The Rich Roll Podcast - Mishka Shubaly Interviews Rich

Episode Date: May 19, 2013

THE BEAST RETURNS! Once again, I'm switching gears. The interviewer becomes the interviewee. Part II. Mishka was a super popular guest on the podcast about a month ago. If you listened to the interview, you know we went deep — exhaustingly deep perhaps. Despite the fact that I had never previously met Mishka face-to-face, I had a knowing sense that we would hit it off given our many points in common – writing, running, alcoholism & sobriety. There was an immediate short hand, and we just went straight to the core until we both felt like we were drowning in molten lava when the interview was over. So when my publisher raised the issue of having someone interview me to coincide with the release of the paperback version of Finding Ultra* — hitting bookshelves and online retailers 5/21! — I knew Mishka more than fit the bill. Osher Günsberg hit the nail on the head with Part I of this self-involved and shameless self-promotional podcast double, and Mishka picks right up with Part II right where Osher left off — repaying the favor of my unrepentant deep dive with him by hitting me hard with some tough questions as we peel back the layers and get behind the scenes on my book, my story and what drives both of us. OK. NOW FOR THE (HOPEFULLY NOT TOO) HARD SELL….. I feel weird asking people to buy the paperback. I'm sure the majority of you listeners out there have already read my book – you have, right? RIGHT?? But then again, who knows? Maybe you haven't. Maybe you just stumbled upon this blog and podcast out of the blue. So here is an opportunity to learn a bit more about me, why I wrote the book and what I hoped to express. Oh yeah, there's also this little matter of admitting that I would like to move some units. Maybe even make the NY Times Bestseller List for Non-Fiction Paperbacks – a list I narrowly missed with the hardcover release. OK, busted. Call me shameless. Call me competitive. Or, just shoot me. I am formally apologizing right here and right now. But hey, wouldn't you do the same if you had spent a couple years writing a book? So cut me some slack. I will say that if I do make the list — an admitted (huge?) longshot, it will be entirely due to YOU — the audience of this podcast and blog. And hey, if my book and this podcast stand for anything, it's that we should all dream big. Making that list is definitely a big dream of mine. Moreover, the truth is, I ain't got no publicist out there shilling for me. Plus, Random House basically told me they don't have the resources to market and promote the release — basically no press to get the word out. So I'm on my own. But I'm not — I've got all of you, who have been beyond supportive. So if you've enjoyed the content I've been freely sharing — content that takes an obscene amount of my time to create — and feel inclined to support the message I so passionately believe in, then this is the time I am REALLY ASKING FOR YOUR HELP. Forget donating, just pull the trigger on the paperback. Already read the book? Then get it as a gift for someone — after all, Father's Day is coming up and you gotta get dear old dad something anyway. Plus, it's darn cheap – just $13.50 on Amazon. What the heck, right? That's like a one cold pressed juice at Whole Foods; and will hopefully be even a bit more nourishing. Then tell a friend. Thanks! Rich

Welcome to episode 31 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Mishka Shibali. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody. Welcome back. I am Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. I'm in New York City. I love it here. I'm having a great time. I've been here for several days and a couple more days to go before I head back to Los Angeles and it's been an amazing time. The Seed Experience at 82 Mercer Street, which was amazing. Thank you to everybody who showed up.

It was awesome. Had a couple hundred people show up to hear me give my spiel. And it was a really cool event. I'm going back today. This afternoon is a two-day event. So can't wait to go and see some of my fellow plant eating colleagues. It's pretty cool because it's in this loft space on Mercer Street, right in the heart of Soho, which creates kind of a cool, unique, urban, hip environment, which is somewhat distinct from a lot of the other kind of veg fest or or veggie oriented uh events um

that i've been attending and i've had the honor of speaking at um tons of like hip people with lots of tattoos and piercings and tons of great vegan food and people talking about getting healthy and getting fit and uh it was a real pleasure and an honor to speak there. And I hope everyone who showed up enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed being there. I also got a chance to hook up and meet face-to-face for the first time with my colleague, Tim Van Orden from Running Raw. You might remember him if you've been listening to the podcast. He was a guest a couple of months ago. He was a great guest, a very popular guest on the show. We did that interview by Skype and I had actually never met him in person. So it was good to

kind of get to know him a little bit. I did a little video interview for him for his YouTube channel. So if you're a fan of tim's hopefully he'll be uploading that at some point in the near future and i've also been running around like a maniac recording all kinds of podcast episodes while i've been here i wanted to try to get the most out of this trip and sit down with some of the people that inspire me while I'm here and start to create kind of a backlog library of interviews that I can start to upload over the next week or two. So a couple days ago, I had an amazing experience. I went out to Queens to visit PS244, a public school, a public elementary school that's K through third grade

out there. You might've heard me talk about it and I've tweeted about it a couple of times, but PS244 is the first public school in the nation to institute an all vegetarian school lunch program. And it caught headlines across the nation and even internationally, program and it caught headlines across the nation and even internationally, some television news coverage, et cetera, for kind of breaking this sacred ground. And if you know me, you know that I'm passionate about this school lunch issue, which I think we need a lot of work on. It's pretty deplorable. It's pretty, pretty embarrassing what kids are being fed at their schools, whether it's a public school or a private school or what have you. And when I came across this story and kind of read some of the menu items and the foods that they're serving these kids,

I was really fascinated by it and knew that I had to go out and meet these guys. So I made the schlep out to Queens, sat down with one of the teachers, Christian Ledesma, who's sort of head of the wellness program there and was instrumental in implementing the new program, as well as Bob Groff, the principal. There's also another critical person in the equation from the New York City Healthy, what is it called? The New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods, I believe it's called. And she's up in Ithaca. She was not

able to sit down for the interview, but I'm going to try to get her on Skype and include her in the interview as well, because I know that she uh basically the key person to help make this happen and what i was amazed to find out was you know all the news articles sort of just talk about the school lunch but what's really going on at the school so much more beyond that it's really a wellness and fitness oriented curriculum to its core and in its constitution and the school lunch is really just uh the next manifestation of a whole array of programs that they're implementing there they're growing some of their own food this is like a city block school and they have these pouches out along the fence where they're growing

food they have a tower uh they have a they have a tower planter in their library i showed up uh it was after school it was in the afternoon. Most of the kids were already gone, but they had after school programs going on. I saw kids tasting blackberries and talking about what they felt when they ate these good foods. And I saw kids making granola bars and I was like, what is going on in this school? So anyway, I had a great conversation with Christian and Bob, and I'm going to be putting that up next week. I really think people need to hear this story, and hopefully this lights a spark for other public schools to follow suit. I realize there's a lot of

political issues and corporate conglomerate interests that are involved in the school lunch program. It's a complex issue, but there is work to be done. And I wanted to shine a bright light on what these guys are doing. So check that out. Look forward to putting that up sometime next week. I also went over to CNN headquarters when I'm in New York City.

I always try to find an excuse to go over there and see my friends at CNN and had the good fortune and opportunity to sit down with Ronnie Selig, who is the director of the health and wellness and medical unit over at CNN. She sort of lords over that whole department as an executive vice president and producer. And she's also an accomplished triathlete. She's the person behind the CNN Fit Nation program. And we had a great chat about what they're doing with Fit Nation, about her personal story in triathlon, which is inspiring and very, very interesting.

And kind of what goes on behind the scenes over at CNN, how they decide to cover stories, which stories to cover, how they cover them. And that was really, really cool. I'm also going to sit down this week with Jonathan Fields, the man behind the Good Life Project. He has a phenomenal program with that and is sort of busting paradigms all over the place. He's an inspiring guy who kind of came across my radar about a year ago and I've been following him religiously. The last time I was in New York, I had the opportunity to sit down with him and get interviewed for his program, The Good Life Project. And now he's going to sit down with me and I'm

going to get to pick his brain, which is pretty cool. I'm also going to interview Jason Wacob, the CEO of mindbodygreen.com, which is the leading wellness destination on the web about his personal story, the founding of MindBodyGreen, kind of what they're doing over there. It's my favorite wellness site. They're doing amazing work and they have big plans. So that should be fun as well. I'm also going to do an interview with the Fat Burning Man podcast. I don't know when that's going to go up.

Probably not for a couple months. I'm not sure. But I'll be talking to him. What else? Thanks for all the amazing feedback from the Asher Gunsberg, uh, episode, episode 30, which I just put up a couple of days ago. Got a lot of great emails, a lot of great tweets. People seem to enjoy that, which, uh, is a relief because if you listen to

it, you know, we switched gears and, uh, Osher interviewed me and, and he's great. He's, he's great guy, total pro at interviewing and i knew that he would be a good candidate to kind of sit down and pick my brain we've gotten to know each other a little bit and gone out on some runs and you know he's a professional host he was host of uh australia's version of american idol australian idol uh and a bunch of other tv shows including a big tv show here in the u.s uh that was on i don't know a year ago two years ago on cbs called live to dance and uh he's a great guy so i'm really glad people enjoyed that if you haven't listened to it yet um you should go back and listen to episode 30. uh what else is going on well as i mentioned uh this sort of uh flipping the switch here and

having the uh spotlight on me for a change on the podcast was an idea from my publisher who said hey your paperback's coming out you know on the podcast instead of interviewing people why don't you have uh somebody interview you which is where the idea for having Asher sit down with me came from. And I wanted to break it up into two parts. Asher's interview was part one, and today we're going to do part two. And the person that I kind of nominated to handle this is the good Mishka Shabali. That was another very, very popular episode when I sat down

with him about a month ago and interviewed him. That was a really intense, in-depth interview that people seemed to enjoy. And I thought that he would be a great guy to in turn interview me, and we could cover a bunch of topics and ground that only Mishka knows how to delve. So that's what we're doing today. And I think it's a good complimentary piece to the Osher interview because we talk about a bunch of different stuff that we didn't talk about with Osher. And once again, as it always is with Mishka, it goes deep. It's intense because he's an intense guy. And I love that guy uh so that's what we're putting up today i'm excited to share this with you and i hope you guys enjoy it um why am i doing

