The Rich Roll Podcast - Lance Armstrong Is Moving Forward

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

Everyone has highs. Everyone has lows. But few people on Earth have experienced the unimaginable level of success enjoyed by this week’s guest. Fewer still have undergone a more precipitous fall from grace. What exactly is it like to go from global hero to pariah overnight? This is the story of Lance Armstrong. One of the most decorated, fiercely competitive and controversial figures of our age, today Lance joins the podcast to mine the depths of his infamous dismantling. We explore the demands required to rebuild his life. And together we consider his journey forward. But first, allow me to contextualize. I am well aware that Lance is polarizing. Emotions run hot. And nobody lacks an opinion. Perhaps you have been eagerly awaiting this conversation. Maybe you’re outraged. Either way, I get it. If you hold a strong opinion, this conversation isn’t likely to change that – nor is it my goal. As an athlete immersed in the culture of multi-sport who has closely followed the Lance story for as long as I can remember, I grasp and appreciate better than most the issues and controversy that swirl around the world’s most famous cyclist. This podcast is about exploring humanity in all its incarnations. More than anything, I’m interested in what makes people tick — why they do what they do; what they have gleaned from their experiences both good and bad; and how we can collectively grow from examining the lives of others. Among my favorite conversations are those with convicted murderer Shaka Senghor; registered sex offender Joseph Naus; felonious insider trader turned FBI informant Tom Hardin; and a battery of reformed reprobates that include alcoholics, drug addicts, and drug dealers. I state this not to draw any comparison whatsoever to Lance, but rather to illustrate my interest in the complex, dualistic nature of the human condition in all its incarnations. I too was once broken and lost. I cannot begin to compare my experience to that of Lance’s, but I do understand what it's like to be dismantled. I know intimately what is required to confront and overcome one's past. And I have great empathy for the degree of difficulty required to rebuild a life. It is with this spirit that I approached this conversation – not as an investigative journalist, nor as judge and jury. But rather, with heart open — my only agenda to have an honest dialog with one of the most prominent figures of our time. Of course, we discuss his iconic rise, fall and efforts to move forward. But I also endeavored to explore terrain beyond the scandals – subjects like mindset and preparation that often get eclipsed in the grand conversation about Lance. We talk about therapy. We explore his history with anger. And we delve into the evolution of his hyper-competitive nature. We discuss the differences between training as a professional cyclist versus his preparation for Ironman and other ultra-distance events. I asked him what it’s like to contend with a $100 million lawsuit hanging over his head. We discuss common mistakes many athletes make and how he would approach coaching young professional athletes. And finally, I gauge his thoughts on the future of clean sport. This is not the definitive Lance interview. We only had an hour. There were plenty of subjects I wish I had more time to explore. That said, I found Lance to be both open and demonstrative. I think you will be more than intrigued by the discussion. Enjoy! Rich

I know the way I operate as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a host of a podcast, as a teammate, as a businessman, as a anything is far better than it ever would have been. And I have great memories, but when I look back on the people that sort of populated that scene, you know, those weren't friends. And not that they were bad friends, or they were mean, or they were vindictive, but they just weren't friends.

They're there for the ride. And they're gone, which is a bummer, but the most important thing is I know, and I say this all the time, I know who my friends are. That's Lance Armstrong. This week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What is happening? What's the latest? How are you feeling? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Big show today. Really big show today with somebody who truly needs no introduction. None other than Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong on the podcast today. than Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong on the podcast today. And rather than do my typical opening, I thought I would do something a little bit different this time to help provide a little bit of context and nuance and background on this episode. So, I have David Zimmit joining us. Say hi, David. Hey. Many of you guys know David's the photographer, the filmmaker hailing from Malta, who I've been working with over the last two months. And David came along with me to Austin to help document this podcast, along with the podcast that we did with Rip Esselstyn.

That's coming up soon. And I thought it would be fun to discuss a few thoughts about Lance in the episode with David in a more conversational way rather than just me doing a monologue. So by way of background, I had never met Lance before. We have some mutual friends and acquaintances in common, but we'd never met prior to this. And when the opportunity arose to do it, I jumped at the opportunity because, of course, I would want to talk to Lance Armstrong. And I didn't know what to expect. I went into it with an open mind and an open heart. And I think it's important for all of you guys who are listening to understand that I'm not an investigative journalist.

I'm not that interested in rehashing a bunch of terrain that Lance has spoken on ad nauseum in the past. And I really tried to explore and mine some new terrain. And as for, you know, my overall perspective, I've said this many times on the podcast before, I have a tendency to really be able to see the gray in everything. And I don't see my role as host of this podcast to judge, you know, in terms of the cycling community and all of that. You know, I wasn't a professional cyclist. I was not part of that culture.

But I am somebody who is a member of the triathlon and cycling community at large. And I followed sport and Lance closely forever. And I understand well, perhaps, you know, better than most people, all of the issues that swirl and surround Lance, all of the controversies. I get it. I get that Lance is very polarizing. He is an emotional figure and people have very strong feelings about him. I get that as well. And upfront, I just want to say that I don't think this

conversation is likely to change people's opinions. If you're coming into this with a strong opinion of Lance, this conversation probably isn't going to move the needle one way or the other for you. And leading up to this, I had put it out on social media. There were a few tweets and social media posts about this episode. And I got plenty of comments from you guys out there ranging from people who are very excited to listen to this. And then a couple of people who express their outrage that I would have Lance on the podcast. And I get that as well. I understand that having him on the show may not sit great with everybody. And that's fine. Like I said, I'm not an investigative journalist.

I'm not judge and jury. This is not about applauding or reprimanding. I'm really interested in the human condition, what makes people tick, why they do what they do or did, and what they have learned from their experiences, both good and bad, and how we together can learn from all of them. And towards that end, look, if you look back on the history of this podcast, I've had all kinds of interesting people on the show. I've had a convicted murderer. I've had a registered sex offender. I've had a convicted insider trader turned FBI informant. I've had a whole battery of reprobate, but reformed alcoholics and drug addicts and drug dealers. And some of those episodes are among my very favorites. And some

of those people are among my very favorite people. And for the very reason that those conversations mine, they expose, they explore the human condition in all its forms and its failures and its lessons. And I've learned from all of these people and all of those experiences. And so it is with that spirit in which I approach this conversation, because whether you love Lance or you loathe him, Lance truly is, it's undeniable that he is one of the most prominent figures of our time and a figure that really transcends sport. I mean, there are very few people in the last century that have achieved such incredible heights of glory and such lows. And I'm really interested in what that's like and what we can learn from that.

Lance is one of the most fierce and intense competitors on the planet for better or worse. I think those are traits that both have served him well and also paved his downfall. And that's inherently fascinating. And as I said to Lance before our conversation, I know what it's like to be broken and lost. Not that I can in any way compare my life experience by any stretch of the imagination to that of his, but I do understand on some level and have great empathy for the difficulty of taking inventory of your actions, of your past, and attempting to rebuild and move forward. Lance is all about moving forward. His podcast is called The Forward. And that's something that I really wanted to explore with him, to see where he's at with all of that, how he's moving forward. And to be frank, I got to say that I found him to be really open and not defensive in the least.

