David Clark: When An Audacious Goal Becomes An Obsessive Addiction

Goals are great. Audacious goals? Even better. But what happens when that quest to touch the outermost edge of your capabilities tips into maddening obsession? David Clark has been there. And this week he returns to the podcast to tell us all about it. Longtime listeners will remember well our first conversation — one of my most popular episodes to date — in which David vividly recalled his extraordinary journey from morbidly obese, full-blown alcoholic into sober, vegan, ultra-running warrior. Not too long ago, David tipped the scales at 320 pounds. Fueled on a steady, death-defying diet of booze, pills and fast food, he was a man hell-bent on wrecking havoc, destruction and woe in the lives of loved ones and anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, He wasn't just unhealthy. He was broken. Ultimately Dave met his breaking point. Understanding that if he didn't change he would surely die, he summoned the will to finally face and overcome his demons, transform his life wholesale and ultimately accomplish feats most sane people would deem impossible. As told in his memoir Out There*, David didn’t just drop 150 pounds on a plant-based diet. He didn’t just complete a half-marathon. He didn’t just complete a marathon. And he didn’t just finish the Badwater 135, but went on to crush an impressive list of ultra-marathons, including a run across the entire United States (along with podcast fave Charlie Engle) and the Quad Boston, in which he ran the Boston marathon course four times without stopping. Along the way, he repaired his broken self, emerging healthy. Mission accomplished. Or so he thought. No matter how far David continued to push the envelope, a void nonetheless remained. A hole in his soul he simply could not fill. So he continued to push, convinced that the answer he sought would surely be found in going further. Farther. Longer. Harder. What had begun as a laudable journey to wholeness had fractured, leading him away from the light — and into darkness. And yet once again, David found his way out. This is a conversation about that journey. It's about what happens when goals devolve into addictions — an escape from what is most real and important. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the impact of those stories on our beliefs. And it's about constant, continual fidelity to growth and re-invention. I sincerely hope you enjoy this powerful, contemplative exchange with the inspiring David Clark. 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?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  My whole life was a search for happiness in all the wrong places. And I tried to find that in fast food, in pain pills, in alcohol, in business, in everything, always looking for that external validation. And obviously, that never works. You know, I was 320 pounds and a raging alcoholic, but those weren't my problems. My greater problem was that I just really didn't know how to live life. That's David Clark, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:45Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What is happening? How are you? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. Welcome to the podcast. Got a great episode for you guys today. I am reconvening with the ultra-inspiring, ultra-runner known as David Clark, longtime listeners of the podcast. Might remember that I sat down with David about two and a half years ago, I think it was. It was episode 113. To this date, one of my most- Popular episodes on the podcast, so please check that out if you haven't already. It would be a good primer for today's episode, but for those of you that are new or perhaps skipped over that episode, David's a guy who not that long ago was tipping the scales at over 320

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  pounds. He was a raging, hope to die alcoholic and really on a crash course with, you know, not a long life, like his prospects were not looking good. And, you know, people say people don't change, but if this show is about anything, if there's one sort of theme that predominates everything that I do on this podcast, it's about proving that notion utterly false. And, you know, David is really one of the most amazing, one of the most inspiring protagonists in this narrative that I have the honor of weaving weekly on the show because he completely transformed his life. He adopted a plant-based diet. He lost over 150 pounds. He started running and

• 3:05Rich Roll?

  became this ultra-running machine who's gone on to compete at the Badwater 135, widely considered the most challenging footrace in the world. He's run the Javelina 100, 100 miles across the Arizona desert. He's competed at Leadville. He did this thing called the Quad Boston, where he ran the Boston Marathon course four times, back and forth, all in one run. And he's even run across the United States with a couple of people, including Charlie Engle, another podcast favorite. So how did he do it? How did David change his life in such dramatic fashion? What were the tools he utilized? What was the mindset? How does somebody like David, this functioning

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  alcoholic, or not so well-functioning alcoholic, fast-food junkie, you know, morbidly obese, how did he overcome his addictions, lose 150 pounds, and go on to compete in these extraordinary ultra-endurance events? Well, we're going to answer that today. I've got a few ideas on it. Of course, David has plenty to say on the subject. And some of those thoughts I want to share before we launch into this interview.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks for sticking with me through all that. David Clark, again, how does somebody like David, this insane alcoholic, fast food junkie, morbidly obese, how does he overcome his addiction, lose 150 pounds and go on to run at Badwater? Well, to answer that question, I think you really have to first realize one essential truth, and that is that alcoholism, obesity, fast food addiction, these weren't really David's problems. These were symptoms of a greater underlying problem. And recognizing that, I think, was the first step in David being able to crawl his way out. Because this is a guy who just didn't know how to live his life. He wasn't just unhealthy,

• 5:01Rich Roll?

  he was utterly broken. And that hope for the future, the journey, the path forward, was going to require him really reckoning with that, dealing with that truth, and ultimately reprogramming every aspect of how he lives his life. And as the adage goes, the solution is pretty simple. You just have to change one thing, everything. And David did that. He really did. He put the work in and lived to tell the tale and has gone on to accomplish all of these amazing feats of extraordinary athleticism and endurance. And today, we sit down again to explore all of it, picking up where we left off last time. We talk about running and sobriety, of course, but also, this conversation focuses on the importance

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  of matching our actions with our beliefs. It's about the positive or negative effects of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And we also have a very interesting dialogue about that point when a healthy pursuit, something that you think is good for you, suddenly tips into becoming unhealthy, like another addiction, or a way to run away from an underlying discomfort, or an undealt with emotion, or what is real, or what is most important. So if you listen to this show often, you know that I truly believe that growth is our mandate, and that we should never be afraid to fail, that we should always be challenging ourselves, that we should always be getting out of our comfort zone, and we should be reexamining and redefining who we are.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  And David is, you know, he's a shining example of this, you know, case in point, this guy is now shifting gears away from ultra running and he's dipping his toe into the world of MMA fighting with, with no fighting experience whatsoever. It's just absolutely bananas. And you know, a tip of the hat to that for uh, being able to kind of, you know, not be too afraid to try something like that. And that's really what I'm talking about. So without further ado, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with David Clark. Enjoy.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  All right, let's rock it, man.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  We're here.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  Good to see you. Uh, it's been over two years. I couldn't remember exactly when we first sat down, but I just looked up on the website and you actually recalled specifically November of 2014. So two and a half years almost, man.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I remembered because I was heading out to Javelina right after it. So I had that like date association.

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  Seared into the brain, right? Well, I gotta tell you, uh, you know, that conversation uh, got a lot of traction. People were super inspired by your story. Uh, definitely one of the more popular podcasts that I've had. Your story is super powerful and I don't want to recap the whole thing, but there's a lot of new listeners who, you know, might take a beat before they go back and listen to our original conversation. So it probably uh, is worth tracking, tracking it a little bit. And if you could just give the, the quick, I don't know, do you have like a bullet, a bullet point synopsis of how you uh, overcame addiction, lost 150 pounds and went on to run at Badwater?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I used to eat more cheeseburgers and drink more beer. Yeah, no.

• 8:19Rich Roll?

  A lot of beer.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  A lot of beer. You know, it was um, You know, I was 320 pounds and a raging alcoholic, but you know, those were, um, those were symptoms. Those weren't my problems, you know, my, my, my greater problem was that I just really didn't know how to live life. And there was, my whole life was, was a, a search, you know, for happiness in, in all the wrong places. And I tried to find that in fast food, in pain pills, in alcohol, in business, in, in everything, you know, always looking for that external validation. And, you know, it was kind of like, I've described it as the deconstruction of a human being, you know,

• 9:01Speaker 01

  like I, I grew up and had, you know, I was very isolated from the world and I, and I didn't have like a lot of the normal structure kids have, you know, I bounced around a lot. And I thought that having all these external things would make me happier, kind of fill that hole. And, and obviously that never works.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  It is the great epidemic of delusion that I think defines our culture. You know, it's almost like we can't, we can't even blame ourselves because we're so inundated with messages that reinforce that lie.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, once you start searching for happiness, you've lost it, right? Like, at least when you're looking someplace other than, if your eyes are open and you're searching for it, you've lost it, right?

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  How long did it take you to figure that out?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  A long time. I'm still telling myself that now.

• 9:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you were, uh, I haven't got back and listened to our original conversation, but you, you had success as a business. You were like in sales, right?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:57Rich Roll?

  Kind of like a hustler.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:59Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and, you know, applied that kind of, you had some street smarts and you were able to apply that and gain some success. Uh, well, even while you were kind of a functioning alcoholic, while the wheels were falling off, you were still able to kind of get out there and, you know, get done what needed to get done for a period of time.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, on the surfaces, like I was 29 and I owned a chain of stores, retail mattress stores. And, you know, I was the smartest man alive. All you had to do was ask me, never mind the, you know, 320 pounds. And then the bottle of whiskey in my back pocket, I had it all figured out, you know, and.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  And so paint a picture of like a day in the life at the nadir, like at the bottom.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Wow. Um, I'd wake up and, and I actually used to say this as a joke, but you know, cause I was so overweight. I would be like, um, the, I exercise all the time, you know, I wake up for, in the morning and shake violently for 30 minutes, you know?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  And in but that was the truth like right every joke has has truth behind it and and I did I had like terrible withdrawal shaking cold sweats vomiting all that kind of stuff every single day and

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  So hair of the dog.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's funny, like, only reason I hesitated is because back then I would say I don't drink in the morning, but that was only because I woke up at like one o'clock in the afternoon, right?

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, people, you know, I wasn't a daily morning drinker, but you know, there was plenty of times, uh, you know, more often than not, when you wake up and you're in that condition, it's the only solution because you feel so horrible and your, your, your body and your brain, nothing functions and you know, if you just have a couple of drinks like that will actually evaporate and you'll feel normal. It's not about getting drunk. It's about overcoming, uh, you know, what you're sort of enduring in those hours, you know, right after you haul yourself out of bed in the morning.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Rich Roll?

  Or in the afternoon.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I had no desire to drink anymore for like the last few years. All I wanted was to want to drink. Like I kind of knew I had to, like you said, just to feel normal, just to get, get to back to good, but I, I, I didn't want to drink anymore. Like, in fact, I was chasing wanting to drink. I'd always try to figure out what I could do the night before, like setting up a glass of water in the morning or, or even trying to like these stupid things like, you know, like, well, maybe if I wake up at 3am and take a shot of whiskey and then go back to sleep, then I'll wake up in the morning and want to drink again, you know, and I won't have this like,

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I won't have this like terrible deficit, you know, I'll just like string it out a little better and but that's it. I mean, I just wanted to want to drink.

• 12:33Rich Roll?

