The Rich Roll Podcast - Kílian Jornet: Summiting The Mind Of The World’s Greatest Mountain Runner
Episode Date: January 22, 2019Never meet your heroes, they say. Fortunately, this entire podcast is based on ignoring that advice. And today, that's a good thing. First, Kílian Jornet — one of the most humble, accomplished an...d inspiring athletes in the world — rarely sits for long form press. Second, this hero lives up to the hype. And this conversation is everything I hoped it would be. For the uninitiated, Kílian Jornet is inarguably the most prolific and dominant mountain runner of all time and amongst the world's greatest athletes, period. Born and raised at 6,000 feet above sea level in the Spanish Pyrenees, at age 5 he climbed an 11,000 foot mountain — the highest mountain in the region. Now Jornet adores the mountains with the same ferocity with which he runs them. Racking up wins in most of the world's premier ultramarathons, his many accomplishments include: * 4x champion of Europe’s Skyrunner World Series; * 3x champion of the grueling Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc; * 2011 winner, Western States 100; and * 4x consecutive winner, Hardrock 100; and * 2017 winner at Hardrock 100 despite dislocating his shoulder at mile 14 In search of inspiration outside formal competition, Kílian embarked on a self-styled adventure project dubbed Summits of My Life — establishing the fastest known recorded times (“FKT”) to ascend and descend the world's most challenging peaks, including the Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Denali and even the planet's tallest summit. Not only did Kílian set the Mt. Everest FKT at 26 hours from base camp, he did it without supplemental oxygen or ropes. A mere six days later, he repeated the performance — an accomplishment that inspired Adventurer of the Year accolades from National Geographic. Kílian's feats of poetic athletic prowess are beautifully depicted in his gripping memoir Run Or Die*, the new documentary Path To Everest, and his latest book Summits of My Life* — all of which I urge you to check out. Today he shares his remarkable story. This is a conversation about what drives one of the planet's most uniquely gifted fleet of foot — a man devoted to redefining what is possible, continually pushing the limits of human ability, and never failing to astonish competitors with his near-superhuman fitness and ability. So what lies behind the success? Kílian's motivation isn't what you might imagine. It has nothing to do with race results. And his happiness derives not from victory. Instead, it's adventure that sparks Kílian's joy. Immersion in nature. Living outside the comfort zone. And always, always exploring. A truly amazing human, what strikes me most about this other-worldly athlete is his profound humility. Kiílian's passion and respect for nature's prowess is earned. Refreshingly grounded, he lives simply, an ethic and aesthetic reflected in the minimalistic purity of his athletic pursuits. Today I'm glad I met a hero. I think you will be too. Enjoy! Rich
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I normally like solitude and I like kind of like being alone, being alone with
with mountains. It makes sense on the way that it's this feeling, like this
feeling of feeling very small, it's really interesting I think and facing
yourself. We are so much about we want to leave a legacy or we want to be remembered
or we want to do something important
and at the end nothing we do is important
and I think when you realize that
we are not important and what we do is not important
then you realize how wonderful it is
That's Killian Jornet and this
is the Rich Roll Podcast.
The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich
Roll. I'm your host. Welcome to the show, to the podcast. Good to have you here today. As the saying, the adage goes, never meet your heroes. And I understand
the sensibility behind that piece of advice, but from time to time, I choose to ignore it.
And in the case of today's guest, I'm so glad I did because Killian Jornet, truly one of the greatest,
if not the greatest living athlete,
somebody who inspires me
and inspires millions of other people all across the world.
This guy really lives up to the hype.
We had a tremendous conversation.
He's beautiful, he's humble.
And it was a real treat
because he doesn't do a lot of long form type press or media.
And I'm so excited to share it with you guys in a couple few.
But first, let's take care of a little business, shall we?
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We're brought to you today by recovery.com.
I've been in recovery for a long time.
It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And
it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in
the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find
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challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.
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a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do.
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Okay, Killian.
Oh, Killian, all you ultra runners out there,
you know what I'm talking about.
You get where I'm coming from.
But hey, if you never heard of this guy, that's okay.
Don't feel bad because I'm gonna tell you all about him.
Killian is perhaps the most prolific
and successful professional sky runner,
trail runner, ski mountaineer, and long distance runner.
He's a six-time champion
of the long distance running Sky Runner World Series.
And he's the winner
of some of the most prestigious ultra marathons on earth, including the UTMB Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, the Grand Raid, Western States,
the Hard Rock 100, and so many more. In fact, this is a guy who won so many ultra races so readily
that he started looking for different kinds of challenges, unique challenges outside of formal
competition, just to keep things
fresh for himself. And that's what ultimately led him to this self-styled adventure series that he
calls the Summits of My Life Project, which essentially involves Killian picking off FKT
records, which means setting the fastest ever recorded times to ascend and descend some of the world's most challenging peaks,
including the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Denali,
the Bob Graham Round,
which you might recall I discussed
with Ross Edgley recently,
and Mount Everest.
Yes, that Everest.
Killian set the fastest recorded time,
26 hours from base camp, which is a feat
that he accomplished without supplemental oxygen or ropes, and then repeated six days later from
slightly higher up on the mountain. It's insane. It's a feat that led National Geographic to name
him Adventurer of the Year, which is beautifully chronicled in a new documentary called Path to Everest,
which you can download from summitsofmylife.com
or on Vimeo.
And I'll put links up to the documentary
on the episode page on my website.
Killian is also the author of Run or Die,
which is an amazing read.
And more recently, a book called Summits of My Life,
Daring Adventures on the World's Greatest Peaks.
And that book really beautifully illustrates
all of his awe-inspiring feats and accomplishments.
So this is a conversation about many things,
his life, his training, his racing,
but essentially it's about what drives him,
how his happiness derives not from results, but from immersion
in nature and adventure and living outside of his comfort zone. We talk training routines,
of course, and just to give you a sense of what a savage this guy is. In December, he tweeted that
in 2018, a year in which he had three injuries and took three whole months off,
Killian still managed to put in 804 hours of training with 1,521,000 feet of elevation gain
of climbing. And this was apparently the least that Killian has trained since 2006.
What can I say? Killian is amazing in some respects otherworldly,
but also refreshingly humble and grounded,
somebody who lives a very simple life
and in many ways is a minimalist,
which is an ethic and an aesthetic
that I think carries into the simple purity of his pursuits,
minimal gear and this very real and profound love
and deep respect for the environment.
In any event, I really enjoyed talking to him.
So without further ado,
I give you the great Killian Jornet.
Well, I'm sure you'd rather be up in the mountains
just over the way right now than sitting here in a studio.
This is like, I think we have, how many people do we have in here?
This is the biggest crowd I've ever had for doing the podcast here.
I'm like, wow, we're performing for an audience today.
I've wanted to meet you for a very long time.
You're a huge inspiration to me, and I'm just delighted to talk to you.
So I appreciate you taking time out.
You just got in,
you just told me you've been in like 20 different places in the last like two weeks or something like that. Your time code must be completely upside down. Yeah, but I think it's good because
we are changing like time zone every day is good because you don't know where you are or when you are. So like you don't feel
any jet lag. It's just like the motto these days is like, if you have 10 minutes and you can't
sleep, sleep because you don't know when it will be the next time. Right, right, right. Well,
if there's anybody who can endure this, I think it's you. So you're perfectly suited to be able to manage that kind of crazy schedule.
And first of all, before we even get into it, congratulations.
You have a baby coming on the way.
Yeah, thank you.
It's exciting.
Yeah, probably.
Yeah, exciting and scary in the same way.
But yeah, really.
Yeah, looking forward.
I think we'll need to work in logistics the next year.
Yeah, things are going to change a little bit, I would imagine.
Yes or no?
You're looking at me like, no, they're not going to change.
Yeah, of course they will change,
especially because both me and Emily, my girlfriend,
we both do the same lifestyle,
so we will need to decide who is racing which race so the other can, like, be babysitting when the other racing.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that is a little bit of an adjustment, I would imagine, because for people that are listening, I mean, Emily is an incredibly accomplished ultra runner in her own right.
You guys were just in Nepal, right?
And she was doing FKTs, like, recently.
FKTs like recently? Yeah, actually she was this summer, like she was doing some FKTs in, in, in some, uh, 4,000 meter summits in the Alps, like Mont Blanc and, and Monroe's. And then like,
she was doing some like long distance run, like a 300 mile run in Sweden and all these,
when she was pregnant, like she didn't know at the time, and and yeah we were in nepal now like and she was just climbing up to to 5 000 meters so 1700 uh hundred uh feeds and yeah no it was feeling good
yeah right so five and a half months pregnant so that means sometime this winter yeah yeah it will
be winter baby that's uh that's good like to start like in cold. Does that change how you think about risk and how you calculate the challenges that you want to undertake?
It's hard to know because risk is nothing that is objective.
It's something that is very subjective.
It's more a feeling that is objective. It's something that is very subjective. Like it's, it's, it's more a feeling that, that, uh, that, um, mathematics think. And, uh, I think it changed all the time.
Like sometimes, uh, you go to, to take a, to, to a climb, uh, and like you always calculate,
okay, it's, it's these objective things. Like it can be avalanche or it can be like a select falling
or crevasses or like the technical skills you need and then you decide if you are yeah if you
can't do it or not but then it's something a feeling that sometimes like you say i can do that
but i don't feel for it right and other times it's like okay i feel I feel that I'm in the flow and I can do all this.
