Ultra-Athlete Samantha Gash On Suffering For Your Passion, Running Across India & Why Service Is Paramount

Imagine running a 250 kilometer ultramarathon across the Atacama desert — one of the driest places on Earth — when your only legit running experience is a single ill-fated marathon attempt that left you humbly walking the last eight miles. That same calendar year, you race three more 250km ultramarathons to become the first female and youngest person to ever run and complete the 4 Desert Race Series Grand Slam, one of the world’s toughest and most prestigious endurance achievements imaginable. This is inspiring story of Samantha Gash – ultra-athlete extraordinaire, roll model, humanitarian, and just a really cool person. Discovering a previously unbeknownst acumen for endurance and a disposition for suffering unlocked a certain joy in Samantha, as well as a thirst for more. So the year following her 4 Deserts achievement, she conquered a 222km non-stop foot race across the Himalayas at 6,000 meters above sea level — an event that had only been completed previously by one man. That experience triggered a deep desire to leverage her running for humanitarian causes. So she got to work, running and raising money for causes she believed in. Among her accomplishments: * A 379km non-stop run across Australia’s Simpson Desert on behalf of Save the Children Australia; * A community run & fundraising event on behalf of podcast fave Turia Pitt and Kate Sanderson, victims of the Kimberley ultramarathon bushfire – a race in which Samantha also competed; * A 32-day, 1968km run across South Africa's Freedom Trail, also on behalf of Save The Children Australia; and * A 76-day, 3253 run across India from from Jaislamer, Rajasthan to Shillong, Meghalaya on behalf of World Vision Amidst the insanity of it all, she somehow managed to raise over $203,000 and counting for the aforementioned causes. Today we unpack Samantha's extraordinary, inspiring journey, blisters and all. This is a phenomenal conversation about Samantha’s transformation from someone with no athletic background into the inspiring ultra-athlete humanitarian she is today. From all the hardships and seemingly insurmountable setbacks and obstacles to the rare air she occupies today, it's a story about self-belief, purpose, perseverance and the call to service. But the core theme of today's conversation is the close kinship that exists between passion and suffering. And the magic that transpires when you have the willingness to entertain the impossible, step outside your comfort zone and courageously leap through fear into the abyss. Sam is an absolute delight. It was a privilege to spend a few hours with her and boyfriend Mark Wales, a badass Australian Special Ops Commander she met when they were both contestants on Australian Survivor. You're gonna love this one. Promise. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Do you know the Latin root of passion is to suffer? And so often people go, "I'm so passionate, I'm so passionate." And I'm like, "Oh, are you willing to suffer the most in your life for that thing that you're talking, that you're passionate about?" I mean, it doesn't need to be the thing that you do for your full-time job. What we're passionate about can be fulfilled the most through the thing that we do outside of work, because we have the time and space and maybe financial freedom from our full-time job. But I think when you are willing to suffer for something, and you connect it for something that's for me, outside of myself, to a bid, that suffering doesn't seem so great anymore. I really do gain great perspective of it. I also choose when to suffer. Like, I don't suffer. Like, it's why I don't always race anymore, because I know what it's like and how hard

• 1:49Speaker 01

  it is, and I want to make my footsteps count. And on the idea that maybe we don't have that many footsteps, what is the best use of my footsteps?

• 1:58Rich Roll?

  That's Samantha Gash, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where each week I roll up my sleeves and get deep, even emotional at times. It happens. There have been tears on this show with some of the most inspiring thought leaders and positive change makers I can find all across the planet, people across all categories of health and wellness, fitness, nutrition, medicine, entrepreneurship, social activism, music, entertainment, the whole deal. So, thank you for dropping by. Today's guest is the inspiring, powerful, super cool Samantha Gash, who is an extraordinary

• 2:55Rich Roll?

  ultra athlete, a role model, a philanthropist, a humanitarian. What can I say? Samantha is amazing. Check this out. In 2010, with close to no legit running experience, Samantha became the first female and the youngest person ever to run the Four Desert Race Series Grand Slam, which is one of the world's toughest endurance challenges. It requires competitors to run four 250 kilometer ultra marathons across the driest desert in Chile, the windiest desert in China, the hottest desert in the Sahara, and the coldest desert in Antarctica, basically the most inhospitable places on earth, and you got to do it all in one calendar

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  year. You might recall Samantha's name coming up in my podcast with Jennifer Steinman way, way back. That was March of 2015, RRP 133. Jennifer is the filmmaker behind the Desert Runners documentary, which profiled four people over the course of a year as they tackled this crazy four deserts challenge. And Samantha is one of the featured athletes in that amazing movie, which you should definitely see if you haven't already. In any event, in the aftermath of her 2010 four deserts accomplishment, Samantha went on to run a 222 kilometer non-stop

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  Adventure across the Himalayas at 6,000 meters above sea level. And that event had only been completed previously by one man. And that experience being in the Himalayas, it really triggered in her a deep desire to, from that point forward, leverage her running for humanitarian causes. So, her next big run was a 379 kilometer non-stop trek across Australia's Simpson Desert. She used that to raise over $32,000 for Save the Children Australia. And then she went on to co-organize a fundraising community running event on behalf of podcast favorite, Tereya Pitt. You remember her from podcast number 287.

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  And Kate Sanderson, who were both victims of the Kimberley Ultramarathon bushfire. That was the race that burned Tereya and Samantha, ironically, also was competing in that race. And that event raised over $40,000 to support both Tereya and Kate's continuing rehabilitation, which is amazing. And then in September of 2014, Samantha ran an average of 61 kilometers for 32 days in a row across South Africa's Freedom Trail, raising $55,000 on behalf of Save the Children to support a holistic initiative that increased access to feminine hygiene products and provide education around the importance of attending school.

• 5:39Rich Roll?

  And most recently, Samantha teamed up with World Vision to run 3,253 kilometers across India. It was a 76-day expedition from the west side of the country to the east, which ultimately raised over $150,000 to fund six education-focused programs. So, it's insane, all of it, extraordinary. And you're gonna hear the whole thing, but first...

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Okay, so this is a super awesome conversation. It's a conversation about Samantha's journey from a traditional, non-athlete practicing lawyer, and then how she became this inspiring ultra-athlete humanitarian that she is today. We track all her crazy runs, the trials, the challenges, especially her recent traverse across India and how she trains, how she competes, how she prepares mentally. We talk about the hows and whys of her strong call to service, that pull to leverage her talents for humanitarian efforts. But I think the core theme of this conversation is the relationship between suffering and

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  feeling alive, the importance of challenging yourself, and the magic that occurs when you have the willingness to step outside your comfort zone and leap through fear into that abyss, into the unknown. Samantha's super cool. It was an absolute delight to hang out with her and her boyfriend, Mark Wales, who came along for the ride. Mark is a badass Australian special ops commander. She met him when they were both contestants on Survivor, the Australian version of Survivor. And he was cool. I was a little intimidated by him, but he was cool. All right, enough. Let's talk to her. Give it up for Samantha Gash. Awesome to have you here, Samantha.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Thank you for making the trek up to the house, to the container studio, to do the podcast. It's lovely to meet you.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so great to meet you. Been waiting to meet you for a while, so it's awesome.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  I know. Your name is constantly coming up, and it took a little jockeying and some persistence, and you've been pinging me pretty consistently, so I appreciate that. And I'm thrilled to talk to you. There's so many areas to discuss, so many points of interesting intersection, and I'm just, I'm stoked to meet you. You're a big hero of mine. And we're on Facebook Live, I should say that on the podcast right now. We are doing a first ever Facebook Live broadcast of the podcast. I'd like to make this a regular habit. So check it out on my Facebook page and leave a comment and let me know if you enjoyed this or what you would like to see in the future. But in any event, let's just dig into it.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  I think the first thing that I want to just explore with you, I think a great way to kind of just launch right into this, I want to hear about India. If you ran all the way across India, west to east, right? Unbelievable.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I mean, it was the hardest thing that I've ever had to prepare for and definitely the hardest thing I've ever had to, you know, endure along the way. It was, for those who don't know, in 2011, I went out to India to do a 222 kilometer non-stop run between the two highest motor oil passes in the world. It's a race called the Ultra The High. And I really, I did have some experience with the ultra marathon running.

• 9:12Rich Roll?

  Just a little bit.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  But I mean, I had some experience, but in a really short condensed period of time. And it was like a baptism of fire going out to India to do 222 Ks at a race that peaked at 20,000 feet.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  So the, the run across India began with a formal structured race.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  No, the idea for India began with...

• 9:34Rich Roll?

  Once, when you did that race.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was 2011.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  So, and I think the way to kind of talk about India is like, why did I? It was a pivotal point for me doing this race in 2011. I was doing it purely for myself. I was just wanting to see what was my own, you know, personal, physical and mental capabilities. And I realized that I was in way over my head. And I got to the second mountain pass of that race and I just said, I was hypothermic. I had brought six mates over from Australia and the US and they're all there for me. And I just thought, if I can mobilize their support to help me in this moment for myself, imagine what I could do if I was trying to do it for something that was for a slightly more worthy cause. And so on that mountain pass, I just said, never again am I going to push myself so,

• 10:21Speaker 01

  so incredibly hard unless it's for something outside of myself. So fast forward, you know?

• 10:27Rich Roll?

  Six years or whatever it took, but that was the kernel of the idea, that was the birth of the idea.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the birth of the idea and I I travelled through India a little bit afterwards. And I um had a friend who I was talking about, what would it be like to kind of go to do a traverse from south to north? And he's like, no, don't go south to north. It's been explored quite a bit, either on car and a bit on foot. He's like, go west to east, think ma- um desert to mountains. And I love, I suppose trial running for like the extremes and landscape and geography and climate that it can take us to. And so west to east sounded really appealing to me.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  And nobody had ever done that before.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I I don't think so. I mean, maybe they had and it's just not recorded, but from my understanding, no one had done that before. And then it kind of evolved over the years and it was after I did a run across South Af- South Africa that I thought, I think I'm now ready to attempt the beast, which is putting, you know, the pieces of the puzzle together to see if this India run is actually possible. So.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine the logistics of trying to pull that off. I mean, it must have taken multiple years just to organise it.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  It took two years of, I I I guess sole focus um to kind of work out what would the run look like, um what kind of logistical support did I even need, what support could I get in country, what would I require from, you know, the networks that I had in Australia or the US, um and then why was I going to do this? Why was I going to be, you know, an Australian girl running from the west to the east of India? What was that for?

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  The purpose.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  What was the purpose?

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  And so how did you like sort of zero in on what what that would be?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Over the last five years, my kind of purpose has been exploring the barriers to quality education for children around the world. And so with.

• 12:17Rich Roll?

  And why why did you, why that? Like, why is that of personal meaning to you?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Um, I think it came out of, it came out of Sahara quite a bit. Uh, and I'm sure it might explode.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we'll definitely get into that.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  But I guess I think education is the breaking point to break cycle of poverty, um to change someone's paradigm from having very limited opportunities to seeing the potential for future opportunities. And so I think if a child has access to education. Their life can change, not just for them, but also for their families and the communities around them. So I think it's a really solid starting point.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  And what is the way in to actually redressing that in a meaningful way?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Well, for me, I don't think it's building schools. And I think a lot of people think a child can't get access to school, let's go and build a school. But the problem is across the globe, there's so many barriers to why a child can't even enter into that school ground. And in a country like India, that barrier changes all the way across the country, based on culture, the landscape of the country they're living in, the temperature, the language that they speak, whether they're in a patriarchal part of the country, or whether it's matrilineal. So there's all different types of reasons why a child can't go to school, which therefore I think the solution needs to be quite specific to that area.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  Even access to water. I had, I had Scott Harrison from Charity Water on the podcast, and he was, it was fascinating how he was explaining that, you know, in these areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly where there really just isn't, you know, access to quality water, it's the women that have to make that trek, and that is prohibitive to them attending school, right?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Definitely. And even things like children not knowing that they should wash their hands after going to the toilet. You think of the link effect of that, a child doesn't wash their hands before they go to the toilet, they eat food, they get sick, they get diarrhea. I'm sorry, they get diarrhea, they get sick. Then they might have to walk six K's one way to get to school. It's forty five degrees Celsius, so ninety plus Fahrenheit. They're unwell from the simple thing of not being able to wash their hands. So the chain effect of things that can make a huge difference in these communities to get that child to school. Sometimes people find it so overwhelming, the issue of, you know, how can we help a child in some poverty stricken areas of India get to school? But it's small stuff like

• 14:43Speaker 01

  teach children how to wash their hands, show mothers how to plant sustainable ingredients that they can. Uh grow during the different cycles of the season, which can actually be nutritious for their families, um which is also empowering because they get to look after their families.

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  Right. And I would imagine you saw quite a bit of this, you know, dearth as you were traversing the four deserts, right? I mean, you're running through these, you know, tiny communities across these, you know, sort of, uh, you know, areas that are quite impoverished.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I did have access to some kind of community connection through doing the four deserts, but um for the most part, you are in this isolated world of the run of the race. And I think the race is different than um an expedition across India where the focus is not so much on the kilometers and how fast you do it. It's about what are your observations as you're doing that traverse.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And the engagement with the communities that you're passing through, right? Like, I know you made stops along the way and.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And I guess that was the hardest part of the entire project. I mean, if I just had to run, it would be very, very hard. And I don't think I would have lasted that long because the motivation might not be there.

• 15:56Rich Roll?

  From like fifty K right into like giving a talk at some school or something like that.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the project was to visit eighteen different um programs and communities that World Vision support across the country. And when I say eighteen, within each of those visits, I might have visited four different programs, whether it was a family in a mud hut, um going, walking through the slums and and meeting a shopkeeper, going into a school, and all of those could have been separated by, you know, fifty, sixty kilometers that we would have had to travel. So um that, those were the hardest parts of the journey, but the most rewarding parts of it for the understanding.