  Instead of wanting to not want to drink.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Right, no, yeah, yeah. That wasn't an option.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing how powerful, uh, the disease is in that regard. Like I can remember. Just wanting to ha- if I could just string together a couple sober days so that my body could feel okay again, then I would have that desire to drink where those first couple of drinks would actually feel good. And I would get to experience what most people experience when they drink a couple of drinks as opposed to

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  just trying to get to baseline again.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember one time I was, it was a birthday, I have no idea which one. But I had like, I was just wrecked with the flu. I mean, just wrecked. And, and I had like this plan of having my friends meet me and we were gonna like, kinda take over this little bar in downtown Denver, this Irish bar and, and then I got the flu and I literally like was sitting on the toilet, you know, coming out of one end and then vomiting into the sink, you know, from the flu, not even from drinking. And, but I got myself off, out, you know, dressed up and went to that bar and I, I just like-

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, nothing's gonna get in between you and that.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  But I was so frustrated because I could, I mean, I remember thinking, okay, if I just take this shot, I'm gonna get over, I'm gonna, I'm gonna beat the flu, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to the point where I got the flow going and I just couldn't get it. And I had, I did like six or seven shots and finally my brother's like, dude. And my brother's an alcoholic too at the time, even he was like, dude, you just, it's not there. You gotta go home.

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  So at the end, what are you putting away in terms of alcohol and food?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Man, scary, scary things like, you know, an entire bottle before I left the house. And then another bottle, you know, with whatever I was doing.

• 14:14Rich Roll?

  You can't, you can't leave the house sober.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  No, no, I literally couldn't. No. And, and like the fast food, the weird thing about like the fast food and stuff is it, it changed around, obviously, just like anything else. But, you know, at one point I was kinda stringing out my fast food use too. Like where I would have, you know, McDonald's for breakfast or something, that'd be my hangover food, right? And then maybe lunch. And, you know, I got to the point where I couldn't eat in the morning anymore. But I still probably ended up coming close to my, my caloric goal for the day.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  By just that insane midnight trip, you know, with- Double quarter pounder, filet of fish, large fries, you know.

• 14:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think the thing that a lot of people don't realize about full blown alcoholism is that you don't wanna eat, even if you're hungry, you don't wanna eat because that gets in the way of the alcohol, you know, getting into your system, right? So if you eat some food, maybe it'll make you tired and that's gonna impinge on the buzz or whatever. So I can remember going out of my way to not eat, but inevitably, you know, I'd pass out and then I'd wake up and there'd just be fast food wrappers like in my bed or like an open pizza box.

• 15:26Rich Roll?

  And you just rifle through, you know, five or six cheeseburgers that you don't even remember eating.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I don't even like think that I looked at it as food, you know what I mean? Like, I looked at it as, you know, just another drug, you know, it's just something else that was gonna make me feel better.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  Did you have the awareness that you were using food like a drug at the time or was that a later?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  No, not even close. I was like way off my radar. Like, I didn't even know that I was using alcohol as a drug. Like, it was just what I did. It was so tied to my identity, you know, it was like, oh, I'm Irish, you know, and I'm, I'm that guy. I work hard, I party hard and, you know, at some point in my life, like when I had the stores going and I was making a lot of money, that, that image fit. But eventually, you know, that image didn't fit at all, you know, and I, I think that's that ultimate identity crisis that happens, right? Like, who am I?

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  So how did you reach that bottom? Like, what happened and, and how did you flick the switch and, and move into sobriety?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  You know, that's the crazy thing, man, like to describe the, the last morning is to describe almost exactly the one before it and the one before that and the one before that, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't like all of the times that I should have quit drinking. We talked about that like at the last, the last time we did that, you know, like all of these times where I like, you know, ended up in jail or, you know, got so drunk I couldn't wrap my Christmas presents, you know, and, and the humiliation and all the things that go with that. Like, that should have been my last day. I should have walked away and said, come on, dude, like, you've got, you're better than this, you know, you got people that love you, but I didn't. You know, the morning was just, it's just another morning and, but I let go of whatever I was hold on to, that last little bit of.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Dignity, fight, whatever you want to call it, or maybe I grabbed on to some fight, you know, I don't know, but I surrendered. I was collapsed on my bathroom floor. And I actually out loud looked up and I said, I said, help, help me.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that, that moment of clarity that you hear about. I mean, a lot of people in sobriety talk about it being a spiritual experience, or perhaps their first visitation of a, of a spiritual experience. Is that how you think about it?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I do, I do. Like, I, I, I, I realized, maybe not at the moment, but looking back, like, that, that that surrender was the first time I really accepted that I was in a fight. You know, so it was like, it's not the surrender that I think that some people think of where you just kind of like roll over and die. You know, I was like, I'm getting my ass kicked. You know what I mean? And, and it's bigger than me. I can't win. I can't win. So like, I need help.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  And so what was the first thing that you did to extend yourself to reach out for help?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  I went to, well, I mean, I talked to my wife at the time. I went to AA. Um, I, you know, my wife, my, she's my ex-wife now, but, um, I think she, you know, I don't know, you know how selfish alcoholics are. I expected it. Once I said I need help, that the world was going to start moving, spinning in the opposite direction, right?

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  They're going to pin a medal on your chest, congratulate you.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Right. A whole team of scientists were going to show up. But, um, I mean, she rightfully so knew that, um, this was a battle that I was going to have to, to get in. And I'm sure she didn't really believe me, you know, I wouldn't have believed me.

• 18:58Rich Roll?

  I'm not even sure I believe you. Well, you have, you have, you, you've, you have no trust. You know what I mean? And it's very common for the alcoholic to dip their toe into sobriety and then expect everybody to immediately start trusting them again, when they have this robust, multi-year history of, of being unreliable and not showing up when they said they would and having a very tenuous relationship with the truth.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:20Rich Roll?

  So, you know, I think there's a, a lack of patience or understanding of how long it takes to rebuild all that.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no doubt. But I, I'd kind of played a game, you know, it was a similar game that I, I had played in, in business, you know, where I was like, okay, if, if, um, You know, I really did have that kind of insane as it sounds, you know, like this concept that I was, I was smart, like I'm the smart guy. I'm the guy that has it figured out, you know, and, and that's why I've done well in business and that's why I've done this. And I mean, it was so easy to let that go. And, and I let it go to the point where it was like, you know, maybe, maybe I'm actually like borderline retarded. Like maybe I am so dumb that I think that I have an understanding of something and I have no understanding. So

• 20:12Speaker 01

  I, I almost became opposite George, like from.

• 20:16Rich Roll?

  Well, that may have, that may have saved you. You know, that injection of humility, I think is a cornerstone of actually grasping what sobriety is and making it stick. I mean, I know a lot of super smart people that died in the gutter, you know, because they came in, they needed help, they were on their last legs, but they just, they were too smart for the 12 steps or too smart for sobriety and refused to surrender their self-will and continue to double down on that, you know, that fantasy equation that they believed was responsible for whatever success they had in life, thinking that their, their wits were going to be able to, uh, you know, crack this equation wide open and, and get them

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  healthy and it doesn't work. So I think it actually benefits people to turn their brain off and just like, just surrender, just, you know, take advice from people that have put together, strung together a couple of years of sobriety, do what they say, stop questioning it and just let it go, man. You know, like, what are you fighting? Like when you finally release that, that's when you make room for the magic to enter.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. And I just, I, I, I embraced that, like this, this idea that whatever it is that I'm doing from this moment forward has to be completely different than anything I've ever done, you know, and that's strangely how running even entered the equation because running just seemed stupid and you know, like impossible. It seemed like a super power, you know, like. People that could just leave their house and run to me is like, you know, you may as well be flying or climbing up the outside of buildings, you know what I mean? So I was like, well, if I can go do this, this thing every day, this like act, you know, if I can just will myself to do this and will myself to go to AA and take these actions

• 22:01Speaker 01

  that I'm, I'm kind of like submitting myself to that and proving to myself that I'm serious. Cause, cause like talking about my wife not believing me, I didn't believe me and I wanted to believe me, you know? So doing those things-

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  You had to learn how to trust yourself again first.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Because, you know, alcoholism, it doesn't just crush your ambitions. It, it breaks your instincts. So your instincts are no longer reliable because those ideas that crop up in your head, that sound like a good idea, those are the things that get you into trouble. So when you can no longer rely on those to guide you in a responsible, positive direction, then you're lost until you can figure out how to rebuild that and be able to trust those impulses again as they creep up.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So we're gonna, we're gonna get into all the running and the amazing things that you've done with running, but I think I'm, I'm interested in, in kind of delving into how you think about running, your relationship with running, with respect to sobriety. Because I get a lot of emails, a lot of messages from people, as I'm sure you do as well, who kind of conflate fitness or running with sobriety. And I think there's a lot of confusion there with respect to the relationship between those two worlds, at least as I see it. So I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think like any relationship, right? They, it evolves and it changes and it gets deeper and you get a, a better understanding of it as time goes, right? Like you can get into any relationship. And have it never evolve and never change and you get one small thing out of it and that doesn't last a long time typically. So my relationship and view on running has changed dramatically over, you know, the first time that I hauled my fat butt out the door and managed 15 seconds of running on the treadmill to bad water, you know, and even from bad water to now. And, you know, I always, I get that all the time too, you know, that's even when people mean well, they go, it's great that you traded addictions like that. That's

• 24:08Speaker 01

  like so amazing. I'm so happy for you.

• 24:10Rich Roll?

  Right. But I think conversely, what I'm getting at more is somebody who reaches out and says, I can't stop drinking, but I came across your story. So I went vegan and now I'm running.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  And they sort of look at that as the solution to their addiction problem. And I'm always the first person to say, listen, you know, going vegan, going, you know, going plant-based, getting out and moving your body. Those are fantastic, but these are not the path to sustained sobriety. Like you've got to do the inside work. Like you've got to develop a spiritual relationship with a higher power. You've got to like at least explore 12 step or find some program that works for you. You've got to find other people that you can tell your secrets to. Like you've got to learn communicate. There's a whole other aspect to it that is fundamental to sobriety, in my opinion. I think, you know, like running, fitness, eating plant-based, these are all part of my wellness equation.

• 25:05Rich Roll?

  But I don't want people to be confused that that is how I got sober. I mean, that didn't come until after I had, you know, 10 years of sobriety.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. For me, it was, I think I'd been running for two years when I really found sobriety, you know, and I hadn't used in that time. I had two years of abstinence, but I hadn't really found sobriety until I'd been away from using for a couple of years.

• 25:28Rich Roll?

  And I know you know what that means. So when you define finding sobriety, what does that mean specifically?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  I mean, that spiritual health, that point at which if I could no longer run, I would still have been okay. Because I think there was a point that at first, for the first couple of years, my weight loss, my health changes, my running and my sobriety were really just one big ball. And I wasn't sure where one ended, where the other one started, you know, it was just all part of new life, new life. And how does it separate? And when I had my back surgery in 2000, early 2008 into 2007,

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Um, I think that was the first time that I had to really take that first look, that scary look, because two things happened. I was confronted with maybe not being able to run anymore and also pain medication, you know, from, from the surgery, from the injury. So it was like,

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  What did they put you on?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Oh my God, all those times that I, I went to my doctor for pain medication and, and they wouldn't give me any, or they'd give me two or three. I actually told my doctor at one point, like, you can't give me all this stuff. I'm like, I'm a recovering addict. And they're like, don't be a hero.