So, yeah, I think it's many things that affect that.
And probably like having a baby can change that.
But then I have friends that they have babies and they continue doing the same.
So, I think I will need to discover when it comes.
Yeah, I think you'll know when it happens.
It's hard to anticipate, as somebody who has four kids, it's hard to anticipate beforehand.
But then when the event occurs, there's something that changes, I think, in your, I don't know, your emotional being or your sense of self that everything that you do has an impact on this other person.
When you're talking about risk calculation, it's very much an internal, it sounds like you're just calculating
this internally, like, how do I feel? How do I feel like I can, you know, whether I can handle
this or not? But then, in the back of your mind thinking, well, there's this other person who's
relying on me, like, I'm curious as to whether that will impact that, or maybe not, I don't know.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's it's very interesting i think because like
uh when you yeah as you say like we don't know like how it will affect and because it's because
it's a feeling it's not like saying okay we have a kid so like uh i will not do that or i will do
that because you don't know how you will feel and at the end like you can calculate uh and take a reasonable
decision of doing a thing but then the feeling it will say someday like no like it's it looks
so cool i need to go there even if it's. I think I will. Yeah, I will see. Yeah.
You will find out soon.
Well, within the world of multi-sport and endurance and ultra-endurance, I mean, everybody knows who you are.
They know your accomplishments.
But there's a lot of people that listen to this that don't necessarily come from that world.
world. But perhaps they became familiar with you because of the Everest expedition that you went on in 2017. So, can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that made headlines across the world in a five or six-day period. You summited twice.
twice. So I want to walk through that. But maybe even before that specifically,
how did you prepare for that? How did you wrap your head around getting ready to do something like that? And what was it that you were seeking to accomplish?
Well, I think the preparation is like a long one and a short one.
I would say the long one, it starts like very, very long time ago
when I was like probably three or two years old.
So I think it's not that you decide, okay, next week I want to go to Everest
and what I do or like next month or next year,
but you need to have a background or like a long period of training before
before being able to to do some things it's like uh when you race like it's not that you decide
okay i want to to one like western stage or hard rock and and you start preparing and the month
after you are able but uh i was starting when i was kid to go to the mountains and to start to do long days out, then racing.
So it was like during, I have been training for more than 15 years.
Like, yeah, the last 15 years I have been training at least 1,000 hours a year.
So that's the background.
So that's the background. And then on top of that, during the last two months before going to Everest,
it was more specific preparation.
So actually the different thing compared to only endurance training
or more technical climbs, it was to prepare to be really confident
and to be really comfortable in situations that you are not supposed to be comfortable yeah so
for example like uh i was okay if uh some problem arrives up there i will be by myself and i will
have uh not any help so i need to to be to be able to, yeah, to take the good decisions.
And for that, like I was going to train home and to, to do very long days, like sometimes
like 15, 20 or more hours alone.
And in some situations that they were a bit risky, like that I needed to be always in
tension for avalanche or for things and to put myself in the really limit on my technical skills
to be always in this tension situation
and to be able to take decisions on a reasonable way
and not to let the emotion to interfere on that.
Right.
So on some level, it's a natural progression of everything
that you've been doing your whole life since you were three years old,
as long as you can remember.
I think there was a quote where somebody said,
how long did it take you to prepare?
And you're like, well, my whole life, right?
This is your life, yeah?
And as somebody who's been training 1,000, 1,200 hours in the mountains
per year for many, many, many years,
it seemed to make sense as the culminating point of this summits of my life thing that you were
doing. But I would imagine there were specific things around a client. You're somebody who,
I mean, you're resting heart's like 34 or something like that.
You have a crazy VO2 max, like 92, right?
Yeah, yeah.
2012, I mean, for perspective, like I think Lance Armstrong's was 85.
Like it's crazy high.
So you have these, you know, these perhaps genetic or created gifts that have,
that are a result of the training that you've done in your upbringing.
created gifts that are a result of the training that you've done in your upbringing.
But there were also, I would imagine, specific things that you had to do to get ready for acclimatizing,
even though you acclimatize better than most people.
And I think I read you were training with oxygen deprivation or masks on on the bike and on the treadmill and things like that to try to expedite your ability
to to acclimate once you got there yeah well as you said acclimatization is something very
important before expedition and especially uh like the goal of the of the whole thing it was to try
like to to don't spend too much time in the mountain, like in the travel.
First for two things, because I like to do many things,
so like racing and climbing and skiing.
So I didn't want to spend like three, four months
in a base camp, like just sitting.
Right.
And then because I think if you arrive acclimatized
in a mountain,
you are fresher mentally,
so you keep the motivation,
and also you are physically stronger
because you came from home, you have been eating well,
it's not like you are in a base camp
just eating fried rice for two months.
So the goal was to arrive in the mountain already acclimatized.
And for that, I have been doing the last five years different expeditions
and trying different things.
Most of them didn't work.
And this year, I think we finally get what worked. And actually it was
like home before departing we were spending like around 300 hours in altitude. So both
sleeping like in the night we were sleeping in a hypoxic tent at 6000 meters. And then
during the days in the morning I was doing my normal
training like five to ten hours in the mountain and in the afternoon I was
doing like one one hour every day very intense like I will say like in the in
the threshold or like even higher like anaerobic intervals during one hour at
six thousand meters elevation.
And could you feel the difference when you got there?
Did you feel like you had expedited the process of being comfortable
at that kind of altitude?
Yeah, it was cool because normally the first day you arrive at 6,000 meters
coming from Europe, you arrive in the mountains and you see,
okay, I feel like shit.
At that time, it was at 6,000 meters, first day we were able to run.
Three days after coming to Tibet, we were able to climb to 7,000 meters
and feeling good.
It was a huge difference, I think, to feel acclimatized for 6,000.
For most people that attempt Everest, there's a period of weeks where they're kind of inching their way up and getting used to it and all of that so that they can be as safe as possible for the summit.
And you're compressing that into literally a number of days.
And so how long were you there before you're like, okay, you know, tonight's going to be the night?
Yeah, like we were actually before going to
everest like uh i i fly from europe uh with emily and and we were going to show you that it's a
mountain just by the side uh 8 000 meter summit so we were going there and we spent like uh 10 days
in show you and then, so I reached it,
I don't think the summit,
but the summit plateau.
So around 8,200 meters.
And then I was driving
to Everest-based country
just like a couple of hours from there.
And then it took like
one week to feel ready.
So I would say like
between two to three weeks period is where, like if
you are acclimatized from home, like you need.
Right. And right beforehand, I, were you like running up, you know, a thousand meter, uh,
a sense like an under an hour, like getting ready, like people were like, what are you
doing?
Mm. Yeah. Like I, I think like it's, it's cool to the things and especially like in base camp it's very
very boring like you are sitting in a wonderful place like you have beautiful mountains all around
and you are sitting in a tent doing nothing like that's not like what i want that's not you yeah
no so like okay you need to rest like uh, the year before, I wanted to do everything, like, everything every day.
So, I was doing a lot every day.
And then, like, after one week, I was completely destroyed.
Right.
So, this year, okay, I say, okay, I will need to rest a bit.
But we figure out, like, one day resting, one day activity is enough.
So, yeah, like, it was a one day off.
And then the other
day like you could like if you are well acclimatized like i think going up to 8 000 meters it's
it's not this hard like and you can run up and or like you can walk slowly up and run down kind of
but it's fine yeah and so the first attempt you decide to start at like 5,100 meters, right?
Yeah.
Which is lower than where most people start.
Yeah, normally.
Like at the temple, right?
Yeah, normally people start from the final push that it takes a few days from ABC,
Advanced Base Camp, that's at the feet of the mountain at 6,300 meters.
But actually, to get there, it's a long, long hike.
It's like maybe 13 miles from Rombuch.
It's where the road ends.
Like, it's a road that finishes there.
So, I wanted to, like, the goal of the whole expedition,
it was not to set a FKT in the mountain
because, like, you cannot talk about FKT
in these high mountains
because conditions and style make huge difference.
So it was mostly to try to go from the last village
to the summit and back.
And only with, yeah, my means, So it was mostly to try to go from the last village to the summit and back.
And only with my means, like carrying all the gear I needed and not having any assistance.
Because then I wanted to know if I was able to climb the mountain by myself or if I wasn't. Right. So the spirit behind all of this is a sense of purity, like, that infuses everything that you do, which is, first of all, like, can it be done?
And can it be done without all of the gear?
Like, how, how minimal can this be accomplished, right?
Just with man and mountain and nothing else.
else. Yeah. Like, Oh, I think like as animals, we are a mammal and we are a very bad
adapted animal to the mountains. Like, because like, as you see,
like you can see like the fastest men on earth, like who's involved,
he runs like around 40 kilometers an hour, 400 meters.
And that's probably like what a cow can run.
So like we are by far not the fast animal.
And if you've seen the mountains,
like we were in Nepal or in Tibet and you see the yaks,
and like we are there like with down jackets
and we need to eat a lot to keep fitness and altitude.
And you see this yak that is staying there for weeks.
He eats one time a week, like just a hand of grass.
He's not drinking anything.
He's not cold.
This is like you, though.
Yeah, no, I am very far from there.
So, like, we need to have some gear.
We need to have some that, but to try to get as close as we are as an animal to climb, yeah.
