The Rich Roll Podcast - Dean Karnazes On The Road To Sparta: Channeling Pheidippides, Out of Body Experiences & Why Inspiration Is A Two Way Street

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Picking up where we left off exactly two years ago, today's podcast marks the return of ultramarathon legend Dean Karnazes. For the select few unfamiliar with a man whose name has become synonymous with running, let's break it down: Hailed by TIME as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the World, Dean is a New York Times bestselling author of several books and perhaps Earth’s most recognized ultra-distance running specialist – a global ambassador of sport who has pushed his body, mind and spirit beyond places most people simply cannot fathom. Dean's mind-bending feats of two-legged prowess include: * Running 350 miles in under 81 hours, foregoing sleep for 3 days; * Running 50 marathons in each of the 50 states in 50 consecutive days; * Winning the prestigious 4 Desert Race Series in 2008, traversing the Gobi, Antacara, Sahara and Antarctica; * Competing in the Badwater 135 10 times, including victory in 2004; * Running 148 miles on a treadmill in 24 hours; and * Running 3000 miles across the US from Disneyland to NYC in 75 days I met Dean back in 2011 and we’ve been friends ever since. In 2013, I even helped crew him to his 10th Badwater 135 finish. Today we reunite to pickup where we left off in RRP 115 — one of my most popular podcasts to date — to discuss life, running, his latest adventures, and his brand new book, The Road To Sparta: Reliving the Ancient Battle and Epic Run That Inspired the World's Greatest Footrace*. This is the book Dean was born to write. It’s the story of Dean’s ancestral heritage and his deeply personal, genetically hardwired connection to the intrepid ancient Greek ultrarunners known as hemerodromes. It’s also the incredibly well researched historical account of Pheidippides — perhaps the greatest and most heroic hemerodrome of all time — and the crucial role he played in helping Athens defeat Persia in the Battle of Marathon that took place 2,500 years ago. Pheidippides' 153-mile, 36 hour run from Athens to Sparta in 490 B.C. wasn't just critical to Greek victory, it's fair to say it spared Western Civilization and preserved the democratic institutions we so value today. Finally, the book is a deeply engaging, first-hand account of Dean’s attempt to honor his lauded hemerodrome ancestor by replicating Pheidippides' ancient and historic 153-mile run, training and racing on only the few foods actually available to Pheidippides at the time. Beyond fascinating tales from the new book, this is a conversation about curiosity, consistency, and drive. It’s about out-of-body experiences that occur when you are stripped to your very core. It’s about what motivates him to continue pushing the boundaries of human capabilities well into his 50's and how his training, racing and nutrition have evolved to meet that challenge. But most of all, this is a conversation about what it means to be truly alive – and the beautiful embrace of discomfort required to explore the outer limits of performance, potential, and human experience. I consider Dean a role model. In addition to being one of the great athletes of our time and an inspiration to millions worldwide, Dean is someone I am lucky to call friend and mentor. I’m thrilled to further share his life, wisdom and experience with you today. Enjoy! Rich

That's why some of the most fascinating stories I read about endurance athletes are not of their great successes. I mean, those are kind of formulaic, if you will, but the great kind of defeats or failures, those are what really intrigues me because I think you learn a lot more about yourself when you fail or come close to failing than when you succeed. That's ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. What's up, everybody? How are you guys doing? What's going on? My name is Rich Roll. I am your

host. Welcome or welcome back to the show. This is the program where I go long form with some of the most intriguing thought leaders and positive paradigm breaking change makers all across the globe. People who have devoted their lives to making the world a better place on an effort to help you and me unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. If you would like to support the show, there are oh so many ways, but perhaps the single most powerful way you can help is just to subscribe. It's totally free. So if you haven't done so already, please make a point of clicking that subscribe button on iTunes or on whatever app you use to consume podcast content. And thank you very much for that. Okay. So today marks the return of my buddy and ultra

running legend Dean Karnazes to the podcast. We pick up where we left off almost exactly two years ago, which was episode 115. That posted November 30th of 2014, so it is almost exactly two years ago. And that is one of my most popular episodes ever. So check it out if you missed it the first time around. For the few out there who don't know who Dean is, let me briefly break it down for you guys. Hailed by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, Dean is a New York Times bestselling author of several books and perhaps the globe's most recognized ultramarathoner. This guy is a true ambassador of running and a guy who has really pushed his body, mind and spirit to places most

people simply cannot fathom. To give you an idea of what Dean is all about, let me briefly run through just a few of his ridiculous mind bending running accomplishments. He ran 350 miles in under 81 hours, foregoing sleep for three days. He ran a marathon in each of the 50 states in 50 consecutive days. He won the Ford Desert Race Series in 2008, which is a super prestigious ultra-marathoning series race. He won the Badwater 135 in 2004, and he's gone on to run that race 10 times. He ran 148 miles on a treadmill in 24 hours. And he also ran 3000 miles across the US from Disneyland to New York City in just 75 days. Amazing, right? I got a bunch more I want to say about Dean and this conversation, but first.

So I first met Dean back in 2011, and we've been fast friends ever since. In fact, in 2013, I even helped crew him to his 10th Badwater finish, which was just an incredible, epic, and amazingly meaningful experience for me. And today, we convene to discuss Dean's latest excursions and adventures and fascinations, as well as his brand new book, which is called The Road to Sparta, Reliving the Ancient Battle and Epic Run that Inspired the World's Greatest Foot Race. epic run that inspired the world's greatest foot race. As I say in the podcast, I truly believe that this is the book that Dean was born to write. It's the personal story of Dean's Greek heritage. It's also this incredibly well-researched historical account of Greece's defense against the Persians back in 490 BC and the critical role that was played by this guy called

Pheidippides, who, among many other unbelievable feats that we get into in the podcast, is a guy who ran for 36 hours straight from Athens to Sparta, which is 153 miles, to seek help in defending Athens from a Persian invasion in the Battle of Marathon. That was a run that made Pheidippides perhaps the greatest and most heroic ultramarathoner of all time. And it was also a run that in many ways, I think it can be cogently argued, saved Western civilization as well as democracy as we know it and enjoy it today. And finally, the book is also this beautiful firsthand account of Dean's attempt to honor his long lost Greek ancestor by himself retracing the steps of Pheidippides and his ancient and historic 153 mile run. And he did so training only on the foods that Pheidippides

would have eaten at the time, which is really cool and fascinating. It's a really great read. It's a fun book. And we get into some absolutely fascinating and fun stories about the book and about Pheidippides and about Greek history and this incredibly important role that was played by ultra runners in Greece's military of the time. that was played by ultra runners in Greece's military of the time. So you guys are in for a treat. I consider Dean to be a role model. In addition to being one of the great athletes of our time and an inspiration to literally millions of people worldwide,

he's somebody that I'm lucky to call friend and mentor as well. And I'm just thrilled to share a little bit more of Dean with you guys today. So, Beyond the New Book, this is a conversation about curiosity, drive, and balance. It's about out-of-body experiences. Dean tells a really amazing story about something that happened to him on the road to Sparta. And it's also about how Dean's training and nutrition has evolved over the years. It's about common mistakes many runners make. And it's about what motivates him to continue pushing the boundaries of human capabilities well into his 50s.

But mostly, it's about what it means to be who you are and the beautiful embrace of discomfort that's required to explore and continually discover what that is and what it really means oh he said he was reading yeah he had no idea we're friends yeah i didn't say do you tell him we were going to see each other no i didn't even i didn't mention he just said i'm i'm like oh i know rich he's a good guy what's's the guy's name? Andres. Hey, Andres. Good luck in the Cozumel.

We're recording. We're on. We're rolling. You better finish. No DNF now. You're never living it down. Well, this will post after the race, unfortunately, but we're still sending out the good vibes to the universe.

So it's good to see you, man. It's good to be back in front of you. Thanks for having me back on. I appreciate you uh taking the time welcome to los angeles so you bet you were i try to avoid this place whenever i can oh come on it's always good seeing you you're listen you're a socal native i was born here you're greek we're gonna get into all that but yeah don't don't disavow your socal heritage and roots we get hate mail oh come on you you just have to go come out. We're in West Hollywood right now,

but you got to come out to my neck of the woods. I think you would dig it. Yeah, no, I like it further north. Yeah, even beyond your house. Maybe up Ventura County, maybe Santa Barbara County. Yeah, it's nice up there, man. LA gets kind of a bad rap sometimes. Well, I went to Cal Poly.

I don't know if you know my- I do know that. Flowtown guy. Yeah, I do know that. And you're down here for, of all things, a game show. You're doing a game show. What is going on? Let's see.

I can probably tell you all about it because I think it'll have aired by the time the podcast goes live. But it's called To Tell the Truth. And it's a remake of that classic program. So there's a celebrity panel of four celebrities. And there's myself and two imposters. And all three of us go on stage and we say hey i'm dean karnasas the ultra marathon man i ran 50 marathons 50 stages 50 days uh-huh and the next guy said no i'm the dean karnasas i'm the ultra marathoner i you know

i've run everywhere across the world and the celebrities ask us questions and then at the end they say will the real dean karnasas stand up So the contestants have to guess which person is the real person. And they can ask all kinds of probing questions. I have the easy part because I don't have to make anything up. They said, just answer as you would. Yeah. Well, are they going to let you do it in shorts so people can see your calves? That's going to be a dead giveaway.

They've got a wardrobe person. That was exactly what they're saying. They're like, we want everyone to be in athletic gear. But if it's so obvious that like you're so much fitter than these other guys, because they're just celebrities. I mean, they're just paid models they're bringing in. Right. What do they call it?

Special talent or talent extra. So if we look too much different, it's going to be in street clothes. Well, that'll be fun. That's a little bit different. You're always doing some offbeat stuff like that. Weren't you going to do Dancing with the Stars at some point? I turned it down. Oh, you did?

Yeah. I talked with some of my sponsors, and it's kind of off-brand. In hindsight, I think I should have done it. If you have some kind of crazy crisis and everything goes to hell, then that's kind of where you go to resuscitate everything. If you saw me dance, you would not say that. Well, anyway, it's really good to see you. I don't think I've seen you since Badwater

when I crewed for you, which was three years, two and a half years ago, I think, at this point. Yeah, I can't remember if those are good memories or bad ones, yeah. Well, they're good memories for me. I mean, first of all, I just wanted to publicly thank you for asking me to be part of your crew. That was just an unbelievable experience for me, and it meant a lot to me.

So I really appreciate it. Being able to contribute and participate in that with you, it was quite something. I can't believe you're thanking me for being a crew member. No. Because crewing out there is nothing but hell. thanking me for being a crew member because crewing out there's nothing but hell it's well i mean i learned so much and it was just it was a privilege to you know be so proximate to watching you do your thing and uh and it was great and you know i think in retrospect looking back on it i had when you asked me to do it i was like yeah awesome of course and that was like the last i

thought of it until like the weekend before we were doing. So I didn't really, I haven't really, you know, I hadn't been in like kind of quote unquote like training. I wasn't like, you know, working out a ton, but I just thought, oh, you go and you, you crew, like usually at these ultra marathons, you don't really pace until like maybe the last 40 or 50 miles or something like that. And we'll just feed them. We'll stay up all night. It'll be a party. It'll be intense, but it'll be cool. And I remember asking like literally,

I think like a couple hours before or maybe the night before I asked Coop, Jason Coop, your main crew dude. I was like, so how does Dean like to do it? Like, what's the strategy? Like, what are his preferences in terms of pacing? And he's like, well, he wants someone running with him the entire time.