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. Don't be a hero. Like, we'll worry about that once you get out of pain. And so

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  That's terrible.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable, man. And that wasn't my doctor, my surgeon, who might be listening, but that was like my, my general, um, my first doctor that I went to.

• 26:49Rich Roll?

  So like oxys and things like that?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Luckily, no, but Percocet, uh, Percodan, Vicodins, all that kind of stuff.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  And how long were you on that stuff?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  You know, I resisted it. Actually, I didn't take anything, um, through three or four months while I had two herniated discs and I was going through rehab and stuff. And then, well, I had one massively herniated and one severely bulging and the second one herniated. And when that happened, I couldn't even stand up and, and that's when I finally said, okay, I'll, whatever. At this point, I'm, I can't even think about anything but not being in pain. I mean, the pain was so severe and they had two weeks I had to wait to get into surgery. So I took them then. And then they put me on a ridiculous, I wish I'd have saved it, painkiller schedule for after my surgery, you know, and it was like,

• 27:37Speaker 01

  I think it was taking like 10 Percocets a day, you know, and that would lasted for like four days and then went down to six and then they switched me to Vicodins and slowly weaned me off. And I got so

• 27:49Speaker 01

  twisted up inside from having this and taking it and wondering what it meant and all that, that I just took it all and flushed it down the toilet and

• 27:58Rich Roll?

  Well, it activates the beast. It activates the craving. I mean, when you're in a ton of pain, it's not like you're getting high though, right? Or were you getting like?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Well, no, the men, I wasn't, but like, you know, like you, you push back against yourself. You're like, I don't want to use this to get high. I'm going to take it as prescribed. And then all of a sudden you're looking at the clock and you're waiting for your time to come.

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  That's what I mean by it activates that, you know, that, that little monster creeps up and says, oh, here we go again.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  So it was just a matter of time before I started just. Swallow on them, you know, by the fistful. So I

• 28:28Rich Roll?

  Chewing them up.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I threw them away, you know, and it was painful. It was a tough decision because I knew they weren't going to give me anymore. They wouldn't believe me if I told them I flushed them. But

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting because I think that that's another, like, that's another layer of surrender, right? Like, in retrospect, do you look at that as like a gift? Because

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 28:51Rich Roll?

  Sort of removing running made you look at other aspects of how you were living and had to grapple with like what it all means. So you weren't just relying on running for your kind of sober solution.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Hundred percent. And, and to, to the point you made earlier about like that, the, the person who's trying to grasp a hold of running as, as a, as a lifesaver, you know, to get out.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  I think it's really easy to look at, you know, Badwater and some of these extreme events and think that, you know, doing these ultra marathons has taught me this, you know, skill of this will and this perseverance and all these mental skills that you develop from running ultra that, that translates to my recovery. And that's totally backwards, totally backwards.

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  Explain that.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Recovery and the, the wor- the initial stages of, of finding how to be happy internally without looking to something outside of me. Those are the skills that taught, that kept me in the game at Badwater, you know, trusting the process, knowing I don't have to have it all figured out right now. That I can, I can just feel this without making it, instead of using the pain to create a, a picture in my head that I can just let it be what it is. Like, this is just pain. This is just pain in my legs, you know, I don't need to respond to that. I can just keep moving. And that was from, you know, sitting in the chair in my living room, thinking, how am I going to never drink again? You know, and going. You don't have to worry about that.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  You know, you don't have to worry about that right now. You have to just.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  Well, it trains you to constantly bring yourself back into the present.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  And this perpetual, you know, cycle of surrender, surrender, surrender. And understanding that within that surrender is actually power, not, it's not a giving up.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  It's actually a way of like marshaling the troops in a certain respect. And to continually bring it back to the present translates beautifully into, into athletics, especially ultra, when the distances and the times are so overwhelming that the only way through is to just continually anchor yourself in the moment of what you're experiencing. And trust that if you're feeling lousy, that can shift. Or if you can just get to, you know, five steps forward, then you'll deal with what comes after that, after that. And not having to control that process and, and have a clear vision of where it's going to lead you and being comfortable with that.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and I think it can relate directly to like my first holidays, for example, like everyone that's an alcoholic, you know, struggles with that, you know, first holidays, like how am I going to get through the holidays?

• 31:34Rich Roll?

  Right. Or as soon as you get sober, it's like, how am I going to do this? I have to go to a bachelor party in nine, in nine months.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Right. What if I go to Ireland in 10 years? That was like actually one of mine.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  But, you know, so like I was, I don't have to, I don't have to not drink on Christmas morning now on October 1st. Right. I can worry about that on December 25th. And it was the same thing for me in, in running, you know what I mean? Like I don't have to run a hundred miles right now. You know, I can run that hundredth mile later. I'm just trying to run mile one, you know? And I think that that got me through my first few ultras and stuff like that. But it also translated later, you know, like in, in trying to be more competitive in running, it was more surrender. You know, and it was like, okay, well now I'm capable of running a hundred miles at X speed.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, you, you start to build up that pressure on yourself of, you know, everyone's watching. You know, they think I can, I gotta get first place. I got it second, top 10, whatever it is. And, and knowing that the only thing I have control over is now. And if I run this entire race in this moment, the best I can in that moment, then I'm never going to regret whether I come in first or 100th.

• 32:54Rich Roll?

  The results take care of themselves.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And that's a direct skill from recovery to running and not from running to recovery. Cause I, I can't remember the last time I, I finished a run and went, oh shit. That was what I thought during that run is really going to help me on my recovery tomorrow.

• 33:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I never, I never experienced that.

• 33:10Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  All right. So 320 pounds. How long does it take you to get, what do you weigh now? Like 170 or something like that?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Actually about 158, 159.

• 33:28Rich Roll?

  I've been training a little bit. Yeah. How long, we're going to get into it. Don't worry. How long did it take you to drop down to fighting weight?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  So I went from 320 to about 185, training for my first marathon. It was about 15 months total. Actually, the weight loss part was about nine months. 15 months to the marathon. And I stayed there for a long time and 185 was fine. It was good. I liked the way I looked. I liked the way I felt.

• 33:56Rich Roll?

  And you did that just through running and sort of controlling your appetite? Was there like a protocol to that?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  There was, um, I, I chose like the glycemic index kind of as, as my holy grail of nutritional choices. The filter which I, I ran everything through and I ate very like, um, kind of paleo, honestly. I ate like lean meats and greens and that worked fine for me. And it was really the, when I was decided to get a little more serious about running in terms of, not like taking myself too seriously, but like, what can I do? You know what I mean? I, I had this picture that I was, of who I was. I was this 320 pound alcoholic. This guy who, you know, was tragically fat and, and, and always, you know, coming up short on, and always this close to doing something really great, you know, and all this kind of garbage that I'd placed on myself.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  And I busted that apart and became something new. I became, you know, a runner, a sober guy. And, and I lived in that place for a while. And eventually I was like, well, maybe, because part of that image was that I'm just a mid, mid to backpack athlete. You know, I'm not out there trying to win these things. I just, just doing this for fun. And I was, I questioned that too. I was like, well, what if that's just a bunch of shit too? You know, is that just a comfortable zone that you pigeonhole yourself into? And so I was like, well, let's see, you know, and, and I started, I became a plant-based athlete, just as a, a experiment, you know, like, give it 30 days and see, see how you feel.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  And what, what inspired you to do that? Did you read a book or watch a documentary?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I read this book called Finding Ultra.

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on. You've probably read Scott Jurek's book.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  No, it was before Scott Jurek's book, man. Come on.

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  Our books came out at the same time, so.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  No, they did not.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they did, like, within a month of each other.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Finding Ultra and Eat and Run?

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  No way.

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they came out, like, his came out maybe a month or two before mine.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem possible. I would have guessed like, three years.

• 35:44Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, no. We were, it was all, it all happened almost simultaneously.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  No, and, but no, like, I did read your book, and I didn't know who Scott Jurek was. And I knew that there was this kind of, you know, underground thing in ultra running, you know, about that diet and that thing. And so I just figured I'd try it, you know, like, I was very interested in the concept of making my body become the ultimate machine, you know, like, what, what is optimal? What, what am I capable of doing? What?

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  And where do you think that impulse came from?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Just, just the insanity that's me. I don't know. I don't know. Guy, because I, I don't know, I tend to, I tend to do brain surgery with a chainsaw, you know?

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  Was it, was it, was it sort of an internal promise that you made to yourself? I mean, is it, like, I'm, I'm interested in whether that's reparations for the wounds, you know, self-inflicted wounds, or, or whether you felt like you wanted to prove something to the world or to other people?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I don't think so at all, honestly. I, I was more interested in, like, I just finished writing Out There. And my book is very much about that whole concept of identity and how. It's so important for human beings that we match our behaviors and our concept of who we are. And when they're not in alignment, there's conflict. And I couldn't ever get sober or healthy because I never viewed myself as that person. And I'd always tried to change my behaviors to make me change. And when I got it, I won't say right, because I don't know what right is, but when I got the result I was looking for, it was when I changed my concept of who I was. I was like, well, maybe this isn't who I'm supposed to be. It would make sense to me that I screwed this up.

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  So the results were dictating your identity rather than saying, this is who I am and then, and then adopting behaviors that match that?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how I kind of got out. I was like, well, maybe I'm not supposed to be this 320 pound tragic drunk, right? Maybe I'm an ultra marathon runner and I just screwed it up somewhere along the line. And it made sense to me that I would have screwed up who I was supposed to be somewhere along the line. So I bought into that. And I changed my behaviors changed naturally when I changed my identity. And it took a lot of faking it at first, you know, like what does a runner do? A runner runs. So I'm going to go run. What does a runner do? A runner doesn't eat this, you know? And anyway, so here I found myself two, three years into sobriety and being a runner, and I found myself saying all these things like, oh, I start off slow and taper off, and I'll never be a fast runner, and I'll never do this, and I'll never do that.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And I just heard that voice one day and it reminded me a lot of the 320 pound Dave, you know? It reminded me a lot of that, like I'm imposing all these limits on me. And I was, I was more interested in like, can I break down that paradigm? Can I break that down? And like, what happens if I don't fear putting myself out there to run faster? Can I, can, how fast can I run? How fast can I do 100 miles? How fast can I do 50?

• 38:33Rich Roll?

  It's amazing how we all, all of us, create narratives, stories about who we are that craft our identity. And they're, they're just basically illusions.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Rich Roll?

