is nothing short of astonishing. Today he opens up about the strange dichotomy between his elite fitness and near-death experience, his decision to return to racing, and the critical importance of lifestyle choices for endurance athletes of all levels. We also talk about his experience at the Naval Academy and tenure as a Naval officer, triathlon professional athlete representation in the media today, his thoughts on the Norwegian Train, the future of triathlon, advice for amateur athletes, and more. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: InsideTracker: insidetracker.com/RichRoll Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RichRoll Birch Living: birchliving.com/richroll Athletic Greens: https://www.athleticgreens.com/richroll SriMu: http://srimu.com/rrp Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:13Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  Heart attacks, that's the number-one killer. This is the thing that most people are gonna die from.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  You aren't invincible, no matter how fit you are. For men and women in the U.S. I mean, that's real.

• 1:30Rich Roll?

  My guest today is quite literally lucky to be alive.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It's okay, just watch this.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  His name is Timothy O'Donnell, and he is a professional long-course triathlete with over 50 podium finishes. Timothy is the 2009 ITU Long Distance World Champion. And Tim O'Donnell from the USA. He placed second at the 2019 Ironman World Championships in Kona.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I'm so humbled and honored, thank you. He is a humble man, he's a gentleman, and Tim O'Donnell, second place.

• 2:00Rich Roll?

  Timothy's impressive 20-year athletic journey, and more importantly, his life, nearly came to a tragic end when, in 2021, he suffered a widowmaker heart attack in the middle of a half-Ironman race.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  You know, I asked myself, am I gonna die? Two children, Isabelle and Finn, and Finn was only eight weeks old at that point, so... Cannot wait to give Rini and the kids hugs. It's gonna change my perspective on life, that's for sure.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  Somehow Timothy was able to finish that race, placing 11th, which is absolutely insane.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Life is precious and it goes by quickly.

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  We discuss his heart attack, of course, his life and career as a pro triathlete. We discuss his experience at the Naval Academy and his tenure as a naval officer, advice for amateur athletes and tons more. Timothy's story is truly inspiring. I was honored and grateful to have him here to share it with us. Before we dive in, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Okay, so here it is. This is me and Timothy O'Donnell.

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  Speaking of Greg Bennett, we have him to thank for getting us together. The great, very handsome and successful, accomplished Greg Bennett.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Such a great guy, baby. Definitely a mentor role for me over the years as well. Been lucky to have some guys like that around me.

• 3:30Rich Roll?

  It's cool to see him kind of step into the podcast thing and really kind of embrace it. I listened to the episodes that you guys did together and it's cool what he's building there and it's great. And I appreciate him connecting us. I mean, obviously I'm familiar with your story. I've followed your career for many, many years. And it's just, you know, we were chatting a little bit before the podcast, like what happened to you isn't that uncommon? And yet, the facts of what kind of transpired are so extreme that it makes this, it makes for just this insane story. So let's just like, out of the gate, like, get it out there, right? Like you had a Widowmaker heart attack in the middle of a half Ironman race.

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  It's like the most insane thing.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I finished the race. I do not recommend finishing the, finishing the race or your workout if you're having symptoms of a heart attack. That's for sure.

• 4:27Rich Roll?

  Just for context, you're at the, you know, the tip of the spear of elite Ironman professional triathlete performance. You've had every iteration between like second and ninth, I think, at the Ironman World Championships, like second, third, fifth, like, I don't know, not 10th, not first, right? I don't know.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Pretty close.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  Too many, you know, you, how many times, you've raced there 10 times, nine times?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  10 times, yeah.

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  10 times. Many times, like the fastest American, your best performance in 2019, finishing second.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Second to Jan, yep.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  Correct. And only American to go under eight hours?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yep, still the only.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Only one.

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  So, and, and being like 39 at the time, right?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  Older, on the older side of things. And then the following season, you're in this half-Ironman race in Miami, which was like on a, on like a, the bike course was on like a...

• 5:29Speaker 01

  The NASCAR.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on the NASCAR thing. It's all, and it's streamed, right? There's video footage of all of this. In addition to you, like, having a vlog about the whole thing, which is unbelievable, you're pushing like 300 watts and you start to experience symptoms. So like, I want to, like, walk me through this entire thing.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  So I'll just rewind a little bit.

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Because, you know, finished 2019, race of my life, second to the Ironman World Championship to Jan Fedeno, and I'm excited.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  The GOAT.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yep, the GOAT. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't argue against that one. That's, he's got a strong argument. So, you know, COVID hits and kind of 2020 shuts down.

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  And I'd actually started getting symptoms earlier in 2020. We got back from Australia, Rudy and I both got really sick. That was the beginning of February 2020. No one really knew what COVID was yet, especially in the US. Over in Australia, it was a little more prevalent just because of its proximity to China. And I started getting like chest fluttering and all of a sudden it started to get kind of hard to breathe when I was swimming. So I'd actually gone in 2020 and ran some tests. I'd done a stress test, done echocardiograms and things like that. And the juxtaposition of what they found versus how they saw me as a professional athlete and my fitness level didn't raise to any alarms. But, you

• 6:56Speaker 01

  know, I hit the start line at Challenge Miami in March of 2021 and I kind of knew something was off. I had some trouble breathing and I actually said to Ben Hoffman, his good buddy of mine, fellow triathlete, I don't, before the race, I'm like, I don't really feel right. But Jan was there. Here we are, the first time I get a chance to race him again. And I love racing the best because I get the best out of myself. So, pin it, have a great swim in the front with a couple of guys on the bike, start to get this kind of spreading pain through my chest and then shooting pain down my left arm and my jaw started to lock up.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  All like classic signs. But I'm looking down, like you said, I'm pushing 300 plus watts, saying, there's no way I'm having a heart attack if this is, you know, if I'm still physically able to do this. So I backed it off a little bit and just kind of made it through and then everything just kept getting worse and worse and worse until I called my primary care doc in Boulder and he told him what was going on. I actually called my wife, Miranda Carpe.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  But first of all, you finished the race.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I finished the race.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:08Rich Roll?

  And you're still, what, you were 13th or something like that?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  I was 11th. I was just out of the money. And I was so mad at myself.

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  Right. All right. So you know something's off, but it's not a heart attack. Like you wouldn't be able, you would have just collapsed. Like we all have this mental construct of what that looks like. Like suddenly you just, you know, fall down to the ground.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  And I go back to my first Ironman World Championship where I DNFed and I

• 8:35Speaker 01

  After that race, I told myself, you're never going to DNF another race again because once you start, once you let yourself do that, the weakness like creeps in.

• 8:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden quitting is a lot easier. So I would kind of had that mindset like, no, like this is just race pain. You're going to tough it out. But as I, as time passed, after I finished, I knew, hey, this isn't, this isn't right. This is, I've done full Ironmans and started to feel better quicker than this, not worse.

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And that's when the kind of the red flags really started to go off.

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  So you call Rennie, your wife.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  You're like, I don't feel so good. She says what?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  She says, you need to call Dr. Dave right now. So I called Dave and he's like, dude, you need to take some aspirin and get yourself to the hospital right now.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  And what's going through your mind when you hear that?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Uh, I had a feeling I knew what was going on and a lot of people like, oh, just dehydration. And, um, but I just, I knew it was something worse. And I went to the first hospital, which was down the street and it, I mean, it took 90 minutes to get an IV and to get looked at. And I was starting to get a little nervous. Like, this isn't the place I probably should be.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a weird thing. There's this juxtaposition between strengths and weaknesses, like your strength as an athlete saying, I'm not going to DNF, I'm going to push through no matter what, right? Uh, not, you know, not the best strategy when you're dealing with what you were dealing with. And the fact that you're so robust and so strong that you could literally walk upright into the ER and say, I'm having weird symptoms. They're not going to prioritize looking at you.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially with everything going on. I mean, they had the big like COVID 10 outside the hospital. It's like a scene out of outbreak, right? So.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  That's right. Like that layered on top of the whole thing. And you like to go back to what you, you spoke about a minute ago, um, being in Australia, having like fluttering early COVID. So, so basically what you're saying is you think you had COVID early before people were talking about getting COVID, like.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:45Rich Roll?

  Before there was a test for it. Um, and perhaps there's some aspect of long COVID that. That is like an implicating factor in all of this?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is all me just thinking about it, right? Obviously, I don't have a medical degree.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  No, you're an engineer, though.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  You're a student of your own body, though.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's two things. There's two things that happens when you have, um, I had a soft plaque rupture. Uh, and, um, the plaque filled up my LED right at the top of the LED by the, um, the left main, um, artery ventricle.

• 11:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  But.

• 11:20Rich Roll?

  Which is not great.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Not ideal.

• 11:22Rich Roll?

  That's not where you want it to happen.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a dangerous spot, right? The further higher up you go, the more you're shutting off. Um, but there's two things that happen, right? There's the actual, there's the plaque buildup, which was happening anyways. But then there's the, the inflammation and the, uh, the, um, in the artery wall that's compromised, right? That wall has to fail. So.

• 11:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  In my mind, I'm, I'm wondering is if inflammation or something related to, to possibly, you know, earlier, um, when I was having all those other issues may have been part of the buildup to lead for that artery wall failing.

• 11:59Rich Roll?

  Right, there's the, the buildup of the plaque is one thing. That's decades of either some combination of genetic predisposition, lifestyle, et cetera. Uh, but then there's the rupturing of the plaque and it's free flowing. Like what causes that rupture? And then the rigidity of the arterial wall, right? Like whether it can like bend or flex as that, that like loose flowing plaque is, is cruising through, you know, through the LED.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  And what, and, and what role did or may have COVID played because of the, the long-term, you know, inflammation aspect of that?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get it.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  And, um, one of the, I've worked with several cardiologists trying to, you know, obviously you want to get the best guys around you, especially if you want to get back to competitive triathlon. Uh, and, uh, Aaron Baggish, who I'd worked with at Mass General and he's since moved on. I believe he's running the, um, like sports cardiology for the IOC, moved to Switzerland. But he did say in runners, that plaque buildup in the LED at that point is. Like they haven't linked it, but it's something they see and I didn't, I didn't have plaque built, built up anywhere else. And he said the, the kind of that flow at that point in the LED is, is very high and

• 13:16Rich Roll?

  Normal for an endurance athlete, meaning?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Uh, well, yeah, it's just, it's just a point where when you're an endurance athlete and you're pumping so much blood all the time.

• 13:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  That it is a spot that seems to get compromised.

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  Is it that, that like gym fix thing, you know, like the idea that the, the enlarged runner's heart that, uh, causes, you know, the advanced endurance athlete to have heart problems later in life at a higher incidence rate than the normal person? You hear a lot about that, right?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I'd say it's probably like a little different because I mean, my heart was, my heart size is normal. But yeah, I mean, enlarged hearts. So it's very common in the sport as well.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  Okay. So you're in the ER, you're, you're waiting. They're not ushering you in, right?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:02Rich Roll?

  So at some point though, they're, they're having a look at you like, tell me what happened.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it kept getting worse. Uh, actually our videographer that helps us, um, like with our YouTube show and things like that, took me to the hospital and I couldn't

• 14:18Rich Roll?

  Talbot? It was Talbot at the time, wasn't it? Or?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Uh, Kenny Whitrow.

• 14:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Was, was working with us and still does.

• 14:23Rich Roll?

