The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Ultra Running & Destroying The Colorado Crush On A Plant Based Diet With Robbie Balenger

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

In today’s episode, Nick talks with ultra-endurance athlete Robbie Balenger about his accomplishments, recovery techniques, diet, and running career. While he has admired Robbie for some time, Nick met Robbie for the first time in Leadville when the two ran the Leadville 100.  Robbie had formerly completed the 2019 Transcontinental run, and his competition of the Leadville 100 was part of what he dubbed the ‘Colorado Crush” - a multi-month undertaking consisting of the Leadville trail series, the Colorado trail, and all fifty-eight Colorado peaks.     By way of background, Robbie shares that he spent a number of years in Austin before moving to his current city of Denver, CO.  He moved to Austin for family, but stayed for the fun, getting into the food and bar scene and spending a lot of time partying.  Eventually, though, Robbie started falling in love with running and endurance training, and he found that it provided a healthy form of the same elation he pursued through partying.  Seeing that partying didn’t help him be his best for his work, and finding in running a substitute for the physical boost partying gave, Robbie found himself more and more invested in the sport. His races quickly evolved -a half marathon led to a marathon, and then to an eighty-mile race.  About two and a half years after his first fifty-miler, Robbie was running the Transcontinental.  His move to Denver only deepened his drive to run, and transitioning to a plant-based diet aided his performance as an athlete.  Robbie’s aim in changing his diet was primarily to enhance his performance, but it also had a secondary grounding in concern for environmental health.  While Robbie is a committed advocate of plant-based eating, he also explains how people can care for environmental needs even without adopting his plant-based diet; for one thing, they can pay close attention to sourcing when purchasing and consuming meat. Even with rigorous training and a plant-based whole food diet, Robbie’s body was seriously challenged by the Transcontinental.  He dealt with hallucinations and paranoia, shin splints, tendonitis, and more.  But after the first month of running, his body adapted and the work became somewhat easier.  As he settled in and ran, he was able to do a lot of thinking; ultimately, Robbie feels that he came away from the race with a deepened sense of self-confidence, growth in trust of/reliance on others, and a clearer sense of how to define himself as a man. Shifting gears a bit, Nick asks Robbie to share about NuCalm, one of Robbie’s sponsors and a company Nick and his team are interested in exploring.  NuCalm offers a unique concept for recovery centered on the fact that recovery at base is rest.  It’s difficult during races to get good sleep, so Robbie decided to use NuCalm’s three-part system to enhance his sleep quality and foster cellular recovery during the Leadville 100.  He tried the system throughout the Colorado Crush, and continues to use it as part of his regular routine.  His results have been profound, and offer great possibilities for runners looking to boost recovery both during and after races.  Finally, Robbie shares about how cycling fits into

Today I sit down with ultra endurance athlete Robbie Ballinger. And I actually met Robbie when I was out in Leadville, Colorado, doing the Leadville 100 with the BPN team. And it was amazing to meet and connect with Robbie. He has accomplished some big feats, especially in Colorado and across the entire United States. In 2019, Robbie completed the district. Transcontinental running from California to New York, 3,175 miles in 75 days. That's about 43 miles each day. And he does this on a plant-based diet, which we dive into.

Recently, Robbie completed what he calls the Colorado Crush, which is the Leadville Trail Marathon, the Leadville Solar Rush 50-mileer. the Leadville 100 and the Colorado Trail, which is 485 miles, he ran 1,200 miles and climbed 300,000 feet of elevation in 63 days. So I'm going to sit down, talk to Robbie about some of these endurance accomplishments, his recovery techniques, his diet, and the course of his running career. So let's dive in to today's episode. You are listening to the Bear Performance Podcast, where we discuss topics on fitness, nutrition, business, and leadership to help you perform at your highest level and go on more. I'm your host, Nick Bear, founder of Bear Performance Nutrition and Prior U.S. Army Infantry Officer. We've scaled our brand through our core pillars of transparency, service, and integrity.

And now I want to share with you through our course. experience and our guests, how you can optimize your life. Welcome to the show. Robbie Ballinger, ultra endurance athlete, choosing the biggest, hardest challenges and in constantly challenging self even more. Robbie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Nick. I'm excited to be here.

You know what's crazy is, before we dive into some things, I knew about you from hella and I was following your content and things you were doing and when I arrived to Leadville for the Leadville 100 I was at the athlete meeting you know in that big open field and I saw you right in front of me and I was almost like I was mind-blown I was like holy crap here's Robbie Ballinger I'm about to run the same course as Robbie and uh it was almost like seeing like a ghost. It was the weirdest thing because I've seen you on social media. I've seen you running and you have like this just this grit look to you.

And when I saw you, it was like, holy crap, we are doing the same race. It was amazing. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that was a fun day. I thought, you know, as they always do, Leadville really shows up for their events and like all parts of it. So that beginning athlete meeting was super cool. I thought the video they did with it was great.

And yeah, it was exciting just to be there and see everyone that was about to embark on such a beast of a race. Was it your first time doing Leadville? The 100, yes. I had crude and past it back in 2018. And I've done the Silver Rush 50. Right when we moved to Colorado in 2018, I tried to do it again in 2019, three weeks after finishing my run across the United States and made it halfway. And was like, I'm good. I don't really need this right now.

And then again did it earlier in the summer, but not the 100. This was my first time at the 100, and I was humbled by it. I mean, what a race, just a big bear of a race, no doubt. Yeah, I think it's one of those things. I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, but I didn't quite understand the magnitude of it until I got there. And while I was doing it, I was like, this is not a, this is not a typical, or it can't be, a typical 100 mile race.

This is, we're hiking, we're climbing mountains right now. You know, like, I, I knew it was going to be 100 miles. I knew it was going to be the Rocky Mountains, but I didn't expect to be climbing that much. Yeah, I mean, the climbing, but also just the altitude you're at, right? Like, you can go climb, but it's not often that you're going to climb in a race where the starting elevation is 10,000 feet. And with that, there's just so much less oxygen going through your body. Therefore, every step's twice as hard as it would be at sea level. So I totally agree.

