Episode 553: Ken Rideout: How The World's Fastest 50-Year-Old Marathoner Traded His Darkest Habits for Incredible Strength

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“- So on this podcast camp, what we do is we do a healthy”

performance shop before we start, and this is by magic mine. I'm scared, this one actually is like, I think it's like the magic mine max, which is three times the caffeine. Can you handle that? - Let's go. - I don't know, I'm scared. I've taken like three of these. - We're talking to like a professional former drug addict that's

the idea of some extra caffeine, doesn't exactly like make me start to sweat. - It's like that's true. - You told me we're gonna smoke DMT, I'd be like, oh my god, I don't want to die again. - You're right, so a little extra caffeine, and a little lion's main, and a little Asheville Gondas, not going to really hurt anybody. Okay, okay, here we go, do it.

Well, you actually can do cheers, me, and then I can't do the whole thing because I'm going to

“I have to have like four, but you should do it. We'll watch you do it.”

- It tastes pretty good. - It's good, yeah. - It's not like those other shots that you like to promote. - Sorry, different shots. - You guys, you are in for a treat. Can't write out as someone who literally is the epitome, like if you were to look up habits and hustle in like the, on, you know, on chatG between our Google or Wikipedia,

your face would be there because this guy is a crazy, like he's a killer in all the good, the best ways, and his story is extremely aspirational, inspirational, and all the things, and I met him. Well, actually, I saw him at one of these, but Jesse, it's their running events hell in the hell, is that what I was telling him.

And he was like really kind of like, just like kind of like in focus mode, and he basically

didn't even look my way, but I looked your way, and four years later, you're on this podcast. So anyway, can't have a new book. It's called Everything You Want is on the other side of hard, and I finally have you on this show. So thank you for being here. - Thanks for having me. It's been pleasure. - It's my pleasure. We actually even did a podcast before the podcast, which kind of happens when you like click with somebody, but can you kind of just

give my audience a little bit of like an origin story, like who you are beyond what I just said, like what you kind of like, who you are, and where you started, because it's pretty spectacular, where you started, and where you are. - I'm going to give you the abbreviated version, because there's a whole book of it right there. - True. I'm originally from Boston. I grew up in the inner city, grew up in kind of a rough environment,

rough childhood, a lot of abuse, drug addiction, very hostile environment. But from my youngest age,

“I just remember feeling like I'm not supposed to be here. I don't know how I ended up in this”

place in life. But I knew I wanted to get out of there, and I don't know why I didn't have role models on mentors necessarily that were pushing me towards going to college, getting like working in a professional setting, like, you know, in my, at that time, it was probably expected that you would have either like a blue-collar job, which I'm cool with, like, but that was the aspiration was like, get a job for the state or the city, and like, where I'm for the sanitation department or the

city doing, like, road work or, you know, maybe work at the prison, which is what I ended up doing. I played, I was very athletic in the sense that I played a lot of sports. I played football in hockey in high school, and then also in college, played two NCAA sports. Neither one really well, and when I graduated from high school, I started working as a guard in prison, and that was my

first or corrections officer. When I call it a guard, sometimes the prison community, the prison

social media crowd attacks me for calling it a corrections officer. What? Why? It's just like, it's not, yeah, it's not PC, basically is what you're saying. It's just, it's weird that people get hung up on some things like this, but I was a corrections officer. To me, it was, I was a prison guard of whatever. You were 18, right? Yes, and I probably looked like I was 15, no, four years, while I went to college. So I worked there full time in the summer, and then a few nights a week while I was in school,

and, you know, it was exactly what you would expect, like an aggressive environment and of very steep learning curve, but again, most of the people that I knew in there, prison is very segregated. So I knew most of the white guys going in there. Matter of fact, there was a good, one of the other corrections officers was a guy called Mickey Ward. They made a movie called the fighter about a Mark Wahlberg played him in his brother, Dick Yecklin, was an inmate

played by Christian Bale. In the prison that we were both working at, and then eventually my stepfather had already been inmate there, and my brother, who's 11 months younger, would end up being a prison and inmate there multiple times. And my brother, just to give context as to how I grew up, my brother was 11 months younger, growing up in the same environment, same exact conditions,

and never graduated high school, never had a real job, career, criminal, in and out of prison,

heroin addict, the whole nine yards. And he, so he ended up getting sense. They're shortly after

as a pharmaceutical sales rep for like six months. But I was playing in a men's hockey league in

“in New York and Meta Guy, who was working in finance on a trading desk, and he got me a junior”

trading, just just in trading job on a trading desk, like an institutional trading desk, like a real finance wall street trading desk. And it was, it was everything that I wanted to do. It was a aggressive. It was like being on in a sports locker room. It was hyper competitive. But I was also getting like he's essentially emboiled, which is crazy, because I was boxing for the New York Athletic Club. I wasn't like someone you would think would be bullied or picked on. And not that I was

letting them, but they were trying to do that. And then eventually after a couple of months work and there I slapped someone in the face after just too much of the bullshit, and they fired me. And I was so naive. I didn't realize we had competitors. I didn't even, I mean, I was so happy

they gave me two weeks evidence. I didn't know anything about anything. I had never had a professional

job. I mean, I had to farm a suitable company, but I was like a remote sales rep out in the field, like I worked from my home. And some of the industry traders heard what happened and they loved it. Some of the traders were like, oh, this guy is crazy. I wanted him to be my sales coverage at this at a, you know, trading, my sales coverage at a trading desk. So the big enron trader would call into the trading desk and like, hey, buy me this, sell that. And we would put these trades together

and get like paid and exorbing it amount of money. So after getting fired within two days, I had a job. I was making 40 grand. I had a job making 80 grand the next Monday, which was crazy to me, because that was like more money than I could ever imagine at the time. This is in 1997. Okay. Okay. So I'll be kind of about millions of questions already because this is like,

“because like, you're a whole story. I mean, you gotta, guys, you have to read the book because”

it's, it's, it's really, it's fantastic. But let's just offer the beginning. Because here you are working as a, as a correction facilities officer, prison guard, whatever, your brother was in jail, your father, like, you kind of like just skip around it like it's no big deal. Like, you know what I mean? And then you went to be a pharmaceutical rep. Like, and you were like, it's just no big, like, how did you kind of, like, that's a very traumatic experience. Like, the fact that you've been

went to college, that to me is like something that you just kind of like, you know, blip skipped over. Can you just go, "Hi, what kind of environment you were living in?" Like, where was your mom? Like, how did you, what was your dad in jail for? Why was your brother in an NFL? Why did you not take that same path? Like, there's so many things that you could have like done differently that would have taken you on a whole different trajectory before becoming a pharmaceutical rep.

Yeah. So, my parents would have me when they were 19 and 20. My mom was 19. My dad was 20.

“They were divorced, like, within a year. After having me and my brother, um, then my mother”

had a series of different boyfriends and then married this guy from Alabama, who was much younger than her, so it wasn't much older than me. I mean, he was obviously, he was older. He was an adult, but he was, like, complete immature, and they would like be beat the shit out of me all the time. How old were you at this point? She, they got married when I was 8, so I was 8 to 18 and then he was gone for a couple of years when he went to prison. But he went to prison for like stealing

credit cards and like, you know, using stolen credit cards. It's like, like, complete, like, name-compooled behavior like knucklehead. And, um, it's, it's crazy. It took him as long as it did to get caught. It took as long as it did, been to get caught. And then, uh, so then he, he went to this prison called Billarick, a host of corrections and, um, and they would beat the, he'd beat, you up constantly. She got out of me. Yeah, like, hit us with a belt. Yeah, it was crazy. And then I had a

day, he has a son with my mother, so I have a step brother who's eight years younger. And, um, who's now a drug addict and doesn't work. It's, they're a mess. But I wanted, going to college was,

was never like a, uh, the thought of not going was never even in my mindset. I just knew that I

that was the next step of life. I didn't know why I knew that. But I just knew, and I wanted to keep playing sports. So when I went to college, it was easy to plan to go to college, so I had to keep playing sports. That's all I worked. You worked, like, while you were in college, but how did you make money to get to college and how would you have been to school? I went to a state school. It wasn't very expensive. I went to crappy, state school, framing him state. I always called the Harvard of

framing him Massachusetts. And, um, you know, it was not very expensive. And I paid for working in the prison, took a bunch of student loans and it's crazy because I had all these students loans, but as soon as I got the new job in finance, I paid the money off in like two months. So did you, as a kid, or, like, as a younger person, like a teenager, or whatever, did you have big dreams, big aspirations? Because you grew up in an environment that didn't seem like that would be a normal type of way to think.

Did you always have a different type of mindset? Did you have, like, some kind of, like,

you were playing sports? So that sports actually, like, kind of, like, tweak the way you think, or how did, like, to me, that's not normal. What happened to you? All I wanted to do was play sports.

I got my freshman year of football, of freshman year of college. I got then I was playing football

and I was a bunch of the, like, knuckleheads on the football team and like, oh, take sociology. That's

“not very challenging. Right. And I was like, oh, okay. And that's how I end up studying sociology.”

Obviously, in hindsight, I would have went to the Naval Academy, studied business, got out, gone to Harvard and get an MBA. I wish I could do it all again. I would have made my life a lot easier. And then when I got out of school for a year or two, I was still living in Boston. And when I going into my junior year, I got cut from the hockey team because of my attitude. And I was, like, just struggling, like, being an adult. I had no, I had no, like, role models. I, I mean,

I'm not making excuses. I was just lost. And I was, like, behaving like an asshole. And the coach was, like, you're attitude's terrible. And if you, I ignored several warnings and they were like, we don't need you. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm screwed. Like, I'm lost. But my grades were terrible and when that happened, I also, at that point, was floundering socially and started doing cocaine. And then with all my buddies in Boston, who were like, literally, like, crazy people. And we

would just go out through cocaine. They would get into fights every single night. It was like, I mean, I mean, two of like, my five best friends, a dead from either drug addiction or violence. Like, it was crazy. It's like, it sounds hyperbolic to talk about it this way. But it was people who know me and know where I was, like, living, understand that that was a very much a reality. So then you go to New York and now you're live, now you're a trader. And when I get out of school,

I was like, I got to get a job. I got to get to sales end the last two years. I studied, like, a savage and got on the deans list every year. Because I wasn't dumb. I was just lazy. I hated school. But once I focused, I was like, just like, was running race. I was like, I'm going to outhouse all everybody. And I got good grades. And I graduated. And I needed a job in a friend who was doing pharmaceutical sales. And he's like, my buddies, the sales manager, they look up for someone in New York.

And I was like, I'll do that. And I mean, it was like, $36,000. I had a rent apartment. By the time I paid all my bills for the first six months, I had like $50 left over. I mean, I was like, how am I going to do this? And I was like, using credit cards and surviving. But for some reason I had this insane, delusional self-belief that I'm like, I'm going to figure this out before the money runs out before I like really get too deep. I'll figure out the next move. So I was

always like in a job, not a career. And I'm like, I'm going to figure it out. Met this kid in finance.

And I saw all these guys working in finance at the gyms that I was training at. Because I was always exercising. And I was like, these guys are dope. If these guys that make money doing finance,

“that's what I need to be doing. Right. So that's how I end up in finance. And then I'm working on this”

trade in desk in very quickly, start establishing myself. It was like kind of like the law that jungle there, like you had to be aggressive. And I just -- Yeah, but we weren't talking to like retail investors. We weren't talking to like individuals. We were talking to institutions. You couldn't be like, right, no one was lying and stealing. Like you'd get, this was highly regulated like legitimate finance. And so we were trading with Anne Ron and Goldman Sachs. And like we weren't running people over,

no one was, but we were making a lot of money. And so when I get the new job making an even grant, now I'm covering Anne Ron is my client. And I start making like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And within a year or two, I get hired by Kenneth Fitzgeralds to go to London to run European and Asian commodity sales and trading for Canada. And now I'm making millions of dollars. And I'm flying the Concord back and forth. New York to London. I've got a brand new Porsche at that time.