  Okay, cool.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Talbot got very busy.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. He, well, he switched over to Lionel and that became a full-time thing, right?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  They're doing awesome. Great job. But

• 14:32Rich Roll?

  But you did some stuff with him early on, didn't you?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  We did, yeah. We were, he first started working with us, Gwen Jorgensen and Talbot.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  I mean, sorry, and Lionel. And, uh, I think he, he picked it right that Lionel was the way to go. Like he can only focus on one and he was totally right. Like that was, that was the goal mine for sure.

• 14:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, Kenny, like he, I was in the, I couldn't even walk into the hospital. I was vomiting outside of the hospital and Kenny had to like pick me up and bring me into the hospital. And, uh,

• 15:02Speaker 01

  It wasn't until they they realized they did the blood work and my levels were through the roof for, you know, the enzymes that are showing signs of the heart muscle dying.

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  Right, there's an enzyme that gets released that shows definitively that you're having a heart attack.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely, which they also say if you tested like anybody that finished an Ironman right afterwards, they would that enzyme level be through the roof too, just from the effort. So there's even a little like ambiguity there if it really is what's happening. But they made the decision to bring me to Jackson South Hospital and get me in with the cardiology team. And they brought in the big, like, the big paddles. And all of a sudden, there's a lot of people around me. And that's when I kind of realized in in my head that am I, you know, I asked myself, am I gonna die? Is this it? And that was, that was probably the hardest moment while I was kind of going through

• 16:00Speaker 01

  all this and, you know, I quickly made the decision, put that thought out of my head. My son, they have two, two children, Isabel and Finn, and Finn was only eight weeks old at that point, so definitely wanted to make sure I was around for, for him.

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  For both of them.

• 16:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a flashpoint moment, you know, I can't imagine a more kind of acute reckoning with your own mortality. And again, it's this weird dichotomy between the, the kind of superhuman fitness that you have to have to do what you do, which, which I suspect gives you a sense of, you know, maybe a little kind of outsized sense of immortality, like, oh, I can, you know, I can do all this stuff. Like, literally, you can have a Widowmaker heart attack and walk around afterwards, like, You know, but then to be in ER and have, yeah, like it's that, you know, but then this is

• 16:58Rich Roll?

  working against you at the same time, right? And then to have like a ton of bricks land on you and say, actually, you're human and perhaps even more frail than you might have imagined. And to have that crystallized into, you know, such a, you know, an intense moment with young children, you know, at arguably like the peak of your career, coming off a second place at Connell, like it's very, you know, disassociative experience, I imagine.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was definitely hard to get my head around, especially in the moment. And you top all that off with the fact that this is how you make your living, you know, this is how you feed your kids. And not only are you faced with this moment of mortality and realizing that you aren't invincible, no matter how fit you are. And I think that's a big thing for endurance athletes of all levels. We all think we're invincible when fact is we're, you know, can be as frail as anybody else. And then on top of that, it's okay, you know, not only can I, do I know that death is real right now, but I might be out of a job. So it was, there was a lot going on.

• 18:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think there, there is, you hear this adage, you know, you can't out train a bad diet or bad lifestyle habits or whatever. But, but I mean, you're kind of like, yeah, but I train 25 hours a week, you know, like, that might apply to other people, you know, like.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  10 or 15 hours maybe, but 25.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  But like, I've been out on my bike for like six hours, like, you know, at like normative, you know, watts of like, I don't know, for you, 300 or whatever it is, you're like, I'm gonna eat like a huge plate of whatever I feel like.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:44Rich Roll?

  You know, and I'll be fine because I'm not like those other people.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:48Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  It's not gonna happen to me.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  So you have this, yeah. And you, and so then you, there's reckoning and you're like, oh, actually that's true. And, you know, not to get into, neither of us are doctors, like, was this caused by genetics? Is this, you know, all of that, I'm sure, you know, all of this is swimming around in your mind. But just in the moment, that, that confusion of trying to make sense of this and like how you're going to move forward and like, am I even going to survive to the next day?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  So they poke around initially, right? And they're like, they seem unalarmed until they're, they are alarmed.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Right. So they brought me to the other hospital and they, and even the cardiologist comes in, the team, you know, they're on call. So it takes a little while and, and he, the doctor comes in and is like, we're just, we're going to go in and look, you know, we're going to, we, we don't think, we think it's nothing big, but we're going to go look. It'll be quick. And then all of a sudden they're in there for a while. And that's when I really knew that something was, you know, definitely up. And they finished the procedure. They placed the biggest stent they had, you know, in there and the doctor.

• 19:56Rich Roll?

  And they go, do they go through your groin to do that?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  They actually, they went through my arm.

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  Your arm?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Just, uh, it's a preferred, you know, groin is pretty common, but the recovery is a little bit harder since, you know, you gotta, gotta keep weight off of that area after that procedure. You don't want to rupture anything. So if they can go through the arm and it works, and that's kind of their preferred method, which is great. Cause I just, I'm left-handed too. So they went through my right arm even better.

• 20:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  But yeah, they went through, they poke around and they kind of cleaned the blockage out and they put the stent in to reinforce the artery wall where it was compromised. And the first thing the doctor said to me afterwards, and I didn't really know what was going on. He said, well, I guess you're going to have to find a new career. And one of the nurses, that his head nurse had actually worked at Boulder Community Hospital. And he.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  What are the odds of that?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, right?

• 20:50Rich Roll?

  Cause you're in Miami.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're in Miami. And he, he just like, let's, let's go on the doc. He's like, he's like, don't say that. He's like, no way, Tim. He's like, you're going to be fine. He's like, says the doctor, I've seen guys like Tim in Boulder all the time. They're up, they're riding their bikes in two weeks, three weeks. Don't worry about it. You're going to be good. So, uh, there was a little, little reassuring from, uh,

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  From one of our Boulder friends.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  It's so intense, like trying to make sense of that, trying to understand, you know, so, just so out of left field, like, you know, something you would have never imagined would have happened to you at such a young age, at such a high level of fitness. Of course, in the wake of that, you have this rehabilitative period, but at some point, you have to reckon with, like, am I going to still be a pro triathlete? Like, I've had this near-death experience. I'm interested in, like, what you've taken from that or learned from that that's informed your life. But often, you know, people that have those experiences, they have a relatively short half-life, like, they're, they have a very acute awareness of their mortality for a period

• 22:00Rich Roll?

  of time, and then it kind of tails off and you're back to normal again.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the first thing was making sure we got all the information. And the second thing was making sure it was a decision between myself and Rinny.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Because, you know, it is more than just me, and I've had a great career in triathlon, and I had quickly come to a realization that if I can't do this, then that's okay. I don't need to do this, it's something I love to do and I want to do, but if it's going to be detrimental to my health and my longevity and being around from my family, then it's not something I should do. And that's when we, you know, started to really align with some of the right, right people, the right doctors, and make sure that we were good to go.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So you get a clean bill of health, like, it is safe for you to train. So, you know, and this sense of, like, unfinished business, like, I was progressing, like, I was getting better, maybe I can still, you know, do this. So there's the physical aspect of, of the strain that you're going to put on your body, right? And I'm interested in, like, the stress tests that, you know, they performed on you, because, like, that would be, you know, it's like, you don't really, you know, like, you're not going to fit into their paradigm of, like, how we measure these things for the average person in the wake of a heart attack. So maybe talk a little bit about that, and then I want to get into, like, the mental, you know, aspect of this, because I, you know, I have a sense that that has been a

• 23:31Rich Roll?

  much steeper mountain to climb.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, the physical side, like you said, the mental side definitely was, was a much harder challenge. On the physical side... I actually dodged two bullets. So there's after you get fixed and the or the the clog is unclogged and everything's reinforced. The longer you've you have a blockage, the more damage you can actually cause to the heart muscle. So you get scarring on the heart and that can really affect the way the heart heart works and how much blood it pumps. So, you know, I had my heart attack during the race and I didn't. It was maybe, I don't

• 24:16Speaker 01

  know, four o'clock or so. And it wasn't until maybe 1am the next that like the next morning that they they fixed it. So there's a lot of time under duress there. So they're very worried that there's going to be a lot of damage to the actual heart muscle. But luckily, scarring was minimal and function wasn't impaired. So I dodged a bullet, making it through the actual incident. And then I dodged another bullet with the long term damage that it actually caused to the heart muscle. So, I mean, I couldn't be any luckier.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  For considering what happened to me.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  And I don't think we've said it, but the survival rate for a widow maker is like 12% or something like that, right?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  It's definitely pretty low. And I have a friend who's a heart surgeon, retired heart surgeon that I talked to after the fact. He's like, they should be peeling you off of the Speedway right now. He's like, count your blessings. Now you're here. So on the road back physically, I actually went to cardiac rehab. And it was it was pretty entertaining. Like you said, like, how do you like really measure? And we had to bring my

• 25:14Rich Roll?

  We're gonna get Tim on the treadmill.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  I was probably about 30 years younger than the average person.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  You have to break all the records, though.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  So, you know, most of the we you do it as a group of like, I don't know, eight, 10 people in at a time. And they're all kind of, you know, 75, 80s. Yeah. And they're all just churned along at 20 RPMs on recumbent bikes or walking on treadmills. And I my coach, Julie Dibbons, came in with me that first day. And like, okay, like, you can't follow our protocols. It's not going to work. You guys just have to ramp it up. You got to get your heart rate up. And we'll monitor. We'll be there watching.

• 25:48Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna crush this test.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  So we get on the treadmill. And I start bumping the treadmill up. It only goes to like, eight miles an hour.

• 25:55Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  So I'm like,

• 25:58Rich Roll?

  This isn't gonna work.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, this isn't gonna work. So we ended up having to bring my trainer in and my bike and just doing, doing our own bike sessions in there. It was, it actually did give me a lot of confidence because I did have the heart rate up and I knew that they were monitoring everything and if something went wrong, I was at the hospital.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  It actually was a big part of my mental recovery, too.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  So it gave you confidence that you could push yourself without, you know, any kind of like real danger, physical danger to yourself, which is important because that's what your sport's all about. The analogy that comes to mind is, is like a professional cyclist who has a bad crash, you know, and they have to descend, you know, just be fearless, you know, in these Alpine descents or whatever. If you have a bad crash, like, you're gonna hold back, right?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, just get that little bit of hesitation.

• 26:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, or if you have a, you know, suddenly you have a kid and your whole like kind of worldview shifts, it's not just about you, you're gonna, you're gonna, like that, you know, however many percentage points, you're gonna be kind of off what you used to be, how does that impact you? When you're, when, you know, at the, at the highest level of sport, it is about those tiniest of increments.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was a huge challenge. And even getting on the road to get to that point was a huge challenge. It was, I was on blood thinners. I actually had to be on them for a year afterwards. So, you know, if something happens, like on one of those descents or with the car while you're out there riding, it can get a lot worse, especially if it's a brain injury.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you crash, you're in big trouble, right?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're in big trouble. So I stayed on the trainer for a while and then I finally started getting outside and I'd been sort of removed. And then you're outside and these big semi trucks are passing you on, you know, Highway 36 in Boulder and you're like, ah, you know, this is, you realize like, wow, this is, this is really kind of dangerous out here. And then you normalize to it again. You're like, okay, I'm comfortable out here. And you kind of get back into your routine a little bit. You're also questioning, like, the further you are from the information, the real information, the harder it is to, I guess, get a hold of it, right? So like the doctors, the cardiologists, they have, they're very versed and everything. And to them, it's like, no, you're fine. You're

• 28:18Speaker 01

  okay. We fixed it. It's a mechanical issue. It's been fixed. You're good to go. But.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know that as much as them. This is my first experience being in there. So there's a lot of questioning in your mind like, okay, well, is it really fixed? Am I really good to go? And then you remove another level, like friends and family, who have even less information than me about it, and they are petrified.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're like, what are you doing?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  They're like, you're crazy, you know?