I mean, that race took everything in me to finish. So I kind of want to take it a step back real quick before we dive into some of the challenges you've done, the accomplishments you've achieved in the endurance space. You know, you're in Colorado now, right? You live in the Denver, Colorado area? Yeah, correct, in Denver, yeah. But previously, you were in the Austin, Texas area.

Is that correct? That's correct, yeah, downtown Austin, Eastside. I was there for 10 years, moved there in 2007, and was there until 2017. So really there for a really exciting, amazing time in Austin's growth and maturity as a city. Yeah, I got the Austin area in 2014. The military brought me to Fort Hood. And we would travel into Austin on the weekends. And even from 2014 to now, 2021, I've seen it change drastically.

Like, the city has just changed completely. But when you moved to Austin, like what brought you to this area? Was it work? Was it the restaurant bar space or what brought you here? Well, so back up a little bit. Like I grew up in Georgia. My family was in the Dallas area. My mom's family.

So we always were traveling to and from Texas. And then after high school, I tried out college for a little while. It wasn't really for me. And ended up moving up to Alaska. I spent like a long summer up there. and then traveled down to the Virgin Islands and was there for like two and a half years. In that time, my mom and some of my family moved up to the Austin area. And when I was done down in the Virgin Islands, I thought it'd be a good kind of stopping point.

And I went there and anyone that's been to Austin, as you just talked about, it's infectious, right? Like, you get there and you're like, wow, okay, I think I might say a little bit longer than just, you know, a quick second. And that turned into 10 years. And in that is when I got really engrossed in the food scene and, you know, worked at some amazing places and the last six years or so were spent running and part owner in Bufelina Pizza. It's a Neapolitan pizzeria. There's one over on the east side and then went off Burnett Road. But yeah, so came via family, but then stayed for the fun. Like it was a great place to spend my 20s and, you know, 30s. Yeah, had a great time there.

No, it's such a fun spot. I mean, I think that's what I found about the Austin, Texas area, was I'm from Pennsylvania originally. A small town in Pennsylvania right outside Hershey. It's called Palmira, tiny town. And I first actually went to Georgia, Fort Benning area, about 45 minutes from Atlanta. And that was an eye opener for me. I was like, whoa, there's more out here than central Pennsylvania. And then I got to Austin, I came to Austin, Texas the year after that. And I was mind-blown again.

I was like, there's even more out here. And I think it was one of those things where I fell in love with the city, but I fell even more in love with the culture. and the people and how inviting it was and there was opportunity and it was active. Like when I go downtown Austin, even if we're going for dinner, I get this guilt almost when I see people running circles around Lady Bird Lake, like Town Loop Lake, because I'm like, man, I want to be running right next to them right now. So it's this, it's this inviting city that makes you want to be healthy. It makes you want to train.

It makes you want to be active. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, even in the years where I was in Austin that I wasn't really focusing on athletics, I was still moving my body all the time, right? Like, I mean, I was on a bike. I was out, just, you know, stand up paddleboarding on Lady Bird Lake and all of that. So I agree. It's, it's infectious in that way. It's such a great city. It, you know, we moved to Denver. And the real reason we moved up here was for my fiancee to go to nursing school and also to be closer to the mountains. And I've said many times, I was like, if there's mountains around Austin, like I would never leave. But then I

realized if there were Austin mountains around Austin, Austin would be perfect. And it would be more of a metropolis than it's already turning into. But yeah, I just love Texas so much. I love Austin, especially. Yeah, me and my wife, we, you know, we were in Colorado, we were saying, because, you know, growing up, she's from Michigan, I'm from Pennsylvania, we have mountains around us and big green trees. And that's one thing we do miss. And being in Colorado was, you know, we were thinking we could, we could see ourselves coming back to Colorado more often because of that, the terrain, the mountains, the water. So when you're in Texas, is that when you started falling in love with endurance training and running? Yeah, it came in the latter years in Texas, actually. So I grew up playing team sports.

I was a big football player. I actually played offensive line, believe it or not. Anyone that's seen me, it's kind of a hard thing. What did you weigh that? Heart thing. You know, I was a smaller offensive lineman. I waited probably about 2-10, really swole, like, you know, I've been lifting weights all all through high school. And, you know, the way I succeeded at the spot was having fast feet. You know, I was really good at maneuvering around people, creating leverage to get them out of the way. But yeah, I grew up playing sports. And then, as I mentioned, I moved up to Alaska in the Virgin Islands. And there, it was like hiking and snorkeling and stuff like that. And then when I got to Austin, I really got into the

restaurant bar scene. And I'd say that my, you know, I really left athletics behind for a while. And I was really expressing myself through working hard and then also partying really hard. You know, that's another thing Austin provides is it's got a nightlife like no other. And I was imbibing in it fully. And then when I took on these restaurants and started running Bufelina, we were very, like very successful right out of the gate. And it was quickly apparent that the partying really hard wasn't allowing me to be the best version of myself to be a leader for the restaurants. And in that, I just started dating a girl at the time who's now my fiancee Shelly. She invited me out on a run. She comes from a family of runners. She had done some marathons already.

And we went two and a half miles. And it was all I could do. We went like Lady Bird Lake to downtown. And I went and got a juice, a daily juice, and we got a cab home. And that was like all I had in me. But it stuck. Like I was in it from that moment on. And what I got from it was it gave me the same, like, sensation and, like, elation that I would get from partying. But it did it in a lot healthier way. Like, I often like to say that, like, drugs and running are opposite, like, drugs, you feel great when you do it. And then you feel like shit afterwards. Whereas, like, with running, you feel sometimes like shit while you're doing it, but you're always going to feel great afterwards.

And that equation to me is more rewarding, especially at this point in my life. So that two and a half mile run quickly escalated to a half marathon within like two months. And then it was a marathon the following year and then on to 50 milers. And it just quickly progressed and became with each step, it became more the center of my life. Have you done the Austin Marathon? Yeah, I've done Austin, I think three times. Yeah, I did it in training for my first 50 miler in like the progression. I did Austin Marathon.