• 16:33Rich Roll?

  So you have this idea of of tackling uh the hurdles that impair younger people getting access to education, but you have to find a partner, right? Like, so why World Vision? Like, why, you know, what, how did you sort of line up the right people and the right organizations that you could partner with on this?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Well, you and I are both lawyers, so we definitely do our due diligence.

• 16:55Rich Roll?

  I try and forget.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I call it laps and I try and say it's very, very lapse. Um, I had, I mean, like any project partner that I ever look for, I do a lot of research into the programs that they do, um, the the success or um.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  How how sustainable that they are for the long term, um whether they actually are a the world vision kind of motto is it's a hand up, not a hand out. And I've worked with all the not for profits um over my time and I just felt that the blueprint that um world vision had in India was something that I could work with.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And it's got to be a very collaborative process. I mean, I think my project was a bit of a red flag. I mean, imagine going to a charity and going, I want to do something that's as potentially dangerous and risky and maybe going to give you a lot of negative media attention. I'm going to run across the country. I'm gonna I'm gonna run on roads which trucks go past and I want to try and connect the this run to access to education.

• 17:55Rich Roll?

  Why would that get negative or negative reaction though?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it's dangerous. It's it's

• 18:00Rich Roll?

  Something were to happen.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Ah, and and something could definitely

• 18:03Rich Roll?

  But also expensive, right? Like this is a major or, you know, thing to pull off.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  But they there was different partners funding different things. So and I get that question all the time. Like, how does this all get funded? Um, partially it gets funded by me, partially um world vision committed to the content creation part. So we had a videographer out with us and that was funded by world vision because they were using that content. Um, logistics, I tend to get corporate partners and you do, you know, that kind of standard sponsorship packages for them. So you have different people who align to different parts of the story and you use your run across India to share that story for them.

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  So when it comes together, how big is the crew? Like, how many of you guys like schlep over there?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had, I mean, it was it was madness. I don't even sometimes I go, how did I do that? Um, I had three different crews that came out.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Uh, my first crew, well, I'll talk about kind of the the foreign crew, so the non-Indian crew. Uh, for the first month, I had what was called um my like body physical month. So everyone I had brought out was, you know, physio, people who would give me tough love. I mean, it was such a long way to go. I couldn't kind of get emotional into like the heart components too much. I really need to focus on what the body needed to do. For anyone who's kind of done really long expeditions, like the first two to three weeks are the hardest. Your body is going through a massive adaption phase. And once it goes through that, it gets more used to the rigors of long days of expedition running. And you actually get used to it. Your body changes and goes into this different gear and it becomes

• 19:36Speaker 01

  It becomes your new norm. So until then, you need people who-

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  Right, it's sort of like, it's fighting you and fighting you and fighting you and then it goes, okay. Like now I get what's going on, like we can get into a groove now.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I mean, everything that could go wrong to my body went wrong in my body in the first, from week two to week four.

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  I, um, from the stress of the project and just dealing with all the different components of it. Um, and it was really hot. I mean, the first eight hundred kilometers of the run was in, you know, ninety to a hundred Fahrenheit temperature, ninety percent humidity.

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And I was trying to cover a lot of mileage. So I was doing on a-

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  Like, cause it's flat?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was flat and I just, I only had a couple of community visits in that time and then I needed to get to the middle section of the run where it was highly densely populated with community visits. So I just needed to get through that part of the run. And so I, I think in the first three weeks, I did over a thousand kilometers.

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  So it was a super high mileage in that kind of timeframe. So everyone I had out was about tough love. And so I chose my crew based on the body. And, you know, my stomach wants, I think, two and a half, three weeks in, my stomach swelled up and I put a photo of it on Instagram and everyone was like, are you pregnant? And I'm like, I certainly hope I'm not. It was, it was so swollen and then to run with that swelling in the gut and it was just such pain, I could, I was like waddling. I was, and then I was just kind of hurled over and, oh, I mean, there's some brutal footage of me just trying to get through that. Um, and sometimes you have this vision of what something's gonna look like, that you're gonna be able to run and then you kind of succumb to, to walking. And it takes a massive drop of the ego to go, you know what?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  For the next two days, like I just have to walk and I can, you know, I can power walk the shit out of something if I have to. And I was hiking so hard in so much pain and just hoping that I could get through the mileage for that day.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And then I had, you know, a stress fracture in, um, my ACL and, you know, my physio thought it might have been bone damage.

• 21:33Rich Roll?

  How early on in the, in the run did that occur?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Three weeks in.

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  Oh my god.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  And I-

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  So just for clarity, we should probably say, like, this run was- How many kilometers in total?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Three thousand two hundred and fifty three.

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  And you're covering like forty five to sixty K a day.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the longest, you know, probably the shortest day was forty, the longest day was seventy six.

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  So three weeks in and all, how many days total?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Seventy six.

• 21:58Rich Roll?

  Seventy six. Okay. So three weeks in, you got a stress fracture. Oh my God.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  And imagine what the mindset goes through when you're like, I have so much more to go. I haven't even reached Delhi yet, which was like my month in. And that was like my first like milestone, which you've got to break, you know, any long term goal, you break it into chunks. And I just kept thinking, got to get to Delhi, got to get to Delhi.

• 22:18Rich Roll?

  So you have, you've, you broke this into three parts. You have the tough love section, then you have the head section, and then you have the heart section to like bring you home.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:26Rich Roll?

  And I think that's, that's a good sort of um way of launching into like how you approach such massive goals and obstacles, right? Like you break it into these component pieces. I just have to get to Delhi or I have to get to the next lamppost or whatever it is. Like when you're, when the rubber hits the road or your knee is killing you or what, whatever, like what are you resorting to, to push through?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  When I initially my physio, I was in a lot of pain. I was struggling to even walk until my physio would bring me into my camper van. And I think it's important to note, like I lived in a camper van for this entirety of this project, not really any water and.

• 23:03Rich Roll?

  And you have how many people like in your orbit?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Um, so in that, it changed, let's say for the first month, there was maybe like eight in that camper van. I could stretch my arm out and touch the head of my photographer. I was like, hey, good morning.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  Did you have, were any of these people pacing you or was it just support?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  People would come out for maybe five Ks at a time. It was actually for their mental health at times to get out of that vehicle because that becomes quite a, you know, the air conditioning is going full ball. It's, it's, you kind of detach from the world of India. And the people who came out of my crew came out there because they wanted to experience what it was like to do India. This wasn't a highly paid gig. It was because they believed in the cause. And so I would have people come out for five K and, and run with me and then jump in the, the security car behind me. And yeah, it was and it was great. It was a revolving door of people and I would just chat to them. And and sometimes I knew I didn't want to talk and other times I would just like talk about anything.

• 24:01Rich Roll?

  So how many days in or weeks in before you kind of click into that? Like sort of new mentality of being in the zone. It's like this is the new normal and I get up and this is what I do every day. And it's like you're kind of in a groove with it.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I think I had, I think probably getting to Delhi. So as I said, I had a really bad um ACL kind of um issue going on. And so my physio didn't want to tell me at the beginning that he thought it might be bone damage. And I could tell on his face something was wrong and I'm a I'm a control freak. This is I think, yeah, I'm a control.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I'm a control freak, so I could.

• 24:35Rich Roll?

  I'm shocked to hear that, but go ahead.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  So sure. So I would look at him in the eye and I could tell that he wasn't telling me something. And that started to freak me out more than anything else because I thought he's not telling me it because maybe he thinks I can't do this. And so I was running with a friend at the time. I'm like, you've got to make him tell me. You've got to make him tell me what's wrong with me. Does he think I can't run further? And finally, he told me, I think you might have a, you know, bone damage uh around your knee. And the moment he told me, I was like, okay, what's our game plan? This doesn't sound good, but what are we going to do about it? And he said, well, I think we should book an MRI when we get to Delhi to just find out. You've got a day off in Delhi after you visit some communities in the slums. Let's book in this like MRI.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay. And so I kind of went into overdrive. I'm going to plan. I called some friends in Delhi. I'm like, can you pull some strings? I have no idea how to work like the medical system in India. Managed to kind of work that out. And after that was sorted out, I just said, okay, I've got a plan. I'm just gonna get to Delhi. It's gonna be ugly. I'm gonna have to walk a lot of it. Um I'm gonna maybe have to take quite a few breaks. And I think letting go of the panic just allowed my body to start to get to heal itself.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  Well, also you had you had a goal, like just we got to get to Delhi. Anything beyond that like is not even worth thinking about.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  I had like four hundred Ks. I had four hundred K to get to Delhi. Uh so it's like. I know. It wasn't like I was like eighty Ks from Delhi. I had had several days to get to Delhi. And my goal for the first day was if I can just try and I would always walk the first four cave every day to just get my body waking up. I'd get up at three forty five every morning. So it's pitch black. And you want to kind of get yourself used to India roads. And then I would always run for fifteen K pretty much straight. And when I was injured, I was like, if I can just, if I can run for four hundred meters and then walk for six hundred meters, like then I can just keep doing four hundred meter run, six hundred meter walk.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  And I would just keep breaking it up. And slowly, time after day after day, I was able to stretch out how far I could run and walk. And then I got to Delhi, got the MRI, and it wasn't bone damage. It was just a partial sprain or strain. And with that, I was like, okay, cool. Well, I can deal with a strain. That's fine.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  Right. And the relief of that, just mentally, I would imagine, like a huge burden is lifted off your shoulders.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm very careful how I say this because I think some people don't take notice when their body truly is going through injuries. But I also think people are really conservative. When their body is in discomfort and going through this new sensation, we're so quick to go, oh, I better pull back my training. What's actually happening is your body is adapting to a new load. And sometimes you have to give it sleep, give it more food, and giving it the right food, hydrate your body, maybe take a couple of supplements, feed it with all the positive love that you can, and you can push through that. And then that's a new boundary of what you're now capable of doing. And I had experienced that in South Africa when I ran across it. So I I knew I would go through a really clunky, yucky phase between week two to week four.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  And afterwards, yeah, I had pain, like I was running across India. Did I ever think that that was not gonna hurt?

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Um, but my brain started to compute with the reality of what it was.

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your brain and your body have the ability to acclimate on a level that I think most people never truly access in their lives. And, you know, I had a taste of that in Epic Five, like the fifth Iron Man I did, but like felt the best of all of them. And, you know, when I did the podcast with the Iron Cowboy, who did the fifty Ironmans and fifty states.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  I follow that journey.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  He did, you know, he basically, what he said mimics very closely what you're saying. Like, at some point, it just clicks in and it becomes your new normal. And that becomes. You know, then like your sense of what's possible expands.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  But I think most people sort of shy back from that before they get to that experience because there is that discomfort period where you think like, this is not right. Or like, maybe I'm going too far. And you know, you see, I see it all the time out here on the trails. Like people go out for, and I've said this before on the podcast, but they're going out for like a 45 minute run or whatever. Yeah, it's hot out, but they're just like burdened with vests that are filled with like all these products and fluids and like, oh, it's like, dude, you're gonna, you're not gonna die. Like, come on, you know what I mean? Like, what is, you know, your boyfriend, he's in the SAS, he's laughing over there because he's like, yeah, like, I can't imagine what your training was like, right? Like, they didn't give you gels, you know what I mean? So, you know, I think, but, but people are so worried about that.

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  Or maybe it's just the marketing machine behind it telling us that we need all this stuff, but like to go without and to have that experience of, of connecting with what your body is actually capable of, that's where the beauty can occur.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  And I had the world's greatest perspective, you know, out the, out the doors of that camper van, I was watching women work in the fields tirelessly from sunup to sundown, carrying, you know, logs and heavy branches. And then I saw children walking, you know, four to eight Ks in the extreme heat with, you know, one small bowl of rice in their stomach and no shoes on. And so when I would see that type of stuff and what I consider like true duress, I kept thinking I've chosen to be in this situation. And with that choice gives, I think, a high degree of empowerment and like resolve to kind of push through it.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I also knew when I got to exit it, I got to, I could exit any point, but I was definitely going to exit, you know, day 76. And so it temp, you know, at the most, it was going to be short-term discomfort.

• 30:14Rich Roll?

  So what is it about, what is it about like on a broader level? Like, what is it about that suffering or that experience of pushing through? You know, what is the allure and like, what does it mean to you? Like, what is it? What is it that you're connecting with and why does that give your life meaning?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Do you know, I talk about this a bit in my presentations, but do you know the Latin root of passion is to suffer?

• 30:39Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that, but I love that.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And so often people go, I'm so passionate, I'm so passionate. And I'm like, oh, are you willing to suffer the most in your life for that thing that you're talking that you're passionate about? I mean, it doesn't need to be the thing that you do for your full-time job. What we're passionate about can be fulfilled the most through the thing that we do outside of work because we have the time and space and maybe financial freedom from our full-time job. But I think when you are willing to suffer for something and you connect it for something that's for me outside of myself to a bid, that suffering doesn't seem so great anymore. I really do gain great perspective of it. I also choose when to suffer. Like, I don't suffer. Like, it's why I don't always race anymore because I know what it's like and how hard it is and I want to make my footsteps count.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And on the idea that maybe we don't have that many footsteps, what is the best use of my footsteps?

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  Well, a lot of people can sort of cavalierly, you know, toss the, toss the word addiction, you know, in your direction. Well, you're just, you're just addicted to this, right? Like, so how do you, how do you respond to that?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I'm not, like, I'm actually not addicted to running at all. You know, I just, you know, I can't really talk much about it, but I was just on that TV show Survivor and I couldn't run the entirety of it. And I was like, oh, that's fine. And there would be a lot of trial runners and ultra runners that could not cope not being able to run for a couple of weeks. If I get injured, for the most part, outside of an expedition, I just say to myself, well, that's my body's way and my mind's way of telling me I'm meant to focus my energy elsewhere. So I don't think I'm addicted.