Throughout all this, I'm suffering with this like imposter syndrome and fraud complex. I'm like, they're gonna find out that I'm stupid and I shouldn't be here. And I like had no on the surface. I had confidence, but deep down. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just figuring it out on the fly. Like it was all happening so fast. I had an ankle surgery, caught prescribed some opioids. And I was like, see you later. I'm like, I'm the most confident person in the world.

I'm good. I don't have any concerns. And that started like a 10 year like 24/7 addiction to drugs. But you were like a functional, functional drug. Yeah. No one ever knew that I was doing drugs. I mean, they probably thought I was a weirdo, but not on drugs. Like, I even saw something like,

“I was in your book. I think a must admit or something when I was researching all of your stuff.”

Like, you were like, your wife had no wife. You got married. You didn't even know you were at a drug, you deep that you even did drugs. My wife is very much like a straight, late square. Like,

she had never, she's never done any drugs in her life. Like, ever. She drinks. She, like,

not excessively, but she'll have a drink. But she's like completely naive. Like, early in the relationship, we walked by as someone smoking weed. And she's like, that weed. And I'm like, are you insane? Then you go to college? Like, you don't know what weed is. She's like, I didn't for now. I didn't hang out with those people. I was in a sorority full of nerds. Like, we didn't, she just didn't, wasn't exposed. She's not, she's not a nerd.

She's like, I mean, she played sports. She's into shit. But she was just like naive to those kinds of things. So, I mean, eventually she realized like something's up. And but I was never like relishing in my addiction. I was always like, I kind of stopped these drugs, but I can't do it. I can't stop. It was like,

Like, what made you start in the first place? Like, yeah, you're doing coconut all the stuff

when you were younger. You're still doing coconut milk in New York, because I'm like, this is, this is losing proposition. But the, uh, the, uh, of the content fentanyl and all those things. Like,

“they just made me feel good. And, and, and what was your drag of choice?”

Oh, Opia's like, oxycon and percussed. All that things. And all like, the stronger the better. And I would take them in the morning before I got to work. I'd take them at lunch and I'd take them in at dinner. Like, so I would take like 30 to 50 percussets a day. And this is when you were actually like, like, making all these millions of dollars. Yes. And I had so much money. Like, I had connections on the street right by like a whole prescription bottle of, you know, when you get the prescription filled,

there's like a thousand pills and they put it in the bottle and then put the bottle back. Yeah. I had like shady guys that would sell the entire bottle. Like, I don't know if they would steal it, how they'd get it. But I was the worst because I had means and I had, and I was resourceful. So I would know how to connect with degenerates, because I had to grown up with these type of people. And so I mean, I'd find connect, I had talk about it in the book. I found like, uh, shady doctor in

London. I had guys and doctors in Chinatown in New York. I could just go in, skip in front of the whole line of a hundred people in his waiting room, give him a hundred bucks to write a script for anything that I wanted. So it was like the worst scenario. And I couldn't stop. I was physically addicted. I, when I would stop, I'd get physically sick like a guy withdrawing from heroin. So I kept like, and in a couple of times, I did it. I like just white knuckle did. I just got sober like locked

myself in my bedroom. Most just like, I'm just going to be sick until it's over. And then I'll emerge from this like death tomb. And I'm, I'm skipping around. I'm fast forwarding a bit. But eventually, my wife and I get married. She knows I'm struggling this. I had used this other drug called subitex, which is like, like methadone kind of helps you get off the opioids. But it's supposed to be just a transition, but people are on those things long term. And those become super addictive.

And just as hard to get off. So when we got mad, we adopted a daughter from Ethiopia after we got married. And when we, when I realized like the clock that the runway is, I'm running out of runway.

I have to do this now or never. And I was like, if I don't do this, I might kill myself. Because

I can't live like this. I'm not a loser. I didn't want to be a loser. But I was behaving like one. And I had very high self esteem before this happened. And now I was like destroying myself emotionally. And I went to an outpatient detox facility in New York. And they gave me like some, like, I went through basically like a medically assisted detox where they gave me room to stay awake, Zanets to calm down at night and to sleep and ambient and blood pressure

medicine. And there's an important story in the book where I, my wife finds me on the floor on conscious in the middle of the night in our apartment, which is like this beautiful, like glass high rise, like 50th floor, gorgeous views of the city. And I'm like basically living in hell. And she finds me in there. And I just like come clean and tell her everything. I said, I'm trying to go through this one week detox. Because when the week is up, I can take this other drug. I can

get an injection of a drug called Vivatrol. That's an opioid blocker. So you cannot get high. If you take the drugs that won't affect you, it like basically occupies all the opioid receptors

“in your brain. So it's like, it's like a safeguard. But to take the Vivatrol, you have to be”

completely clean for a week, which most addicts can't do because it's just sick, like sicker than you can ever imagine. Yeah. So I did it. And I got through it. And I told her and she was like, oh my god, this is crazy. And then I got the Vivatrol shot and then I was good. And then I would just, you know, I've had a few relapses along the way, but not like, wait, wait hold on a second. So so basically that Vivatrol that you're talking about, if you take your drugs, take your pills,

it just doesn't affect you. None. No effects. Believe me, because I tried. You cannot get high. So how does that affect you? Like, so if you're not getting high, what did it do to your mentally? Like, were you just like, what was that wasn't that panic or anxiety? Well, all of those things, but, you know, your body is so resilient. I mean, thinkable when they tell you Tylenol, don't take more than like four times a day. I'm taking six at a time. Multiple times a day. Like my body just like

the fact that I've survived this. And in my addiction relative to like when you see a real hard core heroin addicts or fentanyl guy, you're like, how is this guy alive? Like my friend's back. My friend Zach Clarke was like, shoot in heroin in smoking crack. Twenty four seven for like a couple of years. I'm like, I can't believe you're alive. But that's your body is like magical.

Yeah. This is why now I look at it. I'm like, I would never put that shit in my body about, like,

process foods in my wife's life. I don't know crazy. She's like, you're worrying about a serious life. I mean, you know, you won't be gluten, but you're like through all these crazy things.

“But then like, how long do you need to take that drug until you just kind of”

titrate off of that? Yeah. No good questions. So you take it for 30 days and then after 30 days, if you don't like take it. So you take it for about three months. And basically after about seven

drug for seven days and become physically addicted. Yeah. If you cut it out for 30 to 90 days, which

“why they always tell people like 90 day re out with 28 days, that basically is enough time to reset your”

brain. So then you have a clean slate. And if you're in idiot, you'll start using it again. And if you're like, if you have discipline, you'll stay sober after that. I just, I just needed to get it out of my system where I could like get a fresh start. Well, so after that 30 days, you were fine. 90. I got the shot three months. I got after the first month, I went back and got the shot. Okay. So for 90 days. And then you were like, you, you said you had a couple of like

missed haps. Yeah. How old were you when that happened? So when I got sober in 2010, I was, um, 39. Okay. So it's 39. So finally, like, for 10 years before that you were like taking at like 50, 60 pills a day every day, every day, every day. Or I was on subusex for like a months at a time. And you were, and at that, in those 10 years, was that like your highest, you know, money making, we'll get to now late, you know, we'll get to like the present after. But in those 10 years,

you were making millions of dollars. Yes. So it never, ever affected what you were doing. Well,

probably did maybe I wouldn't have been making 10 years. But I was also spending money as fast as I was getting it because when you're doing that kind of shit to your brain, all of a sudden, all the natural, like, all the, all the natural, like dopamine receptors in all the field, good chemicals become dull, like so for a very long time, like year plus, the things that normally make you happy, like waking up in Hawaii, looking at the sunset, having sex, like these kind of things,

they just don't feel that void. It's not the same kind of high because when you hijack, you're like reward system by artificially multiple times a day, like getting your, like, dopamine, like, bond through the roof, you're like, no, that's the high that I'm looking for. This other stuff is like, they're not even moving the needle until you like get to pay it back

“to baseline. And then you have to reset everything. So you just, but that's what makes it so difficult,”

because people eventually, then a lot of times will give up and be like, I need to feel good for a minute, which is what happened is I'd be, like, sober for, like, six to 12 months, and I'm like, I'm going to get high just to have a day, I need a day off from life. And it would take, like, a day or two, three, four days of, like, being high around the clock, to be like, what am I doing? And then my own wife would also start to figure it out, like,

she would notice the shift in my personality. And you can look at someone's eyes and tell, right away, the pupils directly, like, I can look right at someone and be like, dude, that guy's fucking whacked out of his mind. So it's my wife will be like, why do you know I'm like, look at his eyes. Because I don't know just to hide your wife, not know. Well, she only knew me on drugs. How long were you dating her? Five years. If you only know

someone as like a crazy person who was like, for five years, but we were ever sober in those five years. Well, I was on sub-use text and I wasn't on crazy. That wasn't like high and low, high and low. I was like steady, but that also made me like a grouch and very, like, jumpy. Like, I would be normal. Some will cut me off and track. Like, I'd be like, I'm going to f-n kill that guy. It's rageful. Kind of, but not as not like, not like off the reservation.

I would just be like, high-strong. So then when you got off the drugs, were you then still working and finance? Yes. When I got sober, I was working at credit agricultural trading, fixing

income products. So I corporate bonds. And then in 2000 and in 13, when we had our third child,

we were living in the city. We moved to Westchester County. So a place called Katona that was like ideal, like it was gorgeous. But I was commuting to the city. So I was driving into the city, like 40 minutes in the morning to get into the city at like five a.m. running on the westside highway, training like crazy. Then I would come home. It would be like an hour and a half drive. And it was driving me crazy. It was ruining my life. Because I like 330, I'd start looking

at my watch and looking at ways and looking at my watch. And I'd be like the first person out of the office. And at that time, I was working at a financial technology firm that I helped start with a friend of mine called the Marcuchinard, who was ran structured credit trading at Goldman Sachs. We started a company called Electronify. That was an electronic trading platform for corporate bonds for end-user. So like, Pimco portrayed directly with state street instead of trading through

the banks in them taking a fee. Anyway, it was a long shot that it would work. But I wanted to go to California to cover the West Coast clients. And I just wanted the change of my life. And it was like, it was in hindsight, it was so insanely stupid and risky for me to do this. Because there's no trading desk in LA that I can work on. If this doesn't work, I'm in LA. And I don't have

“the only thing I've done is work on trading desk. And they're all in New York. So I was like,”

I'm going to just take a chance. And I have fooled it. I had my fourth son was brand new. He was like, less than six months old. I moved the whole family across country to LA. I rent the house in the palaces. That's like a seemingly expensive. I'm burning to my money like it's on like, we're like throwing money overboard. I'm just like, I can't believe I'll quick my money is running out.

because when I got sober, I was like, really into endurance. But it became my new addiction.

“That was what I was going to ask you. But so that's what I was going to say because now that”

that was a good segue, you were still doing financial stuff, though, which got sober. Like you didn't loot. Like it wasn't, you couldn't, you got sober because of your own will. It wasn't because you were going to lose a job or anything, and you're still making kids. And I was like, you're still thriving financially and in your profession. And it was just more like, you've now you're having kids. But then did you then use the running as like your new addiction? Yes. Yeah. And had it to start

because you were playing hockey. Like you were always athletic and did hockey. But you were never

a track star. No. I started running when I was like right before I like finally got sober. I was like on sub-use texts. I couldn't get off that. But it wasn't like hugely negatively impacting my life. I could still exercise. It's tough. And I just became obsessed with exercising and training. And then when I was went through that with that detox, I started running every day. And the the nurse would be like, all right, listen, you're going to feel terrible. I'm like, I've done this

a million times. I know what they have from doing. Like I know I know what's coming. Like spare me the like lecture. Yeah. I'm pissed. I'm I hate myself and I'm angry like I got it. So then I would just go after work and like vlog myself running at 10 miles every day. And I would be like, I'm sweating. I'm freezing. I'm like hot. I'm going to drop dead. And I just was like, nope, this is my penance. I deserve this. If you, you're running. So I just thought it doing it every day.

