Smile, Or You're Doing It Wrong: Andy Glaze On Relentless Positivity, PTSD, & The Healing Power Of Movement

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The one and only Andy Glaze. Arguably the most inspiring, ultra-indurance athlete in the world. He serves others while juggling his passion for running.

“I have, like, an intense fire inside that burns. That's what allows me to do all this crazy stuff”

from travel ons to ultra-running, and every flavor because it's all fun. Yeah, it hurts, and yeah, it's uncomfortable, but dead people don't get it suffer. And I'm alive, you know. How long is your 100-mile, a week running streak been going on at this point? 320 weeks.

Andy, man, so good to meet you. This is long overdue. So excited to talk to you. I'm so excited to be here. This is a dream come true, honestly. Yeah, you're the guy who's running all these races. You're putting in, you know, these 100-mile weeks.

And you're the guy who is known for smiling. It's the title of your book. So you're the smiling ultra-runner guy.

“But honestly, to me, there's so much more to your story.”

It's about two things in my opinion. It's about the space between falling down and getting back up. And second, how physical movement is a catalyst for emotional healing? Yeah, I mean, so I mean, the beginning of sort of the downfall was probably my parents divorced. They got divorced when I was about 10, and they split up.

And so then I had two kind of different households that I was having to navigate at a young age.

My dad was like a worker hallick, so he was never home, and then my mom was like a loving mom.

But she had been a stay-at-home mom and then had to go back to work because of how she was divorced. So she was at work. My dad was at work, and so I kind of, you know, a gen X or kind of raised myself, right? I mean, we were of that age where we came back home when the street lights came on. And like, um, not a lot of parental supervision.

You know, before cell phones, before pages, all that sort of stuff. And so I had a lot of time just without any parental supervision. And that sort of led me into maybe not hanging out with like the best group of friends, which then led to, you know, starting to smoke pot, and then just experimenting with all sorts of other drugs and alcohol,

which then, you know, got into like some really heavy stuff, like, you know, crystal meth, and then I just really spiraled out of control at a, you know, at a very rapid descent. Um, at a young age.

I basically had a friend who's father sold crystal meth and weed to the biker gangs of Southern California.

And like, redlands, which is where I live, is kind of like a stop-off point. Hell's angels had like, you know, clubhouse in San Bernardino. And like, so there's a lot of drugs coming through and I just had like unlimited access to this stuff. And I did a ridiculous amount of meth at a very young age, which, you know, I was smoking it at a light bulb.

So I was, I remember for like my 16th birthday, they gave me a line as long as my arm. And I did the whole line, you know, I mean, just really crazy amounts of drugs that a young person should not take. Which eventually caused me to like run away from home. Luckily, my dad was able to like hire some off duty cops to find me. And then, of course, when they found me, I was, you know, macyated, shrunk out.

Like probably hadn't slept in days.

“How long had you been away from home when you ran away?”

It wasn't long. Probably like a week or so. Yeah. It was like, you know, I'm 16. So I'm just sleeping on people's couches.

Yeah. You know, kind of like, I didn't, you know, I was so incapacitated with the drugs that I wasn't even thinking people were looking for me. I'd run away and I just figured, okay, now I'm like on my own and I can just, you know, do this. But no, I mean, my dad was like, they were all actively looking for me. I just wasn't even thinking about that as like a possibility.

I don't want to rush through this. Yeah. And by 16, you're completely strung out on Crystal Matt. Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty compressed period of time to go from, hey, I'm a young kid and maybe I'm bumming a cigarette here and there to like being a full blown like Crystal Mathatic.

Right. It was just really easy to to access. It was the first time you smoked Crystal Math like, um, was that like a light bulb moment, like, oh my God. I mean, it just feels really, really good.

I mean, I think, you know, I always think about it.

And I've described it in like as like, it's like taking and happiness, right? Like you just feel so euphoric when you take it in that at a young age. And I was going through some stuff like around 15, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. They gave him like six months to live. And so I didn't know how to process that.

It was a 15 year old.

“You know, I wasn't given any tools or like, hey, you should, you know, do this.”

I just did more drugs. Drugs made me feel good. I didn't critically think about it. Like, oh, I'm doing these drugs to mask my, you know, of course not. And then yeah, I tend to question that I'm about to lose my dad and my dad was very strict and very hard on me.

But he's still my dad, you know, the crystal meth just made me feel so good. And just like, you know, being up for days and days was just endless energy and just it made everything in life fun. Like I, you know, I could clean my room and it was fun. And I wasn't used to feeling like that, you know, I mean, we, I would smoke it and it would make me feel slow. And it would kind of like just kind of make me chill out.

But like, crystal meth made me just want to do everything and everything I did was fun.

It didn't matter what it was, um, it was just just just amazing high.

And as a 15 year old, 16 year old, you don't really understand the lifelong consequences of doing this stuff. Super addictive, very difficult to get off of. Yes. And somehow you manage to keep your teeth. Yeah.

I went to treatment with some guys that like lost all their teeth. That's enough. I don't have any backmolers. So you don't. But I lost a good.

I lost a couple of them. Yeah. Your dad finds you after you run away. Right. You know, from there, ensues even more chaos.

You think like, okay, now you're going to get into the solution. And it just seems like you get put in one bad situation after the next. Yeah. I mean, so they, they didn't really know what to do. Um, options were pretty limited back in the early 90s.

You know, I mean, we didn't, I mean, that was kind of even before the internet. You know, stuff like that.

So they hired an educational consultant who basically is like, well, we have these wilderness

programs. We can send them to. Um, and they're like, okay. So they ship me off to Utah.

“And essentially, there was like, I think nine or 10 of us kids.”

And we were all in various forms of drug abuse or, you know, behavioral issues. And they, like, basically dumped us into the middle of Utah and then just started hiking us. Yeah. So physical scared straight. Yeah.

Yeah. But we're all coming down off. I mean, I remember there's a girl coming down off cocaine. She was like a ritual for my lay. I'm coming down off meth.

You know, other people are coming down off.

So we're all just a mess, emotionally crying.

“And I remember the girl just sat down and like refused to hike for like three hours.”