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  It doesn't cause you any kind of like stress or duress?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  No, not really. Like, I just keep, I always just say to myself, just, there's so many things in life that you care about and sometimes we can get caught up in the... The rigor of having to run every day and do a certain amount of mileage and achieve personal best through whatever is that physical pursuit at that time. But there's more to me than just a runner. You know, I'm always very hesitant to say that, in fact, I try not to say I'm a runner. I try and say I'm an endurance athlete, which is so ambiguous that no one really knows what it means. Um, but I, you know, there's so much to me and what I care about that if I can't run for three weeks, I can spend my time pretty worthy and feel value in who I am as a person outside of that.

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a certain mastery, I think, that comes with that. Like, if you, like, being grounded enough and being connected enough with yourself to like, be okay with whatever is happening, right? It's sort of a detachment from expectations and a, a just of being, you know, sort of being in the present with what is happening and being in acceptance or surrender, surrendering to that.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  It's something I've had to work a lot on.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  I'm de- I'm definitely not, um.

• 33:27Rich Roll?

  Enlightened?

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I, maybe I spent so much time in India to try and get enlightened. But I, you know, I was a, I was a lawyer like you and I felt, um, that perceived version of success was, you know, climbing the corporate ladder and, you know, looking a certain way and being, you know, communicating in a certain way. And very quickly I worked out that law wasn't the right path for me. And to walk away from it wasn't as hard as maybe it should have been considering I studied nine years to, to get into that position. But then I wasn't brave enough to go and work for myself. And I, I went into finance because I thought, oh, that's another, that's another version of success. If I, you know, work in financial advice. Uh, and then I was like, oh, no, I don't really suit that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And then I worked in communications. And then I was like, no, Sam, like, you're actually a terrible employee. You're really, really bad. And I used to always say, no, they don't understand me. And like, they're really harsh on me. And then I had this aha moment going, no, you don't want to do what they need.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  And of course, it's their prerogative as your employer to expect a certain type of maybe behavior or standard. And I wanted to go and run across a desert, or I wanted to take, you know, four weeks to do a run across South Africa. So.

• 34:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Why won't they give me all this time off?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Like, they don't understand me.

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you figured it out a lot sooner than I did. I did a lot of suffering in the law firm environment for you. So I can tell you that you got out when you needed to.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Rich Roll?

  I wish I had had the sense of self and the wherewithal to be able to be connected enough with myself to, you know, have that self-awareness to make those kinds of moves earlier.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I observed particularly the women who were in senior positions at the law firm to me.

• 35:13Rich Roll?

  And you were, I mean, just for clarity, like you were at Baker McKenzie, like this is a huge international law firm. Like it's not some small operation.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I was lucky. I sometimes I think I wouldn't have got that job now, considering how competitive it is. I definitely was what I consider a flight risk. In fact, myself and a few other girlfriends who all got jobs at Bakers, I think that we were, we were all flight risks. We were bleeding heart humanitarians who, you know, traveled a lot, had a lot of multiple interests outside of law. And I think now they would see a red flag on our CVs. But at the time, Baker McKenzie were hiring that type of person. I think we maybe kind of changed that.

• 35:54Rich Roll?

  That's an attractive candidate. You want a well-rounded person. I mean, I went to law school with a lot of people like that. But then, then, you know, the paychecks start getting dangled in front of people's eyes. And a lot of that sort of do-gooder, you know, sensibility that attracted you to law school in the first place, sort of gets pushed quietly aside. And it's like, well, I'll go do this for a while. I mean, in the United States, like, most law students that graduate law school have tremendous loans they have to repay. And the idea of going to work for a nonprofit or something, it just doesn't, it's not sensible at that phase. Like, I'll pay off my debt and then, you know, I'll go do the thing that I want to do. There's always a deferment of that thing that you truly wanted to do. And for a lot of people, they just, they never make it back because they get sucked

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  into the system and the money's too good and. You know, they blink and then their, you know, partner and they're kind of in.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Well, I said to myself, I'm either gonna leave now. Um, because if I get used to the security of this type of income, maybe it's gonna be harder to walk away. And I thought, you know, what if I then have kids and then there's gonna be so many other excuses of why it wouldn't be fair to walk away from that security. So I did it quite early in my degree because I didn't own a home, I didn't have children and, you know, I.

• 37:08Rich Roll?

  Did your friend, did your flight risk friends quit also?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  We all quit within a six month period and they're all my, I mean, we're still.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  Are they on your crew? Did they come to India with you?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but one of them was working at World Vision at the time and that was just completely coincidental. And the other one was working for the UN and she was, um, oh, she was, I think she just left Cambodia at that time. So, um, we all kind of did our own different thing. Um, I felt bad for Baker McKenzie that the three amigos left them. And within a six month period.

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  Used to huge turnover.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  They are. They do invest quite a lot in your training and development at the time. Um, and I don't ever begrudge or regret that I did that. I mean, I got an excellent, solid base of what it's like to be a lawyer. And, you know, if I get contracts thrown my way right now, I can review them with a lot of.

• 37:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, it always comes into, it always comes into play.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  It does.

• 37:58Rich Roll?

  I always think like that, I mean, I took a million depositions as a lawyer and I, that helps me as a podcaster. You know, I know how to like, you know, pay attention and ask questions. But do you have, like, how do you think about the sort of, uh, I mean, a big thing about going to law school is it, it trains you in a certain way of thinking, like a certain mentality and how you approach problem solving. Does that come into play in ultra running? I mean, I know you also have this other, you have the artist side of you as well, the actress side. And I know that you've talked about, um, how the performance art, arts training has kind of, um, has applicability in your running. So how do those two things work?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I think both of them. And I mean, anything that you do for that period of time and the training in both performing arts and law was a nine year phase of my, you know, academic life and then I actually practiced as a lawyer. I think anything that you do moving forward will draw from that, um, skill base and you will incorporate that into how you, you act and conduct yourself and engage with other people and the projects that you choose to take on. I mean, I think I'm very methodical with, um. The way I approach an ultra marathon, but I'm also very careful and I have a degree of like um risk mitigation in my approach to it, which is weird for the fact that I ran

• 39:21Speaker 01

  across India, but I don't think anyone will ever know how much risk analysis I did in a project like that to make it a project that wouldn't flop over and be a detriment to myself and the people who connected themselves to it.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  What would be an example of one of those risks that might not be self evident that you had to like figure out how to navigate?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  I mean, there's.

• 39:42Rich Roll?

  Like water, right, would be one?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Access to water and there was sections of our, I mean, people think that you, you know, there can be hundreds and hundreds of kilometres in India where you don't have access to a store. Uh, and we would kind of camp a lot of the times, our camper van at petrol stations, but they only sell petrol, like they don't sell water or any other supplies because they can't undercut the stalls that are along the way. So there's, you know, those stalls, those tea houses have a monopoly, um, and so your access to water was definitely one.

• 40:13Rich Roll?

  You have to know where all of those are, right?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I had to, I hired a local team and they were amazing, but um there was definitely at times when you had to have trust that they had your best interests at heart and, you know, there's an, the Indian culture is so like, there's a ruthlessness to it because you think of the population size, to be successful in India, you have to have a ruthlessness and a competitiveness and you have to fight hard. And so for a lot of my crew members to go out there, they kept saying, I'm getting screwed over by India, I'm getting screwed over by Indians. I'm like, no, you are now in India, you need to understand the environment and the context and what you're working in. And as opposed to getting angry at someone, think why they're like that. They're like that because that is the only way for them to be successful normally.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  It's a dog eat dog world sometimes. So it took me a while to, and I would make so many cultural mistakes that I would, the culture was the hardest thing that I kept finding. There was risk in not understanding it um for the project for me. I mean, there were so many times when we got told, we're going to turn the camper van around if you don't give us X amount of dollars. And there was bribery all along the way and just, you know, imagine trying to, I remember in the first couple of weeks of the run, I'd be running. Anytime I go to the camper van, I'd have to take a phone call to the media or I'd have to write this blog or I'd have to answer this advice. Or we were getting traffic problems up ahead or the police escort, you know, wanted X amount of dollars.

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  And I'm just trying to run and I was like, I can't deal with all of this right now.

• 41:43Rich Roll?

  Have like a slush fund for like just, you know, sliding off a few bills every, every now and again for whoever to grease the palm.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And you can't even like, you can't even record all that kind of stuff because it's just, it's the smallest amount of cash, but then it all adds up and. Yeah, it was tough.

• 42:00Rich Roll?

  What is, you know, what, what was the big, the most surprising thing about India and the culture that you encountered? Like what is, you know, what is it like to traverse all of India and, and all of these different, you know, provinces of this amazing place that you got to experience?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Oh, the, the country can change within fifty kilometers from language, not just dialect, language, from the terrain, from the way the people look. It is a country with a hundred countries within it. And that makes sense because of the way that India, you know, Bangladesh and, you know, now West Bengal. And there's, there's obviously the country has changed quite a lot over the years, but you know, the influence, the Tibetan influence up north and um, you know, the country is incredibly, incredibly diverse, which is why you can't put a blanket solution on the country when it's talking about access to quality education. You need to look in like microcosm to that certain community and go, what is going to work with this community?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  What are they going to pick up? Are they going to pick up economic development initiatives? Are they going to want um, you know, to focus on, you know, uh, nutrition? Or are they, what's going to work for them that is going to make it sustainable and flourish into the future?

• 43:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've never been to India. Julie's been, but you know, as somebody who doesn't know that much about it, from a bird's eye view, looking down, it it looks like total chaos.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  But they get that chaos, like Indians understand that chaos. We don't understand it. So us, so a Westerner trying to go in and operate, you know, whether in a business sense or a pleasure sense for travel, it can be incredibly overwhelming and you have to almost succumb to it and you just have to kind of give in to what that is, which is why my diet was Indian. I never tried to, you know, have a Western style diet whilst running across the country. I learned that the hard way in South Africa. Oh, I, I mean, I would have to parties and I mean, I ate so much food, but it was probably the best food you could eat to try to run across a country to sustain the bulk of your body and not kind of fall apart and be a little weed finishing, you know, the run as well.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  And did people know what you were doing as you were passing through? I mean, did you have kids and people come out and run with you? Were they, did they have an awareness of what was, I mean, I know there was press in India, but like what was the day to day experience of that like?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  People worked out. I mean, I had quite an extensive Indian crew and I I had two support vehicles in my camper van. So one of my support vehicles would go ahead and kind of check the route, pick up any supplies that we needed and had Run India on it. And they would talk to all the locals. So people were waiting for us and everyone would be screaming, Run India, Run India. And so I'd be running and

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  And there, when I was in Rajasthan, um, there was a pilgrimage happening in the opposite direction. So hundreds and if not thousands of people were walking the opposite direction that I was running. And, you know, it's probably three sizes of this, which is the road, um, of this, you know, um, shed right now. And they would kind of just all be clapping and I'd be clapping at them because they were walking, they were walking a hundred and fifty K one way, taking off their shoes, praying and then coming back a hundred and fifty K. And they would stop maybe every thirty K per day and like sleep together on these communal environments with music and communal food. Um, so I felt like I was doing this like reverse pilgrimage in an opposite direction. And I love Rajasthan because although there was a lot of intensity with stairs

• 45:31Speaker 01

  and, you know, so many people, it was a real friendliness to it and just it was a, it was a Beautiful curiosity. As I got further north into the country, um, those stares were not curious. They were of hate and disdain. And that was a very difficult thing to kind of get through. But it was something that I prepared myself for as well.

• 45:53Rich Roll?

  Disdain rooted in what? Like, what, where is that? What's the origin of that?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Um, it's hard to know. I'm not them and I try not to pretend to understand everything about um, India. I think seeing a woman running freely, I would never see women on the streets. I would never see a woman riding a motorbike. Uh, and here I was, a woman in shorts and I know people are gonna be like, you should have worn long pants. Well, you run in a hundred and ten degrees in pants and see how it feel. I would have died. And I got to a certain point where I was like, you know what? I'm gonna be as respectful as I can, but I am an athlete and I'm gonna stand to being an athlete running and I need to, I need to do what's right for me as well. And I've got my security team and I'm wearing a top that's appropriate, but I need to, I need to wear shorts.

• 46:40Rich Roll?

  Right. So that was occurring more in the heart section.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:44Rich Roll?

  The third section is the elevation starts to go up.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the very, very top, it's great. Um, cause it's quite like this Tibetan Nepalese influence as well. But the kind of the northern central belt um, of like Lucknow and um, Haridwar. No, it wasn't too bad, but um, Kanpur. Yeah, there was um, Marut, which has got a high um, high degree of kidnappings. And so, you know, there was men on mopeds, particularly during the festive seasons that were riding around spitting at me. Um, you know, there was a man who was slashed open, dead on the ground, tied up by a horse and there's people who were just watching it and yeah, there was a lot of confront, you know, there's,

• 47:25Speaker 01

  obviously there's um, people who are poor and um, starving and begging, but seeing like the mental illness side of that as well. Um, and you know, you just wanted to give water to, I always felt like I was never doing enough. I wanted to do so much more than I could do and I think I'd feel that.

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  Part of the world where the volume's turned up to ten. I mean, you know, in India, it's just, it's so in your face, right? Like, just because there's so many people and there's so much poverty.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  It's quite overwhelming even just thinking about it. You know, you go back to some of those moments and it's only when I do a podcast, when I have this liberty that you give me to speak about this story for, you know, forty minutes, whatever it is, do I take myself back then? And normally when people ask me in my day to day life, how was India? They just, they want a short condensed answer. They want a sentence. So my

• 48:15Rich Roll?

