The Rich Roll Podcast - Mark Allen: One Of The Greatest Athletes of All Time On The Spirituality of Peak Performance

Episode Date: February 13, 2017

Between 1982 and 1988, Mark Allen launched six attempts to claim the title of Ironman World Champion. Each year he was squarely defeated by his arch rival, the legendary Dave Scott. In 1989, the two titans of triathlon once again descended upon the white hot lava fields of Hawaii to reprise their annual duel in a spectacular showdown that would make history as the greatest race Ironman had ever seen. Dubbed The Iron War, Allen & Scott raced neck and neck at blistering speeds for 8 hours and would cross the finish line less than one minute apart — decimating the previous world record and redefining the limits of human endurance in the process. When the dust settled, Mark Allen finally emerged victorious. And over the next several years the man they call The Grip would become arguably the most successful triathlete in the sport's history with six Hawaii Ironman World Championship titles, 10 Nice International Triathlon titles and countless other victories across distances, terrains and fields of every variety. So how did Mark Allen go from perennial also-ran to an athlete ESPN dubbed “The Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time”?  The answer might surprise you. Because it has nothing to do with fitness, nutrition or gear. Instead, it has everything to do with spirituality. Without a doubt, Mark's embrace of shamanism unlocked hidden reservoirs of human potential. It's a devotion that broke the glass ceiling on his mindset and plateaued career and ultimately propelled him to staggering heights of athletic success. But how? And what does it all means to him now? I needed to know. So I jumped in my truck, drove to his house Santa Cruz and put a microphone in front of him. This conversation is the result. It's a conversation about Mark's remarkable life and his ongoing quest for expansion. It's about the importance of aligning yourself with nature's rhythms. It's about investing in yourself, cultivating self-understanding and honing a positive mindset. And it's about the crucial role humility — detaching from ego — plays in manifesting personal potential. Bottom line? If you really want to soar, look within. Deep within. It was an absolute honor to speak with Mark. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

Two days before the race I was in my hotel room and I was flipping through a magazine, just passing time, not reading anything until one page caught my attention. And it was an ad for a workshop that was going to take place in Mexico, teaching about a way of life from the Indians in that area, the Huichol Indians. And the workshop was going to be led by these two great shamans or medicine men. One was 110-year-old Huichol Indian, Don Jose, and the other was his adopted grandson, Brant Secunda. And there was photos of both of them,

and it was those photos that stopped me as I looked at this. And they just had this look that was very peaceful but powerful. And that's kind of the state you're trying to embody and embrace when you're in that real flow and racing you just want to feel peace but also feel like this strength that's surging through you that's mark allen and this is the rich roll podcast The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. What's going on? How are you? What is happening? My name is Rich Roll. Welcome to my podcast, the show where I have the great fortune, the great opportunity to go deep, to get intimate and go long form with some of the world's most inspiring,

positive, paradigm-breaking changemakers across all categories of wellness, entrepreneurship, spirituality, entertainment, creativity, on and on and on. And today's guest certainly fits the bill. Before I get into who that is and what we're doing here today, a couple quick announcements, really quick. Julie and I are going to be in Australia coming up in mid-March. On the 16th, March 16th, we're going to be in Sydney at Paddington Town Hall. And then the following evening on the 17th, we're going to be in Melbourne at the Malvern Town Hall. Both of these are going to be amazing, curated, beautiful amazing curated beautiful evenings of talking and connecting and cultivating community around

all the ideas that I sort of support and advocate through this podcast and the work that I do so if you're in Australia and this interests you go to livingtheplantpowerway.com or you can go to my website richroll.com and click on appearances and all the information about ticketing and all of that you can find there. Okay. So did I tell you guys that I drove up to Santa Cruz last week and stopped by Mark Allen's house for a chat? Yeah, man. The grip. The grip.

A living legend, this guy. Arguably the most successful triathlete in the history of the sport and perhaps the most dominant Ironman triathlete of all time in the house this week with me for you guys. So who's Mark? If you're not a triathlete, if you're not into that, Mark is a six-time Hawaii Ironman world champion. undefeated champion of the Nice International Triathlon. And he's an athlete that ESPN in 2012 dubbed the greatest endurance athlete of all time. Today, Mark is a sought-after motivational speaker. He's a coach. He's an author of a couple books, Fit Soul, Fit Body, as well as this really inspiring, cool book of quotes and photography called The Art of Competition. And there are so many interesting things about Mark beyond just his sort of results on the race course. The first thing is this guy, although he is a coach today, he never himself had a coach. It's amazing that he was able to become the elite performer that he was without that kind of guidance.

But I think what interests me the most about Mark and his story and why I was so drawn to seeking him out for the podcast is that this is a guy who continued to show up in Hawaii for the Ironman World Championships and was unable to win. The champion, the sort of top of the podium, just continued to elude him until he discovered shamanism, which essentially began to help him sort out his spiritual self, his interior life, his priorities, his limiters, and basically his entire mindset, which I find very fascinating. And this makes up a good portion of what we talk about in today's conversation. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery

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To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right. Awesome. So this is me and Mark Allen talking about his amazing life, his triathlon journey, how he works with athletes today as a coach, and most importantly, his ongoing quest for spiritual expansion. All right, man, thanks for taking the time, Mark. It's a beautiful spot you got right here, just a couple blocks from the beach, conducive to the surfing lifestyle that I know you enjoy? Yeah, I moved back up to Santa Cruz 18 years ago in 1999. And my son was going to be starting kindergarten. And I thought, if I don't get out of San Diego now, which is where I was living, it's not going to happen for another 12 years. And so we packed the family up and up here we came.

And I've just loved it every single day that I've been here. It's a nice lifestyle. You can do anything. You can bike. You can run. There's trails everywhere. But I'm pretty much in the water every day now, out surfing. And a two-minute walk, not bad.

It's right there. Yeah, it's kind of – this town has a very unique feel. It's almost like it's stuck in time. has a very unique feel it's almost like it's stuck in time you know it's like you can it's its own little universe that seems untouched by you know the bay area and the kind of gestalt of silicon valley and the rest you know it's very ideologically diverse you can pretty much find anybody thinking about anything in the universe here and And I love that, though. It's full of characters. It's a little rough around the edges sometimes. It's not for everybody.

But for me, I absolutely love it. One of the reasons that I moved up here was that I've studied shamanism with Brant Secunda since 1990. And he's based here. And so I just wanted to be closer to what he was doing. Because it's just like anything, you know, you're like when you're training, it's good to be around people who are doing the same thing you are. It's motivating. And, you know, on that, that level of, uh, studying shamanism, it's just easier to do it when you're in a community where there's people around who are doing the same thing you are. And,

um, yeah, I love it. And it's been a great journey being up here. Yeah, cool. Well, the shamanism and your sort of ongoing spiritual quest for expansion and how that relates not only to your athletic success, but kind of your life in general is definite. That's why I'm here. That's the main thing that I want to talk to you about. I know you've told your story a million times, but perhaps we can set a little bit of foundation that I think will make, you know,

that the spiritual aspect of, of your story, all that more kind of relevant. Um, you know, obviously the story is well told, uh, 10 time world champion, six time Ironman world champion, uh, and the lead up to those six Ironman victories, uh, you know, the crucible of that being six losses that preceded that and this quest to try to find a way to, you know, get to a different place with yourself as an athlete so that you could kind of conquer this, you know, this race that seemed to elude you. So maybe, you know, walk us through a little bit what that was like and the process of, you know, embracing shamanism as a vehicle or a conduit for tapping into, you know, a higher, you know,

more fully developed actualized version of yourself. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Um, you know, I, I got into the sport of triathlon in 1982, just with the dream of somehow going to Hawaii and crossing that finish line. I had seen, uh, uh, the Ironman on Wide World of Sports, February 1982. And I was just, you know, first thought is how many days is it going to take him to do that? You know, because Jim McKay was saying 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and marathon. And of course, it's like one day start at seven, you got to be done by midnight. And it just seemed absolutely out of the realm of possibility. Like, how can you do that? But, you know, I'm

watching this program and here's these seemingly ordinary looking people doing this extraordinary thing. And, you know, about two weeks later, I just thought, I want to go there and see if I can be one of those people to cross that finish line. And, you know, my secret goal when I went there that year was to see if I could maybe be top 100. I thought, you know, I'm 24. I'm young. Maybe I can. I seem to sort of have a knack for cycling and running. And you had a swimming background, right?