I mean, what did you think, David? Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting interview. interesting uh interview and even just for me myself being there you know um he's uh been been a big i guess inspiration for me from a very young age and someone i always kind of looked up to to an extent um so yeah it was really really interesting just being there yeah i mean it's it's fascinating just to be in that guy's presence and to be able to have a conversation with him. And again, look, opinions on this one are going to differ. And that's totally cool. This is by no means the definitive Lance interview. We only had an hour. And in that hour, we were able to explore what I think is some pretty interesting terrain. Terrain I really tried to mine in areas perhaps less discussed in the conversation around Lance

or often overlooked in what we see and what we read about with this guy. And of course, there were a million questions and topics that I wanted to get into with him that we just didn't have time to explore. So, it kind of is what it is. But what did you think? Did you think, you know, we got some good stuff, right? Oh, yeah, for sure. And I think also, you know, myself as an amateur athlete, I was just really intrigued and curious, you know, to be around this guy who, you know, has such an incredible mindset and has, you know, kind of win at all costs. And just to see that intensity, it was just really interesting. And what do you do with that win-at-all-cost mentality

when now you're faced with rebuilding your life and you're no longer a professional athlete and you're aging up? And what is he trying to achieve with the podcast and how is he moving forward? And I think those are all really interesting territories to explore with him, and I did my best to do that for sure and i think you know like you you rightly said um i think you know from all the different guests that you've had on the podcast um like we we can all learn from from people you know

whether they've done you know whatever they've done in their life and that was one of my biggest takeaways from this was that. 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 treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing

and how overwhelming and how 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. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Thank you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you.

Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Lance, this happened. We actually did it. We got a conversation with him. I think it's pretty cool.

Like I said, you know, go into it with an open mind, you guys. There's a lot to learn from somebody who has experienced life in all its forms on such a massive scale. And we explore all kinds of different things with him. We talk about certain things that I think get eclipsed in the typical conversation around Lance, his mindset and the prep and training for Tour de France, you know, all the Tour de Frances that he competed in beyond the doping conversation. You know, what was he doing that others were not and what can we learn from that? Of course, we track his iconic rise and fall and comeback in the world of cycling and how he's moving forward now. We talk about coming back from being public enemy number one and how he's

grappling with the emotions that swirl around that, that get sort of packed into rebuilding your life. And we specifically hone in on his anger issues, which I think is super interesting. We talk about therapy, living with his story, dealing with the public reaction. And then we get into the differences between training as a professional cyclist versus his experience participating in Ironmans and then as an ultra runner. versus his experience participating in Ironmans and then as an ultra runner. In other words, what it's like now as he ages and his relationship to his inherent competitiveness has to be sort of metered to, you know, encapsulate his, you know, the fact that he's getting

older and that he's not a professional athlete anymore. And how do you sort of contend with that and navigate that? We talk about how he's moving on his podcast stages and his podcast, The Forward, his new company, WeDo, and, you know, what it's like to wake up every day staring down the barrel of a $100 million lawsuit that this guy has hanging over his head. And then we get into, you know, his perspective on the future of fair sport in today's world of quickly advancing science, whether it's genetic engineering, CRISPR, all the things that are sort of coming online right now that make the prospect of fair competition all the more complicated. One of the things that I asked him in the podcast was whether he has seen the new documentary Icarus that was directed by Brian Fogel. Unfortunately,

he had not seen it yet. I wish that he had because I think that would have made for a really compelling, interesting discussion about that movie and its implications. But Brian is coming on the podcast next week to talk about that documentary. And I think it'll make for a really great bookend to this podcast to kind of continue the conversation that we began today with Lance. So that's it, man. You have any further thoughts, David? No, I don't. I think it was, yeah, like I said, just an amazing experience. Yeah. And I'm sure the listeners are really going to enjoy it. All right.

So without further ado, I give you my conversation with Lance Armstrong. Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it. It's great to be in your studio. And you're definitely somebody who I've wanted to talk to for a long time. And like I said earlier, you know, our social circles overlap. We've got lots of mutual friends.

And it's exciting for me to meet you and to talk to you about it. I think the first thing I'm interested in hearing a little bit about is just this podcast journey that you've been on. You know, I started mine five years ago. It's been transformational in my life. It's enriched me in so many ways. It's been transformational in my life it's just it's enriched me in so many ways it's been an incredible thing and so i'm interested in you know what what motivated you to decide to get into this and what the experience has been like for you um i mean five years wow i've been at it a year or so just over a year and it really was almost on a whim like my, you know, I think most people know the story of the arc of the story. And

we were, we being me and my manager who I'd been with for a long time, who's stuck with me, he, you know, he was trying to figure out a way for me to just do something and sort of as the cycling platform and sports platform went away the cancer platform went away you know what is a platform that we could we could find or or go and get and so he was on me for well over a year dude just just start a podcast and you know everybody you know everybody's still you know who are your you know your your true friends want to sit down and rap and just just go do it and it's like yeah i don't want to i didn't want to start it actually because i was

afraid i'd just kind of get sick of it and a weekly show as you know is kind of a pain in the butt it's a lot of work a lot of work yeah and so i just started it on a whim and and it's been it's been great it's been great to talk to people it's been great to quote unquote work you know because i try to not i don't just have somebody on and sit down and go okay what i'm what do you want to talk about yeah like i i dig into their lives i spend days thinking about their lives reading about their lives so reading about somebody else's life is has been you know i haven't done homework in a long long time yeah it is homework i mean if you want to do it right and you really want to deliver something solid, you've got to put the time in, man.

And I think people don't really appreciate how much time it takes to do it well. And you've been doing it well. And I feel like you really found your groove with stages. Like, that's compelling, you know, to be able to go behind the scenes. Yeah, the spinoff of the forward which again was was totally random last minute started as um one idea that didn't materialize and then morphed into another idea which i didn't think would work and then i just you know recruited an old friend who was a who you just met at yeah i was crazy i mean i'm at this event i'm speaking and he's the dude

who's like filming the whole thing and he comes up to me after i talked he's like i love your talk gives me a we do hat he's like you know we should connect i was like wait i know this guy right and i was like i just i've been trying to connect with lane because like you know i'd connect i'd email you and then a couple days would go by and i'm like i don't know if this is happening or not he's like i'll ping him And then you would just email me back. So here we are now, but that's cool, man. I mean, are there, you know, who, who are your, uh, who are your dream guests that you're trying to track down? Like, who would you really like to sit down and talk to, uh, on the weekly show? God, who would I want to talk to? I said, I mean, somebody asked you the other day about Oprah,

right? About who? Oprah. Oprah, yeah. I'll talk to Oprah. She owes me. She'll come on the show. Who was it? Somebody asked me the other day, and I didn't have a great answer.

Did you read John Ronson's book? He wrote this amazing book called So You've Been Publicly Shamed. I think that's the title of it. And it's kind of about what happens when somebody missteps and then the internet piles on and then lives get wrecked in the wake of that and people just kind of move on. It's a cultural phenomenon that I think we're seeing more and more of. It's something that you live through and, you know, have a unique perspective on. But I think in the context of, you know, of that and, you know, what I said in my email to you, like I'm interested in how you move forward from something like that.

And as somebody who's, you know, faced adversity in my own life and kind of weathered, you know, certain storms, not on the level that you've had to, of course, but, you know, how do you pick up the pieces and move forward? Right. And, you know, obviously that's the name of your podcast. Right. And that's kind of the theme of, you know, how you're trying to live your life and rebuild this. And I think in the context of the conversation that surrounds you, what gets eclipsed are all these other qualities that made you successful because the doping thing looms so large that we don't get to talk about these other aspects of your career and you know you're a kid who at 15 you're out there mixing it up with mark allen and

mike pig like you know just basically this raw talent who you know took his talent and fueled it with mindset and extreme preparation and focus that no one had ever seen you know in your sport that took you to a certain height and so I'm interested in the mindset piece of that, you know, that, that focus and what you think it is about you that, that allowed you to kind of, uh, you know, achieve that height. That all got lost, Rich. You know, the, the, the, the reality is here's the truth, right? And the problem with the whole story is that we still don't have the truth, right? Which is sort of a fucked up thing to think about. So for all these years, we peddled, for lack of a better word, a narrative, a story.