All right. to get as close as we are as an animal to climb, yeah. Mm-hmm. And all right, so the first attempt from 5,100 meters,
you make it to the summit and back down 26 hours?
Up 26 hours.
Up 26 hours.
Okay.
And no ropes, no supplemental oxygen.
Unbelievable.
Like what was the hardest part of that for you?
Well, like the hardest thing in the first test is that I feel like I had stomach problems.
Yeah. You ate something bad, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Like I eat something bad probably the day before like in the base camp. So at the beginning I was feeling okay for a few hours,
but then I started to have like diarrhea and vomiting.
So I decided to stop eating to avoid that.
But then like energy goes low.
So like during the last hours to the summit, it was very, very slow.
The last hours to the summit, it was very, very slow.
It's not hard in a way that up there, it's more like only two decisions.
You are saying, okay, is this going to kill me?
And if it's yes, then you turn.
And if it's no, then you continue.
But why not bail when your stomach's turning on you and say, look, I'll just do this, you know,
I'll go reboot and do it again another day.
Like that decision to continue,
I mean, were you too far into it?
What was the decision to persist?
Yeah, mostly it's like, it's very long,
like from Romburg until you get to the mountains, like it's these 30 miles in the moraine.
It's painful, like it's not fun. So the moraine it's it's painful like it's it's not fun so then
i was there and it was like almost when i decided okay now it it will be hard i was yeah yeah that's
and then i was at a thousand meters so he's like okay should i go all the way back and start it
again like a couple days or like anyway like i'm here uh it's, I will go slow, but I will not die.
And somehow it will be some fun.
So why not to continue?
And yeah.
Fun for you.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a special fun, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you do that, but then I presume
because of that stomach illness
or a sense of knowing that you could do it faster or better,
you make this decision to go once again.
Yeah, it was funny.
Like, I was going down from the first summit.
And during the downhill, I was thinking, okay, like, we still have, like, five days
till the plane leaves from Lhasa to home.
So we had some extra days in the base camp.
It's nothing to do in the base camp so instead of like packing during one week like it was like I was thinking
okay why not to try to go up again not for the doing a fast time because I knew that I will be
very tired after this first session but But also it started to interest,
like if it would be possible to recover fast
and to see how the recovery affects
and to see if it was possible.
Yeah, from what I understand,
being somebody who's never attempted anything like that,
but people who really understand this,
that's the most miraculous aspect of all of this, which is that it generally takes somebody weeks to kind of recover from an experience like that before they're prepared or physiologically ready to attempt another summit.
But just literally days later, you decide to go again. And I think it speaks to your natural ability to recover more quickly
than the average human being on some level.
But also, what is that?
Did you just felt like internally you did a gut check and you're like,
I'll be fine, I feel good?
Yeah, I think it was I felt okay.
Yeah, I think it was, I felt okay.
Like, you feel tired, but it's like, okay, yeah, I can move.
So, but mostly I think the recovery, it's because we hadn't been long in the mountains. So, like I said before, like with the first acclimatization and with the being like
short travels, like we were there and I was still fresh on kind of like motivation and like
healthy, like strong. And in the other side, like I never slept high in the mountain. Like
all the nights I spent, it was always a maximum. It was 6,300 meters. So like not sleeping high, it
makes a big impact for the recovery. Then you need to be able to go to the summit, like
from so do a long elevation from 6,000 meters. So it's very long days, but it's good nights.
So that makes us so good for recovery. And yeah, like during the second ascent, like I was feeling tired like normally, but it was, I think it was better than what I expected.
Like I was able to kind of walk.
Was there anybody in your contingent, your group of people who pulled you aside and said, maybe you should wait a little bit longer?
Or do they just trust you that you know yourself?
Well, like this group of people, it was only one person.
Oh, see, that was it, right?
That was it.
So it was a seven month test.
So that was, it was just your filmmaker, the filmmaker, right?
Yeah, it was him and me.
And the good thing is like, we did't have like kind of much internet or anything or
cell phone.
So it was like I was only just sending like maybe every few days like a message to my
team or my family saying, okay, everything is okay.
We are good.
So we didn't have much input.
No, you have more people with you here today than you did on Everest.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And that second time up, the conditions were worse, right? It was snowing and windier.
Yeah, it was supposed to be the best day in the summer or in the spring. All the big groups like uh adrian belinger uh they were uh climbing the that day uh also like the the swiss expedition um cory uh carrie cobbler they were climbing this day so they were saying
that's the day it's marked to be the best one on the on the season so i was saying, okay, that's cool, yeah. And then we started climbing,
and the bad weather was coming faster than supposed.
And because I didn't have any radio or any kind of communication with the others,
they could not tell me.
And then I saw it was okay.
The sky is a bit more white.
But it was windy, but not that bad.
It's not wind that throws you away in the face.
Right.
And so you summit.
And this time you started from advanced base camp, right?
So that was like 6,500.
Yeah, this time, yeah. Actually, after the first summit, I was going down from advanced base camp, right? So that was like 6,500. Yeah, this time, yeah.
Actually, after the first summit, I was going down to the base camp.
Then actually we... You got lost.
Yeah, no, that the second time.
But yeah, after the first time, we were packing everything to get ready for leaving.
Lastly, because I knew, okay, if I go back to the summit, like it will be super speed after.
So we pack everything and then we went up to ABC to 1600 and then we didn't have any
tender, but it was, uh, uh, Alpenglow that they had an expedition there and they were
up in the mountain so we could sleep in their dining room.
And then I started from there.
Yeah, then going down, I get lost from the mountain.
That was kind of fun to me. Yeah, and you end up perilously close to that north face ridge, right?
The drop-off.
Yeah, it was strange.
Like I think like now, like I has been talking with a lot of doctors and start
to understand why I had, I had the blackout period during a few minutes.
So actually I was climbing and it was fine.
It was windy.
So like the tracks and the, uh, it was covered like, uh, even like in spring
climbing, you cannot talk about Alpine style because even if i wasn't
using the fixed ropes like it's it's the second leather or the third leather in the second step
that i use it and then it's the fixed ropes there so like even if you don't use it like it's
easy to to follow the way because they are there but during the second ascent, with all the bad weather,
like it was snowing a lot and windy,
so all the ropes and all the tracks were covered.
But that was okay.
And in the way down, I remember very well,
like until I reached the 8,300 meters.
But from there I have like a blackout period.
I don't know what did happen.
And the next-
Like you don't know how you got there.
Like I think you said you thought you were gonna wake up
from a dream and be at base camp.
Yeah, yeah, because from there,
like the next memory was like,
I was down climbing something technical in a big phase.
I was not anymore in a reach where I was supposed to be,
but in a big phase, I'm not, I was not anymore in a reach where I was supposed to be, but in a big
phase, snowy, rocky, it's like where I am, what I'm doing here. Um, it's this dream because I
didn't have any connection with the last memory. So I didn't know if it was reality or if it was a
bad dream and I was going to wake up in the base camp. And yeah, the bad or the worst thing,
it was like I didn't know where I was.
So I didn't know if I was in the northeast phase
or in the north phase or in the south phase.
So it was like, okay, it's in the middle of the night,
it's bad weather, I'm in a phase,
and I thought I have no, absolutely no idea where I am.
So how do you keep it together how do you avoid panicking how do you avoid you know your emotions getting the best of you when you're in a moment like that yeah i think that's that's what you need
to prepare for and to feel as i said before feel confident in situations that you are
not supposed to be confident and to be comfortable it's it's exactly this kind of situations and
i think it's uh it's just to to really accept and to to mentally accept before going to an expedition
what you can find there and to not be surprised when these situations arrive because they are
possible and i think uh when i was there it was like it was more like a checking saying okay
i i am cold no i will not die because i i will have like frost bites or like hypothermia
i didn't feel any edema like a brain edema or like them so i was
saying okay this is okay this is okay the only problem is that the night uh and i don't know
where it is but i will not die because it's night and i will not die because i don't know where it
where i am so then it was like okay i just need need to figure out these two things. Like the night is this, like you wait until it's daylight so you can see where you are.
And then it was mostly to know that.
And I was physically feeling good.
So I was thinking, okay, I'm at 1,000 meters.
At that time, I was between 8,200 and 8,000 meters.
8,200 and 8,000 meters.
I would say, okay, if I'm by, I don't know how, in the south face,
and I need to climb up again to 8,500, it will be hard,
but I feel, like, physically okay to doing it.
So I wasn't afraid of, like, need to go up again or to, yeah. Right, so just, like, really to compartmentalize all of these things
and be as logical as possible and not let your emotions or any fear creep into how you're making those decisions.
Yeah, I think emotions up in high mountains are dangerous.
And it can be fear.
Like if you panic in a situation like that, probably you do mistakes and then you fall but also like euphoria like if you are summiting and
in the summit like you start to to have like adrenaline and you start to feel wow that's done
and unlike excitement then probably during the downhill like you will do mistakes because you
don't take care so i think both good and bad emotions up there like any emotion is bad in a
yeah in normal, yeah.
So that's something I would imagine you've just learned over the many years of just always being
in the mountains and being in, you know, countless situations where risk was a huge factor.
Yeah, more, yeah. We learn a lot of mistakes, I would say, and doing mistakes,
having accidents or doing stupid things. We all do. And these situations
that you, when you come home, it's like, wow, today was very, very stupid. And it's there when
you learn, when you say, okay, next time I need to do better. Yeah. And your adventures have not
been without some consequences to some loved ones.