  It was awesome.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  So my answer was, oh, it was really complicated. It was harder than I thought, but amazing. And then they're like, awesome, great, cool.

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  And I don't even, don't even know how to answer it. I either give you that superficial, giving you nothing answer.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  How many hours do you have?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Or let's sit down for a little while and have a chat. And so it's, it's been a long time since I've sat down and like, thought back to those moments of, of running up to Nainata, which is this province, um, although it's this town, um, kind of the, the foothills of the Himalayas. And there was this lady standing on her own up a switchback on a road and she was, I don't know, um, if she was either starving or dehydrated. And I think there was really strong mental illness there, but I just, I kept kind of like going back. I was like, I can't leave her. I need to do something. And I kept kind of going back up and down and thinking that I needed to do more. And I gave her water and like my Indian team were like, you've just got to go. Like there's nothing you can do. And it's, um, shit feeling.

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  But ultimately you, you raised a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, at a, at a minimum of a hundred and fifty. I don't know the, the final tally, but we, we were funding six education programs.

• 49:23Rich Roll?

  And that's, that's where that money's getting funneled into program, into programming.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  And I went to those communities where that funding is going as well. So there's quite a nice connection to actually see the people where the funds will change their lives directly.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and how do you kind of conceptualize, you know, I'm not looking for a pithy answer, but you know, in the wake of this experience, like, did it change you? Like, how do you think about poverty, education, India and that experience overall, like on a personal level? Like, what did it mean to you?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 49:57Speaker 01

  I try not to search the small stuff. I mean, it's very easy. It's hard to adapt to India and it's so easy to adapt back home. And so it's, you know, we, the life of comfort is so easy to get into and the life of um simplicity is mu- sometimes much more challenging. Um, you can't help but keep wanting to seek that, to go back to that where life is simple and it feels like it makes sense. And when you walk away from it and you're doing

• 50:26Speaker 01

  what sometimes feels like the mundane, you know, it it is in my natural inclination to think what next? And I have forced myself to not plan another project for a while. I mean, that was kind of three years really heavy focus of my life where I didn't think of anything else. There was definitely impacts on like relationships and just, you know, it was, it was all consuming to make that thing happen. Every single day was a challenge in the lead up to it. Nothing went to plan. And that set me up really well for India because getting the funding, even getting the permits, getting people on board. Um, people love the idea, but backing it was more challenging and I had to really, I had to back myself more than I've ever backed myself in my life.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  So I now need to have a little break of, I can't keep chasing that. You can't keep chasing that feeling um unless it feels really right.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  And so, yeah.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  But, but your capacity for resilience and malleability must be through the roof, right? Because you've had, I mean, when, when, when nothing goes to plan and you're in these, you know, incredibly trying circumstances and you've got, you know, however many weeks to go, you know, you adapt, right? Like, so when you come back, I mean, everybody that I've spoken to who's been to India, they have trouble re-acclimating when they come home for a variety of reasons. And, and they're just going to like an ashram. They're not like, you know, doing anything like, you know what I mean? Uh, uh, but, you know, sort of having that, that knowledge, like that sense of what you're capable of

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  and your, your ability to kind of like, you know, weather whatever gets thrown at you has to be, you know, a very fulfilling sort of feeling to have.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  I think resilience.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Um, at a high degree is really possible for anyone if you really believe in what you're doing. And I think our capacity to be tolerant and understanding if we back ourselves and we have the support by others for for that is through the roof. I mean, I don't always have high resilience, but I think um for in those circumstances, it's pretty strong.

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  Um. So what do you tell people who come to you and say, I'm trying to do my first ultra or my even my first five K?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Um.

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  Uh, you know, how can I get like a little, how can I slice off a little Samantha?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  I just say, know why you're doing it. Like be really clear on your why. Um, and you know, like, I mean, you're, I follow your training and I think you're quite incredible to be so consistent. And whether it's just social media that allows me to think that I think you're incredibly disciplined and consistent with your training, even when you don't have a race. Um, it's obviously a way of life for you.

• 53:06Rich Roll?

  I think it's like, it's funny when people say, thank you for that. But like, it it almost makes me uncomfortable because honestly, it's like what I prefer to do. Like, I feel guilty because I should, I feel like I should be doing something else. But like, if I was single, I I could easily like move into a hut and just like do that all day. Like, that's my choice. You know, it's my, that's my love.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Um, well, that's your why, like you love it.

• 53:29Rich Roll?

  Um.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Um, it's, you know, it's part of who you are and the fabric of your DNA now, whether it was from the beginning or it's something that is created into you. But I think for people who are tackling a new challenge, that's not a part of their DNA. Um, and they want to be able to deal with the challenges that it poses. And obviously, training for an ultra marathon or a marathon, a half marathon, you just, I think, if you know why you're doing it, you're able to deal with um, the challenges of time commitments, the doubt within yourself, if you get injuries, if you don't succeed in the way that you wanted to the first time round, like, I think you can kind of keep going back to that point.

• 54:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think you have to know why you're doing it. You know, a lot of people approach me, I'm training for this, I'm training for that. And it's like, why are you doing that? Like, what's going on with you personally? Why is this important to you? What is meaningful about this? What are you seeking to learn about yourself via this experience? And I think when you have a grip on that in a healthy way, that helps inform, you know, the approach to seeing it through, as opposed to like, oh, I don't know, I didn't think about, you know, like, I think you, like, you're gonna burn out, or you're just gonna, that day's gonna come, where you wake up and you just don't feel like it, and that's probably not gonna happen.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  It's not a particularly mindful way of going about something that's gonna cause a lot of, you know, pain and potentially discomfort to you. So I think it also helps inform your support network that you create around you. So if you know why you're doing something, you know, whether you get a coach, or whether you seek, you know, advice or support from friends, or what you seek from your partner in order to kind of like, keep pushing you, you're a bit more clear in what you need to get in order to do this big, great, audacious goal.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, sort of interlinear, interlinear, lineated in what you just said is, is understanding that even if it is an individual pursuit or goal, that these things don't happen in a vacuum or isolation. Like, you, you need a team. Like, you need people who support you, who have your back and can hold you accountable and lift you up. These things don't happen, you know, it's not, we have this ego attachment to like, I did, or it, it, this is not how it works at all.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I might have been the one who ran across India, but I can like, wholeheartedly say that I would not have done it if I didn't have my team.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and what an incredible group of people, you know, to sort of take a time out from their lives and devote themselves. I mean, obviously, it's a grand adventure, but I think people underestimate, like, how difficult it is to

• 56:03Speaker 01

  It was not romantic.

• 56:05Rich Roll?

  any kind of ultra event, let alone an expedition on that scale. I can't imagine.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing what they did. And sometimes I always feel, I feel so guilty for what they go through in order to be there. Now, a couple of years ago,

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  I'm so sorry. Thank you.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. I'm like, come, come out, let me, let's talk about you. Tell me about your problems. But you and I have both experienced crewing at the same time together.

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  We both crewed at the same Badwater event.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  You were there?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  I was there.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  How did I not meet you?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  We actually passed each other.

• 56:37Rich Roll?

  We did?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  So this is a cool story. So I was listening, so you were crewing Dean.

• 56:41Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  I was crewing Kath Todd. The girl who won.

• 56:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  So when Dean was, so you guys were on the right hand side of the road and um I think Dean was having a bit of a, you were a very blokey team, right?

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was all guys.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  It was all boys. Um, and Kath was running quite well this point. He was just before the night time. And we just kind of ran past and we kind of had a bit of an exchange. Hey Dean, you know, you guys said hi to us and she kept going.

• 57:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  And so I was listening to, I know, I was listening to Dean's podcast and then I was listening to David Goggins podcast and we were all there.

• 57:17Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  So I was, and you spoke to them about it at the same time. Like, oh my gosh, I was there then. And then I remember when we passed Goggins as well.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. I didn't know. I wish I had known.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Well.

• 57:27Rich Roll?

  You know who else was there was Shannon Farrar-Griefer. Do you know Shannon?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  Ultra Shannon?

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Oh, is this?

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  She did the double, like she was the first woman to do the double Badwater.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  She, she didn't have a good race. Like, uh, she's, you know, dealing with some health issues right now, but she lives right near here. And every time I go out, there's one trail where I got to run and I would, I would say ninety five percent of the time when I go out there, I see her out there. And she had an all female crew, like all these hotties.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Uh, well, you guys had the, the boys crew. We had a mixed crew. We had someone who was from Canada. We had someone from Vegas and I was from Australia and we all had met Kath through different circumstances. So I met Kath in India. And she was gonna do that ultra race, but she pulled out because she couldn't handle the altitude. But we connected really well and she's like, you know, I know you like to talk a lot, so can you come and crew me and just talk the entire time when you pace me?

• 58:21Rich Roll?

  Is that the, your one experience at Badwater?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:25Rich Roll?

  It was a rude awakening for me. I was in no form or shape to be.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  I remember listening to your podcast when he's like, you're gonna have to run this and this and you're like,

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, Jason Coop, Jason Coop, who's like his coach, who was kind of crew captain. I was like, how much does Dean want us to like, I just figured, oh, we'll, we'll pace him in like the last 50 miles. But like, most of it, we're just gonna be doing handoffs. He's like, no, you want someone to run with them the whole time. I literally went ashen. And the first real pull I had was like the hottest part of the day.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  So where did you start with him?

• 58:53Rich Roll?

  I blew up, like, I had to stop, like, I couldn't do my whole pull. Like, I was like, it's too hot up. I thought I was gonna be like, you know, the only crew guy in the medical tent. I ended up running with him all night, like, once it got dark and it was fine and it was good, but like, I didn't train. I was not really training and like, I just went in over my head. I felt bad about it, actually.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  How long, how long were the stretches that he had you doing?

• 59:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, there were a couple hours, depending upon how people felt.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  That's long, like, that's, I mean, we, so Kath took 32 hours. And, I mean, we didn't sleep the entire 32 hours. I'm sure you didn't sleep either. Cruising that race taught me what cruising really means. If you're cruising someone to make the most of every advantage they can possibly have. Bad water is.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  There's no downtime.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  You think it's gonna be chill and you're gonna be in the van, like, listening to music with the air conditioning on, like,

• 59:43Speaker 01

  I felt like we did it harder than the runner.

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  And the other thing is like, you're not supposed to put the air conditioning on in the van because it'll overheat.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we had, I mean, I learnt so much about cruising from that experience as well. And I've implemented in other experiences with my crew people in those types of races. You know, when you're cruising in India and it's 77 days, you better not expect that from someone because it's way too high demand. But in bad water, you know, the way Kath wanted to be crude is you, obviously you run behind her. She doesn't even speak to you, she just puts her hand out right or left if she wants a certain water bottle. And you've got to kind of like, put your hand out and get it in the right spot.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  Right, like a track and field baton handoff.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  And then be ready when she wants to return it back to you. And then she'd be like, okay, I want you to wet my face with some ice cubes. And she goes, you know, get my face, but don't get my glasses and, you know, it was. It was so intense and some people can go, she was high maintenance, but at the same time, this girl is going, you know, she's going for the win, she was

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  She has the right to be hard. Yeah, it's like this is, she's a high performing elite athlete.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And from your, if anyone here is listening to this and they are about to crew someone, I, I think the best crew are those who are able to take the runner's goal as their own. So a win in whatever PB they wanted or whatever thing is a win for them and they can't be sensitive.

• 1:01:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  And I just think you can't take what someone does. Obviously, hopefully your runner is respectful and they definitely apologize at the end for anything and they've got manners. But I think you have to understand that they are at their, the limit of their capabilities. And like, it's a fine, fine line that they're playing on.

• 1:01:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it ain't a party. That's for sure.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  No one's having a party.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  That's why they say like, never have your friends crew for you. Cause it's like, yeah, when, I mean, it's, you're stripped down to like, you're just rawest self. And it's inevitable that there's going to be, you know, outbursts or, you know, emotions. And as a crew member, you also have to be highly attuned to the psychology of your athlete, right? Like you need to know when what they're asking for is not right. And you have to like, sort of step in and say, no, you should be doing this. Um, I was amazed at how Dean maintained his composure. Like he was polite and gracious throughout. Like I never saw him crack on that level. And he wasn't having a great race. Like he had every reason to be like frustrated and, and kind of let that loose and how that flows downstream under the crew. And I, I

• 1:02:08Rich Roll?

  never saw him do that. And that's like a, I mean, that takes extreme character and it's experience.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  I was, I was at, so it's got a lot to do with experience, that not everything is riding on that run. He's been there, done that before and knows that some runs will work and others won't. Um, that he's only going to probably perform worse if he starts to let his mind take control in a negative sense. So he was, you know, the heat of bad order is so hot that if you start, and same as India, if you start to freak out, that heat intensifies and you actually realize how hot it is. So there has to be this calmness and almost meditative like spirit when you're running in those types of environments.

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  Well, let's take it back a little bit. I fear that certain people that are listening are gonna form this impression that you're just some crazy outlier genetic freak who was born to just be this amazing runner and it was just bred into you from the get go. But your origin story, you know, belies that notion.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was really, really uncoordinated, not particularly fit.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  Growing up in Melbourne, never really played sports.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a kind of country girl. I think I was afraid of embarrassing myself and then looking like a fool. So I would often not try things. And I was that kid in primary school that when they picked, you know, when they do that schoolyard pick, which I think is the worst thing you can ever do.

• 1:03:40Rich Roll?

  I'm very familiar with this.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Are we gonna both be like that last kid standing?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  So I was always...