And then I did Hells Hills 50K and. Smithville, Texas. And then my first 50-miler was down in Georgia. But that was, I think, I think that was my second time doing it. And then I did it again in 2019, or whatever it was right before COVID, 19 or 20 in February. It's interesting. You say that about like the restaurant and bar space because I've heard that from multiple people. I have this friend, Brian Mazza, he owned, or he was part owner of a series of restaurants in New York. And he kind of got out of the restaurant space for that really, you know, same reason. He found himself drinking and kind of partying.

It was part of that lifestyle as part of that job. And when he left that part, he left it really because he wanted to leave the party scene because it was so embedded into it. And I can see and I hear from multiple people that same thing where it's just part of that job. It's part of that lifestyle. I mean, growing up, I worked as a bus boy at some restaurants, smaller restaurants, like seafood restaurants. But it was the same thing where as soon as work was done and it was late, there was always an after party. There was always something going on after that. And it was just this constant cycle and constant routine.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's it. It's the cycle. It's the routine of it. It's like you work hard. So then you want to reward yourself. So you go out to the bar, you close the bar down. If you're lucky you go home then.

you might stay up even later. And then that means you're just going to sleep in until it's time to go to work again. And it becomes this cycle that, you know, on the surface is a lot of fun. Like, I'm never going to deny that that time of my life was fun, but it wears on you. And for me, it just had an expiration date. And there was just a time where I was like, okay, I've done that. Like, I want to move on to something else. And that thing luckily became running, like pushing my limits physically.

And I couldn't be happier to have made the transition. So how long was it after you did your first 50-mileer to then when you did the transcontinental from California to New York? That's a good question. I think it was about two and a half years, I think. That seems about right. Yeah, it was, you know, I started off with a bang. My first 50-mileer was a really hard one.

I kind of signed up for it naively, not knowing how hard it was. I went home to where I grew up in Northeast Georgia in the mountains to do it. and it ended up being 56 miles with 15,000 feet of elevation game. So it was a massive race that I remember telling Shelley, I thought it would take me nine hours and it took 16 and a half. It's like just the naivity of all of it. But again, it was just like with every step, I was just enthralled with the growth that comes out of these efforts.

You know, getting out there, pushing yourself. There's moments in a race where you're like, I don't know if I can do this, but you do. And you finish it. And with that, with each time you do that, you become a stronger person because of it. And I think that's what keeps me coming back at the essence of it. I really like the analogy of like the opposite of a drug because it's one of those things. Like you said, when you're in it, you're sucking, you're hurting.

And you almost question, you know, why don't, why do I keep doing this sometimes? But then as soon as you get done, it's sometimes, all right, when am I doing this again? not if I'm doing this again, but when am I doing something like this or even harder or bigger? Yeah. So when did you decide that you, like,

what was that pivotal trigger moment where you said, I want to run across America. I want to run 3,175 miles because obviously there's a lot of, I mean, that's not something you just say, I'm just going to do tomorrow.

There's planning. There's logistics. There's, it's time. It's 75 days. Yeah. Yeah, so it kind of came to me. Again, we moved from Austin to Denver. When we did that, I had sold the shares of my shares in the restaurants. And I was taking some deliberate time off

to kind of figure out what I wanted to do next. And as we moved to Denver, I just started running. I was already running a lot, but it just kept, I had more time so I could run more. And this is where I was kind of processing what I wanted to do, what I had done, what was next. And in that, I got really fit and ended up going down to the Copper Canyon down in northern Mexico. If anyone's read Born to Run, it's made famous by that book. It's where the Taramara Indians live. And there's a 50 mile race down there every year called the Cabo Blanco 50. Went down there for that.

I was really, again, searching for what I wanted to do next. And while I was there, I met a group of gringoes that had all found a way to make running the center of their life. And that really spoke to me. I was like, okay, these guys have done that. I think I could do something too. And at the same time, I was considering getting into something around environmentalism. I was thinking maybe doing something in solar or even wildlife, wildland firefighting to kind of mitigate the issues going on with climate change. But in that, I also found that I was transitioning to a plant-based diet.

And with that, it's a, you know, the more we eat plants and less animal products, the better it is for the environment, you know. And so in that, I was like, wow, okay, well, if I take on some big effort, I could promote this lifestyle, like diet lifestyle that I think is really important and also try to start solidifying myself in this world of ultra endurance. And I at that time met a guy down there named Patrick Sweeney who had ran across the United States in 2015. And so like all these pieces just came together. And as soon as I got back from that trip, I went on a run around Denver, came in from it and told Shelley, hey, I'm going to run across the United States. And that was, I said, I'm going to do it in a year. And that was on March 15th, 2018. And I left on March 16th, 2019.

So a year and a day later, we set off from Huntington Beach towards Central Park. When you transition to a plant-based diet, I mean, I personally don't follow a plant-based diet, but I'm always interested in them. Reading books on plant-based diets. Recently read a book called Fiber-Fueled, not sure if you ever heard of it, by a Dr. Will Bolesowitz, really great book on just the importance of plants and their impact on the gut and fiber and prebiotics

and probiotics that produce postbiotics and just the overall intent of a plant-based diet. But when you made that transition to that plant-based diet, was it for the impact on the environment on animals or was it for a health and performance reason? How did that transition happen? And what was, or were some of these triggers that kind of initiated that? Yeah.

So triggers wise, like, I would, I think it already, it had been in the back of my mind for a little bit just off of some like personal friends that were plant base. And then reading Scott Jurek's book, Eat Run or run eat. I can't remember it. But anyways, you know, he's like one of the most accomplished ultra runners of all time. He's been, he's been plant base since he was in his teens. So those two things were there. And then when we moved to Colorado, it was the first time I wasn't working in a restaurant bar in my whole adult life. So it was the first time I had full control over what I was going to eat.