You were like an All-American in college and swimming? Yeah, in NAIA, which is, you know, swimming has so many. Not Division I. Yeah. Swimming has so many levels. So, you can be the top dog in your lowest level if you know so anyway uh i was a very mediocre swimmer if you look on the grand scale of things i never was able to even come close to qualifying for like olympic trials or nationals

like that um but i'm put together i think more to to bike and run. And so, you know, I had this aerobic engine that was developed through years as a swimmer. So, you know, the cardiovascular was there. And right away, it just seemed like, you know, I kind of had a knack for this thing called triathlon. And so, anyway, I was there, you know, 1982. I found myself. That was like how many years into Ironman? What is it? 79 was the first year, right? 78. So, it how many years into Ironman what is 79 was the first year right

78 so it was it was four years into it it was originally on Oahu they moved it to the big island

of Hawaii and that's when it really took off and you know there was it was easy you just sent in

your application with a check and a mugshot and you were in the race that was it yeah it was like zero qualifying to do it you know so probably a lot of people on that start line shouldn't have been there but

and how many people did they max out or could anybody just go if they wanted to go there was maybe a thousand people that year that's still quite a bit it was quite a bit but you know there was still plenty of room for more. The main guy at that time was Dave Scott. In 82, he had won the race once. He was coming back hoping to win his second title. And the guy was tough as nails, especially in later stages of the race. But I came out of the water that year on his feet.

He was the leader out of the water, and I was second out of the water. And I thought feet he was the leader out of the water and i was second out of the water and i thought hmm that's pretty good yeah he was no slouch as a swimmer either no he was a great swimmer um halfway through the bike ride i was still with him and we were in the lead of the race so now i'm thinking this is pretty crazy my first iron man and here i am with the best guy in the world and you know and your prep leading up to that was you were just winging it, trying to just listen to your body and figure out like, how did you even, you know, prepare, know how to prepare there. There was nobody who could tell you how to get ready for a triathlon in 82. There were no triathlon coaches. You know, I kind of, I had a friend who was a cyclist. He gave me his tips as best as he could. I had another guy that was really good at running and who knew a little bit about triathlon.

So he kind of tried to guide me on that level. But it was just, you know, go out there and see how much you could do and hope it didn't kill you, you know. And so anyway, so I'm with Dave and we made the turn and we're headed, headed back to town. And, um, you know, we had over five minutes on the next guy. And, uh, shortly after that, I went to shift into a big gear and my derailleur broke. And so I was out of the race halfway through the bike ride, didn't finish, you know, accomplish that finishing goal.

But I had been with the best guy in the world for about four hours of racing. And, you know, it's about half the amount of time it takes to the winners. And that's really when the dream was born. Like maybe, just maybe I can be the winner of this amazing race. Um, and shortly after that, I picked up some sponsorship. Nike picked me up. Uh, I was asked to be on a triathlon team in San Diego. They were going to pay me a thousand bucks a month, which sounded like a million dollars, you know, back then. And so off I went, you know, and it, you had to be thinking like, man, I don't even know

what I'm doing. And I'm up here at the, at the, up here with Dave four hours in this ain't nothing but a thing. I'm going to come back next year and just walk away with this thing. Right. Or at least like, I've got to be in the mix. Like this is going to be, this is all going to happen for me right away. Like quickly. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think it would happen the next year because I didn't, you know, I knew that from hour zero to four is very different from hour four to eight. But I thought maybe in a year or two, if I keep on this trajectory, that maybe I can, you know, maybe I can win this thing. Because I had, that very first summer, I had beaten some of the best guys in the sport. Scott Molina, Scott Tinley at a half Ironman distance race earlier in the summer.

And so, really, the only other guy that I had never beaten was Dave. And, um, so yeah, I w I wasn't thinking immediate, but I was certainly thinking it's definitely a possibility. And so, you know, the next year I did come back and finish it. I was third. Um, and I just wanted to see what that was like to cover that whole distance because i'd never done a full iron man um but then it was the next year i thought okay now it's my time you figure you know you go from being with the best guy to being third place and then why not just keep going and completely blew up the next year i was i think i had a 12 minute lead off the bike ran through town just like high-fiving you you know, thinking I've got this thing. Nobody's going to catch me, you know, I mean, 12 minutes.

And, you know, it was a 10K through town. And then the meat of the marathon was 20 miles out in the lava. And at the bottom of the hill, going up to the meat of it, I thought, I've got this thing. When I got to the top of the hill, I felt like every ounce of energy had just drained out of my body. And I thought, I don't know what's going to happen here. And indeed, I ended up walking, struggling. And at one point, the medical team came by. And I was stopped in the middle of the road just pouring water on myself.

And they go, we need to ask you a few questions because we're not sure. We need to, you know. And they go, what's your name? I go, Mark Allen, leave me alone, you know. And they go, what are you doing? What am I doing? I'm doing the Iron Man. And then they go, what day is it?

And I'm thinking to myself is it saturday or sunday i had no idea i couldn't and i knew if i got the answer wrong they're pulling me and i go i am fine just let me go and they you know they let me go but that's when i really saw um how challenging and complex the iron man is you know my training had gone even better that year than the first two years, but I ended up walking on the marathon and having an abysmal... And not just the Ironman in general, but there's something very specific in particular about the Ironman in Hawaii. Well, the Big Island is such a powerful, powerful place. You get off of

the plane and you can just feel it right away. And you come down onto the tarmac. You don't go through a little jetway. You go right down onto the hot tarmac. The wind's blowing. The sun's beating down on you. And all of a sudden, you realize what you're in for. And even when you're flying in, it flies right along the west side of the island where the course is. And it's just stark black lava with one little ribbon of road that is the Ironman course. And, you know, it's very intense. So, you know, you can look at it as intense negative, like I want to run and hide, or you can look at it intense as, wow, this is so powerful. Let me embrace this. And I didn't, I did not have a way to embrace it. I was intimidated by the feel there.

I love Hawaii. I loved being there, but I was intimidated by the energy and the intensity of the island. And, you know, as the years unfolded over the next six years, the first six years I did Ironman, each time I saw that that island had a way of opening doorways into your personality that you can easily keep locked tight and shut and not look at in a normal situation. It will show you exactly who you are. It'll show you exactly who you are and where you are within yourself. And like anything, that's just an opportunity to embrace that and move past it or to get stuck with it. And, you know, every time things would start to fall apart, you know, the intensity of the race and the island and everything.

the intensity of the race and the island and everything. And all of a sudden, I'm looking at fear or self-doubt or even like anger, like, why can't I win this thing? How come Dave Scott's winning this? You get that cynical conversation going on in your head. And I didn't have a way to quiet that voice inside, nor did I have a way to come to the big island and honor that energy with my efforts, you know? And so, well, first you need sort of a foundational like language to even

understand what's going on to really conceptualize this, this powerful duality that's at play, the dark and the light, you know, the heavy and the, you know, it's like the energy is so palpable on that Island. And it really is like this, this mirror, you know, it's like, Hey man, you know, roll the dice at your own risk when you come here and you can, you can, if you're tapped in, like you can feel it, there is no question about it. And if you're not right with yourself, it will crush you, you know? And so I think the first step is coming to an understanding of that reality and then trying to figure out a process for unpacking that so that you can then do that work of getting right with yourself or being able to objectively, you know, do that inventory, look in the mirror and and and, you know, clean your house, so to speak, so that you can then can then you know be as optimally expressive of who you are for your next visit so that's a journey this is really the journey i feel like that that iron man presented for you so how does it first manifest like you're you're dealing with

these losses and this sort of rivalry with dave but at some point there has to be kind of a, a moment where you're like, all right, like, how do I, how do I, how do I finally transcend this kind of, you know, this rut, this cycle that I'm in? Yeah. You know, the first, the first step for me was, um, actually going there with the right focus. You know, the first five, first six years that I raced there, well, after that first year, the next five were years where I was thinking, maybe I can win, maybe I can win, maybe I can win. And each year I was not winning. And then in 1989, uh, that was a point where it was like, okay, either I don't go back or I go back in a very different way because what I'm doing is not working.