  Even, even the good ones aren't true. You know what I mean? Like, none of it's true. We just make this decision, like, I'm this person. I'm the person that does this.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:54Rich Roll?

  And if you can unpack that and kind of transcend it and say, well, let's create a new narrative and reinforce that through behavior, you create a brand new story.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  That's the key. And like, cause there's always evidence to supply either way, right? Like, if you say, oh, I'm the stupid person, right? I'm the person that always, and then you lock your keys in the car. You're like, oh, see, look, I lock my keys in the car.

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, there's always evidence to support whatever. But like, certain aspects of your life pop out to you as being more salient or important than others.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:25Rich Roll?

  And you use those as examples to fuel that story. But your life is a spectrum of a million, a billion decisions and behaviors and activities. So why are you self-selecting the ones that reflect poorly on you? As opposed to the things that you, you could just choose to look at all these things that happened throughout your life that were blessings, that could fuel gratitude, that could make you feel good about yourself and your place in the world.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know about you, I'm not hardwired to do that. That takes a tremendous amount of, you know, energy and discipline to do. But it's always inspiring to hear people that can shift that narrative and crack it wide open and do something different. I mean, when I, you know, one of the things Josh Lajani always says is, he decided that in his sort of quest to, you know, become the person that he is now, which is similar in certain respects to your story, he lost 200 pounds. He decided it wasn't about weight loss. He wanted to be an athlete. And when he forgot about the scale and just focused on trying to be a better athlete every single day, the weight coming off was a simple byproduct of changing that narrative about who he was.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  It came along for the ride. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I, I couldn't agree with that more. And that's, that's what, I didn't care about whether I ran a slow race. You know what I mean? Like, but I did care about convincing myself that I'm a slow runner. I did care about that. You know what I mean? Just in the same way that I didn't, I didn't care about being 320 pounds, but I cared about looking at myself as someone who was supposed to be fat.

• 40:57Rich Roll?

  Right. So the first marathon, what was your time in that one?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  4:45.

• 41:02Rich Roll?

  4:45. All right. And what's your fastest marathon now?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  I've

• 41:07Rich Roll?

  I mean, you're you go way longer than marathon. I know marathon is not your specialty.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  The only reason I hesitate is because like my official, I have run a sub three in training, but my official marathon PR in a race is 326, but it was the day after a 50.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  Like only you got and like try to PR a marathon the day after a 50.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I didn't really try, which is probably why I did it.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  All right. So we talk about this in much more depth in our earlier podcast and I definitely suggest everybody go and check that out. It's episode 113. And I'll put a link in the show notes up to that. But, you know, you go from running these marathons and then tackling, you go and you run bad water, arguably the hardest foot race in the world, 135 miles through Death Valley, hottest temperature on planet earth, like just this insane race. And like you conquer it. And in many respects, you could consider that to be, you know, kind of a crowning achievement that symbolizes this extraordinary journey that you've been on from the 320 pound alcoholic into, you know, a true athlete. Very few people on planet earth are able to do something like that. But for you,

• 42:17Rich Roll?

  it's not enough, right? So you got to, you got all kinds of more challenges you tackle after this. You do like the quad Boston, right?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  You decide you're going to run Boston like back and forth four times, right?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:30Rich Roll?

  You do that. And you're trying to break all these world records on the treadmill and you're doing all kinds of stuff all over the place, right? So

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37Rich Roll?

  This is, this kind of brings it back to an argument that you raised a couple of minutes ago about people looking at you and saying, well, you've just transferred

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Rich Roll?

  addictions, right? And so I think there was a good period, and this is what I really want to get into today, because I think this is super interesting. There was a period of about a year where I was sort of following you on social media and even I was like, I think David's losing the thread, man. He's like going off the reservation. Like, how much is enough? Like, he's become maniacal about this. Like, at some point, he's going to have to find a balance point with this because it's not a sustainable lifestyle. And you just seemed hell bent on just going from one challenge to the next and like not even giving yourself a break in between these. So what was going on with you during that time? And how do you like, you know, describe what you were doing and like how you think about it?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Like, well, I mean, the one thing like, When we talk about, you, you mentioned the, the things we put on ourselves for identity, I'm this type of person. And one thing that is, is actually very important to me is that I never want to be the type of person that's afraid to fail, you know, and, and I want to do what is just on, what I think is just on the outside of what I'm capable of. I want that as an athlete, as a man, as a person, as a human, like every, in everything. And so I think like my, my intention at first was to just like constantly challenge myself to be outside my comfort zone. And I was like, um, I'd done bad water and I'd, and I'd done some things and, and, and as the universe conspired to present itself, like

• 44:11Speaker 01

  I had my 10th sober birthday coming up, 2015. And I was like, man, like, I wonder what I would have done with a 10 year anniversary when I was an alcoholic, you know, like would I have tried to drink for 10 hours non-stop, you know, cause that, I mean, that's like the kind of thing that I would have done. Like I always did this weird thing with numbers and dates and things. So I like, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge myself to do 10 epic events as I determine them. But I called it the, this, this zen 10 because I was, part of the challenge was I want to be more present and more aware in these events that I've ever been before. I want to let them unfold in a way that, you know,

• 44:54Speaker 01

  that I'm just really grounded to them and I can learn something about myself and my limits and all these things. So I had this like kind of monkish aspirational thing hidden into it, you know, and, and I did it, you know, and I, and I went through it and I don't regret it at all. So what were the 10? They were like, um, Rocky, the US National Trail Championship at Rocky Raccoon. And, and I wanted to go after, that was the main reason I was doing that is I wanted to run my fastest 100 ever. And I came short of that. Right. Cause that, that's like a pretty flat course, right? Yeah. And I had run like, You know, crazy for me, crazy sub 18 and came in second place this hundred. And I was like, I just want to see if I can, what am I capable of doing?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  And so that was the first one. And then, um, then I did, uh, in March, I came out here to LA. And I did the, tried to break the 12 hour world record for the greatest distance run on a treadmill in 12 hours. And then I ran the LA marathon right after it for, um, for a nonprofit that works with addicts. And then I did the quad Boston and, you know, I did a hundred mile.

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about the quad Boston for a minute though. So you, you, uh, did you have problems like with access to the course and all that kind of stuff? Like, did you have to jump through a bunch of hoops for them to even let you do that? Or did you just kind of fly under the radar?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  You know, somewhere in between, you know, I did want to include the, the BAA in that, you know, because I didn't want to get pulled off the course. And they, they, they appreciate us being honest with them. So they just gave us some guidelines, like we weren't allowed to wear hydration vests or anything like that. And honestly, I mean, the, the roads were all open for the first two and a half or three marathons. You know, like there's people that do this nighttime midnight bike ride that I didn't even know about that happens. And they're like all neon lights and polka music. It's like, I had a lot of company out there.

• 46:42Rich Roll?

  So you started, what, which, which marathon was the marathon that actually everyone else was running? Was that?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  The last one.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  Last one. Okay. So you did, so you started like the day before, basically?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wanted to do it four times in one day. So I started, we, we, I started like, I think it was 5pm the day before. Cause my, my wave went off at like 11am or something like that.

• 47:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  So, all right. So you, so 5pm and.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Started at the finish, ran out to Hopkinton, ran back, ran out to Hopkinton.

• 47:12Rich Roll?

  And you're just continually running the whole time. Like it was just a, a, an ultra all the way through.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. And it was, it was crazy. It was like, well, I mean. And we did it, the way I designed it was like the, the first one, each marathon was for a purpose. And the first one was for the people who are still out there struggling. Second one was for the people that made it out, found recovery like myself. The third one was for the families affected by addiction. And the last one was for those lost and specifically for a, a local Boston girl, Sophie Kelly, who passed away. She died of heroin overdose at like seventeen, seventeen or eighteen. And I ran the last one with her mom.

• 47:51Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful, man.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  And it was, it was, to this day, I mean, I've done a few of these like really crazy kind of things. And this is the one that, cause Runners World did a story on it before. And so like there was people standing out on such and such street corner in the middle of the night with the magazine, telling me about their daughter. And Boston has been, Massachusetts in general has just been like

• 48:14Speaker 01

  devastated with heroin and, and kids. And it was just crazy how many people came out and had a story.

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  Did you have a bunch of people run with you for stints?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I had, I always had someone with me the whole time.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  And how do you, people are gonna kill, this is a bit of an aside, but people are gonna kill me if I don't ask you like, how you fuel when you're running such long distances? Like, what are you eating? What are you drinking?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  That one was tough because we couldn't carry hydration packs. So like, at first it was cool, like the, the, the crew car, you know, would, would be there, but I had potatoes, potatoes and salt and water. You know, I've tried everything, gels and powdered drinks. And I'm, I'm pretty lucky in that I can, I can eat just about anything to, you know, better, better performance on some than others. But real food is really a, like, separating salt, water and calories was, was.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  So like sweet potatoes or like how are you chewing, like you actually like baked potatoes or mashed potatoes?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so both like, so sweet potatoes, we'll take a sweet potato, like a small sweet potato and put a, um, a, a fig in it. Or, or even a date. And so there's like a sugary thing too in there. And then with the regular white potatoes, just boiled and then salt on them.

• 49:27Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Nothing tastes good when you're running anyway. So what the hell does it matter?

• 49:31Rich Roll?

  But, yeah, but I mean, there's no way you're doing gels on something like that. Like, that's not gonna work.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Gels do work for me, you know, like.

• 49:40Rich Roll?

  Even in the super long stuff?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, all of the. Crazy treadmill stuff I've done. Like if I'm going fast, I'll do gels for the first 50 miles of 100. And because I real food's hard to digest if you're running really hard for me. And then I'll switch to the food later. Cause at some point, you know, you just can't stomach another damn gel.

• 50:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, you're gonna get, you're gonna have a revolt down there, right? And it's also tricky when you start taking in that much sugar. You gotta keep priming the pump. Or you're gonna have like a crash.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  So I do peanut butter too. I do peanut butter, avocados and potatoes typically. But the way I work it out is I'll usually start with five foods and the five change. And I just figured I gotta get 200 calories every hour from those five foods.

• 50:25Rich Roll?

  And no like maltodextrin drink, like powder carbohydrate or anything like that?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  Good to know, man. Alright, so you do the quad Boston.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  You too can be a mediocre runner.

• 50:36Rich Roll?

  Come on. There you are. You're telling a story about yourself, you know?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Less, less people confuse me with Scott.

• 50:43Rich Roll?

  Very few people on planet earth can do what you do. Um, alright, so you do the quad Boston and then what comes after that? You got more treadmill stuff, right?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I did, um, I did a 100 mile treadmill run that came about. Um, I might be confusing years here actually. Yeah, that was a different one. No, I did a 100 mile treadmill run in October. That was like event number six or something like that. I did a Badwater as part of the, the 10 events. I did Leadville. I did, um, Squaw Peak, which was, um, the Squaw Peak was an interesting one because that was like kind of a mini surrender in the middle of all this that I, I was like, okay, all 10 of these don't have to be better than the one before, right?