So the training was harder and more cutting edge than anybody else the the technology piece the testing the reconnaissance the composition of things all these things we said uh were the reason that we were the best there was one part of it we said we didn't talk about right doesn't take away the fact that all those things happened and they all made the difference the last part unfortunately the generation that we were in everybody had to have that part they but they didn't have the first 10 parts so literally overnight it shifted to and again this what you just talked about when the internet piles on and the media piles on and people pile on and commenters pile on, it shifted to, ah, it was all about that one thing.

And all these 10 of the things, the training, the reconnaissance, the composition of the team, the tactics, that was a bunch of bullshit. He just gave us a bunch of bullshit for 15 years. So while this rise wasn't totally true, the fall isn't totally true either. Because what happened in the middle is you had an agency in USADA who came and said some very intense, damaging, and untrue things. They said that the athlete at the center of it all is the biggest fraud in the history of sport. Think about that. They said that this athlete and his team ran the most sophisticated doping program in the history of the world. Think about that. But there's truth

in that, isn't there? No, no. And the worst is this athlete forced young impressionable men to put deadly substances into their body. Think about that. So I get it. I get that they said that. That was part of, as the report came out and as the takedown took place, they needed PR points, bullet points, talking points, and those were their points. And so I understand. I'm not, I know why Travis tigert says those things because he was about reinforcing his report there's a lot of truth to the report but those things those

bullet those talking points are not true so when you when you measure up and not that it matters right but it's hard to recover from those things yeah well when that that's the primary narrative and you're somebody who's always you know you're very savvy with the media and you've you've always done a very good job of trying to control the narrative in the story and that was a situation that you couldn't control and i and i and i for the rest of time i won't be able to control right but that's the beauty of having your own podcast you think the other other teams had protocols that were as sophisticated as postal? Look, I'm going to boil this down to you very, very simply and straight out of the truth here.

In the postal case, and this is not off the record. These are public transcripts. The world will and should know in the postal case we have to depose everybody one of the depositions that we've taken is tyler hamilton the line of questioning to tyler hamilton was because tyler to back up a little bit tyler goes from postal to csc to phonak you probably know enough to but yeah and then he was on like rock racing at the end right that's a whole other so the line of question goes like this was there more doping at postal or csc and the answer was csc was there more dope doping

at csc or phonak? The answer was Phonak. So our system, look, it doesn't matter. I mean, we were all dirty. The teams were all dirty. They were all at the game. They were all playing the game. But, and again, I feel silly talking about this because it really doesn't matter what I think or what I say. But we, I'm you we were not the most sophisticated system but you're the bullseye yeah and that's and again that goes back to me understanding why they why they did what they did and why they said what

they said i'm not i'm not by the way i wouldn't change a thing that's something that i'm interested in hearing a little bit more about your life i think i've heard you say like you know you you're you like your life better now yeah so all things being equal if you could go back if you didn't make the comeback and all that kind of stuff and you could have continued to live with this yeah none of this then i would have and and would you would you trade what's going on now for for that life no i wouldn't i wouldn't change a thing because why because and and and by the way too there's a lot of stops along this train here that could have been none of this could have happened some of this could have happened or what happened happened could have happened right and so

the option of nobody ever finding out it never never being exposed, me continuing to just, you know, live the life I was living. I wouldn't, I don't want that. When you were in that position, though, did you, like, feel the weight of trying to carry that lie? No. Or did you just compartmentalize it? Yeah, that was completely compartmentalized. I mean, that was the way the game was played at the time. completely compartmentalized. I mean, that was the way the game was played at the time.

And, you know, some people don't like to hear that for a variety of reasons, but that that's, that's the way me and my peers played the game. And so, and then the next option is, is some sort of a hybrid option where USADA wants to work together. And, you know, my deal is the same deal as everybody else. My deal is the same as George and the same as deal is the same deal as everybody else my deal is the same as george and the same as levi and the same as tyler and the same same as everybody which is you know this six-month off-season suspension and come help us and but that wasn't the deal and so i didn't i didn't you know the message to me was loud and clear hey come out with your hands up we have you surrounded uh which that that never works well with me so i said fuck you right uh but it but but it wasn't it wasn't the same message but it's neither here nor there so i say fuck you and it's world war three total meltdown

everything goes away all the platforms all the sponsors the lawsuits pile up everything and so that's it's been five years and um i think not back up i don't think i know the way i operate as a man as a husband as a father as a friend as a host of a podcast as a teammate as a businessman as a anything is far better than it ever would have been and so how did you that's important sorry to interrupt yeah but the most important thing is i know and i say this all the time i know who my friends are And I say this all the time. I know who my friends are. Whereas go back six or seven years. Well, when the shit hits the fan and everyone, you know, flees or whatever.

That's when I look back on and I have great memories. But when I look back on the people that sort of populated that scene, you know, those weren't friends. And not that they were bad friends or they were mean or they were vindictive they but they but they just weren't there for the ride and the better and they're gone which is a bummer but the better thing or the real highlight is is there are people that well there are people that surprise you because it turns out they weren't friends the shit hits the fan and you're public enemy number one. And all of a sudden there are people calling going, Hey, let's go get a beer.

Let's go play golf. Let's go for a bike ride. I'm like, well, where'd you come from? So they didn't, they weren't interested in kissing ass toast in the champagne, you know, riding around in the team car. They were, they didn't care about that, but they were a friend. And so the journey from that place to where you are now requires grappling with anger and resentment. As somebody who's a long time sober,

they kind of say in recovery, justifiable anger is like your death knell, to hold on to that, even when you're right. Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? And, you know, you're somebody who's fueled by, you know, in many ways in the past, like, you know, there is an anger component to what has fueled you. And, and that's, I've, I've noticed, you know, from the sidelines that slowly dissipate. I mean, cause there was still a lot of that, you know, in the Oprah interview era. Right. And so how have you traversed that to kind of come to terms with that and begin to let

go of it? I mean, look, I mean, I've done a few major interviews since it went down. Obviously, there's everybody points to the Oprah one, which they should. And Oprah had its reasons for happening. Oprah wasn't. and oprah had its reasons for happening oprah wasn't well it certainly appears that the timing wasn't right it had to happen then um and it didn't go well and and you're right i was i was i was a certain guy at the time so if you compare oprah to joe rogan two-ish years ago to howard stern six months ago.

Those are different. I mean, I got so many, like after Rogan and Stern, people were like, dude, why didn't you just say that on Oprah? Like, we'd have been fine. Yeah. But you weren't that guy. I wasn't ready. No. And again, Oprah felt rushed, and maybe in some senses it was,

but that's a different person and that's not it wouldn't have mattered if she wasn't rushed i don't think right like you were just you were holding on to a certain perspective on the whole situation at that time and that was going to come out no matter who was interviewing and that's a whole process of of me just living my life and living with this story and living with people's reaction and living with therapy living with what's the therapy all about i mean i was just i mean just you know no kind of special magic therapy just standard therapy that i do solo i do with anna anna does solo we do with the kids just more just conversation on uh on our lives and you know obviously with the

children we tried to to help them navigate this as teenagers as best they could but to be honest i mean the the more important element is just has just come through and it's it is therapy in a sense that just in conversations with people, whether they're in an airport over a cup of coffee or even over email. I mean, just understanding where people were when all this went down and how it affected them. So that, to me, has been the most important part. And so I just let go of, i mean you saw it for like i

get it i get it i don't i don't i don't think they're necessarily honorable or or honest but hey i i don't care i mean i'm not that that that is i cannot change that right and so you know almost almost all of it's gone away not all of it but almost all of it well you got one big thing looming over you right now you got the one big lawsuit is that is that is may the trial date for that sometime in may i mean what's that like to wake up every day with that i never think about it you don't think about it we're gonna win the case yeah that's the lance armstrong mindset back to the mindset we We're going to win the case. The government cannot prove damages.