this uh well as i continue to mention my paperback the paperback version of finding ultra is coming out on may 21st which is in a couple days. Today's Sunday, May 19th when I'm recording this. And you got to give me a break, man. I got to get a little self-promotional here. I started this podcast really because I wanted to introduce to you guys all of these people that I've been able to meet as a result of this journey that I've been on. Really cool people with amazing stories and amazing information. And I wanted to shine a spotlight on them. This podcast is about my guests. It's not about me. But I got to get

a little shameless here. My publisher basically said they don't have the resources to help promote the paperback release, and I don't have a publicist, and there really isn't any press to speak of to help buttress getting the word out about the paperback. And so it's on me. It's on my shoulders to try to make something happen. And I want to move units. What can I say? I spent two years writing a book. It feels weird to try to kind of tell you guys, hey, buy my paperback. And especially, I would imagine a good percentage of you that are listening to this show have already read my book. They're like, enough with this book

that you wrote two years ago. Come on, let's move on. But it's a window of opportunity in which I have to get a little bit shameless. So I'm apologizing now, forgive me, and I hope that the interview at the same time will be entertaining and enlightening. And for those of you who have not bought the book, maybe you'll think about picking it up. Father's Day is coming out. And hey, the paperback's cheap. I think it's like $13.50 on Amazon. So wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Done. Get something for dad. It's a no-brainer. Inspire dad to get off the couch, get him moving, change up his diet. Whatever, man. It's a simple, easy easy quick gift and uh i'm doing my best to get the word out actually it was cool last night i was walking home uh to my hotel from the seed and uh you know when i'm in new york i like to walk everywhere rather than take the subway and

i was walking all the way uptown and I passed the Strand Bookstore, which was my favorite bookstore in New York City, legendary bookstore, and popped in and sure enough, saw my paperback in there, even though the on sale date isn't for a couple of days. So that was really cool. I'm glad to see that it's getting out. My publisher informed me that Barnes & Noble

is going to give it some good placement right up front in the stores. But I'll believe that when I see it. That's what they say. I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully that's the case. So if you've enjoyed the content that I've been providing you, if you've gotten something out of it, if you've been inspired or been informed, this is the time that I'm asking you to please do me a solid, pick up the paperback, get it for a gift for somebody um i'm really uh trying to get the word out so tell a friend tell a friend about the book tell a friend about the podcast

and uh i owe you big time all right enough with the hard sell i think i've said enough and beyond. One thing that I did want to mention before we get into the episode is my buddy John Hirsch, who is a professional triathlete living here in New York City. He's a great guy. I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years. I got to know him initially at Brett Blankner's Zen Triathlon uh training camp um he has he's he's also a coach and he runs a team here in new york city called team continuum uh if you want to find out more about that it's at www.teamcontinuum.net and continuum is spelled c-o-n-t-i-n-u-u-m I N U U M. He has some entries for a couple of the premier triathlon races on the circuit. The most premier,

blah, blah, blah, prestigious races. The 2013 Ironman Lake Placid race and the New York city triathlon. And he's got entries for that. So if you're interested in participating in those races, which I'm sure are sold out already, you can check out Team Continuum, and they will provide

you with one-on-one coaching. And if you know me, you know how much I believe in one-on-one coaching. You'll get coached by John himself, a top pro triathlete and coach, and you'll get a kit and you'll get a weekend full of awesome activities for the team. So they have some fundraising goals that they want you to meet in exchange for that. I think it's $1,500 from the New York City Triathlon and $2,500 if you're going to do the Ironman. But you'll race knowing that you help people with their direct needs as they battle cancer. So check it out. John's a great guy. He's a great coach. Those are two great races. It's pretty much a win-win-win. So go to teamcontinuum.net to find out more. And if you have any specific questions you can't find there,

you can email lisa at teamcontinuum.net. So enough for that. What else? Let's get into Mishka. If you didn't listen to my previous interview with Mishka, he is a recovering alcoholic like myself. He's a writer like myself. He wrote the number one kindle single called the

long run he also wrote one called shipwrecked and a couple other there's uh others other kindle singles which are great short reads which you should check out you can just pick them up on amazon um he's also hosted at the moth which is a personal favorite of mine, listening to a spoken word from The Moth. And just an overall inquisitive, interesting, compelling character. And thanks, Mishka, for picking me up at the airport the other day. 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, support and empower you to find the ideal level of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more.

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To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. 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. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with 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. So let's get into it, everybody. I hope you enjoy this episode. And there'll be more coming from me from New York City later in the week. Enjoy. Mishka Shabal. I'm walking down the southern stream Get to the river for a run to the low I'm walking down the southern stream

Get to the river for a run to the low What are we going to talk about? Do I get to do the intro today because I'm doing the interviewing you can do it yeah you can do that you can do whatever hey this is your show

I'm just a guest today I mean I have a couple of different intros that I've prepared oh you prepared that's scary that's frightening actually so I can do hey welcome back to the Rich Roll podcast

I'm Rich Roll I'm an back to the Rich Roll podcast. I'm Rich Roll. I'm an author of the number one bestselling Finding Ultra. This is already going south, man. I'm a plant-based nutrition advocate. I am an ultra-distance endurance triathlete something like that happily married man father of four recovering attorney did i hit all the bases i think that's it yeah let's this is shorter is better dude well then the alternate one is um you know uh welcome to welcome to

counterpoint hard-hitting journalism with mishka shabali. Right. We're going to be looking at the seedy underbelly of the ultra-distance triathlete world, a searing expose on Rich Roll. Who is he and is that really his name? Now I'm really scared. This is retribution, isn't it? This episode will be called The Big Payback yeah oh man are you you're making me already regret doing this well my my theory is to front end load the regret to get the as much regret out at the beginning and then at the end when it's not so bad you'll be like oh man i got off easy that's your idea We'll see how that goes.

That's how I'm selling it. That's the marketing pitch. All right, man, come at me. Well, one of the, I mean, as a fellow Amazon author and as somebody who has put their private life in the public sphere, you know, a big question for me is how you deal with those one star reviews i mean i think for i think for an aspiring author that kind of thing is so intimidating because people you know

people take you to task not just for what you've written or for what you're you know is in your book but like what your hair looked like that day or something like that. Yeah. Well, you really did come out of the gate with the, the hard, the nerve splitting, you know, question. Well, yeah. I mean, I think, uh, you know, it's the first time that I had done something on a real public scale, uh, where you're open to, you you know that kind of criticism from people and i guess i would first say that the book got like over it has like over 300 amazon reviews and you know they're overwhelmingly positive you know there's like 290 of them or whatever or five star or something like that so i'm not complaining you know well the thing is though, is the nature of the human brain, though, is we have a tendency to de-emphasize the positive stuff and then the negative stuff really sticks.

Oh, of course. You go right to the one-star reviews and you read those and then you walk around all day thinking about that and grinding your teeth over what that guy did. He didn't understand or whatever. didn't understand or whatever um yeah it's and it and also it's not like you put out an album that was just an expression and people didn't like it or they liked it like well it's what you said it's you're exposing your life you know so it's not they're not they're not just judging the book they're judging you as a human being so it definitely cuts close to the nerve and i knew that going in you know i remember and i've told this story before, I can't remember if we talked about it last time we talked, but, you know, when I first turned in the manuscript, I was like, oh my God,

like, am I sure I want to do this? Like, is this the right thing? Like, it's scary and it's a very vulnerable feeling. And, you know, it goes with the territory. It's like, hey, you're great, And, you know, it goes with the territory. It's like, hey, you're great, you're writing a book, and then here you deliver it. It's part of the package. So, I accept that and I welcome it. And I actually have no problem whatsoever with criticism. If people didn't like the book, and some of the criticism, we can get into that a little bit. I got a fair point.

You know, I can see that. Like, you know, I could see that objectively. But when they sort of started to take your life to task and judge you as a human being, that's a little bit different. And it's hard. It's hard to block that out. I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me emotionally because it definitely does. Well, you know, one, one point that I would make on that is that when I read a one-star review of my stuff, I, you know, a point I made to someone when I was, you know, griping about it is if I was a fictional author, it would be a criticism of my book. And that would be easier to take. You know, I can handle criticism of my writing, but it's

a lot harder when it's criticism of your life, especially when you've, writing but it's a lot harder when it's criticism of your life especially when you've when you've worked really hard to do an unsparing unflinching evaluation of your faults for the you know strangers in the world at all but it was pointed out to me that though the one star reviewers feel that they're reviewing your life they're still just reviewing your writing yeah i guess i mean it doesn't feel like that well first of all receiving in but it's you know that's the truth is that they are they're reviewing the words that you wrote you know and i share that you know less for you than um you know for other aspiring writers who you know may have read your stuff and think man that was a great book, but no way

am I ever going to open myself up to that. Right. I mean, I think you, you make this sort of choice to be vulnerable and say, here are the, here's the dark side of me. Here's the part of me I'm not proud of. Here are the mistakes that I made. And then to get a one-star review where somebody's criticizing you for having those traits or expressing them when you're the one who's calling yourself out on that is a little bit that's an interesting thing but i think also what you have to bear in mind is there's also a lot of transference like somebody's really they're talking more about themselves and where they are and where they're coming from and what's going on with their life than they are just as much as they are sort of you know levying judgment on

your life you know what i mean i oh i totally agree i mean my you know i the analogy that i always make is when you're when you write about your own life it's the equivalent of standing naked in front of a crowd of strangers and i i feel like that's a good faith gesture that you're making that you're going to say i'm going to stand here naked in front of you and all my deformity you know and if there's somebody who says oh man that dude could really use you know use to lose five pounds or something that's on you man right well right i mean know, you would hope that somebody would applaud your courage for saying, you know, I'm going to kind of step out and, you know, pull the curtain back a little bit on this. And, you know, not everybody does that. But I think that you, you know, you've

said that originally when you were writing The Long Run that you didn't think anybody would be interested in that kind of a story. And, you know, what a surprise to you it was to find out that you were wrong. So, the majority of the people, you know, really can kind of tap into that kind of a story and and you know what a surprise to you it was to find out that you were wrong so the majority of the people you know really can kind of tap into that kind of thing emotionally there's just there's always going to be the outliers who don't like it or you know whatever it's fine and you know i struggle with it i mean you'll read people you know they're sort of these life coach kind of people on the internet or otherwise and you know sort of these life coach kind of people on the internet or, or otherwise, and you know, sort of these people that hold, hold themselves out to be,

you know, inspirational, motivational speaker kind of people. And they'll say, you know, you got to embrace your haters, you know, you got to embrace your haters and love them.