• 51:29Rich Roll?

  It's so alcoholic.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I know, right? I'm like, so I'm gonna just make this 50 miler that I was going out to speak at. And I'm gonna make this the combination of speaking there and sharing and running with, because it was for a group called Addict to Athlete in Utah and running with them. You know, and not running my race, but running and supporting them along the course was like, I think that was event four or five or something like that.

• 51:59Rich Roll?

  So was it, there was one event though where kind of the wheels fell off the wagon and you kind of had a reckoning with what exactly it was that you were doing, right? Wasn't that Leadville? What was it?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  No, it was actually after all of the 10 events. It was the next year. So what happened is I went through all of these events and I ended it with a 48 hour treadmill run because it was like the craziest thing I could think of. Like I really wanted to go out.

• 52:25Rich Roll?

  How many miles did you run in 48 hours?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  186 miles.

• 52:27Rich Roll?

  And you were staying at a gym? Where did that go down?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I own a gym in Colorado and I just did it there. And man, I still have like panic attacks. Sometimes I like, I think that I'm dreaming and I'm still on that treadmill running and then all of this is a dream and I'm gonna wake up and I've still got 10 hours left.

• 52:44Rich Roll?

  Were you hallucinating? Like how do you?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Strangely, I did. I mean, I got a bad water story about hallucination. Actually, it happened during the 10 events in 2015. I hallucinated for like 10 hours out there.

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  What were you seeing?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Oh, man. So there was the white line that you run on. His name was Desmond and he was spinning around and he would break open into a mouth and then start talking to me and then he would like...

• 53:09Rich Roll?

  What's he saying to you?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Oh, at first some really dark shit, man. Like I'm actually writing about it currently or actually just finished writing that part. But like really dark shit. Like I had like a spiritual thing out there, man. Like tell me that, you know, I was a fraud, a fake, that I didn't deserve to be on the bad water course, that this is for real runners and, you know, you faked your way in here and all this like crazy stuff trying to get me to quit. And Desmond was me, obviously. Like I don't know where any of that came from, but like it was, I had just a terrible race. Like, I mean, at two hours into the race, I was falling down on the road and passing out, falling asleep. Like, I don't know, my...

• 53:51Rich Roll?

  Two hours in?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Two hours in, I lost, what was it? I lost, um...

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  Did you like, when was the...

• 53:57Speaker 01

  I lost some ridiculous, like 12 pounds in the first 17 miles or something like that.

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  Had you just run another event shortly before that or?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Um...

• 54:05Rich Roll?

  You're just running yourself into the ground?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Define shortly before.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe you have a overly eager or overly, what's the word? I can't think of the word.

• 54:21Rich Roll?

  Uh, overly eager sense of how long it takes you to recover in between these events, right?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think muscularly, like if I have one kind of talent, if you will, or one thing that I've done well in my running career, it's recovery. I've, um, I usually recover really quick, especially muscularly, but I think there's another level underneath muscularly, you know, that

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, there's like a deep, deep fatigue that probably takes months and months to you, for you to stabilize.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was a night start and like my coach thought, you know, with the heat and the night start and just being a little off, you know, that that can get out of hand quickly, you know, when you have five things go 10% wrong, you know, that that can be a big number, you know, and but it actually turned out to be

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  You finish.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yes, it actually turned out to be one of the most beautiful, peaceful experiences of my entire life and I, I actually chronic, or, um, chronicled it to my crew. I was telling them what I was experiencing because I knew that was going to be significant to me, you know, like I was describing them what I was seeing and, um, what I was going through and I had these like crazy flashbacks back to being a kid and times where I was like literally intervening for myself in the past from the race, like driving down the road and I'm like in the car with the drunk me, holding on to the steering wheel, stopping the car from like hitting, going into other traffic and it was just

• 55:49Rich Roll?

  That's true.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  It was crazy, man. It was so nuts and I, I didn't want to forget any of it.

• 55:54Rich Roll?

  Like you went into another dimension and like bent time to be your own angel

• 55:59Speaker 01

  It was crazy.

• 56:00Rich Roll?

  And protect yourself.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, and it became this act of like, I was convinced that there was no possibility of finishing that race, like, I can't state that strongly alive, like there was no possibility of a finish, so it became

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  You're falling asleep in the first two hours.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Right, right. And it so became this thing is like, well, can you keep going? Anyone can keep going if you have some sliver of hope. Can you keep going even when there's no hope? Like, and that was like what I kept telling myself, like it has to be, has to mean something more than just finishing.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  But that's your hope.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I guess so.

• 56:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I guess so. But that's, yeah, that's where, where it, it meant. And when, when I did finally finish, I remember thinking, looking around and like, like not trusting my crew, like I kept waiting for them to come up to me and say, you know, you didn't finish, right? Like, we drove you here, right? You, you know, you didn't finish. I kept expecting someone to say that to me because I was like, kind of getting my buckle. And I'm like, looking around like.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  So it's so like your, your relationship with reality is so tenuous and stretched.

• 57:13Rich Roll?

  Clearly, man, clearly.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  So what do you take from that? Like in retrospect, looking back on being able to complete that race when, you know, to, to coin your own phrase, there was no hope, like.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to buy the new. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I don't know, man. Like, um, I think that, uh, I think that was the first time that I felt the, the undercurrent of what we're, what we're moving towards, you know, that, that, um, like, are you in control? Like, I don't think there's anything too extreme in life if you're choosing it. You know, you know what I mean? Like, I'm all about breaking down barriers and breaking down limits and challenging yourself and, and, and if you want to be the best, whatever it is, it takes an insane amount of dedication and drive. And if you're choosing that, I don't think there's ever anything wrong with that. But I think there's a first time.

• 58:07Rich Roll?

  But it begs the question of what is free will with respect to that choice? Because if that choice is being informed by an unhealthy impulse, then that's a different animal.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. No, and, and I'm sure we'll, we'll, we'll talk to that point, but like, that's where I think I felt like a little bit of the, of the conflict brewing. I think that's why Desmond was saying some of those things to me. You know what I mean? Like, but I finished these 10 events and it was great. And I, I, I wrote about it and I felt good about it. You know, I didn't feel, I felt like it was a good thing, you know, and I thought it was a healthy thing for me. And. I um, in the next year, I was like, okay, so now what? You know, now what does it look like? And I, you know, spent a lot of time with my, my kids and meditating and, and doing all this kind of cool stuff. And um, Charlie Engle called me out of the blue and asked me about this icebreaker run. And I was like, I'm pretty sure I said yes before he ever finished the first sentence.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  You're just dying for some kind of challenge, right?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that became this beautiful run because I went into it with a singular goal. And it was, my goal for the icebreaker run was to never have a discouraging moment, to never have a singular moment where I wasn't happy and present, you know, that, that I was gonna go in with no expectation. Like if I had to run 20 hours a day or 20 minutes a day, that I was gonna do whatever was asked of me. You know what I mean? And

• 59:34Rich Roll?

  And to be clear, the icebreaker run was you and Charlie and a couple other people doing a relay across the United States to, to sort of raise awareness around addiction.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  For mental health and addiction and PTSD and a host of other things. And I really liked, I embraced the idea of doing something as a team, you know, because I, I've, I've done so many things that were just kind of about me, you know, and even though I'm attaching a, a good cause to it, it's still me, you know, and I liked this, you know, my moniker's always been, we are Superman. It's not, I am Superman. I got a scar on my back from my back surgery. It proves to me that I'm not Superman. But um, you know, so we did it. And I, I think I accomplished that goal. I mean, I, I had a smile through every thunderstorm and, and everything. And then here's where it gets a little dicey, you know, I finished this run and, and I, I looked up bad water to start date. I'm really into dates, as you can kind of guess by now.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  And it was on my 4,000th day of recovery. I'm like, wow, how epic is that?

• 1:00:33Rich Roll?

  Too, too tempting to not pull the trigger on that.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then I didn't get into bad water. And I was just kind of like blown away. I mean, I, I, I really was.

• 1:00:43Rich Roll?

  How could they not let you in? After your resume of all the stuff that you'd done.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. I don't know. But I, you know, it was

• 1:00:49Rich Roll?

  Did you piss off Chris?

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I, I don't think I did.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  But I didn't and you know it was beautiful was another it was another good opportunity to surrender. I mean, I remember I wrote a Facebook post. It was like, hey, I never thought I'd get into bad water ever. And I got three times in and if me not getting in means someone else lives their bad water dream, then I'm totally cool with that. But I think I made a tactical error inside when instead of just letting it go, I decided I wanted to do something else and I'd been toying with this idea. We you and I even talked about it actually at the podcast last time, the double Leadville. I was like, I'm going to do the double Leadville on my 4,000th day of recovery and it's going to be about, can I do two times what I thought was impossible because Leadville for me,

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  and that's what my book out there is really about, was doing the impossible. I ran a marathon, but I'm like, okay, lots of people run marathons, you know, triathlon, but Leadville really seemed impossible. So now here 10 years later, 4,000 days later, can I do it twice?

• 1:01:52Rich Roll?

  And just for context, explain a little bit about Leadville and what makes it so unique and difficult.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Well, Leadville is in Leadville, Colorado, which is the highest incorporated city in the US. I don't think it's the world, but it's 10,000 feet above sea level. And it's notorious race, you know, goes over this Hope Pass, which goes up to almost 13,000 feet. Right at the midpoint of the race, right when everyone is suffering, it's a total nut shot. And it's a race where, you know, routinely the champions that win it, you know, don't finish the next year. And, um, you know, all ultras kind of have that flavor to them, but I think Leadville really encapsulates that. And, you know, it's just got a really iconic guy. That's the the figurehead for it and Ken Klober. And and it's just, it was in my backyard and it seemed like the big impossible. So it's it's a race that, um,

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously I wrote about my book, so it's very near and dear to my heart. So this, this, this, this had this like really big like thing to it, you know, it was just like hanging out there for like, what is this? What can this be? What is it gonna mean?

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  So you put a lot of expectation on yourself and a lot of energy and a lot of excitement about tackling this crazy challenge.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  And I invited like a friend to come out who's, who's a filmmaker and, and, and film it. I'm like, let's just see what happens out here, you know, let's, let's just.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  The Sude brothers?

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I just saw them yesterday.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bobby sent me a text that he saw. Yeah, and they're great. And I met them on the icebreaker run.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  And what happened was not what I was expecting at all, you know, and I, I told everybody about this because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm about risking pub failure publicly these days, you know, my life's an open book, literally. And I told everyone about it and um, I put it out there in the universe and I went out to do it. And um, from the get go, I just knew something was, something was wrong, you know, like I, I, I just didn't feel in control.

• 1:04:02Rich Roll?

  So how long into it? Well, first of all, did you do, were you doing it like the Boston quad? Were you gonna do the first one? You're gonna go from the end of the beginning and then run?