And it became like a habit. And I was like, okay, I'm feeling better. Now I'm getting faster. I'm getting stronger. And it just became like my own source of pride and punishment. It was like, you this is your punishment. I've like levied this punishment against you. And you're not getting out of it. And I just built this like resilience and discipline. Like, I know I got to do this.

“Oh, I feel like let's get up and go have breakfast. I'm like, what time do you want to go?”

10? All right. I'm going to get up and run at six or whatever. You know, I would just do it. You reverse engineer everything. So you run. And you've been running every day for for five years. You said 10 miles a day. Yeah. I would when I was doing the Iron Man stuff. I would swim, bike, or run, but I would work out once or twice every single day. But when I started when we moved to LA, I was training for the Iron Man. And so I was biking a lot. So I would either run

or bike every single day. And there was a guy in my neighborhood in the Palaces who was into cycling. We started riding together. He had an asset management firm. You know, and he didn't have a business development person. But he had like $2 billion in assets under management. And I said, let me run business development for you and help you grow the firm. And he was like, you don't have any experience and with friends. Like, I don't want to have to fire you. It's like we're like too close.

Like, I couldn't do that. And I said, let me come and work for free for three months and see if

“it works out. And it worked out like really well. And after a few weeks, he said, okay,”

here's a real finance salary. And all of a sudden, I was like back and at least had a job. And um, but didn't seem like you ever like hurting for money, though. Like it didn't like you. I wasn't like, no, but I was running out of money. I wasn't like no one would have known I was struggling, but I was like getting low. Like that was getting low. Because if you overspending what you had, basically. Yeah, like I was like, I had an crazy, expensive apartment

in a gated neighborhood up in the Palaces. I was like, I didn't need all this stuff. I had nice cars. And I was like, I got a figure out a way to make my money. It's going to run out. And I

got like dangerously low on cash. But I never told my wife, hey, we're going to blow on money.

And that's the relationship we have, though. She, we have very traditional relationship. She handles the kids. She manages the house. She doesn't ask about money. I don't tell her what to spend. She just, she's like, I want to do this. I want to do that. I'm like, yeah, go ahead. Oh, sometimes she'll be like, can we do this, this, this? I'm like, can you wait till next month or yeah, do it? Normally, I'm just like, do what you want. She's not like into labels.

She would never buy like a fancy handbag. She'd like, I'd rather have the money. Yeah, right, right. So that was the saving grace. Yeah. And um, no, then when I got through it all, I was like, you know, telling her all she's like, oh my god, I'm so glad you didn't tell me what was happening. I wouldn't because I was like, there's no sense in both of us not being able to sleep. Right. That's so true, right? But I figured out in, in, in, in,

in my life changed dramatically. This guy, Jack McDonald, all that the palaces group changed my life. He gave me an opportunity to do that. And I rewarded and we grew from two to five billion in assets. We were managing like, we had a series of separately managed accounts that called SMAs in finance. The finance nerds will get this, but we would manage these huge pools of capital for big institutional investors like Soros, Oak Tree, like all these type of top-end class managers.

But we managed a very specific strategy of whole-known residential mortgages. So we would buy non-performing loans, remedy them, and then sell them off as re-performing loans once you fix the

missing documents in these mortgages. And not you contrary to popularly, if you would never buy

like a pool of mortgages that people aren't paying, and then evict the people. That's the worst outcome for everyone. You want to like keep them in the house, so you might restructure the

like a year of payments, the mortgage is now re-performing in a bank and an insurance company can buy that. But they can't buy the stress non-performing assets. So it's a lot of boring shit, but

point is we had a really niche strategy. And it was an opportunity to build to start our own essential

internal private equity fund, like our own discretionary fund where people give us money and we manage it to our liking versus separately manage the accounts. You're going to go, you're managing it in conjunction with the other manager. And the fees are appropriately much smaller for an SMA, but on a private equity style fund, we were getting paid no management fee, because we didn't need the management fee to run the business, because we had $5 billion in capital, but we took 30

percent of all the profits we made. And we tried to hire people to help us raise the money, and they laughed aside at the office, and they were like, "Why do you think you can do this?"

“And I was like, "I think I can win the Boston Marathon until someone beats me." Of course,”

I think I can do it. I didn't think I could, but I was like, "I'm going to convince everyone around me that I can't." We did it. We raised like $35 million in two years, made $10 million in the clients all double-demonic minus 30 percent. I want to take a quick break from this episode to think our sponsor, Therososh. Their "Try and Light" panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally

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it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therososh.com right now and use code "Be Bold" for 15 percent off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to Therososh "T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E.com" and use code "Be Bold" for 15 percent off any of their products. So, what do you think would you say your superpower is what is it that to do? Illusionally optimistic in my abilities, because if I sit down and think, I would tell you like,

I don't think I can do that again. I don't think I can win another race. I got lucky. The people that showed up were very good, or if I did a good business deal for a long time, I'd be like, man, I'll never be able to get a deal done like that again. And then eventually, I just was like, you know what? I've done this so many times. I got to stop thinking that it was

“luck. But it's also like, you must be exceptionally good at sales. People, like, if someone who's”

into sales and sales processes, you sat me down and they'd be like, well, how did you reframe this and why did I'm like, I have no process. That was like my biggest, that was my, the guy who hired me Jack McDowell. That was his biggest, like, bone of contention with me. It drove him fucking crazy. Right. He would be like, I can't. He's like, you know how much it pisses me off. He had a last

one in the first one out. You don't take notes. You never send updates and reports. But when I tell

you, we need to we needed to raise $5 million for the operating company, which is crazy hard. Right. Basically, take a stake in this manager that isn't really making a lot of money. And I did it. Then we wanted to raise discretionary funds. We couldn't even hire people to help us. And I did it myself. And he was like, this is crazy. He's like, nothing that you're doing makes sense, but you keep getting it done. So consistently that I don't even doubt it anymore. When I tell you I want to do something,

my inner dialogue is like, wait, never. He's never going to be able to do this and then you do it. And I just can't believe it. And it's all based on relationships. But none of it is traditional. Like, let me sit down and explain to you how I like see what he did this. And then I changed my body. And then I pointed like this like a Tony Robbins thing like, he's free friend. You can see him reframing with his hands at any points to get his neck. I don't that shit's far into me. I'm just like, hi,

I just want to do a deal. Here's the deal. I want to I'm an honest person. Here's my background.

It's like everything's publicly available. I've never been involved in like a financial conflict in my

life. I've never been party to any lawsuit. I'm like, I also think like we were talking earlier. If someone has a disputable money, I'm like, just keep it. I don't need that energy in my life.

“Right. I'm not desperate for money. I'm not desperate to do a trade in what I think when”

people sense that you don't need to do something, they want to be in business with you because it's just sincere, desire to do business, not like desperation on necessity. How much of it though is like ability, right? Because I think that in order to be extremely successful in life, I think the

they'll want to hang out with you, they'll want to like be in business with you. That's right. You can have all the credentials in the world. But if you're not someone that they like, then it doesn't matter anyway. Right. That's exactly right. And to my question is, you, is like, can you even teach someone that those skills? Right? Like, it's not kind of like either you have it or you don't? It's something that is like, it's a little bit frustrating to me

because I'm like, I don't know how to quantify what I'm doing. I don't know how to explain it to someone. I've had, I've mentored a million different kids over the years working with me formally and informally. And I'm just like, I can see them trying to emulate some of the things I do. And I would

always say to them, like, do, do not try to do things the way that I do them. Take those style.

And I'm using put your own, put your own personality into it. But you can't talk like me. It sounds crazy. It sounds crazy when I hear myself talk. But the ear and you try to talk like me is not. And I don't know how to teach that. But like when I talk to my kids, I can tell them what my mindset is. And I can explain to them like, my son was struggling with school. And he's 14 and I'm

“like, listen, you think anyone like school body, you think I like school? But here's the thing with life.”

You are going to pay these dues right over here. You're going to pay these things now or later and it's up to you. And they keep getting more expensive as if you go later. Meaning, if you don't do your work now, that work is going to get exponentially harder next year. But the people that a smile will pay their dues now, so that later in life, if you do the handle you work now, go to the right schools. Whatever your profession is, get the right degrees. Do the hard work early.

It's like bankers. You're 5 years of your life are gone. They're going to own you. They're going to torture you. But if you do those 5 years, you're going to be rich for the rest of your life. Right. And so you could pay me now or pay me later. But everyone's paying the bill. Exactly. And if you don't pay now, you're going to pay a little over time and your life's going to be miserable because you're going to do things you have to do for us as things you want to do.

And it's like people will like, in finance. Now, I want to do what you're doing. I'm like,

“I don't even know how to describe to you what I do. Like, I, how do you make the move from finance?”

I said, if you're waiting for the stars to align, they're never going to align. I basically

almost went broke back myself into a corner and just put all my chips on the table, betting on myself. That's the thing though. Like you're authentically who you, you are you, right? And I think that people gravitate to people who are very authentic, right? Like you're not trying to be somebody else. You're not doing something that like, you're not trying to fit into a box. And that is, is attractive in itself. But your mindset and your mentality and your like ability to like

really kind of like, like, to do the thing that nobody wants to do is so intense. How does that, like, how does that even, like, how do you even teach that? Like, you can't even teach. Like, in someone even, like, like, you have a whole book on how important it is to do, like, something, right? So, do you have like a framework where people would read this book and be like, okay, how can I be even 10% more gritty than I am right now, would they be able to find these

actionable ways to do it? Yes, because I'm not telling anyone how to do anything. I'm just showing you in the book, how I get it. Here's how I change careers. Here's how I got sober. Here's how I got married. Here's how I adopted children. Here's how I raised my kids. So if it's that sentence, here's how I did it, blank. How did you do it? Everyone is scared of any kind of change. Anything that you're thinking about doing that's hard. Of course, it's scary. So I use my kids as

a lot of examples. My one's middle son is very timid, but he's very athletic. He's playing baseball, so he's up at bat. Every time the pitch comes, he steps like away from the box and I'm like, so after the game, and I parent them all differently because they're all different. And I try not to be intense, but it's hard enough for them to be my kids because they know that I want to die to win, but I don't try to put that on them, but they it's inevitable that they pick up on them.

Yeah, it's inevitable. So it's hard for me to like, because all I stress is effort. I don't care about winning and it's, well, we'll get into it more, but so I said to him, buddy, every time the guy throws the pitch, it looks like he's scared. He's stepping out and he's like, I am scared. And I said,

“okay, at least we know where we're starting. Guess what? Everyone's scared. You need to learn how to do”

this while you're scared. I'm scared about everything. This is the picture of the, on the cover of

my book is from the Gobe Desert race I did in Mongolia. I had never run an ultra in my life. I had

never slept in a tent, run with a backpack, and now I'm doing 155 miles stage race over six days across the Gobe Desert in Mongolia. Sounded like a cool challenge until I'm boarding the plane and thinking, like, what the f am I doing? I'm so scared, but when I walked down the jet way, it was very distinctive, like, very memorable moment, because I was like, I'm so scared, like, for a week leading up to it, I'm like, what have I done? I have sponsors. I'm like, I could humiliate

myself. And as I walked on the plane, I was like, you know what, f all this? I'm going to kill

My legs would destroy running down that hill at Jessie's house. Like, I couldn't walk the next day, and I knew it was coming. While I was, oh my god, that is, that raises so hard, running down that hill and let eccentric load on your muscles, destroy my legs, worse than a marathon worse than an Iron Man. I mean, you're going for three hours running up and down a hill at 18% grade. It's like, you're breaking, breaking, then, like, using all muscles

to get up the hill. I don't want to, I don't want to do it. I'm like, intimidating and scared, but you saw the mindset that I get into, it's like, no, it's time to attack because you are either

“going to kill or be killed. And when I get into those positions and if anything, that's what I would”

say is the main overriding theme is like, you get to the point in your life where you either accept mediocrity or you realize that if I want to do hard things, guess what? If it was easy, every asshole would have already done it. And I want to do things that other people can't do and the only thing separating me, I have no natural gifts. I mean, you saw me, you walked in, you're like, oh, you're not as big as I thought you were. Like, I'm a very average guy. And I know that I have no

nothing special except my mind. And that's the thing is for everyone listening. It's all internal Andrew Hewman the other day said a psychologist or a psychoanalyst told him, it's all internal meaning. You win a race. No one comes over and sprinkles dopamine on you. You generate those feelings internally. And when you realize that you're also generating the fear, the anxiety and all that shit is self-induced. The same way that those emotions start to get embedded in your brain,

whether you like it or not, you can also control that experience and be like, no, no, no, no, I'm not afraid. They better be afraid even if you don't believe it. If you repeated enough times

and act on it, once you start acting on it, it's a reality. You would never know I'm scared.