Because in the restaurant industry, you often find yourself famished at some point in the night. The chef throws something up like a family meal for everybody and you just devour. It doesn't matter what's there. But I had this opportunity. I was at home. I wasn't working. I was like, okay, I can try anything I want. So it really started off of performance.

The question was just like, okay, if I want to be really good at running, I see this guy Scott Jurek's doing it. me give it a try. And then the environmental part kind of came into the conversation really quickly after. After doing some research, did I realize that it was a big part? Something I could do as an individual to really help with that. But performance was really what held me in it initially, especially. As soon as I switched over or started the process and just started leaving animal products behind, I found that my endurance level increased quite a bit.

And the things that now I kind of see in retrospect are I wasn't as sore. I'm giving up meat. Meat causes inflammation. Inflammation causes soreness. And if I wasn't getting sore, I could do a 20 mile run. The next morning, wake up and do it again because I wasn't just hollily around the house like I had been prior. And then also when you're taking on something really big, say like a transcontinental run, it's much less laborious on your system.

So therefore you have more energy to give to your legs. like eating plants just takes less to digest than say a cheeseburger. And with that, you have a finite amount of energy every day that you get to expel and you get to choose where to use it. And when you're pushing yourself that hard every day, I choose to use it on my legs instead of processing heavier kind of things. So that was kind of how it started. And the things that really, yeah, work for me on a performance level again, just that

lack of inflammation, no soreness, and feeling lighter. just goes a long ways. I do, you know, I'm 110% plant-based. I do often talk about how for me, my conversation is a lot around doing better, like just better is better. Like if the more we transition towards plants, the better it's going to be for the environment. And I do think people will also experience increased performance, but I understand that not everybody's going to make the full jump. And in that, I think it's really important that we start talking about if we're going to going to eat animal products, just making sure they come from a really good source, right? Like, like, it seems to be the conversation from my perspective is either people are vegan or they're

not and they just eat whatever, where I think it's really important that like if you're going to eat a steak, make sure it comes from a really quality source. You know, like looking at you and your supplement line, like one of the big things you talk about is making sure it's of high quality. And I think people that are into that should think about that on all of their food choices. Whatever you're going to eat, make sure it's a good version of it. Yeah, there's this, I talk about this a lot, but there's a documentary I watched on Netflix. Not sure if you've ever seen it, it's called Kiss the Ground.

And it talks all about regenerative farming and soil regeneration. And the more I started diving into this, I found, well, there's regenerative farms, like, right down the road from me. So we'll go, like, right down the road and we'll get our beef from, A farmer we know, we know it's grass fed, grass finished. We subscribe to this thing here in Austin. It's called farmhouse delivery where every Thursday we get this box delivered to our house in this big tote and it's whatever produce is in season.

Fruits and vegetables are available from local farmers. It's great for plant diversity in our diets. And I love knowing where my food's coming from. So one of my goals in the future is my wife and I want to have a small little farm. And that farm feeds us where we raise our own animals, we grow our own produce, we have our own herbs and spices growing in the garden that we want to grow and produce all of our own stuff, chickens, get eggs, stuff like that every morning. But in terms of diet, you know, I know it's becoming popular in the endurance.

space being fat adapted on a ketogenic diet. Do you follow a higher fat ketogenic diet or are you still a high carb consumer? I still eat a good bit of carbs. I mean, I try to get it from really, you know, quality sources. I used to eat a lot of just like, you know, bleached white pasta, dry pasta at home. Don't do that as much. But no, definitely not keto at all. I eat just whole food plant-based diet and it seems to fuel me really well.

When I was running across the United States, we did focus on high fat and high carbohydrate, like just because just trying to get as much quality stuff to burn throughout the day. But, no, it's not something I focus on as far as to that level. So going into the transcontents a little deeper in 3,175 miles, 75 days, roughly 43 miles each day, if I'm not mistaken, what were some of the initial? issues or consequences you'd experience in those first couple of days because when I was talking to Hela about his transcontinental, he said as it got deeper in, his body kind of acclimated and it knew it was going to be running big miles every day. But in the beginning, was it harder to acclimate to that higher mileage and get used to it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, Hela and I came to it from a little bit different spot.

Like Hela is a streak runner. He's really fast. He hadn't really done, dug really deep into the ultraseen. Where I had been in that a little bit longer. So I think our transition in the first month was slightly different, but also there were a lot of similarities. And the reality is it's like,

you know, when I was training for the transcon, I was running upwards of 110, 120 miles a week. But then you step into the transcon and you're moving that up to 315 miles a week. And there's really no way to gradually get there because you can't put that type of load on your body until it's time for the main event, right? Or you're just going to be worn out. So when you do that and you increase the load that much, there's going to be consequences.

And for me, the way it manifested was day three. I was hallucinating as though like I was a character in fear of clothing in Las Vegas. Like it was just wild. Everything was strange colors. I had weird paranoias. I thought things were jumping out of the bushes at me. So that was kind of the first place. So I was like, okay, this is going to be a big deal. And then around day seven, I got shin splints in my left leg. And anyone that's had shin splints knows it's just like horrifically painful. And usually what one would say to do is stop, elevate, ice, take some time off. Well, that really wasn't in the equation. I had to continue. So it became about just problem solving as much of ultra running is, is just like what are ways that I can mitigate this? And for that, it was a matter of putting on like

a compression sleeve on my leg. I changed from crew socks into ankle socks, increasing the mobility in my ankle. And then also went into a different shoe, the Hoka Bondi's. And that, those three things allowed my body to start healing while I was moving. So, you know, over the course of like six days, I overcame shin splints. And then right after that, because of that, I had been, compensating on my other leg, I got tendonitis in my other ankle, which really stopped me. It actually stopped me. There was one day of the 75 days I took off, and that was day, it was 19 or 20, and I couldn't really go any further. My leg wasn't allowing it. Took the day off rested. The next day, it actually wasn't much better, but we went ahead and wrapped it with a nice bandage, lowered mobility,

and that allowed me to continue. So those were the really big things. I had spoken with some people had done transcons or other big efforts prior to leaving. And one thing they told me was that after the first month, your body will have adapted, and it will get a little bit easier. It never got easy by no means, but after that month, it was like, my body aligned and my mind aligned to the task at hand. And I think that's a lot of what this endurance space is about is adaptation, applying a pressure over time and eventually your body will adapt to it.