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you have a, you have a graduate degree in engineering, right? There are other things that you could be doing, right?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 28:53Rich Roll?

  We'll get into that, but yeah, relatives, friends, et cetera. But your wife, Rini, who we haven't even really talked about, but she's an incredible Ironman champion. She won the world championships three times, right?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Three times.

• 29:10Rich Roll?

  Set the run record. Like unbelievably accomplished Ironman triathlete.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, she makes me look like a cunt. I'm just like trying to like not get embarrassed.

• 29:20Rich Roll?

  We'll get into what that marriage looks like. You know, so, you know, where's her head at like in terms of like being supportive, being concerned, cautious?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  So, Rini, she's an unbelievable human being and an amazing wife. And it took me a while to really realize the toll it was taking on her. Even at the, even at the very beginning, when I was at the hospital, we're like, okay, we need to keep this quiet. I don't know what this is going to look like. You know, there could be implications with partnerships and things like that. So we just need to like figure this out before we tell people. And, but she was at home by herself with two little kids.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And like she needs an outlet and one of her friends was over and she just started bawling. Like she needed, like she needed that outlet. And so, you know, that was a little bit of an awakening like, okay, like this is a big impact on Rini. But it wasn't until even two months later where I was starting to get back to some training and I was going to do a treadmill run. And I, and she was gonna lay down with our son Finn, get him down for nap and take a nap with him. And I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna run an hour. Well, an hour passes by or whatever, I get sidetracked doing something around the house. I start super late and I get on the treadmill and TV's blasting and music's blasting. I'm running and she just wakes up from the nap like two hours later, just hearing blasting TV. In her mind, she's like,

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Tim should have been done running, exactly. He should have been done running an hour ago. So I'm running along and the door busts open and Rini just has this look on her face, you know? She didn't know if she's gonna see me, you know, lying on the ground dead, right? And she sees me and just goes, she has this huge sigh of relief. And that's when it really hit me like, oh, my God, like, this is a massive impact on Rini.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Psychological toll on, yeah, of course.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  She's going through a lot and she's, she's very stoic. I mean, she's a professional athlete. She's one of the best in the world. She's, she knows how to handle pain and almost internalize it, even if it's to her detriment.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  But, you know, that's, that really hit me hard about what, what this has done to her too.

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So how do you work through that? Like, how do you come to some kind of agreement about how you're gonna move forward together?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  It's tough because she knows, like, she was close enough to know that it was okay. But like I said, still a little bit further removed that it's kind of scary. And even, I think, honestly, just having it, okay, this is what I'm gonna do for this short period of time, right? Like, like letting-

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  I got two more years or what's this?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I didn't realize, like, even at, we both raced Ironman 70.3 Santa Cruz in September. And she even said out there, she was on the course, like, it wasn't until after that race that she started to let go. She's like, even in the race, I was worrying, where's Tim? Am I gonna see Tim? Making sure I was okay. But after that race, everything seemed to kind of normalize for her. But then in Kona, a month later, my mom's texting Rini, like, how are you watching this? Like, I can't watch. You know, my mom's petrified that I'm gonna drop dead on Ironman live coverage.

• 32:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  And once again, like, one step further removed from-

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  From the doctors and the knowledge that this is okay. But-

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  And my mom didn't tell me that, but she didn't want to freak me out, but-

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And even if, even if, like, yeah, it's that, that gap between, like, logically understanding, like, you're safe, the doctors are telling you, you're safe. But it's kind of like when you're on an airplane, you're like, you know, it's, it's a pretty safe way to travel, but you're like, you think you're gonna crash at any minute, you know, like- Like, that has to, like, and knowing that all these people who love you are concerned about you is a psychic toll that you're carrying, right? And understanding that it's more than just you with the kids and all these people that care about you and the impact that this is having on them, like, the commitment that you have to bring to your sport, while also, like, managing that is like an added, like,

• 33:36Rich Roll?

  you know, kind of mental aspect of the training.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Right. And it's, you hate to say it's as simple as just time, but there is that component of it. Everybody just needs time to heal and kind of have their cathartic moment with all of this.

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  So, two things. First of all, like, when you're training, do you feel yourself, like, holding back? Or do you, like, can you match that, like, max heart rate or, you know, those, like, watt thresholds? Or do you kind of like, maybe I shouldn't just, you know, that, I'll hold back that 5%?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't feel like, Rich, that I got to that point where I could really push myself until the Kona build. It was, it took that long. Part of, there's other factors, too. There's, I almost had a complete year off of training and racing, so I'm dealing with a lack of fitness that I had to rebuild. And at this point, I'm now turning 42.

• 34:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  So there's the age component as well, and no matter how fit you are, as you get older, you know, your max heart rate's gonna start to diminish. So we're kind of dealing with all of that. But I did, I had to do Ironman Des Moines in June to qualify, and that was a, that was really tough mentally. I mean...

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  Well, so, after the heart attack, how much time did you take off? And then how much time between the heart attack and Des Moines? Because I want to get into that race.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so pretty much all of 2021. I took maybe four to six weeks off. Actually, the cardiologist in Boulder had me on the treadmill doing a stress test like the next week. He's like, you're good to go.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  One week.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel confident, but you need to stay aerobic and you need to manage your training load because you have to let your heart recover.

• 35:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So, training load, like hours was minimal, intensity was almost non-existent for most of that year. And then January, January of 2022, I kind of went back into that normal training routine. So I had a couple of months before Des Moines to try to get back into Ironman fitness. Almost got there, didn't quite get there.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. In Des Moines, you're first out of the water, you ride 412 on the bike, right? And you rode a 301 marathon, even though you like blew up in the last 10K.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the last, probably yes. I think it was 19, I just shattered.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  Like, so this is like a crazy performance, I mean, for anybody, any pro, but to make that like your first Ironman after what you suffered through, like is unbelievable, right? Like, that's pretty amazing.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  As a, I don't know, I'm always, as a pro athlete, you're always hard on yourself, right? So you're always, you're never happy with a performance. But yeah, I mean, as I look back, yeah, that was pretty impressive to be able to put that together. But it, you know, as we talked about, the mental side of it was the hardest part. I was in third. I need, all I needed to do is get third to qualify for Kona, which was my goal for the year, to get, just to get back to Kona, just to celebrate the sport and what I did to get back to that point. And I had like a 14-minute lead on fourth place, and I'm walking and I'm, I'm like, I should just drop out. Like, these negative thoughts are coming in my head. I don't, do I even need to do this? Like, I can, I can, my family's

• 37:07Speaker 01

  right over there. We can just go hang out and chill. And I actually saw Kenny, who was filming there, and I ran by him. He's like, everybody's struggling right now, To. Everybody's struggling right now. Just keep, just hold it together. And I just broke it down to the most basic. Okay, I'm not going to worry about the guy that's 14 minutes back. I'm not going to worry about qualifying for Kona. Let's just run, start jogging from aid station to aid station and let's at least just finish this race. And if this is my last Ironman, okay. You know, but let's, let's get to the finish line.

• 37:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And at least get an Ironman finish under my belt. And once I did that and I started, I didn't, I didn't come back to life, but I was able to hold it together enough to, to stand the podium and get that Kona spot.

• 37:51Rich Roll?

  Is that a perspective shift from the pre Widowmaker Timothy? Like in the year prior to the Widowmaker, would that have been your mindset in a race like that? If you were struggling in the last six miles?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know. I, I definitely had those moments before where you gotta, you have to button it up a little bit.

• 38:14Rich Roll?

  Right. But that, but that kind of lingering like, hey, is this worth it? Like I could just be with my kids.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually I had that Ironman bowler in 19. Yeah. And then maybe that's a product of also being in the sport for so long, right? Uh, cause it's hard. I mean, you, I started racing Kona in 2011. I hadn't missed a year.

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And like that, that, you know, you look at the, a lot of the guys, you know, have an injury or something that gives them a break and it's, they, oh, everybody always comes back better, you know, they, it's like, we just need a little bit more time off. So, yeah, I think part of it, just time in the sport and it was exacerbated though 100% by the, the heart attack.

• 38:55Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Because it was, it came in, it crept in quicker and it hit harder. Because there was also the doubt like, that this is even something you should be doing.

• 39:05Rich Roll?

  Right. But you make your, you, you get your slot to go to Kona and, and going into that race, uh, is your like, having, having gotten second the last time you raced it, the obvious thing would be like, well, now I need to go back and win it, right? But. Having had, you know, the heart attack, my sense is, and also from kind of like watching your vlog in the wake of that race was like, I just want to be proud of my race. Like, I want to, I'm proud that I qualified and I get to go do this and have this experience. So that feels like a, you know, kind of a new approach or sensibility, like that is very much tied to, you know, the experience of surviving something potentially fatal.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  It was, and it was, it was hard to understand that even in leading into the race. And it wasn't until I was out there on the run that I really had that moment. And it was, it was a decision, you know, I came off the bike, I was still, I think I was fifth or sixth at that point, running down Lehe, I was very much in that race.

• 40:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And, but I kind of got out mile eight or nine and I was on the Queen K. And I was at that point where I didn't feel great. I wasn't as fit as I probably needed to be to run well off of the ride I had just put together.

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  And I, and I know I've been there before, right? That you can, things can go really wrong out here. So I was definitely holding back there because I wanted, I made the decision that this is, this isn't about trying to go for a top 10. I've been, you know, I wasn't going to run onto the podium at that point. You know, I've been in the top 10 plenty of times. This was about me coming back and the support of everybody around me to get me to this point. Not only my family, coaches, teammates, but the whole triathlon community. I mean, the support I've had was unbelievable. So I really wanted that moment to be something that I enjoyed and that we could all enjoy together. And it made, it made running down that finish line, even though it wasn't, you know, my best finish, probably my best

• 41:11Speaker 01

  moment in triathlon.

• 41:12Rich Roll?

  But you had a great race.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I had a pretty good race.

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  You performed quite well and you were, what were you 13th, I think?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  13th, yeah.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  13th. But on another year, you would have been like, I don't know, fifth or fourth or something like that. I mean, it was just an unbelievable year.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, 8:02 on any other year would be.

• 41:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would be right there. Yeah.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  You know, that was what was so weird about this year. Like, like, uh, there were so many, uh, you know, veteran pros who are actually having really good races, who were just non-factors. And I watched the whole like live stream and they were like, you know, like Lionel and, you know, like barely mentioned because they were so far, you know, behind the, the tip of the spear. Um, even like, you know, Cam Werf, who's coming in here in a couple of days. And I can't wait to talk to him as well. You know, bike course record holder, who you would think if you're watching the lot, following the race, like, oh, he's way off his game. He's like, not even anywhere near the front. He still breaks the bike course record, doing great, but there were just all these guys faster than him. Like, it was a real

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And those guys are running under 240.

• 42:16Rich Roll?