And we just had to sit there and like, you know, and we're all like, Come on. Let's go. Like, you know, and then everyone starts yelling at everybody. It was a lot of drama.

But it was pretty rough there in the beginning. I talk about it in the book.

But essentially the first day that hiked us all night with no food.

Right. And starvation. Just like, and then at the end of the night, they gave us a banana. And we all just like, I ate the whole thing. The peel.

Yeah. Like everything. And then I ate other kids. And that was kind of like how they introduced us to this program. But little did you know that this was your first kind of touch point with endurance.

Right. Yes. It's sort of an inciting incident that, you know, becomes salient many years later. You know, but this is like your introduction to the world of voluntary suffering. Right.

Yeah. I mean, for sure. There's a lot of like parallels and looking back. I mean, now I've done the Moab 240 multiple times. You know, I'm out there suffering in Utah, like hiking around doing all the running and stuff.

And I'm like, oh, look at me 30 years later, like doing this because I want to do it, not because I'm forced to do it. And this idea that that pain can have a positive purpose. Yeah.

“I think the most important thing is they had a therapist that would come out like once a week and talk to us.”

And that was the first point in my life where somebody made the connection in my brain where they're like, you're doing drugs because you're upset. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm doing drugs because they're fun. Like no, like you're upset about your dad, you know, you're a teenager.

You're going through your teenage stuff. And you're doing these things to cope with whatever's going on in your life.

And I never thought about that.

I'd never made that connection. There's no point where I'm like, oh, I'm upset. I'm going to smoke weed. I was just upset and then smoked weed. But never had the emotional maturity or emotional intelligence to like make that connection myself.

So that was like my first sort of introduction to, wow, I'm using this stuff to mask, you know, what's really going on. I need to deal with what's really going on so that I don't have these issues later on and try to run from them again. So you come out of that experience and then you get put in this crazy boarding school.

“Yeah, so I thought everything was good. Like I'd done really well did a lot of work.”

All my, you know, counselors and everything were like Andy is great. But then that educational consultant came back and they're like, he probably shouldn't go home. It's only been three months like he'll probably get mixed up with those same people again. Everybody else, my whole group got to go home. And my parents came, they're like, we're taking you to Massachusetts.

And I'm like, you know, I'd maybe been to the East Coast one time. Like my, when we meet Massachusetts, you know, and they flew me to Massachusetts and took me to this boarding school. In a, in a giant castle, like a real castle in the Berkshire's, which is like Western Massachusetts. Yeah, it was considered a therapeutic boarding school. They, they went with this philosophy.

It's called Datop, which you'll have to like, you know, listeners or viewers will have to Google it, but that that was sort of the, the philosophy of the school. And it was kind of based on Positive peer pressure, No medication,

And on the on the surface, it looked really like a great place. Because that the philosophy was they were taking very intelligent kids, gifted kids that We're really messed up and then getting them into really, really good universities. Like, you know, one of the guys I went to school with, you know, 1600s on all his SATs went to Columbia, like, and so they would take us.

And, and that kid was like really strong out on drugs when he first got there.

14 years old, 15 years old, whatever. But like, was able to turn it around and get 1600s on his SATs and then get into Columbia. So it was like, it was a school that on the surface looked great. Like, hey, my kid's messed up. He's, he's intelligent.

I'm going to send him there, and then at the end result is he'll get into a good college And graduate high school. And because a lot of us when we got there were like, you know, dropped out of high school Or like, you know, and did do that for a lot of kids. I mean, a lot of kids did.

I mean, I just call it what it is. I mean, this place, all right. The John Dewey Academy. Yes, yes. To me, you know, what it sounds like is they, they had a very aggressive form of therapy.

They would create these group therapy sessions that were very confrontational, where they were weaponizing fear and shame to like, you know, if you interpret it, charitably to like root out like whatever is bothering you.

That, you know, yes, it can go one way and this kid gets into Columbia,

but it can cut in another direction. Well, a lot of kids did not make it. That kicked out or ran away or whatever went on to somewhere else. And then it was also like, there was aspects of it that were really off. Like, I remember we had a kid there who was gay.

And they decided they were going to be able to make him not gay. You know, and did some all these weird things were conversion. Yeah, conversion therapy. They made him like, wear a pink crown and all these different things. And it was like, it was a total emotional torture.

And we're all in the thick of our own drama, but then like having to experience other kids also getting tortured, you know, and it's kind of... That's horrible. I mean, you're already ashamed.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, you're ashamed. It's like, you don't need more of that.

Yeah, so it's like, I'm getting, you know,

and then you're like, in group sessions, and you're just hearing the most horrific things that these people have done, or, you know, seen, or whatever, and or experience,

“which I think a lot of that should just be like one-on-one type stuff.”

Like, I don't need to hear about your deepest darkest, most horrible thing. But in the right environment, like, shame doesn't survive the light. And if you can, you can have a cathartic experience. If you feel safe enough to share something like that in a group setting,

if it is well-received, but if you're being shamed, or you made to feel... Yeah, I feel that. That is only going to strengthen that, that shame response. Yeah, well, I mean, it was, I mean, I have stories like,

we had a kid who's mom killed his dad, and he was like a real famous guy, and they made a lifetime movie about him. And like, the headmaster made him watch the lifetime movie, with all of us, you know?

And then, I mean, just, that feels abusive. It was quite, quite abusive. And then, you know, I talk about it in the book, but like, he was then accused of some, you know, stuff with females that were going there,

and somehow got out of it.

“But, you know, I don't know if he was really innocent,”

the headmaster. There was like, there's some stuff online. I mean, this school still exists. Right. It does, but I don't, it does.

It's not at the castle anymore, and it's kind of, I mean, I'm sure it's like morph and become something completely different. But... And then there was this Spanish teacher.

Yeah. So, I mean, we all hold like things that are very difficult to talk about in D.O.F. and, you know, one of the things that happened to me was I was essentially groomed by an older, you know, teacher. We were not, we were not allowed to date while we were there.