And like, you know, I'm not there yet. You know what I mean? But I also, it's like, we're talking, you know,

like between you and I, it's on a pretty small stage compared, you know, compared to somebody who's really in the public spotlight who has to deal with that as a daily aspect of their life. The amount of Teflon shield that you have to walk around with, I can't imagine that. I remember the day after Britney Spears shaved her head and was attacking her car with an umbrella and stuff like that. head and was like attacking her car with an umbrella and stuff like that and and my heart went out to her because i was like britney if if you can be such a mess that you elicit sympathy in the heart of like an anonymous druggie you've really made a mess of your life yeah well we live

in this culture too where everything is everything is so instantaneous. And talking about pulling the curtain back or removing the veil on celebrity, like everybody's got a cell phone. And people are fallible and make mistakes. And we hold people up to a certain standard and love to see them kind of fall from that podium a little bit. And that's why TMZ is on every night and that kind of thing. We like to sort of revel and celebrate in those those foibles that's just you know kind of what our you know that's a big part of our culture so yeah we have to accept it if you put you try i

mean you can't engage it really you know you got to just sort of accept it and move on and and i think it forces you to look within yourself and say well you know like i'll you know if i'm not feeling particularly spiritually fit you know i'll get resentful and i want to lash out or get into some kind of dialogue with somebody online about this and that and that's a that's a no-win situation you know what i mean but when i'm feeling good about myself then you know it's like yeah whatever move on like i know who i am and and they want to feel that way and think that way you know that's their prerogative and they're entitled to that so but i think it is that it's that drawing that differentiation between the work and the life

you know like what is the writing and what is the personal attack yeah a huge thing is perspective as well i mean especially you know it's you can say that we live in a culture of lowest common denominator but that's sort of tv culture and there is a whole bigger culture than that and and you know to look and i do this and i think other people do this in their lives as well as you know the the negative thing gets blown way out of proportion and the reality is that far more um far far far more people have seen you know have been witness to your story and see themselves in your shortcomings and your failings and um and the admirable thing is for a lot of us is less the the the distance that you've traveled in the in the races but the distance that you've traveled in your head and the you know more the courage it takes for you to take on uh your biggest obstacle uh who is rich roll then it has to take on the epic five you know it's the epic one yeah yeah exactly right you know um

yeah it's true it's true uh i had a great point i was gonna make that just alluded me right now oh yeah i was gonna say um what did i say about rich role being your biggest? Yeah, that, that threw me off of my thinking. Uh, a couple of weeks ago, I, I, uh, I don't know what came over me, but I decided I was going to tweet my favorite one-star review of my book. That's awesome. I totally support that. And then right after I did it, I was like, why did I do that? But it's so classic. Like the headline or the sort of tagline for the review on Amazon, I'll put it in the show notes because I can't resist. But it was like, this is a great book, but only if you're George W. Bush. And the guy went on to this sort of like point-by-point analysis of why he found me so distasteful as a human being, which was, I read it out loud to my boys, you know, and they were like laughing. They were like,

they thought it was hilarious. And so it's like, I'm okay with that. You know, like, I'm like, all right, he's, you know, and the guy, it was long, right? The guy actually took a lot of time to like write that thing. Like he took time out of his day to do that and you know personally i've never gone online to write a negative review of anything i'm also not going online and writing a lot of positive reviews about a lot of stuff either like i just try to remain neutral on that stuff generally i mean i would leave hitler a negative review like i would i would be brutal with him on yelp yeah on yelp right but um that's that's the thing when somebody devotes the time and energy to write a thousand word mon you know sort of manifesto uh about what a crappy person you are not just a bad writer but like a lousy

human being you got to wonder what else is going on in their life well that's why i said you know there's a lot of transference going on you know and i think that's true um you know the uh the you know you can't you know as a creative person as a human being as an artist or what have you you can't believe the the you know all the positive stuff and you can't believe the negative stuff you know what i mean you just have to be you kind of have to immunize yourself from that that being said you know yeah there's some low blows and some of those one-star reviews but there was a couple things that i read there was a consistent theme in in the kind of you know lower ranked reviews of my book which was that um i was advertising

products like throughout the book well let's talk about that and uh and you know what like i'm like you know what that's legit that's a legitimate critique that's a legitimate criticism and had i had the opportunity to rewrite the book or do it again, I would not have put in all those parentheticals about like, hey, if you want it, you can check out my protein powder or whatever. Like they took people out of the narrative and it came off like a sales pitch. And that was not my intention, but I can see why people came away with that. And because, you know, there were more than a few people that raised that point it's like all right i see that like you know i shouldn't have done that you know and and it wasn't my intention to like be trying to kind of like hard sell my products or whatever i was

trying to be like here's a here's a roadmap to how i did it and then you know if there's a reference like hey if you want to learn more about this this is what i did and here's the link um i should have just pushed all that stuff into the back into the appendix and just tell the story like you know so i get that i'm fine and i'm fine with people pointing that out what i mean rich i gotta say that it's like it's great for you for you to to come out and say that i mean i think we i do think we live in a world where, uh, apology is forbidden.

You know, that it's, it, we, it, the only way you can say you made a mistake is if you're caught doing something and, and then you go away to some rehab for 30 days and you come back and

you're, uh, you know, you've been redeemed. You hire a really good publicist. Exactly. Exactly. But it's another thing else.

It's a, it's a different thing to come forward and say i did this thing i thought it was going to work i've gotten negative feedback from from voices i value it was a mistake it was an error in judgment if i had it to do over i would do it differently i mean i i totally agree with you and i agree with your critics that for you know for me as a reader the experience of reading the book was frequently interrupted and and the worst thing for me was that i was like man this is a really good story and these little parentheticals aren't are harming the story and the story is what i care about the most yeah and look it's the first book i've ever written and you know i happen to have a really good editor. And for the most part, he, you know, my editor at Crown really helped me improve the book. But I also feel like it was sort of incumbent upon him to kind of say, you know, as somebody who does that for a living to say, hey, you're a first time writer, like, you probably don't want to do this here. Like, that might not be a good idea. But like, nobody ever pointed it out to me. And it was like, yeah, I didn't do, you know, I should have done it differently. So, you know, that's all. That's awesome. I mean, that's about, that's all I have

to say in rebuttal. I think it's great to, for someone to be able to admit a mistake in a public forum. I mean, I go back and I read the long run and i'm like i can't believe people bought this just can i have it back for a day to work on it and then i'll give it back to you right you know i look at it and it's like can't you do that now with kindle singles like you could actually update it and then people's kindles get updated automatically yeah i actually i have an alternate ending i want to work into where like a X-Wing fighter comes down and picks me and Luis up. And then we... Yeah.

But yeah, you can go back. I was just reading on the plane. I was reading Vanity Fair magazine about the perils of World War Z and all these problems they had making this movie. And how they basically started shooting before they decided what the third act was. So it's sort of like that. You can bring in a new third act completely change the ending but it's like you don't even have to like somebody who's already bought it and has it on their kindle like the next time they open it it'll just be there right isn't that how it works yeah and i and i fear that because i think that

for for you know for a control freak author like myself, the tendency is to go back and read. Oh, you'd just be working on it all the time. Oh, yeah. I mean, could you imagine if a musician could constantly be retooling a song, and then every time somebody played the MP3 on their iTunes, it would be a different version? Oh, yeah. That would suck. Because as readers and as listeners, what we love is the imperfections. What we love is the stuff that the artist goes back to and thinks oh man i gotta take that part out you know and it's no that's where it's slow there and then

it speeds up that's the best part of the song you know and i also think that you know i don't know how much people really realize or understand this that you're never really you're never really done with something you just basically decide you're not going to work on it anymore or there's no you know it's time to work on something else so it's like when you're when going to work on it anymore or there's no you know it's time to work on something else so it's like when you're when you turn your book into the publisher or you publish your kindle single or you record an album or whatever it is it's never done or or a movie you know a movie's never done they just run out of time to continue to work on it and edit it and time's up so they put it out but so you're always going to look back on your work and i

certainly do with my book and go why did i say that or i should have changed that or i you know what this would have been a lot better if i'd done this and that and you just you know you learn from it and you know it's good that you can look at the long run and kind of go uh you know like i don't like that or this it shows that you're still interested in growing as an artist and as a writer and that will just be expressed in your next work. Yeah, I think that that keeps you moving forward as a writer when you can look at an older work and reflect on it and say, oh man, I would do this totally differently,

or this isn't the type of storytelling I want to do at all. It fuels further projects. Right. Yeah, if you look at it and you go that was awesome i wouldn't change a word well you know then are you really are you growing yeah if you're high-fiving yourself then it's not necessarily right forward motion right but i mean i think you know you and i are both in similar situations here so we're sort of uh our first big thing you know the first like step out into, uh, into the spotlight or whatever,

you know, and your first book and then my first exposure, um, you get some things wrong and, you know, and there's a lot that you want to change and you, the learning curve is really steep. Yeah, for sure. And plus I didn't think anyone was going to read my book. yeah for sure and plus i didn't think anyone was going to read my book i don't know about you but all right are you more relieved that people read it or would you be more relieved if no one had if no one had maybe i'd be relieved but i'd also be horribly depressed so i'll take i'll take uh less relief and less depression. That's good. That's good. You know?

All right. So, what else didn't you like? Come on. Let's get it all out. Do you want to get it all out of the front? I figured I was going to sprinkle it through. Hey, man. It's your show.

Yes. Again, welcome to the Rich Roll Show. That's right. When are you starting your podcast? There were some people on Twitter that were like, when are you doing a podcast? Rich, look around. Once this room gets clean, then we can talk about other projects.