  Very like definitive, like seismic shift. Like, here's a new generation of people. This sport is changing. It's changing really quickly. And this is the, the, the new crop, like a changing of the guard.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  And Kona made that so evident. I mean, it, and I think there's a couple of factors. You know, we had a big break, right? You know, Kona 19 versus Kona 2022. But because we missed those races in between, you normally get like one or two rookies that come into a race you have high hopes for every year. But because they, they don't have the numbers, they almost just kind of fall into line with how the race is playing out. But here we had this critical mass of young guys, new to Kona.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  And they didn't care. And they didn't get stuck into the group think of how the old guys do it. They're like, no, like, let's go, boys. And I think that dynamic of having all those new guys there at, at the same time really led to that.

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  And, and kind of casual about the whole thing, you know, like, oh yeah, I rode this or I read, yeah, like, like it was no big deal. Like not like, you know, like the older guys going, holy shit, like they're so much better, they're so much faster.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  You know, you know, you had the Norwegian fellas here a couple of months ago and And and Olaf their coach and they were very matter of fact, like this is what we're gonna do and they did it and they executed.

• 43:35Rich Roll?

  They executed perfectly and and and none of this like I know you you've worked with Mark Allen, right? So you're steeped in the mysticism of the island and the the kind of vicissitudes of Madame Pele's, you know, you know, decision to support or not support.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  And and you know, kind of being in sync with that, you know, vibration being an important aspect of how you approach that race and and and race that race. And I asked, I asked Gustav, I was like, yeah, what do you think about like, he's like, doesn't get you.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I know, Mark had to be rolling his eyes, right?

• 44:12Rich Roll?

  I know. He's like, I put no credence in that whatsoever. And like, he's young and the first time he did it, he won. So it's like, it's understandable that he's like, I don't understand why everyone gets caught up about that.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  I think there's two things there. I do think the shift in whether it's it's not the same race in terms of conditions, I think that used to be.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  Well, the conditions were unbelievable this year, right?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  But they've been, you know, the race got shifted a little earlier in the morning, which helps. And then, yeah, I mean, 18, the conditions in 18 were amazing, too. I mean, Daniela's race, that was kind of the equivalent of what, you know, the Norwegians and Sam Laidlaw did this year. But yeah, that attitude they have, and I'm a little bit envious, actually, Rich.

• 44:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  I feel like I love to see it, but I feel like my generation, we didn't like after Crowie, between Crowie and now, like, we didn't step up like we could have.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  You didn't, you didn't like feel like sort of iterate on what they established.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, I think we all kind of fell in line with that thought of like, this is how it has to be, and you have to be patient and all that. And we didn't have anybody that really.

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  Questioned that.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. So when you look at at like the Norwegian methods and what Olaf is doing and all of that, like, what do you take away from that? Like, what do you, what what do you like, you look at that and say, oh, actually, I should use some of this and this and this, or maybe not that?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  You know, they're using a lot of stuff that's been around, but they're using it in different ways, like lactate testing. Like, I've been in the lab many times, done it one-offs, but the way they're incorporating it into the training, I think, is taking it to the next level. I mean, there are some factors like shoes and aerodynamics on the bike that are just making everybody faster. And particularly on the bike, when your efficiency gets so much better, you're not spending as much energy on the bike, and you can run better. I do, I get nervous about like the sugar glycogen spikes, and that kind of like really like racing at that high, high level, how that'll play out in the long run.

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  Meaning, like, so you're wearing a CGM right now, I can see it on your arm, super sapiens, yeah. So you're able to monitor your glucose levels in real time, all the time. This is a big thing that the Norwegians are really looking at and studying. So when you say, when you say, like, the spiking, like, what are you talking about specifically?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Well, I, yeah, I think, right now, it's, I mean, glycogen, you need the glycogen to, it's a numbers game, right? To be able to perform for that long with those numbers, you gotta be burning a lot of fuel. I just don't know how, when you're operating at that high level of, like, blood glucose levels, how that will play with inflammation and the long-term implications on that.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, long-term metabolic health and insulin resistance over time, right? Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  And some of the advice I've gotten, going back to the heart, is, don't, like, every time you spike your blood sugar, you're triggering inflammation, that is the worst thing for your heart.

• 47:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you're 43 now, 42?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I'll be 43 at the end of the year.

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  43, yeah. Yeah, when you're, when you're like Christian and Gustav, he's like, whatever. You know, like you're in that Superman infallible, like immortal stage of your life.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, three Red Bull, three Red Bulls and two shots of espresso at 4:30 in the morning, like,

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  Woo, let's go.

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  Before the podcast, I was sharing with you, I've got a galley of this new book called Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia, it's coming out this spring, he's coming in here next week. And it's, the thesis of this book, it's really, it's a very grounded kind of look at extending not just lifespan, but health span through the, you know, prevention or delay of the biggest causes of mortality, which are heart disease, right, or heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, metabol- and it's all about like, all of these things are rooted in metabolic dysregulation. So he's a big proponent of using CGMs and trying to be ahead of the

• 48:42Rich Roll?

  curve in terms of like, how our body is metabolizing the food that we eat and the stress that we incur and all these sorts of things. And it's super interesting. And of course, yes, it relates to inflammation and all of these things are interrelated in a way that we don't appreciate adequately, like we treat them separately. Well, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, these are two separate things. Well, actually, you know, like, you know, there's a lot, yeah, like the Venn diagram overlaps quite a bit on all of this sort of stuff. And so for you, being at your age, who's still an elite professional athlete, who has, you know, suffered this heart attack, and I'm sure has learned a lot about heart health, like, what are the things that you've taken away in terms of,

• 49:27Rich Roll?

  A, like your own, your own habits around lifestyle, nutrition, diet, et cetera, and kind of the advocacy piece of like what you want, you know, the normal person out there to understand about what, you know, how we should be, you know, thinking about our heart health and testing, et cetera?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, everybody should learn their family history and know the warning signs. And those are things that I neglected. And fortunately,

• 50:06Speaker 01

  The silver lining for everything that's happened to me is that I do have a platform now that I can talk about this and bring awareness. And I've had so many emails and people coming up to me at races saying, "Thank you. You brought this education to me or a family member and you've helped us step in and prevent, you know, worse things happening from existing heart issues." So that's been huge, you know.

• 50:32Rich Roll?

  So, okay, so in your case, family history is what?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  On my father's side, we had, well, my mother's side, we had a heart attack, but I believe most of the genetic stuff is from your, from the, from your father's side. And we had coronary artery disease in quite a few of his ancestors. And he actually had this whole, like, I don't know if it was 23andMe or one of those things done. And I'm flipping through this and like, oh my gosh, like, they had people going way back, family members, and like, everybody's like coronary artery disease and not just like a heart issue, you know, an artery issue, which is, you know, what I had. Except one guy who I think fell on a train track and was, you know, hit by a train. I'm like, okay, that one's not heart-related.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  But at what age? Like, he might have had a heart attack.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But that was going way back. That was, I don't know, early 1900s or something.

• 51:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so robust history there. You know, myself also, like, my grandfather was a, he was captain of the swim team at University of Michigan in the 1920s and stayed fit his whole life and died of a heart attack at 54. So when I turned 54, like, and I'm named after him, like, it's, you know, you think about your, you know, it definitely was living, like, a present, you know, awareness in my, like, kind of daily consciousness that, you know, I didn't have before that. So it just makes you aware, you know, of your mortality, you know, in a way. But anyway, so, so, warning signs then. Like, you mentioned, you know, obviously, chest pain.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Chest pain, shortness of breath, huge, huge warning sign if it feels like someone's sitting on your chest. That's a good indication that there's an issue. Obviously, the left arm, the jaw also signs.

• 52:24Rich Roll?

  Does the jaw happen on both sides or just on the left side?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Usually the left side, I believe.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that's because the LED left ascending, what does it stand for?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Left anterior.

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  Anterior descending, right, okay. That's because that affects that side of the body.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  I believe so, yeah. Or, Rich, if you're just noticing performance drops. If you're an athlete and you, like, all of a sudden, like, things seem a little bit harder, there might be a slowing of your blood flow from maybe calcified plaque in an artery.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  And then there's a series of tests that you can do. I mean, you can do a calcium scan. There's been some advances in the types of scans, though, right?

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Huge. And that actually was a big part of me coming after Des Moines of really getting confidence back. So I had done a calcium scan even before the heart attack. It showed calcified plaque in the LED, not a ton. But where there's calcified plaque, there's soft plaque. That's can really give you the issues, give you the trouble, rupturing, and you end up where I ended up. But after Des Moines, I started actually having some palpitations and fluttering. I got super nervous. Turns out I did have a little bit of an abnormal rhythm. But that was just from, hey, you're really dehydrated. You did a hot, humid Ironman. You shocked your body. Your electrolytes are out of balance.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  So it's an electrolyte issue. No problem, but I obviously wanted to monitor that. I put a Holter monitor on for a couple of days and we monitored everything. Not a big deal, but I also then went and did a, it's called a Clearly scan. And that can actually, it's a non-invasive way, the only non-invasive way to show soft plaque. And I did that, paid out of pocket for it. I don't care, it's peace of mind, I need it. And it did, it really gave me a lot of confidence. We saw everything, everything looked good, you know, everything was, the stent was working, all that stuff. So

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  How does that work? That test?

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Um, it's, it's almost, I think it's somehow done off of like a CT scan.

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And it shows, so the difference with that is it shows soft plaque versus like

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Versus just calcified plaque.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  Right. Uh huh. Interesting. And so you're all good on that?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  And that's when I'm like, all right, let's go. Like, let's let the rains loose. But that wasn't until like July or August. So I had a pretty short runway going into the world champs.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So, so in terms of like the average person, maybe the semi-fit person, whatever, like whoever's listening to this, like what is the, you know? I guess like the ideal time to get tested is, is like today, right? Like, doesn't matter how old you are or whatever, how fit you are, or how overweight or not overweight you are. I mean, you're like the pinnacle of fitness. So we think of people who are having heart attacks as being sedentary, overweight, people who smoke and have terrible diets, et cetera. And so it's shocking, you know, to hear like somebody, like you just wouldn't think somebody like yourself that this would happen.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think, especially if you know, you have a family history, definitely get looked at. My, my siblings, I'm the youngest of four and they were all like,

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  If this happened, uh, you know?

• 55:42Rich Roll?

  They all go get tested?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, they helped it. They're like, man, we're screwed if this happens. He's the best of all of us. He's a fitness.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  And how did those, I mean, are they okay?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody's good. Yeah.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Good, good. Um, and then in terms of, of, of any kind of lifestyle habits that you've changed as a result?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  This is a part I actually struggled a little bit with, Rich, because my bandwidth with everything, it's been a lot.

• 56:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  To, to manage and, um, I noticed that in Kona, I just didn't have that fight. Like it was such a mental, emotional toll to get back to that point that it, you know, that's when I realized how much this had all really taken out of me. And I get mixed things from, from different specialists, right? Um, I expected everybody to tell me to go vegan. And, you know?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I need to talk to like, I know John Joseph has a cardiologist that he wants me to talk to. So I'll probably talk to him when I retire, but the really only feedback I got was, hey,

• 56:43Speaker 01

  don't like, avoid red meat, basically. Like if it swims or flies, it's going to be better for you in terms of inflammation.