And I went like ashen white. I was like the whole time oh man i was i thought i'm in over my head you know i mean and the first the first uh pacing pull that i took with you was like i think it was like two or three in the afternoon like the hottest part of the day and i i almost like couldn't make it i was like i don't want to be like in the med pack. I was like a crew guy. The crew guy DNFs. Yeah. Yeah. It was a low moment for me. And I thought I shouldn't have agreed to do this. I don't know if I'm up for it. But then we ended up running most of the night together. I don't know if you remember, which was really great. Like I was, you know, many hours of, you know, just pushing through the darkness. And that's when we talked in depth about this book that now is out in the world, right?

Yeah. You told me the whole story behind it. We had a lot of time out there. Yeah, we did. We had a lot of time on our hands. I don't know if you remember, but I remember quite well. I do. And, you know, I mean, just digressing a bit, the reason I enjoy people running with me,

it's not because I want or need someone running with me the whole time. I like living vicariously through other people's eyes. I mean, I've done it 10 times. It's still magical, but it's, to me, it's almost like having a kid, you know, you got to see things and experience things for the first time. And it was, you know, it makes it fresh again for me. So. Yeah, it was, it was really fun. It was really fun. And you had, you didn't go back the next year, did you? they're back on the original uh the original route now i think i was gonna say i'm lucky that i finished those 10 years that i did and i'm lucky you joined me that year because now it's um the route is still the same but it has to start at night so you're not running through the heat of the desert yeah the national park won't let them do it in the day now so it's changed the race dynamic completely that that

changes it dramatically it's a different experience altogether now. It's still a great experience, but yeah. Right, cool. So, during that night time you started to unpack this whole story about Greece and your fascination with, is it it's Pheidippides, we all say Pheidippides but they say it differently in Greece,

don't they? Pheidippides. Pheidippides. Yeah. Yes. Almost like you're the, you this, you know, not to get too soulful, but in certain respects, I think it's fair to say you're sort of this modern incarnation of, you know, not just this man, but this tradition of ultra running that originated in this ancient time in Greece, you know, in the 400s, 400 BC. They have a term for these people, right? Hemero dromi, or hemero dromos.

I saw it written, but I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. No, I know how to pronounce it. The translation means day-long runner. I mean, Pheidippides was a professional runner, and that was his vocation 2,500 years ago. He was essentially the faster internet. The Greeks realized that the quicker they could disseminate information and collect intelligence, the better off they would be as far as defending their territory against invasion.

So they trained these guys to run insane distances all day and all night. They were basically ultra-marathoners that were professionally trained and paid to do that. And it fascinated me because I had no idea these sort of folks even existed so long ago. Right. So there was this whole culture around celebrating these guys and what they could do, but they've almost become, aside from the famous story of Pheidippides, which you then realized as you started to get into the history is sort of misunderstood. You know, these guys were like, they kind of, this culture has been lost in history. And if anything, it's this minor footnote, but when you really look into it, it's quite amazing. It is. And, you know, the translation of his name, Pheidippides, literally

means spare the horse and that was because a trained Himero Dromo could outrun a horse and we know now um you know with man versus horse that you know I've outrun a horse during the Vermont Trail 100 so it's possible for a man to outrun a horse and um in the in the mountainous hilly terrain of Greece, southern Greece, a man could easily outrun a horse, and they did, routinely. And, you know, for me to kind of see the way I live my life and become more adventurous with my running, you know, not just doing ultra marathons, but doing, you know, runs like across California, just these kind of self, you know, conceived 50 marathons, 50 states, 50 days, kind of these adventures, I came full circle and realized a lot of that may be inbred in a certain way.

Right. I think that's beyond a shadow of a doubt what's going on. Like when you tell the story in the book about running from Sonoma down to San Diego and staying at the missions, I mean, when you did that, was that, so it's basically a coastal run from Northern California to Southern California. When you did that, were you aware of this Greek tradition? Or were you sort of just doing it because you were compelled and inspired to do it? Because in many ways, you were doing exactly what these people did. And this is hardwired into your DNA and your history history being greek yeah and that's a really insightful question i didn't know

about any of this history when i was doing this i mean it's just something i wanted to do um you know i had always believed the story that uh philippides ran from the battle of marathon to the acropolis 26.2 miles and that was as far as he went. You know, he proclaimed Nike, Nike, or Nike, Nike, which means victory, victory. Which is why Nike became Nike shoes, right? Except he died after that. Nike hasn't really died yet. But yeah, but I didn't know about the distances they were really running, you know, or he really ran. I thought it was just a marathon. So we're going to get into what the real story is, but I think in order to kind of provide a proper context for everything that follows,

it might make sense to, you know, recap your, your journey and your heritage a little bit. I mean, we did that. We did our first podcast. That was like a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago at this point. Uh, a lot of new listeners who might not have heard that yet. So maybe we can go back a little bit and just hear a little bit about how you got into running, the fateful 30th birthday and kind of where you took it from there. Yeah. So I used to love to run when I was a little kid. I remember running home from kindergarten when I was six years old. I mean, that was kind of my fondest childhood memories is running and running, you know, a mile or so when my mom couldn't come pick me up because we had, I was the oldest child

of three and she was having a hard time getting me home from school with a young baby in the house. So I just started running home and loved to run, ran competitively up to a freshman in high school. Well, there's one story in the book that I didn't know about, which is that you actually ran your first marathon when you were 14. It was a fundraiser. Yeah, I did. And I always thought the sort of lore is that, you know, yeah, you did a little bit of running

in high school, but you didn't really become a runner until that 30 mile run on your 30th birthday. But that's not quite accurate, right? You showed this amazing facility and capacity and, and, and love for running much earlier. Yeah. Um, I, you know, I ran 105 laps around the high school track as a fundraiser, uh, to raise money for the library. And that ended up being 26.3 miles. So I literally, and it wasn't a fast marathon. I wish I would have recorded my time in

hindsight, but I know I was there a couple hours beyond everyone else and kids were cheering for me and I was out of it when I was, you know, running around this track and they were high fiving me and slapping me and I was just delirious. So it wasn't the, you know, most spectacular memory, but it, you know, it was a marathon at 14. Yeah. But I think that that in certain respects, was your first connection to your heritage. So maybe talk a little bit about your grandparents. And, you know, coming into the understanding of, you know, who Pheidippides was, because that was part of the motivation to run that marathon, was it not?

Yeah, it was. You know, I, my father always insists we're from the same village in the hills of Greece as Phidippides. And I always tell him, Dad, I grew up in, you know, I was raised in LA. I mean, what village in the hills of Greece are you talking about? But my grandfather, who has my same, I'm the namesake of him, was Constantine Nicholas Carnassus. He immigrated from this area of the Peloponnese in Greece to Los Angeles. And that's where my family was born and bred, where I was born and bred. And this penchant for running just manifested in me. I'm not sure why, but I have some really incredible memories of going to Easter picnic.

For Greeks, Easter is like the most celebrated holiday ever. And watching these old men from Greece, from the old country, and they would just dance. They would Greek dance for eight, 10 hours at a time. I just couldn't believe it. And they'd take shots of Uzo in between and they'd get back out on the dance floor and I just thought, how do they do this? I mean, their endurance was just remarkable to me. And those things kind of just, I guess they imprinted in a way upon me, yeah. And your father would tell you the story of Pheidippides, sort of, you know, steeping you in the lore of Greek culture. Well, he told me the story of the marathon, and Pheidippides dying at the end.

And, you know, I was, as a young kid, brazen. I just thought that is the coolest thing ever, just going out in a blaze of glory and just falling dead. I thought, I've got to do this marathon. It's something I have to fulfill this. I've got to be one with the ancient Greeks. That was my way of doing it, is running this marathon. Then you had a cross-country coach who was also kind of a mentor and, and, and sounds like kind of an amazing guy and amazing teacher.

He was. Benner Cummings. I'll never forget him. And, you know, rest his soul. He passed away last year. But I got to, I got to see him again. We reunited before he, he actually died. So he was, he was more of a sage than a coach.

I mean, he never, he never really told you what to do. He just kind of instructed, you know, run with your heart and your legs will follow kind of thing. Somebody's upstairs. That's all right. We're in a hotel room. Life is in session. We're in a sleazy hotel in Los Angeles. Yeah. So when he retired, though, so your passion for running kind of... Yep. I hung up my shoes and and then i followed kind of the same life trajectory as you did and that you know i went

to college i went to graduate school i went to business school i partied like crazy more than i should have um maybe not to the same extent that you did but i was reckless and on my 30th birthday i was in a nightclub in san francisco we talked about this during the last podcast right it was the it was the paragon bar right yeah yeah it was my local bar when i lived in san francisco we probably knew each other then well i think i had said in the last podcast like i was trying to identify when it was i think i was living in that neighborhood when i i very well may have been in the bar that night that that happened i should have taken you with me i know you're gonna save me 10 years yeah so i mean that night i just happened. I should have taken you with me. You're going to save me 10 years. Yeah. So, I mean, that night I just, uh, 11 o'clock at night, I walked out of

that bar, uh, you know, three sheets to the wind and decided I was going to run 30 miles. And I knew that if I got to Half Moon Bay, that was 30 miles. So I just left the bar, stripped down to my underwear and ran all night to Half Moon Bay and forever changed the course of my life that night. Right. So, but it wasn't an overnight thing of like, I'm quitting my job and now I'm a full-time runner. I mean, the reality of that was that it evolved over many years as you started to explore, uh, not just running marathons, but ultra marathons and then distinguishing yourself and slowly moving away from your career path and embracing, you know, the mystery and the unknown that comes with trying to, you know, blaze a path in this world that's not exactly known for,

you know, supporting a professional, right? Like, you've got kids, you've got, you know, a wife, you got a more, you got all the things that, you know, we all have living in modern society, but somehow you, you know you found this marvelous, beautiful, amazing way to be able to do what you love, and I think that's inspiring to everybody, irrespective of whether you're a runner or not, to be able to tap into your passion and create a life around it.

I think that my story gives people hope and permission to follow their own passion. I think, as we know, a lot of people live their life in a state of quiet desperation. And that's largely because their vocation is not aligned with their passion. And that's not a new concept. But I think it takes sometimes reading about someone else who's kind of boldly stepped out to give you the motivation and the impetus to actually do it yourself. So I think that's what I've done. I think a lot of us, I think you're in the same,

in that, you know, in that same group have, have done that for other people. I think that's a gift we provide. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a blessing to be able to put that message out there. And it's also a lot of grunt work. Yeah. I mean, it's not, yeah, it's sort of like, oh, you know, you're now you're living your passion, so everything's easy. You work hard and you've never worked before. I definitely work hard. It's just different the way you feel about it. It's Saturday night right now.

Dean, this is work. And we're in a sleazy hotel room in L.A. It's not that sleazy. Come on, it's nice. The game show is providing for you well. Come on, it's nice. The game show is providing for you well. So from there, Ultra Marathon Man, your book comes out, which still I would imagine sells like crazy. That book changed the landscape in terms of how people approached running and their understanding of what the human body is capable of. And since that time, we've seen this boom in interest in what really was a tiny subculture when

you wrote the book. Yeah, and a lot of people credit that book for contributing to the growth of the sport and for better or for worse. I mean, some people say, you can't get into races now. These popular races, they sell out in hours or the lotteries are so full. But I think beyond that, it's really inspired a lot of people to step beyond their comfort zone and to test their limits. I mean, the first time I heard of someone running 100 miles, and I know a lot of your

listeners know about ultramarathoning, others might not. But the first time I heard of someone running 100 miles, I just couldn't grasp the concept. I thought, well, where are the hotels along the way? Or how many days does it take to do this? And the guy just said, no, the gun goes off. And hopefully within 24 hours, you reach the finish line. And it was just such an expansive idea to me that a human could run 100 miles nonstop. I didn't even like driving 100 miles.