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I wasn't. I was initially going to do it involving the actual race.

• 1:04:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, so this was just, you just saw, oh, okay. So you're gonna do it on your 4,000th day of sobriety, just solo vibe?

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I was initially gonna do it during the race and I talked to Ken Klober, who's like my second dad now, and he thought that it would um, maybe take away from the people that were doing it for the first time, you know, and I said, so I never want to do that. So I'll just, he's like, you do it, you do it another day, I'll come out there and pay you, you know, and I'm like, all right, I'll do it. In fact, I know the damn day it's gonna be on my 4,000th day. Like, I mean, it seemed like all the stars aligned for that. But I, I went out there and I was going through some stuff with my girlfriend at the time, too. And, you know, where we'd, we'd have this kind of great relationship, but a very um, Not open in the sense that people think when you say open relationship, but open in

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  terms of honesty about how, you know, I'm 46, I'm divorced, you know, I got kids, I'm not really looking for this XYZ, you know, we might have 20,000 days together or we might have one and that's just kind of where I am in my life right now. But I promise you this one day is going to be really good, you know, and, and she was okay with that. And I kind of came to the conclusion that, um, and I know this is all really personal stuff, but that's just what I do. But, um, I hope she's not mad at me. But, um, like, you know, I came to the point where I didn't think I was doing the right thing by her anymore. You know, that, that, that, you know, there was something about, yeah, it's,

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  yes, I'm being honest about where I am, but maybe it's still not the right thing to necessarily take up her place. You know what I mean?

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  Well, what I see a lot with that dynamic is still the other partner clinging on to some idea that that will change and, and the person and the other person on a maybe even an unconscious level, allowing that to perpetuate.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  And they can say, look, I'm being honest, but they kind of know that maybe it's not so fair.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, that's it. That's it. And I, and I got out there and I knew, I knew early on that, um, like the reality is like, I was, this voice just started coming on and it was like, what's next, Dave? Like really, what's next? Are you going to be out here next year doing it four times? Are you going to do it 10 times? You can do 50 miles a day forever. Like, I mean, we had just got through doing 35, 40 miles a day all the way across the country, right? Like, I mean, what does this really mean? Where does this go? You know?

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  And what are you looking for? Like, what is it? Where, what is that hole inside of you that continues to drive you forward into this world? Like, what are the questions that remain unanswered? And how is doing this going to answer that for you?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think I can answer that. Like I came to the conclusion, at least for me, like, that day one, day one, zero, ground zero sobriety. I felt like there was a strength present in my life that day that wasn't there before. And that felt,

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  That that didn't come from inside me. And when I found these types of things, I felt like I was gonna be okay. If I could keep touching this really strong part of me, the part that wants to quit, the part that wants to give up, the part that wants to just take the easy way out, if I can keep confronting that, that I'll be okay if the the desire to like use ever comes back. You know, if I find myself back in that place again someday, that I still have access to this this strength. And I think I kept going back there to just make sure it was there. And then eventually you go, okay, it's there, you know, I've done all this crazy stuff.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  And then you go, well, how deep is that part power, you know, how how big is that room? How deep is that well? And you just start exploring, you know? And what I realized out at Leadville was that

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  that that well of strength is inexhaustible, you know, it's it's there is no limit to it. There's no limit to it. And I had, I realized I had to stop searching for something that I already found. And that running up to that point, I feel like running was was fine for me. Running was a beautiful, positive thing in my life that running reflected my recovery. And all of a sudden, I felt like it was reflecting my addiction and not my recovery anymore. And

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  I decided that if that to be to be in control, control is illusion, but to be in control of myself in that a moment was more important to me than finishing the race. You know, and I decided that I had this kind of epiphany out on the mountain on Hope Pass. And I think everyone's been on Hope Pass as some sort of an epiphany. But I just like, I saw it. It was like another moment of clarity. You know what I mean? Like, I saw it and I saw Courtney and I saw running and I saw Leadville. And I saw my kids not with me on my 4,000th day recovery.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  And I'd separated myself and I'm out in the middle of the woods and like, and it just. I don't know. I it I just saw it in entirely different way. And I realized that even with Courtney, that I had found this way to be happy, you know, and and truly happy in that you could take my business away from me. It wouldn't matter, man. You could take my house, you could take any object or thing that I own away from me. And I know how to be happy because my happy is not my happy place is not dependent on any of those things.

• 1:10:17Rich Roll?

  But that breaking point compelled that realization, that epiphany, because I would presume that like baked into this is this sense that, you know, if you can't do the double lead fill, or you're not able to double down on whatever the last challenge was to go even deeper and further and longer and faster, that you're not going to be okay.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Rich Roll?

  That you actually need that, that you're reliant upon that.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:44Rich Roll?

  In order to give you some sense of peace or sense of self that is further driven by this external identity that you've crafted about who you are and the expectations that then get imposed upon you.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Yes, hundred percent. And and I realized that what I'd inadvertently done to myself is that, yeah, I found this happy place. But when I walked in there, I slammed the door behind me. And I wasn't letting anyone in with me. I wasn't letting Courtney in with me. I was like, I created almost a jail out of it. You know what I mean? Like, and it wasn't like that for the longest time. It was like, it's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. Fuck, it's like that. Where did that happen? And it was just this surrender. And I remember telling my friends, I'm like, I'm gonna let this go, man. I gotta let it go. Like, and it's not because I don't fucking care what people say,

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  like, you know, can't do it, couldn't do whatever. It's just like, I've got to, I've got to be okay.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  What planet do I live on? If I get back to Leadville and I've run 100 miles? And that's failure?

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  What have I done to myself?

• 1:12:02Rich Roll?

  It's insane.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  It is insane.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  But that's a beautiful emotional and spiritual breakthrough to reach, like you took yourself as far as you could to get to that point to understand that ultimately that's not the answer.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Rich Roll?

  And that you've got to find peace within yourself that lives and breathes and thrives outside of this subculture of running.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  You know, I think it's it is the knee jerk response when somebody looks at somebody who's in recovery, who runs ultra, who's covered in tattoos and said, well, clearly this is a, you know, somebody who likes to live on the fringe, who likes to push the envelope, who's a person of extremes. They have they have taken this compulsive addictive personality and they have laid it on top of the template of ultra running. It's very clear. And when people say that to a lot of people in your position, they balk and they say, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. When somebody says that to me, I say, you're right. I need to look at that.

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  I need to own the fact that I am a recovering alcoholic, that I am somebody who's prone to extremes. I am somebody who's trying to establish some semblance of balance in my life and reckon with the fact that I do feel alive on the extremes and how can I make that work for me rather than against me? But that's like an alchemy that I'm always kind of playing around with, but I have to have an awareness that I can take that too far. As opposed to, you don't understand, or you know, like Mishka, I've asked him this question on the podcast. He's like, taking the drink, taking the drug, that was always the easy choice. Getting up in the morning and putting on your running shoes and getting out the door. That was the hard choice and that's how I distinguish these two worlds.

• 1:13:53Rich Roll?

  But yet there still can be that blind spot and you lived and breathed in that blind spot for a long time until you played it out and couldn't take it any further. And with that comes, I think, a tremendous like growth opportunity for you.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, like I don't. I said, like, when um, when we talked last podcast, like, my first AA meeting, I think is actually the very first time I ever listened to anybody in my life. Like, I really think that I somehow made it to thirty four without ever listening to a human being. And I think um, I think that out there at Hope Pass was the first time that when someone asked me the question, have you traded addictions? The first time that um, I saw myself through my eyes. I like allowed myself to see myself. You know

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  what I mean? Instead of just, I mean, because I think that I did, I wouldn't change anything. Like, I think that what I did to that point was exactly what I needed to do. And I think that it did, it did meet the minimum standard that I have of is what you're doing creating happiness in your life, right? Like, ultimately, that's what it's about. If you can be happy shooting heroin, go do it. I, I've never seen that. But hey, if you can do-

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  Well, I might start out happy.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  You know, not real happiness, right? But like, I think that um, that it did in that ultimately, I want to pride myself on, there's no truth that I wouldn't rather know than not know. And for the longest time in my life, it wasn't that. It was like, there's no truth that I wouldn't want to, that I wasn't willing to project onto someone else, you know? There's no truth that I won't establish as real if you give me enough time to control everything, you know? And, and I don't, that's not, I don't want to be that guy. I'm not that guy. And when I felt like, I think as addicts, we know the voice of addiction. We know the sound of its voice, like, the, the, literally, the sound of that voice,

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  like, identifying your father's voice, your mother's voice, your son's voice. Like, I know the sound of that voice, and I heard it out there.

• 1:16:10Rich Roll?

  And I think that's why so many alcoholics and addicts get defensive when they get thrown that question because they they know they're they're getting poked in that in that place where that voice is being threatened. And there's a little bit of a covetous relationship with it with protecting it. You know what I mean? Like, don't go there. That's my little special private thing. You know what I mean?

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  That saved me.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  And you're getting a little too close to that. How dare you, you know, attack it? Like, it gets to it gets to live and breathe in this kind of minimized truncated way through running as opposed to substance.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  And I think that's like

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  Or whatever behavior, you know, it doesn't whatever, whatever, whatever behavior that you kind of translate that impulse into.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's like a part on every human being, right? Like, instead of a thing, it's a place in us so that we put stuff, you know, that's really important to us, stuff that we will not be challenged on because it's too important. And, you know, for some people, that's like, I'm a good mother, mother, or, you know, I'm a whatever it is, I'm a, I believe in God, whatever it is, we put in a place. It's like, okay, this is the unchallengeable box. This is where I file the things that I'm going to dig in on. And I put my my running in there. And I think at Leadville, I took it out.

• 1:17:24Rich Roll?

  So you have this moment. I mean, you have like a breakdown?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, actually, it's on it's on video. Crazy. But, um, yeah, it was at the top of Hope Pass. And I just like literally broke down. I was just sobbing like a baby. Like, but it was, it was beautiful.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  Like a cathartic epiphany.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Rich Roll?

  And so how do you articulate what that is and what that what that means and how that has changed your perspective on not just your running, but how you're living?

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Well, what I said out there, and I think that it was, it's more, I haven't found anything that's, that's, that's a better description of it since. But what I said out there was that I had to answer the question of how big I want running to be in my life. You know, how much of my life do I want occupied by running? And I need running to be

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Serve a different purpose in my life. I'm still gonna run. I love to run. You know what I mean? There's something beautiful about running, something peaceful, and I do some of my best thinking when I'm running. But it doesn't have to be a mechanism to test who I am. It doesn't have to be a a mechanism for self-discovery even anymore, that I'm not done discovering who I am.

• 1:18:43Rich Roll?