• 56:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and I would imagine keeping an eye on like LDL, ApoB and like some of these blood markers and.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  That's huge. And you have to go beyond your total cholesterol and your LDL, HDL. You know, I work with InsideTracker and now they have ApoB, which is a really big indicator of, hey, okay.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Right. That's, that's like everyone's sort of, I think everyone was pushing InsideTracker for a while to have that marker because that has become like the, you know, most important marker.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  But you can go even further than that. The size of your LDL particles is huge. And that's another issue I have. I have small LDL particles. That makes it easier to Right. Kind of get through a compromised artery and collect.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  And then just different transportation methods, which is the lipoproteins and how they bond to things. And I do know I need more to get more fiber in. And that's another thing I had kind of cut out gluten. I had a lot of stomach issues with the first Kona and leaky gut and all that stuff. Now that I've learned more, I've kind of realized, hey, maybe it's more of avoiding processed stuff versus, you know, good clean wheat or, you know, a sourdough.

• 58:00Rich Roll?

  Or just looking at things that are, that are producing inflammation in your body also, right?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's a good thing with blood testing too, is yeah, monitoring inflammation and then those particular markers.

• 58:12Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  And I did genetic testing as well. And sure enough, there was like four markers that were red flags. Yeah. Cardiovascular disease.

• 58:21Rich Roll?

  So how are you like moving forward now? Like you're, you're, you're coming off of, you know, a Kona that you're proud of. Like what is the, you know, the short and long term future look like for you as an athlete, father, you know, advocate, et cetera?

• 58:39Speaker 01

  That was definitely a hard. This discussion with with Rini and like what's this year going to look like? I wanted to race. I actually woke up the next morning in Kona. I'm like, okay, I've closed that chapter. Like, I came back, I closed it. But what about performance? I think I can still perform. So then I'm like, that wasn't about performance. That was that was more of like

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  Shocking that that occurred to you.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  But unfortunately, Kona is only going to be a women's race this year with the new format. The men's world championship will be in Nice. So I've decided I'm not going to do that. Right now, I'm just going to do a couple of races that I want to do for the love of racing and to try to get back and win a race and hopefully do maybe one more Ironman in this in the fall. But I mean, we talk about inflammation and markers, like it takes a toll. Training that much, you can I can see it in my blood work. So

• 59:38Rich Roll?

  It's not a recipe for longevity.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  It isn't, no. And that's what the cardiologist I'm working with and, you know, we had before we started recording, mentioned statins a little bit, and I'm not currently on a statin.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  So you were previously and now you're not?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  For the first year, I was.

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  And so what was the decision to stop?

• 59:56Speaker 01

  It really was about training.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  It impeded your your ability?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's a lot of muscle soreness and a lot of issues with trying to train. And, you know, my doctor friends have inside jokes. They'll be on a ride and all of a sudden, someone's not riding that well anymore. It's like, oh, he just got on a statin.

• 1:00:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  But it's a, you know, we just talked about it. It's not a short term. It's a short term thing. It's not a long term thing. And that's how we've approached it. The the best argument I've gotten for being on a statin is that it can actually calcify soft plaque. So it can take some of that dangerous soft plaque and stabilize it, which is a consideration I have to definitely look more into. But they said that's a long term thing. You know, you get through racing this year, year and a half, and that's a plan that we'll develop when you get done.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  Right. So another year?

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna, I don't wanna push it. I don't wanna push my luck. I don't wanna push my luck.

• 1:01:01Rich Roll?

  And how does, I mean, obviously, you know, these are family decisions. Your partner, you know, knows the landscape better than anybody. Like, how, how is that, like, being married to, you know, an extraordinary athlete who does the same thing that you do? I imagine there's, there's benefits, but it also maybe makes it challenging.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely, um, it's, there's, you know, you gotta, there's the good and bad that you're managing.

• 1:01:27Rich Roll?

  I mean, Timothy, she's more successful than you.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  She's way more. Why am I on here? Why don't you, she should be sitting here.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  I'd love to talk to her.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  It was actually, it was hard because when we started dating, she was, I was almost like a newcomer, right? I'd been doing short course, I was on the national team, Olympics was on my mind. And she was getting ready, we started dating in kinda 09, and she was getting ready for that first world championship.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:01:53Rich Roll?

  Was that the one where she just exploded onto the scene?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  It was, yeah. She ended up second. She ran like 256 in the Zoot shoes back in the day.

• 1:02:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  So, she's not in the super shoes, she's not in a Rocket X or, you know, whatever, making her go fast by any means, so. Yeah, it was, for me, it was a little difficult to find myself, I guess, because you're, you're here with the world, the world's best, and there is obviously stuff to learn, but

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  everybody does it a different way at the same time. So it almost took me a couple of years to start to realize, hey, this is my path, this is my journey, and this is the way I need to do it. And it probably wasn't until 2015 where I had that first podium in Kona where

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  I was comfortable or confident enough in myself to say, okay, I obviously have all the love and the respect in the world for my wife. She's done it this way, and it's worked. It's worked three times. But I'm me, and this is my journey, and this is the way I need to do it.

• 1:02:55Rich Roll?

  Do you have different training philosophies and methods and different coaches and stuff?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  We, uh, we do. Well, she started working with Julie Dibbons. I've been working with Julie for a couple of years now, since 2018. She really, Siri Lindley was her, kinda that coach in her career. They had a little break, and then she got back into it, and Siri... Rennie, like you said, I'm an engineer. Like, I like to dig into stuff. Rennie is so simple. She's like, let's do the work. I'm gonna nail it. This is my goal. This is where I'm going. This is what I'm going to do. And I'm just gonna make it happen. And Siri was perfect for her. And Siri's not a, she isn't, you know, a super technical coach. She'd be like 40, 50s, you know, we're gonna, they're gonna be bing bam boom, you know, they're, they're gonna be fast. Okay, I don't know what that means, but like, let's just work hard. And that was perfect for Rennie.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  And for you.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  For me, I needed, um, probably needed more help, less talent. So I needed to learn how to get more aerodynamic on the bike. I needed to learn how to run a little bit more efficiently because those were weaknesses of mine.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  Sure, but those are engineering problems.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  They are, yeah. And sometimes they take time, time to solve, right? It's, you know, all right, try this and okay, it didn't work, evaluate it, go back, you know, see what happens and then just keep tweaking and tinkering.

• 1:04:23Rich Roll?

  And how is it being part of the Boulder community? Like where everyone is, I mean, there's, there's a camaraderie, right? Like there's a sort of esprit de corps. Like so many people are into multi-sport and everybody's super fit and out getting after it. But a lot of pros live there and, you know, it's gotta be, is there like a fatigue with that also? Like where you're going out and like kind of everybody's got the same goal? And I would imagine that, you know, there's challenges with that, I would suspect.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  You don't, you only put your, you only surround yourself with the people you want to be around, right? So, I mean, there are so many people in Boulder. Actually, you know, Aaron Royal was here, you know, Australian professional. He was in Boulder for a little while last year. I didn't even know.

• 1:05:09Rich Roll?

  Well, everyone's in their basements.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yes, right now.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  You're all in Boulder for.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  And we haven't even had any sunshine. It's very weird, very weird. I feel like I'm back on the East Coast in the winter. But yeah, you can, I mean, you surround yourself with the people you want to. And, I mean, I have great training partners. But they're all younger and they they throttle it. So I have to be

• 1:05:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Have to be a little careful about what I, you know, what I get into in training and don't let my ego get get the best of me.

• 1:05:40Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Yeah. When you go out with other people, you're either going too hard or too easy.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  Right. But you're rarely doing what you're supposed to be doing.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what I've actually found is the hardest is when like age your athlete or something wants to come and ride with you. And they get nervous.

• 1:05:57Rich Roll?

  Their moment.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Well, they get, yeah, or they get nervous. They don't want to like hold you back.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  And then you just end up getting, they ended up giving it to you. You're like, no, like this is, we just need to settle down, you know?

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  I want to talk a little bit about your background. I think there's some interesting stuff here. So you your first sport was swimming.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:19Rich Roll?

  And then you went to the Naval Academy, right? So did you grow up, where did you grow up? You grew up in California or Pennsylvania? You went to like a seminary school before, right?

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  I do. My high school Wyoming Seminary not, it wasn't a, it wasn't like a proper seminary. It was a private day slash boarding school. But we grew up, my dad was in the corporate automotive world and we grew up everywhere. We got into swimming. We lived in Northern California outside of Sacramento and Roseville. Actually, Summer Sanders, her original swim team as well. She was a little bit before me, but the Sugar Bears.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  That's where we all started. And then we started moving around, but I was the worst swimmer in my family.

• 1:06:59Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  I mean, my family still scratches their head that I've made a career out of being a professional athlete. I mean, I was hopeless when I was a kid.

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  So, but you did it throughout high school and ended up like what you wanted to be, you wanted to be in the Navy? Like, what was the impetus to go to the Naval Academy?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  No, I didn't. I had no, originally had no desire. My older brother, Thomas, who's a couple of years older than me, he always wanted to go to Annapolis, always did. And he went there and I seemed to kind of follow Thomas. I guess I emulated him. He, he was a great student. I'm like, I'll be a great student. He's a distance swimmer. Okay, I'm going to be a distance swimmer.

• 1:07:36Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And then he goes to Naval Academy. I'm like, okay, I'll go check it out. So I went and visited him and I, I just, I fell in love with just the sense of duty and the sense of there being something more than just a college experience. Like I really felt like.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  There's a purpose for being there and an honorable purpose especially. So that that kind of drew me in.

• 1:08:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And did you, did you swim competitively at the Naval Academy?

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  I did. I swam, I swam my first two years there.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  My swimming career was really based off of training harder than everybody else.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you and me both.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't have, I didn't have the goods. But I, I prided myself on knowing that I could work harder than everybody else.

• 1:08:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  I mean, my coach.

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  It'll take you pretty far. It's just not going to take you all the way.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, now I look back, like especially when I had to start working on my running. Like, man, I wish I had taken the time to become a more efficient swimmer, work on my stroke. Cause I could have, I could have been better than I was.

• 1:08:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's a beautiful pool there though. I'm, I'm from Maryland. Like I, so I swam lots of meets at the Naval Academy pool over the years.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember when, when I was there, I came into practice one day and there was an age group meet. And our coach was like, yeah, this kid just crushed the.

• 1:09:01Rich Roll?

  I know what you mean to say.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  The pool record and the 200 free record just destroyed it. We're like, whoa, what's his name? Uh, Michael Phelps.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  Right. He's 12 or something.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was.

• 1:09:09Rich Roll?