I mean, I know you were out with Emily, you know, outside Chamonix, and you had to be rescued, and you've lost a couple friends.
So I would imagine that, does that weigh on you when you're out there?
Sure.
Like, we do an activity that we know that it's possibly like we can die there in the mountain
and it's nothing that we look we are not uh doing that because the because we are close to death
but because we are alive when we're doing but is the possibility of of uh yeah of an accident and
of an accident.
And when you have some close calls,
it can be like, yeah,
some friends that they die by your side or it can be like some accidents.
But all the times,
I think it's funny that
when you start to do mountaineering,
like you are afraid about your capacities
because you don't know yourself,
but you see the mountain as something solid, that it's there, it's like a ball or it's something.
And more you go into the mountains, less you are afraid about yourself, but you know better your
capacities, your technique, your experience. But you see that the mountain it's moving and it's, uh, it's
dangerous there that you, you don't see, but they are there.
So you are more afraid about, about the mountain.
So it's this thing that it's many things that you cannot control.
Like you can think logically, but then it avalanches come where it's supposed to not,
or like, uh, some rock fallings and things.
And you need to accept in a way that that's part of it,
that it's many things we can control,
but it's some of them that is not possible to do.
Yeah, I mean, I look at you as somebody
who despite all of your accomplishments,
you know, is very humble.
Like you have a very healthy relationship with humility
and not to project, but i would imagine that comes from
an appreciation and respect for nature like you're never going to beat the mountain right and if you
don't have a respect and a healthy level of humility when you're attempting these challenges
and you're putting yourself at great peril so it keeps you like sort of right-sized about everything
So it keeps you like sort of right-sized about everything.
Yeah, I think conquering mountains is a very, very ironic word. I think like we are not conquering mountains.
Like we can conquer ourselves,
and the mountain is this big mirror where we see ourselves.
But we can never pretend to be fighting against the mountain
or to be fighting against nature because first of all, because we are part of it.
We are part of the nature.
So I think it's important to pass there lightly so we can only see our footsteps. But we like leaving no trace is not only like about leaving rubbish,
but it's also about like
being being accepted by the mountain or being try.
Yeah, kind of like being there, but trying to don't aggress the mountain.
And I think on a way, I don't think that if you don't aggress the mountain,
it will respect you more,
but at least it keeps you aware of like,
okay, you are really, really nothing.
You are very, very small,
even if you are like,
and especially because sports,
it's so much about ego
and how the sport is organized.
Like you win a race
and you are in a top of a podium that it's like, it's something very
artificial, like why you are better because you run faster than the guy that is second
on one, the one is third or the one is last one.
So we'd really like building kind of this egocentric, uh, uh, mindset, uh, how Sparrow is organized. So you can think and it's easy to believe that you are someone good or that you are better than others.
And especially in mountains, that's very dangerous.
And at the end, like it will put in your side, like, yeah, you are nothing.
Right. Yeah. That's super interesting.
nothing. Right. Yeah. That's super interesting. And I think impactful coming from somebody who's,
I mean, you basically won every big race that there is to win. You stood atop all these podiums
until there was really no challenge left for you to conquer other than it seems to make perfect sense in retrospect that you would then go onto this summits of my life experience because just you in the mountain and you without any fanfare.
Well, there's probably some fanfare wherever you go.
But without the structures and the kind of logistics of racing to be able to just go out on these mountains and make it as pure as possible and see how fast you can go up and back and have
that experience just for yourself yeah i i i am like i normally like solitude and i like uh
yeah kind of like being alone being alone with uh with uh mountains it's it makes sense on the way
that it's this feeling like this feeling of feeling
very small it's it's really interesting i think and and facing yourself and of course in racing
you can find great challenges because like racing at the end like at the beginning it was like
a pure competition motivation like i want to win the race or i want to become world champion or or
or whatever and that really drive me to to achieve that and i think it's a very interesting process
because having this goal in mind you put so much effort like it's it's easy to train very hard if
you have this goal in mind but at the the end, like when you achieve the goal, it's like
the satisfaction it's, it's, it's a second, but then it's like, okay, what, what next?
And of course, like doing the same process is not as exciting, but, uh, actually I think
now and now racing it's, it's cool because it, it gives me like both like a motivation to to train hard to do some kind of
trainings like seeing young people that it's going very fast like uh and wanted to beat them
it's like what maybe sometimes when i'm training like it gives me this like more yeah motivation
to to push a bit more the bottom And then it's also a good checklist.
Like if you are racing and you are doing good performances,
it means that you are in okay shape.
So I think that's important after for going to mountaineering
because it means that I'm keeping in good shape
and then that I can use this racing shape for going to mountains.
But there I know that at the end I will be by myself
and it's only a fight against yourself.
Yeah.
Well, a couple of interesting things about your training
and your racing and your preparation.
You don't have a coach.
You haven't had a coach since you were a kid, right?
Yeah, since I was 17 years old, yeah.
Yeah, you learned everything there was to learn from that coach.
And now you go out, and from what I understand, you don't really create training plans.
It's more of a, this is how I feel today, and I'm going to go out in the mountains for two hours or ten hours,
or maybe I'll decide when I'm halfway out there how long I'm going to be out there.
Yeah.
Is that fair?
No, it's not that fair.
Yeah.
No, no.
All right, so explain.
Yeah, actually, yeah, I was with a coach until I was 17.
So I was kind of learning the basics, like to be methodic and like to follow like kind
of different what it happens when you do these volume trainings or when you do like short
intervals or long intervals.
So I had this basic and then I like to study.
Like I spend a lot of hours every week, like just reading articles that they come about
the physiology that they come about psychology, that they come about training,
uh, looking to what other people is doing out there, both in, in, in climbing
and in ultra running, but also like in athletics and in, uh, like a cycling.
And so I really like to read, uh, these subjects to understand how the body works and to try
things and especially I like to try things like to see how it works.
For example, both in training, like for example, doing 30, 30, like 30 seconds super fast and
then resting 30 seconds, like during some periods of time,
I wanted to really push that to the limit.
So I was doing that like as long as possible
during like three hours or like doing that only 30, 30s,
like all the time.
And then like saying what it was happening the next week.
And are you journaling that and writing it down
so you can look back and-
Yeah, I have an Excel with like all the trainings
and all the descriptions since 2003.
So yeah, I memorize everything.
It strikes me as somewhat...
You strike me as very similar to Alex Honnold
in your approach and your lifestyle
and the purest aspect in what you do.
And I think what gets missed, um,
in Alex's story, maybe not so much now that the documentary is out is the rigorous preparation
that goes into his free solo climbing. And, and it's the same with you. Like people want to think,
well, you're just out there doing whatever, but you're very methodical in your own way
about how you approach your training and your racing and the feedback
that your body is giving giving you i mean i read didn't you create also like this spreadsheet of
this chronology over the course of history of what's required to go fast in the mountains
like you're a student right you're a scholar of the sport and the human the human physique
yeah i can be geek sometimes and yeah you have some friends that they are on that no i think it is interesting and especially like to to understand what has been done before
and and to understand what's uh what's going and yeah studying i think it's what makes us
uh interest to yeah like if we read a lot what's going on and, and if something new is, it's,
it's happening to, to understand why and to understand how and to try to apply that. And
I know that many things, uh, I can try or I, I can read, like I would not be able to, to,
to use by myself because I have not the capacities.
But it's interesting to try and to see if it's working or not.
And sometimes these tests or these things can work on me and other times it can work
for other people.
But it's interesting to try it, yeah.
What is something that you've changed over the last couple of years in how you approach your training that was different than what you were doing maybe, I don't know, five or six years ago?
I would say that I take a bit more care about resting today, but that's not fully true because I don't rest much.
You don't really periodize or taper at all, from what I gather.
No, but tapering, I think,
when you see, for example, the marathon athletes
like Elliot Kipchoge or these guys,
they don't do much either.
They train very hard until last week.
But I think on planning seasons,
it's important to find some periods.
But mostly, I would say now, I think with the base of the last 15 years of training,
I'm able to perform in an okay level without doing very specific training.
So only training average, I'm able to do some good results
in long and short distance.
But then it's more about like this specific training,
like as I say, like for Everest,
it was this acclimatization
and doing this very hard intensity training
for in very high altitude.
That was very interesting.
Or like, so I think now maybe it's like
I have already the base.
And during these last years is these more specific trainings
that I can put for some period that this period can go
from one week to three, four weeks.
So that's, yeah, that's what they change.
But it's not unusual for you to go out and train seven, eight hours in the mountains.
And I think you go, like, you can go out for seven hours without even any water, right?
You don't bring a lot of stuff with you.
It's not like you're packing a ton of food and drink.
When you did Denali, you only had like a liter of water for that 11 hours.
Yeah.
Is that true?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's the double I have in my second Everest. had like a liter of water for that 11 hours. Yeah. Is that true? Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's the double I have in my second Everest because it's frozen. So, yeah.
No, but yeah, I don't, yeah, I can train for like 10 hours without any water or food.
And I think-
Has somebody studied that?
Like, what is it that allows you to do that?
You're just so efficient.
I think it's years of doing, like, I remember, like, when we were kids, like, maybe seven, eight years old, like, we were sometimes with my mother to do, like, a 10, 15 hours walk, and we didn't bring water.
So we were very, very thirsty.