You don't have to have a clean room to do a podcast. Don't tell me that, though. I'm already in danger of death by horderification, where one of these shelves of guitars is just going to topple over on me. No, man. You're just a Brooklynoklyn writer musician artist i like to think of this you got some crazy shit on your walls in here don't look too closely one uh one thing i want to talk about I feel like reading finding ultra, we see you not just going on one path and then taking a steep right turn. You seem to be reinventing yourself.

There are like, there are several transformations over the course of the book. You know, I mean, there seems to be a big change that takes place in your life when you discover swimming and that, that, that that's something that you're good at and then another change when you discover alcohol and then obviously another change when you undiscover alcohol when you get that out of

your life and then another transformation when um you know when you realize you're 40 you're overweight you're out of shape. Is there another transformation in the pipeline? Hmm. You characterize them as transformations. When you describe that, I'm thinking it's a series of going from one obsession to the next, you know, like transferring obsessions along the way. But I guess transformation is a better word. Yeah, I hope so. of the things that I learned, the first things I learned in recovery that I think about a lot, uh, is this idea of, you know, progress and regression. Like we have this idea that,

you know, if things are going good, you can kind of cruise or that your life is static, you know, and that it's not, nothing is ever that way. You're either moving towards recovery or greater recovery or growth or you're regressing and moving towards relapse or your life is devolving. It's a very elastic thing that is constantly in motion at all times. And I have to always kind of bear that in mind because I want to just cruise, you know um and i have to push myself to continue to expand and grow um because my kind of default setting is to devolve you know what i mean if left to my own devices and uh and i try to be forward thinking about what I'm doing, but also be open, you know, and not try to plot the course too thoroughly ahead. So now, and I'll keep this a little bit short because I talked about this with Osher last night a little bit. But, you know, people keep saying to me, well, when's your next race and what are you training for?

And, you know, what's the next big thing? And I certainly want to race and I want to to challenge and even you pick me up at the airport and we were talking about that on the way over here and my life has become gratefully has become a lot more busy uh you know as a result of the book and the things that kind of revolve around that and it's it's really kind of shifting my interests and my priorities. Like, I still want to race and be relevant and push myself and see what I'm capable of, for sure, and I love that, and I love the daily training. I love being in the process of doing that,

and I actually need it to ground me. But now, like, that kind of energy and enthusiasm, that really, like, laser focus that i had to like prepare for ultraman or or epic five that shifted a little bit away from racing and performance and onto how can i take this message you know to the next level like what is a way that i can sort of step up what i'm doing to help more people that I'm currently helping, you know, and that's where the satisfaction comes from. That's the growth opportunity.

That's the challenge. So that kind of next obsession, if you will, or transformation is to find a way to be of, you know, greater service. And so, unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily allow me to go out and train as much as i would like you know and also you know i i i want to be you know i'm there for i want to be there for my kids and my my girls that are at a tender age right now my teenage boys are getting ready for the next phase of their life and you know it's kind of a key time in their development and you know i don't want to miss that you know like i'm i'm i'm you know i'm showing up and present for that at the same time so i'm juggling all these different

things and and again and i say it all the time like balance is my final frontier i'm always trying to get that mix of how i can make everything work and fit and you know i'm constantly failing and you know going back to the drawing board on that. And so the 25-hour training week is not as feasible as it was a couple years ago when my life looked a little bit different than it does now. And that's fine. You know, part of me is part of me is sad because i keep turning over this idea in my head of you and i doing our first 100 mile race together and i feel that'll happen i feel like that is the uh uh late 30s early 40s sober version of the wild and crazy uh road trip cancun or something we can

make that we can we can make that happen. I mean, the one thing that I have done is that I've kind of reconfigured my training to be much more running focused. The cycling is what takes up, you know, the large percentage of the time, so many hours on the bike. So I'm spending less time cycling, more time running.

And, you know, I've been traveling a lot. And that's something I know I can always do. And it's it's easy you know it's easy to do wherever you go so i'm more focused on like the ultra running than on the you know the the cycling and the triathlon so we'll make that happen i just great i gotta pull the trigger on a race so you so you're basically declaring now while we're on the air that you're gonna run a hundred miler with me i need a little time to get ready As long as there's a sufficient prep window, you know, I think you can count me in. All right. And I'm going to have my first, you know, legitimate ultra running experience because, because I'm going to crew for Dean Karnazes at Badwater in July. And so trial by fire.

Well, it's going to be cool because I'm there just to help, you know, I'm not racing. I'm there to help him. But it'll give me that experience of what that race is like and kind of what a running race of that distance entails. Which, yeah, I've done Ultraman and Epic Five, but I've never participated in anything like that. That's a completely different animal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. To hear your answer that you welcome the complexity that has come with becoming a best-selling author, but that you can't do as much training and time on the bike as you had been and as you enjoy doing totally resonates with me because there was a point in my life where I had a girlfriend who was saying like, oh, all you care about is running. Like you just do it all the time. And then I was like, all right, well really how much time is spent

running? And I was like, well, you know, the weekends are pretty much totally shot. And then, you know, like between five and 10 hours during the week so basically the same amount of time i was losing to drinking right so yeah exactly and except without the hungover part where you're discounting that aspect of it where you're just kind of checked out of everything for you know two days or whatever yeah yeah watching uh watching the early bill murray classics on VHS over and over again. Right. Right. I mean, you know, yeah, I think that, you know, listen, when you, you know,

when you're kind of at your bottom with drinking and drugs, like your life's real small, right? Your life revolves around like, you know, in my case, it was a bare mattress on the floor of essentially an empty apartment and teetering on, you know, unemployment and homelessness, and the phone wasn't ringing. And also just malnutrition, like rickets, things that have been cured, like scurvy. The doctor was like, I haven't seen this since 1875. Yeah. Trench foot. like scurvy the doctor's like i haven't seen this since 1875 yeah and uh and then you get then you get sober and your life gets big you know what i mean and and that's that's a beautiful thing and as it continues to get bigger and bigger it's easy to lose sight of what allowed it to get big and you always have to kind of remember you know know, and, you know, kind of be in touch with, you know, how you got to that place. And so, I guess the point I'm making is, you know, my life continues to expand and I welcome that even if it, you know, becomes more complicated and tricky.

But, you know, you have as a, you know, as an alcoholic, you have these sort of alcoholic fantasies. alcoholic you have these sort of alcoholic fantasies and they used to be they used to be you know sort of hey i want to isolate myself in a hotel room in vegas you know and and have nobody talk to me for you know whatever like the downward for example for yeah for example the movie leaving las vegas you've seen that movie right it's the's the alcoholic anthem. When he goes shopping, when he's in the liquor store, like, I got a boner. Well, see, this is my point. Like, most people see that movie, and they're absolutely horrified.

And they're like, I don't understand. And it's like pornography. How terrible. And I watch it, and I'm like, he's just having a good time. Like, I'm right there with him. And I'm like, I could see myself doing that. Yeah, I'm just watching it, like, riveted to, like, what's he going to do now? It's like, oh, yeah, I could'm like, I could see myself doing that. Yeah, I'm just watching it riveted to like, what's he going to do now? I was like, oh, yeah, I could do that.

I could see myself doing that. And then you get sober and that kind of alcoholic fantasy starts to fade a little bit. But now as being an athlete, it's replaced with this sort of fantasy of living in a shed in the woods, Ted Kaczynski style, with just my bike and my running shoes and just going out and training all day and never talking to anybody and isolating into that zone. Which is equally, maybe not equally, but that's not a healthy life either. That's a small life, right? Yeah. life either that's a small life right yeah i mean you and i started talking last time about alcoholic behavior you know addictive behavior that doesn't involve uh an illicit substance and then i was going back and looking at finding ultra again and there are you know there are times

there where you're just sort of like living on the bike and uh i was like oh yeah he rich is doing it too i i know i do it in parts but it was it was eye-opening because I missed that the first time around. And it was only you drawing my attention to sober alcoholic behavior that then I could see that you had a similar level of obsession, like a drinker, like squirreling alcohol. Yeah, I mean, you can engage in a whole variety, an endless variety of behaviors that are alcoholic in nature without drinking or using drugs. So, sobriety now is about keeping that in check and being aware of when things are out of balance in that regard. That's a big, tricky one, man. Because I feel like I've been having a dialogue with you in my head since we did the last podcast. that's, that's a big tricky one, man. Cause, um, I feel like I've been having a dialogue with you in my head since we did the last podcast about addiction and alcoholic behavior and what's healthy and what's unhealthy and stability and stuff like that. And I,

I totally thought myself into a rabbit hole the other night where I was just thinking like, Oh, is it that doing anything that I want to do that i enjoy doing is that behavior that like if i anything that makes me feel good is that an addictive behavior and no i think that the the litmus test or the barometer of that is you know is it is it is it impacting other areas of your life in a negative way like it is it is it interfering with your relationships is it derailing other things you know in your life that's undermining

the overall quality of how you live yeah a uh after i quit drinking a bandmate came to me and he was like oh it's great you quit drinking and stuff and i was like well it's okay and uh it's okay if you never want to have fun again yeah i was i was in that phase and he was like, well, it's okay. It's okay if you never want to have fun again. Yeah, I was in that phase. And he was like, should I quit drinking? And I was like, well, is it causing problems with your girlfriend? And he was like, no. And I was like, is it causing problems at work? And he was like, no.

And I was like, do you still enjoy it when you have a drink? And do bad things happen? And he was like, no, I have a blast. And it's fine. I was like no i i have a blast and like it's fine you know i was like quit wasting my time man right you know like have have fun you know but also there's something behind that because why would he ask you that question you know what i mean maybe there's more going on than he wanted to admit to you or whatever but yeah i mean you know people say that things like that to me and i'm like, you gotta, you have to diagnose yourself, man. I can't diagnose you, you know?

