Barbell Shrugged - Running the Sahara Desert and Scaling Everest w/ Charlie Engle  — Barbell Shrugged - 344

Episode Date: October 6, 2018

Charlie Engle is an ultramarathon runner, an adventure-seeker, a global explorer, and a philanthropist. He's also a recovering crack addict, a convicted felon, and a man driven to the edge of human endurance and achievement.   Charlie is the author of Running Man: A Memoir of Ultra-Endurance, a gripping, vivid, gritty, funny, unforgettable memoir chronicling his globe-spanning races, his record-breaking 4500-mile run across the Sahara Desert, his decade long struggle with addiction, and an unfortunate stint in federal prison for mortgage fraud.   In this episode, we talk about how Charlie went from doing crack cocaine to ultra marathons, whether running is a healthy addiction, how Charline ran two marathons a day for 111 straight days, the chronicles of starting a foundation with Matt Damon for clean drinking water, and more.   Note from Charlie: Please visit water.org to raise awareness for global water crisis.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_engle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and get a box FREE with your first purchase @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase @vuori - www.vuoriclothing.com “SHRUGGED25” to save 25% storewide ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

family we're back another saturday edition of shrugged um we're hanging out with charlie ingle we made him we met him in tahoe this weekend and holy crap this guy ran a marathon in the morning a marathon in the afternoon for 111 straight days across the Sahara Desert. You know what else is cool? I've watched the documentary that was filmed about his adventure across the Sahara, and I knew that I kind of knew who this person was, but I didn't really know. And then I met him, and I kind of didn't really, I don't know.

It felt like maybe we had been friends in some distant past life. And then he told me that he ran the Sahara, and I knew exactly who he was. And then I get really stoked on these things because these people are gangsters that do this thing. Like two marathons a day? A marathon is just like how he thinks of time. Like, oh, that's about a marathon. Holy crap. Couldn't even imagine.

But what is really epic about doing things like this is that when you finish them, you inspire the hell out of a lot of people. And now he has a foundation with Matt Damon and he's doing really really cool things I hope you guys enjoyed the interview I had a blast meeting Charlie I was not really expecting a lot mainly because I it was like a long-distance ultra marathoner and there's few fewer people that I have less in common with than um ultra marathoners I don't understand that at all um and then when I got to know him and we started

interviewing him and all the things man I was so impressed and I wish we had like two and a half hours to talk to him but we were getting he was getting kicked out we were getting kicked out he had other things to do because he's big big shot at the Spartan World Championships and he had to go but awesome interview I'm really stoked that we got to meet him and just what a blast. Make sure you get over to the program vault shrug collective dot com forward slash vault 11 programs you've got three long-term

programs olympic weightlifting you've got the crossfits you've got the mass gains all the things that you need to get super small strong fast healthy all the things um eight short-term programs i hope you guys love it 47 a month a month, 11 programs, membership site, shrugcollective.com forward slash vault. Get in there. Hope you enjoy the show. I'm going to talk to you about not having a podcast. If you're on 52 shows a year, you basically have your own that everyone else pays for. You turned me up just then.

Hold on. I'm playing with it. I'm so blown out. Do you know what, dude? That is actually funny. I'll let you pay for my podcast. Yeah. And I'll just talk about whatever I want on with it. I'm so blown. Do you know what, dude? That is actually funny. I'll let you pay for my podcast. Yeah. And I'll just talk about whatever I want on your show.

And every week what I do is I post. Yeah. The problem is they'd be asking me the same questions, so we'd be talking about the same shit every week. Well, if you're a guest on the show, it's actually more powerful because I'm going to ask you and I just hang out and learn. Yeah, and so what I am. So the goal is actually to get your message out.

When I come on your podcast, I'm actually interviewing you. I'm talking to you. And then your podcast ends up being you and my podcast ends up being you. Oh, I like that. You flip the role. Because otherwise, all I'm doing is 52 weeks a year answering the same questions. Not the same questions, but, you know, in general, what have you done? Who are you?

It turns in. That's the biggest problem with all the podcasting right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can come on and interview the host. I'm just going to make up some shit today. Let's do it. Just to be different.

Are you ready? Yeah. Now that you've said that, that means the show's ready to start. 100%. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. My name is Anders Varner. We're at the Podfest. Is that what that's called? Podfest. Pod means the show's ready to start. 100%. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. My name is Anders Varner. We're at the Podfest. Is that what that's called?

Podfest. Podfest. World Championships. Look, they put all these people that run podcasts in like a cage back here. Fluorescent lights. It's gorgeous outside. We're in Lake Tahoe, California, hanging out with Doug Larson. Charlie Engel, you just got off a stage.

I think it was a stage. I did. Leadership talk. I did. Yeah. You've got some trail stage. I think it was a stage. I did. Leadership talk. I did. Yeah. You've got some trail running things kicking off here. I do. You know, so Spartan is known for obstacle course racing.

Pop this up just a little bit. There you go. Just like that. You're known for obstacle course racing. But in Joe DeSena's infinite wisdom, you know, of extent. I've heard that a lot. Just in the first 24 hours of being here. Joe is an idea guy.

That guy's different. He's an idea guy. Yeah. No, he's, you know, he's one of those people that puts out the big ideas. And he is, he's gotten to a point, I think, in his career that he can throw it out there. So we started talking about Spartan Trail trail you know and just it they're known for obstacle course racing a lot of people don't want to jump over shit and get muddy you know they also don't want to run a road race where there's there's pound exactly for 26 miles exactly

and you know ultra running which is sort of my background which i'm sure we'll talk about ultra running is really where uh these days you know 50 milers 100 milers i mean they've it's just grown it's just blown up they're everywhere but what what's not everywhere actually is like a 10k trail race right or a half marathon trail race and so that's what spartan trail is going to be so we're that's really interesting that that's the case because because trail running in my opinion like not being a runner i was really enjoyed trail running i'll go for a trail run no problem but but i don't want to go for for a 10 mile race or not race but like run just on my own just going for a jog but if i'm if i'm close to some trails and i'm running around the woods that sounds awesome i can't believe nobody's like

nobody's really pushed this forward made a big thing yet trail running's actually become the most fun training that i'm doing probably over the last like 18 months of just my my life i hated running for so long i hated it because the pavement sucks yeah but if you get out into the into the woods and you breathe and especially california in the desert now it's 110 degrees out there it's fantastic to run from the fires unfortunately but you know i mean well the thing is you know picture where you run your trails most of the time and then try to picture 800 people being on that trail at one time it is a little complicated so you do have to have the right venues so the cool thing about spartan trail is that we're doing it at already existing spartan venues so we're not doing it here at tahoe this year but my guess is next year we will. And you can just imagine.

Yes, you've got this amazing course right here, but we could take people off on trails heading the complete opposite direction. We could accommodate a couple thousand people. Especially here. It's incredible stuff. to, of course, to further the Spartan brand, but more than anything, bring people into the Spartan tribe who, you know, who, again, are maybe intimidated by doing, you know, having to jump over a wall or doing burpees. And, you know, the Spartan Trail Race will be true to the brand in the sense that it's going to be, you know, my hope is that it rains a couple days before the trail race you know the first one is actually october 13th in virginia in errington virginia during you know it'll be on that saturday morning starting at the same time as some of the spartan races it's just the trail runners will go

off one way and uh the regular spartan racers will go off the other way and you know it'll be a cool way what happens at these races too a lot of times is the maybe one person in a couple wants to come do the obstacle course race and very often the other person is athletic yeah so this gives you know both of them something to do you were saying you hope it you hope it rains was that was that kind of implying that you you guys want this to be something that's not just like a casual trail run. You want this to be in line with the Spartan brand. This thing needs to be really, really tough. If somebody does the Spartan Trail half marathon,

the last thing I want them thinking about or talking about when they get home is what their time was. Because who cares? Who cares? I mean, because the course is not going to be some smooth trail. Every course is different, I imagine. People are going to be on rocks and roots and mud. And, you know, in the east and half of the United States right now, there's, thanks to the hurricane and other things, there's trees down everywhere.