But I think doing that, like, I don't want people to start now to run 10 hours yeah
let's be clear this is you're not advising anyone to do this but you you started but it's important
yeah when you were a teenager didn't you try you tried to see how many days you could go
like training without eating you went like five days until you passed out or something
yeah and that's what i was yeah that's what they were saying before like
it's please don't do this at home no but but it's it's very interesting to know where are your limits
and and to to experience that by yourself like that time like it was like many times when you
are in a race and you you you miss one uh aid station it's like okay i don't have food and you start to panic
whatever like it's not because you miss that that you will lose your race and i think if you know
like when that time like i was uh 17 years old and i was in university and i was like far away
from the racing season so it was like yeah why to see how the body can be efficient in
different metabolisms and how far away. So it was very interesting because I stopped eating
and I was training like not a lot, but like the normal, like three between two and four hours in
the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Yeah. Not so much. Yeah. No, but like not very, very
long days. Uh, and then like the the first day like you are
Okay, the second day you are hungry
uh, but
Actually, the endurance is the same like I was able to run almost the same pace for the four hour run
The only difference it was like I lose like a power and speed like I was unable to do a sprint
And this was keep going like the endurance. I almost didn't lose at all during five days.
Then I pass away and yeah, I was really close to the university.
So I wake up and I was going to do it.
But then it's interesting because, you know, okay, until five days, I don't really need to worry.
Or like I know that the fat are burning.
And I think then the body starts to be also more efficient on how to use energy.
You also cross-train quite a bit.
You're skiing all winter.
You're mountaineering.
You're doing a variety of different things.
And I would presume that keeps you fresh and keeps you from burning out.
You see a lot of ultra runners who explode on the scene.
They have a season or two in which they're crushing it and winning races
and then they either overtrain or they get injured
and then it's very difficult for them to have a presence at that level once again.
And you've been able to maintain a consistent presence at the top for
for many many years i mean it wasn't until like the last year that you even really had any injuries
yeah yeah as you say it's um it's uh it's interesting to see what how yeah why how many
athletes they burn out after two seasons and that's very common in ultra running and probably because uh people is training
running so so much like so many miles every week during during uh like many years so i think the
the mileage there it really affects so combining with other activities like it can be cycling or
i do like skiing like during six months like from november
to to end of april i don't run a single day it's only only skiing so like uh doing endurance
activities but that they are not the same movements and both for the mind like to to
change and to be excited to run and to and for the and for the body like to use other muscles and other
reticulations it's uh yeah it's very healthy yeah um what was it like being injured really for the
first time this past year i mean you had two shoulder surgeries and then you broke your fibula
yeah i had you in a boot for a while although you still managed to get on a bicycle and ride
around with a boot on and do a push-up or two yeah yeah
no i think like injury is like uh the first one i really like i the shoulder uh surgery it was
something i wanted to do so it was no not like i had an accident and the day after i right i stopped
so it was a persistent thing that you just had to deal with no i needed to do one time i was saying okay i do now and so then you enter in a mindset okay of doing that so i used that time to to read a lot so uh
when i was like reading all the this chronology of of things uh and and then like studying also
like a lot of physiology um so it was kind of fast going because it was things going on and i was prepared for that
but then for sure the fibula it was just an accident i had a ski accident in a race
so that was a bit more like okay it has been like three months stop and now like
two months like on and back again so i wasn't worried about coming back to shape because
i knew that after like some recovery it will be okay but it
was more like okay now it's like one or two more months like without doing anything that's probably
the first time in your life you had to literally sit in a chair yeah yeah it was long then also
like I didn't tell my doctor all what I was doing. So it was like I was starting to cycle, like with the Ferula, yeah, with the boot.
So I was starting to cycle.
Okay, it feels away.
So after two weeks, I tell my doctor, can I start cycling?
He started to say, yeah, you can start to do some easy things.
But you'd already been doing it.
Yeah, and same with running.
Like I was running some long distance things, and then he was saying, yeah, you can start gently.
So that's not an advice for people either.
Like listen to your doctor.
But I think you can do things like at the first weeks,
like I could work a bit more on my upper body
or I can work a bit the other leg.
So I think not stopping completely,
it's important for having a fast. for trying to move however you could.
And then you ended up,
I think it was three and a half months
after you suffered the injury,
you won the Marathon de Mont Blanc.
Yeah, yeah, that was,
I didn't know how I would be.
So that was interesting on that.
But yeah, no, it was good.
I mean, how much running were you able to get in
before that race
i was able to run during one yeah like one month i would say or yeah something like three weeks one
month and uh yeah like i did some long days some very very long days and then some short uh
short running but um but yeah i was like I wasn't afraid about the amount of running,
but I was more afraid about the speed,
like going downhill very, very fast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, speaking of downhill,
I mean, that's really where you shine
and where your style kind of comes through.
You're like this ballet dancer,
prancing down these mountains, precarious,
very technical trails with just incredible agility that even the best ultra runners marvel at.
And there's all these videos of you with a GoPro attached to your head and you're
like on the precipice of some ridge where it's thousands of feet down in each direction and it makes everybody's palms sweat. So it begs the question of your relationship with fear. I mean, people would say,
oh, well, he's not afraid. He doesn't have fear, but that's not really accurate, is it?
No. And first, I think it's the things like fear, like it's important to keep you alive. Like if we were not afraid of anything, like we would climb
30 floors building and jump because we are not afraid to die and we would die.
So like fear, it keeps us alive, like because it tells us, OK,
you are not ready for that or you you cannot do that.
And in the other way, like.
or you cannot do that.
And in the other way,
every person has different skills on what he's used to do.
For me, probably it's more dangerous to be walking in New York or Los Angeles in the streets
because I'm not a city person at all,
so I would start to cross the streets without looking.
That would be the most afraid you would ever be if that was your life.
Because you are not used to that.
But if you are every day in the mountains, it's like when you are in the highway,
if you take your wheel and you just turn it, probably you will just have an accident.
But you don't do that.
So it's the same in the mountain.
Like you put the feet in the good place and you don't do that. So it's the same in the mountain. Like you put the feet in the good place, like, and you don't fall.
So if you are, if you know how to run, like, then you will not fall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we should probably talk a little bit about your upbringing.
I mean, you grew up in the mountains.
Your parents were guides, right?
So you were hiking and mountaineering from as long as far back as you can recall yeah I
didn't have my Jetsons yes it no I sure like my my father was a mountain guide
and my mother she was also passionate about about mountaineering so since we
were children with my sister like we were going to to do some summits or to do some crossings
so that was kind of like everyday uh yeah everyday activities were like going out out in the nature
out in the mountains so it was i don't think it affects much like on on physiology like on how my
body was built maybe within the ankles or that,
but it's mostly about being comfortable
and to read the landscape.
When did you first realize that you had this talent?
Or I don't think I have a, like I am good running,
but I don't think it's a big talent, but-
Why not? It's a big talent. Why not?
It's a stupid thing.
Like, it's running.
I can still put a feet after the other, and that's all.
But you recognize that you have some gifts.
Yeah, like, I think, like, I have a morphology that it's adapt for running,
and that's, like, of course, like like if my dream was to be a basketball, yeah.
Like probably I would not go far,
even if I put a lot of work because I'm like 170.
But then it's work, I think like, yes,
the morphology and some genes give you something
and then you need to put a lot of work.
And I think it was mostly like when I was a teenager,
I wanted to do that, and I prioritized that over other things.
So I didn't want to socialize, or I didn't want to go to parties,
or I didn't want to go after school to do something.
When I was after school, I wanted to go training and perform. So I think it's during that time
that you start to choose your way and yeah, put hours on it.
Your coming out party was, was it UTMB when you were like 20 or 21? Was that like the first time where everybody kind of knew who you were?
Yeah, yeah.
That first race where you were like winning by a ton
and they thought you were cheating?
Yeah, UTMB 2008, yeah.
Yeah, no, it was funny because like,
before that, like I already like won some sky races
or like ski mountaineering World Cup and things.
So I knew I had the level to win with Team B,
and I prepared the race very well,
like I was doing the round in two days.
And I knew that I was able to run in less than 20 hours.
So I say, okay, I can win that.
And if nothing happens like i will
be winning but then like i think the the ultra running world at that moment it was very very
close so like it was they didn't think that someone young could could win a race and we see
today like it's almost only like a young guys
winning the races.
But at that time, yeah, it was much older people
who'd been around for a long time.
Yeah.
You didn't just show up out of nowhere and win a race.
No, no, like at that moment, I was already,
I had already like eight years of racing and performing.
So, but it was just that the people who were running,
they didn't look around.
They only looked to ultra running.
So they didn't know what other people was doing.
Right.
You were crushing it in skiing, ski mountaineering, and all these other races.
Yeah, yeah.
Like this same year, yeah, or the year before I won the Sky Running World Cup and the ski mountaineering.
So I think, yeah, I think in ultra running, experience is important,
but it doesn't matter if you put like from 30 to 40 years old
or from like 20 to 30 or from 10 to 20 years old.
So it's just like you need to have the amount of miles,
but it can be before or after.
Right.
And in that race, you were like winning by a ton and then near the
finish they detained you for like an hour and questioned you and made sure you had the right
gear or wanted to know like what was going on and then they released you and you still won by an hour
yeah yeah it was like i don't have a very good memory of this first edition because I put a lot of, like, yeah, I really wanted to do the race.