Well, I'm really glad you're bringing that up because I think that you and I both get, probably get a bunch of, you know, emails, Facebook messages, Twitter. Am I, am I leaving out any other social media that people reach out through? Instagram? Instagram, Pinterest. Pinterest. Are you on pinterest maybe i don't i want to i'm going to come and visit your pins i i don't have a problem with it yeah i'm on there i can quit anytime i want all right yeah i uh so you probably get a lot of the same emails and messages that i do which you know of people who have found that they're in trouble in their life, whether it's with alcohol or substances or food, anorexia, bulimia, overeating. And they want to change or they say they want to change and they ask you for help.

or they say they want to change and they ask you for help um i suspect you probably have a similar response to that that i do where you don't know what to do um because i want to help everybody man i like i want to i'll save everybody if i can but i'm just a dude i'm not a doctor i'm not a scientist i'm not an addiction counselor i'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm not an addiction counselor. I'm not a therapist. I obviously still have tons of shit to figure out in my own life. But that doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to help somebody else that's asking for your help. It's true. And I do try to help people. I give them all the caveats of my list of zero qualifications and then try and say, well well from what you've told me i think you know

that this this might be able to help you but the the larger question for which i want to burden you with is how do we know when someone is actually ready to change when they're ready to quit um to quit drinking or quit drugging or combat their food addiction or just change anything you know i mean how do we how do you recognize that like that crystal moment where you have that clarity where you're like recognize it on somebody else yeah or or how i mean how can can you and i talk about it so that other people can reckon can say oh you know i i recognize that in myself i am now ready to change um i don't expect you to actually answer yeah no well i think that i think that uh you know if somebody is seeks out your advice or counsel and is asking for help

you can guide them in the best direction that you you like you can. And then you have to kind of detach from the results. And whether somebody is willing to change or not will be reflected in the subsequent actions taken, not in whatever words come out of their mouth, right? So, if somebody says, you know, I really want to change my diet, and then you say, okay, well, why don't you read this book or watch this documentary or start your day off with a green smoothie. And then they email you two weeks later and they didn't do any of those things. And they say, I really want to change. And I'm like, all right, well, I gave you, you know, five or six things to do, but you didn't do them. So are you, you know, maybe you're not really willing. Maybe you need to go further down

and maybe you need to suffer a little bit more before you have that willingness. Like, I don't know. You know what I mean? But the point point being that it's it's the actions that reveal where somebody's at far more than you know the words coming out of their mouth yeah and you've you've seen it from both sides because it's you know it sounds like you went to rehab uh totally kicking and screaming and then oh yeah you're you. And then the awareness of the garbage you were putting into your body and the decision to change was totally self-started. It was self-started, but that was on the heels of a lot of other stuff that preceded that. heels of, you know, a lot of other stuff that preceded that, you know, for a long time, Julie, you know, who had always eaten, like, just in the context of food, I guess, Julie, you know, had always eaten way, you know, way healthy compared to me. And, you know, she's

always, she's this spiritual seeker and she's always reading this book and that book about, you know, how to expand your consciousness and she's practicing yoga and she's always reading this book and that book about, you know, how to expand your consciousness. And she's practicing yoga and she's meditating and doing all of these things that I wasn't doing. And I think she had some frustration. You know, she'll say, I could see a better version of you inside of you that you couldn't see. And she's trying to facilitate that coming out. And she'd say, why don't you read this book? And she'd put it on my bed stand or why don't you do this? Or, you know, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I wouldn't do it. You know, like I wasn't ready. I didn't have the willingness and she had an attachment to a result. You know, she thought if I give him this book and he reads it, then he'll change. And it was never like a nagging

pressure thing. She just kind of, you know, wanted, she could see that things could be better if I could just take her hand you know but i didn't want to take her hand and then she got to a place in her own kind of spiritual journey where she really like let go of all of it she let go of all expectations that i was going to change and she just said she made peace with it and said i love him the way he is no matter what i don't need him to lose weight i don't need him to eat differently than he's doing i don't need him to do anything different i accept him completely and she let it go and she didn't just give it lip service like she really did let it go like and that's when i started to change

you know and and it's because and i think she never announced to me any of this this is she's told me this in retrospect that this is what was going on with her and i think you know i wasn't consciously aware that she was doing it but on an unconscious level i could tell um like when she kind of decoupled from it then it was like oh it's on me like she's not telling you know because because there's always that resistance like somebody wants me to change so i'm like no i'm not going to change screw you i'm going to do it my way and then when that was gone then it's sort of like my reflection in the mirror became a little bit more crystal clear. And I was like, oh, wait, like she's not bugging me to do that anymore. Like, you mean I have to take responsibility for this?

And then that was when, you know, I was I started the process of becoming ready to, you know, take stock a little bit more than I had. If I ever get to meet Julie, I'm going to wash her car. Actually, the car needs washing. Not your car, her car. No, her car. Whenever you talk about her or write about her, it's awesome because you can really see that in a lot of ways she was your sort of North Star, that she was. Oh, very much so. She was very much the point of reference and like, oh, things could be different. way in which she um uh checked out or or surrendered or sort of released you in a very positive uh

light and after the last time we spoke i was thinking a little bit about what you know sort of set the stage for um for me making the decision to quit drinking and for me it was people releasing me in a much more negative light yeah where people just well i've had that too and it and there it wasn't like dramatics of like oh if you don't do this then i'm gonna leave or we're gonna kick you out of the band we're gonna fire you or whatever people just wrote me off in their minds as that's who he is. He's an animal. Leave him alone. And just leave him to his pursuit of devolution.

Right. And that was really scary because then I was just all alone. Yeah, that's almost worse because if somebody's's gonna come at you in a rageful way then there's that's backed by emotion you know that that's backed by uh somebody who has some kind of investment in you being different but when people are just like whatever dude you know then then you're then you're really by yourself right yeah yeah and when when people started making the death watch jokes when where it was it was just a betting pool as like, well, does he have six months?

Does he have a year? Does he have 10 years? Oh, wow, that's heavy. Yeah. That's, I don't want to die, man. Yeah. Especially now, you know. How is it different now than it was, you know,

in the early stages of sobriety for you now? What's changed in terms of how you approach your life or not drinking? I mean, in the first six or eight months, I was in shock and awe that I could do it at all. And also, I was starting to run and starting to rack up my mileage. And I was like, oh man, this like tired old body can actually do this. This is interesting. Um, I was also just enraged all the time and painfully awkward around people. Cause I didn't know how to, didn't know how to string a sentence together without a beer.

And, uh, it was just, it was a novelty. It was like, oh, this is, here's this weird thing that i'm doing let's see how long it lasts and i and i couldn't bear to tell anyone that i'd quit drinking it was just people noticed that i wasn't drunk i couldn't bear to tell anyone that i was an alcoholic and i couldn't bear to tell anybody that i was quitting drinking for good um i actually i told some drinking buddies that uh i was just gonna quit drinking until i was 70 and no this is good it was whatever you have to do to make sense let's just stick with getting through the week how about that well because to say forever to say i'm never gonna take another

drink is terrifying when you're an alcoholic and if i could if i said to myself if i just removed that never and said i will be able to have a drink again at some undetermined point in my future um but i think my dad's like 68 and he's still pretty spry totally sharp um he's got a lot of life ahead of him he still schools me at the gym uh 70 is too early now i may have to bump it back like 10 years but why do you like i don't think about that you know i don't think about like you know i'm never this or i'm never that or, you know, when I'm 70 this. I just focus on what I'm doing right now. And that makes it more manageable.

I'm going to turn around on you something that you said last time, which is you're more spiritually evolved than I am. No, that's not true and let me be very clear like in case there's any confusion i am not putting myself on any kind of sobriety pedestal by any stretch of the imagination sobriety is very difficult for me and i've had you know pitfalls and struggles with it and it it doesn't come easy to me and i'm not like the guy who's working like you know the greatest program in the world. Like, you know, I'm doing what I can, but, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm a worker among workers in that world for sure. So, I get uncomfortable when it turns to, you know, me sort of sitting here. Like, when there's like a, you know, this expectation that I'm going to pontificate upon sobriety from, you know, Mount Olympus or something, because that's, that's definitely not where I'm coming from. Well, no, I mean, I, um, I, I, I didn't say you have it dialed and I don't think you have

it dialed because I think that the minute you think you have it dialed, you're screwed. Um, and I think, you know, I think, you know, this is a, you know, people say, oh, you know, what are you quitting this week? Are you quitting sugar? Are you quitting caffeine? Oh, you're going to be a Mormon. You're going to like, and they sort of, you know, dig at me for that. And man, I'm just trying to get better. Just get incrementally better.

Just a little bit better each time. I'm not shooting for perfection. just a little bit better each time i'm not shooting for perfection and i think that if you're if anyone is trying to to do anything whether it's carpentry or sobriety or you know being a triathlete if you're shooting for perfection yeah you're always going to fall short you know i think you always just want to like just just try and get a little bit better and i and i um i mean i said uh you're more spiritually evolved both as a dig and totally seriously because and and i do have a lot of respect for you because it's obvious that you have done um you know sort of brutal self-inventory and and you spent a lot of time uh doing your own homework on this of trying to get yourself better

yeah but it's not a you know constant progression forward it's you know one step forward two steps back two steps forward one step back you know oh yeah it's jig-jagging you know all over the place yeah it's not like this smooth you know parabolic curve upwards and i mean and that's that's one of the things i try and tell people is you know people are like oh you know um you stopped drinking you started running your life is great and i was like ah whoa whoa whoa that's you know that's not it at all sobriety is always tricky man i mean i think that as as you get some time behind you, it gets easier without ever getting easy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it doesn't get easy. And I think that people run into problems because you sort of get sober and then you have this initial pink cloud. And then life kind of moves on and it's you know you're you know life is not without its difficulties and problems and it's like hey man like what's going on i got sober why is this happening to me and you know well you know at least you get to navigate it without being drunk and and so you know my life is full of you know complications and and problems but they tend my problems tend to be uh higher quality problems than they used to be you know what complications and problems, but they tend, my problems tend to be, uh,

higher quality problems than they used to be. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm not getting pulled over by the cops all the time. And, you know, but I still have post-traumatic stress. Like every time there's a policeman behind me when I'm driving,

like, I feel like, you know, I start to sweat and I get panicked. I feel like a criminal whenever I see a cop. Exactly. Yeah, that's the thing is there's always work left to do. It's not about the destination.