They admit this. So look, the case is about one thing. It's not about who's a good guy, bad guy, nanny, nanny, boo, boo, none of that. It's about damages. And they freely admit that they cannot prove that they were damaged. Yeah, there's liability and then there's damages. And they freely admit that they cannot prove that they were damaged. Yeah, there's liability and then there's damages. I mean, liability looks like it's pretty clear, but how do you establish? I mean, is there anybody walking around who says,

you know, I love going to the post office and waiting in a long line, but now I'm going to use UPS because of what happened? Like, that's a tough. I'm not going to send my Christmas cards. Do you never use the post office? No, I use them all the time. You do. And I said, I said around Stern, like I loved, I loved representing the postal service riding around in Europe with the United States, anything on your chest, standing on the top step on the Shams Lee's day with the national Anthem anthem with the United States Bowl. I love that. Like, I wasn't ashamed of that.

I wasn't, I didn't think that was a goofy sponsor like some people thought. I was proud of that. And so, but look, I mean, in Judge Cooper's courtroom, we had a summary judgment hearing and he pushed them. He said, you got to give me a number. He said, Your Honor, we don't have a number. And this is a public proceeding, so i'm not saying anything out of class here and he pressed them three or four times they said we don't have a number and judge cooper said okay well i'll make it real easy name one client that you lost because of all

this was that in summary judgment proceedings right yeah in november and he's and they said your honor we can't we don't have one but they can't i still got by summary judgment though yeah but it's hard it's it's almost impossible to win on summary judge the judge they don't want to be appealed they don't want to get appealed they don't want to get overturned it just it's easy for them to say i'm just gonna let the jury decide. Right. Let's get, let's get back to the mindset piece. Um, you know, I'm interested in, in, in kind of exploring that, you know, as an athlete myself and a lot of athletes that listen to this show, you know, what is it that you think, uh, back to the original question, really, like what is it that you think set you apart and allowed you to sort of succeed on the level that you did, everything else aside? I mean, one of the things you did is you kind of came into cycling and you reimagined the schedule, first of all, because everyone was doing all these races.

And you're like, the only one that matters is Tour de France. I'm just going to focus on that. I'm going to sidestep all this other stuff. That was new and different at the time and the ability to just kind of hone in you know with that singular you know ability to just lock in on one thing and and you know really um set up your entire life around that one goal i think is interesting and just you know what is it you know what is it you think when you look around at other athletes, triathletes, cyclists, whatever, that you think that you have that other people didn't have? What can be learned from that?

The scheduling part wasn't – I mean, Endurain did that too. Although some of those years he did the Tour of Italy. But he figured out in his home country of Spain, the biggest bike race in the world and the only bike race was really the Tour. But that's the same in every country so especially as americans we certainly don't know what the vuelta is or the giro or the classic they don't know any of that shit and the and we know the tour because of greg lamond and so it was easy for me to just say okay i'm coming back from from cancer nobody thinks that i'm gonna amount to anything anyways. I mean, I could barely get it.

I mean, I begged to be on the postal service team. And, you know, this all meets the comeback, meets the team firing Johnny Welts, hiring Johan Brunel. and and he really i mean a lot of this had to do with his vision um his genius uh that he was and still is um but that was a you know for he and i we we formed a perfect partnership where i was willing to do the work he was motivated to lay out the agenda and the plan. Um, of course, you know, I'm not going to discount or ignore the fact that McKellie Ferrari was an

amazing trainer, uh, the best in the business. Um, and probably still is to this day. Um, so the way that all came together, the athlete, my willingness to work hard the

training and then johan's vision of how we were gonna uh how we were gonna do this and he truly believed it like he and all that mixed in with this sort of fuck you attitude because you know certainly at that time the fact that we called 20 teams and 19 of them just literally hung up within five seconds i mean the chip on my shoulder back in in 98 99 was tremendous and so that worked and and i think a lot of athletes use that as i know a lot of athletes use that as motivation and even if there's not a real reason to have a chip they'll go make one up i'd make them up right yeah i remember you said on rogan that you used to concoct stories about yeah competitors did you see that quote and then

carry that out of the race into the real world and get yourself in a bunch of trouble yeah it turns out they're great guys it's not a ultimately it's not a sustainable fuel source though right is it and like now you have to find a new you know a new motivation to get out on the bike and do what you do and and you know a different you know a different set of ground rules for that so you know what does that look like i mean i don't compete i mean if you could you would though i can't but i can you can't compete of course so you can compete what is the status of that but cycling oh you can oh so that's been lifted right on well the the you know the the fine print says that after four years an athlete given a lifetime

ban that after four years they can compete it's a little bit limited i I couldn't go do Kona. Couldn't do, anyways, there's a bunch of certain races you can. Yeah. Right, right, right. But like I, like last spring I started riding a lot and I got back into riding for a couple of reasons, but I started riding a lot and I started feeling fit and I was like, I'll go do some of these gravel races. They're all in sanctions. Bunch of cool people do them. They're hard. And I'd get in these races with these young kids.

40, I'd be 40. I was 45 at the time. I'd get in a race with a 25 year old pro. And you know, next thing I know there's two guys left. It's me and him. And I'm like, well, yeah, of course I'm here because I'm me. I'm supposed to be here. But the 25 year old pro lives and breathes and

is obsessed with cycling and he eats perfectly and he trains perfectly and he rests a lot of and me being me who just kind of rides for fun gets in that situation so my head says of course i'm here but then all of a sudden the body the warning lights start coming on right but you still have the you still have some semblance of the win-at-all-costs mentality that's got to percolate up. But for me, it's either just ride for fun, ride to stay fit, ride to be with your friends and not compete, or you're all in.

You live like a monk. Right. You completely dedicate every aspect of your you know every aspect of your life for a goal and i don't want to do that anymore i don't and that's so you have to make peace with the fact that you're you're gonna get your ass kicked here and there by these young kids yeah yeah and that's where i i had had you know i did four or five of them and after like the fifth one i was like you know i'm sick of like the morning lights. It's like, dude, just chill out. Like your summer's coming up, go to Aspen, just ride with your friends. And if you're alone, if you need to suffer,

just go a little harder. But that's, that's a, that's a maturity. That's an evolution, I think, you know, and as you inch out, what are you, 40, 76, 46. Yeah. So as you inch out what are you 47 46 yeah so as you inch towards 50 you know how do you you know and you and you know that you can't you're not going to be able to be you know at that level that you're used to being at like being okay with the only look if somebody waved a magic wand and said okay you can at 50 you can do kona you can go race kona uh-huh you go back in the cave yeah well i don't know if i don't know if i would or wouldn't but you at that point you wouldn't you are not competing for the victory you just i don't care who you are you're not i mean unless everybody else

crashed i could see you thinking like i'm gonna i'm gonna give this everything and see what i could do because that's the one thing you haven't been able to do but then you're then you're then you're there's a different type of result i mean you could say as a 50 year old could you be top 10 like that's that's like winning yeah so you could you set that as the bar yeah but at 46 or i had this conversation with andrew messick the other day and we were talking about a lot of things and i said you know what i'm glad I didn't go to Kona in 2012. I would have been lit up. I would have been crawling down the road. You think so?

Yeah. Why? Because it took me, I wouldn't, the nutrition, hydration, I wouldn't have had dialed. I would have, the pacing It just that event in my, my sense that is that that event takes a lot of experience and it took me a long time, seemingly a long time just to figure out halves,

but the foals are, you know, they're almost not even comparable. Right. So I would have, I would have completely screwed it up. And I just, I told him,

I was like, thank you. Yeah. Well, when you listen to Mark Allen, who I know you just had on your show and i've had him on my show as well you know how long it took him to master that and even mccormick you know with all his brash brashness and talent you know how many years it took him to conquer that as well so yeah and then then you know that then you get into 40 and then you're just getting farther and farther away from that magic. It doesn't, yes, you're getting experience, but by the way, you're becoming an old man. And so.