I'm standing on the start line of every race, wishing I was anywhere, but there's scared and shitless. But outwardly, I'm like, you're all dead. I'm killing everyone. Even though I love everyone, but that's the process I have to go through because I know I'm not special. But I know that the things that I can control most people don't know how to do that. Well, you made yourself special, actually, because if you're mindset like to me, but that's available to anyone. Well,

“right, but what you said to me that was really important, which was everything in life is a decision,”

right? You can decide to be a superstar. You can decide to be a loser, right? Depending on what you do with it, right? But you said the thing that was very true. It's the action you do. The more action you take on something, the more you give yourself the self-confidence and self-esteem that you can do a hard thing and then do the next thing and do the next thing. You've just done so much of it that now you have so much confidence that like maybe if you don't even know what to do it, like

that race, that the 100, the ultra-marathon is so insane. Like, you know, even if you have never

done it before, you know, you can actually finish it because you've done a hundred other races. Well, I didn't know. I was nervous, but I wasn't going to show anyone else. I was nervous because like people are animals with people with where animals. The same way I want to look at my kids sometimes playing. I'm like, they might as well be like puppies or lion cubs, like the boys that rough house in my daughter can't get away from them fast enough. And when you realize that

dogs can sense if you're afraid. Like, give us, I'm not a big dog person and when dogs are super aggressive and I'm like, oh my god, I don't let the dog look at me. The dog knows exactly who's afraid and they go right to them and I'm like, oh, it doesn't matter what's going on inside. I mean, I'm only projecting what I want people to see and that's like, I'm here to kill. Yeah, and you're also just like the tunnel vision and the and the beast mode of like just

you want to get this thing done. That's right. I want it over with and done. So I'm like, I'm not going to bother them. I'm not going to, I'm going to leave them alone. But okay, the thing is though that we like you haven't said it yet, I haven't said it yet. This like you were like the fact like this guy is like the fastest guy like in your like over 50 and you started when you were

“four in your 40s. I mean, that is like insane. Number one that even shows and I think you've”

talked about it that like where you started from has nothing to do with where you're going to end up. Right. Again, this is, this is literally sheer grit and mindset that people could reframe for themselves. Like they don't have to be stuck where they are. That's not there. That doesn't have

to be the reality. They can always shift and move if they want to. Think about all the entrepreneurs

that are out in the world that have like stories of like 100 different failures. I was reading about this kid. I don't know a lot about him, but the Alex Hermosie. Oh my god. I had like three or four businesses that failed miserably. And now he's worth, I don't know how many hundreds of millions he's writing books. He's got like that guy like he's got the same mindset. He just applies it to business business. Just doesn't plot like it doesn't get me excited. The way I like a competitive

race would. But he like had gyms that failed. And he had other gyms that failed. And he created

You know what's interestingly? You know what's really interesting though? It's because he found

something that he was good at. Like to you, like what's interesting to me with you is like this is a whole other career path. Right. Like this endurance. Like you're like a very, probably one of the

“best endurance athletes there are. Right. That's how I was introduced to anyway, which is an, and it's”

true. And that in itself to just own business career. Like you may have been terrible at something else. But you may, like this and it's supposed to be an, this is an entire business as, as high you're doing it. People, you've actually keep on like reinventing yourself into this new person. You're a finance guy. And then you were like now you're an endurance athlete. You also have like a, you know, like an marketing agency. But like the through line is your self belief and that

you know, like you don't only care, you're not putting yourself in a box. You're like, I'll do this box for a while. And then I'm going to shift and then I'm going to try this thing. And then that doesn't work. Most people don't have that, um, that ability to see themselves beyond like the myopic view of themselves, right? And so besides action, what is something else that people can like learn from you that can help them move even like a little bit for like, further. When you would just

describe it now with the only thing I could think was like, yeah, I've tried a million things.

I've failed it a bunch of stuff, but guess what? I'm not afraid to do lose. Because guess what? If I'm not losing occasionally, I'm not really trying. And if you're afraid to lose, like, starting the agency, like, I didn't know if the agency was going to work. I didn't know if doctors and scientists were going to work with me. That's the idea. Yeah. I mean, I mean, me, like, in the,

“John Bear was instrumental in saying, like, you should do this. You've got to just see,”

Hitler was like pushing me to do this for years. He's like, you should manage fighters. So initially, my thoughts on this. Because I had, I had a podcast for a long time called the fight with Teddy Alice. That was huge. And we like, that's how I met Dana White. I've interviewed Jake Paul, Dave Portnoy, we had every fighter. We had every champion in the UFC at one time on our show. So that's how I got introduced to like combat sports. And now my youngest son is into

Jiu Jitsu and wrestling and he's friends with Dana. So Dana will we invite him to like huge fights. And we sit not in the front row, like against the cage. It's unbelievable. Like I've got pictures on my Instagram of my when he was eight, my son with his in Boston with a Celtic jersey with his own name on the back. Because when we bought him the Celtic jersey, I was like, do you want like, Jason, what name of players you want on your back is like, I don't want another man's name on my back.

I want my own name. He was eight. He must have heard me say that because I would always say that I'm like,

I'm like, I'm not going to wear. I mean, maybe Larry Bird, but I'm like, I'm not wearing another guy's name on my back. No one's better. They're worse than me. Like, come on, oh, sure is he. And he had a he had a leprechaun hat on and the Dana loved them. Dana brought Dana comes over

“before the main event of this huge paper view fight in Boston goes, can't remember. Give me a phone.”

My kids don't have phones. I said, he had to take mine. So he brings him over interrupts the broadcast. He sits in with Rogan and I'm friends with Rogan to take a pictures of my son with Rogan. Then he's got Bruce Buffer. The announce are holding his hand up with the Tuxedo on point. Then a camera like he just want to fight. Then Dana comes on and goes, camera, get in the cage. You can see in the background, there's a picture on the Instagram that places packed

because that main event is about to start. Yeah. And Cameron standing in there with his hands up like a fighter and he gets out of the cage. And he says, the Dana, Dana, the next time you see me in the octagon, I'm not going to have my shoes on because he had like Celtics, Colette, Eric Jordan's on. He's just like a cool kind little guy. Yeah. And, um, but so I had that podcast. So when I started the agency, I was going to manage fighters. So we managed the UFC

well to wait a chance for a while, but I'm a homemade. I've done work with Dana, but Dana does temporary. Although, I'm not as manager, but we've done like we've brought them deals. And then very quickly, though, we started working with a couple doctors and scientists and thought leaders in the health and wellness phase, like Jeremy London, Brian Hofflinger, I've done some stuff with Andrew Huberman. And very quickly, we started the Carvote

Anic, we worked with Christian Holmes that, uh, whoop, and all these people that I've friends with. And I started showing them deals. And again, not in a, um, transaction away, I was like, hey, not no exclusive arrangements, but can I show you deals? And because I had all these relationships with brands because I raised the money for a bunch of them. And I had an inventory finance company for a couple of years, another example of a failure that business didn't work. We sold it for next

nothing in, but but I learned a lot. And through that, everything you do in you, you're gathering in, tell you, learning information. I learned how about CPG brands and how difficult it is managing their cash flow and building out inventory and getting terms with manufacturers, contract manufacturers, the whole shed. It was a lot of crash costs in CPG in entrepreneurship because I worked with the founders. And, um, through all that, I just had all this experience and, and, and, and I was getting

influencer type deals from the running I was doing. I had a, a shoot deal with Reebok, which was crazy. They only had like three athletes, me, shock, and like Angel Reese. It was crazy.

do any more brand deals. But I know a guy that would be a good fit for you. And I just, for years,

“my wife would be like, you're doing all these intros. Like, why don't you try to make that a business?”

Like, it seems like you're creating just a bunch of extra work for yourself. And I'm like,

I'm just there. My, my friends, I'm building relationships. I never wanted anything in exchange

for being a good friend. Yeah. Yeah. And it just moved into a career and a job. And it's the same thing with running. I didn't set out with running. Like, hey, I'm going to be a run influencer. People are going to know me. Like, I freaking toiled in darkness and anonymity in those hills above Malibu and Calabasas for so long. Like, I met Reggie Miller up there. Reggie Miller's riding his bike. I'm running every single day. We see each other with the only people out there

for miles. And we just developed a friendship. He wrote a blurb from my book with the, I'm back of whether I'm like Reggie Miller's one of the best basketball players in history. He's like, freaking Michael Jordan. And the fact that he's like, but he respected me because he saw me there

every day. And you know, going up a mountain on a bike and running, you're basically going to the same

speed. We'll be right next to each other for like 10 minute climbs. And he'd be like, man, you're getting after I'm like, well, you're right here too. And we would just, and he's like the same age. And all of this stuff of just putting out good energy and effort. It all morphed itself into this nichey weird career that I have now that I'm like incredibly grateful for. I say to my wife like once every couple of weeks, I'm like, can you believe I don't have a job? When I was working on a

train desk, I'm like, I'm in hell. Like, they own me. I came in there 12 hours a day sitting, like, side by side with other men all day trading, fighting, bickering, you know, guys, like, got his phone up too loud. You like, do turn that F in phone that I'm going to throw it out the window. Of course, it's all alpha guys. Like, F you. I'm like, you turn that phone. You know, it's like crazy shit like that. Constant conflict. Now, I have no conflict in my life. If I someone is like,

doesn't gel with me. I'm like, I don't need to do this business. I'm going to go do something.

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explain this. So then you're you start running. You didn't set out to be like the fastest the best. You're just doing this as like kind of like a way to kind of get out all your rage and

“all the you have to shift something. You're not doing drugs now. So that just becomes your new”

addiction basically. Right? So like when did you become competitive with it? Like when did you kind of see that you were like faster? Like what's your time? It's like 540 now or like it was like some crazy time, right? 54539 per mile is the pace that I ran. My best mayor that was 228. But I've run 229 sub 230 after 50 like 50 six times. So I set out. So I was running in like 2016. I moved here. I'm running 1718. I started to like recognize. Oh man, I'm getting pretty good.