You know, female contact was limited. You know, we could be friends, but, you know, it was, it was very segregated and whatnot when it came to that sort of stuff. We were allowed to watch TV or have,

you know, anything like that. And so I had this older teacher that was there, kind of start inviting me over to her apartment, letting me watch TV, letting me watch movies, kind of like becoming my friend.

And, I mean, I don't think there's any other word but grooming, you know, I was, you know, quite young, 16, 17 years old and it turned into like a sexual relationship which then, you know, definitely made things very different.

Why was there? And then, you know, I left the school and she continued to do it with other students. And I think, you know, she did it with students before me too. But it's, you know, we were also secretive and so like,

if I were to like have reported it, I would have then gotten attacked. And so I was like, scared to talk about it. I didn't, I mean, tell my parents about it till way later when I was older.

I didn't, I mean, I didn't tell anybody about it.

And I always felt this like really intense sense of guilt

because, you know, after I left,

“I was like, you should say something handy.”

You should report this. This is like not okay. And then she ended up getting like pregnant by one of the other kids. And then, you know, had the baby and, you know,

then I, then I felt super guilty because I'm like, now I could have prevented this, but I did it. And then I still, I mean,

I really have never said anything about it till I wrote my book and I put it in my book. But beyond that, like, I mean, now it's been 30 years. But yeah, it's, and I have no idea

whatever happened to her after that point. But obviously, she didn't continue to work for the school. Did you stay sober through that high school experience? I did. So I, I didn't do any drugs or alcohol

through high school or through that high school experience. And then my dad told me he would pay for college if I stayed sober.

because college is quite expensive.

“And so I actually stayed sober through college as well.”

And then as soon as college was over, I was like, all right, I'm going to start drinking again. Yeah, I mean, you're undergoing this intense experience and high school presumably for purposes of like healing. Yeah, and actually just making it worse

or giving you more kind of emotional baggage that's going to lead you back to drinking and using. Well, and I, and I think too like when you're, when you're confronted like that and you're being yelled at and all this stuff like,

you learn to survive and sometimes learning to survive is just like making stuff up so that like, you know, the camera, or not the camera, but the like the attack will get off of you. And so you end up like kind of like faking who you are

and like creating like a different persona

and just just to survive, you know.

Like if the sharks want blood, you give them blood and then they'll leave you alone. You know, and sometimes, you know, that's, and that's not a good way to develop as a, you know, 16, 17 year old person, right?

Like you don't want to like develop those skill sets where you become a chameleon, you know, to put on the right mask for the right situation. Exactly.

“Fin submission when you need to or to just get by, you know,”

meanwhile you're just calcifying that like armor, you know, and that's putting distance between yourself and like who you are because you just all you know is survival and in order to survive, you have to be this kind of person in this situation and this kind of person in that situation.

And you don't learn how to stand up for yourself. You don't learn how to, you know, have principles that you will stand on, you know, because your principles might be threatened or like attacked and then, you know,

you don't want to have that. So it's, yeah, it was just a very challenge. And then, you know, you become close with other people and then they get attacked and maybe they get kicked out

and then you never find out what happens to them.

You know, I lost a lot of friendships in there that I was like friends with them and then they left and I still to this day never know whatever happened to them. Then you go to Skidmore, like great liberal arts college in upstate New York, lots of freedom.

Yes. Your dad's paying for it. Provided you stay sober. But no one's really watching you. Yeah, it's true.

I mean, nobody was watching me. But I mean, I didn't, I was still very scared of like doing drugs. Like sort of that like scared straightness. That, that had been institutionalized in me in that place.

And I went from the kid who ran away to, now you're a Skidmore. I was, well, I know. And I, I was just so scared that if I drank then I would smoke weed and if I smoked weed,

it would lead to like something else that would lead to crystal math and then I'd be like back where I was. And so that fear just kept me sober because I was just so scared of like going back to being the, the kid that I was.

You talk a lot about PTSD. And, and your, your kind of relationship with it in different contexts. But, but I haven't heard you talk about like the PTSD of just surviving institutionalization.

You know, like just knowing like, hey, you know, I, I went so far off the path off the radar that I ended up like having to go to this Utah situation and this crazy school and surviving all of that. Like that has its own, you know, kind of,

that castle long shadow. And I would imagine just throughout college or like can't go back to that. Like, you know, if I touch any of this stuff, like it's going to take me right back to, you know,

Utah wilderness camp. I mean, I definitely had some emotional, like, responses, you know, for a long time. I think just over time, that just kind of numbed out. I don't know if it was when I started working out

and exercising, if that, like, sort of helped move me past that. But I think also like, I did start using again after college. I was like, you know, you go through that rationalization where you're like, I was young.

I was so young. You know, I can handle it. You know, I had a job, I was a adult. You know, my dad's not telling me I can't do it anymore. And you know, started drinking and smoking weed again.

And I definitely probably did it more than I should have. But I was able to sort of still maintain your high function. Yeah, high functioning. But like, I have like a intense fire inside that burns.

“And I mean, I think that's what allows me to do all this crazy stuff.”

But it just numbed out. You know, so I was high functioning. But like it was limiting my ability to like do anything meaningful. And it was like that for a long time.

I just smoked weed and drank and like, you know, continued on with my life. And you know, I was in sort of corporate America working at like, like with computers.

I'd always been really good at computers.

“And that's what I leaned into after college.”

And yeah, I mean, I wasn't unhappy. But I wasn't happy, you know. But my body wasn't happy. And so my body started to like revolt. I started getting like all this anxiety and depression.

And I'm like, what's going on? What are these feelings that I'm experiencing like, because I hadn't felt like, I mean, one because you're sober. You know, and so you're not masking things. And when you're sober, but then when you lose that sobriety and start using again,

it's very easy to mask feelings. Sure. And some of those feelings are probably like, I wasn't living up to my potential. I knew I wasn't, you know, you start.

I was in an marriage, but it wasn't like this great marriage where I was like, super excited to be married. And I started like, feel like I was going to die. I was having panic attacks. I was having chest pain, shortness of breath.

All these sort of physical reactions to my emotional state. And again, I didn't, there's this is before the internet, before WebMD, before you could like, hey, what's going on with me? I'm 20 something years old. And I'm having these chest pains and shortness of breath.