So I just scouted these trails last week. And there's, you know, in a half marathon, you're going to have to go over 10 or 12 over, under, through, you know, some trees and some mud. And, you know some trees and some mud and and it and you know what and those are those are the stories that we want to tell yeah when we're done with actually like what brings people i think to these events is like they're overcoming this big thing like i the first one i ever did i was actually kind of let down because i thought i was going to be jumping over this like gigantic flaming pit and then i i'm not going to name what company that was but i got to the flame and i was

like i wanted the flame where's the big flame but they come to this like this everybody i haven't done any of these spartan races so this is the very first one and everybody has literally freaked me out over the last 24 hours about how unprepared i am to go get my ass kicked tomorrow well you know what here's the other thing though I, and I tell people all the time about Spartan, which is something I love so much. Nobody cares how you do except for you. You know, you're, you're, you're basically anonymous. There's 10,000 people here. It's going to be wave after wave after wave. And so when you're out there, there you know it's really just you watching you and you against the course and you know as a runner my background is you

know is running and I've done pretty well at a lot of big races and so if I was to finish you know last in a big 100 miler you know I'd get I'd get a hundred messages saying what's you know what's wrong you know are you sick are you injured like what's happening if know, what's wrong? You know, are you sick? Are you injured? Like what's happening? If I finished last, like tomorrow, nobody cares. And as an athlete too, though, and I think this is, um, philosophically, this is a really a great point. And that is, it's safer for me to go do a run, right? I mean, it's way safer for me to go do a marathon or a half or 50 miler or something in the trails. Just because you have a background in ultras. Yeah, I know I can do that,

right? So when I step out here tomorrow, you know, what do I actually have to gain? Well, what I have to gain is this, you know, my belief is, you know, surviving anything, getting through difficult things isn't about being, same person you were at the end of it, especially if it's self-inflicted suffering. We're choosing to do this race. Nobody's forcing us, right? Totally. Maybe somebody's forcing you guys.

I don't know. So you're choosing to do this race. Doug's making me do it. I'm making Anders do it. That's right. So you can't very well blame anyone else. He intentionally told me to not be prepared. Right, right. Don't worry about the goo packs. He intentionally told me to not be prepared. Right, right.

Don't worry about the goo packs. No big deal. You'll be fine without any carbohydrates. My only piece of advice, just start slow and taper off. That's what everybody says. Start slow and taper off. That's great. Pretend you're hiking for like the first two hours.

Yeah. You know what you want at the end of this thing? Whether you realize it or not, but I know you guys do, you want to be empty at the end of this thing, you know, you, you, whether you realize it or not, but I know you guys do, you know, you want to be empty at the end of this thing. Like you want, you want to cross that finish line and actually be thinking, not just thank God that's over. Yeah. Um, which will absolutely be one thought. Um, but also, uh, you know, that, that it took everything you had to get through it and, and's cliche, but you left everything out there. And it's just, you know, people avoid, you know, they avoid hardship way too often. Comfort is so overrated.

We don't learn anything from comfort. And this is controlled, safe suffering. You know, you're going to go out here. You're not going to die. You know, no matter how badly it goes will it will make you a better person it will make you have a greater understanding of yourself and humility is good for all of us right and it's fun to watch really amazing some of the people you'll see tomorrow you just won't freaking believe how easy they make this stuff look.

I actually think at the extremes, being too physically comfortable isn't good for your mental health. I think there's, especially like you said, this is self-inflicted physical suffering. Like we're doing this, we're choosing to actively, you know, no one's making us do it. I think consciously doing things like this is really good for people's mental and emotional health, just as it's good for their physical health. If you're pushing yourself to the limit, then it's very hard not to be present and engaged in that moment where you're not thinking about your bills, you're not thinking about whatever conflict might be in your life, or the person who is sick that you hope is doing better. You're just present in that moment when you're truly pushing yourself,

especially when you're outdoors, you're in the sun, you're around people that you really enjoy being around. We'll run the race with the Anders and a couple of friends tomorrow. It's hard for me to not be thinking about anything except for exactly what I'm doing in that moment. I think that's really good for people's emotional and mental health. You said that incredibly well. It's this idea that we spend so much of our lives trying to control everything, right?

Because we do have bills and we have families and you have a schedule. You guys have stuff to do and you need to try to stick to that. So much of it is about control. When the gun goes off tomorrow and you do your, you know, your yells in the starting corral and you get into this, uh, this mindset, the second you step away from that start line, you're out of control. Yeah. Well, you know, you really are, you, you are, you are no longer in control and that's such a, you know, being able to thrive in, in chaos and randomness is really the, I think it's the greatest strength that we can develop. And yet so many people, you know, try to arrange their lives in a way where everything is controlled

and there's no, there's very little that happens that's random. And if it does, it throws them off. You know, at work, I tell people regularly too, you know, regularly too, you should actually hope for a shakeup in management or how else are you going to differentiate yourself from other people? If that's what you need to do to progress in what you're doing, if things aren't chaotic. Yeah, there has to be chaos to be able to weave through something or it's too structured, too systematic. If everybody's doing great, you're going to be stuck right where you are. One more rung up on that ladder. Yeah, yeah. But all this stuff kind of came, this overcoming adversity thing was not just something you found out on the mountain.

Your whole platform is built off of kind of overcoming addiction recovery. It is. So, I mean, I'll give you the short version, but in my, I went to college at UNC Chapel Hill as a 17-year-old freshman a long time ago. And, you know, I had had that sort of dream-like high school career, you know, captain of the sports teams and top 10 in my class and, you know, dated the cheerleaders. And, you know, I was the man. And so I get to college. He still is. He still is.

He's still dating cheerleaders. Cheerleaders love him. Yes. He actually has a whole harem of cheerleaders behind us right now. You just can't see it. Only when my wife lets me. Yeah. Which is occasionally, I'm happy to say.

I still dabble in cheerleaders. You're doing it right. But, you know, I get there, and it's like I fully expect there to be a banner on the dorm that says, you know, welcome, Charlie. You know, and after about a week, what I actually figured out was just how freaking average I was. There's 4,000 other freshmen there who have the exact same resume yeah you know that I did and what I found though was I was like an incredible all-american first team drinker and that's the path one thing good about college they will let you drink forever that's the path that shows no

and so that's that's where I went and needless to, it wasn't good for, you know, a really successful college career. But, you know, I ended up from 19 to 29. You know, I'm old enough that basically it was, you know, the 80s were the cocaine decade. I mean, it was pretty much ubiquitous. It's still out there, but it was sort of like the, you know, it was everywhere, you know, and I was an addict and I was a very high achieving guy. You know, I led every company during my 20s, you know, in sales because as an addict, you know, I needed to do that so that I could balance on this side. And people couldn't say, well, look what a screw up you are. Was this like a weekend thing or like a Tuesday afternoon lines?

No, I was, yeah. So any opportunity, you know, if there was a chance to. At some level, it's like performance enhancing when you're in sales. Absolutely. You are on fire. Absolutely. No, and I mean, it's an inevitable crash. And that crash happened over and over again.

And my joke used to be that, you know, well, the boss can't fire the best salesman. And that, that absolutely turned out not to be true. Eventually, you know, eventually everybody has, has had enough. Yeah. And so, you know, you know, quitting, as I like to say, quitting was easy. I did it a hundred times, you know, so I quit over and over and over. That's the last time. I'm never going to do that again. And then I'll just cut to the chase. So my first son was born when I was 29 years old.

And, you know, I knew I actually counted on him to be my savior. Like he was going to save me because I finally, this was finally going to be this human being that was going to count on me to actually be a dad and a person and all that. So I couldn't possibly continue this destructive behavior. And, you know, a couple of months into it, I had, I had done well and my wife at the time, his mom and my son, Brett came to to visit me I was on a job in Kansas and they came and spent a week and it was like this the most amazing week of my life you know I'm I'm I know you have kids you have kids also 13 week old oh well what look who I'm talking to right so you know I'm learning all this right now so you're holding this little baby right and like it makes

you want to you just like I'm I'm getting goosebumps now just thinking about it. And I have this place where as an addict, you know, I just thought I was broken. And I have this place where I now have all this love to give. And I feel this, you know, completely unbiased, unjudging love coming back from this little baby. So I'm never going to use again. I take my wife and my son, and I drop them off at the airport in Wichita after the best week of my life, and I drive straight to the hood, and I spend the next six days smoking crack and killing myself. And it was like that was when I realized nobody.

Hold on. Crack is a really aggressive jump. Indeed. Indeed. That was a switch that just happened. Hold on a second. Crack is a really aggressive jump. Indeed. Indeed. That was a switch that just happened. Hold on a second, Crack. Cocaine is like a thing that people, like you're, if you're in a circle, you've probably seen that before. Going to the hood and finding crack, when does that step happen?