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  Anything having to do with eye-hand coordination.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  And isn't it, oh, exactly. And isn't it terrible that as long as you're not the last kid picked, you're like, oh, phew. You know, if you're the second last kid picked, you're like, well, that's all right. At least I wasn't standing on that line by myself. So I was not a great athlete. And I really, my primary school years were just of me being a bit of a, I mean, for those who, you know, are listening on the podcast and have never seen a photo of me standing next to someone, I mean, there's probably a reason why I have a lot of solo photos on my Instagram account. It's because I'm four for 11.5. So I'm pretty short.

• 1:04:20Rich Roll?

  I like the point five part.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'm trying to be very accurate.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  I was teased a lot, like, growing up. And I think it's because I didn't own my space. I didn't own, you know, I think kids...

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting that you would go into performing arts then, because that takes a certain sense of self-composure.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  By the time I got to high school, I started to kind of build and gather in my own wonderful weirdness. And I owned it. And it was actually through, in year seven, I got into the school play. And I was the first year seven student to get into the school play. And it was, all of a sudden, I felt that I was around, like, my like-minded... Interesting, bizarre, unique people who were also at the same time, you know, pretty smart and were good at sport and it kind of taught me that I can try those other things and still be this arty, small kid who, you know, does, is not really sure of her place. Uh, so I think performing arts was a real eye opener and um, and independence.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that you would then pursue law though, because it's sort, you know, it's sort of a binary thing, like you're going to be an arty kid or you're going to be kind of the sensible, you know, business minded person. I mean, if you're going to be a trial lawyer, then like performing arts is, you know, fantastic. But most people who end up going into law aren't, aren't the people that are in the school play.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Australia it is.

• 1:05:44Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Australia, um, a lot of people who were very performance driven, high communicators, a little bit, a little bit wacky, just drop the pen, hit your head.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  Sorry.

• 1:05:58Rich Roll?

  And it's on Facebook Live, so you know, it's gonna be awesome.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so um, I feel like that's a bit different in Australia. I mean, a lot of the people that I know really were a bit of um, people on the stage and then like went into law and then left law quite quickly because it was too much of a tight, you know, square for them that they didn't want to fit into.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  Right. So at what point do you decide law? Like, how does it work in Australia? Like in the United States, you go to university and then you go to law school. Do you start studying law like when you're in college?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Yes, at college. So I um, started with a performing arts degree. I took, I took a year off after uh, finishing year twelve and I traveled throughout the States. Um, did like thirty states with my backpack in the year. Uh, and then came back and did my degree, which was a performing arts and law degree. Um, and in Australia, law is just your undergraduate degree and then you can, you become a lawyer and then you have to, as a lawyer, then do another year uh, training, which gives you a practicing certificate. So we don't set the bar.

• 1:07:00Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  That was a convoluted way of answering that.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  No, I got it. I got it. I got it. So, so how old are you then when you, you're like this young lawyer at Baker and McKenzie?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  I wasn't that young because I had found ultra running during that time. So in two thousand

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see. Yeah, but now I remember like you started, you started running when you were like doing, you're sitting for your exams.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  That as a stress reliever.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I did my first marathon, um, which was a massive thing for me, big deal, like really had never run that much and then decided, okay, I'm gonna, I'm, I found a group of friends who were a little bit older, who were, who were running. So I started to run with them and do fun runs and did my first half marathon. And I was just like, wow, like, I don't just physically feel amazing, but mentally I feel the strongest I've ever felt in my entire life. I felt it was a bigger endorphin hit than acting on the stage or, and I loved acting. So for me to feel that through running, um,

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  So you knew, like, this connected with you.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  It just.

• 1:07:56Rich Roll?

  I mean, you weren't like winning a half marathon, right?

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Rich Roll?

  Like a middle of the pack.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  I was a middle of the pack, yeah, middle of the pack. And then I did my first marathon, nearly pulled out thirty two K because it hurt. Um, and my girlfriend kind of basically dragged me through the last ten Ks. And it was that near failure that made me do my first ultra.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  So here's where I think it gets super interesting and you take like the road less traveled, right? So most people would be like, okay, that was fun. Like maybe I'll be this like hobbyist marathoner and do a marathon a year, or maybe use that as my vacation, go to some destination and run a marathon. That's most people, right? But you go from being this person who struggled to finish their first marathon and almost pulled out. The next thing you do is you sign up for the four, you're like, then I got into ultras, like, no, you sign up for the four deserts. Like that was gonna be your next thing, right? Is that correct?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yes and no. So I signed up for the first race of that series. I signed up for the Atacama Crossing in Chile. And it was, that was the only one I wanted to do.

• 1:08:58Rich Roll?

  Plan to do, you were just gonna do one?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I was just gonna do one and I considered it a once in a lifetime opportunity, which I feel like my life has had this thread of, oh, you've got to do this once in a lifetime thing. And all of a sudden I become, that becomes my serious part of my life.

• 1:09:13Rich Roll?

  Once, well, everything you do is once in a lifetime.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it becomes like my addiction, you know, in a sense. Um, and the running isn't the addiction, the adventure and like living life on the edge and, you know, pushing the boundaries of what we're humanly capable of and then realizing like our limits are so far deeper than we ever thought possible. And, um, but then also having like the self of. Like the understanding yourself to not always have to push into that place.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's important.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  But you didn't have that sensibility when you signed up for Atacama, right? You're just gonna go do this crazy desert.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  It was a crazy, it's like, oh, I'm gonna be Sam Gash and she likes to do different things. She's gonna run in the Atacama Desert, she's gonna take six months off.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  Cause she's so interesting.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Cause she's so crazy. And everyone was like, you're so crazy. I'm like, yeah, I'm so crazy.

• 1:09:59Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, just watch me.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, just watch me. I'm just gonna be this little girl running across the desert with a massive backpack on.

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  So, so you go to, like, why that one, though? Just sounded so wild?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  It worked out well with my university.

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  Timing wise?

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  But also something about reading about the salt flats and I, I just, I really felt a connection to like the Atacama Desert on an academic level. Like I just liked the sound of it, you know? The Sahara, I was like, okay, that's sand. Antarctica, I, I need to do another race to qualify and that's way too expensive. And China didn't appeal a great deal to me. So, um, I wanted to do that. And then I linked it into a three month placement at a Capitol Defense Office. So I kind of was doing this North and South America, um, experience and making six months off university worth it.

• 1:10:45Rich Roll?

  I see. Okay. So, did you have an awareness that there was such a thing as the, like, that the possibility existed that you could do four and that no woman had ever done that before?

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  I never knew it. I didn't know it. I knew there was three of the races. I didn't ever believe that someone would even comprehend doing four.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And now we're gonna intersect with a, a podcast that I did probably two years ago at this point.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  I can't remember exactly when it was, but with, with Jennifer, the Director of Desert Runners. And that's where your name first came up on the podcast, um, because she documented this experience, right? But maybe, you know, walk us through the experience of the first one and what triggered you to then tackle all four?

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  So I was um doing my clerkships at law firms in the summer before I went across to Chile. And I was living this extreme life of working really, really hard at the law firm and then parting and then trying to train to run this ultra marathon, which I didn't even know how to train because who back in twenty ten, there wasn't much content available for how to run an ultra marathon, particularly an ultra marathon that requires you to carry everything that you require in a pack on your back whilst you're racing, particularly for a female who is a pescatarian.

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  So this whole, like, I just, I didn't know what I was doing. I was making it up. And one night I went out late and I was dancing, I was wearing heels. And but I'd said to myself, the next day it's gonna be my final long run before I fly to Chile. And I got up, I felt exhausted, I didn't really wanna go train, but I was like, no, you've got to do it. And put my backpack on, put all these soup cans in my backpack to try and simulate the weight. And I always go, why didn't you just put like the sleeping bag that you were gonna use? And why didn't you put the stuff that you're using, not these like jarring soup cans that like dug into my back as I ran?

• 1:12:35Rich Roll?

  Cause you're ultra.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Cause I'm so crazy. And I twisted my ankle during that run and had this really bad injury. And I think I was very close to not doing the race that I had like been so excited about for five months. And I decided I the only way I could possibly do it was to walk it. And I had had a moon boot on till about ten days before the race. And so I just started.

• 1:13:01Rich Roll?

  And how long, how long was a moon boot on?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Six weeks.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  Wow. So no running?

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  No running, no running. I did like one hike in Santiago before the race and my legs were so sore the next day because I hadn't used them in six weeks. And I was like, well, I might be able to get through day one, but I doubt my legs are gonna feel pretty great on day two. And so I just, I remember the restraint I had at the start line on day one, watching everyone run bolt off the start line. And I was like, oh, don't, don't go, don't go, you can't run, you have to walk. And I was walking with the guys with like the poles and who were, you know, not to judge, but were overweight and looked like they hadn't trained. And I felt like, oh, this is not where I wanted to be, but just accept it, like, just accept it. Like, you're

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  lucky that you're twenty five and you get to be, you know, in San Pedro de Atacama. Day one walked, day two walked. In fact, I was known as like this.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  So I'm sure I've got this massive backpack on that weighs twenty five percent of my body weight, big water bottles at the front of my chest and I had my arms out straight because I didn't want to get chafing under my arms and I had two pigtails down my, you know, the side of my.

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  And so the film crew could always see me from far away because I said I had this very militant, like very hardcore power hike and my arms would be waving straight in the air. So they said they always recognized me from the very, like from far away.

• 1:14:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Um, and they just thought I was like this cute little Aussie girl who was just pretty slow and doing her best to get by.

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  She's in over her head.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, she doesn't know what she's doing. So I was like, I was a battler. I was in the, you know, bottom third of the field. Day five came on, which was seventy four Ks. And I started to, I mean, it feels weird to say that, but it's almost like walking in that desert and being calm about having to walk healed my injury. And on day five, I was like, am I so bold as to maybe try and shuffle? And so I just started shuffling. Wasn't fast. And I shuffled the first like forty five K and I didn't even stop. And I like started to see people that I had never seen any other days in the races.

• 1:15:12Rich Roll?

  Right. The war of attrition, they're just starting to drop.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'd gone out too hard, too early. And I got to this point where all of a sudden I caught up to three Aussie guys. And you have never seen a group of guys so unhappy to see a girl in the desert.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  How many women were in the field?

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe like twenty percent of the field.

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  And I, they looked at me and one of them was my boyfriend at the time and the panic on his face that I had caught up to him and he was in the top twenty of the field and I was like the bottom twenty of the field. And on the big seventy four K stage, we ended up finishing that stage together. And I actually felt that I held myself back to finish the final twenty five Ks with the boys.

• 1:15:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  And I just remember thinking, okay, like it was a massive confidence booster that, you know, I still got first in my age group that race and that was my goal going into it.

• 1:15:58Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. So from struggling to complete your first marathon to being in a boot for six weeks before this thing and walking most of it and then just hammering, you know, just like crushing the longest day, you know, and doing it in style.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, crushed the last, that day and then the last twenty four Ks, I came in like third female. Um, and I just thought maybe there is something to be said about. Yeah, maybe I was strategic without even knowing it. Like, maybe the injury allowed me to drop my ego, observe people around me, focus on the mind being the power as opposed to the physicality, uh, and fo- and see where is the most important part about that race, which is the seventy four K long stage and attacking that. Cause I passed people by hours, hours and hours, people who were so far ahead of me earlier on, they're fifty Ks in, they'd burnt themselves out. And, you know, once you get over that red line, you can't recover.

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  That's the way it works, you know, and then you can literally gain hours on people.

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, you've seen it in like hundred mile races and, and Ironman, Ironman races. I mean, I've never won a race because I've been at the front from the beginning. It's always been attrition.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's about continuing to move, just keep moving. You know what I mean?

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  And, and, and it's, it's a, you know, the, the hare never wins. The tortoise usually wins. The longer the race, the better the tortoise's chances are.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And from that, I, you know, dusted my hands. I was like, wow, I achieved my goals and I didn't even realize it. And I went to Texas and I was, I was working for a Capitol Defense Office and working on a death row campaign. And during that time, you know, I've said it before that I, I thought that no work could ever be as tough as what I did, um, during those three months. And so all of a sudden, the idea started to come into my head, what if I tried to become the first woman to do this? And I knew two other women were trying to do it that year. And so I was like, well, I can't try it next year. I'm gonna have to try it this year. And I remember telling my boyfriend at the time and he's just like, I'm like, I reckon we can do it together. What if we both, you know, not just be the first woman, but we can be the first couple.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  It's like, I didn't sign up for that.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's like, I'm a, he's like, I'm a med student. If I'm gonna sign up to do something so silly. Um, and he's like, I don't think you're gonna be able to pull this off. And it was, obviously I had to get the funds, you know, I was a law student doing an internship at the time, a non-paid internship.

• 1:18:19Rich Roll?

  First you had to break up with him, right?

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't break, I stuck with him throughout that thing. Or should I say, he stuck with me throughout that thing. And I think him telling me that I couldn't pull it off was just like, who can tell me I'm not gonna pull this off if I work hard enough? Like, you know, I just ran two hundred and fifty kilometers across the desert with an injured foot. Um, and so I just worked so hard trying to find the funding to do that race, you know, I. I never put it out to the world that I was anything other than I was. I said, I'm just this, you know, um, I'm just this young Australian woman trying to do, being an ordinary person trying to do something extraordinary. But my first call was to Jennifer Steinem, the filmmaker. And I said to her, I saw that you were filming a couple of people during this race. If I did all four, do you think you might film me?

• 1:19:04Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  And she's like, yes, I have no woman yet. I would be very interested in that. And that was my catch.

• 1:19:09Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's how it kind of developed.