There is no destination. The work continues. That's why I gave you a little bit of shit when you sent me that email and then you subsequently wrote a blog post about how you graduated from therapy. And I was like, really? You're cured? How does that work? I can't imagine graduating from any kind of process of self-discovery because we were talking earlier about alcoholic behavior patterns. Because we were talking earlier about alcoholic behavior patterns. I'm always reeling in this behavior pattern or that behavior pattern and having to check myself here and there. And that will continue until the day I die.

And hopefully I improve along the way and get better and start to develop a mastery over patterns that don't serve me or what have you. But I don't anticipate graduating from that or getting to any place where I feel like I have complete mastery over everything. And so, I was making light of it. I was just giving you a hard time because I understand where you were coming from in terms of, you know, what you were trying to achieve with your therapist. No, but I mean's it's absolutely something that we should talk about though because i mean i do think that um you know um graduation may have been the wrong word choice but um you know i mean the reason that my therapist made the decision to uh i mean if you say you know the the technical term is discharge but that sound makes it sound like... You are institutionalized.

Yeah, either something biological or something... Neither one of which have good connotations. So I came up with the word graduated. Matriculated. Matriculated is when you go to... When you matriculate, is that graduate? No, that's when you matriculate is that graduate no that's when you you matriculate from from here's where we're both going to be outed for not being as smart as we think we are i i'm going to look it up later the um no i mean the way that my therapist my the way my therapist

put it is um you know he said you you met all the goals of the program and um and you know in that program it has um you know it works with people who um are sort of very base non-functioning alcoholics you know and he said you know when you came here um you had very few sober friends you had very few friends you could trust you spoke to almost no one in your family um you know almost every you know family or important relationship had been compromised by alcohol you uh were working two nights in a week or two nights a week in a bar um no health insurance and no just no i mean you know we talked about this like you know when you're when you're a drunk your life is very, has very finite limits. You know, it's like you're living in the RV of the soul.

you know, now the writing, my writing, the writing that I've done and writing about, um, sobriety and recovery and getting myself better has been so successful that like, I can sort of do anything from that. Now. Um, I have my relationship with my older sister, Tatiana is it's not that it's returned to its former glory. It's better now than it's ever been. Like we never got along as kids, the way that we get along now. You know, Tashina and I have always been, you know, pretty good, but, you know, but that's improved my situation. You know, my relationship with my mother, you know, has always been, she's always, you know, shown me unconditional love. But we're much better friends now. My dad and I like, you know, talk more than we ever have. Right.

Everything's gotten better. Right. You know. So's gotten better. So the journey continues. The need to go and see this person on a weekly basis or whatever you were doing is not as urgent. Yeah, that's the word I was going to use. again and again in you know both in your journey and in my journey is that it um at best it's cyclical um at its worst it's erratic but it's never steady forward progress oh no and nothing in life is um but you know what is uh getting ready to be steady right now my need to go to the bathroom i knew that was coming.

That wasn't very poetically articulated. Hold on a second. Sorry about that. I have to take a quick bathroom break. Quick matriculation. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to bring up was uh you said you that the earlier draft of your book had a uh a much more extensive drunkologue

is uh did you think about featuring any of that in the paperback version uh i didn't get an opportunity to do an edit for the paperback. Essentially, I was just informed that there would be a paperback coming out. It wasn't. And that that was a good thing. So it wasn't like, hey, is there anything you want to change for the paperback? Actually, that would have been great. I wish they had said, you know, you want to make a few changes, we can do that.

But I wasn't given that, um, that option. Uh, so, um, are you open to, uh, it ever seen the light of day? I mean, maybe on your blog or something like that. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think that, that, you know, we talked about this last time, but, you know, I kind of had to condense the drunk a log a little bit because there were, you know, like we, like my book is sort of three different books you know and that was just one aspect of the book and uh i you know i painted the whole picture on the first pass just to get it all out there and see what i had to work with and some of the kind of gnarlier you know more you know desperate kind of times got weeded out to just convey the kind of flavor of where I was at without getting into specific incidences.

And then this happened and then this happened. Is it weird that I want to read about that? I feel like I'm some like torture form enthusiast or something. Yeah, there was some colorful stuff in there. I mean, it's not, you know, I've read other recovery memoirs and, you know, obviously I know lots of people in there. I mean, it's not, you know, um, you know, I've read other recovery memoirs and, you know, obviously I know lots of people in recovery and I will, I will tell you that my story doesn't stand out. You know, it's pretty garden variety in terms of like my, my escapades, you know, and you know, that's another level of vulnerability. Like, I don't know,

you know, some of that stuff is like, you know, it know it's it's there's some dark stuff in there and you know i kind of laid out you know the general picture without getting overly graphic about the whole thing i don't know if anybody needs to know about that i don't know if anybody's interested in that except for you maybe but you know i can tell you this story maybe i'll maybe i'll write about it i don't know let's see you should take you know but it's like i'm not i'm not you know uh you know jerry stall or you know foley right or is james foley right james fry fry yeah yeah like those guys are dark dudes right and their their recovery tomes are you know super intense like yeah yeah um if if you do anything with it you should take it to the moth i feel yeah that would be the uh that might be the perfect form for yeah that could be good i feel like you have to be like mike berbiglia to get up there though and you know like i have this idea of this sort of like this is the thing though like highbrow comedy that goes on there this is the thing before mike got up there before mike

verbiglia got up there to do that he was just mike he was just some dude he's supremely gifted in that medium though well and also sometimes the microphone brings out greatness in people um there's there's i mean there have been times where I've seen people get up there and it's, you know, they're a, they're a food service worker or they, you know, they're a CPA or something.

And then they get up there and they're in front of people and the mics in front of them and they just grow wings. And it's awesome. It's so cool to, to getting up and doing the moth scares me a lot more than doing a hundred mile race all the more reason why you should do maybe that's why i should uh you just committed with that um like i just think about ira glass and mike berbiglia and like you know like there's sort of these you know hollowed you know talents that are you know kind of made for that and and i've

you know i've listened to plenty of them and they're like it's i'm always like wow that's that's some chops to be able to do that i mean but you and i both know that chops are often the result of training yeah that's true you know that's true i have a couple of points i want to hit uh while i've got you here as long as i can i can stick a couple needles into you all right come on man you i told you you can come at me um one of the one of the points that I wanted to raise, which I think is valid, is the sort of the first worldness of being a triathlete and being an Ironman. I mean, the fee alone for an Ironman race is, what, between $600 and $1,000? Yeah, it can be steep. You know, $5,000 to $10,000 for a bike. hundred and a thousand dollars and yeah it's pretty it can be steep you know five to ten

thousand dollars for a bike um well that it doesn't that doesn't yeah five to ten that well you don't have you don't have to spend five thousand dollars maybe maybe a thousand to five thousand the bike that i rode ultraman in the for in 2008 was you know off the shelf mid-level track i think you know it wasn't like 500 bucks but i think it was under it was like 1500 or 1800 or something like that so it wasn't nothing but um it wasn't like a ten thousand dollar bike i mean i i bring it up um not just because that's one of the uh it's one of the things that keeps coming up in the one-star reviews. I do want to raise some of those questions,

but it's something that's kept me out of trying triathlons. It's just that, dude, you know how long a $2,000 bike would last locked up in front of my house here? I'd say like 15 minutes. First of all, you would never leave a bike like that outside. You keep it in your apartment,

preferably in your bedroom. Preferably in your bed. You develop a covetous relationship with those kind of bikes. I think that certainly there's no getting around the idea that participating in Iron know, an expensive endeavor. And that's just the way that it is. I think that, but that's only one slice of what triathlon is. You know, that's a very small fraction of like the triathlon world. And, you know, for somebody who's interested in exploring it, rather than to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and go, well, you know, you see Iron Man on TV and you see these crazy fancy bikes and all this kind of, it's intimidating, right?

And you go, well, I can't do that. And that's out of my reach. Like, forget it. But every town has like a local triathlon, you know, every other weekend or something like that within driving distance. know you show up at those races and you'd be amazed that you know 99 of the people are on just you know crappy bikes and stuff they you know pulled out of their garage and wrenched together or what have you and i think if there's a will there's a way and if somebody's interested in pursuing that you know there's a way to to kind of get a foothold in it and and begin without really spending very much if any money i mean you, you need a pair of running shoes. You need a swimsuit. You know, if you need a wetsuit, you can probably borrow one. You're

not going to need that to train for one. You know, you can ride, you can find a stationary bike at your local gym and borrow somebody's bike to do your first race. And there's no need to go out and spend a lot of money, you know, once you, if you develop an appetite for it and you enjoy it and you want to explore it further, like you can slowly kind of upgrade over time you know and that's kind of what i did you know i didn't uh you know and i had to save you know put away quite a bit of money in order to be able to kind of underwrite and fund the first ultraman experience but you know i'm not going around you know racing every weekend because there's a lot of travel involved with that and you know i can't afford that so you know i'm sympathetic to that

um you know in many ways it is kind of a first world i mean it's you know in the same way that golf or tennis is i suppose um i don't know but but i think that it doesn't have to be that way. And I think if you erect that barrier and say, well, it must be nice to be able to go and do triathlons, but I can't afford that. I think that's kind of a cop out too. Yeah, I agree. And I, I mean, I think that, I think that, you know, there's, there's two different, you know, there's two different worldviews there.

If you look at something and say, why can't I do that? That's one worldview. The other worldview is, how can I find a way to do that? Right. And that's what you're describing. That's two entirely different ways of looking at a situation. I mean, like you, I'm sort of a top-down guy. So if I ever was going to do a triathlon, it would have to be an Ironman.

Just because I want to like you know give me the toughest thing you have and knowing you a little bit if you set your mind to do it you'd find a way to get a bike somehow some way you know you'd work it out and you know maybe it's not going to be a ten thousand dollar bike but you don't need a ten thousand dollar bike and you know a lot of it's like the business this the you know the bicycle industry uh profits tremendously from sort of uh you know a lot of a lot of guys with a little you know dispensable cash who get interested in triathlon and they want to have the best bike and they buy these bikes that are like these wind foils you you know, that are, that are made for made for speed. Um,

but are so it's sort of like, uh, somebody who's never ridden a motorcycle, buying a motorcycle, that's just way too fast for somebody with that sort of aptitude to ride it. You know what I mean? Like if you're a professional and that's your job, then, you know, you want the formula one racer, but if you want to just finish one of these races and do your best, there's no need for all that crazy equipment. And it's easy to get caught up in all that kind of stuff. And it's like Lance Armstrong said, with an asterisk, I suppose, it's not about the bike. But despite everything that's occurred with him, that sort of precept remains true. It really isn't.