What about the difference between. Did you swim this morning, by the way? I did, man. Where were you? I know I had kid drop off and I was trying to manage. Like I do. I'm a morning person and Anna is an evening person. So I get the kids up and start to get, you know, get them fed and get their day going.

And then she likes to sleep in. So she sleeps in a little bit and then we both get up or she gets up and then we take them to school. But then having said that, I'm the person that person that's you know boots up at nine o'clock and she's stays up till midnight so i couldn't figure out how to make it all work well you also said you you were going to do the group ride at 8 30 and the swim practice started at like 7 15 and it's i was gonna get i was like there's no way i was gonna get out early i don't swim the whole time i my when i'm first back in the pool, I swim 2,000. So I would have been out of there by eight.

Rip's pretty fit, man. He was looking good. He's always fit. He's a freak. I know. He's a freak. I know. But I'm interested in the differences that you've experienced between cycling,

which is a team sport and then moving into you know triathlon which was your original sport anyway you know the individual aspect of that and then kind of what it's been like to dip your toe in the water of the ultras and the ultra running and the lead vils and and you know what kind of you know how did that impact your preparation um you know your mindset throughout those races like what are the differences between those two worlds i mean when i was running a couple of years ago it was it wasn't structured you know all of those cycling had structure triathlon in 2012 had structure after that you know after the reason decision decision came out and I wasn't allowed to compete,

there's just no structure. I don't have a coach. I mean, in those days and in those years, I knew exactly what I was going to do every day for a week, and then I'd get a new program, and then we would adjust or you would test. And so it was way more scientific. And since then it's, I literally wake up, check the weather, or maybe arrange it the night before with some buddies.

Hey, you want to run? Or, I mean, it's so casual. Right. But, and with that too, those years that I was, or that year that I was running, I was just, my program, if there was one was, I just kind of followed what everybody else was doing. So if these fast guys in town were out doing a workout, I would attempt to sit in on the workout. Right.

And that would be my structure, but, and they were way faster than me, way lighter than me. And I ended up getting injured and runnings. You got a little injured with that, recently you're back into it well i'm starting to run a little more now but i got yeah i just my both of my psoas is just uh-huh gave out right which is an important turns out it's a really important muscle for running i mean if you can't your first psoas is shut down. Well, also as you get old, I'm about to turn 51. Like you get, you have to start paying so much more attention, all that annoying stuff that you don't really want to do.

The foam rolling and all the rehabbing kind of things. Yeah. And you get those niggles much more easily than you used to. But, you know, you go out and you ride with these young guys, Loss and Craddock or whoever, you know, like fast young pros. If you, you know, what would it look like if you were to you know in an alternative universe if you were to start coaching some young some young athletes whether triathletes or cyclists like what do you see people doing why because i i never i

never coached myself how am i gonna i just listened to yeah but here's the thing this goes back to the original question, which is what gets eclipsed in the conversation about you is that you have this, you're sitting on top of an unbelievable amount of experience. Right. And so, you know, how, you know, what is it about that experience that, that we know less about, you know, that could be helpful to young athletes. Like, you know, when you're out with these guys, like, and you're looking at them and you're like, why is he doing that? You should be doing athletes. Like, you know, when you're out with these guys, like, and you're looking at them and you're like, why is he doing that? He should be doing this.

Right. You know? Yeah. But it's more, I mean, I think, I mean, look, let's just use Lawson as an example, right? Because I, he does live here in Austin and he is on the world tour and, and, and I do train with him. And so last winter he's, he's, he says, you want to go for a ride?

I said, sure. I said, how long are we going? He's like, six hours. I said, okay. I said, well, what do you do? He's like, oh, I have three one-hour and 15-minute intervals at 290 watts, and he's not a big guy. And I said.

For those that are listening that don't know that i said what what did you just say i said and mind you it's november uh-huh i was eating fucking apple cobbler and bluebell ice cream in november and drinking beer and staying up late and i'm like wait what did you just you're telling me you're going to do three hours and 45 minutes of intervals in November on a six hour ride? He says, yeah. I said, okay. So I go on the ride and at my age and at my level, all I can do is sit on the wheel, but I can stay on the wheel. But I'm sitting back.

So to your point, I'm sitting there going, what the fuck is this kid doing? This is the dumbest thing I've've ever seen i mean to be that early in the year and like hammering that hard yep and there was a lot more to it which i won't bore the listener with but i said who is who told you to do this he says jv's doing the training jonathan butters i said well figures i mean that that is so ill-advised and just nobody can tolerate that. Because what? Like, what's the lesson? Like, what is it that you're trying to communicate about preparation?

I think you have to. You've got to, like, play the long game. Not to say that nobody couldn't handle it. Maybe there is some person out there. Maybe Eddie Merckx could have done that. Lawsoncratic can't do that. And it almost felt like an experiment. And I just thought it was, and I tell Lawson this, and I would tell JV this,

that's not a fair experiment. This is a kid who's, he doesn't have that engine. And what makes you think that's going to work? And fast forward, it destroyed him. I mean, this kid was on the sideline the entire season. And if he wasn't on the sideline, he was the first guy getting dropped. So to your point, I mean, for me, I don't want to sit here and go, okay, no, not three hours and 45 minutes of intervals.

How about we do five, 10, or make up? That's not my thing. But I can look at it from my own experience and go i don't think that's a good idea checking that it's november checking that i know the athlete checking that you know a lot of other boxes and and say no you gotta you gotta find a better option option here. Or then you get into the technical parts of cycling or strategy. I mean, those things I know. But, I mean, as far as creating a training plan, I was a listener. I always did.

All the way from swimming age group, swimming at 12 years old, all the way through, I just said, okay, what are we doing? Yeah, but at some point, you must be taking more and more ownership of what you know works for you right the only owner the only in the sense that i gave a lot of feedback and so we were very the relationship between johan and myself and ferrari and myself was there was constant communication there so if something if i felt like something wasn't working or like any athlete with any training plan you're tired you need a little more recovery you have a slight injury like that has to be put on the table and there's doesn't do anybody any good hiding that or being ashamed to talk about

that fuck it just say you know what i'm i'm destroyed this is what lawson craddock should have done he didn't he just kept running the plan and digging a hole for himself just tap out for a little bit right so the message underneath that is you got to know when to when to let off the gas and that perhaps too many people are going too hard too often i mean i think most people go yeah too hard it's hard it's a different kind of discipline yeah to know when to hold back and if you talk about tries i mean the try world is you you know this, I mean, the makeup of that athlete, that's the way they're wired, at least for a few years. And inevitably, they all burn out or get injured or just say, okay, I've had enough. Right.

But they're wired to just go hard and commit their life to this. And, you know, that might work for some but i i don't know that that works for most well in the in the amateur context it's that's what i'm talking about it's yeah it's unbelievably expensive and and uh and unbelievably time consuming so it doesn't lend itself to longevity yeah and in the pros you know there's so few people who can even make a living doing this you know it's crazy and the people who can even make a living doing this. You know, it's crazy. And the amount of energy and time and discipline and focus that goes into trying to compete at the highest level of Ironman, it's unbelievable. Like, unless you're in the top percentile of those athletes, like, I don't know how these guys get by.