• 1:19:12Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you're sort of presenting yourself in this semi self-deprecating manner of like being this every, you know, this average person. But what I'm hearing, like the theme that's emerging from the story is this boldness. Like there's a certain audaciousness, you know, it's not an average person that's that that makes the leap from, you know, the almost I didn't finish marathon to the the desert marathon and then making the leap to I'm going to do all four and be the, you know, try to be the first woman. Like, that's not a, you know, methodical, organic growth curve. You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're just, you have this, like, there's a sensibility to,

• 1:19:54Rich Roll?

  like, see the possible or see the, see the possibility in the impossible and, and, and take that leap of faith, you know, that I think maybe that's your, maybe that's your gift. Like, how do you think about that?

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I think it's also believing that past experience, even if it's limited, shouldn't be a limiting factor in being able to tackle something big on the basis that you do the hard work to make up for that gap of experience. So I might not have run an ultra marathon before, but I, here's my nerdy lawyer ways. I read everything that you could possibly read about ultra marathons and what would it take to fuel a body in a way that it could look after it? And, you know, maybe the injury was a blessing in disguise as well. And I, I still think to this day, I wouldn't have done all four if I had, didn't have that injury.

• 1:20:44Rich Roll?

  Right. If you had just had a perfectly right up the middle experience on that.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wouldn't have done it. And, and then China, I nearly put out in China was hard. Like, it was so mountainous. And I kept thinking, you know, you start, I romanticized what Chile was like. And then I get to China. I'm like, oh, this is actually really hard. Like, I forgot how hard it was. Um, and the first day was just hills after hills after hills and. It was, that was probably that and a moment in Sahara were the only times that I ever contemplated pulling out of it. And but beyond that, I just, I was willing to be the last person walking across the finishing line. I was willing to do anything to get there. And I actually became a stronger athlete as, as the year progressed.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  I think there's, uh, there's beauty in, in naivety, like naivety can be underestimated because when you, you're not really clear on what you're getting yourself into. You know, you can embrace it in a way that somebody with more experience might be sort of cautioned off of. You know, I mean, with that comes a preparation and all of that, but like to just be like, why not? You know, like, yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I had people write to me all the time going, oh, I've never, never done a 10 K run and I think I'm gonna run across Australia or something. And you know, obviously there's a risk mitigator saying going, oh, prepare yourself and maybe build into it. And then I kind of think, no, I was a bit like that. And I'm, I should never crush someone's like, you know, naivety on, on the basis that they have enough realistic optimism and understanding that they need to prepare themselves. And there are risks associated with jumping a lot of steps.

• 1:22:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I think that person will find out in due time whether that's really gonna happen or not. I mean, most, there's a lot of people that make broad proclamations like that. And, you know, in a matter of months, they, they usually flame out. And but the person who, you know, continues to persevere, you know, that's the flame you wanna, you wanna fan.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that actually is my greatest strength. Um, I think it's that I tend typically do what I say I'm going to do. And I have an idea and for most people, they seem like far-fetched fanciful ideas. But if I put the idea out, what I first require when I say fanciful idea is I wanna get a bubbling of excitement. Of myself, of other people that I um respect their opinion of. Once there's that bubbling of excitement that takes me to about a hundred and ten percent. Oh, my God, I really want this. Then the work that I do reflects that commitment to make that excitement a reality.

• 1:23:19Rich Roll?

  And you you can't manufacture that.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  Right. That's why you can't just make this decision now, oh, I'm gonna do this other adventure. Like, it takes time, right? And you'll know when it strikes you.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it has to feel right. I mean, I sometimes say in ultras, you get caught out if you have impure reasons for being there.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  You'll get rooted out.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Like, the body's like, I'm not gonna do this. So that's why if I ran across India just to run across it, I think I would have made two weeks.

• 1:23:43Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Well, let's talk about the Sahara and what happened there. I mean, I talked about it with with Jennifer when she was on the podcast. And it it certainly makes for, uh, you know, quite a a gripping story in that documentary. But, you know, walk us through what happened there.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Oh, um, you know, you said, what do you not want to talk about before?

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Well, that's what I meant.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I don't really. I mean, it's in the film.

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  Well, the thing is, it's funny in in kind of prepping for for today and, you know, doing my due diligence.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  You know, sort of leveraging that lawyer background that I have. I noticed that it doesn't come up that much, even though it's in the movie. And it's talked about when you read about the movie and all the interviews that you do. And it it it's, I mean, you're certainly never raising it and it it often isn't even asked about.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think in the early days, it was asked about and I didn't want to talk about it. I I remember I did my first, okay, I should probably.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  We should probably explain what we're talking about.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, wow, I I don't, you know, I'm a corporate speaker and this is in my corporate speaking. But I don't talk about it, I show it. But if I was to explain it now in words, um.

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

  And also, we should just point out that we had to turn the air conditioning off because.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm in the Sahara.

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  It's like a hundred and four out here and we had to turn the AC off because it screws up the audio. But now it's sort of, we're having a Saharan experience.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  So you feel like I'm like listening and maybe you think I'm crying out.

• 1:25:12Rich Roll?

  Sweating, you know, we can turn it back on, but it's just like this hum on the audio.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  And every now and again, I feel like.

• 1:25:17Rich Roll?

  I'm thinking, I don't want her to be uncomfortable, but like, fuck it, she ran across India. She can handle it.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Sometimes I feel like my legs are slipping. Um, okay, so on the first day of um the run across the Sahara Desert, two hundred and fifty Ks, I am always typically really underprepared because I believe in a lot of recovery. So day one of that race, it just, I was the hurt locker. I, my backpack's always the heaviest and I suppose I have the most internal demons um at the start of a run, particularly a stage race. And I was running with a group of friends and then they, we went into a checkpoint and they wanted to take their shoes off and my whole approach is don't take your shoes off, don't sit down, just keep moving even if it means you have to walk for a bit, just walk out of the aid station.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  And I started walking out of the aid station, slowly was shuffling and you know, there was a, a sand dune and there was a, there was a guy on the sand dune. And I was, as the movie goes, I was confused why there was a guy on the sand dune, um but I just thought he must have been a part of the race and I.

• 1:26:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's kind of the middle of nowhere though, right? I mean, there was an aid station nearby, but it's not like you're in a town.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  We, we actually weren't far from a town, I, but you, you don't think it because all you see is the sand, but like there are in like Egypt, these kind of sand dune communities and but you, you do get into the bubble of the race. You think you're the only thing out there, that the race is the only thing that exists in your mind. And I kind of got to that sand dune and he had his hand out like he wanted to give a, a high five and so I kind of grabbed his hand and you know, he, he obviously had um impure motivations and you know, attempted to sexually assault me in that moment. Um, all I can say is like, I'm so lucky that Lycra is so tight and I was hot from Sahara because it,

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  it actually helped me out in like being a bit of a barrier from him being able to go a bit further and I was also very lucky that there was a guy on a motorbike that was riding by and scared him away back into the bush. And so I backed away from him and you know, you think about it like I was frozen. I was frozen in that moment because I was so, I did not expect like now when I do my expeditions, I think about this stuff and I'm prepared for it. So I think about my whistle.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  I mean, of course you didn't expect it. Like, how could, can you imagine you're in the middle of running an ultra? And you're, you get yanked and in, in, in, you're put in this position where you're being sexually assaulted? I mean, who, who, nobody would.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  But now I say women be prepared, be prepared that there are, when you run on the trails, you have to realize that there can be anyone on the trails. And there's been a lot of incidences around the globe where a woman has gone for a run on a trail and has she's been in somewhat assaulted by someone there. And it is a crappy thing to acknowledge and particularly for something that we love to do. But that's why there's whistles on backpacks. That's why, you know, we should carry our mobile phones, even if we want to be disconnected from technology. You have to think of, um, you know, I hate to think of worst case scenario because I'm like the eternal optimist, but I, it's definitely made me more cautious and, um, it took me forty five minutes to find, um, someone after that happened.

• 1:28:32Rich Roll?

  I mean, what's going through your mind in that forty five minute period? I, I can't even imagine that you were able to even move forward.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  I don't think I moved, I, I had lost my voice. Like I, I could not even speak. And I was going forward and, um, there were these checkpoint markers and the wind kept heaping the checkpoint markers and so they kept flapping and I kept thinking someone was behind me. And so every couple of like, you know, minutes, I would like dart around and look behind me thinking someone was there.

• 1:28:59Rich Roll?

  I mean, were you moving or were you just sitting, laying down?

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  No, no, I was like moving forward. I was going through the course, trying to get to the next aid station. When in reality, I could have stopped, waited for the guys to come up behind me. And I, that would have happened much quicker, but my mind said like safety is forward. I've got to go forward. I don't want to stick where I am. The person that I found, or that found me was Jen Steinman, the filmmaker.

• 1:29:21Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  And she took one look at me and knew something had happened and put her camera on, um, in the car. Which must have been, like, we've talked about it since then, that's a big, like, filmmaker moment. I'm here for my friends now, I'm not gonna film this moment.

• 1:29:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  So she kinda carried.

• 1:29:37Rich Roll?

  She's there, I mean, this is the most dramatic thing that perhaps is gonna happen in the documentary, and she has an opportunity to document the whole thing.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  And she put it down, and I still was quite composed, cause I was like, you know, gotta get to safety. I was like, in like, you know, um, I was very, I was composed until I got to safety. And then I just, I hadn't drunk water in forty five minutes, I'm in the Sahara Desert, I was dehydrated, I was fatigued, I was emotional. And I took like a bit of a break, and I had seven Ks left to go. And when I went to do the seven Ks, I just like collapsed on the ground, and I'm like, what am I doing? Like, why am I running, why am I pushing?

• 1:30:13Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna finish a race after I've just been like, it just seems so meaningless.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  It seems so meaningless, and it was all going through my head, like, what is, what is this about? And like, what's this country? And so I pulled out of the race. Um, they were like, you know, you can pull out of today and we'll just give you an average time and we'll let you continue tomorrow. Which, um, in some ways, sometimes when you're racing, you want someone to give you an easy option as well. Like, we'll still let you be in the race, but you don't have to do that seven K. So I, I got into my tent, um, people kept coming past thinking that I was the first woman for the day. Because no other woman was back, and they're like, hey, congratulations, awesome. And I'm sitting there going, I don't wanna tell them what happened. I also don't wanna lead them to think that I won. And so I just, again, like, I didn't know what to say.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  And then after about twenty, thirty minutes, I was like, nah, I've gotta go back out there. Like, I have to go to that exact spot where I finish, and I have to finish this. Because if I don't, this moment is gonna define my racing experience, not, someone else is gonna define my racing experience when I did this for myself.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And so I went back out there and I, I charged through that seven K, um, probably the hardest I'd run seven K in the entire.

• 1:31:26Rich Roll?

  You get a ride back to exactly where you stopped.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, got a ride back, and they were just like, okay, and it was very unceremonious. It was like, okay, Sam, go, and they put the stopwatch on and I went. And so I'm now running in the heat of the day with all the people who are at the back of the field, thinking, what is going on? Why is Sam running at the back of the field? I haven't seen her all day. And I just didn't speak to anyone, I just kind of like, put my, I used my little, you know, the little bit of battery I had in my iPod that I was saving for the long stage on day five, and I'm like, I need to put this on right now. And I just like ran and I. I processed what happened as much as one can process in a short period of time. And I just thought, no, like, I'm not going to be a victim. I'm going to make this, this race is about me and I'm not going to let someone that I'll never see again, like, be the defining moment for this.

• 1:32:14Rich Roll?

  It was your character defining moment.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, nobody would have besmirched you to just be like, no, I'm not finishing. You know, there's no point in that. It is the extremely rare person that would have made the move that you made. And I think it speaks to what you said earlier, like if, if you have a talent, it's this, you know, commitment to following through on what you say you're going to do, like this firm constitution. And I think if anything, that is obviously, you know, this is your secret power, right? And I don't know if it, what kind of compartmentalization was required to be able to kind of mentally approach that. But the fact that you made that decision and followed through on that, I mean, that's, that's it's just, it's an unbelievably remarkable thing.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, my grandma had died a week before that race and I had been, my parents had been overseas, so they weren't there when she died and I spoke at her eulogy and I was there with her at the end. And I just remember thinking like, right now, she's watching over me and she wants me to finish this. And I definitely felt her spirit with me for the rest of that race. And to the credit of my people who, who I shared a tent with, who, most of them I had never met before. I don't know if they had a secret conversation and made a strategy, but one of them was with me for the rest of the race. One of, they took turns, but there was someone in that tent with me every moment for the rest of the race.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  And these are guys that whether they went slower at times or faster at times to kind of stick with me, they definitely made it possible. Um, and I look back at that and, you know, you, you wonder why I focus on access to education. Um, I think my capacity.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Or my fortune to be educated in the way that I am gives me that ability to have perspective and to think to the long term and to analyze a situation and to get myself out of a situation that could have placed me in the cycle of being the victim.

• 1:34:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what I was, what I was sitting here thinking about. Like, that would be the typical route. Like, you're the victim. You can do the speaking circuit and talk about, you know, female empowerment and women's rights, but, you know, really allowing that to sort of control the narrative. And then maybe five years later, you go back to the spot where it happened and you run that seven kilometers as a part of that healing process. But expediting the healing process by immediately going back there and running that is like taking this bold step to redress it as it's occurring without any time for even reflection upon what had occurred.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the reflection was done afterwards. And I just, I think we have to acknowledge that things out of our control happen to us all the time. And sometimes they can be horrible like that, or they can be 10 times more horrible, like what's happening to so many women in sub Saharan Africa, where they are abused on a daily basis and they don't even know that that's actually a bad thing. And there's certainly no way that they can get out of that. And so there's always degrees of perspective, but I look back at that. And although it was horrible at the time, I feel it was my defining moment in that experience. I feel like I grew up and we can choose to look at something in a positive lens or a negative lens. And it's our choice how to respond to something. We are so much

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  more defined by our response to something than the action of what happens to us in that moment.