And so that year I changed a lot of key things about my training. The general stuff was the same, but there were a few things that I tweaked that really brought my physical training in line with what that race required and demanded. More specifically? More specifically? Well, like, you know, I was, I was doing a lot of Saturday, Sunday, long bike, long run, double thing, you know, so long bike, Saturday, long run Sunday, you know, six hours, six and a half hours on Saturday run two and a half, sometimes three hours on Sunday. So that's standard stuff, standard stuff. That's a lot of training on top of everything else you're doing throughout the week. However, I saw that I was falling apart after hour six of the race. You know, I was really strong through hour six, but then I just started to fall.

Everything fell off. So it's like, okay, I'm doing a great, a lot of training in two days, but the Ironman is a one-day race and it lasts eight hours. So that year I did five training days throughout the year, sprinkled throughout the year where I'd swim about 30 minutes, bike seven hours and run 30 minutes off the bike. So I was actually doing eight hour training days, which race day Sims. Yeah. And that started to bring me in line with what I needed to do to be physically ready. But there was also that internal character part that was having a

bit of problem. You know, first of all, I admitted, hey, I was afraid of that race. I was afraid of the distance, the heat, the wind of Dave Scott, you know, and I also realized if I'm going to go back, what can I do with the focus so that it's not the same focus that's not working? And I realized I was trying to win and winning is dependent on everybody else. So, in 89, I thought, I'm going to just go there and try to have my best race. And it's easy to say that, you know, like, oh, I'm going to have my best race and don't worry about everybody else. But more to, the skill and the talent of these other great competitors to help elevate me to a level that I would never be able to go on my

own. So it was more just going there to say, Hey, let me see what I can do to have a great race. If I win great, if I get second grade, if I get i get fifth no problem but i just want to have my best race swim bike run don't fall apart so hey so rather than then sort of hanging your hat on externalities that you can't control really reeling it in and focusing on the things that you can control which is obviously your performance and it kind of ends with that right that's there's nothing outside you can't control the wind you can't control Madame Pele or the heat or Dave, you know, Dave Scott, any of these other competitors. Yeah. And it really, you know, I will never forget that year being in the water before the race, feeling this peace that I'd never felt before because it just felt like okay

this is the right focus and I didn't have that uptight feeling that I normally had I mean I was nervous and it's Ironman and you know been training all year for it but it was very different and as it turned out Dave and I were together on the swim we We were together on the bike. We were together through the opening miles of the marathon through town. And, and finally about the half marathon point, um, we passed the last guy had been ahead of us. And so one of us was going to win and we were on this pace that was going to shatter his previous record. his previous record and unfortunately at that point he was the guy who was feeling stronger and he started surging and pushing the pace and building it and building it and we were going close to six minute pace and and then you know all the garbage starts going on in my brain like ah Davey is he gonna win it again I didn't do the right kind of training you know I was whining to myself and finally it got so hard to match his pace that I just like my mind just went quiet because all the energy just went into taking that next step.

And literally in an instant, my mind went quiet. This amazing transformation took place. And to describe that, two days before the race, I was in my hotel room and I was flipping through a magazine, just passing time, not reading anything until one page caught my attention. And it was an ad for a workshop that was going to take place in Mexico, teaching about a way of life from the Indians in that area, the Huichol Indians. And the workshop was going to be led by these two great shamans or medicine men. One was 110-year-old Huitzilandian Don Jose, and the other was his adopted grandson, Brant Secunda. And there was photos of both of them, and it was those photos that stopped me as I looked at this.

And they just had this look that was very peaceful but powerful. And that's kind of the state you're trying to embody and embrace when you're in that real flow and racing you just want to feel peace but also feel like this strength that's surging through you and i wasn't feeling any of it in that moment you know dave is the guy who's surging and i'm barely hanging on and my mind goes quiet and don jose it's like he came back to me. It's like he was right there, almost like floating right next to me. And you hadn't even done the workshop.

You just saw the ad. Yeah, I'd just seen the ad. That's how powerful the image was for you. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, so, you know, later Brant would, as I was studying with him, he would say, you know, there's many realities that can coexist at the same time in the same place. And so, clearly that was one of them because here's Dave Scott. He's surging. He's thinking about what he's going to drink at the next aid station and how he's going to break me. And I'm having this vision of a 110-year-old Weechel Indian right there next to me. And I just felt like I was receiving this life force or energy from him, was receiving this life force or energy from him,

from that image of him or that vision of him. And I could just feel myself coming back and getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And it was a real tipping point for the race. And it was about a mile after that that I realized, oh my God, I really can win this. And it was the first moment I think I ever really felt like I can win this. But I had had these blisters on the arches of my feet, blood blisters pop. There was my shoes were red.

You know, my legs were killing me. And I didn't know if I could even take another step. So here I am. I know I can win, but I don't know if I can take another step. I know I can win, but I don't. And so, you know, it was just that thing of just because you can doesn't mean it's you're going to. You still have to take every step all the way to the completion of that goal or whatever it is that you're engaged in. And so, you know, I did go on to win that year.

Dave had his best iron man. He beat his previous time by about 17 minutes. And I did my best on that day by nearly 30. And the difference in our times was 58 seconds, a very, very small difference, but. And that is the iron war that has gone down in history and been written about extensively. And that marathon time was 240, right? 240. Is that still the fastest marathon at Hawaii? A guy broke it this year. He went about 20 seconds faster than my time. The interesting thing about it is that his marathon time was purely from the start of the marathon to the end of it. Our split that year, our marathon split included the time. Our marathon time started the second our bikes crossed into the transition area.

So it included the transition. It included your transition. Yeah, but anyway. So we're going to say you still hold on to that. Maybe. I had the official record there for many, many years. Many years. And that's something I want to get to as well.

I mean, that was still the dawn of this sport. And for that marathon time to withstand that amount of time, I think, speaks to certain things that you were doing. And I think it's worthy of kind of exploring training techniques, how they've changed and how they've evolved and why you were able to, you know, run that pace and have that time, you know, hold up over so many years, despite all the advances in training and nutrition and gear and all the like, but let's continue on through the current narrative. So, you know, on that day, it looked like the biggest thing that happened was that I won for the first time. And indeed, it was amazing. I mean, to come down that last little stretch along Elite E-Drive,

knowing that I wasn't going to cramp, I wasn't going to fall down, I was going to win, Dave could not catch me. You know, you hold your emotions at bay throughout the day because you really do have to try to be as steady as possible so that the down moments don't draw you down, and if you're feeling really good, you don't get too excited and go too hard. And so you're just trying to find this steady middle ground, and again, this is something that Brant would emphasize about the Weechel Indians. He said they're always just steady no matter what's going on.

And they like to crack a joke, so they're always laughing. And if you think about it, that year, it was like the first year that I kind of didn't take myself so seriously in the sense that I want to be the champion, you know, it's like, that's almost, that was just taking it too seriously. And as opposed to saying, Hey, let me just go out there and see what I can do. Let me just try to have a great race. And so, you know, I, I was able to find that right place to be in, to have a great race there, you know, to have that vision of don jose was really um that was a turning point in my life because i realized that there's so much more going on than

just meets the eyes and your normal day-to-day reality and and it was shortly after that that i did go to that workshop in mexico and i met brant and has studied with him since. And, you know, he's been a real force for enabling me to keep developing myself as a human being, you know, each and every day. And that was also one of the reasons I think it was very easy for me to transition out of the sport of triathlon. Because when I was racing, I put all my energy into it, indeed, for sure. But I knew that that was just part of who I am, you know, an athlete. I'm also a father. I'm a two-legged on this earth. You know, I'm part of my community. I'm part of this whole world and this earth. And it was very easy for me to transition out because, you know,

just being alive is such an important thing and quality to be grateful for and humble for. That's really beautifully put. and just sort of thinking about how you made that switch from the person who's holding on so tightly to this idea of becoming champion and what was required to actually transform you into that champion was a detachment from your ego and perhaps a healthy injection of humility, right? And that journey, as it continued to evolve and blossom, you know, propelled you through six total championships. Right. So it's almost like ironic, you know, like you have to take yourself out of all of these things that you think you need to be in order to win in order to actually be the person who who sort of can handle that victory and, you know, weather what is required to not only get there, but sort of manage it psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yeah, that's sort of so much of great performances, for me anyway, in the sport triathlon were a paradox because you have to have this deep desire to do something to kind of get yourself out the door every day. But at the same time, you have to also be willing to just let it go and just say, hey, however it turns out is going to be all right. And to really trust in that and believe it.