And it's easy to get hung up on that that's one of the things i find really frustrating about running these days is that there's this uh gotta get the gear mentality and you see people in this these sort of uh shoes you'd expect to see on uh astronauts in a movie or something like that and they have uh you know they have the the gels on a band like um you know like artillery like there were some mexican revolutionary and stuff like that it's true i mean look at yoga what do you need to do yoga and now there's like all these crazy expensive mats and the special towel and the what you know like you can get these yeah i mean there's no end to now the amount of gear that you can buy for something that essentially you need nothing in order to do i could not agree more i mean the other thing is what that gear does is it functions as a means to

prevent you from doing the thing that the gear is supposedly designed for you know it's like running oh you know i saw well i can't run without my whatever my reebok pumps or I can't run without my Reebok pumps, or I can't run without my spandex tights. Or my Garmin. Like if I don't have my Garmin on and I go out and run, then did it count? Yeah, or my Bodyglide or my iPhone or just whatever. You can run in anything, man. When I was a kid, my foster brother would kick anybody's butt

running in flip-flops. You know, he's a Vietnamese refugee who came to live with us. It's his birthday today. Oh, wow. And yeah, he's turning 40. And it's funny because we have pictures of us when we were kids and we're the same height. And then he didn't grow anymore. And now when the pictures of us together, it looks like Chewbacca and Yoda.

Oh, that's funny. But he could outrun anybody, you know, barefoot or in flip-flops. And that's the thing is that – Like the Tarahumara Indians they talk about in Born to Run when they show up at Leadville. I mean, they don't – you know, they've never had any of that kind of stuff and they don't need it. And it sort of puts a microscope on, you know on how excessive and obsessive we can be about that stuff but I think it also goes towards this sense of identity

like creating an identity for yourself around the gear and how the gear kind of fuels that like whether it's your Oakley shades or whatever it is that sort of says this is who I am and this is the team that I belong to. And,

and, you know, people can take comfort in that and, and like that. And, you know, if it's a healthy pursuit, I have no judgment about that,

but I think it's, you know, it's, it's always important to kind of check yourself and go, you know, do I need this? Do I really need, you know,

do I really need this $2 thousand dollar carbon wheel for my for my butt you know like when ride to the store yeah when or yeah i mean you know it can get crazy and it's it's the same with look it's the same with um audiophiles and their stereo gear it's the same with you know golf and your golf clubs or what you thing is. You can go all the way to the wall with it in terms of money, but it doesn't need to be that way. Well, I mean, exhibit A, look around my apartment and look at the zillion guitars. Do you really need all these guitars?

I have like $3,000 guitars here. And when I'm making a record, the guitar that I use, I paid $190 for. That's it. I only need one. You can only play one at a time. Yeah, and I would look around here and go, well, I can't be a musician because I don't have 45 amps and like 50 guitars like you do. So it's out of my reach. Exactly.

Exactly. exactly exactly and and i mean that's one of the things that it's important to me when i'm you know when i'm hooking first-time guitar players up with their first-time guitar or something like that um or when i'm talking to people who you know the guy at the corner store he wanted to get into running he was like what do i need and i was like nothing dude do you want to go running right now we do you have a break we'll go run around the block you know like you have your you are born equipped with everything you need to go running. Well, in the same way that the gear can fuel an identity, it can also act as a barrier to prevent somebody from doing something. And you can create a comfort zone around that.

So, for example, you can say, well, I'd love to ride a bike, but I just can't afford it. And you can kind of say, that's your excuse out of doing it. Or I'd love to run a marathon, but I can't afford a $130 pair of shoes, so it's not going to happen for me. of your imagination um that are set up to make you feel better about uh about you know not getting out of your comfort zone and trying something that that probably scares you because that's when somebody says that it's like oh i hear the there's oh you're just you're afraid there's just fear there like let's talk about working through that fear forget about the 130 shoe let's let's focus on that and like then suddenly if you can overcome that like the shoe issue disappears yeah the i guess the fear is the invisible accessory that you see with some of those people who are over equipped or people

who use the equipment as a reason not to do something and look look, you know, I know how, like I've showed up at triathlon races. Everybody's incredibly fit. They have all this crazy gear. And I remember when I showed up to do Wildflower, the Wildflower race, and I think that was 2006 or seven. I talk about it in the book. It's a race that I DNF'd at. It was really kind of the first

triathlon that I was undertaking and I was ill prepared and brand new to the sport and I didn't know what I was doing but I was like determined to go and do this thing and I had you know a crappy bike

and I didn't have the right gear or anything like that and I remember being there and seeing all these incredibly fit people and being like and fancy bikes and all of that

and being intimidated you know and so I see how that goes you so I see how that goes, you know, I see how that can work. Rich, I feel like you're missing an opportunity here because thus far I've needled you into agreeing to run a hundred miler with me and doing the moth. And I think you're missing your opportunity. I think we can rewind. I'm not sure I agreed to do, I definitely didn't agree to do the moth. I'm just saying you're missing an opportunity to grill me into agreeing to do a triathlon now that I'm –

Oh, you're right. You're right. Well, because you were giving me such a hard time. You felt like I was hard on you last time, so I'm letting you do all the questions. You know, that's the question. So, but I think doing a trial, after what you've done, you know, I think doing a trial on is a no brainer and something that would be fun and easy for you. Okay. You just agreed, right? All right.

Do I get to pick the race? Yeah, sure. I mean, if I'm in, I'm all in. You know me. All right. We'll talk about it. You can do it. It'll be fun, man. Yeah. in, I'm all in, you know, me. All right. We'll talk about it. You can do it. It'll be fun, man.

Yeah. No, I'm like, listen, it's been something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I, you know, I, I, I always loved swimming as a kid, but I wasn't a great swimmer. I got kicked off the swim team for my bad. But you were on a swim team and you know how to swim. So yeah. Well, yeah. And there you're like ahead of most people.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm, you know, I'm running out of excuses. You are. Um, speaking of,

excuse of like, Oh, I don't want my bike to get stolen. Like you can, you hang it from the ceiling over there. I, but that's where I put guitars, dude.

Yeah. All right. Um, I, it's completely spaced on my thought there um oh speaking of shameless product placement we were talking about putting obstacles in front of doing stuff running a marathon doing a triathlon getting sober doing things you want to do um you know i i've told you about this but i wanted

to sort of bring it up again i um a buddy of mine was like i'm 37 i'm in lousy shape i wanted to be doing what you're doing like can you but i but i don't have any money can i trade you a painting uh for whipping me into shape um and that gave me the idea of i mean i feel like you know for a lot of us real or imagined money is a big obstacle to doing this stuff whether it's money in the in the shape of time or paying you know especially in manhattan paying for a hundred dollar a month gym membership or something like that um so one of the things that i started was uh was just doing barter camp where my uh my friends who are my age who are both fat and skinny uh you know i just they show up and i train them for for whatever you know whatever yeah it's awesome you know i think that's fantastic so

where's the painting well i guess i haven't know you haven't collected yet that's tim's self-portrait right there the the naked woman with her breasts hanging out that's my friend tim so that's what he looks like good looking guy huh yeah i guess wow real men have curves all right no i think that's super cool man and. And that's something I could see being kind of a viral concept. I think it's really cool. And I think, especially in sort of economic downturns, you're seeing more and more of that, this barter economy. And even online, there are sites that are springing up where a friend of mine started up, has a startup. It's called Tradya, T-R-A-D-E-Y-A, tradya.com.

And it's like, hey, I have this and I need this. And, you know, it's like basically just this online barter system. Oh, that's great. There's a bunch of little things like that online. And it's cool. You know, I like that. There's like an authentic, genuine, you know, give and take with that. And, you know, you have something to give. I like that. There's an authentic, genuine give and take with that.

You have something to give, and it probably makes you feel good to be able to relate what you've learned and help these other guys out. They can give you something in return. It's cool, man. I could see that springing up realize how much they inspire me. I think that your readers probably see you as an inspirational character, and they're right to. But I know that there have got to be readers and reader stories that have inspired you oh absolutely you know that's like the whole like the emails that i get you know that's what it definitely it doesn't just inspire me it like spurns me on you know like that's why you know i've made the decision to kind of shutter the law practice and step into this world and, and,

you know, try to, you know, take what I'm doing to another level because they're inspiring me to get the message out more for sure. Yeah. It's, it's great. It's really a positive feedback loop. You know, I, um, there have been times where I'm feeling unmotivated because everybody feels that way sometimes, particularly when you're training for a big event, you know, and you know, I'll get an email from somebody and they're like, all right, you know, I started getting up at five 30 every morning and, you know, to run, you know, seven miles each day before work.

And it's all because of you. And I'm like, man, I don't get up at five 30. I don't get up at seven. Keep you honest. Like now you gotta, you gotta get up and do it because you don't get up at seven. Keep you honest. Like now you gotta, you gotta get up and do it because you can't, you can't, you know, you can't have them doing it. And you, you know, you're going to feel lousy if you start sloughing off. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's great. And, you know, when starting to do the barter camp thing really

was like, Oh, okay. Now I need to be able to know how to train people. And I need to, I need to design a workout that I can get through, you know, how many guys are, do you have showing up? We've done one so far and I had, I think I had five guys come out, which was great.

It's open to women as well. Of course, I can't wait for a woman to come out and just school all of us. And it won't, it won't take much, right? You should like set up a face group, and just school all of us. And it won't take much. Right. You should set up a Facebook group page or something like that for it. Yeah, I will definitely do that.

And then you can post times and things like that. That would be cool. Yeah, I got to get on that. So the paperback's dropping on this trip. You have the big vegan talk festival thing this weekend. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. I'm speaking on Saturday.