And yeah, so it happened. But yes, the first month was really trying. Also, the first month, you're going through some really intense terrain. It really flattens out after that month through the middle of the country until you make it to the Appalachians. So, yeah, first month was a doozy. You know, one of the reasons I personally love running so much, like my favorite time of the day because, you know, I come to the office, there's people coming in out of the office. I'm in meetings, I'm on calls, get home, talk to my family, my wife. But my run in the morning, and this is why I like running by myself, when it's dark, it's like this solitude where it's my time and I can just think.

Like I dissect and digest some of my biggest problems in my life during my morning run. Obviously you had like 3,175 miles to do that. What was going through your mind? Were there things that you were trying to solve? was there an intent going into this of, I want to find this out about myself and then something you realize you found out that you didn't know prior because,

I mean, if I have a problem in my life, it will find me during a run and it'll be in my head until I solve it. So kind of, what are some of the things you experienced during that run? I think the most profound thing coming out of it was just more of a belief in myself than ever. I grew up with a single mother.

My father passed away when I was really young. And in that, she did a really good job at raising me. And one of the things she instilled in me quite quickly was you can do anything you set your mind to. And this was kind of like the thesis of that. This was like trying to really put that to the test. And what I found out there is I was. Every day you're pushing yourself. Every day you've got to wake up, make the decision to get out there.

And then with every step, you have to consciously make. that step. And so that was a big profound thing. It's just coming out of it being like, I am capable of anything. And that's a that's a real valuable thing to feel. And then, you know, while I was out there, yeah, I went through everything. I mean, you have all the time in the world. You know, I went from contemplating, you know, what movies I wanted to watch when I finished to like, how did I become the man I was? And a lot of thought into that. A lot of, you know, I think the first, a couple years of me really getting into endurance were processing and trying to understand what it means to be a man, not having a father figure. That was something that was left kind of questioned

and a void for me and something that I was exploring and expressing in many different ways throughout my young adulthood and some were really healthy. A lot were not. And yeah, coming to terms with that and further understanding who I am as a man. And, you know, only, I would say only recently, actually in this summer's efforts, the Colorado Crush, did I finally come to the point where I realized it's no longer a search for what it means to be a man? This is me expressing it. And that was a really big thing. And I think when I was out there on the transcon, it was a lot of searching for that and trying to understand, like, what are these pillars of my character that are what I'm going to hang my hat on as what it means to be a man. And that's, That to me is things like following through with what you say you're going to do, being compassionate to others and trying to be level-headed and be a good problem-solver and things of that nature. And those were things that I got to express and understand while I was out there and have now left me in a place where I feel pretty confident in who I am. I think it's an issue that needs navigated by so many people because I feel like, you know, as I was growing up personally, younger, it's like, who am I supposed to be?

What am I supposed to be focused on? Like, what goals should I be going after? Because we're constantly surrounded by all this comparison and seeing what is necessarily right and wrong. And I recently read this book, I think it was. was Tim Grover's winning. I think that that's what it was in. And he talks about that if you don't genuinely show up as your true self, you're going to constantly be disappointed in yourself and you're not going to perform to that standard that you can possibly perform at. And for me,

like, when I look at my life, and this is why I like talking to high performers, is because when I look at the end of my life, I'm about to die, whether that's, you know, that's a lot of a year from now, 10 years, 30 years. And I left a lot, if I would have left a lot on the table and not went and accomplished as much as possible, it's almost like, well, what could have been? And I also heard this quote this one time. And I think it was Tucker Max, actually. And he talks about his biggest fear in life is that he dies, he shows up to heaven, and he meets the man that he could have been. And it's like,

what are you leaving on the table? And I think with some of these big challenges, it's, you know, we, we named this last campaign and we did for Leadville 100 as a team as more than the miles.

Because just like some of the challenges you've accomplished, when you look at the face value of it, someone's like, well, yeah, Robbie ran 3,175 miles over 75 miles over $75. days. And if you take it for face value, it's all it is. But there's so much more, I'm assuming, than the miles. There's more than those miles, like the things that you navigated and learned

through that process, so much deeper and probably life-changing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, just the physicality of moving your body over that amount of space is just one of the many aspects, right? Like, it's not just the physical endeavor. It's very much a mental endeavor, maybe more so, especially after your body adapts. Then it's just having the will to continue every day. And also like encountering other people and learning how to process people better. And I learned a lot about that out there. You know, it's amazing what happens when you put your phone down and quit,

quit kind of like making assumptions of others based off of what we see from the news feed on our phone and instead embrace people face to face and talk to them. I was going through very rural parts of America, places that I hadn't been in a long time. And I had probably put up some walls and made some assumptions about what those people were like. And when I got out there, I was like, these people are amazing. They're fascinating. And they're here with as good attentions as I have. And that was a really big thing.

So yeah, there's tons of growth that came from every aspect of what I was doing. Also learning to trust in others. You know, when you run across the United States, you know, there's two ways to do it. You either do it with a crew or you do it solo pushing a baby stroller. You know, me and Hela both went the crew route. It's much faster. And with that, you have to depend on other people. And I've always been a fiercely independent person.