Because that is, that's like a, you're like, oh, fuck, I made it to the crack house. I'll take exactly when it happens. I'll take exactly when it happens. I'll take exactly when it happens. It happens when you travel, as I did for a living, and you go out on the streets looking for drugs, basically, and finding powder cocaine from your local dealer that you've bought from for years is no problem. But if you're going to show up in some strange city, the place to go is, you know, I'd always say, you know, where should I go in this city?

Not for drugs, but like, you know, and people would say, oh, there's this great bar over here, but whatever you do, don't go down to, you know, Colfax in Denver. You know, don't go down there. Actually, that's exactly where I'm going. Right. I'm like, okay, I'm like, just so I'm sure where to stay away from. Can you tell me where that is exactly and so you know and so that's where that it just became it was a much easier drug to get

and it was cheap and it was awful and unfortunately you know the second I tried it it became you know it's like it planted a flag in my brain and claimed that territory. And it it man, it's awful. It's awful. And I mean, what's happening today in the country is is a similar thing with with so many people in their 20s, especially in teenagers. You know, this this opioid fentanyl crisis is like the real deal. And it's cheap and it's easy to get and it's awful. But anyway, so there I am in Wichita. And at the end of six days, I'm sitting on the ground outside of a dumpy motel

that's like 15 bucks a night that I can no longer pay for. And I'm watching the police go through my car. And there's three bullet holes in the car and you know and it's from it's from somebody shooting at me like it wasn't an ad they were shooting at my car like they were shooting at me and it really was one of those moments or the moment why were they shooting at you just drugs drug deal you know i was i had money i you know i it's one of the things you keep i've never been shot at so i don't know yeah it's not it's not good yeah i had one go right into the door the driver's door

and it like grazed my pants and yeah so it was it was real and i'm watching this when i knew i was in trouble i'm watching this cop you know sort of search my vehicle and he reaches under the seat and he pulls out this crack pipe and you know he holds it up and he like turns around and looks at me and shakes his head and i like that that moment of just such painful judgment and embarrassment and humiliation for me yet all i could really think of about was like so that's where that was yeah like i looked for that thing for an hour yeah frantically i wanted to make light of it but that was when i said okay you know i have a choice you know i have a choice between

living and dying right now and and i i chose running is what i chose what are some of the wait let's back up for a second did you end up spending time in in jail or prison as a result of no and finding that or what happened with that no you know and i mean not to go off on a tangent if i was um you know if i'd been african-american i certainly would have but you know not to you know not to go too deeply down that social yeah but you know i was a i was a still moderately clean-cut white guy you know driving through the hood in a in a a Toyota 4Runner. And, you know, it was a double standard completely. And, you know, there really wasn't anything,

you know, technically I didn't commit a crime that they witnessed having drug paraphernalia. They certainly could have, and actually they may have written me like a, a ticket, but, you know, for that, there was nothing they could have really done about it. And, you know, and actually they may have written me like a, a ticket, but you know, for that, there was nothing they could have really done about it. And, you know, and thankfully, do you tell your wife about that right away? Or is that like, I'll just keep that to myself. By that point in my marriage, and that was my first marriage, you know, by that point, um, you know, she knew when I, when I basically fell off the face of the earth for two, three, four days at a time, we were way beyond her wondering what I was doing.

And, you know, it was terrible. It was a terrible way to live and unsustainable. The best part about it, and it sounds crazy to say it this way, is that I learned about true suffering during 10 years of addiction and everything that's come after that, even some really shitty things pale in comparison to, you know, just the depths of, of, of laying there in a, in a bed after a four day binge, knowing I, you know, spent all my family's money and my money and, and, you know, I've just destroyed myself again and I have to start over again. And I have to tell all these people, I promise I'll never do that again. You know, and I mean it. Yeah. That's the thing about an addict. You know,

when you're in that moment, that terrible moment, you mean it when you say I'm never doing that again, because why would you yeah who would voluntarily crush themselves in that way and humiliate themselves but three days later you feel good again it's like well you know i can just have two beers despite the fact that in you know 10 years of drinking i've never had just two beers yeah you know but i still but that's what the addict brain says when you kind of look back on that, like what, I guess, what were you missing in your life that you were filling with the drugs? Yeah. No, it's a great, you know, it is a hole.

And I think part of it is certainly genetic. I was a good, solid fourth generation, you know, alcoholic addict. And there is a lot of science that says that there is certainly a genetic aspect to it it doesn't mean if you're you know parents or grandparents were that you're going to be but you certainly like any disease you have a greater likelihood yeah and you know what i don't you know i don't know you know i grew up uh an only child in a in a pretty bohemian sort of hippie household with super young parents 18 years old and and um you know I I did I spent my life my early life trying to figure out how to be relevant how to be somebody and I found you know I found that drugs what they did is they they so when I started

running and then we're going to start talking about that in a second when I started running I sort of ran like an addict too yeah I was going to get to that because I feel like so many people attack fitness in the similar way of and we kind of come from this this crossfit side of strength conditioning and it's not too hard to find people that you're like hold on you need to back this thing down a little bit yeah find a little balance and i'll bet some of them were you know had been alcoholics or addicts or and they make that change and that switch flips yeah and you know i spent the first three years of my running after i finally quit drinking and doing drugs running like a maniac. I mean, I ran 30 marathons.

I ran, and people said, you know, didn't you just, it seems like you just switched addictions. Is there a similarity kind of between the two highs? of mine that actually had a near-death experience from an overdose and started running as soon as she kind of got healed and out of recovery and it's a very similar story in that like running kind of replaces that thing and then are the are the highs very similar and kind of the struggle that you go through in that absolutely but there But there's a huge distinction, and people have said, you know, when someone says, aren't you just addicted to running now, very often, especially early on, I took great offense to that because I felt like they were saying, you know,

aren't you still a fuck-up, basically. That's what I heard. Yeah, right. You know, you're still that same person, and now, you know, you're still just you're still that same person. And now, you know, you're, you're, you're still just, you know, you just put it all here, but it took me a little while to figure it out, you know, as a runner, uh, well, as an addict, my goal was to be invisible. Uh, I wanted to feel nothing. I wanted to be, I wanted to hide. That's all I wanted was to not be noticed and not feel anything.

As a runner, it could not be any more opposite. So while I may have, especially in those early years, I may have run sort of addictively. I felt everything because there's nowhere to hide. You're going out to run a marathon or a hundred mile or, when you hit that and doing CrossFit too, you know, when you, when you hit the, you know, seventh set of, you know, squats, there's no hiding anymore. I don't care what, you know, I don't care what drug you have in your system. I don't care if you were, you know, drunk out there, like you're, there's nowhere to hide any longer with from that pain and that was illuminating for me like i loved that well when uh when people say things like that like you you were addicted to cocaine and now you're addicted to running like when i think about addiction when i the one of the

defining aspects of addiction that i've heard is that you continue to do something despite all the negative outcomes it's producing and the negative outcomes that running was producing for you was probably not even anywhere in the same ballpark that the negative from the negative outcomes that you're experiencing I never got fired because of running right and no one shot you and I could always find my car after a night of running I never one time lost my car whereas after a night of running, I never one time lost my car. Whereas after a whole lot of binges, I would walk out of some place going, where in the hell did I park? And why don't I even have my keys?

So even if you're running with some level of compulsion, it's still not – I wouldn't think about it as being addicted in the same way at all. I have something that I think you'll appreciate though too. And that is this. And, and I ran those years, those early years, every single time I ran, I ran as hard as I could. Like I, what I was trying to do in hindsight was like run the addict out of me. I wanted to, if I could have taken a knife and just literally like, if I could find it, I would have sliced that part of me out and discarded it. It took me those years to realize that in fact, the addict, like that part of my personality is all the best parts of me. Like if I didn't have that, all of a sudden I'd be some blob over in the corner with a, with a remote control in my hand or a video game console, you know, doing nothing but that all day, every day.

And so the gift of still behaving somewhat like an addict, but again, without all the incredibly negative consequences, allowed me, it also allowed me to learn. It helped me learn moderation. What I also found was humility in that, like, I was a good runner. I was breaking three hours in the marathon and all of that. So I always tell people, you know, so I was running like 250 marathons. And so when I would go to Boston, that meant like I was 700th. So it's not like all of a sudden I was like winning the Boston Marathon. You know, I was still. It's like your college career, though.