And I eventually got to a point where I passed out, because I was having such a bad panic attack. I started hyperventilating and passed out. I was talking to my buddy. I have a friend who I've known since kindergarten.

He's still one of my best friends. And so I called him and I was telling him all this stuff.

“And he goes, man, you need to start working out.”

And I was like, what? When do you mean I need to start working out? He goes, yeah, it sounds like you need to start doing some exercise.

And I had, again, never thought about that.

You know, here I'm 20 something years old. Don't work out at all. Smoke weed, drink alcohol, and just work on a computer all day. I'm getting a personal trainer. They showed me some exercises.

Got me on an elliptical trainer. Started doing the elliptical trainer. I felt pretty good. I started to alleviate those anxious feelings. I mean, I was still probably a little depressed.

But the anxiety started to kind of alleviate. And so I started leaning in a little bit more. Like, well, if this is going to make me feel better, then I'm going to do more of it. How do I learn more about this exercise stuff as an adult?

“And I ended up, I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time.”

And we have a very robust community college network up there. And so I took a community college class on exercise science. And I had run a mile and a half to start the class and then in the class. That was like part of the grading. They wanted to see improvement.

And that was my first time running since like, you know, I was a little kid.

Yeah, I never quit after that.

I just kept moving. I was kept lifting and everything. I mean, I've done everything endurance-wise from triathlons to tough matters to, you know, marathons and half marathons and ultra running and everything.

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Rich Roll and Use the Code Rich Roll that's $75 off at Mill.com/Ritroll and Use Code Rich Roll. You know, your story is one that really illustrates the idea that, that like, sobriety is not a linear thing. You know, it's like you've had all these fits and starts, and you've been sober and not sober and have been high functioning while using.

“And I think that's really the more typical story with people who eventually find their way towards long-term sobriety.”

Yeah. Well, I mean, when I first started going to the gym,

you were still using it. Yeah, I used to have a carrot. I would go, all right, we're not going to smoke weed right when we wake up. We're going to go to the gym. You've got to lift and lay it until you're on.

Then we'll smoke, go eat lunch, you know, and you know, have a nice, have rest of your day. So it was like, and the beginning, it was like delayed gratification of the drugs. And then that became, you know, wider and wider and wider and wider. But yeah, I was. Yeah, so you have these two incompatible things.

It's like growing interest in like fitness and running, et cetera. And then, you know, quietly on the other side, like you're continuing to like use. Right. And I did that for, you know, a couple of years, and then I ended up gained a divorce. Well, it's more than that.

I mean, there were like three crazy things that happened in a 24 hour period. Which you're talking about like, date hit by a car, that whole, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I got hit by a car and almost died. I mean, you know, right, you were riding your bike. Yeah, it was right in my bike.

And, you know, now I'm a paramedic. And so like I know a lot about trauma. And just how dangerous that situation was. And of course, like, I didn't go to a doctor. I didn't, you know, I woke up.

I had missing teeth. I was on the side of the road. My bikes mangled. I had been hit from behind. And they just left me. So like a hit and run.

Yeah. I hit landed on your head.

“Yeah, I don't, I mean, I, I think I, I faced planted because I, I knocked out a couple of my front teeth.”

Or though, you know, I could have hit the actual handlebars. I'm not really sure what exactly went went down. But because I have no memory of it, which is like concussion. And, you know, all the, you know, traumatic brain injury type stuff. And so then I had to have all this emergency dental work.

Luckily, didn't have any broken bones. But like, was bruised. And, you know, maybe I had broken some ribs. But nothing that needed like a cast or anything like that. And, um, yeah, and then my wife decided that that was a good time to let me know that

that she was going to leave me. And, um, so yeah, so then I had to like transition into okay. Like, I mean, we had grown apart. So it wasn't like this huge, like, I wasn't not expecting it. But I guess the timing just was like kind of bad, you know.

In the aftermath of that bike accident, you're basically self medicating with weed.

And you're always like, I'm done with that.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I leaned into a hard. Yeah. And then your grandfather passes away. Yes, yes. And so I went back to California and went to his funeral.

And at that point, I was like, I need to do something with my life that is not what I'm doing. I need to do like a hard pivot, a hard shift. I started taking some fire classes and, and, um, EMT classes and, and I liked them. And so I kind of leaned into becoming a firefighter EMT and that led to me being a firefighter.

Paramedic. But it was that funeral with my grandpa that really changed my perspective on where I wanted to go with my life.

“I mean, do you call this like a rock bottom moment?”

I mean, it is like, you know, kind of a flash point that changes everything. I think trajectory. The rock, the rock bottom moment kind of was, I was lying in bed. My wife came in and told me she was leaving me. You know, I had like my, my teeth were all messed up.

I'm sore. I'm, you know, and she laughed and I smoked a big joint and got super high.

Just like I did the years before I started working out.

And I was like, oh my god, I never want to feel like this again.

Because the last time I've smoked weed or done any illicit drugs. You know, what is your definition of rock bottom? For me, at that moment, that was like a rock bottom moment as an adult. You know, I had rock bottom moments when I was a kid. Obviously like running away, getting found all meth out.

Like that was a rock bottom moment. But as an adult, when you're, you know, you're extremely injured. Life's leaving you, then you smoke weed and you feel the same way you did years earlier. Even after all this growth and like trying to like make things better and you're right back to that point.

I mean, that was a rock bottom moment.

And that's where I was like, I don't want to feel like this anymore. Not doing this ever again. I'm going in a different direction. And then the thing with my grandfather happened, which this pushed me even further in that, you know, different direction.

So I think, you know, whether you want to call it rock bottom or the springboard that I jumped off of and continued to move upward, that that was, that was definitely in. Yeah, I think rock bottoms are when the pain of your circumstances exceeds your fear of doing something different. Yeah. And these events or circumstances in which you think like it couldn't get any worse, like this is, this is like my lowest moment.

I mean, retrospect often turned into being like these springboards to use your word, like these catalysts for reimagining and rebuilding your life. Like everything that happens is neutral until you apply your perspective. And if the perspective you apply to it is like, oh, this is an opportunity for change and transformation. And then you put on your smile hat and adopt the ending place positive affect.