And putting the trust in others and seeing how much people were willing to rise to the occasion to help me, that was a big thing as well. I mean, it's it's amazing how much people are willing to give to you to do some crazy goal like running across the United States. States. And that's been a big, a big learning thing for me. How big was your crew for that? It varied between three people up to six at one time. The core of it was my crew chief was my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Jackie Shelley's sister. And she did an excellent job of keeping everything on track. She was there for the majority of it. And then Shelley's parents were there for the majority of it. They were there for the first 30 days and the last like 15, I think, or something like that. I might be getting those numbers wrong. And then I had one full-time crew member of this guy

named Elliott, which was a kind of really cool chance encounter. I went back down to Mexico, that race that I mentioned where I kind of had the genesis idea for this. We went down there three weeks before I started the Transcon to kind of get a last minute, like, boost of inspiration, one more race to kind of get my legs right. And while we were there, we met this, this tall, lanky British dude. And he found out what I was doing. And we invited him to come up and crewed me for a bit. And he ended up showing up in L.A. a day before I left and stayed with me all 75 days. I literally only known the man for 10 minutes prior to that. And we had 75 days to get to really know each other. And he was just like a godsend, having somebody there,

consistently. And then outside of that, people were coming and going. My mom came out for a while. Shelly came out as much as she could. And then I had some buddies in the middle that did like the 20 days in the middle who was just a bunch of guys out there, which was fun too, you know, a little more ruckus and hell racing going on while we were doing it. No, that's amazing. I'd love to learn, you know, me and my team were really interested in one of your sponsors, Newcom. Yeah. I would kind of love to learn more about like that concept for recovery. Because when you see most people talk in recovery, it's, you know, compression boots and some sort of active wearable or food and nutrition or foam rolling or something like that.

But can you explain Newcom what it is, how you used it and what benefit you got from it? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we talk about recovery. recovery, right? And like you said, there's all these things we can talk about. But at its essence, what is recovery? It's rest. It's sleep. Like without that, none of the rest of that matters. And for me, when I ran across the United States, you know, I was really trying to figure out what, you know, what is required in order to take on long efforts sustainably. And I thought at that time, food was the key to it, going plant base. And what I found through it was that was a huge component.

But I didn't think about recovery at all. And it really wreaked havoc on me throughout the whole run. I didn't get a lot of sleep for those 75 days, which made a lot of the days a lot more grueling than they had to be. When I finished, I was in New York City, and I was introduced to Newcom. I went to a recovery center, and they laid me down, and they explained to me that it's this three-part system made up of the main part being headphones, where there's an app with tracks on it. It has binaural beats. So it's these tracks that through the binaural beats

brings your brain down to alpha and theta waves. And that's where our brains go during deep meditation or restorative sleep. And then you put a small patch on your wrist and this patch is actually electrically charged. It's a biosignaling disc. And it sends a message to your brain to start releasing GABA.

GABA is what we use as we fall asleep. And then the third part being just an eye. mass to block out the light. So you lay down with this. And depending on how long the track is, you drop into alpha and theta waves from anywhere from 30 minutes up to two hours. And while you're there, your body goes into the parasympathetic nervous system. Or the parasympathetic nervous system is allowed to take over. And that's where cellular recovery happens. So this was like a very profound thing for me, especially coming off the transcontinental run where sleep had been so hard. And at that moment, I said, man, I really wonder what it would have been like to have this.

So then fast forward two years, I decided to take on what I've coined the Colorado crush. And Newcom and I had developed a relationship. And we both were very interested to see how this could be applied to endurance athletes. And that was kind of, again, like the thesis of this run was let's see what it's like to use Newcom on the run. And so the way that I utilized it while on the run was, I would be out all day pushing my body. And then when I would come in in the evenings, right before I'd lay down to sleep,

I would put on the system. And what I was doing was assuring that throughout the night, I was going to get some quality rest. And you can loop the track. So I'd pick a track and I would allow it to run as long as my mind wanted to stay in it. And there's a point where your brain kind of says, I've had enough, and you just kind of come awake a little bit.

And then I would just pull the headphones off and get the rest of the night's sleep I could. the results were profound. It really, really was. Like my crew and myself could tell a distinct difference the days that I didn't do it compared to those that I did. And then in everyday life, the way that I recommend as athletes to use it, like what I do is I really go for like a biphasic sleep cycle. So I get up pretty early. I'll go ahead and, you know, have my morning coffee. I go for my run or whatever the workout is for the morning. Come home, do a couple of little things around the house and then I lay down for anywhere between 40 minutes and 70 minutes with new calm. And that allows me to get this quality rest and like the restoration and the gains from the

work I did that morning. And then it allows me to come back to the rest of my afternoon really clearheaded with no stress and no anxiety. So that's like another part of this. Like for athletes, I really like to talk about this like cellular recovery that it allows to happen. But if you're somebody that battles anxiety, high stress situations, it also is a huge tool for that. It's really profound. It's like they're part of my family. I love Newcom and love working with them. Anyone that's interested in trying it, like you go to Newcom.com. It's in UCALM. And there's a coupon code when you go to the to the checkout. If you put in Robbie 50, it'll give you 50% off like a month trial of it. Or if you go to my social media, there's a link there where you go to a landing page.

It'll tell you more about it from my perspective. But Nucom is really, really cool. And it definitely helped me loads this summer. And it's something that I'm utilizing now every day to get rested up and ready for whatever I take on next. It's super, super interesting. You know, I find that when I was younger, I could definitely operate on less sleep. And even today, I don't get as much sleep. as I'd like to just because, you know, running a business and work and everything. But

if I can't get more sleep, I'm focused on how do I get better quality sleep? Exactly. So one of the things that I do, I don't know if you ever heard of it, it's called a chili pad. So it goes on the mattress of my bed and I cool my, it circulates cold water on the top of my mattress on this pad. And it brings my bed down to, I have it set at 59 degrees Fahrenheit. hype. So I sleep at 59 degrees. And what used to happen is I'd wake up in the morning or the middle of night. I'd be sweaty. I'd be hot. And I'd be waking up multiple times out the night. Now I sleep like a baby. Wake up feeling great. I'm never hot. I'm never sweaty. So that's one of the things I've been using the last couple months. And I love it. But I'm going to check out new

calm because I've seen you talking about it. The science looks super interesting behind it. And I'm curious, you know, how it works and how it performs because I'm constantly looking, how I'll get better quality sleep if I can't get more. Yeah, this is a way. I mean, it definitely, it's, you know, essentially where you're going, where your brain is going is where you would go during deep meditation. It allows you to do that on command without having to fully understand the practice of meditation. Yeah, I think it's profound, you know, the company started off as a medical device company. And then they were, they're, they're utilized with special forces and then a bunch of pro hockey and football teams. And then only recently have they made it into a much more affordable

system that we can do like on a monthly kind of, you know, a monthly way. And yeah, it's super cool. Definitely hope you try it out and everyone else because, yeah, I think it can help everybody. Anything that can like help us all to get more stress or less, have less stress and better sleep, Like, that's going to raise the frequency of the planet by everybody being in a better place. And I just think that that's something we should all be striving for. No, I agree. So you kind of mentioned it on Colorado Crush. And this is what I really want to dive into, like the meat and potatoes, this.