It's like you get to college and all of a sudden it's like, oh, everybody's smart. Yeah. Everybody's fast. Yeah. And then you go to the Boston Marathon. It's like, oh, everyone's really, really fast. Yeah. But now you have the actual coping mechanisms to kind of deal with that a lot better than going to the bar. Well, and then what I found out almost accidentally is, you know, with the really longer stuff,

once I started entering 50-milers and 100-milers and multi-day races. So you did crack again. Right. Just on the trail, yeah. Yeah, no doubt. And what I figured out in those cases, though, was that all of a sudden the playing field was very much leveled for me. And again, this is totally, I'm looking at you two guys, and I couldn't lift a quarter of what you guys do. But if we picked a lighter weight and said, okay, let's see who can do 1,000 reps, I would then have at least a chance of,

there would come a point where you I would then have at least a chance of, you know, there would come a point where you guys would be way ahead or, you know, whatever. And then it would probably slowly come that way. And maybe I'd even manage it, but I need, I need something to be awful and difficult. And when I enter a race, I actually want, and like you guys will get, you'll get this wish for yourselves tomorrow at this Spartan race. I want at some point to want to quit. Yeah. Like I want to reach that point where I'm done. I'm just done.

And then find a way to continue moving. Well, in talking to a bunch of people around here, it was kind of like the progression of it always starts in like a physical capacity. And then there's a mental component to it of like having to push forward. And then one of the girls yesterday that I was talking to kind of started to get a little bit emotional. Like the spiritual journey that she kind of goes through on the mountain and seeing people struggling, overcoming their own adversities, getting through the obstacles. And it was really like being my first one that I'm going to do tomorrow. It's a very cool thing to see that people are able to kind of use this thing that is this Spartan thing and really find themselves out on the mountains

because we're not like you talk about being comfortable. We're super comfortable in our daily lives, and we have to go find these events to really test our own merit and find out what we're capable of doing. Well, I'll ask you. I've got a question for you. So when is the last time that you can identify that you tried something this new, when you had a first like this?

Oh, yeah. I mean, maybe it happened last week. I don't know. But, like, is there something that you could say that you've done? Yeah, I actually try to do things like this all the time. Okay. As much as possible. But it's only, like, so when I was really heavy into the CrossFit thing,

there was no way I would look at this and be like, this is stupid. Why would I ever run? I'm going to mess up my CrossFit. Yeah, exactly. But since I've been done competing, yeah, like, I try and find as many things as possible because learning is like the coolest thing in the world to me now. Well, the hardest part for you tomorrow, and I mean for both of you, and you guys seem like you're very aware guys though,

is you're going to be jacked up tomorrow and all that. And what I always tell people when they take a step back, like I actually believe that we all sort of live our lives chasing firsts, right? First girlfriend, first car, first job, first, you know, we, we, we love for me first drug. Like I basically spent 10 years chasing that first high because nothing is ever like that again. And you, you all, you really can't recreate it exactly because it's, because it's new and you don't know what to expect. So you guys get the beauty tomorrow of

doing something that is, um, not foreign to you because you do, this is a lot about strength and agility and stuff that you're used to, but combined with running and a mountain and a lot of other people. And if you can be fully present as much as possible and, and like really appreciate almost in a meditative way, you know, what you're going through and where you are and taking that even just 60 seconds before the race begins and a few deep breaths and look around and just just you know pull in all that energy it's it's so powerful the idea of like these sportsmen is almost something that i really almost have started to like it's like oh let's go run 13 miles of a mountain okay i'm so unprepared for tomorrow which i didn't even know about but when people

like say these things it's like okay cool like i'm in good shape i'd like to do that um are you doing other events or is running still kind of the the center and then spartan clearly has its obstacles and things but ocr and and running is that still your main it is it is absolutely and and you know i still uh we were talking before we started today about a big project i have coming up so a lot of things i'm doing are sort of in support of that these days and i'll i'll tell you about that but um for the most part i like to run you know i like to run ultras and i like to how many have you done oh man i've probably done 75 ultras have you done the what's man. I've probably done 75 ultras.

Have you done the, what's like the 200, what's like the gnarliest distance that we've? Yeah, so these days, actually one of the latest things has been these 200-mile races. Actually, right where we are, there's one called the Tahoe Rim Trail. Cool. And it's literally a 200-mile foot race around Lake Tahoe. And I've not done that one, but 200 is the new 100, apparently. So a race that I've done a lot is there's a race called Badwater, which is in Death Valley in July. Oh, yeah.

Every year. You guys are sick. I've done that one a bunch of times. You're twisted people out there. There's no air. It's just hot. No, it's just hot. You have to wear the, like, four-inch shoes.

200-degree surface temperatures. Terrifying. You know, the thing is, though, like, if you're going to do something, right, why not maximize? And it's funny. I tell the story very often about when I was early in my running career, I thought for sure I would be that guy who, who did like 150 marathons and I'd be the old guy kind of leaning to the left and crooked. And you know, I'm 80 and I'm still running a marathon. And I was totally satisfied with that like image of me. I'm thinking this is awesome. And I reached a point though, where I realized I got to the start line

and sure. There's this idea. If you step up to the start line, if you're trying to run your best time, there's a challenge in that. But I got to the start line knowing I'm going to finish this race. It might take me three hours. It might take me four hours. It depends on how my day goes. But I missed that feeling of not knowing if I could do it. Like, I mean, the cool thing is for you guys about tomorrow, you're both, you know, tough, strong guys. And, and I have no doubt you'll, you'll get to the finish line. My guess is you have a little doubt

that you'll get to the finish. I don't know if you do or not, but I don't know. But what a great, oh man, what a, that's like the best feeling to step up to something and not know. It's less like I wonder if I'll get to the finish line. It's like I'm very confident I'll get to the finish line barring like a catastrophic injury. Sure. But it's more like how is it going to go? It's not going to be easy, but how hard is it going to be? It's going to be hard, but how hard is like the big question? Like how cold am I going to be? Like what's the weather going to be easy, but how hard is it going to be? It's going to be hard, but how hard is the big question?

How cold am I going to be? What's the weather going to be like? That type of thing. I'm not used to that aspect of it. What do I wear? Am I going to be super hot in the sun and it's 75 degrees out, but now I have long pants and I'm fucking just sweating my balls off? Or is it going to actually end up raining and we're in the mountains

and now we're in the shade and we just like went swimming and in ice cold mountain water and i'm just like for like the next three hours like just freezing cold like those are the the unknowns that are more interesting to me than the fact that i just have to run for a couple hours that's a great i mean you guys have the life experience and you've done you know you've done plenty of hard things i appreciate the the value in value in doing that. And I mean, that's what I always encourage people to do is like, what do you, you know, what are you waiting for? Like, what, what is it? Like, if you want to get into CrossFit, get into CrossFit, what, what are you going to, you got to get in shape to get into CrossFit or you got to get in shape to, to start training for a marathon. Screw that, you know,

just start, just start. I mean, and if you go run your first marathon or if, you know, whatever happens tomorrow, I actually guarantee that you guys will, you know, you'll thrive. You'll not be the same at the end. Well, you've got some big

projects coming up. We're going to take a quick break. And I want to hear about the training because this adventure you're about to go on is pretty pretty epic yeah awesome we'll be back in a second all right shrug fam i told you this guy's a gangster two marathons a day that's insane andy used to do crack yeah used to do crack i don't know which one's more intense i couldn't even imagine doing crack scariest thing ever starbucks coffee is a lot for me to handle. Crack, I couldn't even fathom. Terrifying.

But I love it when people turn their lives around. Very cool. Muscle gain challenge. You want to get super swole? 26 pounds, 26 weeks. That's the goal. Mass gain challenge. Get over to, or muscle gain challenge, sorry.

Get over to themuscle challenge sorry get over to the musclegainchallenge.com download the free ebook how to get strong now see we make things super simple for you right you want to get strong now okay i'll write the ebook called how to get strong now then you read it then you do the muscle gain challenge then you get yoked 26 pounds 26 weeks biceps the size of arnold's quads the size of pokalski's mouth the size of mine yeah right good luck there's no ebook for that that's a lifetime of dedication get over to the musclegainchallenge.com right now download the free ebook how to get strong now and now back to the show welcome back to barbell shrugged we are hanging out with charlie angle you have some really epic

um adventures coming up in your life but in the break wait a minute let's back up for a second yeah in the break you just told us that you ran across the sahara Desert. And we – Wait, hasn't everyone? Sahara Desert? Yeah. Wait, did they make a documentary about you? Indeed. I've watched you. Oh, really?

Yeah, running the Sahara. That's it. You're on Netflix. That's me. I know you now. Yeah. That's so radical. This literally just became like the coolest day ever.