What's next in the pipeline for you? I mean, we talked a little bit about it on the way here. Yeah, so I'm starting to think about the next book. I talked a little bit about it with Osher yesterday, so I don't want to rehash too much for the listener. But, yeah, I've sort of been thinking out loud for a while now about what I want a follow-up book to be about and kind of looking at the landscape in terms of the diet and nutrition books

that are out there, the plant-based nutrition books and sort of saying, well, you know, what can I bring to this dialogue, to this discussion that is, you know, really kind of growing, gaining a lot of momentum. I mean, I said this the other day, like Rip Esselstyn's follow-up book to the Engine 2 Diet came out this week. It's called My Beef with Meat. And as of yesterday, it was like, at one point it was number 13 on Amazon. It probably even went into the top 10, I don't know. But that's enormous, right? It's huge, right? So that just shows me that there's a ton of interest in this kind of lifestyle and eating, and that's enormous, right? It's huge, right? So that just shows me that there's a ton of interest

in this kind of lifestyle and eating, and that's a good thing. But it also, you know, makes me say, well, you know, is there anything else to be said? You know, I don't want to write another book that's a retread of information that's already out there, and I'm not going to write another book if I'm not bringing something that I feel is valuable to and helpful to people so I've been putting a lot of thought into that

and you know I'm not ready to like fully articulate you know kind of what it what it's going to be but I have some ideas about it and I think it's you know it starts with the plate and what you put on the plate and what you put in your body and but i'm also interested in in what happens after that you know for me that's a starting point uh to a journey that can take you in many different directions and from a holistic point of view that that means really addressing the mental and spiritual aspects of your health um and how to kind of you know the the big theme of my book is becoming more self-actualized or kind of unlocking a better version of yourself and developing a better relationship with who you are. And diet and fitness are a big aspect of doing that. But that's not the end of the story.

So, I'm interested in kind of picking up where the diet books leave off. You know, a lot of these diet books, they'll say, here's why you should eat this way, here's how you eat this way, here's a bunch of recipes, and now go enjoy your life. And that's the end of the story, right? And for me, it's like, well, now what? You know, that's the beginning of the story for me. And I don't see a lot of books out there that kind of um follow up with the next chapter and so that's kind of what i've been putting some brain power into so we'll see when when i quit drinking for me it was just um it was just subtraction i was just i i'm gonna remove this thing from my life and then I will be me. I will continue to be, to remain the same guy and everything else will go, go forward as planned just without the alcohol. Didn't work out that way.

Shocking. But I'll come out and say that I've done as little to grow spiritually as possible. That's one aspect of sobriety and recovery that I've really dragged my feet on. I mean, I'll be honest. It still scares the shit out of me. and it's i mean i'll be honest it still scares the shit out of me and um one of the things that's abundantly clear reading finding ultra is that you really went on a a journey through memory an emotional journey a spiritual journey um you really um tried to reinvent or rediscover or get a new perspective on your entire person not just your fitness or your you know alcohol intake or lack thereof and stuff like that i mean when i whenever i whenever i'm thinking about the book i always

think about this guy on his bike biking like he's possessed and uh just the inside of his skull and what's you know i mean also like dude epic, you know, Ultraman and stuff like that, like, your brain must go to amazing and terrifying places. A lot of the times it's just blank, too. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I talked about this a little bit yesterday too asher asked a similar question and it's you know it's like what are you thinking about you know when you're in that painful place or you're doing that like a possessed person and and uh you know i said the same thing to him which is

you know i don't know you know like a lot of it is like i don't know i mean i would say that that um i'm always trying to get to that place of like no mind you know uh particularly in i guess in a training context like where where it's an active meditation and and i said this yesterday too uh you know where time becomes elastic and you kind of lose time and and uh and the thinking brain you know starts to turn off because the thinking brain is not always my friend generally you know quite often it's attacking me with negative impulses and messages that don't serve me and i work really hard to kind of you know redirect my thinking and to make the choice to not listen to those messages but the real kind of peace comes when you can actually turn it all off and that comes through

practice you know what i mean it's like you read these stories of these tibetan monks that sit in these caves for days on end and they don't eat food and they don't they don't have water and they're in this you know blissful state of samadhi you know it's like i i want i want i want to achieve that you know what i mean and like my means for exploring that is a little bit different um but i think the end point is the same it's it's you know it's a it's it's a spiritual quest as much if not more so than a physical you know a fitness oriented kind of thing um and you know when you're in those really long sessions and you kind of can start to approach that place time does become elastic and you kind of lose time. And that eight-hour ride doesn't feel like an eight-hour ride.

It feels like a dream. Yeah, I mean, my experiences with losing time are usually on the other side. But the other side of the sobriety coin. Well, I know what that's like too you know the the last marathon that i i went out to run i mean i went out to do like 15 miles with my friend dave uh dave was my drinking buddy when i was 20 and uh we used to live in this unheated basement together and the thought that he and i would ever be running like 10 miles or something

together just preposterous together is mind-blowing. I mean, I love being able to reverse the old darkness from my past like that. But we went out to do 10 or 15 miles, and I ended up doing a full marathon. And when I got home, it really didn't seem like that many miles or that many hours. It just seemed like, you know, we had a good laugh. Right. And that's crazy, right? Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. And it's your perspective on it.

You know, I remember when, you know, during Epic Five, the fourth Ironman on Maui was so difficult. And it just, you know, I really met my maker on that and had reached a level of exhaustion that I just didn't even think I was capable of. And, you know, there was one remaining, right? There was another one to do to finish. And I got a really good night's sleep

and I got a couple of really good meals in me and woke up. And I remember approaching that day and enjoying that day as if that Ironman was just a celebration of all the four that had preceded it, like this sort of victory lap or like an afterthought. I was like, oh, we're going to go out and do this Ironman in Kona today. It's going to be awesome. We're just going to have a good time. You know, and like I had no like, oh, it's going to hurt. It was none of that. It was like, we're just going to breeze through this.

We already did four this week, and I actually feel pretty good because I actually got a good night's sleep finally in the middle of this thing. No problemo. You know, and it's like, that's insane, right? That's insane. And so my perception of how long it was going to take, my perception of how it was going to feel, all of that, you know and it's like that's insane right that's insane and and so my perception of how long it was going to take my perception of how it was going to feel all of that you know had had shifted from the way that i'd felt even a couple days prior and i remembered you know it still took all day

but you know it was we had a good it was like the most enjoyable of all the iron mans you know and it didn't and when we were done, it was like, oh, we're doing all right. We did that. Cool. We're done. Like it was the same kind of, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is I relate to what you just said with that, that marathon story. It was very similar. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's funny, the, the picture of, uh, of you and Jason Lester at the end, like you guys look, uh, you guys look cashed, but it's almost like you and your cousin ran out to the hay barn and back. Right. I mean, that was it, too.

We were the only one. There was one other person standing there that took the picture. There wasn't anybody around. I mean, we had a couple of friends cheers to the end, but that was it. It wasn't like a finish line or anything like that. It was like, all right, I guess we're done. I'm hungry. I'm going to go to bed now what's going on it's you know it's funny like a lot of my friends who don't run they're like you know i was like oh yeah you know i'm a little

little beat in kickboxing class today because i ran a marathon two days ago and they're like oh which marathon and i was like you know just ran around this one yeah it's out there waiting for you to go and do it anytime you know and the uh the marathon that i did for boston of like of all the races that i've ever done that was probably the most rewarding because i like got to the end and there was no finish line i was just i was in the middle of manhattan and like some guy was walking by with his girlfriend and i was like yo look at my garment and he was like get away do you need a dollar like get away from me and i was like, yo, look at my Garmin. And he was like, do you need a dollar? Get away from me. And I was like, no, look.

And it was like 26.2 on the dot. And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah. And he gave me a high five and that was it. Yeah, that's cool. That's what it's about, man. That's what it's about. Yeah, getting a high five from a random stranger.

And it was just, it was so personal. It was like just, it was my thing. It was our thing. And that my thing. It was our thing. And that's the great thing about running, too. You don't need the big race and the entry fee and all that kind of stuff. You can just go out and do it and do it for yourself. You don't need anybody to send you a race number. You can give yourself permission to go out and do it on your own.

And sometimes that can be more satisfying than the race. Yeah, man. Yeah, I totally agree. To me, that's the best thing about running is that it's so democratic. You can just go out and do it, and it's available to almost everyone. I mean, unless you have a physical disability where you actually can't run,

you can afford to run. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. When are we going to go out running together, man? I don't know, dude. You're going out of town tomorrow, right? I know.

I know. It's a shame. The timing's off. I would love to give you a tour of like, we can run through the crappiest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Yeah. I mean, when I come to New York, I go to Central Park, obviously. I do the full loop, and then I go around the reservoir. I mean, I know the park really well, and I know the West Side Highway.

What do you call that? Yeah, West Side Highway. Yeah, just along the West Side. I mean, those are the two places that I run, I'm sure. And I've run over the Brooklyn Bridge and all of that, but I've never really run through Brooklyn. You know, like the outer boroughs are unexplored territory. So next time, man.

When are you getting when are you getting back i get back on uh monday afternoon oh we can run tuesday maybe if you're not cashed i i will be cashed but we can we can run down to uh we can run down to fort tilden you can give me a swimming lesson all right we can do that i leave i leave uh wednesday morning so all right let's do it all right cool are we done here man i think so i mean i uh i think we're it dude i thought you were gonna i thought you were just gonna hammer me no when when you said the last thing about running i was i was almost like reach over and turn the computer off because i was like that i'm never gonna say anything better than that that was beautiful that was like our sort of

hopeful epitaph for the entire conversation. All right. Yeah. Good, man. I think we did it. Awesome. All good.

Rich, thank you so much for being a guest on the rich roll show. Thanks for guest hosting today, Michigan indulging, indulging me in this experiment podcast experiment. It's, it's, it's always,

it's always a weird blast good and i'm going to get you to uh start your own podcast i'm more interested in that than in you doing a triathlon so we'll see all right we're out of here all right thanks man peace plants plants Thank you.