And it's a systemic, you know, issue that needs to get addressed and fixed somehow, especially when you have this organization that's just making so much money i know but that's the sport is not about the tip of the spear the sport's about the middle of the back yeah that's that's that's why when we did the stages when we did stages for kona and i had mark allen on and dave scott on you know while you have to talk to them about 1989 and the iron war and what that was like i've watched enough interviews that bob babbitt did with them to know what they that what they're going to say so you got to cover it in case your listener hasn't watched those interviews but i'm way more interested in saying okay mark you know there's 2 000 people in kona today that are about to do a full iron man in four days like

what can like right speak to the middle of the pack right i mean jan ferdeno he knows what he's yeah you know uh marina carefree knows what they all they got it so don't let's not talk to them but and you know when you watch the nbc, when it comes on, you know, well, it's all about those special stories. Right. The bread and butter of the whole thing. Yeah. So that's all. I mean, Messick and Ironman, I mean, that's, I think they try to be sensitive to the pros and prize money and that part of the sport but by the way i mean with their ownership structure now

that that that ownership is not at all about who's gonna win this weekend i mean it's it's about growing the business building out more events numbers numbers numbers yeah well you know and cycling has its own problems as well i mean that's just a shit show in so many ways. Yeah, it was easy to take over. It turns out it's easy to dominate a bunch of stupid people. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, really. So explain that.

Well, the way, and I don't mean to, I'm not trying to sound like a jerk or say people, but the way Johan and i came in this was a sport that was easy to take over they were stuck in their ways they were we were coming in the late 90s they were they were still you know treating the sport like it was the early 80s you know i mean it could be you know the mentality towards, well, I mean, the biggest barrier that probably still exists today is their attitude towards women. You could never have a woman swan here. You could never have your wife at the race.

You could never have her visit. I mean, it was totally old school. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that seems to have changed. But just the ability to, or the willingness to explore other things, whether it's technology or wind tunnel. I mean, when we first went, I mean, it sounds so obvious to go do reconnaissance.

You have 10 major climbs in the tour. Go spend five days and get to just, even though if you think you know them, go there alone when there's not a million people on the hillside and just go do it. It was crazy. The first year we went in 1999, we didn't see anybody. In 2000, we didn't see anybody. But they started to figure out that we were going. In 2001.

So none of these riders were going off and riding the course. No, of course not. And so then we took it from seeing the mountains to seeing all the time trials. And then after five or six years, they're all there. Everybody's doing it. That is so I mean I'm embarrassed to even say it

it's so obvious have you have you seen the Icarus documentary I haven't oh you haven't seen it but I've been asked about 5,000 times

if I've seen it right and I only haven't I Right. And I only have... Do you have a resistance to watching it? No, no, not at all. I'd love to see it. But I don't watch TV at home. I watch movies, I love, love, love documentaries.

But I only watch them when I travel. And so, in my dumb self, the only way I know how to download anything is through iTunes. You don't have Netflix. I have Netflix at home, but, but you can't apparently, and this is what I'm told. And I think it's right.

You can't download a movie from Netflix on your computer. And all I have, you can't download it. You just stream it. If you have, you can stream it anywhere on your laptop or whatever. On a plane. Oh,

not on a plane. Right. The internet's not strong enough on a plane no so i mean you're all you only watch them on when i'm forced to sit in a seat for three hours right that's how i pass the time so you can download it to a mobile device your phone or ipad i don't have an ipad a phone i don't want to watch it on my phone but anyways i'm i'd love to see it i met with with fogel years ago when he was when ago when the movie was the original movie. Right, just the original conceit of the movie.

Yeah. And I'm like, okay. Right. Whatever. Did he interview you on camera for that? Mm-mm. Oh, he didn't. Yeah, I had him on the podcast recently.

I haven't published that interview yet. But it was, I mean, you should definitely watch it it's incredibly fascinating and it it will it will just change and color your perception of sport and clean sport not just in cycling but you know sport-wide and when you when you he really is able to tap into the profundity of this problem in a massive way and and when you you realize the level at which you know these practices are being uh perpetrated it's it's it's shocking and it's you know as a kid you know i grew up i just there was nothing i loved more than the olympics like that was just the greatest thing ever and you know i swam at stanford and had i shown up i was like a basically a walk-on you know but had i shown up and i found out you know all my heroes on that team there was some

kind of program going on you know i don't know what i would have done you know i probably would have done who knows you know i don't know but but you know i can't shake thinking about this movie and the extent i mean basically these guys are saying like nobody's won an Olympic medal is clean. You know, like I don't know whether that's true or not. I don't either. But with these people who are sort of sitting atop this world of doping and anti-doping, to hear them say that, it really, you know, makes you think, it makes you question the future of sport and what can be done to create an even playing field, whether that's even possible, especially with all the crazy technological advances and CRISPR and genetics and everything that's going on. It's going to get fucking crazy. I don't know what that's going to look like.

I'm still just trying to get Eclipse from being the most sophisticated doping program in the history of the world well yeah i think you're going to live with that for a while yeah unfortunately um you know that is what it is but you know i think when you watch this movie well it it it pulls covers and and makes you realize that this is a a problem that extends much more broadly beyond cycling you know that that sort of takes the brunt of it. And when you look at the way that certain sports are treated versus the NFL and the NBA and how we kind of, you know, take a blind eye to those other sports and the vested interests that are at play there, like, you know, I don't know,

I don't know how to even begin to unpack and address the larger problem. Yeah. I don't either. I don't know. Well, you should watch the movie. I will. No, I will. What, you know, how do you, how do you communicate with your kids about all this?

I mean, I know that's an ongoing conversation. You've got a son who's like a big time football player right now. You know, this has to be something that comes up all the time that they're dealing with, especially the younger kids as they're growing older. Yeah. Um, you know, so there's, there are, there, there, there are two waves of kids. There's the older ones who are high schoolers, two sophomores, and then a senior, and then the younger ones were first and third grade so obviously totally different conversations you know experience or you know experiences with or interactions with their classmates but I have to say you know my older ones lived through it at a really key point in their life when it was you know they understood they understood and they could, you know,

either hear about it in the hallway or hear about it on social media or, or however, and they really, and this is, I think it's a testament to Austin and to the schools here, to the counselors, to the teachers, to their friends, to their classmates. We had very little drama for lack of a better word with the with the older kids and and at this point it's never a conversation because i've been so honest with them and so transparent with them and it's it's an open door policy that if they ever do have a question let's talk about it it's just not it's just not an issue anymore and but then that gets you to

my younger kids who of course when this went down had no idea they were they didn't even walk so then you know the society that we live in now which everything sits out there and is forever whether it's oprah or tyler hamilton's book or a new york times article or what are this podcast it sits there forever so my while my older kids can obviously go tap into that they probably won't because they know they know everything pretty much the younger ones are going to grow into it and so then they're going to they're going to potentially you know watch a documentary or read a book or watch oprah or listen to this podcast and then and then you know then it's a whole nother wave of conversations so but i but you know what i I'm fine with that. Yeah.

I mean, that's not, there'll never be a time and place where I say, nope, I'm not talking about it anymore. With my children. Yeah, you have to, you have to continue that, I would imagine. you know luke came home and said you know they're doing steroids or you know i'm told i should be doing this right or or maybe i did do it or you know have you thought about that have you had that conversation with you know it's interesting because it it well i think that this fight this this anti-doping fight is you know i get asked all the time should we just legalize everything and my answer is always like no you can't can't, you can't do that. That's, that's crazy. But they have a lot of, so you have, so they had said they need to exist. These agencies need to

exist, but when they exist, you know, they have a lot of messaging that really, that I don't know that, I mean, between USADA and Jeff Novitzki, who was the federal investigator who took down Bonds, took down Marion Jones, took me down. You know, his main thing that he always, these high schoolers, these steroids in high school, steroids in high school. My son plays for Westlake High School. He's a senior. They're undefeated.