And I thought, you know, if I can break this barrier physically, I can, you know, extend that same life lesson into every direction. And that's been the case. Right. Yeah. It's been beautiful to watch that unfold. And I think, you know, speaking personally, my, you know, love of ultra endurance is really about this template that it provides for self-exploration and greater self-understanding. The training and the racing, it strips you away of every artifice until you're deeply connected with who you are, what makes you tick, what are your weaknesses, what are your fears, all of that becomes extremely present.

And it's allowed me to be able to look at things in my life and grow past them. And that journey continues, of course. So in certain respects, you can almost call it like a journey home, right? And so I see this book Road to Sparta we said I just told you this right before we started recording the podcast but I think this is the book that you were meant to write you know because that's

what this book is it's a journey home it's a it's a exploration and a journey to expand your sense of self-understanding by going back and connecting with the ancestry that made you who you are today and allows you to do what you do. Yeah, no, I couldn't have said it better. And you're exactly right. And I hope that, you know, I hope it's a fascinating story, first and foremost, of seeing this incredible lineage that has gone full circle. But I also hope that inspires other people to kind of learn more about who they are and where they came from. I think the interest in that subject alone is,

is blossoming. I mean, you know, with ancestry.com, I know 21 and 23 and me, I don't know if you've ever heard of this genetic testing. I've done it. And I,

my lineage all comes from Greece. So I kind of already knew that. At the very bottom, it says you are a direct descendant of Pheidippides. Start running. For you. So you're aware of this lore that surrounds Greek tradition and running on some kind of general level, but what happened that made you think, I really need to invest in this,

I really need to get to the bottom of this and explore it and connect with this by going to Greece and really immersing yourself in the culture? Yeah, it was actually an interaction with an older Greek man who said, you know, Pheidippides ran more than just a marathon. And I thought, holy, come on, we know he ran from the Battle of Marathon to the Acropolis, and that was it. And he said, no, no, there's more to the story than that. And so when he said that, I thought, okay, I want to learn the truth.

Come on, what really happened here? And so I contacted Professor Paul Cartlidge, who's one of the foremost authorities on ancient Greek culture from Cambridge University, and he agreed to work with me in kind of piecing together the puzzle. So it just set in motion this journey for both of us that was really revealing. We learned a lot.

He learned a lot from me as well as I learned, of course, a tremendous amount from him. I mean, how do you piece it together? Like, what is the historic record that you can even point to to get to the bottom of it? Well, I approached it through the lens of an ultra-distance runner. So there's one of the ancient sources, Herodotus, who's the father of history. Yeah, he's the father of history. He's the father of history. Father historian. Yeah you know he had just made mention of Pheidippides being dispatched from Athens to run to Sparta. He was a haemorrhoidromo, a day long runner and he ran to Sparta to recruit the Spartans. Which is for those listening that's a 153 miles. He didn't mention that I I'm like, hold it. He just says it very casually. It's one passage in this ancient record that he just dispatched this guy to run there.

I'm like, do you understand? I mean, he obviously didn't comprehend what that meant for a human to run that far. I mean, in his day, humoral dromo, that was their job. I mean, the guy was just doing his job. It was his day at the office. I mean, there's nothing more than that. The guy was just doing his job. It was his day at the office.

I mean, there's nothing more than that. And I looked at it through, you know, a modern-day ultramarathoner thinking, how was he able to do this? I mean, he ran barefoot. He, you know, subsisted on figs and olives and cured meat, water only, no electrolyte replenishment. And the record says that he arrived in Sparta the day after setting out, which can be interpreted as 36 hours. So he left one morning, he ran 153 miles by sunset the next day. I'm like, that's insane. There's no GPS watch, no nothing. No headlamp. I mean, come on. And just provide the context as to why he did that, like what was going on in the world,

because it's rather amazing. Well, it was at a very delicate juncture in world history in that Greece was this nascent democracy. This whole idea of rule by the people was foreign. It was brand new. Persia, who invaded Greece, it was a tyranny. It was a top-down dictatorship. It was a tyranny. It was a top-down dictatorship. And the Persians, Darius, just thought, we can't let this idea of the people ruling themselves percolate up.

I mean, that's going to crush his kingship. So he sent his fleet just to crush the Greeks. This is like 490 BC. 490 BC. And the Athenians were badly outnumbered, where the Persians landed with upwards of, they think, 50,000 people. The Greeks at most had 10,000 fighters. And this was in Marathon, which is sort of on the west or the east coast of Greece. East coast of Greece.

And actually, Marathon, the word itself means field of fennel or fennel, because there's this Marathon. This is a big plain, an open plain filled with wild fennel. Wild fennel grows fennel because there's this marathon this is a big plane an open plane filled with wild fennel wild fennel grows you'd love it it goes all over naturally in greece yeah so when you say i'm running a marathon you're saying i'm running a field of fennel we should change all the bumper stickers from 26.2 to fennel yeah so the persians under it was under cyrus right like they're out for world domination and Greece is standing in their way. But they're kind of, you know, they're moving westward and just toppling everything in their wake. Greece was a gnat, basically.

I mean, the Persian Empire was 70 million people. I mean, Greece was maybe a few hundred thousand. I mean, they just thought, we're just going to roll over Greece, done with this democracy thing. But if you've seen the movie 300, you know, who is the most badass fighting force in ancient Greeks? It's the Spartans and Leonidas. It's the Spartans and Leonidas. So the Athenians dispatched Pheidippides to run to Leonidas and recruit the Spartans into battle to somehow fight off the Persians. Right, because they thought the only way we're going to survive this is if we get the Spartans

to come on board and help us out. But it wasn't like the Spartans and the Athenians were super best friends, right? There was some tension between those, but sort of Greek nationalism would prevail, right? If all of Greece was under threat, then Sparta would be compelled to come and help. Yeah, I mean, it's not unlike the U.S. states. I mean, Nevada and California doesn't always see eye to eye. The Greek city states were a little more distinct in that, but you're absolutely right. They had a pact where they said, if we're invaded, we put aside our disparages and we all come together. Yeah. So Pheidippides heads to Sparta and the mission is you got to get the

Spartans on board and get them up here to marathon as quick as possible because these boats are coming and it's going to be trouble. So he runs 153 miles. He gets to Sparta. The Spartans say, we're in. Let's go fight these guys off as best we can. However, our religion forbades us from leaving for battle until there's a full moon. And that ain't going to happen for six days. So P days so if it'd be like oh man the Spartans are coming but they're not gonna leave for six days how did they know they were coming how did they know that the the Persians were coming could they see the ships or what was the indication that they that this battle was about to happen yeah the Greeks had they had these, basically, they were spotters all over. That's one of the things that Himerodromo would do. They'd run and patrol the coastline,

and when they saw the Persians, they'd dispatch a foot messenger back to Athens and say they've invaded and where they've invaded. So that's how that kind of went down. Uh-huh. So Sparta says, fine, we'll do it, but we got to wait. We got to camp out here for six days. We can't leave for battle for six days. We're going to screw ourselves if we violate the gods. Yeah, exactly. So then Pheidippides has to run back to Athens and deliver this news. He's got to tell his people. The next day.

The next day. So it's a 300-mile round trip. And this is verified in the historical record. It's on the record, yep. That's amazing. It's amazing, but it's just glossed over in the record. I mean, there's a lot of emphasis on the battle. So he ran back, and then this happened.

Yeah. And not only that, he ran back to Athens. Sorry. Let me grab some water. Yeah, so he runs back to Athens. He's got to deliver this news that Spartan's in, but you're going to have to wait a little bit. And so the Athenians do what? I mean, they're faced with this choice, either wait for the Spartans, in which case they're imperiled by the impending Persian invasion, or show up and fight.

And that's exactly what happened. So the intelligence that Pheidippides provided really proved crucial to the Battle of Marathon, because had he not returned and informed the Athenians that the Spartans are delayed, the Spartans probably would have retreated back to Athens and been slaughtered in waiting for the Spartans. But he gave them the intelligence saying the Spartans are not coming. The Athenians made the decision the next morning we need to take on the Persians. It's got to happen now. Every day we wait. They're fortifying their positions.

We can't wait six days. And therefore the Battle of Marathon took place. And it can be, you know, you can make a supposition that had Pheidippides not completed his mission, the Battle of Marathon may never have happened. I mean, we'll never know because it's ancient history, but there's a probability that it could never have happened. And no one ever brought this subject up before because no one had ever looked at what happened through the lens of an ultramarathoner. Yeah. I mean, the historical ramifications can't be overstated. I mean, first of all, it's a David and Goliath situation, and the Athenians prevail by sort of resorting to these crazy guerrilla tactics to overcome this massive army, right?

Where they're doing all kinds of things that you see sort of in modern warfare happen when people are outnumbered. Like they encamp, they sort of circle around them, and they have all these, you know, they took off all their armor, right? So they were nimble and could move around more quickly and all these things that sort of violated the principles of traditional warfare at the time. Well, and the Persians had this tremendous fleet of archers and that's how they typically took on an enemy is when the enemy was at a safe distance, these archers would dispatch their arrows into the sky and basically slaughter half the people. And then they'd bring out their cavalry. They would just go clean up the mess. The Greeks just thought we got to rush at them as quickly as we can and not give their archers any way to shoot at us. Let's get in there quicker. So they basically

charged for one mile across this open plane of marathon carrying this shield that's estimated to weigh between 35 and 70 pounds in one arm, a thrusting spear in the other arm, and locked shoulder to shoulder with the man next to them. They had to stay in formation because it's called a pharynx, and they didn't want to break that. And there was a lot of dishonor in breaking the pharynx because you're not defending the man next to you. So that's how they rushed across the battlefield. And it's been said that when they hit the Persians, when they physically contacted them, the reverberation could be heard for like three to four miles. It was that loud.

Wow. That's super crazy. So ultimately, they end up winning this unwinnable battle. That's super crazy. So ultimately, they end up winning this unwinnable battle. And in so doing, really just save democracy, right? So had the Athenians been overrun in this battle and the Persians continued to move westward, toppling Greece, democratic principles as we know it may have never, that little, you know, sort of pilot light might have gone out at that time. It's speculation, but things could have very well ended up differently. And not just democracy, but I mean, you know, the arts, drama, architecture, mathematics,

you know, there's a lot of things that the Greeks did in that golden era of Greece that changed the world. It can be said that, you know, previous to that golden era of Greece, you know, we really didn't live. We just avoided dying. You know, our whole life was about not dying, not, you know, being attacked, whatever. And it wasn't until the Greeks came along with some wine and some, you know, raucousness that said, okay, let's turn this around. Let's live a little bit. You know, Socrates had said, you know, it's not life, but good life is to be chiefly valued. So the Greeks really learned, you know, how to live a good life, and we're kind of following that same model right now.

Yeah, and the book is, the book's really three narratives. It's your sort of personal heritage. It's this historical record of this period and Pheidippides and the Persians, et cetera. And then it's you're retracing the steps of Pheidippides by yourself running from Athens down to Sparta. But one of the parts of the book that I really loved was your description of kind of the culture of Greece at this time and talking about this emphasis that they put on developing mind, body, and spirit and cultivating, you know, these athletic beings, right, in the gymnasiums and in, you know, the original conception of what

academia was, which was basically like working out and then like deep thoughts, you know, which I was like, I want to go to that school. You know, that sounds awesome. You just like get super strong and you talk about, you know, important things. Well, the word gymnasia where we get our gymnasium literally means school. So you're right. The ancient schools used to be like 24 hour fitness, but just, you know, staff with Harvard professors, literally. So that's how kids would learn. They'd go and they'd work out.