  Right. And then, and so, so talk to me about like your kind of career in the Navy. Like you, so you study like naval engineering, right? Like you're going to be a ship builder or something and then you go to graduate school at Berkeley. But do you, are you, do you become a naval officer? Or what is your relationship with the Navy? Cause I know also like a big thing with you, like you've got the red, white and blue kit. And like there's a, you know, there's a certain, you know, kind of relationship that you've maintained. To, you know, that experience. So I just, I'm curious to learn more about that.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when I went to the Naval Academy, there's a five year commitment. Everybody graduates and everybody that graduates is commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy. And I, you know, so go to the academy, had no, never done a triathlon, didn't even know what triathlon was at that point. I knew I'd seen the Timex watches that say Ironman on it. That's all I knew. I didn't know what it meant. And. I, uh, my brother, Thomas, was an ocean engineer and it was time to go pick category like, you know, uh, majors and I went like, well, I don't want to do everything Thomas does, but I'll do naval architecture, which is like a subset of ocean engineering shipbuilding. So, you know, I picked that and I had the most interesting Navy career, I think, of, of anybody. You have a five-year commitment.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  I qualified for a program called the immediate graduate education program, which allowed you to go to a grad school. If you were accepted, you had to be in the top, like, I don't know, 5% of the class. And you had to get a scholarship from that school. Where there was only two schools that have ocean engineering programs in the country and it was Michigan or, or Cal Berkeley. And I'm like, whoa, I'm in triathlon at this point. I am like, I quit swimming. I was full on triathlon.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  And, and the academy had a triathlon team.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  We had a, a club team, so it wasn't a varsity sport. But for a while I balanced swimming and triathlon. I remember my sophomore year, swimming Saturday morning practice. The officer rep for our tri-team was waiting outside the pool, brought me to the airport. I flew to Tennessee, unpacked my bike, did the triathlon race that Sunday. Flew back home Sunday night, was back in the water Monday morning at, you know, 5:30 or whatever.

• 1:11:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Some coach never knew. Some coach would have flipped, kicked me off the team if he knew. But I was trying to balance both. And then I did wildflower at the end of my sophomore year, which at that point was collegiate nationals. And I got 11th. I dropped my chain on that big hill coming out of transition. But I was a top guy in the naval academy team and I thought, hey, maybe there's something here. Maybe I can be good at this. And that's where I said, okay, I'm gonna stop swimming, even though I had some of my best races at the end of that year, stopped swimming and said, okay, let's go all in on triathlon.

• 1:11:54Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah. Prior to that, uh, you, you had mentioned to me that you, you had pursued like dive school for a minute?

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  Like, tell me what happened.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so I've never told this story, Rich. This is pretty embarrassing. But yeah, I went to Berkeley, um, you know, got my masters in ocean engineering there. And I had service selected when I was still at the academy, special operations, which is explosive ordnance disposal. And part of that is doing the EOD dive training. So I go to my command and... I'd already found like the best situation ever where I'd had the support from Navy Sports and my commanding officer to pursue the Olympic dream. So I had convinced the Navy to be like, all right, this guy's got something special. I'd won the Armed Forces National Championship in triathlon. Like, okay, we're going to support this guy. But I still had to go to

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  dive school first and do that. So I come from the Olympic Training Center, finish up the season, and I'm like-

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  So you're, hold on, just sorry to interrupt you-

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  There's a lot going on, there's a lot going on here. I told you-

• 1:12:58Rich Roll?

  All right, the Navy deployed you to the Olympic Training Center.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  They did, yeah.

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  Like, you were, you were officially like in, you know, an armed service officer, but you were there to just train triathlon and be at the Olympic Training Center.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  That was, yeah, it was more of a-

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  You're like being paid, or like-

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're normal. You're, I was still an N center. I was maybe Lieutenant JG at that point, because the first couple promotions are automatic. But the Army, Army and Air Force have world-class athlete programs-

• 1:13:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  And Fort Carson, that outside of Colorado Springs is where the Army is based. Navy didn't have that, so I had to kind of try to make one happen.

• 1:13:33Rich Roll?

  And that Air Force Academy, of course, being in Colorado Springs.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Right there, yeah. So actually, you know what happened, Rich, is I put together this like packet, promotions packet, and I sent it to the head of Navy Sports. It was, I mean, professionally done. And the Navy Personnel Office is in all places, it's in Millington, Tennessee. But it lands on his desk. And just like as he's looking at it, the top-ranked EOD guy on the West Coast, who is going to be my like head honcho boss, walks by his door and he says, "Sir, take a look at this." And Captain Hines looked at it, he's like, "This is awesome. Like, these are the type of people we want in the Navy. Like, let's, let's promote this." So bam, all of a sudden, I'm-

• 1:14:17Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  You know, I'm heading to Colorado Springs.

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  Sort of as a, and you know, from a promotional perspective, like you're like a poster boy-

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:26Rich Roll?

  For recruiting, et cetera.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  So we'd do PR and things like that. I would go to dive tanks in Denver and-

• 1:14:32Rich Roll?

  But let's talk about the dive school.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  So I go there, I'm a little overconfident. I'm like, I'm super fit. I'm, you know, finishing the race season. But I didn't really prepare properly, which I should have known, right?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  And I get there and all the instructors are just waiting for me like.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  They want, they want to fail you so badly.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Not only my junior officer, and these are all senior enlisted. So these guys are like, they're in it. They know everything and they're like, ah, look at this little run. But I'm also like, I'm almost like the boss's pet too, right? Like his, his project. So there, I had a target on my back, which I didn't know at the time. I was oblivious. I'm just like, do, do, do, do, do. So I get up for the physical, the physical test at the start of the high school. And I go and I do my pull ups and I have a, I have a six, six wingspan and I'm barely six feet tall. So I'm like, kind of misproportioned, not great for doing pull ups.

• 1:15:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  And I do my pull ups. I get off the bar. I do like one or two extra over the minimum, which I think was a eight or nine. And I feel like you failed. Like, what? I'm like, yeah, no, yeah. Like three of those didn't count. Your chin didn't go all the way over the bar. Like, you didn't tell me that. Like, I didn't know. They're like, you're off the bar. Like, and they're just kind of messing with me. So they're like, okay, well, you gotta like do a retest. And if like, if you fail the retest, you're out. So then I kind of like panic. I get in panic mode. I got two days or whatever. It's a weekend. All the other guys are going off and partying over the weekend. And I'm just like trying to do pull ups all weekend. Well, it's like the worst thing to do, right?

• 1:16:02Rich Roll?

  You show up exhausted.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  I soaked to the retest. I could barely lift my arms and I didn't do, I, I, I didn't do it. I didn't get there and I had to go to the board and basically they're like, all right, yeah, we have to boot you out. But at the same time, they're all scratching their heads because like, they're like, oh, this, this went terribly wrong. Like we weren't expecting this guy who, top of his class at the academy.

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, professional athlete, like this is a weird situation, right? So I get booted out.

• 1:16:28Rich Roll?

  Firestorm.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I get booted out and I'm like, ah.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  Did you do the breath hold stuff and all the other aspects of the test though?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Uh, this was like before all that.

• 1:16:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, okay. So that, this is like a precursor to even get to that.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Beginning. Yeah. So it's like, you're like, you're revolving door, like you're in and you're out.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like, all right.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  So I'm like, I'm like, I'm shocked. They're shocked. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen. Like. Am I just gonna go to the fleet and like have to like be a surface warfare officer? I don't know. Luckily, they made an exception like, all right, we're gonna like, this is.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  Don't tell anyone.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just we're gonna put you back in next class. So I went back to my command in Coronado for, I don't know, it was eight weeks or whatever. And like, they're like, just, your only job is just go to the pull up bar outside the building and just make sure you do this. So I ended up going back and I had some redemption. You know, I did, I don't know, I did way more than I needed to do and I ended up, you know, as a class leader and ended up being the honor graduate. So the top graduate in the class. But I still, oh, man, along the way that those, those eight weeks, however long class was, oh, man, I had everybody after me. I remember we were, you know, they, you have to pass all these tests like breath hold and things like that. And they have one where they just beat the crud out of you when you're on the bottom with your tank on.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  They pull your tank off, they tie all your tubes, you rip all your stuff off. And you gotta sort it all out and the master chief of the dive school, he's like, my buddy was up top and they're like, all right, who's up next? Like O'Donnell, he's like, I got him, I got him. So he comes, he goes, it does a number on me and writes on the little chalkboard like I'm finally getting my, my mask back on. He writes on chalkboard or the dry erase board, good luck. Like, good luck with this one. And I did it and I got through it and he's like, okay, all right, this, you know, maybe this guy's okay.

• 1:18:22Rich Roll?

  Right, you had to do it with a target on your back.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I actually got amazing letters from my two, the two instructors in my class are like, really, thank you. Like, you did an amazing job. We really appreciate you sticking that through. And so it all, you know, all's well that ends well, but it was, it was hairy.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and any thought of, of kind of, you know, joining the special forces or being SEAL or anything like that?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  I was the only, I was the only guy on the tri team my senior year, which is probably five or six of us that didn't go SEALs. I was the only, all my, all my buddies are.

• 1:18:56Rich Roll?

  They're one SEAL.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  Yep, they're all team six guys now or, you know, they're getting out and stuff, but.

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  It's an interesting kind of time that we're in and maybe this has a lot to do with like social media and the internet, but you know, the, the, the kind of ascension of, of the special ops officer as, as you know, kind of a celebrity, you know what I mean? Like whether it's books that are being written or just people that, you know, impart wisdom on podcasts, like there's a lot of energy around, you know, SEAL Team Six guys, et cetera. And it's cool. It's cool to like learn from these guys and, and, you know, try to, you know, extract from their experience, something that's, that's actionable. But as somebody who, you know, has a background in this, like, how do you, like, what is

• 1:19:46Rich Roll?

  your perspective on all of that? How do you look at all of that? Like whether it's, you know, Goggins or Jaco Willink and these guys that are, you know, that are out there and, you know, people love these guys. And Goggins also like being, you know, he, you know, part of his career was, you know, not dissimilar in that he was sort of a, you know, kind of on tour.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  Doing a lot of talks, you know, on behalf of the Navy. And there's that famous, you know, commercial that he shot where he's running, you know, like, I think they even aired that during Iron Man, you know, and.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. One point, I think before I started doing Kona, they had, I think they had some of the SEALs, like, they sponsored the race and they had SEALs like drop in.

• 1:20:24Rich Roll?

  He was one of those guys.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And then they did the race, right?

• 1:20:27Rich Roll?

  They parachuted into the swim.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they parachuted into the swim start.

• 1:20:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. I think he was one of those guys that did it, did that, that year.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  It's hard because you get, you get split, like, split support, you know, people think it's awesome, but then, you know, and the service and other people like, oh, you're not doing your job that you were supposed to do.

• 1:20:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  So that's really tough.

• 1:20:46Rich Roll?

  You're, you're like, you're the, the shiny thing that they're dangling in front of other people while we're actually out here like doing the gig.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. But, I mean, there's value. I think one of the biggest mistakes the Navy made was David Robinson back in the day.

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  They should have had him in his whites going into every game.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Like, imagine that. He's, he's got his whites on, like, officer and gentleman, you know, going into the arenas. Like, there was, there's value to that. And, I mean. There's duty can be served in so many different ways. And I actually really struggled with that when I got out of the Navy. My time was up at the end of oh eight. I just missed the Olympic team by a couple of spots at trials. And I felt guilty that I I didn't do what I was supposed to do in the Navy. You know, I'd signed up to be a EOD officer and I'd gone and done this crazy path. And they had supported me so well. And it really it was eating at me like, what should I do? And luckily, my department head, Kevin Childery, who had been actually when in his early enlisted

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  days, actually did triathlon like professionally for a little while. And he sat me down and he's like, Tim, you've like, you don't write your own orders. You've done what we've asked you to do. By the way, you're way behind your year group. You're never going to get promoted past like oh four Lieutenant Commander. So you've kind of shot yourself in the foot with your Navy career. And you have potential to do something great in triathlon. So don't let, don't let the thought of, you know, being here to serve in another way holds you back like you've done what we've asked you to do. Now go follow your dream. And that was a really big moment for me.