I've only had this happen to me twice. We were interviewing one of the very first shows I ever did. We were interviewing this guy named Ben Pekulski. And I was literally like, I know you, dude. Like, why do I know you? Like, the whole time I was just sitting there like, have we hung out before? And then, like, halfway through the interview, he's like, oh, yeah, I'm most known for being in Generation Iron 2. And I was like, oh, you don't know me, but I've watched that movie like 12 times.

I have totally watched you running the Sahara. That's incredible. Now we have some stuff to talk about. Let's go. That was a bad idea. I'm totally watching that when I get home. Oh, we can watch this tonight. It's awesome.

Okay, I'm game. Yeah. So tell us about that real quick. You know, the Sahara came around because another weird note about my background is so I worked in television production for a number of years. What haven't you done? Man, I was a producer. Who are you? I was a shooter and producer on Extreme Makeover Home Edition, if you ever used to watch that show.

I know about that. I didn't watch it. But anyway. But I was running a tremendous amount, doing a lot of races, and I did this race in the Amazon jungle where a guy that was out there. Amazon jungle. Dang. Sahara Desert.

Check. This guy just randomly said, this guy just said, hey, I wonder, he had been to the Sahara Desert doing a 100-mile race like the year before, and he's like, I wonder if anybody's ever, he had been to the Sahara Desert doing a 100-mile race like the year before. And he's like, I wonder if anybody's ever run all the way across the Sahara. And I literally looked at him and said, that is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Like, why? It's impossible.

Like, you can't. There's no water. You can't do that. There's no water. Yeah, all the reasons. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I got home and I researched and I figured out that, you know, as it turns out it turns out for pretty good reason no one ever had run across the sahara and so well the sahara desert's like as big as a like yeah it's like a who knew africa was that big who knew africa like

the whole u.s on sahara desert i don't know if that's true but it's very big no it's 5 000 miles yeah the map makes africa look like it's kind of like the same size as like America. Yeah. Not even close. You could put all the continents probably like in Africa. It's one and a half times or even twice. The whole continent twice as big as, you know, it's just huge. So I start planning this thing.

And you know what I started doing was really just telling people. And I think this is a powerful thing, hopefully for some of your listeners and for you guys. Saying something out loud is a whole lot different than thinking about it, right? You got to talk about it. It makes it real. Yeah. I started telling people, I'm going to be the first person to run across the Sierra Desert. And I had done enough wacky things up to that point that people weren't, that you couldn't totally discount me.

Yeah. But most of them were like you're insane you can't do it it's not possible it's too it's too hot you can't get resupplied the sand's too deep all the reasons did you ever make like a cool joke you're like oh i'm gonna go on this like soft sand run because like living at the beach people like oh yeah i went on like a soft sand run yeah across the sahara well a friend of mine actually said one of the my most memorable lines of someone ridiculing me was he said, why don't you just say you're going to swim to the moon?

But anyway, ultimately, I kept talking about it. And, you know, it's a weird thing when you take possession of an idea and you're surrounded by people, even your friends. And this is actually a serious comment. You can't assume that everyone actually supports what you're doing. It's a strange human nature thing because, and I'll flip it over to addiction. When I got sober, my initial instinct was to get all my drunk friends and try to get them sober too. Look at this amazing new life that I have. And they're like, piss off. Yeah and they're like all they're like piss off

and right and so overachiever you think you're better than us yeah exactly well so years later of course as i'm sober my life is actually you know livable as compared to what it used to be many of those guys and and girls came to me and said you know know, I want to change my life because it is a better life. So running the Sahara, I let other people take sole possession of the impossibility of it. You know, and every time someone told me it wasn't possible, I felt myself dig in. And I was at least going to continue to do whatever I could to make it happen. And I won't give you the long version of the story, but I actually... No, you can.

Well, I managed to get a... I've watched the whole documentary. Dude, I managed to get a meeting with a guy named James Mall, who's a director who had won the Academy Award for Best Documentary a couple years earlier for a totally different kind of film. And I got a meeting with him, and I was late, and my pitch sucked, and it was just like the worst thing ever. I'm sweating all over his office.

How could your pitch suck? Hey, I'm going to run the Sahara Desert. But to ask someone to spend money on that is a little like, okay. I'm going to need a billion dollars. Usually the answer I get is, okay, you go do it and film it and then bring it to us. They make these things called GoPros. Have fun. So at the end of the meeting, I thought maybe I could get a student director

or somebody that he could recommend that might get on board this project. And at the end of the meeting, he stood up and put out his hand and said, I'll do it. I'm like, what do you mean you'll do it? He's like, yeah. If you run across this area, I'm going to be there with cameras. And a week later, he called me and he said, you know, I told you that we needed to get a production company on board. And I just hung up with Matt Damon. And, you know, Matt said that he would like to executive produce this project and he'd like to narrate the film.

Is that okay with you? Sure. I paused. Do you know that guy? Are you talking about the Goodwill Hunting guy? Okay. I paused. What's Ben up to?

Ben Affleck, is he around? I'm telling you, dude. I paused for a fact, and I said, well, I was really hoping for somebody better. But Matt didn't want to be all right yeah so you know you flash forward and now we all i all of a sudden have two academy award winners attached to this thing and ultimately it's a great documentary ultimately hon zimmer did the score for the film and like he's the greatest you know i watch this documentary he's a beast amazing and so i got, you know, three Academy Award winners attached to a running film. And just, I'm freaking out because, because look, if a sponsor asked me, are you sure you can do this?

I'm like, absolutely. 100% no doubt. If like one of my friends or family said, are you sure you can do this? I'm like, hell no, I'm not sure. How could I be sure that I could run run 5 000 miles across the world's biggest desert so i i sucker all these people to come out there with me including two fellow runners um a taiwanese friend of mine that i'd raced against a lot and a canadian buddy of mine and so the three of us you know i dragged this crew of 20 people out to the out to senegal and west africa

on in the sahara and i remember sitting there before we started a day before thinking you know we're all gonna die out here and this is my fault and and why did i think this is a good idea and you know we we take off the next day and actually things go um very very badly pretty much right from the start. And actually, I bet you guys can relate entirely to this because you know that feeling like if you were going to start CrossFit today or you watch other people who have been good at something come into CrossFit and they just are on fire, right? The first two or three days like oh my god this you know this is amazing and I'm just gonna I'm gonna set records and all of this and then and then that

slow descent of the of the body starts to happen because you I don't care who you are you will break down yeah you know and so we were out there running 40, 50 miles a day in that first week, trying to basically adapt to that physical stress. And it was 140 degrees, and we're in deep sand. Your feet are blistered out. So my two running partners are both, you know, I look like day seven. They both have IVs in, and we're, I mean, two crew members have quit. I was going to say, what is the crew doing?

So their job would be, and most of them were native Tuaregs, like the people of the Sahara, so we hired an outfitter. They were like laughing at you. Oh, you think it's hot. 140. Exactly. Yeah, right. Wait until it's 160 tomorrow.

So the outfitter, their job was to like, you know, go set up a camp for lunch. Because, I mean, look, running was our job. Like to think that I'm going to run 50 miles, you know, go set up a camp for lunch. Because, I mean, look, running was our job. Like to think that I'm going to run 50 miles, you know, through deep sand over 12 or 14 hours and then pitch my own tent and make my own meal was not really doable. So, you know, our job was to run. And so we had a crew out there. Because I'm not, look, it was a very, it was a calculated risk. I mean, it was a very risky ordeal in a general sense.

But, you know, I wasn't, I didn't want to die. I mean, I didn't want to. You know, I knew it was a chance. Yeah. You know, without a crew, without support. No, no, no. I mean, like, were you committed to it enough to a point where it was like, man, this is, this is something that literally could kill you. Sure, sure.

And you have to go into it knowing that that's a possibility what was interesting is i ultimately ended up not being afraid of the um of the elements the heat the sand the the stress of all of that but people are dangerous and we encountered you know we ran across um senegal maurit, which is an Islamic Republic, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Egypt, which, of course, you couldn't run across any of those countries today. None of them. I mean, it's the world has changed in the eight years or whatever it's been since I did that. And we encountered, you know, people and, you know, three runners sometimes without our support team because the support team would go ahead maybe five miles. And, you know, we'd run and we'd catch up and, you know, drink and eat and then keep going. And every day was about 50 miles of this sort of yo-yoing.