They'd be taught lesson plans. In fact, Aristotle even went beyond the gymnasia, and his disciples were called the peripatetics or the wanderers because he used to walk around Greece. He used to say, you know, learning takes place outdoors. He would basically give a walking lesson. So kind of like we have walking meetings now. He was doing that 2,500 years ago. So what else did you learn about Greek philosophy

and the great thinkers of this era that kind that were presented to you or that you uncovered in doing all the research for this book that have sort of influenced how you live or maybe change your ideas in certain ways? Well, this whole concept of, you touched on it, arete, or the personal bestness, if you will. The Greeks thought only you could achieve this if your mind, your body, and your spirit were all aligned. And I think we failed that in so many ways in the West. I mean, a lot of our bodies are not temples anymore, are they? We really focus on cerebral development to the detriment of our bodies. So the Greeks thought unless you really worked out and really had a fit body,

you couldn't have a fit mind and you could never achieve your bestness. So I think a lot of people are realizing that now. Also, the whole idea of spirituality. I think a lot of athletes, I know you've gone there, Rich, I've gone there, have realized that interpersonal relationships really matter a lot with performance. And that if you don't have your spirituality and your relationships kind of buttoned up, you're never going to be at your best. So these are very ancient principles. And during this period of time, like the 490 circa this era, who were the contemporary leading thinkers of the time? Was that the timeless? Because I don't know my timeline,

like Socrates, Aristotle, like it's all just a long time ago, but there could be hundreds of years separating these people? There's about 75 years separating them. So some of the... Like some of the Aeschylus who fought in the Battle of Marathon, he was a philosopher and he said really powerful things. He said, man searches out God and searching finds him. And I think that's true. I think that in searching, we find our God, right? However you define that. He also said that today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday, which speaks to stress,

right? And living a little free. I mean, that's one thing with even the modern Greek culture that surprises me, that, you know, the economy's in ruins, things are bad, but they're never beyond just having a shot of ouzo and a little Greek dancing. That spirit still lives large, even though things are pretty bad over there right now. Right. One of the subjects that comes up quite a bit on the podcast is Stoicism,

but I think that comes, that's like third century, right? Third century BC, you're right. Yeah, the Stoics. Have you studied any of that or looked into that or did that influence how you approach the book? I'm fascinated with stoicism and that philosophy now, you know, it's kind of, it's gone through a rebirth. Yeah, well, now it's like, it's never been cooler to be a stoic, you know. Well, yeah, and before that, it was the Spartans. I mean, living a very Spartan lifestyle, just paring things down and going to more of a simple lifestyle, simple foods. You know, the Spartans lived very simply. And also, they thought that, you know, living in a hard land

bred hard people that could tolerate things. So they also put themselves against hardship. They didn't live a comfortable life. And that was their recipe for happiness and fulfillment. You know, the Stoics came about, you know, 100, 150 years after the period I write about. So I kind of left that out of the book. Right. So just to kind of perpetuate the timeline here. So the Athenians defeat the Persians.

Pheidippides runs back to Athens from Marathon to deliver the news to say, Nike, Nike, victory. And then he collapses and dies as the apocryphal story goes, or perhaps it happened. We don't know. I loved your sort of fantasy version of events that you spun at the end. It's my book, damn it. I'm telling the story the way I want to tell it. This is the way it happened, my version, which was beautifully written, by the way.

I love that. I'll take your version of that story any day of the week. But of course, knowing, okay, we defeated the Persians, but they're going to go home, lick their wounds, and they're going to come back fiercer than ever. And how Greece sort of girded themselves and prepared for that. And that culminated in the battle that we all saw in that movie 300, right? Battle of Leonidas.

Thermopylae. Yeah, Thermopylae, where the 300 Spartans defeat the Persians. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, moving along that timeline, I mean, that allowed Greece to really proliferate, and all these ideals that we're speaking about, you know, moving along that timeline, I mean, that allowed Greece to really proliferate. And all these ideals that we're speaking about, you know, grew to prominence. And then when Alexander the Great came along, what he did is he migrated east. So he set out on the ancient Silk Road, if you will, across Asia and really conquered a lot of Asia. And in doing so, you know, when they used to travel these armies it wasn't just the men they would take women children and people would stay along the way so people would say I like this valley I'm gonna stay here with my

family and Alexander and you know and the kids would be born new people would you know new people would you know basically army men would come into existence and they'd move along. So the thoughts and principles of Greece got spread in that regard, almost like pollen in the wind. And that's why the whole idea of democracy and all the principles that we kind of believe in now were able to flourish because they spread so widely across Central Asia. Yeah, that's super fascinating. Really interesting. And also I learned a lot more about Sparta. You know, Sparta was more dynamic than I think we realize. We just think of them as being a bunch of hard

asses. But they, you know, the way they treated their women and, you know, treating everybody as they really like believed in and oozed these democratic principles from every fiber of that culture. Yeah. And they were more militaristic, the Spartans. I mean, that was their emphasis, is, you know, building a military force. And they became somewhat obsolete, almost like North Korea now, where, you know, culturally they're lagging so far behind. But for that period, you're right, they were very, very democratic, more so than the Athenians in a lot of ways. You know, the Athenians, it was just the men working out, the women were allowed inside. The Spartans, men and women worked out alongside each other. So the women held prominent positions in politics,

in the government, as well as, you know, they're tough. Yeah. And, you know, their attitude, I mean, you know, there's the saying of the Spartan mother who sends her son off to war saying, come back with your shield or on your shield. I mean, they were hard-ass. That's amazing. That's a mom. Yeah, I know. She sings mom.

Unbelievable. All right, so you come into this understanding that there's a lot more to Pheidippides and this culture of ultra-runners as being integral to how society functioned in Greece. Where does the idea of going to Greece and retracing his steps start to come into your awareness? Well, Professor Cartlidge put me in touch with Dr. P.J. Shaw, who had written a paper. She'd actually retraced the footsteps of Pheidippides as best she could, and she actually wrote the foremost authoritative research paper on the travels of Pheidippides. So I spoke with her. She sent me all of her material. She was just incredible.

All the pictures, all her mapping, and this was well before, you know, GPS or anything. I mean, this is kind of line of sight and piecing together pieces of historical record. So I went and visited those same regions that she had tracked through back in the early nineties. And how does she, you know, recreate that kind of, you know, understanding of how he would have made his way from, you know, one little area to the next. I mean, there's actual documentation on that? She was a historian, yeah. And she pulled every reference she could to Pheidippides in ancient record and looked at these sources, looked at some of the descriptions of the mountain peaks, the valleys, and through

that went to these places, observed them, took pictures, and kind of pieced together what she thought was his actual footsteps, you know, his actual trek. And she's sharing all this information with you. And so your original thought was, I'm going to go there and I'm going to do it exactly the way that he did it. I thought I was going to be able to create his actual run. And when I started to, you know know really dice into and and dissect what she had done I realized that as an ultra marathoner there's just too many variables I mean one of the

things that she made clear is that these hemerodromo would use line of sight a lot of times to navigate and depending on the temperature the amount of food if they were bonking or if they were feeling energetic, they might choose to go right over the top of a mountain and straight down because it's a shorter distance, even though it involves climbing and descending thousands of feet. Or they might decide to circumnavigate the climb and go a longer distance, but on flat terrain. So the number of variables that I saw through my eyes as an ultramarathoner were just overwhelming. So I saw a lot of the areas that he ran through, but as far as recreating the actual pathway, it's something that can never be done. That brings up an interesting subject matter, which is this intuition that you have as an ultra runner to be able to kind of

tap into your environment to be able to make those kinds of decisions yourself on these expedition type runs that you've done. There's a, you know, you talk about that when you talk about running from Northern California to Southern California, like, do I take the coastal route? Or do I go over this mountain that's going to be, you know, steep, but it's shorter, but there are these winds and, and, and really like allowing yourself to feel what's right to make that decision is very much in the tradition of these, these guys, right? Yeah. So here you are, like you really are tapping into that, that DNA. Well, it's again, it's because I've spent so much time outdoors. I'm so fascinated with outdoor sports. I think that if you were interviewing a surfer and you asked him,

is the wind onshore or offshore? Is it sideshore? Is the swell northwest? Is it coming from the south? They're going to know these things intimately, and they'll be able to get very descriptive about exactly what's going on in the environment, the outdoor environment. And it's the same with ultra marathoners that have done races in places where their progress

is dependent on the weather. And that's a reality that very few people live in these days. I mean, we've got our smartphones. I mean, how often do you go outside and kind of look up and say, okay, it's feeling kind of humid today. The wind's blowing from the south. It's going to rain later today. Yeah, like never. Never.

Yeah, it's become irrelevant, right? Well, we're in climate-controlled environments, you know, most of our waking and sleeping hours anyway. Yeah. Well, I mean, I ran across the U.S. So I ran from L. from LA to New York City, and 75 days of basically running them from sunup to sundown. And you really get in touch with the environment much more so when you're outdoors all day. And it's, I mean, I would, you know, challenge any of the listeners, when was the last time you spent all day outside? You know, you might have gone to a barbecue or to a football game, but very few people

do, unless you're an ultra marathoner, you know, just get up in the morning and you're outside all day, you watch the sunset, you watch the moon rise, you know, and you do it for a full cycle or two. Very few people do that anymore. And so doing that, like having that experience of being outdoors for, you know, extremely extended periods of time, like what has that taught you if you can like drill down on the meaning of that well I think it's it's where we came from it's it's something that we humans you know can identify with and it that's being lost and it will continue to be lost as the world progresses so maybe that magic maybe that the connection with the earth

Will never be the same I'm worried about it. I know a lot of the younger generation are worried about it, and you know we've just become a Society that is you know we're trying to deal with such an incredible earth Population and how do you take care of everyone a lot of us to build structures right and get inside so The reality of where we came from and how we used to live might be lost for a long, long time. So the idea of walking and running the exact path of Pheidippides is out the window, right? So was all hope lost? Well, I got to see a lot of the terrain, and I got to experience a lot of the same kind of foraging for food.

So I got to experience a bit of it. I also ran a marathon, the Silicon Valley Marathon, wearing an ancient hoplite outfit. So I got to run in his outfit. Hoplite is a.k.a. toga. Yeah, modified toga, yeah. And I ran barefootfoot which was the only marathon barefoot or did you have the little leather like the sandals no i i actually ran barefoot yeah there's there's a lot of debate in kind of historical record whether um hemoradroma wore

sandals or barefoot they think they might have done both but they said that the ones that went for really long distances probably ran barefoot yeah so were you also thinking that when you were going to retrace his steps you were going to do a barefoot or were you not going to go that crazy i was probably not going to go that crazy yeah one marathon 26.2 miles like that was right so you run you run this marathon in the toga barefoot you get all chafed up and realize maybe those shorts that I usually wear aren't so bad. Bloody nipples or not. Yeah. But I did get to run on a lot of the same footpaths, the same trails that he probably traversed.

Definitely a lot of the same mountaintops, a lot of the same canyons. And what's really remarkable is that so little has changed in 2,500 years in Greece. In Southern Greece, you get outside of Athens and you get up into the Peloponnesus and some of the hills around Tripoli and Sparta. It's the same way it's been for 2,500 years. That's really cool. So the kind of runner-up way of approaching this is to run the Spartathlon. Yeah. That's like the closest approximation to having an authentic experience.