• 1:22:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And is that, that informs, you know, like back to that thing of like, okay, you know, clearly like you put a lot of thought into the kit that you wear and all of that. So, so like allegiance to that sensibility is part of the reason why, you know, like you, you kind of comport yourself the way that you do.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I look at triathlon as a gift that the men and women of our armed services really gave me, you know, without the support of the Navy when I was in the Navy or even learning about triathlon when I was at the Naval Academy. My life would be completely different. I mean. I wouldn't have my wife or kids right now, right? I mean, if I wasn't in the sport, that all stems from that. So I am eternally grateful to our armed services and everybody that are part of it.

• 1:23:15Rich Roll?

  That's cool. You know, when, when the day of retirement comes, like, what is that? Do you have any sense of what that looks like for you? I mean, are you gonna, are you gonna like, you know, dig into that engineering background? Or are you gonna?

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  I'm gonna give you a little piece of advice, Rich. If you see a boat that says designed by Tim O'Donnell. Yeah, don't, do not step on a boat that says it's designed by me, all right? I don't.

• 1:23:36Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  No, I'm, I'm well past that. I look at my engineering background.

• 1:23:40Rich Roll?

  I'm confident that if you decided to explore that, that it would be a safe boat.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  No, I'm, I'm, it'd be too, I'm too far removed from that. I think the engineering piece of my education is great for problem solving, which has really played well into what I, Ironman racing. I mean, it's all giant puzzle, right? There's so many different things you're trying to put together on the fly when you're out there racing. I don't know. I mean, I want to do, I want to put the energy into triathlon, into something else and try to have that success. I don't really fully know what that is yet.

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Randy and I are going to start like an age group coaching business focused on, we won't be, we're not going to be high performance coaches. We're not going to look to coach the next Randy, you know, Ironman World Championship. We've seen, we've looked for balance as much as we can in being professional athletes. And we've seen how hard triathlon can be on families, particularly age group families. When you're working jobs, you have kids and then you're trying to train for an Ironman. So we're looking to, okay, next step is let's integrate triathlon into, into people's lifestyles. So it's a healthy part, you know?

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  You know, there's that saying, like, if you're not, if you're still married, you're not training hard enough. Like, we don't want that.

• 1:25:01Rich Roll?

  The Ironman widow. Yeah, I know.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  So that's, that's going to be kind of a big, I think, part of the next step. Cause we do want to stay connected to the sport. On top of that, I'd love to get into public speaking. I think that'll be really fun.

• 1:25:14Rich Roll?

  I think you're really good at that.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Thanks, yeah. And I've been messing around with some real estate investment stuff that I think will probably be part of it, too.

• 1:25:21Rich Roll?

  Cool. What is, what is the, you know, on that coaching tip, like, what is the advice that you would give? The amateur, the enthusiastic amateur, like you've been to a million races, a million Ironmans, you've seen these people out there, like what are the common mistakes that you see people making that are easily avoidable?

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Overtraining.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  If you have a minute, just be like, please stop doing this thing that I always see people doing.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Overtraining, Rich, everybody overtrains. Like, I mean, I understand if you are trying to be a professional and get there, like you gotta put the work in, but if you're overtrained for what you, all the other stuff you have in your lifestyle, you're gonna hit the race course unprepared in the sense of, you know, just not being able to access the work you've done. And that, and get a coach, or get on a program, and find some people around you that you can train with and share the enthusiasm, enjoyment with, and talk about it with your family, you know? Don't make those plans by yourself. Make them as a family.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  It's definitely a joint.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  It is. Everybody's gotta invest in it, right?

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  Everybody has to be bought in, or it's not gonna go well, right? And if you're gonna try to train 20, 25 hours a week, and you have kids and a job and all of that, I mean, it's tough, man.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Where did you max out on training hours back in the day?

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  I mean, the most, I mean, maybe like, short periods of like 22 to 25, but a lot of 20-hour weeks, and then probably the vast majority 15-hour weeks. And that was freaking hard, like, that's not sustainable.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:27:03Rich Roll?

  You know? So, yeah, if you're a pro, if you're Gustav and Christian, and you don't have girlfriends, and like, you're just like, you're in your twenties and this is what you do, great, you know? Most people, that is not, that's not gonna work. So, stop taking your tip from that, you know?

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  And try to figure out how to root what you're trying to accomplish balanced against the other things that you, that are valuable in your life.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  And I think you can put more energy at that level for an Asian competitor wanting to really enjoy the sport, put more energy into some of the other details, you know? Get a proper bike fit, or, you know, learn about nutrition, things like that, like, make yourself as sufficient as possible, so your success can come from something else other than just training 20 or 25 hours a week.

• 1:27:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and the, the training being for the most part, you know, joyous and nourishing as opposed to draining and, you know, denigrating to the other aspects of your life.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  I was talking to a H2B athlete a couple of weeks ago and she had like full on trained for this Ironman, was overtrained, did horrible, got on a separate program that was like 10 hours a week, 12 hours a week and ended up the next year.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  Doing better.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Doing so much better and she enjoyed it.

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  You know who's great on that is, is Gordo Byrne. I'm sure you know Gordo. Everybody in Boulder knows everyone, right?

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  Guy's so wise. Yeah, amazing. The last thing I want to talk to you about before I let you go is, is kind of the current state of the union of, of triathlon, professional triathlon and, and this issue of, of athlete representation in sport, which I think, you know, you know, you're very immersed in, in terms of triathlon, but also I think is, is, you know, relatable outside of just triathlon itself, like, like the, the role or the, like the power dynamic between the athlete and the organizations that, you know, kind of

• 1:29:13Rich Roll?

  control the trajectory of an, of a professional athlete's career.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been involved in some form since 2014 of the athletes trying to put themselves in a better position and it's, it's not, it's never been about like trying to go against Ironman or, you know, oppose them. Rooney and I have made our careers really off of Ironman, right? Like without Ironman.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  You're gonna be very politic, right?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  A good Navy man. I'll say what you can't say, which is that like the WTC, all right, no, I mean, I mean, it's a massive conglomerate. It makes a lot of money hosting a lot of races. It's very profitable in what it does and.

• 1:29:58Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful thing in that it allows a massive number of amateurs to compete alongside professionals in the sport, which is a really cool thing. I think it's amazing. But I think that the sport really caters to that amateur experience in a beautiful way, but does not do enough to take care of the professionals who are dedicating their life to elite performance, especially in a sport where you can only compete at your peak a couple of times a year. Like, how many Ironmans can you do? And these purses don't cut it. And the parity between men and women, like, there's so many problems here that need to be solved.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it all starts with the fact that they're an event company, right? They aren't like...

• 1:30:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're like...

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  We're almost a sideshow.

• 1:30:47Rich Roll?

  It's not that different than, like, putting on concerts. The fact that it's sports almost is...

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  But they'll sell out, and this is probably their argument, they'll sell out an Ironman that there's without a pro race, right? So it's almost always like, do they need pros? And that's because we haven't been packaged as a product that we can sell. We haven't been packaged as entertainment. And I think, I mean, it's like, why was everybody so mad at Lance with all this stuff? It's because he was seen as inspiration, not entertainment, right? People didn't look to him as an entertainment feature, like the NFL guys that are pounding each other and all doing stuff behind the scenes or whatever. And I think we've been stuck in that inspiration role, and that's why it is awesome that we're interacting with

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  the age group community at Ironmans. But it doesn't necessarily help us grow the sport professionally or even on the amateur level. And that's where I think we got something really interesting with the PTO right now. It's because we're putting together a package of races focused on professionals that we can put out there. I mean, there's 22, 23 million views on television last year of PTO events. So this is something we haven't done before, being able to focus on the pros to help kind of grow that. It's been hard. We had to bring together a partnership, right? There's investors and then there's the athletes and we got to rally athletes.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  It's a hard situation for the athletes because we're all, it's a self sport, um, kind of a, almost a selfish sport. And we've never had anybody around long enough to really believe in, right? Like, there's always these monies coming in, like a Try Dubai or like American Interbank where like there's a, some cash thrown at the athletes and everybody grabs as much as they can and they think it's just going to disappear. So they never really invest in it, but now we're a partnership. You know, we own half of the PTO as athletes. So we're putting, it's sweat equity for us. We need to get behind it and we need to make sure this thing succeeds. We need to get the same athletes consistently racing each other on these big stages with big prize money. And we need to get to the point where you're not losing money just to show up to a race.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  And that's where the sport is at right now. I mean,

• 1:33:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's super expensive to travel to all these exotic locations and to like bring your bike and, you know, stay in hotels and all of that. And then the prize money doesn't even cover the travel expenses. So like this, it makes no sense. And so it's incumbent upon the athlete to go out and get their own sponsorships outside of prize money. Which, you know, like a lot of these companies within multi-sport, like, yeah, they'll give you a bike or they'll give you product, but like not a lot of money is being thrown around unless you're at the very highest level. And that's reserved for like, I don't know, five or six people and everybody else, good luck.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  And now we have even more talent that's worth the money, but the pie is not any bigger, right? I mean, when you talk about endemic, you know, bike companies.

• 1:33:54Rich Roll?

  So if you get, if you win Kona and you're a man, what do you get? And if you're a woman, what do you get?

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Uh, the prize money is equal.

• 1:34:00Rich Roll?

  It is. What is it like 250 or something like that?

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  No, I think the win is like 125.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  125? 125,000?

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:34:08Rich Roll?

  For the Ironman World Championship.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  But if you get.

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  What is it if you win, you know, like, I don't know, the, you know, PGA?

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  I mean, there's

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  Augusta.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  There's like a 600th ranked like tennis players are making 600 grand.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  The Australian Open or whatever, you know, like, yeah, it doesn't make, it doesn't make any sense.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  But we need to, we need to be able to bring the money in, particularly from getting exposure on television to bring in some of these other partners beyond the sport, banks, you know, car companies.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  What is the advertising revenue that NBC garners from their Ironman broadcast? I mean, it's gotta be, cause that's always like an Emmy winning, you know, production.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Right, but I believe they pay for the television time.

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, they're paying the WTC for the rights to broadcast.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  I believe, I believe Ironman pays them to get this, to buy this, they buy the, they buy the airtime and then whatever sponsor, whatever commercials they air, they bring back into them to, they, they keep it, right?

• 1:35:04Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  That's not a great model for

• 1:35:06Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Like, if you want to generate revenue off of selling the sport as entertainment, you gotta bring in a lot more.

• 1:35:13Rich Roll?

  Well, and also now that it's being livestreamed, you know, how valuable is the broadcast when it's however many months later?

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:22Rich Roll?

  And they finally air it.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  You know.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  And it's, I mean, it's, they're hard races.

• 1:35:27Rich Roll?

  It used to be a big thing. Like, I don't, is it still a big thing?

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  I think they still, it's, it's more of kind of that documentary style though versus like a true race event, right?

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  Right. You're not watching it to see who wins. You're watching it for the pageantry of, yeah.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  So the PTO, that stands for Professional Triathlete Organization.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:35:47Rich Roll?