Insane number. And, you know, we made it we ran 111 consecutive days of two marathons a day without taking a single day off and it's a phenomenal documentary how do your feet survive that you know you you really do adjust you adapt and we weren't racing so if i felt something going on, if I felt a hot spot is the way we call it in ultra running, if I felt a hot spot, it's not like I would stop and I would figure out what's going on with that shoe or that sock or if I needed to tape something or whatever. Because if you let a, you know, again, same in CrossFit or anything else,

you let a tiny thing go for long enough it will become a big thing a full injury yeah being on the soft sand for the whole thing is that is that something that's actually much easier on your joints but it's harder as far as energy expenditure it's a great way to put it eventually it was easier on the joints because yes it was softer certainly than running on a road but you you think about it we actually very often in our workouts, we look for, like on a BOSU ball or something like that, we look for ways to create instability in order to strengthen the supporting muscles. You know, you're working one big muscle group, but of course all those little supporting tendons and muscles, you need those. So in the Sahara, we had no choice but to strengthen those because every step was like, you know, you're never just hitting solid ground.

What does your training look like as you're going up to that? I mean, part of the thing that really makes me, I think, is really cool is when you start talking about it. Because as soon as you start talking about it, then you have to start taking action too. Okay, now I've backed myself into this corner. I'm telling everybody I'm going to go run the Sahara. No one's ever done this thing before. And shit, now I got to start training. How do you train for the Sahara desert?

You know what, though? It is like, it's life. You know, I had been running for a long time by that point. And I'd, I'd been sober. So 92, I'd been sober like 13, 14 years when I did that. And, you know, in life is training, right? I mean, you can't, you actually can't go out and train your body for that because it would be unhealthy. Yeah. Like, and I don't ever represent the fact that trying to run 50 miles a day for over 100 days is, I don't say this is what you should do. If you can't do that, you're out of shape. Right.

It's really good for you. I gained like 15 pounds before I started the run because I knew what would happen. And I'll never forget the Gatorade was one of our big sponsors. And so I went to the Gatorade Sports Science Labs, and they were like doing all these tests and glucose testing. Put more sugar in the drink, please. Right. Sweat.

I need more. They're doing sweat tests. And I'll just never forget meeting with this nutritionist. And sugar in the drink, please? Right, sweat. I need more. They're doing sweat tests, and I'll just never forget meeting with this nutritionist, and she goes, okay, by my calculation, you're going to burn. You need to take in about 12,000 calories a day in order to maintain your weight. And I'm like, I remember looking at her and going, okay, you understand that basically I have couscous and goat to work with right and so I think I think

we did I think I did manage about I managed about 4,000 calories a day on average you know for some sometimes maybe as much as five so of course I lost weight but but you guys can attest to this the human body is it's just an amazing machine because it adapts to the stress. What did heat feel like by the end? Yeah, well, we tried all kinds of things. We had a medical doctor along with us, and he was – I told him before this thing started, I said, you can't doctor us the way you would someone in the real world because this is not

this is going to go against every principle you have as a doctor yeah like and and your job though is not to say don't run your job is to say okay we need to do this so you can run because we tried like uh when when my guys were laying on the ground with ivs the doc got all pissed off at me and he's like you know you can't keep running in this heat. So I'm like, okay, let's switch the night running. How about turn the heat down? So we switched the night running. I have to do this.

Right? So we get the miles in at night for a couple of nights, but guess what? Now you're asleep. We got to sleep during the day, and it's 140 frigging degrees. It's not like we had an air-conditioned RV. I did not see an ice cube for 111 days, like not one. the day and it's 140 freaking degrees it's not like we had an air-conditioned rv yeah like i didn't i did not see an ice cube for 111 days like not one so there was not a there was not a cold drink to be had there was not anything so we but but again the i'll tell you something else

that's interesting so like i had my favorite stat of the entire time is i only had, I had two showers in 111 days. So, but what's funny is when you're all in this and I would never in a million years compare this to like military, because my life, while my life may have been slightly at risk from time to time, you know, it's still child's play. I could basically quit whenever I wanted. So it's, and nobody was shooting at me. Right. But what you, you know, what guys talk about, especially in women in the military, when, when they're in a firefight or when they're really in the shit for weeks or months at a time, the bonding that takes place and just the, and even in, even in a gym, you know, when you're, when you're trying to reach

a certain goal and you're doing it with other people and you're all on that same page and there's a power to that that is just unmistakable and that's what we found out there was this it was us you know it was just the three of us and nobody else on the planet and every single day all i had was my stupid um uh ipod playing the same freaking songs over and over which I mean I wrote Apple a letter after that expedition and said look I put shuffle I hit shuffle yet when I got home you know Johnny Cash Ring a Fire played 48 times you know and this other song only played three. Why is that? But it was tedious.

We ran 12 hours a day. The mental part of it was just impossible. Were the other guys running with you the whole time? Were they rotating? No, no, no. No relay. Our vow was to stay together. And, of course, it made it harder know you're only as fast as your slowest person at any given moment right that's why i'm running yeah to use it full circle you say i could

go faster but you know i'm trying to be a friend trying to support my friend so but but look the the best um because i don't want to forget to say this, you know, the best thing that came out of that expedition was Matt, Damon, and I started a nonprofit that was a clean water nonprofit at the time called H2O Africa. And today it's called Water.org. And if you ever see Matt, like on an advertisement, he did a bunch of Stella Artois has a big deal with Water.org these days. And, you know, so water.org is the biggest and most important water nonprofit in the world at this point. And it all came out of this just stupid idea to run across the Sahara Desert.

Crazy what happens when you start talking about things. Yeah. And, you know, and it came from some guy I'd never met before. And I always like to say, you know, words, you know, said to us in passing by a total stranger can change the course of your life if you're paying attention. I can't believe they're using Matt Damon as the spokesperson instead of you. Yeah, well, you know. I'm a much more successful fundraiser than he is.

No, he's a great, I mean, the cool thing about him is he's really a good guy. He's not a pretender, and he genuinely is involved in the nonprofit. He's got a good heart. He's not doing it just for PR. The guy doesn't need any more PR. What exactly does that organization do? In essence, it is an aggregator. It does two things. It provides funding for some other nonprofits that do clean water, but it's also about, you know, in India, in a lot of African countries, you know, if you were to loan someone, you know, a hundred dollars to start a business, whatever that might be, you know, a roadside stand or whatever, it's, it's an immense

amount of money and more than enough to get them started. And so these micro loans help people who just can't possibly find a way out. The other big thing is it's not just about clean drinking water. It's about sanitation. It's about toilets. You know, it's about girls being able to go to school in a lot of these countries. Because if you don't have a bathroom to be able to use, you know, at a school, if you don't have sanitation and some running water, then you really can't go. You know, I mean, certainly girls can't go. So the most important work that water.org does is providing those kind of opportunities in some of the most impoverished places on the planet. If people want to support that organization, is there an easy way to do that?

Yeah, absolutely. Water.org. If you go there, there is, I mean, and they they probably take they get some very big corporate sponsorships but more than 50 of the many millions of dollars they take in are uh from just individual donations of you know 25 or 50 or 100 bucks and you know and if you do all the the you can do the checking there's all kinds of charity sites out there that will rank charities and you'll see water.org you know at or very near the top of you know responsible spending nobody's you know matt damon certainly isn't taking a salary let's put it that way and nobody else you know there's no there's no uh there's

nobody running it that's making you know half a million dollars a year you know you got people who are committed to the cause and you know that's the life that they had. So, again, I always like to say, I mean, I get the great benefit of having been part of something that the people who are drinking clean water or, you know, having toilets or whatever, you know, they're not – they don't know who I am, that's for sure. And, you know, I was getting ready to say they're not thinking about me when they're flushing the toilet. But maybe they are. I don't know. A lot of people are. So at what point during your 5,000-mile run through the biggest desert on the planet, did you feel like, okay, I've made a horrible decision.

This isn't going to happen. I'm about done. Did you get to that point? Yeah, it was really early on, I mean, to be honest. But I will freely admit as just a, I don't know if I'm normal or not, but normally enough to be embarrassed and be, I was, I really was. I was horrified about, I mean, this was a very big budget project and one that was in great danger of failure early on. And what I had to do actually was to take a step back after that first week

and realize that I had been doing what we're all guilty of sometimes. You start a business, and in your mind, you're already spending all this money that you're going to make, even though if that ever happens, it's a long way down the road. And I had to get it back to you guys. That's the carrot. You guys look at each other. And so, you know, and, and so been there and right. I know about that one. So I started running in Senegal and I can tell you, I had this heroic vision of me diving into the red sea at the finish. Right. And just all the amazing things that were going to happen well guess what I actually needed to do the work in between and so like on day 10

I finally understood that what I needed to do was get up and focus on the next day so I got up and I and I and this is going to sound kind of crazy but i got up the next day and i focused on just running a marathon in the morning and i got to lunch and that was my saying get to lunch you know and i'd i'd get to lunch and i'd have a break and a short little nap and i'd get up and i'd say okay all i have to do is run another marathon this afternoon it seems so easy just run the marathon just 200 more marathons but it is funny like on days when you guys are training, like maybe two times or even three times in a day, if you're focused on the dread that you have for the third workout or whatever it is you got going on, you're just screwing yourself. There's a very cool athlete mindset that happens where it's like, oh, I just have to go work out.