Yes. And again, just digressing for the listeners, the Spartathlon is an organized 153-mile foot race from Athens to Sparta that happens every year in September. And it was originally created in honor and in memory of Pheidippides, right? Wasn't it like these historians that kind of figured this out and decided they were gonna retrace his steps and that's how the race was that kind of came out of that expedition? It wasn't actually historians, it was actually some military guys. And one became a marathoner and uh read a bit of herodotus he also liked to read ancient record you know he read um ulysses and um homer and uh saw this reference to this guy running

153 miles and it just fascinated him and this is back in the early 80s so he was the first there was the first group of people that actually did it but again, they did their best in recreating this track, but most of what they did was on the road. They tried to follow a road because they couldn't just, you know, they had support vans and such. They couldn't just bushwhack up in the mountains. Right, right, right. So tell me about this race. Because not only did you do it, but you did your best to try to have some fidelity to what Fidipides might have been experiencing by training on and fueling on the foods that he most likely was eating. I ate your foods, Rich. You wouldn't have any. My foods.

Except for the cured meat. Yeah, I didn't eat that part. No, but I ate figs and olives. And they used to eat this concoction called pastelli, which was ground sesame seeds and honey. It's almost like an energy paste. So I ate pastelli as well. And water. That's all I had during this entire race. And you were experimenting with that when you were training, right?

I trained for about nine months. Yeah, you acclimated on that. Yeah. As best I could. What was that like? During the training, forget about the race, but during the training, was that hard? Or did you feel the same? Did you feel different?

It wasn't ideal. And it was a bit constricting in that when you run for run for 14 15 16 hours you start craving a variety of food sources i saw that firsthand at bad water you had some crazy requests like i can't even it was like yogurt with like something weird mashed pickles yeah pickles and like you know poor monster energy drink into it and i was like what is he eating yeah so you know, poor monster energy drank into it. And I was like, what is he eating? Yeah, so you know. I mean, those are the kind of cravings you have. And, you know, only relying on figs was fine in these long training runs, basically for energy, figs and pastelli.

But during the race, it didn't end up being that way because I'd never gone, like, for a full 36 hours only eating figs and there's ramifications eating so many figs well not only that like leading up to it you had all kinds of crazy commitments and you know flight delays and all sorts of stuff that kind of culminated in you being you know I think it's fair to say like semi-exhausted by the time you arrived on the starting line for this thing so it wasn't like you were in tip-top shape to begin with. Well, again, in describing all of that in the book, I hope to give the readers a glimpse into my life and into the life of a lot of athletes that are trying to do what I'm doing,

where we're not professional basketball players or baseball players. We don't get these huge salaries. We have commitments. We actually have a day job kind of thing, even though it's a little bit of a different day job than most. But I tried to show people that, you know, I was exhausted going into this. I wasn't fresh. Like some people might just think all we do is train and race. And that's far from the case. So I want to give people a glimpse into kind of my lifestyle, as well as you know, So I want to give people a glimpse into kind of my lifestyle as well as the adventure of running the Spartathlon.

So walk me through some of the highs and lows of the experience of actually doing the race. Well, to describe the race, you need to know that the cutoff times are really aggressive. For instance, you have to be in Corinth within nine and a half hours of start. And that Corinth is 50.22 miles. And it's a pretty brutal 50.22 miles. It's hot. It's kind of rolling. Nine hours for 50. That is aggressive.

And you don't want to get there anywhere close to the cutoff time because these aggressive cutoffs keep moving forward throughout the duration of the race. So you want to get there with some buffer ahead. And all was going well for about the first 75 miles, just over the first half of the race. And then things began to unravel. And it was largely related to my GI issues and the figs, I think, mostly. Figs go right through you. That was the

problem. So for the last 75 miles, I literally did not have a piece of food. I just only drank water, primarily warm water and ran 75 miles doing that. And you had a couple interesting experiences, uh, in the latter phases of the race, right? Like you had, well, two things there was, you had this crazy out-of-body experience. So tell me about that. Out-of-body, I think, is the best description of it. I've never had anything like this happen. And I was running. So, you know, I'd been over 30 description of it. I've never had anything like this happen. And I was running.

So, you know, I'd been over 30 hours of nonstop running. It was, you know, morning the next day after starting out. And I started to see like a little stick figure below me, like a little image, almost like a little GI Joe that was just kind of moving along. And I thought maybe is it a bug? Is it, you know, what is this thing down there? And I was just like of moving along. And I thought maybe, is it a bug? What is this thing down there? And I was just meditating on this thing. I don't even know for how long. Trying to piece together, what is that? And then all of a sudden, it dawned on me, that's me.

It was as though I was in a hot air balloon or like a helicopter looking down on myself. And I thought, that was kind of freaky. How long did that go on for? It happened once. I don't know how long I was actually meditating on. Time is pretty elastic, right? Yeah. And I can remember with great accuracy almost everything about that race. There's certain blocks in that timeframe where I don't remember anything. I don't remember any of it. I can't recollect how I got from point A to point B.

But that's a very specific memory. That memory in itself, because I remember this little thing down below that I just kept looking at. And cars were going by me. I kept hearing things, but I couldn't get anything out of my head besides this little figure below me. And you're not a stranger to having, you know, kind of crazy psychedelic, you know, hallucinations during these crazy runs that you've done. That's happened to you before and you've written about it. And I think we talked a little bit about it the last time, but this is kind of qualitatively a different experience. I don't think this was a hallucination. You know, I've seen things off in the desert. You know, I've seen hallucinations and a lot of ultra marathoners, a lot of ultra athletes have seen hallucinations. I've had hallucinations talk to me before, which is

trippy, but this was something altogether different. So what do you make of that? I don't know. I mean, maybe that's just how you feel before you die. I really don't know. I've never had an out-of-body experience. And as you saw in the book, I did a lot of research into others that have and seen when these sort of things have happened. And it's usually been in traumatic incidents, car accidents, things where people are in a coma, and they all of a sudden have these flashbacks, these recollections. I think it was something along those lines.

It's super interesting. One of the things I always say is I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And every time my wife hears me say that, she goes, oh yeah, I'm a multi-dimensional being having a simultaneous experience. I guess that's like the graduate degree of what I'm a multi-dimensional being having a simultaneous experience. I guess that's like the graduate degree of what I'm talking about. Like I'm not there yet, but that sounds like it falls into that category maybe. Well, you know, the closest I can get to it, and I imagine a lot of mothers can relate to this, is when we had my daughter Alexandria. And I was

with my wife Julie the entire time she didn't have any sort of drugs like she wanted to have a natural childbirth and she was in labor for almost 10 hours and you know I could see obviously it's in the pain and where her head went she was somewhere else I mean I witnessed this all very coherently and she was somewhere else that's the best I witnessed this all very coherently, and she was somewhere else. That's the best I can describe it. She can't remember a lot of what happened during those 10 hours, but I witnessed the whole thing. And that's very similar to, I think, where my head was at.

Yeah. Well, I think there's a difference. I mean, I think when you're under extreme duress, whether it's stress or pain, we have a natural defense mechanism to like disassociate, right? So maybe that might be part of what she was experiencing. But the idea that you're observing yourself from a distance, that gets into some seriously, you know, trippy stuff, right? Well, I think that had to do with just sheer exhaustion and sleep. I think there's a multitude of factors that came together. Exhaustion, sleep deprivation, lack of calories, a lot of things came. My electrolytes, I'm sure, were completely whacked out because I hadn't

had any sort of electrolyte replenishment, no salt tabs, none of that stuff. Well, much like you like to take some flourishes with how Pheidippides actually died, my take on that is that ultra-endurance, like I said earlier, is a portal to the soul, right? And it strips you down to your very core essence until there's nothing else there except the present moment and your higher self. present moment and, you know, your higher self. And I choose to see that as almost like a door opening into, you know, the unseen realms that I think surround us, but are beyond our natural perception. And I think it's a gift. And that happens only in certain races to me where I really have, that happens during my bad races, if you will. I have some of my best experiences

during my bad races because during a good race, have some of my best experiences during my bad races because during a good race, you're kind of coherent and you're kind of racing and you've got all those pretensions still wrapped around you. You've got all your vanities. That hasn't gone out the door. When everything's going well, the ego is happy with what's going on. That's exactly right.

But when it's not going well, then the ego gets checked at the door. And that gives you an opportunity to look at yourself. I agree. And I think that's why some of the most fascinating stories I read about endurance athletes are not of their great successes. I mean, those are kind of formulaic, if you will. But the great kind of defeats or failures,

those are what really intrigues me. Because I think you learn a lot more about yourself when you fail or come close to failing than when you succeed well there's no question about that I experience that and I commend you for always like you're fearless

you just sign up for all these races you go for it you don't worry about like oh people think I need to win or whatever you just do it I think that's really something cool but the other experience that I wanted to ask you about was this kind of you had a term for it I wrote it down Oh USWS the slow wave sleep yeah you're fought you're like running but your half

of your brain is asleep yeah so tell me about that it's you know it's basically sleep running and uh it it happened to me a couple times during the sportathlete where i just literally woke up in the middle of the road running thinking i know not to be out in the middle of the road what's going on i'd meander back over the shoulder and it happened again i'd wake up running down the middle of the road and it occurred to me i was sleep running. Did you know what that was or did you find out later? No I kind of had episodes of that during other races that I've partaken in but this was more pronounced. But it's actually like a it's a thing and like it has a name so. It

does and we're not the only species that well you know man man does this humans do this typically when they're under great physical duress, when they're trying to escape. Like I write about people in the military trying to escape a pursuant that are forced marching for three, four days at a time, and they fall asleep with one eye open. So we do that. Other species, I studied about the swallows, which to me was fascinating. The swallows migrate 6,000 miles without a full night's sleep from South America. And what they do is when they start to get drowsy, they fly to a higher altitude where the air is so thin, it puts them to sleep. And then they just glide.

And as they come down and the air becomes thicker, it wakes them up. So they come back into consciousness and that sleep cycle is enough to reboot their whole system and they keep flying along. And they eat, they swallow bugs as they're flying. They don't stop. They don't sit down for 6,000 miles. That's amazing. That's amazing.

And you expressed how you felt refreshed, like a little bit refreshed, like when you would come out of these little episodes. Listeners are probably like, what the heck are you talking about? You know, think back to college. So imagine when you're cramming, you're doing an all-nighter and you've got that book in front of you and you kind of, your eyes are so heavy and you just kind of nod off. But when you wake back up, you're kind of alert again. You're kind of rebooted. And I think that's kind of what I went through. A little bit, right? Yeah. All right. So you're having all these struggles with your bowel and you're falling asleep and you're still running and you're out of your body and all this stuff is happening,

but you make it to the finish line. And what's really cool about this race is the way that all the athletes finish. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to describe the raw emotion in that finish, but you don't go under a finish line. There's no official finish line. You're running with a timing chip, and there's mats you cross along the way, but to actually finish, when you get to the main square of Sparta, there's this towering bronze statue of King Leonidas, and you just touch his feet. So you reach up, and I mean, he's larger than life. It's a 30-foot

bronze statue in the sky. Gerard Butler. Yeah. You just touch his feet, and that's when they stop the clock, and you're done. Uh-huh. And talk to me a little bit about what that experience means to you, you know, as a Greek person, as somebody who's carrying on this tradition that goes back, you know, hundreds and thousands of years. Oh, it's chilling. I mean, there's no way for any athlete to arrive at that place. You know, there's over 350 people that started that race from 46 countries. You know, some of the most elite

ultra endurance athletes from around the world. Only about a third of the people ever make it. So for anyone, not just me and my Greek heritage, anyone who stands below Leonidas and touches his feet, you just cry. I mean, it just sends shivers down your spine. It's such an emotional moment. For me, it was somewhat juxtaposed because the moment only lasted for maybe 10 seconds until someone's grabbing me saying hey you got an interview here you got an interview here another

guy's grabbing like hey you got to go to the medical tent it's mandatory they check you in the medical tent there's people saying oh you know your family your cousins are here they want to meet you they want to meet you people They want to meet you. People are handing me books, snapping selfies. It was just such a conflicted experience. Right. So you were kind of yanked out from the ability to just be present with the moment of, I mean, I see it as like this crazy full circle. Like we, like, you know, I said at the outset like this this process of coming home of really like connecting with you know who you are and where you came from and you know this this tradition that you are the modern incarnation of i mean in a symbolic way like it's it's kind of