“Yeah, it could end up being like the best thing that that ever happened to you.”

Right. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't hate that it happened to me because I think now I'm able to live to my full potential and I'm a lot happier. How did the ultra thing kind of code the thing is I didn't, I didn't even know about ultra. Or any of that stuff and tell us like in my mid 30s. I didn't know anything about any of it and I went down that rabbit hole and

that's how I got it all to you. So I just signed up for 50k. The dome of me. Yeah, it was going on is like. What is the deal with people like sober people like recovering addicts and alcoholics in ultra?

There's there's a lot of us like what do you have like a theory of mind about that? Like, well, proportionately high. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of people like, you know, significant trauma in their lives that thing go on and like want to continue to do hard things. I mean, what it's like if you're going to do anything to an extreme are personalities tend to like push us in that direction.

But voluntary suffering, you know, it's like you're you're putting yourself into a situation that.

“You're you're suffering, but you always have the ability to tap out if you want to.”

Is something that we can't do in real life.

That we could never do when we were like in the addiction like phase of our lives.

And so it's like it's a safe way to really push ourselves without like huge consequences. Because at the end of that, you can't quit. You can't quit if you're like in life and and all these horrible things are happening to you. So what do you say to the person? I'm sure people have come up to you and said, well, you've just traded one addiction for another like we crystal math.

Yeah, it's just running. I think that like, you know, a lot of my running is because I love to run. I don't know if I love to do drugs. I love the feeling that drugs gave me, but I don't know if I like love to do drugs, but I love to run. And I love to be in nature and I love to be surrounded by, you know, trails and all these things.

I don't, you know, drugs gave me a feeling that I liked and it gave me a scape that I enjoyed. But I don't think I loved love them. I mean, I was addicted to them for sure. And I'm obviously still addicted to them if I ever went down that rabbit hole again.

“But I think it's different because I truly just loved to run.”

And so yeah, I'm sure my addicted personality, I mean anything I do in life though. It's like running, you know, spending time with my family. I'm like, I'm a beekeeper.

I have a grove.

Anything I do, I do like on an addictive level.

You've found healthier outlets for your addictive tendencies.

“But I think it's like, you know, I asked this question to lots of people who are in recovery,”

who are in ultras and stuff like that. And it's almost like a litmus test because if they just deny their addictive relationship with it, like there's something dishonest going on. Like of clearly the fact that so many people in recovery gravitate towards this world, there's something going on there.

And I think that if you're really being honest,

it's like, yeah, it satisfies some kind of addictive craving that I have inside me.

You know, it's a worthy investment because it's in the interest of my personal growth, and it makes me a better person. And it's a journey of self-discovery. There's only good reasons, but yeah. That doesn't mean that it absolves you from having like an obsessive compulsive relationship with it.

I have an obsessive compulsive relationship with it. But anything that I can be anything like sugar, you know, like I have to like refrain from eating sugar because I just love it so much. I would eat candy ice cream, everything vegan ice cream. But yeah, there's no like sort of relationship with sugar.

That's about becoming a better person. You know what I mean? So with running, you could insert anything else, bow hunting or whatever. Are you using it to run towards something or are you using it to run away from something? Like all these pursuits can be distractions from some other discomfort.

And because running, especially at such long distances is so painful,

“you have to sustain a degree of discomfort for such an incredibly long period of time,”

it can be an effective way to like mask whatever other discomfort you really don't want to deal with. Or it can be a way of confronting that so that you can heal it and become more whole. You brought up earlier, like I do suffer from PTSD mostly for my job. You know, just from years and years of seeing the most horrific things you can possibly imagine from being a paramedic. You know, in the last five years, I've really had like pretty bad symptoms and stuff.

I've been able to utilize the ultra running, especially the long distance ultra running as a way to. Quiet the symptoms of the PTSD. I think probably because it overrides the nervous system. You know, like when you're like 80 miles into an ultra, like your nervous system kind of gives up and you just kind of go into that. Survival mode where you're like a lizard brain, you're like, I need to eat, I need to drink.

I need to keep moving forward and you don't really think about anything else. And that has been very like beneficial for my PTSD, like being able to like manage it.

The problem is that in the last few months, it has stopped like working.

And so I'm kind of in like a weird spot where I've always used running as a way to like deal with this sort of emotional trauma that I have. That I don't have control over and now it's not working the same way that it's worked for years. And so, you know, I've started going to a therapist and I'm trying to get to the point where you do like it's called EMDR. We're doing like CPT right now, which just these ways to help like reprogram the brain for these traumatic moments that. It's like, it's like, it's almost like the brain can't recognize that certain memories are in the past.

“And so you have to like, you have to figure out how to like get those memories in the past and you know,”

I'm not a therapist, but you know, there's there's very proven techniques and I've talked about it online and I've had a lot of positive feedback from people that have said like EMDRs like a really good thing. And so, I'm sort of in this like thing it kind of reminds me, I don't want to like, you know, trivialize your your your injury or your your back surgery, but like. I've used running as a way to deal with my trauma and now I can't use it as a way to deal with it and it's like definitely a weird weird place to be in, you know, because it's like I want to escape the PTSD symptoms, but I don't have the way to do it like I used to.

Like I used to. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. It seems to me like you found your way into running and running was so effective at helping you manage your mental health. Yeah. And it was almost like this epiphany like, oh my god, like this is what I've been looking for all along that's been missing in my life and doubling down, doubling down, doubling down and then realizing.

You develop a tolerance, you know, and it's like, okay, now I have to go from 50K to 50 miles to 250 miles to 300 miles. I'm doing 100 miles weeks for 300 weeks in a row.

“Yes. And your trauma or the root of that is now so acclimated to that like that's your that's your resting state now. Yeah. And until you go deeper and.”

Begin to untie the knot like the actual source of all of this, it's not it's not surprising and like I'm not a mental health professionally. I don't need to like armchair it's like apologize any of this, but you know, it makes it makes sense. And again, I think this is like. You know, you got a very emotional moment ago like this is a beautiful opportunity, you know, like what a gift now you can go deeper and get to the source of this and really heal it rather than go to such great lengths to just mask it or manage it.