And when you can do that and just let it go, then it's like all of a sudden you're free. And you have so much more energy. you're free and you have so much more energy you know it takes energy to have a desire or to hold on to a dream you know that to keep going because of this thing that you wanted to do as opposed to just being quiet and and just doing what you're doing you know that's such a that's such a more peaceful way to do it and there's so much more energy available because nothing's stuck and you're you're uh you know you're like the giant oak tree you're you're you're unaffected by your environment like you're able to to respond without being reactive right like there is a there is a tremendous amount of like strength and power in that right so as you begin to uh

you know study shamanism and explore these ideas with brant and beyond like what is what is it that you're learning like what is it that's changing about you well we wrote a book together called fit soul fit body nine keys to a healthier happier you and in there it's kind of those nine keys are really like almost like a template for what I went through and did to become a champion over and over and over in triathlon. You know, it's dealing with the negative emotions, embracing positive qualities, managing stress, training in the right way, eating in a way that's designed for the way our genetics are set up. I mean, our genetics haven't changed in thousands and

thousands of years, but the things we eat, the environment that we're in is very different than our ancient ancestors. But it's those ancient genetics that keeps us alive and healthy. So, you know, we feel good when we're out in nature, right? We feel good when we move. We don't feel as good when we sit around. We don't feel as good when we're enclosed in these things called houses or offices 24-7. And this was all so natural for, like, as a kid, I had this feeling like I just wanted to put my arms around the earth and give her a hug. You know, I didn't tell my friends this, obviously. You know, it's like, okay, dude, right on. You give her a hug, right?

But that's sort of the way I feel. And I think, you know, kids are like that. And then somehow we forget that we are a part of nature. Not only that, the idea that you could be like that would be frowned upon. So we're sort of, you know, pulled away from that natural tendency that we gravitate towards as kids. And, you know, your book is called Fit Soul, Fit Body. It's not called Fit Body, Fit Soul, right? There's one precedes the other.

body it's not called fit body fit soul right there's one precedes the other and and sort of reprioritizing that and understanding that the more we can uh adjust our daily lifestyle habits to be in sync and rhythm with the natural you know sort of uh you know with our with with our environment that the happier and the more adjusted we're going to be. Yeah, we actually had, we debated that. It should be fit body, fit soul, fit soul, fit body. And, you know, everybody in our world here knows about the fit body. I look at every magazine cover of Mr. and Mrs. Beautiful, right? We know we have this body, but it's like, what is our soul? What is our inner character?

What is our soul? What is our inner character? What is our inner environment like? And when that gets lined up in a more positive direction, then everything else is easier to take care of. So, if you're happy, you want to take care of yourself physically, right? If you're depressed or you're isolated, then you don't have as much energy and you don't take as good of care of yourself. You don't eat the same, you don't sleep the same, you don't exercise the same. And so just like you can get in a negative spiral, you can also get in a positive spiral going in that right direction too. Yeah. It's a harder sell for people though. You know what I mean? Everyone wants the six pack abs, but if you tell somebody,

hey, you know what? Actually, the better road is the inside job. Maybe the six pack abs will come down the line. Maybe they won't. But if you really want to be happy, if you want to feel contented, if you want to pursue a life of purpose, maybe look inward a little bit.

People aren't so excited about that always. Well, I think part of it is one that that inner fitness is it can be a painful process you know like changing your physical being in some ways is is easy for people you exercise more eat less whatever it is but um old patterns that we have that don't serve us, those can be harder to change. And the other side of it is, you know, you can measure so many of the physical changes, but it's hard to quantify emotional or spiritual changes. Like, am I happier than I was last year? Do I love life more than I did last year? You know, I think so, but I'm not sure.

But for sure, it's like, oh, yeah, I'm 15 pounds lighter than I was last year. I can run 30 seconds a mile faster. It's more quantifiable. So I think it's maybe easier for people to. unpacking, you know, whatever resentments you have or past trauma and how that's going to relate to how you're going to move forward in a more, you know, productive way isn't so clear, like you said. Yeah. And it is hard. It's painful. And it's not linear either, right? So, if you have to describe like the fundamental kind of core ideology or premise behind shamanism you know how do you speak to that brand often describes that as developing a relationship with the spiritual

world of nature you know taking time to witness the sunrise or witness the sunset taking time to go for a walk in the woods or sit by a creek and listen to the sound or just be with the ocean and watch that energy and that power. And I mean, everybody has had that experience where you're somewhere, maybe you're in the mountains or you pull up to the ocean or you see something for the first time and you just go, wow, look at that. And in that moment, that wow moment, you have forgotten about your credit card debt. You forgot about the dent in your car you got to get fixed.

All your problems are gone because you have made just a natural connection with that environment and nature. And it's part of how we're hardwired. I mean, they've done studies with it so for example they they took some college students and they had one group do 30 minutes of exercise on a treadmill and then they had a second group outside doing 30 minutes of exercise and both of them experienced and had reductions in the stress hormones, but the people who did it outside had a greater reduction and it lasted longer, you know, just because that's just how we're hardwired. It's very simple.

You don't have to try. You just have to do. And as you're starting to, you know, embrace these principles and incorporate them into your life throughout your, your, your triathlon training triathlon career. I mean, you were never, you never had a coach, right? You were always like a self-coach guy. So how are those principles getting translated into how you're living your life on a daily basis? Well, that's a good question. You know, when I was, like you said, I didn't have a coach when I was racing and that's's, you know, I've actually been telling a lot more of are going through as they're getting into the sport and trying to figure out how to train and, you know, hopefully not making as many mistakes as I did,

you know, because you have coaches now. But I learned about all the things that can go wrong because I did them all wrong. And then I figured out how to do them right. And it's, you know, my coaching is very simple. It's not super complicated. It's not entertainment in terms of having a million different kinds of workouts. It's just basic training that actually really works. It got me six Ironman victories.

And in tandem with that was what I was doing with Brent, where I would go to retreats with him a couple of times a year. And one of them was always in August. It was eight or nine days where I, right in August, my season starts in January. I start training. And it takes until August to get to the point where I have enough fitness, then I can bump it up to real Ironman training for about six or seven weeks before Kona. And right at the point where me and all my training buddies are in shape, finally good enough shape to do this high intensity Ironman training stuff, I take eight days off from swimming, biking, and running.

And they're like, you're going to go do what? How dare you? Yeah. We're going to be doing a long bike ride. Good. Go for it. But I was working on that internal environment, working on developing that ability to keep my mind quiet to the practices that Brant taught. And finding that place of peace and calm and trust and steadiness and finding that ability, honing that ability to connect with the natural

environment wherever it is that I'm at. You know, Brant always mentions, you should feel at home no matter where you are on this earth, on this beautiful altar of Mother Earth. And that's certainly something that was serving me really well each of those years that I was going back after meeting him and having to do this thing called the Ironman in that amazing place called the Big Island of Hawaii. And, you know, it was like night and day. Like before 1989, before I met Brant, I would be on the marathon and I'd look around and

I felt like I was in this hell, you know? I mean, here you are, it's hot, stark, black lava. It always seemed like there was no wind on the marathon, or the wind was moving with you, so you were just stifling heat. Afterwards, when I was working, studying with him and starting to develop all of these principles that he teaches, I'd look around and go, wow, look at this. This is just unbelievable. And you would, I would still feel the heat and still feel that intensity, but it's like I was just embraced it. And it just felt great that I had this opportunity,

this chance to be out here doing this on this amazing day in this amazing place. Yeah, your perspective completely shifts and your relationship with those externalities is so different. Yeah. So interesting. I think, you know, a couple observations on that. The first is really the importance of mindset, however you decide to define that. I mean, at the highest echelon of not just triathlon, any sport, like all these athletes are just incredibly gifted, talented. They're all, you know, their whole life is about training. Uh, their understanding of nutrition has improved,

like all, everything is dialed in perfectly. And yet mindset, the psychology, and let alone the sort of spiritual component that goes into all of this is really a final frontier that I feel like is still so woefully under addressed. And I think it's to the detriment of most elite athletes. Right. And so the idea that you would take those eight days and really focus on honing in your mindset and getting right with yourself so that you could perform. I mean, that is like that takes the second observation is is is responsibility, right? Like taking responsibility for your career and not like to the extent that there are coaches now and that's great and they can guide you. our coaches now and that's great. And they can guide you. I think what happens at least with a lot of amateur athletes is you divest yourself of responsibility for your own career and you vest it in the hands of a coach and you'll just do whatever that person tells you rather than say, like, I

really need to know what's right for me and what's best for myself. That comes through experimentation. It comes through experience, of course. Uh, but to have the kind of cojones and the wherewithal to say, I'm going to take eight days off speaks to like the importance of mindset. And it speaks to, you know, really taking responsibility for for your trajectory in this pursuit. Yeah, you know, coaching is a it's a collaboration if it's going to work really well. going to work really well um i feel like i learn a lot through the experience of training and racing that so many things that just you'll never find in a book because science is pretty darn good but it doesn't know everything about everything right and so um like i said my coaching is very simple on the surface but it comes from a lot of experience.