profound it is and even if you think it through even further i mean i had to be at my best i mean i could have been a just an and said i I'm going, I'm fried, because I was dead at that point. I'm going to go find a hotel and just crawl in a bed. But there was a line of like 100 people there to see me, so I just rose to the occasion. I said, I've got to be my best. These people are here for me. I want to be there for them. When Pheidippides arrived in Sparta, he couldn't just crash. I mean, he had to present a very compelling argument to the Spartans to join the Athenians. So he had to stand proud and not look defeated, because that would give

an impression to the Spartans that there's just no hope. He had to puff out his chest, stand proud and say, men, we need you. and this is after 36 hours of nonstop running. So in a way that the two experiences were kind of parallel in that regard. What have you taken away from this experience with respect to, I mean, immersing yourself in the history and in the research of trying to understand this period of time and who these people were, I would imagine gives you a profound sense of appreciation for, you know, what this culture created, right? And this is where you come from. But then to travel back to Greece and kind of experience firsthand what's happening there now. I mean, you talk about this in the book, like the juxtaposition of kind of what Greece stands for and the current state of affairs with what's going on over there right now. Yeah, I mean, you know, the golden days of Greece are definitely, you know,

millennia ago. But I think that the Greek spirit still looms large. And I think that one thing that we know as athletes is shared suffering brings people together like nothing else. And every year I go back to Greece, which has been half a dozen years now, I see the bonds are growing stronger between people. More people are running in Greece now than ever before. And we saw that with the economic downturn in the U.S. I mean, when you have nothing, you kind of revert to the simple things that you have. And so more people have turned to running in Greece, which Greeks, you know, largely running was not the most popular pastime. Well, let's leave it at that. But every year I go back, I see more and more runners, just recreational runners, not racers, not elite runners, but people just running around the neighborhoods.

So it's kind of, I think it's had positive implications as well as negative implications. Right, so you've gone back there every year. Yeah, every year. A couple times a year, sometimes, yeah. So what do you want people to get out of this book? Like, what is the core kind of idea behind it that you're trying to convey? Well, you know, I think first and foremost, I want it to be entertaining. I mean, it's, I want someone to enjoy reading it. I've had a couple, you know, really nice messages from people that have said, you know, I started this when the

flight took off. I didn't put it down. I read it on the, on the cab on the way to the hotel. I read it in my hotel room. It was fascinating. It was, thank you for that. You know, when you engage in something that captivates you, it takes your head somewhere else, right? You forget about your troubles. You forget about life for a while and just really get into this story. So I hope first and foremost, it does that. Secondly, I hope it gives an appreciation for the contribution of ancient Greece to our modern living. And also I hope it inspires people, like I said before, to find themselves, to really search for themselves. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, all that comes across.

I mean, it goes without saying that I enjoyed it tremendously. And like I said, I truly believe it is the book that you were meant to write. Like all the other books that lead up to this book because it brings everything into like this laser focus of who you are. And I think it gives purpose to the work that you do and context, you know, to understand that this is what you, where you come from and to understand that rich history, I think really helps me understand you better. And it also helps me understand the historical context of running like throughout culture building over the millennia. Yeah, I think anyone who's run a marathon, or aspires to run a marathon will really appreciate this book, because it explains exactly

how the marathon became the marathon and why I think it looks also inside our heads and like, why are we doing this? Running sucks, right? This hurts. It's painful, but we're still, we're going to do it. We're going to persist and persevere. It's just funny that the story of Pheidippides for most people and myself until I read your book boils down to him running from Marathon to Athens, and that's all we know. And we thought of that as the most, you know, I'm saying Herculean thing, you know, jesting with that word, but that a human being could possibly do. And yet that was just, I guess it's because he died, right? That makes that story stand the test of time. But what if the story had been put out earlier about the 153 months?

Maybe we would have skipped the marathon and everybody would be running Spartathalons everywhere. Well, and I explain that in the book. I think that the reason that the final marathon was emphasized in the historical record, I mean, the historical record just glosses over this guy running round trip from Athens to Sparta is because he was just doing his record. I mean, the historical record just glosses over this guy running round trip from Athens to Sparta is because he was just doing his job. I mean, that's what this guy's job is. He did his job. No big deal.

He might have done a good job that day. You know, you get a pat on the back. But that final 26.2, the messenger died. And in ancient Greece, there was nothing more heroic than dying and serving your fellow man. So that is the legend that percolated up through the ages. Right. So let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk to you about Haiti, because I know you just ran. When did you, that was a while, was that like a year ago? When did you run across Haiti? Earlier this year. Earlier this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I want to hear a little bit about what that was like. Well, I got invited by the North Face to go on an expedition to run across Haiti. And I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. There wasn't a lot of research on it. And I'm very bad at saying no. It was a 230-day... You definitely are overcommitted. It was a 230-mile run across Haiti. There's basically one road, as I learned, that goes across Haiti. And we ran on this one road. And it was... Rich, it's hard to describe how that impacted me. You cannot go there without being impacted.

It is the most shocking, disturbing situation I've ever been in. I've seen a lot of poverty, I've seen a lot of hardship, I've never seen anything close to Haiti. It was, we were very juxtaposed there as runners. A lot of the areas, you know, these are villages where they'd never seen an American before. They'd never seen a white person. And here we are running down their street, you know, in athletic gear, we're fit, we're, you know, we're in good shape, we've got muscle.

And these people are, you know, they're just trying to make it through the day, literally. I mean, they're living day to day in incredible poverty. And it was really bizarre to see this. Well, this is a situation where the world's spotlight has sort of moved on, right? But the reality is that that's still a story, right? But the reality is that that's still a story, right? It's just the news cycle is so fast these days that our attention shifts away and focuses on other things.

Yeah, and I mean, it wasn't even, I'm not sure even the earthquake before that, it was that much better. Because some of the infrastructure there is non-existent. And even where money has come in to build infrastructure after the earthquake, a lot of it was in rubble. I mean, it was built. There was no way to sustain it. I don't see a solution to Haiti. I'm a can-do kind of guy like you are, like most Americans, like we can fix this. Okay, let's come in. We're the Americans. We'll get this one righted. like we can fix this, okay, let's come in, you know, we're the Americans, we'll get this one righted. It's going to take a long time. I mean, the deforestation is incredible. I mean, they've largely cut down on a lot of the trees on their island and use those to build or for fuel. Once they had no trees left, they burn plastic for heat to try to heat the food. They live on

subsidies from the UN. There's really no sustainable industry. The oceans are fished out, so they have no source of food from the ocean. It's really a desperate situation down there. It's heartbreaking. And that must have felt weird to run through that. Like, hey, we're here to, you know... I mean, I imagine it was to raise awareness

around these issues or what was that? Was it a fundraiser or? It was a fundraiser. And I mean, we succeeded in that regard because most of the funds came from the U.S. I think all of the funds came from the U.S. But you're right. Could we have done it another way? Maybe. I don't, I mean, I think we provided entertainment, especially for the kids because they'd never seen an American before. And here we are, you know, kind of high-fiving kids running down the street, and they could run with us for a while. For a lot of the villagers, I think, again, it was something they'll never forget. I mean, they've never seen a white person.

And here's, you know, all of a sudden, you know, half a dozen of us in clad and running gear running down the street. We're waving to them, and they're kind of looking at us like, you know, are you Martians? Where'd you come from? But that was it. I mean, other than that one impression, I don't think we left anything of value. And when you come home from something like that, like, do you feel like, is there an avenue to, you know, be able to contribute in a productive way? Like, is there what can be done? Yeah. I mean, I think I did all that I could do. I personally also, I mean, I, I wrote a check for $10,000 just because, you know, I don't have, I don't have that much money to donate to charity, but I just said, I got, I just cannot at least, even though, you know, the Haitians are so different than, than I was, I mean, here I am, an athlete,

educated. These are villagers that physical fitness is the last thing on their mind. They're impoverished. They're worried about getting through the day, feeding their family, survival. Even though we're so different, you can't see another human like that and not feel an attachment at least i can't so you know i i feel like i did all that i did contributing this money i just i don't think you can throw money at this problem and make it go away i think it's gonna take a lot more than that yeah and i don't have the answer i mean i really don't know what a solution is and you're you're like a. I mean, you're no stranger to third

world countries. Like you've traveled, I don't know how many countries you've been to, but you've been to a lot, right? So. I've been on all seven continents twice. So yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if I told you this, but this in the summer, I got invited by the U.S. Department of State to be an athlete ambassador. So I was sent as a sports envoy to run 525 kilometers across the ancient Silk Road between three countries to celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations with the U.S. So I ran across Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. I didn't even know that. I think I saw you posted some photos from that. Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't, I guess I didn't even know that. I think I saw you posted some photos from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess I didn't really fully process that was what was going on. I was a U.S. ambassador.

I'm like, wow, that's incredible. Yeah. That's a cool experience. I could do a whole podcast with you on that. We could because that was. Were you doing that with a group? Were you the only person running? I was the only person running.

Local people came out and ran with me. You know, some places, it was just villagers. Other places, you know, there are high schools with track teams that would run with me. Some nights I stayed in hotels. A lot of other nights I homesteaded in yurts. So it was a really great experience. Wow. Yeah, I was out there for 12 days running across the Silk Road. What was the most kind of surprising thing that you discovered or saw along the way? I think the most surprising is how un-Westernized that area of the world is. You know, I didn't see one Starbucks.

I didn't see one McDonald's the entire time. So, you know, I was 12 time zones away from San Francisco, from my home city, from the West Coast. So it's basically, that's as far as you can get away from where you live. Before you start coming back. Yeah, if you bore a hole straight down, that's where I was. And I felt that removed. The cities were remarkable. The infrastructure there was very progressive.

Some of the country I ran through, unspoiled, very natural, in the same state it's been for forever, if you will. The people were very warm, very, you know, it's nomadic. So every town I'd come running into, literally the entire town would come out to greet me. They'd have dancing, you know, they'd want to have a celebration. I'd have to run 40 to 50 miles a day and five towns along the way would want to have me there all day. Wow. Did you have a documentary crew with you for that? Yeah, I had a film crew that documented Wow. Did you have a documentary crew with you for that? Yeah, I had a film crew that documented it.

So is there going to be a film coming out about that? It's on the State Department website. So they basically did a daily wrap of every single day and then one final video. So it's a short video. It's like a 15-minute, the final one. That's cool. Yeah. So in terms of shifting gears gears and I want to shift

gears a little bit and kind of dissect some of your, some of your secrets and your practices, I'm interested in, you know, I, I, as I told you earlier, I just turned 50. So, um, you know, I'm trying to under, I'm trying to really reconnect with my body. I've kind of formally started training again. Um, and, and learning kind of, you know, how it's a little bit different now than it was a couple of years ago and how to approach that. So, you know, how has your training regimen or protocol evolved as you, you know, as you get a little bit older? What does that look like? Or has it, or do you just still do the same thing? What does that look like? Or do you just still do the same thing?

No, I think it's evolved a lot. One is that I've shifted my paradigm so my whole life now is about training. I just view my life through the lens of an athlete. So there's never a moment when I'm not training. I don't just look at a training block like, okay, I've got to go out for an hour and click off nine miles at an eight-minute pace. block, like, okay, I've got to go out for an hour and click off nine miles at eight minute pace. I literally think, okay, if you have five minutes, you can do 100 burpees. You can do a set of push-ups. You can do pull-ups. I'm forcing you to sit down right now, by the way. Dean wanted to stand for the podcast, but the mic stand won't go high enough. So you're going to get antsy,

right? If you want to stop and take a burpee break, we could do that. Yeah, so I mean I'm constantly working out. I'm also working out much harder. So HIIT training, high-intensity interval training, really pushing body weight to exhaustion. So really, really pushing as much as I can to try to keep my testosterone levels up because we're getting older, right?