And I won the Malibu half marathon one year in like 2017 or 18. And then I was like, wow, I can't believe I want to race. It wasn't crazy fast. It was like an hour and 12 minutes, but it was fast enough to win. And then in 2020, I won the Pasadena half marathon, which was like 9,000 people finished in the rules bowl live on KTLA. And I crossed the finish line in the newscasters like, oh my god, he has the first place finisher. What's your name? And I'm like 10 right out. And she's like,

how was it out the other first place? Finisher. And I go, it doesn't say much about the competition. And she was like, oh, I don't see that was kind of like an insult to everyone. Uh, some

conscious subliminally. But I was like, oh no, no, everyone was great. But that's always been my mindset

about race. It's like the day before I turned 50, I won the Murdoch Beach marathon, the whole thing like not my age group. I won the whole race. And my wife was like, and I wanted to win a marathon for a long time. My wife is like, oh my god, she's crying. She's like, you did it. We're on

here. She's like, how much did you win by I said less than a minute? She goes, what the hell? Like, what would you have been happy with? I said, I should have run under 230. But that was my default setting was like, and it's not, it's not like, I'm not seeing this in a bragging way. I wouldn't

want anyone else to feel this way. But it is what it is. I was just like, it was never enough. I

was like, either not running fast enough or the competition wasn't good. But if I didn't have that mindset, it wouldn't give me the motivation and drive to do the things I did. It's like, it's like, if you listen to interviews with like, Kobe Bryant or Tom Brady, and not that I'm trying to compare myself to those guys. But it's like, there's almost like a tortured soul component to people that are overachievers and doing like great things. And again, not that I'm doing great things.

But you can't kind of have one with all the other. When's the last time you saw someone who's like top of their game in any category? And they're like, oh my god, I'm so well balanced. Everything is great. Yeah, yep. I did everything I had to do today and everyone likes me. And I like everyone else. Never. No, right. There's a component of it that's like, that guy's a psychopath. The guy who won the gold medal. Yeah, he's a nut. Oh, yeah, he has to be nuts to be like,

the kind of drive into termination. It takes to do some of these things takes that kind of mindset unfortunately. It does. I mean, I'm glad you said that because the whole thing about balance is completely nonsense. I mean, if you want to be extraordinary, you need to be obsessed and so like just

“insanely focused to be a psychopath. You have to be the fact is like, you're right, I've never met”

one made the really good athlete, a really good person. Like someone who's super successful in any

field who's just like, laws they fare about life. You know what I mean? It's just never seen it yet.

Well, like Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese would be an example of someone who's their super successful and they have very peaceful. But go to their house in their 50s, they're like, for almost drowning themselves every day. They get an after it's in it to an extent that most people can't comprehend, but it becomes your normal. Everything becomes everything becomes, you can acclimate to anything and that becomes a relative, right? Everything is relative. So it's not going to

be normal to an mediocre average person. Exactly. And you're, anything but mediocre. So then here we are, you're basically this, like you're not like you know the competition is not even close to what you're like, you're like embarrassed that you're winning against these people. Yes, that's right. And then what was the first, like you wanted New York Marathon, you want the Boston Marathon? Well, it would be clear. I didn't win the whole marathon. I won that 50 and all.

“In your category. Okay. So in 2021, I just turned 50. And I think I did rich role and he was like,”

what's your goal this year? And we're coming out of COVID. So because coming out of COVID, all the marathons will lump together because they were making up for the when they was suspended because they're COVID. So they were all taking place in like 17 months, whereas normally there's only two a year. So it would take you at least three years to get all six marathons. Unless you ran like one week and then another week and block you. So I just kind of blurred it out like,

oh, I'm going to try to win my age group in all the world marathon majors. So Boston, New York,

Chicago, Tokyo, London, Berlin. And the first one up was Boston and I won. I ran 230 just on and again,

I crossed the finish. So 230 and 20 seconds. I couldn't find 20 seconds. But I won my age group by a lot. By how much? By how much? Like five minutes. And then by five minutes. Okay. So then I went to, no, sorry, London was first. I ran London. And that was the world championships the first year. I turned 50. And I ran that race in 230 and like 50 seconds. And I crossed the finish line. And they made us, you had distinct, three distinct separate start areas. And at three miles,

they all merge together. But you can't see the different start areas because there's so many people. They're like in different parts of an neighborhood. So they can get all the people starting at the same time. So I'm standing on the start line of the age we're all in the Corral together in the 50 plus age group. And we have special numbers on our front and back. So you can identify who you're racing it within the race. So we take off and I cross the finish line. No one passed me. And it

went at merged in three at the three mile mark. I'm leading my section of the London marathon. The motorcycle's in front of me. I'm like holy shit. This is crazy. I'm not winning the London marathon. But I'm leading my section. It's crazy. And I'm like, I can't even see them behind me. And I'm like, oh my god, me, am I going too fast? So I crossed the finish line. No one passes me. You know, like one or two people pass me throughout the race. When you're running that fast,

this is like not a lot of movement. You know, you lot people get locked into the pace. Yeah. You don't see people running like super fast at the end very rarely other than maybe the last mile.

“So no one passes me. So I crossed the finish line. I'm like holy shit. I think I just won the age group”

approach. If I run all the way back to my hotel and hide park at the full seasons, I get all my bags. I'm like later, I get I'm on my way to the airport trying to catch the next flight out. I was literally on a flight in like three hours after I finished. And I call my the guy who was coaching me, my real Freole and I'm like, dude, I think I won the whole effort and thing. And he's like, not just second. There's a guy in front of you on my dude. I think this guy cheated. He's impossible.

Intentionally, and then the shitty thing is the only two people in the world they care of me and him.

Yeah. But I know what he did. Because he ran the first three miles in like five minute flat

per mile. So basically what he did was he ran as fast as he could when it all merged together. I didn't know those someone up the road. Because he supposed to be starting with me. I even sent him a message and was like, dude, how did you not start with me? You didn't run past me. He's like, oh, I started in the section with the British National Championships. I was like, that was more important to you than the world championships. But I know what he did. He fucked me.

And I was like, I, what am I going to do? I wasn't going to like make a big steam. Because I'm the only me in care. No one cares about some old guy complaining about getting cheated in the race. But I was, I was so angry. So I got second there by less than a minute. He just barely beat me. If I had seen him, I know he was up the road. I would have like poured it on and tried to catch him.

“But can't you tell the people who are in charge of that race? I think the guy in email and I'm like,”

dude, this is crazy. Like, I spent like a shitload of money to come over here and stay and London for a week. I think I'm running a racing. And you're letting this guy start like, why even have a special start section? If this guy gets to start over there, he was like,

you know, basically like, oh, yeah, sorry. Next year we'll clean it up. I was like,

I'm just saying, yeah, he was basically like, yeah, I see what happened. Sorry about that. Nothing we can do now. They will fix it next year. I'm like, what's his name? And how old is he? No, I don't want to say that. I've already liked fucking swing. Why? He's people should know that. You, you are the real girl. I had to do his look and see who won in 21 in London there. 21, how old is he exactly? He was met in a year older than me. So he was just turned 52.

Obviously he was really good runner. And where did he come? He, okay, he bamboozled me. He knows what he did. A hundred percent. See, I would be like, you're kind of of nature. You're still pissed about it. I'm still angry. So then out like a month after that, I ran New York. And that was one of my biggest wins ever because I won my age group. But as I'm coming into the finish, she'll handflan again of female pro one New York. She was running all the marathons in like a month because they,

they were out. So she's just running and I'm coming up to finish you in New York.

“And I look back and here in the crowd starts going crazy. I'm like, whoa, what the hell?”

They're not, they're not cheering for me. This is like a hundred people crossing. And I look back and here comes she'll handflan again. Sprint in behind me. And I'm like, oh, hell, no. I'm not going to let her run past me in the finishing line. And I sprint to the finish. And as it turns out, I won the master's division 40 and over, which paid like $5,000. And I won the 40 and over. First time someone over 50 had ever won that. And like the previous

two of the two of the four previous winners were like, mebka fleski, who won Boston, New York, silver at the Olympics. He ran like 215 and Abdi Abdi Rockman, who's a five-time U.S. Olympic runner. They're my friends after the race. They texted me like, welcome to the club. You're the master's champion. And I was like, I mean, I only ran 233, but I won by three seconds. Really?

And if Shalain wasn't closing on me, I would never want to sprint that I was on. I was in hell.

I was in so dying. So, how does it go? It goes over 50, over 40. This age groups every five years. So 40 to 44, 45 to 49. But the over 40 is called the master's division. That's like a distinctive category at every race. And it pays money. And there's guys who are over 40 that are crazy fast. Like those two guys were former Olympians still running competitively at 40. And they smashed that, they like probably broke the course record. What's the time that

they would have? 2015 to 12 like, okay. So that's another five-minute miles. Okay, what are around five-minute miles? Okay, so get this for for me and for anyone who's cares and listens. Like give me an example. So if you're getting at 230 and you're winning at 50 and over,

“let's just say to 29, what would be like the best of the greatest time for someone who's 35?”

There's old. They would be around. They'd probably have been guys who have won at 35 years old. Now you're like low to hours, two under two or five wins now. Like two or five. Okay, that's like nothing. That's under five-minute miles. This is crazy. Yeah, and the grand scheme of things like I'm basically like, "Oh, my best day in a race like the C, like the C, I am the California International American where I ran 220, the winner probably ran 208, so I was like a little less

than a minute a mile behind the winner. But if you look at the difference between where I finished in the average finisher of like 330, like I'm peeding like average runners by like an hour to two hours. And I'm only losing by like 20 minutes. But that's 20 minutes between me and the winners is astronomical. But that's crazy. Even like five minutes is huge at that. When you get to the higher levels and you start running competitively like under 230, finding five to 10 minutes is really hard.

So when you do your, can you run every day for 10 miles, non-vincible, minimal? How long does it take you to run? On average an hour, 15 minutes, around 7.30 per mile. So 7.30 is like your every day kind of such a mess. If I'm in really good shape, it'll be 7 to 7.30. If I'm like just f and around like

About every I always have like several pairs because I had to deal with rebark. I'd have like

four or five pairs of shoes that are rotating to some none of them are overly worn out. And then you can just look at the bottom as soon as you start to see the rubber wearing you chuck them. So probably like training shoes, there's a difference between training and racing racing shoes are very like little more delicate. They have like not a lot of rubber on the bottom. They're super lightweight. Especially the high-end like Nike like alpha fly or vapor fly, the racers shoes that those

those shoes will only last about 300 miles. So like when I'm training for Marathon three weeks gone. rebark made a pair of shoes for 500. Adidas made a pair of shoes for $500 that you could only wear once. Are you serious? Yeah, why how? Because they don't have a lot of rubber on the bottom. So they're

super, super lightweight and they just wear out fast. The foam gets compressed, the rubber wears off

and they're only made to run fast once. What do you think of whole cuts? They don't want to wear in high cuts now? Do you like them? They're very big and like very soft, but they're like bulky. Yeah, I think that there's a school of thought that says like that after cushioning is good for you. There's other people like Gabby Reese would be like a big barefoot person and be like, no, that's too much. It gives you false sense of security. I think like this, it's like people

asked me, what shoes do you wear? And I was like, that's like asking the guy who won the Daytona 500. What kind of tires do you have on your car? I need some for my camera. Yeah. I'm like, or I need tires for my pickup truck. What kind of shoes do you wear to run every day? I'm like,

“you have to find shoes to work for you. Everyone's feet are different. And I mean that honestly,”

it's not like trying to be funny. It's sincere. It's like, what kind of sports brought you where? Well, do you like little lemon? You might like this one. It's like every person is different. Do you have huge boobs? You might want more support. If you have no boobs, you might not even want a sports brand. I don't know. You know, it's like that. It's like, I have good relatively good run form. So I don't need all this extra support. I'm not landed on my heel. I'm not like

pronating. I'm a very aware of my form. I think that's one of the secrets surrounding. Well,

it's the focus on making sure you're running officially. First, then worry about all the extra

shit. Because if you're running with terrible form, you're like wasting a lot of energy. So you had this coach who helped you, right? Is Mario? Mario started coaching me once. I got to 233 on my completely on my own without knowing what I was doing. I hired Mario and he helped me get from

“233 to 228 in one 12 weeks cycle. Really? What did he get? What kind of pointers did he give you?”