And for me, like, run 100 miles, it was like, I will be able to do it.
So I didn't doubt about, like, going fast,
but I was doubting about keeping the distance.
So during the race, it was very cool.
And then they started to stop me, uh to check the gear like it was a
mandatory gear at the time or now too but and they were checking me like if i had all the gear and
they checked me that like for five times during the race and all the time it was there so uh one
hour before finishing like just at the top of the last climb, they stopped me and, uh, they give me the
radio to the race director and he was like, okay, we know you are sitting somehow, uh,
you stop here one hour, like we will find what are you doing?
And then we decided if we let you finish or not.
And he was like, what's going on here?
And like, I wanted to quit at that moment. I just say, okay, let's go home and
keep in ski mountaineering and sky running. Yeah, screw you guys.
And then it was actually one guy there, a friend that was saying, no, no, just
calm down, like keep going, finish. And like you will see that everything is good but at that moment it was yeah not right how do you think about um ultra running how this explosion of growth that it's
that it's had over the course of your career i mean what it is now versus what it must have been
like back even i mean 2008 wasn't that long ago but it's changed quite a bit it's become so popular
but it's changed quite a bit.
It's become so popular.
Yeah, in 10 years it has changed.
Like at the beginning it was more an easy sport.
It was not that many people.
It was just a few races.
And yeah, in 10 years it's like races everywhere.
I don't know how many hundred miles is in US, but it's like hundreds of hundred miles.
And that's insane.
It's like one race every weekend
at least and so many participants, like races in Europe with more than 10,000 runners.
And the good thing I think is that it keeps the soul of the sport, like's uh not pre-formatting to something like uh like uh
illogical like i think the beauty of the sport is to do logical things like as utmb for example
is running around the mountain that's something like you would do like just for fun or like
western stages from a to b like you know in a nice place and i think every race have his charm
and it's not only like about performance but
like the soul yeah the soul and it keeps it's interesting I don't think it's uh
it's of course like it's an elite of the like some fast runners that we want to go on races and
want to perform but that's not the big part of the sport the big part of the sport, the big part of the sport is that everybody can feel the same thing. And like, you can be a top athlete or you can be a new beginner and you can be in the same race,
doing the same path and experiencing something similar. And at least for the moment, I think
it's keeping that. And that's very, that's, that's important. The community, you know,
it's an unbelievable community of people.
And you being somebody who likes your alone time,
who likes to be out in the mountains by yourself,
I mean, I also see somebody who really embraces and loves the community,
and that's a big driver for you.
I mean, you race all the time.
You're at all of these races.
Like, I don't know, you're 15 or 20 of these a year, it seems like.
Yeah, it's a lot of racing.
As you said, community is something that is important
because it's what makes the sport living.
If it would be only top athletes racing by themselves, it has no sense.
It's because it's this.
I think it's a cool community.
It's people that loves uh loves
like challenging themselves loves sport but they also like it's sort of a connection with nature
it's a connection with the with the places and especially here in us it's a big difference i
think with europe on how how these um you need to be like kind of related to the to the community and to the place with the
like all the hundred mile races almost they require like a um a trail service so you need
to work on the trails uh before you are able to to to register for a race yeah yeah so that's
built into it yeah i think that really cool thing is that it's it's not only about racing but it's also like i think feeling you can feel the race in a racing
perspective but you can feel the race in our organizing perspective in a volunteering or in
a pacing and all all have the same importance and i think here especially in the US, you feel that much more that they respect as much the pacer or the volunteer than the one that wins or than the participants.
Yeah, that's something that's really cool and unique about the world, I think.
do you think that you have a different relationship with pain and suffering than the average athlete like how do you think about those things
i don't like pain but i accept that it's part of the of the job do you think that you feel it in
the same way other people feel it?
Obviously, you only have your own experience,
but you have this ability to tolerate it at a pretty high level.
I mean, it was that hard rock race.
You broke your collarbone at like mile 13
and still not just finished the race, but like won the race.
Yeah, but like it's the arm.
You don't run with your arms, so it's like it's the arm like you you don't run with your arms so it's like it's not no yeah
did you just like did you know it was broken right away and put it like harness it somehow
like what did you actually do when that occurred yeah it was very stupid of me like actually and
i was a bit embarrassed like we were running and it was in the beginning of the race like mile i think it was my like mile 13 or
something like that and then it was this like small like uh just like maybe only like 50 meters
snow field and i was saying okay i want to like it will be fun to go in this snow field and do like
skiing and i was going there and I was like gliding in the snow
and then I completely lost the control.
So I just,
Right.
Just hit the rocks after and I-
Like you were just trying to have a little bit of fun.
Yeah, and then like, okay, it was like, okay,
I'm so stupid.
So I put the shoulder back and then it was okay
during like maybe two, three miles
because it was still warm,
but then it started to be cooler,
so it started to be really painful.
But then I figured out a way with the backpack,
like to lock the shoulder and so on.
Like, yeah, it was, I think when you are in a race,
like you can really put yourself through pain.
Like you just go on and like,
you don't think too much about it. Yeah. yeah i mean i would think that if the race was shorter because the adrenaline
rush can carry you through something like that but when you're dealing with you know the number
of hours that a hundred miler entails i would imagine that wears off at some point yeah yeah Yeah, I would not say it's pleasure. It's not pleasant. But, yeah, it's only pain.
If it's not something dangerous,
if you break a leg and you say,
okay, if I continue, it will be much worse,
then it's stupid to continue.
But if it's only pain, I was thinking,
anyway, what if I stop now? I will go to the hotel and it's only pain like i was thinking anyway like what if i stop now i will
go to the hotel and i will have pain anyway because because it will not go away and i will
just be sad because uh i have pain and sad because i i am sitting here i have been doing a long
travel and and i'm just sitting in a hotel so i will will be sad because I have pain, but I can run.
I'll be less sad if I just keep running.
Yeah, exactly.
That's bizarrely logical, I suppose, in some strange universe.
Of all the things that you've done, what has been the most challenging for you?
What has been the most challenging for you?
It's always easy when you have done something.
Because you have been able to do it, then it looks easy.
You can put a lot of effort on doing something.
But if you don't fail, then it's like, okay, it was not that hard.
So I think the hardest thing is always when you fail, because like, it means that you need to, like,
it was not enough.
That's the teachable, the teachable moments.
Yeah, I think so. And for I think, like one of the hardest races I have been feeling it was a western stage 2010 like uh i was completely unprepared i i was running
a lot a lot of things like a long distance around just the weeks before in in europe i came here
and i didn't think about like heat i was thinking okay it will be hot but I like hot for me is like being
uh like more than 20 degrees Celsius that's uh I don't know how that's in Fahrenheit but it's like
like how we are now here in in uh in Los Angeles is way much hotter than for me it's hot. So then Western States, it's like around 90 some degrees.
And I didn't expect that at all.
And I was thinking, okay, I just run like without water
and I will drink in daily stations.
So then I started to get dehydrated
and I started to have cramps on the body.
And that was, yeah, for sure, like a big fight to the finish.
Right.
Is there any allure for you to tackle any of the road ultras,
like Badwater, or does it have to be in the mountains for you?
Yeah, I'm not a fan of road.
Like I normally only run in road when I cross from trail to trail.
Right. Avoid roads. There's no New York marathon coming up for you.
No, no. Like on a way, like it's, it's somehow like inter, like I have always these boys here
saying I should try one marathon one time or to try to, to do like, I don't know, a 10K or, or,
or a half or a marathon because it's because it's interesting in terms of training.
Like I would like to train like flat during a period
to be able to run faster.
But in the other ways, like I want to do that
and that and that and that and that.
So I don't find the time for doing that.
So I would not say that I will never do a road marathon
because maybe one day I do.
But yeah, for the moment, I don't think it's what I'm focused on.
What's driving all of this?
Where does the motivation come from?
Where is the muse?
What's behind the curtain here that's propelling you?
Is it a sense of wanting to be the best version of who you are? Is it a search for
excellence or perfection? Is it just connecting with nature? Like what is the driving impulse
for you? I think the driving impulse is it's happiness. Simply it's like to be happy.
happy and that's an easy answer but it's a deep answer too because where I find happiness is on knowing myself, challenging myself and seeing who I am, where I can go and experiencing different things. I think it's a lot about experience and
and experiencing places, nature,
views like I've run in places that they are beautiful.
And that's what it motivates me to go to one place or another is to
why to go there.
It's to to see the views from that point
and see the beauty of the nature is is one
big motivation and if i can combine that with uh with an inner challenge that it can be
be able like to put the question i'm able to progress and like i think achievement on the
sense of like doing things that you think that they are not possible for you before.
Like all the effort you put to be able to change
these status from impossible to possible
is something that gives you a lot of, yeah.
So is there a sense when you're looking at a challenge
where you're like, oh man, that scares me
or that I don't think I could do that.
And then that's what gets you interested
or what does that calculus look like
when you're trying to think about
what the next adventure is going to be for you?
Yeah, I think it needs to be in the edge of that.
Like it needs to be, if it's something like,
it's many races that you go there
and you know that you will win.
And then it can happen many things, but you think, okay, with the people that are there or, like, with the preparation, it will not be a surprise if I win.