You know, I mean, the trauma stacks, right? So I'm, you know, that that's the hard part is like it was probably manageable, but like the more that stacks on top it just eventually becomes a pile that just tips over right and. There's police officers, military, whatever, like they just are exposed to stuff on a daily basis over and over and over again. And. And if they don't deal with it, like right now we have like a huge like suicide problem with with with firefighters and we don't talk about it because, you know, we don't I don't I don't know why we don't talk about it, but we don't and.

I'm hoping that by me being honest and talking about it on my platforms and whatnot that I'm helping like sort of break that stigma like hey, you know, we got to go get help we can't just you can't just mask it and unfortunately a lot of firefighters and police mask it with drugs and alcohol, you know, and so it's it's not a good combo it's a weird thing because I feel.

I feel like weak talking about it, even though it's like I'm selling people like hey, we got to break the stigma, I still feel weak having to like.

“Get emotional about the fact that I have something I literally have something wrong with my brain that's what that's the way I look at it, you know, and it's like.”

It's frustrating not being able to control, you know, that that part of your brain where you're like, why why can't you just be normal, you know, like I have a great life, you know, and things things are going so great and like my brain. Well, let me just be normal. Here on the pod, optimizing our lives is something that comes up a lot, how to hone our habits, our routines, our health, but what's wild is my car is doing that too.

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What was the decision to share this stuff publicly? It's one thing to say, I want to try these ultras and get into this world's another thing to take people along with you.

I've always kind of like, fill me in my life, but I never really had the ability to edit it.

You have a GoPro and when I first started doing my ultras, I'd like to fill myself, but then I didn't have a computer that could edit the GoPro footage because GoPro would make, you know, it was just, I'd have to buy like a $6,000 computer in order to edit, you know, $100 GoPro. And then when Reels and TikTok came out, it allowed me to edit videos on my phone, like, with, you know, no barrier to entry. So I just started making videos and they, they like went viral and it was like, from the kick-out.

I mean, there was the one where you were like, I'm going to run 100 miles come with me. You kind of think that went nuts right on the top. Yeah, that was kind of, that was kind of the beginning of TikTok. I mean, the first real I ever made got 70,000 views and I was like, what is going on? Like, you know, you don't back then 70,000 views was like insane.

So I kind of stumbled into it. I never when I started thoughts myself, oh, I'm going to have all these followers or, you know, this is like the future.

If you had told me five years ago, like if we went back into a time machine and said, hey, Andy, you're going to have millions of followers and all this stuff. I would have been like, what are you talking about millions of followers? Like, I have a thousand followers. Like, they're all friends and family and people I went to college with, you know.

“So what is your sense of why what you were sharing connected with people?”

Well, it started just like the, the hubours of running. I mean, there's so many funny aspects of being a runner, you know, and there's so many runners. And then I think it got into nobody had ever like really shown the nitty gritty aspects of running 100 mile race. You see these beautiful movies that people make on YouTube and, you know, they're polished and, you know, there'd be like, you know, some stuff, but it was just beautiful. It was like watching a movie and then all of a sudden I'm showing like all this like kind of low five footage and talking about hallucinating

and doing all this stuff and nobody had ever really seen or heard about that before. And like I said, those platforms just made it so easy to share and consume it. And, you know, once you start getting millions of people watching your stuff, it's just, it's a game changer.

“Where does the smile or you're doing it wrong, mantra come from?”

So, you know what Strava is? Yeah. Okay, so Strava has come on dude. Well, I think talking to Strava's nap, there's segments, right? You could like make a segment. And there's a trail by my house called your either smiling or crying. And it's like, I love running it. And one day I was running it and I was like, who would be crying on this? This is like amazing. And I like, in my head said something like, if somebody's not smiling, they're like, they're doing it wrong.

And I said it to my friend and then it just, I mean, this is probably 10 years ago. I started just saying it, putting it in my Instagram. This is back when there was just pictures and no videos or anything. And it just sort of, it blossomed from there until like a whole life philosophy, but it really was just the idea that, yeah, like this trail, right? If you're running up it, I guess you could be crying. And if you're running down it, you could be smiling. But either way, you're still running, you're still like out in nature.

And you're on this beautiful trail. So again, it was just that like mental, like you really should be smiling.

And it's like, I should like this. And what is the life philosophy then? Well, just, you know, always looking for the positive, you know, aspects of life.

Also trying to, to reach other people because of smile. If you're smiling by yourself, that's great. But if you smile at somebody else a lot of times, they'll smile back at you, which, you know, will give them a chemical reaction in their brain. And maybe that will help them, you know, like when you smile, you have like a chemical reaction in your brain. So, if I smile at you and you smile back, you know, maybe you're at a horrible point in the race, you're at a horrible point in life.

“But that smile might be the thing that just changes your brain chemistry just enough to, to get you into a different direction. That's springboard, right?”

I know it sounds very minimal and small, but like, something I've seen it, I've seen it work. And people have done it to me and it's worked.

That that you've learned from your life experiences and from all of these ultra running races that you've done.

“I think it's my acknowledgement that like it's, it's a good thing to fail.”

When I was younger, I, I definitely did not see the value in failure and I was embarrassed by it and I was like. Scared that people would make fun of me or, you know, people would talk poorly behind my back if I failed. So, it's a recognition that in order to succeed, I have to do things that have a high chance of failure. And so, if I do fail, then that's okay. But I have to then take that failure and like figure out what went wrong and then try to fix it.

You know, I've done that in ultra as I do it in life. I taught, you know, I have a lot of DNFs and races that I didn't, that I wasn't successful in and then I think a lot of times people like are so scared that they're going to fail that they don't do it. And that, that's everything in life, but Ultra's really helped me with that because I fail so much in ultra as it's so hard, right? And there's so many things that can go wrong that it's helped me like bring that into my, my normal life of like, it's okay.

So, when you get an email from somebody or a DM or a text from somebody who saw some of your content and they say to you, as I'm sure they do, you're so inspiring. I wish I could do what you do. I want to be better, I want to be, I want to get off drugs or I want to, you know, enter a race. Yeah. But insert XYZ.