He just gave me structured, very detailed specific workouts, whereas when I was training myself, I would just run 10 miles every day. If I felt good, I'd run as fast as I could. And then I'd run one long run every week. With Mario, I would do like two workouts a week. The long run would be very structured. Every mile would be defined. And it was hard. And I did this workout one time. 20 mile workout in Philly, because when I had the podcast with Teddy Alice at one point,

him and I trained a guy called Alex Vaz, who was the WBC light heavyweight champion of the world boxing. And Teddy was a famous trainer. He trained multiple world champions. And he asked me to be the assistant trainer. We lived in Philly for eight weeks in a training camp like rocky shit. Like we were a lot. We were just in this condo. We had three condos in this apartment building. And we didn't leave. I didn't see my kids. We didn't do anything. We didn't go out to dinner. We had a chef, a trainer,

me and Teddy and the fighter. It locked in. Wow. And I was doing all my training on the scully kill river in Philly in like August, September, October, because the fight was in mid October. So it was hot. And I did this run one day and it was like, okay, 10 mile warm up at like 630 pace. So run 10 miles in six and a half minutes per mile. Then the workout went like this. One mile at 545 pace, one mile at 535, one mile at 525, and then go through that three times. So then the recovery mile

is 545 pace, which is close to as fast as I can run America. She took a nine miles of like hyper ventilating. When I finished that last mile, I literally pulled to the side of this greenway

“and collapsed in the grass and like multiple people were like, oh my god, do you need an ambulance?”

I'm like, nope, I'm just recovered. I couldn't stand up and then I got up and ran back to the house. Are you serious? But that's the thing is when people like, what should I do for training? I'm like, no one is willing. Not many people are willing to do this kind of work. But then they will think, wow, you're lucky or a good runner. And I'm like, I'm the furthest thing from lucky. This isn't lucky. It's like, they'll tell you, you know, you're crazy for training so hard. And then when

you win, they'll tell you that you're lucky. And it's like, some of these people online, man, you could, if I walked on water, they tell me I couldn't swim. I'm not trying to hear from like, the haters in the bullshit artists. It's because most people can't even comprehend what you're even accomplishing, right? It's like too much for their, they don't, it's like something that's out of the realm for what they would even go after. Right. And I don't say that in a braggadocious way.

like it requires, like, work to, like, the brink of death. Like, what did we say earlier before this?

“It's like, don't be upset by the results you didn't get by the work you didn't do. Exactly. You know?”

You know, and they exactly it. And I have so many friends that'll be like, yeah, I'm pissed. I hate this

job. I should be like the manager. I should be the CEO. And I always think, like, trust me,

if you should be the CEO, they'd know. Yeah. I don't hate you. I don't, you don't have to be a rocket science to look at someone and be like, oh, that person is special. Right. I mean, I talked to you for like five minutes. I'm like, oh, she's crazy. She's this girl is like an overachiever. Yeah. I felt the same way about you. So then how did you go from going to doing these races, which like, marathons to ultra marathons? And now this is a whole other, a whole other, you know,

bag of tricks. Yeah, but I don't think of myself as an ultra runner. I was just talking to Scott Daru who was the CEO at the time of Equinox. Yeah. And he was like, oh, he connected. I got connected to a mutual friend. And he was gonna run this race. And he was asking some advice about running us something else. But what's the race? And it just for some reason. It just like kind of spoke to me. I was like, tell me more. And he's like, oh, it's in four weeks, so five weeks. It's this time.

“And I was like, dude, I think I can win that race. And he's like, have you done an ultra river?”

Oh, my God. Yeah. He's like, have you, I'd never run anything more than a marathon. And I

long story short. He's like, go for it. I don't think you can do it, but go for it. And Equinox like sponsored me, re-bogg athletic brewing like all these awesome partners will like, oh, I hope you'll like fund that trip because it was expensive because going to a race there, I'm like, I can't get myself in a coach seat for 14 hours going to do this race. I'm like, I needed to get our business class seat for a team brand. You know, like, I wanted to stay in a nice hotel before

the race started, which was the furthest thing from nice in Ulan, Batar, Mongolia. Well, I'm going to say how nice was it. Probably not that nice. Oh, my God. It was horrible. Like the tiles were falling off the shower. It was crazy. And that was your five-star hotel. That was the best hotel in the city. And so I just bought some backpacks and started training in the Nashville heat. I put towels and bottled water in the back to simulate the 20 pounds that I figured I would need

because you had to bring your own food. So I had to like research everything freeze dried food. What should I bring for food? You had to have mandatory safety equipment, a whistle, a blanket, like a tin foil, a blanket, like all this shit, like insurance for the insurance purposes. So I just started training showed up. And like I said, I was scared going there because I'm like, I could humiliate myself. And then I just got there and attacked it. And I just didn't have

experience doing it. But like it's the same thing when I took the job and financed with that guy Jack McDonald's. Like, you don't have experience. I said, no one has experience until they have to undo the job. Like, some point someone's got to give someone a chance. And if you don't want to give me a chance, I'll give myself a chance. I'll do it for free. And he knew I had three four kids. Like, I didn't have the luxury of failing. And it's like that race. I didn't have the

luxury of not doing well. I had brands that was sponsored. I'm not going to humiliate them. I've talked about, oh, yeah, I've been training using, you know, rebark shoes. This thing in that thing.

And then I go there and make a fool of myself. And I go trounced the first day. Yeah, one by 90 minutes.

It's a whole chapter in there about the book that you could make. They could write a whole movie script just about the race, all the shit that happened. Okay. I know. So let's talk with this race.

“Because I think it's so a month before you go to this race, you have never even trained for an”

ultra marathon ever, ever, ever, ever. In a month, you get all these big sponsors. And then you end up winning the race. Yes. Okay. How did you do it? Just sheer will. Yes. And I had, I had good residual fitness because I had been training a lot. And I had been running races. I was like right in the middle of my best year ever. And so I get there in the first day. I get smashed. I get a fourth place on the day. And every day, it's like the tourfronts. You get a cumulative time. Yeah, you tell people how it works

because I think it's like 25 to 30 miles a day for three days. Then there's a 50 miles stage. Then there's two more than there's 26 miles a marathon. And then the last day is like five miles. And you get in a little bit lighter every day, but not terribly. Because you have your backpack, a sleeping pad, all your shit in the backpack and the food. So you read a little bit of food, but it's not like it's getting like pounds lighter every day. There's certain even in the last

day, you still had at least 10 pounds in that backpack with all the backpack. And this, I mean, the sleeping bag and all the stuff. Yeah. So the second day, I was like, oh my god, I got a manage my pace. I went out too hard. But I also arrived less than 24 hours before the race started, like an idiot. And I just, he yes, I didn't do anything right. So then I was like, I got a effort. We're in this now. The second day is 28 miles. I go very conservative and before

I know it. I'm looking around. I'm like, oh my god, I'm leading by a lot. But I'm not killing myself. So then I stopped to pour it on. I'm like, oh my god, it's only like five miles to go. And it's like literally like, it would be like an oasis. I'd be like, oh shit, there's the finishing village. It's not running, get there. It's in a band in like, you know, no mad village. We were in the middle of nowhere. We'd see like, she purters and stuff occasionally. Just like a movie. You'd see like,

guys hurting goats and shit, but I know no man's land. And with a few miles to go, I fell down.

depletion. And I fell down. I busted my arm over my arm as gushing blood. My backpack

“rips the whole strap rips off my backpack. I'm like, oh my god, I'm not going to be able to finish”

this race. I can't run like this. It's a 20 pound backpack. And one strap is missing. I get to the finish line because the blood is all over me. And I don't know. I'm bleeding. So I'm like touching my face. I'm covered in blood. And I get there. And they're like, oh my god, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm just exhausted. And they're like, no, you're bleeding. And I'm like, no, my backpack ripped. Anyway, I try to fix the backpack. It's a disaster. Couldn't fix it. I take off the next day.

It's kind of tied together. Plus open again. And I tied it in a weird way that it's got through

the day. Thank God. And on the end of the third day, I'm still in, I got second place that day.

I was down by 12 minutes after the first day. I made up eight minutes. I'm down four minutes. Going into day three. I lose another six minutes. One down 10 minutes after three days to the same Swiss mountaineering guy who's so sick endurance athlete, not really talking very stoic. And people had dropped it out every day because it's so hard. And we're in the middle of a

“sandwich set up this camp and a woman dropped out. And I convinced her to let me use her backpack.”

Which didn't fit me in like just tore my neck and shoulders apart. I had like tape all over me trying to protect my skin. But she gave me her backpack. And the fourth day was the 50 mile stage. And it's me in the Swiss guy all alone at like 20 miles to like 40 miles. But at 40 miles, he's like, man, I got to walk a little bit. And we're racing, but it's also like we're alone in the desert. It's like

100 degrees. And I'm like, okay, I'll walk with you for a little while because I'm hurting too.

And you would get water every five to 10 miles. So he's running out of water. So I'm taking my water, which is spitting, which I'm trying to use sparingly and I'm putting on his head. I'm like trying to help him. I'm like, you want me to carry your backpack. Let's just get to the next stage station. You'll be good. I'm trying to, I'm trying to help him survive. Like this got me die. Like we're in the friggin desert. And I'm eventually some trucks came through that

were like race support like checking on people. And I was like, yo, what the f, man, where have you

“guys been? This guy's struggling. So they start giving him first date. I'm like, you guys are good.”

They're like, yeah, and I just took off like a bat out of hell. And I won that stage by 90 minutes, which is what I ended up winning by. So then I get there at like five o'clock that night. We started eight, but because people were going 50 miles and everyone's finished in different times. The next day you didn't race. It was, so that was like Wednesday night. We race against Friday morning. I'm like, oh, I got hang around at this camp for like 36 hours. It was like hell on earth. Because I'm like,

I'm hungry. I'm cranky. I don't want to be around anymore. I'm in a tent with full with three women sleeping on the ground. No shower. I'm washing my clothes with the water. Oh my gosh. It was like a survival experience. But I was like, okay, now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel into the Swiss guy's credit. I mean, he was destroyed. He barely finished. After the on Friday morning, he got up and came up like a bat out of hell. We frigging sprinted for 26 miles together.

And at the end, he ran away from me on a downhill. He was really good going downhill. Because trail run is a very technical and I'm not. And going the downhill, he just ran so fast. I'm like, I can't believe he's going that fast. If you fall, you're going to lose your teeth. And he finished like a minute or two ahead of me. But I was so far ahead. And as we're coming across this raging

river, there's a rope, strung across tides, like a big Ford Raptor truck. And I'm holding it. First,

I was like, I don't need that stupid rope. I walked into the river and almost got washed down the white waters. It was so aggressive. Some holding on. I take my backpack off, dunk myself under the freezing cold water. Because now I'm like, oh, no, I don't have to wash my clothes. Everything's cleaning the river. And I get across in the guy who designed the course to stand there really nice Spanish guy. And he's like, how was it? And I was like, dude,

that was hard man, you better call an ambulance. But not for me. And you was laughing. And so I was at that point. I was just having fun. And the last day was six miles. And there was a really cool Irish guy from who lived in South Africa, Killian Ryan, his family on Ryan Air. Really nice guy. Recovering alcohol. I just really like, Gregarias. And just there to have fun to the last days. Like, yo, it's only six miles. Like, it's on. I don't have you one. Like, you can just take it easy.

Yeah, you can let someone else win. And I was looking, I'm like, he was crazy. I'm like, oh, fucking die before I let someone win a stage. I'm racing to the death. And he was like, this guy's crazy. But I meant it. And me and the Swiss guy go into like, I'm talking to a full sprint. We will run it like two lunatics through this little village into this big, like former gangas, con village fortress. And it was all so cool. And then I killed him. And I ran away. It's like in one

by a few minutes and ran into there. And I was like, oh my god, I won. And that really was when people started to like really pay attention. Where I was like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, both called me the best runner in the world over 50, which was crazy for me because they're definitely people who've run faster. But it's like being the Olympic champion. There might have been people

those days, I showed up. I did what I had during that one. But muscle and fitness outside magazine Forbes were all right in these articles. I was like, this is so surreal. Because I mean, I was like a dead dog loser for like 10 years. Even the first time I made it to Hawaii, I write about this in the book about how hard it is to quit. You think in the minute, like, I'm going to quit. I'm going to get out of this. And I quit like an idiot and it changed my life.