Because the Colorado Crush, you created this term, correct, for what you accomplished this past year? Yeah, I did. It was something, it's my brainchild for sure, something I came up with. essentially it's like reverse engineering some words i was just like i want to crush colorado and then it eventually became the colorado crush um and yeah it was a a multi like multi month effort where i started it was the leadville trail series which is a marathon in june 50 miler in july and 100 miler in august between the marathon and the 50 miler i uh traversed the Colorado trail so 485 miles. I did it in 11 half and a half days. And then again, I ran the 50 miler. And then

between the 50 and the 100, I summited all 58 peaks over 14,000 feet in Colorado. And then for the grand finale, ran the 100. So kind of statistics of it, it was about 1,200 miles, right under 1,200 miles in 63 days and 308,000 feet of elevation gain. So putting that in perspective, that's the equivalent of summiting Everest from C to summit 10 and a half times in two months. What did that do to your body when you're right? Along the way, I got a lot stronger, you know, high altitude training is really good for us. It increases your red blood cells. It's legal doping, really, in a lot of ways. And in that, I got really acclimated to being up there. I felt really comfortable at really high altitude.

you know the thing about Leadville as a trail series as races the thing that most people really have to battle is being at such high altitude i felt right at home up there um i got a lot stronger i think the one thing that i'm feeling right now is my knees are a little tweaked they're feeling a little older than they did before but all in all i mean my body feels really good i feel really strong and i just got to take care of the knees ice them and do all the good recovery stuff we can do for them but um yeah it was it was a good summer Leadville wrecked my body in a way that

you know I've been wrecked like that before but it wrecked my body in a different way and I think it was the altitude I think it was the elevation where the day I mean when I finished um you know I finished Leadville

I remember trying to sleep that night and for about three nights after I could not sleep because I for one I couldn't get a deep breath but I could just really feel I personally feel my central nervous system gets taxed more than my muscles and some other parts of my body. So my muscles will heal up faster. My toenails are still falling off. But it's my central nervous system that always takes some more time just to come back to life.

Feel a little draggy and a little slow and lethargic. And once that comes back, you know, I'm rocking and rolling. I was itching to run a week after. It was over. But that's what I found is I cannot sleep after the race. And central nervous system was just taxed. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when we do big efforts such as level 100, when your body goes into a place of fight or flight, right?

Like, when you go there, like evolutionarily, all that means is you're running from something. And there's a reason that you need to, like, be able to continue. And I think that rattles our nervous system. It definitely like, I know the come downs from big ultras for me can be, can be hard, especially like emotionally and like you're saying, like just feeling off a little bit. And I think it comes from that is like fight or flight takes off for so long and then bringing it back down and being like, no, we're okay. And actually, we want to do that again.

Yeah, my mood was, and I was very conscious of it, which is, which is weird because for a few days, afterwards, and I talked to a few people who've done some big ultras and have done Ledbill, and they kind of told me to expect and anticipate this. And it was one of those things that I brushed under the rug. I was like, no, like I'm not going to feel that. But for days after, I did feel that like I was irritable. I was moody. I could consciously, and I even told my wife, like, I don't feel right. So just like, I'm sorry you're going to have to deal with me for a few days, I'm just like, I'm just off, like very, like very triggered by, by things. And, um, kind of like, you said, it kind of emotional. It was a, it was a weird feeling. And it lasted

for about a week and then subsided. And then I was itching for another, another race. But it's so interesting what, what the body, like trauma and stress does to the body in terms of either physical, emotional, mental stress, you know, they all stress the body in some sort of way, but it's crazy how the body adapts and can take so much, but then has to release that at some point in some way. Totally. And I think the important thing, like, is the awareness of it, right? Like, knowing that that's going to happen now after big events has helped me a lot.

Like, after the transcontinental run, I went into pretty dark, the depressed place for a little while. And I think it was a lot of those things you're speaking of, but on like a very big scale. And I feel really I feel really good that I'm not really experiencing that as much now after this summer's Colorado crush. And I think a lot of it comes from awareness. You know, like I definitely had that couple of days as you're talking about. But I'm happy to see that it only lasted a couple of days instead of like a couple of months. Like it's after the transconcone.

What do you think what do you like when that happened after the transcontinental? Was there someone that like was there to tell you like this is normal? you're supposed to experience this or was it one of those things where you're just that you couldn't control what was going on like what what was going on well you know it was one of the things i had been warned of it prior to taking off on it and having done some ultras and understanding how like what we just spoke of it happens on the minute scale after big efforts um but it's kind of the similar it's similar to the way it feels when you get into a big effort is you can anticipate it and you can think it's coming but you really don't know what it's like until you're in the midst of it and

that's a big difference between in theory and actually living it. And, you know, I think for me it came from like a true physical and like hormonal place. Like your body like adapts to this new thing where you're going, go and going every day. And then you stop, right? And it's really hard. It's really hard for all parts of our system to do that. And then also I think when I ran across the U.S., you know, lot of this was, again, defining myself in this in this world, in this ultra-endurance world. And when

you take on big things, I think often we have this misconception that once we get done with it, birds are going to be chirping, the sun's going to come out, there's rainbows, life's going to be beautiful forever. And the reality is, that's not how it works. Like life is always going to be life and we're going to have challenges and obstacles and triumphs. And I think that was a rude awakening for me to realize that and to become, become okay with that and not only okay with it, but embrace it and be like, I wouldn't like it anyways if life became completely easy. And again, like the clouds parted and everything was perfect. So I think that was a lot of it too, was coming down from it and understanding that there was

still a grind. Life was still going to be a grind and I had a lot of work to do. And now I'm happy with that. I know you do from what I've seen on Instagram, spend some time on the bike. Do you use that time more so for active recovery, flushing the legs, or cycling something that you're also passionate about? It's more low impact, keeping the body moving as kind of like moving recovery. For the most part, I am fascinated with it. I have some friends who have excelled quite a bit in like gravel road racing and mountain biking.