How do you respond to that person? I mean, normally I just, I just tell them to like, you know, you got to just, you had to do one small thing a day. I, I, a lot of times go on like a tangent about doing 30 minutes a day and how. It, it seems like nothing, but if you look at it over like a huge amount of time, it adds up to a lot. And sometimes that's when people are in those really dark moments and they feel like they can't get out.

They just need like a small little light at the end of the tunnel to know that if they keep heading in this direction, they'll get there. And sometimes that's just 30 minutes of something. Whatever it is, if they need to go for a walk for 30 minutes, if it's reading a book, whatever they need to do. But 30 minutes a day. Everybody's got 30 minutes a day.

I don't care how busy you are, you can find 30 minutes. 30 minutes in a month, I mean, how many hours is that, right? I mean, it's 15 hours.

“Times a year, you know, you're, you're talking days. I think it's like five and a half days of of doing something.”

And what I know is that if they do 30 minutes a day, that will end up being an hour a day, which will end up being an hour and a half a day. And you know, it'll, it'll form a pattern and the consistency will build and build and build and build and they'll be able to get out of that hole. But that's normally what I do. I mean, if it's like really drugs now call all related, then I, you know, encourage them to, to like find an AA meeting because I think like we've had people at our department that have had issues and like, you know, I'm always, I think.

When you're in a dark hole, I think, you know, encouraging people to go to a meeting is always like a good way to start, you know, at least they can maybe find a sponsor or do something to help them pull themselves out because they probably can't do it themselves. They're going to need that help. Those are probably the two, two main things that I push.

What year was it when you were first encouraged to go to the gym?

Probably like 2000 and two maybe. Right. So 24 years ago. Yeah. And I asked that knowing that it was a long time ago. So kind of underscore like these things don't happen overnight.

I feel like people are in a, they see what you're doing and they want to be there right away. Yeah. And I don't appreciate or understand that this is 24 years in the making. Right.

“And, and I think we would all benefit from a little dose of patience when it comes to this sort of thing.”

Like when you went into that gym, it was probably no more than 30 minutes the first time that you went in.

And these things build upon each other and it's really a tortoise race. You know, if you're playing the long game and you start to fall in love with movement, whatever that looks like.

You're running 100 miles a week for the 300th odd week in a row and you're writing books and on a podcast.

But the point is, you know, in my life like I've never accomplished anything that I've accomplished was at least a decade.

Yeah. And I think everybody is over indexing on what they can do in a period of a few months or maybe even a year. Because we just not, we're not wired to think in decades. But truly all of these things happen very slowly over time. I like setting lofty goals that are like really far away.

You know, like decade goals are like 20 year goals, things like that because then you're always kind of focused on something. But it's also very far away.

“And then you have to like break it up and be like, all right.”

Well, that's a 20 year goal. But what's a one year goal that I can work on that will get me to that 20 year goal. And I think one year goal is the little step. Right. But far far away.

I'm like, I really want that. But in order to get that, I have to do all these steps. So let's just focus on the first step. But yeah, you're right. I mean, I started with running that mile to half.

Now, I run a lot. But like even before I started doing altruism, I probably ran for, you know, 15 years before I started doing altruism. I wasn't running all that far. You know, half marathons, 10k's, 5k's, stuff like that. I mean, I was just just a normal running.

You didn't set a goal to run an ultra when you first walked into the gym. Like these, these things happen. They percolate out organically. Yeah, from what your curiosity is finding interesting. True or false.

Transformation is available to everybody.

It's always within your power.

But like you said, it takes time. You have to be very patient. And you can't rush it. I, I loved just use the analogy about, you know, water through stone, right? It's like, just water go through a stone.

Yes, it does. How does it do it? Very, very slowly. It just slowly goes over that stone. And over 100 years, all of a sudden, you have two stones, right?

I mean, that's, that's it really accomplishing most things in life. When you, when you try to rush it, it's not going to really work. And why is it worth it all the effort and the toil and the failure and the hardship and the suffering? Well, hopefully because the goal is going to make you or someone a better person. And, you know, that would be, that would be the reward.

I mean, most people don't set goals that are not a positive thing in their life. So, like, if you work and work and work and reach that goal, then, you know, you're working towards either making yourself better or making something else better. You know, whether it's the world or your local community or your family or whatever it is.

“The key is that you have to keep setting goals.”

You can't just, like, set a goal, get there and back. All right, well, we're done.

I did it, you know, I mean, life is always about just improvement and change.

So, you just always have to be working on those two things. One of the things I appreciated the most about your book is that you couch personal transformation as an act of service. Like, when you make that investment in yourself, you are positively impacting the people around you. So, it takes it out of this self-obsession paradigm that I think we see a lot of online. Like, is this all about me and my routine and I'm going to get what I'm going to get, you know, for my own, you know, kind of

ingratiation or whatever. And you're like, no, this is, this is not really about you. It's about how you can impact the people you care about and your community. Well, and I get a lot of messages, obviously, like, "Hey, you inspire me." And that's great.

My response normally is, "Great, go inspire somebody else." You know, like, let's pass it along, right? If I inspire you, then you go inspire somebody else. Then they'll go inspire somebody else and we'll have this, you know, ripple effect, butterfly effect, whatever you want to call it.

“And in the end, the world would be a better place, right?”

And wherever it starts, it doesn't matter. Three people down the line will have never heard of me. That's great. I don't care. I just want them to, you know, get inspired and do something great with their lives.

The most effective way to inspire other people is to up level your own. Right? Yeah, I mean. And you've got to, like, walk that talk. You can't just, like, pull a camera out and talk it.

Like, you actually have to do something. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I do do things. Yeah. No, you do.

I'm just saying, like, you know, for other people out there. Like, if you're just talking or talk, but you're not doing it, it's, it's a fool's errand, right? Like, and it's transparent people see through that.

And then you then are, like, vibrating at a different, like, resonance.

You know, and people can feel that. They know that. Well, I can, I mean, I can inspire more people because of what I'm doing. But like, say, I inspire this guy over here. And he goes, you know what?