Right. So I'm doing that. I'm also training smarter, I think. I'm training my legs a lot more for muscle development versus just running. And what does that look like specifically? I ride this thing called the elliptical. I think we've talked about that before. So elliptical, sometimes a stationary bike in the gym, and then also squats, squats with weights. Right. So, beyond squats, what other exercises in the weight room do you do? I do primarily body resistance weight exercises.

So, I'll do sets of pull-ups, like 20 pull-ups, military, and then behind the neck. And 20 pull-ups is 20 legit, not those little half jerks. 20 pull- like pull-ups that's a lot yeah i'll do like five or six sets of those a day i do ledge pull-ups too with just my fingers so um you know yeah i'm a little more bulky than most runners but i think that's helped me sustain a career you know for two decades without an injury right like you don't ever get injured. Yeah, knock on wood. I mean, I've never. You must get like little niggles and things like that though, right?

Do you do like massage or acupuncture or any of that kind of stuff? I don't do shit. I know. I shouldn't say that. No, it's all right. I don't use a foam roller. Tell me your truth.

I don't use a foam roller. I don't use anything. I don't take any drugs. No drugs at all. Well, you're a true Hemerodromy. Is that how you say it? Hemerodromy. Hemerodromy.

Hemerodromy. Yeah. Yeah, so wow, none of that stuff. I never get like a little, oh, my knee's feeling a little wonky. Not really. I mean, nothing I can't run through. Sometimes during a run, I'm like, Oh, you know that there's a little niggle there, but I mean, it usually works itself out within three strides, if not, you know, a couple hundred meters kind of thing.

And do you still get up at like four o'clock in the morning? I sometimes do, but I also sometimes sleep until 10 in the morning. So I really mix it up. Like some days I try to wake naturally when I can. Uh, and if I get up at four in the morning. So I really mix it up. Like some days I try to wake naturally when I can. And if I get up at four in the morning, it's usually because I woke up. I won't set an alarm to get up at four in the morning. And if I wake up at four in the morning, I'll go with it. So I try to really follow my body's circadian rhythm naturally versus forcing it to wake up at certain times. I think that's helped a lot, as well as just quality of energy throughout the day. And in terms of your run volume, has that changed at all? Do you feel like you don't need

to do as much volume because you've been doing it so long? Or do you still run a marathon before breakfast most days of the week? Or what does that look like? I feel like I can get away with a lot without a lot of volume. So I can like I just the new york city marathon uh was it wasn't the weekend before last and on very low base and i think i ran like a three sub 320 like 318 maybe 315 um and with almost no training so i can do that kind of stuff no problem now if i wanted to go sub three hours i'd have to put some effort into it so my speed has definitely decreased as i've gotten older, but I still think my, you know, my endurance is increasing still as far as, you know, just duration and pain tolerance. Right. Well, the, the, the, yeah, the endurance can continue to expand. It's the strength that starts to become more difficult as we get older.

I'm not having the problem with strength as much as speed. Yeah. But you know, the other thing is I've shifted my diet a lot. I mean, we've talked about this briefly and you'd be amazed at my diet in that I'm pretty much raw these days. Oh yeah. Pretty much raw, but not, I eat protein. I eat primarily fish. So oily fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines. So oily fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines. I eat salmon, mackerel, or sardines six nights a week. Yeah. And nothing processed, nothing refined? And then a lot of raw vegetables and fruit?

A lot of raw vegetables. I don't cook anything. I don't process anything. No grains? No grains. None. We've talked about this before. Yeah, but so when you go out on a longer training run

and you have to bring some stuff with you, what do you pack with you? I go to nut butters a lot, pastilli. So I use, you know, that sesame, it's ground sesame and honey. Do you make that yourself? Actually, you can buy it. I buy it in bars. You've probably seen those sesame bars kind of thing. The ones that are solid, like a hard that you can crack,

those are made with sugar, so don't eat those. The ones that are soft and kind of pliable, those are made with honey. And I get them from Greece. I've got a supplier from Greece. Oh, you do? I'm not going to share that supplier. I've got your secret stash. You talked in the book about eating, like, real Greek olives.

The food, like, Kalamata is actually a place. And, you know, people have probably heard of Kalamata olives. They grow olives there in these ancient olive trees that produce the best olives in the world. And, you know, the Chinese love Kalamata olives. So these Chinese, you know, these very enterprising Chinese businessmen said, let's just buy it. Instead of paying the import fees, let's just buy the trees, plant them in China. They could never produce an olive that tastes the same. You know, it's the soil.

It's like the salinity of the soil, the hours of sunlight, the humidity. There's a lot of things that come into making a Kalamata of olive. And the trees are original, right? So they've been there for a very long time, and they're not like rebreeding them. And to explain these olives, though, they sounded like they're like the size of like a peach. Yeah, they're the size of plums.

I mean, they're massive, and you can eat them raw. They're fruity. Well, I think an olive is a fruit, I think. And they taste, yeah, taste like almost like a hybrid between an avocado and a plum. Wow. Yeah. Who would have known man. Yeah yeah the foraging in Greece is unbelievable. The Yaya's, Yaya's a grandmother, they walk around they pick collards basically greens they call it Horta and they pick collards, basically greens. They call it horta. And they make this collard green where they just steam these collards and you put a little lemon juice

and some olive oil on top. It's amazing that a weed can taste so good. Right. That's cool. All right. So the nut butters, the sesame bars, and what about liquids? You know, my go-to is coconut water. i really believe in coconut water and just unsweetened plain coconut water and you know if i was to have a glass of coconut water now i really don't like it like it doesn't taste very good but if you're sweating it tastes terrific right yeah well and it has it has those electrolytes that you're looking for right yeah so keeping it simple, whole foods. I like it, man. I'm down with that program.

I've read your books. I've read your books. What do you think are the common mistakes that most athletes or runners make? Because you're around thousands of runners. You're at all these races. You have the ability to observe all these people around you all the time and watch people running alongside you. What do you observe where you're like, if they just, don't they understand if they just did this, like it would be so much better? I think it depends on, you know, the, the, both the physical condition and kind of the stage of development, like, you know, newbie runners or new marathoners. One thing I see is they tend to overdress and not necessarily

with the right moisture wicking clothes, but they start out when it's cold, they might have a layer, you know, on and maybe a shell and they just start sweating so quickly and you're so much more comfortable if you don't generate so much heat. So that's one thing I've seen. I've also seen socks that are too thick. So going to a thinner sock. I've seen a lot of people running in shoes that are overbuilt. I think that are overbuilt that are forcing them to run in a non-natural gait. I also think that people over hydrate and they eat too much. I think like during the New York City Marathon, I had half a glass of water at the halfway mark.

That's all I had. And I barely ate anything. I had like a little bit of yogurt, like plain full fat Greek yogurt, some cashews and a banana for breakfast. Half a glass of water is fine. I think people put too many calories in their mouth. Yeah, I mean, to be fair,

you're so adapted to this that you don't really need anything. It's not that taxing for you to go out and run a four-hour marathon or whatever, you know? It's not a big deal where it is much more of a big deal for the average person, but I do see- But why? That's why I question that. Why?

You know, I mean, it's not like I've got a lot more, right now, like I didn't train a lot more than anyone else running a- Yeah, but you've been running, you know i mean it's not like i've got a lot more right now like i didn't train a lot more than anyone else running uh yeah but you've been running you know 100 200 mile weeks for the last 20 years so you know you can't discount that aspect of it but i will i i agree with you like you'll see just out running casually when you go out for a run like people are loaded down like it used to just be a little fuel belt now it's full backpacks yeah all kinds of stuff and it's like dude you're only going out for an hour you know and people put so much emphasis on like you know how many gels do i have right now and every you know 15 minutes i gotta have

two packs and right i i think that uh we're overdoing it yeah right and so where where do you fall on on the whole shoe thing you know i'm sure people ask you every day what kind of shoe they oh everybody wants to know about the shoes what kind of shoe but i mean i should preface by saying i can run in wooden clogs i mean i i have a very um natural uh uh gate if you will and natural stride so i've never needed any sort of support or cushion and i've always been i've always trended toward the minimalist um that said, I love running in hokas. I mean, I think hokas, there's a lot to be said about hokas. So I can run in anything.

I think the right shoe for someone is the shoe that fits them best. And I think that it takes a lot of experimentation, unfortunately, and probably a lot of money to find a brand and an actual model that fits you well. So I would say go into a specialty retailer, you know, a shoe store, and work with someone who's knowledgeable to get you fitted for the right shoe. And they'll let you wear test it, like running up and down the block.

But, you know, based on the last of the shoe, I mean, I have a really wide forefoot. So there's certain models of shoes like the Ultra. I love the Ultra. And it's not a triple or double E. It's just a regular shoe because the way their forefoot is so roomy But other people just say there's it's too much like I my foot doesn't fill up that space So you really need to find the shoe that works best for you. Yeah, I like that advice

I mean, it's interesting to just watch these trends, you know this pendulum swing, you know It was like it's vibrams and it's the new balance minimus and then it all and then suddenly overnight it's all about hokas and you know and then you know my introduction to hokas was showing up at bad water and noticing everybody was wearing them yeah what are these shoes uh the pendulum swinging in that direction and then coming and then and then really this whole like zero drop you know movement with the ultras and all of that it's just interesting to watch but i've never found like the ultimate ultimate i'm always like just buying all different kinds of pairs and trying them to

see what works yeah i've been running in the ons lately and i really like those i've never tried those i've heard great things yeah they really fit me really well. I've been enjoying those. Well, I learned a lot from talking to other runners. And I probably, myself and Bart Yasso, probably talk to more runners than anyone else in the world. Because I'm literally at a race expo every single weekend talking to runners at marathon expos or at even shorter races than that, half marathons. I go to 5 5k because of my sponsors and i talked to a lot of runners i always query them i'm like what are you running in you know what do you like and i've heard a lot of good things about the ons uh i've heard a lot of people

like the hokas changed their life like i used to have all these shin splints and everything now they went away so when you hear that you know from a lot of different people uh of all ages and abilities you start to believe that's a good shoe for a lot of different people of all ages and abilities, you start to believe that's a good shoe for a lot of people. Right. So I got a funny story about the ons. So I, I, I was wearing a pair of ons and I, I, in an Instagram photo that I put up a couple of weeks ago. And, and this dude from on like gets in touch with me. His name is Lottie Demko. And he, he writes me this email and he's like, listen,

first thing I got to tell you is I'm vegan. I'm a former pro triathlete. I work for on running. I saw your Instagram, but mainly why I'm writing you is because almost every single day, at least 200 times at this point, people come up to me and think that I'm you this guy like you know and he sent me a photo and he actually looks a lot like me and and so i talked to him on the phone the

other day and he's like yeah i was in the i was in new york city and uh i'm going out for a run and he was there for the new york city marathon he was going out like the day before for a jog or whatever and he hears hey rich and he turns around and it's you do you remember that i'm so glad you said that because you're telling me that story i'm like oh i gotta tell rich i met this other guy who looks just like him in new york that's the guy uncanny no i came i was ready to start hugging the guy i mean he looks exactly like you yeah it's crazy right yeah he's told me that he started just telling people that he just saying yeah like if they think it's me that he just goes along with it and then somebody tweeted the other day, like, oh,

it was great to meet you or whatever. And it's a picture of this person who tweeted it with Lottie. And I was like, Lottie, man, you can't like pass yourself off as me. But I thought it was funny. And usually people say, oh, I look, you know, you look like this person or that person. But I saw this photo and I was like, oh my God, he really does look a lot like me. I can see why people are. But whatity what nationality is he well he's

he's kind of a global citizen i think he he's lived all over the world he lived in but he's he's predominantly he lives in barcelona now but i think he's i think he's danish yeah um but yeah i thought i thought you were gonna say if this person mom was watching me like you know running down the road and he was gonna say to say, God, your form really sucks. You really supinate, Rich. You've got to work on that. But I just thought it was funny that you mistook him as me the other week. So it was really cool.