And then at the same time, people need to take that, and then maybe there will be a little modification they make based on their lifestyle, based on the stress that they're under, based on how their body is responding. You can set up the ideal training plan, but life does not follow the ideal training plan. Never does. It's such a bummer that it doesn't work out that way you know that thing called work it kind of gets in the way of all that fun stuff that most people are trying to do out there but what is so if you had to articulate your your training philosophy or your coaching philosophy with the athletes that you work with? What does that look like? Like you have a specific approach that is unique or different or? My overarching goal is to get people fit without burning them out or injuring them. You know, you can take somebody and that takes time and patience. You know, you can take somebody

time and patience. You know, you can take somebody from not much to a fairly high level of fitness fairly quickly with very intense training, but it's also a slippery slope because they get to the top quick, but then they can crash down on the other side very just as easily. And so, you know, that was actually one of the overarching goals that I had when i was racing was to exit the sport healthy uninjured and not burned out which i was able to do so it takes a lot of just steady aerobic training to do that along with some faster stuff for sure some strength training because that's how our bodies respond i mean if you kind of go back to like ancient genetics and how we were built to survive, most of what our ancient ancestors did was just fairly steady movement. You know, the Huichol Indians in Mexico, they're not doing wind sprints up and down their mountains.

You know, everything is steady, but they're moving and they are... It's like the blue zones. Yeah. They're carrying loads of corn and firewood and water and you know so they're exercising their muscles along with their cardiovascular system and so if you sort of model that um you know like i said back in ancient times the only time you really sprinted was to get out of the way of danger, right? Or maybe when you were at the end of a kill, ready to get the lion or whatever it is, but most of movement was steady. So mimic that in the training and that's how you're going to get somebody at their fittest possible. And that's

what I do, right? So a lot of aerobic zone training, Z2 kind of stuff and, and patience, understanding that it's a multiple year experience, right? If you really want to, you know, sort of manifest your potential. Yeah. And pain is not necessarily the great goal. You know, things can actually be enjoyable in your training. They don't have to hurt all the time.

Right. Yeah. It seems like the sort of predominant, you know, experience of the amateur athlete is to kind of train in that gray zone. They're not going easy enough on easy days. They're not going hard enough on hard days. They're just kind of going out and, you know, feeling like they got something out of their workout every single day without enough thought and sort of conscious intentionality behind what they're doing. And, you know, you, you strike me as somebody who throughout your career had the wherewithal

to kind of know when to hold back. Like if you're running, if you're riding in the, in the, in the bunchy, you know, or you're doing those crazy, I mean, back in the day, San Diego, that was the spot, right? Everyone was running and gone in a lot of pressure to be a, you know, a workout hero, right? And a lot of workout heroes turn into race day zeros because they're so focused on who's going to win the workout, you know, and not doing, not sort of like being intentional about what the purpose of that specific workout is. And that's where ego comes in, right? Yeah. You know, you can either be the champion of each day's workout

or you can maybe be a champion overall in a race that means a lot to you. You can't be the champion of both. And like you said, so many people are doing that gray zone training where it's too hard to really be considered aerobic and it's too easy to really give you the benefits that actually very hard speed work will give you. And so it just sort of ends up burning them out instead of giving them the real benefit. And it's hard for people to have the, it's a different kind of discipline for people to remain in that aerobic zone, especially if they're inexperienced and,

and they have to really go slow. So they feel like they're not getting anything out of it and they feel like they're getting gypped, you know, and they want to expedite that process, but it really requires just fidelity to that journey, which is its own kind of, you know, it's, it's just as hard to hold back as it is to go hard sometimes. Yeah. I don't, I don't know any triathlete that I have to motivate to train. You know, they're all type AAA. They're all let's go. Um, when I first started training, like training smart, as opposed to training, just in that gray zone, you know, I had to slow down my pace running over three minutes a mile, just to keep my heart rate from skyrocketing over that aerobic upper limit. And at first I thought this is not going to get me anywhere. I mean, how can I, I'm running

slower than guys twice my age. How am I going to, how am I going to win a race at this pace? But obviously as I built that aerobic pace and all of a sudden I'm starting to run faster at that same pace and eventually, you know, I can run a five and a half minute pace and still be aerobic. So, you know, when I'm in a race and we're running 530 miles, I'm aerobic and all my guys running next to me, they're way anaerobic already, you know, and it just, it pays off. And the other thing that that will do is it will give you, it'll give you durability and longevity you know we in the relaunch of my coaching we we we have a thing it's called 1621 infinity and uh the the guy scott zagarino and his agency came up with that concept and he sent me those numbers 1621 infinity and he

goes what are those and i'm thinking wow i don know. Is it like the end of the world? I don't know what, you know. Some kind of weird Aztec Mayan calendar thing? And he goes, that's your resume. And he goes, the one is you were the first ever ITU Olympic distance world champion. You know, very few people who are new to the sport know that you were actually really good at Olympic distance races, racing. The six is your six Ironman triathlon world championships. And some people, most people probably know that stat, but to show that not only were you good at Olympic distance, but Ironman,

there's very few who can cross all those distances. The 21 was a 21 race winning streak from 1988 through 1990. And at all distance races included some duathlons. You know, again, it's just showing the versatility that you had based on the fact that you really trained smart. You did the right kind of training. You didn't burn yourself out. You didn't over race. And then the infinity was, uh, in 2012, ESPN had a, they were trying to figure out who's the greatest athlete of all time. And so what they did is they had 16 different athletic categories like endurance and football and game changer and tennis. They had, you know, and they had a, they had five in each category. And then people voted who was the best in each category. And somebody called me up and they go, hey, you're on this thing with ESPN. You're one

of the five they've listed as one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time. And people are voting on it. And I ended up getting over 50% of all the votes in that category, which voted me the greatest endurance athlete of all time. And then in the next round, I was put up against Muhammad Ali. And that was it? That was it. Well, then it went to greatest athlete of all time, right? Not just endurance athlete.

Right, right, right. All right. Well, you got the crown on endurance. You know what I mean? But I was just psyched that, you know, I did what I did because I loved it. I didn't race to make a mark in history or become something, a name in the sport or anything. I just did it because it was coming from inside of me. I just loved what I did.

I loved the experience. I loved the journey that I was on. And to realize that other people out there in the world were watching what I did and to get honored in that way to even just to be listed in one of the top five endurance athletes of all time. And then to get that voted that I was like, wow, pretty cool. If you had to describe, Pretty cool. If you had to describe, you know, what, what, what was it or what is it about it that you loved, right? Like what drew you to it? I mean, I know you saw it on television and you thought, I'm going to do this. This is great. And your first one, you're already like, you know, mixing it up with the best. So obviously there's, this is what you were supposed to be doing, but what is it specifically that you feel like magnetized

you to this world? Initially, it was just like this puzzle to figure out how do I, how can I put together an Ironman, a great Ironman? But then it really became kind of a practice for me for developing myself and perfecting myself, you know? And I think you can, you can use almost anything as a practice. You can use chopping carrots as a practice. You can use shamanism as a practice.