I'm going to train and run a marathon. Okay. Now, he's training and running a marathon. And he's going, of course, talk about it. Because we all, you know, hey, did you hear I'm running a marathon?

You know, maybe he inspires some people at work. Hey, you know what? I want to run a marathon, too. Maybe he's got kids at home and they're watching their dad doing hard work. And he doesn't know it.

But in 10 years when they're older, they're going to, like,

“remember that when they're, you know, that their dad was doing this.”

I mean, it just, you just don't know. It won't be as big as, like, my splash. But it might only be two people at work. And maybe a random uncle that, you know, falls in on Facebook. They're like, oh, wow, Joe's running a marathon.

You know, maybe I will, too. And it's, it's still possible to make a small ripple even if you're not doing as much. Yeah. I think the size of the ripple doesn't matter. It's, you know, it's still, it's still going to move it on.

And like, people are still going to get inspired. Hmm. But even if it's smaller, you know. Maybe it's a 5k. Maybe maybe Joe's overweight.

And he's like trying to lose weight. And he's just going to run a 5k. It's going to be a big thing. That can be really inspiring to people. Like, hey, if Joe can do a 5k, I can do a 5k.

What am I doing? You know, Joe's 300 pounds. Like, and he's out there training. Like, you know, and, and maybe that's the ripple effect.

You just, you just never know.

Yeah. All right. One final banger before I release you back to your life. Uh, the magic of life lives between I can't, and I did. Yeah.

What does that mean? I mean, you never know if you can do it until you try.

“Um, a lot of times everything seems impossible until somebody does it, right?”

So it's like, I've done a lot of things where people would say, Oh, that's, that's impossible. Nobody can do that. And, and then I do it. And then people are like, oh, maybe, maybe I'll try that too.

Maybe, maybe that that sounds like a good idea, you know, but until somebody does it, it's, it's an impossible feat. So yeah. Which a perfect example of that might be what happened at the London Marathon, this past weekend.

Nobody's broken two hours in sanctioned Marathon. Ever. And then two guys do it in the same day.

Can you imagine being somebody who runs 159 and gets second place?

That's like the idea that that barrier got broken, you know, in the same race by those two guys at the same time. I mean, we, we all know like once Rodger Bannister broke the form of it, mile barrier, then suddenly, you know, that once it was broken, other people did it. This illustrates your point. But the fact that, you know, two people in that race and you can super shoes, yes, you know,

Morton gels or, you know, you can deconstruct all of this, but like,

“honestly until this past weekend, it had never happened.”

And now it has. And like now how many people are going to run under two hours. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the more we get, like you said the shoes, the, I mean, all that plays a factor, the shoes, the nutrition, all that.

When you get that more and more dialed in and everything becomes, you know, it's an engine. So, you know, if it can, if you can do it, somebody will figure out how to do it and emulate it and replicate it next, it'll be like, who's going to break one 55, you know? I mean, all that's impossible, then someone will do that.

So, what's the barrier that you're looking to break next for yourself? Oh, maybe like getting into hard rock. I'd love to, I'd love to do hard rock really, really bad and try that race out. I have a race in June called the Summer Spine. It's in the UK.

It's 268 miles from England to Scotland. Whoa. And it's sell, there's no crew, no paces and there's only five age stations. Wow. So, each age, it's like speed project UK.

Well, each age station's like 50 to 65 miles apart. So, that's my, that's my big race of this year and I'm terrified of it. Like so scared. But, you know, that's why that's why. That's why I'm excited.

But it's yeah, it's going to be, it's going to, it's going to test me for sure. What is the one thing that you want people to get out of reading your book? Well, I hope, you know, I hope people, in a low point, can read my book and realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but that it's might take a while to get there.

Just to be patient with the process. But through like time and consistency, like they, they should be able to get themselves out of it.

And there's a lot of people that are in low points, like going through divorces, you know, maybe just getting out of jail, maybe just getting sober, whatever, and reading my book and going, here's somebody that's like pretty successful. And here's the messy, curvy road he took to get here. It's not a straight line.

It's a lot of this, a lot of mistakes, and then coming back, a lot of mistakes, you know, like you said in the beginning, like my sobriety hasn't been this like perfect.

Oh, I got sober and then never did anything again.

I mean, even there's even a point where after my divorce, a doctor prescribed me medication and I just took it and it, you know, and I shouldn't have because it was, you know, it was anti anxiety medicine and, you know, sleep aides and then, you know, then my body's like, all of these are amazing.

“Like we should just keep taking these, you know, and that's, that's what an addict does, right?”

They like, oh, this, I feel so good. Like it makes me feel so, I don't know, I don't feel anxious anymore. I can sleep perfectly. But yeah, you're going to keep making mistakes and the key is just to keep failing forward.

So I say, you know, fail forward, you know.

And for the person who is listening to this or watching and feels stuck, they're inspired by what you've shared today, but they just, they're stuck. They don't know. What do I do first? How do I break this pattern?

How do I get out of this rut that I'm in? What is the advice?

“Start fresh every Monday, pick a 30 minute goal, try to do 30 minutes of something every day.”

Whatever that is, if it's walking, if it's jogging, if it's riding a bike, swimming, some sort of movement.

If you're injured and you can't move and, you know, pick something that uses your brain,

write a journal, read a book, do something to like try to improve yourself and do it 30 minutes every day. And put a smile on your face, and put a smile on your face, trying to find that positive. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah, thank you.

This is appreciate it. Yeah, this is great. It's super nice to meet you. Your book is fantastic. Everybody pick it up right away.

“Your favorite independent book seller, Amazon or wherever you.”

Unfortunately, I'm published. Oh, that's right. So Amazon is the worst to get it. I mean, you can get signed copies on my website, but yeah, Amazon has me on a chokehold right now.

And get yourself one of these smile hats. Yes. There you go. Cool, man. We'll come back and share more of your adventures.

I will. I'm sure we could talk for another couple hours. But I'm a fan and I'll be cheering for you. Thank you. I'm a fan as well.

Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Peace. Peace. Plants.