  Or self-flatulation.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, yeah. But I'm done using running to discover who I am. You know what I mean? Like, I wanna pursue ultimately, like, you know, how much I can love, and how much I can give, and how much of my ego can I let go, and how much, you know, can I ground myself and be balanced? I wanna continue to pursue that. I'm just not gonna do it through running. You know what I mean? I've gotta find another way to do that, that running is gonna be something different for me now.

• 1:19:15Rich Roll?

  That's pretty powerful. And that takes a lot of courage because your your attachment, your connection with running and how it's crafted your identity is so powerful.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  So it's a courageous move into the abyss a little bit.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  But we gotta talk about this, like, like, how this is translating now. You're like, getting ready for an MMA fight? I mean, what the fuck is going on?

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Well, that, yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't, that doesn't segue well, does it?

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  That happened very interestingly, like, I didn't like, say, okay, I'm not gonna run, now I'm gonna go get in a fight.

• 1:19:56Rich Roll?

  MMA fighter? Like, I just was like, what are you doing?

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Actually, one of the amazing gifts that's come from the book is, is meeting so many, like, people, people, you know, just people that you bump into anywhere at a marathon or race, and then other people who, you know, have been a big figure in your life, and then all of a sudden, like, they're in your life. And Pat Milic is one of those guys. You know, I've been a UFC fan my entire life. And Pat Milicich is five-time UFC champion, you know, invented Milicich Fighting Systems, you know, trained the best fighters in the world. And he read my book out there and he was touched by addiction, not personally, but he lost two brothers. And he also, he found my book, but he was going to train for Leadville. Like, he was like done with

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  fighting and he's like looking for the next big challenge. And so we just kind of got connected.

• 1:20:48Rich Roll?

  You'll train, you'll train him for Leadville and he's going to train you in MMA?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  That is exactly right. And we're going to do it for the, for charity. We're, we're going to try to raise a quarter of a million dollars to go into treatment programs. And, but it happened. It was, it was just really kind of crazy, man. Like, and it set up this great friendship where like, I've been, for lack of a better term, fighting with myself, you know, for, you know, my whole life, right? As an addict and in recovery and, and Pat's like fought the toughest guys in the world. And, and I'm obviously genuinely afraid of getting in the cage.

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  Do you have any fight experience at all?

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Hell no.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  Any martial arts experience?

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Nothing?

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Well, this will be my first sober fight.

• 1:21:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, other than a few bar fights.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  But yeah, I, I am an Irish kid from New York. So I've, I've, you know.

• 1:21:40Rich Roll?

  And so when did you actually commence training, like in a structured way for this?

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Towards the end of the year.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  And you had to start at the very beginning, I would presume, like fundamentals and?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Which has been the greatest gift of this whole thing is that, you know, I go around and I go to races and it's like, you know, oh, you've done this how many times? And you know, you get that like feed, ego feed, whatever. And to do this is like, there is never anyone in the gym who knows less than me.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's gotta be like unbelievably humbling.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  And who is older than me. So I'm like the oldest guy and the least knowledgeable guy. And it's been very humbling and it's been amazing to be the student and totally and completely humbling yourself to everyone there and giving yourself to the process. And it's something like, I've been missing that in my life, you know, it was it was a much needed, no matter what happens moving forward with the actual fight, that that that alone has been worth the price of worth getting punched in the face a few times.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  It's super ballsy. I mean, to just literally place yourself into a situation where you have no experience whatsoever. It's gotta be terrifying, but also that's the ultimate way to then jumpstart your growth. Like you can continue to tackle these crazy running challenges, but like you know what that looks like.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  So, you know, you you start to get diminishing returns, obviously, and then you have this moment where you have this reckoning with it. And then to throw yourself into a completely unknown, uh, you know, world and and allow yourself to be vulnerable in that, I think, is ultimately gonna teach you more than anything you would learn from, you know, trying to go do a double, you know, Leadville once again.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I I think so, and I hope so. And, you know, it's, I always kind of thought maybe I might, you know, do some amateur fight or something like that, but I figured it'd be like me and a guy in the back of a gym, you know, two friends, something, you know, I didn't expect it to be public and.

• 1:23:40Rich Roll?

  So when is this fight and who are you fighting?

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  We don't know who I'm fighting, although, um, I was, I was talking to Jake Ellenberger, um, here in LA, um, Thursday, and they were calling out CM Punk in a big way.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  To fight me. And so we'll, we'll see.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  He comes from the wrestling world, right?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. But, um, I don't know, man, like, it's gonna be, as it's set right now, we don't have an opponent, um, picked, but it'll be the end of the year, October-ish, um, probably in Denver at the First Bank Center. Pat Milicich is actually the voice for the LFA, the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and does all their commentating and stuff like that. So the plan is to make it happen on Access TV and and on, uh, on that card.

• 1:24:25Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  But like, honestly, like, for me, it was like something that I've, I've wanted to do and something that scares the shit out of me. And I don't like to let those two things live in the same place.

• 1:24:36Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  You don't need to, you know, it's better to do stuff than talk about stuff.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  What have you learned? I mean, very few people have sort of trained in these two very different worlds. So as somebody who has a lot of experience in running and ultra running, what have you learned from dipping your toe into the MMA world about physical fitness and conditioning that maybe runners don't know about? Or like, like, has that expanded like your understanding of how to prepare your body physically to be functionally strong and agile?

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  I have petitioned the UFC to change to 45 minute rounds.

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  Ultra MMA?

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  And definitely at this early stage.

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  Two hour rounds, yeah, like.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  At this stage of the game, the longer it goes, the better I do. That's certainly true, but no.

• 1:25:25Rich Roll?

  That's how the Diaz brothers have kind of distinguished themselves. Because they do triathlons and things like that. They're able to last longer. They have more of an endurance background than most fighters.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, you know, but I mean, it's like, it'd be, it, the best way I could describe it is like, you know, there's certainly a lot of the, the mental capabilities of pushing yourself, carryover, you know, being able to calm your mind instantly has been a skill that's helped great, especially with someone's lying on you and you can't breathe and they're trying to hit you, you know, being able to find a peaceful place quickly is, is helpful there. But honestly, like, it's like getting on a treadmill and someone else has control over the speed and incline. Like when I'm running 100 miles, I'm constantly dictating what I'm doing.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  And in MMA, I am not like, sometimes I am until the other guy has a good moment and then he's dictating it and you can't. So what's the old cliche when you're wrestling a grizzly bear? You don't wrestling a grizzly bear, you rest when the grizzly bear is tired, not when you're tired. Like, it's like that, like you don't. So that part has been, um, interesting, different, you know? But I've been trying to, I really have no expectation. I'm really just trying to take what's there and not bring anything into it. So that I think they're being able to recover quickly in terms of like from being out of breath and being able to, you know, re-up quickly is, is translated nicely. But other than that, man, it's like my head's busy, man. There's so much to think about.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  It's, you know, just when you you get comfortable in one thing, you realize there's four other disciplines you gotta work on.

• 1:27:07Rich Roll?

  All right. So no date and no competitor yet, but.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Definitely. Well, the last LFA card of the year is is is once they establish that it'll be that. And that's typically in Denver around October. So that's all we know.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  And are you still keeping up the running? Like, you still run every day or like, have you totally dialed that back?

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  I've really dialed it back now. And I'm running like three times a week or so, you know. I think that the timing was good. I think I needed, I've had diminishing returns in my running, you know, performance from doing so much racing. So I think, I think just the the universe is so much smarter than we are, you know, like, this, it was a good time to rest. It's, it's hard because I feel, honestly, I feel really fit. I feel really fit right now. So it's, it's hard. Like, I was out at Badwater Cape Fear a couple of weekends ago and and stuff and seeing everyone racing and running and but now it's peaceful. Like, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to pull the plug on any races anytime soon. I did get into Western States somehow.

• 1:28:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  With one ticket, but I haven't even really decided if I'm doing that or not. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait and see, see how I feel.

• 1:28:16Rich Roll?

  Interesting, man. And so what is, what does sobriety look for, look like for you right now? Like, how do you practice sobriety? And what are the routines that you rely on to maintain and gird, gird your program?

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, constantly filling the well with stuff, you know, I'm always reading. Um, my, my 12 step work has kind of morphed into the, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. It's like 12 and 12. It's like another version of the 12 steps, you know? And in fact, I actually kind of like did this big comparison on the two once that, but so I've, I've been really trying to embrace.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  Buddhism as I see it, you know, and, and, and apply that in my life, I think just.

• 1:29:04Rich Roll?

  And what does that look like in terms of like daily practices?

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  So it means, it means doing the right speech, the right things, the right intentions, the right everything that always, you know, letting go of projecting myself onto other human beings, always trying to understand that someone else's opinion and point of view and perspective and where they're coming from is as important as mine. And I get a chance to practice that in my business, owning a gym with members, you know, and, and with my kids and with everything. So I, um, I'm a avid reader, you know, and, and my, my topics, I'm always reading one book that's written from some sort of Buddhist perspective. I'm always reading one book on cosmology, one historical biography, and then I usually read a fiction too, but I haven't

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  been able to find any time for fiction lately.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  That's great, man. And you're working on a new book.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  I am, man. I'm writing the last section of my, my next book. I never thought I'd say next book or, or any book really.

• 1:30:04Rich Roll?

  And so what is the, what is the focus of this book? Like, how do you kind of move beyond what was in out there?

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. How Failure Equates to Happiness. The working title of the book is DNF.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. That's interesting.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Rich Roll?

  And so the premise is?

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  And when I started it, I didn't know. Well, I'm not going to give away too much about it actually, but, but yeah, I definitely took, all of this stuff kind of happened midway through writing the book. So it definitely changed the outline a little bit. But I wanted to use, it, it's definitely strangely because in my life right now, running has taken a step back, but there's a lot more running in this book than there is in out there. You know, out there in many ways is a recovery story with a, with a little bit of running in it. And this is definitely about running and divorce and failure and, and, and how that relates to being happy. You know, where does happiness come from?

• 1:31:01Rich Roll?

  Beautiful, man. And when do you anticipate that being out there?

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  The writing will be done probably within, I'm just writing the last section now. So probably a month or maybe.

• 1:31:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Soon. But then, you know, but then it'll be editing and stuff.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  We're probably a few months.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  When we first got together, I think, I mean, Out There was Out There, but it was still pretty new, right?

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was pretty much launched. So your show is really one of the big reasons why the book was.

• 1:31:31Rich Roll?

  Well, cool, man. And, and I know as a result of, you know, the book and everything that you've been doing, you've had the opportunity to go and give a bunch of talks and meet a bunch of people. Like what has that, how has that changed your life in terms of advocacy? And how you kind of, you know, speak to people who now are looking to you to help them figure out how they're going to get sober or how they're going to lose a bunch of weight or how they're going to run their first marathon?