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely true. And I don't know what they're putting in the water out there in Australia. But the only thing worse that I can imagine than being sexually assaulted in the midst of a race is, is having your body completely burned.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  So Turiya.

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Turiya, who, you know, you probably know I had on the podcast as well, your friend, you were in that race as well, right?

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:03Rich Roll?

  Were you a witness to that occurring?

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  I was, oh gosh, Turiya, she's like amazing.

• 1:36:09Rich Roll?

  The point being, like, the thing about, like, what are they putting in the water in Australia? Meaning, like, she has similar command over her story and how she talks about it, like, is reminiscent of the way that you're sharing it in the sense that You know, she's using it as a means to not only empower herself, but to empower others.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:36:28Rich Roll?

  So they're breeding strong character there down under.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just ahead of Turian during that race and I I saw the fire. Um, and I ran through and I remember going to the race director saying, no one should be allowed through here. We basically, I was with another two guys at the time and we had run for our lives pretty much to get away from the fire. We passed back that message.

• 1:36:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  And it wasn't.

• 1:36:52Rich Roll?

  You're speaking of that. It's getting super hot.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm sort of gonna take my clothes off.

• 1:36:57Rich Roll?

  Should we turn the AC back now? I don't know. We'll get through it.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  I feel like Rich is trying to say like, you need to be wearing less clothes in doing these podcasts. Um, she, um, they didn't pass that message back.

• 1:37:10Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was a pretty awful experience to be a part of and, you know, I, Turia's amazing.

• 1:37:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you ended up, um, doing a, doing a race that raised funds for her and others, correct?

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was two girls who were, Turian and Kate Sanderson, who were the ones that were, you know, significantly impacted by that fire. And so a year to the day that it happened, um, we hosted a fun run in Melbourne around the Tan, which you might have run around when you were there. The Tanico Gardens?

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  In, uh.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Melbourne?

• 1:37:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was in Mel- no, I didn't because I, like I said, I was only there a day. Like I, I couldn't, I didn't even go for a run there.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48Rich Roll?

  I was literally in and out.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's a just a right kind of in it.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  We drove by it though. I, I know what you're talking about.

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  Yes, we did a two loop run and we raised some funds for the girls, not as, I mean, the funds were whatever, but it was more just this community has your back.

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  And she came down for it and ran a loop.

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  It was the most amazing thing. She walked it and then she kind of ran the last little bit and I'll never forget, she still had all her like, um, body, um, protectant on.

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  And she was just, you know, her arms were straight and Michael.

• 1:38:16Rich Roll?

  Her face looks like a ski mask, like with just the gauze all, all around it.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  And she, she ran it and Michael was next to her and I just, my heart swelled with pride and of her strength.

• 1:38:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's unbelievable. All right. So you get through Sahara. I mean, I would imagine you had to battle some demons about just not doing the next one, or was there a moment of thinking you're like?

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  It was Antarctica. My sponsor said if I got through each race, they would fund the next one. So I was like, oh, well, got through Sahara, take me to Antarctica.

• 1:38:45Rich Roll?

  And at this point, where are you in the pecking order of of women, like in terms of rankings? Like, are you working your way up here? Like, are you in the hunt?

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  I'm fourth now. Like, I'm consistently ranked fourth.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  And are women dropping out? Like, are they starting? Is there some attrition occurring?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  So there were only two of the women who were doing the trying for it, and I was always hours ahead. So I that kind of.

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  So it's like yours to lose, even despite all of this, like you're in the driver's seat.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  You can lose easily. But the more interesting thing for me, like, I didn't really care so much about the first woman thing. Like, it didn't, I feel like it was just, it was fortunate timing that I decided to do it. I was a stronger athlete than the other two women.

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  The self-deprecating thing coming in again.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  But what was, okay, what was, I'll try and inflate myself up. What was exciting is that I really had learnt to run. So by the final race in Antarctica, I was racing against a girl who was in the first race. And she just did Atacama and Antarctica. And she was hours ahead of me in Atacama. And by this last race, we were battling, like, we were dueling it out for each other. And she's like, who are you? She's like, I remember looking at your pigtails in that first race. And I just, you wouldn't think, having run seven hundred and fifty kilometers in those extreme environments, would have taught me to run and to be stronger. Because most of the other people who were going for the Grand Slam got weaker. They got tired. You know, you have to go back home, you have to work,

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  you have to cram in your life in a short period of time. But for me, it had, maybe it's the resilience, but I actually learnt to become stronger.

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  Well, you're so new to the sport, too, right?

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, you're gaining every day.

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  It's like on the job training.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Rich Roll?

  Did you hire a coach? Or were you just trying to figure this out through whatever you could find online?

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  Figured it out myself. I mean, most, I have to be honest, I didn't do too much training in between. Didn't have the time. I had to do my law, I had to actually study to be a lawyer. And there was only three weeks between Sahara and Antarctica.

• 1:40:43Rich Roll?

  So you're just using that really to kind of recover and do some shorter runs?

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Rich Roll?

  And so the last one is, what was the last one? Was Antarctica the last one?

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  All right. So when you complete that and you realize, like, Hot damn, like you just won this. You're the first woman to ever do this and the youngest.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  And is it true that like at the time?

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  No one acknowledged it. It wasn't, it wasn't a big thing. Like there was no category for that.

• 1:41:10Rich Roll?

  How many guys have had done it, completed it? There were only a couple, right?

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Dean was one and Paul Liebenberg. So kind of two professional, Paul was a, is a doctor, but you know, Dean is professional. So really two professional male athletes had done that challenge beforehand. And this year, the year that I did it, thirteen people or eleven people were tackling it.

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  And how many of them finished?

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Maybe eight, I think, something like that.

• 1:41:35Rich Roll?

  And did the other two women complete it as well?

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  And that's what was cool. Like there was a lot of guys.

• 1:41:40Rich Roll?

  So three women in the first year. Yeah.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, women are quite good at just, even in pain. And one of the women was, you know, a lot older. She was, you know, mid fifties maybe. And then Lucy, who was um from the UK, she had like terrible knee pain and like had to hobble most of it. Um but she got through it. There's a toughness about women who take, who tackle endurance races.

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. You know, I think women are tougher in the ultras than the guys. I don't know what it is, but I think it's true. But there must have been a point, you know, after you did this, maybe when you got home, where you're like, I'm hot stuff, man. I just rocked that thing.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  I wish I took more time to, to think that way. I didn't.

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  But, but what I'm getting at really is like, okay, I'm like good at this. Like I could like make this more of a thing, not just like something I do on the side as, you know, while I'm being a lawyer, but like, did, when did you start to see the possibility that, that you could perhaps pursue this, not necessarily as a professional running career, but like from a perspective of, of advocacy and like, you know, make this like your main thing?

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  As, to make it as my main thing, maybe four years later.

• 1:42:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  I think at the time, like I was still, I'm doing this. I'm going to finish my law degree. I'm going to be a lawyer.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  When you come home, are your friends like, do they, do they get what you were doing?

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  Maybe to, I would, I would blog during it. So people were along for the journey and you know, when you're blogging along these things, you're quite emotional and you're raw with your writing. And you know, I'm sure there's plenty of spelling mistakes in there as well because you're writing on this small little keyboard in the desert. Um, but no, I don't think people truly understand. And that's okay. That's something you have to come to grips with. But of course, people aren't going to understand what that journey was like. And um, at the beginning, that's hard to kind of readapt yourself back to that world. I mean, I've been travelling around the globe. I've been finishing my law degree in between. Like I, I had mastered more in that year um, than I probably had in the 10 years prior to it. Um, but that's something that you can't put that on other people. You have to kind of take that yourself.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  And when the movie came out, how was that like sort of reliving that experience on the big screen in an auditorium with other people?

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  It was years later. It was maybe two years later, two, three years later. And it was in Edinburgh. So Jen didn't let me see the film before it came out. So I was going in there petrified about how this scene would play out in Sahara. You know, I was like, I hope no one thinks of me as a victim. You know, I certainly didn't see of myself as that. And I remember watching it and a woman came up to me afterwards and she kind of spoke to me and she kind of lingered for a little bit. And, and then a couple of days later, she wrote to me on Facebook and said, you know, I was the girl that came up to you. I want to let you know that a couple of years ago, um, someone that I knew broke into my home, beat me up and raped me. And she said afterwards,

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  she didn't get the support that she felt that she needed. And she had really been hard on herself and she'd been playing the victim game. And she said that after seeing the film, she realised that she was the only person who could take control of her situation. And so she had joined a gym and over that next year, she'd been like signed up for like Tough Mudder events and she would send me photos of when she would like complete the race. And I remember thinking, if that is the only positive of that situation coming, it's worth it.

• 1:45:05Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful. Wow, that's amazing. Well, you've since gone on to, I mean, we can't go through like every crazy race and adventure that you've done, but you know, there's you ran across South Africa and like, you know, what else you did? You know, you did, what else? I wrote them all down, but you ran a, you had a big like run in the desert, Simpson Desert in Australia. Like, you know, it's not just like you're doing this, you know, all the time, right?

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I really love the self devised expeditions where you can create the parameters.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Maybe that's my control freak nature coming through, but I like the, I like creation. I like taking the limits to where I want to see them and push them. I, I want to eat when I want to eat. I want to, you know, I want to go for as far as I want to go and I want to do it for why I want to do it. And sometimes when you do a race, you don't have control of that kind of stuff. So I have control on the creation, then I have to learn to lose control when I actually do it. And I think that's something really poetic about, you know, playing into what you naturally are inclined to do and then having to go to the opposite level of it.

• 1:46:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. How do you think of the balance between mental and physical? In terms of, you know, the strengths and requirements to tackle these types of events?

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  I definitely think mental is a lot stronger. You know, I've seen people who are physically very capable and pull out of these races the second day. And the worst thing about these races is you have to, typically you have to stay with the race because you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert. So you actually have to watch people complete the race that you dreamed about doing. And time and time again, I would see people and I just would see their, like their head in their hands thinking, why did I pull out at that point? Like, could I, the thing is, there's so many things you can do before pull out. You can slow down, you can take on more nutrition, you can wait for someone to come and like bounce off their camaraderie. You can sit down for a moment, but somehow all those alternatives become,

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  like, we don't think of them when we're feeling in that crux of like discomfort and we're on the edge. We think our only solution is to completely take ourselves away from it.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  I can't actually remember what your question was, but.

• 1:47:22Rich Roll?

  Well, it has to do with the mental game.

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think.

• 1:47:25Rich Roll?

  And, and, and the barriers that, that we erect, I think that prevent us from really connecting with our capabilities. Like, you know, David Goggins says it all the time, like he's got his forty percent rule, you know, his famous forty percent rule. Like, you know, when we think we're done, we've only tapped into about forty percent of what we're truly capable of.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't have a formula.

• 1:47:44Rich Roll?

  Like, like, how do you, is that, do you agree with that? Is that, do you think of it differently?

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  I don't have a formula for it. Um, but for me, I.

• 1:47:52Rich Roll?

  Forty one or thirty nine percent.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  I feel like David, mine's forty three point five percent.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Um, I, I definitely think mental plays a massive role in the creation of self belief that you can do something like that. And then the self belief then requires you to have the, the commitment to do the training. So I think it starts with the mental side, but then it also empowers the physicality as well. But I think you have to really believe in yourself. You have to believe it's possible. Um, and you have to believe in your ability to do the hard work behind it.

• 1:48:28Rich Roll?

  Have you had any of these kind of spiritual experiences that you hear about? Like Dean talks about, you know, sort of having his visions when he becomes delirious. And, you know, what is your, what is your kind of like ethereal connection to these endeavors?

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know if I, in the expeditions, you have a couple of them. Um, in India, I couldn't have been running in a more spiritual place. And, you know, I, I talked about spirituality a lot with my crew whilst I was out there. Because some of my crew were avid yogis and felt the departure of being able to practice yoga in a, in a studio. Meant that they were void of their spirituality. And I said, spirituality isn't something, in my opinion, spirituality isn't something that you get in a room. It's something that's with inside you that you can bring into other parts of your life. And spirituality for me is to experience or to be part of what the majority of the population truly live their life like. And the way majority of Indians live.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Daily survival, moment by moment, not thinking ahead, to try and like get into that frame mind, takes me to my closest place of spirituality without a doubt. And it's something that we're not used to in like, it's very hard to get to that. But these people live it by, not because of choice.

• 1:49:49Rich Roll?

  And what does that spirituality look like for you? Like, how do you, how do you articulate that?

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it's the, it's when I actually stop fretting about what's to come and dwelling on what's past.

• 1:50:01Rich Roll?

  Being in the moment, being in the now, right? I think that's how you, you get through these ultras ultimately, you know? The more you can anchor yourself in the present, that like fear of the future and reflection on how hard it's been, or whatever difficulties you've had evaporates and allows you to just propel forward.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Hmm. But I, and as I think I said earlier on, but I don't, I, I'm very careful when I choose to take myself there. You know, I don't, I'm not someone that just wants to beat myself into like discomfort all the time to constantly see what I'm capable of. Like I, I do back myself now. I know that I'm capable of going there. Um, but I don't always need to go there. And I think that's something I've learned with maturity and getting a bit older.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  So then what is your relationship with balance?

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  The balance is that I have to really believe in why I'm doing it to take myself there. And that, you know, my relationship with um,

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  myself and my family and my partner and like my health, they, and the pursuit of pushing the boundaries need to sometimes be moderately aligned. And there'll be times when I push the boundaries of, out of the comfort zone a lot. So the last three years, I've been doing that a lot with India. And now I need to kind of like go back into like,

• 1:51:24Rich Roll?