They've had 10 NFL players come out of that school they've won multiple state championships they're ranked third in the state today and this is texas football this is texas this is this is this is friday night this is this is the tippiest tip that you can get tipped. Yeah, the war is being waged here. And let me tell you something. There is none of that. That's interesting. None of it. And if there was, I would know. And I would assume he's got aspirations to play college ball.

No? No. Really? No. No. Is he starting? He starts, yeah. Wow.

So why doesn't he want to play in college? Because while he gets letters and gets offers, he doesn't want to play at a D2 school or a smaller D1 school. Look, if he was at the level where Florida and Alabama and University of Texas. It'd be different. It'd be different. But if he's getting, you know,

I'm going to make up some name and piss off some of your listening, you know, Southern Kalamazoo, you know, tech, he doesn't want to do that. Right. Where does he want to go to school?

He wants to go to Alabama. Yeah. He got accepted. We toured, we had a great tour. He loved it, but he don't, he's not at the level where he could play ball there.

No. Yeah. That's a whole different thing. That's a whole other. Yeah. But it's interesting. I mean, I just, so to me, it's like, wait, but that's the way politicians operate. They have these things that they put out there to drive a little bit of hysteria, to drive

their agenda. But is that really happening? I don't know. I don't know. So you're seeing it in true Friday Night Lights. And I'm not saying that there's not some kid in Dallas or in Houston. It's got to be happening, though. Right, but I'm telling you, on the best football team

or one of the best football teams in the state, at the highest level, that isn't even remotely a conversation huh that's interesting wow well you know it's it's weird how it it penetrates amateur athletics too you know you hear these stories about these amateurs and iron man stuff like that you know it's like and cycling it's crazy you know yeah amateur cyclists. It's not their career. It's not their profession. And guys are getting caught doing this, man. What do you mean?

All these anti-aging clinics. I mean, come on. Yeah. People are competitive. Says the most competitive man on earth i mean even even you know age group triathletes they don't want they want to they want to either win their age group or get a pr or and then that all fits or meets this whole and you probably had a shit ton of people on the show talking about biohacking and and whether it's diet whether it's supplements whether it's

and whether it's diet, whether it's supplements, whether it's pharmaceuticals, whether it's some new technology. I mean, it's people. Yeah, and that line becomes very gray and murky. You know, what is that? You know, I go to the doctor. But do we care? But do we care?

Well, I think it's a spectrum, you know, when it's on the extreme. Yeah, I think we care well i think it's a it's a it's a spectrum you know when it's on the extreme yeah i think we care you know what does it mean for a cyclist to get a cortisone injection versus enough an nfl player to get a cortisone injection but don't we need another hour if you want to give me sure this is i read i read this morning that the new president of the uci is going to completely ban corticosteroids which is sort of a tricky way to say it. I mean, it's really cortisone. The media loves saying corticosteroid because it has the word steroid. But when in reality, as you well know,

cortisone is a catabolic agent, not an anabolic agent. And so it's a very different thing. When the public hears corticosteroid, they think anabolic steroids. But it's not an anabolic steroid. It's an anti-inflammatory. It's a catabolic agent, not an anabolic agent. So, yeah. Well, we could bark up that tree forever.

Forever. Well, we could bark up that tree forever. Forever. So, as this incredibly competitive person, we kind of explored this a little bit already, but do you think that you still have that in you or is that dissipated? I mean, that's part of who you are, right? So, when you launch a podcast do you want to apply that mindset like oh i have to be you know in the top 10 in itunes or it's you know i'm not going to settle for anything less like do you apply that to everything that you're doing or have you are you have you chilled out i think i've

chilled on that i the i'm curious you probably do the thing, but I'm curious weekly on how the public receives certain guests and the numbers that you get, how many downloads that you get, how many do you get caught up in checking that stuff? I don't, I don't, I don't ask, I get told.

And if I don't get told, then I don't know. And, and I, I prefer it that way, but that all sort of changed when we did stages because stages was last minute. I didn't know. I had very low expectations.

I didn't want to have any expectations on how it would do. But as it went from first week to second week to third week and the numbers just started to get crazy at that point i was like okay i don't i don't even know what to think i was i was i was shocked humbled honored and then and then it was then i got to this place where it was cool to see. I mean, it was for me personally, you know, to generate that kind of interest. Does that feel redemptive? I mean, it's ironic. It's ironic that the one person that the entire sport is banned from mentioning,

The entire sport is banned from mentioning spur of the moment creates a brand, a channel content that is now bigger than our ended up being bigger than anything else. The sport was doing. That's a little ironic. And, but, but at the same time, old Lance would have been like,

fuck these motherfuckers. Let's go. This Lance has to be motherfuckers let's go this lance has to be yeah let's make this the biggest yeah let's show everybody that you know i can dominate this yeah i have to be thoughtful with uh with it and yes the numbers are great and but you know what they could be down next year i don't i, that's my mentality has to be that, that, that, cause I know this better than anybody. No, you know, nothing lasts forever. And so, you know, how I go about just building that show, developing that show,

if we expand the show, but there can't be a, uh, I can't be in a place where it's like, ha ha told you so, or fuck you. Yeah. That's not going to work for you. No, I'm not. And I'm not there. I'm not. It's like, wow. That's what I tell people. I'm like, damn. So that's not in the back of your mind. Yeah. No. What do you think are the stones that you still have to overturn? Like in terms of just emotional development, like what are the things that you still struggle with that you battle with? know the demons that you know you need to kind of work through that are still kind of looming out there and trip you up i mean i don't there

are still things that get me aggravated but i mean this dude this process that I've lived through is, you know, I always gauge it based on, like, when I walk down the street, or if I'm, like, last weekend I went to ACL Fest, around thousands of people. You're walking through thousands, or you're walking in an airport, or you're walking in New York City. Like, how are you walking? How are you feeling?

Like, when you see somebody, they look at you, do you, are you like, why are you, or how, like, what's, what's my confidence level and get confidence is different than arrogance. And man, the way I walk down the street now is so unbelievably different. My confidence level today, if I walk down fifth Avenue in New York city versus 10 years ago, even 15 years ago where it was, couldn't have been a bigger story. You can't even begin to compare those two. It's weird.

And I'm not bragging. I'm just trying to explain this and be honest about it. But it is fucking lovely. It is fucking lovely. There's something about removing that dissonance between what you're saying and how you're behaving that kind of integrates, you know, the human spirit in a certain way that I think allows you to be that way. You know, and I think for me, that's been a big part of the journey. know one of the one of the kind of core principles of of sobriety of recovery is you know not just owning your past and and aligning your you know your actions with your words and all of that but i'll give you also i'll give you an example so we go do and then we gotta run because i gotta go yeah i take this podcast to the race in colorado and it was a whole lot of drama around it because they tried

to ban me they didn't want you to do it was this is crazy but that was they actually did me a favor when they did that so i i rent this airbnb and i'm um and across and this is this cool part of denver called rhino where it's all breweries and and cool restaurants and you know that's where all the cool kids hang out so the airbnb is right across the street from this uh brew pub so i'm waiting on my uber to take me down to the race and i'm with liz cruz who's photographing me forever she's like oh you've been spotted i was like okay whatever long story short the uber pulls up not in front of the house but in front of the brewery so we got across the street and it's starting to rain so we're about to get in the car and but there's still people out on the patio

drinking and having a big old sunday and one of them goes hey lance and i said what's up man and he goes fuck you fuck you fuck he didn't stop and then there's like eight of them and then they all start fuck you fuck you it was unbelievable and i was like i've never that's never happened it happens in social media it happens on you know how it happens and i'm just like in person to your face i I'm like, oh my God. And Liz was like, get in the car. Don't do anything. And I was, I was like, okay.