You can use, uh, being a parent as a practice to develop yourself and to learn more about life each day. And that's, that's a lot of what triathlon was doing for me. Yeah. It's, it's how you do anything is how you do everything. And there was that great quote that I'm going to butcher that you said not too long ago about, um, Iron Man is, what is it? Uh, what did you say? Like Iron Man will take you from the person you think you are, or will dismantle the person you think you are and essentially transform you into the person you

are meant to be. Something like, wasn't it? Do you remember? That's probably even better than what I said. I don't know what it was, but the core idea of being the same. Yeah. You can think of it this way. You can do the same thing over and over and over and work yourself into a rut. Or you can do the same thing over and over and over, but if it's done with awareness, then it becomes a practice to evolve your perfection in doing that and in perfecting that thing, whatever it is. I think, like you said, it affects everything that you do.

And so that's the way that I train. So, when I did runs, I'd go out and I'd do the same loops over and over and over, but I tried to do them a little bit better each time. Maybe my stride is a little different. Maybe my carriage is a little different. Maybe I'm relaxed. Maybe my mind is more quiet. Maybe I'm being more attuned to what's going on outside of me instead of just thinking about what's going on inside of me. You know, it becomes this whole practice for, I guess, becoming maybe more aware would be one way to say it. I'm not quite sure, but, and I think you can see that, um, in, in athletes who have been doing something for a long time, some of them look, their bodies look like they're broken down. Like they're just stuck in this, they don't move right anymore. And I think those are the folks who just go out and they do the routine over and over, but there's

no awareness put into it. And other people, they go out and they do the same thing over and over, and they are just supple and loose and everything is pliable and plastic because they're moving slightly different each time they go out and do it. And that's what I try to do when I surf. You know, it's go out there and just do a little different. When you look at triathlon and perhaps Ironman more specifically, it's been quite the trajectory from, you know, the days when you were racing to what it is now. I mean, beginning in 78, as you said, you know, Ironman being just a, you know, ragtag group of crazy endurance freaks, you know, pushing the limits and under the radar, no sponsorship money, no talent, none of this stuff. And now it's become this massive enterprise, one of the largest participation sports in the world. Um, and yet

you're somebody who the very kind of outset of this sport, you know, has raced it as fast as anybody ran this two 40 marathon in 1989, that was stood the test of time before power meters and heart rate monitors and Garmin watches and, you know, arrow helmets and all the kind of crazy stuff that goes into it now. And so I'm interested in how you conceptualize all of that, because, you know, a lot of people are just like, tell me what kind of shoes should I get? What's the watch that I need? What is the gear? And they won't do anything until they have all the gear. And they've sort of invested so much in what the gear can do for them. And yet, you know, your experience and your record speaks to kind of the fundamental simplicity of it all, right?

The fact that you were doing this so long ago before any of all of these advances. Like, so how do you think about that kind of stuff and specifically how do you you know mentor the athletes that you coach with regard to those issues yeah you know a lot of people ask well with all of the body measuring metrics and things that we have now why aren't athletes just blowing away the times that that i did when i was racing in Hawaii. And, you know, I think part of it is that so much of performance is not measurable. You know, how do you quantify desire? How do you quantify, how do you measure stillness within yourself in the midst of chaos of racing you know these those are things that

they're not going to show up on your garment you know all of the devices can be used for feedback but when they become the overriding thing that's telling you what's going on i think you're missing a whole you're missing a whole side of what sport could be for you as as an athlete it it can be life transformative if you go beyond the numbers you know if all you do is follow the numbers then it there's no consciousness or awareness that's going into it it's just a measurement and you know we didn't have all those things to measure so we had to tune in and figure out sensations and read our own bodies maybe more and that's that's also shamanistic in its own right yeah you know and that's like i said with my coaching it's fairly

simple i don't have like you know i give somebody a three-hour ride i don't give them 20 different zones that they've got to do for five minutes here and three minutes there it will give them the right kind of workout but at the same time because it is simple on the surface, it will give them time to actually think about themselves and to feel and tune in as opposed to trying to remember, what do I need to do for zone three? How many minutes on zone two? You know, it's not entertainment. It's part of the journey if you make it one. With the athletes that you coach and kind of what you observe just from being in this world and being around all these races, what do you think are the biggest misconceptions or mistakes that most athletes are making in the multi-sport or maybe the running world?

sport or maybe the running world? I don't know if they're making that many mistakes. Or just maybe misconceptions, misperceptions about their approach, how they're training, how they're racing. Well, I would say in general, it's just, like I said, if the focus is only about numbers and placings and times, then you're missing a whole part of the sport. You're missing what the sport can give you because it can give you so many lessons about yourself, which are lessons about life, which will empower you in other areas of your life

and enable you to approach things from a broader perspective if you use this canvas to learn you know i always tell people the only bad race is one that you don't learn something from and that goes for the races where your performance is less than you had wanted and also races where your performance was as good or better than you'd hoped for. If you don't learn something, then that's a bad race. But if you learn something, that's golden. And I'm not talking about learning a strategy necessarily, but more something about yourself that you didn't know before

or a place that you were able to go to that you didn't think you had that later on you will be able to access. You know, I gave a talk at the Ironman pasta party, carbo dinner, two nights before the race this past year. And one of the things I said was that, you know, in the first six years that I raced at the Ironman in Hawaii, I had some pretty bad days, some rough days, some tough days. And I thought the island was out. It had it out for me. Personal vendetta against Marco.

I don't like this guy. We're going to kill this guy. But then in retrospect, I can look back and I realize that the big island in's very tough love way was teaching me the things I needed to learn to be able to go and win that race six times, you know, teaching me how to take that next step when I didn't think I could keep going, how to give a hundred percent of what I had to give, even if on that day, it was so much less than I could have had on another day, how to quiet those thoughts that can derail you in the midst of what potentially could be the greatest race you were ever going to have if you can get yourself to be quiet.

And so I was just learning all those lessons in those tough years that enabled me then to go and win six. Right. You had to learn these life lessons in order to be able to step into the kind of person who could earn that title like it's almost like i mean it's it's it's it's almost like uh the bhagavad-gita or like the iliad like these are these are like storytelling principles that are as old as man right like like no you're not going to get the win yet you have to go through this crucible of life and learn these lessons that have nothing to do with triathlon or running or cycling or swimming, but have to do with who you are as a human being and your relationship with yourself.

And once you can wrestle with and reconcile and overcome whatever those sort of character barriers are, then you can step into this more fully actualized person who is the person who can, who can, you know, cross that finish line on the lead drive first. Right. It's just, it's poetic and marvelous and beautiful and true. It's truth, right? Yeah. You know, we, Brent and I teach a workshop together, Fit Soul Fit Body. We have one in Santa Cruz here, workshop together fit soul fit body we have one in santa cruz here 17th through the 19th february right it's coming up it's coming up and um in those i really highlight how that when i tell the stories of the races before i won and the ones after people really get a sense of how it was a a journey that transcended sport and and that's also one of the reasons, you know, I'm kind of

retelling these stories now through my coaching and through that whole venue of our social media to try to get people to use athletics for what it really can be and to enrich their life through it. Not only just so that they feel good and they're healthier and maybe do something that they never thought they could on a physical level, but to also use it as a real life experience. And, you know, you ask about Ironman, it really has grown. I mean, it was just recently purchased by a Chinese company and they are using that over in China to help hopefully develop kind of like a lifestyle goal and system for the kids. Like they're going to have iron, a ton of iron kids events and these iron kids hotels and just all sorts of stuff to,

wow, to, to give them something to aspire to so that now that their middle class is growing, these kids would be healthy as opposed to becoming overweight and having inactive lifestyles, to give them something to aspire to to have an active lifestyle. Have you been over to China? Are you involved in that at all? I have not been yet. We're hoping that I'll get over there this year for a couple events and to be a part of that growth. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And so in your, you know, as you retired from the sport and stepped into coaching and, you know, I know that

like you've embraced surfing, which is kind of like this beautiful sort of metaphoric, uh, you know, approach to all the things that we're talking about. I mean, do you still run, bike, and swim? Or is that like in your rear view? Like where did you put all of that competitive flair that used to light your pilot light? You know, like does that go into the coaching and the teaching and all of these other things? Or how did you kind of transmute that? You know, to be honest, I wasn't that great of a competitor like i come on mark you know i mean the grip yeah i mean i won races i but i wasn't one of those guys that was just frothing to go out and and just crush everybody

no you were you were you had, what I see is somebody who went from somebody who maybe initially was externally motivated, who had to learn how to become internally motivated to become your best, right? But that's still competitive. It's competitive with yourself. That's true. I was always trying to perfect myself and to bring more, bring more into what I was doing through that thing called racing. And that was actually a way to measure was I making those improvements or not, both physically and internally. But yeah, now I love what I do with my coaching. I love what I do with Brant going to his retreats, what we do together, Fit Soul Fit Body.

what I do with Brant going to his retreats, what we do together, Fit Soul Fit Body. I love what I do out in the water there almost every day. Like I said, I surf almost every day. Not every day, but most days. If there's storms or there's no surf, then I'll for sure run because running, I really love running. It feels like that's just a, it feels like that's what human beings were put on this planet to do. You know, my son had a great way of quantifying that. He said, look at, just look at all the other animals out there. He goes, we're about the slowest thing.