Because I was like, I will never feel like that again. I will die before I walk home a Twitter ever again.

“Tell that story. I think it's a really good story. I saw that in the book about how you quit. And”

like that was like the most demoralizing experience of your life. Oh, I could like literally cry. I think it's so embarrassing. But embarrassing my wife would be like, "Who are you humiliated in front of 'em?" I'm like myself. Right. Which is my opinion of me. My opinion of me is the only opinion that matters. Exactly. I had done everything I could to qualify for the Iron Man in Hawaii. And it was like a goal for like two or three years. And I finally did it. I like I just got in. I qualified at the New York

City Iron Man the first year they had it. And when they have new races, they give extra qualifying spots. Yeah. So basically it's like I found all these loopholes and figured away to get into the race. And I did it. And to me it was like qualifying for the Olympics. When you're like 40 years old, it's like, you're not going to the Olympics. This is the Olympics. It's on ABC sports. It's everyone's trying to get there in the sport. And I got there and I just took for granted that I was like,

how hard it is. It's like you're doing a you start running a marathon after running 112 miles, swim in two and a half miles in the ocean. And then in the Hawaii at one o'clock in the afternoon, it would be hard to do that like if you were trained for it in resting to come off the bike and do that was almost impossible. And I got on the run. It was really hard. And I see my wife and she's recording. And it's literally on camera. I run up to her. I'm doing this like cut,

stop recording me. I'm like, I can't do it. I'm going to quit. I got to go back. I'm get. I'm doing terrible. I don't even want to finish with this time. I basically convinced myself it was okay. And as soon as I quit and walked back and got my bike, I wanted to throw my bike into the ocean. I was like, I'm a loser. I can't believe what a piece of shit I am. I mean, idiot, I dragged my wife here for this. They're not even finished instantly regretted. I'm like,

I would have just, I could have easily just walked in at least finish with pride. Right. Instead, I took the easiest way out. And it was like, it was just a reminder of like, yo, every time I've talked for an eat looked for an easy way out or a crutch using drugs to deal with my dip my emotional bullshit or deal with my own trauma. Every time I've taken the easy way out,

it never pays well. It never ends well. It's, it's always ten times harder. You think you're

taking a shortcut, but all you've done is sabotage yourself. And now I have to carry that feeling

“with me forever. And I know knowing what that feels like sucks. Did you go back the next year?”

Yeah. And then the next year went back and smashed. I did like a nine hours and 30 minutes in that context. I mean, I, I, I mean, to qualify that year, I finished like six overall at the Iron Man and was constant in one of my age group, which was something I would have never dreamed of doing until I had that experience. And I was like, oh, no one's ever going to see me quit again. I'm bringing the heat every time I show up now. And I crushed. I mean, I could have, I literally

could have won that Iron Man was constant if I had done a little bit more swimming. I lost like 10 minutes on the swim, and I lost by 10 minutes. Have you ever tried high rocks?

Yes, I did when I, I won the New York City Masters the first year I did it in Julie.

Yeah, first you did. Well, but funny. I did it in the senior landscape. Really? I know that was like, yeah, but I was teasing him because he did the open, he did the open category, which the weights are a little wider. And I did lighter. And I did the pro category and still beat him. And I was like, oh, I got you around. Really? Okay. So how does it? Because I want to do one. I haven't done it hard. It's hard, right? So what's the open category? What's the open

input? So I don't know what it is for. It's very manageable. I think for women, even relatively speaking, it's like the way it's not significant. In the pro category, it was like a 400 pounds

“sled. You have to push and then pull the kettlebells that you have to walk 200 meters with a 70”

pounds each. It's harder than it sounds. You have to do lunges with a 20 pounds sandbag for 100 meters. Is it a pro? Yeah. You have to do wall balls where you take a 20 pound medicine ball, do a full squat and then throw it up 10 feet and hit a target. That was my Achilles heel. I could. I was so close to breaking the world record for the 50 and over and I just completely melted down on the wall balls. I ended up doing our in 10 minutes. But it took me like 10 minutes

on like wall balls where it typically takes someone about four minutes and I like missed the record by like four or five minutes. But I didn't know anything. I only trained for that one for four weeks. But then I came back and Boston last year obsessed training and completely fell apart. I made a few mistakes and I did like an hour and 23 minutes. I was so embarrassed. I had to like make a video and be like dude, I thought I was going to kill and I got killed. I still qualify for the world

championships but I like didn't like win. I didn't. I got humiliated. Have you ever done like

accountability. Oh my god, it is so hard. But I'll tell you this. I posted some pictures that I posted

“online where I looked huge doing that because I'm telling you when I was training for high rocks,”

I came up from the basement one time. I have all the stuff in my house. I got my turf strip in the driveway. Like it's not permanently and so I just bought it. I have a sled. I have all the equipment and came out of the basement one day after lifting weights because I had been running for so long and my kids and my wife were like, Jesus, what are you doing? I'm like what do you mean there go? My older son was like that. You have huge muscles and I got, I mean I got strong, crazy strong.

But your body will adjust like nothing got me in shape like that because you had a combination

of like endurance like there's a lot of running but the strength stuff which I had never really

done that extensively. But when you have a goal in a focused and driven I was training like every single day. I was so like, I know. I mean, I was big. Really, even in this. I was like 20 pounds heavier of muscle. So have you tried Deca? No, but similar. It's similar. Right. I wanted the high rocks. I really wanted to do this year and then like I got busy and life happened. But I want what you do it like the next six to eight months. I have a, I've qualified for the world championship in June

and Stockholm. I'm assigned up for it. Okay. How did I get out of my eyes? I had to be open one. Not in the space. Yeah. Yeah. You can do the open one and qualify for the world championships up until like end of May. I won't be able to do the world championships. I could do the open.

“Yes. Of course you could. That's what I would suggest to you. Yeah, I mean, I could, I would never.”

Okay. What about? Okay. How about now that you're 54 though? Are you still planning on

doing, and now, would you ever do another ultra? Would you ever? I might run a lecture, but I think I'm done like with the, I was not going to ritual about this yesterday. Like I don't want to feel like it's performative and it's like my whole identity is as a runner. Like I am so much more than just a runner and I don't know it's kind of like the competitive part of it has lost a little bit of appeal. It's like the ultra like when I heard about it, I was like I'm fired up.

When I heard about high rocks, I was obsessed and trained obsessively. I can't get obsessed anymore about running and I also don't want to feel like I don't know. It's weird. It's like if I've won the age group roll chips up, what else can I do? I almost feel like it's like winning a local race multiple years in a row. It's like stopping a bully. Like let's someone else have a crack at it. Like winning a race is awesome. I don't need to like keep showing all my neighbors. Like I won the

neighborhood Turkey trot. Like in the palaces, I'd run the Turkey trot every year in the palaces for the July race. And it was like, like we got it. We know you're really really fast. It's like, yeah, you don't come to a local race and like bully people. Like that's someone else. Or just like you blast through everybody. Like it's like it's not even it's like it's not even a fair, it's not even fair anymore. It's like going to hell in the hill and empty in the tank again. I'm like I've already shown

everyone I can do this. I don't want to look what this guy is. You're a devent 12 minutes. I don't want to look at the guy who's like clearly has like some fucking something's missing in his life and he's here killing himself. Hell on the hill fucking backyard race. No one thought that I can promise you. But like but really wasn't your time. Like and I'm saying it to be funny. Like wasn't it like literally like four or five minutes to do it?

No, no. It wasn't at least two hours. That was I mean, that would be so it is so hard. It is quite the way. I like I have to tell you it was really hard. I was shocked. Like I didn't train for it off. I thought, oh, this is easy. I run every day. I can easily do it. I was like, it was mentally exhausted. Yeah. Boring up and down and it's like there's not much space.

So it's basically going around a track or like up and down a small hill. Like a hundred plus people.

“Yeah, it was like I was speaking to this guy. I think I like made a friend. You know what?”

I became friends with on that hill at least and we're still friends. It's Todd Anderson. I love Todd. He's such a nice guy. He lives here because like I met him on this hill. And we became friends and we like talked the whole time up and down the stupid hill for like hours on the thing, you know? Like he had an injury so he couldn't go fast and I don't know. It was a whole thing, but he was a very nice and like, he's the best. Yeah.

It really nice guy with dream recovery. Yeah. They got awesome products. He does. Yeah. Okay. So now tell me about your daily ritual. Do you take like, create a team? Like what's supplemented you take? What do you. So when I wake up in the morning, I take you to wake up. I want to know everything. But between five and six. I invite the fault. Okay. So if I have my brothers and I'm home and I do and things the way I want to do them, I don't like to get up and feel like I got to get

right out the door. Right. And I have four kids. So in a perfect world, I wake up in like 530. I would have in the world. Yeah. I would have. I would have. I wish I could sleep longer. Like as I've gotten older, I have a hard time sleeping more than like 607 hours. I need it. I want to sleep for 12 hours. I can't. My wake up. My body hurts. I'm just like, it's paining you. I can get I get it. Okay. Tell me where I wake up. I take NMN and okay. Wait. Stop right there. Why do you

take NMN and you don't take NR? That's a good question. I haven't really considered it. But I take

worked for me. Like I couldn't tell you what each supplement has done like specifically for me.

But I can tell you that when I added all these different things to my supplement protocol, my life improved dramatically. Really? Yeah. Like my raised times got faster. But a corresponded with like training excessively. So I take NMN and I take NAD+. And I take vitamin D in fish oil, which you know that vitamin D in fish oil have been scientifically proven that in conjunction with exercise has like a 40% some absurdly high increase to your log longevity. Really? It's

you can just anyone who's listening. Just Google fish oil and vitamin D plus exercise and look at the benefits. It's like sauna. Like the scientific supporting scientific data is so incredibly strong. You'd have to be insane not to do these things. Really? It's like sauna. Like it's like a 40% reduction in all cause mortality. I hate the sauna. Like getting that thing like it's my job.

That's a great point. So I've never heard that. So you're saying the staff to like live longer,

40% longer or or some of health care. Some absurd number that scientifically it was in like, it was in like nature. It was in nature magazine just in the last year. Vitamin D plus fish oil plus exercise. That's amazing. How long exercise? It doesn't. I don't know what it says in the duration. I don't know what it says in the data. But I was like perfect. I do that anyway. So I was

“happy to read. Me too. I do that also. So vitamin D fish oil NMN NAD plus. You should really try NR”

it to an agent and I'm not to say that. I mean it. And I'll tell you why because it's a smaller molecule and it's much easier. It goes through your system. It's how it can and a man has to. It doesn't don't get the convert and a man. I think that there are some other things that have molecules too big to get through that could be connected to an agent. I'd love to experiment with it. I'm going to give you some. Or I'll send you some. And by the way, I'm not just saying that

because I actually true like whole heartily believe in it. I think so many so much data on it. Those are the best partnerships that you can say things like that. That's like a good brand that as someone who negotiates a lot of those deals. I'd say to the brand like you want to work with people that genuinely are like missionaries for you. They believe wholeheartedly and everything that you're doing as a brand. 100% because there's so many brands. You know this burden anybody with

what you do with your new company with the agency. There's so many brands doing so many things

“and there's so much noise. You have to be so discerning with who you're working with. Like I”

think it's I think it's really important because so much so much of this business is junk. Like you don't know what you're taking. People have no idea what you're seeing. They just published all these findings about creatine gummies and so many of the brands. Like some of the brands had no creatine in it. Think about that. Can you is that crazy? Well, this is a whole time. I bet you if you were to take most of your supplements and take them into like a lab,

you would be mortified. I agree. Of what's actually how much of the percentage of things are in those things. Well, I would say this. I only take 90% of the supplements I take from momentous.