So I got in the car and they're just, of course, while we're pulling off there, just keep there. Like it was like a chant at that point. And I'm in the car and I said, okay, I have to do something. I can't, I can't just let this, I can't just let this go. So I call the bar. I said, let me talk to the manager. And the lady's like, what's this about? So I was like, see, anyways, he gets on the phone. I explained to him everything that happened. Guy says, man, I'm really sorry. That's, that's super fucked up. I said, okay, here's the deal. Here's my credit card.

The whole tab is on me, but I want you to go out there and tell them that I picked up the beers and food and whatever they had. And I sent my love. And the guy's like, are you serious? I was like was like yeah so he goes out there i mean then he called me back later he's like okay this is what happened so the moral of the story is that you know 10 years ago five years ago two years ago maybe even less that would have been a fight a physical fight and it just me just going, you know what? Because it rocked me because it has never,

that's the first time that's happened. But also getting there going, I have, me being me has to do something. But my do something today was, you know what? I'm going to lean into this one. It's contrary action. Yeah. Do you think you could ever get to a place where you can forgive the david walsh's of the world i mean walsh is a walsh is a special one and we knew we'd

need a whole another hour for him walsh is i know david very very well and david this is gonna sound weird but david and i are very similar i was a win at all costs guy david is a win at all costs guy he'll he'll tweak he'll change he'll manipulate he'll lie he'll deceive shifted for him um he wasn't much interested in in an apology he was more interested in the lawsuit and getting paid and and he got that that's exactly what he got and so if that's what he wanted he got it but i also know david too and and i know this story way better than anybody else so i'm very close not so much with him but i know him well enough that i feel close to him and i'm very close with emma o'reilly so i see how he's so somebody that he used as the pillar of this story to to come after me i i've seen the way he's treated her and she's seen the way he's

treated her. And I can tell you, it's not, it's not an honorable. So I don't, I don't, I'm not uncomfortable with where I sit in the world with regards to him because the, the ploys along the way i know where they sit and you know that's david i mean that's that's god i didn't even you know right but i think the bigger point i'm really getting at is is in order to really be free you gotta like release these resentments or whatever i don't have any i don't have any resentment towards him. And I'm not saying David per se. I'm just saying in general. You know what I mean? Like in my experience and kind of what I've gone through,

it's like even when you feel like you've been wronged and like this person and that person or whatever, it's like you're the one who's suffering. You know, you're the one who's paying the price for that resentment that you're harboring. And if you can get to a place of like truly like letting go of that, then you can walk down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and, you know, be integrated. And I would say and I said this at the top of the show, there are still a few things. Right. And the postal case being one.

But almost all of those have been and it's a process. I don't think anybody's, you know, goes on a ayahuasca trip or goes to counseling once or goes to AA and walks out and is like, okay, I'm good. I'm forgiving everybody. We're cool. It's a long hike. And so they're getting shit. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you or anybody listening and say,

okay, they're all gone. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say it doesn't fucking make me livid and pissed off that Livestrong did what they did because it does so yeah it's it's there but hey i'm gonna work through it and i'm committed and it's and if you if you just said i'm not gonna work or i'm not gonna do the work well then you then you have a problem right and so but but, you know, Walsh elicits no emotion in me. Travis Tiger elicits no emotion in me. I get it. I know exactly.

And I'm good with that. And I'm me. I wake up as me every day. And I like waking up as me. And it's not called forward for nothing. And so, yeah, there are a few more I got to pick off and make right. And they might happen next month. It might take three years.

I don't know. But the key is that you should know this is that so long as I realize that that is a process and I am committed to making, to shedding that. Pretty powerful. It's a good place to end making, to shedding that. Pretty powerful. It's a good place to end it, man. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. That was great.

Sorry. I know this is short for you. No, I know. Yeah, man. I don't go rogue in length, but I go a couple hours. We've got a hands-on deck meeting at noon, so I'll be the bad guy if I don't. All right. Yeah.

No problem, man. Thanks for your time. So you're easy to track down on the internet at lance armstrong we do sport.com stages podcast forward podcast yeah it's all there yeah right on man i'm not very good about leveraging and promoting and pushing that stuff out but there's some good ones out there if people are interested. Yeah, cool, man. Thanks, dude. All right, peace. Plants.

All right, that happened. We did it. It's done. What'd you guys think? Hope you enjoyed it. Again, I was really hoping that Lance had seen the documentary Icarus.

It would have been great to be able to discuss that with him. But as I pointed out at the outset, Brian Fogel, the director of that amazing documentary, is next week's guest. If you have not seen that documentary, please make a point of watching it. It's on Netflix prior to next weekend. I think it will really help inform and contextualize that conversation. It's a very powerful documentary and relevant to today's podcast as well.

And I loved it. Really looking forward to sharing that one with you guys. Until then, please check out the show notes for this week's show on the episode page at richroll.com. Lots of links and resources to take your infotainment beyond the earbuds. Also have a full video version of this podcast up on YouTube. Go to youtube.com forward slash ritual, and you can check that out.

And a couple other podcast episodes, recent episodes that we filmed. If you would like to support this show and my work, a couple of ways to do that. Share it with your friends and on social media. When you go to a cocktail party, ask people, what's your favorite podcast? That gives you an opportunity to tell them about this show. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Hit that subscribe button. Super important.

Also, we have a Patreon account set up for people who would like to support my work financially. Thank you to everybody who has done that. It means the world to me. In thanks for all of you who are supporting me on that platform, I agreed to do a monthly Ask Me Anything AMA video AMA for you guys this week. We were supposed to do it, ran into all kinds of technical difficulties, major snafus that derailed that whole adventure. My apologies for that. I have since been in touch with customer support on that video platform to make sure that it goes off without a hitch next

time. And I've rescheduled that AMA for November 16th at 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Again, that's only available to people who are supporting on Patreon. It's the least I can do for showing me that amazing level of support. How's your plate? How's your plant-based diet? Are you guys on track? Are you struggling? Check out our meal planner, meals.richroll.com. It's got everything you need to dial up your health on your plate three times a day. When you sign up, you get access to literally thousands of plant-based recipes, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. Everything's metric system compliant for those of you who do not live in America. It's all personalized and customized based on your goals and your food preferences and your allergies and your time constraints you can set it up to prepare dishes for one or for however many people are in your family it generates these amazing grocery lists that you can then take

to the grocery store to get everything you need but in i think over 60 metropolitan areas at this point you can get your groceries delivered. It will automatically input all the ingredients to prepare the recipes that you have selected, and those groceries will be delivered right to your door. It's unbelievable. This is such a powerful tool. And one of the things I'm most proud about this product is not only that it's unbelievably helpful, but that it is affordable, $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. So really love this program. We're getting amazing feedback. As I've said before, people are really enjoying it. So if you struggle or maybe you're not a great cook or you're not somebody who likes to spend time with cookbooks and all of that kind of stuff, we tried to

create this program to take all of the guesswork out of eating healthy. And again, I'm really proud of it. So go to meals.richroll.com or click on meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. That's it. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music, and help on the show notes. He's doing more and more work. Thank you, Jason. Sean Patterson for all his graphics work. He's the one who creates all these cool Instagram videos and with the text and all that stuff. David Zamet, who you heard in the intro for his beautiful photo portraits and video work and theme music, as always, by Annalima. Thanks for the love, you guys. Again, hope you enjoyed today's episode,

and we'll be back next week with an amazing episode with Brian Fogle, the director of the amazing documentary Icarus. Check it out. Watch it. It's on Netflix. Watch it before next week. You won't be disappointed. And I think it will really enhance your enjoyment of next week's podcast. All right.

Until then, be well, you guys. Much love. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.