And I think it's really cool. It's not something I've spent a lot of time on. I think at some point, one of my large effort, something that's like comparable to say the Transcon or this Colorado crush, will probably involve a bike. But it doesn't really matter how far I get on the bike. I always come back to my feet. Like to me, the most amazing, beautiful way to move your body is on your feet. It's primal. It's I feel like something we were born to do.

When I run, I feel the most hole I ever feel. I feel, yeah, like my DNA is saying. this is what we're supposed to do. So the bike's good, it's fun. More for moving recovery. And especially coming off of big events, like think about it, like anything that you do day in and day out,

whether it be a substance, whether it be an activity, whatever it is, your body becomes conditioned to it and it becomes dependent on it. And if you just stop doing it, that's where a lot of issues come. That's where you're going to feel off.

you're going to feel just depressed or all these things. So it's really important for me. It's coming off of, say, the Colorado Crush. I want to continue to move my body because I need that psychologically and physically, but my legs can't really handle the beating. So it allows me to do that in a sustainable, healthy way. When I was in this past year, I was training for a triathlon. Then we added a marathon build in between.

And that's where I ended up running the sub three marathon that I was training for and we you know we used the bike a lot for i would have a big run in the morning and then my coach would always have me on the bike in the evening and it'd be like a 45 minute one hour easy spin just you know medium to light resistance just moving the legs and getting blood flowing and i did find that that had me as fresh as possible the next morning like the day before i ran my marathon I was on the bike for an hour, just moving the legs. And it always kept me fresh. So even though I'm not training for triathons right now or in the near future,

when I go into another training block, I'm actually going to use the bike again to keep my legs fresh. They don't stiffen up. And I feel better, you know, just moving them rather than sitting. Yeah, you know, I totally agree. And, you know, it was told to me in a really interesting way. A friend of mine, he's an awesome. Austin night. He lives there, Colin Strickland. He's a Red Bull athlete. He's one of the premier

gravel road racers in the world. And he always encourages me to get on a bike. And his thing is, is, you know, think about a car. What happens when a car like wears out? It's never the engine. It's the drive train. And as runners, our bodies are the drive train. Whereas when you get on a bike, the bike gets to be that. And your body is just the engine. So it's just way less taxing on your body. And that's always stuck with me. I think it's a really interesting way to look at it. And it's a good reason to utilize a bike as much as you can in your training.

So I think I kind of look at, I think I look at a lot of endurance athletes, a lot of high performance, more elite athletes like yourself, where it's constantly challenging, like yourself to something bigger and new. It's like it starts with maybe like, you know, your two and a half mile run that goes to a marathon and then a 50-mile or then 100-mile or then before you know, you're running across, you know, the United States. So is that part of an evolution to find out where your capabilities are,

like your maximum limits? Like where do you see yourself in five years? What are you training for you? Are you climbing Everest? Are you running across the world? Like, where do you, because I try to think of in terms of my mind, where do I want to take this? Like how big do I see this going?

Obviously, I say like, there's no, there's no roof. There's no limit. The sky's the limit, right? But what is the goal with it? Where do you want to take it? I'm not sure exactly where it'll end up. I'd say the quest I'm on right now. is this fascination with how we can sustainably move our bodies through space and time,

the idea of perpetual emotion, knowing that it's not achievable, but it's in the pursuit of. And like how that manifests, I'm not even sure what the next one will be. For me, it's just like following what's interesting to me and where I find that there will be maximum growth and also the opportunity to inspire others. I think I kind of set the bar pretty high by starting with a transcontinental run. That's usually like a place that people progressively get to. And I progressed, but I kind of leaped to it. So as far as future efforts, I really like the multi-day effort, and not even multi-day,

multi-month. I love exploring what it's like to get up and do it again the next day. That's really interesting to me. I'm interested in some FKTs, fastest known times, of multi-day efforts. Being out on the Colorado Trail, that was super inspiring, knowing I did it in 11.5 days. People are doing it in 8.5 days. A guy just did one version of it in 7.5. Yeah, it's kind of all over the place.

I'd like to partner up and do stuff with some other ultra-endurance athletes and not always have to be like the only person out there striving for it. and I like to do stuff internationally, you know, if we get to a place where we can freely travel. I mean, I'm going to, I'm actually flying to England tomorrow to help a guy who's doing a big effort over there. But yeah, just I like to travel. I like to see the world and I like to put myself in really taxing situations so that I can get maximum growth out of it. I think through doing these efforts, you whittle yourself down to your essence and you get to then go in and dive through what that person is. Like, who are you at your core and come out the other side with more understanding and positive growth?

Well, Robbie, I am excited to see what this next thing is. I'll be following along. And I'm sure many others will as well. But I appreciate the time today, man. It was great to meet you in Leadville. It was great to see you when I crossed the finish line and you were there. It was just amazing an event, life-changing event for myself and my team. but it was great to finally meet and connect and I appreciate the time today.

Yeah, absolutely. And the same goes, man. Like, congrats on the 100. That is a beast of a race. And talking about, like, leaping into something. You did. And you crushed it. And it was great to meet you as well.

And it's great to have this time. Awesome. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance podcast. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to leave a review on iTunes. or share it with a friend. It helps us to grow and reach more people

in hopes of changing lives with the Go One More mindset. Head on over to BPNSups.com for all your health, performance, and nutrition needs. We offer a wide range of products to help you feel and perform at your highest level, built on quality, and proven by results without compromise.