Yeah. A lot of people look at it as like, oh, I got to go to the gym and I have to work out. I got to go run today. Like, it's like, no, no, no. I get to go do this. Right. It's awesome. This is where I'm, this is my happy place. I get to go find out how much better I can get today. Like it's leading somewhere. Yeah. Um, and we all understand, I think the three of us get, and a lot of people listening understand that the, the hardest thing to ever do is, is to make the commitment or is to get out the door on any given day like the hardest i love to run i love to run but i you know what i do i actually listen to podcasts when i run these

days so i do it's weird i actually look forward to it like i don't let myself sit around the house and listen to podcasts like i yeah i say if i'm going to listen it's going to be while i'm running so i need to get busy i can't listen to anything if i'm just sitting if audiobooks podcasts anything anything of the sort if i'm just sitting i can't pay attention to it same here no no matter how hard i try i daydream yeah but if i'm like driving my car or making a meal or going for a run or working out like then i can listen no problem absolutely um i've heard that about uh on similar notes where something you just said i've heard that about navy seal training like you're going through buds you're going through hell week the guys that can make it through uh they tend to they tend to have two two qualities i'm sure there's more to it than this but we can probably ask mark divine he's

walking around he'll know better than i will but uh the two main qualities that seem to help people get through is like the guys that can just focus on one evolution at a time. And they don't think like, fuck, I got, I got four more days of no sleep. And they're not thinking about the future and all the stuff coming up there. They're just thinking about like one foot in front of the next one step at a time. And they're, they're, they're more present in that moment and they don't get overwhelmed because they're just doing whatever's next tend to do really well. And, and the guys that, that can under extreme physical stress still have an appetite and they're able to eat enough calories to keep going the guys that get stressed and they can't eat they

fall apart well even tomorrow you guys are going to experience you're going to be out there long enough where you know you need to have at least a small plan for calories because you're gonna you're gonna run out incredibly unprepared yeah but it doesn't have to. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be a lot. Incredibly unprepared. It doesn't have to be a lot. You know, normally for cardio, whatever, you know, you probably need 200, 250 calories an hour. So it's not a lot. I mean, you know, if you had a – there's stuff out on the course

or if you even take a couple small snacks with you, like that's enough. But if you don't have that, you're going to – you're almost certainly going to crash if you're trying to go hard. Right, right. But I know we don't have a lot more time so we don't care about other people wait no interest in worrying about the show we haven't even gotten to the real reason we wanted to bring up the sahara because go ahead we got oh i was gonna ask more about the sahara race like uh at the end you know what what was that feeling like to actually finish and be like, holy shit, I did it?

Yeah. You know what? That's such a great question. I don't get to answer it very often. Do you know the predominant feeling I had was absolute sadness? Oh, really? Which is like it's over. It's real.

So like you brought up the thing about the guys that go to war and they're in these like really intense situations. If you watch, I'm like a documentary junkie because I love watching people go through these things. And if you watch Restrepo, where these guys are in this super gnarly environment. They're getting shot at every day. And then they're faced with either the most extreme violence or the most extreme boredom. And you think, God, I would love to get out of this environment. And what's the number one thing that almost every single one of them wants when they get home? They want to go back.

Yeah. Because you can't find that bond with people. And there's nowhere else in your life they're going to be in such an extreme situation where you have to rely on everyone around you to survive and thrive in an environment that is literally there to kill you real life is complicated you know interestingly the sahara was not complicated i mean there were there were complications and you know if you see the film you know it's there were personalities you know i was both the like bad guy and the and the you know and the good guy

you know i i was the driving force and people didn't like how hard I pushed. And so, and that's part of the film and it's part of the journey. But, you know, but they, to a man will say, you know, we would not have made it if someone hadn't been the guy like saying, yes, we're getting up again tomorrow and we're doing this again. Someone's got to push, you know, if there isn't that person, but it was, you know know the feeling at the end of it was of course you know some of it was relief to have done it and to have you know accomplished this huge goal but but but it was sadness i mean i knew i just knew instinctively that even if we turned around the next day and run back across it never would be the same and it's like going back

to what we're talking about earlier and you know we're making some light of you guys you know all of us racing tomorrow and what it's going to be like and all but the ability to find that place in your mind where you appreciate what you're going through and the heart where if you can find appreciation for the hard moments that is such a skill to master. And when you're in the midst of, life is about chaos and randomness. And if you can't find a way to look forward to chaos and randomness and find a way to thrive under those circumstances, you don't, I mean, I that's how i sound very judgmental saying this but that's not a life i'm interested in i don't i don't want i don't want to know

what's happening tomorrow yeah i want to mix it up yeah i want to i want to create some problems i want to learn and we're creating a massive problem for yourself again you got a big big adventure coming up i do i do so so yeah so i've had this this is a an idea that quite frankly is almost 10 years in the making you started talking about it again yeah i did yourself up now i gotta go do it i did and it's called i mean basically it's dead sea to everest so i'm gonna go from the lowest place on the planet to the highest point on the planet so human powered yeah and it's it's i'm i'm literally going to swim to the middle of the Dead Sea, and I'm going to do a free dive in the Dead Sea

to actually add a little bit of elevation loss to the lowest place that I'm going to go. In the Dead Sea, though, you're going to dive like 12 feet. It's hard. It's hard to get under the water, actually. But your skin also will, like, melt in that thing, right? I'm hoping I can get 100 feet. We'll see. Free dive? Yeah. What that thing, right? I'm hoping I can get 100 feet. We'll see. Free dive?

Yeah. What? Yeah, right. Come on. Seriously. How are you going to do that? Are you going to put some weights on? Drop them?

I'll have to cut the cinder block from my ankle. God. But then I'm going to swim back to shore. It's like swimming through slime out there, like sludge. It is. I'm going to swim back to shore and start running. And I'm going to run about 2 000 miles across the arabian desert and so it's jordan and saudi arabia and there's a there's an area called the empty quarter in saudi arabia that literally is like the

emptiest nothing place on the planet and i when i get to oman i'll run to the tip of oman and um and i'm going to get into a kayak and i'm going to paddle a thousand miles across the indian ocean to nice little triathlon to mumbai right and so when i get to mumbai india i'm going to get on a mountain bike and i'm going to bike all the way across india to western nepal and then cut across east to Everest Base Camp and then climb to the top. And I call the project 5.8 because even though it's about 4,500 miles point to point, it's actually only 5.8 vertical miles from the Dead Sea to the top of Everest. And as I like to remind people, you know, I am a, I'm an environmentally conscious person. I'm someone who spends enough time outdoors to understand that we need to do a better job of being stewards of this place we live. Because that 5.8 space, we're all in it.

Whether you want to be along on my project, you're already in it. Because every human being on the planet lives within that tiny little sliver of space that surrounds this this earth and we need to do a better job of of just taking care of it how long is it going to take you to do this this one is going to be obviously including you know a minimum of six weeks on everest uh will be about four and a half months total so and it's a it's a look it's a bigger idea even i'm actually going to go from the lowest point to the highest point on all seven continents. So this journey begins in January of 2019 actually in South America. So I'm going to go from the lowest place in South America is in Argentina,

and so is the highest point. And they're separated by about 1,500 miles. And so I'm going to do a version of this on all seven have you thought about dying out there before you know i have sure i have and my wife isn't you know my kids are grown at least but um they are both adventurers themselves and have come to this you know this they understand that for me to be a whole and complete person and to be a good dad and a good husband and a moderately fully functioning person i need to do these things and i and i tell people all the time i'm intensely flawed still i mean i'm this isn't only like another hour we're wrapping up it's too interesting

this isn't like i you know i understand that there's a part of me that still is trying to fill that gap, that hole, that thing that's missing. I was going to say, where does this come from? You've done however many, what is it, like 30 plus years now of chasing this dragon? And what will be enough? And I have no idea. And I hope I never find out. You know, I don't, the difference is I no longer need to do it to prove anything to somebody else. And I'm not even trying to prove anything to myself. You know, what I, what I view myself as, as a cultural explorer, I'm not,