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  You know what, man? Like, I'm a pretty creative guy and I've tried to come up with a way that Out There has helped other people. But the reality is like, the book's been great for me, you know, because the gift, when someone reads my book, so like, I think my take on it is that when someone's ready to change, they're going to change. The work's already been done, right? And nothing's going to stop them even. Like I talk to family members all the time. They're always worried about, you know, they have someone who's struggling. They're like, well, if we say the wrong thing, he's going to start using again. I'm like, no, no, just like you can't say the right thing to cause them to get help and to get better. You can't say the wrong thing to spin them out either. Once they've decided to do it, they're doing it.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  So the gift to me is that like when, when I was ready and I looked up and I saw things, I saw your book and I saw, you know, I saw Lance Armstrong's book, which, you know, even though it didn't relate directly to me, it gave me inspiration and I found all these other things. So now people are ready to change their life and they look and they see my book. But that's a gift for me. You know what I mean? Like I'm the, I get the benefit of that. Like, so, you know, I mean, it's, it's been like almost at times it feels like the gratitude is heavy for it because I've benefited so much from it. I get to hear, you know, people tell me that they've read it and it's affected them in X, Y ways, but honestly,

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  they would have been okay without me. So I feel like I've got the better end of that exchange.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  But you get to be in, yeah, that was beautifully put and, and very humble of you. But I also think that you get to serve as sort of a foil, like a, a, a, a projected accountability partner, because if somebody gets inspiration from your story, they can, they can find a lifeline in that. Maybe they send you an email, you send, you, you write back one sentence and it's just enough to like, keep them going on a dark day or something like that. And that's a beautiful kind of equation to be participating in. Um, so I think that's only going to continue to expand for you. I mean, your story is like, you know, 10 times more like extreme than, than mine, you know?

• 1:34:12Rich Roll?

  So, you know, and, and within that extremes, you know, people can, can identify emotionally with wherever they're at and, and hopefully find a way forward. So.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  I think there's, oh, sorry.

• 1:34:25Rich Roll?

  Go ahead. No.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  No, I think there is definitely a, um, I want to say obligation, but definitely like, uh,

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  we're called to stand in the light, I think, you know, when, when you've found a way out, when you've, when you've crawled out to stand there in the light as an example that it can be done, I think is really important.

• 1:34:42Rich Roll?

  And so when somebody reaches out to you and says, I can't stop drinking, you know, what it, what's, what's the reply?

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  That's because your life's not bad enough yet.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  That is my reply.

• 1:34:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, is that what you said?

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they go like, what do you mean? My wife's leaving me. I'm like, I know, isn't that fucked up? Like, how bad do you want it to get? Like, and I do that because like, well, because that's the truth. And the truth never needs to be finessed, or, you know, churched up, or shined, or anything. And that's the reality of it is like, we act, we engage in this act of saying, well, you know, at least I'm not X. And what is, or counter blessings, and even though that's like designed to create gratitude, and to see what you have, it doesn't usually serve that purpose. It actually justifies, right? It's like, well, yeah, at least I'm not X, or, and all this. It's like, well, yeah, but, you know, maybe you should really get comfortable with how shitty

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  your life is, and how bad do you want it to get? Because when you touch that, then you might actually walk away from it.

• 1:35:48Rich Roll?

  I'm much more politic.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I used to be, man, but like, I wanted, I thought for me, like,

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  I wanted, I need to hear the truth.

• 1:36:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, there's, there's power in the bluntness. My friend Chris Davis is like that, who I had on the podcast. He just like calls it like he sees it, super harsh, but in an endearing way where you're like, yeah, man, that's right, like, that's the thud that I needed to hear.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  And I follow that up with, honestly, like, like, I'm, make no mistake, I'm telling you what I'm telling you from an absolute place of love. Like, there's no judgment here, none. Like, how could I judge you, right? Like, I mean, that's like, not even on my radar, like, you know? I can't tell you if you're an alcoholic, I can't do any of this stuff, but I can tell you what I've been through, and the fact that everything you're saying is like what everyone says.

• 1:36:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, sharing your experience. I usually say, if you don't want to, you don't ever have to drink again. It's your decision. And if you're in that place where you've decided that you don't want to, and you're willing to do anything to get it, then go check out AA. Set aside your preconceived ideas about what it may be, or what it may not be, or whatever misgivings, or whatever somebody told you about what it is, or whatever mental projections you have about it. And show up, raise your hand, ask for help, find somebody that you can talk to, that you can tell your deepest, darkest secrets to. Don't be a stranger, participate, do that for 30 days straight, and then email me.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  I guess that's the difference between LA and New York.

• 1:37:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  Well, and most of the time I don't get an email back, you know, because they're not, I mean, I'm basically saying like, look, you don't have to, and there is a solution, but you're gonna have to, it's, it's gonna be hard, you know, there's gonna be work involved and you're gonna have to do some heavy lifting. Are you ready to do that?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I, I think that really ultimately is, is, as much as I could shave it down to the, to the, to the essence, right? Like when the pain of staying where you are becomes greater than the pain of moving forward, that's when we change. And so like, I like to be that person that says, you know, maybe you should really look around and start actively tallying how bad it is.

• 1:38:01Rich Roll?

  Right. Or maybe it's not bad enough yet.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  And you need to sink lower, like that elevator, uh, keep going down.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  I've completely redefined my concept of, you know, rock bottom and all that stuff. Like, you know, because it sets up this like, oh, you're a high bottomer and you're not a high, all this. To me, there's like, rock bottom is death. So anyone who's not dead is a high bottomer. You know what I mean? So, so stop worrying about, you know, like, well, I've only, I've never lost my job. I've never drank in the morning. I've never had a DUI. It's like, well, unless you're gonna go all the way till you die, you're gonna have to get off this thing at some point, right? Like, so stop worrying about rock bottom. You're there.

• 1:38:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but getting them to realize that they have to get off rather than trying to manage it.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:46Rich Roll?

  So that they could drink like a gentleman or, you know, a lady, you know, it's sort of disabusing people of that idea is difficult and they have to, they have to come into that on their own. And that only comes through a lot of pain and misery. Usually.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no doubt, man. So.

• 1:39:03Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Well, I think we gotta wrap it up here.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Right on. How long was that?

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  That was good.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Ten minutes?

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  We got, no, hour and a half, dude. All good.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  We did, we did it in an hour and a half.

• 1:39:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, hour and a half. So yeah, you rocked it, man. That was beautiful. I loved having you back. Fantastic, man. I look forward to the new book coming out. Thanks, brother. I look forward to this MMA fight. You gotta keep me posted on that. I will, man. In the meantime, check out David's book out there if you haven't read it already. It's, it's quite an amazing story. I think you guys would be amazed at the arc of this guy's birth and regrowth. It's really quite stunning. And of course, go back and listen to our first podcast if you haven't already, episode 113, I think I said, from a little over two years ago. And until next time, my friend, come back and tell me how that MMA fight went. We'll do it. All right. All right, man. Cool, man. We did it. Peace. Feel all right?

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Good? Feel good, man. You sure? Yeah.

• 1:40:01Rich Roll?

  No, it was awesome. I'm just checking in, dude. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. Peace. Good stuff, man. Plants.

• 1:40:09Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. Another amazing, awesome, inspiring conversation with David Clark. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Look forward to your thoughts. Please share them on Twitter with me, at Rich Roll, and with David, at We Are Superman. And make a point of picking up his book out there. It's a really great read. Couple announcements. We have Plant Power Ireland coming up, July 24 through 31. There are spots still available. We're doing it at a place called, I thought it was called Ballyvalane, but somebody, was it on Instagram or Twitter, sent me a DM and said, it's not Ballyvalane, it's Ballyvalan. Pretty sure that's how you pronounce it. I've been mispronouncing it this whole time. In any event, it's this extraordinary manor on 90 acres in the Irish countryside.

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  It's really quite the place and we are taking 40 people there for seven days of complete life transformation, Julie and I. There's also gonna be a special appearance by the Happy Pair. Lads are gonna cook, come by, we're gonna cook, we're gonna eat, we're gonna run, we're gonna meditate, we're gonna do tea ceremony. We're gonna have these really cool, intense workshops on everything from creativity to relationships. We're gonna have Ayurvedic treatments. We have glamping tents. It's gonna be fun, but it's also gonna be transformative. That's the idea. And there has to be some intensity required in order to activate that. So we're looking forward to it. It's gonna be. Really amazing. If this sounds like something you'd be into, you can learn more at

• 1:41:29Rich Roll?

  ourplantpowerworld.com, ourplantpowerworld.com. If you'd like to support my work and this show, there's a couple of ways to do it. Share it with your friends on social media. Pretty basic. Leave a review on iTunes. Click that subscribe button on iTunes and you can contribute to my work on Patreon and you can find that banner on any episode page at richroll.com, any episode page of this podcast. If you'd like to receive a free weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. Basically five or six things that I stumbled across over the course of the week that I found helpful or inspiring or informative. Usually a couple of articles, a podcast I listen to, a product I'm enjoying, a book I'm reading, things like that. Basic things. And you know,

• 1:42:12Rich Roll?

  there's no affiliate links in this. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just sharing. So if that sounds like something cool that you want to be a part of, you can just make sure that you sign up on my website. Any of those places where you can kind of add your email address will do the trick. Also, while you're at it, when you're on richroll.com, we've got signed copies of Finding Ultra. We've got signed copies of The Plant Power Way. Pretty soon, we're going to be able to offer signed copies of Julie's upcoming book, This Cheese Is Nuts. We're loading that up on the site now. Please make a point of pre-ordering that. That helps us out a lot. It's really an amazing book. It's beautiful. She did such a great job and it really is next level in terms of not only culinary skills, but also the photography, the layout, the aesthetics

• 1:42:57Rich Roll?

  of the book are really extraordinary and one step beyond what we were able to do in The Plant Power Way. So I'm excited for you guys to enjoy that. We also have t-shirts and tech tees and stickers and all that kind of stuff on the website. I want to thank today's sponsors. 22 Days Nutrition, my friend Marco Borges' company. Again, so happy to have these guys on board as a sponsor. I really believe not only in Marco, but in his mission and what he's trying to do with this company. 22 Days is a delicious and complete plant-based nutrition platform for your life. Rich Roll listeners get 10% off all products, including their meal delivery service and free shipping when you use the promo code RICHROLL at checkout. 22daysnutrition.com/richroll. Use the promo code RICHROLL at

• 1:43:40Rich Roll?

  checkout. Also, Design Crowd. Custom graphic logo and web design from designers all over the world. Get the perfect custom design every time. Visit designcrowd.com/richroll or enter promo code RICHROLL and receive up to $100 off your design project now. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering and production and help on the show notes. And now he's helping me with these intro scripts and the ad copy and everything. He's doing a lot. So, thank you, Jason. Shawn Patterson for help on the graphics. He does all of the cool graphics that we share on Instagram and Twitter and on Facebook and stuff like that. And the music, as always, by Analama. Thanks for the love, you guys. Appreciate the support and I'll see you guys back here soon. Peace. Bye, lads.