And then, like, you finish, you win, but it's not an emotion because, like, it's not—
Like, I already won this race 10 times before yeah or or not not that but just like because you know that it's nothing that it's
surprising or that it's nothing that it's putting you on challenge and i think the challenge is just
where you you think okay that that's maybe possible or maybe not possible for me and i
think it's this line where because if you think okay i want to do
like i want to run one marathon in uh in two hours i know that that's impossible like completely impossible for me so that's that's not uh that's not a goal that's just a dream and and attempting
that it will not make sense uh uh because it's uh, it has not any possibility.
So I think you need to, or like I find the challenge
where it really like thinking, for example,
I know that if everything goes perfect and I feel that,
and with this preparation and with all these things,
it's a possibility to doing it.
There is the exciting part.
So then what are you thinking about right now?
Like what are you looking at at the moment that gives you that feeling?
Well, I like polyvalence, like a fun season for me.
And it's not about the pure performance on one thing,
but it's also like being able to run like 100 miles
and a short distance and do some nice climb,
like to combine all these and be able to be on,
yeah, performing well in both.
It's kind of very exciting because it means like how to prepare,
how to prepare the different to prepare the the different
things on the same time and the recovery and the different skills that that's very exciting in a
point and then in um like i think in in running itself uh like it's it's maybe like a few races
that i would like to to perform a bit better yeah, like probably in trail running now is not where I get the more like excitement.
Uh, but, uh, yeah, in mountaineering, like last year Everest, like it was very interesting
for me, not because what I did that it was like not that big deal in a way.
But it was mostly about...
It was a little bit of a big deal.
No, but like...
But go ahead.
No, but like climbing Everest without oxygen has been climbed many times.
And the only interesting thing was the recovery and the acclimatization.
So that's what I learned, like how to acclimatize and how to, I was able to spend so many hours
in high altitude and even if I wasn't feeling good, I was able to move.
So that gave me ideas of like why not to do some link ups or like combine like long distance
in high altitude and I think that can be interesting for a few years.
Right, that realization, that combination,
your ability to handle the acclimatization and the recovery,
how can you then apply it to a new challenge that would be interesting?
Yeah, I think... In a way that's looking forward, too.
Because people have said,
well, do you want to go back to Everest and see if you can do it faster?
And you're somebody who's always looking forward.
That's not as interesting to you as finding something new.
Yeah, especially I think it's always possible
to go faster.
When you do one time, you see the mistakes you have done.
So going back and doing faster, it's a big travel,
so it's better to do something different
than the same time, just a few minutes or hours faster. So, but like, I think in high altitude,
like lean caps are very interesting.
Meaning like going from one mountain to the next.
Yeah, from one mountain to the other,
or like very long ridges,
like ridges between mountains,
because there you need to be fast to do it,
because the speed it's it's one the only possibility to spend
like uh to do these distances in in high altitude yeah and the other is like uh yeah it's a bit more
challenging on on technical skills so these things are yeah are interesting now yeah the ability to
be creative like you're sort of inventing this thing as you go. It's not purely running. It's not purely skiing. It's not purely mountaineering. It's this hybrid of all of these skills that you've been doing for a very long time. And it's your ability to like take a paintbrush and like paint this canvas with what you're able to do in your own unique way.
to do in your own unique way. Yeah, it's interesting.
Like, I think looking to the past, like
a lot of people have been doing a lot of things.
So it's not that we are inventing anything, but it's interesting to to do.
Yeah.
To to be able to look in a map or to be able to look in a in a mountain,
in a picture, and to imagine something to do because you like to do it,
not because it's something that is famous or something that is on the history
or everything, but just to be there and say, okay, that looks amazing.
It looks fun to run from this reach to the other or to look them up and say,
wow, that looks really fun to follow this line.
Right. Well, now that you're so well-known, you're this global figure. When you make a decision
about what your challenge is going to be, there's a lot of people who are paying attention to that
and have an opinion about it. Are you able to block all of that out and have the clarity to just do what your heart is telling you to do?
Or do you find yourself being influenced by all these externalities that really weren't part of the equation when you began all of this?
We are always influenced.
Influence can be good and can be bad.
And I think it's me or it's ourselves and we need to decide which influencers are
cool or not. And I think it's many that they are really great. Especially today, for example,
social media, I think it has a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. And the good
thing is that now we can see what other people are doing. And I don't know, like, for example, you are saying like Alex Honnold, like what he is
doing, it's very different of what I'm doing, but
it gives me a lot of inspiration for doing some things or what Colin
Haley is doing or what
other ultra runners and that can give me ideas of what to do.
So that's like good influences and then it's also
like the what they say bad influences that is people saying ah you should do that or like you
should do that in this way or like it can be like the the the pressure like you could feel from
i don't know like uh press or like our fans or response or that but. But I think I'm in a moment
where I don't really care about this much.
And I know like, okay, I run and I do racing
and that's on a way, like my way of living.
But what I want to do in the mountains,
it's more like for pleasure and for like this kind of testing and and seeing
if things is possible so i i really want to do this on my way and and and the projects i yeah
they're really motivated especially because like it's not a race that you can say okay even if i'm
not motivated i can go through like if you are doing a project in the mountains and if you are not 100% in there,
like if it's a problem,
it's not that you lose the race, it's that you die.
So-
Right, the consequences are-
Are big.
Could not be higher.
But I think along the lines of the similarities
between you and Alex,
Alex is somebody who has been very conscious and diligent about creating a lifestyle that's conducive to allowing him to do the thing that he loves the most, right?
Like removing all of those external pressures and keeping his life very simple so that he has the most amount of time to do the things that not only he's best at, but that move him.
amount of time to do the things that not only he's best at, but that move him. And he's able to do what he's able to do because he's fully integrated. He takes this talent and this passion and what
moves him and his heart and his passions, and he puts it all together and it gets expressed when
he climbs up El Capitan. And I see you as someone very similar. You've made this conscious decision
to leave Chamonix to live in
Norway, where, you know, life is a little bit simpler, and everything that you love is right
outside your door. And you can just go be the person that you're meant to be. And the races
that you've won in the FKTs and Everest and all of that is just an expression of this passion.
And you're this integrated human being who can take this whatever
god gift gifted talent you have combine it with what gets you excited and out of bed every morning
and put it all together to express yourself in this way that's almost you know it's as artistic
as it is athletic yeah it's and it's uh i think it's hard to do that nowadays because we get so much with like inertia.
It takes a lot of people today, I think.
Like we tend to do what is the simple thing, the simple thing, and to try to do what's easy and what it's supposed to be. And we don't take time to, to find what
we want to do and not what we are supposed to do. And but then
like when you find that that's what you want to do and to find
that the balance on that is much like, it's just the life it's much better like everything around is much
better but uh yeah i suppose it's just like it needs to it needs some courage or it needs some
like seeing sometime okay i don't want to that and to be able to to, no, I don't want to do that and I want to cut on things.
And maybe that means less media exposition or less money or less, I don't know, things
that they are supposed to drive you through success.
But then how you count success is very different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
you have your current success is very different.
Yeah. Yeah. So what is living outside the comfort zone taught you? Like this, this ability to be comfortable with being uncomfortable?
Like how is that a teacher for you and what can be learned from that?
Well, I think it, it teach you, it's mostly decision-taking,
like how to, how to take decisions uh how you take the decisions in
the in the zone like to be always exposed like to not be sure about what's going on and to able to
be really rational on on seeing very fast what are the the different consequences on each decision you are taking
at that period i think that you can apply on on life and you can apply on on everything else
and uh yeah it's uh i think it's to be really cold blood but but to be cold blood to follow your emotions.
And that's kind of contradictory.
But then like is you want, you need to listen to your emotion or to listen to yourself to
see where you want to go, what's the lifestyle you want to have, what's the things you want
to achieve.
And that need to be your emotion that decides
this.
But then the decision-taking through there, it need to be really rational.
Yeah.
What scares you the most?
Well, many things, I would say.
many things I would say like of course like when going out like dying or like
having like a big accident things like that but I think what scares me in more general is like where where are we going like the the, like now we see like all the
environmental problems and especially when you are in
these areas, like with a lot of glaciers,
like you can see day by day almost how it's changing.
So on this way, like where are we going as the planet?
And that's something that it's scurrying.
Yeah, and I think that and where a society, like all the problems between humans that
we have, all the, with, yeah, it's a lot of conflicts, human conflicts too, and I think
that's more scary than dying.
The future of humanity.
Yeah, future of
humanity, but humanity
like we are
one species, more of the planet, so also the planet too.
The planet too. Well, the planet would be fine
without us. It would be much better off.
That's for sure.
No question about that. As somebody
who's seen much more of it than, than I, you can
attest to that, I would imagine. What do you think, um, people misunderstand about you?
Um, uh, I don't know. I don't care, I think. Yeah. But, uh, no.
That's healthy. Yeah. No, I think yeah it's like probably like the first years like when you get the tension you are you get attention and you want to
To take care of this audience I would say
But they're like you need to be yourself and you need to do things that you do
And you know that some people will yet you, some people will not like you,
some people will understand, some not.
But if you put your life only to make a solution on that,
then you will not live your life.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
But it must have been weird
when suddenly you started getting a lot of press
and there's like New York Times
and all these people are like writing about you.
And you're just like literally this kid who just likes to run long distances in the mountains.
Yeah, sure.
That is something that is not that I was looking for.
And it's something that, of course, like everybody likes attention and everybody likes like people liking them but uh it also takes a
lot of energy like i i'm not very social or i'm not social at all like uh i i in general like to
be kind of alone like two persons it's okay three it's it's too much. Well, you're going to have three in your house soon.