I'm not going to cry. You know, thousands of people have climbed Everest. It's not like I'm doing something nobody's ever done. I mean, the thing that the way I'm doing it, I'm doing something that no one's ever done. But this idea that people think i love running i don't love running i love where running takes me i love the people that i get to meet through running i love i love stopping way more than there's a very odd like flow state feeling type thing that goes on with running and it happens with anything that you practice a lot where i'm you see you wake up and you go i'm gonna go run a marathon this morning that's a very small distance to you yeah in a way that you can yeah you can conceptually you can conceptually just see the marathon it's easy yeah

and you have to put in thousands and thousands of hours before that becomes something that's like i just need to go run a marathon. You know what I love about it though? And you really, you actually, it's a great way to wrap up because you just nailed it. I believe in one simple thing. It doesn't matter what happens to us. It only matters what we do about it. So I view it as my responsibility personally to put myself in situations that are going to be difficult because I don't know what

the outcome is going to be. But I know that I am going to get to make a decision. I'm going to have to react to something to respond, to adapt and to, to not just be the same as I was. I mean, there's a lot of, we didn't even get to some crazy stuff that's happened in my life. There are things that have happened with diseases. There's lots of things that we all see around us. I mean, most of the things that have happened to me, I've chosen to put myself. Some people would even argue even as an addict that I chose that.

I don't really buy into that. Some of that is just because that's who I am. That's how I was built. But it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. All that matters is what we choose to do about the things that happen. I also think there's some weird stuff that happens with risk analysis, right? Where you play is so far away from normal humans could ever imagine getting,

but it's not that extreme for you. You've pushed the extreme so far that you may be stepping out of your comfort zone one or two degrees but this is like conceptually something that you can wrap your head around like yeah i can dive down 100 feet like that sounds possible it's really just like i need to keep moving in the direction and i'll get there and it's a lot safer than it sounds probably well there's inherent risk in everything right yeah this Yeah. This is one of my favorite. People will say to me sometimes, you know, because three guys will die in the Chicago Marathon on a hot year, right? They'll say, you know, running, is it running?

Aren't you worried about that? And I'll say to them, I'm like, well, you know, like, did you hear that 5,000 people died on the sofa with their remote control in their hands this weekend? Like, fuck, I'm not doing that. Yeah. Sounds like a really boring way to go. Well, that sounds dangerous.

Yeah. Like, you know, you want to talk about danger. Try living that lifestyle instead of this one. Yeah. If I drop dead tomorrow on this mountain, which hopefully that ain't going to happen, but, you know, I don't want that to happen, and I hope nobody says, ooh, he went out the way he wanted, you know, because that's all bullshit. I don't want to go anywhere.

I got like at least 20 more years of this stuff to do. You know, and maybe longer. And I want to keep discovering things and learning new stuff and recognizing that I have a lot of growing to do. Yeah, that's incredible. Man, I met the dude on the documentary that i watched it took me 35 minutes to figure it out but i got there using people recognize my voice this is so radical um are you bringing a production company with you to go absolutely oh you're gonna be along

it's 2019 we wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't a camera. You're going to have to decide which part of this adventure that you're going to come along on. Are you doing all seven of them? Yeah. What are you going to do in Antarctica? That's a complicated one because the lowest point in Antarctica is actually a long ways away from the highest. Polar bears. They're not friendly. You've got to watch out.

That's actually going to be a really hard one. Polar bears in Antarctica. Shit. They're on the other side. North Pole. Whatever. Whatever. There's something out there.

I think it actually, like the name Antarctica or like Arctos means bear in some capacity. So Ant-Arctos means no bears. There's ants. There's killer ants down there. Really? No. Killer ants. I don't know.

There's like some nine-pound ant. You can tell me anything. I'm not going to that place. It's so cold. There's nothing there. No Starbucks in Antarctica. Penguins are a problem, though. Penguins will get you.

They will come after you. A billion of them in a big circle. You think they're cool because they're all dressed up. They're all huddled up together, though. You don't know what they're talking about in there. They stand so proper. So you've got four and a half months of hiking while swimming to 100 feet deep into all of it. I just want to keep telling stories, man.

So we're going to, you know, there's a lot of production companies. And actually, Spartan is going to be involved in the project. So in the Dead Sea to Everest, the 5.8 project, Spartan is, we haven't even made an official announcement. Fantastic name. We're going to be partners in this thing. So Joe DeSena has, you know, he recognizes it as something that is Spartan-esque, you know, and this idea of finding new things to do and new things to, I was going to use the word conquer, but I don't like that word because you don't conquer anything.

You might very briefly get on top of it, but then you've got to find something else to do. So there's very little conquering. If you're lucky enough to get through it, then there's just something else to do. Well, if you have any interest somewhere in the middle of this journey, want to take a day off and come turn the microphones on, I'd love to interview you in the middle of this thing. We'll use the sat phone, and you guys will just talk to me when I'm out there. Let's do that. Seriously, 100%.

I'll do that. I can walk and talk. I thought we'd have a surprise mom game. Where can people follow this journey? Find you. Find the trail run that we talked about an hour and a half ago that is more immediate. I'm on all social media, and it's always just Charlie Engel, and my website is charlieengel.com.

I'm sure it'll be in you guys' stuff, show notes, and that's the best aggregator right now. There will be a specific site for the 5.8 series, but for now... Is Matt Damon doing this thing? He's not, although I'm actually talking to him about trying to come out. Yeah. He's too scared. I know actually talking to him about trying to come out. Yeah.

He's too scared. I know. You know. Well, you know, he's. Like he's busy or something. Yeah. Born. Yeah.

Boo. Jason Bourne can't even do what you're doing. You're a savage. Charlie Engel crushes Jason Bourne. He's like, can I shoot something? I'm like, no. Yeah. Okay.

Can't come. So, CharlieEngel.com. Yeah. That's it, man. All the things. Instagram's kind of the place I'm living these days more than anywhere else. So, you know, the Charlie Engle Instagram. And then how do people get signed up for the trail run?

Yeah, and so that just also look at my Instagram, but basically Spartan Trail. So, SpartanTrail.com. It's going to be on the Spartan sites. This initial run in Virginia, we don't even have a dedicated site for it yet, but very soon people will start. Anybody who's ever gone to a Spartan site understands that you're going to be hit with about 1,000 ads after that anyway, so don't worry. We'll find you.

Yeah, I like it. It's true. That's awesome. Targeting is fantastic. Douglas Larson. Yeah, yeah. You can find me on everything Strut Collective Barbell Strugs on Wednesdays

and often on Saturdays these days I do technique wads every Sunday you can check me out Douglas E. Larson on Instagram even though I've

barely been posting lately I've been trying to stay off of social media it's negatively correlated with happiness turns out so I've been happier

not being on my phone on social media so much lately but occasionally I still post there. We're actually doing real work, people. That's true. I get way more work done. Instagram's for board work. Like, I don't have shit to do right now, so I'll put a post up. I'll show people

how busy I am. Yeah, exactly. Also, I launched my own site, kind of a catch-all site if people want to work with me, you can go on there. I offer personal training, business, fitness, consulting, digital products on nutrition, mobility, movement, work with me, you can go on there. I offer personal training, business, fitness consulting, digital products on nutrition, mobility, movement, things like that. You can go to DougLarsonFitness.com and check that out.

Killer. I'm at Anders Barner getting in the Shrug Collective. Six shows a week, a million downloads a month. Come and hang out with us. Yeah. Dude, this was so – Doesn't it? I know, right?

Yeah, it's so savage. Months in a row. Two commas, people. We're doing it. Can I come on again next week? Yeah, you can come on all the time. Dude, I feel like if we really want to piss some people off, I have no problem with it, especially on our first interview.

We'll just walk over and tell Dan, like, screw this. We're not doing another one. We could go another hour and a half. We're staying on. I have so many things to talk to you about. You do weird shit. I want to hear about all the diseases and what happens

out in the desert. I'll tease the next... This is actually what I do. I close the show and then we go another half hour. I'm going to tease the next time

you're going to have me on. I've spent some significant time in prison, so we'll talk about that. Really? Yeah. Shut up! We got to the end of the show.

Did you drop that bomb? No, hold on. I'll tell Dan. Oh, man. All right. We'll do the end of the show. I'm not going to talk about it. Did you drop that bomb? No, hold on. I'll tell Dan. Oh, man. All right. We'll do it next time. Dude, this is awesome. Thank you so much.

This has been awesome. Wonderful. Thanks, Charlie. See you guys on Wednesday. All right.