Momentous me too. Shout out to momentous. They have their third party tests. Yes.

And and a certified whatever. A first sport. Yes, it. Yeah, certified flavors. I think they're creatine. Yeah. So I have the new chewable creatine's I take and that's the other thing I take in the morning.

“I'll take like five of those in the morning. What else you take by momentous?”

So then when I finish my run, I'll take I've taken recovery that it's called recovery. Yeah. So I got to write mix of protein and in carbohydrates. As soon as I run, I've taken that no shit every single day for like seven years. Really? When is I finish my run? I take two scoops of that. One scoop of creatine. Mix that in the water, shake or bottle, like nothing fancy with water and just drink it.

And then I'll take and then I'll take another fish oil. And that's really it for supplements after the workout. I'll take another fish oil and the recovery and creatine. And then before bed, I take glycine, which is magnesium glycinate as a form of that. A momentous one. Yeah. Then I take the momentous sleep pack, which has magnesium three and eight, appendage, and something else. I'm spacing. It's like five, five capsules.

But I saw I take the glycine, which isn't from momentous. I buy it on Amazon, Dr. James, the nicatonia, turned me on to it. But then I take the sleep pack from momentous. And sometimes I'll take elite sleep, which has a little bit of melatonin and because for a long time I didn't take melatonin, but then I was reading that as you get older, you produce less melatonin. So I've been supplementing with that. But you know, it's hard to

know like unless you like go into like very stringent blood test where you're testing your blood, taking the supplement, testing your blood, checking for us performance. So I get say it's not realistic. Like it's really hard. And I'm not as, I'm not like a professional athlete to the extent

about blood work and about metrics, it becomes a job. And then it's not it's no longer fun for me.

“And even when I was racing my bike a lot, there's a lot of things that you can analyze like”

power output in heart rate. And I was in like, what's your heart rate? What's your functional threshold power on my dude? At that point, I'm not looking for like homework assignment. Yeah, I totally do everything. I'm perceived effort. Can I tell you something? I find I did this with Lance Armstrong. We talked about this a lot. And I found it very interesting that the people who are truly like the best of what they do or

excel at such a high level, they are not, they're not testing these little things anymore. Like they're not doing it as much. Because he had people doing it, but he, and he's, he's of all the elite athletes I know. No one was more in touch with like what was going on than him in terms of knowing his numbers. That guy is like what he was actually racing. Yes. But like someone like, but I'm saying like what I've noticed that people like after a while,

you know your numbers. Yes. And then you can kind of go on like kind of like you can kind of like

that first-seaved effort because the anxiety of like tracking your sleep, tracking this everyone's

wearing 97 wear. I mean they're having like their or rings and their whoops and their glucose monitor. I'm like, who are you? Like, I would say that the glucose monitor in a lot of those things are good to have like a baseline magic. It's good like to understand it. But when you start getting like Brian Johnson, where you're measuring your reactions and like looking at the red light and I'm like dude, live a little brother. Like you know, you know, you know they were

not getting out of here alive. Like we're all like imagine we're all in a box. No one's going to leave here alive and you're worried about like I'm getting too much blue light exposure. Like that's great. But what's the point then you're like not you're going to die because you know you have no socialization, you're community, no friends. You're like you're not like able to have go for dinner because like you can't eat the calories in the car. Definitely can't eat after 7 o'clock at night.

That then try five. I do think when I'm living, when I'm living a good healthy lifestyle, I do like to fast for a few hours before I go to bed. It's not really realistic all the time. But I do think that I sleep a little better if I don't know if I'm not digesting. But I also like it's important that you enjoy your life too and like do these things and get outside and like live. Live. How about just the fact that just to live? How about amino's? Have you taken

amino's before? I have here in there. But at some point with all the shit I just told you I take it becomes like just overbearing. I'm like, what? I mean, if you take all the supplements that every brand has, I'm like, all I'm going to be doing is taking supplements. I'm not going to be doing anything else. Well, the reason why I'm asking you about this with me. But I do think that they make

“a lot of sense and I think they play a vital role. But if you're eating a healthy whole food diet,”

I think that all of this shit is trumped by eating a whole food diet. And make fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables. If you can do that, you're winning. By the way, again, why we get along because I totally agree with you. All this other stuff is supplemental. If you're not doing the basics, yes. It doesn't matter. You can take every supplement in the world. You can take any, you can go in a cold plunge until your like little hearts content. It makes no difference. If you're not

eating properly, exercising consistently, it doesn't matter. And also like to your point, if you start taking, you don't even know what's moving the needle. If you're taking 97 supplements, but the only reason why I'm asking you about the immunosis is because I started taking them because protein kick, right? It's as you get older to like keep lean muscle mass, build lean muscle mass. How much protein can a person do? Right? Like it's like so much protein.

So now I'm taking these like, I like put in my water. And like, you know, everyone talks about creatine, but then how about these how about these amino's? I feel like it's kind of like one of these underrated things. I agree. I think you're right. It's just like my brain only has enough capacity to do these to do so much. I know you can only do so much. Okay, so I interrupted you. The one thing I was going to tell you about Lance Real Quick is I tease about beat in him at high

rocks, but I'm telling you I've trained with him extensively and done some racing races with

him by crazy stuff. And I'll tell you, I've never met anyone who gets in shape like this guy.

Like I'm trained with him for a week once in Arizona and from the first day to the last day I was like, this is craziest. It's the same person. He gets, he's a freak when it comes to endurance. And when he's, when he's dialed and I said this too in a video, I was like, listen, if Lance shows up and he doesn't carry it's just another guy, but if Lance is fired, to dialed in and focused and wants to win, he's going to kill you. Like he's the savage savage.

“But that's what it takes to show up and do some of the seven years in a row, not get sick.”

And like forget about all the doping stuff. Like I'm promise you, everyone's doing the same thing. It's still, it shows up seven years in a row in a 20 day event. Doesn't get sick. Doesn't crash. Doesn't have a flat tire at the wrong time. And again, about all these

And if they're not doing little things, again, it's like worrying about what kind of tires you have on your car is a piece of shit. But what does the difference? What tires you have on that

“car? It's not going to get from A to B. Was like also majoring in the minors, right?”

Like, these things do not matter if you're not doing the big things, right? Like the basics. You know, my first book I ever wrote was called No Jim Required, right? It was like many truths. It's a truth. And nobody cared. And nobody, like, no one cared about this book because I spoke the truth. I'm like, listen, shop the perimeter of the supermarket. You're right, like the meats, the eggs, the vegetables and the fruit. Do your pushups, your squats, your, you know,

whatever you're all free. All free. And by the way, we'll get you in better shape in any piece of equipment than you'll ever get it. If you can do a pull-up, you're like, you're 99% there. I do. I do sets of 20 pull-ups every single day if I'm home and I'm in my gym and I can do a max of 30 straight pull-ups like any of which way you want. Overhand, underhand, I take great pride. I take great pride in that because I call chin-ups like the great

truth teller. There's nowhere to hide. Get up there and do the pull-ups and you can wiggle worm and shake, you can, you can, you can frigging do whatever you want. Like, get over the bar.

You know what I say? I always, you can't fake strong. No. You can fake a lot of shit in life, right?

You can fake, you know, your influence, your, you can fake your after, you could do your affirmations all day in the mirror. Tell yourself how great and wonderful and beautiful and strong you're. But one thing you can't fake is fit and being strong. So, those things will give you more confidence and more self-belief than all these other things that you, all these other hacks that you're talking about. And when you do a pull-up, that's like, that is strength right

there. You cannot, like, that's body, that's upper body strength that either you have it or you don't. And so, yeah, so when I wrote this book, it's ridiculous. Like, nobody wants to hear the truth. They all will buy the, you know, whatever is that magic pill that's being promoted. You know, like, if this is going to, like, GLP one, like, oh, that's like the life saver for a lot of people now. It's, it is, it is, it is the, it's the life of, like, nobody's learning lifestyle has it.

Well, I think that the GLP one, though, I think you're going to see that just as quickly as it came in, go out because I think the GLP two GLP three is like, red at true times. Oh, yeah. Those things are like, we can't help and you maintain muscle mass burn fat. It's crazy. But, but I think that the ultimate flex in the ultimate status symbol, that's available to anyone, is walking into anywhere and having people be like, holy shit. You're in good shape.

But when someone says to me, I'm like, yes, they would never be like, what a great watch.

But they will say, like, holy shit, that guy's in shape. Even when you say, like, I saw you at that race and you were doing this and doing that, I'm like, that's the nicest thing anyone

“said to me all day. That's what I'm trying to convey is like a serious person. I want to be”

taken seriously. I want people to know, I, this is how I handle business. You work with me. This is what you're getting and you might know like it because it's fucking, I want to win. And if you don't want to win, I'm going to drag you with me. I listen, you're preaching to the converted. Like, I've always say, I'm going to walk in. You're never going to say, oh, that girl has a nicest dress on or the best jacket.

But, you know what, you're going to say, damn, that girl's fit. Yes. And that you'll trust me because if I like, I've had that shows discipline number one and that if you take, if I can take care of myself and I can keep my shit in order, I can probably do the same for you. 100%. Right. So. And you care enough to wear snakes. Oh, yes. Oh, my God, these shoes. By the way, can I honestly, I laughed and mocked at this whole thing because I thought, my God,

they're so like, how can you wear a heel with the sneakers? How like, they're how ridiculous. Meanwhile, I cannot wear high heels because they're so uncomfortable. I tried on this shoe. It is so comfortable. Hello. My wife has like multiple pairs. And I think they're the sexiest thing. And she's like, you really think they're sexy or practical. Like, I go on

on on on on on on both. I was, I'm always like, just put on your laundry and come on with your

sneakers on. She's like, you've think that that's sexy. I got this something sporty about it. That is attractive to me. Really? I love that. I'm telling you, I'm going to wear these all the time.

“They're so comfortable. I love them. And by the way, you're right. Like, that's why I like them. I”

think they are sexy because like, it's they're they're cute enough for people who are athletic and fit, who can't wear cute, like regular heels. But now they can have like, they have a hybrid. And if someone tried to mug you, you could actually do like karate and shit in those things. And you go, oh, you can run away. And by the way, would I, I can also walk to my car, because in the other high heels, I kind of even walk at this. I got a crawl or kind of like,

hold on to things. Okay. So probably I'm like hours late for the gas to see. Oh, yes. I am. Okay. I'm going to have to wrap this. But go, my God, this has been a pleasure having you on. Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Seriously, it's been so nice having you on this Ken. Ken's book is called Everything You Want is on the other side of hard. He is an incredible, I, you got to read the book and get all his stories and his shenanigans because he is so,

to have met you in person without me just, you know, basically walking by you on the hill.

“And where else did people find you learn about you, whatever, whatever, all the things?”

I'm super active on Instagram. Ken, right out in the book comes out March 10th from Simon and

Schusser is available. Everywhere you buy books and I read the audio book myself. I recorded it.

“So that also comes out March 10th and it's all available for pre-order everywhere you buy books,”

including audible. And I'd be super grateful if anyone would buy the book. I'm going to do some live

events in New York, LA. Miami, Nashville. And I want to like meet as many people as I can. And I'm happy to sign books and do everything. I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to even have this and connect with all of my fellow endurance nerds. And you know, I consider myself the

“leader of the nerds. So I say that as a term of endearing. But honestly, I'm like super grateful”

for you for allowing me to share this with your audience. And I'm happy to know you. It's you have great energy. Well, thank you. So do you. Well, we're going to be friends now. Yeah. I know you say don't have room for any, but you're going to have to like push one aside. Oh no, we haven't constantly having cuts. Good. Okay. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Thanks.