Yeah, yeah. I hope that's okay.
But yeah, it's this kind of thing.
But yeah, so then it needs to find a good balance with like this energy and these moments to recharge energy.
And if you could do anything in a typical day like what does that
look like just you going out your front door and getting lost in the mountains yeah like a typical
day like it's just like waking up like not very early like 6 37 i don't eat much breakfast
normally like if i'm home like just a glass of water and maybe yeah like one cookie or like
emily she baked cinnamon buns that they are
delicious so maybe one of those in the morning um and then i go for a run in summer skiing the
winter and depending like weather conditions and and if i feel good like that can be between two to five hours.
Or some days, like I do longer, like eight, ten, fifteen hours.
But normally more like two to five hours.
Then come back home, a bit of work, like mails and logistics, like preparing things.
And then in the afternoon, normally I go for like one hour run or like one short training.
So I can go to the climbing gym or do some small exercises home.
And then I like reading.
So in the afternoon, like I like to just take a book and read.
What kind of stuff do you like to read?
Novels and essays and things like that. So, yeah, like now, for example,
now in this travel around, like I have been reading some Foster Wallace books and like some Spanish books, like Catalan authors or Milan Kundera, some books of Milan Kundera or Alessandro Barrico.
I really like them, yeah.
Do you have mentors in your life,
like people that you seek advice from?
Yeah, I have some people like Jordi Tos and Jordi Corominas.
It's two Catalan climbers that they were the first ones to took me to
the Himalayas and actually the first expedition we did, it was only the three of us.
We had like small backpacks, like 30, 40 liters backpack and we were going like from very
far away to climb high mountains very minimalistic we were eating like one portion of leo food for the three of us per day so
yeah it was kind of this style and i always consult with them uh when things on that and
probably my first coach jordi canals he he was the one that uh started to coach me when I started to ski mountaineering.
And we talk almost every week about training live.
And he's also very geek.
When I have doubts about some algorithm that I'm looking for, like for training or for performance things or things like that,
he's the one to come and say, yeah, maybe we need to find a way there.
And Uli Steck was kind of a mentor as well, right?
Like you learned a lot about mountaineering from him.
Yeah, Uli was someone that first I admired a lot
when he was starting to,
or when I was starting to race and to be in the mountains,
like he was doing all these things, incredible feats. And it was like, wow, to raise and to, to be in the mountains. Like he was doing all these things, incredible
feats. And, and it was like, wow, what's that's, that's incredible. And then actually we meet a
few times we were starting, we, we climbed some things together and, uh, only like going to a
climb day with him. It was just like learning so much every, every second. Yeah. And then he passed
away. You guys were both in Nepal,
but on different mountains when that occurred, right?
Yeah, actually he was in Everest in the south side
and I was in the north side.
And when it happened, I was with Emily in Shoyu
and I just get the news and it's yeah it's uh i think moments that like that are
hard on a way because first you you lose a friend but then like actually because the
the value system you have like uh uh everybody has like a way to look to to live or the activities
we do and and and really had a way that as I was really inspired on and we
share a lot of things. So when he had an accident or people
that follow this way have an accident is like all these
system of values is like falling down. And then he's like, all
the questions like, the race we are taking are worth it or like
it's stupid, what I'm doing. taking are worth it or like it's it's stupid what i'm doing
i was there with emery is like okay like i i was uh thinking all like cool his uh wife and saying
okay it's it's um it's worth it or not and i think at the end like it's what we need to live
like it's if we want to preserve life like we will be in a coach every day, like, just not going out because everything can happen.
But then, like, if it's a possibility of dying, it means that we are living too.
Yeah, it puts you into in touch, in connection with something that we're all going to have to suffer at some point. I mean,
that's another thing I talked to Alex about at Link. Like, I think he's able to live his life
much more present and aware because it's so connected to death at every moment. And I think
it infuses his life with a little bit more vitality and perspective.
Like we, in America, we all sort of tend to believe it's not going to happen.
And we try to, you know, prevent any aspect of death from being in our, you know, line of sight.
But when it's so close to you and it's happening, yeah, of course it's going to happen.
And there's something about like, there's something healthy, I think about,
connecting with it in that way.
And certainly this is what you were born to do.
Like, it's not like you're gonna not do it.
And in some ways it's honoring Uli for you to continue,
what he would have wanted you to do.
Yeah, no, I think it's like this connection
with the risk and with like seeing the death
close.
Like, it's very visual, like when you are like slowing or when you are like stooping
or like putting yourself in some risky places, like it's really visual.
Like you say, okay, if I do that, I'm dead.
But that's also every day. It's only that we don't see like
I was saying like when you are driving a highway like if you do a stupid thing
you will die but you will not do it but I think probably when you do these activities like uh
in in mountaineering or in climbing like the the feeling of like having the control of that,
like saying, okay, I am controlling now
like on how I put my feet and how I put my hands
on how I do this or how I traverse this place.
I have the control of like living or dying.
It gives you a sense of more responsibility thing about your life and it's like with the
playing it gives you also yeah this perspective or like i yeah like on only doing the things that
you want to do and that they are important for you because you realize
like it can go really fast.
So why to spend time doing things that they don't mean anything at the end.
And with that in mind, then what is, what is the legacy that you would like to leave
when it's all said and done?
Uh, not one, I think like, just like that we need to to to live our life as like that it's
that nothing we do is that i think we are so much about we want to leave a legacy or we want to
to be remembered or we want to do something important and at the end nothing we do is
important like it's yeah yeah, it's nothing.
And I think when you realize that we are not important
and what we do is not important,
then you realize how wonderful it is.
Yeah.
Well, that's back to the humility.
Or it's back to life.
And I think it's back to being human and to being,
yeah, just a small thing.
That's beautifully put.
Well, I need to release you to your life and to being, yeah, just a small thing. That's beautifully put.
Well, I need to release you to your life and let you go,
but I want to close this down by reading a passage at the end of your book that really struck me, and I'm interested in you elaborating on it.
It goes like this.
A great athlete is one who takes advantage of the ability that genetics have brought him in order to secure the great achievements.
But an exceptional athlete is one who can swim in the waters of complexity and chaos, making what seems difficult easy, creating order from chaos.
Yeah, as you say, yeah.
Order from chaos.
That's performance, I would say, that it's not logical,
is when you can see clear, I think.
Cool.
Good talking to you, man.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thanks for coming.
It was a pleasure.
I appreciate it very much.
Super inspiring.
I wish you well, especially with the impending new arrival.
Yeah, thank you.
Good luck surviving the big city.
Yeah, that will be harder than all the expeditions for sure.
Yeah, if you want to connect with Killian, he's easy to find on the internet, on Instagram.
It's probably the best place, right?
People want to see beautiful pictures.
Yeah, that's what I try to do, to my eyes on on beautiful places and put in instagram and uh his book run or die um i highly recommend it it's a beautiful book
and the new documentary which you're also promoting right now about the the everest attempt
can you tell us a little bit about that yeah we are we were working last year on on putting the images of of all it's not only about
the everest experience seb was there and seb was filming in the mountain but it's also like
summits of my life yes summits of my life and coming back from why i ended up doing everest
on the way i did like all the the moments in my life that were important to drive to there.
And if people are listening who want to check it out, where do they go to view it?
It'll be streaming online?
It will be streaming online.
So like they will be able to find in my social media or in my website.
All right, cool.
And I'll put a link up in the show notes to that so people can find it.
Thank you.
How do you feel?
Feel good.
Like, yeah, no, it's-
What time is it on your internal clock right now?
Like the internal clock,
like now it's not anymore here.
It doesn't exist, right?
We're beyond space and time right now.
All right.
Thanks so much, man.
Appreciate it.
Peace.
Let's run it.
Unbelievable, right?
What a beautiful soul that guy is.
I gotta tell you, going into this, I was nervous.
I had a lot of trepidation
in how I was going to navigate this interview.
I was a little starstruck, a little intimidated, admittedly.
Also, wasn't quite sure how developed
his English language skills would be,
but I just found him to be delightful.
It exceeded my expectations on every level.
And I really hope that you guys enjoyed him
as much as I did.
Please be sure to check out his new documentary,
The Path to Everest.
You can find that at summittsofmylife.com.
Pick up his latest book, Summits of My Life,
and his memoir, Run or Die, which I really love.
And of course, links to all of these up in the show notes
on the episode page at richroll.com.
Also do me a favor and let Killian know
how this one landed for you
by sharing your thoughts with him directly on Twitter.
He's at Killian J.
And on Instagram, he is at Killian Jornay,
which you should definitely follow him there.
He posts the most beautiful, amazing photos
from his daily training routines.
Plus, don't forget to hit me and DK up
with thoughts on his 2019 goals
with the hashtag DKGoals on Twitter.
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I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering,
production, show notes, interstitial music, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing,
and Jessica Miranda for graphics, DK for advertiser relationships and additional production
and theme music as always by Annalema.
Thanks for the love you guys.
See you back here in a couple of few
with another great episode of Guru Corner
with guess who?
Guru Singh, that's right.
It's gonna be amazing.
Until then, don't be afraid to fail.
Don't be afraid to get lost in nature,
to dream, to extend yourself outside of your comfort zone
and to be yourself.
Do not be afraid to live.
Peace, plants, nature, The mountains. Thank you.