  And so it's sort of a quasi kind of collective bargaining organization, but also an event, you know, production company, like you're, you're creating these races, right? That are, that are designed for like audience engagement, that are kind of, you know, playing around a little bit with the traditional format of what a triathlon race is.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  And

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  To develop stories too, right? Like the NBA really grew when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came in and they had this story, this, you know, NCAA championship rivalry coming into the NBA. You know, Magic, very colorful character. Larry Bird, kind of the curmudgeon, like, you know, just hard worker guy. And it was, it was, the dynamics was awesome, right? And that, being able to tell stories really lifted the sport. It's not just about the competition. It's about the stories and, and, and the rivalries and things like that. And

• 1:36:44Rich Roll?

  You gotta be able to create an emotional connection with the individuals.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You want to root for somebody, right?

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Whether it's, you know, Dave Scott and Mark Allen racing toe to toe. Like, who are we, you know, why are we watching this? Why do we care about who these people are?

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  And if it only comes like Kona once a year on the television and you see Jan or Rini, whoever it is, like, once a year, you, you need to have that storyline. You need that consistency. You need to be seeing these athletes face each other, you know, every other week or every couple of weeks. And, and you need to say that, see that play out with a definitive winner at the end. I think that'll be, be super important too. And it's, it's not, it can't be a charity either. Like this whole PTO endeavor isn't a charity. It's a partnership, right? I mean, if you just hand out money to athletes, I mean, the, the prize money that the PTO has handed out in the last couple of years is insane. I mean, $2 million end of year bonus rankings pool and a million dollar prize purses at the US Open and the

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Canadian, Canadian Open. It's a, it's a big deal for the sport.

• 1:37:46Rich Roll?

  That's huge. Yeah, that's huge progress.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  We have to be a business. We have to be able to cover that. You know, and the investors are awesome, but they're, they're not, they're, they're here to make money off a business too, right? They, they're not here to just give us handouts.

• 1:37:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There has been, there is a history of like, kind of money coming in and, and like the Bahrain, there's the whole Bahrain thing. Like, is that still a thing? Like?

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  Is it? And then what's the?

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  But when, when those guys lose interest, the money goes somewhere. It's like, oh, actually, I want to follow cycling now. So I'm going to put this into a cycling team.

• 1:38:17Rich Roll?

  Like the Crown Prince was super into triathlon. And so it was just like a pet project for him. But, but, you know, I don't know, a lot of money seemed to come into the sport. And then what's the other series where there's like a Russian oligarch involved? Like the?

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Super League.

• 1:38:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Super League.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. Yeah. And Maka.

• 1:38:35Rich Roll?

  Mac is involved with that. Okay. Yeah, like I think they bought the Malibu triathlon. So I was down there the other, you know, like it's

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  I think what's successful about that is, you know, oligarch aside, is playing with the format like the way that they kind of, you know, mix it up and try to make it more interesting for, you know, somebody who's trying to just witness and pay attention like the fan.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think like you get someone that hasn't seen like Olympic, like world triathlon racing and the first thing they'll say is from just being a casual viewer is like, oh, that mixed relay. That's really cool. You know, so

• 1:39:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  there is some tinkering to do with formats and engagement to

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  to really make it powerful. But I think it comes down to the other athletes really need to understand that if you want to make this work, then you have to help create this business, which is the races, right?

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  And from that we can generate revenue that then can support athlete growth and, you know, developing pipelines for up and coming athletes, right? And, you know, sub series and things like that where you can really start to put a foundation under the sport to successfully grow in the long term.

• 1:39:43Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so when you look at golf, tennis, you know, some of these other sports where, you know, like the athletes do quite well, um, you know, what's still missing in like where, where's the, you know, so you're, you're here in town because you had a PTO meeting, right? Like a board meeting, right? So what do you guys talk about? Like, what are you working on establishing to bridge the gap between kind of where triathlon is versus these other sports where the athletes are, are, you know, kind of being accorded pay and respect in a, in a manner, in a manner that seems, you know, more on parity with what they deserve.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  That's a great question, Rich. And we actually, Chris Komod has been brought on as the current chairman, running the show. And he's from the tennis world. He's, you know, running the ATP for a long time. So he, he sees the value in this and he wouldn't, he's got a reputation that he wants to uphold too, right? He's not going to hop onto a sinking ship, right? He's here to make this thing work. I wish I could tell you more about what we discussed.

• 1:40:42Rich Roll?

  All private. That non-disclosure.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  But rest assured, yeah, there is a great plan for the future.

• 1:40:50Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I mean, I feel like the next crop, we were talking about this changing of the guard at Kona, like the younger athlete, like these are, these are internet native people who grew up with social media and they intuitively understand that as professionals, like their image and their kind of like their, you know, I hate that word, brand or whatever. Like it's, they have to shoulder the responsibility of, of, you know, creating interest in what it is that they're doing. And that's just part of their DNA. Whereas older people like your generation, certainly, you know, my, you know, I'm way older. Uh, you know, that was something that, that people had to learn or kind of resisted or, or didn't think that they had to do. But that's just part of the mentality. It's like, oh, you're a professional.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  Okay. Here's what you need to do. Like you'll get sponsors because you have a certain number of people on Instagram who care about the storytelling that you're doing. And you know how to tell a story to get people interested so that when you are racing, you have a fan base and that, you know, like sort of scaled up creates a lot more interest in the sport, which ultimately will bring more eyeballs and money and all of that into it.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, and it starts from the top. We have to really engage those top athletes, right? The young guys, the Norwegians.

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  You see Gustav and Christian and Sam and the like, you know, they, they, those guys know what they're doing online.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  And we can't, we can't grow unless we get the top to really, you know, get on board. And then, you know, once we get it all established, it, everything trickles down, right? And then we can start supporting development, things like that. But Rini and I joke, we've been around a long time, right? We, we joke that we signed up to be professional athletes, but now we're just social media influencers. I mean, the shift has been insane, right? And we struggle with it.

• 1:42:37Rich Roll?

  The Tim and Rini Show, the YouTubers.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  We still, we were kind of one of the first in the, in the, in our sport to get on that. And we're like, ah, like we don't, like, I don't know if this is what we want to do. And so, and but then we kind of, the floodgates opened with all the other athletes. Um, but yeah, I mean, I mean Lionel's channel is probably gets more views than, you know, than like an Ironman.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  No, I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's really smart, you know? And, you know, ultimately like, You develop however many people are interested in whatever it is you're sharing, those people start to care about you.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  You know, like, that's important. I feel like that is part of the job, you know?

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  It definitely is. And I think Rennie and I were good about being able to kind of shift a little bit.

• 1:43:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  I mean, the old days, you just, if you, you know, you put a logo on a kit and you try to get on a magazine cover.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  That's done.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  And then you're good. You're done. You do one booth appearance at a race and you're done.

• 1:43:32Rich Roll?

  Those days are long gone.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're so far gone.

• 1:43:35Rich Roll?

  And probably for the better. Like, what is the value proposition of that?

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:43:39Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? It doesn't really make sense. And I think there's still a lot of companies that are stuck in that paradigm. And they don't understand, like, that really doesn't matter. You know, what matters is, who really cares about what you're doing? Like, whether you get fifth, or first, or 10th is much less important than, you know, how emotionally attached, you know, people out in the world are to what it is that you have to share with them.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's almost this kind of like butting of heads between story and performance, right?

• 1:44:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  They don't always align.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  You have to perform. You still have to perform. Like, it can't...

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, some people don't.

• 1:44:15Rich Roll?

  But do you have to win? I don't know.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:16Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, I mean, like, if you do, if you have the credibility of, if you have a record of performance, you have the credibility, that's, you know, obviously a great spot.

• 1:44:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Rich Roll?

  So what's the future of the Tim and Rennie Show on YouTube?

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  We gotta get Kenny back. We're like, Kenny, we need you.

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  Does he live in Boulder?

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  He does live in Boulder, yeah, yeah. We made the mistake, though, we, you know, we want everybody to grow around us, too. So, like, you know, connected a lot of partners and stuff. And then our partners start using them so much. Like, hey, we still need some Kenny time, too.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're like...

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, come on, where's our Kenny?

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta get back on that.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, we're gonna, we'd like to. And I think we have a lot to share with this kind of transition period, too, right? It's not all about racing anymore for us. You know, we're parents, we're figuring out what's the rest of our life gonna look like. And I think that's a compelling story to our audience.

• 1:45:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Good man.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Are you gonna come out and be on an episode of the show?

• 1:45:09Rich Roll?

  I would love to.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, alright.

• 1:45:10Rich Roll?

  I'd be honored, I'd be honored to.

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  Next time you're in Boulder.

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, that's a promise. And if Rennie, that seat is wide open for Rennie anytime she wants to come.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, she'll, um, we'll get her out of, uh...

• 1:45:22Rich Roll?

  I used to see, like, when Siri had her group out here that she was training, I think, I think Rennie was part of that, like, was living out here, right? Yeah, so I would see them, like, over in, um, Malibu Creek State Park, they would do a run loop in there, and, and she would, they would be, they would go ride as a peloton and she would, like, drive behind them, or, you know, I used to see them out.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  And you know, Siri, um, she bought a pool.

• 1:45:46Rich Roll?

  She did?

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had a pool, they had like, uh, like, one of those, like, above-ground, like, 25-meter...

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, I think I remember seeing something about that.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  And it wasn't heated though, Rennie said it was so cold, like, it was just... They'd be up, I don't know where it was, but...

• 1:46:01Rich Roll?

  But now she, uh, she, like, has a horse ranch somewhere?

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, she has a horse rescue, I mean, her and Becker do an amazing job with that. I mean, they're doing some real good up there.

• 1:46:11Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:13Rich Roll?

  Well, it's great to talk to you, man.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Richard, I really appreciate being here, this is awesome.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Um, any kind of, like, last words for, you know, the unsuspecting, uh, person out there who might be harboring a little bit of arterial plaque, or the aspiring Iron Man athlete who's, you know, spending too much time training and not enough time at home? Like, I don't know, what do you, what do you want, what do you want to leave us with?

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think, um, life is, is precious and it goes by quickly, so just make sure you're, you're doing everything you can to, to enjoy the moment and the people around you, and, um, everything you can to make sure you're around for as long as you can be as well.

• 1:46:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I appreciate it. I think your story is really powerful and, uh, it's just, you know, it's, it's so extreme, uh, that, you know, once you hear it, or, you know, watch the videos or whatever, you can't, it doesn't leave your consciousness, and it, and it really, like, as somebody who, you know, look, I care a lot about my health, but it's inspired me to go and, you know, I haven't been, I haven't gotten a calcium test in a couple of years, like, I really should go and, and check that, and I think everybody should. And I think, you know, you're in a position to really, you know, uh, you know, spread...

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  A message that's not only powerful, I mean, let's face it, like, heart attacks, that's the number one killer. Like, this is the thing that, like, you know, by and large, most people are gonna die from, right?

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  It is the number one killer for men and women in the US. I mean, it's, yeah, it's real. And there's no better investment than ourselves and our bodies, right?

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  Like, it is as serious as a heart attack.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:47:46Rich Roll?

  There we go. Cool. Well, come back and talk to me again sometime. It's just super fun. I'll let you know next time I'm in Boulder. I want to come in. I know the house from the videos, so now I gotta go see it for myself.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Everybody knows where you live. I don't know if that's good or not.

• 1:47:59Rich Roll?

  But much luck to you. And if there's anything I can do for you, I'm at your service.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rich.

• 1:48:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cheers. Peace.

• 1:48:19Rich Roll?

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

• 1:49:01Rich Roll?

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

• 1:49:44Rich Roll?

  and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.