Yeah. Well, we've got to wrap this up. But any parting words of inspiration? parting words of inspiration. I think one thing that I'd like to maybe just, you know, go out on is, uh, it was how you, how you wrap your head around being this, you know, for lack of a better word, like you're an inspiration, inspirational figure. You know, you go to Spartathlon, you finish the race, like you just want to chill and people want a piece of you. They want you to take a selfie or sign a book you go to everything from the new york city marathon to like local 5ks somebody's calling you in this room

that's all right is that my phone uh you're like the house the room phone here no it's oh it's your phone yeah your cell phone you have to get that you can't oh it's the show trying to get in touch with you i think i gotta go do like an audition tonight or something. Okay, cool. You know, how do you, we talked about this a little bit last time, but I'm interested in whether it's evolved or not. Like how do you navigate all of that or kind of shoulder that responsibility with grace? Because, you know, in the course of, you know crewing for you at bad water i i

got a glimpse of of what it's like um and i'll say two things the first thing is no matter how difficult that race became for you because it wasn't your best race i know you were struggling and having a hard time you were always like super gracious with everybody who was helping you. Like you never lost your composure. Like you're very aware of kind of where you stand and how people view you. And then after the race, like at the thing at the gym where everybody's there and everybody's kind of like pulling at you, um, you know, to be able to just be composed and not overwhelmed and, and be present, you know, it takes a lot of energy. Like I have a small taste of that, but to just be really present with everybody who wants to talk to you. Well, I mean, you know, thankfully I'm authentic. It's just who I am. Like I've come

full circle. Like I'm not putting on a show. I'm not acting. Even when I'm exhausted, I enjoy interacting with people. I think because I'm such a strong introvert that I know when I, you know, when I have my time, Dean's time, if you will, I'm just in a hole. I might just go running by myself for four or five hours. But when I'm around people, I really enjoy the interaction. So my quote unquote fans are likable people. I mean, these are people that come up to me in the airport. They're not like, you know, I imagine fans like a rock group, you know, just fawning, oh, can I have a selfie or this and that? They're really good people. I want to sit down and have a beer with this guy or this, you know, have a cup of coffee with them. So that I think is really

helpful. We're kind of like-minded, kindred spirits. And I think they can relate to a lot of my story because it's some of the same feelings and emotions that we've both shared together. It's a human story. Yeah, it's a human story. You know, it's never gone to my head. I just don't think of myself as anything besides just another runner. I don't think of myself as special in any way. And, yeah, it'd be funny.

I'd love someone to just shadow me, like, around for a day. You'd be amazed. Like, walking to the airport, people would come up to me. I mean, just even here in Burbank, three people came up to me in the airport. And they're great people. But you just never think, okay, well, yeah, Dean's kind of known. But I have people come up to me all over, across the world. I mean, it happens everywhere across the world.

And I used to think, okay, this could be a curse, but it's not. It's a gift. Yeah, it's a real gift. And is there something that you want to leave with everybody who you interact with or you're just showing up for whatever the experience presents? I like to listen to how I've touched people or how they even know of me and what their stories are the thing is inevitably when they tell me their story I'm the one who gets inspired you

know I mean people come up to me like oh my god you know I read your book you changed my life I'm like oh well you know how well you know I had cancer and you know they told me I had six months to live. And I said, I'm going to not only beat cancer, I'm going to become a marathoner. This book just inspired me. And that was five years ago. I mean, you hear a story like that,

and you're just, how can you not think that this person is an incredible source of inspiration? So that's one thing I've really learned is that inspiration is a two-way street. That's beautiful. Well, the last time we spoke, you kind of let me in on this grand plan that you have of running a marathon in every country across the world. And I think the idea was to do it in under a year or something like that.

So where are you at with that? Is this still happening? How many years ago did I tell you I was going to do that? Oh, my God. This thing's going to kill me. Hey, listen, big plans take, you know, a long time to plan. Yeah, this one's been five years in the planning, but you're right. Hopefully, and it's coming together really nicely, so hopefully in November of 2017, so about a year from now, I'm going to set out on a global expedition to run a marathon in every country of the world in a one-year time span that's fantastic yeah there's 203 countries and i'm working with the un and the state

department i've got this logistics team hawkeye sports and entertainment that's doing all the planning it's all staged and ready to go so hopefully uh yeah pick a country like crazy you know sort of visa issues with certain strange countries well the state department has a list of right now it's eight countries where i can't leave the airport like you know iraq and syria they're like okay we can get you into the airport you're gonna have to set up a treadmill you can run on a treadmill but you can't you can't even go run around the perimeter of the airport or anything like that yeah so. But I said, can I invite some of the whole thing with this is I want to invite the local people in. Yeah.

So I said, can I set up more than one treadmill and have some of the locals run with me? Right. Or maybe there's a vacant terminal where there's nothing going on that you could transform. It's sometimes going to be on a military base. So I'll have military guys. But I mean, you ran the marathon in Beirut. I mean, you saw what it does. It kind of unites people in a great sort of way.

Yeah, there's no question about it. It's a powerful thing, man. Well, cool. Well, pick a couple of countries and come join me. I would love to do that. That would be fantastic. Tahiti. That's a good one.

Tahiti, no. I want to go to the crazy countries, you know, the ones that are hard to, that are, you know, that are, anybody can go. You know, it's like, it's not a vacation it's about having a a mind-altering you know soul expanding experience i hope there's some vacation element as well you know yeah if you're doing 203 in a year then you're literally there's not much room for error you have like you're not coming home for a couple

weeks you've got a down day here and there but, but I'll be on the road the whole time. You're going to be on the road. And how do you balance all that with being married and kids and all that? I'll take my family as much as I can. They'll come join me as much as they can. Hopefully I can take my wife, Julie, with me the entire time. But my family always comes out and sees me at points along the way. Right.

Cool. All right. Well, good luck in the game show tomorrow. Who is the real ultra marathon man? I't know i got the easy part i mean it's like how are they going to not pick you i don't get it but uh anyway that should be fun and uh thanks so much for doing this thanks so check out the book road to sparta available everywhere is there any specific place people should go to look for it no it's uh they can go to amazon or they can go to any i always say support your local uh independent bookseller because i'm always yeah and uh it's in uh audio it's ebook version did you read the uh did you read the

audio i did but the guy i read i worked with i like chose this guy he's really good and he's not greek but he lives in new york he He went to Queens where there's all these Greek restaurants. And he worked in the kitchen to learn kind of their accent. Wow, that's commitment. So he did a really good job with it. Yeah, he's an actor and he's just really into it. That's cool. Awesome, man.

Well, until we meet again, my friend, hopefully in some strange country where we're going to run a marathon. If you're digging on Dean, the best way to learn more about him and his journey, DeanCarnazes.com, at DeanCarnazes on Twitter, and anywhere else people can find you. They can go to Ultramarathon.com if they're old school. And are you on like a sort of

book tour where you're speaking in lots of places if people want to see the calendar? The calendar is online. Yeah, Ultramarathon, man. Alright, man and calendars all it's online. Yeah. Yeah. Ultra marathon, man. All right, man. Thanks Rich.

Talk soon. Peace plants. Peace and Plato. All right, everybody. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Please make a point of picking up Dean's new book, the road to Sparta,

super fun and fascinating read. You can do that by clicking through the Amazon banner ad on my website, richroll.com. And as always, don't forget to check out the show notes on the episode page on my website, tons of resources, things that will take your experience of Dean beyond the earbuds. We put a lot of time into those, a lot of effort. So please make a point of visiting and exploring a little bit more deeply. As always, I appreciate you guys sharing the show with your friends and your colleagues for leaving a review on iTunes, for subscribing, again, for using the Amazon banner ad. Everybody who's made a habit of that, especially with holiday shopping

coming up, it makes a huge difference and really supports us. Thank you for doing that. If you want to take your patronage even further, we have a Patreon for that. You can find the banner ad for our Patreon account the same place you can find the Amazon banner ad, right on any episode page. If you guys would like to get a free weekly email from me, it's called Roll Call. You can do that. It's totally free. Each Thursday I send out a blast with five or six just helpful tips and tools, recommendations,

books, documentaries, articles I've come across, products I think are cool, things that I've enjoyed that inspire me or that I find useful. There's no like sort of product endorsement or spamminess to this whatsoever. Just cool stuff. That's it. And you can subscribe to that on my website. Plenty of places to enter your email. Shout out to everybody who has helped put on this production today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production. Sean Patterson for graphics. Chris Swan for additional production assistance and help compiling the show notes, and theme music, as always, by Anna Lemma. Also, today's interstitial track is called Two Runs Make a Right. It's by musician, runner, straight-edge vegan, and podcast fan Ray Holroyd. And Ray was inspired by the life lessons that he learned from running 5K

every day for a year year and he wrote this song you can stick around to the end to hear the whole track which you can find on his website revolutionharmony.com as well as on youtube spotify etc wherever you enjoy music but go to his website revolutionharmony.com thanks for the love you guys final thought on some level i think it's fair to say that dean can be chalked up as some kind of genetic freak of nature. But I also think it's too easy to write him off as an outlier, as a guy who is simply genetically wired to do certain things others can't. Because I've seen him suffer up close and personal. I've seen him put his shoes on one foot at a time.

He's a phenomenal athlete, of course, but he's a human being just like the rest of us. And if there's anything I can learn from Dean, it's that, as I always say, we are all sitting atop mountains of untapped potential. And the only thing sitting between you and tapping into that reservoir of underexpressed potential is you and your willingness to welcome and weather and endure some level of discomfort. So let's break the cycle.

Let's face that discomfort. And instead of shying away from it, let's embrace it. Let's welcome it. Whatever it is that you're afraid of, walk through it. What you will experience on the other side will only make you stronger, it will make you better, and it will make you more whole as a human being. See you guys soon. Peace. Plants. Peace. Lights. Every day, every day, for one year we wired my mind Now I live by the 12 other sins I learned from a 12-month-old streak

Here we go Listen to your worry and not your woes See every day is day one People who discover you just need a hug You can run away from depression Every day is day one. Help is what separates the great from the good. Do runs make a fight?

Do runs make a ride? Do runs make a ride? Music is vibration, vibration is movement, movement is running So running is music, we are the music, living your song where you belong Revolution run on it, don't wait my run from it Never out of breath but always out of step Your panic run to it, your purpose run to it Run and run

Be more durable, work less is best And pull every day is day one Run and run Be more durable versus best simple Every day is day one Inspiration is contagious Do not procrastinate 20k in 20c gives me clarity Every day is day one Commitment is difficult to make but easy to keep

Two walls make a fight字幕志愿者 杨茜茜 To run, make it right I know my faith, I know my faith is on I know my faith, I know my faith is on Music is vibration, vibration is movement Movement is running, so running is music We are the music, living your song where you belong Revolution run on it, the white man run from it. Never out of breath but always out of step. Your panic run through it, your purpose run through it.

Run and run and never run. Two runs make a fight. Two runs make a ride. Two runs make a ride. Bye. To run, make a run To run, make a run To run, make a run