  Pendulum has to swing.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  It has to swing. It has to swing back so I can go back there and do it in the right way for the right reasons and with the right outcomes. So now I'm kind of like going back to that.

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  You couldn't just launch right into the next thing.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, which everyone goes, what's next? And I'm like, for the first time in my life, I felt comfortable going, like I, for a moment, I tried to kind of say a few things. Cause I've got ideas. Of course I have ideas, but I'm like, no, there's no what's next. I'm just, I'm going to do little, I'm doing little micro adventures. Um, I'm finishing my book, which comes out next year. Um, we're gonna make a document. We just got the funding for the Run India documentary.

• 1:51:58Rich Roll?

  Well, I know that you made these amazing, there are these amazing videos on Vimeo.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Rich Roll?

  You can find on your, on your website. I, I believe those are, those were the ones produced by World Vision, right?

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  Those, those ones were produced by a guy called Steve Young.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Um, who was hired by World Vision, um, kind of at my request as the right person to come out on this expedition.

• 1:52:17Rich Roll?

  But they'll be a proper documentary.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  And proper, proper documentary made by that guy who filmed that kind of content.

• 1:52:23Rich Roll?

  That's very cool.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  And that was something that was hanging over me. I'm like, we have so much incredible content in the can that shows these stories of these people that we met and what we went through. Um, it almost wouldn't be doing justice to the project to not be able to showcase that stuff.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, beautiful. So do you, how, is there an anticipated sort of release date for that?

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, December, it'll be out by December, yeah. So hopefully we'll, um, can take it into a couple of the film festivals, um.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  Is Jennifer then sort of taking a look at the footage?

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  She, oh, she's my, I mean, Jennifer's one of my best friends now. You know, I, I came to her wedding, um, in Berkeley last year.

• 1:53:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  Um, and I, I'm gonna go and visit her in San Francisco at the end of this trip. So she's definitely my soul sister and has looked over every content that I've ever kind of put out and she's a very good guiding, um, I suppose, figure for me on that stuff.

• 1:53:18Rich Roll?

  Well, we gotta land this plane, but, uh, I think the final thing, and I kind of want to explore with you is how you think about your role as a, um, you know, as this sort of inspirational figure or role model for female empowerment. You know, and this is a theme that kind of comes up from time to time on the podcast and I kind of, my mantra, the thing I always say is like, there are amazing women doing amazing things all over the place. We don't do a very good job of shining a spotlight on them. And, you know, in America, the spotlight is keenly on the Kardashians and, and kind of all kinds of, you know, figures that as a father of two young daughters, I would prefer my daughters don't model themselves after.

• 1:54:01Rich Roll?

  And so I'm always so happy, uh, to be able to share the message of somebody who I think is a healthy role model and inspiring figure who is really empowering, you know, women and young women in particular all over the world with your strength and your grace and, and your accomplishment. So how do you like, think about how you carry that?

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  I struggle with the word inspiration. Um, I struggle with the word inspiration.

• 1:54:27Rich Roll?

  When you get an email and somebody says, you're such an inspiration, how does that make you feel? Like, what is your emotional reaction to that?

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  I used to cringe because I, maybe I, I think the place is, the people I'm inspired by are the ones that just do what they really believe in for the intention of doing the thing that they really believe in, like, wholeheartedly. And then it's my choice to feel inspired by them, not because they've said that they're inspiring, but because they're doing something they really believe.

• 1:54:54Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  And so if someone chooses to say, oh, I'm really inspired by your talk or what you did, like, that's, that's them. Like, that's how they choose to feel and that's awesome. But I'm, I guess I don't go about my business and I don't run across India with the objective of being inspiring. It's, I'm doing this thing because I really believe it can make a tangible difference through a different type of way. And it's, I think it's soft, that run across India, I think, was a really great example of soft diplomacy, which I think can be really effective. Um, and if someone chooses to feel a certain way about it, I mean, yeah, of course.

• 1:55:27Rich Roll?

  But you're aware that that, you know, that this is, you know, that this sort of sense about yourself is being cultivated. I mean, you go and you give talks at corporations and, you know, probably at schools and all kinds of places, right? So when you're delivering that message, like, how are you, you know, what is it, what is the core idea that you're trying to communicate?

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Well, my core thing is to just show that I am really a normal person in the sense that I'm relatable, that anyone could make the choices that I've chosen to make and go down this path. It just comes from choice. And if I can open up people's minds to how they can pursue their choices, well, that excites me, particularly when it comes into the way of positively impacting the lives of other people.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And how do you look at the landscape of, you know, sort of female empowerment? And, you know, the figures that are, you know, out there and, and kind of what they speak to. That was a poorly articulated question, but you get what I'm saying, right?

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  That's because we're pretty much tripping around.

• 1:56:30Rich Roll?

  I have a, I've got this friend, Neil Strauss, and he's a writer and he, he has a podcast that he does with Gabrielle Reese and they do it in a sauna and it's called the truth barrel. Because when you're that hot and you spend that much time in there, it's like truth serum and you end up telling the truth. And I feel like this podcast has sort of morphed into the truth barrel. So.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, you are gonna have to put.

• 1:56:57Rich Roll?

  We're gonna, we're almost done.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to put a towel on the seat afterwards. So you're gonna have to hit me with that question one more time because I sweated out the thought.

• 1:57:07Rich Roll?

  All I remember is that I asked it very poorly, but it had to do with like, how you think about this landscape of female empowerment? Like what you're, you know, like, who are the people that you look to? And like, how do you think about how, you know, culture messages, young women and what can be changed about that? I guess is a way of putting it.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  In my late teens and early twenties, I used to say I was someone that got on better with guys. And, you know, I, I found the company of other women not as fulfilling. And I've now done like a, a 180 on that. And I am the biggest advocate for associating yourself with kick ass women who have strengths, where you have weaknesses, where the focus is on elevating each other, even if you're in competitive fields. And so I feel like I have flourished as an individual ever since I've chosen to do that, ever since I've seen the pie being a whole lot bigger. And I don't think that if a woman is successful in this slice of pie, that she's taken my slice of pie. In fact, she's got that piece of pie

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  because she created it. And so I have a really incredible group of women that I associate with often in the entrepreneurial space, who are writers, speakers, I guess, thought leaders in their own way. And they are the people that I typically go to when I have this harebrained idea that I want to kind of develop. And yeah, that's, and Jennifer's one of them. And I just think you have to know your core. And, you know, recently I did something where. I forgot that that's the norm, that's not the norm. And I think I've created that over the years because that's what makes me be the best version of myself. But you know, I recently did a, you know, a project where I wasn't around that. And I realized how much I need

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  that in my day to day life. So my message to young women is to find your female tribe. And don't be afraid of them being successful. In fact, elevate them with everything that you have to be successful because that is going to be the true measure of how you gain success too.

• 1:59:10Rich Roll?

  That's very similar to Robin Arzon's message. Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  I love that girl.

• 1:59:14Rich Roll?

  I know. And you said before the podcast, you went to her class and I was like, did you tell her who you were? And she's like, she probably didn't, she didn't even know. So yo, Robin, she listens, she's gonna listen to this.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  She's my girl crush.

• 1:59:25Rich Roll?

  She's everybody's girl crush. Um, well, that's awesome. And you know, maybe as a final thought, um, just for somebody who's feeling stuck in their life, who needs a little inspiration or a kick in the pants, or, or just that, like, you know, like sort of little kernel of wisdom to help catalyze, you know, perhaps a, a, a move off the couch and in a better trajectory.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  I mean, the outdoors is the outdoors is the environment where I find, um, not just mindfulness and like, um, the ability for me to remove judgment away from myself, but the place where I can be most creative. And so whether that's the physicality of being outdoors, but I don't get that same feeling being in a gym. So, and not everyone who listens to your podcast is someone who is active, but I just say get outside, like be outside, be in nature, get off the roads where there's like this increased level of silence, put your phone on silent if it's with you and just like, stop being so hard on yourself and start creating the things that make the most sense to you.

• 2:00:30Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful way to end it, I think. We did it.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:33Rich Roll?

  How do you feel? Other than being super hot? Literally, my glasses are fogging up right now.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  I actually think it's perfect that we saved this thing.

• 2:00:42Rich Roll?

  No, it was really great. Thank you so much. It was beautiful to spend a couple hours with you. I really appreciate your message. You are a true inspiration and I wish you nothing but positive, good vibes and luck and keep doing what you're doing. I look forward to seeing what you do next, but there's no time clock on that.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Yep, thank you.

• 2:00:59Rich Roll?

  Take your time, right? Enjoy California. And when you finish that book, will you come back and tell me about it?

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  I will, I will. Thank you. It's been an absolute privilege. I have hounded you and thank you for accepting the hounding.

• 2:01:11Rich Roll?

  No, you didn't hound me at all. Are you kidding? Like, I'm super happy to be able to do this. It's fantastic. So, awesome. You can find Samantha online pretty easily. You can Google her and like a billion articles come up, or you can just go to Samantha Gash dot com, at Samantha Gash on Twitter, Instagram, all those kind of places, right? Is there one place in particular where you like to interact with people or?

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, I think Instagram is where I'm like most, it's the most present reflection of what I'm doing and probably the easiest way of getting in touch with me.

• 2:01:40Rich Roll?

  Right. And you have speaking engagements coming up?

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  I do. I have a very, I suppose, full schedule when I get back and

• 2:01:49Rich Roll?

  But nothing in the US?

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  No, but my book is actually published in the US, so I'll be doing a book tour next year throughout the US.

• 2:01:55Rich Roll?

  Who's the publisher on that?

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  McMillan.

• 2:01:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, in New York.

• 2:01:59Rich Roll?

  Excellent. Well, then you're definitely, you have to come back.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I'd love to.

• 2:02:03Rich Roll?

  Well, I plan on being in Australia probably. As we talked about before, but

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  I will host you.

• 2:02:09Rich Roll?

  Absolute pleasure. Thanks so much.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:02:12Rich Roll?

  Peace. Pleasure.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did it.

• 2:02:19Rich Roll?

  Right on, we did it. How do you guys feel? Was it good? Was it awesome? I thought it was pretty cool. I thought she was great. Why don't you give her a shout out on the internet and let her know what you thought. She's easy to find, just Samantha Gash everywhere you look, at Samantha Gash on Twitter and on Facebook and on Instagram. And share a few thoughts about what you thought about the conversation. Again, if you want to check out the meal planner, I encourage you to do so. Go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, richroll.com. If you would like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of ways to do it. Share it with your friends on social media, leave that review on iTunes.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  Make sure you hit that subscribe button on iTunes as well. And we have a Patreon set up for those of you who Feel inclined to support my work financially and big gratitude to everybody who has taken that leap. I really, really appreciate that. There's a button, a banner ad for that on every episode page of the podcast on my site at richroll.com. If you would like to receive a free weekly short email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call, and it's basically a list of five or six cool things that I came across over the course of the week. Generally, a couple of articles, a documentary, a video, a product, a book I'm reading, things I've enjoyed, things that have inspired me or that I've found useful. It's no spam. There's no affiliate links. I'm not trying to make any money off

• 2:03:45Rich Roll?

  it, just good stuff. So if that resonates with you, you can sign up by typing in your email address in any of those email capture windows on my website. While you're on my site, you can check out our shop. We've got signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way and this Jesus nuts. We've got t-shirts, we've got sticker packs, all kinds of cool merch and schwag for your plant-powered lifestyle. If you were impacted by my podcast, my recent podcast with Scott Harrison of Charity Water, this is a call to action to put that inspiration into action. I made the call to enlist this community, the RRP community, to contribute to the spring, which is their monthly subscription service in

• 2:04:30Rich Roll?

  which 100% of all funds donated go towards providing clean water for people that need it most. And you guys answered the call. As of today, we have amassed enough contributions to account for five wells this year. My company has contributed one well per year, and you guys have contributed to four, so that's amazing. But I'd really like to make it 10. I really would. And I think that's doable. I think we can do that. Most of you guys have an extra 20 or 30 bucks lying around, and I can't tell you how good it feels to give that over on a monthly basis to a cause that is really making a gigantic difference. The degree of payoff for the amount of money that you need to contribute is really just

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  massive. And I was really inspired by Scott and the mission of Charity Water. And so I've really kind of made this my cause. So please, why don't you learn more about all of this by going to cwt.org?

• 2:05:28Rich Roll?

  /RichrollSpring and consider making a donation to the spring. That's C W T R dot org forward slash RichrollSpring. I want to thank today's sponsors 22daysnutrition, the 100% plant-based, 100% USDA certified organic nutrition products and meal delivery platform designed to meet the needs of your healthy, active life. For 10% off all products, including meal delivery and free shipping, visit 22daysnutrition.com/Richroll and use the promo code RICHROLL at checkout. And also my friends at MeUndies, the world's most comfortable underwear. Visit meundies.com/roll to get free shipping in the US and Canada and 20% off your first pair. Big love to everybody who helped put on the show this week.

• 2:06:12Rich Roll?

  Lots of people behind the scenes working hard. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production and help with the show notes and configuring the website. Shawn Patterson for help on the graphics. All the tech stuff that he does that I share on Instagram and on social media, that's Shawn. He does amazing work. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. I am recording this podcast well in advance of it going out because I'm going to Sweden to compete in this crazy Otilo race. So I'm trying to front load all my work. I'm probably going to be off radar a little bit, but hoping that you are wishing me well and I will communicate with you guys again soon. Until then, have a fantastic week and much love for the support. Peace, plants. Namaste.