Look at that squirrel there. Look how fast it went, climbed up that tree. We're not meant to climb. We're not, we're one of the slowest things on the planet but we're meant to run like we can basically outrun anything over over the long haul and um so i love running i do a lot of uh functional strength work now to kind of keep everything going right and uh you know i surf is good if not better than ever in my life which is kind of of mind boggling at 59. I mean, I wasn't a hotshot teenage surfer, like a lot of the guys here. So my baseline was pretty dismal when I was younger. But, um, you know, a couple of years ago, I just, I looked and I realized all these guys that I see out here every day, I see the same guys all the time. None of them are getting any

better. There's one or two that might be getting better. The rest of them are just like holding. I'm like, that's not what happened in triathlon. I got better every year that I was racing. So, I started to just break it down and go, okay, now how can I improve? And so, I just worked on the takeoffs and I worked on my bottom turns and I worked on off the top and I worked on cutbacks and I worked on getting tubed and all these different elements until each one sort of really started to click. And then all of a sudden, they all started to come together, link together on the same wave. It's like, whoa, what was that? And then a little more and a little more and a little more and so anyway that's i've transitioned from using swimming cycling running to be my physical practice to what i do out in the water and you know it's a much more sort of soulful

physical experience right it's all about being simpatico with your environment and kind of you know channeling that internal voice and manifesting it externally. Yeah. And for me, it feels like it really helps keep my whole being pliable. Like, no two ways are the same. You never stand up on exactly the same spot on the board. Nothing is ever the same. It's similar always, but it never are two things ever the same. And so, you can't get in a rut necessarily. So it's always keeping, it feels like it keeps my brain younger, keeps my body more supple for sure. Right. Yeah. And do you go and hit the big waves up at steamers lane, like up the way up here? Do

you go right down the street here? Where do you usually go? I just walked to the end of my street and paddle out. Yeah. It's my, my street and paddle out yeah it's my nice it's my uh it's my way of reducing my carbon footprint i just don't drive to surf right so i can just paddle right out here and there's you know 10 or 15 places you can take off so i like it that's great for people that are listening that are intrigued by the idea of doing one of these retreats with you and brant what is it what does that look like what is the curriculum yeah we we co-teach it so we go back and forth between uh our different materials so brant obviously is the fit soul part i'm the fit body part

majority of what i speak about is how you can exercise and eat and and do things in a way that will promote lifelong fitness and health. So it doesn't matter whether you're trying to lose weight or become an Ironman champion. The principles are the same. The amount of application is obviously going to be very different. And then Brandt teaches a lot of the practices and principles of Huichol Indian shamanism, which help you to develop that ability to quiet your mind, to let go of negative emotions, to embrace positive qualities, to develop your relationship with the world of nature as a way to empower yourself and just to feel good. And then he also leads traditional ceremonies throughout the weekend throughout the

workshop right so what yeah so what are some of those practices that he teaches like to to achieve that that end like is it meditation oriented is it is it you know uh like fire ceremony like what is it exactly yeah there's exercises he exercises he teaches with the fire that you can do with a candle. There's drumming and rattling. You know, drums and rattles have been used for thousands of years as a way to help people shift their consciousness or awareness. And, you know, it's just like anything, practice helps you to be able to go to that place much more easily. So, you know, he does drumming and rattling throughout the weekend, and then he'll, like, have you go do exercises at the ocean where we will be

as a way to learn how to connect with that particular place in nature. It can be a mountain, it can be a lake, a river, but we're right on Monterey Bay there, so we use the ocean a lot. And as you're doing these practices, you kind of think, oh, well, I guess that was pretty good, I'm not sure. And then you get home after the weekend, and then you can sort of feel the shift that you went through over those three days because you when you go back into your

normal environment it's like oh wow i do feel that peace and a little just more sense of happiness or joy or gratitude that i'm alive and that i, you know, yeah, I still have my problems, but they don't seem as bad as before, you know, just like that. That kind of connectivity is, I think, more important than ever, you know, in a culture and a society in which we're just becoming more and more progressively divorced from the natural rhythms of what it means to be alive and what our ancestors experienced and the level of kind of dissatisfaction that I think is pervasive in a lot of people's lives with respect to their careers and their relationships. Like we've just moved so

far away from what it was like not that long ago, right? And to be able to embrace some aspect of that and bring it back into your life can have a profound impact, I think. You know, it wasn't that long ago that pretty much everybody did work outside. They were farmers or, you know, everybody was very attuned with the seasons and the rhythms of nature

and we're a reflection of that. That's one of the ways that Brandt describes it. And in the modern world, we can get very disconnected from it, but it can also be very easy to reconnect. All you have to do is just go out and go for a walk. You're walking on the earth. Even if there's pavement and cement, the earth is underneath there, and just being outside affects you positively as a human being.

Like I said, we are hardwired to feel good when we are outside. And I know this so well myself. My home is my office. I have my office just 15 feet from here. And I get so absorbed with my computer. And world shrinks to, you know, this little screen that's this big. And finally, it's just like, okay, enough of this. And I'll just...

Writing about what we're talking about, right? Well, you're, but you're not. But then I, you know, then I go and I walk two minutes down to the ocean. And literally from the second I step out of the door, it just feels like, okay, okay you know and then you come back and it's like you've had a whole reset it doesn't take much time but you have to do it maybe go to sleep when it gets dark out yeah how about that body to rest i know there's a novel idea right where i know sleep's a big deal for you it is it is for me too and i just can't, I mean, I need eight or nine hours and I know you sleep even more than that, right?

Yeah. I'm a nine or 10 hour a night kind of guy. That's, I think, also one of the reasons I did so well in the sport because I slept a lot. I'd sleep a lot at night. I'd take a lot of naps. And so my body was recovering when a lot of the other guys were up late doing i don't know what they were doing but they weren't sleeping and then they weren't recovering the same either yeah i never i was a you know i was a swimmer and and you know did the whole you know 5 a.m morning workout for you know just basically slept walk through all of my adolescence and teenage years and And it always mystifies me. If you're a professional athlete and essentially your, your whole life is oriented around getting

the best performance out of yourself. The idea that you would like have to wake up super early in the morning to get these workouts. It's like, you know, you have all day, like you're, you're training, like sleep, you know, or take that nap or whatever. I mean, sleep is the ultimate performance enhancer. Well, it's interesting that, you know, that concept of getting up super early to work out and get all your workouts in it. That's such an American thing. Like a lot of the Europeans, when they would come over here to train with us, they're like, why are you leaving so early? You know, you have all day. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's interesting. You know, and they actually did a study when they took top athletes who were sleeping, you know, seven, eight hours a night, and they got them to sleep nine or ten, the improvement in their performance was about the same as if they'd taken EPO. You know, so sleep is definitely a performance-enhancing drug, but it's legal. But we have such a hard time embracing that. We feel like we're lazy.

It's antithetical. It is that American thing. If you're sleeping too much, you're not getting after it, right? Because you've got to get up at 4.30 and, you know, I'll sleep when I die. But you're just undermining your own performance so yeah sleep is a potent performance enhancer and it's good for your health you know that's the bottom line you just don't nothing's going to be in a balanced state in your body because lack of sleep causes stress hormones to be released,

which then sets up all sorts of negative things in your body that you don't want to have happen. It lowers human growth hormone release, testosterone release. You don't sleep as well when you do sleep even. And, you know, it just becomes a negative spiral. So we got to wrap this up here. But I want to leave people with a few like takeaways. You know, if somebody is listening to this and they're inspired by your message, maybe they're hearing that call for the first time.

It's time to finally get up out of the cubicle or off the couch and move their body, maybe sign up for a race or maybe have a keener look at their diet or dial in their sleep or what have you, you know, what are some of the first like steps that you encourage people to take who want to kind of bring a little bit of this lifestyle, whether it's shamanism, you know, the spiritual kind of emotional side of things or the physical side? You know, I encourage people to just make a commitment to doing both of those things because they're so intertwined.

You know, if you are physically active, then you are more positive. You have a more positive outlook on life, which then gives you more motivation to take care of yourself physically. You know, they're intertwined. So, you know, just make it your commitment every day to do some form of exercise. It doesn't have to be long or extravagant or, you know, it might just be getting out and walking for 20 minutes. It might be going for a five-hour bike ride. It depends on where you are on the grand scale of things, scheme of things, and what your goals are also. So make that commitment to just do some form of exercise every day.

Second thing, make it a commitment to just be aware of that natural world around you. Even if it's going outside at sunset and just looking at the colors. Or, you know, especially on the weekends, go for a hike in the trees, on a trail, wherever it is where you can immerse yourself for longer than five minutes in nature. And if you just do these simple things every day or a couple of times throughout each day, you'll start to see that the time in between those is better. You feel better. You're more alert. You're more aware. You have a more positive outlook, but then you'll also start to crave that physical activity and that time

outside in nature, which will then reinforce everything. It's like a positive cycle. Self-perpetuating. Yeah. Yeah. Momentum takes on its own spiritual energy of its own, I think. Yeah. And yeah and uh that's solid

advice but it's not it's not like rocket science you know it's like just move your body you know connect with yourself a little bit allow yourself to feel yourself and go on that journey and if you have a hard time on your own set up a community of people that will do it with you a friend a family member you know i was in a lot of ways I could I could come up with a million reasons why I didn't need to go do those workouts if it was just me going But when I knew that I was Going to be meeting one or two buddies at a stop sign somewhere and they were gonna be a little upset if I didn't show Up I showed up and then it was great. You know, we all enjoyed it. It was great

so having that community of supportive like-minded people who are striving to have those same experiences and make the same positive changes in their lives, if you do it together, it just magnifies it. And for people that are listening who are interested in maybe taking their racing game to the next level. Are you, are you taking on athletes for coaching? How does that work? It's all like, it's a virtual relationship through your website portal. Yeah. It's markallencoaching.com. Uh, people create training plans based on their current fitness, their goal races, uh, the days of the week that they like to do key workouts. If they need days off, they get those also. They have unlimited email support. So just go to markallencoaching.com, make an account. Unlimited emails?

Unlimited email support. And you answer all of them? I do, yeah. Do you really? How many emails do you get from people asking you what they should eat for breakfast? I get a lot of emails when they start out, and I get a lot of emails right before their races. In between, pretty much, people are in the rhythm and they're doing good.

And then, again, if you want to experience that blend of sport and spirit, you can go to fitsoulfitbody.com and see all of our upcoming workshops. We have one, again, here in Santa Cruz, February 17th through 19th. one in april at the capallo institute in massachusetts oh cool uh that's a great venue for our event we've done that six or seven years now over there and how how big is the group of people that attend these it depends between 30 and 50 but you get a real taste of all of the aspects of what we've been talking about today yeah cool man yeah um well that's great it's it's been great talking to you i really uh i really appreciate your time

and and i just have so much respect not just for your athletic achievements and your experience and what you give back to sport but for your spiritual perspective on all of this and how multi-sport physical activity can be this vehicle for uh self-actualization and self-understanding and i think that's something that is under addressed and and perhaps missed or just not talked about enough and for me that has been everything you know that's that's what multi-sport has done for my life. And that's the message that I try to put out to the world. And you are like the ultimate embodiment of that. And I just appreciate that that is the message that, um, that, uh, you know, that is sort of in the forefront of, of everything that you do. And, uh, it's really cool

to spend a little time with you. So thanks Mark. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Great to talk with you. So markallencoaching.com is the website. I assume you have a Facebook page. Is there any other place for people to connect with you? Yeah. markallencoaching.com, fitsoulfitbody.com, at coaching Mark for Facebook, Mark Allen Grip on Twitter. Yeah. The Grip. Yeah. Mark Allen. I think Mark Allen Grip also on Instagram. You'll see me, you'll find me. And, uh, and the books are fit soul, fit body. And you have this beautiful book, the art of competition that is sort of quotes and photography and yeah, those are inspiration. Those are 90 quotes that I paired with photos from nature. Uh, each one is, gives a broader

perspective on competition and overcoming challenge and achieving personal excellence. And then there are six other chapters talking about dealing with fear and what do you do when you get stuck? And then the final chapter is called Art, and it highlights my book and Iron Man victories, my first in 1989 and my final one in 1995. And those were really two of the biggest moments in sport for me where a lot of the lessons were learned. Yeah, cool. All right, man. Good talking to you. Yeah, thanks so much.

Thanks, Mark. Peace. Plants. What'd you guys think about that? It's pretty intense, right? I love it. Super into that guy and so appreciative of him sharing his message with myself and all of you guys today. If you're digging on the grip, a few things I want to relate to you before you

tune out today. First is his upcoming Fit Soul Fit Body Retreat. It's in Santa Cruz, and it's right on the horizon. It's February 17th through 19th, basically next weekend, in fact, if you're listening to this shortly after I publish it. And it sounds like an incredible experience. It's also super affordable. It's priced at $2.99. So if you're in the California region and this perks your interest, you can visit markallencoaching.com for information and how to sign up and all that kind of good stuff. Also, please check out Mark's books, Fit Soul, Fit Body, and The Art of Competition. If you want to learn more about Mark, make a point of checking out the show notes on

the episode page at richroll.com. I've got all kinds of links and resources to take your infotainment, your education about Mark and his life beyond the earbuds. We also just launched a brand new resources page at richroll.com, basically a clearinghouse where I can sort of share my favorite books, my favorite products, my favorite websites, my favorite movies. And it's in its infancy right now. I'm continuing to build it out. And this will definitely be sort of an organic dynamic page where I'll be switching things up and all that kind of good stuff. But I'm super excited about this because I get a lot of questions. What are you reading? What should I read? Blah, blah, blah. Now we just can have it in one place. So if you go to richroll.com, you just click on resources. There's a menu tab at the top there. You can find

that there. We also added an FAQ section to answer a lot of the most frequently asked questions that I get. Again, Julie and I are going to be in Australia, Sydney on March 16th and Melbourne on March 17th. Go to richroll.com and click on appearances for more on that or livingtheplantpowerway.com. I'm also speaking in Pasadena on March 26th as part of the Engine 2 events. And you can find out information again about that at richroll.com forward slash appearances. Thank you for sharing the show with your friends on social media, spreading the word one person at a time.

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a documentary. I saw a video. I watched a new product that I'm enjoying, just helpful stuff. Never going to spam you. There's no affiliate links in here. I'm not trying to make any money off of this. I just thought it would be a cool, fun way to kind of connect with you guys outside of the podcast and outside of social media and just kind of cultivate community. So if you're interested in receiving that, you can sign up basically anywhere on my website. And while you're on the website, while you're at it, I got cool stuff there, signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way. If you haven't read either of our two books, maybe pick those up. We have t-shirts, we've got tech tees, we've got sticker packs

and all kinds of fun junk like that. I want to thank everybody who worked hard, who toiled to put on this show this week. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production work. Sean Patterson for all his help on graphics. We're doing some cool stuff for Instagram right now that's going to be coming out soon

that Sean's been working on. If you're not following me on Instagram, you can do that at Rich Roll. Also, Chris Swan for additional production assistance. And Chris works really hard on the show notes and really kind of helping create the scaffolding, the architecture, the structure for each week's program. And theme music by Analema. So thanks for the love, you guys. Have a great week.

I'll talk to you guys soon peace Thank you.